Begginers Guide (Combat/System/Stats)

Alexpainer · 01-20-2010, 05:16 PM

Hi all! Hope you're all doing alright!

There are a lot of people asking a lot of questions while I am waiting for the PVP queue at Earth Space Dock / K7 so I decided to write a quick guide to how I play and how things work a little.
Please note I am just a guy who has played the Open Beta (albeit quite a lot) and this is not meant to be an EXTENSIVE guide... more like an extended tutorial.

THE BASICS:
Shields And Defense
Shields protect you from damage and you have four quadrants: Fore, Aft, Port and Starboard. The different shield arrays you equip have different shield strengths, regeneration rates, bleed-through and resistance.

Shield Strength - Amount of damage the shield can absorb (its HP). This is modified by the amount of power you allocate to shields and also by your skills (Starship Operations/Specific Ship type skills)

Regeneration Rate – How quickly your shield regenerates to max. This is also modified by power and skill.

Bleed-though– How much damage gets through the shields regardless of the strength. Not aware of anything other than type of attack from the offender and type of shield of defender.

Resistance – How much the total attack is reduced by.

Note on the shield stat system - (Example is a standard 100 point phaser attack with no special bits attacking someone with a resilient shield (5% resistance, 5% bleed through) charged up to full strength)
Attack Made hits shield for 100 Damage.
Reduced to 95 because of the resistance.
90.25 damage to shields and 4.75 damage to hull (Bleed through).

Strategy – You can distribute shield power by clicking on the individual quadrants, this can be done preemptively in anticipation of an attack from a specific direction. You can also redistribute shield power to make all quadrants even. All these commands can be bound to a key in the key binds section of the options or they can be assigned to the hotbar (press p to see what powers etc you have to assign).
A lot of your defense strategy is linked to your ship type and attack strategy, most important though if to know how to adjust it!

Power
Power affects most things on your ship. You have a power level monitor and like many menus you have multiple view choices (click on the icon that looks like stacked pages). The third option lets you set your own power levels, eg you set attack mode to have less engines and more shield, so you don’t die as much, you can save these to the current designated slots. Power comes in four flavours:
Weapons - More you put in raises your DPS, which affects damage skill. As far as I am aware this also affects cool-down regular shots.
Shields – More you put in, more powerful your shields are and quicker they recharge.
Engines – More you put in, faster you go.
Auxiliary – This is more complicated. More aux affects things like science abilities, hull recovery, crew recovery and most importantly TURN RATE.

A quick note – power levels take a while to change, for example, Full Impulse automatically puts all engines into full power… when you enter combat and you go back to your normal power state this will take upwards of 30 seconds to change. There are consoles that will change the levels more quickly (EPS Flow Regulators I think)

Weapons & Attack
Weapons fall into two main categories, Energy and Projectile and can be used from 10km.
Energy includes all beam and cannon weapons. Projectile includes all torpedoes and mines.
Energy weapons are all affected by Weapon Power and are generally for taking down shields whilst projectiles destroy hulls. Right click on a weapon to set it to autofire, only 1 fore and 1 aft can be autofired.
Energy weapons have multiple set ups:
Turret 360 degree attack cone, lowest damage.
Beam Array 250 degree attack cone, low damage.
Beam Banks 90 degree attack cone, medium damage.
Single Cannon 45 degree attack cone, med damage (not commonly available)
Dual Cannons 45 degree attack cone, high damage (Highest DPS)
Dual Heavy Cannons 45 degree attack cone, highest damage (high DPS)

To clarify, Cannons fire faster and do less individual damage, Heavy Cannons fire more slowly and do more individual damage. This could be useful if you use a hit and run tactic or if you have cannon abilities (a lot of the abilities use per shot damage to determine ability damage)
There are also multiple energy types available for the weapons, mostly the difference is just the extra special abilities they have which are mostly situational.
Energy Types:
Phaser Chance to lower weapon power (slightly more damage against shields possibly)
Disruptor Chance to lower resistance (slightly more damage against hulls)
Plasma Damage over time as well
Tetryon Chance to *expose* enemy
Polaron Chance to kill crewmen

Projectiles include torpedoes and mines. Power levels do not affect projectiles in any way that I know of.
Torpedoes travel quickly and do massive damage to hull, they also have special extra affects like energy weapons. Mines are deployed in groups of five… and have similar characters to torpedoes. Both types of projectile are affected by skill… however mines specifically are very dependent on their level (Ie Mk I drops level 5 mines, mk II drops level 10 mines etc).
Projectile Types:
Photon No Clue
Quantum Fast projectiles
Plasma Extra damage over time, slow projectiles
Chroniton Mines only
Transphasic Possibly completely able to bypass shields, + to crit

Attack And Defense Strategies
There are two good strategies I’m aware of.
Frontal Assault: Best for escorts. Set up involves 2 cannons on the front (or beam banks if not) and a turret/mines on the back. Some people like to whack a torpedo in there somewhere which I don’t.
You fly towards the enemy at about half speed (to maximize turning ability) take down the shields and keep distributing shields to the foe so you don’t die… if things look bad, turn quickly and spread the damage to your other shields (this is why you may want Heavy cannons – so you can snake your way to the enemy). Once the enemy shields are down, whack some mines right on top of them, or if they are a fast mover, eg a Bird of Prey, drop em within 2kms, preferably in front and then run away! I normally have my power at 70W/60S/25E/50A or something like that. Note that this is where combat engines can be useful, as they work better at low speeds and have greater turning. Note that more than 2 cannons on the front is pointless as there is a overlapping cooldown that doesn't show - Thanks Grimmage.

Broadside: Best for Science/Cruiser. Set up involves lots of arrays or turrets and a torp. Get within 8km of the enemy (try to keep it that far) and keep at a 90 degree to the enemy and continually blast the enemy then torpedo them! Also handy as you can control which part of the ship a single enemy aims at.
Again if you like to get personal you can use mines on the back instead of torpedoes on the front.
I would also note that disruptors are a good substitute for kinetic damage like torpedoes/mines, though you may need to put more energy to weapons. This one I usually have my set up as 80W/50S/25E/50A, though you may want to have less aux if you are flying a cruiser as opposed to a science vessel.

Auxillary Powers (Deflectors, Emitters and Sensors) and other stuffs
Crew: Crew represent your peons/minions. The more you have, the quicker your ship hull repairs. There are certain attacks (like Boarding Party) that specifically attack crew.
More Coming Later!

Other Suggestions??
EDIT UPDATE:
Linked to this page http://tinyurl.com/stoguide
EDIT 2:
added Ships

Alexpainer · 01-20-2010, 05:17 PM

---RESERVED---
Not sure if they have word limits

Alexpainer · 01-20-2010, 05:19 PM

---RESERVED---
Not sure if they have word limits on this forum

DRGNUSMC · 01-20-2010, 06:22 PM

Curious as to what is the best setup for the gimme ships...

grimmage · 01-20-2010, 06:48 PM

Three Cannons on ANY ship is useless. Cannons have a shared cooldown, though it isnt shown on their icons. The most you can have on your ship and successfully fire is two. Otherwise the cannons will clip into each other; ex, only two shots will fire from cannon 1 and all four shots will fire from cannon 2 and no shots from cannon 3.

The solution is to only mount TWO cannons and fire them interchangeably. Fire cannon 1, when cannon 1 is on cooldown, manually fire cannon 2.

Alexpainer · 01-20-2010, 06:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by grimmage

Three Cannons on ANY ship is useless. Cannons have a shared cooldown, though it isnt shown on their icons. The most you can have on your ship and successfully fire is two. Otherwise the cannons will clip into each other; ex, only two shots will fire from cannon 1 and all four shots will fire from cannon 2 and no shots from cannon 3.

The solution is to only mount TWO cannons and fire them interchangeably. Fire cannon 1, when cannon 1 is on cooldown, manually fire cannon 2.

Added to main post, thanks!

Piecesxiii · 01-21-2010, 07:08 PM

I have a question what is the crew stat for? ie a Light Cruser(starting ship) has a crew of 200 but an escort ship only has a crew of 50 and a science vessel has only 100, is this just to give you an idea of how big your ship is or dose it have some game effect

Danimal · 01-21-2010, 07:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Piecesxiii

I have a question what is the crew stat for? ie a Light Cruser(starting ship) has a crew of 200 but an escort ship only has a crew of 50 and a science vessel has only 100, is this just to give you an idea of how big your ship is or dose it have some game effect

My best guess is that it contributes towards the repair speed, perhaps even ship efficiency as a whole.
obviously having a larger crew would mean that more things get done faster.

YYC26 · 01-21-2010, 07:26 PM

More crew = faster repair times from what I remember. I've never actually noticed it (it may not be implemented yet), but you're supposed to be able to see crew get injured / die during battle, reducing your ability to repair, etc.

Alexpainer · 01-21-2010, 08:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by YYC26

More crew = faster repair times from what I remember. I've never actually noticed it (it may not be implemented yet), but you're supposed to be able to see crew get injured / die during battle, reducing your ability to repair, etc.

You are correct... if you hover over the crew icons (looks like a human paper-chain) itll tell you what the crew does. Ill also note that there are certain attacks that specifically attack crew - like Boarding Parties.

Ill add this in

01-20-2010, 05:16 PM	#1
Alexpainer Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2010	Begginers Guide (Combat/System/Stats) Hi all! Hope you're all doing alright! There are a lot of people asking a lot of questions while I am waiting for the PVP queue at Earth Space Dock / K7 so I decided to write a quick guide to how I play and how things work a little. Please note I am just a guy who has played the Open Beta (albeit quite a lot) and this is not meant to be an EXTENSIVE guide... more like an extended tutorial. THE BASICS: Shields And Defense Shields protect you from damage and you have four quadrants: Fore, Aft, Port and Starboard. The different shield arrays you equip have different shield strengths, regeneration rates, bleed-through and resistance. Shield Strength - Amount of damage the shield can absorb (its HP). This is modified by the amount of power you allocate to shields and also by your skills (Starship Operations/Specific Ship type skills) Regeneration Rate – How quickly your shield regenerates to max. This is also modified by power and skill. Bleed-though– How much damage gets through the shields regardless of the strength. Not aware of anything other than type of attack from the offender and type of shield of defender. Resistance – How much the total attack is reduced by. Note on the shield stat system - (Example is a standard 100 point phaser attack with no special bits attacking someone with a resilient shield (5% resistance, 5% bleed through) charged up to full strength) Attack Made hits shield for 100 Damage. Reduced to 95 because of the resistance. 90.25 damage to shields and 4.75 damage to hull (Bleed through). Strategy – You can distribute shield power by clicking on the individual quadrants, this can be done preemptively in anticipation of an attack from a specific direction. You can also redistribute shield power to make all quadrants even. All these commands can be bound to a key in the key binds section of the options or they can be assigned to the hotbar (press p to see what powers etc you have to assign). A lot of your defense strategy is linked to your ship type and attack strategy, most important though if to know how to adjust it! Power Power affects most things on your ship. You have a power level monitor and like many menus you have multiple view choices (click on the icon that looks like stacked pages). The third option lets you set your own power levels, eg you set attack mode to have less engines and more shield, so you don’t die as much, you can save these to the current designated slots. Power comes in four flavours: Weapons - More you put in raises your DPS, which affects damage skill. As far as I am aware this also affects cool-down regular shots. Shields – More you put in, more powerful your shields are and quicker they recharge. Engines – More you put in, faster you go. Auxiliary – This is more complicated. More aux affects things like science abilities, hull recovery, crew recovery and most importantly TURN RATE. A quick note – power levels take a while to change, for example, Full Impulse automatically puts all engines into full power… when you enter combat and you go back to your normal power state this will take upwards of 30 seconds to change. There are consoles that will change the levels more quickly (EPS Flow Regulators I think) Weapons & Attack Weapons fall into two main categories, Energy and Projectile and can be used from 10km. Energy includes all beam and cannon weapons. Projectile includes all torpedoes and mines. Energy weapons are all affected by Weapon Power and are generally for taking down shields whilst projectiles destroy hulls. Right click on a weapon to set it to autofire, only 1 fore and 1 aft can be autofired. Energy weapons have multiple set ups: Turret 360 degree attack cone, lowest damage. Beam Array 250 degree attack cone, low damage. Beam Banks 90 degree attack cone, medium damage. Single Cannon 45 degree attack cone, med damage (not commonly available) Dual Cannons 45 degree attack cone, high damage (Highest DPS) Dual Heavy Cannons 45 degree attack cone, highest damage (high DPS) To clarify, Cannons fire faster and do less individual damage, Heavy Cannons fire more slowly and do more individual damage. This could be useful if you use a hit and run tactic or if you have cannon abilities (a lot of the abilities use per shot damage to determine ability damage) There are also multiple energy types available for the weapons, mostly the difference is just the extra special abilities they have which are mostly situational. Energy Types: Phaser Chance to lower weapon power (slightly more damage against shields possibly) Disruptor Chance to lower resistance (slightly more damage against hulls) Plasma Damage over time as well Tetryon Chance to expose enemy Polaron Chance to kill crewmen Projectiles include torpedoes and mines. Power levels do not affect projectiles in any way that I know of. Torpedoes travel quickly and do massive damage to hull, they also have special extra affects like energy weapons. Mines are deployed in groups of five… and have similar characters to torpedoes. Both types of projectile are affected by skill… however mines specifically are very dependent on their level (Ie Mk I drops level 5 mines, mk II drops level 10 mines etc). Projectile Types: Photon No Clue Quantum Fast projectiles Plasma Extra damage over time, slow projectiles Chroniton Mines only Transphasic Possibly completely able to bypass shields, + to crit Attack And Defense Strategies There are two good strategies I’m aware of. Frontal Assault: Best for escorts. Set up involves 2 cannons on the front (or beam banks if not) and a turret/mines on the back. Some people like to whack a torpedo in there somewhere which I don’t. You fly towards the enemy at about half speed (to maximize turning ability) take down the shields and keep distributing shields to the foe so you don’t die… if things look bad, turn quickly and spread the damage to your other shields (this is why you may want Heavy cannons – so you can snake your way to the enemy). Once the enemy shields are down, whack some mines right on top of them, or if they are a fast mover, eg a Bird of Prey, drop em within 2kms, preferably in front and then run away! I normally have my power at 70W/60S/25E/50A or something like that. Note that this is where combat engines can be useful, as they work better at low speeds and have greater turning. Note that more than 2 cannons on the front is pointless as there is a overlapping cooldown that doesn't show - Thanks Grimmage. Broadside: Best for Science/Cruiser. Set up involves lots of arrays or turrets and a torp. Get within 8km of the enemy (try to keep it that far) and keep at a 90 degree to the enemy and continually blast the enemy then torpedo them! Also handy as you can control which part of the ship a single enemy aims at. Again if you like to get personal you can use mines on the back instead of torpedoes on the front. I would also note that disruptors are a good substitute for kinetic damage like torpedoes/mines, though you may need to put more energy to weapons. This one I usually have my set up as 80W/50S/25E/50A, though you may want to have less aux if you are flying a cruiser as opposed to a science vessel. Auxillary Powers (Deflectors, Emitters and Sensors) and other stuffs Crew: Crew represent your peons/minions. The more you have, the quicker your ship hull repairs. There are certain attacks (like Boarding Party) that specifically attack crew. More Coming Later! Other Suggestions?? EDIT UPDATE: Linked to this page http://tinyurl.com/stoguide EDIT 2: added Ships __________________ He who fights monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster, as you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you. - Friedrich Nietzsche Last edited by Alexpainer : 01-21-2010 at 08:58 PM. Reason: Extra Stuff/Editing

01-20-2010, 05:17 PM	#2
Alexpainer Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2010	---RESERVED--- Not sure if they have word limits __________________ He who fights monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster, as you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you. - Friedrich Nietzsche

01-20-2010, 05:19 PM	#3
Alexpainer Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2010	---RESERVED--- Not sure if they have word limits on this forum __________________ He who fights monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster, as you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you. - Friedrich Nietzsche

01-20-2010, 06:22 PM	#4
DRGNUSMC Member Join Date: May 2009 Location: Maryland	Curious as to what is the best setup for the gimme ships...

01-20-2010, 06:48 PM	#5
grimmage Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Terra	Three Cannons on ANY ship is useless. Cannons have a shared cooldown, though it isnt shown on their icons. The most you can have on your ship and successfully fire is two. Otherwise the cannons will clip into each other; ex, only two shots will fire from cannon 1 and all four shots will fire from cannon 2 and no shots from cannon 3. The solution is to only mount TWO cannons and fire them interchangeably. Fire cannon 1, when cannon 1 is on cooldown, manually fire cannon 2.

01-21-2010, 07:08 PM	#7
Piecesxiii Junior Member Join Date: Aug 2008	I have a question what is the crew stat for? ie a Light Cruser(starting ship) has a crew of 200 but an escort ship only has a crew of 50 and a science vessel has only 100, is this just to give you an idea of how big your ship is or dose it have some game effect

01-21-2010, 07:26 PM	#9
YYC26 Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2008	More crew = faster repair times from what I remember. I've never actually noticed it (it may not be implemented yet), but you're supposed to be able to see crew get injured / die during battle, reducing your ability to repair, etc.