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Aquarius - Destroyer or Escort?
orangeitis
Member Posts: 5,222 Arc User
Is the Aquarius Destroyer playable ship an Escort or a Destroyer? Well so far, I've heard that it is indeed an Escort. Some even say it counts as both. There are even a few who still think that Destroyers are a sub-set of Escorts. But I think that those claims aren't justified. Here are the facts:
-The NPC Aquarius is referred to as an Escort
-Gorngonzolla confirmed by this post that there are currently(at the time) only 3 Dreadnought ships, each with the word "Dreadnought" in their names, implying that what NPCs are has no effect on what player ships are classified as(Vo'Quv NPC=Dreadnought, player version=Carrier)
-The playable Aquarius is referred to as a Destroyer
-Most destroyers have an alternate mode
-Few Destroyers do not have an alternate mode, such as the Nausicaan Vandal and Scourge vessels or the Mirror Universe temporal ships
-While the Aquarius has an equipment setup similar to Escorts(can load cannons, etc), there is nothing unique about those features to Escorts; Destroyers have the same features
-The playable Aquarius is listed under the "Escort" tab in the Starship and Shuttle Requisitions menu
-^ as is the Chimera, also a 'Destroyer'
-As for an official stance on Destroyers being Escorts... see my sig.
Considering the facts, it is unclear as to whether or not the Aquarius Destroyer is an Escort or a Destroyer.
I think that the hard confirmation would be that if the Aquarius can equip the Enhanced Inertial Damper Field universal console, which can only be equipped to Escorts, Raiders, and Raptors, then(excluding the very low chance of it being a Raider or Raptor) it is an Escort. If not, it is 100% Destroyer.
If anyone out there has both a Hirogen Hunter Heavy Escort and an Aquarius Destroyer, fleet upgrade or no, if you would be so kind as to post confirmation on this issue. Preferably with screenshot evidence. Or hell, a dev word would seal the deal on this issue as well. Thanks in advance.
-The NPC Aquarius is referred to as an Escort
-Gorngonzolla confirmed by this post that there are currently(at the time) only 3 Dreadnought ships, each with the word "Dreadnought" in their names, implying that what NPCs are has no effect on what player ships are classified as(Vo'Quv NPC=Dreadnought, player version=Carrier)
-The playable Aquarius is referred to as a Destroyer
-Most destroyers have an alternate mode
-Few Destroyers do not have an alternate mode, such as the Nausicaan Vandal and Scourge vessels or the Mirror Universe temporal ships
-While the Aquarius has an equipment setup similar to Escorts(can load cannons, etc), there is nothing unique about those features to Escorts; Destroyers have the same features
-The playable Aquarius is listed under the "Escort" tab in the Starship and Shuttle Requisitions menu
-^ as is the Chimera, also a 'Destroyer'
-As for an official stance on Destroyers being Escorts... see my sig.
Considering the facts, it is unclear as to whether or not the Aquarius Destroyer is an Escort or a Destroyer.
I think that the hard confirmation would be that if the Aquarius can equip the Enhanced Inertial Damper Field universal console, which can only be equipped to Escorts, Raiders, and Raptors, then(excluding the very low chance of it being a Raider or Raptor) it is an Escort. If not, it is 100% Destroyer.
If anyone out there has both a Hirogen Hunter Heavy Escort and an Aquarius Destroyer, fleet upgrade or no, if you would be so kind as to post confirmation on this issue. Preferably with screenshot evidence. Or hell, a dev word would seal the deal on this issue as well. Thanks in advance.
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That would suggest that what they decide to term a "destroyer" is just that, an escort that has bigger guns than an ordinary escort. The addition of a fancy console effect would then have little to do with the ship being a destroyer. I realize that the "science destroyer" might belie that statement, but on the other hand those ships do have bigger guns than other science ships, so...
Anyway, that is just speculation, I'll be interested to see if you get an official response.
/M
It's also interesting to note that the Fleet-level Destroyers for the Klingons have an impulse modifier of at least 0.20, while the Aquarius only has 0.15. This doesn't seem to be anything special, just something else that I noticed.
As you said, what NPCs are classified as seems to have no bearing on what the player versions are. (The Galaxy-X, Jupiter, and Odyssey are all considered NPC "Federation Dreadnoughts".)
I'd also like to hear an official responce on this matter. I realize there is a difference between an Escort and a Destroyer, what that difference is, well...
Not all the features of an Escort. It has a weapons layout of a Raider. Not to mention, that +15 weapons power isn't exclusive to Escorts. Most tactical ships seem to have it, Raiders and Raptors included. Heck, even some Warbirds have +15 weapons power.
I'm not really sure Escorts even have a feature they can claim as their own.
...what they're called? Maybe not even that. There does need to be more clarity in-game.
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I was going more for the fact that Destroyers have +10 weapon/+5 engine power rather than Escorts have +15 weapon power. (E.g., it doesn't have the characteristics of a Destroyer rather than it has the characteristics of an Escort.)
Though I'm not entirely sure, it seems to me that Destroyers are somewhat speedier than Escorts, at least when we compare things like the Scourage and the Klingon Vet ship.
Really, I can't even tell what the Aquarius is trying to be at this point.
It's underpowered anyway. Its ship type can very well be defined by what upgrades it gets... when/if it gets a reboot, that is.
It's underwhelming as an anything IMO.
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"Escort" is a meta-game categorization term (it tells you ambiguously what to expect from a ship). The (relatively) complete game's-meta-game-context-sensitive-definition of the "Aquarius Destroyer" is the "Aquarius-class Destroyer-type Escort-category Tier5-difficulty fleetprovisioncredit-cost fleetstore-vendor Playable-use Ship-item". If you look you can see it wedged between "type" and "difficulty."
To flesh out what all that information means, here it is broken down back to front:
Where "item" indicates "general placement in the game."
Where "use" indicates "general deployment in the game."
Where "vendor" indicates "general point-of-access in the game."
Where "cost" indicates "general cost in the game."
Where "difficulty" indicates "general strength in the game."
Where "category" indicates "general 'trinity'-meta-game-purpose in the game".
Where "type" indicates "arbitrary label which may or may not refer to a unique permutation within the domain of 'category'"
Where "class" indicates "arbitrary model attached to type, having no function otherwise."
And for purposes of comparison (to really drive home the point about how the current ship meta-game is irreconcilably terrible and the cause of your confusion) let us look at the "Federation Escort/Refit/Retrofit/Fleet-Retrofit":
ranktoken/dilithium-shipyard tier-2 Federatoin "Escort": "Gladius/Rapier/Saber/Ushaan-class Escort-type Escort-category Tier2-difficulty ranktoken/dilithium-cost shipyard-vendor Playable-use Ship-item".
c-store-shipyard tier-2 Federation "Escort-Refit": "Gladius/Rapier/Saber/Ushaan-class EscortRefit-type Escort-category Tier2-difficulty cstorezen-cost shipyard/cstore-vendor Playable-use Ship-item".
fleetstore-shipyard tier-5 Federation "Escort-Retrofit": "Gladius/Rapier/Saber/Ushaan-class EscortRetrofit-type Escort-category Tier5-difficulty fleetprovisioncredit-cost fleetstore-vendor Playable-use Ship-item".
fleetstore-shipyard tier-5 Federation "Fleet-Escort-Retrofit": "Gladius/Rapier/Saber/Ushaan-class EscortRetrofitFleet-type Escort-category Tier5-difficulty fleetprovisioncreditmodule-cost fleetstore-vendor Playable-use Ship-item".
And before you say "nu uh! these no haz all stuffz" allow me to be irrefutably clear that as I stated above - these are the "relatively" complete definitions as the full ones may cause seizures in small children and dead farm animals being, therefore, inappropriate for posting.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
For a long time, before Vet Heavy Destroyers appeared, all existing destroyers are Klingon, and are lighter in specs than escort counterparts. New players got the impression that Destroyers are heavier than escorts from the vet reward Heavy Destroyers, which are indeed heavier, as the name implies. They're locked behind vet reward not available to normal players, and defy established classifications, and are thus special cases.
When the Breen Cruiser came along, some people began to call that a "Destroyer," based on their mixup between heavy destroyer and destroyer. This is a pure fabrication, nowhere in game, in blog, or in wiki is it called a Destroyer. In game on requisition, it's called "Breen Cruiser," in Dev Blogs it's called "Breen Warship," and in STO Wiki it's called a battlecruiser.
Aquarius fits the bill for sto's early and original interpretation of Destroyer perfectly - it's a lighter, more maneuverable subclass of escort. An exception that's not available to majority of players, also called "Heavy Destroyer" instead of "Destroyer," and a fabrication that has nothing to do with destroyer, doesn't change what the Destroyer class in sto is.
To me, probably one of the best examples of destroyers is the Breen Chel'Gret Warship.
It is significantly faster and more maneuverable than a cruiser, and is far tankier than your standard escort by far (at least on paper... in practice, there really isn't much of a difference at top level play). However, it's not as fast or as maneuverable as an escort, nor is it as tanky as a cruiser. Therefore, it's safe to assume it's a destroyer.
Another example of a destroyer is a Mogai. Now, before you bash me, here's a direct quote from a dev blog on the subject:
So we can guess that a lot of the heavy hybrid ships are considered destroyers.
But in the case of the aquarius, I would actually classify that ship as being closer to a raider than anything else. It's got a really low hull and shield modifier, however, it has very high turn-rate and inertia, with a slightly weakened weapons layout and BOff layout. Very similar to KDF BoPs.
"Escort" is in fact a ship classification that is well-defined in-game - ships that are called Escorts are what is classified as an Escort. While Escorts do share quite a few characteristics between each other, they also share those exact characteristics with Raptors and most Destroyers(least of which the Aquarius). Also, at this point in the game, Escorts have exactly zero other characteristics that they can call their own.
Also, what the Cryptic team behind STO says overrides anything in-game or what any of us arbitrarily refer to something as. They are who decides what is what in-game, whether we say so or not.
These ships have nothing to do with the Aquarius, and are only grouped into the same category in the shipyard menu, which as I pointed out is meaningless since the Chimera is grouped with Escorts as well, and the Chimera isn't an Escort at all.
Please demonstrate that complete definitions "may cause seizures in small children and dead farm animals being", because that claim doesn't seem very likely.
I don't wanna put words into your mouth, but your whole post seems to just say "Aquarius is an Escort because I say it is", which I have to reject on principal.
Please demonstrate that a "Destroyer" is a lighter, more maneuverable subclass of escort. Because the evidence presented seems to demonstrate otherwise. I have no good reason to believe this.
True, but even that quote doesn't lend itself any clean-cut definitions. It leaves too many room for interpretations, such as the JHAS... would it then be classified as a Destroyer?
I gotta agree here. Unfortunately, it seems that the HoH'SuS, the KDF equivalent of the Aquarius is getting a 10% boost to hull points in the near future as well as a flanking damage bonus. Unless Cryptic decides that the Aquarius is a Raider now as well, it'll actually be weaker than Raiders after the update.
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For some odd reason the name also ended up on the Aquarius.
The way she's in the game now she's indeed very odd and needs her own unique characteristic.
And perhaps even a fitting name to set her apart from the Nausicaan ships as well.
But I fear it's a bit difficult to create a euphemistic "starfleetish" word from "gunboat".
Maybe it would indeed be better to rename her to "frigate", a term only used by NPC ships right now.
At first Destroyers were supposed to be escorts with less turn, more hull, and a little less tac boff abilities as in the case with the temporal destroyer, and later the veteran destroyer. Other destroyers such as the Aquarious and fleet scourge don't really fit that description as they are built a lot more like regular escorts. Anyway it doesn't matter what it is really as long as you like the boff stations and stats of the ship, use it.
Looks like a lot of static; lets clean up the frequency:
Lucky for you that my post does not say "Aquarius is an Escort because I say it is" then, otherwise you would no longer be batting 1000 in the failure department and somebody might actually think you have a principal!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The "heavy destroyers" are a recent development. They're heavier than destroyers, thus the term heavy. You can think of them as re-defining destroyers in sto, and you would be wrong, as all they did was define heavy destroyers, not redefining original destroyers.
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The terminology has little or nothing to do with actual gameplay. It's enough that it is what Cryptic says it is, and there's no reason for us to split infinitives over it.
I suspect Cryptic's own internal definition is a bit fuzzy and open to interpretation.
If you guys really feel the need to have this discussion, feel free. But let's keep things friendly, okay?
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Ohh I would put in the same class as a BoP but without the cloak but give it has the same bonus that BoP are getting.
What you call that class for the Feds is another matter, here's a spanner in the works for you.....
It's a corvette.
Join The Space Invaders,..... Federation and KDF fleets.
But before it's actually identified as a Corvette by the game or by the devs, I'd prefer to steer away from referring to the Aquarius as a Corvette until then.
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Well considering corvette class ships IRL are more like escorts for the smaller warships, the Aquarius probably best fits that description, since as a standalone warship, it isn't quite there.
But I stand by what I said before. Based off of handling and current stats, it's the closest thing feds have to a raider.
Good luck with that
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HMM, how about "petscort" or "petvette".;)
I would probably consider that a good title if there wasn't a playable version of the ship.
Yeah one could almost laugh at it if it weren't that sad.
It almost feels like a toy the way it's implemented now.
One thing that hit me when I took another look at the stats todays was that the Fleet Aquarius has a tiny bit more shields than the Fleet Tac Escort retro.
Maybe it would already help the ship if the shield mod got bumped up to 1.0?
It would probably help if the ship got a lot of things. It's shields are fine, what it really needs is hull. A LOT of hull. And a 7th weapon. Right now, it's a BoP without flanking, without a battlecloak, and with 25% less turn. What does that make it? A failure.
This is probably the one ship I will NEVER fly. It's just too gimped, and too horrible. It's base hull is literally 20% lower than it's next closest competitor, and even though it has a good BOff and console layout (ALL THE UNIVERSALS!!!!
All in all, no. Just... no.
The classifications you speak of are only for ship organization in the Earth Spacedock shipyard, and may only apply loose classifications to the ships. Also, they do not apply to Romulan or Klingon ships at all.
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