In contrast to some other players, i would like STO to be more true to what we saw in the shows. Making energy weapons more diverse would be a step into the right direction IMHO.
I still don't think that Star Trek ships can be squeezed into a stone scissor and paper game mechanic, and still be true to the shows.
STO should be definitely more like a Star Trek simulator than a arcade game IMHO.
Way to prove my point there, big guy.
Besides, how much 'weapon diversity' did we see in the shows? Generally one energy type per species - weapons that were presumably standardized in most militaries. So your 'position' should technically call for /less/ weapon diversity.
Making the game more 'simulation'y in no way precludes the introduction and maintenance of balanced ship 'types'. I'm all in favour of more 'simulation' aspects, but that is in contrast with 'arcadey' aspects, not 'gamey' aspects like having a wide variety of different-but-balanced weapons and vessels. From a game-system-design standpoint having that balance is a /good call/, and stubbornly harping on about what was seen on screen has /no relevance/: A balance must be struck between adherence to lore and what makes a good game, and the introduction of more useful ships of the 'fast, maneuverable, hard-hitting' type is not some grand betrayal of the source material because /we did see those kinds of ships on-screen/.
I appreciate all these ideas for keeping my suggestion from being overpowered. 160 degree arc? Fine with me, but I wasn't sure if Cryptic could do that. Can't hit fighters, shuttles, mines or torpedoes? Fine again with me. I'd even suggest that it shouldn't work with BFAW. But I won't accept any protest that it'd be an "overpowered deathray" unless whoever makes that protest can justify it, especially compared to the advantage Klingon cruisers have.
I like this idea, because at times I find Cruisers and Science ships low in DPS and the only way to do any damage in PVP is using FAW with DEM and APA.
Heavy Arrays could have 2 settings like a harder punch with a slower recharge rate with a secondary fire which is weaker but faster as well.
I appreciate all these ideas for keeping my suggestion from being overpowered. 160 degree arc? Fine with me, but I wasn't sure if Cryptic could do that. Can't hit fighters, shuttles, mines or torpedoes? Fine again with me. I'd even suggest that it shouldn't work with BFAW. But I won't accept any protest that it'd be an "overpowered deathray" unless whoever makes that protest can justify it, especially compared to the advantage Klingon cruisers have.
I think its actually a good idea to have the weapons be useful situationally in some cases. Similar to how the torps are for when shields are down.
I'm sure the weapon arc is actually just a number they insert.
Sometimes I don't understand the lack of reason and overabundance of knee-jerk dismissal coming from some players.
Hey, lack of reason and knee-jerk dismissal from a vocal part of the PvP crowd is why we have the broken Enhanced Battle Cloak right now.. why would you expect anything less?
It's an intresting idea, and I think it'd be great for the Galaxy R, as they did have genuinely hench phaser arrays. However, my only problem is this, a BOIII from a DBB is quite a heavy punch to be sure. And I think DBBs are 141 DPV compared to the array's 108 at MkI. Now, if we had 216 DPV, or scaled this up to Mk XI at 420dpv, we'd quickly approach a point where not only have we got a much more powerful beam overload, but we'd completely obsolete the spinal phaser lance.
It's a cool idea though, but I think a different mechanic for it may work, like doing the same damage as an array but in one shot rather than four. This would lend it greater burst damage, but far less utility for FAW so there's that trade off, and it'd mirror the mechanic between DCs and DHCs.
It's an intresting idea, and I think it'd be great for the Galaxy R, as they did have genuinely hench phaser arrays. However, my only problem is this, a BOIII from a DBB is quite a heavy punch to be sure. And I think DBBs are 141 DPV compared to the array's 108 at MkI. Now, if we had 216 DPV, or scaled this up to Mk XI at 420dpv, we'd quickly approach a point where not only have we got a much more powerful beam overload, but we'd completely obsolete the spinal phaser lance.
It's a cool idea though, but I think a different mechanic for it may work, like doing the same damage as an array but in one shot rather than four. This would lend it greater burst damage, but far less utility for FAW so there's that trade off, and it'd mirror the mechanic between DCs and DHCs.
It would be trouble on Escorts, so perhaps this would be specific to certain ship types like Cruisers and Science Ships. With the Excelsior, perhap it wouldn't be able to be equipped to older ships?
It would be trouble on Escorts, so perhaps this would be specific to certain ship types like Cruisers and Science Ships. With the Excelsior, perhap it wouldn't be able to be equipped to older ships?
That's a good point, it could be gated for cruisers in the same way that DHCs are for escorts. On rereading the original post though, aside from the way BO would interact with it, I think it's probably the better way of doing this. It's just the difficulty of incorporating BO with this weapon considering the numbers involved. I don't suppose anybody knows wether BO affects all beams the same, or has specific values for DBBs and BAs rather than a set formula?
i made a thread suggesting this very thing last year, I've had a lot of time to think since then about a acceptable solution. the problem is the single beam array in game is only accurate for very small arrays that you find on an excelsior class, or in the aft area of more modern ships. there isn't a weapon in game that portrays the very long main arrays that the larger ships like the galaxy, nebula, akira, cheyenne, sovereign, etc... have. in about 90% of 24th century star trek ship combat we see these large cruisers fire single powerful shots. sure they could fire 3 of 4 beams from the main arrays but just like in game its more effective to have damage spikes then a dull wearing down of your target with a bunch of wimpy shots.
sense this is a startrek game, all the weapons in it should be as close to what is canon as possible. if new weapons needed to be added or changed the game needs to be adjusted around them, not try to make them work within the current system. that is the incorrect mindset and any new weapon suggestions always get shot down because everyone thinks in those terms.
a canon accurate very long main array has these key features
- extremely powerful
- high rate of fire
- near 360 degree firing arc
- each shot takes considerable power
well, kind of sounds like the most overpowered weapon there is! well that's why they are used, its by far the most versatile weapon in star trek. there are disruptor cannons that are more powerful shot for shot, but those are shot out of gun barrels and lack the firing arc of arrays.
well, how can a weapon like this work in a game that needs to be balanced? considering large arrays almost always only fire 1 beam at a time, all those weapon slots arnt going to be needed. what to do with them? maybe the way to make a beam array a 'heavy beam' would be to equip 1 beam array, and to fill the rest of the unused weapon slots with tactical consoles (beam boosters or energy type boosters), and each tactical console you equip in weapons slots makes the 1 equipped beam array have a slightly higher arc (up to 360, but not able to fire through itself of course), take 10 more energy, and have increased damage. that way you would see a cruisers acting properly, firing 1 shot at a time from its main array only with a near 360 degree arc doing basically the same dps it was doing before with 6-8 beam broadsides.
to make things more accurate you could make the damage it deals much higher then before, BUT small fragile ships would have defense/evasion scores that were so high that these very powerful cruiser weapons would miss more often then they hit escorts/bops. that way escorts wouldn't get annihilated by these powerful cruiser weapons. cruisers would only be able to use their devastating weapons to bash other cruisers over the head, also ending endless cruiser duel stalemates!
this could even work for all energy weapons, cannons too. equip 1 dual heavy cannon and the rest of your weapons slots could have tactical consoles. that dual heavy cannon's effectiveness would be so great that you could truly make high speed attack runs with your defense/evasion at maximum and not have to park behind someone to deal damage. you wouldn't have to equip rear turrets anymore too.
so basically the game needs adjusting before more canon like weapons are added or fixed, and i think this would be a good way to start going about it.
Voyager was a light cruiser designed to be faster and more maneuverable than the galaxy actually, it's in the Voyager pilot.. The idea of Intrepid class ships as science vessels is a STO invention..
The Nova is to the Intrepid as the Nebula is to the Galaxy as the Oberth is to Constitution and/or Excelsior...
heh.. actually if you look at it this way, every major "show" cruiser has had a science vessel sister-ship..
But yeah, really only one on-screen escort... the Defiant..
Even the Prometheus is referred to as a cruiser on voyager..
i made a thread suggesting this very thing last year, I've had a lot of time to think since then about a acceptable solution. the problem is the single beam array in game is only accurate for very small arrays that you find on an excelsior class, or in the aft area of more modern ships. there isn't a weapon in game that portrays the very long main arrays that the larger ships like the galaxy, nebula, akira, cheyenne, sovereign, etc... have. in about 90% of 24th century star trek ship combat we see these large cruisers fire single powerful shots. sure they could fire 3 of 4 beams from the main arrays but just like in game its more effective to have damage spikes then a dull wearing down of your target with a bunch of wimpy shots.
sense this is a startrek game, all the weapons in it should be as close to what is canon as possible. if new weapons needed to be added or changed the game needs to be adjusted around them, not try to make them work within the current system. that is the incorrect mindset and any new weapon suggestions always get shot down because everyone thinks in those terms.
a canon accurate very long main array has these key features
- extremely powerful
- high rate of fire
- near 360 degree firing arc
- each shot takes considerable power
well, kind of sounds like the most overpowered weapon there is! well that's why they are used, its by far the most versatile weapon in star trek. there are disruptor cannons that are more powerful shot for shot, but those are shot out of gun barrels and lack the firing arc of arrays.
well, how can a weapon like this work in a game that needs to be balanced? considering large arrays almost always only fire 1 beam at a time, all those weapon slots arnt going to be needed. what to do with them? maybe the way to make a beam array a 'heavy beam' would be to equip 1 beam array, and to fill the rest of the unused weapon slots with tactical consoles (beam boosters or energy type boosters), and each tactical console you equip in weapons slots makes the 1 equipped beam array have a slightly higher arc (up to 360, but not able to fire through itself of course), take 10 more energy, and have increased damage. that way you would see a cruisers acting properly, firing 1 shot at a time from its main array only with a near 360 degree arc doing basically the same dps it was doing before with 6-8 beam broadsides.
to make things more accurate you could make the damage it deals much higher then before, BUT small fragile ships would have defense/evasion scores that were so high that these very powerful cruiser weapons would miss more often then they hit escorts/bops. that way escorts wouldn't get annihilated by these powerful cruiser weapons. cruisers would only be able to use their devastating weapons to bash other cruisers over the head, also ending endless cruiser duel stalemates!
this could even work for all energy weapons, cannons too. equip 1 dual heavy cannon and the rest of your weapons slots could have tactical consoles. that dual heavy cannon's effectiveness would be so great that you could truly make high speed attack runs with your defense/evasion at maximum and not have to park behind someone to deal damage. you wouldn't have to equip rear turrets anymore too.
so basically the game needs adjusting before more canon like weapons are added or fixed, and i think this would be a good way to start going about it.
I am just going to say it what is the point of a escort then? With heavy beam arrays, there's no reason for anyone to fly an escort. When you can get a cruiser that will keep you alive, and give a good amount of dps, with heavy beam arrays.
I am just going to say it what is the point of a escort then? With heavy beam arrays, there's no reason for anyone to fly an escort. When you can get a cruiser that will keep you alive, and give a good amount of dps, with heavy beam arrays.
exactly, why even bother fly paper boat , when you can do same dps while you tanking
I doubt such a thing would cause people to leave Escorts.
Personally, I would like Escorts to be brought down a notch. Unless you are an experienced player and having Tac Team, RSP and tons of heals, you're just an easy kill against a cannon escort.
I'm a cruiser captain, and I'm honestly very skeptical.
In theory I like the idea, but:
I don't see why it makes sense for Cruisers and Sci vessels, but not for Escorts. There is, as near as I can tell, no reason for the restriction other than "Suck it escorts, you got cannons." Which is... ridiculous.*
Second, you have an upper limit of how many dual and dual heavy cannons you can get on-target at a time, 4x at most. You could have up to *8* heavy beam arrays on a target at once. Moreover you can use Emergency Power to Weapons and Attack Pattern Delta I (or Beta I if you prefer) to dish out ludicrous damage that way.
You do realize that the first post does say they could only be mounted in forward slots right? soooo that 8 is cut in half.
I would love a larger firing arc for my escorts canons. That being said, I feel that if you had a harder hitting array that could probably devistate my escorts weak hull and shields in one shot then you need to make the firing arc 90 degrees or less. Giving me a chance to out manuever you. I would love to see the game balance changed, I would love to see my prometheus firing beam weapons right next to that galaxy and tanking hits, not firing cannons. It is just that cannons are better on escorts. Just my two pressed latinum.
In contrast to some other players, i would like STO to be more true to what we saw in the shows. Making energy weapons more diverse would be a step into the right direction IMHO.
I still don't think that Star Trek ships can be squeezed into a stone scissor and paper game mechanic, and still be true to the shows.
STO should be definitely more like a Star Trek simulator than a arcade game IMHO.
Live long and prosper.
No current series to show this timeline exists: It is shown that starfleet have been building during a war and escorts would be produced more.
Science ships are mostly off doing boring stuff..hell they had to send voyager to a different quadrant to make it interesting.
Cruisers have been common as they have been the main ship in 3 of the series and all the movies. Doesnt mean they are 95% of the fleet though
Regards the screenshots..it is a fact that due to cost constraints they copy&pasted the same old models over and over. I wouldnt be surprised if those excelsiors and galaxys all had the same ncc number. Nevemind the fact that the most recent canon new ships to be produced have included escorts (defiant, prometheus) 1 added in ds9 the other added on voyager. Which seems to show starfleet are happy to plough resources into new escorts while cruisers...well we got 1 new one ...a sovvy
If the game became a simualtor you might get some hard core sim fans join but you would lose a much greater percentage of normal people.
Holy cow, I swear less than half the people who posted in this thread actually read the original post.
forward only, so Max of 4 beams.
Same dps.
It would be a nice option, and wont break anything.
Keep in mind most cruisers can only pull off bo2 anyway.
This wouldn't break anything, shesh.
Why not limit them to the "big array" ships? Not sure what those are kdf-wise, but fed-side thats Galaxy-class, sovereign... Maybe a few others. Excelsior is pretty small for a full on cruiser (and so ugly!), so it might have the big arrays we are talking about.
Holy cow, I swear less than half the people who posted in this thread actually read the original post.
That's because more than half the people who posted are pure escort captains who cover their ears and throw tantrums whenever someone suggests a new space weapon that they don't exclusively get to use.
I am just going to say it what is the point of a escort then? With heavy beam arrays, there's no reason for anyone to fly an escort. When you can get a cruiser that will keep you alive, and give a good amount of dps, with heavy beam arrays.
Escort guys, I love you guys, I really do. I hate being on a team with all cruisers.
But read: The dps is the same.
Its exactly the same thing as DHC vs DC. Its not like cruisers are suddenly going to be doing any more damage in the long term. Its just a few cruisers might get slightly better burst damage - which wont change anything for escorts anyway.
Escort guys, I love you guys, I really do. I hate being on a team with all cruisers.
But read: The dps is the same.
Its exactly the same thing as DHC vs DC. Its not like cruisers are suddenly going to be doing any more damage in the long term. Its just a few cruisers might get slightly better burst damage - which wont change anything for escorts anyway.
Same degree arc as DHC, same dps\damage, restric to only forward position, lower damage multiplyer form Beam Overload i am good with that.
Why lower damage from BO ?
Beacause you can escape CRF(over time effect), but you cant escape BO(instant)
As I am running with dual beams on a cruiser right now, and use beam overload 2, most of the time in PvE the BO shot punches thru shields and into the hull on that first shot. The subsequient dual beams begin working on the hull. While in PvP the BO shot usually puts a 70% dent into their shields and the other dual beams work thru them the rest of the way.
Your Heavy Beam Array idea would, by your proposed numbers of "double the damage, half the firing rate, thus producing the same DPS" doesn't actually pan out corectly.
Say for example we compare the Heavy Beam Array and a Dual Beam Bank at a Mk 1 level with no skill and no rarity bonuses. Just Bone Stock weapons.
Your Heavy Beam Array Mk I would have 216 DPV and 87 DPS. Basically firing once very 2.48 seconds.
A Dual Beam Bank Mk I has right now 141 DPV and 112 DPS.
So with the DPS of the Dual Beams is still superior, and the DPV of the Heavy Beam is Superior to a MK VI Dual Beam which has 207 DPV.
Taken at the Mk X level, still bone stock, the Heavy Beam is 400 DPV and 160 DPS while the Dual Beams are 260 DPV and 208 DPS.
The Dual Beams still have the DPS superiority but the DPV of the Heavy Beam is the hardest striking energy weapon in the game, eclipsing the Mk XI Dual beams (287 DPV) by 113 points of DPV. Even beating out the Dual Heavy Cannons DPV of 384, but falling vastly short to it's DPS of 256.
Since most of the Big Boss Fights are about DPS, the Heavy Beam Array would very likely not be used, EXCEPT for maybe being combined with BO.
Remember my anicdote from the beginning? If I combined your Heavy Array with the skill points and the Very Rare craftability like my Duals have, with the first Heavy Beam BO2 shot at the start of the fight would most likely punch thru the shields and at least 50% of the hull of your average PvE opponent, and it would be very probable to take down the shields of a PvP opponent and maybe start digging into their hull before the following weapons started punching in also.
Tac officers in escorts might abandon Cannons altogether in the effort to create this much feared "Death Ray". With the Tac captains resistance debuffs and the Boff lots to have BO3, it IS quite possible to acheive...
Now don't get me wrong. Don't think I'm flaming your idea. I WANT more weapon diversity with Beams.
The Heavy Beam Array idea just needs it's numbers adjusted. It's DPV needs lowered and it's DPS boosted, but not to the point of making either Dual Beams or Dual Heavies useless.
You have made a grave error. You thought the previous posts made here made any sense with all the penalties and number juggling. They don't.
Why don't they make senss? Because STOS weapons do not make sense.
We have cannons, that curiously do not have a heavy variant.
We got turrets: same thing - no heavy version.
We got dual cannons - weird thing: they have a heavy variant that is simply superior - making this dual cannon kind of redundant.
We got beams also, arrays and dual - and again no heavy variant.
Same goes for torpedo weapons.
So why do dual cannons get special treatment? The heavy type weapon is in fact better and also looks better. Why is there no heavy variant for the other weapon types? And indeed why are there still dual cannons? They suck.
Why are torpedoes basically unusable by anything but escorts ships due to issues with maneuvering a large ponderous ship into place and the lackluster payoff both visually and in terms of damage?
Cruisers gain no ground with those weapons, and thats after it was made clear that torpedoes were supposed to give equal payoff to every shipclass.
??? This whole setup needs reworking.
That aside:
Simple Fact: cruisers would be more fun to play if you could have beams that didn't fire like disco lasers.
A simple parallel to the Dual cannons and heavy cannons is in order:
The beams deal more damage per shot, but RoF is reduced so that the dps stays the same.
Power costs go up by 2.
No further changes are needed.
It will not cut into FAW's performance (unless that is a simple "set to x" type of mod on the rof and then you know where to fix) neither making it better nor making it worse that it already is.
Beam overload will obviously profit and i think i'm not alone if i say: rightfully so. it sucks - unless you get dual beams and bo2+ .
Its simply a fact that a cruiser generally is shoved into the role and support role.
It seldomly can kill anything on its own (given that a competent captain is the OPfor)
Now please engrave this into your brains:
A heavy beam array does not change that one bit.
Cruiser will still not be able to kill anything on their own, because the dps didn't change. and cruiser dps SUCKS - the heavy damage nerf arrays got at the beginning of the game did make sure of that - but didn't change the underlying problems that made people perceive cruisers to be op.
Here is the history why it got nerfed:
Back then, pvp was FvK since there were no FvF wargames.
Klingons were very much BoP heavy back then, and kinda sucked too (as far as team work went).
The usually tactic of klingons was and largely still is to swarm those feds that straggle behind.
Behind what? The Ball.
Following the age old principle of strength in groups Feds did the only thing you can do against an opponent that always has the initiative:
They huddled up into a close group and shot anyone that came out of cloak immediately.
They COULD d othat because since this is STAR TREK, most players back then naturally gravitated towards the Trek Icons. Which were cruisers for the most part. It also helped that cruisers at least had the inkling of a chance to survive a cannon ambush and not die almost instantly.(yeah thx for that shiite balance cryptic. glad you had all beta to ignore us on that.).
So there we had the ball, mostly cruisers armed with wide arc beam arrays.
Klingons dived in, hoping to score a kill with cannons and died at the stakes, so to speak.
And such it was that cryptic, in their infinity display of failure of pattern recognition decided to nerf beam array damage.
Which basically did jack shiite to solve this since the underlying mechanics were totally not related to that. at all.
The Balls power was the force multiplier you get by having 5-6 people in the only ship class able to chain rsp (back then) and deal out damage to almost anywhere an enemy could attack from.
So the cloak ambush still went into rsps, getting nullified and klingons still died at the same stakes, all though a bit slower.
So it was that cryptic did several balance passes that would gradually increase everyones chances to survive. Force multipliers went up, through the roof hitting the moon.
And as such left 2 entire ship classes hanging out in the wind unable to 1v1 anyone (if competent people are involved) and made escorts basically immortal in 1v1. Oh and yeah: cruiser basically cannot use torpedoes in any useful form or fashion. thanks for that. The old force multipliers still are there and no counters have been made for them. There is no mitigation against focused fire. There is no significant punishment for people grouping up tightly (we used to call those counters aoe nukes...) and there is no boon to people who seek to 1v1. They are actually punished for that.
Heck the most important power in pvp is chained snb.
You know all of this already since you do pvp. Which is pretty boring nowadays.
PvP is a boring joke and pve is a snoozefest since the only time npc ships are remotly dangerous is when you give them outright op powers, instead of fixing the underlying problems of them being simply under equipped as far as weapons and skills go.
It however has no meaning as far as making a new heavy array is concerned.
It will not change the dynamic in any meaningful way (the slight boost to beam overload will not change the game in a spectacular fashion and it applies to all ships equally), it will only serve to stop making arrays ships look to incredibly ridiculous.
This is to cryptic:
You made the ground combat fun. I actually experienced genuine entertainment troding along some friends and shooting things with miniguns and stuff.
So now, can we please get an equally thorough look at space combat?
Science ships are mostly off doing boring stuff..hell they had to send voyager to a different quadrant to make it interesting.
You should pay better attention to Voyager. The Intrepid class was designed as a tactical ship, not a science ship. It was fast, maneuverable, and had armament rivaling the Akira and uprated Excelsior. The Intrepid class didn't even have a science lab until they built Astrometrics. That's not much of a "science ship".
Regards the screenshots..it is a fact that due to cost constraints they copy&pasted the same old models over and over. I wouldnt be surprised if those excelsiors and galaxys all had the same ncc number. Nevemind the fact that the most recent canon new ships to be produced have included escorts (defiant, prometheus) 1 added in ds9 the other added on voyager. Which seems to show starfleet are happy to plough resources into new escorts while cruisers...well we got 1 new one ...a sovvy
1 new one... right. You do realize that the Akira class was designed and shown on-screen as a cruiser, right? For one, it's big (464m long, 315m wide, 84m tall), almost 3 times the size of the Defiant, and almost twice the width of the Prometheus. The Akira was also shown in "Message in a Bottle" as the main ship chasing the Prometheus. They sent an Akira, flanked by two Defiants. A cruiser flanked by two escorts.
Don't assume that the game is always right in where it places ships. For example:
Nebula - designed, built, and flown as a cruiser. Like most large ships, it did have science labs, but it was primarily a cruiser with a role similar to the Galaxy.
D'kyr - primarily a cruiser. Even the description in-game acknowledges that the D'kyr was intended as a cruiser, not a science ship.
Saber - intended as a support ship, not a full escort. As shown in First Contact and multiple DS9 battles, it wasn't designed or intended to take the same damage as a Defiant-class, or even the Prometheus.
Akira - as mentioned before, this ship was mostly a cruiser.
Intrepid - as mentioned before, this ship was designed as quick-response tactical cruiser
As to the heavy beam array, I definitely support this. For ships like the Galaxy, their primary arrays could deal short quick bursts, or solid heavy bursts. It'd be nice to be able to switch out at will, but having a heavy beam array would be a good compromise.
Comments
Way to prove my point there, big guy.
Besides, how much 'weapon diversity' did we see in the shows? Generally one energy type per species - weapons that were presumably standardized in most militaries. So your 'position' should technically call for /less/ weapon diversity.
Making the game more 'simulation'y in no way precludes the introduction and maintenance of balanced ship 'types'. I'm all in favour of more 'simulation' aspects, but that is in contrast with 'arcadey' aspects, not 'gamey' aspects like having a wide variety of different-but-balanced weapons and vessels. From a game-system-design standpoint having that balance is a /good call/, and stubbornly harping on about what was seen on screen has /no relevance/: A balance must be struck between adherence to lore and what makes a good game, and the introduction of more useful ships of the 'fast, maneuverable, hard-hitting' type is not some grand betrayal of the source material because /we did see those kinds of ships on-screen/.
Heavy Arrays could have 2 settings like a harder punch with a slower recharge rate with a secondary fire which is weaker but faster as well.
I think its actually a good idea to have the weapons be useful situationally in some cases. Similar to how the torps are for when shields are down.
I'm sure the weapon arc is actually just a number they insert.
Hey, lack of reason and knee-jerk dismissal from a vocal part of the PvP crowd is why we have the broken Enhanced Battle Cloak right now.. why would you expect anything less?
It's a cool idea though, but I think a different mechanic for it may work, like doing the same damage as an array but in one shot rather than four. This would lend it greater burst damage, but far less utility for FAW so there's that trade off, and it'd mirror the mechanic between DCs and DHCs.
It would be trouble on Escorts, so perhaps this would be specific to certain ship types like Cruisers and Science Ships. With the Excelsior, perhap it wouldn't be able to be equipped to older ships?
That's a good point, it could be gated for cruisers in the same way that DHCs are for escorts. On rereading the original post though, aside from the way BO would interact with it, I think it's probably the better way of doing this. It's just the difficulty of incorporating BO with this weapon considering the numbers involved. I don't suppose anybody knows wether BO affects all beams the same, or has specific values for DBBs and BAs rather than a set formula?
sense this is a startrek game, all the weapons in it should be as close to what is canon as possible. if new weapons needed to be added or changed the game needs to be adjusted around them, not try to make them work within the current system. that is the incorrect mindset and any new weapon suggestions always get shot down because everyone thinks in those terms.
a canon accurate very long main array has these key features
- extremely powerful
- high rate of fire
- near 360 degree firing arc
- each shot takes considerable power
well, kind of sounds like the most overpowered weapon there is! well that's why they are used, its by far the most versatile weapon in star trek. there are disruptor cannons that are more powerful shot for shot, but those are shot out of gun barrels and lack the firing arc of arrays.
well, how can a weapon like this work in a game that needs to be balanced? considering large arrays almost always only fire 1 beam at a time, all those weapon slots arnt going to be needed. what to do with them? maybe the way to make a beam array a 'heavy beam' would be to equip 1 beam array, and to fill the rest of the unused weapon slots with tactical consoles (beam boosters or energy type boosters), and each tactical console you equip in weapons slots makes the 1 equipped beam array have a slightly higher arc (up to 360, but not able to fire through itself of course), take 10 more energy, and have increased damage. that way you would see a cruisers acting properly, firing 1 shot at a time from its main array only with a near 360 degree arc doing basically the same dps it was doing before with 6-8 beam broadsides.
to make things more accurate you could make the damage it deals much higher then before, BUT small fragile ships would have defense/evasion scores that were so high that these very powerful cruiser weapons would miss more often then they hit escorts/bops. that way escorts wouldn't get annihilated by these powerful cruiser weapons. cruisers would only be able to use their devastating weapons to bash other cruisers over the head, also ending endless cruiser duel stalemates!
this could even work for all energy weapons, cannons too. equip 1 dual heavy cannon and the rest of your weapons slots could have tactical consoles. that dual heavy cannon's effectiveness would be so great that you could truly make high speed attack runs with your defense/evasion at maximum and not have to park behind someone to deal damage. you wouldn't have to equip rear turrets anymore too.
so basically the game needs adjusting before more canon like weapons are added or fixed, and i think this would be a good way to start going about it.
Beautiful and Smart. What else can you do??
Live long and prosper.
I fly escort with three and cruiser with one alt and I think it's a fine idea. Escorts still have speed and maneuverability...
I would not be more concerned about facing a cruiser or sci with heavy beams than I would any other weapon type.
Also, I'd like to give heavy beams a try on my cruiser.
exactly, why even bother fly paper boat , when you can do same dps while you tanking
Signed.
Personally, I would like Escorts to be brought down a notch. Unless you are an experienced player and having Tac Team, RSP and tons of heals, you're just an easy kill against a cannon escort.
You do realize that the first post does say they could only be mounted in forward slots right? soooo that 8 is cut in half.
No current series to show this timeline exists: It is shown that starfleet have been building during a war and escorts would be produced more.
Science ships are mostly off doing boring stuff..hell they had to send voyager to a different quadrant to make it interesting.
Cruisers have been common as they have been the main ship in 3 of the series and all the movies. Doesnt mean they are 95% of the fleet though
Regards the screenshots..it is a fact that due to cost constraints they copy&pasted the same old models over and over. I wouldnt be surprised if those excelsiors and galaxys all had the same ncc number. Nevemind the fact that the most recent canon new ships to be produced have included escorts (defiant, prometheus) 1 added in ds9 the other added on voyager. Which seems to show starfleet are happy to plough resources into new escorts while cruisers...well we got 1 new one ...a sovvy
If the game became a simualtor you might get some hard core sim fans join but you would lose a much greater percentage of normal people.
forward only, so Max of 4 beams.
Same dps.
It would be a nice option, and wont break anything.
Keep in mind most cruisers can only pull off bo2 anyway.
This wouldn't break anything, shesh.
Why not limit them to the "big array" ships? Not sure what those are kdf-wise, but fed-side thats Galaxy-class, sovereign... Maybe a few others. Excelsior is pretty small for a full on cruiser (and so ugly!), so it might have the big arrays we are talking about.
That's because more than half the people who posted are pure escort captains who cover their ears and throw tantrums whenever someone suggests a new space weapon that they don't exclusively get to use.
Like this guy did.
This guy threw a huuuge tantrum while not reading a single detail of my idea.
Escort guys, I love you guys, I really do. I hate being on a team with all cruisers.
But read: The dps is the same.
Its exactly the same thing as DHC vs DC. Its not like cruisers are suddenly going to be doing any more damage in the long term. Its just a few cruisers might get slightly better burst damage - which wont change anything for escorts anyway.
Same degree arc as DHC, same dps\damage, restric to only forward position, lower damage multiplyer form Beam Overload i am good with that.
Why lower damage from BO ?
Beacause you can escape CRF(over time effect), but you cant escape BO(instant)
As I am running with dual beams on a cruiser right now, and use beam overload 2, most of the time in PvE the BO shot punches thru shields and into the hull on that first shot. The subsequient dual beams begin working on the hull. While in PvP the BO shot usually puts a 70% dent into their shields and the other dual beams work thru them the rest of the way.
Your Heavy Beam Array idea would, by your proposed numbers of "double the damage, half the firing rate, thus producing the same DPS" doesn't actually pan out corectly.
Say for example we compare the Heavy Beam Array and a Dual Beam Bank at a Mk 1 level with no skill and no rarity bonuses. Just Bone Stock weapons.
Your Heavy Beam Array Mk I would have 216 DPV and 87 DPS. Basically firing once very 2.48 seconds.
A Dual Beam Bank Mk I has right now 141 DPV and 112 DPS.
So with the DPS of the Dual Beams is still superior, and the DPV of the Heavy Beam is Superior to a MK VI Dual Beam which has 207 DPV.
Taken at the Mk X level, still bone stock, the Heavy Beam is 400 DPV and 160 DPS while the Dual Beams are 260 DPV and 208 DPS.
The Dual Beams still have the DPS superiority but the DPV of the Heavy Beam is the hardest striking energy weapon in the game, eclipsing the Mk XI Dual beams (287 DPV) by 113 points of DPV. Even beating out the Dual Heavy Cannons DPV of 384, but falling vastly short to it's DPS of 256.
Since most of the Big Boss Fights are about DPS, the Heavy Beam Array would very likely not be used, EXCEPT for maybe being combined with BO.
Remember my anicdote from the beginning? If I combined your Heavy Array with the skill points and the Very Rare craftability like my Duals have, with the first Heavy Beam BO2 shot at the start of the fight would most likely punch thru the shields and at least 50% of the hull of your average PvE opponent, and it would be very probable to take down the shields of a PvP opponent and maybe start digging into their hull before the following weapons started punching in also.
Tac officers in escorts might abandon Cannons altogether in the effort to create this much feared "Death Ray". With the Tac captains resistance debuffs and the Boff lots to have BO3, it IS quite possible to acheive...
Now don't get me wrong. Don't think I'm flaming your idea. I WANT more weapon diversity with Beams.
The Heavy Beam Array idea just needs it's numbers adjusted. It's DPV needs lowered and it's DPS boosted, but not to the point of making either Dual Beams or Dual Heavies useless.
You have made a grave error. You thought the previous posts made here made any sense with all the penalties and number juggling. They don't.
Why don't they make senss? Because STOS weapons do not make sense.
We have cannons, that curiously do not have a heavy variant.
We got turrets: same thing - no heavy version.
We got dual cannons - weird thing: they have a heavy variant that is simply superior - making this dual cannon kind of redundant.
We got beams also, arrays and dual - and again no heavy variant.
Same goes for torpedo weapons.
So why do dual cannons get special treatment? The heavy type weapon is in fact better and also looks better. Why is there no heavy variant for the other weapon types? And indeed why are there still dual cannons? They suck.
Why are torpedoes basically unusable by anything but escorts ships due to issues with maneuvering a large ponderous ship into place and the lackluster payoff both visually and in terms of damage?
Cruisers gain no ground with those weapons, and thats after it was made clear that torpedoes were supposed to give equal payoff to every shipclass.
??? This whole setup needs reworking.
That aside:
Simple Fact: cruisers would be more fun to play if you could have beams that didn't fire like disco lasers.
A simple parallel to the Dual cannons and heavy cannons is in order:
The beams deal more damage per shot, but RoF is reduced so that the dps stays the same.
Power costs go up by 2.
No further changes are needed.
It will not cut into FAW's performance (unless that is a simple "set to x" type of mod on the rof and then you know where to fix) neither making it better nor making it worse that it already is.
Beam overload will obviously profit and i think i'm not alone if i say: rightfully so. it sucks - unless you get dual beams and bo2+ .
Its simply a fact that a cruiser generally is shoved into the role and support role.
It seldomly can kill anything on its own (given that a competent captain is the OPfor)
Now please engrave this into your brains:
A heavy beam array does not change that one bit.
Cruiser will still not be able to kill anything on their own, because the dps didn't change. and cruiser dps SUCKS - the heavy damage nerf arrays got at the beginning of the game did make sure of that - but didn't change the underlying problems that made people perceive cruisers to be op.
Here is the history why it got nerfed:
Back then, pvp was FvK since there were no FvF wargames.
Klingons were very much BoP heavy back then, and kinda sucked too (as far as team work went).
The usually tactic of klingons was and largely still is to swarm those feds that straggle behind.
Behind what? The Ball.
Following the age old principle of strength in groups Feds did the only thing you can do against an opponent that always has the initiative:
They huddled up into a close group and shot anyone that came out of cloak immediately.
They COULD d othat because since this is STAR TREK, most players back then naturally gravitated towards the Trek Icons. Which were cruisers for the most part. It also helped that cruisers at least had the inkling of a chance to survive a cannon ambush and not die almost instantly.(yeah thx for that shiite balance cryptic. glad you had all beta to ignore us on that.).
So there we had the ball, mostly cruisers armed with wide arc beam arrays.
Klingons dived in, hoping to score a kill with cannons and died at the stakes, so to speak.
And such it was that cryptic, in their infinity display of failure of pattern recognition decided to nerf beam array damage.
Which basically did jack shiite to solve this since the underlying mechanics were totally not related to that. at all.
The Balls power was the force multiplier you get by having 5-6 people in the only ship class able to chain rsp (back then) and deal out damage to almost anywhere an enemy could attack from.
So the cloak ambush still went into rsps, getting nullified and klingons still died at the same stakes, all though a bit slower.
So it was that cryptic did several balance passes that would gradually increase everyones chances to survive. Force multipliers went up, through the roof hitting the moon.
And as such left 2 entire ship classes hanging out in the wind unable to 1v1 anyone (if competent people are involved) and made escorts basically immortal in 1v1. Oh and yeah: cruiser basically cannot use torpedoes in any useful form or fashion. thanks for that. The old force multipliers still are there and no counters have been made for them. There is no mitigation against focused fire. There is no significant punishment for people grouping up tightly (we used to call those counters aoe nukes...) and there is no boon to people who seek to 1v1. They are actually punished for that.
Heck the most important power in pvp is chained snb.
You know all of this already since you do pvp. Which is pretty boring nowadays.
PvP is a boring joke and pve is a snoozefest since the only time npc ships are remotly dangerous is when you give them outright op powers, instead of fixing the underlying problems of them being simply under equipped as far as weapons and skills go.
It however has no meaning as far as making a new heavy array is concerned.
It will not change the dynamic in any meaningful way (the slight boost to beam overload will not change the game in a spectacular fashion and it applies to all ships equally), it will only serve to stop making arrays ships look to incredibly ridiculous.
This is to cryptic:
You made the ground combat fun. I actually experienced genuine entertainment troding along some friends and shooting things with miniguns and stuff.
So now, can we please get an equally thorough look at space combat?
You should pay better attention to Voyager. The Intrepid class was designed as a tactical ship, not a science ship. It was fast, maneuverable, and had armament rivaling the Akira and uprated Excelsior. The Intrepid class didn't even have a science lab until they built Astrometrics. That's not much of a "science ship".
1 new one... right. You do realize that the Akira class was designed and shown on-screen as a cruiser, right? For one, it's big (464m long, 315m wide, 84m tall), almost 3 times the size of the Defiant, and almost twice the width of the Prometheus. The Akira was also shown in "Message in a Bottle" as the main ship chasing the Prometheus. They sent an Akira, flanked by two Defiants. A cruiser flanked by two escorts.
Don't assume that the game is always right in where it places ships. For example:
Nebula - designed, built, and flown as a cruiser. Like most large ships, it did have science labs, but it was primarily a cruiser with a role similar to the Galaxy.
D'kyr - primarily a cruiser. Even the description in-game acknowledges that the D'kyr was intended as a cruiser, not a science ship.
Saber - intended as a support ship, not a full escort. As shown in First Contact and multiple DS9 battles, it wasn't designed or intended to take the same damage as a Defiant-class, or even the Prometheus.
Akira - as mentioned before, this ship was mostly a cruiser.
Intrepid - as mentioned before, this ship was designed as quick-response tactical cruiser
As to the heavy beam array, I definitely support this. For ships like the Galaxy, their primary arrays could deal short quick bursts, or solid heavy bursts. It'd be nice to be able to switch out at will, but having a heavy beam array would be a good compromise.