A little help deciding on ship and gear

turbion

Hello everyone,

First of all, I must say that although I've been playing for a fair bit, I'm not very familiar with all mechanics of the game which is why I'm looking for some advice.

I've recently started doing elite space STFs (just Infected for now, since it's the easiest one), and while I've been successful even in PUGs, I realize my DPS is not great. At the same time, I'm also somewhat keen on getting a new ship. Problem is I'd like to get something that I could use effectively on both my Tactical and my Engineering characters. The Engineer is my main, and it's also the one to have good tiers in the reputation (T5 Romulan, T3 Nukara and Omega). However, I realized that I'm not fond of cruisers because of their turn rate mostly, or maybe because escorts seem to be more fun and deal more damage. My Tactical character only has rank 1 in all reputations I think, so it's going to be a while till I can improve that. At the moment, I am using the Breen warship on both characters.

The ship that caught my attention is the Andorian escort. I was thinking of getting the 3 pack, since it has both tactical and engineering oriented vessels, I'd have more customization options (which is something I like), more unique consoles and even a unique bridge if I'm not mistaken. Thing is, the whole deal is 5k Zen, which I don't have atm although I am getting there. I know their main selling point is the 5 front weapons, but I heard they can be quite squishy. I'd also like to know how good the Boff stations are. And correct me if I'm wrong, but would I get those fancy Andorian phaser weapons as default? If that's the case, it would greatly help.

I've also heard nice things about the Tactical Escort Retrofit, and if I'm right, getting the C-store one would allow me to use a cloaking device (which would be cool). However, it doesn't look very special (yes, I kinda care about looks) and I'm wondering how good would it be if I used it on my engineer. On the plus side, it's significantly cheaper.

I'm also curious about carriers, as having a sort of pet seems quite interesting. But I really don't know much about them so if someone could give some more info on them, that would be great.

So those are ships I am interested in. I'd like to get either a ship that benefits both my characters, or a combo that's below 5k Zen. The lockbox ships are out of the question, since I don't have anywhere near the amount of cash needed.

Furthermore, should I keep saving my dilithium in order to convert them to Zen and buy one of those C-store ships, or should I invest that dilithium in properly gearing up my Breen ship (it doesn't have particularly good gear on either characters)?

And while I'm saving up dilithium and waiting for some feedback, could someone help me with an ideal ship power level setup? I reckon it doesn't cost me anything and it could improve my gameplay a bit

Anyway, this turned up to be quite a lot longer than I expected so thank you if you take the time to read

naevius

Even if you are not interested in PvP, I would start here:

http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=427091

You will learn a lot about how ships work and how to put a build together. And what works in PvP always works in PvE.

dashuk2381

Carrier you are basically a sitting brick in space with big shields and hull, but with fighter ships that can go out and cause a lot of havoc. I've never flown the Caitain, only have experience in the Tholian Recluse and Jem Dreadnought, but carriers can be a lot of fun, you just have to figure out what style you want to play with them. They can churn out massive forward DPS with cannons, but if you get swarmed you can get in trouble in a hurry, though I've never had much of an issue as my fighters seem to take care of things pretty quickly. The key is really picking the right kind of fighter ships to match your build, like the Delta Flyers if you are stripping shields, etc. The purple Scorpions you get at the max tier Romulan rep are also pretty good at causing good amounts of damage.

tenkari

dashuk2381 wrote: »

Carrier you are basically a sitting brick in space with big shields and hull, but with fighter ships that can go out and cause a lot of havoc. I've never flown the Caitain, only have experience in the Tholian Recluse and Jem Dreadnought, but carriers can be a lot of fun, you just have to figure out what style you want to play with them. They can churn out massive forward DPS with cannons, but if you get swarmed you can get in trouble in a hurry, though I've never had much of an issue as my fighters seem to take care of things pretty quickly. The key is really picking the right kind of fighter ships to match your build, like the Delta Flyers if you are stripping shields, etc. The purple Scorpions you get at the max tier Romulan rep are also pretty good at causing good amounts of damage.

depends on the carrier. the jem dread carrier can do things quiet well. in fact my fed engineer has it using the Mk XII Jem space set with alll polaron weaponry, a mix of advanced fleet polarons and and hybrid polaron weapons, even when mixing beams and weapons and using only blue level perigrine fighters and tractor runabouts i can hold my own in STF's. even tanked the Tac cube boss in CSE by myself while the rest of the team took out the gate.



As for the andorian ships. yes they get blue andorian pahsers by default, however, if yoru in a fleet, you can get advanced versions that are much better than the Dil store ones. in fact, i had some dil store weaponry when they changed the stats and gave the "refunds" via the prototype console guy. i chased them in and bought a full set of fleet andorian wepaonry for my andorian ship.

the only real big difference is i think the andorian ones get a second proc on them compared to normal phasers. however i dont think there is a fleet elite andorian phaser. normal phasers also work with it since andorian phasers still do normal phaser damage, so get whatever you think is good if you insist on getting the andorian ship.

turbion

Thanks for the replies so far.

originpi

tenkari wrote: »

the only real big difference is i think the andorian ones get a second proc on them compared to normal phasers. however i dont think there is a fleet elite andorian phaser. normal phasers also work with it since andorian phasers still do normal phaser damage, so get whatever you think is good if you insist on getting the andorian ship.

For the record the Andorian Phasers are identical to regular phasers in every way except appearance. No extra proc or anything.

The special wing cannons you get on that ship are pretty sweet though.