[Harndawg]

Good day all,

Long story short I discovered STO about a month and a half ago and I am really enjoying it. I am a complete noob and have been doing PvE and was very easy to get to lv 55.

Now I want to try and make a ship that can (in theory) hold it’s own and I was hoping to get your assistance (of which I will need a lot of). So with all that said here is my toon:

Toon: Tact Officer
Ship: Phantom Intel Escort
Weapons: Antiproton Beam Array MK XI (CrtD) x2 (DMG)

Still working on getting good consoles so not even bringing them up here

So I guess the best questions to start with is

Where can I get better weapons?

How do I get Better Weapons?

What consoles/shields should I try to get?

How do I get them?

I can be reached on this board or if you want you can e-mail me at harndawg@yahoo.com

Thank you for any assistance I receive

[MachoCyclone]

Being a Tac Officer, I would go with a cruiser. Something like the Tactical Command Battlecruiser or the Excelsior Refit. I am not sure about builds for a Tac Cruiser. I am currently using a Aux2Bat build for my Eng with the Excelsior Refit.

For consoles, you are going to want the Vulnerability Locator [+AP]. This will boost your AP weapons and increase the critical hit chance. I forget which fleet location you can buy those at.

The very best weapons that I am aware of are the AP Beam Array MkXIV [CrtD]x4 which will give 100% boost on critical hits. You could run 7 of those with the Kinetic Cutting Beam for your kinetic damage. Although some will argue for the Experimental Romulan Plasma Beam Array (uses no weapons power) and 6x MkXIV Plasma Beam Array with the KCB.

You get either buy better weapons on the exchange (AP weapons are a premium) or you can craft better weapons through R&D.

I hope this helps. I am sure Dark will be along shortly. He is very knowledgeable on this stuff and has taught me alot. I am just learning the details of this myself. Never really cared in the past, but I found myself seriously lacking on the higher end STF's and wanted to do more.

[Harndawg]

Thanks...I will start looking at the tac cmd battlecruiser and the weapons you mentioned

[Dark]

Hm, if you already have the Phantom, you may as well fly it instead of buying another ship. Since you're using Beam Arrays anyway... I'm going to try to keep in mind your (lack of?) budget.

You could do Blood of Ancients a few times. Those appear to be giving Mk XII AP Arrays, but that might be because my characters are level 60. In terms of mods, you want Pen, CrtD, Over, CrtH, Acc, Dam in that order (Pen and CrtD are interchangable). You will also want the Omni-Directional Antiproton Beam Array from the Sphere of Influence mission. Put that aft, along with a Kinetic Cutting Beam from the Omega reputation. You can pick up an Advanced Radiant AP Beam Array (set item) from the Iconian rep once you hit T4.

Right now, you're going to want the Nukara reputation Deflector and Shields, as well as the Romulan reputation Engines. Use the Obelisk Subspace Rift Warp Core from the Sphere of Influence mission until you have the resources (and power levels) to use an [AMP] core from the Fleet holdings.

For consoles, you'll want 5 Tactical Vulnerability Locators [+AP] from the Fleet Spire, or at least 5 Antiproton Mag Regulators. Universal consoles, you'll want the Assimilated Console from Omega, Zero-Point Energy Conduit from Romulan, and the Sustained Radiant Field console from Iconian. If you have nothing better, the Nukara console that gives bonus accuracy to Beam Weapons can be nice as well. The console from the Delta Flight mission isn't bad, either.

Other/better universal consoles are very expensive, either in EC or Lobi. The Plasmonic Leech is tops (and if you get one you want Flow Capacitors in your Science slots, preferably ones from the Fleet Embassy with +Plas) followed by the Bioneural Infusion Circuits.

Then there's Duty Officers, which can drastically change builds. For the Phantom, you're going to want to pick up as many Damage Control Engineers of as high a quality as you can. I then recommend:

Cdr iTac: OSS1/OSS2/FAW3/APB3
LCdr Tac: TT1/APB1/FAW3
LCdr Eng: EPtS1/ET2/EPtW3
Lt iSci: HE1/ST2
Ens Uni: TT1

OSS is Override Subsystem Safeties. This gives a big boost to all your power, and brings you over the normal 125 cap. Make sure you have Weapon Power set to 100, because you literally do not have enough Weapon Power unless it's at like 185 or some ridiculous number like that (for Overcapping). The downside is that when OSS expires, it disables a subsystem. However, Engineering Team will restore all subsystems, and if you activate it a few seconds prior to OSS expiring, nothing gets disabled at all.

FAW is Fire At Will. This is the bread and butter of DPS.
APB is Attack Pattern Beta. This inflicts a damage resistance debuff on anything you hit.

What you do is pair FAW with APB, so you debuff everything. So alternate between FAW3/APB3 and FAW3/APB1 every 20s. Don't desync them, wait for both to be available before activating.

TT is Tactical Team, this baby automatically and instantly redistributes your shield facings. Don't use the Distribute_Shields command, rely on Tactical Team. It'll also buff your Attack Patterns skill, which is the thing that affects Attack Pattern Alpha, Attack Pattern Beta, Attack Pattern Omega, etc. Having two of them allows for activating it every 15s.

ET is Engineering Team, as mentioned. It's a hull heal, but don't use it unless you absolutely have to, because you need it to prevent OSS from knocking out a system.

EPtS and EPtW are Emergency Power to Shields and Emergency Power to Weapons, respectively. Not only do they up their respective subsystem power, they have good innate boosts. Having Damage Control Engineers allows you to keep both active (after the initial 15s) constantly. The chance for that cycling breaking decreases the more high quality DCE DOffs you have.

When you have EPtW constantly active and fire FAW3/APB3 with OSS2 active, you'll just melt entire groups of things. Be sure to stay at max speed (for the Defense boost) and also as close to the enemies as possible (to minimize range drop off), so you're basically an angry disco ball of death.

HE is Hazard Emitters. This clears hazard debuffs like the Borg Shield Neutralizer and Plasma Fires, and is a good heal over time. It's your only hull heal aside from Engineering Team, unfortunately. Use as appropriate.

ST is Science Team. This clears certain debuffs like Placate or Confuse, and is a big shield heal. Very handy against Delta Quadrant enemies and Iconians, it's your only shield heal. Not exactly the toughest build. I'd recommend grabbing Shield Distribution Officer DOffs to turn Brace For Impact into another shield heal.

Now, if you have enough Conn Officer DOffs to reduce the cooldown of Tactical Team to ~15s, you can free up that Universal. (2 Purples is enough, I think 2 Blues are not enough, 1 Purple + 1 Blue may be enough.)

This allows you to go:

LCdr Eng: EPtS1/RSP1/EPtW3
Lt iSci: HE1/ST2
Ens Uni: ET1

RSP is Reverse Shield Polarity. This baby is guaranteed to bring your shields from almost nothing to max, so long as you're being shot at. Unfortunately, it has a long cooldown. Pretty much an emergency shield heal. While we lose a slight amount of hull healing going from ET2 to ET1, so long as shields are active it's only Bleedthrough going towards our hull anyway.

Alternatively, you could go:

LCdr Eng: EPtS1/AtSIF1/EPtW3
Lt iSci: HE1/ST2
Ens Uni: ET1

AtSIF is Auxiliary to Structural. With a short cooldown of 15s, it's a hull heal and 10s damage resistance buff that scales to Auxiliary power. My favorite ability to spam, it'll treat you right. If you were an Engineer I'd recommend this since you'd have the Captain's Rotate Shield Frequency to act as a second shield heal, but since you're a Tac I'd recommend having RSP handy instead.

Offensively, if you can afford a Zemok:

Cdr iTac: OSS1/OSS2/FAW3/APO3
LCdr Tac: TT1/APB1/FAW3

Attack Pattern Omega is a multipurpose buff that will cause you to do far more damage as well as increase your survivability slightly.

OSS2+FAW3+APO3+EPtW3 is ridiculously strong. All this means is you alternate between FAW3/APO3 and FAW3/APB1 instead of FAW3/APB3 and FAW3/APB1. Zemok is ridiculously expensive though, and if you can afford him you're better off buying a Leech console first.

All this being said, I prefer having Engineers fly escorts because this is waaaay too fragile for my tastes. You're going to need to fly your Phantom to get your Starship Trait anyway though, so here's a build for you.

[Dark]

Okay! So you've maxed out your Phantom and gotten your Reciprocity trrait. If you keep exploding and are tired of that, and if you're willing to pay Zen, I'd recommend switching to a Presidio Tactical Command Battlecruiser. The Starship Trait on this one is ridiculously good, and it has a hanger, and it has Inspiration commands. Awesome, though I'm not the biggest fan of how it looks.

My recommendation again requires Comm DOffs and DCE DOffs. I don't recommend bothering with trying for Zemok, since there's no Cdr Tac seat:

LCdr Tac: TT1/APB1/FAW3
Lt Uni: FAW1/APB1
Lt Eng: EPtS1/RSP1
Cdr cEng: ET1/OE2/EPtW3/AtSIF3
Lt cSci: HE1/ST2

As before, we keep TT1 firing whenever possible, cycle EPtS and EPtW.
I'd spam AtSIF3 whenever available as well, and along with ET1 and HE1 you should have enough hull heals to tide you over whenever your shields are down.

OE1 is Overwhelm Emitters, when you mark an enemy with it you do extra shield damage and heal your own shields. Along with ST2 and RSP1, you should be able to keep your shields up most of the time.

Alternate FAW3/APB1 and FAW1/APB1, obviously. Simple build, slightly less damage than the Phantom if you never die in the Phantom. If you constantly die in the Phantom, this could well outdo it.

The All Hands on Deck trait is ridiculous, as it'll keep your Attack Pattern Alpha almost constantly available, plus it'll lower the cooldowns of HE and ST, so it'll improve survivability as well. Highly recommended.

Oh, for your hanger, I'd recommend Delta Flyers for general use. Other hangers do better at specific things, but if you don't want to bother switching hangers as appropriate, the Delta Flyers are a great choice, especially since the latest Tachyon Beam buff.

[Kerry Malone]

Fabulous support as always Dark.

If you're hurting for good weapons and gear, the Fleet Bank does provide some stuff that you can use in the interim whilst you're leveling up (once you go full member!).

Also, we have a full team of Crafters available to craft you any specialist equipment you may need from the RnD portal. All our crafters are lvl 15+ in their RnD, and can usually get you pretty decent quality gear for a lot cheaper than on the exchange. Visit HERE for more info!

These guys talk about CrtDx3/4 a lot, because that is the best mod available on weapons. However, the catch is, everyone else knows that too - and they cost a friggin' fortune on exchange. I would suggest slowly gathering those types of weapons over time, rather than trying to rush-fill your ship with top end gear. Getting the consoles should be your first task, as they make a dull build a good build, even with average weapons.

Always use Tactical consoles in the Tactical slots, and always use energy type specific consoles (not generic weapon type ones, the falloff in damage output is stupid!) - even if you can't get the Vul-Locater consoles yet, use the AP specific ones. Blue is okay, Purple is better. You won't be able to afford UR or Epic just yet, but they do help. Engineering console wise, whilst you're waiting for your rep consoles, use Neutronium for engineering, as that gives you far more resistance to damage, and makes you less squishy. In science, Field Generators are the best way to go, but its not always easy to get those at a decent price. Usually I bung the universal consoles for the specific ships in there if I can't get Field Generators.

The Deflector does make a difference, so make sure you have a pretty good one to start with before you worry about delving into the reputation ones. They take a while to get, but they are worth the hassle. Engines are not so much of a problem, and you can usually get some good ones for not a lot. Shields though, people argue on this, but in my opinion Resilient Shields are better than most others, because they reduce bleed-through of damage. Covariants are popular too, as they have higher HP, but I prefer Resilient as they might last 1 second less in overall combat, but you take less damage overall during the time your shields are up.

Then just make sure you have Traits slotted and Duty Officers assigned. Even if you don't have the ones that Dark has suggested, use any that enhance your ships combat efficiency. Using some is better than using none.

The BOffs are probably going to be the first thing you get sorted, as that is amazingly easy to do now. Use BOffs with passives that assist your ship, like efficiency, teamwork, superior romulan operative, etc.

If you need any help with anything, please do ask a member of our community. Most of us are really great guys who're more than happy to spend the time, effort and in some cases the EC to help you out. So don't be shy to ask for help in UFPK chat or on TeamSpeak!

Happy gaming

[Wesstan]

Also a little tip that helps with survivability of the Phantom (and any other escort): Focus on single target skills.
This wont do as much overall dps as a FAW cruiser but it produces some crazy spike damage and will usually only grab the aggro of the enemy you are attacking instead of everything around you.

As for th Phantom: With Surgical Strkies it is able to use one of the most powerful attacks in the game. use it with some DBBs and you're ready to go.

[ForTheGamer]

Another idea is to build up dil in game to purchase zen and pick up the Pathfinder to acquire its starship trait, Ablative Field Projector. This provides a Temporary Hull Hit Points that must be destroyed first, before your regular hull is touched. The better part is it can be not only stacked up to 3 times, it'll also make you have Science Team on 15 second cooldown, thereby being a shield/hull heal. You can also toss it out to other players (as I like to try doing) and be a pal.

Then you can plug it on your Phantom and boom! You can keep your ship going!

[Harndawg]

Ok after reading over Darks notes I will quickly explain my current progress and the questions I have
1- Phantom Intel Escort: Currently Tier 2
2- Tac Command BattleCruiser: Currently Tier 4
3- Currently working on reputation to get the items Dark mentioned above


Questions:
1- I bought a purple Tact Intel officer at the Sol Base…Does the race of the officer matter?
2- Where do I buy the following Training Manuals: (The toon at the Sol Base only goes up to Lv II)
a. Fire at Will III
b. Attack Pattern Beta III
c. Emergency Power to Weapons III
3- Sphere of Influence: I am having a problem with this, I went back and replayed it enough times to get the Omni-Directional Antiproton Beam, the subspace modulator and some AP arrays. But when I went to play it again I complete everything, but at the end after the last fight in space, I never get the option to collect rewards after the enemy is defeated. Is there a level limit or a limit to the amount of times you can do a mission?
4- Duty Officers: I know it is just me, but I get really confused on duty officers
a. What is a damage control engineer and what constitutes a good Dmg Control Eng
b. Where can I get a good duty officer
c. I know Bridge officers are the ones you put at the stations…are the duty officers part of your ship roster or are they the ones that go in the Space/Ground slot…I believe there are 5 each of them
5- PvE Que
a. When a Que says “Choice of Mark”, how do you get the choice of mark? I did one of those the other day hoping to choose some Iconian Marks…but when we completed the mission, I was never given a choice of what marks I wanted…did I do something wrong?

Thank you for all your assistance (especially Dark) and I hope you don’t mind answering a Noob’s questions

[Dark]

1. Certain traits are exclusive to certain races (like Superior Romulan Operative to Romulans), and rarity is merely an indicator of the quality of those traits. (For example, I believe a purple has two Superior and two normal traits.)

What we care about are the traits themselves. The absolute best trait in terms of effectiveness is Superior Romulan Operative. As a Fed, your only access are the blue male Romulan tactical BOffs from the Fleet Embassy. Pirate is the next best, but as a Fed your only access is the one choice of BOff when you hit Tier 4 in the Diplomacy DOffing commendation. Then we have Efficient (Saurian or the C-Store/Lobi Borg) and Leadership (Human). The BOff from the Delta Rising arc is a Sci officer with Efficient and Pirate, and is the only BOff that has that combination. So ideally all your Tac seats are full of BOffs with SRO, one of your Sci seats has that BOff from Delta, you have the Pirate from Diplomacy, and whatever left is either Efficient or Leadership. Personally I think the Pirate race is ugly as heck, so I just run with Saurians.

(Effectiveness as in "having the most noticeable effect". Crits scale well, the other stuff not really.)

2. Check the Exchange.

FAW3 manuals are exclusively created by Tactical captains with the appropriate skills. As of yesterday they were only 10k on the Exchange, though. Likewise EPtW3 is crafted by Engineering captains, and I can't imagine it costing all that much either. APB3 are randomly on rare or very rare BOffs only, so may cost a bit more. I know we're practically drowning in APO3 manuals, I doubt APB3 can be all that much more expensive on the Exchange.

3. Uh, I have no idea. Seems like a bug, but I barely remember the mission at this point. There should be no limits, but there should be a cooldown where it won't let you pick up the mission again.

4. There's two components to DOffs.

First, they're like a collectable card game minigame. They all have traits and a profession, and go in your Roster (or Brig) in the Duty Officers interface. Then you send them on assignments, if they meet the prerequisites. The more their traits match the ones the assignment wants, the higher the chance of a Critical Success or Success as opposed to a Failure or Disaster. Rarity gives a bonus to this stuff as well.

Second, they're like traits. All DOffs in a particular profession will have a certain affect on your abilities if you put them in your Active Space/Ground Roster. The Damage Control Engineer DOffs we usually talk about give a chance to reduce the cooldown of Emergency Power to Whatever abilities by every time you use an Emergency Power to Whatever ability. There may be DCEs that do something else (I can't remember), so make sure you're getting the right ones.

As to where you can get them - well, they're like a CCG as I said. You can get free "booster packs" at the Academy (in the building where you can do the daily trivia thing for dilithium) as well as free DOffs from the three (Vulcan, Tellerite, Andorian) officers in the nearby area. Those tend to be Common or Uncommon, but rarely you can get a Rare or Very Rare.

Aside from that, it's a matter of playing the DOffs. Assignments belong to Engineering, Operations, Security, etc. and you accrue Commendation XP as you do assignments belonging to that Commendation. When you hit a new tier, you're rewarded with a free DOff from the DOff store - hitting T2 unlocks Greens, T3 unlocks Blues, T4 unlocks Purples - and can buy more with dilithium.

Then there's also assignment chains, where usually you get a Blue or Purple from completing the chain. It's a whole big minigame, and I'm afraid the easiest way to get good DOffs is just from buying them off the Exchange. Otherwise it's a whole lot of luck and time involved.

5. That's odd. Which queue are you talking about specifically? Unless it's specific to a rep (like Borg for Omega), it should pop up a reward window for you to choose the marks. Granted, it's often not much of a choice - Crystalline is only a choice between Nukara or Fleet.

To get Iconian Marks, I'm only aware of a handful that reward it. Space I know Herald Sphere and Gateway to Grathingy does, and maybe Battle for Korfez? I'm not aware of any others. Dunno my ground, Brotherhood of Swords? Not sure.

[Shiff]

I love the advice in these, as I also like flying the Presidio, but I have one small.... umm... problem. See my rank over to the left? See that yellow?

Yeah, I'm Engineering.

But I love the Presidio. Any modifications to the build to compensate for my lack of Tac Captain Abilities?

[Dark]

I'm also an Engineer, there's not really much difference.

The only thing we do differently is having 3 ranks in the Batteries skill for the EPS Manifold Efficiency trait.

It does means if you have a Marion DOff, you can replace RSP1 and OE2 with 2xDEM1 without hurting for heals since there's RSF and MW to fall back on.

[Shiff]

Hmmm....
Anyone got a few million EC I can have to buy some DOffs?

[Dark]

Zemok and Marion are actually last on shopping list, and you may not want them at all. I've certainly moved away from DEM/Marion on my Scimitar in favor of Kemocite.

The really important bits are Damage Control Engineers... I believe you can get at least one purple from the DOff store, but it does require you to be T3 or T4 in the Engineering commendation.

[Harndawg]

I know you said these are at the fleet spire...but where at the fleet spire....went to the dyson one and could not find these consoles

Can you help me out


BTW thank you for your advice Dark and I am following your advice and working on my rep to get the equipment for both the Phantom and the Battlecruiser