STO....

The conundrum of my Elachi Qulash frigate. Getting the motivation to remove and rethink the weapons took me a while. 

I was tempted to just strip the fit and Discharge the ship. After all I've lots more, beam based ships across a broad range of damage types to be going on with. 

Why should I go with another cannon based ship when the last cannon build wasn't really on par with the beam builds......... One last chance I suppose. 

So I checked my old cannon build, did two of the new patrols and it handled really well. Maybe the latest (patch) changes did 'something'. I had to stay cautious but it handled well enough to motivate me for the new build. I copied some elements of that build onto the new ship as a base fit. I still had 4 of the free XII weapon boxes from the new ship reward claim; So decided to go with dual cannons. I've used a mix of heavy's with a quad cannon on my previous build and I was never 100% happy with the rate of fire never mind the rate of fire difference I thought was a compensation for the 'overall' rate of fire. Anyway I went with some standard rear disruptor turrets as the Elachi specific ones are (for me) massively expensive. 

As the Phoenix event is ongoing I spent way to much Dilithium unlocking vouchers till I could get one for a Red Matter device. This in retrospect was probably not worth it but was done.  

A test run or two later along with some Bridge Officer skill tweaks and I was "happy" to do a final now or never test run. 

The skills in the pic above in no particular order go 'overall' from top right (damage skills/buffs) to bottom left (survival and repair) in usage. Depending on miss-clicks, group buffs and situations. Best viewed in the video (even with an invisible cursor) of one of the final test runs I did. I've also added the ship fit at the start. 

Ship reworked (cannon) fit and Patrol test:

A Casual Carebear

Final verdict is that it's a great ship to fly now. It's a keeper. Not a main or a secondary but it's still on the ship roster. I was surprised but maybe like the last cannon build it's an illusion. If it is or isn't, it works for me. Way better than my previous beam build version of the ship. 

I've renamed it to something 'decent' and will use it till the ships mastery level is maxed out. After that I'll keep it in the rota for whatever situational daily or fun mission/TFO that might happen.