For your first few dozen hours in Star Trek Online, nothing is too challenging. As long as you change ships whenever you get a better one, make sure your ships and crew are equipped with the best drops/mission rewards you come across naturally, and keep all your ship weapons the same energy type (regardless of what type that is), you’ll have no problem sailing through the first half of the game’s lengthy story.
However, it’s around then that you’ll hit the level 65 level cap and things change. As encounters scale, you’ll need to have a good build to continue—or just accept that dying over-and-over again every few seconds is your new reality. And while there are many amazingly overpowered builds that are far stronger than this one out there, most require months of grinding reputation and/or being part of a max-level guild to access certain shops and do end-game gear crafting. But what if you just want to be super powerful with minimal effort? That’s what this guide is for.
So You Want to be Overpowered…
One of the easiest ways to become overpowered in Star Trek Online is by boosting your “critical chance” (your chance to get a critical hit) and your “critical severity” (the amount of extra damage you get on a critical hit). So that should be your main focus.
Faction and Race: Romulan/Alien
The Alien race allows you extra trait slots—allowing even more character customization throughout the game. Being part of the Romulan faction allows you to have a full bridge crew with the Superior Romulan Operative skill.
Bridge Officer Skill: Superior Romulan Operative
Each bridge officer you recruit through duty officer missions, main story missions, or purchase on the exchange comes with a long list of skills. Rare (blue) and Very Rare (purple) Romulans can come with the skill “Superior Romulan Operative.” This skill gives +2% Critical Chance and +5% Critical Severity per bridge officer who has it—giving you a +10% Critical Chance and +25% Critical Severity with a late game ship. Simply put, it doesn’t matter what other skills your bridge crew has, just make sure they have Superior Romulan Operative. (You can work on getting the perfect set of other skills at end game.)
*Note: if you aren’t part of the Romulan faction, the only way to get a Bridge Officer with “Superior Romulan Operative” is from a Fleet Embassy (and you only get one with the skill). An acceptable replacement would be Nausicaans or Hierarchy with the “Pirate” trait (or Jem’Hadar Vanguards with the “Engineered Soldier (Space)” trait if you’re willing to spend some real-world cash).
Ship Weapon Type: Antiproton
While you won’t see them drop much in the early game (though you can craft them or buy them from the exchange if you really want to), a full set of Antiproton weapons should be your end goal. This is because their default attack bonus is +20% Critical Severity. Add to this several Antiproton Mag Regulators (which boost the damage of antiproton weapons) as your ship’s tactical consoles, and you’ll be doing an obscene amount of damage just by shooting normally.
Suggested Ship Loadout:
What we’re going to be making here is called a “beam boat.” While canons do more damage, you always have to be directly facing your target to use them—meaning your front shields take all incoming damage while the rest of them do nothing. But as beam arrays have a much wider firing arc, you can have all your weapons, both fore and aft, shoot your enemy at once when you show them either of your broadsides (as well as your front once you get some omni-directional arrays). This allows you to spread out your damage across your shields and never stop shooting.
*Note: As ships have different amounts of slots for weapons and consoles, you’ll want to get as many of the following as you can per slot (or as many as can be equipped on any single ship as in the case of special unique weapons like the Ancient Omni-Directional Beam Array). Luckily, you can replay story missions as many times as you need to.
Front Weapons: [Antiproton Beam Array Mk XI [Acc] [CrtH] [Dmg]] (Reward for completing/re-completing the final Borg mission “Fluid Dynamics.”)
Deflector: [Solanae Deflector Array Mk XII] (Reward for completing/re-completing the seventh Dyson Sphere mission “A Step Between Stars.”)
Engines: [Solanae Hyper-Efficient Impulse Engines Mk XII] (Reward for completing/re-completing the seventh Dyson Sphere mission “A Step Between Stars.”)
Warp Core: [Obelisk Subspace Rift Warp Core] (Reward for completing/re-completing the first Dyson Sphere mission “Sphere of Influence.”)
Shield: [Solanae Resilient Shield Array Mk XII] (Reward for completing/re-completing the seventh Dyson Sphere mission “A Step Between Stars.”)
Aft Weapons: [Ancient Omni-Directional Antiproton Beam Array [Acc] [Dmg] [Arc]] (Reward for completing/re-completing the first Dyson Sphere mission “Sphere of Influence.”), [Antiproton Beam Array Mk XI [Acc] [CrtH] [Dmg]] (Reward for completing/re-completing the final Borg mission “Fluid Dynamics.”)
Engineering Consoles: [Console – Engineering – Neutronium Alloy Mk XII] (Buy cheap on the exchange.)
Science Consoles: [Console – Science – Temporal Disentanglement Suite Mk XII] (Reward for completing/re-completing the seventh Iconian War mission “Butterfly.”), Console – Science – Field Generator Mk XII (Buy cheap on the exchange.)
Tactical Console: [Console – Tactical – Antiproton Mag Regulator Mk XII] (Buy cheap on the exchange.)
Kit Abilities
Beyond your ship’s loadout, you will also need to use bridge officer abilities to maximize your damage and survivability. These are the kit abilities you can buy from normal Bridge Officer Trainer NPCs for a nominal cost and can be learned by most Bridge Officers.
Tactical:
- Beams: Fire at Will – Your main AOE damage dealer
- Beams: Overload – Your main singe-target damage dealer
- Tactical Team – Damage buff
- Attack Pattern Omega – Damage buff
Engineering:
- Emergency Power to Weapons – Damage buff
- Emergency Power to Shields – Shield Healing
- Engineering Team – Hull Healing
Science:
- Hazard Emitters – Shield Healing
- Photonic Officer – Reduces cooldown on all kit abilities
Reputation Farming: Dyson Joint Command, Discovery Legends, New Romulus
Once you unlock reputations at level 50, it’s a good idea to get started on a few of them. While it will take a few days/weeks to unlock the traits you want (unlike everything above which can be farmed for or purchased immediately), here are the ones that will greatly compliment this build.
Dyson Joint Command reputation Tier II gives you the trait Advanced Targeting Systems—which when equipped gives your ship +16% Critical Severity. (Tier VI gives you the Rank II version which is +20% Critical Severity.)
Discovery Legends reputation Tier IV gives you the trait Tyler’s Duality—which gives you +1% Critical Chance based on Hull Capacity (Max +6 at 200,000 Hull Capacity). (Tier VI gives you the Rank II version which is +2.8% Critical Chance based on Hull Capacity (Max +7.5 at 200,000 Hull Capacity)).
New Romulus reputation Tier II gives you the trait Precision—which when equipped gives your ship +4% Critical Chance. (Tier VI gives you the Rank II version which is +5% Critical Chance.)
*Note: While the reputation system doesn’t technically unlock until level 50, you can gather the reputation marks needed to level up reputation once you’re level 10 or higher via Task Force Operations (PvE Group Content) and Patrols (repeatable single player missions). Making a point to gather Dyson Joint Command marks, New Romulus marks, and Discovery Legends marks as part of your daily routine will help you in the long run.
Welp, there you have it: your very own critical beam boat that will carry you to end game. If you like the general idea of the build, you can swap out almost every part for better versions later on if you’re willing to grind for them. On the other hand, you might just want to try a space-magic build instead. But as they say, the sky’s the limit!
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