Actually the Science Nerf is quite real. Gravity Well is great for NPC ships and Pets but does NOTHING to Player Ships (even with full skill and NO resistance on the enemy part). With enough insulators and a number of the STF set pieces energy drain is nearly undetectable. Get a good resistance setup to being held and Tractor Beams only stop you from cloaking and deal a minor bit of damage but cannot HOLD you. Stun effects work for like half a second against almost everyone. Repulsers can barely move a player. Scramble Sensors works for a second or two like VM does. Tachyon Beam is an utter joke. I have no resistance and I have been able to tank TB III with full skill on the enemy without any problem at all.


Basically there is hardly any good Sci Abilities for PvP anymore if your enemy has ANY skill in resistance even if you have full skill into the powers.

Well, I flew another couple sorties in the PvP game and it wasn't pretty. I got spanked. The debrief isn't an attack on the qualities of ship but instead a recognition of the coordination of pilots. The Klingons simply flew as better wings.

You could have the most ridiculous ship in the galaxy and I don't think it would be possible to engage more than 2 middling opponents. Typically I was taking fire from three sometimes 4 and getting popped like a zit. Their coordination is to be admired and respected.

I hadn't encountered carriers and their squadrons as opposition before and it interfered with my ability to target critical elements. While it was possible to mire them collectively the little beasts were like chaff and proved a real hassle as they screened the enemy and made selective targeting time consuming.

I had to switch in a point defence console at the expense of of some other more tested equipment. I didn't like to do that because it's a one trick pony with a long cooldown that contributes nothing to other ship systems.

I am still pleased with my ship. I know it needs some refinements and eventually I would like to refit systems with mk xii gear but the real problem seems larger than one ship. It might be possible to tweak a ship but the rewards or advantages here could be measured behind decimal points. To have real success you have to fly as a team. In future I may be looking for wingers

In response to Shinkuu-Akagan's coomments in respect to TR and GW their effects did seem rather ineffectual against other players. On the other hand the tractor beam seemed to function to the same standard it had against E opponents.

I still haven't committed to the removal of my science team but it remains under consideration. As an aside I actually run two hazard emitters and like then in tandem with my tactical team.

I've commented on DPS before and it hasn't been that important. One thing I am considering is removing the BO2 ability from my Lt Tac and replacing it with BFAW2. The "damage spike"(insert laughter here) that results from beam overload eats my weapons power and results in a significant drop in my damage output afterwards. I think it would be better to maintain steady fire and replacing it with fire at will would offer superior tactical applications.

I do like the point defense unit but it is really a waste on this ship and with this captain as I have built them. With a tactical captain I'd be more inclined to retain it for cannon shenanigans but here not so much.

Antimatter Spread can often be more useful than the Point Defense. Also GW IS actually handy Vs. Fighters. It is about the only thing it really helps with in PvP.

Tractor Beam works fine if the enemy has not invested in the proper hard counter skill. The problem comes in when they have put a at least three bars into Inertial Dampeners. Then you start to see Tractor Beam become rapidly useless. It merely slows them down minorly.

BO gives a decent damage spike so long as your weapons power was good when you used it.. Keep in mind that BO only uses ONE beam so it does not matter how many beams you have. It is far more important that the one beam be a DBB. BFAW by contrast will widdle down your power level more slowly but ultimately it deals considerably less damage to one target and as it does fire all beams the lack of beams to fire with will further decrease its effectiveness. To this day I have yet to have EVER been hit by a BFAW that did more than tickle me even when I pilot Birds of Prey. Besides killing Bio-Neural Warheads and some other clutter BFAW is rather useless.

On the topic of FAW...
I've always found it underwhelming, until my last visit to PvP.
Where the entire opposing team merely circled and all spammed it continuously.
That much of it tickled about as much as a jackhammer tickles concrete
But, on it's own, yeah. It barely scratches the paint.

BO2 is great if you time it to hit JUST before the torps do.
"Sir, shields are holdi... ah, crap." *BOOM*

Good point. My first Assault Cruiser (Sovereign) builds had BFAW just to mimic it's appearance in Nemesis. However using BFAW on the attack is a bit ineffective in a target rich environment such as Infected Elite because it seems most of the beams are hitting things I don't want to hit. Overloads are easier to control and do a lot of damage if buffed correctly.

BFAW however may be good for KDF vs Fed PvP as I've seen several instances where the entire Klingon team is fielding carriers en masse. In that case not bringing a BFAW ship is suicide!

Against single targets BFAW may also be very powerful as all the beams are hitting the same target, or at least I've used it on Escorts where the secondary weapon is one single DBB so I can FAW it in its restricted arc for maximum penguin mayhem.

This^

FAW is definitely a damage boost on a single target.
My problem is, that I am rarely fighting a single target. I usually pack something less situational.
Where I LOVE FAW though, is when I'm tanking fleet actions. It's utility in gaining and keeping aggro is unmatched. In that case, I pair it with APD
(but, in that scenario, DPS isn't my job, heh)

As said above the Sci nerf is very real in comparision to other ship types they are pretty useless

For PVE in any situation you can complete the mission much much quicker in an escort

In an STF apart from maybe Grav welling the odd mob or tractor repulsing, your a liability , in fact if you take an escort instead your extra Damage makes grav welling redundant as you'll just kill the mobs.

In PvP apart from in an organised team with a very specailsed build, you are better in a Escort or Cruiser.



We badly need a balance pass

On this, I don't agree. I am playing with a RSV and with an Armitage as science officier; however, I collected several rare tac officiers, and so my Armitage has everything an escort can have as firepower (except for tac career specials). Plus, anti-borg antiproton stuff & boosts.

With the right build the science ship can clear STF pretty well; for sure the STF without a single science ship in which I was in went much worse than any try with at least one of them.

The effect of my SS build on borgs is pretty hilarous; I even had Sela ship sitting duck for the whole time, even unable to fire back, with our team bringing it down in a matter of 20-30 seconds; and I still didn't put any anti-borg stuff on the RSV yet.

I've even brought a borg cube down all by myself without a scratch in elite, while the rest of the team, with heavy escorts and paid for, exotic cruisers, wasn't able to control the borgs from the other 2 cubes and got Khan destroyed. Didn't mean to be uncopreative on that once, just I didn't even imagine they could be in trouble with all that mighty FPS and tanks around.

There are PvE scenarios where the escort is bound to perform way better; i.e. Starbase 24, where you have to kill lots of enemy fast on your own, and infected STF, where you have to kill tough probes fast, are two of them; but in general, on PVE I just feel the need to get my escort when I want to have a change for a while.

On this I do agree. I think this wasn't deliberate against SCI players. Just E with sci abilities are kinda overwhemling, exp when they come in mass, so it was necessary to nerf them down somehow.

Anyone who has seen a romulan warship decloaking at 2.5km from you, putting tractor beam and takyon beam on you and sending 3 heavy plasma torpedos your way before you can even get your hands on the keyboard knows what I mean.

A fleet scenario with 5-10 sci E ships supporting cruisers & frigates, fighting at full AI, would have been pretty unbearable for any 5 ships P team.

There are only 3 way outs for the devs.

1) keep sci E nerfed, but un-nerf sci players. There already is a 1 vs 1 balance system that seems to work great with DPS, and can be switched on or off at any moment by the game, i.e. when you play at squad leader level. Just extend it to sci side effect, so that NPCs has them relatively less powerful than players.

2) un-nerf sci abilities, but give more counters (while removing some confusing and now useless sci ability). I.e. give sci boff and career some ability to counter remote sci powers, like, destroying a forming GW or TR, invert a tractor beam on an ally ship, invert polarity of syphons & so on. Of course, this abilities must be wide enough in range so that you don't need to stack any heal or attack sci ability away to make room for counters. This would be fun, as would FORCE PvP teams to take a sci along, AT LEAST to provide the counters; or declare escort/cruiser private games. Also, it would give more ways and combinations to build an interesting and useful SCI character/ship.

3) Give sci players anti-dps abilities. For instance, "Fast shield frequency rotation", with 30 sec reload time, giving you 20 secs of cannon fire damage halved. This would be a way to equate escort and sci DPS ratio in PvPs, confronting the pure muscle escort approach vs a more thought, varied and ability based sci gameplay.

Oh, also, 7 ability slots for a sci player are not that much, exp if you introduce counters.

Some current abilities are partially designed to do some countering, as science team and polarize hull, but this seems more as a try to cover a design flaw than a correct approach.

Given this, 7 ability slots (8 if you play some exotic sci ship) are really too few. The solution might simply be the ability to switch in bridge officers even during combat. Of course, you WON'T do that while taking fire, but as you see how the scenario, or the other team, is built, you might want to switch to a secondary strategy you prepared in advance were your build totally off-topic in the current scenario.

This would be a great benefit for sci players, who are searching a more planned and deeply thought game approach, without absolutely altering the game balance.

The ability to switch officers in combat might be restricted to sci careers, to sci ships with any career on, or simply free for all; however, being able to reconfigure your strategy while in a scenario, both because a different target comes into play (with phases where you're supposed to hit hard and phases where you're supposed to defend or block), or simply as you recognize that you messed up your strategy, is a really interesting possibility, which costs nothing in terms of development and doesn't hurt the game balance in any way.

And ... how many times we see officers switching their place on the bridge in ST movies/series?