Nice suggestion, I'll have to look into those crafted bats. Could be very helpful, should have done it with the shield bats.
Anyway, so I was out at DS9 to clear up those Leela journal things and I decided to see if I could get through the New Link again. Surprise, surprise, NO LAG! I don't know what changed, but it cleared more than enough to let me fight the Jem'Hadar battleship. Finally, my mono a mono with it.
And it mangled me repeatedly. Hahaha. All those tricks the JH bugs and escorts don't have? Their battleship does. Mostly it fights like a Benthan ship, which took me about 3 or 5 deaths to figure out how to deal with. That is, BTW, strip your shields and pump you full of quantums. Those hurt, A LOT. I was even popped right through the shields on a couple occasions. I likely wouldn't have died so many times but A) if you don't reengage after a certain time, the ship full heals it's hull and returns to it's start point and Fleet Support didn't work when I hit it! It just didn't spawn. It doesn't happen often, but it's often enough to be annoying as hell. Oh, and the cooldown triggers, even if the ship doesn't spawn. Thanks for that.
I did get it eventually, but it took quite a while. So my theory I could take the battleship is, um, busted. Ah well.
I also dug out the Breen Dread and took it into a private (meaning just me) Starbase 24 to grind some xp on it. I really should build that ship better, didn't get more than a couple thousand points toward tier 2 of it's trait line. Lovely.
Still, all that's left now is the Iconian War. That'll probably be next time, until then.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
actually, on further reflection, i may have been mistaken about the crafted batteries offering a weapon power boost as well as direct energy damage...i tried to look them up on the wiki to confirm, but they aren't listed there
still, if the crafted ones don't work out, there are dual batteries too - might come in weapon/shield flavor
EDIT: okay, they were listed on the wiki - apparently i wasn't looking in the right spot; however, i was right about the energy amplifiers not giving any weapon power boost, and there aren't any weapon/shield dual batteries to boot, just weapon/auxiliary, shields/engines, auxiliary/shields and engines/auxiliary
as for fleet support bugging out, it can do that if you trigger it just as your hull goes above 50%; probably a good idea to have that command trait that removes the hull requirement if you're making heavy use of the ability - cutting the CD down to 10/5 minutes for the regular/improved version of the trait is also very handy
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Fleet Support bugged out right before I died. It should have spawned, I've seen it do it right after the death but it didn't do it, so bleh. It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't trigger the cooldown despite not spawning.
Dual weapon/aux would actually be a good deal, I don't have a way to power aux since I removed the Plasma Manifold. Not a super priority, I'll look though. As for Command, I don't have near enough spec points to power that, and likely won't through the run. That said, after Delta Flight, I'll have that summon, Nimbus and Fleet support. They trigger a 5 min global between each other, but that means with the right timing, I could probably spawn each in turn over the course of Fleet Support's cooldown. Plus I have the sensor platform to drop, so that should help as well. Mostly I'm just annoyed it took longer to kill that battleship than it should have if Fleet Support and her plasma balls of death had shown up. Hey, at least The New Link worked for a change.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
So I ran Uneasy Allies, and of course it bugged, so I didn't get my first ground fight with a Herald. The space fighting itself is just more Romulans, and I can handle them well enough now (still died once, two D'Ds at a time is a pain). In the end, nothing special about this mission, aside from Sela's lovely commentary. I grabbed the kit so I could try out the model, but it's all ground and not that important for this project.
Afterwards I headed to ESD in prep for Blood of the Ancients, but then headed to the exchange to swap around doffs. I've got two UR Projectile doffs, and one R, which gives good chance to repeatedly fire those plasma torps (drop it by 5 seconds? They fire every 8! That means I could fire one torp a second!!). Next I grabbed a VR Maintenance officer to cut my Engineering Team cooldown by 8 seconds and give me a bit of a healing boost. Finally I put on a VR doff that cuts the enemy turn rate when tachyon beam gets used, it was cheap.
I haven't looked at the batteries yet, I'll do that tonight right before I do Blood of the Ancients. So I've taken some time to look over the various Herald ships I'll be fighting.
The Baltim will likely be one of the most dangerous ships I deal with. Why? RAMMING SPEED! I've seen that take down half my hull on my best ship, and that has way more hull than my Miranda at it's best. Now it could be percentage based, but that's still nasty as hell. These will likely be my first targets on the battlefield, just to remove that chance.
For a normal fight, the Quas would be the first target because of those damn EMP probes it likes to throw around. Now that I've read up on them, I know how to deal with those probes: Run away from them. They only go towards one location, so if I skirt around, I can avoid them out right. The Poly probes can probably be taken down by BFAW and Point Defense. I wonder if they're effected by Antimatter spread, hmmm.
The Vonph I'll end up treating as Benthan or Jem Battleship, keeping my distance thanks to that Subnuc carrier wave. Otherwise I have to run science team to clear it. Good news? The Iconian shield will clear debuffs, one every 10 seconds, so maybe I won't need sci team even if I do get caught. That said, that solar flare gateway will be very nasty indeed, and I will turn and kill that as quick as I can.
Though I'll go even FASTER when the Iaidon Dread opens an Oblivion gateway. That WILL kill me, quickly. Shouldn't have to deal with them until Delta Flight, so I can ease in a bit. Honestly, the dread seems to have the fewest dangerous powers, but I'm just going off the Wiki, and you know how well that goes. That said, they are big, bad, bags of health, and it'll take a while to take it down. Really, it looks like on Normal I won't have to fight many of these (two at best), so I won't have to worry about them much.
Well, that's all I can do for now. Next update will be after I run Blood of the Ancients. Wish me luck.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Mission finished. Only 4 deaths, once to that damn ram I was worried about. Thank god it's not a guaranteed hit, I was chased down by TWO of them at one point. I know I got hit once and survived, barely, thanks to Threatening Stance and it's stacking. Otherwise, a hit is a one shot kill.
The Iconian shield worked just like I wanted, clearing subnuc debuffs when they came up. I never had to directly deal with solar flare portals (just lucky this time) though I did shoot at one. I was constantly healing, often barely on the edge of dying. The first battle at the starbase was especially tense. So glad I picked up that engineering team doff, made things easier with sub 30 second cooldown. Torps flew everywhere, it was rather fun.
One upside is that I don't think you EVER fight Herald ships without some kind of back up. If you wait, it will be there. Which of course I didn't bother doing right out the gate and charged in head first. And promptly died. Heh. I did as I planned, and focused on the Baltims first when I could, then the Quas. It helped keep the Quas' from targeting me with those EMP probes which were easier to dodge now that I know HOW.
It really wasn't too terrible, honestly. Of course then I remembered, as the Paris ordered me to, that I had to "engage" a dread at the end of the mission. And do that ALONE. Luckily between sensor platform, antimatter spread (still not sure if it works on the poly probes, but it works on the SHIPS!) and a bit of luck, I manged to not get killed before the plot trigger went off. I actually had two deaths in that last part, once to that ram, and once just due to attrition. I probably died about the same amount the first time I played the mission, which was quite a while ago now.
Overall, I'm a bit more confident that I can handle the smaller Herald ships easily enough, though the Vonphs and dreads will take more work. Not bad for a ship whose major role is exploding horribly. Next time, Delta Flight, and annoyingly I don't get the Delta Flight summons here, I have to wait until Broken Circle. Bleh.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
on the bright side, that's the ONLY mission you have to face a iaidon alone - every mission with one after BoA, you have help...and it's actually help with a decent AI
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
@theeishtmo , quick question - are you still running the subspace field amplifier device? If so, just wondering whether subbing that out with Jevonite Hardpoints (purchase from exchange is faster/easier than crafting them yourself) would be worthwhile?
I still have it, but it's not on constant rotation. The hardpoints might be a good idea, forget how you get the formula for them (I've got them on my main, but they seem to be character bound on pick up). I built some hull batteries (poor man's hardpoints) and will transfer them over today to replace the shield bats which, honestly, aren't worth the effort at this point. We'll see how that goes.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
there's no formula; you can only get them after finishing the jevonite research doff chain, at which point a mission for crafting them will randomly pop up on occasion...but they shouldn't be bind on pickup, because none of the other consumables from the other gamma commodity research chains are
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
I still have it, but it's not on constant rotation. The hardpoints might be a good idea, forget how you get the formula for them (I've got them on my main, but they seem to be character bound on pick up). I built some hull batteries (poor man's hardpoints) and will transfer them over today to replace the shield bats which, honestly, aren't worth the effort at this point. We'll see how that goes.
@shadowfang240 outlined how to craft the jevonite hardpoints yourself, but tbh it is just much more efficient to hop onto the exchange and buy a few - it has been quite a while since I bought any, but they used to be below 100k a pop...
Let us know if it results in better performance. Although I understand why you selected it, it just seems that a subspace amplifier is pretty lame in terms of overall performance.
there's no formula; you can only get them after finishing the jevonite research doff chain, at which point a mission for crafting them will randomly pop up on occasion...but they shouldn't be bind on pickup, because none of the other consumables from the other gamma commodity research chains are
I think the Jevonite Catalysts are bound, and don't work quite the same way, these were in the R&D stuff, not a doff mission, which is why I could never figure them out. Thanks. I did pick some hardpoints up, btw, less than 50k a piece on the exchange, so I got a bunch. Turns out their effect goes away if you die.
Speaking of which, Delta Flight: 2 deaths. Both were just the result of me not paying attention enough. It's been a long week. Really, having a small fleet of really good NPCs backing you up is sure to make things easier, and it did. Something I noticed (keep in mind this IS normal difficulty) is that you really don't face down anything less than a Vonph (well, kind of, gimme a sec). There is a "Herald Cruiser" that looks all the world like a Quas, but doesn't ACT like one. Otherwise, all big ships, all the way down.
Except one: The Mir Fighters the dread at the end spews. I really didn't look at them because, well, they're not that common and they're fighters. BFAW and point defense should take care of them, but otherwise, not much of a threat. Until one rammed me. Oh yeah, they can do that. Surprised me, almost killed me. Almost.
In the end, it was a pretty easy mission. It's really about intercharacter banter than anything else, and I enjoy that. That said, what ever became of the "second sphere" they found information on anyway? It's implied in Blood of Ancients that the Herald Sphere queues were already running, but maybe they were talking about something else and THIS led to that queue? Or did they just forget about it. Odd.
With that mission out of the way, I went to Risa and in between missions I'll be hanging around there.
Anyway, next is House of Pegh. Most of it is ground, which I don't expect many issues with (Heralds on the ground aren't too hard if their numbers are kept down). The space portion, that might be harder. Less support, more smaller ships. We'll see how it goes. Until next time.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
So I got off work early (like 9 am, that's very, VERY early for me) and ran House of Pegh.
AND DIDN'T DIE!
Yes, that's right, I didn't die once, ground or space. I attribute that partially to the hardpoints and the hull patch batteries. Because without either, I would be very DEAD several times. I came close, damn close, close enough I could summon Fleet Support to help out. I never even came close to being able to do that in the previous two missions, mostly because I died so damn fast.
Seriously, the hardpoints saved me given I was rammed at least twice, and managed to limp out of range with 10% health to heal up. One of the more intense fights I've had, constantly trying to heal and stay alive as everything and it's uncle wanted me dead, dead, DEAD. When one of the waves came in and was all Baltim frigates, I almost cried. And sure enough, two of them tried to ram me. Gah!
I don't know what else to say. I took the Starship Trait as a reward, not that it does this ship any good (no attack patterns). I think I can hold my own against the Heralds now, so while I'm sure there will be rough fights in the future (Broken Circle in particular), I don't think they are nearly the threats I was afraid they were. Next time, Time in a Bottle. Until then.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
i wonder how you'll be faring against the vorgons when they hit holodeck? i know i had a TRIBBLE of a time dealing with their battleship in Vorgon Conclusions over on tribble in a nova - and that's a tier TWO ship
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Most battleships, when it comes down to it, involve throwing Fleet Support at them until they blow up. I won't worry about it right now though, my focus is on the Iconians.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
Almost at the main "end" of the story too. Though yes, I will keep going after Midnight.
Anyway, Time in a Bottle is, well, not that interesting from this challenge's perspective. I fought a Vaadwaur assault ship (probably the last one) and a Quas, that's it. Between me and the Chimera, neither had much of a chance. Did learn that the EMP probe will disable heavy plasma torps, so that's something, but beyond that, nothing new to report. It's a ground/story mission after all. Not even a good piece of space equipment as a reward.
Of course, in the middle of the mission one of my fleet mates messaged me: "Hive Onslaught Advanced?" My reply: "In a Miranda? ARE YOU CRAZY!" Then I told him I was busy.
That said, the Borg are still a massive threat to this ship, and Hive is, well, HIVE. Why? I don't have enough hull. Consider this, after all my traits, my skills, the hardpoints, the hull batteries and Threatening Stance stacks, I BARELY clear 20,000 hull. Now that's not really bad, I mean I did DOUBLE my hull points, which on any other ship would be amazing, but on a Miranda? Not so much.
Really, that's the only thing holding the Miranda back from anyone just running this ship through the game. 3 weapons? No big, go with 360 beams. 3 ensign Boff slots? Use those 3 consoles for toy consoles and spec and rep powers to compensate. No hull? Um, pray? Seriously, bleed through, which I even minimized by going with a resilient shield, is more likely to kill me than anything else. A Naussican battleship's transphasic torp took out HALF my hull in one shot, through the shields! The Miranda is constantly playing from behind.
And that's reasonable. After all, you're SUPPOSED to be using higher tier ships, with more hull by this point. Or better, BUYING higher tier ships with even more hull. Still, the fact that the hull really is the only thing holding the Miranda back right now is actually quite amazing, and probably means an all shuttle, or a Tuffli run, or whatever, is completely doable, since in most cases they have more hull than I do.
Anyway, next time, Broken Circle.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
Well, that was a long week. My work schedule is very screwy, and I worked a lot in just the last four days. To the point that about all I could do was do the ship stuff for Risa on one character. Didn't even have time to cycle my R&D on any but that one character.
But today I had the day off and I went and ran Broken Circle. Oddly, I didn't find it any more difficult than any of the other missions in the Iconian War. Groups of ships are small and as long as I didn't outrun my support, I could do fine. Which is, of course, the first thing I did, resulting in my first of 3 deaths in the space portion of the mission. The other two came inside the sphere, where I just got overwhelmed and had everything on cooldown. Yay. Still not bad.
The fact that few of these missions have been hard or frustrating is probably because of all the support. In most missions, when you're alone, if you take a ship down in hull and die, you have a short amount of time to get back and engage it before it decides to return to it's waiting point, and it heals instantly when it decides to head back. Most of the time it's not an issue, you're usually close enough, other times, like the New Link, you're pretty far. Only options are to draw it to your respawn point, or get it to engage something, like a turret or Fleet Support.
But in the Iconian war, you are NEVER alone. There's always some form of support on the map, so they're always fighting. They never heal, so you have time to get back into the fight. Dying repeatedly is not punished, so even if you play subpar, you can get through.
Next time, though, is Butterfly, and that means the Borg return for one more round. Luckily I'll have the Lisest and the Annorax (don't look at me about the spelling, I don't know) as back up, but it's still time to plan an alternate build for this. I'm thinking of swapping to Tac Team (borg boarding parties suck), Hazard Emitters (feel the burn) and EPTShields (where did my shields go, ah, there we go).
I think that'll help counter the biggest issues the Borg have, the super Tachyon Beam and the shield neutralizer. I can hope the Iconian shield clears the neutralizer debuff, but when it doesn't, hazard emitters will do the trick. It'll also help clear plasma burns that the shield also doesn't clear. Tac Team will clear the borg boarding parties, but also shift over the shields when I start restoring them after the Borg take them out. Without BFAW I shouldn't TRIBBLE everything off as quickly, so I might be able to survive a bit longer. That means I need to swap around doffs, so I'll go looking later tonight. There's one for Hazard Emitters and one for Tac Team I want. Both will be very helpful.
In the meantime, here's a few images from Broken Circle, just to kind of show I was there: http://imgur.com/a/0AMKW
Until next time.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
Went much better against the Borg than previous ventures. I think my build changes actually did as they were meant to. I ended up using my blue Tac Team reducer from earlier and the build and picked up a blue hazard emitter guy to make more healing for about 1 million EC. The very rare one was 2.9, and I really wasn't looking to spend that much right now, as well as I barely have that much on this toon.
I survived the first encounter with the Borg in the mission, even the "surprise cube!" portion. It appeared RIGHT in front of me. The second round I died twice. Once from simple attrition, it happens. The second death was when you're supposed to transmit while the Llisest defends you (I think I got the spelling right this time). Yeah, once the message was gone, and the plot flags started firing, the Borg killed me. I was dead as the cutscene played.
Still, it's done. Once I knew I could handle the Heralds, this was the last major hurtle I needed to clear, and did so very well. Future Borg encounters should go much smoother, so that's a plus as well. The prize here, though was the Omni-Directional Antichroniton Infused Tetryon Beam Array. It replaces my Ancient Omni-Directional Antiproton array, which has served me well since Sphere of Influence. Now though, it's time to move on from it, and prepare for the finale of this mess.
Midnight. I doubt it'll be that hard, especially on Normal, and I can handle the Hearlds now, so I'm confident. Any bets on the number of deaths? I'm thinking 2 myself. Should be fun. No pictures this time, but next time, I expect to have quite a few. Until then.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
Okay, took some time to uncompress from the fight. As I said, 2 deaths. One was just sheer attrition. The second was a damn ram. I hate Baltims. And of course there's a whole wave of them after the ESD part of the mission. Weee. . .
Honestly, the hardest part was the last bit where the Annerox was opening the time portal. The number of Herald ships just plain increases the entire time. More and more of them, probably the most I've seen in one map since the starbase bit in Blood of Ancients. Unlike that group, I was in the middle of the spawn point! Yeah, I was bound to die at that point.
My first death was, actually, at the beginning of the map, so really there was quite a bit of time where I didn't die. It wasn't easy, I was constantly healing and fighting and clawing and hoping to kill the most dangerous ships (Baltim, Quas, everything else in order) before they killed me.
Overall, it wasn't too bad. The last shot, my Beauty Shot, came after finishing the ground portion of the mission (which isn't interesting since you can't fight on the ground with a Miranda, though that would be glorious and possibly result in fewer deaths, possibly).
Now I basically consider this the "end" of the challenge. After all, next I fight the Tholians, which aren't the most dangerous enemy I could face and I have fought them on several occasions (in queues, in the Crystaline Event, one mission) so i don't expect those two missions to be anything amazing. Then there's Time and Tide, which is mostly Kremin and Na'kul (however that's spelled), but I've fought the Na'kul in Temporal Front, at level 10, so yeah.
Midnight is the end of the main STO storyline, all the time travel stuff is bonus content, at least for now. As such, this was the overall goal of the challenge, and with that I can give a lot of notes and comments, a lot of them. But for the now I can give my conclusion to the challenge and that is that the Tier 1 Forever Challenge. . .
Isn't really that challenging. The game, on normal anyway, isn't that impossibly hard. The few places I got "stalled" were easy enough to get by with Fleet Support to help. Would I say any player can do it? No, especially newer players. While the game will go easy on you for the first half or so, once the Cardassian missions come along, the game stops hand holding, and when the Borg come out, the gloves are not only taken off, but dropped into a wood chipper.
Still, a more experienced player, like one who's been around since beta, or the launch of F2P should be able to handle it. Hell, even people who remember the days before Delta Rising could pull it off. It's about balancing powers and doffs, gear and traits. It's not impossible, and even many who declared they had to stop before Delta were overestimating how difficult things get. By then, the hardest challenges are done.
I had fun though, which was the point. The Miranda is a hard ship to build for, but not impossible. I died, but no more than my first run, on Advanced, through many of these missions. I have more respect for how powers line up and work together, how traits line up, and how important hull really is in this game. And I will continue to fly it on this character, um, well, forever.
I'll talk about the lessons I learned later. Thanks for following this thread and my adventures in the meantime.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
Try doing it without a single death. Would that be hard? I'd say so.
Practically impossible. Though if I ran this on Advanced, that would be far harder, but when it comes to the difficulty level, there's no point. No extra rewards, just more enemy health and more injuries. The Miranda is SO fragile that not dying in a mission is more something to remark on than how many times I died. I only managed it in one Iconian War mission, House of Pegh, and I'm pretty sure that was a fluke.
If Starfleet had an equivalent for Dahar Master, you would have earnt it.
I want "Khan's Protege," personally.
Alright, some of the various lessons I learned. Hull is EVERYTHING. As I said, I could make up the lack of boff seats, consoles and weapons with some clever uses of traits and toy consoles, but nothing I did ever really made up for the Miranda's lack of hull. I kind of figured bleedthrough would be the death of me, so I went with Resilent shields early, and I focused on shields to try to limit how often my shields went down.
Partial mistake. Oh, it helped, yes, but I had so little hull, when the transphasics came out, or the crits came in, I suffered, a lot. Without any resists, energy or kinetic, I was just chewed up. The Crystalline console helped here as it provided some resists, as did skill investments. In the end, most of my deaths were due to attrition, taking lots of damage from multiple bad guys, rather than one or two doing all the damage. Didn't help when the Baltims showed up, but you know can't have everything.
The result was that some enemies did far, FAR more damage than others, especially the Borg. That lesson, that the Borg are actually dangerous as hell, was something I had long forgotten, and I bet most of you have too. ISA being used at the DPS gauge has minimized how nasty the Borg can be, and against the Miranda and it's limited abilities, they're murderous. They have the exact right tools to take down my shields then rip up my hull, all in one spherical package (because it's always the Spheres, ALWAYS the Spheres).
Which means out of the many enemies I THOUGHT would be the death of me, only the Borg actually exceeded my expectations. The other three, Undine, Vaadwaur and Heralds, simply couldn't bring the necessary sequence of abilities to crush me. In the end, I really had nothing to fear from them other than attrition, which because of the low hull and few healing abilities I was always going to die from.
That said, a lot of baddies surprised me. The Jem'Hadar, for the most part (I'll get to it) proved to be very weak vs the Miranda. The reason: no heals, no tricks. The exception, of course, came from the Jem battleship which did have all those tricksy abilities that wrecked my day. But otherwise, they simply relied on straight up damage and all that extra shielding I invested in made me more or less immune to the bulk of it. The Vaadwaur had the same problem, few tricks that I couldn't get around. In fact, the worst ability they have, the artillery barrage, I dealt with by flying head long at them, often tanking their cannon fire in the process.
Oddly though, some enemies surprised me. The Cardassians especially, I had a lot of issues with the Galor and up, and had to struggle to get through those fights. The Terran Empire ships did much the same, though that was mostly when I was fighting an escort and cruiser at the same time. The Hierarchy was a real pain, until I changed the build. Their ability to jam my sensors made my original torp build untenable, but swapping for the Vaadwaur cluster torp made them far easier. The Voth proved tough, but honestly it was just their massive health and shielding tricks that held me down. The Hirogen was VERY hard, probably the hardest enemy in the game. So many tricks, I just didn't have enough gear and abilities to deal with them.
So powers. Tachyon beam was the best power I used. Early on, it would easily rip down shields of just about everything, and even late in the game vs the Heralds, it would do a good amount. That said, I probably used Engineering Team far more, often cycling it with Miracle Worker during intense fights. Didn't help that there really wasn't much else to use in the Engineering slot. The power I found I used least, much to my shock, was Tactical Team. Despite using it on EVERY character and ship I have (11 other characters, multiple ships each), I abandoned Tac Team on even the original torp build at one point. It just didn't give me the flexibility I needed given the lack of powers I had. Beam Fire at Will replaced it after the beam build conversion and worked great, until I was ticking off one too many Coop ships, then I needed to swap to Overload.
The upgrade and crafting system probably made this far easier now than it would have been a couple years ago. Instead of struggling to get the gear I needed, I just upgraded pieces or build them on other characters. Rep gear was helpful at the end, of course, but not strictly required. I could have gotten away with the standard Resilent shield I was using before I grabbed the Iconian shield, though I probably would have had more instances of being disabled (and likely killed).
The toy consoles I used throughout were all very valuable. The Plasma Manifold was given up eventually in favor of the Crystalline console, but by then I had enough aux power to keep the Tachyon beam running at a decent level, and had more than enough shields to not die and engine power to give me a turn rate that wasn't below that of a potato. The Point Defense console was absolutely necessary to thinning out enemy formations, and Baltims, (I hate those). Antimatter Spread did exactly what I wanted it for, acting as part scramble sensors and part jam sensors, giving me time to get out of dodge or watch the baddies shoot each other (so much fun). The Crystalline console got the least use in the end, I just couldn't see the beams coming out so I didn't know how much and who it was hitting, though the energy resist was very helpful.
Fleet Support was the most important summon I used, I couldn't beat many missions without it. Nimbus Pirates were used when I couldn't use Fleet Support, but rarely. I never did use the Delta Summons, intended to during Midnight, but apparently they have a shared cooldown with Nimbus of 15 minutes! I was not expecting that, and I was done long before the cooldown finished. Temporal Negotiator worked when I needed it, but often if I needed it, I usually died not long after. The Subspace Modulator was available early, but just didn't have the staying power I would have liked (would have been nice if it acted as a polarize hull). Jevonite Hardpoints were nice, but expired on death. Helpful vs the Baltims. The Hull Patch batteries were amazing and I think I'll probably build a bunch on every character.
I think that's about it. Spent about an hour and half writing all that (while doing other things) so I hope that helps others in the future. Now I need to go hit the showers. Until next time.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
I probably won't do it in AoY because, well, I proved I could already. I doubt the Pioneer will be any weaker than the Miranda, if it is I will be shocked that they found a way to do it. It's fun, yes, but once is enough for anyone. Besides, I'll have every new mission they pump out to run with the Miranda, so it's not like I'm missing out.
I know there is a method but all I see is madness.
Comments
Anyway, so I was out at DS9 to clear up those Leela journal things and I decided to see if I could get through the New Link again. Surprise, surprise, NO LAG! I don't know what changed, but it cleared more than enough to let me fight the Jem'Hadar battleship. Finally, my mono a mono with it.
And it mangled me repeatedly. Hahaha. All those tricks the JH bugs and escorts don't have? Their battleship does. Mostly it fights like a Benthan ship, which took me about 3 or 5 deaths to figure out how to deal with. That is, BTW, strip your shields and pump you full of quantums. Those hurt, A LOT. I was even popped right through the shields on a couple occasions. I likely wouldn't have died so many times but A) if you don't reengage after a certain time, the ship full heals it's hull and returns to it's start point and
I did get it eventually, but it took quite a while. So my theory I could take the battleship is, um, busted. Ah well.
I also dug out the Breen Dread and took it into a private (meaning just me) Starbase 24 to grind some xp on it. I really should build that ship better, didn't get more than a couple thousand points toward tier 2 of it's trait line. Lovely.
Still, all that's left now is the Iconian War. That'll probably be next time, until then.
still, if the crafted ones don't work out, there are dual batteries too - might come in weapon/shield flavor
EDIT: okay, they were listed on the wiki - apparently i wasn't looking in the right spot; however, i was right about the energy amplifiers not giving any weapon power boost, and there aren't any weapon/shield dual batteries to boot, just weapon/auxiliary, shields/engines, auxiliary/shields and engines/auxiliary
as for fleet support bugging out, it can do that if you trigger it just as your hull goes above 50%; probably a good idea to have that command trait that removes the hull requirement if you're making heavy use of the ability - cutting the CD down to 10/5 minutes for the regular/improved version of the trait is also very handy
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Dual weapon/aux would actually be a good deal, I don't have a way to power aux since I removed the Plasma Manifold. Not a super priority, I'll look though. As for Command, I don't have near enough spec points to power that, and likely won't through the run. That said, after Delta Flight, I'll have that summon, Nimbus and Fleet support. They trigger a 5 min global between each other, but that means with the right timing, I could probably spawn each in turn over the course of Fleet Support's cooldown. Plus I have the sensor platform to drop, so that should help as well. Mostly I'm just annoyed it took longer to kill that battleship than it should have if Fleet Support and her plasma balls of death had shown up. Hey, at least The New Link worked for a change.
Afterwards I headed to ESD in prep for Blood of the Ancients, but then headed to the exchange to swap around doffs. I've got two UR Projectile doffs, and one R, which gives good chance to repeatedly fire those plasma torps (drop it by 5 seconds? They fire every 8! That means I could fire one torp a second!!). Next I grabbed a VR Maintenance officer to cut my Engineering Team cooldown by 8 seconds and give me a bit of a healing boost. Finally I put on a VR doff that cuts the enemy turn rate when tachyon beam gets used, it was cheap.
I haven't looked at the batteries yet, I'll do that tonight right before I do Blood of the Ancients. So I've taken some time to look over the various Herald ships I'll be fighting.
The Baltim will likely be one of the most dangerous ships I deal with. Why? RAMMING SPEED! I've seen that take down half my hull on my best ship, and that has way more hull than my Miranda at it's best. Now it could be percentage based, but that's still nasty as hell. These will likely be my first targets on the battlefield, just to remove that chance.
For a normal fight, the Quas would be the first target because of those damn EMP probes it likes to throw around. Now that I've read up on them, I know how to deal with those probes: Run away from them. They only go towards one location, so if I skirt around, I can avoid them out right. The Poly probes can probably be taken down by BFAW and Point Defense. I wonder if they're effected by Antimatter spread, hmmm.
The Vonph I'll end up treating as Benthan or Jem Battleship, keeping my distance thanks to that Subnuc carrier wave. Otherwise I have to run science team to clear it. Good news? The Iconian shield will clear debuffs, one every 10 seconds, so maybe I won't need sci team even if I do get caught. That said, that solar flare gateway will be very nasty indeed, and I will turn and kill that as quick as I can.
Though I'll go even FASTER when the Iaidon Dread opens an Oblivion gateway. That WILL kill me, quickly. Shouldn't have to deal with them until Delta Flight, so I can ease in a bit. Honestly, the dread seems to have the fewest dangerous powers, but I'm just going off the Wiki, and you know how well that goes. That said, they are big, bad, bags of health, and it'll take a while to take it down. Really, it looks like on Normal I won't have to fight many of these (two at best), so I won't have to worry about them much.
Well, that's all I can do for now. Next update will be after I run Blood of the Ancients. Wish me luck.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
The Iconian shield worked just like I wanted, clearing subnuc debuffs when they came up. I never had to directly deal with solar flare portals (just lucky this time) though I did shoot at one. I was constantly healing, often barely on the edge of dying. The first battle at the starbase was especially tense. So glad I picked up that engineering team doff, made things easier with sub 30 second cooldown. Torps flew everywhere, it was rather fun.
One upside is that I don't think you EVER fight Herald ships without some kind of back up. If you wait, it will be there. Which of course I didn't bother doing right out the gate and charged in head first. And promptly died. Heh. I did as I planned, and focused on the Baltims first when I could, then the Quas. It helped keep the Quas' from targeting me with those EMP probes which were easier to dodge now that I know HOW.
It really wasn't too terrible, honestly. Of course then I remembered, as the Paris ordered me to, that I had to "engage" a dread at the end of the mission. And do that ALONE. Luckily between sensor platform, antimatter spread (still not sure if it works on the poly probes, but it works on the SHIPS!) and a bit of luck, I manged to not get killed before the plot trigger went off. I actually had two deaths in that last part, once to that ram, and once just due to attrition. I probably died about the same amount the first time I played the mission, which was quite a while ago now.
Overall, I'm a bit more confident that I can handle the smaller Herald ships easily enough, though the Vonphs and dreads will take more work. Not bad for a ship whose major role is exploding horribly. Next time, Delta Flight, and annoyingly I don't get the Delta Flight summons here, I have to wait until Broken Circle. Bleh.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
gl, hf!
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
@shadowfang240 outlined how to craft the jevonite hardpoints yourself, but tbh it is just much more efficient to hop onto the exchange and buy a few - it has been quite a while since I bought any, but they used to be below 100k a pop...
Let us know if it results in better performance. Although I understand why you selected it, it just seems that a subspace amplifier is pretty lame in terms of overall performance.
I think the Jevonite Catalysts are bound, and don't work quite the same way, these were in the R&D stuff, not a doff mission, which is why I could never figure them out. Thanks. I did pick some hardpoints up, btw, less than 50k a piece on the exchange, so I got a bunch. Turns out their effect goes away if you die.
Speaking of which, Delta Flight: 2 deaths. Both were just the result of me not paying attention enough. It's been a long week. Really, having a small fleet of really good NPCs backing you up is sure to make things easier, and it did. Something I noticed (keep in mind this IS normal difficulty) is that you really don't face down anything less than a Vonph (well, kind of, gimme a sec). There is a "Herald Cruiser" that looks all the world like a Quas, but doesn't ACT like one. Otherwise, all big ships, all the way down.
Except one: The Mir Fighters the dread at the end spews. I really didn't look at them because, well, they're not that common and they're fighters. BFAW and point defense should take care of them, but otherwise, not much of a threat. Until one rammed me. Oh yeah, they can do that. Surprised me, almost killed me. Almost.
In the end, it was a pretty easy mission. It's really about intercharacter banter than anything else, and I enjoy that. That said, what ever became of the "second sphere" they found information on anyway? It's implied in Blood of Ancients that the Herald Sphere queues were already running, but maybe they were talking about something else and THIS led to that queue? Or did they just forget about it. Odd.
With that mission out of the way, I went to Risa and in between missions I'll be hanging around there.
Anyway, next is House of Pegh. Most of it is ground, which I don't expect many issues with (Heralds on the ground aren't too hard if their numbers are kept down). The space portion, that might be harder. Less support, more smaller ships. We'll see how it goes. Until next time.
AND DIDN'T DIE!
Yes, that's right, I didn't die once, ground or space. I attribute that partially to the hardpoints and the hull patch batteries. Because without either, I would be very DEAD several times. I came close, damn close, close enough I could summon Fleet Support to help out. I never even came close to being able to do that in the previous two missions, mostly because I died so damn fast.
Seriously, the hardpoints saved me given I was rammed at least twice, and managed to limp out of range with 10% health to heal up. One of the more intense fights I've had, constantly trying to heal and stay alive as everything and it's uncle wanted me dead, dead, DEAD. When one of the waves came in and was all Baltim frigates, I almost cried. And sure enough, two of them tried to ram me. Gah!
I don't know what else to say. I took the Starship Trait as a reward, not that it does this ship any good (no attack patterns). I think I can hold my own against the Heralds now, so while I'm sure there will be rough fights in the future (Broken Circle in particular), I don't think they are nearly the threats I was afraid they were. Next time, Time in a Bottle. Until then.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Anyway, Time in a Bottle is, well, not that interesting from this challenge's perspective. I fought a Vaadwaur assault ship (probably the last one) and a Quas, that's it. Between me and the Chimera, neither had much of a chance. Did learn that the EMP probe will disable heavy plasma torps, so that's something, but beyond that, nothing new to report. It's a ground/story mission after all. Not even a good piece of space equipment as a reward.
Of course, in the middle of the mission one of my fleet mates messaged me: "Hive Onslaught Advanced?" My reply: "In a Miranda? ARE YOU CRAZY!" Then I told him I was busy.
That said, the Borg are still a massive threat to this ship, and Hive is, well, HIVE. Why? I don't have enough hull. Consider this, after all my traits, my skills, the hardpoints, the hull batteries and Threatening Stance stacks, I BARELY clear 20,000 hull. Now that's not really bad, I mean I did DOUBLE my hull points, which on any other ship would be amazing, but on a Miranda? Not so much.
Really, that's the only thing holding the Miranda back from anyone just running this ship through the game. 3 weapons? No big, go with 360 beams. 3 ensign Boff slots? Use those 3 consoles for toy consoles and spec and rep powers to compensate. No hull? Um, pray? Seriously, bleed through, which I even minimized by going with a resilient shield, is more likely to kill me than anything else. A Naussican battleship's transphasic torp took out HALF my hull in one shot, through the shields! The Miranda is constantly playing from behind.
And that's reasonable. After all, you're SUPPOSED to be using higher tier ships, with more hull by this point. Or better, BUYING higher tier ships with even more hull. Still, the fact that the hull really is the only thing holding the Miranda back right now is actually quite amazing, and probably means an all shuttle, or a Tuffli run, or whatever, is completely doable, since in most cases they have more hull than I do.
Anyway, next time, Broken Circle.
But today I had the day off and I went and ran Broken Circle. Oddly, I didn't find it any more difficult than any of the other missions in the Iconian War. Groups of ships are small and as long as I didn't outrun my support, I could do fine. Which is, of course, the first thing I did, resulting in my first of 3 deaths in the space portion of the mission. The other two came inside the sphere, where I just got overwhelmed and had everything on cooldown. Yay. Still not bad.
The fact that few of these missions have been hard or frustrating is probably because of all the support. In most missions, when you're alone, if you take a ship down in hull and die, you have a short amount of time to get back and engage it before it decides to return to it's waiting point, and it heals instantly when it decides to head back. Most of the time it's not an issue, you're usually close enough, other times, like the New Link, you're pretty far. Only options are to draw it to your respawn point, or get it to engage something, like a turret or Fleet Support.
But in the Iconian war, you are NEVER alone. There's always some form of support on the map, so they're always fighting. They never heal, so you have time to get back into the fight. Dying repeatedly is not punished, so even if you play subpar, you can get through.
Next time, though, is Butterfly, and that means the Borg return for one more round. Luckily I'll have the Lisest and the Annorax (don't look at me about the spelling, I don't know) as back up, but it's still time to plan an alternate build for this. I'm thinking of swapping to Tac Team (borg boarding parties suck), Hazard Emitters (feel the burn) and EPTShields (where did my shields go, ah, there we go).
I think that'll help counter the biggest issues the Borg have, the super Tachyon Beam and the shield neutralizer. I can hope the Iconian shield clears the neutralizer debuff, but when it doesn't, hazard emitters will do the trick. It'll also help clear plasma burns that the shield also doesn't clear. Tac Team will clear the borg boarding parties, but also shift over the shields when I start restoring them after the Borg take them out. Without BFAW I shouldn't TRIBBLE everything off as quickly, so I might be able to survive a bit longer. That means I need to swap around doffs, so I'll go looking later tonight. There's one for Hazard Emitters and one for Tac Team I want. Both will be very helpful.
In the meantime, here's a few images from Broken Circle, just to kind of show I was there: http://imgur.com/a/0AMKW
Until next time.
Went much better against the Borg than previous ventures. I think my build changes actually did as they were meant to. I ended up using my blue Tac Team reducer from earlier and the build and picked up a blue hazard emitter guy to make more healing for about 1 million EC. The very rare one was 2.9, and I really wasn't looking to spend that much right now, as well as I barely have that much on this toon.
I survived the first encounter with the Borg in the mission, even the "surprise cube!" portion. It appeared RIGHT in front of me. The second round I died twice. Once from simple attrition, it happens. The second death was when you're supposed to transmit while the Llisest defends you (I think I got the spelling right this time). Yeah, once the message was gone, and the plot flags started firing, the Borg killed me. I was dead as the cutscene played.
Still, it's done. Once I knew I could handle the Heralds, this was the last major hurtle I needed to clear, and did so very well. Future Borg encounters should go much smoother, so that's a plus as well. The prize here, though was the Omni-Directional Antichroniton Infused Tetryon Beam Array. It replaces my Ancient Omni-Directional Antiproton array, which has served me well since Sphere of Influence. Now though, it's time to move on from it, and prepare for the finale of this mess.
Midnight. I doubt it'll be that hard, especially on Normal, and I can handle the Hearlds now, so I'm confident. Any bets on the number of deaths? I'm thinking 2 myself. Should be fun. No pictures this time, but next time, I expect to have quite a few. Until then.
https://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/4omox6/tier_1_forever_midnight_build/
http://imgur.com/gallery/vraCu
But this one is probably the best:
Details later folks, time to relax on Risa.
Honestly, the hardest part was the last bit where the Annerox was opening the time portal. The number of Herald ships just plain increases the entire time. More and more of them, probably the most I've seen in one map since the starbase bit in Blood of Ancients. Unlike that group, I was in the middle of the spawn point! Yeah, I was bound to die at that point.
My first death was, actually, at the beginning of the map, so really there was quite a bit of time where I didn't die. It wasn't easy, I was constantly healing and fighting and clawing and hoping to kill the most dangerous ships (Baltim, Quas, everything else in order) before they killed me.
Overall, it wasn't too bad. The last shot, my Beauty Shot, came after finishing the ground portion of the mission (which isn't interesting since you can't fight on the ground with a Miranda, though that would be glorious and possibly result in fewer deaths, possibly).
Now I basically consider this the "end" of the challenge. After all, next I fight the Tholians, which aren't the most dangerous enemy I could face and I have fought them on several occasions (in queues, in the Crystaline Event, one mission) so i don't expect those two missions to be anything amazing. Then there's Time and Tide, which is mostly Kremin and Na'kul (however that's spelled), but I've fought the Na'kul in Temporal Front, at level 10, so yeah.
Midnight is the end of the main STO storyline, all the time travel stuff is bonus content, at least for now. As such, this was the overall goal of the challenge, and with that I can give a lot of notes and comments, a lot of them. But for the now I can give my conclusion to the challenge and that is that the Tier 1 Forever Challenge. . .
Isn't really that challenging. The game, on normal anyway, isn't that impossibly hard. The few places I got "stalled" were easy enough to get by with Fleet Support to help. Would I say any player can do it? No, especially newer players. While the game will go easy on you for the first half or so, once the Cardassian missions come along, the game stops hand holding, and when the Borg come out, the gloves are not only taken off, but dropped into a wood chipper.
Still, a more experienced player, like one who's been around since beta, or the launch of F2P should be able to handle it. Hell, even people who remember the days before Delta Rising could pull it off. It's about balancing powers and doffs, gear and traits. It's not impossible, and even many who declared they had to stop before Delta were overestimating how difficult things get. By then, the hardest challenges are done.
I had fun though, which was the point. The Miranda is a hard ship to build for, but not impossible. I died, but no more than my first run, on Advanced, through many of these missions. I have more respect for how powers line up and work together, how traits line up, and how important hull really is in this game. And I will continue to fly it on this character, um, well, forever.
I'll talk about the lessons I learned later. Thanks for following this thread and my adventures in the meantime.
If Starfleet had an equivalent for Dahar Master, you would have earnt it.
Practically impossible. Though if I ran this on Advanced, that would be far harder, but when it comes to the difficulty level, there's no point. No extra rewards, just more enemy health and more injuries. The Miranda is SO fragile that not dying in a mission is more something to remark on than how many times I died. I only managed it in one Iconian War mission, House of Pegh, and I'm pretty sure that was a fluke.
I want "Khan's Protege," personally.
Alright, some of the various lessons I learned. Hull is EVERYTHING. As I said, I could make up the lack of boff seats, consoles and weapons with some clever uses of traits and toy consoles, but nothing I did ever really made up for the Miranda's lack of hull. I kind of figured bleedthrough would be the death of me, so I went with Resilent shields early, and I focused on shields to try to limit how often my shields went down.
Partial mistake. Oh, it helped, yes, but I had so little hull, when the transphasics came out, or the crits came in, I suffered, a lot. Without any resists, energy or kinetic, I was just chewed up. The Crystalline console helped here as it provided some resists, as did skill investments. In the end, most of my deaths were due to attrition, taking lots of damage from multiple bad guys, rather than one or two doing all the damage. Didn't help when the Baltims showed up, but you know can't have everything.
The result was that some enemies did far, FAR more damage than others, especially the Borg. That lesson, that the Borg are actually dangerous as hell, was something I had long forgotten, and I bet most of you have too. ISA being used at the DPS gauge has minimized how nasty the Borg can be, and against the Miranda and it's limited abilities, they're murderous. They have the exact right tools to take down my shields then rip up my hull, all in one spherical package (because it's always the Spheres, ALWAYS the Spheres).
Which means out of the many enemies I THOUGHT would be the death of me, only the Borg actually exceeded my expectations. The other three, Undine, Vaadwaur and Heralds, simply couldn't bring the necessary sequence of abilities to crush me. In the end, I really had nothing to fear from them other than attrition, which because of the low hull and few healing abilities I was always going to die from.
That said, a lot of baddies surprised me. The Jem'Hadar, for the most part (I'll get to it) proved to be very weak vs the Miranda. The reason: no heals, no tricks. The exception, of course, came from the Jem battleship which did have all those tricksy abilities that wrecked my day. But otherwise, they simply relied on straight up damage and all that extra shielding I invested in made me more or less immune to the bulk of it. The Vaadwaur had the same problem, few tricks that I couldn't get around. In fact, the worst ability they have, the artillery barrage, I dealt with by flying head long at them, often tanking their cannon fire in the process.
Oddly though, some enemies surprised me. The Cardassians especially, I had a lot of issues with the Galor and up, and had to struggle to get through those fights. The Terran Empire ships did much the same, though that was mostly when I was fighting an escort and cruiser at the same time. The Hierarchy was a real pain, until I changed the build. Their ability to jam my sensors made my original torp build untenable, but swapping for the Vaadwaur cluster torp made them far easier. The Voth proved tough, but honestly it was just their massive health and shielding tricks that held me down. The Hirogen was VERY hard, probably the hardest enemy in the game. So many tricks, I just didn't have enough gear and abilities to deal with them.
So powers. Tachyon beam was the best power I used. Early on, it would easily rip down shields of just about everything, and even late in the game vs the Heralds, it would do a good amount. That said, I probably used Engineering Team far more, often cycling it with Miracle Worker during intense fights. Didn't help that there really wasn't much else to use in the Engineering slot. The power I found I used least, much to my shock, was Tactical Team. Despite using it on EVERY character and ship I have (11 other characters, multiple ships each), I abandoned Tac Team on even the original torp build at one point. It just didn't give me the flexibility I needed given the lack of powers I had. Beam Fire at Will replaced it after the beam build conversion and worked great, until I was ticking off one too many Coop ships, then I needed to swap to Overload.
The upgrade and crafting system probably made this far easier now than it would have been a couple years ago. Instead of struggling to get the gear I needed, I just upgraded pieces or build them on other characters. Rep gear was helpful at the end, of course, but not strictly required. I could have gotten away with the standard Resilent shield I was using before I grabbed the Iconian shield, though I probably would have had more instances of being disabled (and likely killed).
The toy consoles I used throughout were all very valuable. The Plasma Manifold was given up eventually in favor of the Crystalline console, but by then I had enough aux power to keep the Tachyon beam running at a decent level, and had more than enough shields to not die and engine power to give me a turn rate that wasn't below that of a potato. The Point Defense console was absolutely necessary to thinning out enemy formations, and Baltims, (I hate those). Antimatter Spread did exactly what I wanted it for, acting as part scramble sensors and part jam sensors, giving me time to get out of dodge or watch the baddies shoot each other (so much fun). The Crystalline console got the least use in the end, I just couldn't see the beams coming out so I didn't know how much and who it was hitting, though the energy resist was very helpful.
Fleet Support was the most important summon I used, I couldn't beat many missions without it. Nimbus Pirates were used when I couldn't use Fleet Support, but rarely. I never did use the Delta Summons, intended to during Midnight, but apparently they have a shared cooldown with Nimbus of 15 minutes! I was not expecting that, and I was done long before the cooldown finished. Temporal Negotiator worked when I needed it, but often if I needed it, I usually died not long after. The Subspace Modulator was available early, but just didn't have the staying power I would have liked (would have been nice if it acted as a polarize hull). Jevonite Hardpoints were nice, but expired on death. Helpful vs the Baltims. The Hull Patch batteries were amazing and I think I'll probably build a bunch on every character.
I think that's about it. Spent about an hour and half writing all that (while doing other things) so I hope that helps others in the future. Now I need to go hit the showers. Until next time.
This thread makes me want the Andorian T1 SO. MUCH.