STO Newbies Captain's Primer - Ch 3: You may fire when ready, Gridley
This is something I started more for my own entertainment rather than to inform anyone or set myself as some sort of subject expert. For me, something isn't real until I write it down somewhere. This post and the others to follow consist of some things I've learned the hard way over the last two months. I'd like to prevent others from making the same fatheaded, fat fingered, rookie mistakes I have. If what I've posted is incorrect, incomplete, or worse, wrong headed, please do not hesitate to add your own two cent's worth to the mix. My ego's not so big nor is my skin so thin I cannot tolerate being corrected in public. The idea here to allow people to play smarter, not harder. Makes the game more enjoyable for everyone.
Gunnery Stuff!
I had a tough time splitting this off from my stuff on movement. As a former M1A1 tank commander and a 1st Gulf War vet, I was trained to think of movement and gunnery as one package. Ya just can't teach an old Cav Trooper new tricks, so some of this may not make sense unless you've read the things I've posted previously. Manfred von Richtofen, aka the Red Baron, once said, "Find the Enemy and then shoot him down. Everything else is rubbish." Good advice, this is. Unfortunately, he's not around to give us advice about how to do such in STO. I'm not going to try and explain which ship or weapon is the "best". Not my style. Besides, there are others who have done this far better than I who will share with anyone who pays the slightest attention. They gave up things to do so. Like wives/girlfriends. Sunlight. A job. Little stuff like that. Just kidding. No, really. This is a
game.
Not a lifestyle choice. And this would be the point where all of the FanBoys are screaming "Blasphemy!" and, "Burn him at the stake for uttering such foul heresy!"
But I have digressed. As I am wont to do. Something those detailed analyses, complete with Power Point presentations all done in a TNG monitor screen font, fail to acknowledge. Khan Noonien Singh once said, "If you improve the man, you improve the weapon a thousandfold. What the spreadsheet crowd sometimes fails to realize this: The person behind the keyboard can make all the difference between a poorly performing ship with a complete Tier XII kit and a fresh from the yard
Miranda class mounting Mk I standard stuff with a Jim Kirk wannabe riding the Big Chair.
You are the primary reason
your ship performs either well or poorly. Not some Mega Oblivion Cannon Mk XV (Everything)x4. There are tons of people who play STO who live for the biggest, best weapons. They are looking for the magic combo which allows them to stand off at 9.9km and do a one shot kill on that Tactical Cube, whilst shrugging off with no notice the combined fire from four Spheres.
Murphy's Laws Concerning Combat #47: If you want the Enemy to follow their part of your plan exactly, make sure you brief them
thoroughly.
Murphy's Laws Concerning Combat #121: If you notice everything is going
precisely according to plan, run away. Run away very fast. It's a trap!
Play to your strengths, not the stats
My idea of a fun fight in STO is like a knife fight inside a phone booth. I like to close until I see the whites of their eyes, dump an Alpha Strike on a weak shield, and then dance away out of the Circle of Equals. I am chuckling evilly the entire time, too. My one true love in game is an Akira class Heavy Escort, USS
Relentless NCC-93356. I went to a tank in game and then a science ship. But neither one gave me the emotional satisfaction
Relentless does. Of course, I have an Ops guy for a toon instead of a Tactical guy. And right along with this,
Relentless is kitted out with and optimized for 'theme' weapons instead of the sexier ones everyone else likes. I dabble in those once in awhile but mostly I stick to what I have now.
What?! We're reading stuff from someone who doesn't even play STO correctly?! Where's the DEL button?! UnFriend this loser immediately!
The reason I stuck with the theme weapons was it was all I could afford at the time. Unless I wanted to spend Real Money. Where's the challenge or honor in that, hunh? Since I am a, "run what you brung" kinda guy, I decided to stay with one or two weapon types and simply improve the versions I have, rather than try to learn every weapon in the game. I also decided to make the rest of the ship as beneficial as possible to these weapons. I give up some things against someone whose ship is optimized to defend against my chosen weapons. But against everyone else, I do pretty well. Stay with whatever weapons you choose. For as long as you can. It does not matter why you chose that particular weapon. You chose it and you like it so you can learn to use it very effectively. Same goes for ships. There is a hull somewhere where the devs had you in mind when they were designing it. Neither of you knew it at the time, but hey. There will always be someone somewhere who will try to talk you out of your preferred hull or weapon types and into their versions. You'll be unhappy right after you change. You'll listen to a never ending, boring dirge of why you now suck and how you need to do this or that better because "blah blah blah". More importantly, you'll stop enjoying STO as much as you ought to. What used to be really fun will now be an endless, soul numbing, spirit grinding, zombie slog on a never ending stat quest.
Come back to us. Please. We've missed the sound of your sweet laughter.
UPDATE: My Klingon ship is one I loved in SFC III, the
Vor 'cha Attack Cruiser. Pixel for pixel, this was the very most effective ship in SFC III. Properly outfitted and used well, there was no ship she could not take in a one on one fight in SFC III. The preceding is an entirely personal and subjective opinion. The
Vor 'cha does not disappoint here in STO, either. It is a tank, so it has all of the tank's strengths. But it has most of the benefits of an escort as far as movement and weaponry.
Relentless is the ship I love because she is just so darn much fun in a PvP fight. No one in anything larger really takes you seriously until it is far too late. But
Qul'Taj(Fire Blade) is
Relentless after she's OD'd on steroids. Which makes me feel absolutely invincible. To the point where I will pick a fight with a Tactical Cube just because I can.
Lead, d****t! Lead!
Right after I finally got a good set of cannons and torps for
Relentless, I noticed something. Whenever I put the nose of my ship slightly ahead of the target along its path, my weapons hit much more often and seemed to be much more effective. Should have guessed the dev team would do something like this and I feel like a big dummy for not noticing sooner. All torps have a timer on them. A torp chasing the stern of a ship which is already moving at maximum speed away from it will usually not catch it. Save your torps for bow on and flank shots. Unless you're at knife fighting range, then, "Fire One! Fire Two! All fish running straight, hot, and normal!" Torps, even the big scary ones, accelerate much faster than any ship. Of course the big scary ones can be shot down. I've not noticed if this works with beam weapons because I am also a "pew pew pew" kinda guy. I prefer cannons over beams. I am assuming it does.
Only start the fights you know you can win
This seems self explanatory, doesn't it? So why do I see people in STO in Runabouts popping off at Tactical Cubes?
Voyager was a pretty good Star Trek series overall. However, Janeway would last about thirty seconds here. She got away with it for the same reason Jim Kirk did: They mounted script writers instead of phasers. No one outclasses this kind of firepower. Does this mean you should never take on a Cube and should always run away? Nope. Let the situation dictate your next move, though. You and twenty of your closest friends can run down one Cube and then play with it like cat does with a mouse. The Cube may have just won a pyrrhic victory over two or three Star Cruisers and be weakened enough so that your popguns will finish the job. You probably ought to take that shot.
He who fires first, fires last
I've noticed something in STO. The fights seem much more difficult whenever the Enemy shoots before I do. I dunno why this is, I just know it is. Always have something loaded out and ready to go. Max range is 10.0km, so the very second the Range readout changes to green, pull the trigger. Don't let the Enemy shoot first! If you do, you'll spend the whole fight reacting to their moves instead of imposing your own order on them. Difficult to seize the initiative back once you start cutting hulls.
Combined Arms is the way to go
Use the buffs to add to your target's woes. Some I really like are Boarding Party and Eject Warp Plasma. Adding these into a torp attack can ruin a Centurion's whole afternoon. Too many things to think about which are too close together and moving too fast puts you quite nicely inside the Enemy's observe-plan-execute cycle. The biggest problems with an effective combined arms attack are sequencing and timing. Takes some practice to get it right. If you goof, you may wind up leaving yourself horribly open for a devastating counterattack. Easy fix for this. Press F for Respawn, lol.
Hit 'em again! Harder this time!
Alpha Strikes are the way to go in STO. Fire everything, every time you get the chance. Boot 'em, don't spatter 'em. If you cannot fire everything right this second, hold off a bit more until you can. You'll take fewer shots, but each of those shots will do more damage. Ripple fire looks very cool and will keep the Enemy under attack longer. But the Devs included a Damage Per Second stat in all of the weapon info sheets. So they must want us to read and use this. An Alpha Strike is the best way I know to do so.