Star Trek Online

[Xev]

Why you closet min-maxer..!

hehe *purr*

I can appreciate where you went with changing toons to level.. I guess I do the same thing in CO sometimes.. I'll put together a build I know I can level fast and then swap it later for what I really wanted.

I'm not to that level yet with STO. I still have to play my toons from level 1 to 60 'as intended' to get a feel for how to best play them.

I am not dumping my Escort btw! I will pwn that bish  : ) I'm finally getting almost good with Tactical/Escort.. I just noticed yesterday that I picked the 'wrong' Escort for how I play...! (Two Science chairs vs. Two Engineering - I wouldn't hesitate to pick the other Escort if I was making the decision today) but I'm gonna stick with it anyway. My Boffs are what I need to fine tune now, and gear.

Smitty and his Cruiser, though... He is already nasty..

Xev's Escort got me shredded all my first months of STO and I still loved the game.. that must say something...

I want to say again how cool I think it is we can rename Boffs but not only that - we can make them look how we want! My virtual Lost in Space crew is continually taking shape... It's cool! If you have a theme in mind.. of course.. Ahhh and the greedy Dr. Smith is at This helm.. Searching for the base necessities in life... You know...... power, jewels, and lots of moneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoney.

[Arcana]

I can appreciate where you went with changing toons to level.. I guess I do the same thing in CO sometimes.. I'll put together a build I know I can level fast and then swap it later for what I really wanted.

I'm not to that level yet with STO. I still have to play my toons from level 1 to 60 'as intended' to get a feel for how to best play them.

I dunno, I think in STO it is different because it isn't a question of changing builds: as you're leveling you're practically compelled to pick a new ship at regular intervals.  Whether that ship is an escort or a cruiser (or a science vessel) isn't as significant a departure for me as it would be to swap a build.

I want to say again how cool I think it is we can rename Boffs but not only that - we can make them look how we want! My virtual Lost in Space crew is continually taking shape... It's cool! If you have a theme in mind.. of course.. Ahhh and the greedy Dr. Smith is at This helm.. Searching for the base necessities in life... You know...... power, jewels, and lots of moneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoney.

There also seems to have been a major affirmative action movement to get green Orion women into Starfleet.

[Night-Hawk07]

Finally played through the new expansion, and not going to lie, the TOS portion of AoY was disappointingly short. I figured it would be like the Romulan expansion; a whole new story for the first 20 levels, then you get warped to the 25th century through weird time-travel magic. Instead, you go through basically a slightly extended tutorial using the STO crew's favorite TOS episodes as a backdrop....then get warped to the 25th century through weird time-travel magic.

[Xev]

It was really, really, short! The AoY arc. Surprised me too. I thought it was just getting warmed up...and then it was over. I don't normally do mishes but I figured when they made all this fuss about Agents of Yesterday that the story arc was going to be (this long...difficult...me crawling around in caves..) more.

And why no Kirk...! Sheesh.. I mean he was there but faceplanted...

There is one thing, though - the costume pieces and sound effects are now a part of the game and they weren't before. Some skills say 23c. now, too. I dunno if that is just different sound effects or what. I liked that Chekov was cool enough to contribute as much as he did, too. That'll be in the game 'forever' too.

I like the way they took old TOS stories and tweaked them into something a little different for the mishes. I got major warm fuzzies right off from the first mish seeing some of the original Star Trek crew. And I sure liked the AoY Episode a lot more than the tutorial...! But yeah, I was surprised when all the sudden the arc was over.


I'm doing more Episode mishes with Smitty right now and he went and picked him up another nice toy that Xev never got because he didn't run mishes. There are some really nice (I mean, not super amazing... but it gets used...) loot in the story arcs. It is nice I can skip through mishes, too. I mean, Smitty is a loot ho and already level 42.. He has like 10 billion Episode mishes in front of him.. It's kinda nice to be able to cherry pick..

At 50 I can finally run that Delta Arc to see what that uber set gear is I was told about... I've yet to get more than 1 piece in any set.

STO keeps me busy. It's nice. My mind has plenty of places to get lost.

Anyway. Yeah. Short AoY arc!

There also seems to have been a major affirmative action movement to get green Orion women into Starfleet.

A new theme is forming.........

[Xev]

Seemed like too late to edit ^^ and level 50 is coming up...

sorry to spam, but,..

I goofed somehow and am going to end up with two level 40 ships. The final freebie ships. Is there some voodoo magic that makes copies of my old ships into Admiralty ships when I turn 50..? I thought I read something like this in Zone...? It will help me to decide which second ship to get is why I ask.

Too bad we can't trade those ships between toons. I'd try that other Escort out with Xev.

[Arcana]

I goofed somehow and am going to end up with two level 40 ships. The final freebie ships. Is there some voodoo magic that makes copies of my old ships into Admiralty ships when I turn 50..?

If I remember correctly, if you have the ship actually in ship inventory you'll unlock the Admiralty ship automatically.  I think if it is in drydock or if you have it unlocked but don't actually have it, you have to acquire the ship to unlock the Admiralty ship, even if you technically have rights to it.

In other words, if you dismissed the ship to make room, you'll have to buy it again (or fetch it again) to get the Admiralty ship.  Once you have the admiralty ship, you can dismiss the actual ship again.  You don't need to maintain possession of a ship to keep the Admiralty ship.

Incidentally, if you are going to use the Admiralty system - and I would recommend you do because the rewards are pretty good for something that takes very little time investment - there's no such thing as a bad Admiralty ship.  Some tasks require strong ships, some only need weak ships, but no Admiralty task costs anything but having ships to attempt the task.  You can't lose anything running Admiralty tasks, but you can only run them if you have Admiralty ships to run the tasks, and the more ships you have the more tasks you can run simultaneously.  So there's no such thing (to me) as an Admiralty ship that's not worth the time to unlock if you are entitled to it.

[Xev]

R&D materials is one good reason to run Admiralty stuff. There are some mats that I don't see anywhere else but when doing Admiralty, too. Like you say, it's just a few clicks after logging on to run the 'mishes'.

Cruisers have high Engineering, I'm guessing, when they turn into Admiralty ships. Escorts are high in Tactical when they copy over so that gives me another reason to try out the Escort I haven't tried yet. I'll snap it up the next time I hit Sol.

I like that freebie ship we got awhile back that bypasses Event penalties. It also has no maintenance cooldown so it's decent for using as a Pass sometimes too.

[Arcana]

I like that freebie ship we got awhile back that bypasses Event penalties. It also has no maintenance cooldown so it's decent for using as a Pass sometimes too.

Pro-tip: pay attention to maintenance bonuses.  Sometimes you'll get a mission that has really high requirements and you don't have enough Admiralty ships of sufficient strength to guarantee success.  But, you may have ships that have maintenance bonuses.  There's a mission I recall that comes up from time to time that has an intrinsic -50% maintenance bonus.  That means your ships recharge and become available in half the normal time.  Put two ships each with -25% maintenance bonus in that task and those bonuses stack, meaning -100% maintenance, which means your ships will recharge and become available *instantly* after that task completes, whether you succeed or fail.  Which means there's no harm in trying, even if you fail.

[Xev]

*grabs abacus*

Patch day...

My own special mini-game. Neener neener.

[Xev]

What..! No patch...!

They hit us with a Friday one, last week. I better shush...

Or its.....



Time again.

[Xev]

Check this bad boy out!



It's The Doctor! The Hologram dude..

They did really nice with the Voyager crew in the Delta quadrant mishes. Good likenesses and voice.

I can honestly say that having relevant loot in mishes makes them just 100x more fun.. Champions Online has a lot of great mishes but almost all the loot sucks. It's been so long since I played mishes with good loot...

Already knowing the characters is pretty cool, too. It's been forever since I've watched Star Trek Voyager but it was pretty decent when I was watching it. The Doctor has to be one of the best Star Trek characters outside of the Original series.. And now he's in my crew!

It is really cool having Original Series sound effects and costumes now. That's my favorite flavor of Star Trek. I'm glad I started playing when I did.

[Arcana]

They did really nice with the Voyager crew in the Delta quadrant mishes. Good likenesses and voice.

I did like the Delta arc.  There's a side mission in the Delta Quadrant called the Gerren System Patrol that has an insidious accolade (i.e. CoH badge).  You're forced to decide whether to grant asylum to Vaadwaur refugees or not.  And like every MMO where you have to make this choice, nothing seems to change in the game regardless of what you choose: the plot moves on.  But if you happen to replay the mission, something interesting happens.  If you grant asylum, the next playthrough the refugee fleet is smaller.  It is as if granting asylum previously causes there to be less refugees.  If you don't grant asylum, on the next playthrough the refugee fleet is larger.  Depending on what you decide, the refugee fleet will get larger or smaller up to some maximum and minimum.  There are two accolades associated with this mission: one for playing through with the smallest possible ally fleet (the refugees fight on your side) and one for hitting the minimum and then going all the way back up to the maximum.  It takes something like five or ten playthroughs to hit the max and the min.

Unless you read the wiki or follow the forums or otherwise badge hunt (ahem: accolade hunt), you might never notice.  But I thought it was an interesting tiny touch.

[Xev]

I'm liking The Iconian War so far, 'House Pegh' was actually a decent story and where I left off last night. I'm still rooting for that fat Klingon that I'm glad I got to see on TV before.

STO puts a lot of production and story and maybe even a lilt bit passion into their mishes. It's totally old school. Or gives me that feeling, anyway. Like back when I'd do mishes because they were fun and engrossing and the rewards were the shiny cherry on top.

That generous XP and worthy loot is old school mish material, too. The escape has been really nice. Good timing.

I'm ready to start looking at Klingon and Rom ships soon.

Like 6 months into the game....

Finally...

hehe

I've had pretty much no altism up to this point. My first guy still feels like my main but I'm finally starting to know the game well enough to get the inevitable altism.

STO is a lot of game! I hope it's around for decades to come. And I hope we get more TOS people in there while they still CAN be! Come on Mr. Kirk... Show'em how it's done! We need way way way way wayyyyyy more TOS mishes. Who started it all, anyway....??

[Angel Phoenix77]

House Pegh, was the last Matt Miller mission for STO.
The only part I do not like of the Delta expansion is that the patrols is required for the temporal faction, the delta recruits could skip it. This almost made me quit, all of these patrols are the same, not one ground mission.

[Xev]

It was a really good mish. I'm surprised I haven't jinxed myself yet. Usually my mishes get bugged and/or I end up running around lost.

Coming from CO, STO Ground combat seemed really sub par and was one of the reasons I dumped doing mishes right off. Now it's .... *shrug* .. part of the game, the story? Breaks things up a little. I've actually found myself mini-groaning 'awwww a Space mish' in the middle of a story arc when one comes up and have even been considering Ground queues again..

I had to have some action, yesterday, though. After a full day of mishing. So I queue'd it up. My Escort is starting to get just a lil mean. Finally. Smitty and his Cruiser have a long way to go to catch up with Rep and some gear but are already doing respectably.

[Xev]

Smitty (aka Dr. Smith from Lost in Space):

*pats round belly*

"A tribute to my inspiration!"

'at's nawt a knife....

Phaser Shmaser...

[Xev]

With The Doctor on Double Duty, Smitty scrapes by...



And The Universe is saved, once again, by an aging out of shape Courage Challenged guy backed up by balding guys made of air.

[Arcana]

It was a really good mish. I'm surprised I haven't jinxed myself yet. Usually my mishes get bugged and/or I end up running around lost.

Coming from CO, STO Ground combat seemed really sub par and was one of the reasons I dumped doing mishes right off. Now it's .... *shrug* .. part of the game, the story? Breaks things up a little. I've actually found myself mini-groaning 'awwww a Space mish' in the middle of a story arc when one comes up and have even been considering Ground queues again..

I had to have some action, yesterday, though. After a full day of mishing. So I queue'd it up. My Escort is starting to get just a lil mean. Finally. Smitty and his Cruiser have a long way to go to catch up with Rep and some gear but are already doing respectably.

I think most of the missions, space and ground, are a little light on design.  Space missions tend to be more fun because space combat itself is more fun: it is a genuinely unique addition to the MMO vocabulary that MMO players haven't seen a million times before.  But I think there are ground missions that are fun and interesting in their own right when the devs actually spend time on them.  Time in a Bottle comes to mind (its the mission right after House Pegh, in fact).  The Dragon's Deceit in the Delta Quadrant story arc was also an interesting one.  It is just a question of the mission designers actually taking the time to make the missions something more than waypoint combat spawn points.

[Angel Phoenix77]

This has not been a good day for me , first people were rushing the objects of braking the wall open mission and ignoring the current objective, then not more than a few minutes ago, I was told how wrong I am when it comes to fleet projects. how this started was someone asked a question about how to get "white con bridge officers" I told him he was confused and he had to get duty officers. He then told me how wrong I was, again I told him that I was a part of a fleet for a better part of a year and have done many fleet project, at which point, he told me" he played since mail game codes came out" and then ignored me.
I know I am not "pro" but I do know a few things, and try to help, this is almost as bad as a experience I had in City of. but I will still try and offer my help.

[Xev]

You have to give the species time, Angel. It wasn't sooooo long ago we were killing off everything on this planet that bothered us.

Niceness is a mutation. It's un-natural for the average human.

Seek mutants such as yourself. Be thankful for all things good.

My best advice.

I think most of the missions, space and ground, are a little light on design. 

Light, as in....? They are relatively easy if that's what you mean.

Productionwise, sheesh, it's like being in a movie. (video cutscenes galore, and then I do something goofy that's designed purely for dramatic immersion like catapult worry free down a zip line while checking myself out). I can participate about as much as watching a movie, too...(lol).

Hey, sometimes that's good.. I've posted before about being too tired to play CO. You always have to be UP, playing CO (if you're me..and..relatively speaking - relative to... watching TV).

In an STO mish I can be guaranteed tons of cutscenes and other breaks in the action. I dominate the Space mishes when they pop up and zerg the Ground ones with my lack of real effort in ground gear and ground hotkeys ..hehe.

It always takes ~ an hour, and I always win. Mostly I just sit and watch, it feels like.

Kinda like a movie  : )

That's mishes to me, anyway.

It is just a question of the mission designers actually taking the time to make the missions something more than waypoint combat spawn points.

"waypoint combat spawn point mishes"... lol. Nice imagery. As old a style as video games themselves! I always blamed it on the fact that technical people and artistic people are not so often the same and sometimes technical people are expected to do it all.