FIrst off, no, this ain't in the wrong place-from the beginnings of STO, the KDF has relied on PvP to a far greater extent than episode missions or "Fleet actions", both for just general content, AND as a means of raising Dilithium, EC, and Expertise.
The subject is KDF pick-up groups, or "Pugs", a PUG is what you get when you enter into an Arena or Capture and Hold with four strangers you've never met before, on a random basis.
This is usually through the Ques, but it also happens at Ker'rat.
We're going to focus for a moment on Arenas, since that's where most of the following advice really applies.
So, you've qued for a PvP match, and you don't have a team-your team will be assigned to you-this is actually a lot like other, real-world activities such as contracting for an office, technical, or manufacturing job, or going to a union site if you're in construction and working from a hiring hall.
The que 'pops' and the team is assembled by the magic of the random draw.
Now is when you need to set your chat to "Team" and say "Hi", or "Hello", or "Hola", or whatever greeting you use when you meet strangers upon whom the success of your new endeavour relies.
If people are WATCHING their chat-box (or at least keeping an eye on it) they should respond with a greeting of some sort-this is akin to doing a 'radio check', it shows that there is communication, and that some/most/none of the players you're grouped with can/will commuicate.
You start your engines, and (most of the time) hit your Cloak, to go find you some Feddies to kill.
It's usually a good idea, especially at the higher levels, to have a look at the Fed Team before you start decloaking and shooting.
A quick pass, a look-and-see, very useful for identifying what kind of ships the other side is running, whether they have pets deployed, and, if you're familiar at all with the specs of ships in the C-store/Lockboxes/Etc., which ones are a threat, which ones are glass cannons, and which ones are likely to be able to tank your decloaking alphas.
At this point, it's a good idea to ask someone in your group to call targets, and if nobody steps up, to start calling out either enemy toon names, or enemy ship names on the channel-this gives everyone in your group the same target.
This is important, because Feds have decent science ships and two out of three of the best Escorts in the game as faction-exclusive, spreading out your fire will NOT get your "Team" ahead in the points-it's just going to give the Feds, whom are prone to something called a "Fedball" (close formation, mutual support) a selection of easy, cheap kills.
So the target is called, what now?
NOW, your team should concentrate fire-lock on to the target BEFORE you de-cloak, have your buffs set early, be ready to evade once your run is through-you don't need to hang on a target you didn't kill in the first pass, because your teammates SHOULD be focusing fire, de-buffing, Tractoring, subnuking etc. the called target.
So, find your targets, evaluate the likely one to go down fast-or whom the other side is likely to rely on, call (or have called) the target, buff up, decloak, fire, MOVE OUT-use Omega (if you have it) going in, and evasive coming out. Keep moving and re-cloak as soon as you're relatively clear.
If you're second one through the cycle, or paired with someone who is "in trouble" (aka has a Bugship, Defiant, or Kumari on their weak side) you should seriously consider the following:
1) Toss a buff (if you have it)
2)Toss him a heal (if you have one-most players carry at least one copy of Hazard Emitters or one of hte Team abilities, use it.)
3) If you're in range, turn and go after their attacker.
Why do you do this for perfect strangers? because it helps your team win, and most players who GET a hand, will be inclined to LEND a hand when YOU are the one in trouble.
If you got clear wiht minimal pursuit, re-cloak, re-start the process bearing in mind what you observed:
1) did the target use RSP, Tac Team, Rotate Shield Frequencies, or other buffs and heals? did he get support from another ship? Which other ship?
2) was there someone healing/buffing on the other side, is there a Sci (notable by the swish-swish of sensor scans)?
3) Which Feddies seem to like to break formation and pursue? those guys are prime targets for the next go-round, they'll outrun their support and that's good for YOUR team.
4) are your targeted enemies showing "Resistance" on their tooltips? Those guys may be better targets for science or engineering powers than straight weapons.
5) are the Feddies using Jem'Hadar based de-buffs? Healing REALLY fast? Shrugging off damage? Launching Pets?
Use your observations to choose your next target, communicate that target to the rest of the team (including the guys coming back from Res).
Suggested setting changes:
1. Disable auto-targeting. certain Placates and Procs will give the enemy the ability to make you 'shift' targets, whether randomly, or on-purpose, and that Beam Overload, CRF, or HYT is wasted if it's going to a single mine while the mine-layer gets away to heal. You WANT your damage to hit the TARGET, not some random chaff or photonic decoy.
2. watch the status of your teammates-you can see who's in trouble, who's doing fine, who could use a hand-this is shown on status bars on one side of your screen, along with ranges to reach them, and once you select one, you can see their TARGET as well-this can be very useful if your team doesn't speak the same language, or has no time to type.
(incidentally, most of this also works in STFs-especially the bit about communicating and disabling auto-targeting. Shots meant for Probes shouldn't be aggro'ed to the Gate in Infected, for instance, esp. when you're in a position to be noticed BY the gate, and by yourself...)
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