= 44th Fleet Review, December 2016 =

44th Fleet Review, December 2016

Happy Holidays Fleet !

On behalf of the 44th Command Staff Season’s Greetings to you and yours !

Take some time off for friends and family, as December is usually a small dip in activity in STO, though we’ll still run our usual events and contests, nevermind grind the new Winter Event dailies. More on that in a bit.

Before we get into the meat of things, join us in welcoming our newest members that joined last November – I think this is a record number for a monthly sign-up;

@Harvey336 (Harvey) from the UK
@Topdog1125 (Lee) from Florida, US
? Espareox Renar Guardia (Joe) from Colorado, US (Provisional)
@Beares#3936 (Beatrice) from Italy
@Limasuperpower (Pedro) from Lisbon, Portugal
@Silvershadow#5602 (David) from Missouri, USA
@chaosreigns20019 (Chris) from Stoke, UK
@metron#7301 (Joseph), Mountain Time Zone
@Guardian1074 (Josh), Alaskan Time Zone
@pinktubby0905 (James), Mountain Standard Time
@vvolfeman (Calvin) from Alberta, Canada
@skypirateboss (Yeng), Asia
@cadetjordan (Nathan) from Florida, USA
@thesiskods9 (Ben), UTC -5
@Plainwhiterice#7161 (Lee), East Coast USA
@Savesh (Arwyn), Pacific Timezone
? @idkisthepriest (Levon), West Coast USA (Provisional)
@AnganySasmavu (Kate) from Moscow, Russia
@Sheperrd (Charles) from Germany
@Darkhour44 (Darren), East Coast
@worthiestnob (Anthony) from Canada
@arkangelares#2648 (Cameron), Eastern US
@HimuraKenshin (Lucas) from Toronto, Canada
@captainrobert / @Cameronaltyw (Cameron) from Perth (Provisional)

And of course also a warm welcome back to some of our veteran returning players – there’s been quite some changes so you’re in for a ride. Make sure you have your Winter Nacelles on because STO’s annual Winter Event has started !

In addition, there’s the Phoenix Price pack Event, which only runs for a week from Dec 1 to 8. all players will also have the ability to claim a free Phoenix Prize Pack once per account, once each day while the promotion is active. Each time this is claimed, players will also receive a 1x-Use version of the “Phoenix Replica Smallcraft” Admiralty Ship. This daily account prize may be claimed by visiting either Grym on Drozana Station, or Onna at Deep Space Nine. While the event is active, players may accept a mission from their Journal that will aid in locating these new contacts.

I expect this will wreak pure bloody havoc on the dili/zen market…

It’s that time of year again that Q throws an “Andorian summer” party, aka STO’s annual Winter Event, and there are old and new goodies to be earned. The new Breen T6 Chel Boalg ship’s stats are out now, and it’s actually not a bad ship, looking to be a flexible Science oriented Escort. It does has a very interesting bridge officer layout and a sci/Intel seat. So if you don’t have any of the Intel ships, this is your chance to earn a free one, just running a quick 5 minute Winter Event race per day. And that daily race is ridiculously easy – once you get the hang of it. Even if it’s not your favorite ship it’s worth getting if only for another T6 trait and another Admiralty ship.
You can get the ship on ALL your characters by just completing the Winter Event Daily on one toon; any other alts may only have to race once just to unlock it or the Winter store.
Edit: Jim44305 corrected me as this may not even be necessary; your alts can (re)claim the ship without having to participate at all. Thanks Jim. 😉

One other item you should definately get from the current Winter Event are the Frosted Boots. These are usefull throughout the game if you need to travel large ground maps.
If the Tactical/engineer/science powers and kits will be worth it is still to be seen, but usually they are nice to have.

The Winter Event runs from Dec 1st till January. We will reopen and update our Winter Event page in the next days for more hints and tricks.

Even if it wasn’t winter, I’d almost still think Stovokor froze over because not one, but TWO of the most anticipated ships in STO have finally been released last month: ships we thought we wouldn’t ever get our grubby hands on: the Federation Tier 6 Archon (Sovereign !) and not just one, but a full all faction three-pack Tier 6 Sutherland (Nebula !). For us die-hard Trekkies the Sovereign (Archon / Vizier) is an iconic ship in the same class as the original Enterprise and TNGs Galaxy class, first introduced in Star Trek: Insurrection but best seen in its full glory in Star Trek: First Contact (video),

The Tier 6 Sovereign comes in the Intel Archon version and the Command Vizier version, which is only available via the Wizkids promotion.

And then the Tier 6 Sutherland (video). Oh, my…

This is the ship Sci captains (including myself) have been waiting on for a long time. It ticks all boxes and then some. Even better, to our astonishment, Cryptic released a Romulan and KDF variant as well. This is a big deal because the Roms and especially the KDF lacked any true ‘ pure’ faction specific T6 Science ships.
I kid you not if I say that the Romulan version may become a seriously powerfull ship in the game: Battlecloak, Secondary deflector, Singularity Powers, Sensor analysis… Oh my.

After all this you may think I’m pushing you to buy these ships – this is not the case. Especially the T6 Nebula and its variants are specialist ships, and unfortunately you cannot just jump in and turn the key and think you have a 100K DPS murder boat – this is btw true of ALL ships in STO: each ship has a flaw of some sorts otherwise there would be little need to buy others.
How you deal with its inherent flaws (thin hull, weak shields or lack of firepower) is what makes you a good, dare I say “enterprising” captain. 😉

What the T6 Sutherland (and all sci ships) have in common is that they rely on Exotic Damage (5x Sci consoles) instead of pure energy and/or torpedo damage for DPS (why they have just 2x tac consoles and 3/3 weapons). Exotic damage is defined as all damage dealing powers that are not Torps or energy (beams/cannons), so “wizard” things like feedback pulse (“in your face!”), Tractor Beam repulsors (damage Wham-Bam straight to the hull), Gravity Well (Pull), Tykens Rift (energy drain), all reinforced by those 5x Science consoles, which you should jam-pack with 5 of the ridiculously powerful Fleet Plasma-Generating Weapon Signature Amplifier/Nullifiers [EPG] science consoles – you can find them at the Fleet Embassy in the hangar-bay. In addition to the EPG/DrainX, these consoles add extra plasma damage to your energy weapons, so if you have all beams with Fire At Will it will make up for the lack of Tactical consoles inherent on Science ships.

If you want to try out Sci powers, see this handy Exotic Damage Calculator.

To stay with the science damage theme a moment longer, in the recent (and elaborate) Dec 1st Patch Notes, the Temporal Defense Reputation Tier 5 Space Anti-Time Entanglement Singularity now properly benefits from Exotic Damage bonuses – this is turning out to be the massive Crystalline killer in the hands of skilled captains.

Speaking of skills, we still highly recommend, especially for beginning players, to focus on a balanced skill tree. Spreading out your skill-points equally and not focusing on the ultimates will give you ‘more bang for you buck’; once you have a good understanding of STO’s mechanics you can focus and specialize later on, no rush on that.

See these DPS-League suggestions.

On a related note, your captain’s career does not dictate which ship you can or should fly; Tactical captains can fly sci ships, and engineers in escorts do also very well. Mixing and matching careers, ships and skill sets is part of the fun in STO.

Progress on our newest fleet holding K-13 is going quite well, most projects slotted complete fairly rapidly and we’re well approaching Tier 2 on both our Fed and KDF versions. Compared to other fleets we’re ahead of the pack. Thank you all for taking only limited goodies from K-13 – we are low on provisions but we’re building them up. Again you’re permitted to take a single item for testing. Don’t waste too much of your dili and fleet marks on these early kits or consoles when you will get better variants soon.

Fleet wise, your Command Staff will continue to slot the fleet-wide +10% dilithium bonus as dili demand is still high. It rotates on a 5- day up, 5-day down rotation. You can see the little dilithium crystal if it’s in effect.
The “Search for Soolin” screenshot hunt will have a Winter Event version up soon(tm).

Looking forward, in January STO will celebrate its 7th Anniversary with its usual event and (low tier) giveaways and perhaps the Omega Particle game again. Also start saving zen; after the anniversary event there is often a promo-pack discount of some sort (mega-packs may go for 12,000 zen instead of 16K).

On behalf of the 44th Command Staff, Sargon, Blackout, Damix, Palcioz, Defcon, Fatman, Horridperson and myself, we wish you Happy Holidays !

Helm, make it so (video)

Marcase

• This topic was modified 8 years ago by Marcase.
• This topic was modified 8 years ago by Marcase. Reason: Added Jim's correction