I made Captain in Star Trek Online tonight; that’s level 31 if you’re all crass and number-using. We leave those sorts of things to our holographic life forms. They really seem to enjoy it.
As befits a captain, I traded in my Science officer blues for the red of Command. While I was at Deep Space 9 picking up necessary ship supplies, I picked up new uniforms for the crew. All they had were the DS9 uniforms, but that’s fine. Black is very slimming.
I have moved away from science vessels. I find having the ability to tank and fire a substantial volley at enemies in space makes fights a lot shorter, and the game a lot more fun. I still do keep up with my science skills, which are a significant help in away missions and are game-changers in ground-based PvP, where I don’t have my bridge officers to do all the fun things.
Before I leveled into a new PvP tier, I spent a few hours having burny fun with the Klingon Empire. Space PvP was frustrating; Klingons would swarm and take out every Federation ship in seconds, so that was more or less pointless. After I tired of hoping my ship’s explosion would miraculously take out the Klingon fleet, I focused on ground PvP, where the matches went about 50/50, Klingon vs Federation. That’s really where my Science abilities shine.
Eventually, I got to the point where I just wanted to level, dammit, and see my new ship — the USS Manchester, seen above dwarfing the lesser ships near it. That thing is HUGE. As in EVE, you don’t really get an idea for the size of your ship without something to show its scale.
It isn’t a simple ship to fly. In fact, ‘out of the box’, the long range cruiser is nearly helpless. Earlier tiers could get away with ignoring power settings and using whatever consoles happened to come their way. Without the proper settings and gear, a long range cruiser would just sit motionless in space, firing ineffectually at the enemies who would have no trouble doing whatever they liked with the ship.
I boosted my weapon power up nearly to the max, with shields about normal, and speed and auxiliary systems slightly below normal. Engineering consoles (the l.r. cruiser fits three) boosts the speed back up to normal and manage the power flow to the various subsystems, while tactical consoles improve key weapon performance. The result: an express locomotive right down the throat of an enemy battleship. Ramming speed just adds a little je ne sais quois — a little spice, perhaps — to the mix.
Oh yeah, I’ve been telling the crew I’m going to get a new wall-sized plasma TV for the rec area. I wonder what the warranty is like on these…
I am 60% through Star Trek Online without really trying all that hard. I’m far enough through the game to take a look back. Is the game worth the year subscription?
I dunno. I really like the game, but it’s not been out a month and I’m this far in. Just one last tier to go, and then I get to replay the game on the Klingon side. I’ve been assured that it’s a LOT of fun, and I expect I’ll enjoy it. That’s four months, tops.
The storyline missions are wonderfully written and greatly add to the Star Trek lore. We do find out what caused the supernova that destroyed Romulus. We find out how the Romulans are planning to retake their empire. We meet all the exciting and powerful folks that Voyager stirred up on their way back to the Alpha Quadrant. And the Dominion isn’t done with us, either.
Mixed in with the storyline missions are a host of very formulaic patrol and exploration missions. They differ chiefly in their rewards — patrol missions give a large chunk of experience and usually a weapon or module that is better than most in its class. Exploration missions earn you badges of exploration that you can spend on even better modules, allowing you to customize the abilities of your ship to an amazing degree. I imagine it’s possible to build a ship that won’t fold up like the box it came in in Fed v Klingon space PvP, with the right modules earned through PvE.
Fleets (guilds) haven’t made a huge impression as of yet. Not many of the folks in the STOTwitter channel seem to have joined a fleet; the chat channel seems to do all the things a fleet likely would.
The cash shop still only has the playable Federation Klingon and Ferengi races. People are waiting for new uniform pieces (or at least the ones available to pre-order folks), or new ships, but no sign of those yet. I DID pick up a Danube-class runabout on Deep Space 9, though. You wouldn’t think it by how often they trashed those runabouts in Star Trek: Deep Space 9, but they cost as much as a Galaxy-class long range exploration cruiser.
The expectation is that STO will end in the rut that most MMOs fall in to. Unlike EVE, where all classes of ships have a purpose, even the ones a day 1 newbie gets, there’s no reason ever to go back and use an older ship — and hence, no reason at all to ever go back and do low level content. This will leave the galaxy filled with wall-to-wall admirals in huge and powerful ships, all waiting around to find out what rank exists beyond admiral. Supreme Leader? President of the Universe?
They would never do this, but I’d like to see STO let you start over as a new ensign — in the Mirror Universe, the one where you have to carry an agonizer around with you in case you find you need punishment. Or as a member of the Time Patrol, or Section 31, or in the Kirk-era past where everything was far more primitive. Now that the movie has established a second alternate timeline (the Mirror Universe was the first), there’s really no reason not to take the chance to explore all the nooks and crannies of the Star Trek universe.
If you’ve been hesitating about trying Star Trek Online, I’d suggest just going for it. Even if you level through the game in the free month, it’s still well worth that $50, and you’ll be ready when Cryptic starts adding the new content. If you’re looking for a game that will keep you playing steadily for five years or more, I don’t know. so much depends on how Cryptic sees Star Trek Online expanding.
But you’ll get a really fun month out of it at the very least.
16 thoughts on “Star Trek Online: Taking Command”
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Andorians… antennae instead of bunny ears…?
I like STO because it builds so strongly on the Starfleet Command series. The mix of action and tactics works. There are many rough edges and the game has been released without much content and there is definitely the question if it is worth the monthly fee. But the drawback also has its merits: There is no grind. You level up very quickly. Given the very casual nature, one wonders if a F2P or Guild Wars model would not work better for the game. I guess I said this already several times.
This game is almost a shock of novelty to many players. It is interesting to see debates whether Engineers or Science Officers are healers. Interestingly, both guys had no single skill equipped to do anything to allied players, at least not in space.
My main concern is Cryptic. They apparently want to release quite a lot games using their engine and server cluster system, a third project is already in the making. They apparently wanted to charge some money for the Vibora Bay area in Champions, but then decided against it. I can only hope that STO gets some more content over time than CO does.
I hope they manage to make pve ground combat more engaging (in pvp the system works great!) and add more story content. In Starfleet Command one could play Romulans, Klingons, later even Borg story arcs with some generic random missions thrown in (the freighters you see in STO all around were usually to be escorted in SFC3 and to be ambushed by Klingon NPCs…^^). I hope they don’t pull a Hellgate or are rarely adding new content like for Champion’s Online.
They could offer new experiences, the tiered system guarantees that your rich Federation char cannot totally pimp your new char:
Orion Pirates Campaign
Mirror Universe Campaign
Borg Campaign (yup, play a Borg!)
Dominion War
Voyager – you lost the transwarp button to Sol and need to find back your way to the Alpha Quadrant
I can also about cool things involving tribble breeding and more fleet actions. Adding two fleet actions to the mission list without implementing them is such a silly move or teaser that I would like to crucify someone at Cryptic.
At the end of the year Blizzard might top all their previous expansions by offering a themepark reboot for WoW players, aka Cataclysm. Reminding their players that levelling is fun and the original core of the game, not rushing to max and then doing dungeon runs for token collections.
There are Allod of MMOs out there already that are very similar to the original EQ way, if people can’t get enough of it. But I can only encourage people to enhance their experience by trying Guild Wars (very cheap to get the trilogy nowadays – wonder why they do not include Eye of the North for a really complete package!), Age of Conan (free to play till level 20 – a very fair offer!) or give some interesting single-player games a spin: Dragon Age, Divinity II, Fallout 3, Mass Effect 2, Mount & Blade (<- M&B is my absolute medieval darling and single player favorite) gives people enough stuff to play while waiting for the next WoW fix or Diablo 3. 🙂
Yeah, I believe the STO expansions will HAVE to focus on leveling through the storylines of other NPC races. I’d also like to see factions be able to control systems, and use the PvP arenas to (Warhammer-like) take control of contested regions of space.
Found this via Twitter.
I liked your post and I’m finding the very feelings that you’re encountering, though I’ve only barely hit Commander 2.
PvP is a total mess, and those Klingons just go ape-shit on every Fed ship. Sure, I understand that Klingons do have formidable weaponry in their arsenal, but to that degree? What Feds? Just last night I saw people firing on some Klingons and they barely got through the Klingon shields, but by that time I was taken-out already and another ship (or two) were on their way out too.
I do worry about the future of STO because once Rear Admiral is achieved there’s not much to do; and even if Cryptic releases new content for the RAs, that content (unless it’s dynamic is some innovative way) is going to be completed real soon and RAs will hunger for more. I guess I think that Cryptic needs to really revamp/overhaul the whole leveling system if they want to survive, but I doubt that will happen.
Also, I don’t think STO is really all that innovative. I think the creators are relying too much on the Star Trek fanbase and the allure of playing as a Captain of a starship to make this game work. They need more. It looks great and they did a great job accomplishing that, but the game leaves something to be desired.
(Sorry about the long comment).
I dunno. I think the whole bridge officer thing is VERY innovative — only Guild Wars has anything like it, and STO has given it some interesting twists with the space-based and ground-based abilities.
Always a good post Tipa!
I was promoted recently to Lt C and got my first new ship the USS Leontos. I noticed a huge upgrade in my abilities in space (less so on the ground). I’m playing Tactical and I agree with you based on this experience that there isn’t much reason to go back a tier in ships. On to some questions!
Is it worth it to grab a couple different types of ships? As an example, I intend to keep flying escorts. Would it be worth it to grab a cruiser or some such along the line to have something beefy? Or is it only worth flying the highest tier ships once you have them unlocked?
Have you tried team queuing for space pvp? I know I’d rather fly with someone I know… and someone flying a science vessel so I can pew pew while then stomp stomp if you get my drift.
Names@Rerollmuch
There’s no point in using ships from a previous tier, you might as well just discharge them as soon as you change tiers. But there IS value in getting the other ships of the tier you are on. I loved my science ships, but I tried out the escorts and cruisers as well. I had some engineering officers with some very nice abilities which turned a cruiser into a very powerful ship. Different ships allow different bridge officers and consoles to come into play and are well worth checking out.
Great write up, Tipa. I end up buying the game over the weekend because of the $10 off promo on Steam that they had going. A bit before release I had made up my mind that I was going to pass on this one. It felt like it was going to be a quick fun game and I would be done with it in a month or two, just like CoX and Champions Online.
Well, from all the reports, it seems Cryptic is holding to that tradition. I haven’t played a lot yet, I’m very close to hit Lt Com so progression seems quite fast. I haven’t been bored yet though and I’m surprised how fun the game is and how well Space combat works.
I’m sure I will end up playing for a month or maybe two, but sure I’m having a lot of fun with this one! My verdict? It’s worth the $50 even if you quit after the first month.
Section 31 gameplay could be fantastic, bringing in mechanics and themes that The Secret World wants sole claim on.
“It’s worth the $50 even if you quit after the first month.”
Guild Wars works better if that’s the philosophy. 😉
But Guild Wars is a different game. If STO is the kind of game you might enjoy, and you would pay $50 for Mass Effect 2 or some other game and play it for a couple of weeks, well, I’d say go for it.
There are other ranks above Rear Admiral. The officer ranks are:
O-1 Ensign
O-2 Lieutenant Junior Grade (curiously, STO skipped this one)
O-3 Lieutenant
O-4 Lieutenant Commander
O-5 Commander
O-6 Captain
O-7 Rear Admiral (lower half)
O-8 Real Admiral (upper half)
O-9 Vice Admiral
O-10 Admiral
O-10 Fleet Admiral (wartime rank)
So if we go to 10 grades of Rear Admiral (lower half), we still have 10 grades of 4 more officer ranks. That’s a lot of potential future expansion.
MM
Don’t admirals usually command fleets? Just because there are pay grades above rear admiral doesn’t mean a hundred ships all commanded by admirals makes any sense in a navy….
Considering the amount of content Cryptic has released for Champions post release (virtually nothing in 6 months) I’m not sure there’s much point in hoping for large sweeping content releases for STO. Cryptic sadly seems content to grab as many box sales and lifetime subscriptions as they can, then put the game in maintenance mode while they go work on the next box sale scheme. They should be making single player games, not MMOs, or at least not subscription games. It wouldn’t be so bad if they used the Guild Wars model.
That’s just the thing, Tipa, I *don’t* just play a game that I pay $50 for only for a couple of weeks. If I’m shelling out that sort of money, I’m going to play it for much longer than that.
But yes, if $50 is just a couple weeks’ worth of fun, there’s nothing wrong with the box+30 days. 🙂
When I started playing the game I was completely hooked. Because of that, I shot up to the ‘level cap’ in a couple of weeks. Right now I sit at Rear Admiral 5 with little to do. There is a Daily Exploration quest for the same cluster, and that’s it. If I log in, it is to help another Fleet member or do one or two PvP rounds, then log out. Everyone expects a big patch soon that will introduce Raid missions and the Borg Queen, though. But as stated by the other comments, I won’t hold my breath for Cryptic.
The game is a lot of fun and I’m hoping for some cool stuff to come. The Star Trek setting contains so many possibilities that Cryptic has no excuse not to make this game richer.
I share the pessimism regarding Cryptic’s will or ability to provide content for STO, too. Champions Online is about to get a new zone. After 6 months. And it was not a content heavyweight at launch, as we all know.
But one thing I am quite sure about is that Cryptic is good at making money… xD. Still, I don’t think box sales and 1-2 months are enough to make a profit. So they will have to do something to keep players playing and paying.
the new updates to sto been pretty good so far and now there adding a new playable faction pretty soon.starting to fill out pretty good all in all.lot more entertianing than the mineing spread sheet game that is eve.