Hobus Souvereign

Firing up Star Trek Online, my goal is to take my Starfleet Captain tonight to level 40 and finally get to the really big tier 5 ships. My tier 4 cruiser annoys me already a bit. I had chosen the more bulky looking Envoy class, with a black hull plating. The little graphic glitch which showed windows floating in space apart from the neck annoyed me a lot, I saw it every time coming out of warp. Am I nitpicky? Maybe, also the slow turning rate is going on my nerves; I never seem to be able to fire my forward torpedo and make use of the high-yield ability.

My mission briefing sends me to Hobus, to investigate the cause why the system went supernova, and especially why this supernova´s fallout travelled at multiple light speed via subspace and destroyed the Romulan´s homeworlds before tehy could evacuate. It turns out to be a very challenging mission, especially the space fight. A D´deridex cruiser uncloaks, and while at first neutral, the next time it uncloaks it immediately attacks me. And it is cheating, I believe. How is it possible to launch 4 or 5 plasma torpedoes in a row? They eat through my shields and bring my hull dangerously close to give in. I dimly remember having seen a player firing crazy torpedo swarms like this, but I am at a loss which layout and skills are involved. This D´deridex for sure has also plasma beams, so it cannot be due to mounting torpedo launchers only.

On top of it, this particular NPC commander chooses to run away via cloak. Finally, some intellligent behaviour. And to reappear, again, and again. Two more times he reappears throughout the mission, the last time after I finished the ground mission, after fending off three waves of T´varo light warbirds. And he actually manages to destroy my ship this time. I was too close and shields were too low when another one of these 4 plasma-in-a-row crap happened. Damn. It sure feels like cheating when the game just lets you restart again and again. You can literally wipe through all of the content. Even when playing on advanced difficulty, those few permanent injuries are a good idea to have but it does not really alleviate the issue.

As the D´deridex finally implodes into its singularity core (and I do have to wonder why he did not run away vie cloak, this time!) one particular piece of loot drops, which is going to alleviate my main issue with the cruiser, namely its slow turning. The console is of bue/rare quality and my tired eyes see it sports a 26% buff on turning rate! Fantastic! I do not exactly know how the %tage boni are calculated, but 26% on a turning rate of 7 makes it close to 9, plus my warp core skills, and I should bring the cruiser closer to what an unbuffed escort or science vessel can do.

This mission also reqards me with a major plot reveal, beyond of what I already learned playing my level 36 Romulan. It is nice to see how the Starfleet and Romulan mission path´s converge and complement each other´s perspective on the Romulan main mission plot.

Now, finally it is time for the tier 5 ship. I wrestle a long time with my choices. Deep Space Science Vessel? An escort class, or stick to the cruiser class? I must say, in this tier, the cruisers offered really do have the best look. And the best console and bridge officer layout, too. My choice finally is the Sovereign class assault cruiser. I can have now three damage amplifying tactical consoles; I have three disruptor beam enhancing buffs, which give me overall +40% damage. Over 500dps per beam, on a wide angled firing arc, means a lot of sustained dps. And plenty of engineer and still enough science consoles, for damage resists, and my shiny new turn-rate-console! And 4 weapon mounts each front and aft. This is some serious fire power, this should be on-par with escort classes.

I also use the occasion to change a bit around with the bridge officer skills. I seriously missed the fire-at-will skill, when all those heavy damage plasma torpedoes came in. And I was underwhelmed with the rare opportunities to actually but high-yield-torpedoes to good use. This is better left for faster-turning escort classes.

My final layout has 3 disruptor beam arrays plus quantum torpedo front, 2 disruptor beam arrays plus plasma torpedo plus quantum mine launcher back, all mark VII or VIII, with a significant amount of blue and purple rated equipment. And, man, this ship turns and fires like kick-ass! As a first test, I dive head first into a borg daily quest and mingle solo with two borg sheres and two borg drones. I have to use every bridge officer, but I get through it without resorting to my oh-shit-buttons (miracle worker, evasion). Am so very pleased. This ship is so much more fun than the tier 4 cruiser! It might have been a bit my fault of malequipping the U.S.S. Erie, so overall my new Sovereign class U.S.S. Albert Schweitzer profits from both better loadout and my lessons learned.

Now the end game can come.

Addendum, after three more hours of gametime:

I cheated. At least I feel like it. The Exchange is STO´s auction house. I had started to sell the better equipment which I did not need, e.g. all cannons, and collected until now about 500.000 credits. There is a money cap for the f2p part, and I started to worry when I would hit it. I should better make use of the cash instead of wasting it. So I looked into the Exchange. For about 400.000 credits, I bought 5 polaron lasers and 3 according tactical consoles, plus 2 damage resistance engineering consoles.

Needless to say, this made missions suddenly a lot faster and easier, giving me the feeling that I play the missions now on a level which they were not meant to be played. At the same time, I deprived myself of the Diablo-style loot collecting game. Accordingly, the next two missions, plus two borg incursions, felt like a boring grind.

D´deridex warbirds became a common sight and I am used now to their combat style. You have to keep a distance to them in order to shoot down the burst-mode torpedos, keeping your evasion skill ready for this moment. Then you "wait" and circle until the beam arrays and the occasional torpedo have done their job, activating damage resists and regeneration skills from your bridge officer.

Unfortunately, I do not like the graphics of the polaron laser firing. It looks like purple lightning. Nice, but somehow, it does not fit to a Starfleet ship; rather to an alien ship. It is details like this which destroy a game for me.

You reached and play according to the limits and possibilities of a game system. This means that you achieved your exploration of the game system and with increasing familiarit, the newness and excitement fades. You start playing a metagame which is "out of sync" with the spirit of the game. Nothing against meta-game´ing, this is what I do a lot when I start to learn and explore the game´s system. However, the metagame in itself alone is too little. And this is what happens in the end game. Only the meta game is left. Find the most powerful sword, find better armor, to beat stronger enemies, all the while the Lich King is already vanquished. Or it is just a question of routine to get it done. No meaning anymore.

I always regret when I reach this moment, because it usually means the game is over and "normal life" starts. Including special offers from your discount Zen store next door, making me earn virtual credits in order to buy things I do not need but am made believe I need them. Thanks, I got a real life for this.

Maybe I can sell the polaron lasers and replace them with some blue of green phasers. At least the end of the Romulan story arc still compells me to go on. Not sure what is to come after that. Surely another alien race threatening innocent worlds.

Star Trek Online

Treat Perfect World Entertainment as a discounter publisher of MMORPGs. A small number of better-than-nothing quality games with a free-to-play business model behind and the money dribbles in via the numerous options to buy cosmetic ingame stuff. I think it is a great way to have a large number of players access and try out the game, and if it satisfies you, pay for it to your own leasure and get some extra pimp to support your vanity.

Having played Neverwinter, I found it to be a nice little game of this kind. But it could not really capture me for a long term, due to a rather bland story about a lich queen attacking the city of Neverwinter and a very dragged-out game play experience. My dwarven guardian fighter is somewhere around level 30 when I started to get a headache, assaulted by all those currencies and item options, which are not really options but just your usual level grind experience. No, thanks.

Star Trek Online suffers the same problem, but a bit less pronounced. And it has space combat, coupled with planetary third perpective combat. So I can enter a little bit and acutally play a game and try to ignore at best the level-grind elements. A perfect fill-in until Elite: Dangerous has developed a bit more!

I have by now developed a Romulan chick with pink hair, level 36, just having saved the new Romulan homeworld from an assault from an alien invasion fleet. And I have started a level 14 human starfleet commander. Prussian, to be correct. Sub-Lieutenant Mark Brandis rivals Vulcan ideals of discipline and logic, and the German reader probably recognizes my blunt copy of the hero from a famous teenager science-fiction novel series.

The game mechanics feature a kind of top-down map based space combat, with some strategic choices between hard-hitting cannons, which need some more maneuvering to get into firing position, wide-angled beam arrays, full-360´-turrets and torpedoes, which hit hard on armor and hull but are stopped by 75% by your Star Trek typical energy shields. The shields are split into four facing directions and need to be taken down individually, which requires you, besides auto-shooting and getting into firing position, to switch positions now and then in order to avoid hull damage and show a still "fresh" broadside to your enemy. I do have quite some fun with this more tactical approach, as opposed to the piloting-perpective in Elite: Dangerous. Besides shooting and maneuvering, you can also activate abilities, part your own, part those of your bridge officers (cutely abbreviated by players as "boffs").

Ground combat consists of the average third-person perspective, nothing special about it. Well, laser pistols instead of crossbows, a few melee swords and klingon-chunbackus (or whatever they call their weird mixed form sword-staff-axes). No pause to play, since it is an MMO and you can join teams with other players.

Nice also the need to actually administer a part of your big spaceship, including from 200 to 1600 crew members, of whom you are interacting with, chosing from a pool of around 100 duty officers ("doffs", funny) up to 20 of them to also buff (doff, baff, paff, rofl) your combat performance on ground and in space.

The game is difficult to access. As a forum member wrote in one of the many player-made guides, which you will definitely need to get into the game; besides a little tutorial and the screen where you can buy Zen for real-money, nothing is really explained.

The story captures me a lot more than that of Neverwinter, not necessarily because it features some very well done tie-ins with the Star Trek series. Yes, you can encounter most of the characters known from the movies, and the stories around them are well done and on par with any CRPG out there, but I admit I am not that kind of a geek about Star Trek. I just enjoy a science fiction setting and story with a little bit more complex take on mechanics and tactics.

My two characters focus on the two main styles of space combat. The Romulan commands a stealthy highly maneuverable "tactical" warbird, two heavy disruptor cannons, two photon torpedo launchers in the front, turrets in the aft-section for close-angle high damage attacks. The Starfleet Officer steers a slow-turning mighty cruiser which can absorb a lot of damage and relies on wide-angled beam arrays to whittle the opponents down. When one style of combat starts to bore me, I switch character.

Ground combat is less interesting for me, probably because it is already a well-known and overly played experience from other games. However, the odd well done ground mission still manages to capture me. There was for example one in the bowels of maintenance tunnels of a space station, with a very horror movie like atmosphere; you are literally haunted by what turns out to be a holo-persona driven mad by computer viruses, right along with a spectre-like race of transdimensional aliens. However, it goes right over the top, you even have to travel back in time and fend off the aliens right alongside with Scotty and Bones. And it gets downright ridiculous when in the middle of it all,you suddenly have to spend your time finding out about the right mix for a drink of some ex-affair of McCoy in order to calm her down and give you a piece of equipment, which is required to save the whole crew. Yeah, well. Some good, some bad. Back to space combat.

There is some space pvp maps, however when I entered the only one which I was actually able to find, it was full of borg cubes to defeat, and no enemy faction to be seen during all those about 20 missions I repeated in there.

Still, I like and consider it refreshing to the traditional fantasy settings or fantasy-sci-fi mixes out there. It is a kind of a purist approach. Also, it makes partially more sense to me to find/salvage a technological more advanced equipment, say, a mark IV phaser beam array with improved targeting systems, for a space ship than, a Diablo-style leather-armor of painful punishment with more armor rating than a full-blown standard plate mail. Talk about suspension of disbelief. It is somehow easier on you in a sci-fi setting, I think.

I am also a little bit back in the "old days" of CRPG, when you still had to steer and manage a full party and imagine their interaction amongst each other, which was fully perfected in games like Baldurs Gate or Neverwinter Nights. Here, I have my trusted first officer, my science officer piping in with scientific mumbo jumbo, and my engineer who is always ready to throw in a fix to a problem. I can equip them with armor and weapons, choose their skills, too, well, the old days.

Well, that is just a first impression and motivations about this game. So far I can say that Star Trek Online is better than I was led to believe by many a review or discussion. I am playing it now since end of August, while eying each new newsletter from Frontier for actual news on Elite: Dangerous, fully ready to come back once they fixed that stupid gimbal laser bug on my Anaconda and added some more interesting game elements to the current "Space-Trucker" core experience.