And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by

One essential element to any Star Trek game is the ships and STO is no exception. Even through the television shows and movies, a ship is either needed for transportation, combat or some unique twist on a story plot. The exploits of any Enterprise, the Defiant and Voyager, to name a few, are well known.

The name Endevour is one I have always picked, when that option is available. I just like the sound of the word, even though I misspell it on purpose. In STO, this ship is the first my character receives, under very unfortunate circumstances. From here, my character will grow and advance through the game's storyline and progress up through the levels. Part of the learning curve is applying the right upgrades, until I reach that point of acquiring a new ship, since the first one won't be enough to carry on with the ever increasing demands of the game.

So far, the Endevour has taking quite a beating from all the foes that have been thrown at it and survived, somehow. Each time an encounter ends, my crew make repairs and the ship gets underway again, ready to face the next adventure, wherever that may be.

The Endevour is what is called a Cannon Ship, meaning, that it, or a variant there of, has been used in official, accepted media. Although it is classified as a Light Cruiser in STO, in the Star Trek universe, the Endevour is really a Miranda Class Starship. The first ship of this type, U.S.S. Reliant, was seen in 1982's Star Trek II; The Wrath of Khan and was an integral part, of what I consider to be, the best space battle on screen, ever....

....too bad it doesn't end well for the Reliant. Over the years, the model has been recycled, representing other ships of the same and slightly different classes. Still, it's a design I like and will use mine until it's time to move on and up.

The Endevour isn't the only vessel under my command, I also have this; Peregrine Fighter named Minnehaha. Not my first choice, but, I'll take it anyways. One tough little ship and when I mean little....

....I am a hood ornament to other ships! I originally received this through a promotion code and have already made extensive use of it, while not taking active part in Missions the game is offering....

....I am exploring some famous landmarks in the Star Trek universe, like Station K-7, from the Original Series.

I don't plan on replacing this little gift and have already been collecting upgrades for her. Minnehaha is a keeper, both as a small ship that could come in handy and a reminder of what brought me to the game; pure, causal fun.

The Minnehaha is also cannon. Although seen a few times in Star Trek, it made it's biggest impact on Deep Space Nine, an episode called Sacrifice of Angels....

....which opened my eyes to a Federation Fighter. Looks like a fun break from commanding a huge starship, if you ask me.

Genesis

For the longest time, I have looked at this particular title and wondered; is it any good? The last Star Trek games I played with any real vigor, way back when, was Elite Force and Bridge Commander. Although I dabbled with Starfleet Command series and a few attempts at the seldom discussed, hardly remembered Deep Space Nine; The Fallen and a few other titles from this genre, suffice it to say, I have spent some time in the virtual, final frontier.

First things first, I collected on two promotions to get things started http://na.alienwarearena.com/giveaways/star-trek-online-peregrine-attack-fighter-key-giveaway and http://na.alienwarearena.com/giveaways/star-trek-online-new-dawn-idic-tribble-key-giveaway I thought they might come in handy, now or later. 

While I could go into the great details of how I got things going, I won't, because I didn't spent a whole lot of time on this opening phase of things. I downloaded the client (around 12ish gigabytes) and installed. Next, I selected the Federation, picked first Vulcan male I came across, quickly threw on a First Contact uniform (I always liked that look, since the selection was somewhat limited) and named both him and the ship. Easy pesy.

To be perfectly honest, I found the tutorial to be, frustrating. I didn't want to spend all that time (perhaps an hour, maybe less) to work my way up to the action, I just wanted to jump straight into it. Still, I begrudgingly plodded through it, then relaxed, starting to soak up what was being presented.

The tutorial was fairly straight forward. Graduation Day was the first of many episodes in a series. Freshly graduated from Starfeet Academy, I run around talking to people, some I even went to class with. Training Cruise introduces the ground combat part of the game. Klingons board the training ship and kidnap the Captain and kill him. Field Promotions puts my character in command of the ship and begins the ship combat phase of the game. Communications Breakdown has me, as the new Captain, fly off to some system, try and help a fellow Federation ship and be attacked by the Borg. The final tutorial episode....

....brings all of the elements and lessons learned into a single scenario. Ship combat, ground combat and menu interaction. Needless to say, I made it through that experience, confirming this could be a new game for me to divide my attention with.

So, I snagged one more promotion that I could find through Google https://insider.razerzone.com/index.php?pages/giveaway/&id=star-trek and will continue here, next time, with some of those very lessons I learned from the tutorial and how I came to know some of the Star Trek universe.