Ground combat guide: Basics

Hello, fleeties!

This is a guide to farming ground missions in Star Trek Online. The information here is intended to help you learn how to do ground well enough to amass a fortune of dilithium, energy credits, and crafting materials without ever having to pilot a ship.

My guide is limited by my experiences in the game, my preferred play-style, and the online and in-game resources I have access to. It's also limited by time. I wrote all this in August 2015, and in a few months parts will be out of date. I'll try to maintain it here on LCARS.

Last, the focus of the gear section is maximizing damage output, which includes both offensive and defensive components (dying lowers your DPS... but only to a point). Since farming is about *efficiently* getting through content to get rewards, and since most ground mission objectives involve killing enemies quickly, focusing on DPS is the best way to optimize your ground build for farming.

(This isn't to say that you can't have fun abilities and still get through content. By all means, if you love your Ricossa tribble, use it. But I'm not going to tell anyone what's fun and what's not, because nothing makes something un-fun like being told that it's the correct way to have fun.)

The guide is set up in 3 forum posts. This one focuses on basics:

1. Concepts and Terms

2. Why farming ground is awesome

3. Autofire and other options

4. Keybinds and your power tray

5. Parsing

The second part is about gear and the third part is walkthrus.

If you have any questions, feel free ask me in-game: @alex284

--Concepts and terms--

NTTE - Nukara Prime: Transdimensional Tactics (Elite), a PVE queue with Tholian enemies

DRSE - Defend Rh'Ihho Station (Elite), a PVE queue with Elachi enemies

UIE - Undine Infiltration (Elite), a PVE queue with Undine enemies

BHE - Bug Hunt (Elite), a PVE queue with Bluegill enemies

BOTSE/BOSE - Brotherhood of the Sword (Elite), a PVE queue with Herald enemies

NSDTE - Nukara Prime: Self-Destructive Tendencies (Elite), a PVE queue with Tholian enemies

HGE - Into the Hive (Elite), a PVE queue with Borg enemies, and the hardest ground PVE queue in the game

Elite ground tour - NTTE, DRSE, UIE, BHE, BOTSE, and sometimes NSDTE. A player proposing an elite ground tour in a channel will likely have a private queue of NTTE or DRSE open. At the end of each queue, players say "X" in chat instead of "gg" to sign up for the next queue. The 6-mission tour rewards 8640 dilithium, 6 Salvaged Tech, 16638 specialization XP, R&D materials from 6 elite R&D reward packs, at least 30 fleet marks, and several hundred fleet and reputation marks. The tour takes between 40 and 80 minutes to complete.

Voth BZ - Voth Battlezone, an open-world-style ground battlezone accessible through the Salonae Dyson Sphere (near New Romulus in the Beta Quadrant). It's the most efficient source of dilithium in the galaxy, and it also rewards Dyson reputation marks and Voth Cybernetic Implants.

Defera - Borg Invasion of Defera Adventure Zone, an open-world-style ground battlezone accessible through Defera (north of DS9 in the Alpha Quadrant)

Defera hards - The 4 "hard" missions available on Defera: Temple, Probe, Power Plant, and City. They reward 240 fleet marks, 40 Omega marks, some dilithium, and 4 Borg Neural Processors. But like how the silk worm is not really a worm and the guinea pig is not really a pig, the Defera hards are not really hard at all.

Set or Reputation set - Weapon, armor, shield, and sometimes kit from a single reputation that grant bonuses for equipping two or more pieces from that reputation

2-pc, 2-piece, 2-piece bonus - The bonus a reputation set gives for having 2 pieces of it. e.g., "the dyson 2-pc is an ap buff" means "Having 2 pieces of the Dyson Joint Command Reputation ground set increases your damage from Antiproton weapons." There are also 3-pc and 4-pc bonuses.

DPS - Damage per second. The average points of damage a player generates measured in a round of NTTE on ground

SCM - STO Combat Meter. A third-party program that calculates a player's DPS. It's free.

Flanking - Attacking an enemy from the rear 180-degree flank of a target on ground. This results in 50% more damage. If a team surrounds the enemies, then some flanking is guaranteed.

Melee combat - Attacks involving fists or weapons that make direct contact with the enemy (like a sword or a lirpa). These attacks produce physical damage, which is different from kinetic damage (which comes from fabrications, grenades, the TR-116b, or the Zephram Cochran shotgun). I won't discuss these attacks because they're less efficient than ranged weapon attacks, and this guide is about efficiently moving through ground content.

Aim - Aim ("X" by default) increases damage by 33%. For ranged weapons only.

Crouch - Crouch ("C" by default) increases dodge by 50% for ranged weapons but *decreases* resistance to physical/melee attacks.

Expose/exploit - Enemies can be exposed by certain attacks. When exposed, an exploit attack will get a +200% damage strength bonus. If that is enough to kill the enemy, then they will be vaporized.

If an enemy is exposed and you have an exploit weapon, then the secondary feature will start blinking in yellow.

All the standard weapons and most special weapons come with a expose or exploit secondary attack. Dual pistol, stun pistol, wide beam pistol, full auto rifle, assault minigun, blast assault, and pulsewave assault weapons all expose; compression pistol, high density beam rifle, sniper rifle, and split beam rifle weapons all exploit. Additionally, melee combinations can both expose and exploit. Certain kit abilities can expose.

--Why Ground is the best place to farm--

Ground is great for getting dilithium, crafting materials, salvaged tech, reputation marks, or elite reputation marks (like Borg Neural Processors). Elite ground PVE queues give the same rewards as elite space PVE queues (salvaged tech, an elite crafting materials package, some specialization XP, multiple elite reputation marks, and 1440 dilithium) but with one-tenth the effort.

Here's why ground is better for farming than space:

1. Ground is faster: NTTE and DRSE can be completed in less than 5 minutes with a good team. NSDTE takes exactly 5 minutes of play-time if it's successful, less if it fails. UIE and BOTSE take around 10 minutes, and BHE can be beaten in less than 10 minutes with a good team although it may take a bit longer with a PUG team.

2. Ground is easier: If I use a toon with the best gear in an elite space PUG, I will probably fail. In a DPS channel run, failing is still a possibility.

With a completely geared toon in a elite ground PUG, we will probably succeed. In a ground DPS channel run, we will definitely succeed.

Even if money is no issue and I can have the best gear for both ground and space, ground will still be more likely to succeed.

3. Ground is cheaper: To get top gear for space elite queues, you'll need tens to hundreds of millions of EC to get 6 to 8 crafted weapons with the right mods; hundreds of thousands of fleet credits for tactical consoles and elite carrier pets; thousands of reputation marks or more fleet credits and dilithium for a fleet or reputation deflector, shield, engine, and core; more space moneys for science and engineering consoles, like tens of millions of EC for lockbox consoles, hundreds of lobi for lobi consoles, or more fleet credits or reputation marks and dilithium for fleet or reputation consoles. Then you need to upgrade all that to MK XIV *at least*, preferably to epic quality for some of the pieces of gear, for a cost of more millions of EC and hundreds of thousands of refined dilithium.

If you want to get fancy, you'll get space traits (for millions of EC) and starship traits (for thousands of Zen... do you want All Hands On Deck or not???).

And of course you need a nice ship, which costs thousands of Zen.

For ground, you need a weapon, an armor, and a shield. The better ones are from the reputation system or the fleet (some are crafted), and cost less than their space counterparts. You might want an extra weapon for a set bonus, maybe a third depending on what missions you're doing, and an EV suit. You can also get a kit and some modules, but some of those are free mission rewards that are viable end-game options, and the not-free ones are cheaper than any individual piece of space gear anyway. You'll want to upgrade the weapon, armor, and shield to Mk XIV, but going gold is really beyond what's needed for any of these missions. And your kit and modules can't be upgraded.

Oh, and you don't have to buy a ship, you don't need starship traits, you have more innate ground traits than innate space traits, and lockbox ground traits cost a fraction of what space traits cost on the exchange.

--Autofire and other options--

Autofire is much better than clicking to fire each time. The computer will fire precisely when the weapon is ready, it will find a new target faster than you can, and you can focus on things other than firing.

1. Open the options menu (click the gear to the right of your mini-map, and it's the second choice on the menu) while on a ground map.

2. Go to the "Controls" tab.

3. Scroll down to the bottom. There's a drop-menu for "Auto attack." Choose "Toggle, non-combat cancels."

4. Click OK.

5. Right-click your weapon's primary attack in your power tray. It will have a green outline around it, showing that autofire is enabled.

While in the Options menu, you can also change whether you want to use a First-Person Shooter mode for ground combat instead of the default RPG mode. It depends on your machine and your personal preference.

Under the "Basic" tab, you can turn on auto-loot, which also makes the game go faster.

--Keybinds--

Just like with space combat, setting up your keyboard and your power tray properly can turn these missions into a cakewalk.

Below are my ground keybinds (slightly different from what I use in space). Feel free to use them if you don't have ground keybinds; if you do, then they're just an idea.

Space bar uses the left-most power on Row 10 of your power tray, "," is Row 9, H is Row 8, and G is Row 7 of the power tray. In Row 10, I put short-cooldown buffs and debuffs (Rally Cry, Equipment Diagnostics, Tricorder Scan, etc.). In Row 9 I put my Frosted Boots (because I'm impatient... you can use it for something more useful). Row 8 is for health heals and Row 7 is for shield heals.

I moved jump to "/", right next to shift, and holster to ".". The right side of the keyboard is for various UI's - don't feel obligated to use that part if you're doing something different in space.

I then put my most commonly used abilities in Row 1, less commonly used abilities in Row 2, and in Row 3 I put a few abilities that I have in Rows 7-10 so that I can watch their cooldowns.

To set up a keybind, copy the text in between the asterisks (without the asterisks!) into a .txt file and save it as "groundkeys.txt". Copy it into the main folder for STO that includes the GameClient.exe file (for me, this is C:\Program Files (x86)\Star Trek Online_en\Star Trek Online\Live). In game (while on a ground map), write "/bind_load_file groundkeys.txt" in the chat field, and you're done!

These keybinds are set up for a US QWERTY keyboard. You might have to adjust them if you have a different keyboard.

*************

space "TrayExecByTray 9 0$$+TrayExecByTray 9 1$$+TrayExecByTray 9 2$$+TrayExecByTray 9 3$$+TrayExecByTray 9 4$$+TrayExecByTray 9 5$$+TrayExecByTray 9 6$$+TrayExecByTray 9 7$$+TrayExecByTray 9 8$$+TrayExecByTray 9 9$$+TrayExecByTray 9 9$$+TrayExecByTray 9 8$$+TrayExecByTray 9 7$$+TrayExecByTray 9 6$$+TrayExecByTray 9 5$$+TrayExecByTray 9 4$$+TrayExecByTray 9 3$$+TrayExecByTray 9 2$$+TrayExecByTray 9 1$$+TrayExecByTray 9 0$$+"

, "TrayExecByTray 8 0$$+TrayExecByTray 8 1$$+TrayExecByTray 8 2$$+TrayExecByTray 8 3$$+TrayExecByTray 8 4$$+TrayExecByTray 8 5$$+TrayExecByTray 8 6$$+TrayExecByTray 8 7$$+TrayExecByTray 8 8$$+TrayExecByTray 8 9$$+TrayExecByTray 8 9$$+TrayExecByTray 8 8$$+TrayExecByTray 8 7$$+TrayExecByTray 8 6$$+TrayExecByTray 8 5$$+TrayExecByTray 8 4$$+TrayExecByTray 8 3$$+TrayExecByTray 8 2$$+TrayExecByTray 8 1$$+TrayExecByTray 8 0"

h "TrayExecByTray 7 0$$+TrayExecByTray 7 1$$+TrayExecByTray 7 2$$+TrayExecByTray 7 3$$+TrayExecByTray 7 4$$+TrayExecByTray 7 5$$+TrayExecByTray 7 6$$+TrayExecByTray 7 7$$+TrayExecByTray 7 8$$+TrayExecByTray 7 9$$+TrayExecByTray 7 9$$+TrayExecByTray 7 8$$+TrayExecByTray 7 7$$+TrayExecByTray 7 6$$+TrayExecByTray 7 5$$+TrayExecByTray 7 4$$+TrayExecByTray 7 3$$+TrayExecByTray 7 2$$+TrayExecByTray 7 1$$+TrayExecByTray 7 0"

g "$$+TrayExecByTray 6 0$$+TrayExecByTray 6 1$$+TrayExecByTray 6 2$$+TrayExecByTray 6 3$$+TrayExecByTray 6 4$$+TrayExecByTray 6 5$$+TrayExecByTray 6 6$$+TrayExecByTray 6 7$$+TrayExecByTray 6 8$$+TrayExecByTray 6 9$$+TrayExecByTray 6 9$$+TrayExecByTray 6 8$$+TrayExecByTray 6 7$$+TrayExecByTray 6 6$$+TrayExecByTray 6 5$$+TrayExecByTray 6 4$$+TrayExecByTray 6 3$$+TrayExecByTray 6 2$$+TrayExecByTray 6 1$$+TrayExecByTray 6 0$$"

. "holstertoggle"
/ "+up"
home "killme"
delete "logout"

shift+0 "combatlog 0"
shift+1 "combatlog 1"
shift+2 "walk 1"
shift+3 "walk 0"

o "options"
p "dutyofficer"
[ "costume"
j "journal"
k "PvEQueues"
l "fleetwindow"
n "lootrollneed"
shift+n "lootrollgreed"

****************

--Parsing--

(If your first thought is "DPS parsing? Ugh. I don't want to do that," then don't read this! DPS parsing is *not* necessary to do ground combat. But some nerds with too much time on their hands might be interested.)

As you hit enemies, little numbers float above their heads that tell you how much damage you're doing. If you're Data, you can use a paper, pen, and a stopwatch to write down those numbers and calculate your DPS. If you're like the rest of us, you'll need a parser.

A parser is a third-party program that uses the combat log that STO produces to calculate your DPS. You simply download and install the program, direct it to the right file, and then toggle the combat log in-game, and the program will produce various statistics for you.

You do not have to parse. Really. You can just look up guides online (like this one!) and take people's advice and you'll probably do fine. If you feel like you're doing enough damage, then you probably are.

There are two main reasons to parse:

1. To figure out what gear is worth using. Cryptic puts out a lot of new gear all the time, but most of it is junk. Some of it is actually worth buying, and a parser is the best way to tell. Players parse their DPS with various builds and then see if their DPS goes up or down when they use the latest shiny.

2. To get into the DPS channels. For ground, there are 2 channels: DPS-G-200 and DPS-G-400. If you parse over 200 or 400 in NTTE, then you can ask for an invitation to those channels. Mostly those channels are for forming groups to do elite ground tours, but people also use them for other ground PVE queues and to discuss ground gear and tactics.

--How to parse--

There are several parsers out there. The one I use is STO Combat Meter (SCM). It has the prettiest interface and is the parser used by the space DPS channels. There is a technical guide as well.

Download the parser and use the setup.exe file. When it's open, give it the location of the combatlog.txt file (C:\Program Files (x86)\Star Trek Online_en\Star Trek Online\Live\logs\GameClient on my machine). When you're starting a round of NTTE, write "/combatlog 1" in chat to start parsing (or just press shift+1 if you're using the keybinds above). At the end, write "/combatlog 0" to stop the program (or shift+0 with the keybinds). Then you'll get pretty charts!

And, of course, you can parse any combat you want. NTTE is just the one people use to compare. If someone says their DPS is 500 but you measure them in UIE and they have a DPS of 214, then they might not be lying.

--What is a good DPS?--

It really depends on your goals. If you just want to have fun, then forget about the whole thing and don't install the program. You don't need it!

If you want to know if you're ready for NTTE, DRSE, BHE, UIE, and BOTSE, then anything over 300 DPS is good enough. For NSDTE, everyone on the team should have at least 500 DPS. For HGE, each team member should get at least 600 DPS, plus they need to know the mission well.

If your goal is to set a DPS record, then more is better.