2013-2409: The Neo-Legacy of Romulobsters begins here...

There are a lot of Space MMOs you could be playing right now. EVE Online has been awesome following it's 10th anniversary, and I'm among the now 250+ Kite Co. Truckers. SWTOR is still full of large, active guilds, a paid expansion, and a F2P model that is meant to push you towards being a subscriber.

But none of them has Denise Crosby, Zach Quinto, and Leonard Nimoy in the cast. None of them lets you play as a Trill, Ferengi, Klingon, Gorn, Romulan, or Reman. None of them is 100% free for all playable content (including user-created missions) in the game. For that, you need Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek. *swelling music*

Welcome to 2013's Star Trek Online, with the Legacy of Romulus expansion launching May 21st. The game has a new UI, new mechanics, a choice of three starting factions (instead of just the Federation, now every faction can start at level 1). Plus all the recent Season additions like starbases, fleet holdings, the duty officer system, and New Romulus embassies.

Dev Blogs & Videos:

• Livestream of starting a new Romulan character
• Denise Crosby video!
• Denise Crosby podcast!
• UI designer interview video
• Reman characters
• Romulan uniforms
• New Klingon Defense Force content
• Upcoming content changes (STOwiki)

Joining the SNL Federation Fleet: After your Romulan character reaches the end of the first story arc, you will have the option to ally with either the Federation or Klingons. If you ally with the Federation, your Romulan character can be invited to the SNL fleet. If you ally with the KDF, there are many fleets who will welcome you, or with enough players we can consider reviving the Intergalactic Space Crabs as a Romulan/KDF fleet.

Brand new F2P users have a restriction on in-game communication like /tells, so your best options are:

1. post details in this thread, or
2. send game mail to "@brackynews" or "@hero_swe", or
3. Fleet search for "Space Neon Lobsters" and anyone who is online should be able to invite you, provided you can "/tell name@user" them.

Returning players: If you have not logged in to your Federation character in over 12 months you have most likely been removed from the fleet, or bumped down in officer rank. No harm done, and easily fixed. Looking forward to welcoming you back and getting officer positions filled up again!

New players: STO is still entirely Free-to-Play, including the Legacy expansion. BUT if you are serious about playing long term, especially with multiple characters, you will gain a lot of perks and save a lot of unnecessary purchases by being a subscriber from levels 10 to 50 on each character. The perks persist after your subscription ends, so consider a 1-month (Gold) sub to get the most for your money.

SNL Fleet Events

Space Neon Lobsters still ride! And work together co-operatively.

For the rest of May, I'll be logging in to the game every evening (CST/GMT-6) for as long as I can manage for fleet invites and giveaways. You do not need to be logged in to receive an invite, but if you are a new F2P user /tells are restricted, so post here!

There is a lot of Mk II to Mk X gear in the fleet bank helpful for levelling up a new character, and it will all be first come first served, new players and veterans alike.

On June 1st we will have a contest/draw for in-game prizes, and ZEN cards. Watch the forums here for details!

(BTW, very likely it will be difficult to log in on the 21st, but these queues always disappear a couple days after any content update.)

Live Long, and Lobster.

Active / Recently Logged Members

Senior Officer list: (updated May 2013)

Recent Recruit Roster: (If you see your character name here, your character should have been successfully invited.)

Also, since it's a Perfectworld game. People who have recently signed up using Neverwinter can just download this and play, no registration needed!

Oddly enough I just reinstalled this after seeing Into Darkness. However my previous character was deleted... Time to grind!

I just reinstalled this a few days ago and started a new Ferengi. Would love to join the Federation with you duders! What information do you need? My Cryptic username is @Mattanimals. My Ferengi is Michael Jackson, of the U.S.S Dangerous.

If I'm being 100% honest, all I want is a re-release of Star Trek Armada that doesn't have large memory leaks that cause every single Instant Action match to crash 3/4 of the way through.

I was always interested in trying this out...I think now would be a good time to do so.

This might be a big request, but I haven't really played since launch. What are the big things that have changed? Like, really big things, so that this question is actually answerable without someone posting a dozen or so changelogs.

@ubersmake: Well I've tried to do a half-decent job with the wiki here. It's now all the way up to current. Also be sure to check the Livestream link in the post above. If you can slog through all that, come back at me with any other questions! I don't think you'll even recognise it as the same game, honestly. I started playing 1 year after launch during Crossfire, and by the end of 2011, before the F2P switch, I felt it was a whole new game from the videos I saw during the beta. So that... plus F2P conversion, plus an expansion overhaul of two factions. Also the Cryptic development staff is about triple now what it was in 2010. :)

@bibamatt: Information needs to be character@user. I can send mail globally to @user but can't invite.

@nexample1013: Fuck yeah, Armada! Best Trek games ever made.

@juiceton: Bizzare! ;__;

Can't wait for LoR! Has anyone else bought the Legacy pack? Will be using those keys to see what pops out of the Tal lock boxes.

So much Romulan stuff less than a day away. Excite!

@brackynews: Welp, the game's reinstalling now. Sometimes I forget that Giant Bomb is also a wiki. That was probably the most painless way to catch up that I've ever experienced.

I'm still pretty active (Floyd@gbrading). Contributed a fair about to the fleet already but I find it's a more difficult to get Fleet Marks now; the PvE mission browser is terrible these days and I never know if there's any point waiting for a Fleet Action.

I personally have zero interest to play as a Romulan. Played the beta and whilst it was interesting and the UI overhaul was nice I'm kind of happy to amble along in the Federation just grinding Dilithium. :P Looking forward to the fleet being a bit more active. :)

@gbrading: And we appreciate it sir! Yes they have to make queuing better. I mean they did for seasons 6/7, but still... dat old UI. X(

Man, I've been trying to patch STO since yesterday now, the process is incredibly slow and after about 4-6 hours the Cryptic launcher crashes and starts from the beginning on next launch. I want to get into the Romulan expansion. :(

Edit: seems their servers are getting overloaded. I finally managed to patch the game, then it took 3 tries to get to the character selection screen (and another 6 minutes for it to load in the characters), and then 5 minutes at the next loading screen, and after that I just got in to see a message about the servers going down for maintenance in 1 minute.

Apparently they've added the option to change the perks you originally only got when you created a character, which is pretty neat.

Will give it another try tomorrow, maybe I'll even be able to create a Romulan character then.

I've got three federation characters in the fleet already, if you just want to add them to that list. Err, though since the character selection screen is down I can only recall two of them - Damur@fisk0 and Kaarra@fisk0.

Yeah, I bought the legacy pack. Damn, I've spent way too much money on STO.

I had no idea the Space Neon Lobsters still existed. Had I known I wouldn't have started my own fleet last year. Too much time, effort, and dilithium has been put in to switch over now though.

@fisk0: Typical launch, I gotta say. No surprise. My patching went very smoothly after they did the emergency hotfix, plus I already had the Tribble assets, so only downloaded about 300MB. Gotta say Cryptic's launcher is smart about sharing local data.

Currently #4506 out of 8758 in the queue, which is usually how I decide to name my Borg BOFFs. My place isn't going down, but the line is getting longer. The textures haven't loaded properly so I have no idea what my character actually looks like. First stop, find a simple tailor!

@devilzrule27: Woohoo! Fleet alliance! Tell me the name and I'll put you in good standing so we don't wardec.... oh fucking EVE...goddammit. >_>

@brackynews: haha, perhaps I'll bring over one of my alts and plant him as a spy...i mean a...shit...um... fleet tailor?

I won't get in tonight. :(

But that's ok, tomorrow is another day. I always expect the first day of a new episode, etc. to be rough with STO and this is a whole expansion so I'm not upset or anything, just antsy to see how everything looks. And also to change my hud elements to either the Reman or Voyager color schemes. Tried them in Tribble and they looked sharp.

The reman hud is very nice.

I know a few Aussies who are into GB, I am going to get them to try STO, and SNL.

See if we can get a bit more representation on this side of the globe.

How far up the Starbase/Embassy ladder are the Space Neon Lobsters? My main is currently in a fleet but I wouldn't mind switching, as I'm more familiar with the GB community.

So decided to try this out again after Brad talking about it in the podcast and hearing about the expansion and BAM! Login queue 25000 people deep.

I think I'll try again in a week...

@lclay: Yup, I got home and tried to login. Sitting at around 21000 at this point. My husband (a lifetimer) is playing right now, so I am hearing him play all the new content while I wait.

Sigh.

Apparently the one benefit of being in Australia is that there aren't queues after work. Am looking forward to things settling down and seeing you guys on. I tend to play a fair bit, and am generally logged in while watching Unprofessional Fridays (/Saturday Mornings)

Weeeeeeeeell ... if I started up EVE and am currently enjoying my time with Kite, why not this? SET PHASERS TO FUN

Just installed this and going to try it out! If I make it past the story ark I will certainly reach out to SNL!

Just re-installed and rolled up a new Fed, I bought a CE at launch and played for 6 months or so, so I should have no problem getting in touch with you duders!

EDIT: Is there a reason that I can't find Space Neon Lobsters in the fleet finder?

EDIT 2: On top of that, I can't even find any of the officers via a person search... There is only one server right?

How is the ground combat now? I wasn't a fan of it when it first released however I really liked the space combat.

@jnal Well the old fashioned combat is still there, but they added a "shooter mode" that I think is much more fun. It's still a little janky, but it's pretty simple to use and you can switch to it on the fly, so it works in my opinion.

@jesterpc238: Fleet finder does not work very well. Definitely not by browsing, but usually turns up in a search. Person search does not function in any practical way without already being friends. Mail me, as I said. :)

@grixxel: WE ARE SPACE BROTHERS. <EVE on desktop, STO on laptop>

@jnal: Ground combat is still nothing to be a fan of. But it improved a lot in Season 4 if you never played it after that.

@unangbangkay: Level 7, tier 2 starbase, and ready to upgrade to tier 2 embassy once a million dilithium appears outta nowhere!

So, I'm pretty sure I'm doing to download this tonight. Any good resources/advice for a beginner? The one month gold is a good start.

@martian_dogman kindly added my Rommie, Ronet, to the fleet.

The start is pretty chill, not really anything to worry about. Though it depends on if you are going to roll a Romulan or Starfleet, they are almost like different games at the get go.

Just started a few days ago. My captains name is Joshxou of the USS Tenor

The STOWiki is a reliable resource if you're Federation or Klingon. The updates for Romulan content aren't in yet though.

Protips:

- Any captain career can make ANY ship effective. Don't listen to people who insist that you have to fly a certain ship just because you're a certain career. If you roll Romulan you don't have to worry about that until the endgame, since ship selection is limited.

-It's usually a better idea not to mix too many weapon types (cannons and beams, different energy types). You incur a power penalty. However, just for playing missions you don't need to worry, the content is easy enough.

- Use your pre-endgame levels to experiment with different ship types and styles. Try out escorts, cruisers and science vessels and see how you do

-Tactical team is your friend. Always have Tactical Team I on any ship setup.

As an inveterate min/maxer it seems the early trait selection is pretty critical, as well as engi/tactical/science choices. Assuming that the older stuff I'm reading is still applicable.

@darknessmyoldfriend: There is a minimum 25% of your skill points that have to be spent on Ground. You should discover pretty soon if you want to do any significant amount of ground missions to justify going higher than that. As a Gold you will get lots of respec tokens.

Uh... I bought a lifetime 'scrip, so I guess I'll see you guys online -_-

It took me so long to realize this. I spent most of my time thinking it was a useless skill because i never took the time to figure out what it did. Now I can't run a ship without it.

All in all the game is pretty easy from 1-50. There are difficulty settings you can use if you want more a challenge and want in game death to mean something.

Hmm, maybe I'll give this a try. Haven't touched it since open beta, before I really cared at all about Star Trek. I will probably watch the TNT and see if I feel like giving it a shot.

I was hoping to get an invite to the lobster-y space-y goodness. For the character@handle nonsense, it should be "ithor@mantaray95". I would have sent it in-game, but since the last update I apparently do not have 10-something hours played on this account.

Damn, if I'd have known Jeff was going to feature STO on TNT last night I would have stayed up... :(

Luckily got let in but posting my info to be added to the roster.

Old Jim Kenobi@oldjimkenobi

I'm tempted to get back into this, haven't played in quite some time. How are the mid level Romulan ships? And when you ally with feds or KDF do you get to use their ships?

@brackynews: Did not realize we had an STO fleet! (Did not even think to check :/ ) I will have to haul my admiral and his bank of goodies over.

Fed only, right? No Klink sister fleet?

@burningstickman: Yep, Fed only. We had a Klink one ages ago, but not really the numbers to maintain it long term.

We have had quite a few join up to the SNL over the past couple of days. Come on over!

@

Player not found. Tried various combinations and no luck. I found that you can check your name@handle inside teamsettings by pressing O. Once in there should show yourself with the full name and handle combo.

Wait, does this mean the people who were once in the fleet have been removed, or that the new expansion did some sort of wipe to characters. I've occasionally gone back to play to get my guy to 50, so I hope he's still around.

STO hasn't had a characterwipe since beta AFAIK (which to be fair is very little concerning STO). But I do believe Brackynews did remove some members of the fleet which hadn't logged in in a very long time. It's a simple matter of posting your name@handle and we'll invite you back in.