Priority One Podcast Episode 90 TNG Magic and Tholian Love

broodwyn

"23 July 2012 | Hello Captains! Welcome to Episode 90 of Priority One recorded on Thursday, July 19th, 2012 and hosted on PriorityOnePodcast.com!

In this episode?s Blank of The Week we spotlight a very interesting pro-Lifetime Subscription letter from a listener of our show! We?ll find out what happened This Week in Trek and what Captains can expect on the Star Trek Online Calender.

We have a super-duper shipment of STO News this week! We cover Season 6 Dev Blog 12, Fleet Starbase Special Projects, the Season 6 Trailer, Dev Blog 13 & 14, the new Tholian lockboxes - their ships and other prizes, Dev Blog 15 - The Next Generation 25th Anniversary! - AND we get to finally announce the details about our big Priority One event - ?Hangin? with the Devs? happening this August at the Las Vegas Star Trek Convention! - . And coming soon Star Trek Online Content Dev, Jesse Heinig, will be joining us for a video playthrough supplemental covering the new Season 6 Fleet Progression System, so stay tuned!

And Last but not least, we?ll review incoming transmissions from you -- Our listeners.

Enjoy!"

STREAM AND PLAY

zerobang

RE: "pro-Lifetime Subscription letter from a listener of our show!"
http://www.stowiki.org/User:Eklinaar/Subscriber_benefits_breakdown

His math seems logical, but he forgot to take one important point into consideration.
Which is not surprising because Cryptic isn't advertising this mechanic (in fact i think there have been only like 2 Dev posts on the Forum about it ever.).

A F2P Player will get and keep ALL the things he listed, BOff / Ship / Inventory / Bank Slots retroactively as soon as he subscribes for ONE Month.

That is ALL the Lifetime Subscriber perks for $15, forever.

You even get the 500 Zen Stipend for that one month, which you then can use to unlock the Energy Credit limit a Free 2 Play account has to suffer.

$15 is the same as 1 LTA per Character.

You only have to repeat that every time for a new character.



I am not sure about the Respec Tokens, but considering that it is very easy to get an ALT up to lvl 50 in 1 month, (or in one Weekend and a 6 pack of Red Bull), that doesn't really matter.

Ignoring the 500 Zen Stipend and the Veteran Rewards for a moment, the brake even point would be 20 Characters instead of 5 (like his calculation suggests).




I'm playing this game since launch and i just started my 11th Character.

The downside of having so many Characters are all the additional Per Character services that you still want to have beyond the free LTA *perks*...
like all the additional Inventory / Bank / BOff / DOff / Ship-Slots,
and from now on even Per Character Fleet Ships.
per character Lobi Store Costume Unlocks... :eek:

The 500 Zen stipend is not helping (me) in this case either, that's like 500 Zen per year for each Character.

bitemepwe

Enjoyed the show as always.

Now onto more important matters.
Which one of you is unlucky at gambling? I'm getting a poker game up to raise money for a KDF starbase.......

psiameese

*fans self and fawns over Mark*

Welcome back. I still want you to read to me from my old phone book. That voice could almost encourage me to buy Zen. Almost...

azurianstar

What you said last week with Nukara Mining - It really needs to go. Like you said, how can Cryptic expect people to complete this mission if you are constantly under attack? 500 Crystals at 5 at a time, is just pure ludicrous.


With No Win, I've attempted this with the STF Raiders and like said, we couldn't get past Level 5. The reason is those Bio Neural Warheads that just eat through shields like a hot knife through butter. Though we heard of people getting to Level 8, though nobody posted pictures to confirm it.

Level 10 should be as challenging as it can be, but when people constantly hit that wall at Level 4-5, they won't want to do it anymore. And the Marks you get for it is trival compared the Marks you can earn at Nukara during the Event.

So Cryptic really needs to go back to the drawing board.

direphoenix

azurianstar wrote: »

What you said last week with Nukara Mining - It really needs to go. Like you said, how can Cryptic expect people to complete this mission if you are constantly under attack? 500 Crystals at 5 at a time, is just pure riduclous.

Unlike the other interactibles, you can only see the minable crystal formations if you're out of combat. So the first trick is to stay out of combat. There are a couple ways to do this:

If you're in a group, take turns mining, stay with your group and keep all the tholians in the area busy so they don't tag the miner.

If you're a fabrication engineer, you can get away with soloing the mining but it's a bit trickier. First, set up some turrets to autoattack any Tholians that get in the area (preferably, someplace away from where you plan on mining). Even Shield and Medical Generators will draw their attention provided you don't walk up in front of them. Second, deploy a cover shield at an angle to block any Tholian weapons fire should they wipe out your turrets and notice that there's someone mining nearby. I'm not completely sure I'd recommend drones because although they may do a good job of killing targets, when they're done they come back to you... which draws more attention in your direction.

And if those methods don't work, there are areas you can find where you can mine and the Tholians can't get to you. Of course, once in those areas, you may or may not be able to get out of them. Don't worry! You have a trusty transporter to teleport you out of tight situations like these! Beam up to your ship and back down to the base camp and start again!

azurianstar

direphoenix wrote: »

Unlike the other interactibles, you can only see the minable crystal formations if you're out of combat. So the first trick is to stay out of combat. There are a couple ways to do this:

If you're in a group, take turns mining, stay with your group and keep all the tholians in the area busy so they don't tag the miner.

If you're a fabrication engineer, you can get away with soloing the mining but it's a bit trickier. First, set up some turrets to autoattack any Tholians that get in the area (preferably, someplace away from where you plan on mining). Even Shield and Medical Generators will draw their attention provided you don't walk up in front of them. Second, deploy a cover shield at an angle to block any Tholian weapons fire should they wipe out your turrets and notice that there's someone mining nearby. I'm not completely sure I'd recommend drones because although they may do a good job of killing targets, when they're done they come back to you... which draws more attention in your direction.

And if those methods don't work, there are areas you can find where you can mine and the Tholians can't get to you. Of course, once in those areas, you may or may not be able to get out of them. Don't worry! You have a trusty transporter to teleport you out of tight situations like these! Beam up to your ship and back down to the base camp and start again!

Oh I know, but it's not easy. And there are one or two "safe" locations to mine (like one being near the canyon on the south end), but it requires it to be active to do so.

And when you are in a group at Nukara, priority one is getting the Redshirts for marks, not covering teammates who are foolishly wasting time mining.

Tacticals can use cloak to sneak in.

Engineers, big mistake suggesting using Turrets or Generators, they actually cause greater aggro. It's safer to drop a cover shield behind you and if they attack it, it buys you time.


But over all, mining is a major pain at Nukara and really should be removed.

crypticarmsman

azurianstar wrote: »

Oh I know, but it's not easy. And there are one or two "safe" locations to mine (like one being near the canyon on the south end), but it requires it to be active to do so.

And when you are in a group at Nukara, priority one is getting the Redshirts for marks, not covering teammates who are foolishly wasting time mining.

Tacticals can use cloak to sneak in.

Engineers, big mistake suggesting using Turrets or Generators, they actually cause greater aggro. It's safer to drop a cover shield behind you and if they attack it, it buys you time.


But over all, mining is a major pain at Nukara and really should be removed.

Um, no, it shouldn't. If it's not easy enough for you here's a suggestion - Just dion't take the mission.

But just because it's something you don't think is worthwile, it doesn't mean it should just be outright removed.

talien

I had no trouble getting 85 crystals at Nukara by myself as a Sci captain with medic kit in about an hour's time. I just did mining on the side while freeing the trapped redshirts, I killed whatever Tholians were in the area around a crystal then started mining. if I only got a few before a Tholian spawned and attacked me oh well, but I usually managed 5-10 each time.

azurianstar

crypticarmsman wrote: »

Um, no, it shouldn't. If it's not easy enough for you here's a suggestion - Just dion't take the mission.

But just because it's something you don't think is worthwile, it doesn't mean it should just be outright removed.

You know, from now on I won't bother with it. But still the Dev team should review mining in that zone.

zmacg

Hello World!!! I can post on the forums again! I missed you alll...;)

phyrexianhero

I have to strongly disagree with Eklinaar in the No Win Scenario talk (32:30). While having difficulty is one thing, nigh impossibility just frustrates people. Gozer has specifically said he intended for it to be beatable and that's why he added accolades and player titles for beating wave 10. Borticus said that the reason it is at the difficulty level it is now is because they want people to get a certain amount of fleet marks per round -- thus most people are supposed to lose after 4 or 5 waves (getting 10-15 fleet marks). Very simple work-around -- have the waves last longer. The up-to-2-minute death penalty timer should MORE than make up for this. Personally, I'd be fine if they just removed or nerfed the bio neural warheads which act as a one-hit kill. It makes no storyline sense whatsoever that this freighter is just being attacked repeatable from non-mobile platforms that happen to be surrounding it -- there are much better fixes than this to prevent people from making "too much" fleet marks (where something as simple as a longer cooldown after playing it might suffice, say 2h instead of 30m).

Take the elite STF options as examples -- getting all 6 of these unlocks a special costume for the Mk XII MACO/KHG/Omega sets. These may take many tries with pugs but be doable with a pre-made group who is familiar with it. *This* is the case and is a model example of the kind of difficulty it should take.