Notes

This is a pretty damage-focused skill tree. Nothing I took here is too surprising. 

Coordination Protocols, Offensive Coordination, Defensive Coordination - While this set of skills says it applies to hangar pets, in reality, it's more of a mixed bag than that. I was unable to get it to show up for my specific hangar pets, but it still applies to my teammates, Fleet Beacon, and Photonic Reinforcements. Just the fact that it applies to my teammates makes it worth it, but also having several of my stronger pets get the benefit as well makes it doubly worth it. 

Exotic Particle Generator - I could be convinced to spend this point elsewhere. I have no direct EPG usages, but I have even fewer controls or drains. 

Unlocks

You'll notice I didn't take either of the Hangar Pet unlocks. Battery Expertise vs. Hangar Health is pretty easy in my opinion. 10% extra health for hangar pets really won't make a difference, but doubling the duration of batteries will. There's no other way to get Battery Expertise (except a small trickle on a warp core), and there are some pretty strong batteries from R&D. Whereas hangar pets are generally fragile to begin with, so 10% more health won't be worth much. 

Threat control vs. Hangar Weaponry is a harder choice. You would be fine taking either option, but it is only 10% extra damage for pets. This ship doesn't have the highest hull mod, so any reduction to threat is welcome. This does reduce your threat even if you do nothing else as it has -100% when Threatening Stance is off, which it usually is.

The rest of the unlocks are not unusual. Be sure if skimping on points, Team Frenzy on Focused Frenzy is very beneficial because it will let your pets and team take part. 

Notes

None of these weapons are too outstanding. You could easily go for some better procs (Pulse Phasers) or a different flavor, but I chose Phaser to synergize with some other consoles I have. The HYDRA console does Phaser Damage with it's clicky blast. I also wanted to keep my budget low on the weapons since the primary focus of this build is the pets and items that support that. 

Notes

The primary goal here is the Iconian set. It's a toss up on the 3-piece vs. the 4-piece set. The 3pc is a passive proc that gives extra energy damage to your pets and your team. The 4pc is a clicky that gives all damage to your team. It's possible there is a teammate using these powers. It's also helpful to have the extra CrtH/CrtD from your Colony Deflector. I'd recommend at least the 3pc set, and depending on your resources and taste for grinding more Iconian Probe Datacores, the 4pc set is also just fine. I did try out the Gamma and Competitive sets, but neither of these actually benefit your pets, only your team. 

The Accuracy from the Targeting Lock Batteries enhance my own damage. 

The Hangar Pets are a major part of this build. I'll cover Hangar Pets as a whole later on. 

Notes

I'm on a Romulan character, so Superior Romulan Operatives are extremely easy to get and cheap. 

Commander Engineering/Intel Seat & Lt. Commander Engineering Seat

If you think of a carrier as a glorified Support/DEW combo build, Ionic Turbulence III is one of the best debuff powers since it is AoE and high uptime, and scales with Auxiliary power. Any other engineering or intel powers wouldn't cut it, and sadly we don't have the ability to use Science (GW3) or Tactical (APB3 or even CSV3). 

The next seat down works well with OSS3 since that is a huge power buff for both weapons and hangar cooldown. We also have Hot Restart from the Iconian set to cover the weapons offline, and we picked up the Quantum Phase console to cover the Aux offline. We have a full Lt. Commander Engineering seat elsewhere, so the engineering powers are not a priority here. 

Speaking of engineering seat, the Lt. Commander engineering seat is best served by Emergency Power to Weapons 3 as this is a ton of weapons power and some extra Cat2 for my energy weapons. You could slot a debuff or something, but Engineering only has single-target debuffs. 

This leaves us with two Lt. and two Ensign Engineering seats. We fill out with Aux to SIF 1 and EPTE 1 as those are solid choices on any build for survivability, Strategist triggers, and maneuverability. The last two spots are really free spaces, and if you have powers that need triggering, be sure to use the appropriate powers. I ended up with Engineering Team to clear offlines and get some extra healing, and Let it Go as a single target debuff, but neither is required. 

Lt. Commander Tactical Seat & Ensign Tactical/Intel (Universal Seat)

Since we have cannons, we take the highest rank of CSV we can (rank 2). We also need Beam Overload to trigger Dominion Coordination. Since it is just a trigger, we can take that at Ensign rank. The last two slots are debuffs, KLW1 and APB1. Since these are both at minimum rank, we can't really switch them around either. There aren't better Intel or Sci/Eng powers that we could take at Ensign rank, so KLW will have to do.

Lieutenant Science Seat

Finally, the science seat is pretty simple. Our cooldowns are mostly managed by Photonic Officer. Though we are far from perfect, we have a lot of the damage coming from pets which doesn't rely on us having perfect uptime on every power. Boimler's could certainly be used here, but is not required. A few skill points in Readiness should keep uptimes in peak condition. Hazard Emitters is my go-to ensign science power for both healing and DoT cleanse. 

You'll notice a few of these are from my more "budget friendly" Akira build. Strike Group Command Authority (SGCA) and Super Charged Weapons (SCW) are both available in the C-Store and are solid traits for carrier builds. SCW really only works with pets that shoot torpedoes, but you also have to consider that the primary ship has a torpedo as well and gets a benefit from SCW. SGCA, on the other hand, only works with your pets and does not benefit the primary ship. 

Withering Barrage is the next on the list simply due to it being a low-cost and high impact trait. Since we can get this trait from the Klingon Recruitment, it is essentially free, and it increases our uptime from 66% to 93%, no triggers or downstream requirements, just extra duration to CSV. 

The next 3 traits are extremely expensive, so beware. We're off the charts as far as cost vs. benefit to actual DPS. Each of these is either a 10k+ Zen bundle or easily more than 1 Billion EC on the exchange (Scramble Fighters can vary widely).

Scramble Fighters is probably the best Carrier trait you can get across the board. Every time you launch a pet, even if no new pets are launched, your pets get complete damage immunity for 5 seconds. This means that if your hangar bay is on autofire and launching ships every 10 seconds, your hangar pets are unkillable half the time, and are getting half of their hull repaired as well. On a ship with two bays, its even possible likely that your hangar bays will get out of sync and further increase the uptime even if you still have around 10 seconds of cooldown. This makes having a solid Aux power setting (no Aux to Battery) and 3 Flight Deck Officers essential to keeping the hangar cooldown low.

Superior Area Denial (SAD) is also a really strong carrier trait, but is not the best across the board. If you are using pets that already include a firing mode (especially rank 3), then SAD will make you sad... as your DPS drops. However, this time we are going the other way. Choosing SAD means choosing To'Duj Fighter Squadrons at rare since the pulse cannons they include go a little crazy while under SAD. No one knows why, we just accept the massive cannon spam. SAD also makes your own energy weapons apply -30 DRR (which even pets take advantage of), which is the primary reason we do this as an energy build instead of a torpedo build. 

Finally Dominion Coordination is just flat pet damage, hard to say no to. We just have to make sure that Beam Overload is slotted to trigger it. If you do pick a trait to leave home, this would be the one. I "happened" to have it when I got the Jorogumo account unlock for other builds. 

Miscellaneous