My 2 EC as a long time Kar-Fi pilot. First, the console, while it sounds nice, will not get used if it's a science console. The Borg Console is used in a sci slot on most ships, & it is more useful than a 10 second out of every 3 minute console. i dont want to only have 2 sci consoles boosting my Cmdr Boff's sci abilities , make the console an Engineering console, & then add an additional engineering console slot to the Kar-Fi, giving it 3 in total, or just make it an innate ship ability. Instead of adding more Spam, Give the playable Kar-Fi the eject warp plasma ability that the npc ones have. I feel 6 Frigates per Kar-fi, each having almost as much hull as the Kar-Fi does, might be a bit much..
If we go down that route, lower tier carriers would probably become available at Commander 1...at least initially.
I am a BIG fan of bringing lower tier carriers into the mix. I'd really like to see the number of hangar bays progress with the tiers as well. Maybe that means rebalancing the number of fighters per squadron if you end up having 4 hangar bays on a T5 ship?
I also love the idea of bringing rarity and Mk values to fighter squadrons. Itemisation for fighters squadrons is very limited. Straight away here are a number of variables you can spit by:
1) Weapon flavour: Disruptor, Plasma, etc.
2) Weapon loadout: Beam, cannon, torpedo, etc.
3) Mk grade: MkII, MkVI, etc.
4) Rarity & bonuses: Agility bonuses, speed bonuses, damage bonuses, etc.
Ok, here is my honest and 100% upfront opinion. I'm not holding anything back or playing nice.
Just going to call it how I see it. It may seem harsh but your getting the goods.
Carriers
Some people love them, some people hate them. Some people think they are reasonable in the IP, some don't. For the forseeable future we do see a role for them to play in the KDF. Similarly, we do not currently have any plans to give carriers to the Federation.
Please put one in the cstore for federation and make it 5000 points. Make it suck hard though and turn just as bad as the voquv. You will make a ton of money from feddie bears that think carriers are an I win button. Then with all the money raised, put it towards making some new KDF ships.:D
Fighters
I almost titled this "Spam", but my professionalism won out this time (barely). Right now, fighters die too fast, yet there are, frankly, too many on the screen for performance and targeting purposes. There are some user interface issues that I think are the biggest problem here, but in parallel I think there is some benefit to simply cutting down the sheer number of fighters, but making them more effective individually.
Sounds good. Less fighters, but make them more effective and not as squishy. Definitely on the right track here, much respect.
Controls
This is being looked into. This is, unfortunately, a very meaty problem that is going to be expensive to address; user interface changes are not cheap. That being said, we are seeing if there are some things we can do to ease things a bit in the mid-term.
RTM, LTP blah blah whatever. My care factor = 0 . You could make the thing fly itself and people would still complain it was too hard. I'm not sure what the problem is here? Oh wait the fact that this is even considered an issue seems to be the problem.
Vo'quv
There seems to be a split in opinion as to - after FAW is dealt a swift slap in the face, of course - whether the Vo'quv is fine or not. It is an incredibly beefy ship with a really nice bridge officer seating, and this makes it tough to take down without coordination or tactics. That being said, right now we're leaning towards leaving it alone for the moment, at least until we see the effect the FAW fix and the above-mentioned fighter thinning-out have.
Seems fine to me. Out of the 3 roles of damage, science and healing this is jack of all trades and master of none. I'd like to see fighters / pets take or more specialised roles such as send fighters to attack subsystem X like in SFC. Then the carrier may actual have a useful role in premades.
Currently this can stay alive longer that it should to due Tact team which needs adjusting, but that is another issue entirely.
Perhaps fix boarding parties so they are actually useful and then fighters can go on anti-shuttle duty :cool:
Lower-Tier Carriers
This is currently under consideration.
Has no real bearing on PVP due to low tiers being almost completely deserted. How bout making PVP levelling alot faster than PVE grinding, so people actually have a reason to level though PVP. Also make KvK PVP give the Klingon equivalent of diplomacy with unique rewards
Kar'fi
The Kar'fi is a bit of a problem child. It has a very aggressive bridge officer seating, but its turn rate is what you would expect from a large carrier. Combined with the lack of a cloak, this makes it relatively fragile. On top of this, although it has four forward weapon slots, this puts it in the awkward position of whether to devote more power to Weapons or more power to Auxiliary.
This ship is squishy. Again its only real value in PVP is because of the frigates annoy the TRIBBLE out of other people with cron torps and tric mines. Fits in well with my idea of carriers having a more de-buffing/disabling role.
My vote would be to adjust all carriers to better fit a disabling / de-buffing role, which would require an adjustment to a more sci ship like BO layout. Even if carriers have to drop weapon slots and only have 2xfore and 2xaft weapons as a balance adjustment to compensate for pets i think it would be worth it.
Then let the player decide if they want to run damager pets or disabler pets
To this end, we are considering the following changes:
1. Adding a second hanger bay.
2. Adding a Kar-fi-only Science console with a power called Phase Shift based off of the Fek'ihri escort NPC currently in the game. This console would come with the ship. If we do this, existing Kar'fi would be given this console for free.
3. Modifying the fighters (only) to give them increased maneuverability to improve their attempts to kamikaze, since right now they miss far too frequently - which sometimes also leads to AI issues.
1. No
2. Hell No, You guys at Cryptic don't seem to understand, with all the special power consoles or abilities there are only two outcomes, either it
a) sucks hard
b) too good not to use
For example
The intrepid armour is too good, the Gorn repair drones suck hard
Enough with the special ability's already, unique bridge officer layouts on each ship should be what makes them unique as well as ship stats such as speed and hull strength etc. Please stop making KDF ships with the same BO layouts as federation ones.
3. Its something but it really doesn't help the overall carrier situation and kamikaze damage is meaningless in premade pvp.
Please stop making KDF ships with the same BO layouts as federation ones.
This is unrealistic, isn't it? There are four BOFF slot types; TAC, SCI, ENG and universal. There are four BOFF ranks; Ens, Lt, Lt.C, Cmdr. There are "rules" as to which focus a ship should have and how many BOFF powers should be available. There just aren't enough variables to produce different layouts for Fed and KDF 100% of the time.
Of course, add in Helmsman as a BOFF type and you suddenly get a lot more variety...
I'd like to take a moment and go into the general state of ship balance currently in the game, including the proposed new Khar'fi and a few other 'problem ships' in the game.
Warning, massive amount of text crits for over 9000!
We'll start with the ship currently being discussed, as well as it's closest equivalent fed side if these changes go through:
Khar'fi & Interpid
As one of the more prolithic Khar'fi pilots around these parts, I would very much like to have the super ship. Hell, the feddies have the MVAM and the Intrepid, so it's only fair we get something horribly unbalanced too!
But seriously, instead of bringing the Khar'fi up to the level of the other two super ships in the game, you'd be better off bringing it up a little bit and bringing those other two ships down to the level of the rest.
First of all, six Khar'fi frigates is too much. Aside from doing decent damage, these pets launch tric mines, slow targets down with chroniton procs, and worst of all absolutely destroy enemy DPS with aceton field. When that aceton field gets cast onto a damage dealer It's like having an extra hull and shield heal. If the Khar'fi is to get two hangers, the frigates need to be rebalanced, or the maximum deployable per hangar needs to go down (two from each hanger would still be 1 more than before, and they would also still deploy faster from two hangars), or the cooldown on frigates could just be raised significantly.
Invulnerability powers are quite frankly weak design, at least in the eyes of many veteran PvPers. RSP isn't all too terrible thanks to short duration, and the fact that a competent team will have a SNB ready and can usually intuit when it is needed. Ablative armor though is harder to counter, and is probably the most overpowered ability in the game. In matches with a long pace, the interval when an intrepid pilot is seriously threatened and needs to use ablative can quite easily be higher than the interval of the cooldown, and in that case flying an Intrepid becomes God mode. Obviously, the better team you have the more OP ablative becomes, which is terrible.
At the very least though ablative can be countered --PSW is a strong counter, while VM and BTAS are weak ones. This phase shift ability would be even worse, since it has no counter. Sure your team can't target you either and therefore can't heal you, but 10sec is more than enough time to heal yourself a bit and if you're still focused when the effect wears off your team will be ready with focused HoTs and spike heals which should easily mitigating incoming damage.
Phase shift needs to be counter-able. Since it is the counter skill to ablative, PSW and draining aux would at least have a certain symmetry -- although in the case of phase shift this would need to be a preemptive or accomplished with Tyken's due to the lack of target lock.
Speaking of draining aux, one way to balance both Phase shift and ablative could be in the form of a minimum aux power requirement, say at 50 aux. This way it becomes easier to counter both abilities with power drain. BTAS becomes a hard counter as opposed to a soft one, although in the case of phase shift it would still need to be preemptive.
If they are allowed in the game at all, invulnerability powers should have very long cooldowns. Cryptic "nerfed" ablative by reducing it's duration as well as it's cooldown timer which turned out to be a buff in disguise. The frequency that you can use an invulnerability power is far more important than the duration. Even a 5 second period of relief is enough for a competent team to harden a target to the point of near invulnerability. Both ablative and phase shift should be in the realm of a 4-5 minute cooldown if Cryptic is set on keeping their current incarnations in the game.
Better yet, you can change both skills so that they offer a superb defense bonus instead of pure invulnerability. Eg. double to triple the bleed-through on ablative. Eg. have phase shift cause a set percentage (for example, 1/2) of attacks (and perhaps even debuffs) to completely miss the target (technobabble explanation: it is "phasing in and out" of our dimension). Perhaps with that implementation the duration could be increased to 15 seconds, the same as ablative. I also like the idea of a movement/turnrate buff.
Having the console take a science slot seems fine (that's where I would probably put it), but doesen't make sense given that the MVAM console doesn't take a tac slot and can instead go anywhere. Be consistent. Either phase console should be able to go anywhere, or the MVAM console should eat a tactical slot. Being inconsistent can end up looking like bias and create tension between the factions. (eg. Vorcha having less than the excelsior)
Besides that, there are two other ships that are in desperate need tweaking: the MVAM and the Varanus.
Varanus
For the Varanus, the special ability is junk. The healing is not noticeable in the least, and it creates spam. Spam is bad.
That the Varanus is the only science ship on the Klingon side just makes it worse. We lose a very valuable engineering console for an absolutely junk ability. It's a gimped DSSV. Support platforms should either:
a. Be more useful and less spammy
b. Be a console so that players can opt out and just fly a DSSV clone.
c. or both
MVAM
Moving onto the MVAM, the biggest issue isn't the great boff layout (PSW is better than anything you could ever hope to stick into another Ltc. Tac slot offensively), but the fact that the beta section is better than the entire ship *and* has pets that like the frigates spread painful debuffs (although the pets do tend to be otherwise stupid).
The beta section:
Significantly faster than a BoP
Turns better too!
Has more weapons
Has more tac consoles (most important console for an escort)
Has an extra ensin boff vs. the BoP
Has more health and shields than a BoP, despite being 1/3 of a ship
Has a higher weapons power bonus than a BoP
Did I mention it also gets pets that spread debuffs?
It's just grossly out of line. The typical argument is that if you die you're stuck on a long cooldown, but that argument only works if you happen to die
You see, on a good team the escort can be extremely hard to kill. He has the highest defense, maneuvers out of arcs easily, is always hardened by his team mates, and gets a massive amount of attention from his team when he is under attack. If you don't die during a match then the cool-down argument is empty. Like ablative, the better of a team you are on, the more OP the MVAM becomes. Not to mention, triggering separation breaks target lock and can save your bacon when used at the right time.
So no, no super ship please. Khar'fi is mostly fine as is. A small buff is fine. There are already two super ships in the game that are desperately crying out for a balance pass. Instead of taking the Khar'fi up to (or even above) the level of those two ships, lets take those two down to the level of the rest. But if Cryptic doesn't intend to balance the other super ships in the game, by all means let the Klingons have one as well. Fair is fair.
THe Phase SHift ability does indeed not sound good. Canonically, you couldn't interect at all when phase shifted. Just use t hat - no one can target you, and all you can do is "interact" with yourself. Maybe apply to Phase Shift (and Ablative Armor) also an Aux Drain or something like that, to reduce its ability to let you come back from nothing.
I agree with many of the issues you are describing; some are easier to address than others.
We are looking into what it would take to get higher quality/rarity levels for fighters, and to loosen up to some extent what fighters can go on what carriers, though there's still a lot of discussion and there are some technical challenges to this, unfortunately.
The pets disappearing after the allotted time is something we are looking into, because while I understand why it was done, I think it may be doing more harm than good.
what I mean by 'making the pets more powerfull if you want to' is a give and take. If I want them with more defence, i will reduce there dps. If i want them with more dps, i will reduce their hp's.
Like you do when you fix the power levels of your avatar ship.
Now, unless you mean to make, for example, a BOP pet with more DPS or more HP's or with different weapons, that is cool.
But also what about something in the character skills sheet that will improve your pet functions?
What about making the S'Kul fighters (or maybe even some new type of pet) into Defensive or PBAoE pets?
They could orbit in a 3KM sphere around your ship, and kamikaze any Tricos/HY Plasmas/whatever while firing off their turrets.
Or, similar to the Warshade ability in City of Heroes, make them something like Orbitting Death; anything that comes within 3KM of you takes a DoT until they clear out. Justify it by saying they're emitting some sort of radiation field around your ship. Or, if not a DoT, then maybe make it like Dampening Field or an AoE Aceton Field; anything coming in at your or anyone within their sphere of influence has damage decreased by 10% or something.
I think the problem with the karfi is the speed/turning/defense. Its tough to use forward weapons on it when its such a juicy target for the opposition and is so easily slowed or immobilized. One of our teammates (who is widely known throughout the pvp community for using the karfi, probably the best [or only? haha] in the game in it) will do well against random teams, but the second the other team is organized he is constantly getting harassed and is trapped. At that point it doesnt take much to get to the hull, and once that happens there is little hope of saving it. For premade matches he goes in the bird or the varanus.
So overall i think a faster ship would be most welcome. I would say somewhere around the recon sci vessel (the damage sci ship for Feds) for turning and a notch up in speed. Can kind of kill two birds with one stone where it can actually be used as a "sci" ship as well, as klings currently only have 1. It would have a tradeoff with the damage department though due to all the tactical Boffs.
The phase shift would compliment this as well, though i dont think it is necessary. If the phase shift is implemented, make sure it cannot be taken off the karfi, that would be horribly overpowered on something like a bird of prey.
I dont think it needs much more (other than AI fixes). Speed in itself is a defense and can be the difference between being completely neglected and actually being utilized (see varanus before and after speed patch). I really dont think it needs a second hanger, as there are already too many things on the battlefield as is (also I would consider looking into photonic fleets being a single ship if youre looking to reduce spam, they are some of the worst spam to be honest).
Same thing goes with the Voquv. Yes the shields were nerfed, but thats a problem because it cant turn or move. Its defense is so low and the shield facings so wide, its so easy to tail it in an escort and knock down one shield facing. With a proper team the Voquv is one of the easiest ships to kill. Maybe bump it up to be equal to a cruiser in speed and turn (since it now has cruiser shields)?
I think Beagles is spot on here. The Cruiser class vessels in the Klingon fleet are some of the best in the game because of their turn rates. Even just giving the Vo'quv a Star Cruisers turn rate would be huge in making the Vo'quv a more reasonable ship to play. I'm not sure why people think the Vo'quv is so tough. Any escort worth their salt can come in and wipe out all his pets and a shield facing in one pass, and likely put a world of hurt on their hull. Especially if they come in from the side or the back where they don't have to worry about their science abilities. By the way, most of those science abilities aren't really usable since the turn rate on that big tuna boat is worthless. Only npc's fall prey to that, or someone making a mistake in pvp. I'll grant the vo'quv player can use tss, hazard emitters and such, but it still doesn't make them the big bad that some people say they are. In pvp, if I'm not goofing, I'd simply rather play something else that is more straight forward than that... and less of a big target.
Don't get me wrong, I love my Kar'fi and my Vo'quv (I have a player built for each), but I just don't see them as pvp contenders. They're quite fun in pve, but sadly pve is rather scarce on the Klingon side so this is a bad mark against these ships. If I want to tank, I go Cruiser, Negh'var or the retrofit.
With regard to the Kar'fi it actually sounds exciting to give them another hangar bay and I'd suggest that they make the Phase Shift innate. After all Battle Cloak is innate. Additionally, I believe they should give the Defiant a console back and let it have its Cloak. Compare the Defiant's abilities and Numbers to a Raptor. To me its just a good choice.
Someone made a dismissive comment about controlling 'pets' as a Carrier. Clearly they don't understand the concept of a Carrier, or they have never played masterminds before. Either way, Carriers would be a lot more interesting if you could send them to attack (at any range) send them in a defensive holding pattern, and keep them on follow if you want to avoid one conflict to engage another. Command and Control is what the Carrier is about, and you can't properly do that as of now. You simply hope they attack what you want them to, at times. If there is too much spam around you, you can not do that. Anyone saying otherwise is either clueless or just hates the class of ship.
While I realize that control is difficult to create, this would probably be the single best thing you could add to the Carrier class vessels.
Giving vo'quv a star cruiser like turn rate would be a huuuge slap in the face of galaxy class users....its big, it should be worst turning ship in game, but its defences should be adequate to compensate.
Same goes for crapfi getting turrn rate of recon... :rolleyes: maybe DSSV like turn rate, but not the recons.
I'm fine with the vo'quv keeping a crappy turn rate, but give it back the shields it needs to actually remain viable. Even with high science class shields, a Negh'var is tougher than the vo'quv, purely based on maneuverability.
Thanks in large part to maneuverability, a Defiant or a Raptor can actually be fairly tanky for what they are.
Would it be possible to have a power built into carriers that has a dependence on Aux and allows you to buff your fighters? Some sort of AoE like the Science Capt skill but only applies to fighters? Or a fast recharge targeted buff? perhaps allow fighters to appear next to my capt icon or ship info in the HUD to allow for targeting of them?
Pets are hard to balance. There is a very fine line between useless and overpowered, and the fact that a carrier can have drastically differing amounts of pets out (i.e. not the entire pet capacity is released with the first launch) makes things even more difficult.
Therefore: Remove the (combat) pets. Turn the fighters/BoPs/frigates into a click power with a cool animation like the phaser lance. No more need for a sophisticated AI and control scheme. The player chooses the target for every attack run and then the fighters return to the carrier and disappear again at the end of the carrier attack animation.
Animations instead of actual pets could also be an improvement for the MVAM. Instead of two more or less useless pets, you get a super cool animation of three parts swirling around each other, but still acting as one ship from a player control perspective.
While I fully agree pets are hard to balance, I think removing them would be admitting defeat. Cryptic is very capable of doing pets. I don't know what staff they have lost/gained over the years but Mastermind from City of Villains was one of the best pet classes in all MMO games in my own opinion. A few steps down but worth a mention is the pet mechanics from Champions Online. Worse then the pet mechanics in games like WoW and Rift, but certainly workable. Now we have.....Carriers. 'Nuff said.
But by god I will not let them give up on pets just yet. I play a pet class in every MMO I come across. To simply remove them from STO... No, there's got to be a way to keep them. There are plenty of great ideas.
Target PC ships only mode. Reduce number spawned while increasing survivability/strength. Make the ships spawn as a wing, not several individual ships. Give better controls to the carriers for manipulating their fighters. -Something- rather then the chopping board....
First of all, six Khar'fi frigates is too much. Aside from doing decent damage, these pets launch tric mines, slow targets down with chroniton procs, and worst of all absolutely destroy enemy DPS with aceton field. When that aceton field gets cast onto a damage dealer It's like having an extra hull and shield heal. If the Khar'fi is to get two hangers, the frigates need to be rebalanced, or the maximum deployable per hangar needs to go down (two from each hanger would still be 1 more than before, and they would also still deploy faster from two hangars), or the cooldown on frigates could just be raised significantly.
Invulnerability powers are quite frankly weak design, at least in the eyes of many veteran PvPers. RSP isn't all too terrible thanks to short duration, and the fact that a competent team will have a SNB ready and can usually intuit when it is needed. Ablative armor though is harder to counter, and is probably the most overpowered ability in the game. In matches with a long pace, the interval when an intrepid pilot is seriously threatened and needs to use ablative can quite easily be higher than the interval of the cooldown, and in that case flying an Intrepid becomes God mode. Obviously, the better team you have the more OP ablative becomes, which is terrible.
Speaking of draining aux, one way to balance both Phase shift and ablative could be in the form of a minimum aux power requirement, say at 50 aux. This way it becomes easier to counter both abilities with power drain. BTAS becomes a hard counter as opposed to a soft one, although in the case of phase shift it would still need to be preemptive.
Having the console take a science slot seems fine (that's where I would probably put it), but doesen't make sense given that the MVAM console doesn't take a tac slot and can instead go anywhere. Be consistent. Either phase console should be able to go anywhere, or the MVAM console should eat a tactical slot. Being inconsistent can end up looking like bias and create tension between the factions. (eg. Vorcha having less than the excelsior)
If we give the Kar'fi an additional hanger, obviously other numbers will need to be tweaked. This may be the frigates themselves in some way, the number of waves out, or something else entirely.
I feel invulnerability powers do, in fact, have a place, both in PvE and PvP as a counter to excessive aggro for the former and focus fire for the latter - and anything to break up the unfortunate monstrosity that is the value of focus fire is a plus in my book - where we can, let's reward tactics over blind dogpiling.
Obviously, invulnerability powers need to be situational and contextual, but where they provide a viable tactical option they are useful. Also obviously, if numbers are unbalanced those numbers can be changed, but that's not sufficient justification to throw the baby out with the bathwater - that would be truly lazy design.
The minimum Aux level is an interesting idea, btw.
We are, in fact, looking at integrating more special abilities into consoles so that players have the option to use them or not, and in some cases even move them more freely from ship to ship. However: the point is that both should be viable options, so if ship abilities are out of whack, then we need to make efforts to bring them into line. Some may require particular playing styles to get the most out of them and that's fine, but none should be useless.
There are, unfortunately, a lot of inconsistencies that we are trying to clean up while at the same time moving the design forward, and this is inevitably going to be a messy process.
I feel invulnerability powers do, in fact, have a place, both in PvE and PvP as a counter to excessive aggro for the former and focus fire for the latter - and anything to break up the unfortunate monstrosity that is the value of focus fire is a plus in my book - where we can, let's reward tactics over blind dogpiling. Whilst I agree...in part - do you not accept that to take down cruisers, carriers etc that SOME element of Focus Fire is a necessity at times? The huge survivability some of these ships have does require an element of focus fire, if focus firer is bad, why have team play?
Obviously, invulnerability powers need to be situational and contextual, but where they provide a viable tactical option they are useful. Also obviously, if numbers are unbalanced those numbers can be changed, but that's not sufficient justification to throw the baby out with the bathwater - that would be truly lazy design. Hm, I can't disagree that if balanced right it won't be a huge problem.
My comments in green. AS someone who has played a carrier (the Klingon one, I forget the actual name...) I often found that against a mid-low level team, the enemy couldn't take me down without at least two ships focussing. I'm concerned you seem to be implying that Boff powers allow any ship to take out any other one on one - for an experienced well built player this is true, for the general PVP masses? It is not.
If we give the Kar'fi an additional hanger, obviously other numbers will need to be tweaked. This may be the frigates themselves in some way, the number of waves out, or something else entirely.
I feel invulnerability powers do, in fact, have a place, both in PvE and PvP as a counter to excessive aggro for the former and focus fire for the latter - and anything to break up the unfortunate monstrosity that is the value of focus fire is a plus in my book - where we can, let's reward tactics over blind dogpiling.
Obviously, invulnerability powers need to be situational and contextual, but where they provide a viable tactical option they are useful. Also obviously, if numbers are unbalanced those numbers can be changed, but that's not sufficient justification to throw the baby out with the bathwater - that would be truly lazy design.
The minimum Aux level is an interesting idea, btw.
We are, in fact, looking at integrating more special abilities into consoles so that players have the option to use them or not, and in some cases even move them more freely from ship to ship. However: the point is that both should be viable options, so if ship abilities are out of whack, then we need to make efforts to bring them into line. Some may require particular playing styles to get the most out of them and that's fine, but none should be useless.
There are, unfortunately, a lot of inconsistencies that we are trying to clean up while at the same time moving the design forward, and this is inevitably going to be a messy process.
Here I am, still hoping that special powers on the already existing ships get turned into consoles as well.
Kar'fi
The Kar'fi is a bit of a problem child. It has a very aggressive bridge officer seating, but its turn rate is what you would expect from a large carrier. Combined with the lack of a cloak, this makes it relatively fragile. On top of this, although it has four forward weapon slots, this puts it in the awkward position of whether to devote more power to Weapons or more power to Auxiliary.
To this end, we are considering the following changes:
1. Adding a second hanger bay.
2. Adding a Kar-fi-only Science console with a power called Phase Shift based off of the Fek'ihri escort NPC currently in the game. This console would come with the ship. If we do this, existing Kar'fi would be given this console for free.
3. Modifying the fighters (only) to give them increased maneuverability to improve their attempts to kamikaze, since right now they miss far too frequently - which sometimes also leads to AI issues.
Becomes untargetable (you actually lose targeting lock on it)
Gains stealth against ships roughly outside of normal combat range
Can move freely through other ships
Cannot launch fighters or frigates
Cannot use torpedos or mines
It would still be able to use other powers (including heals and beams), but this would be intended to provide an emergency reprieve capability to at least partially compensate for the lack of high level Engineering bridge officer slots.
I'm not sure I like the idea of a second bay. This would ultimately mean more spam. So I would prefer to make the pets stronger.
Some questions concerning the Phase Shift. Will you be vulnerable to AoE (GW, SS, TR, PSW...)? Will your allies be able to heal/target you? What happens if you rematerialize inside a ship (friend or foe)?
Anyway I like the Phase Shift but it sounds a lot like an upgraded Ablative Armor with shorter duration. So all issues with AA should be considered while working on Phase Shift.
In terms of the carriers I would like to see some more roles for them in terms of the ships they launch.
Perhaps like the Fek. Carrier, the Voq. Carrier could launch smaller groups of single raptor escort?
I would also like to see some expansion of the fighter roles i.e assignment of the inidivual ships to a role during setup. When that ship launches it would focus primarily on that role. Perhaps BO skills for LT could be assigned as well? e.g aggressive - seeks out enemy, of defensive - stays close to the carrier as perimeter defense.
I would also like to see craftable fighters, etc.
A retrofit of the Voq. Carrier that swaps out the CMDR SCI and LT. CMDR ENG for a CMDR ENG and LT.CMDR Sci. That would allow it to be very useful for cross-classes.
My comments in green. AS someone who has played a carrier (the Klingon one, I forget the actual name...) I often found that against a mid-low level team, the enemy couldn't take me down without at least two ships focussing. I'm concerned you seem to be implying that Boff powers allow any ship to take out any other one on one - for an experienced well built player this is true, for the general PVP masses? It is not.
To clarify, I am suggesting that blind focus fire should not be the optimal tactic in every situation a team may face.
Some questions concerning the Phase Shift. Will you be vulnerable to AoE (GW, SS, TR, PSW...)? Will your allies be able to heal/target you? What happens if you rematerialize inside a ship (friend or foe)?
Anyway I like the Phase Shift but it sounds a lot like an upgraded Ablative Armor with shorter duration. So all issues with AA should be considered while working on Phase Shift.
Phase Shift as it currently is thought of would be invulnerable to all exterior effects not already applied - friendly and hostile. If you rematerialize inside another ship you simply get bounced to the nearest valid location.
And, yes, we are keeping Ablative Armor in mind with this, and are considering it as well.
My comments in green. AS someone who has played a carrier (the Klingon one, I forget the actual name...) I often found that against a mid-low level team, the enemy couldn't take me down without at least two ships focussing. I'm concerned you seem to be implying that Boff powers allow any ship to take out any other one on one - for an experienced well built player this is true, for the general PVP masses? It is not.
My dispute to this claim, is simple. If you're fighting against inferior opponents who are disorganized and don't understand game mechanics, or are sloppy with their motions, YES you should be able to tear them up even 1:3. All things being equal you should lose however, but that's a big difference. Skill and knowledge are the elephant in the room here. Knowing what your abilities can do, maneuvering to take advantage of them, and having your ship built for maximum effect is a big part of success. If your opponents are new at pvp or badly built, or their ships are not yet geared for the task... of course they should be at a huge disadvantage.
I've seen some rather tanky Escorts out there, by merit of being Engineer-captained. I really hope the first officer system will allow us as players to access some of those types of abilities (Nadion inversion, EPS, Rotate Shield Frequency, Miracle worker) so that you can have a truly pvp viable Tactical in a Cruiser once again.
To clarify, I am suggesting that blind focus fire should not be the optimal tactic in every situation a team may face.
Phase Shift as it currently is thought of would be invulnerable to all exterior effects not already applied - friendly and hostile. If you rematerialize inside another ship you simply get bounced to the nearest valid location.
And, yes, we are keeping Ablative Armor in mind with this, and are considering it as well.
There are a lot of npc's in the expanses that use this tactic, and its not all that hard to deal with. You wait it out, then take them on. I believe the Vito'd are one of these alien groups. I'm fine with the phase shift. Especially where they are not able to shoot at you while shifted/invulnerable. Its a great way of either wasting the enemies energy if they're stupid about it, or giving time for your buddies to help you in a pvp situation.
I have one other large problem with the Vo'quv actually. The Siphons and the Shield Healers are garbage. Their AI is terrible, they die too easily, and their respawn is no better. I'd be fine with them dying if their recharge rate was off the charts faster. However, they need to be so significantly better, that they'd actually give us a reason to use them. As it stands, almost no one wants to use these and that's a true shame. Please give us a reason to use these once again.
To clarify, I am suggesting that blind focus fire should not be the optimal tactic in every situation a team may face.
I think with all the healing available, blind focus fire isn't really the best strategy. Looking into who to focus fire and how to switch targets is usually important.
Phase Shift as it currently is thought of would be invulnerable to all exterior effects not already applied - friendly and hostile. If you rematerialize inside another ship you simply get bounced to the nearest valid location.
And, yes, we are keeping Ablative Armor in mind with this, and are considering it as well.
Phase Shift should be susceptible to some powers at least. I could see Gravity Well making sense (when Ro and LaForge where phase-shifted, they were still affected by gravity...). And maybe then also Tyken's Rift, so both spatial anomalies work.
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I like the idea of fighters as animations.
I like the ideas of fighter wings as single targeted objects.
That could also be done for mines, btw. (requiring to give them a decent defense value and or some hit points). Not sure if that's technically feasible, but it could solve a lot of targeting issues, and also all solves the notable weakness of pets against area effects.
It might also make better targeting controls easier, as you have less entities to manage (both as player as well as programmer for the logic behind it.)
A big thing for me, is that all pets are common and not special. I think it'd be great to be able to craft specific types of pets, each with their own pro's and cons for use. At the very least have uncommon thru very rare pet types that could be acquired thru emblems/marks/ loot etc. It would make flying a carrier a much more personalized experience. Perhaps you would have a wing of Heghta bops instead of standard brels, but would only launch 2 instead of six, but would deliver more immediate dps, while the standard bops do more dps once all 6 are out, these could be a trade off for a bit more dps for the short term, while sacrificing dps in the long term? I dunno just some ideas, I'd love to see something like that implemented, if carriers are to stay faction exclusive, they could afford to be given a bit more customization in their primary role.
VERY IMPORTANT: If you don't see us ask specifically about something, please do not assume that we don't care about it or aren't aware of it. There are a number of restrictions to what we can and can't do - the usual suspects like schedule and technical issues (which, for example, is holding up the irritating-as-hell HoT issue with the Enhanced Battle Cloak), but others have to do with other things happening that we can't talk about.
Also, and almost as important, everybody has different opinions on what direction they want to see the game or specific ships go in, and there's no way we can make everyone happy. What we can do is listen to the feedback and balance that with what we can do and what other longer term plans are working under the hood.
With all of that out of the way, let's get on to some things we're thinking about regarding carriers in general and the Kar'fi in particular.
Carriers
Some people love them, some people hate them. Some people think they are reasonable in the IP, some don't. For the forseeable future we do see a role for them to play in the KDF. Similarly, we do not currently have any plans to give carriers to the Federation.
Fighters
I almost titled this "Spam", but my professionalism won out this time (barely). Right now, fighters die too fast, yet there are, frankly, too many on the screen for performance and targeting purposes. There are some user interface issues that I think are the biggest problem here, but in parallel I think there is some benefit to simply cutting down the sheer number of fighters, but making them more effective individually.
Controls
This is being looked into. This is, unfortunately, a very meaty problem that is going to be expensive to address; user interface changes are not cheap. That being said, we are seeing if there are some things we can do to ease things a bit in the mid-term.
Vo'quv
There seems to be a split in opinion as to - after FAW is dealt a swift slap in the face, of course - whether the Vo'quv is fine or not. It is an incredibly beefy ship with a really nice bridge officer seating, and this makes it tough to take down without coordination or tactics. That being said, right now we're leaning towards leaving it alone for the moment, at least until we see the effect the FAW fix and the above-mentioned fighter thinning-out have.
Lower-Tier Carriers
This is currently under consideration.
Kar'fi
The Kar'fi is a bit of a problem child. It has a very aggressive bridge officer seating, but its turn rate is what you would expect from a large carrier. Combined with the lack of a cloak, this makes it relatively fragile. On top of this, although it has four forward weapon slots, this puts it in the awkward position of whether to devote more power to Weapons or more power to Auxiliary.
To this end, we are considering the following changes:
1. Adding a second hanger bay.
2. Adding a Kar-fi-only Science console with a power called Phase Shift based off of the Fek'ihri escort NPC currently in the game. This console would come with the ship. If we do this, existing Kar'fi would be given this console for free.
3. Modifying the fighters (only) to give them increased maneuverability to improve their attempts to kamikaze, since right now they miss far too frequently - which sometimes also leads to AI issues.
Becomes untargetable (you actually lose targeting lock on it)
Gains stealth against ships roughly outside of normal combat range
Can move freely through other ships
Cannot launch fighters or frigates
Cannot use torpedos or mines
It would still be able to use other powers (including heals and beams), but this would be intended to provide an emergency reprieve capability to at least partially compensate for the lack of high level Engineering bridge officer slots.
The intent would be for the Kar'fi to be a very aggressive carrier - but definitely a carrier - that is more maneuverable than the Vo'quv, but with less ability to survive serious punishment.
Opinions and feedback are welcome, but please keep it productive.
Carriers
Agreed. they are a ship, no different then the skill of their pilots.
Fighters
that spam as you called it, been nerf to oblivion and back, its now kind of useless spam. While I would support making it a touch tougher, i do not support the "reduction" of the number. Still that assesment is based on the Overpower ability of GW and FaW. Pets are completely useless as fighters go vs thos simple powers making a carrier a easy target to roving groups. Lets see the changes to FaW and then we can see what changes the fighter needs first.
Kar'fi
hmm, interesting proposal. Yes, it is the problem child, yet the idea you all are working towards is a interesting one.
It is just something we will have to get on tribble and test. Balance that power out some, so it cant be exploited to create unfair advantages. I would suggest making it too that the person can only heal themselves and DONT extend the 10 second effect. 10 seconds is long enough till we can test it and see how that plays out in a battle situation.
Carriers are the reason I no longer participate in PvP. My least enjoyable experiences in STO are trying to tab through or manually target a real PC hidden amongst all the NPC fighter craft. In a small escort, I am typically blown up before I can get a good shot in.
Carrier spam is a structural advantage that has nothing to do with game stats or mechanics. As a Federation player in a squishy ship, I am at a distinct disadvantage when faced with spam from one or more carriers.
I am not opposed to carriers in STO. I feel they have a place in the game and are a fine KDF exclusive. I do not appreciate the structural advantage that fighter spam provides.
Comments
I also love the idea of bringing rarity and Mk values to fighter squadrons. Itemisation for fighters squadrons is very limited. Straight away here are a number of variables you can spit by:
1) Weapon flavour: Disruptor, Plasma, etc.
2) Weapon loadout: Beam, cannon, torpedo, etc.
3) Mk grade: MkII, MkVI, etc.
4) Rarity & bonuses: Agility bonuses, speed bonuses, damage bonuses, etc.
Just going to call it how I see it. It may seem harsh but your getting the goods.
Please put one in the cstore for federation and make it 5000 points. Make it suck hard though and turn just as bad as the voquv. You will make a ton of money from feddie bears that think carriers are an I win button. Then with all the money raised, put it towards making some new KDF ships.:D
Sounds good. Less fighters, but make them more effective and not as squishy. Definitely on the right track here, much respect.
RTM, LTP blah blah whatever. My care factor = 0 . You could make the thing fly itself and people would still complain it was too hard. I'm not sure what the problem is here? Oh wait the fact that this is even considered an issue seems to be the problem.
Seems fine to me. Out of the 3 roles of damage, science and healing this is jack of all trades and master of none. I'd like to see fighters / pets take or more specialised roles such as send fighters to attack subsystem X like in SFC. Then the carrier may actual have a useful role in premades.
Currently this can stay alive longer that it should to due Tact team which needs adjusting, but that is another issue entirely.
Perhaps fix boarding parties so they are actually useful and then fighters can go on anti-shuttle duty :cool:
Has no real bearing on PVP due to low tiers being almost completely deserted. How bout making PVP levelling alot faster than PVE grinding, so people actually have a reason to level though PVP. Also make KvK PVP give the Klingon equivalent of diplomacy with unique rewards
This ship is squishy. Again its only real value in PVP is because of the frigates annoy the TRIBBLE out of other people with cron torps and tric mines. Fits in well with my idea of carriers having a more de-buffing/disabling role.
My vote would be to adjust all carriers to better fit a disabling / de-buffing role, which would require an adjustment to a more sci ship like BO layout. Even if carriers have to drop weapon slots and only have 2xfore and 2xaft weapons as a balance adjustment to compensate for pets i think it would be worth it.
Then let the player decide if they want to run damager pets or disabler pets
1. No
2. Hell No, You guys at Cryptic don't seem to understand, with all the special power consoles or abilities there are only two outcomes, either it
a) sucks hard
b) too good not to use
For example
The intrepid armour is too good, the Gorn repair drones suck hard
Enough with the special ability's already, unique bridge officer layouts on each ship should be what makes them unique as well as ship stats such as speed and hull strength etc. Please stop making KDF ships with the same BO layouts as federation ones.
3. Its something but it really doesn't help the overall carrier situation and kamikaze damage is meaningless in premade pvp.
Of course, add in Helmsman as a BOFF type and you suddenly get a lot more variety...
Warning, massive amount of text crits for over 9000!
We'll start with the ship currently being discussed, as well as it's closest equivalent fed side if these changes go through:
Khar'fi & Interpid
As one of the more prolithic Khar'fi pilots around these parts, I would very much like to have the super ship. Hell, the feddies have the MVAM and the Intrepid, so it's only fair we get something horribly unbalanced too!
But seriously, instead of bringing the Khar'fi up to the level of the other two super ships in the game, you'd be better off bringing it up a little bit and bringing those other two ships down to the level of the rest.
First of all, six Khar'fi frigates is too much. Aside from doing decent damage, these pets launch tric mines, slow targets down with chroniton procs, and worst of all absolutely destroy enemy DPS with aceton field. When that aceton field gets cast onto a damage dealer It's like having an extra hull and shield heal. If the Khar'fi is to get two hangers, the frigates need to be rebalanced, or the maximum deployable per hangar needs to go down (two from each hanger would still be 1 more than before, and they would also still deploy faster from two hangars), or the cooldown on frigates could just be raised significantly.
Invulnerability powers are quite frankly weak design, at least in the eyes of many veteran PvPers. RSP isn't all too terrible thanks to short duration, and the fact that a competent team will have a SNB ready and can usually intuit when it is needed. Ablative armor though is harder to counter, and is probably the most overpowered ability in the game. In matches with a long pace, the interval when an intrepid pilot is seriously threatened and needs to use ablative can quite easily be higher than the interval of the cooldown, and in that case flying an Intrepid becomes God mode. Obviously, the better team you have the more OP ablative becomes, which is terrible.
At the very least though ablative can be countered --PSW is a strong counter, while VM and BTAS are weak ones. This phase shift ability would be even worse, since it has no counter. Sure your team can't target you either and therefore can't heal you, but 10sec is more than enough time to heal yourself a bit and if you're still focused when the effect wears off your team will be ready with focused HoTs and spike heals which should easily mitigating incoming damage.
Phase shift needs to be counter-able. Since it is the counter skill to ablative, PSW and draining aux would at least have a certain symmetry -- although in the case of phase shift this would need to be a preemptive or accomplished with Tyken's due to the lack of target lock.
Speaking of draining aux, one way to balance both Phase shift and ablative could be in the form of a minimum aux power requirement, say at 50 aux. This way it becomes easier to counter both abilities with power drain. BTAS becomes a hard counter as opposed to a soft one, although in the case of phase shift it would still need to be preemptive.
If they are allowed in the game at all, invulnerability powers should have very long cooldowns. Cryptic "nerfed" ablative by reducing it's duration as well as it's cooldown timer which turned out to be a buff in disguise. The frequency that you can use an invulnerability power is far more important than the duration. Even a 5 second period of relief is enough for a competent team to harden a target to the point of near invulnerability. Both ablative and phase shift should be in the realm of a 4-5 minute cooldown if Cryptic is set on keeping their current incarnations in the game.
Better yet, you can change both skills so that they offer a superb defense bonus instead of pure invulnerability. Eg. double to triple the bleed-through on ablative. Eg. have phase shift cause a set percentage (for example, 1/2) of attacks (and perhaps even debuffs) to completely miss the target (technobabble explanation: it is "phasing in and out" of our dimension). Perhaps with that implementation the duration could be increased to 15 seconds, the same as ablative. I also like the idea of a movement/turnrate buff.
Having the console take a science slot seems fine (that's where I would probably put it), but doesen't make sense given that the MVAM console doesn't take a tac slot and can instead go anywhere. Be consistent. Either phase console should be able to go anywhere, or the MVAM console should eat a tactical slot. Being inconsistent can end up looking like bias and create tension between the factions. (eg. Vorcha having less than the excelsior)
Besides that, there are two other ships that are in desperate need tweaking: the MVAM and the Varanus.
For the Varanus, the special ability is junk. The healing is not noticeable in the least, and it creates spam. Spam is bad.
That the Varanus is the only science ship on the Klingon side just makes it worse. We lose a very valuable engineering console for an absolutely junk ability. It's a gimped DSSV. Support platforms should either:
a. Be more useful and less spammy
b. Be a console so that players can opt out and just fly a DSSV clone.
c. or both
Moving onto the MVAM, the biggest issue isn't the great boff layout (PSW is better than anything you could ever hope to stick into another Ltc. Tac slot offensively), but the fact that the beta section is better than the entire ship *and* has pets that like the frigates spread painful debuffs (although the pets do tend to be otherwise stupid).
The beta section:
It's just grossly out of line. The typical argument is that if you die you're stuck on a long cooldown, but that argument only works if you happen to die
You see, on a good team the escort can be extremely hard to kill. He has the highest defense, maneuvers out of arcs easily, is always hardened by his team mates, and gets a massive amount of attention from his team when he is under attack. If you don't die during a match then the cool-down argument is empty. Like ablative, the better of a team you are on, the more OP the MVAM becomes. Not to mention, triggering separation breaks target lock and can save your bacon when used at the right time.
So no, no super ship please. Khar'fi is mostly fine as is. A small buff is fine. There are already two super ships in the game that are desperately crying out for a balance pass. Instead of taking the Khar'fi up to (or even above) the level of those two ships, lets take those two down to the level of the rest. But if Cryptic doesn't intend to balance the other super ships in the game, by all means let the Klingons have one as well. Fair is fair.
Like you do when you fix the power levels of your avatar ship.
Now, unless you mean to make, for example, a BOP pet with more DPS or more HP's or with different weapons, that is cool.
But also what about something in the character skills sheet that will improve your pet functions?
They could orbit in a 3KM sphere around your ship, and kamikaze any Tricos/HY Plasmas/whatever while firing off their turrets.
Or, similar to the Warshade ability in City of Heroes, make them something like Orbitting Death; anything that comes within 3KM of you takes a DoT until they clear out. Justify it by saying they're emitting some sort of radiation field around your ship. Or, if not a DoT, then maybe make it like Dampening Field or an AoE Aceton Field; anything coming in at your or anyone within their sphere of influence has damage decreased by 10% or something.
I think Beagles is spot on here. The Cruiser class vessels in the Klingon fleet are some of the best in the game because of their turn rates. Even just giving the Vo'quv a Star Cruisers turn rate would be huge in making the Vo'quv a more reasonable ship to play. I'm not sure why people think the Vo'quv is so tough. Any escort worth their salt can come in and wipe out all his pets and a shield facing in one pass, and likely put a world of hurt on their hull. Especially if they come in from the side or the back where they don't have to worry about their science abilities. By the way, most of those science abilities aren't really usable since the turn rate on that big tuna boat is worthless. Only npc's fall prey to that, or someone making a mistake in pvp. I'll grant the vo'quv player can use tss, hazard emitters and such, but it still doesn't make them the big bad that some people say they are. In pvp, if I'm not goofing, I'd simply rather play something else that is more straight forward than that... and less of a big target.
Don't get me wrong, I love my Kar'fi and my Vo'quv (I have a player built for each), but I just don't see them as pvp contenders. They're quite fun in pve, but sadly pve is rather scarce on the Klingon side so this is a bad mark against these ships. If I want to tank, I go Cruiser, Negh'var or the retrofit.
With regard to the Kar'fi it actually sounds exciting to give them another hangar bay and I'd suggest that they make the Phase Shift innate. After all Battle Cloak is innate. Additionally, I believe they should give the Defiant a console back and let it have its Cloak. Compare the Defiant's abilities and Numbers to a Raptor. To me its just a good choice.
While I realize that control is difficult to create, this would probably be the single best thing you could add to the Carrier class vessels.
Same goes for crapfi getting turrn rate of recon... :rolleyes: maybe DSSV like turn rate, but not the recons.
Thanks in large part to maneuverability, a Defiant or a Raptor can actually be fairly tanky for what they are.
While I fully agree pets are hard to balance, I think removing them would be admitting defeat. Cryptic is very capable of doing pets. I don't know what staff they have lost/gained over the years but Mastermind from City of Villains was one of the best pet classes in all MMO games in my own opinion. A few steps down but worth a mention is the pet mechanics from Champions Online. Worse then the pet mechanics in games like WoW and Rift, but certainly workable. Now we have.....Carriers. 'Nuff said.
But by god I will not let them give up on pets just yet. I play a pet class in every MMO I come across. To simply remove them from STO... No, there's got to be a way to keep them. There are plenty of great ideas.
Target PC ships only mode. Reduce number spawned while increasing survivability/strength. Make the ships spawn as a wing, not several individual ships. Give better controls to the carriers for manipulating their fighters. -Something- rather then the chopping board....
If we give the Kar'fi an additional hanger, obviously other numbers will need to be tweaked. This may be the frigates themselves in some way, the number of waves out, or something else entirely.
I feel invulnerability powers do, in fact, have a place, both in PvE and PvP as a counter to excessive aggro for the former and focus fire for the latter - and anything to break up the unfortunate monstrosity that is the value of focus fire is a plus in my book - where we can, let's reward tactics over blind dogpiling.
Obviously, invulnerability powers need to be situational and contextual, but where they provide a viable tactical option they are useful. Also obviously, if numbers are unbalanced those numbers can be changed, but that's not sufficient justification to throw the baby out with the bathwater - that would be truly lazy design.
The minimum Aux level is an interesting idea, btw.
We are, in fact, looking at integrating more special abilities into consoles so that players have the option to use them or not, and in some cases even move them more freely from ship to ship. However: the point is that both should be viable options, so if ship abilities are out of whack, then we need to make efforts to bring them into line. Some may require particular playing styles to get the most out of them and that's fine, but none should be useless.
There are, unfortunately, a lot of inconsistencies that we are trying to clean up while at the same time moving the design forward, and this is inevitably going to be a messy process.
Here I am, still hoping that special powers on the already existing ships get turned into consoles as well.
I'm not sure I like the idea of a second bay. This would ultimately mean more spam. So I would prefer to make the pets stronger.
Some questions concerning the Phase Shift. Will you be vulnerable to AoE (GW, SS, TR, PSW...)? Will your allies be able to heal/target you? What happens if you rematerialize inside a ship (friend or foe)?
Anyway I like the Phase Shift but it sounds a lot like an upgraded Ablative Armor with shorter duration. So all issues with AA should be considered while working on Phase Shift.
In terms of the carriers I would like to see some more roles for them in terms of the ships they launch.
Perhaps like the Fek. Carrier, the Voq. Carrier could launch smaller groups of single raptor escort?
I would also like to see some expansion of the fighter roles i.e assignment of the inidivual ships to a role during setup. When that ship launches it would focus primarily on that role. Perhaps BO skills for LT could be assigned as well? e.g aggressive - seeks out enemy, of defensive - stays close to the carrier as perimeter defense.
I would also like to see craftable fighters, etc.
A retrofit of the Voq. Carrier that swaps out the CMDR SCI and LT. CMDR ENG for a CMDR ENG and LT.CMDR Sci. That would allow it to be very useful for cross-classes.
To clarify, I am suggesting that blind focus fire should not be the optimal tactic in every situation a team may face.
Phase Shift as it currently is thought of would be invulnerable to all exterior effects not already applied - friendly and hostile. If you rematerialize inside another ship you simply get bounced to the nearest valid location.
And, yes, we are keeping Ablative Armor in mind with this, and are considering it as well.
My dispute to this claim, is simple. If you're fighting against inferior opponents who are disorganized and don't understand game mechanics, or are sloppy with their motions, YES you should be able to tear them up even 1:3. All things being equal you should lose however, but that's a big difference. Skill and knowledge are the elephant in the room here. Knowing what your abilities can do, maneuvering to take advantage of them, and having your ship built for maximum effect is a big part of success. If your opponents are new at pvp or badly built, or their ships are not yet geared for the task... of course they should be at a huge disadvantage.
I've seen some rather tanky Escorts out there, by merit of being Engineer-captained. I really hope the first officer system will allow us as players to access some of those types of abilities (Nadion inversion, EPS, Rotate Shield Frequency, Miracle worker) so that you can have a truly pvp viable Tactical in a Cruiser once again.
There are a lot of npc's in the expanses that use this tactic, and its not all that hard to deal with. You wait it out, then take them on. I believe the Vito'd are one of these alien groups. I'm fine with the phase shift. Especially where they are not able to shoot at you while shifted/invulnerable. Its a great way of either wasting the enemies energy if they're stupid about it, or giving time for your buddies to help you in a pvp situation.
Phase Shift should be susceptible to some powers at least. I could see Gravity Well making sense (when Ro and LaForge where phase-shifted, they were still affected by gravity...). And maybe then also Tyken's Rift, so both spatial anomalies work.
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I like the idea of fighters as animations.
I like the ideas of fighter wings as single targeted objects.
That could also be done for mines, btw. (requiring to give them a decent defense value and or some hit points). Not sure if that's technically feasible, but it could solve a lot of targeting issues, and also all solves the notable weakness of pets against area effects.
It might also make better targeting controls easier, as you have less entities to manage (both as player as well as programmer for the logic behind it.)
Carriers
Agreed. they are a ship, no different then the skill of their pilots.
Fighters
that spam as you called it, been nerf to oblivion and back, its now kind of useless spam. While I would support making it a touch tougher, i do not support the "reduction" of the number. Still that assesment is based on the Overpower ability of GW and FaW. Pets are completely useless as fighters go vs thos simple powers making a carrier a easy target to roving groups. Lets see the changes to FaW and then we can see what changes the fighter needs first.
Kar'fi
hmm, interesting proposal. Yes, it is the problem child, yet the idea you all are working towards is a interesting one.
It is just something we will have to get on tribble and test. Balance that power out some, so it cant be exploited to create unfair advantages. I would suggest making it too that the person can only heal themselves and DONT extend the 10 second effect. 10 seconds is long enough till we can test it and see how that plays out in a battle situation.
Carrier spam is a structural advantage that has nothing to do with game stats or mechanics. As a Federation player in a squishy ship, I am at a distinct disadvantage when faced with spam from one or more carriers.
I am not opposed to carriers in STO. I feel they have a place in the game and are a fine KDF exclusive. I do not appreciate the structural advantage that fighter spam provides.