Star Trek Online Discussion Thread (now free to play!)

I need to star running the STF's so I can get some of that cool loot!

 

so the game's getting another patch today apparently...

here's the specifics... doesn't look anything too major, so don't know why they'd need 2 hours down time to get the patches working, but whatever...

M

 

Just rebooting all the servers and validating them probably consumes more than half of that time.

 

true lol

I just got a DOFF assignment titled "Investigate Rumours of Klingon Intelligence"... shockingly i got a critical failure on it lol

M

 

I need to ask a few questions before I can determine how best to increase your ship's damage dealing capabilities.

Why are you mixing cannons and beam arrays on a cruiser?
Are you attacking ships straight on?
Or are you making broadside attacks?
What are the bridge officer abilities you are using?
How are you distributing your ship's energy levels?

For cruisers, the standard way to increase DPS is to use 3 fore beam arrays and 3 aft beam arrays, do broadside attacks so all 6 weapons are firing on your target. You can further boost your ship's damage by using Boff abilities such as Emergency Power to Weapons, Beam Overload and Beam Fire At Will. Attack patterns will also help boost you and your teammate's attacks too.

 

1) Don't mix beam arrays and cannons - either go with beam arrays front and rear or the single cannons you have in the front now and 360 degee firing turrets in the rear (which BTW are considered 'cannons' for all boff powers like cannon rapid fire, etc.) Also, maximize your Tac Boff powers for your beam array or cannon layout (IE DON'T select Beam Overload or Fire at Will if you have cannons as they ONLY buff beam array powers.)

2) Dump the Photon Torpedoes for Quantum Torpedoes. Yes, Quantums have a 2 second longer erecharge time; but Torps are 'weapons of opportunity' in that they only really do damage when the enemy's shield is down, so you want to save them for when that happens anyway. The big advantage with Quantums in this regard is taht they are the fastest travelling torps in the game, so they have the best chance to get to the target before he is able to raise a downed shioeld facing.

 

Actually, mixing cannons and beams is not that bad.

If you attack at an angle you get very high dps, not quite escort level, but enough to kill things on occasion.

I have a dual beam, 2 cannons and a quantum torp in front of my sovereign refit.
The arc quantum torp, 2 beams and turret in the rear.

I use cannon spread fire, torp spread 1 and high yield 3 and tactical team plus tac captain powers to buff damage while having some survival abilities from the ship.

With all tac buffs and the cannon spread I can usually drop shields on my first pass and kill anything with less hull than a battleship/dreadnought with the torpedo high yield.

if a second torp hit is necessary, a spread from the rear torp can do it, since it only requires a minot course correction thanks to the 180° arc.

 

How good's just putting turrents on your ship's rump?

 

Good if you're an escort and are attacking with DHCs up front, so you can be firing the turrets at the same time.

Total crap if you're in a cruiser, because you could be broadsiding with a beam array and getting 3x the damage...

 

I heard turrets on the rear are good when you are turning and so on.

 

An RCS console beats turrets on a cruiser. Turrets are filler for Escorts.

 

THe basic principle is to have as many weapons firing as you can manage. Escorts typically use forward facing cannons, so having rear turrets that can also fire forward makes sense.

For cruisers and slow turning ships that can't easily keep their forward constantly pointed at their targets, it is much easier to broadside the target and have both fore and aft beam arrays firing.

 

Ok, letting out my secret of success (relativ, cause a harcore PvPer will still always smash me), here is my current build.



And my skill point tree, which I think is even more important.
I regret not having some points in Flow Capacitor, it's gimping my Omega set a bit

 

My setup at the moment, mostly geared towards STF Borg hunting, although will shred most anything that gets in front of it...

 

Here's my "doing my dailies and stuff" build. It's going to change later; probably today even, as I'm going to spend $35 on ships just to strip a weapon off one and a console off the other:

 

U.S.S. Banhammer? For real?

 

Yeah; the IRC users suggested it during the days of the official IRC channel, and I brought it back when I started moderating the official forums. My Klingon is in the I.K.S. Ban'leth.

 

Okay, this is a silly question, but how do we actually visit the KDF fleet starbase? (Or have we not advanced far enough to do so?)

 

You can visit it already at Tier 0 from the first second.

As long as you dont have a transwarp gate, you need to go to Eta Eridani (neutral zone) and enter fleet starbase system.

 

Since we're comparing ship builds, here's mine. As its name suggests, the Arbalest is designed to be an artillery ship. The USS White Star can attest to the amount of damage this ship is capable of producing.