[Jellybug]

Hi, all -

Relatively new to the fleet (almost 2 weeks), relatively new to the game (same). I played it a bit before it went free to play in Season 5, but didn't do much beyond getting a trio of Captains up to Vice Admiral. And certainly the endgame has changed significantly since then, along with a total skill tree overhaul.

I've decided to work on everything at once, since it seems that time delays are worked into almost every part of the game. And I'm focusing on my Federation Tactical alien, Jelle.

The reputations are moving along well, I've done those projects daily and should be able to keep that up, such that I'm Tier V in all of 'em after about 25 more days of playing.

In that time, I'd like to work towards the final ship setup, moving straight there from where I'm at now, without any expensive in-between setups. I suppose the focus would be for speed runs of endgame content, STFs, Crystalline, etc. And in the interest of not wasting respecs or other costly resources, I thought I'd get some advice here first.

I'm flying around in a Tactical Escort Retrofit, and I like it. It's not unlocked on the account, but I did get it for free back in the day and it did come with the Cloaking Device module. The Fleet version is an obvious next step (though I don't get the discount), but I wanted to see if there are any Kumari pilots out there that would recommend that instead? Or something similar?

Power levels sitting in sector space are 125/95, 81/45, 57/30, and 45/30.

I have no Duty Officers worth putting on the bridge, and am not sure what to look for.

The skill tree I copied in total ignorance from a hopeful build I found. Now that I've had some play with it, I can see it's probably designed for a Tac captain who can switch between cruisers & escorts, which for now, won't be my thing. So I'd also welcome any suggestions for skill setups, the entire system is new to me.

The Bridge Officer skills are holdovers from long ago, and I think they're not working as well as they used to. Particularly, I should probably change the Lt. Engineering and Science skills, since one is stepping on my Tac Team's toes and the other seems to have a dangerously long cooldown. I'm thinking EPS2 and HE2, but again am totally open.

As for the Tactical officers, I wanted to ask if attack skills are the priority or are the attack patterns? That is, which skills go into the big Commander & Lt Commander spots, and which get relegated to Lt spots? I'm also planning to focus on Scatter Volley and Torpedo Spread, as per advice from a few fleetmates I've met, since it seems AoE rules the space STF missions.

And this is what I've got to work with:

50m EC
743k Dilithium
12k Zen
1.2m Expertise

I either have the Marks I need for Tier V reputations, or know how to go about getting them at a good enough rate. Expertise shouldn't be too bad to manage for building the reputations, I'll only need to earn a little over 10k per day during the remaining 25 or so days. Fleet credits are an issue, I can't seem to contribute Marks, but will hopefully get lucky one of these days.

I very much wish I could make it to Clulyan's event on Friday, but I'm going AFK for about 2 weeks and will be on the plane at the time. If in-flight internet allows, I'll see if I can listen in, but I'm doubtful. So I figure I'd post here and check in every once in a while whenever I feel frustrated about not being able to fly around Cardassian space with cannons blazing.

Thanks much!

[Wixiban]

PM Sent

[ForTheGamer]

Hello and welcome to the Fleet, Jellybug!

Be prepared. I'm here to respond! Also, Reputations will be much easier once Season 9 hits. They'll move at the speed of Dyson's. Which is awesome.

As for your ship, its a pretty good one to have. If you go with the Kumari, you'll get 3 different ways to boost up your ship. Which means different types of ways your ship can play out. Its got more versatility than the Defiant. Pure damage though, Defiant wins out. Though that's only if you care about damage. Maelstrom is a pretty good hull tanking ship for Escorts. The Armitage allows you to be a slightly supportive ship depending on its pets and shield tanking ship (shield bots). The Aquarius is a DOD (Delta+Omega+Delta) Beamsabre specialist. The MVAE allows you to have 3 different ships by splitting apart, so you can do a lot of damage and "team up" on a single enemy.

For a recommendation, I'd say that if you like the Defiant, nothing wrong with getting it to Fleet status. Then you can branch out afterwards to different ships for different ways on doing things. That's what I've done.

Power levels, I think you are doing pretty good there.

For duty officers, a good idea is to probably take officers that would boost your offensive power or to compliment your lack of defense. Stuff like Emergency Power doffs, Energy Weapon doffs, etc are things you should look at.

For skill set up, it really depends on what you'd like to do. If you want pure damage, you'll want to get weapon skills, aim and severity (last one in Tactical) all maxed out. If you want to be a little tanker, you'll want to have performances (Engineering) boosted up while also boosting up . If you want to do some crowd control, a good idea is to build up capacitors, decompilers, and that (I've very rarely seen this, it is fun though).

Figuring out what you like to do is how you should build your ship. If you don't like to play a certain way, you'll get bored and no one wants you to be bored. We want you to have fun. After you figure out what you'll like, we can most certainly help you build it better.

Teams no long share cooldowns, so if you use Engineering Team or Science Team, you no longer need to worry about that. It was fixed a patch ago I believe. As for skills, you seem to have a fair understanding. And Hazard Emitters is always a good idea, simply because it clears up a lot of junk.

Right now AoE has less penalities than single attacks. Though if Season 9 continues with the fix-it ideas, this may change. For now, yes, AoE is the way to go. Unless you debuff it.

Attack Patterns are highly recommended for Tactical Officers if you want to buff you damage. Though as I mentioned before, you can also debuff the enemy too. That would be through Subsystem Targeting. A lot of people like the former rather than the later.

If you are looking at the Scatter Volley and Torpedo Spread specifically, you'll want Torpedo Spread at the higher levels. This is simply because Torpedo Spread adds an extra enemy per level. So TS1 hits 2, TS2 hits 3, TS3 hits 4. Scatter Volley doesn't scale like that, I think (damage wise it does get better). It'll only hit the people in front of it, I think. Its been awhile since I've used cannons. I'm used to beams. Attack Patterns don't get buffed as much, so you'll want them lower.

As for what you can spend, you literally could buy the world of stuff. I'm like uber poor in comparison. I'm so jelly. :p Seriously though, with that much resources, you can guy whatever you'd like. No questions asked.

[Jellybug]

Thanks very much, guys.

I'm sold on the Fleet Defiant. All that mattered really is whether or not the ship I've been using is good enough, and if the Fleet upgrade will manage the endgame, that's that.

My obvious problem will be Fleet Credits, mostly for weapons and Tactical consoles. If I spend the 25 days following vacation on gearing up and finishing the reputations, I'd have to earn over 300 Fleet Marks per day, or slightly less by contributing other resources. The other currencies aren't an issue, except the Lobi Crystals for a certain console, but my chance for those should come pretty soon.

So my next question is, how to best get those Marks? Five Elite Crystalline fights per day for a month sounds... a lot like the Mirror event, only twice as long. I've not done much else for Fleet Mark rewards, any other favored mission you'd recommend to rotate in?

[Dark]

I personally get a good chunk of Fleet Marks from DOffing. Once you have 110,000 or more CXP, you can cash in 10,000 for Fleet Marks from an assignment on our Fleet Starbase. I actually find it easier to earn Fleet Credits from contributing other things (like white DOffs and commodities) than from Fleet Marks. Fleet Mark contribution is in high demand, and often fills up very quickly. Frankly, I'd be surprised if you ever run out of Fleet Marks after just the current Mirror reputation event (assuming you get the daily thingy to do the Event reputation project).

Minor bit of advice regarding Fleet tactical consoles and Fleet weapons, prioritize the consoles. A set of purple Mk XII weapons from the Exchange (super easy to acquire with your 50m EC) is only short one modifier from Advanced Fleet weapons, and usually the difference is going to be one [Dam] modifier. That won't make nearly as much difference as 5 Fleet tactical consoles, which would give you +9.5% compared to purple Mk XIIs, as well as a giant chunk of critical chance or severity.

Lastly, if you're willing to grind all your characters at once, that's your call. However if you get just one character to T5 in something, they can produce Sponsorship tokens that can be sent to other characters on your account. When those other characters use the token, it permanently doubles the reputation reward of all the projects in that reputation for that character. That effectively cuts the time and effort required by half.

With that in mind, I do recommend spending the 5 minutes necessary per character to get a the Dyson commendation, as well as the Epohh tagging chains going (the latter giving you a steady source of Epohhs which can be turned in for Romulan marks). However, for Nukara and Omega, if you only grind one character to T5 and hold back on the others, you'll cut your efforts required for your other characters by half, at the cost of increasing the total time required (before all your characters are at T5) by 50%.

[Jellybug]

My plan for the reputations is to get just one character to Tier V first, then follow with the others via sponsorship:

I've decided to work on everything at once, since it seems that time delays are worked into almost every part of the game. And I'm focusing on my Federation Tactical alien, Jelle.

I have vague ideas about how to proceed with some of the other 4 VAs, but will hold off on their reputations and rep-dependant gear until they're sponsored. Collecting the Epohhs and Dyson tokens is a great idea, though whether I do it now or later it'll still be 18 days to max any given sponsored character, depending on Season 9 changes.

How long would it take to get to 110k CXP from a nearly fresh start? That method of earning FC seems fairly out of reach on this schedule. I'm keeping the duty assignment list full, I've got Uncommons for maybe half the list, but have only just passed Tier 1 in all fields. And once someone is at max levels, presumably their Doff list is pretty full of blues & purples. Could those be moved to my other characters to speed up their Doff grind?

Contributing commodities, and even Dilithium, will definitely ease the Fleet Mark earning. The EC & Dil is much easier to come by, and at least the Dil isn't needed that much with my target setup. 3 of the Active Space Doffs are gonna hurt me, though, 40m EC each. In fact, I've got enough Dilithium ore right now to cover both Dilithium and Fleet Credit requirements, so it's an option.

[ForTheGamer]

As long as you haven't equipped a doff, you can move it from one character to another.

There are also assignments taht when you complete, you'll earn a new doff that's of high value (blue or purple). http://sto.gamepedia.com/Assignment <-that link will allow you to earn them without having to pay for them.

Getting to 110k CXP isn't too difficult if you know what you are doing. Sadly I don't know, I'm not that great at DOFFs myself. <_< Actually most times I forget about DOFFs entirely.