Help with a Returner

[Intrepid]

So as a followup now that I’m a couple weeks acquainted with the current STO.

How should my Bridge Officer layouts look? Are there any specific ones should be getting? For example I have the heirarchy intelligence specialist… how exactly is that better than any other regular science BOFF? I also read up on their traits, are they active as long as they are listed underneath my ship name or do I have to select their active traits somewhere?

Last one is what exactly is a pilot, command, temporal and intelligence specialist? I notice that their abilities are different, do they really matter over the regular ones?

[palcioz]

Bridge officer layouts have mostly changed by adding more options.  All of the basics that worked before specializations still do very well — the “Dragon” and “Drake” builds are perfectly good builds.  More “advanced” builds typically start with something like these as a base and start layering on power creep.  Often, the idea is to use enough +rchg or another +something (from doffs, traits, boffs, etc) to only “need” one copy of a power — this frees up bridge officer power slots for more powers.

The bridge officer specializations exist to (1) give players more options to slot into those now freed slots and (2) to let Cryptic provide more variety in end game ships, thereby increasing the amount players will spend.  (This is the same reason why lockbox training manuals are a thing.)  Typically, there will be a small number of powers in each specialization that are generally useful and a large number that are either junk or only good for specialized builds.  To use a specialization, you need to train or obtain a boff with that spec (eg, the Heirarchy Intel specialist), then you need to train that boff in the individual skills.  Furthermore, you need to have a ship that has a seat with that specialization attached to it — these are “dual” stations like Tac/Intel that would allow the tactical boff in that seat to use either tactical or intel skills in each slot.

Opinions will obviously differ, but I consider most of the boff specialization skills to be pretty gimmicky.  Override subsystem safeties (Intel) is pretty strong, and concentrate firepower (Command) is good for torpedo builds.  Generally, being tied to a particular ship is too restrictive for my tastes, and I tend to fill up boff slots with standard T/E/S skills instead, especially since things like Kemocite and Subspace Vortex are much cheaper on the exchange now.

Bridge officer traits are active as long as the bridge officer is slotted in one of your ship stations.  There isn’t a lot of variety in space traits — most people stick with the “Superior Romulan Operative” trait (for +Crit, available on specific tac boffs from the embassy) and “Pirate” (for +Dmg, available on that Heirarchy specialist as well as certain KDF boffs).  Kremin boffs (+rchg, from the Research Lab) are also useful for certain builds.  All of the other space boff traits are basically ignorable.

I think that’s the main high level advice that applies in general — there are of course particular things you can do if you’re interested in a specialized build, and especially if you’re willing to buy a particular ship to support that.  Do you have anything in particular in mind that you’d like to try or fly?

[Marcase]

Pretty much what Palcioz said.
Bridge officer traits are always active, which is why certain ones are so sought after. The Hierarchy one (“Mister Potato Head”) is coveted for his (Space) Pirate trait, good to have as your “go to” science bridge officer.

Bridge Officer layout is all depending on the ship you fly (more tactical Boffs for escorts, more science ones for science ships etc), and you *can* specialize, but a good base crew will serve you just fine; certain Boff skills are always usefull.

Typical Boff skills you can use on any ship (your first choice);

Tactical; Tac Team 1, Beam Fire at Will 2, Beam Overload, Attack Pattern Beta/Omega – replace beams for cannons if preferred.
Engineer: Engineer Tm, Emergency Power to Weapons/Shields (2 copies)
Science: Hazard Emitters, Science Team

After these you can fill any remaining slots with exotics like (call it your specialist choice);

Tactical: Kemocite Laced Weaponry 1 (exchange), Torpedo Spread/High Yield
Engineer: Directed Energy Modulation, Reverse Shield Polarity
Science: Subspace Vortex 1 (exchange), Feedback Pulse, Tractor Beam Repulsors, Gravity Well, Tykens Rift

Intel (Potato Head) and Temporal are good, the others too specialized to bother with now.

Often overlooked, it’s also usefull to have a dedicated ground away-team, the Jem’Hadar, Borg and Voth unique Boffs (but also Vulcans, Andorians and Klingons obviously) have good innate ground traits, giving you some extra *bang* for Boffs, so to speak.

The new pilot/command/temporal/intel specs are extra careers; you can train your Boffs to have one (or all!) these extra skills as some ships accept double careers seats. Mister Potato Head for example can have a combination of regular Sci skills *and* intel ones (like Intel Team and OSS) if the ship has a Sci/Intel combo seat (Phantom, Scryer, Eclipse for example).

Captain traits will boost your ship even more, especially in the current meta. You can collect these all over the game (episodes, exchange, T6 ships). These need to be slotted to be active (you can mix and match depending on ship/preference or even between missions).

Re; ships, if unsure, Fatman made a neat flowchart 🙂 (ignore the Annorax)

"Boldly bashing Borg to bits since 2012..."

[Author]

Posts