I won't belittle anything you said you had a few valid observations in there. I quoted this part for one reason. This points to the main issue many feds have with PvP in general. I will agree that klink ship layouts and tactics are easier to grasp for basic level players. Therefore low level klinks will out perform low-medium level fed teams... no doubt there.
Now ask what is your ships burst strategy... you could use BOL with a HY combo. You could go cannons with a hy combo. You can go all cannons with a HARD debuff factor. Bottom line is however you do it you need to BURST to break through healing. Cannons on a cruiser are almost useless and most klink cruiser pilots don't use them... however your right they are more Bursty then beams (with out overload)
Your burst plan can also include skills like Aux to Damp... this will allow you to Spin on a dime and get that facing again. (you WILL out turn a bop with aux to damp on) Perhaps thats a better idea then that second emergency power to shield junk.
Thanks for not belittling me or being condescending as i typically hate that kind of behavior and it would have just sparked another flame war.
I agree with what you say about Burst firing and getting your damage on target effectively than doing helter skelter attacks which yield nothing but wasted DPS, the timing of the burst is very cruicial as well in my eyes. I have learned this over the 100s of pvp games i have played, i used to use HY and BOL and still use HYT and BOL, sometimes switch BOL with FAW to try and alliveate some of the pressure from too many pet ships flying around me. Yeah i also tried Aux to inertial dampners before but didnt not see much gains in turn speed for me, could be because i fly a star cruiser and my shields were always plummeting at an alarming rate and the extra added kinetic resist that Aux to inertial dampners gave was not really worth the shield tanking trade off, so shield tanking has become my primary goal especially after the new patch.
And Planning is everything you are right, when you read my post before you would have noticed i made a comment about strength in numbers and the ability of the klink ships to bear their most powerful weapons more quicker in most cases on fed ships than vice versa. This puts the feds in a very precarious position, not only do we have to plan to be outnumbered and out gunned when we run into a group of ships consisting of 2 or more carriers we have to predict and be vigilant of incoming fire from all angles while focusing fire on the pets to make sure we eliminate the supports ships to get to the main guy( aka player ships), which does create a tabbing nightmare when there are 3 or 4 carriers spawning fighters at an alarming rate all over the place. While all this is happening the feds have to also keep a close eye on allied ships and their own ships' shields and hull which can drop quite quickly with all the incoming damage from pet ships/ summoned photonic ships/ Aoe Spells and ofcourse the player ships debuffing us and outputting tremendous damage from their cannons on us while all of the above is happening. What all this in essence leads to is fed captains hitting the inevitable "CD Wall", a term i coined for when all your spells are on cool down due to constant usage to stay alive or trying to keep your team-mates alive. I have tried rigorously to time the activation of my spells to avoid hitting this wall but it just does not pan out to my advantage when I am immensly out numbered. Face it you can be a pro strategist and absolutely good tactician/ but when you are out gunned and out numbered it is simply a loosing battle just how long you can prolong it thats all. Of course while having to deal with all this we have to plan to execute our damage bursts to keep the klink player ships hurting.
So admist all this confusion and constant target toggling and damage reciving, executing a plan to kill some times gets lost in translation. Suddenly and most often its about survival, we are just fighting to survive now due to the above stated reasons but mainly due to being heavily outnumbered (thanks to carrier pet spwan rate) and the fact that these pets actually do quite a bit of damage to our hulls when there is a whole pile of em. So although the plan is there executing it can be very hard considering the klink ships strengths over that of fed ships at the va level.
While I would agree that all klinks have feds, it is not necessarily true that all feds roll klinks. I know people who have no interest in it, or rarely if ever play their klinks. Many feds seem more interested in the emblems than actually winning. I even had one tell me in an FvF that there "is no winning, I still get emblems". That is a typical attitude it seems. No wonder so many suck.
It's a shame many feds seem to have little active interest in actually being good at PvP, it would make it far more entertaining.
You have touched on a good point here, I myself have run into fed players like this, ah its only for the emblems so i can buy some neat stuff and sell it on the exchange for ECs. Not many are like this though ther are quite a few who are actually very actively interested in PvP but that interest is dwindiling and the FvK pvp waters might run dry, i say might cuz i dont want to sound like i am over exaggerating at this moment, and its just going to be FvF or KvK. Faction vs Faction play is what i love but the way the game is setup right now the Klink faction ships do have some advantages in the VA/ LG1 tier over their fed counterparts
it was a rare occurrence when the team is not 100% cloaked. We can approach our targets unmolested and wait to see who others are targeting, and then attack. This is, without a doubt, a tactical advantage.I am not going to argue that the ships themselves are OP'd, as I do not believe they are, it is simply that there is a deference that allows klinks to pug PVP for more easily.
Obviously this changes with the carrier groups as most are visible, barring the use of MES, but carriers are a whole other issue for PUGS. They just dont encounter anything like it PVE fed side. For that reason they are at a disadvantage, and while that may not be due to the ships, it is due to the nature of the game.
Frankly fed side FvK gets tiresome because wins come too infrequently, while klink FvK gets tiresome because the wins are all too often too easy and there is no sense of challenge. Sure there are same faction PvP, but that kind of defeats the purpose to my mind.
So I am curious to know what these differences are in your mind that allows the klinks to pug pvp far more easily? And I think this is what most fed players are begining to feel in the end, it gets tiresome when one faction is guaranteed an 80 percent win chance due to "the nature of the game" if you want to call it that
You can't build a ship to compensate for the experience of a better player. I did LTC pvp in my science alt BoP yesterday and could not win (could barely kill anything) a match to save my life. Am I to assume that at LTC the feds have an advantage over the KDF? Or do I just put it down to bad build, bad equipment and a rusty set of skills at that level pvp?
One can have all the tests with a friend or complete strangers and the outcome will still be skewed to your belief that the KDF is designed to have an advantage over the feds in combat. Unless you can find two people of equal skill, .
Please, I am not just basing this on assumptions or trying to cook up some lies about how OP the KDF side is or just because i feel like complaining or crying about some looses i took, I took many looses during PvP times i shake em off learn from em and move on. I have played enough PvPs to notice a few things here and there. Also I said that when i first started my post that it was an opinion of mine, but now I read other players are saying the same thing as I am so maybe its just no longer an opinion. Maybe it is the constraints of the game itself
When i fought 1v1 with my klink friend just comparing my pvp time with his, i would say I have actually spent more time in pvp arenas on the fed side than he has on the klink side. But one thing he has and i have to give him credit for this is his ability to adapt. The moment he saw i could rip through his shields and lay damage faster on his hull he used the universal BO slots to his advantage, he switched his tacts around and switched to a more healing based setup. I think he had only 1 tac ensign at the end in that LT com bop to counter my 2 tacs in the fed LT Com escort (remember fed escorts dont get universal BOs). All he needed was rapid fire anyways cuz he always could bear his cannons faster on my ship than i could do on his. The turn-rate was the winner here and it clearly showed. The battle was long drawn out but in the end no matter what i did I could not beat that turn rate on the BOP and the cloak obviously allowed him to flank my position 9/10 times. Again not complaining here just stating what i have observed.
I know most klinks will be like you need to learn to fly better, use better tactics etc! well i would like to think i am past that point, i have faced countless opponents, countless arenas, different flying styles, gone up against different strategies and still there is one thing that just boggles my mind, why is it that I use these same strategies, same flying skills and same tactics on the klink side and I am a far more of an effective killer but on the fed side I am not. I adapt, I plan the same way on the klink side and it works just fine, i fly with a klink team who are not as good as the fed team i fly with and the result is still in favor of the klink side. So this does raise an eyebrow.
Ship capabilities have a lot more to do with this game than many of the people on this forum are prepared to admit, .
Bingo, exactly, this is what I am driving at, ship capabilities are definitely playing a role in the outcome of PvP space arenas.
Another example is when i was with my sci BOP LTC level ship at ker'rat. I saw two fed ships working togeather trying to complete the quest. I was the only Klink in the area and I decided to harass them a little bit, the klink in me came out i guess . I saw there were two of them so i was going to need some healing to counter the incoming fire from the cruiser and escort. I set up my ship for heals on the fly with RSP1/ENG1/TSS1 coupled with HYT1. I timed my attack waiting for them to either be scanning a node or getting hit by a borg ship. The opportunity came when the crusier got the attention of a cube while trying to kill a borg repair hulk. He got hit with two shield nuetralizers and lost all his shields and was being assisted by his escort buddy to stave off the cube. I flanked the cruiser which had no shields and taking damage from the cube dropped battle cloak and let him have it from my frontal dual heavies with HYT and all. Needless to say the curiser didnt last quite long taking a pounding from two sides but i had the escorts full attention. He was on me like white on rice and he had taken my forward shields down and put damage on my hull. I was down to 88 percent hull I immediately hit evasive manuvers + engine battrey, bought my port and aft shileds to take the escorts frontal fire power and move out of range of his fire by 11-12km or so. The BOPs excellent manuvering contributed to this next up coming fight, i pulled away from the fed escort looking like i was weak and did not have any heals (Eng1 and RSP1 were still un-used) again a big thanks to Universal BO slots. The escort took the bait and came at me away from the cube, i did not cloak until i had lured the escort far enough from the borg ships. Hit a shield battrey got some of my shields partially up and cloaked with the escort chasing me. I made sure to always keep him 11-12km away before i cloaked, as soon as he lost track of me he continued to come forward towards my last known position i did counter manuver around him and ended up behind him with HYT charged and ready, i dropped cloak again and it was a battle that I came out as the victor
Needless to say the BOPs turn rate was again what helped me the most to out turn the fed escort and I was consistently able to keep my main cannons on him and put damage on his hull and his shields. So i sincerely doubt a well flown/well setup BOP can really be matched by a well flown/well setup fed escort at the LT Com level. Obviously I spend a lot of time specing my characters properly checking and double checking what i want in my skills and how much skill points i am putting into what i want. If i had a fed escort and was up against two klink ships i never would have been able to pull the above off.
You have a point and obviously I didnt explain mine that well. When I talk about 'ships' I mean everything that comes with them, equipment, Bridge Officers and their abilities. Essentially everything that changes when you jump tier. The only thing that doesnt alter significantly is the player. Therefore any massive changes in the outcome of the game must be primarily down to changes in game mechanics.
Sorry but that, again, just doesnt stand up top scrutiny and relies on the false assumption that there no, or extremley few, experienced federation players, and thats simply not the case. The inbalance in this game is caused primarily by the game mechanics not player experience. If both side had the same basic mechanics you would be right, but they dont.
Sounds like you need to stop replying to my threads if your amazing contribution is to tell people they suck. Welcome to the ignore list.
Some of your posts make sense but you seem pretty quick to assume that game mechanics are always to blame. I was just tired of it. I'll be more polite next time.
Your bop stories are great... you can do things like that in a bop sure. You can also do things like that in a federation escort. You can't cloak up... but you hit harder in a fed escort and your not as squishy so the results are pretty much the same. In one of your points you mentioned your fed is in a star cruiser (AKA The Space Whale) A ships whos only real purpose is to keep Escorts from going boom. Honest question... have you played or tried flying a federation escort?
You have a point and obviously I didnt explain mine that well. When I talk about 'ships' I mean everything that comes with them, equipment, Bridge Officers and their abilities. Essentially everything that changes when you jump tier. The only thing that doesnt alter significantly is the player. Therefore any massive changes in the outcome of the game must be primarily down to changes in game mechanics.
Sorry but that, again, just doesnt stand up top scrutiny and relies on the false assumption that there no, or extremley few, experienced federation players, and thats simply not the case. The inbalance in this game is caused primarily by the game mechanics not player experience. If both side had the same basic mechanics you would be right, but they dont.
It's funny how two people can come so close to seeing things the same way but interpret them completely differently. The player has to alter significantly to take advantage of the significant mechanical changes in the last tier. Some will adapt, others with expect the game to.
Again, there aren't extremely few experienced and highly skilled Fed PVPers. The great ones just exist in a much larger pool of significantly less skilled players. The diamonds in the rough, so to speak.
Your bop stories are great... you can do things like that in a bop sure. You can also do things like that in a federation escort. You can't cloak up... but you hit harder in a fed escort and your not as squishy so the results are pretty much the same. In one of your points you mentioned your fed is in a star cruiser (AKA The Space Whale) A ships whos only real purpose is to keep Escorts from going boom. Honest question... have you played or tried flying a federation escort?
Yes sir, quite a few times I have a lt com. spec'd only in fed escorts, and VA tac flying a escort as well...(retrofit)
I dont know if i can really pull that off with a fed escort cuz the klinks will seem coming...cloak and flank me and then kill me
Yes sir, quite a few times I have a lt com. spec'd only in fed escorts, and VA tac flying a escort as well...(retrofit)
I dont know if i can really pull that off with a fed escort cuz the klinks will seem coming...cloak and flank me and then kill me
Well here is my point I was making earlier. I didn't realized you where talking about a cruiser at the time bursting in a star cruiser is hard... its almost a 100% support ship really. The defiant refit can cloak so you can indead do that however I have killed plenty of klinks in both the fleet and advanced escorts. Try the following ideas on the escorts....
Attack Pattern Omega (provides defense boost damage boast... and the most importent TURN boast)
Attack Pattern Delta is a great defense skill that will make it easier to drop a EPTS for AUX to Damp..
Aux to Damp On a star cruiser, no it won't work well. On an escort you WILL turn hard.
Emergency Power to Engines. Nice Speed bump and a bit of a turn bump as your engine power will go up.
Here is the last Advanced Escort Build I was using
HY 1 - Delta 1 - Omega 1 - Rapid Fire 3
Tac Team 1 - HY 2 - Beam Overload 3
Emergency Power to Shields 1
Emergency Power to Engines 1 - Aux To Damp 1
Sci Team 1 - Hazard 2
1 DBB 2 Dual Cannons 1 Quantun
3 Turrets
Hyper Impulse engines with FULL OR SPD OR TURN... which ever is going to suit you best.
Power settings 100 / 25 / 40 / 35
And spend skill points on shield and aux efficency... and a good amount in engine effic as well.
This is a great build to Solo Pug in... you will be speedy you Will have good turn, You have a counter to ShockWaves... a counter to Tractor beams. and a BOAT load of DPS. NO you can not shield tank... but you can speed tank which is more workable in a fed escort.
As far as making a star cruiser do much other then heal... well not sure if its possible; theres probaly better advice on that in the cruiser forum section.
I still say that the difference between these tiers and the level of play within them is more related to the use/availibilty of BO powers than the inherent design of the vessel involved.
The inherent designs seems only relevant in as far it provides you with the BO powers you have.
The other stats influence the gameplay, but not all with the same relevance. Maneuverability usually seems more important then your hull or shields. The extremes can lead to notable differences - for example, a Bird of Prey is very "fragile" and requires good reaction times to withstand an attack. You have a little more time in a Cruiser or a Science Vessel. But a little more time is not several seconds, more between fractions of seconds and 1-3 seconds.
At lower tiers, this is less so. Combat is not that fast, but you have less resources to recover - so you need to avoid damage or retreat when in trouble. (But you defintely can, you won't be "one-shotted" or anything like it.)
Regarding the "ship balance" at lower tiers, I found the K'Tinga (Tier 3, Commander level) better then the Tier 3 Fed Cruisers. The maneuverability and front-focused weapon layout was a real boon already there. For other ships, I don't think there are any notable differences (where you can make them, there are no equivalents to BoPs on the Fed side or SVs on the KDF side.)
I would actually put tier 3 as the "best" tier in terms of speed and the relevanve of Bridge Officer abilties and the relevance of basic stats like hull and shields.
Please, I am not just basing this on assumptions or trying to cook up some lies about how OP the KDF side is or just because i feel like complaining or crying about some looses i took,
I did not suggest you where. I was suggesting that your belief may be skewed by your experiences in pvp or by the relative ease/difficulty of the tier you play, lack of experience of your opponents or any number of outside variables. Granted one faction may actually hold an advantage over the other in ship design at a given tier, but it seems to flip/flop enough that no one faction has an inherent advantage over all tiers.
why is it that I use these same strategies, same flying skills and same tactics on the klink side and I am a far more of an effective killer but on the fed side I am not. I adapt, I plan the same way on the klink side and it works just fine, i fly with a klink team who are not as good as the fed team i fly with and the result is still in favor of the klink side. So this does raise an eyebrow.
The KDF is designed more for combat than the federation? (being pvp-centered and all)
I actually have found the opposite to be true. My fed tac/escort was insanely easy to play and had little to no threat of dying in pvp, but I found the KDF to be more challenging to play.
I would actually put tier 3 as the "best" tier in terms of speed and the relevanve of Bridge Officer abilties and the relevance of basic stats like hull and shields.
Yep, above T3 things start getting gimmicky and weird.
Well here is my point I was making earlier. I didn't realized you where talking about a cruiser at the time bursting in a star cruiser is hard... its almost a 100% support ship really. The defiant refit can cloak so you can indead do that however I have killed plenty of klinks in both the fleet and advanced escorts. Try the following ideas on the escorts....
Attack Pattern Omega (provides defense boost damage boast... and the most importent TURN boast)
Attack Pattern Delta is a great defense skill that will make it easier to drop a EPTS for AUX to Damp..
Aux to Damp On a star cruiser, no it won't work well. On an escort you WILL turn hard.
Emergency Power to Engines. Nice Speed bump and a bit of a turn bump as your engine power will go up.
Here is the last Advanced Escort Build I was using
HY 1 - Delta 1 - Omega 1 - Rapid Fire 3
Tac Team 1 - HY 2 - Beam Overload 3
Emergency Power to Shields 1
Emergency Power to Engines 1 - Aux To Damp 1
Sci Team 1 - Hazard 2
1 DBB 2 Dual Cannons 1 Quantun
3 Turrets
Hyper Impulse engines with FULL OR SPD OR TURN... which ever is going to suit you best.
Power settings 100 / 25 / 40 / 35
And spend skill points on shield and aux efficency... and a good amount in engine effic as well.
This is a great build to Solo Pug in... you will be speedy you Will have good turn, You have a counter to ShockWaves... a counter to Tractor beams. and a BOAT load of DPS. NO you can not shield tank... but you can speed tank which is more workable in a fed escort.
As far as making a star cruiser do much other then heal... well not sure if its possible; theres probaly better advice on that in the cruiser forum section.
I have had the same setup on my escort, but since i switched to the start cruiser Eng i have not looked back at my escort much, i just started playing him yesterday again but it was funny that i noticed i had a very smiliar setup as what you put forth except for attack pattern omega
The KDF is designed more for combat than the federation? (being pvp-centered and all)
I actually have found the opposite to be true. My fed tac/escort was insanely easy to play and had little to no threat of dying in pvp, but I found the KDF to be more challenging to play.
well you should try playing them against klinks now after the patch went in, its insanely hard to play feds i find. Given the strength in numbers the klinks possess at any given time in most arenas thanks to carriers spawning so much pets and the ship buffs it seems like at the VA level atleast the KDF has a massive advantage.
After playing my LG1 klink and VA Eng/Tac/Sci ..its worlds apart in terms of difficulty level, the KDF sure does look a whole lot easier to me.
Given the strength in numbers the klinks possess at any given time in most arenas thanks to carriers spawning so much pets and the ship buffs it seems like at the VA level at least the KDF has a massive advantage.
The carrier pets may be a bit over-buffed in damage (even though they have since rebalanced the pet BoP damage after the update) but the the proc [dam] on weapons that also came down the pipe effects everybody. I personally think that any advantage that exists at VA level for iether faction is a misinterpretation of gameplay.
Teamwork FtW... I look forward to finishing the leveling on my klink... may take a while cause i dont play him much but they are an overall fun faction for PvP
Comments
I agree with what you say about Burst firing and getting your damage on target effectively than doing helter skelter attacks which yield nothing but wasted DPS, the timing of the burst is very cruicial as well in my eyes. I have learned this over the 100s of pvp games i have played, i used to use HY and BOL and still use HYT and BOL, sometimes switch BOL with FAW to try and alliveate some of the pressure from too many pet ships flying around me. Yeah i also tried Aux to inertial dampners before but didnt not see much gains in turn speed for me, could be because i fly a star cruiser and my shields were always plummeting at an alarming rate and the extra added kinetic resist that Aux to inertial dampners gave was not really worth the shield tanking trade off, so shield tanking has become my primary goal especially after the new patch.
And Planning is everything you are right, when you read my post before you would have noticed i made a comment about strength in numbers and the ability of the klink ships to bear their most powerful weapons more quicker in most cases on fed ships than vice versa. This puts the feds in a very precarious position, not only do we have to plan to be outnumbered and out gunned when we run into a group of ships consisting of 2 or more carriers we have to predict and be vigilant of incoming fire from all angles while focusing fire on the pets to make sure we eliminate the supports ships to get to the main guy( aka player ships), which does create a tabbing nightmare when there are 3 or 4 carriers spawning fighters at an alarming rate all over the place. While all this is happening the feds have to also keep a close eye on allied ships and their own ships' shields and hull which can drop quite quickly with all the incoming damage from pet ships/ summoned photonic ships/ Aoe Spells and ofcourse the player ships debuffing us and outputting tremendous damage from their cannons on us while all of the above is happening. What all this in essence leads to is fed captains hitting the inevitable "CD Wall", a term i coined for when all your spells are on cool down due to constant usage to stay alive or trying to keep your team-mates alive. I have tried rigorously to time the activation of my spells to avoid hitting this wall but it just does not pan out to my advantage when I am immensly out numbered. Face it you can be a pro strategist and absolutely good tactician/ but when you are out gunned and out numbered it is simply a loosing battle just how long you can prolong it thats all. Of course while having to deal with all this we have to plan to execute our damage bursts to keep the klink player ships hurting.
So admist all this confusion and constant target toggling and damage reciving, executing a plan to kill some times gets lost in translation. Suddenly and most often its about survival, we are just fighting to survive now due to the above stated reasons but mainly due to being heavily outnumbered (thanks to carrier pet spwan rate) and the fact that these pets actually do quite a bit of damage to our hulls when there is a whole pile of em. So although the plan is there executing it can be very hard considering the klink ships strengths over that of fed ships at the va level.
You have touched on a good point here, I myself have run into fed players like this, ah its only for the emblems so i can buy some neat stuff and sell it on the exchange for ECs. Not many are like this though ther are quite a few who are actually very actively interested in PvP but that interest is dwindiling and the FvK pvp waters might run dry, i say might cuz i dont want to sound like i am over exaggerating at this moment, and its just going to be FvF or KvK. Faction vs Faction play is what i love but the way the game is setup right now the Klink faction ships do have some advantages in the VA/ LG1 tier over their fed counterparts
So I am curious to know what these differences are in your mind that allows the klinks to pug pvp far more easily? And I think this is what most fed players are begining to feel in the end, it gets tiresome when one faction is guaranteed an 80 percent win chance due to "the nature of the game" if you want to call it that
Please, I am not just basing this on assumptions or trying to cook up some lies about how OP the KDF side is or just because i feel like complaining or crying about some looses i took, I took many looses during PvP times i shake em off learn from em and move on. I have played enough PvPs to notice a few things here and there. Also I said that when i first started my post that it was an opinion of mine, but now I read other players are saying the same thing as I am so maybe its just no longer an opinion. Maybe it is the constraints of the game itself
When i fought 1v1 with my klink friend just comparing my pvp time with his, i would say I have actually spent more time in pvp arenas on the fed side than he has on the klink side. But one thing he has and i have to give him credit for this is his ability to adapt. The moment he saw i could rip through his shields and lay damage faster on his hull he used the universal BO slots to his advantage, he switched his tacts around and switched to a more healing based setup. I think he had only 1 tac ensign at the end in that LT com bop to counter my 2 tacs in the fed LT Com escort (remember fed escorts dont get universal BOs). All he needed was rapid fire anyways cuz he always could bear his cannons faster on my ship than i could do on his. The turn-rate was the winner here and it clearly showed. The battle was long drawn out but in the end no matter what i did I could not beat that turn rate on the BOP and the cloak obviously allowed him to flank my position 9/10 times. Again not complaining here just stating what i have observed.
I know most klinks will be like you need to learn to fly better, use better tactics etc! well i would like to think i am past that point, i have faced countless opponents, countless arenas, different flying styles, gone up against different strategies and still there is one thing that just boggles my mind, why is it that I use these same strategies, same flying skills and same tactics on the klink side and I am a far more of an effective killer but on the fed side I am not. I adapt, I plan the same way on the klink side and it works just fine, i fly with a klink team who are not as good as the fed team i fly with and the result is still in favor of the klink side. So this does raise an eyebrow.
Bingo, exactly, this is what I am driving at, ship capabilities are definitely playing a role in the outcome of PvP space arenas.
Another example is when i was with my sci BOP LTC level ship at ker'rat. I saw two fed ships working togeather trying to complete the quest. I was the only Klink in the area and I decided to harass them a little bit, the klink in me came out i guess
Needless to say the BOPs turn rate was again what helped me the most to out turn the fed escort and I was consistently able to keep my main cannons on him and put damage on his hull and his shields. So i sincerely doubt a well flown/well setup BOP can really be matched by a well flown/well setup fed escort at the LT Com level. Obviously I spend a lot of time specing my characters properly checking and double checking what i want in my skills and how much skill points i am putting into what i want. If i had a fed escort and was up against two klink ships i never would have been able to pull the above off.
+1 Agreed
You took what i was thinking and coined it well.
Some of your posts make sense but you seem pretty quick to assume that game mechanics are always to blame. I was just tired of it. I'll be more polite next time.
Your bop stories are great... you can do things like that in a bop sure. You can also do things like that in a federation escort. You can't cloak up... but you hit harder in a fed escort and your not as squishy so the results are pretty much the same. In one of your points you mentioned your fed is in a star cruiser (AKA The Space Whale) A ships whos only real purpose is to keep Escorts from going boom. Honest question... have you played or tried flying a federation escort?
It's funny how two people can come so close to seeing things the same way but interpret them completely differently. The player has to alter significantly to take advantage of the significant mechanical changes in the last tier. Some will adapt, others with expect the game to.
Again, there aren't extremely few experienced and highly skilled Fed PVPers. The great ones just exist in a much larger pool of significantly less skilled players. The diamonds in the rough, so to speak.
Yes sir, quite a few times I have a lt com. spec'd only in fed escorts, and VA tac flying a escort as well...(retrofit)
I dont know if i can really pull that off with a fed escort cuz the klinks will seem coming...cloak and flank me and then kill me
Well here is my point I was making earlier.
Attack Pattern Omega (provides defense boost damage boast... and the most importent TURN boast)
Attack Pattern Delta is a great defense skill that will make it easier to drop a EPTS for AUX to Damp..
Aux to Damp On a star cruiser, no it won't work well. On an escort you WILL turn hard.
Emergency Power to Engines. Nice Speed bump and a bit of a turn bump as your engine power will go up.
Here is the last Advanced Escort Build I was using
HY 1 - Delta 1 - Omega 1 - Rapid Fire 3
Tac Team 1 - HY 2 - Beam Overload 3
Emergency Power to Shields 1
Emergency Power to Engines 1 - Aux To Damp 1
Sci Team 1 - Hazard 2
1 DBB 2 Dual Cannons 1 Quantun
3 Turrets
Hyper Impulse engines with FULL OR SPD OR TURN... which ever is going to suit you best.
Power settings 100 / 25 / 40 / 35
And spend skill points on shield and aux efficency... and a good amount in engine effic as well.
This is a great build to Solo Pug in... you will be speedy you Will have good turn, You have a counter to ShockWaves... a counter to Tractor beams. and a BOAT load of DPS. NO you can not shield tank... but you can speed tank which is more workable in a fed escort.
As far as making a star cruiser do much other then heal... well not sure if its possible; theres probaly better advice on that in the cruiser forum section.
The inherent designs seems only relevant in as far it provides you with the BO powers you have.
The other stats influence the gameplay, but not all with the same relevance. Maneuverability usually seems more important then your hull or shields. The extremes can lead to notable differences - for example, a Bird of Prey is very "fragile" and requires good reaction times to withstand an attack. You have a little more time in a Cruiser or a Science Vessel. But a little more time is not several seconds, more between fractions of seconds and 1-3 seconds.
At lower tiers, this is less so. Combat is not that fast, but you have less resources to recover - so you need to avoid damage or retreat when in trouble. (But you defintely can, you won't be "one-shotted" or anything like it.)
Regarding the "ship balance" at lower tiers, I found the K'Tinga (Tier 3, Commander level) better then the Tier 3 Fed Cruisers. The maneuverability and front-focused weapon layout was a real boon already there. For other ships, I don't think there are any notable differences (where you can make them, there are no equivalents to BoPs on the Fed side or SVs on the KDF side.)
I would actually put tier 3 as the "best" tier in terms of speed and the relevanve of Bridge Officer abilties and the relevance of basic stats like hull and shields.
The KDF is designed more for combat than the federation? (being pvp-centered and all)
I actually have found the opposite to be true. My fed tac/escort was insanely easy to play and had little to no threat of dying in pvp, but I found the KDF to be more challenging to play.
Yep, above T3 things start getting gimmicky and weird.
below tier 4 things start getting slow and boring.
tier 5 & 6 are heavily dependant on player skill, build synergy and team cohesiveness.
I have had the same setup on my escort, but since i switched to the start cruiser Eng i have not looked back at my escort much, i just started playing him yesterday again but it was funny that i noticed i had a very smiliar setup as what you put forth except for attack pattern omega
well you should try playing them against klinks now after the patch went in, its insanely hard to play feds i find. Given the strength in numbers the klinks possess at any given time in most arenas thanks to carriers spawning so much pets and the ship buffs it seems like at the VA level atleast the KDF has a massive advantage.
After playing my LG1 klink and VA Eng/Tac/Sci ..its worlds apart in terms of difficulty level, the KDF sure does look a whole lot easier to me.
The carrier pets may be a bit over-buffed in damage (even though they have since rebalanced the pet BoP damage after the update) but the the proc [dam] on weapons that also came down the pipe effects everybody. I personally think that any advantage that exists at VA level for iether faction is a misinterpretation of gameplay.