How are the pilot escorts?

telbasta7386

I've been out of STO for a very long time now, thinking about returning. I logged on yesterday and checked out the starship requisitions to see what new stuff had been added and the pilot escorts caught my eye, cute little things. If I recall correctly, the Aquarius destroyer was kind of a bust when it was introduced, being underpowered compared to the other "larger" escorts - so how do the pilot escorts add up? Are they worth the cost?

Always liked the smaller ships, defiant and such, but I dont like giving up combat viability for it (otherwise I'd be flying a shuttle all the time).

rmy1081

Right now the pilot ships are the best escorts in the game. I like the heavy escort carriers (all 3) but as escorts, the pilot ships are better.

warmaker001b

IMO, the Pilot Ships have set the "New Standard" of Escort play for all factions. They are that good. Do not let the slightly weaker hull fool you. Flown and built right, your Bonus Defense keeps you alive and with the best Specialization Gimmick in the game, "Pilot Maneuvers" you have all kinds of tools to keep it that way. Bonus Defense with Escorts can all be made good. Pilot Ships are even better since they can reach that soft cap of roughly 80 very easily and with proper build, even surpass it. With a half-assed build, my KDF & Fed Pilot Ship were dinging 100 Bonus Defense while before in other Escorts, roughly 80-something was the best. My Reman can hit 120-something which is ridiculous.

These things do take a while getting used to for flying. For most builds, simply zooming around at the fastest game speeds possible is not ideal. It will make you elusive but your weapons time on target will suffer. A Pilot Ship user must fly in a way to find that happy medium on benefiting from its superior handling, Bonus Defense, and having time on target for its weapon arcs. You need to learn when to use the Pilot Maneuvers and what they don't work against.

The Pilot Ships have full access to Pilot Skills and the very strong Pilot Maneuvers. They are slightly weaker in hull. But they have the weapons and console layout of a high powered escort. Their combination of speed, inertia, turn rate is only surpassed by the Risian Corvette, which has none of the many special features of the Pilot Ships. They take the features of an Escort and fully bring it to the new world of T6. They are what I compare every Escort to now.

Last thing: If you are one to sit and "Turret" your ships, these ships aren't for you. Turreting forsakes speed, mobility, neutralizing your Bonus Defense. Get a Cruiser instead.

jonathanlonehawk

warmaker001b wrote: »

>Snip< everything he said is true

Damn fine essay on the pilot ships.

I fly mine as a beamscort with a forward torp and have hit upwards of 50k with it. I really like them. My main issue is now I have too many choices...

potencethe1st

War maker nailed it - these are the new standards for escorts IMO.
Prior to the doping console fix I had achieved 75k, I now average 62k in it without any plasma consoles.

I fly a beam array build too - it sacrifices extra damage from beam banks so that I can maintain full speed and therefor more damage from sub warp sheathe and improved pedal to the metal. I rock flanking from Intel and point blank shot too. Stay close, fly at full throttle, use arrays so uptime on DPs is maximized, and stay on flank. You can do strafing runs so easily with aux to dampeners.

I can just about handle (heal through using sci team1, Eng team1, and HE2 along with ablative she'll trait and 2pc iconian set) all the aggro in ISA while pumping out 50k dps easily.