Returning Player

victorstella

Been out of the game for a couple of years or so and have a bunch of Zen to spend. I've got a level 57 Tactical captain and Avenger Battlecruiser. Looking for advice on current best ship for tactical captains, best space set, and best ground set.

victorstella

PS- Federation player. I have lots of Zen, not looking to play the lock box scam nor do I have much EC, Lobi, Latinum, etc. Once I get into a fleet I'm willing to buy space or ground sets from the star base if those are the best or pretty good sets.

davefenestrator

If you like the Avenger, the Arbiter is the T6 version with a nice mastery trait (damage buff from using Emergency Power to Weapons). Buy the C-Store version to start with since the Fleet version does NOT give you the ship's console or its mastery trait.

The Iconian reputation set is the most popular space set for DPS. You can earn the elite marks needed for gear by doing the last 2 ground missions on Kobali once a day.

davefenestrator

^ that's the Iconian deflector, shield, engine & core, not the console, beam, torp.

For beams, Antiproton is still king. I think crafted with Dmg/CrtD x 3 and Pen is still the favorite but I'm not a DPS chaser.

dracounguis

I'm no expert on best this or that; but the Arbiter Battlecruiser (aka Avenger Mk.2) is pretty good. Shares consoles with the Avenger, Good Starship Trait, can use Intel abilities; I find those the most useful of the specialty powers. If you got the cloak on the Avenger, it can use that too.

If so inclined to buy a 'bundle' of ships the 31st Century one has an escort, dreadnought and sci-ship. People seem to find the 31st Century ships to be 'best' C-store set atm. All have 'configurations' for playing roles of attack, defense or support. People say that the Temporal powers are strong, but I've never really found the best use for them. But can't say I've tried too hard either.

Oh, and the 31st Century ships are cross faction, so if you do have a Klingon or Romulan, they can use them too.
So decent value package.

The best dps space gear set still seems to be the Iconian engine/deflector/shield/core.
For ground, not sure. I just use whatever rep gear is newest cause I get bored of the older ones.

felisean

You might wanna have a look at the builds we published at sto-league.com. But be careful, right now we're running into a space revamp and some things might change soon.

Have a look especially at our discount builds, most of the stuff there is cheap or from episodes

Unknown

This content has been removed.

dumas13

Between the balance pass and being away for a few years, I'd recommend holding back on a ship just now. As someone who also came back after a long break, the game changes a lot after a year away. Get your new skills set up, decide on specializations for you captain and look into new boff powers, just generally get into the new flow of things before committing money. Maybe even make a new toon to check out revamped storylines and relearn the game at a gentler pace instead of diving in near max level. It sounds like you left after Delta Rising hit since that raised the level cap, so maybe the transition won't be quite as painful as it was for me. I'm not saying, "Don't buy anything," just "Sleep on it until you're used to the current state of the game."

That said, I very strongly second the Arbiter recommendation. It's an evolution of the Avenger that should suit you quite well if you enjoy using the older ship. The mastery trait is AMAZING for anyone running Emergency Power to Weapons, which is, well, anyone using energy weapons. If you think you might be interested in seeing the Romulan or Klingon storylines, I'd recommend buying the Battlecruiser pack to get that trait for all factions. All three ships are pretty good.

The 31st century set offers options for just about every playstyle and the Ouroboros is on the very short list of ways a Fed player can get access to a battlecloak. It's massive bang for the buck if you play multiple factions: three ships per toon for the same price as one each. Most of the traits are tied to Temporal abilities or exotic damage, so they may take some creativity to work, but they're all solid ships.

novafury

I too am a returning player and have no idea where to start with the new ship classes. I used to captain a Fleet escort of the Hermes/Dervish-class. Given the space revamp however, all my old data is probably moot.

I've heard torpedoes are terrible now. Why's this? Last I remember High-Yield and Spread were excellent. I know FAW was pretty great even in 2013, but apparrently it's gotten the nerfbat finally. Cannon rapid fire still a staple of the escort class?