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Are Birds of Prey useless in Fleet Actions?
ds9fan2
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
Well... maybe not useless, but at least less-useful. My sense is the preferred BoP attack pattern is to cloak, then declock near an enemy and blast them hopefully to bits. Then recloak, and repeat. Problem is, if you do that, you spend a fair amount of time not actually in the fighting - very precious time when you have X seconds left to destroy an enemy fleet, or you're trying to protect another ship or starbase.
I'll be leveling up to Captain soon and am wondering if my tactical officer should continue in a BoP.
I'll be leveling up to Captain soon and am wondering if my tactical officer should continue in a BoP.
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But no you won't be doing hit and run attacks, the BoPs Battle Cloak will be more like the Strategic Cloak found on the Raptor and Battlecruiser, a cloak for between fleet action waves.
Very quick to get into shooting positions and pour good firepower.
But in my case, I've had to change to my siege just to avoid being popped from a sideways glance, admittedly that's partly due to having to queue up for the event as currently my fleet members are pouring time and resources into the fed fleet base.
For fleet groups with a dedicated tank, go the bop, for pick up groups, I'd recommend something a little tougher like a raptor or siege destroyer
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You also have to avoid immediately aggroing an entire enemy group. A tac officer in a BoP would have trouble handling the barrage of fire, especially if Tac Team goes into cooldown.
Once these are both gone, use your Battle Cloak to quickly break aggro and look for the freighter who only has one teammate on it. (to do this right, no freighter should have more than 2 people defending it. This means one freighter is under defended) Race to that freighter's aid and repeat. The same applies for Raptors, but the Battle Cloak should mean your Full Impulse will come up sooner, allowing you to get to other freighters more quickly.
I have gotten 19 saved freighters following this plan with my Raptor, and not mopping up after the Freighter is safe from ships targeting it.
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The BOP can and should be the first response, unless your BOP is built for a specific purpose like healing and protecting freighters and such.
You need alot of crowd control and healing for star base blockade? No problem, go Com. and Lt. Com Science and Eng for Grav Well and Eject War Plasma or Transfer Shield strenght and Extend Shields.
I currently stick with Com. Tac, Lt. Com Science, Lt. Tac, Lt. Eng. which allows to do moderate AE damage by Cannon Scatter Volley and Torp. Spread III as well as Crowd Control by using Grav Well I. Very well balanced for STFs and Fleet Actions.
This...............
I run a Brel and have no problems but yes you do use your cloak mainly as a buff or between attacks.
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Bloodthristy
Guild - <Lords of The Dead>
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For beginners though I would recommend investing in defense consoles mostly to kinetic damage and then an ablative and tetraburnium engineering consoles as well and make sure you remember a bop players bible is "brace for impact".
The strengths are with any class you can do very quick kills and egress/escape.
The weaknesses are pretty much no shields when cloaked, explosions because usually when you destroy a ship or need to cloak something is most definately blowing up near you,0km to 5km is where most of the anti cloaking or tractoring abilities can nail you.
The major aspect besides piloting is finding that happy medium between having enough skills to kill your target as soon as possible after dropping out of cloak or within the 3 second window if using EBC and then having the necessary healing to survive the 20 seconds and the reentry of using the battle cloak.
A lot of players do not want to get into anything complex when playing a game and will refer to this as it being a science or whatever but in reality knowing a few things and setting your bop up properly to how you want to play will be the most fun you can have in STO. The birds of prey are the major cornerstone of why I love to play the KDF and majority of my toons are KDF.
The other beauty of the Universal BOFF slots is that you can configure it to very different styles. Whether you want to be heavy in TAC, ENG, SCI, whatever. The standard 3x3x3 console layout makes it even more possible to be proficient in practically anything but not quite the same power of a dedicated Escort, Sci, etc. But with the same ship, you can drastically change your style of play to suit your mood. All it requires is some reconfiguration of your gear, BOFF layout, and possibly a Respec.
The bop I am most excited about is that new fleet one with the 2 LC stations where its got Commander, Lt, and 2x LC. One exciting thing I'd want to try out with that is Commander Science, 2x Tact LC and Eng Lt. I'll prolly be getting more boff slots too to have enough different setups to run a B'rel, Fleet (D7/Vorcha), and The 2 Fleet Bops...
Bops are just so fun when you get to know them
With incompetent groups, you can save a Freighter all by yourself in a properly set up Hegh'ta.
I don't really care about going in second. Sure, I die faster in my Hegh'ta than in other ships, but I still die hard. Use whatever you can to do the job. I keep a big supply of shield batteries, plus I run that battery buff Doff guy, since most of my skills are devoted to saving freighters in the Blockade thing.
In my Hegh'ta, and another person in the PUG running the starter Norgh, we saved 20 of 21. You can't do that without everyone, including the Norgh, working hard to save freighters.
IKS Korrasami (Fleet B'rel Bird of Prey Retrofit T5-U)
It also works very well as a team support ship in PvP.
Build:
Aegis full set
Commander Engineering (Eject Warp Plasma)
LTC Science (Gravwell)
2 tac Lts (CRF1, APB, HY1, TT1)
Thanks to the defence bonus from Aegis, this little bird of prey can dodge a large amount of enemy fire so long as it keeps moving at 3/4 to full throttle. It's job is to be the glorious vanguard of a battlefleet using EWP and GW1 to fix the enemy location then designate targets for termination using APB.
If held under fire the Aegis set and Cdr. Enginner and Ltc. Science means this little bird can tank surprisingly well buying the team time to regroup and smash the enemy opposition.
I have flown virtually all ship types in STO extensively, with the exception of carriers (no interest yet) and the Hegh'ta is my all time favourite.
To the OP:
Yes, early game BoPs are used as raiders. By lategame you will realize with Commander and Lt. Cdr universal bridge officers you can make any sort of BoP to excel in any situation. Single player PvE is also very different from endgame fleet actions and PvP.
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its not ussless but can make the mission very hard ,
for example most players use a escort build says cannons in front, so single target attak, but in most fleet aktion mission there coming waves with totaly spreadet enemys so you attak one enemy with your bop or 2-3 with a cannon volley what staying with luck in a line,
and who atttaks the other ~10-15 enemys from the wave....;)
hmmmm battle clok thats it the way to win any fleet action
no sorry for my ironic but i dont like them in fleet action mission in blokade mission where you have to safe max frigters for max fleetmarks this ships still destroy a good amount with good ships still 18-20 ships saving is possible with 1-3 bops ~10-11, in stfs missions i dont see the big prob on them.
who cares if you do that in a fleet action mission where wave comes afther wave and you + some others kill the mission on this way that brings alot of fun.;)
With bops you can pretty much set it to be a sci ship or a cooler looking raptor/escort. In pvp(haha if anyone even still bothers to in this game!) they're hilariously funny to play.
I take it you're not familiar with the Universal BOFF slots that the BOP is famed for in this game.
I'll simply say this: The BOP can be built to practically do almost anything in the game and not just Damage.
Unknowing fools that know nothing about the BOP, or put no noteworthy time on the BOP, that's who.
Quite a number of our fiercest PVPers in the KDF call the BOP the ship of their choice.
Let me guess, it's you with the low DPS ship unable to handle that 10-15 enemies and so complain that other Birds of Prey must take the load off you?
I jest (its normal Klingon humor
Let's just say that an experienced PvP capable pilot, who is used to tanking/evading 3-4 DHC armed Defiants or Fed Escorts at once in a typical Admiral/General PvP scenario, would have no trouble at all speccing their Bird of Prey to take on PvE too.
Infact, if you use a Science Lt. Cdr. bridge officer all you have to do to excel in PvE is spam gravity well, torp spread, CSV and if that isn't enough flexibility slap on a high level attack pattern like APB3 or APO to boost the DPS to nonsensical Escort/Raptor like levels.
I am not kidding that if you want me to build a survivable and versatile yet combat-effective ship, a Bird of Prey is the ultimate vessel just for the full universal bridge officer layout alone.
That... and it's fast and nimble as hell, just like any other escort type vessel, plus able to mount 4 DHCs making it just as capable as any other DPS machine if not better.
Because if you wanted a Fed side LTC Sci escort with a gravity well or other OP power in PvE, you have to fork out $25 for it. You get the Bird of Prey, full specced, free of charge.
There are no useless ships in this game. Some are more optimal in certain missions than others, agreed, but with the BoP being full universal, and the Fleet Action being a completely static and predictable scripted affair with little to no dynamic elements besides random enemy faction, what is the limitation here.
Hint: It's not the ship that is the problem.
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I think that's the issue there.
IMO, the BOP is not a newbie friendly ship, despite the initial starting ship being a BOP. If you didn't stick with the BOP throughout levelling as a new KDF player, you're going to have issues if you decide to jump into one at the last minute at the General ranks.
The freedom and options given by the BOP is its strongest asset to the player. But for inexperienced players, that same freedom and options is alot to take in.
The BOP is one of those "advanced playstyle" kind of things in STO. Newbies die hard and fast in a BOP. But experienced BOP users make it look terrifically fast and fun... because it is!
Edit to add: As for "Are Birds of Prey useless in Fleet Actions?"
Of coruse they are. Anything is effective in Fleet Actions, as long as the player knows what he's doing in building up the ship and a playstyle for the ship. This is PVE folks, and STO PVE isn't exactly science and exclusive in nature.