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Cruisers suck
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Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
and that makes me sad... don't get me wrong, cruisers can be quite nice PVE, particularly where there is no time limit. They can take a tremendous amount of punishment and take their time killing off whatever mess they flew straight into, but in stfs where getting it done fast is key, cruisers just really don't have it. And when it comes to PVP, the most cruisers can hope to do is survive, they can't really bite back. In 1v1 pvp, a properly built escort will tear a cruiser up and quite effortlessly tank the damage a cruiser, heck, several cruisers can do. I've flown my bop into a ball of fed cruisers and been accused of hacking because i built my bop to be able to tank damn near as well as a cruiser while doing far superior damage. And the only time an escort ends up "piddling about with just its turrets" (as some cruiser lovers say) is only against another escort where they dog fight, each trying to keep out of the others cannon arcs while simultaneously trying to keep the enemy in theirs. Otherwise most escorts do what I call the "park and pwn" where they stop or significantly slow down (most easily done against slower ships like cruisers) and just blow the TRIBBLE out of a shield facing and then the exposed hull underneath. I have even park and pwnt the tac cubes in stfs while tanking them... IN A BOP.
The game's balance is quite off, and it saddens me, because cruisers shouldn't just be damage sinks and traditional mmo tanks that have "taunt" skills (starship threat control) with low damage and lots of health. Do you think the enterprise E would be flying around, barely doing any damage to a cube trying to "distract it" while extending its shields to the defiant to let it kill the cube for it? No.
In trek lore, the defiant, and escorts in general, were starfleet's way of fielding more firepower without the tremendous expense and resources that would go into full blown cruisers. They are basically the equivalent of taking the weapons of a crusier, and the engines of a cruiser, strapping them together, and sending them into battle without the rest of the ship.
Both ships should be able to do excellent damage, comparable damage, and I mean comparable within the same time frame. None of this "escort shreds enemy in two volleys, cruiser takes 2 minutes." TRIBBLE. The only difference there should be between the two is that the cruiser is slow and, while easy to hit, can take alot of punishment, while the escort is supposed to be much faster, maneuverable, and evasive, so that it can avoid damage and take advantage of enemy weakness by having better ability to get into position to do so. An escort 's primary defense should be evasion, keeping moving. It should never, EVER, be able to park and pwn or slow to a crawl without getting easily blown out of the sky.
So, while I really, really wish I could love my cruisers, particularly the odys (holy TRIBBLE that's a pretty ship) I bought, I don't. I'm not satisfied with pve traditional mmo tanking in a star trek game (the pve content is so limited and pretty lame anyway) nor can I trick myself into thinking: "I'm content with my role, playing a healer/damage sink." like most people who say they like cruisers have. Really? REALLY?! There is no "healer class ship" in star trek, in first contact, did the crews of those poor, tattered ships think: "Thank god the enterprise has arrived to extend its shields!" or "Yay! The enterprise will distract and meatshield us from the cube while we do all the damage!" no! they thought: "Thank god the enterprise is here to pwn this cube's face!" Nor am I happy to simply absorb the damage of 1-5 attacking ships in pvp, only to not have enough damage to destroy a single one of them... unless they happen to be super, I mean SUPER noob.
I don't want to take any of the awesome away from escorts, I just think their awesome should be tweaked to match star trek canon and cruisers fixed to not be so sucktastic. And this mmo shouldn't be trying so hard to copy the typical mmo formula. Each ship should be able to take care of itself, there should be no need to form a group of healer+tank+dd's. Every ship should be able to tank, escorts should evasion tank, cruisers should meat shield/defense tank, and sci ships should be somewhere in the middle. Every ship should do the same amount of damage, escorts in reasonable bursts with cannon attack runs (a la defiant) or more traditionally (a la prometheus), cruisers should not suck with few tac consoles and few, low level tac skills, nor should sci ships for that matter. Only being able to fire 3 torps in a volley? seriously? Voyager could do and did better than that. Though admittedly, sci normal-damage output should be balanced with their sci damage/crowd control skills.
There are many, MANY ways to fix the problems with this game, but that'd be a whole other novel which I shall, perhaps, write later.
The game's balance is quite off, and it saddens me, because cruisers shouldn't just be damage sinks and traditional mmo tanks that have "taunt" skills (starship threat control) with low damage and lots of health. Do you think the enterprise E would be flying around, barely doing any damage to a cube trying to "distract it" while extending its shields to the defiant to let it kill the cube for it? No.
In trek lore, the defiant, and escorts in general, were starfleet's way of fielding more firepower without the tremendous expense and resources that would go into full blown cruisers. They are basically the equivalent of taking the weapons of a crusier, and the engines of a cruiser, strapping them together, and sending them into battle without the rest of the ship.
Both ships should be able to do excellent damage, comparable damage, and I mean comparable within the same time frame. None of this "escort shreds enemy in two volleys, cruiser takes 2 minutes." TRIBBLE. The only difference there should be between the two is that the cruiser is slow and, while easy to hit, can take alot of punishment, while the escort is supposed to be much faster, maneuverable, and evasive, so that it can avoid damage and take advantage of enemy weakness by having better ability to get into position to do so. An escort 's primary defense should be evasion, keeping moving. It should never, EVER, be able to park and pwn or slow to a crawl without getting easily blown out of the sky.
So, while I really, really wish I could love my cruisers, particularly the odys (holy TRIBBLE that's a pretty ship) I bought, I don't. I'm not satisfied with pve traditional mmo tanking in a star trek game (the pve content is so limited and pretty lame anyway) nor can I trick myself into thinking: "I'm content with my role, playing a healer/damage sink." like most people who say they like cruisers have. Really? REALLY?! There is no "healer class ship" in star trek, in first contact, did the crews of those poor, tattered ships think: "Thank god the enterprise has arrived to extend its shields!" or "Yay! The enterprise will distract and meatshield us from the cube while we do all the damage!" no! they thought: "Thank god the enterprise is here to pwn this cube's face!" Nor am I happy to simply absorb the damage of 1-5 attacking ships in pvp, only to not have enough damage to destroy a single one of them... unless they happen to be super, I mean SUPER noob.
I don't want to take any of the awesome away from escorts, I just think their awesome should be tweaked to match star trek canon and cruisers fixed to not be so sucktastic. And this mmo shouldn't be trying so hard to copy the typical mmo formula. Each ship should be able to take care of itself, there should be no need to form a group of healer+tank+dd's. Every ship should be able to tank, escorts should evasion tank, cruisers should meat shield/defense tank, and sci ships should be somewhere in the middle. Every ship should do the same amount of damage, escorts in reasonable bursts with cannon attack runs (a la defiant) or more traditionally (a la prometheus), cruisers should not suck with few tac consoles and few, low level tac skills, nor should sci ships for that matter. Only being able to fire 3 torps in a volley? seriously? Voyager could do and did better than that. Though admittedly, sci normal-damage output should be balanced with their sci damage/crowd control skills.
There are many, MANY ways to fix the problems with this game, but that'd be a whole other novel which I shall, perhaps, write later.
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Are you serious or sarcastic?
"Perhaps a little bit of both".
I am quite happy playing cruisers, but I don't PVP
I taught some people to use the Injector Assembly and tactical precognition tricks to make cruisers dance like a butterfly, sting like a bee. A certain gentleman with a handle starting with the blue letter J participated in the thread too
It's not a joke that certain cruiser builds can fly around as fast as escorts tanking everything with impunity and it takes a certain piloting flair to do the 'fast battlecruiser' act well.
Assault cruiser is decent provided the pilot can maintain max range and high speed discipline, Odyssey Operations with the saucer separated spamming Aux2Dampers and APO is like a supercharged Mercedes CLS AMG swooping through STF maps with Jeremy Clarkson at the wheel.
Hmmm, methinks I should de-mothball my Texas Chainsaw Massacre cruiser build for some fast and furious Tokyo Drifting ESTF action on youtube this weekend. What say you
Oh, and here's a wee lil article on why cruisers are awesome.
I use cruisers extensively for fleet PvP. Nothing wrong with them :P
About you demothballing one of your old cruisers: I say aye fellow warrior. May you never know defeat!
We can discuss tactics in more detail and evaluate my ship builds when I get home later. Think we need some quality time to look at specific (lesser used) ship components and why some builds of mine look totally insane.
The fleet escort with cannons, beams and torpedoes all firing at once is quite the star in ESTFs because of something called synergy between all its skills. It's not as hard hitting as your AE with all the DHCs but is a blade dancer capable of adapting to a variety of situations and destroying targets at any angle and range. I use it as a proper escort destroyer which means it's like a flying artillery platform intended to fly behind a battle line and just slaughter things and heal other AEs for 20 minutes straight. As you recall the ship did poorly with DHCs but once the mad scientist treatment came on it was splendid.
The other 'mad scientist cruiser' build you probably have not seen. I only demonstrated the Lexington's 'fast battlecruiser' capabilities to the TFR fleet and to @InputEnd in last week's ESTF training run.
One other thing too is that my assault cruiser actually outperforms the fleet escort in a long running battle due to the enormous amount of engineering slots. Sure, might not turn as well as the escort but straight line speed? The cruiser is faster thanks to Injector Assy. in the extra engineering slot.
I think you can play STO in any ship that you want to fly if you know how. I have always flows cruisers and don't have any issue with them. I can't get the hang of escorts and have tried many times. It's all about what you want to play and how you Skill up.
I am currently fully skilled in Doff and Dabbo until the FE replay starts
You haven't played any Lineage II have you? :eek:
run away! run away! Aaaaaaaaa!
Yes to discussing tactics (as a Noob, I still need some work, though at least I'm not flying a Rainbow Bortas). Especially with Synergy as I probably haven't quite mastered that (much less know how the hell that will work out).
My AE only had DHC's and Turrets because I can't really time correctly when to launch a Torpedo to max effect.
In all truth, I fear the damage over time Cruiser over the Escort, mostly because the Cruisers are tough as nails and will stay in a fight for a long time, while Escorts (unless they get some seriously good backup), tend to pop under a lot of concentrated fire
I need to switch back to the assault cruiser again. It does feel that in certain situations I can get the cruiser to do an impressive burst of cannon and beam damage in certain conditions. You just need to creatively manipulate some tac and eng skills.
I recall in KASE that my assault cruiser can kill 3 probes. 2 spheres and/or a cube in a much quicker time than the escort with DHCs based on the fact I can spam CSV and BFaW continuously using Emergency Power to Battery and Technician doffs. Also, no need to retreat when the Borg do fire back. Just charge right back at them, polarize hull and repulse away.
I then leave a glittering tricobalt mine on their doorstep when I turn away to setup the next attack run... just like a giant escort
The thing to note here is that beam arrays naturally do not cause massive damage but with supporting powers they are seriously capable of punching big holes into things all the way out to max range esp if your toon is speced for max damage and criticals + antiproton weapons.
Actualy, that is not entirely true.
The captain's class determiens the way a ship delivers damage. A decent Tactical Cruiser will do a lot of burst damage, for example with Beam Overload 2, Attack Pattern Alpha, Fire On My Mark, Tactical Fleet amd Go Down Fighting all stacked. Sure, an escort will have an even higher base to work with, but the captain matters more than the ship class.
I was waiting for a Sci Vessels are Fun thread actually.
Someone called my concept for an assault science ship to be a 'mad scientist' design. But it's actually very effective as a "Federation Raider" type of ship
Because this is the Forums, and the posts would just revolve around around why Science Vessels suck
We are all doomed I am afraid
As for the game, they have to have some kind of gameplay balance to make it interesting and fair. Right now, science ships are broken and escorts are a little overpowered, but once that is fixed, I like the different roles the two play.
Hey, wasn't meaning it as an offensive jest.
@sophlogimo: He can only do as you suggest every 90+ seconds and go down fighting only works under 50% health. So yes, let us pause to marvel at how a tac captain can do a decent burst of damage in a cruiser and, after what is an eternity in pvp time, do another decent burst of damage... if under 50% health. Sorry, color me unimpressed.
@Sakarak: By "much more powerful, upgraded excelsior class ship," I presume you mean "much more powerful than the 80 year old excelsior class ship." and not "much more powerful than the defiant." But either way, when I look at that fight, I don't see, "Wow, look at the defiant go!" I think, "The defiant had its hands full with an upgraded 80 year old ship, how can it possibly blow through a sovereign?" And in regard to the prometheus and the nebula, that was the byproduct of needing to say "this new ship we're introducing is awesome, but we can't spend half the episode showing it." Just like many of the dominion war scenes show vessels popping from a single volley for the sake of conserving time and cramming as much "epic" as possible into the time allotted. But as I said, an escort is the weapons and engines of a cruiser strapped together and sent into battle without the rest of the ship. An escort should have the firepower of a cruiser (and a cruiser the fire power of an escort), the difference is one is slow and has high defense, the other is fast and evasive. And each should be pretty much equal but with different styles of play and advantages. Currently an escort can blow the TRIBBLE out of pretty much anything with ridiculous ease, and can tank just as well if not better than a cruiser. While the cruiser is survivable but pecks at things. The balance is way off. I'm not saying I hate cruisers as they should be, I hate them as they are... and I really, really wish I could love them, cause the ody is freaking beautiful.
I have encounter decent PvPers. I have encountered awesome Escorts. I practically read the damn Organized PVP channel on a daily basis. I have been owned by Lady Fek'thiri via her violet disco ball of doom.
The problem isn't that Escorts are overpowered or anything like that. It's you. You aren't giving the big boats a chance or experimenting with them at all. The only reason Escorts "seem" like they tank better than a cruiser is because they are going at a high speed. Disable the engines and their defense drops considerably. Then they pop like every other ship.
I also make optionals in Elite with my Bortas'Qu, it just depends on the team. Granted, 5 cruisers won't be able to make the optionals, but even if it is just 2 good Escorts and a couple cruisers, the Optionals are possible to achieve. Besides, why should you even care about optionals anyway? More often than not, you usually don't get anything out of the extra bag.
And on another note, slim down the wall of text.
And excuse you, you don't know anything of what I've done with "the big boats." And it's frankly, too much to convey. But I started in a cruiser and flew cruisers all the way up to VA where I found myself severely disappointed at how the best I could do was damage sink and run from an enemy escort without really doing much to make it think twice about attacking me again. I then got a promy and was much happier. Also, my bop can get caught in three tractor beams having three cruisers pounding on it as hard as they can, caught in two grav wells, which I would survive, possibly having actually taken some damage, which i would then completely heal up in a few seconds, making that whole attempt entirely useless. So stopping an escort from moving doesn't necessarily mean its defense goes out the window. Plus the only thing disabling the engines of a death machine like lady fek'lrhi does is stop her from her perpetual upward or downward spiral that prevents cannon users from keeping her in their sights (a tactic that would no longer work so well if they would give us proper 360 degree motion, or even simply allow ships to point their nose all the way up and down.), thus affording them, THEM, the escorts, the opportunity to kill her. Stopping lady fek'lrhi for some cruisers really wouldn't do anything to her.
And yeah, just two good escorts is all it takes to make up for the tremendous lack of damage on the part of the three other cruisers. That's just a point toward my argument. Yes, the items in the extra bag might not be that great and you might not even get any of them, but that doesn't really soften the blow of the all cruiser team's inability to get the bag and have that opportunity to get nothing. And you're talking about your bortas? The cruiser with 4+ tac consoles so it can actually do damage like an escort? Duh. I like the bortas quite well, it's the closest approximation of what a cruiser should be capable of.
Yup, escorts are sprinters, sprinters who can sprint the whole marathon two or three times in the time it takes the poor "marathon runner" to do it once. The poor marathon runner who is lagging behind, trying its best to feel useful, even though it knows the escort is the star of this show.
Nope ,I use both,So I will rephrase it.The escort is the guy who gets KOed in allout barfight unless he runs out the backdoor.The cruiser is the guy still standing after slugging it out for the duration.A lack of patience,and running a cruiser like a escort is folly.I love my escorts, but I enjoy the cruisers as well.Its just a different style of tactical usage.
Ah, your right.This is a personal egostroke thread, and trollbait. I should look for a thread that has something more constructive to ponder, and input.:D
I seen other cruisers kill, support with heals/buffs and tank just fine in PvP.
I do not see the Cruiser defficiency at all.