DISCLAIMER: The math in the following is fuzzy and based on my observations. It may require refinement.
Currently, slow cruisers are a pain to turn. RCS Consoles could solve this problem, in theory, but the problem is that the boost is a percentage and benefits ships with a high turnrate the most. Those ships (mostly escorts and BoPs) can benefit more from RCS consoles but they already have a fairly optimum turnrate and need survivability. Cruisers could theoretically afford to sacrifice survivability for turnrate if not based around being the main tank of a group but they get too little return from a percentage based boost.
The ships that don't need the boost already have plenty of turnrate and the ships that need the boost don't have enough to benefit from a percentage increase.
If we switched to a pure numeric boost, the opposite problem would crop up.
To really be worth slotting and pose a tempting choice opposite defensive consoles, I think RCS consoles need to offer a mix of a flat turnrate boost in degrees and a percentage boost.
Instead of the high end ones being +35%, for example, what if they were:
+2 Degrees per Second Turnrate
+X% Overall Turnrate
Whereas X = the mark of the item for blue quality, +1 for purple, and -1 for green.
Midrange ships would see increased performance, high turn ships would see less, and slow ships would see enough to be worth slotting the device.
So whereas a 5.5 turnrate ship currently would get 14.8 turnrate fully specced, with 100 engine power, and with blue Mk XI 4 RCS accelerators, with this change, it would get up to 26.74 (a number any escort would still beat with a reasonable skill investment on 50 engine power). Mid-range ships would benefit more whereas high turn ships would see a slight reduction from where they can cap out at now while still being ahead of everyone else who has an equal number of RCS accelerators slotted.
This would make RCS Accelerators a tempting tradeoff for the defensive capabilities you sacrifice to slot them whereas the current consensus is that they are not.
More examples follow:
My MVAM Prometheus in its beta command mode hits 59.2 turnrate with 2 RCS consoles. That's one of the most extreme example of turnrate I know that's achievable without a bug ship and I think higher than what the bugship can hit due to the MVAM +15 bonus. Its new cap would be 47.36 turnrate. Of course, that is affected by the presence of just two engineering consoles.
Let me do napkin math on the Jem'Hadar ship. Base turnrate 20. With skills, I'm estimating 26. With 4 RCS Consoles, I'm estimating it would get 63.44 turnrate. Now, with my proposed revisions... 49.58 turnrate.
Peregrine Fighter. Current, fully skilled and RCSed: 60.06. Post changes: 49.84.
B'Rel Retrofit. Current, fulled skilled and RCSed: 61.30, Post changes: 47.78.
And, for fun, an Intrepid as a benchmark. Current, fully skilled and RCSed: 31.98. Post changes: 28.73.
So if the RCS Accelerators changed from +35% each to +2, +11%, it would retain the fast turning ships as the fastest with some very subtle hiccups based on number of consoles, effectively cap turnrate as we know it to around 50 degrees per second (but, seriously, how many people besides me go that overboard with turnrate in an escort?) while making it a potentially worthwhile console for cruisers, actually worth trading defensive consoles for depending on build.
Effectively, this would make 50 the cap for escorts, down from 60. It would make around 25 the potential cap for cruisers, up from 15. It skews boosted turnrates towards the middle and ships in the middle (like most sci ships) or that don't use many RCS consoles (like the average escort player who isn't as turnrate crazed as I am) would see little or no effect, maybe a one or two degree skew. Obviously, if your ship doesn't use RCS consoles now, it would not be negatively affected. If RCS consoles are a waste for your ship now, you would likely see a positive effect overall.
The pecking order remains. Escorts turn best, sci in the middle, cruisers turn worst. If your build prohibits devoting a console to RCS, nothing changes. If you run on low engine power, this is probably a boost for you. A ship like the Galaxy X or Odyssey could get a whole new life out of this in terms of new PvE only builds and see a modest QoL tradeoff option in PvP builds. Carriers would benefit from this as well. However, without looking at the "full turnrate" builds, a single RCS console would get the worst cruisers for turn up to what cruiser pilots seem to regard as the "not painful" threshold, making it possibly worth dropping some defense.
This isn't a magic solution but one that makes RCS Accelerators vs. hull boosting consoles a hard decision for more people... and hard decisions make for more variety of gameplay, more distinct players, and depth of choice.
I'm in support of this. If base turn rate will not be changed, then taking player choice and making it effective for what it is looks like the best alternative... and like you said: to ships with low turn rates, the percentile values the RCS consoles provide show pitiful improvement. This wouldn't render the RCS consoles overly powerful - just strong enough for people whom want them to take notice and slap them on.
I mean, we already have the means in-game to raise turn rate - using consoles, we can get more. It's just not effective for the lowest denominator so... kind of like how science consoles were considered for revision, this could definitely use tweaking.
Though I don't get why you started another thread about this when we had another going pretty well. Now, I get the impression people will swoop by and start haranguing over this all over again - you're mostly covering mechanics but barely brushing on the reasons, feelings and conviction as to why things as current are wrong and what it may mean to some players. Regardless, I'm all for helping spearhead this effort and get the Devs to notice this - my belief is that the lower-extreme of cruiser turn rate is unyieldy enough to be a blatant game flaw over a sound balance decision.
Well, I posted the ideas midway into long threads that likely would draw attention mainly from cruiser pilots.
If there's an issue with this idea that I'm not seeing or if my math is off, it needs input from the whole community. I also think this is the kind of idea, even though it's a console tweak idea, that could have some far reaching impact on how people play. (Probably not that different for science players. Potentially very different for some escorts and cruisers.)
I think your solution is a bit unyieldly - don't turn the whole thing around, just fix where it doesn't work as well.
There is precedent in the game for IF/OR logic with equipment, though. Photon torpedoes, for example, seem to do something like "incapacitate 10%, or 10 crew, whichever is smaller".
Whereas in our case with the RCS consoles, a Mk11 could be like "+35% Turn Rate, or +X, whichever is higher".
Personally, I think the target value for X above should be what an RCS Console would give to a ship with a base Turn Rate of 10 (the light cruiser). That way you always have a fair minimum value just to make sure it never goes too low, but it becomes better and better for those ships that actually do have good turn rates. It's not them that need to change, but rather the near-punitively low bonuses the RCS console give for their investment after having been slotted in an Engineering console... by constrast of the beneficial differences you could see from other engineering consoles on gameplay.
I don't know anyone that currently, or would like to in the future, fly their cruiser in a manner that required a faster turn rate.
The ones that would benefit are the folks putting canons on their cruisers (most notably of the ones I've seen, Galaxy-X pilots), swinging themselves around to bring their canons on target would be advantageous. The way they pilot their ships though tends to be about sitting in one spot and rotating through the healing and damage resist abilities.
I personally fly the Excelsior and orbit targets. Haven't really ever had an issue with the turn rate myself.
The Galaxy retrofit that I have in dock doesn't really need a turn rate boost since I play it like a tank, taking all sorts of punishment but giving out very little of it (put the saucer sep. console in the bank).
BUT...
I could see the potential for someone that wanted to use the Saucer Seperated version of their ship (Galaxy Retro or the upcoming Odyssey) where you had the more agile stardrive section at your disposal and would like to have a bit more turn for that.
I can only state that I most emphatically agree with any idea that puts a bit more oomph into the turning of the big ships. From your keyboard to the dev team.
More critically: There are a few cases where I'm not sure boosting turn rate would be the right move: since it features the built in phaser lance, the Gal-X gets a lot more mileage out of this proposed buff than, say, the assault cruiser or any other Fed slowboat that doesn't have a big alpha damage power with narrow arc. The Gal-X's cloak and subsequent boost to alpha damage also depends mechanically much more on turning and positioning.
Make no mistake, I'm 100% behind you from a gameplay point of view. My love of mobility - and frankly, the feeling of control you get from being able to move your ship, reactively, in a meaningful fashion - has doomed me to flying escorts all the time. I like them and appreciate them for what they are but their gameplay dynamics can't be applied uniformly, which is the sad truth.
So I guess now that I've spent a while thinking about it I'd say my feedback is "this is a fantastic beginning, but it will need to come bundled with an across-the-board balance pass on the base turning of all cruisers so that we don't end up making narrow-arc abilities lots better".
I'm not a well-rounded STO player, so I know little about the arc of various commander-level and captain engy and sci powers. I do know some of them are facing dependent and that would shake up balance. Though in an ideal world, of course, Tribble would get outlandish balance tweaks every two weeks to workshop these problems, constantly iterating on proven design mechanics and testing out crazy new stuff.
I'm going to quote some stuff from the thread before, because I think it's pertinent and that I don't want to get into arguments I've already argued for.
I don't expect cruisers to turn better than science ships, or to DPS like escorts... but I think there's a bare minimum that should be observed... and I also include you in that category, KDF carrier captains.
I mean, each ship category can have a nice turn rate niche and stick to it:
Escorts: 15
Science Vessels: 12
Cruisers: 8
Mirandas with 10 weren't exactly agile. Excalibur-class cruisers with 9 were a bit less so, but okay. Turn rate 8 was a noticeable drop for the Heavy Cruiser, but still respectable. Anything lower gets increasingly tedious and should, as far as I'm concerned, not be in the game and propped up to higher values - I can emphasize with the need for cruisers to be slower... but watching a Galaxy with full engine power, mobility-specced captain and 4 Mk11 RCS console only manage a 180 turn in 18 seconds is just sad.
Who said I wasn't? It's nice to give me the subtle 'learn2play' message there - I meant engine power, not throttle. Besides, slowing down to tighten your turn is pretty much a must for captains of the other non-cruiser ships out there too.
Who said I didn't start initially as a big cruiser fan that started STO's Open Beta and played through it as an engineer captain, going for cruisers? Vesper-class cruisers have Turn Rate 9 - definitely slower than the Miranda and hardly handling like escorts - and I was fine with them. I even PvPed, and didn't suck.
Heavy cruisers had turn rate 8. Slower, and noticeably so... but still okay. Did nicely at PvP too - despite evil Birds of Prey with the paralyzing Viral Matrix (to which I had nothing against - I thought science powers were entitled to their perks).
And lo and behold: the Galaxy-class! My favorite ship ever! I finally get to pilot it... boldly going...
Going... well, the going was okay in Sector Space. The shock came later.
Well, once I was warping in a star system doing this Cardassian arc mission with the giant space lifeforms around... I discovered that the Cardassian Galors were tearing me to pieces. I couldn't turn and maneuver well enough to exploit their weaker shield quadrants while I had trouble also keeping my weak spots away from the business end of their weapons.
I still PvPed. Or tried to. And there swooped in the Klingon Vor'cha, catching me in my rear end and sticking there pouring firepower in there despite not having tractor beam, or me having evasive maneuvers and... well, basically had a very easy time just shooting at one shield and making my Galaxy-class popcorn open.
Which sadly, despite my attempts to persevere and adapt - because Ioved my Galaxy-class cruiser - did not really pay off. Trying to compensate with the deficiency using RCS consoles proved of little use, as giving a fractional bonus of something small means... you're not getting a whole lot (especially when you could put other consoles that'd have more visible impact too).
The end result was that the aberration that was the Galaxy's abnormally low turn rate poisoned my fun. I had loved playing cruisers until then, and then they became un-fun. I don't understand why I - or any other - should subject him/herself with un-fun-ness when using free time to practice a hobby. I felt I had too much respect for myself to bear up with that, so, I stopped trying. I tried something else.
It doesn't mean I did not wish it was otherwise, because had it not been of higher-level cruisers turn rate worsening to that extreme, I would still actively play them and likely would love every minute of it. Cruisers were fun at LtC and Cmd ranks. They should have stayed that way, rather than the contrary, giving many the impression that the 'ship upgrade' actually felt more like a regression.
The Excelsior seemed, for a Tier 5 ship, like a step in the right direction (aside from the nonsense of it outperforming more recent ships). I wasn't an Excelsior fan, though. So, I was hoping that the Odyssey would be that next endgame cruiser that would finally set things right.
And instead, we just got showed that the Devs did not get the point. They stuck to even lower turn rate values, assuming it's remotely fun to be in that kind of ship - whereas turning around in that is about as pleasant as sustaining testicular injury.
Do I want to see cruisers with escort turn-rates? Of course not! But I want the lower extreme raised to something more respectable. I've had enough with seeing this aspect of how I could enjoy the game made this way because the Devs have some finicky perception of 'ship balance' taking priority over the fun-factor derived from how well they handle.
To the op, if you don't like it, play something else. A different cruiser, a different class of ship, something.
To Zoberraz, I was prepared to just tell everyone complaining to live with it - I'm perfectly fine with the way my Galaxy turns. But your post was actually good, constructive criticism, well done. While I still don't agree that cruisers *need* a turn rate buff (neither would I complain if they got one), you do make good points.
(ship base value - Turn Rate 6 degrees per second)
1 MkX Impulse Engine (Stock)
4 Mk11 RCS Consoles (+35% turn rate each)
Captain with +100 in the Impulse Engine skill
Captain with +100 in Engine Performance
Ship Engine power set to 114/100 (Maximum available)
...was 14.8 degrees per second. For going all out.
So, you can go and help out in an STF. And once you win it, the 180 degree turn you'll need to do to get your lootbag will take you 12 seconds if you're fully specced like that (which you likely won't, because speccing like that is a bit crazy considering how little dividend it gives you).
Or, you can try to do that Daily mission in Eta Eridani protecting Deuterium Tanks, and huff and puff as you try to beat one Galor, and then go around the other side of the map to fight the two frigates and the Galor reinforcement, to then again go on the other side of the map to fight the Keldon boss. *huffs* You can only use Evasive Maneuvers every so often (for all the good it does, giving 25 degrees per second... that's my Recon Sci's turn rate at average engine power, average mobility specs and 1 RCS console) and Deuterium fuel tanks are in finite quantities.
Point being, low turn = tedious. It's okay to have low turn rate... but at a certain extent, it becomes masochistic. No one, even those willing to put up with it, deserve that.
No? This isn't a learn-2-play issue, after all (though many confuse it for that). Even people like you Hakaishin, by thinking this is fine and taking it for granted are putting up with something that could've been better implemented.
I see a flaw in the game's design. I'm sick of playing ostrich and leaving it ignored when I remember all the good times I had with my LtC and Commander ships, and see the endgame cruiser not deliver the same.
So, I'd rather talk it out and see the problem fixed. Even if you're oblivious to the issue. If it ever gets fixed, you'll be grateful later on.
Whereas I have enough self-respect for myself to not wish to willingly jump through this many fiery hoops blindly and acknowledge that something is wrong. There is a fun factor to be derived out of these things, and at the lower extreme, there's not a whole lot of it compared to what it was while leveling up... before earning an Exploration Cruiser.
I explained that before, earlier in this thread. Perhaps you didn't read? We're hardly proposing for cruisers to suddenly just plain become better at turning in comparison to other vessels. I, for one, am arguing for the sake of raising the lower extreme some. Not a whole lot - just high enough to that sweet spot where people typically don't have complaints about cruiser turn rates.
Because there is a sweet spot that even the slowest turning cruisers could turn as without it feeling tedious (keyword). Game developpers work on games and create moments - moments they hope will be awesome to their audience. The lower turn rate values at the bottom for the Federation don't contribute to that in a way that's all that positive.
Else you'd think we'd shut up and be happy about it. Well, we're not happy about it. Hence, this thread.
...at what turn rate would my Galaxy-X, as overpowered as it already is, be considered game breaking to Escort pilots?
Where do you draw that line?
If I turned even as well as a Fleet Escort (the slowest escort available), I would be RIDICULOUSLY overpowered to the point I may even take on entire enemy parties by myself, because I could effectively equip DHC fore in PvP.
By God, the devastation I would bring...
Where then, do you see the fastest cruiser (Excelsior) speeding up, but not moving as fast as the slowest escort (Fleet Escort) before you've "crossed the line"?
Cruiser armament is usually phaser arrays, even with Turn Rate 8. With the fore and aft torpedo launchers. Usually. When you pilot them early game (well, that's how I did it), you'd broadside and then turn your front and rear - depending on convenience, to lob a torpedo at an opportune time. Space Combat 101, more or less.
The greater turn would help line up torpedo shots and cover shield quadrant better, there's no denying that. But then again, early game cruiser have that and no one's whining about them doing it too well.
Since what you have are slow firing torpedoes and beam arrays (unless you're partial to the 180-arc cannons, maybe - I think they're wierd) the fore facing, that your broadside is most effective at melting shields and that keeping your front constantly toward the target is most of the time not that useful because your torpedoes continually fired don't do that much shield damage, and you have less beams facing forward.
What the forward facing does help with is for things uniquely done from the front - Hakaishin, that's where your phaser lance comes in. But your phaser lance doesn't fire all that often so the abuse there is limited. Also, science ships with slightly higher turn rates like the Nebula and the Deep Space Science Vessel have often been touted to have more difficulty getting the most out of deflector dish powers. I think phaser lance/deflector dish power use are kind of equivalents so if it's tough for them, then the slight creep up in turn rate for cruisers wouldn't be that much of a big deal for anyone not driving a cruiser.
So, given the above, raising the turn rate a tad is mostly beneficial in a purely quality of life way. A better ability to follow more agile friends along without lagging as much behind, less drudgery when turning while unassisted, and so forth. It makes happy people, it still keeps cruisers at cruiser-like mobility by contrast to other ship types and such.
There could be a concern about which ship is better between the Star Cruiser and the Assault Cruiser if they end up with the same turn rate (wait, they do - ehh, you get the idea) but typically people will play ships they like and the visual/whether they're a fan of the ship's design in the first place is probably going to be the largest motivator in the choice (there is the Boff placement too, but to me that doesn't matter all that much). The Excelsior is an amazing ship that has exactly the kind of mobility I want... but I don't like the Excelsior all that much - I'm not that keen on captaining it.
Basically, the balance in mobility within end-game cruisers doesn't matter all that much - as long as they retain cruiser-like handling that has its niche, and leaves the niche of sci vessels and escorts to them as well.
I think the "fix" to turnrates is rather designing cruisers with a reasonable turnrate in mind.
The problem is those ships are not "majestic" to use Captain Gekos word to fly, they are just annoying. As if people didn't cry enough about the Enterprise D / Galaxy turnrate he introduces "flagship" cruisers with even lower turnrates...
While I am also for a stronger effect of RCS consoles on ships with a low turnrate the fix should be to make cruisers turn better by default, so that people don't feel the need to stuff them with RCS consoles out of pure frustration with the sluggishness of their cruiser.
Confused.
So cruisers should get a better return on the RCS console effect becuase they do not turn fast enough but escorts and Science will garner a lesser effect becuase they turn fine as they are?
Why the catering to one type of vessel?
Why not just improve the base effects of the RCS and let it be?
Confused.
So cruisers should get a better return on the RCS console effect becuase they do not turn fast enough but escorts and Science will garner a lesser effect becuase they turn fine as they are?
Why the catering to one type of vessel?
Why not just improve the base effects of the RCS and let it be?
This....why go all difficult with it? Yes a change need to happen.....nut dont make the solution worse than the problem....give it a better return on percentage or a solid number to go off of skills slotted specifically for turn rate effect.
And Sekrit man your avatar looks like Eddie Murphy....(always wanted to say that)
Confused.
So cruisers should get a better return on the RCS console effect becuase they do not turn fast enough but escorts and Science will garner a lesser effect becuase they turn fine as they are?
Why the catering to one type of vessel?
Why not just improve the base effects of the RCS and let it be?
Not so much. I just think a middleground needs to be achieved so everyone is tempted to use one of these in place of a defensive console.
Escorts would still get substantially more and have double potential turnrate of slow cruisers.
This is just about making RCS consoles more equally tempting.
I asked becuase on the fuzzy logic given in the first post, it appears that Cruisers would gain greatly and science and escorts would lose out marginally.
Given the changes to FG & SEA consoles, the RCS will look better by default just because its something that can now go in the void left by the two former Engie consoles being retasked to science.
Also becuase I personally do not find Cruisers so slow turning as to be unrealistic for the level of combat in STO.
I asked becuase on the fuzzy logic given in the first post, it appears that Cruisers would gain greatly and science and escorts would lose out marginally.
Given the changes to FG & SEA consoles, the RCS will look better by default just because its something that can now go in the void left by the two former Engie consoles being retasked to science.
Also becuase I personally do not find Cruisers so slow turning as to be unrealistic for the level of combat in STO.
It really won't. The gain is still marginal. Four consoles yielding 8 turn rate on some ships and 40 on others is not very balanced. At the same time, a flat turn rate buff wouldn't be fair or equally tempting either.
What I'm asking for is a compromise that's a bit of both so that ships that fully invest fall into a more reasonable range of each other.
It really won't. The gain is still marginal. Four consoles yielding 8 turn rate on some ships and 40 on others is not very balanced. At the same time, a flat turn rate buff wouldn't be fair or equally tempting either.
What I'm asking for is a compromise that's a bit of both so that ships that fully invest fall into a more reasonable range of each other.
I am saying this as an escort pilot who uses RCS.
And I'm only dubiuos as STO can ill afford a space combat mechanic where everybody scoots around as nimble as flies or where one has to now use a RCS to retain such nimbleness that was once accrued to ship design.
I don't use any RCS.
And I'm only dubiuos as STO can ill afford a space combat mechanic where everybody scoots around as nimble as flies or where one has to now use a RCS to retain such nimbleness that was once accrued to ship design.
I don't use any RCS.
Huh? Nobody's nimbleness goes down who doesn't use RCS under my proposal. And no cruiser will ever out turn an escort, unless the escort is very badly specced and the cruiser has sacrificed virtually all defensive and offensive capability for turnrate.
Huh? Nobody's nimbleness goes down who doesn't use RCS under my proposal. And no cruiser will ever out turn an escort, unless the escort is very badly specced and the cruiser has sacrificed virtually all defensive and offensive capability for turnrate.
Then I will just stay on the premise of I'm dubiuos of the effects if implemented. Otherwise I have no input on the matter and as such can offer little debate on the subject.
hmmmm.. some good thoughts there Leviathan, and others...
I been cruiser/ big ship from the word go, back in closed beta. What you propose is radical, and off the bat I do not agree with it, BUT let me think about it, you may be on a good path here.
Comments
I mean, we already have the means in-game to raise turn rate - using consoles, we can get more. It's just not effective for the lowest denominator so... kind of like how science consoles were considered for revision, this could definitely use tweaking.
Though I don't get why you started another thread about this when we had another going pretty well. Now, I get the impression people will swoop by and start haranguing over this all over again - you're mostly covering mechanics but barely brushing on the reasons, feelings and conviction as to why things as current are wrong and what it may mean to some players. Regardless, I'm all for helping spearhead this effort and get the Devs to notice this - my belief is that the lower-extreme of cruiser turn rate is unyieldy enough to be a blatant game flaw over a sound balance decision.
This will promote fun - I'm all for fun. Go go!
If there's an issue with this idea that I'm not seeing or if my math is off, it needs input from the whole community. I also think this is the kind of idea, even though it's a console tweak idea, that could have some far reaching impact on how people play. (Probably not that different for science players. Potentially very different for some escorts and cruisers.)
There is precedent in the game for IF/OR logic with equipment, though. Photon torpedoes, for example, seem to do something like "incapacitate 10%, or 10 crew, whichever is smaller".
Whereas in our case with the RCS consoles, a Mk11 could be like "+35% Turn Rate, or +X, whichever is higher".
Personally, I think the target value for X above should be what an RCS Console would give to a ship with a base Turn Rate of 10 (the light cruiser). That way you always have a fair minimum value just to make sure it never goes too low, but it becomes better and better for those ships that actually do have good turn rates. It's not them that need to change, but rather the near-punitively low bonuses the RCS console give for their investment after having been slotted in an Engineering console... by constrast of the beneficial differences you could see from other engineering consoles on gameplay.
The ones that would benefit are the folks putting canons on their cruisers (most notably of the ones I've seen, Galaxy-X pilots), swinging themselves around to bring their canons on target would be advantageous. The way they pilot their ships though tends to be about sitting in one spot and rotating through the healing and damage resist abilities.
I personally fly the Excelsior and orbit targets. Haven't really ever had an issue with the turn rate myself.
The Galaxy retrofit that I have in dock doesn't really need a turn rate boost since I play it like a tank, taking all sorts of punishment but giving out very little of it (put the saucer sep. console in the bank).
BUT...
I could see the potential for someone that wanted to use the Saucer Seperated version of their ship (Galaxy Retro or the upcoming Odyssey) where you had the more agile stardrive section at your disposal and would like to have a bit more turn for that.
More critically: There are a few cases where I'm not sure boosting turn rate would be the right move: since it features the built in phaser lance, the Gal-X gets a lot more mileage out of this proposed buff than, say, the assault cruiser or any other Fed slowboat that doesn't have a big alpha damage power with narrow arc. The Gal-X's cloak and subsequent boost to alpha damage also depends mechanically much more on turning and positioning.
Make no mistake, I'm 100% behind you from a gameplay point of view. My love of mobility - and frankly, the feeling of control you get from being able to move your ship, reactively, in a meaningful fashion - has doomed me to flying escorts all the time. I like them and appreciate them for what they are but their gameplay dynamics can't be applied uniformly, which is the sad truth.
So I guess now that I've spent a while thinking about it I'd say my feedback is "this is a fantastic beginning, but it will need to come bundled with an across-the-board balance pass on the base turning of all cruisers so that we don't end up making narrow-arc abilities lots better".
I'm not a well-rounded STO player, so I know little about the arc of various commander-level and captain engy and sci powers. I do know some of them are facing dependent and that would shake up balance. Though in an ideal world, of course, Tribble would get outlandish balance tweaks every two weeks to workshop these problems, constantly iterating on proven design mechanics and testing out crazy new stuff.
Thanks for your consideration, and good luck!
Also cruisers should get a bonus to weapons range (15km maybe) to compensate for their turn rates.
The problem is those ships are not "majestic" to use Captain Gekos word to fly, they are just annoying. As if people didn't cry enough about the Enterprise D / Galaxy turnrate he introduces "flagship" cruisers with even lower turnrates...
While I am also for a stronger effect of RCS consoles on ships with a low turnrate the fix should be to make cruisers turn better by default, so that people don't feel the need to stuff them with RCS consoles out of pure frustration with the sluggishness of their cruiser.
So cruisers should get a better return on the RCS console effect becuase they do not turn fast enough but escorts and Science will garner a lesser effect becuase they turn fine as they are?
Why the catering to one type of vessel?
Why not just improve the base effects of the RCS and let it be?
This....why go all difficult with it? Yes a change need to happen.....nut dont make the solution worse than the problem....give it a better return on percentage or a solid number to go off of skills slotted specifically for turn rate effect.
And Sekrit man your avatar looks like Eddie Murphy....(always wanted to say that)
Not so much. I just think a middleground needs to be achieved so everyone is tempted to use one of these in place of a defensive console.
Escorts would still get substantially more and have double potential turnrate of slow cruisers.
This is just about making RCS consoles more equally tempting.
Given the changes to FG & SEA consoles, the RCS will look better by default just because its something that can now go in the void left by the two former Engie consoles being retasked to science.
Also becuase I personally do not find Cruisers so slow turning as to be unrealistic for the level of combat in STO.
It really won't. The gain is still marginal. Four consoles yielding 8 turn rate on some ships and 40 on others is not very balanced. At the same time, a flat turn rate buff wouldn't be fair or equally tempting either.
What I'm asking for is a compromise that's a bit of both so that ships that fully invest fall into a more reasonable range of each other.
I am saying this as an escort pilot who uses RCS.
And I'm only dubiuos as STO can ill afford a space combat mechanic where everybody scoots around as nimble as flies or where one has to now use a RCS to retain such nimbleness that was once accrued to ship design.
I don't use any RCS.
Huh? Nobody's nimbleness goes down who doesn't use RCS under my proposal. And no cruiser will ever out turn an escort, unless the escort is very badly specced and the cruiser has sacrificed virtually all defensive and offensive capability for turnrate.
Then I will just stay on the premise of I'm dubiuos of the effects if implemented. Otherwise I have no input on the matter and as such can offer little debate on the subject.
I been cruiser/ big ship from the word go, back in closed beta. What you propose is radical, and off the bat I do not agree with it, BUT let me think about it, you may be on a good path here.
hmm need to do some tests...