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Space Problems
dragonian994
Member Posts: 10 Arc User
in The Academy
To anyone who cares to read this, I've been having a plethora of shortcomings with my ship in space combat. I'm blaming myself, of course, because I'm pretty sure the answer is as simple as the fact that I'm just a total idiot when it comes down to this game, even though I'm a big Star Trek fan and playing a game revolving around it is quite neat. I'm a Level 60 (Because, of course, I leveled WAY TOO PREMATURELY early on in the game, and am now majorly behind, even though I'm a Fleet Admiral) Engineer with the Sovereign-Class Assault Cruiser, and I have mostly Tetryon weaponry on my ship, however, I doubt it's very effective. I can survive well in fights, but battles take FOREVER because I don't have enough weapon power. I tried to set it so that I had more power to my weapons, but it seemed like the Voth Bulwark Battleship I fought nearly destroyed me because of it. I think the problem mostly lies in my skills, which I didn't train very well, my weapons, and maybe my power levels. Also, as much as I would LIKE to buy Fleet Phasers from my Fleet, my Fleet's Starbase almost NEVER has any weapons provisioned, and all my other holdings have almost nothing that I seek, as well. I'm also not confident enough to do any STFs, because I feel like I'll look like I'm leeching off teammates because of my sheer incompetency. Any ideas as to how I can fix this up, or is my character doomed? (By the way, I'm a new player, so I guess that justifies my posting under the Academy section?)
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If your ship is less than effective try some cross-faction ship in the Exchange: many of them are vicious, and fairly cheap.
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Krenim_Temporal_Manipulation#Omni-Directional_Antichroniton_Infused_Tetryon_Beam_Array
However....IF you are switching to Phasers...https://sto.gamepedia.com/Quantum_Phase_Catalysts (MUST HAVE)...Then either go through missions that offer free Phaser beams as a reward or buy Phaser beams with the modifiers you want on them...There alot of variants out there too...Pulse Phasers, Phased Bio Matter ,Kelvin Timeline,(lockbox phasers) or the Bio molecular ones from the undine rep..but they cost dil..
As well as good free gear..Sol Defense is decent if you need a bit more resistance..Braydon isn't bad on a sci ship or Escort if you like speed (like me).
The Voth are kinda tough if you dont understand what abilities they use..Many are science based..There Is a Reflective Immunity matrix that ship uses to send your shots back at you (like Feedback pulse)..But its fairly obvious when they activate that screen(shield)..Best case scenario..Dont fire ENERGY BASED WEAPONS (pepper them with torps or a maybe an aceton beam) when its up (it'll be up shortly after you start shooting)...Or If you can...Heal through it...But that might require some things..
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Voth_Bulwark_Battleship
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Ability:_Reflective_Immunity_Matrix
Rouge Sto Wiki Editor.
Rouge Sto Wiki Editor.
There is one big flaw in my assertion and that is that there is literally no weapon class where the mission system rewards both the tactical console to boost damage, AND the useful weapons at Mk XII Very Rare so if you do this you will either need to compromise and use some Mk XI Rare components, or craft / trade on the exchange.
At any rate, I find gearing a ship without spending anything a valuable exercise in that it gives you a ship that (a) can do any mission content (on normal at least) easily, (b) most (if not all) queues on normal, and a good number on Advanced, and finally (c) to confidence to actually spend resources / Fleet Credit / EC upgrading sure in the knowledge that you are making a good build better.
Your Ship and equipment
The basic strategy here is to
1. Obtain a T5-U or T6 ship if you can. There are so many offers and promotions that give away ships I don't consider this a violation of the "no cost" approach. Even a "rubbish" ship like the Kazon Heavy Raider [T5-U] available on the exchange for ~2mEC can rock about 12kdps using this approach - so if you have to do the build on your last "free" ship from levelling it shouldn't be too far behind.
2. Go through the episode replay system looking for episodes that reward Space Sets, or Very Rare Mk XII weapons or consoles. Using what you find you need to
3. Pick (From whats available) a weapon damage type and approach. If you are flying a slow turning ship you typically want to look for 250 degree weapons (Beam Arrays typically), escorts benefit from 45 degree weapons (dual cannons) on the front and 360 on the back (turrets). Keep an eye out for the tactical console for the weapon type - there are episodes that reward +30% Tetryon and Phaser damage iirc. You can also find a lot of Disruptor and Antiproton items
4. Pick a (complementary) space set. The best way to compare space sets is to look at the stats on the deflector as it (typically) signals the intended build for the set. +exotic damage on the deflector means its good for a science ship for example. There are not a lot of sets that include the warp core as a mission reward: The Obelisk Warp Core from Sphere of Influence is good.
5. There are 3 or 4 special Mk XII very rare consoles to keep an eye out for: Polaric Modulator, Temporally Shielded Datacore etc. You know theyre special because they have the text "You can equip only 1 of these items".
6. The episode Temporal Expanse offers tactical consoles that add 20% damage to weapon classes (Rather than damage types). At any rate, make sure your ships tactical consoles are filled with only +20% or +30% to your selected damage consoles. Any Universal consoles replace either science or engineering.
You now have a shopping list, and a list of episodes you run - many probably multiple times.
Your Captain
The next thing to consider is your captain. Regardless of whether you are Tactical, Engineering or Science, you want to use one of the "General purpose" skill builds - usually quite a lot of points in the tactical tree to get the appropriate boosts to your selected damage class and a smattering into engineering and science to improve survivability.
I could argue in favor of specific specializations, but someone could probably come up with a strong counter argument for other specializations so I'll merely say that if your ship has specialist seating and you want to train a BOFF to use that seating, you need to have 10 points in the appropriate specialization in order to use the training manual on a BOFF. So this might guide your early specialization selection.
Your BOFF skills
Your general entry level high damage high survivability builds rely on a core set of skills: Two copies of Tactical Team I (so you can cycle it as often as possible). This makes or breaks simple builds as an active TT automatically rebalances your shields, so keeping TT rolling improves your survivability in battle a lot. Then your remaining tactical skills should be (1 each of) your "scatter" attack (FAW etc), your powered attack (beam array overload etc), and attack pattern beta and omega due to the strong damage debuffs they apply to your targets.
Your Engineering skills are normally an engineering team (rank 1) and then emergency power to shields / weapons and if you have slots left over, directed energy modulation for more weapon system damage.
Science you want hazard emitters (for their hull heal effect) polarize hull plating (to situationally use to escape tractors), science team and transfer shields for their shield heals.
DOFFs and Traits
Don't forget to go through your space traits - active or not and choose traits to balance any perceived imbalances in the ship.
Also go to your DOFF system and see if you have any DOFFs that have effects related to the BOFF skills you are using and set them active.
Now, to fly the damn ship
Personally I think that steering the ship via the mouse is the way to go as this frees my left hand to press skill buttons. This does mean that you need to arrange all your skills on your action bars in ways that are easy to invoke.
What with active traits and all your boff skills and any batteries or other devices you want to use you will probably have run out of action bar space. A button on the top right of the action bar can be clicked to open 3 action bars. Open the GUI editor and disable the BOFF skill overlay - its messy and can't be keybound. Click the "New Tray" button to activate the extra action trays on the right hand side of the screen which will give you up to 30 more skill slots. You should now have 40 action bar slots that can be accessed using 1 through 0 and variations of ctl, alt and shift, and 20 slots with skills you can click when not steering. I bind these 20 to "t" and "g" as I explain:
Investigate keybinds to at least get the tactical teams on a button press. My keybinds are set up so that "t" tries to invoke everything on tray 5, "g" everything on tray 6, and "space" fires all weapons and invokes everything on tray 7. so I can just drag buffs (and heals) that are not very situational into these bars and press a single button to trigger the next healing or damage boosting effect thats ready.
With all this you should have a decent ship with decent skills and can start to customize the build to make it better: You should be able to do all non-advanced content so your build tweaks from this point should be easy to determine if they are better or worse.
Not really an issue. Watch some you-tube videos on a few to learn how to do it. If you're not being a total noob strategy-wise people don't normally have issues. Plus some people have so much DPS, even 'good' players get carried just by things dying before you even get in range cause uber-player zips in and nukes everything. Start in the normals till you get the hang of it, then pop to Advanced so you can start getting the Elite Marks from STFs. You need them for any Rep gear you want. I'd suggest the Borg Console and Kinetic Cutting Beam as the 1st two items. They are a great pair for just about any ship layout.
You have plenty of options to get out of your issue.
First off, if you think you skill speced wrong, then rebuild your ship around your skill spec. Until you can trade in some refined dil to get a respec token. Then respec how you want to play.
If you think your gear isn't performing then invest some EC into buying new weapons off the exchange. Sure it's a waste but it gives you a quick and easy change. You can easily make back any EC you spend this way.
So for example if you think your tach weapons are under performing, decide what to trade up with. What weapon type do you think would perform better? Drop by the exchange and put some EC down on some of those weapons an try them out. See if you like it any better.
You can definitely save for a T6 ship if you are not willing to drop real money. It is doable. But you might have to make some short term sacrifices until you get your T6 that you want. What are those sacrifices? Well you wont be able to dump dil into any reputation and you'll have to be patient trading dil.
There is a solution for every mistake, but to be honest there really arent any real mistakes, just less than desirable results.
So just do STFs and don't worry about complainers. They know why you are in there. You need your marks too. But if you followed the above advice, maybe your new weapons are performing better?
Cycle between these two missions:
-Sphere of Influence
-A Step Between stars
These are both fairly easy missions of the Solanae Story Arc that provide you with a special mission ship instead of your current one. Given that you're fully supplied with a ship and some excellent unique bridge officer abilities, these are great missions to train your personal space combat skills and mechanical understanding. Furthermore, these missions will provide a full compliment of very respectable equipment for your ship after running it a few times, as well as combat-worthy EV suits for yourself and your away team.
There are a few other missions you can run that supply AP beam arrays to speed things up(getting enough of them for your cruiser will probably be the most time-consuming part), but they can be a bit more challenging if you're flying an undergeared ship.(Fluid Dynamics being one example.)
Outside of running these missions, you'll likely want to pick up some cheap AP tactical consoles(Antiproton Mag Regulator) from the exchange, and perhaps a few defensive consoles like Field Generators(extra shield capacity), Emitter Arrays(extra shield healing), and SIF Generators(extra hull healing). These should hold you over until you get some fancier stuff from Reputations/Missions/Fleet Stores.