Science Starter

Notes

I use the same two areas on the ground tree on every character. 

Notes

When we put together the outline for Budget Ground Builds, we really had to go back to the beginning with how to make a ground build. So many good tools exist in both cheap lockbox gear, as well as Reputation gear. If you had barely anything to your name, save a few Energy Credits from playing through the story missions, where would you start?

The Kit Frame is often overlooked, and cast off onto the exchange. We aren't doing any upgrading, and we can't do any re-engineering. In theory, you can keep grinding Uneasy Allies for the Romulan Imperial Navy kit and hope for a [Kperf]x2 or better mod pool. There are 11 mods in the pool, and that's assuming there isn't a carryover double-up mod in the pool. This means it's roughly 1 in 121 kits you can get a [Kperf]x2 - you can grind out the dil for the 11th Anniversary bundle in that amount of time. As it stands, you have to run it half a dozen or more to get a [Kperf] kit. While we do that on some of our other Starter builds, we went a different direction here. 

Kit frames are often cast-off rewards from Lockboxes. Starfleet Frontier kits happen to come at Epic by default, which sets you up for some serious benefit at this level. Unlike space, on ground, the extra mods can have a huge impact. Just the fact that the Epic mod is [KP/Wpn] doubles the KPerf from the kit frame. We get 52.5 KPerf and 26.2 Weapon Proficiency, benefiting both kit modules and our weapon. This is extremely cost effective since you only need one mod to be [KPerf], and approximately 1 in 4 kits will have one of these mods (roll 1/11 3 times). Another benefit from Starfleet Frontier kits is that we get a chance for an additional Exothermic Induction Field, which is one of our highest damaging kit modules. 

For armor, if you can pick up a small stack of Phoenix boxes for 40,000 dil (5 days of refining), more than likely you can get a token to turn in for the Guerrilla Combat Armor. If not, they often run Phoenix Events that give away free tokens. Now, this does take an Ultra-rare token, but they are still about 1 in 6 for a Ultra Rare token. This armor gives us some Expose and Exploit benefits, including increased duration of Expose. The clicky on the armor also can be used in a pinch to stay alive a bit longer, especially since we have a fast cycling heal in Medical Tricorder. Turning incoming damage into a DoT gives us more time to react to the damage.

For shield and secondary weapon, just about every build has the Nahkuhl Temporal Operative Shield & Rifle. The shield is invincibility when you need it as NPCs are really bad about targeting the distortion to make you vulnerable. Since we don't ever fire the second weapon, we can pick up the 2pc with this set for both CrtH and CrtD. 

That leaves the primary weapon, and honestly there are going to be a ton of playstyle preferences in play with primary weapon. I personally like long range snipers, but ground is often dominated by clumps of enemies, especially based on how our kit modules shake out. As such, the only weapon in the game that is a sniper with an AoE secondary is the Type 3 Phaser Rifle, which is a mission reward. It's only Mk XI Blue, but going from XI to XII only adds 2 damage per shot... not a huge loss. The AoE snipe is great for clustered enemies while staying a good distance away. It's also an AoE Exploit, so ideally your team has some exposes. At least Hyperonic Radiation is an Expose. 

Notes:

When it comes to kit modules, forget everything you know from Space combat. First off, Kit Modules scale extremely hard with rarity. A Mk II Very Rare will outperform a Mk XI Rare. This means it is often better to craft a kit module at a lower Mark to get a higher rarity, then you can spend resources to try and get a higher mark later. At this budget level, we try to make it to where you can craft or cheaply purchase every kit module you need. With the science loadout, you are in luck! Three of the kit modules are default ones, and two just take some Dil investment. 

When it comes to default kit modules, you can just craft them! Go to Kits & Modules, Science Kits, and just pick Exotherm... it's not there? Yeah, that's a really really old bug. Exothermic Induction Field is unfortunately in a weird place. You're going to have to buy it from the exchange or get it as a mission reward or loot drop. It's a default kit module, so it should never be very expensive. It's also easily obtained from a Fleet Research Lab should that be available to you. We're assuming no fleet gear here, so some of our EC budget goes to purchasing the kit module. More than likely, you'll have a version  of it just from playing through the game, or hopefully you can put it on a short list to upgrade from access to a fleet. 

Hyperonic Radiation and Medical Tricorder are default kit modules that you can craft. If you want, you can craft them at Mk II Very Rare, and then work to craft Mk XII as your resources allow. You can also pick these up from the exchange, often for pretty cheap. Mk X Very Rare is sufficient if you want to keep dilithium spending low. 

When it comes to Skill Tree, make sure you are spending Skill Points in Temporal, both for space and ground benefits. Spending 30 points in Temporal will let you get the highest quality Paradox Bomb kit module. Use this as your first kit module to pull targets into a clump before hitting them with Exothermic and Hyperonic for damage. Without Paradox Bomb, targets would just run out of the damage field for Exothermic Induction Field. 

Finally, Crystal Prism is a solid kit module that lets you set up crystal prism turrets. The benefit here is twofold: You can quickly set up a good amount of damage output with 3 charges, and even add up to 5 given enough time. The crystals also will tank for you and your team, absorbing damage that might otherwise be directed at you. Each time you place a crystal, all the other linked ones will refresh and fully heal, further increasing tanking. This costs an Ultra Rare Phoenix token, but since we also want the armor from the Phoenix store, a 10-pack won't go to waste. You can turn any leftovers into upgrades if you want, but we aren't assuming upgrades here. Just one stack of 10 should get you what you need, but its possible you'll need more. You can also wait for Phoenix box events where boxes are given out daily for free. 

Notes: 

Since we only need one gun, we can use the secondary weapon to complete some set bonuses. The shield is already one of the best in the game for its survivability, so the 2pc from the weapon being critical chance and damage that applies to the entire build is icing on the cake. 

If you wanted to, some of our other starter builds use the Romulan Imperial Navy set. This one focuses a little different, but there's nothing inherently wrong with Romulan Imperial Navy set here, provided you swap out guns for Plasma.

Meta-Focused Tweaks:

• I won't pretend to know what is META on ground. We do have some other ground builds that will get you started if you are after higher-tier damage. 

Budget Tweaks:

• This entire build is already at the lowest tier of cost, you'd be challenged to cut further cost without large sacrifices in ability.

Notes:

When it comes to personal traits, at this budget level, we only have default and mission reward traits to work with. Since we took a Rifle as our primary weapon, we use Rifle training. If you took a different weapon type, you'd need to swap this out. Unlike Space, ground builds don't translate between careers. Science-exclusive traits and kit modules can't really be swapped out without starting from scratch on the build. Check out our other starter careers if you are not a sci character.

As you grow in budget, you're going to want to pick up Kit Performance stats from other traits. We have a whole host of traits listed on our Ground Basics page. Once you finish with this build, the only place to go is up! 

Miscellaneous