As many people know that when you get to Commander, you currently only get 80,000 Dilithium for a ship when the amount needed is 100,000.

As a result, it's currently very difficult to get a commander level ship.
The easiest way to handle this is to simply not buy a Tier 2 ship and grind through LT commander in the light cruiser. But if this is not your cup of tea, it is possible to build a Tier two Connie to handle the commander level missions.

As such I am putting out this guide for a Tier two commander level cruiser.
The real thing is ship Bridge officer powers.

Science power
Ensign power Science team 1

Tactical power
Beam overload 1

Engineering powers.
LT
Emergency power to shields 1, Reverse Shield Polarity 1
Ensign
Emergancy power to weapons 1 or Engineering team 1.

For weapons and gear, I suggest Buying with your dilithium one shield array.
[Resilient Shield Array Mk VI [Cap]x2]

Then when you run the mission Past Imperfect and choose,
[Efficient Impulse Engines Mk IV] as I run with these engines up to Rear admiral and beyond.

As for ship weapons Run the missions Doomsday Machine twice to get two
[Hargh'peng Torpedo Launcher Mark VI]

and the Devidian mission Everything old is New and get two
[Phaser Beam Array Mk VI [Dmg]x2]

The basic strategy around this is that you run in attack mode as much as you can, changing to defense as needed when facing battle ships, and such. Also When the space combat gets too... hard switch to a defensive ship setting with your shields to 100.

Running a sci character
Choosing to save everything till i can get a RA ship
Currently in T2 Escort - Cpt. 7 - MINOR problems on the way, but not big ones ...

Gear, which is NOT the standard (Lack of EC's forced me to an alternate build) :
[Dual Disruptor Beam Bank Mk VII][Dual Tetryon Beam Bank Mk VI [Acc] [Dmg]][Dual Tetryon Beam Bank Mk VI [CrtD]]

[Efficient Impulse Engines Mk IV][Covariant Shield Array Mk VI [Cap]x2][Disruptor Turret Mk V]
[Subspace Field Modulator][Console - Engineering - Plasma Distribution Manifold Mk IV][Console - Tactical - Disruptor Induction Coil Mk VI][Console - Tactical - Phaser Relay Mk I]

No science consoles ..

BO's

Tactical : 2 x TacTeam I - 1 BO II

Engi : EMP to weaps I

Sci : Sci team I

People say on the server that "IF you're not in a T2 Cruiser, you WILL get in trouble !!"
I am in no trouble what so ever !
My minor problems have been caused by not paying attention

USE A T2 ESCORT IF YOU LIKE ! No biggie !

See you all ^^

This should not be needed they just need to fix the crap were you get a new ship every lvl

These are workarounds. Almost all of the methods to gain dilithium are not yet implemented. They will be added in a later build, hopefully early this week. You will be able to grind dilithium as needed, and it is my belief that the gap is intended to force us to test the grind, and find the bugs, and report any tweaks to the amount gained. By the time this goes live, it should be fairly seamless, I hope.