It’s our guide to ship energy weapon types, along with how and when to use which weapons.

Then we share our thoughts on the new Season 1.1 update, including the death penalty system and the injury system.

PLUS We asked you just what ship Interior functionality means to you, and you told us!

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Our STOked App:

Grab the STOked iPhone/iPod App and download STOked plus bonus content on the go!

NEWS:

Season 1.1 is upon us!  https://www.startrekonline.com/season_one1

Complete Patch notes @ Link.  But here’s some major highlights:

    * Difficulty Slider and Death Penalty

    * Overhauls to “overpowered” abilities:  Feedback Pulse, Subnucleonic Beam and Viral Matrix (primarily a PvP change, but affects PvE too)

    * Skill highlighting drop-down (not fully functional – don’t trust it!)

    * AND SO MUCH MORE!

Veteran Rewards coming soon! https://www.startrekonline.com/veteran_rewards

New uniforms, badges, titles and ships (Captain’s Yacht!)

    * Rewarded at 100, 200, 300, and 400 days.

    * First reward will be about May 13th.

    * A few Lifers up in arms over “Captain’s Table” being opened for 400-day Vets.

    * They WILL be rewarded to Lifers:  https://forums.startrekonline.com/showpost.php?p=2617330&postcount=92

Free Weekend, coming May 7th:  https://www.startrekonline.com/free_weekend

Prior subscribers will be auto-reactivated, to try out the game again with recent changes.

    * Beginning the same weekend:  Free Demo downloads and Refer A Friend bonuses.

MATH:

Damage Types!  

Energy Weapons:  

Phaser

2.5% chance per shot of knocking one subsystem offline for 5 seconds.

    * Cannot be relied upon, but is very annoying and very powerful in the right circumstances.

    * Tooltip says 5 seconds, but I’ve witnessed this outage last as little as 1second.  Could be lag?  Could be damage resistance?  UNKNOWN.

Disruptor

2.5% chance of placing a debuff on enemy which enhances the damage they receive by 10%.

    * Because this debuffs your enemy, your ENTIRE GROUP benefits from this debuff.

    * Refreshed with each application, does not stack.  Lasts 15seconds unless refreshed.

Tetryon

2.5% chance to deal extra damage to enemy shields (note: All 4 quadrants receive this damage, regardless of which you are facing)

    * Very nice for quickly tearing down shields, but worthless against Hull.  Once their shields are down, this special is useless.

    * It’s not obvious when this happens, but the numbers parse out to roughly match the tooltip.

    * Always -80 to all shields, unaffected by skills/abilities.  Does not scale well – more effective at lower levels than high ones.

Plasma

2.5% chance to apply a fire-dot DIRECTLY TO THE HULL.

    * This is THE choice for high-dps in a firefight.  Will apply to hull even at full shields, not affected by shields.

    * The chance to apply the dot is relatively small, but it STACKS if landed multiple times.

    * The damage from the dot scales with the Mk of weapon, making this a useful proc at all levels/ranks. (118/15sec @ LtC, up to 162/15sec @ Adm)

    * Can be cured in several ways, but NPCs don’t cure it.

Polaron

2.5% to drain 25 energy from ALL subsystems.

    * Could be considered a more consistent/potent version of Phasers.

    * Energy drain can completely cripple any enemy ship, on a lucky string of hits.

    * The drain reduces the enemy’s damage output, speed, shield regen and strength of aux-related abilities.

    * Keep in mind that players frequently run with 25 energy in weapons/aux.  ONE SINGLE HIT from a Polaron proc can knock those systems offline temporarily.

    * Note:  Drain does not affect power regen, and can easily be countered with EPS Flow Regulators, or EPS Power Transfer.

Antiproton

Special proc vs. Borg enemies.

    * Available only from Battle Group Omega via badges.

    * Purple ship weapons come with built-in high-crit stats that are very nice, but not worth the skill point investment.  You can get lower sp-cost weapons with the same +crit stats.

    * VERY handy vs. Borg (up to 1000 dmg extra on a proc – 7.5% chance).  So much so that owning them is worth it, if only for STF missions.

MAIL:

Woah, momma.

Unlike PvP, where almost everyone had the same ideas, “Ship Interior Functionality” is a HUGE range of interpretations.  Here are some noteworthy examples:

smbrenn suggests being able to set a destination in Sector Space, then enter your ship interior to do other things, primarily including crafting.

plunkett insists on “not flying around in a giant warehouse” (he categorized this as “Mood” but others also called this Functionality)

neotom52345 suggests the inclusion of mission objectives, including being boarded by enemies, renegade holo programs, ship mysteries and more.

    Also functioning layouts that don’t resemble randomly-placed corridors and non-functioning doorways.

darkpony50 has a good series of ideas that boil down to new interfaces to do existing functions. Examples: Boff skill purchases from your ready room via Starfleet commlink, purchase equipment via Cargo Bay, reassign ship gear via Main Engineering, assign Away Team at Transporter Room.

jon ross brought up the idea of an on-ship bestiary or kennel to keep non-combat pets (a la Porthos or Spot)

justin potts mentions the concept of player-created content, via the Holodeck, that could be experienced by groups or fleets as “training”

kevin davis proposes a crafting subsystem where non-assigned boffs can be sent to do research on ship subsystems (incentive to recruiting more boffs on bigger ships).  This research would provide an extra layer to crafting, which would be done on the ship.

kevin davis also mentions replacing loading screens with animated sequences including shuttle trips or transporter room interaction, that feature your captain & crew.

Also multiple requests for:

* Being able to fly your ship from the Bridge (a la “Bridge Commander”)

* Captain’s Ready Room to display Accolade progress and trophies from Accolades and possible rare Explore missions. (big one within Jupiter Force)

* Crafting functionality throughout the ship interior.

* Complete customization.  From the look of consoles, carpets and lighting, to the effect they have on your ship performance. (e.g., purchase an upgrade to your Sick Bay to improve crew regen rates, and it ALSO appears as a different console type when you visit Sick Bay.)

Items surprisingly NOT mentioned:

* Functioning viewscreens for communication.

* Inclusion of boarding parties as a PvP function.

* On-ship view of Astrometrics, as an optional replacement for Sector Space

Next Week’s Question:  Send us ONE non-combat mission idea.  The more detail the better.

MEDIA:

Introducing “Moist Gaming” (chuckle)

This video comes to us courtesy of Ellandess.  We may feature additional clips of theirs on future shows.  Here’s where the bar is SET.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Diyt9FgYaQQ

The post Guide to STO Ship Energy Weapons | STOked 32 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

STOked, Season 2 Episode 4: We cover some recent news for Star Trek Online, then show you how to plan out your character skills with a handy skill builder tool, and show you what video cards get you the best results with STO. How much does a dual core, quad core, or even a single core processor effect your game performance? We give you the answer!

PLUS: We interview Craig Zinkievich STO’s Executive Producer about the current state of the game and get you answers about up coming death penalty possibilities, future content expansion for low and high level players, and so much more!

Our STOked App:

Grab the STOked iPhone/iPod App and download STOked plus bonus content on the go!

Show Notes:

CAST:
Chris, Jeremy

DISCLAIMERS:
GoogleAds showing Energy Credit Buying services on our embedded player. We do not support them, but are having a hard time convincing Google to remove them.
We claimed that a Borg Raidisode would be published on Feb 18th, based on a forum post from DStahl. It didn’t make it into the patch, but we have no control over that. Stay tuned for the next announcement. Don’t shoot the messenger!

NEWS:

5-Day Buddy Keys available — https://www.startrekonline.com/claim_buddy_key
Available for any subscriber, allows for d/l of client and 5-day free play.
Originally said 10 days? Bait & switch?
If they play a LOT, that’s enough to reach Rear Admiral!

Work has started on an unofficial Mac client using WINE, Xquartz
https://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=76799
List of known issues:
Fonts are ugly when they are small… Noticed mostly when scaling the UI down.
antialiasing is not functional
sun/stars nearby in the background of space missions might have texture drawing errors and get flashy when moving the camera around
alt key is usually not functional on most machines… this is an Xquartz keymapping problem… newer xquartz testing versions work better, but are still unstable. For now, going to have to live without alt.
due to limitations in Xquartz, Multimonitor set ups can be a hassle. The game will want to play only on the left-most monitor, wether its the primary or not.
running in the normal VIrtual Desktop window mode can have the mouse reactions go super fast while turning yourself or the camera… the farther you move the mouse… can be a bit annoying.

Ask Cryptic: Let’s Talk Skills https://www.startrekonline.com/node/1158
They talk about Skill Caps, and how they are necessary for future content once the cap is raised to RA 10 (“later this year”)
They will be altering the Ship Pilot skills, so that each tier will again benefit the ship types further up that line.
Their “answer” to the question regarding Weapon Types vs. Skill Point Cost was disappointing. Not really an answer at all. Paraphrased: “They’re different and exotic because we say so.”
Compare to a fantasy MMO:
Daggers = Armor Piercing. Swords = Bleed DOT. Equal but different effects. Now if Swords cost more skill points to attain the same DPS as daggers that are cheaper, why would anyone use swords?
SOLUTION: Higher Tier weapon types need to be more powerful effects, in order to justify the skill point investment. Or, even out the cost. You can’t have equality AND imbalance, at the same time.


MATH:

A Walk-Thru Guide to the Captain Skill Builder

https://sto-builder.binarybit.ch/ — created by Ghley < —- LOWER THIRD TO SHOW LINK
Java, 32-bit ONLY
Easy on-site bug reporting tool
Patch Notes / To-Do List at the bottom of the page

STEP 1) Choose your profession.
This will alter the skill choices available for your “ground” specializations.

STEP 2) Choose your ship.
If you’re trying to set yourself up for end-game, choose an end-game ship for maximum forethought.

STEP 3) Choose your boffs’ abilities.
The drop-down lists provided are NOT all-inclusive. They do not include ‘rare’ Mk III abilities, or those trainable by Captains (more on this topic later).
You will notice that all skills that affect your chosen abilities are now highlighted in a gold color.
NOTE: Several BUGS exist, so not all skills are highlighted correctly… hopefully the creators are working on this!
You may need to come back to this step if you find you’ve spread yourself a bit too thin!

STEP 4) Spend your skill points.
The Builder knows when you have spent enough to rank up. Watch for the next rank to unlock.
The numbers at the top show: Points Spent This Rank (Points To Next Rank)
Most skills begin giving significantly diminished returns, starting around rank 4 or 5. So it’s not always the best idea to max out unless you NEED every last tidbit of bonus (PvP?)
One bonus of training all 9 ranks in some skills: To teach your boffs powerful Rank III abilities.
You can only teach your boffs abilities that match your Captain’s Profession (so Science captains will potentially have the best Science boffs, e.g.)
This skill builder does not support Rank III taught abilities. Workaround: You can select a lower-rank ability on the boff dropdown menus, to show which skills will affect these.
Don’t be afraid to buy lower-tier skills, in order to meet the requirements to unlock the next tier up. Sometimes the broader bonuses of low-rank bonuses are better to have in the long run.
DON’T NEGLECT YOUR GROUND SKILLS! Despite this builder only highlighting the SPACE skills that benefit your boffs, remember that you will be fighting on the ground also!
Pick a sub-specialization within your class – don’t try to do everything.
Click the “Space Stats” button near the top to display your character’s skill modifier totals in the right-hand pane.

STEP 5) Share your build.
The URL field at the top of the screen is updated on the fly as you spend your skill points. You can copy & paste this to share your character build.
Recommend using a URL shortener for forum sharing (bit.ly or similar)

Summary/Tips:
For now, Commander and higher ship skills are limited to the ship you are currently flying and do not carry up to the next tier. THIS WILL BE CHANGING.
For more information on your individual skills, you can pull up your Skill Pane in-game (press P) and look at the list of skills from there.
The skill information provided by this skill builder can also be used to help you select your Deflector Dish and Consoles.

MEDIA:

STO Benchmarks show clear lead on Nvidia cards

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/star-trek-online,2553.html

Nvidia GTX260 w/896MB of RAM currently goes for $194 on Amazon on Amazon

The post STOked S02E04: State of The Game Interview & Best STO Video Card first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.