 |
| Your Defiant, most of the time! IT'S TOO FRAGILE! |
The Defiant is one tough little ship. We're just going to jump right into the ship and take a look under the hood.
U.S.S. Defiant (Defiant Class)/ Federation Starship (Defiant Class)
Front Firing Arc: 90° Rear Firing Arc: 90°
A: 3
E: 2
H: 3
S: 4 (3)
When defending, convert all of your opponents [Critical] results into [Hit] results.
Actions: Evasive Maneuvers, Target Lock, Scan, Battle Stations
Upgrades: Tech, Weapons, Weapons, Crew, Crew
Points: 24 (22)
The Defiant has a pretty even stat distribution. I'm torn on whether this is a flavourful depiction of the ship from the show. On the one hand, it packs a decent enough punch and I don't think it should have been stronger, on the other hand, I think the ship has 1-2 too many shields. I would have preferred for the Defiant class to come in under 20pts. As it stands, the ship is about 4 points cheaper than the Enterprise D, which I think is too close. This thing is supposed to be a light battleship, not a few steps away from a massive flagship. So, I think it's a bit too point heavy for what it is supposed to be. I understand that it's an overpowered ship etc., I just think it could have done without the 4th shield.
Moving on, what the hell is with the dial on this thing? How does the Valdore have a better maneuver dial than this thing? I get that the come about is pretty unique on Federation Ships, but this is a missed opportunity to really translate the ship of the show to the game. It should have had a few more green maneuvers.
The special ability on this thing will ensure that you never take a crit, except in some very odd circumstances. It's very comforting to know that if you throw the Cloaking Device on this ship that you aren't going to take a crit and have it kill your ship right away. The problem is that it only has 3 hull points, and that really isn't enough to weather a storm, especially if the opponent can somehow get rid of your cloaking token or battlestations token. 3 Hull points is too few. I know that I'm kind of sucking and blowing here, but it goes towards how this is a ship that's pulling at a few too many threads, and not really hitting the mark. Just because it can avoid crits doesn't mean that it won't take three hits on the hull when cloaked. This leads me to think that the Cloaking Device on this thing may not be THAT great an upgrade, but I'll get around to a larger discussion about the cloaking device shortly.
Finally, the double weapon slot is pointless, but the double crew is useful, as you'll need a few crew if you want to make it a defense machine. The Cloaking Device is always an interesting decision on the Defiant. I've used it a few times, and didn't particularly like it, but I was also trying to force Picard onto the ship with the cloaking device and I actually don't think that it's a good match. If you're running the cloaking device, one way to run the ship would be to run it side by side with a Martok Ch'Tang, and put Sisko on the Defiant. Who says you can't run a fleet that's mixed and still full of flavour? If you go that route, you should probably still take Sulu to get an extra defense bonus, and take Quantum Torpedoes, because you can keep the Defiant cloaked until it's ready to unleash the Torpedoes. There are plenty of circumstances in which Martok is better than Picard- especially where you really need a re-enable action instead of one of the big four.
Tomorrow I'll take a look at some of the other upgrades that come with the Defiant. RAMMING SPEED!!!
The Defiant's speical ability is not so good. The defender mods dice first then the attack mods his dice. This means Totheh can still crit the Defiant. I think Khan and Torps can too.
ReplyDeleteCheat Death is really good on this ship. If you fail your Cloak roll you will survive and then you can drop the cloak to get the Shields back. This all in faction too.
I like your point about point costs. It's funny that such a small ship costs about as much as the flagship
Any attacker ability that converts dice to crits will trump the Defiant game text, including Fed/Klingon photons and Khan. It's really not very good, although it will save you from naturally-rolled crits - just in time to watch Toreth flip one of those hits right back to a real crit.
DeleteThe point cost on the Defiant could be for two reasons:
ReplyDelete1. That they wanted to make sure that fans of the defiant would not be upset by a weaker ship
or
2. That a ship costing about 20ish points with 3 attacks would unbalance the Federation
I waffle on which one I think is most correct. You wouldn't have been able to bring the Defiant in under 3 attacks or there would be a lot of upset people.
I'm watching DS9 (actually just saw the episode from which your screencap came from) and I have to say that I think they would have done better with less shields and more attack. The point of the Defiant was that it was a fast, maneuverable ship that was so powerful as to be almost unstable.
ReplyDeleteThe ability kind of represents its maneuverability, but it should pack more of a punch. This sucker was taking out Jem'hadar attack ships in a few well-placed phaser blasts!
It does that pretty well now. Park it within range 1 of a generic attack ship and two volleys with battlestations generate a kill more often than not, especially with Sisko rerolling blanks.
DeleteThat said, the primary attack value and "ablative armor" text are both fine to me, but the maneuver dial is pretty poor and they really missed the boat by not making a pulse-phaser cannon weapon upgrade. Something like Attack Dice 5, range 1, disable to use, cost 3-ish, maybe 4. The game could use something like that.
Yeah the Feds could really benefit from a Weapon upgrade that does not require a target lock to give them a little diversity.
Delete