Every weapon of a given “mark” level is normalized to the same dps (and price). The differences are whether it has an expose or exploit special attack, what the cooldown on that is, and what kind of special effect it has (AoE, knockback, etc). It’s nice in a way, because you don’t have to worry about the dps, but just focus on the specials you want.
I dunno. Just seems kinda dull to me. But I hate ground combat in the game anyway.
The ground combat isn’t as horrible as it seems early in. Once the kits get multiple powers it winds up having several overlapping concepts going on at once. You’ve got the lining up of shots relative to flanking and the layout of your weapons’ AOE, you’ve got the positional game going on with turrets, mortars, grenades & cover shields, you’ve got the bonus dodging from well-timed rolls, and the buff / debuff / crowd-control war going on amongst all this. Group ground PVP is actually fairly interesting. The only real problem with it is the same problem the entire game has - it was just pushed out too early. Some things are obviously weaker than they ought to be (fabrications, grenades & melee) and some things are obviously stronger than they ought to be (chained CC causing massive exploit shots). And all the PVE ground content is trivially easy. It needs a lot of polish.
Which is the problem with STO in general, really. The game wasn’t ready for release. It needs another 8-12 months to cook.
Space combat is where the game really shines. But ground combat isn’t too bad; it’s actually fairly different from the typical “beat down the bad guy’s hitpoints to win” paradigm. Damage is a secondary consideration. The way you’re supposed to win is via clever tactical use of special powers. And there are a lot of different special weapon attacks and ground combat skills.
The problem is the fine tuning and balancing is not there yet. The game definitely needs more polish, more tuning, more missions. I do have fun playing it now; however, I wouldn’t give it a strong recommendation at this point. Probably the best time to enter the game will be one or two months before SWTOR goes live, when STO gives a big push to compete against that.
Maybe for you. I die constantly.
First major update just went in. ( Release notes )
Points of interest are skill respecs, some more level cap content, a fair bit of PVP improvements and a whole lot of general polish.
I just got this game this weekend. The space graphics are pretty sweet, it seems to me. Kinda sucky that the initial load of the game restricts the player to just a couple of character slots…
- Is there a way to tell a particular mission’s difficulty? I don’t want to jump in over my head.
1b) Or do the mission generators auto-scale?
2)Figuring out the quest givers was giving me fits. Are all the ones available to me appear on the “Hail Starfleet” button?
(I hope I’m not praticing thread necromancy here…)
Nah, it’s still relevant. As far as the missions, none of them should be any too hard. You can check the level of a mission by hitting L, I believe, for Log, and looking there. All missions of a level should be roughly the same difficulty.
If you zoom in all the way in to your Starship, you can see the name you gave it on the hull.
Nice touch.
USS Stockham
USS Haverfield
USS Ingersoll
I was finding names out of my “U.S. Destroyers” reference book. Finally! My love for naval military history pays off. (Except, step “3. Profit!” is lagging a little.)
Ok, thanks! I’ll check that when I get home.
I love it when I find a came that reignites some excitment in these old bones.
Some missions are more difficult than others. The climax of a multi-mission arc tends to throw something bigger and nastier at you. You’ll know when it’s coming just from the mission briefs, you’ll usually get some help, and the game’s “Normal” setting is pretty lenient anyway.
Speaking of which, the second major update has gone in. The major feature is a difficulty setting (with a death penalty for using it) which cranks up the mission enemies along with their rewards. There’s a fair bit of other tweaks and polish, including some more level cap content, but the difficulty setting is the big thing. I’m finding it a lot of fun - a fair bit of the game mechanics could be shrugged off because the enemies were too weak to get a lot out of it. I was soloing the space part of the first 5-man Task Force, to highlight how undertuned things were. On Elite, though…boy you do NOT want to get poked with an assimilation probe 
As for quest givers, all the people who give you missions will either show up automatically on your Starfleet comms or you’ll get a mission to go meet them in person, and then they’ll show up. There are a very few missions that show up out of the blue when you get near a system, but those are usually systems you’ll wind up going to anyway, or fleet actions that you’re repeating.
Yeah. I got pulled into a fleet scenario at Starbase 24. It was the first time I died. I got in over my head surprisingly quickly. (I tried to follow other players around and let them draw off some of the adds, but I wasn’t paying attention at one point.)
“J” for journal shows the level/difficulty.
Ah, right. My work keyboard is different from my home one so muscle memory had me stabbing at a random spot. I guessed.
No worries. Just clearing that up for the lurkers.
My new pet peeves:
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I was doing a “Defend the Sirius Sector” repeatable quest. I pick the nearest enemy signal and move in. The pop-up tip said they were -3 levels compared to me. I load inside the action. Sure enough, most mobs were weaker. But then some yahoo who was +35 to me joins the instance. I get ganged up on by a cloud of fighters that spawned as +35 to me (I presume the server is programmed to give everyone inside a challenge.). While there was no real penalty for dying (is there an achievement badge for dying in less than 5 seconds?), it was still annoying.
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I was doing the “Patrol the Orion Sector” quest. You had to enter four star systems and do the quests there. Some are “open” quests, some are not. I got into a system that was “open”, but I was the only one there. I was tasked with destroying 5 Klingon squadron groups. Just as I engaged my first group, someone autojoined my group. I thought “great! I’ll get this part knocked out quicker.”
No such luck. The player did nothing for about 15 minutes. (Maybe they went to take a dump?) Then they left the system (but not the group) and went to a different star system to do that quest. Meanwhile, because I was grouped, the mobs spawning were intended/set for two players.
What a PITA. If I dropped group, I would get booted from the system and mission, right? I managed to complete that portion of the patrol. Yet the yahoo got credit too, right? This left a slightly bitter aftertaste.
This is fixed now. We hope. The +35s join their own, +35 instance.
There are work-arounds for those two problems.
- Change the instance you’re in. Above the minimap, click on the instance name and choose another one. Unfortunately, you’ll lose your progress in the previous instance. Changing the instance is also useful once you’ve completed the current one. Switch to one that’s already started, instead of waiting out the 5-minute reset timer.
Your other choice is to let the high-level player do all the work.
- Turn off auto-grouping. It’s in the social options; I think “O” by default. While it can be fun meeting up with other players doing the same missions, there are too many negatives to it, in my opinion. (I’m in the opposite position of you. I’m more likely to be the player who had to go afk for some reason. But I don’t want someone to complete the mission for me.)
Also, if you were there first, I think it makes you the team leader. You may be able to boot the afk-er.
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About the keyboard: there are different “default” key sets depending on what key map option you’re using. There’s one that mimics WoW keys and one that mimics FPS, along with the native STO set.
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I’m about one level below Captain rank. I’m looking forward to my next ship. I’m just starting the DS9 area missions.
I like the new civilian clothes option. Not a lot to choose from, but it’s nice not to have to wear a uniform all the time.
This was last night. Maybe if the +35 guy was grouped with a low level Lt., it let him in the one I was in.
Thanks for these tips. I looked for those option settings, but I couldn’t find them.
It’s someplace in the social window. Try different the tabs. Look for something about “open teaming”. The icon looks like a little person with others behind it. You want to change it to (I think) “private” teaming. Sorry, I can’t be more specific, I set it a long time ago and haven’t poked around there for a while, so my memory is dim.