Free MMO Guides » bridge officers

Star Trek Online Bridge Officer Space Abilities Guide

admin — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 21:40:50 +0000

Out of all the things that differentiate your character from every other, Bridge Officer abilities are probably the most important ones. The types of weapons you use, ship you have and skills you picked are very important, but having the right abilities which you can use in combat is invaluable.

There are dozens of different abilities you can choose and no doubt all are useful. But since you can have only so few of them, it’s recommended to use the ones best suited for a variety of situations you will find yourself in, and not just the ones which will be used rarely. The best abilities are the ones giving you more survivability and damage, and aren’t specific for PvP or PvE encounters, therefore try to pick those. Fortunately for you I tested quite a few and while I certainly don’t know if you’ll like my setup, I can try to give you some pointers so you can see what works for me.

The following list of abilities can also be found on sto-intel wiki!

Tactical Bridge Officer Abilities


Name	Min BO Rank	System	Effect
Cannon: Rapid Fire	Lieutenant	Cannons	Improves your next cannon attack. Quickly fires numerous bolts. Each bolt does less damage than a normal cannon bolt.
Cannon: Scatter Volley	Lieutenant	Cannons	Improves your next cannon attack. Fires a cone of area effect cannon spray centered on your target. (Currently shows as Cannon: Rapid Fire with a different icon at the officer trainers.)
Tactical Team	Ensign	Crew	Deploys a security crew and grants a tactical buff for your own ship or an ally. Also removes crew and tactical debuffs.
Torpedo: High Yield	Ensign	Torpedoes	Improves your next torpedo attack. Photon, Quantum, Transphasic and Chroniton torpedo launchers fire a salvo of torpedoes. Plasma launchers fire a single, slow moving and destructible heavy torpedo that does massive damage.
Torpedo: Spread	Ensign	Torpedoes	Improves your next torpedo attack. Launches multiple projectiles in a spread pattern that damages all targets in a large area around the target.
Attack Pattern Beta	Lieutenant	Maneuvers	Reduces the target’s damage resistance every time it receives an attack from you or your allies.
Attack Pattern Delta	Lieutenant	Maneuvers	Targets an allied ship. Any ship that attacks your ally will receive a stacking damage resistance debuff.
Attack Pattern Omega	Lieutenant Commander	Maneuvers	Buffs damage and turn rate while making you immune to holds, roots, and slows. Can be used while held.
Beam: Fire at Will	Ensign	Beams	Fire at Will improves your next beam array attack. The Bridge Officer fires your beam weapons at multiple targets of their choice.
Beam: Overload	Ensign	Beams	Overload improves your next beam array attack. Overloading your beam weapon delivers an extremely powerful blast, but drains weapon power and briefly takes your beam weapons offline. Only the energy type you overload will go offline – so if you overload your Phasers, all Phasers will go offline and not your Plasma weaoons.
Dispersal Pattern Alpha	Lieutenant	Mines	Improves your next mine attack. Lays a series of mine clusters behind your ship
Dispersal Pattern Beta	Lieutenant	Mines	Improves your next mine attack. Lays a wide net of mines behind your ship.
Beam: Target Auxiliary Subsystems	Lieutenant	Target Subsystems	Improves your next next beam array attack. Instructs your officer to target enemy auxiliary systems. This attack deals normal damage, but also drains the target’s auxiliary power and has a chance to take target’s auxiliary subsystems offline.
Beam: Target Engines Subsystems	Lieutenant	Target Subsystems	Improves your next next beam array attack. Instructs your officer to target enemy engines. This attack deals normal damage, but also drains the target’s engine power and has a chance to take target’s engines offline.
Beam: Target Shields Subsystems	Lieutenant	Target Subsystems	Improves your next next beam array attack. Instructs your officer to target enemy shields. This attack deals normal damage, but also drains the target’s shield power and has a chance to take target’s shields offline.
Beam: Target Weapons Subsystems	Lieutenant	Target Subsystems	Improves your next next beam array attack. Instructs your officer to target weapons. This attack deals normal damage, but also drains the target’s weapon power and has a chance to take target’s weapons offline.

Science Bridge Officer Abilities


Name	Min BO RanK	System	Effect
Energy Siphon	Lieutenant	Deflector Dish	Draws power from the target. This reduces the target’s power settings to all systems and increases your power settings.
Mask Energy Signature	Ensign	Sensor Array	Shields the energy output of your starship making it more difficult for enemies to detect you.
Science Team	Ensign	Crew	Repairs shield damage and grants a science buff for your own ship or an ally. Also removes science debuffs.
Tractor Beam	Ensign	Tractor	Slows the target ship, thereby making it an easier target for weapons. Targets held in a tractor beam cannot cloak. Increase in effectiveness based on current auxiliary power level.
Tykon’s Rift	Lieutenant	Deflector Dish	Creates a spatial anomaly at the target’s location that drains power from all nearby hostile ships and causes minor damage.
Viral Matrix	Lieutenant Commander	Sensor Probes	Launches a probe that flies to the target and then shuts down its systems, effectively holding it in place. The target is highly resistant to holds for a short duration after this effect expires.
Charged Particle Burst	Lieutenant	Sensor Array	Temporary disables the cloaking devices of nearby hostiles ships and damages their shields.
Gravity Well	Lieutenant Commander	Deflector Dish	Creates a spatial anomaly at the target’s location that draws enemies to its center and gradually crushes their ships, inflicting kinetic damage. Shields drastically reduce the effects of kinetic damage.
Feedback Pulse	Lieutenant	Deflector Field	Harnesses the energy of beam weapon attacks directed against you. Each time you are hit, a damaging pulse is directed at the attacking ship.
Hazard Emitters	Ensign	Hazard	Periodically cleanse the ship of any fire or radiation hazards. also has a heal over time
Jam Sensors	Ensign	Sensor Array	Prevents the enemy from targeting you.
Photonic Shock Wave	Lieutenant Commander	Emitter	Releases a massive blast around your ship, knocking back enemy ships and inflicting kinetic damage. Shields drastically reduce the effects of kinetic damage.
Photonic Officer	Lieutenant	Emitter	Reduces the recharge time of bridge officer powers.
Polarize Hull	Ensign	Hazard	Provides damage resistance against energy weapons, breaks any current tractor beams, and protects against additional tractor beams.
Scramble Sensors	Lieutenant	Sensor Probes	Fires a probe at the target that bursts into a particle field, confusing the affected enemies into targeting each other. (Currently shows as Jam Targeting Sensors at the trainers.)
Tachyon Beam	Ensign	Deflector Dish	Drains the targets shields. Increases in effectiveness based on current aux power level
Tractor Beam Repulsors	Lieutenant	Tractor	Push up to 3 enemies (dead or alive) away from your starship
Transfer Shield Strength	Ensign	Deflector Field	Uses power reserves to bolster an ally’s shields, increasing their current strength and making them more resistant to damage for a short duration. Increases in effectiveness based on current auxiliary power level.
Photonic Fleet			Rumored to mess with enemy radar to show a fleet on enemies.

Engineering Bridge Officer Abilities


Name	Min BO Rank	System	Effect
Aceton Field	Lieutenant Commander	Weapon Modifications	Reduces the damage dealt by the target’s energy weapons, and also makes the target take radiation damage when using energy weapons.
Antimatter Spread
Aux. Power to Battery	Lieutenant	Auxiliary Power	Converts your aux power into an emergency battery to be used later. When activated, the emergency battery creates a short duration increase in all power levels.
Directed Energy Modulation	Lieutenant	Weapon Modifications	Cycles the frequency of your energy weapons resulting in increased shield penetration.
Emergency Power to Auxiliary	Ensign	Batteries	Directs emergency battery power to the auxiliary systems for a short duration
Metaphasic Shields
Aux. Power to Dampeners	Lieutenant	Auxiliary Power	Redirects auxiliary power to provide significant kinetic damage resistance.
Aux. Power to Structural	Lieutenant	Auxiliary Power	Utilizes auxiliary power to restore damage to the hull and provide it with damage resistance over the duration. Increases in effectiveness based on current auxiliary power level.
Boarding Party	Lieutenant	Crew	Launches up to three assault shuttles at the target. If they arrive safely, they will cause damage to the ship’s crew and subsystems. Each shuttle launched removes 20 crew from your ship who attempt to beam back upon completing the mission.
Eject Warp Plasma	Lieutenant Commander	Warp Core	Creates a plasma area of effect field behind the starship. Ships passing into the field are slowed and receive a plasma fire damage over time effect.
Emergency Power to Engines	Ensign	Batteries	Directs emergency battery power to the impulse engines for a short duration
Emergency Power to Weapons	Ensign	Batteries	Directs emergency battery power to the weapons systems for a short duration
Emergency Power to Shields	Ensign	Batteries	Emergency Power to Shields directs emergency battery power to the shields for a short duration
Engineering Team	Ensign	Crew	Greatly accelerates hull repair rate over a short duration for your own ship or an ally. Also has a chance to repair subsystems.
Extend Shields	Lieutenant	Shields	Regenerates the shields of nearby allies and improves their damage resistance.
Reverse Shield Polarity	Lieutenant	Shields	Converts incoming energy weapon damage into additional shields

Recommended Abilities

Tactical Officer

Torpedo: High Yield – torpedoes are found on every ship in the universe, and this ability will make sure they hit even harder. Definitely one of my favorite skills.
Attack Pattern Omega – this abiilty will buff you with an increased turn rate, useful for any kind of ship for sure. Additionally, you will be immune slows and snares.
Beam: Target Shields Subsystems – when activated, your next beam attack will drain a small amount of your targets shields and sometimes disable them for a short duration as well. You could alternatively take Target Weapons Subsystems, which does the same only for weapon subsystems.
Cannon: Rapid Fire – when activated, your cannons will start blasting your target more frequently resulting in a much higher damage output. If you’re captaining an Escort ship this is a must have.

There aren’t many other highly recommended abilities for tactical officers, but if you need more Tactical Team and Beam Overload are good choices.

Engineering Officer

Emergency Power to Weapons/Shields – take whichever you prefer. Being a tactical officer and having (almost) enough DPS I prefer more power in shields but it’s up to you. If you put enough skills in these abilities the cooldown is as long as the buff lasts, meaning you can have it active all the time.
Reverse Shield Polarity – one of the best abilities you can have if you ask me. While it’s active any energy weapon damage you receive will heal your shields — for the duration you’re almost invincible.
Engineering Team – repairs your hull and provides a chance to repair damaged ships subsystems.

There aren’t any other engineering BO abilities which I think are as useful as these above.

Science Officer

Polarize Hull – my favorite science ability. While active, you are immune to Tractor Beams, but the best part is the high damage reduction it provides. Considering the cooldown is only half a minute and it lasts 15 seconds, you can fire it up all the time.
Jam Sensors – by activating this ability enemies won’t be able to target you for the duration. What else is there to say.
Science Team – Science Team provides a quick heal to your shields and a damage resistance buff. Additionally, it has a chance to remove science debuffs on you (such as aforementioned Jam Sensors).
Tractor Beam – some players like it, some don’t. As I already mentioned I usually run with an escort ship and being able to hold my opponents in place is invaluable for maximizing DPS.

Viral Matrix, Feedback Pulse and Scramble Sensors are supposedly very good as well, but I have yet to try it personally. The four abilities above are more than good enough for me.

If you want to find out more detailed info about skills to figure out how to best distribute them be sure to read the basic skills info and after that this excellent skills guide. If you didn’t know where to start with BO abilities, I hope this article helps. Now go distribute those skills where it counts!

Source: stoplanner.com/blog

Similar Posts:

Star Trek Online Bridge Officer Training Guide

admin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:27:31 +0000

Within minutes of starting Star Trek Online, people (bridge officers) will start reporting to you as if you know what you are doing. Luckily the tutorial provides some introductory information so you don’t embarrass yourself too badly during your first day on the job. From there though, the learning curve can seem quite steep with the numerous different skills, merits and skill points available, not to mention the fact that players can buy bridge officers and skills.

Bridge officers arrive standard with two skills, one for ground adventures and one for space encounters. This is helpful at first due the fact that players will fill up the slots for Tactical, Engineering and Science bridge officers and need to use those same officers for ground and space combat. As soon as the bridge officer page starts filling up though the officers can be tailored for one area (space or ground) and captains can start setting up different away teams (ground) from space officers.

Bridge Officer Roster

Right out of the Starfleet academy, Captains have four bridge officer slots. These slots can be filled with any combination of officer careers (science, tactical, or engineering). The away team can be made of any career-options (i.e. the away team can all be tactical). The ships have specific officer stations though. The first ship acquired has three stations (one of each career). Those stations allow for the bridge officers of those careers to occupy the stations. Those first stations are called Ensign stations that means officers in those slots can only use one skill (Torpedo Spread I). Second tier ships have an additional slot depending on the ship type (tactical escort ship has one additional tactical slot, engineering has one more engineer slot and so on).

If the bridge officer roster is full and another bridge officer is awarded/acquired, the new bridge officer will go into the Bridge Officer Candidate area. See below for how to use the officer candidates to train existing officers or hold on until achieving the rank of Lieutenant. Achieving the rank of Lieutenant will provide two more slots for bridge officers on the roster. If there are still officers in the candidate category, they can be added to the roster.

Bridge Officer Basics, Building a Better BO

Bridge officers have specialties that come in the form of skills. When hovering over the rewards of different bridge officers available, the skills will show up as bolded text so that captains can evaluate fairly quickly whether or not that officer will fill a need with the crew. Even if those aren’t exactly the skills desired, take the career needed since skills can be changed out. This means that filling a Science officer spot is more important than taking another Tactical officer if the science slot is open.

Acquiring Bridge Officers is not tough, but sometimes they don’t arrive quickly enough or pre-set with the right skills. Thankfully, everyone is for sale on the internet. Bridge Officers may be purchased for 100 Starfleet Merits from Elsa Mora in the Personnel area of the Earth Spacedock. The list is lengthy of available candidates, but they all cost the same so take your time, or heck, buy as many as you can fit in your assignments. Bridge officers can also be purchased on the player exchange, so watch for those rare officers on the “auction house.”

Through mission rewards, captains earn Officer Skill Points. These are the points used to increase existing skills of bridge officers. Example: a starting Tactical Officer may have Torpedo Spread I as a skill (it will be skill level 1). Spending Officer Skill Points in Torpedo Spread I will make that skill more effective in combat (all skills ramp up to skill level 9). Two hundred Officer Skill Points must be spent on an Ensign level bridge officer in order for that officer to be promoted to Lieutenant (which will also cost 300 Starfleet Merits).

Once the officer is a Lieutenant and is placed in a Lieutenant’s Station, two skills become available as attacks (Torpedo Spread as one, and maybe Rapid Fire as the other). Spending those Officer Skill Points is wise, but make sure to spend them on an officer worth the investment, or make that officer better with the methods described below. Saving up skill points isn’t really viable since bridge officers can’t skip to second tier skills without the first tier purchases.

Changing Skills and Specialties

Luckily Bridge Officers aren’t like real employees, bridge officers can be told what to do and that they have to change (and they won’t file with the HR department). Specializing a bridge officer can be completed in a couple of ways. The first is to use acquired bridge officer candidates as trainers.

When a new bridge officer candidate is provided, he/she/it (aliens) will show up in the Assignments area under Bridge Officer Candidates. As a candidate they can train your existing crew skills for a price. This can be helpful if you have a full complement of officers and can’t take on anymore, but want some of the skills a candidate may have.

The second way to gain new bridge officer skills is through purchase at the Earth Spacedock from Bridge Officer Trainer (he didn’t get a cool name like Elsa Mora I guess). For varying Starfleet Merit costs (Ensign 75, Lieutenant 150, etc.) most of the basic skills can be trained directly to existing bridge officers. This is an easy way to get the exact skills desired quickly. This will be very beneficial for leveling up alts later on.

The third way to gain new bridge officer skills is through player trainers. Every bridge officer can train the bridge officers of other captains (players). The catch is that bridge officers can only train other bridge officers up to the level below their current level – i.e. a Lieutenant ranked bridge officer could only train up through an Ensign-ranked skill. This is seen as both a social tool for the game and a secondary market for a “gathering” type profession. It reminds me of Enchanting in World of Warcraft in that the players have to be in proximity and the transactions are all completed outside of the game’s currency exchanges.

Playing Favorites

There are a couple of different schools of thought when it comes to managing the bridge officer teams. One school is to load up skills and gear on a select few officers versus the other philosophy of spreading points to all officers so that “all boats rise.” Both strategies can work, it’s more of a personal preference. The reality is that in the early stages of the game it won’t matter all that much. One of my captains didn’t spend an officer skill point until he became a Lieutenant and it didn’t matter too much. There really is no scarcity of bridge officers or points to spend on them for the most part. Take your time and try to make solid decisions, but don’t beat yourself up if you get down the road and see some mistakes in what you did. The game gives you opportunities to rectify most of those mistakes.

Source: TenTonHammer

Similar Posts: