The Ponycor Guide

Version 0.0.3 Beta-r1

The contents of this document should stay classified and for Panda Eyes only until further notice.
Also, take into notice that this is the Ponycors view on things, it doesnt necessarily mean they are
always correct.

Version History:
0.0.1 Alpha: First Release More to come
0.0.2 Alpha: Added Response + Control Configuration + Autofire Method Section.
0.0.3 Beta-r1: Updated Efficient Power Level Switching Section.

(Illustration on the Ponycor ready for PvP combat!)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction / introduction to PvP basic trait selection.

2. Some small tips to begin with.
3. Auxiliary, the essentials.
4. How do I properly respec a toon. (Skill Tree)
4.1. Logical Skill Tree Respec for a Tactical Escort (Example)
4.2. Extra elaboration on the skill tree aspects for confirmation (For all builds)
5. Proper Weapon Selection for PvP.
5.1. What Weapon Types are most viable? (Cannon/Torp/Beam)
6. What Captain/Class is really still viable?
6.1 Viable Bridge Officer Abilities and proper usage.
7. Doffs and the Ponycor.
8. Efficient Power Level Switching.
9. Rotating Shield Self Heals.
10. Response + Control Configuration + Autofire method.
11. Consoles and the Ponycor
1. Introduction / Introduction to PvP basic trait selection.

Welcome to the Ponycor guide my fellow Pandas!

This document will give more insight into PvP aspects and can possibly add to the quality of our
PvP team and individual builds. A successful PvP team is just as much dependant on invidual
builds as in teamwork. Having the right abilities and use them at the right time on yourself and
others is essential for this goal.

Lets get into the very beginning of ones character, namely the base traits of your toon. Now, I
do not expect you to relevel a toon if you do not have the proper traits, but like in all PvP, every
few percentage you can squeeze out of your character will eventually make you a better PvPer
for yourself, and your team. From reliable sources I do know that the ones that can be a tough
match for the Pandas actually consider releveling toons and some have already made it
happen.

The two main traits which have the most impact or effect are quite obviously;
- Accurate (+10% Accuracy)
- Elusive. (+10% Bonus Defense)

Especially on an escort which has to deal the most possible damage in a team I would say
Accurate is one trait which is simply a necessity for an optimized build. That extra defense
works pretty much equal on every ship/class and is highly recommended.

The remaining two traits (Assuming you picked the Alien race as your PvP toon) are of less
concern. The Warp Theorist trait gives like 1 point extra to all power levels, which is not that
significant. Efficient Captain gives a 1 or perhaps 2 points extra in your lower power levels when
properly skilled in the skill tree.

I can most likely recommend Techie for most people (Especially healers) since this gives +10 to
hull repair, which includes all bridge officer hull healing as well as slightly boosting the Borg Hull
Proc from the sets. I even thought it boosted passive hull repair but this is of very low
consequence. Astrophysicist is also a reasonable trait, it gives +10 to flow capacitors, which
boost about all draining from abilities, including Polaron/Tetryon procs. Even better, it boosts
your BFI boffs.
This was the introduction to successful PvP, and I strongly recommend releveling a toon with at
least the two most important traits if not done so yet. The Joined Trill is also not bad for PvP, as
the joined symbiote trait gives a tiny boost to a wide variety of ship traits. Still, and again
compliment this race with the two most important traits (Accurate/Elusive).
2. Some small tips to begin with.

Bridge Officers;
Always use either a full Saurian or a full Veteran boff crew. Saurians give extra points in lower power level
systems, Veteran boffs buff Accuracy/Defense a bit, etcetera.

Chance tips:
Always try to make a build which isnt too much based on chances wherever possible.

Power level tips:

Always prioritize your power levels as follows;

- Shield should always be prioritized before engines. For the simple reason that more shield setting will
benefit you at all times, where with a proper skilltree the only thing you gain when increasing your engine
power level is speed and turnrate, but not Bonus Defense. Simply said, you will drop your tankiness for a
little bit more turnrate/speed. For an escort, always increase turnrate with RCS consoles instead. The
reason is, turning up your shield tanking can only be done with +4 consoles, which is simply not worth a
whole slot. So simply use the power level setting to obtain it. 100/50/25/25 for escort.

- Its probably best for a healer (if he decides to be a dedicated auxiliary) to put the remaining power level
in shields as well. (25/50/25/100)

Gear tips:
The absolute best gear setup with highest possible defense is without a doubt a Mix of M.A.C.O MK XII
Shield, in combination with the Borg Engines/Deflector and Borg Console. The occasional Hull heal proc
will heal about half your hull back.

The Multi Regenerative shield proc doesnt heal that much shield hitpoints, but it seems to increase your
shield resistance by far. Use this combo in a premade, do no longer use anything else, tetryon glider or
two piece MACO is worth nothing compared to this. The multi regenerative shielding (3 part borg) is
without a doubt the BEST proc.
3. Auxiliary, the essentials.

Batteries/Devices:
Before I recommend anything else, Auxiliary batteries are most likely the most important batteries you can
have on a ship and in PvP,. It puts your auxiliary on high in an instant, and saves you loads of time trying
to manually put your auxiliary on high. It saves time, you can instantly use a aux based heal after that,
including Self healing like BFI to make absolutely sure it procs with the highest possible potential.

It IS the best battery to use. Either use an Aux bat right next to your aux based heals on your tray to easy
it up, or use a Team battery with Aux/shield mix. The next best thing to use besides Aux bats is the RMC,
it fixes about all subsystems except for Weapons (probably bugged).

The 3th device you should put on your ship is no battery, because using 3 batteries simply is inefficient
and messes up your cooldowns.(I guess on a cruiser there is little choice, I would go with an extra
Shield/Rechargable Shield Bat then and only use it for a Shield proc)

I would recommend the Subspace modulator. It buffs all your hull resistances and also increases your
bonus Defense nicely. Use it whenever your hull is being touched or spiked or in other situations where
your hull is being hurt.

Auxiliary based abilities;

Every ability based on auxiliary is being effective depending on which power level the ability has been
clicked/activated. If you use a Transfer Shield Strength or Hazard on someone with a low aux at the
moment you click it, there is no more use in putting your Auxiliary up, the TSS was given on that specific
aux setting the moment you clicked it and will keep giving the (15 second) HoT based on that specific aux
level you gave it at. So its vital to sent over your heals at max aux, after you clicked the heal you can
pretty much change your power level back to something you prefer (i.e. weapons)

Max out your builds as much as possible;

I know, PvE sucks, but try to obtain at least the M.A.C.O. Shield MK XII, which is still the absolute best
shield in game. Also try to get all your gear up to MK XII Purple wherever possible. Im pretty sure all the
RP guys are doing it. Always trying to max out everything always helped me back in the days. Its icing on
th cake, but never the less essential, if 3 out of 5 throw the hat at it and say fuck it, then were already
lost. Grind those fucking Shields etc.

Get your so called Balanced setting to work as full Aux.

When you obtain a new ship, your 4th powerlevel setting is actually not called Aux, but Balanced and
simply puts all of your powerlevels to 50/50/50/50. But thats just stupid, nobody in PvP (Except noobs)
actually use this as a balanced setup. Most PvPers manually change and save this preset to max
Auxiliary instead. (Make sure the preset is really saved)
4. How do I properly respec a toon?

A good skill tree setup is one of the other important factors of the optimization of your individual
build, and also makes sure you cover all the important aspects and abilities you are going to be
using on yourself and others to the maximum possible effect. Its also vital not to waste
skillpoints in sections and skills that are less than effective and probably not even worth it in the
long run. Lets not even start talking about the skills in the tree which are constantly being
screwed upon by Cryptic, not knowing whether the skill has any useful effect.

The first thing you will want to figure out is; what skills am I going to use? And what
main role do I have in the team. If you figured this out, you can basically create a final
speck which would hardly ever require a respec, unless you want to change your
abilities ofcourse. But the point of having a good premade is creating a toon which is
ready on demand and preferably 99% optimized, only then you can be a proper asset to
the team you are in. Having a half made build is not going to help anyone out. If you
want to test around in a build, level up a new toon. Its no harm to bring it along into the
queues, and if we face bad odds its simply because its not a pre-setup 5 versus 5. But
never take some experimental goo into a challenge 5v5 because it will fail on the team
until its proven effective or reliable or can supplement a team setup in a positive way.

Im going to explain the specific skills that cover Captain/Bridge officer abilities later on, I
will first show you how a proper skill tree respec is logically created. The following will
cross my mind when respeccing my Tactical Escort, as an example;
4.1 Logical Skill Tree Respec for a Tactical Escort (Example)
The first thing again, is what is your role? By knowing your role in a premade you can
make priorities which reflect themselves into a skill tree.

Think about three most major aspects of the skill tree, which are Hull healing/Resist,
Shield healing/Resist, and Damage. (Lets leave Science out for now in this example).
Which ones do you prioritize over the other? Obviously for a Tactical with the
requirement to do the highest possible damage we are going to fill up all the damage
related skill aspects to 9 (Max) with the exception of the last Tier 5 Performance skill,
we will discuss that one at a later time. Thus this means we will at any time, prefer
maximum damage over anything else. Also take into consideration, lower tier skills are
much less expensive, so any important low tier skill is probably ready to be specced into
6/9 points.

Tier 1.
Attack Pattern Skill: 9
Weapons Training: 9
Driver Coils: 0
Ship Batteries: 3/6
Hull Repair: 6/9
Flow Cap: 9
Shield Emitters: 9

I will explain the first Tier 1 spec, you can clearly see here that Ive prioritized Weapons
over anything else, where the second important thing I found is shields. Without shields
your hull is naked and ready to be killed. With shields, no hull to be punched. Therefore
I always prioritize Shields a little bit above Hull. Hull repair could be specced into either
6 or 9, depending whether you prefer Hazards above for instance Sci team 1.

I personally prefer a Sci team for the team and myself, so thats why Im saying, 6 or 9.
Why do I put Flow caps on 9? Simple fact that the Shield Distribution Doffs or BFI
doffs are simply being buffed by it. Again, shields.

Shield Emitters boosts abilities like Transfer Shield Strength, it does as far as I know not
boost the Multi Regenerative shield array Borg proc. It boosts Sci team shield heal,
RSP?, and extends.

Driver coils obviously on 0. You can easily compensate for the lack of power levels
when flying out of full impulse, you simply take a step back before you engage into red
alert, so you fly into the combat area with full power levels. If you keep dying, driver
coils may help you for like 1% of the total match duration, but its too insignificant to spill
your points into it. If you respawn you could be at the spot where the match is taking
place a bit faster because full impulse is also being buffed by this. But lets ask yourself,
if you (constantly) die anyway, you already failed right? So again, dont spec into
something that will help you at a point where you already fail in a match.

On to Tier 2;

Tier 2.
Starship Energy Weapons: 9
Starship Projectile Weapons: 0 (gonna assume you wont bother with an inefficient torpedo spec)
Structucal Integrity: 6/9
Starship Subsystem Repair: 0
Starship Warp Core Efficiency: 9
Starship Power Insulators: 0
Starship Shield Systems: 9

Again we put all Weapons on 9. Seconded by Shield focus. Shield Systems increases
your shield capacity to the maximum. Integrity on 6 or 9 depending on the total points
outcome when done respeccing. (Dont worry too much about this, at the end resistance
is way more important then the slightly lower hull you get with 6 in struct.

Subsystem Repair is in my opinion a totally useless skill. It drops a phaser proc from 5
to 3~ish seconds, I believe it also affects Viral to an extend. But only when your crew is
still alive, which is NOT after a few minutes into a serious match. Putting 3 points in
here is too insignificant, where 6/9 is a waste of resources. It could be made viable with
a Nurse doff, Biofunction monitors, and Forcefield consoles, but thats simply a big
waste. The amount of investement is not worth it. Id rather see our teamhealers quickly
throw out Aux2sifs to create a survivability buffer when procced. (Or Engi team to fix the
proc). We will instead put our extra points into Hull resistance later on. At least we know
thats reliable to spec into.

Power insulators, again a useless skill. The gains are not worth the investement. If you
are being drained, you are being drained good. No insulator will help you against it
anyway unless they totally fix all the drain stuff to be properly counterable. 0 Points
here.
On to Tier 3.

Tier 3.
Starship Maneuvers: 9
Starship Targeting Systems: 9
Starship Electro-Plasma Systems: 9
Starship Impulse Thrusters: 9
Starship Warpcore Potential: 9
Starship Graviton Generators: 0
Starship Particle Generators: 0

Again maximized into Damage. Targetting systems will give maximum possible base
bonus accuracy. Maneuvers will get your Bonus Defense to Max. (This affects hull and
shields equally depending on what the enemy is shooting at.

Starship Electro-Plasma systems will both double your EPS transfer rate, as well as
buffing your Emergency Power to X abilities. (so this includes EptS, thus shields).

EPS transfer speed isnt all important, never the less a double in speed boost there
helps you when you fire of a Beam overload (An ability I do not personally prefer for a
tactical escort) but it also speeds up the transfer rate to your auxiliary whenever you
need it. BFI, Transfer shield strength, all rely on Auxiliary, so making a fast transition to
auxiliary possible where no Aux battery is handy, EPS transfer speed will help you with
that.

Impulse thrusters, fast engines, affects turnrate as well. What does turnrate turn back
into? Indeed, damage. If you cant turn fast enough your Dual Heavy Cannons might not
hit your target as much.

Starship Warp Core Potential to 9 will put 5 additional points into all your subsystems,
worthy enough to put 9 points into. Also rounds off your systems better then when you
would only put 6 points in, which probably converts back to only 3.5 or 4 points into all 4
subsystems. Would result in a messy end result for your subsystems, especially
weapons or auxiliary!

Graviton Generators and Particle generators are not needed for a good escort, even if
you would choose to have a tractor beam on it. Tractor beam is hardly if any affected by
Graviton generators. If youre being hold by an unspecced TB1, and have no Polarize or
Omega up, you will get stuck nicely anyway. Thus not noticable when speccing into
Gravs. One example that could require Graviton/Particle gen speccing (at least to 6)
would be an escort with TBR on it.

On to Tier 4.

Tier 4.
Starship Threat Control: 6/9
Starship Engine Performance: 6/9
Starship Hull Plating: 6/9
Starship Shield Performance: 6/9
Starship Interial Dampers: 0
Starship Sensors: 0

First of all, notice that now were at tier 4, the skill points become more expensive. At
this point I no longer prioritize shields over hull, but divide them equally amongst all the
Tier 4 skills.

Hull Plating will boost your passive hull resistance from all incoming energy damage
(Including bleedthrough). Threat control pretty much does the same thing, except it also
adds a tiny bit kinetic resistance to it.

Both Hull plating and Threat control basically both give the same amount equally over
your energy weapon resistance to hull. Its best to distribute your points equally over
these two abilities to gain the most benefit. Like 9 points in Hull plating and only 3 in
Threat control (Or vice versa) will overall give you less benefit than when you would put
6 / 6 into Hull plating and Threat control. Always divide them exactly equally. i.e. 6/6,
7/7, 8/8 or 9/9. (If you find higher then 6/6 to be worth it or if you have skillpoints left)

Inertial Dampeners are less then useful, and definately not worth speccing into with the
current state of the game. This ability should properly resist you from holds like Warp
Plasma, Tractor beams, Chroniton Procs, etcetera. Yet it doesnt properly do this. Its
way too expensive for that small benefit you gain from it (if at all). The only thing that it
properly counters is a shockwave stun, but these stuns are hardly used to critical effects
these days and there is a team that can throw you tactical teams to compensate for the
disabled shield distribution.

Starship sensors not useful at all in PvP, you dont want to chase cloaked ships in
premades that much, it might be fun for kerrat, and if you really want to get a spot in the
Kerrat Book Of Legends, I wont stop you.

On to Tier 5.

Tier 5.
Starship Energy Specialization: 9
Starship Projectile Specialization: 0
Starship Armor Reinforcements: 0
Starship Auxiliary Performance: 3
Starship Weapon Performance: 3
Starship Countermeasure Systems: 0
Starship Subspace Decompiler: 0
This part is quite obvious, Maximum damage, 3 points in auxiliary (gives 5 points in aux,
best bang for buck). Armor reinforcements is to much skill point investement for the very
little gain.

Weapon Performance on 3 (gives 5 points extra in weapons). Nicely rounded off. Its not
that bad to go 5 points over 125, after all, also when drained by something that gives
the extra 5 points there.

Countermeasures and Decompiler have no use in this Tacscort Example.

And we are done with the Escort spec. Put the remaining points in the skills that
are currently at 6, and divide them over those skills equally. This example was
simply shown how you basically start of a skill tree spec with logical thinking.
4.2. Extra elaboration on the skill tree aspects for confirmation.

Lets go over all the skill tree sections/skills again for all imporant PvP aspects, including
Science/Engineer.

Tier 1.
Starship Attack Patterns
Always spec this with a Tactical Captain to buff APA, if you use Beta/Omega/Delta as a non-tactical
captain, also spec into this skill.

Starship Weapons Training

Always spec into this one, even if the main goal is not to do damage. Cheap skill costs.

Starship Batteries
If you use batteries, and Im pretty sure you will, putting 6 into this is more then enough. RMC also
benefits from this skill in duration. 9 points is not really needed because normal batteries are used mainly
for power level increase benefit for a short amount of time. Those extra 2 seconds gained isnt noticable.
Ill elaborate on proper Battery use later in the document.

Hull Repair
Always spec this up to at least 6, recommended 9 for a healer or anyone who is using Hazards, Engi
Team, etc. Also Buffs the Borg Hull Proc. I think it even buffs the Passive hull repair rate on your ship.

Flow Capacitors
Always spec this to 9. Alot of stuff is dependant on it, including Brace for Impact doffs. Polaron/Tetryon
proc. Tetryon Glider if used. Buffs up Subsystem Targetting skills as well (Including the integrated ones
from a Science ship. Buffs Energy Siphon, Tykens and some other drainstuff. Cheap skill.

Shield Emitters
Always spec this to 9. Buffs Sci team shield points, Transfer Shield Strength, RSP, Extends, RSF
(Engineer). Cheap skill.

Tier 2.
Energy Weapons
Always spec at least 6 into it, even as a healer. Skill is relatively cheap, so 6 points is quite okay.

Projectile Weapons
Same as above, if you use a torpedo boat, and use them simply for the proc, there is no harm putting at
least 6 points in here.

Structural Integrity
At least 6 points here, preferably more, but take into consideration that hull resistance is oh so important
as well. Definately 9 for low hull ships (Science), Escorts can do with 6, 7 or 8 if necessary for skill point
spreading.
Starship Subsystem Repair
Viable as long as your crew is up, which is mostly not the case in a prolonged match. Phaser proc
reduces from 5 to 3~ish seconds but again only in the best case scenario. To keep this skill really effective
you would need multiple Bio Monitor consoles, Emergency Force Field consoles, et cetera. Not worth all
the investement. A quick responsing healer can throw you an aux2sif or Engi Team.

Warp Core Efficiency

Cheap skill, so spec at least 6 into it, preferably 9. This skill not only boosts your lower power levels, it
also makes sure your engine power level is sufficient enough to be able to drop it all the way to 25 and
still have like 45 effective engine power. This means at lowest engine power your power is high enough to
get maximum bonus defense at all times. Also higher shield, but especially auxiliary will make the
transition to maximum auxiliary faster because there are already more points in auxiliary at lower power
levels (25).

Starship Insulators
As explainer earlier, the skill isnt worth the effort in countering drainspam. Rather spend the points
somewhere in hull resistance, which is actually reliable.

Starship Shield Systems

Boosts your Shield Capacity to max. Cheap skill, recommend 9 points into it.

Tier 3.
Starship Maneuvres
Simply increases your Bonus defense, which effects your hull/shield tanking equally. Maximum points are
recommended.

Starship Targeting Systems

This increases your base accuracy. Basically at least 6, but 9 recommended. (Definately for damage
dealers). It is not entirely known how (weapon) procs work, it is known to be affected by weapon cycles
rather then weapon bolts or beams. But it could be possible that the first weapon bolt/beam from a
weapon cycle reaching the enemy target will be the ultimate factor for a proc depending if it misses or
hits. Thats why you should take this skill into consideration even when you are not supposed to do much
damage.

Electro Plasma Systems

Simply put 9 into it. It buffs your EPS transfer speed by double, and it also buffs your Emergency Power to
X abilities, thus Shields. EPS transfer benefit has been explained in the Escort Respec example.

Starship Impulse Thrusters

I would recommend 9, but at least 6 into this. No matter whether you are using an escort, science or
cruiser vessel. Reason for this, again is to make sure you reach your maximum Bonus defense with the
lowest amount of power level into your engines. (setting of 25) Also for Escorts its viral to have the highest
turnrate.

Warp Core Potential

At least 6, but recommending 9 for it. 9 points into this skill gives 5 powerlevel points per subsystem.
Starship Graviton Generators
Totally depends on what bridge officer skills/weapons/consoles you are using.
I do not recommend speccing Graviton generators for Tractor beams because a hold of an unspecced
TB1 is just as good as a specced TB3 hold so to speak. Just forget speccing grav on TB.

There are also a few other abilities that are affected by Graviton generators. Tractor Beam Repulsors
should always be buffed by Graviton Gens, so buff that up to at least 6 in that case. In a premade you will
want to use TBR tactically, and push the subject out as far as possible.

Shockwave is affected by this skill, but if you realise why you use a Shockwave, i dont think you will want
to spec Grav generators for this skill. Not that useful.

Now we get to the Chroniton Weaponary. Graviton Generators BUFF Chronitons. Both the Torpedo and
Mine proc. If you consider using an annoying Chroniton spam build, definately dont forget Graviton
Generators. Only then it will be viable. Also consider Graviton Consoles for a Chroniton spambuild.

Last but not least, Graviton Pulse generator is buffed by Graviton skill/consoles.

Starship Particle Generators

This ability will not buff Tractor Beam kinetic damage. It will buff a variety of Science skills. But only a few
is still worth speccing in for damage.

Tractor Beam Repulsors is buffed by particle gens, but its only viable when used on a Tactical Captain to
buff this ability with Particle Gens. For anything else its not worth it, simply use it for Repel and Push then.

It buffs shockwave damage, but its nerfed badly now, speccing particle gens for shockwave damage is
useless now as well.

Part Gens buff the Isometric console, again only useful with a Tac, and possible with a Sci (combining
with Sensor Scan)

Feedback Pulse is buffed by it, only effective in combination with a Tactical or Sci (Because of Sensor
Scan).

Furthermore a few others skills, like Warp Plasma, Gravity well and other things are buffed. Not viable for
most other things imo.

Tier 4.

Stealth
Only useful on a highly specific build like a BoP with a cloak, could be handy for extra survivability whilst
cloaking/cloaked. Or, also useful if you want to buff your MES! (Joke)

Threat Control
Cant leave this skill untouched. Gives passive resistance to hull energy resistance and kinetic damage.

Hull Plating
Same as above, use both skills with equal amount of skills in it. Preferably 6 and 6 or more.
Engine Performance
Shield Performance

Both boost those powerlevels nicely, makes you less prone to drains, also boosts Shield resist/regen and
makes sure your engine power level is high enough for maximum bonus defense on your ship.

Inertial Dampeners

Should make you more resistable to alot of holds hardly works properly. Not worth investing in. More was
explained in the Skill tree Respec Escort example earlier.

Starship Sensors

This buff does nothing to increase your Sensor Scan and Fire on my Mark hull resistance debuff. It only
increases the stealth debuff on those abilities, including Attack pattern beta.

It also gives a small resistance to confuse stuff like Scramble etcetera. Not worthwhile for the skillpoint
investement.

Tier 5.

Energy Weapon Specialization

Always spec this up to 9 in a damage dealing boat, but only if the captain is a Tactical Class. For anything
else its not really viable. Dont bother any points in it with a Sci or Engi class captain. (Hence,
Captain/Class, ship doesnt necessarily matter.

Projectile Weapon Specialization

Never put any points here unless you are a dedicated Trico bomber or Transphasic bomber (Again also
only as a Tactical Captain) If you have a specialized Torp boat like a choniton boat dont put points in here
either.

Auxiliary Performance

You can put 3 points in here at least, but it depends what ship you fly. An escort can put in 3 points,
because even with the borg deflector, warp core potential, you wont reach 115. By putting 3 in Aux you
get 5 points in return. That makes 115. Include the Maco procs which also give a max of 10, you reach
125 without a battery when transferring all to aux. Scis normally already reach aux 125 without any
trouble, not necessarily need this skill then.

Weapon Performance

Escorts can put 3 points in here, even if you overcap over 125, it can still be a slight extra when you are
drained or when you are quickly switching to aux. A little more weap power left that way :)

Countermeasures
Only viable things this skill buffs is Scramble Sensors and AMS. Obviously AMS is pay to win and its not
as useful, just annoying.

Subspace Decompiler

This is an important one, especially for Science ships. It buffs a variety of skills.
- Shockwave 3 stun is boosted to 4~ seconds.
- It buffs up Viral Matrix up considerably.
- It buffs your innate Science Subsystem targetting skills duration*
- Shockwave Torps stun is also affected by this

In my opinion, in a serious premade, Subspace Decompiler should always be specced to 6 or 9 on any

Sci/Sci.
5. Proper Weapons Selection for PvP.

Energy Weapons;
The best energy weapons used in PvP are simply Phasers. Simply because of the fact
that the phaser procs are most devastating for a team especially in a prolonged match.

- Auxiliary offline, no heals/selfheals.

- Engine offline, easier to target, Bonus defense drops considerably, increased hits and possibly critical
chance increase.
- Weapons offline, bummer for the enemy escort just buffed up his Attack Pattern Alpha.
- Last but not least; Shields. Shields go offline and the target we are currently on (The more teammates
target the same main target, the more likely it will be for shields to proc (on the right target as well). All
weapons are set to one person, and he will often die.

A full team with as much as possible phasers is the most preferred choice. The other
weapons that are most likely preferred after phasers is the Phased Tetryons. They also
poses the innate phaser proc next to the tetryon one.

Often, 33%+ of the deaths we experience of the serious and long premade matches we
do are caused by Phaser shield procs. Lets simply counter it by making full use of these
weapons as well now and use it against them. Me, MT, has been using Polarons for all
my life. But the tide has to turn. I will keep my ship called My LolaronPWNy, but
Phasers will be my first priority choice in any premade match now for sure.

The second best choice is not really here, Polarons are nice for the drain, but unreliable
and not that effective unless you got loads of luck and they stack, which is often not the
case, very unlikely even. But sure it does happen.

Disruptors are now buffed by tactical abilities/captain abilities that directly increase raw
damage, and are probably my second choice together with Polarons. But for a
premade, I strongly suggest everyone to jump to phasers/phased tetryons, preferably
with at least 2 Acc mods on them. Dont bother too much with Mk XII though they are
quite expensive (Phasers anyway), Phased Tetryon is relatively cheap though.

For the rest, and I will only mention it once, Accuracy is king in PvP. Use at least
weapons with two times Accuracy. Preferable [Acc]x2 [CrtD] or [Acc]x3. Id rather see
people use Mark X/XI [acc]x3 weapons rather then using Mk XII [CrtD]x2 [CrtH] and
stuff. Time after time its proven that overall in a match the more acc, the more damage.
5.1. What Weapon Types are most viable (Cannon/Torp/Beam)?
For a Escort:
A full DHC/Turret Escort is mostly referred as the highest possible damage output. There is not much else
to say, also the proc potential is perfectly optimized this way. Just make sure to have a proper turnrate
(45/55~). I disrecommend using Beam Overloads. This way you can simply use 2 Attack pattern doffs,
Omega 3, 2x Rapid 2, an APD1 to proc the Doffs, two tac teams and a spare Scattered there. (Assuming
you only have Commander tac and LC tac)

For a Cruiser:
Slow ass cruisers, what do you put on it? It really depends on the speed of the turnrate and quite hard to
tell. I personally dont believe much in beams anymore, the power drain is much higher, and Single
cannons/Turrets seem to work out nicely these days. If you got a Lieutenant Tactical you might even want
to put on Rapid fire or scattered. Increases the damage and proc rate a bit more there. (Weapon cycle of
Cannons/turrets decrease with Rapid/Scattered on)

For a Science:
Also, most vessels have become quite maneuvrable these days, it would be dumb to still put full beams
on a Sci/Sci these days. Especially with the Wells being introduced, it would be a loss if you wouldnt put
on Single cannons + turrets on there. But be aware you still want to make full use of all possibilities you
get for granted, meaning that I would strongly recommend putting a DBB there on the front and a single
beam array on the aft possible to keep those free 4x Subsystem Targetting abilities rolling.

For a Carrier:
These ships are so slow, I wouldn't recommend anything other then beams and perhaps torps on it.
Mines could also come into the picture there.

Special notice on Torps/Mines:

The only viable torps/mines in my opinion are Transphasics and Chonitons at the moment. Using
Quantums for DPS is quite stupid really. We got full energy escorts to handle that job. Its even quite
inefficient to spec a Tactical Escort into both Energy and Torps and you would severely have to withdraw
points from additional defense.

If you want to make a full torpedo boat in your Sci/Sci or even cruiser, you can do so. Especially handy for
healers which need most of their powers in Auxiliary and Shields constantly to keep those heals at their
max potential. Using a full tranny build will need to make them use and trigger hull heals alot more. I do
not recommend a torp build on a Carrier, but simply beams or turrets/Mines. I also do not recommend a
full tranny build with an escort. it works Ok with 2 or 3 people doing it, but the spike goes away quite soon
in the middle of the match.

How do I cover my weapons in terms of consoles?

It is _ALWAYS_ best to fully spec into the skill tree for 1 weapon type if you are a pure damage dealer.
Like it is the same with tactical console covering your weapons. The best and most efficient way is simply
a full torp/mine build or a full energy build. Use the proper consoles to cover those weapons, and you will
get the max potential out them. Dont mix weapons unless you are a Sci or Engi which shouldnt
necessarily do high damage but what to make full use of procs and stuff.
6. What Captain/Class is really still viable?

Captain Class/Roles;
Lets first look at the Captain Classes which come with their respective Captain abilities these days. We will give some
insight in what they actually do, and when you might want to use them in a PvP match. Some Captain abilities have
grown quite useless these days in PvP, whilst some have only grown more essential.

Engineer Class;
There is really not much to say about this class and their respective captain abilities. This class gives not much more
value in PvP other than the thought of Hey, I have extra buffs to keep myself alive, screw the rest of the team. It
adds very little these days to PvP. The worst engineers are most obviously the ones in Sci ships and Tactical ships.
They lack the necessary damage/spike, although some still deny is. Its simply true. They have very few reason to be
in a Science ship either. There are enough, and again, enough abilities to keep everyone as a Tac and Sci alive in
PvP these days. No need for RSF and Miracle worker anymore.

Further more, both Nadion Inversion and EPS Transfer have also become quite useless. EPS Transfer doesnt do
much more then add some points to someone and increase their EPS speed, adds almost nothing to an escorts
damage with full DHC/Turrets either. For total siphon drain shutdowns it doesnt work either.

Nadion is only effective if you still use a full broadsiding beam cruiser and/or using Beam overloads -.-

At the very most, one engineer class as a place for a spot in a premade, but only if hes a massive healer. This
because he can devote about ALL of his heals onto other persons and use Rotate Shield Frequency and Miracle
Worker to compensate for his own healing whenever necessary.

Tactical Class;
The damage dealers, put these guys in anything other then a Escort and you lose loads of potential. Tacticals in
cruisers are ok, but not great. I suppose using DEM is not bad if you combine your APA and GDF together with it. But
real spike comes from Tacticals in escort class ships.

Tactical captains do not only kill a target, they also have to watch the team like any healer has to. He should never
ever in a premade put his tactical teams on spacebar or on an automated rotation. Dont underestimate this factor.
Tactical Captains also needs to have very good situational awareness, watch their buddies and act if they see
someone get a gap in their shield by an escort spiking on them. And yes, this can be very annoying when you are
right at someones ass and you are almost in the process or alphaing and killing someone. You will have to make the
choice and make an estimated guess on whether you want to take the risk of staying on your target, or save your
precious teammate with a Tac team. Also Tacticals can throw out 2 additional Sci heals to others on full Aux with a
battery or whatever.

The most important abilities on Tactical captains are APA (For Spike, use in conjunction with subnukes)
and GDF. However, to maximize GDF potential you will have to drop your hull down considerably. You cannot always
expect your teamhealers to keep your hull at 50%, so use this ability timely.

The last thing I wanted to say is, even when an escort is on a target he called out, if there are no nukes available and
there is no light at the end of the tunnel with blasting through a targets shields, the escort can choose to spread out
his damage onto other targets until a new viable target is found. Then the target caller will most likely announce the
new target when a weak spot is found. Rapid Target swapping is often the only way out if not enough crowd control
(Ripping of extends) is available.

Science Class;
Pretty much as important as Tactical Captains. They have to coordinate together with both the Tactical captain(s) and
other Scis which carry a subnuke. If the communication fails, the plan often fails. You subnuke a target as soon as
the tactical captain has at least his Attack Pattern Alpha ready.
You mainly use a subnuke to strip off all the buffs and stuff that prevent a tactical spike escort from killing a target. A
priority list on what you should subnuke off:

- RSP, if RSP is up, it will be very hard to punch through. Its 95% of the time invulnerability.
- Brace for Impact proc as a second trigger.
- TSS2, Hazards, Aux2sif as a third priority.

Science class captains should mainly subnuke when this is being asked, but often there is a delay between a team
coordinator calling for a subnuke, and the actual subnuke being triggered. Just like a tactical escort, you can TAKE
the initiative and subnuke of an RSP as soon as you see it, take the reponsibility and the risk involved of double
nuking, but dont just do nothing.

If a double nuke has taken place thats too bad, i doubt it will happen often, but sometimes there is lag involved, other
times someone hasnt got his ship aligned for the subnuke, another Science should take over which DOES have his
Subnuke in arc and take the initiative. So whenever someone was supposed to nuke, and it doesnt happen, and you
see an RSP going up on the enemy target, just nuke it off. The only thing you shouldnt forget is to mention that you
subnuked him instead of your team buddies, just for confirmation.

Also it is very handy for scis to have a Subspace jumper ready at all times. It virtually has the same cooldown as a
subnuke themselves, therefor there should always be a jumping console on any science vessel available. Place it
right next to your subnuke icon on the tray and you should be good. If a target caller asks for your subnuke, and you
are being hold by something, the jumper will often be of help. If the jumper is grayed out on the tray, its most likely
because your Aux is procced and offline. It is VITAL to have an auxiliary battery on a Sci/Sci or Sci healer, preferably
use RMC and Aux on a rotation.
6.1 Viable Bridge Officer Abilities and proper usage.

Tactical Abilities:
- 2x Tactical Team for yourself and the team, vital for proper team functionality. Receivers should also ask
for it at all times when someone is spiking them.
- 2x Attack Pattern Omegas is vital for an escort, both in survival, potential and damage. Remember, if
you are being hold, you cant do any damage anyway. Preferably use 2x Omega3 at all times with two AP
doffs. If you do not have two times APO at least, youre a liability to a team.
- 2x Rapid fire, this will make sure you will squeeze the most damage out of your DHCs and turrets.
- Use a Delta 1 in between to proc Omega 3 with 2 attack pattern doffs. Rotate these two abilities.

Science
- Viral Matrix, if you decide to use this ability, Id personally prefer two times Viral Matrix 1 and use a few
doffs with it rather then using one Viral Matrix 3. Reasons are quite simple;
1. Doffs are more valueable when they proc more. Obviously two times Viral 1 will proc it more.
2. For Viral, Subspace decompiler is necessary for skilling. Since Shockwave 3 requires
Subspace decompiler for the nice 4+ second stun, its mostly logical to use these abilities
together.

- Gravity Well, Tykens, are all quite useless unless multiple players stack them.

- Energy Siphon is quite nice with flow capacitors, unfortunately both hazard and the borg procs easily
counter them. Thus not viable enough. You still benefit from more power levels in your own systems, but
thats a bit selfish and unneeded.

- Tractor Beam Repulsors, very nice ability. You dont necessarily need two of these, one should suffice if
nicely timed in a premade setup to push either the target or the healer(s) out of the healing range. The
Repel amount is aux based, so if youre a sci using it use it at full aux. As an escort keep your weapons at
max. use this ability in conjunction with Evasive and time them properly together (also with your first and
second escort).

- Tractor Beam, can be very effective. Aux is supposed to be affecting it, but dont bother with it. Save
story with the useless graviton generator skill for TBs. You can also use two of them and rotate them.
Just never use TBs when a vessel has Omega or Polarize up or its useless. Tractor beams can be used
to drop the defense of a target, but it can also be used, just like Tractor beam repulsors, to hold the
cruisers back and then use TBR or something to seperate the enemy group.

- Feedback Pulse, Mixed thoughts about this one. This ability isnt even that bad, but you got to have a
good reason for them to kill you. If youre an engineer or some other useless guy in the team, people
pretty much ignore you, and your whole FBP is being useless. Tactical captains often have more
advantage with this skill because Tac powers buff it, again probably not that useful.
7. Doffs and the Ponycor.

Doffs is where its at guys! The Ponycor explicitely forbids any usage of SNB doffs! Um... Ok lets
get on with it. Im going to put my advice here on proper doff selections, what would probably be
the most preferred combination for a specific kind of ship.

Escort:
- 3x BFI, 2x Attack Pattern

This one is pretty straight forward, you want the maximum possible self healing, and the attack
pattern doffs will nicely improve your defense even more using 2x APO3 per minute, and having
2x RF2s. Highest damage right there. Best of both worlds. Tac Initiative basically becomes
useless. (Might still be viable for a second cooldown reduction while subnuked).

- 3x BFI, 2x Evasive?

Probably best if you have no money for the AP doffs, its questionable though whether Evasives
are still viable after the nerf.

Science:
- 3x BFI, 2x Viral
- 2x BFI, 3x Viral
- 2x BFI, 2x Viral, 1x Photonic Reduction
- 2x BFI, 1x Viral, 2x Photonic Reduction

I do not recommend, on any ship, to take less then two BFI doffs (Brace for Impact), using less
then two will not let the BFIs proc enough to be of any consistent value.
Science can get away with two, because they often have a much higher shield modifier then
cruisers or escorts.

Cruiser:
- 3x BFI, 2x Sciteam Doffs
- 3x BFI, 2x Engiteam Doffs.

I can honestly not think of anything more viable than this. Just make sure you duplicate the
team ability you will be using the most. You think engi team is overall more worthwhile? Go with
two engi team doffs. You can even use two tactical team doffs but that would probably make
your healer go boo boo and you would theoretically have 4 team abilities. 3 is the absolute max
imho.
Again this all depends on your bridge officer layouts.

Extend Doff
There is one other Doff Id like to see, and especially on a healer (which preferably uses two
times extends) is the usage of the Extend Doff. It would be ok to simply replace this with a BFI
boff so you would remove one of your three BFI doffs.

The doff at this moment of writing gives 20% shield resistance at all times when having extends
on someone. I would probably even still recommend it when it would be nerfed to 15% or 10%
because that still gives a nice resistance addition to your shields.

SNB Doffs, they do at the end not contribute to your skills and knowledge of your build.
I also do not recommend using SNB doffs or any low chance based doffs. BFI is a chance doff
but the change with 2 or 3 BFIs is very high for it to proc, so weve really gotta keep our builds
as stable and solid as possible. Stuff like Attack Pattern doffs are stable and solid doffs, which
always procs the same stuff. The Photonic 20% off doff is also a steady and solid 20% off.

We dont want to win by chance, but by skill.

8. Efficient Power Level Switching.

Power level switching is something which not all of us have mastered, and its probably not suited for
everyone. Some say its not needed, the Ponycor is pretty sure that its an positive asset to your overal
PvP experience and that again you should try to utilize everything to the maximum possible. The Ponycor
pretty much learned it and he pretty much automates it while he plays. It is essential for healers unless
you are a so called dedicated aux healer, where expected your power level is always on full Aux, and the
rest into Shields.

The simple reason for this is that a battery is not always beforehand/available, thus to obtain the
maximum possible power level before using an aux based heal is going to be much more effective. At full
aux. Again, its too late to boost your aux AFTER you gave an Aux based heal to someone. Its
understandable that even if an Aux battery is not available, and the teammate needs a heal so bad that
you cannot wait until you transferred all your power to Aux, logically.

Try to learn and pre judge / predict whether someone is going to need it in the upcoming 5 seconds, this
way you also learn to pre load your aux instead.

The best way for the Ponycor is to use the buttons 1, 2, 3 and 4 right above the W A S D steering keys.
Weaps / Shields / Engines / Aux.

So the next question is, what power levels should you use on a specific ship? And how can you optimize
them? We will get into that now. First ask yourself again, what is my primary role?

If youre an escort is quite obvious your standard preset will be 125/50/25/25. But are you a healer with
loads of heals? Do you really want to sit on 125/50/25/25? It is possible, but you would have to master the
usage of quick power level switching and/or have a quick hand with the Aux battery. But aux batteries also
have a cooldown and do not last in the whole road.

Escort Powerlevels;
First of all, and logically, your Weap setting should be 125/50/25/25. First weapons, then shield tanking.
What is the second thing you use in PvP mostly as an escort? I would also say Auxiliary. So how do I
properly set up my power levels for this? Well. The transition would be fastest if an escort simply had its
powerlevels at 125/25/25/50, because of the rest power is already in aux, it would be faster to make the
move to full auxiliary. But having low shield power all the time is still too much of a sacrific.

But we can make the transition from full Aux back to Weapons faster if we would have our Auxiliary
setting on 50/25/25/100. Why? because the remaining power is in weapons, so changing back to
weapons will make at least that transition a tad faster.

Another example for escorts, first decide why you would want to use the engine preset, is it mostly for
chasing, or do you mainly use it to get the hell out? In the first case you should probably set it to
50/100/25/25. Why? because the remaining power is still in weapons, so if you ran into your enemy and
you successfully chased him, your weapons are back to full faster when you change back to the weapons
preset. In the latter situation, you would probably want your remaining power points in shields. (Not aux,
because if you run away you most likely dont have any aux based heals left to use anyway.

And last but not least, if you have no auxiliary heals left, and you are in trouble, the only thing that is still
an option is transferring all your power to shields. I personally prefer to put the rest of the power in
Weapons so that I at least can do a bit of damage still, while being on full shields. Actually all sounds
quite logical does it?

Full Aux Healers:

If you run full aux at all times, you will probably not want to change alot (not even needed if you run full
torp/mines, or using phasers simply for proccing). Simply set your power levels at 25/50/25/100. All in
auxiliary, the rest in shields. (Remember, Extend shields resistance is based on your shield power level.
So if you would use two EptSs on a rotation, your shield power level is now around 100~ish with aux on
125. Perfect for a support/heal boat.

Aux on demand Healers, or a hybrid:

If you do use a energy build healer, and actually want to do a bit of pressure damage whenever you do
not need to heal, you will probably want 125/25/25/50 as your attack preset, reason for 50 aux is because
you want to go to aux asap as soon as you change powerlevels, and EptS already keeps your shield level
reasonably high. Aux is overall still more important than shields for a healer anyway, with the exception of
Extends, but again EptS mainly keeps that up to an acceptable level anyway.

And in this case of a hybrid, on demand aux healer, when in full aux mode, your setting will most likely be
50/25/25/100 so you can jump back to full weapon power as soon as you threw out your heals.

As a Science guy in a Cruiser or Sci vessel, using a full torp build (Chronitons for proc for instance) its
quite nice because this build doesnt really require Weapons power at all. In this case you can simply stay
on 25/50/25/100 at all times, and instant full aux heals you can throw out.

Further Tweaking power levels for maximum efficiency.

The last thing that we can do is to maximize the tweaking on the powerlevels is to take aspects like the
M.A.C.O. Power level proc into the calculation, or for instance Plasmonic leech. For M.A.C.O. the proc is
a 5 stack fixes value, every stack gives 2 extra power level. So with the proc fully stacked 5 times (which
is mostly the case) you know that you will already gain about +10 at all times in a match. Now let is simply
tweak our setting at full aux, especially for a healer, to 90 (115 effective) so that the +10 is being added up
from the M.A.C.O and gets 115 to 125 anyway. The remaining 10 points you just took away from aux
could be added up to shields (25/60/25/90) and voila, this balanced out the power levels a bit further.
Besides, it would be a waste if your auxiliary would be over the cap of 125 to 135 with no extra gain or
benefit.

I wouldnt recommending putting your Escort weapons lower so you sit at 115 effective and 125 with
M.A.C.O. Proc though, you need that punch of 125 weapon power right as soon as you engage into a
match preferably :)
9. Rotating Shield Self Heals.

You have a team to support you in surviving, everyone will give their last bit of reserve on to you when
you are in trouble. Yet that doesnt mean you should lack the necessary self heals.

For every and each of you, you should have at least these three shield heals;

- RSP1
- Brace for Impact (Doffs)
- Transfer Shield Strength 2.

Transfer Shield Strength 1 has always proven to be very weak, Rank 2 gives more resist and healing
hitpoints and is in my opinion the sweet spot.

You can have great success when rotating both of these three in a logical order. Use RSP when youre
being subnuked, use BFI if you are subnuked again, use TSS2 somewhere between there.

Try NOT to stack them but try to spread them over the match where possible.
Also try to save BFI and especially RSP1 as your absolute last resort.

Think of the three as a buffer, you basically have 3 buffers here before you are out of self heals. Having
these doesnt mean you are invincible, nobody can counter 5 man targetting you and subnuke stacking
you, but rotating this properly will give your teammates the time to act on it and extend you.

And again, an Aux battery will definately speed up the timing on the full usage of each of these abilities to
their maximum extend in a very short period of time.

Emergency Power To Shields

This ability is simply mandatory for every PvPer, you can simply not live without it. It gives not only the innate (18%
for EptS1) shield resistance, the increased power level you gain with this ability on your Shield power level simply
also increases the Shield resistance and regeneration speed even faster.

With ships that have two Ensign Engineer slots, its vital to use two copies of EptS1 and keep them rotating at all
times. Do not use them as soon as youre being shot at. You want to neglect the damage as soon as someone
shoots at you, which is only achievable when you have these abilities already buffed up.

Some ships only have one Lieutenant Engineer spot, or one Lieutenant Commander Engineer spot, in the first
situation you will probably want at least one copy of EptS1, and one copy of RSP1. Also in this condition, its most
likely not viable to use one copy of EptS1 and use Extend 1 with it. Let the healers deal with higher and more
effective extend ranks instead.

If you only have one copy of EptS1 you could consider using it as soon as you engage into a match, and use it
afterwards only as soon as you are being focusses upon. Probably not a good idea to rotate just one EptS copy.

For the situation where you have one LC spot, I would suggest either using one copy of EptS1, RSP1, and Extends
2, or EptS1, Epts2, and a copy of RSP2. Or either EptS1, RSP1, EptS3.
10. Response + Control Configuration + Autofire method.

In this section the Ponycor will go through all the control settings in the control tab. This part is also essential for your
total contribution in the match, and is just as important for Escorts dealing damage, as for healers still outputting the
maximum damage and never letting your weapons be unused even if you are not targetting an enemy foe.

Out of game Video Options

First of all, and this might sound a bit silly but we can improve our response time in PvP by adjusting some of the
video card settings outside the game. For Nvidia users, you can simply go to the control panel and set the Maximum
Pre-rendered frames to 1. The normal setting on auto is in reality 3, which gives you more input lag in games. Also
you can make sure that Vertical Sync is off in the Nvidia control panel.

For ATI/AMD users, I didnt believe there was an option in the control panel for them, but you can also directly change
this value in the game itself with the following command:

/rdrmaxframesahead 1

(There are also some Graphics options in-game which can really improve your frames per second and smoothness of
the game, and I really suggest especially in a PvP match to try to keep your FPS simply as high as possible with the
smoothest possible FPS. So if that means tuning down your graphics options, you should take the appropriate action)

In-game options to improve overall PvP experience

First of all go to the Basic options, and change mouse filtering to 0. You might have to get used to the faster response
for your camera movement, but after a while you will thank me for it, especially being an escort you require fast
reponse, but i can recommend it for anyone. If you are used to rapidly clicking certain abilities via the tray, you can
even increase your Mouse cursor here to a larger size if you sometimes have problems keeping track of your cursor.

So, lets get over to the Control Tab, make sure you are in Space/Sector Space before you edit these settings.
First of all, lets look at your Camera setting. From personal Ponycor experience, Follow Target and Free Camera are
the only reasonable camera types today.

Chase camera is not viable for any ship class, especially people that use it for an Escort it looks like its cool, but it
wont help you in the long run and its basically the same story for your team. Chase camera is also quite buggy. But
the reason why Chase cam isnt the best and especially when you are premading, you want to keep an eye out for
other stuff happening as well. You want to change your camera to another direction without the annoyance of
constantly returning to the front position all the time. With Chase Camera you can simply not effectively click another
target properly without having to Tab through all of them, which simply requires way to much time.. You need
situational awareness in an escort. I personally always liked Follow target best for an escort.

Also for healers/sci, it is probably prefered to use free camera, but on personal preference you could also get away
with follow target depending on what you think works best.
Targetting and other Options:
Lets get on with the essential gameplay controls and configuration. Lets first see what they all do.

- Enable Camera Shaking; A nice feature which basically shakes your camera as soon as an explosion hits you or
something, fun, but quite useless in PvP and will only bug you, simply disable it.

- Reset inactive tab target; Im not 100% sure on what this does, and I dont use tab targetting, but I simply disable it
because I dont want to game to auto pick a target for me. This can interfere with things like healing someone else.

- Click Unselects Target; When you have a target selected, and you want to clear that target because you are
Scrambled or for any other reason (Feedback Pulse) you can click on the stars or anything that is not a flying object
in screen and you lose your current target. I prefer this myself so I put it on On.

- Only attack if target selected; No, we DO want to fire our weapons even when we do not have a selected target.
This also means when you are a healer, and you are targetting a teammate which you are healing, your weapons
would stop firing if this ability was On. We simply always want to keep our weapons firing at all times simply to get the
most out of your weapons and procs. Same story for an escort, when an escort is shooting at an enemy target and
the escort has to throw out a tactical team to a team mate, it would mean your weapons would stop firing. This option
should definately be off.

- Select auto target on attack; If you turn this on, everytime an offensive ability is engaged or every time
GenSendMessage HUD_Root FireAll etcetera is being provoked your target would jump to a random enemy target.
Nobody would want this, especially healers really need to keep their target at the target they want, especially when
healing a friendly teamplayer. Keep this turned off.

- Assist target on attack; Always turn this off. If you turn this on, if you are targetting a friendy teamplayer for healing,
and your weapons are firing (which always should be firing whenever possible) your target would jump back to an
enemy right when you were about to heal a team buddy. Same story for an escort, if he uses a self heal on him while
attacking a target (Thus having selected a target), the heal will often be given to some other random teamplayer and
not to yourself.

- Never Auto Target Objects; You normally want all your weapons to fire on real players only, if you use spread and
scattered and other AoE, all the pets/mines will be affected anyway. But again, you want all your weapons to fire as
much as possible only on the opposing team real players. A must for directed tactical damage escorts.

- Never Auto Target Pets; Basically same story as above.

- Target threatening enemies first; No explanation needed, simply turn it off

- Select attacker if attacked; Same bullshit, automatic target jumpings, we dont want that. Turn it off.

- Tab select offscreen targets; If you make use of Tab targetting (I prefer using my mouse to click targets :-p)

- Keep moving during contact dialogs; Doubt that has much to do with PvP, but annoying never the less. Turn it On

Continue to next page for explanation on the Auto Attack setting, this option makes all the above tweaked options to
work properly!
Auto Attack!
Let me first say this, Auto fire all the way. There is no more need to use a manual cycle like it was supposed to be in
the early days aka. Season 2<. Its all blasphemy! The highest potential you gain in weapons firing is simply to use
auto fire and keep your weapons rolling all the time. Not just for damage, but also for maximum proccing potential.

There are only a few situations where you dont want all your weapons to be on auto firing all the time, and these are
ofcourse specialized Tricobalt bomber builds, or some twat using Quantum torps with High Yield, etcetera.
Transphasics go through shields anyway so timing there doesnt have to be tweaked to the last millisecond.

If you do have such a build where you only want specific weapons to fire I will show how you can do this
later in an example. Lets first explain the methods of the Auto Attack, since there are a few options.

- The first option is none, obviously we dont want none.

- Toggle, Change cancels. This keeps your weapons rolling after you first triggered your weapons to fire,
changing targets will stop the autofiring until you press your spacebar (or whatever triggers your
weapons) and keeps auto firing all the time again until the target dies or you change targets.
- Toggle, never cancels, seems to be bugged, dont use it.
- Toggle, non-combat cancels, dont use this one either, works kinda wanky or something.
- Maintain, keeps auto firing even if your target dies or you change targets, your weapons will keep firing.

As a healer, you definately want maintain. Keep those weapons rolling on a real enemy player, even when
you are focussing on a team player. Just keep the weapons rolling on the enemy target you last targetted
before you switched over to the friendly target to heal. I really prefer this option on an escort as well, as
soon as your target dies, your next volley will automatically be shot at the next target in visual range.

If you really want, the only other viable option is Toggle, Chance cancels. This would stop your weapons
from firing after you change targets or killed a target, but why would you want this?

Scrambling is really not so much of an issue with this setup it will overall still be much more beneficial
than with a screwed up configuration Craptic is putting up as default.

Now we still need to actually enable auto firing on all (or some) weapons.
There are two options to see your weapons.
You can see them either in the tray, or in the seperate tray which you can access with the number 3 on
the tray profile thingy (If it doesnt come up its probably hidden in the Rearrange HUD/UI setting)

You can also drag your weapons to your tray where the red arrow is located in the screenshot below.
Move all your weapons seperately to an empty tray, for instance tray 4, or 5. Doesnt really matter.

In the screenshot above, you see some of the weapons lighted green, these weapons are on autofire. You
can enable and disable autofire for a specific weapon by right clicking on them. (you will have to use a
proper auto attack method as explained in the previous section to do this).

For an all energy build, and all other builds unless you want to time specific torpedos et cetera, simply put
all weapons on autofire so they light up green.

A small example how to bind specific weapons to spacebar, and let them roll on autofire,
excluding a few others.

If you really dont want all weapons to be fired all the time, you should make a bind on your spacebar that
does not let you trigger the normal firing trigger function; GenSendMessage HUD_Root FireAll.
You actually can use a command called GenSendMessage HUD_Root FireTorps, but if you use an all
energy build and want to use Beam overloads with a DBB, and the rest DHCs on autofire, you might want
to time the dual beam bank onto the millisecond and leave it off the autofire. Using FirePhasers wont for
that,on spacebar, neither will FireAll, both trigger both the DHCs and DBB at all times.
The function that lets you fire off specific abilities/weapons on the tray is; +TrayExecByTray 0 0
Where the first number is the tray row number, the second number is the tray slot on the row itself.
These numbers always start from 0, where 0 is the first row, 1 is the second row, 2 is the third row, 3 is
the fourth row.

For the second number in +TrayExecByTray, 0 is the first ability on that row, 1 is the second ability on that
row, and so on.

Here you can see that I have all my DHCs on autofire, with the exception of the dual beam bank. Now,
lets make a spacebar bind that lets us trigger the DHCs on autofire, but leaving the dual beam bank out
of it. So, you can see that all the weapons are on the fourth tray, so we will start off with +TrayExecByTray
3 0, we skip +TrayExecByTray 3 1 (This spot is the DBB spot), and we go on with +TrayExecByTray 3 3
and so on.

Type in chat:

/bind Space +PowerExec Distribute_Shields$$+TrayExecByTray 3 0$$+TrayExecByTray 3 2$$

+TrayExecByTray 3 3$$+TrayExecByTray 3 4$$+TrayExecByTray 3 5$$+TrayExecByTray 3 6

There we go, this should have put all your DHCs and Turrets, and Distribute shield function onto your
spacebar, excluding the Dual Beam Bank at spot 2 of row 4. (Which is 3 1)

I dont think most will need this though, but Id rather explain it to you anyhow.
11. Consoles and the Ponycor.

Consoles, consoles, consoles. What consoles are viable, and which are not? How many should I stack,
ho w many should I not? lol.

Lets first explain a few basic things about ship consoles and PvP. Consoles are about contribution,
balance and selfish-ness. You lost me there? I bet you did. Lets quickly install a set of consoles onto a
ship, in this example we use a healer.

4 Engineer slots
Neutronium Neutronium Neutronium Neutronium
4 Science slots
Field Generator Field Generator Field Generator Field Generator

Just for good order, Field Generators boost your shield capacity, where neutronium buffs your own hull
resistances.

Now I will ask you, what do you think of this build? Quite tanky isnt it? Well. It might be tanky, but it
doesnt contribute anything to the team except that you should be awesomely invincible. Try to pick a
balanced setup instead. Play with it until you found the right setup. Can you survive with four SIF
consoles, and four Shield Emitters? Then do so. You will help your team out greatly. If you found out you
are just a bit too squishy by shield penetration, replace one of the four Shield Emitters with a Field
Generator to boost your shield capacity a bit. Do you find your hull to be a bit too squishy still? Replace
one SIF generator with a Neutronium and go on from there.

But dont simply go on the selfish tour and only use self-surviving consoles, especially not as a guy with
loads of heals.

Just for good order, Shield Emitters boost Extends, Transfer Shield Strength, Science Team, about every
shield ability you can throw out. and to compensate for your loss of shield capacity, it actually buffs your
precious EptS1x1 you buff on yourself every 30 seconds.

SIF Generators boost about all hull heals, Hazards, Aux2Sif, EngiTeam, even your own hull borg proc.

There, that solves that problem. Lets get on with the pay to win consoles, never equip your whole ship
with pay to win crap. Especially not crap that has 3 minute timers on them which are only barely useful or
are easily cleared, like AMS. Its annoying, people even call it OP, yet its a waste on a slot and is easily
cleared.

Pay2win versus In-game widely available consoles

Armor consoles, Shield Emitters, SIF Generators, at least these consoles are useful at ANY time of the
match and always contribute to some ability or your/team survivability, where useless pay2win consoles
are often only usable once, cleared, and then you are a sitting duck with that useless pay2win console
filled up your slot with a 2 to 5 minute timer. See where Im going? There are ofcourse exceptions, some
are really useful like the jumper, and a few others. But dont clog it up and really re-think about if you
really need a specific console.