Social Systems

This section will walk through how to navigate social systems like chat, friends, teams, and fleets in STO.

Throughout this guide, look out for items marked ALERT in red text for special cautions and italicized picture captions for related images. 

5.1 Chat

STO has a labyrinthine chat system harkening back to old-school MMOs . . . and most of it is utter uselessness, trolling, and clutter. As with other sections, we’ll first explain how to use it, and then we’ll provide some recommendations on how to make it useful. 

The chat window is a non-persistent communication log that only lasts the duration of your log-in session. Switching characters might cost you chat messages while you’re swapping, and if you want any kind of persistence in your messaging, use the email system instead. (See 4.5)

Left: Chat Window; Right: With message entered but not sent

To send a message, click down in the text bar, type your message, and press Enter. The message will be sent to the currently-selected channel and ONLY that channel. To change channels, select the box on the right, and use the set channel function to change the channel. 

Channel selection menu

The Chat window can have multiple tabs, and each tab will only display messages from each channel you have selected to be viewed in that tab. In this way, you can assign certain conversations to tabs so that you’re getting the right messages in the correct tab. 

To change these settings, you need to open the Chat Settings window. To get there, select that same chat options box and choose “Chat Settings.” This will open up a new menu called “Chat Configuration.” Each tab has an entry on the left where you can change all the channels that are displayed in that tab, along with color-coding channels and other options like showing the channel name or timestamp with each message. You can also rename your tabs as you like using the box at the top-right.

Chat Configuration Menu

What if you want to join a new channel? Let’s say you already know the channel’s name. If so, go to the channels tab, select the one you want and choose join. This works in reverse to leave a channel: highlight the one you want to leave and select leave. If you don’t know the channel’s name, you can search for publicly-visible chat channels to find the one you want.

Chat Channel List

Direct Messages

To send a direct (private) message to someone, you can type /tell and then their character@handle to send a message. /w also does the same thing. If you don’t want to receive messages or see someone else’s chat, type /ignore character@handle to ignore them. 

Recommendations

Set up one tab for NPC, Mission, System, and Reward messages. Turn off any and all Combat channel settings to avoid slowing down your computer’s performance as the game tries to type out each combat instance. You’ll only occasionally need this tab if you forget what a reward was, or for other reference purposes. 

Set up a different tab as your main conversation tab, with only these channels: Tell, Team, and Task Force Operation, along with Fleet and Armada as applicable. If you subscribe to other channels that are more active, include them here. You can also subdivide this into multiple tabs. For example, I’m an endgame player who likes to run Elite Task Force Operations, so I might have one tab set up for space Task Force Operation group-forming channels, one for channels used to form ground Task Force Operation groups or events, and another for channels used for trading. However, when you’re first starting out, you’ll probably do better to mostly ignore chat. It’s a good idea to leave Team and Task Force Operation chat up in case your teammates are trying to communicate to you on team maps but you can also just minimize the chat window entirely.

ALERT: Turn OFF Zone Chat from all channels. Zone Chat is infested with a large number of players who enjoy saying things to get a reaction out of you. Don’t take the bait, ignore them and leave them to their sad existence. 

Chat Etiquette

• Read the rules of each chat channel you’re in. They should be posted in the description of the channel

• Don’t send the same message over and over again. Even in trade channels, where people expect to see “WTB” (Want To Buy), “WTS” (Want To Tell), or “WTT” (Want To Trade) offers, give it a good 10-15 minutes before repeating the message.

• Sending people unsolicited direct messages (DMs) should be done with great discretion. Don’t take it personally if they don’t respond to you.

• Don’t interrupt someone else’s role-play (RP) if it’s showing up in a channel you’re subscribed to. If you don’t want to see it, turn the channel off. It’s not a great idea to join in unless you’re part of the group that set up that RP session.

5.2 Friends and Teams

We’ve found the best way to play STO is with a friend. If you’re a dedicated solo player, you can certainly enjoy the game and complete most every type of mission and episode without much player interaction at all, but if you have friends to play with, that makes the game that much more fun. 

5.2.1 Friends

Friend management is largely done through the social menu, off to the right side of the minimap below mail by default. 

Social menu

The friends tab is the fourth from the left and shows all your friends, both online and offline. You will also see where they are and if they are looking for a team (LFT) or not. If you have a friend request pending, highlight the row with that person’s name and @ handle and either select accept request to accept the request, or select remove friend to clear the invite. The other person is not notified if you reject the request. 

Friends window

To add a friend, you can use the friends menu to add a friend if you know their character name and @ handle or right-click on someone’s character and click “add friend.” 

ALERT: It’s rude to randomly add people, so make sure they’re okay with it before you do. 

The “Warp To” button is broken and does not work at all. 

Right-click a player to open the interaction context menu

5.2.2 Teams

Teams are temporary groups that players form to run the same episode, patrol, or task force operation together. There is no permanence to teams beyond that player session. When you enter a task force operation as a team, the team should persist after the task force operation; any teammates picked up during the task force operation do not remain part of the team after its conclusion.

To join up with another player, you can find their name in the friends list, a chat channel, their character/ship, or even a fleet roster, then right-click and choose “Invite to team.” Teaming DOES enforce faction boundaries, so characters belonging to the KDF or aligned with it cannot team with Federation or Federation-aligned characters.

Team Settings menu with privacy menu overlaid 

The Team Settings menu allows you different options on teaming. Team Join Mode changes your team settings. Open Teaming will allow anyone in the instance to join your team freely. Prompt on Creation allows you to set your team join mode each time someone requests to join your team. Allow on Requests allows anyone in the game who sees you to ask to join you on a team and you will get a pop-up to confirm the team addition. Closed Teams will disallow non-friends from adding you or inviting you to a team. The Loot Mode and Loot Threshold buttons will determine how loot is handled for teams you lead. Loot Mode determines how Loot is allocated. Loot Threshold determines at which setting the loot is prompted for teammates to ask if they want to “need”, “greed,” or “pass,” on the item. Round Robin is where everyone takes turns getting loot, Master Looter means that the team lead gets all the loot, and Need or Greed will ask the teammates if they want the item a lot (“need”) or a little (“greed”). Free For All is a random Loot allocation.

Both menus have the privacy button, which allows you to set how social you want to be and how visible you want to be within the game. 

Recommendations

We recommend not allowing public challenges, but allowing other people the option to trade, invite, email, and tell (direct message) you. Turning off fleet invites can also be a good idea. Again, all of these are recommendations. Feel free to be as social as you want, or not. 

If you’d like to run a private instance of a Task Force Operation, you can invite players to join your Task Force Operation instead, which does NOT enforce faction teaming. This allows you to team up with players of the opposite faction and even launch Task Force Operations with fewer than the required number of players (see 8.2 for more information).

Right-clicked friend from friend’s list with options 

The search page lets you search for other online players; Find Fleet lets you see other fleets with players online, covered in the next section.

5.3 Fleets

Fleets are STO’s version of player guilds. Fleets can be social communities of players who regularly play together, or you can treat them as basically stores and not interact with other members at all, and there are fleets that are just fine with either approach. There are some very strong endgame unlocks, including additional trait slots, consoles, deflector array, and warp/singularity core, exclusively through fleets, so it does benefit you to join one. However, you’ll want to take care to join the fleet that’s right for you. 

Fleet Green Flags:

• Fleet meets your desired levels of activity.

• Fleet has the appropriate levels of holdings. Underdeveloped fleets at this stage in the game are probably few in members and don’t have the activity needed to progress holdings, such that you’ll expect a long wait before getting access to the higher-tier items.

• Fleet leadership is reasonable about providing access to the stores. You’ll have to be the appropriate rank, as defined by the fleet leaders, to buy things from the stores.

• Fleet leadership is active in slotting projects for you to contribute marks and other resources that you'll need in order to earn in-game resources and buy from fleet stores.

• Fleet members have other common interests; STO has a wide variety of fleets that cater to a variety of interests, both in-game and out.

Fleet Red Flags:

• Do not join a fleet that demands thousands of refined dilithium or multiple weeks to leave provisional status and buy things. 

• Do not join a fleet where you’ll struggle to earn fleet credits. As a new player, you want a fleet with sufficient activity and attentiveness to new players.

• Do not join a fleet where you'll be expected to obey the whims or manipulations of fleet leadership. There are plenty of other fleets that aren't run by power-tripping jerks. You don't need them; they need you.

Finding a Fleet

There is a tab on the social window to the right of the minimap to help you find a fleet. Fleets with active online players will be shown in this window. These windows will usually tell you a little bit about the fleet and have recruitment information there.

Find Fleet Window

Navigating a Fleet

To join a fleet, you must be invited by fleet leadership. In my experience, there are plenty of fleets that will send spam messages to any player that is visibly without a fleet, and these are usually NOT the fleets you want to join. Fleets who spam randoms with unsolicited invites are not providing a valuable service or experience in our book. 

Once you’re in a fleet, access the fleet’s holdings by pressing the fleet button below the minimap

This will open up the main overview screen for the fleet. You’ll probably not spend a bunch of time here, but it’s useful to see Events for fleets that use them. 

The next tab is holdings, and this is where you’ll spend a good amount of time. Select the holding you want to see from the left to see overall progress on the holding, and you can click the individual project shown in the center pane to view the project, then select “Contribute” from the pane to the right to add resources to a project. 

Left: Holding tab of a fleet holding (Colony); Right: Contribute tab for that holding

As a new player, what you’ll likely have access to the most are Fleet Marks, R&D Materials, Expertise (don’t use it all! You’ll need it for Reputations, see 6.6), and potentially civilian duty officers from Admiralty (see 6.8). Contributing resources to a fleet project will earn you fleet credits at varying amounts and returns. What fleets will mostly likely be scarce on is refined dilithium and non-civilian duty officers. We encourage you not to spend refined dilithium on fleet projects when you are new, with the exception of Fleet Vouchers, i.e. those earned through Klingon Admiralty Tour of Duty 10/10. 

Fleet Credit Exchange table, sourced from the wiki: 

There are a few other things that can be turned in for fleet credits in that table, but they are very uncommon and unlikely to be needed on well-developed fleets. 

The usefulness of the New, Events, Roster, Settings, and Information tabs will vary heavily depending on the fleet, and your rank within it. Roster can be used to see if fleetmates are online. The information tab will give you an overview of the fleet and its contact information. Settings will tell you what the ranks of the fleet are, from which you can determine what your permissions are. To leave a fleet, go to the roster tab and choose the “Leave Fleet” option.

Left: Fleet Roster Screen; Right: Fleet Information Screen

Fleet Settings/Permissions Screen

Lastly, Armadas are worth a mention. Other fleets can band together into an armada, where different fleets have different ranks within the Armada, which have different bonuses. You can contribute to projects of other fleets in the armada by selecting the “holdings” tab for a given fleet, which is useful when joining a fleet with highly-developed holdings. 

Armada tab with other fleets' holdings shown

There are a total of six fleet holdings, and while there are many, many, many things available at each holding, we’ll provide a quick overview of notable items from each holding. 

• Fleet Starbase (Tier 5)

  • Elite Hangar Pets (do NOT waste dilithium on advanced hangar pets from the dilithium store)

  • Fleet Ships, purchasable with Fleet Ship Modules

  • Trade in surplus commendation XP for Fleet Marks

  • Buy Fleet Duty Officers for Fleet Credits. 

• Fleet Dilithium Mine (Tier 3)

  • Miner duty officers

  • Can refine an extra 500 dilithium ore per day upon visiting

  • Having this holding maxed also unlocks a 15% dilithium discount on all purchases

• Fleet Research Lab (Tier 3)

  • Ground/space Reputation, starship, active reputation trait slot unlocks

  • Krenim bridge officers

  • Particle Focuser consoles for exotic builds

  • Krenim duty officers, including some with R&D traits

  • Fleet Kit Modules

• Fleet Embassy (Tier 3)

  • Romulan bridge officers, notably with the Superior Romulan Operative trait for extra critical chance and severity in space. 

• Fleet Colony (Tier 5)

  • Energetic Protomatter Matrix Infuser consoles for survivability and damage on energy builds

  • The Elite Fleet Intervention Protomatter Deflector Array is widely-used. The best mods will depend on your exact setup; see the Basics guides or example builds for the proper choice. [Drain]x2 [EPS] is the default for energy builds.  

• Fleet K-13 Holding (Tier 3)

  • K-13 Survivor Duty Officers, including guaranteed doffs with R&D traits

  • Superior versions of a number of traits, including Cannon/Beam/Projectile Training

• Fleet Spire (Tier 3)

  • Advanced Tactical consoles: Locators/Exploiters

  • Duty officer assignment and active ground/space duty officer slots

  • Spire Kits with [KPerf]x2 are okay when first starting out

  • Obelisk Swarmer Hangar Pets are okay when first starting out

  • Voth Duty Officers

  • Fleet Plasma-Integrated Warp Cores/Fleet Thoron-Infused Singularity Cores.

ALERT: Almost every fleet purchase will require not only fleet credits, but also refined dilithium and lots of it!

To buy things from a fleet store, you’ll need to actually visit the fleet holding. You can travel there in sector space, but most of them have transwarp options as well, with the Dilithium Mine and Embassy being a notable exception. Defera and Azure Nebula will get you close to those locations.  Since most of those locations, especially the Fleet Colony (Dranuur), are out of the way, this is the better way to get there.

Relevant Fleet Transwarp Options

Once at the holding, you’ll need to find the vendor you want to buy the item from, then pay fleet credits and dilithium to get it. 

Example holding screen from Fleet Colony

Fleets also have a special bank called the Fleet Bank. At certain ranks within the fleet as determined by leadership, you can deposit or withdraw items from said bank. In general, don’t put anything there that you wouldn’t mind losing forever. 

You can also buy items from another fleet's stores if your fleet's holdings are not developed enough to access the item. However, your version of the holding must still be provisioned. As an example, if I wanted to buy the deflector above but my fleet did not have an advanced enough colony, I could seek an invite to another fleet's holdings. Once there, I can buy the item from the store under one condition: my own fleet must have sufficient provisions (checkable from the holdings tab) on its own colony to allow the purchase. 

ALERT: You cannot buy ships from another fleet's holdings. You must be a member of the fleet to buy ships. 

Some people like to band others together and form new fleets. While this can be a fun project for you and other players to work on together, be aware that the fleet system’s costs do NOT scale with the number of members, and these were really meant to be completed by fleets with dozens of players. Unless the idea of spending millions of refined dilithium to complete a new fleet, when there are many, many established fleets out there with finished holdings, appeals to you, we suggest you skip that for now. This is especially true on the KDF side, where there is a dearth of finished fleets.

If you are looking for a fleet to join, consider reaching out to the Terran Imperial Guard/Terran Imperial Guard KDF. We have several friends of our site in that fleet and they're always looking for members without imposing burdensome requirements for contribution or participation.