In other news:
I flew the Ferengi for an hour…
And it’s a good ship!
It isn’t very lethal, and in fact, I found myself running away (overwarping) from more powerful ships on several occasions. I was actually kind of getting beat up. There were some tense moments as my damage crept over 100 a few times. It never seemed to have enough torps, and being mindful not to ESI my own drones turned out to be an important part of my strategy if I had any hope of scoring a kill.
Early in my session, I was being cheap and I didn’t bother getting xtals because it felt like it had enough energy with its low warp cost. After using long bursts of warp 16 to bring down an Orion or escape certain death (which was more often the case) I decided that staying alive is worth the expense and seconds spent refueling.
And then there’s the gold. Ahhhh that glorious MTrek gold… The thing that makes this ship worthwhile to fly, is its nice gold earning rate. Because that whole time I was getting slapped around by bigger ships, I was dealing some damage too. And the Ferengi have ways of swindling a premium out of the starbases when it’s time to pay up. I even managed to set a couple of gold-earning records on the stats page. (#3 for Gold/Second and #10 for Gold/Conflict)
I was enjoying an entirely new style of play (for me) with my usual priorities on their head. 1st: Survival. 2nd: Try to deal some damage. 3rd: Maybe get a kill here and there. I was targeting bots based on how many points of damage I might be able to deal or how much bonus I would earn over how much gold they were carrying.
I felt like I was struggling a lot with this class, but every time I docked, I couldn’t help but smile when I raked in some more gold. I don’t think I’ve even realized the full potential of this ship yet, but I think it’s already earned a spot in my “core” fleet alongside my CL, RBoP, and II-A.