Star Trek Online · career

Tactical macros

The damage career. Tactical captains bring Attack Pattern Alpha, Fire on My Mark and Go Down Fighting, and are the reason most damage records look the way they do. Their abilities are almost all short cooldowns, which makes them the career that benefits most from a well-built firing bind.

20 macros

Alpha Strike
Tactical
```
/bind t "team Alpha strike $$ +TrayExecByTray 1 0 $$ +TrayExecByTray 1 1 $$ +TrayExecByTray 1 2"
```
Fires your damage cooldowns together and announces it. Tactical burst windows are short and stack multiplicatively, so opening with half of them is close to wasting all of them.
Attack Pattern Rotation
Tactical
```
/bind space "+power_exec Distribute_Shields $$ +TrayExecByTray 1 3 $$ +TrayExecByTray 0 0"
```
Chains your attack patterns onto the main firing key so they refresh whenever they come up. Attack patterns are short enough that manual tracking always loses uptime.
Bind a Command to a Key
General
```
/bind numpad4 "say Engaging"
```
The foundation of every bind in this library. The key comes first, the command goes in quotes, and anything you can type into chat can be attached this way.
Call It Out and Fire It
General
```
/bind h "team Heals incoming $$ +TrayExecByTray 1 0"
```
Chains a team message onto an ability so your group sees the call the instant it goes out. Used for heals, tanking cooldowns and anything the rest of the team needs to react to.
Create a Named Alias
General
```
/alias camp "logout"
```
Aliases live in CommandAliases.txt in your Live folder and let you wrap a long chain behind a short name. Essential once your binds get long enough to be unreadable.
Distribute Shield Power
General
```
/bind space "+TrayExecByTray 0 0 $$ +power_exec Distribute_Shields"
```
Balances shields across all four facings. It has no cooldown, so it belongs in every attack bind you own — the difference between a captain who does this constantly and one who does not is enormous.
Enable the Combat Log
General
```
/combatlog 1
```
Turns on the log that every parser reads. Nothing shows up in your damage numbers until this is on, and it resets more often than you would expect.
Fire All Weapons
General
```
/bind space "GenSendMessage HUD_Root FirePhasers $$ +TrayExecByTray 0 0"
```
Adds the actual weapon trigger to your attack chain. Without this line a tray bind fires your abilities but never pulls the trigger, which is a surprisingly common bug in home-made binds.
Fire an Ability by Tray and Slot
General
```
/bind q "+TrayExecByTray 0 0"
```
TrayExecByTray triggers whatever sits in a given tray and slot, both zero-indexed. Because it names the position rather than the ability, the same bind survives every ship swap and loadout change.
Fire on My Mark with Call-Out
Tactical
```
/bind g "team Mark is up - burn it $$ +TrayExecByTray 1 4"
```
Applies the damage resistance debuff and tells the team, so everyone dumps their burst into the same window rather than spreading it out.
Ground Combat Chain
General
```
/bind space "+TrayExecByTray 2 0 $$ +TrayExecByTray 2 1 $$ +TrayExecByTray 2 2"
```
The ground equivalent of the spacebar bind. Ground trays are separate from space trays, so this needs its own bind file if you play a lot of ground content.
Load a Saved Bind File
General
```
/bind_load_file mybinds.txt
```
Reads a bind file back in. Keep one file per ship build and setting up a new character becomes a single command instead of an evening.

Other STO careers

Every career shares the same macro syntax, so a good idea usually ports across.