Friday, June 28, 2013

Star Trek Online (Part Seven)

Duty Officers and Assignments
Star Trek Online - First Complement
Duty Officers and their associated assignments are something that you will only unlock upon reaching level 7. And once you do, you will receive a quest that directs you to claim your first batch of duty officers from Lieutenant Ferra at the Starfleet Academy.

But anyway, the things to note here are mostly as follows...
  • Overview
    Star Trek Online - Duty Officers OverviewStar Trek Online - Commendations
    The Overview tab monitors the overall state of your assignments, duty officers as well as commendation advancement. While the previous two aren't in urgent need of an explanation, the thing to note about commendation advancement is that there are quite a few commendation categories that you may advance in.

    Each category has a total of 5 ranks and as you advance into the next rank, you will be given various titles, unlocks and access to purchase duty officers (of that category and rank) from Lieutenant Ferra at the Starfleet Academy using Refined Dilithium.

    To advance in any particular category, all you have to do is complete assignments that reward you with Commendation XP for that category (e.g. Trade XP for Trade Category) and keep on doing it until you eventually rank up.
  • Assignments
    The Assignments tab is where you would often be referring to when looking for stuff available for your duty officers to do.
    Star Trek Online - Assignments TabStar Trek Online - Planning an Assignment
    The "Current Map" shows you a list of available assignments found at your current location or sector. These assignments will mostly be errands that you are performing for the natives found there. "Personal", on the other hand, would give you a list of duties that are more related to your starship or own self. The assignments found on these two lists appear to be generic and will update or refresh itself periodically (refer Sector Update & Shipboard Update).

    For any one assignment, there will be certain criteria or requirements of course, without which you may not proceed. These may come in the form of items (like Medical Supplies or Provisions), currencies (like Energy Credits, Refined Dilithium), personnel specialization (like Geologist or Quartermaster) or a combination of them. And while most of the assignments would only consume the non-critical stuff like items or currencies and leave the personnel part intact, there may be some special ones which would permanently remove these duty officers from your roster (like duty officer reassignment or prisoner exchange).

    Do note that you are only given 20 assignment slots and so may only perform up to a maximum of 20 assignments at any given time. And though each assignment may require some time to complete, you will only be required to start them and they will automatically complete themselves after the stated amount of time regardless of whether your online or not.

    Breakdown of a Typical Assignment
    Star Trek Online - Assignment DetailThis part shows a brief description of what the assignment entails. Usually ignored, but this is where you should look to see if completion of the assignment would result in the removal of duty officers sent.
    Star Trek Online - Assignment RewardThis part shows what sort of rewards you would get for completing an assignment. Typical rewards would be stuff like varied amounts of Energy Credits, Dilithium Ore, Commendation XP, Skill Points and Expertise Points. However, some of the more special assignments may reward you with items, equipments, bridge officers or duty officers.
    Star Trek Online - Assignment Duration COS RiskThis part shows the duration of the assignment, chances of success and its casualty risk level. Scoring a critical success will net you a better (or more) reward than a mere success, while failure would give you nothing. If you unfortunately get a disaster, then the duty officers that you've sent would be in risk of either getting injured and landing in the sickbay for a certain duration or worse, get killed.
    Star Trek Online - Assignment RequirementThis part shows the requirements of the assignment, like what sort of items, currencies or personnel is needed. The thing to note here would be the traits that is asked of the persons that you are sending in for the assignment as they would alter your chances of success. For example, if the Geologist your sending in is "Congenial", "Emotional" and/or "Tactful", your critical success chances would increase. Conversely, if you've sent in one that is "Unruly", your chances of a disaster would go up.
  • Duty Officers
    Star Trek Online - Duty Officers
    For the duty officers tab, this part tells you the details of all the duty officers found onboard your crew roster, including prisoners and civilian passengers. The part to note here would be the ability to flag 10 duty officers as "active" crew members (5 Ground, 5 Space).

    The reason for making a duty officer active is to harness their special talents. For example, Shellar Kurn in the above screenshot has the ability to reduce the recharge time of any subsystem targeting attack (bridge officer skill) by 5 seconds at a 50% chance. So if you use this sort of skill often, you would want to make him an active officer to activate this proc.

    Do note that any duty officer only has 1 of such talent (either Space or Ground and according to their specialization) and you may not flag more than 1 duty officer having the same sort of talent as active. Finally, the potency of such talents (proc rate) would depend on the rarity of the duty officer.
  • Recruiting Duty Officers
    Apart from the buying of duty officers from Lieutenant Ferra, there are a couple of more ways in which you can get more duty officers, some of which are free of charge while some are not.
    Star Trek Online - Personnel OfficerStar Trek Online - Tellarite Personnel Officer
    First of all, there is the "Personnel Officer" right behind Lieutenant Ferra where you can engage in recruitment of duty officers at regular intervals. Next, there is also the Vulcan, Tellarite and Andorian Personnel Officers located around the Starfleet Academy. These too can be performed at regular intervals and are free of charge as far as I know.
    Star Trek Online - Fleet Personnel Officer
    Alternatively, you may also use Zen to purchase duty officer packs from the C-store or fleet credits to purchase duty officers from the Fleet Personnel Officer.
  • Department Heads
    Star Trek Online - Department Heads
    From what I can tell, assigning of a bridge officer to be the First Officer or department heads doesn't seem to do much apart from enabling you to get recommendations on who to send for an assignment. But nonetheless, I still visit this tab often to look for various assignments that may have "escaped" from being shown in the Assignments tab.
Crafting
Now crafting in Star Trek Online is something that you can only do at Memory Alpha in the Alpha Centauri block (for Federation characters at least). And from what I can tell, it is at best something that you would engage in when you have free time.

This is because, while most of the items crafted aren't too bad (probably at par with stuff you can farm from PVE missions), they do not have sufficient "power" (in terms of specs) to outrank those that you can acquire from reputation projects or your fleet's starbase NPCs.

Furthermore, you will also need to spend quite a decent amount of time and effort to increase your "General Research Skill" to craft the "better" items as well as gather the materials needed so I'ld say they aren't worth your time. But if you still wish to proceed with it, then let us continue.
Star Trek Online - Crafting Requirements
First of all, to craft something, you would have to satisfy its "General Research Skill" requirement. As far as I know, this is just a numeric value wherein if you keep crafting something (anything), you will eventually reach the required amount.

Next, you will need to gather the materials needed to craft the item in question. From what I do know, these materials can be gained from two sources.
Star Trek Online - AnomalyStar Trek Online - Waveform Matching
The first source is from anomalies such as that shown in the screenshot above. These anomalies can be found in anywhere from sector space to ordinary space to even on the surface of planets that you beam down to. A nifty way to check whether there are anomalies around you is to press "V". Upon doing so, it will tell you the number of anomalies lying around as well as point you in the direction of the nearest one.

Once you find one and interact with it, you will then have to play a simple "Match the Waveform" game. Whether you win or lose in this game, you will still get crafting materials, but from what I can tell, winning will net you better results (in terms of quantity and materials). And as a tip, I find that its easier to win if you match the amplitude (height) first and then the frequency.
Star Trek Online - Dilithium Ore Extraction 1Star Trek Online - Dilithium Ore Extraction 2
The second source is from when you are performing your "daily" asteroid mining for dilithium ore. The crafting materials will come out as a "by-product" in the process of your mining, but like with the previous anomaly deal, you will also have to play a simple game here when mining too. And as far as I know, the quantity and quality of the crafting materials that you get from here will be dependent upon the "score" that you achieve.

Anyway, the name of the game is to keep aligning the pinkish scope to the three red points. And when I said aligning, I not only meant orientating the scope but also adjusting its size so that it fits like as shown in the second screenshot above.

Upon doing so, your score will keep increasing until the system messes it up for you to re-align the scope once more. This process will keep repeating until the 60-second timer runs out and you will then collect your reward (dilithium ore and crafting materials).
Star Trek Online - Research Supply Vendor
Finally, depending on the item you wish to craft, you may sometimes need a schematic design. These schematics can either be crafted yourself or bought at 10k Energy Credits each from the Research Supply Vendor.



Previous: Star Trek Online (Part Six)

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Star Trek Online (Part Six)

Starships
Types
Remember that I've said that there are a couple of types of starships available in Star Trek Online? Well...there are roughly altogether three types. Regardless of your chosen career profession, you may choose to pilot any of the starship types. However, depending on the type that you choose to pilot, your general roles and abilities in a space combat would slightly differ.
Star Trek Online - Tactical EscortEscorts
Escort-type starships can be considered a tactical officer's best friend. They are built to be small, fast, maneuverable and hard to hit. They have higher-ranking Tactical bridge officer stations, are heavily armed and can equip all kinds of starship weapons, including Dual Cannons and Dual Heavy Cannons, but have medium hull and weak shields.
Star Trek Online - Exploration CruiserCruisers
Cruiser-type starships are large and resilient. They have higher-ranking Engineering bridge officer stations, strong hulls, a large crew complement but average shields. Additionally, due to their large sizes, they cannot turn very well, are slow-moving and easier to hit.
Star Trek Online - Long Range Science VesselScience Vessels
Science Vessel-type starships are medium-sized and versatile. They have higher-ranking Science bridge officer stations, weak hulls but strong shields. These starships are most noted for a passive ability called "Sensor Analysis" (a powerful damage resistance debuff).
Others
Carriers
Although these will still have variants that fall under one of the three starship types mentioned, carriers are purposely singled out and placed here due to their ability to house hangar bays from which you can launch all sorts of AI fighters or small crafts.
Star Trek Online - Caitian Atrox Carrier
Small Crafts
They are exactly the same as that found launching from carriers. The only difference here is that these can be piloted and customized by the player while the carrier ones cannot. Your only purpose of using these small crafts are for participating in shuttle-only maps or events. Using them in starship-level space combat is equivalent to suiciding as you will be swatted like a fly.
Star Trek Online - Peregrine Attack Fighter

Roles & Bridge Officer Station Ranks
One of the major reason why your starship selection plays a part in your space combat role is due to the difference in type, quantity as well as rank of the bridge officer stations found onboard the starship.

Generally speaking, Tactical bridge officers have skills that are mostly related to upgrading your attacks and damage capabilities, Engineering bridge officers have skills that are more in line with increasing your starship's resilience while Science bridge officers have crowd control skills that roots, disables or are otherwise AoE in nature.

And since Tactical bridge officers can only man Tactical stations, Engineering bridge officers to Engineering stations and Science to Science stations, you can now understand why your roles would differ depending on your starship selection, right? (The only exception to this is a Universal station which can be assigned with any bridge officer.)
Star Trek Online - Starship Stations
Anyway, the above shows the stations found onboard one of my starships (apparently a cruiser-type). As you can see, since it is a cruiser, it has 2 Engineering stations, 1 Tactical and 1 Science. However, you should also note the ranks of the individual stations. One of the Engineering stations is of "Commander" rank while all the other stations are of "Lieutenant" ranks.

In essence, a station of "Commander" rank would allow a bridge officer of the rank of Commander to use all of his or her bridge officer skills while if the same bridge officer were to be assigned to a station of the "Lieutenant" rank, he or she would only be able to use skills up to the rank of Lieutenant. So if you refer back to the "Starship Stations" screenshot, you can see that despite all of my assigned bridge officers were of the rank of Commander, only "Shooraz" has access to all skills because she was assigned to a Commander station.

Customization
Star Trek Online - Starship TailorStar Trek Online - Starship Customization
For the most of this part, you would only need to know that the "Ship Tailor" NPC allows you to customize the look of the starship and shuttle that your currently piloting.

If your doing it to a brand new ship (for the first time), most of the "regular" options will be free of charge. However, subsequent changes would require that you "surrender" some Energy Credits for the modifications.

If one of the options you have selected is a cash shop design, you will need to pay "Zen" (the in-game cash shop currency) for those particular selections regardless. But don't worry, those designs will have their prices clearly labelled right beside the options so its hard to miss them.


Switching Between Starships
For the last part of this section regarding starships, I will be talking about how to switch between active starships or even to a small craft.
Star Trek Online - Starship Selection OfficerStar Trek Online - Starship Selection Window
First of all, you will need to locate an NPC officer with a starship logo as shown in the "Starship Selection Officer" screenshot. After interacting with the NPC, you will then see a Starship Selection window. From there onwards, you can select whichever starship that you wish to pilot via the list on the left hand side and then click the "Ready Starship" button down on the bottom right corner. The same applies when you wish to select a current small craft from your pool of existing ones.

Do note that doing this is merely flagging to the system your preference in ships so much so that whenever you get into a space combat, the game system will automatically spawn you into your selected starship when participating in regular space combats and into your selected small craft when participating in shuttle-only fights.

If what you desire is to pilot a small craft wherever you go and regardless of the situations, you may do so via the "Set Active" radio buttons found on the bottom left of the same window. By leaving the radio button on "Starships", you will be traveling around the STO universe in your selected starship and performing in-game activities as per normal. By leaving the button on "Small Craft" instead, whatever space activities that you do will all be done in your small craft and that includes fighting in regular space combats as well.

Currencies
Star Trek Online - Currencies
If you look at your inventory, right under the "Assets" tab will show you all the sorts of currencies that are being used in Star Trek Online.
  • Energy Credits
    This is the most common form of in-game currency that you will come across. It is used to buy basic equipment and commodities, trading on the "Exchange" as well as purchasing outfit modifications and customizations for you yourself, your bridge officers or your ships. It can be easily acquired by selling the loots that you get or as rewards for completing certain missions and quests.
  • Reputation Marks
    Star Trek Online - Reputation ProjectsStar Trek Online - Azure Nebula Rescue
    Reputation Marks are used in personal reputation projects that becomes available to you when you've reached level 50 (Vice Admiral). Completing these projects will help you to unlock special equipments, commodities and perks. These marks can be earned via completing special PVE missions.
  • Fleet Assets
    Star Trek Online - Fleet DonationStar Trek Online - Federation Fleet Alert
    Fleet Credits are used to acquire special equipment from NPCs found in your fleet's starbase. They are obtained when you donate resources, personnel, fleet marks (earned via participating in fleet missions) and other whatnots that are required to fleet upgrading projects. You will only start to come across these when you've actually joined a "Fleet" (a player-made guild).
  • Dilithium
    Star Trek Online - Breaking the PlanetStar Trek Online - Dilithium Exchange
    Dilithium comes in two versions, "Ore" form and "Refined" form. The ore form is what you would get when you participate and clear specific PVE maps, daily missions or finish some types of quests. The refined form is what you would use to purchase special starships, bridge officers, duty officers and equipments or even exchange them into Zen (cash shop currency). The conversion rate of Dilithium Ore into Refined Dilithium is 1 : 1, but you may only process 8,000 of them a day.
  • Gold-Pressed Latinum
    Star Trek Online - Dabo MinigameStar Trek Online - Gold-Pressed Latinum Prizes
    Gold-Pressed Latinum seems to be some form of currency that is won by playing an STO minigame called "Dabo". Access to this minigame can only be found at specific locations like for example the bar onboard Deep Space Nine (space station).

    As far as I can tell, the minigame appears to be some sort of roulette where you place your bets (in Energy Credits) at particular slots found on the ends of some circular device. The inner rings with the symbols will start spinning and eventually stop...upon which the system will calculate the symbols that align at your selected slots and then pay out your winnings to you in the form of Gold-Pressed Latinums.

    Do note though, that the rewards that you can exchange using these Gold-Pressed Latinums seem to be purely cosmetic consumables so I reckon that they aren't really worth your effort to obtain.

Previous: Star Trek Online (Part Five)Next: Star Trek Online (Part Seven)

Friday, June 14, 2013

Star Trek Online (Part Five)

Leveling Up Need to Knows
As far as I know, the level cap in Star Trek Online is currently at 50 just like in SWTOR. Whether there are plans to allow a player to go beyond it is unknown but highly doubtful because most of the in-game content seems to point towards this as the end-game.
Level01 - 910 - 1920 - 2930 - 3940 - 4445 - 4950
RankEnsignLieutenantLieutenant CommanderCommanderCaptainRear Admiral, Lower HalfRear Admiral, Upper HalfVice Admiral

Anyway, using the Federation ranks as an example, the above table roughly shows the level progression in STO starting with Ensign when you began with the tutorial and ending with Vice Admiral when you reach the level cap.
Star Trek Online - Level Up Rewards Unlocks
Basically, level is gained via earning skill points instead of gaining experience points. And once you've attained enough skill points, you will automatically rank up to the next level.

Although roughly every level or alternate level will net you some kind of reward or unlock (be it gaining extra bridge officers, more duty officers, some kind of usable space or ground skill or just some new PVE maps or functions), the more important milestones would typically be at the change of ranks.
Star Trek Online - Free New StarshipStar Trek Online - Promoting Bridge Officers
At every change in rank (roughly 10 levels or so), you will often be rewarded with a free brand new ship (of your choice) at the "Starship and Shuttle Requisitions" officer, after you've visited Admiral Quinn at the Earth Spacedock for your "promotion" (which is actually just a quest to show up and nothing fancy). However, do note that this offer is only limited to a select few kinds of starships (not the best but still usable) and not for them all so don't get your hopes too high up.

Next, it is also at these change of ranks where you get to promote your bridge officers and unlock their higher tiered skills for use in ground and space combats as well as upgrade to the next set of better space and ground equipments.


Character Skills
Star Trek Online - Character Skills
Despite being called skills, these aren't really usable at all but rather, they actually work kind of like passives to give you a boost (in the form of bonuses) to your equipped weapons, equipments, space and ground skills of your bridge officer and your career.

For the most part of this, the whole character skills thingy is first divided into two specific sets or areas of development, Space Skills and Ground Skills. Developing your space skills would allow you to perform better in space combats while developing on the ground skills would improve your overall ground combat experience. But from what I could tell, there appears to be no effect on the kind of space skills that you get by your chosen career. Only your ground skills seems to be affected and would be different.

Anyway, with regards to the space skills set, it is further subdivided into "Tactical Systems", "Engineering Systems" and "Science and Operation Systems". However, they aren't named as such to tell you to avoid touching them if your chosen career is tactical, engineering or science. Rather, they are purely meant for categorizing the skills associated under them and how ranking up those skills would improve your capabilities (in those areas) when piloting any starship.

For example, if you wish to boost your weapons or attack capabilities, then the skill you are looking for would most likely be found under tactical systems. If you wish to look for a skill or skills that improve your ability to utilize a starship's physical capabilities to its limits, those skills can be found under "Engineering Systems". For skills that improve your bridge officer's science buffs or debuffs, they are found under "Science and Operation Systems".
Next, all of these character skills are also sorted into columns, Lieutenant, Lt. Commander, Commander, Captain and Admiral respectively. What these mean is that the skills found in that specific column will only be unlocked for you to rank them up when you've reached the appropriate level ranks, i.e. Lieutenant rank skills are accessible right from the start while Lt. Commander skills are only accessible when your at least level 10, Commander skills at level 20, Captain at 30 and Admiral at 40.

Furthermore, to prevent players from stockpiling skill points and use them on higher ranked skills, there is a minimum skill point requirement whereby you will need to allocate sufficient skill points into the previous rank (or below) before the next rank of skills would be unlocked. For example, even if you've reached level 40, you will still need to allocate at least 263,000 skill points into Captain-ranked (and below) skills before you are allowed access to Admiral-ranked skills.

And to prevent unbalanced skill point allocations, there is a maximum skill point cap to both "Space" and "Ground" so that you can't just dump all your skill points earned into one and totally ignore the other.

Lastly, if you look at the skill details window (upon selecting a skill), the description found here ought to sufficiently tell you what leveling up that skill would do. But to make things easier to understand, let us use the skill "Starship Energy Weapons" as an example.
Star Trek Online - Skill Name RankThis here tells you the name as well as the rank of the skill.
Star Trek Online - Skill GistThis here summarizes what leveling the skill would do.
Star Trek Online - Skill DetailsThis here tells you the skill's details. Depending on the skill, some may give you the ability to retrain your bridge officers with grade 3 skills provided you are of the stated career profession and have sufficient levels invested in the skill.
Star Trek Online - Skill Level BonusThis here tells you how much bonus you would get per level invested in the skill. Typically, all the character skills would show you this same table, but the exact effect of the bonus upon your character's stats is unknown. What we do know is that each character skill can be leveled a maximum of 9 times and that the amount of bonus you get would decrease every 3 levels.
Star Trek Online - Skill CostThis here shows you the skill point cost per level. It represents how much skill points is needed to increase the skill by 1 level. As far as I know, this is a fixed cost and is dependent upon the rank of the skill, i.e. Lieutenant-ranked skills: 1,000 & Lt. Commander-ranked skills: 1,500
Anyway, the bottom-line is...do not be afraid to put in your skill points into any of the skills (regardless of their categories) so long as the skill's bonuses appeal to you and your playstyle.


Bridge Officer Rarity and Skills
Bridge officers are pretty much part and parcel of STO's space combats as well as ground combats (if they're involved). Without them, your ability to fight is effectively halved (or more) if I do say so myself. So to start things off, let us talk about their rarity.

Bridge officers that you will find in the game typically comes in four distinct "flavors" (okok...rarity), Common, Uncommon, Rare and Very Rare. However, the differences between officers (of different rarity) is not so much as the skills that they come with (since that could be retrained) nor is it their stats (afaik, their hp appears to be the same and there is no other visible difference), but rather in their trait potency.
Star Trek Online - Common Bridge Officer TraitsStar Trek Online - Very Rare Bridge Officer Traits
Bridge officer traits come in three degrees of potency, Basic, Standard and Superior. And in order to give you an idea of their relative strength, if we take Standard as the basis, Basic would only be half as strong as Standard while Superior would be 1.5 times stronger than Standard.
RarityTraits
Common2 Basic, 2 Standard
Uncommon1 Basic, 3 Standard
Rare1 Basic, 2 Standard, 1 Superior
Very Rare2 Standard, 2 Superior
Apart from that, the bridge officer's rarity would also affect the number of basic, standard and superior traits that they possess.
Star Trek Online - Bridge Officer Skills
Next, the above shows a typical bridge officer's skills. And as you can see, it sort of resembles your character skills but is more simplified.

Anyway, each bridge officer is assigned with 4 ground skills and 4 space skills. The sort of skills that they get is dependent upon their career profession though. A tactical bridge officer would get tactical space and ground skills while a science one would get science skills. But nonetheless, all the skills would inevitably have to be ranked according to Ensign, Lieutenant, Lt. Commander and Commander. The reason for this would be made known to you later, but for now just be satisfied to know that you would need to promote your bridge officer to the appropriate ranks before the respective skills will be unlocked.
Star Trek Online - Torpedo High Yield I
Using "Torpedo High Yield I" as an example, the things to note here are mainly:
  • Skill Level - Just like character skill levels, bridge officer skills have a maximum of 9 levels as well. However the difference here is that instead of gaining bonuses, what you get is a decrease in the recharge time (cooldown). At maximum skill level, the amount of time you need to wait before you can reuse the skill is at its least.
  • Expertise Points - Contrary to that shown in the screenshot, what is needed to raise the levels of a bridge officer's skills isn't Skill Points but rather Expertise Points. However, despite their deliberate distinction, they both work in somewhat the same manner. Anyway, just to digress a bit, both skill and expertise points can be gained by completing quests or just simply kill stuff (be it in space or ground combats). Once you've reached the level cap of 50, all skill points that are subsequently gained will be automatically converted into expertise points.
  • Expertise Point Cost - Basically this part is exactly the same as character skills. It just tells you how much expertise points are needed per increase in skill level.
  • Skill Grade - Bridge officer skills come in three grades, I, II and III. In order of their power, Grade I is the least powerful while Grade III is the most. Apart from this, you will also need to know that with each increase in grade, the rank of the skill also increases. For example, Torpedo High Yield I is an Ensign-ranked skill. Its Grade II version, Torpedo High Yield II will be a Lieutenant-ranked skill while Torpedo High Yield III is Lt. Commander.
Well...the last thing I reckon you would need to know regarding bridge officers is how to retrain their space and ground skills. Do note that when you do so, their existing skills (of the corresponding rank) will be permanently replaced by the new ones so be sure that you know what your doing here before proceeding. Anyway, as far as I know, there are 3 sources from which a bridge officer can acquire new skills.
Star Trek Online - Bridge Officer TrainerStar Trek Online - Bridge Officer Assistance
The first source is from a Bridge Officer Trainer. Though this source can train your bridge officers in a wide variety of skills, they are mostly only Grade I and II skills.

The second source is from acquired bridge officer candidates which you don't intend to take in as your permanent crew. The catch here is that these bridge officer candidates will just train one of your existing officers, of the same career profession, in one skill (space or ground) that they know (of any rank) and will then leave...vanish...disappear (you get the idea). And since Grade I and II skills can be learnt from the Bridge Officer Trainer, you will mostly only use this option to train your existing officers in Grade III skills which you cannot acquire from anywhere else.
Star Trek Online - Bridge Officer Training
The third and final source is from you yourself or other fellow players. Remember that I told you that certain character skills, when you've invested sufficient levels into it, will allow you to train your bridge officers with grade III skills? This is it.

The problem here though is that you are only able to train officers in Grade III skills of the same career profession as you yourself, regardless. So if you are of the Tactical profession and wish to teach your Engineering bridge officers in Grade III engineering skills, you will either have to approach some other player of the Engineering profession (to help you train) or find one bridge officer candidate with that skill in particular.
Star Trek Online - Bridge Officer SellerStar Trek Online - Assignment
And before I forget, bridge officers can be obtained either by buying them using refined dilithium off of NPC sellers such as Elsa Mora at Earth Spacedock, gotten from quests, assignments or simply bought via the "Exchange" (in-game auction or tradehouse). For your information, that was where I acquired all my "Very Rare" bridge officers...and for very cheap Energy Credits (one of the in-game currencies) too.



Previous: Star Trek Online (Part Four)Next: Star Trek Online (Part Six)