so while the Varanus definitely has its shields down more than its counterparts, its hull repair ability - especially when stacked with existing hull repair abilities - means that its shields being down isn't nearly so dangerous.
Mr. Heretic have you seen what happens in PvP to a ship when it shields go down? No amount of hull healing from drones will save a ship without shields when it goes from full HP to zero in seconds.
The Varanus already pays for it's special ability with one less console. The reduced shield is a double whammy on what I understand is supposed to be a team oriented ship. And a science ship, at that.
Trouble with ships like the Varanus is that their only ever useful setup as healboats in pvp/elite STFs, but in those situations the heals flow like water anyway and even a little escort can be healing like a champ:/
But as it stands you can do all 'solo' PVE content at elite difficulty with 0 hull/shield self healing needed anyway
So the ingame need for actual pure healing setups is pretty slim, would be nice to see class/role distinction played out more in the future : say large scale STFs/Fleet Actions that would straight up require X amount of the teams players to be pure healer, others DPS and a couple of 'tanks' etc
Sorry, but that doesn't sound right to me. Every other ship pays for it's special ability by losing a console slot only, no other ship loses shields or hull. Ablative is probably the best PvP skill in the game, and even then the Intrepid only loses a console slot. The fact that the Varanus has lower shields than every other science ship seems more like a hold out to when it had higher hull -- analogous to the Raptor having more hull (but less shields) than federation equivalents. If the original reasoning was to have the Varanus lose both an engineering console *and* shields for it's ability, then that seems like poor, inconsistent reasoning -- bordering on favoritism for one faction.
Yeah, I agree, unless that healing is somthing super awesome, rule is, if you loose those shields, in PVE STF or in PVP, your 2-4 seconds from dying. regardless of heals. You all have nerf the resistances and the weapon damage bonus so much, you just dont last long enough on such a low hp style of ship. THe fact it was changed from its original purpose to begin with gave me pause as I was like ummm was nothing wrong with it... but no testing or investigation was done properly, and it got beat up with the nerf bat badly. Now we have what we have.
I enjoy the idea of making it a viable ship again, but double tapping it for its ability, when no other ships gets that? Yeah i will have to say foul, there and toss out a flag. This ship was perfect as a Gorn Vessel when it first came out. THen it got changed, incorrectly, into what it is now, and became a ship no one flew, because it had its individuality, then had it stripped away. At least you all are wanting to fix that error, BUT double tapping it again? Yeah this healing ability better be something else, otherwise, it will remain a ship no one will fly again.
*Following criticism is a touch blunt, my apologies, but it is correct and the changes that have occured in the past show it is. It a team criticism and a major concern from myself, an investor of your product.*
Understand after fighting you all in pvp, and seeing most of you dont have end game accts and dont play your own game regularly shows. It is almost as if the team (dev) have no inkling of the changes that are widespread through your own game mechanic simply due to the fact you dont play your own product to see what effect it just had. May not be company policy, but after the absolute shalacking you all took in pvp showed me that you dont know your own game mechanic. Yes the team knows the programming and what you design it to do, but dont regularly test it and know what happens with it and how it performs under the constant conditions of the live game.
Sure you can do data mining all you like, that is great, but those reports are meaningless unless you understand the play of the game and know how, who, and where those numbers are coming from.
Go watch a pvp match of when a ship losses it shields and is not a full blood cruiser or carrier who can take a hit or two, and you can see what my concern is. Hull tanking in pvp is a fantasy, it just does not happen. same in a STF, loose those shields, your dead in 2-4 seconds.
So please, stop, listen to the concern we express, and consider what we are talking about, we who play this game, know its in and outs so much we can show all of you some things you never knew this fun game could do,a nd give us the benefit of the doubt, just as we do you.
Mr. Heretic have you seen what happens in PvP to a ship when it shields go down? No amount of hull healing from drones will save a ship without shields when it goes from full HP to zero in seconds.
The Varanus already pays for it's special ability with one less console. The reduced shield is a double whammy on what I understand is supposed to be a team oriented ship. And a science ship, at that.
Another argument for making the platforms optional:
We're running a fleet setup at the moment with 1 Voquv, 1 Veranus, 1 Marauder and 2 BoPs. And guess what, we've been accused of spamming several times now. This is just not acceptable. We only have one carrier and still there are so many pets out there. Fighters from the carrier, Interceptors from the Marauder and Repair Drones from the Veranus. Please, I beg you for the sake of PVP, don't force us to bring spam into a match. Make the Interceptors and Repair Drones a console so that we're able to take it out.
Mr. Heretic have you seen what happens in PvP to a ship when it shields go down? No amount of hull healing from drones will save a ship without shields when it goes from full HP to zero in seconds.
The Varanus already pays for it's special ability with one less console. The reduced shield is a double whammy on what I understand is supposed to be a team oriented ship. And a science ship, at that.
This ship was not made with PVP as its primary role, in fact no ship is made with only PVP in mind. The Varanus performs quite well in every PVE instance I've used mine.
Another argument for making the platforms optional:
We're running a fleet setup at the moment with 1 Voquv, 1 Veranus, 1 Marauder and 2 BoPs. And guess what, we've been accused of spamming several times now. This is just not acceptable. We only have one carrier and still there are so many pets out there. Fighters from the carrier, Interceptors from the Marauder and Repair Drones from the Veranus. Please, I beg you for the sake of PVP, don't force us to bring spam into a match. Make the Interceptors and Repair Drones a console so that we're able to take it out.
It's already optional, making it a console would be wasting resources. Just don't click the power.
It's already optional, making it a console would be wasting resources. Just don't click the power.
The ship gives up a console in order to provide this rather useless "special" power. Making it a console gives you a choice between gimping yourself with a relatively worthless ability or having a ship that is actually competitive and fun. This wouldn't effect anyone PvE if they didn't want it to.
All special powers should be a console (with reasonable restrictions where applicable). If that's the trend, it's a good one, in my opinion.
The ship gives up a console in order to provide this rather useless "special" power. Making it a console gives you a choice between gimping yourself with a relatively worthless ability or having a ship that is actually competitive and fun. This wouldn't effect anyone PvE if they didn't want it to.
All special powers should be a console (with reasonable restrictions where applicable). If that's the trend, it's a good one, in my opinion.
Useless now, lets see how it turns out when they're done.
The problem with making it a removable console is that for whatever reason Cryptic thinks the Varanus should have less shields than a regular science ship. So even if the console is removable, you're still stuck with a worse ship with lower shields than the feds have.
The new special ability should be pretty damn good (as in, hands down better than Ablative, MVAM, etc) to justify losing those shields. Otherwise, things start to look pretty bad on Cryptic's part. I think most people would prefer to have the hull repair drones receive less of a buff in order to justify a fix for the Varanus' shields.
And here's a novel thought. Seeing that science ships are bordering on overpowered anyway, how about simply bringing the shields on every science ship down a notch to the level of the Varanus. That would actually improve balance overall.
Just hit LG last night and picked up a Varnus. I love the look of it, and I'm playing SCI so I thought it woulds be a good fit.
Boy was I wrong. This thing should be hauling garbage. Well maybe I misspoke. I didn't mean to say that the Varnus should be hauling garbage, I meant to say that it should be hauled away *as* garbage!
I really wanted to like this ship, but after flying the Vo'quv since hitting General, Ive got nothing nice to say about the Varnus, and Ive got a serious case of buyers remorse.
The performance of the ship seem like a step down a tier, and the heal bots dont seem to do much except add to the spam.
Whlie working on the tweaks and updates for this ship, consider replacing the bots with a console/innate ability or something to cut back on the on screen clutter. Between the fighters and mines, there is already plenty going on.
Glad this ship is getting an update, its in dire need of it.
Salami would probably have a much better idea than I, though he may not be at liberty to say yet. It is in with the same batch of fixes for carriers and fighters and a number of other balances fixes, however.
Hi. Since the carrier AI pet fixes are in, does that mean the Varanus fix is going live soon also?
Hi. Since the carrier AI pet fixes are in, does that mean the Varanus fix is going live soon also?
In, but on the new code branch. The carrier changes and the Varanus changes will probably go live around the same time the duty officer system goes live. We were really hoping they would come out sooner, but at this point that appears to be the most likely timeframe.
In, but on the new code branch. The carrier changes and the Varanus changes will probably go live around the same time the duty officer system goes live. We were really hoping they would come out sooner, but at this point that appears to be the most likely timeframe.
Working on Season 5, before actually adding anything to the Season 4 update, already? o.O
In, but on the new code branch. The carrier changes and the Varanus changes will probably go live around the same time the duty officer system goes live. We were really hoping they would come out sooner, but at this point that appears to be the most likely timeframe.
I'm probably reaching here, but... since you said both the Varanus drones have their healing boosted, and you're doing other changes to the ship (like on the repair platforms), can you "just" edit the heal numbers of the drones, so we have something to work with now, and the wait for the new code branch (which anything could delay) would be less painful?
(I'm making the assumption that the heal drone number change is something relatively easy for a dev to do, and that can be separated from all the other Varanus changes going in with the new code branch).
Working on Season 5, before actually adding anything to the Season 4 update, already? o.O
Code branches don't always line up with season demarcations. Nothing I have been working on has been formally designated as Season 5, at least not to my knowledge.
I'm probably reaching here, but... since you said both the Varanus drones have their healing boosted, and you're doing other changes to the ship (like on the repair platforms), can you "just" edit the heal numbers of the drones, so we have something to work with now, and the wait for the new code branch (which anything could delay) would be less painful?
It's not impossible; it is a little dangerous and time-consuming, however. I will see what I can do, but can't make any promises, since lining up this sort of thing in multiple moving code and deployment pipelines while hitting existing internal deadlines is...challenging.
Code branches don't always line up with season demarcations. Nothing I have been working on has been formally designated as Season 5, at least not to my knowledge.
It's not impossible; it is a little dangerous and time-consuming, however. I will see what I can do, but can't make any promises, since lining up this sort of thing in multiple moving code and deployment pipelines while hitting existing internal deadlines is...challenging.
Oh. Something else you may want to consider, as I was testing this ship on Tribble before buying it live - the drones have warp cores, even though they never go to warp. Ever. And one of them exploding near me caused 10x the damage that it ever (currently) heals.
Can you remove the warp cores, since these things never go to warp? It is kind of silly, in a very close fight, for an enemy to target/AOE the drones, that are going to be close to you anyway, trying to heal you, and they explode with a warp core breach... killing you.
Edit:
"officer Hull Repair Drone deals 489 (548) Kinetic Damage to you with Warp Core Breach."
Edit2:
"officer Hull Repair Drone deals 1593 (1783) Kinetic Damage to you with Warp Core Breach."
And this was me flying in a straight line, to avoid the cores.
Also, I maxed out all the skills the tooltip for the repair platform said to, except for the projectile/mine skills, in an attempt to increase the drone repair rate. Nope. Looks like no skills increases the drone repair rates. So we're 100% dependent on your changes to increase the repair rates.
So, my final suggestion still stands - remove all drone WARP CORES. Remove any warp cores from the repair platforms while you're at it. They never go to warp either.
Wow, Heretic youre on a Q&A marathon here. I personally would like to say, Thank You for all the info you are providing us in this thread, even though KDF is not my thing. It is good to see you are taking time to answer so many questions, thanks again for all that info
The Varanus is one of my favorite ships on the KDF side, and I'm glad to see it's getting this amoung of attention from both players and devs. I do hope that the devs create Gorn-related interiors for the ship (and the other Gorn vessels coming) that we can use for our ships.
So.. is it intended my hull repair drones completely ignore me 95% of the time I spawn them? They do follow my ship but refuse to heal my hull.
Has anyone noticed this behavior?
The hull repair drones wait until your hull is down to around 75%, as I recall, before they will start healing you. We are adding in some additional modifications to the drones to make them heal more aggressively because I agree, in their current state they can be pretty stubborn about doing what one would expect.
The hull repair drones wait until your hull is down to around 75%, as I recall, before they will start healing you. We are adding in some additional modifications to the drones to make them heal more aggressively because I agree, in their current state they can be pretty stubborn about doing what one would expect.
Well, they're still going to be worthless in PvP then. Once you lose a shield facing and your hull gets under 75% you are either going to be quickly healed, or quickly killed. The only way to consistently go down to 75% hull without losing shields is being stuck in a gravity well or warp poo, and those will kill the drones anyway. I do not see why the Varanus has to lose a console slot *and* a ton of shields for this! I am trying to like you heretic, especially after you engaged the PvP community in the early stages of TT and SS changes, but this shield thing is a really bad call. The fed science ships are completely superior, and this Varanus change is obviously not going to change that.
Not that I should care, I have been mainly playing my fed Intrepid lately because of the gross faction imbalances.
Well, they're still going to be worthless in PvP then. Once you lose a shield facing and your hull gets under 75% you are either going to be quickly healed, or quickly killed. The only way to consistently go down to 75% hull without losing shields is being stuck in a gravity well or warp poo, and those will kill the drones anyway. I do not see why the Varanus has to lose a console slot *and* a ton of shields for this! I am trying to like you heretic, especially after you engaged the PvP community in the early stages of TT and SS changes, but this shield thing is a really bad call. The fed science ships are completely superior, and this Varanus change is obviously not going to change that.
Not that I should care, I have been mainly playing my fed Intrepid lately because of the gross faction imbalances.
I find little fault with this logic. At 75% hull, chances are (with resist buffers on CD) one is going to die and the Drones will not make a bit of difference. The Varanus needs a more Gorn approach in its design.
Why does it have heal drones anyways?
I find little fault with this logic. At 75% hull, chances are (with resist buffers on CD) one is going to die and the Drones will not make a bit of difference. The Varanus needs a more Gorn approach in its design.
Why does it have heal drones anyways?
seems like a gimmick for the sake of a gimmick. if your on the ropes and your shields are down and you don't have a strong instant heal your dead quick, an over time heal from the drones might give you a split second. now if they directly absorbed damage for you as you would take it, and die as a result, that would be different. they would be emergency hit point sponges, and maybe wile they live give you some small additional buff too.
seems like a gimmick for the sake of a gimmick. if your on the ropes and your shields are down and you don't have a strong instant heal your dead quick, an over time heal from the drones might give you a split second. now if they directly absorbed damage for you as you would take it, and die as a result, that would be different. they would be emergency hit point sponges, and maybe wile they live give you some small additional buff too.
I like that idea and it has a certain "lizzard" feel to it.
That reminds me, I need to make a new Gorn Alt and name him Eddie.
Comments
Mr. Heretic have you seen what happens in PvP to a ship when it shields go down? No amount of hull healing from drones will save a ship without shields when it goes from full HP to zero in seconds.
The Varanus already pays for it's special ability with one less console. The reduced shield is a double whammy on what I understand is supposed to be a team oriented ship. And a science ship, at that.
I'm thrilled to see that screen spam is a dev concern!!!
But as it stands you can do all 'solo' PVE content at elite difficulty with 0 hull/shield self healing needed anyway
So the ingame need for actual pure healing setups is pretty slim, would be nice to see class/role distinction played out more in the future : say large scale STFs/Fleet Actions that would straight up require X amount of the teams players to be pure healer, others DPS and a couple of 'tanks' etc
I enjoy the idea of making it a viable ship again, but double tapping it for its ability, when no other ships gets that? Yeah i will have to say foul, there and toss out a flag. This ship was perfect as a Gorn Vessel when it first came out. THen it got changed, incorrectly, into what it is now, and became a ship no one flew, because it had its individuality, then had it stripped away. At least you all are wanting to fix that error, BUT double tapping it again? Yeah this healing ability better be something else, otherwise, it will remain a ship no one will fly again.
*Following criticism is a touch blunt, my apologies, but it is correct and the changes that have occured in the past show it is. It a team criticism and a major concern from myself, an investor of your product.*
Understand after fighting you all in pvp, and seeing most of you dont have end game accts and dont play your own game regularly shows. It is almost as if the team (dev) have no inkling of the changes that are widespread through your own game mechanic simply due to the fact you dont play your own product to see what effect it just had. May not be company policy, but after the absolute shalacking you all took in pvp showed me that you dont know your own game mechanic. Yes the team knows the programming and what you design it to do, but dont regularly test it and know what happens with it and how it performs under the constant conditions of the live game.
Sure you can do data mining all you like, that is great, but those reports are meaningless unless you understand the play of the game and know how, who, and where those numbers are coming from.
Go watch a pvp match of when a ship losses it shields and is not a full blood cruiser or carrier who can take a hit or two, and you can see what my concern is. Hull tanking in pvp is a fantasy, it just does not happen. same in a STF, loose those shields, your dead in 2-4 seconds.
So please, stop, listen to the concern we express, and consider what we are talking about, we who play this game, know its in and outs so much we can show all of you some things you never knew this fun game could do,a nd give us the benefit of the doubt, just as we do you.
agreed.
We're running a fleet setup at the moment with 1 Voquv, 1 Veranus, 1 Marauder and 2 BoPs. And guess what, we've been accused of spamming several times now. This is just not acceptable. We only have one carrier and still there are so many pets out there. Fighters from the carrier, Interceptors from the Marauder and Repair Drones from the Veranus. Please, I beg you for the sake of PVP, don't force us to bring spam into a match. Make the Interceptors and Repair Drones a console so that we're able to take it out.
This ship was not made with PVP as its primary role, in fact no ship is made with only PVP in mind. The Varanus performs quite well in every PVE instance I've used mine.
It's already optional, making it a console would be wasting resources. Just don't click the power.
The ship gives up a console in order to provide this rather useless "special" power. Making it a console gives you a choice between gimping yourself with a relatively worthless ability or having a ship that is actually competitive and fun. This wouldn't effect anyone PvE if they didn't want it to.
All special powers should be a console (with reasonable restrictions where applicable). If that's the trend, it's a good one, in my opinion.
Useless now, lets see how it turns out when they're done.
I believe the consensus is that it's not optional until there is an equally efficient choice to be made in not using it.
The new special ability should be pretty damn good (as in, hands down better than Ablative, MVAM, etc) to justify losing those shields. Otherwise, things start to look pretty bad on Cryptic's part. I think most people would prefer to have the hull repair drones receive less of a buff in order to justify a fix for the Varanus' shields.
And here's a novel thought. Seeing that science ships are bordering on overpowered anyway, how about simply bringing the shields on every science ship down a notch to the level of the Varanus. That would actually improve balance overall.
Boy was I wrong. This thing should be hauling garbage. Well maybe I misspoke. I didn't mean to say that the Varnus should be hauling garbage, I meant to say that it should be hauled away *as* garbage!
I really wanted to like this ship, but after flying the Vo'quv since hitting General, Ive got nothing nice to say about the Varnus, and Ive got a serious case of buyers remorse.
The performance of the ship seem like a step down a tier, and the heal bots dont seem to do much except add to the spam.
Whlie working on the tweaks and updates for this ship, consider replacing the bots with a console/innate ability or something to cut back on the on screen clutter. Between the fighters and mines, there is already plenty going on.
Glad this ship is getting an update, its in dire need of it.
Hi. Since the carrier AI pet fixes are in, does that mean the Varanus fix is going live soon also?
In, but on the new code branch. The carrier changes and the Varanus changes will probably go live around the same time the duty officer system goes live. We were really hoping they would come out sooner, but at this point that appears to be the most likely timeframe.
Working on Season 5, before actually adding anything to the Season 4 update, already? o.O
Most likely a dependency issue, what those fixes need is in that next code branch, so they can't go until those other things go in.
I'm probably reaching here, but... since you said both the Varanus drones have their healing boosted, and you're doing other changes to the ship (like on the repair platforms), can you "just" edit the heal numbers of the drones, so we have something to work with now, and the wait for the new code branch (which anything could delay) would be less painful?
(I'm making the assumption that the heal drone number change is something relatively easy for a dev to do, and that can be separated from all the other Varanus changes going in with the new code branch).
Code branches don't always line up with season demarcations. Nothing I have been working on has been formally designated as Season 5, at least not to my knowledge.
It's not impossible; it is a little dangerous and time-consuming, however. I will see what I can do, but can't make any promises, since lining up this sort of thing in multiple moving code and deployment pipelines while hitting existing internal deadlines is...challenging.
Oh. Something else you may want to consider, as I was testing this ship on Tribble before buying it live - the drones have warp cores, even though they never go to warp. Ever. And one of them exploding near me caused 10x the damage that it ever (currently) heals.
Can you remove the warp cores, since these things never go to warp? It is kind of silly, in a very close fight, for an enemy to target/AOE the drones, that are going to be close to you anyway, trying to heal you, and they explode with a warp core breach... killing you.
Edit:
"officer Hull Repair Drone deals 489 (548) Kinetic Damage to you with Warp Core Breach."
Edit2:
"officer Hull Repair Drone deals 1593 (1783) Kinetic Damage to you with Warp Core Breach."
And this was me flying in a straight line, to avoid the cores.
Also, I maxed out all the skills the tooltip for the repair platform said to, except for the projectile/mine skills, in an attempt to increase the drone repair rate. Nope. Looks like no skills increases the drone repair rates. So we're 100% dependent on your changes to increase the repair rates.
So, my final suggestion still stands - remove all drone WARP CORES. Remove any warp cores from the repair platforms while you're at it. They never go to warp either.
Has anyone noticed this behavior?
The hull repair drones wait until your hull is down to around 75%, as I recall, before they will start healing you. We are adding in some additional modifications to the drones to make them heal more aggressively because I agree, in their current state they can be pretty stubborn about doing what one would expect.
Well, they're still going to be worthless in PvP then. Once you lose a shield facing and your hull gets under 75% you are either going to be quickly healed, or quickly killed. The only way to consistently go down to 75% hull without losing shields is being stuck in a gravity well or warp poo, and those will kill the drones anyway. I do not see why the Varanus has to lose a console slot *and* a ton of shields for this! I am trying to like you heretic, especially after you engaged the PvP community in the early stages of TT and SS changes, but this shield thing is a really bad call. The fed science ships are completely superior, and this Varanus change is obviously not going to change that.
Not that I should care, I have been mainly playing my fed Intrepid lately because of the gross faction imbalances.
I find little fault with this logic. At 75% hull, chances are (with resist buffers on CD) one is going to die and the Drones will not make a bit of difference. The Varanus needs a more Gorn approach in its design.
Why does it have heal drones anyways?
seems like a gimmick for the sake of a gimmick. if your on the ropes and your shields are down and you don't have a strong instant heal your dead quick, an over time heal from the drones might give you a split second. now if they directly absorbed damage for you as you would take it, and die as a result, that would be different. they would be emergency hit point sponges, and maybe wile they live give you some small additional buff too.
I like that idea and it has a certain "lizzard" feel to it.
That reminds me, I need to make a new Gorn Alt and name him Eddie.