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One thing to keep in mind is that this is a fifteen hour story. What we’ve seen so far is roughly the equivalent of the opening setup scenes before the credits of a one-hour episode in the previous Treks.
I liked it, I think it has a lot of potential. I was bothered by the same things as others. If it were set thirty years before TOS, the ship designs would make more sense; a big, overengineereed hull could be a sensible test platform for tech that is later used on the Constitution class. We’ve had to get used to a new Klingon appearance before, but we have a canon explanation for that and this ruins it.
Supposedly, they have a team of professional fact checkers going through Trek canon to preserve continuity…I can only assume their advice is being ignored.
Kathleen Hanna, one of the original riot grrrls from the 90s PNW music scene, and her current band The Julie Ruin, are out with their second album, “Hit Reset”. This is the video for the second single:
Thanks, Marcase!
Worth noting that the STO Academy build planner is expected to be updated for the new skill system on April 12. If Atillo meets that target, it’ll be very handy for planning out builds before spending your one free respec.
Yeah, this has been the topic of conversation (often fueled by alcohol) since the 70’s. I had many a debate with college friends about it! None of which I remember well at all. And really, I have no idea whatsoever.
Hm, let me see if I can explain this. It has to do with my approach to RPGs in general. I’ll use WOW as an example, because I played it this way for a long time.
For me, the primary consideration, the way I get the most enjoyment, in an RPG, is to play to character concept. Typical raiders in WOW don’t think of their characters as fictional people inhabiting a fictional world; they think of them as reconfigurable weapons platforms, to be altered and optimized for maximum effectiveness in any given situation.
I don’t play that way. My Frost Mage is not a Frost Mage because Frost happens to be effective at this particular moment; she’s a Frost Mage because she was born with an aptitude for it, and spent her life training for it. Think about the meaning of the word “talent” — skills may be learned, but talent is innate. She could learn the skill required to throw a fireball, but she would never be as good at it as she was at throwing a frostbolt.
Technically, in a the-game-allows-it sense, I could reconfigure her to forget all her special Frost ability and suddenly develop an aptitude for Fire. But if you think of an RPG as a fictional world, that’s really retconning your character, and retcons suck. They’re sometimes unavoidable, but they suck.
So — no respecs for my character. But that doesn’t mean she’s just purely focused on appearance, because within the constraints imposed by staying permanently within Frost spec, it’s still possible to try to be the best possible Frost Mage you can be. It’s still possible to learn and optimize a rotation, to understand what sort of gear best supports that rotation and other aspects of your playstyle, and so forth. So as you’re moving through a raid dungeon, all else being equal, you may be weak relative to someone who respecs to Fire if an encounter favors Fire — but when you come to an encounter that favors Frost, you’ll be stronger, even if that person switches to Frost, because you’re more specialized for it.
In general, I favor a design that allows for a “Jack of all trades” playstyle, but requires a tradeoff between versatility and specialization. I also this makes for more complex and interesting play in a raid environment. Back in Vanilla and BC, I was in a server-first raid guild that was friendly to people who didn’t want to change specs. Part of the challenge we dealt with was figuring out the fights and phases and tasks that a given spec was strong or weak on, and how to use them in complementary ways. There were times, for instance, when Fire was best suited for a quick 5-10 second kill of an add, while Frost was best suited for a 45-second mid-encounter vulnerability phase, and strategy had to take that into account. Much more interesting, for me, than for everyone just to swap into the most effective spec for every situation — which essentially renders weaknesses meaningless.
Now, STO doesn’t have the strict class and spec distinctions that WOW does, so I tend to go with visual design to develop the character concept. But as in WOW, I do want to maximize performance within the (self-imposed) constraints of the concept. Hence, this thread!
The pictured console is last summer’s. However, the Battle Module 4000 mentioned in the set description is new. I had read that it was coming, but the earlier implication was that you could slot either the BM3K OR the BM4K, much like the consoles in the T5 and T6 heavy destroyers. The fact that you can equip both is very interesting indeed.
My hope is that the new ship (which looks like a fancy D’Kora) can use the D’Kora appearance if you own the T5 ship. There was a point where I considered making Blerg my main character and focusing on building out his ship. He’s not going to be my main, but perhaps it’s time I focus on improving him some. The D’Kora is a super fun ship to fly.
I should have clarified: I’m in an Annorax. So I’m working with 4 fore weapons, 3 aft, frigate pets with coalition disruptors, and a spinal mount weapon that does AP damage. So that gives the disruptors and AP weapons a bit of an advantage, since the former synergizes with the pets and the latter with the spinal mount.
I’ve also got a decent set of UR-to-epic beams for each of these.
Coalition Disruptors: [crtd]x2 [dmg]x2
Herald AP: [crtd] [dmg]x3
Andorian Phasers: fleet [dmg] version
Chronometric Polaron: all upgraded to UR, which has a fixed [dmg] modAnd finally, I like to have at least one torpedo equipped.
I played around with various combinations last night, and hit on one that feels and looks good:
– Herald AP DBB front
– Herald AP beam front
– Experimental Proton Weapon front
– Gravimetric torp front
– 3x Herald AP beam aftThe EPW isn’t especially strong, but it consumes only 5 power, the console is universal, and the three-piece set bonus adds +10% crtd to all weapons plus 10% crth to the torpedo. I’m considering shifting it aft, for more Herald AP proc chances, but it looks awfully good up front. The grav torp is of course a very fun sci torp.
My favored Coalition Disruptor build is:
– 2x Coalition Disruptor DBB front
– Resonant Disruptor Beam front
– Resonant Transphasic Torp front
– 3x Coalition Disruptor Beam aftThe Resonant set adds some AOE damage resistance debuff procs (it essentially applies the standard Disruptor debuff to every target in range when it procs, which is frequently with the torpedo). It also adds a very nice weapon cycle haste cooldown. This setup lacks punch, however. Replacing two of the aft beams with turrets would add some single-target damage in the forward arc, at the cost of weaker FAW. However, I need to upgrade any turrets I add.
And finally, the Chronometric Polaron build was:
– Chronometric Polaron beam front
– Experimental Proton Weapon front
– Gravimetric Torp front
– Krenim Torp front
– Chronometric Omni Beam aft
– Polaron Omni Beam aft (blech!)
– Temporal Disruption Device aftSo there are three set bonuses in play here. The chronometric set bonuses add a +energy/exotic damage cooldown, with a rather long 30 second duration, and double the proc chance on the krenim torp to 50% — plus a damage increase to all torpedoes. The EPW/gravimetric set boosts crit damage and crit chance on the torp. And the TDD, plus the console it goes with, significantly increase the damage of the Krenim torp (and should I fly past a target, it’s a big bomb to drop on them).
The twin torps up front quickly stack and maintain the Supercharged Weapons buff. Of the three, builds, this is the strongest…but ugh, that polaron omni beam. I could just replace it with the heavy turret…but inexplicably, that turret’s energy is distinctly green, despite the fact that the chronometric DHC matches the beams. I might try it anyway.
The weapon candidates are:
Andorian phasers and quantum phase
Herald AP (this would definitely be all beams)
Coalition disruptors and resonant disruptor (really like how this looks and sounds, but major candidate for aft turrets)And last but not least — brace yourself…
Chronometric polaron beam
Chronometric polaron omni beam
Heavy chronometric polaron turret
Experimental proton weaponThere’s a crazy mix of set bonuses involved in that setup. I’m currently using it with a regular polaron omni beam in place of the turret, the Krenim torp, the gravimetric torp (set bonus!), and the temporal disruption device aft (set bonus!) but that one mismatched beam looks terrible.
