How do you build a science character?

zisko · October 2015

Like the title says, How do i build one? Which skill should i have tag, and how many points should i have in it? this is the first time i'm doing a science build so need info on this. i been to STO Academy, and don't understand anything from those builds. also how do you get the Wells class? (it's for the science character

) every info is welcome

Update v2.0
http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/?build=sciencebuild_11118

e30ernest · October 2015

It really depends on what kind of end-game you want to play out of your character. For example, are you planning to primarily fight using beams or torps? Are you planning to deal exotic damage, crowd control, heal boat or drain ship? Ships aren't tied to any career either (a Science captain doesn't need to fly a Science ship for example) so you don't have to necessarily get the Wells.

darleath · October 2015

I think the Wells Class ship is in the Lobi Store, and Lobi drop from opening lockboxes. You might need to open quite a few...

As for Science, look in the character skills tab, you will see one part is categorized as "science". Then go to one of your Science Bridge Officers and look their skills.

Finally, good Duty Officers can really change the life of a Science officer. For example, having 3 purple Doffs that gice you a chance (20% I think...) to generate an aftershock gravity well can be incredibly powerful, others improve your draining capabilities, etc...

Base fact: if you want to do damage using science skills, to maximize it you will need some T6 ships because of their traits. I think the "must have" was the Geneva (science Intel ship) for a +25% exotic damage.

Additionally, if you are aligned with the KDF, I strongly suggest you to farm dilithium, buy 1000 zen or so, and wait for a ship sale, then buy the tier 3 destroyer ship with the Plasmonic Leech console, because that console will let you feed lots of energy to your subsystems AND drain said energy from the targets of your beams. Mind you, you won't have enough skill points to cover both energy weapons and torpedoes, and the norm amongst sci ships is 3 weapons fore and 3 weapons aft. If you want to go for a torpedo boat, consider slotting 3 360º weapons on the back (Omega Cutting Beam, Omni directional beam array from the R&D, and the Ancient Omni directional if you want AP or the Tetryons one) for the energy draining.

For ground, improve to lv 6 of 9 all the science skills, and you will cover the minimun point expenditure for ground, be able to train into any skill your boffs, and work as a healer or an attack scientist.

zisko · October 2015

I usually use 1 torp in both fore and aft the rest is beams, exotic damage is similar to dps? Don't care about crowd control or heal not sure what you mean by drain ship. Prefer to do damage than heal or should I say use science to cause destruction in the battlefield prefer to do it in space then on the ground. Yep don't know how magic characters work in this, but there's nothing wrong in trying

centaurianalpha · October 2015

My last toon was a Sci captain; I like to have a "tanky" build, so I used just enough skill points to not lose the Sci mainstream, while buffing the Engy skills as much as possible. My philosophy is "ship as weapon", so any skills that buff ship gear are fair game.

lucho80 · October 2015

zisko#6191 wrote: »

Not sure what you mean by drain ship.

Ahemmm....

A drain ship is a ship that specializes in power and/or shield draining abilities or consoles.

Energy Siphon - Drains target's power while boosting your own. Drain depends on flow caps and duration on Aux power.

Tyken's Rift - AoE drain with exotic damage. Flow caps and aux power boosts drain.

Tachyon Beam - Drains shields. Boosted by Aux power and flow caps.

All three can have their CD reduced by deflector officer doffs.

Greedy Emitters trait gives you more damage from using all 3 abilities above.

There is a Tyken's Rift aftershock doff.

Plasmonic Leech is a must on a drain build and packs a punch with high flow caps.

Subsystem Targeting also drains power.

There is a Diplomat doff that drains weapons power if someone fires upon you while using TT.

The Neutronic torp's drain scales with flow caps.

Sensory Analysis boosts drains on target by 30%

The best drainers IMO are the Voth Palisade, the Vesta, and the Breen Sarr Theln.

e30ernest · October 2015

zisko#6191 wrote: »

I usually use 1 torp in both fore and aft the rest is beams, exotic damage is similar to dps? Don't care about crowd control or heal not sure what you mean by drain ship. Prefer to do damage than heal or should I say use science to cause destruction in the battlefield prefer to do it in space then on the ground. Yep don't know how magic characters work in this, but there's nothing wrong in trying

Drain/Exotic/CC are all DPS (damage per second) related. They just get you that DPS in different ways. At their very basic:

Drain - This build lets you drain your opponent's subsystem powers lowering their damage, shield resistance and mobility. You can also add that drained power to yourself (via Energy Siphon, Leech, Supremacy, etc.) to buff your own damage (if using energy weapons especially). You'd want to skill up on Flow Capacitors for this.

Crowd Control - Lets you bunch up all your opponents making it easier for you and your team to shoot them and kill them both through your own raw damage and subsequent warp core breaches. You'd want to skill on Graviton Generators for that.

Exotic Damage - This is a more direct damage approach. Damage here is dealt through your science bridge officer abilities or through "clicky" consoles and traits. You'd want to skill up on Particle Generators for this.

You can skill for a mix of all 3 on your captain's skill tree, but your ship build will mostly focus on one of those if you want to get the maximum out of them.

So for Sci Captain skill trees, the basics apply. You'd want to maximize your skill points for your chosen main weapon type then skill up on the sci skills of your choice. Those are the only real skills you'd want to max (9 points). The rest would be in the 3-6 point range.

If you want to fly a science ship, it'll be better to focus on a particular weapon type. You've got limited weapons slots on most ships (3 fore and aft) and limited tactical bridge officer abilities so while it is perfectly viable to slot a torp fore and aft with beams, it won't be optimal. It is also difficult to optimize a more canon build due to the amount of points you'll invest in your science tree vs a more weapons-oriented build.

IMO flying a science-build science ship is one of the more challenging and rewarding ships to fly. It requires a bit more thought and timing due to the general long-cooldowns for the good science abilities. A good science captain can be a force multiplier for the team through debuffs and crowd control, or he/she can make a run more difficult for the team with mistimed/misused skills.

For your reference, have a look at the Science Build Thread. There are a lot of nice builds there to study/copy both for PVE and PVP.

noroblad · October 2015

wells is from temporal lockbox era, but I cant recall if its box or lobi or what. Its probably not worth it anymore, you can probably buy the scryer or something like that 2 or 3 times over for the trouble of getting an outdated wells.

Science can be built a lot of ways ... you can build like a tac and drive a hybrid ship like the breen carrier or nandi or such, which have heavy sci consoles and at least ltcmdr sci seating, backing up your shooting damage with exotic damage or a tricky build like shield zapping or gravity or whatever. You can build like a tac and just shoot stuff, in something like a phantom, and enjoy your photonic fleet etc. You can build pure sci, and drive a ship with 5 sci consoles and a 2nd deflector but only 6 guns, doing damage with abilities like tractor beam repulsors, gravity well, or whatever. You can do weird stuff.. my breen carrier sci has a weak engine and moves slowly, using TBR to push things in front of me with pedal to the metal, doing tons of damage. My dyson reverses TBR and drags things thru its mines and gas spew and other nasty things that I can put behind my ship and drag them through -- this is rather amusing. My nandi has all flow caps and tet glider set, pulling shields off super fast with that new torp .. 2k/hit aoe shield damage (not torp damage, thats much higher of course) into a GW group with ts3 is pretty much win. These are just some of the ideas. You can really get crazy with universal heavy officer ships (birds of prey and the similar ships released in boxes etc to make sure that kdf has nothing unique).

warnings: there are no sci ships outside of federation at high level. Sci takes a lot of gear if you want to mix things up with diff builds like I do -- many oddball things like gravity anchor, specific 2nd deflectors, extra fleet consoles (not just tac, you need a set of flow caps and a set of exotic and maybe a set of gravity), specific crafted console, and more. To strip shields you need tet glider set. Exotic damage does better with some pricy toys. TBR reverse office is rather expensive. All in all, its just an expensive, resource heavy class -- and if you focus on one build only, that probably should be exotic which is also expensive. It takes a fair amount of gear and know how to make a 6 weapon ship perform even decently compared to a 5/3 type ship that just shoots. Its almost required for exotic sci to have 15 crafting in science for the trait.

And all that ignores playing a healer, which some pvp folks do. Ive never done that setup, but its another approach, you get a heavy tanky ship like recluse and play support.

liberatrix · October 2015

great thread, good comments

alex284 · October 2015

Spec 9 points into flow caps and particle generators. Spec into gravitons if you think you really want to do crowd control (not really useful at this point in STO's life, but some people are attached to it). Everything else you can easily change later on.

Get embassy consoles that give plasma explosion that boost flow caps or part gens. Slot boff abilities to go with one or the other.

If you want to do an exotic damage build, buy the graga mal or falla okev doff and slot (at least) grav well and tractor beam repulsors. Slot conservation of energy and work on your science RnD school to get that trait. If you have the zen, get a tactical command ship for AHOD (reduces cd on science abilities) and possibly a phantom for reciprocity (reduces cd on tactical abilities, useful with limited tac seating).

If you want to do a drain build, get plasmonic leech and slot at least tykens rift and energy siphon.

Drop the torps. You will not have enough room for 2 copies of faw, attack patterns, tac teams, *and* torp spread, especially if you're running a lot of sci abilities (also, do you turn to use each torp? If so, you're losing "on-time" for half your beams when you do. If not, why are you slotting a torp on each side?).

A lot of the sci skills (especially the more expensive ones) are useful in PVP, not PVE. If you stick to PVE, note that npc's don't cloak (so no need for sensors), that subsystem shutdown does very little (so no need for subspace decompiler), and holds aren't all that useful. So most of your points will still be available for tactical and engineering skills.

If you're really into PVP, then I can't help there.

mustrumridcully0 · October 2015

I'd never put 9 points in any skill, the last 3 points do so little. I don't believe that will make an appreciable difference compared what you can get for just taking the first 3 points in any other skill you would otherwise not be able to train.
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Particle Generators and Flow Caps however are basically what you need for drain and damage. Gravity Generator if you want more crowd control with your gravity well, and I don't know why you wouldn't.

Sensors is important for the Science Captain ability Sensor Scan, which is basically the only straight damage buff your career has to offer.

Subspace Decompilers and Countermeasure Systems are basically dead skills currently, since the abilities that they buff are not really seen as valuable any more. Scramble Sensors, Viral Matrix, Photonic Shockwave, Charged Particle Burst... Maybe one day they'll be useful again. But not really for now.

Remember that you don't have fly a Science Vessel just because you are a Science Captain! Most advice here will probably automatically lead you in that direction, and it might be exactly what you plan to do anyway, but just keep it in mind. If you're not going to fly Science Vessels, you will probably want a different skill build. Then only Starship Sensors is still important for Sensor Scan.

If you fly a Science Vessel - my best experience for a while now have been torpoedo oriented builds with gravity well. That is also a very fun build IMO.

lucho80 · October 2015

mustrumridcully0 wrote: »

I'd never put 9 points in any skill, the last 3 points do so little. I don't believe that will make an appreciable difference compared what you can get for just taking the first 3 points in any other skill you would otherwise not be able to train.

Depends on your play style. Frankly, if I'm going to specialize in something, I go all out if the skill ability relationship is linear. That being said, I would never put more than 6 on any resistance type skill which includes inertia dampeners and power insulators.

How do you build a science character?

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