Quiver of Arrows

Cardassian Ghemor Intel Flight Deck Carrier

Build Overview and Focus

I built a rather effective Kinetic build on my Tzentar, which happens to be a full carrier. On a record-setting run, 200k of the damage output was from pets alone - on a build not dedicated to pets! Advanced Hangar consoles also came on the scene and a new build archetype was finally viable - the Carrier. When we started delving into carriers, a kind poster on reddit gifted me with a Mirror Engle, the source of the Superior Area Denial trait. I was also gifted Scramble Fighters, and splurged for the Carried Away Mudd's Bundle. If you can't tell from that much alone, this is one of the most expensive build around. 

Namesake

Psalms 127:3-5 English Standard Version 2016 (ESV)

Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

Meta Analysis

Budget Analysis

T6 C-Store Ships (5)

Phoenix/Event Stuff (6)

Lobi Gear

Promo/Lockbox Ships (2)

Lockbox Gear (Exchange purchases) (8)

Fleet Gear (1)

Other

Change History

Build Breakdown

The main focus of this build is on hangar pets, with secondary focuses on Energy damage and Agility. The Ghemor is more agile than most carriers. 

Skills

Skill Unlocks

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. 

Build Goals

Hangar pets

This is a no-holds barred Carrier Build. With several generous gifts, this ends up being a build that costs Billions of EC to replicate or several Event Campaigns. There's really no fuss beyond a maximal carrier build. 

Starship Weapons

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. 

Starship Equipment

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. 

Starship Consoles

Set Bonuses

Much of this gear is pretty straightforward. We take all engineering and universal console slots, and slot HCPTs to buff my pets. I chose phaser to buff my own weapons, but you can choose whatever flavor fits the build best. The Cat1 doesn't affect the hangar pets. After that, HYDRA/Swarmer are universal consoles that apply to hangar pets as well, and the HYDRA console comes from the Hydra which also has a great pets trait (especially considering it is C-Store), and the ship itself is fun to fly. 

Past these console selections, we have 4 console slots left. It's a bit of availability vs budget, but in my case I already had Sensor Suspension Burst from the event. There are better choices if you didn't get this event, but many Hangar consoles are extremely expensive. You could also opt to use support consoles, which is what I did with the Bozeman console. The Tachyon Net Drones doesn't directly benefit my pets, but is an amazing support console so it will debuff targets for my pets to hit. The High-Energy Communications Network is a great C-Store console for team support, but even better if you have pets as it instantly ranks them up upon use and gives them a damage boost. The last "wildcard" pick is simply to counteract the OSS3 offline that can happen to my Aux (which prevents launching more pets). It also happens to be +Phaser, and ends up being a pretty solid console for the build, especially since it is a mission reward console.

Bridge Officers

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. 

Traits

Personal Traits

The traits I chose here are certainly on the lower end of the budget. You'll see several traits that are free. When we look at traits that benefit Hangar Pets, there aren't a lot. I'm also not including any Personal or Starship traits that summon additional pets as most of these are pretty terrible as far as damage sources due to uptime or simply a lack of damage. 

Intelligence Agent Attache is enough for cooling down Fleet Support, but also cools down your other Captain Powers. 

Wing Commander is probably the most important trait since it doubles the speed at which your pets rank up. This benefits your regular Hangar pets as they tend to die and this gets them back up to rank 5 as quick as possible. Since this rank also affects Hangar Craft Power Transmission bonuses, it is important to pick this trait up. Each rank of your Hangar Pets gets 40% more of a bonus from Hangar Craft Power Transmission. This ends up getting you to the full 3x Multiper on HCPT twice as fast. Pets also heal when they rank up. 

Independent Wingmate is pretty optional, as it only affects a single hangar pet. The first pet that you launch gets a large bonus to its damage output, and if it dies, it passes that buff to the next one in line. Since you can launch hangar pets during a briefing, it will often end up on the first Hangar Pet you launch. Most of our damage comes from a wide array of hangar pets and fleet support, so buffing a single one is not as impactful as a trait that buffs everything. 

Feel the Weight of our Presence is often used on a support build as it is a -DRR to enemies within 12km. We quickly hit the -12.5 DRR cap with 5 players, 6 hangar craft, 5 Reinforcement Fighters and a smattering of other pets. This means the trait pulls double duty as enhancing your pets as well as supporting your team. 

Holographic Mirage Decoys is a holdover I had from doing a Mines build, and is not essential to the build. This does give a little extra durability to your Hangar Pets, but is not essential. 

The other traits are up to you, you can find a good list of traits for DEW builds or support builds to fill out the rest of your traits. In my case, I kept it simple and stuck with what I had available. 

Starship Traits

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. 

Reputation Traits

All of the reputation traits benefit the primary ship, there's not really any traits that benefit the hangar pets except that Omega Kinetic Shearing occasionally triggers from a pet torpedo.

Active Reputation

Duty Officers

The Emergency Conn Hologram is something I recommend and slot on every build. The maneuverability afforded by simply using an Ensign Engineering seat, often unused, and a Duty Officer slot is second to none. Evasive Maneuvers having essentially minimum cooldown is very helpful to make sure you are where you need to be. Just be sure to save HYDRA console until after you have repositioned to teleport several pets to you in your new location. 

Vincent Kish is pretty optional, but since we aren't using a max rank of either of our Energy Weapon enhancement powers, this gives us a chance to do a little extra damage just by using them. Opportunity cost is small, but benefits can be pretty worth it. 

Fill out the rest of your duty officers with Flight Deck Officers that reduce hangar bay cooldown. This is the best way to keep fresh pets on the field, and better rarities reduce the cooldown even further. 

Miscellaneous

Ship Stats

Piloting

Piloting this thing is akin to a lazy DEW build. At least 1/2 of our DPS comes from hangar pets, which are going to do what they are going to do. Prioritize keeping them up, fresh, and on the field. After that, prioritize keeping your weapons on target so you get many critical hits for Intelligence Agent Attache. I won't do too much detail on piloting since the general piloting strategy is the same as any DEW Cannons build. A carrier build excels in an off-support situation, or in defending an area instead of lots of traveling and movement. Leviathan TFO is a perfect example of a mission not to use a carrier on. ISE struggles due to the required pace at which you move around the map. 

Parse Breakdown

Half of the damage comes from the pets, half comes from the primary ship.

Portability

Carriers are pretty sparse in portability. There are not a lot of 5/3 carriers with 2 bays. This was simply the cheapest hull for me to obtain.