If you’ve tripped onto any post of mine in the STO forums, you know that I’m a Bird of Prey player.
that is, out of my group of KDF characters, all of them have at one time or another, been wholly dependent on a Hegh’ta after level 40, and that most of my existing characters rely on the Bird of Prey for their ‘ride’…even in the presence and availability (and sometimes ownership) of ‘better’ ships from a pure DPS (Damage Per Second) perspective.
A big part of this, is that nobody else has one.
There are cross-faction Raiders now, and the Fed-side has the Aquarius, which is basically a rebranded cross-faction raider.
But those inevitably have at least one fixed bridge station, and have to rely on a console to cloak.
Once upon a long time ago (game time) KDF had several ‘unique’ types of ship.
We had Carriers.
We had Battlecruisers
We had Flight Deck Cruisers
and…
we had BoPs.
We still have these ships-with the exception of the Battlecruiser lineup, they’re the same ones we had years and years ago.
What’s changed, is that now, Federation players have:
Carriers
Battelcruisers
Flight Deck Cruisers.
Back in this era of long-long ago, KDF had integral cloaking, and Feds did not. We paid a price for this. Lower shield numbers, a crew damage mechanic that made larger crews a handicap (and as a result, larger crews)…
That was then.
Today, we still have the handicap. Raptors (Our version of Fed Escorts) take a gimping in turn rate, speed, and the aforementioned large crew. Our battlecruisers have twice to three times the crew of equivalent Federation ships (The only direct comparison-the Avenger vs. Mogh. Identical seating, consoles, turn rates…we take a hit on inertia and we’re running 2.5 times the crew number.)
I run Bird of Prey, because Cryptic hasn’t figured out how to sell a better version to the Feds yet. It’s still Faction-Unique, in a day where nearly every piece of “KDF unique” gameplay has been repackaged for Fed players.
On the 14th, there will, no doubt, be plenty of KDF ships that aren’t BoPs. We’ll see plenty of Battlecruisers, from the Bort to the Qib.
We’ll see Raptors-a rare sight unless it’s a Mat’Ha, but they’ll be out there, I expect we’ll see the ever-rare Gurambas come out to play in force, even Kren Temporal ships and Varanus science ships…
We’ll also, no doubt, see plenty of Scimitars from our Klingon/Romulans and T’Varos, maybe a few Faehts.
But I’m kinda looking forward to seeing a few more BoPs, and maybe even doing some all-Bird-of-Prey runs, just to show the Feddies in their DPS leagues that we can make it work in opposition to all the recieved wisdom of the BFAW cruiser set.
It’s a pipe dream, I know…but at least, I hope we’ll see full teams of KDF designs out there-the KDF’s excellent battlecruisers, the Gorn science ships, Nausicaan vessels, Raptors, and BoPs.
Maybe someone will even have the chops, and make us a video proving that we can do it WITHOUT having to rely on cross-faction lockbox ships.
