Need Advice on an Oddysey Tactical Ship Build For An Enginee

[BaronVonHeller]

Hi guys.

As I assume is typical for noobs, I made a mess of my skill trees when I first started so I need to respec them.

I am an engineer and typically fly either the Tactical Oddysey (with the 3 console set) or the Gal-X. I have it loaded out currently with 3 borg AP Beam arrays + 1 Borg Photon torpedos both fore and aft. (They are currently only mk X's, but I am working on changing that.)

As far as my playing style goes, I enjoy a bit of all 3 career skills. My main goal is to have a fairly solid tank build that deals fairly decent damage. I am not too concerned with healing others.

I realize that Cruisers aren't designed to do massive DPS, and I am not expecting to be an escort, lol.

Based on what I have read, my current build is fairly terrible, yet, I am not all that unpleased with the performance, to be honest.

Here is what I have put together as my potential new build. Any advice would be appreciated before I spend the $5.00.

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Thank you!

[Warburton1881]

I do have a couple of comments, but also a disclaimer. I fly a lot of Oddies as a science or tactical officer, but I don't do STFs or PvP, so if you are looking for an STF or PvP build you should probably get advice from one of the many STFers or PvP people in the fleet.

The first thing I noticed was that your tactical BOFF had Torpedo Spread II as a Lieutenant skill. Unless you see a lot of action against multiple small ships, you might want to consider using High Yield Torpedo instead of torpedo spread. It deals more damage to your target. Myself, I usually put a Tricobalt Torpedo either in the bow or stern. They have a slow recharge, but they deal massive damage when they hit. Supposedly, torpedoes are not as effective against shields as against ship hulls, but I have had good luck using a Tricobalt as a first strike weapon because I can usually take out or at least seriously damage an opponent's forward shields with one torpedo. I can then pound him with whatever else I have until the Tricobalt recharges. Then I can finish off the other ship with another Tricobalt.

The second thing I noticed about your build was a lot of red bars on the skill tree, as well as a lot of empty skills. Personally, I try to spread the wealth. As you may already know, the first three levels of a skill add 18 points per level to that skill. The next three add 15 per level, and the last three only add 10 points per level. So, if you convert one level nine skill into a level one, two or three skill, you gain 8 points worth of overall ability for your captain and his ship. Of course, if a skill is one you never use, that's another story. I stay away from Damage Control, for instance, because I don't particularly want to encourage the AI ships to attack me. Also, if you are interested in training your BOFFs in Lieutenant Commander or Commander skills, you need to look at which skills are trainable by your captain and which skils you need to put in your skill tree to allow your captain to train those skills. Training abilities are unlocked at levels three and six, so you can unlock all your available training skills without having to put more than six points on any part of your skill tree.

Good luck with your build.

[SeedyGeorge]

I'll post more coherently in a bit, but for starters:

- Cruisers can abuse the old 'cycling emergency powers so your power levels are always huge' thing. To summarise, take a copy of E power to Weapons, and another to Shields as the minimum, cycle their activations. If you can get them, Damage Control Engineer doffs will help with up time, if you can't get them or want more security, then another copy of each will easily give you constant uptime on both abilities. (Although you should get pretty much constant uptime with the two copies if you have the right doffs).

- Your skill build is actually pretty reasonable, but I would personally tweak it to something along the lines of the following:

Lt Tact - Beam Fire at Will, Torpedo Spread
Comm Eng - Emergency to Weapons, Aux to Struc, Directed Energy Mod, Warp Plasma
Lt Sci - Sci Team, Hazard Emitters
Ens Uni - Emergency to Shields
Lt Comm Uni - Polarize Hull, Tractor Beam, Gravity Well

This is entirely debateable, but you could do some solid crowd control with grav well and warp plasma, entangling a bunch of enemies at once, then do a directed energy+emergency weapons+fire at will sweep to hit them all, and follow up with a torpedo spread to hammer home the point. You're also quite tanky, assuming you: mash distribute shields all the time, keep the emergency powers up as much as possible, and have the right doffs/items. And you can ALSO help your friends a bit (which no cruiser should overlook, ever).


EDIT: I'm not claiming expertise in cruiser builds, though. These people (<!-- m -<a class="postlink" href="http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=280501">http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showt ... p?t=280501</a><!-- m -) however, are. Check out the thread.

[BaronVonHeller]

Thank you guys. That is some solid advice. I will take it to heart and let you guys know how it works out.

I really don't enjoy pvp, so I don't really need to be a monster.

Thanks again for the help!