Star Trek Online

Philistine

You have to define "Best" Cruiser. If you talking about inflicting damage, then yes, the Excelsior is still the best Cruiser in the game. It has a better turn rate than the Assault Cruiser (Sovereign) and it has a Lt. Cmdr. Tactical slot. I rotate two officers in and out. One has Torpedo High Yield III (Four torpedoes) and the other has Beam Overload III (MASSIVE single strike from one beam array).

If you're talking about tanking, then I think the Galaxy-X (the "future" 1701-D from All Good Things) is the best cruiser in the game. They recently added a fourth rear weapon's slot to it bringing it up to where the rest of the Tier 5 Cruisers are. It still has the cloaking device and the massive Phaser lance. Mine is equipped with 2x Mk XI Rare Phaser Relays in it's tactical console slots and I'm fully specced into Phasers and Beam Arrays in the skill tree. With that in mind, it's baseline damage is 19,800 hit points. I've had it crit upwards of 58,000.

Wonder if this will have any impact on the game?

Atari to sell Cryptic Studios.

They claim it won't, but what else are they supposed to say?

Meanwhile, I probably won't bother logging back on until this big, mythical update actually happens.

Season 4 update supposed to come out this week, I hear tell. Anyone gonna get back into it if it is?

7/7 is the last I heard. I'll definitely give it a shot, since I'm still paying $14.99 for it every month.

Season 4 has hit Tribble. I'm purposefully avoiding it until it hits Holodeck. The new Borg DSE's are nice.

Season 4 went live on Holodeck this morning. Take everything you know about ground combat and chunk it in the trash.

Every weapon has changed. For instance:

Rifles: Long range, low DPS
Assault: Medium range, medium DPS
Pistols: Short range, high DPS

Also, the Borg are back in force. They now adapt. You'll have to use a device to remodulate your weapons or go hand-to-hand.

Read all about it here. Be sure to watch the video.

Edit: If any of you would like to log in, I'd sure like to try the new fleet/team voice chat function.

So have they gone to their usual diligent effort to notify you of exactly where to find all of the new content?

Shooter Mode, Borg Adaptation, weapon remodulation =

Nerfing all of my favorite shields =

Changing little things like the bridge officer display =

article

Author not exactly have to be the first and second paragraph

I'm also not liking the way all grenades are on a timer now. Used to be that I could throw everything in my satchel - stun, photon, plasma, smoke - all at once and then wait out their individual timers. I liked it that way, dammit.

Any new kick ass ships planned that aren't hundred year old designs or luxury liners with a third nacelle?

Well, there's the new fan-designed Enterprise, but I don't know if that will be a playable ship. Other than that, I wouldn't know. I have my cloaking Defiant, and that's all I want.

My understanding is that they're working on a whole new system for ships. Yeah, the Federation is going to get the Ambassador class and the upcoming Enterprise-F class. But, eventually, the goal is to allow you to upgrade/create custom ships.

For instance, through crafting (or some other means), you could theoretically upgrade the T-3 Akira class to T-5 status (weapon, console, and bridge officer slots). There's also talk about updating the Bridge Officer slot with the skill cap increase. For instance, my Galaxy-X has a Lt. & Ens. Tactical Officer, Cmdr. & Lt. Cmdr. Engineering Officer, and Lt. Science Officer. With the promotion to Admiral or Fleet Admiral, perhaps they could all be upgraded to Commanders or Lt. Commanders.

Ooooh. I could definitely use another engineering console slot or two on my Defiant. Especially now that my shield capacity has been reduced.

Well, the Invasion starts either this weekend or Monday. The Borg are on the move and they're expected to gain significant ground in the Alpha Quadrant.

[?=Here's an image of the "Boss" Flagship on the Tribble Test Server.][/?]

Is anyone else thinking what I'm thinking?

[?=Compare that Borg Flagship with a schematic of V'Ger from TMP.][/?]

[spoilers]
Well, in one of the Shater/Reeves-Stevenseseses books, V'ger is revealed to be from the Borg homeworld, or something like that.
[/spoilers]

Hopefully I'll get some internets at the new apartment sometime soon.

There's an interesting twist. The "Q Reward Weekends" they've been having have offered 2x Skill/Bridge Officer/Merit points and double Mark/Emblem rewards. In four total hours of playing over last weekend, I increased six grade levels. These new Borg Invasion things offer 5x points/emblems/marks!

I'm hoping to get my Captain 6 Tactical Officer all the way to Vice Admiral 1. With the exception of the Aegis Engine, I've already used my Main Character to craft all the Purple Mk XI gear for him as soon as he's ready.

Never could bring myself to do that. Even started a Klingon character at one time, but never bothered bringing her up past LC. The way I see it, leveling up new characters is a poor substitute for new content and goals for my Vice Admiral.

Oh, I concur wholeheartedly. I just want to fly Escorts and my Engineer will never be as good as a Tactical Officer in an Escort. So, now I can swap back and forth. I still love my Cruisers. So, I have a top level Cruiser jockey. But, soon I'll have a top level Escort jokey for those days I just wanna fuck around.

Bought me a plasma minigun over the weekend.

Needs more field testing before I decide if I like it more than my old full-auto rifle.

Yeah. I saw the announcement about F2P on the forum. Here are the details.

The only thing I don't like is that the Klingon faction is going to be locked until you reach Level 25 (Commander 5). I don't particular like or play my Klingon characters. But, I can't help but think this will be bad for the faction, and as such, bad for the game.

Edit: I love my Phaser Minigun. I use it against everyone except for the Borg. I read on the forum how the mechanics work. Lets say you get 10 shots before you have to re-modulate. That can be a whole engagement with a hand phaser or one shot with the minigun.

Yeah, I have a bad habit of cooking off that long full-auto sweep and having the Borg adapt halfway through.

But I have each member of my landing party outfitted with a full-auto rifle of a different energy type, and one of those little remodulator devices, so they won't be adapted to us all at the same time.

I'm...starting to get a little worried. Dan Stahl, the Executive Producer and also a Serious Hard-Core Trekkie, is resigning.

The content drought, the sale of Cryptic to PW, going Free to Play (F2P), and now Dan resigning? I know turnover is fairly high in the video game industry, but this is starting to look like a sinking ship.

I doubt they'd just kill it anytime soon. They're still selling subscriptions, and beta testing new content. If the result is a game that strays farther away from pure canon Trek, well, my pinstripe-painted Defiant with custom weapons, with an all-female crew in mirror universe TOS miniskirts carrying an assortment of alien weaponry and swords says I don't really care all that much.

Stahl has likely just been offered a better job and paycheque elsewhere.

I might pick this game back up when it goes FTP. Just built myself a new computer and I'm thinking I may want to start a new character from scratch to discover the graphics I've been missing out on with my dinky laptop.

I'd have to start a new char. from scratch too if I ever go back to ST:O. They've changed so much stuff I don't even remember what any of the various skills do anymore.

Odds are, I won't be coming back in any case. Skyrim is out November 11th, SWTOR is out December 20th, I'm going to be gone for work for basically all of November and December, and my job is going to be keeping me rather busy indeed once I get back to the "real world" in January and on through 2012.