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Sartek's STU - NSC3 Patch

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1) You can get a Defiant at the beginning of the game, science ships are upgradable to the exploration-class ships if you chose to upgrade it.
2) Exploration ships are more powerful than your standard ships, which means they could fend off the 3-corvette squadron that every empire has at the beginning of the game.
3) "Exploration" is just the name of the class but considering their firepower they are at cruiser level at the beginning with 4 upgrades that comes with new ship sections with more modules with each upgrade, up to a Battlecruiser level (in terms of NSC3 power scaling).
4) Exploration ships can cloak (up to Psi-phase field generator, strength +5). NSC3 Battlecruisers can cloak as well with Heavy cloaking (up to strength +3) so Defiants have the upper hand there.
5) Exploration ships are not numerous, I think you can have up to 10 of 'em; from my perspective, that makes them more special, it is not just any other ship that you can print from the shipyard non-stop.

@ DiYu I understand where you are coming from; personally, mods shouldn't be a big debate, I have some friends that prefer to keep the game devs original vision for the game because "that is how it was intended to be". I do not share that perspective and I always encourage playing with mods if it brings more enjoyment to your playthrough (same is true when creating mods).

With that said, I love the defiant and I already knew most of the information you shared. However, I could also tell that you haven't played with mods (including NSC3), because a compatibility patch like this one can't really add a new ship class (like the covert class that was suggested), I have to work with what Vanilla (base game) and NSC3 has established already; I hear you and now allow me to explain my reasoning behind my choice to make the defiant an exploration-class ship:

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i haven't played stellaris on pc really. mods are a big debate and i love star trek. I see in the comments you are struggling to define the Defiant. Its definition is not an explorer for sure, but its has cloaking, advanced maneuvers, and a nice array of forward fire. You could, if it is possible, create a covert class? because the defiant and its cloaking abilities where a covert construction with a Romulan cloak. but this was the defiant during DS9. The original defiant was a battle cruiser that disappeared in TOS during a Tholian web. Later in Discovery they had found out that it didn't get destroyed, but yet went 100 yrs into the past in the mirror universe, thus giving the Terran empire HUGE tech advantage creating the strong empire that knew the federation exists, before the federation even knew of the mirror universe. So you have a lot of creative play here if you want.

Hmm yep, the Defiant is not big but can take on larger targets. I also wanted to follow Stellaris ship size trend where it would be easier to identify powerful ships based on their size. That is why I think I'm going to leave the defiant out as a exploration ship that can support other vessels in combat throughout all stages of the game and because it becomes a particularly strong ship at max tier.

The Defiant as a flagship, hmm not really, it's not a big spaceship, I think something more like a battlecruiser would fit in better, fast, maneuverable and dangerous.

@Kashy Thank you Kashy!

Regarding the Defiant, exploration ships are upgradable up to tier 4 and are quite strong on their own, that means that they can take on Borg ships 1v1 up to Strike Cruiser level.

At one point I was thinking making the Defiant the flagship, I could certainly do that, I'm quite tempted, what do you think?

Hello A-Sartek, a quick note:
I saw that you're using the Defiant as an exploration ship. Don't do that. It was created as a warship, specifically to take on the Borg. Instead, use the first Enterprise NX-01, which was a research vessel. The Defiant wants to fight. :-)

Great, thank you, you're the greatest, and you deserve a big prize for that. :-)