Ship Mastery? Intell officers, and other dumb questions.

feadulin

Sorry for looking like a complete dweeb but I have been googling for the last 3 hours and am still really lost when it comes to what I should be doing now that I have reached level 50.

Silly question time:

I purchased the delta rising pack and see that I can slot the new ships.

Should I just continue to level in my free science ship until I reach level 60 or should I start using the new t6 ships ...( meaning can I start doing the whole ship mastery now or is it locked until level 60?)

Does anyone know of a guide that helps to explain how to use intel officers and how ship mastery works? I have searched and have not had any luck.

captcokecan

feadulin wrote: »

Sorry for looking like a complete dweeb but I have been googling for the last 3 hours and am still really lost when it comes to what I should be doing now that I have reached level 50.

Silly question time:

I purchased the delta rising pack and see that I can slot the new ships.

Should I just continue to level in my free science ship until I reach level 60 or should I start using the new t6 ships ...( meaning can I start doing the whole ship mastery now or is it locked until level 60?)

Does anyone know of a guide that helps to explain how to use intel officers and how ship mastery works? I have searched and have not had any luck.

I'd start levelling in the T6 ships. T6 is going to be the gold standard going forward, especially when Fleet T6 arrives.

I have no Intel officer guide right now, seeing as I am likely going to start experimenting with them tomorrow myself, but I will describe how mastery works.

Basically, when you step aboard the bridge of a ship that can be Mastered (T5U or T6), you unlock the ability to gain Mastery "Experience" with it. Think of this as an abstract way to represent you and your crew getting to know the ins and outs of the ship. As each of the first 4 tiers are unlocked, you gain passive bonuses.

Once the 5th tier is unlocked (Only on full blown T6 ships!) you gain a Starship Trait that can be slotted on your captain, and the best part, it transfers over to other ships you decide to use.

So, in my case, I will likely be stepping out of my Phantom for a little bit to command the Eclipse for long enough to gain that T6 trait, then maybe back to my Phantom.

See how it works? I get 2 traits that way.

Hope this helps.

perfectships

I'd say that the game won't bite you, so just have a bit of an experiment for yourself. Grab one of your T6 ships that you like the look of (in terms of Boff layout etc). You'll have some high quality Intel Boffs with your DR pack, with random abilities. Since you don't really know which abilities are good or bad yet, avoid using those to start with - you don't want to retrain and lose a rare level 3 ability (that'll be a swine to replace) as you experiment.

You'll see that the Intel ships have hybrid Boff seats, eg the Cmndr Intel/Sci seat in the Scryer. You can use it as just a regular Sci seat, and slot only Sci abilities with a pure Sci Boff. Or a Sci/Intel hybrid officer can have any combination of Sci or Intel abilities to fill those slots as you want.

Buy some cheap Intel officers (ideally human, for their Space Trait) from the ESD requisitions officer. Don't pay too much attention to the abilities they have as you browse the selection (which is random), since you'll get a different officer than the one described anyway - unless they've fixed that bug. Though you should get the correct species and hybrid profession (Intel/Eng, Intel/Sci, Intel/Tac) that you payed for.

You can read what the new Intel abilities do as you browse the Intel officers. Make a note of the abilities that jump out at you as 'Ooo... niiiice!':cool: Retrain those abilities up on your new Intel officers you just bought, which is nice and cheap.

Take your ship out to places where you can solo fight/test, where you can merrily be on your own with no one watching; stuff like Carraya or Argala. If you're not happy with what you've got, then warp back to ESD and repeat until you end up with something that fits your style nicely. In the meantime, that testing time isn't wasted since killing stuff with your ship will add Mastery points to that ship - which'll get you gradually nearer to unlocking its precious Trait at the end (all of this happens automatically), which you can then use on your captain as s/he captains any ship, as mentioned above.

Happy flying and best of luck.

noroblad

use your t6 ships. All of them that you can per character to unlock the trait if nothing else.

Mastery is super simple. Play in the ship and kill stuffs. After a while your ship gains a level and has a bonus. There are 5 total bonuses that can include nifty stuff like more damage or more defense, for the most part. Carriers get faster pet deployment.

Intel officers are also super simple.

step 1) get an intel officer. There is one in the quest chain, one in the lobi store, and some low quality ones at your home base officer vendor guy.

step 2) choose between normal skills or intel skills. For example if you have the free science officer, you can choose to train "gravity well" (old science skill) or "surgical strikes" (new intel skill).

They otherwise act just like any other officer -- the skills you picked are available in the tray like before. With one exception: if you slot an intel skill on an intel officer but put him in a NON INTEL slot (universal, or in our sci/intel example, a pure science seat) the intel sklls are NOT AVAILABLE.

You can train intel skills at the standard officer trainer.

gavinruneblade

For Intel officers, you have three for each of your captains from the pack you bought. Most Intel powers are only good for PvP here's the really good ones for pve:

Space, best ones:
Override safety systems -amazing buff to all power levels on your ship. Great power.
Surgical strikes - far better than beam overload and it can go in any slot not just tactical. A must for any beam ship

Optionals:
Intelligence team - only needed for fighting hierarchy in delta quadrant, but quite good in those cases
Kinetic magnet - helpful against enemies that use mines, only situationally useful otherwise. Hilarious vs hirogen and in the gorn minefield mission.
Transport warhead - looks good on paper, but long cool down and mediocre benifit makes this less useful than torp spread overall. Biggest virtue is you can put it in non-tactical slots depending on the ship.
Electromagnetic pulse probe - looks good on paper, in play I've used it a lot and never seen any enemies actually get disabled by it.

All the rest I recommend avoiding unless just to test them out.

Ground best:
Incite chaos - amazing confuse power, works wonders on battle zone maps. The more enemies the better it works.
Tripwire drone - minor damage, but big aoe knockdown. Strongly recommended power.
Site to site ensnare - rocks on melee characters, hohum otherwise. Hold breaks too easy.
Photonic decoy - follows you around pulling aggro, handy for squishy ground characters, but only a so-so power

Avoid the rest in favor of more powerful options from their core profession.

All the above is from my experience playing with the powers for a while. Your mileage may vary. Lots of the Intel powers are fun even if they don't help you kill enemies, which I think fits the bill nicely. My advice above was for combat effectiveness not for theme or fun.

And do remember you can mix powers from in tel and core professions both. Like give a tactical Intel boff stealth, lunge, incite chaos and tripwire drone.