Bridge Station Rank

seazombie64

How do I rank up my bridge stations? I have an Intrepid class, and 1 of my stations is low ranked even though the BOFF assigned is Commander. I am guessing the rank of stations is ship based, but I can't any information to confirm that.

tiriusavaro

You are correct in your assumption that it is ship based. Generally speaking, the higher level tier a ship is, the more high-rank bridge officer stations it has, and the high-rank stations are dependent on the type of ship. As your Intrepid is a science ship, it'll have high-rank science stations, as opposed to escorts which will have tactical and cruisers which will have engineering.

If you want to look at bridge officer stations for possible new ships, I'd advise Stowiki as the list these days is a bit long to include here...

mithrosnomore

What they said.

Bridge stations are tied to the ships. Lower rank ships have lower rank bridge stations.

If you have a ship that is available for lieutenant-rank player captains, for example, it wouldn't make any sense for it to have a commander station.

seazombie64

mithrosnomore wrote: »

What they said.

Bridge stations are tied to the ships. Lower rank ships have lower rank bridge stations.

If you have a ship that is available for lieutenant-rank player captains, for example, it wouldn't make any sense for it to have a commander station.

That makes sense..it's just frustrating to have 2 science commander boffs, and 1 commander station and 1 lower rank station. I guess it gives me something to look forward to

lilchibiclari

Be aware that no ship in the game has more than one Commander bridge station and none have more than two Lieutenant Commander stations (excluding the Commander station)

tiriusavaro

It does make sense in a way. Look at the TNG bridge crew for example, where there's one Commander, most of the senior officers are either Lieutenant Commander or Lieutenant rank, and the remaining consoles (like the helm and the consoles on the rear wall) are staffed by ensigns.

So, if you put your Counselor at the helm, it's logical that she would not be able to use her Commander-level therapy sessions there.

Now that I think of it, wouldn't it be cool if in battle we could have an "exploding console" damage effect that would temporarily shut down a boff station, of put one of your boffs in sick bay so that another would have to take over?

shockwave85

lilchibiclari wrote: »

Be aware that no ship in the game has more than one Commander bridge station and none have more than two Lieutenant Commander stations (excluding the Commander station)

This is mostly true, except Cryptic kind of overturned the "one commander station" rule with the Science Destroyers. They have both a Sci and Tactical Commander, but one of those commander-level abilities will be disabled depending on which mode the ship is in. There's also a CD on going back to Tactical Mode after you cancel it, making it impossible to switch rapidly back and forth.

Generally, at Tier 5, ships will have:

1x Commander station (matches ship type: Escorts get Tac, Sci gets Sci, Cruiser gets Eng)
1x Lt Cdr station
2x Lt station
1x Ensign station

Final tally of powers you have is:

1x Commander power
2x Lt Cdr powers
4x Lt powers
5x Ens powers

Total: 12 bridge officer powers

What class those seats are determines how many powers from each career you can access, and at what levels. Powers that become available at Lt Cdr like Attack Pattern Omega and Gravity Well are extremely potent, and how you assign those three critical high level Lt Cdr and Cdr powers often determines a lot of your overall build. Differences in Boff seating are probably the biggest thing that differentiates ships. You can toughen a ship up, you can make it turn better, but the Boff seats just are what they are.

A few oddball ships like the Caitian Atrox and Voth Palisade have two Lt Cdr slots by giving up their ensign station entirely. This is fairly potent as these ships can then use four high level powers. It is therefore extremely rare for Cryptic to spec a ship that way, and both of those so far are science ships.

bendalek

One more teensy, tiny bit of advice on BoFF stations ... Some of the Alternate versions of ships i.e. C-Store versions, Fleet versions etc. have what's called a "Universal" station of various ranks (some even have multiple universal stations) on the STOWiki they are signified by a "grey" icon ...

These, as the name suggests, can be used with any type of officer and can be swapped out to, sometimes quite drastically, change the overall capabilities of your ship.

Many Klingon vessels have universal stations for instance, which gives you a lot more flexibility, than the usual Tac for Escort, Sci for Sci and Engi for Cruiser builds ...

lilchibiclari

tiriusavaro wrote: »

Now that I think of it, wouldn't it be cool if in battle we could have an "exploding console" damage effect that would temporarily shut down a boff station, of put one of your boffs in sick bay so that another would have to take over?

I would make that tied to the ship injury system--i.e. you could get that mainly when you get K.O.'d, and the "worse" the injury, the higher-level the station is disabled--e.g. a "minor" injury would disable an Ensign station, a "major" injury would disable a Lieutenant station, and a "critical" injury would disable a Lt. Commander station (if you have one--or a Lieutenant station if you have none).

seazombie64

I am getting used to this concept now. I made RADM(lower) last night and bought the Long Range Science ship, which came with another station. Then noticed my 2 engineers had the same ensign skill. The boff trainer at ESD now makes sense to me and I went there and retrained one of them in their ensign skill.
My captain and boff skill distribution are most likely a hot mess but I learn more each time and should be able to clean things up and be a lot smarter on my next character. My ship selection is most likely not optimized either, I pick ships more for their appearance and as I learn the game I am having a good time even if I am not "optimized".

bendalek

seazombie64 wrote: »

I am getting used to this concept now. I made RADM(lower) last night and bought the Long Range Science ship, which came with another station. Then noticed my 2 engineers had the same ensign skill. The boff trainer at ESD now makes sense to me and I went there and retrained one of them in their ensign skill.
My captain and boff skill distribution are most likely a hot mess but I learn more each time and should be able to clean things up and be a lot smarter on my next character. My ship selection is most likely not optimized either, I pick ships more for their appearance and as I learn the game I am having a good time even if I am not "optimized".

BoFF skills can be retrained whenever you like, just remember that any points already spent on improving a skill, which generally just means it resets quicker(i.e. the 'cooldown") will be lost when you retrain them, so you'll need to put points back into skills again, though you wont have to "promote" the officer again ...

Also remember that some skills have what's known as a "shared" cooldown, so it isn't the best idea to have 2 BoFF's with the same skill at the same rank, but most skills have a level II or even level III version so mix and match to get the result you want ...

And there is nothing wrong with picking a ship because you like the look ... Ultimately having fun is THE most important part, so don't let anyone tell you that this or that ship is bad or wrong ... If you need help to improve your "build" there is a fantastic tool that you will see linked to regularly on these forums

http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/

If you want some help setting up your favourite ship, fill in the details and you'll have dozens of people offering help and alternatives for you ...

tiriusavaro

seazombie64 wrote: »

(...) My ship selection is most likely not optimized either, I pick ships more for their appearance and as I learn the game I am having a good time even if I am not "optimized".

I don't see anything wrong with this either. My first character was decidedly a mess too, but I loved the look of his ship and recently spent time repairing him with all I'd learned from the game later on. He still flies the same ship (though I did replace it with a Fleet version) and I still love playing him.

There's a scene from one of the Trek novels that's always stuck with me. I don't have the book on me, but in Diane Carey's "Challenger", Scotty is designing a new ship for a young captain. The captain tells him to do what he thinks is best, but Scotty objects and tells him it's the captain's job to decide: "You have to like her, lad, or else you won't fight for her."

seazombie64

Thanks everyone for the wisdom and advice everyone. I will experiment with the skill planner this weekend when I have more time, I am certain I will learn something from it.

shockwave85

bendalek wrote: »

Also remember that some skills have what's known as a "shared" cooldown, so it isn't the best idea to have 2 BoFF's with the same skill at the same rank, but most skills have a level II or even level III version so mix and match to get the result you want ...

Not quite. Shared cooldowns apply when you activate a power of a certain type, it will start a shorter cooldown on all other powers of the same type. So Emergency Power to Shields itself has a 45 second cooldown, and starts a 15 second cooldown on all other Emergency Power to (something) that you have slotted, and a 30 second cooldown on other copies of EPtS regardless of their level. Running two EPtS1 is the same as running EPtS1 and EPtS2 (as far as CD is concerned).

Check the skill to see what it starts a cooldown on. Deflector skills like Grav Well will start a CD on other deflector skills like Tyken's Rift. Beam skills start a CD on other beam skills. Mostly the shared CDs are fairly logical. You can slot two skills from the same category, but generally not more (Emergency Power skills are an exception, you can get away with 4 because of the quirks of how the 15/30 second shared CDs line up). So, if you're running beams, run like two Fire At Will. Not two Fire At Will and a Beam Overload, certainly not three Fire At Will. 2x FAW, 2x BO or 1x FAW and 1x BO. Any more and you will always have a skill which is not firing at its maximum cycle. In other words, wasted.