Now that I have the game open,
Social > Team Settings > LFG Settings > Looking for group mode > Allow team invites
instead of “Open teaming”.
That didn’t prevent me from joining (involuntarily) someone else’s instance.
I changed it to “closed”. That seemed to work.
I have a new question:
During character creation, the player is asked to select from a list of optional “traits”. (For example, “warp Power theory”, or “Accuracy”)
How do these traits influence what skills your character gets while on missions?
For example, all of my characters seem to end up with “Attack Pattern Alpha” and “Evasive Maneuvers”. Is that because I am picking the same optional traits, or are those coming out of the skill tree I am investing skill points into?
Traits usually give you some sort of passive bonus. They don’t affect what abilities (i.e., a power on a cooldown) you get. There are a few exceptions, especially for species-specific traits. Skills do not give you abilities either, they are more passive bonuses. Think of skills as equivalent to attributes in other games.
The abilities you are seeing come from gaining levels. Some of them everyone gets, others are due to your class. This wiki page seems to explain well.
For the most part, the racial traits are entirely passive. Warrior gives you a boost to ground damage (especially melee) and so on. There are a small handful of active ones, such as Vulcans’ “Nerve Pinch”, but the vast bulk of your active abilities are determined by your rank and/or your choice of career.
Of your two examples, everyone gets Evasive Maneuvers at the same point in the Lieutenant rank. However, Attack Pattern Alpha is restricted to the Tactical career. A Science career would get Sensor Scan, which makes scanned enemies take more damage and can counteract cloaking devices, and an Engineering career gets Rotate Shield Frequency, which is a powerful defense boost.
Career choice also determines which Kits you can equip. Kits provide almost all of your personal abilities on ground missions and there’s a fairly wide variety even within a career, much less between them.
Ok, thanks. It’s just starting to make sense now, especially with the help Im getting here.