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thinking of buying the game, got a few questions
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Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
Hi,
I have looked forward to this game for a while. For some reason I thought it came out next year, so I'm trying to catch up on research on the game to see if I want to get into it. I have a few questions for beta testers and pre release players
1. how do you level up? Is it a pure instance based system or can you go off and do your own thing if you want?
2. As you progress up ranks can you recruit more crewmen for your bridge crew? is there a pool you draw from or do you create them?
3. as you progress up in rank and have new ships available to you can you retain older ships of yours? if I have a class 4 cruiser can I also have a class 4 or class 3 science vessle?
4. can your bridge crew/ ship crew die? if I have an away mission and take my science officer with me, they die, do I need to get a new one?
5. what crew possitions are available and need to be filled?
6. how do you get upgrades for your ship? do you buy them or are they quest loot?
Thanks.
I have looked forward to this game for a while. For some reason I thought it came out next year, so I'm trying to catch up on research on the game to see if I want to get into it. I have a few questions for beta testers and pre release players
1. how do you level up? Is it a pure instance based system or can you go off and do your own thing if you want?
2. As you progress up ranks can you recruit more crewmen for your bridge crew? is there a pool you draw from or do you create them?
3. as you progress up in rank and have new ships available to you can you retain older ships of yours? if I have a class 4 cruiser can I also have a class 4 or class 3 science vessle?
4. can your bridge crew/ ship crew die? if I have an away mission and take my science officer with me, they die, do I need to get a new one?
5. what crew possitions are available and need to be filled?
6. how do you get upgrades for your ship? do you buy them or are they quest loot?
Thanks.
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2- Bridge officer limit is set by the ship you have, your starter ship allows you to have 3 active bridge officers (one of each tactical, science, engineering), your second ship adds an extra slot of one of them depending on the ship type (tactical for an escort, engineering for cruiser...). You can swap them around as you like. You gain more either by purchasing them from a station or mission rewards (or now randomly "rare" ones will ask to join you). You can customise all of them in quite alot of detail, their race and gender are set but you can edit their appearance and abilities to suit your needs, and promote them to new levels. If they are an "alien" the customisation means you can make them pretty much any race you can think of.
3- Yes, I beleive the limit is 6 ships in your "garage" so you'll probably ditch your tier 1 by the time you're flying tier 5 ships but if you want to hold onto that Nova class you can.
4- No, they don't die, they are incapacitated and can be revived. Its star trek, main character never die
5- Each ship has different slots, but all bridge officers are either tactical, engineering or science. Tactical give you abilities that makes weapons do more damage and some useful combat maneuvers. Engineers improve survivability with abilities like "emergancy power to shields", science officers have a variety of more specialised abilites like tacheon beams to take down shields or tractor beams to pin the enemy. Each ship has maximum ranks available to to, for example your starter ship only allows ensign abilities to be used, the next allows one to be a lietenant, which gives that officer acess to a second teir of abilities.
6- Each time you advance in rank (every 10 levels) you gain acess to a new tier of ships, one is given as free but you need to buy any others you want (ie if you chose escort as your free and want a science ship you'll buy it). Equipment for ships is a mix of loot and buying, you can get quite nice things from loot, or save up and buy specialised equipment from the starbase.
Hope this helps
When you buy bridge officers you choose what gender/race they are, the rewarded and rare ones have this pre-set.
To the best of my knowledge.
On this subject, it should be mentioned that STO has an 'auto-grouping' feature. If you're entering a star system...and there's other people entering it around the same time, on the same mission as you...
The game will team you up automatically. It's an instance, but you'll end up in the instance with other folks.
You can turn this function off if you don't like it, but it's on by default.
1. how difficult to get a rare bridge officer is it? are there missions that they are rewards for more than others? is it worth geting the lifetime account for the borg officer?
2. how quickly do you advance in rank? is it set to a number of missions completed or is there an experience point system?
3. how do you get cash to buy better stuff/personel? are prices high? do players create things for sale or can you craft things in game?
Rank is tied to how many skill points you have spent levelling your chars skills, but it is a fixed number of points required for each advance in rank. You could chose not to spend the points right away and instead save them for a while, but in all honesty it's pointless doing so (see what I did there):cool:
No crafting at all per se, you can trade items gained from scanning anomalies with some npc's to acquire better than standard gear, at higher levels the same items are used to research upgrades to existing gear, but I know of no one who has been able to do this yet. There are two types of currency, Starfleet merits used for purchasing bridge officers, purchasing new skills for Bo's and customising your star ship, then you have energy credits used for buying gear from players and npc vendors, there is a half assed ah for players to sell unwanted loot, but its buggy as **** atm.
***EDIT*** Forgot to mention badges, badges are awarded for taking part in pvp and exploration missions, these can be exchanged for uncommon or better equipment, you trade them in at the appropriate vendors
Bridge officers with rare skills turn up, infrequently, as mission rewards. They won't be dropping left and right, but you'll get a lot of green 'uncommons' early on in the game...even some of those might have stuff that doesn't normally come on a store-bought regular BO.
There are certain missions that will give rare (blue, etc) BOs as rewards, but they're not repeatable to my knowledge. You can't do 'em again for the same reward.
It is based on skill points earned and spent. Not quite experience points, because you don't have to wait till you advance in level to get new stuff; you can spend skill points as you earn them.
Each rank has 10 grades. So after Lieutenant Grade 10 is Lt. Commander Grade 1. This makes Lt. Commander 1 effectively 'Level 11', and many players (and devs) refer to it as such. Commander Grade 1 is 'Level 21', and so on.
Expect to spend about two hours per grade, which means maybe 20 hours per rank, with about 80 hours to reach endgame. Give or take, more or less.
There are different currencies in the game. Bridge Officers, for example, can be purchased and upgraded from vendors for Starfleet Merit. This is given as a mission reward.
Ship equipment and personal gear is usually gotten through Energy Credits, which you obtain from selling items or unwanted gear you receive during missions. You can also get some equipment via redeeming exploration mission rewards.
There is a player market, called the Exchange. You can list items for sale.
Crafting is more of an 'item upgrade' system; you need to have a Phaser Array Mk II already, before you can upgrade it to a better Phaser Array Mk II.
Leveling up is done by earning both skill point and experience. Currently, the player is limited to 45 levels, and five ranks. Each rank unlocks a tier of equipment that you can use; you can of course still use all earlier tiers of equipment. It is possible tyhrough not allocating skill points to go all the way to level 45 at the base rank of Lieutenant...but you will be severely gimped at the higher levels, whose enemies are made predicated on certain equipment levels minimum.
You gain 2 per rank, up to a maximum of 12 IIRC. As you progress in levels, you are awarded bridge crew members through a "mission" - supposedly these crewmembers think enough of you that they want to join. THere is also a bridge crew "store". Higher-quality bridge crew are only gotten through either the awards OR the Exchange; the store only has regular/low-quality ones. Qualty in this case refers to inherent traits; each BOff can have four ground and four space skills max.
You can have a maximum of seven ships (1 active, 6 in "storage"), so it's possible to keep that many. That's enough for your starter, and ONE ship of each tier, with 1 left over. If you want other ships, you have to start making choices. You can shange which ship you fly at the Shipyard - talk to the NPC with a icon of a ship over his head.
Not currently; Cryptic uses the "unconscious" mechanic, and BOs are revived after a fight ends, providing the rest of the party survives. If All party members are rendered unconscious, then you need to use the Respawn button. If YOU are knocked out but the party survives, just wait a bit; eventually one will come over to wake you up. All Captains get a CPR power that can revive one party member as well - being the revived member only has 10% health, this is mostly of use to Eng or Sci spatains, that can either heal/regen shield in a hurry.
You ALWAYS have enough bridge officers to fill all slots on your starter ship, and can commission more as you move up. All ships save for the starter ship have FOUR bridge officer positions, set up as follows:
Escorts: 2 tactical, 1 engineering, 1 science
Cruisers: 1 Tactical, 2 Engineering, 1 science.
Science: 1 Tactical, 1 Engineering, 2 Science.
Klingons in thier Birds of Prey get four stations, but they are "universal" ones - they can fit ANY BOFF.
Statins also have a rank attached - the BOFF at that station can use any skill of the rank of the STATION or lower in space. Or the rank of the BOFF. whichever is lower.
Example: YOu have a Tactical station rated for a Lt.C. a Commander can use his Lt.C or his LT skills at that staion. A Lt can only use his Lt. skill at the same station.
Quest rewards, drops, player sales (Exchange) - loot is not a problem here.
Hope that helps.
All Bridge Officers are randomly generated. Certain things are fixed such as being able to choice from one of a Engineer, Tactical, or Science as a new BO reward for a mission. When you Requisition (buy) a bridge officer, the personnel officer (store) offers you a 40 or so randomly generated BO candidates with an even mixture of races, gender, traits (special passive abilities), and abilities.
And when you reach Lt Commander in Rank, you will receive a randomly generated BO Candidate at levels ending in *2, *4, *6, *7, *9 and *0. The BO candidate will be of Green (Uncommon) quality at Lt Command, at Commaner up through Captain that will be of Blue (Rare) quality, and at Admiral they because Purple (rare) quality. The better BOs will have better traits and abilites which aren't normally available.
And one nice thing is that if you like the BO's that you've leveled up and spent a goodly amount of resources. You can have one of the BO Canditates train (replace) one of you Commissioned BO in a skill the candidate has. For example, if a Rare Science BO candidate have Viral Matrix III (Rare skill), you can have that Candidate train your Science BO in Viral Matrix III.