Advice for the Presidio? (noob needs help)

katyusha454

My boyfriend and I have been playing the game for a little while and we decided once we hit level 50 on our Fed characters we were each going to buy ourselves a fancy endgame-ish ship. He went with the Atrox because he loves carriers, and I went with the Presidio because I like the battlecruiser concept of emphasizing damage while still being much tougher than an escort, and the extra maneuverability compared to something like the Guardian is nice too. (I considered the Avenger as well but I figured a tier 6 ship would be a better choice than a tier 5.) The problem is I'm kind of a noob and I don't really know how best to go about setting the ship up for best performance. I also don't own any other premium ships except for a couple of tier 2s that I picked up as freebies during the 5 year event, so I can't take advantage of any other special consoles.

So what I'm getting at is I just spent what is for me a very large sum of money on this ship without having much of an idea how to fly the thing properly. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. My general idea is to set the ship up with a damage focus as a counterpoint to his rather tankish carrier since we mostly play together, so advice along those lines is especially welcome.

reginamala78

Beam arrays are your friend (as I'm sure you've already learned) for their wide fire arc. 6-7 arrays plus the power Beam Fire At Will makes you basically a disco-ball of death for anything within 10km of you, good for clearing multiple smaller targets or increasing your rate-of-fire against lone big ones. Back it up with Attack Pattern Beta or Attack Pattern Omega and you can make it that much meaner.

Maxing out your weapons energy is the key to making those beams hurt, as otherwise the drain from all those weapons means you'll just be tickling your enemies. Emergency Power To Weapons is an important ability to have both for the increase it gives to weapons energy and the flat damage bonus it gives.

Since you're fairly new, you'll want to use what is commonly known as a Dragon Build configuration. In that setup, you carry two copies of Emergency Power To Weapons (EPTW) and two copies of Emergency Power To Shields (EPTS) and alternate activations every 15 seconds, which with cooldowns give you the benefits of both abilities always active. EPTW as I stated boosts your weapons, and EPTS gives you both a regular shield heal and reduces all incoming damage, making your shields effectively thicker. As you get more advanced in the game and start using Duty Officers (Doffs) there are ways to cut down to only needing one copy of each power, but when you're starting out the Dragon is easy, cheap, and reliable.

The next most common drain-control backup is two pieces of equipment, the Kinetic Cutting Beam and the Assimilated Module, both from the Omega (Borg) Reputation. You only need to get your rep up to level 2 to access them both, and when combined they give you a proc that reduces the drain on all your weapons for a few seconds, making it a fairly cheap and readily-accessable way to reduce your drain further, and thus hit harder.

For other powers carry Tactical Team (TT), Science Team (ST), and Hazard Emitters (HE). TT rapidly rebalances your shields when under heavy fire, and removes some tactical debuffs. ST and HE provide both good heals and remove the various science debuffs and DOTs that are becoming steadily more common with all the newer enemies. There are lots of other good powers as well depending on your situation, but these three are the never-leave-ESD-without kind.

seaofsorrows

reginamala78 wrote: »

Beam arrays are your friend (as I'm sure you've already learned) for their wide fire arc. 6-7 arrays plus the power Beam Fire At Will makes you basically a disco-ball of death for anything within 10km of you, good for clearing multiple smaller targets or increasing your rate-of-fire against lone big ones. Back it up with Attack Pattern Beta or Attack Pattern Omega and you can make it that much meaner.

Maxing out your weapons energy is the key to making those beams hurt, as otherwise the drain from all those weapons means you'll just be tickling your enemies. Emergency Power To Weapons is an important ability to have both for the increase it gives to weapons energy and the flat damage bonus it gives.

Since you're fairly new, you'll want to use what is commonly known as a Dragon Build configuration. In that setup, you carry two copies of Emergency Power To Weapons (EPTW) and two copies of Emergency Power To Shields (EPTS) and alternate activations every 15 seconds, which with cooldowns give you the benefits of both abilities always active. EPTW as I stated boosts your weapons, and EPTS gives you both a regular shield heal and reduces all incoming damage, making your shields effectively thicker. As you get more advanced in the game and start using Duty Officers (Doffs) there are ways to cut down to only needing one copy of each power, but when you're starting out the Dragon is easy, cheap, and reliable.

The next most common drain-control backup is two pieces of equipment, the Kinetic Cutting Beam and the Assimilated Module, both from the Omega (Borg) Reputation. You only need to get your rep up to level 2 to access them both, and when combined they give you a proc that reduces the drain on all your weapons for a few seconds, making it a fairly cheap and readily-accessable way to reduce your drain further, and thus hit harder.

For other powers carry Tactical Team (TT), Science Team (ST), and Hazard Emitters (HE). TT rapidly rebalances your shields when under heavy fire, and removes some tactical debuffs. ST and HE provide both good heals and remove the various science debuffs and DOTs that are becoming steadily more common with all the newer enemies. There are lots of other good powers as well depending on your situation, but these three are the never-leave-ESD-without kind.

Excellent advice, very well written.

I made a rough sample build for you that you can see by clicking here.

It's just a rough template to get you started. I used Phasers in the sample, substitute for whatever you wish to use. My build sample also does not use a Torpedo, if you like to use them, then feel free to replace one of the beams with your Torpedo Launcher. You can swap out one of the Beam Fire At Will skills with your Torpedo Skill if you wish.

The second Epic Console (The Regenerative Integrity Field) is the one from the 5th Anniversary Give away ship (The Kobali Samsar.) If you don't have that, then feel free to swap that out with the console of your choice.

The Solanae Set used in the build (Impuse, Deflector, Shield) can be picked up for free by replaying the mission A Step Between Stars.

The Obelisk Subspace Warp Core is free from playing Sphere of Influence.

These aren't the 'best' items, but they're free and will get you started. You can pick up Tactical Consoles and the Shield Consoles for Science from the exchange for fairly cheap. If they're too much at Purple, you can pick up Blues or Greens to get you started. Same with the Beam Arrays. I recommend trying to get beams with increased Critical Severity (CritD) as the Mod.

Again, it's just a rough start. If you want a more advanced example, let us know and we can do that too.

bobosmrade1

Every beggining is hard. You can use the build provided by sea of sorrows above since its cheap, easy to fly and reliable enough. There are more free set alternatives, like the Kobali set you get from replaying the Anniversary mission (the set is really good at keeping you alive), and Breen set (I dont know what it is good for, I never used it ). After you get in a T5 fleet and get enough fleet credits, you can start to replace the Neutroniums and Tactical consoles with their fleet versions (Enhanced Neutroniums are at the fleet dil mine, and fleet tac consoles are at the fleet spire). If you can get blue or purple Tehnician doffs, you can also try an Auxiliary to Battery build, which drains Aux power and gives bonuses to other power levels, while the Tehnician doffs on the use of the skill decrease coouldowns of boff powers. You can get max 30% cooldown, but its rather expensive if you dont have the Tehnician doffs. I belive you can get a few from completing the doff commendations and claiming them at Lt. Ferra doff store.

katyusha454

Thanks a bunch for the help guys. Looks like I definitely need to get some better weapons to start with. Right now what I have is kind of TRIBBLE compared to the stuff that's been posted :P

seaofsorrows

katyusha454 wrote: »

Thanks a bunch for the help guys. Looks like I definitely need to get some better weapons to start with. Right now what I have is kind of TRIBBLE compared to the stuff that's been posted :P

If you have any questions on how/where to acquire any of the items, just let us know.

variant37

katyusha454 wrote: »

He went with the Atrox because he loves carriers, and I went with the Presidio

No real comment on your build, as there is lots of good advice in here already, but I did want to say that the ship you chose is superior to the one your boyfriend picked by a significant margin.

cmdrscarlet

If you want to annoy other players, go Antiproton :P

ry0ku83

katyusha454 wrote: »

My boyfriend and I have been playing the game for a little while and we decided once we hit level 50 on our Fed characters we were each going to buy ourselves a fancy endgame-ish ship. He went with the Atrox because he loves carriers, and I went with the Presidio because I like the battlecruiser concept of emphasizing damage while still being much tougher than an escort, and the extra maneuverability compared to something like the Guardian is nice too. (I considered the Avenger as well but I figured a tier 6 ship would be a better choice than a tier 5.) The problem is I'm kind of a noob and I don't really know how best to go about setting the ship up for best performance. I also don't own any other premium ships except for a couple of tier 2s that I picked up as freebies during the 5 year event, so I can't take advantage of any other special consoles.

So what I'm getting at is I just spent what is for me a very large sum of money on this ship without having much of an idea how to fly the thing properly. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. My general idea is to set the ship up with a damage focus as a counterpoint to his rather tankish carrier since we mostly play together, so advice along those lines is especially welcome.

So here's a good starter Auxiliary to Emergency Battery (a2b) build, All the items are rewards from the Episode missions which can be repeated (though are on 30 min a cooldown timer once completed).

http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=prest6cbcstarter_9571

If you aren't on the Dyson Sphere quests yet, you can make do with the Jemhadar set from the Cardassian Struggle missions. The Beam Array's are from the Last Mission on the Borg Advance Episode Mission "Fluid Dynamic's" (this mission can be tough on a new player but just keep at it the beam's are well worth the potential deaths and fustration), The Warp Core and Anicent Omni-Beam Array are from the First Mission of the Solanae Dyson Sphere Episode "Sphere of Influence" These 2 items form a set that give 10% bonus Anti Proton Dmg when used together.

The Neutronium Alloy Engineering Consoles and Science Field Generators can be found from the 3rd Delta Quadrant Episode Mission "Reunion"

Subspace Modulator Device can be found from the "Skirmish" Klingon War Episode Mission.

The other 2 engineering console's you'll have to get from the exchange, also from the exchange you'll need to get 3 green uncommon Technician Duty Officer's with the space ability "Recharge Time on Bridge Officer Abilities Reduced" (Later on you'll want to get high quality ones for even greater effect) Then you'll want to go into your Duty Officer Roster and set those 3 DoFFs to active duty under Active Space Tab. When you use Aux2battery (a2b) Engineering skill on your ship with these 3 officers active it will reduce the cool down on your Bridge officers abilities allowing you much greater up time on your skills.

Lemme know if you need any help or explanation on the above.

disposeableh3r0

cmdrscarlet wrote: »

If you want to annoy other players, go Antiproton :P

No no no, use retro phasers.