I visited the Badlands, and I like it a lot. It's admittedly very similar to the Undine zone, but it still seems as if some people don't fully understand the concept. I probably won't reach them here, but I'll try anyway.
So, here are my tips to maximize the amount of marks and elite marks you can get in the Badlands:
- Split Up. Yes, they say "Never split the party" in D&D, but seriously, the number of spawns per point increases with the number of players. Sure, that's a great source for Starship Mastery XP, but Red Alerts are a lot better for that, and what you really want are the Elite Marks. More than 2 players are basically too many. You cover more ground and attack multiple points at once. That means you will finish the individual areas more quickly and in parallel. If you see one or two players already at a location, look for a different point.
- Split Up. If you're not alone, one guy should draw aggro and the other should focus on the interacts. If you see that someone already has all the aggro, use the opportunity instead to deal with the interacts, or stay in proximity to a power station to keep the progress bar moving - even if there is exciting pew pew going on elsewhere, stay on the task!
- Split Up, even in the final phase. When the Starbases appear, you first basically have to redo the 3 types of station you already did previously, in a short form. Numbers don't really help you here ,they just make things more chaotic for extra spawns that break your interacts or get you off course. Only once this is done do you need focused firepower. A simple strategy could be that almost everyone focuses on one starbase, while two diligent Captains move to the other stations and do the initial work.
A simple rule might be: If you see a lot of other players busy at the point, move to somewhere else.
Admittedly, these players might all be clueless and do nothing to advance the point, but you can take care of that later.
Also, a bonus rule: Occassionally look at the map and see if any points already finished turn gray - that's a sign the enemy is taking the points back. If you don't know of anyone else taking care of the problem, do it yourself. Especially when you're not alone at your current point.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Comments
Can you get the Tier IV reward without doing a lot of pew pew even if you're completing actual objectives?
Pew pew seems to be a reliable way to get the top reward.
I have to test it more, but I don't believe this tip is valid. The final 'Mirror bases' take a larger group to defeat, they don't seem to scale down for numbers the way the rest of the zones do. By far the best success I have seen for this event is if the entire zone moves from one base to another collectively. The base zones spawn a significant number of opponents and are difficult for small groups to complete. If you're in a zone where you have tons of people.. then sure you can probably split 50/50 and all meet up on the 3rd, but otherwise I believe it's best to move together as a group. If someone else has a different experience, then by all means let me know.
No, you cannot. I tried this on one zone, I didn't engage the enemy, I just did the objective. I participated in all the generator shut downs but didn't shoot at the bad guys, and got Tier 1. I did another zone where I stayed back the entire time until the very end. I flew in at the end popped all my buffs and did FAW for about 20 seconds and got T4 Rewards. This was just a few days ago.
The Badlands only awards DPS. The Undine Zone accurately rewards participation.
But, it's also not good for large groups to go from point to point... there's some kind of tipping point where an entire fleet of dreadnoughts can spawn... not good, everyone usually runs away, or gets blown up, and the dreads end up causing some problems when the bases spawn.
The bases at the end require quite a few ships to finish quickly.
The hardest part if you're low on DPS are the 3 stations that you need to power down - once the first is fully powered down, a reset timer stars ticking. If you take too long taking out the enemies around the other stations, you might have issues. A way to handle those might be not to complete the final step at first. But enemies will respawn eventually, so you still need to deal with them in some way. If you have problem killing enemies, trying to use the station as cover and using crowd control powers* to keep the enemies out of firing range, or temporary immunities, can help you.
The other two points don't seem to have any reset mechanism. The moving power/plasma/whatever station requires you to stay close, so another general advice: Stay on target.
*) (draw them away and use a Gravity Well, then Evasive Maneuvers back to the station, or push them out with a Tractor Beam Repulsor + Evasive Maneuvers. Optionally combined with a Plasma-Emission Torpedo or Gravimetric Torpedo Torpedo Spread.)
My experience from actually trying it, says otherwise.
Give it a shot in the Undine Zone. Turn off auto fire, activate a capture point and just fly around in the circle inside the capture zone, not firing while everyone else kills stuff. Then deactivate the device without firing.
Tell me what you got.
Obviously, the only way to get points on the actual planet killer is to kill stuff.
Amusingly, I already hated the "fly close tot he capture marker" missions in the Undine Zone, the Badlands managed to make it worse.
But it's still quite soloable. Just very annoying. But it doesn't really get great with more players, just even more chaotic.
Flying in pairs is a solid option if you can't do it alone, however.
The Undine Battlezone is exactly as Seaofsorrows describes it, if you're the first to activate a point, and then deactivate, it doesn't matter how much DPS you put out, you'll get a mark bonus... I think it was 60 marks, but it's been a while since I've flown in there.
Since the Devs at Cryptic are the industry standard when it comes to using copy/paste as game design, what the OP proposes should work in the Badlands as well. This probably needs someone to spend some serious amounts of time in the Badlands to prove or refute it.
The spawn rate and spawn size of NPCs depends on the amount of players at a point. That means the zones are even doable with low populations for the most part.
Well, I can tell you that is how I do it.
But I think even with Tier 5 U ships and decent acquired upgraded gear and without any special traits you can get there. I did solo the Undine Zone Points before Delta rising, too. The thing one (probably?) can't solo are the final starbase or the final planet killers. (But in the Badlands, the Starbase preperation work can be done solo, too, so the bases can be 3/4 finished). And actuallly, now that I think about it - the Planet Killers could also be half-way-done. I never completed one solo, though, there are always people eventually coming in, and it might really take longer than 10 minutes to complete solo.