I've been gone for quite a bit, doing a few things here and there and I settled back into STO.
And realized that there was a gigantic amount of updates between now and when I used to play, which was way back prior to Season 1.

So to help settle back in I'm hoping someone can answer these questions for me:

1 :: Is Fire At Will still really bad?

2 :: Is Torpedo Spread still really really really bad?

3 :: Are Science Ships still the least used type of ship?

4 :: Are there any sort of "summoners", i.e. motherships that use pets to do their fighting?

5 :: Are the Klingons still suffering from horrid PvE?

6 :: Did the early game(1-20) change significantly?

1. Fire at Will is used by a lot of people, escpecially cruisers; it was buffed at some point I think
2. IMO, yes
3. IMO, yes
4. Klingon carriers, although I'm not sure what fraction of their damage comes from pets; Engineers can summon quite a few pet-like devices on the ground. Science captains in space and Tactical captains on the ground have limited (far from class-defining) summoning abilities.
5. Yes
6. No

1) Depends. It's changed to a duration based ability that effects all of your beams. And while active, your beams do slightly higher damage. It's great for 1v1 for taking down mines/torps. Fire At Will 3 against 1 target is straight up deadly. But, as soon as even 1 other enemy is introduced, your effectiveness drops dramatically since you'll be splitting your fire.

2) I actually like it a lot. But if you use it, take note that they changed the FX so that it visually fires off a lot more torps... but it still does the same damage

3) Yes, Scis are still the minority

4) Klingon carriers. The Vo'Quv can be used to summon 2 swarms of fighters, 3 additional ships via Photonic Fleet, and an additional support ship via Fleet Support if you are below 50% hull.

5) Let's not talk about that

6) I haven't played those levels in forever, so I can't comment on that.