Intel team is a bridge officer ability used on many builds. This grants the user an amount of stealth for 9 seconds, as well as some other effects outside the scope of this discussion.
Using the trait "Fresh From R&R," team abilities may be activated every 10 seconds, and Intel Team itself has a 1 second activation time. This means that a build with adequate methods of cooldown, or two copies of this ability, can use Intel Team every 10 seconds on a constant cycle, resulting in continuous stealth.
Ships under the effect of Intel team appear in a transparent greenish color and many times cannot be targeted until the effect wears off. They can still be visually tracked by those with a keen eye, but with various other visual effects and the high speeds of these battles make that difficult especially for inexperienced players.
Whether you intend to build a ship like this, or are learning how to combat them, this section will provide important information for you.
I think it is important to understand how these types of ships work in detail, whether creating one or fighting against one.
The first step is to choose a ship that has access to Intel abilities. Since the Intel Revamp changes deployed in March 2022, all three ranks of Intel Team now grant the same amount of stealth, 4680. Ships like the Scryer and Daemosh are popular science platforms, and the Deimos and Legendary JHAS are popular beam builds that have intel seating.
Now that we have our ship, it is simple to acquire the trait "Fresh from R&R," which allows team abilities to be used every 10 seconds. Then, we can either slot a single copy of Intel Team with high cooldown management like Photonic Officer and/or The Boimler Effect, or alternatively slot two copies of Intel Team to guarantee the maximum uptime. Many times, we may suffer effects that extend our cooldowns so having two copies is a good way to prepare for the worst case scenario.
With Intel teams on a constant cycle every 10 seconds or so, we now have the core of the build completed, and should be benefiting from the stealth 80% of the time or better.
Next, we'll focus on increasing the amount of stealth that this offers through a few methods.
First, bridge officers like Reman Infilitrators or Pirates offer a stealth bonus. However, these bonuses do not stack with each other - thank goodness. This means that if you have a Superior Infiltrator and a Pirate officer active, you will only receive the 200 stealth bonus from the Infiltrator, not both 200 + 150 stealth. That is now 4880 stealth (max).
Second, the ability Emergency Power to Auxiliary provides a flat 100 bonus to stealth, as well as additional auxiliary power of course. Each point of Aux power also increases stealth, so if we activate Emergency Power to Auxiliary 3 and that sets our ship to 100 aux power, that means we have 200 stealth in total from this ability. That's 5080 stealth now.
Third, in the skill tree there is a choice given after spending 10 points in the Science category. Choosing stealth here grants an additional 100 stealth even to Intel team. That's 5180.
Fourth, the trait Exitus Acta Probat, available from a tradeable box for KDF characters or from the Section 31 Science Destroyer for everyone else, grants a stealth value based on your ships "base" stealth value. It is not a flat 500 as referenced in other documents, and if you have the other options listed above, you should get close to 540 stealth from this trait. This pushes your stealth rating as high as 5720. This is plenty to deal with the majority of player ships.
There is a final piece to the puzzle, and one I've been very outspoken about the balance of, and that is Attack Pattern Lambda. Lambda provides a perception reduction to ships you hit with energy weapons, reducing their ability to target stealthed ships, including yours. If you are able to fit in both Intel Team and Attack Pattern Lambda 3, you will reduce their perception by 450 points. Consider this effectively the same as if you had 6170 stealth against whichever target you are attacking with Lambda. Note that in team fights, other ships will not be affected by this.
Total: 5720 Stealth (+450 when enemies are affected by Lambda 3)
Now that we know how Intel Team ships are built, this provides us with two options for fighting them.
The first is easy - ignore perception entirely and focus on outright damage. Ships rotating Intel Teams have a window of opportunity between activations - Intel Team takes 1 second to activate, and another 1 second before the stealth bonus takes effect. This means you have a 2 second window, every 11 seconds, where you can attack and deal as much damage as you like. Many high damage builds will attempt to hit this window full force and this can be especially humbling for pilots whose builds hinge entirely on the stealth mechanic.
The second option is to increase our ship's perception, allowing us to target enemy ships even while they are under the effect of stealth abilities, like Intel Team but also Cloaks.
Some basics - Stealth drops off over distance. The closer you are to a Stealthed ship, the less effective they are at hiding from you. This is easily calculated by the formula (Perception - Stealth) /50 = KM. The result is the distance you must be within in order to target and attack a ship with a stealth value. All ships have a base perception value of 5000, which can be increased by equipment, skills, auxiliary power, etc.
There are many options for increasing perception but I'll list out a common configuration here.
First, the Jem'Hadar Deflector, available from the mission Operation Gamma for free, provides 2.5% stealthsight and 31.9 perception. Stealthsight can be converted into perception easily - in this case, 2.5% is 250/2 = 125 perception. This means that this deflector provides 156.9 perception for our ship.
Second, Emergency Power to Auxiliary also provides a perception bonus, noted on the tooltip as "X km perception radius." This is confusing, but in short, the 5 km Perception Radius from the Rank 3 ability is equivalent to 250 perception.
Third, the console Tachyon Detection Field which can be acquired for a little dilithium by purchasing the Tier 3 Nebula class ship is a universal console that can be used on any ship, and it provides a perception boost while active for 30 seconds. This console has a 1 minute cooldown that can be reduced by using traits like Unconventional Systems. While active, this is another 236 perception.
Fourth, your auxiliary power rating increases your perception, but this amount is different depending on the type of ship you fly. Standard escorts and cruisers are subject to a 0.4x modifier, which means if you have 100 aux power, you will only get 40 perception. In the skill tree, if you have spent 15 points in Science, you can double this value by choosing the perception option, so you'll have 80 perception. Science ships have a better benefit, as their modifier is 1.2x, and Science Dreadnoughts have a 1.6x modifier. This means a Science Dreadnought with 100 aux power can have up to 320 additional perception from power alone. This makes science ships prime builds for anti-stealth.
Fifth, some specialization bridge officer abilities also grant perception, but this will depend on your specific ship. Intel Team now grants perception, up to 350 at Rank 3, as well as Attack Pattern Lambda, which grants 450 at Rank 3. Lambda does have one huge glaring disadvantage however, in order to get the perception increase, you must fire an energy weapon. This means you might get soft-locked into a situation where you are unable to target a stealthed enemy without more perception, yet have no way of increasing perception because you cannot fire on that stealthed enemy.
Sixth, Science Captains have the captain ability "Sensor Scan" which provides an additional 5% stealthsight, or 250 perception. This ability also subtracts 500 stealth from enemies, and has a 3km AoE effect so if used skillfully, you can increase your perception while also decreasing the stealth of a target which helps your entire team target them more easily.
Last, the Intel Specilization can provide additional perception at Tier 2, so some players will set Intel as their secondary spec for this increase. This increase scales with Aux power as well, so it can be unreliable depending on the rest of your build.
So how does this all come together - on my Legendary JHAS build, I am slotting a number of perception boosting tools in an attempt to target ships maximizing stealth, so I'll use that example. All of that comes together to provide roughly 6350 perception, so be sure to check out that build video here.
Going back to the formula before, (6350 - 5720) / 50 = 12.6 km. This effectively means I can target a stealthed ship all the way past weapons range as long as my buffs are all up, effectively negating their stealth entirely.
However, that ship can and will use Lambda against me, reducing my perception. This would result in something more like this: ((6350 - 450) - 5720) /50 = 3.6km. That means while under the effect of their Lambda, I have to be within 3.6km in order to target them, so piloting will play a huge role in how effective I can be against this enemy. It is absolutely worth noting that the debuff from Lambda can be cleared with Tactical Team, so if I use this I can more effectively fight ships using both Intel and Lambda abilities.
Now, the issue that plagues this system is that ships that lack either Intel, Pilot, or both specialization seating are at a distinct disadvantage, and ships maximizing their stealth as above will be completely untargetable at any range. For example, if the most perception you can get is 5550 (a high value for non-spec builds), then (5550 - 5720) / 50 = Negative km. That's very disappointing from a game design and balance perspective and something I hope will change in the future. This means that any ship that falls into this category is forced to using the first option - deal all damage during the 2 second window in between Intel team activations. Some players really excel at this but it pushes the skill floor up quite high and allows players with relatively lower skill to punch above their weight too easily.
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