Sadia's Budget Builds: Assault Cruiser

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SADIA'S BUDGET BUILDS: ASSAULT CRUISER

PREMISE: budget builds are meant for either new players or alts of players that do not have lots of resources on their main characters. Players are encouraged to modify these builds as they wish, as they are meant to be a first stepping stone to more advanced and powerful options.

LIMITATIONS: these builds are created with limited resources in mind – something a new lvl 50 character can achieve by playing single player missions and doing some foundry/STF missions for a couple of weeks. Limitations include:

  • No zen, lockbox, lobi or event ships, gear or traits.
  • No starship traits
  • Only crafted gear, loot drops from missions and rewards from single player missions (this includes the traits from SP missions too)
  • EC limit: 5 million EC. This is not a hard limit, but it is to be expected that new players will not swim in EC yet.
  • Starting build ships are lvl 40 „free“ ships – aka ships you can acquire for free when you reach lvl 40 (rear-admiral rank), or you can buy them for refined dilithium.
  • Getting help from other fleetmates (crafted gear etc) is encouraged. In the end, it's one of the reasons fleet are here for.


CASE OVERVIEW: ASSAULT CRUISER

Assault cruiser is a good all rounder for the ship of it’s type – it has 3 tactical bridge officers (BOFF) slots, which is a necessary minimum for a standard beam build. It also has heavy engineering leaning, which allows for Auxiliary to Battery (AuxToBatt, A2B) build, and still leaves space for tanking skills.

While it’s basic turn rate is decent enough to run cannons, it’s limited to single cannons only which is in most cases sub-par solution to usual beam array setup.


BRIDGE OFFICER SKILL SETUP:

The most important aspect of a ship build is the BOFF skill setup – proper setup will help you perform decently even with the sub-par gear – something that cannot be said for other way around. I'm going with AuxToBatt build because it's fairly cheap to make these days and will draw out the most from a cruiser with this BOFF seating.

Lt. Tactical: Tactical Team I, Attack Pattern Beta I

Ens. Tactical: Beam Fire at Will I

Cmdr. Engineering: Engineering Team I, Auxiliary Power to the Emergency Battery I, Emergency power to Weapons III, Directed Energy Modulation III

Lt.Cmdr. Engineering: Emergency Power to Engines I, Auxiliary Power to the Emergency Battery I, Emergency Power to Shields III

Lt. Science: Hazard Emitters I, Science Team II

All of these skills can be bought at a bridge officer skill trainer except the lvl III versions:

  • Emergency power to Shields III: can be crafted by an engineering character with at least two points in the engineering skill tree (or can be bought from exchange)
  • Emergency power to Weapons III: can be crafted by an engineering character with at least 12 points in the engineering skill tree (or can be bought from exchange)
  • Directed Energy Modulation III: can be crafted by an engineering character with at least two points in the tactical skill tree (or can be bought from exchange)

    If you are not an engineer, your best option is to ask a fleetmate to craft you the training manual. On exchange, prices for these manuals usually fluctuate between 100-300k EC.


ACTIVE DUTY OFFICER SPACE ROSTER:

This is very important part of this build, and the most costly (EC wise) part of it. To utilize the two „Auxiliary Power to Emergency Battery“ skills to their full potential, you'll need 3 Technician duty officers (doffs) of at least Rare (blue) quality. They should be of the type that reduces cooldown on ALL bridge officer skills whenever AuxToBatt skill is used. This reduces the cooldown of your skills significantly, allowing you to use them more often and therefore boost your combat efficiency. My preferred setup is as follows:

  • 3x Techicians (reduce BOFF skills cooldown when AuxToBatt skill is used) – Rare or Very Rare
  • 1x Warp core engineer (subsystem power variant - has a chance to boost all power levels whenever Emergency Power to X skill is used) – Rare or Very Rare
  • 1x Energy weapons officer – Shiled power variant: Chance to gain shield power when using energy weapons – Rare or Very Rare

Three technicians of at least rare quality are a must – you can buy them from an exchange for around 1 million EC apiece. You can also gain 1 rare technician by finishing „Colonisation: B’Tran cluster“ assignment chain (you also get a repeatable mission which can yield a purple technician on a crit). This will be the biggest EC drain in this build, but it’s worth the cost. I suggest you get very rare technicians as soon as you can, either by doffing or buying them on the exchange as you gain more EC.


STARSHIP EQUIPMENT:

Apart from the BOFF skill setup, this is the second most important aspect of the ship build. My proposed setup is the barebones gear you can buy or craft (with help of the fleetmates) or acquire by (re)playing single player missions.

FRONT WEAPONS:

  • 4x Very Rare Phaser Beam Arrays Mk XII: crafted or bought on the exchange, don't bother yourself with traits at this point, just grab the cheapest stuff there is.

BACK WEAPONS:

ENGINEERING CONSOLES:

SCIENCE CONSOLES:

TACTICAL CONSOLES:

  • 3x Phaser Relay Mk XII: „Of signs and portents“ mission in the „New Frontiers“ mission tab

DEFLECTOR:

ENGINES:

  • Bajor Defense Hyper-Impulse Engines Mk XII: „Scylla and Charybdis“ mission in the „New Frontiers“ mission tab

SHIELDS:

  • Bajor Defense Covariant Shield Array Mk XII: „Scylla and Charybdis“ mission in the „New Frontiers“ mission tab



    WARP CORE:
  • Plasma-Integrated Warp Core Mk XII: crafted or exchange

I suggest upgrading weapons and tactical consoles to MK XV as soon as possible, as this will boost your DPS by 30-50%. Getting Advanced fleet phasers and Fleet Spire tactical consoles (when you acquire enough dilithium and fleet credits) is even better option.


SPECIALIZATIONS:

This build isn't made with specializations in mind, but you will get to lvl 60 relatively fast and that will mean you'll get at least 10 specialization points to spend. I suggesting maxing out Strategist secondary specialization first and then going for Intelligence (more DPS) or Miracle Worker (more tanking) specializations next.


PERSONAL SPACE TRAITS:

There should be enough free ones to fill the entire list, and I suggest the following: Accurate, Elusive, Efficient Captain, Beam Training, Operative, Fleet Coordinator, Techie, Bulkhead Technician, Shield Technician, Warp Theorist.

I suggest you get your crafting skills to rank 15 – this will open new space traits like: Beam Barrage, Give Your All, Inelastic Collisions etc.

There are also some space traits you can get from single player missions, however none is really critical for this build.


SHIP TRAITS:

None. This build is for new characters/players and they are not expected to have any ship traits yet.


SPACE REPUTATION:

Maxiumum tier 2 – something that can be achieved within a week (6 daily missions for 2.5k reputation points each).

  • Advanced Targeting Systems: +16% crit severity, T2 Dyson reputation (grind Dyson ground battlezone for marks and dilithium)
  • Precision: +4% crit chance, T2 Romulan reputation (run Romulan patrols or New Romulus ground repeatable missions)
  • Chrono-Capacitor Array: 7.5% BOFF skills recharge speed, T2 Temporal rep (run „Battle of Procyon“ or „Days of Doom“ space STFs on normal, or wait for events where you can select these marks as a reward)
  • Energy refrequencer: receive 2.5% of outgoing damage as Hull heal, T2 Iconian rep („Brotherhood of Sword“ ground STF on normal/advance is the quickest option)


CLOSING WORDS:

Depending on your character's profession and skill setup, this build can churn out between 15-25k DPS in ISA. Upgrading weapons to Mk XV should boost this to at least 20-30k range. You are free to experiment with the build as you like, and freely post and modifications or additional advice here.

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