As the lead ship of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the Defiant already comes with quite a bit of technical background and canon footage. As always, we try to stick close to the spirit of the ship from the shows while constructing its gameplay roles.

Ok, so let's talk a bit about the game mechanics. As you probably already guessed, the Defiant is an Offensive vessel of short range. That's actually similar to its gameplay in the older versions of Fleet Operations. Yet, the Offensive Profile delivers a significant amount of area damage in the form of critical hits. Combined with the high Offensive Value of this sweetie, this really makes her a deadly threat for groups of smaller ships.

Another core feature of the Defiant in the show was its maneuverability and all those nice flybys dodging weapons and disabling hostiles. That's something we wanted to incorporate into Fleet Operations too. This made it in in form of her special ability: Attack Patterns. We briefly talked about Starfleet Patterns in the past and the Attack Patterns are another example of this Federation-only type of special technology. While active, the Defiant also fires bursts of Quantum Torpedoes. This can be used as a nice damage spike to overwhelm your enemy. However, that's only half the candy. Attack Patterns also grants the Defiant a chance per quantum volley to disable hostile weapon systems. Veterans might recall that from the old Defiant ability.

Ok, that sounds like it matches the Defiant from the show quite well. But wasn't there some talk about the Federation focusing on synergies between ships? Right! Indeed there is a synergy associated with Attack Patterns. Once activated, not only the Defiant itself will disable weapons its target, but also some other Federation vessels nearby will join the ship on its attack run. This can either be used to get an almost-for-sure disable effect on the primary target of all the effected vessels, or you could try disabling multiple targets at once, given you do the proper micro management and all the disable effects roll the dice in your favor.

That's, by the way, a general path we try to follow. All abilities should be fun and usable without intensive micro management, but there should also be some benefit or some alternative usage if you train yourself with certain abilities. That allows players to focus on their favorite ships and build strategies around that, without just following a standard build. But more about that as we reveal some further features and the complete Federation techtree.