= State of the Fleet, May 2020 =

[Marcase]

Greetings and salutations 44th,

Your long awaited State of the Fleet is back, and we’ll try to post an overall fleet update every month again. This blog is focused on our newest and often beginning Star Trek Online players, but I hope the veterans find it informative as well.

As always, welcome (back) to our latest members:

The Mighty 44th

Your 44th Fleet is doing quite well – we are attracting new members every week and our own forum and discord are as lively as ever. Don’t be shy to join the discord voice channel(s) – it does help to guide or further explain STO builds and mechanics or mission walkthroughs – but it’s not a requirement.
If you can, at least setup your discord via browser, windows download or Android app for listening in via https://discordapp.com/invite/ayuyXUj
This link is permanently posted under Resources at the top of this website.

Right now the 44th Fleet (“Main”), 44th Delta Fleet, 44th Gamma Fleet and our KDF 44th Assault Squadron have either met, or are fast approaching their max tiers. Gamma fleet will continue to take a slower pace as it’s basically a training fleet for our newest members to discover the fleet system in STO.

And to all our KDF aligned alts – Qap’la ! Thank you all for the increased effort to feed the KDF colony with much needed battery provisions – it has filled completely and is nine days away untill completion as of this post.

Once again we do point out that there is zero-difference in whichever fleet your character(s) are placed regarding ranks and priviliges, as we all act as one – the Mighty 44th.

This is also a good moment to reintroduce the 44th Admiralty to our newest members.

The 44th is a massive armada of four fleets and the time a single person could oversee it all is long gone. Keeping track of the many-many promotions is a full day-job all in itself, as without those timely promotions your fleet store access to buy the shiny fleet ships, fleet weapons and fleet consoles would be unnecesarily delayed.

So a big sloppy Orion smooch to your Vice-Admirals BreakingForce, Damix, Palcioz, Paradoxical and Phoenix who run day-to-day operations of the Mighty 44th. They oversee your promotions and generally keep an eye on things to keep everything running smooth as Tholian silk.
If you have any questions you can always turn to them in-game, website pm or discord.

Not to be outdone, your fleet has a dynamite core of Commodores as well who organize events, support our members in-game with advice and are always on-hand to render assistance. AnganySamavu, Balthazar, Bilrost and RatheMagius have recently been joined by GallifreyCaptain and Shohom. Congratulations !
Commodores are selected members of the Mighty 44th hand-picked for their dedication and support in everything 44th. As above, they are available for questions or suggestions whenever needed.

Finally, the three fleetmembers you are NOT to disturb at ANY cost are the three Fleet Admirals of the 44th. Akula, Sargon (@rdm) and Marcase are way too busy to deal with electronic paperwork of any kind so do not disturb us when we are having our “Commander’s Nap”.
The three Fleet Admirals are the Final Frontier whenever executive decisions need to be made (reprimanding misbehaviour, creating/deleting additional fleets etc) – we hold the Nuclear Briefcase, as it were.

As you know (because you have studied them, right? Right…?) the rules in the 44th are simple – don’t behave like a pile of smelly tribble droppings and help a fleetie when in need. We don’t have ‘must attend’ reporting days and you can wear whatever you want. We don’t have an official fleet uniform as such but you are encouraged to wear the 44th sleeve patch (any starbase tailor) and ship emblem (any ship tailor; however not all ships have this option).
Remember though that the 44th Fleet name is proudly displayed above your characters all the time for all to see – so represent !

Fleet Meets

We do have fleet meets of course, and recently we celebrated the impromptu Corona Outbreak Meet on Deep Space Nine. Helmed by Commodore Veratisu it was a fun gathering of 44th members who once again broke the 20-member limit on Deep Space Nine by showing up at Quarks’ with 30 ! There were some workarounds needed to spoof the system and not everyone was able to join the following TFOs, but that’s more STO’s limitation than our lack of enthusiasm. Great turnout and good fun all !

You also will see a return of “Search for Soolin” which is a quick and easy picture hunt on our 44th forum. Besides the forum ribbon there will usually be a small reward available.

We are in the works of organizing another “Nimbus Naked Run”; naked in this case being a no shield, no weapon, no powers marathon through all the angry mobs on Nimbus which as usual will try to either want to kidnap, kill or eat you. In addition we may climb Paradise City for the hidden accolades on the rooftops there. More on this later.

Another major event on the horizon is STO’s annual Summer Event (July-August) better known as the Lohlunat Festival. The grand prize for doing a fun and easy daily – flying around with a jetpack, the only place you can unfortunately – is a Tier 6 ship. Especially when you’re just beginning in STO, the free Summer/Winter ships are a welcome addition as ship, traits and Admiralty card. This event is also a dynamite dilithium boost and ofcourse a good excuse to show off some beachwear.

STO News

Not that much STO news going on, except that Cryptic has accelerated a number of events (Red Alerts) which are running almost back-to-back now. This is a gap-filler since producing new missions/episodes are a bit on the backburner due to pandemic. There is always something to do in STO and it will get (too much of) a grind if you try to do ALL of the events.
Our advice – don’t.
Avoid burnout due to event-overload, so just pick and choose which you like because they will eventually return in one form or another. Trust us, we’ve been there and done that.

As Cryptic is currently also working from home, their current major projects include integrating the recent episodes of Star Trek Picard and elements of Discovery Season 3, but there is also a serious revamp of the Klingon arc underway. All the KDF-only tutorial missions will receive a serious visual overhaul, which includes new Klingon bridges, hallways, ground maps etc. Don’t expect First City to be redrawn but some visual updates like lighting will be a welcome update.
See this Youtube for a few visuals.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds with Captain Pike is also being announced and if it will actually be produced (2021?) is still unsure due to the current Corona Virus pandemic, but you can bet you may see another iteration of this Pike-series USS Enterprise introduced to STO eventually, and elements of this show including actor’s voice work to add to STO’s lore. Most likely it will be some continuation of Discovery.
The good thing of this all is that Star Trek is still being produced and aired and our beloved franchise is still alive and kicking.

STO Tips and tricks

Highlight: Plasma piercing rifles (link) for beginning players.

We all want to fly ships so ground builds are always neglected, resulting in our poor away teams more often than not being pounded by what are essentially mediocre NPCs. To remedy that, we encourage starting players to equip themselves AND their away team with good ground weapons. And this time we highly recommend the Plasma Piercing Rifle.

The PPR is cheap and has a vicious proc that ignores shields. If you have a 5-character away team using these simultaneously the total effect is wicked and it will make your progress through ground missions a lot easier.
It also has – intended or not – a 1 second stun. This may just be a neat visual, but you will see your target trying to block the incoming shot, pausing it for one second.
The rifles can primarily be found at the Romulan Fleet HQ and Romulan armories. If you don’t have a Romulan character ask a fleetmate who does.
The Plasma Piercing Rifle will be discarded eventually when you reach level 60-65 but they really can be used all the way to Elite ‘endgame’ ground TFOs.

Of course, there is a small catch – you need to upgrade them. Luckily, this is very simple.

Buy 5x Mk 1 white rifles and use Phoenix tech upgrades to get it up to your current maximum level. The standard Normal, Advanced and Superior Tech Upgrades have all been made obsolete – since you can get Phoenix upgrades you don’t need any other and the previous ones are now a waste of refined dilithium.
Upgrading from Mk 1 you will at minimum get a rare/blue version, but quite often a very rare purple one or even a gold/Epic variant.
Phoenix Upgrades can be found in Phoenix boxes which can be bought with refined dilithium in the Dilithium Store/Special Items. Once opened, downgrade all Phoenix upgrades by right-clicking and scroll down the new menu, untill they are all Uncommon Green. In the Uncommon Tab you will find Phoenix Universal Upgrades again at the bottom of the menu. These Phoenix Upgrades can be used to upgrade everything: beams, cannons, turrets, shields, ground kit, engines, armor etc. etc.

Note that the next Upgrade Weekend is June 11-15, so hold off with upgrading untill then, since every upgrade will receive a significant boost.

Regarding the Plasma piercing rifles, a modest dilithium investment to buy Phoenix boxes will take away the need to constantly buy/equip ground weapons for your captain and away team Boffs. You will be upgrade the weapons as you level up to their next higher Mk.
Remember to ALWAYS go for purple/very rare quality (if lucky Epic) stuff – a MK VI purple item is almost 2 levels more effective than any plain white MK VI. And this is true for everything in STO: space weapons, shields, armor etc.
Equip your entire away team w purple plasma piercing rfls and you will slice through those annoying ground episodes like a hot Batleth through Vulcan butter.

There are better weapons like the Herald Staff, the Boolean cannon and the TR116, but the PRR is cheap and still very, very effective.

That’s it for this time, we will notify and post details on the coming fleet events and Summer Event in the coming weeks.

See you, out there captains !

Calendar:

May 28 – June 4: Galactic Red Alert
June 4 – June 25: No Win Scenarios
June 11 – June 15: Upgrade Weekend !
June 25 – June 29: Tholian Red Alert Weekend

Zen: 383 (will likely drop further during the Upgrade Weekend)

Previous State of the Fleets at the bottom of our link page.

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"Boldly bashing Borg to bits since 2012..."

[Phoenix]

Nice write-up Marcase! Great info, as always.

aka @phoenix#6622

[AnganySamavu]

Photos from latest fleet meetup. Sorry for the delay, but I had to sort out things in real life a little bit first.

Cats, dogs, sehlats, hortas, risian caracals, toy tholians, tribbles, dinosaurs, snowmen… What else fleeties keep as pets?

Party patrol

Quark’s is a great place to have a party but, I think that this Hur’q over there would agree with me, it’s a little bit too cramped. How about next time we raid one of Dyson Sphere commands?

Running circles

Party moved to Dranuur

I’m not going to talk about protecting the environment and such… But I do really that we had somebody clean the pond

You might don’t want to look back…

Favorite 44th’s exercise – run when everybody else runs. I guess that’s good since there’s Nimbus marathon incoming

Photos from colony invasion simulations we ran there are coming soon(tm)

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by palcioz.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by AnganySamavu. Reason: found a typo

aka @anganysamavu#4972, @kjoiner#6008

[Shohom]

Great snaps as always Angany🤩

This reminds me that I have to stock up on party amplifiers again😁🥳

The longest journey is the discovery of oneself

[Author]

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