Star Trek: Online

[Blamo]

About the Galaxy-X:-
= Officer stations equal to an assault cruiser.
+ Basic cloak
+ Can equip dual heavy cannons
+ Phaser lance (has a small forward firing arc, can miss, can do upto 11000 damage)
- Horrible turnrate, which makes cannons only good for PvE content.
- Only 7 weapon slots.

As someone who primarily does PvP now, I'm loving it. Due to it's inferior turnrate I've fitted it with only beams, allowing me to broadside with all seven. Nothing is more fun then decloaking behind an unsuspecting escort, tractoring them and reducing their hull by half before they have a chance to hit Reverse Shield Polarity.

In a sustained firefight though (since you can't cloak in battle), the Gal-X is the most inferior T5 cruiser.

That's just PvP though, in PvE where enemies aren't smart enough to make use of your horrible turnrate, you can equip cannons and lay waste to them.

 

[Angelsilhouette]

New "Ask Cryptic" is up, it's about Season 2. Galaxy class with separation! Defiant with Cloak! Intrepid with Ablative Armor!

http://www.startrekonline.com/node/1888

Wow season 2 is going to be pretty impressive.

Yup, they're even putting in the Nebula and Excelsior into the C-Store (Possibly for as much as the $25 Gal-X)

- More ship interiors (Bridge Ready Room, Sick Bay, Engineering and the Observation Lounge.) And Sick bay will have mini-games for healing injuries on your chatracter or BO from Ground missions; Engineering will have a mini-game to repair ship damage from being blown up on Space missions. (Assuming you play on a mission difficulty seting higher than Standard).

Scuttlebutt is that they've pulled the interiors because they couldn't get "Sitting in chairs tech" right.

Or maybe they're waiting to put things like "Fish tank" and "Ship model" into the C-store.

 

[Noname Given]

New "Ask Cryptic" is up, it's about Season 2. Galaxy class with separation! Defiant with Cloak! Intrepid with Ablative Armor!

http://www.startrekonline.com/node/1888

Wow season 2 is going to be pretty impressive.

Yup, they're even putting in the Nebula and Excelsior into the C-Store (Possibly for as much as the $25 Gal-X)

- More ship interiors (Bridge Ready Room, Sick Bay, Engineering and the Observation Lounge.) And Sick bay will have mini-games for healing injuries on your chatracter or BO from Ground missions; Engineering will have a mini-game to repair ship damage from being blown up on Space missions. (Assuming you play on a mission difficulty seting higher than Standard).

Scuttlebutt is that they've pulled the interiors because they couldn't get "Sitting in chairs tech" right.

Or maybe they're waiting to put things like "Fish tank" and "Ship model" into the C-store.

Actually, they did say that it's taking longer to 'hook' the interiors (and new Turbolift tech - ie a real quick transfer screen not a full loading screen when you transfer to another internal area); so the new interiors might not make it onto Live with the initial season 2.0 patch - maybe a week or two later (they'll go on Tribble for initial testing and then be pushed live after that).

As for the 'sitting in chairs' tech - not forgotten, but (per a recent Dev post); not a top priority atm.

Edited to add an update on the status of Interiors for the Season 2.0 update currently on the Tribble Test Server:

The following is a post taken from the STO Forums by the game's Executive Producer:

Originally Posted by dstahl
Just a quick update...

The devs working on the interiors (including beacon guy) just gave me an update and they plan to turn on Interiors for this weekends build - so things are looking good to get them in for Season 2. The only thing that is not going to be ready is the science lab mini-game which will come later. (it wasn't as cool as we wanted it to be and so we're redesigning it).

(So, the new, expanded Starship Interior rooms should be up on Tribble for testing this coming weekend - 7/17/10; meaning they should also be in the initial patch for the Season 2.0 Update when it goes Live on the Holodeck server at the end of this month.)

 

[Anthony Sabre]

Interiors are up now on Tribble. Just walked thru my medium sized interior. Breath taking honestly. Especially the engineering level.

 

[Blamo]

Engineering is excellent, no doubt about it. My only quibble is how the random crew tend to go into your quarters.

The refit exploration cruiser should prove a fave with some, with it's extra ensign engineer station (far better then a tactical ennsign station). Plus the celestial ship costume is cool.

The refit defiant did look to be a bit overpowered, what with two tactical commander stations, but they've now downgrded one to lt cmdr and added another ensign tactical station.

Haven't tried out the refit intrepid yet.

 

[Angelsilhouette]

Engineering is excellent, no doubt about it. My only quibble is how the random crew tend to go into your quarters.

Or how they will leap down from what seems like 15 metres up. (The upper deck in engineering)

Or how they will walk down invisible ramps in engineering. xD

My biggest quibble is the fact that everything is so open. My dad's warehouse is narrower than the corridors and the captain's quarters is higher than the vaulted cathedral ceiling in my RL living room. So much unnecessary hugeness. I can't wait to see the smaller non-combat interiors.

In some of the layouts, you don't have crew walking into your quarters, instead you have a constant stream of them walking down the side-corridor that leads (only) to your quarters and turning around before heading to the main corridor.

They seriously need to contact an interior designer or maybe contact Andrew Probert (who was originally on board when Perpetual had the property and was tasked with designing the ship interiors)

 

[Ronald Held]

you can go to every deck on your ship, regardless of class?

 

[Noname Given]

you can go to every deck on your ship, regardless of class?

No, you now have (on Tribble test server) 3 decks:
[All decks have a Turbolift now (and the doors slide open and closed with the 'swish' sound effect); and you select the deck you want from there.]

1) Main Bridge (with your Redy Room where you can place Trophies from past missions)

2) The 'Crew Deck' with:
- Crew Lounge (with more space to display trophies)
- Sick Bay
- Captain's Quarters

3) The 'Engineering Deck' with:
- Main Engineering
- Engineering/Sience Lab.
- Transporter Room

All connected via a main ship's corridor in a complete circle for the Engineering Deck; and a semi circle for the Crew Deck. Yes the main corridors are a bit large; but they used them already for one of the new Klingon PvE Episodes; they are the width they are so that they can design missions where you may need to perform ground combat, etc; so I don't have an issue with the width (this IS a game not a "Star Trek 25th Century Technical Simulator".)

There was also supposeed to be 'mini-games' (in the same vien as the 'tricoder/ship scanner' they've added for Memrory Alpha resource collection; but there is a post saying these were pulled because in internal ytesting they didn't think they were fun/good enough; so they're retooling them and will add them when they have something better (that was a bit dissapointing as while it is nice to see the 'ship'; imo, it's also good to have something to do - ie a reason to GO to the Sickbay or Main Engineering, etc. But I do like the fact that there's room for further ship interior expansion; and the Dev have said they want to do missions that take place ON your ship; and are designing things with that in mind.

Bottom line - They've added quite a bit in the 6 months since launch (and yes, they need to CONTINUE this); but I am impressed with what they've done with the Season 2.0 update overall; and the Ship Interior system they implimented was better than I expected as to the look and getting around in the ship. I do hope the get those mini games added and start doing missions that can take place there as development of the game progresses.

They expect to do a couple more patches to Tribble this coming week; and probably will have an Event on Tribble to draw more player there the Weekend of June 24th - 25th; and if everything goes well, they are looking at pushing the Season 2.0 Update Live to the Holodeck server on Tues. 7/27/10.

 

[Mjuice]

Finally got this game on friday and spent the whole weekend playing it, and so far I'm absolutely loving it

I've read so much negative stuff about it but I'm glad I ignored it. I mean I can understand some of the gripes about the gameplay, and I've never played any other MMOs so maybe I just don't know any better, but it's really not that bad. The most important thing to me is how they've recreated the universe. To me, they've got it absolutely right. It looks and feels like I'm in the Star Trek universe.

 

[Kaziarl]

Finally got this game on friday and spent the whole weekend playing it, and so far I'm absolutely loving it

I've read so much negative stuff about it but I'm glad I ignored it. I mean I can understand some of the gripes about the gameplay, and I've never played any other MMOs so maybe I just don't know any better, but it's really not that bad. The most important thing to me is how they've recreated the universe. To me, they've got it absolutely right. It looks and feels like I'm in the Star Trek universe.

I'm glad you're enjoying it. I must say, I have loved this game the entire time I've played it. And having played WoW as well (currently playing actually, I tend to switch back and forth between a couple of different games) personally I think the only thing WoW currently has over STO is 5 years. STO has made tremendous progress, as has already been mentioned, in the few months since it's release. I look forward to that continuing.

 

[Angelsilhouette]

I'm glad you're enjoying it. I must say, I have loved this game the entire time I've played it. And having played WoW as well (currently playing actually, I tend to switch back and forth between a couple of different games) personally I think the only thing WoW currently has over STO is 5 years. STO has made tremendous progress, as has already been mentioned, in the few months since it's release. I look forward to that continuing.

And WoW doesn't put all of its new content into a microtransaction site. :3

(Though I have heard they added a new sparklepony in for $25. They must be taking lessons from Cryptic's marketing dept. xD )

 

[Noname Given]

I'm glad you're enjoying it. I must say, I have loved this game the entire time I've played it. And having played WoW as well (currently playing actually, I tend to switch back and forth between a couple of different games) personally I think the only thing WoW currently has over STO is 5 years. STO has made tremendous progress, as has already been mentioned, in the few months since it's release. I look forward to that continuing.

And WoW doesn't put all of its new content into a microtransaction site. :3

(Though I have heard they added a new sparklepony in for $25. They must be taking lessons from Cryptic's marketing dept. xD )

Sorry, WoW's 'Pet Store' Champions Online by about one year and their other character services like $25.00 per character server transfer came online about 3 months after WoW's launch. The $25.00 'Sparkle Pony' also pre-dates the $25.00 'Galaxy-X' - so in effect for this one particular item (which, unlike the 'Sparle Pony'); that you can also get for 'free' using the Refer a Friend Program (and 2000 CP); it seems Cryptic was just taking a page out of Blizzard's playbook.

 

[syberghost]

I'm glad you're enjoying it. I must say, I have loved this game the entire time I've played it. And having played WoW as well (currently playing actually, I tend to switch back and forth between a couple of different games) personally I think the only thing WoW currently has over STO is 5 years. STO has made tremendous progress, as has already been mentioned, in the few months since it's release. I look forward to that continuing.

And WoW doesn't put all of its new content into a microtransaction site. :3

(Though I have heard they added a new sparklepony in for $25. They must be taking lessons from Cryptic's marketing dept. xD )

STO doesn't put "content" in an MT. It puts cosmetic stuff and account actions in there. The former is common to most MMORPGs, and the latter is in 99% of them, including Ultima Online, EverQuest, WoW, and every other MMORPG with more than 100k subs.

There are a couple of things in there with very minor game effects, but better things are available ingame within the first day of play except for one ship, and that ship is both available via other means than MTs *AND* quickly superseded by ships going in with Season 2.

All the CONTENT is free. All of it. There aren't even plans on the table yet for paid content updates, although I'm sure that they'll come eventually (just as they have for almost every successful MMORPG).

 

[Angelsilhouette]

I'm glad you're enjoying it. I must say, I have loved this game the entire time I've played it. And having played WoW as well (currently playing actually, I tend to switch back and forth between a couple of different games) personally I think the only thing WoW currently has over STO is 5 years. STO has made tremendous progress, as has already been mentioned, in the few months since it's release. I look forward to that continuing.

And WoW doesn't put all of its new content into a microtransaction site. :3

(Though I have heard they added a new sparklepony in for $25. They must be taking lessons from Cryptic's marketing dept. xD )

STO doesn't put "content" in an MT. It puts cosmetic stuff and account actions in there. The former is common to most MMORPGs, and the latter is in 99% of them, including Ultima Online, EverQuest, WoW, and every other MMORPG with more than 100k subs.

There are a couple of things in there with very minor game effects, but better things are available ingame within the first day of play except for one ship, and that ship is both available via other means than MTs *AND* quickly superseded by ships going in with Season 2.

All the CONTENT is free. All of it. There aren't even plans on the table yet for paid content updates, although I'm sure that they'll come eventually (just as they have for almost every successful MMORPG).

Disagree. By the very definition, the Nebula class and Excelsior Class are both content and both going into the C-Store.

The Borg Bridge officer is not cosmetic as it gives you +5 efficiency to all of the ship stats.

The Galaxy X is not cosmetic as it gives you a cloak and an AOE attack that ignores line of sight. (Don't know this first hand, just parroting those who are gnashing their teeth about it. :3 )

And, just to get pedantic, the TOS Enterprise isn't cosmetic as it gives you an extra engineering slot over the standard starter ships and the blue phasers scale up with the ship, meaning you can skip purchasing at least 2 phasers for the entire career of your toon. (So long as you don't mind them being a bit weaker than the phasers you can purchase with badges and merits. :3)

But then, as I said, I'm just being pedantic about it.

Mostly I'm annoyed at them holding 2 customisable bridge officers hostage at $5 per character. I like some of the larger bridges that have 12 officers stationed in them, however after you hit RDML 5, you only have 10 of your own officers, so when you visit your bridge, you've got a couple of visitors on board and working your stations. Obviously no biggie for people who ignore their bridges and / or don't RP, but it seems to be a blatant tax on people who do RP (as that's really the only reason to have the additional BOs.

They say it's for people who like to change up their ground crews, but you already have room for 3 of each class of BO as well as an extra 4th for 1. This means you can safely have 2 ground crew set ups if you chose.

However, I shall relent early and admit that this is neither the time nor the place for this sort of discussion, so will stop countering any counterpoints. ^.^

 

[syberghost]

And WoW doesn't put all of its new content into a microtransaction site. :3

(Though I have heard they added a new sparklepony in for $25. They must be taking lessons from Cryptic's marketing dept. xD )

STO doesn't put "content" in an MT. It puts cosmetic stuff and account actions in there. The former is common to most MMORPGs, and the latter is in 99% of them, including Ultima Online, EverQuest, WoW, and every other MMORPG with more than 100k subs.

There are a couple of things in there with very minor game effects, but better things are available ingame within the first day of play except for one ship, and that ship is both available via other means than MTs *AND* quickly superseded by ships going in with Season 2.

All the CONTENT is free. All of it. There aren't even plans on the table yet for paid content updates, although I'm sure that they'll come eventually (just as they have for almost every successful MMORPG).

Disagree. By the very definition, the Nebula class and Excelsior Class are both content and both going into the C-Store.

The Borg Bridge officer is not cosmetic as it gives you +5 efficiency to all of the ship stats.

The Galaxy X is not cosmetic as it gives you a cloak and an AOE attack that ignores line of sight. (Don't know this first hand, just parroting those who are gnashing their teeth about it. :3 )

And, just to get pedantic, the TOS Enterprise isn't cosmetic as it gives you an extra engineering slot over the standard starter ships and the blue phasers scale up with the ship, meaning you can skip purchasing at least 2 phasers for the entire career of your toon. (So long as you don't mind them being a bit weaker than the phasers you can purchase with badges and merits. :3)

But then, as I said, I'm just being pedantic about it.

Mostly I'm annoyed at them holding 2 customisable bridge officers hostage at $5 per character. I like some of the larger bridges that have 12 officers stationed in them, however after you hit RDML 5, you only have 10 of your own officers, so when you visit your bridge, you've got a couple of visitors on board and working your stations. Obviously no biggie for people who ignore their bridges and / or don't RP, but it seems to be a blatant tax on people who do RP (as that's really the only reason to have the additional BOs.

They say it's for people who like to change up their ground crews, but you already have room for 3 of each class of BO as well as an extra 4th for 1. This means you can safely have 2 ground crew set ups if you chose.

However, I shall relent early and admit that this is neither the time nor the place for this sort of discussion, so will stop countering any counterpoints. ^.^

As I said, it's all either cosmetic, available via ingame means, or outgrown in a day of play, with one exception which has better ingame content coming soon. Reviewing your examples:

Nebula and Excelsior. Cosmetic; they're ship costumes. They make your ship look different, not act different.

Borg Bridge Officer. The "Efficient" trait is available on "Uncommon" or higher Saurian bridge officers found in game for free.

Galaxy X. The exception I mentioned. The refit ships for Vice Admirals blow it out of the water, they'll be loading this month.

TOS Connie. You outgrow it in a day of play, and the phasers are weaker than the freely-available ingame phasers you acquire through play at higher levels. People only hold onto those on other ships because they look cool.

It's all either cosmetic, available through ingame means, or superseded by better ingame equipment. The only exception stops being an exception in a few days. It's sparkleponies.

 

[Angelsilhouette]

As I said, it's all either cosmetic, available via ingame means, or outgrown in a day of play, with one exception which has better ingame content coming soon. Reviewing your examples:

Nebula and Excelsior. Cosmetic; they're ship costumes. They make your ship look different, not act different.

Borg Bridge Officer. The "Efficient" trait is available on "Uncommon" or higher Saurian bridge officers found in game for free.

Galaxy X. The exception I mentioned. The refit ships for Vice Admirals blow it out of the water, they'll be loading this month.

TOS Connie. You outgrow it in a day of play, and the phasers are weaker than the freely-available ingame phasers you acquire through play at higher levels. People only hold onto those on other ships because they look cool.

It's all either cosmetic, available through ingame means, or superseded by better ingame equipment. The only exception stops being an exception in a few days. It's sparkleponies.

Actually, the Excelsior comes with the ability to transwarp anywhere, from what they've been saying. However, that may just be to the major space stations.

You can earn the ability to do so via the diplomatic system, earning transwarp conduits as you level in the diplo system.... However, when I was playing on test, the accolade for the diplo system said (after I'd done all of the diplo missions) that I had earned 1 out of 160 diplomatic levels (Which was wrong, I hadn't even earned half of the diplo XP necessary for level 1). So what the Excelsior does for you is gives you all of it right up front without all of the diplo grinding.

The saurian bridge officer you mentioned is indeed free, but only on rare saurian bridge officers and rarely on the rare BOs, not uncommon and up. This is why you don't see too many of them on the exchange and why they cost tens of millions of EC.

 

[Phily B]

Game is dying, its a ghost town and the devs have given up trying to respond to people on forums to the point where they just ban some people.

Good riddance.

 

[Jax]

If I joined the game after season 2 was launched is Season 1 still available for me or is the Universe the same for everyone ? so I would be thrusted upon season 2 plots right away ?

 

[Noname Given]

Game is dying, its a ghost town and the devs have given up trying to respond to people on forums to the point where they just ban some people.

Good riddance.

Funny, I see about the same number of instances since abou a month after the game launched. th only ban they did recently was a player who went ballistic and opened 5 threads on the same subject (RE: The state of the KDF faction and his belief no Dev cares - and yes, the KDF needs a lot of work but they did add a fair bit of ontent to it - it just seems a lot of KDF players expect it to all come in one patch).

But honestly, the game is hardly a ghost town; and the STO Dev Tracker shows a lot of activity with the Season 2.0 update scheduled to go live on Tues. 7/27. A lot more people are on the Tribble test sever this weekenbd as ther is a test event going on.

 

[Noname Given]

If I joined the game after season 2 was launched is Season 1 still available for me or is the Universe the same for everyone ? so I would be thrusted upon season 2 plots right away ?

It's an MMO - meaning they try to make the 'universe' persistent. Whenever you start a new character, he starts at Level 1 (Ensign) - does the Tutorial, then starts getting offered various missions, etc. As the player, it up to you to decide what you want to do. the New content doesn't overwrite or replace existing content, it just adds to it; so n effect, if you started a new character today, he's have more mission options than a character who started when the game first went online. That's the natuire of MMOs, they're never 'finished' per se; new content is added as time goes on in an efferot to keep people playing and subscribing.