Star Trek Online (Cryptic's "other" new MMO)

[Jaddison]

Reading through the threads for past MMOs that headed into open beta a common theme emerges much like what is happening in this thread.  This goes all the way back to Vanguard perhaps even beyond.  I remember being on the fence about PotBS but then the open beta comments started about how this was different from the norm.

On fence i sit trying not to get sucked in by the ghost of the GGFE, now the GTFE.

[Blackjack]

As far as phasers go, I'm just wondering if maybe they have some optional effects/attributes that the rifles don't. that out yet. I agree I feel a little strange running around space dock with a rifle in my hand -- I wish there was some option to "holster" our weapons, aside from removing them and putting them in inventory. Personally, I would've preferred rifles and heavy weapons be limited to, say tactical officers and
security red shirts, but, I dunno, most players probably prefer being able to use everything.

Hit the "H" key.  There's actually a little icon for it down in the toolbar.  I wasn't sure what it did, so I clicked on it.  I couldn't figure out what the significance of the letter was, but seeing your post, it must stand for Holster.

H key for Holster? C'mon dude! That would be WAY too straightforward, obvious, sensible, intuitive and non-inscrutable for STO's UI.

[CeeKay]

On fence i sit trying not to get sucked in by the ghost of the GGFE, now the GTFE.

I'm feeling the same way, but all I need to do is glance over at my MMO shelf with EQ2, EQ1, PotBS, Vanguard, AoC, Warhammer and LotRO gathering for it to go away.

for the moment that is.  come launch day it may be a different story.

[Jag]

Anyone have a link for some basic gameplay info? I'd like to read up on it at work while it downloads.

Scroll back a page or two - I know I put in a link to the official manual somewhere. At work at the moment though and can't take the time to look it up.

Google is my friend

http://www.startrekonline.com/manual

[Blackjack]

On fence i sit trying not to get sucked in by the ghost of the GGFE, now the GTFE.

I'm feeling the same way, but all I need to do is glance over at my MMO shelf with EQ2, EQ1, PotBS, Vanguard, AoC, Warhammer and LotRO gathering for it to go away.

for the moment that is.  come launch day it may be a different story.

The one thing most of those MMOs on your shelf have in common (for the most part -- Pirates sticks out as different, and it's on my shelf too; Ceekay and I each also played Tabula Rasa) is they're fantasy games obsessed with orcs, swords, robes, wizards, goblins, shields and elfs. And bare boobs and buns (AoC).   So STO not being all about that has that much going for it in terms of a different experience.

I believe that's "Gone Gold Forum Effect" (GGFE) and "Gaming Trend Forum effect" (GTFE) for those of us new here, or not informed on the alphabet soup.   Lets see how I and other skeptics like myself feel after we get to do more of the actual ship instances, and do some group play and stuff.

I think it's a good fit for me cause I'm lifetime on LOTRO, and have no plans to abandon it, just could use something a little different for a while. I'm not playing any monthly fee games at the moment, so I'm open to STO. I just want to put in another week or so before I make any pre order decision. And I will report bugs as I see them (that "giant avatar in space" but is the only one I've seen so far, aside from the login issues yesterday); I'm trying to remind myself that it is still a Test (though many of us, including myself, tend to probably view these as "playable demos"), and they really need as much feedback and bug reports as possible. It's just a shame Atari didn't give them a longer open beta window, even just a couple more weeks longer.

[Blackjack]

Hey, just a reminder to keep checking their open beta page, as they're adding other partners to distribute more keys (Ten Ton Hammer and Massively have run out; besides Fileplanet, there are 4 other sites distributing keys now):
http://www.startrekonline.com/openbeta

-----------------------------------------
Been trying to find some relatively helpful threads at official forums. Here are some...

Still confused about character class/ship class interaction
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=56917
*I found player posts in this thread kinda helpful, esp. this one about how to "place" your away team members to arrange an ambush (though that seems very un-Federation-like, no? ). Which is something I probably need to learn to better use my mines.  

On the ground, it is often useful to place your bridge officers to set up an ambush. Just click the down arrow icon next to their name then click where you want them to stand.

Try to position them up so the enemy gets to the red-shirts before they get to your officers. Try to position them in 2 groups so you get bonus flanking damage. To let them move again, click the down arrow at the top of the away-team list.

Tips & Tricks: Escort Class Starships (closed beta tester now sharing his insights on this ship class)
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=56809

Head Start Pre-Order Drawback
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=57982
I recall some complaints back with Champions that pre-order bonuses/perks weren't available until the official Day 1 launch (i.e., were not available during the 3-day head start for pre-order customers). Seems to still be the case with STO. Not a big deal to most, but customers don't like surprises. So if you don't have your pre-order bonus/perk on the head-start's 1st day, don't panic.  

[Wargus]

I thought about what I'd posted yesterday overnight, I still think its safe to say this game isn't for me at release.  That said, I'll put more time into it, ignoring the theme of the game and focusing on gameplay.  I concede some people may have a lot of fun with it.

What it boils down to me is that I expect more from some titles. Maybe that isn't fair, howeve I expect Star Trek games to live up to the standard of IP. Its probably an impossible standard, but there it is.  I think it safe to say (even if you like the game) that Cryptic didn't even really try to reach it. Heck, they've essentially said they didn't try to reach it.

Now, absent that IP, is it a good game?  It still has issues, however much fewer.  I'm still not sure the game has enough to it to survive, but I'll play it for a while to find out. 

[Harkonis]

I look different now

[Vindel]

I look different now

You look like the creature from that movie Jeepers Creepers 

[Destructor]

Nice collection of character outfits there. I need to stea...er, borrow some of them for my own characters.

[Blackjack]

I sense from forums that space battle difficulty is something they'll be continually tweaking. Apparently some CB testers pushed for a difficulty slider similar to what City of Heroes' instances offered (where you chose 1 of 5 difficulty levels, affecting the size and quality of the mobs you'd encounter)  but Cryptic said it wouldn't happen for STO.

So they have to walk this fine line between gradually ramping up the difficulty but not making it so tough that casual players don't have a chance.

I found this thread useful, with some various players offering up advice on ship combat:

Seriously - what I'm doing wrong in [space] combat
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=58894
A few snippets...

If you have more enemies try to spread the damage, don`t let them all shoot in one shield, they will reach your hull faster.

use the enviroment ...at that mission i was circling that big asteroid and keep just one enemy ship in my range.

While you`re fighting try to get use with the shields rerouting, tricky thing to do at start
==========================================
Beyond that, well, personally, I prefer 3 beam weapons over having a torp launcher. And broadside lots. Got Fire At Will 1 on my tactical officer, of course.
==========================================
[question about how to take on a tough battleship enemy]
I had the same problem with the Orion Battleship. I solved it by simply circling in one direction, firing as fast as I can manage and pumping torps at his weak shield whenever I came around to the firing arc. That killed the Orion pretty fast, if being a bit tedious. I make sure to kill the other ships first, so I am only concentrating on the Battleship.
==========================================
When you need to turn quickly, be sure to increase your auxilliary power (either set power to balanced or use the manual sliders). When you need to move quickly, increase your engine power. The attack and defense presets have no power in aux or engines, so i tend to run like the attack config, but with slightly less weapon power and more aux, so that I can actually turn.
==========================================

Also, they referenced a pretty helpful player-created starship "tier chart." Folks may want to bookmark or just save his image (it's basically a PNG file):
Suricata's Ship Tier Charts
http://suricatasblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/stoshiptierchart.png
It gives you an "at a glance" view of how many officers, consoles, and weapon slots each ship can have.


I'm not quite clear on the whole "auto-grouping" stuff just yet. This thread looks at that a bit:
Get Rid of Forced / Instanced Groups!
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=59567
The "how to" was:

There's an Option to turn this off in the Social Menu. Hit "o" in game, and look in Team Settings, the bottom right option will turn off the auto-teams.
...
If you are auto joining groups in map encounters or PQs then you didn't turn it off. You just haven't done any group missions yet. If you change the right settings then you will not join a group even in those zones. There's other people there in the zone with you, but you wont be grouped with them.

Aaaand, Shield adjustments in space combat explained here (the tutorial touches on it but I honestly couldn't understand how to adjust them to this point):
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=59292

actually the way it works is like this:
- Redistribute shields: Click on the center of the little ship. It will 'even out' your shields, so if you have full left, right, and rear shields, and empty front shield, they'll all end up at 75%.
- Transfer power to specific shield: Click on the little arrow for one specific shield and *the next* pulse of energy will only go to that shield (instead of distributed to the 4 shields).
==============================
Each time you hit the arrow (either the one on screen or the direction arrow on your keyboard), it shifts a tiny bit of power from your other shields to that shield. So you have to click it a lot to see the difference (especially if the enemy is still shooting at you on that side.)

But if you go to the powers screen and drag those buttons to your hot bar, it's a bit easier -- each time you click the button on your hotbar for one of your shields, it acts as though you are clicking the arrow for that shield for five straight seconds. Definitely a relief on the fingers. (There's also a button you can put on the hotbar that balances all of the shields -- that one only runs for two seconds, for some reason.)

I think I might jot some in-game "Captain's Logs" that repeat some of these tips, so I'll feel a little less lost in-game.   I kinda miss X-Wing/Tie Fighters' simple "shield balancing toggle key."

My head hurts, I think I might need Starfleet Academy remedial courses. 

[Jag]

What is the consensus of a good starting class for getting used to the basics. I'm thinking Engineer for the ability to heal (or is that science?) and tweak systems.

[Blackjack]

What is the consensus of a good starting class for getting used to the basics. I'm thinking Engineer for the ability to heal (or is that science?) and tweak systems.

I went with Engineer too, it just sounded a little different. They've apparently got some advantages in repairs, which I guess could be likened to healing. You get to use mines and eventually, I think, little turret things in ground combat too.
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I was wondering about the Vulcan neck pinch and mind mild, and this thread mentions them. You might need to open up the powers list and then drag it into a hotkey slot to use it, it seems.
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=58282

You can also find it by pressing "P" to bring up your list of "powers" then drag/drop to your hotbar.

Hope you got Mind Meld too, as it kicks butt (and unlike Nerve Pinch works at some range).

I'll have to check those out. Not sure how "mind meld" works at range.  
---------------------------------------------
They set up a feedback forum section for Missions and Episodes. I guess it could be considered kind of spoiler-ish, though I am eager to read more about the content. So, if it interests ya...

Missions and Episodes
http://forums.startrekonline.com/forumdisplay.php?f=74

[ydejin]

I sense from forums that space battle difficulty is something they'll be continually tweaking. Apparently some CB testers pushed for a difficulty slider similar to what City of Heroes' instances offered (where you chose 1 of 5 difficulty levels, affecting the size and quality of the mobs you'd encounter)  but Cryptic said it wouldn't happen for STO.

Yeah, I'm getting my ass kicked.  I did the rescue the freighter no problem, and the Vulcan sector patrol went okay -- some tough but doable fights.  But now I'm on the Patrol the Orion Sector mission.  I got through the first planet.  But the Kinjer has this tough sob of a ship that's blasted me to bits 3 times.  I'd upgraded screens, phasers, and photons to level II, so I thought I'd do okay, but no go.

I ended going back to patrolling the Vulcan sector.  The missions seem to reset themselves on some sort of a timer, I don't have the "Vulcan Sector Patrol" mission itself, but visiting the individual systems often seem to have the scenario for the system reset and you can rerun it for more experience.  Hopefully I'll be good enough shortly to try taking on the Orion Sector again.

[Edit:] Okay, I went back after I leveled once, and I did better, but nowhere near good enough.  It's a Negh'Var warship listed at +1 which means one level above me.  Memory alpha says "
The Negh'Var warship was the largest class starship known to operate in the Klingon Empire during the late 24th century."  Lovely, just lovely.

I got it's shields low, and it's hull integrity down to about 80% before it blew me to smithereens.

[Blackjack]

What happens when you "die," btw? I've read there's no penalty, just wasn't clear if you just end up back in spaceport Earth or something.

Can we team up on something like that or does that patrol seem to be solo-only? Or would that just make it even more difficult? I figure part of the fun is ships complementing each other, so maybe a Science vessel (assuming it didn't "draw aggro") could debuff the nasty cruiser, and make it a more manageable fight. Or my engineering-focused vessel could cower behind yours and try to keep you repaired.  

I hope to catch up tonight. I thought I'd do my next "regular mission" (don't know what to call them) before I tackle the patrol stuff.

Sort of a tangent subject, I saw a post somewhere about one particularly nasty "boss battle" where you're supposed to just put full front shields and shoot down incoming torpedoes until a friendly AI fleet arrives to take it out. It's *not* the one you're having trouble with, alas. I guess it does show it pays to read the mission text carefully to see whether you really have to take something out, or if you can expect some AI assistance.

Was it the Undine Dreadnought? If so you are not supposed to fight it. You put all your power to shields and shoot down the torpedoes he fires at you. You do that till the fleet shows up and kills him. The quest even tells you all of that.

I assume the torpedoes are slow if you can actually target them.  

I'm getting an itch to create an STO usernames thread, just to give us all some fighting chance to find each other in-game. My Friends list has all these folks from the Champions OB, though I think only one person from that was online in STO ... and heck, maybe he was online in Champions.

[MaxSteele]

I have made Ensign Red Shirt, with his ship the U.S.S. Expendable.

I'm running this on a 3ghz AMD processor and an ATI 1900 XTX video card, Windows XP 32 bit with 2 gigs of RAM.

I do have most details set to low, but even still, the game looks fine to me.  I'm sure the graphics can ramp up to super great looking, but right now the graphic quality isn't affecting the playability of the game for me.

I'll need to see if there are any slowdowns when I get out into space, or have lots of action on the screen at once to see if my frame rate dives.

[ydejin]

What happens when you "die," btw? I've read there's no penalty, just wasn't clear if you just end up back in spaceport Earth or something.

Pretty close to no penalty.  You end up back where you started when you loaded that particular ground area / space sector.  AFAIK there are not other penalties.

Can we team up on something like that or does that patrol seem to be solo-only? Or would that just make it even more difficult? I figure part of the fun is ships complementing each other, so maybe a Science vessel (assuming it didn't "draw aggro") could debuff the nasty cruiser, and make it a more manageable fight. Or my engineering-focused vessel could cower behind yours and try to keep you repaired.  

I don't think it's solo only (in fact that may be my problem).  Although there's some discussion on whether or not the bad guys scale with number of players, and I haven't seen a straight answer on that.  I might be around a bit tonight, probably more on Thursday and Friday night.  I'll PM you my info for the Fleet.

[Jag]

How do I join the GT channel. I'm going to try to get on tonight. I'm loaded and patched. Just need to leave work and ditch the wife and kids

[Wargus]

If you are having combat troubles - for those fights that are hard make sure to set your stance to defensive otherwise I go offensive (I set it so weapon power is about 3/4, putting the remainder into shields and aux, with minimum in speed).  Load forward intensive weapons (cannons or dual phasers, +torp) in your starter ship. Start firing everything once they are in range (works fine on the starter ship -later ships you'll eat through power too fast), when you get to about 5, and hit reverse.  Set power to forward shields as needed. If you start having problems keeping that shield up, go back to forward motion & start circling him plinking with your rear phaser & turning in for the torps until your forward shield is full. Then rince & repeat.  

This doesn't work as well against multiple mobs, in that case split them so they are on different shields, set speed to half or lower & keep one ship in front of you & plink away.  

[ydejin]

If you are having combat troubles - for those fights that are hard make sure to set your stance to defensive otherwise I go offensive (I set it so weapon power is about 3/4, putting the remainder into shields and aux, with minimum in speed).  Load forward intensive weapons (cannons or dual phasers, +torp) in your starter ship. Start firing everything once they are in range (works fine on the starter ship -later ships you'll eat through power too fast), when you get to about 5, and hit reverse.  Set power to forward shields as needed. If you start having problems keeping that shield up, go back to forward motion & start circling him plinking with your rear phaser & turning in for the torps until your forward shield is full. Then rince & repeat.

My latest strategy has been to put weapons on maximum and then even things out as my shields take damage.  I figure they seem to be pretty slow striking back, and that power to shields is just wasted until your shields have taken at least some damage.  Might as well put that extra energy towards the phasers until it's needed elsewhere.

I hit with forward phasers and torpedoes at 10km and then turn sideways so that both forward and aft phasers can hit.  I stay there until the shields are down a bit, then I swing back toward the enemy (using evasive manuevers if necessary to make sure I can get into the shield arc I've been firing into with my torpedoes pointing at him), then hit my Tac officers torpedo buff and fire away.

The problem I was having with the Klingon Negh'Var was that his shields and weapons are just too powerful.  I can't bring his shields down, even if I sit next to him and pound him.  On the other hand, he can bring my shields down quite handily with only two or three salvos.

I've been trying to take full advantage of my officers special powers, which is how I got it down to 80% hull integrity.  But I suspect it's just too powerful for me to take.  Essentially it's a Battle Cruiser that I'm trying to take on with a Reliant class Cruiser.  So it's no surprise I'm getting my ass-kicked.

[Destructor]

What happens when you "die," btw? I've read there's no penalty, just wasn't clear if you just end up back in spaceport Earth or something.

Pretty close to no penalty.  You end up back where you started when you loaded that particular ground area / space sector.  AFAIK there are not other penalties.

Can we team up on something like that or does that patrol seem to be solo-only? Or would that just make it even more difficult? I figure part of the fun is ships complementing each other, so maybe a Science vessel (assuming it didn't "draw aggro") could debuff the nasty cruiser, and make it a more manageable fight. Or my engineering-focused vessel could cower behind yours and try to keep you repaired.  

I don't think it's solo only (in fact that may be my problem).  Although there's some discussion on whether or not the bad guys scale with number of players, and I haven't seen a straight answer on that.  I might be around a bit tonight, probably more on Thursday and Friday night.  I'll PM you my info for the Fleet.

At the moment, there's no death penalty at all. Once beta (or Live) progresses, it's supposed to reduce your crew meter, which should adjust how long it takes you to repair hull and other minor things. If CO is anything to go by, it'll do next to nothing.

Also you'll get more baddies the more players are in your instance (even if they aren't in the same version of your instance).

Here's a few links I'd love to have your input on:

The game's auto-fire settings. By default, you can only have one forward and one rear weapon on auto-fire. But by the time you hit your next ship, odds are you'll have plenty of weapons you'd like to put on auto-fire, and the devs just don't allow it. So you spam the hell out of your spacebar key.

The current lack of being able to customize your bridge officers. Long story short - yes, you can use the tailor to design how you want them to look, and purchase race/sex of the BO you want, but you can't just design them when you first get them like you can in say CO with character creation. Why? Who the heck knows.

Finally - The Amazing Growing Tribble. Word of warning - those things get dangerous if you let your BOs have one in their inventory.

Other tidbits - you can rebalance shields if you click either on your ship itself (on the HUD where your shields are), or a quadrant of your shield facing (same place). Clicking on the ship will adjust all shields to have roughly the same shielding left (by draining/powering up the other facings), while clicking on a certain facing will divert power from the other three facings into boosting that one facing. Very, VERY useful if you're getting pounded on a certain facing, or if your weapons only point one way.

As far as my personal power settings - I just use the all energy to weapon option. Yeah, I can't turn much, or go very fast, but you can do lots of damage on your target. For that boss fight mentioned, open fire at max range, and start backing up immediately. You'll be able to slowly hammer down its shields, while it does very little in return. Fire a torpedo occasionally if you get a facing low, or if you want to do more damage (like when a facing is down). I don't remember having any problem in that mission (or any so far in beta), but who knows what they did to the low level ranges.

[Blackjack]

How do I join the GT channel. I'm going to try to get on tonight. I'm loaded and patched. Just need to leave work and ditch the wife and kids

Jag, the way STO and Champions' private channels work is someone has to create one (the Gaming Trend channel I started in Champions open beta is still there), and then the creator (me in this case) needs to sort of add everyone manually to the private chat channel as a member.

So I'm going to start a STO names thread and I'll add folks from there. This needs to be your "@name" user name, which serves as a sort of global chat ID in STO (and Champions) so you can always message a buddy regardless of his actual character name. If you're not comfortable posting that in the thread, by all means PM me and I'll keep it confidential. I have short term memory anyway.  \

Is something wrong with the chat server? I was in just now, lots of people are on, but I don't see any chat at all and if I try to chat, nothing appears in the chat window. 

[vizionblind]

this game has the Cryptic touch and not in a good way. Anything Cryptic does is so cookie cutter and bladn, publishers should be ashamed to release this dribble...

[Blackjack]

And of course I got home just in time for a 2-hour emergency maintenance session. Sigh.  

Star Trek Online is being brought down for emergency maintenance at 6:45 PM PST. We are expecting this downtime to last no more than 2 hours.

Lag was apparently pretty awful and the global chat server gradually disintegrated like the straw man in the Wizard of Oz. So hopefully they will remedy some things.

Once more with feeling...

"It's a BETA! It's supposed to be busted!"  

I'm still perplexed that the MMO industry in general (not just Cryptic/Atari) can't "scale up" from closed to open beta without springing leaks everywhere, when they presumably know just exactly how many open beta keys they're doling out. So they have a fixed capacity target, right? You'd want to allow for the worst case scenario # of logins/players, right? But I am a simple caveman, and I am frightened by servers and their flashing lights and loud fans, so what do I know.  
=============
On the Shield stuff, I just think it maybe needs to be a little more obvious (at least the first time) that something is happening. Flashing lights, or the shields blinking, something optional at least. I've clicked the shield arrows like mad, and visually it just doesn't look like anything is happening at all.

I agree the auto-fire limitation doesn't make much sense given how much tougher space combat appears to get later on. One player suggested something like letting you "unlock" higher additional auto-fire maximums by rewarding you for completing a certain mission or instance. They could even write it into the mission text as "Oh, that last fight shows me you need to be able to use at least one additional weapon in auto-fire, so here's your upgrade."

Cryptic's argument apparently is that it would make the game dull, but clearly shield and power distribution ends up gobbling a lot of player activity anyway so it's not like the ship would play by itself. Not having to pound the spacebar into submission doesn't seem like it would dull things too much. Hopefully Cryptic will give in on that at some point. I'm sure even just adding one or two to the auto-fire maximum would win kudos.

[Wargus]

Wouldn't worry about it Blackjack - the rubber banding and lag have made the game nearly unplayable tonight.

[Harkonis]

I'm a bit baffled how Cryptic is having the exact same problems with the exact same engine that they had in the Champions beta.

[Blackjack]

I'm a bit baffled how Cryptic is having the exact same problems with the exact same engine that they had in the Champions beta.

It would probably help if the two games weren't apparently sharing the same server, and then suffering the same problem - Champions forums indicates the global server chat going down impacted them too.

There's even a rather sad post there from someone saying their Champions supergroup was so dismayed with STO open beta's condition (after 1 1/2 days???) along with not getting responses to their Champions tickets, that they've decided to wash their hands of Cryptic products altogether:
Saying Goodbye to Cryptic
http://forums.champions-online.com/showthread.php?t=97336
I'm surprised the thread didn't get locked since most official forums prohibit whiny "I'm leaving!" threads. Every MMO I ever played (including LOTRO, CoX, Planetside, others) had plenty of threads like that, but I can't remember someone deciding a couple messy days of open beta indicated they should blacklist a company's games altogether. I wouldn't be surprised if some Champions support people had to shift to STO, but afik the dev teams are entirely separate.

Besides, I made our GT channel MOTD "this game is buggier than a roach motel" back in August about Champions for a reason. It was an unholy mess in open beta at that time. Anyone who experienced that couldn't possibly walk into STO open beta and expect smooth sailing. Right?

I'm still keen on STO, but I'm starting to think just putting off getting it until it's been out for a month (I think I did that with AoC) might be more sensible. But it's early, and I'd like to wait and see how things shape up over the next week or so, like everyone I'm sure.
==================
Gonna have to hang it up shortly for the night. Seems like the emergency maintenance is going to take longer than anticipated. Latest estimated time is 12:30 a.m. Eastern. Bleah.

[Blackjack]

GAH! They pushed the estimated server-return back to 1 a.m. Eastern

In the meantime, TTH just launched a new Star Trek Online sub-site...

(announcement) The premiere source for all your exclusive STO news, guides, and entertainment.
http://www.tentonhammer.com/sto/features/previews/site_announcement

The Ten Ton Hammer STO site
http://www.tentonhammer.com/sto

Gnight dudes. If I can log in in the morning, I'll send out channel/friend invites to every one in that thread.

[Destructor]

I'm a bit baffled how Cryptic is having the exact same problems with the exact same engine that they had in the Champions beta.

It would probably help if the two games weren't apparently sharing the same server, and then suffering the same problem - Champions forums indicates the global server chat going down impacted them too.

Yeah, that's the problem at its core right here - CO/STO's server is EXTREMELY overwhelmed, and when STO blows up, it's taking CO down with it.

And people were saying that CO didn't have enough server horsepower to run it properly (see Lagmuria). STO has only amplified the issue by about 100 times.

[Blackjack]

Maybe they can merge the two games? Call it...

Champions Trek Online!
Instead of crew members, you recruit Super Heroes!

or
Star Champions!
Instead of a Captain, you're more like the Silver Surfer^TM.

I'm going to give it to 1 a.m., but I bet they'll extend maintenance another hour at that point. It's 1. Nothing... Yeesh, just saw they're extending it to 3 a.m. Eastern due to problems found during the patching process. Officially I believe the open beta should be renamed "Star Trek: Emergency Maintenance." 

Hey, Massively posted a useful Seven Tips for Star Trek Online newbies:
http://www.massively.com/2010/01/13/seven-tips-for-star-trek-online-newbies/

[Wargus]

Well, it appears STO and Champions share some servers.  The STO outages have brought down Champions as well.  How's that for budget game design? 

[YellowKing]

Had kind of a funny bug happen to me. When I transitioned from the space combat tutorial to the real game, my character stayed a starship for a little while. So I was "walking" around the star base as a miniature space ship. 

I have to agree with the comments that say this has the Cryptic fingerprints all over it. It feels exactly like CO (again, not in a good way).

However, the big potential here I think is the space combat. If they could iron out the bugs and polish this up, I think the combination of space combat/ship customization and ground exploration could be a pretty compelling combo. Sort of like a Pirates of the Burning Sea where the land-based stuff actually worked.

[Destructor]

I have to agree with the comments that say this has the Cryptic fingerprints all over it. It feels exactly like CO (again, not in a good way).

However, the big potential here I think is the space combat. If they could iron out the bugs and polish this up, I think the combination of space combat/ship customization and ground exploration could be a pretty compelling combo. Sort of like a Pirates of the Burning Sea where the land-based stuff actually worked.

Well, it is the exact same engine powering both games. And same exact servers, as noted before.

And yeah, I'm having a ton of fun with the combat parts. Ground combat needs some work, but space combat is lots of fun.

[Blackjack]

Had lots of fun this morning on a 3-man "auto matched" team on the initial patrol stuff. I could see it getting over-repetitive down the road (like most space combat games imho), but assuming the "unlocked areas" later on have more to do, that could help remedy that. I'll post a lot of new screenies in that thread.

Even if you just focus on the same targets, it's helpful. I just got my first science officer (Vulcan of course), and choose one who has a "shield buff" you can use on friendly ships to help them out in a jam.

I've added everyone in the username thread to the GT channel, so hopefully you guys will get the invites and be able to use it now. Remember it's the click menu in lower left corner of chat tab, and then Gaming Trend should be one of the chat channel choices.

[Arclight]

How is the game running for you guys? Not server action but the PC performance.
At medium settings I find it very stuttery..

Intel duo core cpu E6850@3GHz
4 gigs of fairly fast ram
8800 GTS vid card 512........Vista home 32 bit.

Are they still running a debug version of the game?

[Blackjack]

"It's a beta! It's not supposed to run well!"  

I'm Vista 64-bit w/ a so-so ATI card (4670). The space combat this morning ran beautifully without a hitch.

I still find ground combat and "inside space station" performance rather sluggish. I just haven't done enough of it to see if it's "by design" or if I've got a performance problem.
==============================
A couple threads of interest...

Post a pic of your character/uniform
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=57079

User Interface - Community Feedback (good place to post your observations - Cryptic sugggested a uniform format to make it easier for them to read)
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?p=1416264#post1416264

[Destructor]

What NVidia driver version are you using? The newest ones have major stuttering problems with CO and STO. I think the 191.62 version is the one you want, or something close to that.

[Jag]

Running silky smooth, cranked to full on my i7, 4650, 4GB, W7 64bit Dell.

[Blackjack]

I felt really hooked this morning. I would admit that you can probably enjoy this only as much as you're willing to set aside your particular (we all probably have different ones) daydreams about what STO would let you do.

I mean, there's so much humor, diplomacy, romance, intrigue and other stuff in any of the ST series, and maybe I expect too much for an MMO to deliver some of that -- rather than just blowing stuff up real good.  

Episodes are fine, though I guess I was hoping for something more along the line of LOTRO's book/chapter epic content, or Bioware's promised storylines in SWTOR. One of the things I like in LOTRO is the occasional chance to play as a famous character for one instance, and experience their story for a little while and get some insights. Would love to be some famous ST character just for one mission, or fight alongside them via time travel or something.

OTOH LOTRO doesn't have space ships and compelling space combat. And I can always use a break from boars and orcs.

Instead the game is more very addictive space combat with ST trappings, just not a lot of storytelling from what I've seen so far. However, I love the combat, configuring my ship, my crew, etc. I think I like it enough to overlook the absence of things I wish were there. And maybe some of what I'm hoping for will come later or in later areas. Or maybe some other dev years from now (Like Bioware with Star Wars) will tackle ST with a whole different take and engine that can better meet my daydream expectations.
==========================
With that blowhard babbling out of the way, I really look forward to teaming with some GT folks and trying to learn how to start our own fleet! Huzzah!   I'm hoping Destructor can remind me how to do that.

TTH had a Q&A about fleets a while back, including how to create them. I'm not sure if you need a full team still to create one at this point, or just two:
Building a Fleet - A Star Trek Online Q&A with Lead Programmer Stephen D'Angelo
http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/77687

Ten Ton Hammer: So how does one start their own fleet?

Stephen D’Angelo: You visit a fleet manager at the Star Base. It’s a small fee, and at the moment you have to have a full team, but soon you’ll be able to team with just one other person to start the fleet. Then those members will become the starting members of the fleet.

Ten Ton Hammer: How many ranks are available in fleets?

Stephen: We currently have seven ranks. Each can be renamed. Each can have privileges assigned to them independently. So you can use them any way you want.

Ten Ton Hammer: What are some of the privileges you can assign to members?

Stephen: Privileges range quite a bit. You can allow ranks to invite members or not; the ability to kick members from the fleet; banking privileges. There are also a few privacy settings for how much of the fleet’s internal information you’re allowed to see.

Ten Ton Hammer: Where can fleet members access the fleet banks?

Stephen: They’re accessed from the Star Bases, the central hubs; the same way you access your personal bank.

Ten Ton Hammer: Can the fleet vault be expanded?

Stephen: Not at the moment. In the current beta builds, we do not have a leveling mechanism for fleets. So they are what they are. We do want to add that, but it probably won’t be present at first release.

Ten Ton Hammer: Is there a cap on how many players you can have in your fleet?

Stephen: Yes, but it’s not set in stone. It’s currently at 250. We want it to be much larger. We believe the players are going to want huge fleets.

[Destructor]

Would love to be some famous ST character just for one mission, or fight alongside them via time travel or something.

I...er... Nah, I won't tell you what I know.