D4, the Budget Epic Ship

The D4 is the Klingon Epic Interceptor. It’s the quickest, cheapest to own, but also the weakest of the G3 epic ships. I got mine last month when I decided I was going to be too lazy to destroy the 500 level 40s for a Military Supremacy! event. It essentially replaces my Saladin in the rotation.

What the D4 is Good At

Its ship ability is Relentless Hunting.

“As long as the opponent has a Hull Breach, The D4 Increases its Weapon Damage by 1% every round (cumulative).”

This ability starts at 1% at level 1, and maxes out at 25% when you get to level 45.

This is a pretty good ship ability, not as great as the Augur or Enterprise. The big advantage it has is in speed, as you would expect with most interceptors. The advantage it has over say, the Saladin, is that you don’t have to entice an opponent to hit you first in order for its ability to activate.

This also gives it a big boost compared to other Interceptors in that it’s ability works against bases, other players and armadas.

It’s armed with only two weapons, a high impact torpedo, and a phaser bank. Again, somehow a phaser is a kinetic weapon.

The other odd thing is that the D4’s weapons seem to be exactly the same. It seems like they should be a little different, right? Here are the stats from my level 15 ship.

Stat	High-Impact Torpedo	Phaser Bank
Min Damage/Round	21,757	21,757
Max Damage/Round	26,109	26,109
Armor Pierce	23,142	23,142
Shield Pierce	2,479	2,479
Accuracy	2,479	2,479

This oddity aside, it really is a good hunter. In a big PvP battle, you’ll be fast enough to pick your battles. As someone who’s featured an Augur as my top ship for a while, the most frustrating thing about them is that catching your opponent can be difficult.

It’s also a huge improvement in terms of fighting hostiles over the Saladin. This won’t be the huge leap if you’re coming up from a Gladius, with its bonus against hostiles. But for me, I can now take out about twice as many level 39s as I could in the same systems, and the same crews than I could with my Sally.

Crewing It

As with all epic ships, the right crew is everything. You’ll want to make sure you’ve activated the D4’s ship ability by putting an officer on board that activates a hull breach. So Gorkon, Azetbur, Kang or Krell should be on your D4 in most situations.

Criticals are going to be a key to success, so a strong Khan and/or Kerla will be very useful.

How does One Get the D4?

You’ll need at least a level 34 shipyard to construct a D4. It will take you 150 blueprints to construct the ship. Each blueprint will cost you 1200 Klingon credits.

Unless you’ve reached dark space, you’re not going to be able to get D4 blueprints from defeating hostiles. So you’re going to really have to focus on earning Klingon faction credits. You’ll need to have at least a RESPECTED reputation with the Klingons in order to purchase D4 prints in the faction store.

You can also get the blueprints from rare and epic armada pulls, and the higher your level, the more likely you are to get them.

Make sure you focus on Romulan Scout ships and your Vi’Dar dailies in order to maximize your Klingon credits.

Upgrading Your D4

By the time you get a D4, you know that it’s going to cost you an awful lot of crystal to upgrade. You’re going to want to invest in Pure Crystal and Klingon Pure Crystal in the Galaxy Research tree to reduce these costs as much as possible.

Cost	D4	Enterprise	Augur
Primary UC Material	46,400 Crystal	51,000 Gas	54,950 Ore
Secondary UC Material	15,075 Gas	16,150 Ore	17,025 Crystal
Tritanium	16,460,400,000	10,211,000,000	11,914,500,000
Dilithium	210,943,000	670,895,000	517,529,000

Since the D4 has fewer weapons to upgrade than the Enterprise or the Augur, it’s by far the cheapest of the Faction G3 epics to upgrade in terms of materials, costing in total 5,675 fewer total G3 uncommons than an Enterprise, and 10,500 fewer than an Augur. It more expensive in terms of Tritanium, but again, if you’re high enough to build a D4, you should be able to do the base raiding to cover this.

Background

The D4 made it’s debut with the release of Into Darkness as the ship that’s chasing Kirk, Spock and Uhura.

The original concept was created by artist James Clyne. It’s supposed to be an updated and streamlined version of the Klingon Bird-of-Prey.

(The Klingon fighters began as an original sketch by concept artist James Clyne that suggested an industrial-type fighter ship. Pixomondo heavily detailed the model and gave it a ‘bird of prey’ feel.) “Not in the traditional namesake of the Klingon Empire, but more of like, you can imagine this chase scene as an unarmed trade ship and a bad-ass predator. You had this larger more predatory hawk chasing a little sparrow trying to take advantage of its size and move through little cracks and nooks and crannies and be a little more nimble.”

Pixomondo visual effects supervisor Ben Grossmann

It certainly does have the look of a bird, just much more compact than the B’Rel. Overall, I’m not a fan of the design. An alternative look was designed by Pierre Drolet . This one wasn’t used, but I like it better.

And in terms of the game, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to have a small surface fighter as an epic ship, the most powerful G3 Klingon ship. It seems out of place to be on the same level as the much larger Enterprise or Augur.

It seems that the B’Rel would have been a fine ship to have as an interceptor to have here, but that’s just my two cents.

Bring the D4 Home

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