Incline Official codex Star Trek Online topic :salute:

[Drakron]

only if youre willing to splash hard cash on this bs

Likely it will end up on the C-Store like the rest of the packs.

Also it seems ALL of the ships of the pack will be available to all characters, only the Dominion T6 ones require grinding the mastery to unlock for reasons? in a way its better that the Temporal Pack for cross faction unlocks that was very Fed heavy but on the other, it have less ships that the Temporal Pack.

Also the real stinker is the Jem Hadar Vanguard.

 

[eklektyk]

yeah pretty much you pay for ship traits and their unlocks now anyways ...

on totaly unrelated note: what is better beam with [dmg]x3 or [dmg]x2[pen] ? undecided what to craft for my "pets" - no dps crunching to be in 1% players but to get job done i guess with minimal pain

 

[Drakron]

[Pen], Dmg is one of the better mods but not as good as Pen and you can always re-roll Dmg with Re-Eng but not Pen since its a crafting mod.

 

[Norfleet]

Also the real stinker is the Jem Hadar Vanguard.

In other words, you need this pack to play proper Jem'hadar, otherwise you're stuck with inferior, permanently crippled Jem'haderp instead.

 

[Stokowski]

So, returning from an age when beam-boat anitiproton crit builds were some kinda meta ...

I can roll up a Cardassian character, for 1000 Z. For Cardassian ships it's either lockbox (fuck that), lobi (fuck that), go Zen Store for Cardassian Intel (6000) or Gamma Vanguard (13000) which includes Jem'Hafar ships?

I can roll up a Jem-Hadar character, for free(?), but for Jem'Hadar ships I get one (or two) through story/levelling and lockbox/lobi/Zen for any others?

Has any grognard done the maths on the most effective way to create these additional pylon building characters?

And what should I do about Specialisations? Got a Fed TAC, Kling ENG, and ROM/KDF TAC that need to be reconfigured for all the updates.

 

[Bliblablubb]

The free JH race is crap, because it does not have the space trait. "Don't gimp yourself".

According to our resident funhating spacepirate, buying the vanguard starter pack for 2000 cybershekelz is cost efficient, because those 2k are "discounted" if you ever decide to buy the 13k pack. As in "you are not paying them again for things you already have", so you don't "loose" money.
With that low cost pack you get the not-gimped JH species and 1 T6 ship (which you can unlock for the rest of your toons through ship mastery?).
If you want to fully commit to the Kardashians and the Jemmies, you are better off buying the 13k pack instead.

Having him team up with the KDF side is also recommended mandatory for catfood and cheaper consoles.


For specs you need wait for Norfleet himself to grace you with his presence.

 

[eklektyk]

yeah "free" jemmie is trash
incentive is that he starts at lvl60 so you can avoid all the "fun" of leveling him up that you already done x=n-1 times ...
im undecided if i even want to dump zen on proper char at this point ...

 

[Norfleet]

Has any grognard done the maths on the most effective way to create these additional pylon building characters?

The two optimal points for pylon spamming are either Jem'hamdars, with the Non-Derped upgrade, or Romuscum, because Romulan Master Race has the largest ship access and therefore the yugest ASS-pool. The two original factions are now basically second-class citizens with only niche applicability. Naturally, see me if you wish to eliminate any FUN from the process. But given that you are all filthy casuals and my lessons would probably be wasted on you, meh. You're going to derp around uselessly, accomplish nothing, and then quit anyway. You may as well just cut to the chase.

 

[Drakron]

I can roll up a Cardassian character, for 1000 Z. For Cardassian ships it's either lockbox (fuck that), lobi (fuck that), go Zen Store for Cardassian Intel (6000) or Gamma Vanguard (13000) which includes Jem'Hafar ships?

THere are no Cardassian ships that are Lobi.

The (nearly) full Cardassian experience is getting the Vanguard Pack because it includes the Cardassian race unlock, the Cardassian Intel ships and as a bonus, the old Lock Box T5 Galor leaving out the Keldon thats the T6 Galor,of course thats all thats actually in the game, you can get Cardassian BOFFs from ESD Slave .... I mean Bridge Officer Requisitions Officer even if they are just at common quality but even a common Cardassian is better that most races very rares as they have a space trait.

There is, of course missing stuff ... no special outfits ... no Hideki small craft that you will never use because nobody likes small craft content since it either doesnt exist and the one that exist tends to be pretty bad (even if I dont mind The Vault that much, outside the "Great balls of plasma" at the end) .. no Cardassian weapons (despite the fact there is a Cardassioan disruptor pistol model, I was surprised it didnt end up on the Lobi store) and of course you still answer to either senile J'mpok or Admiral Quinn, Trill'd man instead of a proper Cardassian.

Also dont speak of ASS cards, claiming the damn things on my JH lead to having to claim and disclaim about 100 ships and small craft and that was painful, very painful.

 

[Norfleet]

Dunno what an ASS-pool is, and am thankful of it.

No you aren't. You merely have not tasted the glory of the ASS yet. Once you have, you, too, will be converted to an ASS Man.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

And you can be comfortably well-off compared to the state of ignorance even if you half ASS it!

There is, of course missing stuff ... no special outfits ... no Hideki small craft that you will never use because nobody likes small craft content since it either doesnt exist and the one that exist tends to be pretty bad (even if I dont mind The Vault that much, outside the "Great balls of plasma" at the end) .. no Cardassian weapons (despite the fact there is a Cardassioan disruptor pistol model, I was surprised it didnt end up on the Lobi store) and of course you still answer to either senile J'mpok or Admiral Quinn, Trill'd man instead of a proper Cardassian.

Well at least ~Quinn treats you like a Cardassian member of Starfleet (which is to say, like every other member of Starfleet), while J'mpok is very insistent on you being 100% Klingon.

 

[Blaine]

Do people actually play this game together, or does everyone just solo grind/LARP/queue like in virtually all modern MMOs?

I very vaguely recall being briefly upset about Star Trek Online in the late 2000s. It was originally slated to be developed by Perpetual Entertainment; I suppose I thought it had a better chance of turning out to be a more serious, faithful, old-school game in their hands compared to Cryptic, who even then were known for their extraordinarily shallow and casual game design, popularity of CoH notwithstanding. Chances are it would have been shit anyway, thinking back now.

I'm genuinely curious what Codexers still playing this are getting out of it, not even trolling. I'm entering a phase where I genuinely believe MMOs are on their way out (or more accurately, into extreme obscurity, a la text MUDs) and, instead of ignoring their existence as I have been for years now, I'm instead becoming curious about the ones that are still limping along.

 

[Drakron]

Do people actually play this game together, or does everyone just solo grind/LARP/queue like in virtually all modern MMOs?

Its a single player game really, teaming doesnt help and in fact can create more issues that doing missions solo, the exceptions are queues that are just 5/10/20 players.

I very vaguely recall being briefly upset about Star Trek Online in the late 2000s. It was originally slated to be developed by Perpetual Entertainment; I suppose I thought it had a better chance of turning out to be a more serious, faithful, old-school game in their hands compared to Cryptic, who even then were known for their extraordinarily shallow and casual game design, popularity of CoH notwithstanding. Chances are it would have been shit anyway, thinking back now.

Perpetual Entertainment didnt do much outside concept art, in fact I wonder if they didnt garb the Star Trek license to get more moeny so they could fund Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising, Cryptic got the game because one of CBS clauses was to release the game on the timeframe specified, this is part why it was such a horrible mess at launch as Cryptic had not much time and I guess why they got the license and nobody wanted to create everything from the ground up in just 2 years.

I'm genuinely curious what Codexers still playing this are getting out of it, not even trolling. I'm entering a phase where I genuinely believe MMOs are on their way out (or more accurately, into extreme obscurity, a la text MUDs) and, instead of ignoring their existence as I have been for years now, I'm instead becoming curious about the ones that are still limping along.

Honestly?

Its a single player game with multiplayer and interactive 3d chat lobby, if you are a Trekkie and want to see DS9 Promenade and OPs then you get that chance in STO, its typical of modern MMOs with the added bonus of the Cryptic Engine being heavily instanced so at most you play with 19 other people (assuming that queue actually launches) but its also low maintenance and doesnt require much from you outside a functional brain, its something that you can play VERY casually without being penalized.

Its also fun seeing the absurdities of Cryptic monetization, like remember Chakotay's ship? the Val Jean? the thing that is nothing but a modified scaled up Maquis Fighter? well that thing is now BETTER in all respects that the USS Voyager in STO.

 

[Blaine]

Yeah, I've been reading up on the game's monetization schemes, and this shit is hilarious. For example, the Lifetime Subscription is $200 if you can get it on sale; the current new content pack that accompanies the just-released new expansion is $130; and apparently this year they rolled most of the nickel-and-dime F2P account restriction unlocks into something called the Elite Starter Pack and discontinued monthly subscriptions.

I might download the client and poke around at some point, although none of the post-WoW theme park MMORPGs I've ever tried (and I haven't tried one in the better part of a decade) have ever grabbed me past the stage of giving them a whirl.

 

[Jarpie]

Perpetual Entertainment didnt do much outside concept art, in fact I wonder if they didnt garb the Star Trek license to get more moeny so they could fund Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising, Cryptic got the game because one of CBS clauses was to release the game on the timeframe specified, this is part why it was such a horrible mess at launch as Cryptic had not much time and I guess why they got the license and nobody wanted to create everything from the ground up in just 2 years.

I think this is the reason why the galaxy map is so small, I know people would bitch if it'd be lot bigger as it would take lot longer to fly around, but it would give the game much better feeling of the big galaxy. One of the things LOTRO did right was to have a huge maps. Shame that craptic has ignored exploring aspect completely from the Star Trek, outside of maybe couple missions.

 

[Bliblablubb]

Actually the map is yuge, especially for casual non-veteran players below 50. They have no slipstream, borg engines or good transwarp locations, and may even think twice before spending 35k creds on fast travel. Yet they have to snail around the galaxy at fantastic speeds of warp 5/6/7, giving them time to make dinner on their way to their target.
At least the galaxy is one big map now, so you CAN go afk while flying, instead of having to confirm map changes every 5 mins.

We used to have a lot of low level missions open, just to have fast travel points, and one selling point for the Excelsior was coming with extra transwarp locations.


You only realized how big it is, when you made a fresh Fedling and realized that fast traveling to DS9 required rank 4 diplomacy.

 

[Norfleet]

Yeah, the map is yuge, which is why the NO FUN method of playing involves explicitly avoiding any and all sector space travel at low levels. Or at all, really. Back in the days of the Romulan Flotilla beamup bug, I went set course back to Romspace and went AFK after being dumped at Sol...after an hour and therefore an idlekick, I was still only halfway there. It is futile to even try to go anywhere in sector space at low levels, you are just wasting your time.

 

[Blaine]

In other words, the map is yuge, but in an empty and mechanically pointless way that is annoying rather than interesting to newcomers, yet simultaneously unappreciated by veterans since they're using improbability drives to zip around everywhere anyway.

 

[Drakron]

Well by map they mean sector space, the only thing you do that is travel from point to point to either start missions that have their own maps (again, Cryptic engine is heavily instanced) to fly to contact points for duty officer assignments.
In the past it was further divided into sector blocks likely because the engine doesnt handle the scale that well as when they merged the old sector blocks into just having the 4 Quadrants as separate maps a lot of visual issues with ships and effects in sector space appeared ... another "issue" is because instance limits you could have 20 people in a sector block and you would see ships flying around, since now the maps are much bigger but the limit is still the same, they feel empty, I suppose part is because people really are only in space these days to run patrol missions, you still have to "walk" to DOFFing contact points but most people dont either care or maxed it out or completed the chains so they have no reason to do it.

And yes, you can directly Transwarp to missions, costs EC and also launch directly to queues instance ... that wasnt the case in the part, Transwarp to mission was added at some point and also the qeues used to require to fly there to queue, this was before my time but even those queue doors were still there for the longest time, none of the queues added after have sector map doors.

So its not entirely pointless due to DOFFing and those weird people that play Foundry missions (User Created Content) since no Transwarp to Foundry missions.

 

[Norfleet]

In other words, the map is yuge, but in an empty and mechanically pointless way that is annoying rather than interesting to newcomers, yet simultaneously unappreciated by veterans since they're using improbability drives to zip around everywhere anyway.

To be fair, it's hard to make space interesting. The literal defining feature of "space" is the total absence of anything in it!

 

[Blaine]

To be fair, it's hard to make space interesting. The literal defining feature of "space" is the total absence of anything in it!

Right. EVE Online features 1:1 realistically-scaled space that is mostly empty, and there are literally over 9,000 systems in the game at this point I believe, yet you can warp to each planet, moon, star, PoI, etc. (if any) in any given system. More importantly though, there are Interesting Things™ constantly occurring everywhere, peppered and clustered around the entire universe, as well as Interesting Things™ to seek out and find (such as a player corporation's structure that has run out of fuel and become vulnerable, a victim busily mining space rocks, gate-camping noob pirates to scan down and ambush, an unwitting member of a corp you're at war with slowboating around "safe" space, etc.).

There's a bunch of PvE shit constantly going on as well, but no one cares about any of that except when looking for easy targets.

It's "real" space as well, in the sense that you can make your way to any set of in-system coordinates via advanced warp drive manipulation and then bookmark those coordinates, can intercept other in-warp ships as one would expect given scale and positioning, and you can see planets and moons zipping by from the correct perspective depending on your warp vector. That being said, the game uses a "grid" system and only activates necessary grids, and I have no doubt many other tricks are employed as well. Systems look and feel pretty convincing, though.

 

[Bliblablubb]

When I first started playing, I was actually in it for the fun. So the vast empty space was actually adding a nice flavor, being sent further and further away from your homeport. 'Course it sucked having to fly back home for shopping, but they intended you to stay in that area until you leveled up anyway, before returning home to resupply. Grinding random fights for half a level after each mission.

Then a wild Norfleet appeared and removed all fun from my game. After building my 3rd additional pylon, roaming the galaxy for colony doffing chains, minerals and catfood, I lost all appreciation for the vast open space. Thankfully doffing has run out of favor compared to the income from assjobs, so doing those chains isn't that mandatory anymore.


Reminds me: can you still slot 3 doff clones on active duty? I am afraid to touch my borgkittehs even if I fly an escort, because I vaguely remember people claiming you can't anymore...

 

[Blaine]

Right, so... you're now in it for just Skinner's pigeon shit, right?

Hey, whatever floats your boat. I have some past game shame of my own to cope with, such as the immense amount of time I spent playing Warframe.

 

[Kruno]

I think Josh Sawyer needs to make Icewind Dale 3 in Star trek Online.

 

[Bliblablubb]

Right, so... you're now in it for just Skinner's pigeon shit, right?

Every (MMO) player is just in it for the pigeon shit. Jump through hoops, get shinies. Just a matter how obvious the game does it. I am just a filthy casual part time pigeon tho.