[whocares1975]

Mom and I were discussing shuttles and we have slightly differing opinions on them: I think they're awesome good fun, Mom thinks they're   

The difficulty people have with shuttles, especially when they join STO, is that the shuttle comes with -S equipment which can be confusing. Namely, shuttles do not need to use shuttle-specific equipment and often, such equipment is worse than just using the equipment off your main ship. In addition, shuttles also have their own challenges: they are fundamentally small ships in their own right and need to be built with the same care as a capital ship with fewer slots. However, it's easier to show not tell.

With that in mind, I built a Captain's Yacht using (almost) all mission-obtained equipment. I tested it out and it works reasonably well. I will note here, as a traditionalist I like to have both energy and torpedo weapons on ships; and to push it further, I gave myself the limit of having only Federation weapon types on this shuttle, so that limited my choices to the phaser and quantum torpedo (or photon torpedo) sets. However, there are several other options available.

Captain's Yacht

The real value in using mission equipment (or even better, reputation equipment) is in two-piece set bonuses. This build benefits from:

• Trilithium-laced weaponry/console bonus: 5% firing haste for all energy weapons, and +15 flight speed.
  
• Quantum Phase Catalysts weaponry/console bonus: +15 accuracy rating, doubles potency of quantum phase weapons shield drain, and doubles potency of quantum phase high-yield torpedo shield heal.
  
• Kobali Regenerative Circuitry bonus: +60% hull regeneration (increases as hull decreases)
  
• Incontrovertible defences bonus: +30 kinetic damage resistance rating
  

I did not look to change any traits from my ship as people simply don't do that. I cheated slightly on my goal by using the Point Defence System, but that's a cheap console (from a 1000 zen ship) and can easily be swapped for a tactical console, a science console, or something off the Exchange. The Captain's Yacht has an extra device slot, and allows for the bridge officer to be any type (Eng, Sci, Tac). It's a good idea to have the bridge officer trained in all available Ensign abilities so you can swap out if required (e.g. using Torpedo Spread here but can swap to High Yield, Fire at Will, or even hull or shield heal with this ship).

An issue that people also have with shuttles is the difficulty in aiming and shooting. There are a couple of 'fixes', one being to get a ship holoemitter from the GPL Store; the other is to use reputation equipment visuals on the ship (such as the Iconian reputation deflector) which provides a good "front end". Having said that however, as you use shuttles more, you get used to its orientation (unless you're Red Squad, in which case you "can't recall").

I hope this will give people having some difficulty with shuttles to give them another look.