Fight fire with fire. Dispersal Pattern Beta 3 with Tric Mines will give you four (4) 60k crits at at time. And Donatra can't post on the forums to complain.

Lol... it can be much much higher than 4x60! I get at least 52k per hit with APB on. That's just APB alone.

Tactical buffs + APB2 + Omega(3) ability = Tactical Nuclear Penguin attack

People can point and laugh at my carrier all they want. It blows up stuff like a boss with TCM spam.

With multiple PUG ships spamming TCMs each Borg encounter is merely an exercise of buffing up and throwing stuff out the tailgate. Annoying borg just disappear.

90% of the time I'm being shot down is either because of a server lag or because of being careless (and doing something else besides playing the STF).
So the OPs problem is probably in his/her character and/or ship build.

Don't go near gate. Park at somewhere between 7.6 -8Km far away and attack on it with full power.
Keep pressing attack patterns and brace for impact for extra hull buff, and to feel safe. Placebo you know.

I use purple Mk xii wtih [acc]x2 dual heavy cannons with tactical team, attack pattern alpha and go down fighting so I can do some decent damage even from this far away. Then a big plasma torpedo III buffed by 2 KHG pieces and attack patten omega makes the residents of the gates cry.

well, I find it hard to go closer than 9km to a gate. ofc your approach vector does count, but I always stay on the safeside, and try to keep away more than 9km.

however if the gate targeted you, the 9km distance wont help. just came from a game, where the gate oneshotted me (according to my combatlog with a 47k shot, so it wasnt even that much... lol) at range 9,8km, because I wondered into the "danger zone" coming out of evasive manouvers :S

and the problem is, that the gates shoot invisible plasma torpedos, so it is just me, sitting there, and randomly blowing up. (at least with donatra there is a 50% chance, that the torpedo salvos will be visible, with the gates I have never ever seen a torpedo)

Gate attacking:

Stay at 9.99km to a high side and the gate will not be able to target you at all. This is a known exploit

As for countering the torpedo... no counter. It does damage about 2 seconds before the graphic impacts you, so pre-emptively activating TSS2, EPTS, TT and Brace for Impact is mandatory for surviving an attack run. If you see the beam weapon from the Borg target you, activate defenses immediately. Do not wait to see the torpedo which will be inevitably coming your way invisibly.

I usually deliberately do threat control by running up to point blank and bombing the heck out of it with TCMs for hundreds of thousands of damage points. Due to the stacked resists plus evasive maneuvers I usually take little damage. Fast enough that the tractor beam can't even lock on successfully.

If you're used to PvP already, ESTFs are nothing lol. Seriously, you can tank in an escort or sci ship. Just don't stay still and let yourself be hit multiple times without resistances up.

Unless you're a big honking carrier or cruiser tank with insane amounts of shield tanking then your job is drawing fire and surviving everything lol.

Seriously. the only annoyance I have in STFs are the Negh'vars on Cure Elite (but even those can be taken out easily from the flanks). Anything else is easy to kill.

When the PUG's are reading the chat then you can have some awesome moments in STF's :-)

Usually I just bait them with a good morning or bring a friend and strike up a conversation with him. PUGs will react like "omg, competent team" and play by the book LOL

Awesome idea "faking" a conversation with a friend , have to try that too

Usually I greet them over the Teamchat and hope that someone is reading it

Borg with one shot torps is canon in the ST universe