Okay I am trying to make a smooth transition from being dps with my escort to tanking with my new Odyssey Class. What consoles and weapons would make for an excellent tank? Thank you.

First, there is no real smooth transition. :p

Use Beam Arrays both fore and aft, and broadside whenever possible. AP works well as usual. If you have the Sci Ody as well, due to Sensor Array it's actually better at DPS than the Tac Ody.

For tanking, get Neutronium and double-check that you have a Field Generator. (If you don't, it's the #1 best Science console in existence. Get one!) You might want Tetraburnium as well, since it defends against Plasma (Borg!), Antiproton (Borg cutting beam, PvP), and Polaron (Dominion, Breen, and PvPers who want to gang up and drop your power to 0 across the board). The "Dragon Flagship" build works fairly well as a starting point. I don't know if EPS Flow regulators still work in counter-acting overloaded weapon systems (i.e. you have 7 or 8 beams firing at once), and I'd recommend an RCS Accelerator if you want to be able to turn around within the system.

However, more important than the consoles are the skills: half of tanking is threat control, the other is survival. Do you have any ranks in that skill? (It's risky doing so in an Escort, though) Do you have Fire at Will (aggro ALL the things!)? Survival skills (Aux to Structure, Hazard Emitters, Reverse Shield Polarity, etc.)? What's your career track?

All cruisers imo should be skilled into threat. Those that are not, I hate you. Your primary job in a cruiser is to keep you Science and Escorts free to do their job.

That being said, you can still do great dmg in a cruiser.

If you fly both escorts and cruisers, it is hard to train in threat without gimping the escort.

And I hate you because I have a escort ... so am I only supposed to fly only Cruisers and have a USELESS ability because dumb Escorts pilots cannot into Alpha?

Why not roll an engineer and build a proper tank Cruiser from the ground up?

Hey hey, blame Cryptic for charging real money to respec when you want to fly a different ship type. My point is valid and still stands. If you are gonna fly a Cruiser, train some threat so that the escorts and science vessels can do their job properly.

I've posted numerous times about how much of a scam their real money respec is, how no decent mmo does this to it's player base and even how we would be better off if space skills were tied to our ships. Allowing players to correctly spec each of the ships they own only adds to their space gaming experience.

Don't shoot the messenger because you don't like the message. Shoot Cryptic management for screwing with their consumer.

Because playing video games is serious business.

*facepalm*

Learning to actually support your team with your BOFF powers is far more valuable than some silly skill. Threat control certainly does not work in PVP, so learning how to truly assist your team by healing them is far more valuable.

This is not entirely inaccurate. You can very easily use Dilithium to respec by converting it into C-Store points. It's ridiculously easy to acquire vast amounts of Dilithium in-game, and the re-spec token costs are relatively minor.