Need help with the cursed Ha'pax

lessley00 · December 2014

I have a neglected Rom eng toon that I'm fixing up. The ground set is improving from rom plasma rifles to the Dyson ground set, and the space set features a rom deflector and a rom impulse (soon to be replaced with dyson gear. I have the hyper-plasma torp and it does fair damage, but the main problem is: ALL OF MY ABILITIES AND MY BOATS CLOAKING DEVICE IS GONE! Trust me I've tried everything. So I really need help with this, and while you're at it: is there a better build for this ship other than a dual plasma beam bank, three beams, one dual cannon, a turret, a plasma torp, and the
hyper-plasma torp?

And do not and I repeat DO NOT start yakking about how I should buy a c-store ship. I'm working on that

snowpig74 · December 2014

hmm eng-boat...

set it up as BFAW-boat with single (romulan) plasma beam arrays. Keep the romulan engine, add up nukara deflector and shields. console-wise you should plan at least with: nukara particle converter, assimilated console and zero-point. plan for a cutting beam in one of the aft slots to get the 2-set bonus of the omega weapons (console+cutting beam). you could also go for romulan hyper torp+exp. romulan plasma beam array+zero-point for the 3-set bonus of the romulan weapons-set.

You have limited tac-seats, therefore you are almost forced to use one of these combinations:
- BFAW I & II, TT I or
- BFAW I, TT I and APB I

with all the eng seats, you could try to set up aux2battery with doffs which reduce cooldowns (both Lt Eng seats with A2B 1), add up EptW 3 and DEM 3 for the eng-commander and another EptW 3 or EptS 3 for the Lt.com Eng.

Science-wise you do not have many options, i'd go with HE1 and ST2.

lessley00 · December 2014

Please post that again without shortening your words or tell me what they mean

seriousdave · December 2014

Found the acronym list again, not sure it's up-to-date with all the current stuff but most of it should be covered.

To get snowpig74's suggestions covered:

BFAW: Beam Fire At Will
TT: Tactical Team
ATP: Attack Pattern Beta
A2B: Auxiliary to Battery
EptW: Emergeny power to Weapons
EptS: Emergeny power to Shields
DEM: Directed Energy Modulation
HE: Hazard Emitters
ST: Science Team

To get details about the skills I can recommend the STO wiki, it's great for looking stuff up.

ryakidrys · December 2014

Since the turn rate is so slow, use of all beam arrays is your best weapon type to use. Torpedoes are great, but you need some turn rate to make the best of them and the Ha'Apax is at the slowest turn rate of any level 40 and higher ships. Learn to broadside with beam arrays for the best use.
With beam arrays, BFAW becomes the weapon modifier to utilize.
The lvl 40 and fleet Ha'Apax have a LT tac and an Ens Tac bridge officer seating, so you are so limited in tactical abilities, you might want to lean on an A2B build, but that's a different build type I will bypass for now. The technicians needed for A2B builds are expensive if you buy them from the exchange. There is a 7 mission chain in the B'Tran cluster that, once completed, you can run a DOFF mission periodically that gives you a chance at getting the technicians. At least 2 purples are desired to make A2B build work. As I said previously, I'll bypass A2B for now.

Work on the Omega rep chain to get the assimilated module and the kinetic cutting beam, they make a nice combo.
Until then, use all beam arrays of the same weapon type. If you must use a torpedo, try to use only one so you won't have to keep turning right and left like a drunk pilot to fire a forward torpedo, then the aft one, then fore, then aft, etc.

Tac team is your friend as it reorients your shields to mitigate incoming damage. The damage boost is an added bonus. EPTS and EPTW are a good combination on a FAW beam boat for damage boost and extra resistance to shields.

For starters, try the following as a base BO setup:

TT1
TT1, BFAW2
ET1, EPTW2, EPTS3, RSP3 or A2SIF3
ET1, EPTW2, EPTS3
HE1, ST2

You can swap EPTW and EPTS to fit your needs. For more damage, use EPTW3 with EPTS2. For more tankiness, use EPTS3 with EPTW2. Cycle EPTx abilities as often as possible.

If you have at least 1 purple and 1 blue conn officer that reduce Tac Team recharge, change tactical to double up on BFAW or use an attack pattern
TT1
BFAW1, BFAW2 or APx1

If you can muster up at least 2 purple damage control engineers that reduce emergency power to subsystem recharge, engineering stations can change to....

ET1, RSP1, EPTW3, A2SIF3
ET1, XS1, EPTS3
HE1, ST2

You'll probably have to play around with things until you find what fits your playstyle and the situations you get into when playing, but the above info should give you some ideas to work with and a base to start if needed.

lessley00 · December 2014

Yeah, I was kind of following the boff abilities on my fed toons sovereign:

Beam overload I
Torpedo High yield II
Beam fire at will I
Hazard Emitters II
Polarize hull I (Great against tractor beams)
Emergency power to aux I
Emergency power to eng I
Emergency power to shields II
Engineering team II
Acton beam II
Reverse shield polarity II (The best!)
and Directed energy manifold II

And my fleet warp core gives me a weapons capacitor which gives me a damage buff for a short time, makes my beam overload more powerful
my sovereign has a beam build with two torpedo launchers, and it kicks a*s

ryakidrys · December 2014

lessley00 wrote: »

Polarize hull I (Great against tractor beams)

In PvE, more often than not, a tractor beam helps me stay on target.

schloopdoo · March 2015

If you're flying the Fleet Ha'apax, putting a Tactical Officer in the Lieutenant Commander Universal seat neatly solves the problem of a shortage of tactical abilities, while leaving you four Engineering boff abilities to work with. The ship is well set up for a cannon build, and using the Dual Vector separation console from the Haakona (which is a Ha'apax retrofit) will give you the maneuverability you need to make the cannons viable. The ship doesn't have the 5/3 weapons layout of a Starfleet Avenger or Klingon Mogh Battlecruiser, but the ability to summon a friendly NPC who represents the other half of your ship can more than make up the difference. As much as Starfleet players like to go on about Saucer Separation on the forums, I don't know why I don't see more Romulan captains using the equivalent console.

antonine3258 · March 2015

The limited tactical options on the base model are a problem. I threw some Nukara-brand web mines on mine to help with it being a bit of a slug while cornering.

As said, beam arrays, beam arrays, beam arrays. A quick cloak in combat can help if you need to reorient thanks to the turning boost. You're going to be spending more time broadsiding, probably though, and fire at will is often more useful in PVE than overload.

If you do decide to get the c-store variant, you can outfit it more happily as a cannon-build thanks to the dual-vector's boosted maneuverability. Keep in mind the vectors are a bit more fragile than the combined craft.

Need help with the cursed Ha'pax

Comments