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A balancing Act: Tactical-Engineering-Science

cmdrskyfallercmdrskyfaller Member Posts: 0 Arc User
Devs, make the following changes so that tactical ships do not receive 100% benefits (damage,healing, tanking, defense,etc) with minimal skill point investment while the other classes have to spend heavily into specific boxes for what in the end are mostly harmless abilities. Bring balance back to the classes.


Skill Point changes:



1- Energy Weapon and Torpedo specialization skill boxes will -ONLY- increase the critical severity of these weapons.

2- Starship Sensors skill box will now provide +Crit hit chance. After all, you can't shoot with precision at things your sensors can't detect.

3- Change Attack Pattern all-in-one capability:

a- Remove Starship Weapons Training. Assign its bonuses to the Energy and Projectile training boxes @ Lt Cmdr rank.

b- Attack Pattern Omega no longer has immunity to holds nor +def bonuses nor turn rate bonus nor damage resist bonus. Attack Omega is now purely a speed boost plus damage boost and immunity to teleport.

c- In place of Starship Weapons Training, put new skill box: Defensive Patterns.

d- Add new BOFF abilities that start from Ensign rank and become tier 3 at lt cmdr rank:

Defensive Pattern Gamma (+turn rate +defense bonus +immunity to boarding parties)
Defensive Pattern Epsilon (+ resists + immunity to holds)
Defensive Pattern Zeta (% chance weapon hits on target causes them to lose accuracy, % chance that hits scored on your ship reflect back to attacker at 20% damage shield bypassing)

Player cannot stack attack and defensive patterns. Defensive Patterns have the same 'shorter' timer as Attack Beta/Delta (30s).

4- Swap location of all Tactical boxes in the Commander slot and the Captain slots. Ergo, Targeting systems and Starship Maneuvers will now be Captain rank.

5- Swap location of Starship Hull Plating and Structural Integrity boxes. Of Hull Repair and Electro-Plasma systems; Of Impulse Thrusters and Subsystem Repair.

6- Merge Driver Coils and Starship Batteries into one box: Starship Operations. Add new skill box in Lt rank row: Starship Crew. This box gives +crew resists, +Crew regain and +hull repair rate BONUS while in combat.

7- Merge Countermeasure systems and Power Insulators into one box called 'Starship Countermeasures'. Add new skill box: Applied Scientific Theory. This new box adds +Crit chance to all science abilities. This enables damaging and healing abilities to crit for additional damage/heal/debuff. This Box is found in the Lt Cmdr rank slot.

8- Swap Shield Emitters with Inertial Dampeners.

9- Change Subsystem Attacks (tactical boff ability & native to sci ships) so that its chance to disable is linked to Sensors skill. @9 points = 80% chance. The tier of the disable determines base time of disable duration (modified by subspace decompiler).

10- Science abilities will now have the bulk of their effect determined directly by captain skill stat (and +stat equipment) rather than Aux Power setting. Aux Power will only determine the duration of the ability.

For example:

Gravity Well: Graviton stat determines how many ships get pulled in. 1 ship per 64 points in the stats. Particle Stat determines how much damage those ships take inside the well. AUX power determines how long the anomaly lasts.

11- CRITICAL: Any damage boosting ability (Omega, Alpha, etc) should specify what damage types is affects. All science-based damage should be switched to EXOTIC damage. That way Alpha/Omega can boost Energy and Kinetic only.

Image Link to the proposed new skill tree look:

http://i.cubeupload.com/uLTIru.jpg


What these changes do:


1- Escorts and tactical ships lose their immunity to get hurt when under attack omega but still retain the ability to call up on defensive patterns for the same (and more) defensive perks that can literally be called upon shortly after Omega is used.

Why this? It is to control the absurd perfect-defense plus damage boost ability that is allowing escorts or any ship using it to sit in place (0 speed) and add up very high damage upon a target in AOE with little to no risk.

2- Swapping the location of skill boxes and with the merging & adding of new ones, we have a new skill point paradigm where no one captain of any type can gain maximum benefit of the other 2 classes with minimum points spent. This new 'skill point tree' makes it so that the most critical skill boxes now require a commitment in skill points to acquire.

Tactical skill boxes now cost more skill points to achieve effective weapon performance (base damage modifiers and accuracy/defensive stat determiner are +1 rank now) and critical hit and severity are no longer bundled up in one box... the player has to put points into the weapon type (energy or projectile) for crit severity and into sensors for crit chance.

Engineering skill boxes no longer provide their critical healing and hull HP boosting abilities at minimum skill point investment.

Science skill boxes now have increased skill point cost for critical abilities and passives.

This all avoids the cookie-cutter template that allows almost any ship to have max healing, max firepower and max hull/shield stats without having to sacrifice anything for it. It makes cruiser captains spec'ing deeply into engineering to be the best tanks; those spec'ing deeply into science to have strong science performance and those focusing on damage in tactical boxes to have the strongest punch but not have the best shields/armor/healing capability in balance.

It restores the trinity of balance that we had pre-f2p.
Post edited by cmdrskyfaller on

Comments

  • kolbrandrkolbrandr Member Posts: 266
    edited February 2014
    Sure, why not?

    The best players will adapt and thrive no matter what changes. If there is a way we can balance things better, that would be fantastic.
  • groomofweirdgroomofweird Member Posts: 1,045 Arc User
    edited February 2014
    Due to the epic wall of text I have not the inclination to bear reference to all the points I find interesting.
    I do agree with some of your suggestions that would in fact require me to largely respec and rebuild allot of my toons, but I am in favour of this as it would create diversity and allow them to greater fulfill their chosen professions.
    Other points you raise I don't think could be woven into game mechanics easily, some could.
    And some of the interface ideas you mention though practical, some may consider a "dumbing down" of the game, or removing the level of ship skill customization some players relish.
    Still some food for thought there but that was an darned long post.
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  • lucho80lucho80 Member Posts: 6,600 Bug Hunter
    edited February 2014
    All I got from that long post is that he wants sensors to be the most powerful sci skill. I do like the idea of moving power insulators up a rank or two. Damn skill is too powerful to be where it is now.
  • cmdrskyfallercmdrskyfaller Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited February 2014
    And some of the interface ideas you mention though practical, some may consider a "dumbing down" of the game, or removing the level of ship skill customization some players relish.
    Still some food for thought there but that was an darned long post.

    On the contrary, it is there to reduce the number of 'dumbed down' customization.

    For example, you can spec an escort only in one way really. All tactical skill boxes except threat control to 9 (and no stealth if you don't use a cloaking device), then all the shield and hull repair & HP boosting boxes to 9 and finally the remaining points you spend getting as many power levels and resists as you can based on your particular build.

    In this case the only 'customization' you have is whether you prefer more power bonuses or more resists. Escorts in this cookie cutter template have maxed out healing and maxed out hull and shield HP.

    With my changes, the escort has to spend more points in tactical than before (Capt. points more expensive) and really has to decide between shields or hull repair or their hitpoint buffers or power levels... he can't max them all anymore and he no longer has the 'I-win' feature of attack omega's defenses and damage boost all in one. Nor can he make a crit-boat if he does not spend points on sensors and weapon specializations and targeting.

    By reducing the ability to 'one template for all' you increase the number of templates that focus on specific capabilities ...or who choose to try to mix and match defense and offensive abilities and utilities.

    Sci and Engineers on the flip side finally get to be more effective at their roles because the other classes no longer can get their best and most critical abilities for little skill point spending...and for sci in particular the sci abilities are now based on skill points not aux so you do need a ship spec'd for science to shine with those abilities.
  • inkrunnerinkrunner Member Posts: 407 Arc User
    edited February 2014
    This idea has my full support. :)

    Balance is what we need in this game moving forward, and these suggestions would go a long way towards it (especially preventing attack pattern stacking and adding defense patterns).
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  • theuser2021theuser2021 Member Posts: 170 Arc User
    edited February 2014
    OMG, Engineers need a buff! :D
  • mircalla83mircalla83 Member Posts: 9 Arc User
    edited February 2014
    My take on this:
    The Result why 'Invest 3, at most 6 in a Skill' is such an issue is more due to the fact that increasing skills has a diminishing return on effect. Flipping the magnitude of the first and last 3 'sections' would help more, weak at low investment, strong at high.
    Another Problem is: While the initial implementation of Tactical Team, back when the game launches, was weak (only gave a buff to weapons and cleansed off Attack patterns and FomM), the current implementation is too strong. TT1 gives a full on Auto-Shield-Rebalance, to the point that 'take a ship with 2 Tactical Ensigns and alternate TT' is the default.
    My take on it would be: Keep the magnitude of the active buff and the removal of debuffs. increase the duration of all 'Teams' to 12. Reason for this: The 'Team' space skills have 3 Ranks. Using TT as an example, TT1 would get a 4 second duration Shield rebalance, TT2 gets 8 Seconds, TT3 the whole 12 Seconds. Suddenly, Escorts no longer can brainless blaze in and use 3 Shield Quadrants as 'Batteries' for their front due to 'chained' TT1. The 'Heals' on ET and ST are One-Time things already, and they don't even buff anymore, as they did in their initial implementation.

    Finally, the last thing that is an issue to the current state of balance: Tactical Buffs applying to non tactical abilities (Damage causing consoles, Science Abilities, Damage abilities from Engineering).
    The Tactical abilities that increase 'outgoing' Damage (as opposed to AP:Beta and Delta debuffing the enemy so it takes more 'incoming' damage) should be changed to ONLY apply to effects increased by skills from the Tactical Systems category.
    It is plain absurd when a Tactical Captain, in an Escort with LTC Non-Tac, a cruiser or a science ship can use AP: Alpha to boost their Eng/Sci Damage skills (and in case of, for example, a Tac/Escort picking GW1 in the Sci LTC slot, actually surpassing the damage that a Science ship with non-Tac Captain can do with GW3).


    TL;DR:
    Buff Sci and Eng by removing the ability for Tac to buff the magnitude of non-Tac Damage abilities, and get rid of the 'Got 2 EN Tac BO spots? Put 2x TT1 in it and chain it'
  • rylanadionysisrylanadionysis Member Posts: 3,359 Arc User
    edited February 2014
    This thread in a nutshell

    Escorts are OP, plz nerf
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  • mircalla83mircalla83 Member Posts: 9 Arc User
    edited February 2014
    This thread in a nutshell

    Escorts are OP, plz nerf

    Depends on how one takes it.
    The 'just nobrain chain 2x TT1' is a disease on EVERY ship, not excluded to Escorts. It is ridiculously easy to just 'tank' everything (that isn't oneshotting with absurd amounts of Bleedthrough or blasting shield AND hull in one go anyway, in case of energy weapons).

    And when a Tactical Captain gets MORE out of non-Tactical abilities than a captain of the specialization in question, something is just plain 'off'.

    Nerf Dual-TT1 'tanking', and nerf what a tactical CAPTAIN can buff using their class skills.
  • magniacapramagniacapra Member Posts: 544 Arc User
    edited February 2014
    This thread is mainly irrelevant given that most tac's are rommie and sit cloaked before singularity jumping and impulse capacitance cell'ing away after a vape. Who needs to spec in defence with battlecloaking and insane decloak defence bonuses!?

    The games way more broken than this for any of this TRIBBLE to make a difference.
  • daan2006daan2006 Member Posts: 5,346 Arc User
    edited February 2014
    lol all that and the op forgets about a2b,dem,faw beam boats that can faw 2 or 3 escorts to death in seconds and can still tank 3 or 4 escorts and not die, get a grip the only escort that is op is the jhas bug

    for real? can scimitar use a2b? maybe it time i give pvp a ones more :D
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  • cmdrskyfallercmdrskyfaller Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited February 2014
    This thread is mainly irrelevant given that most tac's are rommie and sit cloaked before singularity jumping and impulse capacitance cell'ing away after a vape. Who needs to spec in defence with battlecloaking and insane decloak defence bonuses!?

    The games way more broken than this for any of this TRIBBLE to make a difference.

    You see, the reason you see that is not because the player is using the romulan singularity abilities or the console to get away fast after getting a kill. What you're suffering from is that escort's being COMPLETELY IMMUNE to any counter-attack from the victim.

    Why?

    Attack omega and tac team's auto-balancing of shields. You cannot tractor him (immune!), you can barely hit him (+huge def bonus), you cant hurt him before he finished you off (you need to take down all of his shield HP worth due to tac team's autobalancing shields plus you're using only half of your armaments (front or back attack) while he's using a significantly higher damage output weapons with an absurd damage boost from omega on top).

    If you have a KDF character I strongly suggest you try this so you can SEE how different the game would be without tac team shield autobalance and without omega's defense buffs.

    Bird of Prey has full universal bridge officer stations.

    Set them up like this:

    Do not use Atk Omega. Use atk beta. Do not use tactical team.

    Use attack alpha to add damage boost on your test attack runs to simulate the damage boost that my suggested attack omega would give.

    Equip the ensign engineer console with emergency to engines 1

    The result? You decloak ...and you're vulnerable. You can be tractored and held and killed, you have a long duration speed boost from emg to engines but your turn rate is not boosted hence you get at best two passes at target at high speed. You have no defense nor resist bonuses so the ship you were attacking can hit you back. You have no shield autobalancing so any hits you land on the enemy ship and any hits the enemy ship lands on you have a few seconds of 'duration' in terms of shield damage ... the opening is there ..a weakened shield facing which you can use your escort's superior speed, spike damage and turn rate to focus on.

    If you stay too long near a cruiser or sci ship under these conditions you will be mauled. That is why the escorts and cloakers in particular are hit and run. Federation escorts have more hull and shields precisely because they have no battle cloaks.

    A bird of prey would have to equip the following bridge officer stations to MATCH a single attack pattern omega's defense bonuses in its current iteration:

    Subspace Field Modulator
    - +15% defense rating for a few seconds.

    Lt Engineering : Emg to Engines 1 and Aux to Dampeners
    - Speed boost, resist boost, immunity to teleport, turn rate boost and hull resists.

    Ensign Science: Polarize Hull
    - Immunity to holds, hull resist.


    FYI , pre-f2p the escorts literally had to run the above setup if they wanted to survive an attack run. They needed to have polarize hull or they'd be tractored and gobbled up. They needed the speed boost in order to hit one shield facing, come about and hit it again while their polarize hull was active...and then use the last few seconds of polarize hull and emg to engine duration to get OUT of 5km range or they'd be tractored and gobbled up.

    The escorts doing this attack run got hit while doing this. They got hurt. Their remaining lt station was usually dedicated to healing or to 'escape' abilities (jam sensor/scramble).



    The changes I propose do not only affect escorts although it does affect them the most..for they are the ships that are currently benefiting the most from the current system. The alterations to the skill point costs makes ship captains not be able to be good at everything with one build, it forces the player to choose which elements to give up in order to gain best performance in another.

    For you see, the current meta has all the science and engineering abilities that are critical to healing.... available in the lowest skill point cost abilities and their bridge officer abilities that heal are accessible at LT stations which any ship has access to. In contrast, the LT Cmdr and above abilities of tactical are denied to most non-tactical ships and the provide as you have seen above, the equivalent of 2 officer station's worth of abilities with one click PLUS a damage boost. Sci and Cruiser ships get no equivalent high-performing abilities in the Lt Cmdr and Commander slots. Not for healing and not for damage nor utility. Sure, their upper tier abilities are stronger than the lower level ones and they get unique abilities there...but they simply dont come close at all to the effective impact of attack omega or the insanely higher bonus damage that high yield/spread/beam overload/FAW3 get compared to their 1 and 2 versions.

    With the change of skill box locations and switching the performance of abilities to skill points not aux you balance out the performance of the lower tier abilities. A tactical captain that does could not afford to spend 6 or 9 points on shield emitters or hull repair skills because they are now much higher skill point costing boxes simply cannot heal himself as well as if he had spent points on it.
  • erei1erei1 Member Posts: 4,081 Arc User
    edited February 2014
    mircalla83 wrote: »
    Depends on how one takes it.
    The 'just nobrain chain 2x TT1' is a disease on EVERY ship, not excluded to Escorts. It is ridiculously easy to just 'tank' everything (that isn't oneshotting with absurd amounts of Bleedthrough or blasting shield AND hull in one go anyway, in case of energy weapons).

    And when a Tactical Captain gets MORE out of non-Tactical abilities than a captain of the specialization in question, something is just plain 'off'.

    Nerf Dual-TT1 'tanking', and nerf what a tactical CAPTAIN can buff using their class skills.
    And how is it more ridiculous and nobrain than spamming spacebar with balance shields keybinded ?
    The whole gameplay need work. But they can't monetize it, so it will probably stay that way.
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  • mustrumridcully0mustrumridcully0 Member Posts: 12,963 Arc User
    edited February 2014
    One interesting idea I've heard from the designers behind the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons. They consider that maybe the "Striker" aka "DPS" role was perhaps suboptimal.

    The idea I see behind this is the same as we see in STO: damage wins the game. The only way to win against the enemy is to take away all his hit points. You can do all the fancy crowd control and healing stuff, but it's all an indirect way to success, generally meaning it will take longer.

    I am not sure what the best solution would be, but maybe one would think along these lines:
    - Everyone deals damage, and can get damage buffs. Ship type, career choice, it doesn't matter, damage is what everyone deals.

    The different roles focus on damage mitigation - how do you avoid taking damage.

    Tactical: Maneuvering, Positioning, Dodging - you try to get into a position where the enemy deals less damage to you, and you avoid damage.

    Engineering: Healing and Resistances. You take the damage, and then shrug it off.

    Science: Crowd Control.
    You use crowd control abilities to suppress the enemies ability to inflict damage against you.


    Basically, all 3 roles might take 30 seconds to kill an NPC cruiser. But if you don't use any powers, you might die.
    The Escort would survive because it attacks from the rear, and constantly evades shots.
    The Cruiser survives because it takes the damage and then recovers from it.
    The Science Vessel would dispel the enemies damage buffs, breaks its heal, and stuns or immobilizes it, or debuffs its damage output.

    You can also have an hybrid - an Engineer in an escort would have less damage avoidance but more healing. A Tact in an cruiser would have a bit less healing but more damage avoidance.
    A scientist in an escort would sacrifice some debuffs in exchange for more mobility and damage avoidance.
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