Hello and welcome to Joe and STO! With the Summer Event coming up quickly, I wanted to talk a bit about the free ships given each year and why it’s such a special time in the calendar for many players.
FREE SHIP WHAT?
If you’re new to the game since February of this year, I’ll let you in on a secret…
Cryptic gives away nearly $100 worth of ships each year.
I’m serious! There are three nearly-magical times of the year for players.
- Late January/Early February -Late February/ Early March: Anniversary Event
- Early/Middle June or July – Early/Middle July or August: Summer Event, aka the “Lohlunat Festival”
- This year is different due to work slowdowns and other work inconveniences slowing down work from home during the COVID-19 work-from-home orders. The Summer Event is starting when it normally would be ending.
- Early/Mid December – Early/Mid January: Winter Even, AKA “Q’s Winter Wonderland.”
All three Events have had something in common since 2012 (and 2013 for the Summer Event): They give away an endgame-capable starship!
This is a time most players mark in their own personal calendars. If you’re doing anything productive in Star Trek Online, these are where you usually take a breather, do the daily task to get your daily credit (or in the past, the mission which awarded the ship), and partake in the other activity(ies) the Event had to offer. (Maybe not every moment of every day, but you tend to have one character do the daily while others do other activities surrounding the Event.)
COOL! I’LL JUST SKIP THE SHIPS I DON’T WANT AND ENJOY THOSE “EVENTS” IN PEACE.
Ahhh….yeah…this is why I’m doing this mini-series. See, you may not know it now, but I feel you’ll see sundry examples of ships with some kind of use that you’ll consider running this year’s Summer Event even if you don’t like Science Vessels (this year’s ship).
I CHALLENGE YOU TO FIND 5 EXAMPLES!
FINE!
*GRUMBLE*Stupid fan who’s probably not actually reading this, demanding I prove myself over the 8-year history of such Events.*GRUMBLE*
*COUGH* I mean, I’m happy to oblige! I’ll do more than that…I’ll cover every Event ship we’ve had released!
THAT…that…is 8 years of account-unlocked ship goodness (not counting some that were only individual mission rewards) with a wide variety of ship choices should I ever choose to go those routes (plus a couple decent or practically meta ships, too!).
Hey, you asked for this (or maybe not…maybe that’s the voice in my head…)
Anyway, it’s a TON of ships, so I’ll break this series up into 3 parts:
- 2012 thru mid-2014, “The Tier 5 Era”
- late 2014 – 2017 , “The Tier 6 Era,” “Ship Reclaim Era,” and, “Admiralty Era.”
- 2018 – 2020 (so far), finishing the “Admiralty Era” and covering “The Scaling Starship Era”, “Admiralty Auto-Claim Era,” and, “Quarterly Ships Era.”
…Okay, so naming and cutting Eras out aren’t my strong suits! I’m a math tutor, not a historian!
Let’s start early in the game’s life with “The Tier 5 Era,” spanning 2012 through the Summer Event of 2015.
The Reputation System either wasn’t available yet or wasn’t what it is now. All ships earned through these Events were character-based unlocks. Yep! They were like free Lockbox ships, in a sense: Do a mission or a set of daily tasks and you get the ship!…on that character. (This would later be changed for the most part, but not until The Ship Reclaim Era in 2015.)
Let’s jump in, starting with the Federation and Klingon Defense Forces’ newest flagship!
TIER 5 ERA
2012
EVENT: 2nd Anniversary
- IMPORTANCE: They were stripped-down previews of the game’s first Bundle ships: The Odyssey and Bortasqu’ Cruisers, intended to be flagships of the Federation and Klingon fleets. They were also decent Cruisers being made available to all players at the time as long as they did the required mission for each before the Anniversary Event ended. It was a decent upgrade over the Tier 5 freebie Cruisers of the time but not quite as good as some Tier 5 options of the time like the Exclesior (including for Turn Rate; this Odyssey turned like a truck without much help from consoles that could help your Turn Rate…and this was before you could craft RCS Accelerators!).
- SIDE NOTE: They’re available in-game from your Fleet’s Shipyard. They cost 200,000 Fleet Credits. If you’re looking for free T5 Cruisers from the perspective of not needing to spend actual money, you could do worse than a stripped-down Odyssey or Bortasqu’.
- I still have my original freebie Odyssey from this event on my main account. I never could dismiss it!
EVENT: Winter Event/Q’s Winter Wonderland
- SHIP: Breen Chel Grett Warship
- IMPORTANCE: The first time we’d received a guaranteed ship during the Winter was the cold-themed Breen Chel Grett. While I’m not as familiar with the importance of ships from the time, I can safely say that if you were low on usable ships, you might as well have done the Event’s daily until you had enough Q Portraits to obtain the ship. However, like the Odyssey, you had to do this on each character that would have wanted the ship.
2013
EVENT: 3rd Anniversary
- SHIP: Ambassador Support Cruiser/Kamarag Battlecruiser (Tier 3) and Ambassador Support Cruiser Retrofit/Kamarag Battlecruiser Retrofit (Tier 5)
- IMPORTANCE: Unfortunately, there’s nothing of any major importance here aside from bringing the Enterprise-C and a Klingon equivalent into the game. While you can still get Tier 3 versions of these ships from the mission Temporal Ambassador, the Tier 5s are no longer available (with the Ambassador Retrofit becoming available again just once as a C-Store account-wide freebie for one day years ago).
- SIDE NOTE: They did get Tier 6 versions, with the decent History Will Remember trait, about 2 years ago.
EVENT: Summer Event/Lohlunat Festival
- SHIP: Risian corvette (not with a capital “C” as Chevrolet has the rights to that)
- IMPORTANCE: It was the fastest ship of its time. If you could handle its speed, combined with being the first Escort-style Event ship, it would have been a nice addition to Tactical captains’ arsenals. Plus, some people tried to break System Space impulse speed records with it.
- EDIT: Thanks to Twitter user Lord-Ice, you can see just how far people went to break the System Space impulse speed record (which I don’t know where it stands, but if it’s above what I believe to be 2k…that’s just insane!). Check out the GIF below!
- https://imgur.com/zzrlfYu
EVENT: BONUS! Mission Reward in September, 2013
- SHIP: Obelisk Carrier
- IMPORTANCE: While it handled like a truck…no, that’s still too maneuverable…while it was practically a stationary whale, it was the first freely-available Carrier for players. The mission for it, “Sphere of Influence,” before December 5th (the Winter Event, interestingly enough, started the next day: December 6th).
- SIDE NOTE: It’s still available from the Fleet Shipyards. Also, an upgraded version with a unique console is available in the Lobi store for 800 Lobi.
- SIDE NOTE 2: There’s still a way to get upgraded Obelisk hangar pets in the mission.
EVENT: Winter Event/Q’s Winter Wonderland
- IMPORTANCE: It would be the first freely-available ship with what we now know as Raider Flanking, providing improved damage when firing on an enemy’s rear arc. It also was the first free ship to have a console set, combining with the previous year’s Breen Chel Grett Warship‘s Breen Energy Dissipator to boost what’s now Drain Expertise and Control Expertise.
2014
EVENT: 4th Anniversary
- IMPORTANCE: These were the first Science-based ships available as an Event reward. They had some flexibility in being Science-oriented or more Tactically-oriented through an innate transformation mechanic that changed what abilities, BOFF seats, and one weapon slot was available to you. It also previewed the Dyson Science Destroyer Mega-Bundle, where each faction got 3 upgraded variants (including a console each that’s part of a console set) for 9,000 Zen (or you could purchase it in Faction-based packs for 4,000 Zen or individually for 2,500 Zen).
- SIDE NOTE: This version is still available in-game from the Lobi store for 600 Lobi. You’ll get whichever version fits your faction.
EVENT: Summer Event/Lohlunat Festival
- SHIP: Risian Luxury Cruiser
- IMPORTANCE: Along with a console set bonus for the Risian corvette, the Luxury Cruiser has an improved Slipstream (which wasn’t new in itself) that gives a slower sector speed increase but disables collision (except for Stars).
- SIDE NOTE: There are plans to release a Tier 6 version of this ship next year, though those plans are not definitive.
- SIDE NOTE 2: This is the final Tier 5 ship to be released as an Event Ship…because Tier 6 was on its way.
TIME TO TAKE (TIER) 5!
That’s all for Part 1 of this series. Out of these 8 ships, you had the opportunity to earn (per character, so it was a grind!)…
- Cruisers: 3
- Science Destroyers: 1 (I’m treating the faction variants all as 1 ship)
- Tactically-oriented ships: 3 (the corvette, Heavy Raider, and Warship)
- Carriers: 1
Just in those 2.5 years, we quite the variation! With only 8 slots, this is about as even a distribution as you can get: 3 Engineer-focused, 3 Tactically-focused, and 2 Science-focused.
The Risian Luxury Cruiser was the last Tier 5 event ship rewarded. On October 14th, 2014, the Delta Rising Expansion was released. With it, the highest Tier of starship was raised from Tier 5 to Tier 6. The 2014 Winter Event ship, and all ships going forward, would be Tier 6, offering players free chances to earn ships with Starship Mastery they could unlock for their characters’ ships. While many early on weren’t earthshatteringly good, some would come to find use in a variety of builds.
However, I’m getting ahead of myself. Today is the Summer Event 2020 launch! Go to Risa! Enjoy! I’ll be back with more for you later in the week.
Joe and STO 