So, I’ve been playing STO for about two months now, ever since it went free-to-play. And it’s a great game! All the playing content is available to free users (unlike LotRO where I would farm deeds for ages just to scrounge enough Turbine points for a quest pack) and the storylines that go with the missions are well thought-out and written – at times the’re easily on a par with the plots of Star Trek itself. Needless to say, I love it. You get a wide range of ships, and most of these are free to obtain. And not just free in that they don’t take real money, either; when you get promoted (like levelling up), you’re given a ship requisition token. That’s right: it’s a ship, for no real-world money, and no in-game money either. My ideal price.
- For the purposes of interstellar navigation, playable sector space is divided into sectors. Sectors are roughly cubic and are usually designated after a star system contained therein. The list below outlines all systems and other phenomenon that appear to the player within said sector while in sector space. These systems may contain other notable locations (such as planets) not listed;.
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In Star Trek Online, a critical hit is a hit on an enemy that deals additional damage. The critical hit mechanic consists of two components: Critical Hit Chance, the chance that an attack can deal additional damage. Improved by the Weapon Specialization space skill, and the modifiers CritH or CrtH on weapons. Critical Hit Severity, which determines how much additional damage is dealt by a.
Until now my favourite ship to use has been my Sovereign-class “assault cruiser” (as well as classes, STO has given ships type names, because there are different class-skins for each ship: the Majestic Class is another assault cruiser but differs from the Sovereign only in appearance. But you only get one canon ship in each type, so I always go for that). This Sovereign-Class is the USS Hagia Sofia: it’s big and powerful and it can take a beating – especially now I’ve equipped it with some top-end technology which I scrounged from the Borg.
But now the HS has fallen from favour, because after a career of using cruisers I’ve gotten an escort. I like cruisers: they carry a lot of weaponry and while they may be slow on the turn that doesn’t really matter, because their weapons – phaser arrays mostly – have wide firing arcs that allow you to broadside. And they’re tough: the Hagia Sofia has 800 crew which makes repairs a lot quicker.
But now we come to my new ship: the San Gregorio. She’s a Defiant-Class Retrofit, and is the ultimate end-game escort, along with the Prometheus Class. She’s not the toughest ship, but she more than makes up for it with her teeth. She came with a pair of dual phaser cannons, a photon torpedo launcher and a phaser array at the front, and two phaser arrays and a photon torpedo launcher at the back. Standard issue stuff, nothing to write home about. So, with some of the stuff I’ve collected through missions and Special Task Forces (extra tough missions against the Borg), I upgraded her. I even blew 95% of my in game currency balance buying a piece of weaponry for her – on the notoriously-overpriced Exchange. No matter: I wanted the piece, and I could afford it – and I would never have spent all those energy credits anyway. Now the San Gregorio, or the St. Greg, as I refer to her casually, fields three Antiproton dual heavy cannons, and a plasma-disruptor combo dual heavy cannon. I picked up the plasma-disruptor piece as a mission reward. On paper it’s better than those antiproton cannons, but I’m not sure. Certainly with a new console I picked up it falls behind. And as for the antiprotons…well, they’re terrific! They fire bursts of red – not normal phaser red, but proper rose-blood-coca cola red. They look great! And they’re really powerful, too. Going up against ships, I let loose and before you know it that ship is having some real troubles.
The heavy weaponry isn’t the only thing about this ship that I love, though.
This is in many ways the crowning jewel of the St. Greg: her cloaking device. It’s this more than anything else that makes her stand out from her regular Captain-rank counterpart. That said, it’s funny what it’s used for. Because it’s not a Battle Cloak (a thing only the Klingons have), it can’t be activated when I’m at Red Alert (i.e. in combat), so it’s not so good as a getaway device. I’ve not tried her out in PvP yet, so I haven’t tried the surprise trick, whereby you get all set up under your cloak, approach and then let rip as soon as you decloak right above them. After all, it’s hard to surprise a computer. What I’ve used it for a lot, though is:
1) Getting past enemies I don’t want to fight, either to get to a target I want to attack or to aid someone on the other side;
2) Getting into a position to attack without coming into range of the enemies if I can avoid it. Particularly useful on The Cure Space!
One thing I’ve noticed about this ship when compared to a cruiser is that escorts are hard work to use. You have to be on the ball 100% of the time, because otherwise you won’t be facing the right way, you’ll be going out of range, and you won’t be keeping yourself alive. It takes a lot of turning, a lot of weapon management and a lot of bridge officer skills – after all, she does have three tactical officers. Ideally I’d fly her with a joystick – using the arrow keys is really difficult. But that’s at home and I won’t have it until Easter. What I’ve done instead is set up the hotkeys for optimum efficiency. Not just the location of the skills on their bar (see below), but I’ve changed the basic keybinds of the game.
Torpedoes are no longer fired with Ctrl-Space but with Ctrl-T. To fire all weapons, press Ctrl-A. And the second Skills Tray is no longer keyed to Ctrl-1, 2 or 3, but to the numeric keypad – allowing me to transfer shield strength much more quickly with less reliance on the mouse. It works terrifically. But it also means that nobody else will ever be able to fly this ship. That’s not me celebrating a defeat of the hackers, but almost an annoyance that if I need to do something – get a drink of water, say – I can’t simply hand over to someone else who plays and say “keep her alive”. They won’t have a clue about what to do!
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Not to worry. I like her just as she is.