My shiny new T6 Defiant

So I figure before I start blathering on about my shiny new ship, I’ll let you know about a problem I had last week. Somehow, some way, some one, hacked in to my account. Yes my STO account. This person managed to extract nearly every bit of Zen, dilithium, and EC from my account and all my toons. That was roughly 1 million dilithium, 100 million or  so EC, and somewhere in the vicinity of 2500 Zen. Guard that password close my friends and better yet use all 14 characters.

To the credit of Perfect World they saw the irregular activity and the fraudulent IP and shut down the account, but the hackers got all the tradeables out of my account. They also tried to buy Zen on the account but apparently they couldn’t hack the payment system I use. Thank God for that. The bright side is that they were just after stuff and that was the extent of their malice. I still have all my toons and ships and what not. I’m just a bit resource poor at the moment 😦 The support team is looking into the lost goods and other possible fraud committed while the baddies we using my account. Cryptic did figure out that I had 2450 Zen prior to the hack, and they restored it for me this morning, I don’t think they will be able to return the EC and Dilithium however. The staff was pretty good about helping me get my account unlocked.

Also a follow-up on the dialog box decloaks fix. Yep they fixed it! Rickey Bobby sums up my sentiment well on this… Thank you Lord Baby Jesus! Tested it multiple times with multiple ships, seems good. Knock one of those top tens pet peeves off the list 🙂 There is one caveat to this happy story, the fix seems to be only for unsolicited dialog boxes, if you open one of the static mission dialogs that sit neatly out of your way or pick up a mob drop the ship decloaks. Apparently the transporter can’t be used while under cloak. News flash, canon says otherwise, see Star Trek IV, Voyage Home, et al. But thank you Cryptic for at least fixing the biggest part of the dialog box decloaks ship issue 🙂

OK, so I took advantage of all those Black Friday deals that Cryptic had going on 2 weeks ago and ended up buying a T6 tactical escort. I wrote about this ship last Thanksgiving, (T6 ‘Defiant’ Should You Own It?) and wasn’t over the moon about it, but I decided that the 25% off Zen plus 25% off all C-Store items was too good to pass up, I mean seriously, the ship was effectively 44% off! The console to complete the set alone was worth the Black Friday price!

Speaking of the console, the Quantum Warhead Module is pretty badass! It offers a dull but useful, passive 10% boost to all torpedo damage, but it’s active ability is the real deal. It loads “charges” up to 6 which can be fired at any time. It will empty all of the charges at once and the damage is epic. I have gotten over 200k damage with all six charges! A great finishing move for sure. This console is the third piece in the stealth fighter set for the Feddies. It is used in conjunction with the quad phaser cannons and the fed cloaking device console. This gives you the overcloak and critical ambush features for the 2 of 3 bonus which reduces the cloak recharge time and boosts crit chance and damage during the decloak bonus period. Do not under-estimate this if you are an ambush style attacker. The third set piece is delicious, it turns the crappy regular cloak into a battle cloak. Yes, it’s another Rickey Bobby baby Jesus moment.

I went with all phasers up front, 2 advanced fleet dual cannons and the quad along with a Kelvin Photon torpedo launcher. Aft is some nice elite fleet phaser turrets and another Kelvin photon launcher. I went all Mk XIV on this little bad boy. The ship is really similar to the T5-U tactical escort retrofit but has hybrid seating for pilot officers and the fifth level mastery is a brilliant starship trait that extends the scatter volley ability from 10 seconds to 14 seconds. This ability coupled with other abilities and or DOFF/BOFF passive can lead to a state of constant scatter volley. It is most effective.

As I mentioned last year, this ship is basically a near identical but slightly upgraded version of the Tactical Escort Retrofit. The extra BOFF seating and the fantastic quantum module console are probably worth while, but when we add the withering barrage ship trait, well… get one, seriously get the ship already. I will eat some crow and totally walk back my 2015 suggestions about this ship. Even if you already have the T5 Defiant, this is a solid ship and who doesn’t want to be able to have a battle cloak on one of the Defiant based escorts or even the Avenger which can equip the quad cannons. Not sure I would, but I can!

I have a comparison between the T5-U and T6 Tactical Escorts along with the Phantom, Tactical Pilot, and the new Theseus Temporal Escort. For pure unadulterated tactical badassery the Pilot is tough to beat in this group. The Theseus is excellent as a team support escort and pretty solid for tactical officers that like a little science strength. None of these ships are strong in engineering but the best of the worst is the Theseus. I imagine the Engineering Pilot would beat the Theseus if were on this list. The Theseus is the most versatile in this bunch really unless you need some stealth in which case it lags well behind the cloak equipped ships.

It should be noted that all of the ships shown on the charts below except the Pilot, are available in a Fleet strength. Fleeting these up will push all but the T5-U defiant ahead of the Pilot in overall power and strength.

If you want a battle cloak capable full-sized escort for your Federation toon the T6 Tactical Escort with the Quad Cannons and the Cloak installed is your ticket. Otherwise it seems that the Phantom is the best all round escort ship here.

I wrote up all these ships in the past save for the Theseus, which I do not own.

• DS9 Fans Love This Ship
• Nerfs Up, Time to Unleash the Defiant *Note: they did Unleash it since 🙂
• Flying the Mercury Class
• Head 2 Head: Mercury vs. Phantom