Yesterday, on KA ground elite, we had one guy that in the beginning of the mission just stand there, not moving while we cleared all borg before the nodes room.

Then, when we start the cleaning he goes to the room and begins to drop shields at random. We asked him to stop but hi didn't. Finally, one of us just beams out and as soon as he realized the team was down to 4 he beams out too. Reduced to only 3, we decided we would finish the mission and not loose our time.

We lost the bonus, but manage to finish the mission and got our rewards. Actually it was easier with 3 taking it seriously than with 5.

This boggles my mind. Of all the space missions on normal, Cure is the easiest. How can you fail to those BoPs? Their hull is tissue paper! One CSV/TS volley and the front BoP is exploding... which does enough damage to the one behind it to finish it off too, and I can move on to the other two in quick succession.

I just don't get it. Maybe I am so used to dealing out good damage that I can't fathom someone running a poor damage setup in an STF.

My worst experience...there's so many. But I'll stick with the thing that almost always happens.

I normally fly Science ships. I loves me Intrepid Retrofit and me Nebula.

Well, I had just really returned to the game and saw the changes done to the STFS so I figured, why not, what's the worse that could happen?

Little did I know this would envoke the power of Murphy and his Law.

So I checked up on how to do the STFs now and went in..that's when my hell began.

Off the bat we destroy the Cube and Sphere and go after the Generator..and once we pop the Generators in come the Nanite ships, and all that could stop them..

A Nebula that was geared for support and healing roles with one Grav Well 3 to its name.

Oh yeah, this is gonna suck.

Well, the Rainbow Brites were still spamming fighters and all that on the Generators and here I was, fighting a holding action against a horde of Spheres and Probes...the entire time I was mentally hoping for a server crash so epic that Cryptic would be blasted back to the stone age.

Long story short, we finished the STF but failed the optional..

However no matter what happens when I run Infected, I find myself being the only one trying to keep the probes away. And in Cure: the only one that's protecting the Kang.

Moral of the story: Never Insult Murphy and call him a motherless @$$hole.

Did you use the 10% strategy? That is, get all the generators to 10%, then blow them all up as quick as possible, and start nuking the transformer that is healing the gate. If you do it right and there's enough DPS in the group, you can nuke the transformer before any of the nanite spheres or probes reach the transformer, making the entire ordeal of trying to keep them at bay unnecessary. It's a lot faster than trying to kill every wave of nanites after every generator pops.

If your team was attempting to do the above, best you could do was to either help them nuke the transformer or try to keep the nanites away by repelling or rooting them. The whole problem starts when people play different strategies. Seeing as how you say they were still killing the generators while there were nanites to kill I guess they didn't follow the 10% strategy. Then the only strategy would've been to switch from whatever they were doing to killing nanites. It'll be difficult to get the optional in time that way, but its still possible if there's enough DPS. Heck, anything is possible with just enough DPS.

They didn't use the 10% they out and out nuked the first one in a mass spam of firepower.

Add in when I called for help I was ignored and yeah...wasn't fun at all.

I would have to say the first Infected run I ever made before the revamp was the worst. Pug group without a clue (me included). Nothing like dying in nearly every other mob. After coutless deaths, dropped and picked up players and attempting the last room about 3-4dozen times. We got through it.

This is not the worst one I have ever been in, but it was pretty bad. Yesterday infected ground. We do the whole everyone know the triggers etc. oh yeah yeah we all know. 3 victim in and optional is failed. One person for some reason had to be at the door to every room. Ok so we move on. Get to the final room do the whole left right center deal. Yah yah all good. One person walks in, and stands in the plasma and dies, resurrected, and happens again. 3 times total. Then another person starts spamming pets and mortars etc.. Argos the whole room. Then dies. Repeatedly. Finally 3 of us are moving along and the other two when not dead are agroing anything they could. Finally get Rebecca out, and they won't spread out. So chain lighting in effect. One more shot and she's a goner, and I disconnected. Got back in time to see an empty star base with no loot and a col down on the game. I was ****ed. I pray none of them got tech.

Once I was in an Infected Ground Elite with two guys wearing the EVA suit. As you have to put it into your armory slot they were nearly without any defence. So they were dying continously. When they were down they started spamming "Help"... After 10 minutes it was obvious that they don't want to change their "outfit" and the run is going to fail. So I left.

Seriously... Sometimes I really wonder about other players behaviour. Just to quote the AVGN: "What were they thinking?!?" ^^

I'm in a business where knowing basic mathimatics is very important. One wrong calculation could spell disaster for many. What I have discovered is the average high school graduate which my company regularly hires will have a great deal of trouble counting to 10. Therefore, with the influx of new people who could not play before F2P because mommy would not let them use the credit card, many of them will not know what 10% is. So what it all boils down to is we are doomed to die horrible deaths in the STF PuG world for a very long time.

Part of the problem is that some "pros" are so quick to throw around insults, and then wonder why their hails go ignored.

I was in Infected Space Elite last night. I know about the 10% rule. Switched target to move to the next generator... let loose everything...

And the target hadn't switched. Boom. "Go back to normal, Rick! ******!!!!" etc etc. No slack for a genuine mistake... just a "They're noob!!!! They're noob!!!" assumption. At that point, nothing I could say would restore things - the optional was a bust.

The group still cleared up within 20 mins overall. I do think that if you want to do the optionals reliably, you'd better form a premade. Better for the "pros" blood pressure, right?

Note that it's good to see those helpful few who give advice. It's the ones that just rant and rant that are doing nobody any good - least of all themselves. I always imagine someone frothing at the mouth and gibbering "FUUUUUUUUUUUU!" and rocking backwards and forwards. The thought amuses me a little.

As for me - I did come properly geared, knowing the strategy and with components to heal injuries. Next time I'll be more careful!