Monday Megathread - your weekly "dumb question" thread

[u/Sputnik1_1957]

Post all the questions you may have about anything STO-related. PC? Console? Everyone's welcome to post their questions here.

Last thread can be found here.

Stay safe out there and happy flying!

[u/Pale-Paladin]

Hello, question about the zen ships that have 3 nearly identical declinations, one per faction (example: Sojourner/Kahless/Shamshir, Kuthar/Oniros/Dynnasia, Arbiter/Kurak/Morrigu etc...).

Considering I have cross faction flying and like I said there's very little difference between the three most times, am I wrong to think it's always better to take the Romulan variant to make the most out of them? Because they have a battle cloak and singularity core perks, whereas the klingon variant has just a regular cloak and the fed has... nothing special, unless I'm missing something? Trying to optimize my acquisitions here, even if I end up never touching the ships.

Follow up question, is there any disadvantage to having a singularity core compared to a warp core? Is there any instance of for example, you've got a set which is going to have only a warp core and no singularity variant?

Thanks.

[u/Khtairrhu → u/Pale-Paladin]

Realistically speaking, you really want to go for the prettiest (to you). There are practical differences: in general, Rom is the least robust, Fed has best shields, and Klingon has best hull, but not by much.

Using Battlecloak and Singularity adds a bunch of gameplay mechanics that are fun but fairly specific, and as mentioned elsewhere, the Singularity core is a bit weaker, so you end up needing to use those mechanics to keep up with the others.

[u/Retribution1337 → u/Pale-Paladin]

With regards to the ships being similar, you're right on the money there. At this point they're nearly 9 years old as they were released in 2016 back when other factions actually got ships reliably but there was no cross faction flying, so this was how the other factions got the new ships, they all had very nearly the same stats (minor stuff like inertia for size differences) minus the faction specific stuff like cloak. You could get all three romulan or all three federation and they're so functionally identical, you wouldn't really notice. They even give the same traits and consoles between them.

As for the singularity cores, there's some minor differences between the two (most notable I think is singularity cores tend to give less power but I'd get a second opinion on that) but honestly the differences are so minute that you'll never really appreciably see it unless you're REALLY min-maxing. I did also have a nose through the wiki and any sets I found that had a warp core, also had a singularity, so I don't think you'll be unable to use any because of a singularity core requirement.

[u/westmetals → u/Retribution1337]

The only addition I have to this, is there are a small number of newer ships where there's also a Jem'Hadar version, and these are generally superior because they have the wingman mechanic.

Also, the Temporal Warships have a faction-dependent trait. It's not properly explained on the wiki, but you actually get the trait appropriate for your character's faction, regardless of the faction of the ship.

[u/tampered_mouse → u/Retribution1337]

singularity cores tend to give less power

@/u/Pale-Paladin: Singularity cores have -40 total power vs. normal warp cores, but they add a couple abilities ("perks") in return (e.g. see Morrigu).

One additional note: Warbirds have no cruiser commands.

[u/Pale-Paladin → u/tampered_mouse]

Thanks, good to know.