Welcome to Starbase 24

Hello and Welcome to Starbase 24, my Star Trek Online Blog.

The purpose of this blog is to provide objective information and tips about various aspects of STO, both PvP and PvE related. I will try to talk most about Captain and Bridge Officer skills and useful combos, Ship types and builds, Space and Ground tactics as well as walkthroughs for the more difficult PvE Episodes.

While I have been playing STO since Closed Beta and have seen most of the game content, I will try to refrain from formulating value judgments on the game as a whole until well after launch day and its necessary emergency patches have passed. In a loose translation – I will not write a review on the game based on my Beta experiences but will rather wait until things settle down 2-3 months down the road.

Now a little bit of information about me: I am a gamer. Well to be fair I am a PC gamer, I do not own and do not plan on owning a console system any time soon. I’ve been playing games for the past 20 years and will continue to pursue this hobby for as long as I can. I’ve played almost all major PC RPG titles and have at one time or another subscribed to most major MMORPG titles. I’ve seen Ultima Online back when it started, I’ve fought for Midgard in DAOC, ganked my way through Shadowbane, did the whole Everquest and SWG thing, raided until my brain went numb in WoW and experienced the “future” with AoC and WAR. My fondest memories are related to Anarchy Online and Shadowbane, though for different reasons.

On the other hand I cannot consider myself a “trekkie”. Sure I watched the shows, saw the movies and read some of the books but I never greeted anyone with “live long and prosper” nor do I pretend that my Merlot is “bloodwine”. My favorite characters in no particular order are Picard, Spock and Garak from DS9. My favorite show is DS9, especially the later seasons when the general atmosphere of the show darkens and war becomes the prevailing theme. The rest of the shows lack, in my opinion, the punch needed to stand out. Sure there are singular episodes here and there, but most of the time the plot ends on a positive note either by the liberal use of technobabble (we’ll route the plasma aftershave through the Jeffries tubes to flush out the quantum chroniton rats that have taken control of the holodeck!) or various alternate reality or time travel solutions.

That being said I play STO because I miss a good and new SF MMORPG. Anarchy Online, which I played for a number of years, is showing its age more and more and lacks the space combat I am fond of. EVE is glorious in its complexity but demands a much higher commitment from me that I am willing to give.

So now my hopes rest on Star Trek Online and its Federation-Klingon conflict. I hope Cryptic manages to pull it off in a satisfactory manner and create a multi-faction game with both rich PvE and engaging PvP.

Engage!