style="width: 640px; height: 360px;" alt="STO Ship"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/76083">


Star Trek Online
launches (pun intended) in a few short weeks on February 2nd, with the
open
beta starting this week! For those of you who haven’t been
decoding all of the
transmissions from Cryptic Studios and scouring the forums for every
scrap of
information, we’re providing a bite-sized list of critical
need
to know items.
I like to call them Nuggets of Critical Knowledge Everyone Really
Seeks, aka
“Nockers.” In no particular order except numerical,
here
are ten Nockers for
your reading pleasure:

style="">1. Star Trek for
non-Trekkies

style=""> You
don’t have
to be
a hardcore fan of the shows and movie. STO isn’t just for
Trekkies who can name
the episode of every show. The game is quite accessible for those of us
who
know what Star Trek is, maybe watched a few shows or movies when we
were
younger or have never (gasp!) watched it. Those that know the lore will
find and
soak up the accumulation of canon in the game and the rest can simply
enjoy the
game for some solid MMOG fun.

style="">2. Classless classes

Each
player will choose a profession (see #6
below), but
that does not mean you have chosen a class and are locked into just
that
playstyle. The game is created to attract players that want to max out
one
playstyle, but also those that like to change it up. By changing out
ships,
officers and kits, characters can change their focus from PvE to PvP,
or even
their role; DPS, Healer, Tank. The end game is very open for players to
be able
to accommodate all kinds of missions with a single character instead of
a
stable of alts. Essentially players can “alt” using
one
character.

style="">3. Leveling up is
Rank.

STO
uses a skill based system rather than
experience based
so players choose the
progression of
their character by allocating skill points to increase their rank.
Completion
of missions will reward characters with skill points which allows for
leveling
up/increasing in rank. A complete list of ranks can be found in our
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/78807">previous
beta journal.

style="">4. Traits versus
Skills versus Powers versus Kits

Traits
are innate abilities of a character
determined during
character creation. An example of a Trait is “10% Resistance
to
cold” which
would be specific to that race.

Skills
are the abilities within each profession
(Science,
Tactical, and Engineering) that will enhance the Powers which
correspond to
that aspect of a player’s abilities. Skills can be specific
to a
power or can
be more general and affect multiple powers.

Powers
are most analogous to what traditional MMOG
players
would call spells. Powers are specific to the profession, however
Powers can be
found in Kits in addition to each player’s profession.

style="">5. Science, Tactical
and Engineering – Careers, Ships and Officers

Three
themes are evident in the player choices for
personal
careers, the ships they choose and the bridge officers available. Those
themes
are Science, Tactical and Engineering. A character’s style="">career
starts out with a basic decision to roll a Science Officer
(Healer), Tactical Officer (DPS), or Engineering Officer (Tank).
Additionally ships
come in three flavors, Escorts
which focus on DPS, Science Vessels which favor Science officers (for
fleet
support) and Cruisers that correlate to Engineering (tanking). Last but
not
least, your bridge officers
are
available as Science, Tactical and Engineering officers and will
correspond to
the same type of attributes as those found in player careers.

style="">6. Racial Comments

Star
Trek Online has several venerable races from
the Star
Trek universe. On the Starfleet side, players can choose from eight
races,
while the Klingon Empire currently boasts four races. If by some chance
the
races available don’t fit your vision of the game, players
can
create their own
custom race. Each race will receive four traits. The difference races
are
designed with pre-determined trait(s), with and the remaining are
chosen by the
player. Custom created races allow for four traits to be chosen.

style="width: 640px; height: 360px;" alt="Klingon Space Battle"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/76084/preview">

style="">7. Play a Klingon, PvP
is out there.

At the
beginning of the game, everyone starts as a
member of
Starfleet. Achieving a certain level and/or through a quest chain (this
has
changing during beta), players unlock the ability to start a Klingon
character.
As we found in our href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/78574">exclusive
Q&A, Klingons are
currently considered PvP-only, and have different paths of
ship
progression than Starfleet, who doesn’t want a Bird of Prey?

style="">8. Bridge Officers,
Managing your team(s)

Bridge
Officers will make up your captain’s
stable of
personal team members. Each officer will specialize in Science,
Tactical or
Engineering and possess skills and powers to aid your character in both
space
and ground combat. The teams are comprised of five officers that you
will
accumulate over time (characters start with one officer that is
received during
training). As captain, players will choose the officers for each of
their
teams, both ground and space, which may (or may not) be different. Team
composition will depend on the mission type (PVE, PVP, Exploration,
etc.).
Bridge officers can equip kits to enhance their powers, and thus boost
the
benefits to the ship, team or captain.

style="">9. Crafting comes in
two flavors.

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/77956">Crafting
will
encompass two different variations in the game. The first is the
traditional
gathering, harvesting, manufacturing which is common in many MMOGs.
During time
spent both in space and on the ground, players will find nodes for
harvesting
which can be taken back to Memory Alpha for processing into usable
items.

The
second flavor or crafting is the
“harvesting” of bridge
officer abilities. During a player’s career rare bridge
officers
with unique
skills may be found. These rare skills can be learned by the
captain’s current
bridge officers. In turn, that captain can train other
captain’s
bridge
officers with these unique skills. Essentially, captains will collect
and
harvest these skills, which can then be sold in the form of training
other
player’s officers.

style="">10. Ground and Space

The
game is divided into two aspects, space and
ground
combat. Players’ captains and their bridge officers will
accumulate skills and
powers that increase efficiency in both of these areas. Missions may
include
space or ground combat or both, however players have the choice of
which
missions to accept. Gear, kits and other items will also be ship/flight
or
ground crew specific.

  style="width: 640px; height: 360px;" alt="Space Flight"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/76081">

That
covers the basics for those of you just
starting to get
your Trek on. Each of the above could be turned into a multi-volume
discussion,
so we’ve kept it brief. If you’d like additional
information or want to dive
deeper into the above points, let us know in the forums.


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Star Trek Online Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

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