Cheap End-game Ship Upgrade Project

tribbulater

Ok, what with the ongoing stream of events, seasons, reputations, et al., I had cause to poke through my captains recently. Only to discover that despite getting fairly consistent 2nd/3rd place in CCA (even some firsts), and not having trouble with any of the content I run really, if I actually *look* at my captains I discover ships fitted out with mark X (and even VIII) green gear, ground equipment I haven't upgraded since mk VI, etc etc.

Yes, there's lots of blue mk XII and even some purple in there (it's cheap after all), but overall my captains have apparently been filling out endless requisitions pleading 'for God's sake send us some decent gear!', while I the rear admiral have been drinking fine whisky and sleeping on satin sheets.

So I am looking to upgrade at least one decent ship for each of about 20 captains, and experienced advice on the most efficient/cost effective way to do this (because no way am I going back to sleeping on low thread-count cotton!). I have most of the event ships and giveaways, and have completed all reps except Lukari, have the AoY Mk XIII UR unlocked, and about 2,000 rep marks in each rep to spend (on every captain).

I'm not space rich so would like to do this as cheaply as possible. I have a fair number of Phoenix and other free/no dil upgrades. No Lobi to spend and a decent but not huge amount of Fleet credits available.

It's my understanding that the largest benefit comes simply from upgrading your weapon systems to Mk XIV, so that's where I will probably start.

If people could recommend a basic target of a ship, a weapon system, and maybe a couple console/item sets to get started with I would very much appreciate it. With luck we may get a couple designs that other people can also aim for to be moderately effective in end-game level content.

Any advice appreciated, thanks in advance!

jaguarskx

The ship you want to upgrade depends on whatever ship you want each captain to command.

The Iconian space set is still the best reputation gear you can get. The full 4 piece set give a good combination of defensive and offensive capabilities. You need to have 20 Iconian Data Cores to get the complete set.

http://sto.gamepedia.com/Iconian_Resistance_Starship_Technologies


I generally prefer Disruptor weapons for the moment. Therefore, I am going to point you to getting the gear in Echoes of Light to get the 3 piece Nauusican set which focuses on disruptor damage. You can also grind that mission to get very rare disruptor induction coil Mk XII. That gives you a beam array, torpedo and a universal console that will give a disruptor weapon bonus.

http://sto.gamepedia.com/Mission:_Echoes_of_Light


From the Terran Reputation I would get the Terran Task Force Disruptor Beam Array because you want to stick to one type of energy weapon damage and the Ferrofluid Hydraulic Assembly which increases the ship's hit points, weapon power and slightly improve torpedo cooldown time by 0.5 seconds. This two piece set will give you +13.3% projectile weapon damage.

http://sto.gamepedia.com/Terran_Task_Force_Munitions


The Delta Alliance Rep has a couple of consoles to get. The Bio-Neural Gel Pack gives you a little more power, improves shield capacity a bit and reduces cool down on all Boff abilities by 7%. The Neutronic Torpedo Launcher is a pretty good weapon since it can nerf enemy ship power for a short time.

http://sto.gamepedia.com/Delta_Alliance_Ordnance


You can't go wrong with the Assimilated Module and Kinetic Cutting Beam from the Omega Reputation. The two piece set power is pretty good.

http://sto.gamepedia.com/Omega_Adapted_Borg_Technology_Set


From the Iconian reputation I would also get the Sustained Radiant Field which give your ship +20% hull & shield healing as well as +10% to all weapon damage.

http://sto.gamepedia.com/Radiant_Armaments



I am not in a fleet, but when you have the resources I recommend getting the vulnerability consoles for disruptors which will replace the disruptor induction coils. I would use a mix of Exploiters (critical chance) and Locators (critical severity) depending on the ship's critical chance. Personally, I think critical chance of 30% is good enough so install Exploiters until you get to 30% (if you can). If you have free tactical console slots, fill them with Locators.

jaguarskx

Assuming you have the Kobali Samar cruiser, you should use the Regenerative Integrity Field console.

dracounguis

tribbulater wrote: »

So I am looking to upgrade at least one decent ship for each of about 20 captains,

First, cut that number down to 1. Makes life alot easier. Barring that, for ease, I'd say chose a path for each captain and stick to it:
Path 1.) Pick a Reputation, level it, buy it's gear when max level so it's all Mk12.
2.) Find a set of missions that reward some nice gear, run over and over till you outfit your ship. (My KDF ran "Boldy They Rode" 8 times for the Jemmy Polaron BAs, it was horrible, but 'free' weapons)
3.) Fleet gear, the Advanced level gives you choice of weapon type. Not terribly expensive.
4.) Exchange bargain shopping. Some good stuff there for cheap if you don't NEED! to have DMGx3 CrtD stuff. And T5 Rare lockbox ships can be had for as low as 2-5M EC. Quite a bargain. (But were more a bargain at 100k before Admiralty came along!)

And about upgrading stuff... I played with my Phoenix upgrades on Tribble (so they didn't get used 'for real') and the chance to proc a Quality upgrade sucks vs the Experimental ones you can craft. Tried 8 BAs upgraded from Mk2 and only 1 went to Ultra Rare. So I'd say craft a few Experimental ones (that give 2x quality) pop in 1.5xQuality booster (the 2x ones are horribly expensive) and that gives those Mk2 items a decent chance to proc a quality upgrade. Cause one or 2 Experimental ones will upgrade a Mk2 to Mk 8 or 9, so you lose the opportunity to add extra %s to quality chance till it had worse returns. Lower Mark things have a much better Quality chance than High Mark items. I assume someone has a "How to upgrade your items most efficiently" article out there somewhere...

Generally, I don't bother to try for Epic quality. It takes way too many upgrades to get it after your gear hits Mk10-Mk14. The Bonus Weekend coming up is nice in some ways, but bad in that it gets you to high Mk fast, but does nothing for quality. I would not be surprised if getting a Mk14 Epic actually 'costs' more during the Bonus weekend since you have to work on the quality at the end when it costs you more vs at lower Mk levels.

tempus64

@Op, Go check out Timberwolfs "budget" builds. They pretty much all just use free equipment, traits etc from missions. He doesn't really talk about it but I suspect the biggest EC outlay would be for DOFFs possibly. Of his more recent ones, I don't think I've seen a single budget setup doing less than about 30k in ISA.

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTimberwolf1701/videos

kodachikuno

farm the hell out of omega particles and build yourself a ton of omega upgrades, that will save you mountains of Dilithium

tribbulater

All right, excellent advice, thanks to all of you!

I hadn't really thought about how many separate items might be needed so I obviously won't be doing it all this upgrade weekend.

Steps being taken:
-Farming/buying cheap Omega parts where available.
-Realized I need more Fleet credits so farming up some of those also.
-Making a checklist of Jaguarskx's console/item suggestions and will begin working through those.
-Heading off now to check the budget builds from Tempus64's Timberwolf link.

Thanks again, I will post back with some numbers/resources/design info once I get further along.