by Jeff Francis on May 21, 2010
No
matter what
style="font-style: italic;">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
style="font-style: italic;">Wrath of Khan.
Khaaaaannnn!!!! Naturally, when
style="font-style: italic;">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
style="font-style: italic;">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.
style="font-weight: bold;">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.
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/84663">
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 574px; height: 596px;"
alt="star trek online ship slots and info"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/84663">
="">
Your starship slots and basic info
style="font-weight: bold;">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:
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.
style="font-weight: bold;">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
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/sto/federation/ships"
target="_blank">Federation
and
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/sto/klingon/ships"
target="_blank">Klingon
ships available in
style="font-style: italic;">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!