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black0utcreature
Member Posts: 5 Arc User
Hello everyone, this is my first time posting on these boards. Sorry if I ramble and I'm not 100% on the jargon.
So I was big on the game for a couple of years, then I just dropped out. This was about the time the Delta Expansion started. I just could not take the constant grinding.
But with everything happening in the world lately I've had a lot of free time, and I've been trying to get back into the game in the last two weeks. Figured with all the new content grinding probably won't be an issue anytime soon.
Trying to get back to it has been a lot harder then expected, especially with space battles. When I left I was level 58, through shear force of will I've been able to get myself up to a level 65 Admiral, but 75% of my space battles still go the same way - I show up, unload everything I have at the computers ship, don't even scratch their paint job, then they hit me with two torpedoes and I'm dead. The only thing that's helped me at all is the Nimbus Pirate Distress Call.
I thought I had a fairly strong ship and stats, and did not have anywhere near this much trouble holding my own in a fight before my hiatus. I'm flying an Andorian Kumari Escort, my weapons (aside from the Kumari Phaser Wing Cannons) are all Polaron beams/cannons and Quantum Torpedoes, all between Mk XII to Mk XIV. For my Shields/Impulse/Deflector I'm using the Jem'Hadar Space set, once again all between Mk XII and Mk XIV. All my Engineering Consoles are designed to increase damage resistance and hull restoration, my Science Consoles are for increased Shield Capacity and Restoration, and my Tactical Consoles are all for increasing Polaron or Quantum Projectile damage. I've been trying to improve things using the Skills and Traits systems, but I'm not 100% sure how they work so a lot of that is just swinging in the dark. Nothing I've done though is stopping my shields from crumbling like tissue paper the first time I get hit and not being able to last 10 seconds against a Warbird.
Does anybody have any idea what's wrong with my set up or what I'm missing? What's changed over the last five years that has me so far behind the curve?
So I was big on the game for a couple of years, then I just dropped out. This was about the time the Delta Expansion started. I just could not take the constant grinding.
But with everything happening in the world lately I've had a lot of free time, and I've been trying to get back into the game in the last two weeks. Figured with all the new content grinding probably won't be an issue anytime soon.
Trying to get back to it has been a lot harder then expected, especially with space battles. When I left I was level 58, through shear force of will I've been able to get myself up to a level 65 Admiral, but 75% of my space battles still go the same way - I show up, unload everything I have at the computers ship, don't even scratch their paint job, then they hit me with two torpedoes and I'm dead. The only thing that's helped me at all is the Nimbus Pirate Distress Call.
I thought I had a fairly strong ship and stats, and did not have anywhere near this much trouble holding my own in a fight before my hiatus. I'm flying an Andorian Kumari Escort, my weapons (aside from the Kumari Phaser Wing Cannons) are all Polaron beams/cannons and Quantum Torpedoes, all between Mk XII to Mk XIV. For my Shields/Impulse/Deflector I'm using the Jem'Hadar Space set, once again all between Mk XII and Mk XIV. All my Engineering Consoles are designed to increase damage resistance and hull restoration, my Science Consoles are for increased Shield Capacity and Restoration, and my Tactical Consoles are all for increasing Polaron or Quantum Projectile damage. I've been trying to improve things using the Skills and Traits systems, but I'm not 100% sure how they work so a lot of that is just swinging in the dark. Nothing I've done though is stopping my shields from crumbling like tissue paper the first time I get hit and not being able to last 10 seconds against a Warbird.
Does anybody have any idea what's wrong with my set up or what I'm missing? What's changed over the last five years that has me so far behind the curve?
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What boff abilities are you using? Is your power preset set to 'attack'?
Also unsure if mixing beams and cannons is helping things. Your ship really needs cannons front and turrets rear.
For boff's basically my opening volley is a mix of Torpedoes: Spread II, Cannons: Scatter Volley II and Beams: Overload I. Jam Targeting Sensors I and Wing Cannon Overload also if I could get them in. Back in the day I remember this doing real damage to the NPC's, even if they recovered somewhat. Nowadays though their shields don't even blink.
I also have a couple of shield strengthening/repairing boffs for when things get hairy, which is coming way too quickly nowadays.
For my power preset I originally had it set to Balanced when I returned. But since shields have been my issue lately I've been trying it on Defense the last few days.
And is it really better to drop my beams for cannons? I don't like the idea of being so dependent on a weapon with so little range. Or is that just something I have to accept for the ship I'm flying?
1. Right now I'm basically replaying the early episodes, so I'm fighting mostly Klingon and Romulan ships. I'm mostly able to hold my own against things like Light Warbirds and Corsairs, but the second something sturdier like a Battlecruiser or Dreadnought show up I'm toast.
2. I did not realize there was a difficulty setting. How would I adjust this?
3. It's a T5-U. How does this matter? And is there a way to change this or would I have to buy a new ship?
4. I also have a Patrol Escort, a Mirror Advanced Escort and a Support Cruiser Retrofit. Before I left I had been experimenting with loading different types of energy weapons on them, the idea being each ship would be fully loaded with a different type that I could switch at a moment to see what's more effective, or if I just got bored with one type. As I said, my Kumari Escort was meant to be my Polaron ship, the Patrol Escort my Tetryon ship, the Mirror Escort my Romulan Plasma ship, etc. I honestly never got very far with this idea and didn't even start equipping the Cruiser Retrofit.
I'll be honest, I really hate to give up on the Kumari Escort. Personal taste, I just think it looks the coolest, and it's the only ship I've, y'know, spent actual money to get. But do you think one of my other ships would hold up better?
5. I've explained some of my BOFF's above. I also have Torpedoes: High Yield I, Beams: Fire at Will I and Cannons: Rapid Fire II Which I use during the cooldowns.
6. Also, as I said above, since shields seem to be my problem lately I've been trying to max out my defense, while keeping weapons between 50-75%
For Traits, I've mostly been focusing on defensive ones since Shields have been my big issue so I figured I'd try to max them out. Hasn't really helped. What Traits do you recommend?
First weapon power set to 100. This is a must and is unquestionably a big part of your difficulty. An escort lives longer by killing the stuff shooting it. You have none of the survivability of a cruiser or even science ship. There are only very rare circumstances where diverting power from weapons is ever a good idea on an escort.
Boff powers I know you've got more than what you said, in engineering and science powers, and tactical commander slot you haven't mentioned. However for a short term fix use canon rapid fire 2 or 3, and high yield torpedo 2 or 3. Fit in attack pattern beta, probably APB 1. This will give you a single target focus, and if you can start killing them off one by one, you can start to hit and run if you must. Double up on them since you probably don't have much in the cooldown reduction.
Now, to be clear, how you use them matters. Aside from engineering team and science team, the heals typically are more useful as preventative because they have resistance bonuses which help you keep your shields/hull, and are better for that than the small heal. For tactical powers, obviously you want to use them when you're ready for an attack run.
As others have said, use cannons and turrets only. The range fall off issues are fixed by long range targeting in your skill tree.
For difficulty settings from the wiki, "To change your base difficulty level for solo content, go to your "Options", and under the basic tab is a setting to change your default difficulty level." I never change it more than once in a blue moon so I think that's still accurate. I'm not sure why you'd be facing dreadnoughts in the early missions even if you set elite difficulty for some reason, but I don't know what they've done to them and they are also going to play very different at low levels than high levels due to scaling.
Also try doing the Argala delta quadrant patrol mission and to maybe get a better test of your staying power. Kazon are not particularly difficult.
A T5U is fine and should be serviceable, so that's not an issue. The normal T5s don't scale up through the later levels as T5U and T6 does so you'd have a lot less hull and shield than you are 'expected' to. There are T6 versions of the Andorian ships in the Cstore, but I wouldn't buy them if you're struggling with the T5U.
A few things from the conversation above:
If it were me I'd be using your Patrol Escort for the time being just due to it's bridge officer layout making life easier.
You can check what difficulty level you're set to play missions at by pressing J to bring up your mission journal and then clicking on the "in-progress" tab at the top and checking the difficulty level displayed at the bottom of that page. It should be set to normal.
For missions it doesn't really matter what Tier of ship you use. Tier 5 is fine.
Beams and cannons don't really mix well. Pick one type of weapon. Now you only have to be concerned with buffing one type of weapon instead of several types so your damage will go up. You have a couple of escorts and their boff layout and turn rate is really designed for all cannons front and turrets rear. Cannons do exceptionally well in-game.
Going increasingly defensive doesn't necessarily work out well. For either of your escorts the play style that works is the exact opposite in fact taking advantage of the spike damage and maneuverability available to you. Tanking the bad guys would be for your cruiser.
Going defensive with your power levels also doesn't work well at all as you have 6-7 beams or cannons & turrets starved for power and not doing much damage. Your power level preset should be set to attack with your weapons power set as high as it will allow.
Not using attack pattern boff abilities like attack pattern beta (debuff your targets damage resistance) and in the case of the Kumari perhaps attack pattern omega (buff yourself) is likely holding you back a fair bit as well.
The net result of going defensive (turtling) is that the bad guys are wearing you down but with practice you should be able to eliminate as many of them as possible in your opening volley so that your not taking as much damage.
Energy weapon need power (the more the merrier - emergency power to weapons), an attack pattern like beta, and a firing buff like BFAW 3 or beam overload or cannon scatter volley/rapid fire. Having tactical team 1 up all the time will take care of distributing your shields.
Using your Patrol Escort as an example a sample boff layout might look something like this for a cannon build:
Tac: Tactical team 1, attack pattern beta 1, cannon scatter or rapid fire 2, cannon scatter volley 3
Tac: Tactical team 1, attack pattern beta 1, torpedo spread 3 or beam overload 3 or even an emergency copy of AP Omega
Eng: Emergency Power to Weapons 1, Engineering Team 2 or Auxiliary to the Structural Integrity Field 1
Eng: Emergency Power to Shields or Engines 1
Sci: Polarize Hull 1 or Science Team 1, Hazard Emitters 2.
For emergency power abilities you could run 2x EptW without using active duty doffs for EPtX cool down and could even move one copy up to EPtW2 and use ET1.
A sample opening volley would look something like TT1->EPtW->APB->CSV then repeat again with your second copies.
I realize that torpedos are a canon part of Star Trek but you really should try running 3-4 dual heavy cannons / + 1 dual cannon front and all turrets rear. You'd be amazed at how fast things on the receiving end blow up.
For specializations I'd recommend trying Intel primary and Strategist secondary.
I followed everybody's advice about my weapons, and I swapped out all my beams for turrets and cannons. I also adjusted my Power Preset to give everything it can to Attack. This did give me noticeable improvement in my offense, but my shields still feel like they collapse way too easy whenever I encounter anything stronger then a Light Warbird.
That said, with heavy use of the Nimbus Pirate Distress Call and Photonic Fleet (and skipping over The Vault because I so did not feel like dealing with a shuttle mission right now), I was able to power my way through the end of Romulan Mystery arc and start on the Cardassian Struggle arc. I'm only two episodes in, but I'm finding my shields are holding up much better and I'm having a much easier time holding my own against the Cardassian and Mirror Universe ships then I did against the Romulans and Klingons. Maybe the Jem'Hadar Space Set is just incredibly weak against Disruptor damage?
I'm gonna try to play around with my BOFF abilities next, and over the weekend I'll see about arming up one of my other ships and see if I have an easier time with it.
Once again I want to thank everybody for their help with this.
If you're feeling 'too squishy', the two main culprits are likely your Deflector and Skill Tree. There are a myriad of things you can do to improve/contribute to your ship's survivability, but I'd suggest starting with those two.
The Jem Hadar mission-set Deflector is heavily tuned towards Science Vessels with emphasis on boosting Control and Drain with NO defensive stats. The Shield from the set is decent, but I'd strongly recommend picking up a deflector from the exchange with more defensive/healing stats, or switching to the Quantum Phase("Stormbound") or Solanae("A Step Between Stars") sets. The Former is more shield-healing focused, the latter is very offensive while favoring hull.
Later, you'll probably want to graduate to the Discovery Reputation Set, or build towards a Fleet-hybrid(Colony Deflector/Spire Warp Core with Competitive/Discovery Rep Engines and Shield) setup.
As for Skill Tree, that's fairly beefy discussion, but even having a just few points in basic shield/hull capacity/restoration and Shield Hardness can make a pretty big difference. With a ship as glassy as the Kumari, it's probably worthwhile to compensate with your skill tree if you're really in love with the ship. (It'd be a good idea to consider upgrading to one of the T6 versions at some point as well - you can still use the Kumari appearance on them while gaining access to Pilot Maneuvers.)
Just keep in mind, these days save up your DIL and then acquire 10 Packs of the Phoenix Pack from the DIL Store, and if you wait for a 2x Event it can really boost several items to max level.
It always nice to see new players returning...
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Aegis_Technological_Research
While it is outperformed by newer reputation and some mission reward sets, it is easy to obtain and will give you time to breath while you move through missions and reputations.
But once again, thanks to everybody for their help. Between me getting my abilities back and the advice you've given me I was able to finish off the Cardassian Struggle and Borg Advance missions, skipped over New Romulus (I remember those missions being very repetitive) and the Solanae Dyson Sphere (most of which isn't repeatable), finished the Delta Quadrant stuff I never got to (I really hope I never have to hear Harry Kim bicker with his zombie ex-girlfriend ever again), and started the Iconian War, which is the first stuff that's completely original to me.
Hold on.. YOU started the Iconian war?
We were desperately trying to find the culprit who fired the opening volley in that one.