u/Annemarie30

9 out of 10 times the mission fails. WHY DEVS WHY is advanced in the queue?

If you are new and lost, let's break it down. To start, you should focus on only a few things:

1. Start with simple: a DEW (directed energy weapon). I'm going contrary to popular opinion here. Choose a not popular energy type, Tetryon or Polaron, MAYBE AP. Pick and stick with one energy type. Common wisdom is you have one torpedo forward and the rest beam arrays. if you have the EC, buy the crafted Omni array for a rear slot.

My reason for this is that you're going to throw away most of the gear once you figure things out. Why not Phasers/Disruptors? Generally, support gear like Isomags is far more expensive.

2. Speed is life. One of the best things you can do is dump any mark choices into Competitive rep. There are choices for impulse engines that give you speed and turn boosts based on either heal buff powers or firing mode powers. Deuterium surplus is a consumable. There are 2 missions you have to do to unlock them: the first mission of the Specters chain, and then the defense contract.

3. Dilithium. You need to be able to get dilithium: Doffing, Admiralty patrols, and TFOs to get dilithium. With dilithium, you get the phoenix boxes, and those get you the phoenix upgrades for your gear.

4. Only use consoles that make you go faster, boost your weapons, or increase your survivability. Once you have that down, please move on to the guides, schemes, and builds. You don't need to improve anything beyond very rare Mk 12 or 13, unless you know you'll use it later.

Twice now I've been one-shot by the thing, and I was 9km away. full shields....

And did I mention it seemed to bypass shields completely? full health and then 3% on other times and full shields

Specifically, Gravimetric, Advanced biomolecular and particle emission torpedos