My first character in Star Trek Online was a liberated borg engineering officer who chose an escort ship upon reaching Lieutenant Commander (Lt. Cmdr). I started a second character at that point when I found the escort to be bizarrely harder to play than the starter ship, which made me wonder about science vessels instead.
So my second character is a Vulcan tactical officer who instead chose a science vessel upon reaching Lt. Cmdr. I took it out last night for its first patrol and oh my goodness is it a radical change! My tactical/science combination breezes through the same missions that were giving my engineer/escort fits.
It feels completely different. The science vessel can hang in a firefight so much longer, thanks to massive shielding and engineering/science officer skills, but what seems crazy is how much damage per second (DPS) it does at the same time. It can’t do quite as much as my escort, with its high-powered cannons, but the sub-targeting abilities almost make up the difference.
My science vessel can engage five or six ships at a time without worrying! I just tweak my power curve for shields and use my abilities to keep them up while I bang away at enemies. My favorite tactic so far is to gain the attention of one ship in the pack, then hold it with a tractor beam, target its shield generators, and blow it to bits while it’s helpless and in my gun sights.
It seems like the science vessel’s sub-targeting ability, coupled with its dual science consoles, give the craft amazing survivability and flexibility, while my tactical officer’s skill set lets me do crazy burst damage and pretty good average DPS over the long haul. I know this much: that combination clearly better suits my style of play than engineer/escort.
After having such a fun time of it, I logged to my other toon and tried a few different things, working up different tactics and seeing how they compare. On the whole I find I’m getting better with the engineer/escort combo, but it’s still a more difficult build for me.
Escort phaser cannons do an insane amount of damage and their cooldown is quite short, so the trick is to keep the ship’s forward arc trained on the enemy at all times. If I can keep my shields up, and that’s the real problem with an escort, I can cut through just about any enemy ship’s shields in seconds and start hammering her hull. My escort can rip the innards out of even the largest battleships in very short order.
Maybe if I tweak the escort’s loadout a bit and change up some of my engineering skills I’ll be able to up the survivability? Or maybe I should change out the consoles and shield generator for units geared more toward defense? I don’t know yet, but take it from me: don’t fear the tactical/science combo. It’s big fun!