[Teryon]

http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?...romulanbuild_0

That's most of it. DOFFs are:

Uncommon: Recharge time reduced for Tac Team and buff
Recharge time on boff abilities reduced
Recharge time reduced for Eng team and buff

Purple: Chance to reduce time to recharge torpedos

Common:
Chance to reflect dmg while using polarize hull.


My issue? I blow up FAR too much, my shields drop too quickly, and lets not even mention how quickly a mere borg cube in an STF kills me with plasma, not even a heavy plasma torp.

There may be other issues I don't recognize here(probably DPS, but lacking records..*shrug*). Help, advice, etc?

[Three of Seven]

Moving this to the Imperial Guard forum.

Personally, I wouldn't use Tetryons, but that's me. I would drop the torpedo and replace it with another beam, that will mean you can fire from the side a little more. The doff "Recharge time on boff abilities reduced", is this a technician? Because if so, you'd need to be running 1 or 2 Auxiliary to Battery abilities to see that effect.

The Scimitar is defiantly more known for it's ability to deal damage than survivability, though there are improvements that can be made. "Starship Threat Control" reduce that skill to 0, stick some points into "Starship Power Insulators" as the Borg drain shields, this adds some drain resistance.

Consider getting the Borg console and putting that into one of the science slots, both the Shield Resequencer and Dampener can be swapped out, as well as working to upgrade the Neutorniums.

Here's a build I found while looking, just focus on the boff setup here: http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skil...ld=ktahscimi_0

They are using an Aux2Bat set up, so that's 3 V.Rare Technicians, Warp Core Engineer to remove debuffs and something else which may work with what you are using. Mine has a Dulmur because I use Directed Energy Modulation as my Lt.Com Engineering slot.

[Teryon]

Rather expensive technicians judging by the AH. Oy. How do you handle the inevitable tractor beam crap without polarize hull?

[Three of Seven]

My scimitar uses polarize hull instead of the transfer shield strength that they have.

[Sysil]

If you equip the cloak with shields and secondary shields consoles, my opinion is this ship has already got the best defense a ship could get: cloaking with your shields up.

Your not in front of an enemy that you want to kill? Cloak until you get where you need to be.
Your shields are going down and you go no heals? Cloak until your heals come off cooldown.

In addition to getting an excellent defense, you get +45% DPS bonus for 15 seconds and extra turn rate for the cost of 2 consoles, one of which gives you secondary shields. That is a very cheap price to pay.

[Dark]

I deal with tractors beams by ignoring them and shooting. Also with Attack Pattern Omega. Technician DOffs on the Exchange will be expensive, but you can get purple ones for free from Support B'Tran Cluster Colonization Efforts assignments.

You're an Engineer, you shouldn't be that squishy what with RSF and Miracle Worker (with the Grace Under Fire trait).

Keeping in mind that I'm not a Scimitar pilot, I recommend using three Damage Control Engineers (preferably all purples, but blues work too):

LtC Tac: TT1 / APB1 / FAW3
Ens Eng: EPtW1
Cdr Tac: TT1 / APB1 / FAW3 / APO3
Lt Eng: EPtS1 / Aux2SIF1
Lt Sci: TSS1 / HE2

You should have 2xTT, EPtW, EPtS, and A2SIF on your spacebar. This means you'll have TacTeam up 2/3rds of the time for shield distribution, and A2SIF popping every ~15s to top up your hull and give you damage resistance 2/3rds of the time. With 3 DCEs, you'll have either EPtW or EPtS firing every ~15s so with 3 ranks in Starship Batteries you'll have the boost from EPS Manifold Efficiency up 100% of the time (in addition to having EPtW and EPtS active all the time, unless the cycle of DCE cooldown reduction breaks).

Synchronize your use of FAW3 with APO and APB (so don't have your attack pattern abilities on the spacebar). You'll be able to go FAW/APO (20s) FAW/APB (20s) FAW/APB (20s) FAW/APO, etc.

You'll have TSS and RSF as your reactive shield heals (use them when your shields start to drop), with EPtS constantly hardening and regenerating your shields. You'll have HE as your reactive hull heal (use it when your hull is around 80%) with A2SIF intermittently healing and hardening your hull. Your Bio-Molecular Shield Generator reputation power serves as a backup heal, and Miracle Worker (with Grace Under Fire) is obviously a great emergency hull heal.

You're not going to be able to tank in this, so Starship Threat Control should be at 3 Ranks. I'd say 0 ranks, but Jena@sarcasmdetector recommends 3 ranks and I'd trust that. You can offset the increased threat with the -Threat science consoles from the Fleet Embassy.

As I mentioned before, you want 3 ranks in Batteries to get good mileage out of EPS Manifold Efficiency, and try to max out Attack Patterns as it'll be fired off a lot.

You should probably carry a stack of large shield batteries as backup heals, and your singularity core should ideally be one from the Fleet Spire (the ones that resist power drain) with the [AMP] mod. You want your Aux power to be decent, so either W->A or S->A, and then take both T4 Nukara traits to get a respectable bump to damage and toughness. Your Starship Auxilliary Performance should have at least 3 ranks - I prefer 6 ranks, and ideally 6 ranks in Engine Performance. As a Romulan, you're going to want to keep Shield and Weapon Performance at 9 ranks, but drop Warp Core Potential to 6 ranks (you're not getting much out of it). Drop Hull Plating and Armor Reinforcements to 6 Ranks at most, 3 Ranks ideally. You're hitting diminishing returns from your skill points pretty hard at 9 ranks, especially with 3 Engineering consoles boosting resistance.

(Personally, I think you've got too many points in Ground. I've never seen the need for anything other than minimal investment.)

You definitely should not be using a torpedo, and you don't even have any skill points invested in it. Tetryons are actually good, [CrtD]x3 if possible. The reason it's good is that you'll be grabbing Tactical Vulnerability Locators [+Tet] if you're running Tetryon weapons, and that boosts your Refracting Tetryon Cascade reputation power.

If you can pony up the cash, there's always the Valdore console, which is ridiculously strong. The Plasmonic Leech is also extremely useful.

The Borg Deflector and Engine can increase your survivability, pair it with Fleet Resilient [Cap]x2 [Adapt] [ResB] shields. (ResB is ideal for current PvE content, but may not be as good when Delta Rising hits.)

Others probably have better Scimitar-specific advice, but I hope that helps!

Oh, and use your Drones. One hanger of Elite Drones has the same DPS as two hangers of Elite Scorpions.

[Teryon]

*scratches head* ok, still translating all the acronym\shorthand, but the gist seems to be..be a tac officer. Hm.

[Dark]

I actually prefer an Engineering captain. Nadion and EPS abilities help power management, and Rotate Shield Frequency and Miracle Worker abilities help with being fragile. You'll get less DPS, but I like to not blow up.

TT = Tactical Team
APB = Attack Pattern Beta
FAW = Beams: Fire At Will
EPtW = Emergency Power to Weapons
APO = Attack Pattern Omega
EPtS = Emergency Power to Shields
Aux2SIF = Auxiliary Power to Structural Integrity Field
TSS = Transfer Shield Strength
HE = Hazard Emitters

[Teryon]

I like to not blow up too, I mean, who does? Aside from Gir perhaps. Just trying to picture the playstyle here(which will take awhile given the lack of 20 million EC for just a few doffs..good lord where to people get this cash). There's no Polarize Hull to escape tractor beams, no Eject Warp Plasma or Gravity Well I to help control ships who won't kindly stay in one place, etc.

[Dark]

Whoops, I should have noted that I'm primarily a PvE player, so my recommendations are geared entirely towards that.

Ships moving around aren't an issue in PvE, especially since FAW just hits all the things.

Which DOffs are you talking about regarding costs? Purple Techs, or Purple/Blue DCEs?

Edit:
I tend to just ignore Tractor Beams in PvE. They don't really do anything to me, and a lot of the time APO will be active or about to fire off anyway, which makes us immune to Movement Debuffs.

In fact, two copies of APB means they're always available when FAW is available. So you can actually keep APO in reserve to counter tractor beams, or for additional mobility/defense.

[Teryon]

Either of them. As for movement, PVE is all I do(not much point in PVP; they come back after all), but ships swoop, move, they don't stay on a nice broadside arc, etc etc. And sometimes preventing an opponent from reaching the objective, like in Khitomer, pays off.

[Dark]

You can get purple Tech DOffs for free from the Support B'Tran Cluster Colonization Efforts assignment, given time and luck.

No clue about DCEs though.

[Arkainjel]

I think you can get at least one DCE from leveling up engineering or something.

I know Dark's wall of text seems like a lot, but to be effective, that's a great way to go. While the game is fairly flexible in that you can do a good job with non-optimal gear and builds, unless you are really attached to eject warp plasma, you'd be better off with something else. You're using 2 neutroniums and an RCS... IMO none of that is needed. You are also using a shield refrequencer and an inertial dampener sci console... IMO neither are needed. When it comes to ship builds, you want to go for one focus - shield tanking, hull tanking, beams DPS, control, healing, etc. You simply cannot have it all. Your build, has a pretty sci heavy focus given you're an engineer in a falchion...

As was previously mentioned, you had a bunch of points in threat control... this means for stuff will want to shoot you as it multiples your aggro. You have one shield heal, and a basic one at that. That is nowhere near enough to reliably keep your shields up against anything except... things that don't shoot back. With a 30s CD, ST won't keep your shields up and you alive. EPtS and TSS are, IMO both superior as they both have a shield hardening effect. EPtX are great because you get bonus power which helps you maximize an [AMP] warp core. TSS heals A LOT if your aux power is high - if your aux power is low, ST is better. You have 3 hull heals which is good... except it's easier to absorb damage when your shields are up. If you can do it, 2 copies of HE is awesome (again it is dependant on aux power, just like TSS) which will clear annoying plasma badness. ET is solid and aux2sif gives you a hull hardening buff. Unless I'm a tank, I never run all 3 of the hull heals, I'll pick one or two at most because you should be able to keep your shields up by cycling TT.

NOTE: ET and ST have their own usefuless for clearing certain negative effects.

Anyways, not it comes to what you want to do with your ship. I didn't see where you mentioned that you want to deal super DPS, or tank like a boss, or heal like a boss, or control like a boss. You can technically do any of these on your ship but with only 3 tac slots, I'd shy away from DPS. There are better ships for tanking, healing, and control but tell me what you want to be able to do and I'll throw something nifty together for you. I promise my followup response won't be as long!

Ark

[Teryon]

Wasn't really looking to DPS in this thing, just enough to kill massive groups relatively quickly. I've got an Eggshell-With-Sledge(ie, tac refit escort) for that.

What I want to do is to be able to survive anything currently in the game without sweating it, and to control where things go; I have a dislike for ships like tholians, Voth swarmers, etc. I'd also like to avoid movement impairment.

As a final note I'd like to actually understand what I'm doing, but I'm going with the 'takes time' idea on that one.

[Arkainjel]

I'd probably try the build below. It should be relatively tanky (especially if you get the valdore console) but still deal reasonable dps via pets and bfaw. Gearwise, you'd have to try it out, but the borg 2piece with the resilient adapt resb/resa shield would be nice. Nukara 2piece with the resilient adapt resb/resa would work too I think. Singularity core... get one with AMP from the dilithium mine if you're not going to wait until the new stuff comes out. Tetryon is fine, get a kinetic cutting beam aft.

Consoles:
4x Eng: assimilated, zero-point, valdore, plasmonic
4x Sci: if you want threat: 4x +Th Emitters, if you don't want threat, 4x-Th Emitters (or run with 2 or 3 and and move some universals here and you could put in some neutroniums in the eng slots... but I hate doing that lol)
3x Tac: 3x tetryon locators

falchion 1 2 3 4
cmdr tac tt bfaw2 bfaw3 apo3
lt cmdr uni ph1 tss2 gw1 x
lt eng eptw1 epts2 x x
lt sci he1 tss2 x x
ensign uni et1 x x x

3x DCE(dmg control engineers), 2xTT(conn officers), 1xGW (gravimetric scientist)

you'll have 2 abilities to get you out of slows/snares (apo3 and ph1).
you can cycle TT on CD which balances shields out.
you can cycle bfaw on CD.
you can cycle tss on CD - with epts, you'll be getting good shield hardening/heals 4x per minute as tss and epts will be useable once every 30s each.
you should be able to cycle epts/eptw on CD.
he1 to clear plasma.
et to clear offline systems.

If you feel that your shield are too godly, you could drop one tss2 for tbr1. You could also try using the adapted maco shield or the romulan shield to get a really high shield cap if your hull isn't taking too much of a beating with bleedthrough. You'll have to experiment to see what works for you. Keep in mind both he and ph give you hull hardening. Also,

Ark