ambassador retro build

matchstick606

So this is a fallow up post to my question about the fleet ambassador. I have a build here I want you all to see and give me any tips about making it better. mind you I'm a tac caption and my fleet is very small so we have no fleet weapons as of yet, so everything has to come from just buying it off the exchange.

the builds been working for me so far and just wanted some input. I'm thinking of just throwing on a field gen when i get the fleet ver but i would like to hear from others before then.
http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=matchsticksbuild1_0

rmy1081

matchstick606 wrote: »

So this is a fallow up post to my question about the fleet ambassador. I have a build here I want you all to see and give me any tips about making it better. mind you I'm a tac caption and my fleet is very small so we have no fleet weapons as of yet, so everything has to come from just buying it off the exchange.

the builds been working for me so far and just wanted some input. I'm thinking of just throwing on a field gen when i get the fleet ver but i would like to hear from others before then.
http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=matchsticksbuild1_0

The only thing I would change is engineering team 2. I would change it to Aux2SIF. It's a good hull heal with a 15 second cool down (that's really fast so you can heal a lot). Having 2 ETs means you're going to be waiting for shared cool downs. Otherwise its pretty solid for most everything.

I like tractor beam repulsors. Just remember they are situational, so if you're a person who like to press buttons at anytime just to press buttons, you'll find your team hating you really fast and your missions will take a lot longer because everyone is chasing the enemy around the map. That's just general advice and is not necessarily directed towards you.

torvinecho25

Okay, I've been using the Ambassador (and cruisers in general) for a long time, so I might be able to help you figure out a few ways to upgrade your build a little bit.

I'll tell you right off the bat, what you have now is pretty darn good; its a pretty solid build around the bat, and theres only a little bit of fine tuning that needs to be done. Props on the setup, I like it.

A few tweaks I'd recommend to improve overall performance...

First off, weapons; 8 beam arrays isn't a *bad* idea, but you are dealing with a little bit more energy drain then your build is capable of handling. In addition, you don't have anything capable of doing kinetic damage. Kinetic damage, in of itself, isn't as good as energy, but its great to have at least one kinetic weapon to hammer hard against unshielded targets. One option is to equip a fore torpedo or an aft mine; however, what I would recommend is dropping one of your aft beam arrays and equipping the Kinetic Cutting Beam. My reasoning for this is that it would allow you to inflict kinetic damage in a 360 degree arc, and it would have another advantage that I'll mention later.

Your set and warpcore are both great, good pick on the MACO.

For consoles...on paper, four neutroniums are pretty good. My concern here, however, is that you are looking at a lot of "efficiency loss" on the neutroniums because they suffer from diminishing returns, especially on the third and fourth consoles. For nearly the same effect, you could equip one neutronium, one tetraburnium, and one ablative hull armor. That will actually give you the same amount of resistance to all energy types as four neutroniums, and free up a space. In that extra space, you could equip the Assimilated Module; the Module would give you a couple nice passive bonuses, but what would pretty help you out would be the set bonus it gives you when working in tandem with the Kinetic Cutting Beam. This bonus, called Omega Weapon Amplifier, cuts down your weapon power drain to almost nothing for a period of time (and it procs into effect very frequently, especially with 7-8 weapons firing); this would go a long way toward solving the energy drain issues of firing 8 energy weapons, and would make a significant increase toward your overall DPS.

Science and tactical consoles are both great! Since you are running Tractor Beam Repulsers, I'd recommend equipping a Graviton Generator in the extra slot when you upgrade to the Fleet Ambasssador, rather then equipping a third field generator; the field generator is nice, but the extra damage from TBR would really help you out.

Last but not least, your BoFFs...Tactical BoFFs look great! If your solely planning to PvE, I'd recommend replacing the Beam Overload II with another Fire at Will. Why? The Beam Overload drains a huge amount of energy per-shot; this is normally not a big deal, but on your build you are already running 8 energy weapons, and have no powers/abilities equipped to counter this drain whatsoever. That means that every time you fire a Beam Overload (every 30 seconds or so, if you use it every time), you will literally deadpan your weapon power (8 energy weapons = 80 drain + the Overload stack, you hold a max of 125 weapon power = you will knock your weapon system offline every time you fire an overload, assuming you are broadsiding with your beams). That means every 30 seconds, after you fire an Overload, your weapons will shut down, and you will have to wait for the power to come back up, which would take about 5-7 seconds assuming you kept firing after the Overload. If you do the math, if you fire an Overload every 30 seconds then spend 5 seconds unable to fire your beams for effect due to power loss, you are losing a huge amount of overall damage. Not really beneficial to your build at all, which is why I recommend replacing the Overload with Fire at Will. Alternatively, if you are set on having that Beam Overload, I'd recommend equipping a copy of Emergency Power to Weapons to counter it, and purchasing a lot of weapons batteries. That aside, props on the Tactical Team

For engineering skills...the only problem I see here is the dual engineering teams. Considering that all team powers run on a shared cooldown, you can only get effect out of two copies of teams (each use of one team power triggers a 15 second cooldown on all the others); your build has three (engineering team x 2, tactical team x1). That translate to an effective waste of one power slot. Your engineering skill set is pretty focused towards tanking, with no focus on damage; with a little tooling around, you could make it do both.

A good idea for your engineering skills on this build would be as follows.

Emergency Power to Weapons 1, Engineering Team 2, Emergency Power to Shields 3, Auxiliary to SIF 3

Emergency Power to Weapons 1, Reverse Shield Polarity 1

Why this setup? It allows for a level of tanking equal to what you have already, but gives a 10% boost to ALL your energy damage ALL the time due to the dual Emergency Power to Weapons; it also gives you the extra weapon power to counter the drain of 8 energy weapons, and gives the power necessary to fire off that Overload you wanted. This is just a suggested layout; once your comfortable with something like that, you could further tinkering with it to equip Directed Energy Modulation, which is a great way to bring your damage capability even higher.

Good choice on your science powers, I like them


Anyway, hope this helps take care out there

dahminus

http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=redonrambbas_0

3 technicians. 1 marion and 1 w/e you would like.

Huge spike to your damage and survival

matchstick606

torvinecho25 wrote: »

Okay, I've been using the Ambassador (and cruisers in general) for a long time, so I might be able to help you figure out a few ways to upgrade your build a little bit.

I'll tell you right off the bat, what you have now is pretty darn good; its a pretty solid build around the bat, and theres only a little bit of fine tuning that needs to be done. Props on the setup, I like it.

A few tweaks I'd recommend to improve overall performance...

First off, weapons; 8 beam arrays isn't a *bad* idea, but you are dealing with a little bit more energy drain then your build is capable of handling. In addition, you don't have anything capable of doing kinetic damage. Kinetic damage, in of itself, isn't as good as energy, but its great to have at least one kinetic weapon to hammer hard against unshielded targets. One option is to equip a fore torpedo or an aft mine; however, what I would recommend is dropping one of your aft beam arrays and equipping the Kinetic Cutting Beam. My reasoning for this is that it would allow you to inflict kinetic damage in a 360 degree arc, and it would have another advantage that I'll mention later.

Your set and warpcore are both great, good pick on the MACO.

For consoles...on paper, four neutroniums are pretty good. My concern here, however, is that you are looking at a lot of "efficiency loss" on the neutroniums because they suffer from diminishing returns, especially on the third and fourth consoles. For nearly the same effect, you could equip one neutronium, one tetraburnium, and one ablative hull armor. That will actually give you the same amount of resistance to all energy types as four neutroniums, and free up a space. In that extra space, you could equip the Assimilated Module; the Module would give you a couple nice passive bonuses, but what would pretty help you out would be the set bonus it gives you when working in tandem with the Kinetic Cutting Beam. This bonus, called Omega Weapon Amplifier, cuts down your weapon power drain to almost nothing for a period of time (and it procs into effect very frequently, especially with 7-8 weapons firing); this would go a long way toward solving the energy drain issues of firing 8 energy weapons, and would make a significant increase toward your overall DPS.

Science and tactical consoles are both great! Since you are running Tractor Beam Repulsers, I'd recommend equipping a Graviton Generator in the extra slot when you upgrade to the Fleet Ambasssador, rather then equipping a third field generator; the field generator is nice, but the extra damage from TBR would really help you out.

Last but not least, your BoFFs...Tactical BoFFs look great! If your solely planning to PvE, I'd recommend replacing the Beam Overload II with another Fire at Will. Why? The Beam Overload drains a huge amount of energy per-shot; this is normally not a big deal, but on your build you are already running 8 energy weapons, and have no powers/abilities equipped to counter this drain whatsoever. That means that every time you fire a Beam Overload (every 30 seconds or so, if you use it every time), you will literally deadpan your weapon power (8 energy weapons = 80 drain + the Overload stack, you hold a max of 125 weapon power = you will knock your weapon system offline every time you fire an overload, assuming you are broadsiding with your beams). That means every 30 seconds, after you fire an Overload, your weapons will shut down, and you will have to wait for the power to come back up, which would take about 5-7 seconds assuming you kept firing after the Overload. If you do the math, if you fire an Overload every 30 seconds then spend 5 seconds unable to fire your beams for effect due to power loss, you are losing a huge amount of overall damage. Not really beneficial to your build at all, which is why I recommend replacing the Overload with Fire at Will. Alternatively, if you are set on having that Beam Overload, I'd recommend equipping a copy of Emergency Power to Weapons to counter it, and purchasing a lot of weapons batteries. That aside, props on the Tactical Team

For engineering skills...the only problem I see here is the dual engineering teams. Considering that all team powers run on a shared cooldown, you can only get effect out of two copies of teams (each use of one team power triggers a 15 second cooldown on all the others); your build has three (engineering team x 2, tactical team x1). That translate to an effective waste of one power slot. Your engineering skill set is pretty focused towards tanking, with no focus on damage; with a little tooling around, you could make it do both.

A good idea for your engineering skills on this build would be as follows.

Emergency Power to Weapons 1, Engineering Team 2, Emergency Power to Shields 3, Auxiliary to SIF 3

Emergency Power to Weapons 1, Reverse Shield Polarity 1

Why this setup? It allows for a level of tanking equal to what you have already, but gives a 10% boost to ALL your energy damage ALL the time due to the dual Emergency Power to Weapons; it also gives you the extra weapon power to counter the drain of 8 energy weapons, and gives the power necessary to fire off that Overload you wanted. This is just a suggested layout; once your comfortable with something like that, you could further tinkering with it to equip Directed Energy Modulation, which is a great way to bring your damage capability even higher.

Good choice on your science powers, I like them


Anyway, hope this helps take care out there

Thanks for the tips, I think I'm going to try out the boff layout as well.

nickcastleton

where do people get the Red Matter Capacitor from? i thought anything from the 2009 trek was not allowed?

ursusmorologus

nickcastleton wrote: »

where do people get the Red Matter Capacitor from? i thought anything from the 2009 trek was not allowed?

It was a special item in the Collector's Edition package

Usually license issues apply to specific assets (like ships and costumes). I'm guessing that since there was no "red matter capacitor" in JJ Trek, just generic red matter "stuff," and they have rights to canon, they would have rights to their own red matter "stuff"

trhrangerxml

Everything from the 2009 Star Trek Countdown comics falls under the old TV licence, so Red Matter Cap, The Vault and Adapted Destroyers all fall under the old licence. So we could see say the Squid, but the JJ-prise and Vengeance have a very high chance of never seeing the light of day in STO. There are certain gray area items, stuff that didn't appear in Countdown, but are from the old time line, like the Shrapnel Torpedo (gonna argue that the Transphasic Cluster Torp was an early version of this).

sevmrage

Not to mention, from what I've heard, the RMC has to be obtained outside STO, and you better be willing to pay a premium for it.

matchstick606

sevmrage wrote: »

Not to mention, from what I've heard, the RMC has to be obtained outside STO, and you better be willing to pay a premium for it.

Well that's if you can still hunt down a new copy of the collectors edition of the game. I was lucky and found it for $14 at micro center. Comes with a month gold account as well, plus the art book is cool.

sirokk

Regarding the OP...

All the above is good advise. I would also add the you might want to try an Aux2Bat setup - It pushes all Auxilary power into all of the other 3 powers: Weapons, Shields and Engines for a period of time. It's like a super power-up.

There's an excellent build thread here, it's says PvP but it also applies to PvE:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=427091

General info about Aux2Bat:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=6289311&postcount=8

Aux2Bat for Ambassador:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=12617611&postcount=962

The BOff skills and DOff's used are the most important part of Aux2Bat. Get (2) Aux2Bats setup with your BOffs and get (3) Technicians of whatever quality you can afford.

sevmrage

True, buying a copy of the game itself is probably cheaper that specifically getting the RMC.

matchstick606

so here is the redone ship with the boff layout changed. I'm having a hell of a lot of fun with this one. I also droped two beam arrays for torps to give it a little better firepower.

http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=matchstickbuild20_0

grendelthewise

that looks better to me, I think I might adopt some of your ideas with my Ambassador.

dahminus

You try an aux2bat, I guarantee you would enjoy it more
http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/?build=redonrambbas_0
Remember to use those techs if you do

matchstick606

dahminus wrote: »

You try an aux2bat, I guarantee you would enjoy it more
http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/?build=redonrambbas_0
Remember to use those techs if you do

I never used a aux2bat build but reading (dontdrunkimshoot) how to post has me thinking of giving it a try.

stofsk

matchstick606 wrote: »

I never used a aux2bat build but reading (dontdrunkimshoot) how to post has me thinking of giving it a try.

If you want an aux2batt build, you might consider some other ships that take advantage of it a bit better. The Ambassador-retrofit comes with a LtCommdr science, which is mostly wasted if your aux power is reduced to 5 most of the time (which it will if you do aux2batt).

Which is not to say that you can't or shouldn't do an aux2batt build with this ship. I would also look at the Fleet Ambassador as well as an eventual upgrade, for that universal LT. You could slot in science powers like TBR more for the damage rather than the repel. Or you could be a more support orientated build, one which is focused on tanking and keeping your team alive.

sirokk

matchstick606 wrote: »

I never used a aux2bat build but reading (dontdrunkimshoot) how to post has me thinking of giving it a try.

With a decent Aux2Bat setup, you won't need EP2W because Aux2Bat pushes Aux power to ALL the other 3 powers, not just weapons. Boosts weapons, shields and engine!

If your an Engineer, you can use EPS Power Transfer when Aux2Bat is on cooldown. Otherwise make sure to have some Aux batteries in a device slot.

Just got 3rd place in Starbase 24 last night with Aux2Bat on the Exploration Cruiser Retrofit (regular T5 Galaxy).

ursusmorologus

EPtW doesn't just boost subsystem power, it boosts damage too ... by a lot