Since no player is ever in an elite queue on the PS4, I have no nothing to compare against so I though I'd post the question here?
Tried the Tholian red alerts when my main was just level 55 and my Pathfinder T6 had mostly Mark X items. Tried about 20 red alerts with randoms and none were ever completed. Stopped trying the red alerts figuring I need to work on my ship more.
Now 5 characters later with two rank 60 and having the Pathfinder, Andromeda and the Heavy Carrier Escort bundle, I decided to try out the Borg red alert event. All five character with their respective ships can handle Advance queues. I occassionally get wiped with the escort but they are my newest ships with mix of MarkX-XII items and no sets. The Pathfinder and Andromeda use the Solanae set. Still have a good ways to go on repuataton sets. My Andromeda is strongest defensive as would be expected.
Tried five alerts so far to test out how my escorts would do. My teammates and I would take out the 4 groups but never get close to taking down the mother ship. In one mission, every time we died, we would get spawned in the middle of 20 or more Borg probes so that mission was a complete wipe. Tried my Andromeda last night and I lead the group against the mothership. We had it down to 11% damage and something wiped me out in 1 sec over top the mother ship. At that point I had gone most of the mission with no deaths. Think I was the only one. I thought we were going to win it. Then going back, every 30s sec over the top of the mother ship, something would wipe me out. Tried it like 5 times over the next few minutes but the mothership was up to 37% and the mission ended.
Are the red alerts designed like an Elite queue mission as they generally seem unwinnable with general ship builds and randoms? I mean I know I still have a go ways to go on my ship builds but that it going to take a good bit of time to happen. Yet I generally have no problems with advance queues in any of my ships as long as I try to play smart and do a decent setup on my ships with what I have.
Red Alerts are pretty easy and are nowhere near the difficulty of Elite Queues. Two or three Players go right and the rest go left through the Escort groups. After through them, you should have three or four Escort groups done as you get to the Capital Ship group.
Sometimes a few will go direct at the Capital Ships. Stay out of the way of the Web Cannon. A decent DPS group can finish this in 5 minutes or so. In the pre Delta Rising days you could run out of time doing the Tholian Red Alert. With the explosion of DPS and all the Traits and Abilities this has become trivialised.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
I don't know what it's like on console.. I have never played the console version of STO. I can tell you that on PC they're not hard at all, as others have said they can easily be done solo by most experienced players.
In fact, I have been playing STO for years and I can honestly say I have never seen a Red Alert fail. The only way I know it's possible is that I have heard people say so on the forum. Maybe it's harder on console, but I doubt it's THAT much harder. It might be useful to post your build and maybe we can help you improve your damage output. With the ships and equipment you have, you should be able to carry your team through a Red Alert.
Red alerts are somewhere between normal and advanced. Nowhere near elite. They are also doable solo. Before they made us queue up, we PC folks have been soloing them for ages now...and not just the DPS chasers.
Pretty much this. Unless they significantly buffed them up for consoles...
Anyway, in Borg RA, if you don't have overwhelming firepower to just blow the whole thing up in 10 seconds...
The mothership fires a nasty torpedo that does kill you almost no matter what (nothing short of "immunity to all damage" will work if it hits.) fortunately it's big, flashy. relatively slow and can be shot down. The ship also periodically releases probes and spheres that can repair it. Killing them is obviously a good idea.
And in Tholian RA, although it's IMO the harder of the two, it's simple: clean up the smaller ships first, mind the webs and try not to be caught by torps while at 0% shields... Stuff that cleans movement debuffs and Engineering Team are neat but not really 100% necessary.
For tholians, they like to take your weapons offline. Until you have a space set that repairs offline automatically or that has a weapon capacitor, you can use a weapon battery to fix this.
I do remember blowing up in the Tholian alert back in 2014 when all I had was the free level 40 escort. With T6 ships it almost never happens unless I get teleported and then web cannoned while evasive maneuvers is on cooldown.
Red alerts are somewhere between normal and advanced. Nowhere near elite. They are also doable solo. Before they made us queue up, we PC folks have been soloing them for ages now...and not just the DPS chasers.
Like the man said. On the console power creep is less visible but with a basic 10k dps they're very easy.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
Red Alerts are all different levels. The trick is to look at your "playing at" level in the top left corner of the screen. If it says lvl 10, then that Red Alert is lvl 10 and you've been reduced down to that level. If it says lvl 60, then you've been buffed up to that level, but your equipment hasn't. This is assuming you aren't already lvl 60 or lvl 10 or whatever level the Alert happens to be.
The better your gear and level, the easier it is to solo-run lower level Alerts. Lower level alerts seem to be closer to sol system, going up in level and difficulty the further from Sol you get. Some of the most difficult are in Delta Quad, for instance.
Elite PVE instances are different. If you have the best gear you can have AND are running an Elite PVE queue, you might be able to do it. Maybe. With luck. But I wouldn't try that with one that requires 10 to 20 people, because you will probably never be able finish it or else spend 24 hours trying.
Point: if you have trouble doing missions, you can always reduce the playing difficulty of the game under Options. I don't think this will affect PVEs or Alerts. Never tried it.
Red Alerts are all different levels. The trick is to look at your "playing at" level in the top left corner of the screen. If it says lvl 10, then that Red Alert is lvl 10 and you've been reduced down to that level. If it says lvl 60, then you've been buffed up to that level, but your equipment hasn't. This is assuming you aren't already lvl 60 or lvl 10 or whatever level the Alert happens to be.
The better your gear and level, the easier it is to solo-run lower level Alerts. Lower level alerts seem to be closer to sol system, going up in level and difficulty the further from Sol you get. Some of the most difficult are in Delta Quad, for instance.
Elite PVE instances are different. If you have the best gear you can have AND are running an Elite PVE queue, you might be able to do it. Maybe. With luck. But I wouldn't try that with one that requires 10 to 20 people, because you will probably never be able finish it or else spend 24 hours trying.
Point: if you have trouble doing missions, you can always reduce the playing difficulty of the game under Options. I don't think this will affect PVEs or Alerts. Never tried it.
Borg and Tholian RA's are set at level 50. Don't know where you got the idea that they go lower!
"You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
Borg and Tholian RA's are set at level 50. Don't know where you got the idea that they go lower!
Borg and Tholians, sure. but for some stupid reason, I was actually thinking of Deep Space Encounters, which use the same symbol (or used to) on the map - not the button. An Error easily made. and I was just throwing levels out there as examples, not saying they were this.
For tholians, they like to take your weapons offline. Until you have a space set that repairs offline automatically or that has a weapon capacitor, you can use a weapon battery to fix this.
Or emergency Power to Weapons. Which is good to have on ship builds anyways.
The Borg Unimatrix Ship does have a one hit kill weapon. Its a giant slow moving plasma ball that comes from one of the ends of the ship. That may have been what was hitting you. It similar to a heavy plasma torpedo though in that if you see it coming you can target it, shoot it, and destroy it before it touches you.
The Temporal Marauders Red Alert disappeared completely when Cryptic changed the entire Red Alert paradigm to PVE Queues (that they still have not announced or indicated ONE word about in Patch Notes).
These Torpedoes from the Unimaxtrix you can see coming and meander about slowly. They are unlike the Invisi-torp of Death that one may run into in ISA.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
I have to check the level but I haven't played a Tholian or Borg red alert yet on the PS4 that has succeeded. That's about 25 fails between the two types.
On the Borg one, the probes seem to respawn as fast as you kill them around the mothers ship. Tried five so far. No go.
Comments
Sometimes a few will go direct at the Capital Ships. Stay out of the way of the Web Cannon. A decent DPS group can finish this in 5 minutes or so. In the pre Delta Rising days you could run out of time doing the Tholian Red Alert. With the explosion of DPS and all the Traits and Abilities this has become trivialised.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
In fact, I have been playing STO for years and I can honestly say I have never seen a Red Alert fail. The only way I know it's possible is that I have heard people say so on the forum. Maybe it's harder on console, but I doubt it's THAT much harder. It might be useful to post your build and maybe we can help you improve your damage output. With the ships and equipment you have, you should be able to carry your team through a Red Alert.
Anyway, in Borg RA, if you don't have overwhelming firepower to just blow the whole thing up in 10 seconds...
The mothership fires a nasty torpedo that does kill you almost no matter what (nothing short of "immunity to all damage" will work if it hits.) fortunately it's big, flashy. relatively slow and can be shot down. The ship also periodically releases probes and spheres that can repair it. Killing them is obviously a good idea.
And in Tholian RA, although it's IMO the harder of the two, it's simple: clean up the smaller ships first, mind the webs and try not to be caught by torps while at 0% shields... Stuff that cleans movement debuffs and Engineering Team are neat but not really 100% necessary.
I do remember blowing up in the Tholian alert back in 2014 when all I had was the free level 40 escort. With T6 ships it almost never happens unless I get teleported and then web cannoned while evasive maneuvers is on cooldown.
Like the man said. On the console power creep is less visible but with a basic 10k dps they're very easy.
The better your gear and level, the easier it is to solo-run lower level Alerts. Lower level alerts seem to be closer to sol system, going up in level and difficulty the further from Sol you get. Some of the most difficult are in Delta Quad, for instance.
Elite PVE instances are different. If you have the best gear you can have AND are running an Elite PVE queue, you might be able to do it. Maybe. With luck. But I wouldn't try that with one that requires 10 to 20 people, because you will probably never be able finish it or else spend 24 hours trying.
Point: if you have trouble doing missions, you can always reduce the playing difficulty of the game under Options. I don't think this will affect PVEs or Alerts. Never tried it.
Borg and Tholian RA's are set at level 50. Don't know where you got the idea that they go lower!
Borg and Tholians, sure. but for some stupid reason, I was actually thinking of Deep Space Encounters, which use the same symbol (or used to) on the map - not the button. An Error easily made. and I was just throwing levels out there as examples, not saying they were this.
My character Tsin'xing
These Torpedoes from the Unimaxtrix you can see coming and meander about slowly. They are unlike the Invisi-torp of Death that one may run into in ISA.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
I have to check the level but I haven't played a Tholian or Borg red alert yet on the PS4 that has succeeded. That's about 25 fails between the two types.
On the Borg one, the probes seem to respawn as fast as you kill them around the mothers ship. Tried five so far. No go.
My character Tsin'xing