Star Trek Online Discussion Thread (now free to play!)

[Harvey]

I still have something like 50 of the old lock boxes in my inventory waiting to be opened. Since my brother and I share a LTS, there's no way I'm paying for C-points, so I just have to wait for my monthly supply (plus the dilithium exchange). And now there's a new lock box to clutter my inventory? Ugh.

[Timelord_Victorious]

Actually, I am not so sure the change fir KA is so bad. It brings it in line with the other two.
It was to easy. A good group can do the optional in half the time.

The death timer is a good thing, too. Not looking so stupid now in my threat controll tank cruiser, heh, escort captains?

Of course now there will also be demand for heal ships.

The best set up now will be 3 escorts, tank cruiser, healing cruiser/sci ship.

[intrinsical]

The KA changes aren't bad, I just meant its better get your optionals done now while its still on easy mode.

I'll need to start having a second look at the healing abilities in space, especially BOFF abilities that can be applied to other ships. Which ability heals the most?

Right now I'm always using an Emergency Power to Shields first as it gives 30 seconds of damage resists, followed by a Transfer Shield Strength as backup if EPtS is still on cooldown, and finally Hazard Emitters if my hull gets damaged.

[Timelord_Victorious]

intrinsical wrote:

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The KA changes aren't bad, I just meant its better get your optionals done now while its still on easy mode.

I'll need to start having a second look at the healing abilities in space, especially BOFF abilities that can be applied to other ships. Which ability heals the most?

Right now I'm always using an Emergency Power to Shields first as it gives 30 seconds of damage resists, followed by a Transfer Shield Strength as backup if EPtS is still on cooldown, and finally Hazard Emitters if my hull gets damaged.

You should look into the AuxPower to System abilities....

Also team heals are Sci team, clears debuffs and restores some shields.

You already have transfer shield and hazard for team heals.

And lets not forget Extend Shields, which is less of a heal but an excellent resist.
it`s sort of the team version of Emergency Power to shields.

[Scout101]

Dislike most of those changes, except making the MK XII chance higher than the 0.0005% it seems to be now.

The death timer? The STF optional clocks are already hard enough without being down a man for upwards of a minute, 2 minutes once they die a few times. That'll be just fine, until the guy guarding the probes in KASE, for example, is on 2 minute cooldown and the whole plan goes to shit.

And for KAGE, starting the timer at the beginning is kinda lame. Yes, it's a little easy at the moment to get around things, but if the clock starts about 5-6 minutes earlier, and you have to stop and kill EVERY borg on the upper level as well, I don't see it working out very well. Especially if you're down a man or two because of the new death timer. Some of these missions are only 15-20 minutes to start with, getting to the two minute cooldown means you will have sat watching the screen do nothing for NINE MINUTES of the STF. that's crap.

Agree with the suggestion for new optimal build for a team, but you don't get to see any of that when you join up, not until it already starts. You can try and build around it in a private one, but unless it's all Fleet mates and a pre-built team, tough to grab people off EliteSTF and guarantee that grouping. And basically means impossible to just join a PUG queue and have any shot at this thing. Optionals were sometimes hard in a PUG (usually were), but now it's actually impossible.

Wish they'd stop tinkering with the old stuff, and make a NEW set of STFs to play with. Even with the changes, doesn't change the fact that we've figured out how to game the system a little because we've had to play each mission hundreds of times, can do them in our sleep, and are sick of them. I'd be happy never to play KA again, but can't get either of the drops for Mk XII. Got both the ISE ones, so at least am done with THAT one. Oddly, only Mk XII gear I have, and have both of them. And played that FAR fewer times than KA (where I focus), and got one Mk XI space drop there total...

[Timelord_Victorious]

Honestly, people make the changes out worse than they are...

The respawn timer on ground is a total nonissue unless the whole team wipes and when was the last time THAT happened? If it happens the optional is lost anyway.
Remember a teammate getting you back up works no matter how long the timer is, and being alive 5 minutes resets the timer as well.

it is different for space, but unless you make an all escorts once more into the breach run, people shouldnt die there too.

Certainly anybody guarding probes should NOT die, those things dont even fire back.

And if people would for once let me, the tank with actual threat control, shoot first they wouldnt even be in danger at all. They could even throw me a heal once in a while instead when my stuff is eventually on cooldown.

The instakill torpedos are finally being looked at and will hopefully be fixed by the time this will go live.

The only thing I cant really judge yet, how the new KAGE works. I imagine it is similarly difficult as Infected with teh optional.
You won't really be able to spare a minute, sure. Impossible? Not so sure.

And really the optionals on Elite should only be doable for the very best teams. That's what they are in there for. The loot drops are not even that good. One of the team might get a proto salvage on occasion or somethimes you get blue Mk XII gear...
But the proto tech drops are exclusive to the boss drops at the end..
Otherwise completing the optional only gets you an accolade, nothing more.

[intrinsical]

I'm not too worried about the new respawn timer. I do see that the maximum cumulative respawn timer of 120 seconds *might* be a little long, but its not too far off the mark. Cryptic can easily to tune it down to 90 seconds if too many STFs fail due to people waiting to respawn.

I hate bringing out my past but I've been doing much tougher content in EQ a decade ago. Even with this new respawn timer change, I can easily say that STFs are still much easier to than the most encounters I have faced in EQ. As every player have easy access to some form of shield regen and hull repair, the healer has a much easier time and can even focus on offensive attacks rather than having to focus on keeping the Main Tank alive. Compared to EQ where the group is essentially dead if the healer misses a heal or two on the MT, STF groups have a very large leeway to recover from any mistakes the group makes.

I forsee that the way groups are organized will change. We will see much less of random pugs and chances are a new NormalSTF channel would be created so players can organize themselves into groups of MT + Healer + DPS before starting a STF. Expect to see more specific "CSE LF Tank", "KASE LF Healer", "ISE LF2M DPS" calls rather than a general "LF2M CSE" call.

[Hartzilla2007]

syberghost wrote:

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DC Universe just made lockboxes free to unlock for LTS. Hopefully Cryptic will learn from this.

especially since the new one actually has usefull stuff besides the ship in it.

[Scout101]

Mostly my complaint about the respawn timer is that half the damned borg in the STF have the ability to one-shot kill you in elite mode, so it's not always that you did something stupid, sometimes you just dared to try and attack the thing you're now REQUIRED to kill. Or sometimes just dared to be in the area when an invisible torpedo blew you up...

[Scout101]

Forgot to mention: special Blue DOFF for doing the Friday 13th mission (Hearts and Minds, you can find it in the available missions list) by end of today. Don't miss out

[SPEKTRE76]

So I bought an NX-Class star ship from the C-Store however when I try to select it in the shipyard, it doesn't even show up. Only my Miranda Class ship is there. Do I really have to BUY two ship slots in order to use my new ship?

[intrinsical]

If you bought the NX directly from the C-Store, you have only unlocked the ability for all your characters to requisition the ship. Each of your character (if you have more than one character) will still need to go to the "Starship and Shuttle Requisition Officer" in ESD to actually requisition for the starship.

[SPEKTRE76]

intrinsical wrote:

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If you bought the NX directly from the C-Store, you have only unlocked the ability for all your characters to requisition the ship. Each of your character (if you have more than one character) will still need to go to the "Starship and Shuttle Requisition Officer" in ESD to actually requisition for the starship.

Oh yeah brother, I tried that. I guess my rank isn't high enough? I just started playing. I'm a LT lvl 4.

[Timelord_Victorious]

The NX is a starter ship. Everyone is high enough for that. You need an open shipslot, yeah. You should have at least two of those ( unless this is a silver restriction)
How did you buy it?
Were you in game with your character or did you buy it from the website store?
If the second one you need to open the C-Store in game and claim it for your character.

[SPEKTRE76]

Timelord_Victorious wrote:

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The NX is a starter ship. Everyone is high enough for that. You need an open shipslot, yeah. You should have at least two of those ( unless this is a silver restriction)
How did you buy it?
Were you in game with your character or did you buy it from the website store?
If the second one you need to open the C-Store in game and claim it for your character.

Yeah I just saw that. It kind of blows. They should at least warn you before you buy. What I really need are some better weapons ATM. All I have a dual torpedo upgrade and that has a 45 second respawn time if I've got torpedoes to launch. I accepted a diplomatic mission were I must gather dilithium and deliver it back to another Starfleet vessel. It's impossible, because somehow the big heavy cruisers see me and they attack us both and NONE of my phaser banks or photon torpedoes does a damn thing to them.