Bought this in December 2012. Im now Rank Captain. and im MORE frustrated than when i started off.

1) Im consistently getting stupid annoying glitches. My character will NOT fire his weapons. no matter what buttons i push or re-login. This happens often and screws me over during missions.

2) I bought the defiant. Captain grade. I upgraded 3 of its main cannons to duel mark 8. Lost TWICE to 1 D'deridex warbird. All the warbird did was tractor beam me and *** hump my ship til it exploded. I couldnt even bring down the Warbird main shield before i was blown up. WTF is that?

I beat a D'deridex TWICE with my CONSTITUTION class without blowing up.
today I lost TWICE with my upgraded DEFIANT to 1 damn warbird? And, add insult to injury, it tractor held me, and my weapons couldn't even bring down its shield before i was destroyed.. .. lmfao

What am i doing wrong?

Pretty much everything.
From not explaining clearly what you do to actual informations about your ship loadout and the fricken captain-avatar you use.

Read up on the escort forum what bridge officer powers you need. For starters you need a sci bridge officer with polarize hull power to break the tractor when it hits you(it´s kinda explained right in the power description, isn´t it?).
You ARE using bridge officers, right?

As for the glitches, using a keyboard is NOT like using a pad. It stalls when you jam too many keys. Unless you got a special gaming keyboard. Or just get a pad for the PC (or XBox-USB connector for XBox pads) and use that in the game.

He's quite right about [1] though. Input lag is basically the one thing that kills me these days, and it is incredibly frustrating to be mashing away at the button to fire weapons (when they're supposed to be on autofire!) while some Borg cube is violating you with the cutting beam lazer again.

True, especially with the "twitch-based" escorts and the current server stress. And that´s not even taking into account ISP/wifi problems the OP might have.
It could be pretty much everything, and sadly the magic eightball doesn´t work so well lately. :p

Hopefully Cryptic will upgrade their servers some.

K im not ignorant. My connection and wifi is stable. I have a 19 MB connection, using a D-link DIR-655 extreme N router, im 10 feet away from. Think i got connection issues?

Moving on, heres my defiant load out:
For: 3 X Duel phaser cannon mark 8 (217 DPS per cannon). 1 X duel tetryon beam mark 7 (auto)
Aft: 2 X Photons - Stock with ship
Shield: Stock 3900 + 140 regeneration
Impulse: Efficiant impulse mark 4 Rare 84 flight and high turn rate

Engineering console: 1 tritanium Armor, 1 personal thing (i forget
Tactical: 1 X 3.5% energy weaopons boost, 1 X 7% energy weap boost
Science: I forget. It was decent tho.

Specials: 2 X special abilties restore 1700 shields instant. 1 X Red matter (repairs damage instant) 2 X rapid cannon fire. 1 X anti torpedo damage. 1 X evasive, 1 X 50% + all energy weapons, and a few other i cant remember.


Now heres how the battle went:
I go in standard impulse nice and slow. Power diverted to shield. I boost shield + boost weapons. The second i open fire, Warbird locked tracotor returned fire. Shields now down to 30% in 4 seconds.

I use shield restores (continue firing) and use second weapons boost powers. and cant shake warbid tractor. (using evasive too) Warbird fires second Volley. Shields DOWN. I use repair while still firing.

Now 15 seconds in, warbird shields at 20%, i continue healing and firing. Warbird fires 3rd volley. Hull down to 20 %. Warbird fires... ship destroyed.


Remember "Way of the warrior" when the defiant tractor held a vorcha? lolol

You're not doing it right. No, literally, you aren't. If anything destroys you that fast with a cstore ship, you're doing something wrong. In this case you really don't seem to know how to tank properly with an escort. And remember that you're going up against a battlecruiser with something thats basically a heavy frigate sized ship, you're not going to be able to go toe for toe all the time. Set up an attack run, blast away, pull off, heal, repeat. It's tedious sometimes and I personally prefer a cruiser's ability to tank while broadsiding to having to cycle regen buffs, but it's entirely doable, and that coupled with the escort's superior firepower means that the sitution you're describing is entirely doable.

This is not a game bug. This is not a technical flaw. This is someone getting frustrated because they're not playing the game right.

A ship is only as good as its captain....and most captains are no Benjamin Sisko. Then again, Hollywood can make starships do incredible things.

Besides, the ship you're using is a Defiant-class, not THE USS Defiant...

And yeah....a Defiant class is pretty much a frigate. It's not gonna step up in a destroyer's face and win. Nooo...in a straight up slugfest, a ship as small as a Defiant class is gonna get smeared all over the quadrant...

Hit and run, that's the way to take down a bigger ship.

Or just cycle Tactical Team and use Reverse Shield Polarity to deflect bigger blasts. If you have Tactical Initiative with Cannon Rapid Fire it only becomes all the more ridiculous (in PVE anyways). It's quite doable. You just need the right abilities and the skill to apply them effectively.

Sisko Is the MAN!!!!!!!! I wish i had his skills! but ive only been playing as month. Its not a C sec ship. Its a grade earned ship.

And i was merely thinking of DS9 where the defiant would go slug fests on cruisers (uss lakota upgraded excelsior) and she slugged out a neghvar and pwned both. Truthfully the defiant can slug out the big guys. But thats cannon.

But its starting to sound like in shoulda gone with the Galaxy. Escorts seem like they are inferior and are there for a challenge.

oh btw, i had a Akira before this ship and i barely got touched. thought id throw that out there.

Im still learning. So dont be afraid to tell me im wrong and correct me, im open to how to play this game better.

Escorts aren't an extra challenge type of ship. The Tank/Healer/Mage/Rogue breakdown for STO ships is Escort = Rogue, Cruisers = Tank/Healer, and Science Ships = Mage/Healer.

Escorts, even Tier 5 heavy hitting ones like the Advanced Escort Refit are all about dealing damage faster than the other guy can handle, and getting out of range.

Ideally you want to set up an alpha strike on an attack run using Torpedo High Yield and Cannon Rapid Fire to tear up the target.

Each ship has pieces from all three classes, but they focus primarily on one of them. (There are some C-Store ships that bend this a bit and are unusual hybrids.)

For your Defiant you'll need one Lt Engineer and one Lt Science officers

For science you want either Hazard Emitters or Science Team with Polarize Hull, for Engineer you want Emergency Power to Shields and Engineering Team. That will give you some very limited tanking ability that is absolutely vital to keeping your escort in operational condition.

Finally, as an escort, don't be afraid to hit Evasive Maneuvers and get the hell out of dodge if things aren't going your way. It's there for precisely that reason. The Tractor Beam has a range of 5km, so if you're outside of that, they cannot tractor lock you. Romulans also like to use Viral Matrix, which will flat out shut down your ship, for that one, I actually don't remember the counter, but if you're staying out of the line of fire it shouldn't be able to keep you offline long enough to be a serious issue.

Regardless, you should probably look up the escorts forum, and take a look how you should be putting one of these ships together.