Giving STO Another Try

[matthunter]

Nope, I have very few event ships due to long breaks from the game or disinterest. The Breen and Fek'lhr ships look godawful and I wouldn't want to look at one as my ship even if it had 50 console slots and shat ZEN. I am only JUST comfortable with the new T6 BoP they give you for Klingon Recruit (the version that kitbashes the Disco BoP with B'Rel parts) as it's a bit ugly.

I am running the event for the Temer Raider as it looks kinda cool.

I'm anal about running the missions in order so I don't have many summons (in fact I think I've only got the Scorpion Fighters item) - but giving Vaadwaur something else to shoot always makes them much easier. The final battle (with the four battlefronts) was really simple since they weren't constantly locking me down/spamming bombardments.

The worst mission I ran was the patrol with the Talaxians and having to deploy satellites. Even if you can get them all deployed, they're static so they get disabled really easily and then you have a MASSIVE fleet all spamming their shit at you. You're lucky if you can survive a strafing run and the Heavy Artillery vessels are tough to kill in one pass.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

I am sure there is a T5 fleet verion of one of these ships that gives access to the lost souls, and they make the vad very easy, hell they make everything easy as you can happily stay 15 kilo out of range and send them in and watch them melee straight through the sheilds and right at the hull, then they do fire damage on top of that, nothing stands a chance, amazing damage that i am sure will be nerfed at some point. lol

Although i am only using this ship for the vad, and once they are out the way back to the usual klingon ship.

 

[Sebine_91]

Just got a lifetime sub in the sale and looking forward to getting back into this. Put in so many hours on my Xbox a couple of years ago and thoroughly enjoyed Agents of Yesterday (even if it was rather short!). Looking forward to starting anew on my laptop. I'm curious to see how they've handled the Picard timeline.

 

[137th Gebirg]

I might have considered a lifetime membership once, but support from Cryptic for the consoles has been quite abysmal lately. Lots of bugs introduced on each new release and slow patch turnarounds (largely due to enforced reviews by MS & Sony prior to deployment). It really does feel as if the consoles are on a permanent backburner these days. I'm hoping things start improving post-COVID, at which time I may reconsider the lifetime membership. The way my luck goes on such things, I'll probably get around to buying it a week before they announce they're discontinuing the game. :/

 

[Sebine_91]

I might have considered a lifetime membership once, but support from Cryptic for the consoles has been quite abysmal lately. Lots of bugs introduced on each new release and slow patch turnarounds (largely due to enforced reviews by MS & Sony prior to deployment). It really does feel as if the consoles are on a permanent backburner these days. I'm hoping things start improving post-COVID, at which time I may reconsider the lifetime membership. The way my luck goes on such things, I'll probably get around to buying it a week before they announce they're discontinuing the game. :/

I hear that. It's the main reason I stopped playing on my Xbox to be honest as I figured when the Xbox One became obsolete or if they ever ended console support then I'd have to start all over again on PC. Been waiting for a lifetime sub deal before starting again on my laptop. Played for a couple of hours and it's been fun to revisit the world. For an immersive Trek experience it really is second to none. Perfect lockdown game really in that I've got an insane amount of missions to catch up with and it's nice to feel part of a wider community. Shame they haven't added the Starfleet uniforms from Picard yet though (if they have, I didn't see them).

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Is the lifetime sub still attractive at this stage in the game‘s life cycle?
I have to wonder how long they will want to keep creating content with as dated as it is?
To pay for itself you need to play for at least a couple of years, I think.
The engine was old-ish when it was released years after Champions came out.
How‘s the player count developing?

 

[Haggis and tatties]

The game seems to have quite a good player base and i don't think i have ever seen it empty, and the summer, winter and ship events certainly have players returning through the year, and as for the LTS at 50% off on the PC at the moment i think it's still a steal because some of the extra stuff like slots, retain token, LTS ships and playable races would cost you round about £70 alone to buy with actual cash, so if you were looking at getting your money back then during the LTS 50% off sale you would make that LTS cash output value but in just over a year with all the free bonus LTS stuff and that first year 6000 a year stipend, and some of the stuff you can't buy at all, like the 3 LTS ships or playing as a Talaxian captian.

 

[137th Gebirg]

I'm sure they saw an uptick in playership during the lockdown last year, which increased the problems tremendously, as their developers were also home and having problems getting their updates in. More things broke during that time than any other since the game first rolled out, IIRC. This was particularly true for the consoles.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

I can't believe i am actually enjoying melee combat in this game now via the Klingon recruit, and running through the entire game with just melee weapons on my whole team with 5 combat pets, it's insane how physical damage in this game just tears through everything. lol

 

[Sebine_91]

Seemed to be full of players last night, loading times were relatively slow probably due to the number of ships. It seems I'm not the only one who decided to go back to it in lockdown! It must be over a couple of years since I last played it properly and I can see there have been changes. I've enjoyed being able to get a decent ship straight away - went for the Arbiter Battlecruiser. Getting a massive kick out of it again. Maybe it's just the fact that the graphics are better on my laptop but the space areas look stunning.

I can't believe i am actually enjoying melee combat in this game now via the Klingon recruit, and running through the entire game with just melee weapons on my whole team with 5 combat pets, it's insane how physical damage in this game just tears through everything. lol

It's interesting you say that because ground combat is feeling a lot better than I remember.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

^^Yeah it feels more solid, and all i do is lock on to the nearest enemy with mouse button 4 and then spam the spacebar and everything so far just crumbles, and i am just under 1700 melee kills and i have just finished the Vad story line....oh and you can now track your klingon recruit progress in the rewards menu, so that is good as i was wondering if i was doing the whole space ambush task correctly, and it seems i was, so getting there and enjoying it.

 

[Tirius]

I can't believe i am actually enjoying melee combat in this game now via the Klingon recruit, and running through the entire game with just melee weapons on my whole team with 5 combat pets, it's insane how physical damage in this game just tears through everything. lol

Same here. I started using the special bat'leth with my recruit just for the achievements initially, but I might just have him keep it as his main weapon. I have trouble engaging enemies on busy maps sometimes (I just did the one where you fight the heralds on New Romulus and had some trouble running around the trees and rocks), but it feels a lot more effective than it used to.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

^^^Ditch the slow bat'leth and go grab the dual Nanopulse mek'leths from the khitomor accord mssion and enjoy, you won't look at a bat'leth ever again as they have no cooldown, just constant attacking.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Or you could get the Picard Bundle Tommy Gun.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

^^^The Tommy gun or Cochrans shotgun are nice but to get the 2500 melee kills you need to use a melee weapon, but after i get those kills i think i will be using the shotgun because its knockback is awesome and watching it floor a group of borg is a lot of fun. lol

 

[137th Gebirg]

Where does one get the shotgun? Asking for a friend.

 

[ProwlAlpha]

Where does one get the shotgun? Asking for a friend.

It was from an anniversary event from six years ago, I believe.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Ah... damn. I regret not starting into this game sooner. I tried it when it first came out, many years ago, and it was super-glitchy to the point of being unplayable. Then I picked up again a couple of years back and have been playing it ever since, but I fear I missed out on some really cool things that can no longer be acquired by any means currently available (Zen/C-Store, Lobi/Lahlunat Favors, etc.) Really wish there was also a way to convert GPL to EC's or Dilithium or something. Aside from the few odds and ends at the GPL Exchange, there's nothing much useful there and I'm really not sure of its greater purpose in the game, unless there was something more substantive that I missed many years ago. Also hoping that whatever special events that opened up the final Admiralty mission slot comes back around (something to do with the Jam'Hadar, IIRC), which I've read seems to only happen once every 5 years or so.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

Where does one get the shotgun? Asking for a friend.

All is not lost, you can get it from the Phoenix prize box with one very rare token, 10 boxes cost 40,000 dil, or if you grabbed the free boxes all week giving you 6 free boxes to open, one might give you a very rare.

The PPB contain alot of past stuff that you missed over the years with a few being account wide like the prolonged engagment phaser set, but not everything is account wide, ZC shotgun is not account wide, you have to check before you pick......here is a link to all the stuff in the boxes that were in past events.
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Phoenix_Prize_Pack

Oh and if you do try this and get a very rare token make sure your charactor is level 65 or the item you grab will be scaled down to your level, so instead of getting a MKIII Shotgun you end up getting a MKVI shotgun, so i had to waste 2 rare tokens to get the correct MKIII version. lol

And here is a more indepth run down of everything you can get from the boxes and what they do.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AIiIecXa_9x-0ewtMhG1ivAcw6H2H094qiSQKPdX9Gs/edit

 

[137th Gebirg]

Will take a look, thx!