Hey everyone! After retiring from STO last month, I decided to log on again recently and realized that I had not shared many of the builds that I developed before I left... so now I'm posting them here since I don't really want to make a big deal over at /r/sto. I spent a good part of my STO playtime widely experimenting with different weapon and skill loadouts to find unique builds that you will almost certainly never see someone use (or at least, that was the idea). These are the results of my experimentation and I hope that you will try them out; however, keep in mind that they are very specialized as I created them to be specific for each character, and it is unlikely that you will have the exact same skillpoints as my characters. Some of these have been tested by other captains, but by and large these builds are not commonly known or used.

Saber's PvP Odyssey (Odyssey Star Cruiser or other variant)

• Skillpoints: http://imgur.com/a/zxVcm#0

• Loadout: http://imgur.com/a/zxVcm#1

• Stations: http://imgur.com/a/zxVcm#2

• Active Doffs: 2x Conn Officer (Evasive Maneuvers CD reduction, purple quality), 2x Energy Weapons Officer (Beam ability CD reduction, blue quality), 1x Warp Core Engineer (blue quality)

Description: this is mainly a support vessel, but it is also capable of scoring kills due to having a frontal weapon loadout. The DBBs combined with BO II often score strikes that allow team mates to take advantage of a downed shield facing on most ships, but usually not cruisers since they have much higher shield health. The general idea is to Subspace Jump behind an enemy target, hold them with the Assimilated Tractor Beam, and use BO II and Rapid Fire I. If you are an engineer, you can use Nadion Inversion to mitigate the power drain from BO, and the Red Matter Capacitor or Weapons Batteries when it's cooling down.

About half the time, you will switch over to auxiliary power to throw out healing to teammates, and you will almost never use these healing abilities on yourself except Aux to SIF III (since its CD is so short). As an engineer, you should be prepared to go down to dangerously low health since you have the benefit of engineer-specific self heals such as Rotate Shield Frequency and Miracle Worker. This is also where the 4/4 Assimilated Borg set comes in handy; the respective procs will heal your hull or shield so that you can save your healing abilities for your teammates. Finally, EPtS I and III keep your shield health and power levels up so that you are regenerating 900~1200 shield health per 6 second, and since the EPtS shared CD time is the same as the ability effect time, one of the two will be active at all times as long as you remember to press the buttons. Photonic Officer reduces the CD on your healing abilities from 45 seconds to 30 seconds, allowing you to keep your teammates alive.

With the MK12 Assimilated Borg set coming in Season 7, I hope to see a revival of the usage of the full set, because I think it's very underrated.

Notes:

• If you have the NX Grappler console (which I do, but it's not shown in the picture), you can replace the Parametric Hull Plating and basically have two tractor beams instead of one.

• The only exploitable weakness of this build is that it doesn't have as much shield health as if MACO shields were equipped, but this is made up by the high regeneration rate of the Assimilated shields. In emergencies, it is possible to increase your own regeneration rate to ~1800 per 6 seconds by using EPtS, Rotate Shield Frequency, and a Shield Battery (and Transfer Shield Strength for even more if necessary). This will also cause shield damage resistance to hit ~50%. If these abilities are on cooldown, Reverse Shield Polarity should always be available as a last resort.

• Smart use of Photonic Officer is a big part of this build, especially for abilities with longer cooldowns such as AP: Omega, Reverse Shield Polarity, Transfer Shield Strength, and Hazard Emitters. It does not affect Aux to SIF.

• Another important part of the build is having 2-3 Conn Officers to reduce the CD on Evasive Maneuvers. Since the Odyssey has a bad turn rate, you can effectively turn as fast as a light cruiser for ~8 seconds by activating Evasive Maneuvers every 20 seconds (or 15 seconds if you're using three Conn Officers).

• If you have points into the Flow Capacitors skill (I don't), the power drain on the Assimilated Tractor Beam is significant.

Raszagal's Tactical Stealth Bomber (Bird-of-Prey UPDATE: also the Breen Chel'Grett)

• Skillpoints: http://imgur.com/a/zxVcm#3

• Loadout: http://imgur.com/a/zxVcm#4

• Stations: http://imgur.com/a/zxVcm#5

• Active Doffs: 3x Projectile Weapons Officers (purple quality), 1x Deflector Officer (blue quality), 1x Gravimetrics Scientist (purple quality)

Description: the main feature of this build is that it allows even the wimpiest of science officers to put out massive damage. It is essentially a torpedo build, but don't be fooled by the mediocre DPS parses; the weapon loadout will allows for damage spikes of 25,000 to 70,000 in a matter of seconds every 15 seconds. In the DPS tracking frenzy we often forget that straight, raw damage is also very effective. This is accomplished by cycling Torpedo: High Yield II and III, which fires a Heavy Plasma Torpedo (HPT) every 15 seconds. You can also "save up" a HPT since you have 30 seconds to fire it, effectively allowing you to fire two at once when you hop between engagements. The Bio-Neural Warhead is an added punch, and while it has a long CD of 1 minute, you can fire it at 15 km, it has a built-in antiproton point defense system which fires at multiple targets while travelling, and finally explodes for up to 36,000 damage (~90,000 critical) when it reaches its target.

This is all in addition to normal plasma torpedoes firing every 1.5 seconds (due to the doffs) and the resulting plasma fire damage which stacks up to 5 times. The disruptors combined with Rapid Fire I triggers the disruptor debuff, which causes targets to take 10% more hull damage, which is quite significant when firing high-damage projectiles such as we have in this build (e.g. 10% of 30,000 is 3,000 extra damage). Finally, let's not forget that we're a science officer; Gravity Well I and III allows for constant crowd control and also does a fair amount of damage when you switch to auxiliary power before firing one off, and groups targets together for tremendous damage since both HPTs and the Bio-Neural do splash damage.

Notes:

• If you have the Isometric Charge console (which I do, but it's not shown in the picture), you can replace the Graviton Generators console for even more burst damage.

• The one fatal flaw of this build is that, like most Birds-of-Prey, it is very squishy. It is very easy to die from a single HPT or even an Isometric Charge blast since the hull points are so low. Smart use of the Battle Cloak along with the two instances of Transfer Shield Strength should be enough to keep you alive, if badly crippled at times. If you are a science officer like this character, the innate science officer abilities are also very handy for staying alive (albeit not quite as useful as the innate engineer abilities).

• Since this build doesn't rely much on energy weapons damage (it only makes up about ~10% of the total damage done), you can liberally transfer power from weapons to shields or auxiliary when necessary without significantly affecting your damage output.

• The Bio-Neural Warhead is activated manually. I prefer this since I can choose exactly which target to fire it at, since the antiproton point defense does significant damage when passing by other targets. It is often smart to fire at the furthest target away so that the point defense gets a good firing run.

• This build can also be adapted for use on any escort, but you will not have Gravity Well (except in the case of the MVAE).

Raszagal's TCD Bomber-Carrier (Vo'quv)

• Skillpoints: http://imgur.com/a/zxVcm#3 (same as above)

• Loadout: http://imgur.com/a/zxVcm#6

  Note: I accidentally wrote 'Dual Cannons', it's obviously a Dual Beam Bank.

• Stations: http://imgur.com/a/zxVcm#7

• Active Doffs: 3x Deflector Officer (blue quality), 1x Flight Deck Officer (hangar CD reduction, purple quality), 1x Gravimetrics Scientist (purple quality)

Description: I've posted this build before but failed to update it when I confirmed its massive damage output. Similar to the previous build, this build relies mainly on the kinetic damage from Tricobalt devices (TCDs) and Gravity Well. However, unlike the previous build, this one shines at damaging groups of enemies rather than a single enemy. When encountering a large group of enemies, the idea is to Gravity Well them together, manually activate Torpedo: Spread III, and manually activate the TCDs. This requires some micromanagement but ultimately necessary to properly synchronize the cooldowns; that is, the shared coodown for having two TCD launchers is 30 seconds, and the cooldown for Torpedo: Spread III is also 30 seconds, so you want them to finish together so that you can launch four TCDs instead of one.

Like any other carrier, you want your pets out as much as possible. The Advanced BoPs are considered by many to be the most damaging carrier pets available, and will make up for the lack of single-target damage in this build. Swapping to auxiliary power before launching and having a Flight Deck Officer significantly reduces the CD of the hangar.

Notes:

• Torpedo: Spread III is absolutely necessary because it causes four TCDs to fire. However, keep in mind that four will fire if and only if you have at least four targets within your torpedo firing arc. This should be easy with Gravity Well.

• Again, don't be fooled by the mediocre DPS parses; the weapon loadout allows for massive damage spikes of 31,000 (one target) to 124,000 (four targets). When accounting for splash damage, it's not uncommon for a volley of four TCDs to do over 300,000 damage each time.

• This build is very tanky. It has slightly less hull than Odyssey variants, and just as much shield health. I opted to have two Tactical Teams instead of a beam ability for more survivability. Any significant single-target damage comes from the hangar pets, so the single DBB is only used for the subsystem targeting abilities built into the Vo'quv.

• The only person I know of that has also used this build is Je'rat, and he loved it.

• The Atrox cannot use this build effectively because they are dirty Federation petaQs it doesn't have the proper tactical slotting, but the Recluse Carrier and Kar'fi Carrier is capable.