Ask Cryptic: The October Edition

I predict that as soon as this goes live the flame wars on the STO Forums will light up the night!

I agree! Burn baby, burn!

A flamethrower? I seriously want a squad of them for my TRT.


I can see it now. All 5 people advancing at once, putting out a wall of plasma fire at everything that moves.

Lastline wrote:So it sounds like we are getting elements from Eve, Runes of Magic and Pokemon. It sounds like they are trying to broden thier player base, and make STO more profitable. Should be very intresting.

Sadly, it always has to be about the profit. this, personally, is why I'm getting bored of MMO's and I even have a life time membership to this game....lol It just isn't worth putting in all the effort just to get a few gains which is funny, cuz in real life, I'm an extremely hard worker (some would call it being an old workhorse). I guess I just don't like it too much when something is already somewhat long and drawn out and the company makes it even more so just to pad a profit margin and if extending that profit margin is necessary because of sagging sales, then maybe, companies should drop back to running just a couple of mmo's.

But anywho, that's just my two cents worth, as always....lol

P.S. Any word about the D'Deridex Warbird yet? That would be something, the only something, I'd put an effort towards getting....lol

Season 7 is scheduled for the 13th, this coming tuesday.

So get as many free doffs as you can before then!

And DIl!

Stunshock wrote:So get as many free doffs as you can before then!

And DIl!

Is DI going away??

THey're nerfing a ton of ways to get dilithium. It's not going away, but it's gonna be a lot harder to gather. While needing a ton of the stuff for pretty much everything in game.

Stunshock wrote:THey're nerfing a ton of ways to get dilithium. It's not going away, but it's gonna be a lot harder to gather. While needing a ton of the stuff for pretty much everything in game.

Dilithium!... I thought you meant DI (Diplomatic Immunity)... yep, I'd read that dilithium was being cut... I'm still waiting for the release and the STO Forum fireworks that will ensue heheheheh

Hehe, no, it was dil. But the l blends into the ! That's why I wrote it out fully in my reply.

The cuts aren't going to be as dramatic as were originally planned. You'll still see a bit of a drop on straight dil rewards for STF's, but their logic is that you'll be able to trade marks for dil. This is pretty asinine because you can't start doing that until you've grinded up your rep, and by the time you've got the rep chances are you're about done doing STF's and so won't ever really get to make use of the "extra" dil from turning in marks.

If you keep doing STF's once you have your rep and such, then you can trade in your marks for more dil. That dil plus the reward for the STF itself should be slightly more dill than you get now. But you have to go through the rep grind first. Also we don't know how long the turn-in project will take, nor what other materials it might require. If the project takes more than an hour or so, chances are you'll still be coming out behind.

Not sure what other sources of dil are being cut? There's definitely more dil costs, though. Embassy will need dil, rep will need dil, once you have rep getting the special items and sets will need dil, doff officer exchanges will need way more dil.

You can still get free doffs from the academy, but the "general" recruitment assignment will now cost 1k dil. It's the one that awards a pack instead of just straight doffs. So I'm betting most people will skip that, so the price of white doffs is going to go up. Add to that the reinforcement pack from the zen store going away.

Last couple weeks, I've been saving all my general recruitment doff packs. I've got like 5-6 so far on each character. I'm thinking after a few weeks or so of the new regime the price of them will climb and I can make a tidy profit off them.

I also suspect that part of their reasoning is that, unless they introduce some new sets, the sets you won on STF's will no longer be quite as shiny as before. Up to now the main reason everyone ground those STF's so regularly was the chance to win drops that would lead to Mk XI and Mk XII weapons and the ground and space sets (such as Honor Guard, Omega Force and MACO shields, engines, etc.) For space the best set in the game is, generally believed to be, the 3 piece Borg (Deflector, Engine, Console) and one of the Elite shields (HG or MACO). With this new release I understand that changes as the Console is no longer part of that set and so you'll no longer get the Regen Shield proc unless you equip the Borg shield. Since that proc is only a chance (you may or may not get the shield boost) I don't think it will be worth it. The full Honor Guard, MACO and Omega Force sets are fine but none of them have procs that are exactly game changing (indeed, the Regen Shield proc is good but not exactly game changing, either). I've been looking at the Fleet Space and Ground Equipment on Serenity. It's pretty awesome stuff. Easily on a par with, if not exactly equal to, Mk XI and Mk XII sets and weapons. In short you will be able to build a ship or ground team easily comparable to anything you can get thru grinding STF's now without having to grind STF's (you'll have to grind other things instead heheheh). Personally, although I enjoy the STF's, I like that. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations

I haven't looked at the space shields, deflectors, or engines from fleet starbases. But, the weapons at least are the best in the game (currently, who knows with the new stuff coming out).

I think the borg set is still going to be the most used. I mean, you want the engines at least, otherwise you'll be swapping them back and forth every time you go from action to sector space, because no one wants to be stuck at warp 10. The shield kind sucks, since it's regen and not covariant or resilient. But those regen powers proc a lot, and make a difference. I figure people will either go 2 piece borg and just have the hull, or swallow it and go three piece borg and say goodbye to the stronger shields.

At least until you get your reputation ranked up. Have you seen the captain's powers? There's a couple passive ability choices where you get heals. There's regens and instant heals. There's rather large passive shield regens that are always on, or there's instant heals that have a chance to proc when you take a critical hit. There's also powers that when you get hit they have a chance to placate the attacker. Once you get to the higher rep ranks, you're likely to be MUCH more formidable. That's not even counting any of the special gear you can buy.

The reman set, which you can get the shield now from a mission and have to do vault events and doff assignments for the rest, is going to be purchasable via rep just like the borg sets are. There's also new weapons and other gear. Including reinforcements items that'll bring you some NPC assistance.

Fleet Engines provide a warp boost in Sector Space just like Borg and HG/Maco. I'm not sure if it's as much of a boost... I only noticed they list a boost. I'll have another Goosey tonight if I get a chance (like everyone else I'm trying to grind as many STF drops as I can before Tuesday )

Ugh. The dil reward for STF's has been removed completely. I just did an elite, got marks and the neural processor, but no dil.

On the plus side, an elite is 60 marks, so doing one gives you more than enough marks for the first two tier 0 rep projects.

I'm so mad with you
I've been patchign for three bloddy hours now. And the closer it gets to being done the slower it goes.

From what I am reading on the STO forums dilithium is broken and no one is getting any from any of the exploration, stf, etc. etc.

You know, I ran the tour the universe the other night, and there were sectors where i wasn't getting my credits, despite having the sectors marked complete. So it doesn't surprise me stuff is broken.

This is staus quo, after a major update such as this things will be broken for a good week (or longer) before they get fixed.

So other than that what does everyone think of season seven so far?

I'll tell you after I've set up Arwen's shop, then have a poke around as Stunshock. But I'm loving the change character button.

Well I hope it's a case of stuff being broken, cause that kinda sucked. I expected dil and got none. :p

I bought my vesta, but haven't gotten a chance to play with it yet. I did the two new romulan space missions (mostly to get a start on the rep). They were both pretty fun. The vault one is kind of annoying, have to chase around tholians trying to put a fucking web around the vault. There's also a part at the beginning where we killed everything and literally had to wait like two minutes for the next part to start, that was kinda lame.

I really don't have any interest in new romulus other than going 'oooh, pretty.' I tried the missions on tribble and new romulus is like a korean mmo.

Oh, and if it hasn't happened yet we need someone to get on and start our embassy projects :p

The Vesta is broken for a lot of people. Seems they can't assign Boffs to the stations.

Oh, and if it hasn't happened yet we need someone to get on and start our embassy projects

We had the embassy projects up and running as soon as we logged in yesterday. If you look in the holdings there are now two tabs. One says "Starbase" and the other says "Embassy". If you hurry you may have a chance to keep up with Winters!

Well, I tried a couple of the patrol missions. The starbase was a fun little one, and the Galordon Core was fun and different, though it got really annoy at one point as the Gekli wont move if they were under attack, and a new pair of attackers would spawn before i got chance to finish off the old set. That went on for a good 7 minutes. I think before i do any more missions like that, I should switch to the Viper. Kill things faster.


I also had a quick beam down to New Romulas. It looks interesting. Haven't done anything there yet. But had a quick look.