For anyone who is a fan of Star Trek, the MMO Star Trek Online has gone Free to Play!
In this massively multiplayer online game from Cryptic Studios, players can pioneer their own destiny as Captain of a Federation starship, or perhaps become a Klingon Warlord and expand the Empire to the far reaches of the galaxy.
Setting:
STO takes place at the beginning of the 25th Century, after the destruction of Romulus, with the Next Generation/DS9/Voyager era notables having either retired or ascended to senior diplomatic and political positions, with a new generation of officers taking their place. Yes, this is set in the original timeline (where Nero of the most recent Star Trek movie came from), and the Alpha Quadrant is a rather different place from that of a generation prior, with factional tensions rising, a renewed Federation-Klingon War, and the Borg, the Undine, and other threats chomping at the heels.
Gameplay Modes:
Sector Space: The over-world navigational mode, where you fly around to various star systems, anomalies, gateways and such, but can’t engage in combat, though chat, banking services, and such are still available. In short, it takes time to get places in space (except if you use the rechargable transwarp ability, which is an instant teleport to a couple of designated places - with the faction's home planet (Earth or Qo'nos) available as the first destination, and more added as one gains certain ranks.
In System Mode: Once you drop out of warp and enter a star system, you can fly around, engage in space combat and such. This is notably where the game shines, with simple controls, cooldown-based skills that buff, debuff, heal, root or such, and weapons you can actually set on autofire. Even better, everything is appropriately named and makes sense in-game. The basic self-heal, for example, has emergency engineering teams trying to repair your ship in combat!
Ground combat: Reminsicent of Mass Effect 1 mechanics, you form an away team, beam to the planet’s surface, and start looking for aliens to kill, abnormalities to scan, etc. And best of all, if you're doing single player missions, you're not alone - you can take a party of bridge officers with you, so you basically have your own little adventuring party (which you can equip and outfit - and promote as you advance in rank).
Classes:
When creating a character one of the first things you'll choose is an area of expertise, either Science, Tactical or Engineering. Unlike most MMOs, things like armor and weapons aren't restricted by class, and the same thing goes for ships. So even if you choose Sciences, you'll still be able to captain an escort or cruiser and be able to equip the same armor types as the other classes.
What does depend on your class are kits, your ground skills and some of space abilities. Kits are what your captain takes with him on his away missions and greatly enhance his combat effectiveness. Many of your ground abilities are based on kits, with the rest either based on your class or granted by the weapon you're using. Players also gain and level up class-based abilities every rank. For example, Science players begin with Sensor Scan - which among other things, reduces an enemy's resistance to damage - by Commander it will have improved to Sensor Scan III and the damage resistance debuff more than doubles.
Your closest equivalent to a DPS class, Tactical specializes in doing direct damage to the enemy. In space, this can mean rerouting power to the weapons to increase your phaser damage, while on the ground, you'll have access to various stealth, close combat, and grenade oriented abilities.
Kind of the equivalent to a tank/pet class, Engineers are the guys who reroute power to reinforce various subsystems (shields, engines, etc), perform miracles (in fixing your ship - the highest level skill for Engineering Captains is actually "Miracle Worker"), and build turrets/shield generators/combat drones on the ground. Not quite as much of a DPS focus, but they have ways of penetrating shields to do more damage to enemies than one would expect.
Some call this "support class" of STO, as Science Captains can weaken enemy shields, root enemies, heal themselves/others, or simply disable enemy subsystems (like their shields, weapons, or engines). That and they have superior shields in space, tractor beams, holographic fleets...they're good at tipping the balance of fights.
Ships:
Cruisers
Cruisers are the largest ships in Starfleet, with large crews capable of repairing damage quickly, and powerful warp cores enabling a greater amount of power to be spread across the ships subsystems. The flagships of the fleet, resistant to damage, capable of holding more inventory than other vessels. For reference, every single Enterprise has been a Cruiser (with the exception of NX-01).
Primary Role: Lots of power; large crew complement provides quick repairs and boarding party tactics.
Secondary: Large Warp Core (power bonus); large cargo space (inventory); bonus to power in all systems; more weapon slots than Science vessels or Escorts.
Cons: The turn rate. Oh god, the turn rate...being massive means turning takes forever, especially at high speeds.
Escorts
Fast, maneuverable warships, Escorts turn on a dime and are armed to the teeth. Built for the front lines, ships of this sort have much smaller crews than cruisers, and not as many deflector systems as science ships, eschewing these extraneous things for armored hulls and powerful forward mounted weapons capable of tearing targets apart. Its emphasis on speed and maneuverbility are quite powerful in a pinch, and isoton for isoton, these are the most powerful ships in the fleet. The Defiant and the USS Prometheus are both exmples of Escort.
Primarily Role: Heavy damage ship, boasting incredible firepower for its size.
Secondary: Bonus to damage, speed and maneuverability; can use heavy cannons; bonus to weapon power; extra forward weapon slot.
Cons: Weaker shields mean you almost have to have an armor module, and if you come under heavy fire, you die.
Science Ships
For anyone who has heard Voltaire's USS Make Shit up, Science ships are basically what the song describes. With powerful sensor abilities that translate to superior targeting, subsystem disabling, anti-cloaking abilities, tractor beams, hurling gravity wells or photonic shockwaves all over the place, Science vessels are actually quite a threat to be reckoned with. Of course, they do work best in fleets, improving the effectiveness of allies, while hindering enemies(letting more fragile escorts tear these weakened ones apart like piranhas).The USS Voyager is an example of a Science ship.
Primarily Role: Fleet support, ally aid, battle control. Specializes in buffs, debuffs and control.
Secondary: Advanced shields, innate subsystem targeting, innate cloak detection; bonus to Auxiliary power.
Cons: Weaker hulls, since they don't specialize in armor and more space is devoted to labs and sensor suites than reinforcing the structural integrity fields
Notable Things:
Casual Playstyle: If you don't have hours to spend each day - don't worry. The single player content can be done a piece at a time, with breaks within a mission and save points you can log out at if you need to stop. And if you don't have time for missions, you have the duty officer system, where you send your crew off to complete tasks that net you money, experience, and items - and levelling from 1 to 50 via the doff system works too. Further, its not a big min-max game, and there is no way to go so “wrong” when building your character that you screw yourself over completely.
Klingons: Once you hit level 25 you unlock the ability to have a Klingon character as well, though the Klingon faction is significantly less fleshed out than the Starfleet one. Still, its pretty fun, since they do get to invade Klingon Hell, and are quite powerful in PvP.
Missions: For most missions, you don’t have to go back to Earth or to the mission-giver to report that you've finished. Since this is a Star Trek MMO, you can click on the little Starfleet symbol next to the mini-map to hail Starfleet Command to report in, turn in missions, claim rewards. Nifty, eh?
In-Game Currencies (or Free vs Pay): There are three major in-game currencies: Energy Credits (EC), Dilithium (dil), and Cryptic Points (CP). CP are the way that you can straight up buy stuff for the game with real money, though most people tend to use them on cosmetic items or other unnecessary things, like a xp boost that nets you 20% more exp (and which is really, REALLY unnecessary), or *shudder* keys for lock boxes.
Tips: Always, always, always upgrade your ship when you get the chance, as the lower level ships are simply inferior in every way to higher level ones - and you get free upgrades at most new ranks anyway. Also, you don't need to sell your ship every time you get promoted, since with every promotion (every 10 levels) comes a new ship slot.
Useful Links
Official Site: https://register.perfectworld.com/sto_splash - download the game here or from Steam
Official forums: Here - as a warning, not the best community around, but what do you expect from something free and quasi canonical?
Wiki: Star Trek Online Wiki – Not the best maintained wiki. There is some good info, but also a fair amount of outdated information/BS
BL Members in STO:
AlfheimWanderer (Anara W'Tsase@EnSalience)
HolySeraph (Angela@HolySeraph)
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Originally Posted by lantzblades
