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Tier 1 Forever Challenge
theeishtmo
Member Posts: 236 Arc User
Call me mad. Seriously, I'm kind of nuts here. I started this out on the STO Reddit and I've been actively playing it ever since.
The Challenge: Fly a Miranda through the entire storyline using a new character.
If you think that's crazy, well it is. Not as crazy as setting the difficulty to Elite and doing it, but crazy anyway (might do the Elite thing later). Most people are CONVINCED you must have a Tier 6 or at least a 5U to do anything in STO's "endgame." This is hogwash, of course, but time to put my money where my mouth is.
So I rolled up a Romulan Engineer (because I have enough Feds, thank you very much) and after pushing through the first few missions, I got my Miranda.
And then took it into Temporal Front. Mostly I wanted the ground set as it is thematically appropriate for the character and I don't want to spend forever on most of the ground stuff.
It taught me a great deal about how the Miranda does against complex foes rather than the straight forward ones you run into early in the game. The result was lots of explosions, but as I learned, I got better at it. Um, the mission, not exploding. The Miranda is very, VERY good at exploding, it doesn't need any help.
Right now I'm level 20, picked up my first collection of Delta stuff. My ship is running two photon torps in the nose (one has [spr]) and a disruptor turret with [rapid] in the back. I've got a Resilent shield I crafted up to minimize bleedthrough as much as possible. My 3 consoles are filled with a Neutrionum, the Plasma Manifold (Oberth console) and the Point Defense Console. Boff powers are very flexible but I find I'm doing well running Tac Team, Eng Team and Tachyon beam. I've got a blue torp doff and a blue Tac team doff (reduces cooldowns). Still need more doffs, but I'm fine for now.
I've run random stuff, including a Fleet Alert against Tholians where I did NOT die once. Came close, but didn't. And actually seemed to contribute more than not. While I'm not very far along, I'm very confident in the current ship build, though my next "addition" will be the Antimatter Spread Console which will be very helpful late in the game with all the nasty melees I have coming in the near future.
So I'll try to keep this updated with my progress. Suggestions on improving the build or what I should look for in terms of future gear will be heard and appreciated. I am trying to minimize the budget (I splurged for the Antimatter console, the others were freebies), so don't go overboard. I do have access to ALL of the event ships, and will grind up their traits OUTSIDE of the missions if I decide I want or need them. I will eventually grind up all the reps too (probably using those event ships, no I'm not taking a Miranda into Hive Onslaught, I'm crazy not stupid), so that's open for suggestions.
Oh, and any Dev reading this: Could we get some more Ensign Engineering boff powers? There are 5 right now that are free (and two that are not in one way or the other) and it would be nice if they could do a bit more. I've got plenty of options for my tac and sci, but eng is kind of bland.
Until next time.
The Challenge: Fly a Miranda through the entire storyline using a new character.
If you think that's crazy, well it is. Not as crazy as setting the difficulty to Elite and doing it, but crazy anyway (might do the Elite thing later). Most people are CONVINCED you must have a Tier 6 or at least a 5U to do anything in STO's "endgame." This is hogwash, of course, but time to put my money where my mouth is.
So I rolled up a Romulan Engineer (because I have enough Feds, thank you very much) and after pushing through the first few missions, I got my Miranda.
And then took it into Temporal Front. Mostly I wanted the ground set as it is thematically appropriate for the character and I don't want to spend forever on most of the ground stuff.
It taught me a great deal about how the Miranda does against complex foes rather than the straight forward ones you run into early in the game. The result was lots of explosions, but as I learned, I got better at it. Um, the mission, not exploding. The Miranda is very, VERY good at exploding, it doesn't need any help.
Right now I'm level 20, picked up my first collection of Delta stuff. My ship is running two photon torps in the nose (one has [spr]) and a disruptor turret with [rapid] in the back. I've got a Resilent shield I crafted up to minimize bleedthrough as much as possible. My 3 consoles are filled with a Neutrionum, the Plasma Manifold (Oberth console) and the Point Defense Console. Boff powers are very flexible but I find I'm doing well running Tac Team, Eng Team and Tachyon beam. I've got a blue torp doff and a blue Tac team doff (reduces cooldowns). Still need more doffs, but I'm fine for now.
I've run random stuff, including a Fleet Alert against Tholians where I did NOT die once. Came close, but didn't. And actually seemed to contribute more than not. While I'm not very far along, I'm very confident in the current ship build, though my next "addition" will be the Antimatter Spread Console which will be very helpful late in the game with all the nasty melees I have coming in the near future.
So I'll try to keep this updated with my progress. Suggestions on improving the build or what I should look for in terms of future gear will be heard and appreciated. I am trying to minimize the budget (I splurged for the Antimatter console, the others were freebies), so don't go overboard. I do have access to ALL of the event ships, and will grind up their traits OUTSIDE of the missions if I decide I want or need them. I will eventually grind up all the reps too (probably using those event ships, no I'm not taking a Miranda into Hive Onslaught, I'm crazy not stupid), so that's open for suggestions.
Oh, and any Dev reading this: Could we get some more Ensign Engineering boff powers? There are 5 right now that are free (and two that are not in one way or the other) and it would be nice if they could do a bit more. I've got plenty of options for my tac and sci, but eng is kind of bland.
Until next time.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
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The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Al Rivera hates Klingons
Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert
All cloaks should be canon.
I just did it on my rom toon, using only BO's and BOFFs that were awards, and the normal ship awards from ranking up and loot drops/awards. It's was a blast.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
Back long before the level cap raise ... I ran a character to max level in a Runabout. It was a blast. I mostly did patrol missions and also at that time Diplomacy, Aid the Planet, stuff like that, were my consistent bread and butter XP sources. But I did quite a bit of combat too. I was not very powerful, lol.
I leveled exclusively with a t2 Connie. When I reached max level, I decided to see how far I could take it. I've never used anything else, and so far I'm just fine
I actually got a new character to level 60 in a Type 10 shuttle on advanced difficulty. Have to admit that the vaadwaur were more than a bit challenging in a shuttle.
Have also run the content up to level 60 in a http://sto.gamepedia.com/Vandal_Destroyer although i admit this was NOT on a new character.
Yeah, the Vaadwaur are on my short list of Things That Will Kill Me A LOT!!! Three exclamation marks are required for that list. That also includes The Borg, The Undine and the Hearlds. Strategies to keep them from killing me are already in the works. SUGGESTIONS are welcome too *hint* *hint*. I still think that shuttle is more powerful than the Miranda, BTW.
In fact today I encountered my first of these, but let me back up a bit. The first mission of the day is Enemy Action where you have to help defend a Tal Shiar base from a fake ally attack, to earn their trust. First time I've died since I ran Temporal Front. Surprised from behind by an escort after I blew up the decoy ship. Not the most interesting part though, the most interesting was when the decoy ship took down my shields with a phaser proc and ONE volley of phaser fire stripped out half my hull. Ouch. Without shields, I am a dead man.
And then came Sleepers. The first mission in the Rom storyline where you encounter the Borg. The cube is marked as a "derelict," meaning it's weaker than a real cube, I guess. Probably, but it still damn near killed me. I only survived because I ran away and swapped tachyon beam for hazard emitters to clear the burn. While I have found tachyon beam to be all that and a box of cookies, there are times when I will have to swap out, or die horribly. I've been playing with Mask Energy Signature (a sci ability exactly 3 people in the game use) and found it fun, but not effective (once combat begins, no swapping powers, so no tachyon beam). But it looks like hazard emitters and tachyon beam are going to be the big dogs here. I'm still very disappointed that Eng doesn't have any cleansing abilities at this level (well, I guess Eng team counts for removing viral matrix, maybe). Would be nice *hint* *hint*.
Level 27, managed to scrounge a purple projectile doff so I'm cycling those torps faster. Other than that, nothing much else has changed.
More generally, the high point of my own T1 experiences was in the last Crystalline Catastrophe event, where my NX managed 3rd place...
A shuttle may actually be more powerful than a miranda (haven't compared the stats) but i dislike the Miranda design so i generally use an NX or TOS barge (the one kirk & spock used) at T1. When playing regular ships i often stick with the T3 heavy escort or Stargazer up to or even beyond level 50 content.
At low level EptE and ST are very important. ET and HE are also useful.
Playing FED i frequently use MES, heck even on my KDF i use it when flying Orion, Gorn o Nausican ships. The defense boost upon leaving MES is quite useful.
In kerrat i use a Nebula with MES to hunt for cloaked ships.
how dare you dis the miranda?!
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Won't argue with the T6 treatment, it does. I know a few people who would pay to fly a T6 Miranda. I'm not one of them (rather the T6 Horizon, which is coming now, so woo).
Today I hit level 30, and I just hit Temporal Ambassador. Not bad, and well ahead of the curve as far as I can tell. Not even trying I tell ya. I did discover that Heavy Plasma Torps do NOT like Mirandas, and kill them quickly. I got hit with one point blank (Mogai surprised me) and was vaped in one shot. The end of Mindgames had a similar issue where the D'D and company did the same thing. I THINK they were criting, so not much I could have done (seriously, 39000 damage? Gotta be a crit). Mindgames does give me a new torp, the Disrupting Photon Torpedo. It's not a strong upgrade, but it does give out damage debuffs, so it's worth the effort. I MIGHT be wrong, but I think it managed to trigger a spread in a fleet alert I went into. I'll have to keep my eye on it.
The big prize, though, is the Antimatter Spread Console which I finally claimed. It has 3 rolls in my build: Break contact with large groups of enemies, get them to shoot each other, and break tractor beams. Otherwise I waste a slot on jam sensors or polarize hull. I used it in said fleet alert, triggering it as I flew into a group of Nausican battleships. While they shot each other, I let loose the Point Defense System and ground them down without taking any major damage (they got destroyed by the rest of the group, still in a Miranda after all). Going into a similar group with spread on cooldown resulted in an untimely death.
All I'm really missing is Miracle Worker and I then have all the space powers and toys I need to, hopefully, survive.
I would like to make a comment about power levels, in that I'm terrible at managing them. Normally I just dump everything into weapons and pray it works. With the Miranda I've been keeping the power levels on a balanced setting because otherwise it turns even MORE like a potato than normal. Turn rate is really bothering me, but my only options to fix it are more power to engines and an engine with a really strong [turn] on it. Not hard to come by, I can probably make one, just not a priority yet. Still, with limitations on console space I need to look at traits and skills and gear to level things out. The Plasma Manifold and EPS Power Transfer have been godsends for this build.
I should be somewhere in the 40's by the time I get to Devil's Choice, and I'm actually worried about that. At lower levels it wouldn't be as bad, but this, this is going to suck. At least I should be through the Cardassian stuff by the time I hit 50 and can start Mark/Starship trait grinding.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
So I finished up Temporal Ambassador (and screwed up the mess up directions accolade, annoyed) and for the first time in the game, had a ship with more than 3 boff powers and some random toy consoles. It was almost TOO easy.
My first direct fight against the Elachi started there after. Their annoyance is the subspace jumping they like to do, and given how slow the turn is on the Miranda, that makes it EXTRA annoying.
So anyway, I figure I should give you a quick break down of gear and stats so you can get an idea what I'm dealing with.
Weapons: VR Photon Torp Mk VII [Acc][CrtD][Spr], VR Disrupting Photon Torp Mk VII [CrtH], UR Disruptor Turret Mk VII [CrtD]x2 [Dmg] [Rapid]
Gear: VR Positron Deflector Mk VII [Em][EPG][ShCap], R Efficient Impulse Engines MK VII, VR Field Stabliizing Warp Core Mk VII [Bat][ECap][W->A], VR Resilient Shield Array Mk VII [AP][Cap][Dis]
Device: Shield Battery, Subspace Modulator
Consoles: Antimatter Spread, Point Defense System, Plasma Manifold
Stats
Hull: 13,137
Shields: 4,710 per facing
Bonus Def: 65.5% (at full combat speed)
Impulse: 22.19 at combat speed, 134 Full Impulse
Power Transfer: 210%
Crit Chance: 4%
Crit Severity: 55.3%
Inertia: 50
Flight Speed: 22.2
Turn Rate: 20.3 deg/sec
Power levels
Weapons 61/50
Shields 63/50
Engines 59/50
Aux 65/50
NO damage resists at all at this point. Yeah.
I still have some skill points to spend, but I'm holding off for the moment. Not sure if I want to push more shields, try to get my hull healing up or go more offensive. Have some damage resists would be nice so I might go that direction rather than more shields as they seem to be holding for the moment. For those curious I am NOT pushing for a skill ultimate as, honestly, I have too many needs between sci and eng to make out either at the others expense. I did pick up Maximum Hull Capacity, Max Shield Capacity, Battery Expertise (I think it effects Plasma Manifold, and it does effect EPS Transfer), Threat Control and Sector Space Travel Speed since I won't get all my transwarps for a while and why not? Doing 10.34 Transwarp in a Miranda now, weee.
Level 38 now. Should be 41 or so by Devil's Choice (average 1 level per mission, with Doffing involved). Should be 50 by the end of the Cardassian arc, if not further along (for comparison, Devil's Choice min is 26).
And then there's Last Stand. What an pain in the butt. It's not dangerous, even to my Miranda (I died once, stupid high yield torp) but it's so BORING. The last part of the mission (3 parts) has you defending some random station from an Elachi attack. They launch fighters. From the way the mission dialog is written, one would think the fighters would attack the Elachi frigates then harass the larger ships while the player fights the battleships and escorts. That doesn't happen.
What does happen is I kill the battleship (easily with my Miranda, surprisingly) while the Elachi ships wipe out the fighters then, um, sit there. You can hear them firing, but on what I can't tell. And there are three groups that come in three waves (new fighters spawning each wave). I remember this being long and tedious in level appropriate ships with my previous Rom characters, but in a Miranda it's even worse. Luckily, I guess, they only target you if you target/shoot them. Otherwise they ignore you. That almost makes it worse though because you can focus on one ship at a time, and just fall asleep in the process. Boring mission all around.
The next mission on the agenda is Devil's Choice, which I might have started last night except I had to go to bed early for work this morning (I have really nasty work hours). I still need to gear up for the ground portion, then it's time for the real test for the Miranda with the defense of New Romulus itself. Which me luck guys, I'm going to need it.
For another "real" challenge why not do the whole story arc with a "melee" weapon in ground rather than a phaser or energy weapon? It's FUN to see all the BOFFs using a sword/bat'leth and beat the TRIBBLE from foes....specially BORGS
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
You can use whatever you like, I'm using a Miranda. If you want to use the NX, Oberth, Connie, B'real or T'liss, more power to you.
I considered Elite, but I've done that on one of my Klinks, before the revamp. The difference really was I died more and had more injuries. Woo. Didn't really make it harder, just took longer, no added reward either. MAYBE I'll raise the difficulty, especially after today, but given I will have enough to deal with later on (Vaadwaur), I'm not in a rush.
Well kind of. I've done everything in the game at least once, if not multiple times. This is something I haven't done, so I guess I am bored. Why? Do you have something better to do? And melee is fun, I have one of my characters speced for it. I tend to die a lot.
Speaking of which, today I did Devil's Choice and. . . DID NOT DIE! Seriously, wow, I was so dreading it, figuring I'd be struggling to stay alive long enough to kill that damn command ship in the last phase and it went off without a hitch. Thus why I'm thinking of upping the difficulty, but right now, I've hit the point of things being routine, which is bad since that could be picking up bad habits in the process. But it works, and works well, so maybe I'm doing it right. Eases my mind about the later big fleet battles (Boldly They Rode, Surface Tension, Takedown, maybe), they might be easier runs than I thought.
So I'm 45 now. I'm moving to finish Specters so I can hopefully hit 50 before Coliseum (Mk XI Reman shield would be nice). Mostly it's just a side jaunt and then back to the grind stone. If I can hit 50, I'll be well ahead of the curve, which is amazing since I'm not even running any skill boosts or anything.
The real question then becomes do I run queues in the Miranda or not? I've done some, mostly Fleet Alerts (no one notices if you're in a Miranda in there), but I'm not as ready to PUG harder STFs where others must pull the weight more. ISA is probably doable (was back in the day), but the nastier ones, I don't know. Plus I do want to get some of those starship traits, which means I have to murder things with those ships (yes, I left that option open, I only HAVE to run the story missions in the Miranda the first time). I've got time to think on it.
With 50 comes everything. Reputations unlock (I have to make the tokens on my main) so all that gear will, eventually, be available. I only need about 630 of each mark to open them all up in about a month. I think I'm looking at getting the Iconian Set for the long term. Or at least part of it, I need to look more closely.
Specializations open up, I have a point from doing the weekly thing on Temporal Front. I'm putting the initial points into Pilot so I can get Scratch the Paint and several other defensive powers. The Miranda is so fragile, that ships exploding nearby will kill me, even frigates. Best to have some protection than none. Also looking at the Stratgeist as my secondary, looks like it has some decent abilities that will definitely help.
The level 50 missions start unlocking as well. Sphere of Influence, Nukara Stuff, New Romulus, etc, etc. Hell, I could skip all the way to Delta Rising at this point if I wanted. I don't want to, I'm crazy, but it's there. But it does mean missions with specific rewards are now available, so it's time to start looking at other gear upgrades. Specifically the Omni beams (antiproton first) to replace the turret which has been, um, kind of useless on this build for a while.
I originally envisioned having two builds, one for damage and one for survival. The current build is kind of a balance of both, so it's not too bad. I also figured I'd have to find alternate solutions to various problems, but in the end I really haven't needed them. I'll see what the future holds.
Finally I can start unlocking Starship Traits. I'm thinking Breen Dread, Nandi and Kobali Cruiser are the three I want most, and will be most useful on this build, mostly because all three enhance the one ability I can use, Tachyon beam.
So now I need to decide how to deal with the queues. In a Miranda, for Pugging, would be very mean to the rest of the group, though I think I could handle ISA well enough. That's fine for Omega Marks, but the rest aren't as easy. The Battlezones will be fine in a Miranda, after that though, I'm not so sure. As I said, I want Starship Traits, so going into a fight with those ships should work out, but it feels wrong to use anything else but a Miranda. Any thoughts?
Which I then screwed up last night by accidentally queuing up for Counterpoint (I meant to get Assault on Terok Nor, ground queues are open season). I apologized to the group, did my best, died only 4 times, and we got all the optionals despite it. Good group, and while I didn't do much (aside from antimatter spread once in a while) I would still prefer to have another ship loaded up for this kind of thing. That'll be my task today, to prep a "queue runner" ship. Probably the Breen Dread first as it has the best trait of the 3 ships I have picked for this.
Queues were the name of the game last night. ISA (clocked an amazing 1.73k dps) with some of the reddit gang, Crystaline (with about 3 deaths), various ground queues (including a group that couldn't figure out Brotherhood of the Sword advanced and caused a failure), and running around the space Voth Battlezone. Oh, I got to that because of Sphere of Influence, which I ran. It's one of only a handful of missions where the Miranda doesn't get any combat time (Step Between the Stars has you fly your ship, but you don't FIGHT with it), and so I ran it early for the Omin beam.
That likely would have made the difference in that ISA (one turret sucks, even with [rapid]). I also pulled up the Kobali warp core. It has a nice instant shield heal that's helpful. Looking at sets, I really like the Iconian Deflector, so that's something I need to go after as soon as I can (yay Bug Hunt).
Repwise, I got marks for everything except Undine. I could have if I had run Step Between the Stars last night, but I was exhausted and had to go to be instead (that would have unlocked the Undine battlezone). I'll have tier 1 for everything but that today, so that helps.
July is when AoY comes out. This character (her background and story) could work for it, which is annoying since I made her too early. That said, I think I can hit 60 and get all the reps done before it comes out, so with dil in the bank, I can repeat my challenge with the new content and maybe higher difficulty. I'll think about it, maybe come up with a different character instead, completely doable after all.
So if you Alia in her Miranda the USS Quantum Leap in the queues, say 'hi.' I'll be chugging along.
My intention is to play through all the story missions with the Miranda set as my main ship. Doffing is part of managing the challenge. I assure you that no projectile doffs would make this MUCH harder. Doffing is more a secondary function, playing the missions is #1. And feel free to join in on this. It doesn't get hard until you're dealing with end game level baddies. I'll even spot you some gear.
That said, I noticed something odd. My hull has yet to crack 14,000 points, pitiful for any ship. Then I happened to be moving some batteries around in the Surface Tension and noticed my hull was just shy of 24,000. Huh? I remember my shuttle (delta flyer) having quite a bit of hull, far more than my Miranda should, but I only ever checked it IN MISSION. I suspect this means Normal difficulty not only drops the HP of the enemies, but boosts YOURS. No wonder newer players come out of the storyline thinking they're invincible and diving into Advanced and Elite queues right away.
Anyway, no plans to up the difficulty yet, 24,000 hull isn't that big of a difference for a Miranda. I grabbed the Solena engine (because the deflector isn't worth it and the shield SUCKS) and continue grinding up my reps. I didn't get to kitting out a queue runner, should be able to do so later today, assuming the job I have doesn't take too long (shouldn't, but you never know). More updates as they become available.