Star Trek Online

Gratuituos DS9/wormhole shot, on my way to the Badlands 'cuz I picked up a community-authored mission based there. Not much else to do if you're not grinding for Emblems or loot to sell on the exchange. Badlands are a pretty trippy place. That was pretty much my selling point on this dude's mission.

You inspired me the other night. I've been selling stacks of 20 batteries on the exchange. I made one million EC's yesterday.

I need six million to buy the last gear I want.

Oh, and I had my first stalemate last night. I was in Ker'rat just goofing off and getting Mk XII loot. The way the teams were made up, I saw this VA in a Nebula and VA in a Sovereign on my team fighting this other VA in a Star Cruiser. I joined the fray since it was only 15km away.

Now, the guy in the Star Cruiser was doing no appreciable damage to any of us. But, all three of us were giving him all we've got and he's just laughing. I landed three bursts from my 3xDHC's and a full THY3 on his bare hull for no effect. He had the Borg Shield and it kept regenerating and healing him. He couldn't kill us and we could not kill him so after a full five minutes, we just flew off to other things.

In a star cruiser? How were you able to attack another Fed in Kerrat? You sure you're not talking about a big Klingon carrier or something?

Six million? What costs that much that you can't buy with emblems or craft?

If too many Feds enter and too few Klingons are there it splits the Feds into opposing teams.

Huh. I've never seen that happen. The typical Ker'rat experience for me is running around blowing up Borg until I'm down to 5% hull, then getting jumped from behind by some chickenshit Klingon before I have a chance to repair. Then respawn, only to have 4 or 5 of the fuckers sniping the spawn point.

My Cruiser jockey is currently using 6x Blue Phaser Beam Array Mk XI [Dmg]x2 I want 6x Purple Phaser Beam Array Mk XI [Acc] [Dmg]x2. They're only available via crafting or, obviously, on the exchange. I have everything but the 180 Chronometric Wave Particles needed to craft them. I haven't hit on even one in over a week and at exchange prices, as of yesterday, it would take nearly 8 million EC's to buy the CWP's or 6 million EC's to just buy the Beam Arrays outright.

Yep. I'd never seen it before last night, but it's been six months since I've been to Ker'rat. I'm pretty much tired of the Daily PvE grind at this point so I'm hanging out at Drozana Station watching the Role Players or doing the odd Borg Red Alert while I wait on the PvP queue to call me.

I could start mailing you any particle traces I pick up. I don't fuck around with crafting, and Ubermass got bored and cancelled his subscription.

Hmm, I got over sixty chronometric last night! I find that sometimes leaving B'Tran and then going back in "resets" it.

In fact I kitted my Defiant in purple gear XI almost entirely from crafting and that included two torpedo tubes and three polaron arrays, plus two blue XI consoles all from chronmetric collected within about 90mins. Yeah, it was a bit tedious, but it was a much faster, and cheaper, way of getting purps than either emblems or the exchange.

Course, all this is going down the shitter soon with F2P....

I may give that a whirl. I had stacks and stacks of particles on my Main character (Mush-Eng/Galaxy-X). But, I used them all to fit out my Second character (Eugene-Tac/Defiant). I used the 250 emblems (that have since been removed from the Vet reward) to outfit Eugene's crew with Purple ground gear and I spent was was left on 3x Tetryon DHC's and 2x Tetryon Turrets.

I blew through about half of my 250, but I'm back up near 200 with all the grinding I do. I'm trying to make sure I have a decent amount of emblems and energy credits built up for when the level cap is raised and there's better equipment out there. Even if the new consolidated currency fucks me on the exchange rate.

When I found out they were removing the 250 emblems from the vet reward, I made two throw-away characters. When it's all converted into "Dilithium," I'll have those two characters send my main two their stuff.

When was this Vet reward? I'm about 90 days behind those that signed up when the game launched, so I tend to get rewards slightly later. I don't remember getting any emblems.

It was the 500 day "Relentless" Veteran Reward. Along with some costume pieces and a free ship slot, you got 250 emblems making it, by far, the best Vet Reward to date.

They removed the emblems a week or so ago to "protect us from ourselves." Can you believe a Dev actually said that on the official forum? But, I digress. They didn't want people rushing out to make throw-away characters when the new economy hits. Those characters would automatically inherit the award and you'd be able to send that currency to your other characters via mail.

So, what did people do? They made throw away characters.

I'm pretty sure that I didn't get it and I've been on for 520 days now. The must've taken it away days before I made it.

I have yet to make a single other Fed character. My one Fed Tac in a Defiant is enough for me. My one half-assed attempt at a Klingon character never made it past LC.

I've read vague rumors about being able to promote your bridge crew and let them fly other ships around you. I guess they'd work autonomously, similar to fighters or something.

It was longer than I remembered. It was removed in the September 29th patch. So, yeah, you hit 500 days on October 1st. Ouch.

I intend on re-rolling my Klinks when the game goes F2P. They'll start at Commander 5. Progressing to End-Game will be much, much easier then. The idea is to allow for the same progression as the Federation side.

Theoretically, on the Fed side, you need one Story Mission, one Patrol Series Mission, one Defend Series Mission (3x DSE's), and one Explore Series Mission (3x Unexplored Areas in X Nebula) to advance one grade of one rank.

By starting at Commander 5, the Klingons will have enough Story Missions to reach Lieutenant General 1. My understanding is that they hope to, one day, have enough Klingon content to go back and allow them to start at Lieutenant 5. But, that's not even on the table for 2012.

From what, admittedly limited, exposure I've had with the DoFF system on Tribble, it's going to just be another subset or minigame like crafting. But, this will earn you fairly impressive passive skills, perhaps some better gear, and a lot of Dilithium.

I have now reached Vice Admiral with two Federation Characters. That's something I do not care to repeat. What I've seen rumored, and what I would like to be able to do is take my favorite Science BoFF and promote him from Commander to Captain and be able to split him off as another character starting at Captain 1.

So presumably these dirtbags at Craptic have no plans for some kind of replacement? That for a matter of weeks costumers who have paid pretty much the same amount of money get royally screwed over with no compensation.

That's screwed up.

They've said they'll probably come back and replace it with an equivalent amount of Dilithium once the exchange rate gets hammered out. But, I wouldn't hold me breath.

Yeah, but I bet that even if they do, those who fell through the crack will still get screwed.

Cocksuckers.

Yeah, I think that was a rather craptacular move on their part.

Where do you draw the line? When Cryptic was split from Atari there was a wave of sentiment from Cryptic employees that blamed all the bad decisions on Atari. They just couldn't say it when they were Atari employees. Okay. I'll buy some of that.

But, now Perfect World has assumed control and we're back to the same boneheaded and misguided decisions. What is the common denominator? It's not Atari or Perfect World...

I have a Lifetime Subscription. I find the game to be fun and enjoyable. I hope it succeeds and takes off with many, many new players when it goes to F2P. But, the Studio is making some, IMHO, stupid decisions.

Speaking of... They're borking the ships with the Excelsior-R getting the short end of the stick.

All special abilities are getting turned into universal consoles. The Defiant-R's Cloak, the Galaxy-R's Saucer Separation, and the Intrepid-R's Ablative Armor. They're also adding an additional console slot for those -R ships so it doesn't impact your play style. Well, this evens out the field because the Excelsior-R has been the only -R ship with 9 consoles. The rest had 8.

But, they're turning the Excelsior-R's Transwarps into 2 consoles.

Yes. I hope none of you were like me and bought the Excelsior-R in the C-Store. It's total number of Transwarps are being reduced from 9 to 6 and the remaining 6 are being divided into 2 consoles.



I loved flying my Excelsior, but I just found the Galaxy-X's cloak to be far more useful in the game. But, I'm worried now. Are they going to turn the Galaxy-X's cloak into one console and the Phaser Lance into another? Am I going to have to give up two console slots now for something I've already bought and paid for??

*insert colorful metaphor here*

Well, if it's a science console slot I gain, it won't change anything for me. But if it's a tactical slot I gain, I'll be fighting the urge to swap it out for another armor or shield recharge console. Another mission-specific adjustment, I guess. They should just max out all the console slots at VA and above anyway. Make the special abilities universal consoles so you can put them where you want to set aside the space.

I copied Eugene over to Tribble last night to play around. The Defiant-R is getting a third Engineering Console Slot.

Am I reading correctly that the Sao Paulo class is tier 4?

Might still have to buy one and see what that quad cannon is all about.

Yep. More Pay to Win (P2W) from Cryptic. There's going to be what Cryptic is calling "Tier x+1" for every ship. Those +1 ships will be demonstrably better than their "free" in-game counterpart.

T1: Miranda
T1+1: Cruiser: TOS Connie w/Yet to be determined (YTBD) Console
Escort: NX Class w/"grappler" Tractor Console
Science: Oberth Class w/Enhanced Plasma Manifold Console

T2: Cruiser: Refit Connie
Escort: Sabre Class
Science: Nova Class

T2+1: Cruiser: 2409'd Refit Connie w/ST:VI homing torp
Escort: 2409'd Refit Ushann class w/YTBD Console
Science: Rhode Island Class w/Decoy Console

T3: Cruiser: Stargazer Class
Escort: Akira Class
Science: Hope Class

T3+1: Cruiser: Excelsior w/3 destination Transwarp Console
Escort: Thunderchild Class w/turret Point Defense System Console
Science: Nebula Class w/Tachyon Detection Grid Console

T4: Cruiser: Galaxy Class
Escort: Defiant Class
Science: Intrepid Class

T4+1: Cruiser: 2409'd Galaxy Variant (Venture Class) w/Antimatter Spread Console
Escort: 2409'd Defiant Variant (Sao Paulo Class) w/Quad Cannon Console
Science: 2409'd Intrepid Variant (unknown name) w/YTBD Console

T5: Cruiser: Sovereign Assault Cruiser/Emissary Star Cruiser
Escort: Hermes Fleet Escort/Prometheus Advanced Escort
Science: Trident Class Deep Space Research Vessel/Luna Class Reconnaissance Science Vessel

T5+1: Cruiser: Galaxy-R w/Saucer Separation Console, Galaxy-X w/Cloak Console, Excelsior-R w/Transwarp Console
Escort: Defiant-R w/Cloak Console, Prometheus-R w/MVAM Console, Unknown Ship w/Unknown Console
Science: Intrepid-R w/Ablative Armor Console, Unknown Ship w/Unknown Console, and Unknown Ship w/Unknown Console

All of the +1 ships except for the Tier 5+1 ships also have more crew (faster hull repair) and an enhanced BoFF layout giving you more powers over the regular "free" ships.

The consoles also stack within ship type (outside of the cloak consoles). For instance, I could put the T1+1 Connie's Yet to be determined console, T2+1 Homing Torpedo, T3+1 Transwarp Console, T4+1 Antimatter Spread Console on my Galaxy-X, Galaxy-R, or Excelsior-R. I could put the T1+1 Grappler Console, T2+1 w/Yet to be determined console, T3+1 turret Point Defense Console, and T4+1 Quad Cannon Console on my Defiant-R, Prometheus-R, etc. Rinse and repeat for the Science Ships.

They're also changing the way your acquire ships. Gold and Lifetime Members will continue to get a free ship token, for one of the free ships, every time you get promoted with the exception of the -R VA/LG level ships. The rationale is that the -R ships will cost what the Galaxy-X costs ($20). It will keep people from subscribing for one month ($14.99), get promoted, claim the token and ship, and then unsubscribe. You will now be required to buy those ships from the C-Store. Silver (F2P) members get nothing. They will have to buy the "free" ships with Dilithium from the in-game ship vendor or buy the +1 ships from the C-Store.

I thought the Intrepid + 1 was gonna be the Belleraphon class.

And I thought the connie homing torpedo was a console. I was thinking about buying that ship just for the console. I could see getting some use out of it in Ker'rat. So you're saying I can't put that on an escort?

Also, the T2 + 1 escort console is some kind of hotrod impulse boost, I think. Was considering getting that one, too.

Those quad cannons...I just don't know. They're supposed to be the most powerful cannons in the game, but they're not heavy cannons. Have to respec for phasers, no confirmation on whether the TOS phaser trick will work to fill three forward slots with them...

Maybe. I'm just going off memory.

It is a console. But, consoles only stack within ship type. I can put the T2+1 Homing Torpedo, T3+1 Transwarp Console, and T4+1 Antimatter Spread Console on any Cruiser. You can't put the Homing Torp on an Escort, no.

I honestly don't know.

I honestly don't know.