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Do you need a T6 ?

connormckeith#7288 connormckeith Member Posts: 10 Arc User
I played a year back and there was some kind of xp bonus going on that lasted forever , so I got to level 50 quickly...

.... and then I couldn't play. Everything trounced my T4 ships and there wasn't much I could do about it.

So I"m wondering, do you have to buy T6 ships to get past that hump ? Am I just a terrible player ? 'Cause I went into a random star system and picked on a single mob, (a romulan) and it pretty much one or two shotted me even though it was my level.

And if it is a requirement ...why don't htey just post that you need to eventually buy one ? The surprise requirement is a really nasty thing to stumble over.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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  • dirlettiadirlettia Member Posts: 1,632 Arc User
    T6 is not needed for anything but you can get free ones a few times a year at Anniversary, summer and winter events. Romulan D'derix things one shot aything foolish enough to get under 5km from them so that was likely just a tactics thing and nothing to do with your ship.

    Still waiting to be able to use forum titles
  • salazarrazesalazarraze Member Posts: 3,794 Arc User
    edited November 2018
    I played a year back and there was some kind of xp bonus going on that lasted forever , so I got to level 50 quickly...

    .... and then I couldn't play. Everything trounced my T4 ships and there wasn't much I could do about it.

    So I"m wondering, do you have to buy T6 ships to get past that hump ? Am I just a terrible player ? 'Cause I went into a random star system and picked on a single mob, (a romulan) and it pretty much one or two shotted me even though it was my level.

    And if it is a requirement ...why don't htey just post that you need to eventually buy one ? The surprise requirement is a really nasty thing to stumble over.
    The answer to the bolded/underlined portion is yes but don't take this personally because the game does NOTHING to teach you about the correct strategies for playing at endgame levels. There are a HUGE number of things that you can do to improve your combat performance. I recommend you get yourself set up with some people in game that can help you out. There are tons of fleets that want to help. Message me in game @salazarraze and I'll gladly show you what to do.

    To answer your question about T6, no you do not need a T6 ship to be "good" at STO.
    When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
  • connormckeith#7288 connormckeith Member Posts: 10 Arc User
    The take away I get here is "Stay away from romulans" after 50...
    :)
  • questeriusquesterius Member Posts: 8,301 Arc User
    edited November 2018
    The take away I get here is "Stay away from romulans" after 50...
    :)

    Not at all. It's just getting to know the trick of the opponents and their counters. Once you know those the mobs are in general pretty easy to dispose of.

    For Romulans their favorite trick in space to tractor beam you and lob high yield torpedoes at you.
    So you need a counter against tractor beam (or just stay more than 5Km away from the Romulans). The science boff power "Polarize hull" is the easiest way for that.

    Second is the high yield targetable torpedoes. Shoot them down before they reach you. E,g, with BFAW, Tractor Beam Repulsors or simply by targeting them.

    Are you familiar with skillplanner?
    https://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/

    If you can show us your build there then more specific suggestions can be made.

    Edit: Forgot to add the distance to stay away from Romulans
    This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
  • rattler2rattler2 Member Posts: 57,973 Community Moderator
    While its not REQUIRED... A T6 would make things just a bit easier. I'd suggest waiting until the Winter Event and doign the daily for the one offered this year. Word on the grapevine is we're getting a Fek'lhri design since all the Breen ships are accounted for save the fighter.

    In the meantime... maybe we can help you with your ship build in some way.
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  • seaofsorrowsseaofsorrows Member Posts: 10,918 Arc User
    Yep, you'll be able to get a free T6 next month, and then probably another free T6 around February from the Anniversary Event.

    If there does happen to be something in the C-Store you really want, I would wait till the end of the month for the 'Black Friday Sale.' Otherwise, for now, you should be fine with what you have, you need to work on your build and power rotation more then likely.
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  • husanakxhusanakx Member Posts: 1,589 Arc User
    edited November 2018
    T5 and T6 are very close spec wise. T6 add ship traits. But you can get ship traits from filling up spec trees. You can also buy them from the exchange. There are a handful of good traits for each faction that have been in lockboxs making it possible to find 3-4 decent traits without ever owning an actual T6 ship to unlock them. If you have a fed look for traits like Honored Dead which you can pick up cheaply most days.

    In regards to T5s. There are a handful of old T5 lockbox ships that can now be had for very little EC. The infinity lockbox has a T5 ship prize pack, they don't have much value anymore and you can get a bunch of good T5 lockbox grade ships for 5-6 million ec. (which is not a lot of EC anymore)

    You can pick up the Ferengi D'kora cruiser... Hirogen Hunter escort... Tholian Orb science ship... Nicor bioship... Voth Bastian flight deck. Those are all Ex lockbox grand prize T5s that can still compete in all content. They also get a free upgrade unlock as they are lockbox class ships. There are a handful of other T5 ships like the mirror ships, the APU cruiser, Malon cruiser and a few others that are decent as well. But for the price you can't go wrong with one of the Ex lockbox options.
  • dracounguisdracounguis Member Posts: 5,358 Arc User
    husanakx wrote: »
    You can pick up the Ferengi D'kora cruiser... Hirogen Hunter escort... Tholian Orb science ship... Nicor bioship... Voth Bastian flight deck. Those are all Ex lockbox grand prize T5s that can still compete in all content. They also get a free upgrade unlock as they are lockbox class ships. There are a handful of other T5 ships like the mirror ships, the APU cruiser, Malon cruiser and a few others that are decent as well. But for the price you can't go wrong with one of the Ex lockbox options.

    Yup, many of the T5 lockbox ships have had a huge price drop. Good time to grab one or many.

  • seaofsorrowsseaofsorrows Member Posts: 10,918 Arc User
    husanakx wrote: »
    T5 and T6 are very close spec wise. T6 add ship traits. But you can get ship traits from filling up spec trees. You can also buy them from the exchange. There are a handful of good traits for each faction that have been in lockboxs making it possible to find 3-4 decent traits without ever owning an actual T6 ship to unlock them. If you have a fed look for traits like Honored Dead which you can pick up cheaply most days.

    In regards to T5s. There are a handful of old T5 lockbox ships that can now be had for very little EC. The infinity lockbox has a T5 ship prize pack, they don't have much value anymore and you can get a bunch of good T5 lockbox grade ships for 5-6 million ec. (which is not a lot of EC anymore)

    You can pick up the Ferengi D'kora cruiser... Hirogen Hunter escort... Tholian Orb science ship... Nicor bioship... Voth Bastian flight deck. Those are all Ex lockbox grand prize T5s that can still compete in all content. They also get a free upgrade unlock as they are lockbox class ships. There are a handful of other T5 ships like the mirror ships, the APU cruiser, Malon cruiser and a few others that are decent as well. But for the price you can't go wrong with one of the Ex lockbox options.

    Great advice, those are all great ships that can handle any content you would need.

    Have a look on the exchange, you can probably find some bargains on these ships. One of these ships can easily get you by until the Winter Event which will get you a free T6. Even then, one of these would be just as good and possibly better then the free T6 but all should be more then capable.
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  • darkbladejkdarkbladejk Member Posts: 3,698 Community Moderator
    You don't "need" a t6 ship in game to succeed today. With that in mind they do have several bells and whistles that can make your game alot easier. The most notable bell/whistle they give you is unlockable starship traits that you can mix and match to backup insane builds. The second most notable bell/whistle is the specialist seatings that many of them have like intel, command, miracle worker, and pilot. As far as to which would be best for you depends on what you like to do in game and what your goals are for your toon and build. What's good for me as a tank may not be something a pure damage dealer may want. It will also upgrade to t5u for free which will save you a good chunk of resources. The t5u ships in game can easily keep up with their t6 big brothers, however t6 gets a very very slight edge due to specialist seating. In fact I used my t5u Cardassian Galor as my main ship well into the Agents of Yesterday era and didn't swap until the t6 Keldon was released.

    If you want something that is relatively cheap in terms of EC, then I would advise picking up a Ferengi D'kora as some of the others have advised. It's got a good balanced setup which will give you a great starting point to get rolling again. There are plenty of budget options that you can get for free or next to nothing and have the ship kitted out in about 4 days or less. If you're not sure where to get started you're more than welcome to give me a PM and I can help you out.
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  • seaofsorrowsseaofsorrows Member Posts: 10,918 Arc User
    You can also find build advice for the free T5 ships by clicking here.

    This should give you some good ideas how to proceed going forward.
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  • questeriusquesterius Member Posts: 8,301 Arc User
    @connormckeith#7288

    If you do not want to commit to Tier6 ships yet, then you can also use a free Tier 5 Retrofit ship which becomes available at level50.
    https://sto.gamepedia.com/Player_rank#Ship_Requisitions
    This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
  • brian334brian334 Member Posts: 2,214 Arc User
    The thing you need most is to have Captain's Skills, Bridge Officer Powers, and Ship Power Levels set so that they generate synergy. For example, if you have a Science Captain in a Science Vessel, but are running 100% Weapons Power with Engineering Skills assigned maximum points, your results will be less than optimal.

    The thing is, there are literally hundreds of builds which work well, and there are thousands that a player with enough experience can make to work, but the inexperienced player has never anywhere in the game been exposed to the idea that it matters how you assign Skills, choose Powers, and use ship's Power Settings. Then at around level 50 it starts to matter and you are stuck with the choices you've made all along.

    Before you use a Captain's Retrain Token, get good advice from a mentor about your build. Guessing can cost you a lot of Zen!
  • questeriusquesterius Member Posts: 8,301 Arc User
    westmetals wrote: »
    questerius wrote: »
    @connormckeith#7288

    If you do not want to commit to Tier6 ships yet, then you can also use a free Tier 5 Retrofit ship which becomes available at level50.
    https://sto.gamepedia.com/Player_rank#Ship_Requisitions

    That's only available at level 50 if you have the lifetime subscription. Free-to-play players do get the same option, but not until level 61.

    My bad.
    The ships available at level 61 i already had in my inventory so did not notice exactly when they became available.
    This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
  • mustrumridcully0mustrumridcully0 Member Posts: 12,963 Arc User
    edited November 2018
    Here is a little Wall of Text I already used on reddit - there the question was more "do I need Mark XIV" gear, but it doesn't change that much. Yes, better gear helps, Tier 6 ships help, but what really matters is that you have a build where things work and flow together.

    Gear Mark and rarity is not unimportant, but it sometimes is more important that the gear actually fits together, and it also fits to your bridge officer powers selection.
    A really ultra-cheap start without anything that requires more investment be too look into the following things:
    • Set Weapon Power to Maximum.
    • If you're using a Cruiser, use the right Cruiser Command - the one that reduces your weapon energy drain.
    • Make sure all your weapons have the same energy type, and are either all beams or cannons. A single torpedo launcher might be okay, but is usually not recommended. Currently, the trend is more toward cannons rather than beams. Whatever energy type you picked - get tactical consoles that buff that damage type. (Also of course, other consoles that might buff the type, but many might require specific missions, reputations, membership in a fleet, Tier 6 ships and what not)
    • Generally, when selecting your powers, you need to consider how they interat with each other, including their own copies. For example, it's pointless to slot 3 Engineering Teams, because the shared cooldown between them will mean that when you an activate the 3rd, the 1st will also be ready again. Gravity Well locks out not just other Gravity Wells, but also Tyken's Rift, so it might be better to pick a different power that you can use together for maximum space wizardry.
    • Use the right weapon buff your weapons. Beam Fire At Will or beams or Cannon Scatter Volley for cannons is the general recommendations. Both skills need to be selected at a high rank, since the lower rank ones also reduce accuracy and mean you miss more often. However, maybe at lower levels with a build not quite as tough to deal with all the "aggro" you'd draw, cannon rapid fire and beam overload are also options.
    • Tactical Team allows your shield to automatically redistribute all power to what ever section is under fire. So instead of having 1 wide open facing that takes all the damage and 3 full facings, all that power is focused on that one facing under fire. Very useful. You just need the Rank I ability to get this effect.
    • Emergency Power to Shields and Emergency Power to Weapons are both skills I'd recommend for a new build. EPtW improves your damage output, killing enemies faster means you need less healing. EptS increases your shield hardness, meaning you take less damage.
    • Hazard Emitters is an important hull heal. It provide a good heal over time and cleanses plasma fires and the Borg Cube Shield Drain ability (but not the Borg Sphere's Tachyon Beam).
    • Science Team can be a great shield heal, and cleanses a few annoying debuffs, including Jam Sensors (when ships suddenly turn invisible) and Subnucleonic Beam (removes all your buffs, and increases the cooldown timers of all cooldowns - you can't avoid the buff removal, but the cooldown increase can be bad enough). I believe Hirogen and Vaadwaur might have a few tricks in this area.
    • Engineering Team and Auxiliary to Structural Integrity Field can both be great hull heals. The latter probably only makes sense on ships that don'T already use Auxiliary to Batteries (see Cooldown Reductions)
    • Cooldown Reductions:There are two early strategies that you can pursue without needing any special traits or specializations, but they might still require a lot of Energy Credits or spending time with the Duty Officer system to recruit suitable duty officers.
      • If you can, try to find Damage Control Duty Officers. They can lower the cooldowns on Emergency Powers, so that in the end, just 1 of each power can allow you up to 100 % uptime on both. This only helps your Emergency Power abilities, but this can already be very valuable.
      • If you fly a ship with enough Engineering slots (probably a Cruiser, especially at Tier 5), an extremely popular strategy is Auxiliary to Batteries (Aux2Bat). You will need Technician Duty Officers that change the ability so that it not just boosts your power levels, but also reduces all bridge officer power cooldowns. (When looking for them, be careful, there are also other type of Technicians that won't help you here.).
        While I mention this as an "early" strategy - it's also an extremely popular that remains viable and highly competitive at endgame.


    If you're flying a Science Vessel, you might take a very different approach from the one listed above. Aux2Bat for example is highly counterproductive, since one of your primary damage sources is not weapons, but science abilities, that all need the Auxiliary power.

    Beyond build, tactics and maneuvering can also be important. Vaadwaur for example have a well telegraphed artillery attack - you might want to hit Evasive Maneuvers to get out of the range. They also have some Tri-Cobalt Mine field launcher - you don't want to be close to that either and leave yourself some maneuvering room, because they hit like a Space Truck.
    Romulans have Tractor Beam and a nasty form of High Yield Torpedoes - getting within 5 km or less means you can't outrun them and gives you less reaction time to activate something like beam fire at will. Hirogen and Bren have Subnucleonic Beam, going in with all buffs activated might mean they get all removed instantly and you plink away completely unbuffed - better wait them out a bit and then use Science Team to remove the cooldown extension. The bigger Hirogen ships have Jam Sensors instead of SNB, so again, going in fully buffed can end you up seeing no enemy and your buffs running out - have Science Team ready to counter the Jam Sensors.Some Voth ships have directional barrier shields - anticipate that and get them to trigger that shield and then attack from another direction. Stuff like that are things you can learn by watching your enemy.

    If you end up dying, remember one thing: While most of the time, high end builds will focus on AoE effects to kill as many enemies as possible at once, but if you need to consider respawns and all that, focus on getting the enemy down one by one. Dead enemies can't heal. (Notable exception on ground combat: Some NPC groups have Medics. They can revive dead enemies. Kill Medics first. Only the Voth have something like that, sometimes a repair ship is spawned - take it out before it revives that Bastion Battlecruiser that gave you so much trouble)


    EDIT:
    In general, the three biggest weaknesses of Tier 5 ships (especially not upgradeable ones)
    • They don't have access to specialization seats. That might not sound like a big deal at first, but many powers have shared cooldowns, and at Tier 5 you often run into this - so in the end, you can't really utililize all your bridge officer powers to the fullest potential. This becomes even more pronounced because Tier 6 ships also have one extra bridge officer ability they can slot (as compared to a similar Tier 5 ship, either an Ensign slot is upgraded to Lt., or a Lt.slot upgraded to Lt.Cmdr). Even if you often just slot one or two specialization powers, this can boost your damage potential. Add in cooldown reductions, and the differences become even more pronounced
    • You have less hull and shields
    • If the ship is not upgraded or upgradable, you also a Starship Mastery track, which affects both your effective hull and shields, but also means you're missing out other perks.

    Overall I would say that a Tier 5 ship will probably need to devote a bit more of its abilities to healing than a Tier 6 ship will, simply because you're more fragile and can't really compensate that with better damage output anymore.

    Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
  • talonxvtalonxv Member Posts: 4,257 Arc User
    > @connormckeith#7288 said:
    > The take away I get here is "Stay away from romulans" after 50...
    > :)

    Fyi, you will get a free tier 5 at lol 61 or 62 IIRC.
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  • avoozuulavoozuul Member Posts: 3,196 Arc User
    The one at 40 is more like a T4.5.
  • questeriusquesterius Member Posts: 8,301 Arc User
    avoozuul wrote: »
    The one at 40 is more like a T4.5.

    The MU ships are the tier 4.5. Dang, this makes me want to pull some of those oldies from storage.
    This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
  • forcemajeureforcemajeure Member Posts: 212 Arc User
    Someone may have mentioned it already, but check that your Difficulty setting is on Normal and not Advanced or Elite (or whatever the higher options are).
  • postagepaidpostagepaid Member Posts: 2,899 Arc User
    The key part of the first post seems to be they hit the overloaded xp issue the game has where you shoot ahead in terms of level but not gear meaning the scaling goes into overdrive and you're very much on the back foot to keep up with it.

    In that case it'd probably help to look at a list of mission rewards and cherry pick the ones you could make use of to bolster the ship and skip the rest til later.

    A slightly cheekier option is to hit the badlands BZ and make use of other players to help with the killing while you gather rep tokens that can either be used for specific gear or use the weapons from the daily box to bodge together something while you work towards your intended set. Low grade gear means less XP but the goal is marks and that isn't effected by how well you can do the the mindless pewpew side.
  • brian334brian334 Member Posts: 2,214 Arc User
    edited November 2018
    The key part of the first post seems to be they hit the overloaded xp issue the game has where you shoot ahead in terms of level but not gear meaning the scaling goes into overdrive and you're very much on the back foot to keep up with it.

    In that case it'd probably help to look at a list of mission rewards and cherry pick the ones you could make use of to bolster the ship and skip the rest til later.

    A slightly cheekier option is to hit the badlands BZ and make use of other players to help with the killing while you gather rep tokens that can either be used for specific gear or use the weapons from the daily box to bodge together something while you work towards your intended set. Low grade gear means less XP but the goal is marks and that isn't effected by how well you can do the the mindless pewpew side.

    This is excellent advice, and something I completely overlooked, which is strange since I wrote a how-to many moons ago about cherry-picking gear:

    Build As You Go: Mission Rewards Get You Where You Want To Be

    The exact choices I made back then are now obsolete due to the many changes in STO since then, but the idea is still sound: look over the mission rewards available to your character, make a 'best of' list, and grind those missions a few times. A reward that drops as Mk VI the first time you run the mission will drop as Mk VIII later, then Mk X, etc. as your level improves.

    Note: The Psionic Shield available from Skirmish still has no equal when dealing with Undine. Until I manage to get sets, it's my default for all my BOffs, and I've regrinded that mission so many times I can now do it in my sleep.

    On the Badlands: If you choose this route, please take time to make friends. They can be a fountain of sage advice on builds and gear. Disclaimer: do not spend dil or Zen on stuff until you are certain it's what you want to do! Other guys can use a particular meta which doesn't work for you.

    I just re-read my old thread and came across a piece of advice about the Borg and Pulsewave Assault Weapons: It Is No Longer True That Borg Adapt By Number Of Hits Instead Of Aggregate Damage! That was true earlier on. Back then I'd get about eight hits with a Pusewave before having to use my Frequency Remodulator. Now I get two. It helps to have a second weapon with a different energy type so you can shoot until they adapt, switch weapons, shoot till they adapt, then remodulate, which fixes both weapons.
    Post edited by brian334 on
  • brian334brian334 Member Posts: 2,214 Arc User
    azrael605 wrote: »
    @brian334

    Grab a TR from the exchange or the Chocrane Shotgun from the Phoenix. They can't adapt to them, they will adapt to Kit powers or pet weapons (security team & such) so you still have to hit it every so often, but your weapon damage doesn't drop.

    True enough, but my guide was intended for a new guy coming up, and its purpose was more to point out a way of thinking about the gea you get for free than finding the very best. By the time I was grinding my Romulan engineer I already had a hand full of level 60+ characters, but I wanted to play it as if I was brand new to the game and see what was out there. Turns out, quite a lot if you look for it.

    Just the Paratrinic Shield, for example, can make a huge difference to a newbie player. I think I got the idea of going back and farming upgrades for free from Husanak. If you're still around, dude, go back and rewrite all your old guides with the new stuff in mind.
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