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Soontir C'boath wrote:Either you did not promote your officers to the proper rank or your ship doesn't have the rank slot for it.

I think the latter is the reason. Pity, I would love to give my ship officers more power. However most of the useful skills I used in space combat are either a. Intrinsic to the ship itself because of consoles, hangar bay etc or b. Intrinsic to my captain.

Funnily enough I find I used Engineering and Science abilities from my bridge officers more than tactical.

RogueIce wrote:

Simon_Jester wrote:

mr friendly guy wrote:It seems like I need at least level 10 before I get the next batch of ships. After that its level 20. Is it worthwhile to try and tough it out until I get to level 20, then get a new ship. I imagine so that I can preserve ZEN points if I don't need to buy tier 2 ships.

*Snip*

While there ARE low-level (that is, usable below Level 50) ships that cost ZEN, there is no good reason to purchase them unless you really, really want to.

Yes and no.

If you're just buying them as "better" T2, T3 or whatever ships, then yeah, they're pointless. You'll outlevel them too quickly, and really that extra Boff slot and/or console you get (maybe both? been awhile) isn't going to be worth it.

What you would buy them for is the unique console they come with. Those can be worth it later on down the line. Offhand, I don't know which ships really have the 'best' unique console; I suspect that in many cases, it'll probably be situationaly dependent anyway. The only one I know of that seems to be widely popular is the Plasmonic Leech console, but that's KDF side (Feds can get it, but you'll have to buy it off the Exchange from a cross-faction console pack).

That said, every once in a blue moon, Cryptic will do C-Store giveaways that will include the lower tier ships. It's always worth it to pick those up. They even used to give away a T5 ship sometimes, though I don't know if they'll bother with that anymore.

Reading the STO wikia page, a lot of them aren't necessarily compatible even within your own faction. For example some of the UFP consoles seem to work only with similar class of ships. Fortunately I got the command ship bundle for the UFP and their consoles are compatible with each other.

The plasmonic leech seems to work with other faction's ships, and the maths seems to work out vs other consoles which simply boost your weapons damage. You would need to lower their power sufficiently and increase your power to match say, an <insert energy type> induction console. Some of these consoles at decent rates for an uncommon on the exchange add about 26.2% to damage. Each point above 50 to a ship's power adds 2% of damage. So you would need to add about 14 points to go beyond break even. That of course is referring to the next few shots with your weapon, since the initial shot would be weaker than if you use an induction console (because the energy boost from the drain occurs after the first shot).

The good thing is, the effect of plasmonic leech essentially magnifies with your skill in the starship flow capacitor ability and according to the table you must be halfway there to get the same benefit. Of course for those skill points into the flow capacitor ability, you could put it into one that maximises starship weaponry (although you need to be an Admiral to do so). In the mid term it should be worth your while from extra damage, unless the foe is a one shot kill. The other advantage is weakening their system and making it harder for them to retaliate appropriately.

Definitely something worth trying to get my hands on.

http://sto.gamepedia.com/Console_-_Univ ... onic_Leech

mr friendly guy wrote:

Soontir C'boath wrote:Either you did not promote your officers to the proper rank or your ship doesn't have the rank slot for it.

I think the latter is the reason. Pity, I would love to give my ship officers more power. However most of the useful skills I used in space combat are either a. Intrinsic to the ship itself because of consoles, hangar bay etc or b. Intrinsic to my captain.

Funnily enough I find I used Engineering and Science abilities from my bridge officers more than tactical.

Bridge officer abilities are absolutely vital to most effective combat styles.

I think one of the reasons you have a problem here is the way you're handling your ships.

Tier 4 and 5 ships tend to have a LOT more slots for bridge officer abilities than Tier 3 and lower ships. So by delaying purchase of a Tier 4 ship (even if it's a big clumsy Galaxy-class), you limit your ability to use those bridge officers' powers. You're shooting yourself in the foot.
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Now, which abilities are most useful depends on the ship. For example, most tactical officer abilities boil down to one of the following:
-Attack patterns
-Torpedo buffs
-Beam buffs

Since your play style seldom lets you deliver a torpedo attack, torpedo buffs are relatively useless to you, especially if you use a weapon that doesn't take the buffs. I'm not sure a Bio-Neural Warhead Launcher can use the "High Yield" or "Spread" abilities, I'm guessing it can't.

Some attack patterns may be useful to you, others not so much, depending on the nature of your ship.

Depending on which beam buffs your tactical officer has you might get some mileage out of those- the big one being "Beam Array: Fire at Will," but also "Overload" and maybe a few others.
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On a big cruiser, of course, your greatest tactical advantage is raw durability. So abilities that repair your ship, or give it damage resistance against incoming fire, have good synergy with your ship's physical toughness because they let you heal damage rapidly and avoid getting worn down over time. Those abilities are overwhelmingly given to the engineering and science bridge officers, which may explain why you get more use out of them.

By contrast, tactical ships rely heavily on "get them before they get us," so you rely heavily on your tactical officers' abilities to dish out massive brutal damage to the enemy before it (more or less inevitably) manages to break up your relatively flimsy ship.

RogueIce wrote:The plasmonic leech seems to work with other faction's ships, and the maths seems to work out vs other consoles which simply boost your weapons damage. You would need to lower their power sufficiently and increase your power to match say, an <insert energy type> induction console. Some of these consoles at decent rates for an uncommon on the exchange add about 26.2% to damage. Each point above 50 to a ship's power adds 2% of damage. So you would need to add about 14 points to go beyond break even. That of course is referring to the next few shots with your weapon, since the initial shot would be weaker than if you use an induction console (because the energy boost from the drain occurs after the first shot).

The good thing is, the effect of plasmonic leech essentially magnifies with your skill in the starship flow capacitor ability and according to the table you must be halfway there to get the same benefit. Of course for those skill points into the flow capacitor ability, you could put it into one that maximises starship weaponry (although you need to be an Admiral to do so). In the mid term it should be worth your while from extra damage, unless the foe is a one shot kill. The other advantage is weakening their system and making it harder for them to retaliate appropriately.

Definitely something worth trying to get my hands on.

In my experience NOTHING is a one shot kill. Even very flimsy things (torpedoes and enemy fighters) take multiple shots to put down because you need volume of fire to compensate for missing with a lot of your shots. And most actual enemy ships have to be shot many many times, because at high level, even if you're putting out something like 1000 points of damage per beam hit and I'm not sure how you'd even do that...

...the enemy has tens of thousands of hit points. So yeah, you're not going to be putting them down with one or two shots. Can you whittle them down rapidly? Yes. Can you singlehandedly destroy surprisingly powerful enemy ships? Yes. But that doesn't translate to being able to one-shot things.

Anyway. As I understand it, the leech is a popular console for endgame play for the reason you give. Also, note that as far as I know, there's nothing in the rules to stop you from having both a plasmonic leech AND an induction coil/phaser relay/whatever to boost damage directly.

Funnily enough I find I used Engineering and Science abilities from my bridge officers more than tactical.

That's because the good tactical skills only really kick in at lieutenant commander bridge officer slots and as a cruiser, without buying one from the c-store, you have zeeeero options for that as a cruiser

Tactical team and beam fire at will should be your staples as a beam boat, for the foreseeable future.

As for the leech? unless you get insanely lucky on a lock box featuring the console? don't plan on having one any time soon. Price on the exchange for fed side is 60 million credits. They are really fucking good consoles, but also insanely pricey.

Get your endgame ship stowed away first, unlock your credit limit and then work up to the leech.

I do recommend you take a gander at the command battlecruiser line.

Without getting too far into the nuts and bolts, your tactical console slots are for direct weapon buffs, and your science and engineering slots are ideally used for universal consoles that also buff your damage in some fashion or another. Durability is only useful to the point where you are not dying; more and more damage never stops being useful. Additionally, durability can be obtained in a variety of fashions to free up console slots. The nuts and bolts can get hella technical, but that's for another day.

EDIT: Coaan's mostly right, but Attack Pattern Beta is always your friend in a big way and it fits in a Lieutenant slot.

Depending on what kind of cruiser you end up using I would suggest investing/crafting a couple of RCS consoles. As for tactical consoles definitely invest in the consoles that increase your weapon-type damage. If you are going for a beam boat look for a cruiser that has a Lt. Commander Tactical station, that will give you Tactical Team, Beam Fire at Will, and maybe torpedo spread or Attack Pattern Beta. You need an engineering officer to use Emergency Power to Weapons as beam boats soak up a lot of weapon power. I would also look at Directed Energy Modulation as a good skill.

As for getting an end-game ship, the new T6 Excelsior looks pretty capable and the Guardian Cruiser has a really balanced set-up. If you are going to get a command cruiser i'd go for either the science or tactical version. The science version lets you use Gravity Well which synergizes with beam boats and the tactical version just makes you do more DPS.

I'd go Beam fire at Will and Attack Pattern Beta for a beam boat, unless they've changed it last time I played torps are not very usefull for beam boats (I use 1 for a item set bonus and that's it).

I use torpedo spread on my Fed toons most of the time. I bought the Regent Assault Cruiser Refit a while back and It comes with a Wide-angle Quantum Torpedo Launcher. I find that its increased arc opens up a lot more options.

Simon_Jester wrote:Bridge officer abilities are absolutely vital to most effective combat styles.

I think one of the reasons you have a problem here is the way you're handling your ships.

Tier 4 and 5 ships tend to have a LOT more slots for bridge officer abilities than Tier 3 and lower ships. So by delaying purchase of a Tier 4 ship (even if it's a big clumsy Galaxy-class), you limit your ability to use those bridge officers' powers. You're shooting yourself in the foot.

I made adjustments like members said to my bridge officers to give the USS Bazinga VI more fire power and abilities. I switched out the useless torpedo buffs and cannon buffs with targeting of subsystems and beam buffs. I have got attack pattern omega, but I haven't tried using it yet.

Go give you an idea how I play, basically before my when I had my Miranda variant, the Galaxy and early on in with my Sovereign my tactics were relatively simply. Approach them front on, open up the first shot with a spread of torps and beams (back when I had torps) then fire with broadsides. I would turn my ship such that the intact shields would face their weaponry, while I could blast away at their weakened shields. Basically it was a battle of attrition.

Now with my command cruisers, it basically boils down to giving them something else to aim at. A tactic which worked well against me with the Dominion since they always deploy boarding parties which cause my ship to fire at them, giving their battleships time to regenerate. I still open by trying to get the first shot. The bioneural warhead has a longer range than torpedoes or beams so that gets fired first.

So if its one on one, I try fighting first and only deploy drones when I am weakened (because the drones have healing rays). If I am outnumbered I deploy all the drones the first time + launch advanced Delta Flyers armed with transphasic torpedoes. If I am really threatened, I pull out my photonic fleet. I always deploy an Aceton assimilator because the cooldown time is really short. Also I use boarding parties to give them something else to shoot at.

I am now trying some other tactics from the advise given on this board. My engineers heal the hull and shields, my science officer uses tractor beams to weaken their shields, and now my tactical officers target subsystems (well shields to be more specific).
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Since your play style seldom lets you deliver a torpedo attack, torpedo buffs are relatively useless to you, especially if you use a weapon that doesn't take the buffs. I'm not sure a Bio-Neural Warhead Launcher can use the "High Yield" or "Spread" abilities, I'm guessing it can't.

You're right. I already tried the torpedo buffs, but nothing.

On a big cruiser, of course, your greatest tactical advantage is raw durability. So abilities that repair your ship, or give it damage resistance against incoming fire, have good synergy with your ship's physical toughness because they let you heal damage rapidly and avoid getting worn down over time. Those abilities are overwhelmingly given to the engineering and science bridge officers, which may explain why you get more use out of them.

That's true. I have been using my ship and characters ability to create drones and holographic fleets respectively to give the enemy another target.

Anyway. As I understand it, the leech is a popular console for endgame play for the reason you give. Also, note that as far as I know, there's nothing in the rules to stop you from having both a plasmonic leech AND an induction coil/phaser relay/whatever to boost damage directly.

Well except the limited console spots. I filled them all up. I have used up spots for some epic universal consoles 3 to release drones of various types, 1 for a quantum singularity wepaon which I use against big ships like Voth carriers and Borg cubes in PvE scenarios, and 1 for the aceton assimilator. I use 3 tactical spots for induction boosters to my Mark XII disruptors.

mr friendly guy wrote:Now with my command cruisers, it basically boils down to giving them something else to aim at. A tactic which worked well against me with the Dominion since they always deploy boarding parties which cause my ship to fire at them, giving their battleships time to regenerate. I still open by trying to get the first shot. The bioneural warhead has a longer range than torpedoes or beams so that gets fired first.

I will note that if the enemy fires boarding parties or heavy (destructible) torpedoes, that is exactly when you use Fire At Will, since it virtually guarantees that any attacking shuttles or torpedoes will get shot repeatedly without you having to switch targets or take the pressure off the enemy's main heavy combatant.

I am now trying some other tactics from the advise given on this board. My engineers heal the hull and shields, my science officer uses tractor beams to weaken their shields, and now my tactical officers target subsystems (well shields to be more specific).

I will note that giving the enemy something else to shoot at works great if it actually works- that is, if the enemy actually stops shooting at you. Or if the consequences of the enemy letting you hit them is worse for them than the opportunity cost to you.

For example, Photonic Fleet effectively... I dunno, doubles your firepower, let's say, and temporarily gives the enemy about four targets to engage instead of one. This is clearly worth it.

But suppose you have a choice between a power that "gives the enemy three targets" OR a power that "doubles your firepower." Suddenly it's less of a clear choice. You might honestly be better off using the "double firepower" option to blow the enemy away faster, rather than using the "three targets" power to (statistically, hopefully) reduce the damage you take to 1/3 of its former value.

Well except the limited console spots. I filled them all up. I have used up spots for some epic universal consoles 3 to release drones of various types, 1 for a quantum singularity wepaon which I use against big ships like Voth carriers and Borg cubes in PvE scenarios, and 1 for the aceton assimilator. I use 3 tactical spots for induction boosters to my Mark XII disruptors.

I'm... not sure those disruptor induction boosters stack, Friendly. If they do, then having three of them is a decent idea. If not... you effectively have two slots that aren't doing anything.
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Grahf: Seeker Of Power wrote:Depending on what kind of cruiser you end up using I would suggest investing/crafting a couple of RCS consoles.

RCS can make playing a cruiser less annoying, but it isn't necessarily critical to survival. Even the Galaxy-class can turn six degrees per second, and you're never more than sixty degrees of turn away from bringing your broadside armament to bear on the enemy. So, since most powerful enemies do turn to bring the broadside to bear, you're generally less than ten seconds from having your main weapons bearing on your target. Less if you didn't approach the target bow-on like a moron.

If you are fighting a single highly agile enemy that has enough firepower to be a threat... well, that often motivates me to have a bridge officer that knows Tractor Beam for just such an emergency. Likewise if you're fighting a swarm of agile enemies, sailing in a straight line and keeping Fire At Will up will usually delouse the area faster than trying to maneuver against them. Plus, of course, seizing individual enemies with tractors and ripping them apart with broadside gunfire at whatever times you DON'T have Fire At Will up.

Yes, damage-boosting tactical consoles stack. This is why you put nothing else in tactical slots OTHER than the best damage-boosting consoles you can, and why five-tactical-slot ships are prized as deathdealers.

[blinks]

I... did not know... that was a thing. I distinctly remember reading the opposite.

Okay. Will definitely remember that for future reference.

[wanders away, shaken]

You can verify this yourself. Outside of sector space the damage listed for your beam arrays changes to take into account modifiers from other items. Just put 2 modifiers in, and remove one at a time and you can see the difference. Now I haven't bothered to verify whether its additional or multiplicative. For example, 2 induction boosters at 25 %, does it boost damage by 50% (additional) or 56.25% (1.25 x 1.25), but there is definitely a boost.

Also how do people handle Borg ground combat? Before starting task force omega I tried a PvE scenario and the Borg rapidly adapted to my antiproton sniper rifle and more powerful disruptor pulsewave rifle. Generally I plan to carry a weapon of each which fires a different energy type (mainly pulsewave rifles) and a weapon for HtH. Usually I use a sniper rifle to let me have the first hit then switch to pulsewave rifle for stronger damage (less range) later on.

I should also like to point out, I discovered bunny hopping or whatever its called. Just jump around and its harder for the enemy to aim at you. You can still get hit, but you can also time it such that you fire while still in the air or as you land and get the first hit. You can also run behind them (even while facing them) and then you usually hit them first. This strategy allowed me to wipe out a team of Jemmies all by myself.

Useful tactic in the Cardassian campaign although I skipped several episodes. In "real life" my character would delegate the Bajoran touch feely stuff or being the errand boy to diplomats to my underlings, so I grew bored and skipped those.

Sheldon just likes to kill Dominion troops. And Klingons, with the subtlety of Sheldon Cooper in a social situation. I was bitterly disappointed that we wouldn't come out guns blazing against the Dominion occupation force on DS9. Instead I waste time with puzzles get in, beat the 2 metre Jemmie and his underlying by using bunny hopping tactics only for the guy to still be alive and beamed to his ship. Fortunately I have reached out to Chinese gold farmers Q for tech upgrades. The Bazinga VI is now proudly sporting 6 mark XIV disruptors of very rare to epic types including a turrent which does almost as much damage as a beam array, ultra rare to epic disruptor induction coils for that extra boost, aegis shields for 10000 + shield points and regeneration and plasmonic leech (instead of another induction booster). And I also got a Voth ship as well which I have labelled the politically incorrect name of Dinokiller.

you got 2 ways of dealing with Borg adaption (well 3 if you count weapons with kinectic or physical damage), Frequency remodulator (a free ground item from your replicator) or the pull 3 peice MACO/HG set (Shield, armor and weapon), otherwise they'll adapt even to the orbital strike on an engineer character.

mr friendly guy wrote:You can verify this yourself. Outside of sector space the damage listed for your beam arrays changes to take into account modifiers from other items. Just put 2 modifiers in, and remove one at a time and you can see the difference. Now I haven't bothered to verify whether its additional or multiplicative. For example, 2 induction boosters at 25 %, does it boost damage by 50% (additional) or 56.25% (1.25 x 1.25), but there is definitely a boost.

It simply had not occurred to me that multiple iterations of the same console would stack...

How does one gain reputation in the task forces. I really want some of those traits the Omega task force gives me, and its not obvious how to gain reputation points.

mr friendly guy wrote:How does one gain reputation in the task forces. I really want some of those traits the Omega task force gives me, and its not obvious how to gain reputation points.

Do fleets alerts for Battle Group Omega, I think.

you need those projects in the rep panel in your character screen to get rep and you need to do SFTs to get the Marks for the projects.

STF's and Red Alerts generate marks. Then you open up the Reputation tab and allocate resources to gain rep. Be prepared to spend tons of dilithium, EC's, and points. Also, as with R&D, the devs love their 20 hour timers.

It's actually really, really grindy. So much so that it's something of a turn-off given how fast paced and fun the rest of the game is.

Highlord Laan wrote:STF's and Red Alerts generate marks. Then you open up the Reputation tab and allocate resources to gain rep. Be prepared to spend tons of dilithium, EC's, and points. Also, as with R&D, the devs love their 20 hour timers.

It's actually really, really grindy. So much so that it's something of a turn-off given how fast paced and fun the rest of the game is.

For the Borg Omega marks Red Alerts are the best for mark generation since they pop up faster than the cooldown timer for STFs, plus anyone can jump in for one so it's easier to finish one compared to an elite STF.

IIRC there's only 2 or 3 Borg STFs that elite difficulty, Hive and Borg DC at least (Hive is 2 STFs btw 1 space and 1 ground), while most classic ones are only up to advanced.

I identified a few PvE slots which will give me the marks I need. Since it takes 20 hours to research, I only really need to play a few of these a day. Chances are, I would have more than the number of marks before I finish the reputation contribution (which is like 20 hours each, so one a day for each faction). The only use for the marks is to spend it on gear.

Anyone else also find battlezones confusing. I go there, kill a few Voth without much sense of how things are going, and then presto, victory. Most probably from what some other players did. At least its a nice way to get marks, and shooting Voth is fun.

Highlord Laan wrote:STF's and Red Alerts generate marks. Then you open up the Reputation tab and allocate resources to gain rep. Be prepared to spend tons of dilithium, EC's, and points. Also, as with R&D, the devs love their 20 hour timers.

It's actually really, really grindy. So much so that it's something of a turn-off given how fast paced and fun the rest of the game is.

Oh I got enough EC left to spend, since I purchased a shit load from Chinese gold farmers. I already worked it out so that I will still have left overs as long as I don't spend too much on other stuff. Currently finding good duty officers to recruit. The points, it looks like I have enough to level up to Tier 5 in everything and still have a little bit left over. Of course I still gain points in quests and duty officer tasks. I didn't realise some of them cost dilithium. I thought they rewarded you with dilithium. In fact I gaining more dilithium than I can refine.

I never risk my CC# with farmers. Call me paranoid. I'm kicking around the idea of buying a few upgrade modules from the C-Store and tossing them up on the market for a couple million a pop.

Highlord Laan wrote:I never risk my CC# with farmers. Call me paranoid. I'm kicking around the idea of buying a few upgrade modules from the C-Store and tossing them up on the market for a couple million a pop.

If you buy a multi-pack of lock box master keys from the Zen store, you can sell each one for around 3 million EC. I've made an insane amount doing it.

Chimaera wrote:

Highlord Laan wrote:I never risk my CC# with farmers. Call me paranoid. I'm kicking around the idea of buying a few upgrade modules from the C-Store and tossing them up on the market for a couple million a pop.

If you buy a multi-pack of lock box master keys from the Zen store, you can sell each one for around 3 million EC. I've made an insane amount doing it.

Is that one master key each, or one multi pack? Good grief, I think I might have enough Zen points left over from buying more slots, I could buy a mastery keys.

Highlord Laan wrote:I never risk my CC# with farmers. Call me paranoid. I'm kicking around the idea of buying a few upgrade modules from the C-Store and tossing them up on the market for a couple million a pop.

Is CC = credit card? I pay via paypal because paypal has eventually refunded purchases (from ebay) where the seller did not send item to me. Now the farmer did ask me to verify who I am after I made a big purchase, but they were quite happy to see a credit card with your name only (I scanned it into a jpeg and use paint to edit out the number) and my driver's licence to make sure I was actually interested in buying so much EC.

Sorry, should've made that clearer. Each individual key sells for that much. Buying a multi-pack is just better value than buying individual ones

Also, spending your various reputation marks on upgrades can yield 500-1000 dilithium apiece. I've been slurging all of my marks on upgrades and missions, and I gained so much dilithium I couldn't process it all in one go due to the 8000 per day limit (bah). But that's an easy, if slightly convoluted way of getting dilithium to convert to zen, and it doesn't cost you a penny.