Should I go into the red?

ukkorby

When I was assigning skill points into the areas of focus I was told by a fellow gamer(s) that you should not use the 3 Red points at the end, which gives you +5. :eek:

I was hoping somebody could add some method to the madness I was hearing, espeially with all the nerfing of abilitys coming out the woodwork I thought why not? I can very well imagine this to be the case.

elandarksky

If you are talking about leveling up and finding where to place your skill points, i have to agree for the most part, with 'no reds'

While it will be making certain skills more effective, its still only a minor boost compared green/amber.

However i often go into the reds on things that seem very important to me e.g. the MEDIC skill for a science captain, all of my sci toons have that in the RED, as its a visible boost to healing abiilites/tanking.

Its a hard choice when picking where to dumop your skill points, but often you can get a bit more diversity out of ambers, than a few reds.

Very hard choice ^^

ukkorby

Thank you,

I appreciate your quick reply! - You guys are fast

tenkari

some people go into the red on the hull strength/shield strength skills as well to get the most HP for their ships.

nynik

Exactly, it becomes a personal preference towards what you may consider essential, transferable, skill choices, i.e. going red in Hull strength is very beneficial across multiple gameplay types, whereas going red in Torpedoes limits the transferable benefits of that resource investment if you decide you want to not use torpedoes on a new ship (and do not wish to respec).

I good idea is to usually prepare your character for transfer to tribble, the test server. Once there, carry out the spec changes there on your mirrored character. And if you change something you do not like, it doesn't effect your live server character. Simply delete the mirror copy and try again.

tenkari

though with the subsystem power skills your likely not going to want to go into the red unless its the flat bonus to all systems, even then likely not as much since i think the last three skill points dont net that much of a return, like maybe 2 points max?

i personally think its best to have 6 max in any skill i'd rather be flexible rather than stuck in one roll.

allmytee

http://home.comcast.net/~amicus/Skill%20Point%20Effects.htm

This is a good source of showing how skill points affect different abilities

ukkorby

Thanks guys! your help is very much appreciated

red01999

tenkari wrote: »

though with the subsystem power skills your likely not going to want to go into the red unless its the flat bonus to all systems, even then likely not as much since i think the last three skill points dont net that much of a return, like maybe 2 points max?

i personally think its best to have 6 max in any skill i'd rather be flexible rather than stuck in one roll.

I agree wholeheartedly for your sentiment of not being stuck in one role, and it's something that I've made a point to try to avoid with my toons.

However, the main point of this reply would be the power skills. Going into the red with them is not just expensive, it's almost an outright waste.

The base power boost for Warp Core Potential is, per system:

Bonus = (StatPoints / 20)

Each rank in the green gives 18, yellow gives 10, and red gives 5. As such, with 6 ranks (+84 stat points), we get a grand total of +4.2 power per subsystem. Now, let's go to the full 9 ranks, for an additional 6000 points. This gives us +99, which comes in as a whopping... 4.95. Not even a full point boost for 6000 points. Granted, it goes to all systems, but nevertheless, wow.

Now, the subsystem performance results are a little bit better, at least so long as you're talking about per system. Their calculation is:

Bonus = (StatPoints / 10)

So with 6 ranks (+84), you get 8.4 extra power points for that specific subsystem. 9 ranks (+99) predictably gives 9.9 power points. This is for an additional 7500 to 9000 points, depending on the subsystem. Pretty dang expensive.

So in short, for at least the power abilities, it isn't just silly, it's crazy, to put that kind of "weight" into it.

To the OP who asked the question in the first place: My OVERALL advice in general is, don't go into the red unless you're absolutely mad for a skill (e.g. you absolutely must have every last scrap of power for weapons, regardless of the consequences to other stats), or unless it's at Lt. or Lt. Cmdr and is an essential skill you'll use all the time. These are the basic attack and defense skills (ship and ground weapons and shields, and ship hull HP). This should nominally be held off until you're deeper into the leveling system so you know you have some points to spare. The primary exception to this rule is for people who super minmax, and most of those people are all about PvP, wherein a few ranks of a particular stat point may mean the difference between constant victory and constant defeat. Unless this is the case for you, though, it's just too expensive to try this, and it almost certainly will lock you into one or two roles. Some feel that this is the "correct" way to play the game and this behavior should be browbeaten into you along with other things (e.g. what ship to use), but I strongly disagree with these sentiments.

So long story short, unless you know what you're doing, or it's a cheap skill you'll use all the time, going into the red is probably a bad idea.

quiscustodiet

Common fallacy, citing very low numbers.
Truth is, regardless of skill, a "red" upgrade gives 50% mileage of a "yellow" upgrade and ~27.78% of a "green" upgrade. Doesn't matter if Warp Core potential only goes from 4.2 to 4.95 in the last 3 stages, it's the same proportions as the other skills.


Now, as to whether it's worth maxing skills: yes, it is. Just because they give lower returns doesn't mean they're less useful than skills that either don't fit your Ship type (e.g. Subspace Decompiler on a Cruiser) or have very little to no combat benefit (Driver Coils, Batteries,...).

Personally, I always go for:

Any Carreer/Ship:
- Weapons Training: 9
- Hull Repair: 9
- Starship Energy (replaced by Projectile on 1 char) Weapons: 9
- Starship Energy (same) Spec: 9
- Warp Core Potential: 9
- Warp Core Efficiency: 9
- Targetting Systems: 9
- Impulse Thrusters: 9
- Shield Performance: 9
- Hull Plating: 9
- Shield Emitters: 9
- Shield Systems: 9

That comes out to 20700 skill points, 93000 left to distribute according to Ship type:

Cruisers:
- Threat Control: 9
- EPS: 9
- Maneuvers: 9
- Armor Reinforcements: 3
- Weapon Performance: 3
- Engine Performance: 3
The last 9k either in Attack Patterns or Power Insulators, depending.

Escorts:
- Attack Patterns: 9
- Engine Perf: 9
- Maneuvers: 9
- Armor: 9
- EPS: 6
- Power Insulators: 3

SVs:
- Flow Capacitors: 9
- Decompiler: 9
- Particle Generators: 9
- Graviton: 3
- Engine Perf: 3
- EPS: 3
- Maneuvers: 3
- Armor: 3
... but obviously, this one is less set in stone.