From Qo’noS with love
There was a double reward weekend now for Star Trek Online (STO), so I decided this might be a good time to move up my KDF character a bit in the ranks.
Klingon side in STO suffers a bit from lack of content/missions – and “a bit” is probably an understatement. For a game that is so geared towards pre-made consumable content (not exactly a world to just wander and explore), the distinct lack of interesting content is significant.
In my opinion, the argument that Klingon side is PvP-focused does not quite cut it – for PvP to be viable and fun there should be two sides. I am not a PvPer, but that seems like common sense. Rather there should be an even mix of PvP and PvE for both sides.
The number of Klingon/KDF-specific missions that are not just “go kill stuff” grinders are far and few between. The featured episodes are available, but at least the missions I have played in the first two the amount of rewrite for Klingon side is minimal – sometimes only replacing “Federation” with “Empire” or similar. I would have hoped the dialog with the Breen (who also are a warrior race where honor is important) would have been adjusted accordingly, but that does not seem to be the case.
Qo'noS
Despite my complaints here I must say I have a lot of fun despite that; I really like my battle cruiser and my engineer character. Starting to play missions in the Foundry has also helped here; I have played a few quite fun missions. I also realized there was a bit more to melee combat that just button mash when I started playing my Klingon-side character and one of the weapons I use is the Bat’leth.
Another reason for this play time on KDF side is also to improve my understanding a bit more of what is there right now and get a better feeling for how I should make missions for KDF side. So I will be playing Klingon-side alien to get a few more levels under the belt and perhaps see some of the missions and areas that are already there first.
The next season update should have a bit more love to the Klingon side, as well as the melee combat. I am looking forward to that. Qapla’ !
My battle cruiser I.K.S. Kikh'az
A ding world 
I have read that the Klingon ships play a bit differently then Federation ships. Did you notice anything? I’m glad that the foundry is starting to fill out the missions for that faction. It sounds like Klingons are a lot better off then Creeps in LoTRO (to cite an extreme example of a PvP focused faction embedded in a PvE game).
Klingon ships all have a battle flavour to them, at least in name. They seem in general to be more front-loaded in terms of weapon slots – my battle cruiser has 4 in front and 2 in back, for example.
Most have some kind of cloak, Bird-of-Prey also have battle cloak. Bird-of-Prey is also special in that the bridge officer slots are all universal; you can put whatever BO combination you want.
Turn-rate is pretty good, overall better than Federation side, with Bird-of-Prey probably better than anything else.
Bird-of-Prey is a bit fragile through and only a small crew, so it is more of a hit-and-run type of ship, I think.
Ah, ok. Explains some complaints I’ve read about Klingons in PvP 🙂 What is your sense about the degree to which Foundry is really helping the content for Klingon faction? Are enough new missions popping that they feel like a full featured faction?
No, that is not enough for a full-featured faction, rather it is making the lack of PvE content a bit more bearable.
You only get mission completion rewards by doing a daily mission that gives you a reward if you complete 3 Foundry missions and that is still not quite as good as the rewards for a single Cryptic-created story mission and certainly not any of the featured episodes.
The Foundry missions provides content variation and can certainly be enjoyable, but does not fix the issue with lack of Cryptic content.
Also, Klingon side seems to have significantly less than Federation side in terms of customisation options (ships, costumes).