So apparently flying an Escort is the equivalent to painting a giant red bulls-eye on your ship?

There’s some debate as to whether high shield HP or high shield regen will help any, but we all know if they want your shields gone, they’re gone.

So rather than roll over and let Escorts become easy prey, why don’t we let them use what they’re supposed to use.

Every combat focused episode of DS9, the Defiant’s shields are gone in seconds. But the Ablative armor pulls them through the encounter.

Then we look at the modified Voyager, and see how the futuristic Ablative armor generators ward off the Borg like mosquitoes.

So where’s the Ablative armor?

It can be an extra layer of defense between shield and hull. Escorts would have it by default, and other ships could possibly add it by way of a console/modification/whatever they’re called. Of course, this will mean you’re sacrificing something else that’d probably be more beneficial.

I think it's a very canonical addition, rather than everyone saying "Escorts all need Cloaks!!1!"

The ablative armor on the defiant is like the ablative heat shield on the rockets we used to use during reentry. Once it's gone, it's gone and should have to cost energy credits to fix. There's our death and damage penalty.

There is ablative armor engineering console...

percicely, you alredy can get it

Just recently got my Lt. Com. I saved 20,000 credits out of the mistaken assumption that I'd have to buy my new ship. So I got a Science Cruiser and an Escort Cruiser. After using both, I have to ask. Is there any reason at this point to use anything but a Science ship?

This is not a troll. Seriously, Escorts feel even squishier than Light Cruisers. What am I doing wrong?

Kill things faster. This is not a troll reply, you need to knock stuff down before it can grind you under. Do some exploration missions for badges (Hromi for Lt Com), get a pair of dual heavy cannon up front, a decent phaser bank and a phaser trt on the rear. Get an EPS relay for engineering and some plasma or cannon tac consoles. Destroy +2 cruisers in one pass working alpha pattern/cannon rapid fire/tactical crew/tach beam while taking bugger all dmg.

Constantly push your CD's, tac team and rapid fire have 30 second cd's iirc so there's no big deal burning them. Evasive manouvers, emergency power to shields, brace for impact etc etc. Push as much power to weapons as possible and keep your shields stabilised. 100 to shields = waste of time, you cannot outlast most targets, but you can out damage them.

note: this advice tends to go out the window for pvp where players just burn all their defense CD's on your burst, you really need to catch the napping for this to work... ; )

Except we also have replicators. So it's not impossible that with enough recovery time, the armor could be repaired just like shields regenerate after a while.

Okay for the sake of realism (I know its a game) but:

Armor is on the outside of the hull, so It would not be able to be repaired without either a spacedock facitilty, or some peep hanging on the outside on the hull. And I don;t care what anyone says, the red shirts or your average knuckle dragger are not that dumb to be hanging on the ship's exterior during a battle.

In my engineering console slot.

Provides resists to phasers, disruptors, plasma, and I believe tetryon, fyi

Before they can start giving out free armor boosts to escorts, i think they need to first work out the unfairness of giving fleet action loot out onlly to the top dpsers, aka the escorts

Right now the absolute only reason to play cruiser or science is so that in pvp they can live longer and kind of pull the weight of the team, sometimes its works sometimes it doesnt

If you give escorts more surviability now there will be absolute no reason to play cruiser period, and that would be pretty sad