Space combat at lvl 60 is virtually impossible.

[Sjt.Yuri]

I've been playing this game as a Starfleet Tac officer for a while. 700 hrs on my older account to be exact. Recently PWE sent me an email that said I got a gift of a T6 Andromeda class cruiser and an instant jump to level 60. I was level 55 when I used both of those. I still use the T6 because for some reason it's better than my Star Cruiser that I had. But the worst part is that I can't complete any missions because space combat is impossible. I'm using all XII class weapons and modules but I don't know what's going on. I'm playing on normal difficulty. My beam weapons do ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and my torpedoes are like stabbing their hull with a toothpick. Their beams drop my shields in one shot and their torpedoes are like thermonuclear warheads. I've been using every buff and ability but I never manage to get the hulls of the AI ships below 90%. Please if you know whats wrong help me I adore this game and I want to keep playing with my main guy.

(NOTE: I see this all the time in forums: "I had that same issue/ I don't know how to fix it." I don't care. I am looking for a solution, not sympathy.)

[Ricco]

Escrito originalmente por KGB-Putin:

Escrito originalmente por Running-Target:

Are you Free to play? Are you using rare or very rare MKXii weapons, Those works better. What damage type are you using? Maybe switch to Plasma or Tetryon. Are you using the gear from the missions: Sphere of Influence and A Step Between Stars?

Make sure you are on Normal difficulty. Might need to totally revamp your build. It is normal that the content past the Dyson Sphere Chain will be more difficult and you will get killed often. Some extra hard enemies have special tactics you need to follow to get pass them.


Read here > https://sto.gamepedia.com/Ship_weapon
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Mission:_Sphere_of_Influence
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Mission:_A_Step_Between_Stars

I'm not entirely free to play. I have purchased Zen before and traded it for dilithium. I am using mostly very rare Antiproton beams and photon torpedoes. I'm using photons because they recharge super fast. I read that they were the best because of that oj a guide somewhere. I've used transmaphic cluster torpedoes before but they were mostly useless until you dropped enemy shields, and that's appearantly difficult. I am using all the Solanae equipment. I've tried using a number of different sets. I've used full Tetreyon, Disruptor, plasma, polaron, even normal phasers. Nothing works as well as the antiproton.

I have found Antiproton to be great at chipping away shields, but don't do much for hulls.

[Ziland]

Escrito originalmente por n3mes1s:

Probably you did something really wrong. I use pilot/strategist in almost ALL my toons (24) and i dont have any problems of suravility. Quite the opposite lol. Hell, some of my escorts have even more durability that some cruisers :p. Its not about specializations but about traits. If you are dying a lot, change your traits, not your specializations. At least in my case, but again, never had to do it so far.

The fact is that i dont like half-measured specializations. I want full trees to use. So specializations like command/intel that are mixed ground/space dont suit for me, since i basically only play space.

I didn't die though, but my shields were going down and I was losing 5-10% hull in thick furballs (which I categorize as squishy compared to only losing 5-10% shields at most with intel/pilot).

But it all depends on the rest of your equipment, I use pol set/rep weapons with my only crafted one being the omni (full beam), and I use the jem hadar set + fleet core, all at mk xiv ur. So this is really just a noob setup, I can imagine with a 'real' setup that intel wouldn't even do anything anymore, I'm just not there yet (nor do I feel the need to, 20k dps is good enough for me atm).

As for ground combat, I think intel really helps a lot there, but it doesn't really matter, that toon is sci. Oh and I fly that last winter reward lukari triangle, lol. :P

[Ricco]

Also important to know is what mission you are currently having trouble with.

[Ricco]

I saw that triangle flying over arizona a few days ago, was that you?

[Ziland]

Escrito originalmente por n3mes1s:

Well, one of your main problems is that the jem haddar set is really bad. Yup, it boost polaron but that boost is not worthy the lack of performance of the other pieces. You will be probably far far better equiped with the Lukari Armaments set from the lukari reputation. If i remember right it gives you 15% polaron boost as well.

For ground, the only specialization you need is commando. lol. nuf said. I dont even bother to slot any extra primary one. Im lazy that way. I use pilot/strategy and i switch to commando in my secondary when i go to ground. And thats it.

The Lukari armaments set is a weapon set, and I'm already using it (minus the torp). The restorative initiative is the one for shield and such, and this one doesn't give any polaron dmg buff. Tbh, the lukari space set doesn't look like much of an upgrade to me, some minor cooldown reduction for heals I rarely use anyway and an aoe regen that probably doesn't do much as I'm zooming by everyone at full speed anyway (jem hadar impulse engine is quite fast at low power + EPtE).

No, the iconian set is the one I considered. But imo, it isn't worth the +100k dill atm, the dps increase is for 30sec out of two minutes which makes it a permanent (assuming I always hit it out of cooldown) dps incease for myself by about 33/4=8.25% compared to the jem hadars 16%. Only reason I'd go for it is if my fleet wants me to buff their dps with the extra 45% from energy weapon procs, assuming I can even keep that up with 6 beams and no tac haste on a sci char (I'd depend on someone elses haste, probably) to get it to full stack, I can probably keep it refreshed on my own aftter that (assuming that's how it works).

So I'm kind of stuck with the jem hadar space set until they bring in some OP polaron buffing space set. But like I said, survivability is a non issue for me with intel/pilot, it's just that elite stf is out of the question atm for me with pilot/strat (maybe once I get my stuff to epic), but it's not like my dps is enough for elite stf's anyway (isn't 25k entry level?, I'm at 23 atm).

[Ziland]

I get that the set is ♥♥♥♥♥, and the boost of 16% isn't that much either. But until I fight something that makes me feel as weak as I felt before gearing up, I don't see a reason to change. Just look at that last mission for instance, Brushfire, with the sona ship to fight at the end, I beat it without even noticing what it was the fist time around, while all my alts got poped so many times it's not even funny, and I did it on adv on my main, normal for the others (that ship is insane to beat without gettting poped if all you have is mk xii mission reward equipment and a crappy free T5). Now I don't know the trick to beating that mission, but I didn't need to know on my main (and I mindnubingly brute forced it on alts, technically on main too, but witout banging my head against the wall).

And yeah, I'm using one locator and one exploiter (locator helps offset the potential dps loss when my sci ultimate on cooldown, sue me that's what I call it :P, and the exploiter to buff it), only two tac on that ship, thanks to the lukari universal console it isn't that bad though (+30% on that sucker alone).

If I used an escort I'm sure I could forgo the 16% from the jem hadar space set though (can't imagine how powrful this build would be with 3 extra fleet tac consoles, sheesh, talk about glass cannnon), especially given how squishy my escorts seem to be by default (can't really depend on shield with escorts since they only have a .9 multiplier for it). Btw, badlands is the only place where I actally have to use my hull heal skills for anything other than getting rid of drain in the case of the hazard sci skill and hull top off from bleed through from aux to structure, which I use as a hull resist boost while in the badlands.

Point is though, there are a lot of viable solutions to dps/survivability in this game (viable, not perfect by any means), all of which require a little work, that's what makes this game fun in the long run imo, trying things and figuring out weird builds that work even though intuitively they seem like they shouldn't. Imagine how it'd be if you got to max level and everything was still as simple as when you were leveling up, how boring the end game would be, no punishment for making bad choices (sadly though the devs seem intent on removing the posibility of bad choices, as they call it "making every option just as valid", bleh...).

[Ziland]

Sorry for the wall of text, ignor at your conveinience. And tldr, I think I'm right so nah...

If you're talking tac ship, then yeah, dps is pretty easy to get to 20, I have mine at around 15k atm, but that's a problem in and of itself when doing daily alerts at US night/early morning. I often end up being the highest burst dps in those hours and end up collecting all the agro, and given my paper thin survivability, this isn't working out too well. Only being half way through pilot is the main issue imo, once I get the other half I should be okay'ish.

As for mixing and matching locators and exploiters. The math should be simple enough, so bear with me here:

My base stats without any tac consoles are:
CrtH = 6.1%
CrtD = 70.9%

Locator/Exploiter stat for mk xiv epic:
CrtH = 1.9%
CrtD = 9.4%

Calculations for 100 avg shots base:
100 - 6.1 = 93.9 (# non crit shots at 100% base dmg)
93.9 * 100 = 9390 (portion of the dmg that is non crit)
6.1 * 170.9 = 1042.49 (portion of the dmg that is crit)
Total = 10432.49 (for reference this number would be 10k without any CrtH/D)

Calculation with full locators:
1.9 * 2 = 3.8 (locators added up)
6.1 + 3.8 = 9.9 (new CrtH)
100 - 9.9 = 90.1
90.1 * 100 = 9010
9.9 * 170,9 = 1691.91
Total = 10701.91

Calculation with full exploiters:
100 - 6.1 = 93.9
93.9 * 100 = 9390
9.4 * 2 = 18.88 (exploiters added up)
170.9 + 18.88 = 189.78 (new CrtD)
6.1 * 189.78 = 1157.658
Total = 10547.658

Calculation with mix:
6.1 + 1.8 = 8 (CrtH)
100 - 8 = 92
92 * 100 = 9200
170.9 + 9.4 = 180.3 (CrtD)
8 * 180.3 = 1442.4
Total = 10642.4

So only locators would be higher. But since I use an ultimate with 50% CrtH for 1/6th of the time I aught to at least put one exploiter. That's the math behind my reasoning here because 2 exploiters would do less avg dmg for 5/6th of the time. And two locators would be useless for 1/6th of the time since it 'sets' it to 50%, doesn't say that it boosts it. If the ultimate was setting it to 100% that'd be a different story, then full exploiter 'might' be worth it. Either way, the difference is minor here since it doesn't take into account the individual weapon's natural CrtH/Ds. I have one weapon with 60% CrtD and one with 4% CrtH, the rest are mostly acc because reasons. :P

[Ziland]

That does make sense, I think I'll do that, respec the ultimate out (one less button to press) and put those points into CrtH and more Pen, I do favor consistancy over intermitent bursts. I guess I got suckered into the ultimate's shinniness. :P

I can definately respec smarter if I'm not trying to drop 27 points into sci.

But hey, at least I got to 20k with a half ass cheapo build with shinnies! Could be fun going for a 'real' build now, maybe go for 40k this time uh? Sounds like fun! :)

[Beunruhigende Bewegung]

indeed it is imposible, i just reached lvl 65, all the patrol mision or any quest, i get 1 shotted on ground or in space, i find that there is a way to grind in beta quadrant space enqunters 300k energy credits per ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 2 hours, its stupid how they set these settings... Really dont understand how am i soposed to get a shield that costs 200 milion and will do minimal diference.. not a single mision can be done once you reach level 65... Rally retardec

[ʥ]

More necro... :!

[Jordan_Peterson]

Escrito originalmente por Sjt.Yuri:

I've been playing this game as a Starfleet Tac officer for a while. 700 hrs on my older account to be exact. Recently PWE sent me an email that said I got a gift of a T6 Andromeda class cruiser and an instant jump to level 60. I was level 55 when I used both of those. I still use the T6 because for some reason it's better than my Star Cruiser that I had. But the worst part is that I can't complete any missions because space combat is impossible. I'm using all XII class weapons and modules but I don't know what's going on. I'm playing on normal difficulty. My beam weapons do ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and my torpedoes are like stabbing their hull with a toothpick. Their beams drop my shields in one shot and their torpedoes are like thermonuclear warheads. I've been using every buff and ability but I never manage to get the hulls of the AI ships below 90%. Please if you know whats wrong help me I adore this game and I want to keep playing with my main guy.

(NOTE: I see this all the time in forums: "I had that same issue/ I don't know how to fix it." I don't care. I am looking for a solution, not sympathy.)

ALWAYS keep in mind this game has still an un-optimized difficulty-adjustment depending in some missions.
Some mission you will beat blidnfolded with level 60 some you will have real troubles.
Some you will have no problems mit MK II gear, in some you will fail if you dont have at least top notch MK XII gear.
I was in your shoes. Everoyne else kept saying I must be doing something wrong. I wasnt, I was just a new player not having the meta-traits nor meta-skills nor meta-items for my ship.
That was enough if you level too fast to 60 or 65 that enemies become really strong if your gear is still like that of an level 50.

[delta]

Escrito originalmente por Gen-Rusher Carlton:

That was enough if you level too fast to 60 or 65 that enemies become really strong if your gear is still like that of an level 50.

Do the enemies in missions scale up to your level? Because I gained about 20-30 levels doing nothing but doff assignments....

[Jordan_Peterson]

Escrito originalmente por delta:

Escrito originalmente por Gen-Rusher Carlton:

That was enough if you level too fast to 60 or 65 that enemies become really strong if your gear is still like that of an level 50.

Do the enemies in missions scale up to your level? Because I gained about 20-30 levels doing nothing but doff assignments....

yes they do scale just that your captain level doesnt really mean much when other stuff is more important, like gear, traits, skills, boffs, ect.

[jozenone]

dId you check your traits? Class 12 items are rank 50. try to rank up if you have dilithium to trade for phoenix upgrades. I think level 60 is class 14 gear. That alone will make it feel better.

[Penguin Liberation Front]

Escrito originalmente por Goofybutt:

indeed it is imposible, i just reached lvl 65, all the patrol mision or any quest, i get 1 shotted on ground or in space, i find that there is a way to grind in beta quadrant space enqunters 300k energy credits per ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 2 hours, its stupid how they set these settings... Really dont understand how am i soposed to get a shield that costs 200 milion and will do minimal diference.. not a single mision can be done once you reach level 65... Rally retardec

I would recommend the Discovery ship reputation set to keep you alive. 2 pieces give you +120% hull healing which will go a long way and with all 4 pieces you get an area effect blast that adds to your max hull for the entire time you are on that map.

The Discovery ground reputation had a Mudd's time device thing that you activate before combat and if you die are instantly moved to the point you activated it fully healed. handy stuff :) For the record I'm always dying in ground missions haha