-
Posts
-
Greetings Fleet !
Later than usual, this is your monthly State of the Mighty 44th. The delay was partly due to lack of time on my part, but also I wanted to dig up and confirm information regarding the upcoming Age of Discovery expansion which I will get into in a moment.
- Active characters = 661 of 1242 (53.22%)
- New characters = 92 of 1242 (7.41%)
- Active accounts = 193 of 345 (55.94%)
- New accounts = 19 of 345 (5.51%)
And first, as usual, a welcome to our newest members:
-
- @Lord_Regulus
- @rodneywollam
- @shadowblade666#5846
- @rednecksod
- @Roquendur
- @noisycricket1
- @gabrield8577
- @kieranmann
- @bob#3296
- @chrystal#3702
- @marcustvon#5706
- @dluxinterior
- @vorkosigan#9753
- @philsly#9609
- @henriprado
- @guldash90
- @lurid#4004
- @aldegoth
- @Reddawg99
- @Noktuvius
- @Voncloud
Expanded expansion
CAUTION – if you haven’t seen it, minor Discovery Season 1 Spoilers ahead.
Following Cryptic’s rather surprise announcement on the “don’t call it an expansion” launch of Age of Discovery, ahem, expansion, this is what we know so far.
It will pretty much be like the Gamma Recruitment Event, where a sub-faction of Federation toons can be created in a past timeline (…) and played through a different tutorial. Currently there isn’t a plan for a special recruitment event to go with it, but it is more than likely that Cryptic will just reuse the Temporal Agent event or the aforementioned Gamma one for this. We might get a free character slot and have to level a newly created DISCO alt character during a month/3 week event – the actual DISCO part will probably involve playing between 1-3 new unique episodes, which in turn will take less than an hour of actual gameplay, so you will have plenty of time to properly unlock it.
And yes, I call Discovery DISCO and not Star Trek: Discovery or STD because… reasons.
Age of Discovery will launch during the fall, which will introduce Cadet Silvia Tilly, voiced by Mary Wiseman, and around January the second part will launch which will include evil mirror twin “Captain Killy“. Followed by Season 3 which will (re)introduce Commander Landry, played by fan-favorite Rekha Shanti Sharma. More content and actors will be added as Discovery goes – I will say that this will be a golden opportunity to get some of the “B-cast” to the foreground.
Also confirmed – the rippin’ Tardigrade.
The first AoD episode will see us meet Cadet Tilly, #silly4tilly and visit some of the unique DISCO locations, including the interiors of the Shenzou and Discovery and maybe some planets as well (including that certain bar on Qo’nos…?)
Also just like AOY, they will be launching a bunch of Discovery era ships. So expect a bunch of background ships from the Battle of the Binary Stars
to pop up. This we like because moah ships = good. 🙂In fact, STO lead designer Al “captain Geko” Rivera confirmed we will be able to replay the full Battle of the Binary Stars. Another giant spacefight will be the defense of Starbase 1
from the onslaught of House D’Kor.Regarding ships, people are already all hyped over the DISCO-era Enterprise
which showed up for like 3 seconds at the end of DISCO Season 1. So expect another iteration of the 1701 “no bloody A, B, C or D” Enterprise besides the current canon and JJ-verse Connies.And oh yeah, that means DISCO style Klingons – we will be facing a Klingon Matriachal House, House of Mo’kai, led by T’Kuvma’s sister Jula which will have a lot of women warriors, who will have some sort of unique attacks and qualities with a “Discovery twist”, whatever that is. These KDF will have new ground abilities which may be similar to Intel Powers in STO, something involving subterfuge/confuse/stealth/smoke grenades. We’ll see.
A lot is still unknown, simply because Discovery is still running and the general direction of Season 2 is still subject to change itself.
Cryptic is in fact working closely with the Discovery team, and have met their writers several times. This means that for the first time in STO’s history, there is a live tie-in with a current show with concurrent stories. I think this is an exciting thing to see, regardless of how I personally feel about the show, because it opens up a lot of possibilities that we have never seen before. We’ll see how fast Cryptic can incorporate the new DISCO events into STO.
Cryptic specifically said that going forward, DISCO content will NOT be the only thing they will release, but sprinkled in between other stuff (hence “it’s not an expansion”). That being said I can understand if they want to focus on DISCO content in the immediate future — and why wouldn’t they? It’s current, it has popular exposure and some great advertising with Season 2 on the horizon.
Someone said, because Discovery is on now, it will be our common Star Trek, not your dad’s Next Generation or your grandma’s TOS, but something we can all enjoy together. I like that.
But realistically DISCO is just another Star Trek reboot/reset and doesn’t have a wealth of history to draw on as of yet, unlike ‘canon’ Trek from TOS to Voyager. There just isn’t enough for a proper Star Trek Discovery Expanded Universe to feed all of STO. Yet.
And while I have the bridge, I’ll just throw it out that I still have trouble with DISCO’s placement in the overal Star Trek timeline – I still think it’ll be a better show if they placed Discovery after Voyager, and just come up with some new enemy species rather than redesigning the Klingons completely. But that’s just me. Moving on.
The Return of the
JediPicardHow do you make a grown man (me) squee like a 12 year old girl ? Answer
.Don’t mind me, I’m just uh, checking this hankerchief from really up close.
TNG is ‘my’ Trek, it’s the Star Trek I grew up with, and I still love it, warts and all. And boy did it have some warts – some episodes were AWEFULL. But when TNG got it right, they got it right. So I’m really happy #SirPatStew will reprise his role as Picard.
I really, Really, REALLY hope Cryptic will be able to get the good captain to do voice work for STO, and Al Rivera already said if they have to redcon stuff to fit it in, they will.
Nothing is confirmed so far, but we do know that the mini-series around Picard will be about his time after TNG, its movies and even after VOY. According to canon Picard became Ambassador to Vulcan, so we’ll see if that continues.
STO’s Discovery
Regarding Star Trek Online, big changes ahead. We will see our Reputations increased to Tier VI, basically following the path of our level increase from 60 to 65. Tier VI will grant new rewards including account wide (!) unlocks.
There will also be a revamp of the current queues – which are now renamed Task Force Operations – and will include a Random option. If you choose to pick Random, you will join a random queue/TFO which will grant a larger and/or special reward. Think of the current Endeavor system with its random missions. You can still queue for missions of your choice, but you’ll miss the special reward. What I’m looking forward to is that there will be a scaling balance – level 20’s and level 60’s can join the same TFO, with the NPCs difficulty may be set to level 40 or something.
This is of course subject to change (bugs/patches) but should go live during the Fall.
Another point of note is that Cryptic more than before will embrace the Account, not your individual characters. We will see more account-wide options and promotions, including a (rumored) easier way to swap alts and move items across them.
STO – Summer Event Ending
Remember to turn in all your monkeys and tropical birds before Aug 16th on Risa, and if you saved them turn in your 2018 vouchers – these vouchers will be useless after the event so get your 40 marks of choice. Also, by this time most competitive players already collected their accolades so the races will be less populated – if you struggled to get first place, now may be a good opportunity to queue.Speaking of struggling, if you were having trouble facing Borg, HurQ or Pakleds in STO, our very own in-house wisest Beard Paradoxical has finished his epic guides which will answer most if not all of your questions regarding STO ships, weapons and their wobbly mechanics.
Much appreciated Para !
This month’s bug *drumroll*
Something funny is going on with our ship’s devices, which refuse to stay in our ship’s device slots and keep being returned to our inventory. This is not a global bug but a big chunk of the playerbase has it. Cryptic is looking into it (your 44th has a line to an official STO bug tester) but apparently has trouble replicating it.
It does exist however and we’ll see when it gets resolved. Another ‘fun’ issue is that traits and loadouts are starting to disappear/reset again…That’s it for now. There’s much more to cover, but I’ll save that for the next fleet review.
A big thanks to Akula, Damix, Sargon, Paradoxical, BreakingForce and Phoenix for helping keeping the fleet neat and tidy, and a special thanks to Palcioz for keeping our website up and running. Thanks guys !
- Carry on captains.
MarcaseCalendar
July 3-Aug 16: Lohlunat Festival
Aug 16-Aug 20: Bonus XP Weekend
lockbox key: 4,225,000 ec
zen rate: 261
lohlunat favors: 100 @ 6,900 ec
podcast: Priority One 376 & 377 (coverage of STLV with Mary Wiseman and more. Recommended !)
Previous State of the 44th Fleet: July 2018
"Boldly bashing Borg to bits since 2012..."“STD” – they did not think this one through very well, did they? 😀
Regarding the random queues – I agree that they need to do something with empty queues. But with the number of clueless people in any given instance now, when they are actually able to pick one they maybe have some familiarity with, imagine what it will be like when it’s random. This must be the promised difficulty increase 🙂
It should be interesting. They would need to come up with quite a nice reward to convince me to try random queues without a fleet team.
Thanks for the update Marcase. I always enjoy reading your State of the Fleet posts.
aka @SolarEagle
Since I tend to just click ALL on the pve queue window these days the random will suit me just fine.
Good to hear there will be more account-wide stuff. The biggest issue I have with STO is the requirement to level alts for events (Gamma, Delta, Disco, Temp) and then they just sit there doing nothing. I want stuff to do with my main character since I’ve spent ungodly amounts of real money and in-game currency on her.
Don’t watch STD as don’t have Netflix, so unless it eventually appears on Sky, doubt I will ever watch it, from what I have seen from clips there are things I don’t like the look off, the new Klingon look is different but I don’t know if they explained why they look like that, is it off shoot of the augment virus, but I do detest the ships, they look horrible to me, 100% not trek, they are certainly a different look that appears to be a mix of stargate/farscape/something else.
My main other issue is the inevitable problem you get with a prequel to TOS, the technology to make TV programs has moved on, the fed ships and bridges from what I have seen look far more advanced than TOS ships but it should be worse as its before TOS, I am sure u know what I mean.
If the 44th has a line to a bug tester all I can say is LEAD FOOT, LEAD FOOT, LEAD FOOT 😛
More content is good and will be interested to see what they do with T6 rep, the new queue things sound interesting, getting more queues populated is a good thing but the people who seem to have no idea what they are doing will be a problem, so many tzenkethi ra have failed due to this, I have been in many where I get left on my own one side and 4 go the other and they still cant defend that satellite and let the torps through.
I have Netflix, but in the US you have to get something else, CBS all access BS… thinking to trial sub a week and binge watch all S1 and S2, lol.
Random ques with random people sounds a little scary lol. The Tzenkethi RA is not exactly intuitive but not really hard either… maybe time to restart the STF guides? 🙂
Timberwolf is on it again. Last month Polaron, this week Antiproton is back – grind that Crystalline event ! 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIym3FNo2JM
"Boldly bashing Borg to bits since 2012..."
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.