TRIBBLE F2P Maintenance and Release Notes - September 29, 2011

System

We will be bringing the Tribble server down for maintenance to apply a new update.
ST.16.20110926a.8

Features:
Silver Account Details

• At this phase of the Beta everyone will be starting as a fresh account. No character transfers will be allowed in the first few weeks, there will be no Beta Currency C-Store Stipend this week.
• Silver account details
• Character slots – silver accounts will receive the following character slots
  • 1 slot that is limited to Starfleet characters
  • 1 slot that is limited to Klingon characters (note that in this build the Klingon faction is not available at this phase of the beta)
  • 1 slot that is for Foundry content creation
  • Additional character slots may be purchased from the c-store
• Bridge officer slots
  • 4 free bridge officer slots
  • Additional slots may be purchased from the c-store
  • No slots awarded when rank is gained
• Energy Credit limit
  • Silver characters are limited to 100 Million energy credits. As long as a character is at this limit, they may not gain additional energy credits.
  • The limit may be increased to 1 Billion energy credits (same as gold players) via a c-store purchase
• Inventory Slots
  • 42 starting inventory slots
  • Up to 18 additional inventory slots may be purchased from the C-store
  • No slots awarded when rank is gained
• Bank slots
  • 48 starting bank slots
  • Up to 36 additional bank slots may be purchased from the C-store
  • No slots awarded when rank is gained
• Captain retrain tokens
  • Retrain tokens may be purchased from the C-store
  • No retrain tokens are awarded when rank is gained
• Foundry creation access – players may access the Foundry for content creation if they have purchased foundry project slots
  • Foundry project slots may be purchased with Dilithium – Note: not available in the first beta build
  • Silver players do not receive any free Foundry project slots
• Silver players will hear advertisements when using Vivox voice chat
• Silver players will have the following restrictions until they have played for 20 hours, previously had a subscription, purchase c-points, or ever purchased anything in the c-store:
  • Not allowed to create a fleet
  • Chat restrictions:
    • Rate limited
    • Broadcast chat restricted
    • Private messages to friends only
  • Mail restrictions:
    • Rate limited
    • Can only send mail to friends

Gold account Details:

• Character slots – silver accounts will receive the following character slots
  • 1 Unrestricted character slot
  • 1 slot that is limited to Starfleet characters
  • 1 slot that is limited to Klingon characters (note that in this build the Klingon faction is not available)
  • 1 slot that is for Foundry content creation
  • Additional character slots may be purchased from the c-store
• Bridge officer slots
  • 4 starting bridge officer slots
  • Additional bridge officer slots awarded at some ranks
  • Additional slots may be purchased from the c-store
• Energy Credit limit
  • Gold characters are limited to 1 Billion energy credits. As long as a character is at this limit, they may not gain additional energy credits.
• Inventory slots
  • 42 starting inventory slots
  • Additional inventory slots awarded at some ranks
  • Up to 18 additional inventory slots may be purchased from the C-store
• Bank slots
  • 48 starting bank slots
  • Additional bank slots awarded at some ranks
  • Up to 36 additional bank slots may be purchased from the C-store
• Captain retrain tokens
  • A retrain token is awarded at each rank
  • Additional retrain tokens may be purchased from the c-store
• Foundry access
  • Gold players start with 8 project slots for the foundry.
  • Additional Foundry project slots may be purchased for Dilithium.
• No advertisements in Vivox voice chat
• No chat or email restrictions
• Allowed to create fleets

Duty Officer System

• The Duty Officer and Assignment system has been added to the game! This system is an optional mini-game themed around the logistics of managing the full crew complement of your ship that opens up when you reach the rank of Lieutenant Commander.

• Upon first initiating the system, characters will be granted a number of starting duty officers to staff their ship. Additional duty officers of various qualities, rarities, specializations and species may be gained by means of certain assignments as well as via purchase of random packs of duty officers on the C-Store.
• The HUD has been updated to add a button allowing access to the duty officer system from any sector map, the interior of your ship or an ally’s, and most social maps.
• Every character has two active rosters, one for space and one for ground. Duty officers may be slotted into both of these to grant you various conditional and passive effects.
• Duty officers may also be sent on assignments granting a wide array of rewards including skill points, bridge officer points, energy credits, Dilithium, commodities, additional duty officers, bridge officers, items, and commendation experience.
• Assignments require a certain amount of time to elapse ranging from five minutes to seven days. Time continues to count down even when a player is not logged into the game.
• Commendation experience allows a character to advance independently in twelve different categories; one of these, Diplomacy, co-opts the existing Diplomacy system by allowing characters to gain DXP via the assignment system in addition to existing methods. Another, Marauding, is only available to Klingons. Each commendation category has four tiers of advancement. Advancing in a commendation category opens up new assignments and offers special rewards.

Stance Animation Updates:

• The following stance animations have been updated
  • Standard
  • Brawler
  • Stern
  • Creature
  • Gruff
  • Relaxed
  • Swagger
  • Thoughtful
  • Feminine
  • Seductive
• Stance animations have received new foot placements to make them blend better with existing emotes.
• Small idle poses and animations have also been added per stance to give more variety to players that are standing around.
• Females stances have also been fixed up to reduce hand/arm issues that occur w/ “crossed-arms” poses.
• Suggestion for you Klingon characters – Try out Brawler, Stern, and Gruff stances!

Tutorial Update

• Shooter Mode is now the default configuration for new characters, and the tutorial has been updated to teach people how to use it. Along with that, you can skip the tutorial as long as you’ve completed it at least once before.
  • If you’ve played the tutorial all the way through before, when starting a new character you’ll be asked if you want to skip it or not. THIS IS THE ONLY PLACE THE SKIP OPTION IS OFFERED. Should you agree to play the tutorial, you will need to play it all the way through to the end.

Currency Update

• The currency system has changed! There are now only three forms of major currency in the game:
  • Energy Credits – Use this to purchase consumables and standard (common) gear.
  • Gold-Pressed Latinum – Earn this from playing Dabo, and use it to purchase novelty items.
  • Dilithium – Earn this by completing daily missions, exploration, PVP, and special events. Purchase rare or very rare gear and new ships.
• All of the old medals, marks, badges, merits, and emblems will be going away. In the final release, they will be converted over to dilithium. Thus, your old currency will be useful at any level to purchase appropriate gear or ships.
• Coming soon: You will receive dilithium ore for your daily missions, and you will need to refine it into dilithium crystals to make purchases. This is an in-progress conversion.

Special Task Force Updates

• At Level 45 you can access Normal Versions of all existing Borg STFs.
  • Invasion
    • This is the only STF available for this initial launch. (the others will be released as the Beta continues)
  • The Cure
  • Khitomer Accords
• Each STF has been broken into two 30 minute segments, one space segment and one ground segment per STF.
• At 51 you can access Elite Versions of the existing STFs.
  • These versions are not available in this build
• Playing the STFs now requires the use of the public queues or private queues to play.
  • The public queue requires 5 players
  • The private queue requires 1 player
  • This also means you can join an STF from any map that allows queue access.
• STF Loot has been updated
  • There are now many new Space and ground weapons designed to help combat the Borg threat.
  • Special Vendors have been added to Earth Space Dock and Qo’Nos for collecting the new STF loot.

Archived Post

Event Calendar

• There are several new events that will be rolled out via the events calendar in your mission journal throughout the beta. They will be available at specific times throughout the day and typically offer a superior way of earning something specific, such as gear, dilithium, XP, or Energy Credits.
• The only event that will be available in this initial launch will be the “Mirror Universe” event.
  • This is a 5 man event that unlocks for players once they reach level 11.

Mission Journal

• The Mission Journal has been given an overhaul! You can still access it via the “J” key or faction logo on the lower left corner of your minimap.
  • Across the very top, you’ll see an alert when you have actions that can be taken with a mission (for example, a mission is complete and ready to turn in)
  • Below that, from left to right, you’ll find: EPISODES; PvE; PvP
  • Episodes
    • The Hail button will allow you to remotely contact the person offering the mission.
    • The More button will show you the list of upcoming episodes. You can also replay missions through this list of episodes.
      • You can look at each faction hub separately to see all of the missions that are coming!
  • PvE
    • Clicking the Volunteer button will open the PvE Queue. Here you can find Fleet Actions and select STFs.
  • PvP
    • Clicking the Attack button will open the PvP Queue. Here you can queue up to go head to head with other players.
  • Along the bottom, you’ll see a filmstrip of upcoming events for the day. Clicking an event will tell you more about it, including how to participate in it.
    • You can also click the Calendar button to see what’s on tap!

Episode Flow

• One major change for existing players is episode availability. Like a TV series, all episodes have been serialized, requiring you to play them in order.
  • Each episode requires a specific player level and that the previous episode on the list has been completed. Assuming you’ve played the previous episode, the next episode will be available as long as you meet the minimum level requirement.
  • Each episode has been changed to scale to your level, so you can’t out-level it.
    • You will be rewarded based on whatever level you are when you complete the mission.
    • Critters will also scale to player-level, rather than be locked at an episode level.
    • This means you can do events, PvE, PvP and other repeatable content as much as you like and then do episodes at your leisure without worrying whether or not they’re still level appropriate.
  • Skill Points and Bridge Officer Skill Point rewards from episodes have been increased for the first half of the game.
    • This means you’ll rank up faster and be able to get into your first new ship much sooner than was previously possible.
    • This boost does slow down as you raise in rank.

Lore Missions

• The Path to 2409 has been broken down into a series of 29 volumes, each with an average of 5 chapters.
  • Once per day, on Starfleet Academy and Qo’noS, players can get a mission to claim a datachip from that area’s library computer. Once collected, this mystery datachip will randomly become a named datachip that contains the information for one of these 140+ chapters
    • Using this named datachip will consume the datachip item and unlock an accolade for that specific volume/chapter. You can then read that chapter at any time by going to the Accolades tab in your Journal
    • This named datachip can also be traded or placed on the exchange
    • Collect them all to complete the entire Path to 2409!
• Also on Starfleet Academy and Qo’noS, once per day players can get a mission to test their knowledge of the Path to 2409.
  • Look on your map to find the test location, marked by a waypoint
  • This test of knowledge will tell you the specific volume and chapter that contains the answer.
    • You can always just guess at the correct answer, or if you’ve found that datachip before, you can read the chapter in the Accolades tab of your Journal.

General

• Updated Klingon ship replicator to produce commodities.
• New players now start in shooter mode.
• Ds9 got an amazing art update to make it look even more awesome.

Systems

• Updated carrier AI commands to only affect owner's specific pets (instead of all pets on team).
• New fighter AI commands. Allows carrier captains to issue Attack, Recall, Escort, and Intercept orders (if they have the appropriate powers).
  • This feature is missing a UI so players can’t use it yet. Stay Tuned!
• Updated name and icon for schematic for immunosupport nanites.
• Reduced chance of Borg ships clearing effects of boarding party subsystem targeting.
• Reduced Nausicaan Guramba Ship Lance charge time from 3s to 1s.
• Gorn Varnus Fleet Suport Updates
  • Improved ship healing drone healing powers.
  • Added mask energy signature PBAoE component to drone platform.
• Player Spawned Fighter Updates
  • Improved player fighter defense values.
  • Removed fighter docking after combat.
  • Improved carrier Bird-of-Prey damage.
  • Reduced carrier waves from 3 to 2.
  • Increased Kar'fi S'kul fighter kamikaze damage.
  • Carriers can summon hanger pets without an enemy targeted.
• Aim and Crouch are now 2 separate modes. They can be combined or used separately. Default keybinds are C for crouch and X for Aim.

Archived Post

Character

• Small fix to get crossed arms working for long armed characters
• Updated Andorian species descriptions for two genders instead of four.
• Updated the Sit_Chair emote
• Chest Badge Activate now works with all weapon powers - Used in "Security Escort" ability
• Fixed Assault melee power - Does not skip animations anymore

Effects

• Fixed bug that was causing a blue glow on Manus of Borg to be a square on low end machines.
• Fixed issue with impulse glows when at full impulse.
• Changed visual for Charged particle burst to be a sphere instead of a flat disk.

Audio

• Other players shouldn't hear your shield balance/redistribute or photonic medical officer audio now.
• New Guardian of Forever voice.
• Tetryon cannon sounds should no longer loop.

UI

• Added C-Store, Duty Officer, PvE Queue, PvP Queue, Mail and Social buttons to the Minimap HUD. Duty Officer icon blinks when assignments are complete. Mail icon blinks when you have new mail.
• Add Caitian to the Guild Species list.
• The respec window now closes if the player gets out of range of the contact.
• Hide normal interaction text for the red alert button.
• The skill respec window automatically closes when the character status window is opened.
• Both ground and space now show 25 characters for the guild name.
• Add C-Store ship purchasing support to the Ship Store.
• You can now double click to select and advance the character class in character creation.
• It’s now possible to close the private PvE queue configuration window, and a small overview window will show instead.
• New class icons for both federation and klingons.
• Slightly adjusted the character spacing of the fonts to improve legibility.
• Fix rank/grade display for requirements for next rank.
• Fixed several bugs related to dropdown lists.
• Add low level notifications to the queue displays
• Security Bridge Officers are always selectable as Standard Away Team members.
• Simplified the power description, show enhanced powers in the description
• Made item assignment item cost consistent with the crafting display of cost.
• Fixed a layout bug in the interaction buttons where the text would overlap with the high priority indicator icon
• Interaction Buttons: made it so that the button text behaves as the rest of the UI (mouseover, pressed, disabled).
• Updated the Klingon tactical console icon.
• Red Alert Indicator Text appearance update

Missions

• Several typos have been resolved in the Doomsday Device Episode.
• Feds and Klingons can now go into each others star clusters for duty officers - they cannot do exploration missions that belong to the other faction
• Updated Drozana depths, past, and Gateway system in the past, so that player cannot use reinforcement powers.
• Fix for incorrect sector location given in Cage of Fire mission text.
• Players now rank up when earning skillpoints instead of when spending them.
• Removed Drake from Under Cover of Night on the ground map.
• Forging Bonds is available via the journal again.
• Destroying the asteroid before responding to the disabled IKS Kang no longer causes the mission to enter an unwinnable state on “Saturday’s Child”
• Khitomer Ground: Using the console in auxiliary control beams the borg out.
• Typo fix in Leading the Way.
• War Games: Fixed issue with Ensign Longworth becoming non-responsive after coming out of his room
• Certain enemies are no longer unkillable in Night of the Comet
• Resolved typo in KDF mission Destiny
• Resolved typo in Cernan patrol.
• Resolved typos in the banter of the patients when first arriving on the Khitomer.
• Hide and Seek: Placing mines as an engineer with the "Transmit Data" dialog up will not block the player from completing the mission.

Foundry

• Klingon Foundry contacts Dara, Mina, and Nava are working again.
• Fix for selecting an object to use as a Component Complete trigger not making the object interactible.

Known issues:

• Purchase of Foundry project slots is not yet available.
• The Klingon faction is temporarily disabled.
• The tooltip on the character creation button may display an incorrect number of available character slots.
• There is currently no way to obtain Cryptic Points, so nothing may be purchased from the C-store.
• The help tips in the tutorial may not be displayed in some cases.
• Silver players will see notifications that they are receiving additional bank and inventory slots when they gain a rank, even though they are not receiving the slots.
• The Captain retrain window still indicates that you can pay to respec your skills with Merit. This is not the case, and it will be removed from the UI in a future build.
• The character selection/creation screen for Foundry creation will allow you to start creating a character even if you do not have any foundry project slots, and then the character creation will fail. In a future build this will be changed so that you will not be able to begin character creation until you have Foundry project slots.

Archived Post

how do we copy our charaters onto the tribble f2p server?

Archived Post

they have disabled the copy to tribble feature at this time, check out the F2P developer blog

Archived Post

Specter2 wrote:

how do we copy our charaters onto the tribble f2p server?

Right now, not at all. First Sentence after Silver account details.

Archived Post

Cant char transfer yet... thats the first thing in the post btw... Can we get a lvling thing so we can test the STF?

Archived Post

After playing through the revamped Tutorial, I must say that little has been improved (mostly aesthetics have changed, but not all for the better).

If you are interested, how I think the tutorial should could be changed/improved, I'd like to refer to to an antique post of mine: http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=174588

Regards,
Rachel

Archived Post

Salami_Inferno wrote:

Silver Account Details

* At this phase of the Beta everyone will be starting as a fresh account. No character transfers will be allowed in the first few weeks, there will be no Beta Currency C-Store Stipend this week.
* Silver account details
* Character slots – silver accounts will receive the following character slots
o 1 slot that is limited to Starfleet characters
o 1 slot that is limited to Klingon characters (note that in this build the Klingon faction is not available at this phase of the beta)
o 1 slot that is for Foundry content creation
o Additional character slots may be purchased from the c-store

I thought only Gold Accounts could create content?

Archived Post

psytce wrote: »

I thought only Gold Accounts could create content?

We are in the process of adding a way for Silver players to pay C-Points or Dilithium to unlock a single foundry editing slot. The details aren't available yet, but know that it is probably coming soon.

Archived Post

Salami_Inferno wrote:

We are in the process of adding a way for Silver players to pay C-Points or Dilithium to unlock a single foundry editing slot. The details aren't available yet, but know that it is probably coming soon.

That's an awesome idea.

Archived Post

Specter2 wrote:

how do we copy our charaters onto the tribble f2p server?

Did you not read what the dev's have put up all over the site? it doesnt just say it on this topic but it says it over at the Path to F2P Dev Blog from at http://www.startrekonline.com/node/2623
READ before posting.

Archived Post

Hold it, Full Stop.

I thought the NEW new Tutorials would be coming here, you know, the one that takes place at Starfleet Academy, with the Borg stuff at Vega Colony becoming a part of the Borg STFs at the end of the game..?

What the heck? IS this all we're getting as far as "new" Tutorials go? Another polishing of the same thing we've had since launch?

Cryptic, I am Dissapoint.

Archived Post

Katic wrote: »

Hold it, Full Stop.

I thought the NEW new Tutorials would be coming here, you know, the one that takes place at Starfleet Academy, with the Borg stuff at Vega Colony becoming a part of the Borg STFs at the end of the game..?

What the heck? IS this all we're getting as far as "new" Tutorials go? Another polishing of the same thing we've had since launch?

Cryptic, I am Dissapoint.

Ditto. and OH so tired of waiting

Archived Post

New character. Right away I notice that I'm in shooter mode. It's nice. However when I go to report in, I find that the F key doesn't bring up the dialogue box- no, instead I have to exit shooter mode to RPG mode in order to get my cursor, then click the interaction button on the right hand side of the screen.

This is, for a number of reasons, ridiculous.


Before transporting over to the Khitomer, I notice a tooltip pops up saying something, and with the 'close me' button being (enter)- however hitting enter boots up the chat. The close button has alternated on these tooltips between (.) and (enter)- but it stays the former even when the tooltip is the latter.

Again, this is something that needs to change.



I see that you've made the shield facing bars change colour depending on how damaged they are- this is a great change and I applaud it.

new red alert symbol looks nice.

Archived Post

Are we to assume, that if a player chooses not to pay post-F2P, he/she will find his/her character(s) losing any and all boffs beyond the silver maximum of four (or however many slots purchased)?

Archived Post

Can't wait for this to hit holodeck...

Archived Post

Salami_Inferno wrote:

We are in the process of adding a way for Silver players to pay C-Points or Dilithium to unlock a single foundry editing slot. The details aren't available yet, but know that it is probably coming soon.

Seriously, I don't know why you guys are bothering with all the monthly subscription portion (beyond LTS players like myself) - as honestly, you DO NOT give enough incentive for ANYONE to "go Gold" (IMO) in STO.

That's interesting in that in one of the lst interviews given by DSthal; he said that you guys didn't want to 'destroy their subscription business - but honestly - I don't see what people get for paying $10.00 a month (with $5 of that effectively reimbursed with 400 CP.)

And before anyone starts in with the "You hate Silvers" line - No, I honestly don't. I want to see STO continue to be profitable; and UNLIKE Champuions Online - where Gold (subscription) get you access to Free Forn character creation; STO (with Foundry access being sold on a oer slot basis) (and again IMO) doesn't really give Gold enough in that honestly - taking that $15.00 a month and using it in the C-Store will effective get them LTS access for one character very quickly under the cuurrent C-Store price structure (which it has been said in many an interview and Dev post that they DON'T see C-Store prices rising and again while that isn't a bad thing per se - again; I don't see anything left that would temp me if I were not an LTS already and were an F2P Silver player coming in - to subcribe for gold access to STO - and from what I saw of CO's overall success in F2P - maintaining Subscribers does help; but they seem to be comp;letely abandoning trying to lure monthly subscriptions in STO - and unless they know something I don't; I just don't see how that helps STOs profitability long term.

Archived Post

One thing I noticed almost immediately while doing Stranded in Space, I was awarded merits for the tactical option:

Your tactical training has paid off.
You received 1 Bridge Officer Skill Points
You received 2 Starfleet Merits

Do we /bug this or post it?

(Edit: Well, I tried to bug it in game, but got an error about the ticket system timing out.)

Archived Post

Protector wrote: »

One thing I noticed almost immediately while doing Stranded in Space, I was awarded merits for the tactical option:


Do we /bug this or post it?

Always take the time to register the bug in-game via ticket.

Archived Post

Very disappointed in the "new" tutorial so far.

It's not set up that differently than the last tutorial with the exception of removing ZQ's voice over work. To be honest, that was really saddening to me...

As far as the Notes go...

Salami_Inferno wrote:

• Energy Credit limit
  Gold characters are limited to 1 Billion energy credits. As long as a character is at this limit, they may not gain additional energy credits.

I realize that a billion is a lot, but why do paid players have a cap at all? Makes no sense.

Salami_Inferno wrote:

• Updated Andorian species descriptions for two genders instead of four.

Um.. The Andorians have four genders...? What is the update, and why are they losing two of their genders.

Salami_Inferno wrote:

• Aim and Crouch are now 2 separate modes. They can be combined or used separately. Default keybinds are C for crouch and X for Aim.

I noticed the separation, but also noticed you cannot do the 'crouch-walk' anymore.. to move now breaks the crouch. Is this WAI, or will it be fixed before going live?

Again, all-in-all... not really impressed.

Jolan'tru

Archived Post

Thoughts:

The tutorial...man, I had hoped you guys would be able to re-make these before F2P. Seriously Cryptic, THE TUTORIALS SUCK. I've literally seen 3 people I've invited to the game quit without getting past the tutorial because they are horrid. It's the first things people see when they get on STO, and it seems like it might be a good idea to make sure they are at least 'OK'. Better would be if they were actually good.

I see no incentive to maintain a Gold account. If you don't have something up your sleeve that we don't know about yet, you need to re-think this. I've been subbed for over a year now, but I have to say if F2P happened right now I'd just drop my sub, spend $20 on some specific upgrades and be done with it.

Other than that, I like it!

Mission progression change is awesome, I'd only suggest maybe slowing down the last half of the game more from where we're at...getting to your first ship sucks and this fixes that, but after that the game goes super fast then you hit cap and get bored. I suppose you have the leveling data though, so just try to make it so the average player hits cap and runs out of episodes at about the same time.

I like the change about leveling too, that always confused people.

I hope the non-F2P features make it to holodeck before F2P....

I also hope your content team is actually going to generate some, you know, content, before F2P.

Archived Post

I thought that F2P was going to have enough BOFF's to man the T5 ships, wouldnt that be 5 BOFFS not 4?

Archived Post

Umm.... why "un-canonize" the Andorian genders?

Archived Post

How does a new player interact with the help floater, or with the GUI? I can't figure out how to get a mouse cursor to work in the first room of the tutorial

The help panel has a scrollbar on it, which I can't scroll because I can't get a cursor

Archived Post

•Players now rank up when earning skillpoints instead of when spending them.

O_o, so I don't have to spec into useless skill to lvl up? Big plus.

Archived Post

Very disappointed that Character does not start at Starfleet Academy ant that the new tutorial does not involve the Academy. It was a waste of time to do the tutorial since it really did not change much.

Archived Post

Sollaf wrote: »

•Players now rank up when earning skillpoints instead of when spending them.

O_o, so I don't have to spec into useless skill to lvl up? Big plus.

Awwww... No more level 51 ensigns.

Archived Post

PodSix wrote:

How does a new player interact with the help floater, or with the GUI? I can't figure out how to get a mouse cursor to work in the first room of the tutorial

The help panel has a scrollbar on it, which I can't scroll because I can't get a cursor

you press F to interact
press . (next to close it has (.) to close down windows
or press b to get rid of the shooter window.

Archived Post

100 million credits seems very high for silver. ive never even had 100 million.

Archived Post

Frankly, 100 million EC for Free players is by no means a Limitation for them... 10 million wouldn't be a limitation either. 2million would be much better.