Not sure where to start - Science Career Path

Comments

• flagusco Member UncommonPosts: 1

  April 2013

  I have a lvl 50 Vice Admiral Science Officer and it was my first character. It took me a while to get the hang of the game, but now I understand the nuances of the gameplay and what to focus on. Early in the game, it's not really critical how powerful you are or how fast or whatever...the game sort of compensates for you at the earliest levels.

  As a science officer, your key abilities are attacking subsystems. You can target shields, weapons, auxiliary systems or engines. This is key in group play as you can devistate an enemies shields quickly to make way for others to send in torpedoes or other heavy weaponry that you may not have.

  If you want to go healer route, make sure the points you spend in your space categories complement the healing abilities your ship can dish out, in particular group abilities. You have a lot of AoE skills that benefit others as well as particle skills like Gravity Well that can literally rip enemy ships apart.

  My biggest advice is READ EVERYTHING. The most enjoyment out of this game will come from what you read in each story and how your actions affect the story and how you participate. As far as combat goes, make sure you have the best weapons you can own for your class/level.

  Have fun!
• Po_gg Member EpicPosts: 5,749

  April 2013

  Originally posted by Kryziz

  I like playing healers in most other mmo's, but I also like CC, I'm not a DPS kinda guy, and have always like support role.

  As a vulcan sci captain I can agree with flagusco, based on the above quote science will be a nice fit for you.

  And I can only suggest the same as he wrote, read the skills, some wikis, etc., it will help a lot. STO is working a bit differently than the average mmo's, it's quasi-classless (one of the first from that type of mmo's I guess), your captain is "only" the captain, your ship and your officers has just as much weight on your gameplay, so you have to manage them as well. You can partake any role (dps, tank, cc, heal, support, etc) with your captain on a decent level, but of course the most efficient is if you stick with your colour And science is just what you wrote, heal, support, and some cc.

  On the main page there's a nice write-up on skill planning: http://sto.perfectworld.com/news/?p=861531

   

  Ships: as you level you'll get free ships, you can choose always from 3 (eng, sci, tac). If you plan to play a heal sci captain then it's easy, after every promotion choose the science one. You don't need to worry about the best ships until you reach VA (level cap). Same goes to the ship's equipment, it's enough if you "gear up" only your endgame ship(s) - since you can have many, for different roles.

   

  Skills are a bit tougher, since you're just the captain. In space, almost 2/3 of your "clickables" coming from your Bridge officers (on ground only 1/2ish of them clickables, but that's still a lot). It's your task to manage those Officers, train them those skills you think will be useful in your chosen role. It's a nice minigame to manage your BOffs

  But to fine-tune / min-maxing them is also something you need to worry only after level cap, since they can learn truckloads of abilites, and during your leveling course most of those won't be available anyway (since you're their commanding officer, they always have lower rank than yours, and low rank means less abilites to learn)

   

  I suggest simply start to play, it will be a mess in the beginning since the game opening up all the options pretty early, but in time everything gets in place as you'll get familiar with the systems and mechanics.

  Edit: and ofc you can't wreck anything, your captain can retrain, same goes to your officers (or you can hire new ones and develop them as you wish, you can even buy and sell them so if you have the credits you can buy a fully educated officer who fits perfectly into your build), same goes to ship equipments. Just dive in and enjoy the ride