Tactical Ship Selection

Over the lead-up to Delta Rising and even more so after the Launch of Delta Rising, there has been a lot of discussion regarding Tactical Captains in Cruisers and Science Ships. While the Tactical Readiness Department understand the desire to fly iconic ships, such as the Galaxy, Sovereign and Intrepid, as a tactical captain, these ships are simply not adequate to take advantage of all your tactical training can afford you.

The new high end Elite content is far more difficult than we’ve experienced in the past. It does requires Captains to be fully invested, skilled and geared, this also means taking advantage of all your class’ skills, advantages and ship’s abilities and mitigating your weakness and vulnerabilities. While there are exceptions to every rule, those exceptions are generally maxed out and have spend the large amounts of EC/Dil/Zen to be the exception.

First I want to address, Tactical Captains in a Science Ship. The standard Science ship has 6 weapon slots, 3 forward and 3 aft. That is a deficit to the 4 forward and 2 aft or 4 forward and 3 aft of an escort or raider.

“Well how is 4 forward and 2 aft better than 3 and 3, they both add up to 6”

Simple, Escorts and raiders can equip dual heavy cannons which do significantly more damage than beam arrays and even dual beam banks. Also most ships that have 4/2 configuration has a significant increase to their weapons power which more than makes up for the rear weapon deficit.

“I want all the cool Science Power!”

There are Science focused escort that are available to you so you can use the Science Boff abilities. Ships like the Prometheus and the Dyson Ships allows tactical captains to fly Science Oriented ship, while preserving your Tactical Captain Advantages. You don’t need to have a dedicated science ship to take advantage of the Cdr LvL Science abilities. You can really make do with Lt. Cdr Science abilities simply because this is as much as your captain skills and ship’s power level will only be able to take advantage of the Lt Cdr abilities.

Finally While Science Ships have higher shield modifier they have the weakest hull in the game. And in this era of shield penetration if you have weak hull you need to have abilities that help take the fire off you. And while Science and engineering captains have skills like Scattering Field and Miracle Worker, the tactical Captain have Attack pattern Alpha and Go Down Fighting. Neither of which help with Survivability.

Now, Escorts in cruisers, while on paper this looks like a great idea, 4 fore and 4 aft vs the 5/2, 4/3 or 4/2 Escort/Raider configuration. Higher Hull, higher shields and I get to Separate my Saucer/chevron! You’re also slower and unable to equip Dual Cannons. These two factors affect damage output and survivability.

“Well if I have higher hull how is being slow a liability?”

Speed = Defense, the Higher your speed the Higher your defense, the Higher your defense the harder you are to hit. It’s a bit confusing but Defense does not affect how much damage you take, if affect whether or not you’re even hit. While you have abilities like Evasive Maneuvers and Emergency Power to Engines, you’re still slow in space and do not have the speed to evade many attacks which will melt a ship’s shields and hull down to 0 no matter how high it is.
Engineers have the benefit of abilities like Rotate Shield Frequency and Miracle Worker as well as Engineering Fleet to heal and add damage resistance. Making up for this shield/hull healing and resistance deficit requires that you effectively reduce your damage output and weapon’s power level. You will need to fill your Engineering Boff slot with Healing Abilities and any available Science and Tactical slots with healing abilities that will require high Auxilliary power to work well.

“What about Aux to Bat Tac cruisers?”

Great plan, except you would need to be super specialized and you would have very little room for healing abilities. And even if that wasn’t an issue we’d still be running into power issues. Even with the boost Aux to bat gives every other systems you’re still firing 8 weapons at the same time and remember higher weapons power = higher energy damage. Also if you are able to mitigate your energy levels, Aux to Bat builds are not the cheapest builds. A Fully Realized Aux to bat Build will cost about 200 Mil EC

“How do Engineering Captains do it?”

Engineering Captains have EPS Power Transfer and Nadion Inversion they also have the trait EPS Manifold Efficiency. EPS Power Transfer gives a massive power boost to all Power Levels and Nadion Inversion reduces the drain abilities have on power levels. EPS Manifold Efficiency give a secondary boost to all subsystems when you use a battery or emergency power abilities.

“I don’t want to be squishy!”

A properly outfitted escort is not squishy. An Escort’s speed is it’s shield, and an escort is capable of very high speeds. If you are overwhelmed, an Escort is capable of being hit a lot less depending on how fast you’re going. An escort can also mitigate the damage down by eliminating the amount of attacker is attacking it.

“Why do you care?”

The Tactical Readiness Dept cares because we have encounter so many players in the fleet that were told to buy and whatever ship they want by well-meaning fleet mates and end up regretting it because it doesn’t do what they want it to do and not having the resources to replace the ship. With Tier 6 Ships costing 3000 Zen ($30 USD/475K Dil) picking the wrong ship has become very costly to replace, even more so when the Cruiser/Science Ship comes from a Lock Box.

Finally Escorts are some of the hardest hitting ship in the game and is fairly versatile when properly outfitted. If you need more guides as to how to set up an Escort, watch our 2nd Livestream that’s archived at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZlWofQdaKaGqU47FzO3OmYrKqyc5nO1j.

WhiteOnmyoji
Chief of Tactical Readiness

Duly noted. But if it's purty, Ima gettin' it! B)

Quote by Ngagecloak

Duly noted. But if it's purty, Ima gettin' it! B)

That's fine I paid $1200 For "ownership" the blue dress that was worn by a dancer at the Opening Ceremonies in Athens, I don't wear it. it sits in the Olympic Museum in Laussane and I visit it every time I'm in Switzerland, it has a lot of meaning to me one reason is because it's a pretty dress. If any one is interested in the story of why this dress means so much to me, I'm willing to tell it it involves a bra, water 3 extra inches, and me freaking out about nipples in front of an NBC VP. Ask me on TS.

You guys are so picky sometimes. *stuffing things in fleet bank willy nilly* ;) :P

The Aikune Manifesto Worth a thread bump

Quick question, if that's alright. Does the reverse apply? I'm a level 40 Engineering captain, just thinking about buying an Alita (when I get to 50, obviously). Is an Engineer in an Escort a bad idea? I've had much more fun flying the Akira than any other ship during levelling up.

I don't agree! I think people should play the ship they like with the captain they like because STO is a game and the point of games is to have fun, and I don't think you provide a good argument to the contrary.

"Escorts and raiders can equip dual heavy cannons which do significantly more damage than beam arrays and even dual beam banks."

No, DHCs do less damage than beams.

Beams have a wider arc, so players can spend more time hitting enemies. Beams access more weapons power overcapping (4 times more). Beams have less of distance damage drop-off than cannons. FAW is a bigger damage multiplier than CSV. FAW has the same arc as your beams do while CSV has an even narrower arc than DHCs do. Beams travel faster than cannons so an enemy is less likely to die in the time it takes the energy to get there.

You don't even have to have that much gear to see the benefit. When I played my new delta recruit, I just got the ship with the most tac consoles at every opportunity, put on cheap, common beam arrays from the EC vendor at ESD, and as many copies of FAW as I could. I was blasting through content so fast that the NPCs were saying things like "We have to hold out for 30 more seconds" after everything was dead.

"You don’t need to have a dedicated science ship to take advantage of the Cdr LvL Science abilities"

If a ship has a commander level sci seat, then it's a sci ship, or at least a sci carrier. By definition, you need a sci ship to use commander level sci abilities.

"You can really make do with Lt. Cdr Science abilities simply because this is as much as your captain skills and ship’s power level will only be able to take advantage of the Lt Cdr abilities."

What is it about tactical captains that adversely affects a ship's science skills as compared to a science captain? Science captains get sensor scan (all damage multiplier), sub-nuc (doesn't buff sci skills), photonic fleet (doesn't buff sci skills), and scattering field (doesn't buff science skills). They get the traits photonic capacitor (doesn't buff science skills) and conservation of energy (exotic damage buff). They get nothing that benefits non-damage science abilities.

So it's conservation of energy and sensor scan vs. APA, GDF, and FOMM, all of which buff exotic damage and to a greater degree than the science abilities.

As for power levels, the only career-specific ability that affects auxiliary power is an engineering ability, so both science and tactical captains are at the same disadvantage there.

"And while Science and engineering captains have skills like Scattering Field and Miracle Worker, the tactical Captain have Attack pattern Alpha and Go Down Fighting. Neither of which help with Survivability."

First, killing things actually helps a *lot* with survivability. The damage you take from something that's dead is 0.

Second, APA, GDF, and FOMM all buff exotic (that is, science) damage. Sci captains get... sensor scan. That's it. This is why tac captains get the most damage from science ships.

Third, GDF gives a damage resistance buff.

"Now, Escorts in cruisers, while on paper this looks like a great idea, 4 fore and 4 aft vs the 5/2, 4/3 or 4/2 Escort/Raider configuration. Higher Hull, higher shields and I get to Separate my Saucer/chevron! You’re also slower and unable to equip Dual Cannons. These two factors affect damage output and survivability."

Cruisers have a lower damage output than ships with a commander tac seat, but the career of the captain has nothing to do with this.

Cruisers turn slower than escorts, but, again, the career of the captain has nothing to do with this.

And not being able to equip dual cannons increases damage output because beams do more damage.

"While you have abilities like Evasive Maneuvers and Emergency Power to Engines, you’re still slow in space and do not have the speed to evade many attacks which will melt a ship’s shields and hull down to 0 no matter how high it is. Engineers have the benefit of abilities like Rotate Shield Frequency and Miracle Worker as well as Engineering Fleet to heal and add damage resistance. "

Several problems:

1. In order to get high defense, escorts have to move. Defense is based on speed. But if you're using DHCs (like you keep saying people should), you can't move as much because of that tiny firing arc. Ships with beam arrays can keep moving at top speed. My scim gets around 90% bonus defense when moving at top speed, which is more than any escort will get while standing still.

2. RSF is crap. MW is great but has a long cd - if you really have problems with taking damage it won't completely solve them.

3. Again, what does this have to do with career? Cruisers' survivability is better than escorts' and their damage output is worse. Career doesn't change that.

Now onto a2b, which I agree isn't optimal, but it's not terrible for people starting out.

" Great plan, except you would need to be super specialized and you would have very little room for healing abilities."

A2B doubles your boff slots at the expense of 2 boff slots, which hardly makes you "super specialized." Not all heals are based on aux power. You get extra sci teams and eng teams.

Also it buffs shield and engine subsystem power, increasing shield regeneration and strength and defense.

"And even if that wasn’t an issue we’d still be running into power issues. Even with the boost Aux to bat gives every other systems you’re still firing 8 weapons at the same time and remember higher weapons power = higher energy damage."

What does this have to do with a2b? You're still going to be firing 8 weapons with or without a2b. If you're saying that it's still a problem for cruisers to have 8 weapons, again, how's that an issue just for tactical captains?

Also, more overcapping power helps beams more than it does cannons (beams have access to 4 times more overcapping power than DHCs do), and a2b increases overcapping power. So A2B mitigates this problem.

"Also if you are able to mitigate your energy levels, Aux to Bat builds are not the cheapest builds. A Fully Realized Aux to bat Build will cost about 200 Mil EC"

A2B requires 2 copies of a2b (available at ESD for 2000 ec) and 3 technician doffs, which can be obtained for free at the B'Tran Cluster or found on the exchange for a few million ec. I have no clue how you got to 200 million ec.

I was running a2b back when I couldn't afford much in this game, with purple doffs even though you could get away with blue doffs. If you look at STO build discussions, a2b is always brought up as the *cheap* way to reduce cd on tactical abilities, and that's because it can be as cheap as you want it to be.

"Engineering Captains have EPS Power Transfer and Nadion Inversion they also have the trait EPS Manifold Efficiency. EPS Power Transfer gives a massive power boost to all Power Levels and Nadion Inversion reduces the drain abilities have on power levels. EPS Manifold Efficiency give a secondary boost to all subsystems when you use a battery or emergency power abilities."

EPS power transfer runs for 30 seconds with a 120 second cooldown. That's 1/4 uptime. 3/4 of the time an eng captain has the same subsystem power as any other career.

Nadion Inversion does not reduce the "drain abilities have on power levels." Just on weapons power. It's nice, but, again, there are lots of other ways to reduce weapons power drain, like, say, running beams and taking advantage of overcapping power, spire cores, the assimilated 2-piece, greedy emitters trait from the nandi....

EPS Manifold Efficiency helps some, true. But it's not game-breaking or even enough to compete with tactical captains' abilities.

Career affects 4 abilities and 2 trait choices in a game where you're likely to have 30 to 40 abilities to use and so many traits that are better than the ones that come from your career. In space, there really isn't much difference between the careers as they're all as capable of enough DPS to beat all the content in the game, and piloting, gear, and teamwork have far more affect on DPS and survivability than career does.

Quote by alex284

I think people should play the ship they like with the captain they like because STO is a game and the point of games is to have fun

this! weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee :woohoo:

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.

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.

"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."

Probably because it ceased being a discussion, lol