Basic Gear and Items

This section will walk through basic principles for setting up ground and space builds through the stages of the early leveling journey as well as how to deal with difficulty spikes throughout the episodes.  

Throughout this guide, look out for items marked ALERT in red text for special cautions and italicized picture captions for related images. 

The content in this section should start around level 10. We recommend you understand most this section before reaching level 20 and use 3.10 as needed.

3.1 Acquiring Ships I - Leveling up (first new ship) / Episode Rewards

ALERT: This section does not apply to Jem’Hadar characters.

When you gain a rank between levels 10 and 40, you’ll be able to obtain a new ship. Report to your faction vendor to select your starship. You will have a choice of at least 3 different starships. For Federation characters, your choices are each aligned with one of the three careers. Klingon Defense Force characters will find their faction less . . . scientifically inclined and so are offered light, fast raiders called Birds of Prey trading a weapon and a bridge officer ability for bonus flanking damage and more flexible seating instead of science ships. It is possible to acquire KDF science ships, but it will cost other resources than the free level-up token.

Rank-up ship reward prompt

For your first playthrough, it’s worth trying out different playstyles with each free ship offering and you can pick what you like, but . . . if you want recommendations:

• LtCmdr can start with the Tactical-heavy Escorts, where incoming fire isn’t as dangerous at early levels and you have a mix of weapons to leverage multiple firing modes from multiple tactical seats. The ships are maneuverable, which is helpful as you get used to flying your ship.

• Cmdr is a good time to try out heavier cruisers on a Federation character as enemies get stronger. KDF characters are better served with battlecruisers, which mix weapon damage with survivability. Romulan characters only get a single choice at LtCmdr and Cmdr so . . . I guess there’s that.

• Captain is a great opportunity for Federation characters to try a science vessel if they haven’t already, as the signature ability of science ships, Gravity Well, is fully unlocked here. KDF characters are stuck with a choice of too many tactical seats or too many engineering seats or not enough seats in general. Given a choice, I’d favor the engineering seats to stay alive. Romulan players are in the same boat though at least I would lean to tactical on Romulan because the D’deridex is unforgivably slow.

• Rear Admiral is where Federation characters should go back to Cruisers, as the Sovereign Assault Cruiser is the best of the bunch. Escorts should be avoided at this rank given their excessive tactical seating. Romulan characters finally get an option to try a science vessel. KDF characters can check out a carrier playstyle with a side of science in the Vo’Quv, at the risk of being intolerably slow, or stick with the tried-and-true Vor’cha Battlecruiser.

• Vice Admiral offers one last free ship. Federation characters might consider picking up a better science vessel as the only decent option here; if you prefer the weapons-based approach, the Sovereign is still the better ship to fly. KDF characters can take an Orion Marauder Flight Deck Carrier as an overall decent carrier, or they finally get access to a Science Vessel in the form of the Varanus. Romulan characters have a variety of choices, and those wishing to lean more into projectiles will want the T’Varo Retrofit, while a more conventional approach would favor the Dhelan.

When you acquire a new ship it will show up at the ship selector. From there is a list of all ships that you currently have in inventory. There is only a certain number of active ship slots you have at any time. You can tell which ship you are currently using based on the icon besides the ship's name. 

Ship selected icon in ship list

By default newly acquired ships will not be automatically equipped (selected as active). To do this we need to head to the ship vendor to change to our newly acquired ship. Find the new ship or ship that you want to change too in the side of the menu and push “Ready Starship” 

Ready starship button highlighted

You will likely be prompted to update and save a loadout. Usually it is always safe to push save and continue. Until you get into the later game where you can fully establish builds and have persistent gear you won’t be replacing, pushing save and continue will always be a good safe option. 

Unsaved Loadout prompt

The active ship icon will now change to the selected ship! 

Later on you will unlock a system that uses the ships you’ve acquired called Admiralty (see section 6.8). As this will not happen until later it is recommended to keep the ships you acquire while leveling up. Once a ship is no longer needed, you can put it into deep storage though “drydocking” it. To do this you need to not have the ship equipped.

Discharge option highlighted

Drydocking will prompt you to confirm that you are doing this. The act of drydocking will strip the ship or equipment and place it into your inventory.

Left: This gear can be used to outfit a newly acquired ship; Right: To retrieve a drydocked ship you can navigate to Drydock in the top and press active beside the ship you want to bring back to your roster 

Other ships at each tier can be acquired, but they will cost resources that a new player will likely not have. We discuss lower-tier ships that are useful to acquire in Section 7.1. 

When you acquire a ship, should you wish to rename it, simply go to the ship selection vendor and select the pencil icon to the top left of the ship. Be as creative, funny, or immersive as you please, but there are two things you should be aware of: 

1. Prominent names in canon are not available. You can name your ship the Enterprize, but not the Enterprise. 

2. While the in-game filter will prevent you from naming your ship something truly vulgar, people are very creative at getting around such things. For the sake of everyone around you and your own account, refrain from indulging in naming your ships in a way sure to draw an angry reaction. You will end up reported and it’s possible your account will be banned.

Ship Rename Icon highlighted

3.2 Duty Officers

At level 12, you’ll unlock the Duty Officer system. Duty Officers are the lower-rank members of your crew. By default you can have up to 100 inactive duty officers, with more slots unlockable via a Zen (premium currency) purchase. You can access your duty officer roster by opening the Duty Officer menu. Duty officers, or doffs, have two purposes: assignments and active roster. On assignment, they earn you rewards, especially experience, and help progress you through commendations to unlock more duty officers. Duty Officers in your active space or ground slots augment your ship or character respectively through various bonuses.

Go to the “Roster” tab to view your duty officer list.

Left: Duty Officer menu; Right: Duty Officer Roster

Each duty officer has 5 attributes:

• The species of the duty officer can sometimes matter for specific duty officer missions.

• Specialization indicates their career and there are a large number of these categorized in various departments (e.g. Tactical, Engineering, Medical).

• Traits influence the officer’s chance of success on a given assignment. 

• Most duty officers will have a benefit listed under with [Space] or [Ground]. This only applies when they are occupying an active slot.

• Rarity influences the duty officer’s chance at succeeding in missions as well as the amount of bonus they bring when used in an active slot.

• 
  

Assignments and active slots.

Assignments are missions you give to duty officers. Assignments award Experience Points, Expertise, and XP in one of 11 different commendation trees, along with other small rewards like Dilithium Ore and Energy Credits. We’ll discuss those in Episode IV. Leveling up commendation trees will unlock duty officers at your faction’s doff vendor and can eventually be used to help acquire fleet resources. 

To send a duty officer on an assignment, open the Duty Officer menu. At the top, select “Duty Officers.” On the left, select “Current Map”, “Personal”, or “Department Heads” to find available duty officer missions. Different maps (including different instances of the same map) will have different missions available under the “current map” field, whereas personal rotates on the “Shipboard Update” timeline. Different missions will award different XP in different Commendations as well as have different requirements, which might include specific resources or commodities. If you don’t have the required duty officers available, the career icons will show red.

Annotated Duty officer assignment screen

Click “Plan” to select the mission. That will open up a submenu where you’ll choose which duty officers will go on the assignment. Missions will call for a variety of different careers and duty officer traits to increase (or in some cases decrease!) likelihood of success. Green traits and careers increase the chance of success and red reduce it. The blue bar represents your chance at a critical success, which vastly increases the awards from the mission, or even upgrades the rewards entirely. The game will automatically assign duty officers to the mission to give you the best shot at completing the mission, but you can always select different ones. Assign your crewmen and select “Begin Assignment," Once a mission is begun, the result will be available after a certain duration, depending on the mission. In general, longer missions have higher rewards. 

ALERT: Be careful about sending duty officers on missions with low percentage of success, especially if they are common rarity.  A critical failure can result in injury, forcing a sick bay stay before the duty officer is usable again, or in the worst case permanent death of the duty officer (common rarity only). 

Individual assignment screen

Red means “he’s dead.” 

You must also be careful if playing on the Klingon Defense Force, as missions that talk about “Execute So-and-So” are also good ways to permanently lose the duty officer. There are certain other missions for Federation characters related to colonization and diplomatic envoys that can also cost you a duty officer. 

Duty officers assigned to this mission aren't coming back. 

By default, you start with 20 duty officer mission slots available and can unlock 3 more from a fleet holding. If you realize you need a duty officer and they are on assignment, you can go to the In Progress tab, find the appropriate mission, and abort it. Aborted missions do not grant rewards.

To view your progress through the various commendation trees, go to the Overview tab and look at the Commendation view. There are 4 ranks, maxing out at 100,000 XP in each of the 11 tracks. You will earn a free duty officer from your duty officer contact (example: Lt. Ferra for Starfleet) each time you advance a rank in a Commendation, as well as the option to buy others with dilithium. You’ll also earn more at various character ranks: 15, 18, 23, 31, 41, 51 and 64. The most important ones to max out quickly are Science, Engineering, and Military as there are good duty officers at Tier 4 that will benefit you at the endgame above level 50. Diplomacy (Marauding for KDF) also unlocks more transwarp options. Sending duty officers on assignments (sometimes called doffing) is a good way to quickly gain experience points and level up, but you must be careful not to out-level your available gear. 

Duty Officers and their assignments are one of the most flavor-filled, lore-rich portions of the game next to the episodes themselves, so if you enjoy all the Star Trek tie-ins, don’t just rush through getting as many of these assignments–there’s a lot of flavor text in the assignment names and results. If you’re more gamer-first, Star Trek-fan second, you can of course blitz through them for maximum reward. 

Duty Officer Commendation screen

Active Slots

By default, you can assign up to 5 duty officers to active space slots and 5 to active ground slots. These duty officers will NOT be available to go on assignments and instead provide bonuses to your character and ship. Duty officers in space slots provide bonuses to your active starship and duty officers in ground combat provide your character with bonuses in ground combat. To slot a duty officer in one of these slots, go the “Roster” tab” of your duty officer menu, select either Active Space or Active Ground from the Duty Officer Reports menu. A subset of your roster with applicable benefits will be displayed. Use the “Put on Active Duty” button to move a duty officer to one of your open positions. Active Duty Officers can be selected and removed from active duty using the “Remove From Active Duty” button. If you have hit your roster limit while duty officers are active, you will only be able to “swap with reserve” or even “swap with active” if both active and reserve are at capacity.

A 6th space and ground slot are unlockable via fleet holdings. See Section 5.3 for more. 

Active duty officer slots

Recruiting More Duty Officers

At your faction’s academy, you can recruit more duty officers every 48 hours, either from one of four major career groups (tactical, engineering, science, civilian) at the personnel officer, or from one of 3 allied faction vendors. For Federation characters, these are Vulcan, Andorian, and Tellarite. KDF characters can find Orion, Nausicaan, and Gorn recruits at their academy.

ALERT: It’s not a good idea to use the General Recruitment or R&D assistance because these cost 1,000 refined dilithium apiece. 

Left: KDF Duty Officer Recruitment prompt; Right: Recruitment options

3.3 Shipbuilding First Principles 

Okay, so you have a new ship. Now what do you do with it? There are so many moving pieces that even if you remember what everything is, it’s hard to keep track of it all. In the endgame, STO is a game of synergy, where all the various pieces of a well-crafted ship build come together in a blazing display of power as bonuses stack on bonuses and the build is one cohesive fighting machine. However, early in your journey, you’re just starting to acquire the basic building blocks. Still, there are a few simple principles that will carry you through early content:

1. Remember those power levels on your ship? Set weapons power to 100. If you’re on a science vessel, you should put more power into aux. If you’re in a particularly slow cruiser, adding more power to engines can help mitigate that. However, weapons stay at 100 at all times until you’re at level 50 and ready to start an endgame build, where our Basics guides and starter builds can give more tailored recommendations for specific builds.

2. Only slot 1 flavor of energy weapon. There are six primary flavors of energy weapons: antiproton, disruptor, plasma, polaron, phaser, and tetryon, and the differences between them are basically cosmetic. Pick the one you like the best, although each faction will find it easier to equip their faction’s flavor either from their gear vendor or from gear caches given for specific recruitment events.

   1. Federation = Phaser

   2. Klingon = Disruptor

   3. Romulan = Plasma

   4. Jem’Hadar = Polaron

There are more advanced builds that mix them, but that is a topic discussed in more detail in the various endgame Basics guides

Ship Equipment Vendor Screen (KDF)

3. If possible, pick either cannons or beams. You’ll have very limited bridge officer seating until level 40-50, so either fly with beam arrays in the front and back, or equip dual/dual heavy cannons in the front with turrets. If you’re flying a ship with 3 or more tactical seats, you can put turrets in the back and beam arrays/dual beam banks in the front and use both but it might be harder to find the equipment to do so. However, it’s better to have a non-matching weapon type than no weapon at all. You can buy common energy weapons of the appropriate mark and matching your faction per above from ship vendors. In general, dual/dual heavy cannons have more damage per shot, but a narrow firing arc. Only certain ships can slot them, making cannon builds somewhat limited in applicability unless you’re willing to accept the lower base damage of single cannons; our recommendation is to not do this unless your theme demands it. Beam arrays deal less damage but have a wider firing arc, and dual beam banks are in between. Turrets have the least damage of all but fire in all 360 degrees. There are specific beam arrays available later/more expensively called Omni-Directional Beams, which fire at almost the same damage of a beam array, but are limited to one that is part of a set and one that is not. 

4. Only slot tactical consoles that boost that energy weapon type, i.e. Phaser Relays for a Phaser build and Disruptor Induction Coils on a Disruptor build when first starting out. There are more powerful versions of these consoles later on, and eventually you might replace them with engineering console versions or use entirely active consoles, but for now, this is solid advice. If you’re slotting all cannons or all beams for your energy weapons, you can slot +cannon or +beam consoles, especially if that’s all you can find easily, but these give smaller increases than the damage type specific consoles. If you’re short on energy consoles, you can fit in a torpedo-boosting console that matches your torpedo type if you’re using one, but it should be replaced as quickly as possible.

5. Only slot 1 torpedo at most. It goes in the front. There are reasons to slot an aft torpedo to complete a strong set bonus with an otherwise lackluster torpedo on more advanced builds but not at this point. Pick between Photon, Plasma, or Quantum; Chroniton, Transphasic, and Tricobalt should be avoided. If you choose to use a Plasma Torpedo Launcher, be aware that launching a High Yield Plasma Torpedo fires a destructible torpedo with considerable AOE damage which will hurt you if you are within 1 km of it. We recommend only using this torpedo launcher with Spread, both because of the self-damage and the potential for it to be shot down. Skip mine launchers for early levels.

With these considerations in mind, how do we gear a ship when we’re just starting out? 

• Deflector, Shield Array, Core and Impulse Engines should generically be the highest mark you can slot. You’ll be able to slot higher mark gear as you advance in rank, and the differences between the various pieces of gear don’t matter much right now. Use the highest mark / rarity combinations you can fit. A higher rarity piece of gear, as denoted by the color of the border around it, may have higher stats than a higher mark. 

• Secondary Deflectors on science ships always go to the highest mark of Deteriorating Secondary Deflector available.

• Weapons: per above, we’re either slotting all beam arrays, or all dual/dual heavy cannons of a single flavor in front with turrets in the back, optionally with a torpedo in the front. If on a tactical-heavy ship, we can run dual beam banks in the front with turrets in the aft

• Consoles will largely be whatever you can acquire. Priority should be given in tactical console slots to consoles matching the energy flavor you’ve chosen (i.e. Phaser Relays for Phaser). Especially with consoles, higher rarity may outweigh higher mark for stat boosts, so be sure to pick the higher value, not just the higher rarity/mark. Example: Mk II Very Rare = Mk III Rare = Mk IV Uncommon = Mk V Common

• Hangar bays, if you have one, will largely be whatever you have access to. Basic Peregrines/To’Duj Fighter Squadrons are fine. Hangar Bay recharge time scales with auxiliary power so don't divert all power from that subsystem if you have one. 

• Device Slots can mostly be ignored for now. You can slot and use batteries to get them out of inventory, especially weapons batteries, but you likely won’t see much benefit from it. 

Gear has both a Mark (indicated by a number at the bottom right of the item) and a rarity, and both increase the stats provided, or damage of the weapon. Standard issue (SI) gear is essentially Mark 0. You’ll constantly be cycling in higher mark / rarity gear as you progress, so don’t get too attached to anything at this point. Sell the old stuff to a vendor for a small chunk of energy credits as you continually search for items of a higher mark. Note that you can’t slot higher mark items until you’ve ranked up sufficiently:

1. Mark I-II requires Lieutenant Rank (level 1)

2. Mark III-IV requires Lieutenant Commander (level 10)

3. Mark V-VI is for Commander+ (level 20)

4. Mark VII-VIII is for Captain (level 30)

5. Mark IX-X is for Rear Admiral, Lower Half/Brigadier General (level 40)

6. Mark XI-XII is Rear Admiral, Upper Half/Major General (level 45)

7. Mark XIII-XIV is unlocked at Vice Admiral/Lieutenant General (level 50)

8. Mark XV requires Fleet Admiral/Dahar Master (level 60)

Higher rarity gear sometimes comes with an additional note in the title of the item, surrounded by brackets. This is called a [modifier], and higher rarity items will have more modifiers, or will gain more stats for their modifier. There are dozens of different modifiers in the game, and our endgame builds certainly optimize for them (especially when buying items modifier choices from fleet vendors), but starting out, these really do not matter and should be considered “neat” when you happen across them rather than fishing for a particular [Dmg] mod on a Mk III Beam Array you’ll use for a few hours of playtime.

3.4 Bridge Officer Abilities 

That leaves bridge officer abilities, which are the most important part of a build. There are a lot of bridge officer abilities, and the wiki has a full list of them and all their effects. Each power has three ranks, and each power can start/end at different ranks. For example, Beam: Fire at Will starts at rank I in Ensign, and ends with rank III in LtCmdr, while Cannon: Scatter Volley starts at rank I in Lieutenant, and has its rank III at Cmdr. Gravity Well doesn’t start in Science until rank I at LtCmdr and both ranks II and III are found at Commander. Narrowly, there are far fewer abilities that are important at the early levels. We will not discuss or utilize bridge officer powers that must be acquired using event currency or from lockboxes/the Exchange at this time; please see our Basics pages or builds to see how those are used.

Tactical

Tactical powers, broadly speaking, all have to do with enhancing weapons. The most important powers in Tactical are the class of abilities called weapon enhancements or firing modes. These modify how your weapons behave. Energy weapon firing modes by default persist for 10 seconds, affecting all firing cycles initiated during that time. For the early levels, unless building a science-focused build, prioritize slotting the highest rank of these abilities possible, and only 1 copy. Remember that similar bridge officer abilities share cooldowns, so you can’t have Fire at Will and Beam Overload active at the same time.

• Beam: Fire at Will (Ens/Lt/LtCmdr) gives your beams an additional attack and lets them hit two targets at once, with reduced accuracy

• Cannon: Scatter Volley (Lt/LtCmdr/Cmdr) allows your cannons to fire at up to 3 targets, in a cone centered on your main target. 

• Beam: Overload (Ens/Lt/LtCmdr) supercharges your beams to fire a single blast per firing cycle at a single target, followed by a reload time.

• Cannon: Rapid Fire (Lt/LtCmdr/Cmdr) increases your cannons’ firing rate on a single target.

• Beware: Target Subsystem: ____ are also firing modes that lock out both cannon and beam firing modes, and should not be used even if “innate” on a science ship or carrier.

Torpedoes similarly have firing enhancements, but theirs only last until the next torpedo launch. They also share cooldowns with each other but not with energy firing modes.

• Torpedo: High Yield (Ens/Lt/LtCmdr) launches more powerful projectiles at a single target. Some torpedoes become targetable/destructible on high yield and these can damage your ship if you get too close to the explosion. On the plus side, these destructible torpedoes have area-of-effect and will often switch targets if the initial target is destroyed while in-flight, unlike standard torpedoes

• Torpedo: Spread (Ens/Lt/LtCmdr) fires multiple torpedoes at multiple targets, increasing both in number of torpedoes and targets with each rank. 

Note that each of our enhancements are either single target and multi-target.

Mines have their own firing modes, but they are not useful at this level of play. Other tactical powers worth considering are:

• Tactical Team (Ens/Lt/LtCmdr) gives you a small boost to the effectiveness of your weapons, removes hostile boarding parties, and most importantly distributes your shields automatically to reinforce damaged facings. Since the last reason is the main use of this power, there is no reason to ever use it beyond Ensign.

• Attack Pattern Beta (Lt/LtCmdr/Cmdr) applies a resistance debuff on hit, which effectively increases your damage. The scaling benefit here does not scale as strongly as your firing modes; don’t sacrifice firing mode rank for a higher Attack Pattern rank

Engineering

Engineering powers are focused on power levels and defensive tools. The most important powers in Engineering are the Emergency Power abilities. These increase power levels in a subsystem and provide additional benefits related to that subsystem. 

• Emergency Power to Weapons (Ens/Lt/LtCmdr) provides weapon power and bonus energy weapon damage, making it a must-slot for any build relying on their energy weapons for damage, usually at the highest rank possible.

• Emergency Power to Engines (Ens/Lt/LtCmdr) is (in our opinion) the most ubiquitous power in the entire game, providing a strong increase in engine power, speed, and turn rate. It appears on virtually every endgame build and even at rank I can nearly double your speed (or more!). Emergency Power abilities share a cooldown, but they can be cycled so a maximum of two are usable on a ship at once with both at maximum effectiveness.

• Emergency Power to Auxiliary (Ens/Lt/LtCmdr) is for science ships using an exotic build with excess Engineering seating. It boosts the auxiliary subsystem as well as providing Control Expertise and Exotic Particle Generators.

• Beware: Emergency Power to Shields also exists, but you are effectively limited to only two Emergency Power abilities, so this is not one to use in general play.

Engineering also has a number of defensive abilities

• Engineering Team (Ens/Lt/LtCmdr) is probably the first one you will encounter, repairing disabled subsystems and providing a small heal. It does not scale well, so its main use is as filler or a small heal on ships lacking higher ranks of engineering seating.

• Auxiliary to Structural (Lt/LtCmdr/Cmdr) is a faster-cycling heal that also boosts your resistance. It is commonly used in endgame builds due to its low cooldown, which can trigger several key offensive benefits and traits. 

• Reverse Shield Polarity (Lt/LtCmdr/Cmdr) allows your shields to basically heal off of incoming damage. It is a very strong defensive power, but has limited uptime and a long cooldown. Often referred to as an “Emergency Heal”

There are two other Engineering abilities that deserves a mention at this time:

• Auxiliary to Battery (Lt/LtCmdr/Cmdr) dumps all the power from your auxiliary subsystem into other subsystems. This is not incredibly useful, unless it is paired with specific Technician duty officers assigned to active slots that reduce the cooldown of ALL bridge officer abilities after using this ability. Auxiliary to Battery shares a cooldown with Auxiliary to Structural so the two cannot be used together. This is another power that is generally only taken at the lowest rank possible since the Technician benefit does not scale with the rank of Auxiliary to Battery, only the rank of the Technician. If you see references to “A2B”, “Aux2Batt” builds, they are using this power with those duty officers.

• Directed Energy Modulation (Lt/LtCmdr/Cmdr) is a very minor energy damage boost, but if your ship has excess engineering seating, it’s likely the best you can fit. 

Science

Science powers are a mix of defensive powers, usually around shields, control/debuff powers that pull or lock enemies in place, and drains that lower enemy subsystems. Many of the offensive powers also deal damage that scales off of a stat called Exotic Particle Generators (EPG) as well as your auxiliary power stat. Exotic damage, sometimes called “Space Magic,” “EPG” or “science builds,” often hits multiple targets and bypasses shields, so it scales very, very well. 

When endgame players think of science abilities, they start by thinking of exotic damage abilities.

• Gravity Well (LtCmdr/Cmdr/Cmdr) is the prima donna science ability but does not become available until you have ships with LtCmdr seating at level 20. This ability’s damage is not very strong but its primary purpose is to group enemies to where all of your other abilities can damage multiple enemies at once. This is usually taken at the maximum rank available. 

• Tyken’s Rift (Lt/LtCmdr/Cmdr) is an area-of-effect ability that also does damage. On ships with a Secondary Deflector, it can also trigger that damage. It does share a cooldown with Gravity Well, but they are long enough cooldown abilities that you can alternate between them.

• Tractor Beam and Tachyon Beam (Ens/Lt/LtCmdr) are filler abilities often available by default. Both deal minor damage and are primarily used as triggers for other things. Tachyon Beam, as a shield drain, triggers the Secondary Deflector on its target for ships that have them. Tractor Beam is a minor hold/damage that triggers a number of other powers and traits. 

Science also has a number of utility powers.

• Science Team (Ens/Lt/LtCmdr) is probably the first one you will encounter, clearing science effects and providing a small shield heal. It does not scale well, so its main use is as filler or a small shield heal on ships lacking higher ranks of science seating.

• Polarize Hull (Ens/Lt/LtCmdr) is a crucial ability early for new players because it provides a strong resistance bonus and clears tractor beams. YOU WILL WANT THIS ON YOUR SHIP WHEN ENTERING THE ROMULAN MYSTERY STORY ARC! It’s not the best endgame power but will probably save your bacon at least once in the early levels.

• Transfer Shield Strength (Ens/Lt/LtCmdr) is a stronger-scaling shield heal, but lacks the cleanse effect of Science Team.

• Photonic Officer (Lt/LtCmdr/Cmdr) is a powerful ability that reduces the recharge time of all bridge officer abilities when active. This has tremendous utility and should be prioritized.

• Hazard Emitters (Ens/Lt/LtCmdr) cleanses debuffs and damage-over-time effects and also provides a heal-over-time and damage resistance increase. It is commonly taken as a heal/utility power. 

Cooldowns, Durations, and Uptime

Many effects or benefits from gear or active duty officers are passive (always in effect). Some have a limited duration. Those active or conditional effects have a cooldown -- this is the time after use before the ability can be used again. 

The cooldown can be reduced by either a percentage cooldown reduction, a flat cooldown reduction, or a recharge haste. 

• Percentage cooldown example: a duty officer that recharges 10% of bridge officer cooldowns after auxiliary to battery is used

• Flat cooldown reduction example: a duty officer that reduces the cooldown of Tactical Team by 8 seconds

• Recharge haste: Improved Tactical Readiness skill improves the recharge speed of tactical abilities by 17%

• Bridge officer and captain abilities also have a minimum cooldown, which is the lowest cooldown an ability can achieve. This is sometimes called the “global” or “duplicate” cooldown

• Multiple copies of a power or powers within the same group or class of powers will put each other on a lower cooldown, sometimes called a “shared” cooldown. This is often the same value as the global cooldown, but not always.

When combined with the duration of an effect or ability, we can gauge the amount of time that an ability or buff is available: Uptime = Duration / Cooldown. Some effects do not start incrementing their cooldown or being affected by cooldown reduction while they are active. A term for this is a “channel”. For these items, the formula is slightly different: Uptime = Duration / (Cooldown + Duration). 

Fully-developed endgame builds WILL have a strategy in place to get bridge officer abilities down to minimum cooldown, as well as drastically increase the uptime of captain abilities and even consoles with active effects. For now, it is enough to know the principle exists and should be considered within a build. You’ll get more tools to approach this problem later. 

3.4.1 Example Federation Leveling Builds

Taking the principles above, let’s show some example builds for early leveling ships, using our recommended ships from 3.1 and the principles above. These builds were used and flown with new characters using no account-wide unlocks and they all handled the appropriate levels of content without issue so they should work for you. That's not to say you'll breeze through everything depending on your piloting, but they should feel very comfortable. We'll use the same core Federation beam build throughout the process, with some variations depending on the type of ship we're using, but you could certainly use cannons if you wanted. 

ALERT: Do not expect to replicate the gear on these builds exactly. The drops and salvage you pick up won't be exactly the same. Bridge Officers you should try and align with, but we show them as illustrations, not builds you should replicate exactly. These leveling ships are only flown for a few hours apiece before a better one is available, until we're above level 40.

Sabre Escort (LtCmdr): 

Heavy Cruiser (Cmdr): 

Long Range Science Vessel (Captain) 

Assault Cruiser (Rear Admiral - 45) 

Note:

Reverse Shield Polarity might have to be purchased, Emergency Power to Weapons 3 can be exchanged for the level 2 counterparts and Directed Energy Modulation / Auxiliary to Structural upgraded to save on EC, but these will become essential skills so worth buying. Many players can craft these and should just ask you to provide a PADD (found under officer Training in R&D). We discuss this more in 3.6.

Assault Cruiser - Rear Admiral Upper Half

At rear Admiral Upper half (level 46) you get access to Mk XII gear. From the Exchange (see Section 4.4) we purchased:

• Qty 2 [Console - Engineering - Plasma Distribution Manifold Mk XII] (8,000 EC each)

• Qty 1 [Console - Engineering - Injector Assembly Mk XII] (4,000 EC)

• Qty 1 [Console - Tactical - Phaser Relay Mk XII] (13,000 EC)

From the ship Vendor:

• Qty 4 XI [Phaser Beam Array Mk IX] (13,100 EC)

In total this was 85,000 EC to upgrade the build. This will be a good step to progress into the starter builds and acquire more gear from Reputations, later Episodes, and Fleets.

If you'd like to progress this build further into one that will carry you beyond Level 65 while still being completely Free-to-Play with only mission and Reputation gear, please see our full build on this T5 Ship.

3.4.2 Example Klingon Defense Force Leveling Builds

We can adapt these same ideas to the Klingon Defense Force and provide example builds for early leveling ships, using our recommended ships from 3.1 and the principles above. These builds were used and flown with new characters using no account-wide unlocks and they all handled the appropriate levels of content without issue so they should work for you. That's not to say you'll breeze through everything depending on your piloting, but they should feel very comfortable. We'll use the same core Klingon Disruptor Cannon idea throughout the process, with some variations depending on the type of ship we're using, but you could certainly use beamsif you wanted. 

ALERT: Do not expect to replicate the gear on these builds exactly. The drops and salvage you pick up won't be exactly the same. Bridge Officers you should try and align with, but we show them as illustrations, not builds you should replicate exactly. These leveling ships are only flown for a few hours apiece before a better one is available, until we're above level 40.

Somraw Raptor (LtCmdr): 

K’t’inga Battle Cruiser (LtCmdr): 

Vor’cha BattleCruiser (Captain) 

Vor’cha Battle Cruiser Retrofit (Rear Admiral) 

If you'd like to progress this build further into one that will carry you beyond Level 65 while still being completely Free-to-Play with only mission and Reputation gear, please see our full build on this T5 Ship.

3.4.3 Combat Tactics

How you fly your ship is almost as important as what's on it. Effective piloting is more than just slapping a bunch of gear on it. First off, you'll want to stay in a position where you can bring as many weapons to bear on a target as possible, on the same enemy shield facing. Weapons that are not in arc don't deal any damage. Circling enemies is not generally advisable and will lead to longer combat times. That will look different for different types of builds, as it will depend on if you're mostly using beam arrays or cannons. 

Try to fly parallel, or broadside if you’re using beam arrays in both the fore and aft slots. This means you’re parallel to your target and will make it more difficult to use a torpedo; it can be done, but will require you to swing your nose onto the target to fire the torpedo, then pivot back to bring all the beam arrays to bear. 

For builds using cannons or dual beam banks, fly nose on for everything else, no strafing or "attack run" nonsense. 

Flying away is only for when the enemy is about to kill you or the objective does not involve defeating them. We cannot overstate the importance of piloting, it's probably around half of your performance starting out.

Explanation slide for broadsiding

• The red arrows represent weapons firing

• Small red diamonds represent weapons not firing

• Large red diamond represents current target selection

Explanation slide for Fire at Will builds

Explanation slides for Fire at Will builds with 1 torpedo in front

Explanation slide for nose-on builds (Cannons, Dual beam banks, torpedoes, exotic/science). This will be most endgame builds. 

Explanation slide for focusing 1 shield facing

• Energy weapons have a significant range penalty firing at longer ranges

• With all 3 points in Long-Range Targeting Sensors, energy weapons suffer a 0-20% final damage penalty from 2 - 10 km

• Point Blank Shot and Narrow Sensor Bands further incentivize getting closer

• Mitigate by closing the gap to primary target quickly and efficiently

• Balance this against fighting too many enemies at once (especially if not tanky) and getting so close that multiple enemies can’t be engaged with AOE abilities like Scatter Volley since weapons are out of arc

• Try and move to groups of targets when possible to minimize zooming all over the map such that multiple targets can be re-engaged without drastic turning or positioning

  • If there is a lone target that needs to be destroyed in a different direction, weigh whether or not you can destroy it easily from range or if it is worth the time spent approaching it and then having to turn and reposition after it is defeated

  • Lone frigate/cruiser-rank enemies are generally not worth approaching unless there are no other targets to pursue

• Exotic abilities have no particular range penalty, though some can only be activated within 5 km

• Torpedoes have no range penalty

  • The Sniper trait incentivizes launching torpedoes at longer range

  • Launching at longer ranges, however, increases the distance and time that torpedoes must travel to target

  • Destructible torpedoes may be shot down at longer ranges

  • Approaching within 1 km of a target and firing destructible torpedoes may result in you taking friendly fire from your own weapons

Explanation for an advanced piloting concept: Flanking. We cover ship types in Section 7.2 and specializations in Section 6.7.

If you're still unsure of how to fly your ship well, 1) be patient, it takes practice to learn. Even a skill like targeting the weakened/defeated shield facing takes time to perfect. 2) check out our YouTube channel, which has example videos of how we fly. We're not the best pilots in the game, but we do well enough to teach some solid fundamentals. We also have a section on known difficulty spikes further down (3.11) for those parts of the game that are known to be more challenging for new players. 

3.4.4 Staying Alive

There are many different layers of defenses to keeping your starship intact. These apply to a lesser extent on ground, but let's start with a diagram that illustrates the principles. The red arrows are incoming fire, blue shapes are shields, and green shapes represent hull hit points. 

NPC energy damage is rarely crippling except in large volumes. NPC torpedo damage is much more threatening, especially if shields are down. NPC exotic damage is also a threat, especially if facing Voth or Terrans. NPC damage reflect mechanics can also be a major threat; we cover those more in section 3.11.

If you start seeing your shields drop in early levels, you should take these actions:

1) Bank to present a stronger shield facing, or distribute shields to that facing. Activating Tactical Team will do that automatically.

2) Apply a shield heal if you have one. Reverse Shield Polarity is an excellent "stay alive" button.

3) If your hull starts taking damage, activate a hull heal if you have one or at least Brace For Impact (see 3.7)

4) Throttle up and move away from the target. Speed increases your defense rating, which will cause enemies to miss more. Evasive Maneuvers can be useful here to quickly get away (again, see 3.7).

5) If your hull is severely damaged, activate as many heals as possible. Reiterative Structural Capacitor is an easily obtainable burst heal with a long cooldown from the Phoenix Box (see 4.6)

If you'd like a deeper walkthrough of each of the survivability mechanics above, check out our Mechanics guide starting on slide 135 where we go in depth on a variety of Survivability mechanics. 

ALERT: That presentation has a lot of math in it.

3.5 Training Bridge Officers

Bridge officers can be trained by going to a bridge officer training and acquiring the manual for most abilities. Some manuals must be crafted through the R&D system or purchased on the Exchange. Bridge officers may learn as many abilities as you care to teach them, but they may only have one active ground ability and one active space ability per each of the four ranks (Ensign/Lieutenant/Lieutenant Commander/Commander) at any given time. Under the status menu (U), select the bridge officer you want to train/reconfigure from the list on the left. The bridge officer must be the appropriate career and rank to learn the ability. 

Tutorial for training bridge officers

To change the active ability, select the slot you want to replace, then select the ability you want to use from the list of available abilities below. To learn a new ability, you must have the appropriate manual from the bridge officer vendor. The manual and some expertise will be consumed in the process. 

Top: Select slot you want to learn a new ability. Bottom: Select the ability you want them to learn from the list.

Top: Additional training manuals can be purchased from the bridge officer trainer at your faction hub (see 1.9). You will still need to change the selected power on the slot on your ship. Teaching the bridge officer the skill alone won't make it the one assigned to that ship. Select the ship on the left, choose stations, find the appropriate bridge officer and rank and left-click it. A list will appear on the right with skills that can be used by that bridge officer in that seat. 

Bottom: Specialization abilities come online later, once you have reached endgame stages of builds and generally after leveling up unless you have purchased a Tier ship. These will be discussed more in sections 6.7 and 7.1.

3.6 Groundbuilding First Principles

By around level 20-25, you will need to start thinking more about your ground loadout. By the time you reach the “Cutting the Cord” mission, you’ll definitely want to at least have some things figured out. Just like in space, STO is a game of synergy, where all the various pieces of a ground build come together as you assume a role more akin to wizard-lord than starship captain. However, early in your journey, you’re just starting to acquire the basic building blocks. 

 There are far fewer pieces of a ground build than in space, but there’s still a few principles we should follow. This is a pared-down version of what we cover in our main endgame Ground Basics page. 

1. Damage gets the job done. There are basically zero ground maps where the objective doesn't involve making something's health bar go to 0. Usually it's many many somethings, which leads to a natural focus on offensive abilities. 

2. When in doubt, favor offense over defense. While building full glass is not a great idea, there are a few highly-effective survivability tools out there and going beyond those is probably not a great idea because most of the time, it's unneeded and takes away build space from damage. 

3. The kit is king. Your kit and its modules are analogous in power to bridge officer powers in space. Even if you're focused on weapon damage, the kit and modules you slot are critical to making a good build.

4. Most things are situational. There are a few obvious must-slots. There are many obvious don't-slots. And then there's a wide gap in between them where the appropriate answer is "It depends." We don't shy away from "It depends," we seek to understand when and where to use something.

Kit Abilities

Again, the kit is king and we’re searching for the highest possible Mark. Each time you promote to a new rank, you may want to swap out any modules you can at the vendor. Here are some desirable ones that you can acquire easily from a gear vendor to help carry you through the early levels. They are in priority order, so the ones on top are the most important.

ALERT: If you’re going for a melee build, it’s highly recommended to do this on a Tactical captain to grab Lunge and Motion Accelerator. 

If you can scrounge up 40,000 Dilithium to buy 10 Phoenix Prize Packs from the Dilithium Store and acquire some Ultra Rare or Very Rare Tokens, the Crystal Prism (Ultra Rare) and Sompek Lightning (Very Rare) will serve you well over the bottom two options. Do not buy individual Phoenix Prize packs; further discussion of this prize pack is in section 4.6. You can add one more personal space and ground trait as well as a kit module slot by applying an Elite Captain token to your captain. This can be purchased from the Zen Store (see 4.7) or as part of the yearly giveaways, typically near anniversary. See 8.3 for more information.

Ground Armor and Shields

You’ll largely be picking up what you can find or earn as a mission reward at the highest possible mark at first. Polyalloy Weave Armor has the most physical and kinetic resistance, while Recoil-Compensating Armor and Integrated Targeting Armors provide far fewer defensive benefits but have crit bonuses. One of the better earlier mission-reward armors is Physical Augmentation Utility Armor, from the mission “Jabberwocky,” which is a combination of a melee-focused Physical Augmentation Armor and a crit-focused Recoil-Compensating Armor. 

Shields, again, will largely be whatever you can find at the highest mark. There are better shields in the endgame, as mentioned in the Basics, but you won’t have ready access to them. The Phoenix Box again can be your friend, offering you the Sompek Personal Shield at Very Rare that also reduces damage to shields by 5%. It’s not much, but it’s something. 

Devices should include hypos. Beyond that, there’s not much else that really matters. You can use power cells and shield charges if you want, but a combat pet may be the most helpful. 

Weapons

There are a wide variety of ground weapons you can choose from, including rifles, pistols, heavy weapons called “assaults,” and melee weapons like swords and bat’leths. Melee weapons require you to be right next to an enemy but they do bypass shields. Feel free to try different ones that appeal to you, especially the more unique ones. As with space weapons, the differences between flavors (i.e. phaser, disruptor, etc.) are negligible. 

However, there are a few types of weapons that are stronger and a few that are not so good based on their base damage, range, firing speed, and number of targets.

 This table comes straight from the wiki: 

Not every type will be available in every flavor, but the craftable ones are more common and widely available.

Since STO generally has you fighting grouped targets, ranged weapons with more range and that can hit multiple targets with good DPS are valuable. For pistols, that means dual pistols or split beam pistols. Good rifle candidates are full auto rifles (and autocarbines), wide beam, and split beam/bolt rifles. KDF characters can also pick up a blast rifle from the mission “Alpha” that has a strong AOE secondary. Romulan characters can pick up a plasma piercing beam rifle at the Romulan Flotilla that is also a good leveling weapon. In terms of Assaults, Miniguns are okay but have a decent spool-up. Blast Assaults can be okay on boffs but fire too slowly to be useful for players and pulse wave assaults are basically only good at point-blank range. Sniper Rifles, Stun Pistols, and Compression Pistols are not worth slotting for the most part. If you want to use a Sniper Rifle, make it your alternate weapon and use it on initial attack, then switch to something else when enemies close. 

A good idea might be to equip your boffs with AOE expose weapons like full auto rifles, miniguns, and dual pistols, and give yourself an exploit gun like a split beam or wide beam rifle to capitalize on that damage possibility. It’s not reliable but it helps when it happens.

3.6.1 Commanding Bridge Officers on Ground

Many times it will be advantageous for you to command the location your bridge officers move to. This can either be tactically to set up choke points, have your team more spread out, or interact with various missions (Example “Mine Enemy”).

When multiple pressure plates need to be stepped on, there is usually a UI element, often a reddish or yellow colour indicating that someone needs to stand on these locations. Normally these are spaced far enough apart that you cannot stand on one, and have the away team naturally step on the other plates. There could also be puzzles where there are multiple plates that need to be stepped on in different configurations

Example from Mine Enemy

Bridge officers can be commanded to move to a location using a Rally Point . This can be one for a single Bridge officer or for the whole away team. Clicking on the rally point beside a Bridge Officer portrait will command a single bridge officer, while the rally point at the top of the list will command all bridge officers. 

Once pressed, the mouse will turn into a pointer indicating that you are now placing a rally point. Once clicked there will be a small zone on the ground showing the rally point and the associated bridge officer (numbered from top of the list to bottom, 1 at the top 4 at the bottom). 

A 4 team example

The bridge officer will now attempt to reach that point and will stay there until the rally point is removed. This can be done by right clicking the bridge officers associated rally point button or removed for all bridge officers by right clicking the rally point button at the top of the list. For example, this is how you solve the pressure plate puzzle in Mine Enemy unless playing with others.

There are a few more things that you can command bridge officers to do, and it has to do with the rest of their UI. 

You can also right click on abilities to prevent the bridge officer from using them freely. This will make the icon red and will only be used when manually pressed. To show it's in use the icon will turn green before going on cooldown, To turn this off simply right click the ability again. 

Finally if you’re bridge officers become separated, either due to teleporting cutscenes, forgotten rally points, or stuck on environment, the away team can be transported back using Regroup bridge Officers 

3.6.2 Example Captain-rank Ground Builds

As with space builds, it's unlikely you'll be able to replicate these exact same builds in terms of gear, nor should you try, but the general idea and principles are illustrated through the examples. 

Bridge Officers

By and large, your bridge officers are not particularly adept with their weapons and you will do most of the heavy lifting in combat. Give them your leftover weapons and armor for now, upgrading to a newer mark when available. However, giving them valuable utility modules like heals on science captains, teamwide buffs on tactical officers, and fabrications on engineers will allow them to use them without having to be too smart about how they use them. Remember, you can only promote ground boffs to learn new abilities once you outrank them, so you can’t replace all their abilities until you yourself are ranked Captain. 

Since you’ll likely acquire more bridge officers than you have a supply of effective combat gear or energy credits for manuals, pick your 4 favorite bridge officers and assign them to your Standard Away Team. You can access this by opening the Status Window (U) and going to the Stations tab, at the bottom of the menu.

Tactical

Kit Modules:

• Photon Grenade is a direct damage ability

• Overwatch is a defensive buff that debuffs enemies that strike you

• Rally Cry is an offensive boost, heal over time, and resistance boost

• Lunge helps with melee weapons,

• Suppressing Fire slows and reduces enemy damage

Weapons:

• Main weapon is highest-mark salvaged Full Auto Rifle

•  Rlternate weapon is a melee for specific recruit events (see 8.5). and the kit modules Suppressing Fire, Overwatch, Rally Cry, and Photon Grenade are main damage options. 

Armor, Frame and Shields:

• Armor is Physical Augmentation Utility Armor. 

• Kit and Shields are highest mark items that could be salvaged from episodes

Devices:

• Hypos are essential

• The Combat pet was a mission reward so it was slotted

Traits:

• Lucky

• Creative

• Field Technician

• Rifle Training

• Peak Health

• Strike Team Specialist

Example Away Team 

This is for a Tactical Captain, so either 2x Engineer or 2x Science to balance team composition out.

• Tactical Officer has Photon Grenade, Target Optics, Overwatch, and Fire on My Mark

• Engineer has Weapons Malfunction, Shield Generator, Quantum Mortar, and Medical Generator

• First Science officer is mostly heals: Medical Tricorder, Vascular Regenerator, Tricorder Scan, Nanite Health Monitor

• Second Science Officer has more debuffs and controls: Medical Tricorder, Tricorder Scan, Hyperonic Radiation and Controls. 

You can of course invest more into your bridge officers’ gear and kits, especially as you acquire more resources, but remember you will not always get to bring them. There are no bridge officers present in endgame Task Force Operation content.

Engineering

By captain you should be able to get the following from the kit vendor at your faction hub for a pittance, all at Mk7: Chroniton Mine Barrier, Quick Fix, Quantum Mortar, Beam Turret, and Fuse Armor. 

Chroniton Mine Barrier is an excellent bit of kit that allows yout to pre-dispense them at a location for enemies to walk into. The Quantum Mortar and Beam turret will be staples for you and your bridge crew as these will benefit from your personal trait “Nanomolecular Architect”. Quick Fix is a repair for your summons but also a self damage buff for your ground energy weapon, and Fuse Armor is best used on large targets to pin them in place, excellent for allowing the Quantum mortar and Beam turrets for doing damage.

Armor, Weapons, Kit Frame and Shields are highest mark items that could be salvaged from episodes. Primary Weapon is the Romulan Disruptor Split Beam Rifle

Example Away Team:

For an Engineering Captain, so 2x Engineer, paired with a tactical or science.

• Tactical Officer has Photon Grenade, Target Optics, Suppressing Fire, and Overwatch

• Science Officer has Medical Tricorder, Tricorder Scan, Vascular Regenerator, and Nanite Health Monitor

• Engineer 1 has Quick Fix, Beam Turret, Medical Generator, and Quantum Mortar

• Engineer 2 has Quick Fix, Chroniton Mine, Beam Turret, and Quantum Mortar

The one downside to this approach is that this is a much slower form of play, it favours defensive posturing and slow advancement; choosing a point to put down fabrications and mines makes static defenses. The upside is that on timed events where the game sends waves of enemies at you this excels and almost plays for you. Additionally, being able to fortify before a miniboss lets you relieve some of the pressure that would otherwise be placed on you by having to react to whatever mechanics it might have.

If this doesn't seem appealing then copy the setup for the tactical captain example.

3.7 Captain Abilities

As you rank up, you’ll gain various captain abilities related to your career. You gain a new career-specific ability every 10 levels, starting at level 4 on ground and level 7 in space, up through 44/47. One last ability unlocks at 63. Captain abilities tend to have longer cooldowns than bridge officer abilities, but are also generally more impactful. The number in (parentheses) shows at what rank you unlock the ability.

The icons for some abilities vary based on your captain’s faction. If this is the case, icons will be shown Left to Right: Federation, KDF, Romulan, TOS Starfleet, Jem’Hadar

Universal - Ground

Universal - Space

Missions may also have a “Transwarp to this mission’s starting location.” but this will not put the default Transwarp on cooldown. 

Engineering - Ground

Engineering - Space

Tactical - Ground

Tactical - Space

Science - Ground

Science - Space

3.8 Shuttles and The Vault

Shuttles are smaller craft used in a handful of missions. The first such one is The Vault. These craft have much more limited capability, with stats less than even your starter ship. The wiki has a full list of available shuttles. 

When you pick up this mission, you will need to go to the ship requisition officer and procure a shuttle. There are more expensive and capable ones available but the default one (Type 8 Shuttle for Federation players and Kivra Shuttle for KDF) is fine for this mission. Go to the Officer and make sure the selection scroll bar is all the way to the left. Use the filter to narrow the field to just show shuttles and purchase one.

You can buy nicer shuttles with energy credits, refined dilithium, or even Zen (see Section 4). There are few places where you are required to use one, however. 

ALERT: If the scroll bar is not all the way to the left, you will likely get weird errors where the list appears blank. 

Next, you will want to fit it out. Shuttles are NOT locked to the shuttle-specific gear they come with. You can and should equip your best gear on the shuttle; you can always swap it back when returning to your ship. Alternatively, keep a secondary set of engines,  core, deflector, and some weapons for your shuttle. We strongly encourage beam arrays and maybe a torpedo on shuttle loadouts; the latter only if your shuttle has a boff station for Torpedo: Spread. You mostly fight other small craft in a shuttle so wide firing arcs are helpful against agile enemies and torpedo spreads are guaranteed hits. 

Very basic low-level shuttle gear. Note that shuttle-specific default gear is not used except the Omni-directional beam array, which are not available until higher ranks or skipping missions in the storyline.

In terms of controls, shuttles fly the same as a regular ship, just…smaller. You won’t generally be expected to fight larger ships alone in a shuttle though there are certainly ways to do so. With a default shuttle and scrounged-up gear, it's better to avoid such fights like the Mogai warbird in this mission. If you do have a fancier shuttle with bridge officer stations, prioritize Polarize Hull on this mission to avoid tractor beams and torpedo: spread in general. We discuss this mission more in 3.10.1.

3.9 Environmental Suits

When you’re in particularly hostile environmental conditions, you’ll want to activate your environmental suit. This item replaces your body armor, so if you were fond of its bonuses, you’ll have to forego them for the duration of your use of the environmental suit. The EV suit usually activates automatically, but if it doesn’t (for example, on the mission Step Between Stars), open up the Status window (U) and select the option to swap between your armor and EV suit. The default one is fine, but doesn’t have any combat stats; you can acquire ones with better items through the Reputation System. 

Left: environmental suit slot highlighted; Right: EV suit tooltip

Additionally, a UI element will appear on your ground bar that will let you change between EV suit and active Armor. At the bottom of your tray is a rotate button similar to that seen beside your EV suit in your captain status. 

Examples of environments where EV suits are required include:

• Nukara System

• Any mission where you have to spacewalk

• Asteroid mining

3.10 Difficulty Spikes

Star Trek Online has some notorious difficulty spikes in the storyline that will put your space and ground builds to the test, especially if unprepared. We’ll review the major ones in this section.

ALERT: There are some very minor storyline spoilers in terms of telling you who'll be fighting and what kind of BS they'll be using in this section. If you want the full, unfiltered experience, only consult this section when you have difficulties. 

3.10.1 Romulans - The Vault and Cutting the Cord

The Romulans are the first difficulty spike that most players encounter in the Romulan Mystery story arc. The larger D’deridex-class and Mogai warbirds have a combination that frequently blows up enterprising junior officers. The first part is Tractor Beam, which locks your ship in place, followed by a barrage of Heavy Plasma Torpedoes that finishes you off. This is a rude surprise if you’re used to mostly vibing through space combat. 

Red thingy coming towards the blue thingy

There are several counter-tactics available to defeat this:

• The science bridge officer ability Polarize Hull clears the Tractor Beam and adds a strong resistance to kinetic damage (read: torpedoes) to your ship. Use this when you’re being tractor beamed to clear the hold. That still leaves the torpedoes themselves.

• You can shoot down the torpedoes with an AOE firing mode like Cannon: Scatter Volley or Beams: Fire at Will. Torpedo: Spread is a good counter, too, as long as you time it correctly. If you have fighters, you can set them to Intercept mode to shoot down the torpedoes.

• As long as your shields are up and you have Polarize Hull active, the plasma torpedo barrage should not be fatal. Shields are very important to resisting kinetic damage, reducing incoming damage by 75% when striking a shield, so abilities like Reverse Shield Polarity will help keep your shields high. 

• Tactically, Tractor Beam has a range of 5 km and can only be used on targets in the fore arc. Neither the Mogai nor the D’deridex are particularly nimble, so attacking them from the rear and from a distance will negate this combination.

The Vault

If you’re flying a shuttle mission, in the Vault, with no bridge officer abilities, avoiding the Mogai near the end is key. The Brace for Impact captain ability can help you absorb the damage if it does launch torpedoes at you, but your key defense here will be avoiding that fight. If you’d like to see how Jay did it on a new character, here’s a video.

That said, there are plenty of ways to trivialize that mission for more heavily-geared players. For Federation players, the T3 Thunderchild Heavy Escort Refit has a console called Point Defense System which does tremendous damage against incoming fighters and torpedoes when activated. To use it, simply click the button and watch as it takes apart nearby fighters and torpedoes. It probably won’t kill a Mogai, but will weaken it enough for you to finish it off with your weapons if you want. It costs you 75,000 Refined Dilithium to obtain, which is far from trivial early game and you likely won’t have that much early game, but if you’re tired of small craft or want to make shuttle missions easy, this is a decent purchase. 

Cutting the Cord

The last mission of the Romulan Story Arc is Cutting the Cord, during which you will be on your own, on the ground, for almost all of the mission. Before doing this mission, make sure you have 5 kit modules, a decent ground weapon, and a stash of hypos. If you have 40,000 refined dilithium, it might be worth it to buy a stack of Phoenix Boxes (see 4.6) to grab some better ground gear. Either way, if you approach this mission slowly, it’ll be fine, but it is harder compared to previous missions since you won’t have your bridge officers’ assistance. If you’re struggling, here is a video of Jay playing through it on a new character to give you an example. 

3.10.2 Feedback Pulse

Players will encounter Feedback Pulse at different times depending on their faction and storyline. Federation players will first be introduced to it in the Borg Advance story arc, in the final mission: Fluid Dynamics, where the Borg Octahedron uses this ability. KDF players might encounter it even earlier if they do Empire Defense or Sortie missions against Federation opponents. 

Feedback Pulse inflicts damage on anyone shooting the person using it with energy weapons, and since you’ll continually be improving your damage, that means that Feedback Pulse damage scales with you, to the point where endgame ships without innate survivability can easily one-shot themselves if they’re not careful. 

The first step to dealing with Feedback Pulse is to know who has it, and how it works. Enemies with Feedback Pulse include:

• Borg Octahedrons of all flavors and types

• Certain Borg Dreadnoughts (“pickles”)

• Terran/Federation Science Vessels of various flavors and types

• The Voth don’t exactly use Feedback Pulse but the larger ships (Bastion Cruiser, Citadel Dreadnought) have Reflected Immunity Matrix, which functions the same way while also making the ship immune to attacks. 

• Vorgon Cruisers

At certain points, your bridge officers may give you a warning that a vessel is about to use Feedback Pulse but you can’t count on this all the time. 

The green/blue triangle buff on the target’s buff bar is a better indicator, but you have to recognize what it is and what it means, as well as move the UI in a way to see it (on PC at least). 

There are a few approaches to this potent ability, which remains a threat even to endgame players. We’d suggest probably half of our deaths on Elite are to Feedback Pulse or similar mechanics.

• Science captains have it the easiest, as using the captain ability Subnucleonic Beam (see Section 3.7) will strip the buff from the enemy ship instantly. Be aware that this ability has a rather long cooldown.

• Otherwise, you can do two things. The first is wait out the buff. Immediately turn to throw your fore weapons OUT of firing arc to avoid using your heavier-hitting fore weapons and thus inflicting more damage to yourself. Wait for the buff to disappear. If you are completely out of range, you’ll take no damage.

• You can also try and kill the target through Feedback Pulse. Feedback Pulse provides no protection to the user, and it also does not reflect torpedo or exotic damage, so if you have those on your ship, you can use them to finish off an enemy and tank whatever damage is reflected back at you. This does NOT usually work on higher difficulties, where enemies are tankier and presumably your damage has outpaced your survivability.

3.10.3 The Borg 

The Borg are the next difficulty spike that players face. While Federation players encounter them very early on, they don’t really ratchet up until a few mechanics are introduced in the Borg Advance. 

In space, Borg have potent shield drains. Since shields heavily reduce incoming damage, this means that incoming torpedoes will be made much more potent. Borg ships also use plasma weaponry, which leaves a damage-over-time (DOT) effect on your ship. The bigger ones also have Tractor Beams and even Feedback Pulse.

To counter this, the strongest ability you can slot is Reverse Shield Polarity, and that’s why we recommend everyone take a Cruiser / Battle Cruiser of some kind at Commander, when you’ll most likely be fighting the Borg. Reverse Shield Polarity causes incoming energy damage to heal your shields and grants you an immunity to shield drains. Combined with Polarize Hull to clear tractor beams and resist damage and/or Hazard Emitters to clear damage-over-time effects, and the Borg won’t be too much of a problem in space. 

On the ground, the Borg have a mechanic called Adaptation, which causes them to gain an immunity to an energy type after so many incoming attacks of that type. The Borg adapt separately to damage coming from captains versus bridge officers. You can either switch to another weapon or remodulate when that happens. Standard Borg do not adapt to kinetic or physical damage so if you have a melee weapon or a ranged weapon with those characteristics like the TR-116B sniper rifle, that is another approach. You’ll know they’ve adapted because you’ll see ADAPTED over them in green. Keep firing without remodulating and you’ll get a red and white indication that, no really, you really should. The Remodulate command is right above your ground tray and will take a few seconds to complete; this time can be lowered with certain gear items from either the Defera Adventure Zone or the Omega Reputations. 

Remodulation indications

The Borg also have a number of other annoying mechanics on the ground. One of them is a snare ability called “Resistance Is Futile”, which tethers you in place. You can roll out of it. The Borg can also sacrifice their shields to heal a drone and gain a resistance buff against physical and kinetic resistance. Lastly, the Borg have an ability called Assimilation, which means that if your character takes fatal damage while under this damage-over-time effect, you will be assimilated and join the Borg Collective, complete with a distorted view as you’re turned against your allies. For gameplay purposes, this effect ends after 60 seconds, at which point you’ll expire. To make things worse, higher-ranking Tactical Drones have the equivalent of a full auto rifle, with an AOE cone attack. 

The best way to deal with Borg on the ground is ensure you have strong sources of kit damage and survivability in your loadout. A good weapon helps, but since they can adapt to it, your kit is even more valuable than ever. Don’t charge into too many drones at once and remember to remodulate after each encounter. 

3.10.4 Undine - Surface Tension

The last mission of the Solanae Dyson Sphere arc is called Surface Tension and it can be quite difficult. Without spoiling it overmuch, once again you’ll be on your own on the ground, and against large numbers of Undine ships in space. 

On the ground, if the ground starts looking molten, move immediately, as this ability does a lot of damage very quickly. You will also want to focus on hypos and health-recovery mechanics rather than shields, as the Undine deal psionic damage and physical damage which bypasses shields. 

In space, the sheer number of enemies means you will want to take this fight slow and let your allies help you. Undine Vile Heavy Bioships have an ability called Fluidic Rift, which summons what can best be described as space snot bubbles. They’re slow moving but large, so steer clear of them, as they deal significant damage to your hull.

3.10.5 Delta Quadrant - the Vaadwaur

The last major difficulty spike for the early and midgame is the Vaadwaur, about a third of the way through the Delta Quadrant story arc. The Voth you fight beforehand aren’t anything you haven’t seen already and provided you know how to deal with their reflective shield (see 3.10.2 for discussion on Feedback Pulse), they’re not too bad. 

The Vaadwaur, however, are a different threat altogether, and will test your build and piloting. The first and foremost danger from the Vaadwaur is an ability called Polaron Barrage. When activated, the Vaadwaur will start marking an area of space with a large number of small blue circles. They’ll then fire a devastating barrage in the vicinity of those circles. You can tank a limited number of them depending on your setup, but the key tactic against this is to GET OUT OF THERE AS FAST AS POSSIBLE! 

If you haven’t been taking Emergency Power to Engines, you’ll definitely want to do that, as tanking this ability is not practical. It does too much damage, and most Vaadwaur ships have it. Stay mobile and avoid it. Their larger ships are also fairly tanky, so you’ll want to start investing in Reputation gear as you advance through the Delta Quadrant to power up your build. 

Vaadwaur ship casting Polaron Barrage

The other ability that they use is Constriction Anchor, which is like Tractor Beam, but spawned from a drone. Constriction Anchor holds you in place and Polarize Hull does NOT clear it. You can target and shoot the drone, but when it’s paired with Polaron Barrage, it’s a deadly combination that doesn’t leave you much time to react.

Target the Constriction Anchor quickly to destroy it 

On the ground, the Vaadwaur are largely not too challenging. You should prioritize destroying the support drones, which make their target immune to damage. Take out the drone first and they fall fairly quickly . . . with one exception. Vaadwaur Overseers are tough enemies with heavy melee attacks, first encountered in “Capture the Flag.” Slowing them down, through abilities like Suppressing Fire or Chroniton Mine Barrier, will help and you’ll want to slow them down and back away rather than standing there and trading blows. 

If the target is immune, look for the drone with the swirling energy trail leading to it. 

Clear the support drones first 

These guys are not trivial to take down

3.11.6 Iconians

The Iconians are a later-game enemy type that appears in the Iconian War storyline. In space, Iconians are principally dangerous due to three reasons:

• Electromagnetic Pulse Probes are a potent disable that leaves your ship defenseless. 

• Shield Gateways reinforce Iconian shields. These are small blue circles that can be targeted to remove their benefits. 

• Solar Gateways are the most dangerous and summon portals that fire solar energy into your ship. You must target and destroy these immediately. 

Left: Target Solar Gateways right away; Right: Be especially careful of ones behind you 

On ground, Iconian Defilers and Harbingers are the most dangerous enemies. Their attacks are well-telegraphed, with the former showing a large triangular red area on the ground for the Nightfall attack. Harbingers have one of two attacks, with Mass Gravimetric Detonations setting up large red circles on the ground that explode after a brief delay and Gravimetric Traps summoning twin columns of energy that toss you into the air and deal damage. In both cases, the appropriate tactic is to avoid the danger areas.

Stay out of the danger area marked in red

3.11.7 Na’kuhl

The Na’kuhl are a later-game enemy type encountered in a few missions and TFOs surrounding the Temporal War. While their appearances are relatively few, they have a single annoying gimmick: the ability to make temporal duplicates of themselves or their ships. When this happens, the ship or character that summoned the duplicate is invulnerable until the duplicate is killed or destroyed. This is a highly-annoying ability, especially when the duplicate is hidden behind a wall, obscured by VFX, or otherwise hard to target. It’s similar in principle to Vaadwaur Support Drones, so as with those, target them and destroy the duplicate first. In space, you’ll also want to avoid the plasma wave cone attacks that their larger ships use. You can later repurpose this shield for your own uses by playing "The Temporal Front," it's a common endgame ground shield. 

Left: Targets immune due to temporal distortions active; Right: Targeting the distortion to make the casting enemy vulnerable