Star Trek Online is the newest MMORPG about space adventure, and it makes no bones about being a space combat –centric game. Players are able to start your space exploration and get sto gold. Certainly, the majority of the missions will include space combat (previous interviews with Cryptic has the number at 60% space combat missions).The first thing to understand about captaining your ship is the layout of the controls. If you want to play STO, please prepare sto credits firstly, and read some basic guide, such as this one-space combat! Space combat is at least about 3 things; ship movement, offensive attacks, defensive actions.

Firstly maneuvering your ship

Just like driving a car, each ship has basic motion controls for forward and reverse, with various speeds available up to ludicrous speed. Captains can steer using either the mouse (holding down both buttons) or W, A, S, D keys (very similar to other MMOGs). Players hope to defeat your enemy; you first can control your ship smoothly. If you have targeted an enemy, the camera will always center on that enemy so steering with the mouse can take a bit to get used to. Moving into position is critical in ship combat as you will always want to monitor the enemy’s shield strength (as well as your own). Make sure you move into a position to maximize offensive and defensive opportunities.

Time to offend

Sometimes talks fail and players have to resort to violence. When this happens, it’s time to start clicking; there is no auto attack in this game. If you need buy some items, you should have sto money firstly. Starting out, each ship has three basic attacks, front phasers, rear phasers and forward photon torpedoes. The phasers are good to bring down shields, and torpedoes will eat up enemy ship hulls. Much improved from the earlier versions, the combat hotkeys and options have become very intuitive. Essentially anything you put in your hotbar for ship combat wil populate the quick-draw box (shown on the left above). Each weapon has a different field of fire, also called arcs. Hovering a mouse over the different weapons will show the firing arcs so that players can tell where the firing cones are located. Another visual clue is that the weapon buttons light up when the targeted enemy is within the firing arc and range.

Best offense is a good defense

Defense is all about shields. The goal for minimizing incoming damage is to not take any! For most players, good defense will help you save much trouble, such as buy sto gold, and others. My anticipation is that shield management will become much more involved as we get into the higher levels. There are multiple shield management tools at your disposal. First and foremost is re-allocating shield energy. Using the arrows in the shield UI, players can bolster failing shields by drawing energy from the shields not being attacked. Shield management also comes in the form of skills for both the players and their bridge officers. Skills can help repair shields, re-enforce them or provide speedier allocations. As stated earlier, the cat and mouse game of maneuvering to keep the right shields facing the enemy while maintaining prime attacks will be a challenge.