This is a nice post. The theory crafting here is interesting. I've decided to come back after about 3 years because I love TOS and I thought I might try levelling using a T1 ship due to their simplicity. I have the T1 Andorian Light Escort on reserve so I've decided to roll up an Andorian for my new AoY toon. The ALE is more powerful than the Miranda due to the next weapon slot, so this won't be as difficult a journey as Eishtmo's was. However, it should still be a lot of fun. The new expansion opens quite a few possibilities.
Well that was a wonderful vacation. What did I do? Well, I played around on Risa, leveled up an AoY toon (she's 60 now and Tier 3 on all her reps except Temporal), started the Temporal rep on my main (it's at Tier 3 too) and got the Vorgon escort. I should REALLY get that trait for this. Random mines to hit your enemies with? YES PLEASE! Oh, and I did some scouting with my main.
So with AoY, 5 regular missions got added. Three in a substory that moves with the player called Yesterday's War, and the last two wrapping up Future Proof. Do they look like a true challenge for the Miranda? Um, hard to say because my main obliterated all comers, as she is apt to do. Even more so in Temporal Reckoning when I accidentally had the game on Normal rather than Advanced. It was not a pretty sight, for them. Muhahahaha.
Anyway, it's time to get back to work. The build hasn't changed at all:
I did swap out the one resist trait with Rapid Support because, um, why not? Anything to help keep this build up. Otherwise, it's time to get back into the Miranda and go a running. I have 5 more missions to run, so I'll update this as necessary. I also got a week off of work (so far) so I've got time to do it. Anyway, the Quantum Leap is back in action. Until next time.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
Core of the Matter was, um, not hard. 23c Romulans (so few tricks) and Na'kuhl ships. That plasma wave motion gun the Na'kuhl ships have aren't difficult to deal with as long as you run away. Even the high end ships need to run for that thing, but a Miranda especially. That said, while I came close to dying a few times, I did not, in no small part due to Hull Patches which are amazing and I love intensely. I also didn't get hit with the Doomsday Machine's weapon blast, though in a previous playthrough, despite not even being in it's firing arc, it did still kill me once. BS, friends, BS.
I've done this mission three times now and am finally getting settled into it. The hardest part is the ground section where my main and my AoY characters got their asses handed to them. 23c Romulans on the ground hit HARD. Miner Instabilities are just as bad. 25c Romulans NEVER hit that hard, what the hell Cryptic? Also another note of annoyance is the Doomsday Machine, and the fact that the Hargh'pang, the weapon that has a proc specifically to hurt the Doomsday Machine, doesn't do anything. Fine, it can't KILL the it, I'd be fine with that, but it doesn't do anything, not here, not in Days of Doom. Let it act as a minor slow in Days of Doom and reset the firing sequence here or something! It's a special weapon, let it be SPECIAL for dog's sake.
Anyway, I made a mistake in the last post. I forgot Sunrise and Stormfront, so there were 7 to run. Temporal Front doesn't count because I did it back at level 10, 3 times for the ground set. So now there are 6.
Next time, Vorgon Conclusions, which is a stupid long mission for some reason. Until then.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
My math is still bad, I completely forgot Time and Tide. I'll get into my complaints about Future Proof when I get to it proper, but being partially forgettable is part of the issue.
On to Vorgon Conclusions. Three different enemies, no deaths. The Vorgons are the new kid on the block for this group and they have Harasser Probes, and that's about it. Oh, they are annoying, so annoying, but the Miranda has three tools to deal with them: BFAW, Antimatter Spread and Point Defense. In the end, they aren't even an issue. The Vorgon Battleship isn't even that much of a challenge. It's a tough ship, but considering you have to face it down 3 times in this mission, once without a break and while it has reinforcements, the fact that I didn't die at all should be very telling.
The Tholians make a return, in their 22c forms, which I didn't even bother fighting since they decide to fight the Vorgons too. I gave them a wide birth and let the two groups go at it. And the Vorgons vaporized the bugs. Poor guys. Of course that meant fighting the Vorgons myself, so, um, yeah, I guess I didn't benefit from that one.
And finally the Breen return. Now I had some issues with the Breen, mostly the Plesh Breks and their love of tractor beams. Otherwise the fights were just long and tedious. But that was with the old Torp build, the Midnight build ate them all alive. I did switch out Tachyon Beam for Polarize Hull, just so I didn't need to worry about those tractors, but wow did I knock them around, all of them, even the carrier. I don't think I was ever in any real danger the entire fight. Out of habit I even summoned fleet support at one point, right before the last Breen ship exploded (poor girl didn't even get to see the explosion).
I have noticed that the Miranda is turning better, though I'm not sure how. Maybe flying some cruisers and other not speced ships has made the Miranda SEEM like it's doing better than it is. Running Core of the Matter had my Miranda looking like a T'liss (first time Alia's been in one for a while, kind of) but it turned MUCH better than the starting Romulan ship does in the tutorial, but a lot. Wild and weird how skill points and traits play with a ship's base abilities.
I am concerned that these missions are just plain easy. Maybe it's because I'm a level 60 Eng with a full suite of traits, gear and skills, and these two missions were designed with players far less advanced than that. In other words, I worry I'm coasting and getting bad habits from play. As I said before, Normal isn't hard at all, in fact it should be called "Easy," and it gets most players into trouble because they think they're doing well, then they get into Advanced, or dog forbid, Elite queues and are completely useless. Still, these missions shouldn't be THIS easy for the Miranda on Normal. I'll see how things go once I start running Future Proof.
Next time, though, Terminal Expanse and the Kelvin Klingon Kompany. Er, uh, never mind.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
Terminal Expanse was, um, a cakewalk, and practically forgettable. Seriously, I can't even remember if I died in it or not. I think I did, against the Sphere builders, but that was likely attrition if anything. They throw quite a few at you, but I really didn't see them as anything dangerous.
Oddly, I noticed I had another mission in my "Available" tab in the mission journal: Hide and Seek. Which wouldn't be odd, except I'm on a Romulan-Fed. How did it get there? I have no idea. I know I helped another player through said mission once, but I don't think I used the Miranda for it, and if I did, why did the mission stay in the tab? It should have gone away. Very odd.
I did some other cleaning up of the mission journal but that was about it. I wish I had more to say, but there wasn't really much of a challenge in this mission, or any of Yesterday's War. I guess my standards are a bit higher than they were after all.
So with such a brief thing, next time, I'll do Sunrise and Stormfront together, since, you know, they're kind of together. Until then.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
Lower tiered ships are still completely viable, it's just more of a challenge at higher leveled content. Your ship isn't quite as beefy, and you're giving up extra console slots and specialization seating- but that's pretty much all. Higher base stats just mean you won't get one-shotted by higher leveled content ships (dem plasma torpedo spreads... nasty) and you won't end up dying as much. Most of the "game magic" really does exist in the officer's skill choices, specializations and ship gear. The rest is the choice of skills you use, and the order in which you use them in battles.
I'd actually love to see PWE/C incorporate newer game features such as specialization seating, etc., at least make them universal slots on lower tiers so that if you do indeed choose a lower tier as a higher ranked officer you can make the ship really shine. It's not as if this would be a "game breaking" feature, because lower leveled officers still wouldn't be able to utilize the specialization system since you don't start earning points until much later.
Would definitely go a long way in terms of variety in game, at least. I don't see how giving people more choice is a bad thing.
It's not you- it's me. I just need my space.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
I'll repeat the main lesson I've learned doing this: Hull is EVERYTHING, and if you don't have it, it becomes much, much harder. The Miranda has the lowest base hull in the game, only 10k, and with so few boff, console and weapons slots, boosting it more is hard, very hard. You will die, a lot, but with careful planning you likely won't die much more than a normal player playing on Advanced difficulty. I agree with the universal seating thing though, that would help SO much with the Miranda. That said, you can do it with B'rel, but no specialist seating, Mores the pity.
On to Sunrise and Stormfront. First, why didn't we try to reverse the effects on the Na'kuhl star BEFORE burying the thingy on Risa? Too many Tholian ships? Not enough sense? Dumb, really, could have staved off a lot of bad stuff, but The Plot demands.
Anyway, this is the first time I've fought the Tholians head on in a mission since Temporal Ambassador (and the first time with a Miranda since The Search for New Romulus). I've fought them in Crystalline Catastrophe and Fleet Alerts, so I'm not unfamiliar how the Miranda reacts in a fight with them. Still, it was a new thing, and I did pretty well, dying twice, once to a damn warp core breach (forgot I STILL haven't gotten the points for Scratch the Paint, do'h!), and once to a combination web, tractor beam and attrition. I got stock on a orb web wall while being tractored by a Recluse and shot at by it and the Orb Weaver. I damn near got away, but at the last second everything went on a cool down and I couldn't recover. Bah.
The most interesting thing to happen was in Sunrise. At one point, you fly into a micro nebula. These usually disable your shields while you're in there, but the Iconian shield was like "nuts to this" and kicked on it's hot restart. That was then removed by the nebula debuff, that was cleared by the hot restart and repeat. It was really odd that the shield just kept turning on and off like that. There's a brief fight with Tholians there, and the shields, as sporadic as they are, did help keep me alive (every other shot hit the shield). I wonder if other micro nebulas work the same way, which is kind of an odd bug. Fun though.
I do like both missions, though I didn't see the connection to Vorgon Conclusions I was expecting. You KNOW Kal Dano dies, you've SEEN his ship before and know where it comes from, can we at least ACKNOWLEDGE this fact? It was fine when the mission was first released and they didn't have Vorgon Conclusions, but we do now, so go add the dialog options. Or maybe I just missed it, that's been known to happen.
Next time, er, Time and Tide, and complaining. Because why not?
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
All of this would be much easier if we'd see more "retrofit" versions of the prior Tiers available- rather than more new "shinies" being released as the latest Tier. It's pretty obvious to me that their intended focus is for everyone to use the "latest and greatest" versus what's available as a whole.
The whole tiering system in itself needs to be revamped IMO- they need to just get rid of ship tiering and make the focus on specializations/skills and add the bonuses to base hulls accordingly, rather than limiting the availability of boff slots and other things and making them dependent on the latest content releases/tiers. This would "balance" the game, because no matter what hull you choose, the amount of specialization points you've invested/skills and your level of skill as a player would ultimately determine your survivability- rather than how much money you spend in the C-Store for the "biggest hull" available.
I'm not really a fan of EVE online, having played for a few years, but I can tell you this is one system they did RIGHT. In that game, you can buy the biggest, most expensive ship available if you want- but if you lack the skill points or just plain skill to pilot it, you'll lose your ship. (permanently) STO would really shine with such a system- and specialization/skills/boff choices would be a meaningful place to start with this, IMO.
Simply strip out the "tiers" and make all ships with base stats, then the specializations/skills/boff choices would improve upon that (hull plating, shields, etc. to increase the "base" stats) in order to increase survivability. Make all boff slots open for specialization choices, so that they're not restricted to the content they were released with. (if you question this, try slotting an Intel officer in a AOY ship) That's yet another restriction I have yet to understand- a lot of people argue here that a "bridge console" is only capable of "X", so if you put "Y" officer in there they can't use it, which is ridiculous IMO. Why? Because it's a PC and not a Mac? Seriously? Yeah, I think there should be more thought involved here.
It's not you- it's me. I just need my space.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
There is thought involved, and it's "how can we make money?" A valid concern, it costs money to keep the servers running and creating new content. New ships, on higher tiers, make money. Anyway, let's not get too bogged down in this discussion as it gets away from the real point of this thread: Me dying horribly in a Miranda. And then complaining about it.
Time and Tide features the first time you actually fight Krenim in the game, and they're, not so bad. I think the Iconian shield was TRIBBLE with their powers with it's debuff cleanse, so I wasn't getting hit nearly as hard as I probably should have. It did TRIBBLE with my turn rate and I think it effected my damage output, but beyond that, nothing I couldn't ultimately handle.
Two deaths though. Both to the Na'kuhl, specifically the Daemosh destroyer. I don't think the ship itself is really dangerous, but the distortions do the one thing I can never let happen with a Miranda: They made the fight longer. The longer the fight, the more likely I am to die, and die I did. Twice, TWICE, I was killed by one of these things, in two separate fights. Neither with backup, always a bad sign. Once to a plasma torp and once to attrition.
Worse, my controls got locked! I got locked into a hard right turn. I could kind of get out of it, straighting out for a bit, but then right back to the right. Made the last Daemosh fight harder than it had any right to be. I got through it and it fixed itself in the last space map, but damn that was annoying.
So finally, I want to complain about the time travel storyline as a whole. As I said, Midnight is the END of Star Trek Online as it's built. Every mission, in someway, ties back to the Iconians, and while the last story line is the Iconian War, the entire GAME is part of the Iconian War technically. The time travel stuff feels, um, tacked on as a result.
The fix would have been easy: Give the TOS characters their own, full length storyline that runs parallel to the main one where the effects of the Temporal Cold War are actually explored, instead it's glossed over with silly probes and that's it. I get the time crunch, but still, more effort would have been nice.
Which brings us to Future Proof and the fact that it feels at least as hollow as the Iconian War felt early on. Worse, honestly, because after Temporal Front, there should have been at least a couple more missions, if not more, establishing the extent of the conflict, but instead, we zip straight to the ending, with only the brief, but unremarkable, Yesterday's War storyline to give us any context. I really never felt the conflict was going anywhere and then suddenly it was over. OR WAS IT? It was.
Which is to say that while I was pleased with much of the content that came with AoY and Future Proof (no mission in Future Proof is a dud, really), there's so much being missed out on that I'm left unimpressed by the time travel stuff as a whole. It still feels completely tacked on to a story that's already ended. Still, it's a story mission so Alia will go through it on her Miranda.
Next time will NOT be Temporal Front, because I did that mission already, three times, back at level 10. No need to repeat it really, I might later, but not for this run. Next time, I think I'll run the last two missions, Temporal Reckoning and Ragnarok together since, really, they are two parts of the same mission, just like Sunrise and Stormbound (not Stormfront, bleh). Until then kiddies.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
be VERY wary of ragnarok...the sphere builder ships use temporal abilities, most of which deal physical damage (something which there is precious little resist to on most of the gear and traits in the game) and has 100% shield penetration - a very deadly combination as i found out doing it on my best-equipped character...my ship may as well have not had any resists at all with how easily they tore through it
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
And done. Sorry folks, no pictures this time. As I said, I really consider Midnight the accomplishment as the end of STO, but Ragnarok. . . Let's get back to that.
First is Temporal Reckoning. 3 deaths. Two were against the Na'kuhl battleship as part of that first phase of the mission. Distortions = long fight = dead Miranda. Painful, but I got him clean in the end by summoning Delta Alliance Reinforcements and they vaporized the damn thing. Was a beauty to behold. The last death came against the Terran fleet, mostly because I went in first. Heh, I'm just too aggressive for my own good sometimes. Oddly this is the same place my main died. I accidentally ran this mission on my main on Normal difficulty, which meant I devoured everything in my path. The Miranda had a much harder time of it, which is the big difference between a fully loaded end game ship and a Tier 1. Stark and terrible.
Then came Ragnarok. The first thing I didn't notice on my main's run through is the constant hull damage you take on the map. This was both very bad (13k hull, and losing 150 every second, bad, bad, bad) and very good (on damage, threatening stance adds 5% max hull, up to 10 times). AKA, I was running max hull for the entire mission because of this, that's GREAT, aside from it only being 20k (21k with hardpoints), and the fact that EVERYTHING was pissed at me. The first phase of the fight resulted in 4 deaths, 4! Even all of Midnight only managed to rack up 3. Okay, so I figure I need to control my threat a bit, so during the ground portion I swapped over from BFAW to Overload. If I can only tick one target off at a time, the others can take some of the load.
Phase 3 proved that this mission is the hardest in the game with a Miranda. SIX deaths. That's a total of 10 for ONE mission guys. On Normal too. Many of the deaths were warp core breaches, which isn't unsurprising. Attrition did much of the work as well, with the expanse debuff making it hard to recover quickly while everyone was shooting at me. Rough, rough fight, the entire way. The weirdest death had "Target Auxillary At Will 3" take me down. I'm not sure if that's an actual ability or not, but I did notice my aux being knocked off line more than usual in the mission, and this makes me wonder what was really going on here. I should note that after the Expanse is dissipated, I didn't die again. It was all to defend the Ent J.
In any case, I suspect that 10 deaths is likely the record, even vs the other missions with many deaths. And I had help, which often means fewer deaths over all. I was constantly at my max achievable hull with the best non-epic gear I could haul around. I was astonished at how hard it ended up being, finally a mission to match the challenge that I expected for this project. Of course, it had to come at the bitter end of the game and likely won't be matched any time soon.
So that's it? Well, yes and no. Yes for now, but there will always be new story missions and Alia and the USS Quantum Leap will fly them. No, because I have an idea for more to do, but not now. For now, I need to get some sleep, been rather sick of late. Until next time kiddies, and yes, there will be one.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
i still find this thread the most entertaining, thx for that...........
Seconded. It's a welcome and refreshing diversion from the same old, same old.
Looking forward to more threads like this!
+respect for blazing your own path!
It's not you- it's me. I just need my space.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
I'm so happy to see that I'm not doing this madness alone! The USS Reliant was one of my favorite ships in the movies, so I was delighted that the Miranda Class was the starter Ship for this game. I hated the fact that I had to leave Her behind so quickly, so now I'm trying to take Her through the game on my newest character.
To the rest of us who are about to die (over and over again), I salute You!
Comments
Well that was a wonderful vacation. What did I do? Well, I played around on Risa, leveled up an AoY toon (she's 60 now and Tier 3 on all her reps except Temporal), started the Temporal rep on my main (it's at Tier 3 too) and got the Vorgon escort. I should REALLY get that trait for this. Random mines to hit your enemies with? YES PLEASE! Oh, and I did some scouting with my main.
So with AoY, 5 regular missions got added. Three in a substory that moves with the player called Yesterday's War, and the last two wrapping up Future Proof. Do they look like a true challenge for the Miranda? Um, hard to say because my main obliterated all comers, as she is apt to do. Even more so in Temporal Reckoning when I accidentally had the game on Normal rather than Advanced. It was not a pretty sight, for them. Muhahahaha.
Anyway, it's time to get back to work. The build hasn't changed at all:
https://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/4omox6/tier_1_forever_midnight_build/
I did swap out the one resist trait with Rapid Support because, um, why not? Anything to help keep this build up. Otherwise, it's time to get back into the Miranda and go a running. I have 5 more missions to run, so I'll update this as necessary. I also got a week off of work (so far) so I've got time to do it. Anyway, the Quantum Leap is back in action. Until next time.
I've done this mission three times now and am finally getting settled into it. The hardest part is the ground section where my main and my AoY characters got their asses handed to them. 23c Romulans on the ground hit HARD. Miner Instabilities are just as bad. 25c Romulans NEVER hit that hard, what the hell Cryptic? Also another note of annoyance is the Doomsday Machine, and the fact that the Hargh'pang, the weapon that has a proc specifically to hurt the Doomsday Machine, doesn't do anything. Fine, it can't KILL the it, I'd be fine with that, but it doesn't do anything, not here, not in Days of Doom. Let it act as a minor slow in Days of Doom and reset the firing sequence here or something! It's a special weapon, let it be SPECIAL for dog's sake.
Anyway, I made a mistake in the last post. I forgot Sunrise and Stormfront, so there were 7 to run. Temporal Front doesn't count because I did it back at level 10, 3 times for the ground set. So now there are 6.
Next time, Vorgon Conclusions, which is a stupid long mission for some reason. Until then.
On to Vorgon Conclusions. Three different enemies, no deaths. The Vorgons are the new kid on the block for this group and they have Harasser Probes, and that's about it. Oh, they are annoying, so annoying, but the Miranda has three tools to deal with them: BFAW, Antimatter Spread and Point Defense. In the end, they aren't even an issue. The Vorgon Battleship isn't even that much of a challenge. It's a tough ship, but considering you have to face it down 3 times in this mission, once without a break and while it has reinforcements, the fact that I didn't die at all should be very telling.
The Tholians make a return, in their 22c forms, which I didn't even bother fighting since they decide to fight the Vorgons too. I gave them a wide birth and let the two groups go at it. And the Vorgons vaporized the bugs. Poor guys. Of course that meant fighting the Vorgons myself, so, um, yeah, I guess I didn't benefit from that one.
And finally the Breen return. Now I had some issues with the Breen, mostly the Plesh Breks and their love of tractor beams. Otherwise the fights were just long and tedious. But that was with the old Torp build, the Midnight build ate them all alive. I did switch out Tachyon Beam for Polarize Hull, just so I didn't need to worry about those tractors, but wow did I knock them around, all of them, even the carrier. I don't think I was ever in any real danger the entire fight. Out of habit I even summoned fleet support at one point, right before the last Breen ship exploded (poor girl didn't even get to see the explosion).
I have noticed that the Miranda is turning better, though I'm not sure how. Maybe flying some cruisers and other not speced ships has made the Miranda SEEM like it's doing better than it is. Running Core of the Matter had my Miranda looking like a T'liss (first time Alia's been in one for a while, kind of) but it turned MUCH better than the starting Romulan ship does in the tutorial, but a lot. Wild and weird how skill points and traits play with a ship's base abilities.
I am concerned that these missions are just plain easy. Maybe it's because I'm a level 60 Eng with a full suite of traits, gear and skills, and these two missions were designed with players far less advanced than that. In other words, I worry I'm coasting and getting bad habits from play. As I said before, Normal isn't hard at all, in fact it should be called "Easy," and it gets most players into trouble because they think they're doing well, then they get into Advanced, or dog forbid, Elite queues and are completely useless. Still, these missions shouldn't be THIS easy for the Miranda on Normal. I'll see how things go once I start running Future Proof.
Next time, though, Terminal Expanse and the Kelvin Klingon Kompany. Er, uh, never mind.
Oddly, I noticed I had another mission in my "Available" tab in the mission journal: Hide and Seek. Which wouldn't be odd, except I'm on a Romulan-Fed. How did it get there? I have no idea. I know I helped another player through said mission once, but I don't think I used the Miranda for it, and if I did, why did the mission stay in the tab? It should have gone away. Very odd.
I did some other cleaning up of the mission journal but that was about it. I wish I had more to say, but there wasn't really much of a challenge in this mission, or any of Yesterday's War. I guess my standards are a bit higher than they were after all.
So with such a brief thing, next time, I'll do Sunrise and Stormfront together, since, you know, they're kind of together. Until then.
I'd actually love to see PWE/C incorporate newer game features such as specialization seating, etc., at least make them universal slots on lower tiers so that if you do indeed choose a lower tier as a higher ranked officer you can make the ship really shine. It's not as if this would be a "game breaking" feature, because lower leveled officers still wouldn't be able to utilize the specialization system since you don't start earning points until much later.
Would definitely go a long way in terms of variety in game, at least. I don't see how giving people more choice is a bad thing.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
On to Sunrise and Stormfront. First, why didn't we try to reverse the effects on the Na'kuhl star BEFORE burying the thingy on Risa? Too many Tholian ships? Not enough sense? Dumb, really, could have staved off a lot of bad stuff, but The Plot demands.
Anyway, this is the first time I've fought the Tholians head on in a mission since Temporal Ambassador (and the first time with a Miranda since The Search for New Romulus). I've fought them in Crystalline Catastrophe and Fleet Alerts, so I'm not unfamiliar how the Miranda reacts in a fight with them. Still, it was a new thing, and I did pretty well, dying twice, once to a damn warp core breach (forgot I STILL haven't gotten the points for Scratch the Paint, do'h!), and once to a combination web, tractor beam and attrition. I got stock on a orb web wall while being tractored by a Recluse and shot at by it and the Orb Weaver. I damn near got away, but at the last second everything went on a cool down and I couldn't recover. Bah.
The most interesting thing to happen was in Sunrise. At one point, you fly into a micro nebula. These usually disable your shields while you're in there, but the Iconian shield was like "nuts to this" and kicked on it's hot restart. That was then removed by the nebula debuff, that was cleared by the hot restart and repeat. It was really odd that the shield just kept turning on and off like that. There's a brief fight with Tholians there, and the shields, as sporadic as they are, did help keep me alive (every other shot hit the shield). I wonder if other micro nebulas work the same way, which is kind of an odd bug. Fun though.
I do like both missions, though I didn't see the connection to Vorgon Conclusions I was expecting. You KNOW Kal Dano dies, you've SEEN his ship before and know where it comes from, can we at least ACKNOWLEDGE this fact? It was fine when the mission was first released and they didn't have Vorgon Conclusions, but we do now, so go add the dialog options. Or maybe I just missed it, that's been known to happen.
Next time, er, Time and Tide, and complaining. Because why not?
The whole tiering system in itself needs to be revamped IMO- they need to just get rid of ship tiering and make the focus on specializations/skills and add the bonuses to base hulls accordingly, rather than limiting the availability of boff slots and other things and making them dependent on the latest content releases/tiers. This would "balance" the game, because no matter what hull you choose, the amount of specialization points you've invested/skills and your level of skill as a player would ultimately determine your survivability- rather than how much money you spend in the C-Store for the "biggest hull" available.
I'm not really a fan of EVE online, having played for a few years, but I can tell you this is one system they did RIGHT. In that game, you can buy the biggest, most expensive ship available if you want- but if you lack the skill points or just plain skill to pilot it, you'll lose your ship. (permanently) STO would really shine with such a system- and specialization/skills/boff choices would be a meaningful place to start with this, IMO.
Simply strip out the "tiers" and make all ships with base stats, then the specializations/skills/boff choices would improve upon that (hull plating, shields, etc. to increase the "base" stats) in order to increase survivability. Make all boff slots open for specialization choices, so that they're not restricted to the content they were released with. (if you question this, try slotting an Intel officer in a AOY ship) That's yet another restriction I have yet to understand- a lot of people argue here that a "bridge console" is only capable of "X", so if you put "Y" officer in there they can't use it, which is ridiculous IMO. Why? Because it's a PC and not a Mac? Seriously? Yeah, I think there should be more thought involved here.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
Time and Tide features the first time you actually fight Krenim in the game, and they're, not so bad. I think the Iconian shield was TRIBBLE with their powers with it's debuff cleanse, so I wasn't getting hit nearly as hard as I probably should have. It did TRIBBLE with my turn rate and I think it effected my damage output, but beyond that, nothing I couldn't ultimately handle.
Two deaths though. Both to the Na'kuhl, specifically the Daemosh destroyer. I don't think the ship itself is really dangerous, but the distortions do the one thing I can never let happen with a Miranda: They made the fight longer. The longer the fight, the more likely I am to die, and die I did. Twice, TWICE, I was killed by one of these things, in two separate fights. Neither with backup, always a bad sign. Once to a plasma torp and once to attrition.
Worse, my controls got locked! I got locked into a hard right turn. I could kind of get out of it, straighting out for a bit, but then right back to the right. Made the last Daemosh fight harder than it had any right to be. I got through it and it fixed itself in the last space map, but damn that was annoying.
So finally, I want to complain about the time travel storyline as a whole. As I said, Midnight is the END of Star Trek Online as it's built. Every mission, in someway, ties back to the Iconians, and while the last story line is the Iconian War, the entire GAME is part of the Iconian War technically. The time travel stuff feels, um, tacked on as a result.
The fix would have been easy: Give the TOS characters their own, full length storyline that runs parallel to the main one where the effects of the Temporal Cold War are actually explored, instead it's glossed over with silly probes and that's it. I get the time crunch, but still, more effort would have been nice.
Which brings us to Future Proof and the fact that it feels at least as hollow as the Iconian War felt early on. Worse, honestly, because after Temporal Front, there should have been at least a couple more missions, if not more, establishing the extent of the conflict, but instead, we zip straight to the ending, with only the brief, but unremarkable, Yesterday's War storyline to give us any context. I really never felt the conflict was going anywhere and then suddenly it was over. OR WAS IT? It was.
Which is to say that while I was pleased with much of the content that came with AoY and Future Proof (no mission in Future Proof is a dud, really), there's so much being missed out on that I'm left unimpressed by the time travel stuff as a whole. It still feels completely tacked on to a story that's already ended. Still, it's a story mission so Alia will go through it on her Miranda.
Next time will NOT be Temporal Front, because I did that mission already, three times, back at level 10. No need to repeat it really, I might later, but not for this run. Next time, I think I'll run the last two missions, Temporal Reckoning and Ragnarok together since, really, they are two parts of the same mission, just like Sunrise and Stormbound (not Stormfront, bleh). Until then kiddies.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
First is Temporal Reckoning. 3 deaths. Two were against the Na'kuhl battleship as part of that first phase of the mission. Distortions = long fight = dead Miranda. Painful, but I got him clean in the end by summoning Delta Alliance Reinforcements and they vaporized the damn thing. Was a beauty to behold. The last death came against the Terran fleet, mostly because I went in first. Heh, I'm just too aggressive for my own good sometimes. Oddly this is the same place my main died. I accidentally ran this mission on my main on Normal difficulty, which meant I devoured everything in my path. The Miranda had a much harder time of it, which is the big difference between a fully loaded end game ship and a Tier 1. Stark and terrible.
Then came Ragnarok. The first thing I didn't notice on my main's run through is the constant hull damage you take on the map. This was both very bad (13k hull, and losing 150 every second, bad, bad, bad) and very good (on damage, threatening stance adds 5% max hull, up to 10 times). AKA, I was running max hull for the entire mission because of this, that's GREAT, aside from it only being 20k (21k with hardpoints), and the fact that EVERYTHING was pissed at me. The first phase of the fight resulted in 4 deaths, 4! Even all of Midnight only managed to rack up 3. Okay, so I figure I need to control my threat a bit, so during the ground portion I swapped over from BFAW to Overload. If I can only tick one target off at a time, the others can take some of the load.
Phase 3 proved that this mission is the hardest in the game with a Miranda. SIX deaths. That's a total of 10 for ONE mission guys. On Normal too. Many of the deaths were warp core breaches, which isn't unsurprising. Attrition did much of the work as well, with the expanse debuff making it hard to recover quickly while everyone was shooting at me. Rough, rough fight, the entire way. The weirdest death had "Target Auxillary At Will 3" take me down. I'm not sure if that's an actual ability or not, but I did notice my aux being knocked off line more than usual in the mission, and this makes me wonder what was really going on here. I should note that after the Expanse is dissipated, I didn't die again. It was all to defend the Ent J.
In any case, I suspect that 10 deaths is likely the record, even vs the other missions with many deaths. And I had help, which often means fewer deaths over all. I was constantly at my max achievable hull with the best non-epic gear I could haul around. I was astonished at how hard it ended up being, finally a mission to match the challenge that I expected for this project. Of course, it had to come at the bitter end of the game and likely won't be matched any time soon.
So that's it? Well, yes and no. Yes for now, but there will always be new story missions and Alia and the USS Quantum Leap will fly them. No, because I have an idea for more to do, but not now. For now, I need to get some sleep, been rather sick of late. Until next time kiddies, and yes, there will be one.
Seconded. It's a welcome and refreshing diversion from the same old, same old.
Looking forward to more threads like this!
+respect for blazing your own path!
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
To the rest of us who are about to die (over and over again), I salute You!