Overview: Swift, deadly, fragile – these heavily armed ships focus on frontal firepower, attempting to take out a swath of opponents in one devastating pass and relying on speed and firepower over raw toughness to keep them functioning.

Characteristics: With weak shields and moderate hull capacity, these ships rely on their manoeuvrability to stay alive – they typically boast high turn rates and good inertia scores, allowing them to weave between enemies and stay out of the line of fire. On the flip side, escorts typically mount seven conventional weapon batteries, at least four of which face the front arc. They can deal massive damage on the approach and then make their getaway before facing retaliation – so consider using dual cannons or dual beam-banks to maximise your punch. The last feature of high level escorts is an experimental weapon mount, allowing you a showy and exotic piece of ordinance. All of these ships side-line engineering and science in favour of tactical consoles and bridge officer seating, making them extremely hard hitting at the cost of durability.

Experimental Weapon: Somewhat exotic weapons that can be exchanged freely between any escort you own, these weapons can be anything from a railgun to a lightning projector. They function in a similar way to normal weapons, but usually have a 360 degree fire arc and ignore weapon enhancement powers like Beam: Overload. You’ll be provided with an electrical beam attack by default, but you can swap in other experimental weapons from premium/event ships and reputation stores.

Raptors: Typically used by the Klingon Defence Force, these ships supplement their agility with a cloaking device, allowing them to go undetected when out of combat. You’ll also receive a short damage buff when you break from cloak and begin your attack.

Pilot Escorts: Modified for extreme mobility, pilot escorts have access to the full range of pilot bridge officer abilities and a rapidly refilling fuel gauge. Fuel can be expended to perform a pilot manoeuvre, like an evasive roll or using retro-rockets to jump backwards and prolong an attack run. Don’t underestimate the utility of being able to “dodge” in space!

Strike Wing Escorts: These variant escorts come with a single hangar bay, allowing you to bring a small number of support craft with you into combat for a little firepower or utility. These can also be used to counter heavy torpedoes and enemy small craft by selecting intercept from your carrier commands!

Raiders: Fast, flexible and fragile, these ships trade a single weapon for a damage bonus when hitting an enemy from the flank. The seating is typically very flexible, meaning you can do some interesting things with your bridge officers – a Fleet B’rel Bird of Prey can even equip Gravity Well III. The intelligence specialisation can work extremely well if you get the hand of flanking, since it will add even more damage, critical chance/severity and a chance to drain target shields.

Suggestions: Now that’s covered, here’s a few tips for flying an escort ship:

• Each energy weapon you fire will drain power from your weapons system – set your “weapon power” to maximum to offset this! Remember, the power in each subsystem (weapons/shields/engines/auxiliary) improves the performance of all related effects – including damage.
• Make sure you are using “Emergency Power to Weapons” – this bridge officer ability will increase your weapon power and damage dealt. Some Damage Control Engineer duty officers have a chance to reduce the cooldown of all Emergency Power abilities when one is used. Having them in your “Active” slot and using a second, different Emergency Power ability will let you maintain both at once with close to 100% uptime!
• Use an energy weapon enhancement power (Beam: Fire At Will/Cannon: Rapid Fire etc) alongside an attack pattern power (Attack Pattern: Beta) with a matching cooldown. This will maximise the damage you do since you’re hitting harder while the enemy’s resistance is weakened! You can also use Beam: Fire At Will or Cannon: Scatter Volley to apply your attack pattern debuff to everyone you hit!
• The engineering bridge officer ability “Reverse Shield Polarity” can keep you alive long enough to get out of a bad situation if you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.
• The science bridge officer ability “Photonic Officer” can help keep your cooldowns low on your other abilities.
• Use All of your tactical console slots for weapon damage boosters. Typically you’ll want the ones that improve a specific damage type (i.e. phaser) but there are ones that apply to weapon types (i.e. beams) as well. The best tactical consoles (Vulnerability Exploiter/Locators) come from the Fleet Spire Holding (meaning you’ll have to be in a player fleet to get them) as they have a damage bonus identical to crafted/found consoles along with a small bonus to critical chance or damage.
• Consider picking up the Arbiter Battle Cruiser, Kurak Battle Cruiser or Morrigu Heavy Warbird from the C-Store. These are solid cruisers with a tactical bent, but they all unlock the Emergency Weapon Cycle starship trait. Not only will this increase your firing speed by 20% while “Emergency Power to Weapons” is active, it will reduce the power drained per shot by 50%. This won’t make or break your build, but it is a very strong trait for an energy-weapon approach.

Should You Fly One? There are pros and cons to the escort playstyle, with the biggest draw being the overwhelming force you can deploy in the first moments of an engagement, obliterating everything unfortunate enough to be in your fire arc before your slower allies arrive. Then we run into a downside, as these ships are not durable – while a science ship or cruiser have high shields and hull respectively (along with access to a lot of healing) you’ll probably rely on hit and run tactics. You may also find the tight fire arcs on dual cannon/beam banks restrictive – a trade off for their significantly higher damage. If picking your target and taking them out in a glorious volley of energy then zipping away before retaliation appeals, this could be the ship class for you.