Star Trek Online (Now for free and people are still playing!)

Um. Between sales and subscription allowance, the 10th anni bundle would cost me about $120 right now. Which is what I might have said I thought would be a fair price for it. I'm going to have to think about this one. I don't quite want that many Enterprises, except of course I kinda do. And due to the DC comics run between about ST3 and ST5 I really have a soft spot for the Excelsior.

Well I have about a day and a half to talk myself into it.
 
It's nice that they are all already fleet level and include the skin unlocks and consoles from the other variants.

If I didn't already own a TOS Connie (promo pack version) for my human TOS captain, along with 7 years of buying other T6 ships (at least 3 fed ships per fed captain), I'd have bought it by now. Besides the Connies you also get the Defiant and Voyager for when you want cannons or (magnus pyke) SCIENCE!
 
If you didn't log in yesterday, apparently the T6 coupon is available for 30 days?

Anyway that new TFO is pleasantly trivial. A bunch of little ships, and one mild blocker mechanic at the end. Felt like a setup for some plot point that wasn't fully baked yet, but I won't have a problem doing that one 20 times.

Yes, I was pleasantly surprised by the reasonable length and lack of any annoying mechanics.
 

jandrese

Ars Legatus Legionis
14,005
Subscriptor++
The new story mission is just the first half of the storyline, and does the annoying thing where it dumps you in control of a terribly built character/ship. I guess it makes it easier to balance the mission if you're not trying to make it a challenge for 12 year vets and also people who started playing yesterday. The mission is pretty easy if you just spam your two super-murder special abilities on the ground. The space stuff is like being thrown back to level 10, but thankfully the enemies are also like you are level 10, so it's pretty easy.

It's super weird to hear your character talk.

The actual plot is pretty threadbare.
The mirror universe emperor is I think trying to hijack the V'Ger probe from ST:TMP and turn it into a weapon. Being a mirror universe story there is of course a lot of backstabbing. It is hard to imagine anybody ever getting anything done in the Mirror Universe when everybody gets backstabbed like twice a day. Then Star Fleet decides to work with clearly evil Mirror Universe characters for no apparent reason. To be continued.
 
Cryptic using the golden opportunity to improve old content? Not in a million years.

Once in a while the impossible does happen:

"Janeway has also been retroactively added to the Delta Quadrant missions that feature most of the rest of the cast of Star Trek: Voyager. You'll find the Admiral directing you on missions throughout that entire storyarc."

https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star- ... is-live%21
 

Krye

Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
6,437
Subscriptor
So I'm hoping to finish out the current event to give the new science carrier to my new science capt (lvl 31 now). I've never run a carrier or a science capt so I'm excited to see how this plays out!

Meanwhile, i bought the Arbiter with the free T6 coupon so I can get the T6 trait that improves beam weapons. Since all but 2 of my ships use beams, it just seemed like the way to go.
 
Noob question: is there any reason to keep "old" ships? I've got a few ships clogging my dry dock that are less sub T5. Can I safely trash those or do they need to stick around for admiralty cards or something?

Normally you only need to keep them until their admiralty card is unlocked when you reach that level.

One reason you might need to keep one is if it unlocks its skin for a T6 ship, and you like that skin. Many/most T1-T5 skin unlocks are free for T6 even if you've never owned the ship but there are a few exceptions and I'm not sure whether deleting a ship deletes the unlock. TL;DR unless you really like that ship's look and plan to get the T6 version, you can delete the lower-level ship without checking the wiki about skin unlocks.

Also, any T6 zen store ships in dry dock can be deleted since you can reclaim them, and the same with event ships (summer, winter, anniversary). Just never delete lobi / lock box / promo pack ships.
 
I've kept a couple of the leveling ships. When you've been in the game a certain length of time you'll find you're buying extra T4/T5 ships for admiralty purposes (and deleting them from inv as soon as they populate there). But yeah eventually you'll buy drydock space.

I had a really really weird event TFO over the weekend. 3x more rifts, beefier enemies, crazy spawns. It was L65 like all my other recent ones, and I didn't think the events had hard-mode options (which I certainly didn't pick). I thought they had buffed it, but then the next day it was back to normal. What am I missing?
 
I've kept a couple of the leveling ships. When you've been in the game a certain length of time you'll find you're buying extra T4/T5 ships for admiralty purposes (and deleting them from inv as soon as they populate there). But yeah eventually you'll buy drydock space.

I had a really really weird event TFO over the weekend. 3x more rifts, beefier enemies, crazy spawns. It was L65 like all my other recent ones, and I didn't think the events had hard-mode options (which I certainly didn't pick). I thought they had buffed it, but then the next day it was back to normal. What am I missing?

I had a tougher one Sunday or Monday too, I forget which. My guess was that I was in a really low DPS group, so the rifts stayed open and spawned a bunch more enemies, but I'm focused on my own work so I wasn't watching the others.
 
I've kept a couple of the leveling ships. When you've been in the game a certain length of time you'll find you're buying extra T4/T5 ships for admiralty purposes (and deleting them from inv as soon as they populate there). But yeah eventually you'll buy drydock space.

I had a really really weird event TFO over the weekend. 3x more rifts, beefier enemies, crazy spawns. It was L65 like all my other recent ones, and I didn't think the events had hard-mode options (which I certainly didn't pick). I thought they had buffed it, but then the next day it was back to normal. What am I missing?

I had a tougher one Sunday or Monday too, I forget which. My guess was that I was in a really low DPS group, so the rifts stayed open and spawned a bunch more enemies, but I'm focused on my own work so I wasn't watching the others.
Experienced the same issue Monday. Assume it was simply that someone wasn't closing the rifts and eventually became overwhelmed. By the time I decided to check it out we had like 6 rifts and a ton of enemies to clear. Also had one mission that didn't grant rewards/progress, so that was fun.
 
I had a tougher one Sunday or Monday too, I forget which. My guess was that I was in a really low DPS group, so the rifts stayed open and spawned a bunch more enemies, but I'm focused on my own work so I wasn't watching the others.
Experienced the same issue Monday. Assume it was simply that someone wasn't closing the rifts and eventually became overwhelmed. By the time I decided to check it out we had like 6 rifts and a ton of enemies to clear. Also had one mission that didn't grant rewards/progress, so that was fun.

So the thing is the ship I'm driving right now can basically hold down one base by itself - it can take a minute to clean up if two rifts spawn at once, but possession doesn't flip. But the crazy one had rifts continuously spawning and I couldn't kill ships fast enough. So unless there's some trigger condition that causes that to happen, something was out of whack.

And the first time I ran the TFO I clicked out of it super fast and it didn't mark event progress. Since then I wait for the marks dialogue to pop and it's not been a problem.
 

jandrese

Ars Legatus Legionis
14,005
Subscriptor++
I've kept a couple of the leveling ships. When you've been in the game a certain length of time you'll find you're buying extra T4/T5 ships for admiralty purposes (and deleting them from inv as soon as they populate there). But yeah eventually you'll buy drydock space.

I had a really really weird event TFO over the weekend. 3x more rifts, beefier enemies, crazy spawns. It was L65 like all my other recent ones, and I didn't think the events had hard-mode options (which I certainly didn't pick). I thought they had buffed it, but then the next day it was back to normal. What am I missing?

I had a tougher one Sunday or Monday too, I forget which. My guess was that I was in a really low DPS group, so the rifts stayed open and spawned a bunch more enemies, but I'm focused on my own work so I wasn't watching the others.

I've seen that happen off and on for years now. I figured the first person in the queue had their difficulty mod set higher and the TF payed attention to it.

It doesn't help when people can't stick to their post and wander off to "help", only to have the outpost get overwhelmed with spawns 30 seconds later. It's like trying to coach grade school soccer teams.
 
The non-legendary Mirror 12th anniversary bundle details are live - https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star- ... -bundle%21

13,125 zen for 5 x mirror ships and some costume pieces. Or buy 4 of the 5 separately (not the Engle) for 2400 zen each.

The Terran Adamant Heavy Raider includes a new experimental weapon, a 135-degree-arc rapid kinetic launcher. If the visuals look nice I might buy this ship just for that.
 
Wow a bundle that is almost reasonably priced, where you can buy the ships separately, and not locked up in gamble boxes? Did someone take the Cryptic C-suite hostage?

:) they're probably being nicer with this one than usual since Mirror ships are less popular and they save a fair bit of work by reskinning and reselling the fed versions.
 

jandrese

Ars Legatus Legionis
14,005
Subscriptor++
It is kind of impressive how Iuppiter Iratus has been released for weeks now and still so few people understand how to run it. It is the easiest TF ever if you have one ship at each outpost guarding it and the last two running interference on the station and tossing some long range supporting fire over if someone gets in trouble. On the flipside it is really annoying if everybody bunches up on one outpost and lets all of the others get completely out of hand.

I was on a particularly clueless team today and decided to see what would happen if I didn't blow up the shield ships in the final phase. After sitting back for some time watching the endless stream of "no damage" messages stream off of the Enterprise I was couldn't take it anymore. I think maybe there should be failure conditions for these TFs. Maybe a little challenge will convince people to consider paying attention.
 

tcowher

Ars Tribunus Militum
1,759
So anyone else playing this again or still? Or know any groups that are active later at night like after midnight est?

I had bought the lifetime subscription a while ago and just came back in time to get the mirror ship bundle. Lots of things have changed and a new Tier of equipment? XV now. XIV was the highest at the time I dropped. Game still does a horrible job of telling you how to improve your gear or pilot ships.
Of course I pobably have to many clicky consoles....

tc.
 
There's a group of us who are kind of active, at least to the point of logging in to do the events and occasionally spend money. Sometimes you just want shooty shooty starships. I don't think there's any group activities going. As an MMO there's not a lot in STO that I find really engaging, but it it's a great little sandbox for a certain type of gamer/fan.
 
If you aren't in the Ars fleet we can add all of your Fed characters. All of the holdings are max level so all the gear and special bridge officers are available. It's a quiet fleet without any group activities though. Not that STO has raids.

If you need a KDF fleet, the one I'm in is max level except for the last 2 upgrades to the colony (Morale 5 and overall 5).

For gear upgrades: buy 10-packs of Phoenix boxes, open them, buy upgrade tokens, done.
 

jandrese

Ars Legatus Legionis
14,005
Subscriptor++
The thing where you can keep doing the current STFs after getting the regular prize to build up a mountain of Dil is one of the contributing factors to the Dil market collapse. The other contributors are the Admiralty system and of course Cryptic not releasing anything worth spending Dil on for years.

In other news it seems the Intel spec is getting some buffs. Interestingly it is all buffs no nerfs. I didn't realize Intel was in such a bad place. Even Surgical Strikes was buffed. The buff to Transport Warhead is interesting in that it turns your torpedo launcher into a 360 torpedo launcher every 15 seconds. So if you are running a cannon boat you can stick a torpedo in an aft slot and get to load the front up with 5 DHCs. Almost certainly better DPS than a turret back there, especially if it's part of a set. But you have to burn a DOFF power slot to make it work, and it has to be on a ship with Intel seating. The shield pen is still probably going to be wasted because shields won't last for that 2-6 second delay anyway however.
 
I was fond of EM Pulse Probe back in 2014, so it might be time to bust out the intel spec ships in my fleet again. There will probably be some new lock box or lobi intel ships coming out but I can't stand those Discovery 32nd Century floaty parts ships.

Console players: the daily free giveaways for the 12th anniversary will probably begin on 3-10 (Thursday). On PC there were 6 including a T5 ship coupon that's handy for unlocking the Vulcan shuttle, Andorian blue phasers, or a ship skin or console that you want. Each giveaway only last 24 hours.
 

Krye

Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
6,437
Subscriptor
I'm still playing as well. Been focusing on my new science carrier character though so I've not been contributing to the fleet. I need to add her soon so I can contribute and use fleet services once she hits level 65. It's been interesting trying a carrier and a science build for the first time. A LOT more clicking on things and actually caring about what order to click things. I still fly terribly though with my damage swinging from 12K DPS to 30K DPS and I'm not entirely sure why other than my bad flying.

My T6 D'Kora is very consistently doing 20K DPS now and basically NEVER dies with 2 shots of Miracle Worker (Ferengi engineer) every 5 minutes and hull resists in the 40% or higher range.

Is the Plasmonic Leech out of favor now a days? I've yet to see any build guides include it yet it's one of the strongest consoles I have on my T6 D'Kora keeping my power levels pretty high on all stats during combat.
 
It was nerfed but it is still pretty useful if you don't have a bunch of other high level consoles to take its place. I still run it in several builds.

I use it some builds if I don't want to think to hard or build it out to the max. It's fine if you have it kicking around but as you build out you will eventually replace it and don't bother with it if you don't have one.
 

jandrese

Ars Legatus Legionis
14,005
Subscriptor++
Cryptic has suddenly noticed that the Dil market is completely off the rails and has taken the bold step of...turning Rep completion Dil into a kind of bastard Dil you can only spend on Rep gear. The idea of adding something you might actually want to spend Dil on (other than Zen) has apparently not occurred to them yet.

https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/star ... -dilithium
 
Cryptic has suddenly noticed that the Dil market is completely off the rails and has taken the bold step of...turning Rep completion Dil into a kind of bastard Dil you can only spend on Rep gear. The idea of adding something you might actually want to spend Dil on (other than Zen) has apparently not occurred to them yet.

https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/star ... -dilithium

This makes sense even though the farmers will hate it.

If I wanted to I could get enough rep marks boxes from the Temporal/Delta/Dominion/Klingon recruit rewards to get a new alt to reputation tier 5 without actually playing the game, then get the 500K dil reward. Delete the alt, rinse and repeat.

I have a real job so I have no interest in switching to dil farming but some people have more free time than spending money and so we have the dil exchange pegged at 500.

I don't disagree that the game really needs more dil sinks, but dil production from admiralty, event extra days, random TFOs, and the classics of contraband and reputations is out of control.