New PS4 player at the earliest levels of the game. 3 Characters - Science and Engineer Federation captains and Klington Science Captain. Haven't found anything related to space combat yet on the web.
All I see is comments on having the highest dps for space combat. Are there not different types of tactics to use between the different types of ships or even between factions, say between an Federation Escort or a klingon Bird of Prey? An early mission with the Borg mentioned Janeway tactic but nothing was explained. Is there really no tactics?
Very hard to tell so early in the game. Try to get a feel to what to expect at end game and help with a direction on obtaining ships.
Thanks!!
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The classes just have different ways of approaching it.
There are very few missions where your class actually matters.
In some missions you might have slightly different objectives depending if you're engi/tac/sci.
But generally, you just want to blast things to bits as fast as possible.
Until they start adding more missions were blowing up the enemy is not the primary focus, there really is not much to differentiate the classes at end game. Just different ways to go about getting high DPS.
Just figure out which ships provide best dps (class doesn't matter), build them out, then point, start shooting and keep shooting till destroyed? Seems awful boring.
Yes, it's build your ship, choose your power set, choose your gear, learn the rotation and simple tactics for your power set. Done.
An escort with cannons is going to fly differently than a beam boat cruiser or a space magic science ship, but this is a casual game for people who like Star Trek not a hardcore tactical simulator ... IN SPAACE!
The different capabilities of the ship classes may steer you one way or another in how you achieve high dps.
Sci vessel may steer you towards a high partGens/Exotic damage build, while escorts may steer you towards a full on energy weapons build...and so on and so forth.
In the end though, PvE is pretty much all about DPS at this point in time. And captain class doesn't really play a major role.
Could be boring for some, I don't find that to be the case though. Been around for 3 years already, and still not sick of the game.
Even though end game becomes a one way road to higher and higher DPS.
That said, captain class still has some meaningful impact in PvP, granted, not as much as it used to, but not many people even PvP anymore due to massive powercreep since Delta Rising expansion.
And the really impressive DPS values one can hear in some missions are also the result of a lot of tactical use of abilities, good teamwork, and positioning, not just the weapons in use.
Yes, there are different types of tactics to use on different PvE maps. Currently I'm not familiar with what ones are on the consoles. But I'll speak about the ones just released for PC in the latest expansion:
Battle of Procyon V - the mission comes in 3 waves. Each wave is the same encounter, but with increasing number of enemies from a newer set of enemies, so by the third wave you have 3 types of enemies with a large variety of powers being used against you. The goal is to shut down portals. (Closing things is often the tactic in a lot of maps that go beyond straight damage races). The tactics used to complete this quickly on the highest level of difficulty revolve around push/pull powers that science BOFF powers utilize. So trying to bulldoze this map with straight DPS isn't the best or easiest way to complete it.
The Doomsday map for the Temporal Agents - This map is timed, and comes in 3 phases. Phase 1 is a dogfight in two spots so DPS is all that matters. Phase 2 is about slowing down an approaching planet killer. So this is more about flying between two points on the map, picking up an item, dropping it off in front of an immune enemy and then managing the enemies that spawn to come take that item away. And phase 3 is about transporting an item from point A to directly in front of the enemy at point B, while it does damage to you, and other enemy NPCs come to take it away from you, before the big planet killer gets in position and blows up the station.
Those are just two examples of maps that are not DPS centered. However, you will find the two most POPULAR maps in PVE space missions are Infected: The Conduit space map, (ISA for short ... which stands for Infected, Space, Advanced) and Crystaline Catasrophe (CCA for short ... which stands for Crystaline Catastrophe Advanced). These are the fastest maps to complete and are a straight up DPS race. The tactics that used to be needed to complete these maps have long since been either tweaked/nerfed or overcome by power creep. So it's just a straight shoot everything till its dead as fast as possible.
And THAT is what people are talking about almost alllllll the time when they talk about DPS is king.
Regarding the differences between ships, there are indeed big differences. Over the years the defining characteristics have been merged and blurred, but back in the day it was very basic. Fed and Klingon, no Romulans.
Fed had science ships, cruisers, escorts. Klingons had Raiders, battle cruisers, raptors and then carriers.
There's been a lot of crossover, as Klingons now have some science ships. Feds have some raiders. And carriers. Romulans were introduced and they have warbirds.
And so on and so forth. I can say this, a raider, which is a Bird of Prey, has all universal seating and thus ends up with one less weapon slot. They get flanking bonuses. They have battle cloaks. They have the best turn rates. They're fragile with less hull points. So they're small, fast, stealthy, do high burst damage, and are built to do fast, forward facing attack runs.
Cruisers on the other hand are big, slow, have high hull, 8 weapon slots and with power level management are basically built to lope around the map showing their broadside and fire beam arrays allllll day allllll night.
Remnant of the older story content. There are tactics, but not in that particular instance. As you level up you'll experience a lot more with the Borg.
Anyways, welcome to Star Trek. There's a 6 year head start that a lot of us on the forums have, so you'll see things like DPS is king and you have to remember the context. We're really only talking about a couple of maps, and not MOST of the game, where there's all kinds of other stuff you end up having to do. Usually it's click on things (like closing portals) or protecting things (like Deep Space 9 from an invasion by the Mirror Universe).
That being said, building for high damage makes everything die fast, so that's always going to be a good strategy for your ship builds.
There are definite distinctions between the ships. And there used to be a lot more distinctions between the factions but they've been blurred over the years. (For instance Feds did not originally have cloaking abilities at all. And to get that type of effect needed to use the Science power Mask Energy Signature).
These days the biggest differences you'll find is with the ships themselves. Escorts, Science ships, Cruisers, Battle cruisers, Destroyers, Carriers, Flight deck something somethings ... there's so many different variations. And Warbirds, don't forget about Warbirds. And there's a lot of different ways to build each one to maximize damage, and since it costs a lot of time and resources to build a ship out to its top potential, you'll need to focus.
For instance if you wanted to build a ship that did its top DPS with Torpedoes, you're going to need very different equipment than you would to build up a ship that uses beam arrays.
Class matters. The Skill tree matters. Tactical does DPS in a way that Science doesn't. Engineering's only real edge in damage potential right now is its ability to keep its weapons power above the cap for longer. And to get an idea on how that works, is pretty advanced tactics with this game's subsystem power mechanics. (EPS is DPS is the catch phrase you'll see ascribed to that generally).
Building them out takes a lot of time and resources. And the pointing and shooting part is really key. Piloting can swing your DPS results by 50 to 75 thousand Damage per second. I personally suck at flying. So even though my build is really kitted out, I need to fly better to get better results.
It's not that boring. But it can be a grind. So my advice is to take it slow. Enjoy the game and its story and just have fun with the journey. The forums are a great place to get advice, especially on builds and gear and ships and weapons. There's so much fun stuff you've got ahead of you to learn!
So science is space magic!
The Science Ship Build Thread is a fun place to start on here to really get an idea of how to build up a science ship.
hahahahahahah
well done.