Fed Tact officer piloting a different type of ship?

[CW]

So is this possible? Can I make a tactical officer and pilot a science vessel? And if I can should I or should I stick to a science capt to pilot it? And an Engi to pilot a cruiser?
Any bonus/penalties for having different captains piloting a ship type?

[Kitsune Aoi]

Tactical are best in Raiders, Escorts or Destroyer class ships but can fly any and still perform well. The only thing that the different career paths do is determine a few class abilities and your ground skill point you can put points into. The main thing that will change your performance in any ship is your distribution of space skills. So feel free to pick the ship that meets your interests or playstyle.

Tactical Captains get a couple abilities to help with damage output. Engineers get a couple abilities to increase survivability. Science officers get a scan and another ability that I can't remember what it does as I haven't truely played my Sci Toons in about a year.

Sci Ships have increased Shield strength, Subsystem targeting and sensor analysis ability

Cruiser generally have increased Hull instead of shields and normally 1 or 2 more weapon slots than Sci ships. They get the Cruiser Commands instead of teh sensor analysis and subsystem targetting.

Escorts are DPS focused with less Hull aand shields but better mobility. They have no real features like the subsystem targetting, Cruiser commands or sensor analysis that the other 2 ships have.

Raider ships are pure glass cannons. More Mobile and fragile than an Escort but they getting a flanking damage bonus to help them. (KDF Birds of Prey, Romulan T'Varo, Kazon Heavy Raider, and Breen Plesh Raider all get the Flanking Raider aability)

Then yu have Hybrid ships that combine those 4 types. This is where I would include the Destroyers, Risian Corvette (Escort/Raider), Breen Chel Gett Warship (Cruiser/Escort) to name a few..

That is just a general summary of the Ship classes. But as far as aa certain class having to take a certain ship class that is just up to your prefferance. I fly all ship types on aall my toons. If you like a certain ship/playstle just go for it and don'y worry about matching your ship to you career.

[CW]

Well you kind of hit on one of the reasons i was looking at. The Sci vessel for the subsystem targetting combined with the increased attacks from a tactical captain.

I will have to do some research into the cruiser commands. But I thought they were kind of slow moving. Last time I played was when the game came out... no klingons besides pvp. No romulans at all and no hybrid ships. A hybrid ship sounds interesting.

[Kitsune Aoi]

Yeah the Cruiser Commands were added sometime around October/November 2013 as part of the New Romulus Expansion and Season 9 time frame. http://sto.gamepedia.com/Category:Cruiser_Commands

Most cruisers still have teh slow turn rates but one of the commands can help increase teh mobility of teh Cruiser plus any allies within 5k of your ship. It has really helped give teh cruisers a purpose so that they are no longer over shadowed by the high DPS ships.

KDF have a full stoyline from level 1 now as well. I personally like teh KDF and Rom Storyline more than teh fed one but they have been slowly redoing the fed content as well updating it to teh current standard.

[CW]

Nice thanks for the info and the link. May have to make a char for using cruisers also. Long ago when I played I did the escort ships. Did that to 50. So trying other types now.

[Szeron]

Tacs are fine to supplement damage in cruisers and they can boost exotic damage Science Ships put out with their buffs.

The only captain/ship combination that really seems like a waste, off the top of my head, would be an Engineer in a Raider(they're simply not build for survival and Eng abilities won't make nearly enough of a difference in one).

I.. could probably argue a case for pretty much every other combination.

Specific careers can get more out of their respective ship types, but there's more than enough reason to mix and match to specialize or compensate for weakenesses.

[Dookalyon II]

my main is a tac captain flying a T6 Cruiser, do I miss the commander abilities in my tac boffs, yes, but I still enjoy playing it, ultimately its what you enjoy flying regardless of your initial choice of captain, BUT... the skill allocations and boffs and doff u use will be a different story altogether :)

[AbsynthMinded]

I go for ships based on appearance more than anything. It is something that annoys me greatly as the ever better ships appear, and the ones I want to fly 'because I just love them' become increasingly obsolete. It is the stupidest development plan evar~ Never take choice away from the player.

I do agree that Tacs get the most out of ships built for agressive tactics. Fast, manuverable, and usually set with whatever gets the highest edge in DPS. Having to keep moving to get in and out of enemy range as the primary form of survivability. On my Tac, in a Dreanaught, if evasive manuvers isnt on cooldown im doing something wrong. Even tho a cruiser, properly equiped to compansate for lack of manuverability she gets where I need her to be any time I need her to be there. Tac in a Science Based ship isnt bad, it's just not the most effective DPS. The details that define a Sci ship are higher shield multiplier, cater to beams over cannons, subsystem targeting built in, and the scan buff for damage multiplier ( which is now a reclickable power instead of a toggle, less cool now than it had been ). The subsystem targeting can be duplicated in your Bridge Officers at the cost of other powers, but I find those more efective and likely to work than the built in ability of Sci Ships. Because the scan is no longer a toggle, I find I miss using it as often as I should. The whole point of the enchanced shields is that you are expected to stay in the fight longer buffing/debuffing with Sci Abilities, and not main DPS. If you dish out Main DPS and get the attention of the enemy, those shields wont last you long.

[Mansen]

Short answer: Yes.
Longer answer: Yes - Yes you can. Competitively even.

This isn't your typical MMO. You're not locked into a pre-defined role like always having to play a healer or DPS with no way of playing a tank. The ship is in charge of most of your abilities along with your bridge officer setup.