New Testingstan

look fuck off man, I don't care about the Borg, I just want to zip around in a Miranda scanning shit.

Exploration missions are available fairly early. Heck, just go to one the clusters/nebulae and start poking around.

I'm on some planet helping against the borg.

Vega colony?

isn't that the tutorial

I think it's part of it.

...yeah. You do kinda have to complete the tutorial first. Then you can go out and find some exploration stuff to do.

The tutorial really isn't that long, compared to how it was. You got a couple ground fights and a couple space fights but be happy, it's not as long and annoying as it was before.

With my second character I had an opt-out on the tutorial, so instead I started at the Academy and got told 'guess what, attrition means we're giving you a ship' and told to go draw a phaser and kit from an arms locker. Good work there, commandant. Inevitably, another female character hit on mine as I crossed the main hall.

Problem with 'Explore Region' missions Aaron is that they're not well varied. You get some interesting stuff in the campaigns though... With my tactical character I recently completed two missions of searching for Preserver artifacts. Unfortunately the Breen kept pissing in the soup and I was forced into a few engagements, both space and ground.

So I can change ships without spending real money?

You get a free ship every ten levels. I paid real money for the Oberth I'm using now - about $4 Aus bucks. The massive Odyssey class cruisers at level 50 are more like $20. But there's so many good options for free that unless you're really jonesing, it doesn't matter. I haven't transfered my tactical captain(well, vice admiral now) to an Odyssey because there are only two reasons, and they're not enough: one, slipstream drive for faster sector space travel. Two, universal bridge officer slots - traditionally, cruisers mean more engineering slots. The Odyssey class gives you more flexibility.

Still, I'd probably buy one now if I hadn't promised Chris and Anders I'd get into BF3 very soon.

At level ten you're eligable for a Sabre class escort, a Nova class science vessel, or a Constitution class cruiser. Each class has three variants.

timmy wrote:With my second character I had an opt-out on the tutorial, so instead I started at the Academy and got told 'guess what, attrition means we're giving you a ship' and told to go draw a phaser and kit from an arms locker. Good work there, commandant.

I do like skipping the tutorial that way. It's like damn, I'm one awesome Lieutenant.

timmy wrote:Inevitably, another female character hit on mine as I crossed the main hall.

This didn't happen to me, though. Maybe because my female alt is named Applejack.

timmy wrote:Problem with 'Explore Region' missions Aaron is that they're not well varied.

Yeah, the mission types aren't terribly varied. Still worth doing though, because some of those planets you go on are pretty cool looking. I remember one that was all night-time dark blue with funky plant life and lots of mist and stuff. It was one of the best planetary surfaces I'd yet seen in the game (this was before the Romulan FE series though, which I'm told had some cool surfaces).

So they're worth checking out, even though "go here, scan anamolies" or "go here, shoot badguys" can get a little tiring. Can't remember if the diplomacy objectives are any better.

Diplomacy missions are always worth doing; more diplomacy levels means more transwarp unlocks. Saves a lot of time.

Borg sector defence missions are good too... When V'ger shows up!!

I'll wait to get a Constitution then.

I have cruisered up.

So whats the difference between phaser arrays and the classic twin banks?

Firing arc. Arrays have 270 degrees, the banks have...90 I think? It's in the tooltip somewhere.

Also I think the narrower your arc, the more DPS you get. So it's a bit of a tradeoff. I'm not 100% on the mechanics of it though, since I stick with beam arrays because I like broadsiding.

Yeah it seems to work better. I'm thinking of ditching my aft launcher for a turret or array.

Definitely worth is as an option; although my personal strategy with cruisers was to slowly circle straffe, unless you have a superior turnrate to the opponent.

Well the Fed cruisers seem to wallow about, I rarely get to fire my launchers more then a couple times. Usually as I close with that torpedo buff thing.

That's the way to do it. Torpedos are only really useful when you've knocked out a facing shield quadrant anyway, so they're best saved for a frontal assault on a larger, more powerful enemy.

I picked up a pretty good 360 degree disruptor turret kinda early, and I've kept that as my aft weapon.

I've been playing with a couple different banks up front and it's not very easy, but throwing down attack pattern alpha before engaging seems to help, and then i have a really strong torpedo of some kind aft, so i'm always passing over and slapping them on the back of the head. Plus the disruptor turret keeps me always hitting with something.

I should probably switch back to escorts since i'm a tactical captain, that extra science slot is unused and i have a spare tactical officer that only gets action on ground-side missions.

I kinda suck though so...

I dunno, I'm science in a Constitution.

I might do a Pakled Tactical next just for a laugh.

It doesn't matter what ship class you use; but if you don't have the staff for various slots you miss out on abilities. You can use dilithium to requisition bridge officers at any starbase.

I have a few bridge officers waiting for me to claim them but when i do it says i can't have more bridge officers, and gives me the choice of training an existing bridge officer in a new ability. So far I don't see much point to it, so...

You have to discharge an existing BOff

Once they are gone you can't get them back, so choose wisely.

You get more slots...at like RA if you're a freebie player. If you're gold you'll get a little more at some levels, though I didn't go up at CAPT. I have no idea how it works anymore. Also you can buy them from the C-Store, of course. I don't know if there's a Boff slot cap though. Even if you're pretty anal you only need like 11 I guess: one for each Department Head slot (7) and then four for a dedicated away team (the 5 Bridge slots can be used by DHs). Well okay, I guess 16 if you want unique Department Heads, dedicated Away Team and dedicated Bridge Officers but that'd be pretty crazy.

But yeah. You'll get a ton over the course of the game. I have a stupid amount of Boffs sitting in my menu waiting to be assigned or used to train somebody.

So I got a Saber and with the quantum 3 mines it makes a pretty good minelayer.