It's because you can't see the Captian at the Helm that you cannot see it.
I fly cruisers on teh KDF side of things and do just fine in PvP and have seen even Galaxy-Xs in PvP do just as fine in combat. I see no cruiser defficiency.
I fly cruisers on teh KDF side of things and do just fine in PvP and have seen even Galaxy-Xs in PvP do just as fine in combat. I see no cruiser defficiency.
I Captain a Cruiser as well in PVP. I just cross heal and do steady DPS to whoever the fleet is targeting. When they target me, I pop RSP so that they focus on someone else again. :rolleyes:
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
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.
A properly built escort can tank just as well as a cruiser, the escorts that have to run away all the time don't know what they're doing. In your bar fight metaphor, the cruiser is the guy who thinks he's bad *** cause he doesn't have a clue, and the escort is the chuck norris who pops in and ko's everyone in the room, then does a victory lap with fireworks.
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
How can this possibly be a "personal ego stroke" thread? I'm not talking about how bad *** I am, I'm talking about how bad cruisers are, how I want to fly a cruiser, but if I do, I'm going to be relegated to damage sink heal boat. Not awesome pwnness that was the cruisers from the show. As I said before, does the Enterprise E sit around extending its shields to the defiant while it does all the awesome? No. Both ships should be awesome DD's with different tactics, the slow, sturdy cruiser, and the fast, maneuverable escort.
Cruisers could use a few more ensign stations to better reflect their universal design.
If anything, what a cruiser needs is higher ranking tac officers so it isn't relegated to firing a 2-3 MAX torpedoes in a volley or stuck with low level fire at wills. If fire at will was meant for anything, it was the cruiser, and it can only use level 1 and 2? pff. But really, I am of the opinion that most of the tac skills need to be commands more like a toggle and without a level, and less like skills. If you tell your tac officer to fire at will, he should fire at will until you tell him to do something else. And how ridiculous is it that you have to continually tell your tac to rapid fire the cannons? "Now, Mr. Worf, i want you to REALLY fire the cannons." Seriously? or "Rapid fire, Mr. Worf. Now rapid fire again! now rapid fire again!" it's really quite stupid. The cannons should just have two modes of fire, the normal mode being like rapid fire, the second mode being like scatter volley. By equipping cannons, you would get both modes of fire that you can switch between in combat. Same with torpedoes, no matter what ship equips them, they should fire the same number of torps in a volley or a spread and have the two modes. When your torps have finished cooling, you should be able to choose to fire them this time as a volley at one target or a spread. They could come up with some ACTUAL skills for tac officers instead of having their special abilities be a mode of fire. "Your special ability is to rapidly fire cannons?" "Yes sir, I can push the button that says rapid fire quite proficiently." Riiiiiiiight....
I Captain a Cruiser as well in PVP. I just cross heal and do steady DPS to whoever the fleet is targeting. When they target me, I pop RSP so that they focus on someone else again. :rolleyes:
And that is because cruisers can only pvp in a group where 3+ cruisers are all banging on the same target. Cruisers in this game in pvp are more like an environmental hazard than an actual opponent. They are just floating about randomly firing their beams all over the place while extending their shields and popping heals and doing their best to stay alive if they should have the misfortune of being targeted by an escort. When I'm flying my cruiser, I don't want to always have to have a buddy to even remotely be a threat pvp. If anyone should be able to fly solo, it should be a cruiser. A cruiser is supposed to be the top of the line in weapons, defenses, personnel, science facilities; cruisers are starfleet's do everything really well ship. They fielded the specialized escorts and science vessels to avoid the cost of building full blown cruisers. An escort and a science vessel put together pretty much make a cruiser, by splitting the cruiser into its two roles, defending the federation and exploring the unknown, you allow the science vessel to go off and do the exploration while keeping the weapons close to home to defend the federation. Which is not to say a science vessel has no tactical ability, we've seen that they do from voyager.
I think some people miss the point of this thread. I'm not saying cruisers suck because I'm trying to make all the cruiser people feel bad, or puff up my ego. I WANT TO FLY A CRUISER. I share the experiences of forgetting to do my doffs in sector space cause I'm too busy looking at how perty my ody is. The point of this thread is to air the problems with cruisers. I want cruisers to be as awesome as they should be. This thread is meant to be constructive. That's why the first post's title goes "Cruisers suck" straight into "and that makes me sad," cause cruisers SHOULD be awesome. Which is why I have also included in my posts suggestions as to how the game could better be balanced to reflect the show and make things fun for everyone. Let everyone be kick ***. No one should just be a healer or just be a damage sink or just be a DD. That's not how ships were in star trek, They each had their strengths, but every ship could take care of itself and hold its own. Never would the Enterprise E need two or more other cruisers to take down one defiant. I feel that the people who have found a way to love their cruisers as they are have merely allowed themselves to settle. "This is the way things are, and I'll be content with my role." Don't settle, don't let cryptic dictate to you that this MMO will be a space themed wow. Don't let them tell you you have to fit into tank, dd, or healer. Demand that this game be true to trek.
Escorts are about right
but they should Escort
the Escorts job is to protect the larger , slower ships and the carriers
Thats how a battle group is organised
Escorts protect and scout
its the Big boys who break heads
Escorts are about right
but they should Escort
the Escorts job is to protect the larger , slower ships and the carriers
Thats how a battle group is organised
Escorts protect and scout
its the Big boys who break heads
In the context of this game, the developers should not be under the mistaken impression that the federation fielded escorts because the cruisers weren't well armed enough and needed escorts to protect them. If cruisers needed more fire power, they would just include more weapons in cruisers. Escorts were deployed to quickly increase the federation's military capabilities, they are essentially mobile weapons platforms, weapons and engines, a quicker and cheaper way of enhancing federation defenses without the time and expense that would go into building all those cruisers. The defiant was actually rarely seen escorting. It was usually being solo kick ***. And if you saw the defiant and the enterprise E flying together, the defiant wouldn't be there to protect the poor, helpless enterprise, that would just be two kick *** ships being kick *** together in their different kick *** ways. The enterprise taking hits like a champ and bringing down the pwn hammer while the defiant dodges those hits while bringing down its pwn hammer. Two, equally pwn hammers, just wielded in different ways. But that is not so in this game, cruisers can take hits, but not really dish it out, escorts can really dish it out, and take damage just as well if not better than the cruiser. The balance of power is way off.
The thing is that STO simplify alot within space combat for the reason of playability.
In terms of attack strenght, the Defaint (as an escort) might be as powerfull as an cruiser, however, the Defaint was mostly docked on DS9 in the series. And there is a reason. Though you can put large and powerfull weapons on small ships, you can't store alot of supply, nor crew, nor science equipment, nor repair equipment. In ST escorts as the defaint would be unsuitable for long term travel or long term missions, and useless for science or research. The Defaint was also build only for one task: as defense vessel against the Borg. In contrast, cruisers are build to fullfill a very broad spectrum of task and can operate mostly independently.
However, this advantage of cruisers is not reflected in STO. You don't need to refill antimatter, you don't need to refill mines or torps (ok, maybe they can be even replicated, but this costs energy, so again antimatter as fuel). You also don't need large science labs or med station. In addition, the absolute amount of crew has only a very limited influence.
So in STO cruisers are more or less big clumpsy battle ships that can dish out some moderate damage while offering some healing. And this is a real pitty. There would be some solutions that would improve the realism, e.g. coupling the amount of DOs you can have with the amount of crew on a ship. As well as improving the effect of powers like engeneering team based on the absolute crew. But I doubt that this will ever implemented in STO.
How can this possibly be a "personal ego stroke" thread? I'm not talking about how bad *** I am, I'm talking about how bad cruisers are, how I want to fly a cruiser, but if I do, I'm going to be relegated to damage sink heal boat. Not awesome pwnness that was the cruisers from the show. As I said before, does the Enterprise E sit around extending its shields to the defiant while it does all the awesome? No. Both ships should be awesome DD's with different tactics, the slow, sturdy cruiser, and the fast, maneuverable escort.
I am cringing at my prior posting.My attack on your character was unjust, and unfounded.I had a manditory duty shift rotation in RL.So I am a posterchild for why people shouldnt skim threads, when they are half asleep. Then post on them.So I offer a humble apology.I had missed entire sentances bobbleheading and my brain processed some remarks as posturing, because I missed whole sections of your input, and took your input out of context.Your reply to my rant, was more civilized than I merit. I get it now, you like cruisers, but they lack the canon feel.I liked my T-3 excelsior, but that was only because it behaved the way I expected an 80 year old fleet workhorse to behave.I couldnt wait to jump into the vaunted Galaxy class at Captain level if I liked the excelsior.THAT was the biggest dissappointment I had to that point.The Galaxy class was a dumpster fire in combat.I was grateful for my first Defiant then, because that Galaxy class sat in my inventory getting hateful glances when I saw it."Pride of the fleet" cruisers feel weapon nerfed, I agree.As for how I feel about escorts,I wont step off the bridge of my endgame Defiant, unless someone blows it out from under me.I have the TAC oddy too. AT this point, I only use it for episode missions or sector cruising(gotta show off that MACO pimp job)I am still somewhat new here, and I run my escorts in any color I want....as long as its phaser.Same with my oddy, as long as its AP.I again apologize for my bad form rant.
And that is because cruisers can only pvp in a group where 3+ cruisers are all banging on the same target. Cruisers in this game in pvp are more like an environmental hazard than an actual opponent. They are just floating about randomly firing their beams all over the place while extending their shields and popping heals and doing their best to stay alive if they should have the misfortune of being targeted by an escort. When I'm flying my cruiser, I don't want to always have to have a buddy to even remotely be a threat pvp. If anyone should be able to fly solo, it should be a cruiser. A cruiser is supposed to be the top of the line in weapons, defenses, personnel, science facilities; cruisers are starfleet's do everything really well ship. They fielded the specialized escorts and science vessels to avoid the cost of building full blown cruisers. An escort and a science vessel put together pretty much make a cruiser, by splitting the cruiser into its two roles, defending the federation and exploring the unknown, you allow the science vessel to go off and do the exploration while keeping the weapons close to home to defend the federation. Which is not to say a science vessel has no tactical ability, we've seen that they do from voyager.
I think some people miss the point of this thread. I'm not saying cruisers suck because I'm trying to make all the cruiser people feel bad, or puff up my ego. I WANT TO FLY A CRUISER. I share the experiences of forgetting to do my doffs in sector space cause I'm too busy looking at how perty my ody is. The point of this thread is to air the problems with cruisers. I want cruisers to be as awesome as they should be. This thread is meant to be constructive. That's why the first post's title goes "Cruisers suck" straight into "and that makes me sad," cause cruisers SHOULD be awesome. Which is why I have also included in my posts suggestions as to how the game could better be balanced to reflect the show and make things fun for everyone. Let everyone be kick ***. No one should just be a healer or just be a damage sink or just be a DD. That's not how ships were in star trek, They each had their strengths, but every ship could take care of itself and hold its own. Never would the Enterprise E need two or more other cruisers to take down one defiant. I feel that the people who have found a way to love their cruisers as they are have merely allowed themselves to settle. "This is the way things are, and I'll be content with my role." Don't settle, don't let cryptic dictate to you that this MMO will be a space themed wow. Don't let them tell you you have to fit into tank, dd, or healer. Demand that this game be true to trek.
The one problem with this is you are basically asking for:
a) More Tac slots on the cruisers. The only one with a LTC Tactical Slot (not universal) is the Excelsior and I have seen people turn that ship into a respectable Tactical Cruiser.
b) Have cruiser on the Fed side be able to equip Dual Cannons and Heavy cannons. The only cruiser that can do that Fed side is the Galaxy-X and I see more hate about this ship than cruisers in general. KDF has it made because most of their cruiser can mount Dual Cannons and do reasonably well.
c) More Tactical Consoles. I see that as the chief problem with the gimped damage abilities of cruisers. One of a few reasons why my Bortas can do a lot of damage for a cruiser is because Cryptic deemed for it to posses 4 tactical consoles (or 5 for the Bortas Tactical Cruiser) at the cost of Science Consoles (which I can live with)
Are any of these things right about what you wish to see?
I am sorry, but cruiser have a purpose. They are tanks. If you are looking to deal damage change ships.
A good example of this is in DS9, the defiant will rip through most ships in a couple volleys. When a cruiser will deal with it opponent just not as fast. If you are in a cruiser and getting owned by an escort sorry your build needs to be tweaked. I know plenty of players in cruisers that can tank multiple escort at once. If this is not game balance I don't know what is. Even my eng in a cruiser can tank two players. If you don't like the role then it might be time to change ships. There are some good damage dealing build in cruiser out there, but I would pride myself on no deaths over kills any day. A perfect example of a tank build is being able to tank the tac cube in infected space and still through heals on the escort on the gate.
I did pvp this one tac in a oddy, that took on three player with one of each class in their respective ships. He could down the escort one on one deal enough damage to the sci to keep him on the defensive and tank the tank. When dealing with all three of us he tanked us from about three minutes before he went down.
Instead of making a thread cruisers suck how about making one says show me your build, or help me what are I doing wrong. I hade to copy a build for my eng and tweak it for my game play style.
The one problem with this is you are basically asking for:
a) More Tac slots on the cruisers. The only one with a LTC Tactical Slot (not universal) is the Excelsior and I have seen people turn that ship into a respectable Tactical Cruiser.
b) Have cruiser on the Fed side be able to equip Dual Cannons and Heavy cannons. The only cruiser that can do that Fed side is the Galaxy-X and I see more hate about this ship than cruisers in general. KDF has it made because most of their cruiser can mount Dual Cannons and do reasonably well.
c) More Tactical Consoles. I see that as the chief problem with the gimped damage abilities of cruisers. One of a few reasons why my Bortas can do a lot of damage for a cruiser is because Cryptic deemed for it to posses 4 tactical consoles (or 5 for the Bortas Tactical Cruiser) at the cost of Science Consoles (which I can live with)
Are any of these things right about what you wish to see?
@ a) Really, I don't want more tac slots on cruisers, I'd much rather they made ACTUAL skills for the tac officers to possess, I don't see the ability to "high yield" or "spread" or "rapid fire" or "scatter volley" as skills but simply modes of fire on hardware.
@b) I don't care for cruisers to equip cannons actually, I feel they should balance the damage so a cruiser can do proper damage in the game with the hardware seen in the show. Besides, cruisers turn so slow that I don't really think dual or dual heavy cannons are that viable. Though I have no problem with the galaxy x's ability to equip cannons, nor would I care if other cruisers could equip cannons... to each their own, I wouldn't be fond of the notion personally, but whatever.
@c) I agree that increasing the number of tac consoles would help greatly in reducing the deficiency of cruiser damage. I feel that a cruiser with 4 eng, 4 sci, and 4 tac would more closely approximate the show. That big ship is full of space to house the facilities for all those things. An escort would have the same tac capability, but reduced eng and sci capabilities which would essentially be traded for the advantage of higher speed and maneuverability. The sci vessels would have a similar advantage, plus the bridge officers of both ships reflect their specialization. Though frankly, I'm fond of the notion of making all bridge stations universal, but if they made it so basic functions like torpedo volleys/spreads were a function of hardware and not bridge officers, I may not mind the current skill allocations.
I am sorry, but cruiser have a purpose. They are tanks. If you are looking to deal damage change ships.
A good example of this is in DS9, the defiant will rip through most ships in a couple volleys. When a cruiser will deal with it opponent just not as fast. If you are in a cruiser and getting owned by an escort sorry your build needs to be tweaked. I know plenty of players in cruisers that can tank multiple escort at once. If this is not game balance I don't know what is. Even my eng in a cruiser can tank two players. If you don't like the role then it might be time to change ships. There are some good damage dealing build in cruiser out there, but I would pride myself on no deaths over kills any day. A perfect example of a tank build is being able to tank the tac cube in infected space and still through heals on the escort on the gate.
I did pvp this one tac in a oddy, that took on three player with one of each class in their respective ships. He could down the escort one on one deal enough damage to the sci to keep him on the defensive and tank the tank. When dealing with all three of us he tanked us from about three minutes before he went down.
Instead of making a thread cruisers suck how about making one says show me your build, or help me what are I doing wrong. I hade to copy a build for my eng and tweak it for my game play style.
There is no "tank class" ship in star trek, there is no "healer class" ship in star trek, there is no "damage dealer" class ship in star trek. Star trek is not freaking WOW. This game should not attempt to put ships into traditional mmo roles.
I don't get owned by escorts in my cruisers, I can tank several of them, just if any of them have a decent build, they can tank just as well as a cruiser while doing far better damage. You strike me as someone who didn't really read the thread, cause I already stated that I do have an escort as well. I don't need to make a "help me" thread, because I have already been through all that, and guess what? Cruisers do TRIBBLE damage no matter how you spec them, some just do slightly less crappy of a job than others. Regardless, what fun is a game where no one can kill each other unless they are severely outnumbered? That is exactly why I proposed the scaling defense system that would allow one on one combat to be fun while scaling defense to compensate for more enemies targeting you. That would best simulate the abilities of ships to have proper one on one fights or have a fighting chance, if not prevail, when outnumbered as seen in the show.
I am cringing at my prior posting.My attack on your character was unjust, and unfounded.I had a manditory duty shift rotation in RL.So I am a posterchild for why people shouldnt skim threads, when they are half asleep. Then post on them.So I offer a humble apology.I had missed entire sentances bobbleheading and my brain processed some remarks as posturing, because I missed whole sections of your input, and took your input out of context.Your reply to my rant, was more civilized than I merit. I get it now, you like cruisers, but they lack the canon feel.I liked my T-3 excelsior, but that was only because it behaved the way I expected an 80 year old fleet workhorse to behave.I couldnt wait to jump into the vaunted Galaxy class at Captain level if I liked the excelsior.THAT was the biggest dissappointment I had to that point.The Galaxy class was a dumpster fire in combat.I was grateful for my first Defiant then, because that Galaxy class sat in my inventory getting hateful glances when I saw it."Pride of the fleet" cruisers feel weapon nerfed, I agree.As for how I feel about escorts,I wont step off the bridge of my endgame Defiant, unless someone blows it out from under me.I have the TAC oddy too. AT this point, I only use it for episode missions or sector cruising(gotta show off that MACO pimp job)I am still somewhat new here, and I run my escorts in any color I want....as long as its phaser.Same with my oddy, as long as its AP.I again apologize for my bad form rant.
The OP is correct in his assessment in pretty much every way. Cruisers are quite frankly broken and fill no function other than being pretty to look at. The Escort is the only viable ship in this game. With the fatal overnerf of the Science skills and ships, they are insignificant. Cruisers (and this had to once again be someone's "Vision") were made to be so slow and so weak that a spastic child of four with down's syndrome on a unicycle could defeat them. In PvP they were so poorly designed that they're relegated to being herd animals, unable to survive in the wild away from their mommy and daddy. Useless ship. Which sucks. I have one escort. I have five cruisers. This is STAR TREK. It's supposed to be about cruisers.
I have read every thread on this forum I can find about ship building and getting the most out of my dread's and Oddy's. I invested an absurd amount of time and energy trying to get my feeble dread onto equal footing with my tac escort retrofit. Guess what? No matter what you do to it, it doesn't stand on equal footing. Cruisers are ruined. Double their damage and add fifty percent to their turn rate, and then they maybe have a shot. Less than that? Probably not.
Forum Apologists aside, the cruisers are garbage. They are in TRIBBLE shape because of a lack of designer flexibility and an idiotically slavish devotion to the holy trinity of MMO's designed exclusively for the stupid. That is the direction our designers seem to be taking us. Between the stealth nerfs (I'm not going to accept that they are bugs until someone owns up to them and fixes them, so they must be WAI if they haven't been addressed by now) and the gross mismanagement of the framework of skills and professions, there really isn't any reason at all to play a cruiser when you can play an escort.
cruisers just need more variable firing arcs, reminds me of "Silent Death" game format with Warhound ships that have lot of arc firings and large cannons.
if any ships foolish get closer to warhounds, it will activate deadly automation turrets in the field of range.
that was pretty much same rules on turn-base engine during combat speed.
only problem Cryptic that really forgot about federation shields, some episodes show that some shields did rotated, only by those larger ships with designed shield rotations because most large ships are too slow on engine drive turnings.
if they add "Yoka-Shan" concept from silent death's game (faction), they used Plasma Shield to kill incoming torpedos and missles, even deadly to small wing of fighters if they get too close.
The OP is correct in his assessment in pretty much every way. Cruisers are quite frankly broken and fill no function other than being pretty to look at. The Escort is the only viable ship in this game. With the fatal overnerf of the Science skills and ships, they are insignificant. Cruisers (and this had to once again be someone's "Vision") were made to be so slow and so weak that a spastic child of four with down's syndrome on a unicycle could defeat them. In PvP they were so poorly designed that they're relegated to being herd animals, unable to survive in the wild away from their mommy and daddy. Useless ship. Which sucks. I have one escort. I have five cruisers. This is STAR TREK. It's supposed to be about cruisers.
I have read every thread on this forum I can find about ship building and getting the most out of my dread's and Oddy's. I invested an absurd amount of time and energy trying to get my feeble dread onto equal footing with my tac escort retrofit. Guess what? No matter what you do to it, it doesn't stand on equal footing. Cruisers are ruined. Double their damage and add fifty percent to their turn rate, and then they maybe have a shot. Less than that? Probably not.
Forum Apologists aside, the cruisers are garbage. They are in TRIBBLE shape because of a lack of designer flexibility and an idiotically slavish devotion to the holy trinity of MMO's designed exclusively for the stupid. That is the direction our designers seem to be taking us. Between the stealth nerfs (I'm not going to accept that they are bugs until someone owns up to them and fixes them, so they must be WAI if they haven't been addressed by now) and the gross mismanagement of the framework of skills and professions, there really isn't any reason at all to play a cruiser when you can play an escort.
Wow you are just all kinds of negative with that post.
@ a) Really, I don't want more tac slots on cruisers, I'd much rather they made ACTUAL skills for the tac officers to possess, I don't see the ability to "high yield" or "spread" or "rapid fire" or "scatter volley" as skills but simply modes of fire on hardware.
@b) I don't care for cruisers to equip cannons actually, I feel they should balance the damage so a cruiser can do proper damage in the game with the hardware seen in the show. Besides, cruisers turn so slow that I don't really think dual or dual heavy cannons are that viable. Though I have no problem with the galaxy x's ability to equip cannons, nor would I care if other cruisers could equip cannons... to each their own, I wouldn't be fond of the notion personally, but whatever.
@c) I agree that increasing the number of tac consoles would help greatly in reducing the deficiency of cruiser damage. I feel that a cruiser with 4 eng, 4 sci, and 4 tac would more closely approximate the show. That big ship is full of space to house the facilities for all those things. An escort would have the same tac capability, but reduced eng and sci capabilities which would essentially be traded for the advantage of higher speed and maneuverability. The sci vessels would have a similar advantage, plus the bridge officers of both ships reflect their specialization. Though frankly, I'm fond of the notion of making all bridge stations universal, but if they made it so basic functions like torpedo volleys/spreads were a function of hardware and not bridge officers, I may not mind the current skill allocations.
Not to attempt to burst your neutronium alloy bubble, but I recently did an Infected Elite Space mission and my PUG team only had one good Escort, 2 Carriers (the Kitty Kind), I think a Sovvy Cruiser, and me in my Bortas. We not only finished the mission, but we got the optional as well.
I know this doesn't go with the current topic you're talking about, just something I wanted to share.
Wow you are just all kinds of negative with that post.
You know, you're absolutely right. I tend to be negative on the forums much more than I am in game. In another post I mention a LONG history with Cryptic and their '**** you' attitude toward their playerbase. It is possible that I'm just tired of them getting a hold of a good concept or IP and then failing to live up to that IP's potential.
This is one of the most recognizable and profitable IPs in television/cinematic history. It might as well be Superman. And yet there are flaws so fundamental in the framework of the game that it's beginning to feel like we're being steered into WoW mechanics and roles.
I.
Hate.
That.
I thought the Champions framework after their rebuild was kind of genius, to be honest. No defined roles, MASSIVE replayability because of that, and a solid, sturdy foundation which they've steadily improved on for a good while now. I would very much love some of that positive direction and more proactive design philosophy applied to this game. Instead, I get a Catbox, gambling, deceptively presented and timegated psuedocontent and ships so crippled it baffles me that people just accept it.
This is star trek?
So, I really do apologize if my posts here on the forums seem unduly harsh, I really need to start being more constructive in my posts. I honestly want to see Cryptic break out of the mold they've established and really hit a home run with this. I'm kind of desperate for them too, actually. Whoever is coming up with the fundamental concepts of a lot of their games is brilliant, but in application they all seem to fall short.
The Cruisers thing is a big issue to me, because I don't want to be forced to play a tactical officer in an escort in order to be efficient and effective, and yet, having leveled first a sci and then an eng, and over the past week a tac, I can say that tactical officers hands down are the most efficient and effective.
Escorts perform above and beyond what is capable for most cruisers, and from my perspective I find that an enormous failure of design. I didn't grow up watching Star Trek: Defiant. I don't remember that ever being a show. There was a defiant in DS9, but it wasn't the focus. The Enterprises, Voyager, those were what the shows were about, the ships themselves were like part of the cast. Invalidating both of those ships types (the science ships moreso than the cruisers, but both are still woefully inadequate) you kind of pigeonhoe people into being tac/escort. I see probably three or four times as many tacs as any other, and it's not hard to see why.
The OP is correct in his assessment in pretty much every way. Cruisers are quite frankly broken and fill no function other than being pretty to look at. The Escort is the only viable ship in this game. With the fatal overnerf of the Science skills and ships, they are insignificant. Cruisers (and this had to once again be someone's "Vision") were made to be so slow and so weak that a spastic child of four with down's syndrome on a unicycle could defeat them. In PvP they were so poorly designed that they're relegated to being herd animals, unable to survive in the wild away from their mommy and daddy. Useless ship. Which sucks. I have one escort. I have five cruisers. This is STAR TREK. It's supposed to be about cruisers.
I have read every thread on this forum I can find about ship building and getting the most out of my dread's and Oddy's. I invested an absurd amount of time and energy trying to get my feeble dread onto equal footing with my tac escort retrofit. Guess what? No matter what you do to it, it doesn't stand on equal footing. Cruisers are ruined. Double their damage and add fifty percent to their turn rate, and then they maybe have a shot. Less than that? Probably not.
Forum Apologists aside, the cruisers are garbage. They are in TRIBBLE shape because of a lack of designer flexibility and an idiotically slavish devotion to the holy trinity of MMO's designed exclusively for the stupid. That is the direction our designers seem to be taking us. Between the stealth nerfs (I'm not going to accept that they are bugs until someone owns up to them and fixes them, so they must be WAI if they haven't been addressed by now) and the gross mismanagement of the framework of skills and professions, there really isn't any reason at all to play a cruiser when you can play an escort.
I don't find your post "negative," just honest. We point out the flaws of cruisers and the horrible misstep of trying to cookie cut trek into traditional mmo roles, because we both want these terrible mistakes to be fixed, it is constructive criticism.
Comments
It's because you can't see the Captian at the Helm that you cannot see it.
I fly cruisers on teh KDF side of things and do just fine in PvP and have seen even Galaxy-Xs in PvP do just as fine in combat. I see no cruiser defficiency.
I Captain a Cruiser as well in PVP. I just cross heal and do steady DPS to whoever the fleet is targeting. When they target me, I pop RSP so that they focus on someone else again. :rolleyes:
I meant the OP.:D
^^
this X a million..........:D
A properly built escort can tank just as well as a cruiser, the escorts that have to run away all the time don't know what they're doing. In your bar fight metaphor, the cruiser is the guy who thinks he's bad *** cause he doesn't have a clue, and the escort is the chuck norris who pops in and ko's everyone in the room, then does a victory lap with fireworks.
How can this possibly be a "personal ego stroke" thread? I'm not talking about how bad *** I am, I'm talking about how bad cruisers are, how I want to fly a cruiser, but if I do, I'm going to be relegated to damage sink heal boat. Not awesome pwnness that was the cruisers from the show. As I said before, does the Enterprise E sit around extending its shields to the defiant while it does all the awesome? No. Both ships should be awesome DD's with different tactics, the slow, sturdy cruiser, and the fast, maneuverable escort.
If anything, what a cruiser needs is higher ranking tac officers so it isn't relegated to firing a 2-3 MAX torpedoes in a volley or stuck with low level fire at wills. If fire at will was meant for anything, it was the cruiser, and it can only use level 1 and 2? pff. But really, I am of the opinion that most of the tac skills need to be commands more like a toggle and without a level, and less like skills. If you tell your tac officer to fire at will, he should fire at will until you tell him to do something else. And how ridiculous is it that you have to continually tell your tac to rapid fire the cannons? "Now, Mr. Worf, i want you to REALLY fire the cannons." Seriously? or "Rapid fire, Mr. Worf. Now rapid fire again! now rapid fire again!" it's really quite stupid. The cannons should just have two modes of fire, the normal mode being like rapid fire, the second mode being like scatter volley. By equipping cannons, you would get both modes of fire that you can switch between in combat. Same with torpedoes, no matter what ship equips them, they should fire the same number of torps in a volley or a spread and have the two modes. When your torps have finished cooling, you should be able to choose to fire them this time as a volley at one target or a spread. They could come up with some ACTUAL skills for tac officers instead of having their special abilities be a mode of fire. "Your special ability is to rapidly fire cannons?" "Yes sir, I can push the button that says rapid fire quite proficiently." Riiiiiiiight....
Escorts "Wash and Go"
And Science vessels "Splash and dash"
And that is because cruisers can only pvp in a group where 3+ cruisers are all banging on the same target. Cruisers in this game in pvp are more like an environmental hazard than an actual opponent. They are just floating about randomly firing their beams all over the place while extending their shields and popping heals and doing their best to stay alive if they should have the misfortune of being targeted by an escort. When I'm flying my cruiser, I don't want to always have to have a buddy to even remotely be a threat pvp. If anyone should be able to fly solo, it should be a cruiser. A cruiser is supposed to be the top of the line in weapons, defenses, personnel, science facilities; cruisers are starfleet's do everything really well ship. They fielded the specialized escorts and science vessels to avoid the cost of building full blown cruisers. An escort and a science vessel put together pretty much make a cruiser, by splitting the cruiser into its two roles, defending the federation and exploring the unknown, you allow the science vessel to go off and do the exploration while keeping the weapons close to home to defend the federation. Which is not to say a science vessel has no tactical ability, we've seen that they do from voyager.
I think some people miss the point of this thread. I'm not saying cruisers suck because I'm trying to make all the cruiser people feel bad, or puff up my ego. I WANT TO FLY A CRUISER. I share the experiences of forgetting to do my doffs in sector space cause I'm too busy looking at how perty my ody is. The point of this thread is to air the problems with cruisers. I want cruisers to be as awesome as they should be. This thread is meant to be constructive. That's why the first post's title goes "Cruisers suck" straight into "and that makes me sad," cause cruisers SHOULD be awesome. Which is why I have also included in my posts suggestions as to how the game could better be balanced to reflect the show and make things fun for everyone. Let everyone be kick ***. No one should just be a healer or just be a damage sink or just be a DD. That's not how ships were in star trek, They each had their strengths, but every ship could take care of itself and hold its own. Never would the Enterprise E need two or more other cruisers to take down one defiant. I feel that the people who have found a way to love their cruisers as they are have merely allowed themselves to settle. "This is the way things are, and I'll be content with my role." Don't settle, don't let cryptic dictate to you that this MMO will be a space themed wow. Don't let them tell you you have to fit into tank, dd, or healer. Demand that this game be true to trek.
but they should Escort
the Escorts job is to protect the larger , slower ships and the carriers
Thats how a battle group is organised
Escorts protect and scout
its the Big boys who break heads
In the context of this game, the developers should not be under the mistaken impression that the federation fielded escorts because the cruisers weren't well armed enough and needed escorts to protect them. If cruisers needed more fire power, they would just include more weapons in cruisers. Escorts were deployed to quickly increase the federation's military capabilities, they are essentially mobile weapons platforms, weapons and engines, a quicker and cheaper way of enhancing federation defenses without the time and expense that would go into building all those cruisers. The defiant was actually rarely seen escorting. It was usually being solo kick ***. And if you saw the defiant and the enterprise E flying together, the defiant wouldn't be there to protect the poor, helpless enterprise, that would just be two kick *** ships being kick *** together in their different kick *** ways. The enterprise taking hits like a champ and bringing down the pwn hammer while the defiant dodges those hits while bringing down its pwn hammer. Two, equally pwn hammers, just wielded in different ways. But that is not so in this game, cruisers can take hits, but not really dish it out, escorts can really dish it out, and take damage just as well if not better than the cruiser. The balance of power is way off.
the BIG stuff does (Troop transports , battle ships , carriers , cargo vessels , Commander Sisko's Lunch trolley)
In terms of attack strenght, the Defaint (as an escort) might be as powerfull as an cruiser, however, the Defaint was mostly docked on DS9 in the series. And there is a reason. Though you can put large and powerfull weapons on small ships, you can't store alot of supply, nor crew, nor science equipment, nor repair equipment. In ST escorts as the defaint would be unsuitable for long term travel or long term missions, and useless for science or research. The Defaint was also build only for one task: as defense vessel against the Borg. In contrast, cruisers are build to fullfill a very broad spectrum of task and can operate mostly independently.
However, this advantage of cruisers is not reflected in STO. You don't need to refill antimatter, you don't need to refill mines or torps (ok, maybe they can be even replicated, but this costs energy, so again antimatter as fuel). You also don't need large science labs or med station. In addition, the absolute amount of crew has only a very limited influence.
So in STO cruisers are more or less big clumpsy battle ships that can dish out some moderate damage while offering some healing. And this is a real pitty. There would be some solutions that would improve the realism, e.g. coupling the amount of DOs you can have with the amount of crew on a ship. As well as improving the effect of powers like engeneering team based on the absolute crew. But I doubt that this will ever implemented in STO.
I am cringing at my prior posting.My attack on your character was unjust, and unfounded.I had a manditory duty shift rotation in RL.So I am a posterchild for why people shouldnt skim threads, when they are half asleep. Then post on them.So I offer a humble apology.I had missed entire sentances bobbleheading and my brain processed some remarks as posturing, because I missed whole sections of your input, and took your input out of context.Your reply to my rant, was more civilized than I merit. I get it now, you like cruisers, but they lack the canon feel.I liked my T-3 excelsior, but that was only because it behaved the way I expected an 80 year old fleet workhorse to behave.I couldnt wait to jump into the vaunted Galaxy class at Captain level if I liked the excelsior.THAT was the biggest dissappointment I had to that point.The Galaxy class was a dumpster fire in combat.I was grateful for my first Defiant then, because that Galaxy class sat in my inventory getting hateful glances when I saw it."Pride of the fleet" cruisers feel weapon nerfed, I agree.As for how I feel about escorts,I wont step off the bridge of my endgame Defiant, unless someone blows it out from under me.I have the TAC oddy too. AT this point, I only use it for episode missions or sector cruising(gotta show off that MACO pimp job)I am still somewhat new here, and I run my escorts in any color I want....as long as its phaser.Same with my oddy, as long as its AP.I again apologize for my bad form rant.
a) More Tac slots on the cruisers. The only one with a LTC Tactical Slot (not universal) is the Excelsior and I have seen people turn that ship into a respectable Tactical Cruiser.
b) Have cruiser on the Fed side be able to equip Dual Cannons and Heavy cannons. The only cruiser that can do that Fed side is the Galaxy-X and I see more hate about this ship than cruisers in general. KDF has it made because most of their cruiser can mount Dual Cannons and do reasonably well.
c) More Tactical Consoles. I see that as the chief problem with the gimped damage abilities of cruisers. One of a few reasons why my Bortas can do a lot of damage for a cruiser is because Cryptic deemed for it to posses 4 tactical consoles (or 5 for the Bortas Tactical Cruiser) at the cost of Science Consoles (which I can live with)
Are any of these things right about what you wish to see?
A good example of this is in DS9, the defiant will rip through most ships in a couple volleys. When a cruiser will deal with it opponent just not as fast. If you are in a cruiser and getting owned by an escort sorry your build needs to be tweaked. I know plenty of players in cruisers that can tank multiple escort at once. If this is not game balance I don't know what is. Even my eng in a cruiser can tank two players. If you don't like the role then it might be time to change ships. There are some good damage dealing build in cruiser out there, but I would pride myself on no deaths over kills any day. A perfect example of a tank build is being able to tank the tac cube in infected space and still through heals on the escort on the gate.
I did pvp this one tac in a oddy, that took on three player with one of each class in their respective ships. He could down the escort one on one deal enough damage to the sci to keep him on the defensive and tank the tank. When dealing with all three of us he tanked us from about three minutes before he went down.
Instead of making a thread cruisers suck how about making one says show me your build, or help me what are I doing wrong. I hade to copy a build for my eng and tweak it for my game play style.
@ a) Really, I don't want more tac slots on cruisers, I'd much rather they made ACTUAL skills for the tac officers to possess, I don't see the ability to "high yield" or "spread" or "rapid fire" or "scatter volley" as skills but simply modes of fire on hardware.
@b) I don't care for cruisers to equip cannons actually, I feel they should balance the damage so a cruiser can do proper damage in the game with the hardware seen in the show. Besides, cruisers turn so slow that I don't really think dual or dual heavy cannons are that viable. Though I have no problem with the galaxy x's ability to equip cannons, nor would I care if other cruisers could equip cannons... to each their own, I wouldn't be fond of the notion personally, but whatever.
@c) I agree that increasing the number of tac consoles would help greatly in reducing the deficiency of cruiser damage. I feel that a cruiser with 4 eng, 4 sci, and 4 tac would more closely approximate the show. That big ship is full of space to house the facilities for all those things. An escort would have the same tac capability, but reduced eng and sci capabilities which would essentially be traded for the advantage of higher speed and maneuverability. The sci vessels would have a similar advantage, plus the bridge officers of both ships reflect their specialization. Though frankly, I'm fond of the notion of making all bridge stations universal, but if they made it so basic functions like torpedo volleys/spreads were a function of hardware and not bridge officers, I may not mind the current skill allocations.
There is no "tank class" ship in star trek, there is no "healer class" ship in star trek, there is no "damage dealer" class ship in star trek. Star trek is not freaking WOW. This game should not attempt to put ships into traditional mmo roles.
I don't get owned by escorts in my cruisers, I can tank several of them, just if any of them have a decent build, they can tank just as well as a cruiser while doing far better damage. You strike me as someone who didn't really read the thread, cause I already stated that I do have an escort as well. I don't need to make a "help me" thread, because I have already been through all that, and guess what? Cruisers do TRIBBLE damage no matter how you spec them, some just do slightly less crappy of a job than others. Regardless, what fun is a game where no one can kill each other unless they are severely outnumbered? That is exactly why I proposed the scaling defense system that would allow one on one combat to be fun while scaling defense to compensate for more enemies targeting you. That would best simulate the abilities of ships to have proper one on one fights or have a fighting chance, if not prevail, when outnumbered as seen in the show.
No worries.
Some of the cruisers in this game are the size of carriers, lol. And did you just call Sisko fat? Shame on you.
(Saw him on CBS being interviewed, He is now the size of Bajor)
The OP is correct in his assessment in pretty much every way. Cruisers are quite frankly broken and fill no function other than being pretty to look at. The Escort is the only viable ship in this game. With the fatal overnerf of the Science skills and ships, they are insignificant. Cruisers (and this had to once again be someone's "Vision") were made to be so slow and so weak that a spastic child of four with down's syndrome on a unicycle could defeat them. In PvP they were so poorly designed that they're relegated to being herd animals, unable to survive in the wild away from their mommy and daddy. Useless ship. Which sucks. I have one escort. I have five cruisers. This is STAR TREK. It's supposed to be about cruisers.
I have read every thread on this forum I can find about ship building and getting the most out of my dread's and Oddy's. I invested an absurd amount of time and energy trying to get my feeble dread onto equal footing with my tac escort retrofit. Guess what? No matter what you do to it, it doesn't stand on equal footing. Cruisers are ruined. Double their damage and add fifty percent to their turn rate, and then they maybe have a shot. Less than that? Probably not.
Forum Apologists aside, the cruisers are garbage. They are in TRIBBLE shape because of a lack of designer flexibility and an idiotically slavish devotion to the holy trinity of MMO's designed exclusively for the stupid. That is the direction our designers seem to be taking us. Between the stealth nerfs (I'm not going to accept that they are bugs until someone owns up to them and fixes them, so they must be WAI if they haven't been addressed by now) and the gross mismanagement of the framework of skills and professions, there really isn't any reason at all to play a cruiser when you can play an escort.
if any ships foolish get closer to warhounds, it will activate deadly automation turrets in the field of range.
that was pretty much same rules on turn-base engine during combat speed.
only problem Cryptic that really forgot about federation shields, some episodes show that some shields did rotated, only by those larger ships with designed shield rotations because most large ships are too slow on engine drive turnings.
if they add "Yoka-Shan" concept from silent death's game (faction), they used Plasma Shield to kill incoming torpedos and missles, even deadly to small wing of fighters if they get too close.
Not to attempt to burst your neutronium alloy bubble, but I recently did an Infected Elite Space mission and my PUG team only had one good Escort, 2 Carriers (the Kitty Kind), I think a Sovvy Cruiser, and me in my Bortas. We not only finished the mission, but we got the optional as well.
I know this doesn't go with the current topic you're talking about, just something I wanted to share.
You know, you're absolutely right. I tend to be negative on the forums much more than I am in game. In another post I mention a LONG history with Cryptic and their '**** you' attitude toward their playerbase. It is possible that I'm just tired of them getting a hold of a good concept or IP and then failing to live up to that IP's potential.
This is one of the most recognizable and profitable IPs in television/cinematic history. It might as well be Superman. And yet there are flaws so fundamental in the framework of the game that it's beginning to feel like we're being steered into WoW mechanics and roles.
I.
Hate.
That.
I thought the Champions framework after their rebuild was kind of genius, to be honest. No defined roles, MASSIVE replayability because of that, and a solid, sturdy foundation which they've steadily improved on for a good while now. I would very much love some of that positive direction and more proactive design philosophy applied to this game. Instead, I get a Catbox, gambling, deceptively presented and timegated psuedocontent and ships so crippled it baffles me that people just accept it.
This is star trek?
So, I really do apologize if my posts here on the forums seem unduly harsh, I really need to start being more constructive in my posts. I honestly want to see Cryptic break out of the mold they've established and really hit a home run with this. I'm kind of desperate for them too, actually. Whoever is coming up with the fundamental concepts of a lot of their games is brilliant, but in application they all seem to fall short.
The Cruisers thing is a big issue to me, because I don't want to be forced to play a tactical officer in an escort in order to be efficient and effective, and yet, having leveled first a sci and then an eng, and over the past week a tac, I can say that tactical officers hands down are the most efficient and effective.
Escorts perform above and beyond what is capable for most cruisers, and from my perspective I find that an enormous failure of design. I didn't grow up watching Star Trek: Defiant. I don't remember that ever being a show. There was a defiant in DS9, but it wasn't the focus. The Enterprises, Voyager, those were what the shows were about, the ships themselves were like part of the cast. Invalidating both of those ships types (the science ships moreso than the cruisers, but both are still woefully inadequate) you kind of pigeonhoe people into being tac/escort. I see probably three or four times as many tacs as any other, and it's not hard to see why.
I don't find your post "negative," just honest. We point out the flaws of cruisers and the horrible misstep of trying to cookie cut trek into traditional mmo roles, because we both want these terrible mistakes to be fixed, it is constructive criticism.