test content
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc

Discussion Thread: Space Metagame Changes

13468914

Comments

  • notrealednanotrealedna Member Posts: 1,028
    edited August 2014
    woodwhity wrote: »
    Strange, I can remember "Sci"-ships going into battle against the Borg and the Dominion in Star Trek. Surely they didnt know what to do, or it was simply a matter of "in times of need". Imo we are having multiple wars going on, so I guess anything gets the war-refit.
    Even the Nebula was more cruiserlike than sci-like in the series. Same applies to the Armitage, and the prometheus. The Intrepid too wasnt that lightly armed and shielded.

    And strangely, many sci-abilities dont exist like this in Star Trek, so if we go like Star Trek, we can just flush out Sciships completely.

    Well tahts why you want each ship with a role not have a sci ship do better damage than a escort or a escort debuffing better than a sci ship.That removes any reason to have more than 1 ship .
  • hipachilleshipachilles Member Posts: 195 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    Well tahts why you want each ship with a role not have a sci ship do better damage than a escort or a escort debuffing better than a sci ship.That removes any reason to have more than 1 ship .

    Would you at least concede that some of these powers being discussed are so under-utilized that they need a buff/adjustment? Maybe that Mask Energy Signature is pointless or that target subsystem starts too many shared cooldowns and isn't strong enough?

    I have seen a lot of comments that hazard emitters is too strong and that it needs to be cut back, can you get behind that change? I have even seen a lot of concern about Subnuc, which has almost nothing to do with PVE at all, could you at least share your feelings on that power? Too strong, too weak, something?

    I honestly want to get your reaction to some of those suggestions, because none of your comments have been informative enough for me to know WHY you feel the way you do. The best I can tell is that you think the game is perfect and no changes are necessary at all. Is this really how you feel?
  • notrealednanotrealedna Member Posts: 1,028
    edited August 2014
    Would you at least concede that some of these powers being discussed are so under-utilized that they need a buff/adjustment? Maybe that Mask Energy Signature is pointless or that target subsystem starts too many shared cooldowns and isn't strong enough?

    I have seen a lot of comments that hazard emitters is too strong and that it needs to be cut back, can you get behind that change? I have even seen a lot of concern about Subnuc, which has almost nothing to do with PVE at all, could you at least share your feelings on that power? Too strong, too weak, something?

    I honestly want to get your reaction to some of those suggestions, because none of your comments have been informative enough for me to know WHY you feel the way you do. The best I can tell is that you think the game is perfect and no changes are necessary at all. Is this really how you feel?

    Like all pvp people said ...all powers are fine untill you get to use them with doffs.Thats why a2b is broken...its not because its a overpowered power but because with tech doffs gives to many advantages.

    Sure mask energy signature needs to be better...but how much better can you make it .Romulans have battlecloak and you dont want that power to be turned into a battlecloak boff power...you'd get ships that normaly are balanced to work without cloaking now being able to fight and cloak when they are about to explode.

    in pvp most people use HE to clean plasma and all other gases...all of them invisible because the game engine cant render them ...you can say its a anti lag counter.It counters the broken game effects by cleaning them.YEs it can heal and its great when is used on you by a dedicated healer speced to make it heal well.You wont get much healing with it on a escort with low aux.For spike heal ET and ST are better.

    They dont have to change the powers...they have to fix the tech doffs ,BO (100% crth :/ ) and thats pretty much it.No need to fix whats not broken .That power creep comes from consoles and stuffs added since LoR....the initial boff powers are fine as they are.
  • druhindruhin Member Posts: 7 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    Well tahts why you want each ship with a role not have a sci ship do better damage than a escort or a escort debuffing better than a sci ship.That removes any reason to have more than 1 ship .

    Ships in Star Trek have clear defined roles. Just not the roles you're trying to shoe-horn them into.

    There are Science ships, Scout ships, Exploration Cruisers (yes, plural), Destroyers and even Heavy Escorts. One thing they all have in common thou, is all having access to generally anything. With some ships more specialized in one area or another, not directly related to "skills". A Scout ship is defined by being both fast and nimble (which in STO translates to equipped Impulse Engine). A Science ship is equipped with enhanced sensors, additional science labs, and meant for generally scientific missions. Despite this, a Science ship is still more than capable of defending itself, and performing a fleet role (fleet, as in a fleet of ships).

    Star Trek does NOT have a "Tank" role, or a "Healer" role, or even a "DPS" role. All ships are capable of being offensive (DPS) to either a lesser or larger degree. And contrary to how things work in STO, "Escorts" don't necessarily have the highest firepower. In an onscreen battle between an Advanced Heavy Cruiser (The Excelsior Class, Lakota), and a Tactical Escort (The Defiant Class, Defiant), they ended up being relatively evenly matched. The Defiant was pulling their punches in this battle (for fear of destroying another Federation ship), but the Lakota had no intention of being friendly. The Captain of the Lakota assumed the entire Defiant crew were Changelings, and must be destroyed. Despite all of this, the battle ended in a stalemate.

    Star Trek ships (in particular Federation-built) tend to be designed around the concept of "Jack of all trades, master of none". That design should be reflected in STO as well. If you want the Holy Trinity of Tank/Healer/DPS, I suggest you go elsewhere. It's not part of Star Trek, and it sure as hell shouldn't be part of STO.
  • redalerttribbleredalerttribble Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    I have a lot to say here. Disclaimer - all my own opinion and I am not the best player. To start, here's a quote from a post I largely agree with, though (snipped for space).
    hyndisfox wrote: »
    Long time player, but never bothered to actually post on the forums.

    I'm just going to address one topic here, and that is Aux2bat. This worries me greatly.

    *SNIPPED for space*

    A game that is boring is no good at all. You don't want to make the game boring, or to reduce cruisers to autoattacking bricks.

    Furthermore, along these lines of allowing cruisers to do stuff, I also suggest the merging of energy weapon abilities. Let fire at will effect beams and cannons. Let rapid fire effect beams and cannons. This gives a cruiser more options for loadouts.

    Spread volley could be left unique to cannons, and beam overload could be left unique to beams, but beam overload still needs some love. I don't have any suggestions on these abilities.

    Agreed. To be perfectly frank, cruisers need TEETH. Not escort-level teeth, but I remember more than one person referring to beam arrays as "tickle beams," and while I think that was an exaggeration, I don't think it was an exaggeration enough to ignore it. One reason that A2B is so popular is because while some people enjoy the idea of STO being "Escorts Online," a lot of people would really rather fly cruisers, which are the iconic ships of Star Trek and some of the strongest combatants seen on the screen. A2B allows them to do that. It gives them teeth. While cruisers may be able to provide support for other players, a lot of people would rather be able to put hurt on the enemy, and forcing the most iconic category in the game into support is not something many appreciate.

    Before A2B caught on, the game earned the name "Escorts Online" for a reason. If you're going to excise A2B as it was (and I seriously doubt many people, if anyone, will bother with it without technicians), then you've got to give realistic options, and options that allow people to fly their favorite ships without them being toothless and not cough up something like 600 lobi for a single-character unlock to make them viable. Also as a note, re: A2B, I am completely ignoring the Scimitar. I have been told the most lethal build in the game involves EPtX's with the Scimitar. The only ship in the game that is a Scimitar is, not so surprisingly, the Scimitar; the other cruisers must be considered as well. When I think a cruiser, I think a Starfleet Enterprise-type ship or a mainline Klingon ship, e.g. the Vor'cha or Bortasqu.

    Something else to keep in mind - I may be mistaken, but I seem to notice a trend in certain players and devs wanting people to be using powers situationally as opposed to chaining them. The problem with this attitude is that this requires massive reflexes and situational awareness. with this game, at minimum, you need to be aware of your hull, four shield facings, four power levels, 6-8 weapons and their cooldowns/firing arcs, and the cooldowns and status of at least 12 bridge officer powers and many (5-10?) captain powers. Add in other things, such as console powers, crew numbers, enemy status/types/locations, in-air projectiles, the status of your teammates, your speed, your position, current mission status and goals, proximity for area-of-effect buffs (which are almost always impossible to manage effectively in a PUG and probably most pre-mades)... it's just too much. It requires massive levels of both situational management and micromanagement. In Star Trek Picard yells, "KEEP THOSE SHIELDS UP!" when the consoles are exploding all over the bridge. The crew doesn't need to be explicitly told to dump power from the emergency reserves and redirect it to the shield facing that's in tatters.

    While the game requires a certain amount of micromanagement, please try to keep this in mind. I remember the fiasco last year about devs wanting people to stop chaining EPtX. That was a change I thought would have sunk most of my ships outright, and I'd rather not repeat something like that. If you want to get rid of chaining there are going to have to be some very fundamental changes to stop requiring so much micromanagement and make it so there's a LOT larger margin for error, as in more than 5 seconds between shields going down and being destroyed - and that would be on an escort under heavy torpedo bombardment. Also note that this problem is worse for non-escort players since escorts are designed more for "twitch" reflexes, and so far as I can tell, other ship types are generally supposed to be a bit more forgiving for poor reflexes.

    Someone mentioned separation pets. I must agree 100%. At this point, the Aquarius isn't just a joke, it's an embarassment. I only slot it on the one char I have that uses his Ody because I'm a completionist and regularly advise people not to slot it. Other separation abilities generally seem to be only slightly less bad. The AI's are suicidal and pick the worst targets, often doing things such as randomly tractor beaming cubes in CSE and TRIBBLE up ISE optionals. I vaguely recall a dev saying they didn't want to give them fighter controls because that takes away from the carriers. I can understand that, but I dunno what ELSE to do. To be useful they need better self-preservation, more omph, and more control over what they do.

    Torps need to be more effective. I'm not precisely certain how to do this, but in the show they are DEVASTATINGLY powerful in a lot of cases. This is why phasers are used so often, because torps are the big guns. While it would be ridiculous to assume they're the Angel of Death with impulse engines here, they are nevertheless usually regarded as an active disadvantage for most ship types unless it's the AC-R qtorp, and even that's borderline. Escorts, cruisers and science ships are all better served without them. Some ships would be INSANE to put torps on, e.g. the Vesta, wherein you need all three front slots for Aux Cannons in any build that's going to use them effectively. And requiring at least one torp is a good way just to frustrate people.

    Another thing is that mixed weapon loadouts are very actively discouraged and penalized. Stick a DHC on a Gal-X with phaser arrays and you've got a weapon slot that's nearly wasted. The fact that the Gal-X can't use it effectively thanks to the lack of tac slots is something others can beat to death, but given you have only three tac slots to put weapon abilities and everything else in, my point is made - you're not going to be able to bulk up both beams and cannons in a practical manner. Canonically many ships had multiple types of weapons and were better off for it. With ships now, you usually have all beam arrays, all DHC/turrets, and maybe the Borg KCB and a 360 degree phaser array. I'd love to have more canonical loadouts be viable, but they just aren't, and something like a tiny 1% bonus, or even something larger like 5%, to DPS is not going to cut it by any stretch of the imagination. If there's some kind of "reward" for more canonical/mixed loadouts it's going to have to match - not approach, MATCH - high-end weapons paired with high-end BOff abilities, so it'll need to be big.

    The crew mechanic. I'd say this should just flat-out be ditched; it's fundamentally broken. You are not going to be flying a ship with quite literally everyone dead. You are not going to have crew members rise from the dead, no matter how much your captain spec'd into necromancy and doesn't mind feeding their zombified crew the brains of captives from defeated ships. And you certainly aren't going to lose 10% of your crew with every torpedo strike. Truth be told, in most cases, short of the ship being wrecked to the point of unsalvagability or outright exploding, MOST of the crew, though banged up, will probably be alright. Ideas such as having crew penalties "stick" (e.g. crew remain dead for the mission) are just going to be aggrivating if they're heavy enough to count and ignored if they aren't. And I can guarantee that making crew have more impact on things such as team abilities is going to make things a BEAR to work with and will require months and months of rebalancing. A crew stat MIGHT work if it's a static stat that reflects something like repair rate, but that's very iffy. I could see it pretty easily becoming even more of a pain, and might even help encourage instakills/alpha strikes.

    BOff abilities. I don't think a lot of them need nerfs, but a lot of them need buffs. Aceton Beam and Boarding Party are just fillers that you have on an engineer BOff because you're a newbie and don't know any better. Extend Shields has no benefit to you so people are very discouraged from actually slotting it unless the only thing they want to do is heal, and only play in team matches (e.g. no Foundry missions or episodes) with that build. Attack Pattern Delta has always struck me as one of those things that's good on paper but of very little use in practice. Eject Warp Plasma is almost a joke, the ships that can get the strongest versions of it are often trying to shore up their tankiness with A2SIF3 or RSP3, strengthen their DPS with DEM3, or are just plain too slow and bulky to be able to use it very effectively. I'm sure there are plenty more in there. Also, you might want to work on the T5 console powers for a lot of ships often being regarded as somewhat useless toys that go on only one ship, e.g. the Riker Maneuver, which is basically an exploding EWP.

    I mentioned Area of Effect issues earlier. I'll mention it now. Cruiser Commands are awesome for the cruisers - not so much for the team. In most cases people are going to be swooping around a much larger target, circling it, doing strafing runs, etc. They are not going to be flying in a moderately tight formation complimenting each others' abilities. Similar for Mask Energy Signature and other abilities. Please note I am NOT advocating "nerf the cruiser commands so they have a larger range." That's not it at all. Frankly I think that the "toggle-buff" idea is a pretty sound one and should be introduced in other aspects of space combat, and it certainly makes cruisers more fun to play, and both increases their teeth, their attractiveness as targets for tanking, and reduces their bulkiness to be less mind-numbingly whale-like. However, I'm not sure WHAT would help with this. Possibly have it extend to all team members if you're in a team, and have it affect those around you in a 5 KM range if you're not (e.g. in the Undine Battle Zone)? It'd be an improvement, I'd say, if not ideal.

    Although some would disagree with me, I'd like to address the thought of "Kirking" it being so bad. I'm here, at a Star Trek game, not because I really want to play an ultra-specific role, but because I'd rather pretend to be Captain Kirk for a bit. Now, does this mean a single ship should fly in and dominate everything? No. But it also says that there should not be specific, required roles for every player, nor should such requirements be manifest in order to beat specific missions. This is especially so as not only do I not particularly want to rely on other specific players, but I also don't want to rely on players in general being properly equipped/skilled/etc. Because often, they aren't. In some cases, if they were, they wouldn't be in that particular queue trying to get equipment. This game is very heavily customizable. I'd say that this is something that should be built on. I think that having multiple goals that must be carried out in concert in one way or another is a much better way to force group work.

    On the note of customizability, I would also like to toss out a very, VERY controversial idea - decouple ground and space power sets. They're almost two different games in the same game. For instance, one could love being a tac in space, and hate being a tac on the ground but love being an eng on the ground. I realize this might cause a lot of problems, but give it some thought.

    Science stats - I'll be honest, I discourage people from getting sci's until their third or fourth characters. Simply put you have to dump a lot of points into specific science-only skills in order for them to have much omph, and that's just a pain. In a way it locks you to science ships. It seems to me that most tac and eng space skills are interchangeable - what helps a cruiser helps an escort, if not in an ideal way. Particle Generators are pretty useless to someone in, say, a Fleet Assault Cruiser, and there's an active disincentive to even touch PG-based powers, because you'd be wasting points if you want to use non-science ships, and short on points if you spec to use sci ships. On that note, the Joined Trill trait should REALLY not be so science-heavy. Not every symbiote was in a sci officer's guts. It makes JT built-in advantages pretty much only good for science officers, and that's unfortunate since there's plenty of other ways they could be buffed in a way that helps officers of all types - one idea is matching the ship type you're in, though that's just off the top of my head.

    Finally - please, PLEASE get rid of the "explosion in space" mechanic. Every time someone tries to bring that up, someone else ends up attempting to tack on a mechanic to it that still results in the ship exploding and completely missing the entire point. Have it be like ground - you warp back to the start point, or you wait for someone on your team to repair you (if you're in a team). Plus I'm sure you guys can think of a better ship power than 'blow up the ship.' I have used that a grand total of three times. Admittedly one of those times was aboard Shon's Enterprise, which was pretty cool just to say I self-destructed the thing, but nevertheless. If your ship explodes, game over forever. So please consider changing this. It pretty well destroys immersion for a lot of folks.
  • enkemenenkemen Member Posts: 113 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    Had another thought.

    Okay, pretty much everyone agrees that the crew mechanic is borked. Crew loss doesn't really change anything enough to be noticeable. I can be running at zero crew and, for the most part, be just as effective as I am when I have a full crew.

    Well, why not tie the "X Team" abilities efficacy to current crew level? From an ingame perspective, it makes sense -- the fewer crew you have, the fewer people you have for your science, engineering, or tactical team. This also has a bonus in that it makes torpedoes and other crew-killing weapons more useful to slot -- a few good torpedo hits, and suddenly Tac Team barely balances shields? I'd take torpedoes for that. It also adds value to other powers -- "do I want a low-ranking power that might let me down, or a higher ranking power that's guaranteed to work but takes up an important slot?"
  • colonelkiracolonelkira Member Posts: 82 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    Subsystem Targeting: Having a shared cooldown with standard beam abilities like FAW, makes them completely uninteresting for most players. Solution: Remove it.

    Tachyon Beam: Currently the drain is way too weak. It's completely counterable with normal shield regeneration. Solution: Buff the drain, maybe add a Shield Res debuff.

    Bleedthrough: Bleedthrough can be increased with various methods. There's no counterstat or way to decrease it though, besides using resilient shields. Solution: Add a counterstat being buffable like shield penetration.

    Flow Capacitors: Power Insulators have diminishing returns, Flow Caps don't have them. As an effect of that you can't provide a good passive res against drain, caused by massive Flow Caps stacking: Solution: Add diminishing returns to Flow Caps.

    Science Trait: The Trait, that you get from lvl 15 Science, is way too strong. It can give someone who stacks massively partigens 100% critical chance with sci dmg abilities. This leads to OP builds in PVP, tearing apart full teams with their FBP, TBR, GW, Warp plasma etc. Solution: Reduce the crit buff to a percentage, that doesn't make it possible to achieve 100% crit chance.

    Boff Space Traits: There is a limited choice of boffs having space traits in this game. For example you're pretty much obliged to get romulan tacticals for more dmg and romulan sci/engs for more defense. Solution: Add more possible Space Traits for Boffs. Also add a trait pool to boffs, like Captains already have, instead of having them fixed traits.

    Pets: Abilities from doffs affect pets. Currently it's possible to use Overload Doffs with Obelisk Swarmers and Scramble Doff with Drones. Also pet abilities scale with player's diverted skillpoints. Solution: No transfer from doff abilities to pets. No Scaling with Skill Points.

    AI: NPC's AI needs a major buff. Solution: Give them a pool of abilites, being also accessible to players and make the NPC's use them in the 'right situations'.

    A2B Solution: Add a shared cooldown to EptX and A2B.

    FAW Solution: Add a dmg debuff scaling with range, similar to cannons.

    Useless Ensign slots: A lot of zen ships do suck with their fixed ensign. Solution: Replace the fixed ensign with an universal.

    Aux Weapons: There are already Aux DHC's, only available for the Vesta. Other science vessels don't have a chance to deal energy dmg, when being full on aux, though. Solution: Add other aux powered weapons like beam arrays, being available to all sci vessels for example.
    58. / SvK
  • drreverenddrreverend Member Posts: 459 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    Useless Powers in my experience include:

    Go Down Fighting: Seriously, I never use this. If you're below 50% hull on an escort, and most tactical officers fly escorts, you probably don't have time to click the power before you explode. You're too busy pushing your heals and repairs and evasive maneuvers and trying desperately to not die in the next 5 seconds when another torpedo hits you, and the extra damage is so limited you'll probably be dead before you get another shot off or do anything meaningful. It also seriously under-performs next to gems like Photonic Fleet and Miracle Worker. Those two can be used whenever and where ever you want, while Go Down Fighting is only when you're seconds from death and has you gambling on you not exploding before you get a shot off.

    I think on my Tactical officer? I've used it... once. By accident. In over a year.

    Abandon Ship: Why does this exist?

    Tachyon Beam: Maybe consider changing this from just a straight, single target shield damaging beam into an AoE cone that also drains shield power levels and shield hardness.

    Science ships could use some love. They should really feel like Space Wizards with all their tricks and powers, rather than Grav Well dispensers.
  • redalerttribbleredalerttribble Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    enkemen wrote: »
    Had another thought.

    Okay, pretty much everyone agrees that the crew mechanic is borked. Crew loss doesn't really change anything enough to be noticeable. I can be running at zero crew and, for the most part, be just as effective as I am when I have a full crew.

    Well, why not tie the "X Team" abilities efficacy to current crew level? From an ingame perspective, it makes sense -- the fewer crew you have, the fewer people you have for your science, engineering, or tactical team. This also has a bonus in that it makes torpedoes and other crew-killing weapons more useful to slot -- a few good torpedo hits, and suddenly Tac Team barely balances shields? I'd take torpedoes for that. It also adds value to other powers -- "do I want a low-ranking power that might let me down, or a higher ranking power that's guaranteed to work but takes up an important slot?"

    This strikes me as an idea that sounds good in paper, but will result in something along the lines of going back to centering game tactics around an alpha-beta strike. Swoop in once to kill crew, swoop in the second time to destroy the weakened ship. It would be EXTREMELY easy to do that, so far as I can work out in my head.
  • hipachilleshipachilles Member Posts: 195 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    havam wrote: »

    I can't really put my finger on why and how this has changed, but counters are more plentiful then they used to.
    Thoughts?

    Well, I think part of this is due to the EptX doff that can remove all debuffs. I think the other part is that Tac, Sci, and Eng teams no longer have shared cooldowns amongst themselves. But I agree, it does seem harder to get those CC debuffs to stick for very long against players.
    havam wrote: »
    If counterplay can completely negate their effects, then the baselin cc effect should be much more powerful then they are now.

    I think part of the problem is that so many "buffs" are also counters. Hazard Emitters, Science Team, Tac Team, Eng Team, Polarize Hull, Emergency Power to Anything, Attack Pattern Omega. Each of them buffs you in some way AND counters, cleanses, or gives you an immunity.

    I think you might be on to something in that all of those are skills that are kind of "must-haves," and that may be the reason. Each of them buffs and counters at the same time.
  • redalerttribbleredalerttribble Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    drreverend wrote: »
    Useless Powers in my experience include:

    Go Down Fighting: Seriously, I never use this. If you're below 50% hull on an escort, and most tactical officers fly escorts, you probably don't have time to click the power before you explode. You're too busy pushing your heals and repairs and evasive maneuvers and trying desperately to not die in the next 5 seconds when another torpedo hits you, and the extra damage is so limited you'll probably be dead before you get another shot off or do anything meaningful. It also seriously under-performs next to gems like Photonic Fleet and Miracle Worker. Those two can be used whenever and where ever you want, while Go Down Fighting is only when you're seconds from death and has you gambling on you not exploding before you get a shot off.

    GDF used to be more useful. It's still useful, but mostly to escort commanders. One trick to get this to be useful is to tie it to spacebar. That way it's inert most of the time, but when you're beating on the button to shoot, you'll auto-trigger it as soon as it comes up.
  • colonelkiracolonelkira Member Posts: 82 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    Photonic Shockwave -
    gravwell better damage, repulsors better for control, overshadowed by shield/hull regen abilities
    Not widely seen. The stun is too short to really be of any noticeable effect. While a solid concept, it simply cannot compete for limited science slots with other abilities.


    Uninteresting / Not Used Abilities -
    Viral Matrix
    Photonic Shockwave
    Scramble Sensors
    Jam Sensors
    Photonic Officer
    Charged Particle Burst
    Tachyon Beam
    Mask Energy Signature

    Lol, everything being useless in PvE, is uninteresting / not used? Btw. do you even have a clue about for what PSW is used in PvP? It's the best offensive sci ability in PvP.
    58. / SvK
  • druhindruhin Member Posts: 7 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    Subsystem Targeting: Having a shared cooldown with standard beam abilities like FAW, makes them completely uninteresting for most players. Solution: Remove it.

    Don't remove it. Tweak the abilities themselves, and turn them into toggles. Make them the Science equivalent of Cruiser Commands. No need for the "Secondary Deflector" tech, which likely never will be added fully.
  • sdkraustsdkraust Member Posts: 524 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    Oh this is going to be fun.


    All ships and factions should be able to do the same relative damage. The difference between them should be that some ships are more nimble, some ships can take more hits, and some ships don't necessarily use conventional weapons.

    This is basically what we have now except for one critical flaw.

    Tac Captains, and Romulan Boffs innately do more damage. This is a balance issue IMO. The game is half way across a street between what I'm describing and the MMO Holy Trinity. I loathe the MMO Holy Trinity. It doesn't belong in a canon where The Defiant can do as much damage as The Enterprise, they just use different techniques to do them. Tac (as in Tacticians) should be using crafty hit and run methods to do a lot of damage, while providing debufs through attack patterns. Engineers, should be doing sustained damage (Which is what's so "scary" about A2B apparently) while providing buffs, and Scis should be using space magic to do a lot of damage with Grav Wells and Tractor Beams.

    Why don't people like this idea? I'm not quite sure. Maybe people are too engrossed into the holy trinity concept where everything doesn't resolve around DPS. STO resolves around DPS and I like it like that. Other PVEers do to.

    And I don't see why it can't be applied to PvP. Engineers provide tanky DPS, while Tacs provide Burst DPS. Tank should counter Burst. Scis should provide Magic damage that cripples the low hulls of Tac Ships. And Engineers should shrug off Sci abilities due to their large hull / crew sizes.
  • colonelkiracolonelkira Member Posts: 82 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    druhin wrote: »
    Don't remove it. Tweak the abilities themselves, and turn them into toggles. Make them the Science equivalent of Cruiser Commands. No need for the "Secondary Deflector" tech, which likely never will be added fully.

    Toggle like sensor analysis? So -X power to system Y as long as you have it on target? And what about the chance-based disable component? That wouldn't work with such a system. Btw. i'm not talking about the innate subsys targeting, that sci vessels have. I'm talking about the boff ability. No reason to use it on an escort or a cruiser, when it shares CD with overload and FAW.
    58. / SvK
  • woodwhitywoodwhity Member Posts: 2,636 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    drreverend wrote: »
    Useless Powers in my experience include:

    Go Down Fighting: Seriously, I never use this. If you're below 50% hull on an escort, and most tactical officers fly escorts, you probably don't have time to click the power before you explode. You're too busy pushing your heals and repairs and evasive maneuvers and trying desperately to not die in the next 5 seconds when another torpedo hits you, and the extra damage is so limited you'll probably be dead before you get another shot off or do anything meaningful. It also seriously under-performs next to gems like Photonic Fleet and Miracle Worker. Those two can be used whenever and where ever you want, while Go Down Fighting is only when you're seconds from death and has you gambling on you not exploding before you get a shot off.

    I think on my Tactical officer? I've used it... once. By accident. In over a year.
    .


    Being a bad player doesnt mean the abilitiy is useless. Especially not one of the three most powerful captain abilities ingame.
    I usually have ample time to use it, and sometimes I even delay heals to get a better one. In my escorts.
  • amosov78amosov78 Member Posts: 1,495 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    Bleedthrough: Bleedthrough can be increased with various methods. There's no counterstat or way to decrease it though, besides using resilient shields. Solution: Add a counterstat being buffable like shield penetration.

    True. This is also why I mentioned them using the graviton skill and consoles to buff shield resistance.
    U.S.S. Endeavour NCC-71895 - Nebula-class
    Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
    Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
  • welcome2earfwelcome2earf Member Posts: 1,746 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    icegavel wrote: »
    If we want to discuss metagame changes, we need to discuss metagame. And the current meta is "DPS is King". So, we should start there. Why is DPS king? Because it gets everything done more quickly, and there's no reason NOT to do it. There needs to be a REASON not to DPS. There also needs to be utility in non DPS builds. Both of these can be handled fairly easily. How?


    You're hitting on a very valuable point here. DPS is not only required for optionals, but most fleet actions still score you based on damage. (Starbase 24, Breaking the Planet, Big Dig, CE to a lesser extant) - heck do any of you guys remember the good ol' days when SB24 had an actual scoreboard?

    Now I know that Crystalline Entity is a step in the right direction with Heals counting towards your total score, and I think Big Dig now gives you points for deactivating shields/releasing prisoners, but DPS is still weighted the heaviest.

    Fleet actions need to have multiple ways to get first place - not just by the pew pew.
    T93uSC8.jpg
  • druhindruhin Member Posts: 7 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    Toggle like sensor analysis? So -X power to system Y as long as you have it on target? And what about the chance-based disable component? That wouldn't work with such a system. Btw. i'm not talking about the innate subsys targeting, that sci vessels have. I'm talking about the boff ability. No reason to use it on an escort or a cruiser, when it shares CD with overload and FAW.

    Like I said, "tweak it". And yes, I was referring to the Science ships innate "Subsystem Targeting" abilities, sorry.

    Keep the "chance to disable" function of it, but either reduce it's chance, or it's duration (or both). And if you disable the subsystem, the current "Reduces power level of system by X" seems pointless to me. The power level should be 0, if the system is disabled. Would that make players inclined to always toggle the Weapon subsystem targeting? Give all weapons regardless of energytype, a chance to disable weapons subsystem? Possibly. But think of it in another way: Want a chance to disable a fast-mover with poor shields? Toggle Engines. Disable a shield-heavy Cruiser? Toggle Shields.

    Wholly agreed with you on the removal of Target Subsystem: X as an ability for Bridge Officers. There is literally ZERO reason to choose one of these, over Beam Overload or Fire at Will.
  • colonelkiracolonelkira Member Posts: 82 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    Oh sorry, i think you've misunderstood me. I was referring to the shared CD, when i wrote 'Remove it.'. I'm not agreeing on the toggle idea though. I think that Sensor Analysis is enough. Subsystem Targeting on Science Vessels should work the same way as the boff ability. Just remove the shared CD please!
    58. / SvK
  • bubblygumsworthbubblygumsworth Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    druhin wrote: »
    I'd like to suggest the consolidation of the current Beam vs Cannon special-powers (i.e BFAW vs CSV, or BHY vs CRF).

    Would it be possible to either make a "Rapid Fire" power able to fire your beams OR cannons in rapid succession, or possibly add a "Beam Rapid Fire" or "Cannon Overload" type abilities?

    Current:
    - Beam Overload
    - Beam Fire at Will
    - Cannon Rapid Fire
    - Cannon Scatter Volley

    New list (if possible)
    - Overload
    - Fire at Will
    - Rapid Fire
    (Scatter Volley removed, due to Fire at Will working with Cannon powers)

    New powers (if possible)
    - Beam Rapid Fire (quick, short bursts from your energy beams for limited duration)
    - Cannon Overload ("high yield" burst of cannon weapons fire, which deals 100% crit on first blast, with no additional power drain)

    This plus giving cannons the ability to use subsystem targeting :D
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
    I drink, I vote, and I PvP!
  • rattraps123rattraps123 Member Posts: 101 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    During space battles, it seems like they are super cluttered with beams and weapons fire.

    LESS is MORE and I think instead of having 8 beams firing out of a ship you have 1 beam that's 8 times more powerfull.

    Crazy weapons fire and clutter
    http://i.imgur.com/xbUsy.jpg

    In all the star trek tv shows and movies we don't see ships do this. Fire everything just all the time like crazy. It needs to be more controlled and refined, less cluttered.

    Controlled weapons fire like this
    http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/firstcontacthd/firstcontacthd0249.jpg

    This is the only instance I can think of where a ship fires more then one of it's weapons at a time on the target.

    http://uncommongeek.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/sacrifice-of-angels2.jpg


    Here's how it should work,

    Beam weapons would stack say you have 4 forward and 4 aft. then your phaser beam weapon should fire 1 phaser x how ever many phaser banks you have installed + tact consoles.

    torpedoes should fires Volly's of torpedoes . Say you have 4 forward torpedoes . then it should fire a Volly of 4 in a row + damage + tact console damage.



    So your woundering what about Torp spread ? Keep it.
    And Fire at will keep that too.

    What about Dual beam banks ? Make the phaser beam thickness wider. But add the dual beams + singles + tact consoles damage together.

    Point is. we need to DECLUTTER Space battles.
    cSLYSLc.gif
  • amosov78amosov78 Member Posts: 1,495 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    During space battles, it seems like they are super cluttered with beams and weapons fire.

    LESS is MORE and I think instead of having 8 beams firing out of a ship you have 1 beam that's 8 times more powerfull.

    Crazy weapons fire and clutter
    http://i.imgur.com/xbUsy.jpg

    In all the star trek tv shows and movies we don't see ships do this. Fire everything just all the time like crazy. It needs to be more controlled and refined, less cluttered.

    Controlled weapons fire like this
    http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/firstcontacthd/firstcontacthd0249.jpg

    This is the only instance I can think of where a ship fires more then one of it's weapons at a time on the target.

    http://uncommongeek.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/sacrifice-of-angels2.jpg


    Here's how it should work,

    Beam weapons would stack say you have 4 forward and 4 aft. then your phaser beam weapon should fire 1 phaser x how ever many phaser banks you have installed + tact consoles.

    torpedoes should fires Volly's of torpedoes . Say you have 4 forward torpedoes . then it should fire a Volly of 4 in a row + damage + tact console damage.



    So your woundering what about Torp spread ? Keep it.
    And Fire at will keep that too.

    What about Dual beam banks ? Make the phaser beam thickness wider. But add the dual beams + singles + tact consoles damage together.

    Point is. we need to DECLUTTER Space battles.

    You also have Nemesis and a couple of instances on Voyager, but those were generally more like FAW. It would certainly look a lot nicer, they could essentially relabel the beam and cannon weapons as emitters.
    U.S.S. Endeavour NCC-71895 - Nebula-class
    Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
    Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
  • lucho80lucho80 Member Posts: 6,600 Bug Hunter
    edited August 2014
    My observations:

    1) Tetryon Beam proc - I've said it before, and I'll say it again, it's really bad because of all the shield heal/regeneration power creep. Specially when destabilized tetryons are 50% better (although HE clearable), and Tetryon Glider is 84% better. A boost to the proc up to at-least match the level of destabilized tetryons would be nice.

    2) Tachyon Beam - Plain and simple, it needs a boost. Most players never use it because they don't see the point in wasting a science ability for it. The shield resistance debuff idea seems like a very good one.

    3) Target subsystems - Fine as-is except for the disable effect which is negligible for most.

    Comments to other suggestions:

    1) Subnuc beam - For those who think it's OP, the change to team abilities shared cooldowns gave it a good whack already. Just carry a copy of ST and you can clear it away. I've seen matches where three SNBs are needed for it to stick to a target.

    2) Nadion inversion - Frankly, people consider it garbage, but it's actually pretty powerful. The problem here is that in PvE, the only enemy who poses a bit of a drain threat are the Voth (The Breen? Please. They're a joke). It's really useful against power drains in PvP and I have to subnuc it out of targets in order to drain them because it lasts a whole 30 seconds which is an eternity in PvP. I'd be fine with it getting some extra effect if the aux2bat issue is taken care of first.

    And finally, the aux2bat problem (putting on armor and raising shield to deflect incoming fire):
    It's a bad problem, but it seems changing the doff overall effect is out of the question or not the ideal solution, so here are my ideas in order of preference.

    1) Exclude aux2bat itself from being affected by the Technician doff's effect
    2) Force aux2bat to keep the aux power at 5 (pre-boosts like leech) on use. Chaining lets the Aux power float up which takes away its one down side.
    3) Add a shared CD between aux2bat and EPtX
  • mancommancom Member Posts: 784 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    Okay. Wall of text ahead, but I'll do my very best to explain my views.

    But before I get into specifics, I want to start with some even more meta than the metagame, based on you saying
    we've been taking a hard look at Space powers and abilities that are underperforming, as well as a select few that dominate the choices players make across the board.
    I believe it would be beneficial for the discussion if you could clarify which parts of the game you are willing to touch in the attempt to rebalance the space game. Is it only Boff ablities? Or are you also looking at consoles (universal and/or regular), other gear, traits, doffs and the skill tree itself? (In a similar vein, many issues of the "pve/pvp gap" arise due to a really poor NPC AI - is this something that could also be addressed as part of the space rebalance?)

    I think that this is quite important to know because I don't have many problems with boff abilities. It's mainly the gear and traits (and romulans) that I consider problematic.

    A second thing that you should probably define in order to have more meaningful responses is what you want space combat to be like in an ideal setting. How fast is combat supposed to be? Should players have roles (damage/heals/cc) to be truly effective or should everyone have a bit of each in an ideal setting? But maybe most importantly: What is the intended balance between gear/traits (so effectively everything that is "passive") and boff powers? (Prime example: Elite Fleet Shields with their massive innate resist.)


    Okay, so much for the questions, now we get to my reply to your questions.


    I want space combat to be like tug-o-war, not like a pistol duel. Therefore I'm skeptical of everything that allows for reliable vape-style attacks (decloak damage bonus + romulan crth/crtd etc. bonus is a big issue here; notice how all the top tacs are romulans these days). And I like pressure damage. Kills shouldn't just happen in a 5s windows with 2-3 supporting SNBs like it is mandatory these days in high-level matches. Pressure one target, fake an attack on a second, destroy the third - that's how it should work.

    Problematic powers:

    1) [Adapt] modifier, and to a lesser extent [ResA], [ResB]. This allows for a huge amount of resist with essentially zero opportunity cost and there is basically no counter to it (even SNB only gives you a couple of shots before the resist is back). That much "free" resistance negates pressure damage and forces all successful attacks to happen in an extremely short window of time and usually with SNB support.

    1a) Nanoprobe Field Generator - same as [Adapt]. Free resists are a big problem.

    2) Free heals, like the Valdore console. Seriously, how is this thing supposed to be balanced against a "+15% natural shield regen" console?

    3) The amount of subsystem power we have. Your rationalisation for halving the vaules of the "+power" engineering consoles was that people had too much power. Then you gave everyone leech and due to Damage Control doffs (or A2Bat) everyone can have 2 sets of EPtX going. This is ridiculous. It removes the choice between weapons and aux power (well, shield and engines too, but these have always been secondary) and invalidates all target subsystem powers.

    4) Your graphics engine sucks. Sorry to say that, but if a Core i7 with AMD HD7850 renders only a fraction of the warp plasma clouds in the game, then something is severely wrong with your engine. Powers with big range dependent effects like warp plasma and related powers need to be visible. Do something about this. Few things are less fun than getting stuck in plasma, grav wells & co that one can't even see. Either reduce the impact of these powers or make sure that they render correctly on every client. (Example of how bad your engine is: When fireworks initially did not have a cooldown, one could make other stuff like GW/Plasma intentionally disappear for other players by spamming the fireworks effect.)

    5) Too much variance on certain powers (shield drains like TachB and CPB come to mind). Ever since you introduced general sci resists to the skill tree, these powers vary wildly between useless and pretty powerful (usually more on the useless side). These powers should provide a more reliable output.

    6) Jump console. Yes, this thing is bad. It used to take a skilled pilot to deliver SNBs from a big vessel. These days everyone can do it even in a big fat recluse carrier. Just click "subspace jump" and you are done. Introduce some kind of jump immunity (like there already exists for the "jump to my place" thingy the Bortas has) or even better: Make it require frontal arc, so that one can teleport from "facing the target head to head" to "behind the target", but not jump behind it from anywhere within 10km no matter which directions on is facing.

    7) Too much variance on cooldowns. What I mean with that is that there are too many ways of reducing cooldowns and they are very inconsistent too. Is a 15% chance to reduce cooldowns on deflector abilities a littel bit really balanced against a certain cooldown reduction on attack patterns or a 35% chance to reduce coolwons on EPtX powers? (And of course A2Bat is an issue too because it also provides a certainty, not just a chance like many other cooldown reduction abilities.) It's hard to balance boff abilities when there is such a wide range of cooldowns one has to deal with (and in contrast to photonic officer, or even the very simplistic doubling up on boff abilities it these reduction effects from doffs don't even reduce your available boff abilities).

    8) Make up your mind on whether tac buffs (APA/APO etc.) should buff sci abilities (FBP/TBR etc.) or not. At one point Borticus had declared that APA&co should not buff sci stuff, even implemented it and then suddenly without comment the game reverted back to buffing it. In my opinion tac buffs should not amplify sci powers because that makes sci-based damage a thing for tacs (because it then needs to be balanced with APA in mind) and too weak for the other classes.

    9) Too much CrtH. When certain builds have something like 40% critical chance, then it stops being a chance and becomes certainty. You have seen how you had to remove the CrtH part from BO in order to alleviate this issue. I think it would be best to get to the root of this problem and apply diminishing returns to CrtH so that you can normalise CrtH values at a much lower asymptpotic threshold.

    There is probably more, but I'll leave it at that for now. Did you notice how most of my issues with the space game are not boff abilities but rather other things that overshadow boff abilities? Rebalance space around boffs and tune everything else down so that it doesn't overshadow boffs anymore, then we can truly have choices.
    1042856
  • nymysys1nymysys1 Member Posts: 1 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    During space battles, it seems like they are super cluttered with beams and weapons fire.

    LESS is MORE and I think instead of having 8 beams firing out of a ship you have 1 beam that's 8 times more powerfull.

    Crazy weapons fire and clutter
    http://i.imgur.com/xbUsy.jpg

    In all the star trek tv shows and movies we don't see ships do this. Fire everything just all the time like crazy. It needs to be more controlled and refined, less cluttered.

    Controlled weapons fire like this
    http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/firstcontacthd/firstcontacthd0249.jpg

    This is the only instance I can think of where a ship fires more then one of it's weapons at a time on the target.

    http://uncommongeek.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/sacrifice-of-angels2.jpg




    Here's how it should work,

    Beam weapons would stack say you have 4 forward and 4 aft. then your phaser beam weapon should fire 1 phaser x how ever many phaser banks you have installed + tact consoles.

    torpedoes should fires Volly's of torpedoes . Say you have 4 forward torpedoes . then it should fire a Volly of 4 in a row + damage + tact console damage.



    So your woundering what about Torp spread ? Keep it.
    And Fire at will keep that too.

    What about Dual beam banks ? Make the phaser beam thickness wider. But add the dual beams + singles + tact consoles damage together.

    Point is. we need to DECLUTTER Space battles.

    I totally agree with this; more emitter arrays does not mean more beams going out at once, it means more places for a single beam to be emitted, thus reducing or eliminating blind spots in weapons coverage.
  • marc8219marc8219 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    I think beam overload was fine the way it was before all the recent changes. It should be changed back to where it still drains weapon power and doesn't always score a critical but does higher damage.
    Tala -KDF Tac- House of Beautiful Orions
  • welcome2earfwelcome2earf Member Posts: 1,746 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    kyeto13 wrote: »
    The motive for this would be to avoid death. The lost of a ship was a terrible thing for a captain's record and should be avoided at all cost. These vessels contain hundreds, if not thousands of crew members with families and homes and they entrust their lives to you. This tension would be played out with a death penalty of a a 1 hour cooldown on that vessel, that is non-interruptible. If your hull reaches zero percent, you will be transported to your Faction's home system and you will have to transfer command to another vessel until the burning hulk of your old command can be repaired. You will also forfeit the mission, with partial rewards handed out based on performance.

    Interesting. VERY interesting indeed - it makes your "
    T93uSC8.jpg
  • redalerttribbleredalerttribble Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    During space battles, it seems like they are super cluttered with beams and weapons fire.

    LESS is MORE and I think instead of having 8 beams firing out of a ship you have 1 beam that's 8 times more powerfull.

    Crazy weapons fire and clutter
    http://i.imgur.com/xbUsy.jpg

    In all the star trek tv shows and movies we don't see ships do this. Fire everything just all the time like crazy. It needs to be more controlled and refined, less cluttered.

    Controlled weapons fire like this
    http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/firstcontacthd/firstcontacthd0249.jpg

    This is the only instance I can think of where a ship fires more then one of it's weapons at a time on the target.

    http://uncommongeek.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/sacrifice-of-angels2.jpg


    Here's how it should work,

    Beam weapons would stack say you have 4 forward and 4 aft. then your phaser beam weapon should fire 1 phaser x how ever many phaser banks you have installed + tact consoles.

    torpedoes should fires Volly's of torpedoes . Say you have 4 forward torpedoes . then it should fire a Volly of 4 in a row + damage + tact console damage.



    So your woundering what about Torp spread ? Keep it.
    And Fire at will keep that too.

    What about Dual beam banks ? Make the phaser beam thickness wider. But add the dual beams + singles + tact consoles damage together.

    Point is. we need to DECLUTTER Space battles.

    There are other cases where this happened.

    Best of Both Worlds comes to mind, where it happened at least twice when the Enterprise was slugging it out with the cube. The order "fire all weapons" came down... and it certainly did so.

    There was also another episode in season 2 (the one where the whole colony is obliterated except for one house with one old couple in it) where something like this happened, as I recall.

    Another thing to keep in mind is that, if I recall correctly, some parts of battles weren't even directly shown (e.g. ordering a phaser strike, but no cut to the ship models), which could easily have involved multiple arrays working in tandem. If we go solely by the on-screen shots, at least seven of the Ent-D's phaser arrays were never seen firing once in the entire series. Much of this was limited in the series due to limited special effects budgets, and I'm pretty sure we started seeing less of this sort of concern as TNG spread into movies and DS9 and Voyager progressed. Whether that directly translated to more phaser strikes, I can't say, but it wouldn't surprise me.

    Additionally it's needed in order to help make cruisers more viable. Broadsiding is a tactic particularly suited towards cruisers, and in fact is their primary combat tactic. I would say that trying to "reduce" this clutter changes the game for cruisers entirely; I can't say, however, whether it is for better or worse.

    Plus there are going to be a lot of people upset with most of their expensive, shiny weapons becoming fairly useless, I wager, if this sort of change is put in place.
  • bubblygumsworthbubblygumsworth Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    marc8219 wrote: »
    I think beam overload was fine the way it was before all the recent changes. It should be changed back to where it still drains weapon power and doesn't always score a critical but does higher damage.

    This is another that I have to agree with. I'be been playing a build that heavily relies on BO for the past 2-3 years. Since the latest change, I've moved out of my trusty BoP and into a cannon only heavier escort :(
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
    I drink, I vote, and I PvP!
Sign In or Register to comment.