A collection of born-again newbie questions

[Archived Post]

Hi all,

I'm a born-again newbie to Star Trek Online, since I pre-ordered and played during the beta and after launch got to about Lt. 4 and then moved, got distracted with other great games, and only now am coming back to the game (just got to Lt. Commander 1 with new ship - whoohoo!). For the record I continued to pay my monthly fee because I liked what I played of the game and wanted to support a good Star Trek game. I also knew I'd come back to it eventually.

Well now I'm back and I have questions. I've looked at a lot of the wiki's and forum posts which have answered many of them. But some questions remain. Bear with me, please.

1. I spent a lot of time customizing my characters appearance including his uniform. After equipping body armor it essentially wipes out all that work. Obviously I want the benefits of the body armor, but is there a way to "hide" it without un-equipping it?

2. Can kits ever be used by your bridge officers? There are an awfully large amount of kits available, and since you can only equip the type for your character it sure seems like an terrible waste if they can't.

3. How do you access the interior of your ship?

4. Is there some way to control your ship with the mouse, but without having to hold down the left and right mouse buttons the whole time? It's very fatiguing. All I want is a keyboard toggle, so that I can turn it on and off with a single key press (or extra mouse button - in other words button 4 or higher). I've tried macros for my razer mouse and it doesn't work (although it worked for long enough for me to confirm that it feels great!).

I'm sure I'll have more questions soon, but if you kind folks could help me with the above I would really appreciate it. Engage!

[Archived Post]

1) Right-click on the armor when it is equipped. Choose disable visuals.

2) No they cannot. Kits essentially give you bridge officer abilities to complement the abilities you get as you level up.

3) Click the down arrow on the minimap and choose visit bridge (or visit interior something like that). You can't do this during missions.

4) Can't help you with this, sorry.

[Archived Post]

Welcome back to STO :)
1. I spent a lot of time customizing my characters appearance including his uniform. After equipping body armor it essentially wipes out all that work. Obviously I want the benefits of the body armor, but is there a way to "hide" it without un-equipping it?
Right-click on the armor in question, select "Disable Visuals". Same goes for ship items that show up on your ship (late-game equipment "sets" that you may have already seen on ships, the Borg and Aegis sets.)

2. Can kits ever be used by your bridge officers? There are an awfully large amount of kits available, and since you can only equip the type for your character it sure seems like an terrible waste if they can't.
Nope, Bridge Officers (BOffs) have sets of 4 abilities for both space and ground combat. This is to promote customization and maintain balance. You can change these abilities at Earth Space Dock (or Qo'noS} for a merit fee. It would be advisable to choose the power you most want before spending Bridge Officer points to level it up (leveling an ability works to reduce its cooldown mostly. Very slight effect boost otherwise. Some powers work best if maxed, like EP to Shields. Having two maxed EP to Shields means you can have 100% uptime on both, one in cooldown.)

3. How do you access the interior of your ship?
There's a little downward arrow to the lower-right of your minimap (default is to the upper-right of the HUD) which contains all the extra menus. You'll find your bridge access there, which leads to your ship interior. Nothing much yet in the interiors by the way, but knowing Cryptic, they'll get around to adding fun stuff to do in there soon.

4. Is there some way to control your ship with the mouse, but without having to hold down the left and right mouse buttons the whole time? It's very fatiguing. All I want is a keyboard toggle, so that I can turn it on and off with a single key press (or extra mouse button - in other words button 4 or higher). I've tried macros for my razer mouse and it doesn't work (although it worked for long enough for me to confirm that it feels great!).
You could try with the mouse, but its best to be able to control the camera with the mouse and move the ship via the default WASD keys. Many ships are designed to fire sideways (like cruisers with their multiple beam banks) like the ships of old, "broadsiding". It'll be hard to see what you're firing on when you're controlling your ship via the mouse.

Other than macro's or assignable keys, there's no current supported way in STO to mouse control a ship except via left+right mouse.

If you have other questions regarding ship setups or other stuf about STO, dont hesitate to ask :)

[Archived Post]

4. Is there some way to control your ship with the mouse, but without having to hold down the left and right mouse buttons the whole time? It's very fatiguing. All I want is a keyboard toggle, so that I can turn it on and off with a single key press (or extra mouse button - in other words button 4 or higher). I've tried macros for my razer mouse and it doesn't work (although it worked for long enough for me to confirm that it feels great!).


You can assign another key tot he LEFT+RIGHT BUTTON in your Key Binds under Options. I'm sure you should be able to setup a programmable keyboard or mouse macro to toggle that assigned key/button press on and off.

[Archived Post]

You can assign another key tot he LEFT+RIGHT BUTTON in your Key Binds under Options. I'm sure you should be able to setup a programmable keyboard or mouse macro to toggle that assigned key/button press on and off.

I will try this again, but the first time I tried it - it didn't work. I tried setting it to the tilde "~" key in the upper left corner of the keyboard. When I pressed the key nothing happened. When I held the key nothing happened either. I wonder if it's a bug, or an oversight.

I really want to be able to toggle the use of the mouse from the cursor to steering the ship and back again using an assignable key (or extra mouse button like 4 or above), but I don't know how to get Cryptic's attention and make this a feature request.