I've really enjoyed the Hydra. It's a solid all-round ship with a good trait. I wish the pilot and intel seats were swapped so that I could use a higher level Reroute Reserves to Weapons, but that's a minor complaint. What's embarrassing for cryptic is that they released the Hydra (an excellent c-store ship) and then they follow that up with the meh Texas as a lockbox.
At this point, from what I’ve seen (came back to the game in the last year), they have been very hit and miss with the promo/lockbox ships as of late. Just since I came back, we had the fidget spinner ship, the Sagan, the Romulus bugle, the excelsior 2, the world razer, and the Texas. That’s almost 50/50 there.
I’ve heard you talk about Surgical Strikes before, then I tried it, . Game Changer ! Just Wow😮 . . . Really chops down targets with high Hit Points. I purchased the Hydra because of your detailed comparisons of how this ship is Lock/Promo Box quality plus explanation of how Pilot was tweaked and can be used with this ship. Been having a lot of fun with it thanks! Amazing Video with comparisons! Your wealth of knowledge and passion you have for Star Trek and the game never ceases to amaze me 😁
I was on the fence about the ship, but after seeing you cut through the enemies of the Elite Argala like a hot knife through butter, you have convinced me. I do not have your experience, nor all the consoles and weapons you have, and furthermore, I'm on console, but your video was an amazing display of this ship's potential. It's coming out today on console, and I'm gonna get my greedy hands on it as soon as I'm done writing this. Thank you very much, sir Spencer. Really.
I used one to level up a new toon, Up to Lv30 it one shots whole waves in patrols, I got the bundle because I wanted bev Crusher for Next gen a theme build, So this ship turned out to be a bonus, Leveling up with it took no time.
"Fleeing from Borg Tyranny the last battleship, Hydra leads a rag tag fugitive fleet on a lonely quest, a shining planet, known as Bajor" This thing screams classic BSG.
I bought the bundle and love the Hydra. I moved my CSV build from the Leg. Scimi and haven't looked back. My sci carrier uses the trait and I'm also getting value from the Eagle on a torp toon and Styx on a tank toon so don't really care that I haven't bothered about the other 3 in the bundle.
I absolutely love this ship although I’m probably biased as its a Prometheus variant. My only complaint is this was a missed opportunity to revamp the MVAM. Maybe do something akin to the MVAM pets being like the Vanguard Wingmen The pets as they stand now do little damage and it’s just a gimmick.
Finally getting this today I literally waited for a review. And this is the guy with an Amarie already too lmao thanks always Spence I suck at buildcrafting but got every ship heh *looks at empty wallet now*
I noticed that also. Was kinda hoping it came with the Immolating Phaser Lance. Sadly it did not 😂. I took pictures of that on my TV wish I could post them here.
I keep hearing ‘power creep’ during this, and it begs the question. How do they boost up future lockbox/promo ships to be more attractive than these new Terran ships? And how will future cstore ships compare? Or, do they start a shift to T7? Though THAT is probably a massive can of worms.
You come 'this close' to persuading me to do something I haven't done since 2019, that would be to actually buying some zen to get this ship, but I'll wait until get enough stipend, I have about 1200 worth as of today, so it'll be a few months until then. I do like the review you gave this ship, thanks. Dave_N8PU
Pilot revamp is active on xbox since the start of the anniversary event, they snuck it in i think, cause neither you or triz mentioned on your news videos. Thx for your breakdown
As a dedicated old player when DEWsci was the jam. The adamant is the far better of the two for dewsci. But the hydra can just bring the hurt with energy weapons. Don’t get me wrong the Adamant can hit hard. But the Hydra just melts groups of ships no matter your build. Edit. Forgot to mention the combination of Intel/pilot is the perfect way to trigger cold hearted on something then melt it with surgical strikes. Crazy damage.
Fantastic review Spenser, you nailed it on this ship review. such a fantastic ship with the most immersive pet console to ever be created in this game. highly recommended for any carrier build, osirus approved o7
Another excellent review. As someone practically glued into the Adamant, my argument for this being better, for me, is that the Adamant has three Science seats, allowing me to use Gravity Well; which would require committing a whole universal seating to Science to have that on the Hydra. The weaker turning rate is also a negative. The extra weapon slot, while excellent, is essentially negated as the ship inevitably spends a little less time facing the enemy than the Adamant could (in theory!); something important for the cannon-obsessed, but for (water!) beam users isn't even a consideration. Something to note, on Playstation at least; The description for this ship is the Deimos Pilot Destroyer!!!! I'm not sure at this stage if these 'errors' are a genuine attempt to mislead players, as I'm sure there will be some who see the description of this ship listing the Immolating Phaser Lance as one of its features are sold on the ship that might otherwise not be. These description errors by Cryptic cannot simply be genuine mistakes or the work of a careless mindless, poorly educated employee any more. I think they're out and out designed to mislead. What a disgusting practice; yet so typical of the gaming industry. I'm starting to think that managers and owners of game development studios would have been potentially chosen the path of a career-criminal had gaming not proven to be such a lucrative industry to work in. Speaking of errors, although this one is undeniably genuine, and far less of an issue; it's worth noting for future videos, 'even less options' should be 'fewer options'! I know the use of 'less' and 'fewer' is a big mystery to many and in almost all cases people use 'less' when they should be using 'fewer'. It's a small point but as Cryptic love to demonstrate; errors can prove negative to viewers/readers.
I really love this ship. Then, I got the Terran Pathfinder Science Warship which I also love. I wish I could have the intelligence seating on the Pathfinder.
Looking forward to the experimental weapon parse off! I missed the boat on a lot of the T6 event shops over they years (last ship I’d gotten prior to coming back was the first T5 risian corvette, might have been the first event ship) so looking forward to seeing how the various exp weapons available compete.
There is another good dual spec ship you missed. The legendary jem hadar vanguard attack ship. It's a raider platform, with 5/2 weapons. Seating is cmdr tac/pilot, ltcmdr uni/intel, ltcmdr uni, lt eng, ens sci... of course availability is limited to getting a legendary jem Hadar upgrade
The fleet grade out of the box... was never to be nice. It was Cryptics way of keeping people from grabbing these as fleets without buying them. Still nice to not have to burn resources for fleets.
Casual, how do I make my ship look like the normal skin while using the Tilley shield? I always have an oily look when using it unless I have a vanity shield in place and that changes the look????
Is this ship really that good got 6 T6 ship coupons I look at the trait and it doesnt really fit my DPS disrupter build so it must be the console that makes it good maybe I am missing something on the trait defently one I am looking at.
The Leg defiant is worse. Pilot and pilot makes it not quite good enough. Terran Defiant is weaker definitely. It's INT and TO LT is worse BO wise if u like the combo maybe better rank wise not quite and having only 7 wpns vs the Hydra's 8 wpns.
I'd say this ship beats both Defiant options there. Neither Defiant is bad, this just has a better overall setup imo. The Legendary Bugship is certainly a fair bit closer but it cost almost $60 on sale. Really boils down to your specific build and whether the Cmdr Intel or Cmdr Pilot benefit you more. With CSV I can do basically the same build on either ship and get comparable performance.
Copy paste from my comment to STU1701: "I got the bundle for the Styx. yesterday i was bored and tried out the Hydra, and was pleasantly surprised. I ofcource don't have all the stuff you have, but i have some, like surgical strikes. I play on advanced, and i expected to be destroyed in minutes, with only 101 hull. but i didn't. In fact, i tore through enemies like they were tissue paper, and didn't die once. This ship is fast, deadly, and tough. i like it. Now i don't need luck, i have the Hydra..... ;)"
I've been running BO3 with RF3 (with Superweapon Ingenuity and Go For The Kill), and found Surgical Strikes (with Vanguard Specialists) underwhelming in my very limited testing. Have you ever played with the BO3/RF3 combo?
I've done builds with like CSV + CRF so that I can swap between AOE and Single target before, but never done two single target modes together like that. Better off to use Surgical Strikes if you're wanting single target for both, will hit harder and use less trait slots.
So you said taht surgical strike is better than beam overload. But why wouldn't you use both and boost beam overload even more? Or do they not stack? If they did it would seem a no brainer to hit beam overload and then boost it even farther with surgical strkie.
They do not stack. Performance wise, Jayiie did a good breakdown last year following the Surgical Strikes buffs. old.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/u6n5yp/weapon_enhancement_analysis_beams_cannons_and/
I actually disagree with the multi-factor mode being worthless simply because the activate Hydra clicky works with the multi-vector pets AND they get three times the effect as a normal pet Edit: Plus as much as their DPS on their own is worthless they do draw some threat so that's a moment where the enemy is shooting at a otherwise worthless pet and not you
I'm kinda salty , I got the Hydra yesterday on ps5. Great ship but the description says it that the immolating phaser Lance and it doesn't wich is kinda messed up for people who spent money for that reason!
If you have the T5 coupon they gave out during the 13th anniversary (I think that’s where I got it) you can get the T5 Prometheus, and the MVAM console on it could be of use.
I've really enjoyed the Hydra. It's a solid all-round ship with a good trait. I wish the pilot and intel seats were swapped so that I could use a higher level Reroute Reserves to Weapons, but that's a minor complaint. What's embarrassing for cryptic is that they released the Hydra (an excellent c-store ship) and then they follow that up with the meh Texas as a lockbox.
At this point, from what I’ve seen (came back to the game in the last year), they have been very hit and miss with the promo/lockbox ships as of late. Just since I came back, we had the fidget spinner ship, the Sagan, the Romulus bugle, the excelsior 2, the world razer, and the Texas. That’s almost 50/50 there.
Great video Spencer! I picked up the bundle and I’ve had a great time with the ships, specifically the Hydra and the Monitor.
I’ve heard you talk about Surgical Strikes before, then I tried it, .
Game Changer ! Just Wow😮 . . .
Really chops down targets with high Hit Points.
I purchased the Hydra because of your detailed comparisons of how this ship is Lock/Promo Box quality plus explanation of how Pilot was tweaked and can be used with this ship. Been having a lot of fun with it thanks!
Amazing Video with comparisons!
Your wealth of knowledge and passion you have for Star Trek and the game never ceases to amaze me 😁
I was on the fence about the ship, but after seeing you cut through the enemies of the Elite Argala like a hot knife through butter, you have convinced me. I do not have your experience, nor all the consoles and weapons you have, and furthermore, I'm on console, but your video was an amazing display of this ship's potential. It's coming out today on console, and I'm gonna get my greedy hands on it as soon as I'm done writing this. Thank you very much, sir Spencer. Really.
I used one to level up a new toon, Up to Lv30 it one shots whole waves in patrols, I got the bundle because I wanted bev Crusher for Next gen a theme build, So this ship turned out to be a bonus, Leveling up with it took no time.
"Fleeing from Borg Tyranny the last battleship, Hydra leads a rag tag fugitive fleet on a lonely quest, a shining planet, known as Bajor"
This thing screams classic BSG.
Love this ship! Overall really like the bundle. I'm using the Terran Hestia livery and ended posting screenshots because it's really good.
I bought the bundle and love the Hydra. I moved my CSV build from the Leg. Scimi and haven't looked back. My sci carrier uses the trait and I'm also getting value from the Eagle on a torp toon and Styx on a tank toon so don't really care that I haven't bothered about the other 3 in the bundle.
Haven't tried the ship itself yet, but that engage the hydra console is the most fun I've had using a carrier.
I absolutely love this ship although I’m probably biased as its a Prometheus variant.
My only complaint is this was a missed opportunity to revamp the MVAM. Maybe do something akin to the MVAM pets being like the Vanguard Wingmen
The pets as they stand now do little damage and it’s just a gimmick.
Finally getting this today I literally waited for a review. And this is the guy with an Amarie already too lmao thanks always Spence I suck at buildcrafting but got every ship heh *looks at empty wallet now*
Great review and I love the format.
btw. the descriptions of the ships for this release are for other ships. the hydra on playstation has the description of the deimos
I noticed that also. Was kinda hoping it came with the Immolating Phaser Lance.
Sadly it did not 😂.
I took pictures of that on my TV wish I could post them here.
Thank you Spencer, great detailed breakdown. Finally picked up the bundle with this sale. Looking forward to flying it 😎😎😎
This is certainly my favorite ship. I LOVE this thing so damn much!
Not out of touch. Spot on. Amazing boat. I'm loving it.
thanks for this. i like that you've done a suggested build and what's needed - that is top tier content
I keep hearing ‘power creep’ during this, and it begs the question. How do they boost up future lockbox/promo ships to be more attractive than these new Terran ships? And how will future cstore ships compare? Or, do they start a shift to T7? Though THAT is probably a massive can of worms.
Dual Cmdr ships with a Cmdr Spec + LtC Spec seem to be the next route. After that, 3rd spec seat might become a thing.
You come 'this close' to persuading me to do something I haven't done since 2019, that would be to actually buying some zen to get this ship, but I'll wait until get enough stipend, I have about 1200 worth as of today, so it'll be a few months until then. I do like the review you gave this ship, thanks. Dave_N8PU
Pilot revamp is active on xbox since the start of the anniversary event, they snuck it in i think, cause neither you or triz mentioned on your news videos.
Thx for your breakdown
Great video Spencer! Thank you.
As a dedicated old player when DEWsci was the jam. The adamant is the far better of the two for dewsci. But the hydra can just bring the hurt with energy weapons. Don’t get me wrong the Adamant can hit hard. But the Hydra just melts groups of ships no matter your build. Edit. Forgot to mention the combination of Intel/pilot is the perfect way to trigger cold hearted on something then melt it with surgical strikes. Crazy damage.
Outstanding work 👏. GREAT information
Does the Hyrda console work with the swarm from Section 31 Command Heavy Battlecruiser?
Fantastic review Spenser, you nailed it on this ship review. such a fantastic ship with the most immersive pet console to ever be created in this game. highly recommended for any carrier build, osirus approved o7
IMO the best C-store ship right now, better than most lockbox ships.
It’s my go to ship the INSTANT I am able to change out of my starter ship for all characters except Dominion. For Dominion I use my vanguard carrier
Another excellent review.
As someone practically glued into the Adamant, my argument for this being better, for me, is that the Adamant has three Science seats, allowing me to use Gravity Well; which would require committing a whole universal seating to Science to have that on the Hydra. The weaker turning rate is also a negative. The extra weapon slot, while excellent, is essentially negated as the ship inevitably spends a little less time facing the enemy than the Adamant could (in theory!); something important for the cannon-obsessed, but for (water!) beam users isn't even a consideration.
Something to note, on Playstation at least; The description for this ship is the Deimos Pilot Destroyer!!!! I'm not sure at this stage if these 'errors' are a genuine attempt to mislead players, as I'm sure there will be some who see the description of this ship listing the Immolating Phaser Lance as one of its features are sold on the ship that might otherwise not be. These description errors by Cryptic cannot simply be genuine mistakes or the work of a careless mindless, poorly educated employee any more. I think they're out and out designed to mislead. What a disgusting practice; yet so typical of the gaming industry. I'm starting to think that managers and owners of game development studios would have been potentially chosen the path of a career-criminal had gaming not proven to be such a lucrative industry to work in.
Speaking of errors, although this one is undeniably genuine, and far less of an issue; it's worth noting for future videos, 'even less options' should be 'fewer options'! I know the use of 'less' and 'fewer' is a big mystery to many and in almost all cases people use 'less' when they should be using 'fewer'. It's a small point but as Cryptic love to demonstrate; errors can prove negative to viewers/readers.
Great watch, lots to think about for my next ship... thank you for your efforts o7
I was able to use a coupon right after it came out, been using that ship since it came out
good vid i was thinking about geting this and now for sure
I really love this ship. Then, I got the Terran Pathfinder Science Warship which I also love. I wish I could have the intelligence seating on the Pathfinder.
Maybe Cryptic plans to remove gambling and wants to wane us off by releasing one trash ship after another until nobody misses lock boxes anymore?
Don't set yourself up for disappointment.
Looking forward to the experimental weapon parse off! I missed the boat on a lot of the T6 event shops over they years (last ship I’d gotten prior to coming back was the first T5 risian corvette, might have been the first event ship) so looking forward to seeing how the various exp weapons available compete.
There is another good dual spec ship you missed. The legendary jem hadar vanguard attack ship. It's a raider platform, with 5/2 weapons. Seating is cmdr tac/pilot, ltcmdr uni/intel, ltcmdr uni, lt eng, ens sci... of course availability is limited to getting a legendary jem Hadar upgrade
The fleet grade out of the box... was never to be nice. It was Cryptics way of keeping people from grabbing these as fleets without buying them. Still nice to not have to burn resources for fleets.
i only have one t6 coupon left from the Christmas sale, idk if i should get this now or wait for the new ship bungle coming up
Casual, how do I make my ship look like the normal skin while using the Tilley shield? I always have an oily look when using it unless I have a vanity shield in place and that changes the look????
Right click on the shield and pick disable.
is it just me or is the saucer section really reminicent of the old Battlestar Galactica front portion?
Yeah, strong BSG vibes there.
Is this ship really that good got 6 T6 ship coupons I look at the trait and it doesnt really fit my DPS disrupter build so it must be the console that makes it good maybe I am missing something on the trait defently one I am looking at.
Spencer, how would you stack this ship up against the Leg Defiant, and Leg Bug ship? or the Leg Terran Adamite ship?
The Leg defiant is worse. Pilot and pilot makes it not quite good enough. Terran Defiant is weaker definitely. It's INT and TO LT is worse BO wise if u like the combo maybe better rank wise not quite and having only 7 wpns vs the Hydra's 8 wpns.
I'd say this ship beats both Defiant options there. Neither Defiant is bad, this just has a better overall setup imo.
The Legendary Bugship is certainly a fair bit closer but it cost almost $60 on sale. Really boils down to your specific build and whether the Cmdr Intel or Cmdr Pilot benefit you more. With CSV I can do basically the same build on either ship and get comparable performance.
@@CasualSAB I own all of those ships, which is why I was asking. Good to know. Thnaks Spencer!
Copy paste from my comment to STU1701: "I got the bundle for the Styx. yesterday i was bored and tried out the Hydra, and was pleasantly surprised. I ofcource don't have all the stuff you have, but i have some, like surgical strikes. I play on advanced, and i expected to be destroyed in minutes, with only 101 hull. but i didn't. In fact, i tore through enemies like they were tissue paper, and didn't die once. This ship is fast, deadly, and tough. i like it. Now i don't need luck, i have the Hydra..... ;)"
Hail Hydra
how are yall movin like that I have trouble with wasd cause i mostly play with controller on other games
Can you do a DBB/FAW/Torp spread build with it? I usually do beams on my ships.
Yeah, you could do that easily on the Hydra.
Just picked one up using my free 100% discount coupon, dont know if it was a bug or not but it let me exchange it for a ship
Interesting, hopefully they've removed that restriction for good then.
@@CasualSAB yeah hopefully, I have another one from way back and it will still lets me choose from the new tab if I wanted something I guess 🙂
The Hyra is nice, the Hydra multivector mode being limited to 90s kind of sucks though...
I've been running BO3 with RF3 (with Superweapon Ingenuity and Go For The Kill), and found Surgical Strikes (with Vanguard Specialists) underwhelming in my very limited testing. Have you ever played with the BO3/RF3 combo?
I've done builds with like CSV + CRF so that I can swap between AOE and Single target before, but never done two single target modes together like that. Better off to use Surgical Strikes if you're wanting single target for both, will hit harder and use less trait slots.
@@CasualSAB Thanks for the PROMT reply!!! I'll have to experiment a bit more with Surgical Strikes.
Do you have the kelvin timeline intel dreadnought? Do you have a review of that ship?
Not anything recent, but it's still a very capable ship that still competes vs modern Intel ships.
@@CasualSAB thanks, i was planning on buying it. i bought the hydra but it is too "slippery" for me.
I'm glad we've got more good ships for folks who aren't spending a lot. The Adamant can be pretty entertaining for DewSci.
So you said taht surgical strike is better than beam overload. But why wouldn't you use both and boost beam overload even more? Or do they not stack? If they did it would seem a no brainer to hit beam overload and then boost it even farther with surgical strkie.
They do not stack. Performance wise, Jayiie did a good breakdown last year following the Surgical Strikes buffs. old.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/u6n5yp/weapon_enhancement_analysis_beams_cannons_and/
Is the immolating phaser lance on the hydra different too the one found on the deimos?
They're different.
@@CasualSAB like how can you explain?. i dont own either so i cant see what the difference is
@@CasualSAB i see cyptic did a typo issue it doesn’t have it. You could of said that…..
Hail Hydra!
I actually disagree with the multi-factor mode being worthless simply because the activate Hydra clicky works with the multi-vector pets AND they get three times the effect as a normal pet
Edit: Plus as much as their DPS on their own is worthless they do draw some threat so that's a moment where the enemy is shooting at a otherwise worthless pet and not you
I'm kinda salty , I got the Hydra yesterday on ps5. Great ship but the description says it that the immolating phaser Lance and it doesn't wich is kinda messed up for people who spent money for that reason!
There's no fleet version of this ship is there?
No, ships from the Anniversary bundles are fleet level out of the box.
@@CasualSAB Thank you :)
Hej. Anyone if there are any t5 ship concoles that are useful to get on a f2p account?
M6 Computer, and it is even T3 console.
If you have the T5 coupon they gave out during the 13th anniversary (I think that’s where I got it) you can get the T5 Prometheus, and the MVAM console on it could be of use.
Thanks guys. Im going to get them right now =) No longer have the t5 cupon as the Vulcan ship looked more fun then it was =)
@@MrBadmonkeycw I dont have a ship that can use that console. But im working on an alt that might use it =) Thanks dude.
Does the ship have a hangar bay?
No
Admirality should NOT be Blue. fleet level and budand ships should be ultra.
Is that cost in U.S Dollars?
Yes
I never even use the MVAM on my Hydra hell I don't even put it on a tray slot it's that useless. 🤣
They need to fix that gather intel system, it makes no sense.
😄💯👍🖖
Do all Americans pronounce 'coo-pon' as 'cyu-pon'? Never knew that!
F this game lol.
...and support ships...
Outstanding work 👏. GREAT information