Star Trek Online

[Sudy Nym]

Liberated, Borg, and Klingon? Is that a roleplayer's dream or nightmare?

I love my little Pakled! He's so unlike the so many buff, beautiful characters. It's like everyone was made to choose between buttons labeled "babe" and "ugliest random assortment of alien parts possible".

Incredibly neat some of the minor races they've officially included as playable. On the other hand, it's kind of a head scratcher. There's so little to go on when it comes to Pakled lore. I mean, there are only two named Pakled in all of Star Trek canon, and they're from that one TNG episode. Still, they obviously made a heck of an impression on some designer.

Now if only Cryptic MMOGs, with some of the best character creation options out there, didn't limit your character slots so extremely. Sure, you can buy more.... And it just so happens I had some free C-Store points saved up from my Champions subscription. But it's still really slimy, and they go to no lengths to hide it.

[Blackhawk]

I haven't played in a while, as the missions got a little too repetitive (kill three groups of four ships, then kill four groups of three, then kill five groups of three and beam bits aboard), but I was fond of my Benzite engineer, Bora.

[Sudy Nym]

I haven't seen a Benzite yet.

I'm relishing this introductory period while everything seems fresh and new. Doubt I'll play for long, even though I love the source material. My wife isn't playing (laptop won't support it). The key will be how fun I find the combat. So far, I don't really mind the ground combat. It's clunky (like CoH and Champions, unsurprisingly), but has more tactical depth than WoW. And of course is due for the overhaul soon. Space combat is enjoyable so far, but the lack of terrain makes it somewhat boring. As I remember EVE being.

[Jag]

Just started playing this from the $3 steam sale and I'm having a blast. 30 free days was worth the money. Not sure about long term legs, but just playing through the different seasons is fun. Season 4 is coming next month with some new changes as well. Curious if anyone was still playing.

[coopasonic]

Just started playing this from the $3 steam sale and I'm having a blast. 30 free days was worth the money. Not sure about long term legs, but just playing through the different seasons is fun. Season 4 is coming next month with some new changes as well. Curious if anyone was still playing.

I guess I missed the $3 sale. I have been sitting on the sidelines waiting for it to appear supercheap just for 30 days to check it out. My gaming guild still has active members, but we have fringe people in all the "failed" games.

[Daehawk]

Looks like STO is changing hands. Wonder if it will go Free2Play? Looks like all Cryptic stuff is going from Atari to the new company.

Greetings,

Cryptic Studios, previously a wholly owned subsidiary of Atari, has recently been acquired by Perfect World Entertainment, a company dedicated to delivering quality MMO experiences to gamers.

As part of this acquisition, Cryptic has begun a process of separation from Atari.

We've prepared succinct informational pages with details about the transition, frequently asked questions and a Q&A discussion thread to help you better understand the transition and what it means.

http://www.champions-online.com/transition

http://www.startrekonline.com/transition

http://www.playneverwinter.com/transition

In short, our games and associated services will operate with minimal interruption and most of the changes apparent to our players and other users will be largely cosmetic.

Thanks so much for your time and interest!

[Smoove_B]

Yup -- Free to Play by the end of the year:

"And also Star Trek Online, after the acquisition, in fact Cryptic is working on the free-to-play model for Star Trek Online," Perfect World Entertainment's CEO, Kelvin Lau, said in a recent earnings call for Q2 2011. "This is going to be launched by the end of this year as well. So I think free-to-play model we have a bigger potential in US market and also in China market."

[Paingod]

A features matrix of what Free to Play means. I've been wanting to try it for a while and it looks like I won't have to pay anything for that.

The two 'big' things I see that are restricted are Bridge Officer slots (I believe these affect your ship's performance) and the Foundry (which is where you create your own missions and content). There's also the typical inventory restrictions, etc.

Their calendar says they're currently doing Testing work with the Free model on a set server, and I can't find anything that gives a specific release date on this.

[Blackhawk]

Free to Play begins today. I may take a look.

[Stuie]

So I have a PWE account, but it appears that the launcher wants me to create a "crytic handle" (sic) before I can log in. But when I try to do that, it tells me I already have an account. Whatever... back to playing UFO: Enemy Unknown.

[Dan256]

Free to Play begins today. I may take a look.

Thanks for the heads up, think I'll take a look, too.

[hepcat]

I bought this early last year during a sale on amazon and never played. I still have my code, untouched.

[Defiant]

I returned to this last month after having played it during the beta and when it first came out for a while for a while, and returning it again a couple of times. They've certainly improved a lot of stuff as well as added a lot of stuff. Space battles are still more fun than ground battles. The story based missions are, on the whole, fairly good, particularily how many of them there are (there are probably about 80+ on the Federation side, and I've played maybe half of them). I particularly liked the storyline on the

Spoiler:

Devidians

The storyline was nicely written and the lighting effects were pretty effective when you first encounter them.

They've added some stuff, in particular the Duty officer "mini-game". I hate to call it a minigame, cause there's not much game to it, but it does make you feel more like you're captaining a huge vessel (of course, I have more Duty officers than will fit onto my Defiant class ship). You can also walk around more than the bridge of your ship, although apart from the bridge, the rest of the ship all look identical (generic Enterprise-D or the like, so wrong for a Defiant).

I do wish they had more story's set on your ship (and more non-violent missions). Many of the episodes on all of the series took place on the ship/space station of the applicable series. I can only think of one memorable mission that was like that (where you have to settle a dispute diplomatically on what looked like the observation lounge of your ship).

Spoiler:

The one where you have to prove a cardassian was framed

In any event, this game is a steal at free-to-play.

[Jag]

The game has become tremendously fun with Season 5.

Defiant, a buch of people are in small fleet called Quarter to Fleet if you are interested in joining. The thread is on QT3 is here and fairly active. We don't run endgame missions or anything, although those are so easy to instant que, they take about 15mins and are very low stress.

The game is an absolute steal at F2P. You really don't have to spend any money to get all the gameplay. Oh and today starts the 2 year anniversary and they are giving away free Cruisers to anyone over level 5!

It really is a beautiful game.

[Rip]

Now that it is free I have no choice but to check it out.

Off to create my account while steam downloads it.

[Rip]

So much for that. First time it doesn't like my display name. Go back later after thinking about another one, complains about e-mail address being used among other things.

Try to get it to email me info based on the e-mail address and it complains no account associated with that e-mail.

I absolutely hate creating complex accounts for stuff. Basic stuff only on creation. Login username/password and e-mail. Save the rest of the stupid crap for later.

[Jag]

Anyone a DS9 fan? Coming Feb 11

[ericb]

So much for that. First time it doesn't like my display name. Go back later after thinking about another one, complains about e-mail address being used among other things.

Try to get it to email me info based on the e-mail address and it complains no account associated with that e-mail.

I absolutely hate creating complex accounts for stuff. Basic stuff only on creation. Login username/password and e-mail. Save the rest of the stupid crap for later.

Make sure you're checking both cryptic and perfect world for account usage, emails, etc. I still run into issues when I forget to set the button to cryptic when I log in.

I'm playing again for the first time in at least a year and I can say it's greatly improved. I've run into one major bug from 1-20 and that was resolved by leaving the system and coming back in later (it saved my progress). The graphics are gorgeous and run great (1920x1200, most everything high or better). It also has a lot more cut scenes and new areas. The only thing I don't like about the new free ship is that it can't be used until 50 (but it can be stored so you don't lose it). Some of the trek nerds should be hired by cryptic too because some of the foundry missions far exceed some of the main storyline plots.

[Dan256]

Yeah, I've been playing this for a couple of weeks now. Wow, way more fun than I thought it would be. I made it to 50 and my enthusiasm has waned a bit as I don't know where to go from here. It's still fun, but feels a bit repititious after level 50. But the ride up to 50 was a blast. It's worth downloading and giving it a ride, that's for sure.

Even if you don't like MMO's for some reason, you can treat this game like a free solo player game if you want to. In fact with the lack of communication throughout the game, I get the impression that most people just go about their business solo.

This might be a bad time to check out the game though. With the anniversary, and the ship give-away, plus the availability on Steam now, the server is kinda flooded. I was getting some bad lag tonight, whereas every other night was smoothe as butter. I would make an account now and level up to at least 5 to get the free level 50 ship, but keep in mind that the lag will go away when the hysteria dies down.

tldr; Great Game, give it a try!

[Rip]

Finally got an account created. Christ it was a PIA!

[Defiant]

Yeah, I've been playing this for a couple of weeks now. Wow, way more fun than I thought it would be. I made it to 50 and my enthusiasm has waned a bit as I don't know where to go from here. It's still fun, but feels a bit repititious after level 50. But the ride up to 50 was a blast. It's worth downloading and giving it a ride, that's for sure.

Did you finish all the story missions?

[Sabin Stargem]

I am tempted to give it try, despite my tendency to avoid Massively Online Games. I really enjoy the look of the Nova-class starships, and making the USS Malpractice into reality appeals to me.

[Rip]

Finally got all set up. Finished the tutorial. Pretty fun but I got tired so called it a night. Need to read up some and see what I want to do from here. Started with a Human science guy.

[GreenGoo]

I may give this a try.

When an MMO comes calling, everything else falls by the way side. Here's hoping I don't like it.

[Blackhawk]

For those who've played more recently than I: It's been a year since I've played. I have a level 10 character with several hundred thousand credits and like 1,600 dilithium. Since dilithium wasn't in last time I played, I have no idea if that's a lot.

I'm tempted to delete him and start from scratch to see the new content and learn the game from the ground up. Would that be worth it?

[NickAragua]

If you do delete delete him, sell the dilithium for "cryptic points" (the in-game currency you can buy with money) first. 1600 isn't really worth much, but that's pretty much the only way to get CPs other than paying actual money (ugh).

[Jag]

It's not that much. You get like 450 from the foundry daily for reference.

[Stuie]

So I have a PWE account, but it appears that the launcher wants me to create a "crytic handle" (sic) before I can log in. But when I try to do that, it tells me I already have an account. Whatever... back to playing UFO: Enemy Unknown.

Finally figured out my logon issue. The STO launcher uses IE even though my default browser is Firefox. I had IE set to never allow cookies; once I changed that to Prompt for Cookies, the STO launcher worked.

This was in no way obvious on the old launcher, but the current one kinda sorta clued me in. Off to try this thing out now....

[Dan256]

Yeah, I've been playing this for a couple of weeks now. Wow, way more fun than I thought it would be. I made it to 50 and my enthusiasm has waned a bit as I don't know where to go from here. It's still fun, but feels a bit repititious after level 50. But the ride up to 50 was a blast. It's worth downloading and giving it a ride, that's for sure.

Did you finish all the story missions?

Heh, no, I only finished the Klingon line. I"m just not real enthused by the ground combat; so, I'm putting those off for a bit. More than one ground mission a day seems to make my eyes bleed. I"ll do them eventually, when I get bored with the other stuff; didn't mean to make it sound like I'm totally bored already; I'm not.

Now I'm making another character and running him up to 50; it's worth doing again. Then I'll see what I want to do. I don't feel comfortable heading into PvP when others have a two year head start on me - I want to figure a few things out first.

[Jag]

I wouldn't worry about PvP. The sessions are short and I believe the rewards are the same win or lose. You will get some people with some pretty slick setups that will destroy you, but you will also have people on your team helping as well. Maybe because it is ship based, the PvP is not as 'stressful' as a newbie as i've seen in most MMOs.

[Rip]

Well got my starter guy up to Lt Cmdr and picked up the research ship since my guy is a science guy and I have two science bridge officers. More fun than I expected so far although I still have no idea what I am doing when it comes to R&D, crafting, etc. Just trying to hang with the missions until I get to commander at least.

Hard to figure out what to do with all this crap. Started giving most of the food and hypos to the bridge officers. Upgrade their equipment as I notice I have superior stuff.

Bought $10 worth of credits but only xferred 10% of them to star trek until I can figure out what if anything I should buy. So much to learn. But at least I can find my way around space now.

[Jag]

The best things to use the credits on is an endgame ship (Vice Admiral), extra inventory/bank spots and maybe more character spots. Nothing really necessary for gameplay except perhaps a slightly nicer ship than you get at Vice Admiral.

Ship chart here:

http://www.spidermitch.com/STO/Spidermi ... pChart.jpg

[Rip]

The best things to use the credits on is an endgame ship (Vice Admiral), extra inventory/bank spots and maybe more character spots. Nothing really necessary for gameplay except perhaps a slightly nicer ship than you get at Vice Admiral.

Ship chart here:

http://www.spidermitch.com/STO/Spidermi ... pChart.jpg

Like the Long Range Science Vessel Retrofit. Looks like I will need to charge it up a little more by then. Hopefully they will run a sale by the time I get to that level.

I see a lot of bridges in there. Do those work on any ship or do they only activate on certain level starships? I just figure out yesterday that I could even go to the interior.

[Teggy]

Can someone give the quick background on the "seasons"? There is a cutscene that plays at the start of the game that talks about the destruction of the Romulan home worlds - did this happen during the previous "seasons" or was that just the original setup to the game?

[Blackhawk]

Can someone give the quick background on the "seasons"? There is a cutscene that plays at the start of the game that talks about the destruction of the Romulan home worlds - did this happen during the previous "seasons" or was that just the original setup to the game?

I remember that from the original storyline. Actually, you can get more on that from the Abrams Star Trek movie, which is what the game builds on. Also, check out the original intro.

[Dan256]

The best things to use the credits on is an endgame ship (Vice Admiral), extra inventory/bank spots and maybe more character spots. Nothing really necessary for gameplay except perhaps a slightly nicer ship than you get at Vice Admiral.

Ship chart here:

http://www.spidermitch.com/STO/Spidermi ... pChart.jpg

Like the Long Range Science Vessel Retrofit. Looks like I will need to charge it up a little more by then. Hopefully they will run a sale by the time I get to that level.

I see a lot of bridges in there. Do those work on any ship or do they only activate on certain level starships? I just figure out yesterday that I could even go to the interior.

Rather than buying Cryptic points, you could also exchange dilithium for Cryptic points. Right now it's around 180 dilithium per Cryptic point. At 8000 dilithium per day, that's around 45 Cryptic points a day I think.

Officer Reports Daily gets you 1440 dilithium in about 30 seconds.

The History Test in the Academy nets you 480, I think, and the answers are here: http://www.stowiki.org/Lore

There's a Daily Explore mission that can be combined with any of the Explore missions and that nets you 1440 dilithium.

You can do the mission for Kerrat repeatedly; every 3 missions nets you 1440 Dilithium.

There's a system right by Kerrat called Alenha, I think, and that nets you 480 Dilithium for a quick Daily PVE flight rescue mission, but I think that might be only good at level 50. It's only once a day, but you also get some good devices as a bonus for that mission.

Also in the same zone as Kerrat is a system called Zibel that has a disabled freighter nearby, that also has a quick PVE Daily mission associated with it for some dilithium.

And there's the PVE Queues - Infected and Cure, that give you 480 dilithium, and you can do these once an hour.

Then there's the Doff assignment to inspect ships for contraband, you'll see that now and then, and it's associated with another Doff mission that nets you 2000 dilithium; so, don't pass those up.

Anyone know any other easy ways to get dilithium?

[Rip]

OK, up to level 20 Commander. Almost halfway there.

Seems like the missions are getting longer. I have a bad habit of clicking on what do you want me to do instead of reading all the NPC dialog that helps speed it up some.

[Kasey Chang]

Decided to bite and installed the freebie and get a free account going. It's free, right?

EDIT: Thus far, experience is not good, but this MAY be because I have a glitchy DSL.

Got the full client downloaded, and finally figured out the difference between registering on PerfectWorld vs. On Cryptic.

Actually got into the mission, and boarded the USS Khitomer. Did a couple different objectives, then my connection crapped out. I tried to log back in, and keep getting "invalid password", even though it's saved in my password keeper so I know it's right. After all, how did I start playing with invalid password?

Tried to change password, but the change password confirmation link they sent me is invalid as well. WTF?!

EDIT: Exit the game, logged back in, and it worked. Finished the tutorial mission and I'm now at Starbase 1 (i.e. Earth Space dock) Quit for the day.

[Rip]

Decided to bite and installed the freebie and get a free account going. It's free, right?

EDIT: Thus far, experience is not good, but this MAY be because I have a glitchy DSL.

Got the full client downloaded, and finally figured out the difference between registering on PerfectWorld vs. On Cryptic.

Actually got into the mission, and boarded the USS Khitomer. Did a couple different objectives, then my connection crapped out. I tried to log back in, and keep getting "invalid password", even though it's saved in my password keeper so I know it's right. After all, how did I start playing with invalid password?

Tried to change password, but the change password confirmation link they sent me is invalid as well. WTF?!

EDIT: Exit the game, logged back in, and it worked. Finished the tutorial mission and I'm now at Starbase 1 (i.e. Earth Space dock) Quit for the day.

It gets confusing trying to decide which one to log onto at different times. Don't give up it is pretty fun.

I was rolling along but just ran into a ship call IRW Rea kicked my ass a couple times. Decided to take a few minutes break. Hoping to at least get up to Captain tonight. I want to get into the admiral ranks as fast as I can since it seems like that is when the ships really start getting cool.

I do wish they would fix the autofire issue, I haven't gotten frustrated enough to go look for the workaround yet.

[ericb]

There is a text / command that will turn on the autoattack again. It's " /defaultautoattack 1" and it should stick afterwards.