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looking for advice on a Sci
asmodeus451
Member Posts: 257 Arc User
note: this is going to be a side character, so not looking to invest any RL money or lots of time grinding Dil for Zen on it. lower-end rep stuff is probable, but anything over T3 is unlikely to happen.
again, this is just a side project for when i get bored with my main toon
that said, here's what i've got so far: http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=posscicpt_0
as far as skills go, i know i'll need Grav gen, Part Gen, Flow Cap, and possibly Attack patterns
where i'm stuck is the Sci Boff abilities.
i know that any decent Sci boat needs GWIII (especially after it gets fixed)
but other than that i have no idea what to pick.
i like HE for the hull regen and resist, and with no other hull heals i feel like HE3 is necessary.
FBP+RSP makes the evil genius in me cackle with glee(you're healing me and hurting yourself MUA HA HA HA!), but is it really any good?
and what about the other stuff? is it any good?
Edited to add: and what about Doffs?
clarification: my main experience with STO thusfar has been with Tac and Eng toons. so i know almost nothing about building a decent Sci
Edit2: updated build with a more Torp/shield strip focused design while maintaining the direct damage sci sbilities i like: http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=posscishp2_0
again, this is just a side project for when i get bored with my main toon
that said, here's what i've got so far: http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=posscicpt_0
as far as skills go, i know i'll need Grav gen, Part Gen, Flow Cap, and possibly Attack patterns
where i'm stuck is the Sci Boff abilities.
i know that any decent Sci boat needs GWIII (especially after it gets fixed)
but other than that i have no idea what to pick.
i like HE for the hull regen and resist, and with no other hull heals i feel like HE3 is necessary.
FBP+RSP makes the evil genius in me cackle with glee(you're healing me and hurting yourself MUA HA HA HA!), but is it really any good?
and what about the other stuff? is it any good?
Edited to add: and what about Doffs?
clarification: my main experience with STO thusfar has been with Tac and Eng toons. so i know almost nothing about building a decent Sci
Edit2: updated build with a more Torp/shield strip focused design while maintaining the direct damage sci sbilities i like: http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=posscishp2_0
Tenebris lux mea est
Post edited by asmodeus451 on
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Are you looking for a PVE build (STF's & missions) or a PVP build ?
Also , what type of ship are you planning to fly (escort , cruiser , sci) ?
Here's a list that includes Sci ships (plus a ton of accumulated knowledge) from the PVP forums .
(look for the bullet point "SCI SHIP/CARRIERS" for Sci ships .)
You can also ask your question on the PVP forums as they are very knowledgeable about ... well everything . :P
Just remember , Sci is not about DPS , it's about debuffing and (in PVP) harassing .
Since this game is cureeently all about DPS , some ppl don't like to play Sci because of that .
Me , I love Sci on the ground (w/Medical Kit) in STF's and PVP .
Space ... , meh , not so much .
its a freeb, but like i said i dont plan on investing much into this build, as its more of a side project for when i get bored
-Drop the Tachyon Beam. It's practically useless, both in PvP and PvE.
-The Feedback Pulse isn't much in PvE. Chaining Gravity Well would be better.
-A Polarize Hull would be very good to free yourself from Borg tractors, and is borderline necessary in PvP, or you'll be critted to kingdom come.
-Preferably, swap out the Beam Array for another Beam Bank. You'll do more damage that way.
-To really get good results, stack science consoles of a single type. Probably Particle Gens, if damage is what you want.
-Attack Pattern Beta is very situational in PvP. Leave it on for PvE, but Attack Pattern Delta is probably better otherwise.
-If you go for PvP, Science Team is a must to deal with enemy Subnucleonic Beams.
-Finally, Energy Siphon is not going to do much since you have no Flow Capacitor Consoles. You'd best use something that benefits from Particle Gens in its place.
-Oh, and if you use a particular Boff ability, it's always nice to have the related Duty officers. Blue ones are always cheap.
Basically, to actually have good results with Science, you have to stack a skill like crazy. For example, with Gravity Well, consider if you want to hold stuff or damage stuff. Damage? At least 3 Particle Generators. Hold? Same with Graviton Generators.
ya meant to state in last post, i despise pvp and avoid it like the plague
on a positive note, this is exactly the kind of advice i've been looking for
been researching on my own while waiting for replies and had already decided to go for Polarize instead of Tachyon. good to know thats a smart move
i like the BA cuz i have trouble facing my target sometimes, specifically i run into the situation where i'm practically kissing it and HAVE to turn away to circle back arouund. the BA lets me get more damage out of those times i have to do that (which is ALOT)
seeing as its for PVE, i think i'll keep FBP and stack Part Gens
that said, any suggestions on what i should swap out Energy Syphon for?
scurry5 (above) does PVP . Told you they know their stuff !
If you have that problem , try double tapping your 'stop' speed throttle (so you start to fly backwards) and then hit Evasive Maneuvers .
Suddenly you're flying backward fast and you are also able to do some quick course corrections this way .
Once Evasive Maneuvers has run it's course , you can set your ship to move forward again .
Try putting Transfer Shield Strength 2 instead of that , and put Science Team 1 instead of Transfer Shield Strength 1 .
Instead of Tachyon Beam , put in Polarize Hull , as scurry5 said , it's great as either a counter to a Borg Tractor beam or as an extra bit of hull endurance boost (it does not heal your hull) .
My BOff layout: GW III, Syphon II, Tractor Beam II, Polarize hull I / TSS III / Tachyon I (for CE, otherwise I'd recommend a HE II) / HE I. EPtS II & I, BFaW II, Torp Spread I, TT I.
Rationale for this particular setup: Syphon for the power boost more than the drain effect. GW, BFaW, Spread for clump of enemy destruction. Cycled EPtS with the TT to shield tank, with TSS for healing others / emergency shield tank button. HEs as the only hull heal I carry - definitely run a set of resilient shields (MACO XII was my preferred choice, though I ran MACO X till I got it).
Power spread was (baseline) 80/25/15/80, with 6s in warp core, efficiency, power boosters, etc., will boost baseline powers to over 100, and syphon can boost it close to 125. Shields/engines would hover right around 50, though, unless you add plasmonic leech to the combo, which I never did as a Fed...
Never was a fan of the PBAoEs, you go in and aggro a clump of enemies with one, you most likely won't survive the egress unless you're skilled enough with Evasives to get out of range or have a good tank to keep the pressure off you...
This makes you an excellent small vessel destroyer (probe duty on KA, stalling nanites in Infected, etc.) but leaves you a bit lacking against stronger ships (save your subnuc and keep syphon up as much as possible, GW only when a shield is down)
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
i can see that being kinda scary, especially against a debuffed target
Doesn't work. GW and tykens will put the other on a global CD if one of them is used.
TRIBBLE. cest le vi
Point 1)
Gravity well is broken. It has been for a long time. Gravity well levels 2 and 3 are not benefiting from aux power, particle generators or graviton generators. The tool tips are lying. The abilities still work to an extent, but not as well as they should, especially considering Gravity well 1 outperforms 2 and 3.
For now use level 1 gravity well only. There is a fix for this on tribble right now, but we don't know if it will make it to holodeck before season 8. Also the current version on tribble benefits from particle generators and graviton generators by such a small amount that for the purposes of enhancing gravity well you should not bother fitting either console, or specing more then 3 points into the ability. If the fix does arrive on holodeck in its current form only expect your aux power to make a noticeable difference to it.
Point 2)
Tykens Rift is broken. It has been for a long time. No version of the power benefits from flow capacitors or aux power. Do not use this ability at all on holodeck. It will only drain your targets power by a couple of points for a fraction of a second before it spikes back up.
There is a fix on tribble right now, it is looking prity good on there and may be the new must have science ability. But we will have to see what it is like once it makes it to holodeck. We may not see this fix until season 8 as well.
Point 3)
One of the best looking active duty officers for space is the deflector officer which supposedly helps you recharge tachyon beam, energy syphon, gravity well and tykens rift. It is broken. It only effects gravity well and tykens rift. What ever is wrong with it may not be fixed for a long time as one dev recently claimed to have looked over the code and seen nothing wrong.
Point 4)
Currently the best way to run a science ship is to fill up its science consoles with flow capacitor consoles and run two energy syphon's. DO not use energy syphon 1. It is currently broken and does not give to you as much energy as it takes. The purpose of energy syphon is primarily to keep all your own power levels maxed out. There is no fix for energy syphon 1 on tribble or redshirt. The devs have acknowledged the bug but there are many acknowledged bug in STO that haven't been fixed since before release, so no estimate as to when we might see a fix for this one.
Point 5)
Tachyon beam 3 is not as bad as it first seems. Once you accept that your science ship works very well with two energy syphon's you will be running with 4 or 5 flow capacitor consoles any way. At this degree of skill level tachyon beam 3 is no longer a waist of an ability slot. One use will drain an elite spheres shields. two uses will drain an elite cubes shields. With two tachyon beams you can use it once every 15 seconds.
Point 6)
If your running with tachyon beams and energy syphons and have a full rack of flow capacitor consoles you can use a tractor beam duty officer to add shield drain to a level 1 tractor beam. If a level 1 tractor beam without consoles cant hold a target a level 3 tractor beam and a full rack of graviton generator consoles wont be able to either. This makes this doff and flow capacitor consoles the best way to boost this ability.
End of Points)
So there you have it. All the information you need to build your science ship with complete skill synergy. Made possible by the need for only one skill. Flow capacitors.
I run a carrier for fun on my Ferasan Atrox captain with 5 purple mk 12 flow cap consoles and 9's in the drain skills. In Pve I can keep my power dialed up constantly once a battle gets going, and it almost feels like I'm a engineer... almost. The flipside is that I think if I were an Engineer captain in the Atrox he'd actually do this easier, but that's another story.
I'm finding versus other (strong) players this build just falls flat. I can barely dent even a Tactical captains power (and according to Tooltip my drain is in the 40's on my Energy siphons alone). Since this is my Crystalline build I run Delta Flyers, but I've also tried Stalker Fighters in pvp as well as Danubes. The Deltas and the Stalkers both have a manner of drain they provide, one shields one aux in orientation, with the Stalkers causing a form of jam sensors if they can crash Aux (Never happens). Conversely the Mon bosh has no problem Jamming Sensors even on moderately build ships. I'm not suggesting any Mon Bosh nerfs, but I do think this shows something is wrong with power drain on most powers. My Cat Carrier runs just about every kind of power drain imaginable, including a tykens, and innate as well as targetted subsystem targetting boffs (and FAW and a few others depending on purpose). Like I said, on a halfway decent enemy player with 6-9 in Drain resistance you can't drop their power to any noticeable level. Its a shame. Just something to bear in mind.
A good shield stripping build would be Tractor Beam I, Tractor Beam II, Charged Particle Burst II, and Charged Particle Burst III with Polarize Hull I, Transfer Shield Strength II, and Hazard Emitters III on healing. Slot a Tractor Beam officer in your duty officer active space roster, this adds shield stripping to tractor beam. I wouldn't bother with Tachyon Beam at all. Just to give you an idea how bad Tachyon beam is in it's current state, Tractor Beam I + duty officer drains more shields than Tachyon Beam III. On top of that, Tractor Beam also has a holding effect (if specced in Graviton Generators). If you go this route, consider a dual tetryon beam bank with 2 plasma or quantum torpedoes for fore weapons, slotting a kinetic cutting beam, another torpedo, and a mine in the aft section. If you also run 2-3 projectile weapons you can get a very respectable amount of damage out of this setup. If you feel ambitious, get the Romulan Hyper Plasma Torpedo from Tier IV New Romulus, the Nukara Tetryon Beam Bank from Tier V Nukara, and the Nukara Web Mines from Tier IV Nukara. All three weapons work very well on science vessels. For console slots, flow capacitor consoles are quite valuable, as they boost your shield stripping potential significantly.
Subsystem Drain/Disable is more or less on the fence right now because Tykens Rift is broken at the moment. Once fixed, I'd go with something along the lines of Polarize Hull I, Tractor Beam II, Energy Syphon II, Tykens Rift III with Hazard Emitters I, Transfer Shield Strength II, and Energy Syphon II. Again, you want to stack flow capacitor consoles to boost the draining effects. Particle Generator consoles will also provide a minor damage boost to tractor beam and tykens rift if you have the console space. Polaron weapons would be valuable here due to their drain proc, especially when combined with plasmonic leech. 4x Polaron Beam array (2 fore, 2 aft) with 1x torpedo (Romulan Hyper plasma if possible) and 1x Mine (Nukara Web mine if possible) should do fine.
Kinetic Damage builds are my personal favorite both in PvP and PvE. On most of my setups I run Tractor Beam I, Tractor Beam II, Gravity Well I, and Photonic Shockwave III with Polarize Hull I, Hazard Emitters II, and Transfer Shield Strength III. The idea of the setup is to bunch up the enemies with gravity well, use photonic shockwave to ensure the enemies remain, and then spam them with Romulan Hyper Plasma Torpedoes and normal plasma torpedoes. (3 Projectile Weapon duty officers, 1 Tractor beam officer, and 1 gravimetrics scientist (gravity well aftershock). Stacking Particle Generator consoles is highly recommended here. 6 skill points in Graviton Generators would also help significantly.
As for Tactical and Engineering bridge officer layouts, this will be pretty universal. Tactical Team I and Attack Pattern Delta I would be nice additions to any science setup. On the engineering side, Emergency Power to Shields I and Auxiliary to Structural Integrity Field I would both work well on a Science vessel. Use your Engineering console slots to stack Fleet RCS accelerators with [AllRes] to increase your damage resistance and use your Tactical console slots for universal consoles. Coming from flying cruisers and escorts, you are probably going to think I am crazy with that comment. In reality though, the majority of your effect against the enemy will be though your science abilities, not your actual weapons. You must run auxiliary at maximum or near maximum to make your science abilities worthwhile. Shield power must also remain high because your hull is very weak. Now this means low weapon power, unless you go with a power drain build. So in most cases, you need to rely on projectile weapons.
The Romulan Hyper plasma torpedo can put out 7500 kinetic damage/second and 500 plasma (shield bypassing) damage/second if you have a second torpedo to help cycle projectile weapon officers, a method to hold the target, skill points in projectiles, and 3 projectile weapon officers slotted in your duty officer roster. This is why this weapon works so well on science vessels, they have a large number of control abilities. Due to these control abilities, Science vessels can force the slow moving Romulan Hyper plasma torpedoes to hit their targets. Now in PvP this torpedo has counters. Fire at will, scatter volley, pet spam, gravity well, tractor beam repulsors, photonic shockwave, and the Hyper refracting tetryon dual beam bank are just a few counters to these torpedoes. Now in PvE, you won't run into any problems, NPCs don't launch many anti-torpedo attacks that can't be dealt with swiftly.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
Just a couple of nitpicks. I find that while both GW3 and GW1 fall off to around the same damage with distance, GW3 tends to do more damage to the target in the rift itself - about 600 compared to 800. Also, Aux power actually has a significant effect, although it may not be as high as it is supposed to be - damage at rift centre goes from about 800 to about 1000 when aux goes from 80 to 130. I didn't use tooltips for this - I used the combatlog. So yeah - it's not strictly correct to say that there is no benefit from increasing ranks or Aux power - there is benefit, but it's pretty small. As for the particle gens thing, my advice was more for the future, once the fix is out, since he did talk about after the fix. However, I wasn't familiar with the improvement being small, since I don't have Tribble access.
Tachyon beam with stacked flow caps - yeah, it's a possibility. In fact, my main Science vessel was a drain boat. I was trying to shape my recommendations around his desire for Grav Well, so I just went with a setup that would prepare for the fix. If he used Grav Well, Tachyon Beam would have lousy synergy - especially Tach.B1. Although - with Energy Siphon and 4-5 Flow Caps, one should be able to drain enough power to knock down shields anyways. At least, that's what happened when I used 3 Flow Caps with Siphon 3 on a Tac Cube. No Polaron proc there either.
Anyways, OP, if you want a drain boat, you won't go far wrong with his outlined setup.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
I did as you said - however, I had a different result. Fed Sci, Tachyon Beam 3 and Tractor Beam 1, Purple Tractor Beam Officer. Max Flow Cap spec, 3 embassy consoles.
Tach Beam 3 - 486.6 per pulse, 10 max
Tractor 1 - 222.1 per pulse, 10 max
So, to my surprise, Tachyon Beam 3 drains more. I too had thought TBO would drain more, like I heard from so many, but it wasn't true.
However, I wondered why, and so I discovered this:
Tachyon Beam 3's strength scales with Aux power, but Tractor Beam's drain doesn't!
So if you're running high Aux, TachB3 drains more. With low Aux (I'm guessing), TB1 (and 3, for that matter, I checked as well) will drain more. Also, TachB seems to scale higher with additional Flow Caps.
Since this is PvE, Tachyon Beam 3 would be superior for pure shield drain. However, I think Tractor would still be better for PvP, since it's not going to be cut off by your target flying out of arc, and has the slow.
I see this posted all the time on the forums. Its complete rubbish. Fully buffed up with flow capacitors Tachyon beam III drains roughly 700-800 pts per tic per shield facing. Tractor beam 1 on the same ship with the same flow capacitors and the drain doff only drains 200-300 per shield facing per tic.
Of course both these figures are before you factor in resistances. But people need to stop passing this myth that tractor beam drains more then a tachyon beam 3.
The effect of the graviton generators skill upon a tractor beam is far far smaller then it should be. If you have 6 points in the captain skill you never need to fit a graviton generator console or use a beam higher then level 1 as anything that resists its hold is doing so through a blanket immunity. Conversely if you use a graviton generator console you don't need any captain skill.
Kinetic damage builds can be very effective in PvP. In PvE PSW and gravity well suffer from doing to small an amount of damage to compensate for the time they spend on cool down. Tractor beam repulsors on the other hand has a much better potential for DPS but can also cause you to loose friends and alienate people.
A drain build is far better for PVE as a couple of energy syphon's running sequentially (levels 2 or 3, don't use 1) will improve your energy weapon DPS though over capping. An energy syphon 3 with flow caps effectively gives you +200pts of power split between your subsystems equally. Keep your default power setting set to high aux and the duration of your energy syphon's buff will be long enough to keep all your other power levels running high as well.
This is good advice. The Romulan Hyper plasma torpedo is a poor mans aux cannon (it provides high enough DPS, with shield penatraiting burn, that when using doffs you can forgo running energy weapons at all if you chose)
Of course using a build that relies on torpedos and mines over energy weapons works very well with shield stripping abilities so we are back to flow caps.
However asmodeus451 specifically said he didn't want to spend too much on his build, I don't know if he considers the RHPTL to be too much.
let me start by saying the primary reason for me wanting to do this at all is to get to play with some of the awesome Sci powers denied to me on my carriers/escorts
having read through everything, i must say some of these ideas intrigue me.
first off: i know several things on holodeck are currently broken; as this is going to be a side project (read: its gonna take awhile to even GET to 50) i'm planning for the fixes i know are coming
the original idea i had for this was a Debuffer/Damager, hence the presence of FPB and GW as well as AP-B
drain builds dont appeal to me, but the idea of a shield stripper w/ lots of Kinetic damage does.
what about a Torp boat (something like Turrets and KCB aft, a DBB and 2 Photons/quantums fore) with lots of shield draining stuff?
i'm gonna do some tinkering in the build planner and post it in a bit
http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=posscishp2_0
EDIT: Now has Skills:http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=posscishp3_0
purples are the eventual goal, but i'll take blues/greens to start
Deflector Officer (recharge variant)
Gravimetric Scientist (gravity well variant)
Tractor Beam Officer (shield drain variant)
2xProjectile Weapons Officer (torpedo variant)
Edit to add: I could also use some advice on the stuff NOT filled in on the build; Deflector, Impulse engines, Warp core, and Shields
If Tachyon beam is ever going to become a powerful bridge officer ability, it needs to do something more than strip 8,0000~ shields/facing when at maximum. A shield damage resistance and shield heal debuff of some form is badly needed to make the ability useful again. Tractor Beam I will deal about 4,000~ damage at ensign level as well as strip 3000~ shields/facing when specced at maximum. Add in the fact that Tachyon Beam III x2 takes up significantly more valuable bridge officer slots than Tractor Beam I + II and you begin to see the problem.
Assuming the Graviton Generator effect is similar to Tractor Beam repulsors, every 1 point in Graviton Generators is about a 0.5% boost in the slow potential. That theory does appear to be the case from tests that I have run in the past, but there is no method to determine this due to the lack of a tooltip. However, anything above 150 Graviton Generators is really quite a waste. Around that level you will be able to stop any NPC.
Here lies a very good philosophical debate. Should I drain my enemy dry and use my energy weapons to deal damage, or should I use kinetic science damage dealing abilities with torpedoes to deal damage? Kinetic Damage build and Drain builds are two very different styles of Science officer gameplay. They both have their merits, and they both work very efficiently in PvE. Photonic Shockwave isn't meant to be a major damage dealing ability, it's a AoE stun and spam removal tool.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
You really don't want to cross stack science abilities. If you try to run shield drain, power drain, and kinetic damage at the same time you will end up with several fairly weakened abilities, unless you have a 5 science console ship and room for a universal consoles such as the Nukara Particle Converter (a particle generator console). In which case you could run 3x Flow capacitor and 2x particle generator + nukara particle converter for a decent setup. Normally, you want to stack abilities that share benefits from skill points. Tractor Beam, Gravity Well, Tractor Beam Repulsors, Photonic Shockwave, and Feedback Pulse all work well together because they all increase in effectiveness off of the particle generators skill. Charged Particle Burst, Tractor Beam (with duty officer), Energy Siphon, and Tachyon Beam all work well together because they all improve in effectiveness via the flow capacitors skill.
Tykens rift is up in the air right now. If the changes stick around based on the Tribble test server changes, it could make things very interesting indeed. Tykens rift's drain scales off of flow capacitors and it's damage scales off particle generators. The changes will actually make tykens rift's damage more reasonable and the drain workable, opening up some interesting build ideas.
As far as skill points go, you are fine for the most part. However, you a bit too many skill points in the "red" area, which usually isn't very cost effective. I've made a few suggested changes in this setup along with a suggested warp core, engines/shield/deflector. http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=psscishipskilledit1_0
I also made a few gear/bridge officer changes there. It's one possibility for you on a particle generator built ship. There are a lot of other options, this is just to help give you ideas. Engineering consoles, I'd suggest stacking Fleet RCS with [AllRes] rather than Fleet Neutronium with [Turn]. Science vessels rely on their shields more than their hull resistances, not to mention they usually carry polarize hull. The extra +20 all damage resistance from the fleet neutroniums will suffer from heavy damage resistance diminishing returns from your other damage resistance abilities.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
i like the Tetryon weapons, cant belive i didnt think of that. with half my weapons doing kinetic damage (KCB and 2 torps) the other half need to be good at stripping shields.
i'm not keen on 2 copies of Tractor Beam, but if 2 copies of it will let me keep it up on a target more often, i'm willing to try it; however it strikes me that TBR1 might be useful to have as well (STFs like ICE and Cure found come to mind), so possibly drop TB2 for TBR1?
Aux2structural is a no go, a good 80% of my powers will be using AUX pwr level, and Bats have too long a CD to use them as a backup reliably.
i don't like not maxing skills, but in this instance i'll bite the bullet, simply because alot of the changes you made make sense. i came to STO from another MMO that REQUIRES specialization and optimization to be competitive. you either min/maxed or went home
i've modified my build (yet again) based on your changes, take a look: http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=possscishp4_0
EDIT: alomst forgot, there is ALOT of conflicting info as to whether or not PG affects Tractor Beams, but either way i still think they'll be worth it
Alien, so i get 9
Space:
Accurate*
Elusive*
Astrophysicist
Warp Theorist*
Conservation of Energy (need feedback on this one)
Ground:
Aggressive*
Soldier
Resilient or Peak health (undecided, help me out)
Creative
* not changeable as the toon has already been made and used his free respec to get them
Your completely discounting ability synergy, and your assertion that tractor beams have a faster recharge is false. Both abilities have the same cool down.
Tachyon beams have a shorter duration (5 seconds) then tractor beams which creates the impression that the reuse on the tractor beam is greater. The short duration is a good thing, The longer it takes for an ability to apply its damage the greater the chance a portion of the ability will be wasted after the target pops.
Now you are quite right to praise the boost to damage you get from the hold on the tractor beam, but as you say graviton generators are not required to achieve an acceptable degree of hold the base strength or a level 1 tractor beam is quite sufficient to achieve immobilization of your target with just standard captain skill investment.
There is no need to use a higher level tractor beam then 1 unless your goal is to achieve the maximum amount of damage from it. But to do that you need full aux and a full rack of particle generator consoles. This in turn wouldn't be a bad thing, but now your suffering from lower weapons power so unless your using a projectile build you have sacrificed dps to gain dps.
As your using particle generator consoles your probably also going to want to use other abilities that are effected by them. Photonic shockwave is not a high DPS ability though, as you mentioned the point of using it is the disable. But the disable is only effected by subspace decompiler. In PvP the disable is not easy to exploit in a science ship so you may need a high degree of co-ordination with your friends and you will need to invest heavily in it to make it worthwhile.
In PvE the ability to disable ships is largely irrelevant, and many boss ships are immune. The push from tractor repulses would be more useful, and this ability would do more damage, but it shares a cool down with tractor beam.
Gravity well is us full in any situation with large numbers of closely packed ships that can be clustered to harm each other with their warp core breaches. But it does not synergize fantastically with tractor beam as your mixing AoE and single target abilities. Nothing wrong with this, but its nice when your full load out works together.
Speaking of load outs that work together we find ourselves looking back at flow capacitors.
Using two level 1 tractor beams, a level 3 tachyon beam, a level 2 tachyon beam, an energy syphon 2 and an energy syphon 3 on a science ship gives you a complete set of abilities that all benefit from the same low level captain skill, and a full rack of the same console.
The tachyon beams quickly remove the shield buffer of your target.
The tractor beams add low level shield drain over the long duration to counter regeneration. The energy syphons reduce shield power to also reduce regeneration, they reduce engine power to enhance the hold of the tractor, they reduce weapons power to help you tank and they reduce aux power to lesson the effectiveness of all abilities used. Finaly they boost your own power levels up so that despite running with full aux power you still have juice for energy weapons if you don't want to go with a dedicated projectile load out.
Every ability works together with the others and all are working to their maximum potential except for the tractor beam, which doesn't have such a high particle generator stat to enhance its hull damage.
Now I am not saying a build focusing on particle generators is bad. But the degree of damage you can pump out of science abilities is quite horribly limited, they don't scale up very well with skill investment.
A drain build suffers from targets with power insulators, but a particle build also suffers from targets with kinetic resistance. One of the big differences is that a drain build doesn't force you to chose between energy weapons and science powers. You can have both and benefit from an abundance of system power.
There are pros and cons to both setups, but please, don't try to tell me there isn't a synergy between Gravity Well, Tractor Beam, and Photonic Shockwave. Kinetic Science builds are forced to use projectile weapons for their damage dealing, it's a downside to running such setups. Energy/Shield drain builds don't have much in the form of AoE crowd control, yet they are able to run setups in a similar fashion to escorts or cruisers while still using some science debuffs. I love energy drain builds too, one of my fleetmates flies a ship with a very nice drain setup. In a team setting their shield and energy stripping is very advantageous. The OP in this thread is going to need to take a look at all three playstyles to decide what he likes better. Who knows, he may come up with something completely different. This thread is really to help give him or her some ideas on how to build a science vessel.
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They provide slightly higher stats +31.9 for the MK 12 versions vs +30.00 MK 12 on the standard version plus you add Threat control (plus or minus), Plasma infusion to any weapon type, Hull repair, and shield repair stats.
Here's an example:
Plasma Infused Particle Generators Consoles provide +31.9 to Starship Particle Generators for a total +127.6 when using 4 sci slots.
Threat Generation is decreased by 63.8% or get the version that will give +127.5% threat Generation.
Finally, If you are using plasma weapons you get a +9.6% Plasma damage boost. If you using a different energy type then you have a 2.5% chance to do 32.8 plasma damage for 15 second which ignores shields.
The Plasma Infused console I described only cost 50,000 Fleet Credits and 9,100 Dkilithium per console which is pretty cheap considering what you get.
Co-Leader of Serenity's Grasp
Your quite right, I don't. I haven't used it in PvE since before F2P. Haven't used it in PvP since they dropped the photonic shockwave torpedo ability from those effected by photonic science officers either.
My belief that most ships were immune was founded entirely upon the authority of others. Seems like you have me hear.
I would be very interested to learn just how reliably you are able to achieve this. The theory is great and I have no doubt you have done it and that it was epic. But how reliable is it?
As I said I haven't used PsW in PVE for a very long time, it sounds like it should be far more reliable then TBR as you describe it. Can you reliably achieve this without drawing agro from the gate? (I doubt the OP wants to do that in a basic lunar without advanced rep defense powers) And what happens when the aftershock gravity well doesn't kick in?
Also in your example how competent was the pug? Just how quick are we talking? Is this something you regularly achieve, in which case what exactly is your technique?
I have come to discount Particle builds for a number of reasons. Mostly because of the mixture of bad cool down times and the large portions of time one spends in situations which do not match their situational usefulness. I keep Bridge officers trained in the abilities so that I can switch them in when such situations arise, but they rarely see use any more.
I must admit that when I PUG I hop out of my science ships and into one of my escorts as even with a science specked science captain it is far easier to solo a side in KASE (probe duty, cubes, transformers gate and all) or to Take down two cubes in CSE in quick succession and make it back to the kang and hail it before the raptors arrive.
Gravity wells, tractor repulsors and the other tools available to us in science ships buy us time in which to kill our enemies, but the DPS creep has gotten so bad that the best debuff these days is a warp core breach.
So science ships are for fun rather then efficiency. Not because they are bad, but because escorts and certain cruiser builds are good to the point of rendering science obsolete.
My reaction to this obsolescence has been to build my science ships around the assumption that everything I target is going to die fast. Either because I have killed it, or a member of my group has (as I said I fly escorts with pugs so that I can compensate for them to the greatest extent, that leaves me in science ships with more efficient DPS heavey groups).
Tachyon beam therefor wins out over tractor beam as it delivers its damage twice as fast. Energy syphon wins over gravity well because it buffs my ship, so that I carry the benefit of using it beyond the termination of my initial target. Tractor beam gets included as well because it is also on a fast cool down.
Its all about keeping up and spending as little time being useless as possible.
This is my principle area of concern.
Using projectile weapons for damage dealing is a fantastic way around the need for weapons power, but to bring it up to acceptable levels (at least what I consider acceptable) you really do need some expensive toys. Principally the hyper plasma torpedo launcher and ZPM console.
You also need to be willing to invest either time or EC into obtaining the projectile duty officers. The mines are cheep as all heck, and other launchers arnt that bad. But I just don't see this meeting the OPs 'cheep' requirement (well maybe by my own standards, but I don't think he has mine).
But while I am not sure that this build is right for the OP, You have renewed my own interest in this area of science. I may make some adjustments to one of my sci-ships in light of your claims and see if I can have some fun with it.
i do indeed belong to a fleet, dont have access to MK XII sci consoles from it, yet, but thanks much for the tip
In cure space elite, pop gravity well I right in front of the raptors, next pop photonic shockwave. They will be unable to escape the well. This also works for bird of prey and Neg'vars. Use tractor beam on everything you are damaging. With two copies this skill can be spammed as a damage dealing ability as well as a shield stripper/hold.
In Khitomer Space Elite you can pretty much spam your damage dealing science abilities until the end. Use tractor beam on everything, drop gravity wells on cubes and transformers. The four small generators surrounding each transformer can be taken out just by firing 3 hyper plasma torpedo volleys in their direction. Treat this as fire and forget as you work your way around the generators. When the cube appears, pop a tractor beam II, a beam target shields I, and a gravity well I. The shields will fall away in seconds, and your torpedoes will be free to kill the cube. Once one transformer is down, the large sphere/probe ball spawns on the other side. If you get there soon enough, you can drop Gravity Well I, tractor beam I on sphere 1, and subnuke beam on sphere 2 to ensure they do not escape with EPtE. (Otherwise you wouldn't be able to hit both the spheres and probes with shockwave because they spawn 3.5km too high/low.) When they are all starting to get drawn into the well, activate photonic shockwave III to stun them. If you have it, consider using eject warp plasma or vent theta radiation, flying circles around the outside of the gravity well. Theta strips shields and Warp plasma does high shield ignoring damage that scales off of Particle Generators. Neither ability is required, but in some cases it does speed things up slightly. Next use sensor scan + refracting tetryon cascade. In most cases, this will kill all of the probes in a glorious light show. Now for the IRW Valdore, you have the unique ability of canceling that nasty 120k pulse it fires from cloak. Fly up to the Valdore and hit shockwave. The disabling effect will make it impossible to fire. This effect also works on player controlled scimitars.
The way I look at kinetic science, is that it's main purpose is to keep the target from moving while you drop shield bypassing damage upon it. You can do a lot of damage with a Science vessel, in some cases more than an escort. As an example, last night I took out a premade's recluse healer in just over 15 seconds solo with a science vessel. I waited until they tossed hazard emitters to a teamate before using Gravity Well I + Tractor Beam II + Beam Target Auxiliary I + Sensor Scan. Unloaded my Har'peng torpedo and Romulan Hyper Plasma Torpedoes. They started using heals, so I subnuked and shockwaved. The Har'peng exploded while dealing 13k shield ignoring damage and a few seconds later the second Har'Peng went off for 5.4k, killing the Recluse though full shields. You can do a lot of good with your science damage dealing abilities, it's all about knowing when to use them, and when to wait. Tractor Beams can be spammed, Shockwave can be dropped liberally, and Gravity Well should be saved when a hold + higher damage is needed. In the grand scheme of things, Gravity Well and Attack Pattern Omega have the same cooldown timers, 60 seconds. Photonic Shockwave and Attack Pattern Delta both have the same cooldown timers, 45 seconds. Much like an escort pilot plans his attack patterns, so must a science officer plan his damage crowd control abilities. Think of tractor beam as a science officer's beam fire at will I and II, rather than a simple hold.
In high DPS teams (3+ tactical escorts), it is indeed much harder to find spots to drop gravity wells and photonic shockwaves. The abilities are still useful when clumping up enemies, it makes the spheres in ISE quick work for a team of scatter volley escorts. However you don't benefit much by this, essentially you are merely supporting your escort teamates as they push out the damage numbers. You act as a force multiplier, their critical hits increase because of the lack of defense on their targets and they kill them faster. For some cases, it's one of the downsides of a kinetic damage dealing science vessel, when on good teams you don't deal as much overall damage as you could if you had run a shield/energy drain setup.
1 very rare projectile weapon officer may be obtained via the Nimbus III story arc. 2 more projectile weapon officers may be obtained though completing the Rolor Nebula colony assignment duty officer chain. Kinetic damage builds can get high weapon power, but at the price of shield power. When I am not under heavy fire, I will switch to a 70/15/15/100 setup, which pushes my weapon power over 100 due to a [A->W] warp core. Shield power is still at 70 though, 90 with EPtS, but I wouldn't want to go at a Tactical cube without 15/70/15/100. My weapon layout is usually the Hyper Refracting Tetryon Dual beam bank, 1x Har'peng (or plasma) torpedo, Romulan Hyper Plasma torpedo fore with the kinetic cutting beam, nukara web mines (or plasma mines), with the Omega force torpedo launcher aft. It is an expensive setup at that, but it's also a very enjoyable setup. Having the ability to quickly take out entire groups of NPCs without escort support can be a valuable asset.
However, no less valuable than a shield/energy drain build that you have described. I've used them, dropping a powerful target down to 0 in all subsystems makes short work of them. I just don't prefer them because I can't take multiple targets out as quickly as I could with a kinetic build. I'm sure the OP will find his playstyle in time. Based on his comments I'm assuming we have both given him a number of ideas. Good luck to you on building a kinetic setup, I hope I have been helpful in my explanation of the setup.
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I'm curious: for shield stripping or drain, how effective is the Tac BOff ability - Target Shield Subsystem?