first of sory to disappoint u guys, but this is a call for help not an offering. altough i kinda know what im doing in the game, it still holds a couple mysteries to me. my main mysterie is what equipment to use with what skills and boff powers. for instance ive learned that skilling sensor array boost beam overload or is it target subsystems... hm see my issue here.
any help here would be welcome. ive seen some very good guides out there like the one for healing from faithborn. maybe someone knows stuff and can pour it into a nice thread or just put it up here.
for me its the science consoles and deflector arrays that give me issues vs skills and powers. dont get me wrong, i know my stuff and im probably geared to my fullest potential vs the way i want to play the game, but it want to get a better understanding at how all these things are intertwined.
thanks all
ps i put this in the pvp section cause i get the feeling this is the section that gets read by the people with the bigger understanding of those kinds of things, and im a fellow pvp'er
Skills:
Sensor Array Boosts target subsystems
To see which systems affect a certain skill open the description of the skill (press p and click on it). Most of them are described. I don't remember a source where to find a list for it at the moment, but you can always start with the skillbuilder found here
Equipment:
Here it really depends which ship you fly.
Weapons:
Weapon setups can easily be found in the subforums of the ships and discussions about it. Just try out what suits you best. General guidelines: stick to one damage type (phasers or disruptors or plasma or ...) and to one weapon type if possible for your skill-setup (either only cannons or only beams. if you fly a targte subsystem escort you need both, but else not). This will save skillpoints and makes boosting the damage easier.
Shield:
For PvP T1-4 as a FED I recommend a shield with Dis resistance - 90% of klingons will use disruptors, less the higher the tier. In T5 the weapontypes are mixed up too much, just go for cap, or if you really want to Dis and Antiproton.
For escorts it is always a covariant shield, for cruisers and science ships it depends on your tanking skills and how long you can stay on the field, sometimes a normal shield array for cruisers or a resilient for science ships is better. For the bonus in general aim for Cap. A shield array with 2x Cap is better than a covariant array with 2x regen
If you fly a ship with covariant shields you can drop your shield power to 25 and put it elsewhere (for example engines). The regen just isn't worth it and higher engine power is more evasion and less crits on you.
Engines:
Get rid of the efficient impulse engines at T4 and higher. They are too slow.
If you are an escort always fly with a hyper-impulse engine. It grants higher flight speed from 50 engine power and higher. As an escort you should always put as much points into engine power as you need to cap out the bonus defense you find under defense in your ship-status screen (to see it you have to fly on a map, and really fly, it depends on your flightspeed and therefore throttle)
With all the efficiency and performance bonus power in engines from T4 and higher the hyper-impulse excels there usually for every ship.
Deflectors:
Pick what suits your skills. Same with science consoles. In general its: Starship Operations boosts all science skills. deflectors, sensors and emitters boost all the skills in their tree:
deflector - deflector dish, deflector field, spatial anomaly
emitter - tractor system, hazard, photonic
sensors - sensor array, sensor probes, astrometrics
The skills you can skill from T3 on only boost the skills from their own system. This skills will share a global cooldown most of the time, but not always (for example science team benefits from deflector field but doesn't share a cooldown with feedbackpulse for example).
Use science consoles that either boost several of your skills and/or the most important one(s).
Engi consoles:
Get one EPS Flow console (from T3 on, below they are too expensive for you maybe and not that necessary). Get a second if your weapondrain is still higher than your regen, but don't waste all slots for EPS flow if you don't even need it. The other consoles depend on your flavour
Tactical consoles:
Stack consoles of the damagetype you use
How to behave:
Don't park your ship.
The slower you move the higher the chance to receive critical hits and lower the chance to evade fire
Switch power settings
Allocate power to how you need it. Flying with 100 shield power if you don't get attacked isn't very clever and flying with 100 weapon power while under SNB too. (with hyper-impulse engines you can often outrun SNB users with 100 engine power). Same with science skills. Some of them require a high auxiliary power setting. Before you use them switch to 100 aux, fire them, switch back. No need to fly with a mediocre aux all the time.
Know how to counter certain skills
Assist your allies
Attack enemies your allies attack. Share heals and counter effects applied on them. The more time the enemy needs to kill your ally the more time you got to hammer away on them freely. The faster one enemy drops the less damage they do. If possible take heals that can be shared on allies, not only self-heals
Follow the fuzzy, it does not lead you astray.... (yes it's a poke at your avatar )
The only note I'd add, be darn sure, they are talking about a PvP spec, and not a PvE one.
Also, some spec's are 1 dimensional. Ex. Drain carrier or DPS carrier. Neither exist, really.
Drain carrier won't do enough drain to make someone truly go, " OMG GET IT OFF!! " and DPS Carrier is just a FBP carrier, or a RF Turret one. The latter being of zero threat. (I've faced one before, and honestly, it was a joke. I didn't even need a hull heal to beat them.
Lastly, look VERY closely, at what you'd need to support that build type. Some require lots of ingame cash to get. TSS3, RSP3, or other BO trained only skills are tough to get. There is also the fact of, how hard to get the equpment, in terms of say, a antipolaron build, w/ same consoles.
PS. Some builds discussed, are just utter TRIBBLE. Take everything w/ a grain of salt, sit back, look at the big picture, and visualize it in your head. Is this a build that requires X, Y, Z to be effective, or is it a build that is single minded in purpose, and everything is towards that objective? Ask questions about it, and ask more about he answers to that. Use Tribble to test stuff, since it won't cost you stuff on LIVE servers. You can get a somewhat good feel about PvP, by doing PvE vs 3 spawns and 2 spawns. (ask a person to group w/ you, but not join the map) If it sucks in PvE, it will most likely suck in PvP.
a couple things not discussed in other threads, there is a new filter in your skill menu, top left is a drop down menu, it will only show the skills that affect the power selected(ground and space)
tricobalt torpedos are invaluable when facing carriers, they do tens of thousands of AOE damage, target the fighter in the middle, and then fly as fast as you can into the cloud and launch at under 2km, it will kill them all instantly (it does have a 1min cooldown though, so i like to put in itn the aft) .. it's also good at killing escorts on your butt. tactical team+target subsytem:shields+tricobalt@2km=dead escort in less than 5seconds.
sensors/sensor array, max them out, get a tachyon deflector shield, sensors/sensor array, increase the most powerful tactical and science powers, also increase energy(beam/cannon) weapon accuracy.
.. don't buy acc energy weapons, only get acc launchers.. the sensors will increase you energy weapon accuracy more, and the added crit % is way better, get 4% beams and cannons if you can... always!!
beam overload III is WAY more powerful than II ... it's one of the few that is. i get hit for 12-30k with beam overload III regularly in pvp. (shields full, 50% hull.. dead one shot).. yeah OUCH! .. and the dev's a rapidly trying to fix the beam overload problem, where once and while it sometimes takes your weapons offline for good.. lol.. they're trying
dont ever stack attack pattern alpha + omega if you're using rapid fire too, bonus is calculated on base damage, and alpha+rapid fire adds all but #5 of that + omega.. so omega only adds another 3%.. not the (fully spec'd, version III) 50% it says it will... people don't know that.. use then alternately. never stack them unless you get tractor beamed, then use omega to break free.
everything else is out there... use the search on each power your wondering about.. but use the new drop down in the skill menu first, then retrain if you need to, you get 1 with each promotion free.. so you should have a few free ones already.
You should use the new skill highlight thingy to figure out what skills affect what. You can also press P in space and read the power descriptions, they tell you what buffs what generally.
Basically science skills are setup like this:
(Almost) Every science skill is buffed by starship operations training.
Then they are buffed by one of 3 skills, deflectors, emitters, or sensors.
Then they are finally buffed by one of the tier 3-5 skills.
So lets say you have energy siphon and science teams as your main science skills. They are both buffed by the deflector skill. Energy siphon is also buffed by starship operations training and deflector dish. Science team is buffed by the science team leader and deflector field skills.
So, if you want to buff them both at once, you want to get a deflector dish with as much deflector skill rating as possible, like a graviton dish with [def]. If you get one which buffs deflector dish or deflector field then you're only buffing either energy siphon or science team, but not both (not including whatever deflector skill is already included on the thing).
Comments
General:
Start here http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=118581
A lot of guides for everything
Skills:
Sensor Array Boosts target subsystems
To see which systems affect a certain skill open the description of the skill (press p and click on it). Most of them are described. I don't remember a source where to find a list for it at the moment, but you can always start with the skillbuilder found here
Equipment:
Here it really depends which ship you fly.
Weapons:
Weapon setups can easily be found in the subforums of the ships and discussions about it. Just try out what suits you best. General guidelines: stick to one damage type (phasers or disruptors or plasma or ...) and to one weapon type if possible for your skill-setup (either only cannons or only beams. if you fly a targte subsystem escort you need both, but else not). This will save skillpoints and makes boosting the damage easier.
Shield:
For PvP T1-4 as a FED I recommend a shield with Dis resistance - 90% of klingons will use disruptors, less the higher the tier. In T5 the weapontypes are mixed up too much, just go for cap, or if you really want to Dis and Antiproton.
For escorts it is always a covariant shield, for cruisers and science ships it depends on your tanking skills and how long you can stay on the field, sometimes a normal shield array for cruisers or a resilient for science ships is better. For the bonus in general aim for Cap. A shield array with 2x Cap is better than a covariant array with 2x regen
If you fly a ship with covariant shields you can drop your shield power to 25 and put it elsewhere (for example engines). The regen just isn't worth it and higher engine power is more evasion and less crits on you.
Engines:
Get rid of the efficient impulse engines at T4 and higher. They are too slow.
If you are an escort always fly with a hyper-impulse engine. It grants higher flight speed from 50 engine power and higher. As an escort you should always put as much points into engine power as you need to cap out the bonus defense you find under defense in your ship-status screen (to see it you have to fly on a map, and really fly, it depends on your flightspeed and therefore throttle)
With all the efficiency and performance bonus power in engines from T4 and higher the hyper-impulse excels there usually for every ship.
Deflectors:
Pick what suits your skills. Same with science consoles. In general its: Starship Operations boosts all science skills. deflectors, sensors and emitters boost all the skills in their tree:
deflector - deflector dish, deflector field, spatial anomaly
emitter - tractor system, hazard, photonic
sensors - sensor array, sensor probes, astrometrics
The skills you can skill from T3 on only boost the skills from their own system. This skills will share a global cooldown most of the time, but not always (for example science team benefits from deflector field but doesn't share a cooldown with feedbackpulse for example).
Use science consoles that either boost several of your skills and/or the most important one(s).
Engi consoles:
Get one EPS Flow console (from T3 on, below they are too expensive for you maybe and not that necessary). Get a second if your weapondrain is still higher than your regen, but don't waste all slots for EPS flow if you don't even need it. The other consoles depend on your flavour
Tactical consoles:
Stack consoles of the damagetype you use
How to behave:
Don't park your ship.
The slower you move the higher the chance to receive critical hits and lower the chance to evade fire
Switch power settings
Allocate power to how you need it. Flying with 100 shield power if you don't get attacked isn't very clever and flying with 100 weapon power while under SNB too. (with hyper-impulse engines you can often outrun SNB users with 100 engine power). Same with science skills. Some of them require a high auxiliary power setting. Before you use them switch to 100 aux, fire them, switch back. No need to fly with a mediocre aux all the time.
Know how to counter certain skills
Assist your allies
Attack enemies your allies attack. Share heals and counter effects applied on them. The more time the enemy needs to kill your ally the more time you got to hammer away on them freely. The faster one enemy drops the less damage they do. If possible take heals that can be shared on allies, not only self-heals
The only note I'd add, be darn sure, they are talking about a PvP spec, and not a PvE one.
Also, some spec's are 1 dimensional. Ex. Drain carrier or DPS carrier. Neither exist, really.
Drain carrier won't do enough drain to make someone truly go, " OMG GET IT OFF!! " and DPS Carrier is just a FBP carrier, or a RF Turret one. The latter being of zero threat. (I've faced one before, and honestly, it was a joke. I didn't even need a hull heal to beat them.
Lastly, look VERY closely, at what you'd need to support that build type. Some require lots of ingame cash to get. TSS3, RSP3, or other BO trained only skills are tough to get. There is also the fact of, how hard to get the equpment, in terms of say, a antipolaron build, w/ same consoles.
PS. Some builds discussed, are just utter TRIBBLE. Take everything w/ a grain of salt, sit back, look at the big picture, and visualize it in your head. Is this a build that requires X, Y, Z to be effective, or is it a build that is single minded in purpose, and everything is towards that objective? Ask questions about it, and ask more about he answers to that. Use Tribble to test stuff, since it won't cost you stuff on LIVE servers. You can get a somewhat good feel about PvP, by doing PvE vs 3 spawns and 2 spawns. (ask a person to group w/ you, but not join the map) If it sucks in PvE, it will most likely suck in PvP.
tricobalt torpedos are invaluable when facing carriers, they do tens of thousands of AOE damage, target the fighter in the middle, and then fly as fast as you can into the cloud and launch at under 2km, it will kill them all instantly (it does have a 1min cooldown though, so i like to put in itn the aft) .. it's also good at killing escorts on your butt. tactical team+target subsytem:shields+tricobalt@2km=dead escort in less than 5seconds.
sensors/sensor array, max them out, get a tachyon deflector shield, sensors/sensor array, increase the most powerful tactical and science powers, also increase energy(beam/cannon) weapon accuracy.
.. don't buy acc energy weapons, only get acc launchers.. the sensors will increase you energy weapon accuracy more, and the added crit % is way better, get 4% beams and cannons if you can... always!!
beam overload III is WAY more powerful than II ... it's one of the few that is. i get hit for 12-30k with beam overload III regularly in pvp. (shields full, 50% hull.. dead one shot).. yeah OUCH! .. and the dev's a rapidly trying to fix the beam overload problem, where once and while it sometimes takes your weapons offline for good.. lol.. they're trying
dont ever stack attack pattern alpha + omega if you're using rapid fire too, bonus is calculated on base damage, and alpha+rapid fire adds all but #5 of that + omega.. so omega only adds another 3%.. not the (fully spec'd, version III) 50% it says it will... people don't know that.. use then alternately. never stack them unless you get tractor beamed, then use omega to break free.
everything else is out there... use the search on each power your wondering about.. but use the new drop down in the skill menu first, then retrain if you need to, you get 1 with each promotion free.. so you should have a few free ones already.
sci console and deflectors with the + deflector field apparantly buff the healing and resistance % of your science team.
sci console and deflectors with + emitters buff hazard emitters heals and buffs the time of your HE in effect
sci console and deflector with + sensors buff the time your jam sensors last.
what deflector dish does not sure, think its energy siphon and tachyon beam.
a deflector with simply the stat 'Deflectors' im still not sure what that does.
this way ive learned that my purple deflector dish is somewhat worse then a random green i found, dohh. (for my build that is)
Basically science skills are setup like this:
(Almost) Every science skill is buffed by starship operations training.
Then they are buffed by one of 3 skills, deflectors, emitters, or sensors.
Then they are finally buffed by one of the tier 3-5 skills.
So lets say you have energy siphon and science teams as your main science skills. They are both buffed by the deflector skill. Energy siphon is also buffed by starship operations training and deflector dish. Science team is buffed by the science team leader and deflector field skills.
So, if you want to buff them both at once, you want to get a deflector dish with as much deflector skill rating as possible, like a graviton dish with [def]. If you get one which buffs deflector dish or deflector field then you're only buffing either energy siphon or science team, but not both (not including whatever deflector skill is already included on the thing).