Hello, I am a new player and was wondering if anyone can give me advice on the best way to start making money and how to set my skills up best for space combat for pvp/pve. As well as for land combat.

I do mainly have more interest in space combat more then land combat so if theres a way to only do space combat then it be great if someone can tell me how.

please come join the 44th Fleet. many friendly and helpful players. no hassle application process. fed and klingons are welcome. just click on my signature.

coming to the forums is a great place to learn so that is a good first step.

My first question would be what career path did you take?

I chose tactical officer or whatever its called

im new to sto aswell and was wondering if i could join your fleet aswell

Well, first is...save up your Dilithium, do not spend it on consoles, weapons or lower tier ships. Once you reach higher levels, you will require dilithium to buy your ships, and its not cheap. So dont waste it (unless of course you're willing to buy ships from C store with real money). They are a number of Daily missions that will give you Dilithium. One of the best is Explore Strange new Worlds mission, another is Officer Reports. If you just do these every day, you can earn 3k of Dilthium a day.

For a fast experience to level up, try and do the Mirror Mirror Space event when it on, it only occurs for an hour, but you can level up 2-3 levels in that hour as it has no cooltime timer and if you get lucky with teams, you can run it 4 times. It also pays dilthium and gives some decent drops. Its available from level 20 and you access it from the PvE Queue.

As a Tac, you need to concentrate on weapon skills, your main damage dealers will be the Dual Heavy Cannons and secondly torpedos (Quantums are probably the best in my opinion) so aim your build to help increase damage from these weapons.

The standard Weapon set up for an Escort is Cannons and one torpedo in the front, turrets in the back(which fire 360 so can help with damage dealing) and if youve got the slot, another Torpedo launcher in the rear.

Its best if you keep the cannons and turrets of all the same type (I use Phaser as its fairly cheap) so you can fit Tactical Consoles that will increase damge from these weapons by upto 26% and they can be stacked (I run with 4 Phaser Consoles on my escort).
This is of course a sort of ideal final setup for maximum damage on your final Tier 5 ship...while levelling up however, I found doing the Epsiode missions (although it measn you have to run ground missions as well) and events will give good enough weapons, consoles and ground equipment for you to get by and you the rest you can find cheaply on the Market that will suffice.

Dont worry too much about equipping your lower tier ships with expensive equipment as you wont be using it for long,as it becomes quickly obslete as you level up. In most MMOs Ive played its been worth spending gold/credits etc on expensive Mid level gear, as it takes a long time to level and for it to become obslete so its worth it, in Star Trek though, you can level up in a month or so, even with casual playing.

Hope this helps.

But what if he/she is a tactical officer interested in "flying" cruisers, like i am?

You Captain's profession does not determine what ship(s) you can fly. The way I explain it is this way. Your Captain provides 1/3 of what you can do in space. Your ship and Bridge Officers determine the other 2/3s.

Now having your Captain profession and ship type align, gives a lot of synergy. A Science captain and Science Vessel is very power in the ways of hitting below the belt (er, buffs/debuffs, etc). But every combination of Captain profess and Ship type are viable. Each combination provides a fun and unique game play. I should know I have a level 50 character of every combo. (Yes I play a lot).

Tactical Captain flying a Cruiser is fun. At a decent buff, my Tactical/Dreadnaught Captain's beam weapons do 1200+ pts per tick. And that's base damage. Crits (which I get a lot) hurt a lot more. I don't do as much DPS as Escorts. But I can slug it out with multiple Borg Spheres in an STF all by lonesome and win.

Sounds great, any advice on what skills to focus on, i have yet to start the game but i fear i will spend too many points in skills that will not be very good in the end!

Overall, try not to place too much value on game guides and such , you the Captain is the best judge. Read the detailed descriptions, look at the bridge officer and character powers you're using, take it easy, and by level 35 you should have a very good idea of what is it you want by endgame, be it a tanker, damage dealer or scientist. Save up your points and spend them later, to avoid respeccing costs.

But I will say this - anything that deals with weapons damage, hull repair and shield repair is very good.

Anything that deals with weapons power, accuracy, shield hitpoints, great.

The things to avoid are

Driver Coil - Useful for flying fast in Sector Space but you will be limited (until level 45 or so) to Warp 10 anyway. 1-3 points for a start

Attack Patterns - If you're a Tac Captain then APs are great! But if you're an Engineer or Scientist in a cruiser or science vessel.. you can't use much of APs and enjoy them to the max anyway. Invest in tanking skills instead, until you find yourself roleplaying Ben Sisko in the Defiant by endgame.


Lastly- take it easy, and have a chat with some folks who have respecced dozens of times for maximum performance PvP or Elite PvE (STFs)... you can contact me ingame at @carmenara if you need an in-game tutorial or two.

Can't risk posting more as I will surely run into conflicting ideas, miscommunications, and too many words. After all everyone has their ideas about what is the optimal character build.

Sound advice for you as a starting Captain, spread out your skills, no more than rank 6 in anything unless it's really needed (such as structural integrity, hull repair, shields...). The top 3 points are for min-maxing and do not give you as large a boost as the first few points anyway.

Lastly, this is not a fleet recruitment post - you will gain little from joining fleets until later in the game when you can appreciate max performance teams, resource sharing, etc. And there are hundreds of fleets to choose from in due course. What's the hurry? Look around the game... see if you like it first.

Enjoy yourself as an independent starship operator first to gain experience, rather than joining a fleet and living and dying by their ideals for little much in return.

The point of my encouraging you to experiment and observe is: - If you take any copy-paste character and ship builds, what you're doing is driving someone elses' racecar and not having the satisfaction of researching and designing your own.

Good captains follow build guides. Great captains read them and understand the ideas and logic, and implement the concepts into their own working principles.