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Saw the New Expansion and Was Wondering...
mackermomo
Member Posts: 247 Arc User
in The Academy
I've been gone a couple years, and I was intrigued by the new expansion. Here's a couple questions if you have a second.
1. If I start as a new Romulan, are there Romulan ships or will I be forced to fly Federation or KDF ships?
2. I've heard the skill points system has been upgraded. Is the new one an improvement?
3. Crafting used to be a real mess and not really worth the time. Have things changed?
4. Are there duty officers and missions for the new expansion?
5. Are the bugs any better? I remember lots of stuff that simply never got fixed before, which is one of the reasons I left.
Thanks.
1. If I start as a new Romulan, are there Romulan ships or will I be forced to fly Federation or KDF ships?
2. I've heard the skill points system has been upgraded. Is the new one an improvement?
3. Crafting used to be a real mess and not really worth the time. Have things changed?
4. Are there duty officers and missions for the new expansion?
5. Are the bugs any better? I remember lots of stuff that simply never got fixed before, which is one of the reasons I left.
Thanks.
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2) I find the new system to be more straightforward and flexible in certain ways than the old one. Many skills were merged, like control resistance and two or three control-related skills are now a single Control Expertise skill. This makes it easier to try out new boff powers without losing effectiveness: Gravity Well and Viral Matrix used to benefit from separate skills, now they run off one. Similarly, there is now a single Kit Performance skill that lets you use any module at maximum efficiency. In addition, you no longer have to keep track of varying skill point costs and have to redo everything because you somehow have 500 points left over.
In addition, there's the Specialization system that opens up after level 50. Every time you level up past that point, you earn specialization points that can be spent in one of six trees that contain some pretty powerful skills like flanking damage in space or doing a barrel roll for a couple seconds of immunity to damage. You can earn spec points even after hitting the level cap at 60 and eventually fill all the trees.
3) Crafting is... different now. Everything you craft that's uncommon or better gets random mods, so there's a possibility of generating gear that really fits what you want your ship to do if you're willing to go through enough failures. Leveling up crafting skills unlocks some fairly useful traits, and also grant access to a few new items that are pretty powerful. Mk XIV is now the top level for gear, but v. rare Mk XII is adequate for normal difficulty. You can spend dilithium to upgrade gear, sending it up a level with a chance of improving its rarity. This gets very expensive if you try for Epic Mk XIV equipment. Oh, and you can't craft melee weapons anymore except through a couple doff assignments.
4) There are new mission, both in this expansion and from previous updates. The Agents of Yesterday expansion includes a short campaign set in the TOS era that links STO to several classic episodes, but you can only play them by starting a TOS-era Federation character. There are also several new missions available for all toons that are centered on the Temporal Cold War and the Tox Uthat (the MacGuffin Picard was searching for on Risa in the episode where Riker trolled him with a souvenir request). Old missions and storylines have been reworked, and you may have missed the Delta Quadrant and Iconian War arcs.
1. You have Romulan ships to use for each level. If you really mean AOY as the "new expansion", which it is, you can't play a Romulan. Only a Fed from 23. century.
2. Personally I don't think it is an improvement, but it is a lot simpler. YMMV.
3. I wasn't here for the previous system, but this one is not bad. A bit random, though.
4. There are missions for each expansion (again, not sure what you mean by "new"). Duty officers? Romulan doff pack has been removed from c-store. AOY - I don't think there are unique doffs. You use Fed ones. Delta Rising - you can buy a pack with Delta doffs from c-store. Or probably get them from Exchange.
5. Bugs are awesome, as always </sarcasm> Some were fixed, some not, new were introduced.
1. If I start as a new Romulan, are there Romulan ships or will I be forced to fly Federation or KDF ships?
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Romulan_playable_starship
And a comparison picture of most (not all of them):
http://sto.gamepedia.com/File:ROM_Size_Chart.PNG
2. I've heard the skill points system has been upgraded. Is the new one an improvement?
The new one is easier. I don't know it well enough to say it is an improvement end-to-end. I do know the min/maxers say that the science and engineering "ultimate" unlocks are so bad they are traps to trick people into horrible builds. But I also know that it is a much simpler system and it leads into the spec-point end game progression very nicely. I also like how it gives much more accurate and complete numbers when you look at the tool tips.
3. Crafting used to be a real mess and not really worth the time. Have things changed?
Crafting has changed twice. The new crafting is a big improvement over the second version. I never knew the first version. The only thing that makes me sad is Aegis isn't a levelling set anymore only an end-game set. But the crafted gear is some of the best in the game. Especially the sniper rifle, particle emission plasma torpedo, and beams or cannons with the [pen] stat. There is plenty of good stuff to craft for fun and there are crafters who make lots of money at it.
4. Are there duty officers and missions for the new expansion?
Many doffs, but no new missions since the delta expanse came out. Despite what Guljarol said, there are a horde of romulan doffs. You can use both romulan doffs (recruited at your capital) and your allied faction (either fed or KDF). Most lockboxes have a few unique doffs. The time travel story is covered by two lockboxes Kelvin and Nakuhl, Nakuhl had 30 doffs: http://sto.gamepedia.com/Na'kuhl_Warfare_Specialist_(Duty_Officer). Kelvin has 40. The Nakhul are warfare specialists who give damage bonus vs Nakhul enemies. The KElvin guys give special mods to many of the end-game specialist abilities.
These are not in the console game YET, but they will be. Devs want all three games having the same content and gear as quickly as reasonable.
5. Are the bugs any better? I remember lots of stuff that simply never got fixed before, which is one of the reasons I left.
Depends who you ask. Some say no. The last four patch notes were full of bug fixes. 25 last patch alone. In an interview the game lead designer Gecko said that they got extra Q&A people to support the console launch and he assigned them to old bugs that were too low priority so hadn't been fixed. Bug if there are specific bugs that bothered you ask which ones. A few are still around. I have a very bug free gaming experience, but one that bugs me a lot is that there used to be a doff mission to recruit new romulan bridge officers. It got lost and it was on the "list of known issues" for about 5 months then they pulled it. Not fixed as of today. On the other hand, a bunch of tailor bugs that went back to the early days of the KDF (sash clipping and color errors) were fixed. So were a bunch of mission voice over bugs that were several years old. So it really depends on what bugs bothered you specifically.
I'm a bit excited about all the changes to crafting and doff missions compared to my experience with the somewhat under-developed versions. It also sounds quite nice to be able to fill out the skill tree, eventually. I started playing when STO first came out, left after a year, then came back for the Romulan expansion and purchased the lifetime sub, so I've seen quite a few changes over my tenure. It does appear that some aspects of the game are maturing nicely, though, which is more than I could have said about the game previously.
It sounds to me like the new staff are working on some of the really old bugs, which is a great step in the right direction. Yes, I remember the doff mission that never got fixed. I had posted about it on the old forums, and was surprised to see it was somehow still flagged in my account when I opened up the new forums for the first time. Of all my posts, that was the one that carried over. Made me chuckle, since it brought back memories of frustration. J
I think there is enough of an improvement for me try again in the near future. Again, sure appreciate the assistance.
One i particular for the Romulan faction is the mission to recruit Bridge Officers. The last time I saw a mission to recruit Romulan Boffs was late 2014. Sure, there are plenty of times when I saw Boff recruitment missions to get Fed side or KDF side Boffs for my Romulan captains, but they are not the same as Romulan Boffs.
#1 - Yes, there are Romulan ships. Note, there are no faction specific T6 science ship for Romulans (and KDF). There is the T6 Eternal cross faction 31st century science vessel (one ship for all 3 factions) that can be purchased from the C-Store, but it does not look Romulan (or KDF) and there are no ways to customize it other than some color palettes.
#2 - Overall, I like the new skill system. However, since it is new I likely need to respec my captains now that I have a better feel for what skills I want. All players are given a free respec token so if you screwed up the 1st time or wanna change your skill allocation, then you can do so at no cost. Retain tokens have been permanently reduced from 500 Zen to 300 Zen.
#3 - I only dabbled in the old (2nd version) of the crafting system. I found it to be rather lackluster and not very appealing. I like the current system which allows you to craft weapons with the modifiers that you would like to have, but they are randomly generated. Unless there are some specialized weapons (or gear) that you, then crafting is the way to go. You can only craft "generic" damage type weapons (with maybe two exceptions). While you can craft "generic" phaser weapons, you cannot craft Agony Phaser Weapons which comes from the Mirror Incursion Lock Box. Even though you can only craft generic weapons, it's modifiers that makes them special.
One of the best torpedoes in the game is the Particle Emission Plasma Torpedo Launcher which can be crafted as long as you have the materials and the special Doff to do so. It does plasma damage, exotic damage and temporarily slows down enemies. The TR-116B sniper rifle is craftable, and from what I've read a lot of people like using it especially against the Borg since they cannot adapt to it.
The upgrade system goes hand in hand with the crafting system. It allows you to upgrade the mark level of gear to Mk XIV. It also gives you the ability to increase the quality of gear as well. Epic is the highest quality which will allow items to have as many as 5 modifiers instead of only 3 modifiers for very rare items. Pushing gear to Epic Mk XIV can be very expensive, but they can fetch pretty high prices on the Exchange if whatever you crafted / upgraded is considered desireable.
One thing to keep in mind when it comes to weapons... The biggest boost to damage is to upgrade a weapon to Mk XIV even if it is a common (white) weapon. Increasing the quality will improve damage too, but going from Mk XIII to Mk XIV gives you the biggest boost. Note if you upgrade a common Mk II weapon to Mk XIV and it is still common quality, then that means you have somehow angered the RNG Gods (random number generator).
4 - New Doffs do come up from time to time in expansions or new seasons (Season 11.5 currently), but not always. The same can be said of Doff missions themselves. I do not recall seeing any new Doff missions for some time.
5 - There are always bugs such as the Doff missions to get Romulan Boffs. The AoY Expansion introduced a lot of animation bugs. Enemies you killed may still be standing upright. When you respawn from dying in a ground mission you are sometime still laying face down on the ground even though you can move normally. Switching weapons / firing weapons seems to fix that issues. There are always bugs, when old ones are squashed, new ones pop up.
By "having trouble" do you mean you can't find it? FYI, it helps to explain your specific problem instead of just saying something is not working.
Many features of the PC version are not yet available on consoles. See this article from the main News page for STO. See the NEWS button at the top left of this page for more news and info.
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10142423-star-trek-online-console-differences