[TheHubby]

I came back to the game after several years away, and I'm feeling a little hopeless at the moment. I find that in most space missions, I will end up hitting the respawn button numerous times. I don't recall there being so many enemy abilities that take me from full shields to all 4 down in one hit. I pretty much know my equipment is just sad, but not sure how best to improve it. I have a little over 2 million EC, which is the most I've ever had, and cannot afford to spend real cash on keys to sell for EC.

Here's the Academy link to my character and ship: http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/a...34c26172044951

Any and all suggestions welcome.

[Scarlett]

I may not be seeing your BOffs on my phone, so what are your BOff abilities? Also what DOffs do you have?

Out of curiosity, how much Dilithium do you have?

Finally, Are you looking to do a lot of damage or survive? There is a happy medium, of course, but what is your long-term goal?

[Mack]

Several issues with the build:

1. Focus your skill planner to fill in all tactical skills. You've left some important skills unfilled such as weapon amplification, hull penetration. Put at least two points in targetting expertise to improve your accuracy. Every other point is how you play the game really. For instance, I would remove 4 points from ENG/SCI Lieutenant each and make use of them in Shield Mastry & Warpcore Potential. I'd also try to arrange at least 1 point for Drain Expertise.
2. I can't comment how polaron weapon type is in terms of damage - never used them. Regardless, I'd recommend getting Vulnerability Locator tacticle consoles x4 from Fleet Spire for Polaron energy type. These modules also increase Crit chance along with Polaron weapon type damage.
3. From Dilithium mine, get yourself a Neutronium [TURN] alloy if you wish to use one.
4. Get these reputations consoles to increase your crit chance: Romulan Zero Point Energy Conduit & Omega Assimilated Module
5. Get these consoles from episodes to increase your crit chance: "Temporal Disentanglement Suite"
6. Chronometric Capacitor will provide additional damage for polaron weapon type, I believe.
7. If you plan on getting the Fleet version of this ship, that'd be great with the additional console slot. It will give you the opportunity to slot "Reinforced Armaments" console you can obtain from some episode. This grants a 60% power transfer rate when upgraded to VR MK XIV and some other stats.

For Ship Traits:

1. Honored Dead - will help you with survivability. Available on Exchange - must have.
2. I won't comment on other traits, as it depends on what you have

Personal Traits:

1. Context is for kings - Works well alongside honored dead.
2. Get all the good stuff for Tactical here, Innocous, Operative, Beam Training, Beam Barrage
3. Again, can't comment much since I don't really know what you have available.

What I've posted above is just a "beginner" jist. More work needs to be done towards acquiring specific traits. Having the intel + strategist specialization, and more. But doing the above - you'll definite witness huge improvements and won't be hitting that respawn button as often.

Once you achieve the above, we can then talk about optimizing console set bonuses to achieve better DPS. But this should do for now, as its economical and uses fleet credits/dilithium.

[Bridger]

Since you are using Polaron you want to maximize your Power Drain, so I would get this parts:

[Terran Task Force Deflector Array Mk XIV [SciCD] [Sh/HullCap]]
[Romulan Advanced Prototype Impulse Engines Mk XIV [SecSpd-2] [Turn]]
[Terran Task Force Quantum Capacitor Warp Core Mk XIV [AMP] [W->S]]
[Temporal Defense Initiative Regenerative Shield Array Mk XIV [Cap] [Cp/Rg]]
[Console - Universal - Plasmonic Leech]
[Console - Universal - Quantum Phase Converter Mk XIV]
[Quantum Phase Torpedo Mk XIV [Ac/Dm] [CrtD]x2 [CrtH] [Proc]] replace the Tricobalt Torp with this one
[Console - Engineering - EPS Flow Regulator Mk XIV]

Look here for the Skill Tree: https://ufplanets.com/showthread.php...CLASS-TACTICAL

[TheHubby]

I may not be seeing your BOffs on my phone, so what are your BOff abilities? Also what DOffs do you have?

Out of curiosity, how much Dilithium do you have?

Finally, Are you looking to do a lot of damage or survive? There is a happy medium, of course, but what is your long-term goal?

Your phone is ok, I forgot to fill the officers in, got them there now.
Got 104k dilithium right now.
Kind of a mix, I have a lot of story to run through so I'm doing more mission then PvE Queue type things. Which means it's me against the enemies, so I need to live long enough to do the damage.

Mack and Bridger - I will fix my skill tree ASAP, I just kind of tried to generally raise my survivability, and I see an agreement that I skimped too much on damage skills. Thanks, that's something I needed to know.

Mack - Took one look at what Honored Dead did on the wiki and bought one without a second thought, thanks again.

Bridger - Will start working on reputations to get the suggested equipment, though it will take a little bit, I've got Task Force Omega at 1 and all the others at 0, so got an uphill battle there.

[Scarlett]

Ok, the next question: have you built up any Fleet Credits? With that much Dil, you want to get Vulnerability Locators from the Fleet Spire. Naturally for your weapon of choice, Polaron.

The Fleet Polaron weapons from the Starbase are also worth looking at.

[TheHubby]

Yep, been working a little on fleet credits, up to 56k. Sounds like I need to tour all our holdings and see what they sell.

[Dark]

How married are you to Polaron? Disruptors and Phasers are the top two right now thanks to free gear like the Nausicaan set or the Trilithium set.

If you were around recently enough to do the current anniversary event, the event ship has a +Phaser console with an extremely strong clicky ability.

[TheHubby]

It's not that I love polaron, it just happens that those are the decent weapons I ended up with. My set of phaser cannons isn't quite as good, but I'm actually using them and the DOMINO console on my Risian corvette at this very moment (Figured I'd get it's mastery to add to my bag of tricks)

[Bridger]

But keep in mind the items I have listed are for getting the most out of your Polaron build.

[Dark]

The +Disruptor and +Phaser gear (the non-Tac stuff) is what makes them such strong choices, and aside from one potentially really expensive 2-piece most of the other things are free and readily available, such as the Bajoran deflector/core/shield/engines set.

For what it's worth, it's usually recommended to go with DBBs and turrets rather than cannons and turrets nowadays, unless you have some of the good +cannon traits. IIRC Phasers should be fairly common rewards from missions, in any case.

[Scarlett]

You have the DOMINO?! Niiiice, use that no matter what.

Are you fixed on the T6 Arbiter? Do you have the Fleet version? IF not, then that should be your very first item to buy from the Fleet, no kidding.

IMHO, don't worry about the Reputation stuff yet. Don't get me wrong, work up your Reputation, yet I recommend focusing on one Rep at a time, unless you have the time to play. Since I do not, then my experience forced me to focus my time toward certain projects. Having said that, I also recommend only slotting the daily project to use Marks, not the Hourly.

Otherwise, all your other gear can be stuff from missions or vendors. It's "good enough for government work" in the short-run.

How are your crafting levels?

[TheHubby]

Crafting is literally just starting, cannons at 2 and that's it so far. Working on Omega rep to get that Assimilated console Mack suggested.

As for the Arbiter, it looked like a good place to start, liked the 5 forward. I'll be in it for a bit, as right now cash is a bit tight, so can't afford to buy any of the many ships I want. Once things are looking up, I'll probably be trying lots of different ships, and not just on this guy, also have an Engy and Klingon tac at 60 who I'll be giving shiny new toys to when I can.

Dark, why are DBB's the better choice right now? I'd think with the DBB's and turrets you'd be making it harder by having a mix of beams and cannons so one ability wouldn't pump up all you weapons at once, but since I know very little about how things work right now, I could be way off.

[Dark]

YI recommend focusing on one Rep at a time, unless you have the time to play.

As a lazy person who highly values returns on effort, I can't disagree strongly enough. Due to the daily bonus boxes which are rewarded once a day per reputation the first time you do something that awards that reputation's marks, you shouldn't be touching any reputation more than once a day unless you've already gotten all the daily boxes for all the reputations.

Dark, why are DBB's the better choice right now? I'd think with the DBB's and turrets you'd be making it harder by having a mix of beams and cannons so one ability wouldn't pump up all you weapons at once, but since I know very little about how things work right now, I could be way off.

Ugh, I messed up something in the editing and brain-to-keyboard. I meant DBBs and Omni arrays, which function much like turrets but are, y'know, beams. One of the major advantages, assuming you can counteract the relatively minor disadvantage of FAW, is that FAW abilities are one rank lower. So while it's possible to go FAW3 and APO3, it's impossible to go CSV3 and APO3 as both of the latter are Cdr abilities.

Though there's kind of a skill requirement in fielding forward-arc weapons on ships that don't turn as well as escorts, and it's much easier to just go with all arrays.

Arguably the best Phaser weapon to have is the Trilithium Phaser Omni-Array since it (and the two-piece set bonus) gives firing haste, so it's really best to go beams with Phasers. This set, more-so than the various non-Tactical console sources of +Phaser, is what makes it competitive compared to Disruptors.

The indisputably most powerful weapon in the game is the Terran Task Force Disruptor, which comes in Beam Array and DHC flavors, so there's no strong incentive to go beams as opposed to cannons there. Yet what puts Disruptors at the top of the charts is adding in the 3-piece Nausican set on top of that, and the set consists of a Disruptor energy torpedo (not kinetic, boosted by +disruptor consoles), a Disruptor array, and a non-Tactical console which gives +Disruptor. So for Disruptors you would want to go beams as well.

[Scarlett]

You could use Omni-directional beams in the rear. One from crafting (which you could buy off the exchange), the other from a mission reward (and there are several to choose from, depending on the weapon type you should settle on). The third slot could either be a Beam Array or a Torpedo. Heck, I'll craft an Omni-Beam for you if you wish

If you are cool with the Arbiter, then I *really* recommend getting the Fleet version if you don't have it. There is a little more HP and an extra console slot, which you really want, no matter the ship. You may already have the Fleet Credits for one. All you need is a ship module. You could buy one off the Exchange, buy one from the C-Store (read: real money), or maybe ... maybe, the Fleet has one, but you'll need to ask someone else if we do because I have no idea ... nut maybe.