At 1st I was sweating the 5 foward weapon slotted Escorts till I saw that that they only have 2 Aft weapons and are not has maneuverable has the BOP

What good will having 5 weapon slots up front do if your're always being hit in the back

If only the KFD had a vessel that could debuff while Cloaked :P
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I agree with you -- let me state that up front. The Andorian Escorts are -- to some degree -- a paper tiger. Overall, I think that the Jem'Hedar Attack Ship (the "Bug" ship) still has the edge..and to some degree, the BoP may have an advantage given the cloaked alpha strike. I came to this conclusion based on two factors:
1. The bridge officer layout. For the Andorian tac version, there are only three slots available for survivability skills. For the Engineer and Sci versions of the escorts, there are five potential survivability slots. None of the non-tac slots are above Lieutenant level.
2. Consoles -- in order to gain the special set bonuses, a pilot will have to sacrifice three console slots -- that only leaves seven for the basics...to include the tac slots to boost damage. This will limit things like shield strength and turn radius, amongst others.
On the other hand...it is wise to be cautious. There are a few tidbits that I think could be dangerous in the right situations...like the fact that the three-set bonus -- "Wing Cannon Synergy" -- allows the deployed cannon platforms to benefit from specific player skill sets, such as cannon rapid fire, scatter volley, etc. That is something even carrier pilots cannot do with thier fighter wings, and it represents a potentially significant increase in burst damage capability. Also consider that the Wing Cannon Console essentially adds two more forward-firing weapons to this ship, increasing the number of forward-firing weapons to seven. I sort of doubt that the wing cannon platforms do as much damage as normal weapons...but together they may be able to add enough dps to make a difference.
The key to piloting this craft will be to kill anything you face as quickly as possible, because although it can dish out damage...it certainly can't take any...if it does not kill on the first strike, then it is probably dead.
Luckily, it has no cloak.
When was the last time you saw a vesta?
People buy them, play with them a few weeks and dry dock them.
Gives cryptic money. Meh
It's already been confirmed by a dev that they do not do as much damage as a normal weapon. The gimmick will be a fun trick to goof around with, but in a pvp setting it's not likely to get used.
I run into Vestas a lot in STF PUGs. The last one I saw was yesterday.
What Cryptic should consider before releasing anything.
Seriously? I am on everyday for hours and haven't seen a vesta since the week they came out. I see the chimera and oddy all the time.
They could always put a turret on the front :P
I'm expecting a fair few of the 3-tac-seats versions will run with:
3 DHCs
1 Torp launcher
1 Turret up front
2 Turrets at the back
And tac BOffs of:
TT1, CRF1, APO1, CRF 3
TT1, CSV1, TS3
THY1, APB1
These new ships will be nice, you will see them. Then they will decline as others go back to a ship they usually favor more.
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Hmmmm, I'm trying to remember an STF in the past week that DIDN'T have an Oddy in it. Heh. I see the Chimera a fair bit too. But yeah, I've been grouped up with Vestas pretty recently. They stick out since for me they're very new you know? I was on a break when they were introduced.
The last time I saw a Vesta was two hours ago. I was staring at it from the bottom of a Gravity Well as IKS Norgh'a'Qun exploded around me. It was the only ship I faced in that match that I could not kill.
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I plan on buying the set for my Fed Tac, and driving the sci version, and using it much like I use my Bortasqu' - open up a can o' whoopass on my first pass and get the hell out of there before the enemy realizes what hit him. Pull a 180 when I'm out of weapons range, and repeat until one of us is dead.
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I fight almost daily with vesta's in PVP and many times I got killed by them.
Haven't done PVE for a long time so I don't know what is there.
Actually by their advanced tractor beam spam pets +tractor beam+tyken rift+DHC+mines+theta radiaton +SNB+leadership+elite shields +plasma dot
If vesta would had an kdf equivalent until now it would had been nerfed to death by federation complaints .
Kumari+elite shield+leadership will be interesting to fight.
I refuse to be content https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwI0u9L4R8U
Rear weapon slots is a weakness? I don't see it. It has the same amount of rear weapons as a Bird of Prey. And right now, a third turret in the rear isn't exactly setting the world on fire with the other Fed escorts.
It's turn rate is as good as the mirror escorts. And lags behind the Bug ship. So I guess that's a weakness. But not much of one.
The boff layout on the tac model is a limitation for sure. But I know some dedicated folks will find a build that works with it.
And the Engineering model and Science model have better BOFF layouts.
The ship will be fine. There will be dedicated Andorian fans who also play the game well enough that they will find ways to utilize this ship.
Now if only Cryptic would create something equally as intriguing and fun on the KDF side. I mean come on wouldn't it be super fun to be given a puzzle like this? 5 forward weapons. 5 tac slots. But some crazy BOFF decisions? On a KDF ship? Challenge accepted!
But alas, Cryptic slacks on the KDF-ness yet again.
It would not be much of a Challenge for a KDF player, we've been working with the BOP for years.
You give me 5 foward Weapon slots and a basic cloak and give you a wasteland :cool:
You don't even need the basic cloak. I've been running the Charal with mask energy signature 1 and tractor beam 2, and it's fantastic as an ambush attacker.
But yeah, give it a basic cloak and use that LT universal for more resilience and you have a superior attacker for sure.
If this is true then Cryptic owes many players a refund (Like that will ever happen)
It's moves like this that just makes Cryptic look like they enjoy deceiving the STO players.
Now they'll just hide behind the item is subject to change fine print and wonder why the players are all going into Rage Mode.
I believe you misunderstood what was earlier stated. What they said was that the 3-piece bonus would make Wing Cannon Platforms (the deployable drones) be affected by CRF, CSV, and the console abilities. That's all they said. They in no way implied that you could actually use console abilities simultaneously with CRF/CSV, which is what people are complaining about.
Sure, you can use CRF and CSV fine. It's just that you can't use them simultaneously with console abilities.
It's not a case of false advertising. It's just that players assumed that console abilities would not share cooldown with cannon abilities, when Cryptic didn't mention anything about it either way. Sure, you can argue against it, but it wasn't false advertising, as they never claimed that you could do it anyway.
Edit: Unles,, of course, having Wing Cannon Platforms flying around completely locks out CRF/CSV.
Usually rumors like that start here on the forum with someone saying something open ended and stupid like "So what do you guys THINK (Insert Item here) Willl do." Then the blah blah blah starts and then players get misconstrued by fan fiction and expect something to happen that was never stated would happen but say a lie enough times and every one will believe it as true.
They will then demand that cryptic pay them back for something they never said WILL happen but simply that it MAY. May means maybe yes maybe no so stop pinning your hopes on liquid words and more on solid facts and you'll be fine.
It seems to me that Cryptic did make a change to the Ships to stop it from being OP.
That aside:
I've seem many of the Andorian Escorts go pop hella fast even in PVE, so far it seems that no one has found a good balanced build to use with it (at least the Tac version)
The ones that I've seen seemed paper thin and add to the fact that their consoles place your Tac Bridge Officer cannon skills on CD so your kicking out less DPS over time.
It's early yet for the Andorian ships but so far most of the players that were using them have said that they'll be switching back to their nsert ship name here.
This kind of takes the fun out of wanting to gut them...... almost
If you rip out the console/wing gimmicks, this is a decent ship. (No match to a Bug, though, because of turn mode.)
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I think players expect it to "feel like its cool" more than being straight out more powerful and seeying as how it puts all canon boff abilities on CD it probably doesn;t feel like its cool at all. Personally I'm passing on it for now, not a fan of how it looks tbh, if the side platforms were usable on other ships I would've snapped it up right away for the novelty/vanity factor, but alas...
thats how i fly every kdf ship lol. bops and raptors arent really dogfighters, one cant turn with a fedscort, the other is made of paper
I'm running the Engineering version, the Charal. It's very tanky compared to the Mirror Escort my Tac officer was running prior. Very very tanky. And it still spits hot fire.
Yeah, because of that I'm running only two of the consoles for the passive set bonus. The Wing Cannon buddies, which are fun in PVE albeit fragile. And the Science Shield melting console, which comes in handy in some situations in PVE but a lot of static mobs I fire upon in PVE have no shields, so it kind of works out since I don't need access to it all the time.
I'm not going back to what I was flying. This is an upgrade. And prior to the Siege Destroyer, my KDF character flew a raptor exclusively. This ship flies a LOT like that raptor. So it's kind of hitting me on a bunch of different levels.
And I'm a Vulcan captain with a Human BOFF setup, flying the Andorian battlecruiser. I'm a flying inside joke when you remember all the beef the Andorians had in Enterprise with the Vulcans. Heh.
The Charal is really really close to what I thought it would be. Fun, fits my playstyle, and is better than what I was flying. I'm even hellbent on grinding out the dilithium for the Andorian weapons to unify the colors (right now I'm running Mk XII green phasers that I stockpiled through farming missions and the Exchange in the past two weeks, as starter gear).
I really do at this point wish they'd offer something similar on the KDF side. At least in terms of ship specs.
The heavy cannons the ship comes with are great, but I don't like Phasers.
With a set of fleet phasers it has sufficient firepower, and I could tank a tac cube in KASE long enough to kill it.
No idea if I ever test the tac version, since I have no idea what to do with all those boff abilities unless I use a wild mix of weapon types.
Posed this in the Bug report link:
"lol this TRIBBLE child of DHC's is really a beam boat lol hahahahahahahahahaha I love it
Think about it, you can have free DHC's on this ship with its set bonus and then you can chose beam skills like Befaw, BO, or targeting and never miss a beat. My oh my oh my i actually think I will buy this thing now since I am major beam captain and this thing will be fun specially with my "Inertial Denial" Build.
How unorthodox, how interesting, how fun it will be, finally escorts have no choice atm but to be Beam boat DHC hybrids. I wonder if I will be credited with this discovery as I have done so many times in the past or if people will simple restate my own thoughts as theirs."
Can you imagine the quixhotic builds that could come from this? the three console set. 1-2 Dhc's in the front 1 torp 2 beams cutting beam in the back with another beam. Then you use the Ships sets and it puts all the cannon skills into cd but Cannons skills do not affect beam skills, correct? Correct. Then you can use befaw, spread, BO, or Target Shield or something. No nead to have Cannon skills when you get a set of them for free so technically you will have more tac slots for free right? While everyone else has LT Com and Lt tac slots you will be default have two LT comms and an LT slot. How op is that? and with a standard Patrol escort tank defense my god my god my god the pain we will rain down on our enemies. Think people think. You don;t let technicalities steal your game. You refine it to the rules they are forcing on you. While the world is playing checkers then we will play chess and you have to sacrifice a pawn to get a king. When you are given something bitter you do not cry over it, you rise above it and make lemonade. I will re-post this in another andorian build section and lets see what we can come up with. Maybe i will be heckled, maybe i will be lauded. Players will say Escorts shouldn't have beams. Why not? I have been running a patrol escort with beams since i started the game and i kill more players then I die to. You can try it or not i don't really care, changing the way the game is played, that sounds the most interesting to me. We'll just call it Ozifacation.
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