Tac officer in a cruiser, engineer in a cruiser...
 

Which would be better for leveling and ultimatly tanking/dps in a fleet environment. I know I want to pilot a cruiser and fill out a tank role, but both of the chars in question are still only lt7. in the light cruiser so far I simply can not tell a difference beetween the two.

In space the only difference your character class makes is the skills that you acquire as you level and your race bonuses that you picked during character creation.

At some point this may change but right now when it comes to space combat it doesn't really matter all that much.

Simple answer is Tactical Captain in a Cruiser for space Tanking/DPS. The bottom line right now seems to be the only way to tank is either be the first one in and soak the alpha strike (the enemies will continue to fire on you until it is inconvenient or they take heavy damage from someone else it seems) or output loads of damage to keep drawing their attention. There is not a solid aggro system in this game as people would relate it to WOW for example. Your best bet is to take the toughest ship in terms of shield/hull combo and output as much damage as you can on that ship which would be a Tac officer.

Assuming that Attack Patterns Alpha and Omega do not stack, you'll probably be able to have a broadside that is stronger than any other if you use a battle cruiser. Even though they're restricted to using lower leveled cannons than Escorts, the additional beam array should make up the difference. Combined with the lower energy requirements of cannons and an EPS relay, you should be quite fine in delievering damage.

Considering the ability "Go down fighting" I would recommend that you stay away from using shield related abilities and instead buff your hull using structural integrity and dampeners. If your shield subsystem is targetted, reverse polarity will not help you, while making your hull inherently tough allows you to make the most of Go Down Fighting.

If you really want to shield tank using Reverse Shield Polarity, having an Engineering team active while you are using it is a necessity. This will hopefully cope with any system downs you experience.

Yea the game is in need of some good aggro generating skills for proper tanking, but when you mention things like that you get shouted down by folks who don't like applying standard MMO archetypes to Star Trek.

I tried an engineer in an escort in beta and did not like it. The Engineer defensive skills just didnt seem to help enough in an escort to make up for the lack of DPS as compared to a Tactical officer in an escort.

However, I believe it is doable with the right setup.

As for agro management.. I dont want to see 'taunt' type abilities in this game. I WOULD like to see a way for Escorts and Science ships to escape 'agro' in some way to allow those Cruisers to take more of the damage.

Lol I'm actually one of those people who hate having to reference other MMO's to get a point across, but I found not doing it caused more headache. Too many people need the comparision it seems, and if I didn't say "could be compared to" or whatever I get a lot of hate on that regard too. Oh well, win some, lose some. :D

Don't misunderstand me - I love the system the way it is. Perhaps my wording was poor - what I tried to say is that the ai in this game is programmed to behave differently than what people would be used to from other MMO's.

On the other note, "escaping aggro" is definately doable by clever use and timing of evasive maneuvers, jamming targeting, cloaking (for Klingons) or simply timing your turns to keep yourself away from the heavy firing arcs once you learn where they are. I do not want to ever see Taunt like abilities in this game - totally not in the spirit of Trek, unless our characters have nemesis-like enemies and that would make it unique in a sense.

I'm familiar with the typical MMO architypes... and think the game needs more semblance of them.
But at the same time I agree adding "taunt" abilities would just be lazy. I am fine with escorts and science ships being able to escape aggro... but I think better would be adjusting cruisers to have inherent extend shields abilities or similar.

So the "tank" may not necessarily be the one being pursued by the enemy, but is the one providing protection.
Extend Shields is the obvious beginning place. Unfortunately most of the abilities I can think up that would provide this function would seem to fall more into the science officer realm.

It could work though (and makes sense actually)... Science officers could be the tanks in ship (extend shields, jamming sensors, etc.) and the healers (medics) on the ground. Tactical would be DPS in ships, tanks on the ground. Engineer would logically be healers in ship (sending shuttle teams to aid repairs, etc.) and then dps/support on the ground... possibly ground tanks too I suppose.

There is no rule that says your role has to be the same in both play type scenarios... I think people assume it though.

I am not so much looking for a 'tank' style such as wow or some such, but def looking to be able to absorb maassive amounts of damage, yet still deal enough to '****' off enemies enough so that they focus fire on me more so than science vessels or escorts. This is of course 'aggro' 'threat' etc, but not even sure what kind of mechanics the game has for this or not.
My main concern with being a tactical officer vs. an engineer is at higher levels you can 'train' your officers of the same class, and for a 'tank' ie. survability situation it probably makes more sense to train your engineers than your tac officers am i right?