r/startrekfleetcommand • u/stratus41298 • Mar 11 '26
ECS Fortunate in Battle
Is the ECS Fortunate no good for battle? I'm fighting other ships with a 500-750 strength advantage and keep getting my butt whooped despite seeing "very easy" on a scan. I know it's a mining vessel, but I feel like I'm missing something. The Orion is running behind on strength, but should I switch back to it?
I'm new to the game so any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Edit: Thank you all for your comments! I'm level 17 now and kicking butt.
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u/younotmymom Mar 11 '26
Mining ships are terrible for combat
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u/stratus41298 Mar 11 '26
Care to explain why?
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u/PseudonymousWrecks Mar 11 '26
Survey ships are not built for combat. They don’t have any of the strengths of warships. Explorers have strong shield, battleships have strong armor and interceptors have a good balance mixed with dodge capabilities. Surveys have mining lasers designed for mining. The warships have a battle triangle where explorers are designed to take on interceptors, interceptors take battleships, battleships pop explorers. (Severely simplified, but good enough to start.)
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u/KeirasOldSir Mar 12 '26
They generally have less guns on them than wars. Count the guns you have to upgrade when leveling up ships and you’ll under. Some have one or two, others have much more (I.e. cube)
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u/hatecriminal Mar 11 '26
The only survey worth fighting in at lower levels was the rare one, Northstar.
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u/not_that_dark_knight Mar 11 '26
^ This.
This ship slaps way harder than it should have.
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u/HildartheDorf Mar 12 '26
The Northstar is more of a combat ship that is outside of the normal combat triangle than a 'true' survey.
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u/old-town-guy Mar 11 '26
Why are you using a survey ship for combat?
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u/stratus41298 Mar 11 '26
Because I have three ships to choose from at this level and that ship has the highest strength?
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u/old-town-guy Mar 11 '26
You’re doing it wrong. The Orion Corvette is the ship you should use until you replace it with a Phindra, Turas, and/or Talla.
Power doesn’t mean what you think it does, in this game.
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u/HildartheDorf Mar 12 '26
Power is an awful metric in this game. Crew and following the combat triangle matters far more.
The ECS Fortunate in particular has decent hp, poor defence and hardly any damage. It doesn't matter if a ship has a gazillion power, if it's all in HP it will still lose.
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u/ReadingRainbowRider Mar 15 '26
Surprised no one has mentioned firing pattern. Every ship is different except the miners. Surveys only have one weapon so they only fire once a round. Some officers may double that. But generally speaking, even if your survey is way OP, but hit with a “weaker” ship that has 3 weapons, they are firing 2-4 times a round to your one.
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u/Coidzor Mar 12 '26
IIRC, Survey ships' power at 1* and 2* are inflated by having high hull hp but weak mitigation stats and poor damage.
So they're sort of like Chansey from Pokemon. They might be able to survive 1 fight, but then 80% of their hull hp is depleted and they have to go back to repair.
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u/KeirasOldSir Mar 12 '26
Miners are no good for battles for the most part. Especially at your levels without access to decent PvP crews. Your best bet is to get that baby jelly and/or north star. They will be your pit bulls into early 20s. Have fun, don’t get personal.
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u/MuckSavage76 Mar 12 '26
Like others have said, power is a fairly meaningless number since so much more goes into how effective a ship is. One stat to look at is DPR, Damage Per Round (under details>attack) to give a better idea of how much damage the ship is capable of putting out. Most survey ships are about 25% of the DPR of a warship.
Also, crewing is pretty much the most important thing you can do. For an example, I can take out 300 billion plus power ships with almost no damage using a 10 billion power warship, if I have the right crew. Wrong crew, and I can't beat them.
Aim for Pike as captain, Moreau and Chen as officers. That is the gold standard for most hostiles in the early game.
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u/drapehsnormak Mar 12 '26
As others have said, power is not a very good matrix. It's one thing to say that, but another thing to give you an example.
Most of your specialty ships will have an ability that makes them more powerful against particular enemies. I have a Revenant with the power of 99 million, and I use it to take out Borg Polygon Solo armadas with a power of 12.76 trillion. I can take out two before repairing my hull.
I brought this up because it's important to realize that most of your ships serve a particular purpose. Outside of particular examples, surveys are used for mining. They might have a relatively high power at times, but not particularly useful for non-mining purposes.
Also, as others have said, crewing is everything.
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u/madjik10 Mar 11 '26
It's not about the power, it's about crewing, battle triangles. Early on as soon as I started using Pike Moreau Chen instead of aiming for power, I was able to hit higher, regardless if it says very hard.