Ship Roles and Captain Careers

What is this about?
Let's talk about captain careers, ship roles and "best ships" for a second.

Captain Career

Your captain's career doesn't matter for what kind of build you want to do. A science captain can be a threat-tank, a tactical captain can do a science build and so on.

The career only unlocks certain abilities that help with certain roles.

• In general, a Tactical captain is the most efficient at any role.
• Science captains are a close second for science builds and a second in general for most other roles.
• Engineers are the "worst" and only provide little benefits to threat-tanks.

With that being said, no career is substantially bad for any role - we are talking about 2-10% differences at most.

Choose what you like, and it'll be ok.

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Ship Roles

There are several ship roles / build types that currently exist in this game. Pretty much all ships and ship types are tailored for one or two specific roles.

While they can be "abused" for other roles, they won't shine at it and in most cases feel awful.

That's why there are no "best ships", just ships that are good or even very good at a specific role.

Also note that while some ships are better in their designated role than others, there are no bad T6 ships, and even T5-U ships are good for any content at advanced difficulty.

All T6 ships will be good for at least advanced difficulty with a budget build (= mission/reputation/fleet gear, few to no event unlocks, and minimal exchange budget) in their role.

Pick what you like to fly, build toward she ships strength, and you're good to go.

Understanding how things work together in a build is more important than just throwing together a bunch of expensive or "meta" gear.

The main roles and the ship types tailored for them are:

1. Beam boat: Deal DPS with beams.

• Power focus on weapons.
• FaW + beams for multi-target (either 4/4 or 5/3), BO + DBBs/Omnis for single-target (5/3 or 5/2).
• At least Lt.Commander Tactical seating.
• Typically cruisers and dreadnoughts with beam arrays and broadsiding, and partially escorts or battlecruiser with DBBs and frontal attacks.
• Top-Tier examples: Husnock Warship (5/3 Warship, mastery, Recursive Shearing 3), Vaadwaur Juggernaut (5/3, miracle worker), MW D7 FDC (5/3, miracle worker)

2. Cannon boat: Deal DPS with dual (heavy) cannons.

• Power focus on weapons.
• CSV for multi-target, CRF for single-target. 5/x layouts preferred.
• At least Commander Tactical seating.
• Typically Escorts, Raiders, Warships.
• Top-Tier examples: Vaadwaur Juggernaut (5/3, miracle worker), MW D7 FDC (5/3, miracle worker)
• Subtypes:
  • Glasscannon. Typically a raider or escort with little to no survivability, but exceptionally high damage output.
  • Alpha Strike build. Hit a devastating first strike, then retreat (to recover hull and/or wait for cooldowns).
  • Ambush build. Like an alpha strike build, but with cloaking (and de-cloaking buffs) on top.

3. Threat-tank: Take in 75%+ of all(!) enemy attacks, and survive that.

• Power focus on weapons.
• Create enough threat so that the enemies attack you, while the glasscannon teammates deal the majority of the damage.
• Requires some DPS to create a base threat, multiplied by threatening stance and other modifiers. Taunts that create aggro/threat without doing damage are barely available in the game.
• Also requires enough survivability (hullcap to sponge damage in general, continuous healing/regen for normal damage, and burst heals for damage spikes).
• Rarely used outside of pre-made teams for specific elite TFOs and/or DPS parses for leadership boards. Not very useful in solo content.
• A hull modifier of at least 1.4 is highly recommended, as are Cruiser commands.
• Typically Dreadnoughts, partially cruisers/battlecruisers.
• Top-Tier examples: Atlas, Gagarin, Arbiter, Galaxy Dreadnought, Galaxy, Vengeance are some examples.

4. Kinetic torpedo boat: Deal kinetic torpedo damage.

• Power focus either on AUX or engines.
• Heavily recommended: Lt.Commander Command seating for Concentrate Firepower 3. Agility and enhanced battle cloak can be of value.
• No typical ship type.
• Top-Tier examples: Tzen-tar, Section 31 command battlecruiser, Janeway, Titan, Dhailkina
• Subtypes:
  • Alpha Strike build. Hit a devastating first strike, then retreat (to recover hull and/or wait for cooldowns) - and repeat.
  • Ambush build. Like an alpha strike build, but with cloaking (and de-cloaking buffs) on top.
  • Stealth Bomber. Ships with enhanced battle cloaks that can fire torpedoes/mines while being cloaked, and are flown perma cloaked. (Fleet/Legendary) B'rel, Kor, M'Chla; (Fleet) T'varo, (Fleet) Faeht, (Legendary) T'liss.
  • Minelayer. As the name suggests, focuses solely on laying mines. Difficult to pull off, annoying to play, but it works with enough budget and patience.

5. Science-Exotic boat: Deal exotic damage.

• Power focus on AUX.
• Wants lots of EPG and ctrlX (or drainX for niche/PvP builds).
• Often paired with exotic torps, those that have secondary damage that gets boosted by EPG/ctrlX (more than 3 front slots are very helpful for those builds).
• Pretty much needs a secondary deflector. Energy weapons don't matter on these builds due to low weapon energy and lack of buffs.
• At least Commander Science seating. The more Science seats, the better (preferably 8+).
• All science ships (indicators: science commander seat, secondary deflector, science starship mastery package) are designed for science builds, as are science and support carriers.
• Top-Tier examples: Temporal Science vessel (Verne / Qul'poH / Sui'Mor), Lukari Dranuur Scout Ship, Sphere Builder Edoulg, Somerville, all Crossfield types
• Subtypes (boundries can be fluid):
  • Sci-Torp (focus on exotic/anomaly torpedoes),
  • Sci-Clicky (focus on console abilities),
  • Sci-Secdef (focus on SecDef procs),
  • Sci-Anomalies (focus on anomalies that proc SIA / Spore-Infused Anomalies),
  • Sci-PvP (focus on drainX, specific expensive builds for the few people that still care about PvP).

6. Pet-based Carrier: Have hangar pets do the heavy lifting.

• Power focus on AUX.
• Usually paired with SAD. Secondary damage either beams (tactical + engineering carrier) or sci/exotic (science + support carrier).
• Anything with 2 Hangar Bays. Typically Full Carriers, but also Flight-Deck Carriers. Those are basically cruisers with 2 hangar bays, and the advantages of both classes without the disadvantages.
  Flight Deck Carrier sadly outclass "classic/real" Full Carriers in the current state of the game.
• Top-Tier examples: D7 Miracle Worker Flight Deck Carrier, Miracle Worker Flight Deck Carrier, Fleet Suliban Silik Flight Deck Assault Carrier

7. Debuff Support ship: Buff your team and debuff enemies.

• Power focus on AUX.
• Often SCI/ENG heavy abilities. Team healing could considered be a part of it, but plays no role in practice. There is no stand-alone Healer role.
• The least favored role within the current mechanics, as the game barely gives ways to be of substantial support without being a burden on the team.
• Sometimes used in nanny runs for DPS parsing on PC and DPS record hunting. Pretty much useless in solo content.
• The ideal ships for this have hangar pets that can apply additional debuffs or team support abilities on foes, of which the list is very short.
• Top-Tier examples: Terran Styx Dreadnought, Tholian Jorogumo/Recluse/Tarantula, Hur'q Vedcrid Dreadnought

8. Hybrid of one or more of above. DEWSCI (Directed energy weapons + Science; either dew-lean or exotics-lean) would be an example, as well as many niche builds.

• Typically not good at any role, but ok enough to push their weight when done right; and can even be good for elite with the right budget. Usually more done for theme reasons than for efficiency.
• Fundamental ship building and game mechanics knowledge required to get synergy effects of the different build parts.
• No "best ship" or typical ship type, as hybrid can be anything.

Ending note: Great reading material for anyone interested in ship building: "How starships work in STO"
It is a bit math-heavy at times, but you can skip those parts. Best thing: It actually explains how things work, without a focus on maxing DPS.
Quote: »This is not a copy-and-paste set of build instructions for 'optimal DPS'.«