Man, now I want to go back and give it a try but I don't even know how many respec tokens I have saved up and they're not listed under assets.... Was it ever possible to respec for energy credits or am I just confused?

What can you say about the RSV......

Righteous
Science
Victory

Cheesy? Damn straight, now come get your wuppin, my RSV opened up a can specially for you

I have tried every science ship in game as they were released. I always end up back with my Luna. It is by far (at least for me) the best sci-ship in STO.

I run the luna like its an escort, dual beam bank, cannon, quantum torp, x3 turrets rear

cannon rapid fire, beam overload, high yield.

B/c thats kind of a lame escort I make up for it with sci powers and lots of heals.

tachyon beam 3, charged particle burst 3, tractor beam various haz emmiters, tranfer shield str and sci team

emergency power to weapons, rsp

I use tractor beam, engine batteries, and evasive maneuvers and target engines to continuously face my opponent and unleash cannon rapid fire.

CPB 3 and Tachyon Beam 3 are your bread and butter abilities.

Made useless? Interesting. I have yet to see anyone flying one that wasn't tough as nails to kill and also dealing decent damage numbers.

That extra TAC console means you can add a little bite to your weapons. Nothing like watching your shields melt to TB and CPB as a volley of Quantums hits your hull, meanwhile you lose power to energy siphon and use your big heal on the enemy because you got SS on you too.

On my RSV, I use a single dual beam in front, a single BA in rear. 2 Quantum torps in rear, 1 Quantum and 1 Tricobalt in front. Anything other than a well built Science ship i can drain of shields pretty quick, I can run at full AUX since I have few guns.

Once I make a whole I use SS and fire that Tri Torpedo. My Quantums hit for almost 7k without a crit. The Tri will one shot any escort most of the time. WIth the RSV close to an escort in turning, you can get where you need to be to make that Tri hit.

Sci ships are tougher to kill, they have such huge shields, but even cruisers have to work hard to live through it.

Recently on tribble I had a friend working with me to test a Transphasic build. The idea was that you could deal hull damage even with the shields up, so when you did launch the Tricobalt, it could possibly still kill them with bleedthrough. It wasn't bad, even though it did more damage to the hull at full shields, the lower overall meant that it took more effort to kill an exposed hull.

Not completely undoable, with the new rapid fire transphasic torps, but would be tedious work I think. I won't abandon it though. Find a way to make it decent for PvP.

Anyway, the RSV is a very useful ship. If you can't make it work, you're playing it wrong.

i use the luna on my sci toon, though i want to use the nebula lol.. but the luna has a better loadout...

however, being a huge fan of the titan book series, i find it very funny that cryptic made this ship the more tactical of the science vessels.... im pretty sure they did nto read the books when developing it... Riker often refers to his ship, the titan, a luna class as not being all that tactical... he often makes statements that while it can defend itself, hed prefer to not get into a fight with it, as heis not always confident that it can come out on top... and in the first couple of books it is usually just barely getting out of tactical situations lol..

Myself I am looking to have one of my Tacs running in a RSV..mostly because its an easier transition from running eng/cruiser.

What kind of weapons loadout would be suitable for shield striping?

I like either:

3x Cannons + 2x Turrets + 1x Torp (or 1x Turret, 1x Torp, 1x Beam on the back)
or 3x Beam Array + 2x Beam Array + 1x Torp