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Question about Sci Captains on cruisers.
e8f7a409
Member Posts: 13 Arc User
Are Science captains able to properly fly cruisers?
In Space, Career choice affects nothing but the captain abilities we receive and a corresponding trait. Thus the entire point of having a captain of a particular career path is to use the abilities this career choice provides. How effective the abilities a Science captain brings is, for the most part, based on Aux. Aux power has to come from somewhere else, and, in my limited experience with them, Cruisers seem to be lacking on Sci Boff Stations.
In other words:
If I fly a Cruiser with high Aux, I am sacrificing Weapon, Shield, or Engine power to make a couple of long-cooldown abilities and a small handful of low level Sci abilities be more effective.
If I fly a Science captain with low Aux, I am making my long-cooldown abilities, the entire point of having a captain of a particular career path, less effective, and thus gimping myself by not picking a different career path.
This is, however, theory.
Has any of you who have used such a captain in such a ship experienced a different result? Is it possible to keep high Aux without making the build less efficient than it would be with a different Captain?
Edit: For the record, I am approaching this matter from an entirely Min/Max perspective. I am not asking if you had 'fun' but if you managed to put a Sci captain on a cruiser without the result being less efficient and optimal than it could have been had you picked a different ship.
In Space, Career choice affects nothing but the captain abilities we receive and a corresponding trait. Thus the entire point of having a captain of a particular career path is to use the abilities this career choice provides. How effective the abilities a Science captain brings is, for the most part, based on Aux. Aux power has to come from somewhere else, and, in my limited experience with them, Cruisers seem to be lacking on Sci Boff Stations.
In other words:
If I fly a Cruiser with high Aux, I am sacrificing Weapon, Shield, or Engine power to make a couple of long-cooldown abilities and a small handful of low level Sci abilities be more effective.
If I fly a Science captain with low Aux, I am making my long-cooldown abilities, the entire point of having a captain of a particular career path, less effective, and thus gimping myself by not picking a different career path.
This is, however, theory.
Has any of you who have used such a captain in such a ship experienced a different result? Is it possible to keep high Aux without making the build less efficient than it would be with a different Captain?
Edit: For the record, I am approaching this matter from an entirely Min/Max perspective. I am not asking if you had 'fun' but if you managed to put a Sci captain on a cruiser without the result being less efficient and optimal than it could have been had you picked a different ship.
Post edited by e8f7a409 on
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There are no science nor engineer captains in the top 10 DPs records. I haven't looked, but I bet there are/none in the top 100.
Can you break 30k in a cruiser with a science captain? Yes. Ironically the science odyssey has the record using sarcasmdetector's Gawain the green knight build. People/have made t6 variants with both the Intel/cruiser (oss3 and ss3 are juicy) and the guardian. Most use tactical captains, but you can absolutely do it with a science captain only losing 10%-ish damage vs the tac.
Sci captains get four powers:
Sub nuke. This is almost useless in pve as NPCs/generally don't have any self buffing powers and the few/they do have they use at the dumbest time possible (example, rotate/shield frequency while shields are full wasting the shield heal portion of the power). Has no effect on aux powers.
-resistance power whose name I forget. Less effective and longer cool down than fire on my mark. Benifit all sources of damage including guns equally. Works best on a team. Will boost aux damage but no other aux powers.
Photonic fleet. Has no effect on aux powers. Does help you both defensively and offensively.
+shield resist power whose name I also forget. Does not help aux powers but will synergize with shield heals.
You get two traits. One makes photonic fleet cool down shorter. Joy. This is my happy face. No really. (I may love photonic fleet, but the devs desperately need to buff this trait). Anyway, the other gives you a stacking exotic damage boost based on the enemy shooting you. Most (not all) exotic damage is increased by aux power.
So, only one trait helps aux powers and it helps "a bit". One power synergizes with shield heals. One other power boosts all damage which happens to include aux damage, but also includes beams, torpedo's, and ramming.
Nothing else a science captain brings to the table interacts with aux power.
Also, plasmonic leech, +supremacy, +damage control doff = max out all power.
I'd say sci's are the weakest class to put in a cruiser, and engi's are the weakest class to put in a science ship. Here's why:
Sci's strengths are debuffing and buffing. Their weakness is direct damage. Generally speaking, cruiser's primary strength is survivability, and they're decent at damage, and rather lacking on the debuff/buff end of things. Sci's strengths can't thus be amplified by a cruiser like they could through a different ship.
If you put a sci in an escort, their aoe debuff allows them to take great advantage of the offensive potential of their ship, and their self-buffing lets them take a few more hits, or avoid big ones by sharing aggro with photonic fleet or by subnucing things like FAW3/THY3/FBP/etc off of a target.
If you put a sci in a sci ship, the strengths directly line up, and work great - you can pull enemies into an area and debuff them with sensor scan, or just drain them to a stop via TR - sci ships are aoe debuff/buff machines, and sci captains fit great with that.
I'm not saying it won't work, I'm just saying, to answer your edit directly, from a min-max perspective, mixing a cruiser and a sci captain is a suboptimal combo.
SCM - Hive (S) - [02:31] DMG(DPS) - @jarvisandalfred: 30.62M(204.66K) - Fed Sci
Tacs are overrated.
Game's best wiki
Build questions? Look here!
Science captains have one damage power and one survival power and one (photonic fleet that does both). Engineers have two heals and two power buffs.
Engineers shield tank in science ships better than science captains do, and on build/that splis weapon/aux their two power buffs again put them ahead of science captains in a sci ship. The only build/where a/sci captain beats an engineer in a sci ship is a hybrid torp/particle gen with all +threat embassy consoles to max out their trait. Overall sci is the worst pilot for a sci ship.
Meanwhile engineers have nothing to offer a cruiser it can't already do by itself better than the engineer can. Cruisers rarely need power, and definitely have all the heals in the world already. But the sci captains damage buff and shield buff work fine.
If the game needed a tank, and had an aggro mechanism that rewarded TRIBBLE damage with overkill survival engineer in cruiser would rock. As it stands its like bringing plate mail to a poker game. In other words, irrelevant. Put the engineer in an escort or sci ship where his powers are needed and plug a hole.
Now, command specialization is a potential game changer for engineers in cruisers. With the teleport and grab aggro power, plus the transfer all my shields to my team power, etc tanks might actually have the tools they need. And with the new plus damage -survival traits it will be possible to build a team that needs a tank and can do more damage when the tank has aggro.
I loathe the trinity and think this is a horrible way for the game to go, but I am still interested to see what comes of these changes.
It's the other way around: AUX power adds to them. Subnuke, Sensor Scan, and Scattering Field have a higher effect the higher AUX power is. From checking the numbers in the pop ups, their effect at low AUX is less than half their effect at max AUX.
Thus this was my reasoning: If I fly with low AUX, I may as well be using a different captain as the effect of the captain abilities will be negligible. If I fly at high AUX, most cruisers have too few SCI stations and thus I am sacrificing Weapons, Shields, or Engine just for a couple of long cooldown abilities and around three Sci Boff powers.
The abilities a tactical captain brings to the table are so that any ship they fly, no matter which, will be better than it would otherwise be. But the abilities of Science captains seem to become gimmicky in any ship that doesn't have high AUX, and high AUX is kind of a waste in any ship that isn't able to equip a good number of Sci Boff skills.
Sci captain abilities and Sci boff powers synergize in that they both need high AUX to work properly, and the photonic fleet trait is such that the only way to fully benefit from it is to be on a ship able to slot many Sci Boff abilities. What I wanted to know if there was a way to turn this around, taking full advantage of a cruiser while taking full advantage of a Science captain as well.
I am sorry if my choice of words obscured my true meaning. English is not my first language.
Is this still effective without supremacy?
That's what I was afraid of. Thank you very much for your assistance.
If you look at the 2015 info graphic cryptic posted, there's far more tactical captains than science captains for this reason. Tactical captains are better at damage in every ship, even science ships than a science captain. Attack pattern alpha, fire on my mark and go down fighting all buff the damage from gravity well and tractor beam repulsors.
yes. Especially with multiple emergency power to.... Boff abilities that you keep going all the time.
The difference isn't huge. Most of the good ship builders say 10%. So if you have a build that does 30k damage with a tactical captain and you swap to science, expect to still do ~25-28k. Definitely less, but the build still works.
If you give a sci captain the Gawain build, he'll still be doing solid damage with it.
Here's a link:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1331481&highlight=gawain
Engineers also have a slight advantage in the keeping the energy levels high due to some of their innate skills vs some others... but that can be negated with the proper ship gear loadout...
Science Officers can drive a cruiser.. and they can bring some tools with them... but it's nothing to write home about.
Tact Officers are simply gods in STO because the devs are lazy or suck and can't figure out how to make a properly balanced game so they make everything about DPS... which tacts rule hands down.
This bit is misleading. It is irrelevant what type of captain you have for training because now all training manuals are unbound. So of you have an engineer anywhere on your account he can train your science captain's boffs and your science captain can train your engineer's boffs.
But the secondary deflectors really changes the conversation about what damage a sci ship with a sci captain can do. All of a sudden every deflector power now causes about ~2500 worth of damage. Now my scramble sensors is a weapon. So cool you shoot scramble sensors at a group of tiny fighters and what them all explode in a few seconds.
Any class can fly any ship and do well.
The word "cruiser" means absolutely nothing. The difference between some of the offensive ships and some of the tanks is orders of magnitude in potential dps output, and there are even a couple of science themed "cruisers".
First, lets talk power.
Any non-rom ship can *easily* get MAX/75/75/75 power and get "amped" for the amp warp cores etc. From there, you can typically have ONE power level maxed and ONE OTHER at 100 or so. You cannot easily max 2 powers and keep amp, but you can give up ONE power level, max or nearly max 2, and be 3/4 amped. So ... no, you don't have to "sacrifice" power and have problems caused by low power systems. Your exact power profile will be your own creation, but you can surely cook up one that works well for your build.
High aux has a second benefit: the reputation aux to damage trait.
The problem with MOST ships is that you are NOT going to find many science themed "cruisers". That is, a ship with CMDR science and 4 science consoles. Science kinda stinks without officer seats and consoles to support it --- all you can do in the majority of NON-SCI ships is heal yourself well with a modest aux power OR do minor stuff. Or, to put it simply, you can't get a 600+ part gen build in an engineer's ship or a tactical boat.
That brings up the last thing: there is one GEM of a ship for this: the tal shier box ship cruiser supports 4/4 weapons AND is science heavy with 4 sci consoles and a UNI cmdr officer. Its a bit dated in a t6 ship world, but its an amazing hybrid ship that allows solid science powers in a different platform, and it has "cruiser" commands. Several CARRIERS which lack the commands but are in all other sense a "cruiser' with pets also fit the bill -- the free breen carrier from winter if you got one, or the recluse, or some others are excellent hybrid science ships.
All that to day ... you can just forget your science. A sci captain in a tac ship can blow things up just fine without needing aux power. But a tac captain is better. For that matter... a tac captain is better in a SCI ship than a sci captain too.
Its really simple, but I will break it down for you:
1 )the game favors damage. EFFECTIVE == DPS IN STO.
2) tac captains do the most dps in ANY ship due to GDF and APA if nothing else.
3) rom tacs are the best due to superior ships, superior race traits, superior BOs, and so on.
So while a fed sci captain in a recluse or scryer or whatever can do amazing things, its not gonna out max/min a rom tac in a faeht or scim. It wont even out perform a tac captain in the same ships from the same race and faction etc.
Just to hopefully get people to stop parroting this nonsense, there are no t6 ships in the top 20 DPs records. Despite some people wanting to have a reason to yell at cryptic and call t5u obsolete, (as noted in a recent discussion in general) the top record holders are still scimitars tempests, and the M