Here's a video that showcases how -immediately- things destroy me ...
Positioning and timing can take a bit of practice. Tactical team has to be up pretty much all the time. Ditto for cannon scatter or rapid fire plus attack pattern beta and emergency power to weapons which is why there's two copies of each ( a copy each of scatter and rapid is fine).
Unbuffed and under powered weapons don't do much damage.
Your attack sequence would be something like this:
EPtW2* --> TT1 --> CSV3 --> APB1 and then repeat with the second copy of each. The idea would be to take as many bad guys with you on your opening fully buffed attack then clean up with the next rotation. Yes, this will happen eventually, it's just practice is all
Hull heals: A2SIF**, ET, HE (usually in that order)
Shield Regen: ST3 (also for when your boff ability timers or view of the enemy get scrambled).
You got tractor beamed and need to escape: PH1 or even evasive maneuvers.
You can change your Lieutenant Universal boff slot from science to engineering by getting a cheap engineering boff off the exchange. A Nausiccan would be nice (pirate trait). It doesn't have to be purple.
Since you're a Science Captain - use Sensor Scan on larger bad guys while firing, Photonic Fleet + Scattering Field when extra help or a diversion is needed. Evasive maneuvers when caught out of position or need to retreat.
TSS and tractor beam aren't much help as you can see. Tachyon beam is good for dropping shields but is only single target and best replaced for now as unlike when you were at lower ranks there's always more targets.
If you haven't got 2 points into electo-plasma system flow on your skill tree you might consider replacing one of your 2 RCS consoles with a cheap EPS console, but one of the reasons you're not doing as much damage as you should is not using EPtW. You can see your weapons power dipping to about 50 which is not good. Going from APO to ABP (2 copies) will also make the opposing party blow up sooner.
*EPtW, EPtS, EPtE, EptA = emergency power to weapons, shields, engines, auxiliary. **A2SiF = Auxiliary to the Structural Integrity Field.
Positioning and timing can take a bit of practice. Tactical team has to be up pretty much all the time. Ditto for cannon scatter or rapid fire plus attack pattern beta and emergency power to weapons which is why there's two copies of each ( a copy each of scatter and rapid is fine).
Unbuffed and under powered weapons don't do much damage.
Your attack sequence would be something like this:
EPtW2* --> TT1 --> CSV3 --> APB1 and then repeat with the second copy of each. The idea would be to take as many bad guys with you on your opening fully buffed attack then clean up with the next rotation. Yes, this will happen eventually, it's just practice is all
Hull heals: A2SIF**, ET, HE (usually in that order)
Shield Regen: ST3 (also for when your boff ability timers or view of the enemy get scrambled).
You can change your Lieutenant Universal boff slot from science to engineering by getting a cheap engineering boff off the exchange. A Nausiccan would be nice (pirate trait). It doesn't have to be purple.
Since you're a Science Captain - use Sensor Scan on larger bad guys while firing, Photonic Fleet + Scattering Field when extra help or a diversion is needed. Evasive maneuvers when caught out of position or need to retreat.
TSS and tractor beam aren't much help as you can see. Tachyon beam is good for dropping shields but is only single target and best replaced for now as unlike when you were at lower ranks there's always more targets.
If you haven't got 2 points into electo-plasma system flow on your skill tree you might consider replacing one of your 2 RCS consoles with a cheap EPS console, but one of the reasons you're not doing as much damage as you should is not using EPtW. You can see your weapons power dipping to about 50 which is not good. Going from APO to ABP (2 copies) will also make the opposing party blow up sooner.
*EPtW, EPtS, EPtE, EptA = emergency power to weapons, shields, engines, auxiliary. **A2SiF = Auxiliary to the Structural Integrity Field.
That seems to have done it. I made all the changes you and others suggested, and actually completed an episode without dying.
Feels a lot better that way. :P
I also moved some of the more important BOFF abilities to the main hotbar, so I'm not having to scramble to remember where they are in the middle of a fight, which has proved to help as well.
Once again, thanks for the advice and help.
For now though, the set from Midnight or Stormbound will give you much better space equipment with a little time investment.
As to your skills, if you can list out where you put points in the space skills, or even use https://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/ it can give us a guide on how to help you use them to better effect for you. Ultimately you probably want to respec, but you'd need a better understanding first, not just of what stuff does, but what you want to do and get out of it, and how to handle your weak spots.
I'm guessing Midnight/Stormbound are part of a later story arc? Basically, I need to muscle through the rest of Delta Quadrant to get better eqipment?
Should be doable, I think. I'm like 85-90% finished with it, currently.
Well you should be able to just skip missions and cherrypick those you want to do. As a new player I understand you'd want to do the story in the order it is given to you. Unfortunately it isn't really in order any more, and there is a ton of missing content that has either been cut or misplaced.
As KDF you aren't missing any cut content as far as I can remember, but there are a number of storylines that you should already have done by now.
The first one is the Nimbus arc, which directly preceeds the Romulan mystery. The next is the Spectres arc, which is completely self contained as a story in the Fed/Klingon neutral zone, but used to be stuffed in fairly early, though I think it still unlocks some simple patrols there. There is also the marauding patrols you probably haven't done yet, which is KDF only content, and while they are just patrols, not some overarching story, they are part of the Fed/Klingon war.
Then there is the lost Dominion arc, which really should be done before finishing the New Frontiers storyline, but makes most sense to do it before or after the Cardassian arc, or maybe post Borg arc. Yes its pretty messy because it actually postdates the original Borg content, but the Borg stuff was later redone and ties in much more closely to the Dyson and Delta stuff now. Then they redid the Cardassian arc and cut it basically to a third of its original size, though originally it was only for Feds. The arc itself is fairly self contained but where it fits in the story isn't quite apparent with all the changes, though you do meet one character there you will really want to meet first in this arc, not later in the story as they have it setup now.
Finally there is the Breen/Deferi Cold War arc which you want to do before the Iconian arc because of one specific mission. All these arcs should be in your available tab.
The mess of temporal war missions really are kind of two branches of one story, and they aren't really in order. Sunrise actually was the first new mission introduced after the end of the Iconian war, but now you see its behind a bunch of other Temporal missions that came after it, aside from Temporal Ambassador which was always a standalone mission that long predated Sunrise.
So, that all aside, it is fair to say that you probably shouldn't be doing Midnight before even starting the Iconian storyline, especially since it is the conclusion to it and will spoil a lot. Stormbound should be done after Sunrise, but Sunrise doesn't make a huge reference to the Iconian war so you should be fine doing Sunrise and Stormbound and then coming back to what you were doing, though like I mentioned, you might want to go back and do some other things too.
Of course, looking at your skills, I realize I totally forgot about the Solanae set, which is an okay option for a set as well, and you've already got one part. There are two other sets in some of the missing arcs I mentioned, but they are very old and not very good.
Now the video I watched and aside from not using your BOFF powers, like tactical team, CRF and CSV until fairly late, I also notice you were barely moving. Throttle control is really important to a cannon escort type ship, but being a sitting duck is asking for trouble. Your defense rating increases the faster you go up to some maximum point, but with your engine power so low, your throttle at half, and also whatever engines you're using, you were barely even moving, and that's a serious problem. With your low engine power, you'll do better wtih combat impulse engines, which the sets from Midnight and Stormbound offer. The Solanae set offers hyper impulse engines which won't help at all with low engine power.
So skill wise, you almost totally neglected engineering skills, have a lot in science skills, and tactical is a bit odd itself. I'm not going to tell you how to put your skills down, but firstly, you should consider what BOFF powers you want to use. You obviously went heavy on shields, but nothing in shield healing, while you totally neglected hull and hull healing. You also went all in on control and drain expertise, but do you use them for much? They do offer useful defense against control and drain, but you also got their branch skills that do unique things. You've neglected any skill in accuracy, and the crit skills, but you're flying a tactical ship.
I think you largely fell for the noob trap of maxing out skills versus a wider distribution. It isn't that you should never max out any skills, but being new to the game, you don't really know how to make the most of what you're doing especially for the ship you're flying. Keep in mind, most skills are setup like this: 1 point gives 50-60 of a skill. 2 points and you're at 80-85. The third puts you up to 100, so that last skill point is only giving you 15-20 of a skill. Very often you'll find better value by putting it to the first rank of another skill.
Again though, what you have isn't necessarily bad, you just need to know what you're doing and how to make it work. For what you've laid out, you want to get shields with a good regenerative value, such as regenerative shields. Your lack of impulse expertise is going to make you slow which is kind of a problem for an escort type ship, but less so for a cruiser, and your low power investment means combat impulse engines will help you the most. With no focus on hull healing of any kind you depend on resists and anything to help your shields take more of it, which maybe suggests resilient shields over regenerative (set concerns may well trump this, though.) You'll also need to get hull healing from somewhere, and your few BOFF heals aren't going to help you much, so a reputation trait like energy refrequencer is going to be important, but you should also look at placates with your investment into control expertise, and threat reduction (which is useless solo.) With no focus on accuracy, or crit damage, your weapons probably should be primarily [dmg] mods, and maybe an [acc] mod, although most of your crit chance typically comes from equipment (that you don't have yet.)
Should you go making sweeping, expensive changes? No. Do try out some different things and see how it affects you. You're already doing better as you said so, good. Don't be afraid to try something different.
Although one final note on your equipment, the skill planner suggests you have ambiplasma envelope consoles. Those are utterly useless for you. They improve plasma projectiles, not plasma energy weapons. You want plasma infusers.
ad lvl 65 things get way to hard on ground its ok but in my scimitar t5 U i get 1 shot almost by any ship
i have all the items from the jem hadar ship to my scimitar but so far i see the item info there all lvl 45 purple
i look all quest but they only give max lvl 45 items so i need tons off tech upgrade to lvl all my items
i really hope they give beter rewards that are for lvl 60 to 65 so i dont need to upgrade every time
and max lvl stuff ad market are insane high sample a shield so 6 mil -.-
in my few it will take away alot of fun to play this game
ad lvl 65 things get way to hard on ground its ok but in my scimitar t5 U i get 1 shot almost by any ship
i have all the items from the jem hadar ship to my scimitar but so far i see the item info there all lvl 45 purple
i look all quest but they only give max lvl 45 items so i need tons off tech upgrade to lvl all my items
i really hope they give beter rewards that are for lvl 60 to 65 so i dont need to upgrade every time
and max lvl stuff ad market are insane high sample a shield so 6 mil -.-
in my few it will take away alot of fun to play this game
mk 12 very rare should be fine for all content on advance, if your getting killed that fast something gone very wrong with your build. make sure your difficulty is set to normal, if it is fill this out and if you can post it in your own thread, so we can see what's going on.
Comments
Positioning and timing can take a bit of practice. Tactical team has to be up pretty much all the time. Ditto for cannon scatter or rapid fire plus attack pattern beta and emergency power to weapons which is why there's two copies of each ( a copy each of scatter and rapid is fine).
Unbuffed and under powered weapons don't do much damage.
Your attack sequence would be something like this:
EPtW2* --> TT1 --> CSV3 --> APB1 and then repeat with the second copy of each. The idea would be to take as many bad guys with you on your opening fully buffed attack then clean up with the next rotation. Yes, this will happen eventually, it's just practice is all
Hull heals: A2SIF**, ET, HE (usually in that order)
Shield Regen: ST3 (also for when your boff ability timers or view of the enemy get scrambled).
You got tractor beamed and need to escape: PH1 or even evasive maneuvers.
You can change your Lieutenant Universal boff slot from science to engineering by getting a cheap engineering boff off the exchange. A Nausiccan would be nice (pirate trait). It doesn't have to be purple.
Since you're a Science Captain - use Sensor Scan on larger bad guys while firing, Photonic Fleet + Scattering Field when extra help or a diversion is needed. Evasive maneuvers when caught out of position or need to retreat.
TSS and tractor beam aren't much help as you can see. Tachyon beam is good for dropping shields but is only single target and best replaced for now as unlike when you were at lower ranks there's always more targets.
If you haven't got 2 points into electo-plasma system flow on your skill tree you might consider replacing one of your 2 RCS consoles with a cheap EPS console, but one of the reasons you're not doing as much damage as you should is not using EPtW. You can see your weapons power dipping to about 50 which is not good. Going from APO to ABP (2 copies) will also make the opposing party blow up sooner.
*EPtW, EPtS, EPtE, EptA = emergency power to weapons, shields, engines, auxiliary. **A2SiF = Auxiliary to the Structural Integrity Field.
Feels a lot better that way. :P
I also moved some of the more important BOFF abilities to the main hotbar, so I'm not having to scramble to remember where they are in the middle of a fight, which has proved to help as well.
Once again, thanks for the advice and help.
Well you should be able to just skip missions and cherrypick those you want to do. As a new player I understand you'd want to do the story in the order it is given to you. Unfortunately it isn't really in order any more, and there is a ton of missing content that has either been cut or misplaced.
As KDF you aren't missing any cut content as far as I can remember, but there are a number of storylines that you should already have done by now.
The first one is the Nimbus arc, which directly preceeds the Romulan mystery. The next is the Spectres arc, which is completely self contained as a story in the Fed/Klingon neutral zone, but used to be stuffed in fairly early, though I think it still unlocks some simple patrols there. There is also the marauding patrols you probably haven't done yet, which is KDF only content, and while they are just patrols, not some overarching story, they are part of the Fed/Klingon war.
Then there is the lost Dominion arc, which really should be done before finishing the New Frontiers storyline, but makes most sense to do it before or after the Cardassian arc, or maybe post Borg arc. Yes its pretty messy because it actually postdates the original Borg content, but the Borg stuff was later redone and ties in much more closely to the Dyson and Delta stuff now. Then they redid the Cardassian arc and cut it basically to a third of its original size, though originally it was only for Feds. The arc itself is fairly self contained but where it fits in the story isn't quite apparent with all the changes, though you do meet one character there you will really want to meet first in this arc, not later in the story as they have it setup now.
Finally there is the Breen/Deferi Cold War arc which you want to do before the Iconian arc because of one specific mission. All these arcs should be in your available tab.
The mess of temporal war missions really are kind of two branches of one story, and they aren't really in order. Sunrise actually was the first new mission introduced after the end of the Iconian war, but now you see its behind a bunch of other Temporal missions that came after it, aside from Temporal Ambassador which was always a standalone mission that long predated Sunrise.
So, that all aside, it is fair to say that you probably shouldn't be doing Midnight before even starting the Iconian storyline, especially since it is the conclusion to it and will spoil a lot. Stormbound should be done after Sunrise, but Sunrise doesn't make a huge reference to the Iconian war so you should be fine doing Sunrise and Stormbound and then coming back to what you were doing, though like I mentioned, you might want to go back and do some other things too.
Of course, looking at your skills, I realize I totally forgot about the Solanae set, which is an okay option for a set as well, and you've already got one part. There are two other sets in some of the missing arcs I mentioned, but they are very old and not very good.
Now the video I watched and aside from not using your BOFF powers, like tactical team, CRF and CSV until fairly late, I also notice you were barely moving. Throttle control is really important to a cannon escort type ship, but being a sitting duck is asking for trouble. Your defense rating increases the faster you go up to some maximum point, but with your engine power so low, your throttle at half, and also whatever engines you're using, you were barely even moving, and that's a serious problem. With your low engine power, you'll do better wtih combat impulse engines, which the sets from Midnight and Stormbound offer. The Solanae set offers hyper impulse engines which won't help at all with low engine power.
So skill wise, you almost totally neglected engineering skills, have a lot in science skills, and tactical is a bit odd itself. I'm not going to tell you how to put your skills down, but firstly, you should consider what BOFF powers you want to use. You obviously went heavy on shields, but nothing in shield healing, while you totally neglected hull and hull healing. You also went all in on control and drain expertise, but do you use them for much? They do offer useful defense against control and drain, but you also got their branch skills that do unique things. You've neglected any skill in accuracy, and the crit skills, but you're flying a tactical ship.
I think you largely fell for the noob trap of maxing out skills versus a wider distribution. It isn't that you should never max out any skills, but being new to the game, you don't really know how to make the most of what you're doing especially for the ship you're flying. Keep in mind, most skills are setup like this: 1 point gives 50-60 of a skill. 2 points and you're at 80-85. The third puts you up to 100, so that last skill point is only giving you 15-20 of a skill. Very often you'll find better value by putting it to the first rank of another skill.
Again though, what you have isn't necessarily bad, you just need to know what you're doing and how to make it work. For what you've laid out, you want to get shields with a good regenerative value, such as regenerative shields. Your lack of impulse expertise is going to make you slow which is kind of a problem for an escort type ship, but less so for a cruiser, and your low power investment means combat impulse engines will help you the most. With no focus on hull healing of any kind you depend on resists and anything to help your shields take more of it, which maybe suggests resilient shields over regenerative (set concerns may well trump this, though.) You'll also need to get hull healing from somewhere, and your few BOFF heals aren't going to help you much, so a reputation trait like energy refrequencer is going to be important, but you should also look at placates with your investment into control expertise, and threat reduction (which is useless solo.) With no focus on accuracy, or crit damage, your weapons probably should be primarily [dmg] mods, and maybe an [acc] mod, although most of your crit chance typically comes from equipment (that you don't have yet.)
Should you go making sweeping, expensive changes? No. Do try out some different things and see how it affects you. You're already doing better as you said so, good. Don't be afraid to try something different.
Although one final note on your equipment, the skill planner suggests you have ambiplasma envelope consoles. Those are utterly useless for you. They improve plasma projectiles, not plasma energy weapons. You want plasma infusers.
i have all the items from the jem hadar ship to my scimitar but so far i see the item info there all lvl 45 purple
i look all quest but they only give max lvl 45 items so i need tons off tech upgrade to lvl all my items
i really hope they give beter rewards that are for lvl 60 to 65 so i dont need to upgrade every time
and max lvl stuff ad market are insane high sample a shield so 6 mil -.-
in my few it will take away alot of fun to play this game
mk 12 very rare should be fine for all content on advance, if your getting killed that fast something gone very wrong with your build. make sure your difficulty is set to normal, if it is fill this out and if you can post it in your own thread, so we can see what's going on.
https://skillplanner.stoacademy.com
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.