Nope. To my surprise, really, many people do not know this; nonetheless it is true: EPS console helps you recover faster from sub-systems power dips too. You can easily verify that for yourself, of course.

Some people awkwardly see it as diminishing returns, which only *seems* to be the case, in that (in your example) you don't get the 26.2% of the current total each time; rather you simply get base + 26.2% each time -- sans a penalty.

On that note, I remain that it's silly to put anything other than 5x dmg consoles in your 5x tactical console slots: it's why you got the Fleet Tactical Escort Retrofit to start with.

Which skill any sane person has maxed out to begin with, I'd say.

Depends. In new Fleet missions with Season 6, probably. In STF, it's still useful. Being able to get in point blank to the blind spot of the cubes without taking any fire is a nice bonus. Especially when you get the +15% damage boost.

STFs are large enough that you can still cloak on your way to your next target, giving a nice boost to your attack when you get within range of your target.

It isn't a diminishing return. It only seems like that because it does boosts the base damage of your weapon before modifiers, and not boost your modifiers. If your base damage is 100, 4x 26% boosters = 204; 5x 26% boosters = 230. One could also argue that there's not much point in using 4x damage boosters when the increase isn't all that much more than 3x damage boosters after modifiers.

I waste my ensign tactical slot. THY1, TS1, BO1, BFAW1 are nothing to write home about. I'd rather not slot it then bother with mediocre damage buffs and drop in DPS (as you would have to replace a DHC in a 4x DHC, as you mentioned).

Even without an ensign engineering officer, my Tactical Escort Retrofit can hold its own in a 1 on 1 or 5 on 5 dogfight.

I think the ship is a fantastic (albeit small) upgrade to its predecessor. In my pure PVE setup I can still be a terrible menace in PVP, which honestly surprised me since it sounded like you had to setup exclusively for one or the other.

Yes it's not a huge improvement over the other, but more damage is more damage, and that is what a tactical escort is all about IMO. Plus you have a cloak for alpha strikes, setting up your runs, dropping aggro from PvE or Players so you can get back in the fight on priority targets. The turn rate increase is always helpful and every bit is noticeable.

I do not find survivability to be an issue with the loss of a second engineering slot *shrug*. Perhaps I am just used to not having them. Yes two copies of EPTS would be nice, but certainly not necessary. I'd rather take the damage anyday, and between the Engineering and Science there is enough Damage Resistance and Spot heals through the BOFF abilities.

If I wanted to focus on more defensive style, I'd probably switch myself to a cruiser instead.

Just my 2 EC

Ops is on crack. The regular Defiant Retrofit doesn't have 4 Engineering Consoles... Only has 3. This changes nothing for if/when I get a Fleet Defiant Retrofit. I already have a Defiant Retrofit as it is.

All the Fleet version will do is give me an extra tactical console. For which I will just put in 4x Phaser Relays and a Torpedo console. Cloakiing Device and Assimilated Console go in the science slots, everything else for armor is in the engineering.

EPS consoles are VERY useful. Especially when you run BO. The weapon power replenishes back much faster. It adds an extra damage per time interval since power gets back to 125 faster with EPS console. Doesn't matter if you pvp or pve, eps consoles are good. Not deal breaker if you don't use them, but it is an ever useful console indeed.

There are NO diminished returns for stacking energy consoles. The formula that calculates the damage is a little tricky, you just won't see a hefty amount of damage being added by the 5th tac console. But they do stack and there is nothing lost.

Agree with the tac ensign, it would be cool if they would make the ensign universal. Defiant lacks some heals that would make it a bit more sturdy. You need to fly it at very high speed to avoid taking too much damage, that in fact you don't have too many options to heal. You can still add some beam subsystem attacks or bo1 in that ens slot, so it's not useless (especially if you replace a turret with a beam in the rear), but would be more useful to be a universal.

Still, a decloaking defiant would be deadly. Even in PvE, you still get the decloack bonus damage.

I think Fleet MVAE would be the best. Followed closely by fleet patrol and defiant. Think how a VM can mess somebody up, or how a TSS3 can heal. TBH each has a slightly different playstyle, I see Defiant being a great alternative for Kerrat, mvam better for having a little sci touch (TBR, VM, TSS) and patrol being a little sturdier but still efficient in damage.

Counting only FED-side and ony Fleet versions or equivalents, I'd say: JHAS>Prometheus-F>Akira-F>Defiant-F=Hermes-F>Saber-F (RP Ship)>>>>>>>>>>>lolAquarius-F.

But that's overall balance, at least now each of the first 5 fills a slightly different role.
Well, the JHAS obsoletes both the Defiant and the Hermes, but it's uncommon.

Glad someone agrees. :)

One of my major gripes was the lack of a universal ensign station. Now that I actually have the ship, I can say it's not all that bad living without it. Sure, instead of being able to run 2x EPtS convenienty, doing so with 1x EPtS + 1x TSS works reasonably well too. I have 1x quantum in fore, so now I get to use 2x torp high yields (III + I), using the ensign tact station. Together with my doffs to support that, I now get to use continuous CRF + continuous THY. So I think you actually *do* get something back for losing the ensign engineering (= universal) station.

5x tact consoles rules. The ship is indeed less sturdy -- the lack of continuously running EPtS causes this, is part; and, of course, simply having one less eng station.

Also, an incidental advantage of running 2x EPtS lies in having a purple Warp Core Engineer doff with the ability to give you a 20% chance of getting a +25 power levels boon (for each and every subsystem) on use of any 'emergency power' (like EPtS). 20% may not seem like much, but when running 2x EPtS continuously you'll find yourself pleasantly surprised with a whole lot of extra power, a lot of the time. It is, of course, possible to run 2x EPtS on the fleet defiant, but at the expensive of something useful like Engineering Team II. It may be, though, that just having Miracle worker III + Hazard emitters II suffices. Especially since you're also (presumably) running 2x Tact Team continuously, and Tact Team shares cooldown with Engineering Team (so the latter may not be always directly available to begin with). We'll see.

More at 11 (or a bit later, lol).