Quick question about Ship Defenses and the damage resist display

ussvaliant

Hi there my question is in the character status menu where you have selected your ship then Status and Stats you have a Defenses option that shows what damage resists for each type of energy/kinetic/radiation you have.

My Annorax base is just above 40% across the board. I am using the following traits

Impact Defense Specialist - Molecular Defense Specialist - Advanced Hull Reinforcement - Aux Power Config (Defense) - Aux power setting is set to 98 in subsystems which pushes the Defense stats to up to when active 61%. I have spent 3pts in Hull platingg

Yet during combat I see absolutely no noticeable difference in my ability to resist damage vs having only 50% the base value I mentioned and only using Aux Power Config (Defense) with 98 aux in subsystem power.

I don't have any armor consoles equipped however I have placed a epic kinetic and physical dmg console on and 25% all dmg res epic console on and again I see real difference in survivability.

But my question is this is the Defense tooltip giving actual Defense values or is it lying to me, or do NPC's just have an ability to negate a large portion of your damage resists ?

charon83

Well right now, according to my own observations and some feedback i got from others in game, Crit-Severity on enemy torpedoes as well as some special abilities are broken (which started to happen with ViL and the lvl 65 scaling).

As a little example my 3 mains:
1. Tac, fully GP/mk15 on tac-MW cruiser (dedicated beam build/human) with some minimal semi-defensive skill allocation to survive borg (i.e. about 30% resistance/def on kinetic as well as a slight increase in hull. If stuff doesn't die quick enough the end results are Torpedoes one or two shotting me with about 70-120k damage in a single hit (kinetic)

2. Tac, Fully GP/mk15 cannon build (cardassian) in the cardassian-intel escort - Glass cannon really, this includes nothing regarding defenses and goes all out on damage, a single torpedo crit can kill this character, same as my beam character really, normal beams only kill this one if i'm too slow to react to the rather tight firing-arc on certain enemies.

3. Discovery Sci (WiP) space wizard (currently in the draanur lukari vessel) GP/MK 15 (missing 2 consoles, 2 traits and a few minor fleet unlocks as well as active reputation abilites atm.) - generally a standard wizard build mostly specialized on exotic damage and ctrl expertise, however also heavily invested in shield reg/strength. SAME result as the other two, single torpedo crit can kill him (although, thanks to the temporal spec and crit immunity every 45 seconds this character usually doesn't die due to the rebound with the temporal spec, but it Does happen from time to time versus Borg specifically due to their shield drain).

Basically 3 different builds, all with different defense values, skill allocations and trait/ships/equipment and all of them, after weeks of testing yield the same results, If i die from anything BUT torpedoes, it's usually my fault (piloting etc), but the enemy torpedoes are whats basically out of control for me. Which could be the same for your build (a LOAD more defensive than any of mine, and they survive everything else just fine). Also keep in mind, those 3 are VERY dedicated builds that include tons of EC/Lobi/Zen ship traits and fully upgraded gold-gear in every slot. The Reason i'm pointing this out is because despite all of that, those crits STILL happen, so i doubt there is anything anyone can really do at the moment (playing counterpoint advanced is just not fun for instant, seeing everyone die from the torpedo spreads that go around no matter the build - but i haven't been looking for people who might be able to survive those to gather more info on this issue)

So to make it short: Yes the values are accurate, however there is something wrong with enemy crit-severity at the moment, at least according to my own observation over the last couple months.

charon83

Well right now, according to my own observations and some feedback i got from others in game, Crit-Severity on enemy torpedoes as well as some special abilities are broken (which started to happen with ViL and the lvl 65 scaling).

As a little example my 3 mains:
1. Tac, fully GP/mk15 on tac-MW cruiser (dedicated beam build/human) with some minimal semi-defensive skill allocation to survive borg (i.e. about 30% resistance/def on kinetic as well as a slight increase in hull. If stuff doesn't die quick enough the end results are Torpedoes one or two shotting me with about 70-120k damage in a single hit (kinetic)

2. Tac, Fully GP/mk15 cannon build (cardassian) in the cardassian-intel escort - Glass cannon really, this includes nothing regarding defenses and goes all out on damage, a single torpedo crit can kill this character, same as my beam character really, normal beams only kill this one if i'm too slow to react to the rather tight firing-arc on certain enemies.

3. Discovery Sci (WiP) space wizard (currently in the draanur lukari vessel) GP/MK 15 (missing 2 consoles, 2 traits and a few minor fleet unlocks as well as active reputation abilites atm.) - generally a standard wizard build mostly specialized on exotic damage and ctrl expertise, however also heavily invested in shield reg/strength. SAME result as the other two, single torpedo crit can kill him (although, thanks to the temporal spec and crit immunity every 45 seconds this character usually doesn't die due to the rebound with the temporal spec, but it Does happen from time to time versus Borg specifically due to their shield drain).

Basically 3 different builds, all with different defense values, skill allocations and trait/ships/equipment and all of them, after weeks of testing yield the same results, If i die from anything BUT torpedoes, it's usually my fault (piloting etc), but the enemy torpedoes are whats basically out of control for me. Which could be the same for your build (a LOAD more defensive than any of mine, and they survive everything else just fine). Also keep in mind, those 3 are VERY dedicated builds that include tons of EC/Lobi/Zen ship traits and fully upgraded gold-gear in every slot. The Reason i'm pointing this out is because despite all of that, those crits STILL happen, so i doubt there is anything anyone can really do at the moment (playing counterpoint advanced is just not fun for instant, seeing everyone die from the torpedo spreads that go around no matter the build - but i haven't been looking for people who might be able to survive those to gather more info on this issue)

So to make it short: Yes the values are accurate, however there is something wrong with enemy crit-severity at the moment, at least according to my own observation over the last couple months.

Edit: Corrected some spelling-errors and the post got deleted? (hope this is not a double post now), good thing i had a copy ready.

ussvaliant

Thanks for the reply that explains why the Tzenkethi and Terrans who both specialise in kinetic damage types are literally wiping the floor with me.

So its a combination of broken powers and poorly balanced game play where NPC's/game resorts to cheap shots.

mustrumridcully0

A few months back, when the Tzenkethi were the new enemy to fight, the Strategist specialization proved quite useful against them. IIRC, it was the kinetic immunity special ability they had that could save your life. Immunity still breaks any arbitrary damage value the enemy can shoot at you, and kinetic damage sources are not quite as omnipresent as energy damage sources, so there is a good chance it actually triggers on a dangerous hit.