Lootcritter here: Finally starting to play catch-up on the reviews I’ve missed in the past month (Jupiter pending later today). Timberwolf took advantage of the Black Friday sales to get his hands on the Steamrunner Blockade Escort Retrofit through Steam. It is obtainable exclusively from Steam as part of the Steam Starter Pack, which is currently $24.99 USD. It is not purchasable otherwise.   

He’s a great source of information and contributor over at The SHOW.  If you’re looking for advice I recommend you check out his YouTube channel, and don’t forget to listen in on The SHOW – the best Star Trek Online Podcast for build advice and news 😉

Steamrunner Blockade Escort Retrofit Review:

This ship has a special place in my heart. It was a starship seen in Star Trek: First Contact and in the Dominion Wars that seemed to take care of business while being in a smaller package, similar to the Defiant…Only not the super hero ship the Defiant was. So after I reviewed the Herald Baltim, I had to continue trying out escorts and this ship screamed at me (also so did one of my buddies ingame who would message me “Steamrunna!!!” constantly).

This ship did not disappoint! It has a good turn rate and flight speed with a 4/3 weapon layout. its only handicap I could see was its BOFF layout, only having a ensign science and two lieutenant engineer slots. However, with the right abilities and batteries in place for healing, at T5U this ship was amazing. Five tactical console slots, seven tactical BOFF seats, and a mastery to boost damage output coupled with its turn rate make it great to work dual beam banks into its build, while also allowing beam arrays to also work. The build I chose was based more around maxing out critical hit chance and severity instead of plasma explosion embassy consoles due to only having two science console slots. The results did not disappoint! The video link below highlights the multiple runs I used to test this nice little escort.

While this might not be the best escort for damage output or maneuverability, it is still a great escort to own and use in your fleet. The Admiralty card is nice, the Steam pack you buy also include a Tier 1 version for starting your captains out, and I feel it has enough versatility despite it’s flaws to be a good ship for escort pilots, especially pilots who like a challenge like me.

I hope that the developers come out with a Tier 6 version in the C-store so that everyone can have the option of flying an endgame version of this ship (The current version is a little tricky to get, but doable).

Until next time, Timberwolf is signing off