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kronin
Member Posts: 325 Arc User
in The Academy
I have not yet attempted the new one. I am still stuck on "Time and Tide". When I first tried that mission, I had no idea how to build a decent ship, and didn't have much good equipment, anyway. I have learned a lot about builds, slapped on some mk xiv gear, and I'm now able to play most PVE content. But I still don't stand a chance against the not-cool vomit cone of death. I mean, I last a little longer. I can even take one or two of them out. But I can't beat this thing. So, here's my question. Are all featured missions this insane? Or is it just "Time and Tide" that's somehow crazy-tougher than any other mission I've ever played?
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My character Tsin'xing
If you can't get out of the way in time, try hitting brace for impact or using something like Polarize Hull to lessen the damage. You can also hit 'Rock and Roll' from the Pilot tree if you have it and avoid the damage completely.
Just remember, that often times, the quickest way to avoid it is going forward toward the enemy ship instead of side to side. The beam is cone shaped and the farther out you are, the longer you have to fly to get out of the zone, it's quickest to aim toward the ship and go straight through it.
Other then that, they're just typical AI ships, avoid the cones and dispatch the ships.
My character Tsin'xing
My character Tsin'xing
Staying at full impulse is a great point, I don't have any issue with them, but as others have said, I never stop moving.
Something that truly works is to divert all power to weapons and then, behold, divert to engines and not shields or aux that many builds seem to incorporate. Slap on an hyper impulse engine from one of the reputations and you will find yourself flying across space faster than practically anything.
It will provide you with extra defense if you lack sufficient defense. Both the Iconian and Aegis engines provide a defense bonus. It will make their beams miss you more often and you can almost outrun torpedos and easily avoid the plasma clouds and plasma wave cones with the speed and mobility gained by doing all of this. It also makes combat and flying significantly more fun. You can also focus on the Intel and Pilot specialization trees for defense and turn rate.
Oh I forgot to say you can also get a warp core with the Weapons->Engine mod instead of Weapon->Shields or Aux and you will have engine power above 100 and still 125 in weapons. Fast escorts with high impulse modifier will be able to hit speeds up to 100 in combat, and other slower ships will hit speeds from 65~90 and that's fast and fun.
Area of effect abilities like torpedo spreads and gravity wells can minimize the work of trying to find the temporal distortions.
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
When the distortion ships are created, stop attacking the real ship since it will be immune to damage. You can use area of effect abilities to help in that situation like torpedo spread, beam fire at will, cannon scatter volley and gravity well. These distortion ships do not have shields so they are vulnerable to torpedo attacks.
Choosing the right impulse engine can slightly improve your chances to avoid the vomit one. A hyper impulse engine is your best bet because they are efficient at high power level. Most people select the option to devote most of your ship's power to weapons. But if you need to evade the vomit cone, then you should switch to dumping power into engines to get a speed boost. You should look for engines with modifiers like [Spd] and [Turn].
As for the warp core, you may want to take a look at a hyper injected warp core that allows engines to receive 130 max power rather than the standard 125 max power. More importantly, you may want to consider a warp core with the [W->E] modifier which give your engine a bonus of 7.5% of whatever power you are giving your weapons. This does not reduce power to weapons at all, it merely provides bonus power to engines.
The [Eff] mod (for efficiency) will provide you with extra power to your subsystems in general. The lower the power level the more extra power your subsystems will receive. However, at 75 power or above you receive no bonus whatsoever. I am not sure if [Eff] has been renamed after the skill system was revamped.
There is another warp core mod [SEP] for Starship Engine Performance which gave up to 9.9 additional power in the old skill system. Not sure if the mod is called the same in the new skill system and how the additional power bonus is calculated.
I completed Time and Tide as well as The Temporal Front with a level 60 KDF engineer on a separate free to play only account using only the free T5 Vor'cha Battlecruiser Retrofit I got when I hit level 40. That ship has basic Mk XII equipment; it has a combination of uncommon / rare beam weapons and torpedoes, and I believe the tactical consoles are either rare or very. There are no rep gear on that ship, but I am currently working on Omega, Nukara and Romulan reps.
What I do have though is a little more than 2 years worth of experience. So I use tactics I developed over time to make up for having "junk" gear. While I do have some ultra rare Mk XII to XIV gear I have not felt the need to use them yet. I purchased them fairly cheap on the Exchange when they were Mk VIII a couple of months ago and was waiting for this past weekend to upgrade them.
It all boils down to tactics and knowing when to do certain actions. Flying various types of ships across many captains from Birds of Prey (my favorite ship), Raptors, Escorts, Battlecruisers, Cruiser and Warbirds probably benefited me as well since that technically means I need to adjust my tactics based which captain I am playing. Unfortunately, tactics are something that takes time to develop and is extremely difficult to convey in text.
Seconding I've done it with Mk XIs. Takes longer, certainly.
What's your bridge officer loadout? The temporal ability is debilitating, but not always fatal - are you stopping? It seriously increases the effectiveness of all firepower on you
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
As for the distortions, torp spread is great, they have no shields so torpedoes eat them alive. FaW is also good.
My character Tsin'xing
My character Tsin'xing
Hmmm.... In terms of overall power, Romulan have a bit of a disadvantage because each subsystem get 10 less power compared to Fed / KDF / other faction starships because Romulan ships use Singularity Core which gives the ship some abilities in exchange for 40 points of power. One such ability is the Singularity Jump which causes the ship to jump forward by 5km while leaving behind a weak gravity well in the spot you were at. The jump is always 5km regardless of your singularity charge level which affects how much damage the gravity well charges. Simply use Singularity Jump to get out of the "vomit cone" area of effect.
Something else you can do with Singularity Jump is to approach the Na'kuhl distortion ships that spawns from the main ship (which is immune to damage at this time), activate torpedo spread, jump when you are very close to the distortion ships, then fire your aft torpedoes.
The Flambard has the Dampening Wave Emitter console. If you know you cannot get out of the "vomit cone" area of effect, then use the console. It disables nearby ships, causes minor radiation damage and more importantly it dramatically reduces enemies' damage output for a short period of time.
You also have the evasive maneuvers ability than can get you out of the way. Switching your ship's power profile to engines instead of weapons will make you fly faster.
Lastly, you can acquire Deuterium Surplus and engine batteries which can improve engine power for a short period of time.
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Deuterium_Surplus
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Engine_Battery
Get a Hyper Injection Singularity Core which can increase engine power based on your current singularity charge level.
I would imagine the Flambard feels a bit sluggish when you fly it due to the power penalty for Singularity Abilities. One way to offset might require you to respec your captain's abilities. The abilities that allows you to move / turn faster and have more available power are all engineering abilities. You need to decide how many points you want to devote to engineering without taking away too much from science or tactical.
Impulse Expertise = Increased speed and turn rate; there are 3 levels
Offensive Subsystem Tuning = +4.8 weapon and engine power
Engine Subsystem Performance = Another +3.2 engine power
Warp Core Potential = + 3 power to all subsystems
Improved Warp Core Potential = Additional +2 power to all subsystems
Warp Core Efficiency = The lower the power level in each subsystem the more "bonus power" you receive. +0 to + 10 bonus power; +0 at 75 power and above.
Now you get to deal with even more Na'kuhl in the next mission (they love plasma, watch for mines in the ground, and always shoot the distortions or keep your boffs on a tight leash)
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
You also need to deal with the Na'Kuhl on the ground which can be difficult because the shields they use can create distortions of themselves, The distortions must be killed first because while the distortions are around, the specific Na'kuhl projecting them is immune from damage. You also need to deal with crawling bio-toxin mines. The gas masks you get from one of the Elachi missions can come in handy or you can wear environmental suits... which does not offer much damage protection.
This mission is actually worth playing through multiple times because of the rewards. Each time you complete it you can select either the armor, shield or weapon; the weapon is not that great in my opinion. You can equip your captain and your away team with the armor and shield which are pretty good, but that means you need to complete it 10 times.
My tac captain who did it first still has 2 tac boffs, 1 science, 1 eng. So many respawns. I really need to change his away team.
The USS Pastak will be with you for all space combat parts of the mission. Though on a couple of rare occasions the USS Pastak would not engage enemies until the final battle. Except for the final battle enemy ships appear three at a time, the other exception would be one ship that is trying to escape.
I don't know how many ships are in the final battle since I never bothered to count, but they are generally separated in two groups somewhat near each other so you do not need to fight them all at once. Additionally, one other Federation starship will appear as reinforcement.