Star Trek Online

[megatiger78]

Its a really good game. even if you know nothing about star trek

[RogueMason]

Yeah, I've played it since it went free-to-play. It's fun for the most part. I've got three characters; my main, max level Federation captain (Human) who has a ridiculous number of ships that I barely know what to do with. Then I have a Gorn in the Klingon Empire, not at a particularly high level, and a Romulan who is in the same position as the Gorn, level-wise.

Ship combat is pretty cool (and is the main allure), but the ground combat is rather poor. The missions are all practically identical, too; warp in, blow up some enemy ships, beam down, kill some people, reach your objective, beam up, blow up enemy ships, victory. Rinse and repeat. I just gave up on the storyline missions, instead focusing on PvE games that are generally more interesting.

I've got 8 ships and 1 shuttle, but these two are my most loved:

USS Halcyon - Tier 2 Science vessel

Very well equipped considering its diminutive size. Last I remember, I had either the Borg or the MACO shields, deflector, and engines mounted, plus some high end plasma weapons and quantum torpedoes. I absolutely adore this ship, even to the point of taking it into Special Task Force missions knowing full well that I'll be outclassed by everything, and yet I still manage to not get blown up too often. Maybe the Borg just don't think I'm worth the effort until I'm about to kill them

Fortunately, no-one's ever complained about me flying this tiny low-tier ship into the field. Someone even remarked that they do it sometimes, too, which is quite surprising given that these missions can be pretty tricky at times.

USS Apollo - Tier 5 Deep Space Explorer

My flagship. Sleek, stylish, and pretty damn effective in combat. It may not have the punch that the PvP-ers have on their ships (because lets face it, who does pack that kind of punch without P2W?), but the MACO/Borg equipment (obviously, I can't remember which of these first two ships has what equipped at the moment) plus anti-proton weapons and some serious science officer abilities make it dangerous.

Both are pretty invaluable in the Borg STFs, the Apollo especially. I may not be able to rack up as many kills as the others, but I've got it where it counts when I fly 'em. I do have more combat-oriented ships in my personal fleet, but I don't use them as often.

...

I think I might go and play it for a little bit, now. I wonder how the fleet starbase is doing...

[CptRichardson]

Its a really good game. even if you know nothing about star trek

It WAS a good game. Unfortunately, they're rapidly falling down into the F2P traps, and it's swiftly becoming as bad as most Chinese MMO's when it comes to paying just to be able to remotely play.

[FreeThinker]

It was fun at the beginning, but it quickly became boring, they is no real challange, and you will learn nothing intresting like you can do in KSP

[AcidSludge]

IMO "STO" was and IS a game with a huge potential, but I stopped playing that because it evolved into a huge grindfest. Rep for that here, Rep for that there - for me, "Daylies" are funkilling artificial blownup pseudocontent, and because of that I don't play MMOs anymore.

Had fun times leveling up with the storymissions and playing the "endgame content" with a few buddies for a while - I can definitely recommend taking a look at Star Trek Online. The graphics are nice, the sound is treckish, the character editor is "wow!", and there's a powerful tool for making your own missions, which spawns the existence of a donkeyload of player created stuff which has much more "treckish" feel as the content delivered by the game itself.

On the other side - the storymissions and the endgame content is (sadly) somewhat repetitive (as mentioned by RogueMason earlier), but hey - I've never seen a MMO which missions and quests aren't.

So - STO is a nice F2P-MMO definitley worth taking a look, but it's not *my* game anymore

[Sampa]

Love this game... My favorite stuff are the story-based foundry missions. In one of the series, my main got married to a young, female Romulan!

[Newt]

I always thought it seemed, too militarized. Starfleet never was about war, or was not supposed to be, but all I have seen of this game (and I was very seriously looking into it for a while) makes me think that that is at the crux of the gameplay. Is this the case?

That is why the only two games I have played in the last year or so (apart from games of my own creation) are KSP and Orbiter.

[Sampa]

STO is not all that strong in the exploration department, though Cryptic has made a good attempt at it. However, following the story missions, you can see more that it is less of the Federation WANTING to go to war, but more because the HAVE to. The Klingons have declared war on the federation (AGAIN).

[Brethern]

STO would have been allot better if Neelix wasn't in it. Or if we got to shoot him or throw him to the borg or any of the other thousand horrors that he deserves.

[Tommygun]

I always thought it seemed, too militarized. Starfleet never was about war, or was not supposed to be, but all I have seen of this game (and I was very seriously looking into it for a while) makes me think that that is at the crux of the gameplay. Is this the case?

That is why the only two games I have played in the last year or so (apart from games of my own creation) are KSP and Orbiter.

Yes it's pretty much 90% about fighting. It is easier to make war based content than about science and exploration.

All your science and engineering officers are for making you fight better in combat and the crafting system is for making weapons and defensive items.

You can ship trade items for profit and a few science missions, but you can't really advance much without fighting.

I haven't played in a few years, but at the time for me it was a great free game.

[Wallygator]

I had an account when it was first released - a charter account which allowed me to play free forever. Then it went free anyway! what a waste. I have now since forgotten my login details - Oh well.

My flagship was the USS William Shatner. Because clearly, STO needs MORE SHATNER!!!

[InterCity]

Captain of USS Regulus (Tier 4 cruiser) reporting in!

I don't like the design of it, it's super ugly, but at least feels decent.

I loved the look of my tier 3 (USS Resolution), it looked just plain Badass. And the tier 1 is also pretty good.

[Sampa]

Oh yeah, forgot to mention, my main's flagship...to date...is the Sovereign-class Assault Cruiser (free version), USS Hornet

[sumghai]

As an avid STO player, I've always been fairly fond of the Intrepid-class, my current ship is the USS Odyssey (NX-94276), a T-5U Fleet LRSV Retrofit.

As to concerns about the heavily combat-oriented nature of the MMO compared with the peaceful exploration from the actual TV series, my personal understanding is that traditionally in MMOs, the primary method of earning XP through mission progression has always been through combat - it's much easier for developers to assign an XP value to a enemy mob vessel a player has defeated, compared to deciding how much a successful outcome for a diplomatic negotiation is worth.

Also, "exploration" in the vein of strange new world and new civilizations isn't easy to implement. STO recently removed the exploration clusters from the galaxy map, which provides a series of madlibs-style randomly-generated missions, often with nonsensical results (e.g. "Go to ____________ system, and scan 5 artifacts from the ___th Borg Dynasty, while avoiding _______ mobs"). Procedurally generating entirely new civilizations with unique culture, NPCs, costumes, starships would have an adverse impact on the existing lore of the canon Trek universe.

That being said, there's a small glimmer of hope on the horizon: user-created missions in STO's Foundry system often feature creative storylines and exploration, and recently, Cryptic announced that in the near future, there would be better integration of the Foundry into the galaxy map - specifically, the different systems a player encounters while warping through Space Space will each now list three random good-quality Foundry missions that have said system as a starting point (e.g. Fly past Andoria, and in addition to visiting the default social zone, you'll now have additional choices to start one of three Foundry missions based on Andoria).

---

On the flipside, I'm such a huge fan of the STO lore, I've created my own fanon based on it, dubbed Star Trek: Odyssey.

Premise + Episode Guide (WIP)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/179473427/ST-ODY-Episodes-Summarized.html

Character Guide (WIP)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/179473427/ST-ODY-Characters-Tropified.html

USS Odyssey, NX-94276 - Master Systems Display

original art on DeviantArt

USS Odyssey, NX-94276 - Anime-style Character Art of the Crew (WIP)

[Sampa]

As an avid STO player, I've always been fairly fond of the Intrepid-class, my current ship is the USS Odyssey (NX-94276), a T-5U Fleet LRSV Retrofit.

As to concerns about the heavily combat-oriented nature of the MMO compared with the peaceful exploration from the actual TV series, my personal understanding is that traditionally in MMOs, the primary method of earning XP through mission progression has always been through combat - it's much easier for developers to assign an XP value to a enemy mob vessel a player has defeated, compared to deciding how much a successful outcome for a diplomatic negotiation is worth.

Also, "exploration" in the vein of strange new world and new civilizations isn't easy to implement. STO recently removed the exploration clusters from the galaxy map, which provides a series of madlibs-style randomly-generated missions, often with nonsensical results (e.g. "Go to ____________ system, and scan 5 artifacts from the ___th Borg Dynasty, while avoiding _______ mobs"). Procedurally generating entirely new civilizations with unique culture, NPCs, costumes, starships would have an adverse impact on the existing lore of the canon Trek universe.

That being said, there's a small glimmer of hope on the horizon: user-created missions in STO's Foundry system often feature creative storylines and exploration, and recently, Cryptic announced that in the near future, there would be better integration of the Foundry into the galaxy map - specifically, the different systems a player encounters while warping through Space Space will each now list three random good-quality Foundry missions that have said system as a starting point (e.g. Fly past Andoria, and in addition to visiting the default social zone, you'll now have additional choices to start one of three Foundry missions based on Andoria).

---

On the flipside, I'm such a huge fan of the STO lore, I've created my own fanon based on it, dubbed Star Trek: Odyssey.

Premise + Episode Guide (WIP)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/179473427/ST-ODY-Episodes-Summarized.html

Character Guide (WIP)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/179473427/ST-ODY-Characters-Tropified.html

USS Odyssey, NX-94276 - Master Systems Display

http://th04.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/f/2014/073/d/b/uss_odyssey__nx_94276____master_systems_display_by_sumghai-d79zqws.png

original art on DeviantArt

USS Odyssey, NX-94276 - Anime-style Character Art of the Crew (WIP)

http://th08.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/f/2014/342/8/e/_wip__uss_odyssey_senior_staff_by_sumghai-d844tjl.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B7_6_KeCAAEa_Y4.jpg:large

Cool, I knew that a lot of players were asking for that foundry implementation