Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Nawyria]

Hello everyone,

I've spent a little time thinking about Officer Skills and which are useful on what kind of ship. I've compiled a few builds into a document below, along with a guide for how to use it. I'm very interested to hear if you find this helpful, if you agree with the choices I've made and how so/why not.

Cheers!
Naw

Officer Skill Builds v2.0

click here for pdf

What is this guide?

Your officers start off at level 1 with 2 skills points and gain an extra skill point at each level-up, up to a maximum of 21 skill points at level 20. This is enough to fully max out 7 skills, but unfortunately you don't always get a say in what skills your officer gets. The two starting skills are randomly selected and, upon leveling up, you are presented with two randomly generated choices allowing you to level up an existing skill or pick a new skill. You may never get the chance to pick the skill you want and could be force into picking sub-optimal choices for the officer's intended role. Therefore I've made each build into a rating list rather than a straight-up pick order, as you won't always get what you want. I've rated the skills in four categories: Essential, Good, Acceptable and Bad.

Essential - These are the skills I consider best for this kind of build. They directly boost the core idea of the build and should be taken immediately.
Good - These are skills that are good for the build, but aren't essential to making it work.
Acceptable - These are skills that provide a tangible benefit and are acceptable to take. However, they are outclassed by the two better categories and you should never pick this skill over a better one.
Bad - These are skills that you should stay away from. Any benefits they provide apply in a situation where it's already too late (e.g. an Artillery ship taking hull damage).


How do I use this guide?

The idea is that this chart can help you level up your officers to ensure you're getting the most out of spending the 21 skill points available to them over the course of their career. You can print it out and keep it on the desk with you or simply open it on your computer whenever you're leveling up. As mentioned above, you won't be able to allocate the skills exactly the way you want, but there is a strategy you can employ to get a close as possible to an ideal build. The strategy revolves around prioritizing picking up 4-5Essential skills and 2-3 appropriate* Good skills for your particular build first. This helps you avoid picking up Acceptable and Bad skill choices (which would eat away at the 21 points better spent elsewhere) by choosing to level up an existing good choice and gives your more opportunities to pick up better skills later down the road.

*By appropriate, I mean appropriate to the ship your officer is captaining. If you're putting a Carrier-build officer on a Heron with a Missile weapon in the medium slot, then Missile Specialization is an appropriate pick, but Target Analysis might not be.


Skill Picking Algorithm

Whenever you level up an officer, use the highest available option on this list.

• Pick a new Essential skill. These are the core skills of the build and you really want to have these.
• Pick a new appropriate Good skill. This improves the odds of getting a missing Essential skill later down the line and it's another skill you can level up instead of learning a new Acceptable or Bad skill.
  • EXCEPTION: If this officer has already got seven appropriate skills between their Essential and Good skills and one of the next two steps is available to you, skip this step. It's almost always better to push an existing appropriate skill to max level than it is to pick up a new one.
• Level up an existing Essential skill.
• Level up an existing Good skill.
• Level up an existing Acceptable skill. Better to level up a sub-optimal choice than a poor one.
• Pick a new Acceptable skill. These are better than Bad skills and represent sub-optimal rather than useless skills.
• Level up an existing Bad skill. Better level up a poor skill than to get a new one that might clog up your choices.
• Pick up a new Bad skill.

Builds Explained

    Artillery
An Artillery ship is any ship equipped with Tactical Lasers, Graviton Beams, High-Intensity Lasers, Railguns, Hypervelocity Drivers and Heavy Maulers. It is intended to do one thing: pummel enemy ships at long range. In order of importance, the most relevant skills for an Officer captaining this ship (1) Increase gunnery range, (2) Boost damage output and armour-cracking ability and (3) Give it enough speed to stay at range. Leftover skills are best spent improving flux dissipation and helping the ship protect itself from long-range counter-barrage.

    Low-Tech Battleship
A Battleship is the ship that is the highest weight class in the battle and can simply out-duel any enemy ship by virtue of dying last. While damage boosts are good, nothing quite keeps this kind of ship going (and pumping out damage) than staying alive. Therefore, in order of importance, the relevant skills for an Officer captaining this ship (1) Improve shields (2) Improve armour and damage reduction, and (3) Improve armour-cracking ability. Leftover points can be invested into doing additional damage, or improving the power grid.

    High-Tech Battleship
Copared to a Low-Tech Battleship, a High-Tech Battleship typically features worse armour, but more efficient shields and better flux capacity/dissipation. This shifts some of the focus away from improving armour and towards range, and the power grid so that the ship can make the best out of its shields. Therefore, in order of importance, the relevant skills for an Officer captaining this ship (1) Improve shields (2) Improve armour-cracking ability, and (3) Improve the power grid and gunnery range. Leftover points can be invested into doing additional damage, or improving armour.

    Carrier
This category speaks for itself. A Carrier is any ship that deals damage primarily through the use of fighters, rather than gunnery. In order of importance, take skills that (1) Improve its ability to replace fighters, (2) Boost fighter combat capability and (3) Keeping the Carrier out of the fight. Spare points can be invested to make the Carrier a support platform through missiles and long-range gunnery.

    Frigate
This category is for ships that are the lowest weight class in the battle, Frigates and some Destroyers. They typically have the lowest base stats in the fight and this creates two problems. Firstly, the frigate needs to stay alive by staying mobile and out of reach, secondly, the Frigate needs to do enough damage to actually cut through shields and armour. This means that the most important skills (1) Keep the ship moving fast - all the time, (2) Provide a much-needed boost to defensive capability and (3) Improve armour-cracking ability. Extra points can be spent on improving dissipation (if the ship can't fire all its guns with shields active and stay at 0 flux), Gunnery Damage, Missile Damage or a Range boost.

[CuteBB]

In my point of view, helmsmanship should be a key skill for carriers as setting fighters in engage mode will generate some flux which means you will lose speed bonus.

+50 almost doubles the speed of all carriers.

[Schwartz]

Decent guide. I did a run-down of skills for myself just recently. Agree with some, disagree with others.

- Damage Control, Countermeasures, and even Helmsmanship are trap options. More speed is nice, but 0-flux boost is extremely situational and I want my ships to shoot.
- If a ship uses shields as main defense, you want Defensive Systems. Even on frigates.
- If a ship uses armor instead, buff armor. Don't try to do both unless picks are imperfect.
- Power Grid Modulation is a secondary skill at best. Useful if you can spare the slot on shielded ships and phase ships.
- Target Analysis is the best offensive skill.
- Evasive Action is the best armor skill, but if you can get both, get both.
- Combat Endurance is mandatory.

[Blaine]

- Combat Endurance is mandatory.

No levels of Combat Endurance are ever needed for flying capitals, unless some people take a lot longer than I do to finish the biggest fleet battles. Unless you're only ever going to have one capital in your fleet (presumably piloted by you), at least one of your officers can skip Combat Endurance entirely.

Cruisers and below can definitely make use of Combat Endurance 1 and I agree it's nearly mandatory, although in some cases it may be skippable. I've only had two Herons run out of peak performance a single time, during a brutal 3:2 fight against REDACTED.

With destroyers and especially frigates, Combat Endurance 2 may be helpful to squeeze some more use out of them, although you'll probably stop putting officers in frigates after a certain point, so that's worth considering.

I will never in my life take Combat Endurance 3 on any officer ever again, because frequently when you switch ship assignments you'll lose supplies unless every single one of them has Combat Endurance 3, which (to me at least) is very annoying. I'd rather have more points spent elsewhere and get by with overall lower CR.

[Nawyria]

In my point of view, helmsmanship should be a key skill for carriers as setting fighters in engage mode will generate some flux which means you will lose speed bonus.

+50 almost doubles the speed of all carriers.

That's a good point, I like that a lot! Changed it right away.

Decent guide. I did a run-down of skills for myself just recently. Agree with some, disagree with others.

- Damage Control, Countermeasures, and even Helmsmanship are trap options. More speed is nice, but 0-flux boost is extremely situational and I want my ships to shoot.
- If a ship uses shields as main defense, you want Defensive Systems. Even on frigates.
- If a ship uses armor instead, buff armor. Don't try to do both unless picks are imperfect.
- Power Grid Modulation is a secondary skill at best. Useful if you can spare the slot on shielded ships and phase ships.
- Target Analysis is the best offensive skill.
- Evasive Action is the best armor skill, but if you can get both, get both.
- Combat Endurance is mandatory.

In order:

- I'll agree on Damage Control and Countermeasures, but I'll make the case for Helmsmanship being stronger than you give it credit for. The speed and acceleration boost really helps AI-controlled ships crawl back from getting in too deep. The 0-flux boost at 5% means that Cautious Officers can maintain their distance by not throwing away a +50 boost while using their standoff weapons.
- I'll agree with your take on Defensive Systems, it's a lot better than I give it credit for.
- I would agree with you here on not taking Shield AND Armour boosting skills... for player controlled-ships. For instance, I don't necessarily trust my Battleship officers enough to keep themselves safe using just their shields, so I want them to have boosted armour too.
- I guess I did overvalue Power Grid Modulation a bit. 10% Capacity doesn't no nearly as much compared to, say, -20% damage on shields.
- Target Analysis, Evasive Action and Combat Endurance are indeed the three best skills. I came to pretty much the same conclusion. I would argue for Helmsmanship is a clost fourth.

- Combat Endurance is mandatory.

No levels of Combat Endurance are ever needed for flying capitals, unless some people take a lot longer than I do to finish the biggest fleet battles. Unless you're only ever going to have one capital in your fleet (presumably piloted by you), at least one of your officers can skip Combat Endurance entirely.

Cruisers and below can definitely make use of Combat Endurance 1 and I agree it's nearly mandatory, although in some cases it may be skippable. I've only had two Herons run out of peak performance a single time, during a brutal 3:2 fight against REDACTED.

With destroyers and especially frigates, Combat Endurance 2 may be helpful to squeeze some more use out of them, although you'll probably stop putting officers in frigates after a certain point, so that's worth considering.

I will never in my life take Combat Endurance 3 on any officer ever again, because frequently when you switch ship assignments you'll lose supplies unless every single one of them has Combat Endurance 3, which (to me at least) is very annoying. I'd rather have more points spent elsewhere and get by with overall lower CR.

It's not just about the Peak Operating Time, though. Combat Readiness directly affects several important in-game stats that I honestly believe are worth the hassle of switching assignments.

For every 5% below 50% CR, ships take a -1% hit to Maneuvrability and Damage Dealt, a 1% increase Damage Taken, as well as degrading Autofire Accuracy, Missile Storage and running the risk of malfunctions.
Between 50% and 70% CR, ships operate normally.
For every 3% CR above 70%, ships gain a +1% bonus to Maneuvrability and Damage Dealt, a 1% reduction in Damage Taken, as well as increasing Autofire Accuracy.

This essentially makes rank 3 Combat Endurance a +5% to three of the most important stats.

[Blaine]

Do those maluses actually apply before the peak performance timer is up? I suppose they probably do. I guess peak performance is just there to punish you for using anything other than capital ships and cruisers. 

Either way, it's worth noting that while three +5% bonuses certainly aren't nothing, that's also a point (potentially two points, since the Combat Readiness 2 can easily be skipped, depending on your playstyle) that could be spent elsewhere, conferring other bonuses.

Still, you've got a point. Maybe it's more worthwhile than I thought, better than two points spent in any of the "leftover" skills (that you wouldn't have points in if you took Combat Endurance 3). I wouldn't necessarily call it mandatory, though.

[Schwartz]

Combat Endurance does speed, damage AND shield efficiency. That's a holy trifecta right there, and the speed buff is a baseline buff. Combat Endurance level 2 might be pointless, but that case can be made for a bunch of other level 2 skills. Usually there's a great payoff at level 3. Very occasionally it may be worth to pick up single point skills, but that's if you have covered your bases and have points left over. I.e. Evasive Action 1 for the maneuverability buff on a front-shielded and front-gunning ship is decent.

For every 5% below 50% CR, ships take a -1% hit to Maneuvrability and Damage Dealt, a 1% increase Damage Taken, as well as degrading Autofire Accuracy, Missile Storage and running the risk of malfunctions.
Between 50% and 70% CR, ships operate normally.
For every 3% CR above 70%, ships gain a +1% bonus to Maneuvrability and Damage Dealt, a 1% reduction in Damage Taken, as well as increasing Autofire Accuracy.

This essentially makes rank 3 Combat Endurance a +5% to three of the most important stats.

I've been wondering about this, since on the ship page, when you modify the CR slider, you see speed and shield efficiency go up or down, not damage dealt, damage taken or maneuverability (turning speed). Maybe the wiki is outdated.

[Blaine]

Combat Endurance level 2 might be pointless, but that case can be made for a bunch of other level 2 skills. Usually there's a great payoff at level 3.

Yeah, I know. I noticed this right away. I'm not at all a fan of "filler" skills body-blocking the way to the good ones behind them, and frankly would prefer to see the 3 levels of each skill merged into 2 (that still confer the same total bonuses) and overall maximum skill points reduced accordingly. I'm sure some people would disagree with this for any number of reasons, such as it being more difficult to snipe a couple of nice level 1-only skills.

[Retry]

In my point of view, helmsmanship should be a key skill for carriers as setting fighters in engage mode will generate some flux which means you will lose speed bonus.

+50 almost doubles the speed of all carriers.

That's getting changed in .9: Activating fighters will now generate >5% flux so Helmsmanship will no longer let a carrier with active wings benefit from a speed boost.

[Schwartz]

- I'll agree on Damage Control and Countermeasures, but I'll make the case for Helmsmanship being stronger than you give it credit for. The speed and acceleration boost really helps AI-controlled ships crawl back from getting in too deep. The 0-flux boost at 5% means that Cautious Officers can maintain their distance by not throwing away a +50 boost while using their standoff weapons.
- I would agree with you here on not taking Shield AND Armour boosting skills... for player controlled-ships. For instance, I don't necessarily trust my Battleship officers enough to keep themselves safe using just their shields, so I want them to have boosted armour too.
- I guess I did overvalue Power Grid Modulation a bit. 10% Capacity doesn't no nearly as much compared to, say, -20% damage on shields.

You're right about shield & armour together being viable for NPC ships, but so is picking more offensive skills. Do you want the NPCs to survive longer or win their slugfests more easily? Best defense is a good offense and all that. If you give a shielded ship an armour bonus, that ship's armour likely is still not that great, whereas its shield is likely very efficient. Play to its strength and give it the ability for more flux pressure on the enemy, rather than adding a skill to 'endure failure' if you will.

I also sold Power Grid Modulation short a bit.. it's a secondary skill, but it serves a shielded ship much better than an armour skill for the reason I outlined.

With Helmsmanship, you have to consider what else you could get for 3 skillpoints and if it's worth it. You get speed boosts from Combat Endurance already. Carrier with this skill is still an option, but carriers are skill-starved anyway since 9 levels go into fighters. I'd rather give it shield / armour skills and possibly some offense.

Should also mention that I play with SS+ and the Shield Bypass hullmod. Without it, being unable to force NPC allies to keep their inefficient shields down, the equation changes somewhat.

[Alex]

I've been wondering about this, since on the ship page, when you modify the CR slider, you see speed and shield efficiency go up or down, not damage dealt, damage taken or maneuverability (turning speed). Maybe the wiki is outdated.

It's speed/maneuverability, damage taken (not just shields), damage dealt, fighter refit time, and autofire accuracy. The CR slider's tooltip tells you the exact bonuses.

[Megas]

I like level 2 on Damage Control for the faster repairs.  Stack that with Automated Repair Unit and weapons and engines that get knocked out recover so fast that I do not care if they get knocked out.  Level 3... the overload recovery is too small and an insult.  Even -50% from 0.7 was rarely useful.  Less hull damage is okay, but not worth a point if I cannot afford it.  What kills Damage Control for me is Fleet Logistics.  Fleet Logistics makes Damage Control 1 obsolete.  That leaves level 2, which is good... unless I cannot afford it due to lack of skill points.

Combat Endurance 1 is great!  With cowardly AI that will stall indefinitely if allowed, being able to outlast the AI is nice if the fight ends up to be a waiting game.  Combat Endurance 2 is a joke!  If not for the loot bug, I would retreat ships before CR gets down that far than leave them in.  3 is good, but Fleet Logistics 3 is much better if I cannot afford both.

Helmsmanship 3 is mandatory for carriers.  So much that is will not work anymore in 0.9, which will probably make 3 a joke for most ships.

Advanced Countermeasures 1 is aggravating when the enemy has it.  Effectively turns your kinetics into ineffectual fragmentation attacks.  Want to punch through armor with big kinetics (like Gauss Cannon) despite half damage?  Too bad, the enemy can tank that even more.

I do not like junk perks clogging the way to good perks.  Ordnance Expert, Strike Command, and Loadout Design are such skills.  In case of Loadout Design, the 3 perk is great that it more than makes up for that junk perks before.  Well, 2 is not junk, but only if you have extra OP from 3, otherwise, 2 may be useless because you do not have the OP to afford the extra vents.  1, max capacitors are usually more than enough, let alone beyond.  As for the other two skills, spending three points for a minor damage increase and junk perks are not worth it.

Power Grid Modulation is a luxury.  If you want to use Mjolnirs on a low-tech ship, you need it after you get the other flux and shield efficiency perks.  It is also handy for ships that use flux intensity loadouts.  That said, the skill can slide if you cannot afford it.

Defensive Systems 3 is most useful for Hardened Shields hullmod, if I do not have Tri-Tachyon commission.  Hard flux dissipation is convenient on Safety Override ships (but I do not use them in endgame).  But... 4x time shift for phase ships is a poison pill, mostly for AI.  AI ships that have that will burn down PPT and CR faster and lose the waiting game.

Overall, in 0.8, I prefer offensive perks over defensive perks because the greatest enemy to the player is time, thanks to the cowardly AI.  Player needs to kill ships before the AI runs down the clock for a stalemate.  TTK is indictive of combat performance.

[TaLaR]

4x time shift for phase ships is a poison pill, mostly for AI.

Now that I think of it, maybe this perk should burn CR as well as accumulate phase hard flux only at 3x rate, but provide slight boost to effective time rate, somewhere 3.25 to 3.5 (still good enough if it comes without drawbacks).

[intrinsic_parity]

- I guess I did overvalue Power Grid Modulation a bit. 10% Capacity doesn't no nearly as much compared to, say, -20% damage on shields.

Power grid modulation is all about the dissipation at lvl3, capacity is a secondary stat at best. Dissipation lets you fire more weapons as well as helping out defensively. It's not a must pick for every situation but on ships that struggle with dissipation (especially low tech ships) this can help a lot. It's hard to really judge it against stats that just affect damage taken. Dissipation will help you even if you aren't taking damage to dissipate flux or maintain sustained fire. That being said, I agree it's more of a luxury unless you are planning on using weapons like heavy blaster/mjolnir/plasma cannon.


Also, evasive action is not the best armor boosting skill. Impact mitigation is pretty clearly better. I tested the number of shots it would take a 100 and 400 damage per shot weapon to strip various amounts of armor for the two skills:

Spoiler

[close]

Spoiler

[close]

Clearly IM outperforms EA (always takes the same or more shots to strip armor with IM). As the damage per shot increases the difference become marginal, so the choice doesn't really matter vs torpedos and hellebores, but against pulse lasers and stuff like that, IM is much better, and the benefit scales with armor amount so large ships see more difference between IM and EA.  I'm pretty  sure the increased benefit with armor amount is due to the level 2 IM skill. The general difference is due to 20% armor reduction mostly, and the +150 also contributes to that.

My assumptions making this were:
50% of current armor for armor mitigation, applied to the armor damage calculation formula
20% reduction in armor damage is applied after armor calculation (so the amount the amount of armor lost on each shot is reduced by 20%, not a 20% reduction in damage to armor)

EA also has the maneuverability bonus which is nice, but it's not clearly better, and I wouldn't take it over some other skills.

[Megas]

I take Evasive Maneuvers at 1 purely for the mobility bonus.