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Balance for the three professions
darramouss1
Member Posts: 1,811 Arc User
Hey all.
It's pretty common knowledge that the three professions are hardly balanced. Tactical is waaaaay OP. Balance is really needed so that Engineering and Science are no longer treated like the red-headed step-children.
How to do it? Well, I believe that nerfing Tactical is NOT the way to do it. Tactical needs to hit harder with its weapons than anyone else. To take this away will ruin Tactical.
How to do it, then?
I'm thinking that each ship type should provide a bonus to skills of the same type. More plainly said, science powers should be buffed when fired from a science ship and engineering powers should be buffed when fired from a cruiser. These buffs should be in addition to any consoles and player stats.
In addition, a science captain on a science ship should get buffs, as should engineer captains on cruisers.
Why?
Well, I think it makes sense that a science ship would have more science equipment on it. Equipment that could be leveraged to activate those science abilities. It also follows that a science captain could leverage more from his ship than a Tactical or Engineer could. Also, the buffs should not be simple +X% to damage. Yes, some should, but not all of them. Some examples include...
Boarding party - Plus one shuttle with used on a cruiser or carrier. (Cruisers and carriers should have more hangar space.) Plus one more shuttle if captain is an engineer.
Energy Siphon - Extra duration if activated from a science ship. Extra drain if activated by a science captain.
All of these wonderful ideas sound nice and exciting for engineers and science. What about tactical? What would they get? I don't think they really should get more for the time being. Tactical is all about damage. They already have access to cannons (DC and DHC) and their abilities can buff non-tactical abilities. Remember, this idea is about bringing engineers and science up to tactical's level. (Just in case anyone thinks I'm bashing Tactical, two of my 4 toons are Tactical. One of them is my main.)
Constructive feedback anyone?
It's pretty common knowledge that the three professions are hardly balanced. Tactical is waaaaay OP. Balance is really needed so that Engineering and Science are no longer treated like the red-headed step-children.
How to do it? Well, I believe that nerfing Tactical is NOT the way to do it. Tactical needs to hit harder with its weapons than anyone else. To take this away will ruin Tactical.
How to do it, then?
I'm thinking that each ship type should provide a bonus to skills of the same type. More plainly said, science powers should be buffed when fired from a science ship and engineering powers should be buffed when fired from a cruiser. These buffs should be in addition to any consoles and player stats.
In addition, a science captain on a science ship should get buffs, as should engineer captains on cruisers.
Why?
Well, I think it makes sense that a science ship would have more science equipment on it. Equipment that could be leveraged to activate those science abilities. It also follows that a science captain could leverage more from his ship than a Tactical or Engineer could. Also, the buffs should not be simple +X% to damage. Yes, some should, but not all of them. Some examples include...
Boarding party - Plus one shuttle with used on a cruiser or carrier. (Cruisers and carriers should have more hangar space.) Plus one more shuttle if captain is an engineer.
Energy Siphon - Extra duration if activated from a science ship. Extra drain if activated by a science captain.
All of these wonderful ideas sound nice and exciting for engineers and science. What about tactical? What would they get? I don't think they really should get more for the time being. Tactical is all about damage. They already have access to cannons (DC and DHC) and their abilities can buff non-tactical abilities. Remember, this idea is about bringing engineers and science up to tactical's level. (Just in case anyone thinks I'm bashing Tactical, two of my 4 toons are Tactical. One of them is my main.)
Constructive feedback anyone?
Post edited by darramouss1 on
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already FROM character creation. so that is not possible that:
a gravity well from my TAC is doing more DMG when played with all the attack patterns and TAC boosts,
than a GW does on my SCI.
so, my proposal - do NOT nerf TAC in any way.. but give every "class" a boost.
TAC stays as is , or gets 5% crit on weapon dmg
SCI gets +20% effectivity on all sci powers, 10% dmg on all sci powers
ENG gets +15% effectivity on all engi powers, 10% dmg on all eng powers
R.I.P
I have no issue in the Careers excelling at what they are trained in as you suggested. An Engineer should find a ship designed or favoring Engineers to function slightly better in the hands. The same should go for all ships specced to thier specific classes.
That was the original premise of having ships set to a class. Using them accordingly gives the best return while an off career Captain would still function but not as well giving up that sympatico for the use of the bonus of using the differing Captain abilities they bring to the build.
I hope that made sense. I think my wording is clumsy.
R.I.P
Scince you didn't tell us what you complain about (space or ground combat), I'll start with ground: On the ground a mixed team (tactical, science and engineering captains) will always be the best performing. They resist more damage (engineering-bunker) and heal up (medic). Here is only one little problem: A tactical captain can also heal his team and increase the damage resistence using Rally-Cry.
This mixed ability is a little overpowered.
In space there are bigger differences: Science ships lag 1 weapon-slot compared to escorts and escorts can use stronger weapons (dual cannons). Ok, you could pack dual cannons on an Atrox, but it misses the turn-rate to use them efficently.
Cruisers have one weapon-slot more then Escorts, but they have got only about 50% of the turn-rate of an escort. This leads to all-beam-builds.
But with those new rewards from the reputation-system (the Romulan Console), science ships and cruisers will get a little higher rewards, because it boosts all power-levels and there's simply "no use for auxilary on an escort". If we get more rewards like this, balancing the 3 classes should be possible.
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
There's no reason my Tac captain should be getting the same result from Eng and Sci skills as their appropriate classes do. This would make TacScorts more fragile, while giving engineers more ability to tank and scientists more devastating sci powers. It also might help engineers tank in an escort and tacs DPS in a cruiser. Not as well as if they used their favored ship type, but could still lead to some variety.
Ships already grant power boosts that should (theoretically) favor their associated class. Maybe this needs to be more pronounced, but that's all I would do with ships.
I overall agree with the need to do something though. I fly a tac captain in escorts. As it stands, I have no reason to use my Eng alt or start a Sci. I should be blowing up in STF and FA unless my Eng and Sci teammates help me.
1) Sensor scan should lower target's science skill resists as well.
2) Sci Cap. AoE Defensive thingie should buff science skill resists as well.
3) Miracle Worker should be usable on others AND cleanse all negative effects
4) Eng Cap. Shield ability should be usable on others and yourself at the same time.
5) EPTS Transfer and Nadion Inversion should make energy levels grant a higher effect (IE instead of 2% damage per 1 weapon power 2.2% damage)
6) Fire on my Mark should reduce a target's defense rating as well, that aspect should be cleared by something other than tac team.
Everyone gets a buff!
The idea of a class being tied to a hull is repulsive to me. Instead I think all careers should have a focus. Tacs bring the pain, Sci gets to mess with you, and Eng keeps you alive and makes power better. That makes sense to me and works well with any hull(s).
However, I do think that Tactical officers Attack Pattern Alpha needs to be applied specifically to weapons power. This is why a Tactical officer can take a grav well and make it deadly. If you remove that specific buff, then the super powered Tac/Sci boat is not as viable of an option. Everything else after this I believe will start balancing out.
I agree and disagree with you.
I can see how a hard buff could be problematic, but you have to remember that the ship was designed to perform specific functions. Science ships were designed to perform scientific functions. As an analogy, it's like saying that a 4x4 off road vehicle is always going to perform better off road than a Lamborghini, even if the world's best off road driver is driving it.
Ships were designed to perform specific functions. And that is exactly what they currently do.
No need to mess with the ships. They already all have their own particularities and you recognize the function of most ships by looking at their BO seat configuration.
When you see a Commander Science seat, it is pretty clear the ship has a science bias. As a ship with Commander Tactical is definitely a tactical ship. There are maybe only 1 or 2 exceptions where it hard to figure out what bias the ship really has and they come from ships that have multiple Universal seats ( like BoP ).
If adjustments are really needed, i think it is the character classes that need specific changes ( buffs or nerfs ) but again i am not even convinced any changes are needed. Great players do great with all 3 classes in any kind of ship.
addendum: Most Science abilites are directly effect by Auxillary power levels. Would this proposal further increase the effectivness before or after Aux power levels are applied?
R.I.P
NEEERRRFFF... NERRRRFFFF... NERF Sci...
There... balance helps.
On the tactical note, the "Precision" buff from season 7 watered down some of the tactical captains advantage over other classes. There is definitely some diminishing returns on it once it gets up there.
Tactical is broken when it buffs science and other non-weapon related abilities like EWP. Weapon style consoles make sense though.
Science is under scienced. It has so many useless career abilities that don't have anything to do with science, while its main focus is ignored.
How do you buff engineers? If you make them more tanky it just breaks PvP. I would think if you allowed most of their abilities to be team oriented or thrown onto other players it would help a lot.
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The same stupid threads still pop up: "hey, guys, if you only look at damage, the damage-oriented class is stronger!"
You don't say...
Tactical gets no CC/debuff ability whatsoever, no survivability ability whatsoever. None, zero, zilch. So, yes, that means all Tac (Space) abilities are damage-boosters.
If Tac wasn't the best DD (and I'm not so sure it is, tbh), something would be horrendously wrong.
Eng gets mostly survivability abilities (logical for a tank) and some damage-boosters; Sci gets some control, some survivability and some pointlessness.
On balance, the strongest of them all? Sci, by quite a margin. Photonic Fleet sucks, yes; but Subnucleonic Beam and Sensor Scan more than make up for it.
FAW + AP:Beta is the rough equivalent of sensor scan, FAW + AP:Delta will give you a bit more surviability with the same damage output. Although sensor scan was buffed with the damage reduction DOFF but still. Yes you get no scattering field but there is enough resists that it doesn't matter that much. Tactical initiative will keep ALL of your Boff abilities charging faster. Need that target to drop? Hit it with fire on my mark.
They should boost photonic fleet to do more damage based on your AUX levels. That would only be logical.
I think I can understand that, it's a great feeling as a science captain in a sci ship to have an escort at your mercy, that's a great feeling.
I once managed to lock one down with:
TB2, SNB, SS, TR2, Photonic Fleet x3, fleet support, beam target subsystem attacks and AP:B2
I felt both all powerful and sorry for the escort at my mercy...
So yeah, a well played sci can convince escort pilots that sci is OP...