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For anyone who hasn’t yet purchased the Arbiter or Presidio (or KDF/Rom equivalents) for their ridiculous ship traits, now is the time.
The pen is okay, but not nearly as good as locators and plasma generating consoles. You’re still going to use eng slots for universal console dumping grounds.
You can only equip one inspiration crewman, so it’s kinda meh, especially since you’re likely cycling maybe 1-2 boff powers since they’re station rank specific. It works out to being about +1 to all skills… it’s underwhelming.
I’m most interested in the enhanced traits. What level does the station have to be to unlock them?
Specializations
Specializations give you tons of little bonuses and a trait if you fill the tree. The spec trees you want to fill for the bonuses are Temporal and Strategist. The trait from Pilot is nice if you aren’t in the market for buying traits.Commando is good for ground only.
Duty Officers
There aren’t any duty officers that are must haves anymore, but the app doff from the Delta alliance pack is great, albeit super expensive BC you need to buy a $100+ pack to get it (it comes with other stuff too, but it’s all meh at this point)Bridge Officers
Tac best in slot are From tac officers from the embassy with superior romulan operative.Engineers, krenim from the research lab (very very expensive. If you can’t afford, use efficient saurians
Science, the hierarchy science officer has pirate and efficient. You can get him from a mission in the Delta story arc. Otherwise, efficient saurians.
Reputation
Most of the reputation space traits that are worthwhile are awarded at tier 2. So if you’re low on time, concentrate on getting the Romulan (precision) , Dyson (advanced targeting systems), and Delta Alliance(enhanced armor penetration) reputations to Tier 2, Nukara (aux power configuration off and def) and Terran(the Terran beam) to Tier 4, and Iconian to Tier 5 (Ico set).Ideally, you want everything at tier 5, but you’ll get 95% of what you really want with the method above.
space traits
Reddit has a good ranking of space traits here: https://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/wiki/build_anatomy/traits/space#wiki_personal_space_traits. None of them are absolute requirements, but if you have the EC after re-gearing, Inspirational Leader is pretty fantastic.I would quickly use the R&D system to get 2 of those traits (since they don’t cost money, just time) – Beam barrage from the beam school, and Particle Manipulator from the Science school.
Ship Traits
As previously discussed, there are 2 almost game changing traits, All Hands on Deck, and Emergency Weapons Cycle. After that, other traits are fair game. I like Supremacy (from the Astika) as the 3rd, and the 4th and 5th (once unlocked) are to taste. I’m currently using Superior Pedal to the Metal and Improved Feedback Pulse, which you currently can’t get. Subwarp Sheath from the Icarus Pilot ship isn’t bad, neither is the trait from the Hestia. Not worth the actual money though, so I wouldn’t bother unless you have so much Zen you don’t know what to do with it.Deflector/engine/core/shield
The best set, without fail, is the Iconian set, so get grinding Ico rep.Consoles
For Tactical consoles Locators from the spire are best in slot. +AP or +Beam if you follow my advice on the Terran beam.
For Science, plasma infused consoles from the Embassy are not only best in slot, but best overall. At Mk XIV epic, they provide more DPS than tac consoles. Load up.
For Engineering, Leech and anything with +EPS, then DPS universals to fill it out is the general advice (e.g. assimilated Module, Tachyokinetic, Bio-infused etc.) Engineering is essentially the universal console dumping ground.
Weapons: Cannons vs. Beams
I realize that when you played a few years ago, cannons were all the rage. However since then due to a variety of reasons, most of which involve Science embassy consoles (I’ll explain later), and something called overcap (just trust me on this), and the superiority of BFAW, beam arrays are considered to be better than cannons.
Cannons can overtake beams in situations where there are 3+ enemies on screen in the hands of a super skilled pilot and the trait from the Valiant (T6 Defiant), but it’s pretty marginal. So going forward, I’m going to assume that you’re going the beam route (FYI, torpedoes are still sub optimal, but I realize some people just love them).
Weapons: what should I get?
The best beams are generally antiproton beams with the [pen] modifier (which can only appear once). For tac officers, the best modifiers, in order are: [pen] >>> [dmg]>[crtd] >> [crth] >> [acc] >>> pretty much everything else
Your ideal antiproton beam is [Ac/Dm][dmg]x3 [pen]. That said, the difference between dmg and crtd is marginal (like 0.2% damage), and the dropoff to crth is a bit bigger (like 1% damage), really, anything with [pen] with no [acc] will be fine.
That said, Mk level is more important than mods, which means if you’re on a budget, just get some [pen] beams to mk xiv, and worry about other stuff like rarity (there is epic gear now) later.
The exception to the general rule is the Terran Reputation Disruptor Beam Array. It is the best weapon in the game, aniec. I can get 10k out of this beam on its own with BFAW (which means I could theoretically pull my DPS weight in most advanced queues in a T1 connie. Think about that).
This weapon on its own has made rainbow boats viable, and has even made me “rainbow” my ship with 7 antiproton beams and the 1 Terran disruptor array.
It’s been awhile since you played, so I’m just going with some basics over multiple posts (since I work for a living):
Ships
There are 2 reasons you get a ship now: weapon/skill platform and traits.In terms of platform, while its the captain that makes the ship, some ships have higher ceilings. In that regard, the highest ceiling ship the feds have access to that’s not the 23rd century constitution (1.3 billion EC), is the Cronos temporal dreadnought. It’s big and slow, but has 8 weapons and temporal ability slots. It’s a beast.
If you want to stay with your HEC, or get the T6 version (alita), that’s cool too, but it maxes out lower than the Cronos (but with enough gear, we can get your T5 ship into the ~50 to 70k DPS range which is more than enough for endgame content).
In terms of traits, in the C-store, you’ll want these 2 ships (if you’re in a position to buy them) because they have a very high impact on performance, and their abilities cannot be replaced with lesser alternatives. They essentially are best in slot ainec.
– the Presidio for All Hands on Deck (it’s amazing as it reduces -captain ability- cooldowns) and
– the Arbiter Battlecruiser for Emergency Weapons Cycle which essentially bumps your damage by 20%+ The arbiter is especially good value because as a platform, it’s probably in the Fed’s top 3, but all hands on deck is probably more important.You may also consider the Phantom Intel Escort for reciprocity which reduces tactical and intel cooldowns, but since you’re a tac officer with tac initiative, you don’t need it.
From the Lobi store or exchange, none are “must buys” (like the 2 above), but the Astika’s trait, Supremacy is fantastic.
For STO in particular, since the game is CPU heavy as opposed to GPU heavy, you want a strong CPU, and a mid-range value GPU will do just fine. High end GPUs are ridiculously expensive, and very quickly lose the justification for their premium price, especially on the high end.
So $400 option from the site you’re looking at will probably play STO at maximum, although I’d consider paying the $100 premium to get an Intel i5 (6500?) for the extra oomph, and just ease of spec comparison going forward (most people understand the performance level of an Intel chip vs an AMD), and maybe go from the GTX 950 to 960 (since the price difference really isn’t that big), but now you’re into the $500-$550 range.
Keep in mind this isn’t going to be playing bleeding edge stuff at 4k, but it’ll play most new stuff at a respectable frame rate at mid settings @ 1920×1080.
