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is there an "easy" or "dummy" mode?
warpgirl69
Member Posts: 35 Arc User
I'm only level 7 and I'm already exhausted from trying to keep my BOFFs skilled up and equipped.
Maybe I'm spoiled by CoH and other MMOs where all i had to worry about was my own skills and equipment. I never liked games, even console games, where I had to take care of more than just one toon.
Now I have to equip and level a whole freaking crew... PLUS my ship!
I love Star Trek and this is the ONLY Star Trek out there right now, but the freaking number crunching is seriously killing my enjoyment of just playing
Maybe I'm spoiled by CoH and other MMOs where all i had to worry about was my own skills and equipment. I never liked games, even console games, where I had to take care of more than just one toon.
Now I have to equip and level a whole freaking crew... PLUS my ship!
I love Star Trek and this is the ONLY Star Trek out there right now, but the freaking number crunching is seriously killing my enjoyment of just playing
Post edited by warpgirl69 on
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And yes, you probably are spoiled.
2. its not difficult keep yourself geared properly
3. no there is no 'easy mode'
that is the easiest thing, at ur level use whatever u like the name of, trust me its easier there really isnt a lot of number crunching involved if u want some more help pm me ingame @bookreader84
Duty Officers.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
And when you reach VA you only really need to worry about your gear and the gear of your ship. You really don't use Boffs at all at endgame unless you are replaying FEs or storyline missions.
USS WARRIOR NCC 1720 Commanding Officer
Star Trek Gamers
See... this is what I'm talking about, isn't enough I have to worry about giving myself the right skills? I gotta keep track of 4 Boffs and how ever many Doffs?
If you're having difficulty of gearing up your boffs, a simple solution is just to pick one well-rounded gear set, like Energy Dampening Armor, a normal personal shield, and a Split-Beam Rifle, and give it to all your BOFFs. Buy white quality on the Exchange, resell it if you don't like it.
As far as their powers, just pick what powers you want on your ship, then figure out what sort of boffs you need to get that set. This will help. You'll eventually have so much Expertise you'll have a surplus in the millions, so just assume you're going to max everything it out, once you're sure you're keeping a power. In general, use that wiki's charts and these forums a lot. There's a lot of 'so you're a newbie' info around here.
Skill up your Bridge Officer is fairly straight forward. The skills ranks for the most part just reduce the cooldown of BO ability. And you don't have to skills up every single skill a BO has. Ships have Stations which have a maximum ranked ability that a BO at that station can use. For example a Lieutenant Science station can only use Ensign and Lieutenant Science Space ability. There is no need to skill up the Lt Command and Command abilities as you can't use them on that particular ship. And a Bridge Officer which only serves on the ship and never the Away Team. There is no need to rank up any ground skill at all.
Also Expertise points will be in short supply at lower ranks (i.e. you never have enough). But by the time you are Commander, you'll generally have more then enough Expertise to skill up your Bridge Officers.
And as far equipping yourself, you ship and your crew. Well the missions rewards are more than adequate for equipping yourself and your ship. If there is a particular bit of equipment of weapon that you want multiple of, you replay missions (with a 30 minu cool down between replays) and select the reward again (assuming it's not a unique item. And the really cool thing is that the mission rewards will scale to your current rank.
For example, one cool weapon you'll be able to get is the Har'peng Torpedo after fighting the Doo... well I won't spoing your surprise. You'll generally get a Rank Vi version of the weapon is your follow the eqipsodes. Well if you want to get second Torpedo for the aft of your ship you can do that. And if you want to get better weapon when you reach max level, well you can acquire Mk XI versions of the Har'Pends at level 50.
And equipping you Bridge officers, can be done with just drops alone. You can just upgrade your BO's equipment as you are leveling up and get better equipment for them (and yourself if between mission rewards). The game is very forgiving at lower levels even if you are a bit underequipped.
As others have said, the game is already on default 'easy' mode. There is a lot of stuff in the game, a lot of complexities and bits of nuance where crunching the numbers can become necessary. But if you just play solo, and stick to normal difficulty (i.e. easy mode), you should be fine IMO.
If you have any questions just ask. For the standard missions and stuff, what you find is more than adequate generally speaking. Boff skills is where most people will have fun debating.
But a lot of it is entirely optional.
If you regularly team up with 4 other players, you'll never even see your BOff's on the ground and won't need to worry about equipping ground gear for them. If you do solo on Normal difficulty, you can mostly get away with just putting any old loot you have on them. I would recommend updating their gear when you hit Commander, again when you hit Rear Admiral, and finally at Vice Admiral.
Space skills are a different story, but you can keep whatever default skills your BOFF's have and never put in more than 5 or 6 ranks in each. Also, you never have to promote them any higher than needed to fill in all of your BO stations.
(e.g. No point in promoting a Science officer to Lt Commander if your ship can only seat a Lieutenant, or putting points in any skills you can't actually use.)
They don't need to equip anything for space.
You never have to keep more than 4 BOffs current at any given time, even though you may have more in your roster. They can do double duty in space and on away teams. The extras are useful for people who want specialized setups.
Some equipment levels up with you (though not much) and that will make it even easier... you can equip it and forget about it.
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Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The only exception is grenades, in that I'll have a boff use one as a combat opener if Orbital Strike is on cooldown.
Even the little amount of worry I give to my boffs is optional. Use 'em as walking bank slots if you want. Ignore their mechanics and pretend they have story. Ignore their story and use them as gear. STO gives you tons of things you can choose to micromanage, but they're all optional. Turn the difficulty down to Normal and it becomes totally unimportant whether they're optimized or not.
Me playing UT2k4 (red guy) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz0DnP7wXnU
Its not as difficult as it seems. You just need to adjust. Youll realize thru the missions rewards and items picked up. You will have more then enough to equip yourself, your BOffs and your ship.
The Doffs are easy to keep track of. They dont require any equipment and all you have to do is assign them to side missions for extra mission rewards.
I play games to relax, unwind, and have fun. When I want a challenge, I go play The Secret World for it's puzzles and investigations. But if I want relaxing, mindless fun, I want to be able to settle in and just go with the flow.
The other night, I did a ground mission. Fully decked in MK XI purples, my BOffs the same, and the ground mob Cardies were blasting me to bits. It was annoying beyond all reason, as the whole time was spent in a near futile effort to keep personal shields up.
I don't like frustration from this game in particular. I'm more in it for the roleplaying aspect, and I don't want to have to wonder on each mission when I'm going to die because the ground mobs hit like Mack Trucks on Nitrous.
But, that's just my personal opinion.
Me, I'd be very much in support of an "Easy" mode, or RP mode, or Story mode, whatever you want to call it.
"You shoot him, I shoot you, I leave both your bodies here and go out for a late night snack.
I'm thinking maybe pancakes." ~ John Casey
For me, that's like saying 'don't forget to breathe'. It just happens w/o my thinking about it! :cool:
There are other little tricks you can do, like learn to use the environment to your advantage (get behind cover when your shields go down etc). Remember to 'aim' when in shooter mode, and crouch as well. Have a sniper rifle to open with and a pulsewave to close. But generally speaking the boff configuration laid out above does the lion's share for me.
Oh boy.
The game is already in easy dummy mode as it is. What your boffs wear and what skills they have, is irrelevant, at least in normal ground missions. Some space featured episodes might trick you (romulan one's come to my mind) so there you might actually need to learn what skill works and what not. Learnig the game mechanics is much more important in that case than the gear you have. For example knowing that Beam Fire at Will or Gravity Well, or Cannon Satter Volley will counter the Heavy Plasma Torpedo spam a Derri'dex Battleship will use on you.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.