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Carrier vs Battle Carrier. what are the advantages and disadvantages of each?
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I am currently leveling up my first klingon as a science officer. I have been told from some of my friends who have leveled klingon characters to the maximum level that I would be a fool if I did not get a carrier for my science officer so I am curious to know what are the advantages and disadvantages of each the carrier and the battle carrier for a science officer that is going to specialize in space combat. this is Star Trek after all not ground Trek :-)
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This is very interesting topic. I used to play as science officer with carrier but felt that as sci officer I wont get enough tanking power to be competitive enough. Sci is still a very good option, don't get me wrong and with good build you can cause serious havoc.
For Kar'fi (tactical carrier) tactical or sci captain will be very competitive, also in future Kar'fi seems to get update which will be interesting to see.
At his moment I personally think that engineer/carrier is better choice for Vo'quv because natural engineering skills runs smoothly with carrier. Also with aid of your friend you can train your sci Boff with rank 3 science skills of your choice.
But then this is only my opinion in this matter. If you play with highly tweaked premade team designed to support your sci/carrier you will propably be very competitive, but for more casual PvP I'd recommend engineer/carrier.
Why?
As a science Captain you have 4 important things:
1. Subnucleonic beam - which will remove buffs on your target and set his powers into cooldown hell. Having a flock of BoPs pummeling said target when you subnuke it can rack you in some nice damage and a possible kill.
2.) Sensor scan: increases the damage the carirer pets can do. by A LOT. Oh and it also is a great boon to your team mates too.
3.) Dampening field CAN protect your pets of you stick close with them.
4.) Photonic fleet: because spamming even more ships is good.
The Voquvs other advantages are: a decent tank for survivability and following from that good team play possibilities. Hazard emitters, Transfer shields, extend shields... etc.
I usualy do not go reccomend doing a offensive sci power build with these, since being able to buff and heal is in my opinion the better option for this ship. be the anchor.
the karfi is gold for engineering captains and tacs.
Its boff setup and overall ship stats suggest a more nasty, aggressive approach. Engineers get increased tank, tacticals more damage.
It tends to work well enoguh with sci, again because you can strip your targets defenses before striking but its defenses suffer for it.
This really comes down to your personal style of playing.
Yoquv for the more hands off aproach, letting pets do the damage while you strike tactically with your weapons.
Karfi for the personal touch: laying waste on some dood with your heavy weapons while some pets fly around.
For survivability, fire off Delta, full aux Scan and FBP3 and people stop shooting you real fast.
I haven't found a vo'quv cannon build all that viable except in certain pve mission (turrets yes, cannons no), whereas a kar'fi with cannons seems workable.
The kar'fi is a very odd ship to fly. It's a compromise of everything. It's not as good at anything as something else, but it can heal, sort of tank and sort of dps moderately well. I'm not sure if that makes it awesome, or terrible. Certainly if you *know* you're going to tank or heal take a vo'quv but if you aren't sure the kar'fi gives you a lot of flexibility on the fly.
Science Officers are by no means best in a carrier, they're just as well off in a BoP, or a BC if you're a healer. However, to answer your question, I'll break down which is superior by category for you to let you decide which fits your playstyle:
Maneuverability:
Kar'fi
Tanking:
Vo'Quv
On-board Firepower:
Kar'fi
Deployable Firepower:
Vo'Quv
Group Support:
Vo'Quv
Basically, the Kar'fi is a fine ship if it's supported but it's survivability is suspect compared to the Vo'Quv when it's alone; on the other hand the Kar'fi doesn't need it's deployables nearly as much as the Vo'Quv does to reach it's potential.
Ultimately it is up to you and how you want to play the game, hope this helps
As a Sci Officer Gorn, I've played with both carriers extensively. My personal conclusion was...
Vo'Quv
Very good support ship, but plan on just being that really, support. You'll turn slower than a pregnant whale, but you can take a gigantic beating and keep on rolling. My personal preference was to fill every weapon slot with turrets so you can go with alot less weapon power and dedicate more to aux and shields.
Kar'fi
What can I say? It's my new favorite ship as a Gorn Sci. It looks like a cross between the devil's freight train and a porcupine. It has a decent turn rate, so you can slap some cannons on this sucker and push out with more offensive than defensive. You'll end up being less of a team support ship though and an aggressive attacker; Once you get this ship down pat, you'll have a majority of people avoiding you 1 on 1, or even 2 on 1.
Here are my personal reasons:
Vo'Quv has one less weapon. For giving up this weapon, it gains a hangar bay. A hangar bay is *infinitely* more valuable than a single weapon slot - and requires absolutely zero weapon power investment to to use.
To explain this in detail, 1 hangar bay can be worth up to 9 fighters or 3 birds of prey, and either of those things carry their own photon torpedoes and cannons/turrets - essentially they're multiple weapons systems all unto themselves.
The Vo'Quv *is* slow - no doubt about it; but it's also ridiculously hard to kill in the right hands, and while 6 guns isn't a lot, when you take the proper Tactical skills* you can dish out solid damage on your own while softening up targets for your fighters.
I *highly* recommend investing in at least 1 beam fore and aft to make use of Target Subsystems. I know some people think it's not worth much; but I honestly feel it's a very useful ability, and one that if used well can be just what you need to break an opponent's shields for your fighter's torpedo salvo to get through.
I'll add that while the Vo'Quv is a very tanky ship, you can make use of things like Scramble Sensors III and Jam Sensors III to make even targeting you a pain in the butt; without really detracting from your ability to take a pounding directly.
The Kar'Fi meanwhile gains a Lt level Tac Officer slot... at the cost of your Lt. Commander level Engineering power, and one of your Lt. Science powers. By itself that would be OK, but you also lose hull and crew, and while you pick up a gun... it costs you a hangar bay. As I noted above, hangar bays are much, much more valuable than guns.
Now here's the big problem with the Kar'Fi - Not only are you losing a hangar bay, but what you can actually put IN that hangar bay is not very good imo.
The S'kul fighters are, imo, a total joke. The problem is that they're main selling point is also their greatest weakness: They ram the enemy ship after awhile. Now, ramming does some reasonable damage - but it deprives you of a fighter's constant DPS, and the S'kul fighter's DPS is, as I recall, already below that of a To'Duj in a straight fight.
So you're giving up a hangar bay, and you're losing fighters not only to them getting shot down normally, but also by them ramming the enemy ship - whether it has shields up or not - ultimately making keeping a high quantity of fighters out very, very difficult.
The other option, the Fer'jai frigate is far, far superior; in fact let me just give them credit here: I like the Fer'jai quite a bit more than I do the BOP a Vo'Quv can use. That said, frigates take longer to deploy than fighters, and while their tricobalts can hurt a lot... they can also of course be shot down.
The big thing here is again... you've only got the one hangar bay. Where a Vo'Quv could have a whopping 6 BOPs... you've got, at most, 3 Fer'Jai.
And as a final insult... that extra gun you can mount takes up extra power to fire, and being a Sci-Heavy ship and a carrier (and thus your hangars are tied to Aux), you'll want your Aux at a minimum in the 50+ range; which means you're either not-maxing weapon power or losing some base shield setting. Either way, this is more painful for a ship who's loss of a hangar is supposed to be balanced by an extra weapon slot.
Now that said, I can think of one use for the Kar'fi off the top of my head - due to it's higher turn rate you can probably use an offensive Sci build more effectively.
On the one hand, this is good because other than the Varanus the Klingons really lack a ship that can do this. (The Vo'Quv is too slow for directional sci powers most of the time. You can get your Subnucleonic Beam off now and again, but even that can be tricky and requires evasive maneuvers)
On the other hand, using offensive sci powers further weakens your already not-great defenses.
Can you make a Kar'fi work? Absolutely. However it's a lot harder than the Vo'Quv, and the payoff for a well-played Kar'fi is merely 'adequacy' while the payoff for a well piloted Vo'Quv is 'supremacy'.
That is - if you fly a Kar'fi really well, you'll do fine. You won't be extraordinary or anything, but you'll do well enough for yourself. If you fly a Vo'Quv well, you can and will dominate anyone who isn't on their toes.
============
All of the above said, this is also all likely to change a bit - Heretic's thread on Carriers suggests that the Kar'fi may get it's second hangar bay and a lot of other love in the relatively near future. So it may be worth flying before long.
*Take Beta I or II... I recommend II myself. Delta is also good, but in a big furball where you're liable to get ignored it can be hard to get it on the right target. Of course you could take Delta I and Beta II. I also like Tac Team for the ensign slot due to the shield facing reinforcement.
You have a ton of good points there, but in my experience with the Vo'quv, even 1 on 1 you usually had to get extremely lucky in order to kill any half decent player if you were going with a pure defensive Vo'quv, even support/defensive. Sure, you can sit tight and wait out the beating/zerging you'd take til allies showed up, but you'll not have the punch to take out individual people on your own with the current state of the game. This is, of course, if you went a purely defnesive/support Voquv. I haven't tried to with offensive abilities itself, was way too slow for it.
The Kar'fi on the other hand. I went right into the cloud of about 5 feds in Ker'rat, no extra NPC adds either mind you... and hey, I didn't even purposefully go into them, they were sitting on the spawn in. With the Kar'fi, it tanked all of their dps and blew one up before a series of lucky hits and procs took me out.
I think both ships are very fine ships and both do very well. Both are superb, good choices of ships.
EDIT: Then again, apples and oranges. Vo'Quv is an amazing ship in itself, very very decent for pve. Getting all those fighters out in pvp can wear down cubes and such pretty face as well as boasting al lthose sci and engie slots makes it a mean pve carrier. No slouch in pvp either, can keep yourself alive and throw out the heals to keep your team alive.
Youre wrong about one thing..
A wellflown Kar'fi isnt just adequate.. Its an amazing ship, able to put some serious hurt on just about anything.. A Vo'quv is easier (just like a zombie cruiser) but is a rather passive ship.. IMO the Kar'fi is just the right blend of Offensive power, combined with just enough defenses/heals to be a pain to kill. I wish it had a Uni Lt slot in place of the Tac though.
^ This.
Kar'fi is a very powerful ship, just a bit harder to learn to use properly.
I mean I know I'm not the greatest captain out there to begin with - but in my Vo'Quv, one on one, I can stand up to pretty much anything one on one. In the Kar'Fi I felt like I was flying a coffin basically. So that's why I said what I said.
I definitely wanted to like it too... it's a very pretty ship, and if they give it a second hangar and To'Duj's, I think I'll be giving it another shot.\
*edit*
I should add that "stand up to" does not merely mean "take hits from". One on one I don't think I've encountered a ship I could not eventually kill. I'm a sci captain so that helps a bunch, and I have a couple other tricks to make my damage a bit more meaningful. It's a far cry from being a DPS ship or anything; but I don't stalemate, either I'm going to kill them or their friends show up (or mine do) and it ceases to be an even contest.
The Voque survivability is great and I love the damage out put I can do over long engagements with 6 bops. It does turn like a brick so directional powers are rough to pull off at times. I run two cannons and a beam for the front and two turrets and a beam on the rear with tetryons, (if you have a suggestion let me know). I also run high shield and AUX setting for my power.
That being said what do you all like to use in your Sci bridge officer powers for this ship and why?
With my Eng the Karfi is totally worth it. I tried it with my Sci but I was just not happy with it. The added survivability really helps out tremendously with my Eng. Currently Im running beam boat for FAW but I liked that cannon idea I saw posted or maybe looking at adding some mines maybe. As for the S'kul and the Fer'Jai Im 50/50 on them. If it looks like I will have a long fight I like the FerJai. Sometimes I get lucky with the Skul and getting some good burst damage but most of the time I count them as a torp with a 30 sec timer and I will be lucky if two them hit before they get destroyed. Also they miss a lot on the suicide runs.
Same as before, what do you all like to use in your Sci bridge officer powers for this ship and why? I really like seeing what other people use and sometimes I learn something new.
Cheers to all the carrier pilots out there!
My current Kar'fi build: (Science Captain)
4 Single Cannons
3 Turrets
Borg set + Reman shield (for looks)
Tac LtC : TT1 - CRF1 - APB2
Tac Lt : TT1 - CRF1 - ( alt : APD2)
Eng Lt : EP2S1 - EP2S2
Sci Cdr : PH1 - TBR1 - HE3 - FBP3
Sci Ens : ST1 ( alt : TSS2 - HE3 - GW3)