For Cardassia!

I mentioned previously that one of the main things I was looking forward to in Victory is Life, is in fact making a Cardassian toon and going for a Cardassian build. It took a backseat while I was busy grinding out the Jem’Hadar toon/ships, but I made it! A proper Cardassian toon with a Cardassian ship, in Cardassian uniforms and a bunch of Cardassian BOffs!

Whew! That’s a mouthful of Cardassians. (>_>)

Jem’Hadar are everywhere now, because they’re free with VIL. But let’s face it, as a species Jem’Hadar are boring. They’re all cloned and grown in test tubes, raised to be single-minded, violent, blindly loyal and the personality of attack dogs. And they can’t even get funky in the sack! I guess the upside is if you’re the type to write character bios for your toons, at least Jemmies wouldn’t take long to write.

In contrast, the history and background of Cardassians are ripe with possibilities, and that backdrop can make for some intriguing characters.

Finally, I get to use the Galor Bridge.

Meet Gul Virlic Loll, my newest toon who made it to a T6 Cardassian ship, in this case a Ghemor Class Flight-Deck Cruiser, the C.U.V. Black Knife. He has nothing but Cardassian BOffs, and I gotta say, I couldn’t get motivated to start leveling this guy until Cryptic finally made the Cardassian uniforms available! Yeah, the whole package’s gotta be there, and it’s glorious when I can theme build this guy.

This is his Bio:

“Virlic Loll was celebrating his tenth birthday in Lakarian, on the day that the Jem’Hadar leveled the city. Loll survived the massacre as an orphan, only to witness the attempted genocide of his people by their Dominion “allies” and the total collapse of the Cardassian Union as an Interstellar power. Forced to learn to survive, Loll, like many post-war Cardassians, developed a deep hatred for the Dominion, as well as a sense of injustice towards the Federation Alliance for reducing Cardassia to an occupied state. He managed to work his way into the severely reduced Cardassian Self-Defense Force, and gradually rose through the ranks for his tireless efforts to revitalize the Cardassian military. 

His dissatisfaction with the restrictions imposed on Cardassia by the Dominion War Accords, led Loll to defect to the True Way in 2389 when that organization reemerged a few years earlier. He saw the True Way as the most promising alternative for Cardassia to regain its lost glory and influence, and even rose to become junior adjutant to Gul Madred himself. Loll worked tirelessly to destabilize the civilian Detapa Council, but he soon became disillusioned with the True Way when Madred chose to ally with renegade Dominion remnants. In 2395, taking sensitive information regarding True Way operations with him, Loll defected back to the civilian government and provided valuable intelligence to dismantle the terrorist organization.

Since then Loll remained with the Cardassian military, winning a full commission as a Gul but specializing in intelligence work. Although he has been a loyal Cardassian for the better part of twenty years now, Loll’s once-membership with the True Way still causes many on the Detapa Council to question his loyalty; for his part, Loll simply continued on, determined to see Cardassia strong and proud again.”

I have just managed to push this guy to level 65 the other night, but he is very much still in the development stage. His resource levels are very low, with Admiralty, DOff, R&D and Reputation all just starting out; I have just completed the Black Knife’s mastery track, and grinding out Starship traits is so painful now, I dread the thought of going through a couple more ships for them. In terms of gear, I’m slowly working on getting stuff for the Black Knife; I’ll likely have to wait a bit till some of the Reps are filled out so I can decide on a Rep set. The other thing worth noting, though, is the fact that the T5U Galor included in the Gamma Vanguard Pack comes with a set of four Spiral Wave Disruptor Beam Arrays at ∞ …. yay for no-upgrades!

Current Cardassian BOffs can be purchased from the usual BOff vendors, but seem to be only available in white/common category and to Cardassian captains for 224 Dilithium each. What makes them interesting is their Space Trait: Photographic Memory gives them +1.5% damage and +1.5 accuracy and defense rating; even if the damage buff is only Cat 1, you still get the accuracy and defense buffs, which means Cardassian BOffs are a somewhat viable alternative to Nausicaans… at least on the KDF side. Nothing against Nausicaans, but I’m kinda sick of seeing them on all of my KDF ships because of their Pirate Trait. It breaks my immersion a bit.

C.U.V. Black Knife, Ghemor Class Flight-Deck Cruiser

So this is the guy I will be working on for the next little bit, until I’ve built him up to a decent level. The Yukuwa frigate pets seem a bit iffy — they are armed with Spire Wave Disruptor beams, so in theory they should be hitting enemies quite frequently, but their innate ability is Torpedo Spread — which may be why they are not as effective as some of the other pets. The Unique consoles that come with the three Cardassian Intel ships are kinda fun; I especially like the Mobile Torpedo Platform since that thing follows your ship, so it’s like an additional pet.

One other thing I noticed is that I actually quite like Flight-Deck cruisers, with their 5/3 weapon layout, sturdy hulls and the presence of a single hangar. Apparently I like the generally layout so much I have three toons flying them! The Cardassian one adds Intel abilities on top, but trades off one Tactical Console for another Engineering one, which is definitely suboptimal. It also has less Tactical BOff seats, and slower in flight, so overall I’d argue the Cardassian ship is just a tad less powerful than the Allied ones, but oh well, it wins by being cool and Cardassian!