[Mack]

I ended up getting the bundle.

Note: My main and preferred style of gameply is EPG builds on a SCI player.

The Atlantis, Ahwahnee and Chekov are some ships I ended up finalizing to get. Along with this, I was going to get the another zstore ship for it's trait and 4x Ship Upgrades. The total cart value was already the discount bundle price, so at this point going for bundle simply became, logical.

I'm not rushing towards builds or levelling and taking my time with each ship. So far I've played and levelled the Atlantis and absolutely love my pizza cutter. I do plan on coming back to this in the future. The second ship I've just set-up is the Ahwanhee class and yet to level - but I did take her into my dailies. She's purely OP with the Sci setup I had and the as a carrier along with that outrageous console itself.

So apart from these 3 ships + that T6 ship coupon, I see everything else as a freebie - regardless if I plan to ever use them.

Oh, the rifle is indeed awesome and looks good.

[ForTheGamer]

So, if you like pets, I think we need to rally that all pets gain Close in Sensors Pass. I picked up the T7 Elites last night and was just mincing things without actually doing the work myself and when I did, it was glorious. That skill makes the T7 really good and would be a very big boon if it gets retroactively added to other pets.

Also on the Discoe, it is a amazing to watch between them, beam overload (co-assault), plus anomalies + spore/gravity how fast things die. Like I run Advanced only stuff and it was amazing. It didn't cook as well as say just standard science wizardry (what does?), but that is likely because I'm not built for running pets. I have a few things to help, but not dedicated.

Add in Energy Refrequencer from one of the Space Reputations to cause beams to gain health which triggers starship trait Flagship Tactics for 33% haste on energy weapon damage (applies to all your pets too, btw) and things go wild. You could also apply the the Rep. Trait to Risk vs Reward, though that becomes a goal of staying under 90% health, which triggers radiation damage every second on a target and 3km area when you are healed (once per second). Which if you combine the two, basically means it works on all ships.

I'm just thinking over all the possibilities you can run with this stuff. Gonna be fun.

[Buckaroo]

So, if you like pets, I think we need to rally that all pets gain Close in Sensors Pass. I picked up the T7 Elites last night and was just mincing things without actually doing the work myself and when I did, it was glorious. That skill makes the T7 really good and would be a very big boon if it gets retroactively added to other pets.

Also on the Discoe, it is a amazing to watch between them, beam overload (co-assault), plus anomalies + spore/gravity how fast things die. Like I run Advanced only stuff and it was amazing. It didn't cook as well as say just standard science wizardry (what does?), but that is likely because I'm not built for running pets. I have a few things to help, but not dedicated.

Add in Energy Refrequencer from one of the Space Reputations to cause beams to gain health which triggers starship trait Flagship Tactics for 33% haste on energy weapon damage (applies to all your pets too, btw) and things go wild. You could also apply the the Rep. Trait to Risk vs Reward, though that becomes a goal of staying under 90% health, which triggers radiation damage every second on a target and 3km area when you are healed (once per second). Which if you combine the two, basically means it works on all ships.

I'm just thinking over all the possibilities you can run with this stuff. Gonna be fun.

I've always wished they had released the Legendary Akira as a flight-deck carrier.. I would have paid money for that. However, since they didn't, can you share what your usual carrier ship build would be?

[ForTheGamer]

I honestly run a pretty standard build and then just add on to it. I usually run either an A2B if I'm not doing science stuff or a Gravity Well + Spore trait build when science related. However, since you probably want to either Flight-Deck or Carrier build, I'll run with those.

What I run for those is a pretty standard beams build. 6 beams + 2 omnis for weapons. For ship gear, I run the MACO shield (adapted MACO, I think for Klingon). Reason I began running that, is that it boosts power levels and you want high power levels in auxiliary and weapons. It'll also boost your engines and shields which is also nice. Though that's the only piece you'll be running from MACO. The 2 set for it isn't really worth putting another on, so fill it with your best 3 piece. My best right now is the Preeminent set, though probably the Mycelial or another would be better suited.

For gear, I'm currently running the Isomagnetic Plasma Distribution Manifold for any available Engineering slots, Exotic Particle Focusers for any available Science slots and Phasers for any available Tactical slots. I run the following 3 ship consoles: Prolonged Engagement Dynamo, Defensive Drone Guardians and Bio-Neural Gel Pack. The three ship consoles are only if you want to lower your cooldowns. Dynamo and Drone are each 7.5%, with the Bio being 7. That gets you to the magical 22% cooldown that is pretty much what you can shave off with an A2B build. So, that's why I run those. If you don't have those, don't worry and just run the consoles I mentioned.

Now Iso or the Pets version of Iso doesn't matter too much which you use. The pets version will likely be slightly better, but my build specifically considers them expendable. Like, yes it is nice to keep them alive, but I'm not about to go out of my way to worrying about it. You'll see why when you see the rest of what I'm doing.

For ship traits, I'm a big fan of "if I'm doing A, do A more". For me that's science, so my starship traits will almost always contain Improved Gravity Well + whatever the full name of the Spore trait is. If you are doing this, you'll want a half and half ratio of anomalies to drain skills. This is to make sure you aren't just waiting on cooldowns all the time. Realistically, if you've got like 4 anomalies + the pets, things die pretty quick. So yeah, most of my skills are Gravity Well, Charged Particle Burst, Subspace Vortex, Tachyon Beam, Energy Syphon, etc. For tactical I run Kemocite Laced Weaponry or Tactical Team, Attack Pattern Beta and Fire At Will. If its only two slots, Beta and FAW. For Engineering, either Emergency Power to Shields or Engineering Team + Auxiliary to SIF.

For duty officers (DOFFS) I usually run the escort ones for total +20ish% damage (so at least 3 rares), followed by the gravity aftershock, followed on top of that with Aux to SIF having a chance to have a DoT hull heal. A little more healing doesn't hurt nothing after all.

To increase my pets damage (for now), I use Overwhelming Force + Coordinated Assault + Charged Particle Reaction. Overwhelming Force causes all Beam Overloads to create a minor Charged Particle Burst. Coordinated Assault applies Beam Overload to all pets. Charged Particle Reaction causes all user made Charged Particle Bursts to drain shields (and disable cloaking). Therefore, you burn through a ships shields pretty quickly.

If I had the Mirror Engle, I would rather go Superior Area Denial, which grants all pets Fire At Will. Then I would add the Kelvin Vengeance's Target Rich Environment + Tucker's Redirecting Arrays. Which would increase the amount of damage and how long it runs for both pets and self. Though that isn't to say the above paragraph doesn't hold its own. Just you'd probably get more bang for your buck with this, I'd wager.

With the 2 extra trait slots, I'd would fill them with any of the following: Entwined Tactical Matrices, Unified Engineering, Relaunch and Repair, Gre'thor's Fire, Team Synergy, Tricks of the Trade, Flagship Staffing and Risk vs. Reward. Unified Engineering and Relaunch and Repair for additional healing, ETM and Fire for additional damage.

However Flagship Staffing and Risk vs. Reward are probably mainstays on any ship I use now that I understand them a little better. You don't really notice how good those are for pets at first (or in general). Flagship Staffing provides a 33% haste for energy weapons, resets cooldowns (not shared, so one or the other) on any type of healing. The Risk vs Reward provides you damage equal to any hull healing you've received while under 90% hull health, so it is a little harder to manage.

This is where I go into my reputations build for a bit to explain how those two are good for pets. I go with Chrono Capacitor Array to get the absolute max for cooldowns possible (may be overkill because of consoles), Active Hull Hardening, Hull-Repairing Nanites, Tactical Advantage and finally Energy Refrequencer. Most carriers have a high hull repair and regeneration anyways, so might as well lean directly into it. Same thing with much of my personal space traits too. Of course Tactical Advantage increases your damage the lower you drain a ships hull (starting at 50%), so you increase yourself and pets damage there.

However, Energy Refrequencer is the star of the show. It provides around 9.4% hull healing of any of your energy weapon damage and provides it 5 times in 1 second. Remember, both Flagship Staffing and Risk vs. Reward both work simply by needing a hull heal to fire. Energy Refrequencer basically allows you to always have these traits running. The haste of course increases all damage and if you can keep your hull close to but not above 90%, you've got extra radiation damage going.

Oh and about the radiation. If you increase your base healing and thus Energy Refrequencer's healing, it'll increase the radiation damage as it matches whatever the heal is. And unless they patched this, it scales on both ends. Meaning you can possibly get the heal critical followed by the radiation critical, both increasing with healing and science. Though, the odds of you getting all the conditions for insane damage is extremely low. I just saw it once in my time, so I know it is possible. I decided to use the MW spec to see if it would happen (as it allows healing criticals), just the odds aren't probably worth it. Quite sure someone will figure out how to game this though.

The added bonus of the Energy Refrequencer is that it provides your pets a self-sustaining (not to be confused with self-sufficient) heal to keep them alive for a good long while. In many of the Advanced runs I've been doing (of nearly everything) it usually takes an explosion to kill my pets. The other thing I do is put them on Escort (hence the doffs) and go full tank (also to help get under 90%). Though the healing only works on if they are hitting an enemy, so at the start of combat if they aren't full, they can possibly die.

But wait! There's more! Let's get back to Flagship Staffing for a second. So this means the hull healing from Energy Refrequencer provides you 33% haste, right? And a cooldown on skills, right? So why oh why do I have even both with the consoles + the one reputation trait? After all, if I've got this, I don't need the others right? Oh sweet Ensign... You can get cooldowns on top of your discounted cooldowns! I have so many buttons coming off cooldowns during combat that I have no idea what to press, when to press, I just press whatever I can.

Why? I missed some text earlier for Flagship Staffing. It reads any allied target(s) of any Command, Hull Healing or Shield Healing will receive the cooldown. We are an allied target, so it works on yourself. So yeah, I'd highly recommend this on all ships, just because you can always have it going and it works on all cooldowns. If you could get Energy Refrequencer to apply to everyone, this would be broken.

Thankfully the only way you can break this is if you had something that could apply any type of healing to all ships with a process over time. Except, there's a few things that could work well. For Command ships they've got Great Than The Sum, which will allow you to boost power levels and heal % based on hull and shield health any time a Emergency to Aux or a Command skill is used. Though the better play is probably Team Synergy which applies any Team skill on anyone else. With 3 different teams to use, that's a lot of cooldowns to be passing around and imagine if 5 players all had that? I could just imagine how quickly the cooldowns would be.

I realize I might've gone off way longer than I intended, as the later stuff is stuff I just realized. But yeah. That's more or less my carrier build + what I'm thinking about doing.

[Sorotia]

You know...more and more I could dig the probes and the phaser rifle, but ugh I don't really want any of the ships cept the carrier

[ForTheGamer]

The Ahwahnee is the one that contains the Flagship Staffing which you'll get the most bang for your buck since you can basically use it on all ships. Edit: Well, assuming you equip the other trait that is.