Hey all.

I played STO back in beta and for a month or so afterwards, but couldn't quite stick with it. I'm back after getting tired of other games I've been playing and because of seeing all the new stuff they are putting out for STO.

My existing characters aren't high level enough to really factor into this question.

I'm wondering what people have found to be the best captain type for flying an escort ship. I know a lot of it is simply player preference, but I'm curious what people have found works best for them and why. I've played a tactical escort captain through Lt. 6, so have a (small) taste of what that will be like. But I'd like to hear about Engineering and Science as well.

Also, what player/race traits work best with the escort?

Thanks in advance!

From a PvP point of view Tac and Sci work extremely well with escorts, depending on your team setup. For PvE I'd go with Tac (though anything will work in PvE if you follow some basic rules, but by using a Tac killing things will go faster). Eng's captain abilities don't realy match with the escort's role as a damage dealer.

Traits:
Accurate
Elusive
Efficient Captain
Warp Theorist

I have a sci and a tac toon and they both fly escorts and put out the same damage. All my damage dealing buffs that my tac has are replaced with damage resistance debuffs that my sci has. Sci is great fun for offensive trickory

Any of the Careers will work great in an Escort.

Tac: Will help give you monster damage and eat through your enemies faster than the other types.

Eng: WIll boost the relatively small durability of Escorts much higher than it naturally is, along you to stay in the fight longer and keep dishing out the damage.

Sci: Nice mix of both; Sensor Scan will boost your damage, and Dampening Field will give you a great resistance buff. You also get Photonic Fleet to cause some disruption/boost your damage and SNB to strip buffs and resistances away from your target. SciFleet is also a huge shield resistance buff.

As far as traits, you definitely want Elusive and Accurate. The other two are up to you. I recommend Efficient, however.

Thanks so much for the input, all! You've been very helpful!

So I have another question. The engineering captain has several abilities that provide more power to weapons. My understanding is that with a few DHCs coming to bear on a target one can run low on power relatively quick. With the engineer's ability to boost weapon power, wouldn't that allow for more sustained mg output?

Engineers only have 1 to boost power: EPS Power Transfer. It boosts power, as well as giving a large power transfer bonus.

There's also Nadion Inversion, but that reduces the power drain of each weapon (something like 70%).

Right, so with longer sustained weapons fire wouldn't that translate to a dps increase? Or is it rare to be target facing long enough to make use of the extra power?

Not at all, you'll definitely notice the boost from Nadion Inversion - especially after using Beam Overload.

Keep in mind that while this boosts and Escorts DPS (and survivability through other Eng abilities), Escorts are really about burst; and an Eng (nor a Sci) can come close to the sheer burst potential of a Tac.

Okay, thanks for the clarification