Hi Captains,
We will be bringing down Star Trek Online tomorrow,
Thursday, February 14th, at 7AM PST (click
here to view in your timezone) for maintenance and to apply a new patch. Patch notes can be found
here, and we expect this maintenance to only last for 2 hours. The test server may also be unavailable during this time.
Thanks for your patience and understanding,
- The Star Trek Online Team
Comments
Why do I get the feeling thats gonna go over like a lead balloon? Not trying to betray the bad news but... seems like a decided negative... granted 50 marks every 15 minutes might be a little excessive... but taking them out entirely? why not let the FM farmers have 50 marks for the 1st run through the spotlight or some such... Just a thought... at least it'd be a little less.... hrm... harsh I spose is the word...
Federation 12th Cavalry
Deep Space 19/USS Montana
Host of the Borg Boombox, 0300 GMT on Fridays on Subspace Radio
P.S. WHy does it have a 30 second cooldown after firing off a torp spread... That doesn't even make sense.
1: its cooldown isn't cut in half, but damage is.
2: its cooldown after using a torp ability is 30 seconds for no visible reason. Why wouldn't it just be 19 seconds like the regular cooldown? I hope when you guys get around to fixing this you cut the cooldown in half. Make the cooldown uniform and not 30 seconds for torp spread or high yield make it 9 seconds for everything.
Level 20 or even earlier makes more sense to me. That way more people will be able to benefit from it.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
More likely they just want to slow fleets' progression so they can drag out starbase grinding as long as possible.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
My guess is that they're trying to herd players to certain content, and not use any one thing to the point on ignoring other things the devs spent time on developing. It was very easy to make FMs in a half-decent quantity without ever touching the fleet events using the Foundry. Problem is the 'carrot on a stick' followed by the cattle prod method they seem to like using lately.
That and sell lock box keys to open lock boxes and DOff packs which have a chance of giving a Fleet Marks booster pool (which otherwise can only be gotten by spending more FC than you can get back using it)...
#2 I see no mention at all about the Yesterday's Enterprise "Uniform" being removed or staying as a reward in the Temporal Ambassador episode. Not in the patch notes, or anywhere else on the forums. (Please post a link if it's been officially mentioned.)
#3 You are making it so the Breen Chel Grett Warpship 2012 starbase ornament is off by default and has to be turned on manually ONLY for the KDF and not Federation fleets. This is something players have been requesting since the project was introduced.
#3A It is nice you made a change to allow fleet leaders to manually cancel the project themselves instead of removing it yourselves. Originally you stated the project has to be filled and the timer finished before you removed it, which would have left fleets who filled it at the last minute, but still had the timer going, at a complete and total loss to get it.
#3B Also, now you have the tech to allow fleet projects and reputation projects to be cancelled and have no excuse not to implement it later.
#4 No dual pistols for the Romulan Reputation Store?
#5 WTF? I'm not one to spend dilithium on consumable items and, until checking the STO wiki just now, never knew how many you get. You get 1! 1250 dilithium and up just for a single use item and now, for those who like using them, you decrease the amount of time it lasts without decreasing the costs to obtain it? You also don't mention what the new duration is, leaving people to find out AFTER purchasing it. Also, these types of reputation projects don't show how many uses you get. That's why I've never purchased them. Not risking spending 1250+ dilithium on an item I might get a single use of, which turns out to be the case. Not worth it.
Edit:
#6
Um, excuse me but WHAT foundry daily missions? You are not being specific as to which missions you are referring to. If you are referring to the "Investigate Officer Reports" (which to my knowledge was the ONLY foundry daily before) did you guys forget that a while back you turned that into a REPEATABLE mission that can be completed once every 30 minutes instead of a daily? Why aren't you being more specific?
#7 I never really cared for doing foundry missions. Not even to get fleet marks. But I share the sentiments that others have about you TRIBBLE over the rewards in this manner.
They have already said that the costume pieces are staying around as a reward for the mission after tomorrow. Just can't remember where it was posted of the top of my head.
Host of the Borg Boombox, 0300 GMT on Fridays on Subspace Radio
Still, a bit of a bump in fleet mark earnings from current fleet missions would be nice to fill the void.
Seriously... you guys need to hire someone to tell you when you're making boneheaded choices... I'll gladly do that job... if it meant your development team would actually function like one...
Yes I understand that and have no problem with fleet marks being removed as a foundry reward, as long as they intend to increase the amount we can get from fleet actions.
Examples: Federation Fleet Alert (defeat the waves of enemies and the final siege group while keeping the starbase from being destroyed before time runs out). Maximum amount of fleet marks upon successful complete = 17 (22 during 2 hour bonus fleet mark event). That's it. If you do this fleet action on a character in the level 10-15 range you're lucky if you can complete it successfully before time runs out. Nothing worse than doing squat for damage, even though you're bumped up to about level 44, only to fail this and get a measly 10 fleet marks if you're lucky.
Starbase Fleet Defense: Takes around a half hour to complete. I haven't done this mission in a long time. Takes too long for little reward and I've never ever seen it completed 100% successfully.
Azura Nebula Rescue: Not worth the time. You have 15 minutes mandatory to rescue as many ships as you can and each type of ship gives so many points. Sometimes each asteroid spawns only 1 or 2 point ships for half or most of the mission. On rare occasions after engaging Tholians around a ship to be rescued, a group of about 5 or so Mirror Universe ships will spawn right on top of you. So you end up having the Tholians AND Mirror ships to deal with before you can rescue a ship which ends up taking too much time and you miss out on scoring more points. One time I did this about 3 weeks ago, 1 player was tanking the Tholians away from the ship. I went right under the ship and started to release the tractor beams. That's when a group of mirror ships spawned on top of ME, used a tractor beam on ME, and attacked ME, and I had to start fighting. Took a good 2 minutes or so for the rest of the team to get done freeing other ships and come help us. 2 minutes that could have been spend freeing another ship, or 2 if your team split up.
The reason why I say this mission isn't even worth doing: No matter how many ships you free or how many points you score the absolute maximum reward you earn is 18 Romulan Marks (22 during bonus rep event) and 6 fleet marks (8 during bonus fleet mark event). And due to Mirror Universe ships spawning, and/or a not so good team, I've managed to get only about 13 or less Romulan Marks for completing this on more than one occasion.
I remember with the announcement about the changes to the foundry where a mission needs to take at least 15 minutes to qualify for Investigate Officer Reports, Cryptic stated they wanted to reward us for the amount of time spent doing something. I took this as meaning: the longer it takes, the more you earn. Not true in the slightest. It takes a mandatory 15 minutes to complete Azura Nebula Rescue for a maximum 18 Romulan Marks. Hell, I can complete 3 dailies, excluding the instances, on New Romulus to earn 30 Romulan Marks in that same amount of time. But I guess that's what they want us to do for Romulan Marks. I don't do them anymore. I've decided that if I need Romulan Marks, I'll just team up, tag Epohhs, evolve them, then trade it in.
It also seems like almost nobody even does Mine Trap anymore. It takes forever to get into. I actually like that mission and it awards around 22 Romulan Marks, possibly more depending on how well everybody does.
In Infected: The Conduit Elite you have 15 minutes to earn the bonus, as long as you do it right, for a minimum of 75 Omega marks. Even without the bonus you still earn 60 Omega marks. And often times I can complete Infected: The Conduit Elite STF with a good 5 or more minutes to spare and that includes the bonus.
Last time I checked, the season 6 fleet actions do reward fleet marks. There are also the older ones that randomly have a daily that rewards fleet marks.
true.
"breaking the planet", "the big dig", "gorn minefield", "klingon scout force", "starbase 24" all labelled fleet action but none giving fleet mark. only 1 big dig daily gives it, and it can be taken once a day.
at least make all fleet actions giving fleet mark so they can be entitled "fleet action".
Yes. In the PVE queue there are missions marked as having a Fleet Mark reward. Federation Fleet Alert is 1. The dailies you refer to are the missions in the PVE queue that awards Dilithium/Gear. The daily mission is to complete a specific one of these missions, such as Big Dig or Gorn Minefield, and the daily rewards 50 fleet marks and 960 dilithium (on top of the dilithium you earn for completing the mission). The problem is that some of these dailies are not showing up at all for a while. I believe each is in some sort of rotation where one of the dailies is offered for a few days and then it switches to another. Example: The Big Dig daily can be offered for a week at a time before finally switching to Gorn Minefield. And I can't remember the last time the daily was for Braking the Planet ground mission (even when the daily is offered it seems like nobody does it anyway).
The daily mission for these in your Available tab of your mission window can be completed, of course, once per day. But the missions themselves can be completed as many times as you want for the regular rewards, granted each one you complete will have a 30 minute cooldown before you can do that one again.
Another thing I noticed is that, nobody seems to do any of the dilithium/gear missions in the PVE queue except for the one that has a daily being offered for it. Example: If the daily is for The Big Dig, nobody seems to be doing Gorn Minefield. The 1 exception is Starbase 24 which people seem to prefer, and I don't recall ever seeing a daily for that mission.
The problem with that is: you don't need to be IN a fleet to do those missions. So, in my opinion, they aren't even fleet actions because they are labeled as rewarding Dilithium/Gear, not fleet marks.
I noticed on a couple new characters at around level 10, the only thing I had available in the PVE Queue was Starbase 24. After joining a fleet with each character, the missions marked as having a reward of Fleet marks, such as Federation Fleet Alert, Starbase Fleet Defense, became available because those you have to actually be in a fleet for.
Not sure if it matters now buuuuuut............the launcher is showing that the shard will be going down for maintenance on February 13th from 7-9 am.
No Nerf without a compensation!
- Reduced costs on Fleet-Starbase- and Embassy-Projects:
- Lowered Dilithium- and Fleetmarks-Costs to 10% of the current for all Projects
- Lowered Doff-Costs to 50% of the current for all Projects
This would be fair!If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
Agreed. My fleet is a small family fleet with 10 or so members. Five of those that are really active. We don't anticipate ever making tier 5 and maybe not tier 4 even though we dump marks and equipment in daily. We've slowed way down but haven't quite given up.
STO gives big fleets a huge advantage over those who chose to stick with small fleets. It also draws people away from the small fleets.
So true we get members leaving just to get the T-4 and up gear So with that said..
TY for killing smaller Family Freindly Fleets but that is what it is about i guess suport those that Pay to Win
Removed the FM' award from the foundry....
Made the dil to Scale - whats the point of doing this? In order to get the dil the missions have to be long enough - so is that gone now? I can get a certain amount of dil for ALL missions since they now scale? - EXPLAIN please
Now that Fleet Marks are now GONE from the foundry - can you INCREASE the amount of marks we get from doing Fleet alert etc? for 15 mins we get only 15-18 marks... on the other hand a 15min STF gives us over 60 marks... 75 with the optional.
Why cant STF's also give fleet marks? Why cant they be balanced?
The only way I will get my fleet marks is through the commendation system...
This will slow down my already small fleet.
Why cant the projects also SCALE to the size of the fleet - you managed to scale them for everything else now it seems...
Instead of tweaking the rewards all the time, why not fix the place we USE them for...
NOT HAPPY.
Totally agree with you... this is just pissing me off
I'm in a smallish fleet and I seem to be possibly the only one actively trying to grind FMs. That investigate officer reports is the sole way I was getting them recently. Decent 50FM payout (60 with boost) and reliable, not wishy washy between 5 and 25 marks as most other ways of getting FMs are.
Omega marks I can get 60-100+ at a time. Rom marks with epohhs can be had 400 every 8-10 days with little effort. But Fleet marks, at only ~25 odd each mission are like pulling teeth trying to get the thousands required for the fleet base.
Was bearable with Investigate reports. After patch, I'd have to give up doing anything fun I actually want to do in game just to constantly play fleet events that unreliably payout half as much less often if I wanted to keep up the same daily FM production.
Devs, FM payouts need boosting on fleet events.
Also I want to see a FM booster that does 50% FM boosts (current booster is only 20%).
Being in a small fleet I contribute lots to projects, as such I've >600k fleet creds and nothing to spend it on.
Even a booster costing 250k FC for 100% FM boost (and double the FM boost amount it lasts for) would be great.
- Flarks are gone from IOR.
- Fleet progress will stagnate, more with our KDF fleet.
Good
- STF Doffs are back.
- The rest of the Romulan weapon types are in the store.
- Improved the Fleet ships (especially my Fleet Norgh).
- I don't have to bother with the Foundry anymore.
Give me more Fleet Marks (minimum double the rewards), and while at it increase the Romulan Mark rewards (and remove the cap from Azure Nebula).
On the one hand Dil rewards scaling to the time spent playing the mission means I can finally play those epic 2+ hour missions without feeling like I'm missing out by not micromanaging my time to earn Dil as effacingly as possible. This is an awesome change.
On the other hand, I find most of the fleet mission content incredibly boring and Foundry repeatable was my main source of fleet marks. Losing that sucks.
And on the third mutant hand, with Dsthal talking about Foundry Reputation as a possibility in the future I was already kind of expecting Foundry fleet marks to disappear sooner or later. So, meh?
As for the placement of "Temporal Ambassador," I have my doubts. With the way leveling was speedup in the F2P conversion I personally don't think it's possible to for a new player to run from the Tutorial through the end of the Klingon Front without hitting Captain. I guess we'll see.