Star Trek Online Goes F2P on Tuesday - Here's Why You Should Care/Play It

[BenWah]

Can I play a tribble?

[The JG Man]

This games been on Steam since retail?

The game was removed from the listing just before it went FTP. If you already have the game, I believe it's received whatever update necessary for it to carry on working normally. I'm confident it'll go back under the Free To Play section under Steam, it's merely a question of when.

So, completed the tutorial and reached the starbase. The ground combat isn't too bad, although it seems a bit convoluted to get to the proper third-person shooting mode...two button presses, in the right order? It's not a big deal, but I don't just see why you can't press one and do it. Similarly, I'm not overly keen on the speed control for the ship. I may need to do a fair bit of remapping to get things comfortable. I also found that my ship turned as slow as hell, but maybe that's just starting it up.

Anyhow, I dived in and am an Engineer (I think?) but I haven't used any of my skill points yet because good lord, that looks complicated. Still, my name is Odan and my ship is the U.S.S. Convergence. Do we have a fleet yet for RPS?

One final, curious thing; when I downloaded that link, I ran the executable of the patcher from inside the zipped folder, without extracting it. Now, I don't know how much of an impact that had, but I cannot actually find the folder for the game. It's installed, obviously, but I tried doing a search for it in all the usual places, doing a search in the search option of the Windows panel and I just can't find it. Any idea where it'd auto-download to? On top of that, when I went to create my character, the screen appeared to get bombarded with menus and I ended up not being able to see the character I was creating. Fortunately, he looks alright, but that was a bit frustrating.

//EDIT: I think it downloaded it all to a temporary folder. That is...bad. I may wait for it to come out on Steam afterall...//

Still, the ground combat is decent and the ship combat seems decent enough. Obviously need to sink a bit more into it, but it has promise, I'll give it that.

[Dominic Tarason]

The ground combat isn't too bad, although it seems a bit convoluted to get to the proper third-person shooting mode...two button presses, in the right order?

You just press B to switch between RPG and shooter controls. As for space combat, your starting ship is pretty terrible and handles like a beached whale. If you want something more agile, the moment you hit level 10, get an Escort, which is Federation standard language for 'small, fast gunboat'. They're best played like a fighter, with lots of cannons on the front and turrets on the rear, wheras cruisers are more age-of-sail material with broadsides aplenty.

Also, the game has been pulled from Steam for the moment, because it was previously under the Atari banner. I think Perfect World want to integrate Steam achievements and other standard stuff before putting it back up.

[scorpionbruno]

I'm a huge SF fan and when it became FTP I jumped to Warpspeed and entered the galaxy.

Leveling up is fairly easy and the story so far is great.

Childhood memories are coming back while playing :-) . Being Commander Kirk is Da bomb .

[Dominic Tarason]

Oh yeah, one more handy tech-tip that springs to mind: In the launcher, click 'Options' in the top-right and tick 'disable on-demand patching'. What this does is force the game to download EVERYTHING, rather than try to intelligently call down patch and content data on demand as required.

It'll probably mean a couple of hours worth of download now, but much less waiting later.

[The JG Man]

As for space combat, your starting ship is pretty terrible and handles like a beached whale. If you want something more agile, the moment you hit level 10, get an Escort, which is Federation standard language for 'small, fast gunboat'.

Like I said in a previous post, it's a toss up between wanting a Prometheus and a Galaxy X, where I think the latter just nips in, so I may carry on the cruiser route. Regarding Steam, I'm aware of what they're doing, I just wish it was done quicker.

[Gentleman Jim Stacey]

Started playing on Tuesday. IMO it's fucking great and has made me totally forget World of Tanks.

Space combat is really great and the whole thing just gives me a huge Trekkie nerdgasm. I hope there's a Romulan faction in the future, or at least Cardassian (if the whole Romulan homeworld being destroyed thing is a problem).

[Vexing Vision]

So is this still "everyone's a captain, have at you"-style? Or can I actually populate my crews' ship with my friends?

To this point, Puzzle Pirates is the only MMO that ever managed to get multiplayer-vessels done RIGHT. I don't want to be the captain, I want to be the tactical officer or doctor!

[Gentleman Jim Stacey]

Sounds cool on paper, but it would amount to twiddling your thumbs for 20 seconds and then pressing the torpedo hotkey.

[R-F]

This is known as "you play this game and realise STO is terrible".

[Heliocentric]

Sounds cool on paper, but it would amount to twiddling your thumbs for 20 seconds and then pressing the torpedo hotkey.

An mmo I can play while eating a meal, bargain.

[Labbes]

Is there a RPS fleet going on or are you all space captaining for yourselves?

[Dominic Tarason]

This is known as "you play this game and realise STO is terrible".

That's great if you can cram five very like-minded people with their own computers into a room. Unfortunately, that's a multitude of luxuries that most of us don't have. Oh, and it's $40.

[celt]

Playing it due to this tread. Loving it so far.

It's very complex. Lots of depth. I don't understand quite a few of the many interlocking systems but I'm having a blast. I hate immediately understanding everything I need to do. I keep being impressed with the design decisions I DO understand. I love Trek and this is making me love it more.

It scares me how much I'm enjoying it so far. I'm weirdly hoping it fails me soon because I was hoping to have my MMO slot open for Tera Online when it hits.

[vinraith]

Anyway, here's something useful: http://t.co/EzJQ9jER

Want to bypass that awful Pando downloader for the game? Grab that. It's the autopatcher, stripped of all the game data. It'll run, see that you don't have any of the game data files, and pull everything down from the main file server instead of choking your line with pseudo-torrents. Much faster and more reliable.

Thank you for that, Dominic. With that I can give this a shot now, rather than waiting for it to turn up on Steam.

[The JG Man]

If you get it to work vinraith, can you tell me how you did it? I ran the .exe as an extracted file, but not in its own folder, and it downloaded everything, but to a temporary folder. When I next tried to play, it wanted to download it all again. Some stupidity on my behalf, sure, but if you do get it to work, that would be useful for me.

Perhaps if enough of us are on, we can make RPStarfleet or some sort.

[Labbes]

How about "Rock Paper Phaser"?

[R-F]

That's great if you can cram five very like-minded people with their own computers into a room. Unfortunately, that's a multitude of luxuries that most of us don't have. Oh, and it's $40.

It's entirely possible to play over Vent or Skype.

[Gentleman Jim Stacey]

I thought leveling was slowing down, then I turned it to Advanced and now I'm getting 2K plus just for system patrols. I'll be a Klingon by sundown.

[Dominic Tarason]

If you get it to work vinraith, can you tell me how you did it? I ran the .exe as an extracted file, but not in its own folder, and it downloaded everything, but to a temporary folder. When I next tried to play, it wanted to download it all again. Some stupidity on my behalf, sure, but if you do get it to work, that would be useful for me.

Given that temporary folders self-clear, the solution is pretty obvious - actually unzip it before you run it.