[Sunfire]

Since I've made the fateful decision to look at the game again I want to improve the areas that I never bothered with much. Namely ground combat.

I don't particular like ground combat and it makes me want to pull my last remaining few hairs out, but it is a necessary evil unfortunately. That being said, I want things to be as easy as possible, sadly ground guides out there are severely lacking (duh, only a madman would enjoy ground combat). Any suggestions on how to build a one-size-hits-all away team that can help me make things as smooth as possible? I'm a tactical captain focused on weapons myself and can probably find a half-decent build out there, but for the BOffs stuff is either old as hell or not available at all.

[Jestersmith]

Builds are still pretty relevant now and still pretty much what I use essentially. Not done a lot with boffs since they did trhe boff upgrades option though essentially gear them out with what epic modded gear i aint using and give them a bunch of useful devices

https://ufplanets.com/showthread.php...-Ground-Builds

[Remsus]

Since I've made the fateful decision to look at the game again I want to improve the areas that I never bothered with much. Namely ground combat.

I don't particular like ground combat and it makes me want to pull my last remaining few hairs out, but it is a necessary evil unfortunately. That being said, I want things to be as easy as possible, sadly ground guides out there are severely lacking (duh, only a madman would enjoy ground combat). Any suggestions on how to build a one-size-hits-all away team that can help me make things as smooth as possible? I'm a tactical captain focused on weapons myself and can probably find a half-decent build out there, but for the BOffs stuff is either old as hell or not available at all.

Story line: only the captain has to have full upgraded gear, BOFF Mark XII purple is enough.

TFOs: https://www.sto-league.com/ground-co...rrent-century/

Go "Equipment and Gear for all Professions" route, hopefully you have enough Lohlunat from previous summer events.
If not we can probably see if someone has enough in his banks, when you join us at our STO events.

[darthnovawave]

Unfortunately the reason you don't see much about BOFF builds is that they are pretty lackluster in general. The BOFF AI will aggressively use their powers and any pet devices, but a BOFF will only fire their weapon once every 6 seconds or so and there is no getting around that one. Thus, there isn't any way to make BOFFs into DPS monsters. Given this, instead of taking a DPS-oriented build strategy with your BOFFs, it is better to think "support build" with them and focus on having them amp up your Captain's performance instead.

I generally take a couple of science BOFFs in with at least 3 heals each (usually Medical Tricorder I, Tricorder Scan I, and Nanite Health Monitor II) to keep everyone alive, an engineer BOFF with Quantum Mortar Fabrication II just in case I run a map with the odd "untargetable target stuck in wall" glitch, then everything else is either a team buff or a debuff power. Alternately, Science BOFFs also have a few useful AOE damage abilities like Cold Fusion Flash that might be worth a consideration or Engineers could throw in some turrets and drones, but don't expect much on the DPS parse. While Tactical Captains are heralded as the DPS kings, Tactical BOFFs are pretty lackluster. They offer a few team defensive buffs and grenades, but their buffs are self-buffs of their pathetic abilities, so you'll probably want to lean into specializations on them or skip running a Tactical BOFF altogether.

Specializations help a lot with building your away team BOFFs. Command has several useful team buffs, Intel offers Frictionless Particle Grenade as a big damage resistance debuff, and Temporal offers Paradox Bomb which essentially is a "gravity well for ground maps", which can be handy. I generally avoid Miracle Worker for ground, but there are a few ok heals there if you are using the same boff for space and ground and don't want to fuss with swapping specializations.

As far as gear, again your BOFFs won't be using it much, so you are probably ok as long as you have something level-appropriate (e.g. Mk XII+ at endgame) and don't overstress about upgrading it. I personally end up dumping rep set gear on them after unlocking the tailor unlocks, and a few sets in the Omega and Gamma reps actually offer team buff set bonuses. Since BOFFs rarely shoot, weapons don't matter much but AOE attacks are probably more "optimal".

As far as your captain, the best builds are generally kit-based, not weapon-based. There are any number of strong universal modules around now that can do massive damage. I'd suggest the Ground combat guide by the folks over at STO Better for more guidance there.

https://sites.google.com/view/stobet...ics?authuser=0