Stay Tac/Escort or Start Over?

[Archived Post]

Well, I'm hoping to hit LtCmdr this weekend and finally get into an Escort ship this weekend. My question is, with the glass-cannonism of the ship, would I be further ahead being at such a low level just starting over as an Engineer and going for some additional survivability? Flying a cruiser is mind-numbingly slow to be honest, but at the same time I don't want to be flying an escort as a tactical officer and basically losing my ship constantly because I can't maintain shields. I guess I'm just not really sure what to expect, what would you recommend? The thought of having to re-level to LtCmdr again is admitedly a bit... ugh.

[Archived Post]

The escort as a glass cannon is highly overplayed by some. (mostly people that play cruisers)

Honestly their is NO faster way to level then to fly an escort. I have 10 toons. 9 full level. When I leveled all but the first one I ran every levels escort. The escort is only squishy if you don't run any heals at all or fly silly.

Some tips for you;

1) Always keep moving (stopping will drop defenses)
2) do your best to stay on enemy facings. Don't kill every shield facing the NPCS are dumb and will not rebalance shields. (some players are just as silly if you are pvping)
3) use DUAL HEAVY Cannons. You will need to practice keeping them in arc. However the reward is there, the dmg is awsome and will chew the poor npcs up.
4) don't be afraid to experiment at the lower levels... try a torp, try running 1 beam and a couple cannons. Try diffrent things.
5) run one copy of EPT Shields.
6) Run full weapon power at almost all times
7) Have a tanking plan. Your first line of defense is your shield, think how you will keep it up. EPTS is good Transfer Shield Strength is good... Tactical team is the escort shield heal bread and butter. Have a plan as to what you will do when your shield fails. Engi Team / hazard emitters / (not sure if you have it yet) Brace for impact... and even piloting techniques, like Evasive or a combo of Evasive with a tractor beam to get out of an arc.

That was likely too much info... however point is stick with the escort. No matter what capt type its the best way to level anyway. With some of the recent changes to defense numbers and tactical team a well planned escort is very tanky, there not nearly as glass like as some will have you think.

[Archived Post]

The escort as a glass cannon is highly overplayed by some. (mostly people that play cruisers)

Honestly their is NO faster way to level then to fly an escort. I have 10 toons. 9 full level. When I leveled all but the first one I ran every levels escort. The escort is only squishy if you don't run any heals at all or fly silly.

Some tips for you;

1) Always keep moving (stopping will drop defenses)
2) do your best to stay on enemy facings. Don't kill every shield facing the NPCS are dumb and will not rebalance shields. (some players are just as silly if you are pvping)
3) use DUAL HEAVY Cannons. You will need to practice keeping them in arc. However the reward is there, the dmg is awsome and will chew the poor npcs up.
4) don't be afraid to experiment at the lower levels... try a torp, try running 1 beam and a couple cannons. Try diffrent things.
5) run one copy of EPT Shields.
6) Run full weapon power at almost all times
7) Have a tanking plan. Your first line of defense is your shield, think how you will keep it up. EPTS is good Transfer Shield Strength is good... Tactical team is the escort shield heal bread and butter. Have a plan as to what you will do when your shield fails. Engi Team / hazard emitters / (not sure if you have it yet) Brace for impact... and even piloting techniques, like Evasive or a combo of Evasive with a tractor beam to get out of an arc.

That was likely too much info... however point is stick with the escort. No matter what capt type its the best way to level anyway. With some of the recent changes to defense numbers and tactical team a well planned escort is very tanky, there not nearly as glass like as some will have you think.

Thanks for the tips :) Just a few comments:

3) Are there still GCDs regarding running dual DHCs? As in, can I still fire them in one volley? In doing some research, I found that people said that you'd have to alternate your firing of those using the same item types, but those were posts from early 2010, so I didn't know if the game had changed since then.
4) (regarding the previous item) I was thinking of either dual-DHCs, or a dual cannon/dual-heavy-cannon combo + aft turret for constant damage.

Other than that, the info is appreciated, I definitely feel better about staying with my redshirted alien :) I'll look into the skills as well, I think my current shields are just mission rewards so I'll check the exchange for an upgrade, and look into Tactical Teams and keep my Engineer's shield recharge ability as the primary OSHI- button. Thanks!

[Archived Post]

Thanks for the tips :) Just a few comments:

3) Are there still GCDs regarding running dual DHCs? As in, can I still fire them in one volley? In doing some research, I found that people said that you'd have to alternate your firing of those using the same item types, but those were posts from early 2010, so I didn't know if the game had changed since then.
4) (regarding the previous item) I was thinking of either dual-DHCs, or a dual cannon/dual-heavy-cannon combo + aft turret for constant damage.

Other than that, the info is appreciated, I definitely feel better about staying with my redshirted alien :) I'll look into the skills as well, I think my current shields are just mission rewards so I'll check the exchange for an upgrade, and look into Tactical Teams and keep my Engineer's shield recharge ability as the primary OSHI- button. Thanks!

The Dual cannon cool downs are gone... so no worries there.

Like I was saying experiment away. I have always found Dual Heavies to be better the then the dual cannons almost always... however play with them, get white ones cheap and experiment. You don't need to worry about having everything blue it won't make a massive diffrence. Testing things out with whites will give you a feel with out blowing all your hard earned ECs.

For the shield ya check the exchange... Covariant shields are pretty much always your best best on any ship, escorts for sure. They give you the largets pool of HP, Regen won't be great anyway as you won't be running high shield power.

I would suggest power settings of 100 25 50 25.... but experiment. In general you will find engine power more helpful in an escort, for manuvering, with cannons for sure.

Ya Tactical Team is a great oh noos button. It will distribute your shields automaticly to the facing under attack. It won't rechage your shield... just make the bad guys have to pound you up to 4x harder to kill your shield.

Emergency power to shields give you natural shield resist through extra power as well as a bonus resists... you pretty much need this skill on all ships.

Transfer shield strength is a self castable sci skill that will give you a HOT shield heal as well as another resist.

You don't have many slots yet... so you will want to experiment. I always found that pretty much up till Captain level nothing really hit me hard enough to justify a ton of heals. But experiment with them so you understand how they work... Comboing something like Tac Team with Transfer Shield Strength is great cause while your under fire that hot heal will get applied to the facing of your shield under fire... that + the resist will make you very hard to kill.

[Archived Post]

On my Lt C tac ecsort I'm running the Breen engine and deflector set and the Reman shield. It's a great combo in an escort. The Breen set gives you a boost to power transfer and the Reman shield provides plenty of protection when used with tactical team.

[Archived Post]

My advice would be to use a Nova at LtC, and wait for either commander or captain to start with escorts. Novas are very well balanced ships, turn tolerably, and get target subsystems abilities. Escorts at that level don't really turn fast enough to keep enemies in the DHC arc, unless you come to almost a complete stop, in which case you would die. Painfully. Higher level escorts are easier to use and are somewhat tougher.

[Archived Post]

The above comment about Novas was really interesting, because I also felt that the Escort experience was lacking at that level. The limited weapons and BO abilities made it difficult to appreciate what Escorts are about. At Commander it really clicked though, at least for me. You get enough guns and officer skills to have fun.

One element that isn't being discussed is beam weapons, and how escorts are making use of them. This won't apply to you much until you're Commander-level at least (when Fire-at-Will or Beam-Overload 3 are available), but at higher levels I found the bridge-officer skills for cannons to be pretty lacking. So I've had a great experience with mixing cannons and beams together, and carrying 2 DHCs and adding a dual-beam-bank into the mix. 1 DBB is really all it takes to make use of the whole suite of beam skills, and mixing cannon-rate-of-fire with beam-overload with high-yield torpedo makes for devastating attack runs. It's counterintuitive to stick to ONE damage type but then use multiple types of weapons, but the skillpoint costs are pretty minimal, since beams and cannons are at the Lt.Cm level.

[Archived Post]

Well, I'm hoping to hit LtCmdr this weekend and finally get into an Escort ship this weekend. My question is, with the glass-cannonism of the ship, would I be further ahead being at such a low level just starting over as an Engineer and going for some additional survivability? Flying a cruiser is mind-numbingly slow to be honest, but at the same time I don't want to be flying an escort as a tactical officer and basically losing my ship constantly because I can't maintain shields. I guess I'm just not really sure what to expect, what would you recommend? The thought of having to re-level to LtCmdr again is admitedly a bit... ugh.

you don't have to be an engineer to fly a cruiser, or a tac to fly an escort. You get a choice of what ship you want to fly, you can even get all three and try them all (although only the first choice is free). And actually Tac in a cruiser isn't bad, that's usually what I do. You get the firepower buffs of your tac captain combined with the extra survivability of the cruiser.

[Archived Post]

For Lt. Cmdr Tac/Escort try this...

- Tac Team 1
- Beam Overload 1
- Cannon Rapid Fire 1 (or Scatter Volley if you prefer)

- Emergency Power to Shields 1

- Hazard Emitters 1

- 2 x DHC fore
- 1 x Beam Array fore
- 1 x Beam Array aft

[Archived Post]

Well guys, I have to say thanks for the advice, I have been playing this weekend and once I hit LtCmdr and got into the escort (Ushaan, to be specific), space combat actually became QUITE enjoyable!! Here's the setup I'm using now:

2x Phaser Dual Heavy Cannons Mk IV
Photon Torpedo Launcher Mk IV
Phaser Turret

Reman shield
Breen deflector
Breen engines
2x phaser interfaces
1x science astrometric interface (any recommendations here?)
1x engineering 7.5% mobility interface

BOffs are:
Tac - Tactical Teams
Tac - Fire at Will/Rapid Cannons
Engineering - Emergency Power to Shields
Science - Hazard Emitters


Thus far, works great :) I'm already at LtCmdr Lvl6 as of this morning, thanks again guys! Let's just hope now that the game doesn't get canceled because Atari got cold feet :mad:

[Archived Post]

You listened to Husanak. Always a wise choice.

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1. Divert your power to weapons
2. Put some combat impulse engines on the ship
3. Have heavy cannons on your ship
4. Destroy enemies quickly

And then even with sparse playing like me it doesn't take that long to get a VA tac

[Archived Post]

1x science astrometric interface (any recommendations here?)
1x engineering 7.5% mobility interface

Thus far, works great :) I'm already at LtCmdr Lvl6 as of this morning, thanks again guys! Let's just hope now that the game doesn't get canceled because Atari got cold feet :mad:

The RCS was a wise choice.

The Sci units at this level are far to under powered to really make any diffrence. However the Halon unit is what would boost your Hazard Emitters. So I would go with one of those, for sure at commander.

Don't sweet the Atari leaving thing... Atari is well Atari anyway, Huge lead in the Video game universe and squandered it, will be glad to see cryptic move to new hands. Make no mistake juicy IPs like Star Trek don't come cheap someone will snap em up.

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save as many respecs as ya can dont use them everytime you get the urge u will want them when u get to max level....defiant is my fave ship for any class..tactical escort captain prob the most fun of all the class/ship combos u can do..just push man make that max level

[Archived Post]

. however play with them, get white ones cheap and experiment. You don't need to worry about having everything blue it won't make a massive diffrence. Testing things out with whites will give you a feel with out blowing all your hard earned ECs.



You can also find odd numbered (Mk V, Mk VII, etc) rare and very rare for much cheaper than their even numbered counterparts.

[Archived Post]

well i'm going go be the oddball here i am a Sci in a Escort ship currently i am commander 6 my set up is
front:
2 Dual Phaser Beam Banks MK VI acc damx2 + 1 quantum torpedo MK VI acc damage x2
Rear 2 phaser mk VI turrets
with full breen gear havent done the reman missions yet
2 phaser consoles +1 torpedo console

i open up at 14km and hit beam overload and close in when i hit 10km i fire my weapons and if fire at will if off CD i hit it attack pattern beta and tact team 1 by the time i pass thru the ship if its my level its dead.