FAW vs BO options

revanmichaels

I was lucky enough recently to get the Xindi primate Dreadnought. I normally sell the alien ships for ec but I looked up the stats for this ship and after seeing its trait I decided to keep it. The extra BO charges work like the beam version of “weathering barrage” does for cannons. My conclusions so far.

Normally I try and set my highest tac slot on a ship to FAW, second highest to be a attack pattern and ens will be set to tac team or torps spread. The negative acc FAW gives you hurts unless you use a higher level version or include consoles that bump acc. So by going with BO I can now use other consoles with more useful features then acc.

But with the Xindi trait I’ve been able to flip the torp spread slot with BO. So now with BO1 and Spread3 I have been really impressed with how fast things die. Using just the “Arrest” trait and one slot of Holodeck Officer I’m pretty much able to maintain BO Non-Stop for the whole mission. This is freeing up other slots for traits and boff slots to do others things and I don’t have to use au2bat.

FAW works best if you can max upgrade your damage, but I’m finding out I can get away with using “good enough” beams with BO since it is still one shotting the weak npcs or 2 shotting most others. I am only missing the extra attacks in missions like “ Home” were you are swarmed by low HP npcs.

What is everyone else’s thoughts?

nightken

personally I've always preferred the single target beam/cannon skills. even huge neverending timer fleets aren't that much trouble with a tyken's rift and/or some other aoe skill.

davefenestrator

I like the visuals for BO, and Space Barbie is the real endgame

BFAW is nice to have for TFOs and episodes where you're facing masses of enemies, pets or destructible torpedoes. It's also nice for keeping rear weapons busy since we only get 1-2 omnis. The rest of the time BO is great.

rattler2

Single target can be just as powerful as multi target. Its just a different playstyle. Both are perfectly viable.

As someone who has flown the Xindi Primate Dread... its a pretty decent ship. The real charm of her though, IMO, is the hanger pet she comes with. The Xindi Primate Heavy Fighters, while bound to ONLY Xindi ships, are not something to take lightly. At the Elite level you can get from a fleet starbase, they start packing Torp Spread 3... with QUANTUM torpedos.

While you can only deploy 4 at any one time with the Dread... they are available should you ever get the Aquatic Carrier, which has 2 hanger slots and is a Xindi ship, thus able to mount hte Primate Heavy Fighters. 2 hangers of 4 Heavy Fighters... that can Torp Spread 3 Quantums... dear god. I honestly wish I had the T6 carrier rather than the T5.

Overall the Primate Dread is a good ship, pretty decently balanced, and has decent hanger pets.

I once tried to work the Primate Dread's trait with the Tholian Tarantula's trait. Problem was... the Tarantula's trait had a longer cooldown than the Xindi's. Was a good idea for synergy, but didn't work out in practice.

szerontzur

Beam Overload builds are a lot of fun with a lot of interesting synergies(especially with Coordinated Assault trait).. the game is a bit reliant on quantity over quality of enemies though.

Kemocite Laced Weaponry and Distributed Targeting boff skills can help you hit more targets per firing cycle if you have a means of bunching them all up beforehand.

revanmichaels

I’ve played around with using Distributed Target with a few builds with BO and the Xindi trait. but I end up having to drop my torps or the attack pattern to fit it in the build. This to me makes it a wash. It does work and is a different flavor. Your just swap one damage for another.

@rattler2 I’ll look into the Aquatic Carrier. You are correct in the pets hit hard with there torps. I like using the trait “I forget the name” but it’s the one that makes all pets/allies Fire torps when you fire them. With that trait and the BO, they made a Voth Dread think it was made of paper.

Unknown

This content has been removed.