This is a collection and comparison of the differences between the Tactical, Science, and Engineer career choices. This is an important decision because of the considerable time (measured in months and years) and money (measured in the thousands of $) investments required to take a character all the way to “the max”. And many of the items you must buy are locked to the character you buy them on, and can not be shared with your other characters. The decision might also be relevant because of the PVP nature of many of the games Endeavors, where players must compete in open world combat for a limited number of NPCs to kill.
In my experience, while any career can be effective, the Tactical captain’s abilities are a better complement to the game’s combat-centric design. But I’ll save my opinions for the end so we can get straight to the facts:
Abilities
https://stowiki.net/wiki/Player_ability#General_player_abilities
These are the most important differences between the professions, especially in Space.
Kit Modules
Career-specific kit modules only come into play in Ground content, and these are pretty much the only reason I would consider choosing an Engineer or Science toon. They are not more powerful (Tac has a higher ceiling), but they are different.
Traits
https://stowiki.net/wiki/Personal_traits#Career-specific_Personal_traits
The starting traits are insignificant as almost all will be replaced with better choices.
There are some career-specific traits that can be acquired, but the Tactical profession’s traits are comparatively better for STO content.
R & D (from Skill Tree unlocks)
https://stowiki.net/wiki/List_of_Training_Manuals_craftable_by_captain
Nobody should be choosing a career based on this (unless it’s an alt for the sole purpose of crafting career-restricted manuals for yourself), but here’s the list.
Career-Specific Mission Objectives
https://stowiki.net/wiki/Category:Missions_with_career_path-specific_objectives
Nobody should be choosing a career based on this (no extra rewards), but here’s the list.
Conclusions:
My experience: In the end, STO is about simple pew-pew. The age-old MMO trinity of Tank-Healer-DPS simply doesn’t have a spot in today’s STO, but unfortunately, STO’s career choices were implemented with that holy MMO trinity in mind. We are left in a situation where the Science and Engineer careers are empirically weaker than the Tactical profession in many scenarios, because the damage-amplifying focus of Tactical abilities performs better in STO’s content.
The support focus of Engineer and Science officers (healing, controlling & debuffing targets, deploying devices) is appealing to anybody who dreams of being part of a team and they can be very effective, especially at lower levels. But STO is mostly a solo game, even in “group” content. And those support-oriented abilities just don’t scale up the way Tactical does, especially as speed becomes more important.
In space, the Tactical career is generally accepted as the clear winner and the top choice for almost all builds. This doesn’t change whether you are flying an escort, a science ship, a carrier, or anything else.
On the ground, I believe Tactical still has the advantage most of the time if the discussion is centered on performance and efficiency. And I think they are cheaper and easier to play well early on (at least four of their standard kit modules are still meta-relevant at end game), and they seem to have the highest performance ceiling. They are also usually the fastest on the ground, which means you’ll be the first to reach objectives and the first to start killing.
Many people will say that career doesn’t matter and that all careers do fine. And that’s correct: If “fine” is what you are after or if you are role playing and have no concern for performance, then pick whichever career calls to you!
But if you are interested in performance against STO’s game content, then Tactical is the winner.
In my opinion. 😉