Firstly I was a Tactical officer(female vulcan traits) flying tanking/cruiser, so my advice will be over that mainly.
a typical tactical officer should go escort for extreme dps and abilitity to do some nasty hits in fleet action. However an alternative to this if you are tired of getting blown up with easy hull is Tactical cruiser. A cruiser has tremendous hull, and indeed, I got my hull strength up to 30,000 hull points + 5775 shield points at Cmd 9. You will sacrifice a bit of dps and ability to move around however.
Firstly when flying this way, your typical priority is HIGH YIELD TOPRS!!! I cant tell you how much of a life save high yield torps are, or more so in quantum/photon torps, they're just dual. But it's a quick way to knock down a shield arc and then just lay in the phaser dps with the occasional torp as well.
You are not a true tank, for any high level ships like a +3 battleship that is really brutal, you MUST focus on ONE or 2 down shield arcs! Otherwise you will find it very hard to defeat. Remember, you are doing less damage for survivability, so taking out shields can take time which you might not have.
Speaking of shield types, I find the Covariant Shield Arrays usually have the best balance of shield regen to shield power for a cruiser. You gain more shield buffs than hull buffs which is why shield power is best.
Emergency power to shields, Reverse shield polarity, engineering team I, High Yield torps I find are the most essential for flying this combo.
use the reverse shield polarity when your going in head first on an enemy to deal extreme damage to keep your firwards arcs from dying, roll away if this effect wears off, and focus using your aft weapons, occasionally bringing your forward arcs to bear for bigger pop shots. Your rear should be designed for softer, constant damage streams(250+ deg arc weapons), forward, much higher power/damage, narrower arcs(<= 90 deg arcs) . You do NOT want a blind spot, it hurts if you dont have the speed to get out of it quickly.
For tough enemies, power distribution should be in shields at 100+ and weapons at 50+ and all others at 25+ , for normal or weak, put it into weapons
.Your ability to maneuver will be greatly diminished in a cruiser, that is why the rear it is important to have a constant stream of damage since that is where most of your damage will come from, and you need the room to rotate through the bottom 3 shield arcs to prevent shield penetration. Combat Impulse engines(low power efficiency) are a cruisers friend, the better the turn rate the better for you. Hyper impulse and impulse are more for the smaller ships.
Other recommended abilities:
Sensor scrambler(good chaos!), structural integrity, tachyon beam(low level characters), boarding party(only on high hull regen targets, best in low levels too if you cant get engineering team)
Use evasive maneuvers as a HET(quickly turn) and brace for impact when your about to get torped into nothing ness
For emergency power to shields it helps to use the shield reinforce to evenly distribute shields before engaging emergency power to shields.
Finally be the second or 3rd ship in combat, let the main engineering tank go in first, if there are none your the tank, just be careful
Welll that's my main advice, Im not real good at explaining my tactics, but hopefully it'll help you if you decide to go tactical-cruiser...I managed to (painfully) take on +13 level stuff with this procedure. If you find a better way of doing things, then by all means, have fun
