I have the oposite problem, I have 266k/300k space spent and 100k/100k ground spent. So I'll ask the same question. What happened to my 34k points?
To answer both of you, nothing.
You only get 366,000 total points. You can spend *up to* 300,000 of them on space skills. You can also spend *up to* 100,000 on ground skills. It's called 'wiggle room' and gives people a bit of leeway on exactly how they spend their points, rather than enforcing a strict 75/25% split.
they are absolutely not all needed, only most people don't feel comfortable without skilling all of them. what uses does a dive bombing, decloaking, alpha striking escort have with hitpoints and armor? none! they should be full engine power evasive after they get thier kill, or fail to get their kill. pouring points to try to correct uncorrectable weaknesses is a waist of points. a lot of science ships builds don't need boosted energy weapons damage or crit enhancers, their science abilities are their primary means of damaging. they turn pretty good too, they might not need much turn rate buffing. cruisers only really need the defensive skills, unless the user has delusions of being a major damage dealer. federation cruisers dont turn well, that's another unfixable weakness, and an unnecessary point dump for a slightly better turn rate. you had to invest in 5 (1 at each tier) '+ to ship type' skills before to get the buffs from that skill you particularly needed, now you can invest in the skills individually that you need for lot less.
What else is a dive bombing escort going to spend points on exactly? Escorts make out pretty good since they don't actually need weapon performance anymore and certainly don't need the majority of science skills.
But any science ship that doesn't spec up their DPS is seriously hurting themselves and their team. Science powers do not make up for weapon damage, not even close. You can throw gravity wells all day long, but this game is all about killing things. The Kang can't be protected by gravity wells in Cure, PVP generally requires people to die to gain an advantage, and solo PVE drags on and on with a science ship's poor DPS. And more turn rate is always better. Science ships are slugs when it counts. But in the end science has more things to spec for that no one else does.
The same largely goes for cruisers that can't DPS. Cruisers can not last forever, the stuff shooting them needs to die.
wait i though those extremely useful passives are extremely useful to every ship class, so you should be all set to switch ship types by specing into all of them right? before your '+ to ship type' skills gave you zero benefit if you switched types, now they give quite a lot of benefit. sure sure, your science skills would be messed up if you switched from non sci ship to escort or cruiser, i acknowledge that. but going from dps escort to dps cruiser should work well. that's surly what the majority of casual players will end up doing, so they are fine, and that's whats important to cryptic :rolleyes:
Most passives are useful to all. Science requires skills everyone else does not, that is well established. But there are passives that are well served at different levels for different ships.
Attack patterns on a healing cruiser? Not really useful. So I guess switching to an escort would hurt. Or maybe I'll spec into particle generators for warp plasma damage, again, no use to an escort.
An escort can now hit 125 power with just points in warp core potential, which means speccing for weapon performance is unnecessary, or can be done to a lesser level than other ships who obviously want more weapon power for more damage. Similarly if you build a science ship for full aux power all the time (which is a VERY specific build, most science builds should not do that), they don't need aux performance, not so for the other ships.
I ended up skilling my different captains very differently based on their ship type and role that I wanted to use them for. This really sucks because I am pretty well forced to fly those ships and even those roles otherwise I lose performance.
what a distorted vision you have, the opposite is true, at least for engineering skills. just about every engineering passive is helpful in its own right, so its likely most will spec into them. on top of that, you only need 1 skill, maybe 2 to fully boost engineering abilities. ive not seen an engineering ability have more then 2 skills that benefit it. before there were around 4 skills needed to fully buff abilities. it was very specific too, each EPtX for example had its own specific group of powers that buffed it, and only 1 in common, now they all have 1 or 2 common skills they all draw benefit from. aux to struc and ET are both engineering hull heals, and before they had no common skills that buffed their effectiveness, now all hull heals need but 1 skill speced into to fully buff them.
Yes, this is exactly my point. Science abilities require more expensive and just plain more skills than engineering powers. No engineering BOFF power requires a skill over T3. Tactical BOFF powers don't require over T2. Science BOFF powers require up to T5. See the disparity?
Also no BOFF power required 4 skills in the old system. It was 3 required skills for all of them, aside from a few which required nothing like Boarding parties. You needed a tier 1, 2, and one tier 3-5 skill.
i think our difference of opinion stems from you being a heavy science user, and 1 not. sounds like specing for science skills is too expensive, but im completely happy with the results for a cruiser or escort build.
Yes that is the point. Cruisers and escorts make out okay in this system, though not much room for freedom. Science just suffers.
What else is a dive bombing escort going to spend points on exactly? Escorts make out pretty good since they don't actually need weapon performance anymore and certainly don't need the majority of science skills.
But any science ship that doesn't spec up their DPS is seriously hurting themselves and their team. Science powers do not make up for weapon damage, not even close. You can throw gravity wells all day long, but this game is all about killing things. The Kang can't be protected by gravity wells in Cure, PVP generally requires people to die to gain an advantage, and solo PVE drags on and on with a science ship's poor DPS. And more turn rate is always better. Science ships are slugs when it counts. But in the end science has more things to spec for that no one else does.
The same largely goes for cruisers that can't DPS. Cruisers can not last forever, the stuff shooting them needs to die.
Most passives are useful to all. Science requires skills everyone else does not, that is well established. But there are passives that are well served at different levels for different ships.
Attack patterns on a healing cruiser? Not really useful. So I guess switching to an escort would hurt. Or maybe I'll spec into particle generators for warp plasma damage, again, no use to an escort.
An escort can now hit 125 power with just points in warp core potential, which means speccing for weapon performance is unnecessary, or can be done to a lesser level than other ships who obviously want more weapon power for more damage. Similarly if you build a science ship for full aux power all the time (which is a VERY specific build, most science builds should not do that), they don't need aux performance, not so for the other ships.
I ended up skilling my different captains very differently based on their ship type and role that I wanted to use them for. This really sucks because I am pretty well forced to fly those ships and even those roles otherwise I lose performance.
Yes, this is exactly my point. Science abilities require more expensive and just plain more skills than engineering powers. No engineering BOFF power requires a skill over T3. Tactical BOFF powers don't require over T2. Science BOFF powers require up to T5. See the disparity?
Also no BOFF power required 4 skills in the old system. It was 3 required skills for all of them, aside from a few which required nothing like Boarding parties. You needed a tier 1, 2, and one tier 3-5 skill.
Yes that is the point. Cruisers and escorts make out okay in this system, though not much room for freedom. Science just suffers.
we are getting away from what was originally disagreed on, that the skill tree is no good at all. the way they insist on the skill tree working makes it basically impossible to go from ship type to ship type and it has failed to live up to the hype that you could. as long as you use 1 type of ship, respecs should be unnecessary. before, just about every time i swapped out abilities, let alone swapped ships, a respec was mandatory. now you only really need to when swaping ship types.
there is definitely more ability choosing freedom. ive been arguing that the new tree is better, and i think there is at least agreement now that for escorts and cruisers it is better. for science vessels its not much better, apparently you cant make yourself as powerful, but the tree does make you slightly more flexible then before in most areas.
with my limited sci ship experience, ive found that if a sci ship wants to deal damage it should focus on torpedoes, shield striping and energy draining. it at least wont need energy weapon specing. a sci ships other options are CC and throwing out spam to befuddle opponents. offense from weapons will always be a drop in the bucket for that build. these are only going to really be effective in pvp, i don't think there is a good way to fly a sci ship in pve at all, thats pretty much hopeless. are they of any use in stfs?
with energy levels, i would dump every point you can spare into them. if you run into hard caps, lower a slider and give extra energy to another system. they do need to chop what sci abilities are buffed by down to 2 or 1 skill(s), just like engineering and tactical skills, that's the least they can do. if they really wanted to be fair they would lower skill costs on tier 4 and tier 5 sci skills that effect abilities down to tier 3 level cost. only high end passives should be tier 4 and 5 skills, across the board. ability effecting skills should all be tier 3 and below. i hope the devs are still checking this thread, its discussions like this that really hammer out balance problems.
if they wanted to make a perfect skill tree once and for all they need to strip out what part of the tree your captain and crew could realistically effect, and what is effected by the hardware installed on your ship. the latter should be something you customize at the shipyard and should cost energy credits to adjust. each refit profile should be saved to the selected ship too, not your captain. nothing less then that would reflect accurately on starships. these are starships, not 1 person avatars and they shouldn't be treated like they are the same thing.
we are getting away from what was originally disagreed on, that the skill tree is no good at all. the way they insist on the skill tree working makes it basically impossible to go from ship type to ship type and it has failed to live up to the hype that you could. as long as you use 1 type of ship, respecs should be unnecessary. before, just about every time i swapped out abilities, let alone swapped ships, a respec was mandatory. now you only really need to when swaping ship types.
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For escorts, you can do pretty well without having to respec, from one escort to another, unless of course you want to use sci stuff with the MVAM, then you fall flat.
Cruisers generally are okay within the class, but if you don't spec for attack patterns you probably won't want an excelsior.
Science is much worse off, not for ship changes, that can be done as easily as any other, but for BOFF power changes since you have less freedom now to swap them. In season 4, you had your skill pionts in the T1 and T2 skills that gave up to 48% of any BOFF power you wanted to use. Now, if you aren't specced for it, you get nothing. There is much less freedom within the science tree because of that.
Science also has the issue of wasted skill points if they want to switch to another class. The science skills for most BOFF powers are generally useless in any other ship type. And switching to science leaves you without any points in science skills, because hey they were useless for your other ship. That is where it fails pretty miserably.
Don't forget that if I were to switch from say one escort to another in season 4, the only thing actually lost was the T5 ship skill. In that regard it is only slightly better now since nothing is lost, in general, between the same type of ships.
But going between ship classes is a bad idea and suboptimal, especially when science speccing is involved. And again, I have science ships, cruisers, and escorts all with their own captains. Each captain is specced for their ship type and role. I would absolutely want to respec them if for some reason I wanted to change the class.
Comments
To answer both of you, nothing.
You only get 366,000 total points. You can spend *up to* 300,000 of them on space skills. You can also spend *up to* 100,000 on ground skills. It's called 'wiggle room' and gives people a bit of leeway on exactly how they spend their points, rather than enforcing a strict 75/25% split.
What else is a dive bombing escort going to spend points on exactly? Escorts make out pretty good since they don't actually need weapon performance anymore and certainly don't need the majority of science skills.
But any science ship that doesn't spec up their DPS is seriously hurting themselves and their team. Science powers do not make up for weapon damage, not even close. You can throw gravity wells all day long, but this game is all about killing things. The Kang can't be protected by gravity wells in Cure, PVP generally requires people to die to gain an advantage, and solo PVE drags on and on with a science ship's poor DPS. And more turn rate is always better. Science ships are slugs when it counts. But in the end science has more things to spec for that no one else does.
The same largely goes for cruisers that can't DPS. Cruisers can not last forever, the stuff shooting them needs to die.
Most passives are useful to all. Science requires skills everyone else does not, that is well established. But there are passives that are well served at different levels for different ships.
Attack patterns on a healing cruiser? Not really useful. So I guess switching to an escort would hurt. Or maybe I'll spec into particle generators for warp plasma damage, again, no use to an escort.
An escort can now hit 125 power with just points in warp core potential, which means speccing for weapon performance is unnecessary, or can be done to a lesser level than other ships who obviously want more weapon power for more damage. Similarly if you build a science ship for full aux power all the time (which is a VERY specific build, most science builds should not do that), they don't need aux performance, not so for the other ships.
I ended up skilling my different captains very differently based on their ship type and role that I wanted to use them for. This really sucks because I am pretty well forced to fly those ships and even those roles otherwise I lose performance.
Yes, this is exactly my point. Science abilities require more expensive and just plain more skills than engineering powers. No engineering BOFF power requires a skill over T3. Tactical BOFF powers don't require over T2. Science BOFF powers require up to T5. See the disparity?
Also no BOFF power required 4 skills in the old system. It was 3 required skills for all of them, aside from a few which required nothing like Boarding parties. You needed a tier 1, 2, and one tier 3-5 skill.
Yes that is the point. Cruisers and escorts make out okay in this system, though not much room for freedom. Science just suffers.
we are getting away from what was originally disagreed on, that the skill tree is no good at all. the way they insist on the skill tree working makes it basically impossible to go from ship type to ship type and it has failed to live up to the hype that you could. as long as you use 1 type of ship, respecs should be unnecessary. before, just about every time i swapped out abilities, let alone swapped ships, a respec was mandatory. now you only really need to when swaping ship types.
there is definitely more ability choosing freedom. ive been arguing that the new tree is better, and i think there is at least agreement now that for escorts and cruisers it is better. for science vessels its not much better, apparently you cant make yourself as powerful, but the tree does make you slightly more flexible then before in most areas.
with my limited sci ship experience, ive found that if a sci ship wants to deal damage it should focus on torpedoes, shield striping and energy draining. it at least wont need energy weapon specing. a sci ships other options are CC and throwing out spam to befuddle opponents. offense from weapons will always be a drop in the bucket for that build. these are only going to really be effective in pvp, i don't think there is a good way to fly a sci ship in pve at all, thats pretty much hopeless. are they of any use in stfs?
with energy levels, i would dump every point you can spare into them. if you run into hard caps, lower a slider and give extra energy to another system. they do need to chop what sci abilities are buffed by down to 2 or 1 skill(s), just like engineering and tactical skills, that's the least they can do. if they really wanted to be fair they would lower skill costs on tier 4 and tier 5 sci skills that effect abilities down to tier 3 level cost. only high end passives should be tier 4 and 5 skills, across the board. ability effecting skills should all be tier 3 and below. i hope the devs are still checking this thread, its discussions like this that really hammer out balance problems.
if they wanted to make a perfect skill tree once and for all they need to strip out what part of the tree your captain and crew could realistically effect, and what is effected by the hardware installed on your ship. the latter should be something you customize at the shipyard and should cost energy credits to adjust. each refit profile should be saved to the selected ship too, not your captain. nothing less then that would reflect accurately on starships. these are starships, not 1 person avatars and they shouldn't be treated like they are the same thing.
For escorts, you can do pretty well without having to respec, from one escort to another, unless of course you want to use sci stuff with the MVAM, then you fall flat.
Cruisers generally are okay within the class, but if you don't spec for attack patterns you probably won't want an excelsior.
Science is much worse off, not for ship changes, that can be done as easily as any other, but for BOFF power changes since you have less freedom now to swap them. In season 4, you had your skill pionts in the T1 and T2 skills that gave up to 48% of any BOFF power you wanted to use. Now, if you aren't specced for it, you get nothing. There is much less freedom within the science tree because of that.
Science also has the issue of wasted skill points if they want to switch to another class. The science skills for most BOFF powers are generally useless in any other ship type. And switching to science leaves you without any points in science skills, because hey they were useless for your other ship. That is where it fails pretty miserably.
Don't forget that if I were to switch from say one escort to another in season 4, the only thing actually lost was the T5 ship skill. In that regard it is only slightly better now since nothing is lost, in general, between the same type of ships.
But going between ship classes is a bad idea and suboptimal, especially when science speccing is involved. And again, I have science ships, cruisers, and escorts all with their own captains. Each captain is specced for their ship type and role. I would absolutely want to respec them if for some reason I wanted to change the class.