Honestly, in PvE on normal, you shouldn't have to do ANYTHING to kill the warbird, except maybe redistro your shields as they take hits. You are absolutely sure you spent all of your skill points and you aren't in a tier 1 ship even thou you are a captain or commander, right?

I have the heavy escort refit although it has the stock gear on it ( Im kinda dirt poor in the game..lol). I have all my skill points updated. Honestly up to this point Ive been doing all my missions on advanced difficulty. Its just this one romulan boss ship that seems to be overly difficult. How much of a difference does the higher level gear in this game make (blue vs green etc.) ?

Even Stock gear should be enough to handle it...

If you're playing in 5 or so hours from now, feel free to drop me a message in-game (James@Koppenflak) and I'll take you through the mission and see what's got you stumped.

Well, I finally ended up just skipping to the next set of missions (I got a blue covariant shield as the reward). Thanks so much for the offer of help though I will surely look you up if I run into something like this again.

Hm.

Get rid of Tactical Team 2. It's only good for the shield distribution and nothing else, and Tac Team 1 does that just as well.

Since you have two Target Subsystem skills, I assume you use beams? In that case a Beam Overload 2 to replace the Tac Team 2 might do you some good.

If you can't live without a Tac Team, though, you could get rid of Target Weapon Subsystems and replace it with Tac Team 1.

The rest are pretty solid for a PvE build.

Do you stand still when you fight it or do you keep moving? It's tempting to just sit in one place when using an Escort because you get used to ripping little guys apart, but it's a bad idea. Staying mobile should help mitigate damage a bit.

You really should be carrying some heals, too. I prefer Emergency Power to Shields and Hazard Emitters. Both provide some defense bonus on top of healing, so if you keep moving, you should be able to use them again once their cooldowns wear off and not die in the process.

Adding to Jex's post, if you're in a cruiser or escort, then with a couple of exceptions the best science station you can hope for is only a Lieutenant. I've found great success with Transfer Shield Strength I and Hazard Emitters II.

TSS is a greatly underrated power, and becomes unbelievably effective when coupled with Emergency Power to Shields and the 'Distribute Shields" order.

Remember: If you fire off a shield heal, it will only provide healing to the facings that have received damage. Therefore, if you have a very low front facing, you will get a single boost of, let's say 400 shield strength to your bow, and zero to your sides and rear.

Try this...

Hit "Distribute Shields" - this will take power out of your high strength facings and pump it in to the weakened sectors, averaging everything out.

Then fire off Emergency Power to Shields, which not only provides a minor shield heal, but also boosts your shield power levels (which will drastically improve what follows...)

...Then lastly, fire off Transfer Shield Strength 1.

The effect is three-fold. Your shield power is higher, thus the effectiveness of TSS 1 is increased, and at the same time, you have shield power being pumped in to the weakened facings by THREE things at once: EPTS, TSS, and Distribute Shields.

I've routinely used the above under heavy fire to get a shieldless ship back up to nearly full strength in a matter of seconds.

Thanks for all the great advice. One last note.. my heavy escort refit only has 1 eng station but the ship store says it should have 2. Is there something I need to do or upgrade?

http://www.stowiki.org/Heavy_Escort_Refit

This ship, you mean?

You get one engineering station and two engineering consoles.