Your captain can purchase in a wide variety of skills, which provide bonuses to various aspects of your character. Skills are purchased with skill points (SP), the STO version of experience points which are gained by completing missions and fighting opponents.

Skill Groups and Tiers

The Skills in STO are arranged into groups by similar function and tiers by rank. For example, the Starship Energy Weapons group contains skills that increase your effectiveness with energy weapons (beams and cannons) in space combat:

Within the group, the skills are arrange into 5 tiers according to the minimum rank required to purchase the skill, from left to right. Thus a captain can purchase the Starship Energy Weapons Training skill at Lieutenant (Tier 1, far left), but must be promoted to Lt Commander before being able to buy the Starship Beam Weapons and Starship Cannon Weapons skills (Tier 2, second from left), and all the way to Admiral before being able to access the Starship Antiproton Weapons and Starship Polaron Weapons skills (Tier 5, far right).

Note that there is no rigid skill ‘tree’ in STO – you do not, for example, need to buy Starship Energy Weapons Training before you can buy Starship Beam Weapons or Starship Cannon Weapons. The only restrictions are your captain’s rank and available unspent skill points.

All captains have access to the following skill groups:

• Starfleet Training
• Starship Energy Weapons
• Starship Projectile Weapons
• Starship Engineering
• Starship Operations

In addition, each class has a unique skill group:

• Tactical captains get the Tactical Officer group
• Engineer captains get the Engineering Officer group
• Science captains get the Science Officer group

Skill Levels and Costs

All skills in STO have 9 levels. Your captain starts with no levels in any skills, and purchases skill levels with skill points.

The cost of a skill level depends on the tier of the skill:

How Skills Work – The Basics

Each level in a skill grants a bonus to specific aspects of your character. For example, the Starship Energy Weapons Training skill increases the damage of all energy weapons on your ship. The more levels you have in the skill, the greater the damage bonus.

The effects of the different skills can be broadly broken down according to the skill groups:

• Starfleet Training skills either increase the speed, turn rate and hull strength of ships (the ‘Command’ and ‘Captain’ skills) or increase the effectiveness of your bridge officer’s ground abilities and some space abilities (the ‘Team Leader’ skills)
• Starship Energy Weapons skills boost the damage done by energy weapons
• Starship Projectile Weapons skills boost the damage done by projectile weapons
• Starship Engineering skills generally boost the effectiveness of Engineer abilities, although some also have secondary effects on your ship’s power generation and repair rate
• Starship Operations skills generally boost the effectiveness of Science abilities
• The class-specific Tactical/Engineering/Science Officer skills boost the effectiveness of your captain’s ground abilities

What Affects What

All ships, space weapons and most abilities are affected by three different skills, and the bonus from each skill stacks. In most cases, each ship, weapon or ability is affected by one Lieutenant (Tier 1) skill, one Lt Commander (Tier 2) skill, and one Commander, Captain or Admiral (Tier 3, 4 or 5) skill.

For example, the damage of a phaser beam array is boosted by Starship Energy Weapons Training (Tier 1), Starship Beam Weapons (Tier 2) and Starship Phaser Weapons (Tier 3), while the speed, turn rate and hull strength of an Assault Cruiser is affected by Starship Command (Tier 1), Cruiser Captain (Tier 2) and Assault Cruiser Captain (Tier 5).

In the case of the ship and weapon skills, then, it’s normally fairly easy to see which three skills will affect something. In the case of abilities, you can see which skills affect them by opening the Ability window (press ‘P’), selecting the skill and reading the information on the right-hand side.

For example, the Emergency Power to Weapons I ability is affected by your Starship Warp Core Training (T1), Starship Weapon System Maintenance (T2) and Starship Weapon Efficiency (T3) skills:

For more advanced details on how skills function, how their bonuses are calculated and a lot of numbers, see this Skills Guide article.

This article takes a closer look at how the STO skills system works, examines the numbers behind it and discusses some of the implications of both for character progression and skill builds. An understanding of these areas should help you to get the best out of your abilities, ships and weapons and to make informed decisions about how to spend your skill points to create the kind of character you want to play.

Content Summary:

• How Skills Work: Stats and Bonuses
  • Levels to stats
  • Stats to bonuses
  • Summary
• Examining the Numbers
  • Diminishing Returns
  • Stats per skill point (overall)
  • Stats per skill point (by skill level)
• Build Implications
  • General concepts
  • Focus versus flexibility
  • Try before you buy
  • One for all, not all for one
  • Spreading the points in Tier 1
  • Avoiding level 8 and 9 in Tier 1 and 2 skills
  • Tier 3 skills are your friends
  • Looking for overlaps
  • Energy weapons – sticking with the basics
  • Projectile weapons
  • Ship skills and redundancy
  • Tier 5 skills

How Skills Work: Stats and Bonuses

Your captain’s skills affect all the other major aspects of your character – your captain’s abilities (whether innate or gained from kits), your bridge officers’ abilities, your ship and your weapons.

The exact effects of your captain’s skills are calculated through a system of stats and bonuses.

Levels to Stats

Your captain has a stat for each skill. The base value of each stat is determined by your captain’s level in the appropriate skill.

You can see these base values on your captain’s Skills tab in the Character Status window by clicking on a skill and looking at the bar chart in the Skill Details window that opens in the lower-right:

For example, this captain’s Starship Energy Weapons Training-5 gives a base Starship Energy Weapons stat of 15. Increasing the skill to level 6 would increase the stat to 16, and so on.

Note that your captain has skill-based stats for all the skills on his Skills tab, even if he is not yet achieved a high enough rank to spend skill points on them. The base value for a skill-based stat with no levels in the associated skill is 0.

Your captain’s base value for each skill-based stat can be modified by several factors:

• Traits – certain traits apply bonuses to the stats for a specific skill or skills. For example, the Astrophysicist trait gives a permanent +10 bonus to a captain’s Starship Operations Training stat
• Equipment – many items give bonuses to the stats for a specific skill or skills when equipped. For example, starship deflector dishes tend to give bonuses to the stats for skills in the Starship Operations group
• Abilities – several abilities give temporary bonuses to the stats a specific skill or skills when used. For example, the Science Team ability gives a bonus to the Starship Operations Training stat of the target

It’s important to note that the bonus skill-based stats from traits, equipment and ability buffs still apply even if your captain has no levels in the appropriate skill (and thus a base stat of 0).

You can see your captains current stat values, combining the base value from skills and any applicable bonuses, on his Status tab in the Character Status Window, in the Skill-Based Stats: Ground and Skill-Based Stats: Space sections:

For example, we can see that this captain has a stat of 15 in Starship Energy Weapons Training, Starship Projectile Weapons Training and Starship Operations Training. Note that he also has a stat of 4 in Starship Deflectors, Starship Emitters and Starship Sensors, even though he has no levels in those skills and has not yet reached the rank required to train them, thanks to bonuses from his ship’s current deflector dish item.

Note that you need to be in your ship or on the ground for some stat modifiers to show up on the Status tab.

Stats to Bonuses

Your captain’s current skill-based stats are used to modify the effects of your character’s abilities, ship attributes and weapon damage.

Most abilities, ships and weapons in STO are affected by three skills. In general, the current values of the stats associated with those three skills are added together to form a single stat bonus, and this is applied as a percentage increase to some aspect of the ability, ship or weapon:

• Starship weapons are all affected by three skills. The total stat bonus from all three is applied as a percentage increase to the Standard Issue damage of the weapon. For more details on Standard Issue damage and how weapon damage is calculated, see the Starship Weapons Guide article.

For example, a phaser beam array is affected by the Starship Energy Weapons Training, Starship Beam Weapons and Starship Phaser Weapons stats. A captain with a Starship Energy Weapons stat of 15, a Starship Beam Weapons stat of 22 and a Starship Phaser Weapons stat of 0 will receive a 15+22+0=+37% bonus to the Standard Issue damage of all phaser beam arrays mounted on their ship.

• The majority of both captain and bridge officer space abilities are affected by three skills. The total stat bonus from all three is generally applied as a percentage increase in either the ability’s magnitude or duration (you can find out which by looking at the description of the ability in the Abilities window). With some abilities, only half the stat bonus is applied

For example, the Tachyon Beam space ability is affected by the Starship Operations Training, Starship Deflectors and Starship Deflector Dish stats, and the total stat bonus from all three increases the magnitude – in this case, the amount of shields drained from the target of the ability – as a percentage increase.

• Captain and kit ground abilities generally behave in the same way as space abilities, being affected by three skills, with the total stat bonus from all three increasing the magnitude or duration of the ability
• Bridge officer ground abilities are generally affected only by your captain’s Tactical, Engineering or Science Team Leader stat, according to the class of the bridge officer, and by the bridge officer’s own skill level in the ability. (I suspect that the appropriate Team Leader stat is combined with a stat based on the bridge officer’s own skill level and the total applied as a percentage increase to the ability’s magnitude or duration, but more testing is required to confirm this)
• The speed, turn rate and hull strength of ships are affected by a variable number of skills, depending on the tier of the ship. (Some initial testing suggests that the total stat bonus is applied as a percentage increase to the base speed and turn rate of the ship’s equipped engines, but the relationship between the stat bonus and the hull strength increase remains unclear. Further testing of all these is required)
  • Tier 3+ ships are affected by three stats – Starship Command, Escort/Cruiser/Science Vessel Captain (as appropriate) and the appropriate Tier 3-5 Captain stat
  • Tier 2 ships are affected by two stats – Starship Command and Escort/Cruiser/Science Vessel Captain (as appropriate)
  • I’m not sure whether the Tier 1 Light Cruiser is affected only by the Starship Command stat, or by Starship Command and Cruiser Captain – again, further testing is required
• Certain skills give secondary bonuses to other aspects of your current ship, such as power generation or hull repair rate. (These bonuses definitely seem to be based on the stat value of the appropriate skill and are thus affected by stat bonuses from traits, equipment and abilities, but further testing is required to determine the exact relationships)

Summary

• Most weapons, abilities and ships are affected by three skills
• Your captain has a stat rating for every skill
• The base value of each skilled-based stat is determined by your captain’s level in the associated skill
• The base value of each skill-based stat can be modified by bonuses from traits, equipment and abilities
• When your character uses a weapon, ability or ship, the three skill-based stats for the associated skills are added together to form a stat bonus, which is generally applied as a percentage increase to:
  • The base damage of a weapon
  • The magnitude or duration of an ability
  • The attribute values of a ship
• Some abilities only use half of the stat bonus, and the relationship between the stat bonus and certain ship attributes is currently unclear
• There may be additional modifiers that adjust how much of a stat bonus is applied in some cases, but their exact nature is currently unclear

Examining The Numbers

As explained above, the base value of your captain’s skill-based stats is determined by your captain’s levels in the associated skills.

The stat values for each skill level vary according to the tier of the skill:

The two most important things to recognise here are:

1. The stat values for the lower tier skills are lower than the stat values for higher tier skills – in other words, lower tier skills provide smaller bonuses than higher tier skills
2. The stat value gained per skill level is subject to a diminishing returns effect – in other words, the higher your level in a skill, the less you gain from increasing its level

The rest of this section is going to spend some time analysing these numbers in various ways, and there will be graphs and more tables. If this kind of thing makes your eyes glaze over, you may want to skip to the next section, which discusses the implications.

Diminishing Returns

As noted above, the stat value gained per skill level is subject to a diminishing returns effect – the first level of a skill increases your captain’s associated stat by more than the second level, and so on. Like the base stat values, the rate at which the stat points gained per level drops off varies according to the tier of a skill:

For example, going from level 4 to level 5 in a Tier 1 skill only gains you 1 stat point, while going from level 4 to level 5 in a Tier 3-5 skill gains you 6 stat points.

Putting these into the form of a graph makes it easier to see the relationships:

The important things here are that while the returns from Tier 1 and Tier 2 skills drop off at a similar rate, (halving from level 1 to 3, level 4 to 5 and level 7 to 8), Tier 3-5 skills are subject to less of a diminishing returns effect (dropping by about a third from level 1 to 3 and then from level 5 to 6, after which the returns remain constant).

Not only do tier 3+ skills get you a larger bonus overall, then, but they also offer (relatively) more gain per level at higher skill levels.

Stats per Skill Point (Overall)

Of course, although higher tier skills may give bigger bonuses and be less subject to diminishing returns, they also cost more skill points to buy. As will be discussed in greater detail in Build Implications, below, skill points are perhaps your character’s most valuable resource, so it can be useful to consider how much of a bonus you gain from a skill versus how many skill points it costs.

The following table shows the overall ‘value’ of skills by tier, in terms of ’stat points per 100 skill points’ (stat/100SP). The higher this number, the better ‘value’ you’re getting out of your skill points (although it’s worth bearing in mind that this is only one way to consider the ‘value’ of skills – something which will be discussed in the Build Implications section, below).

For example, buying level 9 in a Tier 1 skill gives a base stat of 18 and costs a total of 900 skill points, so you’ve gained 2 stat points per 100 skill points spent (2 stat/100SP). Buying level 5 in a Tier 4 skill gives a base stat of 30 and costs a total of 2000 skill points, so you’ve gained 1.5 stat points per 100 skill points spent (1.5 stat/100SP).

Again, putting this into graphical form makes it easier to see the relationships:

There are quite a few things worth noting here:

• Buying level 1 in a Tier 1 skill is by far the most efficient (in terms of stat points gained for the skill points spent) use of skill points
• Tier 1 skills remain the best ‘overall value’ skills all the way to level 9
• That said, the ‘overall value’ of Tier 1 skills drops much more quickly than higher tier skills, particularly Tier 3+ skills, which maintain a far more constant ‘overall value’
• As such, the difference in ‘overall value’ between skills of different tiers becomes much less pronounced at higher (6+) skill levels
• At a skill level of 5, Tier 3 skills offer just as many stat points per skill point spent as Tier 2 skills
• At skill levels above 5, Tier 3 skills are actually better ‘value’ than Tier 2 skills
• At skill level 9, Tier 3 skills are very nearly as efficient as Tier 1 skills in terms of stat points gained per skill point spent

Stats per Skill Point (by Skill Level)

Another way to consider the ‘value’  or ‘efficiency’ of skills is to look at the stat/100SP ratings for the cost of buying each level of the skill – when going from level 1 to level 2, level 2 to level 3, and so on.

For example, say you like to use phaser beam weapons, and currently have level 5 in the Starship Energy Weapons Training (T1), Starship Beam Weapons (T2) and Starship Phaser Weapons (t3) skills. Your total stat bonus for phaser beam weapons will be 15+24+36 = 75. If you want to increase this stat bonus in the most efficient (in terms of skill points spent per stat point gained) manner, which skill should you raise?

The answer is Starship Phaser Weapons – not only does raising it from level 5 to level 6 gain you the most stat points (+4, as per the earlier Stat Gain/Skill Level table, bringing your total stat bonus for phaser beam weapons to 79), but it’s also the most efficient option in terms of return on your skill points (buying an extra level in a Tier 3 skill costs 300 SP, so you’re gaining 1.33 stat/100SP).

Buying Level 6 in Starship Energy Weapons Training would only get you +1 stat points for a 100 SP (1 stat/100SP), and buying Level 6 in Starship Beam Weapons would get you +2 stat points for 200 SP (also 1 stat/100SP).

Yes, it’s time for another graph:

Again, there are several things worth noting here:

• Although Tier 1 and 2 skills offer the best value when buying level 1 or increasing from level 1 to 2, beyond that they quickly become much less efficient
• Tier 1 and 2 skills suffer a big drop in efficiency when going from level 4 to 5 – they are the least efficient of all skills at this step
• Going from level 7 to 8 and level 8 to level 9 in Tier 1 and 2 skills is the least efficient option in the game – even the expensive Tier 5 skills offer a better return on your skill points when buying the last two levels
• Although the first two levels in a Tier 3 skill are less efficient than Tier 1 and 2 skills, buying the third and fourth levels is just as efficient, and at all levels above 4, Tier 3 skills become the most efficient per level

Build Implications

Skill points are perhaps the most important resource in Star Trek: Online. Not only do the skills you purchase with them have a significant impact on your character’s effectiveness with the various weapons, abilities and ships, but the earning and spending of skill points also determines your captain’s progress through the ranks and grades.

As such, they’re a limited resource – at any given rank and grade, your character will only have accumulated a certain number of skill points. In addition, characters currently stop earning skill points once they reach the ‘level cap’ at Admiral-5, so the total number you will have to spend on your captain’s skills is also limited, at least for the time being.

All of which means that deciding what skills to spend your skill points on and how many levels to buy in them – your skills build – are among the most important choices you will make over the course of your captain’s career. The way the skill system works and the numbers behind it have several implications for these decisions that are worth considering.

General Concepts

There are some fundamental aspects of the STO skill system that should be kept in mind whenever thinking about your character’s build, and are worth restating before going any further:

• Tier Structure – skills can be divided into three broad groups according to Tier:
  • Tier 1 Skills are cheap to buy (100SP/level) and very general in effect, but provide the lowest base stat values (maximum of 18 at level 9)
  • Tier 2 Skills are moderately priced (200SP/level) and more specific in effect, but provide moderate base stat values (maximum of 30 at level 9)
  • Tier 3-5 Skills are expensive (300-500 SP/level) and extremely specific in effect, but provide large base stat values (maximum of 52 at level 9)

For example:

• Starship Energy Weapons Training (T1) improves the base damage of all available energy weapons, but only by up to 18%
• Starship Beam Weapons (T2) improves the base damage of beam weapons (about half of the available energy weapons) by up to 30%
• Starship Tetryon Weapons (T4) improves the base damage of tetryon weapons (about a sixth of the available energy weapons) by up to 52%

The way that the skill tiers are structured has several important implications for character progression in STO.

The Tier 1 skills are extremely broad in their application, and nearly all characters will gain some benefit from all of them, regardless of the specific abilities, ship and weapons they are using.

The Tier 2 skills are more narrow in their application, and are where the first significant build decisions need to made. Which categories of ships are you interested in using? Which types of weapons? Which abilities? The answers to these questions will shape which Tier 2 skills you’ll want to train up, and which you can neglect.

The Tier 3-5 skills are all very specific in their application and expensive to buy. However, they also have the biggest impact on your character’s effectiveness. This where you focus your build on the specific abilities, weapons and ships you wish your character to excel in.

• Three is the Magic Number – all space weapons, Tier 3+ ships and the vast majority of abilities are affected by the stats associated with three skills – one from Tier 1, one from Tier 2 and one from Tier 3-5.

For example, the base damage of a Tetryon Beam Array is increased by the Starship Energy Weapons Training (T1), Starship Beam Weapons (T2) and Starship Tetryon Weapons (T4) stats.

The most obvious consequence of this is that the maximum stat bonus your character can gain for most abilities, weapons or ships from skills alone is 100 – 18 from the Tier 1 skill, 30 from the Tier 2 skill and 52 from the Tier 3-5 skill. It’s worth noting that over half of these stat points come from the Tier 3-5 skill.

It can be helpful to get into the habit of thinking about your character’s skills in terms of these ’skill chains’ rather than individual skills, especially when considering where to spend skill points most effectively.

• Diminishing Returns – each level of a skill costs the same number of skill points, but the higher your level in a skill, the less you gain from increasing its level

For example, buying level 1 in a Tier 2 skill costs 200 skill points and will increase your captain’s base stat for that skill by 8 (from 0 to 8). Going from level 7 to level 8 in a Tier 2 skill also costs 200 skill points, but will increase your captain’s base stat from that skill by a mere 1 point (from 28 to 29).

As skill points are a limited resource, this is perhaps the single most important aspect of the skills system to consider when choosing where to spend them. Many of the points discussed in the rest of this section revolve around this concept, and will examine it in more detail.

Focus versus Flexibility

The natural tendency when spending your skill points is to try and ‘max’ as many skills to level 9 as possible. Indeed, if you want to squeeze every last drop of performance out of an ability, ship or weapon, going ‘9/9/9′ – buying level 9 in all three skills in its ’skill chain’ – is the way to do it. However, there are a couple of important issues with this approach:

• Because of the diminishing returns on higher skill levels, it’s not a very efficient way to spend your skill points
• Because skill points are limited, you can’t max very many skills, especially the Tier 3-5 ones that provide the biggest base stat values

The combination of these two issues tends to lead the ‘all 9s’ approach into very specialised builds that are very good at a small number of things. Often these builds end up focussed on one Tier 5 ship with a specific weapon load-out, generally with a limited range of abilities that can be used effectively, and frequently neglecting ground combat almost entirely.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this kind of build – if planned carefully they can be extremely effective in their chosen areas of speciality, which has obvious benefits, especially in PvP. However, they sacrifice a considerable degree of flexibility for a relatively small gain in performance in a narrow range of areas.

On the other hand, if you prefer having more options – being able to switch out different bridge officers with different abilities according to the situation while maintaining good performance with both, for example, or having a better balance between space and ground skills – it’s possible to gain a considerable degree of flexibility by sacrificing a relatively small amount of performance by spending skill points more efficiently.

A couple of general examples:

Consider abilities, weapons and ships with ’skill chains’ of Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 skills, such as Tachyon Beam, the ‘Emergency Power to… <system>’ abilities and phaser or photon weapons. Going 9/9/9 in the skills associated with one of these costs 5,400 SP and gives a stat bonus of 100. Alternatively, going 6/6/6 costs 3,600 SP and gives a stat bonus of 82. In other words, you can get three 82 stat bonuses for the same cost as two 100 stat bonuses. That’s 246 total stat points for the same cost as 200. (In fact, if you go 5/5/7, you can get an 83 bonus in each, making 249 stat points for the cost of 200.)

With abilities, weapons or ships that have the same Tier 1 or Tier 2 skills in their ’skill chain’, you can get more flexibility for even less loss in performance. For example, Starship Energy Weapons Training-9, Starship Beam Weapons-9 and Starship Phaser Weapons-9 costs 5,400 SP and gives a stat bonus of 100 with phaser beam weapons and 70 with phaser cannon weapons. For the same 5,400 SP, you could buy Starship Energy Weapons Training-7, Starship Beam Weapons-5, Starship Cannon Weapons-5 and Starship Phaser Weapons-9, for a 93 stat bonus with both phaser beams and phaser cannons.

Taking a little time to look at the numbers that the STO skills system is based on and avoiding the urge to try and max every skill, then, can help you make the most of the limited skill points you have available. Here are a few more things to consider:

Try Before You Buy

It’s worth remembering that you don’t need levels in the skills that affect abilities, ships and weapons to use them. It’s generally a good idea to try things out for a mission or two before making the decision to invest skill points in their associated skills. Sometimes abilities that sounded very cool don’t turn out to be as useful as you’d expect, and vice versa.

One for All, Not All for One

Whatever skills you decide you wish to invest in, the diminishing returns on stat points gained per skill level means that as you progress through the game, your character will gain more immediate benefit from raising them all gradually, rather than focussing on one at a time.

For example, say there are five Tier 1 skills you wish to buy, and you have 500 unspent skill points. If you invest all 500 SP in one of the skills, your character will have a stat of 15 in that skill, and 0 in the other four. If you invest 100 SP in each skill, your character will immediately gain a stat of 6 in all five skill.

So, it makes sense to split your skill points among the skills you want and raise them all gradually.

Spreading the Points in Tier 1

A Lieutenant captain must spend 6700 skill points in order to earn a promotion to Lt Commander, and all of these have to go on Tier 1 skills, of which there are 11 to choose from (9 common to all characters, and 2 unique to your captain’s class).

• If you succumb to the urge to max skills, you can afford level 9 in 7 skills and level 4 in one more. In total, that will give you 140 stat points from your Tier 1 skills
• If you spread the points more evenly, you can afford level 6 in 10 skills and level 7 in another, or level 7 in 6 skills and level 5 in 5 skills, either of which gives a total of 177 stat points

The very general nature of the Tier 1 skills only goes to make spreading the points an even better option. Between them, these skills apply to almost every ability, ship and space weapon your character will ever use, so having stats of 15-17 in all of them gives you a much better foundation than having 18 in less than two-thirds of them.

Avoiding Level 8 and 9 in Tier 1 and 2 Skills

Buying level 8 or 9 in Tier 1 and 2 skills is the least efficient use of skill points on a level-by-level basis in STO, gaining you only 0.5 stat points per 100 SP spent. It also makes only a minimal difference to your stat bonuses – having 9/9/9 in a skill chain gives you a total stat bonus of 100. Having 7/7/9 gives you a total stat bonus of 97 and 600 SP to spend elsewhere.

Tier 3 Skills Are Your Friends

On the other hand, buying level 5 and above in Tier 3 skills is the most efficient use of skill points on a level-by-level basis, gaining you 2 stat points per 100 SP spent when buying level 5, and 1.33 stat points per 100 SP spent when buying every level above that. It also makes a big difference in stat bonuses – buying level 5 in a Tier 3 skill gains you 6 stat points, and every level above that gains you 4 more.

As such, abilities and weapons whose skill chains end with a Tier 3 skill, like Tachyon Beam, the ‘Emergency Power to… <system>’ abilities and phaser or photon weapons, are always worth considering. Getting high stat bonuses with abilities, ships and weapons whose skill chain ends with a Tier 4 or 5 skill not only costs more SP overall, it’s also less efficient in terms of stat points per SP spent. Of course, many of those abilities and ships are more powerful, so it’s not always a simple decision.

Looking for Overlaps

When deciding which abilities, ships and weapons to invest your skill points in, pay attention to any ‘overlaps’ in their skill chains – skills that affect more than one of the options you’re considering.

For example, the Science Team ability is boosted by the Science Team Leader (T1), Starship Deflectors (T2) and Starship Deflector Field (T4) stats, while Tachyon Beam is boosted by the Starship Operations Training (T1), Starship Deflectors (T2) and Starship Deflector Dish (T3) stats. As both abilities are boosted by Starship Deflectors (T2), any skill points you invest in that skill (and any items you equip that provide bonuses to it) will boost the effectiveness of both abilities.

Overlapping skill chains help you get more out of your limited skill points by getting more benefit from a single skill, and are worth paying attention to when deciding which abilities, weapons and ships to use.

(Note that overlaps of Tier 1 skills are extremely common, as the Tier 1 skills are so general in application. However, they’re less valuable than overlaps in Tier 2 or Tier 3-5 skills, as Tier 1 skills offer the smallest bonuses.)

Energy Weapons – Sticking With The Basics

Beyond personal preference or ‘coolness’ factor, there are currently precious few good reasons to use any of the more advanced energy weapon types (plasma, tetryon, antiproton, polaron). The only real difference between the different energy weapon damage types is in their special effects, which generally have a small chance to be applied per attack. Their base damage and DPS are all the same.

As phasers and disruptors have their damage boosted by Tier 3 skills (Starship Phaser Weapons and Starship Disruptor Weapons) while the more advanced types are boosted by more expensive and less efficient Tier 4 and 5 skills, you’ll get a better return on on your skill points from sticking with the basics.

The only potential advantages I can see from choosing to specialise in one of the more advanced types are:

• In PvP, opponents may be more likely to have equipped their ships with phaser or disruptor damage resistance, as these two damage types are more commonly used (thanks to the lower cost and higher efficiency of their associated skills).
• In high level and end game PvE, it’s possible that enemy ships may have higher resistances to phaser and disruptor damage than the other types – but we’ll have to wait and see when Cryptic starts adding the first end game content

Projectile Weapons

There’s more variation between the different projectile weapon damage types than the energy weapon types – their damage and recharge varies significantly, and their special effects are generally applied on every attack. As such, while photons and quantums still have the advantage of being boosted by Tier 3 skills, picking one of the more advanced types (plasma, transphasic, chroniton, tricobalt) to focus on is a more valid choice, according to your ship and playstyle.

If in doubt, though, photon and quantum are the most efficient options, in terms of return on your skill points.

Ship Skills and Redundancy

The Tier 1 Starship Command skill applies to all ships, and the Tier 2 Escort/Cruiser/Science Vessel Captain skills apply to all ships of the appropriate category. However, the Tier 3-5 skills only apply to the specific ship in their name.

The upshot of this is that, if you intend to upgrade to the next Tier of ships as soon as possible, the Tier 3 and 4 Captain skills will become redundant when you are promoted. As such, you may want to avoid investing valuable skill points into any of these skills.

(The exception to this are some of the escort skills, which also boost the effectiveness of certain Tactical abilities, and thus can be useful even when not commanding the appropriate ship type.)

Tier 5 Skills

At present, your captain will stop earning skill points when you reach the current ‘rank cap’ of Admiral-5. This means that the only skill points you’ll have to spend on Tier 5 skills are those you earn between being promoted to Admiral (which unlocks the Tier 5 skills) and hitting Admiral-5 – a total of 8,000 SP.

As Tier 5 skills costs 500 SP/level, 8,000 SP translates into 16 skill levels, which isn’t a lot. If you succumb to the siren call of the 9s, you’ll be able to max one Tier 5 skill and get another to level 7, for a total of 96 stat points (52 from the level 9 skill and 44 from the level 7).

Although Tier 3-5 skills are less subject to diminishing returns than Tier 1 and Tier 2 skills, you will still get more gain in total stat points by spreading your 8,000 SP between more skills. Buying 4 Tier 5 skills to level 4, for example, nets you 120 stat points in total (30 for each skill). Of course, whether you wish to improve several abilities, ships and weapons that are affected by Tier 5 skills by a smaller amount or focus on larger bonuses for just a couple is up to you, but it’s worth considering the options.

It’s also worth noting that Cryptic has already stated that it has plans to increase the rank cap, the skill point cap or both at some point, so you’re unlikely to be limited to 8,000 SP in Tier 5 skills forever.

—

If you want to test your skills and build your character in advance so you don’t have to respec, try STO Planner, the prettiest Star Trek Online character skills builder.

Source: http://theenginescannaetakeit.wordpress.com/

There are dozens of different abilities you can choose and no doubt all are useful. But since you can have only so few of them, it’s recommended to use the ones best suited for a variety of situations you will find yourself in, and not just the ones which will be used rarely. The best abilities are the ones giving you more survivability and damage, and aren’t specific for PvP or PvE encounters, therefore try to pick those. Fortunately for you I tested quite a few and while I certainly don’t know if you’ll like my setup, I can try to give you some pointers so you can see what works for me.

You can find a full list of bridge officer abilities on sto-intel wiki!

Recommended Abilities

Tactical Officer

• Torpedo: High Yield – torpedoes are found on every ship in the universe, and this ability will make sure they hit even harder. Definitely one of my favorite skills.
• Attack Pattern Omega – this ability will buff you with an increased turn rate, useful for any kind of ship for sure. Additionally, you will be immune slows and snares.
• Beam: Target Shields Subsystems – when activated, your next beam attack will drain a small amount of your targets shields and sometimes disable them for a short duration as well. You could alternatively take Target Weapons Subsystems, which does the same only for weapon subsystems.
• Cannon: Rapid Fire – when activated, your cannons will start blasting your target more frequently resulting in a much higher damage output. If you’re captaining an Escort ship this is a must have.

There aren’t many other highly recommended abilities for tactical officers, but if you need more Tactical Team and Beam Overload are good choices.

Engineering Officer

• Emergency Power to Weapons/Shields – take whichever you prefer. Being a tactical officer and having (almost) enough DPS I prefer more power in shields but it’s up to you. If you put enough skills in these abilities the cooldown is as long as the buff lasts, meaning you can have it active all the time.
• Reverse Shield Polarity – one of the best abilities you can have if you ask me. While it’s active any energy weapon damage you receive will heal your shields — for the duration you’re almost invincible.
• Engineering Team – repairs your hull and provides a chance to repair damaged ships subsystems.

There aren’t any other engineering BO abilities which I think are as useful as these above.

Science Officer

• Polarize Hull – my favorite science ability. While active, you are immune to Tractor Beams, but the best part is the high damage reduction it provides. Considering the cooldown is only half a minute and it lasts 15 seconds, you can fire it up all the time.
• Jam Sensors – by activating this ability enemies won’t be able to target you for the duration. What else is there to say.
• Science Team – Science Team provides a quick heal to your shields and a damage resistance buff. Additionally, it has a chance to remove science debuffs on you (such as aforementioned Jam Sensors).
• Tractor Beam – some players like it, some don’t. As I already mentioned I usually run with an escort ship and being able to hold my opponents in place is invaluable for maximizing DPS.

Viral Matrix, Feedback Pulse and Scramble Sensors are supposedly very good as well, but I have yet to try it personally. The four abilities above are more than good enough for me.

All of these abilities are just the ones I found to be most effective in most situations and are by no means a must have. It’s just a way for new players to figure out which ones are best, especially for PvE leveling. I’m sure the situation is different in PvP but I’m afraid I only played about a dozen encounters so far.

If you want to find out more detailed info about skills to figure out how to best distribute them be sure to read the basic skills info and after that this excellent skills guide. If you didn’t know where to start with BO abilities, I hope this article helps. Now go distribute those skills where it counts!

This article presents the results of extensive testing and comparison of various elements of starship mechanics in STO and initial conclusions based on the data gathered. Understanding how starships function should help you make more informed decisions about which ships to command and how to equip them to suit your preferred playstyle and approach to combat.

Content summary:

• Impulse Speed
• Turn Rate
• Hull Strength
• Shields
• Other Systems

General Notes

All the conclusions and formulae presented in this article are based on in-game testing with a variety of test characters on both the live server (Holodeck) and, more recently, the test server (Tribble). A few things to bear in mind:

• This article assumes that the reader is familiar with the concept of skill-based stats and stat bonuses, as described in the Skills: The Numbers article. It’s recommended that new readers familiarise themselves with that information before continuing
• There will be a lot of numbers and formulae. If math isn’t really your thing, I’ve tried to highlight the important things to bear in mind in the Implications part of each section
• All that follows has been extensively tested and verified with all Tier 1, 2 and 3 Federation ships. Testing with Tier 4 Federation ships has been more limited, and I’ve not yet had the opportunity to test with the Tier 5 Federation ships
• The majority of testing so far has been with Federation ships. Initial testing suggests that the same principles apply to Klingon vessels, although some of the base values may vary
• In the interests of brevity (and to save me having to fiddle around with an endless sequence of HTML tables), most sections of this article will only present the conclusions drawn from in-game testing, not the raw data. I anyone is interested, I have pages and pages of it scattered across several notebooks, although at present it’s in hand-written form
• If you come across anything in-game that appears to contradict anything here, please let me know via the comments or a private message to @BigBadB in-game or via the official website and forums
• Everything presented here should be regarded as provisional and subject to change – this is very much a work in progress and will be updated as further testing is performed

Impulse Speed

The Impulse speed of a ship appears to be determined as follows:

Base + (FSpd + (EPow – 50) x IMod x EMod) x (1 + Stat / TMod)

Base is the base speed. All ships currently appear to have a base speed of 5 Impulse with no engine equipped, which is unaffected by engine power or stat bonuses (presumably this comes from thrusters build into the hull).

FSpd is the Flight Speed bonus of the equipped engine, as listed on the engine’s tooltip (see Engines and Speed, below).

EPow is the current Engine Power level of the ship.

IMod is the Impulse Modifier of the ship, which is listed on the information terminals in the room above the Shipyard on Earth Spacedock (where you go to buy new ships and to trade Exploration Badges for ship weapons and equipment):

• All Federation escorts have an Impulse Modifier of 0.20
• The Tier 5 Deep Space Science Vessel has an Impulse Modifier of 0.17
• All other Federation science vessels and all Federation cruisers have an Impulse Modifier of 0.15

EMod is the Engine Type Modifier of the equipped engine:

• Hyper Impulse engines have an Engine Type Modifier of 1.35
• Combat Impulse engines have an Engine Type Modifier of 0.6
• Impulse engines have an Engine Type Modifier of 1.0

Stat is the total Stat Bonus from the captain’s skills and any modifiers. Note that the Federation Tier 1 Light Cruiser counts as a cruiser, and so is affected by the Tier 2 Cruiser Captain skill.

TMod is the Tier Modifier of the ship:

• Tier 1 and 2 ships have a Tier Modifier of 200
• Tier 3+ ships have a Tier Modifier of 400

(The purpose of the Tier Modifier would appear to be to normalise the maximum bonus to speed across the tiers – Tier 1 and 2 ships are only affected by two Captain skills, with a maximum stat bonus of 48, while Tier 3+ ships are affected by three Captain skills, with a maximum stat bonus of 100. Hence, the different modifiers result in a maximum bonus of 24% for Tier 1 and 2 ships and 25% for Tier 3+ ships.)

Some examples:

Captain A is commanding a Tier 2 Cruiser equipped with Impulse Engines Mk I (Flight Speed bonus of +7.8), has Starship Command-7 and Cruiser Captain-7, for a total Stat Bonus of 45, and a current engine power level of 70. His Impulse speed at full throttle will be:

5 + (7.8 + (70 – 50) x 0.15 x 1) x (1 + 45 / 200)

= 5 + 10.8 x 1.225

= 18.2 Impulse

Captain B is commanding a Tier 3 Heavy Escort equipped with Hyper-Impulse Engines Mk III (Flight Speed bonus of +11.6), has Starship Command-7, Escort Captain-7 and Heavy Escort Captain-5, for a total Stat Bonus of 81, and a current engine power level of 30. His Impulse speed at full throttle will be:

5 + (11.6 + (30 – 50) x 0.2 x 1.35) x (1 + 81 /400)

= 5 + 6.2 x 1.2025

= 12.5 Impulse

Throttle

The formula above determines the maximum Impulse speed of a ship at 100% throttle. Throttle is on a simple linear scale, so at 50% throttle, the ship will travel at half the maximum speed, and so on.

Reverse

In reverse, a ship’s speed will be 25% of the maximum Impulse speed according to the above formula (reverse is effectively -25% throttle).

Full Impulse

The Full Impulse speed of a ship is the Impulse speed at 100 engine power according to the formula above, plus the Full Impulse Flight Speed bonus of the equipped engine.

Inertia

The Inertia value of a ship affects its acceleration and deceleration – the higher the value, the faster the ship changes speed. This is quite noticeable when switching from an escort to a cruiser, but I haven’t yet done enough testing to determine the details.

Engines and Speed

Engines have three significant attributes when it comes to ship speed – Flight Speed bonus, Full Impulse flight speed bonus and Engine Type Modifier:

• The Flight Speed bonus of an engine appears to be determined by the type of engine (Impulse, Hyper or Combat) and its Mark, and affected by the Impulse Modifier of the ship it is equipped on (the same engine will have different Flight Speed bonuses on a cruiser and an escort, for example). I haven’t done extensive testing on how these factors work yet, but common (‘white’) engines appear to gain around +0.4 Flight Speed per Mark
• The Full Impulse Flight Speed bonus of engines appears to be determined by Mark – it does not appear to vary by type or by the Impulse Modifier of the ship it is equipped on. Again, I haven’t done extensive testing, but it appears that common (‘white’) engines gain around +5 Full Impulse Flight Speed per Mark
• The Engine Type Modifier is a hidden attribute of engines that came to light when comparing data from many different engines on many different ships. So far, all engines I’ve looked at appear to count as either Impulse, Hyper or Combat
• These attributes may be modified by bonuses on rare (‘green’ and above) engines. So far, I’ve come across rare engines with bonuses to Flight Speed and Full Impulse Flight Speed. I haven’t yet come across any rare engines with a bonus to Engine Type Modifier, but they may exist

There are also a few other things worth noting about engines:

• The tooltips for engines display a single decimal place for values below 10, but only show a rounded integer for values of 10 or higher. An engine that lists a +11 Flight Speed bonus, for example, may have an actual Flight Speed bonus of anywhere from +10.5 to +11.4
• At the time of writing, there is a UI bug that causes the tooltips for all ship equipment to show the values for the last ship you purchased, not your currently active ship. This is a display bug only (you actually get the correct value), but can be confusing when switching between different ships

Effects of Speed

Besides the obvious impact on how long it takes your ship to get somewhere and manoeuvring in combat, the current speed of your ship determines its base Defence value. This appears be calculated as:

Defence % = Impulse Speed x 2.5 – 15

There appears to be a ’soft cap’ on Defence at 50% (26 Impulse), although bonuses can take the value to at least 60%.

The details of ‘to hit’ calculations in STO are still unclear, although the recent patch that updated the Ship Status tab of the Character Status window contained some new information. It seems that the base chance to hit is 95%, which would give a basic calculation of:

To Hit % = 95 + Accuracy Mods – Defence

If the result is over 100%, the excess is added to your Critical Severity, resulting in larger critical hits.

A few notes about ‘to hit’, accuracy and defence:

• The Elusive captain trait appears to give a simple +10 to Defence at all speeds, and is not affected by the 50% soft cap (an Elusive captain with a speed of 26+ Impulse has a defence of 60%)
• The Accurate captain traits appears to give a simple +10 to Accuracy for all weapons
• Accuracy bonuses on weapon tooltips are currently shown as fractional values – a weapon that lists ‘0.1 Accuracy’, for example, has +10 Accuracy
• It’s highly likely that the actual to hit calculations take into account other factors (the relative levels of the attacker and defender may be figured in somehow, for example)

Implications

So, that’s quite a lot of numbers. What do they actually mean? Here are some of the important implications of the way that Impulse speeds appear to be calculated:

• The Impulse speed of a ship at 50 engine power (before any stat bonuses from Captain skills are figured in) is the Flight Speed of the engine + 5
• All ships with the same Impulse Modifier will have the same speed at any given engine power level when equipped with the same engine, before Captain skills are figured in
• Thus, all Federation cruisers and science vessels (with the exception of the Deep Space Science Vessel) have the same speeds when equipped with the same engine, before Captain skills are figured in
• Likewise, all Federation escorts have the same speeds when equipped with the same engine, before Captain skills are figured in
• The higher the Impulse Modifier of a ship, the more speed it gains at engine power levels above 50, but the more speed it loses at engine power levels below 50
• In comparison to normal Impulse engines, Hyper-Impulse engines gain more speed at engine power levels above 50, but lose more speed at engine power levels below 50
• In comparison to normal Impulse engines, Combat Impulse engines gain less speed at engine power levels above 50, but lose less speed at engine power levels below 50
• Thus, which type of engine you should use depends on your engine power settings:
  • If your engine power in combat is typically below 50, you will tend to get better speeds from Combat Impulse engines
  • If your engine power in combat is typically above 50, you will tend to get better speeds from Hyper-Impulse engines
  • If your engine power in combat frequently moves above and below 50, you will tend to get better average speeds from normal Impulse engines
• The maximum speed increase from Captain skills is 24% for Tier 1 and 2 ships and 25% for Tier 3+ ships, and is applied after all other factors (but before adding the base speed of 5)
• As such, speed increases from Captain skills are cumulative with other factors affecting speed – the higher your relevant Captain skills, the more benefit you get from faster engines and high engine power levels, for example
• Impulse speed has a significant impact on your chances of being hit in space combat
• At very low Impulse speeds (6 and below) your chances of being hit in space combat are actually increased, and any critical hits you suffer are likely to be more severe
• You get the greatest defensive benefit at 26 Impulse

Notes

The Impulse speed formula above appears to match in-game speeds to an accuracy of 1 decimal place in all the cases I’ve tested so far. Although Impulse speeds are displayed to two decimal places, there seems to be a degree of weirdness with the second decimal place. This may be down to factors that I haven’t yet identified, but my suspicion is that it’s the result of rounding errors, so I haven’t worried too much about it.

Turn Rate

Ship turn rates in STO are measured in degrees per second, and appear to be determined as follows:

Base + TM x (1 + TB /100 + Stat / TMod + APow / 100) + ETB

Base is the base turn rate. All ships currently appear to have a base turn rate of 3 degrees/sec with no engine equipped (again, presumably this comes from thrusters build into the hull).

TM is the Turn Modifier of the ship type, which is the Turn Rate listed on on the information terminals in the room above the Shipyard on Earth Spacedock (where you go to buy new ships and to trade Exploration Badges for ship weapons and equipment) minus 3.

For example, the Turn Rate listed for the T2 Escort is 16, so its Turn Modifier is 16 – 3 = 13. The Turn Rate listed for the T4 Exploration Cruiser is 5, so its Turn Modifier is 5 – 3 = 2.

TB is the total Turn Bonus from any items, abilities or other modifiers that provide a percentage bonus to turn rate.

For example, a Tactical captain with a +25% turn rate console activates Attack Pattern Alpha II for another +65%, giving a total Turn Bonus of 25 + 65 = 90.

Stat is the total Stat Bonus from the captain’s skills and any modifiers. Note that the Federation Tier 1 Light Cruiser counts as a cruiser, and so is affected by the Tier 2 Cruiser Captain skill.

TMod is the Tier Modifier of the ship:

• Tier 1 and 2 ships have a Tier Modifier of 200
• Tier 3+ ships have a Tier Modifier of 400

(As with Impulse Speed, the purpose of the Tier Modifier would appear to be to normalise the maximum bonus to turn rate across the tiers – Tier 1 and 2 ships are only affected by two Captain skills, with a maximum stat bonus of 48, while Tier 3+ ships are affected by three Captain skills, with a maximum stat bonus of 100. Hence, the different modifiers result in a maximum bonus of 24% for Tier 1 and 2 ships and 25% for Tier 3+ ships.)

APow is the current Auxiliary Power level of the ship.

ETB is the Engine Turn Bonus (see Engines and Turning, below)

Some examples:

Captain A is commanding a Tier 2 Escort (listed Turn Rate of 16, so Turn Modifier of 13), has Starship Command-7 and Escort Captain-7, for a total Stat Bonus of 45, and a current auxiliary power level of 50. He is using a common engine with no turn bonus. His turn rate will be:

3 + 13 x (1+ 0 / 100 + 45 /200 + 50 / 100) + 0

= 3 + 13 x 1.725

= 25.4 degrees/sec

If he activates Attack Pattern Alpha II for a +65% turn rate bonus, his turn rate will be:

3 + 13 x (1+ 65 / 100 + 45 /200 + 50 / 100) + 0

= 3 + 13 x 2.375

= 33.9 degrees/sec

Captain B is commanding a Tier 4 Exploration Cruiser (listed Turn Rate of 5, so Turn Modifier of 2) equipped with an rare engine with a 0.2 turn bonus, has Starship Command-7, Cruiser Captain-7 and Exploration Cruiser Captain-5, for a total Stat Bonus of 81, and a current auxiliary power level of 75. His turn rate will be:

3 + 2 x (1+ 0 / 100 + 81 /400 + 75 / 100) + 0.2

= 3 + 2 x 1.9525 + 0.2

= 7.1 degrees/sec

Throttle

A ship’s turn rate is affected by its current throttle setting. At 25% throttle or higher a ship receives the full turn rate as determined above. At 0% throttle, everything other than the 3 base turn rate is multiplied by a very small modifier (it appears to be around 0.06) – in most cases, your turn rate at 0% throttle will be somewhere between 3 and 4 degrees/sec.

As the throttle control doesn’t have any tooltip to tell you exactly what throttle you’re currently at, it’s hard to be sure how throttle settings between 0% and 25% function, but it appears to be a fairly smooth progression from the minimal turn rate at 0% to the full turn rate at 25%.

Reverse

Ships in reverse turn at their full turn rate (reverse is effectively -25% throttle).

Full Impulse

Full Impulse drains power from all systems apart from the engines, and the drain on auxiliary power will reduce your turn rate, according to the formula above.

Speed

Your current Impulse speed has no effect on your turn rate, and so affects the radius of your turns – turning at low speeds will result in a ‘tighter’ turn, but will still take the same amount of time to complete:

Both of the above turns will take the same time to complete, but the lower speed turn will have a smaller radius.

Inertia

A ship’s Inertia rating affects its acceleration and deceleration. As such, it has no effect on turn rate, but can affect the ’shape’ of the turn – a ship that’s turning is constantly changing velocity, so ships with low Inertia ratings (which change velocity slowly) will tend to ’slide’ as they turn.

Turn Rate and Pitch

A ship’s turn rate appears to affect the rate at which the ship can pitch up and down, as well the rate at which it turns on the horizontal plane.

I haven’t done enough testing to judge whether the ‘pitch rate’ is the same as the turn rate, but the difference is very noticeable when moving from a low turn rate ship to a high turn rate ship or vice versa.

Engines and Turning

Although engine tooltips display a Flight Turn Rate value, common (‘white’) engines have no impact on a ship’s turn rate, and the value displayed is determined entirely by the ship the engine is equipped on, regardless of the Mark of the engine.

Some rare (‘green’ or better) engines do have an Engine Turn Bonus, which is normally indicated by a [Turn] tag in the engine’s name. Engine Turn Bonuses function as a flat additive bonus to a ship’s turn rate that’s unaffected by skills, other turn bonuses or auxiliary power. In general, it appears that each [Turn] in the engine’s name gives an Engine Turn Bonus of 10% of the Turn Modifier of the ship the engine is equipped on.

For example, an Impulse Engine [Turn] equipped on a Tier 2 Escort (Turn Modifier 13) will increase the turn rate of the ship by 0.1 x 13 = 1.3 degrees/sec.

An Impulse Engine [Turn][Turn] equipped on a Tier 4 Exploration Cruiser (Turn Modifier 2) will increase the turn rate of the ship by 0.2 x 2 = 0.4 degrees/sec.

There are also a few other things worth noting about engines (these are the same as for Impulse Speed, above, but are repeated here for clarity):

• The tooltips for engines display a single decimal place for values below 10, but only show a rounded integer for values of 10 or higher. If an engine lists a 20 Flight Turn Rate, for example, the actual Flight Turn Rate may be anywhere from 19.5 to 20.4
• At the time of writing, there is a UI bug that causes the tooltips for all ship equipment to show the values for the last ship you purchased, not your currently active ship. This is a display bug only (you actually get the correct value), but can be confusing when switching between different ships

Implications

Again, quite a few numbers here, so let’s try to pull out some of the important aspects of the way that ship turn rates appear to be calculated:

• Turn rates are measured in degrees per second
• The base turn rate of a ship at 50 Auxiliary power, before any skills or other turn rate bonuses are figured in, is the Flight Turn Rate listed on the ship’s engine + 3.
• The Turn Rate listed for each ship type on the information terminals at Earth Spacedock is the the theoretical turn rate before auxiliary power, skills and any turn rate bonuses are taken into account. In practise, the turn rate will nearly always be higher, as you will normally have at least 25 auxiliary power (barring debuffs or other effects)
• There is much greater variety in turn rates between ship types than in speed
• However, engines have far less impact on turn rate than they do on speed (common ‘white’ engines appear to have no effect on turn rates at all, regardless of Mark)
• Auxiliary power can have a significant impact on turn rate, and this impact is proportional to the Turn Modifier of a ship – the higher a ship’s Turn Modifier, the more benefit it gains from auxiliary power
• The maximum turn rate increase from Captain skills is 24% for Tier 1 and 2 ships and 25% for Tier 3+ ships, and is applied alongside all other factors
• As such, turn rate increases from Captain skills are additive with other factors effecting turn rate, and do not multiply their effects, unlike speed
• Thus Captain skills have less overall impact on turn rates than they do on speed – it appears that a single +25% turn rate console will provide the same increase in turn rate as having level 9 in all relevant Captain skills for a T3+ ship

Notes

As with the Impulse speed formula, the turn rate formula above appears to match in-game turn rates to an accuracy of 1 decimal place in all the cases I’ve tested so far.

Hull Strength

The bonus hull strength gained from Captain skills appears to be calculated as follows:

Bonus Hull = Stat x (Base Hull / 635)

Bonus Hull is the increase in hull strength gained.

Stat is the total Stat Bonus from the captain’s skills and any modifiers. Note that the Federation Tier 1 Light Cruiser counts as a cruiser, and so is affected by the Tier 2 Cruiser Captain skill.

Base Hull is the base hull strength of the ship.

Some examples:

Captain A is commanding a Tier 2 Escort (base hull strength of 15,000) and has Starship Command-7 and Escort Captain-7, for a total Stat Bonus of 45. He will gain:

45 x (15,000 / 635)

= 1,063 hull strength

Giving him a total hull strength of 15,000 + 1,063 = 16,063

Captain B is commanding a Tier 4 Exploration Cruiser (base hull strength of 32,500) and has Starship Command-7, Cruiser Captain-7 and Exploration Cruiser Captain-5, for a total Stat Bonus of 81. He will gain:

81 x (32,500 / 635)

= 4,146 hull strength

Giving him a total hull strength of 32,500 + 4,146 = 36,646

Hull Repair Rates

The base hull repair rate of a ship appears to be determined by the ship’s class, as follows:

The base repair rate is modified as follows:

• The captain’s total stat bonus from the Starship Engineering Training (Tier 1), Starship Engine Maintenance (Tier 2) and Starship Hull Repair (Tier 5) skills is applied as a percentage increase (other skills may also provide bonuses, but those are the only three I’ve been able to confirm at the time of writing)
• Although the human racial trait Leadership is supposed to provide a 15% bonus to repair rate, this appears to be broken at the time of writing – or at least not showing up in the UI report of hull repair rate
• When a ship is in combat, its hull repair rate is divided by 6

For example, Captain A is commanding a Tier 4 Exploration Cruiser (base hull repair rate of 72%/min) and has Starship Engineering Training-7 and Starship Engine Maintenance-7 for a total Stat Bonus of 45. His hull repair rate will be 72 x 1.45 = 104.4%/minute. In combat, his hull repair rate will be 104.4 / 6 = 17.4%/min

Hull Repair and Crew

A ship’s hull repair rate is affected by the status of its crew – as crew are injured and killed, the hull repair rate will fall.

It’s proved difficult to do any useful testing of this so far, and the difference between ‘injured’ and ‘killed’ crew remains unclear (my suspicion is that what counts for hull repair is the percentage of alive, uninjured crew remaining, and that the distinction between ‘injured’ and ‘killed’ lies in how quickly the crew levels regenerate, with killed crew taking longer to be replaced – but I’ve been unable to confirm this yet).

It does seem that you can lose a small percentage of your crew without losing any hull repair rate (around 5-10% of your maximum), and then the hull repair rate starts to drop in a fairly linear fashion, but this is purely anecdotal and may be incorrect.

Implications

There are a few things worth noting here:

• Unlike Impulse speed and turn rate, there does not appear to be any ‘normalisation’ of the stat bonuses from Captain skills when it comes to Hull strength – Tier 3+ ships can potentially gain significantly more bonus hull strength from Captain skills than Tier 1 and 2 ships
• As hull repair rates are percentages, ships will stronger hulls will repair more hull points per minute than weaker ships
• Over the course of longer combats, the innate hull repair rate of ships can have a significant impact on the outcome of a battle, especially for ships with stronger hulls
• As detailed in the Starship Weapons Overview article, all torpedoes have a chance to injure and/or kill the target’s crew, reducing its repair rate

Notes

The formula given for bonus hull strength above appears to appears to match in-game hull strengths to within a point or so in all cases I’ve checked so far. I’m not sure where the 635 modifier comes from, as it seems like a strange number to choose, but the formula does appear to work.

Shields

The shield strength of ships varies significantly according to class and tier. The following table shows the shield strength per facing of a Shield Array Standard Issue (effectively a ‘Mark 0′ shield) when equipped on the various Federation ships from Tier 1 to 3:

There are several things worth noting here:

• The shields of a Tier 2 Cruiser are 14% stronger than a Tier 1 Light Cruiser, while the shields of a Tier 3 Heavy Cruiser are 29% stronger
• Science vessel shields strengths are 30% higher than a cruiser of the same tier
• Escort shields are 83.3% of a cruiser of the same tier
• Shield regen rates appear to follow the same progressions as shield strength – the Tier 2 Cruiser gains 14% regeneration over the Tier 1 Light Cruiser, for example, and a science vessels shield regeneration rates are 30% higher than a cruiser of the same tier, while an escort’s are 83.3% of a cruiser of the same tier

Notes

My testing with shields has been limited so far, and this section will be expanded as new data is gathered.

It’s also worth noting that at the time of writing, the same UI bug that affects engines also affects shields, causing the tooltips for all shields to show the values for the last ship you purchased, not your currently active ship. This is a display bug only (you actually get the correct value), but can be confusing when switching between different ships

Other Systems

There are a couple of other aspects of the starship mechanics in Star Trek: Online that I’m still in the process of investigating.

Stealth Detection

The details of how cloaking and other stealth effects work in space combat remain unclear, although it would appear that the basic system may be similar to that used in City of Heroes, whereby the Stealth Range of a cloaked ship is subtracted from the Stealth Detection Rating of an opponent to determine the range at which the cloaked ship will become visible.

Each ship appears to have a base Stealth Detection Rating (Science Vessels having the highest ratings), which is then modified by the ship’s auxiliary power level and the stat bonus of the ship’s captain from the Starship Operations Training (T1), Starship Sensors (T2) and Starship Sensor Array (T3) skills, but I am still in the process of gathering more data to determine the exact relationships (it’s also possible that other skills have an impact, although those three are the only ones I’ve been able to confirm so far).

Crew Recovery

It seems that the crew recovery rate shown on the Ship Status window may be be bugged. Although crew recovery appears to occur at a higher rate when out of combat, the rate displayed does not change. Likewise, although the official manual still states that crew recovery is affected by auxiliary power, the rate displayed on the ship status window doesn’t appear to be affected by it.

Source: theenginescannaetakeit.wordpress.com

As such, your ship’s weapons are an important element of your character’s effectiveness. This article takes a look at some of the basic concepts governing weapons in STO, examines the various types available, and explains how the different factors that affect your weapons’ damage appear to function. An understanding of these areas should help you make more informed decisions about which weapons to use and how to get the best out of them in the heat of combat.

Contents:

• General Concepts
  • Marks
  • Bays
  • Firing Arcs
  • DPS & Burst vs. Sustained Damage
  • Weapon Tooltips
  • Shared Cooldowns
  • Weapon Skills
  • Weapon Abilities
• Energy Weapons
  • Beam Weapons
  • Cannon Weapons
  • Cannon Cooldowns
  • Turret Weapons
  • Energy Types
  • Weapon Power & Power Drain
• Projectile Weapons
  • Torpedo Launchers
  • Torpedo Cooldowns
  • Mine Launchers
  • Mine Cooldowns
• Damage Modifiers
• DPS Comparison over Range

General Concepts

Before examining the various types of starship weapons available in Star Trek: Online, there are several basic concepts that are worth considering and bearing in mind when selecting and using them.

Marks

Like most equipment and items in STO, starship weapons are available in different Marks. The higher Mark of a weapon, the more powerful it is. Marks range from I to X (1-10), and the Mark of weapons you can equip is limited by the rank of your captain:

The ‘Standard Issue’ phaser beam arrays and photon torpedo launchers that your initial ship is equipped with are effectively ‘Mk 0′ versions of those weapons.

For more information on how Marks figure into damage, see the Damage Modifiers section, below.

Bays

Starship weapons are mounted in weapon bays. Ships have two bays – one fore and one aft, each of which has slots for up to four weapons, depending on the tier and category of the ship.

(For details of how many slots the various ships have in their fore and aft bays, see Suricata’s excellent Ship Tier Charts.)

All weapon types except mine launchers can be mounted in fore bays. Only beam arrays, turrets, torpedo launchers and mine launchers can be mounted in aft bays.

There are currently no ships with port or starboard bays, and no way to adjust the facing of a weapon in a bay. All weapons must be mounted facing either in the same direction as the ship is pointing (fore bay) or in the opposite direction to which the ship is pointing (aft bay).

Firing Arcs

The various types of starship weapon have different firing arcs. In order for a weapon to be fired, the target must be within the weapon’s arc.

For example, torpedo launchers have a 90° firing arc – in order to fire a torpedo, your target must be within the front 90° of your ship (for launchers mounted in the fore bay) or the rear 90° of your ship (for launchers mounted in the aft bay).

Again, the exception is mines, which have no firing arc and do not require a target to fire, instead being dropped behind your ship.

This diagram shows the firing arcs of the other weapon types in STO when mounted in a ship’s fore bay:

It’s important to realise that, as space combat in STO occurs in three dimensions, weapon ‘arcs’ are in fact cones, extending above and below your ship’s facing, as well as to either side.

For example, a torpedo launcher mounted in the fore bay has the following firing arc, when viewed from the side:

It’s also important to recognise that, due to their limited firing arcs, you can generally only bring the weapons mounted in one of your bays to bear on a target at the same time. The notable exceptions are beam arrays and turrets.

The 250° firing arcs of beam arrays mounted in the fore and aft bays overlap for 70° on either side (and above and below the ship):

By turning sideways or positioning itself above or below a target, then, a ship can ‘broadside’ with beam arrays in both the fore and aft bays at the same time.

Turrets have a 360° firing arc, so can always be brought to bear on any target in range, whether mounted in the fore or aft bays.

There is, however, a trade-off for these advantages, as the damage output of the different weapon types is balanced against their firing arcs. In general, the wider the firing arc of a weapon type, the lower its base damage, and vice versa.

DPS and Burst vs Sustained Damage

DPS stands for Damage Per Second. As it measures the rate at which damage is dealt, it’s useful for comparing weapons with different firing speeds.

For example, consider two weapons: Weapon A does 100 damage and fires every 10 seconds, while Weapon B does 500 damage and fires every 50 seconds. Although the two weapons do different amounts of damage per hit, they both deal damage at the same rate of 10 Damage Per Second.

As a measure of a weapon’s ability to deal sustained damage, DPS is an important consideration when selecting which weapons to use. However, sustained damage is not the only important consideration in space combat in Star Trek: Online.

In some situations, the ability to deal as much damage as possible in a very short period of time – often referred to as burst damage – can be more significant.

For example, as shields regenerate every 6 seconds, whenever you knock down a target’s facing shield, you want to do as much damage as possible to the opponent’s hull in the few seconds before the next shield regeneration ‘tick’.

Likewise, when fighting a faster, more manoeuvrable opponent, it can be hard to keep them in your firing arcs. When you can bring your weapons to bear on such an opponent, you want to hit them as hard as you can before they move out of your firing arcs.

In general, the burst potential of a weapon in STO is balanced against its sustained damage – the more burst damage a weapon can deal, the lower its DPS will tend to be.

For example, quantum torpedoes do more damage than photon torpedoes of the same Mark, but have a longer recharge time and thus a lower DPS. In situations where you want to do as much damage as possible with a single shot, quantums will hit harder. However, when you are able to fire multiple torpedoes in a row, photons will deal more sustained damage over time.

Weapon Tooltips

When looking at weapons in-game, it’s important to realize that some weapon tooltips are dynamic – they display the damage and DPS of a weapon modified by your captain’s stats and current weapon power level – while others are static, and display the base damage and DPS of the weapon.

• The tooltips for weapons on your hotbar and in the weapons tray on the HUD are dynamic
• The tooltips displayed for weapons in your inventory, on your ship’s status screen and in stores are static

Understanding Damage Reports

In combat, Star Trek: Online shows you how much damage your weapons are doing with each attack in two places – the small yellow numbers that float up from your target and the Combat tab in the chat window.

The small yellow numbers show only one thing – the amount of hull damage each attack is inflicting. For more detail, you need to look at the combat log in the chat window. Although it tends to scroll too fast to be particularly readable in combat, it can be worth taking a look back through the numbers after a fight.

For each of your attacks, you’ll normally see something like:

<target> absorbs X (Y) damage to <target> with
Shield Array-<facing>

Your <weapon> deals A (B) <damage type> damage to <target>

• X is how much damage your attack did to the target’s shields.
• Y is how much damage would have been done to the hull if it hadn’t been applied to the shields.
• A is how much damage your attack did to the target’s hull.
• B is the total damage your attack did

The first line, with the X and Y numbers, is only shown when the target had an active shield up at the time of the attack. Y is only shown if the target’s shield or hull was resistant to the damage you did, and B is only shown when the target had an active shield at the time of the attack and/or the target’s hull was resistant to the damage you did.

For example, if you saw:

Bird-of-Prey absorbs 180 (162) damage to Bird-of-Prey with
Shield Array-Front

Your Phaser Array deals 18 (200) Phaser damage to Bird-of-Prey

This means that your phaser array hit the front shield facing of a Bird of Prey for 200 damage (B). 180 of the damage was applied to the shield (X) and would have caused 162 damage to the hull (Y), so the Bird of Prey has a 10% hull resistance to Phaser damage (Y/X = 0.9). The hull of the Bird of Prey took 18 damage (A), which means that the Bird of Prey’s shield has a 10% bleedthrough (20 damage bled through the shield and was reduced to 18 by the 10% resistance).

Taking the time to look through the combat log can reveal useful information about both the effectiveness of your weapons against an opponent and the type of weapons an opponent used against you.

As Starfleet officers tend to spend each rank fighting similar types of opponent in PvE, it can be handy to know what weapons are effective against them and which damage types they’re likely to use on you.

Shared Cooldowns

Cannons, torpedo launchers and mine launchers all have shared cooldowns. Firing one of these weapon types will trigger a cooldown, and you will be unable to fire another weapon of the same type until the cooldown has expired.

For example, firing a torpedo launcher triggers a 3 second cooldown on all torpedo launchers on your ship – until this cooldown has expired, you cannot fire another torpedo launcher.

As well as preventing you from firing more than one of these weapons at the same time, cooldowns limit the maximum rate of fire you can attain with multiple weapons of these types, and thus the maximum number of these weapons that can be used effectively in the same bay. These areas are discussed in more detail in the appropriate entries in the Energy Weapons and Projectile Weapons sections, below.

Weapon Skills

Your captain’s skills can increase the damage your weapons do.

All starship weapons are affected by three skills, one from Tier 1, one from Tier 2 and one from Tier 3-5. In general, it’s fairly easy to see which skills will affect a given weapon.

For example, a Tetryon Beam Array is an energy weapon, so it’s affected by Starship Energy Weapons Training (Tier 1), it’s a beam weapon, so it’s affected by Starship Beam Weapons (Tier 2), and it’s a tetryon weapon, so it’s affected by Starship Tetryon Weapons (Tier 4).

Note that turrets count as cannons for the purposes of skills.

For more information on skills and how skill-based stats are calculated, see the Skills: The Numbers article. For more information on how skill-based stats affect weapon damage, see the Damage Modifiers section, below.

Weapon Abilities

Several abilities affect the next attack you make with a specific type of weapon, or change the behaviour of a type of weapon for a short period.

For example, the Torpedo: High Yield ability increases the damage of the first torpedo launcher you fire in the next 30 seconds.

Although these abilities are not in themselves affected by your captain’s skills, the attack or weapon that they modify is affected as normal.

Energy Weapons

Energy weapons use power from the ship’s warp core to project beams or bolts of energy at their target, and come in six basic types:

Beam Weapons

Beam weapons are the most common starship weapons in the Star Trek universe, and are the default weapons of most Federation vessels. Beam weapons can be mounted on all ships.

• Beam Arrays trade damage output for a very wide firing arc, making them easy to bring to bear on an opponent and well suited to less manoeuvrable ships like cruisers. The overlapping firing arcs of beam arrays mounted fore and aft helps to compensate for their relatively low damage, allowing beam arrays in both weapon bays to be brought to bear at the same time by turning sideways to a target and ‘broadsiding’, as described in the Firing Arcs section of General Concepts, above.
• Dual Beam Banks are more focussed offensive weapons, offering better damage output over a smaller firing arc. They are the highest damage energy weapons that can be mounted on any ship, which makes them appealing for offensively minded science vessel captains, as well as effective compliments to cannons for escort captains.

Beam weapons have no shared cooldown, and all beams that can be brought to bear on a target can be fired simultaneously. While this can give multiple beam load-outs slightly more burst potential than cannons, it can also lead to significant weapon power drain (see Weapon Power and Power Drain, below).

Cannon Weapons

Cannon weapons fire multiple bolts of energy rather than beams, and are dedicated military weapons. The only Federation ships that can mount cannons are escorts.

• Cannons are similar to beam arrays, trading damage output for a relatively large firing arc. It is possible to perform limited ‘broadsides’ with fore cannons and aft beam arrays, as their arcs will overlap for 35° on either side, but given the relatively high turn rate of most of the ships that can mount cannon weapons, this is of dubious utility – much greater damage output can usually be achieved by turning to face the target and using Dual Cannons or Dual Heavy Cannons.
• Dual Cannons and Dual Heavy Cannons both trade a very narrow firing arc for high damage, and are the most powerful energy weapons. At present, the principal difference between the two is fire rate – dual cannons fire twice as many bolts per activation as dual heavy cannons, but each dual cannon bolt hits for half as much damage as a dual heavy cannon bolt, giving them the same DPS.

Cannon Cooldowns

All cannons have a 1 second shared cooldown – firing a cannon of any type prevents any other cannon from firing for 1 second – which means that multiple cannons must be fired in sequence.

There has been much discussion and debate over the relative effectiveness and optimal numbers of dual cannons and dual heavy cannons. Judging from the beta, it appears that the original intention of the design was for dual cannons and dual heavy cannons to have different optimum numbers. However, test results indicate that this is not presently the case, and that there appear to be some glitches in how multiple cannons function.

For the time being, the best option appears to be to mount dual cannons or dual heavy cannons in pairs, with two dual heavy cannons seeming to perform slightly better than two dual cannons. Adding a third will provide a slight increase in damage output, but not as much as using a different weapon instead (even a turret, the lowest damage weapon type, appears to add more damage output than a third dual or dual heavy cannon).

I’m far from convinced that multiple cannons are working right at the moment, so am going to hold off on going into the details of the testing I’ve done for now – my expectation is that there will be changes at some point, which would render it all obsolete. For the time being, if you are interested in detailed results of testing multiple cannons, I’d highly recommend the work of some of the posters to the Escort Class Starships and Tactical Officer Discussion sections of the official message boards and Legatus in particular, as my results so far seem to match his.

Turret Weapons

Turrets are unique in several ways. Although they fire bolts and are treated as cannons for the purposes of skills, abilities and range, they have no shared cooldown (and are not affected by the shared cooldown of cannons) and can be mounted on any ship.

They are also the only weapon type with a full 360° firing arc, but pay for this by being the lowest damage energy weapons.

Nonetheless, that 360° arc has its uses. A single turret mounted in either weapon bay will cover any gaps in the firing arcs of a ship’s other weapons, ensuring that at least one weapon can always be brought to bear on a target. They are also the only weapon type other than beam arrays that allow you to bring weapons in both bays to bear on the same target, and unlike beam arrays, don’t require ‘broadsiding’ to achieve this – turrets mounted in the rear bay can fire upon targets directly ahead of you.

Energy Types

The energy type of energy weapons has no effect on the base damage of the weapon. Instead, it determines which Tier 3-5 skill boosts the damage of weapon, which resistance the target uses to reduce damage, and gives the chance of a special effect or ‘proc’ on every shot.

Each of the six energy types has a different special effect:

I haven’t yet taken a close look at these special effects, but there are a few things I’ve noticed so far:

• The DoT (Damage over Time) effect that Plasma energy weapons have a chance to apply appears to scale with the Mark of the weapon (I’m not yet sure if it is also affected by your captain’s skills)
• The shield damage that Tetryon weapons have a chance to apply does not scale with Mark
• The power drain effect that Polaron weapons have a chance to apply doesn’t scale with Mark
• The special effect of Antiproton weapons comes from the descriptions of the Antiproton weapons available as rewards from the Admiral-3+ Borg missions – I haven’t yet been able to get hold of one of these for testing

Weapon Power and Power Drain

The damage done by energy weapons is affected by the current weapon power level of your ship – the higher your current weapon power level, the more damage your energy weapons will do.

In addition, firing energy weapons drains your current weapon power level. Power levels are replenished at a constant rate, and in general you can fire two energy weapons at the same time without suffering any significant loss in weapon power level (and thus damage). If you attempt to fire more than two energy weapons at the same time, however, you may drain your power more quickly than it is replenished, and your weapon power level will start to drop if you maintain constant fire.

Note that this effect is often more noticeable with beam weapons and turrets than with cannons, as the shared cooldown on cannons prevents them from being fired simultaneously, and thus spreads out their power drain.

There are essentially four approaches to dealing with power drain from energy weapons:

• Fire energy weapons in ‘bursts’, allowing pauses for your weapon power level to recover
• Equip items and use abilities that increase power transfer rate, which also increases the rate at which weapon power is replenished (examples include EPS Flow Regulator engineering consoles and the EPS Power Transfer ability of Engineer captains)
• Use items and abilities that increase your weapon power, either to give more power to drain or to replenish what your weapons have already drained (examples include Emergency Power to Weapons and Weapon Batteries)
• Change your weapons load-out to use fewer energy weapons

For more information on the effects of power levels, see the Ship Power Guide article. For more details on how your current weapon power level affects the damage of energy weapons, see the Damage Modifiers section, below.

Projectile Weapons

In contrast to energy weapons, projectile weapons launch physical objects – torpedoes or mines – which carry an explosive payload to the target.

There are some significant differences between projectile and energy weapons:

• Projectile weapon damage is not affected by your weapon power, and projectile weapons do not drain any power when fired
• The projectile type of a projectile weapon affects the weapon’s base damage and recharge rate, unlike the energy type of energy weapons
• All projectile weapons do Kinetic damage. All shields have an innate 75% resistance to Kinetic damage, so projectile weapons are far less effective at damaging shields than energy weapons

Torpedo Launchers

Torpedoes are fired much like energy weapons, but must fly to their target after being launched.

All torpedo launchers have a 90° firing arc, and can be mounted in either the fore or aft bays.

• Photon torpedoes are the basic type of torpedo, and have a chance to injure and/or kill some of the crew of the target
• Quantum torpedoes have better burst damage than photons, but offer lower sustained damage. They have the same chance to injure and/or kill the target’s crew as photons
• Plasma torpedoes have a 33% chance to apply a Fire damage effect to the hull of the target (whether its shields are up or not) for 10 seconds. Using the Torpedo: High Yield ability with plasma torpedo launchers creates a single large plasma ball that does extreme damage but can be targeted and shot down
• Transphasic torpedoes have the lowest damage and DPS, but this can be deceptive – they have better shield penetration than other torpedoes, and initial testing suggests that against a shielded target they are actually more effective than the other, higher damage types
• Chroniton torpedoes slow the target’s movement and turn rate for 10 seconds. I haven’t been able to get hold of any for proper testing yet, however
• Tricobalt Mobile Devices are extremely powerful, and can damage and briefly disable up to 10 targets in a 2km sphere. Like High Yield plasma torpedoes, though, they can be targeted and shot down. Torpedo abilities like Torpedo: High Yield and Torpedo: Spread do not affect tricobalt mobile devices

Depending on the range and the target’s speed and maneuvering, it can take some time for a torpedo to impact – Photon, Plasma and Transphasic torpedoes all take around 10 seconds to hit a stationary target at 10km range, while Quantum torpedoes are noticeably faster, taking around 7 seconds to cover the same distance (I’ve yet to time Chroniton torpedoes or Tricobalt Mobile Devices).

Torpedo Cooldowns

All torpedo launchers have a 3 second shared cooldown (with the possible exception of Tricobalt Mobile Device Launchers, which I haven’t been able to test yet). This means that multiple launchers in the same bay must be fired in sequence, and the maximum fire rate possible is one torpedo every three seconds.

As the various launcher types have different recharge times, the number of them required to achieve this fire rate varies, and in some cases isn’t very efficient:

• Max Number is the number of launchers of that type in the same bay required to attain the maximum firing rate of a torpedo every 3 seconds -any additional launchers in the same bay will be wasted
• Efficiency is the percentage of their normal DPS that each launcher will contribute to your total DPS output at the max number of launchers

For example, plasma torpedo launchers have a recharge of 8 seconds, so the DPS listed on their tooltip is based on them firing every 8 seconds. With three plasma launchers mounted in the same bay, each will actually be firing every 9 seconds, and thus the DPS of each launcher will be 89% of normal.

• Optimal Number is the number of launchers of that type that can be mounted in the same bay while maintaining 100% of the DPS of each
• Optimal Rate is the average rate of fire at the optimal number of launchers in the same bay

Mine Launchers

Unlike other weapons, mine launchers have no firing arc and do not require a target to to be fired. When a mine launcher is activated, a group of five mines is released. The mines move into an ‘X’ pattern and take a few seconds to arm themselves, after which they will automatically target and home in on any hostile target that passes nearby.

Like all projectile weapons, mines do Kinetic damage, and thus are significantly less effective at damaging shields than energy weapons.

Mines offer several interesting tactical opportunities, but my testing with so far has been limited. There are a few things worth noting:

• Photon mines take 7 seconds to arm from when you activate the launcher (this may vary by type, but I need to do more testing to find out)
• Once armed, photon mines have a ’sensor range’ of 2.5km and will lock onto and home in on any hostile target that comes within that distance (again, this may vary by type, but more testing is required)
• Each individual mine appears to do around 20% of the damage of a torpedo of the same type and Mark
• Mines remain active for 60 seconds, after which they self-destruct
• It seems fair to assume that mines have similar special effects to torpedoes of the same type, but I have yet to confirm this
• Tricobalt device launchers, unlike other mine launchers, drop a single tricobalt device. It seems likely that this mine will behave in a similar fashion to a tricobalt mobile device, with a large area of effect

Mine Cooldowns

All mine launchers have a 9 second shared cooldown (with the possible exception of Tricobalt Device Launchers, which I haven’t been able to test yet). This means that multiple launchers in the same aft bay must be fired in sequence, and the maximum fire rate possible is one ‘mine deployment’ every nine seconds.

As the various launcher types have different recharge times, the number of them required to achieve this deployment rate varies, and in some cases isn’t very efficient:

• Max Number is the number of launchers of that type in the same bay required to attain the maximum deployment rate of one mine cluster every 9 seconds – any additional launchers in the same bay will be wasted
• Efficiency is the percentage of their normal DPS that each launcher will contribute to your total DPS output at the max number of launchers
• Optimal Number is the number of launchers of that type that can be mounted in the same bay while maintaining 100% of the DPS of each
• Optimal Rate is the average deployment rate at the optimal number of launchers in the same bay

It’s worth bearing in mind that the efficiency and optimal numbers in the above table assume that every mine launched will hit a target, which is fairly unlikely in most situations. As such, the DPS efficiency of multiple mine launchers is perhaps less import than the deployment rate – the more mine clusters you can launch, the more chance you have of at least some of them finding a target.

Damage Modifiers

There are several modifiers that affect the damage of your weapons in space combat – the base damage of the weapon, your captain’s level in the appropriate weapon skills, any bonuses to those skills, and (in the case of energy weapons), your current weapon power level and the range to the target.

Standard Issue and Mark Bonus

Before looking at how these modifiers are applied, it’s important to understand that the base damage of a weapon appears to be the sum of two factors – the ‘Standard Issue’ damage of the weapon type and a ‘Mark Bonus’:

• The Standard Issue damage of a weapon type is the damage of a ‘Mark 0′ version of that weapon type
• The Mark Bonus is roughly 10% of the Standard Issue damage of the weapon type per Mark of the weapon, up to 100% at Mark X.

(Note that it’s not actually a smooth +10%/Mark, at least for energy weapons. I’m going to be looking at the exact Mark Bonus in more detail soon, but for the moment, +10%/Mark is a good rule of thumb.)

Damage Calculations

Based on the testing I’ve done so far, the damage of your weapons appears to be calculated as follows:

1. Your captain’s total Stat Bonus for the weapon is applied as a percentage to the Standard Issue damage of the weapon
2. This is added to the base damage of the weapon
3. For energy weapons, the total damage is then modified by +2% for every point of weapon power over 50 or -2% for every point of weapon

This is the current damage displayed on the dynamic weapon tooltips on your hotbar or in the weapons tray, and for the mathematically-inclined can be summarised as:

(Base + (SI x (Stat/100)) x (WPow/50)

Where Base is the base damage of the weapon, SI is the Standard Issue damage of the weapon type, Stat is the total Stat Bonus and WPow is the current weapon power level.

(For details of how your captain’s Stat Bonuses are calculated, see the Skills: The Numbers article. For details on the effects of power levels, see the Ship Power Levels article. For a table of the Standard Issue damage of the various weapon types, see below.)

When an energy weapon is fired, the current damage is further modified by the range to the target:

• For beam weapons, damage is reduced by around -4% per km beyond 1km
• For cannon weapons (turrets count as cannons for the purposes of range), damage is reduced by around -8% per km beyond 2km

(For more details on the effects of range, see the Weapon Ranges article.)

A couple of examples:

A captain with a total Stat Bonus of 40 for photon torpedoes equips a Photon Torpedo Launcher Mk VI, with a base damage of 2,202 and a DPS of 339.

The Standard Issue damage for a photon torpedo launcher is 1,383. The captain’s stat bonus of 40 is applied as a percentage, giving 1,383 x 40% = 553 bonus damage.

That’s added to the base damage, giving 2,202 + 553 = 2755 damage. That’s a 25% increase over the base damage, so the DPS will be 424 (339 x 1.25).

A captain with a total Stat Bonus of 77 for tetryon beam weapons equips a Tetryon Beam Array Mk IX, with a base damage of 190 and DPS of 152. The current weapon power level of his ship is 82.

The Standard Issue damage for a beam array is 100. The captain’s stat bonus of 77 is applied as a percentage, giving 100 x 77% = 77 bonus damage.

This is added to the base damage, giving 190 + 77 = 267 damage. This is then increased by 64% due to the current weapon power level (82/50 = 1.64) to 438 (267 x 1.64). That’s a 230.5% increase over the base damage, so the DPS will be 350 (152 x 2.305).

If the captain fires at an opponent 5km away, the damage will be reduced by -16% due to range (-4% per km over 1km) and each pulse of the tetryon beam will strike the target for 368 damage (438 x 0.84).

Damage Randomisation

As becomes clear in your first space combat encounters, there’s a degree of randomness in how much an attack actually deals. I haven’t done an extensive analysis of this yet, but it appears to be somewhere in the range of +/- 5-10% for each attack.

Standard Issue Damage Values

The Standard Issue damage of each weapon type appears to be half of the base damage of a Mk X version:

Notes on Damage Calculations

The above calculations appear to match both the damage displayed by the dynamic weapon tooltips and that actually done in combat in all the cases I’ve tested so far to within a few points of damage (which I suspect is due to rounding errors brought about by the game system only displaying integer values).

Bear in mind that the dynamic tooltips don’t include range modifiers.

DPS Comparison over Range

When the Weapon Ranges article was published, Edgecase suggested a comparison of the ‘raw DPS’ of each energy weapon type over range, and this seemed like a suitable place to include one.

Besides, we haven’t had any graphs yet.

The following chart shows a comparison of the Standard Issue DPS of the various energy weapon types against range to target:

Please bear in mind that we are veering into ‘Theory Trek’ here – although the numbers used to create this graph are based on in-game test results, they include several assumptions and don’t take into account aspects of the STO combat system that are currently poorly understood (such as accuracy and any relationship it may have to range) – so this should only be used a guide for comparison.

Nonetheless, there are some things worth noting. Assuming weapons of the same Mark and equivalent Stat Bonuses:

• At ranges of around 7km and greater, Dual Beam Banks are more effective than Dual Cannons and Dual Heavy Cannons
• At extreme ranges of over 9km, Beam Arrays become comparable to Dual Cannons and Dual Heavy Cannons
• At ranges of around 6.5km and greater, Beam Arrays become more effective than Cannons

In general, then, players that favor beams – and particularly beam arrays – should try to keep a ship armed with any form of cannon as far away as possible. The longer the range, the less the DPS advantage of cannon weapons. Conversely, players who favor cannon weapons should try to close on beam-heavy opponents as quickly as possible.

Once at close range, though, the situation reverses – the cannon-heavy ship should try to maintain a range of 2km, while the beam-heavy ship (if it cannot open the range) should try to close to within 1km.

Source: The Engines Cannae Take It

Upon reaching level 6, players of Star Trek Online unlock the ability to create a character in the Klingon faction. These warlike beings level up through a combination of PvE and PvP combat. Those who choose to walk the path of the warrior are not confined to the Klingon species, however, as they also have the option of choosing between several races who have aligned themselves with the empire.

Each of the five Klingon species has their own set of unique racial traits and bonuses, as well as the ability to choose several traits from a general pool, allowing for a high level of character customization. Players will also have the option of introducing an entirely new species to the empire, and choosing four traits from the pool powers to accompany it.

Gorn

The lizard-like Gorn first entered the cultural consciousness in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Arena.” Captain Kirk was forced to do battle with a Gorn captain on a deserted planet, and eventually does so utilizing some unusual and creative tactics.

The Gorn are unique among races in the empire in that they have three separate species bonuses while most others have only two. Gorn receive the Cold Blooded bonus, which grants them a 25% resistance to fire DoT resistance and a 10% bonus to plasma DoT resistance. The Reptilian Strength trait gives them a 17.5% bonus to melee damage and knockback chance, and the Resilient trait gives them a 5% bonus to physical and energy resistance. Gorn are allowed one more trait chosen from the pool powers, as well.

Klingon

The heart of the empire, the Klingon race is renowned throughout the world of Star Trek Online for their fierce, warlike nature and prowess in combat. Honor is paramount in Klingon society, and most members would be far more willing to die than to sacrifice the honor of their family or themselves.

Klingons are visually distinctive, owing to their large size and prominent forehead ridges. They also posses redundant internal organs which render them incredibly hard to kill.

As a species, Klingons receive the Honorable trait, which gives them a 5% bonus to damage resistance and a 10% bonus to threat generation, as well asthe Warrior trait, which grants a 15% bonus to melee and crit damage and a 5% bonus to damage with energy weapons. Klingon players can also choose two additional traits from the bonus power pool.

Lethean

Letheans are a telepathic species, and are feared and renowned throughout the world of Star Trek Online for their prowess as mercenaries. They are able to attack an adversary’s mind directly, doing large amounts of damage without ever firing a weapon.

The Letheans offered their services to the Klingon Empire, but have still not been fully admitted. They continue to search for ways to prove their worth.

Letheans have two bonus traits specific to their species. The first, Rapture, is a telepathic attack that does psionic damage over time to a single target. The second, Telepathic, increases perception, extends the duration of exposure attacks and the chance that they will be successful. Lethean characters can choose two additional traits from the pool.

Nausicaan

Nausicaans unsurprisingly hail from the planet Nausicaa. They are enormous specimens, towering head and shoulders above most humans. They are known as an aggressive species, and tend to enjoy games that involve some kind of violence or death.

It was a Nausicaan who famously stabbed Jean-Luc Picard in the back days before he graduated from the academy, forcing him to have an artificial heart implanted.

Nausicaans have two traits unique to their species. Physical Strength grants a 10% bonus to melee damage and Pirate gives them a 20% bonus to stealth and a 30% bonus to exploit attack damage. Nausicaans are also able to choose two additional traits from the pool.

Orion

The final species in the Klingon Empire, the Orion, are easily recognizable thanks to their green skin tone. Captain James T. Kirk built up something of a reputation for fraternizing with Orion women throughout his career, beginning with his days at the academy as seen in the 2009 Star Trek film.

The pheremones of female Orions can make males of most species incredibly susceptible to suggestion. Vulcans, apparently, are immune to this effect.

Orions have only a single trait, Seductive, that gives them a bonus to confuse and placate resistances and reduces the amount of threat they generate. Since they have but a single species trait, Orions can choose three additional traits from the pool.

Each of the five Klingon Empire species is unique enough to make choosing between them difficult. In the end, if one appeals to you more than another, then it is probably the right choice for you. If the preset race choices don’t appeal to you, you can always make a completely custom alien race.

Source: brighthub.com

Cryptic has long been known for the excellent character creation and customization options their games offer players, and Star Trek Online is no different. Fans of the Star Trek series will be pleased to learn that they can choose from a large number of races that have appeared on the show and in the movies over the years. Gamers also have the option to create their own custom alien race and introduce them to The Federation.

Each race has its own set of bonuses and advantages to go along with their visual distinctiveness. Check out the full listing of races and their traits below!

Andorian

The blue-skinned Andorians hail from the planet Andoria. Members of this militaristic society tend to settle their disputes through ritual combat.

Andorians are easily recognizable by their skin color, and by the antennae that protrude from the top of their heads.

As a species, Andorians receive one bonus: Acute Senses, which grants a +20% bonus to stealth sight and a 10% bonus to exploit damage.

Bajoran

Members of the Bajoran species resemble humans for the most part, with the exception of a small set of ridges on the bridge of their noses.

Bajoran surnames are placed before their given names, hence former USS Enterprise-D bridge officer Ro Laren being known as Ensign Ro.

Bajorans receive two bonuses: Creative, a 5% bonus to damage and healing with kits, and Spiritual, a 10% bonus to both heals received and regeneration.

Benzite

Benzites, like Andorians, have a distinctive blue skin color. Benzites, however, have an extended nasal lobe and a set of facial tendrils that give them a catfish-like appearance.

Benzites are unable to breathe a Nitrogen/Oxygen atmosphere, so many choose to wear respirators while others have themselves genetically altered to survive aboard Federation ships.

Benzites receive two unique bonuses. Natural Armor is a bonus to energy and physical damage resistance and Natural Immunities provide a bonus to radiation and toxic damage resistance.

Betazoid

Betazoids are known for their telepathic and empathic abilities. They can sense the emotions of most other species, excluding Ferengi and some non-corporeal beings. It is incredibly hard to lie to a Betazoid, so they prize honesty in their interactions with others.

Betazoids receive the Empathic bonus, which reduces threat generation and increased team regeneration, and the Telepathic skill, which increases perception and exposure attack duration.

Bolian

Bolians are another of the blue-skinned species of Star Trek Online, and their unique mouth anatomy allows them to consume substances that many other species are forced to avoid.

Bolians also have Corrosive Blood, which gives them a 20% bonus to toxic resistance and deals toxic damage to any creature foolish enough to bite them.

Human

Humans are by far the most common species in the federation (and in Star Trek Online). They are average in many respects, though they receive several bonuses that can benefit their entire group.

The first bonus, Leadership, grants a 15% increase in repair rate. The other bonus, Teamwork, grants a 5% increase to exploit attack damage.

Saurian

Saurians are a reptilian race, famous for their intelligence as well as their skill in commerce. Saurian brandy is a frequently-mentioned beverage in the Star Trek series, and is renowned throughout the Alpha Quadrant.

Saurians receive the Circulatory Redundancies bonus, which grants them a resistance to toxic, fire, and plasma DoT damage, as well as the Acute Senses bonus, which gives them a +20% bonus to stealth sight and 10% bonus to exploit attack damage.

Trill

Trill are a unique species, in that they join with a host and completely take over their body. The actual being is fully contained within the host and invisible from the outside. Most Trill hosts bear a set of spots along the sides of their heads.

Jadzia Dax, one of the main characters on Star Trek: Deep Space 9, was a member of the Trill species.

Trill receive the Hyper Metabolism bonus, which gives them a bonus to health regeneration, as well as toxic and radiation resistance.

Vulcan

Vulcans are perhaps the most recognizable of the Federation races apart from Humans. They are a logical species, having chosen generations ago to shed their emotions and follow the path of reason.

Vulcans’ training in logic gives them the Logical bonus, which grants a 30% increase to psionic, confuse, and placate resistance. They also receive the Physical Strength bonus, which grants a 10% increase in melee damage.

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In addition to each being’s species-specific bonus, they are allowed to choose two or three additional characteristics. These additional bonuses, including things like Accurate, Warp Theorist, or Sure Footed, allow you to further customize your Star Trek Online character. Keep an eye out for a future guide to these bonus attributes.

Choosing a species in Star Trek Online can be difficult, with all the excellent options available. If none of these seems to suit your playstyle, however, there is always the massive undertaking of designing your own species from scratch. You get to choose your own traits, but won’t have access to any of those that are specific to the races mentioned above.

Source: brighthub.com

All of the systems on a ships are divided into 4 groups of Subsystems: Weapons, Shields, Engine, and Auxiliary. Increasing power to weapons, shields or engines will boost the performance of them respectively: for example, having 100 power in weapons will increase your damage output, while having 100 power in shields will increase its regeneration rate. Giving more power to auxiliary systems will increase the effectiveness of your Deflector Array, Tractor Beam, Ship Emitters, Sensors and similar which is used by certain abilities. Auxiliary power will also increases your ship turn rate.

On every ship you have 200 units of power which can be distributed however you like. You must allocate at least 25 power units to a particular system and a maximum of 100, meaning you can have all 4 subsystems at 50; or 1 at 100, one on 50 and other two on 25.

When you begin the game you have 4 default power presets set by default. One is for Attack (100/50/25/25) and it’s probably the one you’ll be using the most. The second preset is for Defense, having 50 power in weapons and 100 in shields. The third is for Speed, with 25 power in weapons and shields and 100 in engines. The fourth preset is “Balanced” but hardly so: I doubt you’ll be using it much unless you rely a lot on your engines and abilities. It might come in handy when in large groups so don’t dismiss it entirely though.

You can quickly change from one power preset to another by pressing the small icons as displayed on the image above. Note that the power will not be diverted immediately, but rather take a few seconds so keep that in mind as well. By pressing the fifth icon () you can set custom power profiles as well.

The maximum ship power is not set in stone however and you can increase it to over 200. Escort ships can have 110 power in weapons and Science ships can have 110 units in auxiliary power. Cruiser ships have a +3 units bonus to all systems. You can also increase power by using certain types of consoles which give power bonuses. Additionally, if you carefully look at your skill points you’ll notice several skills which allow you to get more power from your ship’s Warp Core. There are several efficiency skills which make certain subsystems more efficient at lower power levels (less than 60), and performance skills which make them more efficient at higher power levels (60 units or more).

There’s also the Warp Core Theorist trait available when you create your character which is one of the best ones you can take: if you don’t have it though, don’t go delete your character because of it. While it’s highly useful, it’s not mandatory in any way.

Be sure to familiarize yourself with power levels and presets and be ready to change them during combat! If you run into several enemy ships while your allies are lagging behind always switch to defense preset to buy yourself some time: it helps A LOT. Don’t forget about the Speed preset either: while the game is very forgiving when it comes to dying, sometimes it might be better to escape the battle and let your allies take the heat for awhile, especially in PvP. As I already said though, most of the time you will be running with Attack preset, but switching to another in the right time is what differentiates good captains from great captains.

I keep trying to complete this quest for the last few days but apparently it’s hopeless. Even though someone always tells others what to do in zone chat, nobody seems to care much and it’s completely frustrating. I even think some players might be there just to intentionally sabotage others from killing the Crystalline Entity since they still keep dropping mines and healing the Crystalline Entity.

First of all, you get the Crystalline Entity quest from Admiral Grigori Yanishev at level 16 (or was it 17?). The Entity is located in the Alpha Centauri sector block, around the Demil system (near Memory Alpha) — typically northeast of it. It works like a regular Fleet Action quest, meaning you can enter the instance and fight the Entity with up to 20 other players. If you can’t find it, it may look like a common Enemy Signal Contact until you get a bit closer. After you kill the Entity (and if), the best loot is awarded to players with top damage.

The fight itself is not too hard, and it’s incredibly easy if everyone knows what to do. Unfortunately, that’s not the case most of the time so here’s what you should know. There are three types of Crystalline Fragments spawned by the Entity: regular Crystalline Fragments, Large Crystalline Fragments and Small Crystaline Fragments. You can destroy regular Crystal Fragments and it won’t make much of a difference; you can even kill Large Crystal Fragments. However, if Large Crystal Fragments hit your ship they will spawn Small Crystal Fragments which heal the Entity, making the encounter difficult, in addition to damaging your hull for a great deal of damage. You should always try to destroy Small Fragments whenever possible, but it’s best not to even let them spawn in the first place.

When you enter the instance, it’s best to immediately put your ship’s power preset to Speed! That way, you can outrun any fragments following you as long as you pay attention. Your weapons will be weaker, but at least you have a chance then. The second important thing is NOT to use mines, or targetable torpedoes such as Heavy Plasma Torpedo as they hit Large Crystal Fragments, therefore spawning Small ones. Do note that Large Fragments only spawn after the Entity drops below 30% hp.

There’s a bit more to the fight but for the most part if you follow the tips above you should be able to defeat this monster. If you have decent DPS in the instance you should pretty much be able to simply DPS the Crystalline Entity and ignore all fragments. If too many start to spawn then clearly you might want to focus on them a bit, but whatever you do just don’t get hit by any fragments.

There are actually four main types of Tribbles: Heal, DPS, Damage Resist and Health Regen. Vitales type as displayed in the picture is actually a self-heal type so if you’re looking for one on the Exchange you’ll immediately know which one you need. You can also find double or even triple buffs type of Tribbles such as Mattson Tribble which give you both HP regen and DPS buffs. A Rivera Tribble will give you DPS, Health Regen and Damage Resistance.

• Healing Tribble – An out of combat self heal.
• DPS Tribble – 1 hour out of combat self damage buff.
• Damage Resist Tribble – 1 hour out of combat self damage resistance buff.
• Health Regen Tribble – 1 hour out of combat self regen buff.

Note that using a Tribble with for example a DPS buff and then using one with Health Regen will not stack, so finding one with double buffs is definitely more useful. There’s a detailed table available here which gives you more information about breeding Tribbles in order to get the most rare ones.

One word of advice though: as Tribbles are considered mortal enemies of Klingons they will not be able to use them!