Cruisers need an ability to chain with BO. Like say for instance Focus beam array, where as all power from from the other beams focus into one beam then chain with BO3 to give the same spike damage that chaining go down fighting and appack pattern beta and attack pattern alpha and CRF3 does on an escourt. Just give cruisers an ability to chain with BO3 that will strip facing shields in one pass like escourts have and then Cruiser would be competitive again.

there are carriers with 7 weapon slots, the karfi and the jem dread, the rest have 6 because they are sci carriers, but i think prime got a point here, but not because of hull or turn rate, but because of boff / console layout

i dont choose cruisers because of the plating consoles

assuming a fast ship with 5 tac consoles and a slow ship with 5 eng consoles

while the tac consoles stack, because its a % base dmg added, the plating consoles dont stack as a percentage, they stack using a formula to not allow plating to reach more than 75%, its impossible, so:
(assuming mk xii purple consoles)

5 tac consoles : +150% of the damage

5 eng plating consoles: ( 40 dmg res magnitude each console)
1 console : 28% damage resistance
2 consoles: 43% dmg res
3 consoles: 51%
4 consoles : 57%
5 consoles: 61%

what you prefer ? 5 tac consoles and 3 engineering on a fast ship
or 5 engineering and 3 tac on a slow ship ( loosing the turn rate, loosing 60%+ damage and winning a mer 10%dmg resistance ) ? come on ! stop saying cruisers are ok ... where in the world 10% resistance is the same as 60% more dmg and higher turn rate ?

so they not only get limited on the boff layout, but on the consoles too, you only benefit 10% between 3 consoles and 5 consoles, so yes 3 plating consoles is the "sweet point" of plating, which escorts can easely get, while mastering the dmg with the rest of tac consoles and heal skills because you dont need the rest of the sci / eng crap.
On the remaining eng console of a cruiser slots you would put an rcs ? an universal console ? that is a waste, because escorts dont need an rcs console, so i think like the other guy said, increase the console ammount of cruisers by 1 eng console slot, could be cool, but very... not probable xD

for example, an escort build ( attack ) you ... well, just use it against anything, a heal build is different, you have to adapt it, 2 reverses wont do anything against a torpedo boat, youd rather use aux2damp for example, in sci officers the same happens, gravity well wont work that great against escorts, so you would use a feedbackpulse or a viral matrix, in dmg deal builds you dont need to adapt, you just use it and hope your dps is the biggest, you only need to change your heals, escorts win all the time, if you notice, things are this way = beginners: cruisers, intermediate : sci vessels, veterans : escorts, its almost this way, escorts win, thats the point, you dont see many players winning with cruisers or sci vessels, tactical ships / skills / layouts are better compared to the others, dot.

If you're in combat or combat range while APO is on CD then you're doing it wrong.

Running two copies + AP Doff's significantly reduces the time away from the fight to next to nothing.

I remember back in the day when an Escort was taking damage, it would flee and be well out of visual range and wouldn't see it again for quite some time. Now they can just hover at around 11km for a couple seconds and come back for another go.

Huh. If I was at a loss for words it wouldn't be me would it? But this makes me close. Very close to being at a loss. Then there was some bit about APO combined with Doffs reducing cooldowns a few posts later on.

Yah think?

You take the TT ability out and you really do need to take CRF out as well. ES who cares. All the shield buffs outside of RSP only really work well in the prescence of TT. That's a fact. Work WELL. Not AT ALL. Read carefully. A ship without TT may have to stack a couple shield resistances to have the same level of comfort that TT and any other shield ability gives. But then you get to why we need TT to do what it does, and it isn't just simply DHC's. There's a REASON DHC's can do what they do.

And APO. Hmmmm....who would think that just driving the cooldowns to the level where you could increase uptime of any ability and only use one copy of that ability could EVER be a good call to make? Seriously. Yah lets just double **** up and maybe no one will notice! Cooldowns are a core component of balance and such a degree of foolhardiness shouldn't even be discussed. It should be corrected.

Cheers!

Spot on.

And just because only a few people are doing it, or doing it right, doesn't make it okay. Rarity isn't balance. Balance is balance. Good design is good design. Other things are excuses.

Cheers again!!

Too late.

It will never go back to the way it was. At first I hated the idea of doffs, but I have accepted that aren't going to go away.

Cryptic just doesn't care about anything other than keeping the interest of the lemmings opening boxes, so we'll keep seeing even worse iterations of doffs in the future.

i like this. i am flying LRSVR and most of a half sized escorts have more hull points than me........................
ships hull hp is strange in sto.

Why? The idea that Escorts can take alot of damage is false. Escorts can deflect a lot of damage but only for short amount of time. Its compounded by the fact that Escorts tend to kill thier foes before they loose that safety of bouncing incomming damage.

Remove the movement protection of ApO and one aspect that has given the false impression of ubertoughness of the Escort is gone.
The great wealness of Escorts have always been stopping them in thier tracks. Something that currently has been partially removed thanks to ApO being a minor PH.

Frankly I never why it needed both a defensive buff and movement protection buff.

assuming a fast ship with 5 tac consoles and a slow ship with 5 eng consoles

while the tac consoles stack, because its a % base dmg added, the plating consoles dont stack as a percentage, they stack using a formula to not allow plating to reach more than 75%, its impossible, so:

assuming mk xii purple consoles

5 tac consoles : +150% of the damage

5 eng plating consoles: ( 40 dmg res magnitude each console)
1 console : 28% damage resistance
2 consoles: 43% dmg res
3 consoles: 51%
4 consoles : 57%
5 consoles: 61%

what you prefer ? 5 tac consoles and 3 engineering on a fast ship
or 5 engineer consoles and 3 tac on a slow ship loosing the turn rate, loosing 60% damage but winning a mere 10%dmg resistance ?

come on ! stop saying cruisers are ok ... where in the world low turn rate and 10% dmg resistance is the same as 60% more dmg and higher turn rate ?

those words are so right, more than 3 engineering consoles is almost useless on pvp in cruisers while you get useless boff layouts too

yes escorts can tank, speed tank ( which almost compensate that little less hull compared to cruisers ),and if you add all those free procs, heals, buffs and stuff you get from sets, tiers, doffs and all kinda stuff like that, escorts benefit more from that than cruisers. Escorts tank almost the same as cruisers, because 20% resistance on escorts is the same on cruisers, 20% of placate is the same, 10% of crit is the same, so why you need a cruiser ? go for the escort, deals 1000000000x more damage and tanks the same


Remove the movement protection of Attack Pattern Omega and one aspect that has given the false impression of ubertoughness of the Escort is gone.
The great wealness of Escorts have always been stopping them in their tracks. Something that currently has been partially removed thanks to Attack Pattern Omega being a minor Polarize Hull.

Frankly I never why it needed both a defensive buff and movement protection buff.

true story again ...
you almost cant stop an escort, because of apo, thats why they can dmg, because they are allways where they want to be, if apo didnt give that movement prottection, it would make it to use a polarize hull to stop tractor beams or something, APO gives it all, prottection, defense, attack, and a doff with crazy cooldown reduction

Even w/the cooldown reductions et al, a proper team will have Scis and thier SNBs. VMs (human boff fixes aside) will disable a target w/APO. TBs will force either APO or evasives w/high engine power. PSW will disable the evasives. SNB removes the immunities. Things are a little more tricky w/the offensive placate procs, but a jam sensor prior to debuffs will allow a Sci ship to hold an Escort down while it debuffs it.

Again the point is a support cruiser should be able to tank one escort's alpha easily enough and potentionally even bait it into a trap in a team environment. Against a good team it really is a bad idea for an Escort to go after a support cruiser other than an occassional strafing run to keep it honest.