Admiral T'pral's crew

I noticed today I’d gotten my monthly allotment of C Store points in Star Trek Online (I get some each month for being a subscriber). There wasn’t anything I particularly wanted to _buy_… I have all the ships I need. Maybe some of the uniform options.

There are _lots_. Most of the time, you’re the only one who sees your bridge officers. How they’re dressed has no effect on the game. But it’s _fun_. I broke down and bought the Bajoran militia uniforms that Odo and Major Kira wore on Star Trek: Deep Space 9.

Then I decided I really needed a changeling on my crew. I brought my Romulan bridge officer kicking and screaming to the tailor, lightened his skin, shaved off a lot of sharp edges, partially melted him, and I had me my changeling.

All the males on my crew got Odo’s uniform. All the females got Kira’s, but in Starfleet section colors. You can see all my bridge officers above. Not all of them are thrilled with their new look. I guess they liked the regulation thigh-high boots of the old uniform.

T'pral's Fleet

Not much of an admiral without a fleet; after collecting all the bridge crew together, I thought I should do the same for her ships. My science admiral has an entirely different fleet, and my Klingon yet another. This is T’pral’s. Mostly escorts. I scaled them to the relative sizes of the ships according to the Memory Alpha wiki. The Akira came out larger than I expected.

So; pictures.

Most MMOs, if they allow it at all, make changing your avatar’s appearance a time consuming and possibly expensive task. In Star Trek Online, a trip to in-game tailors on any space station allow you to change everything from your uniform, to your hairstyle, to the smallest detail of your appearance. You can store up to five appearances at once which you can swap with a keystroke at will.

No other MMO offers that.

In my Vulcan engineer’s long career in Starfleet, the years and the burdens of command have taken her from the fresh enthusiasm of a newly minted ensign to the grizzled veteran of years of campaigns against the Breen, the Borg, the Devidians, the Romulans, the Klingons and all the other myriad enemies of the Federation.

Thanks to the tailor system, not only has her appearance changed — making her more distinguished with age and authority — but all her previous appearances are saved to my local hard drive. I can load them up at any tailor.

If your characters are more than just manikins on which to drape raid gear with increasingly bizarre shoulderpads, you might like what you can do with them in Star Trek Online.

Bonus feature: You can do the same with every member of your bridge crew and away teams as well. Want to make your crew change from the young crew of the original Star Trek series to the aged geriatric crew of Star Trek V?

That can happen.

(By the way, I designed the uniforms T’pral is wearing).

Infected Space (Elite)

Infected (Space) is very simple. There’s only one thing you have to do. And that is all focus and kill the nanite spheres and probes when they pop. That’s all. Infected (Space) is a test of teamwork. If someone goes off on their own, the optional is all but lost.

There are two optional objectives. Complete the entire task force in fifteen minutes, and don’t allow any nanite sphere or nanite probe to heal one of the transformers. If any nanite probe or nanite sphere gets close enough to heal a transformer, the optional is instantly lost.

The strategy is pretty simple. If you see a nanite sphere or nanite probe, kill it. One ship can easily take the probes, but unlike Khitomer Accord, they don’t come alone. They come mixed with tougher nanite spheres and very tough sphere escorts. Additionally, random spheres come to defend the transformers.

Kill the transformers in order. Trying to kill both at once will launch an unkillable wave of spheres and probes.

Infected playbook

There’s a lot of different strategies to winning Infected, especially the elite version, where the transformer guard spheres are replaced by cubes. I’m going to write down the way it’s normally done in normal mode.

You start facing a tactical cube threatening a Federation starbase, Starbase 82. Like all tactical cubes, it has very strong shields, strong hull, strong weapons, and heavy plasma torpedoes that can take down an unprotected ship in one hit. It has two sphere guards which will try to tractor you so the cube can kill you.

It’s pretty annoying.

Once the cube and the spheres are dead, move to the transformer marked with a (2). It is healed by four generators. Kill the guardian sphere (or cube in elite), the generators and then the transformer.

While this is going on, nanite spheres, nanite probes and regular spheres will arrive through the gateway. Break off and kill them. Seriously. Continuing to damage the transformer may cause another wave of probes and spheres. If any of the nanite spheres or probes heal the transformer, it will instantly lose the optional. Additionally, since they are healing damage to the transformer, it will take longer to finish the mission which means more waves of spheres until you have half a dozen circling around.

So when you see a sphere or probe while you’re killing a transformer, take a break and help kill them. Position yourself in front of the transformer. Burn it down. When enemies come, swivel 90 degrees, kill them, turn back and continue the assault.

With that down, go to the transformer on the right side (3) and do the same thing.

The cube and gateway

With the transformers down, a tactical cube will arrive to guard the gateway. Both the cube and the gateway must die to get the optional. The cube takes longer to kill and does more damage, so I would kill the cube first, then kill the gateway. Some suggest killing the cube right at the gateway, so that the cube will damage the gateway, but that’s pretty hard to arrange, and it puts ships in range of the gate’s guns. Getting on the far side of the cube keeps everyone out of the range of the gate guns.

If everyone works together to kill the adds as they spawn, this special task force comes down to raw damage. Unlike Cure and Khitomer Accord (walkthrough still to come), nobody has to do a special job, Just kill enemies, then kill the gates, repeat until finished.

Killing the Cube

Before Star Trek Online implemented the PvE queuer, getting into special task forces was a matter of sitting in Gamma Orionis, spamming for groups. And the people wanting to fill groups would have insane pre-qualifications, like specific classes and builds, and they would kick you out if you didn’t fit their narrow requirements. You also were obliged to stay for all parts of the special task force, all space parts and all ground parts.

The PvE queue splits the ground missions and space missions apart, gives separate rewards for each, and does all the role balancing automatically. Nobody is going to kick you out of an STF. But they will expect you to know what to do. They themselves might have no idea what to do, but they will expect YOU to.

The secret is: they’re easy once you know what’s happening.

The easiest space mission is The Cure. If you can master this one, you pretty much have all the skills to do Infected and Khitomer Accord.

Map for "The Cure"

In “The Cure” space STF, the captain and crew of the IKS Kang were sent to the Vorn system to check up on Borg movements but no word has come from them since. Our job is to head in, save the Kang and destroy the Borg.

The optional objectives (for the normal mode) are to make sure the Kang doesn’t drop beneath 75% health, and to destroy all the Borg and hail the Kang within 15 minutes.

The Borg are using the Vorn system to assimilate and launch a Borg/Klingon armada. Their first target: the IKS Kang. There are three Borg cubes constructing and launching ships at the Kang. Each cube is being healed by four nanite probes. Each nanite probe is being healed by a matching nanite probe.

One ship needs to take charge of protecting the Kang from ships launched by the cubes marked 2 and 3. Usually a cruiser or science ship is best for this. Many people choose to tank the ships right at the Kang, but this is a mistake. Assimilated ships that are within weapons range of the Kang will fire upon it, so it’s best if they never get that near. The assimilated Klingon ships move VERY SLOWLY for a reason. Secondly, if the protecting ship gets blown up, it can respawn and full impulse to intercept the ships before they finish making their way to the Kang. If they are already AT the Kang, they can likely do enough damage to ruin the optional before you get back.

If you’re new to STFs, you’ll probably want to follow everyone to the cube marked with a 1. That cube will have already launched a couple weak assimilated Birds of Prey. Kill them on the way in. It’s the responsibility of the kill team to make sure no Borg ships escape to cause more trouble for the protector.

Kill the bottom nanite probes, then the upper nanite probes, then the cube. Head immediately to the Kang, as the other two cubes are launching more powerful Negh’Var cruisers and the protector ship is going to need help clearing the swarm. Once all the enemies are dead, the strike team moves to the cube marked 2, while the protector moves between cube 3 and the Kang.

After cube 2, the strike team helps clear the newly launched Negh’Var warships and then kills the third cube, ignoring the weak raptors that are launched. The protector still deals with those. Once the third cube is dead, kill all the remaining Borg ships, fly to the Kang and hail it.

The Assimilated Carrier

Optional objectives should be done at this point if the cube killing went fast enough and the Kang didn’t take significant damage. It is very hard to get the optional objective if there’s more than one ship on intercept duty, or that ship can’t take the damage. If you are a cruiser or science ship captain, it is your responsibility to ensure you have a lot of shield and hull heals because dying is bad. Interceptor ships should also be able to kill the two Borg birds of prey easily (they have almost no hull).

Once the Kang is away, an Assimilated Carrier will warp in. It’s a tank and spank; burn it down. It launches fighters, drones and BoPs which will die to any cannon scatter or beam fire at will or can just be ignored. Don’t get distracted by taking down the weak ships, just kill the carrier.

You can pick up your optional and mission rewards where the IKS Kang was parked.

Be sure to roll NEED on any Encrypted Data Chips or Rare Borg Salvage that randomly drop. You need EDCs for ship gear (40 per piece if you go for the Mark XI/Veteran stuff, and you should) and Borg Salvage for requisitions with which you can buy Mark XI weapons which are uniquely powerful against Borg ships. There is a very rare Borg Tech that can drop here, I can’t remember which one, but it can be turned in and instantly get you a ship bit worth 40 EDCs.

If this is helpful, let me know! If it can be improved, definitely let me know!