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Please Help a noob player
generic5
Member Posts: 87 Arc User
in The Academy
Hello from a frustrated noob! I've been trying to play this game (Free-to-Play) for months now, and I still don't have a clue on what I'm supposed to be doing.
When I began, I couldn't finish any missions because my ship kept getting blown up. My character (long since deleted) could only get to 7th Level. I go to Risa where I'm told that I can't beam down until I'm Level 10. I played a few more weeks but couldn't even get to 8th Level, so I quit.
I came back a couple of months ago to try again. I got my new character to Level 10. I go back to Risa, and am allowed to beam down only to find there's basically nothing to do on Risa (unless I completely missed something).
I am currently playing a 25th Level Human Female Tactical Officer (Federation).
My problems:
Space Combat is impossible! Even in the tutorial, my ship got blown up at least 20-30 times!
A enemy Klingon we need to stop? Fine.
A Borg Sphere followed by a Borg Cube is just insane!
At level 16, I got the 'Secret Orders' mission (the one in the Briar Patch). I tried it, and it was a disaster! I lost track of how times my ship got blown up. So I went back to ESD and basically did Duty Officer missions for a month to get to Level 20 with a new ship. I was now 4 levels above the mission rank, my new ship was equipped with the highest ranked equipment I could use, and I just barely got through it. After the Away mission part of the mission, I beam back up to the ship, and I have to keep 2 fleeing Klingons from escaping. Except that the Klingons appear on the mini-map with the same red color as everything else. I must have spent 15 minutes flying around looking for the Klingons. I finally found them, and managed to get them both. Of course, my ship blew up a bunch of times, as per usual, but at least I was given credit for completing the mission.
And during Space Combat, I have to run my character and my Bridge Officers at the same time! How the heck am I supposed to do that when my ship is getting attacked by multiple ships simultaneously?
I didn't know that I could promote and train my Bridge Crew. Here I am a Commander at Level 25 while my Bridge Crew are all still untrained Cadets. Oops!
On Earth Spacedock, I can talk to the Bridge Officer Trainer (the man without a name) and buy Training Manuals. Now if my Bridge Officer isn't trained in an ability at all, can I just buy the Level II Manual and train him/her to level II or do I need to buy Level I first, train him/her to level I, and then buy (and train him/her to) Level II?
On the Duty officers screen of my current ship (Stargazer ship), I have a First Officer, and Department Heads in Engineering and Operations (both headed by Zarva), Science and Medical (both headed by T'Vrell), and Tactical and Security (both headed by Kolez). Am I supposed to have 6 different people as Department Heads (plus the 1st Officer)?
I 'purchased' (that sounds so wrong) a new Bridge Officer (Warp Core Specialist / Engineer) so I could make him Department Head of Engineering (with plans to train him in Miracle Worker). How do I make the change from Zarva to the new guy?
At Level 15, R + D unlocked. Is there an in-game contact that I can talk to for a Tutorial? I am totally lost on this subject.
When on an Away mission and I scan the area, if I'm told there are some anomalies in the area, does that mean that the anomalies are in the same room that I am in, or somewhere on the entire mission map?
Those Wavelength puzzles really confuse me. How do the controls work before the 5 second time limit runs out? I wish that there was an auto-solve with those things.
I've spent my Ground and Space Skill points almost at random with no plan whatsoever. Help?
I am so lost. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
~~~~~
"We do not do this thing because it is permitted. We do it because we have to. We do it because we are compelled." - Rorschach
~~~~~
"We do not do this thing because it is permitted. We do it because we have to. We do it because we are compelled." - Rorschach
~~~~~
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"We do not do this thing because it is permitted. We do it because we have to. We do it because we are compelled." - Rorschach
~~~~~
From Stowiki...
How to Change Difficulty Level:
There are two methods to changing your difficulty level for missions:
1.) Go to your "Options", and under the basic tab is a setting to change your default difficulty level.
2.) Go to your mission (hit the L key, and under the "Episodes" tab, click on a mission, and at the bottom of the window is a drop-down to change the difficulty level.
If you don't have all your bridge officers (Boffs) promoted enough to accesses all the powers their stations have, you need to do that. You probably don't have enough points to go and promote everyone to max level, so just promote them to where they need to be. If you have a Lieutenant seat, promote to that. A Commander station, etc. Then go buy the powers you want. No need to buy all the powers now. Just get the 1 or 2 you want to use.
Oh, and to save yourself some future money/XP points (you'll eventually want to get rid of your Uncommon Boffs so might as well do it before you spend points) go buy some Very Rare Boffs from the Exchange. They have 2 Superior traits. Most are ground traits, but you can get Efficiency on some Saurians. They used to be super expensive, but there are so many better Boffs now (mainly Vanguard Jem'hadar or Romulan SROs) that Saurians might be decently priced now. But honestly, you ain't going for super-dps build so any Boff you like will work. Some even come with some Mk.3 skills learned already. Ferengi Boffs will sometimes come with 3 of em. Not sure why, though.
The whole "department head" thing is just flavor/fluff. It makes no difference in the game who's doing what.
I'm on every day for a bit. Toss me a friend request @dracounguis and I'll be happy to answer any questions you have on the basics. Assuming you are on PC... cause that's where I am.
1. Make sure all your weapons are on autofire. Later you can set the trops on manual when you are familiar with the bridge officer abilities.. You should be using bridge officer abilities mention above and your tactical space abilities.
2. At level 25 you should be flying a Tier 3 ship. Cruiser has the best survivability followed by science ship then a escort.
3. Make sure all the gear are at the highest level (At lvl 25 they should be mark IV). Fill them up from the mission rewards. If there is a set later on use it.
4. Not sure how many skill points you have try to put them in Hull capacity, hull restoration, shield restoration, shield capacity and energy weapons training. Make sure you have one point each.
5. The anomalies are somewhere on the map. The scan shows the direction of the anomalies.
6. Use the arrow keys for the ware length puzzle. Right and left key control the width and the up and down key control the height. Just tap the keys fast until they match.
7. Try to slow down your leveling up the more you level the harder the enemy gets. They get harder the higher level you are. Get better gear/weapons. The goal is to kill them before you take too much damage.
8. If you are dying a lot set your ship power level to shield max. Whenever the shield or hull weakens double click on the ship icon. Engineering Team, Hazard Emitters, Polarize Hull are healing abilities.
Believe me, that's the first thing that I checked. I am on the easiest setting.
How do I check on this? Please remember that I am completely lost on this game right now looking for enlightenment.
Like I mentioned in the original post, I purchased a new Bridge Officer and I placed him on Active Duty but I can't assign him to a Station. I must be missing something.
Understood . . . but if you think about it, shouldn't it matter who is doing what?
Will do.
How do I set my weapons to Autofire?
I'm on the Stargazer at the moment.
Actually, pretty much everything on my ship is Mk V or Mk VI.
I'll check that out once the Server Maintenance is finished.
Cool. Thanks for the info. Now I'll know if I missed something.
Will do.
So if I level during Space combat, the enemies get stronger? All of the other MMORPGS that I've played, leveling made you stronger than the enemies. Oh well, live and learn, I guess.
Will do.
"We do not do this thing because it is permitted. We do it because we have to. We do it because we are compelled." - Rorschach
~~~~~
For squishyness the capts rank Eng, Sci, Tac; and ships go cruiser, sci, escort - stick a Tac captain in an escort, and you have the potential for quick kills and quick deaths. Maybe stick your capt in a cruiser for their next ship and fight with beams/torp like on the shows.
There is about to the winter event Q's Winter Wonderland, you can enter this with a level 5 character and earn various drops from mini games that if sold on the exchange will be quite a lot of ec to a first character player. Also you can get tokens to unlock a free T6 ship for the whole account and have some fun with other players battling borg snowmen. Should be a nice change from frustrating solo play.
Yes enemy get stronger if you level up. When a lvl 65 does a earlier mission the enemy adjust to your level. The problem is that a new player does not have the extra gear, traits and skill that a lvl 65 has gotten. So it becomes extremely difficult for the new player. On some maps the player level is reduced but on missions the enemy adjust to your level. You would also see that the gear rewarded from mission also increase in level. A lvl 65 playing 'Strandard In Space' would get Mark XI gear. So if you miss a gear and replay the mission it actually get harder if you have not improved your character.
Therefore you just have to improve your character. Get gear and skills.
>>How do I check on this? Please remember that I am completely lost on this game right now looking for enlightenment.
Look at image below. Near top of this Boff's page it says Ensign. That's the rank of Boff powers that Boff can use. AKA the first power only. At bottom it says career options. Under that is Promote. You can promote 3 times... first to LT. then LtCom, then Commander. Each promotion allows access/training of the next level of powers.
>>Like I mentioned in the original post, I purchased a new Bridge Officer and I placed him on Active Duty but I can't assign him to a Station. I must be missing something.
If you have the Stargazer (Heavy Cruiser Refit) you have Boff stations of...
TAC [ ][ ]
ENG [ ][ ][ ][ ]
ENG [ ]
SCI [ ][ ]
UNI [ ]
So you can only use 5 boffs on this ship. A 6th or more would be of no real use other than if they have a Mk.3 or special power your other boffs don't have. A lot of players will have a Bridge Crew of Boffs that all have some sort of Space Trait and then an Away Team of Boffs that have all Ground Traits.
>>Like I mentioned in the original post, I purchased a new Bridge Officer and I placed him on Active Duty but I can't assign him to a Station. I must be missing something.
Either you bought a boff that you can't use like a KDF version or if you wanted to fill a SCI seat and bought an ENG or TAC.
or...
Since you have the Stargazer (Heavy Cruiser Refit) then you only can use 5 boffs at a time. A 6th or more do you no good, except for swapping out to use other powers that other boffs don't have.
Most players will have more boffs than the ship can use, but that's because they have a Bridge Crew that all have some Space Traits & then an Away Team that is all Ground Traits.
Yeah, even if you can't use the ship now, do the race and unlock it (if possible at lvl 25?) Race just takes some maneuvering skill, there is no combat so gear doesn't matter. You can fail it and go back to the NPC to restart the mission as many times as needed. Even if you can't run the race due to level, pop the ship Event into an active Event Rep slot so its there for next year. Next year's tokens work for previous year ships for people who may not have finished them up. It'd just mean you'd have to use 2 toons to run the race to get 2 ships next year.
And for missions that drop good gear, you'd want to come back to them at level 40? 50? (whichever that maxes out that gear to max available Mark level). That's more economical than trying to Upgrade a lower Mark item. There were some toons of mine I'd go run the Breen mission arc every time I ranked up, just to get a higher Mark level of that gear.
"We do not do this thing because it is permitted. We do it because we have to. We do it because we are compelled." - Rorschach
~~~~~
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Screen_shot
there is a command to take pics with UI active.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Does your comp function properly (and also do you have a good connection most of the time)?
-I don't ask if you have a "good" comp. (as even non new (not too old) and non expensive comp should be able to be responsive enough for that game if meeting game requirements though better also supporting DX11 by hardware for this game too)
-I ask if it functioning properly.
Reason: when I had a problem with those and at some points I thought it's my personal difficulties (which I do have) however it turned out to be my computer was dying
*If the comp is not the issue then I think either practicing a while (trying this puzzle some times - when it appears) will make you master this puzzle rapidly, probably,
(or you possibly have some connectivity/high latency issue, possibly temporary, somewhere along the way between your comp and cryptic's servers. I don't know.)
You don't really have to bother with the Bridge Officers seperately. You can drag any skill from them, from yourself, from your ship and it's consoles to the Hotkey-Bars. You can even edit the keys in the Keybinds settings. If you can just access every skill with pressing a hotkey, that is much easer than really clicking all the ton of skills spread everywhere. If you take some time to make a setup for yourself that makes sense and you got used to it, you do space combat in the same "natural" way like you drive a car and can focus on the "traffic".
I read the article. Thanks! That helped a bunch!
I figured out why my ship keeps blowing up (other than I don't know what I'm doing). My ship's Deflector, Shield, Impulse Engine and Warp Core are just the Common Gear that comes with the ship. So I stopped doing DOff missions, and have spent the past couple of days upgrading the Gear on the ship. I was going to post a pic, but evidently I have to upload it to PhotoBucket or someplace to get a URL first. I just can't upload it directly from my PC. Oh well, we'll just do this the hard way:
All gear is Purple (Rare or Very Rare . . . I forget)
Fore Weapons
Deflector
Positron Deflector Array Mk VI [EPG] [ShCap] [ShdHeal]
Impulse
Combat Impulse Engine Mk VI [Aux] [Damp] [Turn]
Warp
Deuterium-Stabilized Warp Core Mk VI [EPS] [S --> L] [SCap]
Shield
Covariant Shield Array Mk VI [Dis] [Pha] x2
Aft Weapons
Devices
None (I have no idea what to put in here and why. Any suggestions and reasons?)
Consoles
Engineering: Neutronium Alloy Mk VI (There are 3 of these)
Science: Field Generator Mk VI
Tactical: Phaser Relay Mk VI
Now this ship isn't battle-tested yet. I ain't leaving ESD until I get my BOffs straightened out with all of their Skills as high as I can afford.
"We do not do this thing because it is permitted. We do it because we have to. We do it because we are compelled." - Rorschach
~~~~~
Mission gear is good enough to get to the endgame. Some mission gear set are so good that the top DPS players use it after upgrading. Get the Hargh'peng Torpedo Launcher one of the good lower level torp. Try to save resources that you will need later for end game.
Engineering resistance armors don't stack 100% when you have multiples (unlike tactical weapon damage ones) so you really only need 1. You can get one that handles 3 types of damage, and one that does the other 3, if you like to have most coverage.
You can see the diminishing returns in space outside ESD. Pop one on, look at your resists stats and then pop on another. You don't get the full x% you think you do.
Two engineering consoles from missions I'd recommend are:
Console - Engineering - Trellium-D Plating
Console - Engineering - Polaric Modulator
Both give nice stats and add 7.5% of power from one system as bonus to another system (Aux to Shields & Weps to Engine, respectively.)
Anything I posted would just be parroting what they have already written about. Except for a few things.
Which I consider very important. Which is why I'm posting these as advice for you.
- Have FUN while playing STO. Because STO is a game and fun is the biggest part of why we play games.
- Decide for yourself what makes this game fun for you to play. Some people enjoy squeezing that last 0.001% of performance out of a build. Others like to role play. And so on. There are as many ways to have fun playing STO as there are players.
- If you really enjoyed playing STO this time and you are looking forward to your next opportunity to play STO, you are playing STO correctly and winning the game.
- While STO is fun to play solo, it is even more fun when you get to play it with other people. There is a Fleet out there who were thinking of you when they put together their membership criteria. If you haven't already found them, make tracking them down a priority.
- Lastly, never allow a game based on a popular TV series and some decent films to become a lifestyle choice rather than a game.
If you'd like to, and you think I can show a few things about STO, please look me up ingame.
Handle is@thunderfoot1007. I''ve been here since 2012 and I'll be glad to tell you what I know about STO. For you it will be a very pleasant minute or two, lol.
If you're in Quarks, I'm the really old, very short tlh'Ingan drinking bloodwine and looking for someone to relive old glories with.
So I have my all Purple Bridge Officers now. Some of them have a few of the Skills suggested. If I Train them in a previously-suggested Skill that they don't have, how do I change the Skill to the one that they just learned? Do I need to go Sector Space to make the change? I tried changing it in the ESD, and I tried it on my ship outside the ESD but no luck.
The Neutronium Alloy Mk VI (times 3) gives a 27.0% buff across the board. Ablative Hull Armor Mk VI only gives 18.8% buff to Phaser, Disrupter, Plasma, and Tetryon.
The Monotanium Alloy Mk VI gives a +25% buff to Physical and Kinetic.
I couldn't find any data on the Parametalic Hull Plating MK VI (which covers the other types of damage).
I think that I might just be better off the way things are now unless I'm missing something important.
"We do not do this thing because it is permitted. We do it because we have to. We do it because we are compelled." - Rorschach
~~~~~