Just wondering if someone could help me figure a few things out, or direct me to where they are already figured out. I play mostly Romulan characters and have the various D'Deridex versions, but not the dreadnaughts, yet (and probably not soon). I also play some Klingon and have several of their carrier ships, but not all.
1-If I want to make a "torpedo ship" how do I do it? What crew skills should I go for? How many torpedoes can I use due to the cool-downs? How do I deal with the enemy's shields? Are the various reputation torpedo launchers any good for this? What is the earliest level I can expect to be able to field a torpedo ship?
2-Any tips for fighter missions? How do you set up the equipment on your fighter? How do you avoid repeated messy deaths? Do you use an offensive crew skill of a defensive/healing one?
3-What is the fastest way to earn dilithium?
4-Is there a "most efficient" way to build a carrier? Beam boat, Crowd Control, torpedoes? Any suggestions as to what I should do?
5-I tend to put mostly my defensive/buff powers on the spacebar, and have generally tended towards buffs in general, woudl it be better to use more or less offensive crew skills? What is best to put on the spacebar?
Unfortunately I can only answer #3 since I strictly fly BoPs and I do not have a torp build.
Ways to earn dilithium quickly.
1. There is a daily mission that is repeatable called Investigate Officer Reports. This mission will give you 960 dilithium for completing a "Spotlight" Foundry Mission (community created missions). It might have a 30 / 60 minute cool down.
2. Your first "Spotlight" Foundry mission for the day will give you at least 1,440 dilithium. More if it is a longer mission. There is a 20 hour cool down I think. Doing another "Spotlight" Foundry mission before the cool down will only give you XP. If I want a quick 1,440 dil, I do a mission called Vulture Wheel. I can complete it in less than 8 minutes. 1st time doing it should not take more than 15 minutes. It is real simple only one require space combat situation against a single ship, the rest is dialog driven.
Doing #1 and #2 will give you 2,400 in 8 minutes or less for a speed run. You can repeat Vulture Wheel or play any other Foundry mission + the Investigate Officer Reports daily repeatable, but you will only get 960 dil. Not bad though.
3. Do lots of Doff maraudering missions that give you contraband. 5 contraband can to turned in for 2,000 dilithium to a security officer on a space station. This is a 4 hour security mission.
4. Do lots of Doff maraudering missions that give you prisoners. There are various military missions for "Forced Labor". 4 prisoners are sent to Forced Labor camps for a 500 dil reward; I think the mission is 4 hours, but I could be wrong.
5. The security office in #3 will also take prisoners and give you dil, but it is 10 prisoners for 1,000 dil and the failure rate is higher than that of "Forced Labor". I avoid this mission.
6. The daily Asteroid Mining mission (20 hour cool down) which rewards 400 to 1,000 dilithium depending on how well you play the mini-game on a very bad day (like sneezing and coughing when playing the mini-game) I get 800 dil. In the Beta Usrea sector block (near DS9 and Bajor).
7. The three Pi Canis missions daily / repeatable missions.
7a. Pi Canis - Path of the Warrior. This is a daily mission with a 20 hour cool down. It requires that you successful complete the optional objectives for Pi Canis Sortie Alpha and Pi Canis Sorte Bravo. Reward is 2,400 dil
7b. Pi Canis Sortie Alpha - Attack Fed ships in 3 different planets. Optional object is to jam communications. Do so as soon as you de-cloak. Very easy mission. I can finish this in about 30 minutes. Reward is 960 dil. Cool down time of 30 minutes.
7c. Pi Canis Sortie Bravo - 3 parts to this mission and they all different with different optional objectives. This one is a bit more trickier though to complete the optional objectives. I can do this mission in 30 - 40 minutes. #1 - Intercept freighter sector space. #2 - Attack a Federation ship repair station. #3 - Raid a transport station. reward is 960 dil .Cool down time of 30 minutes.
Naturally, this has a learning curve and it took me a while to get it perfect. Right now for 60 - 80 minutes of play time I can get 4,320 dil. The Sortie missions are repeatable.
Nitpicking is a time-honored tradition of science fiction. Asking your readers not to worry about the "little things" is like asking a dog not to sniff at people's crotches. If there's something that appears to violate natural laws, then you can expect someone's going to point it out. That's just the way things are.
I use a Toduj fighter with DHCs. It comes with a cannon ability anyway. There is no time or space in a loadout for fanciness, so i want as much punch as possible in a fighter.
A carrier is the opposite. You have pets, time, and space to do things. Battlefield control is the priority... drains, holds, etc.
I use a Toduj fighter with DHCs. It comes with a cannon ability anyway. There is no time or space in a loadout for fanciness, so i want as much punch as possible in a fighter.
A carrier is the opposite. You have pets, time, and space to do things. Battlefield control is the priority... drains, holds, etc.
Right now I am using a scorpion fighter with a dhc and a plasma torpedo, I take TS with it, it seems to be working okay, but I haven't tried it on hard mode yet. Do the Doff abilities work while in your fighter?
About the torpedo boat, i have a breen warship in a transphasic torpedo build. 3 blue projectile doffs as active space doffs to reduce the recharge of the torpedoes (it works almost all the time lol), + 1 deflector officer for my GWII, and 1 damage control enginer to improve hull heal skills.
The set, of course the Breen set (without the 3rd piece) that gives you transhpashic projectile damage bonus. Plus 4 transphasic compressors (transphasic console boost). AS weapons, i have in the front 1 breen cluster, 1 rapid reload transphasic torpedo, 2 transphasic torpedos. In the back, 1 transphasic mine launcher, 1 transphasic cluster, 1 rapid reload transphasic torpedo, 1 transphasic torpedo.
I must say, it really hurts. Plus the GW i tend to keep all my enemies in 1 spot and with my transphasic cluster i hurt em badly , im doing really good damage (20-30k dps and that is really much for me lol) but i am not even using fleet consoles, o fleet equpiment cuz i never was in a hurry, im just enjoying it. For now, but i will start replacing all my consoles for fleet ones.
For other type of torpedoes, depends, since not all type of torpedos have the same boosts and possibilities.
4-Is there a "most efficient" way to build a carrier? Beam boat, Crowd Control, torpedoes? Any suggestions as to what I should do?
It also depends on the carrier you are flying.
If you are flying any one hangar ships, treat the hangar as something extra and nothing more -- so a flight deck cruiser is the same build as normal cruiser. Exception to this would be Vesta (since it basically can be anything) and Scimitar (due to favoring forward arc firing)
If you are flying science based carrier (3-3 weapon, 2 hangar), you are focus on battlefield support. Use you science ability to do crowd control and damage.
If you are flyign engineer based carrier (oblisek, mirror vo'quv), you are more of a fire support beam boat with a secondary duty as a tank. Go all beams, stay at above 6km range, and circle attack. For extra firewpower in PvE, replace 1 or 2 beam with single cannons.
Kar'fi is unique in that it is a science boat that have high tactical leaning, so treat it like a weak hulled battlecruiser with hangar. Still go all beams beams, but if you happen to play PvE only feel free to use one RCS and DBB -- torpedo had been nerfed so I don't use them. I am trying to see if using two RCS + the turn rate dyson console will boost the turn rate, but for now use only DBB at most.
Right now I am using a scorpion fighter with a dhc and a plasma torpedo, I take TS with it, it seems to be working okay, but I haven't tried it on hard mode yet. Do the Doff abilities work while in your fighter?
DOFF abilities will work, but the trick with a Torpedo ship is multiple torpedos. Each Torpedo DOFF will check the ability, and a positive proc on the Torpedo DOFF ability cools down EVERY torpedo that you have. So if you miss on one torpedo, you have others to try the DOFF ability... and that might cool everything down.
With a 2-weapon fighter, you have at most 2 Torpedos... which doesn't give you much in the way of Torpedo DOFF procs.
I shove 2 DHCs, or a DHC & another cannon-capable weapon (Turret or single Cannon if you feel like you need the firing arc, or even the new Experimental Proton weapon if you want to get fancy & also use a BO1 or BFAW1 in the BOFF slot)... that way, I'm maximizing what I have. Maybe the Torpedo will blow things up quicker if I get the shields down, but then how do I get the shields down with just 1 DHC? However, if it works for you, then keep at it
Plasmas are probably best since they reload relatively quick & do hull damage right away, if you're going to go torpedo.
1) http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=873351 start here, its a little dated but read the main first few pages and skim the follow up comments. Be aware that torp boats simply cannot reach the dps of other builds, they can do OK but not top damage. A lot of the builds are designed for cloaking ships that can fire, recloak, move, repeat, to wear things down from afar without risk.
2) you mean ground missions? I use 3 engineers with mines to do the heavy lifting and mop up anything that survived. But I dislike ground and just play to "get it done".
3) pay for it? There is no free lunch, but what I did was buy a lot of char slots and run a lot of alts, kdf aligned romulans. Level these up somewhat and do missions to earn contraband to convert to dil. Its about 3 or 4 to 1, so for every guy that turns in contraband, 3 or 4 characters need to farm it. I have 2 that turn in all day long and a bunch that farm for it quasi casually. It nets me a solid 12k per day on top of whatever else I earn actually playing the game. Shared storage space is nice, so you can pass the contra back quickly.
4) My carrier has goodly amount of extra turn rate. 6 weapon ship, I have 3 dual beam banks up front, cutting beam (omega rep) and omni beam (quest reward) in the aft, with a turret in the aft for lack of anything better. All 6 weapons bear on a frontal 90 degree arc and with my fighters adding to damage, I rip things to shreds. Its no scimitar, but for a 6 weapon ship, it does more than I ever thought it would. I am not saying this is the best, just sharing what I did. It really depends on which carrier you have. The JH is different from the karfi is different from the recluse is different from the cat... what you wanting to drive?
5) All my spacebar does is rebalance the shields. I click my other skills on demand, some mapped to keys, some lesser used for mouse clicks. The automatic skill cycle thingy works but it does 2 things: it makes the game stupidly boring for me (ooo, I can mash one button, I has leet skillz) and it performs average all the time. Clicking the right skill at the right time performs better all the time, IF you can manage it. I can't make heads or tails of your actual question, but you should be using ALL of your officer skills on a REGULAR basis. Any skill not being used often is wasted and your build is sub-optimal in that case (esp for PVE. PVP, a couple of must have defensive skills may be seldom used vs some opponents and even in entire matches).
#8 - "We Need Breathing Room" daily mission it pays 1,440 dilithium for exploring unknown worlds in unexplored sectors. The same person who give you the mission will also give you a selection of unexplored sectors to choose from. Just choose one and go. These can be quick missions like scanning anomalies in space / on the surface of a planet / or in an asteroid base. Or it could be combat missions which you need to defeat 6 - 8 waves of enemies which takes more time. Time to complete probably ranges between 20 minutes (3 "space scans") to as much as maybe 45 - 60 minutes (3 combat missions). Repeatable every 20 hours.
#9 - Nimbus III has 3 dailies that are you can do for a bit dilithium. All are from a single NPC in the bar.
#9a - "Creatures of the Desert" (or something like that) where you basically activate a device in the desert to spawn monsters to kill. I think this lasts 90 seconds - 120 seconds. The award you get is based on the number of creatures you kill. I always get in the "30 - 39 range" so the reward is 580 dilithium. 40+ gives you 640.
#9b - "Contraband Search" - Find random location where the Orion Syndicate has hidden contraband (no you do not get the contraband). I think you have 90 seconds (or less) to find the 5 locations in the Paradise Lost settlement. Payout is 480 dil I think. This one will probably take you a few tries to before you get familiar with the possible random locations. If you fail this mission you can immediately try again by speaking to the NPC
#9c - Last one is go out into the desert and find a band of Orion Syndicates. Kill 'em and get 480 dil I think. This is the longest of the 3 dailies, but should take less than 10 minutes.
I believe in a span of about 15 minutes I can earn a total of 1,540 dil from Nimbus III.
#10 - Lastly, there are the Elite STFs you can do. The quickest one to earn 960 dil is the Borg "Infected: The Conduit" Elite. The actual time varies depending on the skills / ships of other players. Generally, it should take between 15 - 25 minutes.
About dilithium, NEVER do exploration missions, they are a waste of a lot of time, and if you have bad luck, you will getting only ground missions, and those are terrible. I mean exploration missions are the most unpleasant experience to gather dilithium (i used to do em ages ago, but i got really dissapointed).
Without talking about the STFS or battlezones, like Dyson that can give you great ammount of dil in sort time, you can ->
In ETA ERIDANI, you can gather about 3500-4000 dilitium in about 30 minutes. Sham'ar - Alhenna Station - Traelus System, and then the foundry have a few fast missions located in drozana station that plus the officer reports new mission can give you about 2500 dilitium easily in about 5-10 minutes.
TAU DEWA - Nimbus - 3 missions that gives you about 1700 dilithium in 10 minutes.
DEFERA - Emancipation - Aiding the Deferi - Deferi Patrols (or something like that). They are 5 sort missions that in total gives you 2400 dilitium for about 25 minutes.
Starfleet / Klingon Academy - The path to 2409 (erm.. we are already in 2014 lol). 480 dilithium for about 35 seconds (the time it takes to go to the mission guy to the mission spot).
If you can, make one or two red alerts in the way, in every sector. It will give you 480 dilithium for the first daily red alert you complete in every sector.
And of course, if you are a klingon , ,contraband, contraband, contraband, return prisoners, return prisoners, deport prisoners, deport prisoners, etc. If you are a klingon, or romulan allined klingon, do a lot of maraudin doff assignments and keep gathering colonists and prisoners. There are a lot of assignments where you can sell em and in criticals you can gain 2500 dilithium easily.
There are more ways, but in the end, the trick is not to do every time the same, just different things. Or you will be tired lol.
In summary my "Speed Run for Dilithium" is as follows:
1. Select the "Investigate Officer's Report" repeatable daily missions (30 minute cool down when you accept the mission). Select the Vulture Wheel Foundry mission. Estimated play time 8 minutes. Dilithium payout 960 + 1,440 = 2,400
2. Go to Nimbus III and do the 3 daily missions given by an NPC in the bar. Total time should by 15 minutes, maybe 20 minutes at worst. I typically get a total of 1,540 dil because I never killed more than 39 creatures within the time limit.
3. Go do the Asteroid Mining daily mission which probably takes 9 or 10 minutes to complete. Dilthium reward ranges between 400 - 1,000 depending on how well you do in the mini-game. I can typically get 920 dil.
4. By now the "Investigate Officer's Report" daily repeatable should be available again. The 30 minute cool down starts when you accept the mission. Select Vulture Wheel again. After about 8 minutes you will get 960 dilithium. Remember there is a 20 hour cool down timer for the Spotlight Foundry award.
Total play time excluding traveling time is about 41 minutes. With traveling time it should be less than 60 minutes. Total dilithium payout (at least for me) is 5,820.
If you have 5 contraband, then go to the Klingon station in the same sector where Vulture Wheel takes place. I forgot the name of the system it is located but is located to the right near the bottom, next to the border of the sector where Qo'nos is. Do the Doff mission to turn in the contraband. The reward is 2,000 dilithium, but you need to wait 4 hours.
log into each character. Empty completed DO jobs. Accept new jobs (beat up fed freighters for contraband). Stuff reward contraband into my shared storage. Move to next char.
At the end, log into the 2 chars and collect current reward, refine, start next. If out, collect 15-20 from shared storage.
Result: both chars get 6k per day, one before work, one when I get home, and one before bed. 12k total.
Time spent: maybe 1/2 hour over the entire day (it gets faster after doing it a while). It might be possible for some people to squeeze in one more go per day, but I can't on my schedule.
Resources required: a bunch of level 11+ alts, shared storage space, and some EC to buy some officers that can do the missions successfully. *** A leveled char does not need to buy officers: the jemh guys, law, and other free greens and blues are good enough. But a level 11 mule needs to actually buy green and blue officers with the appropriate skills.
The oh-noez Im outta dil routine:
on top of the above, I do one foundry per char to get the bonus per day. This is significant over a sackful of characters!
About dilithium, NEVER do exploration missions, they are a waste of a lot of time, and if you have bad luck, you will getting only ground missions, and those are terrible. I mean exploration missions are the most unpleasant experience to gather dilithium (i used to do em ages ago, but i got really dissapointed).
Yeah, I only listed it as an option.
I sometimes take a chance with it to mix things up. I did it yesterday (1st time in about 2 weeks). Finished it in like 20 minutes. I got 2 space anomaly scanning missions and one space combat mission. So... not too bad.
I sometimes take a chance with it to mix things up. I did it yesterday (1st time in about 2 weeks). Finished it in like 20 minutes. I got 2 space anomaly scanning missions and one space combat mission. So... not too bad.
The KDF version is not bad. Beat stuff up 6 times once in a while, get nearly 3k. (You can double up if you did not do it recently). A well built ship can chew thru that in just a few min, but its not a good choice for undergeared players. Its not a bad way to farm xp and dil while leveling up if the missions bore you, though.
The KDF version is not bad. Beat stuff up 6 times once in a while, get nearly 3k. (You can double up if you did not do it recently). A well built ship can chew thru that in just a few min, but its not a good choice for undergeared players. Its not a bad way to farm xp and dil while leveling up if the missions bore you, though.
Yeah, i must say i rather prefer to waste 20 minutes killing some guys to be rewarded by 1440 dilithium than trying to explore 3 dumb systems, that if i am not lucky (meaning, i cant find scanning missions or fighting in space ones) i will get ground missions all the time and i will waste too much time (not to mention almost all the "investigate facility" exploration missions have all the paths bugged and you need to keep repositioning your boffs all the time). And its not worthy, not most of the times. And since i have tons of methods to gather even more dilithium in less time, why the hell im going to do exploration missions.. lol.
But well, even if i waste a little more time in the kdf version killing some guys, i prefer that by far. But i dont do that anyways, since being a klingon means you dont need to worry about dilithium. And the less time you waste, the better.
DOFF abilities will work, but the trick with a Torpedo ship is multiple torpedos. Each Torpedo DOFF will check the ability, and a positive proc on the Torpedo DOFF ability cools down EVERY torpedo that you have. So if you miss on one torpedo, you have others to try the DOFF ability... and that might cool everything down.
With a 2-weapon fighter, you have at most 2 Torpedos... which doesn't give you much in the way of Torpedo DOFF procs.
I shove 2 DHCs, or a DHC & another cannon-capable weapon (Turret or single Cannon if you feel like you need the firing arc, or even the new Experimental Proton weapon if you want to get fancy & also use a BO1 or BFAW1 in the BOFF slot)... that way, I'm maximizing what I have. Maybe the Torpedo will blow things up quicker if I get the shields down, but then how do I get the shields down with just 1 DHC? However, if it works for you, then keep at it
Plasmas are probably best since they reload relatively quick & do hull damage right away, if you're going to go torpedo.
My experience so far has been the vault and the one romulan mission against the walkers. In the vault a TS from the plasma torpedoes killed every fighter group that spawned instantly, I just flew on by. In the other mission the TS's would, when I got them lined up right anyway, clear the skies of elachi fighters. That was on normal difficulty though and I am looking to start doing harder difficulties. I am not so sure using torpedoes will be nearly as good on higher difficulties.
I haven't gotten nearly enough marks to get the any of the rep weapons yet, but I am wanting to try out 3 torp Doffs with the omega plasma launcher and the romulan rep one. Use TS to clear out opposing fighters with the romulan launcher, and use the fast fire rate of the omega one to proc the Doffs. Not having ever used either though I couldn't tell you if it will be worthwhile at all though.
If you are flying any one hangar ships, treat the hangar as something extra and nothing more -- so a flight deck cruiser is the same build as normal cruiser. Exception to this would be Vesta (since it basically can be anything) and Scimitar (due to favoring forward arc firing)
If you are flying science based carrier (3-3 weapon, 2 hangar), you are focus on battlefield support. Use you science ability to do crowd control and damage.
If you are flyign engineer based carrier (oblisek, mirror vo'quv), you are more of a fire support beam boat with a secondary duty as a tank. Go all beams, stay at above 6km range, and circle attack. For extra firewpower in PvE, replace 1 or 2 beam with single cannons.
Kar'fi is unique in that it is a science boat that have high tactical leaning, so treat it like a weak hulled battlecruiser with hangar. Still go all beams beams, but if you happen to play PvE only feel free to use one RCS and DBB -- torpedo had been nerfed so I don't use them. I am trying to see if using two RCS + the turn rate dyson console will boost the turn rate, but for now use only DBB at most.
The carriers I currently have access to are: Kar'fi, and all the orien flight deck crusiers. I am saving up to get the romulan dreadnaughts and science carriers, but it's gonna be a while. I do basically use the Kar'fi as a beam boat with gravity wells, and the Flight deck crusiers as you said, I was just wondering if I was missing something that other people did with their carriers.
How would you set up a Scimitar? Beams or cannons?
Comments
Ways to earn dilithium quickly.
1. There is a daily mission that is repeatable called Investigate Officer Reports. This mission will give you 960 dilithium for completing a "Spotlight" Foundry Mission (community created missions). It might have a 30 / 60 minute cool down.
2. Your first "Spotlight" Foundry mission for the day will give you at least 1,440 dilithium. More if it is a longer mission. There is a 20 hour cool down I think. Doing another "Spotlight" Foundry mission before the cool down will only give you XP. If I want a quick 1,440 dil, I do a mission called Vulture Wheel. I can complete it in less than 8 minutes. 1st time doing it should not take more than 15 minutes. It is real simple only one require space combat situation against a single ship, the rest is dialog driven.
Doing #1 and #2 will give you 2,400 in 8 minutes or less for a speed run. You can repeat Vulture Wheel or play any other Foundry mission + the Investigate Officer Reports daily repeatable, but you will only get 960 dil. Not bad though.
3. Do lots of Doff maraudering missions that give you contraband. 5 contraband can to turned in for 2,000 dilithium to a security officer on a space station. This is a 4 hour security mission.
4. Do lots of Doff maraudering missions that give you prisoners. There are various military missions for "Forced Labor". 4 prisoners are sent to Forced Labor camps for a 500 dil reward; I think the mission is 4 hours, but I could be wrong.
5. The security office in #3 will also take prisoners and give you dil, but it is 10 prisoners for 1,000 dil and the failure rate is higher than that of "Forced Labor". I avoid this mission.
6. The daily Asteroid Mining mission (20 hour cool down) which rewards 400 to 1,000 dilithium depending on how well you play the mini-game on a very bad day (like sneezing and coughing when playing the mini-game) I get 800 dil. In the Beta Usrea sector block (near DS9 and Bajor).
7. The three Pi Canis missions daily / repeatable missions.
7a. Pi Canis - Path of the Warrior. This is a daily mission with a 20 hour cool down. It requires that you successful complete the optional objectives for Pi Canis Sortie Alpha and Pi Canis Sorte Bravo. Reward is 2,400 dil
7b. Pi Canis Sortie Alpha - Attack Fed ships in 3 different planets. Optional object is to jam communications. Do so as soon as you de-cloak. Very easy mission. I can finish this in about 30 minutes. Reward is 960 dil. Cool down time of 30 minutes.
7c. Pi Canis Sortie Bravo - 3 parts to this mission and they all different with different optional objectives. This one is a bit more trickier though to complete the optional objectives. I can do this mission in 30 - 40 minutes. #1 - Intercept freighter sector space. #2 - Attack a Federation ship repair station. #3 - Raid a transport station. reward is 960 dil .Cool down time of 30 minutes.
Naturally, this has a learning curve and it took me a while to get it perfect. Right now for 60 - 80 minutes of play time I can get 4,320 dil. The Sortie missions are repeatable.
I have a few more suggestions, but I gotta go....
Joined January 2009
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Captain Bi Shonen's official Thread! http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=22866531#post22866531
A carrier is the opposite. You have pets, time, and space to do things. Battlefield control is the priority... drains, holds, etc.
IKS Korrasami (Fleet B'rel Bird of Prey Retrofit T5-U)
How very Romulan of you
lol
Lol, why re-invent the wheel?
Right now I am using a scorpion fighter with a dhc and a plasma torpedo, I take TS with it, it seems to be working okay, but I haven't tried it on hard mode yet. Do the Doff abilities work while in your fighter?
The set, of course the Breen set (without the 3rd piece) that gives you transhpashic projectile damage bonus. Plus 4 transphasic compressors (transphasic console boost). AS weapons, i have in the front 1 breen cluster, 1 rapid reload transphasic torpedo, 2 transphasic torpedos. In the back, 1 transphasic mine launcher, 1 transphasic cluster, 1 rapid reload transphasic torpedo, 1 transphasic torpedo.
I must say, it really hurts. Plus the GW i tend to keep all my enemies in 1 spot and with my transphasic cluster i hurt em badly
For other type of torpedoes, depends, since not all type of torpedos have the same boosts and possibilities.
It also depends on the carrier you are flying.
If you are flying any one hangar ships, treat the hangar as something extra and nothing more -- so a flight deck cruiser is the same build as normal cruiser. Exception to this would be Vesta (since it basically can be anything) and Scimitar (due to favoring forward arc firing)
If you are flying science based carrier (3-3 weapon, 2 hangar), you are focus on battlefield support. Use you science ability to do crowd control and damage.
If you are flyign engineer based carrier (oblisek, mirror vo'quv), you are more of a fire support beam boat with a secondary duty as a tank. Go all beams, stay at above 6km range, and circle attack. For extra firewpower in PvE, replace 1 or 2 beam with single cannons.
Kar'fi is unique in that it is a science boat that have high tactical leaning, so treat it like a weak hulled battlecruiser with hangar. Still go all beams beams, but if you happen to play PvE only feel free to use one RCS and DBB -- torpedo had been nerfed so I don't use them. I am trying to see if using two RCS + the turn rate dyson console will boost the turn rate, but for now use only DBB at most.
DOFF abilities will work, but the trick with a Torpedo ship is multiple torpedos. Each Torpedo DOFF will check the ability, and a positive proc on the Torpedo DOFF ability cools down EVERY torpedo that you have. So if you miss on one torpedo, you have others to try the DOFF ability... and that might cool everything down.
With a 2-weapon fighter, you have at most 2 Torpedos... which doesn't give you much in the way of Torpedo DOFF procs.
I shove 2 DHCs, or a DHC & another cannon-capable weapon (Turret or single Cannon if you feel like you need the firing arc, or even the new Experimental Proton weapon if you want to get fancy & also use a BO1 or BFAW1 in the BOFF slot)... that way, I'm maximizing what I have. Maybe the Torpedo will blow things up quicker if I get the shields down, but then how do I get the shields down with just 1 DHC? However, if it works for you, then keep at it
Plasmas are probably best since they reload relatively quick & do hull damage right away, if you're going to go torpedo.
IKS Korrasami (Fleet B'rel Bird of Prey Retrofit T5-U)
2) you mean ground missions? I use 3 engineers with mines to do the heavy lifting and mop up anything that survived. But I dislike ground and just play to "get it done".
3) pay for it? There is no free lunch, but what I did was buy a lot of char slots and run a lot of alts, kdf aligned romulans. Level these up somewhat and do missions to earn contraband to convert to dil. Its about 3 or 4 to 1, so for every guy that turns in contraband, 3 or 4 characters need to farm it. I have 2 that turn in all day long and a bunch that farm for it quasi casually. It nets me a solid 12k per day on top of whatever else I earn actually playing the game. Shared storage space is nice, so you can pass the contra back quickly.
4) My carrier has goodly amount of extra turn rate. 6 weapon ship, I have 3 dual beam banks up front, cutting beam (omega rep) and omni beam (quest reward) in the aft, with a turret in the aft for lack of anything better. All 6 weapons bear on a frontal 90 degree arc and with my fighters adding to damage, I rip things to shreds. Its no scimitar, but for a 6 weapon ship, it does more than I ever thought it would. I am not saying this is the best, just sharing what I did. It really depends on which carrier you have. The JH is different from the karfi is different from the recluse is different from the cat... what you wanting to drive?
5) All my spacebar does is rebalance the shields. I click my other skills on demand, some mapped to keys, some lesser used for mouse clicks. The automatic skill cycle thingy works but it does 2 things: it makes the game stupidly boring for me (ooo, I can mash one button, I has leet skillz) and it performs average all the time. Clicking the right skill at the right time performs better all the time, IF you can manage it. I can't make heads or tails of your actual question, but you should be using ALL of your officer skills on a REGULAR basis. Any skill not being used often is wasted and your build is sub-optimal in that case (esp for PVE. PVP, a couple of must have defensive skills may be seldom used vs some opponents and even in entire matches).
#8 - "We Need Breathing Room" daily mission it pays 1,440 dilithium for exploring unknown worlds in unexplored sectors. The same person who give you the mission will also give you a selection of unexplored sectors to choose from. Just choose one and go. These can be quick missions like scanning anomalies in space / on the surface of a planet / or in an asteroid base. Or it could be combat missions which you need to defeat 6 - 8 waves of enemies which takes more time. Time to complete probably ranges between 20 minutes (3 "space scans") to as much as maybe 45 - 60 minutes (3 combat missions). Repeatable every 20 hours.
#9 - Nimbus III has 3 dailies that are you can do for a bit dilithium. All are from a single NPC in the bar.
#9a - "Creatures of the Desert" (or something like that) where you basically activate a device in the desert to spawn monsters to kill. I think this lasts 90 seconds - 120 seconds. The award you get is based on the number of creatures you kill. I always get in the "30 - 39 range" so the reward is 580 dilithium. 40+ gives you 640.
#9b - "Contraband Search" - Find random location where the Orion Syndicate has hidden contraband (no you do not get the contraband). I think you have 90 seconds (or less) to find the 5 locations in the Paradise Lost settlement. Payout is 480 dil I think. This one will probably take you a few tries to before you get familiar with the possible random locations. If you fail this mission you can immediately try again by speaking to the NPC
#9c - Last one is go out into the desert and find a band of Orion Syndicates. Kill 'em and get 480 dil I think. This is the longest of the 3 dailies, but should take less than 10 minutes.
I believe in a span of about 15 minutes I can earn a total of 1,540 dil from Nimbus III.
#10 - Lastly, there are the Elite STFs you can do. The quickest one to earn 960 dil is the Borg "Infected: The Conduit" Elite. The actual time varies depending on the skills / ships of other players. Generally, it should take between 15 - 25 minutes.
Without talking about the STFS or battlezones, like Dyson that can give you great ammount of dil in sort time, you can ->
In ETA ERIDANI, you can gather about 3500-4000 dilitium in about 30 minutes. Sham'ar - Alhenna Station - Traelus System, and then the foundry have a few fast missions located in drozana station that plus the officer reports new mission can give you about 2500 dilitium easily in about 5-10 minutes.
TAU DEWA - Nimbus - 3 missions that gives you about 1700 dilithium in 10 minutes.
DEFERA - Emancipation - Aiding the Deferi - Deferi Patrols (or something like that). They are 5 sort missions that in total gives you 2400 dilitium for about 25 minutes.
Starfleet / Klingon Academy - The path to 2409 (erm.. we are already in 2014 lol). 480 dilithium for about 35 seconds (the time it takes to go to the mission guy to the mission spot).
If you can, make one or two red alerts in the way, in every sector. It will give you 480 dilithium for the first daily red alert you complete in every sector.
And of course, if you are a klingon , ,contraband, contraband, contraband, return prisoners, return prisoners, deport prisoners, deport prisoners, etc. If you are a klingon, or romulan allined klingon, do a lot of maraudin doff assignments and keep gathering colonists and prisoners. There are a lot of assignments where you can sell em and in criticals you can gain 2500 dilithium easily.
There are more ways, but in the end, the trick is not to do every time the same, just different things. Or you will be tired lol.
1. Select the "Investigate Officer's Report" repeatable daily missions (30 minute cool down when you accept the mission). Select the Vulture Wheel Foundry mission. Estimated play time 8 minutes. Dilithium payout 960 + 1,440 = 2,400
2. Go to Nimbus III and do the 3 daily missions given by an NPC in the bar. Total time should by 15 minutes, maybe 20 minutes at worst. I typically get a total of 1,540 dil because I never killed more than 39 creatures within the time limit.
3. Go do the Asteroid Mining daily mission which probably takes 9 or 10 minutes to complete. Dilthium reward ranges between 400 - 1,000 depending on how well you do in the mini-game. I can typically get 920 dil.
4. By now the "Investigate Officer's Report" daily repeatable should be available again. The 30 minute cool down starts when you accept the mission. Select Vulture Wheel again. After about 8 minutes you will get 960 dilithium. Remember there is a 20 hour cool down timer for the Spotlight Foundry award.
Total play time excluding traveling time is about 41 minutes. With traveling time it should be less than 60 minutes. Total dilithium payout (at least for me) is 5,820.
If you have 5 contraband, then go to the Klingon station in the same sector where Vulture Wheel takes place. I forgot the name of the system it is located but is located to the right near the bottom, next to the border of the sector where Qo'nos is. Do the Doff mission to turn in the contraband. The reward is 2,000 dilithium, but you need to wait 4 hours.
log into each character. Empty completed DO jobs. Accept new jobs (beat up fed freighters for contraband). Stuff reward contraband into my shared storage. Move to next char.
At the end, log into the 2 chars and collect current reward, refine, start next. If out, collect 15-20 from shared storage.
Result: both chars get 6k per day, one before work, one when I get home, and one before bed. 12k total.
Time spent: maybe 1/2 hour over the entire day (it gets faster after doing it a while). It might be possible for some people to squeeze in one more go per day, but I can't on my schedule.
Resources required: a bunch of level 11+ alts, shared storage space, and some EC to buy some officers that can do the missions successfully. *** A leveled char does not need to buy officers: the jemh guys, law, and other free greens and blues are good enough. But a level 11 mule needs to actually buy green and blue officers with the appropriate skills.
The oh-noez Im outta dil routine:
on top of the above, I do one foundry per char to get the bonus per day. This is significant over a sackful of characters!
Yeah, I only listed it as an option.
I sometimes take a chance with it to mix things up. I did it yesterday (1st time in about 2 weeks). Finished it in like 20 minutes. I got 2 space anomaly scanning missions and one space combat mission. So... not too bad.
The KDF version is not bad. Beat stuff up 6 times once in a while, get nearly 3k. (You can double up if you did not do it recently). A well built ship can chew thru that in just a few min, but its not a good choice for undergeared players. Its not a bad way to farm xp and dil while leveling up if the missions bore you, though.
Yeah, i must say i rather prefer to waste 20 minutes killing some guys to be rewarded by 1440 dilithium than trying to explore 3 dumb systems, that if i am not lucky (meaning, i cant find scanning missions or fighting in space ones) i will get ground missions all the time and i will waste too much time (not to mention almost all the "investigate facility" exploration missions have all the paths bugged and you need to keep repositioning your boffs all the time). And its not worthy, not most of the times. And since i have tons of methods to gather even more dilithium in less time, why the hell im going to do exploration missions.. lol.
But well, even if i waste a little more time in the kdf version killing some guys, i prefer that by far. But i dont do that anyways, since being a klingon means you dont need to worry about dilithium. And the less time you waste, the better.
My experience so far has been the vault and the one romulan mission against the walkers. In the vault a TS from the plasma torpedoes killed every fighter group that spawned instantly, I just flew on by. In the other mission the TS's would, when I got them lined up right anyway, clear the skies of elachi fighters. That was on normal difficulty though and I am looking to start doing harder difficulties. I am not so sure using torpedoes will be nearly as good on higher difficulties.
I haven't gotten nearly enough marks to get the any of the rep weapons yet, but I am wanting to try out 3 torp Doffs with the omega plasma launcher and the romulan rep one. Use TS to clear out opposing fighters with the romulan launcher, and use the fast fire rate of the omega one to proc the Doffs. Not having ever used either though I couldn't tell you if it will be worthwhile at all though.
The carriers I currently have access to are: Kar'fi, and all the orien flight deck crusiers. I am saving up to get the romulan dreadnaughts and science carriers, but it's gonna be a while. I do basically use the Kar'fi as a beam boat with gravity wells, and the Flight deck crusiers as you said, I was just wondering if I was missing something that other people did with their carriers.
How would you set up a Scimitar? Beams or cannons?