Doctor Nick's Skill Guide
by garrettcole
We’ve had a few people ask about skills recently, so I thought it would be a good time to repost and update a prior article about skill points based on new information and further experimentation by myself and by others.
Where you spend your skill points are the most important decisions you’ll make as you level up through Star Trek Online. You only get so many skills points to spend, there are nowhere near enough to do everything you want, and it costs zen to change your selections via a respec. It is therefore very important that you plan ahead and spend your points judiciously. Focus on the first three ranks of the skills you want first before moving on to the next three and final three, as the diminishing returns after 3 and 6 points are severe. If you are making a push for higher rankings in the DSP league or for playing truly top-end PvP, then spending as much as you can in space would be worthwhile. For the more casual player, I find that ground combat is more difficult than space combat, so I would assign points to most of the ground skills except Threat Control (let someone else do the dying).
I’ve summarized the various space captain skills by captain rank with my opinions below. As always, I am not a doctor nor do I play one on TV, so my advice isn’t gospel. But I have played this game a lot, probably too much, with many characters of radically different configurations, and done a lot of controlled testing, so I believe my opinions to be fairly solid.
I’m also drawing of a few online resources. First being this handy table of skill point effects. It’s handy, but much of it is wrong, especially the effects of skill ranks on weapons training and, I suspect, hull and shield HP. For outgoing damage, my ownIDIC (now updated for season 9) will show more accurately what the various skills will do for you. Also of handy reference is this power calculator, which has been largely accurate for the limited configurations I’ve tried, and of course the STO Academy skill point planner.
Tier I (really cheap, very economical value, not too much of a waste to put points here):
Starship Attack Patterns: Absolutely vital for tactical captains in escorts, and quite useful for tactical captains in other ships or other captains in escorts. Max this skill out for the former, minimum 6 ranks for the latter, but wait until you actually have access to attack pattern abilities to spend any points on them, naturally. If you’re an engineer or science captain in a ship with no attack pattern abilities then of course this can be ignored.
Starship Weapon Training: Mandatory for everyone. Max.
Driver Coil: A luxury skill that makes it so much easier to travel in sector space, but pretty much useless in combat (with the exception of steaming in at full impulse from a long way away). No more than 3 ranks.
Starship Batteries: Space devices have such a long cooldown time that, even if I want to use them, I just don’t use batteries all that often so I don’t find this useful. There is, however, a technique involving one of the new specialty doffs, a quartermaster who greatly reduces the cooldown of space batteries (80% for blue, 100% for purple, though even I would have a hard time stomaching the cost of a purple). With an appropriate rare quartermaster and two different batteries being deployed, you can pop a battery every 33 seconds according to my sources (best used with the Exocomp or Reman maintenance doffs for the bonus effects) and putting some points into batteries would help take advantage of that quick turnaround. 3 ranks would extend the duration of the power level boost from 10 to 15 seconds. 9 ranks would double it to 20 seconds. How useful that is to you is up to you to decide.
Starship Hull Repair: Absolutely essential for pretty much everyone: for escorts to keep yourself alive, for cruisers to keep your teammates alive or to frustrate opposing players who are trying to kill you. Max.
Starship Flow Capacitors: Good for science captains that use abilities like tachyon beam, energy siphon, and Tyken’s rift, as well as for subsystem targeting. Useful if you’re a tetryon or polaron user. Also surprisingly useful for other ships if you use the Omega Force set, and especially so if you have the plasmonic leach console.
Starship Shield Emitters: Absolutely essential for pretty much everyone (with the exception of certain B’rel and T’varo PvP torpedo boats). Max.
Tier II (fairly cheap, mostly useful skills):
Starship Energy Weapons: Essential for everyone except torpedo focussed builds.
Starship Projectile Weapons: Essential for torpedo focussed builds, somewhat useful for the escort and cruiser builds that use one torpedo launcher. 0, 3, 6 or 9 ranks depending on how torpedo oriented your build is.
Structural Integrity: Absolutely essential for pretty much everyone. Science ships may not see much of a benefit from the highest ranks of this, while cruisers may not require maximum ranks in this to survive relatively easy PvE, but 6 is a minimum.
Starship Subsystem Repair: Think about this: how often do your subsytems go offline? Tholians are bothersome for that but there are precious few applicable enemies PvE. I guess phaser proc counts as this, but if it’s a really vital system you’ll have a battery and/or warp core capacitor to bring it back online. And the skill does not prevent offlines, just reduces the amount of time your system is down. I generally ignore this. If I were doing elite PvP I might take 3 ranks in this just in case I come up against a real science heavy opponent, but would generally take none.
Starship Warp Core Efficiency: I once thought that this skill would be useless with the more advanced cruiser builds since they’re always boosting their power with various emergency power and auxiliary to battery configurations, however I’ve since learned that this boosts power based on the level at which the subsystem’s power is set, not at what it ends up being. In modern power configurations with two levels set at 15, this would be a huge boost for these two subsystems, even running something like an A2B cruiser. Probably 6 ranks is ideal.
Starship Power Insulators: 3 ranks is probably all that is necessary, or some equipment might also give the required protection in lieu of actually spending many skill points. It may be more useful if you intend to do a lot of PvP and are worried about running into dedicated drain or shield stripping builds.
Starship Shield Systems: Absolutely essential for pretty much everyone. Max.
Tier III (moderately pricey, some discretion is required):
Starship Maneuvers: Pretty useful for surviving. I usually take 6, maybe even max if you are a tactical captain in an escort and speed is your method of survival.
Starship Targeting Systems: A missed shot does no dps. Max if you want to be a primary damage dealer, important for everyone. And if your accuracy is sufficiently high that you’ll never miss, excess accuracy, that is accuracy over 100% hit rate, rolls into bonus critical hits, so it’s always useful. One problem is that the way beam fire at will is currently calculated means that excess accuracy does not roll into bonus critical hits as it does with the other firing modes, so if you are doing nothing but PvE in a FAW focussed cruiser you will not see as much benefit as you should. Absolutely vital for PvP though.
Starship Electro-Plasma Systems: Essential for cruisers, useful for everyone who has emergency power to shields or for science ships that must switch between weapons and auxiliary. You probably don’t need more than 6, though A2B cruisers would see benefit from max.
Starship Impulse Thrusters: Pretty useful for everyone. 6 or even max if you’re having a hard time keeping your target in front of you. Possibly less useful if you are broadsiding in one of the faster cruisers or heavy destroyers.
Starship Warp Core Potential: Pretty useful for everyone. 6 ranks is probably good, the upper ranks are probably less cost effective than taking ranks in the higher level system specific skills so I would avoid them.
Starship Graviton Generators: The effects of graviton generators are not well known. The devs stated that more graviton generators increases the effective radius of gravity well with a maximum increase of 25% of the radius at 9 ranks. It also seems that the pushback effects of various abilities can be doubled with max graviton generators. How useful that is is open to conjecture. Generally speaking, I would say only get if you are a science captain in a science ship and would like to get the ability Gravity Well 3 (if you are a science captain in a science ship you will probably want this). 0 or 6 ranks (for captain training). If you use a lot of affected science abilities all the time then maybe it would be beneficial on its own, but there are plenty pieces of equipment that provide a small benefit on their own.
Starship Particle Generators: Not only for use with science abilities that damage targets directly, it also boosts the isometric charge console and the Vesta’s quantum field focus phaser. So if you use a lot of these things, say you are in an offensively focussed Aventine Vesta variant and are running both the aforementioned consoles plus GW3 and a few other abilities like feedback pulse, tractor beam repulsors, and photonic shockwave, then this would be a good thing to have. The last few ranks don’t do very much, so 6 max.
Tier IV (fairly expensive, choose wisely):
Starship Stealth: Only an issue if you have cloak or mask energy signature, and even then not important. Ignore unless you are in a bird of prey in PvP who relies entirely upon not being seen for your survival (and even then a console might be more economical).
Starship Threat Control: I used to be opposed to this skill but now I have 3 ranks on pretty much all my characters. The bonus to damage resistance is actually quite economical, and I always have everybody shooting at me in PvE anyway. If you don’t like people shooting at you then there are always the threat reduction consoles from the embassy.
Starship Engine Performance: Quite useful for everybody. I usually recommend between 3 and 6 depending on how maneuverable you need to be. Max is not worth it as you can always adjust your power settings and get better economy from lower ranks of the other power performance skills.
Starship Hull Plating: Useful for pretty much everyone. Between 3 and 6 ranks is good, though these days I lean toward the lower end with the exception of elite PvP.
Starship Shield Performance: Pretty good for everyone, though better for those who use shields that regenerate quicker. Perhaps not vital for escort captains whose tactics will involve hit and run. At least 3 ranks, probably up to 6.
Starship Inertial Dampeners: This has become a bit more important now that there are PvE enemies that use science abilities and disabling weapons. It does not provide all that much of a benefit, as tractor beams will still keep you well and truly stuck. Escorts with enough skill in inertial dampeners will be able to turn while in a tractor beam, so 3 ranks is probably ideal, but ignore if you’re a slow ship that’s not going anywhere anyway. Sometimes when I fly my carrier, I can’t tell if I’m in a tractor beam or not. It’s more important for elite PvP of course.
Starship Sensors: Not really useful. Ignore unless you plan to fight PvP Romulans and Klingons a lot.
Tier V (very expensive, so you will have to be thrifty):
Starship Energy Weapon Specialization: Absolutely critical (see what I did there?) for an all gun escort running antiproton weapons, as this boosts your criticals. Pretty good for anyone who relies on energy weapons for their primary damage. 6 or max.
Starship Projectile Weapon Specialization: Only useful for captains who use torpedoes as their primary damage. Even if you are an escort or cruiser captain running a torpedo launcher as a secondary weapon, probably 3 ranks and no more than 6 as it is better to use these points elsewhere.
Starship Armor Reinforcements: Moderately useful for everyone. I like to have 3 points in this.
Starship Auxiliary Performance: Vital for science ships, probably not particularly valuable for others. Again I like to have 3 points in this, maybe 6 for science ships or cruisers running A2B.
Starship Weapon Performance: Anyone would benefit from 3 points to this, except a torpedo boat. Up to 6 may also be a good thing to have if you are trying to maximize your firepower.
Starship Countermeasure Systems: Unlike in real life, there’s not much in the way of countermeasures in this game. Even if you are running a build with scramble sensors and jam sensors, this skill is just too expensive for the small benefit, and there are pieces of equipment that do give boosts to this skill. Avoid.
Starship Subspace Decompiler: Useful for science ships running photonic shockwave and viral matrix. If you’re not one of those you should avoid entirely. Even if you are it doesn’t do all that much, so be prudent.
You can see this in a hypothetical typical skill setup for any standard escort or cruiser that is mostly energy weapons with one torpedo here that I’ve posted on the STO Academy Skill Planner.
We’ve had a few people ask about skills recently, so I thought it would be a good time to repost and update a prior article about skill points based on new information and further experimentation by myself and by others.
Where you spend your skill points are the most important decisions you’ll make as you level up through Star Trek Online. You only get so many skills points to spend, there are nowhere near enough to do everything you want, and it costs zen to change your selections via a respec. It is therefore very important that you plan ahead and spend your points judiciously. Focus on the first three ranks of the skills you want first before moving on to the next three and final three, as the diminishing returns after 3 and 6 points are severe. If you are making a push for higher rankings in the DSP league or for playing truly top-end PvP, then spending as much as you can in space would be worthwhile. For the more casual player, I find that ground combat is more difficult than space combat, so I would assign points to most of the ground skills except Threat Control (let someone else do the dying).
I’ve summarized the various space captain skills by captain rank with my opinions below. As always, I am not a doctor nor do I play one on TV, so my advice isn’t gospel. But I have played this game a lot, probably too much, with many characters of radically different configurations, and done a lot of controlled testing, so I believe my opinions to be fairly solid.
I’m also drawing of a few online resources. First being this handy table of skill point effects. It’s handy, but much of it is wrong, especially the effects of skill ranks on weapons training and, I suspect, hull and shield HP. For outgoing damage, my ownIDIC (now updated for season 9) will show more accurately what the various skills will do for you. Also of handy reference is this power calculator, which has been largely accurate for the limited configurations I’ve tried, and of course the STO Academy skill point planner.
Tier I (really cheap, very economical value, not too much of a waste to put points here):
Starship Attack Patterns: Absolutely vital for tactical captains in escorts, and quite useful for tactical captains in other ships or other captains in escorts. Max this skill out for the former, minimum 6 ranks for the latter, but wait until you actually have access to attack pattern abilities to spend any points on them, naturally. If you’re an engineer or science captain in a ship with no attack pattern abilities then of course this can be ignored.
Starship Weapon Training: Mandatory for everyone. Max.
Driver Coil: A luxury skill that makes it so much easier to travel in sector space, but pretty much useless in combat (with the exception of steaming in at full impulse from a long way away). No more than 3 ranks.
Starship Batteries: Space devices have such a long cooldown time that, even if I want to use them, I just don’t use batteries all that often so I don’t find this useful. There is, however, a technique involving one of the new specialty doffs, a quartermaster who greatly reduces the cooldown of space batteries (80% for blue, 100% for purple, though even I would have a hard time stomaching the cost of a purple). With an appropriate rare quartermaster and two different batteries being deployed, you can pop a battery every 33 seconds according to my sources (best used with the Exocomp or Reman maintenance doffs for the bonus effects) and putting some points into batteries would help take advantage of that quick turnaround. 3 ranks would extend the duration of the power level boost from 10 to 15 seconds. 9 ranks would double it to 20 seconds. How useful that is to you is up to you to decide.
Starship Hull Repair: Absolutely essential for pretty much everyone: for escorts to keep yourself alive, for cruisers to keep your teammates alive or to frustrate opposing players who are trying to kill you. Max.
Starship Flow Capacitors: Good for science captains that use abilities like tachyon beam, energy siphon, and Tyken’s rift, as well as for subsystem targeting. Useful if you’re a tetryon or polaron user. Also surprisingly useful for other ships if you use the Omega Force set, and especially so if you have the plasmonic leach console.
Starship Shield Emitters: Absolutely essential for pretty much everyone (with the exception of certain B’rel and T’varo PvP torpedo boats). Max.
Tier II (fairly cheap, mostly useful skills):
Starship Energy Weapons: Essential for everyone except torpedo focussed builds.
Starship Projectile Weapons: Essential for torpedo focussed builds, somewhat useful for the escort and cruiser builds that use one torpedo launcher. 0, 3, 6 or 9 ranks depending on how torpedo oriented your build is.
Structural Integrity: Absolutely essential for pretty much everyone. Science ships may not see much of a benefit from the highest ranks of this, while cruisers may not require maximum ranks in this to survive relatively easy PvE, but 6 is a minimum.
Starship Subsystem Repair: Think about this: how often do your subsytems go offline? Tholians are bothersome for that but there are precious few applicable enemies PvE. I guess phaser proc counts as this, but if it’s a really vital system you’ll have a battery and/or warp core capacitor to bring it back online. And the skill does not prevent offlines, just reduces the amount of time your system is down. I generally ignore this. If I were doing elite PvP I might take 3 ranks in this just in case I come up against a real science heavy opponent, but would generally take none.
Starship Warp Core Efficiency: I once thought that this skill would be useless with the more advanced cruiser builds since they’re always boosting their power with various emergency power and auxiliary to battery configurations, however I’ve since learned that this boosts power based on the level at which the subsystem’s power is set, not at what it ends up being. In modern power configurations with two levels set at 15, this would be a huge boost for these two subsystems, even running something like an A2B cruiser. Probably 6 ranks is ideal.
Starship Power Insulators: 3 ranks is probably all that is necessary, or some equipment might also give the required protection in lieu of actually spending many skill points. It may be more useful if you intend to do a lot of PvP and are worried about running into dedicated drain or shield stripping builds.
Starship Shield Systems: Absolutely essential for pretty much everyone. Max.
Tier III (moderately pricey, some discretion is required):
Starship Maneuvers: Pretty useful for surviving. I usually take 6, maybe even max if you are a tactical captain in an escort and speed is your method of survival.
Starship Targeting Systems: A missed shot does no dps. Max if you want to be a primary damage dealer, important for everyone. And if your accuracy is sufficiently high that you’ll never miss, excess accuracy, that is accuracy over 100% hit rate, rolls into bonus critical hits, so it’s always useful. One problem is that the way beam fire at will is currently calculated means that excess accuracy does not roll into bonus critical hits as it does with the other firing modes, so if you are doing nothing but PvE in a FAW focussed cruiser you will not see as much benefit as you should. Absolutely vital for PvP though.
Starship Electro-Plasma Systems: Essential for cruisers, useful for everyone who has emergency power to shields or for science ships that must switch between weapons and auxiliary. You probably don’t need more than 6, though A2B cruisers would see benefit from max.
Starship Impulse Thrusters: Pretty useful for everyone. 6 or even max if you’re having a hard time keeping your target in front of you. Possibly less useful if you are broadsiding in one of the faster cruisers or heavy destroyers.
Starship Warp Core Potential: Pretty useful for everyone. 6 ranks is probably good, the upper ranks are probably less cost effective than taking ranks in the higher level system specific skills so I would avoid them.
Starship Graviton Generators: The effects of graviton generators are not well known. The devs stated that more graviton generators increases the effective radius of gravity well with a maximum increase of 25% of the radius at 9 ranks. It also seems that the pushback effects of various abilities can be doubled with max graviton generators. How useful that is is open to conjecture. Generally speaking, I would say only get if you are a science captain in a science ship and would like to get the ability Gravity Well 3 (if you are a science captain in a science ship you will probably want this). 0 or 6 ranks (for captain training). If you use a lot of affected science abilities all the time then maybe it would be beneficial on its own, but there are plenty pieces of equipment that provide a small benefit on their own.
Starship Particle Generators: Not only for use with science abilities that damage targets directly, it also boosts the isometric charge console and the Vesta’s quantum field focus phaser. So if you use a lot of these things, say you are in an offensively focussed Aventine Vesta variant and are running both the aforementioned consoles plus GW3 and a few other abilities like feedback pulse, tractor beam repulsors, and photonic shockwave, then this would be a good thing to have. The last few ranks don’t do very much, so 6 max.
Tier IV (fairly expensive, choose wisely):
Starship Stealth: Only an issue if you have cloak or mask energy signature, and even then not important. Ignore unless you are in a bird of prey in PvP who relies entirely upon not being seen for your survival (and even then a console might be more economical).
Starship Threat Control: I used to be opposed to this skill but now I have 3 ranks on pretty much all my characters. The bonus to damage resistance is actually quite economical, and I always have everybody shooting at me in PvE anyway. If you don’t like people shooting at you then there are always the threat reduction consoles from the embassy.
Starship Engine Performance: Quite useful for everybody. I usually recommend between 3 and 6 depending on how maneuverable you need to be. Max is not worth it as you can always adjust your power settings and get better economy from lower ranks of the other power performance skills.
Starship Hull Plating: Useful for pretty much everyone. Between 3 and 6 ranks is good, though these days I lean toward the lower end with the exception of elite PvP.
Starship Shield Performance: Pretty good for everyone, though better for those who use shields that regenerate quicker. Perhaps not vital for escort captains whose tactics will involve hit and run. At least 3 ranks, probably up to 6.
Starship Inertial Dampeners: This has become a bit more important now that there are PvE enemies that use science abilities and disabling weapons. It does not provide all that much of a benefit, as tractor beams will still keep you well and truly stuck. Escorts with enough skill in inertial dampeners will be able to turn while in a tractor beam, so 3 ranks is probably ideal, but ignore if you’re a slow ship that’s not going anywhere anyway. Sometimes when I fly my carrier, I can’t tell if I’m in a tractor beam or not. It’s more important for elite PvP of course.
Starship Sensors: Not really useful. Ignore unless you plan to fight PvP Romulans and Klingons a lot.
Tier V (very expensive, so you will have to be thrifty):
Starship Energy Weapon Specialization: Absolutely critical (see what I did there?) for an all gun escort running antiproton weapons, as this boosts your criticals. Pretty good for anyone who relies on energy weapons for their primary damage. 6 or max.
Starship Projectile Weapon Specialization: Only useful for captains who use torpedoes as their primary damage. Even if you are an escort or cruiser captain running a torpedo launcher as a secondary weapon, probably 3 ranks and no more than 6 as it is better to use these points elsewhere.
Starship Armor Reinforcements: Moderately useful for everyone. I like to have 3 points in this.
Starship Auxiliary Performance: Vital for science ships, probably not particularly valuable for others. Again I like to have 3 points in this, maybe 6 for science ships or cruisers running A2B.
Starship Weapon Performance: Anyone would benefit from 3 points to this, except a torpedo boat. Up to 6 may also be a good thing to have if you are trying to maximize your firepower.
Starship Countermeasure Systems: Unlike in real life, there’s not much in the way of countermeasures in this game. Even if you are running a build with scramble sensors and jam sensors, this skill is just too expensive for the small benefit, and there are pieces of equipment that do give boosts to this skill. Avoid.
Starship Subspace Decompiler: Useful for science ships running photonic shockwave and viral matrix. If you’re not one of those you should avoid entirely. Even if you are it doesn’t do all that much, so be prudent.
You can see this in a hypothetical typical skill setup for any standard escort or cruiser that is mostly energy weapons with one torpedo here that I’ve posted on the STO Academy Skill Planner.