The newest ship in Star Trek Fleet Command is the Stella. It was launched as Harry Mudd’s ship as part of the Outlaws II event in July 2020. It’s a battleship that packs a pretty good punch and is designed for fighting Eclipse ships. Say that three times fast.
How Does One Get A Stella?
By completing Milestones 5 and 10 of the Outlaws II BattlePass, and completing the Unlock Stella research. You’ll need to have a shipyard of at least level 27 to construct it.
She’s then really cheap and quick to build, and equally cheap to upgrade.
How Do I Use Her?
The Stella’s ship ability is “Master Thief” which increases the reward you get from Eclipse hostiles and Armada Targets by 200% at level 1, and goes all the way up to 600% by level 45.
So you’ll likely use her just for Eclipse Survey ships and Eclipse Armadas. Someone on my Facebook page said that she’s a one-trick pony. Close. She’s a two-trick pony.
And you may be saying that you can get just as many of the Eclipse Security Codes by using an Intrepid or other such ship – and you probably can. Probably easily. The difference will be in the repair costs. My Intrepid gets about as many codes as the Stella does, but the Intrepid takes 6.5 hours to repair. The Stella takes just 31 minutes.
Out of the box, with the Pike crew could take out a level 32 Eclipse survey ships, but not level 33s. It was much more comfortable taking out the 29s and 30s.
The big thing you’ll notice when upgrading your Stella is that that it only costs Uranium. The other thing you’ll notice is that there are no warp engines to upgrade.
They’re improved through research.
It’s got Shields, Armor, and Impulse Engines for defense – and kinetic Photon Torpedoes and two Pulsed Phasers.
One might hope that it was equally strong in all three phases of defense, but it’s not. It’s a standard battleship weighting – but the upgrades to the shields and impulse engines do help.
And on offense, it’s got a great firing pattern, with two energy weapon shots in the first round, and two kinetic shots every other round.
Improving Your Stella
It was designed as a “Build-And-Scrap Ship,” in that you’ll improve it by continually building, improving, and scrapping your Stella. The components of the Stella take mostly Uranium to upgrade, which you’ll get in the faction store in exchange for Exchange Vault Loot.
It’s also got a bunch of dedicated research upgrades. This is where you’re going to be improving this ship in the long run – with ship specific research. More on that later.
When Should I Scrap It?
In the long run, you’re going to want to time this out in concert with your research,
Right now, you’re going to want to use this ship as much as you can to grind during the Clear the Coast Leaderboard event. So timing it up with events will be important.
If you’re tempted to just build and scrap it right away, don’t. There’s a mission you’ll get quickly after getting it that requires you to defeat 18 level 26 hostiles with your Stella.
The difference between scrapping a level 10 and level 15 is 100 Stella particles. It’ll also take two more hours to scrap. So for the purposes of this event, I’d recommend scrapping at level 10.
Update – now that the event is over, here’s a guide to scrapping, which includes the recent updates.
There’s also a mission that requires you to scrap your Stella.
Stella Research
The Stella particles you get from scrapping the Stella will help you complete Stella-specific research. Both “Stella Weaponry” and “Stella Hull” require 200 Stella particles to unlock.
You’ll also need an “Alpha Particle” which will make you choose between the two research branches.
And of course, Scopely being Scopely, the number of particles required for these techs skyrockets
And this is just for one tech. 354,180 Stella particles. Now, scrapping a level 45 ship will get you 29,950 particles, but still, that’s scrapping it 12 times at level 45 for to max one tech.
And many of the techs after Anarchist Weaponry in the Outlaw Research tree involve Stella particles. You’re going to be building and scrapping this ship like it’s flipping Groundhog Day.
Crewing Your Stella
For hunting the Eclipse Survey ships, I’d recommend using the Pike–Moreau-Chen crew. If you don’t have the PMC Crew, go with your Starfleet Academy crew.
For Armadas, I’d strongly consider using Khan with this one, for his critical hit bonus, as you’re going to have a lot of bites at the apple.
No Article With Stella in the Title Could Be Complete Without…
Background
In TOS, the Stella was Mudd’s tiny Class J Ship. It was named for his estranged wife, Stella, and was destroyed after hitting an asteroid just five minutes into the episode.
Mudd’s ship was never named on-screen. It was later named by the great Visual Effects Producer Mike Okuda during the 2008 remastering of the Original Series. The ship was named ironically, as Mudd escaped from his wife Stella (from “I, Mudd“) on a ship he called the “Stella.”
.@Darth_Duranium Not seen onscreen but it’s the name of Harry Mudd’s wife and specifically requested by @MikeOkuda – good enough for me!
— Ben Robinson (@BenCSRobinson) April 21, 2016
Trivia That Only I’ll Care About
Mudd’s wife was played in I, Mudd by actress Kay Elliot. Elliot later appeared three times in three different on Bewitched, most notably as Aunt Hagatha. And four other actresses also played Hagatha.
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