Greetings...
My name is BjorJlen and I just wanted to write a quick note to say hi to you all. I am a 56 year old man who loves Star Trek, and only recently have I begun playing STO (only a few weeks actually). So far I am impressed by what I see, though yeah there are bugs in the system and the game could be much better in many ways, but as a old time gamer that is par for the course for games in general (especially MMO's)... nothing is perfect after all. I am slowly learning my way around the game, though being disabled does make things challenging at times (especially with specific info on things can be... sporadic sometimes) as there is a steep learning curve to the game I see (as it's deep in so many ways).
However, I am enjoying myself immensely so far, and when I did the "Doomday Machine" & V'ger missions, I was from then on hooked lol; gotta love me some V'ger & Ilea.
I have a ton of questions (of course) but am diligently learning as I go, and am now actually considering asking about joining a Fleet too (I will post about that in a bit). Anywho, it is nice to be here, and I hope you all enjoy the game as best you can, and "Boldly go where no man... no one... has gone before"...
Peace...
Comments
If you have any questions, feel free to ask. We got all kinds here. DPS people, casual people, Costume fiends...
All that really matters is that you have fun.
Peace...
P.S: And I am with you to on the fun part, because if your not having fun, then what's the point in playing the game?
Delta Recruit event will need one each Fed (2409), Klingon, and Romulan to get everything.
Temporal Recruit is a TOS era character. (I would highly recommend this one)
Gamma Recruit is a Dominion character. (Note that Dominion is an accelerated start at lv 60.)
Klingon recruit... well... Klingon.
So keep an eye out for when the recruit events come around. Best part about them is you only have to start one during the event and get the special recruit transponder item. You don't have to try and rush to do everything during the recruit event. You get the transponder, you are a recruit character forever on that character. They rotate the recruit events all year, so at least one per quarter.
Also know that we have at least 3 seasonal events (Summer, winter, and anniversary) that give out a free T6 ship tied to that particular event. And they have been running year long event campaigns that allow players to have a choice of a Promotional/Lockbox ship (single character), a set amount of Lobi crystals (that you get from lockboxes along with whatever item luck gives you), or I wanna say 2 free C-Store T6 ship coupons.
Gamma recruit event has no choice of race at all, so if you are one of the people (like me) who cannot stand playing Jem'Hadar that recruitment is disappointing (I have skipped all but the first one), though it does have some nice benefits to other characters on the account even just doing crafting and space stuff where you don't have to look at the nasty thing, so if you can hold your nose and get through the Gamma recruitment tutorial for that it could be worth the annoyance of making one of the things even if you never use it on the ground.
AoY recruitment event is a little limited too, it is TOS era but only allows Federation characters, and only a subset of Federation races at that, though the most popular TOS ones are there so it is not usually a problem like the Gamma recruit can be.
Delta recruit event is the most open character-wise, it allows the full selection from 2409 Federation, KDF, and Romulan Republic character generators (and like Rattler pointed out, you need one of each of those three factions to take full advantage of it).
Besides, as the learning curve is deep (which is good imo), that too slows me down a bit lol. For example, while I do in fact now have a rear admiral character (level 42 atm whoot!), I only just learned last night about how to promote duty officers' abilities with manuals. That's how slow it can be for me lol, though eventually I get it even as I have fun playing the game. In addition, as I can't put any money into the game as of yet (maybe never?) and earning Credits & Dilithium can be slow going sometimes too, I am sorta stuck with the free ships I get from leveling, as well as any drops I may get to improve my character(s) and/or ship(s).
Even though I am drooling over some of the ships in the game BIG time lol (which cost Zen sadly). I also find it ironic and a bit funny that while getting loc boxes is easy as TRIBBLE (I have over 2k of them atm), getting the keys to open them is hard as hell lol. I know I can buy them from the market, but I have yet to really get a handle of it as it seems to be a bit... messy compared to other games I have played before, so I haven't been able to get any via it yet. Oh yeah, before I forget, could you explain what AoY means by chance please, and what you mean by "need one each Fed (2409), Klingon, and Romulan to get everything." as such. Get what exactly?
Anywho, I guess that's it for now. Thanks again for your replies, and I hope to hear from you again. I did make a post in Ten Forward about looking for a good, semi big, respectable, active, (etc) Fleet to join, but so far nothing on that end as of yet (even though I do get blind Fleet invites every day, which I always turn down because, well... it seems semi rude to do blind invites for anything without asking first, ya know?). So if anyone has any suggestions on a great Fleet to apply to, please let me know as well. There are soooo many out there, that I haven't a clue which ones are good or not (and I hate playing russian roulette lol). So thanks again...!
Peace...
The Temporal Recruit is the one that takes the longest, but has the best overall storyline. Temporal Recruits get a unique starting mission line that must be completed before they become a Recruit. It's a well-put-together storyline with each mission acting as a 'sequel-of-sorts' to individual episodes of The Original Series with one mission actually placing you inside the episode.
Unfortunately, you likely won't be able to complete the current Event Campaign, but the 2023 one would be next and you'll likely want to pick the two Z-Store Ship Coupons as the 2 ships you can then 'buy' will be available for all characters on your account.
AoY was the "Agents of Yesterday" expansion in 2016 that launched the first Temporal Recruitment event.
The "Delta Recruitment" event has different goals for Federation, Klingon Defense Force and for Romulan Republic characters. Therefore, to unlock the full set of account-wide rewards, a character for each of those three factions would be required.
The Delta Recruit (which was rerun recently, so probably won't be back for a while) has your character from Da Future pop backtime to give you a special device called a "tesseract communicator". It alerts you when there are Iconian devices or data caches nearby, which your future self will need. This applies to recruits from all factions except Fed TOS or Discovery-era; all Delta Recruits have to start off in 2409.
Klingon Recruits have a mysterious benefactor who gives them access to a special bat'leth and a small T6 ship (you can use T6 ships from the beginning now, but some of their abilities are locked out until you gain levels). You also have special goals to accomplish (slaying a certain number of foes with the bat'leth, hunting down a list of criminals, alpha-striking from cloak a number of times, that sort of thing).
Frankly I don't remember what the basis of Gamma Recruit was, because I was bored and stopped chasing that one, but it applies only to Jem'Hadar (I think you still need to get a character to 60 before you can start a Jem, because they all start at 60, but that may have been dropped, I wouldn't know).
The Agents of Yesterday questline starts with recruits in the TOS era; Daniels recruits you to accomplish some goals in the 2260s before you "die" at the Battle of Caleb IV and are brought forward to 2409 by Daniels.
Each of those events will give you a certain device that will track your progress through the Recruitment Event. You need to get that device during the event itself, but fortunately it's usually granted during the tutorial for the character (you do have to go through the tutorial to get into a Recruitment Event, sadly). Once you have that device, the character is officially a Recruit for the event; you no longer have a time-gate to rush through. (One of my toons, a Romulan named Tovan Khev, became a Delta Recruit during the first runthrough of the event, and is on the verge of finally getting the reward for getting his faction Admiralty to level 10 - that'll make sense to you when you get access to Admiralty at I think lvl 61.)
Also, speaking of altitis and CoH, have you tried Champions Online yet? There's like two or three supergroups there consisting of "refugees" from Paragon City...
And thank you for your replies @inferiority & @jonsills. I copied all the info down about Recruit Events you all said, and I will absolutely keep an eye out for them when they come around next time. Btw, how many characters' can we make anyways? Currently I have only four, and atm will only be working on these ones (though I do have a itch to make another one, concept wise lol), so it would be great to know in advance. Just recently I got to level 52 on my main character (whoot!), and was surprised to see that I wasn't given any more "free ships" like I have been getting every 10 levels.
Even though that is definitely ok by me atm due to the fact that I got a very nice cruiser ship I use a ton. And while not uber great like many others, it's actually surprisingly sturdy and can put out some nice damage with some added debuffs as well (I really like overcharged beam weapons big time, and atm I have two of them which I am able to cycle through quite nicely). That being said, it will be great once I am able to get another ship (somehow), though that might be a long time coming sadly. I just unlocked starship mastery, so it will be interesting to see what benefits that aspect actually grant me (gotta do more research on it however lol).
So anyways, thank you all for your great sound advice and help; I will definitely make use of it! However, if you (or anyone else too) has any other great tips and info for me, I would be most appreciative as the game has so much to offer and learn about, it's gonna take a long time for me to absorb it all (resistance is futile! lol). For example, I'd really like to learn about Fleets, but as I have had no offers yet to join one (except for in game blind invites without talking to me about it first, which I always turn down as I mentioned before), its sorta hard to find out about them first hand as specific info on them is sparse at best (and STO Wiki sorta is... lacking a bit on info, compared to other games).
I did hear that the Fleet, "Temporal Operatives" was "ok", but that is the only one I have heard about at all, and even that info is less then I would hope to be, including the fact that there appears to be several one's of them with the same/similar name, and I haven't a clue on which was the one I heard about lol. So any advice on Fleets would be most appreciated big time. In either case, thanks again for the great help, and I look forward to hearing from anyone.
Peace...
P.S: Btw, my Fleet post is located here... https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1267633/looking-for-a-home In case this helps ...
P.S.S: Ohhh, and @jonsills, yes I have heard of Champions online, and while I haven't played it myself, I have read & heard a lot about it (including DCO too). But, as I (and you) can STILL play City of Heroes, I don't actually need to play the game to hook up with old time CoH players from when it was live, as many of them/us are still playing the game. If you are curious about it, just let me know (in a PM or here) and I will be happy to give you the lowdown on it. Thanks again...
(Alternatively, delete a character to make room for a new one.)
When Recruit events roll around, you'll need six characters to unlock all the account-rewards:
- 3 Delta Recruits:
- Starfleet (2409 - any species),
- Klingon Defense Force (any KDF species),
- Romulan Republic (Romulan, Reman, or Alien);
- 1 TOS Temporal Recruit
- 1 Gamma Recruit (Jem'Hadar)
- 1 Klingon Recruit (any KDF species).
(Currently, there's no Discovery-era Recruit event.)Additionally, you'll likely have discovered the Reputation system by now. It's worth noting that:
Projects that give 2500 progress will then give 5000 - this makes it beneficial to level-up that Reputation to Tier 5 on one character before starting it on another;
Thus, you can get stuff for half the usual costs.
This means you'll get "Ultra-Rare Mk XIII" gear instead of "Very-Rare MK=k XII".
For example, the Delta Reputation unlocks a transwarp to the Delta Quadrant;
The 8472 Reputation unlock a Transwarp to the Allied Space of the Dyson Sphere.
These transwarp destinations unlock at Tier 1 of a reputation.
(Or, if you really want to make one sooner, it costs 1000zen in the Z-Store.)
As for free ships, you've noticed that you get one every 10 levels up to level 40. This gets you a Tier 5 ship, which used to be the maximum Tier.
Lifetime Subscribers also get an additional free ship at level 50 but everyone gets another T5 ship at level 61. For Federation characters, this means you can get the T5 Galaxy (Enterprise-D), T5 Intrepid (Voyager) or the T5 Defiant (Um, the Defiant).
As mentioned above, there's free Tier 6 ships at the Summer, Winter and Anniversary (February) events but sometimes Cryptic surprises us with an extra freebie here and there.
The issue is finding out which server to play on since each server is different. Private servers allow for interesting builds that are not possible in other servers like Masterminds with every single pet.
As far as having a Delta Recruit for every faction, it is only the Episode Arc goals that provide 100 to 500 Fleet Marks and 1,000 to 5,000 Dilithium for the Account unlocks. So if a player is just interested in the unique Delta Recruitment rewards, then they just need one Delta Recruit.
Nice to see other 'older gentlemen' (59 myself here) still enjoying MMO gaming.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Feel free to give a shout out to me to say hi if you see me on, and we can both tell all these young whippersnappers to get off our lawns! lol
Peace...