it was about trying to come up with something that allows for a cruiser to manage to pull threat away from escorts. the original post proposed the addition of a threat modifier for beam arrays. other ideas have been put forth after that, such as a threat modifier for all weapons, a toggle ability to generate threat, an ability to decrease threat from other players, etc.
some people do not grasp that if you fire a forward power while moving it becomes a backward power once you pass it
But ok you win
#
from now on the role of the cruiser is to get the escorts killed as fast as possible
Death and destruction rather than team work
its what you want so I hope you can live with it
1) no. a "forward power" fired while moving does not magically become a "backward power" once you pass it. here's two examples of what qualifies as a "backward power" : warp plasma, and mines being launched. a "forward power" once passed simply becomes "a forward power that you flew past" and nothing more.
2) how do cruiser captains that want to tank end up getting escorts killed? they aren't throwing the heals out to the escorts because said escorts won't be needing the heals. the damage is all quarantined off to the cruiser and he in turn ends up internalizing the flow of heals. do explain how "i'll go and take the hits so that you don't have to" ends up becoming less teamwork and more "death and destruction". i would really like to hear you cockamamie your way out of that.
While the name is "Escort", Escorts are not "body guards" to other ships. The name "Escort" was given to the Defiant because the Federation didn't like to call it warship. It was an euphenism.
It's "Escort" function it fulfills when it is destroying threats to other vessels in the fleet. It is meant to take more damage than other ships of its size, but not necessarily the type of damage (much larger) Cruisers already can deal with.
If yo uwant to protect a Freighter, you either send a Cruiser, which is a ver ylarge and expensive ship that cna fullill countless of roles, or you send an Escort, a small, cheaper ship that only fulfills a combat role.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
They are clearly cowards who want to use me to die for them
so they can take their own hits
its all "nerf this , weaken that , make cruisers burn for my safety"
Well no
its time the escorts stood on their merits or died on them
Wow.
OK then, feel free to be a useless floating lump on your team.
Doing low damage, holding no aggro and supporting no one but your non-threat ship that NPCs are going to ignore in favor of the targets actually getting the bulk of the work done.
Always remember, every-time you see a thread where people bash and hate cruisers - its players like you that make them feel this way.
Wow 10 pages off of my single idea of adding a threat modifier to weapons. And no I wasn't saying to all weapons, just like ACC, DMG, CHT etc aren't on all weapons.
Frankly, I do not know what you problem is sollvax. Cruisers are gigantic ships, with TRIBBLE tons of hull and shielding when built correctly and have 8 weapon slots. Generally it's best to use 7 or 8 beam arrays due to broadsiding to maximize damage, but that damage is lackluster at best.
What other role should cruisers be filling? Healing? Buff? Debuff? It's quite simple here, a Cruiser is the same kind of generic tank style you see in any other MMO. Playstyles can make the ships in this game do all sorts of different roles, but it's obvious that the cruiser is designed to soak up as much damage as possible. If you don't want to have any sort of agro modifier, then don't take Threat Control.
My original submission was to provide an additional way to hold agro as a cruiser. Could it be used by other ships? Sure. Would it be a good idea? No, not really.
My second submission was to provide cruisers with a snap aggro ability. How many people would be grateful of that gigantic cruiser suddenly pulled the tact cube that's been blazing away at the escort or science ship that couldn't shake the agro, so that they could continue doing their own job? Countless.
In the end, this game follows the same holy trinity that every other MMO does. Tank, Healer, DPS. In this case Cruiser (Eng), Science (Sci), and Escort (Tact) fill these roles. Can you go outside of them? Sure, will your team be more effective than using the this setup? Not likely, better to have the guy that's equipped to handle the big guys attention than the little guy that's been stabbing them in the back.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
[Unrepentant] Lapo@overlapo: the problem with space STF
is that you can't properly teabag your defeated opponent
Unrepentant: Home of the Rainbow Warrior and the Rainbow Brigade.
Moreover, Cruisers in STO can be tanks or they can be healers, but neither role really fits the IP well so such roles are likely resisted at least in part.
People see what they want to see in the IP. Truth is, none of the series/movies translate well to an MMO.
I love the series/movies as much anyone else, but this playerbase can focus way too much on (what they perceive to be) canon.
Saying 'three classes therefore traditional trinity' doesn't really follow, nor does it need to.
I, too, dislike the "holy trinity" mantra.
Not because I don't believe in different classes having different roles but simply because there's many more than 3 niches to fill.
Take the Bard in FFXI: it's not a healer, it has no real native heals; it's not a DD, it has low potentially in both physical and magical DD; it's not a tank, possessing average survivability and no real hate/threat generation* yet if there's only job/class that was always very useful for all the game's lifetime (10 years and counting), it's the Bard.
So you see, a pure Buffer/Debuffer class can fill a niche by itself.
(*for a short period, some Bard songs did have exceptional hate generation)
As it stands, the whole suggestion is ironic, in that Escorts in STO are completely misnamed. They don't escort anything. They are being escorted by cruisers.
A rose, by any other name...
Don't get too caught up in a name, especially Ship names: a WW2 Destroyer was a comparatively small vessel primary tasked with the destruction of planes and submarines to protect the bigger Ships that specialised in surface combat; a Destroyer in many SF settings (e.g. Eve Online) is a massive Ship that can wreck most other vessels.
Stats and abilities determine function, not name.
Another "traditional MMO" example: "Warrior" - in some games that designates a tank, in others that designates a DD.
And looking at the Ships' abilities and stats, it's not hard to deduce that, in this game:
- Escorts are glass cannons (Nukers). 7 to 8 of an Escort's 12 BOFF slots are devoted to the purpose of dealing damage, they alone can equip the game's strongest weapons (Fed-side at least) and they have the lowest survivability short of BoPs.
- Cruisers are tanks. 7 to 8 of a Cruiser's 12 BOFF slots are devoted to a mostly defensive skillset and they have ~50% more Hull than most other Ships (hell, an Odyssey has 100% more Hull than a B'rel-R and a Bortas even more).
- SVs are support. 7 to 8...
- Carriers and BoPs are a more complex affair to classify.
Personally, I fly all Ship types specifically because they fill different roles, if they were all the same in function, there'd be little reason to have more than 1 char and 1 Ship type.
I wish Ship graphics were stored client-side.
That way, if people want to fly a Cruiser but be a DD, they can fly an Escort and .dat-swap the Cruiser's skin with it.
That'd even answer the clamor for a T5 Constitution: get an Odyssey (or a Sovereign or an Vo'quv or any ship you want), swap the Connie skin on it and you've got the stats and abilities of the Odyssey with the looks (on your screen) of the Connie.
If we could do that, we'd avoid a lot of the "I WANNA FLY CRUZER BUT NO TANKIE!" crowd's tantrums: when you can .dat swap there's no excuse left to pick your ships based on looks instead of function.
To not be the main target, even though he has 8 Engineering powers and 2 Science powers, 40K base hull, 4 engineering consoles slots and 3 science console slots
To not use his surplus of Engineering abilities to support the team
To attempt to be useful in damage with 2 tac stations while the "escort glory boys" are dealing 3x or 4x as much damage and taking all incoming fire.
I, too, dislike the "holy trinity" mantra.
Not because I don't believe in different classes having different roles but simply because there's many more than 3 niches to fill.
Unfortunately, I've seen this argument countless times across too many MMOs to count. Frankly, everything outside of the holy trinity is fluff. It's an unfortunate truth, but it's still true. If you don't have a tank, you die. If you don't have a healer, you die. If you don't have a damager, it can take too long to kill something and you may die.
Everything outside of that, you can live without. Debuffing, buffs, etc just make it easier for those 3 to do their jobs. But it can still be done without them.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
[Unrepentant] Lapo@overlapo: the problem with space STF
is that you can't properly teabag your defeated opponent
Unrepentant: Home of the Rainbow Warrior and the Rainbow Brigade.
To not be the main target, even though he has 8 Engineering powers and 2 Science powers, 40K base hull, 4 engineering consoles slots and 3 science console slots
To not use his surplus of Engineering abilities to support the team
To attempt to be useful in damage with 2 tac stations while the "escort glory boys" are dealing 3x or 4x as much damage and taking all incoming fire.
Are you sure that's what he wants? The Raving Lunatic style of his posts leaves me in doubt that he really wants anything aside from trolling the forms, and postwhoring.
Maybe if you could add another modifier to shields for threat? For example you could take the MACO Shield, split it up into three different types with the same base stats but one would increase threat, another that would decrease threat, and a third that has no effect either way. Then you could choose whether you want to generate more threat, or not, and if you don't want to mess with your threat at all you still have an option as well. Odds are you'd end up with Cruisers taking the threat increase, and science/escorts taking the decrease, but it also leaves some wiggle room for ships like the Nebula, or a Support Oddy in that they can decrease their threat, or vice versa if they're more tank oriented.
Unfortunately, I've seen this argument countless times across too many MMOs to count. Frankly, everything outside of the holy trinity is fluff. It's an unfortunate truth, but it's still true. If you don't have a tank, you die. If you don't have a healer, you die. If you don't have a damager, it can take too long to kill something and you may die.
Everything outside of that, you can live without. Debuffing, buffs, etc just make it easier for those 3 to do their jobs. But it can still be done without them.
I see what you mean, but I'll still offer a short rebuttal:
- Buffers can contribute more damage than actual DDs. In fact, to be worth bringing over another DD, they kinda have to. So, the killspeed argument applies to them as well.
- No crowd control is also often a death sentence.
I'll bring up XI again (I did play it a few years): if you didn't have someone to Sleepga/Horde Lullaby/Bindga/Gravityga a large Dynamis or Einherjar pull, you were toast in recoard time regardless of the amount of tanks, DDs or healers.
- There's often some mixing up of the roles.
What I mean is that the "holy trinity" isn't wrong per se, but it paints an oft-inaccurate and overly simplistic picture.
But anyway, this has little bearing on the discussion at hand, so I'll not pursue the argument further.
Not that it's uninteresting, I just don't want to derail the thread further.
Sierrafortune2: you hit the nail on the head. Sollvax is just trolling.
I see what you mean, but I'll still offer a short rebuttal:
- Buffers can contribute more damage than actual DDs. In fact, to be worth bringing over another DD, they kinda have to. So, the killspeed argument applies to them as well.
- No crowd control is also often a death sentence.
I'll bring up XI again (I did play it a few years): if you didn't have someone to Sleepga/Horde Lullaby/Bindga/Gravityga a large Dynamis or Einherjar pull, you were toast in recoard time regardless of the amount of tanks, DDs or healers.
- There's often some mixing up of the roles.
What I mean is that the "holy trinity" isn't wrong per se, but it paints an oft-inaccurate and overly simplistic picture.
But anyway, this has little bearing on the discussion at hand, so I'll not pursue the argument further.
Not that it's uninteresting, I just don't want to derail the thread further.
Sierrafortune2: you hit the nail on the head. Sollvax is just trolling.
yeah i know what you mean, the synergies, some classes had with each other...for instance the shaman in wow, fury warriors become beasts with the increased attack speed buff, beacause their abilities triggered more often, which left a bleed on the enemy, that increased all incoming damage on the target, they had more rage available, and so on...
also all the teambuffs a class brought to your grp, you really wanted to have a mage on your team if you had more than 2 casters in your grp and so on.
OK then, feel free to be a useless floating lump on your team.
Doing low damage, holding no aggro and supporting no one but your non-threat ship that NPCs are going to ignore in favor of the targets actually getting the bulk of the work done.
Always remember, every-time you see a thread where people bash and hate cruisers - its players like you that make them feel this way.
Remember there is no choice for cruisers now
you told us "resistance is futile"
so now its the Escorts or US
Unfortunately, I've seen this argument countless times across too many MMOs to count. Frankly, everything outside of the holy trinity is fluff. It's an unfortunate truth, but it's still true. If you don't have a tank, you die. If you don't have a healer, you die. If you don't have a damager, it can take too long to kill something and you may die.
Everything outside of that, you can live without. Debuffing, buffs, etc just make it easier for those 3 to do their jobs. But it can still be done without them.
I gave two notable exceptions, though, and both games work. If debuffing is strong enough, it can become as useful a role as dps or healing or tanking.
If it boosts dps enough, it can replace a dps class. If it increases mitigation enough, it can replace a healer and/or tank. It is a concept that those used to the trinity have trouble accepting, but it can work as a viable game design. Moreover, it can do so without removing roles for traditional healers or tanks... if you have a healer you need less mitigation related buffing/debuffing. Ditto if you have a tank.
To not be the main target, even though he has 8 Engineering powers and 2 Science powers, 40K base hull, 4 engineering consoles slots and 3 science console slots
To not use his surplus of Engineering abilities to support the team
To attempt to be useful in damage with 2 tac stations while the "escort glory boys" are dealing 3x or 4x as much damage and taking all incoming fire.
GEE thats two out of five
I do fly a Galaxy R
only a damn fool takes threat control in a general purpose cruiser
There is no reason for there to BE a main target , stop thinking mmo and think commanding a starship
Keep moving , sweep and draw , turn and strike
I will only support vessels that deserve it (vessels in danger because they are fighting count)
I will NOT now heal or support ANY escort that demands anyone "tank"
And I out Damage many escorts precisely because I am bigger and can keep my weapons on the target 90% of the time compared with their "Alpha strike then run like hell"
Dps for 15 seconds per minute does not equal mine for the 54 seconds im dishing it out
We recognise we exist only as drones in your collective
but we (some cruiser captains) do not like being the monkey
YOUR turn I feel
imagine a landing party in the good old days
but the TACS (redshirts) insist they get to hide behind a rock while the science officer draws fire
you choose tac you are TASHA YAR , REDSHIRT RICKY , WORF
you are not the guy in charge
And when I fly as a TAC I take the damage regardless of vessel
I am no "glass hammer" and definately no Strike and run merchant
I dogfight I close engage.
People see what they want to see in the IP. Truth is, none of the series/movies translate well to an MMO.
I love the series/movies as much anyone else, but this playerbase can focus way too much on (what they perceive to be) canon.
Yes and no.... the series/movies are primarily dialogue rather than ship on ship action, but that doesn't mean the concepts of the ships are not communicated. It is true that the Defiant messes with perceptions considerably though.
I, too, dislike the "holy trinity" mantra.
Not because I don't believe in different classes having different roles but simply because there's many more than 3 niches to fill.
Take the Bard in FFXI: it's not a healer, it has no real native heals; it's not a DD, it has low potentially in both physical and magical DD; it's not a tank, possessing average survivability and no real hate/threat generation* yet if there's only job/class that was always very useful for all the game's lifetime (10 years and counting), it's the Bard.
So you see, a pure Buffer/Debuffer class can fill a niche by itself.
(*for a short period, some Bard songs did have exceptional hate generation)
This is true in Everquest as well. Unless you are over geared for the content, you want a slower. Many places you want some sort of crowd control.
A rose, by any other name...
Names matter. They are used to communicate. If you call roses 'dandelions,' you shouldn't expect delivery of a bouquet of roses if you are ordering from a florist.
A name change could be sufficient here though... if they changed the designation to 'tactical' it would convey the meaning better.
Your example of 'warrior' isn't the best of examples in that the term is flexible and can be applied to anything from a traditional heavy plate knight ('a tank') to a modern soldier (dps, and worth noting that in RL dps has reached the point where infantry support is much more often air power or arty than a tank).
Insisting that cruisers should be essentially mobile drydocks or some sort of space bunkers is all very nice, but given that most of Trek covered the exploits of Cruisers, should they really be relegated to a support role even more than they already are?
you choose tac you are TASHA YAR , REDSHIRT RICKY , WORF
you are not the guy in charge
Come on, Sol... even you know better. Just because the captain doesn't man the tactical station doesn't mean he has no tactical training or specialization. Sisko took the Defiant into combat all the time. Kirk wasn't afraid to charge phasers either.
Of course they had tactical officers. None of them ran down to engineering to man the engines themselves either, or to sick bay or to any other station. They had subordinates for that, just as any captain does.
Cruisers shouldn't be there in my opinion to make flying escorts consequence free. Change your build, power levels or ship load out.
I really dont want to see in general tab or any tab "LF Tank (Cruiser) last spot (incert stf here) must be flying odyssey"
Odyssey part could happen if people demand players to fly the best possible tanking ship in game or they wont get an invite. Same for fleet invites, class and ship required for joining.
I do fly a Galaxy R
only a damn fool takes threat control in a general purpose cruiser
There is no reason for there to BE a main target , stop thinking mmo and think commanding a starship
Keep moving , sweep and draw , turn and strike
I will only support vessels that deserve it (vessels in danger because they are fighting count)
I will NOT now heal or support ANY escort that demands anyone "tank"
And I out Damage many escorts precisely because I am bigger and can keep my weapons on the target 90% of the time compared with their "Alpha strike then run like hell"
Dps for 15 seconds per minute does not equal mine for the 54 seconds im dishing it out
We recognise we exist only as drones in your collective
but we (some cruiser captains) do not like being the monkey
YOUR turn I feel
imagine a landing party in the good old days
but the TACS (redshirts) insist they get to hide behind a rock while the science officer draws fire
you choose tac you are TASHA YAR , REDSHIRT RICKY , WORF
you are not the guy in charge
And when I fly as a TAC I take the damage regardless of vessel
I am no "glass hammer" and definately no Strike and run merchant
I dogfight I close engage.
People see what they want to see in the IP. Truth is, none of the series/movies translate well to an MMO.
I love the series/movies as much anyone else, but this playerbase can focus way too much on (what they perceive to be) canon.
I, too, dislike the "holy trinity" mantra.
Not because I don't believe in different classes having different roles but simply because there's many more than 3 niches to fill.
Take the Bard in FFXI: it's not a healer, it has no real native heals; it's not a DD, it has low potentially in both physical and magical DD; it's not a tank, possessing average survivability and no real hate/threat generation* yet if there's only job/class that was always very useful for all the game's lifetime (10 years and counting), it's the Bard.
So you see, a pure Buffer/Debuffer class can fill a niche by itself.
(*for a short period, some Bard songs did have exceptional hate generation)
A rose, by any other name...
Don't get too caught up in a name, especially Ship names: a WW2 Destroyer was a comparatively small vessel primary tasked with the destruction of planes and submarines to protect the bigger Ships that specialised in surface combat; a Destroyer in many SF settings (e.g. Eve Online) is a massive Ship that can wreck most other vessels.
Stats and abilities determine function, not name.
Another "traditional MMO" example: "Warrior" - in some games that designates a tank, in others that designates a DD.
And looking at the Ships' abilities and stats, it's not hard to deduce that, in this game:
- Escorts are glass cannons (Nukers). 7 to 8 of an Escort's 12 BOFF slots are devoted to the purpose of dealing damage, they alone can equip the game's strongest weapons (Fed-side at least) and they have the lowest survivability short of BoPs.
- Cruisers are tanks. 7 to 8 of a Cruiser's 12 BOFF slots are devoted to a mostly defensive skillset and they have ~50% more Hull than most other Ships (hell, an Odyssey has 100% more Hull than a B'rel-R and a Bortas even more).
- SVs are support. 7 to 8...
- Carriers and BoPs are a more complex affair to classify.
Personally, I fly all Ship types specifically because they fill different roles, if they were all the same in function, there'd be little reason to have more than 1 char and 1 Ship type.
I wish Ship graphics were stored client-side.
That way, if people want to fly a Cruiser but be a DD, they can fly an Escort and .dat-swap the Cruiser's skin with it.
That'd even answer the clamor for a T5 Constitution: get an Odyssey (or a Sovereign or an Vo'quv or any ship you want), swap the Connie skin on it and you've got the stats and abilities of the Odyssey with the looks (on your screen) of the Connie.
If we could do that, we'd avoid a lot of the "I WANNA FLY CRUZER BUT NO TANKIE!" crowd's tantrums: when you can .dat swap there's no excuse left to pick your ships based on looks instead of function.
Just wanted to point out, a destroyer in eve-online was designed to take out small fast targers such as frigates and drones. They large than frigates and able to mount up to 7 or 8 small turrets.
Sisko was an engineer
Kirk a navigation officer (Ops)
and these Escort jocks who keep telling me to suicide so they can get the optionals
none of them should have been promoted past LT
Your information is incorrect. Kirk's first deep space assignment was as Tactical officer on the Farragut. (per Memory Alpha/TOS episode "Obsession").
Sisko may have been an engineer but he still commanded the Defiant when off base, including during the battle of DS9 in 'Sacrifice of Angels." He is also noteworthy for punching Q.
Okay, I don't like it as a weapons add-on, boff skill, or console because of the cost of giving up something more useful.
Another idea: Make it a possible deflector add-on.
Give us a push-button power for "extra" threat once we take 6 levels of threat control. (The way other powers give you something extra when you take six levels.)
__________________________________________________
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] "I weary of the chase. Wait for me. I shall be merciful and quick."
Comments
But ok you win
#
from now on the role of the cruiser is to get the escorts killed as fast as possible
Death and destruction rather than team work
its what you want so I hope you can live with it
it was about trying to come up with something that allows for a cruiser to manage to pull threat away from escorts. the original post proposed the addition of a threat modifier for beam arrays. other ideas have been put forth after that, such as a threat modifier for all weapons, a toggle ability to generate threat, an ability to decrease threat from other players, etc.
1) no. a "forward power" fired while moving does not magically become a "backward power" once you pass it. here's two examples of what qualifies as a "backward power" : warp plasma, and mines being launched. a "forward power" once passed simply becomes "a forward power that you flew past" and nothing more.
2) how do cruiser captains that want to tank end up getting escorts killed? they aren't throwing the heals out to the escorts because said escorts won't be needing the heals. the damage is all quarantined off to the cruiser and he in turn ends up internalizing the flow of heals. do explain how "i'll go and take the hits so that you don't have to" ends up becoming less teamwork and more "death and destruction". i would really like to hear you cockamamie your way out of that.
you think im going to repair one ?
They are clearly cowards who want to use me to die for them
so they can take their own hits
its all "nerf this , weaken that , make cruisers burn for my safety"
Well no
its time the escorts stood on their merits or died on them
It's "Escort" function it fulfills when it is destroying threats to other vessels in the fleet. It is meant to take more damage than other ships of its size, but not necessarily the type of damage (much larger) Cruisers already can deal with.
If yo uwant to protect a Freighter, you either send a Cruiser, which is a ver ylarge and expensive ship that cna fullill countless of roles, or you send an Escort, a small, cheaper ship that only fulfills a combat role.
Wow.
OK then, feel free to be a useless floating lump on your team.
Doing low damage, holding no aggro and supporting no one but your non-threat ship that NPCs are going to ignore in favor of the targets actually getting the bulk of the work done.
Always remember, every-time you see a thread where people bash and hate cruisers - its players like you that make them feel this way.
Frankly, I do not know what you problem is sollvax. Cruisers are gigantic ships, with TRIBBLE tons of hull and shielding when built correctly and have 8 weapon slots. Generally it's best to use 7 or 8 beam arrays due to broadsiding to maximize damage, but that damage is lackluster at best.
What other role should cruisers be filling? Healing? Buff? Debuff? It's quite simple here, a Cruiser is the same kind of generic tank style you see in any other MMO. Playstyles can make the ships in this game do all sorts of different roles, but it's obvious that the cruiser is designed to soak up as much damage as possible. If you don't want to have any sort of agro modifier, then don't take Threat Control.
My original submission was to provide an additional way to hold agro as a cruiser. Could it be used by other ships? Sure. Would it be a good idea? No, not really.
My second submission was to provide cruisers with a snap aggro ability. How many people would be grateful of that gigantic cruiser suddenly pulled the tact cube that's been blazing away at the escort or science ship that couldn't shake the agro, so that they could continue doing their own job? Countless.
In the end, this game follows the same holy trinity that every other MMO does. Tank, Healer, DPS. In this case Cruiser (Eng), Science (Sci), and Escort (Tact) fill these roles. Can you go outside of them? Sure, will your team be more effective than using the this setup? Not likely, better to have the guy that's equipped to handle the big guys attention than the little guy that's been stabbing them in the back.
[Unrepentant] Lapo@overlapo: the problem with space STF
is that you can't properly teabag your defeated opponent
Unrepentant: Home of the Rainbow Warrior and the Rainbow Brigade.
this thread
equal parts cynical and helpful
What is your problem? What do you want?
CRUISERS NEED A 206% HULL BUFF
I love the series/movies as much anyone else, but this playerbase can focus way too much on (what they perceive to be) canon.
I, too, dislike the "holy trinity" mantra.
Not because I don't believe in different classes having different roles but simply because there's many more than 3 niches to fill.
Take the Bard in FFXI: it's not a healer, it has no real native heals; it's not a DD, it has low potentially in both physical and magical DD; it's not a tank, possessing average survivability and no real hate/threat generation* yet if there's only job/class that was always very useful for all the game's lifetime (10 years and counting), it's the Bard.
So you see, a pure Buffer/Debuffer class can fill a niche by itself.
(*for a short period, some Bard songs did have exceptional hate generation)
A rose, by any other name...
Don't get too caught up in a name, especially Ship names: a WW2 Destroyer was a comparatively small vessel primary tasked with the destruction of planes and submarines to protect the bigger Ships that specialised in surface combat; a Destroyer in many SF settings (e.g. Eve Online) is a massive Ship that can wreck most other vessels.
Stats and abilities determine function, not name.
Another "traditional MMO" example: "Warrior" - in some games that designates a tank, in others that designates a DD.
And looking at the Ships' abilities and stats, it's not hard to deduce that, in this game:
- Escorts are glass cannons (Nukers). 7 to 8 of an Escort's 12 BOFF slots are devoted to the purpose of dealing damage, they alone can equip the game's strongest weapons (Fed-side at least) and they have the lowest survivability short of BoPs.
- Cruisers are tanks. 7 to 8 of a Cruiser's 12 BOFF slots are devoted to a mostly defensive skillset and they have ~50% more Hull than most other Ships (hell, an Odyssey has 100% more Hull than a B'rel-R and a Bortas even more).
- SVs are support. 7 to 8...
- Carriers and BoPs are a more complex affair to classify.
Personally, I fly all Ship types specifically because they fill different roles, if they were all the same in function, there'd be little reason to have more than 1 char and 1 Ship type.
I wish Ship graphics were stored client-side.
That way, if people want to fly a Cruiser but be a DD, they can fly an Escort and .dat-swap the Cruiser's skin with it.
That'd even answer the clamor for a T5 Constitution: get an Odyssey (or a Sovereign or an Vo'quv or any ship you want), swap the Connie skin on it and you've got the stats and abilities of the Odyssey with the looks (on your screen) of the Connie.
If we could do that, we'd avoid a lot of the "I WANNA FLY CRUZER BUT NO TANKIE!" crowd's tantrums: when you can .dat swap there's no excuse left to pick your ships based on looks instead of function.
As far as I can tell, he wants:
Unfortunately, I've seen this argument countless times across too many MMOs to count. Frankly, everything outside of the holy trinity is fluff. It's an unfortunate truth, but it's still true. If you don't have a tank, you die. If you don't have a healer, you die. If you don't have a damager, it can take too long to kill something and you may die.
Everything outside of that, you can live without. Debuffing, buffs, etc just make it easier for those 3 to do their jobs. But it can still be done without them.
[Unrepentant] Lapo@overlapo: the problem with space STF
is that you can't properly teabag your defeated opponent
Unrepentant: Home of the Rainbow Warrior and the Rainbow Brigade.
Are you sure that's what he wants? The Raving Lunatic style of his posts leaves me in doubt that he really wants anything aside from trolling the forms, and postwhoring.
Maybe if you could add another modifier to shields for threat? For example you could take the MACO Shield, split it up into three different types with the same base stats but one would increase threat, another that would decrease threat, and a third that has no effect either way. Then you could choose whether you want to generate more threat, or not, and if you don't want to mess with your threat at all you still have an option as well. Odds are you'd end up with Cruisers taking the threat increase, and science/escorts taking the decrease, but it also leaves some wiggle room for ships like the Nebula, or a Support Oddy in that they can decrease their threat, or vice versa if they're more tank oriented.
I see what you mean, but I'll still offer a short rebuttal:
- Buffers can contribute more damage than actual DDs. In fact, to be worth bringing over another DD, they kinda have to. So, the killspeed argument applies to them as well.
- No crowd control is also often a death sentence.
I'll bring up XI again (I did play it a few years): if you didn't have someone to Sleepga/Horde Lullaby/Bindga/Gravityga a large Dynamis or Einherjar pull, you were toast in recoard time regardless of the amount of tanks, DDs or healers.
- There's often some mixing up of the roles.
What I mean is that the "holy trinity" isn't wrong per se, but it paints an oft-inaccurate and overly simplistic picture.
But anyway, this has little bearing on the discussion at hand, so I'll not pursue the argument further.
Not that it's uninteresting, I just don't want to derail the thread further.
Sierrafortune2: you hit the nail on the head. Sollvax is just trolling.
yeah i know what you mean, the synergies, some classes had with each other...for instance the shaman in wow, fury warriors become beasts with the increased attack speed buff, beacause their abilities triggered more often, which left a bleed on the enemy, that increased all incoming damage on the target, they had more rage available, and so on...
also all the teambuffs a class brought to your grp, you really wanted to have a mage on your team if you had more than 2 casters in your grp and so on.
i miss those synergies in sto, to be honest.
Remember there is no choice for cruisers now
you told us "resistance is futile"
so now its the Escorts or US
and guess what its going to be US
I gave two notable exceptions, though, and both games work. If debuffing is strong enough, it can become as useful a role as dps or healing or tanking.
If it boosts dps enough, it can replace a dps class. If it increases mitigation enough, it can replace a healer and/or tank. It is a concept that those used to the trinity have trouble accepting, but it can work as a viable game design. Moreover, it can do so without removing roles for traditional healers or tanks... if you have a healer you need less mitigation related buffing/debuffing. Ditto if you have a tank.
GEE thats two out of five
I do fly a Galaxy R
only a damn fool takes threat control in a general purpose cruiser
There is no reason for there to BE a main target , stop thinking mmo and think commanding a starship
Keep moving , sweep and draw , turn and strike
I will only support vessels that deserve it (vessels in danger because they are fighting count)
I will NOT now heal or support ANY escort that demands anyone "tank"
And I out Damage many escorts precisely because I am bigger and can keep my weapons on the target 90% of the time compared with their "Alpha strike then run like hell"
Dps for 15 seconds per minute does not equal mine for the 54 seconds im dishing it out
We recognise we exist only as drones in your collective
but we (some cruiser captains) do not like being the monkey
YOUR turn I feel
imagine a landing party in the good old days
but the TACS (redshirts) insist they get to hide behind a rock while the science officer draws fire
you choose tac you are TASHA YAR , REDSHIRT RICKY , WORF
you are not the guy in charge
And when I fly as a TAC I take the damage regardless of vessel
I am no "glass hammer" and definately no Strike and run merchant
I dogfight I close engage.
Yes and no.... the series/movies are primarily dialogue rather than ship on ship action, but that doesn't mean the concepts of the ships are not communicated. It is true that the Defiant messes with perceptions considerably though.
This is true in Everquest as well. Unless you are over geared for the content, you want a slower. Many places you want some sort of crowd control.
Names matter. They are used to communicate. If you call roses 'dandelions,' you shouldn't expect delivery of a bouquet of roses if you are ordering from a florist.
A name change could be sufficient here though... if they changed the designation to 'tactical' it would convey the meaning better.
Your example of 'warrior' isn't the best of examples in that the term is flexible and can be applied to anything from a traditional heavy plate knight ('a tank') to a modern soldier (dps, and worth noting that in RL dps has reached the point where infantry support is much more often air power or arty than a tank).
Insisting that cruisers should be essentially mobile drydocks or some sort of space bunkers is all very nice, but given that most of Trek covered the exploits of Cruisers, should they really be relegated to a support role even more than they already are?
the Defiant was usually commanded by a commander under orders from a captain
Come on, Sol... even you know better. Just because the captain doesn't man the tactical station doesn't mean he has no tactical training or specialization. Sisko took the Defiant into combat all the time. Kirk wasn't afraid to charge phasers either.
Of course they had tactical officers. None of them ran down to engineering to man the engines themselves either, or to sick bay or to any other station. They had subordinates for that, just as any captain does.
Kirk a navigation officer (Ops)
and these Escort jocks who keep telling me to suicide so they can get the optionals
none of them should have been promoted past LT
I really dont want to see in general tab or any tab "LF Tank (Cruiser) last spot (incert stf here) must be flying odyssey"
Odyssey part could happen if people demand players to fly the best possible tanking ship in game or they wont get an invite. Same for fleet invites, class and ship required for joining.
Just wanted to point out, a destroyer in eve-online was designed to take out small fast targers such as frigates and drones. They large than frigates and able to mount up to 7 or 8 small turrets.
Your information is incorrect. Kirk's first deep space assignment was as Tactical officer on the Farragut. (per Memory Alpha/TOS episode "Obsession").
Sisko may have been an engineer but he still commanded the Defiant when off base, including during the battle of DS9 in 'Sacrifice of Angels." He is also noteworthy for punching Q.
he was the Navigator (chekovs chair)
TOS had more branches and kirk was "helm and nav"
Scotty Engineering
Spock Science
Uhura communications
and surprisingly Mc Coy medical
none of them fit well with this game however (except of course scotty)
Another idea: Make it a possible deflector add-on.
Give us a push-button power for "extra" threat once we take 6 levels of threat control. (The way other powers give you something extra when you take six levels.)
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] "I weary of the chase. Wait for me. I shall be merciful and quick."
Tactical Officer... which does not require an independent Tactical Station. Which you know.
Kirk was a Navigator
never a redshirt