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[Guide] Captain Skill Points and Specialisation System for New Players
ultimatenewbie
Member Posts: 269 Arc User
Introduction
This New Player's Guide is part of a series on STO - see also:
Ideally, over time I will add additional guides on other topics.
The information in this guide is current as at February 2016, including for Season 11: A New Dawn. However, the Skill Point system will be significantly changed in the coming months and this guide will be redrafted at that time. This Guide will be biased towards Federation players, given they are the large majority of the player base - however they will be broadly applicable to KDF and Romulan characters too. As with all of my guide threads, I express my opinion but I try to be fair and balanced. In addition, please feel free to suggest additions/improvements below and I'll include them in the main thread (and credit you for it).
As this is a guide for new players, I have deliberately limited references to high-end ships, powers and Zen store items; it is unlikely that a newbie can afford a 200 million Energy Credit item from the Exchange to support a particular high-end build, so I have not addressed that here unless for context only.
Guide - Captain Skill Points System (see further below for Specialisations)
General points
As your character levels up - indeed, kills enemy ship and ground units - you gain expertise points (XP). These can be allocated to various skills (default press U and then select the 'Skills' tab). You will be confronted with a lot of choices - and the skills you choose can have a material impact on the effectiveness of your character in both ground and space combat.
If you are aware of the economic concept 'opportunity cost' that'll help you understand the skill point system. There is a shortage of skill points - you will not accrue enough to max out every power. In addition, you are limited to a maximum of 300k in Space and 100k in Ground - so even if you wanted to put 200k in ground for a pimped out ground character, you cant.
Understanding the Detail
Lower-level skills (such as Lieutenant) cost much less than higher level skills (like Admiral) and so you need to be choosy - particularly with the high-end powers.
The first three points of each skill give a higher return than the next three points, which give a higher return than the next three. For instance, the first point you put into the skill 'Starship Attack Patters' gives you 18 skill points; the fourth will give you 10; and the 7th will give you 5 - but all three cost the same. For this reason, it is not uncommon for people to leave the 94-99 box unmarked as the return to skillpoints is relatively low, instead opting to spend it elsewhere.
Useful Skills
What you chose to invest heavily on is really a matter for you. Some skills are good to have for everyone, for example:
In addition, most starship builds (but not all!) rely on energy weapons, so points in Starship Energy Weapons, Starship Targeting Systems and Starship Energy Weapon Specialisation can be very helpful.
Some skills are pretty bad for virtually every build and/or just not supported by the game's meta (eg, Starship Stealth).
Builds Drive Skills
There are a range of builds out there such as for: tactical ships that focus on energy weapons; cruisers that focus on power levers to support beams (ie, 'beam boats'); and various torpedo-heavy Science builds (eg drain, control, exotic damage etc). Generally, I would suggest players pick powers that will be versatile (such as the list above) or used a lot by what you intend to build.
For instance, if you're a Tactical profession character flying an escort, you'll want a lot of points in energy weapons, attack patterns, starship manoeuvres, starship impulse engines, and so on, but not many/any points in high-end Science powers such as Starship Subspace Decompiler as your ship isn't carrying high-end Science powers. However, if you're a tactical captain in a science ship, this might be different.
Be aware of how skill points benefit your ship's power levels (eg, Starship Engine, Shield, Auxilary and Weapon Performance skills) as they are expensive but useful. Separately Starship Warp Core Efficiency only works if you're power levels are below 75 - if you're creating a high power level build then you might elect to not put any skill points here (despite being handy at low levels) to preserve those points for Starship Warp Core Potential which gives a flat bonus.
Science Builds
If you're creating a specialised Science build in particular, be very careful with your skill points - they are both critical to making your science build work and they tend not to be particularly helpful as 'general' powers, so absolutely read up about what you're doing before you go and do it.
For example, many Science builds allocate only minimal power and resources towards energy weapons (ie cannons and beams); instead they carry only/predominately torpedoes and high-end science powers. These powers, such as Gravity Well III, matched with significant points into Starship Particle Generators, Starship Graviton Generators and Starship Flow Capacitors, are to support a different kind of play. Science builds are designed to hold the enemy still in the middle of a black hole, deal more exotic and radiation damage (including from certain torps such as Neutronic Torpedoes) and drain the enemy ship's power levels so their shields collapse as you fling torpedoes at them from your agile ship.
These skills (greatly added to by specialist high-end equipment including deflectors, secondary deflectors etc) are highly geared to a certain type of build that would be totally useless for a classic 'beam boat' cruiser that is trying to keep its power levels up whilst broadsiding the enemy with 8 beam arrays. Still, many players think that 'pure' Science builds are both the best and most fun in the game, so it can be rewarding.
Guide - Specialisation System
Upon reaching Level 51, you will gain access to the Specialisation System. This system is a way of continuing to level up your character without actually surpassing level 60, and each specialisation point acts as a boost to your character's combat performance - most skills are passive, but some (like Rock and Roll) are active powers that you can use like Captain Abilities (eg, Attack Pattern Alpha). There are four Specialisation trees, outlined below:
Of the four trees, my favourite is Intelligence. Activating this tree improves your base defence/dodge in space/ground combat respectively, but more importantly the tree has a range of powers that are highly useful in combat, including increasing your resistances/survivability when your shield facings are low, improving your ship's weapon accuracy and shield penetration. In addition, the tree has essential powers that improve your critical hit chance, your critical damage, and flanking bonuses when firing from the enemy's rear arc - these all materially improve the amount of damage you can deal in battle, and rewards positioning your ship intelligently. Intelligence ground powers provide helpful flanking bonus damage (and resistance from being flanked) amongst other things - though as I am generally space focused I prioritise space specialisation points first.
Usually I'll have Pilot as my second active tree. Pilot improves your ship's maneuverability and tactical positioning (with skills like Rock and Roll being helpful to get out of sticky situations). The Pilot tree improves damage output and resistance when surrounded by enemy forces, the idea is that Pilot rewards you for being up close and personal with large numbers of enemies. Pilot also has some hilarious skills such as shield scraping - damaging the enemy's shields by flying into their ship, or Scratch the Paint - immunity from a warp core breach - which sounds like a silly skill to have but has been surprisingly helpful (particularly when fighting at point blank range as the tree encourages you to do).
I am happy to take advice from players who use it more, but I've found Command Officer to be a bit dull, situational and rarely deriving significant team bonuses for the effort. Whilst its base power - increased hit points - is quite helpful, the first set of skills boosts torpedoes (which most players have max one weapon equipped unless they're running a particular Science build), or improve shared healing and similar powers. A handy power - Superflous Emitters (+2 per cent damage per teammate with >95 per cent hull) is helpful in PVE, but the opportunity cost for having it is pretty high given the damage potential of the two trees listed above. Still, if I was doing a dedicated ground character, this would probably be my secondary tree (after Commando, below).
Commando is a very short tree - 15 powers, compared to the 30 of the other three branches. However, the bonuses to ground combat this tree provides are significant and would be excellent to run on a dedicated ground build. There are strong bonuses to personal shields, armour, damage output, weapon cycling, aiming and melee. All are great on the ground. Interestingly, having finished the tree, rather than a ground power, you are rewarded with a Starship trait is like the boarding party skill - given the speed at which NPCs are destroyed, it is essentially totally useless in PVE and absolutely useless in PVP as virtually all human players use its counter regularly, it is unfortunate that a more relevant power isnt awarded instead (eg, a ground combat pet, or something).
In this thread, @mustrumridcully0 explained in an excellent post some of the helpful command, intel and pilot bridge officer powers. Thanks man!
Have Fun and Dont Panic!
The key thing that I cannot emphaise enough is: as a new player, dont be too concerned about stuffing up your skills or specialisations. Go out and have fun in STO and as you learn how to play you'll develop a better feel for what you enjoy doing. Once you've worked this out, spend some time researching skill trees that are optimised to how you have fun.
If you've really stuffed it, there is always the option of purchasing a 'Captain Retrain Token' (colloquially known as Respec tokens) from the C-Store for 500 Zen - you can trade about 150k dilithium (at current prices) on the Zen/Dilithium exchange and not need to pay actual money. Note: If you're a Gold (Subscription) or Lifetime Subscriber, you'll receive a free respec token each time you rank up (eg, Lieutenant to Lt Commander) - double check to make sure you actually need a respec token before buying one from the C-Store. Note, this will only reset your skills, not your specialisations.
Gl, hf!
This New Player's Guide is part of a series on STO - see also:
- Early Decisions - Ultimate Newbie's guide for new players (the main thread);
- [Guide] Starship Equipment, Weapons and Consoles for New Players; and
- [Guide] Admiralty and Duty Officers for New Players.
Ideally, over time I will add additional guides on other topics.
The information in this guide is current as at February 2016, including for Season 11: A New Dawn. However, the Skill Point system will be significantly changed in the coming months and this guide will be redrafted at that time. This Guide will be biased towards Federation players, given they are the large majority of the player base - however they will be broadly applicable to KDF and Romulan characters too. As with all of my guide threads, I express my opinion but I try to be fair and balanced. In addition, please feel free to suggest additions/improvements below and I'll include them in the main thread (and credit you for it).
As this is a guide for new players, I have deliberately limited references to high-end ships, powers and Zen store items; it is unlikely that a newbie can afford a 200 million Energy Credit item from the Exchange to support a particular high-end build, so I have not addressed that here unless for context only.
Guide - Captain Skill Points System (see further below for Specialisations)
General points
As your character levels up - indeed, kills enemy ship and ground units - you gain expertise points (XP). These can be allocated to various skills (default press U and then select the 'Skills' tab). You will be confronted with a lot of choices - and the skills you choose can have a material impact on the effectiveness of your character in both ground and space combat.
If you are aware of the economic concept 'opportunity cost' that'll help you understand the skill point system. There is a shortage of skill points - you will not accrue enough to max out every power. In addition, you are limited to a maximum of 300k in Space and 100k in Ground - so even if you wanted to put 200k in ground for a pimped out ground character, you cant.
Understanding the Detail
Lower-level skills (such as Lieutenant) cost much less than higher level skills (like Admiral) and so you need to be choosy - particularly with the high-end powers.
The first three points of each skill give a higher return than the next three points, which give a higher return than the next three. For instance, the first point you put into the skill 'Starship Attack Patters' gives you 18 skill points; the fourth will give you 10; and the 7th will give you 5 - but all three cost the same. For this reason, it is not uncommon for people to leave the 94-99 box unmarked as the return to skillpoints is relatively low, instead opting to spend it elsewhere.
Useful Skills
What you chose to invest heavily on is really a matter for you. Some skills are good to have for everyone, for example:
- Starship Weapons Training, which boosts the base damage on all of your ship's energy and torpedo weapons;
- Starship Shield Emitters, improves shield repair and healing;
- Starship Shield Systems, improves shield hit points and damage resistance;
- Weapons Proficiency, improves your ground weapons damage, both energy and melee; and
- Personal Shield Generator, improves ground shield hit points.
In addition, most starship builds (but not all!) rely on energy weapons, so points in Starship Energy Weapons, Starship Targeting Systems and Starship Energy Weapon Specialisation can be very helpful.
Some skills are pretty bad for virtually every build and/or just not supported by the game's meta (eg, Starship Stealth).
Builds Drive Skills
There are a range of builds out there such as for: tactical ships that focus on energy weapons; cruisers that focus on power levers to support beams (ie, 'beam boats'); and various torpedo-heavy Science builds (eg drain, control, exotic damage etc). Generally, I would suggest players pick powers that will be versatile (such as the list above) or used a lot by what you intend to build.
For instance, if you're a Tactical profession character flying an escort, you'll want a lot of points in energy weapons, attack patterns, starship manoeuvres, starship impulse engines, and so on, but not many/any points in high-end Science powers such as Starship Subspace Decompiler as your ship isn't carrying high-end Science powers. However, if you're a tactical captain in a science ship, this might be different.
Be aware of how skill points benefit your ship's power levels (eg, Starship Engine, Shield, Auxilary and Weapon Performance skills) as they are expensive but useful. Separately Starship Warp Core Efficiency only works if you're power levels are below 75 - if you're creating a high power level build then you might elect to not put any skill points here (despite being handy at low levels) to preserve those points for Starship Warp Core Potential which gives a flat bonus.
Science Builds
If you're creating a specialised Science build in particular, be very careful with your skill points - they are both critical to making your science build work and they tend not to be particularly helpful as 'general' powers, so absolutely read up about what you're doing before you go and do it.
For example, many Science builds allocate only minimal power and resources towards energy weapons (ie cannons and beams); instead they carry only/predominately torpedoes and high-end science powers. These powers, such as Gravity Well III, matched with significant points into Starship Particle Generators, Starship Graviton Generators and Starship Flow Capacitors, are to support a different kind of play. Science builds are designed to hold the enemy still in the middle of a black hole, deal more exotic and radiation damage (including from certain torps such as Neutronic Torpedoes) and drain the enemy ship's power levels so their shields collapse as you fling torpedoes at them from your agile ship.
These skills (greatly added to by specialist high-end equipment including deflectors, secondary deflectors etc) are highly geared to a certain type of build that would be totally useless for a classic 'beam boat' cruiser that is trying to keep its power levels up whilst broadsiding the enemy with 8 beam arrays. Still, many players think that 'pure' Science builds are both the best and most fun in the game, so it can be rewarding.
Guide - Specialisation System
Upon reaching Level 51, you will gain access to the Specialisation System. This system is a way of continuing to level up your character without actually surpassing level 60, and each specialisation point acts as a boost to your character's combat performance - most skills are passive, but some (like Rock and Roll) are active powers that you can use like Captain Abilities (eg, Attack Pattern Alpha). There are four Specialisation trees, outlined below:
- Command Officer - Ground and Space - boosts the effectiveness of teams
- Intelligence Officer - Ground and Space - boosts the effectiveness of yourself
- Pilot - Space - boosts the maneuverability and effectiveness of yourself
- Commando - Ground - boosts the effectiveness of yourself
Of the four trees, my favourite is Intelligence. Activating this tree improves your base defence/dodge in space/ground combat respectively, but more importantly the tree has a range of powers that are highly useful in combat, including increasing your resistances/survivability when your shield facings are low, improving your ship's weapon accuracy and shield penetration. In addition, the tree has essential powers that improve your critical hit chance, your critical damage, and flanking bonuses when firing from the enemy's rear arc - these all materially improve the amount of damage you can deal in battle, and rewards positioning your ship intelligently. Intelligence ground powers provide helpful flanking bonus damage (and resistance from being flanked) amongst other things - though as I am generally space focused I prioritise space specialisation points first.
Usually I'll have Pilot as my second active tree. Pilot improves your ship's maneuverability and tactical positioning (with skills like Rock and Roll being helpful to get out of sticky situations). The Pilot tree improves damage output and resistance when surrounded by enemy forces, the idea is that Pilot rewards you for being up close and personal with large numbers of enemies. Pilot also has some hilarious skills such as shield scraping - damaging the enemy's shields by flying into their ship, or Scratch the Paint - immunity from a warp core breach - which sounds like a silly skill to have but has been surprisingly helpful (particularly when fighting at point blank range as the tree encourages you to do).
I am happy to take advice from players who use it more, but I've found Command Officer to be a bit dull, situational and rarely deriving significant team bonuses for the effort. Whilst its base power - increased hit points - is quite helpful, the first set of skills boosts torpedoes (which most players have max one weapon equipped unless they're running a particular Science build), or improve shared healing and similar powers. A handy power - Superflous Emitters (+2 per cent damage per teammate with >95 per cent hull) is helpful in PVE, but the opportunity cost for having it is pretty high given the damage potential of the two trees listed above. Still, if I was doing a dedicated ground character, this would probably be my secondary tree (after Commando, below).
Commando is a very short tree - 15 powers, compared to the 30 of the other three branches. However, the bonuses to ground combat this tree provides are significant and would be excellent to run on a dedicated ground build. There are strong bonuses to personal shields, armour, damage output, weapon cycling, aiming and melee. All are great on the ground. Interestingly, having finished the tree, rather than a ground power, you are rewarded with a Starship trait is like the boarding party skill - given the speed at which NPCs are destroyed, it is essentially totally useless in PVE and absolutely useless in PVP as virtually all human players use its counter regularly, it is unfortunate that a more relevant power isnt awarded instead (eg, a ground combat pet, or something).
In this thread, @mustrumridcully0 explained in an excellent post some of the helpful command, intel and pilot bridge officer powers. Thanks man!
Have Fun and Dont Panic!
The key thing that I cannot emphaise enough is: as a new player, dont be too concerned about stuffing up your skills or specialisations. Go out and have fun in STO and as you learn how to play you'll develop a better feel for what you enjoy doing. Once you've worked this out, spend some time researching skill trees that are optimised to how you have fun.
If you've really stuffed it, there is always the option of purchasing a 'Captain Retrain Token' (colloquially known as Respec tokens) from the C-Store for 500 Zen - you can trade about 150k dilithium (at current prices) on the Zen/Dilithium exchange and not need to pay actual money. Note: If you're a Gold (Subscription) or Lifetime Subscriber, you'll receive a free respec token each time you rank up (eg, Lieutenant to Lt Commander) - double check to make sure you actually need a respec token before buying one from the C-Store. Note, this will only reset your skills, not your specialisations.
Gl, hf!
Post edited by ultimatenewbie on
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Comments
I did not read through the entire post, but I thought I should mention to you that Captain Skills is getting a major overhaul. It is currently on Tribble for testing and tweaking purpose.
I have no idea when it is planned to be rolled out on to Holodeck. Best guess is one or two months from now.
Hi. Yep, thanks - already noted in my first paragraph (I literally wrote this the night before the announcement... sigh.)
If anyone is a big user of the Command Officer tree, grateful for your particular views - I am concerned that I am a bit too biased as I've never really seen them as standout capabilities when compared to intel and pilot...
Command secondary is rather popular for torpedo boats and potentially of use on tanks, paticularly support tanks; command primary has the potential to be useful on a heavy tank, but I really don't see a place for that vs running Intel Primary; I think all of my builds run Intel Primary.
SCM - Hive (S) - [02:31] DMG(DPS) - @jarvisandalfred: 30.62M(204.66K) - Fed Sci
Tacs are overrated.
Game's best wiki
Build questions? Look here!
Command primary is definitely useful for team support, but Achilles' Heel can be quite handy in a singleplayer environment too - most of my recent builds have been Command-Pilot, and I only use Intelligence as a secondary these days if I specced into it before the other specializations came out, because a weak spec is better than no spec. (Additionally, Extrovert's 10% XP boost can come in quite handy.)
I also find that Improved Command Frequency (the max-level Command trait) can be a godsend, especially on Starfleet characters - the Ha'apax is a little lackluster, the Negh'var is mediocre, but the command cruisers' quantum torpedoes and TBR will devastate most opponents. With a 5-minute cooldown and the ability to summon a battleship whenever you're in combat, it's quite a powerful thing.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Pilot is probably my favorite as it adds a good mix of defense, offense, and a ton of turn rate. Well rounded for space players.
A full-torpedo build will see no benefits from Command - you have to focus on energy weapons, with just a torpedo (or two, one fore and one aft) to take advantage of vulnerabilities.
Pilot definitely does seem nice, and I would recommend it as a space secondary at the very least for Rock and Roll and Maneuvering Thrusters and Eat My Dust and even Desperate Flight. (Also, Attack Pattern Expertise. That can be handy in missions like Undine Assault or Borg Disconnected if you have enough non-Alpha attack patterns to use. Really, the only thing I can't find a use for are Reckless Abandon and Back Her Off.)
In my opinion, the only question is whether you want to take Command or Pilot as primary, with the other one being a secondary. (Also, Command-Commando on ground. Intel's mostly buffs to flanking defense and blinding/placating, while Command is guaranteed to give boosts to exposes and exploits and movement speed, and Commando lets you use your kit and secondary attacks more often, which can considerably improve your ground offense.)
Really, the only thing Intel has that's sort of reliably useful are the shields-down skills, the flanking skills, Perception Bending (if fighting with or against a cloaking device), and maybe Opportunistic.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.