Orion Seismic Charges is a Common Forbidden Tech that raises your ship’s damage against hostiles, from 5% when the buff first activates up to 70% at max tier and level. A second buff pays out extra Ship XP on hostile kills. It equips to a ship rather than a crew, and its whole job is making hostile grinding faster and cheaper. For a Common piece, that damage curve does a lot of work.
What Orion Seismic Charges does
The damage buff is the reason to run this piece. It is live from tier 1, so the item does something useful the moment you unlock it, and it climbs steeply at the top of the level range. The Ship XP buff arrives later, at tier 2, and it speeds up how quickly the ship carrying the charges levels itself while you grind.
| Buff | Unlocks at tier | Unlock value | Max value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Increases Damage against hostiles | 1 | 5% | 70% |
| Increases Ship Experience hostile rewards | 2 | 1% | 25% |
Values are current as of the latest game data. The scaling is back-loaded: damage sits at 5% at level 1 and 18% at level 10, then jumps to 70% by level 20. A half-invested copy is a modest boost. A maxed one is close to a flat damage multiplier on every hostile you shoot, which shortens fights and raises how many kills you get out of a sitting.
How to get Orion Seismic Charges
Being a Common piece, it unlocks with Common Forbidden Fragments, which you spend in the Forbidden Tech refinery. Those fragments come from Q’s Trials and from special rewards. Because it sits in the cheapest rarity band, it is one of the more approachable pieces to unlock outright rather than something you chip away at for months.
Unlocking the item is only half of it. You also need a free Forbidden Tech slot on the ship you want to equip, and slots open with Forbidden Tech Fusion Rods. The same rods pull a piece back off a ship if you want to move it, so budget for them before you commit the charges to a hull you might rotate out. Rods come from the Forbidden Tech refinery and the store.
Upgrading Orion Seismic Charges
Two tracks run in parallel. Tiering up raises the level cap and switches on the later buff, and leveling up scales the values you already have. Tier 1 caps the item at level 5, tier 3 at level 15, and tier 4, the maximum, at level 20. Tier-ups cost Forbidden Tech Reactors and Forbidden Tech Tier-Up Catalysts; levels cost Reactors and Forbidden Tech Protomatter. Probability Devices raise the chance an upgrade attempt succeeds.
| Tier | Level cap | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5 | No cost (starting tier) |
| 3 | 15 | 32 Forbidden Tech Reactor, 450 Forbidden Tech Tier-Up Catalyst |
| 4 | 20 | 32 Forbidden Tech Reactor, 500 Forbidden Tech Tier-Up Catalyst |
Reaching tier 4 from the start costs 96 Forbidden Tech Reactor and 2,250 Forbidden Tech Tier-Up Catalyst in total. Taking the item from level 2 to level 20 costs 576 Forbidden Tech Reactor and 13,230 Forbidden Tech Protomatter across all levels. Reactors are the shared bottleneck across both tracks, and they come from Daily Goals and the store, so claiming your dailies is the steady way to keep upgrades moving.
One planning note: the damage payoff is concentrated in the last few levels. Stopping at tier 3 leaves most of the buff on the table, so treat level 20 as the real target rather than a stretch goal.
Best ships and uses for Orion Seismic Charges
The game files this piece under the Hostiles use case, and the buffs agree. Put it on whatever ship does your daily hostile grinding, whether that is an interceptor clearing swarms, an explorer farming a specific faction, or a battleship working through higher-level targets. Both buffs only fire against hostiles, so it does nothing for you in PvP, on armadas, or while mining. If you keep a dedicated grinder, that hull is the right home for it.
The Ship XP buff nudges the choice further. Pairing the charges with a ship you are actively trying to level compounds the benefit: faster kills feed more XP, and the buff adds more on top of each one. Our hostile guide covers which targets are worth farming at each stage.
Orion Seismic Charges in Star Trek
These charges have no screen appearance. They are a game-original piece of equipment built on top of real Star Trek material, and the game’s own description supplies the story: the Orion Syndicate traded them until the Federation banned them, and detonating one produces a gravimetric gradient like a collapsed dwarf star, doing heavy collateral damage to nearby ecosystems along with enemy ships.
The Orions themselves are canon and have been since the original series pilot, “The Cage,” where Orion slave women appear in Pike’s illusion on Talos IV. Later series filled in the Syndicate, a criminal organization operating in and around Federation space, dealing in slaving, smuggling, and arms. Banned weapons technology moving through Syndicate hands fits that history well enough that the item reads as plausible even without a canon source.
Are Orion Seismic Charges worth it?
Yes, for almost anyone who grinds hostiles, which is almost everyone. A Common piece that ends at 70% damage against your most-farmed target type is strong value for the fragments it costs, and the entry price makes it one of the first Forbidden Tech items worth unlocking. Take it to tier 4 and level 20 rather than parking it early, since that is where the damage actually lands. Players who live in PvP or armadas should spend elsewhere.