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Engineer and Science

icelord64#3474 icelord64 Member Posts: 23 Arc User
I haven't played either of these classes yet and see alot of em around and have looked at videos and stuff. So i'm interested in both of em but they seem really hard to get a grasp of seeing those are way different then tactical so not sure if they are good or not but thinking of making a engineer today but stay focus on my starfleet captian til she is max lvl. But i'm not even sure what race best suits those classes except vulcans is the onlys ones i know that suit science real good but for engineer i have no clue was thinking alien for it. So any help would be helpful on deciding to make these classes and hope i can grab my eisenberg for em still.

Comments

  • protoneousprotoneous Member Posts: 3,175 Arc User
    The three different disciplines all seem a fair bit different when playing on the ground but in space perhaps not so much aside from their respective Captain abilities.

    Tactical focuses on damage boosts, engineer on survivability and power boosts, and science on things like debuffing. Everything else is on how you set up your character (skill tree, type of ship, etc.)

    It's quite possible to have a science tank and an engineer space wizard.

    I don't think there's a "best" race for each. It's really a personal choice.
  • szerontzurszerontzur Member Posts: 2,724 Arc User
    There were plenty of aggressive Vulcans where Tactical would make perfect sense. Likewise, they had/have many scientists and engineers.
    Play what you want!

    -=Science Captain=-
    Ground: They're basically Wizards and Priests. They get access to nice control, nuking, and a myriad of heals. Electro-Gravitic Field into Exothermic Induction Field is a staple aoe 'root and nuke' combo. Using Triage with the Medical Vanguard career trait will effectively give you a full party restore on demand.

    Space: They're force multipliers. They have some single target debuffs(including the ability to remove buffs from enemies), but their real strength in space is their ability to buff everyone around them. This makes them excellent carrier captains and are even able to summon photonic ships to assist them(which are also effected by their AoE buffs).


    -=Engineer Captain=-
    Ground: They're like Science captains are in space; extremely flexible, versatile, and able to buff and protect a lot of people at once. Mines + Mortars are their staple offensive options, but you'll also get access to some great defensive fabrications that give you continuous protection.

    Space: They're kind of like space-paladins; very tanky and hard to kill. They get a big self-heal that will basically bring you back to full even from the brink of death(there's even a trait to make this refresh faster the closer you are to death). They're able to reduce power drains against them, including the drain from firing weapons, and can super-charge their power levels to make them very tough to take down while throwing out a lot of punishment. Additionally, if you pick up "Drain Infection" in your skilltree, you can effectively turn "Intrusive Energy Redirection" into a death aura around your ship that scales with EPG - which is excellent for both point-defense and generating extra aggro. They are very selfish, however, and don't directly enhance anyone else they're flying with, through buffs or debuffs.
  • annemarie30annemarie30 Member Posts: 2,698 Arc User
    there are builds that are better for each class. the best class for space magic is Science, along with a cold based ground build, because of traits scis have
    We Want Vic Fontaine
  • cryptkeeper0cryptkeeper0 Member Posts: 989 Arc User
    edited July 2023
    there are builds that are better for each class. the best class for space magic is Science, along with a cold based ground build, because of traits scis have

    Not quite true, while each captain class have special traits most are not strong enough. Tact can make better EPG builds then science toons. Only advantage sci and engineer captains have over Tact is survivability and team support.
  • questeriusquesterius Member Posts: 8,505 Arc User
    there are builds that are better for each class. the best class for space magic is Science, along with a cold based ground build, because of traits scis have

    Not quite true, while each captain class have special traits most are not strong enough. Tact can make better EPG builds then science toons. Only advantage sci and engineer captains have over Tact is survivability and team support.

    and if you're into PVP stealth detection.
    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.
  • davefenestratordavefenestrator Member Posts: 10,693 Arc User
    edited July 2023
    Unless you are playing Elite TFOs or trying to climb into the top 1% of DPSers the game is very forgiving.

    Play to have fun, and if gearing up is fun for you there are guides and players here to help you do that.

    In space, my Science captains use anomalies (gravity well, tyken's rift, cold in space from the Winter event) to control enemies, then torpedo spread and AOE attacks (charged particle burst with radiation damage from a deteriorating secondary deflector) to mess them up good.

    You need an actual science ship with secondary deflector for a good exotic damage science build, but the Brigid from the C-Store works great for that, no event / lock box / legendary ship needed. There are other C-store science ships that are good too, I just liked the look and boff seating of it. It's also already fleet level, nice if you aren't in a fleet.
  • nixie50nixie50 Member Posts: 1,350 Arc User
    there are builds that are better for each class. the best class for space magic is Science, along with a cold based ground build, because of traits scis have

    Not quite true, while each captain class have special traits most are not strong enough. Tact can make better EPG builds then science toons. Only advantage sci and engineer captains have over Tact is survivability and team support.

    I disagree. Conservation of Energy and Astrophysicist offset APA, in my opinion, and using GW and the other exoticsin conjunction with photonjic fleet pushes it well beyond a tac captain
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    We Need BERETS in the tailor
  • spiritbornspiritborn Member Posts: 4,401 Arc User
    Either way on casual or low level content none of the careers really outshines the other, it's more of a personal choice, same with race selection if you're not after getting every minor 0.0001% DPS increase to get to the top of the leaderboard your race selection is really just a personal choice and there really isn't any clear career buffs for any of the races (now some careers might benefit more for certain racial traits but that's so minor it's mostly irrelevant).

    Also all race suit all career options really, while Spock was a scientist, it is only logical to want defend yourself from aggressors and engineering is another intellectual discipline so it suits Vulcans just fine. We also know that Klingon scientist exist and we know they have to have engineers because they got spaceships they designed and built themselves, granted this 100% RP now as I mentioned before your race is essentially irrelevant for career choice.
  • davefenestratordavefenestrator Member Posts: 10,693 Arc User
    On ground, tac has grenades and attack buffs; sci has hazards and HP heals; eng has turrets, drones, and shield heals. I find sci and eng more fun for ground combat since everyone also does the pew pew or slice slice but that's personal preference.
  • nixie50nixie50 Member Posts: 1,350 Arc User
    edited July 2023
    if you want Mr Freeze sci has career specific cold kits. I wish they would make the turrets for engineers into baby tanks
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    We Need BERETS in the tailor
  • davefenestratordavefenestrator Member Posts: 10,693 Arc User
    nixie50 wrote: »
    if you want Mr Freeze sci has career specific cold kits. I wish they would make the turrets for engineers into baby tanks

    Snowblowers like we use to slaughter the snowmen :) .

    Fallout 76 has cryo turrets that fire bullets that do kinetic damage + cold damage, with a slight chance to freeze the target on each hit.

  • mciannmciann Member Posts: 29 Arc User
    szerontzur wrote: »
    -=Engineer Captain=-
    (stuff(paraphrased)) They are very selfish, however, and don't directly enhance anyone else they're flying with, through buffs or debuffs.[/i]

    Engineering team gives +40 DRR, hull restoration, warp core potential, and hull regeneration to the entire team. EPS power transfer raises a targeted friend's power levels by 25 each (!) , raises the maximum power level cap by 25 (!!), and increases EPS by 250%.

    You're welcome.

    Engineers are OP on the ground (mines, sabotage, and anchor of grethor), but in space, tacs and scis are generally considered substantially better. I should note however that despite having a tac (romulan allied alien with all romulan SRO boffs at that) with equivalent levels of gear, my Engineer toon has always been my highest DPS record holder in my account.

    In the DPS league, however, tacs are clearly ahead of everyone. If cryptic wanted to address this disparity, perhaps they could continue the overall effort to make shields matter by buffing rotate shield frequency? Maybe give it a team effect, add some flashy graphics so people can see that we're doing something for them? Thanks.

  • szerontzurszerontzur Member Posts: 2,724 Arc User
    edited July 2023
    I guess my main issue with space support engineer is that their career powers have so little they interact with. I actually did/have a hybrid-healer engineer. I was all starry-eyed and hopeful when I was buildcrafting them with lots of synergistic trait and console interactions that just.. don't actually interact with each other. The problem is that Engineering Fleet doesn't really do much for the team compared to, say, just running Overload Integrity Field + Hazard Emitters. You can easily run that setup on a Science Captain and get the benefit of Scattering Field and Co-Opt Energy Weapons on an actual support build.


    As for the whole meta anti-shield narrative.. I feel SOME of that boils down to narrow-mindedness that comes along with the very practice of 'meta' itself. The main issues are that there is a fair bit of shield-bypass in the game and the mistaken expectation that shields are a 'second health bar'. The strength of Shields in STO are damage mitigation/neutralization. More succinctly, 'shield-tanking' is a defensive layer using "Shield Hardness" to cut the incoming damage by a not-insignificant fraction.

    The problem with fixating on combat logs is the assumption that 'bigger number = better'. When you take less damage, it will look like you didn't tank as well. In reality, negating damage actually increases your 'EHP' significantly. This is the same reason drain builds flew under the radar of so many people back during the Delta Rising expansion. Taking an enemy's shields offline would effectively reduce their total health by half(often by much more back then), but those numbers don't show up in a damage log despite the significantly faster time-to-kill. A Drain/Disable build that could only do 70-80% of the damage of a DEW build could often kill things twice as quickly.


    I digress, I've gone a bit off-topic.
  • nixie50nixie50 Member Posts: 1,350 Arc User
    mciann wrote: »
    szerontzur wrote: »
    -=Engineer Captain=-
    (stuff(paraphrased)) They are very selfish, however, and don't directly enhance anyone else they're flying with, through buffs or debuffs.[/i]

    Engineering team gives +40 DRR, hull restoration, warp core potential, and hull regeneration to the entire team. EPS power transfer raises a targeted friend's power levels by 25 each (!) , raises the maximum power level cap by 25 (!!), and increases EPS by 250%.

    You're welcome.

    Engineers are OP on the ground (mines, sabotage, and anchor of grethor), but in space, tacs and scis are generally considered substantially better. I should note however that despite having a tac (romulan allied alien with all romulan SRO boffs at that) with equivalent levels of gear, my Engineer toon has always been my highest DPS record holder in my account.

    In the DPS league, however, tacs are clearly ahead of everyone. If cryptic wanted to address this disparity, perhaps they could continue the overall effort to make shields matter by buffing rotate shield frequency? Maybe give it a team effect, add some flashy graphics so people can see that we're doing something for them? Thanks.

    No. Just No. there is enough vfx vomit as it is
    u7acy6aymfw7.gif
    We Need BERETS in the tailor
  • questeriusquesterius Member Posts: 8,505 Arc User
    edited July 2023
    If i have to name one thing which holds engineers back in space it would have to be the limited range of active powers to draw aggression.

    The current 5Km is simply insufficient. Increased range to 8-10Km would be optimal.
    With all the speedsters these days staying within 5Km of allies is a feat worthy of song.
    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.
  • thunderfoot#5163 thunderfoot Member Posts: 4,545 Arc User
    edited July 2023
    OP, I seldom play Tactical characters. When I first began playing, Engineer characters grabbed my attention. It was a good start. Later on, Science characters looked interesting. So I made one. When the Gamma Recruit Event went live the first time, I decided my Jem'Hadar character would be a Tactical one. So far, he is my only TAC.

    I will now commit heresy of the highest order. In front of reliable witnesses.
    Play whatever looks like it is the most enjoyable to you. This is a game. This IS NOT a lifestyle choice.
    You learn about Star Trek Online in the best ways by playing the game.
    "Dammit, Jim! I'm a starship captain! Not a YouTube influencer!"

    You're not missing out if you're having fun playing a Tactical character while not trying the other two classes. There is no, "One Build to Rule Them All.". I tend to think of, "The Meta!", as bovine biological byproduct. Largely produced and shouted publicly by those whom are mere legends in their own minds. And desperately in need of external validation. Or worship. Same thing, really.

    Mind you, some people around here are excellent sources of knowledge and information. They're easy to spot, too. They usually don't force their opinions and advice on you unasked. Nor does their advice and guidance require you to spend large amounts of RealWorld money. Their advice also normally has pretty good alternatives for gear or Abilities crafted from Unobtainium.

    Took me a very long time to figure out how to use my Space Wizard properly. And my Shooter as well. Sometimes all I learned was, "That does not work at all like I thought it would!". In the meantime, I was playing Start Trek Online to have fun.

    I cannot recommend firmly enough to you this: Play this game to entertain yourself. Treat ALL advice from others as that. Advice(especially advice from me, HAH!). Use what suggestions you want to use from others. But never lose sight of the fact we play this game because we really like Star Trek and because it is fun.

    EDIT: If you'd like OP, I'll tell you everything I know about STO after being here since March 2012. I promise it will probably be the best ninety seconds of your day. lol
    A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
  • davefenestratordavefenestrator Member Posts: 10,693 Arc User
    I agree with @thunderfoot, the point is to have fun.

    That said, there are some gotchas that can get in the way of that, for example as I said above for a true SCIENCE! damage build in space you want an actual science ship not a science-themed carrier, cruiser or dreadnought. I've had a lot of fun with science carriers, but it's not the full SCIENCE! experience.
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