Star Trek Online Open Beta LiveBlog Bonanza Part 12

Continuing on from Star Trek Online Open Beta LiveBlog Bonanza Part 11 – Patch Edition.

Or you could return to the beginning of our STO Open Beta coverage with Part 1.

2:17 pm GMT, Day 12

I took the day off yesterday, dealing with Jack Steel related things, and Cryptic have been busy with the patches.

Update 20100119a.10

Update 20100119a.12

Most notably, the issues I had in the last episode with combat being too easy, and with exploration clusters not having enough anomalies, are supposed to have been rectified.

2:55 pm GMT, Day 12

With just three days until the end of Beta, I’m not going to go through individual missions in much detail unless they really stand out as something different to what I’ve already described. I want to make sure I get to Lieutenant Commander and can show what happens at that point.

I only need another 500 or so skill points to be promoted, and to that end I’m doing a few Exploration missions in the Arucanis Arm. Not having any problem finding anomalies reasonably quickly now.

Lieutenant Grall’s “Do three Explorations” missions are now granting Badges of Exploration, which is good news. I should pop back to Sol and see what 75 1st Order Badges of Exploration will get me.

Star Trek Online Tutorial 52 Badges Of Exploration

Badges of Exploration are finally discovered!

In the center area of Sol Spacedock there are NPCs you can buy goods off using your Badges of Exploration. It all seems ground-based equipment. Armour, weapons, and kits are all on offer. For the tier 1 items, they are all of common (white named) quality, except for the kits that are green. From tier 2 onwards the guns and armour are green, and the kits are blue, making it a lot more useful.

Speaking of item quality, we got some information on those green named Bridge Officers that turned up recently. Stormshade gave us some details.:

Here’s the deal with the “higher quality” Bridge Officers:

1) You guys haven’t seen all the Bridge Officer Skills in the game yet. These guys have a chance to grant you access to those uncommon, rare, and super rare skills. They also might have higher tiered skills in a lower level slot. The only skills available at the Bridge Officer Trainer are the common skills.

2) The traits these Bridge Officers have are superior to the traits a “white” Bridge Officer has.

At the moment the rarity of a Bridge Officer skill is not marked. I have no doubt that someone (maybe even me) will sort out a list of the rarities before long, but it would be helpful if we could tell just by looking at them.

4:48 pm GMT, Day 12

When you spend enough skill points to reach level 11, Admiral Quinn contacts you and asks you to come to see him at Sol Spacedock.

On speaking to him you gain 6 more inventory slots, 12 more bank slots, a free costume change, and a plaque which will get your your first real ship! Your maximum number of Bridge officers increases to 6 from 4.

5:02 pm GMT, Day 12

Taking that plaque to the shipyard, via the turbolifts, gives you a choice of free ship you can receive. Either a cruiser, escort, or science ship. In spite of being an engineer I went for a science ship, as I suspect the low manoeuvrability of the cruiser would not agree with my flying style.

The Shipyard also has consoles, ship weapons, and other goods available for Badges of Exploration. I pick up a nice new phaser turret.

And here is my new vessel. The USS Opera is a Nova class science vessel. For any given tier and category there are up to three ships. They have identical stats and you can mix and match the parts between them. This one is pure Nova, simply because I think it looks nicest that way.

Star Trek Online Nova Class Science Ship 300x177

The Nova Class Science Ship

To get a good idea of what ships have which capabilities, I recommend Suricata’s most excellent ship chart. It shows not only what the ships look like, but also gives you details of weapon hard-points, manoeuvrability ratings, and much more.

10:04 am GMT. Day 13

Another patch came in overnight, bringing us up to version20100123a.1. Patchnotes are here.

Muck Later

After a little rest, we finish up with the End of Beta Bonanza!

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