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The Problem with Science

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
A lot has been said about Science lately, especially the consoles and this is going to be... more of it. Essentially the issue as I see it, and if you aren't interested in that, or the problem, well you can feel free to ignore this thread and everything in it. I won't take that personally. For anyone who is interested in what's going on with Science, well, feel free to add your thoughts. These are mine...


The Problem with Science


There is a fundamental issue with about a third of this game. Science, both the skills and consoles, are poorly constructed. These aspects are fundamentally different for Science than for the other two professions, and are ultimately badly designed and causing problems. It specifically boils down to how Science differs in these respects from their Tactical and Engineering competition.

If you look at Engineering and Tactical skills there is something of a commonality there. All but one Tactical skill increases the passive functions of a ship. The skills enhance damage, enhance defence, enhance accuracy, enhance critical hits... the sole anomaly here is Starship Attack Patterns, which buffs the non-weapons based Tactical powers directly. Engineering is similar. All but one Engineering skill buffs passive ship functions. Speed, power levels, damage resistance... the sole anomaly here is Starship Hull Repair which directly boosts hull healing powers.

Now look at Science, and you'll see something entirely different. There is only one Science power that has a major passive effect, and that is Starship Shield Systems which buffs shield hitpoints. Beyond that there are three separate skills which offer limited resistances, but only to specific Science effects, which is of limited benefit considering you are infrequently hit with these abilities since many enemies won't be mounting them, and even for the ones that are generally the cooldowns on them are lengthy. When you're not encountering those specific effects you've buffed your resistances to? Those skill points are doing nothing for you. Past that all the remaining skills only come into play when an ability is used, and even then the number of abilities affected per skill is limited.

There is a severe disconnect there, and it makes investing in most non-Shield-related Science skills a poor choice. While every Tactical Captain in an Escort can use more hull points, and every Engineering in a Cruiser can use more damage... do either of them really need to invest in a skill that improves knocks and repels that they aren't doing? Probably not.

Which bring us to consoles, where Tactical is king. They double-dip with every single console they use. Each one increases passive weapon damage, and in turn increases the damage of almost every Tactical power as they nearly all scale off of base weapon damage. To boot, everyone has weapons, and everyone gets a large benefit out of mounting these. Then you have Engineering which gives a number of passive buffs to damage resistance, power, turning and repair. These are all useful to everyone, and again some of them double-dip, since resistance consoles will help add to any hull resistance powers a player uses.

Science? Not quite the same. Every console they get simply buffs a Science skill. Remember how many of those skills weren't particularly useful? Well, with the consoles it's the exact same thing. There is really just one exception here, and it's the newly stolen Field Generator... but alas the plan is actually to make that boost a skill as well, though at least it's the one Science skill that gives a passive advantage that is useful to everyone.

So the disconnect persists. Every Tactical captain in an Escort would love to slot another armour console and get a little further away from blowing up. Every Engineer in a Cruiser would love to slot another weapons console and be able to kill his enemies that much sooner. Do either of them really want to stuff a Multi-Spectro Scanner in their ship though? Doubtful.

So why is this a problem? Well, for a lot of reasons...

First, this makes Science undesirable to everyone who isn't doing big SCIENCE. If you aren't flying a Science Vessel you're probably skimping on your Science skills to min/max more of your Engineering and Tactical options, and you're probably using your Science console slots as dump slots for the universal ones. There just isn't enough of a point to investing there. Ultimately that further devalues the few Science options you have at your disposal, generally making about 2/9ths of your consoles pointless, and your options for about 1/6th of Bridge Officer powers limited, or underwhelming.

Second, it makes Science boring. With Tactical you get literal bang for your buck. It may not be thrillingly different, console-to-console, but it gives you something visceral and immediate that you can notice with every shot. With Engineering you get survivability, or maybe something neat like a quicker power transfer rate, or you get to crank your turning and whip around the battlefield just a little bit better. And with Science? You pretty much always get +X to skill Y. And what does that do? Makes a power you may or may not even have mounted a small percent better, or make it last a tiny bit shorter if you get hit with one. And the rest of the time? You get nothing.

Third, it makes for loot that stinks. If you get a Tactical console you can use that. Maybe you don't have the appropriate weapon, but that could just be a drop away. If you get an Engineering console you can use that. Maybe you don't need that armour console, but if you stuff it in your ship it will do something. Now Science? If you get a Science console to drop and you're flying a Cruiser or an Escort there's about a 50/50 chance that console will boost an ability you don't even have on any of your Bridge Officers and thus it will do nothing for you. You actually have to head back to Starbase and retrain to even have a shot at using some of these things, and that requires you to give up the skills they already have. Oh, and let's remember that Science has the same number of abilities that only start at Lieutenant Commander as Engineering and Tactical do combined, so there's a number of powers there you can't even mount on most Escorts or Cruisers even in their weakest form.

Lastly (well, there's no doubt more issues, but this is where I'll stop), it makes it incredibly hard to balance Science. Maybe some of you have noticed that Science is in a constant state of flux, and trying to find a consensus on how "powerful" any one ability is happens to be not unlike trying to catch a TRIBBLE in a butterfly net. Where Engineering and Tactical powers give fairly predictable returns, Science powers can't. Science is modified more heavily by skills and consoles than the opposition, making it harder to control the end result, and harder for players to predict what they're about to get hit with. The difference between someone unskilled in an ability with no consoles that effect it, versus someone who's min/maxed toward it and is mounting four consoles to buff that... well, that's going to be pretty dramatic. And it has to be to justify asking that investment from a player when they are getting nothing else for their skill point expenditure and console real estate. How do you balance a power that can simultaneously be incredibly weak and incredibly powerful? Sure, you could downgrade the the effect of skills and consoles (and they've already done this remember, and that worked poorly), but ultimately that just makes investing in Science an even worse idea and adds to the problem.

So... what's to be done? That's the question.

Ultimately no band-aid cure is going to fix this. You can buff the +X number on Science consoles until the cows come home but it won't fix the real issue. The underlying setup for the entire profession is fundamentally broken and is going to take a complete rework of both Science skills and Science consoles. To be frank, they need to reflect how both Engineering and Tactical work. Most skills and consoles need to give passive bonuses to the ship which have a constant effect which are useful to everyone. The skills which buff active abilities need to be limited in number, and broad in effect, ultimately buffing most or all Science powers as opposed to just a small subset. Similarly, there should be a "One Ring" approach to resistances, where one skill provides limited across the board protection from all of the nasty things Science should be doing. Perhaps most importantly; Science abilities need to stand on their own. They should not be buffed by a number of individual skills and consoles, nor should that be required. They need to have a strong, relevant effect on the game world even if a player hasn't specifically skilled into them, much like you see with abilities from both Tactical and Engineering.

It's not something that can be done with a quick fix, nor would it be a easy one. No shortcut is going to provide an adequate solution to the real underlying problem. This is quite possibly something that will take a Seasonal Update (maybe an entire one) as it's all but a ground up rework of an entire professions tools. New skills and consoles with entirely new effects need to be devised and implemented. The Science framework that's in the game now? As far as skills and consoles go they pretty much all need to be binned. Nothing less will ever really be a solution, just a stopgap.

/2¢ ... do with it what you will.
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    She keeps blinding ME with it?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    A big issue with science has to do with how bad the PvE in this game is. When all you have to fight is stock HP meat bags, control doesn't really matter nearly as much as raw damage and healing.

    That being said, in a more interesting and dynamic environment, PvP, science absolutely kills. It's necessary. Hell, you don't ever want less than three science toons on a well built team.

    The more an enemy buffs himself, the more powerful the debuff class becomes. The more that teamwork is required, the more you need strong control.

    The biggest balance issue in this game is the disconnect between PvP and PvE. Tacticals are the most powerful PvE class, and the least powerful in PvP. Science is the least powerful in PvE, but the most powerful in PvP.

    You can never have good balance in a game like STO because balancing one aspect of the game unbalances the other. The balance points are exactly opposite between PvE and PvP. Strengthening one aspect directly harms the other. There is a constant tug of war.

    The most obvious solution is to make PvE suck less. Elite STFs were a step towards that, although any team comprised of half competent PvPers still plowed through them like a hot knife through butter even before the difficulty nerf. PvE enemies need to become more varied, they need to make use of a larger number of skills and behave more intelligently. They need to be able to actually do some degree of damage on normal difficulty settings, and more advanced settings need to do more than dumbly scale up HP and damage to be interesting. Do this and you move the balance points closer, as well as solve a lot of problems with the science class.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Roach wrote: »
    She keeps blinding ME with it?



    See, that was what I was thinking when I saw this thread earlier. In the end, I decided to skip it. I'm glad to see that I wasn't the only one that joke occurred to.

    On a related note, Jam Targeting Sensors lets you blind them with science.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Science used to be focused on crowd control and healing.

    But apparently the crowd control aspect of it had to be neutered. Completely. So it then became about weak AoEs, slows in a game where slows have no real measurable impact of importance, and other ancillary and situational powers. And they tied it into Auxiliary power, the one power system you had to create yourself a tab for by modifying the balanced tab (Engines, Shields and Weapons powers have their own pre-set, but Aux ...)

    So the evolution of science is squarely placed on the shoulders of the development team. They created this mess. And they're not doing anything helpful to fix it.

    The game apparently has no problems working in a two-tiered system ... weapons/tactical vs. engineering/defense. But that third element appears to elude the development team because they had to neuter what is classically the third option (crowd control) and they added BUFFS/DEBUFFS to tactical/engineering.

    Science is left with the scraps and ancillary aspects of an MMO as there really isn't anything they CAN give it.

    You'll note that in the DOFF system mini-game science holds its own very well. Because that part of the game has a place for botany and geology and the like. That part of the game has room for science.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    in a more interesting and dynamic environment, PvP, science absolutely kills. It's necessary. Hell, you don't ever want less than three science toons on a well built team.

    Exactly, science is not weak in PvP but lacks any real use against the NPCs of PvE which are portrayed as just HP and DPS and suffer no ill effects when hit with CC and AoE powers in the course of PvE gameplay.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Roach wrote:

    Exactly, science is not weak in PvP but lacks any real use against the NPCs of PvE which are portrayed as just HP and DPS and suffer no ill effects when hit with CC and AoE powers in the course of PvE gameplay.

    I'll agree for almost all PvE except for Elite STFs. A well played Science ship will be able to completely shut down the Tac Cube in Infected and KA and the slows and holds are good for buying time with the Probes, Negh'Var's and Sphere's in the optionals.
    You could take another Escort along but I'm always happy to see a well flown Science ship because it's about to make the Escorts job a whole lot easier, especially against the Tac Cubes. Probably not so important in a pre formed team but in a PuG the Science ships can make a big difference.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Roach wrote: »

    Exactly, science is not weak in PvP but lacks any real use against the NPCs of PvE which are portrayed as just HP and DPS and suffer no ill effects when hit with CC and AoE powers in the course of PvE gameplay.

    From what I've seen over the past couple years, this has pretty much been the driving force behind making Science worthless in PvE. I get needing PvP balance, but there needs to be something done to make Science ships worthwhile in PvE (aka, the majority of the playerbase, for what that's worth).


    As for improving the situation...

    1. The ideas of tacking on passive effects to Science consoles are great.

    2. With the recent changes to consoles, I think Sci console contributions to skills could still use some more boosts to compensate.

    3. There needs to be some way to either increase the effects of Sci abilities in PvE or a way to decrease the resistances of NPCs... especially on elite. As far as I'm concerned, the Sci abilities themselves are good in terms of themes and effects... the NPCs are just stupidly resistant to so many of them, or they have shield/hull HP and/or power levels so high that nothing very noteworthy happens. Bringing a Sci boat into an elite STF is so depressingly underwhelming.


    PS. I was going to create this thread but HHJJ apparently condensed his thoughts before I could. I was going to call it "Weird Science." Here's to having that stuck in your head now.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    I agree completely with the OP. I have two science characters - one flying sci ships and the other cruisers. I differentiated the two prior to the skill tree changes when respeccing for ship type would be expensive. I don't really PvP, so I like to have a variety of characters to play in PvE.

    The science abilities are really cool, really flashy, and seemingly don't do much of anything. Of course, in order to "maximize" the effect of the science abilities on my sci/sci character, I run the Aux power setting at a high level. One would think that sacrificing weapon slots and power settings would be made up for by damage and other effects from the sci powers. I suppose in a way they do - I can shield tank quite well. However, the fights easily take twice as long as fights on my tac and eng characters. Great survivability indeed - just BORING to play.

    I get into combat ready to bring the smackdown with my 3 fore and 3 aft weapons.... but no worries! I am bristling with science abilities to bring my enemies to heel in a fast and deadly fashion. I open up a Gravity Well III right next to the lead ship! No doubt such an anomaly will CRUSH the weakling hull of those dastardly villains and make this fight short and sweet. Instead, I see my enemies slowed for a bit with maybe a little damage. Bleah. BORING. How about something like Viral Matrix? Why can't part of the effect be a chance for a failure in antimatter containment?

    There needs to be a real buff or restructuring to the whole Science career and skill tree. This would be much easier if Cryptic had learned their lesson from CoH and made PvE and PvP completely separate. I guess some lessons are learned more slowly than others.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    My sci ship is generally set up as 85/30/30/55. With the skill bonuses I'm usually at around 80 aux. I use emergency power to aux do dump that to around 110. With tachyon beam 3 and shield targeting I can knock out shields quickly. I keep 2 torps up front with 1 beam and 2 turrets in the back with a torp.

    In pve I can drop the shields, launch the torps a few seconds apart and watch them rip a ship to pieces. Coupling a tricobalt with a sensor jam of some sort makes quick work of the target. I can throw in some gravity well for good measure. Fairly simple tactics work quite well in pve.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    There's also the fact that you have to balance it for solo vs group use.

    Gravity Well 3, on it's own, is decent. Not too hard to escape, not insane damage.. Good dealing with 3 GW3's damage, let alone trying to escape. Throw a few Sensor Scans onto that, and you're doing more damage than 3 Tacs would.

    Charged Particle Burst 3... meh, ~4,000 shield drain. Potent, but not too deadly considering we're now in an era where everyone can have >10,000 shield facings. But combine two or more of those and it's lethal to even the best of shield tankers.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    A lot of people have things exactly backwards. Science doesn't need to be changed. PvE in general needs to become more dynamic, challenging, and interesting so that crowd control and playing the debuff class actually makes sense there.

    Do it the other way around, change science to be better at STO's dull PvE experience, and you end up hurting PvP balance. And in the long run the PvPers will have things changed back, because balance matters far more in PvP, and the PvPers care more about it and are far, far more vocal. The balance points need to come closer together, and that's the end of it.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    A lot of people have things exactly backwards. Science doesn't need to be changed. PvE in general needs to become more dynamic, challenging, and interesting so that crowd control and playing the debuff class actually makes sense there.

    Do it the other way around, change science to be better at STO's dull PvE experience, and you end up hurting PvP balance. And in the long run the PvPers will have things changed back, because balance matters far more in PvP, and the PvPers care more about it and are far, far more vocal. The balance points need to come closer together, and that's the end of it.

    Easy, easy fix for this:

    Give NPCs access to more BO abilities. Have the number of abilities scale with difficulty and randomize them.

    You know that a Mogai Escort is going to pop APA/RF (and then Evasive away so you're out of his own arc), you know that the Breen are going to use SNB/Target Shields, you know that Galor is going to use FBP.

    Give NPCs more abilties so that people learn what they are and how to counter them. It'll also raise the overall difficulty so it's more of a challenge - right now, all you have to do is get 3-4 DHCs with Scatter Volley. That's it. After my first character, I leveled up all the rest of mine doing that in the fraction of the time it would have taken otherwise.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    That would help quite a bit MVS. I think the 2nd part would be to raise NPC damage dealing ability on normal to the point where you need to do more than just balance your shields to counter it, and in exchange lower hit points a bit so that NPCs don't have more hit points than players. The third part is AI related, so that NPCs become better at broadsiding or attacking with forward arc weapons, as well as balancing their shields and/or turning weakened facings away from the player.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    I completely agree that Science abilities are very underwhelming. I've been switching them up on my Science character, hoping to find some that really feel powerful, but so far I haven't. I'm hoping that Feedback Pulse, Gravity Well, and Charged Particle Burst will spice things up enough to keep me from defaulting to my Engineer.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    Honestly, I'd go for a lot less... weirdness... in the science powers. It strikes me that Science's role in combat is basically information warfare, and Doing Things With Sensors That Make Your Enemies Scream. Buff/Debuff/Crowd Control and the like. Science needs to go back and focus on that.

    I'm not sure buffing the NPCs and broadening their powers is the way to go, but at this time, to keep from having to go the route of separate PvP and PvE stats (which is a dark route to go, indeed) there's probably no other real choice at this time without having to rebuild all three classes.


    ... Huh. Just had an odd thought. In TOS, Spock was the science officer. Can anyone remember when there was an actual science officer/science department head in TNG/VOY? Sure, Data ran the sensors and reported the computer's analysis, but he was the Ops officer. Was there anyone who was in charge of SCIENCE on the Enterprise?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    mvs5191 wrote: »
    There's also the fact that you have to balance it for solo vs group use.

    Gravity Well 3, on it's own, is decent. Not too hard to escape, not insane damage.. Good dealing with 3 GW3's damage, let alone trying to escape. Throw a few Sensor Scans onto that, and you're doing more damage than 3 Tacs would.

    Charged Particle Burst 3... meh, ~4,000 shield drain. Potent, but not too deadly considering we're now in an era where everyone can have >10,000 shield facings. But combine two or more of those and it's lethal to even the best of shield tankers.


    This is one of the biggest issues really. A lone science ship is an annoyance really, the powers when timed well can affect a battle but generally it is totally dependent on the rest of the team to actually get kills in a reasonable amount of time.

    But when its multiple science ships all using their AOEs together, that is when science goes from underwhelming to dominating. And it is pretty much limited to just the AOE powers.

    Overlapping gravity wells are insanely more powerful than a single gravity well. Multiple charged particle bursts can destroy a group's shields, while one CPB is largely forgettable. Multiple tractor beams on a target are pointless. Multiple tachyon beams can be valuable, but only on one target, while the others are free to use their shield heals on that ally, and in any case isn't much different than multiple escorts focus firing on a target.

    This is the only reason people say science ships are OP, because multiples in PVE that work together can be just crippling. Yet one science ship is never OP.

    If Cryptic ever decides to take science issues seriously, then the first thing to address is the AOEs and how they stack, overlap, and magnify their effects when used together. When that is done, then science can actually be more powerful individually while not being so ridiculously overwhelming in a group.


    A lot of people have things exactly backwards. Science doesn't need to be changed. PvE in general needs to become more dynamic, challenging, and interesting so that crowd control and playing the debuff class actually makes sense there.

    Do it the other way around, change science to be better at STO's dull PvE experience, and you end up hurting PvP balance. And in the long run the PvPers will have things changed back, because balance matters far more in PvP, and the PvPers care more about it and are far, far more vocal. The balance points need to come closer together, and that's the end of it.


    I would disagree with this. The AI is never going to be good enough where science powers will actually matter. Further, what can they actually do that makes science useful? The only real thing that science has a good niche value to is shield stripping, but CPB and tachyon beam have no value in PVE because A) the AI doesn't use shield resists most of the time, and B) the AI has massively inflated shield HP to the point where CPB and TB are a joke to even use.

    Power drain builds can work but require some expert timing or all that effort to drain shields to zero is pretty much irrelevant when they pop back up at full strength when the drain expires.

    Holding the enemy in place is also rarely necessary because DPS to destroy the enemy in question is a better solution in most cases.

    Worse, some encounters have been explicitly designed to render science powers pointless. The Donatra battle is stupidly frustrating because all those anti-cloak science powers don't work against her.

    Further, the problem is that science powers, on an individual basis, are rather weak. DPS-wise you are always better putting full power to weapons than power to Aux, ESPECIALLY in PVE because of their wildly inflated shield HP.


    So what exactly does science bring to the table that would have any hypothetical use in PVE as opposed to just bringing another escort with scatter volley?
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