Character Update

Vice Admiral Zombee
         Beam School is now Level 14. USS Schafer now has the Romulan Prototype Space Set completed. Now working on getting the Romulan Plasma based flame thrower weapon. After that it will be to work on the USS Warrick, a Defiant Class Tactical Escort, is next up to get the Nukara Strikeforce Space Set.
         The Bonus Skill Points Event has started. And Zombee gets nothing from it. But they have also started the Upgrade Weekends and so I am going and collecting the free upgrade modules and going to try and upgrade the gear on First Vice Admiral Zombee and the USS Sorrick.

Vice Admiral Danic, Lieutenant General Sisteric, Lieutenant General Torc and Vice Admiral Grell
            These guys have been parked while I work on other projects.

Vice Admiral Zemo
            Zemo has made it to level 50. And now he is parked while I try to level the next Character while the leveling event is going. This will be the trend till I have all of the characters leveled that I want leveled or the event is over. Whichever comes first.

Lieutenant Commander Daniel
             The current new guy being leveled. He is a Human Federation Engineer. He will specialize in the Cruiser style of ships. This will be the first Fed character I have that went through the New Federation Tutorial missions. And the first Fed guy with the freebie purple officer Flores. I has have been making a point of taking the purple BOff's that Zombee has and transferring them to Daniel so that he will just have purple BOff's from the start and never get rid of characters or wast any points. So far it is going well. I will get into this guy more in the next Update Blog, But for now, he is being focused on leveling. Once the event is over I will go back through the max level guys and finish up their story missions so that all are done and then work on getting their reps.

    SO that's what has happened. I hope this was informative, and Enjoy!

Delta Rising Soon

                So I am going to try and cover some of the changes coming to Star Trek Online and what they mean to me and my characters. This is work of my opinions and what facts that have been presented on the forums and whatever interviews I have been able to hear. Do not take this as the gospel of what’s coming. I have no special insight into this expansion. With that said, on to the show!

                Announced Features

                                So I wanted to start off with listing what they announced was coming with Delta Rising.

1.       New Level Cap to 60. Gaining the ranks of Admiral (55) and Fleet Admiral (60).

2.       New Tier 6 ships

3.       New Advancement Specialization Tree starting at Level 51.

4.       Tier 5 ships can play all of the content.

5.       Some of the Tier 5 ships will be upgradable to be comparable to Tier 6, but not the same.

6.       Old ships will get some updating.

7.       Ship upgrades will not be connected to crafting.

8.       Tier XIII and Tier XIV gear will be added.

9.       Raising the Level cap will allow them to rebalance content to combat power creep.

10.   Content will be released in stages throughout the year.

So that was what was announced as features for Delta Rising at Star Trek Las Vegas 2014.

                Level Cap Information and Thoughts

                                So getting to Fleet Admiral does not mean we will command fleets in space. It does mean that we will get to hear leveling congratulations. It also means that we will no longer have our skill points converted to Expertise Points. Currently, we get this buff to expertise points which allow us to pay for bridge crew skills, bridge crew promotions, reputation missions and duty officers missions. Being aware of this change, Cryptic has stated that they will up the expertise rewards to be on par with current level 50 gains.

                                Meanwhile, skill points will not be used to up our skills. Instead, at each leveling point you will get a specialization point which you can apply to the new specialization trees. No data has been released on what these trees contain, but what is known that this provides the leveling experience of improvement without the character actually having to level beyond 60. And that this will be expanded so that no one will be able to max out the specialization tree. I don’t think that this is reasonable to assume, but could be possible if you can do more than one specialization tree.

                                At certain levels, your character will gain things. 51 will get you a small pack of Duty Officers as a reward. 52 will upgrade you Fleet Support ability to Rank III.  At 54 your Class Ground Ability will be upped to Rank III.  55 will give you a new Bridge Officer.  57 will upgrade your class space ability to Rank III. And 60 will expand your Captain Trait slot by one. All I can say about these additions is that I hope they give people more Doff and BOff space because most people will have maxed out their current cap on both groups. I hope the new BOff will be a purple Intel Officer; otherwise it will get sold off or dropped immediately.

                Tier 6 Ships

                                Tier 6 Ship will be the next Level cap on ships. They also will come in Normal and Intel variations. Intel variations will be geared towards Intelligence gathering and scouting efforts. Normal ships will be more as next generation ships.

                                Also, these ships will come with a new ship mechanic of Ship Mastery. This is a system where you gain passive abilities that increase your abilities with that class of ship. At Tier V Mastery you will get a Passive Spaceship Trait which you will be able to slot into your New Four Starship Trait Slots. The first four traits are passive buffs for that ship class only. The tier 5 trait will be available to you on any ship at any tier. Each ship class has its own Tier 5 ability to gain.

Tier 6 ships will also get increases in Hull and Shield strength as you level from 50 to 60. It also should end at a higher amount that is greater than Tier 5. So these ships will be tougher than Tier 5 eventually.

                Tier 6 ships will also have Intel Hybrid seats for BOff’s. This will allow those positions to either use Class or Intel powers, depending on the training you put into the BOff.

                New Level Advancement System for Levels after 51

                                There have not been many details released on this subject yet. What we do know is that is Specialization Trees. These Trees will be something you get passive buffs from. As you level, your Skill Points will collect and you will get Specialization Points at certain breakpoints. Initially these breakpoints will be the same at when you get a level, but once you are max level it will continue to give you specialization points at break points beyond your level. These Trees will be expandable, and maxing out the Tree will take time. And they plan to extend these trees in future expansion. Hopefully before many people have maxed the tree.

                                What we don’t know is what the Trees are, how many there are, how many powers are in a tree, or even if you can put points in more than one tree at a time. Hopefully those details will come soon.

                Tier 5 ships can play all content

                                They say that the new content you will be able to play with your current Tier 5 ships. The content that is being created you should be able to do without needing to upgrade your ships or use Tier 6 ships. At least the story content and the Normal Queue events will be doable. Playing at Advance and Elite will require better gear and probably better ships.

                Some Tier 5 ships will be upgradable to be comparable to Tier 6

                                So upgrading a Tier 5 ship will give it 10% more Hull and Shields and one more Console. They also will be able to do the Ship mastery till Tier IV. They will not have Tier V Mastery skills. Certain ships will get free upgrades and certain ships will not get to upgrade at all. This upgrade will make these ships only less power in the fact of not having that extra bridge slot. I don’t see this as a bad thing and actually delivers on their promise of them being comparable.

                Some Old Ships will get updating

                                The models for some ships, like the Intrepid Class, will get its visuals updated. These updates will make things look better on our higher resolution screens that people have and bring the beauty back to these ships. Not all of the ships getting the updates have been announced.

                Ship Upgrading will not be connected to Crafting

                                The ships will need to get ship upgrade tokens or spend dilithium to upgrade it. It will be a button to click on the Ship Interface, my understanding, and you will only need to unlock it once per account. So if you have multiple toons, then every ship of the same class will be upgradable for free after the first one across all of your toons.

                Tier XII and Tier XIV gear will be added to the game

                                But how we get this gear has not been released. At least outside of a new feature that they are adding that allow players to upgrade their gear in Tier and Quality, maxing out the Tier to XIV and Quality to Gold (Legendary). This upgrading will apply to almost all gear in space and ground gear. You will be able to upgrade the gear without crafting. And you can get these tradable upgrade resources. The upgrade resources add a certain amount of Research Points to the unit. Once the Research point’s set point is reach you will level the Tier. As you collect the points, you will get a percentage change to level the Tier and or the quality every time you add more research points. The percentage chance is retained and built upon until that particular category is advanced. At that time it is reset to Zero. This in fact means you can buy a Tier I white item and level it up to Tier XIV Gold item. It only takes some dilithium to level it.

                Level Cap will combat power creep

                                This is true in the fact that all of the content will be redesigned to Tier 6 gear and Tier 14 gear for Elite content to be challenging. And the lower difficulties will turned down from that so that Normal will be challenging for Tier 5. This is probably the Best Quality of Life change they could do to the game. With current content being destroyed by Solo Players in less than 5 minutes, I think that this is going to be the best thing that STO could have done to it.

Well that is what I have for now on this subject. Tune in next time to for the next Character Update installment. Until then, Enjoy!

Character Updates......

Vice Admiral Zombee
      So I have been working on this character quit a bit. Beams School is now Level 13. USS Pamela K is completed as far sets are concerned. But still need to gather Purple Mark XII gear. In Fact, only the USS Sorrick is fully decked in purples. USS Fry, a Defiant class Tactical Escort Refit, is now decked out in Reman Prototype Space set and Romulan Singularity Harness Space Set. And now I am working on getting the USS Schaeffer, a Chimera Heavy Destroyer, the Romulan Singularity Harness Set. She already has the Romulan Prototype Space Set.
      I also came to a decision about BOff's. I decided that I am going to have dedicated Away team BOff's. And to that end, I have bought and started upgrading some new officers. The Standard Away Team composition for me will be the Captain, 2 Tactical Officers, One Engineer and One Science Officer. For Zombee, that means That we have Commander Dricdod, Commander Syilijia, Commander Nelen Exil and Commander Poyol Uyman as his personal Away Team crew.
     Zombee is currently decked completely out in Counter-Command Ground set.
     Nelen Exil is his Voth Science Officer and geared out in Dyson Sphere Ground Gear. Nelen is Male.
     Commander Syilijia is one of his Tactical Officers. She is Rigelian and plans are to deck her out in Omega Force Gear.
     Commander Dricdod is an newly acquired male Ferengi Tactical Officer. He will be decked out in Shattering Harmonics Ground Gear. Dricdod is still very business oriented, but is very efficient at his security duties. As an Away Team member he will be used to do more of the melee stuff and, for story purposes, will be the guy that will observe the goods and resources for use on the ship.
     Commander Poyol Uyman rounds out the crew. He is a Bajoran Engineering Officer. He will be decked out in Refractive Bulwark ground gear. He is a very jumpy guy and very quiet about his past.
      As for events. Completed the Crystalline Entity during the Bonus Marks events. Which netted me some extra Nukara Marks. I also ran the Shuttle event at least once each day to stock up in Romulan Marks. Now with no events occurring for a few days, I will be Running this guy for Rom Marks and then moving on to Nukara Marks.

Vice Admiral Danic
      Danic has been only running the missions to collect Marks during the Crystalline Entity event and during the Shuttle Event. Otherwise, he remains parked waiting for Zombee to complete his set gearing. I haven't worked on the Away Team concept for him either. But a quick glance lets me know that I have to many Science Officers. So I might be just using Science Officers in his away Team. Something to think on when I get to gearing him.

Lieutenant General Sisteric
      Sisteric, and the rest of the guys, have been run much like Danic. Gathering Marks from special events but otherwise parking. Sisteric only has one extra officer, Nelen Exil, the Voth Science Officer.  So that means I would have to get additional guys.

Lieutenant General Torc
      Torc is much like Sisteric. With only Nelen Exil as his extra officer for the Away Team crew. Again will have to look into getting more officers.

Vice Admiral Grell
       Grell is gathering Marks. Grell has two members free for the away team. He Nelen Exil but also has Nen the Breen Tactical Officer free to go.

Vice Admiral Zemo
       Zemo has reached level 35. Still working on leveling him, but with the events I haven't had much time for this. Since he is not max level, I haven't planned out his Away Team yet. But at the end of this week starts a bonus exp event that lasts till the new expansion comes out. So I will be working on getting him leveled during this time, and probably starting on new guys. With Fed Eng, Klingon Tactical and Romulan Science on deck.

   That is what I have done this few week. Hopefully, you will find this informative. I plan on doing some reviews of the recent info that has been coming out. Until I get this all worked out. Enjoy the game and I will be seeing you.