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In general, large performance differences are due to player piloting and map randomness - the weapon procs themselves are such a small contribution that they aren't going to swing a map, and that's kind of what we were trying to illustrate. When I get 100k one map and 80k the next, I can either tell I didn't time an ability correctly, I didn't fly in the right position, or sometimes even there's just straight server lag. A missed or hit proc might account for maybe 5%, but me powersliding right past the target is going to be a 20-40% loss very easily.

You are welcome! I hope you found it helpful or informative.

Hey that's our goal! We want to help others play STO... better. 🤣

I do the particle grind to focus solely on obtaining as many of the Omega (Quality) Upgrades as I can - managed enough materials for 500 of them at this year's Anniversary. They're by far the most efficient way of increasing rarity with low mark items, because done right every one will guarantee the quality jump each time, instead of trusting to luck. That's valuable and saves you from burning so many Phoenix Upgrades, that you would have to otherwise. To collect the different coloured Omega materials you have to go to different locations. If you only hang out at Earth Space Dock, Starfleet Academy, Qo'nos or Qo'nos Academy you'll only see red particles. My favourite locations are Drozana Station for yellow (both inside and outside), inside New Romulus Command for blue, and outside Deep Space Nine for red. Particles of the same colour do move around within these areas over time but they follow a regular pattern that is easy to predict. To prepare I leave one of my characters at Drozana station and one inside New Romulus Command so I have someone in place ready to farm yellow and blue at all times. Outside Deep Space Nine is a little trickier as the red particles move to different areas of space. I leave three of my toons there, one in each of the three areas I know the particles will appear in. So instead of having to fly from one area to another to find them, I can just switch from one character to another and start farming straight away.

Ran into the same problem, a wiki dive later... you have to harvest in different zones for different colors (which rotate around to some degree). Managed to harvest around 30 omega upgrades last year.

I did reply earlier but TH-cam seems to think I said something nefarious and deleted it. Drozana Station is good for yellow, New Romulus Command for blue, and Deep Space Nine for red. I leave different toons at each area for the whole event, so I can collect each colour at will with little to no travelling required. The Omega (Quality) Upgrades are VERY useful to have as they prevent you from having to burn as many Phoenix upgrades as you ordinarily would. And if done right, guarantees a quality jump, instead of trusting to luck.

It's certainly worth your time if you can put time into it. If you do the daily minigame, it has you go to different systems and each one you go to will reward a different color. Also, scoring higher will reward some of the higher-tier pieces, reducing how many red/blue/yellow pieces you need.

@@stobetter I was going to say..not to mention when you engage with the Omega to get the minigame, you already know what color you'll get. If someone is only getting one color, they're paying no attention at all.

You are welcome! Aimed to have it out for Upgrade Weekend.

Yeah back in the days when Omegas were the only show in town, no Phoenix boxes!

@@stobetter I believe we had phoenix events! Once every three four months 😢

@@hal0justcal865 Phoenix Events started in Dec 2016, per the wiki.

That's certainly a more cost-effective way to do it! Still can take a pile of dil.

@@stobetter true but what in this game is cheap lol

@@stobetter it does help your EC

​@@JCinLapel I got 12 disruptor rolls to 3 phaser for my isomags. Looks like my alternate toons are flying the Bortasqu

@@dougpfundstein3384 Dump what you dont want on the exchange and use the EC for mats or the type you need you still will do bettert hen holding out to get the one mod you need

Hey that's great! Thank you for the compliments. Always trying to include interesting info.

I think we mention the Gamma recruitment upgrade in the printable, but didn't make the script for the video. Thanks for pointing it out!

That's the goal! We even did some learning ourselves and figured out that some of the other methods we came up with just weren't cheaper, so stick with what works.

Hands down the "old" Risian kit frame - it doesn't lock you into some poor choice kit modules, and the new one is only marginally better at best than the old one.

vet player here since 2013, I did that newer one and get my kit power to almost 700. But the issue is everything above 400 is not worth that trouble or resources, the damage diff is not that great, for example if I raised Kit Performance from 400 to 800 that is not like raising all your damage by double, but way less, maybe 30-40%. So my advice stay with the regular Risian frame and having around 400+ KP is enough with that 8 second 100 booster from ground trait gets you to 500. Mind you my Endeavor perks are 450 / Lazy :)

I keep some ultimates around just to slot in the upgrade item. While it does not show the mods. It will show what other changes are, when an item is epic. As quite a few items are not worth upgrading to epic, of XV for that matter. Case in point. The Disco warpcore. Apart from The AMP mod at UR, and sector speed at epic. Which all cores get. There are zero stat changes whether XII or XV. I have saved loads of upgrades when there is only a few points change from a VR XII to epic XV.

That's a great tip for the UTUs, keeping one around!

@@Yandarval I didn't even think of that, but it's a great way to test upgrades.

That's why we do these! Not all of the elite queues are intuitive.

Hope you were able to enjoy the weekend too!

Just think of all the Dilithium you are saving!

That's a pretty neat trick! We've found that in general content play, simpler is better. It's very often we play Gateway to Grethor and players simply don't close gates. We'd rather teach "close the gates" than "Wait to close them until transports are closer", though probably in a coordinated team run, we'll try out the 12km trick.

Hey, appreciate the feedback! We try to make sure we cover all the flying types on a TFO, and when we have time, intersperse other videos. We'll have a new TFO tutorial rotation coming up soon!

Thank you! We enjoy making these videos and sharing our knowledge.

Thank you for your kind words!

stowiki.net/wiki/Advanced_Disruptor_Beam_Array

You can mix different weapons within the same type, like Terran Phaser and Wide Angle Phaser Beam Bank. It is not best to mix Phaser and Disruptor, for example. You would then have to use +Beam or +Cannon consoles, which give less damage overall, and there are many other non-Tactical consoles that only give one flavor or another. It can be done, but you lose whatever benefits you gain just from not being able to use the higher-output specific flavor consoles.

3 seconds might be a bit long. I make sure to watch my weapons, and if they are in a firing cycle, every 1/2 second or so is fast enough. If I notice my weapons not firing, I hold off for a moment to let them get going again, then go back to a gentle rhythm. Also doesn't do any good to hit spacebar if all the abilities it can trigger are on cooldown. Don't mash it if you don't have to.

@@stobetter oh okay cool thanks. I kind of do a "rolling press" or something every second or so then check the cooldowns so it looks like that's the right approach.

Appreciate the suggestion! Probably will fall in after TFOs so it might be a while before we could get to anything on battlezones.

Advanced Phasers: stowiki.net/wiki/Advanced_Phaser_Beam_Array

They're on our to-do list, just can only make videos so fast. We tend to start with ones that show up for events, but our plan is to showcase them all eventually.

@@stobetter I assumed it was because those were simply a bridge too far for the majority of the player base to handle.

@@needparalegal I think of others more highly than that. We'll get there.

your stats on your spreadsheet are all going to be off and incorrect for this testing

That's simply not true. We haven't heard of this before, so I went into both a Normal difficulty queue and an Advanced difficulty queue, and there was no difference in Hull capacity, CrtH, or CrtD. Now, there is one case that this happens in, and that is when you are level-matching with someone not at level 65, your stats can get de-rated to whatever the system chooses as the "level match", somewhere between the lowest and highest level characters. This can happen in Normal content, but not in Elite content. Some queues require level 10+, while others 50+, and Elite 60+.

Thank you! We enjoy making these videos and sharing our knowledge.

Dark Matter by far - its inexpensive by game standards, part of a super strong 2pc set, and shells out plenty of damage, and the Dark Matter Dissolution gets extra points with Kemocite Laced Weaponry. Hypermass is fine - it's like vanilla ice cream. Very good, I'd eat vanilla ice cream if given, but why have vanilla when you can have a full ice cream sundae?

@@stobetter Interesting. I've been using the Enhanced Bio-Molecular Photon Torpedo from the 8472 rep and that thing hits hard.

We'll have to talk about it as a team. There's nothing secretive about our methods, its just not very polished for general consumption. LINEST is your friend, though it does a lot more than just LINEST.

...I had no idea. That's amazing. I booted up the game just to try it. Thank you for teaching me! 🤯

@@stobetter mate, learned a lot the other way ;) I'm flying around in a fek'ihri interceptor based on your USS Vishnu :p

Testing stuff in STO is better

You know, I'm (Tilor) planning on doing a lot outside when its not a 110°F+ Heat Advisory every day.

Thank you! I am glad it was insightful. Didn't even get into the hours of building the tool to analyze the data. It took a long time to get to this point. I even cut out some stuff I did as the video was getting quite long.

@@stobetter Well, job well done. I hope you're also enjoying the game too!

7/25 patch on PC: www.playstartrekonline.com/en/news/article/11570382

On console never

So Subterfuge doesn't work quite like that. My base Ambush is 15% right now. If I equip a Subterfuge, it goes up to 25% (+10%). Then, if I equip a Superior Subterfuge, it goes up to 30% (+15%). Only the highest one applies. To get to 40%, you need Maquis Tactics - 15% base, 15% Superior Subterfuge, 10% Maquis Tactics. Just checked again in game to make sure.

While true you can only slot one, there are several other weapons you can slot as part of a larger composition. And, even if you slot just plain Phasers in all 8 slots (though we advise a token torpedo as well generally), you can beat any Elite content as long as the rest of the build is solid.

So story episodes are a personal preference, and since we are a team, its hard to speak for the whole team. As far as clothing bugs - I think Tilor's main has the same costume he's had for 5+ years. Not sure we're the best ones to ask there.

So I only found out about the Dominion Polaron from the comments after this video. While they do have extra CrtH, that mission is brutal to rerun. Certainly agree on the filler, though it is limited in its types. However, when it comes to Plasma, it has some really solid options that just don't exist with Polaron, such as the Altamid lobi set and Experimental Romulan plasma, not to mention more gear that buffs plasma than does Polaron. Both will get you solid Elite capable builds.

Plasma has become king of DPS purely because of the Gorn. The Quads, experimental weapon, lure, and complex plasma fires.

The devs probably focus on Phaser and Disruptor since those are the most popular. Case in point: Isomags. Look up the price of any Isomag, and Phaser is far more expensive than any of the others, even though Plasma is pushed as "META" right now. Reason? Phasers are the classic weapon from the show. But regardless of the focus, any weapon flavor is Elite capable.

"META" or king of DPS is a pretty narrow niche. Plasma does just fine without the Gorn goodies, but if you want maximum plasma damage, then the Gorn goodies are really strong. By the same token, Disruptor is boosted strongly by the Hysperian console and trait. Any well-built ship with standard weapons will clear Elite content.

There are many ways to do it, and many builds that will work. If you find it working well for PUGs, great! PUG runs need support tanks too.

@@stobetter that they do. I know when i enjoy seeing new people playing elites.

That's what rainbow builds are for! Don't forget the flashbang Bacon of Kahless! In all seriousness, rainbow builds can work, but aren't optimal. And please do forget the Beacon of Kahless, it flashbangs your team.

I know we've made some decisions on our builds based on the color of the weapon when there isn't much else to differentiate!

Sounds like a fun combination! Thanks for sharing.

You can occasionally get one from levelling-up a Romulan Faction character, but yeah mostly the DOff mission is the way to get them. I know this video could be more clear, but some of that footage would take months to be able to retake (since that DOff mission is so rare). Sorry its a little confusing.

All good, I actually got a boff with Infiltrator this week from the doff mission and referred back to this video to confirm that I needed a green outcome. Thanks!