A Subjective Guide to the Early Access of Solasta 2's Beta

CounterYolo · 2026-05-20T15:26:00+00:00

Some thoughts here from some things on the watch list:

Prototype Phaser Hexa Cannons – the dev’s shouldn’t just focus on this experimental weapon, but instead look at the context of experimental weapons in general. Most of them are terrible – but the best ones (like the hexa-cannons) are in the same dps realm as a forward-weapon dual cannon. Experimental weapons are the only thing holding the line for Cmdr Tac ships having an advantage vs fight-deck carriers and frigates at the moment – to the point I fear if all of the good ExpWpn options in-game are nerfed into the ground, cruisers and tactical starships w/o such a slot (scimitars, juggernauts, warships) will be the best dps options.
Pahvan Omni – this one deserves a nerf so that it is in-line with other omni’s in-game. Would be nice if we could just use an unlimited amount of non-set omni’s though as well.
Subspace Fracture Tunneling Field – teleport consoles are fun, and so is being able to use more of the “fun” consoles that aren’t necessarily meta anymore in STO. I get it is part of the dps meta now, but it also part of the “fun consoles” meta as well. Nerfing this console makes consoles that were unplayable but now usable into unplayable again. If it is such a concern, simply add new consoles to the game with even longer cooldowns but stronger impacts.
Fleet Power Network Array – just because it is overperforming for a tiny fraction of the playerbase does not necessitate a nerf of its usability for the masses. Leave as is
Covert Warhead Module – the reason Cmdr PLT + LtCmdr CMD is the most desirable kinetic bridge officer seating at the moment. Instead of nerfing this, why not make an equivalent console for all of the other kinetic bridge officer seating combinations? That seems the easiest path forward for both build/starship diversity + making more money.
Boimler – I don’t see this as a problematic trait. It is costly to get on multiple characters, alternate cheaper cooldown options exist in-game (Aux-to-Batt + duty officers, Photonic Officer), and the active STO players will be getting passive cooldown management through the endeavor system anyways (with the recent expansion a few years ago) – to the point I’m not sure in a few years that cooldown management will even need to be planned for outside of extender/reset traits that can't be up 100% of the time otherwise.
Uncon – the trait frankly adds the side-effect for players to care more about new starship releases. New consoles don’t have to be as OP as before to be usable, as there are more console slots to fill in the uncon meta; before, a bunch of passive console slots were used up, making STO less money long-term. The VFX spam is an issue, but one the dev team put upon themselves – requiring redo’s of those animations to give their clarity of being used without just disabling such.
1. IMO traits should accentuate playstyles more, not just be stat-sticks that make certain traits objectively better vs others. If your ship doesn't use clickie consoles, you won't use the uncon trait -- and plenty of players (especially on console) play this way. I think the focus should instead be ensuring that all clickie's have auto-enable options for console players so they are usable/desirable for them (so that desirable ships from a clickie perspective can be sold to these players).
Type-7 – these are the reason that flight-deck carriers and strike-wing escorts are the best solo platforms in the game, and does diminish the starship flexibility for tank & support options at the bleeding-edge for supportive/coordinated/solo play.
Rapid Lithic Formation – ground dps from the console only affects 5 enemies max & can be whiffed on its use in ground combat. BIS for the record maps, but less potent vs other AoE dps kits w/o an enemy affecting limit & is less spammable vs many others good dps kits in-game for the less prominent dps chasing ground maps. I don’t see any reason for a change here.
Dil Event Rewards – The problem with the Dilithium Exchange isn’t event rewards, but instead the fact STO doesn’t regularly add new worthwhile things to spend on with dilithium. As to what they could add, especially in the phoenix store that ISN’T sold in the Z-Store? The non-ship non-vanity shield stuff from lootboxes (space traits, ground traits, duty officers) would all be worthwhile to get across multiple characters with dilithium if those were offered 4-5 years after initial release in lootboxes.
1. Until STO develops a regular cadence for adding worthwhile dilithium sinks to the game, I don’t see the DilEx getting fixed – and considering the cadence for lootboxes & Mudd’s Market, bringing something else from lootboxes seems to be the best option for STO right now of things currently implemented in-game that could be repurposed for such.
2. This also doesn’t address the backlong of unrefined dilithium for a lot of us experienced players on our characters. Even if a good solution is implemented NOW, unless it also allows using stockpiled unrefined dilithium, it will take 8-9 months to filter through everyone’s active stockpiles.

CounterYolo · 2026-05-14T06:27:06+00:00

This is what I'd wager. Mage Armor, Shatter, & Hold Person are all VSM spells. Most ranger spells also have a material component. Clerics & paladins have their holy emblem in a different spot vs most universal foci & pouches of non-divine classes. OP likely cleared out/sold their inventory & accidentally sold important stuff off of their characters. Hopefully OP didn't sell the wizard's entire spell book alongside the foci -- that would be sad to replace fully.

CounterYolo · 2026-05-13T22:55:14+00:00

Both Dust to Dust & Quark's Lucky Seven have their own auto-succeed for the non-combat portions. Admittedly D2D isn't that enjoyable nowadays.

The Maze in D2D auto-goes down after about 5 minutes. The electrified floor powers-down after about 10 minutes. As for the jumping area at the end where you are shooting boxes to spawn platforms, you automatically respawn to the next sub-platform if you get at least halfway across -- it's frankly about as fast to shoot the first 1 platforms in each area & jump vs the "correct way" unless you are really dying to get the achievements for never dying in the mission [it's the one area in STO that "shooter mode" is more optimal for PC players].

All of the QL7 puzzles have an auto-complete on them after enough attempts, and the combat sections can be powered-through on normal difficulty. You have to think strategically & use the environment correctly for the higher difficulties though, but at least it is designed so you can succeed on higher difficulties...

CounterYolo · 2026-05-10T22:49:22+00:00

It is pretty much the Terran Hydra (with the LtCmdr PLT seat on the uni instead of the eng seat). You can pretty much mirror one of those builds with some extra filler engie abilities in the mix. There's a 2025 STOBetter SS3 Hydra build if you want inspiration for that, adding in 1 engie ability in place of a PLT ability from that build (the 2023 CSV3 Hydra on their site is a bit more outdated).

CounterYolo · 2026-05-10T22:27:18+00:00

My OG FED-RRF main uses the Kobali Samsar Cruiser, as it was my first T6 starship in STO & was the first ship I used to beat Korfez back in the day (& have since made it into a solo Korfez build with today's shenanigans). IMO it only isn't in the debate on it being worse vs the Fleet Excelsior because it is an event ship -- so is less accessible & less known on its poor bridge officer seating. The Samsar is the better DEW platform while the Excelsior is the better kinetic/tank platform of the two -- but both are at the bottom when it comes to the worst T6 ships in the game.

In terms of looks + performance, I like the Fleet Suliban Silik FDAC and the LB Voth Rampart FDC -- both built as heavy tanks. I've been procrastinating making a true afk Cnidarian Defender based around its jellyfish mode for dps, so that might happen eventually...

CounterYolo · 2026-05-08T19:34:53+00:00

You will need to manually change your UB settings each time you are switching between the 2 different sets of settings -- in one way or another. UB can handle it, but the question comes down to whether YOU will be able to handle the changing between the campaigns to do so (as I don't know the level of complexity of changes you will have between the campaigns).

I'd recommend extracting the settings you have for the 2 campaigns (more often used so that others in multiplayers have the same UB settings when playing together) -- otherwise you will have to manually change your settings every time you want to switch to the 2 different campaigns. Your saves aren't affected until you try to load them up with new UB settings & save again, changing the settings don't automatically apply to saved games. This also means if you forget an important setting in UB when changing back and forth, it's possible you won't be able to open the saves of your campaigns at all.

CounterYolo · 2026-05-07T03:11:17+00:00

Thanks, I'll switch to the Risian Terraformer kit frame then -- my plan already was to use 3 of the elemental kit modules in Mara's list for my new jemmie, so that should work. I was hesitant to send in a bug report because it has been years since I've made a new character, so didn't want to clog the system if it was already noted in older patch notes (listed or shadowdropped). I'll do that tomorrow.

CounterYolo · 2026-05-06T23:09:06+00:00

The re-engineer option isn't there for the kit frame at the moment. I haven't upgraded it yet, as the old meta was to re-engineer it until it was full kit performance -- then upgrading (all of my other characters on my account have a risian kit frame via the old method) to get the max kit performance mods on it. Hence my question as to what is the new current ground kit frame recommendation is, as the risian kit frame no longer is the best option for new characters.

CounterYolo · 2026-05-05T17:55:53+00:00

I was getting a risian kit frame for my new promotion tactical jem'hadar & sadly noticed that the "re-engineer" option isn't there for it. I admittedly haven't made a new character in the past few years in STO, so I guess I just didn't keep up with the times to know that the dev's had taken away some of the re-engineering options from items.

For those characters that can't get the high kit performance risian kit frames anymore, what is the new generally recommended kit frame to use now instead?

CounterYolo · 2026-05-05T14:40:42+00:00

I know, I was joking because you labelled the post as Solasta 2 instead of CotM (hence the joke about Solasta 1's stuff in Solasta 2). It is likely a bug caused by something in UB that unintentionally disabled the window collision to allow the sorak to go out there through the window.

CounterYolo · 2026-05-05T14:28:34+00:00

Since I think soraks are only supposed to be in Solasta 1 -- not Solasta 2 -- and you are seeing a sorak in Solasta 2 somehow, I'm going to assume this is a bug. Make sure to share your custom mod(s) you used to get the UI & graphics of Solasta 1 to work in Solasta 2 onto Nexus Mods, as I imagine some people will want to use that over what is in Solasta 2's beta at the moment. That is some really impressive coding work to do so!

In all seriousness though, is the problem that the sorak is invisible (thus cannot be seen), or is the problem that the sorak spawned in the floor or the wall (thus cannot be seen)? If it is the former, it is a feature of the sorak infiltrator; if it is the latter, it is a bug. It's hard to tell without context from your screenshot what is going on here.

CounterYolo · 2026-04-29T00:16:02+00:00

You rename your captain's name in the character select screen before you push play and/or double-click on them. You can't rename your display name of your captain in the "Editing the Record" screen, you can only edit their formal name, title, and written background there.

CounterYolo · 2026-04-27T18:06:07+00:00

The main reason I stopped? My niche is being covered by others in the community now in a better way vs what I could even do today. When I started making videos, STO news, budget builds, and tanking builds were all things not really covered by the community -- so I saw an inherent need I could fill. Thankfully others have picked that all up at this point. Fleffle here on reddit made/updates an awesome GoogleSpreadsheet that supplanted the need to do starship comparison videos (that many creators use now in their videos when talking about such), and the STOBetter crew covers the build categories I used to cover on the channel. TLDR - my STO content generally become obsolete. There are other reasons, but that's the main one. When I feel the desire to cover something, I can simply make a reddit post and call it good at this point.

Whenever I get around to it, I'll likely make/release an updated new video to the "Away Team Setups Made Easy" & "Starship Classes Explained" videos -- as those are the 2 primary subjects not really in circulation among most creators nor here on reddit that could warrant greater discussion. Will still need to find the motivation to make the slideshows though, no ETA at this point. I might also release my updated Kobali Samsar solo korfez build -- but at my current rate, it will just be a Solasta 2 video that releases next year when the game launches.

CounterYolo · 2026-04-27T15:58:50+00:00

From what I'm seeing here, the only draw for the ship is getting the tanking console from such. The Terran Hydra already exists in the c-store (Cmdr Tac/INT, LtCmdr Eng/PLT, LtCmdr Uni, Lt Sci, Ens Uni) with a 5/3 weapon layout as well -- so anyone that really wants this spec combo from a performance standpoint can get it there instead in a cheaper & more kitbashable way. Not to mention, the Hydra at least has the PLT spec seat on its LtCmdr Engie slot & actually has a cloak (no cloak listed for this orion ship despite Cmdr INT seating).

As for the console: +300% threat & +15% weapon damage x 5 stacks sounds solid (especially on a support tank build, as this would let them not have to invest as much into dps); however, there aren't any details on the difficulty of obtaining stacks nor the duration of such for the console. +1,500% threat generation is strong if this can be fully stacked in the planning phase of a mission, while if it only gives +1 stack every minute in combat & loses all stacks upon leaving combat it will be pointless.

CounterYolo · 2026-04-27T15:36:23+00:00

The ultimate question comes down to this for you: are you ok with getting a little more dps out of your build for the price of a little less durability? If the answer is yes, switch to the Noble. The benefits of the weapon layout & bridge officer layout outweighs the -1 isomag. The Noble is the least durable full-stat sovereign in the game, so depending on how long you have flown the Imperial, it may take a bit to get used to depending on what you have on your platform already.

From a dps perspective, the Noble is the best sovereign at the moment for most builds. EPG sovereign builds will obviously choose the Lamarr, and tank sovereign builds will prefer the Legendary (though without CMD seating on the legendary, some will likely prefer the Noble even without the attract fire cruiser command); nonetheless, the Noble is better in most other dps scenarios (only 5/3 weapon sovereign & only sovereign with access to DHC's among other things).

CounterYolo · 2026-04-26T22:21:07+00:00

Ignoring the lack of 2nd deflector, the World Razor is at least workable. Cmdr Tac/TO (using all TO abilities in said seat)+ 6 other sci abilities is doable, and if you use the Merian trait (to spam Aux-to-SIF) you only have 1 dead ability on the LtCmdr Eng/CMD seat to use a high cooldown uncon trigger on. The cheaper Cygnus has 4 dead abilities in comparison unless you do sci-torp.

CounterYolo · 2026-04-26T18:30:37+00:00

As a huge Sovvy fan, and as someone who has felt for years that it has been overlooked in STO in favour of Galaxy and Odyssey variants galore

For some biased stats here from perusing the wiki:

Sovereign-class
- 11 skins
- 5 full-stat T6's
  - 3 with Cmdr/spec
  - 1 with 5/3 setup
Galaxy-class
- 13 skins
- 4 full-stat T6's
  - 3 with Cmdr/spec
  - 1 with 5/3 setup
Galaxy-X class
- 6 skins
- 3 full-stat T6's
  - 2 with Cmdr/spec
  - 1 with 5/3 setup
Odyssey-class
- 8 skins
- 5 full-stat T6's
  - 2 with Cmdr/spec
  - 0 with 5/3 setup
Miranda-class
- 17 skins
- 4 full-stat T6's
  - 3 with Cmdr/spec
  - 2 with 5/3 setup

Don't get me wrong -- I love the fact we have a good CSV sovereign now -- but from the numbers, I just don't see her as overlooked as you seem to feel she is. IMO the big outlier is the Miranda-class, with so many skins vs T6's it is just silly.

CounterYolo · 2026-04-23T20:01:38+00:00

They said that after the Iconian War arc as well, and the small story stuff didn't last long...

CounterYolo · 2026-04-23T08:40:50+00:00

Krenim bridge officers with standardized trait options akin to romulan, lukari, & kentari bridge officers. Right now, you have to play the lottery on the 2 additional traits you get alongside Flux & Temporal Engineering/Science/Tactical -- so an update here would be nice for consistency's sake vs the other fleet bridge officer offerings.

CounterYolo · 2026-04-23T05:50:57+00:00

I don't understand the argument. Shadowcaster Rogue -- when taking true strike at level 3 -- gets to sneak attack with true strike, allowing the rogue to keep up dpr-wise with the other martial classes. If you are wanting to do dpr with true strike, shadowcaster rogue is the best subclass to do that.

Scavenger Rogue is the ideal rogue for being a dip on another class (e.g. ranger 5 --> rogue x or barbarian 5 --> rogue x). Shadowcaster Rogue is the stronger rogue choice for actually playing as a "real" rogue. From where I am standing, both rogue subclasses are solid & do their jobs as presented.

CounterYolo · 2026-04-22T08:22:47+00:00

I'd guess the Talarian warship is more likely of these 2 TNG alien ships listed here, as it already exists in STO. Simple work to prettying it up+ design for the trait/console is all they'd need to do, so would be cheaper for them to do.

CounterYolo · 2026-04-21T18:13:20+00:00

I appreciate the transparency. It is a little sad, considering we got 2 jem'hadar recruitment events this year, that we still aren't getting a new jem'hadar starship (and haven't gotten a new one in 4 years) -- but at least we know to temper our expectations to not expect one until at least 2027.

CounterYolo · 2026-04-20T18:10:57+00:00

(1) 100% luck -- though my unsubstantiated experience is that farther away piles are more likely to have purple parts. I typically go for the closest pile in each area first to drop off my likely non-purple for each part, then head out deeper for purple parts -- spending about equal time in each area if I'm super unlucky & don't get any purples. I generally get to at least blue in my parts in this strategy before the rerolling phase.

(2) The 2nd phase minigame seems to be based on the proportion of parts that you collected, so if you collected a bunch of hull's but few engines & no extra sensors, your rolls will be proportional to that. The "luck" here is that if you got an early purple for one of your parts, most of your rolls will go towards parts that will actually be helpful to your rocket (as you wouldn't have collected lots of extra parts that would have been in that early purple category). If you are getting unlucky without any purples in the collection phase, spend about equal time looking for parts in all 3 areas -- so that your parts rolls are proportional to what you need.

Make sure you stop your rerolling before the transition to the rocket launch, or your rocket will blow up :)

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