Delta Rising Debrief

Several dev blogs have come out in the last two weeks that I’m just now catching up on. My favorite new feature has to be Grapple Guns! While I would love to be able to use these anywhere, I really doubt that will be the case. None of the existing maps will have been developed with the idea that players can move in three dimensions. I actually wonder too if even for maps where grappling is intended to be used if it will be something where it can be used on any surface or only against specific attachment points. The latter case would be much safer from a development standpoint, but I really hope it’s not that limited.

More details are out on Intelligence Specialist Bridge Officers.  In space combat Specialists can go into a regular bridge seat that matches their profession or a universal one, but they can’t use their specialist abilities. There’s no restrictions for ground combat, which means even if you’re not in a Tier 6 with specialist seating, these new officers will still be valuable for away teams. Intelligence abilities will be thematically focused on debuffs, stealth, and crowd control. Some ground examples:

  • Feign disintegration and get a short term stealth effect, speed bonus, and ambush bonus.
  • Spawn a photonic decoy to draw enemy fire.
  • Tag an enemy at distance and initiate a site-to-site transport to bring them to you and disorient them briefly.

Space combat examples:

  • Fire an EM pulse probe that will travel towards a target disabling any intervening enemies and then explode damaging the target and any nearby enemies.
  • Evade target locks to give a massive accuracy debuff against an enemy and become untargetable by enemy torpedoes and mines.
  • Transport warhead will allow you to beam a torpedo directly onto an enemies bridge, bypassing shields and possibly knocking a system offline.

These are just a few that I liked, there are eleven ground and eleven space abilities described in the blog. As primarily a Science Captain, these look especially fun to me.

The new Kobali Adventure Zone is for players level 54 and higher. Similar to the Voth ground battlezone, for Kobali you beam down with two bridge officers. You can also team with other Captains without having to send your officers back to the ship, which you can actually do for the Voth mission as well if you wait until you’re in the battlezone before teaming up. Cryptic is promising that Kobali will be as scalable and team-friendly as the Voth ground zone while also allowing for a rich personal story-line. That sounds perfect if it works as advertised. While I enjoy the Voth ground map on occasion it does get repetitive quickly, despite how much dilithium you can earn doing it

Of course reputations are a given with any expansion or major update to the game now, and Delta Rising is no different.  The Delta Alliance Reputation will be added with the expansion and bring Delta Marks as the basic reputation currency along with Ancient Power Cells for equipment unlocks (or getting bonus dilithium ore). The reputation offers a four piece space set called Delta Alliance Assault (engines, shields, deflector, and warp/singularity core), a three piece space set called Delta Alliance Ordnance (console, polaron beam array or heavy cannon), and neutronic torpedo), and a three piece ground set called Delta Alliance Elite (combat armor, unimatrix shield, compression phaser rifle). All gear is listed as Mark XII, which seems odd given that the new maximum gear level is Mark XIV. Possible typo?

Nope. not a typo and there’s also a new Gear Upgrade System. So items will now have a leveling system called Tech Points. Once an item has enough to qualify for an upgrade a Basic, Improved, or Superior Tech Upgrade item can be used to upgrade it to the next Mark level. Basic Tech Upgrades will be available from vendors (or crafteD), while Improved and Superiors upgrades will be crafted only. Crafting recipes unlock at 5, 10, and 15 respectively, and the recipes won’t require dilithium. This seems to be intended to promote crafters putting them on the Exchange. The dilithium cost comes in when an upgrade is applied. Upgrades will use a similar slotting system to the revamped R&D system, so you’ll be limited to how many items you can upgrade at a time. Also the upgrade process will take a certain amount of real time to completed. It’s not mentioned but I assume you’ll be able to pay additional dilithium to speed that up just like you can with R&D projects.

There’s also a Research Point track for items, which I wasn’t so clear about from the blog that allows bumping up an item’s quality (common to uncommon, etc.). That doesn’t seem quite as important as bumping the Mark level up, and seems like it over complicates things. Of course until it’s in the game we won’t really know.

We’re finally starting to get some solid details about the expansion now. I expect Cryptic’s dev and PR arms to continue to get busier as we near the October release date.

Delta Rising Intelligence Ships Design

Yesterday, Cryptic posted a dev blog about the design process behind the ship design for the new Delta Rising ships. I’m not going to get into the whole debate of whether they’re Trek-like or not. That’s completely subjective. I will say I liked the thought process behind going for a visually cohesive set of ships designed around a set of themes.

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ea6f653a84709eff9d2361ef6103083a1410803753Of the three, I still like the tactical one the best. The nacelles look influenced by the Defiant design. I’m not totally sure about the swept back part, since I haven’t seen a side view, but it reminds me just a bit of Moya from Farscape which I’ve always loved. The blue lighting is great, although I prefer the grey hull material above to the dark material on the right.

dc3ae406801cc585115ed7afe8e4791a1410803795Unfortunately the science ship is still my least favorite of the three. It is nice to see that the open area in the hull can be filled in, having an open ring in the saucer section just doesn’t look good to me. My other issue is that the ship seems to be patterned after the Luna-class ships, like Riker’s Titan. Vaulyn - Recon Science VesselI’ve never liked the extra science pod that sticks out on top of these, although I did eventually get used to it when I flew a Recon Science Vessel. So, it’s possible that the design of the new science ship will grow on me. Pictures are nice, but nothing really compares to seeing it in the game and the ship customizer.

 

Three Dev Blogs! Ah! Ah! Ah!

Cryptic release not one, not two, but three dev blogs today. The biggest news by far for me are the additional Voyager cast members doing voice work. Robert Picardo’s The Doctor was my favorite character from the series and I really hope he’s heavily used in the new content. In addition to Tim Russ as Tuvok and Garret Wang as Harry Kim, Jeri Ryan will be back as Seven of Nine (although I believe she goes by Annika now) and Ethan Phillips as Neelix.

The second dev blog us about a new Space Event involving the conflict between the Borg Collective and the Cooperative. This one interests me more from the lore discussed in the dev blog than in thinking about playing the actual event. Seeing this contrast between two versions of the Borg is fascinating to me and I’m very interested to see where Cryptic takes it.

The third blog outlines what Cryptic is calling the Delta Rising Operations Pack, which is the equivalent to the Legacy of Romulus pack that was released for the last expansion. At $125 it’s too expensive for me. I’ll wait an buy ships and equipment piecemeal like I did with Romulus. Despite that, there is some good new information in the dev blog regarding the new type of ship.

The new type of ship will be called Intelligence. There will be three for the Federation, I assume in Tactical/Engineering/Science flavors, and one each for Romulans and Klingons. There will also be an additional Intelligence ship for each faction that is based on the theme of Voyager’s journey home. The blog mentions in passing that Intelligence ships will be able to launch drones to scan enemies for weaknesses which the Intelligence Bridge Officer can exploit through powers. This sounds to me like a combination of the current Science scan power plus the singularity powers that Romulan captains can charge up and unlock.

The screenshots of the new Intel ships look really good. Unfortunately the Science ship is my least favorite of the three Federation ships. Hopefully that changes when I see it in game, sometimes screenshots don’t do these ships justice.

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Tier 6: Intel Cruiser, Tactical, and Science Ships

Tier 5 Upgrades

Yesterday Cryptic released the one dev blog a lot of people have been waiting impatiently for, upgrading Tier 5 ships.

Upgrading is done via Zen through the C-store, for between $5 and $10 (subject to change as is all of the dev blog information). The upgrade is per ship but account wide, although I don’t seem many people flying the same ship on different alts. T5 upgrades are free for special ships, basically anything that came from a reputation event, the lobi store, or a lock box.

Upgraded T5 ships only have four levels unlike the five for T6 ships. Just like T6 though the ships will scale up their hull and shields as they level. Since they don’t have the last level that T6’s do, they cannot unlock a Starship Trait. Of course if you have a T6 and unlock a trait you can still use it while flying a T5+ ship. T5+ ships also won’t have specialist bridge officer seating.

There’s a linked page with a list of all of the ships in the game along with whether they are upgraded for Zen for for free. What I found interesting about the page though was just seen how many ships are in the game now, and those are just the Tier 5 ships.

I’m still having a hard time getting worked up over the new ship tier and the upgrade process. Apparently I’m one of the few based on the 204 page forum thread regarding the upgrade post. T5+ ships won’t get the Starship Trait or specialized bridge officers, neither of which we have details on. There’s also this quote from the blog:

Only the most challenging new level 60 content will strongly benefit from using an upgraded Tier 5 starship or a Tier 6 starship, however it will not strictly require it.

The two bolded sections basically read to me that T6 ships will have an easier time, but are not required for any of the new content. For me, that means that I’ll likely stay with my current ship, a Vesta-class, unless I really like the look of one of the new T6 ships.

Picard Maneuver

Speaking of how many ships are in the game, add one more. The Constellation class is being added to STO. The most well known example of this class being the USS Stargazer, Jean Luc Picard’s first ship. This is C-Store ship that adds a new skin to the Heavy Cruiser Refit, a Tier 3 ship, along with a new console called the Warp Burst Capacitor. This emulates the Picard Maneuver, which involves a ship performing short duration a high warp acceleration directly towards another ship causing them to appear in two places at once. The STO console gives a brief  untargetable status, moves your ship forward a short distance, and gives you a short ambush attach bonus.

The console is nice enough that I think a some players will pay the 1000 Zen, $10, just to get that. Then there’s the ship collectors and role-players who’ll want it too. The majority of the player base isn’t going to buy ships right now anyway given that no one’s likely to buy new ships until the T6’s come out with Delta Rising. Personally I’m tempted by the console, but I don’t think I’ll get it unless I come up with a build where I think it will be handy.

Day 28 of Blaugust

Delta Quadrant Developments

t6report It turns out my guess yesterday was pretty good about what the redacted Engineering Corp Report was. We got a little bit more detail today about Tier 6 ships. The additional bridge officer slot was to be expected along with the usual hull and shield points and additional console slot, but the new stuff sounds pretty good: Specialist Bridge Officer seats, Starship Mastery system, and Starship Traits.

The Specialist Bridge Officers have access to the normal abilities for either Tactical, Engineering, or Science depending on which profession they belong to. In addition they’ll have a access to a new Specialist pool of abilities. Unfortunately that’s all Cryptic is saying for now. The way the report is written suggests that there’s only one new pool of abilities, but I may be reading too much into it.

The Starship Mastery system is a little bit more interesting to me. Basically Cryptic is adding a level attribute to Tier 6 ships that will grow from 0 to 5 as Captains gain Skill Points. Gaining Mastery levels will unlock passive abilities which vary depending on the class of the ship. A Starship Trait will unlock at level 5 and if slotted into your Captain’s traits gives a powerful bonus regardless of whether or not you’re flying a Tier 6 ship.

Unfortunately that’s the extent of the details in the latest Dev Blog. This has become a theme so far where Cryptic unveils some new information about the upcoming expansion but only really provides an outline of what’s coming. I was starting to get a little frustrated at the trickle of information Cryptic is releasing until I saw the new expansion trailer.

This has gotten me excited again. I’m especially curious about what ship is at 0:57, and more importantly can I get my hands on one.

Unknown Ship in DR trailer at 57 seconds

Day 26 of Blaugust

Perks of being a Fleet Admiral

The Path to Level 60 in Star Trek Online

Cryptic released the first of many, I assume, dev blogs regarding the Delta Rising expansion. This one deals with raising the level cap from to 60 from 50, Admiral to Fleet Admiral ranks. Before I get into it, I just wanted to mention how much I’ve enjoyed the LCARs formatting they’ve added to most of the blogs recently. It’s the small touches like this that add so much to the game experience.

A new Specialization Tree system is going to be added, with captains awarded 1 point per level after 50. This doesn’t stop at level 60 but continues to award points every time enough skill points are accumulated that you would have earned another level. So theoretically you’ll eventually be able to max out all your Specialization Trees. The blog doesn’t say what the curve looks like for skill points per level or if the curve flattens out after 60, nor are there any specifics on the Specializations yet.

I’m think the Specializations sound interesting. I like that Skill Points will stop converting to Expertise. I believe I have about 5 million points of that unused by now (after checking I actually have 6.1 million), so it’s not like Expertise is in demand once you get your Bridge Officers’ skills figured out. There’s not enough detail here yet though to get excited about.

Jasyla’s Gaming Questionaire, Part Two

With STO news out of the way, here’s questions 11-21 from Cannot Be Tamed:

11. Describe your perfect video game.

Highly customizable character, great story, smart dialog, combat and puzzles that gradually get tougher and prepare you for the challenges that follow.

12. What video game character do have you have a crush on?

Tali’Zorah

13. What game has the best music?

My favorite game soundtrack, at least recently, has been the one for Planetary Annihilation from Uber.

14. Most memorable moment in a game:

There’s more I’m sure, but the first one that popped into my head was wandering into the Lone Lands in the Lord of the Rings Online and seeing Weathertop for the first time.

15. Scariest moment in a game:

Nothing comes to mind, I don’t play horror games though.

16. Most heart-wrenching moment in a game:

Mordin’s final scene in Mass Effect 3.

17. What are your favourite websites/blogs about games?

That’s what blogrolls are for! 🙂

18. What’s the last game you finished?

I think it was Dishonored. Since I play a lot of MMOs and Minecraft, I really can’t finish many of the games I spend time on.

19. What future releases are you most excited about?

Star Crawlers and Last Life are two games that I backed on Kickstarter that I’m excited to see come out (and hopefully do well). BioWare’s new Shadow Realms looks interesting but there’s hardly enough known yet to warrant excitement.

If I could pick any game that’s been announced as in development and have it magically done and released tomorrow, I’d go for the next Mass Effect game that’s in the works. Looking at my answers today and yesterday I apparently have Mass Effect on the brain, no clue as to why that is.

20. Do you identify as a gamer?

Absolutely. I’ve taken some crap about that in the past, normally from co-workers saying it seems like a waste of time, more than once they’ve said this after talking about watching football all weekend on the couch.

21. Why do you play video games?

The same reasons why I read books: entertainment, escapism, and mental stimulation.

Day 20 of Blaugust