khemaraa why dual cannons and not DHC? As I understand it the latter are better wrg energy management and hence sustained DPS.

Yeah, Feds healing is rare, unless it's people from the fed fleet I'm in. On Fed side, I fly a MVAA, for the added sci slot. Gotten used to the fact that only one player the one I roll with will heal me, so transfer shields III is a must for survival. And kinda funny, when the squishy escort has to heal the beamboats >.>

On KDF I fly an ENG with a Patrol Cruiser. All plasma boat with quantums, and a set of S'kul fighters. Not flying elite, just normal STFs, but take the one cube in front of the Kang and usually make the second BOF explode from the warp breach of the first. Then turn around to help with the Cube, the second I arrive Power transfer skills and pop goes the magnetometric overload (I found it works wonders on the nanites). I have heals up my arse, but usually only heal those that I see are trying and not just hanging back and doing nothing. Like that Galaxy-X in one KA run, sitting at 10.0 klicks and pew-pewing with single cannons.... never seen it fire the bloody lance, once.

was thinking the same thing. Are they not identical in all stats except the DHCs have extra crit or something?

DHCs have a higher damage to hull compared to the duals. I run two DHCs a dual and a quantum. Then have 3 turrets in the rear to keep dps up. Its nice to punch through shields with the duals and turrets then watch the dhcs combined with a HY3 quantum tear hull apart.

I understand. While I have pushed the last second mark, that was a nail biter!

Still there are several ways of doing the Cure space, and you have to keep in mind the 2 diff styles too.
Normal and Elite have completely different patterns you have to do. And you absolutely have to keep better control of the site.

For instance when I fly with my House, since I have the science character (ok its the wife's character but hey, I LEVELED IT!) I sit down with the Karfi and I park myself between the base and the Kang. My responsibilties are Kill anything outbound to the Kang, Protect the attack group from the spawning escorts, lend to DPS of nodes and cubes. I am also emergency call for the Kang protector. If the group is taking to much heat from the cube I aggro the cube (unless its primary target) and keep it focussed on me and tank it while the BOP|Raptors do their thing.
With the exploding fighters and the weapon loadout | bridge officer loadout I run, I can easily manage this in Normal mode. In Elite Mode, I have to pay more attention to that Cube, and in helping keep damage off the Kang, but control strats still apply

I fly beamboat on both my vor'cha and sov, as long as people put in emergency power to weps 1 & 2 and rotate them you'll do sick amount of damage. And no one can accuse me of not healing with my cruisers, in fact I go as far as I've ran my ships into so many heavy plasma torps to take the bullet just so pug members don't get killed by them lol.(Honor Guard Shields are awesome btw ) Though honestly I've never ran into bad groups really, do I miss a bonus at least once a day, sure if I'm the only one hitting probes or nanite borgs, but that's more in line with poor execution than dps most of the time at least for normal. With so many f2p players coming in I'm prepared to see that, just gotta be patient and tell them the deal with the missions.