I think that lockbox and lobi ships will get the upgrade for free, like was stated with the Jem Hadar attack ship, but c-store ships and fleet ships will need you to get something. Again, looking at fleet ships, this might be something like the fleet ship module that you have to use to get fleet ships, so it might be that if you have a tier 5 ship you spend one Tier 6 ship module (available in the c-store) to get the basic tier 6 upgrade, but if you want to just skip getting a tier 5 ship you can pay like 4 ship modules, just like with the fleet system. Numbers and cost of hypothetical tier 6 ship modules are open for debate. And of course it might be nothing like that. I think it said they would have more information by the end of the month in the last dev blog on it.

On a related subject, it seems that Cryptic always leaves a lot of thing until the last minute. Like with the last release, the final form of the crafting system didn't show up until well, a few days after 9.5 release really, but just in general big releases seem to never be complete until the day of release. And honestly I haven't played many MMOs but when I played EvE Online, when you could get on their test servers it always seemed like a much more complete build. And when it wasn't, they told you that as well. OTOH, with Cryptic it always seems like with the amount of time they say they spend on the next big release, that it should be a lot more complete by the time we see it on the test server. I mean they have been working on this expansion since around season 9 probably, given what has been said about not adding in new ships because they would have to do all the work again for Delta Rising, so that's at least 4 months until now. So I don't know, is that too little time to expect them to have come out with a system for upgrading ships? It just always seems like that to me, but then again, maybe I have been spoiled by Eve online which seems to have way more resources that STO.

In Voyager canon, two things were established:

- Ocampa have a nine-year lifespan.
- An Ocampan woman has only one pregnancy in her entire life, at most.

Someone did the math and worked out exactly how long it would take the Ocampans to go extinct (I think it was something like one human lifetime).

The above demonstrates many of the problems with Voyager.

ahh god my altitis

I really like that the Fed ships will be getting cloaks. I kind of like the idea of one of the 'spotlight on the new ship' missions where you HAVE to play as that ship being a stealth run, where you have to cloak to survive. (The Feds didn't throw out their phasing cloak, did they...?)

As for the grapple guns, they really smack of the school of thought that a new class should have a unique mechanic as a defining feature. WoW did this twice, once with DK's (and Death Grip) and later with monks (and Roll). I would be annoyed by this if it weren't for the fact they've been adding unique mechanics for the other classes in STO as well. (Some engineering and science type ships have new mechanics, even on some preexisting ships.)

>
>http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/7003853-intelligence-operative-gear
>
>Nothing else known about this, but I think at best, we will be able to
>be able to play with this on a few maps, given how much work the devs
>said it would take to let you use jet packs on maps besides Risa and
>as I see it, this would be about the same. At worse, this will be a
>press F cutscene sort of thing.

--------

this world created by the
hands of the gods
everything is false
everything is a LIE
the final days have come
now
let everything be destroyed

--mu

https://www.youtube.com/user/Yuzral

If you want to know the spoilers and pretty much anything else about the new season, watch these videos. He does a way better job that I could. But please note that I did say SPOILERS. You have been warned.

But to follow specifically up on the grapple gun, so far, its a go to this spot and press F sort of thing, you can't pick your route or anything else really.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

I'm enjoying DR so far as well, but yes, the Vaadwaur ships are excessive. My faster ships can, at least, avoid the mines. My slower ship characters are pretty much SOL against that many tricobalt mines and torpedoes, and yes, their ships take an amazing amount of effort to destroy.

--------

this world created by the
hands of the gods
everything is false
everything is a LIE
the final days have come
now
let everything be destroyed

--mu

I've found my tactical captain and her Avenger can handle most of the firepower the Delta Quadrant is throwing at her, but when battleships are running at around 200,000 hp, it just turns into a a boring waiting game far too often. The update up on Tribble at the moment has dropped enemy hulls a bit, but I haven't had the chance to see how it goes. It should be up on the live server tomorrow anyway.

My other complaint is that, despite my earlier beliefs, they have indeed made it so you need to stop every second mission or so, in order to go grind out the skill points to level. I really thought they'd learnt that lesson at least. The shitstorm over in Tau Dewa certainly doesn't help matters.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

Yeah, after my last post I was reading interesting things on the forums, and I saw the Tribble patch notes refer to hulls and shields being lowered (except hulls on elite). Hopefully it won't be quite so much of a slog.

>
>My other complaint is that, despite my earlier beliefs, they have
>indeed made it so you need to stop every second mission or so, in
>order to go grind out the skill points to level. I really thought
>they'd learnt that lesson at least. The shitstorm over in Tau Dewa
>certainly doesn't help matters.

Yeah, I hadn't known about the Tau Dewa thing until this morning either. Whether you call it an exploit or not it's a law of unintended consequences Cryptic is suffering through right now, and of course eliminating it when it wasn't a cheat is going to piss people off. But they -had- to get rid of it.

I'm just irritated other people shot up to 60 while my highest alt is still 54 because I was doing it the right way. Having to grind patrols was not a good decision on their part. But...still, I'm not butthurt about it like some people seem to be. Usual internet forum nonsense.

--------

this world created by the
hands of the gods
everything is false
everything is a LIE
the final days have come
now
let everything be destroyed

--mu

Eh, Farming is always gonna be a thing in any MMO. I have fond memories of the old Banished Pantheon runs my group did back in the old Paragon days. If it was such a problem, it should have been addressed in the upcoming patch. Shutting down an entire zone, one which also happens to be an entire factions starting area, with next to no communication at all (The only thing I've found is a single paragraph from 'Q' on the forums) is just freaking stupid.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

I thought it was just the patrols they shut down. They actually blacklisted the whole zone itself? That's not only the Romulan starting zone, it's also how to get to both Dyson Spheres...which you have to do to start the new DR content! Are 50's locked out of starting DR?

--------

this world created by the
hands of the gods
everything is false
everything is a LIE
the final days have come
now
let everything be destroyed

--mu

All mission maps in the zone. New Romulus and the Dyson Sphere still work. That's it. Low level Romulans are fucked over too, because THAT'S helpful.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1271351

Bottom line, the EP said that people were leveling to fast, and had to have specialization points removed.

1. I don't care if someone figures out a way to level faster than me, I'm a casual player, I know I'm going to be last at the gate. If someone wants to grind for hours, which even with this "exploit" people were doing, more power to them.

2. What does piss me off is Cryptic's poor QA and constant rush to push untested content out the door, and their constant labeling of anything they don't like as an exploit. When it deals with dilithium, I might see the point, but dilithium is not covered in the EPs letter, just leveling. And I fail to see how making an xp gap in the missions, telling the players to grind to get more levels to play the rest of the story content, and then punishing the players for grinding the wrong type of mission is the players fault. All this is, is Cryptic's latest attempt to make their lack of things to do stretch out until the next content is added.

3. And finally, expecting the player to "know" they were leveling to fast is very unrealistic in this game. There is no official listing of how much XP you should gain, many changes like this are not documented, and half the time, the "bug" is a feature.

Bottom line, next time Cryptic should do better, and not blame the player for their failure

"Hmm, I haven't played STO in forever. Maybe I should update the client and have a look around sometime this weekend."

(reads)

"Or not."

--G.
I don't actually give a shit about most of the sectors they're servicing with the update, so maybe it doesn't actually matter to my gameplay experience that they screwed it up, but...
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

That said, I have characters of both factions. If you need some help clearing a mission and I'm on (I'm @sahaquiel01) I'll be glad to lend a hand.

--------

this world created by the
hands of the gods
everything is false
everything is a LIE
the final days have come
now
let everything be destroyed

--mu

Still strikes me as a rather hypacritical thing to say, concidering the month-before-release double+ XP boost. Got back into the game a bit after Oct started (mostly because of folks here) and had 3 characters to 50 in three or four days. Content-wise I'm not remotely close to the Delta Quadrent. It also rather hurt the Romi character since the first ship change option is based on story progression and not level, fighting above Khitomer in the teir 1 bird at level 25 was... irritating.