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Cheap ship builds? (Presidio/Galaxy)
marcustrek
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
I am trying to put together a basic functional ship build for my cruisers that will do decent damage and be effective in STF's.
The trouble is, most builds I find via google use a large amount of Lobi consoles, or other incredibly expensive lockbox kit. Or consoles I cannot obtain, like the Samsar console.
The only really special consoles I have are Bounty Hunter's Friend and Plasmonic Leech.
Is there a list somewhere of 'non-bling' builds for these ships that someone could point me toward? I prefer all beam boating. Just wondering what fleet or reputation consoles I could use in place of the lobi ones on some of these builds.
I am working on my reputations as well, but perhaps some console suggestions that do not require high amounts of rep to obtain. I have a very good fleet with access to most elite gear as well.
Thanks for your time.
The trouble is, most builds I find via google use a large amount of Lobi consoles, or other incredibly expensive lockbox kit. Or consoles I cannot obtain, like the Samsar console.
The only really special consoles I have are Bounty Hunter's Friend and Plasmonic Leech.
Is there a list somewhere of 'non-bling' builds for these ships that someone could point me toward? I prefer all beam boating. Just wondering what fleet or reputation consoles I could use in place of the lobi ones on some of these builds.
I am working on my reputations as well, but perhaps some console suggestions that do not require high amounts of rep to obtain. I have a very good fleet with access to most elite gear as well.
Thanks for your time.
Post edited by marcustrek on
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http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=marcusnewb_0
Borg Kinetic Cutting Beam (stuff it on an Aft slot) + Assimilated Console
Reason: 2-pc bonus.
Nukara Deflector and Engine
Reason: 2-pc bonus.
Recommended Rep gear:
Gravimetric Torpedo
Reason: Decent proc and damage in the current meta.
Biomolecular Torpedo
Reason: Only if you're going for double Photon torpedoes and using the Gravimetric Torp plus it's 2 or 3 pc bonus to Photon torps. The delayed proc is sometimes useful.
Neutronic Torpedo + Delta Console (+ Advanced Thoron-Infused Polaron)
Reason: 2-pc bonus to shorten Neutronic's reload time as well as cut BOFF ability CD by 7%. Also, TS3 Neutronic is devastating. Especially to clustered NPCs. Add the 3rd piece for a potent free damage weapon every minute down the line as the 3-pc bonus.
Recommended (Technically Essential) Fleet Gear:
Warp Core with [AMP] - The Spire Plasma Warp Cores are generally recommended due to the unique advantage of Plasma Warp Cores.
Embassy Plasma Infuser Science Consoles - Pick either Threat-boosting or Threat-reduction (Threat-boosting is great if you're using Reciprocity, but otherwise, Threat-reduction works fine) and some Sci Mod that boosts something relevant to your build (I usually see PartGens suggested to boost all other exotic damage sources, such as the Neutronic Torp's Radiation AoE or Biomolecular Torp's Radiation explosion, but you can also go for FlowCaps to boost your Plasmonic Leech some).
Spire Tactical Vulnerability Locator Consoles - Grants both a boost to a specific weapon type and a Crit chance boost. Pick up a set specifically tailored to your preferred weapon type.
Miscellaneous Suggested Gear:
Very Rare weapons (or higher) with [CrtD]x2 or x3 mods, and either [Pen] or [CrtH] as the last mod. You could cheat and use weapons with [CrtD]x2 and [Over] as a useful but unreliable source of extra damage (free BO1s times 6 or 7 if the RNG goddess favors you).
Omni-Directional Beam of the same weapon type as your build (Plasma, Phaser, etc), with a Pen Mod. Or Over if there's nothing better. Don't think there's CrtD Omnis though. Stuff it on the Aft along with the KCB.
Notes:
Stuff your Plasmonic Leech on your build. That will help in all cases; especially since you're going to FaW away anyway.
Most of these just require grinding to T3 Reputation, and in the case of Fleet gear, have your Fleet's permission to use their Provisions and visiting a Fleet with the necessary Holding levels to allow purchase of the gear (T3 Spire and T2 Embassy for the suggested Fleet stuff). There's trade channels where you can request access to an established Fleet to buy stuff if your current Fleet does not have fully developed holdings.
The Spire Tac consoles and Embassy Science consoles you can be flexible with, depending on if you're also going to use ship-specific consoles. Otherwise, try to stuff all your Universals (Rep, Lobi/Lockbox/Ship-specific) into your Engineering slots first. Unless you want to run an RCS Engineering Console (preferably Conductive with a [ResA], [ResB], or [ResAll] mod or a Fleet RCS with the same mods if you can afford it), the Engineering consoles are otherwise mostly useless.
If you want to go for a more steady offensive, try to aim for all Spire Tac consoles into your Tac console slots, and top off the remaining slots in your Science consoles with Embassy Plasma Infusers.
If you're hoping to put a bit more unsteady but high spike damage, more Embassy consoles instead (IIRC, they proc independently, unless that's changed, so you could see up to 3 separate Plasma spike damage per beam). I only suggest it here since you have Plasmonic Leech, and multiple Plasma Infusers with FlowCaps (on top of any FlowCaps you might have spent some skillpoints on) can further boost your power levels while further weakening targets.
But flood the Engineering console slots with all the Universals you intend to use first.
Your build looks to be using the A2B setup. Assuming you have the 3 purple technicians for it, then the LT universal station for tactical is not needed for PvE.
LT Uni Eng ET1, A2B1
LCDR Tac TT1, APB1, BFAW3
CDR Eng/ COM OE1, RSP1, EPTW3, DEM3
LT Eng EPTS1, A2B1
LT Sci HE1, ST2
Active Duty Space Roster
3 Technicians
1 Conn officer (Tac team not at minimum on A2B build without it)
1 Maint. Engineer for ET cooldowns
1 Development lab scientist for science team cooldowns
Run tac team, EPTS, EPTW, and both A2B skills as often as possible. Maybe add APB, DEM and BFAW too.
Even with EPTS1 and ST2, you'll probably find that you can use RSP for some of those dicey moments.
HE1 only stops the burn, any hull repair is a bonus. Rely on ET1 for the hull repairs. It's admittedly light on hull repairs, so be careful.
If you don't have the 3 purple technicians for A2B, when you get T4 nukara rep it actually counters the boost you could get, there are a few other types of basic builds you could work from.
2. Borg console and cutting beam to lower power drain (8 beams is too many) and help crth/d and up weapon power.
3. Drop APO for another APB
4. Fleet Tact consoles will help a lot
5. Upgrade on Plasma Flow Sci fleet X console to Gold (will make a huge difference)
6. Iconian 3 piece looks to out DPS (plus helps team) 2 piece Nukara and Rommy Eng but either works well (but expensive to upgrade)
7. Look at Conductive and Exciter Consoles. Many UR "fails" can be very useful and cheap.
8. Iconian console is solid all around. Smallish boost to dps with nice heal perks.
9. If you are going to run a torp put it in back and run Counter Command with the Hydro-Dynamic console for the the 7.5% phaser damage boost. Or TRIBBLE the torp (I would) and run 1 bio turret with the console.
http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=009tacoddy_10191
Thanks!
The nukara tier 4 space reputation traits add a damage boost and defensive boost you can use, but it is based on auxiliary power. A2B constantly robs aux power to shunt into the other 3 subsystems, keeping aux power low when you do have any. Essentially, you miss out on damage boost.
Combine it with a warp core with the AMP mod, and you realize another boost when you can get aux power to 75 or more.
Also, A2B robs a ship from being able to take as much damage. I run some tanks and tested it recently. I purposefully did not add reputation gear and rep boosts, and it came away less tanky. I hadn't realized how much the reputation had covered that loss.
Now, before you have nukara tier 4 reputation, A2B can be a decent DPS booster, though it's not as tanky as a dragon or drake build because the aux power gives a huge boost to hull heals from hazard emitters and allows aux to structural to be very useful, just to name a couple. A2B is cheaper to get going that a good drake build if you have to buy all the DOFFs for the active duty space roster. So A2B isn't all bad, but there comes a point in your progression that it holds you back.
ryakidrys pointed out a lot of the main reasons why A2B has fallen out of favor recently (Nukara Traits, Amp Warp Cores, etc.) The other reason why A2B is no longer favored is because it hinders build diversity by forcing you to use Universal stations to accommodate your engineering requirements. Lets take the build you linked as an example. In your build, you have used your Universal Ensign Spot to accommodate your engineering needs. If you did not have to have 2 copies of Aux2Bat, you could move that EPTW to your Engineering, add a Directed Energy Modulation where the 2nd copy used to be and then use that Ensign Universal slot to double up on Beam Fire At Will. Just making these changes would give you a nice DPS boost by itself.
Generally for Beam Boats, you can find plenty of ways to make sure you have power needs met without doing A2B. It's most commonly done with Emergency Powers. You slot 2-3 Damage Control Engineers to reduce your cooldown times on Emergency Power to Weapons and Emergency Power to Shields. You can also slot a Warp Core Engineer that can boost all your power levels on activation of an Emergency Power.
In your case, since you have the Plasmonic Leech, you're really handicapping yourself by running Aux2Bat. You absolutely don't need it for power so you're taking up valuable BoFF spots for something you don't need. You could change up your space DoFF's, add the Nukara Trait, and change your BoFF layout to something like this, and probably see a nice spike in DPS.
You would also boost your power levels by re-doing some of your skills. If you use the Leech console, you really should consider maxing out Flow Capacitors. You should also make sure you're putting points into things like Warp Core Efficency and Warp Core Potential. If you click the 'Vigilant' link in my Sig, that beam boat is able to easily keep Weapon and Shield power at 100+ with Engines and Aux at 75+ at all times.
I'm not saying my way is right or the 'best,' just trying to give you some ideas to work with. As always, feel free to adapt any ideas to your specific needs.
As does the Iconian. Making running a 3 piece with Rommy eng a deadly option.
Not unless that is a change. Fleet consoles were higher at the start. Haven't used standards since they launched.
You're talking about a DRAKE build, right? From my understanding that reduces cool downs on emergency powers but not on other ones like A2B does. For instance, the cool down on BFAW and TP3.
I am really thankful for all of the suggestions. Could you point out a skill tree that would help me improve my build? I know the flow caps are a big part of using the leech.
Thanks again for the assistance!
The Iconian 3-pc makes for a great late-upgrade set once you've done all the grinding and have a reasonably stable build to do the Rep Mark grinding (though you can cheat a little if you have a solid ground setup and grind the two special missions in the Kobali BZ that grant Marks and Datacores).
But until then, the Nukara 2-pc (Deflector/Engine, or Deflector/Shield, or Engine/Shield) will suffice with its modest passive to weapon power boost and auto-repair of weapon power shutdowns (conveniently useful when running Iconian missions if you missed dodging another ECM Probe and Engineering Team is on CD, and you didn't put any points into Subsystem Repairs or don't have a Human Bridge crew).
The only reason there's no suggestions of [Acc] or [Dmg] or even [PvP] mods is because they're straight up worthless (Acc less so than the other two due to accuracy overflow, but not as useful with the NPC rebalance towards being massive damage sponges as "difficulty" improvements). So it's usually preferred to try and improve the critical chance and critical severity rates so that you're doing large bursts of damage every firing cycle.
Yeah, I guess people call it a 'Drake Build,' not sure where that comes from.. probably the guy that first thought of it, I don't know.
There are several ways to reduce cool down on other abilities as well. Not having to use 2 Engineering slots for A2B generally lets you be more flexible with your universal bridge officer seats and can use those to double up on abilities to reduce their cool down times. For example, running 2 copies of Beam Fire At Will for better up time. There are also other methods through Starship Traits like Reciprocity (Phantom), All Hands On Deck (Presidio), etc. There are also consoles like Bio-Neural Gel packs in the Delta Reputation as well as Captain and Specialist abilities that reduce cool downs. Just remember, nothing can lower cool down time below the 'global' Cool Down which for most abilities is 15 seconds.
As for skill tree builds, you can poke around on Star Trek Academy and look at builds to see how most people do their skills. Personally, I put mine together from a pretty extensive amount of research using builds provided by people from DPS league. When people posted their videos and builds, I would look at them and found many skills were 'must have' among most of them. The skills tab on this build is my template for builds that don't use Torpedos. You can look around that site at other builds as well to get ideas on your skills. You can also use that site to pre-plan how you want to allocate your points so you don't need retrain tokens once you hit 50. If you have any questions about it, please feel free to ask.
As with everything I post, please remember I'm simply going off what I have found to be the most effective based on my research and in game experience. I will never claim my build to be the 'best' or the only way to do something, but it's a template to give you ideas. Everyone's skill point allocation will likely differ slightly based on their needs, so feel free to adjust and experiment to fit your own style. :cool:
And the Dyson WC.