Season 8.5 updates

Wow!

This dev blog is packed full of information and I like everything I see there!

• Ship management sounds like an improvement over the current system
• Load-outs are something I've been wishing for a long time. One of the nice features of City of Heroes was the ability to have multiple "builds" for a character. It might be PvP vs PvE or it might be a solo build and a team build. Regardless, having multiple builds for each ship will be extremely nice.
• Quick-Equip should make building those load-outs even easier.

Looking forward to it!

The Galaxy-X in Action

Trying out the Breen set

In the last post I talked about why I chose the X as my new ship. Now that I have it, how is it working? I've been running it in the Tau Dewa Sector Patrol daily and the Dyson zone and here's what I can tell you:

• It does turn like a supertanker. This is a "feature" of all the Galaxy class in general. An RCS console and a decent level of that Engineering drive skill and it gets back to "regular cruiser" territory. I can tell you after flying an escort since level 20 it does feel very different. There is a learning curve but I am getting there.
• It is tough but it's going to draw a lot of fire and I have managed to blow myself up a few times. In an escort you can pick one target, devastate it, and fly through for another pass. With this ship, even with cannons, things don't blow up quite as quickly (if they move at all) and you're not zipping out of the fight and looping back around. Again, learning curve.
• The Phaser Lance: It is very cool. The 3 minute cooldown is a pain but on the multi-wave missions in the TDSP I can usually fire it a second time if I want. There are few things cooler than cloaking, sailing in close to an Apex Battleship, dropping the cloak and firing the lance - ZAP! Shield gone, significant hull damage, and all the agro the target can give you as you blaze away with rapid-firing cannons and heavy quantum torpedo fire.It puts the target on their back foot and they cannot recover in time to stop it.
• Being locked into phasers is really not a big deal. I run all plasma on my escort and have an all disruptor beam boat as well, and I don't see any problems going all-phaser with the X.
• It works great on the Voth too. Cloak, close in, wait for their magical reflecting invulnerability shield to drop, then decloak and LANCE! It is an instant aggro-puller though so the aftermath can be pretty rough if they are operating in a multiple-big-ship squadron like you see on the minefield-breaching attacks. It's worth it though.
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The only real annoyance is the tactical bridge officer situation. The ship only carries a lieutenant and an ensign station and that means 3 tactical skills only. That really limits the options.

• To maximize that de-cloak alpha strike I'd like to have Cannon Rapid Fire and High Yield Torpedo as an immediate follow up to the big orange can opener.
• Being slower and less maneuverable I'd like to have Cannon Scatter Volley and Torpedo Spread for general usefulness.
• Ideally I'd like to have two versions of the cannon skills to keep one up most of the time while the other cools down.

That's 4-6 slots to have the ideal setup and I only have 3, and I'm not even asking for attack patterns here! This is the single biggest problem with the ship and it's not one that can be mitigated with consoles or devices or exotic bridge or duty officers. For a combat focused ship I'd like to see a lieutenant commander tactical slot at least. Modern designs have at least one universal slot and that would be nice too - converting the science lieutenant slot to a universal would make a huge difference for this ship.

Other than that it's a fun and challenging ship to run. There's no consensus best build out there so it's interesting to see the different approaches taken. My current setup for the limited tac slots is Scatter Volley, Torpedo Spread, and Tactical Team. I can use those multi-attack skills on a single target even if it's not as strong as rapid fire and high-yield. That's this week's answer though - experimentation continues.

Choosing a new ship: The Galaxy-X

During the recent ship sale/bonus zen overlap I went ahead and picked up the white elephant of STO, the Galaxy-X.It's not the most effective ship of its type but there is just something about it. Reading the forums there is a definite divide between those who dismiss it as an outdated design and those who still find it interesting. I definitely fall into the latter camp. Despite the mechanical limitations it's just a cool ship.

Now it did take me awhile to decide to take the plunge. My tactical captain normally flies a Patrol Escort, with a Mirror Universe Assault Cruiser (set up as a beam boat) as a backup for teaming or a change of pace. My then-upcoming engineering captain (who has now reached 50) flies an assault cruiser as well. So my main interest when I decided to pick up a new ship was to get a cruiser, while taking a look at my escort options as well. After an initial run-through, here's what I was thinking:

• The retrofit Defiant - it's not really stronger than my Patrol Escort, and the cloak just doesn't do that much for me. 
• The Heavy Escort Carrier - It has everything my Patrol Escort does plus a hanger bay and the photon torpedo point defense system. I really like it for my tac captain but I suspect my engineer would not get much out of it, and I'm really looking for something they can both fly.
• The Odyssey cruisers - It's fairly pricey but it's a very strong set of ships. I think it only makes sense to get the discounted triple-bundle and I'm going to wait until I have a science captain that can use them. Next!
• The Avenger - not on sale, so no reason to pick it up now - pick a ship that is on sale!
• Assault Cruiser Refit - this is the one I almost chose. It came down to this or the X, and the combination of new skin, the plasma-ejection-like console (an ability I am using a lot with my engineer), and the 180 degree torp launcher (transferable to other ships) all made this extremely attractive and it's probably the next one I will acquire. 

After working through all of that and discussing it with the kid of mine who is also playing the game, he finally said it out loud - "You know, you just kind of have to try it out", referring to the X's combination of cloak, phaser lance, different look and just plain different-ness. If it didn't exist, I would have gone assault cruiser refit. Because it exists, I have to check it out. 

I admit a lot of it was the look of the thing and the "rule of cool". I spend so much time in MMO's looking at my "avatar" that cosmetics matter. That was not the only attraction. A cruiser hull that can mount dual cannons, even with that horrendous turn rate, is interesting. The phaser lance, despite the rampant disappointment with it on the forums, is interesting. A cloaking cruiser, even if it's not a battle cloak, is interesting. 

My Andorian captain takes his new flagship for a cruise by the old home world

I also decided that I might as well go all-in on the thing so I picked up the Venture class too so I would have more visual options - hey, it was on sale too! My tac captain went with the all-Venture look for his (and it is quite pretty). Subsequently my engineer captain went with the Venture nacelles while keeping the rest of it all Galaxy and it looks pretty nice too. 

Next time: How does it play?

Tau Dewa Sector Patrol

Mission Completed

Jumping to the opposite end of the game from the tutorials, we have the Tau Dewa Sector Patrol, a daily mission that earns Romulan marks for level 50 characters. I've been working on my Romulan Reputation and after the initial "oooooh" wore off from running around the surface of New Romulus I realized that the marks were pretty slow in coming. Plus, the ground activities were interesting once but were not thrilling me as a "grind" I wanted to repeat many times. It is a beautiful zone, and it's a big one, but the return on time spent seemed low to me.

Then I discovered the TDSP daily mission and things got a lot more interesting.

Most importantly it's all in space, and there are 15 different missions in it, but you will only need to do 5-7 of them to have a complete run for the day. Each completed mission contributes 10, 15, or 20% towards completion of the patrol. Finish that up and you have 60 marks, 75 if you finish during a bonus period. There's an excellent breakdown of it on the STO Wiki here.

Oops!

For me I just run 5 "stop the attacking ships" missions and call it good. Each one is a good-sized space battle with some allies and with 5 waves of enemies. It's great for practicing with a new ship or trying out new builds for a ship. You can battle everything from Tal Shiar to Hirogen to Gorn to Tholians, so there's plenty of variety. Every once in a while the Enterprise-F shows up and assists you in the fight, which is a nice little touch.

U.S.S. Mjolnir and the Enterprise-F

The 60 mark reward is plenty to keep your tier advancement going since you can only run 1 large and 1 small project at a time anyway. I have not done much gear build yet on it and I suspect to squeeze more out of each day for that I will be returning to the surface of New Romulus. If you're willing to take some time though, 60 a day is not terrible and the actual encounters are a lot of fun.

The Now-Old Federation Tutorial

I thought I would begin with the classic Federation tutorial that so many of us experienced, now retired in favor of a more academy-themed introduction.

Here is Captain - well Ensign - Wolfcastle, my engineering character and a remake of my old lost main character (made it all the way to level 43 back when the cap was 45). The tutorial starts you out as a junior officer on a Miranda-class ship.

You are summoned to the bridge when the ship is called in to help repel the borg invasion of the Vega colony. Yes, I think we can all agree that's a very impressive bridge for a Miranda. The basketball court is offscreen to the right ...

You end up being beamed over to another ship that has been damaged by the borg. Here you get to help out with medical and engineering and of course, shooting.

There was quite a bit of shooting - fortunately it was against the weakest borg in the universe.

There were borg outside the ship too.In this stage you beam back over as your captain is out of action and you are now in charge of the ship! One fun thing was that right there in the tutorial there were usually several players online going through it too so you would have a squadron of Mirandas running around shooting things. It was a nice reminder that it was a multiplayer game.

Eventually you beat the damaged cube in space and then it's time to move to the ground.

Down on the ground you learn the basics of ground combat and run around a very dark zone shutting down borg equipment.

Eventually it's back to space and some final borg 'splosions as you warp to another area and help the fleet (and usually some fellow tutorial players) finish off the remaining borg in space. Yeah, we win!

Then it's a trip to earth spacedock, a meeting with the admiral, and your first command ...

Man that is pretty ... anyway the whole thing took less than 30 minutes and was a nice intro to the basic mechanics of the game. It was a little clunky compared to newer missions, and focusing on the major threat of the setting might have been a mistake in logic, but it worked for me. Farewell old tutorial!