beam boat captain

kroxen40

for a beam boat build is it best to go with a engineering captain or tactical?

peterconnorfirst

In space:

- Tactical will always have the best options for damage dealing (all weapons, exotics)
- Engineering captains have a slight edge in survivability
- Scientists have some minor benefits for team interaction as in de-buffs and buffs

Always remember only the few captain’s powers differentiate the classes, nothing more. Most parts of this game require damage dealing and the minor advantages of eng and sci captains can easily be made up with boff powers, traits and gear so a Tactical Captain is likely the best choice for your beam boat but be assured that all classes will work just fine.

Unknown

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davefenestrator

Yep, all 3 careers work fine for every type of ship.

Engineering is more fun and easier (for me) on the ground, thanks to mortars, turrets and drones acting to draw enemy fire.

telbasta7386

So here's the advantages as I see them:

Tactical gets attack pattern alpha, abilities to boost armor/shield penetration for weapons, and tactical team for a 50% team wide damage boost. They also have fire on my mark, which is good for debuffing boss targets. Everything about tactical is focused on dealing damage, so they get no real boosts to survivability or utility.

Engineering gets EPS power transfer / nadion inversion & the AoE power drain ability, all of which serve to boost your power levels dramatically. Power levels are hugely important in space content, and can make a big difference in ability effectiveness. Of all my characters, my engineers are the only ones that can consistently be at 100-125+ on all four power levels at the same time with pretty hefty uptime on that. Engineers also have miracle worker and rotate shield frequency, both of which boost survivability a fair bit, and their engineering fleet boosts healing and damage resistance. If you're going to want to use a lot of heals, tank, or use non-weapon abilities for utility or damage, engineering is probably the best choice.

Science is somewhere in the middle. They get a lot of debuffs: sensor scan to reduce enemy resists in an area (basically an aoe fire on my mark) and subnucleonic beam to drop a target's damage by a whopping 75%, which is useful against tougher boss enemies. They also get some boosts to survival/healing, with scattering field being an aoe/team damage resistance buff and co-opt energy weapons causing all enemies in an area to heal you instead of damage you with their guns. Science fleet gives both a damage bonus (20% IIRC, not as much as tactical fleet but still hefty) as well as healing and boosts to science skills.
Science also gets photonic fleet, which is hugely useful as both a defensive ability (since the photonic ships can draw aggro and distract enemies) and as a damage ability (because they can put out some pretty good numbers on their own).

ultimately, tactical gets the most damage, engineer gets the most survival, and science is a halfway point with more utility. Each one plays to different ship strengths, too - tactical getting attack pattern: alpha means you dont need to slot attack pattern omega on your tactical boffs, so if tactical seating is limited it's more of an advantage.