Engineer captain in a Vesta?

duskstrider101 · June 2013

Hey guys,

My next 50 (currently 35) is going to be an Engineer. I've been debating using some saved zen to buy one of the three pack ships, and just based on appearances and what I've read, I'm really leaning towards the Vesta 3 pack (I really like the hanger bay I guess, lol).

My question is: how viable is it for an engineer captain to fly one of these, and which one do you guys recommend? What should I equip it with/what should my BOFF layout be?

As I'm relatively new to the game, I'm also not familiar with which reps are the most worthwhile to start leveling, so any advise you have there would be great (I pretty much leveled my Rom and my Vulcan side by side).

Thanks again for all of your help! Love the community here.

--Captain Alvare

shockwave85 · June 2013

Unfortunately Engineers don't synergize well with science ships. You'll neither have the added debuff and control that a Sci captain would to complement the ship, nor would you have a Tac captain's ability to buff damage on the science powers. For an engineer, you'd be better off sticking to a cruiser to fly a support/healer role, or an escort to strike a balance between damage and survivability. Considering your Eng captain has the ability to already heal his ship considerably, you should probably look at the more fragile but high damage escorts like the Fleet Defiant or the Andorian ship. Your Eng captain should be able to keep them alive, while their better inherent damage output will make up somewhat for your lack of damage buffing captain powers.

havam · June 2013

shockwave85 wrote: »

Unfortunately Engineers don't synergize ....

what he said, if you want to safe yourself some frustration don't level and eng. Its a lost cause.

shockwave85 · June 2013

havam wrote: »

what he said, if you want to safe yourself some frustration don't level and eng. Its a lost cause.

Well, considering he's a new player, I wasn't going to flat out say that. I can't really argue with it either though, unfortunately. To make the best of it though, I think the high damage escort is the way to go.

havam · June 2013

well i hate to be that blunt. But the earlier your eng is on the long treadmill of rep grind ,dil grind, doff acquisition, accolades, and gear acquisition the easier to delete the toon and start over with a sci or tac.

My 3 year old max level engs that are well equipped are suffering major depressions every time they see me fly by on the "select a character screen"

ferdzso0 · June 2013

havam wrote: »

what he said, if you want to safe yourself some frustration don't level and eng. Its a lost cause.

yep. start a tac, while you did not invest too much time into your eng

as far as the vesta goes, do not waste money on the 3 pack, you dont want 3 consoles wasted for random shiny bonuses, stick with the Recon. explorer, its going to be enough for everything

edit: as far as reputation goes, start grinding omega for the borg engine, deflector, and the maco shield, get the quantum chamber from the romulan rep, and if you are running the aux dhc-s, then you gonna have to invest into the nukara rep too (tho that should be a last step)

shockwave85 · June 2013

Yeah, my Eng was my first alt. I haven't touched him since having him run Temporal Ambassador just to get a free Ambassador-class I've never bothered to have him fly. It is a sad and frustrating state of affairs on the gold side of things.

duskstrider101 · June 2013

Man, talk about disappointing. I was really enjoying the ground based skills of the engineer too.

Alright, so I guess the better follow up question is: can a Tac captain fly the Vesta well? I know it seems like I'm hung up on this class of ship, I just really like how it looks and the fact that it's a mini carrier. ^^;

My Rom is a Science captain, so I was steering clear of leveling another one of those again. Then again, I guess if I place my points in different areas, he may play different.

Thoughts? Thanks again for all of your input.

ferdzso0 · June 2013

duskstrider101 wrote: »

Man, talk about disappointing. I was really enjoying the ground based skills of the engineer too.

Alright, so I guess the better follow up question is: can a Tac captain fly the Vesta well? I know it seems like I'm hung up on this class of ship, I just really like how it looks and the fact that it's a mini carrier. ^^;

My Rom is a Science captain, so I was steering clear of leveling another one of those again. Then again, I guess if I place my points in different areas, he may play different.

Thoughts? Thanks again for all of your input.

a tac can be good in anything, in the vesta as well (tho the bonuses are less as the tac buffs, do not buff the pets)

shockwave85 · June 2013

Well, you hit the nail with the Engineer. Where they shine is on the ground, so if you're ground focused it's not a bad class. The problem is in space they can really only tank. They don't have heals that can be cast on team mates so they're poor healers, and they don't have much for damage buffs so they can't do that either. Without a dedicated taunting skill though, they can't pull aggro off the DPS guys so there's no point in being a tank.

I think a Tac captain can roll a Vesta, but the other guys might have more insight on it. Generally you'd want to focus on Science powers that deal damage, invest skill points in the science skills that buff those powers, and abuse your Tactical captain abilities (Attack Pattern Alpha, Tactical Fleet, Go Down Fighting) to buff their damage even more.

duskstrider101 · June 2013

Once again thank you guys for the information.

Although this brought up another question: aside from the Vesta, are there any other carrier like ships Fed side? I know KDF has several of them, but haven't heard much of the Fed ones.

Thanks again guys, really appreciate it.

ferdzso0 · June 2013

duskstrider101 wrote: »

Once again thank you guys for the information.

Although this brought up another question: aside from the Vesta, are there any other carrier like ships Fed side? I know KDF has several of them, but haven't heard much of the Fed ones.

Thanks again guys, really appreciate it.

heavy escort carrier, caitian carrier and the lock box carriers

duskstrider101 · June 2013

Where does one get a Heavy Escort Carrier?

shockwave85 · June 2013

Heavy Escort Carrier is the generic name for the Akira/Armitage-class variants. Look for Armitage or Heavy Escort Carrier in the C-Store. It's a slightly Engineering-heavy escort with a single hangar bay.

ferdzso0 · June 2013

duskstrider101 wrote: »

Where does one get a Heavy Escort Carrier?

C-store

or without the special consoles, you can buy the fleet version, from the shipyard for fleet credits and modules

twam · June 2013

There's the Atrox, which is a big lumbering hulk, somewhat like the Vo'Quv. And the Heavy Escort Carrier, which is pretty much what it says on the tin: a slightly bulky escort with a carrier bay.

Apart from those, there's the lockbox ships: Jem Hadar Escort Carrier and Dreadnought, the Recluse and ehm, yeah. I feel like I'm forgetting one, but I'm not sure.

And indeed: engineers are something lethal in ground combat. It just takes a whole lot of work to get them up to par in space (though there are people around who manage it, mind you). *shrug* I just started a second KDF engineer, mostly because I already had 2 sci's and tac's but only 1 eng, but also to see how he would do when specced to BoP style of play, with the option to go NeghVar if that didn't work out. The energy management options an engineer gets are nice: my fed Galaxy Dreadnought captain tends to run close to max power in all subsystems, and that's without running an aux2bat build. You just need to figure out what to do with all that juice, if raw cannon output isn't it.

duskstrider101 · June 2013

For the lockbox carriers, do you have to track down the specific lockboxes they are in and open them, or is there another way to get ahold of them?

To be honest, I really like that Tholian Recluse, but wasn't sure if it was still available.

Once again, thanks everyone for the assistance.

shockwave85 · June 2013

One more note about the HEC. If you're sticking with the Engineer character, you're already Eng heavy. If you go with the HEC, you'll probably want to use that Lt. Cdr Engineer slot for something damage dealing like Eject Warp Plasma or preferably Directed Energy Modulation. You really don't need the extra tank, what you need is damage. Running Elite Scorpion Fighters (from New Romulus reputation) in your hangar bay would help add a bit of DPS as well.

twam · June 2013

You can buy it from the exchange as well, and that is arguably the safest way to get it.
The downside is its pricetag: last I checked it was some 60 million EC.

On the other hand, when you buy it from the lobi store (which is where it is found, not directly in a lockbox), it costs 800 lobi (I think. Might be 600). Lobi you can get only from opening lockboxes, and every lockbox contains at least 4 lobi (average over hundreds of boxes was around 5 per box). So ehm, yeah. If you're going that route, you might want to consider buying Master Keys with Zen and selling those for 1,4-1,5 million each, as that would likely be cheaper.

Edit: keep in mind that the lockbox ships are a 1-character only unlock. If you want them on another character too you have to pay for that one too. I tend to prefer c-store ships for that reason (either with fleet upgrade or not)

Unknown · June 2013

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duskstrider101 · June 2013

Lots of awesome information in here guys, thanks so much!

I think I'm going to go ahead and stick with my Romulan Science Captain as my main for a while, since he's already 47, but once I get around to finishing or rerolling my Vulcan federation character, I'm sure this all will be very helpful.

Thank you guys again!

tom61sto · June 2013

edalgo wrote: »

Actually a few people in my fleet have made some very wicked science ship builds with engineers.

Since science ships have very low hull strength the engineer can help it tank more and keep deploying ganking abilities.

Rotate Shield Frequency with high shield mod that Sci ships come with is pretty much instant shield tank whenever it's off cooldown.

EPS Manifold Efficiency Trait means all EPt powers give +10 to whatever systems that aren't being directly effected by that EPt, which means EPtS cycling for nice high shield resists also effectively buffs your energy damage, Sci abilities and speed for around 20 seconds (out of 30 second the main lasts).

ddesjardins · June 2013

Don't be taken in by all of the talk.

The engineer is one of the more flexible and survivable career paths you can take.

In fact, while I prefer to grind with a TAC because it's EASIER, the engineering Captain is my favourite. It's take a while to get there, but I've settled on a tank build that's immensely fun to play in PvE.

As for an Engineering Vesta, well - it was a lot of fun. It is best as a sci ship, and while under the control of an engineering captain it was damn near indestructible. In the end however I went back to the slow, lumbering Odyssey as my tanking spaceframe of choice.

Be warned though - it's slow nature is not for everyone.

shepard31 · June 2013

A tac officer can really shine in the Vesta 3-pack. What a Tac officer brings to the Vesta is one of its major drawbacks, that being DPS.

It's to my thinking that and Engineer would cover the other drawback, which is low HP. The damage resistance would certainly help, but the Vesta just isn't a tanking ship. It's still a ship that, short of activating the Quantum Shield, has a 90% chance of being one-shotted by a Tac cube or gateway's invisitorp.

DPS is a solvable problem, whereas hull integrity is not. You may have better luck with they Oddy set, but don't let my opinion put you off.

THere are many ship builds that are surprisingly effective.

coffeemike · June 2013

The tac Vesta is nice... I'm a Joined Trill engineer for my main. But it's not tanky... yes but that's where the engineering skills help. I spec'd to a lot of suitability and a few science powers so when I run science ships they are fun.

The hull rate is the only thing you need to watch carefully.

sack26 · June 2013

I run an engi in a escort and it works quite well. I can tank pretty much anything pve troughs at me and do decent dps too. I never die in ESTFs and I snicker when a tac captain does. I don't do as much DPS as a tac would but being able to tank bosses and gates for the team feels pretty rewarding too.

ferdzso0 · June 2013

sack26 wrote: »

I run an engi in a escort and it works quite well. I can tank pretty much anything pve troughs at me and do decent dps too. I never die in ESTFs and I snicker when a tac captain does. I don't do as much DPS as a tac would but being able to tank bosses and gates for the team feels pretty rewarding too.

trust me. when a tac dies, it is not the fact that the tac lacks tanking capability, that killed the player, but the inability of said palyer himself, to kill the enemy first, killed him. you can tank anything in a tank, and more in PVE. that is why from a PVE perspective, chosing ENG is not advisable (unless for ground as said before, on ground they are fun)

sack26 · June 2013

ferdzso0 wrote: »

trust me. when a tac dies, it is not the fact that the tac lacks tanking capability, that killed the player, but the inability of said palyer himself, to kill the enemy first, killed him. you can tank anything in a tank, and more in PVE. that is why from a PVE perspective, chosing ENG is not advisable (unless for ground as said before, on ground they are fun)

I am not trying to say that engis are better at pve than tacs. That is not true. A pve full of tacs will finish long before a pve of engis (except maybe on hive onslaught). All I am saying that in an escort engis can also do decent dps in pve and generally get killed less often.

baudl · June 2013

engi on vesta can only be pure win...high energy levels for sci powers and weapons + enourmous survivability (shields in particular)

duskstrider101 · June 2013

Having watched how this thread has progressed, I had a change of heart. I powerleveled (at least, for me lol) my Engineer from the mid 30s to 50 this weekend, and plan on getting him the Vesta pack very soon.

If anything, the handicap in space content has lead me to want to excel. I picked up a refit esocrt with my free LTS mark, and am loving the fact that I can dish out the damage by also be saved by Miracle Worker.

Thanks everyone for lending their opinions!

Also, if anyone has used the 1000 Day ship (Chimera) and has some advise or builds for it, please post them here! I've been really enjoying working with it.

Engineer captain in a Vesta?

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