Star Trek Online noob here

The Game Room
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I’ve recently started playing Star Trek Online and I have a space combat question. I’m still in the starter ship, so maybe this is something that improves with better ships, but … holy frakkin’ Og, can this ship turn any slower? As near as I can tell, phasers do no noticeable damage and so defeating an enemy ship depends on hitting it with photon torpedoes. Unfortunately, this ship can only launch torpedoes “forward”, requiring my ship to be facing the enemy ship (which really makes no sense — once launched and clear of my ship, shouldn’t a sensor-guided torpedo be able to reorient itself and make a heading for the target?). With the glacially slow turn rate of my ship, trying to point myself directly at an enemy that is flying in a wide circle around me is proving incredibly painful.

I do have my first three Bridge Officers, so I can use them to activate High-Yield Torpedoes, jam targeting sensors, and divert emergency power to shields, but I haven’t yet come across a way to significantly improve my ship’s turn rate.

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  1. You can change the settings on your power distribution panel.

Increasing power to “Auxiliary” increases turn rate. Unfortunately, this will require that less power be applied to other things.

(There is movement, shields, weapons, aux.)

  1. Putting some of your talent/skill points into maneuvering will also be of some help. You will be earning these points as you complete missions and such.

  2. Be on the look-out for skills that temporarily increase a ships turn rate. “Evasive manuevers” is one, for example. Both your Captain, and some Bridge Officers, can have these.

  3. When you get to Lt. Cdr rank, you can pick “Escort” class ships, which have better maneuverability than the other types (Cruiser, Science.) Bear in mind that the first tier (Lieutenant Rank) of ships are going to be pretty generic and underpowered.

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Escort ships have great turn rates and the most firepower, but they only really shoot from the front. That means that you’ll be doing a lot of strafing runs and then using abilities like evasive maneuvers to quickly turn around and do another strafing run.

Cruisers, on the other hand, have lots of beams that fire in huge arcs, making turning less necessary. They do less damage overall, though.

As a general rule, your beam weapons will bring down shields more quickly but won’t do much damage to the hulls. Try to time your torpedo salvos to hit just as you’re knocking out your enemy’s shields.

ST:O space combat isn’t dogfighting - it’s ship combat. It’s more about broadsides and volleys than anything anything.

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Are those the four tiny buttons I found labeled “Speed”, “Defense”, “Combat” and “Balanced”? (Not sure I’ve seen one labeled “Auxiliary”.)

I’ve used that a few times, but I didn’t realize it improved my turn rate. I was mainly using it to try to escape :smiley:

My main frustration at this point is simply how long combat is taking, largely due to the difficulty in getting lined up to launch torpedoes. In one of the early missions, involving a dilithium mining/refining station, I had to defeat three small-ish enemy ships at the station. Then, being unable to beam up some dilithium as the mission called for, I was instructed to look for a “jamming station” nearby. The jamming station was guarded by a single, larger ship. It took so frakkin’ long to beat that ship that by the time I’d beaten it and destroyed the jamming station, the first three ships back at the mining station had respawned and I had to beat them all over again.

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Evasive Maneuvers tremendously improves turning rate. Your jaw will drop when you try it out.

Reducing/increasing speed to 50% gives you the optimal turning rate when Evasive Maneuvers is in cooldown.

Placing turrets at the aft will eliminate the need to maneuver altogether. Turrets have a 360° firing arc. You can just sit there motionless, facing the enemy and firing away from both your fore and aft weapons simultaneously.
The obvious disadvantage is that your fore shields will be depleted in no time, so you’ll need good shield skills and equipment to compensate that.

Avoid hitting an enemy ship at different angles. If you brought down its fore shield, but keep flying around as if it were a dogfight, then your torpedo might hit the still operational aft or side shields. Torpedos do almost no damage when the shields are still up.
My guess is that your battles were taking so long because you weren’t paying any attention to the opposing ship’s shields, attacking it from random directions, instead of sticking to one side.
Likewise, if you’re in a team with someone else, you should always attack from the same direction as your teammate. Never flank an enemy, that’s counterproductive (unlike in ground combat, where it’s hugely effective).

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Yes.

It’s been a while since I’ve played the game, so bear with me: There should be some “tabs” (labeled “1”, “2”, “3”) that appear above that power distribution box. You may have to hover the mouse, or right click it, or something.

Tab number “3” will let you set the power levels to custom settings, instead of the preset ones. Click on tab three. Set your system power levels to whatever suites your style of play. The systems, from left to right in that box, are “weapons”, “shields”, “speed”, “Aux”, at least I think that’s what they are when you select tab 3. You’ll also see “lock” symbols above the columns to keep that column from changing any more as you tinker with the others.

My power preferences on the starter ship were: Set speed to 30 or so, so that I would have “full impulse speed” of about “12” or so. (I have no idea what units that “12” is representing. Quatloos?) Shields at 50. Aux at 40. Remainder in offense/weapons.

But whatever your preferences are, set these settings while puttering around Starbase One, in Sol system, not while under fire. (You can also play with the turn rate/Aux setting in this place, just to see what it will be given a specific setting.) :slight_smile:

Every time you switch ships, you’ll need to reset these settings.

As Apollon said, try to keep firing at the same enemy’s shield facing. This becomes more important, especially when facing “Battleship” and “cruiser” sized enemies at later levels. Hold your torp attacks until you can fire them through downed shields.

I sometimes like to kit out some mine launchers, as well. Tactic: approach enemy, blasting away until I can down one of their shields. Pop a torp through that hole. Drop mines so that they also strike through that hole. Pop evasive maneuver, zoom away to 8-10k klicks away (edge of weapons range), swing around for a rinse/repeat. Not always possible, depending on special abilities of the enemy, but pretty cool early on.

With my setting weapons power levels to 70 or 80, I get shields to drop just a tiny bit faster.

Personally, I also set my camera to “track targeted enemy” instead of “chase” (default). This way, I can see what they are up to, especially if they launch special weapons or trigger a special ability that I need to worry about. You can also see them make course changes, which you may need to adjust to. With camera on “chase”, I found myself merely watching my own cool downs, and not paying attention to what the enemy was doing (and also missed seeing their course changes while out of view, so that they ended up coming back into view at odd or unexpected angles and times).