So I'm a Lieutenant Commander 2, flying a Cruiser (Excalibur class, not that it matters). I've been noticing, in about 2/3 of my space combat engagements, that I'm losing close to 1/2 my crew in the initial exchange of fire! My shields don't drop (well, they take damage, but they don't even go yellow) and my hull doesn't drop below 100%...but half my crew is sharing the colors orange and grey. WTH is going on? Is there any way I can better protect my wussy, wussy crew?
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Use that before torpedoes hit. You get some time, just gotta do it before they hit.
As for your crew dying, I feel your pain. I fly an Escort as well, and I wind up killing most baddies in the first pass. However, that means they're dying and exploding about the time I fly overhead. And apparently my crew are all made of glass, because that explosion tends to injure and kill just about all of them.
Once you get Brace For Impact, it helps a lot. Of course, you have to key it about the time you first see the target spark and sputter, because if you key it as they explode it won't help. It takes a second for the bonus to take effect.
Another thing that might help, although at the cost of console slots, is the Biomonitor for Sci and one other for Eng. It's either SIF or Inertial Dampener, but one of them provides extra resistance to Crew so they don't die as much.
I have the same issues too. You can also look for consoles that help your crew's resistance. Biofunctions type for your science console has able crewmen resistance / live crewman resistance. Plus I'd say kinetic damage resistance would help too, though I could be wrong (it does make sense though)
Just a couple of options to try out that will help, good luck.
Link
I'm at Commander 2 now and I got Brace for Impact 2 when I leveled into Commander rank. If you got it it should be in your powers list like the others said. Another option is to try and hang back more or try to stay on the outside of the mangle of enemies when one starts to get low.
The plus side is that those explosions hurt your enemies too
I've always imagined that "Yellow" crewmen on the little scale are shaken up/knocked over/disoriented by whatever hit you've just taken, so not reapairing anything, but just have to pull themselves together. "Dark" crewmen are unconcious/stunned/trapped/wounded, and so useless to you in terms of repairing the ship until they can make it to sickbay or get patched up by a fellow crewman. (something else that might be occupying yellow crewman's time.)
Evidently a high casualty rate equals victory for them. (shrug) Doesn't make sense to me but oh well.
The explanation of crew on the STO page has really been beefed up since the last time I perused it: I highly recommend checking it out.
http://www.startrekonline.com/ship_overview/crew
As for protecting the crew, looks like it falls to three steps:
* Improve kinetic damage resistance
*Improved medical equipment and items (Science consoles fall under this, I think ship types with advanced med bays do as well)
*Science Officer's skills
As for Brace for Impact, what's been said above is correct; you'll get it once you've spent a certain amount of skill points. II usually save mine for when either I'm about to be hit by a high-yield torpedo, or I'm too near a destroyed ship that's about to go critical. That cuts down on the damage to my crew quite nicely.
Hope that all helps!
As an aside, it does seem a very silly skill. "All hands, brace for impact!" No ****, really? What, with the Red Alert klaxon blaring and the flashing lights and the Birds of Prey visibly bearing down on us through the windows? How very odd...
"What, are we under attack AGAIN?"
"Yep, 'fraid so."
"Didn't we just do this..."
"Yesterday, yes. At least this time we have shields."
"Point. Pass the salt, wouldja?"
EDIT: Just had a thought. All this means that by the beginning of the 25th century, Starfleet STILL HASN'T INSTALLED F***ING SEATBELTS!!!
Actually, the command chair on the Enterprise-E has a seatbelt.
Why do I know this?
Probably a combination of usually 3 frigates/BoPs vs. 1 cruiser, plus the fact that frigates love to use torpedoes, especially in spreads and high-yields. All the cruisers I've encountered very rarely use special torpedoes.
The enterprise A and excelsior both had armrests that folded down over the crew's laps to help keep them from being lobbed across the bridge. Course, when a console is going to explode, as they so often do on federation starships, it's harder for them to get away from it.
As to why you'd declare it in combat. Phaser/disruptor fire = litle shaking, if you're already off balance you might fall down. Torpedo hit = unprepared officers thrown across the room. Officers doing their regular job are probably not actively holding onto something, "brace for impact" indicates they SHOULD hold onto something if they're not tied to a chair or such. (Cause seatbelts wouldn't have done much to help Worf on TNG, now would they? :P)
To be fair, it wasn't until much later that they installed a chair for poor Worf. But he did eventually get a chair!
Well, actually, they took his chair away. He used to sit at the navigation station at the front of the bridge.
When he finally got off the Enterprise and took over the Defiant THEN he got a chair, but that bald blighter wouldn't give him one. :P
At the start of Open Beta the "Brace for Impact" skill actually triggered a brief classic Red Alert klaxon audio clip. I'm very sad they took it out.
I could have sworn Kirk used to say "Brace for Impact" all the time. I associate the phrase more with ToS -- but maybe that's just because I've watched much more ToS than TNG.
I thought they gave the rear Tactical console a chair halfway through the series, which is where he eventually end up throughout his Enterprise term?
I could just be misremembering, mind you. Poor Worf.