I fly nothing but crusiers! Even on my I.K.R character! Escorts are good for short fights and yes you need to hit and run. Science Vessels... Well i have not flown a science vessel. I would imagine they are good as crusiers, just science powers are used.

Science vessels are more difficult to use because they have the least amount of weapon slots and most of the abilities you can use for crowd control and the like have been nerfed to hell and back (at least in PVP)

Ran mirror event last night in my Exeter refit. (just hit LtCmdr on my new eng).
Despite not having points in threat, I loaded FAW and made sure I was the first to charge in...
(all my teams had 3+ tacs)
It was TOUGH to stay alive, but had enough tricks up my sleeve to keep me going.

Being focused by 2 groups with a LtCmdr ship and abilities... and surviving, while (mostly) keeping everyone off of my teammates...
I live for that kind of thing, lol.

Sure, there were deaths here and there. I'm not gonna lie. I could only do so much, lol
But it was a hoot!

Carry on.

Science Vessels are:

Light Cruisers that trade 2 extra phaser banks for Crowd Control & Other Powers

MUCH higher turn rate than any cruiser

Coupled with a science officer, can be a very very dangerous platform (PVE or PVP)

Micro manage galore.

You have to know what counters what and be prepared for anything because there is a counter that you can put on your ship for it. This sometimes requires that you run with 2-3 commander science officers or in my specefic case 1 commander and 3 lt commanders that I can change out to meet the demands of the mission. 1 setup for STF/Borg; one for anti-breen; and one PVP.

Round of applause for doing it in a Tier 2 cruiser. May not of been the cleanest run, but it was certainly the funniest.

Look at that suicidal Exeter go

You are a manlier man than I, good sir.

How to pwn VA level Mirror Event with 'light cruiser'.

RSV with HY and TS, front and aft chronitron torpedoes.

Go around the map spamming everything into submission with torpedoes (both front and rear tubes. Use evasive to spin around on a dime). Spam AoE disables and placates and subsystem target everything that's larger than a cruiser.

Chronitron torpedoes on AoE mode have a devastating mass slow function and once slowed, enemy ships are sitting ducks with no defence bonus at all.

After each spam attack = gravwell + tyken + scramble sensors and whatver, slip away like an attack submarine. Viral Matrix III on ISS Stadi = no more Stadi.

Beam weapons - Polaron DBBs and beam arrays + Jem'Hadar set.

Whomever called that a "recon" science vessel should be executed. That thing is a bloody Jem'Hadar assault ship in disguise.

Out of curiosity, knowing you and your mad scientist ways of experimentation...have you tried what you just described?

Yes I have an actual assault science vessel build that's totally fun. You'll see it... eventually... when I'm in the mood for it...

After picking up a Rear Admiral ship of every type (Advanced Escort, Recon Science, Assault Cruiser), and giving my Assault Cruiser a crash course in ker'rat...

The cruiser is by far the most boring ship I've used. I avoided the assault cruiser simply because I did not enjoy my time behind the controls of a Galaxy. I survive longer than my escort (and can even take on a tactical cube and live), but it's just so boring. I'm watching my beams light up the space around me as I go balls wild with Fire at Will but it's not really fun to do that. Meanwhile I'm popping things like balloons in my escort and... popping things like balloons in my science ship.

I can see the appeal of cruisers. They're the perfect PvE ship, because you never die unless you do something really, really dumb, or get caught in an elite STF's god torpedoes. But for someone who does both PvE and PvP (mostly haunting ker'rat with the debris of my blown up ship), cruisers are just too boring and not dynamic enough. Or maybe I'm too used to my science ship that turns like an escort and ruins peoples' days.