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

[Timelord_Victorious]

Once you reach Vice Admiral you have access to all the patrol missions in Tau Dewa sector block and can visit New Romulus.

The new episodes are all ground based while the patrols are all space.

The episode progression works a little different than what you know.

You have to unlock them through the Romulan Reputation. When you reach a new Reputation tier you get the next episode, so you will have to to a bit of grinding stuff in between.

[Ayelbourne]

So, with a new episode for each of the 5 reputation tiers and all of those episodes following an overarching plot, Cryptic essentially sneaked in a new featured episode series.

[Timelord_Victorious]

i wouldn't go that far. The missions are fairly short and don't really feature anything new, which is the trademark of Feature episodes.

[CorporalClegg]

So I started playing again and have found I've completely forgotten everything about the game. (It has been eight months.)

I started an engineer and leveled him up a bit to reacquaint myself with the controls. Unfortunately, I'm already having the same problem that forced me to quit before. There's something about ship movement that puts excessive strain on my mouse hand wrist.

It's strange because, as I just pointed out in the SWTOR thread, I use the mouse exclusively for movement in that game (and every other MMO), and can play for very long periods of time without ever having any trouble. But there's something about this that's just different.

I remember the last night I played I was up to the wee hours of the morning (for me) mucking about with Methos and intrinsical. Mostly, we just fooled around, but we did run a few STFs and that was most likely the problem. In any case, when I woke up the next day, I was in so much pain; I could barely hold a fork or pen for a week, let alone a mouse.

So I gave the game up after that. But I've been having Trek fever of late (who hasn't?) and was hoping the game would give me a needed fix.

I've tried keyboard turning. Suffice it to say that's not happening. I've also tried fiddling with the various camera and mouse sensitivity settings, but nothing seems to help.

Anyone have any ideas?

[Rocketeer]

CorporalClegg,

I have mild carpal tunnel from working on computers most of my life; however, it's compounded by arthritis. I use the ASD keys and arrow keys at the same time. Try to shift back and forth between the hands. It helps me. You could also try a gaming keyboard. Some tilt the keys so there's less stress on your wrist. I have a Fang pad which I use if I'm planning on doing heavy duty combat. It's a loose pad that connects by USB so you can place it or tilt it to suit your needs. You can map controls to the keys so everything is in easier reach.

Some players that I've talked with like the Nostromo Gaming Keypad.

Hope this helps.

---- Winter Wonderland

I thought I'd take on the snowman army in the NE corner. First I tried with snowballs and they pounded me so badly that I almost never got a shot in. Later I tried it with the Flurry and it was like shooting fish in a barrel. There was only 2 of us fighting the snowmen, one on the lake and me by the army. I ran back to the lake and had to work really hard. I had the Flurry but the other guy was just using snowballs. We almost ran out of time in both cases. Ran down to 30 secs killing the snowmen and down to 20 secs killing the Snowman Overlord.

Ironically, the rewards were chintzy considering that I killed approximately 125 snowmen and did most of the damage to the SO. I'm guessing that rewards scale by how many players participate.

In a couple of other snowman fights, the SO hit me with some serious punches. A couple of times he hit me and knocked me out into the snow crests. Once he hit me near the snowman in the lake and I flew backwards to the other side of the lake and landed up on the the snow crest. 71 meters distance by the target info.

[Capn Flukie]

He a tough snow guy.

Has anyone been having trouble with the radiation minigame on New Romulus? It runs awful jerky now, I was was getting a good 18 to 23 rad tokens up until a few days ago, now I'm lucky if I get 11. Maybe they're making it harder cause they know it's an easy way to get a lot of Rom Marks quickly?

[Rocketeer]

You can unload the epohhs at the GPL vendor. Perhaps you knew that already, but I just found it this morning... :-P

I ran the race this morning and was in the lead with another person about 6 meters behind me. As we neared the finish, there was a player standing there already. When the 1st place flag appeared, he claimed it. I had to take 2nd and the person behind me took 3rd. How did he do that? The player didn't run the race or didn't run it the route we took. Me and the player that came after me were confused how that happened.

And I still see players shooting other players and me. How are they doing it. I've tried shooter mode with no effect.

Another question. When you make yourself as hidden, does it hide you from your fleet roster? I noticed that sometimes I don't see all characters in the roster although I can see them standing in front of me.

[intrinsical]

I'm familiar with the Foundry editor and its similar enough to Cryptic's internal mission editor that I kinda suspected that there's no real way for Cryptic to actually track who's in the race or who came in first. This is why they had to add 1st, 2nd, 3rd place flags that players have to pick up in order to reward winter eppoh tags.

My guess is Cryptic cannot determine if the player picking up these position markers are actually in the race unless they got a programmer to add special "tech" to do the check. Obviously they chose to cut cost and not add that special tech, so any player can pick up these race flags even if they did not run in the race.

[Rocketeer]

Considering how many players exploited the shortcut, I'm surprised that the race flag issue hasn't been. I'm not happy with the whole flag deal. I've missed a few by sliding pass the flag.

Another interesting event occurs during the race. Pets disappear at the drop then reappear after your character makes it across. I assume that they had to do that to compensate for bad coding. I mean what's the difference between coming off that drop and jumping off any other high point?

[Timelord_Victorious]

Rocketeer wrote:

---

Considering how many players exploited the shortcut, I'm surprised that the race flag issue hasn't been. I'm not happy with the whole flag deal. I've missed a few by sliding pass the flag.

Another interesting event occurs during the race. Pets disappear at the drop then reappear after your character makes it across. I assume that they had to do that to compensate for bad coding. I mean what's the difference between coming off that drop and jumping off any other high point?

The pet issue is most likely just a pathing issue.
NPCs pets follow sort of an invisible rail that is computed anew with every movement that you make.
If you jump from one surface that is not connected to the next the pet can't follow.
There are limits for the AI to generate a new route, so there is a function implemented that respawns them near you if you get to far away from where they hit their navigation hazard.
At least that's how i understand it.

[Bird of Prey]

I finally reached 800 lobi and I'm looking for some feedback. Are the ships in the Lobi store worth it? How about the consoles?

[Timelord_Victorious]

Unfortunately the consoles are ridiculously expensive and work best as the set they come in. A complete set is more expensive than a ship and will cost 900 Lobi.
Not worth bending out of shape for IMO.
You can easily get stuff that is just as good but working differently.
Unless you have a niche build that the set is absolutely tailor-made for, then go for it.

The time ship is certainly up there with the best escorts and worth it if you can't get a bug ship.

The recluse carrier is probably the best carrier in game form what I've heard but an aquired taste or simply indifference to the design to fly.

And that's about it... no other Lobi ship available outside of shuttles...

[Bird of Prey]

Thanks. I have an Armitage so it's in the middle of those two options - escort vs carrier. Sounds like I will go with the timeship, as the feedback on it sounds positive.

I've been collecting fleet marks and putting them into fleet projects, but have yet to purchase anything from the fleet stores on our starbase. I went there yesterday, and realized that the MKXII Purple Borg gear I got from the pre-season 7 STF's are now out of date. Guess I need to save up dilithium and start upgrading.

[Rocketeer]

It seems like most of the desirable stuff is at Tier III or higher. I think some players use fleet credits to buy white doffs for SB projects, but I'm saving my fleet credits for better quality items.

[Hanover Fiste]

Looks like the main page, message boards and the game server itself are all down. I wonder if something blew up in the last maintenance they were attempting.