STO Build Advisor – Turning Combat Logs into Actionable Ship Tuning
From raw numbers to clear, human-readable advice for high-end Star Trek Online captains.
The Vision
High-end STO combat is full of variables:
- Weapon types and firing modes
- Traits, consoles, and specialization synergies
- Power levels, firing cycle haste, cooldown chains
- Incoming damage, resistances, heals, and more
Tools like combat log parsers already exist, but they tend to dump data instead of telling a story.
STO Build Advisor aims to bridge that gap:
Read your combat logs, apply a YAML rules engine, and generate concise guidance like:
"You're over-invested in X, under-invested in Y, and here's what to test next."
How It Will Work
Log Ingestion
- The tool reads OSCR / STO combat logs from local disk.
- Sessions can be grouped by map (e.g., ISE, Korfez, Hive) or by build variant.
Signal Extraction
- Damage by source (weapons, torps, pets, abilities)
- Buff uptime and cooldown chaining
- Resistance, deaths, and incoming damage patterns
- Threat generation (for tanks) vs. survivability
Rule Engine (YAML)
Human-readable rules like:
- "If weapon power is frequently below X, recommend more power transfer or fewer energy weapons."
- "If trait A is present but its related ability is barely used, flag as low-value."
- "If hull heals are high but deaths are still frequent, suggest resist/reduction changes."
Narrative Output
The advisor doesn't just show charts; it outputs commentary:
- "Your torpedoes are doing the heavy lifting; consider shifting more console budget to kinetic boosts."
- "You're running History Will Remember but not taking enough fire to stack it quickly — tweak threat tools or reconsider the slot."
- "Weapon power rarely drops below 90 — you could afford to trade some power management for more offensive traits."
Use Cases
- DPS Players – Fine-tune builds to push deeper into high-end performance while keeping runs smooth.
- Tanks – Validate threat tools, taunt uptime, and survivability choices.
- Support / Healers – Understand where healing actually lands and whether resist stacking is helping.
- Tweakers – People like me who love iterating and want a second opinion with receipts.
Relationship to StarDrive
STO Build Advisor pairs naturally with StarDrive:
- StarDrive tunes hardware & OS behavior.
- STO Build Advisor tunes ship & build behavior.
The long-term dream is a bridge between the two:
- "On runs where your CPU/GPU were constrained, your DPS curve looked like this."
- "Here's how system performance and build performance interact."
Status & Roadmap
Current status: Design / Planning.
Next milestones:
- Define the log parsing pipeline
- Draft the first set of YAML rules for common build archetypes
- Build an initial report template with both numbers and narrative
- Iterate with real logs from my own ships and from trusted teammates
The advisor won't replace human theory-crafting.
It will amplify it — turning hours of manual log reading into clear starting points for the next round of tweaks.