having finally posted the extent of my findings in the pvp section, without being able to come up with what the hidden bonus might be other then its curved, im hoping bort sees it and can at least shed some light on what the hell is going on.

I understand your complaints about my builds a bit better now. Its kinda like complaining that a full sized truck gets poor gas milage when thats not what you buy one for.

Do these builds work well in STFs? Yes
Do these builds 'gimp' your group? Not at all
Do these builds put out more than enough DPS to get the optional? Yes
Would I fly these ships in PvP? Hell no

They are designed to fill a role in a PuG STF group that is not needed but still enjoyable to do and are all capable of pulling their weight.

Why you only care about pvp and only evaluate a ship on how it would perform in that setting I have no idea but to each their own.

its not just about pvp, in stfs an escorts job is to deal the most damage as fast as it can, a build that trys to do something different simply isn't being as effective. unfortunately all that maters in an stf as dps

I understand all that matters is DPS but quite frankly I get very bored with the number of ships I have and captains flying the same exact optimum setup over and over and over and over again. I have 5 with at least one full space set, most have two.

So instead I make off the wall builds that are intended to fill a role. Yes the tank-a-scort may not put out 'as much' DPS as a DHC monster would but it can tank the cube in cure pretty much indefinetly allowing the friendly DHC monster I wish was in my PuG group to close in and avoid the damage penalty for being at 9k. The support-a-scort also enjoys making sure that imaginary DHC monster is dealing double damage and never has to waste dps on a shield facing. And at the same time when reality kicks in and I realize I'm stuck with a ton of rainbow builds I still have enough DPS of my own to typically nail the optional by the virtue of being in an escort with a bunch of tac consoles and abilities.

And if that offends those who I group with well then all I can say is: "I'm sorry you feel that way".

Now that is not to say that one should bring a ship that lacks significant DPS capability to an ESTF, they shouldn't. But these builds do not have that problem. Now when I get bored again and design 3 sci vessels for the 3 captains (not carriers) I just might have that issue but oh well.

I have a simple checklist for my builds that they must be able to do or I won't fly them. This is not a difficult set of conditions but if only every ship in every ESTF met them they would be much more enjoyable.

1) Solo cubes
2) Kill 3 raptors before they get to Kang
3) Solo Neg'var AND raptor at same time
4) Pop one side of KASE solo in 7 minutes (not counting probes)
5) Not get alpha'd by Dono

I'd say 1 out of 5 ships I find in PuGs could complete this list.

it's admirable how you defend your build. If YOU enjoy it, use it. I enjoy my cannon build...i do not post it on the forums and wait for negative feedback to roll in and then try to defend it.
The more i look through your build and klick through the videos i can not see a situation where it is an advantage to be in an escort with that weapon setup (i mean the beam escort). Anything i see in that videos can be done with a cruiser...or a cannon escort. you trade surviveability of a cruiser for turnrate, which you don't need/use since you broadside mostly.
yeah sure the commander tac slot is nice, but as i said...all you do can be done with a cannon build too, with even greater dmg results.

so is this build good for stfs...maybe...not really important since close to anything works in stfs.
is it good for team PVP? No, lack of burst dmg and no high tier support abilitys transform that ship into a shark without teeth.

1vs1 you might be up to something, since you have a lot of dmg time on target...you may be able to wear a cannon escort down if you manage to keep it in an endless spinn.

and filling a different role? HE and TSS and maybe auxtosif gives even an escort some good team heals that make a difference. Even tossing a spare TT1 can save other ships.

If your cannon build is enjoyable then I for one would love to try it. If you don't want to post it on the forums just PM it to me.

I tried to avoid the min/max complaints with the disclaimer in the original post. I don't mind if people say the builds are not that good or bad in PvP. I just get annoyed when it becomes exaggerated to 'liability to your STF team' as it is just not true.

Run ACT logger. You *ARE* hurting your team if you are in an escort that does less DPS than a cruiser.

While running my oddy as an eng-biased cruiser (i.e. matching boff setup to assault cruiser) I out-DPSed too many folks. It's why even on NORMAL you can't always win the optionals. You get 50%/50% shot of making the optional on cure.. how sad is that?

I'm not going to say there's only one way to run an escort or a cruiser, or whatever. I AM going to say there is a flat out WRONG way to run a cruiser or an escort. If you're doing it WRONG you're frakking your teammates over and doing it on purpose.

So while I would encourage folks to try out some new things, I would NOT suggest any of the setups listed on the original poster's comments. You WILL frak over your teamates, and cost them the optional.


Run ACT logger. If you're not breaking 2.5 million damage in an escort on a NORMAL pug, you're not even close to where you need to be. To put it in perspective I've seen far too many science ships only hit the 600k-800k range.

I have checked my DPS on the ships with my own method. They all put out much more than 2.5k depending on the ship. I don't think you realize just how much raw damage (without abilities) escorts deal nor how powerful things like APB are in an STF.

I test in KASE by soloing one of the 600k+ HP structures and doing the math. I find loggers tend to be misleading. If I slap APB3 and sensor scan on your target when your packing CRF and APO half of that damage was actually from me.

Why do you all think that these ships have no DPS capability? Is it because I 'dared' to run beams on an escort? Or that one of the escorts is using APB3 instead of CRF3?

I give up defending the builds, try 'em if you want. Enjoy them or hate them if you want. The ignorant stubborn elitists have won.

Eyeballing it doesn't count. You'll need to run the logger. Or log it and have somebody else parse it if you don't have it installed.

2.5k DPS? That's Laughably Bad DPS. My Old Vorcha Retrofit build pulls home more damage per second than that. To say nothing of my Escorts. If you aren't cranking at least 3800 Damage Per Second in an Escort you simply put have a fail build. Especially in an STF which is just a DPS Race.

There's a reason why Escorts are set up in specific ways to do maximum damage per second. It's because that is literally what the ship is built for. It's only doing it's job best, when it can inflict maximum damage. Your ship would slow any opvp stf team down due to it's insanely low output.

I suggest you get the ACT combat log parser. You'll find it most enlightening.