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So I wanted to thank the folk who welcomed me in. One of the things I’m looking forward to is getting to know people in here to chat with and quest with. I realize I’m not really doing a lot of that yet but I haven’t been playing long and…ooof…there is a LOT to know. So I’ve been windmilling my way up the ladder with my questing partner Cpt. Wilde and I’m sure much of what I have accomplished is equivalent to my path to Divemaster. I went from Basic Dive Certification to Master Level in a year because essentially I just kept showing up. Then I went from there to Divemaster in another year the same way. So there I am standing around with all this accreditation and massive gaps in my dive knowledge which I have since proceeded to backfill. Same here. Once I hit 65 I think I’ve heard Spock congratulate me for something like 20 times and I have no real idea what I’ve accomplished. Other than whatever I’ve managed to do with my ship and ground trays and builds has resulted in my not dying anywhere near as much anymore. I will be looking forward to your insight and expanding my list of acquaintances.
Secondly, wondering if anyone else in the Fleet uses the Razer Tartarus gaming pad. I realize there are a lot of ways to play and I know there are some people who howl at the notion of using anything but their mouse and keyboard. I may be broaching the analog of the argument I’ve had among some of the DJ’s I know, some of whom are appalled that I spin on a computer deck instead of old school canon vinyl. Hope I didn’t just lob a grenade into the room. 🙂
In the event, I bought one because I was staring serious carpel tunnel in the face down the road with 40 some odd keypresses in space and like half that on ground…I wanted to focus on my piloting and marksmanship skills without having to rattle through every NUM and Function Key constantly.
If anyone else is using that or employs what the consider useful keybinds and macros that I could use and are inclined to share their insights…would be much appreciated.
See you out there…
Daro
aka @talyn#3391
Regarding the Tartarus… I don’t use it fully but find it mega-useful in space combat sims at least to use the thumb-joystick for manoeuvre. I don’t use the Tartarus for ground maps in STO. But in space maps…
Map – Toggle ‘M’
Offence – Tray 10 Keybind (Macro-Toggle) / Depending on ship/build/Captain could toggle Tray 10 and Tray 9 Keybind
Defence – Tray 8 Keybind (Macro-Activate Once)
Map to Tray 1 Slot 2 – Cloak (Toggle ‘2’)
Map to Tray 1 Slots 3 and 4 – Manual Hangar Pet Launch (Macro-Activate Once)
‘F’ Key Option
Note: The Offence Macro also includes the Fire All command.
A standard TAC Tray 10 Keybind (for me) might include EPtW/EPtSh/BFAW/TS/APO/APB/TT/TT and any relevant offensive buffs/batteries etc… and automated hangar pet launch (to replenish losses).
A standard TAC Tray 8 Keybind (for me) might include RSP/ST/ET/HE and any relevant shield/hull heals/buffs/batteries etc.
Once setup it can serve ENG and SCI captains/builds simply by twiddling with skills/abilities in trays.
Happy Tartarussing!
aka @Nubia
Just showing up is a big thing, keep at it😇👍🏼
About the congratulations from Spock, those are probably when you fill the bar needed to fill out your specialization xp, winning you a specialization point.
Click on U to open your captains details > skills tab > specialization. You can browse through the trees to find out details. Intel as primary and strategist as secondary is a useful set for newbie captains. Miracle worker is good if you need more survivability, Temporal is good for science builds, while command has some good skills for torp builds. As you level up and fill up more points, you can experiment.
You also get captain traits for progressing in each tree. While these aren’t as useful as the ones you get from t6 ship mastery, they can be used in early stages when you don’t have as many traits.
Hope this helps🙂
The longest journey is the discovery of oneself
Folks…thanks for the insight.
Anukis, my use of the Razer is limited at the moment in part because I just got it. I have 2 separate Keymaps, one for ground and one for space. Both have F for loot and talk set up. The space is by far the more involved. I have one macro that fires through my first four trays, offensive and defensive, including the FN Key/Spacebar that fires all weapons in the category. (I’m also windmilling my way through battles as well as the game.) Keybinds are incremental speed up / down, one for full up / full down and one for loot. In-game I have’t quite figured out what to do with trays 5-10 yet. I have some things jammed up there that I don’t want firing in a macro, like my cloak. But I haven’t done anything to assign a macro yet. I don’t quite understand the tray. Tray 1 is all your just open keys. 2-4 are assigned to the three Fn Keys. I guess what I don’t understand is since they’re not automatically bound to a FN key like Alt or Cntrl, how are 5-10 any different that tray 1. Looks to me like they have to be mouse-clicked individually and I don’t know how to assign a macro to them. Like I said, a lot to know. My ground keymap has two macros, one just for toggling my weapon between functions and then one for my offensive and defensive stuff. I walk into a room or space battles and things just start blowing up. Like I can hardly see what I’m aiming at. 🙂 I will become more precise and sophisticated as one would expect of a Vulcan in time. Thanks for the help. I like working my way through my own ignorance but I do have a few puzzlers. I’ve found some categories of issues are best worked on vox rather than text. Wilde has helped me figure out a LOT of this stuff in vox. So…I’m tossing Discord on the pile of things to do. I have skype but it doesn’t look like that’s the go to for folk here. All in time…game doesn’t seem likely to go anywhere and appears relatively Covid-resistant. 🙂
Shohom thanks for your reply. Right now, the stuff you’re talking about is my biggest black hole. My character build / reputation / stats and the like is almost entirely random. I take the missions, thank Spock for his well-wishes, grab whatever is lying around, upgrade my weapons and shielding and the like and pretty much just go back out and blast my way around. Wilde is far more sophisticated regarding some of those finer points than I. I just keep sending duty officers out and collecting the loot they bring back, (which is why my inventory is jammed to the limit practically.) I have 198 of them…lost track of my bridge officers long ago I have so many of THEM and just haven’t really dug into that important aspect of the game yet. Because honestly…for the moment, I just love watching things go boom. I like the surprises like, “Wait…I have HOW many energy credits?”, or dilithium…which I then promptly blow through upgrading everything I can find…so I can go out and make things go boom…better.
Thanks to you both…when my questions and problems become more focused and specific, I will try to ask them in focused and specific language. 🙂 Thanks for the insights so far.
Daro
aka @talyn#3391
As has been mentioned a few times in various fleet forum posts and FAQs, STO has an internal (ie: non-Tartarus or macro driven) .txt-file keybind system. Basic details can be found on the Hilbert Guide (under General Concepts).
So… before you go anywhere near the Tartarus… set up an STO keybind then bind it to a key in-game (as per the guide above).
After you’ve done that, and tested it in-game (always a wise move)… only then map a Tartarus keypress (toggled) to that key… and Bob’s your uncle.
The end result is that with one tap of a Tartarus key, you can trigger all the ten skills/abilities that are found in whatever tray you specified in the .txt-file… and without the need for involved or complicated Razer macros.
Of course, that’s just one way. If you’d like to prod me more re: Tartarus mappings, sent me a /tell in-game @Nubia or message me via the forum. I don’t use Discord as it snaps my PC-strings but I’m sure there are plenty of eminently-capable fleeties willing and able to help there, too. Also, the forum FAQ and Paradoxicals Guides are jam-packed with mustreadness.
On a side-note… automation is subjective, and perhaps situational. Some folks like to go all analogue and manual, others like to hit the one key and put their feet up. My own preference is to choose between auto-lazy-beer-n-vape mode… and frantic single-key-press-sweaty mode… and the Tartarus lets me do that better than any mouse-combo I’ve tried. The thumb-joystick is simply awesome in space. I hope you stick with it, suss it thoroughly and enjoy your new toy lotlymuchly!
Nubs
aka @Nubia
What is this vynil you talk about? We use cans and a string – if it ain’t broken… Okay the string does snap but our industrial replicators can always create a new one.
On a more serious note, I’m glad you reach out to us for questions; there is a lot of knowledge in our (read: your!) fleet and we are happy to share, so never hold back. You will always get an answer. If you’re lucky even a useful one. 😉
Shohom and Chanfron already answered your questions, all I want to add is that STO is very expansive, but also very forgiving and quite flexible on HOW you play. You really don’t need the latest and greatest gear to play Advanced/Elites and you can earn your way to those vaunted zen-store Tier 6/Lobi ships if you are willing to invest the time grinding (collecting dilithium to turn into zen).
Also don’t feel skittish asking for a wingman if you have trouble getting through an episode/mission or if you need to complete a certain endeavor/daily task (eg “do x damage” or “kill x Borg”). Just ask around in 44th-diplo chat and someone will join you (or contact me in-game, timezones permitting).
STO’s mechanic may look daunting, but once you get the gist of it you can create your own builds quite easily. Check out the top of this page under Resources/Links and you see a basic and advanced build guide, or you can ask here on the forum for a custom ship build. Again don’t hesitate, we love talking ships.
Since 2012 I’ve been playing with a mouse/keyboard/Hilbert keybind program and it has served me well. The beauty of the Hilbert keybind is that it is adaptable and you can simpy drag&drop (space) powers to the keybind which allows flexibility if your NPC foes are having a bad attitude, and for me it also limits my keys to WASD+spacebar and mouse. This is just one example, you can expand/simplify your setup to your own preference.
"Boldly bashing Borg to bits since 2012..."Anukis, thank you. I have only just begun to dig into the FAQ’s and the like. I’ve been in the Fleet since the 28th of last month and I’ve lost track of time here in Covid-land but I think…in-game for two months? Little more maybe..3? It’s not as bad as dropping into No Man’s Sky in the original build (which I thankfully missed) and waking up to have Sentinels screaming in your face as you immediately die…from what I hear. Still, I was away from gaming for decades…literally. Until I picked up Skyrim about five years ago…my last run at gaming of any kind was Super Mario Bros. I stopped gaming around the time Sonic The Hedgehog was introduced. So my experience is limited…Done Skyrim almost every way I can on and offline. Started New Vegas Fallout. And…landed here. I’m well behind the learning curve in general and here…out of the ones I’ve played, easily the most layered and complex thing I’ve ever done…I’m a child. So thank you for your help. Yes…instead of what I have now with two different keymaps and three different macros, building the macros in-game then keybinding THOSE to the Razer sounds WAY less demanding and complex.
Like you I am not looking for a level of automation that allows me to enter battle, hit a key, solve world hunger, accept my Nobel Prize, do my round of congratulatory public appearances then wander back to collect my loot and thank Spock. 🙂 I do like being able to pilot my ship without having to worry too much about weapons, shields and finding the key for my Nimbus pirates though. So a middle of the road set up suits me best…thanks again.
Marcase…I know…vinyl? I have some of it downstairs in my museum (basement) right next to my original Apple //e. (Which I still fire up once in a while for an exhilarating romp through The Crypt Of Media and Oregon Trail)
As far as the gear and stuff…I’m kind of gear geek. Got to admit I just kind of like having it sitting on desk top because it looks cool and when people come over they oooh and ahhh. Which is where that conversation usually ends. I personally, in RL don’t know ANY other 60 year old that games and ingame, any game…just Wilde. So they have no idea what they’re looking at and good luck trying explain. 🙂
For builds at the moment, most of my ships are T6. I make decent loot working with my hands (which given my line of work am glad I have not chopped or sawn off or put a nail through with my framing gun). Since I only have this to think about financially, I can and have dropped rather a bit of real loot buying ships. So far my strategy, to the degree that I think these things out is, get the ship, beef it up with the best of everything I currently have, then buy a new bigger and better ship, trick THAT out and use it. Whatever I had before gets shunted over to my Admiralty slots. My top three or four ships have all the levels of mastery available topped out and in the last four days or so have started sussing out the upgrade functions. Which is why how I blew through over 100,000 Dilithium and maxed out my Angel suit.
I would say my biggest area of obscurity is managing my duty and bridge officers. Early in the game I spent a lot on the slots. I think I have all 200 for duty officers and most if not all for bridge officers. I know you can eat an elephant if you do it one bite at a time, but I’m still sort of tharn just staring at the complexity of managing them, upgrading and promoting them and buying and selling my, “underperf0rming officers”. Which just sounds so creepily like human trafficking that I think I’ve sort of subconsciously avoided doing it. It’s like the hell drawer in my kitchen I keep telling myself I need to sort through, organize and clean out and every time I open it, my best intentions are out the window and I just toss something in and slam it shut again.
And thank you for the thoughts on grabbing a wingman. Wilde isn’t able to be on when I am so much at the moment having just moved and setting up house and all. Plus the weekend visitors that just have to see the place. So, it looks like my chat window defaults to the 44th-diplo now? I will ask around and get Discord set up. Would be fun…it’s one of the reasons I was drawn to the game. Other than my mom plunking me down in front of the original Star Trek in its first season. I’ve inhaled and exhaled the show ever since. (I do not however speak Klingon… 🙂 )
Thanks for the help and insight…
aka @talyn#3391
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