STO does not provide very good training for people as they level up their toons. You can go from level 1 to 50 and equip your ship with whatever you want and face no real challenge. That all changes when you run your first Elite STF. The Elite STFs are the very first time that your ship and skills will really be challenged in STO. PvP is a whole other ballgame.
This guide is to help you maximize your ship build for both PvE and PvP combat. My goal with this guide is to get you thinking about optimizing your ship build, for you. It is not intended to provide you with a cookie cutter, one size fits all, I WIN button. It is a starting point to help you get familiar with the concepts of advanced shipbuilding.
This is a work in progress, and is liable to change over time.
When you sit down to build a ship, you need to take into consideration the weapons that you want to use, the skills that you want to use, the duty officers that you want to slot, and your character’s skill tree. Those things will form the base of your ship’s build.
Choose a base damage type for your energy weapons. Do not go for a, “Rainbow Warrior,” build, with all of the colors of the rainbow.
You can mix and match hybrid weapons, so long as the base damage type is consistent. For instance, Disruptors and Polarized Disruptors have the same base damage.
Energy weapons deal damage based on your ships Weapon Power Level, up to 125 Power.
125 Power = 250% damage
100 Power = 200% damage
50 Power = 100% damage
25 Power = 50% damage
Be aware of weapon power usage. Dual Heavy Cannons use 12 energy every 1.5 seconds. Beam Arrays use 10 every 1.25 seconds. Turrets use 8 energy every .75 seconds. If you load up a ship with energy weapons, you will likely exceed the ship’s ability to regenerate weapon energy, which will lead to reduced DPS.
Carriers, Cruisers, and Science ships should be running Beam Arrays in most cases. These ships have crappy turn rates, and Beam Arrays have a wide firing arc. Try to keep the enemy to your side.
Escorts and Destroyers should be running Dual Heavy Cannons in Front, and Turrets in the rear. These ships are very maneuverable. It's not hard to keep the pointy end pointed at the enemy.
Generally, you want to run one torpedo in the front of most ships. I recommend the Omega Torpedo from Tier 4 Omega/Maco Reputation.
Torpedos do not use power, nor are they affected by the weapon power level.
Torpedos do Kinetic damage, which do only 25% damage against shields. Therefore, you want to hold off on firing your torps until the enemy's shields are down.
There are, “torpedo boat,” builds out there, but they are not typical, and will not be covered in this guide.
Bridge Officer Abilities determine what you will be able to do during combat. These determine how you play your character/ship. I’m not going to re-hash every ability in the game here. Click on the “Bridge Officer Abilities” link to review them all. I will touch on a few, VERY IMPORTANT ones.
Tactical Team: This is a Tactical Ability that automagically redirects your shield energy to the shield facing that’s taking damage. It also regenerates shields, clears boarding parties, and clears tactical debuffs. In most cases, you should have a pair of these skills available to you so that you can keep them running as often as possible. (or have something to reduce its cooldown) One other thing, Tac Team 1 is typically all that you need. You’re better off slotting damage dealing skills in your higher ranked tactical slots.
Beam Array: Fire at Will, Cannon: Scatter Volley, and Torpedo: Spread: These abilities are Tactical Abilities that cause your Beams, Cannons, and Torpedos to spread out and hit multiple targets for a short time. The firing arc is dependent on the weapons that you’re using.
Hazard Emitters: This is a Science Ability that heals your hull, strips hazard debuffs (like the borg shield eater), and gives you some damage resistance. This is another ability that you would do well to have running, or available at all times.
Transfer Shield Strength: This is a Science Ability that Regens shields, and gives a damage resistance buff.
Reverse Shield Polarity: This is an Engineering Ability that converts incoming energy damage into shield regeneration. This is what is commonly referred to as a panic button. When you’re getting hammered, pop this, and you will go from taking damage to replacing your shields. It has a short duration and a long cooldown.
Emergency Power to Shields: This is an Engineering Ability that increases Shield Power levels, Repairs shields, and gives damage resistance.
Here are some other things to keep in mind when mixing/matching Bridge Officer Abilities.
Many abilities share cooldowns with other abilities. For instance the following groups have shared cooldowns: (this is not a comprehensive list)
Emergency Power to
Tactical Team, Engineering Team, and Science Team
Auxiliary to
Attack Pattern Beta, Delta, and Omega
Gravity Well and Tyken’s Rift
You can double up on abilities. For instance, many people run two Tactical Teams in order to run one every 15 seconds. There are alternatives to this as well.
Many Duty Officers affect Bridge Officer Abilities. More on this later.
Some abilities work well together, others work very poorly together. For instance:
Gravity Well + Cannon: Spread or Torpedo:Spread = BOOM!!!
Auxiliary to drains your Aux Power to nothing, which makes skills that use Aux power ineffective.
Shields > Hull. If the enemy has gotten to your hull, you’re in big trouble. As such, shield recharge/regen/heal should take precedence over hull heal. That said, only a fool goes into battle without a hull heal.
There are a ton of Duty Officers in the game which have various effects on Bridge Officer Abilities and Player Abilities. Most of the builds covered in this guide DEPEND on having special duty officers. These can make or break your build. Here are some of the most important ones:
Technician: Recharge time on bridge officer abilities reduced when using Auxiliary to Battery.
Conn Officer: Recharge time reduced for Tactical Team and Buff
Conn Officer: Recharge time reduced for Attack Patterns Beta, Delta, and Omega
Shield Distribution Officer: Chance to partially regenerate shields when take damage after using Brace for Impact.
Here are some things to keep in mind when mixing/matching Duty Officers
You get Five (5) space duty officer slots. You can increase this to 6 at a level 3 spire.
Some duty officers can be stacked. Others can not.
Be sure to double check the duty officer description, as many of the different types have different skills. For instance, in the above list, there are two different Conn Officers.
When you set up a ship, this should be the last thing that you do. Set up your skills to take advantage of your ship and your bridge officer skills. Respeccing your character is expensive, so make sure you have everything else worked out before you redo your skills.
Here’s some tips for working with your skill tree:
Don’t have any points in skills that you’re not using. If you’re not using Tyken’s Rift or Gravity Well, then you have no business having any points in particle generators.
Driver coil is pointless for combat. At level 50, Quantum Slipstream and transwarp will get you where you need to go.
Max out Starship Maneuvers and Starship Targeting Systems. These directly affect Defence and Accuracy, which are two of the most important stats in the game.
Warp Core Potential Should never be higher than 6 ranks. 6 ranks gets you +4.2 per system. 9 ranks gets you 4.95 per system. That’s 6000 points spent on improving your energy levels by 1. Spend those points elsewhere.
If you intend on doing damage, max out Starship Weapon Training and Starship Energy Weapons.
You should put some points in impulse thrusters. Speed = defense. I suggest a min of 3 for PvE, 6 for PvP.
If you’re not doing PvP, you can mostly ignore Starship Power Insulators.
Starship Energy Weapons and Projectile Weapon Specialization are not that important. Maxing them out increases crit% by 2% and crit damage by 25%. That’s 27,000 points for 2% more DPS. You get the same effect from equipping a Romulan Bridge Officer with Superior Operative. Spend those points elsewhere. Put your points here after you have everything else to your liking.
Gear
This is going to be a small section. Gear should enhance all of the above. There’s way too much gear in the game to go over it in any sensible fashion. That said, there are a few words of advice that I have for you:
Stick with one damage type for your tactical consoles. And don’t run both projectile weapon consoles and energy weapon consoles.
Avoid loading up on gimmick consoles. In most cases, you will get a much greater benefit from 20% more damage, 20% more shields, or 20% more damage resistance than you would from that grappling hook thingy, or that special torpedo that gives you 2000 damage once every 5 minutes. That said, I encourage you to experiment with different things from time to time. I wouldn’t be posting this info if not for days of experimentation.
Item sets often have very nice set bonuses. That said, be sure to consider what you may be losing if you equip a specific set.
Often, you can run two or three sets at the same time. Using the right sets, you can stack some very spiffy effects.
Fleet Gear is Shiny. VERY SHINY. Aside from set items, some rep items, and an occasional special console, Fleet Gear is pretty much the best stuff that you’re going to get.
-- RESILIENT SHIELDS -- 5% bleedthrough = 50% hull damage when shields are up.
Popular Ship Builds
A2B Technician Build
Description
The A2B Technician build is a build which allows you to maintain very high weapon, shield, and engine power levels, as well as giving you a wide assortment of skills to use at the global cooldown. This build is the standard for end-game STF and PvP cruisers.
Pros
Provides sustained survivability.
Provides sustained DPS.
Allows for a nice amount of versatility.
Simultaneously allows the use of more skills than any other build in the game.
Cons
Maintains very low Aux power, making skills that use Aux power mostly useless. This can be countered through the use of batteries and abilities that increase Aux power.
Can not be used on most escorts and science vessels.
Requirements
Three technician duty officers with, “reduced cooldown on bridge officer abilities,” slotted. (easy to get via the B’Tran Cluster Colonial DOFF missions)
Two Lieutenant or better Engineering Bridge Officers with the Auxiliary to Battery 1 ability.
How to Use this Build
This build is reliant on the three Technicians and the Auxiliary to Battery 1 skill. Every time you hit that skill, all of your other skills currently on cooldown will have their timer greatly reduced. If you are chaining both of the Aux to Bat skills, you can get most of your skill cooldowns down to the global cooldown. This means that instead of running two Tac Teams, you can get away with slotting only one, allowing you to slot something else in the place of the 2nd tac team, and that skill will also be available more frequently than normal.
Additional Suggestions
Though this build can be run with many different configurations, there are some tried and true ways to make this build a beast. If you have two Lieutenant Commander Engineers, you can set your ship up to be incredibly resilient.
Have Tac Team 1 on a Tactical Officer. You only need one. You don’t need any tac team doffs. You can have tac team up and running almost all of the time.
Run Emergency Power to Auxiliary 1 on one of your engineers, and Emergency Power to Shields 1 on the other. This will allow you to have a, “mini dragon build,” running on your technician build.
If you really wanted to, you can run Emergency Power to Shields 3, giving you a full dragon build, but you would end up wasting an ensign skill slot.
Have a science officer with Hazard Emitters and Transfer Shield Strength. That will give you some more shield healing, and some hull healing/hazard clearing.
Have one Lieutenant Commander Engineer with Reverse Shield Polarity 2. It’s always nice to have that panic button.
Dragon Build
Description
The Dragon build is a standard tanking build. It is designed to keep you up and running while taking an incredible amount of damage. This build focuses on maintaining maxed out shield power, and maxed out power to one of the other 3 systems. (typically weapons)
Pros
Great tanking ability.
Ability to deal a significant amount of damage, or use exotic skills, but not both.
Available to almost every end game cruiser.
No required DOffs gives you some customization potential there.
Cons
Escorts and science ships can run a watered down version of this, but not the full monty.
Two science ships can run this build as listed. (Voth Palisade and Tholian Orb Weaver)
Requirements
Two Lieutenant Commander or better Engineering Bridge Officers each with Emergency Power to Weapons, Engines, or Aux 1 and Emergency Power to Shields 3.
One Lieutenant Science Officer with Hazard Emitters 1, and Transfer Shield Strength 2.
How to Use this Build
This build is all about keeping your Shield and Weapon power maxed out. To do this, you will be chaining the four Emergency Power to Subsystem abilities. Fire them off in this order:
Emergency Power to Shields 3
Emergency Power to Weapons 1 (or Aux if you’re doing a science build)
Emergency Power to Shields 3
Emergency Power to Weapons 1
Doing this, you will be able to keep your shields and weapons (or aux) maxed out at 125.
You want to use Transfer Shield Strength to give your shields a boost now and then, as well as some damage resistance. Hazard Emitters will clear hazards and give you a hull heal.
Additional Suggestions
You can play around with a watered down version on a science ship or escort by using Emergency Power to Shields 2, but you need two Lieutenant Engineering slots.
Warp Core Engineer DOff with Chance of temporarily improving your ship power on use of any Emergency Power Ability is highly recommended.
Aux to Structural 3 though not a requirement, is very highly recommended. It grants a 36 point damage reduction, as well as a hull heal, and can be used every 15 seconds.
Escort/Raider/Destroyer Build
Description
Escort ships are glass cannons. Generally, escorts have Dual Heavy Cannons and a torpedo in the front, and turrets in the back. They have crappy shields, crappy hull, and very little versatility. As such, they typically follow this build...
Pros/Cons
It’s an escort. See the description.
Requirements
Two Tactical Team Abilities. (or One Tac Team 1 with two of the conn doffs that reduce Tac Team cooldown by 8 sec)
Science Officer with Hazard Emitters and Transfer Shield Strength
Engineering Officer with best Reverse Shield Polarity that he can slot.
Engineering Officer with Emergency Power to Shields
How to Use this Build
Fly around like a madman, using your skills as often as you need to. There’s really nothing complicated here. Keep your Tac team up, stick them with the pointy end. Be ready to use Evasive Maneuvers or Attack Pattern Omega if you get tractor beamed.
Additional Suggestions
Run a pair of the Conn Doffs that reduce Tac Team cooldown.
Run three of the Conn Doffs that reduce Attack Pattern cooldown.
Batteries can be quite helpful with an escort. Consider some of those battery improving and cooldown reducing DOffs. (beware, they’re expensive)
Credits
HunterAP - Compiled the info in this document
Ganos - Gave HunterAP tons of feedback/help
Davis - Gave HunterAP tons of feedback/help
Change Log
1/15/2014
Added Table of Contents
Added Change Log
Fixed Escort Build Attack Pattern Conn officer reference to have 3 officers instead of 2, per Davis.
Added caveat to the A2B Con about Aux Power, per Ganos' suggestion.
Added Aux to Structural 3 to the Dragon Build suggestions per Ganos.
1/15/2014
Initial Release
Last edited by HunterAP on 01/15/14 22:20; edited 5 times in total
Agree with Davis, saw a few things that could be tweaked. Don't forget the guide I made exclusive for Escorts. The section you have seems, well light on them. Escorts don't have "crappy shields" and aren't glass cannons as long as you set them up right and learn how to fly them. I got a few in stable that could tank better then most people's cruisers, just saying.
I haven't had a lot of interaction with you Huckabee, but Ganos has good things to say about you, so you must know your stuff. Understand that I'm not dissing on escorts, or intentionally leaving them out. I love flying escorts. I typically fly the D'Kora, the Chimera, and the Plesh Brek. (I have the Chimera and the Plesh Brek on almost all of my toons.)
This guide isn't meant to get into the nitty gritty of setting up specific ship types. Matter of fact, I don't really say which builds are meant for which ships. I want people to be open minded and experimental with their ship building. This guide is meant to help them get up to speed on end-game ship building, in general. The A2B and Dragon builds are the two most popular base builds in the game at the moment, and rightfully so, they are quite powerful.
Regarding my comments on escorts, and the escort build section... Escorts are fairly limited in the builds that they can run as most escorts have very few slots available for Engineering and Science skills. The, "advanced builds," that are popular in STO simply don't work well on most escorts. As such, escort builds are typically very simple, and I believe I covered the major points of setting them up. (if you feel that I missed something important, please let me know so that I can correct it.) I am not saying that, "All escort builds are simple." I run a pretty advanced build on one of my Plesh Brek ships, and I even managed to defeat Ganos in his Plesh Brek. But this guide isn't about specific ship focus, it's about teaching the basics.
If you believe I need to add something, please let me know. I'm completely open to suggestions.
I haven't had a lot of interaction with you Huckabee, but Ganos has good things to say about you, so you must know your stuff. Understand that I'm not dissing on escorts, or intentionally leaving them out. I love flying escorts. I typically fly the D'Kora, the Chimera, and the Plesh Brek. (I have the Chimera and the Plesh Brek on almost all of my toons.)
This guide isn't meant to get into the nitty gritty of setting up specific ship types. Matter of fact, I don't really say which builds are meant for which ships. I want people to be open minded and experimental with their ship building. This guide is meant to help them get up to speed on end-game ship building, in general. The A2B and Dragon builds are the two most popular base builds in the game at the moment, and rightfully so, they are quite powerful.
Regarding my comments on escorts, and the escort build section... Escorts are fairly limited in the builds that they can run as most escorts have very few slots available for Engineering and Science skills. The, "advanced builds," that are popular in STO simply don't work well on most escorts. As such, escort builds are typically very simple, and I believe I covered the major points of setting them up. (if you feel that I missed something important, please let me know so that I can correct it.) I am not saying that, "All escort builds are simple." I run a pretty advanced build on one of my Plesh Brek ships, and I even managed to defeat Ganos in his Plesh Brek. But this guide isn't about specific ship focus, it's about teaching the basics.
If you believe I need to add something, please let me know. I'm completely open to suggestions.
haha I didn't think you were dissing on them, just seemed like you could use info on them. I will however argue there is an advanced side to escorts I just don't want people to shy away from them because they are harder to keep alive. I linked my guide so you could add it to your project Better to have things of same nature in one place then multiple. Feel free to edit anything you would want to use from mine.
Yea, my son takes most of my time in evenings now. When I do play I don't get to get in vent much, so my exchange of info comes more off the forums now. Plus I retired from Fleet PvP events, so think of me as the old guy who rocks in the chair all day looking for someone to walk by to spout random wisdom to.
Thank you so much for putting this together. There is much to know when considering character development and ship build, and this guide helps to shed light into some previously dark corners. I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate all of the effort that you have put into this project. It has helped me tremendously.
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