[Fredmann]

So, I finally figured out (thanks to many of you especially Lt. Mayrheane) the fleet purchase process. Now I am down to either the Fleet T6 Avenger Battlecruiser or the Fleet T6 Guardian Cruiser. I have a regular Guardian Cruiser now with which I am very happy but you know how it goes, bigger better etc etc. I would appreciate the thoughts and opinions of other players regarding this VS. Thanks all.

[Mayrheane]

I haven't really used either one; tho I was originally planning on getting ze T6 Arbiter for my fed engineer... til ze krenim holdings arrived... Ah well I might be biased but I would recommend ze Arbiter; tho if you haven't bought cstore one it might end up a wee bit costly... x.X

[Raz Beraht]

I can't fly a ship that doesn't look iconic to me. That's almost the only criteria I use these days, after getting the Presidio and putting it away soley based on how "un-iconic" it looked.

[Bridger]

I think the Avenger is the better of the two.

[Kerry Malone]

It really does depend on what you're looking for out of the ship, and for your chara's class. There are some truly awesome ships out there at the moment, and some truly appalling ones due to a lot of love lost over the years.

The Guardian got a lot of rave when it came out, because it was what the Galaxy should have been, and it had a pretty impressive trait. I would imagine that the Fleet variant will be as good if not slightly better than the C-Store variant from which it derives. However, it is very slow, very ponderous and might not be as tanky as you expect - of course, my experiences of it were not amazing, but I do know others swear by it. I swear at it personally, but then I'm like that. I'm a huge cruiser fan, love them, and I just don't like the Guardian - especially now that they've completely redone the Galaxy to T6. That is just far superior.

The T6 Battlecruiser would be the best of both worlds in terms of performance, tankiness and is a great all-rounder. The original Avenger was the go-to ship to use if you really needed a "jack of all trades" craft. All the speed, agility and layout of a good Escort with the strength and staying power of a cruiser. If you set that up as a beam-boat, it totally owns. The downside being that its not as strong as you might expect it to be, and you do need to seriously fly that thing hard - but it does reward you. I have the original Mogh on my engineer, and I've never looked back from that.

I would say whatever you pick, you're going to enjoy it, and its how you want to play. Of the two, my choice would be the T6 Battlecruiser, simply because its faster and turns better than the Guardian, and its only a slight drop-off on hull points, which if you build it properly - you don't really notice.

[Wesstan]

In terms of DPS the T6 Avenger is the better one. So if you refer "high dps" as better than thats the way to go.

What i like about the Guardian is its flexibility. You may fly it as a dps/tank or a CC-type ship due to its ltcmdr sci slot and its many sci console slots. Also it simply looks better to me.
Another pro for the fleet guardian is that it will only cost you one instead of five(?) fleet ship modules to purchase it.

[Stormy]

I am currently using the Avenger. At first I was not a fan but it has grown on me, thanks to some help with the build. Be sure to check out Bridger's recommendations if you go this route.

[Dark]

I think the Guardian looks a lot better than the Arbiter. :mrgreen:

In terms of weapon layout and turn rate, the Arbiter is better able to handle DBBs/Omni while the Guardian restricts you to BAs. If you're a good enough pilot to handle DBBs, you'd do more DPS in the Arbiter from that alone.

Guardian:

LCdr Tac
Cdr Eng
Lt iEng
LCdr Sci
Ens Uni

Arbiter:

LCdr iTac
Ens Tac
Cdr Eng
Lt Sci
LCdr Uni

In terms of the layout, the Guardian has a superior hybrid seat because it's on Eng as opposed to Tac, but the LCdr Sci forces you to be Sci heavy and you only have a max of four Tac abilities. In general, we want at least 5 if we have Conn DOffs to bring down Tac Team's cooldown, resulting in 1xTT, 2xFAW, 2xAttack Patterns. The Guardian can't do that, which means you'd need to rely on things like Reciprocity or ruinously silly things like 3 Zemoks. AuxToBatt isn't so hot on a ship with an LCdr Sci, plus you'd need a rank 2 one to avoid taking away one of the OSS.

So basically I don't like the Guardian's layout.

The Arbiter if you field double OSS takes away 2 Tac slots, but that LCdr Uni allows for 5 Tac abilities anyway. So with 2 Conn DOffs, 2-3 DCEs, and 1 Zemok we could do something like:

LCdr iTac: OSS1/OSS2/FAW3
Ens Tac: TT1
Cdr Eng: ET1/EPtS2/EPtW3/AtSIF3
Lt Sci: HE1/ST2
LCdr Uni: FAW1/APB1/APO1

That would allow for alternating between FAW3/APO1 and FAW1/APB1 every 20s, backed up by OSS1/OSS2 with ET1 to prevent/recover from OSS's subsystem disables, and all the other normal rotating buffs and recovery abilities.

Though all that being said, I don't think I can stand flying the Arbiter for too long, for aesthetic reasons.

[Fredmann]

Well, I made my decision on which (I’m sure, LOL) you were all waiting with bated breath. In the end I chose tradition and went with the GC. The reasons were: I did not want to lose a device slot or an engineering slot; agreed, the turn rate and speed are poor but I hope to have made up some with consoles and the impulse engine. I also hope to protect my "6" with cloaking tractor mines and, the Omni-Directional Antiproton Beam, Ancient Omni Directional Beam and the Kinetic Cutting Beam (we'll see how that works out). In the end, it was a fun exercise in investigating pro's and con's as well as hearing from you all. Thanks and see you around the Galaxy, by the way she was named U.S.S. Andromeda E.