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dadski
Member Posts: 5 Arc User
So first I'd like to say I'm pretty new to sto, just finished the complete story for the first time on federation character and more than half way on klingon. Just to give you an idea of how green I am when it comes to sto.
I tried looking for certain guides online, but google usually gives out stuff from 4 years ago, which I assume might be outdated.
I did, however, set my skills by a dps league guide for beam weapons.
I need help with the ship build and what to do next, somehow I think acquiring gear for the ship will give me plenty to do, so here it is.
My current ship is THIS
Odyssey Tactical Cruiser T5-X
Fore weapons:
- Diffusive Tetryon Dual beam banks MK XV (3x very rare and 1x ultra rare, dps + CrtH + CrtD)
Aft weapons:
- Omni-directional antichroniton infused tetryon beam array Mk XV (very rare)
- 3x Tetryon beam array Mk XV (very rare)
Deflector:
- Solanae deflector array Mk XV (very rare)
Impulse:
- Quantum Phase combat impulse engines Mk XII (very rare)
Warp core:
- Temporal Phase Overcharged warp core Mk XIV (ultra rare)
Shields:
- Solanae resilient shield array Mk XII (very rare)
Universal console:
- Aquarius escort
Devices:
Random stuff found laying around
Engineering consoles:
- Conductive RCS accelerator Mk XV (ultra rare)
- House of Martok defensive configuration Mk XII (very rare)
- Polaric Modulator Mk XV (very rare)
- Trellium-D plating Mk XV (very rare)
Science Consoles:
- Shield refrequencer Mk XII (very rare)
- Emitter refocuser Mk XV (ultra rare)
- Temporal disentanglement suite Mk XIV (very rare)
Tactical Consoles:
- 4x Tetryon pulse generator Mk XV (3x very rare, 1x ultra rare)
Bridge officers are
- tactical on universal Lt. commander seat with mostly beam abilities equipped
- engineer on universal Ens. seat and has "engineering team 1" for fast heal.
- Science station has "science team 1" and "hazard emitters".
- Commander Engineering slot is filled by borg drone which has "emergency power to shields", "auxiliary to dampeners", "auxiliary to structural;" and "aceton beam"
- Tactical on Lt. seat has "tac team 1" and "pattern delta"
In the recent upgrade weekend, I did take the opportunity to upgrade few things, mostly weapons, but on later research I found there's mixed opinions about tetryon weapons, mostly that they're suboptimal. However any discussion I found about them were several years old, so I have no idea how accurate that is today.
Overall I don't mind changing the build and finding new weapons (beams preferably), as well as any other equipment. It will give me something to do.
I hear fleet stuff is good, I did start working on my fleet bucks and am around 50k contribution so far (I think the store opens at 100k, so shouldn't take long to get there).
So what equipment should I change/get and how?
I tried looking for certain guides online, but google usually gives out stuff from 4 years ago, which I assume might be outdated.
I did, however, set my skills by a dps league guide for beam weapons.
I need help with the ship build and what to do next, somehow I think acquiring gear for the ship will give me plenty to do, so here it is.
My current ship is THIS
Odyssey Tactical Cruiser T5-X
Fore weapons:
- Diffusive Tetryon Dual beam banks MK XV (3x very rare and 1x ultra rare, dps + CrtH + CrtD)
Aft weapons:
- Omni-directional antichroniton infused tetryon beam array Mk XV (very rare)
- 3x Tetryon beam array Mk XV (very rare)
Deflector:
- Solanae deflector array Mk XV (very rare)
Impulse:
- Quantum Phase combat impulse engines Mk XII (very rare)
Warp core:
- Temporal Phase Overcharged warp core Mk XIV (ultra rare)
Shields:
- Solanae resilient shield array Mk XII (very rare)
Universal console:
- Aquarius escort
Devices:
Random stuff found laying around
Engineering consoles:
- Conductive RCS accelerator Mk XV (ultra rare)
- House of Martok defensive configuration Mk XII (very rare)
- Polaric Modulator Mk XV (very rare)
- Trellium-D plating Mk XV (very rare)
Science Consoles:
- Shield refrequencer Mk XII (very rare)
- Emitter refocuser Mk XV (ultra rare)
- Temporal disentanglement suite Mk XIV (very rare)
Tactical Consoles:
- 4x Tetryon pulse generator Mk XV (3x very rare, 1x ultra rare)
Bridge officers are
- tactical on universal Lt. commander seat with mostly beam abilities equipped
- engineer on universal Ens. seat and has "engineering team 1" for fast heal.
- Science station has "science team 1" and "hazard emitters".
- Commander Engineering slot is filled by borg drone which has "emergency power to shields", "auxiliary to dampeners", "auxiliary to structural;" and "aceton beam"
- Tactical on Lt. seat has "tac team 1" and "pattern delta"
In the recent upgrade weekend, I did take the opportunity to upgrade few things, mostly weapons, but on later research I found there's mixed opinions about tetryon weapons, mostly that they're suboptimal. However any discussion I found about them were several years old, so I have no idea how accurate that is today.
Overall I don't mind changing the build and finding new weapons (beams preferably), as well as any other equipment. It will give me something to do.
I hear fleet stuff is good, I did start working on my fleet bucks and am around 50k contribution so far (I think the store opens at 100k, so shouldn't take long to get there).
So what equipment should I change/get and how?
Post edited by dadski#5534 on
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Converting to A2B would be pretty nice. Will try and suggest an alternative but it'll require an investment in active duty doffs also... about 5-6 of them which again highlights A2B which needs 3 plus an emergency conn officer to reset evasive maneuvers with the use of emergency power to engines for increased mobility.
I'm wondering about using dual beam banks in front on a ship with a base turn rate of 6. Even with A2D doffed and up almost full time you might have all weapons on target more often by going to beam arrays in front. Adding a crafted omni in the rear as suggested would help but for me DBB's would be something I might try on a battle cruiser or escort that turns much faster.
With respect to boff abilities one thing that'll make a huge difference is having emergency power to weapons up all the time. Without this and even with your weapons power set to 'attack' there simply isn't enough to go around to power all those energy weapons adequately. You'll see this by looking at your weapons power level while firing - it'll be dipping way down so you'll be doing far less damage.
I personally don't think aceton beam is worth it but it does make for a nice radiation burn on boss npc's just for fun. The thing is that's a commander rank engineering skill being used just for fun once every 45 seconds when it could potentially be put to better use. Also A2D and A2SIF share a cooldown.
There's some tactical boff ability changes you might want to consider also. Lower ranks (1,2) of BFAW have a pretty high accuracy penalty now to the extent they're not really worth slotting so beam overload might be more appropriate. Attack pattern omega is cool in so many ways but has such a long cool down it's not usually worth it - put your highest beam boff ability there instead. Attack pattern beta (APB) would work great as it puts a damage resistance debuff onto what you're firing at for not only yourself but others as well.
Tactical -
TT1, APB1, BO3
BO1, APB1
This would require 2 very rare conn officers as active duty doffs to keep a single copy of tactical team up all the time to distribute your shields.
Engineering -
EPtE, RSP1, EPtW, A2D
ET
Active Duty Doffs -
A very rare Matter-Antimatter Specialist (A2D variant) on active duty would add energy damage resistance and extend the duration of A2D so that it's up 23 of it's 30 second duration. This would be a very powerful addition.
Your Lieutenant engineering ability reverse shield polarity would have a rather long 2 minute cooldown so you'd be keeping it for emergencies. If you were to go to an A2B build you could use it about once per minute. There's a doff that extends it's duration.
2-3 very rare Damage Control Engineers ( EPtX cooldown variant) would be needed to keep both EPtE and EPtW up almost all the time.
An Emergency Conn Hologram
So for active duty doffs this would bring you to over 5 unless you purchase the 6th from you fleet spire (near the tailor).
Active Duty Doff Total - 2x conn officer, 2x DCE, 1x MAMS, 1x emergency conn officer.
Hanging out at the B'Tran cluster and doffing for Technicians can be a pretty good idea as long as you're cool with running an A2B build. For cooldowns and power levels (aside from auxiliary power) it's highly effective but not for everybody. Abilities such as A2D rely on aux power levels so wouldn't be used with A2B.
Having Aux power can be just as much a beautiful thing as not having it and having your boff cooldowns near global. You have choices.
Funny how it's not so much a question of which equipment should I change/get but more what bridge officer abilities should I use and how can I get them into cooldown so I can use them as often as possible?
This I'm aware of, I just have no idea what's the standard. My klingon is in a fleet that requires 750k before having access to store, so 100k didn't look too painful to reach.
1. That I did not know, thanks for that.
2. So I changed my doffs as you mentioned and boffs abilities and it's brilliant. Takes a bit getting used to shorter cooldowns but rotations are pretty simple.
Yeah I wondered that myself quite often, I probably will try for something else. That coupled with what I red about tetryon is what prompted this post. I really don't mind changing the whole set.
TBH I used it so rarely I forgot what it does and forgot to use it all together. Only when I'm "in trouble" and start mashing buttons like a mad man.
I will make those changes, tbh I rarely use BFAW (I assume it's fire beams at will). Only time I used it was against swarms or the little drone ships. But even then it was rare.
Umm... I might need some elaboration. Not really familiar with abbreviations.
This guy I have. First pheonix box I opened, I googled what's worth taking and he was top of the list under rare.
I only finished the campaign episodes and that's pretty much only content I've played so far. This build was more than adequate. I really had no idea what to expect when making this post, so far I've just been winging it in hopes it works.
All information I have is from very old reddit posts (google search engine apparently forgot how to show newer stuff) and local chat here and there. Plus I really don't know what consoles to use for engineering and science.
-=BOFFS=-
My immediate suggestions for improvement would be to slot in Emergency Power to Weapons 2/3 and look for a copy of Kemocite Laced Weaponry(exchange/lockbox) to replace Attack Pattern Delta. The former will give you a damage bonus while keeping your weapon energy levels high(more damage). The latter will reduce enemy resistances(more damage) and give your weapons a chance to proc AoE damage blasts.
Secondly, it might be a bit of an investment, you'll likely want to transition into an Auxiliary Power to Battery build to reduce global cooldowns via Technician Duty Officers. Ideally, you'll want 3x Techs at purple quality for a 30% cooldown reduction per Aux2Bat activation. This will eventually let you avoid doubling-up on boff powers for near-permanant uptime.
-=TRAITS=-
You haven't listed any, and I presume you don't have much to work with yet. This is where the most real-money cost will potentially come from in buildcraft. Your first priority should be to obtain the Emergency Weapon Cycle trait. You can obtain the trait from owning either the Morrigu, Arbiter, or Kurak starships and leveling them up. This trait is fairly pivotal for most Energy Weapon builds due to the firing cycle haste and massive energy drain reduction while firing weapons. It means you hit for more damage and fire more often; fairly straightforward and applicable to any energy weapon setup.
If you want to specialize in beams, there are two paths - Beams: Fire at Will, and Beams: Overload. There are traits to extend the duration of each of these firing modes and maintain them closer to permanant uptime. For BFAW, there is Redirecting Arrays, which is available from the C-Store Tactical Miracle Worker Cruisers(Tebok, Tucker, Klothos). Beam Overload is a bit more expensive to extend; the respective trait is Superweapon Ingenuity and comes exclusively from the Xindi Ateleth lobi ship(this is NOT an account-wide unlock).
-=Damage Types=-
Honestly, pick the color you like most. Phaser and AP probably have the most accessible tools available to boost them, but any damage type is perfectly fine. For Tetryon, you'll probably want to look/lean into the Nukara Reputation for additional bonuses. There are some lobi set options, but those can get expensive and might not mesh very well with your beam setup.
Tactical team 1, attack pattern beta 1, beam overload 3
Beam overload 1, attack pattern beta 1
Emergency Power to engines 1, reverse shield polarity 1, emergency power to weapons 3, auxiliary to inertial dampeners 3
Engineering team 1
You're doing great - the choices you made were intelligent choices
For energy weapon focused builds, these are usually used to fill set bonuses(Like your Temporal Disentanglement Suite for the 2-set tetryon bonus) and provide damage bonuses via passives(Like a Polymorphic Probe Array for Anti-Proton builds).
Science consoles are typically used to enhance science builds; Engineering consoles are usually 'filler' slots for universal consoles unless you really need extra turn rate or armor. Tactical consoles are obviously used for boosting weapons.
Oof, some of those will have to wait. I already spent some coin recently on elite packs odyssey ship, upgrade of the mentioned ship and other various stuff. TBH not really fond of lobi system, but it is what it is.
Here's the updated link with traits. Yeah I don't have a lot to work with. Most are basic and then there's few I somehow got, I suspect reputation system.
I also have a doff that's not listed there on the website, Assault Squad Officer - Secondary shield from tac team.
Now that you have some technician doffs you can gradually ease up on doubling up powers as you increase your cooldowns with higher rarity technician doffs. Some of my earlier suggestions were made as an alternate choice if you decided to not use Aux2Batt and tech doffs for cooldowns.
TT1, APB1, BFAW or BO3
extra ability 1, & 2*
EPtE1, A2B1, EPtW3, A2B3
ET1
ST1, HE2
*one possible filler could be Best Served Cold from the winter event store, another would be Kemocite Laced Weaponry (exchange).
Check out Teacher Kirby's Video on Simple Keybinds. With less than an hours work you could bind your entire tactical and emergency power rotation to a single tray and key. It's easy to set up and it makes life very much simpler so that you can focus on your piloting. All you have to do is pick a convenient key.
EPtW3> EPtE1 > BFAW3 > APB1 > Kemo > BSC > TT1 > A2B1 > A2B1
Imagine NOT having to click on these 9 abilities repeatedly but firing them off in this order as they become available.
Setting this up will improve your game and quality of life significantly, yet all your boff abilities will still be there to monitor and use manually if needed.
I figured as much, probably will get one of those at some point.
Seems I was wrong about fleet store requirements and I think I can already purchase fleet stuff, I've been looking for the romulan boff in the embassy but am kinda lost and had to go afk. Will look for it a bit later.
I got Kemocite laced weaponry this morning, haven't used it yet though.
I'll need to work on my energy credits a bit to get all the stuff.
Yeah I will have to check that video out. The way I have it set up now is on the mouse.
My mouse has 9 extra buttons, 3 of which are on top that I can press with my index finger. So two of those are alt and ctrl (top row and middle row of the tray). Side buttons are numbers 5 to 9. But this sounds a lot more appealing if they can trigger when available.
EDIT:
Ok so I watched the video, it's basically a macro program. I'm pretty sure I can set this up with my mouse software, will just have to tinker with it a bit. I was unsure if macros were allowed, last game I played they were.
This will make things much much simpler.
The cool thing is your tray can stay exactly as it is now but all that clicking is greatly reduced so to enable a better focus on piloting and other things. The difference is amazing!
Even for casual players this can only be a good thing.
Imagine warping into a mission and thinking wow what a beautiful map Cryptic created. Then all of a sudden hostile aliens begin to fire at your ship.
Oh-oh... now I have to click on emergency power to weapons > beam fire at will > attack pattern beta > tactical team 1 over and over and over again. Oops... I just flew into an asteroid and blew up
Keep your focus on that beautiful map longer by tying your offensive rotation of abilities to a single key.
With this taken care of you have more time to focus on other things like firing torpedos, the occasional heal, and watching the strange alien ships detonate
You're still the captain and giving commands to your bridge crew but in a more efficient manner
Take the 10 day challenge and try it. You may never go back.
So far I got and upgraded the 2nd onmi beam as well as forward tetryon beams (250 degree ones, due to the turn rate).
I have managed to set up the keybinds, but I must have missed something as it's not working as it should (or I misunderstood).
Eg. activating tray 5, activates only one or two skills at a time, within the tray 5. It still makes things a lot easier since I just keep pressing one key and skills keep activating in order I wish them to.
New event that started yesterday will be a nice way to get Arbiter for emergency weapon cycle, or maybe Xindi Ateleth, since that one might be a tad harder to get.
If I understand it correctly, only way to get lobi crystals is from loot boxes (and I guess events like this)?
So if you have 8 doubled up abilities in the tray you'd have to press the key 4 times to fire them off each rotation.
Each rotation should take about 2 seconds to activate or 0.5 sec per ability.
The way I understood this is that as long you're not fundamentally changing how STO works for you it's ok (which is why 3rd party combat log readers are also accepted they don't change how STO works just but rather just make it easier to find the stuff you need).
For example a script that activates multiple abilities per key press is a ok, but a script that gave you + 200% damage on a keypress outside of power activations (essentially giving you a "free" buff) is not ok, note that activating an ability that gives you a buff is ok via a script (as long as you own said ability) but trying to essentially get "dev cheats" on the live server is not.
EDIT:Just to be clear I don't know how to make keybind macro let alone something that would intentionally break the game in my favor.
Using an out of game macro is not necessarily ok. Automation is not ok. Reverse engineering the game is definitely not ok.
Using the Star Trek Online's own key bind system is completely ok and shouldn't be confused with any of the above
People who click on their regular rotation aren't wrong in the method they choose to play however they've likely greatly underestimated the amount of time and attention they're spending on all that clicking and overestimated their ability to do this in an effective manner while still piloting their ship.
I was one of those people.
In my opinion it's very much worth giving it a try. I did and have not gone back.
It takes less than an hour. You get to save your text file. Using the file on a new character and dragging a handful of abilities to a chosen tray takes a couple minutes.
Everything else about your character stays exactly the same, including the way your tray looks and the ability to see what your bridge crew is doing and to manually supervise them whenever desired
I don't know. Maybe you need a certain number of posts before you can create a thread.
The board does not allow new users to create threads, you're a new user. Not sure what you mean by 'member since 2018' but we can see on your profile that your account was created the same day you posted this.
I guess he speaks about creating ARC account. Well, I'm still waiting for mentioned abilitiy of creating new posts
What a surprise! I just noticed I can post new threads