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After playing sto for a while and reaching level 65, I've got some criticisms
quasarbat
Member Posts: 25 Arc User
First of all the enemy ship scaling at the higher levels seems over the top to me.
Today I replayed the mission in the Cardassian struggle mission "the new link" I could not defeat the dominion battleship at all!
It would take out my shields in seconds and I could hardly scratch it and gave up after being defeated a dozen times. The thing must have had at least ten to fifteen times the health and firepower as my ship! Now I know I'm supposed to have a t-5 ship with epic level weapons and equipment and such, but that leads into the second thing.
How am I supposed to get better stuff when I can't beat the missions and can't buy it on the exchange? All the best stuff is millions of energy credits and I only got half a million because of an ultra rare mission reward bonus! Maybe thats just the fleet I joined overpricing everything?
Now the third, theres energy credits, fleet credits, dilithium, zen. Isn't that a bit much? Why not just have a single currency? Have all these seems overcomplicated and unnecessary to me.
Now as the crafting, I admit I may not be understanding this part, but I need kit frames for, and they all are millions of credits too!
Maybe star trek online isn't for me after all, although I enjoyed the scenery of the planets it really does get overly complex and the upper level enemy scaling is way overboard!
The last thing is I was hopping to have an odyssey class as my main ship, but I don't want to pay for it and exchanging dilithuim for zen is a rip off.
So I'm probably not going to play anymore after I try the next mission in the solanae sphere episode if its scaled to high.
Today I replayed the mission in the Cardassian struggle mission "the new link" I could not defeat the dominion battleship at all!
It would take out my shields in seconds and I could hardly scratch it and gave up after being defeated a dozen times. The thing must have had at least ten to fifteen times the health and firepower as my ship! Now I know I'm supposed to have a t-5 ship with epic level weapons and equipment and such, but that leads into the second thing.
How am I supposed to get better stuff when I can't beat the missions and can't buy it on the exchange? All the best stuff is millions of energy credits and I only got half a million because of an ultra rare mission reward bonus! Maybe thats just the fleet I joined overpricing everything?
Now the third, theres energy credits, fleet credits, dilithium, zen. Isn't that a bit much? Why not just have a single currency? Have all these seems overcomplicated and unnecessary to me.
Now as the crafting, I admit I may not be understanding this part, but I need kit frames for, and they all are millions of credits too!
Maybe star trek online isn't for me after all, although I enjoyed the scenery of the planets it really does get overly complex and the upper level enemy scaling is way overboard!
The last thing is I was hopping to have an odyssey class as my main ship, but I don't want to pay for it and exchanging dilithuim for zen is a rip off.
So I'm probably not going to play anymore after I try the next mission in the solanae sphere episode if its scaled to high.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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You are paying nothing for the game content, but you also don't want to pay for ships or even to grind dil for zen? That's your choice, but it's Cryptic's choice to charge money for ships so they can pay salaries and keep the servers running. I'm afraid you will have to live without that Odyssey class. Or do the 2023 year long event campaign since it offers your choice of free ships, after playing events for a year.
Are you doing duty officer missions, admiralty, and the reputations?
Doffing can get you a bit of dil, plus free doffs to sell on the exchange, Admiralty awards piles of dil and credits, reputations award dil and Mark XII gear boxes. Dil gets you Phoenix Prize Packs to upgrade gear to mark XV.
The trick with crafting is to craft gear at Mark II VR-quality then use Phoenix upgrade tokens to upgrade it.
If you have not leveled up R&D, you can also buy mark I and mark III kit frames and kit modules from the ground gear vendors for a few hundred credits, then use Phoenix upgrade tokens on them too.
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People can help you with setting up a ship properly (gear, duty officer powers) and give tips on playing the game if you ask. That should be a separate thread. You can also start a thread on how to craft, or how to earn credits.
When you last posted in the academy part of the forum at the start of the month, I offered to help you put together a basic build that would get you through any of the missions. That offer still stands. If you're worried about being made fun or or something like that, I guarantee I did alot worse when I was as new as you are so you're in good company.
With this said, what you're describing here tells me that one of a few things, possibly more than one is going on. You're playing on a difficulty higher than normal and aren't ready, you need to change your build, or need to change your tactics. Possibly all 3. With basic mk xii gear you can get through any advanced level queue and mission. Having alot of health doesn't matter as much as your ability to maintain it. Epic items will come later when you get to upgrading so don't worry about that for now. They're not needed to do well in game. You were able to beat them before or you never would've made it 65 so that tells me some updating to your build is needed.
To start with some basics, what ship are you in currently? Any t5 or t6 ship can be made to do well at endgame. For that matter even most of the t4s can do well at endgame. Once I know what ship you're in I can make personalized recommendations as to what would help you out. We can also look at getting you into a different ship if need be. I have some older ones laying around for such an occasion if it comes to that.
As for generalized advice, what I would recommend you do for now until I know what ship you're in is to use a single torpedo upfront and make the rest of your weapons beam arrays. You'll want to broadside your foes like a WWII naval engagement. Use the beams to tear down the shields and then fire a torp through the opening. To enhance your beams you'll want to utilize the tactical bridge officer powers Fire At Will and Torpedo Spread. If you have a third tactical power on your ship you'll want to utilize Attack Pattern Beta.
For further enhancing of your ship, there are some bridge officer powers you will want that can boost your attack power and your ability to stay alive. For engineering bridge officer powers, the yellow guys, you will want to pick up a copy of Emergency Power to Weapons. This will allow your weapons to deal more damage while this is up. For defensive powers you will want to use Engineering team to heal your hull when you start to dip lower, Reverse Shield Polarity to heal your shields in a pinch, and Auxiliary to Structural Integrity to give you some temporary health and reduce damage. Lastly you will want to pick up two science powers which are Science Team to recharge your shields a bit, and Hazard Emitters which removes debuffs from you and heals you over time.
As said prior, your issue with the missions at this point is most likely build related since you are now at max level. Until you hit max level the game pretty well lets you get away with anything. Once you get to a higher level you need to start putting something a little more cohesive together. As said above, my offer to help you get a working build together still stands and I can help you with the missions themselves if that's what it takes.
As to the prices of various items, they go for what they go for due to supply and demand. Some items are harder to get than others and as such are priced higher as a result. Everything you need to succeed in game can be obtained from missions and re-running them. As for "fleet I joined overpricing everything" please define what you mean by that, because that sounds suspect as all get out. When you say the fleet is overpricing things, are they trying to charge you for gear and help or what are they doing?
Different currencies serve different purposes. Energy credits are the equivalent of gold in world of warcraft and is your basic coin used to buy/trade with other players. Fleet credits are earned by donating various resources to your fleet through projects. Fleet credits can be utilized to purchase various items from fleet holdings, such as ships, weapons, and other items. Fleet Credits and items purchased with them stay with you no matter where you go. individual fleets determine when people get access to the fleet stores because the fleet stores with the exception of a few specific things are not infinite. If for example you wished to purchase 5 items from a fleet holding, someone had to generate those 5 provisions.
Prices for fleet items such as ships, weapons and the like are set by the game itself and not by the fleets. That's something I have no control over as a fleet leader. When you donate to fleet projects those items are removed from the game and don't go to me or anyone else in the fleet. If you donate say 1m energy credits and 10k dilithium, that just vanishes.
As for dilithium, it and zen are linked together. Zen is the premium cash bought currency. Every zen you see in game was bought with real cash at some point along the line. You can use zen to purchase items from the Cstore such as ships and other fun stuff. In order to obtain zen you have two options, pay real cash, or convert dilithium over to zen. Right now the exchange is maxed out at 500 dilithium per zen, but they have been looking at ways to bring this back down. Dilithium is also used for other things such as upgrading items, donation to fleet projects, changing mods on weapons, and a host of other things. You can get 8k refined dilithium per toon per day and move it to your other toons via dilithium exchange. To move dilithium between toons you would make an offer to buy zen for 25 dilithium per zen. You would then swap to your other toon and go back to the exchange and cancel the offer and withdraw the dilithium.
It seems complicated now but it's really not once you know what each is used for and so on.
Lastly, don't worry about crafting right now. Let's worry about you getting functional before we worry about you crafting. Once we get you set with a basic starter build, then you can worry about crafting and farming up all the credits you want. The scaling of the foes can be daunting at times, but fair warning wait till you get to the delta quadrant if you want rough scaling. Your problem right now is you're still super new to this game and haven't yet by the sounds of things gotten a basic cohesive build put together.
As to the Odyssey, if you want the ship, you have a few options. You can buy the ship with cash, or flip dilithium to zen. you could try to talk someone into giving you a zen store coupon that lets you get it for free, but I doubt they're going to just hand them out. As for ships, several times a year cryptic give away ships for free as parts of events. For this winter event that's been going on it's a Fek'hiri ship. Other times they give stuff away is during the anniversary event, and during the summer. Occasionally they will do other events giving out free ships.
So with all of that said. I'm going to make you an offer that I don't make to alot of people. If you would like help, I will sit down with you and go over your build and help you get started. I will help you go over your skills, your ship setup, gearing options and the like. I will help you get started with a basic setup of mk xii very rare gear and t5u ship if need be. Since you're on PC I can help you out. The only question is if you want the help.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
You don't NEED Epic quality gear. With the right build you can get by on Mk XII Very Rare. And if you're in a fleet that is charging you through the nose just to be there, doesn't sound like the fleet for you.
I have to agree with switching power to weapons. Power to shields really just affects recharge rate so its fine to finagle that back to 50 and letting Engines and Aux take the surplus from shields after going full weapons. Especially if you have a few BOff abilities that draw on Aux power.
Anyway I have been using the free t-5 galaxy class and after some adjustment to weapons and consuls I was able to beat the mission by letting the helper ship you can call fight the battleship while I retreated to repair and then engage again.
Right now I've got it equipped with two tetreon dual banks and two quantum torpedo launchers in front and two of the same torpedo's in the back with tetreon arrays.
I should get a screenshot that shows all the consoles and such, but I'm busy today. I'd like to try working on my builds for that and the other ships I use sometime though.
https://sto.fandom.com/wiki/Mission:_Everything_Old_is_New
Also the cooldown on torpedos is slow so having four torpedoes is likely too many unless you are making a torpedo-specific build.
Have you read the Baby Steps guide? It is a great primer for setting up a competent build in STO.
https://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/k88fel/the_baby_step_series_part_1_the_first_step_level/
You’ll figure it out! Don’t worry. There is a big learning curve to STO’s endgame, so we all struggled just like you at first.
This part is objectively false as you can deal great damage with any energy type in game. Whoever told you that you can't deal great damage with tetryon is lying to you. Tetryon doesn't have as many support options as phaser but is still just as viable. Any energy type is viable, what matters is what you support it with and how you use it.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
I'd be inclined to choose phaser or disruptor as these energy types are better supported via mission gear. For torpedoes it may be advantageous to drop all but one forward torpedo and replace them with beam arrays in order to better support broadside beam attacks.
I used to put a couple dual banks on the front of my ship as well thinking that more things hitting a target visually meant more damage and that's not true. So like I said prior you're in good company. Based off what you said, the problem you ran into is definitely your build and I will explain why what you've said you were doing is a bad idea. Now that I know your ship I will recommend a build for you below that you can put together for free by doing the missions. You will not need to touch the exchange and can get everything for free. Only thing you might need to buy would be a bridge officer training manual if that. So first some explanation and then to the build. If you do what I'm recommending, you will pick up massive amounts of firepower and also survival. Also an offer I won't make to anyone else at the end of this.
First up, dual banks are limited to a 90 degree targeting arc and can only fire in that arc. If you can't keep them in the forward 90 degrees, they will never be able to fire, and a weapon that's not firing is dealing no damage. At that point you could do more damage with your ground weapons. While dual banks are certainly viable weapons you need a ship that's fast enough turn wise to keep them on target and typically want to do strafing runs with them, or park and sparkle as you'll hear some folks say. Think of it in old school naval combat. A destroyer can zip in, do some damage and zip out and is very speedy and can dodge things easier than the bigger ships. The bigger battleships have to broadside to bring their full firepower to bear. In keeping your galaxy class facing forward to allow the dual banks to fire, you're preventing any of your aft weapons from being able to fire at all assuming you don't have a tetryon omni beam. Assuming the torps are on cooldown, you've got at best 2 out of 8 weapons firing and doing anything. You may as well run with 6 blank slots on the ship as far as the game is concerned.
For your torpedoes, unless you're building for a dedicated torpedo boat or using very specific niche builds, you NEVER want to run more than a single torpedo on a ship. Reason being is that torpedoes in this game share cooldowns. If you fire your first torpedo, the second one goes on cooldown and can't fire. If you fire the second one, the first goes on cooldown and can't fire. This isn't something like Bridge Commander where you can fire multiple torpedo tubes at once. Also again you're limited by targeting arc and cooldown of the torpedo itself. Remember again a weapon that's not firing is dealing no damage at all and is of no help to you.
Now I recommended that you do a broadside build with the ship and I still do, and here's why. If you do a build with 8 beams arrays and broadside, you'll be dealing far far more damage than you would with the dual banks and torps. Reason being is those beam arrays have a 270 degree targeting arc. if you broadside you can get all 8 of them firing at once. This can drain alot of weapon power, but that's why you want to have your ship power settings set to attack mode at all times. You will have enough power left in the other systems to keep yourself going. A weapon that's not firing is going to do no damage.
For your build this is what I'm going to recommend.
-Delta Quadrant mission Revolution or Cardassian Struggle mission New Link - you will run one of these missions 7 times to get 7 tetryon beams. I recommend revolution for the higher starting grade of weapon. otherwise New Link if Revolution gives you fits.
-Butterfly in the Iconian War arc. You will run this mission 3 times. You will get the Omni Directional Antichroniton beam. This will be your final weapon and you will put it in the rear of the ship. This will let you cheese an extra forward firing weapon if you have to face forward. Omnis can always fire and is best to put them on the rear of a ship. You will use the Temporal Phase Overcharged core as your warp core. This core has an ability that you can use to cheese cooldown reduction for your bridge officer powers in a pinch. You just have to put it on your bars. You will also utilize the Temporal Disentanglment Suite as one of your science consoles.
-Midnight in the Iconian War arc. You will run this mission 3 times. You are going to pick up the Sol Defense shield, engine, and deflector. This will give you a 3 piece bonus that gives you a massive heal when you activate it and can save you from death. It also gives massive damage reduction just by having it on the ship.
-Ragnarok mission in Future Proof arc. This will give you the Trellium D engineering console. This will help you by giving you damage resistance and higher shield capacity/hp.
-Terminal Expanse in Yesterday's War. You will run this twice to get the Directed Energy Distribution Manifolds. This will buff your beam damage. Since you're running all beams this will buff your beams.
-Beyond The Nexus in New Frontiers arc. you will pick up the Reinforced Armaments console.
-Reunion in the Delta Quadrant arc. you will pick up the Field Generator console
-Echos of Light in New Frontiers arc. you will pick up the Nausican Siphon Capacitor for the power transfer rate on the console.
-Delta Flight in Iconian War arc. you want the Polaric Modulator.
-Brushfire in New Frontiers arc. you want the House Martok Defensive Configuration.
That will round out your equipment. Now for your bridge officers.
Lt Tactical: Fire At Will 1, Attack Pattern Beta 1
Lt Science: Science Team 1, Hazard Emitters 2
Ensign Engineering: emergency power to weapons 1
Lt Cmdr Engineering: emergency power to engines 1, auxiliary to to structural integrity field 1, auxiliary to intertial dampers 2
Cmdr Engineering: engineering team 1, directed energy modulation 1, reverse shield polarity 2, aceton beam 2
Just so you're aware, this isn't going to be chart topping and I am scraping the sides of the barrel far as free goes, but it will get you started. Now you take that build and do well starting out. Or here is the offer no one else is going to get. If you don't like that, I will get you into the Odyssey which will be a ship you can use for your entire account and kit the ship out for you on PC. Your choice.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
Also, you can craft tactical Tetryon beam consoles at mark II VR and level those up. Or check prices for mark II VR on the exchange, they used to be pretty cheap. A fleetmate or someone here would probably craft them for you for free since they use cheap white mats. If you have fleet credits you can also get Vulnerability Locator consoles which boost tetryon and give you a bonus to critical hit chance - https://sto.fandom.com/wiki/Fleet_Tactical_Consoles (get Locators not Exploiters.)
That is, get a basic beam array setup with the proper tactical consoles, then work on improving it over time instead of burning out on non-stop episode repeats.
Something to consider for ships, if you have your heart set on spending zero money: you can get T6 fleet versions of ships for 5 fleet modules + fleet credit, and you can get free fleet modules by completing 5 reputations to tier 6. That's going to take awhile, but less time than the year-long event campaign for 2023. The down side is that you will not get the console or the trait that comes with the non-fleet version of the ship.
> This part is objectively false as you can deal great damage with any energy type in game. Whoever told you that you can't deal great damage with tetryon is lying to you. Tetryon doesn't have as many support options as phaser but is still just as viable. Any energy type is viable, what matters is what you support it with and how you use it.
Good point. Tetryon is fine, it just has a not-so-useful ability and a dirth of consoles. I would still think a phaser build would be easier and cheaper to make.
The tactical bridge officer abilities are single target but can be adjusted to torpedo spread 1 + beam fire at will 2 if you prefer multi-target.
Try to engage Photonic Officer 1 immediately prior to starting your attack, and keep using it until all the belligerent parties firing on you have been destroyed, in order to get your bridge officer abilities cooling down faster so that they are available for use more often.
Good luck out there.
https://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/b6e83e42951608f7d9f46cf2de865f9f
And even if you don't end up liking it, it's another strong Admiralty card.
While a hero ship the T5 GCS at least had (and IIRC still has) an issue of having really poor turn rate. As for weapons all energy types have the same base damage, only thing that changes is the proc, so all other things being equal over time the DPS will be more or less the same. The Advanced Phaser Beam Arrays you might have heard of aren't one best weapons because phasers are inherently superior but rather a combination of phasers being one of the most supported energy types and the stats of those arrays being good with a rather nice special bonus if you have more then 1 of those arrays.
Not only is that traditional, but it is also useful for when you knock down the shields with broadside fire since it means you have a choice of direction to turn to fire them (one or the other is usually less of a turn) and the shared cooldown is often lower than the full cooldown (of course, I play Romulan most often and the plasma torpedoes take a long time so if you use photons the tradeoff may be less practical).
That one-front-one-rear arrangement is also good for if you want to run a full set of something (or even two sets) which contains a torpedo but it has a long cooldown or whatever which is not always good timing to take full advantage of the broadside tactic without another torp as backup.
Either way, the Galaxy is a classic broadsider.
(For cruisers, I'll also try to have room for at least one RCS accelerator, because then it handles less like a drunken cow on skates and more like a starship.)
With a mine, 2 torpedoes, and a dual beam bank one would only be able to bring one half of available weapons to bear when broadsiding an enemy ship. This would make sense on a TV show, I guess, but this thread is about getting a ship to work better in-game.
On a 5/3 ship (after equipping it so that it has a reasonable turn rate) another way of doing things that seems to work pretty well is to equip a set torpedo, set dual beam bank, and two beam arrays front, with one set and one non-set omni and a beam array rear. With a forward weighted setup like this most weapons can be brought to bear towards the front of the ship. This might be a setup to work towards a bit later in the game.
You already have some good replies, the game takes time to learn, there are countless varieties of ways to build a ship.
I have a Science Jem'Hadar character I created with the Jem'Hadar Carrier fighters, pets, escorts, etc that I could literally sit in most instances and let all my "aid" ships called in do all the fighting for me. I can typically call up 9 or more fighters & ships at any time.
I have another Warrior based Klingon Chargh class ship I fitted because I liked the animations for how it Cloaks, I pop in hit the target with everything I got, and then Cloak out.
Its just a matter of learning how to put things together, how one thing compliments another, how one ship type works well with cannons while another works better with torpedoes and beams.
There is a lot to learn, it is not a simple shooter game, it requires some thought and trial and error.