Good Exploration Cruiser Build?

Comments

• baudl Member Posts: 4,060 Arc User

  January 2013 edited January 2013

  use this site to play around with different setups. ignore what i put in there it is for something else.

  Go pro or go home

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• reginamala78 Member Posts: 4,593 Arc User

  January 2013 edited January 2013

  I won't rebuild your whole ship for ya as its something you'll want to figure out yourself. I will offer a couple of STO 101 tips & tricks for ya though.
  
  1: In any ship you want to set up your weaponry to create a particular kill zone where you can bring most of your weaponry to bear, plus maybe a heavy weapon or two as a 'finishing blow.' For fast maneuverable ships, that usually means cannons or dual cannons in the front and turrets in the back, so they're all shooting at the same thing in the forward arc. In big slow-turning cruisers, the most common layout is 6 beam arrays, some fore some aft, so they can combine into a big single broadside. Circle your target grinding them down, then if you need to (its not necessary, but if you wanna), swinging in for a finishing blow from a dual beam bank with Overload or a torpedo or something. More than 6 beams gets to be too much power drain though and actually costs you damage, and while there are ways around that, its a good rule of thumb. There's more exotic setups, but as a starting point, cruisers fight broadside.
  
  2: You never want to mix energy types, like youre doing now with phasers and tetryon and plasma weaponry. Since your tactical consoles boost all your energy weapons together, and you can stack the consoles, you want to pick one kind and stick to it. Each type has its perks and none of them are BAD (though you never want to take plasma into PVP), but stick with one. If you don't, you'll be doing significantly less damage than you could, and you'll have people giving you a hard time in group missions for flying a Rainbow Boat (derogitory name for all the colorful beams).
  
  3: Bridge Officers. You don't have yours listed, and those make even more of a difference than weaponry. One popular trick cruisers can do so well, and makes them so difficult to kill, is they use 2 copies of Emergency Power To Shields. Even at level 1 its nice, but at 2 or 3 you become an absolute tank. The reason you run it is that it significantly reduces all damage to your shields, while giving you a heal and boosting your regneration rate in the process. With two copies of the power, you alternate so one is up while the other cools down, giving you a constant damage reduction and a decent-sized heal every 30 seconds besides. Get even more aggressive, load in 2 copies of Emergency Power To Weapons 1 (anything higher than 1 is wasteful), and start alternating every 15 seconds. Now you'll have extra weapon energy to keep up that broadside, and thick shields it ignore whatever they return fire with. Even endgame with a fancy c-store ship, thats still the cruiser standard.
  
  4: Energy. I'm going to guess you're still running balanced as most people still do at that stage in the game. Time to ditch that habit. Set your energy levels to Weapons 100, Shields 50, Engines 25, Auxiliary 25. With your weapons at 100, you'll do max possible damage and be able to handle the heavy drain from all your beams. Shields 50, plus the Emergency To Shields, will give you extra damage reduction besides and boost your regen. Engines 25, combined with some Combat Impulse Engines (which work better at low power) will be slow, but even 'fast' cruisers are still slow, so may as well free up some energy for your weapons and shields. Aux 25, because you don't have much use for it.
  
  If this stuff is things you already know and seems TOO basic, I just figure better too much info than not enough. We all had to start somewhere
  
  PS
  When you get to level 40, don't spend your Free Ship Token on a cruiser. Instead, go to the Exchange, and buy a Mirror Universe Star Cruiser or Mirror Universe Assault Cruiser for really cheap (a few hundred thousand EC is cheap, but a ship token at 120k dilithium isn't), and use that instead. Same stats and officer layouts as a normal Star Cruiser or Assault Cruiser, but just swapped appearances. Then you can spend your token on an Escort and have 2 Rear Admiral ships at your disposal, depending on your mood, instead of just the one.

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• archer586969 Member Posts: 0 Arc User

  January 2013 edited January 2013

  Thank you so much! This saved me a rage or two over getting blown up so easily.
  
  I'll put all this new info to good use!

  [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

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• ehgato Member Posts: 137 Arc User

  January 2013 edited January 2013

  1st sry for mi english.
  
  Hi im flying this one also and i was boring of beam setup so i take a torpedo (i know some ppl will say im crazy and lost a lot of dmg potencial) but ill doit for some fun, i run the ship like this ;
  
  fore = 2x beam plasma array + 2x transphasic torp
  aft = 2x beam plasma array + 1 transphasic torp
  
  some doff for reload torp (white run fine for now give almos constant torp fire)
  
  the ship is limited in the tactical so only can have topr spread 1 + TYH 2 but works fine so far ofcouse i dont do any pvp.
  
  I play half of romulan episodes with this setup and i was more efective than the first half with bveam build
  
  maybe bcs i has no need of run high energy wep preset an use this for shield some at engine and the rest on aux.
  
  almost hit lvl 40 and dont think in change back to beam build so far is more fun se explode anymis with they shield up but his hull fallen apart and burning for the plasma.

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