Star Trek Online at Ten Ton Hammer

No matter what Star Trek series fans preferred, there was one thing that every fan loved: starship combat. From the basic combat of the original series with the actors throwing themselves around the set to the complex fleet actions of Deep Space Nine and beyond, with clusters of ships firing like mad and ships violently exploding everywhere, starship combat is both exciting and darn cool. Not to mention that awesome starship combat saved the Trek franchise with Wrath of Khan. Khaaaaannnn!!!! Naturally, when Star Trek Online came out, I couldn’t wait to try my hand at some starship combat. I wanted to outmaneuver my opponent, knock down his shields with strafing fire from my phasers, and launch photon torpedoes like mad.

Once I got my starship in STO, I wanted to be a good starship captain and not just blunder through fights. However, a lot of the things that modify your starship aren’t exactly clear in what they do. What makes this weapon better than that one? What does this bonus type actually do? A lot of things are not laid out very clearly in regards to how certain things affect your starship, including the most basic items. To that end, Ten Ton Hammer would like to welcome you to Starship Basics, a guide to your starship detailing what everything means and what it exactly does.

The Starship Basics curriculum will be in the mode of several articles. This article, being the first, will deal with the basic attributes of a starship and starship slots for equipment. This will give you the basic info for your starship. Later courses in Starship Basics will cover weapons, shields, consoles (in depth), deflector arrays, and all of the things that impact your starship’s performance.

Starship Stats
Every starship, no matter what type, has the following stats: hull, shields, bonus accuracy, crit chance, crit severity, crew complement, crew recovery rate, alive crew, flight speed, inertia, and resist. Let’s examine each one for what it actually means.

• Hull – The hull refers to the ship’s health. It is the amount of damage that a ship can take before being destroyed. Some ship types have a higher hull than others, such as cruisers versus escorts. If a shield is down and you take damage from that arc, that damage is done directly to the hull. When your hull hits zero, your ship goes BOOM!
• Shields – Each ship has a shield for each arc: fore, aft, left, and right. Shields are your basic defense against enemy fire. Once a shield is down, enemy damage directly impacts the hull. A lot of shields have a “bleedthrough” rating. An example would be that a shield has a 5% bleedthrough, which means that 5% of any damage done by enemy fire bypasses the shield and hits the hull. So a disruptor shot that inflicts 100 damage would impact the hull for 5 points.
• Bonus Accuracy – This reflects any bonus accuracy you have to hit with your ship weapons. Normally, there is a 95% chance to hit with your weapons if the target has no defense. Any bonus accuracy is added to the base of 95%. If your total accuracy goes over 100%, the extra percentage over 100 is added to the critical severity.
• Crit Chance – This is the percentage chance that each shot that you take results in a critical strike, which inflicts more damage.
• Crit Severity – This is the increased damage that you inflict if you hit with a critical shot. For example, if your phaser normally does 100 damage with a shot and you have a 25% crit severity rating, which means you will do 125 total damage if you land a critical shot.
• Crew Complement – This is the maximum number of crew that you have on board. Crew complement does not include bridge crew. The amount of crew that you have affects your repair rates for the hull and subsystem. In addition, the crew complement affects the effectiveness of boarding parties, crew based skills possessed by the captain, and the engineering team. During combat, your crew will be injured. Injured crew member turn yellow-orange. Uninjured crew members are white, and disable crew members are grey.
• Crew Recovery Rate – This stat refers to the number of crew that recover every second. If your crew is being hammered, you’ll definitely want to run away so as to allow your crew to recover, which, in turn, helps increase the repair rates to your hull and other systems.
• Alive Crew – This stat is exactly what it says, the amount of crew currently alive.
• Flight Speed – This is the maximum speed of your ship.
• Inertia – This stat reflects how nimble or sluggish your ship is while turning. The higher the number, the more quickly you’ll be able to turn your ship to get your weapons to bear upon your foes.
• Resist – This stat is broken down in various subcategories. Basically, this stat reflects your ship’s resistance to various forms of damage such as phaser, disruptors, kinetic, etc. The higher the resistance, the less the damage you take from an attack of that type.

Your starship slots and basic info

Starship Slots
Your starship has a number of slots for however you wish to equip your ship. When you gain a ship after entering a new tier, it will come fully equipped. However, you can increase the effectiveness of your ship by upgrading the items in the various slots. Each ship has slots for:

• Fore Weapons – These are weapons that fire in a forward arc from the front of the ship. You cannot place mines or turrets in the fore weapons slots.
• Deflector – In this slot are placed Ship Deflector Dishes, which add a bonus to Starship Sensor Array or Starship Sensors skills.
• Shields – Not surprisingly, your Starship Shields go here.
• Impulse – Your impulse engines go here. This enhances the flight speed and turn rate of your ship.
• Aft Weapons – These are weapons that fire from your ship’s aft (rear). You cannot equip cannons in an aft weapon slot.
• Devices – You can equip various devices here that you can activate when needed. The most common are batteries to recharge a shield or weapon.
• Engineering Console – This is where you put engineering consoles.
• Science Console – This is where you put science consoles.
• Tactical Console – This is where you place tactical consoles.

Consoles increase starship functions in accordance with their type. For example, a tactical console might give an increase in accuracy to beam weapons. Please note that you do not need a console equipped to have a bridge officer manning a bridge position.

Types of Ships
There are a variety of ship types for your character to captain. The main criterion is the manner of your playing style. Ten Ton Hammer has the stats for both Federation and Klingon ships available in STO. Basically, the ship types fall into the classic tank, healer, and DPS “holy trinity” of MMOGs, however, there is a great deal of versatility with the ship designs so that there is a blurring of the three types.

The tank style of ships is Cruisers, which have a lot of hull and have additional engineering console slots. Healing, or support, tends to be done by Science vessels, who have increased auxiliary power and have additional science console slots. DPS ships are Escorts (or almost any Klingon ship) which have the ability to mount cannons and inflict a tremendous amount of damage. These ships sport additional tactical console slots for your killing pleasure.

No matter what type of ship you decide upon, they all share the same type of attributes. The difference is in what the actual stats are, which vary by type and tier. As you progress to higher tiers, the ship stats will increase and so will the number of slots available to you to upgrade your ship. A tier 2 Escort has 2 tactical stations, 1 science, and 1 engineering, while a Tier 4 Escort has 3 tactical, 2 science, and 2 engineering.

This concludes the introduction to Starship Basics. We’ve covered the basic starship information that you should be familiar with as a captain of a starship. While there are a number of different types of ships, they all share the same stats and slots. The chief difference between ships is how their stats compare to one another and the number of slots available for each type of slot. You may now report to the holodeck for Commander Worf’s physical fitness class. Next topic in Starship Basics is weapons or things that go BOOM!