Nausicaan disruptor set comes with set bonuses that really boost damage, add that to two piece Martok and its easy to jump ahead of where you'll be with another energy type.
In pvp you probably got vaped by someone using keybinds to put out massive spike damage, whilst not doing enough to really inconvenience them.
Keybinds - use an app to map a whole load of your clickable abilities to a key, usually the space bar, then activate the spacebard over and over to get activations faster than you realistically can by manully clicking or button pressing. The pilot is then freed from looking at their abilities tray and concentrate on flying instead, so its a win-win.
For added ease use a key mapping program, maybe like you'd get with a fancy gaming mouse or even a free one like autohotkey*, to map that keybind to as a toggle on a spare mouse button. So just click and it will spam say your dps buttons, click and again and it will stop, it could also be used to activate heals or an engineering rotation like A2D, EPTW, EPTS, anything you want activated quickly with minimal effort.
Some expensive gaming keyboards even come with additional macro buttons just for this. I know for a fact the Razer brand Synapse software has a toggle option on a drop down list that be applied to any macro, other brands are available I just happen to have a razer deathadder mouse. If considering laying down money for hardware check first that it will do what you want and has decent reliability.
* really powerful with a scripting language, but more effort than I can be bothered with.
Inventory upgrade is via cstore, there is a sale on right now, although you can store store ship gear on spare ships and the bank. You don't need the weapons in the tray, just set to autofire. The trays are setup by dragging the abilities there, so I'm puzzled by the question.
There are tokens that can be bought on the exchange that provide a pool of bonus rep points each time you get some points, they only cost a few hundread k. Just search bonus and you'll also find ones for fleet marks, XP and R&D, they drop from lockboxes and have little value to the STO rich people that have developed their characters.
Just an FYI for folks with Uncommon (green) Phoenix Box Tokens piling up.
I turned a stack of those in to get Bonus CXP, Bonus Fleet Marks, Bonus Reputation Marks, Bonus Fleet Credit as well as convert to Upgrade Tokens....using on my new Lethean character.
I am certain the Phoenix Box ones are not as nice as the Lockbox ones on the Exchange, but I had them on hand.
"Spend your life doing strange things with weird people." -- UNK
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
Starship traits come with primarily from T6 ships, plus some of those are in reward packs that can be bought on the exchange, some missions have a trait and some specialisations have one thats unlocked once all slots have been filled.
The best ones tend to directly increase damage for a broad range of circumstances or reduce cooldowns, whereas the worse ones tend to be mild heals or very situational.
I will admit, i am at a total loss when it comes to Star Ship Traits, as my Miricle Worker ship automatically came with an extention to beams fire at will when i recieve energy weapon damage, ............ how and where do i obtain additional Star Ship Traits to fill in the rest of those slots, can i earn them? Can i buy them? Where do i go, what will i need to obtain them......... as i see i can buy an additional slot from my Fleet, im not going to unless i can fill them all up.
Please help me here, try not to use abreaviations.
Just so you know, it doesn't 'automatically' come with it. Yes, you can unlock that trait by leveling the ship, but the trait doesn't take effect until you slot it as active. You can have 4 active star ship traits at one time and can unlock a 5th from your fleet.
These traits are bound to the Captain, not to the ship. What the means is.. lets say you level the T6 Arbiter Battle Cruiser and unlock the Emergency Weapons Cycle star ship trait. You then slot that trait so it is now active and you are receiving the benefits of that trait. Now, lets say you change ships and decide to fly your Miracle Worker ship instead.. you will still have Emergency Weapons Cycle active. You do not have to use Star Ship traits with that specific ship, you slot them on your captain and they work with any ship you are using.
Postinggum already did a good job explaining where and how to get traits, so I won't go into that. I just wanted to make you aware of this mechanic as it's not exactly clear to everyone.
Economically there is a huge cost difference between traits that come from a ship available to multiple or all your characters, thats cstore and freebie event ships, and those from single character unlock ships from lockboxes, promo box and lobi ships.
Cstore ships have an added complications:
A trait that is only available to a single faction is made freely available to all your other characters that aren't of that faction, provided that trait has not been released in a reward pack like for example Recipocity. Mostly this is fed ships that lack a rom/kdf counterpart. So you buy a fed ship like intel eclipse cruiser, unlock the trait, now your roms and klingons can get that trait for zero cost from the dil store.
Traits that are released across factions with each faction having their own ship, for example the excellent Emergency Weapons Trait from fed Arbiter, Rom Morrigu and KDF Martok. Buy just one and it only unlocks for that faction. Buy only one and you lose the opportunity to buy the pack in the future. Sometimes these ships are released in packs of three, or can be mega packs of three variants for each faction. Cryptic want you so spend money, thats up to you its not my dough.
Traits from single character ships.
Cryptic have a history of putting some very nice traits on super expensive ships, however not all expensive ships stay expensive and as you play you'll get richer. For example the Vonph carrier comes from a lockbox and early on traded 750m on the exchange, can now be had for 71m; the trait gives every boff ability good cooldown reduction when your ship is above 80% hull, thats potentially all your boff cooldown reduction met with a single trait freeing up other aspects of the build, better for pve than pvp, but lots of people only pve. To a vet player 71m per toon is not that expensive.
Reward pack traits:
Packs are faction specific and labelled as such on the exchange - don't by a fed pack and then be surprised a klingon can't open it
Generally are not very expensive, for example the pretty good trait Recipocity can be had for a klingon for 5m ec, about the price of a single key.
These traits tend to be either of the situational specific/not very good type, or cooldown for certain types of boff abilities, the value of the cooldown ones depends on your build - do you already have all the cooldown reduction you need and are you using that type of ability anyway, for example the Highly Specialized trait will be nice if you build around specialization abilities and useless if you don't.
At the other end of the price scale are the 1.5bn EC promo ships, like the T6 jemmy Strike ship that has a great pvp cannon trait - fine for the billionaire that pvps with cannons and useless for everyone else,
Don't forget the personal traits from Genetic Resequencer boxes, especially good for any build is Inspirational Leader for 3-4m. Also there are a bunch that apply to torps.
Dyson marks are the easiest marks in the game to game to grind, go to the ground battlezone in the dyson sphere at the weekend. If a particular instance is not progressing press M and then change instance.
Comments
In pvp you probably got vaped by someone using keybinds to put out massive spike damage, whilst not doing enough to really inconvenience them.
Some links
https://sourceforge.net/projects/sto-keybind/ the key binds application
some guides
https://sourceforge.net/p/sto-keybind/wiki/STO How Keybinds Work/
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Guide:_Keybinds
For added ease use a key mapping program, maybe like you'd get with a fancy gaming mouse or even a free one like autohotkey*, to map that keybind to as a toggle on a spare mouse button. So just click and it will spam say your dps buttons, click and again and it will stop, it could also be used to activate heals or an engineering rotation like A2D, EPTW, EPTS, anything you want activated quickly with minimal effort.
Some expensive gaming keyboards even come with additional macro buttons just for this. I know for a fact the Razer brand Synapse software has a toggle option on a drop down list that be applied to any macro, other brands are available I just happen to have a razer deathadder mouse. If considering laying down money for hardware check first that it will do what you want and has decent reliability.
* really powerful with a scripting language, but more effort than I can be bothered with.
Just an FYI for folks with Uncommon (green) Phoenix Box Tokens piling up.
I turned a stack of those in to get Bonus CXP, Bonus Fleet Marks, Bonus Reputation Marks, Bonus Fleet Credit as well as convert to Upgrade Tokens....using on my new Lethean character.
I am certain the Phoenix Box ones are not as nice as the Lockbox ones on the Exchange, but I had them on hand.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
The best ones tend to directly increase damage for a broad range of circumstances or reduce cooldowns, whereas the worse ones tend to be mild heals or very situational.
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Starship_traits
Just so you know, it doesn't 'automatically' come with it. Yes, you can unlock that trait by leveling the ship, but the trait doesn't take effect until you slot it as active. You can have 4 active star ship traits at one time and can unlock a 5th from your fleet.
These traits are bound to the Captain, not to the ship. What the means is.. lets say you level the T6 Arbiter Battle Cruiser and unlock the Emergency Weapons Cycle star ship trait. You then slot that trait so it is now active and you are receiving the benefits of that trait. Now, lets say you change ships and decide to fly your Miracle Worker ship instead.. you will still have Emergency Weapons Cycle active. You do not have to use Star Ship traits with that specific ship, you slot them on your captain and they work with any ship you are using.
Postinggum already did a good job explaining where and how to get traits, so I won't go into that. I just wanted to make you aware of this mechanic as it's not exactly clear to everyone.
Cstore ships have an added complications:
A trait that is only available to a single faction is made freely available to all your other characters that aren't of that faction, provided that trait has not been released in a reward pack like for example Recipocity. Mostly this is fed ships that lack a rom/kdf counterpart. So you buy a fed ship like intel eclipse cruiser, unlock the trait, now your roms and klingons can get that trait for zero cost from the dil store.
A few Cstore ships can be flown by all factions, for these all you characters can get those traits. This is the three ship temporal pack, which are nice ships with a generic design that lots of people don't like.
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Chronos_Temporal_Dreadnought_Cruiser
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Ouroboros_Temporal_Raider
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Eternal_Temporal_Multi-Mission_Science_Vessel
Traits that are released across factions with each faction having their own ship, for example the excellent Emergency Weapons Trait from fed Arbiter, Rom Morrigu and KDF Martok. Buy just one and it only unlocks for that faction. Buy only one and you lose the opportunity to buy the pack in the future. Sometimes these ships are released in packs of three, or can be mega packs of three variants for each faction. Cryptic want you so spend money, thats up to you its not my dough.
Traits from single character ships.
Cryptic have a history of putting some very nice traits on super expensive ships, however not all expensive ships stay expensive and as you play you'll get richer. For example the Vonph carrier comes from a lockbox and early on traded 750m on the exchange, can now be had for 71m; the trait gives every boff ability good cooldown reduction when your ship is above 80% hull, thats potentially all your boff cooldown reduction met with a single trait freeing up other aspects of the build, better for pve than pvp, but lots of people only pve. To a vet player 71m per toon is not that expensive.
Reward pack traits:
Packs are faction specific and labelled as such on the exchange - don't by a fed pack and then be surprised a klingon can't open it
Generally are not very expensive, for example the pretty good trait Recipocity can be had for a klingon for 5m ec, about the price of a single key.
These traits tend to be either of the situational specific/not very good type, or cooldown for certain types of boff abilities, the value of the cooldown ones depends on your build - do you already have all the cooldown reduction you need and are you using that type of ability anyway, for example the Highly Specialized trait will be nice if you build around specialization abilities and useless if you don't.
At the other end of the price scale are the 1.5bn EC promo ships, like the T6 jemmy Strike ship that has a great pvp cannon trait - fine for the billionaire that pvps with cannons and useless for everyone else,
Don't forget the personal traits from Genetic Resequencer boxes, especially good for any build is Inspirational Leader for 3-4m. Also there are a bunch that apply to torps.
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Genetic_Resequencer