Sadia's Budget Builds: Patrol Escort

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SADIA'S BUDGET BUILDS: PATROL ESCORT

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 the fleets are here for.


CASE OVERVIEW: PATROL ESCORT

Patrol escort is your basic endgame escort with full tactical focus and secondary engineering focus, which gives it a bit more survivability than the other available option, the advanced escort. It’s quick and mobile vessel and therefore fully suited for a proper cannon build. More adventurous players might try a limited Auxiliary to Battery build, but abundance of tactical BOFF skills makes this kind of a build purely optional, as it sacrifices survival for DPS.



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 a basic “double the DPS tactical skills” setup with some engineering skills to boost survival and speed/turn rate so you can make best use of the dual heavy cannons (further in text: DHCs). DHCs are weapons with highest damage spike in the game, shortest firing period (and therefore quickest weapon power recovery, which is important for DPS), but they have the smallest firing arc and require proper positioning (aka “staying on target”). This definitely requires more flying skill than the more popular beam builds, but it’s nothing that can’t be learned with a bit of training.

Cmdr. Tactical: Tactical Team I, Attack Pattern Beta I, Cannons: Scatter Volley II, Attack Pattern Omega III

Lt.Cmdr. Tactical: Torpedoes: Spread I, Cannons: Scatter Volley I, Torpedoes: Spread III

Lt. Engineering: Engineering Team I, Auxiliary Power to the Inertial Dampeners I

Lt.Cmdr. Engineering: Emergency Power to Shields I (optional: Emergency power to Weapons I)

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:

  • Attack Pattern Omega III: can be crafted by an tactical character with at least 7 points in the engineering skill tree (or can be bought from exchange)
  • Torpedoes: Spread III: can be crafted by an tactical character with at least 17 points in the tactical skill tree (or can be bought from exchange)

    If you are not an tactical officer, your best option is to ask a fleet mate to craft you the training manual. On exchange, prices for these manuals usually fluctuate between 50-200k EC.


ACTIVE DUTY OFFICER SPACE ROSTER:

Unlike with the assault cruiser, this builds requires only a single duty officer to boost your BOFF skills, other doffs are optional and will help your general performance

  • 1x Matter-anti matter specialist (Auxiliary to Dampeners variant: adds energy weapon resistance and increases duration of Auxiliary Power to the Inertial Dampeners skill) – Rare or Very Rare

Optional (Sadia's choice - note that these might be very costly, especially if you want to get purple versions)

  • 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
  • 1x Projectile weapon officer – Torpedo recharge variant: Chance to reduce cooldown on torpedo fire rate – Rare or Very Rare
  • 1x Conn officer – Tactical team variant: reduces the cooldown and buffs the Tactical Team boff skill – Rare or Very Rare

Only the first doff on that list is a must, and conn officer is close second, as it will reduce the cooldown of the only tactical skill that isn’t “doubled” in the build. First is available on the exchange or from the Romulan survivor duty officer pack (though I advise to simply get them from exchange). Second one can be acquired from the doffing system and is one of the “regular” doffs that doesn’t come from the special doff packs.

You can get “free” purple projectile weapons officer, “Law”, from the Nimbus story arc mission “A fistfull of Gorn”.


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:

  • 1x Very Rare Wide Arc Phaser Dual heavy cannons Mk XII: crafted or bought on the exchange - best to ask a fleet mate with good crafting skill to make you one, as they go for around 2 million EC on exchange. If it's out of your purchase range, substitute it for another:
  • 1x Very Rare Phaser Dual heavy cannons Mk XII: crafted or bought on the exchange, don't bother yourself with traits at this point, just grab the cheapest stuff there is.
  • Quantum Phase Torpedo Mk XII: „Sunrise“ SP mission in the „Future proof“ mission tab
  • Quantum Phase Dual Heavy Cannons Mk XII: „Sunrise“ SP mission in the„Future proof“ mission tab

BACK WEAPONS:

  • 3x Very rare phaser cannon turrets Mk XII: crafted or bought from the exchange


ENGINEERING CONSOLES:

SCIENCE CONSOLES:

TACTICAL CONSOLES:

  • 4x 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, Cannon 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: Kinetic Precision, Give Your All, Inelastic Collisions etc.

There are also some space traits you can get from single player missions, however none are 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 10-20k DPS in ISA. Upgrading weapons to Mk XV should boost this to at least 15-25k 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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