Yes, it works fine. Tac buffs give you a lot of exta fire power. The only thing to really think about is making sure your Engineering BOs have an extra Shield buffs to off-sent the loss of the Engineering officer's Rotate. A couple of extra Turn Consoles help too.
You can use any kind of officer in any kind of ship so long as you make up for your shortcomings with your BO's. For example my Engineer uses a Fleet Escort, though it is kind of a horrible hybrid between a cruiser and escort my point remains valid.
I think the only exception to this is Science Officers, you lose too much by not using a science vessel, though I am sure that this too could be argued against.
Works great. Only thing is you lose out on HYTIII but easily make up for it with beam weapons. But yeah, just make sure you have science & engineer team II at the very least and reverse shield polarity and aux to structural integrity field doesn't hurt either.
Works great. Only thing is you lose out on HYTIII but easily make up for it with beam weapons. But yeah, just make sure you have science & engineer team II at the very least and reverse shield polarity and aux to structural integrity field doesn't hurt either.
That may not be an issue with BOff trading coming up, which I presume will allow us to convert existing Boffs back into items that can be used or sold, with their skills and rank intact.
I have a RA5 Tac Officer on an Assault Cruiser. It's very viable. One of the fun things I like doing is getting to low hull, start popping defenses like RSP (not hull repair via ET, but HE is alright), and use Go Down Fighting... and use the entire 60 second duration to dish out hurt, because in a cruiser, you have enough abilities to survive for a bit.
Any Officer type can work in any ship type. The key is what BO skills you load up and what kind of gear you throw onto your ship.
I seem to be the only Engineering/scort person I run into.
As someone who plays tanking classes in MMOs but then specs them towards DPS, I was choosing between a Tac/Cruiser and an Engineering/Escort approach when I made this character.
But I seem to run into a lot more Tac/Cruisers than Engineering/Escorts. Maybe that's just because Cruisers look more like the flagships?
If I had to make a WoW comparison, I'd guess that Eng/Escort is like a Fury Warrior whereas Tac/Cruiser is more like an Arms Warrior. Then again, even when the game favored Fury over Arms, more people seemed to favor Arms whereas I prefered Fury even when it was underpowered.
You have to take into account the faction and what kind of ships everyone is flying.
Federation - Cruisers dominate the Federation in all the movies and TV shows. All the Enterprise versions, and the USS Voyager (which is a small, mission specific cruiser if you get down to it). The only main ship shown in trek for the Feds that wasn't a form of a cruiser is the USS Defiant, and that's it.
Klingons - Birds of Prey and Battlecruisers are shown quite a bit, but the BoPs get the most screentime. TMP movies had alot of BoP onscreen. TOS? Only the D7 was shown. TNG and DS9 showed alot of KDF cruisers also, but when it came down to characters like Martok, Klingon specific storylines, then you always found the characters on a BoP. Even Gen.Martok made a BoP as his flagship, and not on a Vor'cha or Negh'var. The BoP look does have that "eagle" look and has always been shown to move very fast in the shows.
dhc's do so much stupid dmg that it's silly to not use them
That's more about weapon types than captain types.
I fly an Adv Escort, with my Engy captain. I don't have all the tactical buffs, but it does make give me more self-buff abilities, and a little bit more survivability. EPS power transfer ignores all console issues, and pretty much guarantees that weapon power is going to go up, fast. Rotate shields is a nice defense bonus, plus some regen, and a couple other skills are useful too.
Nadion inversion, however, is worthless (half weapon drain for 30 sec, 10 minute cooldown. bleh.)
It's all how you fly em. Play to your strengths, minimize your weaknesses... heck, that goes for anything!
Can anyone explain what the value of putting talents into Starship Operations is for an Escort captain?
All of that stuff seems secondary to damage and survival, which are what I care about. I've never been huge on crowd control abilities, etc.
Well, if the system was being used as it was designed (capless) it would make sense.
The arbitrary cap on a system not designed for it though... no. Not much value there. You get a few more points in your heals, a couple seconds of duration here and there. That's it. You probably get several times the payout from science consoles.
I'm beating this horse in several threads already.
If I had to make a WoW comparison, I'd guess that Eng/Escort is like a Fury Warrior whereas Tac/Cruiser is more like an Arms Warrior. Then again, even when the game favored Fury over Arms, more people seemed to favor Arms whereas I prefered Fury even when it was underpowered.
I run Engineer/Escort as well. My analogy is CoH based and a Eng/Escort is a Devices Blaster or Regen Scrapper depending on the exact spec .
Can anyone explain what the value of putting talents into Starship Operations is for an Escort captain?
All of that stuff seems secondary to damage and survival, which are what I care about. I've never been huge on crowd control abilities, etc.
Several Starship Operations skills enhance survivability substantially. Personally I use Hazard Emitters in my science slots, they provide a very nice HoT ability (9k for HE1 and 11K for HE2 with my spec and gear). Alternatively Science Team provides shield regen and counters science abilities used by some NPCs (or in PvP). Polarize hull plating provides a very substantial energy resistance buff although it's useless against torpedoes. So it's not worth putting a lot of points there but it's worth picking up a few skills.
I seem to be the only Engineering/scort person I run into.
As someone who plays tanking classes in MMOs but then specs them towards DPS, I was choosing between a Tac/Cruiser and an Engineering/Escort approach when I made this character.
But I seem to run into a lot more Tac/Cruisers than Engineering/Escorts. Maybe that's just because Cruisers look more like the flagships?
If I had to make a WoW comparison, I'd guess that Eng/Escort is like a Fury Warrior whereas Tac/Cruiser is more like an Arms Warrior. Then again, even when the game favored Fury over Arms, more people seemed to favor Arms whereas I prefered Fury even when it was underpowered.
You would be the 1st Eng/Escort I've heard of tbh. Interesting choice.
And yes...I went Tac/Cruiser because the RA5 ships (Assault) look like "Star Trek" ships IMO. I didn't want to pilot the Millennium Falcon...I wanted a freaking Enterprise!
I've decided to go ahead and decommission my Escorts in favor of a Assault Cruiser. The reasoning behind this decision is based in part off of the positive feedback about this choice from you folks, and the following reasoning.....
Having flown both the Advanced and Fleet Escorts, I've come to the conclusion that turn rate on Cruisers is a bit slow even with RCS consoles, but some of those abilities that Tac officers get will help alleviate this and it should provide a fairly reliable way of tailing instead of being forced into pure broadside actions a majority of the time.
Past that, having all these high end Tac abilities don't mean much when you die so fast you can't make use of them, and with that, those selfsame abilities won't save you if you use them early on, either. The hulls on Escorts are simply too low after engaging some of the endgame mobs like the Borg. With that said, I do not feel there is any "shortchanging" whatsoever in regards to a Tactical Officer flying in a Assault Cruiser. Honestly there's no point in being a Tac Officer if the abilities you have, end up sitting there while you repeatedly click "Respawn" frequently.
Tactical consoles are not such a critical issue that having fewer hurts the Tac Officer's role, and the same applies to stations. Being a devastating opponent isn't dependent on just having massive firepower and a paper thin hull, that's one-track thinking. Being a devastating opponent is about having survivability and adequate firepower to cut up whatever you face into ribbons, as well as having flexibility to handle unexpected situations, something the Tactical officer is lacking sorely.
And that's pretty much it. I appreciate everyone's feedback. If you see a Assault Cruiser out there named "U.S.S. TFC-Victory", that's me. The ship name comes from a "orchestral trance" type of piece I wrote personally years ago, and TFC stands for "The Final Charge". The song has reminded multiple people who have heard it, of horses galloping at several places, so it became "TFC-Victory" as a result.
Thanks again for all the feedback folks. It's been highly appreciated.
I have ttwo RA5s, one is an Eng/Escort, the other is a Tac/Assault Cruiser. Both are easily viable and work great both solo and in teams. The ship very heavily determines the amount of damage. My Escort does a lot more damage and kills faster than my Assault Cruiser. But the Assault Cruiser handles quite well and blows things up quite nicely, and it can survive a lot longer.
The Tac/Cruiser combo was harder to deal with through Tiers 3 and 4, because those cruisers are so awful, but when I got my Assault Cruiser, everything became more fun. Now it's as much (if not more) fun than the Eng/Escort. (The Eng/Escort is seriously fun, and I'm usually still flying when other Escorts are blowing to bits all around me.)
I keep trying to dispel the myths about Turn being so terrible with Cruisers. I have one RCS console and engines with a [Turn] boost. My Assault Cruiser turns just fine. And as a Tac officer, you get Attack Pattern Alpha to boost that turn when up against fast ships like Escorts. Here's the other thing: In a Cruiser, you don't have to turn that badly. I usually slow to half speed once I'm in the middle of a fight. Who cares about the loss of defense from slowing down? I'm in my Cruiser, and I can take a LOT of hits. Fly loops all around me, I don't care. Get in my Fore or Aft? Fine, I've got 2 torpedo banks and 2 beam arrays either end. You'll go down. Try to stay to my sides to avoid those torpedoes? I've got 4 beam arrays on you. Your shields are now down and your hull will be soon.
No, you won't kill as fast as an Escort. But you will outlast them. The fun of being in the Cruiser for me is that I'm the calm amidst the chaos. I just sit there, dishing out damage and protecting my friends. I can't last as long as an Engineer in a Star Cruiser, but then again, they can't dish out near-Escort levels of damage either. I'm not a tank; I'm not a DPS; I'm not a healer. I can do all three at the same time if I need to.
I seem to be the only Engineering/scort person I run into.
As someone who plays tanking classes in MMOs but then specs them towards DPS, I was choosing between a Tac/Cruiser and an Engineering/Escort approach when I made this character.
But I seem to run into a lot more Tac/Cruisers than Engineering/Escorts. Maybe that's just because Cruisers look more like the flagships?
If I had to make a WoW comparison, I'd guess that Eng/Escort is like a Fury Warrior whereas Tac/Cruiser is more like an Arms Warrior. Then again, even when the game favored Fury over Arms, more people seemed to favor Arms whereas I prefered Fury even when it was underpowered.
I've seen every class of captain in every class of ship. Definitely the Science Captain in the Escort and the Tac Captain in the Science ship gave me pause. I see a lot of Tac Captains in Cruisers, and a decent amount of Engineers in Escorts.
Personally I feel like Engineers are the most versatile captains for different ship types but I see more Tactical Captains on non-Escorts than Engineers in non-Cruisers.
Comments
Pro: lot o weapon slots with a captain with a lot o weapon skills.
Pro: sufficient defense to survive long enough to use said weapons
Con: minimal cool science skills
Con: manuevering issues that may prevent you from making full use of said weapons
I think the only exception to this is Science Officers, you lose too much by not using a science vessel, though I am sure that this too could be argued against.
That may not be an issue with BOff trading coming up, which I presume will allow us to convert existing Boffs back into items that can be used or sold, with their skills and rank intact.
Any Officer type can work in any ship type. The key is what BO skills you load up and what kind of gear you throw onto your ship.
As someone who plays tanking classes in MMOs but then specs them towards DPS, I was choosing between a Tac/Cruiser and an Engineering/Escort approach when I made this character.
But I seem to run into a lot more Tac/Cruisers than Engineering/Escorts. Maybe that's just because Cruisers look more like the flagships?
If I had to make a WoW comparison, I'd guess that Eng/Escort is like a Fury Warrior whereas Tac/Cruiser is more like an Arms Warrior. Then again, even when the game favored Fury over Arms, more people seemed to favor Arms whereas I prefered Fury even when it was underpowered.
Federation - Cruisers dominate the Federation in all the movies and TV shows. All the Enterprise versions, and the USS Voyager (which is a small, mission specific cruiser if you get down to it). The only main ship shown in trek for the Feds that wasn't a form of a cruiser is the USS Defiant, and that's it.
Klingons - Birds of Prey and Battlecruisers are shown quite a bit, but the BoPs get the most screentime. TMP movies had alot of BoP onscreen. TOS? Only the D7 was shown. TNG and DS9 showed alot of KDF cruisers also, but when it came down to characters like Martok, Klingon specific storylines, then you always found the characters on a BoP. Even Gen.Martok made a BoP as his flagship, and not on a Vor'cha or Negh'var. The BoP look does have that "eagle" look and has always been shown to move very fast in the shows.
That's more about weapon types than captain types.
I fly an Adv Escort, with my Engy captain. I don't have all the tactical buffs, but it does make give me more self-buff abilities, and a little bit more survivability. EPS power transfer ignores all console issues, and pretty much guarantees that weapon power is going to go up, fast. Rotate shields is a nice defense bonus, plus some regen, and a couple other skills are useful too.
Nadion inversion, however, is worthless (half weapon drain for 30 sec, 10 minute cooldown. bleh.)
It's all how you fly em. Play to your strengths, minimize your weaknesses... heck, that goes for anything!
guess which one kills TRIBBLE faster?
in this game the faster you kill things, the less time you have to spend tanking them
3 dhc's, a torp and 3 turrets > anything else atm no matter your class
All of that stuff seems secondary to damage and survival, which are what I care about. I've never been huge on crowd control abilities, etc.
Well, if the system was being used as it was designed (capless) it would make sense.
The arbitrary cap on a system not designed for it though... no. Not much value there. You get a few more points in your heals, a couple seconds of duration here and there. That's it. You probably get several times the payout from science consoles.
I'm beating this horse in several threads already.
Several Starship Operations skills enhance survivability substantially. Personally I use Hazard Emitters in my science slots, they provide a very nice HoT ability (9k for HE1 and 11K for HE2 with my spec and gear). Alternatively Science Team provides shield regen and counters science abilities used by some NPCs (or in PvP). Polarize hull plating provides a very substantial energy resistance buff although it's useless against torpedoes. So it's not worth putting a lot of points there but it's worth picking up a few skills.
You would be the 1st Eng/Escort I've heard of tbh. Interesting choice.
And yes...I went Tac/Cruiser because the RA5 ships (Assault) look like "Star Trek" ships IMO. I didn't want to pilot the Millennium Falcon...I wanted a freaking Enterprise!
I've decided to go ahead and decommission my Escorts in favor of a Assault Cruiser. The reasoning behind this decision is based in part off of the positive feedback about this choice from you folks, and the following reasoning.....
Having flown both the Advanced and Fleet Escorts, I've come to the conclusion that turn rate on Cruisers is a bit slow even with RCS consoles, but some of those abilities that Tac officers get will help alleviate this and it should provide a fairly reliable way of tailing instead of being forced into pure broadside actions a majority of the time.
Past that, having all these high end Tac abilities don't mean much when you die so fast you can't make use of them, and with that, those selfsame abilities won't save you if you use them early on, either. The hulls on Escorts are simply too low after engaging some of the endgame mobs like the Borg. With that said, I do not feel there is any "shortchanging" whatsoever in regards to a Tactical Officer flying in a Assault Cruiser. Honestly there's no point in being a Tac Officer if the abilities you have, end up sitting there while you repeatedly click "Respawn" frequently.
Tactical consoles are not such a critical issue that having fewer hurts the Tac Officer's role, and the same applies to stations. Being a devastating opponent isn't dependent on just having massive firepower and a paper thin hull, that's one-track thinking. Being a devastating opponent is about having survivability and adequate firepower to cut up whatever you face into ribbons, as well as having flexibility to handle unexpected situations, something the Tactical officer is lacking sorely.
And that's pretty much it. I appreciate everyone's feedback. If you see a Assault Cruiser out there named "U.S.S. TFC-Victory", that's me. The ship name comes from a "orchestral trance" type of piece I wrote personally years ago, and TFC stands for "The Final Charge". The song has reminded multiple people who have heard it, of horses galloping at several places, so it became "TFC-Victory" as a result.
Thanks again for all the feedback folks. It's been highly appreciated.
The Tac/Cruiser combo was harder to deal with through Tiers 3 and 4, because those cruisers are so awful, but when I got my Assault Cruiser, everything became more fun. Now it's as much (if not more) fun than the Eng/Escort. (The Eng/Escort is seriously fun, and I'm usually still flying when other Escorts are blowing to bits all around me.)
I keep trying to dispel the myths about Turn being so terrible with Cruisers. I have one RCS console and engines with a [Turn] boost. My Assault Cruiser turns just fine. And as a Tac officer, you get Attack Pattern Alpha to boost that turn when up against fast ships like Escorts. Here's the other thing: In a Cruiser, you don't have to turn that badly. I usually slow to half speed once I'm in the middle of a fight. Who cares about the loss of defense from slowing down? I'm in my Cruiser, and I can take a LOT of hits. Fly loops all around me, I don't care. Get in my Fore or Aft? Fine, I've got 2 torpedo banks and 2 beam arrays either end. You'll go down. Try to stay to my sides to avoid those torpedoes? I've got 4 beam arrays on you. Your shields are now down and your hull will be soon.
No, you won't kill as fast as an Escort. But you will outlast them. The fun of being in the Cruiser for me is that I'm the calm amidst the chaos. I just sit there, dishing out damage and protecting my friends. I can't last as long as an Engineer in a Star Cruiser, but then again, they can't dish out near-Escort levels of damage either. I'm not a tank; I'm not a DPS; I'm not a healer. I can do all three at the same time if I need to.
Personally I feel like Engineers are the most versatile captains for different ship types but I see more Tactical Captains on non-Escorts than Engineers in non-Cruisers.