As for the Tier 5 ships you are limited to your faction ships and the generic (or lockbox) ships, for example if you are playing a Fed-Rom you cannot use the Federation Tier 5 ships but you can use the Chel Gret (Breen ship) or the Orb Weaver (Tholian science ship)
Yes they can, outside of a few special boffs as long as their equipment is removed they can be traded and trained by any of your friends and fleetmates
doff xp can take a while but it's less ... tedious since you get many benefits for little investment on time (see contraband and dilitium)
you can level through various PVE content instead of the story including the mirror universe, borg red alerts and the defera invasion zone
originally romulans had full access, this was changed so that they can only use romulan ships at T5 and not allied ships(sorry no romulans in an excelsior)
hit me up if you have any questions while you're in game @emperordeslok
Other players can help me get certain BOFF skills?
You can trade a BOFF to another player who has the desired Skill and have them Train the skill for you. They then trade the BOFF back to you.
How does one level an alt through doffing? Just earning experience via completing DOFF missions? That seems like it would take awhile....
It can take a little time but not much player time. You log in twice a day and pick and clear Doff missions. 10-15 minutes a day of time can have a character to level 50 fairly quickly.
Yeesh, what did you do instead of the story missions? That whole leveling through doffing thing?
You can level only doing Patrols, or only doing DSEs, or only doing Exploration - or any combination of them. I once leveled a character to 50 only doing Foundry missions - and you can use Doffs too.
I'd be interested in knowing the answer to this as well, even if I do plan on mainly sticking to Romulan ships on my Romulan character.
No. Roms can't claim a T5 allied ship.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
you have Nukara, new romulus and the defiari homeworld as Endgame zones, but those are more or less like dailys in WoW.
The STFs are, as you mentioned, STOs version of Endgame "Dungeons", but there are the fleet actions aswell, (fleet starbase defense) Vault shuttle event, and some more.
About the Ground STFs, good luck finding a team, people tend to stay away from those.
About the Group setup, it does not matter, the threat system fpr the NPCs is useless anyway, so "tanking" is more or less a question of luck.
About captain and ship type, you can mix and match as you want, but Eng -> Cruiser, Sci -> Sci and tac -> Escort is the most effective way, coming mostly from your Skills and passives,
Sci has Photonic capaciator as passive, reducing your Photonic Fleet Cooldown of 4 Minutes by 20 Seconds for each science skill used (10 second ICD) which means, in an ideal world,
you will be using Photonic fleet and then another sci skill every 10 seconds, the larger ammount of SCI boff skills on a Sci ship supports this.
Escorts and Tacticals, well, all of your skills give you a damage increase, so it makes sense to use the ship class with the biggest "bang" which are Escorts, as they can equip cannons and have the aggility to keep them on target.
And cruiser tend to have the strongest Hull, while Eng captains have the best Skills to keep going and repair the Hull (even two times in a row, thanks to the passive, "Grace under fire")
So, you see, the right captain in the right ship, is quite an efficient thing, but, its not game changing.
As above, you can match any career with any ship and there is the ideal match-up.
After time you'll start getting a feel for what your preference is whether you like zipping around DPSing in an escort, walking up to a bunch of enemy ships and beating the heck out of them (tanking) or like using "magic" different technological abilities to slow or damage the enemy ships.
I've personally does the escort and tanking... just started playing with Tactical and Science.
DPSing in an escort is fun but I personally like tanking. My main is an Engineer in a cruiser, he can get moderate to high DPS and can take the punishment as well. With the inherent engineering abilities and A2B BOff layouts, he can keep power going to all systems most of the time to keep beams at top output and keep shields up.
Between abilities, character skills, bridge officer (BOff) abilities and matching the right weapons and consoles any career can be very fun to play.
Star Trek Battles Channel - Play Star Trek like they did in the series!Avatar: pinterest-com/pin/14003448816884219Are you sure it isn't time for a "colorful metaphor"? --Spock in 'The Voyage Home' SCE ADVISORY NOTICE: Improper Impulse Engine maintenance can result in REAR THRUSTER LEAKAGE. ALWAYS have your work inspected by another qualified officer.
As for the Tier 5 ships you are limited to your faction ships and the generic (or lockbox) ships, for example if you are playing a Fed-Rom you cannot use the Federation Tier 5 ships but you can use the Chel Gret (Breen ship) or the Orb Weaver (Tholian science ship)
originally romulans had full access, this was changed so that they can only use romulan ships at T5 and not allied ships(sorry no romulans in an excelsior)
No. Roms can't claim a T5 allied ship.
I kinda figured that was the case, but I always like to be sure.
Yes they can, outside of a few special boffs as long as their equipment is removed they can be traded and trained by any of your friends and fleetmates
You can trade a BOFF to another player who has the desired Skill and have them Train the skill for you. They then trade the BOFF back to you.
Ooh, cool. I'll have to keep that in mind if there's ever a higher level BOFF ability I want, but can't get easily.
doff xp can take a while but it's less ... tedious since you get many benefits for little investment on time (see contraband and dilitium)
you can level through various PVE content instead of the story including the mirror universe, borg red alerts and the defera invasion zone
It can take a little time but not much player time. You log in twice a day and pick and clear Doff missions. 10-15 minutes a day of time can have a character to level 50 fairly quickly.
You can level only doing Patrols, or only doing DSEs, or only doing Exploration - or any combination of them. I once leveled a character to 50 only doing Foundry missions - and you can use Doffs too.
I dunno...it might come down to personal preference, but it still seems like simply running through the story missions is less tedious than having to seek out and/or grind through the more basic mission types; though I did seem to have to do a patrol or three on my Federation character anyway, as I would occasionally be just short of the rank needed for the next story mission.
I suppose leveling through the Doff system might be nice if you want to level an alt while still primarily playing on your main, though.
"There will never be enough blood to wash away my need for vengeance! A single world...I could destroy a million worlds and it would not be enough! Your existence is an insult to the memory of my people! I will continue my fight, even if I must fight alone!"
As above, you can match any career with any ship and there is the ideal match-up.
After time you'll start getting a feel for what your preference is whether you like zipping around DPSing in an escort, walking up to a bunch of enemy ships and beating the heck out of them (tanking) or like using "magic" different technological abilities to slow or damage the enemy ships.
...
Between abilities, character skills, bridge officer (BOff) abilities and matching the right weapons and consoles any career can be very fun to play.
That's kind of what I'm doing now: playing with the different career and ship types to see what I find fun. As of right now, I've messed with a Romulan engineer in a cruiser, a Klingon tactical officer in an escort, and am currently testing out a Starfleet science officer in a science vessel. I specifically wrote this up to make sure that, whatever combination I decided upon, I'd still be able to have fun with that combination if I gave the endgame a try.
I've personally does the escort and tanking... just started playing with Tactical and Science.
DPSing in an escort is fun but I personally like tanking. My main is an Engineer in a cruiser, he can get moderate to high DPS and can take the punishment as well. With the inherent engineering abilities and A2B BOff layouts, he can keep power going to all systems most of the time to keep beams at top output and keep shields up.
I actually usually prefer to tank in most MMOs I play, which is one of the reasons why I went engineer/cruiser to begin with, since that seemed the most "tanky". However, as much as I like being able to shrug off damage that would splatter anyone else, another reason why I like playing a tank is the idea of drawing the enemy's attention away from my allies, which apparently works a little differently in this game. That, on top of how sluggish the cruisers seemed, is why I've been considering having an escort in addition to or even instead of a cruiser. However, I still plan on going back and giving the cruiser another try, and use some of the advice about them I've picked up in this thread.
"There will never be enough blood to wash away my need for vengeance! A single world...I could destroy a million worlds and it would not be enough! Your existence is an insult to the memory of my people! I will continue my fight, even if I must fight alone!"
you picked tetryon weapons and didn't take the omega set so i'm suprised, also your armor combo is better replaced by 2x netronium(you're missing a lot of resists on abalative only(specifically antiproton and polaron)
and there's quite a bit of wasted potential in your skill build(too many 9's that don't help you much and too many imporant 0's)
As I mentioned, I'm currently messing around with playing a science vessel and I've noticed that, rather than a straight healer, it actually seems more like a controller or buffer/debuffer, especially with the right BOFF abilities. So, I was wondering, are any of those kind of science vessel abilities particularly useful in endgame or other group situations?
For example, a couple of my current favorite science officer BOFF abilities include Tachyon Beam and another that I believe is called Sensor Scamble. Tachyon Beam drains the shields of a target by a decent amount and Sensor Scramble causes enemies to temporarily target each other instead. I've been using Tachyon Beam to help strip away the shields on enemies- particularly larger ones, but the CD is short enough that I can use it on a few smaller ships in a group, too -and I've especially had fun using Sensor Scramble on groups of smaller ships; they make surprisingly short work of each other, particularly fighters, and I'm usually just left with finishing them off when the dust settles.
So, are either of those abilities equally as useful in, like, the Borg space STFs? Would Tachyon Beam be great for softening up the larger Borg Cubes, or is it usually faster to simply tear through their shields the old fashioned way? And, likewise, would there be a use for Sensor Scramble in STFs? I recall that there are some groups of smaller Borg vessels in some of the STFs. Or again, is it usually simpler to just shoot them down?
Actually, do any of the placate or hold-type science abilities work against the Borg at all? Even in Elite STFs? I ask because I know that, in some MMOs, CC-type abilities can sometimes have reduced effectiveness on certain enemies in harder endgame PVE content.
Oh, and finally, are the Subsystem Targeting ability innate to science vessels of any use, either? They have fairly long cooldowns, and the only one that seemed to have any real noticeable effect was the Target Engines ability. Otherwise, it seemed like Tachyon Beam did more damage to an enemy's shields than targeting their shield subsystems did....
"There will never be enough blood to wash away my need for vengeance! A single world...I could destroy a million worlds and it would not be enough! Your existence is an insult to the memory of my people! I will continue my fight, even if I must fight alone!"
As I mentioned, I'm currently messing around with playing a science vessel and I've noticed that, rather than a straight healer, it actually seems more like a controller or buffer/debuffer, especially with the right BOFF abilities. So, I was wondering, are any of those kind of science vessel abilities particularly useful in endgame or other group situations?
The problem with the STFs is that Gozer designed them to be DPS-centric. 5 Escorts can with relatively easily while 5 Cruisers or 5 Science Vessels can struggle. This means people generally try to push you into an Escort if you're doing STFs. That's not to say that Sci can't be useful, but most of the time the players are just looking for more direct DPS when grouping.
Oh, and finally, are the Subsystem Targeting ability innate to science vessels of any use, either? They have fairly long cooldowns, and the only one that seemed to have any real noticeable effect was the Target Engines ability. Otherwise, it seemed like Tachyon Beam did more damage to an enemy's shields than targeting their shield subsystems did....
Sci abilities are generally dependent upon your Aux value. When you're soloing you generally don't have a high Aux as you're trying to keep your Weapons up as well, so you're probably not seeing the sub-system targeting having as great an effect. If you're running Aux in the 100+ range you can get a lot more benefit out of them.
So Sci ships generally have 2 different play-styles: mid-Aux when soloing and high-Aux when teaming - to get the most use out of your buff/debuffs for you and your teammates.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
As I mentioned, I'm currently messing around with playing a science vessel and I've noticed that, rather than a straight healer, it actually seems more like a controller or buffer/debuffer, especially with the right BOFF abilities. So, I was wondering, are any of those kind of science vessel abilities particularly useful in endgame or other group situations?
For example, a couple of my current favorite science officer BOFF abilities include Tachyon Beam and another that I believe is called Sensor Scamble. Tachyon Beam drains the shields of a target by a decent amount and Sensor Scramble causes enemies to temporarily target each other instead. I've been using Tachyon Beam to help strip away the shields on enemies- particularly larger ones, but the CD is short enough that I can use it on a few smaller ships in a group, too -and I've especially had fun using Sensor Scramble on groups of smaller ships; they make surprisingly short work of each other, particularly fighters, and I'm usually just left with finishing them off when the dust settles.
So, are either of those abilities equally as useful in, like, the Borg space STFs? Would Tachyon Beam be great for softening up the larger Borg Cubes, or is it usually faster to simply tear through their shields the old fashioned way? And, likewise, would there be a use for Sensor Scramble in STFs? I recall that there are some groups of smaller Borg vessels in some of the STFs. Or again, is it usually simpler to just shoot them down?
Actually, do any of the placate or hold-type science abilities work against the Borg at all? Even in Elite STFs? I ask because I know that, in some MMOs, CC-type abilities can sometimes have reduced effectiveness on certain enemies in harder endgame PVE content.
Oh, and finally, are the Subsystem Targeting ability innate to science vessels of any use, either? They have fairly long cooldowns, and the only one that seemed to have any real noticeable effect was the Target Engines ability. Otherwise, it seemed like Tachyon Beam did more damage to an enemy's shields than targeting their shield subsystems did....
Basically, your weapons when you are young (10-20) have a different synergy old (40-50). You'll have a huge weapon tray, multiple weapons etc. Basically just play the game and when you get there you'll understand. Things get so complicated you may want to look up how to bind powers to keys.
The bottom line is that you can make anything work. What is important is that you have fun doing it.
My first go round I used tachyon beam 3 -> tractor beam repulsor -> tachyon beam . This allowed me to get a double shot of tachyon beam on a target. It was fun, but now I find other builds more effective.
Ex-CoH players, Please add the chat channel "CoX STO"
Thanks for linking that thread! Reading through it actually answered a lot of my questions and confirmed a few of my concerns regarding science vessels and science abilities....
The problem with the STFs is that Gozer designed them to be DPS-centric. 5 Escorts can with relatively easily while 5 Cruisers or 5 Science Vessels can struggle. This means people generally try to push you into an Escort if you're doing STFs. That's not to say that Sci can't be useful, but most of the time the players are just looking for more direct DPS when grouping.
The bottom line is that you can make anything work. What is important is that you have fun doing it.
In the end, I think these two points, which have already been stated a couple times in different forms in this thread, are what I really need to keep in mind as I go foreword in STO. If I can make cruisers and science vessels work for me and have fun in them, that's great, and I shouldn't stress too much about STFs, especially if I end up joining a friendly and accommodating fleet. If it turns out I prefer playing an escort after all, that's great too: I don't have to work as hard make myself viable in STFs and I'll presumable already be having fun flying one.
Thanks once again for all the advice, guys. Sorry some of my posts and responses could get a bit on the long and/or rambling side at times. ^_^;
"There will never be enough blood to wash away my need for vengeance! A single world...I could destroy a million worlds and it would not be enough! Your existence is an insult to the memory of my people! I will continue my fight, even if I must fight alone!"
There are a lot of us who run Elite GROUND STFs. My fleet being one. If you take the time to learn the ground game it is quite fun. If you just run in and shoot you are missing most of it and will die quickly and fail Elite STFs. There are strategies and tactics to ground that can be a lot of fun, but most players just want to run and shoot and get the mission over with as soon as possible, and that mentality is not fun to me.
If you're not going to run an escort in STFs, focus on abilities that will synergize with your teammates. Gravity Well is a great one. It clusters up enemy ships, forcing them to eat each others' warp core breaches. Also, don't underestimate Transfer Shield Strength and Hazard Emitters. They're both really effective and can free up a damaged teammates to get more aggressive, plus there's a few STFs where there are NPC allies which should be kept alive (Cure Found, for example).
Well built Cruisers (and I'm talking Captain build) as you can do Elite STFs easily with White MkX gear in ALL Cruisers.)
The simple fact is: As long as everyone in your team can pull 3K DPS; you'll be fine (and 3K DPS is really easy to do with any ship type IF you read up on the game and build accordingly; 5K in a Cruiser should also be fairly easily attainable. It's when you try to break 10K+ in a Cruiser that y9ou really need a good build, good weapons, and good piloting/maneuvering/keep your targets in the best weapon arcs for max firepower playing skills.)
Also, I've been in groups where the person in the escort was pulling under 1K DPS (and yes, at first I thought something was wrong with my parser; but other Fleetmates had seen the same thing when PUGing Elite STFs.
I honestly laugh when I see the myth perpetuated that - "You can only be really successful in elite STFs with Escorts/Tacs" as that's honest just not the case at all.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Elite Ground STFs have considerably less popularity for several reasons.
1. Season 7 largely invalidated any reason to play them, as now it's simply about grinding marks until you finish, then PAYING THROUGH THE NOSE to get anything out of it. Before, you had to pummel each specific STF to get the desired set piece you wanted, thus enforcing the need to play, if not master, all of them. Now? You grind ISE until you vomit, then you're done.
2. It is considerably harder for a single player to carry his less than competent teammates. Whereas a space STF like ISE can be solo'ed by a single well-equipped and skilled player, and it doesn't matter how utterly worthless the rest of the team might be, a ground STF typically requires strong participation from at least 2-3 players and a passable effort from the others. Incompetence results in failure.
3. Ground STFs are often considerably longer, in large part due to factors like "number of enemies that must be killed" and "distance you have to cover relative to your speed". This means that Generation ADHD finds it difficult to focus, as they have the attention spans of epileptic hamsters and bladders the size of walnuts.
4. Ground STFs drop loot of inferior value. Ground equipment is generally poorly valued relative to its space counterparts and demanded in far reduced quantity even at the high end. A ship can use over a half a dozen guns. A man can only use two, and he's going to prefer set piece items anyway, so much of this stuff has little to no demand.
5. Unlike pre-S7, there is now a hard limit on how quickly an individual can usefully gain anything: You can't digest your marks any faster, so after the first STF, you're pretty much done and there is little incentive to keep going, unlike S6, where STFers would often hit them back to back, bouncing from STF to STF in search of the elusive Proto Tech. Now? You do your STF, you get banned from that STF...you've eaten your fill, you're done for the day.
6. Finally, to top it off, ground STF are less popular because they are less popular. This may seem circular, but the fact of the matter is that no one queues because no one queues. So when you queue for a ground STF, and it doesn't pop, eventually you just stop bothering...or even if you do, you queue for another space one at the same time...and it pops, taking you away from the ground one.
This sorry state of affairs has now existed for sometime, and given the churn rate of Generation ADHD, this means there now exists an entire generation of STFers who have never really touched ground, have no idea how to play it, and often simply don't.
Elite Ground STFs have considerably less popularity for several reasons.
<< snipped list of very true statements to save space >>
This sorry state of affairs has now existed for sometime, and given the churn rate of Generation ADHD, this means there now exists an entire generation of STFers who have never really touched ground, have no idea how to play it, and often simply don't.
To add to your excellent list:
8. Ground STFs are significantly more difficult, especially the optional components. In space the optionals are typically just time gated. On the ground they are things like "you have 10 seconds after crossing this invisible line to prevent a civilian from being killed. Complete this 6 times, and one single failure blows the optional for everyone". Given that the line in question is honestly invisible, and there is no in-game text to help you figure this out, you can imagine how rarely the optional succeeds.
9. Ground bosses can be impossible for certain teams to defeat. This is mostly a reference to Armek of Borg and the Queen, but can happen on any of them. Unlike space where you can wear down the enemy by repeatedly respawning and rejoining, all of the ground battles have a lockout, so if one team member is killed they cannot come back to help. If all are killed the fight starts over from the beginning with the boss at full strength.
10. Ground Objectives require coordination between multiple players, not just straight damage. For example, protect 4 locations that are out of firing range from each other while simultaneously activating glowies in the right sequence.
11. Ground enemies that cannot be defeated by damage alone. For example, the turrets that have invincible shields and someone needs to walk inside of them and activate a bomb while other players distract its fire. Otherwise it resets itself to full health and you start over every 30 seconds until you get it correct.
12. Ground enemies that invalidate entire builds. Armek of Borg, for example, has chain damage powers that are capable of team wipes if an engineer sets up turrets or mortars.
There is nothing remotely like any of this in space. Many people just don't want to learn how to handle the ground missions because the level of frustration is enormous. In space you can try a normal difficulty and learn as you go. On the ground, it's nearly impossible to learn by trial and error, someone has to teach you. And really, how many people are willing to listen?
Comments
doff xp can take a while but it's less ... tedious since you get many benefits for little investment on time (see contraband and dilitium)
you can level through various PVE content instead of the story including the mirror universe, borg red alerts and the defera invasion zone
originally romulans had full access, this was changed so that they can only use romulan ships at T5 and not allied ships(sorry no romulans in an excelsior)
hit me up if you have any questions while you're in game @emperordeslok
It can take a little time but not much player time. You log in twice a day and pick and clear Doff missions. 10-15 minutes a day of time can have a character to level 50 fairly quickly.
You can level only doing Patrols, or only doing DSEs, or only doing Exploration - or any combination of them. I once leveled a character to 50 only doing Foundry missions - and you can use Doffs too.
No. Roms can't claim a T5 allied ship.
As above, you can match any career with any ship and there is the ideal match-up.
After time you'll start getting a feel for what your preference is whether you like zipping around DPSing in an escort, walking up to a bunch of enemy ships and beating the heck out of them (tanking) or like using "magic" different technological abilities to slow or damage the enemy ships.
I've personally does the escort and tanking... just started playing with Tactical and Science.
DPSing in an escort is fun but I personally like tanking. My main is an Engineer in a cruiser, he can get moderate to high DPS and can take the punishment as well. With the inherent engineering abilities and A2B BOff layouts, he can keep power going to all systems most of the time to keep beams at top output and keep shields up.
Between abilities, character skills, bridge officer (BOff) abilities and matching the right weapons and consoles any career can be very fun to play.
SCE ADVISORY NOTICE: Improper Impulse Engine maintenance can result in REAR THRUSTER LEAKAGE. ALWAYS have your work inspected by another qualified officer.
I kinda figured that was the case, but I always like to be sure.
Ooh, cool. I'll have to keep that in mind if there's ever a higher level BOFF ability I want, but can't get easily.
I dunno...it might come down to personal preference, but it still seems like simply running through the story missions is less tedious than having to seek out and/or grind through the more basic mission types; though I did seem to have to do a patrol or three on my Federation character anyway, as I would occasionally be just short of the rank needed for the next story mission.
I suppose leveling through the Doff system might be nice if you want to level an alt while still primarily playing on your main, though.
That's kind of what I'm doing now: playing with the different career and ship types to see what I find fun. As of right now, I've messed with a Romulan engineer in a cruiser, a Klingon tactical officer in an escort, and am currently testing out a Starfleet science officer in a science vessel. I specifically wrote this up to make sure that, whatever combination I decided upon, I'd still be able to have fun with that combination if I gave the endgame a try.
I actually usually prefer to tank in most MMOs I play, which is one of the reasons why I went engineer/cruiser to begin with, since that seemed the most "tanky". However, as much as I like being able to shrug off damage that would splatter anyone else, another reason why I like playing a tank is the idea of drawing the enemy's attention away from my allies, which apparently works a little differently in this game. That, on top of how sluggish the cruisers seemed, is why I've been considering having an escort in addition to or even instead of a cruiser. However, I still plan on going back and giving the cruiser another try, and use some of the advice about them I've picked up in this thread.
http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=corjet20_3265
He's a Toe-to-Toe Engineer type person.
you picked tetryon weapons and didn't take the omega set so i'm suprised, also your armor combo is better replaced by 2x netronium(you're missing a lot of resists on abalative only(specifically antiproton and polaron)
and there's quite a bit of wasted potential in your skill build(too many 9's that don't help you much and too many imporant 0's)
As I mentioned, I'm currently messing around with playing a science vessel and I've noticed that, rather than a straight healer, it actually seems more like a controller or buffer/debuffer, especially with the right BOFF abilities. So, I was wondering, are any of those kind of science vessel abilities particularly useful in endgame or other group situations?
For example, a couple of my current favorite science officer BOFF abilities include Tachyon Beam and another that I believe is called Sensor Scamble. Tachyon Beam drains the shields of a target by a decent amount and Sensor Scramble causes enemies to temporarily target each other instead. I've been using Tachyon Beam to help strip away the shields on enemies- particularly larger ones, but the CD is short enough that I can use it on a few smaller ships in a group, too -and I've especially had fun using Sensor Scramble on groups of smaller ships; they make surprisingly short work of each other, particularly fighters, and I'm usually just left with finishing them off when the dust settles.
So, are either of those abilities equally as useful in, like, the Borg space STFs? Would Tachyon Beam be great for softening up the larger Borg Cubes, or is it usually faster to simply tear through their shields the old fashioned way? And, likewise, would there be a use for Sensor Scramble in STFs? I recall that there are some groups of smaller Borg vessels in some of the STFs. Or again, is it usually simpler to just shoot them down?
Actually, do any of the placate or hold-type science abilities work against the Borg at all? Even in Elite STFs? I ask because I know that, in some MMOs, CC-type abilities can sometimes have reduced effectiveness on certain enemies in harder endgame PVE content.
Oh, and finally, are the Subsystem Targeting ability innate to science vessels of any use, either? They have fairly long cooldowns, and the only one that seemed to have any real noticeable effect was the Target Engines ability. Otherwise, it seemed like Tachyon Beam did more damage to an enemy's shields than targeting their shield subsystems did....
Sci abilities are generally dependent upon your Aux value. When you're soloing you generally don't have a high Aux as you're trying to keep your Weapons up as well, so you're probably not seeing the sub-system targeting having as great an effect. If you're running Aux in the 100+ range you can get a lot more benefit out of them.
So Sci ships generally have 2 different play-styles: mid-Aux when soloing and high-Aux when teaming - to get the most use out of your buff/debuffs for you and your teammates.
No, but that's my opinion.
Here's a thread: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=11680781#post11680781
Basically, your weapons when you are young (10-20) have a different synergy old (40-50). You'll have a huge weapon tray, multiple weapons etc. Basically just play the game and when you get there you'll understand. Things get so complicated you may want to look up how to bind powers to keys.
The bottom line is that you can make anything work. What is important is that you have fun doing it.
My first go round I used tachyon beam 3 -> tractor beam repulsor -> tachyon beam . This allowed me to get a double shot of tachyon beam on a target. It was fun, but now I find other builds more effective.
Ex-CoH players, Please add the chat channel "CoX STO"
Thanks for linking that thread! Reading through it actually answered a lot of my questions and confirmed a few of my concerns regarding science vessels and science abilities....
In the end, I think these two points, which have already been stated a couple times in different forms in this thread, are what I really need to keep in mind as I go foreword in STO. If I can make cruisers and science vessels work for me and have fun in them, that's great, and I shouldn't stress too much about STFs, especially if I end up joining a friendly and accommodating fleet. If it turns out I prefer playing an escort after all, that's great too: I don't have to work as hard make myself viable in STFs and I'll presumable already be having fun flying one.
Thanks once again for all the advice, guys. Sorry some of my posts and responses could get a bit on the long and/or rambling side at times. ^_^;
The simple fact is: As long as everyone in your team can pull 3K DPS; you'll be fine (and 3K DPS is really easy to do with any ship type IF you read up on the game and build accordingly; 5K in a Cruiser should also be fairly easily attainable. It's when you try to break 10K+ in a Cruiser that y9ou really need a good build, good weapons, and good piloting/maneuvering/keep your targets in the best weapon arcs for max firepower playing skills.)
Also, I've been in groups where the person in the escort was pulling under 1K DPS (and yes, at first I thought something was wrong with my parser; but other Fleetmates had seen the same thing when PUGing Elite STFs.
I honestly laugh when I see the myth perpetuated that - "You can only be really successful in elite STFs with Escorts/Tacs" as that's honest just not the case at all.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
1. Season 7 largely invalidated any reason to play them, as now it's simply about grinding marks until you finish, then PAYING THROUGH THE NOSE to get anything out of it. Before, you had to pummel each specific STF to get the desired set piece you wanted, thus enforcing the need to play, if not master, all of them. Now? You grind ISE until you vomit, then you're done.
2. It is considerably harder for a single player to carry his less than competent teammates. Whereas a space STF like ISE can be solo'ed by a single well-equipped and skilled player, and it doesn't matter how utterly worthless the rest of the team might be, a ground STF typically requires strong participation from at least 2-3 players and a passable effort from the others. Incompetence results in failure.
3. Ground STFs are often considerably longer, in large part due to factors like "number of enemies that must be killed" and "distance you have to cover relative to your speed". This means that Generation ADHD finds it difficult to focus, as they have the attention spans of epileptic hamsters and bladders the size of walnuts.
4. Ground STFs drop loot of inferior value. Ground equipment is generally poorly valued relative to its space counterparts and demanded in far reduced quantity even at the high end. A ship can use over a half a dozen guns. A man can only use two, and he's going to prefer set piece items anyway, so much of this stuff has little to no demand.
5. Unlike pre-S7, there is now a hard limit on how quickly an individual can usefully gain anything: You can't digest your marks any faster, so after the first STF, you're pretty much done and there is little incentive to keep going, unlike S6, where STFers would often hit them back to back, bouncing from STF to STF in search of the elusive Proto Tech. Now? You do your STF, you get banned from that STF...you've eaten your fill, you're done for the day.
6. Finally, to top it off, ground STF are less popular because they are less popular. This may seem circular, but the fact of the matter is that no one queues because no one queues. So when you queue for a ground STF, and it doesn't pop, eventually you just stop bothering...or even if you do, you queue for another space one at the same time...and it pops, taking you away from the ground one.
This sorry state of affairs has now existed for sometime, and given the churn rate of Generation ADHD, this means there now exists an entire generation of STFers who have never really touched ground, have no idea how to play it, and often simply don't.
To add to your excellent list:
8. Ground STFs are significantly more difficult, especially the optional components. In space the optionals are typically just time gated. On the ground they are things like "you have 10 seconds after crossing this invisible line to prevent a civilian from being killed. Complete this 6 times, and one single failure blows the optional for everyone". Given that the line in question is honestly invisible, and there is no in-game text to help you figure this out, you can imagine how rarely the optional succeeds.
9. Ground bosses can be impossible for certain teams to defeat. This is mostly a reference to Armek of Borg and the Queen, but can happen on any of them. Unlike space where you can wear down the enemy by repeatedly respawning and rejoining, all of the ground battles have a lockout, so if one team member is killed they cannot come back to help. If all are killed the fight starts over from the beginning with the boss at full strength.
10. Ground Objectives require coordination between multiple players, not just straight damage. For example, protect 4 locations that are out of firing range from each other while simultaneously activating glowies in the right sequence.
11. Ground enemies that cannot be defeated by damage alone. For example, the turrets that have invincible shields and someone needs to walk inside of them and activate a bomb while other players distract its fire. Otherwise it resets itself to full health and you start over every 30 seconds until you get it correct.
12. Ground enemies that invalidate entire builds. Armek of Borg, for example, has chain damage powers that are capable of team wipes if an engineer sets up turrets or mortars.
There is nothing remotely like any of this in space. Many people just don't want to learn how to handle the ground missions because the level of frustration is enormous. In space you can try a normal difficulty and learn as you go. On the ground, it's nearly impossible to learn by trial and error, someone has to teach you. And really, how many people are willing to listen?