I finished KA last night and honestly I don't really understand how something like this could have been approved by Cryptic.

The mission in itself is not bad, i liked especially the first space part when you have to prevent the borg ships from reaching the vortex.. however the last space part is just beyond silly, you spend over one hour shooting Devonara, the fight is cool and fun for the first two or three times she cloaks and disappears but after you do it for the 200th time you wish you never started this mission at all.

I always felt KA was easier, pack grav wells for the space beginning part. The ground isn't bad either unless you aggro all the levels in the big room & end up with endless zombie attack, but a quick death & it should reset.

No, I never said it was hard, because it is not.. Im just saying that the last part is too long, too repetitive and too stupid.

i have to agree about the last part of this mission. completed last night with pug fairly easily and i enjoyed the story for the most part. ran into a problem with the server kicking us all with 5/6 nodes down, which meant that we had to restart the borg fleet part and ground part over again. doing all of this still didnt take as long as the last part chasing the ship around and killing a million probes. really sucked all the fun out of it for me, its not even hard just really long for no reason that i can think of. needs reworked

in all honesty, the difficulty of the STF's is not that they require leet gaming skills, but they DO require teamwork skills.

First off Voice Chat is absolutely essential. it is very difficult to coordinate without it.

Second, Skill builds: My My tac uses the same build I use for all PvE:
Cmdr Skill: CFR3
LC Skills: THY3, APO1
LT Skills: APB1, CSV1
Ens Skills: TT1, THY1

Having a timer is absolutely essential:
I use a program called "Round Timer" for my iPod Touch
I start it when the tac cube dies and the shield drops:
Settings
10s countdown
2:30 Main timer
30s Warning timer
10s rest timer.

the 30s warning timer is key because when that starts I hit THY3 and can usually get in 2 volleys of Quantums before the shield goes back up.

Coordinate use of Tactical Fleet, as this provides a damage buff to the whole team.

Debuff the gate: Sensor Scan, Fire on my Mark, Attack pattern beta.

CSV helps you take down more probes quickly. the probes are pretty squishy, but more importantly, they will NOT alter course. there is a relatively fixed amount of time you have to kill them before they reach the gate. (you can extend this time with Tractor beams and Gravity Wells. A Sci officer in a sci ship has no excuse for not having GW3

I think the place where things fall apart for pugs is cleaning up the spheres. Concentrated fire is key to getting them down in a reasonable period of time.

one person per side should be designated to pick targets. everyone else on that side should determine which Function key sets their target to the side leader. pressing that F key sets your target to the side leader. Firing your weapons then makes you target the same sphere that the side leader is targeting. under concentrated fire, the spheres go down in seconds apiece.

Feel free to send me a PM in-game, and I'll let you onto my fleet's TS3 server to discuss strategy further.

there really needs to be another start point, (or 2) in this mission, considering that the main portion, on a speed run with 4 tacs and an engi took 2 hrs to complete the whole mission, over an hour on the ground portion alone, where Infected and cure have 3 restart points and take about 1:30 or easily less.

I actually ran a timer and kept track of individual portions of the mission, and IIRC, it was like :15 gate battle :15 Weaken Fleet 1:00 dungeon crawl, :30 Donatra space

If you don't have a few specific BO skills, yes it can take a long time. But with the right ones, it should only take about 15-20 min. Grav well will hold her in place and prevent cloak. Eject warp plasma will slow her to a crawl and prevent her cloak. If she manages to cloak, charged particle burst will bring her out of it, and disable it for a short period of time. If your team has all 3, it's relatively quick.

How to make it easier

Have 2 cruisers 1 escort and any other ships

Get your best cruiser tank make sure he has fire at will to aggro everything give him a good escort wingman.

the other three ships do the other gate and kill it.


Make sure the tanks keep the spheres and cubes busy you must kill the probes first as they do not stop once aggroed.


For the lone tank and wingman it is essential that the wingman not aggro the spheres and only kill one ship at a time he must wipe out the probes first.

Smallest ships (probes die first) then spheres.

If the wingman aggros the larger ships he will eat up heals and probably die which lets probes through.

So when the 3 players kill their gate the come over and destroy the last gate.

It is a tough fight but you need players set up correctly.

Ignore all the insulting replies, they think insulting someone that has trouble with a STF is in any way a help ? meh.. not worth the effort of replying to.

KA is easy, those that say it isnt just need a few things...

A team (doesnt even have to be a good one, just as long as 1 person knows the fight or can read a walkthrough, and all players have vent, or TS if you like that thing instead)

Thats pretty much it.. read the walkthrough at http://forums.startrekonline.com/sho...d.php?t=150676

the way we do it is this..

clean the trash 1st.

3 on the left gate, 2 one the right, best with an escort on the right and the lowest dps cruiser

when they come through the gate, kill the probes, easy with an escort or two, then the escort from the right gate heads to the left to help dps the gate after helping kill a sphere or two and the cruiser stays to finish the spheres.

Ignore the right gate and repeat and get the left one down.

Once its down all head to the right gate, two cubes come in with the 1st wave, kill the probes, kill one cube, and kite another cube away with the lowest dps ship, if you leave one alive you dont get 2 new ones with each wave.. (we lock it down someplace with tractor mines) not too far away or it warps off and you get 2 new ones.

again just repeat till the gate is dead. the main thing here is to focus fire on one sphere at a time to get em down fast, if you left them build up you will get swamped and fail.

Simple, we get it each time..

The ground is easy till you get to the shield puzzle, what an idiotic section that is, but anyway, read the walkthrough.. 3 on a shield, 2 in the room (1 to drop the shield, 1 to extend it)

Cept now of course our group all has alts stuck on the last fight bug.. this game is out of beta right ?? I've never played any other game that leaves bugs up so long to really P off players..

Wow. So many pompous and arrogant posts in this treat it make me want to vomit.

I have beaten KA a few time but I agree that the first part is ridiculous and that last part needs to be adjusted.

I think the main thing is that stf's are the only semi challenging content in the entire game. A lot of players want some sort of challenge even if its only 3 or 4 out of 50+ or so missions. Asking Cryptic to tone down these missions and turn them into easy mode just like the rest of the game leaves these players with nothing to do. If we can't challenge ourselves why play?

Once you figure out the mechanics of the stf's they become quite easy. Its the players that don't want to do any research, planning or communicate with the team and think they can simply warp in and beat the encounter that make them difficult.