Attn Pugs, here's a free Voicechat for you to use. 2.0

mavairo

http://www.raidcall.com/

And it takes up a great deal less bandwidth than skype. Also, unlike LOLSTO's ingame voice chat this actually works. And works beautifully.
There's no committment to buy what so ever. Get some of your buddys on your friends list to hop on RC with you whenever you guys get a wild hair and decide to pvp. Congrats, you now have access to the single biggest tool that those ebil premades have, without spending $ each month. Solid Reliable and Rapid communication.

Installation is incredibly easy, as is setting up your servers. Joining servers is also incredibly easy. (for those of you that don't like vent cause you can't get it to work... this is so painfully easy it is almost simply point and click to join a server)

I use RC all the time, when playing starcraft2 in the teams ques (as I am strictly a pug there), Sins of a solar empire, sometimes in STO when our vent crashes and bombs out (as vent is prone to do. Never had RC do it), RIFT, wow etc.

If you have friends, (you do have friends right?) shoot them whatever your server info is, or join your buddy's server at the start of a match. If you or your friends are too lazy to setup a new server (even though it only takes like a minute tops) my RC servers are open to everyone. Alliance of Gamers and CAC Backup. Or shoot it out to team chat. Post something in Zone like "getting everyone situated on RC. 1 sec plz" so the other team doesn't just bum rush you. Most premades will not move towards the spawn if you ask them to give you a sec. If it's a pug you are against (which are the ones most likely not to listen to your request.. also funnily enough most pveers are Pugs) once everyone is situated, you'll probably start murdering them even if they are humping your spawn.

Now, once everyone is on RC, what do you do? Start by calling targets. Look for whoever you think is weakest on the enemy team, call out the target (by default IIRC Raidcall uses an open mic system which you can change to a push to talk easily). Everyone that hears it? bring your guns to bear on it. Step two, once a large amount of heals and resistances come into the target (but before they can fully repair said target ideally) call out for a sub nucleaonic beam if there's a sci on your side. Watch the hilarity ensue. If there is no Sci captains on your team, you'll have to attempt to jump targets and stay ahead of the enemy cross heals. Eventually if you are cycling targets enough, you'll find the gap between healing cool downs (assuming your enemy is smart enough to actually heal team mates) and get kills. Step three, call out for heals, and periodically give people an idea on how much longer it will be before either your best damage skills, or heals will be available.

Now Why use Raidcall vs the default in game chat? The ingame voice chat is a horrible buggy mess. It's Push to talk key is unchangable, and is N. N for god sake! It can crash your game, screws up your chat channel, creates lag. Inshort, if you're seriously interested in a free voice chat for sto. (and RC stands pretty well compared to the Pay For Service VCs) You simply put have 0 reason to not at least try RC.

mavairo

Setting up your Push To Talk key.

Click on the little wrench icon towards the upper right corner. This will bring up a new menu, go to Voice Settings, click Push To Talk. Click on the box on the right side, and press whatever key or mouse button you wish to be your push to talk.

This keeps you from having a constantly open mic, why is this good? one it prevents feedback for those of us that do not have a head set, but a boom mic and speakers. It also prevents rather potentially embarrassing moments from slipping through to your buddies. (not that I'm speaking from experience or anything on that last part...)

Hit Apply then OK to close the window. If you just hit apply this leaves the menu open for tweaking other items. Going to Audio settings will allow you to adjust your inbound volume levels, and out bound (inbound is what you hear, outbound is the mic) levels. For my setup I use a little less than half on each, but each mic, headset, or speakers, will be different.

If you ever want to change your settings on the fly without clicking the wrench icon you can do so simply by adjusting the sliders on the right side of the screen the speaker icon naturally is the inbound, the lil mic is the out bound. You will also no doubt notice there's a chat window here as well, so you can link things amongst yourselves, without having to resort to ye old CTRL C and then CTRL V like you would in game. Or chat, if there's more relevant to the match conversation going on in the voice channel.

The program also has it's own PM system so you can check messages given to you by your buddies if they aren't on when you are, etc.

The contacts Tab, is where you add people to your RC friends list. It's also where you can ignore problematic players if you are in other channels you don't own.

The Groups Tab, is where you can search for new groups, recommended groups, as well as get access to an Events and contests calendar.

You can also Favorite channels you frequent often to keep them on an easy to find list. Simply click the little star on the upper left side.

If you are playing a game that supports the in game channel feature, you do not have to do anything fancy, RC automatically makes itself discreetly present. You can also move it's location around on the screen, or simply close out the little window entirely.

The other settings and options are pretty straight forward as well.

mavairo

There's no server hosting on your part, they carry the servers (like Vent and Team Speak)

The requirements for the program are probably lower than that of whatever browser you are presently using, I'll fire it up in a sec and tell you how much it raises my memory usage.

You create the spot in their servers. I leave my firewall on specific Permission based. (It is annoying to have to have it ask permission every single time.. I'll fix that to auto do it later) so even a fairly aggressive firewall and nat settings, you will still be able to make your own channels, and join others.

It's taking up a very small footprint right now. I'd say it's taking up less than 50 megs of ram. my processor isn't shifting any bit right now.

If you can play sto, you can easily run RC

The whole thing other than your client is cloud based, hope that helps

houseofcritz

Me and my fleet mates having been using this for a while now. Its pretty damn good for being free, i think its better then vent!:D