I inched my way to Lieutenant 8 this weekend and learned a lot more about what I should be doing in game. Sadly my learning was also hampered by some pretty annoying bugs in an area I was attempting to do missions in. One required me to deliver products to a planet in need – you may be familiar with this quest called ‘The needs of the many” the problem is there appears to be a respawn timer for you to be able to help planets. Plus it took me an exceptionally long time of scanning in the Delta Volantis Sector just to find a place with a planet to aid. Once I received the message that I should go help I entered only to fly around in lazy circles. Turns out they didn’t really need my help after all.
In that same sector I was helping a friend scan down and explore different locations. One place we were sent to had a ground mission that started off wrong right off the bat. We were there, but our bridge officers were no where to be seen. Well, that’s not exactly true, we could see where they SHOULD have been standing on the mini map. We just couldn’t actually SEE them. Our mission was to clear out groups of Klingons, so we decided even though we couldn’t see our bridge officers we’d attempt to do just that. Except it wasn’t just our bridge officers who were lost under the terrain, it was also the Klingons. It’s really hard to fight things that you can’t see. We knew we were surrounded, but we may as well have been fighting ghosts. The one saving factor was that our bridge officer ghosts could see these new Klingon ghosts, and we could target through them. It was a lot of melee combat that ignores shields and after dying a few times we decided the ghost Klingons and bridge officers were really not worth it, and called it a night.
Despite the bugs I still had a lot of fun. I answered questions for Q’s son (thank you Tipa for letting me know this was not actually who I thought it was) and won some nice items. I sold a few extra things that I didn’t think I’d use in order to fund some purchases. Picked up some photons for my ship and spec’d down that line for space combat. I’m really excited about getting to the point where I can fly a different ship, an actual science vessel would be nice.
Tipa asked me what I thought of STO compared to EVE and I replied that I felt it was much more hands on. Since you’re in control of a character that can leave the ship, and because you actually control the movement of the ship in specific. In EVE I’m so used to orbiting around the bad guys as I fight them (or some other entity in space) where as in STO I actually have to move around lest my shields get low on one side. The crafting on the other hand is far superior in EVE, and the learning curve in EVE is also a lot higher. Both games feel foreign to me since they involve science fiction which I know little to nothing about. Playing a game that’s basically written in a completely different language from the one I am comfortable with still proves to be quite challenging. I had the same feeling with Perpetuum as well.
Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!
For whatever reason there’s always been (from closed beta to today) more bugs in the exploration missions than anywhere else. They’re not consistent either. Most aid missions and ground missions work fine, but occasionally you run into both of the bugs you mentioned above. Very irritating, especially given that the aid missions are on a timer so you won’t find another one for a while.
The good news is that now that Sector Space is updated, they are working on a ground combat update, and the exploration system is the next major one that’s planned for a review/overhaul.