STFC Knowledge Base

Wave Defense

Wave Defense

Wave defense is a group starbase defense game within Star Trek Fleet Command. It basically involved a star base a the center of the map, with ten successive waves of ships coming from the edges of the system to attack it. Five defenders with two ships each will attempt to destroy all the waves coming into the system.

Each wave gets succesively more difficult, so while lower level ops will find the first few waves doable, it is nearly impossible to progress past them at this point. As an ops 49 at release, in a group with four 55+ ships, we were able to do the "easy" wave defense up to round ten, where in round ten only the ops 58 was still alive. Within my alliance, no one has finished all ten waves as yet. The assumption is that once people level up reputation and start to get all the research, these should become much easier. The big wave defenses are almost impossible at this point for anyone under Ops 56 with the rare g5 ships, and even then only go a few rounds.

These waves include all the specialty ship hostiles, such as Swarm Ships, Hirogen Hunters, Borg Probes, Apex Hostiles, and Texas Class vessels. It may be useful to have one of each specialty ship in a group, when possible, but again this is potentially more for the future once research is more available.

Here is a quick breakdown of the smaller wave hostiles (this image was randomly sent to me, it looks like JulesVern's work, but not I'm not sure exactly who has made it.). These hostiles are considerably stronger than normal hostiles of those levels, so take the level with a grain of salt.

Strategy

There are currently many thoughts as to the best strategy. What we have been doing so far is this, though it may change over time:

In the preliminary stage, you can change ships as many times as you want before it starts. So you can bring in a Cerritos, buff your biggest ship, then have it warp home and bring in another big ship. You can also use this to give everyone in your alliance the buff from Titan-A.

If you are trying to get a full alliance group, you can leave a wave WITHOUT losing directives from the preliminary stage. So just leave and start another with your alliance mates till you fill it if you like.

Attacker Positions and Types

Below you'll find the type of hostiles and the direction from which they're coming.

Crewing

Wave defense hostiles are normal hostiles, and so you can use the standard hostile crews on them. If you are low level, you must use these crews on them. At higher levels, it is more important that you are speedy to kill as many hostiles as possible, as there isn't enough time to catch them all when you have normal hostile crews on. So higher levels should be using Pan, Klaa, Una, Kuron, and Ent-E Riker to make your ships speedy. It is also quite clear that Ent-E Riker with two side officers is going to be one of the ideal crews for Wave Defense, so these officers will become a priority with this arc.

Section 31

Section 31 as a reputation is very useful, providing many valuable things in the store. The research isn't research as in the research trees, but is instead favors within the faction store of Section 31. This research is very strong, increasing base mitigation stats by up to 500%, hull health by 1000%, movement speed, etc. WHILE in a wave. So as this adds up, it should make the wave defenses significantly easier.

Section 31 Favor List

Section 31 Faction Store

Favors

Transmitters by Ops

Reputation in Store

Reputation rewards are based on your current rep -- the higher the rep you have, the more rep you get.

Armada Speedups Needed

A very nice favor is the Operation Hermes, which has the abiity to quick start armadas. You'll get the materials to start them from the Facade building. These will allow you to drop an armada start time to 30 seconds. So once you've got your people there, you can use this to start it quickly.