Mission Details

• Mission title : “Adrift”
• Author : @Midnighttlc
• Faction : Federation
• Series : 1 of 3 part mission series
• Next in Series : "Variance"
• Duration : 45 minutes
• Play style : Solo or group play
• Video trailer :

Mission Review

“Adrift” is an enthralling piece of player generated content, created in the Foundry editor for Star Trek Online, by one of our own community members: @midnighttlc.  The average run-time for this mission is approximately 45 minutes for either team or solo play, and will have Captains engaging in a combination of both space and ground combat, while working their way through a beleaguered ship under eerily mysterious circumstances, in an effort to rescue its commander: Admiral Aaron.  

From the onset of the mission, Captains will find themselves questioning the true nature of this assignment, which seems intentionally shrouded in mystery by Starfleet Command.  Pitting a meagre rescue team up against what seem to be insurmountable odds, will have player Captains weary of the many possibilities and potentially dire outcomes for their ship and crew; unfortunately, duty often requires action and sacrifice for a greater cause and it’s under these circumstances that you and your crew will embark on a challenging rescue mission to locate Admiral Aaron.

While the gameplay and dialogue is relatively linear, the mission will have you continually guessing as to what’s going on as the story progresses, and I guarantee that you won’t see the final developments and plot twist coming, which sets the mission up for a much anticipated sequel!

As this mission takes place in the Gamma Orionis sector block, Captains will need to be at least Rear Admiral Upper Half (level 45), and will need to have completed the first introductory assignment in the Borg episode arc to access this piece of Foundry content.  Given the location of the mission, you’re guaranteed to come up against your share of Borg drones during your rescue attempt, so be sure to pack your frequency remodulator, lest you and your crew become the newest additions to the collective.  You’ll soon learn, however, that the Borg presence is merely a sideshow of the main event, as they too have taken interest in the potential of what you’ll uncover in the bowels of the Northstar and the horrors that your discoveries will bring.

“Adrift” is a ground combat focused and intensive mission that will leave Captains anticipating the sequel, and will have them wondering what’s likely to happen next.  Given the author’s penchant for taking the story in unpredictable directions, players will likely be guessing incorrectly, until they get their hands on “Variance”, the anticipated sequel to this mission.  Players craving a new and unique piece of mission content will enjoy this assignment, and will find the forty-five minute run-time a worthwhile investment!

Reviewer’s note: Only the most skilled, ground combat Captains should consider increasing the mission difficulty above normal.  If raising the mission difficulty, be sure to take a modest supply of hyposprays and other useful ground consumables with you, to assist you on this mission.




Mission Details

• Mission title : “Defense of Starbase 57”
• Author : Gregferguson
• Faction : Federation
• Duration : 45 minutes
• Play style : Solo or group play

Mission Review

“Defense of Starbase 57” is the third part of GregFerguson's foundry mission trilogy, which follows the missions “Hearts and Cortexes” and “Graveyard” in the series.  The mission pits you against the Borg, a familiar adversary in the Star Trek Online universe, in both space and ground combat situations.  The ground component is certainly the focus of the pairing, and in many ways resembles the "Infected: Manus" Special Task Force mission found in the PvE queues.  Even Captains who believe themselves to be skilled in ground combat scenarios, may find themselves challenged if attempting any difficulty settings above normal.  The Borg ground force in this mission is much more challenging than the Borg forces found elsewhere in the game, as reinforcements from the lower decks continually replenish the defeated drones, as you navigate through the maps to your various objectives.  Move your team with purpose, as wandering aimlessly about the maps, lazily in search of mission objectives is the surest way to end up completely surrounded.

A five Captain away team would make an excellent assault team for this mission, however, if you’re playing this mission solo, be sure that your away team is well equipped.  Your leadership skill must not falter, if you’re to both complete your mission objectives and keep your crew happily separated from the fearsome collective.

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Welcome to Stonewall's #FoundryFolder, generated and maintained by @Voleron! The Foundry Folder is an index of foundry missions created exclusively by past and present members of the Stonewall Armada!  Stonewall Fleet continues to be home to some amazing story-telling talent and the purpose of this thread is to provide you with information on each of our community's published missions, so as to guide you to the stories that will most appeal to you, and also to help our foundry authors draw attention to their amazing creations!

If you're a foundry author and would like your mission listed in this index, simply post your mission information in the foundry section of the forums in a new thread. Once I've played and reviewed your mission, it will be added to this index!

New to the foundry?  The tutorial video below will teach you how to search and play foundry missions in Star Trek Online:

Hey Angel, (long time no see), I'm not currently playing WoT, but I am logging in for the cash. Too good a deal to miss, especially since I know I'll be playing again in the future.

In related news; I got a spot in the World of Warships beta. Really enjoying that. Any other Stone Wallers playing WoWs?

Ah, I know that's supposedly why they changed Jennifer Lien's hairstyle, because of irritation from the adhesive for the Ocampa ears, but I wonder if that's just speculation, since it's clear she's wearing the makeup at least once after the hairstyle change.

It's quite likely that the prosthetics were bothering his eyes and he stopped wearing the lenses.

I'm almost done working my way through Voyager, and there's something bugging the time out of me. I swear that Ethan Phillips started the series wearing orange contacts, but here in Season 7, his eyes look brown. I remember this was a big deal when he had his Mylean DNA activated and his eyes were quite dark compared to the rest of the series, and I've seen reference photos to double-check that they were indeed orange in the beginning. Do any of our hardcore Star Trek fans know why his eyes changed? Thanks.

I love the idea of this game. I'm pretty tempted to get it, just can't afford it until I find another job. I really like that I've read that there is a PvP slider so that you can, if you like, not even see the open PvPers and just play PvE outside of lawless systems.

My friend was trying to get me interested in this, but said some things about rampant the open PvP trolling that turned me off to it.

Even if you don't feel like jumping back into the game immediately, getting 50k credits just for logging in can help you to set yourself up in case you want to play again in future.

If you start now, you can still probably do it every day and end up with over a million credits.

I'm starting to get sick of STO, again (Age old BOff bug, farming event items on all of my toons, farming starship mastery, et al), so I may pick Secret World up, again.

Lol

PVE WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Continuing on with the last build type, the Drake. The Drake build is more expensive than A2B, due to the expensive Doffs it requires to do its job. But this build type has some clear advantages, but it only works with Emergency power to X (EptX) abilities.

Unlike a A2B build the Drake allows the Aux subsystem power to remain high. This has the effect of allowing the Nukara Offense trait (a Cat 2 buff, more about categories of buffs in another post) to apply it's max bonus. Also the healing abilities will give much larger boost than if aux subsystem was drained of power.


So how does it work? Well much like an A2B build type you slot two EptX abilities (one of each type) that you want to keep on constant rotation. In the active space roster add in 3x Damage Control Engineers (DCE) of the type "[Space] Chance to reduce the recharge time for Emergency Power to subsystem abilities". All of the DCE's offer a 30% cool down reduction the only thing that changes is the chance (i.e. 35% for Purple, 30% for Blue and 25% for Green)



So the best way to keep EtpX abilities up the most often is to use 3x purple (it will only bug out ever so often, because its 3 individual 35% chances to apply). In the picture I have cheaped out and used a blue (only because on this toon I don't have 3 purples). With this choice I accept a little more downtime from it but at a cost reduction. There are also other builds where you can use 2x purple (the 1/2 Drake) and accept that it will fail so often but you then gain back a doff slot for other uses.

So the Drake in action. I have a our friendly Exploration cruiser again with EptW3 and EptS1 slotted. I have my 3x DCE's in my active space roster and I fire off EptW3 (sets off the 15 sec cool down on EptS)



After a second the Doffs apply and reduces my cool downs (down to 30 on my EptW)



I then fire EptS1 and the effect is applied to both EptW3 and the EptS1 (this is why you can get away with a lower doff quality but at the risk it will miss all three or 2 in the case of the 1/2 drake ever so often).



That is the drake

So that brings us to Tactical abilities and increasing your damage in the next post.

I will be helping Aikune out on these, unfortunately we are both relatively busy we might not be super fast on these, especially as i like to talk to the person first to get a feel for what they have available and want to achieve.

If however its going a week or two and you have had no messages from us yet, please give us a gentle kick up the arse via pm on the website and we will sort it out for you.

So we have done the Dragon build in part 1 and next up is Aux to Bat (A2B). Both loved and hated by captains everywhere, it allows you to cool down ALL of your abilities, Tac / Eng and Sci (great I hear you say, but there is a catch, there is always a catch) at the cost of ALL of your Aux power.

Your Aux power drives a lot of your abilities to heal your self and do damage with exotic damage abilities (think grav well, tractor beam repulsers etc). The second catch to loosing all of your Aux is you also lose one of the biggest boosts to damage from the rep system, Nukara Offense (and also the defense boost from Nukara Defense if you have it slotted) in highlighted red below as the higher your aux the higher the bonus.



So while there are other ways to keep uptime on abilities (Dragon and Drake) and A2B has its short comings, it is very useful for situations where the ship doesn't allow you to slot enough tactical abilities (i.e. the exploration cruiser, yes I'm looking at you Galaxy class), so it does have its place. It also has the benefit of being cheap (never to be discounted when starting out or starting a new alt). You can earn the doffs for A2B for free without needing to use the exchange (see the end of this post for how).

So how does it work? Well you slot 2x A2B abilities on your ship and one each of the abilities you want to rotate. You will also need some Technician doffs of the type "[Space] Recharge time on bridge officer abilities reduced". When you fire the A2B ability the doffs slotted in your active space roster will reduce the cool down of each ability by the amount displayed (i.e. 10% for purple tech, 8% for a blue, 6% for green etc for each doff)



You can get away with 2 purples (i.e. 20% reduction) depending on the abilities you have, but the 3x purple you will be able to cool down the longer abilities (i.e. DEM @ 2mins, attack pattern omega @ 1:40) down faster. Easiest way is to tune it to what you need for your ship and the abilities you want to run.


A2B in action

So here I have a Exploration cruiser with a batch of abilities I want to run. I have 3 purple techs fitted and I'm ready to buff up



First I fire off EptW, APB, FAW and DEM



Then I fire A2B which after about a second reduces the cool down on my abilities



Next we wait for the second A2B and EptS to be ready and we fire them off



Now that we have done this you will notice APB and FAW are ready again I wait a few seconds and fire EptW3 with it.



Next I fire the first A2B again, we have come full circle and repeated the process. That is the Aux to Bat build type.

Side note - If I had also fired Polarize Hull, Sci Team, Eng Team and Hazard Emitters they would have also have had their cool down reduced. Thing to remember is to fire off healing abilities first then fire off A2B to get the max out of them before your Aux subsystem is drained reducing their effect.


Doffing the B'Tran - You can get the Doffs for free by completing the Support Colonization Effort doff mission and getting a crit to get a purple otherwise the reward is a blue tech. http://sto.gamepedia.com/Assignment:_Support_Colonization_Efforts has all the detail.

Next the Drake build type

How will we be notified when it's done?

onboard graphics processor

I have been asked by a few in the fleet how I get the DPS I do and its a bit hard to explain how its done over chat given the breadth of what is required for a good build. So I'm hoping I can point them here as well as help others in the fleet with the information required to help improve. Since in game information is just non existent.

So back to basics of ship building in STO ( Warning - this is a very PVE point of view, while most if not all can be applied to PVP I tend to focus on PVE builds).


Engineering Abilities Build Types

There are 3 major types of build (and a few derivatives) in STO that you find just about everywhere and they are all focused on one thing - Maximum uptime of engineering abilities (I'll be covering Tac abilities in a later post). So the goal of these build types is to keep up (applied) Eng abilities (Emergency power to X) to increase our damage and / or defense abilities.


The Dragon Build

One of the oldest because it is so simple a build type uses duplicate abilities to keep up Emergency power to X (EptX) i.e. weapons (EptW) to boost power to our weapons subsystem (+15 Weapon Power Setting for 30 sec for EptW1) and increase damage output via an applied boost (+10% all Energy Damage for 30 sec for EptW1). Shields (EptS) to boost power to the shields subsystem and apply a resistance boost to the shields (Reduces damage to shields by 18% for 30 seconds for EptS1) and the same with Engines (EptE) (speed and turn rate boost) and Aux (EptA) (boost to Graviton Generators, Particle Generator and Subspace Decompiler) along with boosting their respective subsystems.

So how does it work? Well all that is required for a Dragon build is to slot 2x the engineering ability you want to keep up and cycle them every 15 seconds. i.e. 2x EptW. The beauty of this build type is you can choose any 2 EptX and have them constantly applied via slotting 2x 1type of EptX and 2x or another type (but only two types can be applied at any one time). You see this done a lot with EptW and EptS as you get a damage boost at the same time a shield resistance buff while EtpS is applied

As an example lets use the layout below in the image. We have and EptS1 and EptW2 in both rows.



We start by firing the first EptW (setting its cool down to 45 secs - Top row)



It sets the duplicate cool down on the other EptW to 30 secs and 15sec for each of the EptS


Then we fire the EptS, setting the duplicate cool down to 30 on the other EptS (setting its cool down to 45 secs - Top row)



Then the second EptW comes off cool down and we fire it (setting its cool down to 45 secs - Bottom row)



Then lastly we fire the second EptS once it comes off cool down (setting its cool down to 45 secs - Bottom row)



then we repeat.

This gives us the EptW and EptS buff up constantly on our ship providing a boost to damage and damage absorption from the resistance buff applied.




The 1/2 Dragon

The other form of this build type is what is called the 1/2 dragon.

This is where we only cycle one set of EptX, the reason for this is usually to save active doff slots for another purpose (the other 2 types all require doffs to work) and use those slots for other purposes (i.e. Tac team cool down).

The next build type we will look at in part 2 is the Aux to Bat (A2B)

This is something that would interest me i think.

Some three years in and I'm still updating the mission from time to time, as it's very dear to my heart.

In a recent update I changed the costumes for many characters, since more appropriate outfits are now available. All Bajoran Militia officers wear Bajoran uniforms now, while some of the Resistance fighters wear worn clothing. Faces have been updated to make the best of many of the new options. And of course I'm using standard Federation uniforms where it seems fit. Some other assets have also been updated.

I'm even working on the sequel, Terrors of the Past. But it's a slow progress and my life has changed quite a bit, since the release of Shadows. But I'm getting there and I'll hope that the community will like the idea I have for the continuation.

By the way, I'm very honored that the mission appears in the top list for the Toron System Foundry doors. This has brought in many new players over the last month and I'm excited to see their feedback. It's somewhat surreal that almost 500 people have played (=rated) the mission and most of them thoroughly enjoyed it.

Quote by Qmonster

I want to get back into SWTOR. Is the guild still active?

Its alive. Activity fluctuates. We've been trying to reinvigorate it for sometime and would welcome any assistance you could bring.