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Star Trek Online Shipbuilding Guide 

 by HunterAP

 

Forward

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.

 

Table of Contents

 

  1. The Basics
    1. Weapons
    2. Bridge Officer Abilities
    3. Duty Officers
    4. Character Skill Tree
    5. Gear
  2. Popular Ship Builds
  3. Credits
  4. Change Log

 

The Basics

 

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.

Weapons

  • 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

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.

  • Beam Array: Overload, Cannon: Rapid Fire, and Torpedo: High Yield: These abilities are Tactical Abilities that Increase the single target damage of their respective weapons for a short time.

  • 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.

Duty Officers

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:

 

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.

  • For, “easy,” purple duty officers, you can do the colonial duty officer missions.

  • There are many other ways to obtain Duty Officers, but that’s for another guide.

Character Skill Tree

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 - One of the most versatile builds in STO, allowing the use of many skills at one time.

Dragon Build - One of the toughest builds in STO, if not the toughest.  

Escort Build - A base escort build.  There's really nothing special about this build, it's intended as nothing more than a starting point for escort ships.

 

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