Star Trek Online Discussion Thread - Delta Rising

[intrinsical]

I just started playing this for the first time today. I played up to the stop at Earth Spacedock after fighting the Borg at Vega, and so far I am having a blast. I noticed as I was looking through the episodes/missions that it had all of the different storylines or seasons or whatever they are, so does that mean I can jump past the Klingon War stuff and go right to the Delta Quadrant?
EDIT: Just thought of one more question, when do I get to change ships or do I stick with a Miranda class the whole time?

Welcome to STO

Barring a few compulsory checkpoint missions, you can pretty much play in any order you like. Just bare in mind most of the mission arcs are now highly serialized. At least for your first play thru, you may want to play them in order. This is especially true for the latest 3 mission arcs, Solanae Dyson Sphere, The Delta Quadrant and The Iconian War.

You get a choice of 3 ships to upgrade to every 10 levels till level 40. At level 10, you choices are Constitution, Saber, Nova. Level 20 ship classes are the less well-known Cheyenne (Picard's Stargazer), Akira and Olympic (sort of like a century old version of Beverly Crusher's Pasteur in All Good Things). Level 30 are the hero ship classes, the Galaxy, Defiant and Intrepid. And finally at level 40 and the final tier of free ships, you get the Sovereign, Prometheus and Luna (Riker's Titan).

Beyond level 40, your choices for free ships become a bit more limited. There used to be a mission, Temporal Ambassador, that gives you a free Ambassador class (Enterprise-C), but looking now I can't seem to find the mission in any of the story arcs. The summer and winter events also give out a very good free ship in exchange for playing their respective events for 14 days. There are also a collection of mirror universe ships sold cheaply on the Exchange.

Of course if you're willing to pay real world money or can gather enough dilithium in-game, then the C-Store has a huge variety of Tier 5 and Tier 6 ships including the Vesta.

 

[Jim Gamma]

^Temporal Ambassador is in the Klingon War arc.

http://sto.gamepedia.com/Mission:_Temporal_Ambassador

 

[Gul Re'jal]

Beyond level 40, your choices for free ships become a bit more limited. There used to be a mission, Temporal Ambassador, that gives you a free Ambassador class (Enterprise-C), but looking now I can't seem to find the mission in any of the story arcs. The summer and winter events also give out a very good free ship in exchange for playing their respective events for 14 days. There are also a collection of mirror universe ships sold cheaply on the Exchange.

Of course if you're willing to pay real world money or can gather enough dilithium in-game, then the C-Store has a huge variety of Tier 5 and Tier 6 ships including the Vesta.

Or if you participate in one of the "big" events, you can get a "free" highest tier ship. "Free" because no real money is needed, but you have to earn it by playing the game.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

^Temporal Ambassador is in the Klingon War arc.

http://sto.gamepedia.com/Mission:_Temporal_Ambassador

But the Ambassador is a T3 ship and T3 ships are near irrelevant these days.
Because the moment you finish Temporal Ambassador the next thing you do is spend 90% of the next 5-7 levels on ground missions.

The only time that mission rewarded a T5 version, which is a good ship, was as an anniversary event when the mission was made.

Our shipyard offers the Fleet T5 Ambassador, but not with any discounts. You have to pay 4 ship modules which can be a bit on the expensive side.
Probably not worth it, now that there are T6 ships.
Unless you are a major fan of the Ambassador.
Still think it was a mistake not to introduce the T6 guardian as a direct successor with compatible parts.

 

[Jim Gamma]

True, but I was replying to Intrinsical's comment:

There used to be a mission, Temporal Ambassador, that gives you a free Ambassador class (Enterprise-C), but looking now I can't seem to find the mission in any of the story arcs.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Just FYI its a bonus everything weekend this week, marks, xp, and dilithium.

 

[intrinsical]

Here's my spoiler free, one line review of the Iconian War finale mission, Midnight:

It is a quintessential Star Trek story, 4 out of 5 stars.

 

[LeadHead]

Thanks for the review! I won't get to play that for a couple days but was very curious whether or not it would be a good mission.

 

[Gul Re'jal]

It was nice. With really lovely visuals! I played it on two of my toons yesterday.

 

[Ronald Held]

Is there a patch which includes episode?

 

[JD]

I keep picking up parts for my ship, like improved phasers and sensors, but I missed if it told me how to actually equip them. Do I need to do it myself, or does it change them automatically?

 

[Scout101]

can right click and equip them, or hit K, go to your ship on the list on the left, and drag them into place where you want. The 2nd way is safer, and keeps you from swapping out the wrong things.

 

[LeadHead]

You have to put them in yourself. Go to your character screen, the human silhouette symbol next to the minimap on the top right, or press U (I think, I always use the mouse to click the button next to the minimap) select your ship from the left hand side, it'll have your character and the bridge officers as options too. Then select the click on the system you want to change, it'll give you the options from what you have and tell you where they are. This is useful for if you had a great item or console on a previous ship that you want to use.

 

[intrinsical]

I keep picking up parts for my ship, like improved phasers and sensors, but I missed if it told me how to actually equip them. Do I need to do it myself, or does it change them automatically?

Its just like any RPG game. There's your inventory and your character sheet. To equip something, you drag items from the inventory into slots in your character sheet.

The only big difference in STO is that your character sheet has many more sections. There's a section for your character's personal gear, another section for your ship's gear, and each bridge officer also has a section for their own personal gear.

 

[Ruaidhri]

Haven't really played for a while but I've been keeping tabs on STO news and stuff. Glad to see the Iconian War not get too dragged out and reach its conclusion.

I probably needed the break because I was getting a little bored and burned out, and extreme lag made me put STO aside for a bit. Playing a console is a little easier for me right now than PC gaming anyway.

And they've dipped into the Jem'Hadar attack ship well again with yet another version of the ship? Saw that and rolled my eyes a little.

 

[JD]

I got promoted to lieutenant commander and got myself a new ship. I'm a big fan of the Corps of Engieers Trek book series, so I got myself a Saber-Class, which is the class of the main ship from that series.

 

[Gul Re'jal]

Enjoy you new ship! It's always fun to have something new to fly.

Speaking of ships... I'm waiting for another ship sale to buy a nice cruiser for my engineer, but I don't really know which ship I'd like.

Right now I'm flying an Andorian escort: small, fast, nimble, so I'd like a change once in a while for a different play style.

Any suggestions? I'd prefer something medium - not too sluggish - and with Intel over Command.

 

[intrinsical]

Sometimes, I feel Cryptic hires the worst network engineers I have ever seen. Since this morning, I have not been able to login to STO at all. The launcher either fails to start because it cannot connect to the patch server, or I manage to login but again is stuck as the launcher tries to find the patch server.

The last time I experienced such network problems in STO, I could not play the game for almost a full year despite sending lots of customer support tickets and making lots of forum posts. I'm just hoping this time, it is not a repeat of my year of STO hell.

 

[Gul Re'jal]

People on STO forum are complaining right now too, so it seems not to be just you. There's something ugly going on with the server.

Fingers crossed it'll be solve soon.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Enjoy you new ship! It's always fun to have something new to fly.

Speaking of ships... I'm waiting for another ship sale to buy a nice cruiser for my engineer, but I don't really know which ship I'd like.

Right now I'm flying an Andorian escort: small, fast, nimble, so I'd like a change once in a while for a different play style.

Any suggestions? I'd prefer something medium - not too sluggish - and with Intel over Command.

Well, I only know 2 cruisers with Intel abilities, really.
The actual Intel cruiser and the Guardian, which is mainly a standard cruiser with versatile options for science and intel.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Zr3srXHv38[/yt]