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New to Science character. I want to be better than I am.
yourswordismine
Member Posts: 9 Arc User
in The Academy
Hello all, I am looking for help in maximizing my Romulan (Fed) Science character. I'm returning to the game after a long break and I mostly play Engineer or Tactical, but I really want to give Science an honest go. Right now she is Level 50, and she is flying the Dyson Science Destroyer (T5-U). I also have the full Solenae set, the built in protonic cannons, 6 plasma beam arrays, +plas tac consoles, and Plasmonic Leech. This character has no Rep at all yet. I have no money for Zen, other than my monthly stipend. I have no EC, and very little Fleet Creds, and almost no Dil at the moment.
Things I need to know:
How do I do skills? What should I concentrait on?
What Specializations should I go for?
How should I maximize the ship that I have?
What T6 ship (Romulan) should I work toward?
How should I set up my stations? What Boff skills?
Is there anything else I need to know?
Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Things I need to know:
How do I do skills? What should I concentrait on?
What Specializations should I go for?
How should I maximize the ship that I have?
What T6 ship (Romulan) should I work toward?
How should I set up my stations? What Boff skills?
Is there anything else I need to know?
Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.
An articulate soul, trapped in an inarticulate shell
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The R&D system gives the player a related trait for each branch that reaches level 15. The Science one in particular, Particle Manipulator, should be of interest to you as it increases the critical chance and critical damage of your Exotic Damage attacks based on your Particle Generators skill and any additional value from equipment and abilities. The crit chance from this trait alone is capped at 50% but the critical damage portion has no cap.
Given the above, you'd definitely want to max the Particle Generators skill and since most offensive science abilities rely on Aux power, you may want to spend a few points in Auxiliary Performance. A build like this could conceivably run a specialized Torpedo build, ignoring Weapon power and energy weapon-related skills. This would reduce the effectiveness of your built-in cannon, but you probably wouldn't want to leave Science mode for the most part anyway. You could still run an energy weapon build if you prefer to do so, but it'll stretch your power allocation a bit more.
Regardless of which weapon type you prefer, you'll probably want to go after the Gravimetric Torpedo from the Dyson reputation. Critical hits with this torpedo have a chance of creating a mini Gravity Well, and when paired with Torpedo Spread and your own Gravity Well attacks, you can decimate groups of enemy ships with multiple black holes in a concentrated area. The main damage from that torpedo comes from the rifts it generates, which rely on Particle Generators skill rather than torpedo skills.
The new Fleet Research lab has some good science consoles to consider, particularly the Exotic Particle Focuser consoles. They grant the same bonus as standard science consoles but also have a chance on use of an Exotic Damage ability to increase your total damage output. Plasma Generating consoles from the Embassy could also be used if you prefer the energy weapon setup. Either way, you'll want to fill your science console slot with variants of these that increase your Particle Generators skill, with one possible exception. The Exotic Particle Field Exciter from the Science R&D branch could be useful in an energy weapons build, but wouldn't be worth it on a torpedo build.
Obviously, for this build you'll want a high ranking version of Gravity Well. Tractor Beam and Tractor Beam Repulsors can be useful for keeping targets in the area of effect of your other attacks. Eject Warp Plasma and Aceton Beam from Engineering are considered Exotic Damage abilities I believe, though Aceton Beam's damage output won't be very good even with the buffs. You'll also probably want a high rank of Emergency Power to Auxiliary as it boosts your Aux Power and several science skills, especially the Particle Generators skill. If you get the Gravimetric Torpedo, you'll definitely want a copy or two of Torpedo Spread. Tactical Team 1 is pretty much a given on most ships due to the autodistribution effect it has on shields, you don't really need to go higher than that.
Admittedly, I've never built this particular type of ship. I've done something similar as a specialized "Torpedo Bomber" in the T5 T'Varo Retrofit, but that ship is a bit different due to relying on its Enhanced Battle Cloak to fire torpedoes and science abilities without fully breaking cloak, which means I completely forgo all energy weapon and shield skills. I didn't play it much though, as I tend to prefer playing only one main character and that's the Fed I've had since day 1. The T6 Faeht could replicate that style of gameplay, but Romulans are still more or less lacking in true science vessels at T6, so the Dyson Destroyer may be your go-to ship for the time being.
I'd say Pilot as Primary and Command as Secondary would best fit a science-heavy built, but I'm not absolutely certain in that regard. Pilot will give you the extra maneuverability you need to ensure your limited-arc abilities like Gravity Well can be used more reliably and has some nice overall effects both offensively and defensively. Command could be a nice fit for Secondary if you go with an energy weapon build but still use the Gravimetric Torpedo as it would benefit from Expose Weakness. Intel doesn't seem to have anything that would really benefit a PartGen build.
When your Stipend gives you a little more freedom in ship choice, you'll probably want to get the Vastam Command Warbird so you can unlock its ship trait, All Hands On Deck. This trait causes your activations of Tactical or Command abilities to reduce the cooldowns on your Science Bridge Officer and Captain abilities. This can easily reduce longer cooldowns like Gravity Well to global, meaning you only need 1 copy of it instead of 2 and freeing up slots for other choices. If you're a lifetime sub or have the necessary subscription duration and decide to go with the energy weapon build with the Gravimetric Torp, you should also pick up the T6 Dinaes Destroyer. The Dinaes has the ship trait Weapon System Synergy, which causes your energy weapons to build synergy stacks and at 10 stacks your torpedoes become more powerful for a short time.
The universe has a wonderful sense of humor. The trick is learning how to take a joke.
then stack active DoFFs which reduce the cooldowns of science kit abilities when exothermic induction field or hyperionic radiation is used
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
There are many, many ways to make effective science builds. Damage dealing builds reduce this some as a number of sci builds are less dps focused but still fun.
First, lets talk the romulan problem. Roms no got much for science ships, and either get to use a t5u lockbox, a dyson, a haanom variant, or a hybrid. Romulans are THE damage dealing faction thanks to SRO officers and innate SRO on your captain etc. Its very doable to make a romulan do outstanding damage in something like the nandi, recluse, breen carrier, or other what I will call "ltcmdr" sci boats. You lose your cmdr sci seat and gain 2 guns in some of these boats, or you get some other good reward like recluse's cmdr sci & awesome pets or nandi's high tac console count.
For damage builds, the hybrid is obvious... stack tac consoles and beams and combine that with exotic and gw or tbr or something. The sci builds are less obvious... that includes missile boat concepts (which can in turn include shield stripping variants), exotic builds (needs crafting trait to shine, along with oddities like gravity anchor console, lobi console, etc), 2nd deflector with exotic X2, and other hard to get stuff like a good crafted sci console and the pricy pulling tractor repulsor officer if you want that one. Exotic build is kinda pricy to really do top end. Those are really the main 3 dps themed ones (missile/shield strip, exotic, or half sci half tac ships). Exotic builds also make use of weird stuff like eject plasma, plasma cloud crafted torp, metron gas bomb, etc.
Other effective builds include massive pulling gw (graviton themed) / control builds, heavy shield stripping builds, team healer builds, and various hybrids of all these ideas (rather than specialize in one thing, have decent exotic damage & solid shield stripping for example, or high tac damage and crowd control instead of dps/exotic, whatever you like).
There is NO t6 rom ship for rom scientists. I run a faeht because I bought one for my tac guy, but its not even a hybrid its pure tactical. My favorite t6s on my rom sci are the breen carrier as #1. Ive had OK luck with the sci themed cmd cruiser. I love the nandi freebie. Note that 2 of these were giveaway ships. I have a sci heavy dyson that I use for pure sci but its t5. Im really considering that new lobi raider as a missile boat theme.
Cant answer the other questions until you clarify a general role or build you want to work towards.