I need help with ship choices

[Melvin, 12, Huge Nerd]

As the title says, I need help. Currently I've been going through google to look for what ships I should look for, albeit the sources I've found are 1-4 years old. But I've currently narrowed it down to two ships. And before I put the ships I've found down, if you have a reccommendation for me, that would be great. I'm looking for a cruiser-class ship (cruiser, dreadnought, etc.) so I can stuff it to the brim with beam arrays. I'm also using a Starfleet Tactical Character.

So, here are the two ships I've narrowed it down to: The Presidio Command Battlecruiser and the Kelvin Timeline Intel Dreadnought Cruiser.

Those two ships seem to be the best choices for me, from what forums I've found. If you have any input as to what I should choose instead, please let me know!

[ImperatorPavel]

The Kelvin dreadnought is still considered the best Fed DPS ship in STO as far as I know.

[Baroon Valm]

try sto gamepedia for info on the stats, they are updated quite often when it comes to ships..
as far as the choices go, Kelvin dread is very popular, but i have seen some ppl do well in a keldon.. I also think the t6 Miranda is a nice cruiser to fly around.

[ImperatorPavel]

You can make any ship fly decently as long as you have decent gear to be honest.

[Melvin, 12, Huge Nerd]

Well then suppose I don't want to shell out the credits for the Kelvin. Is the Presidio Command Battlecruiser a fairly decent T6 DPS ship if I outfit it properly?

[MeisterGlanz]

It really depends on the gear, ship traits, duty officers, bridge officers -
essentially your build and how well you use it to determine how efficient you are in space combat. But let's just compare these two ships for fun anyway.

The two ships you selected are big capital ships with slow turn rates, both have 8 weapon slots. The Presidio has 4 fore and 4 aft weapon slots, the Vengeance class 5 fore and 3 aft. So broadsiding with beam arrays with these ships is the preferred setup.

They both have good ship mastery traits, All hands on deck on Presidio reduces recharge times, the Vengeance traits buffs damage output while using certain bridge officer abilities.

From the mastery perks themselves, the Vengeance gets the slight edge here, because it gets a 2.5% global bonus to crit chance.

The Presidio console improves torp and mine damage, if you don't plan to use a torp, there are much better options than slotting this comsole. The Vengeance console reduces recharge times of captain abilities, that is decent enough to slot it.

Both ships come with a lieutenant commander tactical bridge officer station. But only the Vengeance comes also with a lieutenant commander universal station, so possibly two LC tactical BOs. Also, the Vengeance has intel and temporal specialist seating. The Vengeance wins this one.

Their special ship abilities are not that important. Sometimes I forget they are there on the ships I have.

The Vengeance has slightly more hull and a slightly better shield modifier because it's a dreadnought.

Ships with similar configurations are the Arbiter battlecruiser which comes with a space trait that gives a weapon firing cycle haste, which is a straight increase to your energy damage per second and the Chronos class 31th century temporal dreadnought, that comes with temporal seating and a console that taunts and increases crit chance and damage. Another benefit of the Chronos is, it is one of three cross faction zen store ships, meaning it can be used on any character on your account.

That's another thing BTW, the Vengeance can only be used on a single fed character, while any of the zen store ships you have bought can be reclaimed by multiple characters of the same faction, you don't need to buy a ship twice. Only exception beeing the 31th century ships.

[ImperatorPavel]

Originally posted by n3mes1s:

Originally posted by MeisterGlanz:

That's another thing BTW, the Vengeance can only be used on a single fed character, while any of the zen store ships you have bought can be reclaimed by multiple characters of the same faction, you don't need to buy a ship twice. Only exception beeing the 31th century ships.

This is a reallly important point. And a real factor to buy a lobi ship. Not being able to claim a lobi ship in all your characters is the main reason a lot of people dont buy certain lobi ships.

Important point about the 31st century ships is that they can be claimed by every character on your account (Just in case OP doesn't know).