My DPS Experiment: 30K Heavy Escort Carrier

So though the sage wisdom of many on this sub-reddit, and some conversations with the people I socialize with in-game, I had an epiphany of sorts. I, like many others simply focused on getting the absolute best gear/traits/etc. I possibly could in an effort to up my DPS. Never really stopping to take the time to really understand how everything works together - Let alone understand what a "build" is (great post btw).

To give a bit of backstory, a captain I fly with on a regular basis was disappointed in his DPS after making some pretty significant upgrades to his ship. I could certainly empathize with his situation. He dumped a bunch of hard earned resources into his ship, and didn't see the returns he had expected. It was then when I finally understood - or at least got a better understanding - of what a "build" is, and how gear is really just "icing on the cake."

So I decided to run an experiment to see how much DPS I could pull with the most "sub-optimal" gear I had in my inventory (link below). Not sure if this would qualify as a budget build, but everything on this ship can be obtained in-game via missions, rep system, or fleet stores. The only things raised above their initial quality level were the three locators because I honestly had nothing worse in my inventory. Boffs are three SROs, a Nausicaan Engie, and a Mr. Potato-head Sci. Boff abilities probably aren't optimal either, but it's what I through together :P Doffs are 3 Rare DCEs, 2 VR Maint engineers, and one VR Warp Core Engineer.

http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=dpsexp_10873

Enjoy!