I just picked up that gorn repair ship...trying to wrap my brain around the tactics involved in using it.

Anyone got any advice they can toss my way?

Klingon High Command has directed this thread to report to the Klingon Shipyards for assistance.

The Varanus? It's the D'kyr in dsiguise. Hell, even the platform does the same as the Tal'Kyr support craft. Use it as a troll mobile IMO. GW3, Tachyon 3, beams for subsystem and torpedoes. The repair platform has a VERY good cooldown (20 sec and you drop another) And the little adds follow everything friendly around. I had 6 spawn on me, and they even started healing my science fleet It's the only true Tier 5 science ship you can get on the KDF side, as the carriers IMO are too bulky to effectively move around and do their jobs. Alternatively, you could sue CPB3 instead of GW3, if you can fly around fast enough. With cranked particle generators, you can rip 3-4 shield facings in one fly-by.

Good to see another Varanus Captain!

Currently, I have 2 builds for the Varanus.

Crowd Control: Good for Elite STFs
TAC: TT1, SPREAD 2<-Use this with CHRONITON TORPS
ENS ENG: ET1
LT ENG: EptS1, AUX2SIF2
LTCMDR SCI: HE1, TSS2, GW1
CMDR SCI: TSS1, HE2, PSW1, GW3

"Paladin" Science Tank Build
http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skil...d=KDFSCITANK_0

Good Luck!

The Varanus is really a DSSV in disguise.

Just with worse shields, and a special console that bugs out a lot.

YAY.

If the varanus had worker-bee equivalent drones (not a dumb platform) and they could be used on other hangar-wielding ships it would be worth buying.

But.. as it is... no. the thing is just a waste of money for no real benefit.

Hull repair is not that useful (as the odyssey owners found out) since the drones die very quickly from any aoe attack and any ship that is getting hit in the hull does not survive long enough to say 'oh man I should head to that repair drone platform and grab me some hull repair!' .

Nice looking ship though.

i'm a varanus captain aswell, so i know the deal

but, thing which i'm wondering, have YOU tried to reach the team mates and keep dropping platforms near them? SUre, it's a sligth waste of cooldowns, but still helps, especially if you got hull repair skill at full (my drones, one each, repair up to 392 per sec, which if they focus on a single ship ALL the team's drones means that the person gets, assuming ALL drone are working, 2x5x392 = 3920 potential hull repair per sec)

It has been my experience as both a VoQuv carrier that tanks and that uses shield drones that the most critical component in the ship's defense is the shields not the hull. Using the shield drones on myself I constantly have to keep launching them, 1 wing spaced out every 15 seconds from the other, because the AOE strikes wipe out half my drones every 5 or seconds.

I have had varanus team members put their hull healing drones on me.. they were nice to heal the bleedthrough damage but were dead in seconds and replacements hardly came. I cannot imagine how placing a platform or launching them directly from your ship (a-la odyssey worker bees) with just one hangar can allow you to maintain at least a small amount of them healing you all the time.

The damage they would heal is also non-critical. Case in point is any tank must be a shield tank. Borg elite and player damage output is so ridiculously high that once the shield is out you're doomed. Healing 4k per second does not match the borg elite ability to put 30k damage on your hull in one hit nor a player's ability to put nearly 50k in a volley.

Unlike shields that can be healed per facing all at once and distributed, the hull is just 'one' big hitpoint pool.


Quite frankly, I would prefer if they replaced the Varanus hull healing drones with shield resistance enhancing drones. Now that would make an incredible difference and gives the ship a true niche.