Ongoing Star Trek Online thoughts, and ST.0.20100202a.3 patch notes.

I’ve just started getting past the point I got to in the Open Beta. Since last I wrote, STO has become a great deal more stable, and less buggy. Just in time, I might add!

The new Character Selection Screen for STO.

This time around, instead of going for a Science Vessel, which are the most heavily shielded, and of middling manoeuvrability, I have gone for an Escort. Escorts are much quicker on their toes, and have most of their weapons facing forward, so are a bit better at putting out damage. I’ve not found them to be overly fragile, as yet. STO’s version of public quests, Fleet Actions, only seem to score you for damage done, so playing an escort seems advantageous for now.

The set missions are well put together. Like Champions though, there are not so many of them that you won’t be doing every single one on your journey to Admiral, which does hamper replayability somewhat. You do have the option of doing exploration missions, but as they seem randomly chosen from a list of premade missions rather than being randomly generated at the time, once you do a few of them you start recognising which one you have just from the first couple of lines of mission text.

The vanishing Bridge Officer issue that I wrote about last week seems to have been finally squashed, and today the Klingons have been given access to a bit of extra higher-level content, which is certainly worthy of a toast of blood wine. So my list of gripes with STO is shrinking. I’m still far from convinced I’ll still be playing when my month runs out, but I am enjoying the time I have, and perhaps the first solid content patch, especially if it contains new features, will sway me.

General

* The Admiral promotion mission will now complete if players choose a fleet escort as their reward. This is not retro-active. If you’re an Admiral with a dangling promotion mission because you chose an escort, please submit a ticket to CS.
* Cardassian “Empire Defense” mission maps are now open to Klingon players.
* K7 station has been decloaked and returned to the sector map. Alleged perpetrators are being interrogated.
* The “Abandon Ship” power is now only available while in combat.
* General server optimization to increase performance.

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