[Federation News Service]

We’re super excited to reveal the brand new Tier 6 Pilot starships! These agile and powerful ships will be released soon and will allow you to slot a Commander Pilot Specialist bridge officer to allow you to take full advantage of everything the Pilot Bridge Officer specialization has to offer.

Availability

Pilot ships will be made available in the C-Store very soon. These starships have three variants per faction and are available in three ways:


Individually
Faction bundles of all three variants
A Super bundle that includes all three variants for all three factions



Pilot Ship Features

This new type of Tier 6 ship has a number of features that make them very unique. The feature that stands out as truly special for these starships is their Pilot Maneuvers, which allows for some truly fancy flying. Below is a bullet point list of features for these starships:


All Factions

Pilot Maneuvers
Commander Tactical/Pilot Bridge Officer Seat
Either a Lieutenant Science/Pilot Bridge Officer Seat or a Lieutenant Engineering/Pilot Bridge Officer seat, depending on the variant
Can Equip Dual Cannons
All new Starship Traits
All new consoles with powerful abilities


Klingons

Cloaking Device


Romulans

Romulan Battle Cloaking Device
Singularity Warp Core

40 Base Power for All Sub-Systems
Plasma Shockwave
Quantum Absorption
Warp Shadows
Singularity Jump
Singularity Overcharge










Pilot Maneuvers Mechanic

Much like how players are able to perform active dodging/rolls on ground, these starships will be able to perform special maneuvers by double tapping in the direction they’d like to perform a special maneuver. These maneuvers can be rebound to different keys, or activated manually from a UI element if you so desire. After activating a Pilot Maneuver you will be briefly immune to damage. After performing such a maneuver you must wait a short time before doing another one. Below is a breakdown of the benefits of each maneuver.

Afterburners (Forward)

By double tapping the W key (by default) you will fly forward in a quick burst of speed covering a good distance. Afterburners can allow you to get out of a dangerous area quickly and grant you a brief period of damage immunity.

Barrel Roll (Left/Right)

You can perform a barrel roll to the left by double tapping the A key (by default) or to the right by double tapping the D key (by default). Barrel Rolls will cause you to travel some distance in the direction chosen and can help you escape hazards (like a Thalaron Burst or Crescent Wave Cannon for example). Like Afterburners, Barrel Rolls also grant you a brief period of immunity to damage.

Retrorockets (Backwards)

You can activate your pilot ship’s retrorockets by double tapping the S key (by default). This will cause your ship to lunge backwards a fair distance allowing you to get behind a pursuing target or to just continue another attack run. Retrorockets also grants you a brief period of damage immunity

Customization

There are many options available to you on how you can activate your Pilot Maneuvers. By default double tapping in a direction with execute a Pilot Maneuver. However, you can also do the following:


Disable double tap to perform a Pilot Maneuver in Options/Controls
Disable double tap on your Pilot Maneuver interface
Activate a Pilot Maneuver directly from your Pilot Maneuver interface
Under Keybinds you can bind a key that, when pressed, will allow you to perform a Pilot Maneuver with a single directional key press.

Example: You can bind shift, so that pressing shift and a direction will allow you to perform a Pilot Maneuver







Pilot Specialist Bridge Officer Seats

All of these ships also include a Commander Tactical/Pilot hybrid specialist bridge officer seat as well as a second Lieutenant rank Pilot hybrid specialist bridge officer seat. The primary profession for this seat varies per Pilot ship variant.

Keep your eyes peeled for a follow up blog for these awesome new ships that will reveal their stats, console abilities and starship traits!

Phil “Gorngonzolla” Zeleski
Lead Systems Designer
Star Trek Online

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[Cehus]

The maneuvering abilities look pretty awesome. I hope the refurbished Defiant will get these.

[Wesstan]

The maneuvering abilities look pretty awesome. I hope the refurbished Defiant will get these.

I agree. Flying my Defiant these days is probably the most fun way of playing the game for me. Enhanced with those abilities it might be just the push i am looking for this game

[Code743]

Stay tuned until next time when we find out which one will have the blatantly OP/must have for min-maxers OMFG starship trait (though having said that, I do use AHOD) that overtaxes the server even further and makes the lag and connection issues even worse.

[Kains]

Looking forward to this one: Finally some abilities I can personally enjoy!

I'm gonna drive folks bananas flying around with my Defiant

[Sysil]

I'm don't want to be negative here but everyone assumes the Fed one will be the Defiant. If I look at what came before, odds are it's not going to be. None of the iconic ships were the ships that came out with special abilities. They were released afterwards.

Intelligence special abilities: Phantom, Scryer & Eclipse (not the Intrepid)
Command special abilities: Misc. Cruisers (not the Galaxy)
Pilot special abilities: betting it's going to be Misc. Escorts, not the Defiant.

I'm sure the Defiant will come out soon afterwards with a Lt Com specialization but not with the Pilot special abilities.

[Kains]

The more I think about it, the more I have to agree with Sysil: Cryptic seems to want to push their own designs pretty heavily, rather than running away with the marketing juggernaut that could be made from making the iconic ships not suck.

Or heck, even flipping back and forth a bit would be nice. My poor Galaxy, Intrepid, and my beloved Defiant would love to spend more time out of the hanger.

It seems a shame to have such beauties caged away.

[Sysil]

Since I play casually now, I use my Galaxy and Intrepid. It's more than good enough for most if not all of the content.

Some might not like being good enough, but at least I look good while playing