Science with a Tactical Twist

Two years ago  I touched on the notion of a science captain flying an escort ship. But today I’m thinking about science officers flying ships that have a certain tactical flair. I am not referring to the Dysons, I’ve spent plenty of digital ink on that ship. Here and here just to mention a few. I’m thinking a traditional science ship with a good turn rate using aggressive weapons. A ship like the Scryer for example.  Or for you stingy caps on a budget, Admiral Quinn’s token will get you the Recon Science Ship with a robust 13 dps base turn rate and 50 inertia. Or if you really want to amp up the tactical the Dauntless Experimental Science ship sports a both a Lt. Commander and Lieutenant at tactical with a sticky 14 dps turn rate and 3 tac consoles which is good for science ships.

Either the Scryer, Dauntless, or the Recon can be effective fighters while still offering all the delicious nerd gear every science toon dreams about. Yes, these sleek and curvy ships are nearly as nimble as an escort yet they can catalog a series of gaseous anomalies faster than Kirk hits on the new nurse in sick bay.

Lately I have been playing around with my science toons (I only have two of them one is in the KDF!). In the Scryer or the Recon there will be limited seating on the bridge for tactical officers. The Dauntless is a great ship for a tactical leaning science officer but since it has escort like seating for tactical it can run cannons effectively, but beams could still be better here. The other two ships are not going to be effective at all with cannons. I have compared cannons and beams recently and we have been down that path already. I am focusing on a beam setup today as they work better with the more typical tactical limitations on the bridge of a science ship.

These hard turning ships might do well with a pair of dual beam banks up front and a couple of omnies in the rear. I mentioned a few tips for running two omnidirectional beams to get around the one per ship a few issues back but there are some specialty Omni-beams that use the same power type but can be used together. The Chronometric Polaron Omnidirectional beam array can be used in conjunction with a standard polaron omni. There are a couple of tetryons that can be used together, Antichroniton and standard tetryon. Antiproton and Ancient Antiproton,  Agony Phaser and standard Phaser as well. Having the two Omnies in the aft allow the ship to have at least two weapons always firing and when an enemy  ship is stupid enough to find itself in that forward 90 degree arc, the pain train arrives. Like I said above, this is an aggressive setup and not for someone looking to be the healer/support guy. The ship will be tactically a little soft everywhere except the forward 90 degree arc. The beam boat broadside is off the table; but seriously with 11-14 degrees of base turning, broadside-schmoadside. There’s blood to be spilled and you have Mr. Slicey! Some of you will catch that reference 😉

I set up that Tholian Meshweaver escort I built a while back this way and it actually was a holy terror. Anyway, beams allow a captain to hit hard without high-ranking tactical officers on the bridge. Beam Overload II or Fire at Will II are both available at a mere Lieutenant station. I always setup my “beam guy” to have both abilities and swap them out when I know one will have an advantage. For example if I am fighting Tholians, I like to have FAW as it shreds the webs. If I am in a situation where I will be fighting fewer but larger ships or a “boss” enemy, overload is a pretty good shield thrasher. Buying the training for the beam abilities is cheap even for the tightest of tightwads, so load up both sets of FAW I and II as well as BO I and II with the same BOFF so you can easily mix and match and swap the abilities before a mission.

For players on a skinny budget, the Antichoniton, Chronometric, and Ancient Omni directional beam arrays are all freebie mission rewards. The standard 360 arc beam arrays are all crafted and will cost between 1m and 3m EC on the exchange. I checked today and Antiproton is the cheapest I have found.

Between these three ships a science captain can really decide just how “tough” he wants to be. Sure the Dyson Destroyer or the Strategic Multi-Mission ships might be even more menacing, these three are still pretty solid science ships and not just knuckle dragging thugs.

I did build a nice Dauntless with Rodessa. She has the complete Nukara space set and the Nukara weapons set all Mk XIV. Up front is the Dual Hyper Refracting beam bank and a rep store Mk XIV refracting dual beam bank. Torpedo launcher up front is wide arc quantum from the Assault Retrofit. Aft has the Antichroniton Omni and a Tetryon Omni at Mk XIV along with the Nukura web mine launcher. Consoles are all Mk XIV as follows: Eng; Enhanced Neutronium (hp) and Conductive RCS with (resall). Science; Univ Nukura, Univ Plasmonic Leech, Exotic Particle Exciter (sh HP), 2x Field Gen Very Rare, Tac; All Fleet Vulnerability Locator, 1x quantum, 2x tetryon.

BOFFs are Science Commander; Sci Team, HazEmitter II, Charged Particle Burst II, Grav well III. Sci/Intel Lt.; Intel Team I and II. LtCommander Tac; FAW I, BO II, TorpSpd III. TacLt; Tac Team, Kemocite II. LtEng; Eng Team, Aux2Structual.

It has been a nice build. The Dauntless is essentially a science escort. I have run very similar builds on the Scryer and the recon always with reasonable success.

OK that;s all for today, be sure to read the ARC news about the 26th Century ships we can fly when they launch ‘Agents of Yesterday’ next month 🙂