Another month, and another STFC update is here. And thankfully, it’s on the light side in terms of grinding. There’s a new ship, new officers, and more to come later in the month. But there’s nothing new to grind, and the Defiant will help you grind the Dominion hostiles and Solo armadas.
The USS Defiant
The Defiant first appeared in the season 3 premiere, The Search, Part One. For dramatic effect alone, Sisko decides not to tell his station crew that he’s not only got a new ship, but then decloaks it just outside the station. It almost plays like a practical joke in wartime. It almost feels like he got lucky that Kira didn’t fire everything the station has at him.
In the game, the Defiant is an epic 4* interceptor, available to players ops level 35 and above. It unlocks a daily Bajoran faction bundle that gets bigger as the ship tiers up. In Solo Armadas, the Defiant will have an active ability to make your ships more powerful and give you a bonus to the loot you get from solo armadas.
Being a 4* ship, it will benefit from a great deal of higher-level research.
Along with the new ship, comes new research. These new research nodes in the Ship tree will increase your Defiant’s damage, mitigation, accuracy, armor penetration, etc, and will do so significantly. So while it starts out (for me) at about 2 million power (with no officers,) it promises to get much stronger than that.
Three New Officers
This month we’ve got a Dominion group of officers, with Weyoun, Ikat’ika, and a Breen officer named Pon. They round out the PvP crews, being your Explorer PvP crew. And being an Explorer crew, it relies on morale. So your Enterprises become even more effective in PvP.
You can never go wrong with Weyoun. One of the best villains in all of Star Trek. And as much fun as Jeffrey Combs was playing Brunt, it’s as the conniving Weyoun where Combs was at his best.
I’ll get more into it in my Weyoun article (that’s coming at some point,) but if you’re looking for a great Weyoun episode, I think Treachery, Faith and the Great River is my favorite. Coombs plays two very different versions of the same character. It’s a great DS9 episode, as it contrasts the moving character study of Weyoun with the silliness of Nog trading Sisko’s desk.
Weyoun is an epic command officer. With full synergy, he will give your ship morale for the first eight rounds. His officer ability increases the number of shots your ship takes.
The Breen officer is a bit of a letdown, story-wise. My long-expressed frustration of original STFC characters comes up again, with the rare Breen officer, “Pon.” It’s not like there are a ton of named Breen to pick from, only two really. Either Thot Gor, or Thot Pran would have been fine.
But “Pon?” Really? Insert your own Pon Farr joke here.
Anyway, he’s a rare engineering officer. His captain’s maneuver will give you a chance to delay your opponent’s firing for three rounds. As much as the name is a miss, this one is perfect for the Breen, whose energy-dampening weapon led to the destruction of the Defiant. His officer ability greatly reduces your opponent’s critical hit chances.
I think that Ikat’ika was by far the best choice for a Jem’Hadar officer in the game. If you don’t remember him, he was the one who fought the captive Worf in By Inferno’s Light. He’s also the one who wounded Martok’s eye. For a one-off character, he left a big impression. He identifies more with his enemy, Worf, than with his Vorta boss.
Ikat’ika’s officer ability increases weapon damage when your ship has morale. His captain’s maneuver increases all of your mitigation statistics. He’s a rare science officer, if you’re curious.
Other New Research and Bajoran Favors
Two new primes this month. Prime Swarm Refinery will increase the amount of resources you get from the Swarm refinery by 500%. And Prime Faction dailies, which will increase by 75% the amount of faction rep you’ll get from completing your daily events.
The first two new Bajoran favors increase the damage your ships do against Dominion hostiles, and increase the daily loot received from the Bajoran faction store. The third one increases the kinetic damage the Defiant does to solo armada, and increases its reload chances.
Events and Battlepass
The battlepass has been improved a bit this month. You’ll get more latinum, more armada directives, and more ship ability stuff.
While there’s no solo leaderboard recruit for Weyoun (grrr), there is a solo milestone event for recruiting him. Otherwise, he’ll be recruiting like Gul Dukat was (or in most cases, wasn’t.)
There’s the requisite Defiant upgrade event. There’s an event introducing the Defiant, and another playing off the clone aspect of Weyoun. Killing enemy ships with Weyoun on the bridge will score you extra points.
Worf approves.
More to Come
There is more content coming later this month. I can’t tell you what it is yet, but it’s interesting.
Also, I’ll be launching my Battlepass contest later today.
Finally…
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