Carrier Basics

Career and Species

Doesn't matter. Okay, there are small differences as you min-max more, but unless your goal is to chase the very top of the DPS leaderboards, any captain career, faction, or species can fly any type of ship and any type of build and do very, very well in any map in the game.

A common question on carriers concerning careers is “What about Science Captains?” Science captains get Photonic Fleet, but it is a minimal contribution to overall damage, even on a carrier build. Science captains do have 2 powers that buff hangar pet damage output: Sensor Scan and Scattering Field, so they're noteworthy. Likewise, Tactical captains have abilities that can also enable hangar pets and have the highest ceiling for DPS overall. That said, career is not a significant factor.

Ship Basics

The way which you view hangars on your build are broken down into four general categories, each with their own nuances of construction. You’ll also see these categories on our Hangar Pet Tier list. Importantly, I’ll be referring to the ship you fly as the Primary Ship. The pets in your hangar bay are the Hangar Pets. Clickies, summons, other pets that are not in your hangar bay are your Secondary Pets. There are builds that focus on other damage sources, but happen to have a hangar. Reading through this can give you an idea of the potential of your hangar pets, but you probably won’t hit the rough threshold of 40% of overall damage from pets. These builds are more adequately covered in Exotic, Projectile, Energy, Support, or Tank Basics since for this type of build, the hangar is a bonus rather than a focus. 

Since this is Carrier Basics, we're going to focus more on the following types of builds that are focused on hangar DPS. Just as energy builds can be defined by their primary firing mode, we can sub-categorize pet builds by which firing modes your pets are using:

• The Coordinated Assault starship trait grants Beam Overload and/or Cannon Rapid Fire to hangar pets

• The Superior Area Denial starship trait grants Beam Fire at Will and Cannon Scatter Volley to hangar pets

• Alternately, pets with strong innate firing modes can excel without adding any firing modes on them through starship traits. 

If a pet has innate firing modes like Fire at Will at rank III,  it's not advisable to give them firing modes since Coordinated Assault and Superior Area Denial only grant rank I and will overwrite the innate firing modes. While niche due to being ship-locked, Lost Souls of Grethor do not benefit from granted firing modes, and other frigate pets like Elite Romulan Drone Ships or Elite Mirror Shuttles with strong firing modes can even lose DPS when replacing their rank III firing modes with rank I from the two starship traits listed above.

Coordinated Assault/Targeted Excision (Starship Trait)

The C-Store Alita Heavy Strike Wing Escort comes with a starship trait Coordinated Assault (CA), which simply states:

Beam: Overload and Cannon: Rapid Fire apply to your Hangar Pets. 

To extend this out, using any rank of Beam Overload on the Primary Ship will activate Beam Overload 1 on your Hangar Pets. Same is true for Cannon Rapid Fire; using any rank of Cannon Rapid Fire on the Primary Ship will activate Cannon Rapid Fire 1 on your Hangar Pets. However, some Hangar Pets come with energy firing modes built in. Coordinated Assault will override these built-in firing modes, and as such choosing Coordinated Assault generally limits you to choosing pets that do not have a built in firing mode. That is because Coordinated Assault only grants the rank 1 of the power, whereas the innate power can be a higher and therefore better.

Coordinated Assault is a weaker trait compared to Superior Area Denial because Beam Overload and Cannon Rapid Fire are single target powers. Pets have a hard time consistently staying on target so single-target abilities are less useful for them than Area of Effect, and the limiting nature of this trait to pets without innate firing modes that won't lose DPS from slotting it makes it rather narrowly useful. 

The new Targeted Excision trait functions almost identical to Coordinated Assault except better. Anywhere you see Coordinated Assault (CA), Targeted Excision would also work, although at a higher price point. 

Superior Area Denial (Starship Trait)

This trait either comes from a Lockbox (expensive) or a ship in the C-store 12th-anniversary bundle (also expensive): the  Mirror Engle Strike Wing Escort. Superior Area Denial (SAD) has the following effect: 

Activating Beams: Fire at Will or Cannons: Scatter Volley causes your weapons to debuff foe's armor resistance for a short duration, as well as activating Fire at Will: I and Cannons: Scatter Volley I on your hangar pets.

Unlike Coordinated Assault, activating either firing mode of any rank on the Primary Ship will activate both firing modes on your Hangar Pets. Like with Coordinated Assault, Superior Area Denial will override these built in firing modes. Fire at Will (FAW) and Cannon Scatter Volley (CSV) are multi-target and have a higher damage potential. Also, since the firing modes cross-activate each other, you can get 100% uptime without too much trouble. Just activate FAW and CSV 10 seconds apart and your pets should have 100% uptime. At worst, you won’t have any less uptime than Coordinated Assault provides. 

The armor debuff is only from the weapons of the Primary Ship, not the Hangar Pets, but it still broadly useful for the Primary Ship and the Hangar pets since the resistance debuff leads to greater damage from all sources. It's also valuable for use on Supports. The real reason this trait impacts carrier builds is the application of FAW & CSV to your pets. The other item to consider is that Superior Area Denial has some unexplainable interactions specifically with Hangar Pets that use Pulse Cannons, significantly amplifying their damage. Ironically, since many pets lose pulse cannons at higher ranks, this makes basic hangar pets with Pulse Cannons significantly better than the Elite versions. The cheapest and most effective pets with Superior Area Denial are thus the Normal To'Duj Fighter Squadrons. Elite Alliance Fighter Squadrons do substantially less damage but also are more supportive for the Primary Ship as they have Focused Assault III.

Carrier with no Firing Mode

If both of the previous categories are considered the major Carrier categories based on their primary starship trait for hangar pets, then there is also a category that applies if you don’t use either SAD or CA but are still building around the hangar bay. It should also be stated that using both is unnecessary since Superior Area Denial overwrites the effects of Coordinated Assault regardless of the activation order. Pets that have solid energy weapon firing modes on their own perform well in this category. For example, Fek'Ihri ships with Lost Souls of Gre'thor don't benefit from firing modes but can be highly effective on their own. Romulan Drone Ships are another example of strong pets that don't need a firing mode added from a Starship Trait as they come with their own Rank III firing mode.

In general, once you get to unlocking gear that allow you to effectively have more than 2 hangar bays via traits/consoles, having a firing mode trait like SAD or CA/TE will be better. 

Ship Selection

There's a large combination of things that interact to evaluate a ship's suitability for carrier builds. Here's our list:

• There is a big difference between 1 hangar bay and 2 hangar bays. 1 Bay hangars have anywhere from 40-50% of the damage output of 2 Bay hangars.

• The more engineering consoles & universal consoles the better, specifically for Hangar Craft Power Transmission consoles.

• The more weapons the better: 8  ≥ 7+Experimental Weapon (XW) > 7  ≥ 6+XW > 6 

• In particular, the more forward weapons the better, especially for Dual Beam Banks or Cannons (5 > 4 > 3)

• Specializations are hard to rate due to the variety of seating choices and build options. Here's the general breakdown:

  • Command is useful mostly at LtCmdr or above for Concentrate Firepower III, but make sure you take pets that use a torpedo to take advantage of it. At Cmdr, you can use Call Emergency Artillery III but this power really requires a Gravity Well or some other strong pull to leverage effectively. Of the specializations, this has the most options that can apply to your fleet. 

  • Intel is good at LtCmdr or higher for Ionic Turbulence (or maybe Kinetic Magnet) for debuff.

  • Temporal is good at LtCmdr or Cmdr for Recursive Shearing, especially on large targets. Rapid Decay is a single-target debuff available at lower ranks. Pets generally target the same thing you do, but often pets have minds of their own. 

  • Miracle Worker Cmdr is good due to the extra console but offers nothing of value for carriers as far as Bridge Officer powers in the way of directly affecting pets. The Friendship Command Flight Deck Carrier trait Cooperation is the Dominant Strategy (very expensive), which triggers from Align Shield Frequencies, Needs of the many from Command, and universal consoles which affect non-primary ship targets does take advantage of both miracle worker and command seating here. With Engineering Consoles being the slot of choice, many ships have more natural Engineering Console slots than those with Miracle Worker commander seating.

  • Pilot is not really optimal for carriers, even if using powers like Form Up or Reinforcements Squadron, they simply can’t pull their weight the same as a true debuff. Also, there are no 2-bay ships with any Pilot specialization powers.

  • The general ranking is LtC+ Command > LtC+ Intel > LtC+ Temporal > Cmdr MW (unless Friendship trait is involved) > Pilot

• Ships with 12 consoles (T6 Fleet-grade) > Ships with 11 consoles (T6) > ships with less (T5 and below)

• Other gimmicks: Cruiser Commands. The most important cruiser commands either reduce weapon power cost (Weapon System Efficiency) or help the Primary Ship to pull enemy attacks away from squishy pets of any kind (Attract Fire). The others are less important

• Boff seating is important too, but Carriers need a mix of Science, Engineering, and Tactical so they're less dependent on having specific layouts. Commander Science tends to be less useful since that reduces the number of weapons available on the Primary Ship, and Commander Engineering is slightly worse unless it also has a specialization paired with it like Command or Intel. 

After that, your budget will really limit you. A good carrier really boils down to a short list: 2 hangar bays and 4+ Engineering Consoles. There are only a dozen 2-bay carriers in the C-Store, and if you remove faction duplicates, that number drops to 7. 4+ Engineering consoles leaves you with 4 ships (skipping faction copies again), so if your budget is Fleet/C-store ships you're picking from the Cardassian Ghemor, the Support Carriers like the Atrox, the Seneca, the Jupiter,  or the Pralim/Blackguard/Sillik Flight Deck Carrier choices. Outside of those, you make sacrifices or change your budget. 

Bridge Officers

Rather than walking through every possible combination of bridge officer skills, let's prioritize what we need: 

• Pick the energy firing modes that coordinate with your Carrier Firing mode (recall: SAD or CA). If you are going without a Carrier Firing Mode, pick one that fits your flying style (don’t CRF on a ship with the turn rate of a small moon).

• Ensure the Primary Ship has maneuverability. Carriers are known for having the worst of all turn rates, and spending a power or two on your maneuverability is a must on a carrier. Common choices include Emergency Conn Hologram with Emergency Power to Engines or the Prevailing Impulse Engines from the Competitive Reputation. 

• Add in a cooldown scheme. Something like The Boimler Effect + Photonic Officer will cover most of your cooldowns. Do not use Auxiliary to Battery + Technicians as Auxiliary Power is key to keeping your Hangar cooldown low (more Aux = shorter cooldown). Use of firing mode extenders does not apply to your pets (Superweapon Ingenuity, et al.), but your Carrier Firing Mode is directly related to the uptime of firing modes on your pets. 

As space allows, follow the Energy Basics to help cover gaps. There are few Bridge Officer powers that apply to pets. This includes topics of debuff and survivability. A few differences are noted below:

• Tactical: Attack Pattern Omega can be used to trigger Conn Officers that spread it to allies, but even at its best, this is a low-uptime option. The better option is to stick to an energy basics layout, including liberal use of Attack Pattern Beta for debuffs. 

• Intelligence: Override Subsystem Safeties is a powerful energy weapon damage boost, but also comes with the risk of shutting off your Weapons or Hangar, use with caution. Ionic Turbulence is a resist shred/anomaly at higher ranks and shines well with damage output from multiple sources. Kinetic Magnet can be used as further debuff but will often be outdone by other standard powers.

• Command: Concentrate Firepower III is excellent if adding in a torpedo that behaves well under High Yield, and also if using pets that possess torpedoes. High ranks of Suppression Barrage are useful for reducing incoming damage and adding survivability to your pets. Rally Point Marker is a decent heal that will also heal any nearby pets, and Overwhelm Emitters isn't terrible as it marks a target and will apply to all of your pets. Call Emergency Artillery III does very high damage on clustered, immobile targets but only shines on specific maps/scenarios but isn’t really affected by a carrier vs. any other build. CEA pets will show as being buffed by Carrier stuff, but their damage output is fixed based on the Primary Ship rather than buffing the pets. 

Part of what makes a carrier a difficult proposition is that very little of your actual Bridge Officer powers have an impact on your Pets’ damage output, and primarily focuses on your Primary Ship’s output. Therefore, priority is placed here on the Primary Ship, and as such similar to other Basics sections. 

Do I need other cooldown help?

Three other easy methods of help with cooldowns are the Readiness skills, Krenim bridge officers from the Fleet Research Lab, and the reputation trait Chrono-Capacitor Array. The question is do we need them?

The answer is it depends and the best way to find out is to take your chosen cooldown scheme and bridge officer powers from above and put it into the cooldown reduction calculator (make a copy) and see what you need. We recommend the following for carriers:

• Photonic Officer I or II: 2-3 Tactical Readiness + Chrono-Capacitor Array

Adding The Boimler Effect trait (expensive) on top of these will help fill gaps and allow swapping out Chrono-Capacitor Array.

Advanced reading on cooldown mechanics

Control:

While the full implementation of keybinding is outside the scope of this guide (and not applicable to console players anyway), PC players should consider using a keybind file or an app like the STO keybind for more efficient usage of abilities. Further discussion and links to the app can be found here.

Skills

There are a wide variety of skill trees out there depending on how general or hybridized your build is, but here are the important skills:

Essential

Engineering - Impulse Expertise (x2-3) - Carriers are known for being slow, they need all the help they can get

Tactical - Coordination Protocols/Offensive Protocols/Defensive Protocols (x2 or x3, possible to skip Defensive) - This applies to your hangar pets and is one of very few skills in the tree that does

The rest of the choices are the same as an energy focused build. Regardless of career, taking 25-26 points in Tactical is valuable to pick up the tactical enhancements Focused Frenzy, Frenzied Assault, and Team Frenzy. This “Ultimate” unlock applies to your pets, especially if you get Team Frenzy.

Skill Unlocks

There are two Hangar Pet unlocks very early in the skill tree, and both are typically outclassed by the alternative choices. 

5 Engineering Points: Battery Expertise doubles the duration of most batteries and even a couple consoles, and is an extremely rare skill. 10% Hangar hull capacity is a poor choice even on a Carrier. Many pets have such low hull capacity that 10% more will not help survivability. Battery Expertise is the better choice here. 

5 Tactical Points: Threat Control decreases your threat passively, and increases your threat if you use Threatening Stance. Threat is such an ambiguous skill to really quantify, so use your judgment. If you are using other builds on your character that don’t have hangar pets, consider Threat Control over Hangar Weaponry. 10% damage in the overall damage output is pretty small, and on builds that have no hangar pets, you get no benefit. Even on your carrier, having more threat directed at the Primary Ship rather than Hangar Pets will be beneficial (if you use threatening stance). Reducing your threat so your Tank can take more damage is also beneficial regardless of build. 

Beyond what is stated here, refer to other guides on Skill Trees and their decisions as other skills will not affect Hangar Pet performance, only the Primary Ship. 

Specializations

• Intel primary, Strategist secondary for general weapon DPS. Players utilizing Intel will want to learn how to take advantage of flanking for best results

• Command may be an appealing Specialization, but very little applies to more than the Primary Ship. When compared to Intel Fleet, nothing in the other Specializations stacks up. 

• Antagonist doesn’t appear to affect hangar pets.

Power Levels

Power levels are a basic but very important way to boost your ship's effectiveness. If you want to know the why behind the power level suggestions, check out our advanced reading on this topic.

• Weapons to 100, shields to 15, engines to 15, auxiliary to 70

Setting Aux power higher is used to decrease the hanger launch recharge time, which is needed to retrigger various traits and Duty officers faster

• Console players will want to use #1 setting (100 weapons, 50 shields, 25 engine, 25 aux) and consider taking Emergency Power to Aux if there is room.

Gear

Our intent with this suggestion is to offer a number of viable gear choices, not to dictate cookie-cutter builds. If you want to use something else, be our guest. For those of you who want a narrowed-down menu from the dizzying array of choices out there, this one's for you. 

Ground rules: only fleet, reputation, easily-crafted, or mission reward items will be considered along with low-tier Phoenix Box rewards. Finishing out reputations is essential to completing an endgame ship. A quick refresher on what those are:

Fleets: Fleets are player groups that allow players to contribute resources (fleet marks, energy credits, refined dilithium, common duty officers, etc.) to various holdings, which unlock a variety of stores carrying fleet-specific items. Fleet holdings with more tiers and unlocks open up more items. Joining a fleet is not essential to succeeding in Star Trek Online, but it can be highly valuable to join a fleet at least temporarily to go shopping even if you don't intend to stay long term. Fleets are the only way to obtain Elite Hangar Pets other than Elite Scorpions.

Reputations: There are 13 reputations that reward players for playing specific pieces of content, either battle zones/adventure zones, or task force operations. Fighting against certain enemies will improve a player's efforts with the associated organization devoted to countering them. Reputations must be advanced, typically through daily projects, and takes 70 days of daily projects to fully level to the highest tier (tier 6) for the first time on an account. Starting the reputation climb and advancing through the ranks is a top priority upon reaching level 50. Reputations have both a series of items that combine into sets with bonuses for multiple pieces as well as reputation stores that sell Mk XII items for dilithium. The Romulan Reputation is the only source other than fleets for Elite Hangar pets. 

Mission Rewards: Come from playing particular missions. It may be desirable (if grindy) to replay a certain mission multiple times. We'll only be recommending items at Mk XI Rare or better because Mk XII Rare should be pretty cheap on the Exchange. 

Phoenix Boxes: Are available from the dilithium store and should generally be purchased in lots of 10 for 40,000 refined dilithium. While some consoles and duty officers are useful and easily available from a rare or very rare token, ship rewards at the Ultra Rare and Epic level are exceedingly unlikely and restricted to a single character. The most frequent choice from the Phoenix Box is the Phoenix Upgrade, which helps upgrade gear items. Phoenix Upgrades are best applied on special upgrade weekends to double their efficiency; it takes about 200 Phoenix Upgrades on an upgrade weekend to take a ship with gear at Mk XII-XIII to Epic Mk XV. 

The Exchange: Allows players to buy and sell a variety of items. Many items are enormously expensive due to their rarity and are thus priced out of the reach of a new or semi-casual free-to-play player; however, they are not needed for this guide. Some items, if cheap on the exchange, may be accessible, like a Mk XII Rare Beam Array so their use may be recommended sparingly.

Crafting: Allows players to create items through leveling their research & development schools (typically via another series of daily projects). R&D unlocks personal traits at level 15, which are particularly valuable in the Beams, Engineering, Projectiles, Science, Ground Gear, and Kits and Modules. Crafting items below level 15 is not efficient as higher crafting skill will lead to greater rarity on first result.

Picking Hangar Pets and Hangar Pet Types

After choosing your Primary Ship (Carrier) and your desired Pet Firing Mode, picking your Hangar Pets has a huge impact on your damage output. Just choosing between Class 10 shuttles and Peregrine Fighters doubles your Hangar Pets’ damage output. You can refer to the Hangar Pet Tier List, comprised of empirically-collected data, to find the one that works for you. You can also keep reading to get an idea of the guidelines you should follow. 

Best Value Pet

Elite Scorpion Fighters are the best bang-for-your buck pet, and are even usable in any Hangar bay. Unlocked without a fleet, and half the dilithium of other pets, these are the stand-out low-cost winner. The only requirement is Romulan Reputation tier V.  Scorpions are even compatible with CA and SAD, so even if you eventually grow into one of those, the pets will still be a solid choice. With a cannon, turret, and torpedo + High Yield I, they make a good middle-of-the-road option when compared to loadouts of other Hangar Pets. As such, let’s use this as a baseline for other choices. We'll offer some others below

Choosing the right pet loadout

Tooltips for pets don’t include an actual damage output value, so it can be tough to make the right choice just based on tooltip alone. While not a hard and fast rule, there are several factors you can look for to choose the best pet. 

1. Pets do better with wider-arc weapons (Omni & Beam Arrays) than narrow-arc weapons (Dual Cannons). Remember, toddlers for pilots. 

2. More weapons is better, except if they have an excessive amount. Tactical Flyer Squadrons, Tactical Attack Fighter Squadrons, and Section 31 Drone Squadrons all list 8+ weapons but have sub-par performance. Typically, a pet with 3 weapons will do better than one with 2, after taking into account the firing arcs of those weapons. 

3. Pets with built-in firing modes are better. A pet with Beam Overload III will do better than one without. However, be aware that the pet will perform worse when you add CA or SAD, since those rank 1 firing modes override any inherent firing modes. Some pets even have built-in torpedo firing modes. 

4. Pets with torpedoes are generally preferred, but not required. Now that Concentrate Firepower doesn’t get eaten up by pets, torpedoes really have no downside. With no cooldown mechanics other than CFP, torpedoes are rarely the highest-parsing portion of a pets damage. Super-Charged Weapons is an unusual trait that applies to your pets even though there is no expectation that it would. The only requirement is that the pet fires a torpedo. This includes secondary pets such as Delta Reinforcements. Micro Torpedoes are a cosmetic difference and should be evaluated just as a regular torpedo of that type.

5. Pets with more per bay have higher damage ceilings. Bays either hold 6, 4, or 2 pets. Fewer pets typically means a higher hull and more weapons onboard, but also mean losing a pet is more detrimental. Bays with 6 pets will replenish 6 at a time. The top damage dealers are 6 per bay pets, with a few notable exceptions such as Romulan Drone Ships (which include lots of weapons and firing modes to compensate). 

6. Elite is better than Advanced or Normal pets. Elite pets get better gear, hull, and abilities or firing modes. The one notable exception is Normal To’Duj Fighter Squadrons which behave far above their means under the power of SAD, and Advanced and Elite versions perform worse. Generally, pick up the Normal pet you want for ~30k EC, and then work up to the Elite pet as you get the resources. Not worth the partial upgrade to Advanced along the way. You can’t spend upgrades to upgrade your pets, you have to directly buy the quality you want. 

7. Pets are either ship locked (restricted) or usable on any carrier. Many pets require owning the ship to acquire the pet, but then the pets can be used on any ship. Look for Fleet versions of the ship that unlock the pet you are after. 

8. There are currently no pets that do no damage that are worth slotting. Their powers are simply too weak to make up for the lack of actual weapons. In the case of Supports, there are a few lower-powered pets that apply strong debuffs such as Attack Pattern Beta to make up for fewer weapons. Check out the Support Basics for more on them. 

9. Be aware that different pets have different cooldowns. Mo'Kai Raiders and Lost Souls have a very low cooldown and can be replenished very quickly. This also means they get correspondingly more value out of traits that trigger on hangar launch, like Scramble Fighters. Conversely, others have much longer cooldowns than usual, so consider that when slotting your traits. 

Front-runner Pets

For each type of Carrier build, here's a quick table of top choices:

Picking Weapons and Weapon Types

Your Primary Ship still needs weapons, beyond the choices of your hangar pet. While not a hard and fast rule, you’ll find better synergy with Energy Weapons than Projectile Weapons on a carrier. Several hangar consoles buff Destructible Torpedoes, but in general the Primary Ship weapons have little overlap with Hangar Pet choices. Having one energy flavor on your pets and another on your Primary Ship makes little difference - your gear won’t increase your Hangar Pets’ damage (IE: Antiproton Mag Regulator won’t enhance Elite Aeons that use Antiproton Beams). As such, you should refer to the Energy Basics for further choices on your weapons type. Just keep in mind that many carriers that can slot dual cannons don’t have the turn rate to efficiently support such a decision. 

Other Gear for F2P/New players

For this section, you have to decide if you are after Primary Ship damage or Hangar Pet damage. If you are after the Primary Ship’s damage, refer to the Energy Basics guide. Otherwise, keep reading to enhance your Hangar Pets. 

The Iconian Reputation 3-piece is a teamwide boost for more supportive builds, including your Hangar Pets and Secondary Pets. You can even go so far as to pick up the 4th piece of the set. Just be aware you’ll be doing a lot of Iconian Reputation missions to get this many marks and Probe Data Cores. 

The Gamma Reputation set of a similar situation does not enhance your Hangar Pets or Secondary Pets, and as such makes no difference in this situation. However, the Gamma Deflector will reduce Kinetic DRR on targets you hit with torpedoes from your Primary Ship, but the Iconian Set 4pc is still going to be preferred over this. Hangar Pets are heavily energy damage. 

If you have access to Lobi Crystals/EC to get the T5 Obelisk ship and the 2024 Summer Event ship, eventually you'll want to consider the 4-piece Ancient Obelisk Technology Set which effectively adds a 4th bay to your ship at the cost of basically forcing you into Antiproton damage on your carrier.

There is a lot of interactions between pets and Primary Ships, here is a table summarizing our findings so far:

On the left, we have a list of effects that you might expect to affect your pets. This is by no means exhaustive, but it is what I could get ahold of. A key one that is missing is the Obelisk 3pc, but since that costs an entire lobi ship it's out of my current budget. I tried to group them by the general slot that it fills, such as trait or equipment. 

* - Super Charged Weapons requires firing a torpedo. Pets that do not have a torpedo cannot gain stacks of Super Charged Weapons. Target That Explosion (Starship Trait) does not allow you to circumvent this requirement. 

** - The Swarmer Matrix console has two passives. The passive that enhances pets does not apply to mines. The passive which is +50 Projectile Weapons Training does enhance mines since mines are projectiles. For reference, Armed Loitering Munition is not a projectile so it's impact damage is not affected. 

Pets fall into one of two general categories: Hangar Pets and Fleet Support. Hangar pets are pets that occupy the Hangar slot, but also Armed Loitering Munitions and Reinforcements Squadron. Things that make these stand out is that they rank up with Hangar XP as well as benefit from Coordinated Assault and Pet Rank such as Wing Commander. Fleet Support includes Fleet Support, but also Distress Calls and Photonic Reinforcement. While these don't get all of the benefits of Hangar pets, they still do benefit from the majority of the same bonuses as your regular Hangar Pets. 

Consoles

There are many options for consoles, especially in Tactical or Engineering consoles depending on whether you're using Spire consoles (Locators/Exploiters), Advanced Engineering (Hangar Craft Power Transmission) consoles, or something at a lower budget. This guide will list some options but the ALICIA tool was created to provide a tailored console recommendation for your budget and build. 

• Advanced Consoles: Hands down, if you are going for Hangar Pet damage output, Hangar Craft Power Transmissions (HCPTs) are the best choice. The mods you choose are inconsequential for your Hangar Pets, but will strongly affect the Primary Ship’s damage. If you are short on Engineering slots, you might go for Locators, but there isn’t anything better than HCPTs for a Carrier Build. Colony Protomatter consoles aren’t Advanced and can be used with HCPTs. If you want to know the optimal choice, try the ALICIA or TRINITY tools. NOTE: TRINITY will not model hangar pet data, for that please refer to the hangar pet tier list.

• Tactical Consoles: Save a slot for Lorca's Custom Fire Controls from the Discovery Legends reputation. If you're flying a Plasma build, the Fek'Ihri Torment Engine from the "Leap of Faith" mission is a solid and free slot, especially if you're using the Dark Matter Torpedo Launcher. 

• Universal Consoles: The other options for Universal Consoles are either Exchange purchases or C-Store ships. None of them are achievable without the Energy Credit Cap Increase or other Zen purchases. If you take off the budget limits for a minute, consider these consoles:

  1. High-Energy Communications Network (C-Store) from any of the support carriers, has a click-to-rank-up ability and strong boost to pets and allies.

  2. HYDRA Console (C-Store) from the Terran Hydra is good to reposition your pets if they are slow to catch up, as well as a burst of damage that scales with number of pets you have active. There is also a solid passive to Hangar Pets. The Terran Hydra also comes with a strong Starship Trait for carriers as well.

  3. Gemini Device (C-store) is a strong pet console that deals significant damage. Comes from the Premonition, which is in the Heritage bundle that also comes with an extremely powerful starship trait for carriers on the Typhon. 

  4. Swarmer Matrix (Lockbox/Exchange) - The active isn't amazing, but has the same solid passive as the HYDRA console. 

  5. Flagship Tactical Computer (C-Store) - the clicky gives a wide Haste boost to your team and hangar pets.

  6. There are many support consoles or lockbox ship consoles that are also good, but at lower benefit or higher cost than needed in "Basics"

• The rest of your console slots should follow the Energy Basics guide, unless you start buying more expensive gear. 

• Devices: Energy Amplifiers (crafting R&D) and Deuterium Surplus (crafting once you run the Defense Contract mission once) are both helpful and free, if having an unfortunately low stack limit. Reactive Armor Catalysts or Hull Patches help with survivability. Delta Reinforcements is a great option for extra damage, especially with how it synergizes with Carrier builds. It doesn’t have to be slotted in a Device slot, but can stay in your inventory.

Upgrading and Rarity

For the majority of items in the game, a build filled with Mk XII+ gear at Rare+ rarity and flown well is capable of tackling Advanced content reasonably well. Some maps are harder than others and some builds will do better at certain maps than others, but it's certainly possible to quite well with Mk XII and Mk XIII on a F2P/new player build. I've done it while building up my builds. Elite Scorpions will have a solid impact in carrier damage and make a great baseline even if you can’t get anything else. Hangar pets are not upgradeable, but you can buy them at up to Elite rank, and they can be made for an Elite-capable ship.

If you do want to fly Elite regularly, you will need to strongly consider having the rest of your gear Mk XV gear, as the difference between Mk XII and Mk XV is about as big as the one between Mk I and Mk XII. Enemies are much harder to kill; while there are a few maps that are relatively easy on Elite that could be completed with Mk XII gear, it would be a slog. Upgrading Hangar Craft Power Transmission consoles in both quality and mark will apply to your pets as well, no other gear upgrades will apply to your pets. 

Epic'd and re-engineered gear is never "necessary" and is only for optimizing builds and/or DPS-chasing. 

Lastly, let's go over things we aren't going to worry about.

Things That Do Not Matter Much

• Energy weapon damage type (i.e. plasma vs disruptor) doesn't matter much, especially when you are first starting. Phaser, Polaron, and Disruptor tend to have more items sets and consoles that are easy to acquire, whereas Tetryon is difficult to acquire gear for outside of Dual Beam Banks and Antiproton / Plasma are worse, which leads to less synergy between hanger pet damage increases and primary ship damage increases.

• Mods (CrtD and Dmg are good and very close to each other, Pen is good on crafted weapons, Over is gimmicky but fun) and re-engineering; these are less than 5% difference. If you really want the optimal answer for your build, look into using a copy of the Energy DPS Calculator.

• Weapon procs don't matter until you start truly min-maxing. The difference between Agony Phasers and regular Phasers, for example, is minimal.

Traits for F2P/New players

See our tier list for starship and personal traits and look for the ones that are free, a mission reward, or from R&D schools. Some traits can be enhanced at the Fleet K-13 holding for marginal gains; those are options as well. If you're looking to exit the F2P world and pick up your first C-store (Zen) ship, the one you want is the Arbiter or its cross-faction equivalents. The Emergency Weapon Cycle starship trait is worth around 20% final DPS on most energy builds even if you don't end up flying it longterm. 

For carriers, the consoles are just as impactful as the traits at a low-entry cost. There are 2 key traits in standalone C-store ships for carriers. The Terran Hydra Intel Destroyer has a great console for carriers as well as a good trait for carriers, even though the ship itself is not a carrier. The Typhon, while also being an excellent carrier platform at its price point, offers Repurposed Cargo Bay Hangar, which is effectively a third hangar bay. After the Hydra, other C-Store ships are either a good trait, a good console, or neither for Carriers. You should probably avoid unlocking a specific C-Store ship just to unlock a specific pet as cheaper Fleet versions likely exist if the only thing you need is the pet. 

Superior Command Frequency can take some legwork to unlock, but is technically free. Just be aware that it will share a cooldown with other reinforcements beacons which don’t take up the trait slot, but may not quite have the same damage output.

In general, the high-impact traits and gear for Carriers is costly. SAD is either a full C-Store ship bundle or lockbox ship. Scramble Fighters is a rare Starship Trait and often fetches just about as much of a price as somewhere between the cost of a Lobi or T6 Lockbox ship. Many other traits are Lockbox or Promo. The other traits on ships from the C-Store are low-impact, even Coordinated Assault. If you have C-Store ships to pick up, Super Charged Weapons, Repurposed Cargo Bay Hangar, and Strike Group Command Authority are the only ones of note. Super Charged Weapons applies to your pets with torpedoes as well, which is another reason to run pets with torps. Strike Group Command Authority is one of the few sources of damage, applying bonus damage to pets based on the strongest pet you have active, up to 50%. Other Carrier powers just simply lack impact. Coordinated Assault is mostly obsoleted by SAD, and editorially, we struggle to recommend a ship purchase that is low impact that is completely obsoleted later. 

Reputation traits

List is sorted top to bottom in terms of priority:

• Always slot: Precision, Advanced Targeting Systems, Auxiliary Configuration: Offense

• If you want to self-heal a lot or are tanking: Energy Refrequencer

• If you need the cooldown help, Chrono-Capacitor Array

• If you and your pets have torpedoes, Omega Kinetic Shearing (pets can apply it)

• If your ship has over 90,000 hit points: Tyler's Duality

• If you still have slots left: Enhanced Shield Penetration (no torpedo) or Magnified Firepower (torpedo)

Active Reputation Traits:

These all have 5 minute cooldowns and most of them don't matter much.

• The Bio-Molecular Shield bubble from the 8472 Counter Command reputation is a valuable defensive tool especially when you aren't moving much, and can cover your pets as well

• Deploy Sensor Interference Platform from the Iconian Reputation is an okay defensive tool but does not last very long

• Quantum Singularity Manipulation is a temporary cloak that also boosts your science stats by +100/125 at T6 for 8 seconds.

• Refracting Tetryon Cascade does decent bouncing damage on a Tetryon build and fairly negligible otherwise. 

• Unlocking the fifth active reputation slot should not be a priority, but is a worthwhile pickup once all other essential purchases are made.

Duty Officers for F2P/New players

See our tier list for duty officers and look for the ones that are free, from mission rewards, from the fleet holdings, or from colonization chains.

Flight Deck Officers with Hangar Cooldown are objectively the best Duty Officers for Carriers. Greens and blues are impactful, and it can be worth it to slot 3 Green or Blue versions rather than having nothing. There are a select few Duty Officers that impact Hangar Pets, and they are generally low impact. 

Piloting

• An overview of piloting and ship handling is covered in our Mechanics slides.