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Drain Expertise
Lieutenant Commander


This skill increases your command of Drain Effects, including both your effectiveness when using them. and your ability to resist the same effects. Drain Effects include all of the following:

  • Shield Drain/Damage
  • Subsystem Power Drain
  • Subsystem Offline
  • Power Transfer Rate Debuffs

Each point of Drain Expertise provides both of the following:

  • +0.5% Base Effectiveness for Outgoing Drains
  • +1% Resistance to Incoming Drains

Overview[]

Drain Expertise is a Lieutenant Commander Science skill that is available to all Lieutenant Commanders. There are two total skills in this chain and 1 specialty skill, each costing 1 Space Point to purchase.

  • The first skill node gives +60 Drain Expertise.
    • Improved Drain Expertise gives an additional +40 for a total of +100 Drain Expertise.
    • Drain Infection adds an Electrical Damage DoT when using drain abilities.

Abilities affected[]

Bridge Officer abilities[]


Console abilities[]

Power drains:
Shield drains:


Weaponry[]

Many different weapon procs have drain effects.

Power drains:
The standard Polaron weapon proc reduces all of the target's subsystem power levels by 25 for 5 seconds. This proc, and other power drain procs, can be found on most Polaron-based weaponry, as well as some non-Polaron weapons:
Standard
Polaron
Dominion
Polaron
Elite Fleet
Polaron
Phased
Polaron
Protonic
Polaron
Polarized
Disruptor
Disruptor-based
Assorted
Others

Not all Polaron-based weapons have drain procs, such as Chronometric Polaron, Piezo-Polaron, Thoron-Infused Polaron and Vaadwaur Polaron emitters.

Shield drains:
The standard Tetryon weapon proc deals bonus shield damage to all of the target's shield facings. This proc, and other shield drain procs, can be found on most Tetryon-based weaponry, as well as some non-Tetryon weapons:
Standard
Tetryon
Destabilizing
Tetryon
Dominion
Polaron
Polaron-based
Elite Fleet
Tetryon
Phased
Tetryon
Piercing
Tetryon
Refracting
Tetryon
Resonating
Tetryon
Assorted
Others

Not all Tetryon-based weapons have drain procs, such as Antichroniton Infused Tetryon, Diffusive Tetryon, or the Competitive Wargames Tetryon weapons.


Other[]

Includes set bonuses, traits, and innate abilities.

Abilities that are not affected by Drain Expertise:

Modifiers[]

Strategy[]

Science Vessels and Carriers have built-in Subsystem Targeting abilities, putting four bridge officer drain abilities at your disposal. Even if your ship is built around using projectiles, you can equip at least a single energy weapon just to execute these abilities continuously.

Many drain items and abilities have a degree of synergy with one another:

Note[]

The current maximum drainX that can be put on a ship with no buffs (circa 2021) is 985.