You will have to do this twice - once in space and once on ground. After you have done both, go to Options>HUD and "Save UI." Now you can go to Options>HUD and "Load UI" on your other characters and they will have the same HUD, chat window, and options.
When you're finished with this, look at how
change what your keys do so that they're more useful.
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When you start STO, the game has your screen and chat settings set up a certain way. Here is how to make that better. I only highlight the important stuff, so explore some of the other options if you feel like it.
OptionsClick the little gear next to your mini-map, then choose "Options."
Starting on the Basic tab, set Auto-loot and Compact UI to On. I lower interface scale to 0.85, which is as small as I can make things on my screen before everything becomes unreadable. Maybe you can make things smaller on your screen or maybe you have a huge screen so you don't want things smaller. The goal is to free up as much real estate on your screen as possible so you can see the game.
Go to the Voice Chat tab and check "Disable Voice Chat." The game's Voice Chat is rarely used (and usually by accident), and we have a Teamspeak server.
At Display and Graphics tabs you can adjust resolution and graphics settings. This depends on your machine. I found that I could run the game at pretty good graphics settings if I turned off Shadows completely, but low settings if I even had Shadows on Low.
Go to Advanced. If your gameclient crashes while loading new maps, turn on Reduced File Streaming.
Controls has a lot of neat stuff. In space, set the camera type to Free Camera (possibly Chase Camera if you're using dual cannons, but even then...). Turn "Keep moving during contact dialogs" to On. I have everything else turned off, but it's really up to you. For both ground and space, set auto-attack to "Toggle, non-combat cancels."
Don't mess with the keybinds in the Key Binds tab.
Upload them instead.
Go to the Chat tab. Turn "Show Times" and "Show account names" to On, and "Show dates," "Show Channel Names," and "Profanity Filter" to Off. I also reduce font size to 0.85 here too, but it depends on your monitor and your vision.
HUDClose the Options UI and click the little gear. Choose "Rearrange HUD." You can now rearrange everything on your screen.
Hide anything that you don't really need. For me, that's the banner across the top that shows your level and the boosts and the tray with the boffs' faces and a few other things. In space, you can click "New" on your power tray to get another, vertical one. This is useful when you hit level 50.
Now you can push things into the corner and make some menus smaller. I like to put notifications lower and the "target of target" and "focused target" windows up along the top so that I can see debuffs.
The goal is to just have what you need on your screen with lots of space to look at the actual game.
Chat SettingsClick the gear, then choose Chat Settings.
First go to the Channels tab. Add StonewallFleet (all one word) and SFEvents. Add more channels if you think you'll want them. Here's a
directory of some channels you might find useful.
When you're all done there, go back to the Tabs tab. Click on the first tab on the list. You can add or remove channels from that tab by checking or unchecking the box, and you can change the color of the channel by clicking the little square on the right. Rename the tab to something more descriptive and click Rename.
I recommend 3 things:
- Uncheck Zone and Local on all your tabs except for maybe one at the bottom of the list. Zone can get busy and it's often full of terrible people saying terrible things.
- Check Tell on all of your tabs. This is when people are talking directly to you.
- I like to keep a tab with only Team and Tell checked, for when I'm doing something with a team and don't want to be distracted.
Notification SettingsClick the little gear next to your chat field. You can turn off notifications here.
AutofireRight-click your weapons in space and your primary firing option on ground, and they will get a green outline. Autofire is on!
Finish upRedo this all in space or ground so that your settings are similar in both. Go to Options>HUD and "Save UI." "Load UI" on your other characters so you don't have to do this again.
