There is one down side to the RSV, it has the lowest hull of all the science vessels. This being so, you'll probably end up getting focus fired a lot, because you'll pop sooner and because you pose a pretty big threat. I prefer the Intrepid, but that's just me .

The RSV has the advantage of being the Sci ship that can most easily slot a TacTeam to boost survivability immensely

If you are out of tokens you can respec for merits, 30k at vice admiral level.

VERY true. I had my RSV equipped with the Borg set, and the super regen is incredibly helpful with tac team. It also has 3 tac consoles, which I miss very much in my Intrepid.

The only reason I find that the RSV falls down is because it doesn't have any sort of uber VA lvl system like Ablative or tac detection grid. Ablative is hard to give up, it's a life saver in pvp.

Also I find that the pure science build of the Intrepid refit un-matched, the sci ensign is the best. The added Tac ensign isn't that great and virtually useless. That being said I run a torp boat and don't run a high weapons power as you'll never compete with an escort or cruiser with beam DPS.

Add Aux to dampeners and you out turn a defiant

I disagree on both the Ensign and Tac console.

The Ensign allows you to easily throw on a TacTeam, which is a mega lifesaver. For example, my RSV runs with 17k shields. With TacTeam up, an Escort Alpha has to chew through all 68000 of my shield HP before he starts tearing through my hull. More valuable than the Ablative, imo.

And you can compete fairly decently with a Cruiser for beam DPS; 5 Beams at 114 weapon power and 3 Tac consoles boosting them are fairly powerful. Using the Starship DPS Calculator, a 5 beam broadside on an RSV will give you 345 broadside DPS and an Assault Cruiser's 6 beam will give you 363*. (These are rough numbers, of course, since the damage was calculated using only 100 power [there's no option for custom settings, it's either 100 or 125 power], and no skills). Not counting any Captain buffs or Tac debuffs, since the RSV can field the exact same Tac buffs as the AssCru, the RSV can overtake the AssCru in DPS thanks to the mega-useful Sensor Analysis. In addition, you have all of your fun Sci abilities to strip shields and what not to further augment your damage output.

I don't consider flying any other science ship. I've tried repeatedly to work out a decent Intrepid R build, but just can't do it.

I'm very slowly leveling a second science ship captain and I'm really going to have to force myself not to fly the RSV when I get there. I don't know if that will work or not.

Luna is excellent sci ship if you are ofensively focused player. Either for shield drain / torpedoes or just weapons.

The extra tactical team really helps, especially with regenerative shields (borg set).

My personal favorite weapon loadout for a shield-stripper build (read: heavy use of Tachyon Beam/Charged Particle Burst) was an even spread of 4 photon torpedo launchers and 2 phaser beam arrays.

I'm giving the Multi-Vector Assault Escort run right now, and the battles aren't all that much quicker as they were when I was using my Sedna.