Sompek was cool until they got the bright idea to make it a 14-day grind where the reward is a cheap, hastily made ugly texture swap of an old similarly ugly weapon and not even account-wide unlike every other event.
The issues with the KM are:
-the ship is aggressively suicidal (and can also move despite supposedly having lost all power) and NO-ONE like to protect a suicidal vital NPC who is actively working its way to the Darwin Award in any game
-if you don't have the Protomatter console, you can barely heal the stupid thing
-some enemies are clearly not designed for an escort mission (like the Undine who spam their freaking bubbles and the Borg and their shield-annihilating beams. If they are in the onslaught wave, consider yourself boned)
-not sure if it's just an impression, but some enemies seem to hit harder than anywhere else
Having the ship move could be acceptable if it was trying to stay away from trouble, which it definitely doesn't.
Personally, if we had the choice, I'd target and destroy the darn ship because it's clearly an automated drone used by an enemy faction to frustrate and kill you.
'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.'
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.
First two waves, no problem. Third wave, two Borg cubes and a swarm of spheres... And the Maru parks right in the middle of them. We're not worrying about it being shot, but dying from explosion damage. Turns out that's disabled until wave six. Fourth wave, Tholians. No problem. We can take them... until the screen goes orange and my shields are gone. Pan down to see the frakking Doomsday Weapon sitting there with the Maru and it's genetically engineered lemming for a captain sitting right on top of it. The rest of the match was lost in a haze of yelling and swearing until it blew up on wave six.
First two waves, no problem.
Third wave, two Borg cubes and a swarm of spheres... And the Maru parks right in the middle of them.
We're not worrying about it being shot, but dying from explosion damage. Turns out that's disabled until wave six.
Fourth wave, Tholians. No problem. We can take them... until the screen goes orange and my shields are gone. Pan down to see the frakking Doomsday Weapon sitting there with the Maru and it's genetically engineered lemming for a captain sitting right on top of it.
The rest of the match was lost in a haze of yelling and swearing until it blew up on wave six.
It's funny, with Sompek people started Threads about 'how far did you get'. For this we don't. At least in Sompek we are in control of our own destiny, but here, the ship seems to want to die as quickly as possible.
'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.'
You can control your destiny. But it takes some effort and thought. You really need to bring the protomatter console to be able to heal the KM. It will generally keep it alive for most of a wave, no matter what is hitting it.
However, in close to 25 runs now I seem to be the only one bringing it
I like the overall idea of the KM event/stf though I find it is kinda one of the few stfs that might actually benefit from a dedicated tanking player to keep the attention off the KM. Though I also find many don't seem to heal the KM at all either hull or shield healing instead holding their healing abilities for themselves.
I think one big issue when comparing the KM event/stf to the Sopek event is that in Sopek the match ends when your party dies, compared to KM it is when specifically KM ship dies. As such it is alot more likely that your stf will end compared to Sopek, since even if you or another player die so long as the others in your group are alive the stf continues.
I would not mind if they implemented some sort of downed-state mechanic for the KM ship that allows you a short period of time for you, or other players in the group to return the downed KM ship to an active state. Such as you have to heal the downed KM-ship up to 50% hp to return it to active state within a duration after it enters into that downed state, and then maybe having a limit of the number of times the KM-ship can go into the downed-state before the mission ends.
I'm thinking I'll skip it this time around. The character I'm playing the most used some...lets call it "unorthadox" tactics when she did the Maru in her backstory, and the rewards aren't really cool enough to make me want to embrace the dissonance.
In her backstory that I actually wrote out in her profile, Millie ordered each burning klink hulk tractored, micro-jump to low warp for a second, and fling the multi-megaton pile of metal on a ballistic path for nearby klingon colonies, and at least three for Qo'nos. The kinks could either intercept the now kinetic-kill impactors, or keep attacking Federation ships. The review board found it rather...disturbing that she considers attempted genocide to be a legitimate combat strategy.
Then again, hers is the ship mentioned in my sig, so nobody should be surprised.
"So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again."
-Dedication plaque of the Federation Starship U.S.S. Merkava
You can control your destiny. But it takes some effort and thought. You really need to bring the protomatter console to be able to heal the KM. It will generally keep it alive for most of a wave, no matter what is hitting it.
However, in close to 25 runs now I seem to be the only one bringing it
Where do you get a protomatter console? I have never heard of that or even know what it is.
You can control your destiny. But it takes some effort and thought. You really need to bring the protomatter console to be able to heal the KM. It will generally keep it alive for most of a wave, no matter what is hitting it.
However, in close to 25 runs now I seem to be the only one bringing it
Where do you get a protomatter console? I have never heard of that or even know what it is.
Can you be more specific about what claim of mine needs factual support?
My reputation active power shield healing sphere bubble stays greyed out, not sure the conditions behind it getting locked out.
Protomatter console is a super powerful ability that greatly helps healing in the absence of other boosts, without which regular haz emitters, TSS, ST1 do very little to offset some really high spike damage to KM.
The speed up condition at full throttle is announced in the mission audio, as is some other 'weapon' based condition.
A broad-siding ship will fire constantly, while narrow arc under those conditions has limited window at full throttle.
The other bugs are well known by the community. I don't know if the ec exchange has been addressed yet in some hot fix or not, but the new tailor glitch has persisted.
I hate this event with a passion. The reward console looks like quite a nice bit of gear i could possibly get use of but the mission is a pile of TRIBBLE.
Why have a disabled ship flying all over the map? It's hard enough to see anyway as it's tiny, plus all the visual spam (another thing STO is seriously in need of sorting out) makes it even harder to see.
Honestly, the last mission i tried we have the Borg in round 2 and the KM flew straight at a pair of cubes and got killed by twin core breaches. The enemies are not the challenge here it's the idiotic NPC we have to nanny.
They should rename it "Protect the dumbass KM whilst it flies into every enemy it can see with it's magical NO POWER engines and gets itself killed".
I'm all for a challenging mission but this is just plain infuriating, not challenging.
> @discojer said:
> You can control your destiny. But it takes some effort and thought. You really need to bring the protomatter console to be able to heal the KM. It will generally keep it alive for most of a wave, no matter what is hitting it.
>
> However, in close to 25 runs now I seem to be the only one bringing it
Sol Defense set 3 piece works better than that trash console.
While I agree the protomatter console is not needed it’s not trash as the sol defense set 3 doesn’t work as well. It does work but the set 3 heal is a lot weaker and comes at expense of 3 slots against the protoamtters 1 slot. Better yet take both and stagger each 1 min apart.
I agree with you on forward arc as I use the very slow carriers as a forward arc torpedo boat without problems.
In my humble opinion, No-Win Scenario was much more fun and a superior PvE compared to Kobiyashi-Maru. The good thing is that the reward unlocks account wide after purchase. Still, I find this PvE to be rife with problems No-Win Scenario didn't have, like the suicidal freighter Captain. I know this is an attempt at a space version of the very popular and successful Arena of Sompek, but I would rather have NWS back.
In my humble opinion, No-Win Scenario was much more fun and a superior PvE compared to Kobiyashi-Maru. Furthermore, I know of noone on STO who has only one toon. So explain to me why the Event vouchers aren't available to ALL toons on an account? It's one voucher every 20 hours, so you are stuck using whichever toon was the first to acquire it. Unless the reward unlocks account wide after purchase with three vouchers, this "Event" is an insult and an utter waste of time. No, it is one more thing, it extremely convincing evidence to completely ignore all future "Events" of this kind, weekend or otherwise.
On a different but related topic, I really like the design of the KM ship and wonder if there's any chance we might get it as a skin for Miranda or as a light freighter on it's own?
I agree I quite like how it looks, and in the wiki it is listed as a light cruiser, but to me looking at the light cruiser (Miranda, Centaur, ShiKahr classes) it does not really have that similar a design. Now compare it to the Heavy cruiser design (Cheyenne, Dakota, Stargazer classes) an it has quite a few similarities to the Kobayashi Maru.
We can talk about how annoying the stf is, and how weird the KM acts. Yet how is that going to help the Devs improve the stf for next year. What kind of changes do some players think would help make the stf more interesting, fun, and less of a pain in the TRIBBLE to play?
Mine would be to rework how the KM works abit. Such as making it that when the Maru is reduced to zero hull points it enters into a warp-core breach state, and that the players in the group have a certain timeframe to bring the Maru's hull points back up to 25-50% to avert the breach, and the timeframe the group/players have to do this might be linked to how many breaches they have averted previously.
Comments
The issues with the KM are:
-the ship is aggressively suicidal (and can also move despite supposedly having lost all power) and NO-ONE like to protect a suicidal vital NPC who is actively working its way to the Darwin Award in any game
-if you don't have the Protomatter console, you can barely heal the stupid thing
-some enemies are clearly not designed for an escort mission (like the Undine who spam their freaking bubbles and the Borg and their shield-annihilating beams. If they are in the onslaught wave, consider yourself boned)
-not sure if it's just an impression, but some enemies seem to hit harder than anywhere else
Having the ship move could be acceptable if it was trying to stay away from trouble, which it definitely doesn't.
Personally, if we had the choice, I'd target and destroy the darn ship because it's clearly an automated drone used by an enemy faction to frustrate and kill you.
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.'
#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!"
Third wave, two Borg cubes and a swarm of spheres... And the Maru parks right in the middle of them.
We're not worrying about it being shot, but dying from explosion damage. Turns out that's disabled until wave six.
Fourth wave, Tholians. No problem. We can take them... until the screen goes orange and my shields are gone. Pan down to see the frakking Doomsday Weapon sitting there with the Maru and it's genetically engineered lemming for a captain sitting right on top of it.
The rest of the match was lost in a haze of yelling and swearing until it blew up on wave six.
Try having the Doomsday machine show up wave 2
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.'
However, in close to 25 runs now I seem to be the only one bringing it
I think one big issue when comparing the KM event/stf to the Sopek event is that in Sopek the match ends when your party dies, compared to KM it is when specifically KM ship dies. As such it is alot more likely that your stf will end compared to Sopek, since even if you or another player die so long as the others in your group are alive the stf continues.
I would not mind if they implemented some sort of downed-state mechanic for the KM ship that allows you a short period of time for you, or other players in the group to return the downed KM ship to an active state. Such as you have to heal the downed KM-ship up to 50% hp to return it to active state within a duration after it enters into that downed state, and then maybe having a limit of the number of times the KM-ship can go into the downed-state before the mission ends.
Then again, hers is the ship mentioned in my sig, so nobody should be surprised.
-Dedication plaque of the Federation Starship U.S.S. Merkava
Where do you get a protomatter console? I have never heard of that or even know what it is.
From the 7th anniversary Lukari science ship: https://sto.gamepedia.com/Alliance_Multi-Mission_Systems_Set#Console_-_Universal_-_Protomatter_Field_Projector
My reputation active power shield healing sphere bubble stays greyed out, not sure the conditions behind it getting locked out.
Protomatter console is a super powerful ability that greatly helps healing in the absence of other boosts, without which regular haz emitters, TSS, ST1 do very little to offset some really high spike damage to KM.
The speed up condition at full throttle is announced in the mission audio, as is some other 'weapon' based condition.
A broad-siding ship will fire constantly, while narrow arc under those conditions has limited window at full throttle.
The other bugs are well known by the community. I don't know if the ec exchange has been addressed yet in some hot fix or not, but the new tailor glitch has persisted.
Why have a disabled ship flying all over the map? It's hard enough to see anyway as it's tiny, plus all the visual spam (another thing STO is seriously in need of sorting out) makes it even harder to see.
Honestly, the last mission i tried we have the Borg in round 2 and the KM flew straight at a pair of cubes and got killed by twin core breaches. The enemies are not the challenge here it's the idiotic NPC we have to nanny.
They should rename it "Protect the dumbass KM whilst it flies into every enemy it can see with it's magical NO POWER engines and gets itself killed".
I'm all for a challenging mission but this is just plain infuriating, not challenging.
I agree with you on forward arc as I use the very slow carriers as a forward arc torpedo boat without problems.
It *is* an account unlock.
Thanks, you are sooo helpful.
I agree I quite like how it looks, and in the wiki it is listed as a light cruiser, but to me looking at the light cruiser (Miranda, Centaur, ShiKahr classes) it does not really have that similar a design. Now compare it to the Heavy cruiser design (Cheyenne, Dakota, Stargazer classes) an it has quite a few similarities to the Kobayashi Maru.
Mine would be to rework how the KM works abit. Such as making it that when the Maru is reduced to zero hull points it enters into a warp-core breach state, and that the players in the group have a certain timeframe to bring the Maru's hull points back up to 25-50% to avert the breach, and the timeframe the group/players have to do this might be linked to how many breaches they have averted previously.