Ooo I love it when this debate comes up. The problem originates in the overall game design which was not intended to scale as far as it has right now but is more complex than a simple DPS number.
Tanking Flaws
- Lets be honest if your running a semi decent build you can stay at full stop or 1/4th foward or reverse to keep the enemy in your foward arc.
Why: Because if the enemy did deal more damage per hit it would nearly one shot players because of the low amount of health ships have compared to their ability to heal/resist it as described below.
- Ability to tank is depended on 2 main factors, mitigating damage (resists) and sustain (healing). Because of how boff abilities work and scale an escorts ability to mitigate damage and sustain their shield/hull is nearly as good as a cruisers. Add in their higher defense bonus and their speed tanking ability surpasses anything but a zombie cruiser.
Why: An escort can run 2 copies of EPTS, 1 Hazard Emitter and 1 Transfer Shield Strength minimum. There are too many 'dump' engie/sci boff slots than the system was originally designed for.
DPS Flaws
- Weapon damage is based around firing arc instead of a practical evaluation of overall capability.
Why: Not really 100% sure. One of those things that makes sense on paper but not reality.
- Weapon Energy Drain has a larger effect on a broadside boats rear beams in lowering DPS than it does on a cannon ships rear turrets
Why: Also not 100% sure. I really think they should make 'aft' beam arrays with slightly lower base damage but much less energy drain so that just like turrets they will always increase DPS.
- No large firing arc projectile weapons make 8 weapon slots much less of a bonus.
Why: Still not 100% sure.
- DHC/HCs and turrets have a larger gap in damage between the first weapon fired than the last increasing overall weapon energy efficiency.
Why: ....
Simply put to fix it would require a re-examination of the current weapon types in game. Not likely.
- Ability to tank is depended on 2 main factors, mitigating damage (resists) and sustain (healing). Because of how boff abilities work and scale an escorts ability to mitigate damage and sustain their shield/hull is nearly as good as a cruisers.
Take 6 ranks of threat control for your escort captain, use nothing but AoE abilities.
Run something easy like Elite STFs in the pug queue for a few days.
Come back and let me know how that works out for you.
Ooo I love it when this debate comes up. The problem originates in the overall game design which was not intended to scale as far as it has right now but is more complex than a simple DPS number.
Tanking Flaws
- Lets be honest if your running a semi decent build you can stay at full stop or 1/4th foward or reverse to keep the enemy in your foward arc.
Why: Because if the enemy did deal more damage per hit it would nearly one shot players because of the low amount of health ships have compared to their ability to heal/resist it as described below.
- Ability to tank is depended on 2 main factors, mitigating damage (resists) and sustain (healing). Because of how boff abilities work and scale an escorts ability to mitigate damage and sustain their shield/hull is nearly as good as a cruisers. Add in their higher defense bonus and their speed tanking ability surpasses anything but a zombie cruiser.
Why: An escort can run 2 copies of EPTS, 1 Hazard Emitter and 1 Transfer Shield Strength minimum. There are too many 'dump' engie/sci boff slots than the system was originally designed for.
For many cases as well, the ability to tactically reposition at a moment's notice, and the ability to take out the enemy outright in the opening salvo is much more valuable in a pressed for time scenario which is just about most of the time in STO. With the objective being to destroy heavily defended enemy installations, the primary objective of a starship captain is to destroy the enemy with maximum precision and minimal time.
This means that we can say in general that Escorts, Raptors and Birds of Prey are uniquely suited to 25th Century strike warfare as presented in STO. As a continuation to some of the ship concepts presented in DS9, I'd say that evolution is a fitting and logical one.
The point about "tanking" with mobility, defence, and the capability to evade enemy fire arcs outright is a very relevant one to this game.
In this respect there are a number of escort builds which are indeed capable of tanking the enemy and can stay alive for a very long time in both PvE and PvP scenarios, with a combination of stacked resists, mobility and active suppression of enemy fire.
Escorts are never squishy. It's the pilot's job to keep the ship moving, to tactically relocate to attack from a weak flank after evading enemy fire, the pilot with better situational awareness and the ability to think in three dimensions will find that it is actually true that you feel safer in an Escort type vessel than in a cruiser.
For most endgame scenarios you won't be working alone so having multiple escorts on the job means you can enhance survivability by shared aggro management, bait and drag tactics and other ACM - derived ideas.
Finally, I do notice that pilots who are already proficient in Escort endgame warfare can do very well in something like an Armitage because it has all the Escort's potential for high mobility and decisive firepower in a more survivable package (LTC Engineering).
So, kudos for bringing factors of game design into the picture
STF Flight Instructor since Early 2012. Newbies are the reason why STO lives and breathes today. Do not discriminate.
Cruisers are designed to tank.
Problem is, while tanking is very important, most Cruiser Captains don't even try to..
Agreed.
I've seen a lot of posts claiming escorts can tank as well, or almost as well as cruisers.
It's been on my mind for a while.
But, I feel like either they they are exaggerating, or rarely meet a cruiser that... not only tries to, but knows what they're doing. I know I rarely see any that try, let alone CAN.
When I'm tanking, I can hold aggro on high damage enemies without a problem surviving.
Say, Tac cube or Gate in infected.
Even on both, though I admit it's somewhat more challenging.
Then I go play my Tac in his shiny escort. And once the cruiser dies, the escorts go pop, pop, pop.
Now... I'm not saying it's not possible. It certainly may be.
In my limited experience with PvP, it very well may be true, there.
It seems like people are comparing Ace escort captains with less than average cruiser captains.
Good tanks seem to generally go un-noticed. I think people only notice the tank when they're not so good, and lose aggro, then people need the meatshield.
If they're not getting hit, we all go about our business.
With great escorts, people notice your awesome damage.
With great science vessels, people can see your expert use of grav wells, heals, repulsors, etc...
Cruisers are seen moving around firing their beams and tossing out heals when they can. Tanking or not.
Perhaps that's the difference?
My friends play tacs in escorts. They always want me there tanking for them in my cruiser. They say I make their lives so much easier.
So, maybe to many, cruisers don't have a place anymore. But there are those out there who see the value of letting a meatshield tag along. That we're not always a hinderance to the team. Even in timed scenarios.
5 cruisers? Ok. I admit that goes slow. But I've done all elite space STF's with a 5 cruiser team at one point or another, successfully.
Some, even with optionals.
NB - you don't need cruisers to heal in STF, because it's only ever one person getting shot at by the high damage dealing mobs (cubes, gate, etc.).
There is enough heals on a 5 escort team to heal one properly spec'ed escort. This is assuming that people know if someone is taking damage and react, but that also applies to cruisers healing.
Myself I love my Luna sci ship. In STFs they are invaluable. I get escort players moaning at me for using it in STFs yet im the one stopping the spheres from overruning them with my gravity wells, shockwaves and rifts. Especially in Infected Elite where people dont know or care about the 10% rule. Also the photonic fleet is very useful for supporting other damage dealing ships.
As for cruisers again its how you use em. I cant turn like otherships so i tank around the edge of the battle area supporting other playersand for tanking slow/ static targets. You get a good emergency power to weapons and other boff skills it suprising just what you can do!
Monkey see, Monkey do. Monkey flings Feathered Monkey poo...
It is up to each player to know how to effectively fly their own ship, and which bridge officer abilities to choose from, whether that be offensive, defensive or crowd control. Each class of ship, science, cruiser and escort with a certain degree can choose to either go fully down offensive, defence etc or have a mixture from each pool.
As a cruiser, I can use my engineering boff stations and use only offensive abilities, change universal stations to tactical if I choose to do so.
So it comes down to simply this. People choose their setup and shouldnt kneel on other players to pick up on their slack if their build is purely one sided.
NB - you don't need cruisers to heal in STF, because it's only ever one person getting shot at by the high damage dealing mobs (cubes, gate, etc.).
There is enough heals on a 5 escort team to heal one properly spec'ed escort. This is assuming that people know if someone is taking damage and react, but that also applies to cruisers healing.
^ this.
Bring along a high damage, responsive, supportive fighter pilot anyday and you can ace ESTF optionals reliably and without stress.
Some say science is required for crowd control too, but escort wings can do their own CC without a problem. And I'm not talking gravity well either; plenty of effective substitutes.
When push comes to shove consider this - you're in a PUG. Bring a cruiser to an elite PUG it doesn't matter how well you tank if none of the other teammates are going to actually work with you. There is also the possibility you're going to be stuck with a low DPS team and no matter how much aggro you draw and no matter how much CC you do, the mission is not going to be won.
That's why I run a patrol escort - it has firepower to kill Elite targets solo. It has enough speed and resilience to stay in the fight. It is a good enough ship that runs efficiently and doesn't need half of its self-repair skills most of the time, so it's also a healing ship. Lastly, with TBR it's also an emergency CC tool. Sure, doesn't lock the enemy in like multi-gravwell attacks, but with gravity well being ineffective on some Borg targets it's far more effective to kill them where they stand and that's what "decisive strike" is all about.
There's no need to worry about tactical errors or weak allied ships if the enemy is dead.
STF Flight Instructor since Early 2012. Newbies are the reason why STO lives and breathes today. Do not discriminate.
A bad escort player generally explodes a lot, so they do one of two things, they figure out how to get tough or they make the easy move and switch to a cruiser.
A bad science vessel has a hard time doing any damage and either learns teamwork or moves to a cruiser.
The bad cruiser player doesn't do enough damage to agro anything, sits with all beam arrays rarely using most of them because they want to fly like an escort. When the escorts explode and they do get attacked all their heals are ready because they don't help the team at all so they think they are 10x tougher in the cruiser and are content to remain in ignorance.
This is 100% true. I was one of those ultra squishy escort pilots that moved to a cruiser and took forever killing anything. It wasn't until much later that I learned how to use an escort properly, now I find even my cruiser skills are improved by what piloting escorts has taught me..... My tac in a T4 Assault Cruiser can even be in the fighting for cube agro without the threat talent in STFs without much danger of getting destroyed (positioning matters!).
After hundreds of STFs with 3 characters on both sides of the space war I feel confident in saying "Skills matter, what you're piloting does not."
Take 6 ranks of threat control for your escort captain, use nothing but AoE abilities.
Run something easy like Elite STFs in the pug queue for a few days.
Come back and let me know how that works out for you.
I have tanked everything an STF can throw at me in an escort. Elites. With all 3 captian types.
Engie (former Fleet Escort): 2 copies of EPTS 1 with Aux2Sif, hazard emitters and transfer shield strength. Add it captian abilities and it is not difficult at all. Eventually somethings would break my tank, if it wasn't for the fact they die first.
Tac (ditto): as above, although had to pop a shield battery occassionally and/or evasive manuevers to reposition/duck into or out of fight. Also packed a copy of AP:D that the engie didn't.
Sci (Mvae): Ran with all polaron beams, tyken's rift, and subsystem targeting weapons 1 plus shields 2. Vs a strong target used aux battery, tykens, and then the subsystem skills. Target was no longer any threat. At times did have to duck out vs heavy hitters like tac cubes that didn't die fast enough but only for say 10 seconds out of every minute that I would tank it. Also packed AP:B 3 and 2 as she was designed as a supportscort. I still love when I'd sensor scan and pop APB to see my damage litterly double along with the teams.
Its not hard at all. Once you get some STF gear, use 2 piece borg set, that device from devian arc, possibly some doffs to help like the brace for impact doff etc it is very very easy to tank. Also, armor consoles and the proper shield consoles in eng/sci slots are manditory. Sadly I no longer run those builds listed above as they got boring other than the engie one that is. Sci is now in a kitty carrier (fun!) and tac is using a torp boat defiant (still tweaking but performs pretty well).
On the other hand though, STFs don't require an insane amount of DPS either, it just makes them faster. A properly designed cruiser/sci ship can bring enough to the table to make the optionals just fine. Sadly though most are not setup properly. In the end its not the class that players bring. Even space elites are pretty easy as far as difficulty goes especially once you are geared. I feel pretty confident a premade team of 5 cruisers and/or 5 sci ships could nail all the elites with 5+ minutes to spare on the optionals.
I fly a Nebula and I can kind of understand what the OP is saying. As a mix of a cruiser and science vessel, it gets the lower DPS of a science ship (only 6 weapon slots) and the turn rate of a cruiser. Which means I take longer to blow stuff up and take longer to follow everyone else to the next objective.
I still love it - its very survivable and I have one hell of a shield tank on it. I have over 18,000 shields on every facing, and the same number of hull points as the Galaxy (I forget how many). It takes a lot to blow my ship up. But since all the starbase events are timed, yes I have a hard time keeping up.
What about taking a ship because its FUN, I don't min/max I try to have FUN.
I have one character on the Fed side in each branch.
My Tactical Officer is in a Fleet Star Cruiser because I just like it and it has a standard set-up no fancy tech its classic Star Trek using pure SF classic tech.
My Engineer is a Lt. Commander in the first escort and its fun and the ship designed a bit flexible on the weapons but that is okay I did stick one dual cannon in front that is what I had in storage and a phaser bank and a torp in front and the rear mines. And naturally worked on defense enough to matter.
My science officer is also a Lt. Commander in the first science ship its quite nice agile, nicely armed and has the tricks to be a good ship.
Note though I do not play PvP so I build for the PvE environment only.
Timers have completely destroyed the usefulness of cruisers and sci vessels (especially anything in T5), hell even the Odyssey for that matter. Seems like the Dreadnought Cruiser can still hang but that is about it on the cruiser line. Sure it is okay to get 1 cruiser/sci/T5 (unless it is an escort) but that is about it. Get any more cruisers in there and you won't beat the timer with normal players. Timers seriously need to be looked at. The last match I was in there were 2 Odyssey's, 1 sov and 2 escorts and we still couldn't beat the timer. This was on Federation Fleet Alert. The match before last same issue except there were two Sovereigns and 1 Sci, two escorts and we didn't win it. Got back in my escorted, dropped into a match that ended up with 3 escorts, 1 Odyssey and 1 Dreadnought, we still only beat the timer by 45 seconds. Yesterday 4 escorts ruled it missing 1 player who dropped when we started. I have been noticing this more and more, when I see more then 1 cruiser I am betting we can't win since 2 seem to be pushing it. Any more then 2 and it is almost 100% assured it is going to be a fail. Not sure if the cruiser just needs it's dps upped or if the timer needs to be pushed out longer but something needs to be done.
If the enemy targeted and fired at any ship at
Range 10 or less this would not be a problem
And would solve many other problems. A enemy battleship
Or base just allowing Tacs to use there Dps at
Will as I see it is the biggest problem I'n the game.
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
It all depends what you're doing really , and what role you're trying to fill
STF wise , a escort will always do a lot of dps , but a geared and experienced cruiser captain can throw out a hell of a lot too
Im a tac flying a science ship , and while they cant throw out as much pure damage as escorts and cruisers , never count them out , specced right they can still do a decent ammount of damage , and in stuff like blockade , where ive seen so , SO many escorts flounder around like lost sheep trying to destroy as many ships as possible instead of actually defending the transport , the science ship and cruiser can do this with ease and in many cases solo
Take 6 ranks of threat control for your escort captain, use nothing but AoE abilities.
Run something easy like Elite STFs in the pug queue for a few days.
Come back and let me know how that works out for you.
Been there, done that, survived to tell of it. All my escorts have threat control for the extra damage resist in PvP, so I'm stuck with it when I go do PvE.
It sounds to me as though a great many players need to learn the value of incorporating Extend Shields into their cruiser biulds (escort pilots will love you), and the glories of Emergency Power to Weapons, along with heals. In my mind, the ideal 5-man team usually includes three cruisers for either PvE or PvP content, because the support abilities and sustained DPS are so valuable.
Escorts are, in fact, WARSHIPS (an escort is a type of warship). That is, they're built for combat. Science Vessels and Cruisers (I prefer to call them STARSHIPS) are not really meant for combat (theoretically, anyway). In a battle, the ship you want is the combat ship, not the research vessel or the explorer. In that sense, it makes sense the way things are.
On the other hand, there's nothing for any ship to do in the game EXCEPT combat, so the real purposes of science vessels and cruisers aren't represented in the game in any way, and I see that as the bigger issue.
Even if there were more non-combat missions to do, having Escorts be overpowered in combat missions is still poor game balance, whether logical or not.
And as far as Star Trek canon in general is concerned, most ships that appear in the TV series are cruisers and they had no problem operating as the backbone of the fleet in the Dominion War. Dedicated warships are few and far between in Star Trek. The Defiant class is the only one that is stated to be so (Akira, Steamrunner and Sabre are conjectured to be warships, it's never said they are).
So, whether you look at in terms of the lore or in terms of game balance it's not right for Escorts to be the outright best ships for combat missions. As I said in my earlier post, a good player can make any ship work. But the STFs (and two of the four space-based Fleet Mark missions) are still mainly about dishing out DPS. As long as you're not completely TRIBBLE weak and lose a shield facing to a stiff solar wind, survivability is not a big issue, and Crowd Control performs no tactical function in an STF I can think of that can't be done with DPS. Which makes Escorts the best option. That's not a great system, imo.
This topic has also brought up something else that I have always wondered about. In a typically MMO/RPG you have the holy trinity that everyone always tries to 'fit' into STO. By that I mean:
Escort = DPS
Cruiser = Tank
Sci Vessel = Healer
That never made any sense to me though. If you look over the abilities and the ship capabilities the roles would be thus:
Note the lack of tank. The optimum tank would vary depending on the opponent but really both the escort and sci vessel make better tanks with a healer backing them up. An escort's defense will provide just as much if not more mitigation than the cruiser would get, and if your going to tank you will be shield tanking and a sci vessel can have a much higher shield capacity with a solid hull and defense depending on the ship. You will note that PvP teams do not have cruiser tanks, they have cruiser healers.
Boff abilities even support this. Extend shields, Aceton beam, and Aux to Sif are all great abilities for keeping allies alive. By comparison the only self only engineering boff defensive ability is emergency power to shields and while rank 3 is stronger than 1 its not that huge of a difference. And a Sci ship with shield cap/regen consoles has a much better buffer tank than most give them credit for.
So I must ask, why do so many insist cruiser = tank?
I have a tank build my job is not to heal others or to bolster them its to beef up MY ship so it repairs faster, its shields stay up and I stay in the fight as long as possible while attacking the biggest enemy on range. While Borg Cube is aiming at me your supposed to attack the cube and take out things like plasma torpedos if you can.
In most fights my power grid is alotted to defense and I have repair teams and the like all keeping me going - THAT is a tank I stay in the fight no matter what until I die. The other players just don't matter for that I want them either if Science messing with the enemy or if an escort using the fact I'm the target to get in a hard attack run. My own attacks usually happen modestly or when the enemy has no shields but is secondary if I'm fighting a Borg Cube I'm likely going to be firing on incoming plasma torpedos more than the enemy ship.
My Fleet Cruiser is designed along this like to take hits and keep going even with a Tactical Captain I go on offense shifting power to balanced only when its practical but can go back as needed to shield heavy defense.
Escorts are, in fact, WARSHIPS (an escort is a type of warship). That is, they're built for combat. Science Vessels and Cruisers (I prefer to call them STARSHIPS) are not really meant for combat (theoretically, anyway). In a battle, the ship you want is the combat ship, not the research vessel or the explorer. In that sense, it makes sense the way things are.
On the other hand, there's nothing for any ship to do in the game EXCEPT combat, so the real purposes of science vessels and cruisers aren't represented in the game in any way, and I see that as the bigger issue.
Actually, Cruisers are designed to be multi-purpose. Trek manuals, like The Galaxy Class one which was written by the tech wizards of STNG and Gene Roddenberry explictly stated that Cruisers like the Galaxy Class are as much a warship as an explorer.
I know you guys really love your escorts. I think they are very cool too. But they shouldn't be able to endure the pounding they presently do. They do not have the mass to absorb the kind of damge they take. A hit on a cruiser(through shields) might hit one vital system but that same hit on an escort(again through shields) hits EVERY vital system because the escort is so small. Small ship, top heavy with weapons and engines, leaves little room for things like powerful shield emitters.
I have a tank build my job is not to heal others or to bolster them its to beef up MY ship so it repairs faster, its shields stay up and I stay in the fight as long as possible while attacking the biggest enemy on range. While Borg Cube is aiming at me your supposed to attack the cube and take out things like plasma torpedos if you can.
In most fights my power grid is alotted to defense and I have repair teams and the like all keeping me going - THAT is a tank I stay in the fight no matter what until I die. The other players just don't matter for that I want them either if Science messing with the enemy or if an escort using the fact I'm the target to get in a hard attack run. My own attacks usually happen modestly or when the enemy has no shields but is secondary if I'm fighting a Borg Cube I'm likely going to be firing on incoming plasma torpedos more than the enemy ship.
My Fleet Cruiser is designed along this like to take hits and keep going even with a Tactical Captain I go on offense shifting power to balanced only when its practical but can go back as needed to shield heavy defense.
And I'm sorry but that makes absolutely no sense to me. Unless I mess up I don't need you to take the hits, I can take them myself for the most part. There is no need for a 'tank' in STO, this isn't like a standard MMO where you need the fighting man to take the hits for the thief. Anything that would burn my hull would be negated with a single extend shields, RSP, or any other number of abilities placed on me. And I find TBR to be the ultimate HY defense, or torp spread depending.
And what is this attack run with escort thing I keep hearing about? You point at the enemy at the range you want to be and move at 1/4 impulse or reverse to keep them in your guns. Aside from pvp their is no need for an 'attack run' in an escort sorry. All this stuff has been said before, is that ancient STF escort build thread still around?
This topic has also brought up something else that I have always wondered about. In a typically MMO/RPG you have the holy trinity that everyone always tries to 'fit' into STO. By that I mean:
Escort = DPS
Cruiser = Tank
Sci Vessel = Healer
That never made any sense to me though. If you look over the abilities and the ship capabilities the roles would be thus:
Note the lack of tank. The optimum tank would vary depending on the opponent but really both the escort and sci vessel make better tanks with a healer backing them up. An escort's defense will provide just as much if not more mitigation than the cruiser would get, and if your going to tank you will be shield tanking and a sci vessel can have a much higher shield capacity with a solid hull and defense depending on the ship. You will note that PvP teams do not have cruiser tanks, they have cruiser healers.
Boff abilities even support this. Extend shields, Aceton beam, and Aux to Sif are all great abilities for keeping allies alive. By comparison the only self only engineering boff defensive ability is emergency power to shields and while rank 3 is stronger than 1 its not that huge of a difference. And a Sci ship with shield cap/regen consoles has a much better buffer tank than most give them credit for.
So I must ask, why do so many insist cruiser = tank?
And I'm sorry but that makes absolutely no sense to me. Unless I mess up I don't need you to take the hits, I can take them myself for the most part. There is no need for a 'tank' in STO, this isn't like a standard MMO where you need the fighting man to take the hits for the thief. Anything that would burn my hull would be negated with a single extend shields, RSP, or any other number of abilities placed on me. And I find TBR to be the ultimate HY defense, or torp spread depending.
And what is this attack run with escort thing I keep hearing about? You point at the enemy at the range you want to be and move at 1/4 impulse or reverse to keep them in your guns. Aside from pvp their is no need for an 'attack run' in an escort sorry. All this stuff has been said before, is that ancient STF escort build thread still around?
Actually, "Healer" makes even less sense than "Tank" in this game.
Firstoff, if every single ship would be able to keep itself alive anyeay ... what are you healing then? Second, with power to AUX and BOff slots wasted(!) on healing abilities, you really gimp yourself to uselessness.
But, Cruisers are indeed TANK/Support. And you'd see the difference between an Cruiser-Tanking and Escort-"tanking" easily in any encounter that has more than one or two ships shooting at you.
Unfortunately, STFs and Fleet Mark encounters rarely have these situations - that's indeed the problem why Cruisers feel so sub-par there. If you went to ... say, a Borg Red Alert, then you can witness the difference yourself:
Escort flies into a group of Borg, guns blazing ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... *BOOOOM* ... Respawn?
Cruiser flies into the same group, disco-balling ... and actually TANKS it. Try to tank a Tac Cube and two normal Cubes on an Escort. I dare you. No problem on a Cruiser.
Of course, the Cruiser has to be build for dps first, tank second ... or it won't be able to aggro anything, and so be just as useless as the Escort who deals no damage and manages to survive by not aggroing anything. But that's not a problem. A decent cruiser will still deal 50-75% of an Escort's damage, unless you count the spikes when all cooldowns get popped - but in that case, the discussion should be about Tac career being OP and everything else being useless, as even a Tac in a Cruiser will outspike an Engi or Sci in an Escort by miles.
If a Cruiser doesn't manage to pull decent dps, the captain sucks. Elephant balls. Same for Sci.
Any ship in STO has to do two things: Deal DPS, and keep itself alive through enemy fire. In addition, each class of ship has ONE additional set of tasks: Sci CCs and debuffs, Cruisers tank, and Escorts deliver the burst to finish off tough opponents.
THAT is STO's trinary.
@flekh: It has been a long time since I did a Red Alert and I don't disagree with anything you stated. Yes a good crui/sci do just fine in the DPS race and it is the primary concern when setting up your ship regardless of the role you want to fill. And by healer I didn't mean that would be all they would do, just that they would be nearly as effective following the escort in with an extend shield so that it didn't explode.
@flekh: It has been a long time since I did a Red Alert and I don't disagree with anything you stated. Yes a good crui/sci do just fine in the DPS race and it is the primary concern when setting up your ship regardless of the role you want to fill. And by healer I didn't mean that would be all they would do, just that they would be nearly as effective following the escort in with an extend shield so that it didn't explode.
Putting it like that, i'll have to agree.
Though ES is a lot better in PvP (where opponents usually can't be taunted away) than in PvE (where a good cruiser can manage to hold aggro and is better off using the BOff slot for either a self-heal or dps/aggro-ability).
Basically, It's what sucky cruisers and sci should do, try to keep the dps alive instead of ... well, being even more ineffective. But to do that, they'd have to realize that they suck, and that rarely happens.
A good cruiser in PvE will rarely if ever need to heal anyone except itself - because it manages to hold aggro. Any remaining damage is either a case of "even an escort can deal with it" or "blam, blam, two-shot". Not much middle-ground.
But I guess it will always come back to that one point, as quite a few people agreed on it already: any ship piloted by a decent captain who knows has he's doing is fine. Any ship piloted by one who has no clue ... well, you better hope it's an escort as that's really, really hard to TRIBBLE up. Or better: a carrier, those are really fool-proof.
Well, unless evolution comes up with an even better model of fools, which is probably inevitable.
And as far as Star Trek canon in general is concerned, most ships that appear in the TV series are cruisers and they had no problem operating as the backbone of the fleet in the Dominion War.
A fleet that routinely got their behinds handed to them. The war ending with the Federation as the looser was temporarily averted by the inclusion of the Romulans and Klingons.... you know, large civilizations with lots of WARships. Add to that the effectiveness the Defiant (a WARship developed as a response to the Borg threat, a real threat that required real warships, not mere starships) constantly demonstrated and is it any wonder a significant portion of he fleet is now made up for the far more combat capable escorts? But that is a cannon argument, you can't balance around that at all.
Actually, Cruisers are designed to be multi-purpose. Trek manuals, like The Galaxy Class one which was written by the tech wizards of STNG and Gene Roddenberry explictly stated that Cruisers like the Galaxy Class are as much a warship as an explorer.
I know you guys really love your escorts. I think they are very cool too. But they shouldn't be able to endure the pounding they presently do. They do not have the mass to absorb the kind of damge they take. A hit on a cruiser(through shields) might hit one vital system but that same hit on an escort(again through shields) hits EVERY vital system because the escort is so small. Small ship, top heavy with weapons and engines, leaves little room for things like powerful shield emitters.
.... why would escorts not be filled to the brim with shield emitters and generators?
Also, when taking hits from antimatter warheads i don't think its the ship's mass that prevents it getting instantly vaporized... its probably something like the hull integrity fields or something equally technobabbly. But I can tell you it is NOT the extra mass a cruiser has. They are not throwing snowballs around... its antimatter.
And I would turn your supposition around: with all the space devoted to being multi role where does a cruiser even fit weapons or shield generators? Or at least weapons and shield generators in excess of what an escort would have?
Its a game balance issue folks, you can take lots of damage so you deal less, simple as that. Some expertly piloted escorts seem to tank like nobody's business, but on the flip side some cruisers do damage like there's no tomorrow; but no escort can take damage like a cruiser and no cruiser can deal damage like an escort. With good pilots you can do optionals just as well regardless of the ship's involved.
Might I suggest reading up some of the excellent guides some forumites have posted? I know I've greatly benefited from them
I realize cannon is important to people, but you cannot balance a game around cannon. At least not a game set up like STO is.
I have a tank build my job is not to heal others or to bolster them its to beef up MY ship so it repairs faster, its shields stay up and I stay in the fight as long as possible while attacking the biggest enemy on range.....
That all sounds great, but you're missing the most important part of the tank build... holding aggro. Maybe i just misunderstood your post or you simply forgot to mention it, but you must keep in mind that merely being a cruiser does not make the cube concentrate its fire on you.
In fact it may even appear that its attacking you when in fact you're just taking incidental fire from its FAW or other similarly random targeted weapon. You can tell who its really targeting by looking at its target of target.
I started STO with a Kling ENG captain flying cruisers with beam arrays and switched now to Kling TAC captain with cannons, specialized in flying raiders. I retired my ENG captain completly.
My impression is:
1. You generally don't need science and eng captains at all in PvE. Also, in PvP they perform subpar in their abilities compared to TAC captains.
2. Escorts/raider/raptors can take alot of damage if specced and equipped correctly. The gain in speed and turn rate make them mobile while retain good survivability. Cruisers lose alot of speed and turn rate, and also though their survivability is better than escorts they lose to much damage and maneuverability for this advantage.
3. Crew plays alomost no role. You can have a cruiser with 5000 people but not able to overwhelm an escort with 10 crewmen when their shields are down. Also, if your crew dfrops to zero there are virtually no drawbacks.
3. TAC BOFs are mostly straight forward damage, but offer also good defensive abilities and are well balanced in their teirs. There are some powerfull ENG BOFs, as EPTS, Aux2SIF, RSP mostly defense, but offer nearly no offense. I don't want to talk about SCI BOFs, the only usefull SCI power is HE, TSS which is available for most escport to heal them self and in higher teirs GW for PvE (useless in PvP) and VM which is useless in PvE, usefull in PvP, but generally too weak and too easy to counter.
Comments
Tanking Flaws
- Lets be honest if your running a semi decent build you can stay at full stop or 1/4th foward or reverse to keep the enemy in your foward arc.
Why: Because if the enemy did deal more damage per hit it would nearly one shot players because of the low amount of health ships have compared to their ability to heal/resist it as described below.
- Ability to tank is depended on 2 main factors, mitigating damage (resists) and sustain (healing). Because of how boff abilities work and scale an escorts ability to mitigate damage and sustain their shield/hull is nearly as good as a cruisers. Add in their higher defense bonus and their speed tanking ability surpasses anything but a zombie cruiser.
Why: An escort can run 2 copies of EPTS, 1 Hazard Emitter and 1 Transfer Shield Strength minimum. There are too many 'dump' engie/sci boff slots than the system was originally designed for.
DPS Flaws
- Weapon damage is based around firing arc instead of a practical evaluation of overall capability.
Why: Not really 100% sure. One of those things that makes sense on paper but not reality.
- Weapon Energy Drain has a larger effect on a broadside boats rear beams in lowering DPS than it does on a cannon ships rear turrets
Why: Also not 100% sure. I really think they should make 'aft' beam arrays with slightly lower base damage but much less energy drain so that just like turrets they will always increase DPS.
- No large firing arc projectile weapons make 8 weapon slots much less of a bonus.
Why: Still not 100% sure.
- DHC/HCs and turrets have a larger gap in damage between the first weapon fired than the last increasing overall weapon energy efficiency.
Why: ....
Simply put to fix it would require a re-examination of the current weapon types in game. Not likely.
Take 6 ranks of threat control for your escort captain, use nothing but AoE abilities.
Run something easy like Elite STFs in the pug queue for a few days.
Come back and let me know how that works out for you.
For many cases as well, the ability to tactically reposition at a moment's notice, and the ability to take out the enemy outright in the opening salvo is much more valuable in a pressed for time scenario which is just about most of the time in STO. With the objective being to destroy heavily defended enemy installations, the primary objective of a starship captain is to destroy the enemy with maximum precision and minimal time.
This means that we can say in general that Escorts, Raptors and Birds of Prey are uniquely suited to 25th Century strike warfare as presented in STO. As a continuation to some of the ship concepts presented in DS9, I'd say that evolution is a fitting and logical one.
The point about "tanking" with mobility, defence, and the capability to evade enemy fire arcs outright is a very relevant one to this game.
In this respect there are a number of escort builds which are indeed capable of tanking the enemy and can stay alive for a very long time in both PvE and PvP scenarios, with a combination of stacked resists, mobility and active suppression of enemy fire.
Escorts are never squishy. It's the pilot's job to keep the ship moving, to tactically relocate to attack from a weak flank after evading enemy fire, the pilot with better situational awareness and the ability to think in three dimensions will find that it is actually true that you feel safer in an Escort type vessel than in a cruiser.
For most endgame scenarios you won't be working alone so having multiple escorts on the job means you can enhance survivability by shared aggro management, bait and drag tactics and other ACM - derived ideas.
Finally, I do notice that pilots who are already proficient in Escort endgame warfare can do very well in something like an Armitage because it has all the Escort's potential for high mobility and decisive firepower in a more survivable package (LTC Engineering).
So, kudos for bringing factors of game design into the picture
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Agreed.
I've seen a lot of posts claiming escorts can tank as well, or almost as well as cruisers.
It's been on my mind for a while.
But, I feel like either they they are exaggerating, or rarely meet a cruiser that... not only tries to, but knows what they're doing. I know I rarely see any that try, let alone CAN.
When I'm tanking, I can hold aggro on high damage enemies without a problem surviving.
Say, Tac cube or Gate in infected.
Even on both, though I admit it's somewhat more challenging.
Then I go play my Tac in his shiny escort. And once the cruiser dies, the escorts go pop, pop, pop.
Now... I'm not saying it's not possible. It certainly may be.
In my limited experience with PvP, it very well may be true, there.
It seems like people are comparing Ace escort captains with less than average cruiser captains.
Good tanks seem to generally go un-noticed. I think people only notice the tank when they're not so good, and lose aggro, then people need the meatshield.
If they're not getting hit, we all go about our business.
With great escorts, people notice your awesome damage.
With great science vessels, people can see your expert use of grav wells, heals, repulsors, etc...
Cruisers are seen moving around firing their beams and tossing out heals when they can. Tanking or not.
Perhaps that's the difference?
My friends play tacs in escorts. They always want me there tanking for them in my cruiser. They say I make their lives so much easier.
So, maybe to many, cruisers don't have a place anymore. But there are those out there who see the value of letting a meatshield tag along. That we're not always a hinderance to the team. Even in timed scenarios.
5 cruisers? Ok. I admit that goes slow. But I've done all elite space STF's with a 5 cruiser team at one point or another, successfully.
Some, even with optionals.
That's my arguement against escorts taking threat control.
:P
It's me, Chrome. [Join Date: May 2009]
"Oh, I may be captain by rank... but I never wanted to be anything else but an engineer." ~Montgomery Scott~
There is enough heals on a 5 escort team to heal one properly spec'ed escort. This is assuming that people know if someone is taking damage and react, but that also applies to cruisers healing.
As for cruisers again its how you use em. I cant turn like otherships so i tank around the edge of the battle area supporting other playersand for tanking slow/ static targets. You get a good emergency power to weapons and other boff skills it suprising just what you can do!
As a cruiser, I can use my engineering boff stations and use only offensive abilities, change universal stations to tactical if I choose to do so.
So it comes down to simply this. People choose their setup and shouldnt kneel on other players to pick up on their slack if their build is purely one sided.
^ this.
Bring along a high damage, responsive, supportive fighter pilot anyday and you can ace ESTF optionals reliably and without stress.
Some say science is required for crowd control too, but escort wings can do their own CC without a problem. And I'm not talking gravity well either; plenty of effective substitutes.
When push comes to shove consider this - you're in a PUG. Bring a cruiser to an elite PUG it doesn't matter how well you tank if none of the other teammates are going to actually work with you. There is also the possibility you're going to be stuck with a low DPS team and no matter how much aggro you draw and no matter how much CC you do, the mission is not going to be won.
That's why I run a patrol escort - it has firepower to kill Elite targets solo. It has enough speed and resilience to stay in the fight. It is a good enough ship that runs efficiently and doesn't need half of its self-repair skills most of the time, so it's also a healing ship. Lastly, with TBR it's also an emergency CC tool. Sure, doesn't lock the enemy in like multi-gravwell attacks, but with gravity well being ineffective on some Borg targets it's far more effective to kill them where they stand and that's what "decisive strike" is all about.
There's no need to worry about tactical errors or weak allied ships if the enemy is dead.
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This is 100% true. I was one of those ultra squishy escort pilots that moved to a cruiser and took forever killing anything. It wasn't until much later that I learned how to use an escort properly, now I find even my cruiser skills are improved by what piloting escorts has taught me..... My tac in a T4 Assault Cruiser can even be in the fighting for cube agro without the threat talent in STFs without much danger of getting destroyed (positioning matters!).
After hundreds of STFs with 3 characters on both sides of the space war I feel confident in saying "Skills matter, what you're piloting does not."
I have tanked everything an STF can throw at me in an escort. Elites. With all 3 captian types.
Engie (former Fleet Escort): 2 copies of EPTS 1 with Aux2Sif, hazard emitters and transfer shield strength. Add it captian abilities and it is not difficult at all. Eventually somethings would break my tank, if it wasn't for the fact they die first.
Tac (ditto): as above, although had to pop a shield battery occassionally and/or evasive manuevers to reposition/duck into or out of fight. Also packed a copy of AP:D that the engie didn't.
Sci (Mvae): Ran with all polaron beams, tyken's rift, and subsystem targeting weapons 1 plus shields 2. Vs a strong target used aux battery, tykens, and then the subsystem skills. Target was no longer any threat. At times did have to duck out vs heavy hitters like tac cubes that didn't die fast enough but only for say 10 seconds out of every minute that I would tank it. Also packed AP:B 3 and 2 as she was designed as a supportscort. I still love when I'd sensor scan and pop APB to see my damage litterly double along with the teams.
Its not hard at all. Once you get some STF gear, use 2 piece borg set, that device from devian arc, possibly some doffs to help like the brace for impact doff etc it is very very easy to tank. Also, armor consoles and the proper shield consoles in eng/sci slots are manditory. Sadly I no longer run those builds listed above as they got boring other than the engie one that is. Sci is now in a kitty carrier (fun!) and tac is using a torp boat defiant (still tweaking but performs pretty well).
On the other hand though, STFs don't require an insane amount of DPS either, it just makes them faster. A properly designed cruiser/sci ship can bring enough to the table to make the optionals just fine. Sadly though most are not setup properly. In the end its not the class that players bring. Even space elites are pretty easy as far as difficulty goes especially once you are geared. I feel pretty confident a premade team of 5 cruisers and/or 5 sci ships could nail all the elites with 5+ minutes to spare on the optionals.
I still love it - its very survivable and I have one hell of a shield tank on it. I have over 18,000 shields on every facing, and the same number of hull points as the Galaxy (I forget how many). It takes a lot to blow my ship up. But since all the starbase events are timed, yes I have a hard time keeping up.
I have one character on the Fed side in each branch.
My Tactical Officer is in a Fleet Star Cruiser because I just like it and it has a standard set-up no fancy tech its classic Star Trek using pure SF classic tech.
My Engineer is a Lt. Commander in the first escort and its fun and the ship designed a bit flexible on the weapons but that is okay I did stick one dual cannon in front that is what I had in storage and a phaser bank and a torp in front and the rear mines. And naturally worked on defense enough to matter.
My science officer is also a Lt. Commander in the first science ship its quite nice agile, nicely armed and has the tricks to be a good ship.
Note though I do not play PvP so I build for the PvE environment only.
So all of your Escort captains have nothing but AoE abilities and at least 6 ranks in threat control?
You charge right up point blank to the cubes & neghvar in CSE in your escort firing CSV & TS at everything that moves?
Because your post leads me to believe you make the same mistake most of the people playing this game make, equating survival with tanking.
They are not, and never have been, the same thing.
If the enemy targeted and fired at any ship at
Range 10 or less this would not be a problem
And would solve many other problems. A enemy battleship
Or base just allowing Tacs to use there Dps at
Will as I see it is the biggest problem I'n the game.
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
STF wise , a escort will always do a lot of dps , but a geared and experienced cruiser captain can throw out a hell of a lot too
Im a tac flying a science ship , and while they cant throw out as much pure damage as escorts and cruisers , never count them out , specced right they can still do a decent ammount of damage , and in stuff like blockade , where ive seen so , SO many escorts flounder around like lost sheep trying to destroy as many ships as possible instead of actually defending the transport , the science ship and cruiser can do this with ease and in many cases solo
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U.S.S. Sheffield N.C.C. 92016
It sounds to me as though a great many players need to learn the value of incorporating Extend Shields into their cruiser biulds (escort pilots will love you), and the glories of Emergency Power to Weapons, along with heals. In my mind, the ideal 5-man team usually includes three cruisers for either PvE or PvP content, because the support abilities and sustained DPS are so valuable.
Even if there were more non-combat missions to do, having Escorts be overpowered in combat missions is still poor game balance, whether logical or not.
And as far as Star Trek canon in general is concerned, most ships that appear in the TV series are cruisers and they had no problem operating as the backbone of the fleet in the Dominion War. Dedicated warships are few and far between in Star Trek. The Defiant class is the only one that is stated to be so (Akira, Steamrunner and Sabre are conjectured to be warships, it's never said they are).
So, whether you look at in terms of the lore or in terms of game balance it's not right for Escorts to be the outright best ships for combat missions. As I said in my earlier post, a good player can make any ship work. But the STFs (and two of the four space-based Fleet Mark missions) are still mainly about dishing out DPS. As long as you're not completely TRIBBLE weak and lose a shield facing to a stiff solar wind, survivability is not a big issue, and Crowd Control performs no tactical function in an STF I can think of that can't be done with DPS. Which makes Escorts the best option. That's not a great system, imo.
Escort = DPS
Cruiser = Tank
Sci Vessel = Healer
That never made any sense to me though. If you look over the abilities and the ship capabilities the roles would be thus:
Escort = DPS/Burst
Cruiser = Healer/Support
Sci Vessel = CC/Debuff
Note the lack of tank. The optimum tank would vary depending on the opponent but really both the escort and sci vessel make better tanks with a healer backing them up. An escort's defense will provide just as much if not more mitigation than the cruiser would get, and if your going to tank you will be shield tanking and a sci vessel can have a much higher shield capacity with a solid hull and defense depending on the ship. You will note that PvP teams do not have cruiser tanks, they have cruiser healers.
Boff abilities even support this. Extend shields, Aceton beam, and Aux to Sif are all great abilities for keeping allies alive. By comparison the only self only engineering boff defensive ability is emergency power to shields and while rank 3 is stronger than 1 its not that huge of a difference. And a Sci ship with shield cap/regen consoles has a much better buffer tank than most give them credit for.
So I must ask, why do so many insist cruiser = tank?
In most fights my power grid is alotted to defense and I have repair teams and the like all keeping me going - THAT is a tank I stay in the fight no matter what until I die. The other players just don't matter for that I want them either if Science messing with the enemy or if an escort using the fact I'm the target to get in a hard attack run. My own attacks usually happen modestly or when the enemy has no shields but is secondary if I'm fighting a Borg Cube I'm likely going to be firing on incoming plasma torpedos more than the enemy ship.
My Fleet Cruiser is designed along this like to take hits and keep going even with a Tactical Captain I go on offense shifting power to balanced only when its practical but can go back as needed to shield heavy defense.
Actually, Cruisers are designed to be multi-purpose. Trek manuals, like The Galaxy Class one which was written by the tech wizards of STNG and Gene Roddenberry explictly stated that Cruisers like the Galaxy Class are as much a warship as an explorer.
I know you guys really love your escorts. I think they are very cool too. But they shouldn't be able to endure the pounding they presently do. They do not have the mass to absorb the kind of damge they take. A hit on a cruiser(through shields) might hit one vital system but that same hit on an escort(again through shields) hits EVERY vital system because the escort is so small. Small ship, top heavy with weapons and engines, leaves little room for things like powerful shield emitters.
And I'm sorry but that makes absolutely no sense to me. Unless I mess up I don't need you to take the hits, I can take them myself for the most part. There is no need for a 'tank' in STO, this isn't like a standard MMO where you need the fighting man to take the hits for the thief. Anything that would burn my hull would be negated with a single extend shields, RSP, or any other number of abilities placed on me. And I find TBR to be the ultimate HY defense, or torp spread depending.
And what is this attack run with escort thing I keep hearing about? You point at the enemy at the range you want to be and move at 1/4 impulse or reverse to keep them in your guns. Aside from pvp their is no need for an 'attack run' in an escort sorry. All this stuff has been said before, is that ancient STF escort build thread still around?
Actually, "Healer" makes even less sense than "Tank" in this game.
Firstoff, if every single ship would be able to keep itself alive anyeay ... what are you healing then? Second, with power to AUX and BOff slots wasted(!) on healing abilities, you really gimp yourself to uselessness.
But, Cruisers are indeed TANK/Support. And you'd see the difference between an Cruiser-Tanking and Escort-"tanking" easily in any encounter that has more than one or two ships shooting at you.
Unfortunately, STFs and Fleet Mark encounters rarely have these situations - that's indeed the problem why Cruisers feel so sub-par there. If you went to ... say, a Borg Red Alert, then you can witness the difference yourself:
Escort flies into a group of Borg, guns blazing ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... *BOOOOM* ... Respawn?
Cruiser flies into the same group, disco-balling ... and actually TANKS it. Try to tank a Tac Cube and two normal Cubes on an Escort. I dare you. No problem on a Cruiser.
Of course, the Cruiser has to be build for dps first, tank second ... or it won't be able to aggro anything, and so be just as useless as the Escort who deals no damage and manages to survive by not aggroing anything. But that's not a problem. A decent cruiser will still deal 50-75% of an Escort's damage, unless you count the spikes when all cooldowns get popped - but in that case, the discussion should be about Tac career being OP and everything else being useless, as even a Tac in a Cruiser will outspike an Engi or Sci in an Escort by miles.
If a Cruiser doesn't manage to pull decent dps, the captain sucks. Elephant balls. Same for Sci.
Any ship in STO has to do two things: Deal DPS, and keep itself alive through enemy fire. In addition, each class of ship has ONE additional set of tasks: Sci CCs and debuffs, Cruisers tank, and Escorts deliver the burst to finish off tough opponents.
THAT is STO's trinary.
Putting it like that, i'll have to agree.
Though ES is a lot better in PvP (where opponents usually can't be taunted away) than in PvE (where a good cruiser can manage to hold aggro and is better off using the BOff slot for either a self-heal or dps/aggro-ability).
Basically, It's what sucky cruisers and sci should do, try to keep the dps alive instead of ... well, being even more ineffective. But to do that, they'd have to realize that they suck, and that rarely happens.
A good cruiser in PvE will rarely if ever need to heal anyone except itself - because it manages to hold aggro. Any remaining damage is either a case of "even an escort can deal with it" or "blam, blam, two-shot". Not much middle-ground.
But I guess it will always come back to that one point, as quite a few people agreed on it already: any ship piloted by a decent captain who knows has he's doing is fine. Any ship piloted by one who has no clue ... well, you better hope it's an escort as that's really, really hard to TRIBBLE up. Or better: a carrier, those are really fool-proof.
Well, unless evolution comes up with an even better model of fools, which is probably inevitable.
A fleet that routinely got their behinds handed to them. The war ending with the Federation as the looser was temporarily averted by the inclusion of the Romulans and Klingons.... you know, large civilizations with lots of WARships. Add to that the effectiveness the Defiant (a WARship developed as a response to the Borg threat, a real threat that required real warships, not mere starships) constantly demonstrated and is it any wonder a significant portion of he fleet is now made up for the far more combat capable escorts? But that is a cannon argument, you can't balance around that at all.
.... why would escorts not be filled to the brim with shield emitters and generators?
Also, when taking hits from antimatter warheads i don't think its the ship's mass that prevents it getting instantly vaporized... its probably something like the hull integrity fields or something equally technobabbly. But I can tell you it is NOT the extra mass a cruiser has. They are not throwing snowballs around... its antimatter.
And I would turn your supposition around: with all the space devoted to being multi role where does a cruiser even fit weapons or shield generators? Or at least weapons and shield generators in excess of what an escort would have?
Its a game balance issue folks, you can take lots of damage so you deal less, simple as that. Some expertly piloted escorts seem to tank like nobody's business, but on the flip side some cruisers do damage like there's no tomorrow; but no escort can take damage like a cruiser and no cruiser can deal damage like an escort. With good pilots you can do optionals just as well regardless of the ship's involved.
Might I suggest reading up some of the excellent guides some forumites have posted? I know I've greatly benefited from them
I realize cannon is important to people, but you cannot balance a game around cannon. At least not a game set up like STO is.
That all sounds great, but you're missing the most important part of the tank build... holding aggro. Maybe i just misunderstood your post or you simply forgot to mention it, but you must keep in mind that merely being a cruiser does not make the cube concentrate its fire on you.
In fact it may even appear that its attacking you when in fact you're just taking incidental fire from its FAW or other similarly random targeted weapon. You can tell who its really targeting by looking at its target of target.
My impression is:
1. You generally don't need science and eng captains at all in PvE. Also, in PvP they perform subpar in their abilities compared to TAC captains.
2. Escorts/raider/raptors can take alot of damage if specced and equipped correctly. The gain in speed and turn rate make them mobile while retain good survivability. Cruisers lose alot of speed and turn rate, and also though their survivability is better than escorts they lose to much damage and maneuverability for this advantage.
3. Crew plays alomost no role. You can have a cruiser with 5000 people but not able to overwhelm an escort with 10 crewmen when their shields are down. Also, if your crew dfrops to zero there are virtually no drawbacks.
3. TAC BOFs are mostly straight forward damage, but offer also good defensive abilities and are well balanced in their teirs. There are some powerfull ENG BOFs, as EPTS, Aux2SIF, RSP mostly defense, but offer nearly no offense. I don't want to talk about SCI BOFs, the only usefull SCI power is HE, TSS which is available for most escport to heal them self and in higher teirs GW for PvE (useless in PvP) and VM which is useless in PvE, usefull in PvP, but generally too weak and too easy to counter.