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Armor vs Tac consoles - why escorts are the only ones that can kill
sophlogimo
Member Posts: 6,507 Arc User
In theory, a given number of specialized armor consoles evens out the same number of tac consoles. So, 4 Mk XII purple tac consoles increase the damage of the attacking ship to 220% of the base value, and 4 Mk XII purple specialized hull platings provide a protection that only lets 42.6% of the damage go through, which means that the 4-tac escort will do only 93.63% of its base damage. So, everything balanced, right? But there are two problems with that.
First: Shields are not effected by this, of course, and there are no "shield hardening" consoles that provide resistance buffs to shields - you absolutely have to use Boff abilities and energy levels for that.
Second: Armor is, by nature, reactive. You do not know what weapons you may have to face, so you either take Neutronium armor (with lower resistance numbers; in the above example, the attacking ship would still do 125% of its base damage) or take the risk of having no armor at all against a given opponent. The attacker, on the other hand, does precisely know which weapon type he uses, and can thus choose accordingly (making the general energy and torpedo weapons damage buff consoles rather useless).
These two problems ultimately lead to the observation that many make: If you want to blow up stuff (at least in PvP), there is essentially only one ship type choice: An escort. Now, the fleet assault cruiser will make things a bit better with its four tac console slots, but then again, there will be an escort with 5 tac consoles... and while the current math for tac consoles works with up to 4 of them, 5 will make a very significant difference.
Wouldn't it be right to have Tac consoles have the same type of "diminishing returns" that armor consoles have? So, their damage increase would essentially be like a corresponding armor console damage resistance?
Not simply added up, but as
"% of damage increase==1/(1-(3*(0,25-(75/(150+Added Damage buff value))^2)))
?
This would then give 207.69% of the damage increase for four Mk XII purple tac consoles, and 228.57% damage increase for five. Against five neutronium armor consoles, that would mean 118.86% of the original base damage for five tac consoles. (Currently: 130%)
And against five hull platings, that would mean 88.63%, so the winner in the "I chose the right armor" lottery actually has a benefit from this gambling.
First: Shields are not effected by this, of course, and there are no "shield hardening" consoles that provide resistance buffs to shields - you absolutely have to use Boff abilities and energy levels for that.
Second: Armor is, by nature, reactive. You do not know what weapons you may have to face, so you either take Neutronium armor (with lower resistance numbers; in the above example, the attacking ship would still do 125% of its base damage) or take the risk of having no armor at all against a given opponent. The attacker, on the other hand, does precisely know which weapon type he uses, and can thus choose accordingly (making the general energy and torpedo weapons damage buff consoles rather useless).
These two problems ultimately lead to the observation that many make: If you want to blow up stuff (at least in PvP), there is essentially only one ship type choice: An escort. Now, the fleet assault cruiser will make things a bit better with its four tac console slots, but then again, there will be an escort with 5 tac consoles... and while the current math for tac consoles works with up to 4 of them, 5 will make a very significant difference.
Wouldn't it be right to have Tac consoles have the same type of "diminishing returns" that armor consoles have? So, their damage increase would essentially be like a corresponding armor console damage resistance?
Not simply added up, but as
"% of damage increase==1/(1-(3*(0,25-(75/(150+Added Damage buff value))^2)))
?
This would then give 207.69% of the damage increase for four Mk XII purple tac consoles, and 228.57% damage increase for five. Against five neutronium armor consoles, that would mean 118.86% of the original base damage for five tac consoles. (Currently: 130%)
And against five hull platings, that would mean 88.63%, so the winner in the "I chose the right armor" lottery actually has a benefit from this gambling.
Remember, STO is nothing but a cosmetics game, where only the rule of cool matters. The game mechanics are intentionally out of balance, don't try to "optimize" anything, as it would just frustrate you.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
The cruisers flown correctly can tank quite well against said escorts regardless of how many tac consoles they have. I'm not saying the entire system doesn't needs an overhaul, but the correct way (i think) to do things with armor consoles currently is not to stack, but to mix them up together.
A decent cruiser pilot is already very difficult to kill with focused fire - what you propose would make them godlike.
With that being said, in my opinion the damage outupt of escorts is based more on offensive Boff layouts than on the benefit of having 4 tactical consols in opposition to 3 in better cruisers.
I've played against plenty of cruisers in 1v1 and lost. They simply can heal/resist through all the dps I put out. Clearly they are doing it right.
The ones that aren't go poof real quick. That's not the escort pilots fault, so I don't see why they need a damage nerf
The current math is rather this:
Damage stackability against 20% target damage resistence:
1 +24%
2 +48%
3 +76%
4 +96%
5 +120%
Damage stackability against 50% target damage resistence:
1 +15%
2 +30%
3 +45%
4 +60%
5 +75%
EDIT: That's also probably the reason for all ballancing tweaks we saw in the past being based solely on damage resistences rather than on the subsequent damage stackabilities.
Anyway, the damage output depends on target's defense, while the target's defense does not depend on anything. That's why stackability of damage consoles is subsequent and therefore a minor factor in my opinion. I do not think that the proposed change is necessary, but even if introduced, it will unlikely make any big difference.
Of course the Escorts are the ship that actually blow stuff up. They have all the firepower and very little defense. That is their role and that's what they are supposed to do.
Cruisers on the other hand have a lot of bulk and they ARE MADE to do less damage and be more of a support crowd control and heal ships.
Science Ships on the other hand throw a lot of junk into the opponents face so that the Escorts can blow the opponent up.
Trying to ask for a cruiser that does more DPS than an escort is for trying to ask for a spicy meal, that is at the same time more sweet than the best of candies. It's just won't happen.
The fleet assault is the closest thing Fed Ships can get , that is close to an Escort DPS wise.
I exclude the pay 100$ for a 1 char only ships from the equasion. Otherwise yes.. i own a D'Kora on my Tac and it's very very strong.
One deals the highest damage that the other can easily counter with the highest defense?
What happens to the Science ship then?
I fly a Cruiser and defend fairly well against escorts in combat and even kill them, the only difference is its takes more time for me to do so, which is fine given that a Cruiser is not designed for burst damage and an escort is not designed to take prolonged/sustained attacks.
I see no need for this change that nerfs the escorts but buffs the cruisers and leaves the science vessel somewhere lost between.
R.I.P
An Engi Cruiser can pretty much outtank the best escort in game, ofcourse if the engi cruiser is as the same skill as the escort
Honestly so far i havent seen one, but im sure someone can do it. There just arent that many great cruisers on lately.
Nobody using Engi actually knows what they are doing. They already used Rotate shield Frequency in the slightest bit of damage, wheras this ability should be reserved for when a Escort actually uses is powerful GDF. An APA can be easily countered with some Transfer shield strength 2, some tactical team, etc.
You still have an RSP1 if you're doing it right. If you are selfish you have RSP1x2.
2x EptS1 or 2.
You have 3x BFI purples if you're doing it right.
A good engi cruiser (whether its a Team healer or a selfish boat) should be invincible against any good, even best escorts in this game. The reason why 99% isnt capable, beats me...
As for Sci's in escorts, or cruisers, or whatever; Sci gets their subnuke which, in a 1v1 perspective anyway, is the most powerful captain ability in game. This is kinda basic stuff and kinda logical, a 1yo child can understand that when 1 ability can basically **** all abilities of a tac/engi captain in 1 click, the subnuke always owns any other ability. (Unless in awkward cases where the sci captain just uses his subnuke without thinking, which happens all too often in PvP) Or unless the tac or engi captain knows what they are doing so they basically play with your Subnuke until you fired it off, and save their abilities until they are nuked.
For the armor and tactical consoles, how the hell would you want to beginto compare stuff like this? Tact consoles buff your DPS which also affects shield, while armor consoles only increase resistance.. On top of that Cruisers can have way more hull hitpoints as well...
I just disagree with the buff one aspect to counter another aspect just to come back and buff the later to compensate for the buffing of the former. Such circular loagic does not work and always leads to more buffing down the road.
R.I.P
Escorts DPS. Its pretty much ALL they do. Everything is thrown into spitting as much damage out as possible in the forward direction.
Cruisers, in order to handle this onslaught, need to turn on the heals, recharges, and resists to full power.
Here's where it REALLY falls apart. Escorts can reset for another run within seconds, its not like Energy or Projectile weapons have massive reset timers, I think the worst are tricobalts, but those are a pretty special case, and even then, less than half a minute.
Have you ever seen the cooldown timers on tanking abilities? It doesn't matter what you can spike your resists to, once you've blown your defensive load in a cruiser, your pants are down for upwards of two to three MINUTES, depending on the particular ability. You cannot hope to reset your rack of defensive and repair abilities in any amount of time comparable to how quickly an escort can come around for another pass.
Escorts have nearly bottomless firepower with very little reset time, Cruisers can spend upwards of 80% of their time in combat waiting on resets. I will concede, this imbalance needs to exist to some degree to keep cruisers from becoming invulnerable damage soaks. But have a little pity here. Because of that necessary sacrifice for playability, cruiser captains are forced to step away from pure tanking in order to have anything to offer when it comes to staying in the fight.
Then you are seriously doing it wrong.
RSF = 2 minutes? Comparable to Attack Pattern Alpha
Miracle Worker = 4/5 minutes? comparable to Go down fighting.
Engi Fleet = 4/5 mins? Comparable to Tactical fleet.
Not to mention you can use Transfer Shield Strength where the cooldown is 45 seconds
BFI doffs which basically acts as a free RSP. 60 seconds cooldown
RSP1 2 minutes cooldown, 1 minute cooldown if you use 2 copies of RSP1.
Seriously? The trick is to ROTATE all these abilities in the best possible way, thats tanking. Not by using all these abilities at once.
If you manage to rotate these correctly and correctly trigger them, any cruiser comes pretty close to invincible.
I've done enough 1v1's versus Cruisers to know how their setup works and how some can pretty much outtank most of our Escorts that PvP. if the cruiser fails, you seriously dont know how to play.
read the post above yours and see that tanking is a matter of rotation and timing just like burst damage and if done properly a cruiser can be just as invincible as an escort is deadly.
The balance exists if one knows how to play thier vessel to its best ability.
R.I.P
The OP has most likely never flown an escort to really understands its cons.
Yeah, and that 150% increase to base equates to probably somewhere in the region of 30-40% actual dps.
If you equip 4 resistance consoles, everyone wil ldeal less damage against you. If I equip 4 tactical consoles, only I will deal more damage. Sure, the second Escort can also equip 4 tac consoles - but that means it's 8 vs 4 consoles, not 4 vs 4.
I know you're fond of 1v1 scenarios, but the default team size for PvP is 5v5, not 1v1. Group size does affect balance.
And as a Tactical Cruiser captain, about half of that is useless to me... Damned PvP cookiecutter build artists...should skip logging in and run a spreadsheet program...