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[Kinsume]

Spoiler

My favourite subject. Wolfpack tactics imo is the most fun way to play the game.
Here are some of the builds I used in my last campaign - stripped of their story point upgrades. Some extra advice regarding wolfpack tactics: Try to have all aggressive officers, except if using the Eradicator, in which case you should go with reckless.

THE BASIC WOLF: Don't s-mod these ever, and get rid of them as soon as you can get something better. Really weak flux stats and bad shield make this one not good in even mid-game encounters

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THE BASIC OMEN: Consider assigning officers with Systems Expertise, Point Defense, (Elite) Target Analysis, (Elite) Field Modulation and (Elite) Energy Weapons Mastery to this one. Consider S-modding Hardened Shields, Hardened Subsystems. This ship is incredibly versatile, works well even without officers (for example when running with Support Doctrine) and has great synergy with some of the best [MEGA-Redacted] weapons you'll get in the late game.

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THE SPEEDY BOI, SAFETY OVERRIDES TEMPEST: This ship lost its powerful High Energy Focuser ship system in favor of one that it's actually best off not using, ever, as it hurts itself by using it. It has a low amount of ordnance points, is very squishy, has low base flux stats and an EXTREMELY small shield, leaving it very cost-ineffective against anything but pirates. Almost worse than the wolf, and that's saying something for a "quintessential attack frigate". Don't recommend keeping these around outside of the early-mid game. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

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THE ACTUALLY GOOD SPEEDY BOI, SAFETY OVERRIDES SCARAB: There are many, many ways to create a good scarab build, so feel free to experiment, maybe you'll find a better one yourself. Always recommend shield conversion - front, though. Officers with Systems Expertise, (elite) Energy Weapons Mastery, Target Analysis and (Elite) Field Modulation have great synergy. Consider S-modding in Hardened Shields and -Subsystems.

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THE NOT QUITE AS SPEEDY, BUT STILL VERY SPEEDY BOI, THE BASIC SCARAB: Same story as above, but not with safety overrides. This is what I used in my late game fights against late game stuff%u2122, although with some [MEGA-Redacted] weapons. Remember, you can go crazy with the scarab. Almost anything works, just remember to use shield conversion - front.

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THE OVERDRIVEN DESTROYER DUO: These are quite similar in function, both of them like to get close, use their ship system and blast the enemy until it dies. Both of them also heavily benefit from S-modded Hardened Subsystems and Extended Shields especially, as well as officers with Systems Expertise, (elite)Ballistic/Energy weapon mastery, Target Analysis and Field Modulation. Both of these are also quite squishy and will die more often than frigates because they are bigger and slower. Don't let that discourage you, though. Use either Support Doctrine (if without officer) Derelict Operations or Hull Restoration, or even combinations of these, to make sure you don't care about these being disposable.

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THE HUNTER-KILLER/POINT DEFENSE HYBRID MEDUSA: A favourite of mine. Heavily benefits from Elite Point Defense skill, as well as Systems Expertise. Great at hunting anything smaller than it, great at dispatching fighters and missiles. Has enough punch to be a big help with capitals and cruisers. Absolute MVP when fighting doritos. Gets a great upgrade with [MEGA-Redacted] weapons.
Consider S-modding Advanced Optics, Extended Shields and Hardened shields. I used 3 of these all the way to the hardest fights with great success.

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THE SAFETY OVERRIDES MEDUSA: In my opinion outclassed by the above, but still, it has to be mentioned. A combination of kinetics, emp and big damage is always scary.

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THE JUGGERNAUT OVERDRIVEN ERADICATOR: You might be thinking, what is a cruiser doing in a wolfpack fleet? Let me tell you. It's as fast as a slow frigate, with INCREDIBLE firepower and tankiness. It's also burn 9, so it doesn't slow down your fleet. It helps with wolfpacks greatest weakness, orbital stations. It can face tank radiants. It brings ALL the dakka. It's fun and satisfying to watch. Try it. Enjoy it. Easily the MVP of my entire wolfpack fleet last run. Benefits from S-modded Heavy Armor, Hardened Subsystems, Expanded Missile Racks or Reinforced Bulkheads. Best officer skills are Systems Expertise, Ballistic Mastery, (Elite) Point Defense, and any and all defensive skills you can get. Mine were piloted by level 7 officers with 5 elites I found in derelicts around the sector.

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THE CROWN JEWEL, THE FLAVOR OF THE MONTH, THE NOTHIN' PERSONNEL KID, THE FRIGATE WITH THE STATS OF A CRUISER, THE ONE AND ONLY HYPERION:
An incredible, probably overpowered frigate. Any wolfpack fleet should aim to get at least a few to capture points. These can be massed with great success, too. I used 3. S-mods are not as necessary as in other ships, since Hyperion has such great base stats already and all necessary hullmods can just barely fit without S-modding. Officers, on the other hand, are extremely necessary: Systems Expertise, once again, a must have, as well as Target Analysis and (Elite) Energy Weapon Mastery. Hyperion can also be used without SO for great value in really big fights where it's small peak performance time would be too low to last, but doing this absolutely necessitates Helmsmanship Elite. Couldn't find a fresh hyperion hull anywhere quick, so the build will have s-mods. if you don't want to s-mod just remove all vents and add the hullmods.

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THE ILLEGAL FRIGATE: Do you want to win the ECM race in every fight? Do you want even more value out of wolfpack tactics? Do you want to have a disposable line of deadly little chestnuts swarm your enemies? Automated Ships is the skill for you. AI cores benefit from wolfpack tactics, and remnants have a nice little frigate: the Glimmer. When using Crew Training while under 240DP, and having the AI core of each ship use Combat Readiness as one of its skills you can have 12 Beta Core Glimmers with 67% Combat Readiness, which is more than enough for pretty much anything. The Glimmer is in many ways the same as the Scarab. Multiple things work, but in all good builds, Shield conversion - front AND Extended Shields are a must. Even with those, Safety Overrides and defensive combat skills, they will still die a lot thanks to the AI cores "fearless" personality. Preferred use with either Derelict Contingent or Hull Restoration. Here are my two favourite builds, The "basic" EMP Droneship and the [MEGA-Redacted] abuser. Both variants will have their AI cores pick Combat Endurance, Field Modulation, Target Analysis, Gunnery Implants and Energy Weapon Mastery, though the EMP droneship will additionally pick Ordnance Expertise, while the [MEGA-Redacted] abuser will pick Systems Expertise. Recommended S-mods are Hardened Subsystems, Hardened Shields and Extended shields, although, let's be honest, you'll end your playthrough before you have enough story points to use on these.

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SOME MORE SHIPS AND THOUGHTS: The Fury, Falcon XIV and Falcon P are cruisers that can kind of do what the Eradicator does. I was just so amazed with the Eradicator's performance I didn't even bother testing the others. You might want to, though. Don't know.

The station killer astral: I ran with two of these in the mid game, because my fleet was having problems with some of the bigger pirate and pather stations. I quickly realised these were not worth the cost to have in the fleet constantly. Before becoming an Eradicator enjoyer I used to pick these up whenever I went station-busting.

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The artillery Manticore: Overall just straight up underwhelming performance, which is surprising. Somehow it was constantly out of position and died almost every mid-late game fight.

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The be-all and end-all spoiler ship: Issue wasn't that this ship isn't good, but quite the opposite. Even strictly under AI control it was too good to the point it made the game very boring, so I dropped it. Here is the build, anyways. Care for major spoilers.

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This is a great breakdown, thank you. Unfortunately so far most of the officers I've found are steady / cautious, I will work on getting them changed out but its what I've got to work with atm. Also have not found a blueprint for frontal shield conversion, so that has been an issue.

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I see, that makes a bit more sense I think. Always been real bad at designing ships, reminds me of the old space empires days. I'm giving the missile scarab a shot, though I don't have the front shield conversion yet. Also trying out the Medusa setup and seeing how it does.

As a side-note, I ran across a guy selling a no d-mod Dominator for 64k in a bar so I grabbed it since they usually run atleast double that on the market. Not sure if it fits in my current setup or not.

Dominator is going to slow the fleet down on the campaign map to burn 8, but as far as what the fleet needs to take on the next tier of opponents (i.e. cruisers), it is an OK choice these days.  I generally view Dominators as good at punching up, namely large, slow targets, such as many cruisers and capitals.  They are much worse at dealing with frigates and destroyers, but the rest of your current fleet seems to have that covered.

However, unlike your destroyers and frigates, your Dominator is not going to be able to retreat at the drop of a hat.  Which means when you deploy it, you're much more committed to win that round, or else it'll likely be left behind if you do need to retreat and redeploy.  You can mitigate this somewhat by keeping it close to your edge of the map.

The Dominator is probably better off without safety overrides because of the large mounts, although you can try it.  The improved burn drive might help with getting in range, as the traditional problem with an SO Dominator is getting within 450 range of frigates and destroyers.  So I'd recommend a standard build.  Although I can not over emphasize how much a non-SO Dominator benefits from an officer with Ordiance Expertise.  It can often provide upwards of 240 flux dissipation, jumping the Dominator from 800 to more like 1040 dissipation, which is a huge improvement (25% or more flux).  Such an officer can eventually transition to an Onslaught as well, which has a similar mount/OP/base dissipation situation going on.

There's a number of weapon permuations that a Dominator can do.  Generally good anti-armor is in the large (Mjolnir, Hellbore, Hephaestus) or mediums (Heavy Mauler, Typhon launchers, Harpoon launchers, Breach SRM pods).  Good kinetic can go in the large (Mark IV), mediums (Hypervelocity drivers, Heavy Autocannons, Heavy Needlers, Sabot pods) or smalls (light needlers or railguns) although the smalls will really want ballistic rangefinder to get 900 range.  I like vulcans in the smalls for PD, and if you're using the front 3 smalls for kinetics, put some flak or dual flak in the mediums.  Dedicated Targeting Core or even better, Integrated Targeting Unit is a must have.  Vents maxed are also pretty much mandatory.  Heavy armor and expanded missile racks are prime s-mod choices if you do choose to go that route.  Expanded missile racks and Missile specialization on a level 4 or 5 officer offers 108 Harpoons for example, which can be your method of securing kills.

I find Hellbores good at cracking armor, but not so good at sustained hull damage.  Same with heavy maulers.  Typically backing those up with reapers or harpoons are a good choice.  If you're running something more like a Hephaestus or Mjolnir, then you might consider the sabot pods to help support bursts of kinetic pressure.

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Glad to hear I didn't waste the money lol. Currently the dominator is parked, but I'll likely try working it into my comp soon.

[Hiruma Kai]

This is a great breakdown, thank you. Unfortunately so far most of the officers I've found are steady / cautious, I will work on getting them changed out but its what I've got to work with atm. Also have not found a blueprint for frontal shield conversion, so that has been an issue.

Just a note, cautious + safety overrides is typically a very bad combination.  Which might explain why your frigates are too scared to engage.

At a minimum, I want aggressive on my safety override ships, even steady may not be aggressive enough.  You'll probably want to make liberal use of eliminate orders and/or Full Assault button on the upper right of the tactical map in combat when using cautious officers.  Mentoring (spending a story point) on the officers to bump up their aggressiveness (cautious to steady, steady to aggressive) might be worth it, assuming you want to keep those officers long term.  It'll also make them level faster (and yourself level faster if you don't have any current bonus XP, as mentoring provides 100% bonus XP).

Also, for unofficered ships in your fleet, you can bump up their aggressiveness as well.  If you're on the campaign map, and hit D, then select tab 4 (Doctrine & blueprints), and then look on the left side, you'll see a line that say "Aggression".  If you hover over the blocks to it's right, it'll tell you how aggressive your unofficered ships will be if you select that block.  So I generally select 3 blocks for aggression, to make all my unofficered ships "aggressive", and then hit confirm (G) in the bottom left to make the change stick.

[Kinsume]

This is a great breakdown, thank you. Unfortunately so far most of the officers I've found are steady / cautious, I will work on getting them changed out but its what I've got to work with atm. Also have not found a blueprint for frontal shield conversion, so that has been an issue.

Just a note, cautious + safety overrides is typically a very bad combination.  Which might explain why your frigates are too scared to engage.

At a minimum, I want aggressive on my safety override ships, even steady may not be aggressive enough.  You'll probably want to make liberal use of eliminate orders and/or Full Assault button on the upper right of the tactical map in combat when using cautious officers.  Mentoring (spending a story point) on the officers to bump up their aggressiveness (cautious to steady, steady to aggressive) might be worth it, assuming you want to keep those officers long term.  It'll also make them level faster (and yourself level faster if you don't have any current bonus XP, as mentoring provides 100% bonus XP).

Also, for unofficered ships in your fleet, you can bump up their aggressiveness as well.  If you're on the campaign map, and hit D, then select tab 4 (Doctrine & blueprints), and then look on the left side, you'll see a line that say "Aggression".  If you hover over the blocks to it's right, it'll tell you how aggressive your unofficered ships will be if you select that block.  So I generally select 3 blocks for aggression, to make all my unofficered ships "aggressive", and then hit confirm (G) in the bottom left to make the change stick.

Yeah I got rid of my cautious ones, sadly one of them was a level 7 I found but he didn't fit in. Currently working with 1x Reckless, 2x Aggressive and 5x Steady.

[Hiruma Kai]

Here are some of the builds I used in my last campaign - stripped of their story point upgrades. Some extra advice regarding wolfpack tactics: Try to have all aggressive officers, except if using the Eradicator, in which case you should go with reckless.

I feel like some of these ships really need those story point upgrades, as without them, they look to be performing worse than some of their simulator counterparts in testing.  The Medusa builds for example seem to lose out to their Medusa counterpart in the simulator (done from mission interface, so no skills involved on either side).  Or is this more of needs to be used in a full fleet setting to see the effectiveness?  They just feel over fluxed with their baseline capacity filling up really fast.  S-mods obviously would help allow you to put more vents and capacitors in.

Also, some of the flux capacitor/vent choices seem unusual to me.  For example with the Hyperion it has 1340 flux dissipation, but only 1190 flux build up with weapons and shield.  Seems like you could shift at least 8 vents over to caps, increasing flux available for  shields from 8,480 to 10,080, an increase of 18%, while still staying flux neutral with the shield up.  That's like throwing another hardened shield mod on the ship.  Is there a reason it needs that extra 160 flux dissipation per second?

[Kinsume]

So how many of each of these ships should I be trying to get for a wolfpack build?

[intrinsic_parity]

You can spend story points to retrain your officers to be more agressive btw. I think you can do it multiple times to get whatever aggression level you want, although that might not be great unless they are level 7 with good skills.

[Hiruma Kai]

So how many of each of these ships should I be trying to get for a wolfpack build?

As many frigates as you're willing to put officers in.  Although I sometimes throw in a couple unofficered Omens as well, simply as fast and mobile anti-missile/fighter tech.  So depends on how many officers you have and you have allocated your skill points.  Without skills, you can run up to 9 frigates with officers and player character, and that is a reasonable plan early game.  Mid-to-late game you'll want to get your hands on Hyperions, which are basically cruisers pretending to be frigates, to go with Scarabs and Omens.  Tempests are also usable, but fallen from their heights of 0.95a.   Actually, with Wolfpack tactics applying to destroyers now, you can probably use Medusa and Shrikes as poor man's Hyperions as well.

So assuming late game you want to pilot a capital eventually, and you want to run a few officered capitals, that'll typically leave 5-6 officers available for standard frigates (or 7-8 if you take Officer Management).   

Use what you have, but I'd prioritize SO Hyperions > SO Medusa > Scarab > Tempest?  Hyperions are definitely worth investing story points in for hull mods.  Depending on how you plan to fill out the late game DP limits, the other ships could be as well.  They're all trying to fill that fast skirmisher role, dealing direct damage with some ion disabling, but the question is how many you can afford officer and DP wise.

I recently beat the Redacted + Super Redacted contact mission with a neural linked Radiant, 2 Odysseys, 5 Hyperions and 3 Glimmers, and was using Wolfpack tactics as one of my 2 leadership picks, so Wolfpack tactics can certainly go all the way to end game.

[intrinsic_parity]

Hyperions have been disappointing me on this patch. My scarabs seem to do comparable damage most of the time (certainly not 1/2 as the DP might suggest). I think scarabs are the best wolfpack ship personally, the ship system is just so good.

[Hiruma Kai]

Hyperions have been disappointing me on this patch. My scarabs seem to do comparable damage most of the time (certainly not 1/2 as the DP might suggest). I think scarabs are the best wolfpack ship personally, the ship system is just so good.

In terms of raw damage output, I agree, certainly not 1/2 the damage being done by Scarabs compared to Hyperions.  But I do feel like Hyperions are better at finishing the kill?  When in the same fleet, Scarabs do dish out plenty of damage thanks to their system (which I agree is really, really good), but my Hyperions average more prorata DP kills (and more solo kills).  I've been deploying 2x Hyperions, 2x Medusa, and 2x Scarabs each fight recently (not necessarily all my capitals though), and the last 5 fights as reported by Combat Reports is attached.

I'm seeing admittedly only about a quarter more raw damage (174k for 2 Hyperions versus 142k for 2 Scarabs), but by prorata DP almost exactly double  (224 versus 112).  Similarly, many more solo kills for the Hyperions compared to the scarabs (14 versus 3).  Probably should watch more, but I've been trying to leverage Neural link (no Automated ships this run), which is player focus intensive.  And unfortunately, not that much more effective than simply flying one ship and using orders.

Could be due to my setups being inefficient though.  Running IR pulse, antimatter blaster, ion cannon, 2x Hammer torpedoes for forward firepower.  Hammers are doing about 40% as much damage as the Anti-matter blaster, which seems pretty good given their OP differences.  Could probably ditch the 2x laser pd on the rear mounts though having upgraded to front shields at some point, although they are apparently shooting down some missiles and fighters.

Hyperions are SO and running Heavy Blaster, Ion Pulsar, and Heavy machine gun.  All 6 of the ships have 2 s-mods each and level 5 officers.

Edit: Uploaded earlier snapshot than the one I was calculating off of.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Nazeth]

My favourite Wolfpack is Wolf + Shrike spam

Shrike is especially broken one. Im using them with Pillum for infinite missile spam, Ion Beam for EMP and 5 Tactical Lasers. Im using Converted Hangard with Wasp/Spark, Integrated Targeting Unit, Advanced Optic and Advanced Turret Gyros.

Wolf instead of Converted Hangar has Expanded Missile racks together with Swarmers. Ion Beam can be also replaced to Graviton Beam.

I'm using also Phase Lance as solid burst dps that scale with that hullmods.

When my ships can nearly stay out of range and spam beam fire, then Wasp/Spark spam provide PD cover and swarm tactic against enemies. Ion Beams are good to turn off enemy PD systems, what reduce casualities in drones.

Commonly it looks like my drones neutralize all enemy frigates and Destroyers around, when Shrikes and Wolves outnumber enemy Cruisers and Capitals.

[tseikk1]

Here are some of the builds I used in my last campaign - stripped of their story point upgrades. Some extra advice regarding wolfpack tactics: Try to have all aggressive officers, except if using the Eradicator, in which case you should go with reckless.

I feel like some of these ships really need those story point upgrades, as without them, they look to be performing worse than some of their simulator counterparts in testing.  The Medusa builds for example seem to lose out to their Medusa counterpart in the simulator (done from mission interface, so no skills involved on either side).  Or is this more of needs to be used in a full fleet setting to see the effectiveness?  They just feel over fluxed with their baseline capacity filling up really fast.  S-mods obviously would help allow you to put more vents and capacitors in.

Also, some of the flux capacitor/vent choices seem unusual to me.  For example with the Hyperion it has 1340 flux dissipation, but only 1190 flux build up with weapons and shield.  Seems like you could shift at least 8 vents over to caps, increasing flux available for  shields from 8,480 to 10,080, an increase of 18%, while still staying flux neutral with the shield up.  That's like throwing another hardened shield mod on the ship.  Is there a reason it needs that extra 160 flux dissipation per second?

These ships are built with the intention of using eliminate orders to pick off single ships one by one, they aren't meant to 1v1 anything bigger or even same size as them. That isn't the wolfpack tactics way. I consider simulator 1v1's (or 1vx) to be largely useless, as they aren't a representation of a realistic battle, especially with a wolfpack fleet. Some ships are also designed to cover up for others weaknesses - some of my ships lack finishing potential, some have antimatter blasters. Some lack EMP, others have nothing but. Many lack PD, which the PD medusa covers. Of course using 28 OP to fill in burst lasers is useless in a sim 1v1.

There are two reasons why all my ships are overfluxed: 1. Energy weapons mastery. I actually think no fast ship really wants to be flux neutral. Especially ones that benefit from EWM. It's better to build for hit & run burst. 2. The nature of how my fleet performs is ships will go in on a target, fire all their weapons until close to max flux (receiving bonus from EWM this way), then falling back while another takes its place. It's a lethal cycle the AI is pretty good at doing with speedy enough ships - Phase skimmer, phase teleporter, time accelerator, SO speedboost and Coordinated Maneuvers speed boost help with this.

Three reasons for why hyperion has vents:
1. EWM. I want it to build up hard flux faster for more damage.
2. Vents are twice as much value with SO
3. The build is actually slightly wrong. I was just recently doing the AI pilot-only 1000dp ordo challenge, where I was using non-SO hyperions for more PPT. The "correct" SO build would actually have a second heavy blaster in the place of the ion pulser. I simply forgot to put it in.

[Kinsume]

So if I should only be running as many ships as I have officers I think I'm overdoing it a bit, currently level 10 and have my 8 officers. Fleet is looking like...

1x Medusa (Flagship)
2x Hammerhead
2x Sunder
4x Scarab
6x Tempest
2x Brawler (One normal and one TT)
2x Wolf

Then misc civvy ships for cargo space and such. I just took down a

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Tantulus Battlecruiser guarding a cryosleep

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with no losses so that was pretty fun. Not sure if that is a Nex mod thing or vanilla but it was pretty tanky. Currently 6 officers are sitting in Tempests, 2 in Scarabs and my main guy is in the Medusa. Still haven't gotten around to mix-maxing my officers. What skills should I be aiming for on them across the board? Should I be dropping ones who don't roll good skill sets and try training new ones?

Edit :
Add a 2nd Medusa and Hyperion to that list, found them on Port Tes and snagged them up. I'm thinking its about time for the brawlers and wolves to go, maybe even one of the sunder/hammerheads.

Edit 2 :
And a 2nd Hyperion, this one from another Tri-port. Has some D-mods but I'm spec'd into hull restoration anyways.

[Gergin]

So if I should only be running as many ships as I have officers I think I'm overdoing it a bit, currently level 10 and have my 8 officers. Fleet is looking like...

1x Medusa (Flagship)
2x Hammerhead
2x Sunder
4x Scarab
6x Tempest
2x Brawler (One normal and one TT)
2x Wolf

Then misc civvy ships for cargo space and such. I just took down a

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Tantulus Battlecruiser guarding a cryosleep

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with no losses so that was pretty fun. Not sure if that is a Nex mod thing or vanilla but it was pretty tanky. Currently 6 officers are sitting in Tempests, 2 in Scarabs and my main guy is in the Medusa. Still haven't gotten around to mix-maxing my officers. What skills should I be aiming for on them across the board? Should I be dropping ones who don't roll good skill sets and try training new ones?

Edit :
Add a 2nd Medusa and Hyperion to that list, found them on Port Tes and snagged them up. I'm thinking its about time for the brawlers and wolves to go, maybe even one of the sunder/hammerheads.

Edit 2 :
And a 2nd Hyperion, this one from another Tri-port. Has some D-mods but I'm spec'd into hull restoration anyways.

I would absolutely replace those Wolves and possibly even the Brawlers with LP Cerberus.  Look at my earlier response for what you want in terms of fitting/officer.  They will bring a ton of damage to your fleet.
They're amazing for training officers in as well because they can punch well above their weight.  You bring just 3-4 of those into a battle against most pirate fleets and they'll rip them to shreds and get a ton of experience for doing so while outnumbered.

[Hiruma Kai]

If you really just want a giant pile of frigates and destroyers and don't mind the individual power dropping off for each, then there is an option to grab Support Doctrine if you haven't already, which gets you a fake level 3 officer in all your unofficered ships at which point the SO frigates without officers aren't at such a disadvantage in terms of PPT since they get Combat Endurance.  Helmsmanship isn't bad for frigates either.  Although it doesn't activate the actual Wolfpack tactics skill which still requires a real officer.  With that Support Doctrine, you can arguably go with as many SO hardened subsystem frigates/destroyers as you can fit into your DP deployment allotment.

Unfortunately, the DP reduction from Support Doctrine won't do you much good yet since you're still just shy of hitting minimum deployment DP (assuming 400 DP setting in configuration, 160 is minimum, you look to have 156 DP), and already have 19 combat ships (out of a fleet soft cap of 30).  Since frigates are good at grabbing map objectives, you can reliably deploy 220 DP, if not 240 DP.

Although setting your campaign doctrine to aggressive (level 3) or higher is a must if you're running safety override support doctrine ships.

Relying on Support Doctrine does potentially change how you build the unofficered ships, since if you are relying on being at high flux to do more damage with EWM, it doesn't work without that skill.

[tseikk1]

You'll want at least Target Analysis, Energy Weapon Mastery and Systems Expertise on all of your officers. Rest is up to you. I don't have the patience to retrain officers, so usually I just mentor them to aggressive and go with the skills I get.