Release notes/20100603

Accolades

 * Accolades in Star Trek Online are special missions that track various achievements throughout a players career in the STO universe and unlock various rewards at certain milestones. Players can earn Accolades for many different actions in the STO universe such as defeating a certain number of critters from a certain species or faction, completing main storyline missions, dealing tons of damage of a certain energy type, and many more.
 * Since launch we have been tracking many of the statistics for Accolades in the background so Accolades that players have already completed will be granted automatically when this feature goes live.
 * For every Accolade that is completed the player will earn Accolade points, so earn a bunch and compare your score to your friends! You can view your total Accolade Points by opening your Journal and going to the Accolades tab where you will be able to see specific details about which accolades you have completed, how many Accolade points you have earned for each Accolade as well as your Accolade point total.
 * In addition to points certain Accolades will grant special rewards to the player. Exclusive titles and special powers are some of the rewards that players can unlock by completing Accolades.

Squad Support

 * Squad support is a feature that allows a user to scale their in-game efficacy to emulate as close as possible a comparable level of a designated member of their team.
 * This is a great social tool that players can use to form teams with their friends, match their level and then go explore the universe of Star Trek Online together.
 * Players will be able to Squad Support both up and down in level.

Veteran Rewards
The following rewards are now granted to accounts that have had an active subscription for 100 days or more:
 * Stalwart Title
 * 1 free respec per character
 * A new veterans badge costume piece
 * A 2% Skill Point and Officer Skill Point to any characters on your account that are less then Lieutenant Commander 6.

Items, Crafting and Vendors

 * Ship info was updated at ship vendors in Qo'noS and Earth Spacedock.
 * Exploration stores for a few MKVIII items were asking for Badge - 3rd order, when they should have been Badge - 4th order. Specifically, space Shields should now be correct.
 * The Ferengi Memory Alpha Vendors (Physical Advanced) is now receiving his Ferengi price-gouge bonus. He now is back to overcharging for his goods, and might just yet make it into the divine treasury.
 * Restored 20 auction lot limit for selling that was accidentally removed in a previous update.
 * Chromodynamic and some Tier 5 armor will now show up on your character and bridge officers.
 * Corrected the bulk buy confirmation text from "Move how many X" to "How many X?"
 * Added a new retro klingon material option to the ship tailor.
 * Fixed an issue where having two respec tokens would cause neither to be used and charge the player merits.

Social and Fleet Updates

 * Made the search areas in the 'Find Fleet' and 'Search' tabs collapsible. Broke the fleet tags into individual dropdowns.
 * Changed the appearance of the fleet tag 'exclude' checkboxes and added tooltips
 * Added "View Website" button to Fleet Details tab and moved the team name to the window title.
 * Added 'Class' column to Search list. In the 'Find Team' window, team members are only displayed in the tooltip.
 * Fleet leaders now have permissions to edit any of the new event settings after creating a new Fleet.
 * The issue where certain “Bind on Pickup” items were displaying as “Bind on Equip” has been fixed.
 * Players are now re-subscribed to a fleet chat channels if they are kicked and re-invited back to the fleet.
 * Trial Accounts can no longer create or join a fleet if they are in a team.
 * Changed the order of some of the fleet search tags
 * Fleets can now create a fleet calendar of events. Fleet leaders can allow posting permission to this calendar, but all members can view the calendar in the general fleet window.
 * Improved the News, Events and Roster pages.
 * Corrected misspellings in the fleet UI.
 * Made the Calendar be a table and show rank info only in a tooltip.
 * Made footer buttons disappear if you don't have fleet permission.
 * Moved the 'Reply' message to an RSVP window
 * There is now a fleet recruitment system that is located in the fleet management tab.
 * Improved Event Detail layout.
 * Cancelling an event now gives an action to remove it completely.
 * Events are now specified by a start time and duration (instead of an end time). The description no longer persists.
 * A “Looking for Team” column has been added to the general fleet window.
 * Corrected a bug that was causing details and RSVP windows to disappear.

FX and Animation

 * The ground shield regeneration turret fx have been shifted to a bluer tone to better match the other shield fx in the game.
 * The bunny hopping issue is now fixed. You can change directions while doing multiple jumps and the correct new direction will play at the beginning of each new hop

UI

 * Team leaders are no longer blocked from adding team members if they have a “Request to Join Team” window open from another player.
 * The tailor camera distance no longer changes due to changing your overall game resolution.
 * The ship tailor camera distance has been moved slightly forward so make minor ship details more visible.
 * While in Sector Space, shield stats are listed correctly instead of as -1/-1.
 * If the player has a hidden contact dialog while in the away team picker, it will now show up when the away team picker is closed.
 * Fixed the bug where the "injury" confirmation text was not getting cleared for regular stores
 * Fixed a bug that prevented players from getting feedback about their away team changes if a contact dialog tried to pop up while the away team picker was open.
 * There is a brand new C-Store UI that is much clearer than the previous iteration.
 * Fixed a bug in the skill picker that would provide invalid points "To Next Rank" for the captain.
 * The font size on the rename button on the character select screen has been enlarged.
 * Players can now turn off all ui in the game with the command “gameui 0” and bring it back with “gameui 1”. No quotation marks required.
 * Players can now make a short note about each of their friends on their friends list. These are only visible to the player owning the friends list.
 * Disable the invite button if a player isn't selected.
 * Team Join - Changed the team difficulty field and tooltip to be clearer. Added a "Match level" radio button to the Join Team window.
 * The MOTD button now disappears instead of becoming disabled if the player doesn't have permission (to match the Events and Roster tabs)
 * Modified the text of the buy, sell, and buyback tabs on stores so that it uses new text.
 * Removed the header (the innate/passive line) from power descriptions on powers in the "passives" accordian in the character status screen.
 * Added the "Highlight Contributing" dropdown to Respec window.
 * Made the skill display window scroll to show the category with contributing skills highlighted when a power is selected.
 * Added an exposed state to each member in the team status window. This will help healers quickly identify who needs assistance!
 * Revised the officer training UI so that it sorts skills by rank, region, and career. It is now also possible to filter by region and career.
 * Fixed some mouse-over/mouse-click audio issues with the emotes window.
 * Added tooltips for pinning/unpinning the emotes pane to the chat window.
 * The hull-strength of targeted ships now shows up on mouse-over in a tooltip.
 * Fixed a problem with the map window not closing via ESC when another window opens over the top of it.
 * Fixed an issue where an invisible button was overlapping the Rename button and stealing its mouse clicks.
 * Before a player has started a search in the exchange, a caption will be displayed that explains that clicking the search button is required for any items to be displayed.
 * Fixed a typo in the Klingon Team Search UI that made the rank icon not appear
 * Players can now rename their ground characters in a space map.
 * The correct count of items will be displayed when viewing attached mail items.
 * Added a "Passive" accordion for captain and BOffs that shows traits (racial and chosen) and also for captain to show all innates and passives. The innates and passives are grouped according to whether they come from accolades or not.
 * There will be an error dialog displayed when a player tries to double-click on a store item when they don't meet the requirements for it.
 * Selecting players that are in different maps no longer returns invalidentityname.

Cloak and Battle Cloak

 * When activated, your shields now immediately drop, but you will also immediately receive 25% to your defense rating.
 * It now takes 3 seconds for the cloak to engage.
 * Immediately after decloaking, you will now have a 15% damage buff for 5 seconds.
 * After decloaking your shields will also come back online, but your shield power will need to regenerate at your normal rate.
 * The strength of the cloak (the distance at which you can be seen) is determined by your starship's auxiliary power setting.
 * Battle Cloak now grants a Turn Rate and Impulse speed buff while cloaked.

Auxiliary to SIF

 * Main instant hull heal
 * It now targets both self and ally, providing a small instant hull heal and medium damage resistance buff over duration.
 * Efficacy is based on Auxiliary Power.

Engineering Team

 * Reserve instant hull heal.
 * It provides a medium instant hull heal, engineering skill buff, and cleanses engineering debuffs over its duration. No longer provides damage resistance.
 * Works well in tandem with Auxiliary to SIF, as Auxiliary to SIF can be used frequently to restore hull health and maintain damage resistance while Engineering Team is kept in reserve to provide a larger instant heal or remove debuffs.
 * This ability is not modified by Power Levels. However, it also grants a buff to the targets Warp Core Training and Engineering Training Stat. The magnitude of this stat buff is based on the percent of your alive crewmen.

Hazard Emitters

 * Main hull heal over time (HoT).
 * It provides a large hull heal over time, small damage resistance buff over duration, and cleanses hazard debuffs over duration.
 * Efficacy is based on Auxiliary Power

Miracle Worker

 * Engineering captain super recovery.
 * It provides a large instant hull heal, large instant shield heal, and repairs damaged subsystems.

Polarize Hull

 * Damage Resistance self buff.
 * Provides a large damage resistance buff.
 * Performance tied to Auxiliary Power setting.

Auxiliary to Inertial Dampeners

 * Kinetic Damage Resistance, Movement Buff, Repel and Knockback Immunity.
 * It provides a large kinetic damage resistance buff, a speed and turn rate buff, as well as immunity to repel and knockback effects.
 * Performance tied to Auxiliary Power setting.

Emergency Power to Shields

 * Main instant self shield heal.
 * Provides a small instant shield heal and medium shield damage resistance buff over duration.

Science Team

 * Reserve instant shield heal.
 * It provides a medium instant shield heal, science skill buff, and cleanses science debuffs over duration. No longer provides shield damage resistance.
 * Works well in tandem with either Emergency Power to Shields or Transfer Shield Strength to keep Science Team in reserve to provide larger instant shield heal or remove debuff.
 * Grants a buff to the targets Starship Operations Stat. The magnitude of this stat buff is based on the percent of your alive crewmen.
 * This ability is not modified by Power Levels.

Transfer Shield Strength

 * Main ally shield heal (instant + HoT).
 * Provides a small instant shield heal followed by a large shield heal over time. It also provides a small shield damage resistance buff over duration.
 * Auxiliary Power affects the performance of this ability.

Extend Shields

 * Main ally shield damage resistance.
 * Provides a large shield damage resistance buff, along with a small shield heal over time.
 * Shield Power affects the performance of this ability.

Rotate Shield Frequency

 * Engineering captain main shield damage resistance.
 * Provides a large shield damage resistance buff, along with a small shield heal over time.
 * Shield Power affects the performance of this ability.

Changes to Attack Patterns
The "Attack Pattern" family of powers have also been reconfigured to be more versatile:
 * : Remains a Self Damage buff
 * : Remains as a Targeted Damage resistance debuff (one player will no longer be able to stack this debuff on a target multiple times, however, a team of players working together can still use this ability to much the same effect, as it will still stack from multiple sources)
 * : Self/Ally Damage Resistance Buff. Enemies that attack a target with this effect receive a damage resistance debuff (this ability can now also be used on yourself)
 * : This ability now grants a Self Damage Buff, Movement Buff, damage resistance buff and Control Immunity.

Other Powers Changes

 * now is a duration based ability, allowing all of a ships cannons and turrets to fire in scatter volley mode for the duration. is still superior in damage against a single target, but scatter volley now has more punch as an alternate and is superior against multiple targets in a cluster.
 * There has been a general increase to Escort Shields.
 * There has been a general increase to the Raptor Hull.
 * Increased the recharge time of Ramming Speed from 120 to 180.
 * Tripled the transfer rate of EPS consoles.
 * Full Impulse: Reduced power recovery delay from 5 seconds to 2.
 * Destructible objects were modified so they don't get HP and Shield bonuses from the difficulty slider.
 * Fixed Tier 5 Klingon ship mod slots. They were each missing 1.
 * Fixed a bug with the Tier-based scaling of, , , ,.
 * Removed system cooldown from captain space abilities.

Weapon Energy Drain Mechanic Changes
The weapon energy drain mechanic will be changing once this build goes to Holodeck. Weapon Power drain is now instantly refunded at the end of a weapon’s firing cycle, instead of a slow return as was previously implemented. Multiple weapons being fired at the same time will still produce a significant drain and will affect their damage proportionately, but once the weapons stop firing, the weapon power level will immediately return to normal.

This change was primarily inspired by player feedback - specifically on the topic of the energy drain caused by firing multiple bursts of energy weapons. Players may now fire all of their energy weapons repeatedly burst after burst, but the damage for each weapon is still diminished during the firing cycle.

As a result of this change to the energy drain mechanic, the EPS Flow Regulator Station Mods, will no longer have an effect on DPS. They will continue to function to improve power transfer rates between different systems. Narrow Arc Multiplier

All energy weapons receive a firing arc multiplier to their damage. The narrower the firing arc, the higher the bonus. This bonus is used to offset the extra difficulty of keeping a target in arc.

Before the season 1.2 patch the bonus granted vs. the difficulty of keeping targets in arc for ships that mainly use cannons was excessive. This bonus has now been reduced such that cannons still deliver more damage than beams, but the difference is more in line with the challenge of keeping the target in arc. Weapons with 180 and 90 degree firing arcs have also had their multiplier slightly reduced as well. Damage Type Tactical Consoles

The damage type tactical consoles (such as bonus phaser damage) have been reduced in magnitude to match consoles that grant a bonus to a weapon type (such as bonus beam damage). This change was made to reduce end game damage slightly, as well as provide more choice for the player to either augment a damage type or a weapon type equally, without feeling like the choice would be diminishing their maximum potential. Excessive Critical Hits

It was determined that Attack Pattern Alpha was out of line in the amount of critical hit chance and severity that it was granting. These values were reduced. Ability Stacking and Duration vs. Recharge

Significant changes have been made to ability stacking and the recharge duration ratios of abilities. Abilities now have smaller system shared cooldowns (15 seconds for most) but a larger global ability cooldown that affects all versions of that ability across all officers (using Engineering Team I puts all Engineering Team abilities into a global ability cooldown). This global ability cooldown is 2:3 of the ability’s recharge time, which means that slotting two copies of the same ability is helpful in that it can be used more frequently, but the same ability will no longer be able to be stacked by a single player.

Duration vs. Recharge is related to the ability stacking issue. Each ability now conforms to a Duration/Recharge category (1-5), which indicates the ratio between its duration and recharge values.


 * Category 1 has a 2:3 ratio (duration to recharge)
 * Category 2 has a 1:3 ratio
 * Category 3 has a 1:6 ratio
 * Category 4 has a 1:9 ratio
 * Category 5 has a 1:12 ratio

Note that Category 1 abilities have a ratio that matches the global ability cooldown, which means that these abilities can have a 100% uptime if two copies of the same ability are slotted.

Complete Category List: http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=157669

Subsystem Debuff Stacking
The debuff power level drain caused by subsystem targeting attacks on the same system will no longer stack. Only the most powerful drain debuff will apply at any one time, but the other debuffs are still active should the most powerful drain’s duration expire.

For example: If three subsystem target shield debuffs (-30, -40, -50) were applied to a single ship, only the -50 debuff would apply while the other two debuffs would remain on the starship for their durations. Should the -50 expire before the other two, the -40 would then apply and so on. Auxiliary Scale

Now Auxiliary affects abilities is on a linear scale so that 100 energy grants 100% effectiveness, while 25 energy still grants 50% effectiveness. This allows the use of auxiliary powers to still be beneficial at minimum Aux, but can be improved by putting more power into auxiliary. Officer Abilities


 * now uses Aux. The magnitude has been buffed so that it provides the original value at 75 power.
 * now uses Aux. The magnitude has been buffed so that it provides the original value at 75 power.
 * now uses Aux. The magnitude has been buffed so that it provides the original value at 75 power.
 * now uses Aux. The kinetic damage has been buffed so that it provides the original value at 75 power.
 * now uses Aux - Aux strengthens the jam, which is fragile to damage delivered from the source. Attacking a target that you've jammed will break the jam once you have delivered damage that exceeds the strength of the jam (which is affected by the Aux level when the jam was applied)
 * has been improved so that the skill and console modifier to its magnitude has been doubled.
 * Added a proper shield power multiplier for III
 * Added a proper Aux power multiplier for Versions II/III of Sensor Scan

Ship Starting Power Levels

 * Cruiser +5 to all power levels
 * Raider, Raptor, Escort +15 to Weapons
 * Battlecruiser +10 to Weapons and Engines
 * Carrier +5 to Weapons and Aux
 * Science +10 to Aux

Tier 5 Klingon Stations

 * Raider - 3 Tactical, 3 Science, 3 Engineering
 * Raptor - 4 Tactical, 3 Engineering, 2 Science
 * Battlecruiser - 3 Tactical, 4 Engineering, 2 Science
 * Carrier - 2 Tactical, 3 Engineering, 4 Science

Undine STF

 * Engineers attempting to hack the consoles now reset properly.
 * Reduced the numbers of Undine inside Quark's Bar.
 * Reduced the number of static Undine spawns inside of the Terradome.
 * Players can no longer farm the boss in the phase “Trial of Janus”. This also contains an additional message directing players towards the hatch in Quark's once they've completed Déjà Vu.
 * Sulu and J'Vek will now attempt to avoid the dangerous gas in the pits of the boss room.

Other

 * Fixed an issue causing to sometimes get stuck at 4 of 5 bombs planted.
 * Updated return text of fed PvP endgame daily missions to point to correct contact
 * Fixed Metreon gas so it has only 1 HP and plays its on-death fx.