Ok so, I am Lt. 6 quickly working my way to Lt. Commander and I wanted to see if anyone would be kind enough to answer my questions so I could get my character ready for what lies ahead at his new rank. My core questions are

What build will maximize dps while being able to still solo missions (and how do I prepare for that build now)?

If I discharge a bridge officer what happens to all the SP I invested in him?

What is the best way to get new equipment?

I looked around the forums and I found this post

"I went Tactical / Escorts on Khabok, who is now a LtCommander.

My ship has:

Dual Heavy Phaser Cannon Mk IV
Dual Heavy Phaser Cannon Mk IV
Photon Torpedo Launcher Mk IV
Phaser Turret Mk IV

For my officers, I have:

Tac: High Yield I (Took High Yield twice, because Spread is lame and there's no other good Escort skills)
Tac: High Yield I / Cannon: Rapid Fire I
Engi: Engineering Team I (to fix the ship if I take any hull damage)
Sci: Tractor Beam (to keep Klingons from battle-cloaking and to keep the enemies hull from turning away)

Basic tactics: Aproach at full speed , not full impulse, drop throttle to 1/4, blow all cooldowns and pop the first ship before the rest can even react. Then it's either keep it slow and turret them down, or if they approach to get behind you, pop Evasive and turn around when you're about 9k out and drop to 1/4 speed again.

Works well in PvP, works well in PvE. If you're taking damage, Evasive / Battery out of range and turn in for another pass."

My questions would be, how does he have four officers? It says his two tac officers have two skills, how is that? Also how did he take one skill twice?

And is there a better dps build?

Thanks

One that raises the weapon skills you use first. Followed by things that boost power.

Poof. But you never stop earning BOff points, so not a big deal unless you swap BOffs often.

A variety of ways.

Drops can provide equipment, as well as money to buy it from the exchange and vendors.

Winning fleet actions can give you blues, coming close to the top greens. With smart choice of targets, you can also get quite a bit of random loot drops in them.

Exploration missions award badges that can be used to purchase even Mk gear.

PvP badges can also be used to buy gear.

Personally, I mostly rely on drops/vendor/exchange and exploration mission badges.

Higher tier ships get more BOff stations. And the stations can be higher level, allowing the use of higher level powers.

A tier 2 escort gains an additional tactical BOff station and has one upgraded to Lt level. A T2 science gets that for science, and a cruiser for engineering.

He took the same ability twice by taking it 1x on each tactical BOff. He could also have taken a I and II version of the same ability on the same officer, if he'd felt like it.

Now you're probably curious as to how that works.

BOff abilities have a system. Beam Overload and Beam: Fire At Will, for example, are both System: Beams. When you use a BOff ability, all other BOff abilities that use the same system go into a 20s cooldown, while the one you used goes into its full cooldown, which is longer than 20s. So having 2 of the same power lets you use that power more often.

Thheorycraft! If you will be using 2x cannons and 1x torp you may want 2x Dual Cannons over 2x Heavies for higher sustained dps. Its about the cooldowns and the wasted 1 second using 2x Heavies. You will probably pull more damage out of Rapid Fire by firing non stop with no wasted cooldown time.

If all you care about is an alpha strike sure Heavies or go 3x Heavies in the front so you are firing a cannon every second instead of firing 2 cannons over 2 seconds and having to wait 1 second for a cannon to come off self cooldown.


Sorry for any mistakes, typing on my phone. =)