Last week I bought STO off Impulse for $8, NZ dollars, about the same as a BigMac Combo. Figuring a 30 day trial will give at least as much happiness as said BigMac (not a big ask) I decided to give it a go.
The intro mission has the rest of the ship officer contingent killed by Borg. It could be advanced senilty but Borg are remembered as some of the more feared things in Trek. The Borg I fought were slightly less dangerous than irate toddlers. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Anyways on the basis of slaughtering shuffling zombies Starfleet lets me command an antique Miranda they must of had in mothballs. Except they must of had a few hundred of them seeing how there were lots of us buying the game for $8 (or hoever much that is in your currency). To demonstrate the (lack of) faith they have in me they don't even assign me a full officer complement.
STO has the same item restriction lunacy all RPGs seem to have. "I'm sorry spears are for level 5 and above, it's too complicated for you noobs.". The requisitions system appears ok at first. Do missions, get merits and then Starfleet will give you even nastier antimatter weaponry which I certainly wouldn't trust to a mere lieutenant. Still, destroyed ships leave odd weapons lying about and you can't install them and start writing your name on planets because you're the wrong rank. I guess we're all very law-abiding here in Starfleet. It's not like you can install them but they get taken off you when you return to Starbase.
The first mission is typical cRPG sillyness. Go to blah, talk to NPCs A thru F. The people of blah are unhappy and have all sorts of problems which you find out about and then, leave. Repair the damaged holodeck, nope. Deal with the local pirate problem, sorry I'm busy. I listened to the whiny peons and then left. Very TNG I guess.
My next mission is to patrol Sirius sector for those traditional orcs of space, Klingons. STO Klingons have really reverted to type. Do we negotiate with them? Give long winded impassioned speeches which cause them to offer anything if you'll just shut up? Subtly point out how they're only 2 LY from Sol and a swarming mass of bristling Federation death? Nope, they're Klingons and there's no negotiating with 'em.
I spent the next hour exploding as I warped into a battle with some ships set to match the last visitor. Seems the options included respawning and re-entering the area in the hope it was set to my level or run away from everything until someone else racked up enough kills for me to go do something else. I also learned that almost every klingon ship class starts with 'K't' and looks pretty much alike so any attempt to work out if you can engage an enemy may as well be resolved by rolling a die. Sorry a '3', you're facing a K'Traga today. Sorry, it's above your level, Miranda go boom. It's not like the game knows exactly what I'm driving and can match me up with a suitable (atm feeble) enemy.
On to more typical missions I'm sent hither and yon to various systems to scan or deliver something and incidently transform into glowy plasma any Klingons, Orions, Syndicate or other bastards that happen to be in the area. Two missions stand out as being even sillier than normal.
In the first we go to a planet to scan some shit and beam down and scan a plant. Overjoyed by all this fun the science guys want three more plants scanned. No problem, its a planet. Damn plants can be everywhere right? To add to the fun there's Orions about doing something. It is suggested you do your scanning thing and leave.
Fat chance. Orions stand around the plants doing, i don't know. My best guess is that they're on some massive bender or recovering from such. First set I approached looking for dialogue options. Could I ask to scan the plant? Could I bluff, bluster or bribe my way through. Was there a 'shag sexy leader into compliance' option. No. No diplomacy in Star Trek, that has no place in the mythos. By the last one I realised that Starfleet does't bother with diplomacy, we kill things. Specifically, red outlined things. Madness.
Later we're taking a boring Vulcan dude to a boring Vulcan Monastry where he can refine the art of boring to his little green heart's content.
On the way some Klingons in some K'twhatevers stop along to chat. My jaw dropped, Klingons previously had only 'opened negotions' with a hail of green bolts and photons. Whatever these guys had to say must be pretty damn important. It was. The Vulcan Ambassador is an evil Shapechanger of a race that is a threat to all beings in the Alpha Quadrant. It's so important that the bloody Klingons are telling me about this bad juju shapechanger instead of standard negotiations (glowy green bolts). Big stuff, important stuff. Actual dialogue options.
Aha! You can't fool me you wily Klingons. I'm going to ignore your claims even though my ships sensors could verify them! I certainly won't take any precautions and it's glowy red death and photons for you and yours. I mean this is the first time any Klingon has spoken to me and they seemed worried. Bah! Who cares. Trek is about blowing stuff up, right?
We beam down and fight an inordinate amount of Klingons before the noodles in the ship tell me he was an evil shapeshifter all along. Oh noes! If only someone had told us! So we chase the shapeshifter across the rest of the map and any klingons we missed previously. The alien beams up to a previously undetected ship which we are told to avoid until help arrives. No problem, running and screaming like a little girl is something those 'engage troublemakers missions' did.
Lessons learned. This is about killing things and taking their stuff ,not that you're allowed to use any of it mind. Also Klingons still havn't learned what happens when twerps with polearms charge dudes with ray-guns.
Starship combat is a little wierd too. Despite being crewed by hundreds of um, crew, you cannot target more than one enemy ship at a time. The ships of the ultra-complicated Gratuitous Space Battles can target other ships with weapons that cannot range the main target. I guess STO is out of Paradox's league here.
The current mission also exemplifies the STO madness. Missions are divided into ship combat and ground combat sections. We start by going to a system where those darn Klingons have a listening post. Considering it's in the Federation back yard it shows that all Klingons have wheelbarrows to carry their balls in. The science officer suggest manouvering by the glowy rocks so the patrolling K'twhocares don't notice us. But we have learned, you canna fool me. STO is not about stealth, diplomacy or thinking your way out of problems. Full Impulse and woe to any daft enough to get in weapons range. Works a treat. Five expanding clouds of plasma later we learn where the base is. Base has teleport inhibitors so we spend some time blowing them up and any K'twhomakestheseup guarding them. We then beam down into the base to blow it up.
Why? Phasers suddenly out of juice? No more photons? Or is it just that we havn't had some ground combat yet? So we place charges and give practical lessons in Firearms vs Melee weapons, something most humans managed after meeting other humans with muskets. The entire galaxy is up to personal death rays and the Klingons are still insisting on giving knives and polearms a go.
The intro mission has the rest of the ship officer contingent killed by Borg. It could be advanced senilty but Borg are remembered as some of the more feared things in Trek. The Borg I fought were slightly less dangerous than irate toddlers. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Anyways on the basis of slaughtering shuffling zombies Starfleet lets me command an antique Miranda they must of had in mothballs. Except they must of had a few hundred of them seeing how there were lots of us buying the game for $8 (or hoever much that is in your currency). To demonstrate the (lack of) faith they have in me they don't even assign me a full officer complement.
STO has the same item restriction lunacy all RPGs seem to have. "I'm sorry spears are for level 5 and above, it's too complicated for you noobs.". The requisitions system appears ok at first. Do missions, get merits and then Starfleet will give you even nastier antimatter weaponry which I certainly wouldn't trust to a mere lieutenant. Still, destroyed ships leave odd weapons lying about and you can't install them and start writing your name on planets because you're the wrong rank. I guess we're all very law-abiding here in Starfleet. It's not like you can install them but they get taken off you when you return to Starbase.
The first mission is typical cRPG sillyness. Go to blah, talk to NPCs A thru F. The people of blah are unhappy and have all sorts of problems which you find out about and then, leave. Repair the damaged holodeck, nope. Deal with the local pirate problem, sorry I'm busy. I listened to the whiny peons and then left. Very TNG I guess.
My next mission is to patrol Sirius sector for those traditional orcs of space, Klingons. STO Klingons have really reverted to type. Do we negotiate with them? Give long winded impassioned speeches which cause them to offer anything if you'll just shut up? Subtly point out how they're only 2 LY from Sol and a swarming mass of bristling Federation death? Nope, they're Klingons and there's no negotiating with 'em.
I spent the next hour exploding as I warped into a battle with some ships set to match the last visitor. Seems the options included respawning and re-entering the area in the hope it was set to my level or run away from everything until someone else racked up enough kills for me to go do something else. I also learned that almost every klingon ship class starts with 'K't' and looks pretty much alike so any attempt to work out if you can engage an enemy may as well be resolved by rolling a die. Sorry a '3', you're facing a K'Traga today. Sorry, it's above your level, Miranda go boom. It's not like the game knows exactly what I'm driving and can match me up with a suitable (atm feeble) enemy.
On to more typical missions I'm sent hither and yon to various systems to scan or deliver something and incidently transform into glowy plasma any Klingons, Orions, Syndicate or other bastards that happen to be in the area. Two missions stand out as being even sillier than normal.
In the first we go to a planet to scan some shit and beam down and scan a plant. Overjoyed by all this fun the science guys want three more plants scanned. No problem, its a planet. Damn plants can be everywhere right? To add to the fun there's Orions about doing something. It is suggested you do your scanning thing and leave.
Fat chance. Orions stand around the plants doing, i don't know. My best guess is that they're on some massive bender or recovering from such. First set I approached looking for dialogue options. Could I ask to scan the plant? Could I bluff, bluster or bribe my way through. Was there a 'shag sexy leader into compliance' option. No. No diplomacy in Star Trek, that has no place in the mythos. By the last one I realised that Starfleet does't bother with diplomacy, we kill things. Specifically, red outlined things. Madness.
Later we're taking a boring Vulcan dude to a boring Vulcan Monastry where he can refine the art of boring to his little green heart's content.
On the way some Klingons in some K'twhatevers stop along to chat. My jaw dropped, Klingons previously had only 'opened negotions' with a hail of green bolts and photons. Whatever these guys had to say must be pretty damn important. It was. The Vulcan Ambassador is an evil Shapechanger of a race that is a threat to all beings in the Alpha Quadrant. It's so important that the bloody Klingons are telling me about this bad juju shapechanger instead of standard negotiations (glowy green bolts). Big stuff, important stuff. Actual dialogue options.
Aha! You can't fool me you wily Klingons. I'm going to ignore your claims even though my ships sensors could verify them! I certainly won't take any precautions and it's glowy red death and photons for you and yours. I mean this is the first time any Klingon has spoken to me and they seemed worried. Bah! Who cares. Trek is about blowing stuff up, right?
We beam down and fight an inordinate amount of Klingons before the noodles in the ship tell me he was an evil shapeshifter all along. Oh noes! If only someone had told us! So we chase the shapeshifter across the rest of the map and any klingons we missed previously. The alien beams up to a previously undetected ship which we are told to avoid until help arrives. No problem, running and screaming like a little girl is something those 'engage troublemakers missions' did.
Lessons learned. This is about killing things and taking their stuff ,not that you're allowed to use any of it mind. Also Klingons still havn't learned what happens when twerps with polearms charge dudes with ray-guns.
Starship combat is a little wierd too. Despite being crewed by hundreds of um, crew, you cannot target more than one enemy ship at a time. The ships of the ultra-complicated Gratuitous Space Battles can target other ships with weapons that cannot range the main target. I guess STO is out of Paradox's league here.
The current mission also exemplifies the STO madness. Missions are divided into ship combat and ground combat sections. We start by going to a system where those darn Klingons have a listening post. Considering it's in the Federation back yard it shows that all Klingons have wheelbarrows to carry their balls in. The science officer suggest manouvering by the glowy rocks so the patrolling K'twhocares don't notice us. But we have learned, you canna fool me. STO is not about stealth, diplomacy or thinking your way out of problems. Full Impulse and woe to any daft enough to get in weapons range. Works a treat. Five expanding clouds of plasma later we learn where the base is. Base has teleport inhibitors so we spend some time blowing them up and any K'twhomakestheseup guarding them. We then beam down into the base to blow it up.
Why? Phasers suddenly out of juice? No more photons? Or is it just that we havn't had some ground combat yet? So we place charges and give practical lessons in Firearms vs Melee weapons, something most humans managed after meeting other humans with muskets. The entire galaxy is up to personal death rays and the Klingons are still insisting on giving knives and polearms a go.