Over the lead-up to Delta Rising and even more so after the Launch of Delta Rising, there has been a lot of discussion regarding Tactical Captains in Cruisers and Science Ships. While the Tactical Readiness Department understand the desire to fly iconic ships, such as the Galaxy, Sovereign and Intrepid, as a tactical captain, these ships are simply not adequate to take advantage of all your tactical training can afford you.
The new high end Elite content is far more difficult than we’ve experienced in the past. It does requires Captains to be fully invested, skilled and geared, this also means taking advantage of all your class’ skills, advantages and ship’s abilities and mitigating your weakness and vulnerabilities. While there are exceptions to every rule, those exceptions are generally maxed out and have spend the large amounts of EC/Dil/Zen to be the exception.
First I want to address, Tactical Captains in a Science Ship. The standard Science ship has 6 weapon slots, 3 forward and 3 aft. That is a deficit to the 4 forward and 2 aft or 4 forward and 3 aft of an escort or raider.
“Well how is 4 forward and 2 aft better than 3 and 3, they both add up to 6”Simple, Escorts and raiders can equip dual heavy cannons which do significantly more damage than beam arrays and even dual beam banks. Also most ships that have 4/2 configuration has a significant increase to their weapons power which more than makes up for the rear weapon deficit.
“I want all the cool Science Power!”There are Science focused escort that are available to you so you can use the Science Boff abilities. Ships like the Prometheus and the Dyson Ships allows tactical captains to fly Science Oriented ship, while preserving your Tactical Captain Advantages. You don’t need to have a dedicated science ship to take advantage of the Cdr LvL Science abilities. You can really make do with Lt. Cdr Science abilities simply because this is as much as your captain skills and ship’s power level will only be able to take advantage of the Lt Cdr abilities.
Finally While Science Ships have higher shield modifier they have the weakest hull in the game. And in this era of shield penetration if you have weak hull you need to have abilities that help take the fire off you. And while Science and engineering captains have skills like Scattering Field and Miracle Worker, the tactical Captain have Attack pattern Alpha and Go Down Fighting. Neither of which help with Survivability.
Now, Escorts in cruisers, while on paper this looks like a great idea, 4 fore and 4 aft vs the 5/2, 4/3 or 4/2 Escort/Raider configuration. Higher Hull, higher shields and I get to Separate my Saucer/chevron! You’re also slower and unable to equip Dual Cannons. These two factors affect damage output and survivability.
“Well if I have higher hull how is being slow a liability?”Speed = Defense, the Higher your speed the Higher your defense, the Higher your defense the harder you are to hit. It’s a bit confusing but Defense does not affect how much damage you take, if affect whether or not you’re even hit. While you have abilities like Evasive Maneuvers and Emergency Power to Engines, you’re still slow in space and do not have the speed to evade many attacks which will melt a ship’s shields and hull down to 0 no matter how high it is.
Engineers have the benefit of abilities like Rotate Shield Frequency and Miracle Worker as well as Engineering Fleet to heal and add damage resistance. Making up for this shield/hull healing and resistance deficit requires that you effectively reduce your damage output and weapon’s power level. You will need to fill your Engineering Boff slot with Healing Abilities and any available Science and Tactical slots with healing abilities that will require high Auxilliary power to work well.
“What about Aux to Bat Tac cruisers?”Great plan, except you would need to be super specialized and you would have very little room for healing abilities. And even if that wasn’t an issue we’d still be running into power issues. Even with the boost Aux to bat gives every other systems you’re still firing 8 weapons at the same time and remember higher weapons power = higher energy damage. Also if you are able to mitigate your energy levels, Aux to Bat builds are not the cheapest builds. A Fully Realized Aux to bat Build will cost about 200 Mil EC
“How do Engineering Captains do it?”Engineering Captains have EPS Power Transfer and Nadion Inversion they also have the trait EPS Manifold Efficiency. EPS Power Transfer gives a massive power boost to all Power Levels and Nadion Inversion reduces the drain abilities have on power levels. EPS Manifold Efficiency give a secondary boost to all subsystems when you use a battery or emergency power abilities.
“I don’t want to be squishy!”A properly outfitted escort is not squishy. An Escort’s speed is it’s shield, and an escort is capable of very high speeds. If you are overwhelmed, an Escort is capable of being hit a lot less depending on how fast you’re going. An escort can also mitigate the damage down by eliminating the amount of attacker is attacking it.
“Why do you care?”The Tactical Readiness Dept cares because we have encounter so many players in the fleet that were told to buy and whatever ship they want by well-meaning fleet mates and end up regretting it because it doesn’t do what they want it to do and not having the resources to replace the ship. With Tier 6 Ships costing 3000 Zen ($30 USD/475K Dil) picking the wrong ship has become very costly to replace, even more so when the Cruiser/Science Ship comes from a Lock Box.
Finally Escorts are some of the hardest hitting ship in the game and is fairly versatile when properly outfitted. If you need more guides as to how to set up an Escort, watch our 2nd Livestream that’s archived at:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZlWofQdaKaGqU47FzO3OmYrKqyc5nO1j.WhiteOnmyoji
Chief of Tactical Readiness
