So, to he guys playing, whats the difference between Cruisers, Escorts and Science ships? I enjoyed playing enhancement shaman the most on WoW are there any direct comparisons? :p
Also, are cruisers more or less tanks in group play, and escorts more or less dps?
also also, do you need to play engineer to have a cruiser, etc..?
ShadowDancerWhen I say, "Why aye, gadgie," in my heart I say, "Och aye, laddie."London, UK
Pretty much tanks are cruisers, snipers/hunters whatever you want to call them are escorts, and science vessels are your shamans.
Cruisers dont have to be tanks tho, same with the other classes altho those are the roles they are more geared for. Not so much at low levels, but as you get higher up the skills your bridge officers have make more and more difference. A torpedo volley (high dps) compared to an AoE attack, and a science officer with jam sensors for instance; you can also specifically train your officers, allowing you to choose skills that suit your play style.
And no, you can be a science officer with an escort. In open beta I was a tactical officer, but I had ships from all three classes. A ship from your class will give you the best stats, but you arent limited to that
So, basically, its complicated, and I will be confused all the time? ;)
I really hope they have made sure you dont back into a corner and have to start over..
ShadowDancerWhen I say, "Why aye, gadgie," in my heart I say, "Och aye, laddie."London, UK
Nah its easy to get the hang of, far more so than WoW or CoH I found. If you want to be really technical in your gameplay then its there, but it can be really simple and fun if you want it to be
Like others have said, if you look just at classical RPG roles, yeah, cruisers are your tanks, escorts are you high dps classes, and science vessels are your clerics/crowd control characters.
The highest level I attained in any of beta was Commander, which gave me access to the Heavy Cruiser, Heavy Escort and Research ships. Any class can have any ship they want, you can buy them all if you so choose. It just depends on what you want to do.
Rundown of the tier 3 ships with at level content.
Heavy Escort - My personal favorite as a tactical officer. Ridiculous amounts of DPS, especially if you have cannons and the bridge officer skill cannon rapid fire. The shields will do you for a spell, but you still need to be in and out. Your best defense is blow the guy up on the first pass. If you do it right, and use your officers abilities you can take out an at level battleship like a Romulan Warbird on the first pass. A little tachyon beam (kills his shields), cannon rapid fire and blast away to take the shields all the way down, and a high yield quantum to punch through whats left of his hull.
Heavy Cruiser - The shields are better, they can take more, your turn rate is slow, so things like cannons are out, you need beam weapons, anything with a large firing radius. If you can keep the enemy shooting at you with aoe type attacks like torpedo spreads then the escorts can mop up the bad guys quickly. More engineering officers means more shield and hull buffs. Can certainly survive longer in a fight.
Research ships - Just plain fun. The stuff your science officers can do are pretty cool. Heal other ships, target jamming, Tykens rift is a pretty thing to see. I am actually amazed at the survivability in game. They have great shields and pack a decent amount of firepower. I honestly think they make for the most survivable 1vs1 ships out there.
My first closed beta toon was a science officer. I liked it, but I think I want to go the escort route again for release. I just like the quick damage they do. I will be playing with ppl 90% of the time, so no problem with surviving a fight.
One of the beefs I have with WoW is that levelling non-dps classes (esp. if specced tank/healer) took so much longer than levelling dps-classes, which is why my pala was specced retri and my shaman specced enhancement..
Is it the same in STO?
Damn, Im looking forward to playing this game a lot now..
It doesn't seem to be the case. From what I could tell, the game seemed to divvy up XP based on how much you "contribued" to a battle both in terms of outright damage dealt [i]and[/i] in contributions to the team effort. Many times, I'd use my escort as in a non-combat role by offering up shieldbreaking and incapacitation support, but never really doing so much in the way of actual damage. Others would then come through and obliterate the opposition, but I'd still get what I felt was a reasonable gain (often, I'd be elsewhere in the map and i'd get a sudden notice of "Awarded x Bridge Officer Points" simply for someone else having taken down the ship I was stalling for a while.
Now that the beta is over, I've come to some conclusions. STO shines with space combat. It was like a slightly diluted Starfleet Command MMO (preserving most of the charm but lacking many of the intricate details that made it so enjoyably complex), and I'll miss that portion of it, but I'm still not sold on paying a monthly fee for it. The story felt like lame fan fiction that was loosely cobbled together with random space and land encounters, and the ground combat portion of things was weak (often times frustrating). Non-story missions would regularly be silly roundabout quests for some arbitrary object or information of value, or a typical "Destroy the powerless baddies" run. While this was fun for two weeks or so, it just feels like it would lose its appeal after a month of play. Paying roughly $50 up front, plus another $x per month seems to be a little silly for something without much depth.
Going off on a tangent, my complaint about subscriptions extends far beyond just MMOs. This online ecosystem (as it stands right now) isn't constructed in such a way as to allow for many products and services to be compatible with one another. Nobody seems to realize that people such as myself would like to use more than one subscription service, but at $14 a month will simply refuse to join up due to the inability to sustain a combination of active products or services. Blah!
I agree with you on the subscription issue. It would be nice to have a unified subscription system that would allow you to play different games for a monthly fee. There is only so much time and money most people can invest into gaming and that's why other MMO's have had such a tough time getting people to join.
I also got Cryptic's invitation to pay the life-time subscription fee. I wonder how many people actually fell for that... $239.99 is a lot of money for a game that is so shallow with such a limited appeal. It would have made sense to pay that for WoW, but then who knew it would become such a phenomenon (of which I am still no part of).
I like Trek as much as the next guy, that doesn't mean I run around the house wearing one of their uniforms... not that there is anything wrong with that. :D
I know we have the whole firstones chat channel in game and such, but I hate chatting in game, and almost never look at the chat window. Id like to invite you guys over to our teamspeak server, its still running teamspeak 2 so if you need the file [URL="http://www.teamspeak.com/?page=downloads&archive=1"]Go Here[/URL].
The address is ts5.holdouts.com:8784 and the password is foxtrot4
There is a channel for Trek Online, and there are a small group on there who play. I figure if we can combine the two groups, we might have something going on.
ST:O has over 1 million created accounts in the first week. Its overwhelming them in every possible way. They had no idea this would happen. They clearly did not expect that large a number. I am finding a large amount of people who are first time MMO players.
ShadowDancerWhen I say, "Why aye, gadgie," in my heart I say, "Och aye, laddie."London, UK
Wow I knew it was proving popular, but I had no idea it was attracting those sorts of numbers already!
I'm fine with it. As code and hardware improves and as the staff who oversee the servers every day get better at their jobs we will see improvements across the board. After March 2nd will be very telling on how the game is doing once the free 30 days begins to end.
the downtimes are slightly annoying but at least the game difficulty went up in romulan space. nearly commander lvl6 and loving every part of my escort.
in a fleet with some long gaming buddies so if the firstones fleet lacks players youre more than welcome to join up.
A [URL="http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/startrekonline/review.html?tag=topslot;title;4"]mediocre score from Gamespot[/URL] isn't going to help this MMO survive for all those who paid for a life-time subscription.
There just isn't enough game, yet.
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
I think that there are enough people who will keep on playing it just because it's Star Trek to keep it going long enough for more content to be produced.
Comments
I'm a bit concerned about the girl on the left...
Also, are cruisers more or less tanks in group play, and escorts more or less dps?
also also, do you need to play engineer to have a cruiser, etc..?
Cruisers dont have to be tanks tho, same with the other classes altho those are the roles they are more geared for. Not so much at low levels, but as you get higher up the skills your bridge officers have make more and more difference. A torpedo volley (high dps) compared to an AoE attack, and a science officer with jam sensors for instance; you can also specifically train your officers, allowing you to choose skills that suit your play style.
And no, you can be a science officer with an escort. In open beta I was a tactical officer, but I had ships from all three classes. A ship from your class will give you the best stats, but you arent limited to that
I really hope they have made sure you dont back into a corner and have to start over..
The highest level I attained in any of beta was Commander, which gave me access to the Heavy Cruiser, Heavy Escort and Research ships. Any class can have any ship they want, you can buy them all if you so choose. It just depends on what you want to do.
Rundown of the tier 3 ships with at level content.
Heavy Escort - My personal favorite as a tactical officer. Ridiculous amounts of DPS, especially if you have cannons and the bridge officer skill cannon rapid fire. The shields will do you for a spell, but you still need to be in and out. Your best defense is blow the guy up on the first pass. If you do it right, and use your officers abilities you can take out an at level battleship like a Romulan Warbird on the first pass. A little tachyon beam (kills his shields), cannon rapid fire and blast away to take the shields all the way down, and a high yield quantum to punch through whats left of his hull.
Heavy Cruiser - The shields are better, they can take more, your turn rate is slow, so things like cannons are out, you need beam weapons, anything with a large firing radius. If you can keep the enemy shooting at you with aoe type attacks like torpedo spreads then the escorts can mop up the bad guys quickly. More engineering officers means more shield and hull buffs. Can certainly survive longer in a fight.
Research ships - Just plain fun. The stuff your science officers can do are pretty cool. Heal other ships, target jamming, Tykens rift is a pretty thing to see. I am actually amazed at the survivability in game. They have great shields and pack a decent amount of firepower. I honestly think they make for the most survivable 1vs1 ships out there.
My first closed beta toon was a science officer. I liked it, but I think I want to go the escort route again for release. I just like the quick damage they do. I will be playing with ppl 90% of the time, so no problem with surviving a fight.
any of that help?
One of the beefs I have with WoW is that levelling non-dps classes (esp. if specced tank/healer) took so much longer than levelling dps-classes, which is why my pala was specced retri and my shaman specced enhancement..
Is it the same in STO?
Damn, Im looking forward to playing this game a lot now..
Now that the beta is over, I've come to some conclusions. STO shines with space combat. It was like a slightly diluted Starfleet Command MMO (preserving most of the charm but lacking many of the intricate details that made it so enjoyably complex), and I'll miss that portion of it, but I'm still not sold on paying a monthly fee for it. The story felt like lame fan fiction that was loosely cobbled together with random space and land encounters, and the ground combat portion of things was weak (often times frustrating). Non-story missions would regularly be silly roundabout quests for some arbitrary object or information of value, or a typical "Destroy the powerless baddies" run. While this was fun for two weeks or so, it just feels like it would lose its appeal after a month of play. Paying roughly $50 up front, plus another $x per month seems to be a little silly for something without much depth.
Going off on a tangent, my complaint about subscriptions extends far beyond just MMOs. This online ecosystem (as it stands right now) isn't constructed in such a way as to allow for many products and services to be compatible with one another. Nobody seems to realize that people such as myself would like to use more than one subscription service, but at $14 a month will simply refuse to join up due to the inability to sustain a combination of active products or services. Blah!
[IMG]http://www.bathtub-productions.com/newlook.jpg[/IMG]
I also got Cryptic's invitation to pay the life-time subscription fee. I wonder how many people actually fell for that... $239.99 is a lot of money for a game that is so shallow with such a limited appeal. It would have made sense to pay that for WoW, but then who knew it would become such a phenomenon (of which I am still no part of).
I like Trek as much as the next guy, that doesn't mean I run around the house wearing one of their uniforms... not that there is anything wrong with that. :D
Worf
The address is ts5.holdouts.com:8784 and the password is foxtrot4
There is a channel for Trek Online, and there are a small group on there who play. I figure if we can combine the two groups, we might have something going on.
It's a little frustrating to have the queue, took about 15 minutes to get in earlier but I'm sure they're working on it.
Worf
I am Galek Dor@Darth Angelus
the downtimes are slightly annoying but at least the game difficulty went up in romulan space. nearly commander lvl6 and loving every part of my escort.
in a fleet with some long gaming buddies so if the firstones fleet lacks players youre more than welcome to join up.
skell@Sindre is my fed and Quetzalcoatl@Sindre is my Klingon.
A [URL="http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/startrekonline/review.html?tag=topslot;title;4"]mediocre score from Gamespot[/URL] isn't going to help this MMO survive for all those who paid for a life-time subscription.
There just isn't enough game, yet.