[Scotty]

I think we're meeting on instance #16 of the spacedock.  There are three of us there already, at least.

[BloodEagle]

I'm there.

[Scotty]

Well that took *entirely* too much effort for something that should be kinda simple.  But it's done.

I'm not sure how invites and applications are handled in game, but we're the 'Hard Light Irregulars' fleet, if anyone who wasn't there wants to join.

[BritishShivans]

Have an account now. Only recently started playing. My account name is the same one I have here: BritishShivans, but my character's name is the same as my EVE one, Ramus Syrbriak.

[Darius]

Not sure how to join. If you can invite remotely, can you send one to @dariusbei00?

[Ravenholme]

Not sure how to join. If you can invite remotely, can you send one to @dariusbei00?

Will see what I can do but I suspect we might need Scotty to do it as the Clan leader right now, as he hasn't promoted any of us through the ranks

[SpardaSon21]

Now that we have a fleet, should we make an IRC channel on esper.net to go with it?  There's already #HLP-ME3 for ME3 fans, so I don't see how this would be any different.

[BloodEagle]

You can make a chat channel inside of STO, and you can have people connect to it via external chat clients, as well.

[SpardaSon21]

I knew about chat channels, but I didn't know about outside connections.  Thanks.

[TrashMan]

IIRC, in one of the side tabs, you can see a list of all Fleets and ask to join.

[Scotty]

Fleet invite sent, members promoted to more than just recruit and stuff.  Took me a few minutes to figure out how to do stuff in the fleet management menus.

[TrashMan]

As one of the founding members and the one who came up with the name, I expect to have ample rights!

Not that I need anything from the fleet bank- I'm fully stocked anyway. Speaking of which - anyone need anything?

[SpardaSon21]

This game is becoming better.  I used to think my escort was boring, but then in the last few missions of the Klingon arc I started getting into turning fights with multiple Birds of Prey.  Needless to say, engaging in battles of maneuver with Birds of Prey is pretty damn fun.  I think I'll start enjoying STO more with the more escort-on-escort battles I get into, since taking down the larger vessels in an escort is aggravating since you only have one direction's worth of significant firepower, with the end result being your frontal shields always take a ton of damage and your other quadrants are forced to be depleted to recharge them.

[Liberator]

Tac Team x2 +Emergency Power to Shields fixes that problem.  Well mostly.

[SpardaSon21]

I actually use EPS a lot, plus Evasive Maneuvers so I can show a full shield quadrant and the Attack Patterns for damage.  It still doesn't solve the fact that fighting cruiser-type vessels is a boring slog as I hammer one quadrant over and over again with cannons and torps.  Fortunately my new Heavy Escort has rear torps in addition to rear phasers so I can hurt people coming and going.

P.S. I really need to hire that new Tac Officer candidate I've got sitting around with Torp Spread and a couple cannon abilities.

P.P.S. I can't wait until I get the Defiant.

[Liberator]

Tac Team, in addition to removing tactical debuffs like Borg Ship Assimilation, auto balances shields toward the one taking damage.  I don't know if it's a bug or not, but under most circumstances I can go from almost no shields to full shields in less than 10 seconds.  Of course that's on my VA Engineer.  Who can tank a tactical cube in a vanilla odyssey.   With one Engineering Boff.  With Weapons set to full power.

It's actually quite easy, you stay outside of 5km so they can't tractor you down and use Beam Fire At Will and Tractor repulsors to keep the heavy plasma torpedos away and you are golden.

[SpardaSon21]

You're a Vice Admiral Engineer.  I'm a Tac Officer who just hit Commander.  Of course you're going to be tanking everything.

Oh, I can't really complain too hard about poor shielding.  Attack Pattern Beta + Cannon Rapid Fire + High Yield Torpedo = insane alpha damage.

[NGTM-1R]

If you're out of tac teams to fire off, you're in trouble.

Hell I barely get away without one on my Sovvie.

[MR_T3D]

My Engineer in a long range science boat has been racking up 1st place in several fleet actions now.  It feels uncanny until I notice all the rainbow cruisers I'm playing with.

But Gravity wells, torpedo spreads, shockwaves, twin DBB+photon up front, turret, BA, mines in back, ride in, pop some abilities, nuke one ship with beams and cannon, get all the aggro with a spread tossed in, EPTS, shockwave the mob, then throw down mines and turn around before another pass. rinse&repeat (CD on gravity well is done by the time I'm set for another run) is working great as a strategy

too bad the swag is not of much use to me, got some purple dual and dual heavy cannons last 2 times.

[Scotty]

My Gryphon escort is now pretty much a weaponization of the color purple.  Dual Heavy Polaron Cannons x4 forward, two Tac consoles for Polaron damage, two consoles for energy weapon damage, Polaron Turrets x3 aft.  Jem'Hadar set to make my ship even more purple.  I kinda dislike not having the extra speed in sector space, though, so I still carry around a M.A.C.O. set in my inventory to go fast.