New Char after a LOONG time

masternecroman

After almost 2 years of playing I decided to make a new toon. Fun fact I have never played as Federation. (BETTER DEAD THAN A FED!!!:D)

I played as a KDF a few times and my current main is Romulan KDF aligned.

So I am wondering if people can help me decide, should I make a Fed or Reman Fed aligned character, what would make the best new game experience in your opinion?

Also, since I am planning to fly a Fed ship whichever I choose, should I pick Engineer or Science for a Fed, Fed aligned toon?

shpoks

Well, if you're looking to use a Starfleet ship then you can't really make a Fed alligned Reman/Romulan, since you won't have access to the Federation ships at end game. If you want to use a Fed ship, you should probably go with a pure Fed character unless you want to fly a T4 Fed ship in the new T6 environment, which I'm sure you don't.

As for the career track....well that depends. I will admit that I'm biased in a way that most of my Fed chars are science and most of my KDF chars are tactical, but I do have Fed tacs and KDF scis as well.
It boils down to you personal preference of a playstyle. The Federation ship lineup is pretty diverse and you'll have a good ship selection to choose from for any flavor of any role. You could go with either of the career tracks and not make a mistake. I'll just say what I personally do with my Fed chars - I don't really fly escorts Fedside (except Tempest), so I use Tac.Officers in cruisers since they synergize well and I use Sci.Officers in pure science ships since I personally feel that scis paired with sci ships work really well together. I can't really comment on engineers since I only have one and he's KDF side Klingon that I use carriers with.

mustrumridcully0

As a Romulan character you cannot fly endgame ships from the KDF or Federation, only Romulan ships. (And before endgame, you can only fly Romulan ships or ships of the faction you're aligned with.)

I personally recommend Tactical or Science Captains. I think they have the most useful abilities (Tac is all damage, science provides some additional utility and is particularly powerful in PvP, if you ever care to do that). Engineering is lackluster IMO - too defensively focused.

jagdhippies

Fed tac
Fed bacause only pure Feds can fly end game Fed ships
Tac because the whole game is a damage race anyway, might as well have APA

I did really well in my engineer when I still played him, but I almost never needed miracle worker and the energy management commands that are eng only never seemed necessary.

A tac's APA is always useful and the occasional captain ability cooldown reduction command (whatever it is called) is nice as well

farmallm

It all depends, they both are very nice. I got a character per faction so I can see their view point and play style.

If you do Romulan/Reman you will only use Romulan ships.

I played both Tac and Eng so far. I had fun with both so far. Eng can be good for shields and defense, or using mines/bombs. However Tac is good for fast action and quick kills. It depends on which one you want to do. They both have pros and cons. I have a low lv Science, what little I played that character. It seems fun so far. But that character isn't a top priority for me at this time to level and use.

jaguarskx

If you want to experience a different main story beginning, then go with Federation because if you choose Reman / Romulan you will be repeating the same story as your other Romulan toon. Each faction has many missions at the start of the game that are unique to the faction so if you want to experience something a little different or get a different perspective, then creating a pure Fed toon is the way to go.

If you want to fly a Federation ship at all times, then you need to make a Fed toon. If you create a Fed aligned Romulan toon, then you can only select a Fed ship up to T4 using dilithium or C-Store ship. T5 ships and above will be restricted to only Romulan ships even if you were to purchase a T5 or T6 starship. Actually, you will not even be able to purchase those ships from the C-Store since those ships will be grayed out.

I have played all three captain careers among my 5 toons; two engineers, two scientist and 1 tactical; spread across the three factions. All careers are pretty fun to play. Obviously the tactical track is the way to go if you are purely interested in DPS. However, the science track is pretty fun as well and they can do pretty good DPS on their own when using the right abilities. Engineers are good for tanks as everyone knows, the DPS is not nearly as high as tactical toons, but they can take a beating. Yeah, STO is just a game and if your ship blows up then it will respawn, however, one of the main sticking points of military combat is not to die if you can avoid it while still completing the mission objective. Therefore, I do not use the tactic that most tactical toons seem to follow which is get in close and sit there to do lots of damage, then respawn when you die and repeat the process.

Basically any career captain can be used to fly any ship. Naturally, a ship with a Boff station arrangement that's geared towards tactical is more beneficial for tactical toons though. My Fed Science toon normally flies the mirror science vessel retrofit, but recently I switched over to the mirror escort retrofit just for fun because it has a Lt Cmdr Science station. I could have selected the mirror heavy cruiser retrofit because it also has a Lt Cmdr Science station, but my Engineer is currently flying that ship. The 0.9 shield modifier makes the ship feel a bit squishier since the mirror science vessel retrofit has a 1.3 shield modifier.

masternecroman

Thank you all! So Fed it is!

One question, does the Ferengi passive pay out?

I mean 20% discount when buying and 20% higher prices when selling sounds great in late game, for instance if I earn 100000 with a normal toon I will get 125000 with a Ferengi.

Did I get that right?