[AlexandrKerensky]

Personally, I think the Dyson ship is better than the vesta. it lacks some of the flexibility, but I think the swapability adds a different sort of flexibility that is still useful and a cmdr tac can be nasty. Did you know APO III can buff science damage too? behind that I would put the Fleet Science vessel Retrofit (Fleet Nova), don't bother with the non fleet version as that's just an RSV (Luna) with less hitpoints, and while I don't buy into the vesta is besta propaganda, the Vesta is fairly solid (except for the fact it's hull isn't).

If you want to try your hand at lockbox ships, the Wells is a very very good ship, and probably ties for the top spot, but is very expensive. Also, though not many sing its praises, I find the Orb weaver to be fairly solid even if it won't win any awards for smashing things, and it boasts 2 LtC slots.

At the end of the day though, pretty much any science vessel can be useful and fun to fly, and each one of them has something to offer.

The more I think on it I have to agree with Curzon. I love my Vesta but damn if my Wells isn't fun to fly. Additionally the Nova is a zippy little ship; though I like the Fleet RSV as well and have had some good runs with that too. But the Wells. Oh the Wells. Now that is a nice ship. Combine that with the temporal warfare set and you have some good times. Even though I'm a Tac I'm getting some really good mileage out of my science ships. Due of course in no small part to the advice I've received here. As far as actually getting a Wells is concerned it may not be as hard as it sounds. Through the lock boxes I've managed to get three of them. So it's not impossible; for the guaranteed route they run for about 130 mil EC on the exchange. Bottom line to echo Curzon is that you can make a good build out of most of the science vessels available, the exotic abilities combined with good turn rates and excellent shields makes them solid vessels. Some of which I have the most fun in STO using.

[Wesstan]

The Vesta set is one of the better sets in-game. I'd say that ship has aged amazingly well.

Yes, it is one of the better sets - but personally i think that with some high ranking science consoles (fleet or not) you may get more out of the build except the Quantum Field Focus Phaser (which is VERY helpful at high aux). a few high ranking field generators combined with the high shield modifier can make a plus of up to 10.000 shield points (per side). Or imagine 5 fleet flow capacitor consoles in a drain build...

[Dark]

Is saving up for the Vesta three pack worth it? Sometimes the "set" consoles turn out to be kind of not worth their price as they take up so many slots.

It kind of depends. I don't know if they've changed it, but the abilities are mutually exclusive which makes some of them worthless to me (in PvE).

So we have a healing field, a big phaser, a reflect/kinetic shield, and (the 3-piece bonus) an invulnerability bubble.

In theory the invulnerability bubble is a nice emergency button, but if I'm getting blasted enough to want it, I would already be using the healing field or the kinetic shield. That means the invulnerability bubble is on cooldown and unavailable when I actually need it. To a certain extent that also applies to the kinetic resist/reflect shield - I don't use it in anticipation of a burst attack (perhaps it would be more useful in PvP?). I trust my normal defense cycle to handle most attacks, it's only when I'm getting pounded that I would trigger things. If I was getting blasted hard, I would have turned the healing field on to recover, making the kinetic shield redundant.

So I basically just used two pieces - the healing field as a backup heal, and the phaser lance thing for offense. If I'm pounding away on a target, I can probably fire the phaser and the healing field should be available by the time I actually need it. The two-item set bonus is just awesome, more speed in Sector Space? Don't mind if I do!

I'm flying a JHEC (with the Dyson set) in combat now, but with the new ship-swapping, I've outfitted my Vesta again with the console and Borg set so I can zoom around the galaxy. So convenient!