STO ps4

ashtin1979

So much has changed since I played a good bit ago in the pc. Now I have my ps4 and am trying to play the game in here only to find out people are so rude and just as nasty as can be. As of right now I have been trying to find out how to get modules to upgrade my ship equipment only to be told that I can only upgrade them using those phoenix tokens and they are no longer in the game.

I was then informed I could buy them off the exchange but I don’t have that kind of credits. Another player told me to save my dilthium and all I have right now is 28k refined and about 40k unrefined. The game has a current cap of only 8k per day. So I guess until they introduce another way to upgrade the gear then for the time being I am stuck at MKII gear. This is really frustrating. It also doesn’t help that the console population doesn’t seem to be as large as the pc population.

Any ideas on what I can do in order to get this gear upgraded? Other wise I’ll have to just buy a bunch of those green ones from the shipyard guy as I make money from repeating quests.

davefenestrator

Don't use the green ones, they use much more Dilithium per tech point than the blue or purple ones (improved, superior).

You could always spend a little real-world money, buy lock box keys, sell the keys for millions of credits.

You could also raise up your R&D skill level in Beams and craft your own. It's best to get to 20 so you get more "critical hits" in crafting and get 2 tech upgrades instead of 1, but crafting 1 blue is much better for upgrading than buying and using 2 green with almost twice the dil.

ashtin1979

> @davefenestrator said:
> Don't use the green ones, they use much more Dilithium per tech point than the blue or purple ones (improved, superior).
>
> You could always spend a little real-world money, buy lock box keys, sell the keys for millions of credits.
>
> You could also raise up your R&D skill level in Beams and craft your own. It's best to get to 20 so you get more "critical hits" in crafting and get 2 tech upgrades instead of 1, but crafting 1 blue is much better for upgrading than buying and using 2 green with almost twice the dil.

I’m working on my crafting now but it’s taking for -ever.

davefenestrator

Be sure to do admiralty so you build up your stock of mats. That will also get you credits and dil.

ashtin1979

I do that. I just wish there was a faster refining process.

davefenestrator

If you also create a Romulan or Klingon captain:
- You get to play through their unique story episodes before their stories merge with the Federation ones
- You get to fly new ships (note: Romulans can't fly T5 or T6 ships of the Federation or KDF, just low-level ones)
- You can split your time between captains so you don't generate more Dil than you can refine with the one captain
- You can do Admiralty on two captains at once, and they can both work on different R&D skills
- Klingons and Romulans who choose KDF over Federation get "marauding" duty officer missions that generate contraband. Trade contraband in to the security officer to get dil

admrenlarreck

Phoenix upgrades are the third best way to upgrade first being the ones from the keyring bundle, second being the Omega upgrades. All three of which are only available at limited times through the year.

When using any upgrades it is always best to upgrade from MK II if possible. Reason being you get a lot more chances to upgrade the quality of the item, for cheaper cost than upgrading from mk XII.

jaguarskx

Welcome back to STO.

First off, I would have to say that expecting the number of players on the PS4 to be anywhere near the number of players on the PC is rather unrealistic because the game is only a little over 1 year on the consoles and STO seems to be more of a niche MMO rather than one that has a broad base appeal.

With regards to upgrading gear, you need the upgrade kits and you also should use accelerators; they are optional, but it is generally recommended you use them if you can afford to buy them. The are many different types of upgrade kits any the upgrade specific types of gear. For example, beam upgrade kits are for beam weapons, science upgrade kits are for deflector dishes, and science consoles, ground upgrade kits are for both ground weapons and armor, shield upgrade kits are for ship shields and person shield, etc. These upgrade kits range from basic kits which can be purchase, all the way to superior upgrade kits. The general recommendation is to use superior upgrade kits because they give the most Tech Points (which is required to upgrade anything) for each refined dilithium it will cost you to actually use the upgrade kits.

Superior upgrade kits must be crafted and you will need to advance your specific crafting school up to level 15 before these become available to craft. They also require very rare crafting materials which can be obtained as rewards from certain Admiralty System missions (available starting at level 52), or from running Advanced and Elite end game queue missions. The Admiralty System is basically like Duty Office (Doff) missions, except they are for your ships. For each ship that you own at level 52 and thereafter you will get a single "Admiralty Card" for that ship... but that is a different topic...

Accelerators are boosts you can apply to the upgrade process whenever you use an upgrade kit (hopefully a Superior kit). There are two types Technology Boost and Research Boosts; they come in two flavors - 1.5x and 2x; which multiplies the tech points / quality improvement % provided by the upgrade kit by either 1.5x or 2x. There is only one source for accelerators; they can only be obtained from the R&D Packs purchased from the C-Store for 300 Zen or 1,000 Zen for a 4-pack. There are one or two missions in the Delta Quadrant story arc that will reward an accelerator, but only when you complete the mission(s) for the 1st time. Naturally, the upgrade kits and accelerators can be bought and sold on the exchange.

Tech Points is kinda straight forward, each piece of gear needs a certain amount of tech points before it can be upgraded to the next mark level, the higher the mark level the more tech points are need to upgrade to the next level. Quality improvement % is more complex; basically the higher the mark level the lower the % each kit upgrade will provide. The same applies to the current quality level of the gear; the better the quality the lower the % each upgrade kit will be applied to the total chance of improving the quality when upgrading to the next mark level. This % can drop below 1%, the upgrade window only displays whole %; no decimals. This means you may need to apply several upgrade kits before you see the % chance increase by 1%.

If you are playing the game on a budget or do not really have the time or inclination to really grind for resources in the game, then my advice would be to simply take an existing very rare gear that you like and upgrade it to Mk XIV which is the highest mark level. A weapon upgraded from Mk XII to Mk XIV will get slightly more than a 50% increase in base damage. Attempting to push something to Epic quality can cost tens of millions of EC and tens of thousands of refined dilithium. Therefore, epic quality gear is not for the "space poor:".

---

The best way to refine more dil is to play more characters, but that depends on how much free time you have and how much of that you are willing to devote to the game. Once a character reaches level 50 you will have an easier and quicker way grind for dil ore because of the many options available to you. The Voth Battlezone (ground combat) is probably the easiest and quickest way to get dil ore as long as you know what to do. But that is only dil ore, not refined dil. So create more characters; do so one at a time to easy your way through it; don't create a 3rd character until you have at least advanced the 2nd character to level 50. Having 3 characters means you can potentially refine up to 24k dil per day.

A good way to get dil ore is to create a KDF character or a Romulan character and choosing to side with the KDF instead of Fed. The KDF have Force Labor (military) missions where you can get 500 dil in 8 hours with 4 prisoners. Your brig can hold up to 20 prisoners so with a full complement of prisoners you can queue up 5 of these missions (as long as you can find the missions in sector space). Humans, Vulcans, Telarites and Bolian prisoners are the best because none of their traits increases the risk of failure. At best there is a 3% chance of a mission failure. Additionally, at best there is a 9% chance of critical success which rewards 1,500 dil instead of 500 dil. There are also many raid missions (marauder) that can reward both prisoners and contraband most of them take 45 minutes to complete. The better the quality of your Duty Officers (Doff) used for these types of Doff missions, the better your chance of critical success. Each faction has a "Turnover Contraband" mission where you turn 5 contraband for 2,000 dil... I am pretty sure you are familiar with this mission by now.

I have invested a lot of time and resources into my KDF and KDF aligned Romulan characters to get a lot of rare and very rare Doffs (my characters have at least 300 Doff slots). On average, after turning in Doff missions I can usually get at least 20 contraband per day, per character. My best outcome was 45 contraband with one character in one day... but at least 75% of the Doffs I have on that character were very rare Doffs. I sell excess contraband from time typically for 8 million to 9 million for a stack of 250 contraband, but this is on the PC not the console. The economy is more inflated in the PC version of STO... sure you can sell stuff for a higher price on "PC STO", but that also means it costs more to buy as well.

---

If you are looking for a steady stream of EC, then I recommend you do Tour The Galaxy once you reach level 50 at that point each system you must fly to will rewards you with 25k EC (the lower your rank the lower the reward). With a typical Mk XII warp core you should be able to get 500k per day once you figure out a good route. Visiting all the systems within the 15 minute time limit will grant you the max reward of 925k EC. However, you need reputation to do that so it is something you have to work for if you want it.


Anyway... time to take my flu medication and fall asleep while playing Mirror Invasion on the PC version of STO.

ashtin1979

> @jaguarskx said:
> Welcome back to STO.
>
> First off, I would have to say that expecting the number of players on the PS4 to be anywhere near the number of players on the PC is rather unrealistic because the game is only a little over 1 year on the consoles and STO seems to be more of a niche MMO rather than one that has a broad base appeal.
>
> With regards to upgrading gear, you need the upgrade kits and you also should use accelerators; they are optional, but it is generally recommended you use them if you can afford to buy them. The are many different types of upgrade kits any the upgrade specific types of gear. For example, beam upgrade kits are for beam weapons, science upgrade kits are for deflector dishes, and science consoles, ground upgrade kits are for both ground weapons and armor, shield upgrade kits are for ship shields and person shield, etc. These upgrade kits range from basic kits which can be purchase, all the way to superior upgrade kits. The general recommendation is to use superior upgrade kits because they give the most Tech Points (which is required to upgrade anything) for each refined dilithium it will cost you to actually use the upgrade kits.
>
> Superior upgrade kits must be crafted and you will need to advance your specific crafting school up to level 15 before these become available to craft. They also require very rare crafting materials which can be obtained as rewards from certain Admiralty System missions (available starting at level 52), or from running Advanced and Elite end game queue missions. The Admiralty System is basically like Duty Office (Doff) missions, except they are for your ships. For each ship that you own at level 52 and thereafter you will get a single "Admiralty Card" for that ship... but that is a different topic...
>
> Accelerators are boosts you can apply to the upgrade process whenever you use an upgrade kit (hopefully a Superior kit). There are two types Technology Boost and Research Boosts; they come in two flavors - 1.5x and 2x; which multiplies the tech points / quality improvement % provided by the upgrade kit by either 1.5x or 2x. There is only one source for accelerators; they can only be obtained from the R&D Packs purchased from the C-Store for 300 Zen or 1,000 Zen for a 4-pack. There are one or two missions in the Delta Quadrant story arc that will reward an accelerator, but only when you complete the mission(s) for the 1st time. Naturally, the upgrade kits and accelerators can be bought and sold on the exchange.
>
> Tech Points is kinda straight forward, each piece of gear needs a certain amount of tech points before it can be upgraded to the next mark level, the higher the mark level the more tech points are need to upgrade to the next level. Quality improvement % is more complex; basically the higher the mark level the lower the % each kit upgrade will provide. The same applies to the current quality level of the gear; the better the quality the lower the % each upgrade kit will be applied to the total chance of improving the quality when upgrading to the next mark level. This % can drop below 1%, the upgrade window only displays whole %; no decimals. This means you may need to apply several upgrade kits before you see the % chance increase by 1%.
>
> If you are playing the game on a budget or do not really have the time or inclination to really grind for resources in the game, then my advice would be to simply take an existing very rare gear that you like and upgrade it to Mk XIV which is the highest mark level. A weapon upgraded from Mk XII to Mk XIV will get slightly more than a 50% increase in base damage. Attempting to push something to Epic quality can cost tens of millions of EC and tens of thousands of refined dilithium. Therefore, epic quality gear is not for the "space poor:".
>
> The best way to refine more dil is to play more characters, but that depends on how much free time you have and how much of that you are willing to devote to the game. Once a character reaches level 50 you will have an easier and quicker way grind for dil ore because of the many options available to you. The Voth Battlezone (ground combat) is probably the easiest and quickest way to get dil ore as long as you know what to do. But that is only dil ore, not refined dil. So create more characters; do so one at a time to easy your way through it; don't create a 3rd character until you have at least advanced the 2nd character to level 50. Having 3 characters means you can potentially refine up to 24k dil per day.
>
> A good way to get dil ore is to create a KDF character or a Romulan character and choosing to side with the KDF instead of Fed. The KDF have Force Labor (military) missions where you can get 500 dil in 8 hours with 4 prisoners. Your brig can hold up to 20 prisoners so with a full complement of prisoners you can queue up 5 of these missions (as long as you can find the missions in sector space). Humans, Vulcans, Telarites and Bolian prisoners are the best because none of their traits increases the risk of failure. At best there is a 3% chance of a mission failure. Additionally, at best there is a 9% chance of critical success which rewards 1,500 dil instead of 500 dil. There are also many raid missions (marauder) that can reward both prisoners and contraband most of them take 45 minutes to complete. The better the quality of your Duty Officers (Doff) used for these types of Doff missions, the better your chance of critical success. Each faction has a "Turnover Contraband" mission where you turn 5 contraband for 2,000 dil... I am pretty sure you are familiar with this mission by now.
>
> I have invested a lot of time and resources into my KDF and KDF aligned Romulan characters to get a lot of rare and very rare Doffs (my characters have at least 300 Doff slots). On average, after turning in Doff missions I can usually get at least 20 contraband per day, per character. My best outcome was 45 contraband with one character in one day... but at least 75% of the Doffs I have on that character were very rare Doffs. I sell excess contraband from time typically for 8 million to 9 million for a stack of 250 contraband, but this is on the PC not the console. The economy is more inflated in the PC version of STO... sure you can sell stuff for a higher price on "PC STO", but that also means it costs more to buy as well.
>
> If you are looking for a steady stream of EC, then I recommend you do Tour The Galaxy once you reach level 50 at that point each system you must fly to will rewards you with 25k EC (the lower your rank the lower the reward). With a typical Mk XII warp core you should be able to get 500k per day once you figure out a good route. Visiting all the systems within the 15 minute time limit will grant you the max reward of 925k EC. However, you need reputation to do that so it is something you have to work for if you want it.
>
>
> Anyway... time to take my flu medication and fall asleep while playing Mirror Invasion on the PC version of STO.


Thank you very much for your post. It was very insightful and appreciative. I have been trying to find out about the superior upgrade kits for weeks now but no one in game would tell me. They would only mouth at me. And thanks to you other guys as well. Good to see there are some decent players out there. I really do like this game.