Also farm that Jaka Itzel patch! Drop down from the tree. I have 7 toons farming it daily. Hardly makes a dent in what's needed, but it's a start.



Also, there's a farm in tangled depths but I don't even bother.

It's F*ING AWESOME! I feel like a boxing champion lol

You might have to go in to the sequences and select the first memory to restart, but that's only a guess as not completed it yet, trying for 100% recuperation :D

It has been released. I shall commence playing (and streaming - see signature for links) shortly.

Also, what the hell? The game is out for not even 30 minutes and there are freaking mods already? :blink:
http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/?

Edit: I'm pretty sure I found my new favourite Fallout game. Also, the system requirements aren't nearly as high as I thought. I'm perfectly able to play the game on max settings without any lag at all. I sort of assumed mid level graphics would be straining it on my pc. :woohoo:

After improving DPS, the other big question newer players have about ship builds is "How do I stop exploding so much?"

The great thing about survivability is that there are so many ways to increase it. And I don't just mean that there's a lot of gear or traits or whatever to choose from, but that there are so many mechanics in the game that are related to survivability that any endgame ship (T5U and T6) can be made reasonably durable in advanced PVE content.

This guide is more about concepts that lead to survivability than it is about specific gear, traits, or skills, to help you think about the different things you could be doing to stay alive instead of just stacking more Neutronium Alloy consoles.

I divided those concepts into four main headings: hull, shields, piloting, and offense as defense, and I provided examples for each. The examples are generally the most popular and effective skills, gear, or traits you can use. Feel free to add more ideas to this thread since there's no way I could mention everything.

If your ship is exploding too much, come up with a plan that involves many different forms of defense instead of stacking up on one or two since many of these involve diminishing returns and trade-offs with other things you might like.

Last, know that your ship will blow up sometimes. This is just the way STO is. Don't let the untimely demise of your entire crew take away from enjoying the game.


Hull

Your hull is your HP in space. If it gets to 0, you explode, so it's a good place to start.

1. Increase max HP

More HP means that it takes longer to get you to 0 HP.

Examples

Structural Integrity (Skill tree): One person estimates that 9 points into this skill gives you 30% more HP, although those last 3 points don't help that much.

Bioneural Infusion Circuits (Lobi console): A popular Lobi console for its boost to critical severity, this console also boosts Structural Integrity.

Armored Hull (Starship Mastery): Available on cruisers, this boosts HP by 10%.

Auxiliary Power Configuration - Defense (Nukara reputation trait): Increases hit points based on your auxiliary power.

2. Hull heals

Doubling your HP just means it'll take twice as long to shoot you down. Heals, though, mean you could live forever.

Examples

Hull Repair (Skill tree): 9 points here doubles your passive hull healing rate and gives a 50% bonus to boff skills that heal your hull.

Regenerative Integrity Field (Universal console): AKA "the Kobali console," a free console from the 2015 anniversary event ship that provides a big heal, more heals over 20 seconds based on your damage output, and a boost to other hull healing skills.

Energy Refrequencer (Reputation trait): Iconian reputation trait that turns your outgoing damage into a hull heal. According to my parser, this and the Kobali console are the 2 best hull heals I have, but its effectiveness is based on your damage output.

Biotech Patch (Trait): This trait is from the Undine lockbox and boosts hull healing by 20%.

Techie (Trait): This trait is selectable for several races and boosts your Hull Repair skill. It's less effective than Biotech Patch.

Auxiliary to Structural Integrity Field (Boff skill): A nice heal based on your Auxiliary Power level with a short, 15-second cooldown (don't slot more than 1 copy). Despite its name, it doesn't take power away from your Auxiliary Power.

Engineering Team (Boff skill): Another nice heal, but not tied to your Auxiliary Power. Also repairs disabled subsystems.

Hazard Emitters (Boff skill): More on this below, but this provides a small heal over time based on your auxiliary power.

3. Damage Resistance

Damage resistance rating (like the "+40 plasma damage resistance rating" on a console) and damage resistance (DR) are 2 different things. Your damage resistance rating (DRR) is summed for a certain energy type and then plugged into an equation that has diminishing returns to produce a percentage of damage that will be deducted from every hit you take of that energy type. The maximum DR you can get is 75%, but only if your DRR approaches infinity.

That's not to say that it isn't useful. Lowering incoming damage by, say, 25% goes a long way to making your ship survive. The trick here is not to go too far, to test (in space but not sector space) how much your DR increases with each thing you change and then decide if it's worth it.

Examples

Hull Plating (Skill tree): Increases DRR to all energy types. It's hard to say how much DR it provides because that depends on your other sources of DR (because of the diminishing returns). If you have nothing else, 3 points here will give you 7.2% DR and 9 points gives you 12.4%.

Armor Reinforcements (Skill Tree): Same as Hull Plating, but for kinetic (torpedo and mine) damage.

Enhanced Hull Plating (Starship mastery): Available on cruisers, this gives a DRR boost equivalent to 1 Neutronium Alloy console.

Auxiliary Power Configuration - Defense (Nukara reputation trait): Increases all-energy and kinetic DRR based on your auxiliary power.

Auxiliary to Structural Integrity Field (Boff skill): This heal also gives a 10-second boost to DRR.

Hazard Emitters (Boff skill): This also boosts DRR.

Polarize Hull (Boff skill): Provides a big boost to DRR as well as tractor beam immunity.

Attack Pattern Omega (Boff skill): Provides a moderate boost to DRR, as well as other boosts to offense and defense.

Neutronium Alloy and Fleet Neutronium Alloy consoles (exchange, crafting, random drops; Fleet Dilithium Mine): These consoles boost DRR to all energy types and kinetic damage. I wouldn't recommend using too many because of the diminishing returns involved in calculating damage resistance and because most builds already have lots of other sources of damage resistance (see above).

Temporal Insight (Starship trait): Provides 100% DR after using a heal. There are a few other "you just can't die for a few seconds" abilities in the game now.

4. DoT and Debuff cleansing

Some enemies (especially the Borg) can apply a Damage over Time (DoT) to you that can really eat away at your HP. Others can apply debuffs like Attack Pattern Beta to you to lower your DR. Know how to counter these and survive longer.

Examples

Hazard Emitters (Boff skill): Hazard Emitters clears "hazard debuffs," which include the Borg DoTs, the Borg shield neutralizer, Eject Warp Plasma, and plasma fire. If something is doing X damage to you each second and it's not from being shot at, HE will usually remove it.

Tactical Team (Boff skill): Removes tactical debuffs like Attack Pattern Beta and boarding parties. Also distributes your shields to the side taking damage.

Science Team (Boff skill): Removes science debuffs like confuse or that thing the Voth use that stops you from moving. Also provides a shield heal.

Engineering Team (Boff skill): Removes engineering debuffs and subsystem shut-downs. Getting your shields back up if they get knocked offline helps you to survive.

5. Temporary HP

There are a few ways to get bonus HP that's not a heal. This is nice because you can use this even if you're at 100% HP, but DR doesn't apply to temporary hit points (so they get consumed quicker).

Examples

Attack Pattern Expertise (Pilot specialization skill): Gives you temporary HP when you use attack patterns beta, omega, delta, and lambda (not alpha).


Shields

Shields protect your hull. Since torpedoes do 75% less damage to shields than to your hull, it's a good idea to keep your shields up as much as possible.

6. Shield capacity

Increasing your shield points means that they'll be taken down more slowly.

Examples

Shield Systems (Skill tree): Increases your shield capacity.

Covariant shields, [cap] mod (Gear): These shields have a higher capacity than others.

Advanced Shield Systems (Starship mastery): Gives 10% more shield hitpoints.

Field Generator (Science console): Increases shield capacity by a certain percentage.

Auxiliary Power Configuration - Defense : Increases shield capacity based on auxiliary power level.


7. Shield heals

Currently, even if you have enormous shields, they will come down when fighting against certain enemies like the Borg and the Terrans. Heals are how you get them back up.

Examples

Shield Emitters (Skill tree): Gives a bonus to shield repairs and to your passive regeneration.

Shield power (Subsystem): Increases shield regeneration rate. Your tooltip regeneration rate is based on 50 shield power. This rate is doubled at 75, tripled at 100, and quadrupled at 125 shield power.

Transfer Shield Strength (Boff skill): A science skill that applies a large heal, then a 15-second heal over time, and also a reduction in damage to shields.

Science Team (Boff skill): Applies a shield heal and clears science debuffs.

Tactical Team (Boff skill): This isn't technically a shield heal, but it rebalances your shields to the side taking damage. If that's only one facing, you effectively quadrupled your shields there.

Emergency Power to Shields (Boff Skill): Increases shield power and applies a shield heal.

Shield Absorptive Frequency Generator (Universal console): From the Valdore Heavy Warbird (t3 Romulan ship), this console regenerates your shields based on your damage output. It's the biggest heal in the game, and turns up in my parser as a large part of all the healing that happened in the round (of course, most of that healing happens to full shields, but it's nice to have full shields!).

Enhanced Shield Distribution (Iconian space set bonus): The 2-piece bonus from the Iconian shield/deflector/engine/core set turns Distribute Shields into a large shield heal.

Reactive Shield Technology (Starship mastery): Increases shield regeneration.

8. Shield Resistance

This reduces the damage your shields take, like DR does for your hull above. There are fewer shield resistance sources out there, though.

Examples

Emergency power to shields (Boff skill): This also applies a reduction to shield damage.

Transfer Shield Strength (Boff skill): Heals shields and adds shield damage resistance.

Various mods on shields (Modifiers): The shield you use may already have some resistance to energy damage in it, or to some specific energy type.

Reactive Shield Technology (Starship mastery): Reduces damage to shields by 5%.

9. Reduce bleed-through

Damage coming in gets divided to your hull and your shields. Your shields, if they're up, take 90% of the damage and the hull takes 10%, and then resistances get applied to each. Reducing bleed-through means your hull takes less damage.

Example

Resilient shields: These divide incoming damage differently: 90% is taken by the shields, 5% by the hull, and 5% gets discarded.


Piloting

10. Defense (aka dodging)

Defense is used to determine an attacker's chance of hitting you when they shoot. More defense means you get hit less.

And this is actually a big deal. My engineering toon in his Nandi gets hit 60% of the time he's shot at; 75% when he's in his cruiser (Arbiter). That's a 25% or 40% reduction in damage coming in before damage resistance is applied to it.

Examples

Moving at full throttle (Player action): Go to space, look at your stats under the "Defense" heading, and you'll see your defense go up depending on your throttle. Your actual speed determines this, so faster ships get hit less. Obviously this can be a problem when it comes to keeping your target in your firing arc, but moving even a little can help.

Starship Maneuvers (Skill tree): Bonus defense just from speccing here that you get even if you're not moving.

Attack Pattern Omega (Boff skill): Gives bonus defense and a speed boost.

Elusive (Trait): A racial trait that you might have that gives bonus defense.

Evasive Maneuvers (Captain skill): Makes you move lot faster and gives bonus defense on top of that.

Tactical Maneuvers (Starship mastery): Bonus defense.

11. Avoiding stuff

It may seem silly and really basic, but if you pay attention to hazards like Eject Warp Plasma and warp core explosions, you will live longer.

Examples

Adjust camera and zoom settings (Player options): Switching to a different camera setting (Options>Controls) or zooming out (page-down) can help you to see more of what's around you.

Never fully stop (Player action): There's a small amount of time between when you raise that throttle above 0 and when you actually start moving.

Stay 2 to 3km away from enemies (Player action): To stay safe from warp core explosions.

12. Running away

You might just need to run away and heal for a minute.

Examples

Evasive Maneuvers (Captain skill): Move really fast and get away!

Deuterium burn (Item): Like a second Evasive Maneuvers.

Battle Cloak (Starship ability): They can't hit you if they can't see you. Only KDF and Romulan captains can access this on certain ships.

Tactical retreat (Starship trait): Trait from the Year of Hell lockbox or the Faeht Intel Warbird that makes you untargetable and move really fast if you're at low HP.


Offense as Defense

13. Kill things fast

When I was new to the game, the battles that were the most frustrating, the ones where I would die a lot, were the ones that dragged on for a long time. Killing things fast means they can't hurt you.

Examples

See my guide on increasing damage output.

14. Area of Effect (AoE) attacks

Many enemies will release a lot of spam - carrier pets, platforms, turrets, targetable torpedoes and mines, etc. AoE attacks can destroy these things before they get to you.

Examples

Fire At Will (Boff skill): It's the most effective way to shoot a little bit at everything while increasing your damage to your main target. Tractor beam mines and Tholian web orbs don't stand a chance.

Cannon Scatter Volley (Boff skill): Hit everything within a small cone around your target. You can hit its targetable torpedoes and carrier pets with this.

Plasma Shockwave (Singularity Core ability): Hit everything around you a little bit. It's not enough to kill carrier pets, but this can take out torpedoes and mines.

Tractor Beam Repulsors (Boff skill): Fires a pulse of exotic damage at 3 targets every second for 10 seconds in all directions around you.

15. Weapons power drain

Weapons power determines how much damage energy weapons do. If you can cut an enemy's weapons power in half, its energy weapons will do half the damage they normally would.

Examples

Plasmonic Leech (console): From the Vandal Destroyer or the Tal Shiar lockbox, this console takes a little of the enemy's subsystem power and gives it to you. It's buffed by the flow capacitors skill.

Tyken's Rift (Boff skill): AoE hazard that drains enemies' power (also buffed by flow capacitors).

I've got an I5-core Alienware. When I bought it, I would be able to play FO4 on medium graphics with the info that was known back than. It'll run fine, even on your laptop. :P

Thanks for your response! I'm glad we can all have this discussion here!

Yes FAW leads to more DPS numbers when fighting groups but in reality this is just minor damage across lots of enemies which when all combined gives really nice DPS figures."

FAW does 3 things: 1) increase your rate of fire against your primary target on all your beam weapons from 4 shots per cycle to 5, 2) add 5 shots per cycle to additional, randomly chosen targets, and 3) increase the damage each shot does (when using FAW 2 and FAW 3).

A ship with FAW1 will increase its damage by 25% against its main target. That number goes up to 40% with FAW3. And then it doubles its damage by shooting at other targets, giving you 180% more damage total.

However, these build are incredibly effective i play cruisers with FAW and see them slowly whittle down the enemies at the same time. In an escort with cannons though i take out the enemy i choose in a few seconds on average.

CRF gives cannons 50% more damage to a single target, FAW 40%. The point Aikune made was "cannons do more damage, hands down," and once you factor in all the other benefits that beams have (lower distance drop-off, wider arc, 4 times more overcapping power, you don't have to use beams with weak turrets, etc.), it's apparent that the reason the top damage builds in STO are all faw boats isn't just because they're whittling lots of enemies down.

Or to put it this way: in 30K and above channel runs where almost everyone is using beams and FAW, the boss fights (one target) usually last a matter of seconds. That crystal goes boom in under a minute. In the current state of the game, there is just no question that beams care capable of more damage than cannons.

This is how i see the FAW meta that has developed in STO, at its most fundamental level it is alot of stat padding to get the highest numbers in ISA and then the logic on how to build ships is determined by this scenario.

I don't see this. In ISA, at the transmitters, there's a cube, a sphere, more spheres spawning, and 4 generators to knock out. So there's one target out of 6 to 10 that cannot take damage for the first part of the fight.

FAW does 50% of its damage to a chosen target. No one is choosing to target the transmitter before it can be damaged. Taking into account that the transmitter is un-damage-able for maybe 1/2 of the fight at the transmitters which are 2 of the 4 fighting areas total (everything can be damaged when you're at the gate or in that first part), then 1% to 2% of FAW's damage is to targets that can't take damage. Actually less than that, because FAW has 50% up-time and it doesn't fire the extra shots if only 1 target is present, like at the end with the tactical cube.

If you take off 2% of the damage from the top beam builds, they'll still be miles ahead of the top cannons builds. And those cannon builds are using CSV, which can also be getting some of its DPS from that transmitter before it can be damaged.

If the mission of choice were CSA, then this would be more of a problem. But ISA just has 3 targets, total, out of dozens that can't take damage for a limited amount of time (and everyone stays out of range of the gate when they're at a transmitter anyway). It's just not a big deal there.

Also fundamentally i think the point Aikune is making that in general the synergies when a captain flies the ship type that traditionally goes with that career makes life easier for players.

And the point I'm making is that these synergies are either small, don't exist, or work in other ways.

For example, an escort is squishy, so isn't having Miracle Worker there more useful?

For another example, a science vessel has big shields, so Rotate Shield Frequency can benefit that type of ship more.

A cruiser has a thicker hull and more room for heals, do Go Down Fighting can be used longer on one of those.

A science vessel can pump out exotic damage, and that damage is buffed by Attack Pattern Alpha and Go Down Fighting more than anything science captains have.

DHCs drain more weapons power and access less overcapping power than beams do, so they could really use Nadeon Inversion.

Etc.

A science captain who gets into a cruiser quite simply wont be as effective as an engineer, their power levels are likely to suffer or they are forced into the A2B route.

I responded to this earlier: Engineers get bonus power for 1/4 of the time if they're chaining EPS Power Transfer, less of the time if they're not using it constantly. That means that for more than 3/4 of the time they have the same power as anyone else.

Science vessels have as much base energy as cruisers do in each subsystem, so science captains will have to make the exact same choice about power allocation in both ships.

And if we're talking about power drain, the only captain ability that affects that is Nadeon Inversion and only for a fraction of the time. Tacs, scis, and engies (for a majority of the time) have the same problems with weapons power drain in any given ship and build.

The people who come here for advice are usually the less experienced players who and the advice is geared more towards that. When people are more familiar with the game and the mechanics it is much easier to make the decision to fly other types of ships, knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your class and what it can bring to a ship. But if people are flying around in ships that doesnt necessarily synergise well early on and find themselves ineffectual they tend to quit the game early, myself and Aikune have seen that alot over the years and it is what posts like this are hoping to avoid.

The main problem I've seen with newer players' builds (in-channel, on Reddit, on the STO forums, etc.) is that they don't understand a lot of the mechanics of the game and why they should be doing the basics, like using weapons of the same energy type and slotting tactical consoles. Any T5 or T6 ship is perfectly capable of completing end-game content, even without the really expensive gear. The main problem is that the game doesn't explain its mechanics.

Focusing on the most expensive and shiniest part of a build (the ship itself) takes attention away from real problems in newer players' builds that won't be solved by buying a different ship.

For example, someone could have a Tac captain in a cruiser running 3 copies of CRF with beams and mixing energy types and not slotting any heals and using the default power settings (50/50/50/50). Telling them to get an escort a) doesn't solve the problem at all since all the same mistakes can be made in an escort, and b) takes a lot of resources and energy away from solving the real, pressing problems the player is having in the game.

If someone doesn't have time to develop an alt and they already have an engineering main they love but they really like escorts, then I think they should just go for it. Of course that's informed by the fact that I don't think these synergies are either monolithic or important, but it's also because having fun is really important.

Or, for one last example, a common synergy that lots of players refer to is "single-target is for PVP, AoE is for PVE." I think there's a lot of truth to that. But it's also true that you can do just fine with a single-target build in PVE and, if that's what floats your boat, then go for it.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by and continuing this discussion! I was kinda hoping we could all talk shop here but then this discussion fizzled out.

I need an i7-core laptop!!! Grmbl, grmbl, grmbl... :P

I've tried it a couple of times, but I found the controls were to clumsy for pc. I do however have a XBox controller nowadays, so I might give it a try again somewhere in the future. It really was the controls that made me lose interest in the games, the rest I found quite fascinating.

I've been a big fan of the Witcher series, though I haven't been able to get my hands on the third installment yet. It's been fantastic so far, though! Love the lore and the swords look pretty awesome, too! Would be cool to own a replica :cheer:

I can't see any reference to the Witcher games in the forum, so I thought I'll mention it. Do Stonewall Vanguard gaymers play the Witcher? Being a proud compatriot of the developer B) and a fan of the books, I was wondering how far it reaches.

Nice, although not really a surprise. They did that in Skyrim too and was received quite well by the fanbase.
I just got my Steamcode in the mail and am preloading the game right now. :woohoo:

On a "lighter" note, I hear that all "human" companions will be romanceable regardless of their gender. :woohoo: It's slightly reminescent of the Dragon Age 2 romance galore B)

I have to admit Alex you raise good points but i still tend to agree with Aikune on this.

Yes FAW leads to more DPS numbers when fighting groups but in reality this is just minor damage across lots of enemies which when all combined gives really nice DPS figures.

I am increasingly seeing people seeing their parse as a measure of how good their ship is and this heavily favours AOE builds always. The single target builds are somewhat left behind in this area. However, these build are incredibly effective i play cruisers with FAW and see them slowly whittle down the enemies at the same time. In an escort with cannons though i take out the enemy i choose in a few seconds on average.
This is something i have seen in other games there is a difference between people's raw DPS figures and their effective DPS. The raw DPS can be really really high but if it doesnt lead to the death of any enemies then frankly it isnt very valuable. In other games you would see damage over time casters put their spells on many many enemies which added up to huge DPS numbers but in reality they were doing very little useful damage on killing the enemies efficiently.
This is how i see the FAW meta that has developed in STO, at its most fundamental level it is alot of stat padding to get the highest numbers in ISA and then the logic on how to build ships is determined by this scenario.

Also fundamentally i think the point Aikune is making that in general the synergies when a captain flies the ship type that traditionally goes with that career makes life easier for players. A science captain who gets into a cruiser quite simply wont be as effective as an engineer, their power levels are likely to suffer or they are forced into the A2B route. The people who come here for advice are usually the less experienced players who and the advice is geared more towards that. When people are more familiar with the game and the mechanics it is much easier to make the decision to fly other types of ships, knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your class and what it can bring to a ship. But if people are flying around in ships that doesnt necessarily synergise well early on and find themselves ineffectual they tend to quit the game early, myself and Aikune have seen that alot over the years and it is what posts like this are hoping to avoid.

Ah but your british what you doing over on NA :P

Howdy, I like to play near enough all roles.. (apart from adc ;_;) so if you'd like to add me I'm on the NA server and my summoner name is:Gogo Yubarii

Well i would apply but the best i could do is do dirty adult jokes and throw drinking parties. but that would be hard on computer especially since computer and liquids dont really mix well together..

I think my wifi connection would devolve to dial up connection.

Quote by Lars1091

No Medgirl, being surrounded by hot, young slaves that do everything for you is something else than keeping morale up! :P

....B bu butt Lars! (sniffles)

(Invalid video video code)

Quote by Gravity

One of these days sej, we will accept it as an application and promote you just to see you suffer.

Just do it. Do it NAAAOOW! :evil:

One of these days sej, we will accept it as an application and promote you just to see you suffer.