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The biggest mistake I ever made was taking that boost
jonharmon
Member Posts: 14 Arc User
So I have played STO off and on for years, and came back to it a couple weeks ago. I moved quickly up from level 25ish where I left off, up to level 53, eventually flying around in my beautiful Odyssey Operations Cruiser (because I like cruisers and am an engineer, and the Odyssey is the best-looking Fed ship in the game IMO) and generally having fun working my way back through the missions in the various story arcs. I had just started the Borg arc when I got the email that said "hey, here's a code that will pop your highest-level character to 60 and give you a free Andromeda!"
Sure, why not? So I did it. I went back to Earth, transferred my gear over into the newly-christened USS Virginia, and set out.
And ran into a world of hurt.
I now cannot beat a single Borg sphere, or a group of three Undine Nicor frigates, in a straight-up fight. Forget taking on a Borg cube, it can't happen. My shields get instantly drained, my beams (Mk X and Mk XI phasers forward, Mk XII disruptors from lockboxes aft) do virtually nothing. Within 30 seconds I am staring at half-dead shields and 50% hull, frantically clicking Engineering Team and even Miracle Worker, desperately clicking anything with a circle to try and get my shields back up, while whatever I'm fighting is still at 98% hull with mostly full shields if it's a cruiser or sphere. I'm on the mission where you have to kill Borg and Undine that are fighting each other and I died FIVE TIMES trying to kill a single Undine bio-cruiser. FIVE TIMES. And yes, I'm playing on normal difficulty, and yes, I'm firing broadsides with my beams and not flying my cruiser like an escort. I thought I knew what I was doing. I guess not, because all of a sudden this has turned from fun into a frustrating struggle.
Now I'm a solo player, I don't have a fleet, and I've also noticed that when I've been in the big zone-wide things like a Tholian invasion, I've been vastly more fragile and less booty-kicking than anybody else in there, but I chalked that up to being lower level than the other folks and having non-Fleet gear, the kind of stuff that you pick up working through the story arcs. (Right now most of the stuff on my Andromeda is between Mk X and Mk XII, Jem'hadar shields and deflector, Obelisk warp core, stuff like that. Nothing fancy.)
Apparently I have no clue how to set things up or survive at level 60. So I'm guessing that I need to find some sort of tutorial on advanced shipbuilding or character building or bridge officer building or SOMETHING. Because if I'm having this much trouble in the Borg-Undine arc, when I get to the Iconians, I am toast. And I don't want to get frustrated and quit the game again.
Thanks for letting me vent.
Sure, why not? So I did it. I went back to Earth, transferred my gear over into the newly-christened USS Virginia, and set out.
And ran into a world of hurt.
I now cannot beat a single Borg sphere, or a group of three Undine Nicor frigates, in a straight-up fight. Forget taking on a Borg cube, it can't happen. My shields get instantly drained, my beams (Mk X and Mk XI phasers forward, Mk XII disruptors from lockboxes aft) do virtually nothing. Within 30 seconds I am staring at half-dead shields and 50% hull, frantically clicking Engineering Team and even Miracle Worker, desperately clicking anything with a circle to try and get my shields back up, while whatever I'm fighting is still at 98% hull with mostly full shields if it's a cruiser or sphere. I'm on the mission where you have to kill Borg and Undine that are fighting each other and I died FIVE TIMES trying to kill a single Undine bio-cruiser. FIVE TIMES. And yes, I'm playing on normal difficulty, and yes, I'm firing broadsides with my beams and not flying my cruiser like an escort. I thought I knew what I was doing. I guess not, because all of a sudden this has turned from fun into a frustrating struggle.
Now I'm a solo player, I don't have a fleet, and I've also noticed that when I've been in the big zone-wide things like a Tholian invasion, I've been vastly more fragile and less booty-kicking than anybody else in there, but I chalked that up to being lower level than the other folks and having non-Fleet gear, the kind of stuff that you pick up working through the story arcs. (Right now most of the stuff on my Andromeda is between Mk X and Mk XII, Jem'hadar shields and deflector, Obelisk warp core, stuff like that. Nothing fancy.)
Apparently I have no clue how to set things up or survive at level 60. So I'm guessing that I need to find some sort of tutorial on advanced shipbuilding or character building or bridge officer building or SOMETHING. Because if I'm having this much trouble in the Borg-Undine arc, when I get to the Iconians, I am toast. And I don't want to get frustrated and quit the game again.
Thanks for letting me vent.
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Glad you got the ship I paid for for free. Makes me feel like a valued customer. Thanks Cryptic.
Clearly the versions they're giving away for free are the inferior ones.
Jon, There's really nothing wrong with the free ship, You could even still fly your Odyssey if you are so inclined. You're gonna want to upgrade it to T5U tho.
At lvl 60, you're gonna find that some of the NPCs might have higher hit points. But you really should still be able to handle them easily enough, with a decent build.
Research builds @ STO Academy. I think there are some decent youtube videos from those DPS fellas that give DPS tutorials.
Also, you're gonna want to start upgrading your equipment too.
In so far as the Borg shield drains, they were buffed a while back, but pretty basic stuff like hazzard emitters, plus a shield heal of your choice should be enough for you to get them back up.
Sounds like your just a little out of practice. Do a little research, upgrade some equipment and you'll do fine.
If you need a new fleet, look me up in game Televek@vengefuldjinn. We can help you along too.
Welcome back, enjoy your new ship.
My character Tsin'xing
First off fleet gear is overrated. With the exception of consoles faction sets are almost always superior. As for weapons you can craft better stuff then a fleet can offer tough I would join a fleet if I were you so you can buy some vulnerability locator cons. you can still be a solo player while being in a fleet. It just means that you have more options for gear and ships.
Second don't mix damage types. use phasers or disruptors but not both. If you mix damage types you are limiting your firepower as you can only effectively boost one of them wit tac cons
I feel your pain, those borg missions are painful even if you level up normally. When I got there, it was a big slap in the face. I had to change my strategy and also call in things like nimbus etc. Basically, unlike everything else up until then, you can't go toe to toe with them and need to be more strategic.
Is there an armory-type site or a way that I can export my character and ship and officer builds rather than having to alt-tab a squillion times and type the stuff out longhand?
But no you can't export the character stats.
there is also gateway: http://gateway.startrekonline.com/#char(Melati Kusumu@marhawkman)/ship-equipment
What's your character name?
My character Tsin'xing
Armor consoles aren't really ness, personally i don't run them mainly due to some ship traits, starship mastery {Desperate Measures i think is the name) and hull heals and fairly decent dps 21-36k depending on Tact or Eng. Fighting Borg though it may be a thought as the Andromeda and Oddy have decent amounts of engineering boff slots to slot a copy of Aux to inertia dampners which gives some resistance to kinetic damage which is the most common attack the Borg do you with torpedoes. Plus always carry a copy of Hazard emitters
I believe largely you're the unkowing victim of Cryptic's "more difficult" content.... it seems they decided that buckets and buckets of excess HP equals "difficult". By level 60 your enemies have an insane amount compared to what they did at 50.
Another piece of advice... dont listen to min/maxers that tell you to upgrade everything to mk XIV and/or gold. Endgame is easily done with mk XII green gear, a bit tedious on some missions/maps but easily done. They can also be done in t4, t5, and t5-u ships w/o issue. Most mkXII gear is rather cheap on the Exchange anymore, especially if you grab items with [Acc][Dmg] mods and dont focus on the critwhore BFaW mentality.
As other's have said don't mix energy types, unless you're going out of your way to make it harder on yourself or want a rainbow build its just not worth it.
quasi-related, as you level up now and gain spec points I would suggest looking at the pilot tree, it has many useful abilities that make life easier on you in space combat.
Also I found this guide pretty handy way of understanding things: http://www.omegaprimary.com/dpsguide/
I always forget that when switching ships. Then i wonder why nothing dies...
Then also follow mrspidey2's advice. Check your energy settings. Every ship change it's the same issue, and 1/3 of the time I still realize only in combat that I forgot to set the energy settings to sensible values.
But first thing I thought: Maybe you left your powersetting on standard, thus ridiculous low Weaponpower, thus your beams are actually cotton.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Oh, and I normally run 75 weapons and 50 shields in combat. I've got enough power mods and skills on the ship that means my effective weapons power is up around 90 and my shields up around 80 or so.
I will try to figure out the gateway. My character name is "Jon Harmon."
Time to go back to the Academy and do some learnin'...
That. 8 beams firing at once with the way power drain works on a low power level and after the first two you may as well not be bothering.
But the Andromeda itself is perfectly fine, and really so is your Oddy if you want to go back to it, I've done exactly the same as you in coming back recently and taking the shortcut to 60, and as far as I can tell stuff just takes a bit longer to die than I vaguely recall it doing...
It is probably worth you going over how to clear debuffs; Tactical Team, Engineering team, Science team, Hazard Emitters are all valuable for clearing things, but right now I've forgotten which does what... (Since this might be news to you, the team abilities no longer share the same cooldown time, meaning there is no problem with running all three like there was)
I'm sure someone can help with the build, I'm still learning what works these days.
ETA - oooo, you edited.
Right, your weapons power is too low; You want it as high as possible, and ideally you want a good amount over the 125 cap due to how overcapping works with beams. 90 just isn't enough, by the time you've fired about 4 of your beams the rest are basically decoration, well under half the damage they should be; what weapon power does - assuming it hasn't been altered - is 50 weapon power is base damage, and 100 weapon power is twice that, and your Andromeda can with its console sit with a constant 130 weapon power, so you are instantly running a third of the damage you could be by the time you have fired a few beams.
Set weapons power to 100 as a starter, then build it up from there.
What is your character@handle? We need the full thing before you can do anything on the gateway.
Get weapons power to 125 and keep it there for starters!
Get your weapon power to the highest you can get. Your goal is an effective value of 125 (or higher*). A beam broadside consumes lots of energy, and this lowers your effective damage.
Also use Weapon Power Efficiency as the active Cruiser Command skill. It lowers your beam drain.
Weapon Power consoles (including special reputation consoles that boost power), the right skill training and Emergency Power to Weapons can all help you maintain high weapon power.
*) Normally you won't see a value of over 125 displayed anywhere, and if you had a theoretical 130 of weapon power for a shot, it wouldn't do anything different than 125 - but since you suffer energy drain from firing weapons, that "overcapped" energy becomes suddenly important. One beam drains 8 energy, and 130-8 is 122, but 125-8 is 117.)
Way to low. Try the skillplanner, its easier to make builds in it.
You can use that site to show us your build.
And yes, beams=MOARPOWR!!! Emergency power to weapons will help with not only more power, but a damage buff as well. Emergency power to shields will buff up your shield power and damage resistance, which will help your survivability.
I'll come back a bit later and post a build idea for you.
If you have trouble with other subsystem power levels, get another two copies of 'Emergency power to' another subsystem.
The four abilities can then also be active continually.
If you are starved for engineering ability slots (which shouldn't be the case on the Andromeda), the same can be achieved by only using one 'Emergency power to Weapons' and one other 'Emergency power to' along with at least two purple Damage Control engineer doffs that have each a 30% chance at reducing their cooldowns (you can slot up to 3 such doffs and the math works out for the abilities to stay up over 90% of the time).
Another method (compromising Auxiliary power levels) is using two Auxiliary to Battery abilities along with 3 purple Technician doffs that reduce all Boff ability cooldowns. This will also allow for the 'Emergency power to' abilities to stay up, with the benefit of doing the same for basically every other Boff ability.
There are other ways, but probably not currently in your reach.
Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider.
Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Don't make ARC mandatory! Keep it optional only!
http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=jhcrapbuild_0
There are a couple empty slots in it...I have a Temporal Disentanglement Suite Mk VI (very rare science console) that's not in the Skill Planner list. Also, my LCdr Tactical station has Focused Assault II as their third ability but that's not in the list either.
Yep, I know, it's a mess. I've just built up this set of gear and boffs as I've gone along throughout the game without a whole lot of rhyme or reason behind it. But, there is light at the end of the warp tunnel...just the suggestions so far about getting Hazard Emitters and keeping my weapon power maxed out is making a big difference. Plus I'm fighting Breen instead of Borg and Undine so that may make things a bit easier.
Thank you all.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, the two aft disruptors are the Coalition disruptors that come out of lockboxes.
2) Tactical consoles are always of your one energy weapon type. Never boost torpedoes.
3) Mines are utterly useless. Put in another beam array.
4) Beam arrays do more damage than torpedoes do (unless you're built for torpedoes - you're not). Get rid of your rear torpedo for another beam array. Up to you if you want to get rid of the front one too.
For a quick and easy rearrange of your BOff powers, I'd go with the following:
Universal: TT1
LCT: TT1, BFaW2, BFaW3
LCE/C: OE1, EPtS2, EPtW3
CE: ET1, RSP1, EPtS3, APtSIF3
LS: ST1, HE2
You don't have your DOff stations listed, so some of the above might be redundant, but basically the design is to always keep Tactical Team running, along with some kind of Beam Fire at Will. You'll also be spamming your Emergency Power to X (2 to shields and 1 to weapon), because not only does that give a global power boost (as you're an Engineer, assuming that Personal Trait is slotted, which it should be), but it'll help with additional shields/weapon damage. Also spam Aux Power to the Structural Integrity Field for additional hull resistance and a minor hull heal. Engineering Team, Science Team, Overwhelm Emitters, and Hazard Emitters are all there for when you need it.
Since you're an Engineer, and if you have 1.5 million EC (based on current Exchange prices), buy Genetic Resequencer - Space Trait: Coalition Starship Tactics. Yes, this requires one of your Personal Traits to slot, but it'll give you (and everyone on your team) about 184 shield regen per quadrant PER SECOND. Shields normally boost about 200-250 or so every SIX seconds. This boost to shield regen is absolutely huge.
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This doesn't require any special doffs. I left a lot in there blank, just wanted to show skills, traits, and boff skills you may want to use. For the captain skills, I kinda go against the grain as I dump as many points as I can in ground
2: Well this is true for an energy damage focused build. If most of your damage comes from beams then you want consoles to boost those.
3: Mines are not useless. Tricobalt bombing is FUN! But if you don't have a dispersal pattern don't bother with them. Also, yours is green7 junk.
4: your torpedoes stink. Transphasics have limited usefulness, and the other is garbage.
5: This is a pretty good build idea.
For doffs, this is a build that would get good use out of the doffs that improve EptX. Either the one for giving recharge reduction, or the one for power boost or both.
My character Tsin'xing
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Only a few upgraded to mk XIV consoles on her, mk XI Phased Tetryon beams... Mk XII Nukara set... I was surprised at how well she performed.
Granted most of my gear on my ships is Mk XII anyways as I haven't really invested in upgrading except some weapons for my Phantom... and only then there were no quality upgrades...