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Need Build Advice for Tactical Captain flying Cruisers
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Greetings!
What would be a good build for a tactical officer captaining cruisers throughout the game?
My focus will be on PvE, mostly solo or with random/auto groups.
I'm not that worried about BOs this early in the game because of the many ways I will be able to get, swap, train and retrain them and because their skill points are not capped. I am, however, very hesitant to allocate skill points for my Captain.
I'm not a min/maxer by any definition but I don't like to get gimped/stuck later on because I made the wrong choices early in the game.
But I'd greatly appreciate any help and advice you can give me.
What would be a good build for a tactical officer captaining cruisers throughout the game?
My focus will be on PvE, mostly solo or with random/auto groups.
I'm not that worried about BOs this early in the game because of the many ways I will be able to get, swap, train and retrain them and because their skill points are not capped. I am, however, very hesitant to allocate skill points for my Captain.
I'm not a min/maxer by any definition but I don't like to get gimped/stuck later on because I made the wrong choices early in the game.
- What are must-have skills and which are to avoid?
- Should I be maxing out certain skills no matter what? (to train BOs for example?)
But I'd greatly appreciate any help and advice you can give me.
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So it might be better to get a few skill to 4 or 5 as opposed to one skill all the way up to 9.
Well yeah, the window that pops up anytime you mess with a given skill shows you exact what + value you're going to get for any particular point spent.
Where it gets a little more specific is the next tier. Start concentrating no what you use a lot of. Obviously Cruiser Captain is important - if you won't fly escorts or science vessels ever, no points there needed. Phasers are probably more important than torps to you because it can be very hard to line torp shots where phasers give you good coverage in a slow moving ship. That is a preference up to you - I would not ignore one for the other, but maybe have a final balance of 6 ranks in one, 3 in the other. Your ground abilities are up to your prefence as well.
For the Engineering and Operations skills, really it is best to have an idea what you'll use down the road for your BO powers. The different maintenance's will affect different BO powers. For example if you plan to have weapon powers and engine powers, put ranks in those. No auxiliary powers? No ranks. Ditto in Operations - do you want to use Tractor Beams? Jam Sensors? Drain Shields? Remember that at best you will only get an Ensign and a Lt Science Power (max level Cruiser) so it should be easy to know what those two will be for you. Focus on two on put points into the skills that will make them better. At higher levels Operations will become moot because points into those skills won't affect anything you're using.
One last note - some of the nicer powers you can train are the manuevers powers gotten by maxing ranks in tier 3 and 4 escorts respectively. You can have a Lt Cmdr Tactical skill in the Sovereign, and one of those might be nice. That's up to you whether or not it's worth the trouble.
Hope this helps.
On the subject of JamesGarrett's last note, it might be hard to justify considering you don't plan on flying escorts, but certain of your personal abilities as a Tactical Captain will be improved by some of the escort ship captain skills, so you might consider investing in them to boost the effectiveness of those. It may be worth it to squeeze some extra use out of, say, Attack Pattern Alpha.
I have been wondering about that myself - I had figured that Starship Command gave me some bonus to Evasive Manuevers and Attack Pattern Alpha. I am curious however where the bonuses to other Captain only powers are coming from. The ground one's are pretty obvious. Some of the one's like an Engineer's EPS Power Transfer, or Scientist's Sensor Scan are shown. But not stuff like Brace for Impact, APA, Tactical Initiative - that OP I am sorry, I do not have the info for. Perhaps someone else.
I always think along the lines of making the ship more efficient aswell so extra power for all systems is good, so looking up efficiency traits further along the engineering tree might be useful when progressing.
Also tactics are worth developing, sometimes flying around at max throttle but not full impule in combat works well if you cant turn enough to engage other vessels, that way you can use your abilities and aft weapons. Strength of the Cruiser is that its as mean from the rear as from the front, used this tactic loads and it works blasting away with aft weapons then when their shields go, engage evasive manuvers and quickly turn and head at them loosing off torps.
As far as I can tell, the universal captain abilities, the ones every player gets regardless of division like Evasive Maneuvers and Brace for Impact, aren't affected by any skills, but automatically increase in rank as you do. The unique division space abilities, on the other hand, are improved by skills. For example, I got a Science Officer up to Captain rank in open beta, and I can tell you that Sensor Scan is improved by Operations + Sensors + Sensor Arrays, Subnucleonic Beam is improved by Operations + Deflectors + Deflector Dish, and Dampening Field is improved by Operations + Deflectors + Deflector Field, but I haven't gotten my Tactical character up very high in level yet.
You know as soon as you mention about the general one's like evasive manuevers I remembered that from OB too. I am curious about the Tactical specific space one's though. Will have to see as I start progressing up.
http://sto-builder.binarybit.ch/
It's empty, no use for me. I'm looking for peoples builds
Here's my build, optimized mostly for cruiser but with some escort points thrown in that you could ignore.
In my ground skills, I have points in both Security and Tactics because these skills affect Tactical Team, which is a BO skill I love. You can skip those if you don't plan on using that Tact Team.
In the Starfleet Training section, Starship Command, Cruiser Captain, and the Tier 5 Cruiser option of your choice are must-haves. As a Tactical Officer, Tactical Team Leader, Escort Captain and Heavy Escort Captain actually add bonuses to your tactical captain's skills (fire on my mark, attack pattern alpha, etc). It does not say so on the tooltip for these skills, but if you click 'P' in game and look at the tactical captain skills, they do give an increase (I can guarantee that Tactical Team does increase them in-game, although I haven't double checked Escort Captain and Heavy Escort Captain yet). I also have some points in Science Team Leader, as I use the Science Team BO skill.
For weapons skills, I of course maxxed the Tier 1 and Tier 2 skills that I'll use. The Tier 5 skills here I am personally staying away from, since points at Admiral Level are both expensive and limited. I did choose 2 weapon types that I liked for both energy weapons and projectiles though...at least I'll have a 2 in 6 chance when a weapon drops that I'll like it
Engineering Skills: The Tier 1 skills are obvious requirements. Pick Tier 2 Maintenance skills that you'll get a lot of benefit from in combat. The Tier 3-5 Efficiency and Performance skills beyond their tooltip affects also apparently give passive increases to power levels for their respective systems. I'd max out the weapons and shield skills anyways, as ALL of my BO engineering skills are in those fields (although I ran out of points for Weapon Systems Performance). I chose not to get the Aux skills, since it would pretty much just be increasing my turn rate, and Aux honestly doesn't have much effect in that regard. I skipped the engine skills too; the skills don't affect power levels very much at max levels, and during combat (when I have the power to them set at minimum and thus get more benefit) I really don't care how fast I'm going. I'm pretty much just an immobile beam base during combat anyways.
For Starship Operations, I chose skills that affect my primary science BO skills: Science Team, and Photonic Officer. I will rotate out several other BOs to get access to other skills, but I didn't feel like I'd be using them enough to justify spending my points.
So, the skills which I'd get the most benefit from (captain skills, weapons skills, engineering skills) I max out. Each science skill I have only gives a benefit to one of my BO skills, so I don't max those out due to the diminishing returns. The same is true of the ground skills, since they only benefit 1 of my BO space skills. I took the common tactic of staying away from all ground skills unless they benefited my space abilities too.
I hope my long explanation is helpful, and not too much of a snoozefest
Edited for grammar