/STG/ - Star Trek General

Two official TNG books. An Officer's Manual and a First Year Sourcebook.

Both can be found here:

mediafire.com/folder/9mt7sng56l8gg/Star_Trek_RPG_(FASA)

/ST-TT/ peeps:
Have any of you played Ascendancy? My brother and I get groups of our friends together for gaming weekends and currently we're weighing up whether to buy Star Trek: Catan or Twighlight Imperium. I wanted to know how you would rate ascendency against those other 2 options.

/STO/ peeps:
Would you be able to suggest a good build for a Defiant Class?

About three times as much as when you got from cadet to Vice admiral.

If you can, try picking the tier 4 zen version of Defiant and later a tier 5 version of it.
That way you can get quad heavy cannons and feddie cloacking generator, as well as some boosts from the two together because set bonus.
After that, get as many cannon or damage type boosters as you can and arm yourself with heavy dual cannons.

Although, you should wait on those ship purchases until April 6th.
There's a first contact day event coming and that means free stuff for all, including most likely a free ship or two per faction.

How about that time when you pushed for them to go 200% Annorax on some shit, saved Romulus, turned it Borg, then destroyed it again and wiped out the Tuterians instead?

What.

Butterfly - you investigate the simulated timeline changes they try and make, decide "oh yeah the holodeck says it's fine, let's do this", then accidentally restore romulus but make it Borg.

Then, trying to undo that, you (indirectly) destroy romulus again, as well as wiping out Noye's waifu (and her entire race to boot).

How many kilo/mega/[SI-prefix]hitlers does that count as?

It was a mistake. Basically the Iconians were winning the Iconian War, so an Annorax-type temporal weapon was seen as the only solution. The problem is that since the Iconians have been around for so long and were so influential back in their heyday, it wasn't as simple as simply removing the Iconians from the timeline, since that would cause immense changes (a simulation to that effect delayed the general proliferation of warp travel in the Galaxy by about 50,000 years, resulted in a violent, expansionist Vulcan Star Empire, and a Klingon republic who's people were more interested in art and poetry, among other changes).

So various simulations are run and it's discovered that the best bet is to not destroy the Iconians, but rather delay their becoming active again, by deleting from time the Iconian Gate that Picard found in TNG so that Picard never finds them. It's not a permanent solution but it buys the Alliance an extra couple hundred years of technological advancement and preparation.

A side-effect of this is that the Iconians never influence Hakeev and whatsername into doing shit with Hobus, so the supernova never happens and Romulus is never destroyed. This means the Star Empire is still around, of course, but D'Tan's republic (in the simulation) is starting to take off anyway; the Republic's advent has simply been delayed, not prevented. So this was determined to be the best course of action.

However, it turns out that since the Iconians likewise aren't antagonizing Species 8472 and thereby making them come out of liquid space to fight everyone as a distraction, the Borg are stronger. So the result was Romulus being assimilated by the Borg.

The only solution involved some technobabble that resulted in accidentally erasing the Tuterian species from time (or getting nearly all of them assimilated by the Borg, it's a little unclear). The surviving Tuterians become the Sphere Builders.

>How many kilo/mega/[SI-prefix]hitlers does that count as?

None. YOU didn't do it, an alternate timeline version of yourself did. You can't be held responsible for what alternate versions of you do, that'd be ridiculous.

The Defiant is a pretty good platform for cannons, and with the space balance changes, cannons are getting unfucked (Dual-Heavies used to not get their innate CritD when using Scatter Volley). Their firing cycle has been put on par with beams, so procs are now more likely to actually go off.

The Defiant class herself, well, it comes in three varieties, but the T6 version is the most powerful. The T4 one has quad phaser cannons, which are very nice (I use them all the time on my Peregrin fighter) and the T5 one has the cloaking device.

All the Defiants are pretty tactical heavy, which leaves a lot of room for a mix of tac powers rather than relying solely on cannons/beams or torpedoes. It doesn't have enough science or engineering to do anything super interesting with it, and the pilot spec seat isn't what I'd call an overwhelming "must have". However, you're probably not in it for the optimization - you're in it for the ship, right?

>The only solution involved some technobabble that resulted in accidentally erasing the Tuterian species from time (or getting nearly all of them assimilated by the Borg, it's a little unclear). The surviving Tuterians become the Sphere Builders.
So STO players are directly responsible for the whole Xindi arc? Fucking Cryptic.

So, continuing: The T6 Defiant, as I would set it up (I'm not going to post a character build - I haven't really slept and the space balance changes not being out on holodeck kinda makes this a little moot) as sort of budget build.

BOFF Seats

Comm. Tactical: Tactical Team 1, Attack Pattern Beta 1, Torpedo Spread III, Cannon - Scatter Volley III

Lt. Comm. Tactical/Pilot: Tactical Team 1, Torpedo Spread II, Cannon - Scatter Volley II

The reason to have duplicates is to reduce the cooldowns on your abilities, so you can have them up as much as possible. In an ideal world, these would be identical copies so that they're equal strength.

I don't have any pilot spec seats, and a lot of my specialized seating is wasted on me because I find I don't care enough to use them (which is admittedly, not "optimal" but you can get by good enough). You'll have to test the Pilot abilities and see if they're worth sacrificing tactical skills.

Lt. Engineering: Engineering Team 1, Emergency Power to Weapons 2

Lt. Science: Either Tractor Beam 1, Tachyon Beam 1, or Hazard Emitters 1 (Tractors to stop targets and tank their defense, Tachyon Beam to strip shields, or Hazard Emitters to clear debuffs), Science Team 2

Lt. Universal: Engineering Team 1, Emergency Power to Weapons 2 (you could swap this to Emergency Power to Weapons 1, and Engineering Team 2 if you think you need the heal boost from ET2, but it'll mean that your weapon power won't be as high as you can get it all the time)

As for gear, I prefer resilient shields because they cut down on the damage bleedthrough. The Dominion set (gained through some singleplayer missions in the Cardassian arc) is a decent starting place, but the Solanae set and the Quantum Phase set are better. All are free, but you'll either have to slog through the single player content to get them, or skip a lot of missions once you're high enough level to access the missions that reward.

New ships incoming captain!

arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10445563

>Caitian, Ferasan and one Romulan ship

Railgun (Heavy Weapon)

This escort also comes equipped with the Railgun Heavy Weapon in its Heavy Weapon Slot. This potent weapon deals kinetic damage periodically and fires like a standard weapon. It may be upgraded like a standard weapon, swapped out for another Heavy Weapon and placed in any other starship's Heavy Weapon Slot. Railguns fire in a 360 degree arc and deal heavy kinetic damage to your target. A portion of this damage will bypass the target's shields.
Escorts and Heavy Weapons

Heavy Weapons are a new item slot in your starship’s inventory UI. Only Heavy Weapons can be placed in this slot. Heavy Weapons can be upgraded like normal weapons and also like normal weapons they will show up in your weapons UI and can be set to autofire. However, unlike most projectile and directed energy weapons, they are not affected by weapon modes like Beam: Overload, Torpedo: High Yield, etc.

Initially, these starships (and their fleet variants) will be the only ships to possess a Heavy Weapons Slot. However, in an upcoming release, many starships will be receiving this Heavy Weapons Slot. Tier 6 Raiders and all Tier 6 starships with a Tactical Commander seat, 7 weapons and 1 or fewer Hangar Bays will receive a Heavy Weapons Slot and access to a basic upgradeable Heavy Weapon.

Players already in possession of one of these starships upon this update’s release will need to claim a Heavy Weapon from the Reclaim tab of the Dilithium Store (for 0 Dilithium). All newly acquired starships with a Heavy Weapon Slot will come equipped with a Heavy Weapon by default.

This new inventory slot and item is being introduced to reinforce the damage role of starships that possess them and can significantly improve your starship’s damage output (especially after being upgraded).

Sweet Jesus! They really are unfucking the escorts.

If you're going for a "canon" Defiant, you may want to seriously consider the Quantum Phase Catalysts set:

sto.gamepedia.com/Quantum_Phase_Catalysts

It's one of the few weapon sets that boosts phaser damage, which is extremely helpful, and it's good at stripping shields. As a bonus, the 3-piece is a big phaser gun that drains power.

I already mentioned the Quantum Phase Applications set, so here it is for perusal:

>sto.gamepedia.com/Quantum_Phase_Applications

The 3-piece power is fairly nice, since it buffs your damage, and debuffs your target's damage. Additionally, it buffs all the skills that the Quantum Destabilizing Beam uses to calculate all its effects, and the drain boost is enough that you might want to consider Tachyon Beam as your ensign science power.

Because the T6 Defiant is 4/3, you'll probably want to put turrets in the rear slots and cannons up front. This isn't a "canon" setup, since we saw in the show that she has at least a few beams, but this is "better" as far as STO is concerned.

Fore Weapons: Quad Cannons, Quantum Phase Dual Heavy Cannons, Phaser Dual Heavy Cannons of your choice, and the Quantum Phase Torpedo

Aft Weapons: Three phaser turrets, so you can get all that juicy forward firepower. You may end up changing this as time goes on and you get other gear, but this is a good starting place.

For consoles, make sure you fill the tactical consoles with as many Phaser Relays as you can lay hands on (preferably Mk. XII+ at level 60). The Quantum Phase Relay is universal, so I'd stick that in either the engineering consoles, or science.

There are quite a few consoles from the reputation system that will be nice to have, and some from leveling aren't bad either.

I can't offer you solid recommendations there because a.) I haven't slept, and b.) the space balance changes may make a lot of consoles less useful/more situational than they would otherwise have been. But this will get you started.

I just scraped up enough zen to get the T6 battlecruiser pack and they do this? God damn it.

I really hope my Ouroboros gets a heavy weapon. That would make my day.

Don't bother with Trek Catan. It's really just the same game re-skinned. And Twilight Imperium is good if you have a weekend. The game takes forever to play. As for Ascendancy, if you've got a few people going in on it, I could well see it being worthwhile

Id hold on to that zen if i were you, looks like the meta is going to be changed and the cruisers will become shite on the side of the escorts.

Different user adding to this.
A good place for those tier XII phaser consoles is the latest Lukari mission, you can get a purple XII phaser console by doing the mission if you choose it.
The mission does have some pretty neat rewards on it in general though, so im afraid there's going to be some grinding ahead of you.

I was the one who request that, and I appreciate you posting that again my behalf. Thank you.

You'll notice that if you actually go to that MediaFire folder and click the link for Officer's Manual, the file itself has been DMCA'd. I was hoping someone else might have it be able to reupload.

It's not the end of the world to not have it, but was hoping someone might.

It occurred to me that I might want to mention really basic stuff like power levels, since I don't know how new you are to STO, and the fact that STO doesn't teach anyone anything.

Your power levels start at 50 across the board, which is "100%" power for a given subsystem. Putting another 50 into weapon power is effectively 200% damage (that's not exact - Cryptic's math is obfuscated). But, for an escort, you need weapon power, engine power, and shield regen. Engine power gives you bonus defense (which means shots are missed and don't hit, which is never a bad thing). Keep in mind though that Auxiliary power causes your heals and other science abilities to scale (in different ways - Tachyon Beam won't drain more shields directly with high Aux, but it WILL drain for longer, which with high DrainX skill can be devastating).

Ascendancy is pretty fun, IMO. Haven't tried the other 2 but I don't see the appeal of just reskinning Catan, so there's that.

Just a heads up, I'm the user who keeps pestering about drain builds, since I (try and) minmax drainx like a motherfucker, so there's a few more things on that front:

>Quantum Phase Console
This is what you want, primarily for the damage boost - the DrainX boost is decent to start with, but there's not a lot you can do with it in a tac boat. No idea how useful Hot Restart is, but probably not very, since I don't think anything actually targets Aux power

>Quantum Phase Torps
Pretty good at what they do, but you need a good drainX for that - more than what you get from the console. Even then, they only come into their own synergising with other powers - these are personally my bread and butter in STFs, but that's because I abuse GW and TS like a motherfucker - you don't have the Sci boff slots for the former, and you have better things to put in Tac slots instead of the latter.

>Quantum Phase...rs
YMMV for this, since you're going for a decidedly shooty boat, but this is definitely on the fence. On the other hand, a shield stealing (not just draining) proc on top of a regular proc seems sweet - on the other hand, you can only have one of them, so it'll barely be firing enough to earn participation awards. The cannon proc is higher, according to the wiki, so that might be more useful, but again the proc is mostly dependent on DrainX - something that you won't really be built for.

>Quantum Phase Cats Set
Not much to see here, I'm afraid - the 2-piece bonus just buffs the torpedo drain (and accuracy, but there are FAR better set bonuses out there); the 3-piece bonus is what you're here for. The problem is, while it's a fuckhueg phaser that drains, it's also one with a long, continuous firing time - so the disappointing firing arc means you have to face your target head-on for 10-ish seconds; something that seems to go against the hit-and-run, glass cannon Tac philosophy.

(1/2)

[distant perpetually-shit-but-fun sci laughter]

No, the Sphere Builders are directly responsible for the whole Xindi arc. Doesn't matter whether or not an alternate version of me played an overall minor part in their creation (Nog, Noye, and Noye's waifu actually did most of the work in that department, my alternate self's sole contribution was to blow up Borg so that they could). The Sphere Builders are still the ones who then decided that Exterminatus-ing reality was a proportionate response to an accident that only came about because we were trying to fix something worse than the Borg.

Ferasan ship?!

FINALLY!

Please have three nacelles please have three nacelles please have three nacelles...

>sees pic

...or have no nacelles, that's fine too I guess. Damnit.

...

(2/2)

As for the quantum phase apps, they're nicely general-purpose, if a little drain orientated.

>QP Deflector
Shield cap and regen are your friends, and this has a nice buff to both. And DrainX, too.

>QP Engines
The Aux power boost is nice (4me) but the Full Impulse boost is of limited use. The buff isn't exactly enormous, and given that it only buffs sci powers, precisely once per combat, it's not very useful.

>QP Shields
Shield heal bonus, again, good.
Shield heal from certain Sci powers - again, these were top tier for a Sci boat like mine, but of pretty limited use otherwise. That being said, the user before suggested Tachyon Beam as a sci power; it's pissing in the wind if used on anything bigger than a Borg Probe (regardless of your Aux power or DrainX), but the shield heal is a welcome bonus. Might be worth considering if you already have Sci teams and Hazard Emitters, but still have sci slots to burn.

>Set Bonus
2-piece is a shield buff and another shield buff, not bad. 3-piece is a seems good - although 12 seconds is pretty shit from my PoV, with 7 weapons on target you should be able to max out the proc stacks pretty quickly.

Overall, the QP sets are weird as shit. The items are definitely trying to bring Sci boats back into viable play, but the 3-piece abilities are undoubtedly very shooty. Think carefully if you really want 'em - if you don't want to grind the Future Proof episodes (which, trust me, you don't), then grab the QPA Shields and the QPC Console, but the rest are unlikely to be worth your while.

>3 nacelles
D E L E T
T H I S

The Ferasans are intended to be the Kzinti with a different name for copyright reasons. Star Fleet Universe gave them vessels with 3 nacelles, and the 5th season of Enterprise was going to have a Kzinti episode featuring a three-nacelled Kzinti ship, which was at least partially rendered.

Star Fleet Universe ships: starfleetstore.com/kzinti-c-12_28/

And the Enterprise-era ship is in pic and I would love to have it in STO.

Unfortunately you have to fill out a pretty detailed survey to get them, and I don't think many (or any) of the regulars in these threads have actually run the modules.

>If you're going for a "canon" Defiant

I always thought canon builds were shit in STO, hence why you almost never see Fed ships actually using phasers.

>you have to play the game in depth to get access to the most basic rules for playing the game

Smart decision there.

Sounds like marriage.

If your ship isn't rocking at least 3 different forms of weaponry banned by the Federation then you just aren't trying.

This.

When you give them a broadside it should automatically kill all epileptic members of both crews.

And that's why I never could get into STO.

ALL. TURRETS.

Oh shit, it must be like the Skittle storm.

"Shit" is relative. With Mk. XIV epic gear, everything is viable and contributing, but there's a definite ceiling for non-optimized builds.

I have a ton of alts, and I run phasers on them because I have the T1 Connie, and her blue screechers aren't too bad at rare Mk. XII, and the QPC and QPA sets synergize well with them. They aren't going to break DPS records, but they aren't in need of being carried through the queues either.

With +Cannon locators I can do that, but that alt only has +phaser locators. So it's just orange with a little green.

Not recently. Generally speaking, you can do a "canon" build and expect performance generally on par with anything else. The revamp, from the look of things, will essentially only reinforce this.

How obscene

How long would you say a game of Ascendency takes?

The SFB models look like red-dwarf

Is that a custom steamrunner?

Type 6 hull, the Refit model. It looks really nice, I'm glad they touched it up whenever they went back over things to shove them in the Cryptic store after being a Steam exclusive.

C-beams, glittering in the dark...

>Plasmonic leech "looted from the Klingons"
>Red matter capacitator working as auxiliary battery
>Anti-proton weapons upgraded with omega particles
>Ability to somehow lace these beams with Kemocite
>Consoles from multiple different enemy species, including one "looted" from the Iconians that allows me to launch Iconian probes tos hut down enemy ships
>Console made out of the remains of the crystalline entity which allows me to fire AP beams at something and get high damage reduction to incoming energy damage
>Vulnerability locators made out of reverse-engineered Voth technology
>Item given to me by the temporal agency which allows me to resurrect the ship or something

How did i do?

It doesn't resurrect the ship, that's the ground item. The space one makes all your bridge officers (but not you) wig out on cocaine so they work at hyperspeed.

Oh yes, that's what it does.
Thanks for correcting me.

It seemed fitting.

God I love the Sovereign class. I hope the new coming Modiphus Star Trek game does them justice.

Y'know, you don't see the Sabre very often.

We really only see them in a few fight scenes

I found the Officer's Manual on Scribd, but I don't know how you can download it from there:

scribd.com/doc/11303127/Star-Trek-TNG-Officers-Manual

Don't forget equipping your ship with Borg technology after repeatedly fucking up the Romulans because they were equipping their ships with Borg technology.

Pfft, im going straight for anti-Iconian equipment.

...

Looks like it's in order

arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10451743-season-13:-escalation-coming-april-25th

>Esclation
We have already fought demigods a time war and we beat the sphere builders who were experimenting with and annihilating entire dimensions during the said conflict.
How the fuck are you going to escalate that any further?

Judging by the burning planet in the logo, not much of an escalation. Maybe they'll just drop Fleet Admiral (You) into a situation where you have to mediate between Talaxians, Kobali, Deferi and a random all female species voiced by Lani Minella.

Clearly you'll have to fight yourself.

That's the only way you could possibly be challenged at this point.

Cyberpunk 2410 when

>season 12
>One new episode
>Lukari vs Tzenkethi
>That's literally fucking it

>season 13
>more queues
>one more mission

Anons, does anyone remember when cryptic used to update with actual content?

I was really expecting more missions by now. I really hope we get more than two more missions before the goddamn Summer event starts again.

Part of the lack of updates has been the re-balancing of ground and space combat going on, We did get Sompek and the new First Contact Montana map in season 12 when they released the ground re-balance, hopefully the lull in missions will end once the hard, backend stuff is done.

>Deferi

Oh goody! A Deferi mission. - nobody ever

Oh sweet Jesus, it's just a flying commbadge.

Cryptic "creativity" at it's finest.

"Stop tapping the hull, Mike"

>pats pockets

Now where did I put my combadge?

Giving up on the Tzenkethi already?

Did that battlezone ever work right?

So, if the Cardassians were so outgunned by the Federation, why did Starfleet have any problem with them?

The Obsidian Order, probably. The Cardies weren't that impressive on the battlefield but their special-ops services probably played unholy hell behind Federation lines.

Cardies struck first, had far fewer reservations as to what they were willing to do, had far fewer reservations regarding ground combat, and aren't also bordering multiple major hostile and semi-hostile powers like the Romulans and Tzenkethi.

Never explained in canon but some reasonable assumptions are:

Star Fleet did not send enough ships to effectively counter them.
The Ships they did send were older models as they were not seen as a major threat.
The Cardassians used a lot of unconventional tactics to make up for their technological inferiority.
Star Fleet might have had the technical superiority and numbers but due to the effects of extended peacetime, their training and performance in actual battle were far below what they should have been (serious real world problem since ...forever pretty much).
The Federation had other serious concerns and could not agree on an approach to the problem that actually lead to a conclusion of the war (see: how long it took to negotiate an 'end' to the Korean war after the mobile phase ended).

I think it's a little unfair to say they were so outgunned. The Galor class couldn't hope to take on a Galaxy class or anything in that bracket. But she could contest against most of Starfleet's older ships, barring maybe the Excelsior and Ambassador classes. Somewhere comparable to the K'tinga.

Yeah, a Constellation or Miranda class would be much more evenly matched against a Galor.

Remove borg from premises
-Unnamed Serbian ensign.

>implying Slavs would be allowed in Starfleet
>implying the Balkans aren't a walled-off forbidden zone on Federation Earth where the inhabitants continue killing each other and drinking kvass, because it's all they have ever done, because it's all they can ever do

And then Starfleet invented the Danube class which could either take a Galor in a straight fight or tow one at warp 5 like a disobedient toddler, and deployed them to what was once Terok Nor. That had to sting.

Really, the dumbest part of all of this is that the Cardassians didn't really take the opportunity at any point to draft up better ships than the Galor and Keldon.

One of the things that amused me a shitload about Bridge Commander was the sheer number of Galors and Keldons you left wrecks of throughout the Maelstrom by the end of the campaign.

>Really, the dumbest part of all of this is that the Cardassians didn't really take the opportunity at any point to draft up better ships than the Galor and Keldon.
I actually didn't mind that part. Based on Kira's little comparison demo of the Cardassian and Fefderation phaser rifles to Ziyal during their pirate phase, Cardassian technology was supposed to be like IRL slavshit weapons - simple, rugged, reliable, ugly as fuck, and largely unchanged for the past few decades. Then the Dominion War happened. It would probably be the 25th century before they got their shit together enough to make a new generation of capital ship.

I suppose. I just don't like how far it gets taken sometimes in the series. Like, Enterprise literally wanted us to believe that the D-7 type cruiser had a service life of two goddamn centuries.

>That one episode where a rogue Nebula class was completely unstoppable to the bulk of the Cardassian military
>That same episode a Gul finds out Starfleet can effortlessly decode Cardassian IFFs and track all their ships with ease
Really, the Ferengi were more of a threat, their D'kora Marauders were at least comparable to the Galaxy class.
>tfw an enterprising DaiMon could have waltzed through Cardassian space looting and enslaving unopposed.

>Like, Enterprise literally wanted us to believe that the D-7 type cruiser had a service life of two goddamn centuries.
Did they? I thought those were earlier takes on the general design, like maybe a D-2. Even STID showed the 2250s as having a "D-4" predecessor design.

REMOVE BORG REMOVE BORG YOU ARE WORST BORG RETURN TO DELTA QUADRANT CADASSIANS+KLINGONS+HUMANS+Q=kill
HAHAHAH
YOU ASSIMILATE STALE SPECIES WHILE THE FEDERATION STILL STANDS.

memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Vorok's_battle_cruiser

Fuck, that's stupid. Rick Berman strikes again.

Is there any point to starting to play STO today, especially if I'm not going to fork over any money for it?