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[BigJonsson]

Yea yea, blew up some Borg scum

The ground combat does suck though, yikes

Ship combat is cool, typical Star Trek ship to ship combat, going to need to get used to all the different hotkeys

So uhhh how does loot work?

 

[Almighty]

Well to my surprise put about two hours into the game. I was playing checked the clock and two hours just flew by so that is a good sign. I am really liking the ship combat, but ground combat is pretty meh so far. Still have a lot to figure out, but overall I am enjoying it.

 

[Slappy967]

Ok so it wants a product activation key but I have yet to get an email with one. What did i screw up now?

 

[Almighty]

Ok so it wants a product activation key but I have yet to get an email with one. What did i screw up now?

I just closed that window and it installed and worked fine for me.

 

[BattleMonkey]

I hope they give us some sense of how much the user base increased when they went F2P, and then how much it goes up again once it's relaunched on Steam.

Like all F2P launches, it's going to be multiple hundreds of percentage increase in player base. It was pretty anemic before F2P launch with sector space having few instances or players in them.

 

[RealMeat]

The ground combat does suck though, yikes

Are you playing in shooter mode? Hit B to swap back and forth. Takes the ground combat from total crap to alright IMO.

 

[BattleMonkey]

Are you playing in shooter mode? Hit B to swap back and forth. Takes the ground combat from total crap to alright IMO.

Ground combat is pretty much the same though, it just makes it quicker to play in shooter mode with your abilities being more mouse friendly. Find playing in old school mode though easier for micro managing battles and crew.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

I want a new ship. ;( I guess the people with $$$$ get the cool ships. I hate the one you start out with, so small. Might as well be a shuttle craft.

Well, you're not expecting them to give Captain Ensign the top of the line? Err, unless they put J.J. Abrams in charge of the game.

 

[RPGCrazied]

Bleh. I wanted to play some now, and there is a 2 hour maintenance. I'm about to hit level 5... I think.

 

[Rezbit]

Yeah the ground combat is just "okay." Still has that slightly delayed MMO feel, but the shooter controls make it tolerable. I do love the idea of having your "ground" crew though, just filled up my last slot with Ensign Jack.

 

[RPGCrazied]

I wish you could pick and choose your duty officers. Seems like I'm stuck with this alien girl with antennas, and some female trill.

 

[SorchaR]

Any advice on the space combat? I've played my share of RPGs and MMOs, but never anything with space combat.
I can't manage to fly, shoot and juggle my shields at the same time... don't I have a crew to do some of that stuff for me? I figure I have to keep rotating my ship to keep my shields up, but my ship is as slow as a snail and I can't use my main weapon when I've turned around. I'm probably doing it wrong, but I have no idea what I should be doing instead..

 

[The Technomancer]

A few tips that I've found useful for early game space combat:
1.)If you can't turn around fast enough to protect one side of your shields you can divert extra power to those shields with the arrow keys or by clicking on that shield.
2.)You can slot a second phasor into your rear weapon slot and keep doing damage while they're behind you, setting them up for a torpedo when they get in front of you again.
3.)It can be easier to turn strategically if you drop your speed down to zero and try to turn on the spot

 

[Htown]

I wish you could pick and choose your duty officers. Seems like I'm stuck with this alien girl with antennas, and some female trill.

You'll get more.

 

[Emitan]

I wish you could pick and choose your duty officers. Seems like I'm stuck with this alien girl with antennas, and some female trill.

You say that like it's a bad thing. STO is Bridge Bunny Simulator 2012

 

[RPGCrazied]

I wouldn't go that far. I'm enjoying the game. Just wish it would let you choose who you wanted as your first duty officer, even your 2nd one.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

Any advice on the space combat? I've played my share of RPGs and MMOs, but never anything with space combat.
I can't manage to fly, shoot and juggle my shields at the same time... don't I have a crew to do some of that stuff for me? I figure I have to keep rotating my ship to keep my shields up, but my ship is as slow as a snail and I can't use my main weapon when I've turned around. I'm probably doing it wrong, but I have no idea what I should be doing instead..

How exactly you play will depend a lot on what kind of weapons you're using, and what their firing arc is. I use a lot of beam weaponry, so I do a lot of circling enemy ships--as long as they're to the side, both my fore and aft beams can hit them. If they start giving the shield facing them a pounding, I can either transfer shield power to that side, or try and turn around and let the other side face them for a while.

I used to play with X360 controller in left hand, now use a PlayStation Navigation controller. Anyway, my space controls allow me to steer with analog, increase/decrease speed with d-pad, use the "Fire All Phasers" command with a shoulder button. Mouse is then free to adjust shielding, use special abilities, or pick specific targets if I don't want it to just auto-target.

I briefly experimented with using all turrets (360 degree firing arc), but the fact that my orientation didn't matter at all in battle was very dull.

I wish you could pick and choose your duty officers. Seems like I'm stuck with this alien girl with antennas, and some female trill.

It really is a "Here's a pack of cards, figure out how best to use them" mechanic--giving full freedom would be too much, I think.

 

[killer_clank]

Kinda enjoying the game. Level 5 lieutenant. Very overwhelming at first, and the currency stuff is kind of confusing to me so far.

The space combat is good, the ground combat is kinda meh.. The loot isn't great so far, but I'll keep slogging away.

 

[Medalion]

Loot is based mostly on getting gear (by killing enemies or completing missions) that serve as ways to improve either your character or your ship, and you can sell that shit for energy credits, the main currency in the game

There is other things like getting refined delithium which is new, and gold pressed latinum

 

[SorchaR]

Thanks, I'll try my hand at space combat again after dinner

 

[Petrie]

Can this game be played well with simply a 360 pad or will I have problems? I enabled it and can't even figure out how to run thus far. I know people will just say "m & kb rulez" but 3rd person games like this will never feel natural to me that way, just holding down shift to run feels awkward. (simply not a PC FPS guy)

 

[watership]

It's hilarious that Fleet actions seem as broken as they did when I first played almost 2 years ago. I have episodes I want to complete, I go to the system, hail the ship, and my fleet action isn't even there. I have the option to create a private instance, yet I solo mostly, so I don't have anyone to invite. I figure the instance I'm on just doesn't have any players doing this mission so I try to change, and i get an error.

Weird.

 

[Medalion]

Now that you mention it, I seem to recall that if other players entered a system like I did awhile back I could automatically team up with them to complete missions...but this new structured mission system you hail an officer, and you pretty much go it alone unless you invite a team ahead of time or something

 

[Shouta]

Any advice on the space combat? I've played my share of RPGs and MMOs, but never anything with space combat.
I can't manage to fly, shoot and juggle my shields at the same time... don't I have a crew to do some of that stuff for me? I figure I have to keep rotating my ship to keep my shields up, but my ship is as slow as a snail and I can't use my main weapon when I've turned around. I'm probably doing it wrong, but I have no idea what I should be doing instead..

First off, is to set all your weapons to auto-fire. That way you won't have to manage all of them most of the time. You CAN manually fire things to time certain attacks but I find putting it on auto-fire to be a lot more painless.

There are various weapon types so if you want to fight as much as possible while turning, I recommend equipping beam arrays which have a 270 degree firing arc in your fore and aft slots, aside from a torpedo launcher. That way you'll have firing coverage as you turn though not as much firing power straight behind (front will have a torpedo to cover that).

You can also distribute shields by using the arrow keys or clicking on your ship's diagram at the button. If you click no the unit at the center, it'll distribute it evenly while the arrows will distribute to that area.

 

[Emitan]

THEY DELETED MY CHARACTER! RAAAAGE

Is there a NeoGAF guild? I probably won't be on too much because of TOR, but I'd like to play this for a change of pace every now and then.

 

[RPGCrazied]

Another emergency maintenance. Either there is a big increase in population, or their server's cant handle the new load.

 

[Medalion]

Perhaps some sucker TOR players jumped ship to STO j/k

 

[RPGCrazied]

My first annoying quest.

Ancestral Sin. I failed it twice. I found the four historians that corresponds with those pages, but I accused the other guy and failed. Is there a quest wiki? Like Wowhead has for WoW?

 

[Medalion]

Sorta... I use this page a lot to answer any questions I have about STO, but some of the articles may be outdated because of the F2P changes

http://www.stowiki.org/Main_Page

 

[Dizzy-4U]

I like the trivia thingy in the loading screen but I think I read all of them in the first few hours of the game. They should team up with Memory Alpha for more.

 

[Medalion]

A lot of that "trivia" relates to the world of STO, and STO is not exactly canon.

 

[jakershaker]

Downloading it now. Always wanted to try it.

 

[Walshicus]

Sorta... I use this page a lot to answer any questions I have about STO, but some of the articles may be outdated because of the F2P changes

http://www.stowiki.org/Main_Page

Yeah, I've been trying to get the time to finish up the "Set" and "STF" articles for a while now...

 

[RPGCrazied]

Did you readd me to the guild?

 

[BattleMonkey]

Another emergency maintenance. Either there is a big increase in population, or their server's cant handle the new load.

Game just went F2P, they always go down several times when this happens. They have more players now than they did at the games original launch probably.

 

[Walshicus]

Did you readd me to the guild?

Fleet hasn't been made yet! Soon though... You need to be in a team of five people online at the same time to make a Fleet.


Update to the OP:

 

[Zzoram]

Any advice on the space combat? I've played my share of RPGs and MMOs, but never anything with space combat.
I can't manage to fly, shoot and juggle my shields at the same time... don't I have a crew to do some of that stuff for me? I figure I have to keep rotating my ship to keep my shields up, but my ship is as slow as a snail and I can't use my main weapon when I've turned around. I'm probably doing it wrong, but I have no idea what I should be doing instead..

Press arrow keys to redistribute ship energy to weakened shields.

You turn better when you're flying slower, just like when driving a car. That said, some ships turn faster than others even when flying slow.



Different weapon types have different firing arcs. Turrets can shoot 360deg but are very weak. Beam weapons can shoot 270deg at medium strength, and cannons and torpedos shoot like 90deg but are the strongest.

Cruiser class ships are strong, have a ton of hull hitpoints, but turn slowly. Beam weapons plus torpedos are ideal for these types of ships.

Science Vessel class ships are for buffs and debuffs, moderate turn speed and hull, you probably want a mix of beam weapons and cannons plus torpedos.

Escourt ships turn really fast but have low hull. You want to equip them with cannons and torpedos only for maximum DPS, and use your quick turn speed to fly circles around enemy ships and do fly by attacks. Use your better maneuverability to stay on the side of enemy ships that have the fewest weapons that can shoot you.

 

[Walshicus]

Okay, we're about to give this Fleet building another go. Pop online!

 

[RPGCrazied]

Okay, we're about to give this Fleet building another go. Pop online!

I got your invite. Someone named sickboy007 invited me too, but I think I remembered his name from this thread. I see he is in a fleet called Gafleet, but you are not. How to you access foundry missions?

 

[Zzoram]

2nd post of the thread has list of players to add, nice

 

[Shouta]

I can pop on if you need another.

 

[The Technomancer]

Same here

 

[Sickboy007]

I got your invite. Someone named sickboy007 invited me too, but I think I remembered his name from this thread. I see he is in a fleet called Gafleet, but you are not. How to you access foundry missions?

I'm part of the old Gaffleet but that one is basically desert nowadays, the old founders/leaders all left. Let's make the new one tonight, i think we've got enough members!

To access foundry missions, click on the combadge, go to available missions and then on the community tab on the left.

 

[Petrie]

Can this game be played well with simply a 360 pad or will I have problems? I enabled it and can't even figure out how to run thus far. I know people will just say "m & kb rulez" but 3rd person games like this will never feel natural to me that way, just holding down shift to run feels awkward. (simply not a PC FPS guy)

.

 

[Emitan]

I can hop on tonight. Character's name is Saayli.

 

[Zen]

Yeah the ground combat is just "okay." Still has that slightly delayed MMO feel, but the shooter controls make it tolerable. I do love the idea of having your "ground" crew though, just filled up my last slot with Ensign Jack.

I'll have to try the shooter controls, just tab selecting and hitting the phaser hotkey seemed to work the best for me.

 

[DarthWoo]

So I recall some discussion about buying cheap copies of the retail game for the time codes or bonus items, in the CE's case. If I do either, will I only have the bonus character slot and such for the 30 days, or do I get to keep it afterward? Are there any other perks from getting one month's sub that will stay if I let it lapse?

 

[Walshicus]

I can hop on tonight. Character's name is Saayli.

Need the account name rather than the character name!

 

[Emitan]

Need the account name rather than the character name!

I think the account name is HobocidalManiac. That's what logs me in.

 

[DarthWoo]

Yikes, was exploring a bit and thought I'd hop into a battle with some random Romulan ships flying around the Alpha-Centauri sector. My ship was destroyed in the opening volley.

Kind of strange after trouncing a Klingon Negh'var earlier.