Beginner Checklist

This site is intended to provide information and options to consider, but not to complete your builds for you - I have no way of knowing exactly what gear each reader has access to, what their piloting style is, or every niche build idea that someone may have in mind.

In fact, many players may not even know what their own piloting style or favorite builds are until they have tried some things, and that's where this guide comes into play.

If players are able to survive longer and experience what it is like to have enjoyable PvP matches, working as a team within the limitations of their builds and budget, they can fine tune their piloting as well as come up with new and interesting build ideas to try out. I'd encourage anyone of any skill or budget level to give this a try and if you find it enjoyable once you've made an appropriate effort, start theorycrafting and testing your own build ideas and techniques.

However, do not enter a PvP match without giving your build a proper effort - that is a sure way to end up frustrated or disappointed. You must come in prepared, and even your strongest PvE tanks will not survive this game mode, but that does not mean it is impossible, just that you need to think outside the box and learn about ship building ideas that you may have never used before.

These builds are generally less maneuverable than "dogfighters," and therefore must rely on weapons with wider firing arcs like Beam Arrays to deal damage. They benefit from a more relaxed flying style and generally higher hull capacities, which benefits survivability, but like any PvP build they must still be quick enough to avoid trouble.

Here are some things generally required for this type of build:

1. Fleet Colony Protomatter Tactical consoles, and several of them. Generally, PvP builds slots 3, 4, or more of these consoles. They provide a chance at healing based on your total hull capacity, activated by using weapon firing modes.
2. Two weapon fire modes - Beam Overload for damage, and a "dummy" mode like Cannon Scatter Volley. This "dummy" mode is used to effectively double our healing from the above Tac consoles, and sometimes to trigger traits like Preferential Targeting to increase damage. If only one fire mode is used, for example "Surgical Strikes," supplemental healing is usually required.
3. At least one escape console, like Fluidic Phase Decoupler, Elachi Rift Jump, or Molecular Phase Inversion. There are countless options at any budget level, and even a perfect build will need to use one of these depending on the situation. Since cruisers attract more fire and are slower, sometimes it is necessary to slot two or even three of these to ensure survival.
4. A source of Damage Resistance Rating, preferably a lot of it. Enemies will use DR debuffs against you, so the old adage of diminishing returns is not as applicable here. You want far more resistance than you think you need, to reduce incoming damage substantially and survive longer. Rhythmic Rumble, Honored Dead, and Pax Triburnium consoles are all viable options.
5. Hull Image Refractors console. This allows any healing applied over 100% hull to become temporary hp, and this includes the healing from the Tac consoles mentioned above. Temp hp is not subject to damage resistances, but also not effected by damage resistance debuffs, so it's a critical part of durability on builds like this. You could build without as much temp hp on a cruiser, but you would need to stack multiple other sources of healing since you will have effectively less health - traits like Reconstructive Radiation, Secret Command Codes, and consoles like Hull-Repairing Embassy Generators are options.
6. Turn Threatening Stance On, and if you die, turn it back on. Threat has no effect on enemy players, but you can still benefit from the increased maximum hull this provides.
7. Your build MUST have Emergency Power to Engines, Engineering Team, and Science Team. Slow ships are dead ships, and Eng Team can clear subsystem disables (like viral engines overload). Science Team is required to clear drain effects like Spore Infused or Tykens, and even more importantly it is used to clear the effects of Subnucleonic Beam, which strips all of your buffs for up to 30 seconds. If you are slowed and "Subnuked," you will be dead quickly so having Science/Eng teams on keys ready to activate at a moment's notice is a critical skill for PvP piloting. Even cruisers need the extra power and speed.
8. Arguably, you must also have Auxiliary to Dampers or Auxiliary to Structural Integrity Field, depending on your specific build. Dampers provides immunity to disable effects, which is critical against intel-using ships in PvP. Aux2Sif can be combined with a duty officer to placate your next attacker, helping you be elusive and avoid taking damage for short periods. Which works best is up to you.
9. Beam weapons, especially arrays will provide the most reliable damage for this type of build.

This unique playstyle requires you to take a birds-eye view of the battlefield, paying attention not only to your teammates' health, but what debuffs they might be dealing with. You will be responsible for clearing disables, science control effects, and tactical effects like Suppression Barrage from your teammates, especially if they are unable to clear them alone.

Since all PvP builds have rapid self-healing, you will be providing healing in addition to that - and teammates with high healing and high resistances can be made nearly indestructible by having a second person dedicating their own healing to them.

An important consideration for any healer is that you must have enough self-healing to be able to cast your external heals without having to use them on yourself, except when absolutely necessary. This means many healer builds rely on traits for self healing, then dedicate their bridge officer abilities to healing teammates via Engineering Team, Hazard Emitters, or through consoles like Protomatter Field Projector and Reiterative Structural Capacitor.

1. Self healing is critical, but avoid using your own bridge officer abilities. Stacking healing from multiple traits, such as PLOT Armor, Secret Command Codes, Reconstructive Radiation, and consoles like Protomatter Tactical Consoles or Embassy Hull-Repairing generators are staples of any healer build.
2. High resistances are still necessary to make sure that self healing gives you maximum benefits - if you have 75% reistances, each point of healing you give yourself requires 4 points of damage to remove again, so consider that when you have healing in the thousands per second.
3. With self healing covered, boosting the effectiveness of your outgoing heals is important, so using consoles like Sustained Radiant Field or Hull Restoration boosting consoles is useful. Some players have achieved hazard emitters in the 200k+ range, and engineering teams in the 50k range. That's a huge benefit to teammates, and with Miracle Worker set as secondary specialization, those heals can crit too!
4. Debuff clearing is a very important benefit to having a healer on a team. One option for everyone is setting Command as primary spec, which lets you use Boost Morale. This clears all debuffs from the entire team, at any distance, for 4 seconds, usable every one minute. A well timed boost morale can save a teammate's life. Another useful option is Team Synergy, a starship trait. When you use eng, sci, or tac team within 10km of a teammate, they also get a copy of it too - including whatever healing or debuff cleansing effect that team ability supplies.
5. Escape consoles are just as important on this type of build as any other, as getting stuck in holds or controls will force you to not only use heals on yourself, therefore not helping your teammates, but might result in your death, making your team substantially more fragile.
6. Turn Threatening Stance On, and if you die, turn it back on. Threat has no effect on enemy players, but you can still benefit from the increased maximum hull this provides. 
7. Your build MUST have Emergency Power to Engines, Engineering Team, and Science Team. Slow ships are dead ships, and Eng Team can clear subsystem disables (like viral engines overload). Science Team is required to clear drain effects like Spore Infused or Tykens, and even more importantly it is used to clear the effects of Subnucleonic Beam, which strips all of your buffs for up to 30 seconds. If you are slowed and "Subnuked," you will be dead quickly so having Science/Eng teams on keys ready to activate at a moment's notice is a critical skill for PvP piloting. Even more important on a healer because you will need to use these on teammates, and slow healers are bad too because they can't keep up with the fight.
8. Arguably, you must also have Auxiliary to Dampers or Auxiliary to Structural Integrity Field, depending on your specific build. Dampers provides immunity to disable effects, which is critical against intel-using ships in PvP. Aux2Sif can be combined with a duty officer to placate your next attacker, and can also be cast on a teammate, although they do not get the benefit of the placate. Aux2Sif 3 can be quite a large heal.
9. Damage is such a non-concern that it has no bearing on this type of build at all. Weapons are equipped for set bonuses, like the Trilithium 3-piece set's increases to healing and resistance, while others might use weapons purely to spread a debuff around, like Suppression Barrage which causes the enemy to deal less damage to your team, making them even easier to keep healed up.