What is a Good Goal for DPS?

This is going to be somewhat controversial, but a lot of thought has gone into my philosophy on this subject. I'll give an explanation as to why I believe what I say provide helpful goals to players in the DPS ranges stated below.

Below 10k DPS:
Basically, anyone below 10k really needs a lot of improvement. Even with green gear on a new 60, you should be above this. If you can't do at least this much, your build has serious flaws, regardless of Career path. If you can't do at least 10k, you can't effectively kill Borg Raptors or Probes in Cure or Khitomer Advanced, which means you are of no use in those maps. It means you are forcing others to carry you because you cannot contribute enough value to a team to do your part.

Goals: You should stick to Normal STF queues in order to test and develop a better build there before entering Advanced queues. Do research on this site, Reddit, stoacademy, etc. Find out what is working for other people or try different combinations of abilities until you find a build you can use effectively. (ie do at least 10k with the build) Then, build up from that point.

10-15k:
This is the bare minimum recommended for Advanced STFs. If you are here, you should be able to receive an invite to the 10k DPS Channel and you are proficient at DPS in Star Trek Online. Congratulations!

Goals: Get your weapons, equipment, and consoles to MK XIV and try to get a ship that fits your build. Really focus on getting a ship that is tailored to your build because you need to have the bridge officer stations that will allow for the high-level Tac, Sci, or Eng abilities you need. You should also be investing in the Reputation and Fleet gear for your build. If you're doing this kind of DPS with all epic MK XIV gear and a lobi ship, your build is the problem. For those kinds of people, your goal should be to eliminate serious flaws in your build. I would start with eliminating anything you find on the "Top 10s" posts on this website.

15-25k:
You're on the right track. If you are in this range, it means you have the beginnings of a solid build.

Goals: At this point, you need to run ISA often to practice navigating it and focus on hitting things from the flank, in addition to increasing the rarity of your gear. (For a Tactical captain, this is still a low number with decent gear - I would recommend examining your build and looking into getting consoles, traits, BOFF abilities, and skills that improve weapon power regen, like Emergency power to Weapons, EPS, or Plasmonic Leech.)

25-40k:
This is where players reach the 30k Channel of the DPS league. If you consistently fall into this range, you are doing really solid DPS. 30k DPS or higher is, in my opinion, good DPS. You should be able to tell that missions have become easier and you should consistently be in the top 2 DPS in PUG STFs. This is excellent damage for Engineer and Science Captains - in fact, either one of those hitting over 30k is a real achievement. It's not top 10 in the world or anything that notable, but it's excellent. If you are a Tac, this is just a stepping stone for you - it's good that you made it here, but there is still a lot of room for improvement.
Goals: Players in this range are generally missing or Ignoring something. You may have discovered the great and powerful wizard of FAW and optimized your build for it, but it may be that you aren't managing your power levels well. Your equipment may be good, but the mods might not be right and they might not be epic. Maybe you need to get certain traits or ship traits to improve. You might be using too many defensive abilities or defensive consoles, many of which you won't need or want when you're doing 50k+. In most cases, players that can't break out of this range are not getting an efficient cycle of their abilities - could be your DOFFS, your traits, or how you cycle your abilities. many players have way too many heals and, many times, have the wrong ones. Passive healing is a big thing with the upper DPS player-base. Look into the console that comes on the Valdore - you may be able to run with no shield heal BOFF station abilities if you're a Romulan. Your goal should be to find what you aren't doing, or aren't doing well, and fix it. Focus on the big things - power level management, ability cycling, minimizing the number of heals in your build to just what you need/is most efficient, etc -  and then fine-tune after.

40-60k:

Congratulations! You have reached a rare level of DPS - here you reach the 50k DPS channel. At this point, you probably are well-known in your fleet for your damage output. Missions or Normal STFs are seemingly trivial - success is a forgone conclusion. You can do any space content in game with relative ease, provided you have a semi-competent team that can close Radiation Gateways and don't go to the right in ISA. The hardest thing left for you to do is to improve your DPS in ISA. 

Goals: How do you improve from here? There are only a few, specialized builds that can exceed 60k in a PUG. At this point, you'll need to evaluate what changes you will have to make to reach the next milestone. Usually, it's a matter of getting ALL epic gear and finding one of those builds and acquiring one of the truly elite ships  that are suitable for high-ends builds, such as the Scimitar (Especially the Scimitar!), the Tal Shar Adapted BattleCruiser, etc. Breaking out of this range gets real expensive, real fast. You need to decide if you're happy with your current, near-elite level of play or if you're going to reach for STO greatness.

60k-100k:

You have reached the elite levels of DPS. Why not have a distinction at 75K? Because most people who can routinely break 60k, pretty much just need a good low-lag run with a Recluse Nanny or some decent Sci Captains to break 75k. At that point, you're in the 75k Channel - you don't need advice from this blog for the massess anymore - you just need to theorycraft and test those theories to develop a new build or simply copy one of the handful of builds that will break 100k.

Goals: Get perfect, epic gear and theorycraft with other elite players.

100k+:

Congratulations, you win at STO!

200k+:

Please stop. The epicness of your DPS is causing server lag.

Recommended Consoles

To make sure people know about what consoles are out there and what the best consoles are for dps, I will list the current preferred consoles for various high dps builds, broken down by type. And, there will be some that are slightly outdated from current Meta, but still valuable - especially to F2P players with limited access to Lobi.

Universal:
Bioneural Infusion Circuits
Tachyokinetic Converter
Assimilated Module
Zero Point Energy Conduit
Plasmonic Leech

Engineering:
Conductive RCS Accelerator [EPS]

EPS Flow Regulator Consoles

Science:
Plasma-Generating Weapon Signature Nullifier Fleet Embassy Science Consoles

Tactical:
Fleet Spire Tactical Vulnerability Locator Consoles

Best Build for New Players

A2B or Aux to Bat

I get asked often by Fleetmates and people from PUGs (Pick Up Groups) that want to know the trick, the secret, to DPS. It's as if they believe I'm just exploiting to get the numbers I posted in chat. The truth is, there is no secret to good DPS. It's about the build and quality of gear. Very often, it's things people refuse to want to believe or things that just never occurred to them because they have a limited view of the game. (Like not knowing the benefits of playing as a Romulan.) To get beyond just good, you have to get near-perfect gear, a good build, and work in a skilled team to maximize damage potential - there are a few tricks to that, but I digress. What is "good" DPS? Ask 10 different people and you might get 8 or more different answers. I define good DPS as being over 30k DPS in Infected: The Conduit (Advanced). My reasoning is simple: you did more than just get MK XIV equipment and you can accomplish any content in the game with a team full of 30k+ players - rather easily, in fact. So how in the world do you get 30k DPS?

There are tons of ways, but for a beginner, there is ONE build that is simple, easy, relatively cost-effective, and is the easiest to keybind: Aux 2 Bat (A2B). A2B is a simple build based around the idea that reducing Cooldowns (CDs) and repeatedly dumping power into the weapons power level will get you good, reliable damage.

What you need:
1. Three Technician Duty Officers that reduce cooldowns on Bridge officer abilities, in Active Space duty. (Preferably purple, but blue is ok to start.)
2. A ship with:

• 2 Lieutenant (or higher rank) Engineering Bridge Officer stations.
• 1 Lt Commander (or higher rank) Tactical Bridger Officer station.
• At least 7 Weapons
• Preferably a Cruiser with Cruiser Commands
• Perferably T6
• Perferably Intel

3.  Seven, MK XIV  high-CrtD Beam Arrays (of the same energy type) and the Kinetic Cutting Beam. (Alternatively, 4 or 5 Dual Beam Banks, with 3 omnis.)
4. The 4-pc Iconian Set, with Ultra-Rare Warp core so that is gets the [AMP] mod. This provide excellent bonuses to energy weapon damage (3pc) and a team-wide buff that increases damage by 33% (4pc), with additional defensive benefits. (Alternatively, you swap out for a Fleet Warp/Singularity Core from the Fleet Spire with the [AMP] mod, in order to gain additional Weapons power gain from EPS. OR, you may swap out the engines for the Romulan Advanced Impulse Engines to take advantage of the bonus to Attack Patterns skill. It is important to maintain the 3-pc set bonus from the Iconian set.)
5. Plasmonic Leech console.
6. A Fleet "Locator" tactical console for each Tactical console slot on your ship.

Basic Bridge Officer layout:

1. Tactical Team 1/Attack Pattern Beta 1/Fire at Will 3
2. Engineering Team 1/Auxiliary to Emergency Battery 1/Emergency Power to Weapons 3/ Directed Energy Modulation 3
3. Emergency Power to Shields 1/Auxiliary to Emergency Battery 1
4. Science Team 1/Hazard Emitters 2

For your fifth Bridge Officer, you'll need to find other Tactical, Engineering, or Intel damage buff/debuff abilities, like Kemocite, Focused Assault, or Override Subsystem Safties. Try to fit as many damage buffs as possible. (Alternatively, you can get more healing abilities, but it limits your DPS. It should also be noted that most heals are severely impacted by having 0 Aux power - some notable exceptions are Science Team and Engineering Team.)

How It works:

The basic idea is to cycle through all your abilities as quickly as possible. Maintaining buffs continuously is impossible due to minimum cooldowns, but the goal is to use them as rapidly as possible. At then end of each cycle of your abilities, you want to hit one of your copies of A2B. You're basically playing DPS whack-a-mole.

Ships it will NOT work on:

1. Ships that cannot slot 2 copies of A2B.
2. Ships with Commander Science BOFF station. (LT Commander is often not optimal, either. The exception being that it is a Science/Intel station.)
3. Ships with only 6 weapons.

Notes:
1. You should invest in Ship Traits (in addition to Rep or Personal traits) that will benefit your build, such as All Hands on Deck, Supremacy, or Emergency Weapon Cycle.
2. You will need to ensure your weapon power level is maintained at 125. The A2B build itself helps with this, but you may need a Cruiser with the Command Array ability to reduce power consumption from weapons, weapons batteries, EPS consoles, etc.
3. It is this author's belief that any ship with a Commander Engineering BOFF Station is best suited for A2B.
4. This build is highly recommended for Tactical Captains and is efficient for Engineering Captains, as well. Science Captains, generally, should avoid this build. If you are a Science captain, the reasons for being one are contrary to the effects of this build because Aux2Bat reduces Aux power to zero.

Top 10 Signs You're Doing it Wrong - Weapons Edition

10. You're mixing Torpedoes with Beam Arrays. (ie Arrays that are not omni-directional)

9. You're using Dual Beam Banks or Dual Heavy Cannons on a ship with a 4/4 weapons configuration.

8. You're using Beam Arrays (ie Arrays that are not omni-directional) on an Escort.

7. You're using any kind of mines, except the Nukara Web Mines.

6. You've got a Torpedo in one of your Aft Weapon slots.

5. You're using Dual Heavy Cannons and Beam Arrays on the same ship.

4. You have an Omni-directional Beam Array in one of your Fore Weapon slots.

3. You can't target a single enemy with all of your weapons at the same time.

2. You're using Single Cannons.

1. You're using more than 1 Energy type for your energy weapons.



Hopefully, none of these things apply to you. If it does, please take this constructively. There is probably a much better way to build your ship and this could be your wake up call.

Recommended Ships

This is NOT the end-all-be-all list of ships you can do good DPS with in STO. Truthfully, gear makes as much, if not more, of a difference than the ship you choose. However, some are better suited to maximizing certain builds or are just straight-forward/easy to build.

I'll make a separate category for each faction and for each faction's ships that are good for the popular Aux 2 Bat builds. (If a ship is listed twice, that means it fits both A2B and standard builds.) I'll also note if a Dual Beam Banks (DBBs) or Beam Arrays (BAs) work especially well on that particular ship. (If I don't list one or the other, I'm saying it can use either.)

Romulan:
Scimitar Dreadnaught
Jaeih Class Pilot Warbird (DBB)

Romulan Aux2Bat:
Vastam Command Battlecruiser (BA)
Scimitar Dreadnaught

Klingon:
Klavek Class Pilot Raptor (DBB)
Fleet Mat'Ha Raptor (DBB)

Klingon Aux2Bat:
Ty'Gokor Command Battlecruiser (BA)
Kurak Battle Cruiser (DBB)
Fleet Qib Intel Battlecruiser (BA)
Fleet Qin Flight Deck Raptor (T6) (DBB)
Fleet Mat'Ha Raptor (DBB)


Federation:
Icarus Pilot Escort (DBB)
Mercury Pilot Escort (DBB)
Fleet Heavy Escort Carrier T6 (DBB)

Federation Aux2Bat:
Fleet Eclipse Intel Cruiser (BA)
Fleet Arbiter Battlecruiser
Presidio Command Battlecruiser (BA) 
Fleet Heavy Escort Carrier T6 (DBB)

Cross-Faction:
Tal Shiar Adapted Battlecruiser (BA)
Breen Sarr Theln Carrier (BA)
Krenim Imperium Warship (DBB)
Hazari Destroyer (DBB)

Cross Faction Aux2Bat:
Vaadwaur Manasa Assault Escort (DBB)
Vaadwaur Astika Heavy Battlecruiser
Xindi-Reptilian Contortrix Escort (DBB
Krenim Imperium Warship (DBB)

Cross Faction low cost options:
Nihydron Destroyer