Tactical Officer Cruiser Build!!!!

[tylerclawson4]

for a good discussion/cookie cutter build for a tactical officer looking to fly a cruiser over an escort take a look at this link and read through you can run the first build posted OR read further for more fine tuned builds sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=227292 also a good note that i have found personally is running two dual beam banks and a beam array on front and all turrets on the back all you need to do is have beam overload 1 and cannon scatter on your tact bridge officer

[yurgain]

I've been working on a build myself, using the Galaxy Dreadnought, and the Vice Admiral assault cruiser. Because I've done more with it, the Dreadnought is going to be my primary example, but much of what is true for it is true for most cruisers period, and I think I have one that is solid as a beam build (no turrets, dual banks, or cannons) part of this might seem silly since the dreadnought can actually use dual cannons, like an escort. But you pretty much have to walk the ship into combat (IE just at range, switch to 1/4 impulse and trundle towards the enemy with cannons and turrets blazing)

Now, while this may seem to be the best option, the dreadnought, like all cruisers, favors engineers and/or science officers. It has 2 tactical stations, but only 3 slots between them. Where as you have a whopping 7 science (and the typical 2 science). This still does not stop cannon builds, but it does change the tactics. Consoles with turn rate increases can help, as can skills to improve turn rate, but you're still going to turn slow.

This turns the vehicle into a Jousting Cruiser. Using evasive maneuvers, other speed/turn boosts, or just tenacity to get distance between you and your enemy to come around for another main volley. This requires turrets in the back, to keep constant fire on your target or targets if you're utilizing certain control/targeting setups for your targeting which Jonathan showed me.

This would be a similar method with a Twin Beam Bank cruiser, beams in front, turrets in back.

An array Beam Cruiser slots all, or most of, its weapon points with beam arrays. This means you are broadsiding as often as you can, and with some cruisers (or sometimes just with the RCS consoles) can work fine with mouse click steering to keep the position. To make up the loss of DPS with only 2 or 3 tactical slots, common to upper rank cruisers. Tactical team and Fire at Will are my personal favorites because FaW makes the beams fire faster, with some extra punch, combined with Tactical Team's damage buff.

Engineering is where you make up your DPS. Keeping such things as reverse shield polarity and power to shields, also add in Directed Energy Modulation which allows you to bypass shields, thus ignore needing to DPS those down, and just crack the hull. Power to Weapons is a smart choice because 8 beams drains power fast, and you can't always have weapons batteries on hand (they run out after all) but the bonus from power to weapons will stack with the others, and aid with making this a viable build.

I'll be adding more, possibly make it a new thread as I go through my designs, but I wanted to throw this much out there, for folks who like cruisers, and have tac offs.