[Seldon]

Greetings fellow UFP'ers!

Welcome to Issue 3 of 'Today on the Forums!'

The STO and UFP forums have seen some activity since Issue 2 which is awesome to see. My hope is that newer members of UFP, and indeed old, will make more use of the UFP forum when they see some of the awesome posts that are highlighted. I also, again. appreciate those that have thanked me and have found the previous issues helpful.

As per usual, all links are either to the Official STO or UFP Forums unless specified otherwise.

"Today on the Forums!"


As you may or may not know April 5th was First Contact Day! Cryptic celebrated this event by allowing Federation players to pick up a non-combat pet and Klingons to pick up a Bat’leth.

A couple of new Dev Blogs were released, the second dev blog was an interview with Dan Stahl by Massively's STO Columnist,Terilynn Shull. It didn't really offer much in the way of new information, it seemed more like damage control after news of the Romulan Faction not getting its own Starbase. The third Dev blog was an extremely good read and was about the upcoming Romulan Warbirds.

An STO poster snapped some pictures of the new D'deridex textures and the resulting explosion from a singularity core, have to say they look pretty impressive. It appears to implode before exploding. As you may know Romulans have their own version of the upcoming Matter/Antimatter warp cores as per Star Trek lore, whether or not they remain Romulan only is yet to be determined. Links in that post are to a website outside of the STO forums.

The new UI seems to be a case of either love it or hate it, with the ability to select a number of preset themes it does add a little variation. Dan recently suggested that we would eventually be able to create custom UI schemes which is nice, but will not be supported ingame and would require some out of game file changing. Let's hope that changes and they offer ingame support for this feature.

There appears to have been some confusion over a recent patch that many players thought nerfed Photonic Shockwave useless. Dev Jeremy Randall stated that infact the skill has not changed at all and that the patch only corrected a Doff that reduced Photonic Shockwave Torpedeos too dramatically.

Some players may have spotted that using Fire At Will used alot more power than it used to. Good news! It is a bug, Dev Jeremy Randall confirmed that this is a bug and that a fix has been submitted for the next build.

The STO Forums have a section called The Academy for new players to read and post questions. One very useful sticky from this forum is regarding STFs and offer some basic guides and run throughs on Normal mode. It is never really a good idea to attempt STFs on Elite the first time through and this thread is a good read before venturing into that aspect of the game.

Tribble recieved a build on the 4th April that addressed some issues with a previous build and an executed NPC for incompetence.


The UFP Forums have seen some activity and I also wanted to point out a thread that I failed to last issue;

Recently a Debates forum was created where UFP members can voice in on a selected topic intelligently. It is a good idea to read the rules before diving into a debate, the current one being your opinion on JJ Abram's affect on the Star Trek franchise. Remember to play nice!

In the Creative Works forum there are creative UFP members looking for opinions from fellow fleet members. One such thread by {UFP}deuZige is a nice bit of fan fiction set in the DS9 era about Quark. There are various other peices of work there too which are worth spending time reading with a coffee if you have the time.

The ESF Forum, accessible to all CL3 members, has a Guides and Support section which offers some useful STF advice for people new and old. {UFP}Three of Seven has recently written a guide on Engineering Kits and it is definately worth your time reading to ensure you are well prepared going into Elite STFs. Thank you Three!

In the same forum is a sneak peak at the new Nukara Strikeforce Reputation is available courtesy of {UFP}Cehus. Thanks for the screenshots!

Two new Away Team Leaders were selected today in preperation for the upcoming expansion, congrats to Nova and .. umm... me! on your new positions!


Well that concludes this issue of Today on the Forums. I tend to write these up when I have time between playing and dealing with kids, hence the small portions. If you want me to include any areas of the forum you feel I am missing let me know and I will accomodate you. Until next time!

[Cehus]

Looks great, as always, but you forgot to report on your and nova's new jobs.

[Seldon]

Looks great, as always, but you forgot to report on your and nova's new jobs.

Lies! (Thank you )

[Odyssey47]

Thanks for the news roundup. I don't always get to look through the forums as much as I'd like to.

[Kains]

Still a great read! Cool to catch up on those bits like Photonic shockwave discussion!

[Bill]

Very, very nice. Awesome summary!

[Mazoue]

Thank once again! Awesome read with my morning coffee!

[SwedishGG]

Very good read! Well done