Any STO players around?

[Rebel_L]

Ive been trying it out and am enjoying it so far (level 7) but had a few questions as some things seem to be rather hard to track down. I play relatively little, likely no more than 10 hours in a week and will probably play solo most of the time. I am a bit of a min maxer at heart.

How is general state of the game, is it in shutdown mode or does it still have decent lifespan ahead?

Are any of the monthly subscriptions worth it? How long would you have to play to make the lifetime sub worthwhile?

Any mistakes early on that I really need to avoid so I dont have to restart a character halfway through

Does the original star trek intro meet up with the other one at some point or is it like two separate games in one?

When I look around in the C store seems like it just shows a picture of what your buying, how do you see the ship stats that come with the ships or gear?

I am a fan of the NX, if you buy the tier 1 NX can that upgraded to with the upgrade tokens you get every 10 levels or does it become obsolete at level 10

along the same lines there is a NX tier six bought with lobi currency... is there anything at lower levels I can do to work towards that? from what I can see it could be traded by someone after they purchase it, how is the trade market, is lobi currency super rare or will this be something reasonable to get a hold of?

Is crafting something worthwhile if your playing solo most of the time? And at what level should one start working on crafting (should I be scooping as many omega particles right now as I can?)

Any other helpful advice would be welcomed

 

[Craig234]

Hi, I think there's some very light playing of STO here, but you might get a lot more response on the STO forum.

 

[Rebel_L]

Hi, I think there's some very light playing of STO here, but you might get a lot more response on the STO forum.

My look over the sto forums suggests to me that its a terrible place to go for these kind of answers, like most game dedicated boards it seems to be full very polarized view points (like the video forum here). So far I have seen a farm more measured game posts in this forum than most places If there isnt a big enough sto player base here I will keep looking elsewhere... the free offers thread though is regularly updated with sto offers so I thought I might find a few people here.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I've been playing steadily since 2014. The game is in good shape financially and they just renewed their license with CBS last year before launching on XB1 and PS4 in September 2016. The renewal and console expansions would not have made business sense unless they expected to be offering the game for many more years.

The monthly subscription makes sense to do for 1 month to get some unlocks, after that it's pointless since nothing is locked behind a subscription. The lifetime subscription when it is on sale for $200 might make sense if you intend to keep playing for more than a few months and like over the basket of goodies it contains. It includes 500 cash shop coins per month so it pays for itself in 3.3 years but the goodies can be worth it much sooner if you play multiple characters in the different factions.

> Does the original star trek intro meet up with the other one at some point or is it like two separate games in one?

The TOS and Fed faction stories merge after (SPOILER). All of the factions (TOS, Fed, KDF, Romulan) have unique story episodes to start out, but at some point they all merge together.

> When I look around in the C store seems like it just shows a picture of what your buying, how do you see the ship stats that come with the ships or gear?

The listings for individual ships do list stats, just not the bundles. You can also see the stats in the shipyard vendor or by going to the wiki: http://sto.gamepedia.com/NX_Escort_Refit

> I am a fan of the NX, if you buy the tier 1 NX can that upgraded to with the upgrade tokens you get every 10 levels or does it become obsolete at level 10

No. Only some Tier 5 ships can be upgraded to a T5-U version which is NOT the Tier 6 version. Tier 1-4 ships can never be upgraded. Leveling up, just take the free ships don't buy ships. Once you reach level 50 buy a Tier 6 ship.

> along the same lines there is a NX tier six bought with lobi currency... is there anything at lower levels I can do to work towards that? from what I can see it could be traded by someone after they purchase it, how is the trade market, is lobi currency super rare or will this be something reasonable to get a hold of?

The only way to get lobi is as a consolation prize for opening lock boxes. A lock box contains 5 lobi on average so for 900 lobi you need to open 180 lock boxes.

But: you can also buy most lock box and lobi ships on the Exchange for Energy Credits. Note that you need to pay in the C-Store to unlock the credit cap before you can own enough EC to buy a ship.

Earning enough EC in game will take you a long long time. To get hundreds of millions of EC quickly the shortcut is to buy lock box keys from the cash shop then sell them on the Exchange for 5.x million EC each. Remember to get the credit cap unlock first!!

Realistically, to get an endgame T6 ship you have 3 choices:
- Pay $30 for one from the C-Store ($25 on sale, but you just missed the ship sale that ended Monday)
- Pay $30-50+ for lock box keys to get EC to get one of the special lock box or lobi ships using the Exchange
- Wait for one of the 3 events every year where Cryptic gives away a free T6 ship. You're too late for the Anniversary Event that ends next week. Your next chance is the Summer event in June.

 

[DaveSimmons]

> Is crafting something worthwhile if your playing solo most of the time? And at what level should one start working on crafting

Crafting can make you money if you find the right niche, and crafting tech upgrades is a lot cheaper than buying them. Don't bother crafting until you reach a high level like 15+ or preferably 20.

> should I be scooping as many omega particles right now as I can?

Yes! They are free and the best upgrades you can get because of the built in 4x rarity improvement chance. Hold on to them until there is another Upgrade Weekend and then use them wisely.

If you've already been working on earning the free Lukari ship, be sure to finish that up. It is an account-wide unlock that gets you the ship for every character you create now and in the future.

 

[XavierMace]

Dave pretty much answered all your questions but as far as I know the two of us are the only active STO players on here. I've been playing since beta. If you're a min maxer, you should be playing as a Romulan Captain. Long term goal, you'll want to run Antiproton weapons and run Duty Officers with the Superior Romulan Operative trait. But let me be clear. That is NOT a requirement for ANY content in the game. You'll see people posting builds pushing 300k DPS. There's nothing wrong with that, but the truth is, you can do pretty much any content in the game at 20k DPS. Don't bother with the official forums for anything. Especially not bug reports.

You'll find a large portion (or at least the vocal portion) is of the mindset that if you're not doing top DPS you're doing it wrong. So take most the advice you get in game with a grain of salt. Especially when it comes to NEEDING a T6 ship. There is NOTHING in game that requires a T6 ship. I have all the pay ships because I have no self control. I still have multiple toons running T5 ships either because it's a canon build or just because I like the looks better.

Also, don't spend any large amounts of currency (in game or real) until you decide what you like and how you want to play.

I play at night, but feel free to hit me up in game for help. @XavierMace.

Edit: Oh, and don't use the upgrade system at all until you've chatted with somebody knowledgeable about it. Otherwise you're just going to waste a ton of resources and get little or nothing in return.

 

[DaveSimmons]

^ good advice. You really can play all the story content and at least the normal difficulty PVE queues in the final free ship you get at level 40, using only green rarity Mark XII gear. It will take longer and you'll die more than if you had a T6 ship and Mark XIV Epic gear but dying does not cost you anything.

And if you decide fun is more important than DPS you can do "good enough" quite decent damage with any faction, any captain type, any ship type, and any energy weapon type. If you want to be a TOS or TNG/DS9/Voyager captain flying a federation ship with phasers and a torpedo you can. Or a Klingon in a bird of prey with disruptor cannons.

 

[XavierMace]

^
This. One of my builds is an Andorian Engineering captain in the Kumari (Andorian Escort) running Andorian phasers, no EPIC gear but mostly Mark XIV. I have no problem pulling 20k DPS in that. 20k DPS is kinda the magic number in my book because at 20k DPS, you're generally the top man on the team damage wise in the PVE queues (if you don't have a premade team) and generally aren't dying. So that meets my requirements for a build which are having fun and not holding back a PUG team. I'm not the type that's going to chew somebody out in game for being the low man on the totem pole in a mission. BUT, if you're running a higher difficulty mission, and you're only pulling 1k DPS, you're doing something wrong and shouldn't be playing the higher difficulty missions.

More specific advice than that, depends on your play style/personality. I can't stand doing mindless grinds, I don't care how profitable it might be in game. I'm doing the Omega particles enough for the free ship. I'm not going to farm them for the upgrade tokens because I don't find that the slightest bit fun and at that point, I'm getting a poor return on my investment. I'd rather spend $10 on keys, which I can then sell on the Exchange then buy the upgrade tokens than spend hours on end farming for the upgrade tokens. But that's personal preference. To each his own.

 

[XavierMace]

OP, just had a good example of what I mean about the amount of damage you "need". If you're concerned about your damage numbers, you'll want to download CombatLogReader so you can parse missions to see your damage. The application gives you full details, but it also gives you a quick summary that you can copy and paste into chat if you're playing with the type of people that do that. You'll get CLR (Combat Log Reader) - Map Name - Mission Time, then each players total damage and DPS, sorted by DPS. Infected Space Advanced is a common mission for damage parsing because of it's consistency.

CLR—Infected Space[2:09]— Dmg(DPS) —Ragnarok@m 23,876,144(185,086) Elon Gates 8,588,228(66,575) Nathan Bri 7,653,798(59,332) Eleventy o 2,169,026(17,352) Shaun@spac 810,624(13,075)

So, that's showing Ragnarok in first place with 185k DPS over the course of the mission. That's downright impressive in a PUG, certainly the highest I've personally witnessed. He could have solo'd the mission. The bottom guy was at 13k. I was the poor guy at 17k, as I was running a space magic build and Ragnarok was killing everything before I could even finish activating all my abilities. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't come close to approaching his number regardless, but I've gotten 40k DPS out of that build.

That first number you see (2:09) is the total mission time. I waited about 4 minutes in the queue for the mission. Map load time is ~30 seconds. We completed the mission in 2 minutes and 9 seconds. That's great if all you're concerned about is grinding for gear. Personally I enjoy actually playing the game and a 2 minute mission time made the wait feel like a waste. Here's a run with a little more normal PUG:

CLR—Infected Space[4:47]— Dmg(DPS) —Kiba@giann 12,603,440(44,693) Radeck@wov 10,575,536(37,369) T'lara@Xav 9,670,351(34,537) James@tvl1 2,552,690(8,894) ketell@emm 1,729,589(6,155)

The DPS spread there is 44k to 6k. At 6k DPS, you should probably be sticking with standard difficulty, IMO. I was in the middle at 34k and wasn't really trying that hard. The total mission time there was 4:47 which honestly makes it feel a bit more fulfilling IMO. I've had mission runs with GOOD teams where the mission time was under a minute. For me at least, that's funny at first but ends up taking all the fun out of it. As I said in the other post, I find 20k-40k where you still actually feel like you're playing the game, rather than one click nuking everything. That's where I personally have the most fun.

 

[SunnyD]

I have an on and off relationship with the game. Right now, it's on as I've been playing since the winter event and the Lukari event for the free ships. It helps that I've been re-watching the various star trek series' on Netflix while I play.

As far as tips and tricks : I'm not the one to ask. I just play.

 

[Rebel_L]

That is some excellent advise, thank you

It sounds like any t6 ship should be fine then so I can happily shoot for ending up with the nx and not worry that it might be a crappy ship (I dont really know much about what is important yet as far as the stats go) I'm playing a human tactical captain now and may play an engineering one at some time but I figure leveling one captain up at the rate I seem to be going should take me until close to summer, if I still like the game by then and the lifetime sub goes on sale (it sounded like it goes on sale a few times a year) I will go for that. I dont necessarily mind big grinds so I can see having fun slowly getting a good fleet of ships to occupy me for a few years.

There is a good chance I will never play a faction other than starfleet but who knows what may happen down the line. It sounds like there is nothing I have to worry about screwing up so bad at the start that it cant be fixed later so thats good. Is there any good established build/ship gearing sites, something with text preferably as I prefer to read rather than watch advice

 

[XavierMace]

To that end, be aware the Lobi ships like the T6 NX are character unlocks, not account unlocks. So you'd have to buy it on every character if you wanted it on all of them. The C-Store ships and event ships are account unlocks.

General guidelines for builds... Beams are better than cannons, on cruisers these should be arrays not dual banks. FAW, FAW, FAW (Fire At Will). Keep your weapon power maxed at all times. Antiproton or Coalition Disruptors for max damage. Don't use "clicky" consoles (consoles with an active power). Tac console slots should only be used for consoles that buff your primary damage type, late game these should be the special consoles from the Spire. Don't put much effort into your gear until late game. As stated previously, don't use the upgrade system without somebody to walk you through it and not until you KNOW what you want to do with your build. Upgrading uses a large amount of resources that are very grindy to acquire.

Reddit has an STO builds page with tons of examples. Generally these builds have paid or limited time items on it unless specifically stated.

Pretty much the only things you can "screw up" to the point you can't fix it is Specialization Points which don't come into play until Level 50. Even then it's not screwed up per say, just a waste of time if you pick the "wrong" ones as you can't reset/respec them but there's no cap on the number of spec points you can acquire.

Beyond that the only other things you can't change after the fact is your career (Tactical/Engineer/Science), race (which makes little difference outside of Romulan), and if you're a Romulan, your alignment (FED or KDF). You get some respec tokens for free (more if you're a lifetime sub) and you can always buy more. So, you're never going to have a character that just flat out can't play end game content, it's just going to be less optimal.

That and per character unlock ships. I recommend avoiding them until you have a build you're otherwise happy with.