Agree about the excelsior. With the right build she holds her own well, especially as an all cannon build.... fun! If you can get the Fleet version if cruisers are your thing. Otherwise the c-store versions are fine, especially the refit.

As for the Ambassador, seems to me it will be most likely a Galaxy variant so I wouldn't keep my hopes up about a great turn rate on that ship. Coming from mainly escorts, you may find the turn rate of any ship bar the excelsior (and perhaps sovvie) lack lustre.

Except it's a useful comparison because they are both tactical cruisers. It's not like comparing an escort to a cruiser or a carrier to a science ship. D'kora and Regent are very similar and fill the exact same tactical role. The D'kora is just better at it.


Hull strength: Equal 39K

Shield strength: D'kora (1.15 versus 1.10)

Power bonuses: Debatable. The D'kora has +5 power to all systems, the Regent has +10 to weapons but no engine bonus.

Boff layout: Regent has a universal lieutenant instead of a science lieutenant, but you'd be insane to NOT use that slot for science so that one is debatable.

Console slots: D'kora. It has 10 slots total. One will be taken by your Battle Module, but you get to decide which type it is.

Turn rate: D'kora (8 versus 7)

Dual cannons: D'kora (Regent cannot use them)

Special features:
* Regent has a low-DPS 180 degree quantum torpedo launcher, and a slightly glitchy explosive plasma trail.

* D'kora has the Battle Module, which gives you effectively a free RCS console, an extra +10 power to weapons, bonuses to your weapon skills, and an occasional swarm missile salvo.

However you are forgetting the most important thing, the D'Kora costs a lot more unless you get lucky in a lockbox with a less then 1% drop rate and Cryptic "black-listing" accounts to never get the grand prize too and people are incredibly greedy on exchange and ask for far more then the ship is actually worth.

The Regent is a Starfleet design as well, a bonus if you do not like flying random alien of the week ship and it is capable of doing some powerful DPS... Sure, its no Excelsior but it can hold its own well.

Plus the regent is bind to account, a useful choice if you prefer having it available on other characters. Whereas the D'Kora, not so much.

I have it, I use my excelsior instead.

The 180 degree torp is nice for the broad side, but really only if you use torpedo abilitys.

Gas console I have never tried to use, doesn't seem worth it.

If your issue is exploding too often I hear the steam runner is prety tanky, Its available only through steam tho,http://store.steampowered.com/app/9908/.

The heavy escort carrier also carries alot of engineering abilitys.

The "something more expensive is better than this so this is useless" mentality is stupid. The Regent is a very capable tactical cruiser, and as I already stated, if you can shell out the EC and module for it, a tier 5 shipyard fleet can get you the Fleet version which has the all important 4th tac console. The High Angle Quantum is eternally useful. I fire it 3 or 4 times more often than I did my standard version, which more than offsets for the lower DPS.

Don't get me wrong it is very capeable but the excel is in fact cheeper at 2000 zen VS 2500 for the acr, and the fleet version is only a t4 ship yard. Infact you dont really even need to buy the ra version, since there is no console worth having.

If you compare the fleet versions they are almost identical. The sov has 1 less turn rate but carries the tac ens and universal lt (which will most likely end up being science making is less dissimilar from the excel). The excel has one more turn rate and a lt sci and eng ens, But it also has the built in transwarp abilitys.

But then pve in this game is easy enough you can fly whatever you want with little penalty.

My best advice is get what makes you happy

Fleet Excelsior is a tier 3 shipyard, unless it changed since I got mine.

Yep I fat fingered that one.

The Regent costs 2500 zen. If you want to just buy it outright, an option not even available with the D'kora, it will cost you 25$. If you are more patient, it will take 30 character-days of maxed dil grinding at the current exchange rate.

The D'kora, at the time of this writing, costs 67M EC.

So I guess a critical question here is, how good are you at earning EC? Because that is going to influence what "cost" is to you. If you don't put any time into earning EC and don't pull in more than maybe 250K a day, then your value system is totally different from somebody who's pulling in 5 million a day.

This is, admittedly, a selling point if you have multiple characters that might want to use the ship.

Its a little off topic but I've heard of others musing on this before, how some accounts seem to get a lot of box ships and others never do. I think there's an of algorithm we're in the dark about that is in some way shaping the distribution of the box prizes. But that is just what I can conclude from other's data about the drops. If anyone else has any info in the matter I'd love to hear it.