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Carriers and the Upcoming Changes -- Voicing some Concerns
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Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
I don't mean to sound "gloom and doom" but my instincts tell me that the upcoming changes to carrier operations and design has some inherent flaws built into them that are based on bias and flawed perspective, and not reality.
I will start with the #1 issue on my mind -- and I may not get any further that that due to time, but we will see.
One of the most important planned changes is going to be a tweaking of the carrier mechanics to reduce playing field "spam" The idea is to reduce the number of fighters or craft a carrier can launch, but compensate that reduced number by making the individual craft tougher.
Here are the problems witih that logic...
1. No offense, Federation Captains, but the truth is that in PvP, with the vessels you have now, Federation players are capable of deploying just as much "spam" as a carrier can. Photonic Fleet, Scorpion fighters, the various special ship abilities such as saucer seperation, multi-vector assault, and the hologram module, and...the biggest culprit of all -- mine layers -- doubles and triples the amount of "spam" on the playing field. In fact, I suspect that all of the complaints a lot of us are hearing from the Federation side is related more to the effects that "friendly spam" has on their lag, rather than carrier craft. However, nothing is being done to address this aspect of the battlefield clutter -- instead, carriers are being punished as the primary culprit.
2. Toughening up the deployable craft is not going to achieve any sort of parity or mitigate the loss of numbers. This is because as any PvPer knows when it comes to opposing a carrier, you ignore the pets and go after the mothership, because if you can kill the mother ship, every craft deployed from that ship instantly dies. One rock, multiple birds. The only thing that would possibly change that equation is if the deployable craft stayed on the board of play after destruction of the carrier...but I suspect that would be somewhat difficult to accomplish game-wise.
3. Less deployable craft means less weapons, which in turn means a DPS reduction. Not too long ago, carrier deployable craft took a massive DPS reduction hit. As far as I know -- and I freely admit that I might be wrong -- but I sort of doubt that the deployable craft will get a DPS boost to balance anywhere between a 30-50% loss in combat craft deployed in the air.
Now...my philosophy is to offer up solutions, not just problems. So -- I am not saying "don't do it!" what I am saying is that if you are going to reduce the number of deployable craft, which reduces a carrier's combat capability no matter how you slice and dice it, then some other changes need to be considered to balance that loss. Here are some ideas --
1. If you reduce the number of craft, then your carriers essentially end up changing roles - this is especially true of the Vo'Qov, which, of all of the carriers, is more of a "stand off" type of launch platform. Instead of being a stand-off support platform for her fighters, a Vo'Qov will need to enter battle as a significant combatant to balance the loss of weaponry and deployable craft. To that end, that means that for the Vo'qov, some changes are going to have to be made. Here are a few suggestions:
a. Provide the Vo'qov with an additional weapons bank in the forward arc, like the Karfi has.
b. Provide the Vo'qov with an innate armor resistance buff to help resist damage.
c. Give the Vo'qov a 2 point turn increase.
I am basically out of time...but my core point is essentially this -- all of these changes are being done, and according to another thread, no changes are being anticipated for the Vo'Qov simply because it is considered a good ship as it is -- I also think it is a good ship, but I also realize that when you make changes on the scale of what is being planned for deployable craft, then the role that the ship plays also changes, and with less fighter craft, then logically, the carrier becomes more of a direct combatant, more like a cruiser, in fact, with hanger bays. The Vo'Qov is ill-suited to go toe to toe with anything in that fashion.
Just some thoughts for a Tuesday morning.
I will start with the #1 issue on my mind -- and I may not get any further that that due to time, but we will see.
One of the most important planned changes is going to be a tweaking of the carrier mechanics to reduce playing field "spam" The idea is to reduce the number of fighters or craft a carrier can launch, but compensate that reduced number by making the individual craft tougher.
Here are the problems witih that logic...
1. No offense, Federation Captains, but the truth is that in PvP, with the vessels you have now, Federation players are capable of deploying just as much "spam" as a carrier can. Photonic Fleet, Scorpion fighters, the various special ship abilities such as saucer seperation, multi-vector assault, and the hologram module, and...the biggest culprit of all -- mine layers -- doubles and triples the amount of "spam" on the playing field. In fact, I suspect that all of the complaints a lot of us are hearing from the Federation side is related more to the effects that "friendly spam" has on their lag, rather than carrier craft. However, nothing is being done to address this aspect of the battlefield clutter -- instead, carriers are being punished as the primary culprit.
2. Toughening up the deployable craft is not going to achieve any sort of parity or mitigate the loss of numbers. This is because as any PvPer knows when it comes to opposing a carrier, you ignore the pets and go after the mothership, because if you can kill the mother ship, every craft deployed from that ship instantly dies. One rock, multiple birds. The only thing that would possibly change that equation is if the deployable craft stayed on the board of play after destruction of the carrier...but I suspect that would be somewhat difficult to accomplish game-wise.
3. Less deployable craft means less weapons, which in turn means a DPS reduction. Not too long ago, carrier deployable craft took a massive DPS reduction hit. As far as I know -- and I freely admit that I might be wrong -- but I sort of doubt that the deployable craft will get a DPS boost to balance anywhere between a 30-50% loss in combat craft deployed in the air.
Now...my philosophy is to offer up solutions, not just problems. So -- I am not saying "don't do it!" what I am saying is that if you are going to reduce the number of deployable craft, which reduces a carrier's combat capability no matter how you slice and dice it, then some other changes need to be considered to balance that loss. Here are some ideas --
1. If you reduce the number of craft, then your carriers essentially end up changing roles - this is especially true of the Vo'Qov, which, of all of the carriers, is more of a "stand off" type of launch platform. Instead of being a stand-off support platform for her fighters, a Vo'Qov will need to enter battle as a significant combatant to balance the loss of weaponry and deployable craft. To that end, that means that for the Vo'qov, some changes are going to have to be made. Here are a few suggestions:
a. Provide the Vo'qov with an additional weapons bank in the forward arc, like the Karfi has.
b. Provide the Vo'qov with an innate armor resistance buff to help resist damage.
c. Give the Vo'qov a 2 point turn increase.
I am basically out of time...but my core point is essentially this -- all of these changes are being done, and according to another thread, no changes are being anticipated for the Vo'Qov simply because it is considered a good ship as it is -- I also think it is a good ship, but I also realize that when you make changes on the scale of what is being planned for deployable craft, then the role that the ship plays also changes, and with less fighter craft, then logically, the carrier becomes more of a direct combatant, more like a cruiser, in fact, with hanger bays. The Vo'Qov is ill-suited to go toe to toe with anything in that fashion.
Just some thoughts for a Tuesday morning.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Due to the fact that some fought against multiple carriers early in there release and the huge number of pets that they could create, the VoQ has for ever carried the Spam moniker.
Its no longer even remotely true and has done nothing but see nerf after buff after nerf given to the VoQ.
Carrier spam is bad but double Scramble effects are good evidently is the philosophy
In addition to carrier pets, mines, Photonic Fleet, and many other sources of spam have been the subject of ongoing discussions. Right now we are hip deep in the build on Tribble, but after that cools down a bit I expect we will be tackling more of these kinds of issues.
To be honest, after I changed my targeting options to exclude the ability to target NPCs and pets, my spam issues have disapeered leaving only SS/AMS as the main spam.
Now infact I have to target any NPC/Pet spam via mouse pointer if I wish to shoot them, and can now TAB target through Player toons in PvP with no issue.
Well my targerting issues with Carriers has been resolved that way, true...
But honestly, targerting sucks enough without pets. Some "Kind" of crossair to pick targerts would be a great addition.
My personal second issue with carriers and their spam is a completly diffrent one: Their sole presence turn pvp into a slideshow. And I know others share that problem.
And to make that clear... I dont want carriers to be nerfed. But that is still anoying.
Photonic Fleet: needs fewer but tougher, higher DPS ships, just like with carrier pets. I'd kind of prefer to get rid of this since science officers are already dramatically overpowered in PvP (because of SNB, Sensor Scan, and Sci Fleet which make them tops in both offense and defense) but I understand that Science is much weaker in PvE, so Photonic Fleet is necessary there.
Scorpion Fighters: shouldn't exist. If they do exist, they should require a hangar bay.
Saucer Separation: needs a little buff if anything. It's one NPC, and severely under-gunned.
MVAM: There really isn't a way to reduce the number of ships. I kind of think that the separated ships ought to have a bit more of a downside to them; right now there is no trade off to using MVAM. But there's nothing that can be done about the spam.
Mines: should get the same treatment as fighters. There should be far fewer mines deployed (1 without using a dispersal pattern would be fine) but they should be harder to destroy (or harder to detect) and do much more damage. Mines aren't used in Trek the way they are in the game anyway, so there's no downside to dramatically reducing their number.
Whether or not to ignore the pets depends on how fast you can kill the carrier. An escort can just burn down the carrier (though they still might prefer CSV over CRF to keep pets under control), but a cruiser will generally need to thin out the pets.
If you aren't using FAW or another AOE ability, then the pets can reach a critical mass long before the carrier is threatened. If there are multiple carriers and they manage to get their full compliment of pets out, just going into the cloud means you lose.
It's not that players need to focus on killing the pets, but the pets need to be killed as a byproduct of AOE attacks.
With fewer fighters, I wouldn't mind if they aren't automatically killed by FAW, TS, or PSW. It would be okay if they were tough enough that they actually needed to be targeted to be killed.
But you can't just ignore the pets -- they'll kill you faster than you can kill the carrier if you do that.
I assumed the deployables were getting a DPS increase.
Right now deployables are feast or famine. If I park on a carrier and drop EWP on him continuously, then he'll be lucky to get 3 or 4 fighters out, and that really isn't balanced. OTOH, if a team with 3 carriers manages to get their full compliment of fighters out and there isn't enough focus on killing the fighters, then they become like a school of piranhas.
There should be some sort of middle ground where carriers can reliably keep a enough fighters in the air to do enough damage, but letting them launch their maximum doesn't result in such a DPS increase.
Any game that has pets and PvP has this problem. It was probably a bad idea to have carriers as playable ships at all, especially for the "PvP faction", but we're stuck with it. Making the carriers more cruiser-like might help, but then pets should probably be reduced even more.
Just remember that most of us who complain about spam aren't just complaining about carriers. I hate scorpions, mines, photonic fleet, and fleet support even more, because none of those needed to be added to the game at all -- carriers at least need their fighters to function.
My typical fight begins like so:
Get all 4 BoP deployed, before the fight even starts, which takes me a little over 40 seconds to accomplish now since the BoPs are now Rare with a dployment speed buff, combined with 2 Flight Deck Officers from the Doff system roster, which results in a little over 30 second cooldown time for each one, at 80 Aux power, and you no loger have to be within 15km of a target to deploy anymore,
They will actually cloak on the onset of their Alpha attack run,
They use CRF1 on their own,
They use HY1 on their own now too.
This concludes with NPC Typhoon class battleships lasting about 5 seconds from start of fight to finish...
And mind you, they are the "new" properly leveling type now on Tribble.
I had the same result with the D'diridex that the Fed ships were having trouble with also.
My 4 BoP, if left to fight a Cube on their own, tend to destroy said Cube, on their own.
My BoP barely get a scratch when Tricobalt mines blow up in their faces.
So, it's now my belief that the new rearrangement for the Carriers to reduce spam, is JUST FINE! :cool:
How is this going to make Carriers more fun to play? The niche for this ship type is to unleash a swarm of gnats on your target. That's the whole point of the class. If you cut those down, what's the point? What is our motivation for flying one?
Um...if spam is a concern at all, why did ya just release even more ships that launch fighters and such on Tribble?
Not that I mind, some of them are really nice...but the whole PvP spam hate crowd is gonna flip out over even more shps with fighters.
Myself, love carriers....bring em on.
The only way I can see the federation giving them something that will fit in line with a carrier is some how giving the federation side functioning outposts like DS9 like as it was in the series was super slow moving but had the ability to move. I'm not sure how this could ever be implemented since they can't go to warp unless there was some kind of balance components like having to be in a full team to go to warp to drag the outpost inside the warp field(or quantum slip stream) of a team being only one team could have one in a group. Being kind of skills it would have like an inherent FAW3 and Torp Spread 3 and 3 launch ports if it was like DS9 say one that launches runabouts, fighters, and delta flyers. I mostly play KDF but I just thought i'd add this an idea that might work one day to not gimp anyone on abilities for each faction. Biggest problem I do have with pets on either faction is how against certain ships they get too close and almost impossible to keep them from exploding to ships such as borg ships.
The screen gets filled up with tons of square reticles all over and it looks much worse than it is.
I think before removing spam and getting rid of it, more though should go into the space UI, because spam will always be a problem until the UI gets adjusted.
For example, why not remove the reticles for pets and then instead when you target a player, have individual icons that appear like buffs lined up for deployed ships, if you want to target the players fighters, you click the icon, and the appropriate target is selected and then the reticles appear
it would look like my signature, the icons for a bird of prey, fighters and mines appear alongside my name, if a player wants to attack them, clicking on them is all they need to do.
Then just make it so the spam targeting reticles are fliped off unless those icons are pressed.
epic space battles without lots of flying square brackets.
I know, right...?
"we're looking into ways to reduce spam"
Oh, but hey, here's another way to easily create more things to drop in space combat ie;spam :rolleyes:
I've a half a dozen different kinds, even after selling a few.
I don't have any problems with the Vo'Quv on Tribble has it is right now in PVE.
My Bulid is a bit outdated and I've seen some great new builds for Carriers poping up that I can't wait to try out.
The Kar'Fi is a Beast on Tribble right now :eek:
Or is it just that more than one carrier in a que is a lot of spam in one place?
The Carriers have been nerfed due to outcry, buffed due to outcry, nerfed again and then buffed again.
Its time to accept that they exist , adapt to thier prescence and move on.
More than enough anti-spam abilities exist and the spam has been reduced from the carrier as it is able to produce on its own.
Any other spam is a by-product of items being put into the game and anybody can use them, so those items have nothing to do with the carriers.
Amen.
10/char
That being said, I'm more interested in seeing some rethinking done on Cruisers. Cruisers need better methods of threat generation. I've been thinking about this a long time, and I really think (while all ships should have it), Cruisers most of all should come with an Innate Tractor Beam. This would be akin to the four free target subsystems that a Science vessel has. This would also allow for cruisers to continue to do crappy damage, but still tie up the enemies so that they become a more serious threat. Even cooler still, would be if we could fire off a multi-tractor beam on enemies.