I can help your ship build

[Battle Lion]

Hey Ev, 

have you looked into Romulan plasma beams from the reputation system?

theyre more available than fleet weapons and just as good.

they add the disruptor debuff as a modifier so the VRs only have 2 modifiers, but lots of people use them for maximum effect. but they ARENT the plasma-disruptor hybrid mission reward things.

the rom rep console and experimental beam array might be a really good idea for you if you can swing it too,

http://sto.gamepedia.com/Experimental_R ... Beam_Array

and you'll get an extra 7.6% plasma damage just by having those two. also the experimental beam array doesnt use any weapon power when youre shooting other guns at the same time. and it has a 6% crit chance.


not cheap though. each rom plas beam is 25K dilithium, and hte experimental array takes some resources too.

worth it, IMO. im switching to rom plas on my main, more DPS than polarons. 

[Evshell]

Thanks, but I've already pretty much fully outfitted my ship with Fleet Weapons. Just have 1 more to go.

Romulan marks are so hard to get compared to other ones anyway, so it is my least upgraded rep. 24 max for each event and they take just as long as Infected (which gives, I think, 95 Omega if you get the optional). Even CE gives you more... (maybe forty-something if my memory serves?), which I use for Nukara.

And I'm low on Dilithium from contributing, but high on Fleet Credits, so Fleet Weapons are more economical for me anyway.

[Battle Lion]

Thanks, but I've already pretty much fully outfitted my ship with Fleet Weapons. Just have 1 more to go.

Romulan marks are so hard to get compared to other ones anyway, so it is my least upgraded rep. 24 max for each event and they take just as long as Infected (which gives, I think, 95 Omega if you get the optional). Even CE gives you more... (maybe forty-something if my memory serves?), which I use for Nukara.

And I'm low on Dilithium from contributing, but high on Fleet Credits, so Fleet Weapons are more economical for me anyway.

actually, thats PERFECT if you only need one more standard beam array, might as well make it the experimental romulan plasma array. you only need that and the console for the 2 part bonus.

romulan marks are actually easier to get than you might think.
for example, heres how i get more than i need.

mine trap, ground mission usually gives about 50 or so.

daily tau dewa patrol gives 60 - and if you go to the ACAMAR system, each patrol takes about a minute or two, just do ACAMAR 7 times (about 9 minutes of work) and you get those 60 marks.

but by FAR the EASIEST way to get romulan marks is to EPPOH TAG.
get 4 eppoh tags, trade them for 1 eppoh research. get 5 eppoh research and trade it for an eppoh. raise the eppoh and then sell it to the researcher for 400 marks.

suddenly, youll find yourself with too many romulan marks.

(with the exception of mine trap), the eppoh tagging/acamar patrol should only take you about 15 minutes a day. thats about as much as 2 STFs, and the long term potential for marks gain is much higher. 


the other ROMPLAS arrays from the store are not neccessary if you have fleet weapons, but the experimental array/rom rep console combo is certainly a worthy upgrade, as it will boost your plasma damage considerably over just a fleet array.

[Battle Lion]

Important tip: there is no longer a global cooldown between "team" powers.

example: tactical team no longer puts science team and engineering team on 15 second cooldowns. 

this is BIG, as you can now keep tac team up full time, while still keeping E-team in reserve for a good heal.

[Kheren]

OK here is the current ship's built I'm using:


http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?bui ... eadnough_0


To be honest, not much thought has gone into it; I simply put there whatever seems nice, but with an eye definitely on survival; shields, armor, SIF, hull repair and such I prioritized over damage. My reasoning is; if I can move away, repair and come back, distribute enemy fire on multiple facings while pounding at him from all angles, I'll do better than just slug it out. It does work well most of the time.

Although I'm tactical, I almost always fly cruisers and practically never escorts; I don't like slugging (full frontal assault while you get clobbered hoping they will go down before you). On the other hand, I love firing torpedoes just for the feel of it (usually I prefer transphasics because of their shield penetration but none on this current build save the Breen cluster).

Another thing; I never PvP and I don't plan to do it ever.

In PvE, I solo 99% of the time (I only team up with LF players on our events).

I've tried this ship in the Allied sphere zone and so far it performs quite better than the Solanae science destroyer I was previously using with 90% of what is seen here.

I'm starting to work on getting the Scorpion Hangar you recommended but it will not be available to me for some time; the requirements are expensive. But I'll get the needed stuff eventually.

Thanks for your counsel!

[Battle Lion]

OK here is the current ship's built I'm using:


http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?bui ... eadnough_0


To be honest, not much thought has gone into it; I simply put there whatever seems nice, but with an eye definitely on survival; shields, armor, SIF, hull repair and such I prioritized over damage. My reasoning is; if I can move away, repair and come back, distribute enemy fire on multiple facings while pounding at him from all angles, I'll do better than just slug it out. It does work well most of the time.

Although I'm tactical, I almost always fly cruisers and practically never escorts; I don't like slugging (full frontal assault while you get clobbered hoping they will go down before you). On the other hand, I love firing torpedoes just for the feel of it (usually I prefer transphasics because of their shield penetration but none on this current build save the Breen cluster).

Another thing; I never PvP and I don't plan to do it ever.

In PvE, I solo 99% of the time (I only team up with LF players on our events).

I've tried this ship in the Allied sphere zone and so far it performs quite better than the Solanae science destroyer I was previously using with 90% of what is seen here.

I'm starting to work on getting the Scorpion Hangar you recommended but it will not be available to me for some time; the requirements are expensive. But I'll get the needed stuff eventually.

Thanks for your counsel!

I just swapped to the Gal X myself for a change of pace from my ambassador, and i can tell you that the ships are actually more similar than i thought they would be. what works for one will work for the other.

the good news is that i can increase your tanking AND damage output ESPECIALLY because you ONLY PvE.
that will make this too easy.

ok lets start off with your gear set. i like it. solanae is a great set. i have it on my Regent and i have few complaints.
when you can, you should upgrade to an elite fleet shield or the Adapted Maco shield.

for maximum tank-yness, i have the Maco deflector with the adapted maco shield and engines. adapted maco 2 piece also gives +25% to torpedo damage so thats neat.


the solanae warp core though, might be holding you back a bit over an elite fleet core. especially one with [AMP]

energy damage type/weapon type mixing:
i highly recommend beam broadsiding with this ship, as the turn rate is fairly poor. also, you have  tetryons, antiproton and polarons? you should really pick one damage type and stick with it. this also ties into your tactical console layout. rule of thumb is that only energy damage boosting consoles are worth putting in the tactical slots, as in PVE nothing does enough damage really to need tanking consoles. 

tetryon is unfortunately considered to have the worth effect out of all the weapon types. not because its a bad effect, but because all the other ones are just so much better.

for this build, i would say that phaser or plasma would be the best damage types.

here's why. since you dont pvp, you dont need to care about shield resistances of other players.
phaser damage consoles will also boost your spinal lance, which will be HUGE with 3 tac consoles (and 4 in the future) pumping it up.

polaron isnt a bad idea, but it will need points in the flow caps skill to take full advantage of it.

plasma is the second best damage type for the Galaxy X, as the embassy science consoles will boost its damage like the tactical consoles will, plus the added shield penetrating damage of plasma fire burn is nice. also, the experimental plasma beam array from the romulan reputation is incredible. it doesnt drain weapon power and it has a SIX PERCENT CRIT CHANCE.

here's what i recommend for a weapon loadout.

i recommend 6 beam arrays of phaser ;(or plasma), the kinetic cutting beam in the aft slot, and a wide angle quantum or the gravimetric photon up front. 

you said you didnt like slugging it out with cannons, but with that handy saucer separation console AND subspace jump and a fleet RCS/Neutronium, you can can make a cannon build very viable with this ship. if you wanted to go that route::

3 dual heavy cannons and the gravimetric or cluster torp up front, with 3 turrets and the kinetic cutting beam aft.
that would be the most damage i think, but you had better be a VERY good pilot. (after 4 years of flying cruisers, i am not, so i stick with broadsiding.) at that point, POSITIONING your ship correctly will make or break you. beams might be safer but its up to you.


engineering consoles:

love the saucer separation. 

subspace jump is useful, but if youre broadsiding you dont need it nearly as much. if you plan to broadside, replace this console with the Nukara reputation console. it gives more accuracy to beams and helps your crits. also it gives +5 to shield power and increases your power insulator stat, so your shields get drained less by things.

the fleet neutronium... is that +turn? get one thats plus turn. you'll need it after your saucer dies, which it does often because cryptic STILL hasnt given us any management of our saucers, like they have with pets. 

borg console. perfect. keep that too.


Science consoles:

if you have youre heart set on cloaking, move the cloak up to science. you dont need the cloak boosting console really, you'd be better served with the romulan reputation console. it increases power levels to all subsystems, increases crit chance and your power insulator stat. all good things.

if you decide cloaking isnt for you anymore, you can save some skill points in your tree, and free up that console slot for a plasma enfused shield emitter array embassy science console -threat. this will make things less likely to shoot at you, add the plasma effect to all your weapons, give +30 to your shield emitters so your heals count for more, and increase your plasma damage IF you are using plasma weapons.


tactical consoles: 

settle on an energy weapon type, and then get 3 of the consoles that boost that type. anything else and you are severley gimping your damage output for no good reason



hangar bay:

we talked briefly about the scorpions the other day. theyre not that hard to get actually. go to the ship vendor on ESD or DS9 to get the peregrine fighters. DS9 has warp coils for cheaper than your inventory replicator.
romulan marks are easy to get if you eppoh tag, experience should be no issue.

dilithium can be hard to come by, but between STFs and the mining, you should have no issue hitting the 8000 cap everyday. once you hit tier 5 omega, dilthium starts pouring in, so you wont miss it.

the duty officers were kind of hard to get. i used all 4 of my federation characters to farm up 30. starfleet academy has a vulcan, tellarite and andorian that you can talk to that will grant free white duty officers.
also the lady in the booth with LT. Ferra at the academy has missions that also award free white doffs.

between those 4 NPCs and my 4 fed characters, i had 30 white engineering/operations Doffs in no time.

if youre a few short, the exchange has them for about 50,000 EC. thats not too much.



Bridge Officer Powers:

Tactical powers:

Ensign: Tactical team 1 is good. balances your shields, increases damage. best of both worlds.
LT: attack pattern beta 1. when you put this debuff on a target, everything shooting at it will do more damage. you. your fighters. your saucer. your friends. 

ensign: either fire at will 1 or high yield 1 or beam overload 1. all are good options. you'll see more DPS with fire at will, but it can also pull alot more aggro.

Here's where you need to make a choice.


Dragon, Drake, or Aux to Batt. this will determine the remainder of your powers.

a Dragon build is basically having 2 copies of EPTS and EPTW and chaining them every 15s for 100% uptime of both powers. great for survivability because you have aux power. 

a Drake build is a variant of the dragon build. you have 1 copy of EPTS and EPTW, and 3 blue or purple Damage control engineer Doffs to bring the cooldowns to 15s. it almost always procs. again good because you have aux power.

the aux to battery build uses 2 copies of auxiliary to battery, and 3 purple technician duty officers. when you hit aux to battery, it drains ALL your aux power and divides it into your engines, weapons and shields. as a result, all 3 are usually at or above 125, which is great bc that increases your shield regen rate, speed and weapon damage. 

ON TOP OF ALL THAT, the 3 technicians powers go off, which reduce the cooldown timers on ALL Boff powers by 30%.

what this means is, it effectively DOUBLES all your other bridge officer powers. technically you have 6 tac powers. 4 science powers. 10 engineering powers.  the main draw back of this build is that you better get used to having 0 aux power. that means that transfer shield strength, hazard emitters, T5 nukara power, and auxiliary to the structural integrity field are now hard to use. also you hangar will recharge a tiny bit slower. 

you can combat this by having some aux batteries on hand, but it doesnt really matter as you are PVEing and with 'team' powers no longer having global cooldown, we are at no loss for heals anymore.

purple technician duty officers are FREE from the B'tran cluster colonization duty officer chain.

i do recommend the aux to battery build, as despite not having aux power most of the time, it is still incredibly resilient AND puts a hurting on things. 

here are 3 separate builds, all with the same tac powers i outlined above.


DRAOGON BUILD:

engineering cmdr: EPTW1, EPTS2, E TEAM 3, DEM 3
eng Ltcmdr: EPTW1, EPTS2, DEM2/RSP
Science: Haz Em1, TSS2

DRAKE BUILD:

Eng Cmdr: EPTS1, RSP1, DEM2, DEM3
eng ltcmdr: Eteam1, RSP1, EPTW3
science: H/E1, TSS2

OR:

eng cmdr: eteam1, dem1, etps3, RSP
eng ltcmdr: eteam1, dem1, eptw3
science: sci team, TSS2

AUX TO BATT BUILD:

ENG CMDR: E-TEAM1, ATB1, RSP2, DEM3
ENG LTCMDR: EPTS1, ATB1, EPTW3
SCIENCE: H/E1, SCI TEAM

You'll have to just time your hazard emitters with your aux spikes, its not hard. aux power is only down AFTER hitting Aux to batt.



your skill tree has alot of room to spread its legs!

http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?bui ... roposed2_0

this is the skill tree i recommend. you'll be able to take and deal more damage. fair amount of crit stacking too.

if you decide to drop your cloaking device. you wont need the 3 points in starship stealth. which means you can put 2 more admiral points (weapon and aux performance) , and 1 more into subsystem repair.



lastly, what reputation power choices did you make?

what are you innate traits?

what are your current duty officers???

[Kheren]

Following your recomendations as best as i could and with what i have or could get, here is what the Kumari turned out to be ATM:


http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillpl ... rovement_0


I'll work on the DOFFs now and test it in the Allied Sphere for comparison ot former built and edit later.

Thanks for all your hard work!


EDIT: I tried the tachyon sweep mission in Allied Sphere space with the Aegis set and a MKXII Fleet warp core I had and I immediately noticed that I had become a lot more fragile than before. Even in full defensive mode, shields went down quickly and I cumulated a lot of hull damage before finally eliminating opposition.

Then I switched back to the full Solanae set and did the same mission again. This time, even in full attack mode, I never had to repair hull and shields barely were affected a few times, thanks to the metaphasic shielding added by the set.

Thus, the build is now this:


http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillpl ... improved_0

[Battle Lion]

Following your recomendations as best as i could and with what i have or could get, here is what the Kumari turned out to be ATM:


http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillpl ... rovement_0


I'll work on the DOFFs now and test it in the Allied Sphere for comparison ot former built and edit later.

Thanks for all your hard work!


EDIT: I tried the tachyon sweep mission in Allied Sphere space with the Aegis set and a MKXII Fleet warp core I had and I immediately noticed that I had become a lot more fragile than before. Even in full defensive mode, shields went down quickly and I cumulated a lot of hull damage before finally eliminating opposition.

Then I switched back to the full Solanae set and did the same mission again. This time, even in full attack mode, I never had to repair hull and shields barely were affected a few times, thanks to the metaphasic shielding added by the set.

Thus, the build is now this:


http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillpl ... improved_0

looks good. just from the look of that, your damage probably went up by about 5-800 or so

apart from weapons loadout, Boff power changes will show the most noticeable change on your ship.

right now you are heavily focused on healing, with literally HALF of you powers dedicated to heals, also of note that most of your reputation choices seem to be for added tanking. 

thats a bit overkill unless you intend to aggro ALL of SB24 fleet action. 2-4 heals is all you really need to get by....you wont be able to take a hit from donatra's scimitar, or a blast from the crystal, but not many builds can anyway, and there's little reason to even TAKE those kinds of hits.


since you probably dont have 3x purple technicians/damage control engineers yet, the best way to restructure your powers would be the DRAGON build that i outlined above. it requires NO doffs to get it running, and you can use all five of your Duty officers to augment your build, rather than MAKE your build.

a simple dragon build on this, with APB1 will probably do about 5-6K dps, assuming you have all phasers. thats pretty respectable, and you should be able to hop right into elite STFs and do better than good.

a note on weapons: right now, only about 4-5 of your weapons can fire at the same time. since you are switching to phaser, here is a handy link

http://sto.gamepedia.com/Episode_replay

just hit CTRL+F and search for PHASER BEAM ARRAY
it will highlight ALL the missions that reward phaser beam arrays. only one mission grants RARE phaser beam arrays, but even filling up with uncommon arrays is a good idea. just leave that wide angle torp and with 7 beam arrays going out, you'll see things melt.


That protonic console you got there really isnt doing anything for you as you arent using any proton damage.

put that fleet neutronium back on! it will REALLY help your hull when your shields drop.

that warp core is pretty nice.  does it have the AMP modifier? what that does is, each subsystem that has power over 75, you get an extra 3.3% to your damage output.

after looking at both aegis and the solanae set, i honestly think that Aegis has not aged well. 
its set 3 bonus SOUNDS cool...but the reactive shielding only applies to your hull apparently. which is fairly useless.

solanae will reduce all incoming damage by 10%, give you a chance every second to heal you ship, also can reflect damage back to the attacker, can increase your turn rate, and only has 5% bleedthrough.

solanae set 3 is very useful it seems. set 4? not so much. you can skip the solanae warp core as your fleet one is much better.


what space duty officers do you have active?

[Kheren]

OK I.ll try with the Fleet core with the rest of the Solanae stuff next. You,re right about the proton console; just forget it in there. I'll bring back the neutronium fleet engineering one.

The Doffs I have are all purple and give me
-reduced time on evasive,
-reduced time on boffs abilities
-reduced time on emergency power to subsytems abilities
-improved power to emergency abilities
-imptoved damage to Borg

[Battle Lion]

OK I.ll try with the Fleet core with the rest of the Solanae stuff next. You,re right about the proton console; just forget it in there. I'll bring back the neutronium fleet engineering one.

The Doffs I have are all purple and give me
-reduced time on evasive,
-reduced time on boffs abilities
-reduced time on emergency power to subsytems abilities
-improved power to emergency abilities
-imptoved damage to Borg

So im assuming that means:

conn officer

technician

damage control engineer

warp core engineer

and something else that i cant remember.


here's some tips on those guys.

the conn officer is pretty good. like all doffs, they come in flavors. that means that some conn officers will do different things than others.
if you decide to go with a drake or dragon build, a conn officer taht reduces the recharge time of TACTICAL TEAM would be a  better fit, as tac team is incredible useful for tanking/damage.


if you do indeed have a technician, check his description carefully - it will reduce bridge officer power timers ONLY after Aux to Battery is used - these doffs are the core of the A2B build, but they only work on that build. replace this guy in the meantime if he is indeed a technician.


the damage control engineer is also a good doff. if you decide to go with the A2B build, this doff will become unnecessary. in order to fully take advantage of his ability, you need 2 or 3 high level version so it procs more.

warp core engineer is also good in conjunction with a damage control engineer. 



your 'improved damage to borg' doff is effectively useless, sadly. remember the high level gear that had the [BORG]
modifier? well it was all discontinued, because that modifier never really worked reliably. alot of borg are actually NOT BORG according to the game, so that added damage buff isnt working as designed. youd be better off replacing it.


i like to have 2x purple shield distribution officers, each gives a 50% chance to give a shield heal when you hit brace for impact. sometimes both of them proc and you get a really nice heal.  


and as always, when you can, try to increase the rarity of your doffs. free purple doffs are available via the star cluster doff missions. i have gotten some really nice ones there.