U.S.S. Recognizer

Typhon Command Escort Carrier

Build Overview and Focus

This build is a straightforward Economy Kinetic build, focusing on torpedoes for maximum damage. However, when choosing ships, there are a few options that will filter down the list of ships available. 5 fore weapons, experimental weapon, and hangar bay(s). While originally planning on the Eagle as an economy Kinetic platform, it's a little too niche for limited C-Store purchases and can tend to be fragile in general content. The Typhon came out and seemed like a lot of fun to fly, and while the console it comes with is merely thematic, the ship and trait itself are fantastic. The two hangar bays far outperform an experimental weapon slot at the economy tier, especially considering the Typhon's trait as well as the strength of full command with hangar pets. 

Namesake

I found the angular design and high color customization lent itself to a Tron-esque color scheme. One of the few vehicles in canon for that is a Recognizer. 

Meta Analysis

Budget Analysis

Each category is sorted by priority of contribution. Something that applies to generally more builds will be rated higher than archetype or build specific contributions. 

T6 C-Store Ships

Legendary Ships

Event Items/Ships

Lockbox Gear & Duty Officers

Lobi Gear (200 lobi each) 

Lobi Ships

Lockbox Ships

R&D Promotional Ships

Change History

Build Breakdown

The Recognizer is a Torpedo boat first, but takes advantage of the dual hangar bays to further boost performance. Since we've started testing ISA solo, survivability has to take a higher priority at a cheaper budget since we don't clear the map as quickly. Finally, this is actually pretty quick for a carrier.

Skills

Skill Unlocks

Notes

This skill tree has been modified to go for a maximal damage output as well as supporting the goal of chasing additional hull since this is also used on the Justiciar hull build. Advanced Hull Capacity is normally an odd choice, only one or two points should really go here, but this was an easy place to pick up a few percentage points of hull capacity. This build gets hull capacity often in small percentages at a time. We also needed to make sure that we picked up 10 points in Engineering to get the 3% hull capacity from the unlock, and 10 Engineering points isn't too much of a stretch. It would have been a harder sell at any higher unlock level. The Advanced Impulse Expertise really helps maneuverability, regardless of build. A single point in Hull Restoration, Warp Core Potential, EPS Flow, and Hull Plating are pretty efficient points for the skills the contribute to. Other +Power points (+5x2) don't unlock as much total power as Warp Core Potential (+3x4).

Tactical points are entirely damage focused. We skip Defensive Maneuvering, but max out everything else. Since we don't need Frenzied Reactions due to a better understanding of cooldowns in general, we can also take one point out of Tactical Readiness. This leaves us 10 points to use in Science. Control Expertise helps clear controls as well as boost our own. EPG and Long Range Targeting are both beneficial for damage output. Finally, Shield Regeneration is a pretty special skill, so I make sure to pick it up on every build. 

Build

Starship Weapons

Notes

If you are familiar with our Starter-tier T'Varo, you'll recognize a lot of the same equipment is used here. You could use the Terran torpedo over the Gravimetric torpedo, but I switched that one out due to the "Destructible Torpedo" damage consoles equipped. Turns out that Swarmer/HYDRA don't benefit Gravimetric or Enhanced Bio-Molecular, but the torpedo change stayed. The rest are very standard reputation torpedoes. We could use mines on the rear, but without Resonating Payload Modification, which is extra-buffed by mines, they aren't as impactful. If you have the lobi, you could replace the Gravimetric with the Delphic torpedo as it has a ton of -DRR potential. 

Starship Equipment

Notes


Starship Consoles

Notes

Anymore on your builds in general, you need to start the discussion with Advanced Consoles since they take up multiple slots and lock each other out. In this case, we could use Hangar Craft Power Transmission [Torpedo] (aka HCPTs) consoles instead of Vulnerability Exploiter [Torpedo] consoles. The major thing about that is budget. Vulnerability Exploiters come at Mk XII Ultra Rare and you can pick your modifiers. HCPTs are easy to pick up on the exchange, but have something like 45 modifiers to re-engineer through which is a huge expense. You could pick up throwaway mods at Ultra Rare, but you could spend weeks-worth of dil just rolling for Torpedo. "But ___ mod is cheap on the exchange", Torpedo, Photon, Quantum might be cheap at one point, but as soon as there's a demand, the price will skyrocket right out of Economy tier. This build did just fine with Exploiters, you can chase HCPTs if you want to, but you'd need the full set all at once - you can't replace Exploiters one at a time so it's a huge economical hurdle to jump. 

With that out of the way, we start by filling all of our Tactical and Universal slots with Exploiters. The Lorca console and Morpho console are both tactical-locked, so we drop two Exploiters for those. The Morphogenic 3pc is great due to its CrtH, CrtD, and Cat1 damage, not to mention slightly more uptime on our firing mode powers. 

We have two consoles from C-Store ships, and one of these is more what you'd expect on a Carrier build than a Torpedo build, so why did I pick these two consoles? Let's talk through C-Store ships for a moment. For a torpedo-based build, you need Lt. Commander-Command for Concentrate Firepower III. This is still a pretty wide net. We want a tactical-focused ship, and at least 4 fore weapons. Commander-Command also allows us to pick up Call Emergency Artillery III, which is a big chunk of damage on kinetic-focused builds like this one. Next, we can look into damage from an experimental weapon or a hangar bay. At this budget tier, Experimental weapons are pretty tough to get much out of. The strong ones either come from event ships or using one of our limited C-Store ships for a single weapon. Hangar pets, however, are often a lot easier to obtain and have a higher damage potential. If we look for ships with two hangar bays, there's only one ship that fits the bill: the Typhon. Since this is a newer ship at the time of writing, it seemed like a great candidate for a new build. It also comes with an S-tier starship trait for ships with hangar bays. In fact, about 1/3rd of this ships overall damage comes from what is essentially 3 bays of Valkyries. That's going to beat out any experimental weapon at this budget tier. Unfortunately, the console on the Typhon is more showy than beneficial, but the platform and trait on the Typhon is fantastic. 

Next, hands-down the best ship for Torpedoes is the Gagarin for Entwined Tactical Matrices. This trait is useful for Fire at Will builds as well, which not only show up on FAW DPS builds, but also supports and tanks as well. I'm able to pick up many more torpedo spreads from what would normally be wasted tactical seats. It's hard to measure overall contribution, but I had roughly the same damage from Torpedo Spread I (entirely from ETM) as I did from the Typhon's Repurposed Cargo Bay Hangar trait. The console is not great, especially for torpers, but with such a wide-application trait and overall damage boost, it's hard to pass it up. This uses two of our C-Store ships at this budget tier. 

At this point, you can go a couple different directions. The Appalachia and Achilles both have good consoles and traits for torpers. The consoles are pretty weak passives but strong clickies. Without Unconventional Systems or Subspace Fracture Tunneling Field (Vovin console), these are strong burst damage consoles but won't benefit you beyond damage output on a torpedo build. The Appalachia is a worse Typhon, trading an experimental weapon for 2 hangar bays. It's quite doable as a torper, but is very similar to the Typhon. If we think about builds in a wider, more general sense, there are some better options for us. The Support Carriers are an interesting option for carriers, but its really the trait and console we take advantage of. Any build you have hangar pets on will benefit from both the console and trait. If you don't have pets, the console still applies an AoE -DRR if nothing else. If you do have hangar pets, the trait is a boost to your Captain power cooldowns as well as your own survivability and healing just for launching pets. The console is a boost to hangar pets by immediately ranking them up. This is great on any type of build with a hangar, not just torpers. As such, I went with a Support Carrier and the Achilles console.

That leaves us with our 4 Engineering console slots to fill. If we look through reputation consoles, there are a lot of available options. I bolded the best ones to consider. 

Set Bonuses

Bridge Officers

Commander Tactical/Command & Lt. Tactical

When it comes to torpedo builds, there is one power that makes a huge impact: Concentrate Firepower III. Since we have two seats that can slot this, we have to decide if a Engineering seat or Tactical seat is more effective. In our case, a High Yield 3 will be far more effective than any engineering power we can use. As such, we put the Concentrate Firepower III on the Engineering seat and use High Yield 3 here. 

At the Commander level, Call Emergency Artillery III is really powerful for damage. On a minelayer, you can use a Mine Pattern 3 at Commander or at attack pattern, but we get a ton of effectiveness out of CEA 3. While the ships that do damage show buffs from our Hangar pet stuff, they don't scale their damage with Hangar pets - only with projectile skills from our ship. 

This leaves us with two ensign and two lieutenant tactical slots. We could use some Command powers, but the lowest rank powers are not nearly beneficial here. With Entwined Tactical Matrices, Scatter Volley and Fire at Will each end up as an extra Torpedo Spread. If you have extra Energy Credits to spare, Kemocite Laced Weaponry can fill out the remaining ensign slot, but we do just fine with Tactical Team. 

Lt. Commander Engineering/Command

Since we already decided to use Concentrate Firepower III here over the tactical seat, we have two more engineering powers to use. Emergency Power to Engines is just about essential for maneuverability on any map and any build due to the Emergency Conn Officer doubling-up the Evasive maneuvers. Auxiliary to Structural is a fantastic heal as well as a trigger for Strategist powers that trigger off heals, being only a 10 second minimum cooldown means it has a lot of uptime. 

Lt. Commander Science

At Lt. Commander on a science seat, you could certainly slot Gravity Well. In our case, at our Economy budget, Photonic Officer 2 works great for getting most of our powers at minimum cooldown. Tractor Beam does pitiful damage, but is a trigger for Carrier-wave Shield Hacking which turns off shields. Shields really put a damper on torpedo damage, so turning them off on-demand can really increase damage output. Hazard Emitters is a great heal and cleanse, also providing Damage Resistance. Since out Aux is high for the pets we use, we get a lot of mileage out of this. 

Ensign Universal

This seat is really flexible and could be for a little extra damage output, but in this case, I went for survivability with extra Damage Resistance from Polarize Hull. 

Traits

Personal Traits

Notes

At this budget, you won't see a lot of expensive personal traits. A Good Day to Die let's you get your captain power Go Down Fighting at any Hull level. If you aren't on a Tactical, then you have your freedom to pick up something else. The rest of the traits are free. If you want some more premium options, check out some of our more premium Kinetic builds. Most of what we chose from free traits are just generalist damage traits. Give Your All is a fantastic survivability power that cuts damage significantly every time we use an Engineering power. Kinetic Precision and Superior Projectile Training are great free options on torpedo builds. The rest of the traits can come and go as budget allows. 

Starship Traits

Here's where our four C-Store ships go: Starship Traits. We apply the consoles that come with these ships where we can, but the traits are just so much higher impact that consoles at this budget level. 

Repurposed Cargo Bay Hangar

This comes with the Typhon, which is the ship we are flying now. This means it is essentially "free", and if you ever want to do a carrier build, this is S-Class best-in-slot. Launching pets gives you more pets, essentially a 3rd hangar bay of some top notch pets. Not Elite, but Advanced doesn't drop the damage output that much and lets you clearly see how much the trait gives you in a parse as normally you wouldn't be running Advanced anything pets. Since this is free with the ship, this is kinda the last one to drop from the build. 

Entwined Tactical Matrices

This is the one ship we only get for the trait, not the console. While the ship is usable itself, there is a fleet version so you don't absolutely have to buy the C-Store version. However, the trait has wide application for a variety of build types, and even occasionally can show up on an Exotic build if you don't have better things to slot and a glut of Tactical seating. In our case, it turns some otherwise wasted tactical seats into extra Torpedo Spreads. This has a pretty high ceiling for damage output, and wide application, so it's recommended not to skip this one. This should be where your first C-Store ship goes, after the Typhon. If you don't have this, your build gets shifted around pretty heavily. 

Angle on the Bow

This is almost essentially the same as Piercing Projectiles, so don't feel you need to replace Piercing Projectiles with Angle on the Bow if you have it already. We also use the console as a solid damage clicky, so this is pretty beneficial to this build. While beneficial, it is merely a stat boost and takes a lower priority to Entwined Tactical Matrices. Since this triggers off of firing torpedoes, nothing else is needed to trigger the power. 

Relaunch and Repair

This is really the odd one out on this build, and the last one to pick up. This lets us get Captain cooldowns and some extra healing for launching hangar pets. We also get great benefit from the console. Neither are essential to this build, and in fact Intel Agent Attache will just about completely obsolete this. However, if you ever want to fly carrier or support, the console that comes with this is just about essential. If you need to save on build costs further over what we have here, just don't pick up the support carrier. 

Reputation Traits

Notes


Active Reputation

Duty Officers

Notes

The Projectile Weapons Officers are cheap and easy to obtain, and really keep the torpedoes firing quickly. The ECH Conn Officer is a must-slot on every build, as the maneuverability can't be beat. 

We also pick up two Flight Deck Officers that unlock pretty easily with Duty Officer commendation progression. Sure, you could use purple ones, but the blue and green ones are plenty. We'd only save 3 more seconds over these two (8 instead of 5 seconds). You could pick up a third as well, but again, triggering pets isn't essential on this build. 

Finally, we drop a potential Projectile Weapons Officer for a Space Warfare Specialist, which does a lot of our healing. If saving on budget, get a third PWO. 

Miscellaneous

Parse Breakdown

Of my 860k ISE run, the clear winner here is Call Emergency Artillery III, with 125k coming from it. Next, around 38k from each "bay" of Valkyries, with 2 bays of Elite Valkyries doing 77.8k total, and 1 "bay" of Advanced Valkyries from Repurposed Cargo Bay Hangar doing 37k. Torpedoes make up a bulk majority of the rest of the damage output, including Concentrate Firepower III. The Achilles console was worth around 56k as well from using it twice in one ISE. 

Ship Stats