Take
your seats, cadets, and turn your attention to your monitors for
the latest installment of Starship Basics. Starship combat is the meat
and potatoes in
style="font-style: italic;">Star Trek Online,
but Cryptic is…well, cryptic…about what
differentiates a good ship from a bad ship. Many aspects of starship
design are hazy and not clearly defined, which is a tad irritating in
that you’ll be spending a lot of time in your
captain’s chair engaged in starship combat. Not to worry,
cadets, as Ten Ton Hammer is here to help you with the Starship Basics
guides. Make sure that you pay attention as that there’ll be
a quiz after the lesson and those with scores below 75 percent will be
forced to do Mugato enclosure clean up duty!
The first Starship Basics guide served as an
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/sto/features/guides/starship_basics_introduction"
target="_blank">introduction
to the subject, clarifying starship stats and basic starship
terminology. The second installment focused on
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/sto/features/guides/starship_basics_weapons"
target="_blank">weapons,
those glorious engines of destruction that you use to vaporize your
enemies. (You ever notice how the Federation says that
they’re for peaceful exploration and research and that
Starfleet isn’t a military organization, but their starships
are armed with more firepower than the Death Star?) The third lesson in
Starship Basics focused on
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/sto/features/guides/starship_basics_shields_and_engines"
target="_blank">shields and impulse engines,
which work together to allow your ship to survive in combat by being
maneuverable and defending against enemy damage. This session will
focus on the deflector dishes and arrays that you can mount on a
starship.
Deflector
Dishes
Deflector dishes are a type of starship equipment that boosts various
skills in deflector fields, sensors, and emitters. These items are
placed in the deflector slot of your starship. The skills enhanced by
deflector dishes are those used for tractor beams, scanning for cloaked
enemies, jamming sensors, and using a tachyon beam to lower an
enemy’s shields. There are four types of deflector dishes and
each type boosts different skills. In addition, deflector dishes are
rated from Mark I to Mark X (with X being the highest). The higher the
rating, the more powerful the deflector dish is. The deflector array,
the most basic deflector dish, also comes in a standard rating as well
as Marks I-X. The standard rating is lower than a Mark I and comes with
your basic starship. Always keep an eye out for upgrades. The four
types of deflector dishes are:
-
style="font-weight: bold;">Deflector Array
– Increases starship deflectors, starship emitters, and
starship sensors skills. -
style="font-weight: bold;">Graviton Deflector Array
– Increases starship deflector dish and starship deflectors
skills. -
style="font-weight: bold;">Positron Deflector Array
– Increases starship emitters and starship tractor beam
skills. -
style="font-weight: bold;">Tachyon Deflector Array
– Increases starship sensor array and starship sensors skills.
What
the skills mean:
The various skills can be confusing, but each skill unlocks certain
abilities when a specific rank and skill level is achieved.
We’ll go through each skill set one by one.
Starship
Deflector Dish –
This skill improves starship deflector abilities and includes abilities
such as Tachyon Beam (draining an enemy’s shields) and Energy
Siphon (drains enemy power levels while boosting yours).
Starship
Deflectors – This
skill improves starship deflector abilities and includes abilities such
as Tachyon Beam (draining an enemy’s shields) and Feedback
Pulse (harnesses the energy of beam attacks against you and damages the
enemy).
Starship
Emitters – This
skill improves starship emitter abilities, which includes abilities
such as Tractor Beam (slows an enemy ship and prevents them from
cloaking) and Polarize Hull (provides damage resistance to beam
weapons, breaks current tractor beam holds on you, and prevents tractor
beam holds).
Starship
Sensor Array – This
skill improves the starship sensor array abilities, which includes
Sensor Scan (reduces the damage resistance and stealth of enemy ships
and increases your perception) and Mask Energy Signature (shields the
energy output of your ship, making it easier for you to escape
detection).
Starship
Sensors – This
skill improves the starship sensors abilities, which include Sensor
Scan (reduces the damage resistance and stealth of enemy ships and
increases your perception), Jam Sensors (prevents the enemy from
targeting you), and Scramble Sensors (this short duration ability
forces your enemy to target his allies for 14 seconds).
Starship
Tractor Beam – This
skill improves the starship tractor beam abilities, which include
Tractor Beam (slows an enemy ship and prevents them from cloaking) and
Tractor Beam Repulsors (pushes up to three enemies away from your ship).
In addition to the various types of deflector dishes, there are other
modifiers that will enhance a deflector’s performance. Like
other pieces of starship equipment, deflector dishes can have from one
to three additional modifiers, depending upon the rarity of the
equipment. These modifiers can stack together if there is multiples of
a specific modifier. An example would be [Def]x2, which would equate
into a +20 to the Starship Deflectors skill. The modifiers that can be
found on deflector dishes are:
-
style="font-weight: bold;">Ast
- +10 to Astrometrics -
style="font-weight: bold;">Def
- +10 to Starship Deflectors -
style="font-weight: bold;">DefD
- +10 to Starship Deflector Dish -
style="font-weight: bold;">DefM
- +10 to Starship Deflector Field -
style="font-weight: bold;">EM
- +10 to Starship Emitters -
style="font-weight: bold;">HS
- +10 to Starship Hazard System -
style="font-weight: bold;">Sen
- +10 to Starship Sensors -
style="font-weight: bold;">SenA
- +10 to Starship Sensor Array -
style="font-weight: bold;">SenP
- +10 to Starship Sensor Probes -
style="font-weight: bold;">Spa
- +10 to Spatial Anomaly -
style="font-weight: bold;">ST
- +10 to Photonic Theory -
style="font-weight: bold;">TB
- +10 to Starship Tractor Beam
As you can see, deflector dishes can have a significant impact upon
your starship’s performance in space combat. Whether
it’s siphoning energy from an enemy ship, lowering their
shields, or breaking out of a tractor beam hold, your ship’s
deflector dish and the abilities of your crew to use that equipment can
be the difference between life and death. Various abilities can be
useful to any starship, while others tend to be more useful for
specific ship types. Being able to break out of an enemy’s
tractor beam is vital for escorts as they depend upon speed and facing
to bring their mighty weapons to bear. All in all, deflector dishes
provide a refreshing variety to your ship’s arsenal of
abilities. There’s the bell, so that means class is over for
today. Fourth year cadets are to report to the Kobayashi Maru training
facility.
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Star Trek Online Game Page.
