How important is the Efficient Captain trait? My charater is a level 15 Star Fleet engineer & I chose Creative, Elusive, Techie & Warp Theorist. I am using the cruiser with all upgraded equipment. Now that I see space combat is more prevalent & so difficult, I regret choosing Creative over Efficient Captain. The space battles take a long time and I wonder if Efficient Captain would help me defeat enemy ships more easily. My ship's weapons need to do more damage, but my shields can't survive unless I run Defensive. I am wondering if I should start over, but hesitate because I would lose my experience, duty officers (I bought 2 packs w/ zen), bridge officers (all rares), equipment, dilithium & energy credits.

Two of my 7 50s have Efficient

I don't miss it on my other 5 toons, in fact I play the toons w/o it more.

I think the real "must haves" for space are actually Accurate (10% hit) and Elusive (10% dodge).

All the other space traits are situational or not-as-significant.

"Efficient Captain" won't help you kill other ships faster.
What it does is grants a (very) small buff to any power levels that you've set below 75.

You should always be running weapons at over 75 (with very very few exceptions - maximum engine power to 'kite' an enemy, or maximum AUX for certain "pure support" team builds). In most cases you'll want your weapon power setting as close to 125 as possible after buffs, which usually means running it at the maximum setting unless you're an Escort and/or running multiple copies of 'Emergency Power to Weapons'.

If you're looking for a space trait to cut fight time, try "Accurate". "Accurate" and "Elusive" are two of the best space traits possible, since any additional accuracy isn't wasted but used to buff your critical hits (both chance and severity). "Warp Theorist" is also a very good trait - raising your power levels (slightly) all the time, regardless of your power level setting.

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All that said, traits will only ever make a very slight difference in your gameplay. What will make a VAST difference is the type of ship you fly and what Bridge Officer skills you slot; along with your equipment (mainly weapon and shield rank).

If you're having trouble in space flights in PVE, post your ship choice and Bridge Officer skills here or in this forum subsection and you'll find plenty of people to give you advice.

Any ship type can be made to work in PVE. You shouldn't ever have to go "full defensive" unless you're flying a shuttlecraft... and even then, there're a few Consoles that can allow you to take on far more than you're really meant to...

Efficient Captain won't give you that critical of an advantage... it's Elusive and Accurate that are the strongest traits, as far as I know.

If you want to keep your shields up in a cruiser, use two copies of "Emergency Power to Shields" (Engineering bridge officer skill) and put as much Expertise (bridge officer experience) as you can towards them. With full Expertise, they last for 30 seconds, and one copy has a 45 second cooldown, but sets only a 30 second cooldown on the other. It'll boost your Shield power rating by a lot more than Efficient Captain would have, as well as offering additional damage reduction to the shields. "Transfer Shield Strength" (Science bridge officer skill) and "Tactical Team" (Tactical bridge officer skill) are others to look into to keep your shields up. The former also heals and toughens your shields, while the latter makes sure that whatever shield facing is getting hit gets most of the power.

I think you would of been better off with Accurate over Creative, but you would probably be better off changing the equipment on your ship if you want to live longer. Without knowing more about how your setup its hard to comment.

http://www.stowiki.org/Traits#Federa...equired_Traits

Having just passed the 20 mark on an Engineer myself, I can say that cruisers can tend to kill slowly, but it improves dramatically at level 20 once you pick up another weapon slot fore and aft.

Otherwise, I agree with the poster who suggested taking your build to the Shipyards forum for more suggestions.

Efficient is a trait you definitely want to watch out for on bridge officers, though (Saurians are the only "non-Zen-purchase" BOffs who can have the trait Fed-side). With your Captain you have tons of Space traits to choose from, but BOffs, not so much, so Efficient is very much desired on a BOff.