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I missed posting about the second Dev Diary regarding the new Enterprise, as it came out during my Android obsessive period a few weeks ago. It’s worth reading though if you have any interest in Trek starship design. Part three is out now though and features a beautiful in-game model draft of the ship. She’s going to be a cruiser, as expected, and a Vice Admiral level ship. I now have quite a bit of motivation to get my Engineer Nal working hard for promotion (he’s only Lieutenant Commander now).

It’s here! It’s here! It’s here!

Even though I’ve been playing quite a bit on Tribble over the last few weeks, it’s still really good to have the ground combat update on Holodeck. It’s completely a perception issue on my part, but knowing I’m playing on Holodeck gives me more of a sense of permanence that’s just not there when I play on Tribble. Tribble is like Vegas. You go there to have fun and goof off, but it doesn’t count.

I logged in on my main Bryn and headed out to Gamma Orionis. One of the things I’ve been waiting to do is replay Assimilation. This mission is part of the Undine front missions and includes the Universal Assimilated Module, which was added as part of the Borg equipment set after I’d finished that chain of missions.

Pre-Season 4, Assimilation was one of my least favorite of the story missions. There’s a ton of Borg ground combat in that mission, and I remember dying while playing it. Possibly it was just because I was Science, possibly I wasn’t doing something correctly, but I think it was because of the way ground combat worked. Melee enemies tended to run up on me, so battles largely consisted of running backwards in circles trying to shoot enemies. Not fun.

Now that Season 4 is here, I picked up the replay from my Ready Room console and headed to NGC-4447. After completing a few space objectives, it was time to beam in with Bryn’s team. I started playing the mission completely in shooter mode but part way through I had to change that to just toggling into shooter mode before starting combat after accidentally clicking my mouse a few times and shooting Borg’s in alcoves. Turns out they don’t like that.

The new content was fun enough that I started out just clearing out all of the Borg I ran across  even if they weren’t hostile. I only started switching my Boffs to passive mode and leaving Borg alone once I saw how late it was.

I had a lot more fun than the first time I ran the mission. I made it all the way through the mission without dying once, although I did have to resuscitate my two tactical officers a few times. The pacing was faster, the battles were more engaging, and dodging behind walls worked well to break aggro and give my personal shields time to recharge. The kits are much more effective as well.

I hadn’t really noticed on Tribble, but I was using a Physicist Kit and dropping an Exothermic Induction Field (EIF) on a group of Borg did a noticeable amount of damage. Pre-Season 4, most of the DoT’s in Science Kits seemed more like bonus damage than actual attacks. Often, I would just use the roots and shield debuffs and that was it. Now though, using EIF or Hyperonic Radiation, has a noticeable effect. There were several instances where DoTs killed Borg that were down to a quarter of their life who had adapted their shields before I was able to remodulate my weapon.

I know there are issues with Season 4, especially for the Foundry, but I’m still really happy with the update. I’m really looking forward to leveling up my alts now that I can look forward to both types of combat in the game.

Star Trek Online is coming down for maintenance tomorrow morning:

We will be bringing down Holodeck on 7.7.2011 from 6:30 AM to 9:00 AM PDT (2330 – 0200 UTC) in order to perform maintenance and apply the Season 4 patch. We will provide an update once the maintenance has been completed.

Patch notes for Season 4 are significant. There’s a few surprises on there too (my comments in blue):

• Whenever you join a team or fleet, you will automatically be added to a voice chat channel. I didn’t realize we’d be able to use voice for fleet chatting, I just assumed it was for teams like in LotRO.
• All existing characters will get a free respec token due to the significant changes to ground combat. I still have some saved from ranking up, but one more won’t hurt.
  
• An auto loot option has been added to the options screen. This will be nice to have, I always seem to fly to far from loot and have to make a second pass to get it after the battle.
  
• A ship selector has been added to all ship/shuttle transporter rooms. Players can now swap ships without having to fly to a starbase. This will be nice to have. No more having to go back to a starbase to switch to a shuttle for doing sampling missions.
  

There’s a lot more in Season 4 and I highly recommend checking out the section on ground combat changes so you understand what the new keybindings are. Even if you don’t intend to use shooter mode, you’ll want to know how to toggle it off if you accidentally engage it (press B).

I’ve actually been holding off on doing anything with my two alts since I saw the ground combat upgrades on Tribble, and I’ve been itching lately to get back to them. Hopefully I get a chance to check in with them tomorrow.

Something I don’t think I was clear about yesterday is that the new aiming mode is not the reason for the change in pacing of the combat. It just makes ground combat more engaging. The speed of fights is from the revamp of weapon damages as well as a change to how shielding and health works. From Daniel Stahl on the forums:

Also note that we have changed the difficulty of all enemies in the game. Most basic mobs are 2 shot simple now. Lieutenants and above get more challenging. A captain is expected to be a challenging encounter that can take tactics to deal with. A captain + sub lieutenants is expected to be difficult.

If you are one shotting Captains – then that is a bug and we want to adjust – so post details if you run into this situation.

This is also the very first build of the ground combat upgrade on Tribble, and the STO team is looking for as much feedback as possible on the new mechanics. So take a little time and try it out. Directions for signing up for Tribble and copying your character over are on the forums.

The first Season 4 build is up on Tribble (see the patch notes here and here). There are a lot of improvements, but the biggest one is the new ground combat update.

My expectations for ground combat have gone through a complete cycle from apathy to excitement. At first, I didn’t really care that it was being revamped. I’ve preferred space combat since the very first time I played the game and always treated ground combat as just a delay before getting back to my ship. As I started to get an idea of what Cryptic was doing from listening to interviews, reading the forums, and seeing sneak peaks on Twitter, I started to get more and more excited. The duty roster is still the main feature I’m looking forward to in Season 4, but ground combat has become a close second.

So I’ve spent a couple of hours playing on Tribble tonight, and I have to say that ground combat is a lot of fun now. Switching from RPG mode to FPS mode is smooth and easy to do. Opening my crew screen automatically switches to RPG mode so I can use my mouse to switch equipment around, I can tell this is a beta feature though since opening the map doesn’t do the same. The FPS aiming takes a little bit to adjust to, and it’s a little weird that your beam doesn’t hit exactly where you point since really what the aiming is doing is selecting a target not actually pinpointing where you’re firing. But it is a vast improvement over the current system.

Combat is much much faster and more exciting. Changes to shield and health stats as well as weapons, mean that battles are over in one or two minutes instead of five or ten. There’s also much less of the goofy backpedaling to deal with melee enemies.

The guns are also much more interesting and varied. In taking my main to Vice Admiral 1, I only ever used two weapons: a stun pistol and a sniper rifle. The only variation was what beam type I used. The new weapons are really fun though and I forsee a lot of swapping between the different rilfes, pistols, and assault weapons.

The only downside is, I don’t think I’ll be able to tolerate ground combat on the live server anymore.

Besides the big combat update, there’s also a neat new animated loading screen as well as a really cool new interface for ship requisition (not the C-store).

I took a few Fraps videos while playing tonight, I should have some up tomorrow to share for anyone who doesn’t have an active sub right now or doesn’t like to mess with the test server.

Back in January Cryptic remastered the Stranded in Space mission, which is the first mission new players do once they get out of the tutorial. Gozer went back to one of the first missions the team made for the game and updated it using all of the new tools that they’d developed since it was initially created. The result was very impressive. Ever since, players have been looking forward to more remastered episodes and Cryptic released two more last Friday: Diplomatic Orders and Doomsday Device. The new missions are just as impressive as what was done to the Azura rescue mission. I ran through all three over the weekend.

The Azura replay was offering a personal communications code that allows a player to summon the S.S. Azura II which provides mail and bank access from wherever you happen to be. That was really the only reason I ran through it again, since I’ve already played the remastered mission a few times.

Diplomatic Orders offers a cool data recorder to replay all of Spock’s Sector Block introductions, but I would’ve played it regardless to see how the mission had been updated. Ambassador Sokketh is no longer haunting Earth Spacedock but is now on Vulcan. Vulcan itself has seen some investment by Starfleet and now has a station in orbit.

Sokketh now has an issue with transporter technology, so there’s a fun section where you fly down to the surface in a shuttle. The Shuttle interior is very well done, as is the flight over the Vulcan temple complex. I do have a complaint about mixing franchises though since Starfleet has somehow managed to incorporate Tardis technology into their shuttlecraft.

Once Sokketh is aboard, the rest of the mission plays out mostly the same only with some tweaks to the dialog and a cinematic when the Ambassador’s true identity is revealed.

Doomsday Device was my favorite of the three episodes. The story is substantially changed from the original, and it really reminds me of a DS9-style episode. You start out by disabling the I.K.S. Targ and then boarding and securing the ship. I really enjoyed not actually having to blow the ship up, and I’d love to see more of that done in future missions/remasters.

MMO Gamerchick didn’t enjoy securing the Targ as much as I did since you beam over without your usual Away Team, but I actually preferred it that way. When you materialize on the Targ there is already a firefight taking place between your crew and the Targ’s crew, so I felt like a Captain beaming in to personally monitor an existing situation. If I’d come in with my regular team, it would’ve been okay but this way made if feel like more of a major operation since my full crew was involved (ignoring of course that they didn’t have names and their uniforms were different).

There’s some interesting gameplay and story in securing the ship and making repairs, not to mention getting a holoemitter disguise to make my character look like a Klingon. I really liked that I had a diplomatic choice once I beamed down to the planet and could avoid combat for the most part.

The final fight had some great story as well as some great new tech in it. The tech part is integrating character scenes into the same maps as ship scenes. This doesn’t sound like much, but it allow for some really cool story telling. Being in a space map and watching the Doomsday Device fire on a moon and then cutting to the bridge of the Targ was very seemless and as close to watching a television episode as they’ve come yet.

It’s not perfect yet. Throughout the mission, you’re talking with Lt. VanZyl whose supposed to be a member of your crew. But her uniform is off and usually in a mission you interact with your bridge officers. Still, she’s voiced well in the cinematic scene so it’s well worth it.

If you haven’t checked out the remastered episodes, I highly recommend them, especially if you’ve been through the Featured Episode series and are looking for more of the same quality-level.

The Jupiter uniforms are part of the 500-day Veteran Rewards and also due on the C-store around June 2nd. When I first say them mentioned for the Veteran Rewards, I had no idea what a Jupiter-style uniform was. Apparently I wasn’t alone in that, since Matt Highison, who  is the character artist working on them, posted on the forums recently (he’s also go more picture links there) to explain that Jupiter is the name for the new series of uniforms. The old uniforms in the tailor have always been labeled as A and B, and they are being renamed to Antares and Sierra.

I think the uniforms look really good. Bryn will be getting a wardrobe update once they become available.