Your right it's more challenging to drive a Tier 4 ship instead of a Tier 5 one, but that doesn't mean it's good No matter how you shake it, it will less DPS then any of the Tier 5 Escorts, the transformation sequences aren't that big of a buff. Also I agree that the Dread sucks, but they don't know what they want to do…
Exactly if they aren't going to fix it the proper way they could at least do it the lazy way and re-arrange the Embassy Boffs to have more trait options at the V.Rare Rank
Is it a TERRIBLE ship? No...it's the same as any other 9 console ship, it'll get you buy but it's not "Strong" I have 10ish or so 10 console ships, I swap between them for fun to fly something different, it's annoying that this ship which cost so much isn't even equal quality to other 10 console ships. You can argue…
Probably because they are all playing romulans... It's just dumb to revamp the whole system and then dump the only good space trait on one race. There is so many races, just give each one something different.