33% chance is way, way too low as we would end up getting a tiny amount of triggers in comparisons to energy weapons.
Um my the highest I bothered counting on a Spread 3 kemo... was 186 hits. ONE one skill hit. That is broken and why the server barfs when they land. Frankly even 62 (33%) would be murder on the server. And there is no way energy weapons are getting 186 kemo hits in 1s.
I get the impression you use photons which are the ones that get full damage boost. Try using Chroniton, or Transphasic which do not get the correct full damage boost.
I was talking total damage. For example High Yield 3 should give Fires 4 Torpedoes, each dealing 74.2% of normal damage, (total 296.8% of normal), Some torpedo get as little as 55.5% of normal damage, (total 222% of normal). High Yield and spread is not consistently giving the full damage to all torpedoes.
It’s not down to base numbers its down due to the powers acting different with different torpedoes. Just like kemo which only works correctly on some torpedo these power are inconsistent as well.
I understand hwat you are saying... and yes HY 3 reduces base dmg to around 70-75% depending on the torp type. My point is that is by design. HY and spread always give the correct numbers to the torp you are firing. Yes some torpedos where giving lower numbers ON PURPOSE as a balance measure. My point is if you take the base number on any torpedo and calculate the % difference at each level of the skills you will see they are consistent. The % of dmg increased for each type of torpedo is going to be with in a couple % points. Specific rep and mission torps have been tuned by developers on purpose.
I cannot upgrade any of my Vulnerability locator projectile consoles with projectile tech. The advanced Quantum torpedo works fine with high yield but does half the damage with torpedo spread over other Quantum torpedoes, a full cut in half damage. The Thoron Quantum’s have a mod missing. The Omega Plasma torpedo seems to have a random amount of targets and shots with torpedo spread. Anywhere from 5 hits 40. There is a massive list of broken, bugged and unbalanced projectile items. A far bigger list then what energy weapons have.
Fair enough if you can't upgrade specific consoles you should report that. I have never ever ever wasted resources on the +crth consoles so I wouldn't know I guess. No doubt that should be fixed. The omega plasma is consistent perhaps if you are seeing something different it has a small aoe that may account of your log being odd. Honestly though why fire a spread with that torp. (I half kid, honestly can't remember the last time I wasted a spread on that torp so you may be right) The neutronic however you are dead wrong about. As someone who helped test that torp on tribble I can tell you that with out the reduction in the number of torps it was the most hillariously OP weapon in the game. As it is when I run that torp I Spread it every chance I can cause its still stupid OP. The Thoron Quantums are NOT missing a mod... they give up a mod for a proc... just like Dual Proc energy weapons. If you have every used Phased Tetryon you know what I mean... they trade one proc for a MOD. The same logic was applied to the Thoron, they gain a free proc.. they give up one mod for it.
I agree projectiles are viable and some builds work well. The point I was trying to get across is a large part of projectiles systems are broken, bugged, unbalanced or missing information. Mines for example have a lot of key information missing from the tooltip. But some parts and some builds do work.
The tool tips in this game are terrible no one will argue that... and they should fix some of the bugs like your upgrades on specific consoles ect. A lot of the things being mentioned however are simply not bugs or broken mechanics at all. They are 100% intended.
“Anyone can shoot a Gravity well... its about basic build smarts. If you are firing weapons that require your targets to be grouped up perhaps its a good idea to use skills that force them into groups. lol”
None of the main ships I fly have access to Gravity well via bridge officers, my main builds do not have any sci powers at all. As for weapons I am Quantum’s focused so no access to Gravity well either. If I have Quantum tac consoles it doesn't seem wise it fit photon torpedo's.
If you are planning to run a torpedo boat... you should plan on having at least a lt cmd sci slot. imo. Ships that don't have that are terrible torpedo platforms As I see it it would be like taking a science ship with only one lt tac and trying to build a faw boat out of it.
I assume you mention your running quants, because you can't run the grav photon. Just wanted to point out one effective way to build a torp boat is to not use Quantum/photon/plasma consoles ect... instead use Warheads... The Spire +torp consoles give you 95% of the buff but it effects all torps including some of the specials like the Harpang that get no buff from anything else. Running those allows you to mix and match just about any torpedo setup. Also if you run those only get the +crtd ones... the locators are beyond useless, and I know you can upgrade the exploiters.
All the "My (kemo enhanced, steroid infused, gravi-neutronic, mega-plasma) torpedoes work great so nobody else has any business complaining so STFU and stop asking for torpedo boosts!!!!" posts is getting real old real fast.
All the "My (kemo enhanced, steroid infused, gravi-neutronic, mega-plasma) torpedoes work great so nobody else has any business complaining so STFU and stop asking for torpedo boosts!!!!" posts is getting real old real fast.
lol good one. Seriously though I am simply pointing out that 95% of the things people are QQing about are working as intended. The 5% sure needs to get fixed, but QQing about things working properly isn't going to get the 5% fixed. The devs will look at the thread notice that most of the "broken mechanics" being mentioned are working properly... and dismiss the entire thread.
If you are planning to run a torpedo boat... you should plan on having at least a lt cmd sci slot. imo. Ships that don't have that are terrible torpedo platforms As I see it it would be like taking a science ship with only one lt tac and trying to build a faw boat out of it.
Well, that invalidates all my builds, then. Back to the drawing board.
All the "My (kemo enhanced, steroid infused, gravi-neutronic, mega-plasma) torpedoes work great so nobody else has any business complaining so STFU and stop asking for torpedo boosts!!!!" posts is getting real old real fast.
lol good one. Seriously though I am simply pointing out that 95% of the things people are QQing about are working as intended. The 5% sure needs to get fixed, but QQing about things working properly isn't going to get the 5% fixed. The devs will look at the thread notice that most of the "broken mechanics" being mentioned are working properly... and dismiss the entire thread.
You make some very good points on some of your posts, of which a few I 100% agree with you on. In this post, you're wrong. I'll compile the list of issues that @wardcalis@jarvisandalfred@pottsey5g@cepholapoid@snipey47a@agresiel2 and others, as well as myself, have discovered or pointed out as not following the mechanics, have some absurd condition placed on it, or not working as intended (either in part, or in full).
A note on Kemocite: Where people are "complaining" about torps benefiting the most from them is due to the double-proc from using TS. The same happens with FaW and CSV, but due to the much lower chance to proc, not many notice. It's the same phenomena that has let FaW users experience double [Pen] procs.
[Note: As of the results of last testing]
Edit: Here's a scenario for you, @bobs1111 and please correct me if I missed something. I suspect that you GWell targets, then TS them after activating Kemo. Lets suppose that you do NOT use Neutronic. Each torpedo will proc Kemo. Kemo has a 1km damage radius. Each target within 1km will be hit with that Kemo damage. So, if you have 4 targets within 1km from the torpedo impact, that's FIVE (5) targets receiving Kemo damage from that ONE (1) torpedo in that spread. Assuming you're using TS3 with a Photon, that would mean 4 torpedoes per target, and therefore, 4 procs of Kemo to 5 targets. If TS3 sends 4 torps per target to FIVE (5) targets that are within 1km from each other, that's ONE HUNDRED (100) procs of Kemo to calculate.
Now, since there's a double-proc bug w/ the AoE powers, double the number of procs. You said you had 186 procs of Kemo on a spread. This is very close to the theoretical 200 procs for the conditions above. I suspect that a target moved in or out of range for the procs during the time period.
EDIT: How can I forget this tiny detail... Under HY, some torps do not benefit from Kemo being applied to the target at all. Kemo is being applied to the 'pet' torp upon launch at 0km from the launcher. The Kemo will cause damage to the 'pet' torp in question, and anything else in range of it. Although I haven't used mines w/ Kemo, I can easily see the same thing happening w/ and w/o a dispersal pattern, as well as some of the mine delivery systems (cluster 'torp' weapons).
Here's another scenario that I had posted on reddit where there are conditions that a LOWER RANK of TS or HY (for salvo torps) could perform better than the higher rank version. I'll try to make a chart and graph it sometime later. I'd like to relax some instead of working on finding the bugs, and then trying to find ways to work around them.
There is a massive list of broken, bugged and unbalanced projectile items.
Is there a thread or wiki somewhere with this list? I don't have any torp boats yet but I like to include at least 1 torp on my builds so they are a little more Trek.
I must admit, I'm growing fond of these AoE++ torpedo builds. People be throwing AoE crowd control to reduce the proximity of things, while doing AoE damage, then tossing their AoE torps at an AoE point while triggering all manner of AoE procs that do AoE damage.
I must admit, I'm growing fond of these AoE++ torpedo builds. People be throwing AoE crowd control to reduce the proximity of things, while doing AoE damage, then tossing their AoE torps at an AoE point while triggering all manner of AoE procs that do AoE damage.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
I've heard you like AoEs, so I put AoEs on your AoEs so you can AoE while you AoE?
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Easiest fix is to remove shield resistance against kinetic damage. It made sense in earlier versions of the game but it doesn't really fit the current build.
Easiest fix is to remove shield resistance against kinetic damage. It made sense in earlier versions of the game but it doesn't really fit the current build.
Having it scale with current shield level as mentioned earlier might make more sense. If a shield is at 8% it only has (say) 10% kinetic resistance.
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Now, since there's a double-proc bug w/ the AoE powers, double the number of procs. You said you had 186 procs of Kemo on a spread. This is very close to the theoretical 200 procs for the conditions above. I suspect that a target moved in or out of range for the procs during the time period.
No doubt... and I agree Kemo isn't working properly. It is part of what I consider that 5% that needs to be looked at. Kemo has lots of issues of course. I still say it shouldn't proc 100% of the time on Spreads though. WIth the radius yes your right it turns into a lot of calculations and a ton of dmg. (even if it where not double procing)
As for my 186 counted... yes you have it about right. Well up a bunch of spheres and spread them. If 200 was the theoretical max it didn't get there only because they where ALL dead before it could count the last hanful of dmg hits. Working as "intended" with one hit 93 hits still would have evaporated that group of spheres... it would have just taken 5-6s longer as all the omega sheer procs finished them off instead. Which is why I stand by it being far to powerful with spread at 100%. (although I will say its hard to say for sure having never seen it work properly in practice)
Vel, check out the torp vid I did with Oden on my YouTube page. I'm on my cell a bit hard for me to get? It shows with TS you get kemo on torp release and then again on impact
Vel, check out the torp vid I did with Oden on my YouTube page. I'm on my cell a bit hard for me to get? It shows with TS you get kemo on torp release and then again on impact
@Jarvisandalfred is looking for the same thing w/ FaW, just like the double [Pen] proc under FaW that we accidentally found, @snipey47a
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Now, since there's a double-proc bug w/ the AoE powers, double the number of procs. You said you had 186 procs of Kemo on a spread. This is very close to the theoretical 200 procs for the conditions above. I suspect that a target moved in or out of range for the procs during the time period.
No doubt... and I agree Kemo isn't working properly. It is part of what I consider that 5% that needs to be looked at. Kemo has lots of issues of course. I still say it shouldn't proc 100% of the time on Spreads though. WIth the radius yes your right it turns into a lot of calculations and a ton of dmg. (even if it where not double procing)
As for my 186 counted... yes you have it about right. Well up a bunch of spheres and spread them. If 200 was the theoretical max it didn't get there only because they where ALL dead before it could count the last hanful of dmg hits. Working as "intended" with one hit 93 hits still would have evaporated that group of spheres... it would have just taken 5-6s longer as all the omega sheer procs finished them off instead. Which is why I stand by it being far to powerful with spread at 100%. (although I will say its hard to say for sure having never seen it work properly in practice)
Outside of the double-proc/no proc issue, I think Memo should be left as-is. With things like Sub warp Sheath, Weapon haste, Iconian bonuses, point blank shot, etc, it's about time that kinetics got some sort of love that didn't result in a slap in the face afterwards.
Now, it becomes a mandate to fix the bugs so that the have-not's won't be discouraged to the point that they quit before they become the have's.
There is a massive list of broken, bugged and unbalanced projectile items.
Is there a thread or wiki somewhere with this list? I don't have any torp boats yet but I like to include at least 1 torp on my builds so they are a little more Trek.
There is no single list I am aware off. I posted a thread in the bug forum with a few items on. Odenknight and others have done some good videos. But there is no single source.
“Um my the highest I bothered counting on a Spread 3 kemo... was 186 hits. ONE one skill hit. That is broken and why the server barfs when they land. Frankly even 62 (33%) would be murder on the server. And there is no way energy weapons are getting 186 kemo hits in 1s.”
How is that any worse than FaW? What is wrong with grouping a bunch of targets together then AoE blasting them. Any AoE type blast will get a large amount of hits in that situation. You could do the same thing with disposal pattern or cluster weapons. Are those broken as well?
“I understand hwat you are saying... and yes HY 3 reduces base dmg to around 70-75% depending on the torp type. My point is that is by design. HY and spread always give the correct numbers to the torp you are firing. Yes some torpedos where giving lower numbers ON PURPOSE as a balance measure. My point is if you take the base number on any torpedo and calculate the % difference at each level of the skills you will see they are consistent. The % of dmg increased for each type of torpedo is going to be with in a couple % points. Specific rep and mission torps have been tuned by developers on purpose.”
I understand some specific rep and mission torps have been tuned by developers on purpose. I was talking about the basic normal every day torpedoes which can have the damage lowered by anywhere from 55% to 74.2% depending on torpedo. Over 4 torpedoes shots there is a damage variance of 72.8% depending on torpedo type. What makes you think it was on purpose and not a bug? As a balancing measure it makes no sense at all. I cannot see any good reason to balance it like that. Just like I cannot see why the advanced radiant torpedo is worse than normal torpedoes. Advanced should mean improved not half damage with spread.
“Fair enough if you can't upgrade specific consoles you should report that. I have never ever ever wasted resources on the +crth consoles so I wouldn't know I guess.”
I have reported it and they don’t care. Just like they don't seem to be bothered about mines getting a useless ACC mod when upgraded to gold level. For me the crit chance ones are the only ones worth using as the crit severity ones are broken unless I missed a fix. When you use mines with disposal patterns the generic ones mean a very large drop in damage/DPS. So for me crit chance are the only ones worth using.
“The omega plasma is consistent perhaps if you are seeing something different it has a small aoe that may account of your log being odd.”
Last time I used it there was no consistency sometimes it hits 5 targets or less, sometimes it hits as many as 10 targets. The plasma DoT is different than expected as well. I think that video link I posted showed some of the crazy things it does.
“Honestly though why fire a spread with that torp. (I half kid, honestly can't remember the last time I wasted a spread on that torp so you may be right)”
It’s meant to have upgraded high yield and upgraded torpedo spread shots. For spread it double targets so you hit up to 10 targets and it used to work. High yield is also upgraded over normal high yield shots. At some point it got broken and now hits random targets.
“The neutronic however you are dead wrong about. As someone who helped test that torp on tribble I can tell you that with out the reduction in the number of torps it was the most hillariously OP weapon in the game.”
I wasn’t on about the neutronic I was talking about the advanced Radiant Quantum torpedo which does half the damage of other torpedoes with spread 3. Its high Yield and normal shots are fine. But with spread its damage is so low its one off if not the lowest damage torpedoes in game.
“If you are planning to run a torpedo boat... you should plan on having at least a lt cmd sci slot. imo. Ships that don't have that are terrible torpedo platforms As I see it it would be like taking a science ship with only one lt tac and trying to build a faw boat out of it.”
I strongly disagree with that as my favourite torpedo boats have zero sci slots. My preference is to shoot off a high yield every second or 2 with lots of disposal mines. darkknightucf has some great torp boats which are a completely different style to me and don’t use sci.
As for only one lt tac with the right setup and doffs that works well for a FaW boat.
“Seriously though I am simply pointing out that 95% of the things people are QQing about are working as intended. ”
So far you have not shown its working as intended. So far it looks like far more than 5% is broken. Most of the torpedo bridge officer powers have bugs and don’t work fully as intended. A large amount of torpedoes don’t work as intended. Lots of the console are bugged.
you're missing my point about sci abilities and torpedoes. A torpedo should be fired and inflict a considerable amount of damage and not require magic sci stuffs to be usefull. It's a torpedo, perhaps the single most effective and deadly catalog of weapons in star trek (against shields and hull). Often the first weapon fired especially in battles where the aim is to severely disable or destroy an enemy so much so that if a torpedo did not do the job not one star trek officer ever followed up with "fire all 8 phaser banks" thus destroying the enemy, because phasers could not hold a torch to torpedoes. Perhaps that's a personal thing, an annoyance of the design of weaponry in this game compared to the IP it is derived from.
And yes, 75% innate kinetic resistance for shields is the primary offender for why so many captains abandon their use and struggle to make desirable builds. I would still like an answer to the question "if shields have innate kinetic resistance which virtually castrates the canon effectiveness of torpedoes against shields for reasons, then why haven't beams received an equally severe penalty when fired against hull? Why create this kind of discrepancy in the first place?" You are right in one thing that these design styles are with a purpose and deliberate but for reasons I think only a Ferengi would understand.
And I will again point to this as one of the more severe issues with torpedo mechanics. Go ahead and run the test yourself, add the numbers up and tell me why you don't have a problem with the hidden mechanics which further nullify torpedo damage to shields even after shield resistance is applied.
Are torpedoes useless? Not by any stretch. But the gymnastics required to make a good torpedo build seem far more stressful and costly than an equivalent beam build and I can't see any reason why this has become Cryptics design philosophy.
“Um my the highest I bothered counting on a Spread 3 kemo... was 186 hits. ONE one skill hit. That is broken and why the server barfs when they land. Frankly even 62 (33%) would be murder on the server. And there is no way energy weapons are getting 186 kemo hits in 1s.”
How is that any worse than FaW? What is wrong with grouping a bunch of targets together then AoE blasting them. Any AoE type blast will get a large amount of hits in that situation. You could do the same thing with disposal pattern or cluster weapons. Are those broken as well?
You don't want to get me going on a Faw is the worst skill in any MMO ever made rant... been there done that. My point is NOTHING in this game forces the server to calculate 100s of dmg numbers in <1s. Which is exactly what Kemo + spread forces the server to do. Its broken badly... and I can only assume Cryptic is stupid enough to have not thought that one through at all. Bottom line is you CAN not do the same thing with a cluster which forces the server to calculate 16 hits... and perhaps as many as 32 if you can group a few things up. Its no where close to the 200 (in theory) that a kemo spread can force the server to crunch. The reason things lag all to heck when a torp spread kemo ship is around is pretty obvious to see. The server plain can't handle it.
I understand some specific rep and mission torps have been tuned by developers on purpose. I was talking about the basic normal every day torpedoes which can have the damage lowered by anywhere from 55% to 74.2% depending on torpedo. Over 4 torpedoes shots there is a damage variance of 72.8% depending on torpedo type. What makes you think it was on purpose and not a bug? As a balancing measure it makes no sense at all. I cannot see any good reason to balance it like that. Just like I cannot see why the advanced radiant torpedo is worse than normal torpedoes. Advanced should mean improved not half damage with spread.
I know that HY2-3 are working as intended because I remember having conversations with the developers that where in charge of creating it that way almost 5 years ago now. lol YES once again HY 2 and HY 3 REDUCE the base dmg of each torp fired... and NO it is not a bug. It is 100% intended to work that way. If you don't like HY 3 and HY 2 feel free to run HY 1 which is the only HY pattern that was intended to increase the base dmg on each torp in a salvo. (yes the developers intended it that way to make HY 1 a bit more attractive as ensign skills have always sucked... and the overall dmg increase on HY 2 and HY 3 is still higher then HY1)
I have reported it and they don’t care. Just like they don't seem to be bothered about mines getting a useless ACC mod when upgraded to gold level. For me the crit chance ones are the only ones worth using as the crit severity ones are broken unless I missed a fix. When you use mines with disposal patterns the generic ones mean a very large drop in damage/DPS. So for me crit chance are the only ones worth using.
I do agree that if some consoles can't be upgraded that does need fixed. (my comment was a just cause) it does need fixed.
As for ACC being useless on torps and mines... who ever told you that doesn't know what they are talking about. Acc does effect mines and torpedos and it is important. Do mines always hit ? Yes... does acc still matter... you bet your backside. It still gets used in Acc VS Def calculations and will create higher dmg to a target if there defense is degraded with debuffs and the like. So no not a worthless mod... just not as good as the others overall, which is the same for every weapon that gets a ACC mod for the most part.
Last time I used it there was no consistency sometimes it hits 5 targets or less, sometimes it hits as many as 10 targets. The plasma DoT is different than expected as well. I think that video link I posted showed some of the crazy things it does.
Fair enough if you can document it well Cryptic should look into it. That stupid torp has been bugged in one way or another since day one... so who knows how baddly the code for it is really botched. I haven't run that torp in forever to be honest it simply isn't that great... it can be fun to see the stupid massive HY, was never really a very useful torpedo in general though. (hopefully they look at)
It’s meant to have upgraded high yield and upgraded torpedo spread shots. For spread it double targets so you hit up to 10 targets and it used to work. High yield is also upgraded over normal high yield shots. At some point it got broken and now hits random targets.
I know the HY is the massive ball... don't remember the spread every being buffed, but if it was cool. If it isn't working thought to be honest I'm sort of glad that is all we need is people firing torps that have the potential to trigger 400+ kemo hits. I mean if they fix it let me know I'll get a few friends to fire it with me and see if we can crash the server. haha
I wasn’t on about the neutronic I was talking about the advanced Radiant Quantum torpedo which does half the damage of other torpedoes with spread 3. Its high Yield and normal shots are fine. But with spread its damage is so low its one off if not the lowest damage torpedoes in game.
Fair enough... I know what they say about those that assume. My bad.
I haven't done any testing for Cryptic in a long time and stopped paying attention to there tribble stuff. (why test things for people that don't listen or plan to listen ever again) Just saying it is very possible that is also by design for some reason... and it is possible your right and something is funny with the math. Either way it would be nice to hear from a Cryptic dev. (unless someone knows of an old Tribble thread about it or something)
But other torpedoes do not lose a mod for example Radiant get a bonus Serv mod, bonus Radiant mod. The devs treat torpedoes and mines inconstantly.
Well all the extra proc Torps/Mines SHOULD only have 2 mods... and they all do accept thoron. So in that case you are right someone there Fd up Thoron should be a 2 mod weapon not 3. (Bio-photons, and Radiant Quantums are both 2 mod weapons if you look a the store versions... don't compare the one off specials which are balanced on there own just like one off weapons)
So far you have not shown its working as intended. So far it looks like far more than 5% is broken. Most of the torpedo bridge officer powers have bugs and don’t work fully as intended. A large amount of torpedoes don’t work as intended. Lots of the console are bugged.
Again I would say be specific. Because from what I have read from people, I'm seeing lots of working as intendeds and not very many real bugs. Dmg tunings on specific torps are not bugs (some people are assuming they are when they are not). There are some things that seem inconsistent (which you also find in energy weapons though) things like the dual proc dual mod rule that started way back with the first lockbox weapon (Phased-Tet). Cryptic follows that 95% of the time and the odd time release something like the thoron weapons where they seem to forget there own rule.
PS... one note on quantums... I think Cryptic has confused themselves on that weapon. The quantums used to have extra crew killing power, and I think they consider that a "proc" like a chron proc, or plasma burn. So they added the +10% crtd to the rads instead. (which means adding the Radiant Proc =2 so 2 mods)... and on the thoron the Rad proc was intended to replace the crew kill proc so they allowed it to have 3. Bottom line ya its all confused. (I don't even remember when they changed the crew killing proc from quantums... I don't think it ever worked the way it was intended anyway). - I am just guessing as to how they seem to have messed up the number of mods/procs on the quantum torps. (they have it right on the bio photons they get a bonus proc and loose a mod as they should)
you're missing my point about sci abilities and torpedoes. A torpedo should be fired and inflict a considerable amount of damage and not require magic sci stuffs to be usefull. It's a torpedo, perhaps the single most effective and deadly catalog of weapons in star trek (against shields and hull). Often the first weapon fired especially in battles where the aim is to severely disable or destroy an enemy so much so that if a torpedo did not do the job not one star trek officer ever followed up with "fire all 8 phaser banks" thus destroying the enemy, because phasers could not hold a torch to torpedoes. Perhaps that's a personal thing, an annoyance of the design of weaponry in this game compared to the IP it is derived from.
And yes, 75% innate kinetic resistance for shields is the primary offender for why so many captains abandon their use and struggle to make desirable builds. I would still like an answer to the question "if shields have innate kinetic resistance which virtually castrates the canon effectiveness of torpedoes against shields for reasons, then why haven't beams received an equally severe penalty when fired against hull? Why create this kind of discrepancy in the first place?" You are right in one thing that these design styles are with a purpose and deliberate but for reasons I think only a Ferengi would understand.
And I will again point to this as one of the more severe issues with torpedo mechanics. Go ahead and run the test yourself, add the numbers up and tell me why you don't have a problem with the hidden mechanics which further nullify torpedo damage to shields even after shield resistance is applied.
Are torpedoes useless? Not by any stretch. But the gymnastics required to make a good torpedo build seem far more stressful and costly than an equivalent beam build and I can't see any reason why this has become Cryptics design philosophy.
I do hear what you are saying. No Science skills are not REQUIRED to make torps viable. However they very much help, torps are one hit weapons meaning they get massive boosts from sci skills that degrade defense and resistance.
The 75%... I can tell you why it exists. Because before the game launched and players got there hands on STO beta... it took all of a day for the first person to realize energy was stupid. (I'm not kidding at all, there was no kinetic resist on shields early beta). So guess what all the game was at that point was throw some torps around and watch people blow up. So Cryptic decided people should have to use energy to get though the shield first. Thing was back then energy didn't mean 1,000,000 DPS faw boats... or 50k DPS Strings of Cannon blaps. Eating someones hull with energy in STO 1.0 was NOT easy to do... There where also not 1001 passives that would keep your shield facing up... There was no Tac team to spin your shield facing. So if you used energy and got someones shield down, if they didn't turn you could fire your HY torps in on the hull and finish them. My point is the issue is NOT the resist on the shields. (I can still drop a shield facing with ONE torpedo on a good torp boat... which means anyone with a spread one and unbuffed torps can do the same) The issue is these days... when someones shield facing hits zero the passive rep stuffs, the console heals, the Intel Spec... ect ect ect all replace that lost shielding almost instantly. If they don't the player hits tac team and the shield facing is also replaced. (with tac team in now means a torp needs to eat in most cases 48k in shields instead of 12k on a player anyway) That is what has made it hard for people to drop shields for torps.
Honestly the game was a lot more fun when it was about dropping a facing so you could slid in some Burst dmg. (which used to be mainly torps... with a few people using overloads for the same effect.) Its all the magic heal passives and shield spins that have destroyed torps not the shield resistance.
What has killed torpedos and the game in general... Reps/Doffs/Silly Uni Consoles (that includes teh spire/res/embassy/mine consoles as well as well as Tac Team. Remove all of that stuff and the game would be 10x more fun.
“My point is NOTHING in this game forces the server to calculate 100s of dmg numbers in <1s. Which is exactly what Kemo + spread forces the server to do.”
Cluster torpedoes or disposal patterns into a gravity well of a group enemy’s does the same thing and has done for years. The grav torpedo with overlapping gravs, the 3km AoW torpedo also rack of a large amount and to a lesser extent the 3km blast mine when placed into a group of enemy can do a similar thing as Kemo . Pretty sure the 20km+ grav wells also rates high up there depending on the content.
Being a mine fan I love laying a mine field into an area I know a large tight group of NPC are about to warp in and watch as 100’s of hits wipe out the group in the same way as kemo. Azure Nebula is one of my favorite missions for that, have you seen someone place 24+ mines into the path of 7+ tightly grouped NPC’s ships? Same for grav wells I will happily drop a ton of mines and watch the AoE blast overlap hitting large numbers.
I don’t see how kemo is that different from I have been doing for years.
“I know that HY2-3 are working as intended because I remember having conversations with the developers that where in charge of creating it that way almost 5 years ago now. lol YES once again HY 2 and HY 3 REDUCE the base dmg of each torp fired... and NO it is not a bug. It is 100% intended to work that way. If you don't like HY 3 and HY 2 feel free to run HY 1 which is the only HY pattern that was intended to increase the base dmg on each torp in a salvo. (yes the developers intended it that way to make HY 1 a bit more attractive as ensign skills have always sucked... and the overall dmg increase on HY 2 and HY 3 is still higher then HY1)”
So HY1 lowering the damage of many basic torpedoes by 86% of normal damage while boosting other basic torpedoes by 111% is not a bug. Ok then it’s a badly balanced and badly deigned system that need re doing.
Anyway I am still not convinced it’s not a bug. You say HY1 is intended to boost damage but around 1/3 of torpedoes in game lose damage per shot. I am not talking about rep or special hand made torpedo's. But the basic torpedo.
“As for ACC being useless on torps and mines... who ever told you that doesn't know what they are talking about. Acc does effect mines and torpedos and it is important. Do mines always hit ? Yes... does acc still matter... you bet your backside. It still gets used in Acc VS Def calculations and will create higher dmg to a target if there defense is degraded with debuffs and the like. So no not a worthless mod... just not as good as the others overall, which is the same for every weapon that gets a ACC mod for the most part.”#
The devs told me and testing confirmed. ACC does not work on auto hit weapons. There is no Acc VS Def calculations for AoE blasts. There is no crit acc overflow for auto hit weapons. ACC is sometimes useful on torps but it’s useless for torp spread and completely useless on mines or other AoE Blasts.
Anyway perhaps only half the problems are bugs and the other half is working as intended. But that doesn't mean there isn't a problem. To me it doesn't matter if its a bug or a badly designed or thought out system. For me there is a large list of either bugs or badly designed system related to projectiles. Mines being a good example as upgrading them to Epic level is working as intended as they get ACC as the devs deigned it but its a badly designed system as mines get zero benefit from ACC and cost a massive amount to upgrade only to get ACC.
“My point is NOTHING in this game forces the server to calculate 100s of dmg numbers in <1s. Which is exactly what Kemo + spread forces the server to do.”
Cluster torpedoes or disposal patterns into a gravity well of a group enemy’s does the same thing and has done for years. The grav torpedo with overlapping gravs, the 3km AoW torpedo also rack of a large amount and to a lesser extent the 3km blast mine when placed into a group of enemy can do a similar thing as Kemo . Pretty sure the 20km+ grav wells also rates high up there depending on the content.
Being a mine fan I love laying a mine field into an area I know a large tight group of NPC are about to warp in and watch as 100’s of hits wipe out the group in the same way as kemo. Azure Nebula is one of my favorite missions for that, have you seen someone place 24+ mines into the path of 7+ tightly grouped NPC’s ships? Same for grav wells I will happily drop a ton of mines and watch the AoE blast overlap hitting large numbers.
I don’t see how kemo is that different from I have been doing for years.
“I know that HY2-3 are working as intended because I remember having conversations with the developers that where in charge of creating it that way almost 5 years ago now. lol YES once again HY 2 and HY 3 REDUCE the base dmg of each torp fired... and NO it is not a bug. It is 100% intended to work that way. If you don't like HY 3 and HY 2 feel free to run HY 1 which is the only HY pattern that was intended to increase the base dmg on each torp in a salvo. (yes the developers intended it that way to make HY 1 a bit more attractive as ensign skills have always sucked... and the overall dmg increase on HY 2 and HY 3 is still higher then HY1)”
So HY1 lowering the damage of many basic torpedoes by 86% of normal damage while boosting other basic torpedoes by 111% is not a bug. Ok then it’s a badly balanced and badly deigned system that need re doing.
I can think of a good reason for something like this happening and being designed, not a bug, and even balanced:
Torpedoes have different rates of fire and different base damage per torpedo. Low rate of fire torpedoes have a high individual damage than a faster rate of fire torpedo. But the torpedo buffs don't care for the rate of fire of the base weapon - they have their own cooldown. A high rate of fire torpedo with a lower base damage thus needs a bigger buff to get a similar benefit from high yield torpedo than a low rate of fire torpedo with a higher base damage.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Yes, but when those rate of fire numbers were designed, there was not tons of gimmicky stuff that raise resists, regen shield facings, distribute shields and other console specific TRIBBLE in the game. Right now, 6s feels like eternity in game and you can heal your ship faster from 1% to 100% than to fire and reload single torpedo.
Like I said before, everything in this game evolved, except torpedo mechanics. When you fly 5x faster than your own photon torpedoes, you know something is fishy.
"Cryptic Studio’s Jack Emmert (2010): Microtransactions are the biggest bunch of nonsense. I like paying one fee and not worrying about it – like my cellphone. The world’s biggest MMO isn’t item based, even though the black market item GDP is bigger than Russia … microtransactions make me want to die.”
“My point is NOTHING in this game forces the server to calculate 100s of dmg numbers in <1s. Which is exactly what Kemo + spread forces the server to do.”
Cluster torpedoes or disposal patterns into a gravity well of a group enemy’s does the same thing and has done for years. The grav torpedo with overlapping gravs, the 3km AoW torpedo also rack of a large amount and to a lesser extent the 3km blast mine when placed into a group of enemy can do a similar thing as Kemo . Pretty sure the 20km+ grav wells also rates high up there depending on the content.
Being a mine fan I love laying a mine field into an area I know a large tight group of NPC are about to warp in and watch as 100’s of hits wipe out the group in the same way as kemo. Azure Nebula is one of my favorite missions for that, have you seen someone place 24+ mines into the path of 7+ tightly grouped NPC’s ships? Same for grav wells I will happily drop a ton of mines and watch the AoE blast overlap hitting large numbers.
I don’t see how kemo is that different from I have been doing for years.
“I know that HY2-3 are working as intended because I remember having conversations with the developers that where in charge of creating it that way almost 5 years ago now. lol YES once again HY 2 and HY 3 REDUCE the base dmg of each torp fired... and NO it is not a bug. It is 100% intended to work that way. If you don't like HY 3 and HY 2 feel free to run HY 1 which is the only HY pattern that was intended to increase the base dmg on each torp in a salvo. (yes the developers intended it that way to make HY 1 a bit more attractive as ensign skills have always sucked... and the overall dmg increase on HY 2 and HY 3 is still higher then HY1)”
So HY1 lowering the damage of many basic torpedoes by 86% of normal damage while boosting other basic torpedoes by 111% is not a bug. Ok then it’s a badly balanced and badly deigned system that need re doing.
I can think of a good reason for something like this happening and being designed, not a bug, and even balanced:
Torpedoes have different rates of fire and different base damage per torpedo. Low rate of fire torpedoes have a high individual damage than a faster rate of fire torpedo. But the torpedo buffs don't care for the rate of fire of the base weapon - they have their own cooldown. A high rate of fire torpedo with a lower base damage thus needs a bigger buff to get a similar benefit from high yield torpedo than a low rate of fire torpedo with a higher base damage.
That would make sense but the way it works doesn’t match that for example a Chroniton has 2631 damage and gets 86% of normal damage. A Photon has 2979 damage and gets a 111% of normal damage bonus at high yield 1.
Chrons where balanced around the fact that there debuff used to be a game changer. These days its a joke and they added the ability to resist cron procs long ago now. There was a time where getting hit with a chron torp that proced was a death sentence. (you could not resist nor clear it and your defense would go negative almost instantly and you would go boom not long after)
I won't deny that the normal torps are badly balanced in light of the current game. I just disagree that this is only an issue that effects torps. I mean Tet procs at one time where ok they are now junk. Phaser procs at one time could not be resisted and where a death sentence as well, and that proc is now junk. All the base weapons have outdated procs. That is the way Cryptic sells new shiney lockbox/rep junks. Its the same for all weapons. The base stuff is only useable these days if you really want a fancy new crafted [mod].
I don’t see how kemo is that different from I have been doing for years.
It's a lot different. Run the experiment you are talking about... pull your log both times and simply count.
If you drop a spread of 16 mines... or breen cluster some spheres. You go for it and see if you can count 186 (kemo) only hits. With kemo you hit ALL the stuff you just listed + all the kemo... and it has to calculate all bonus dmg off the radius from each kemo hit in a chain reaction.
I'm sorry there simply isn't anything else in the game that requires the engine to do that much math. I mean, I am not going crazy am I... do people not notice that a spread + kemo landing is EXACTLY when the game lags to heck. lol
“If you drop a spread of 16 mines... or breen cluster some spheres. You go for it and see if you can count 186 (kemo) only hits. With kemo you hit ALL the stuff you just listed + all the kemo...”
As I said a few pages back when I do that I get about 2 kemo hits. Stupid bugs and broken systems.
“I won't deny that the normal torps are badly balanced in light of the current game. I just disagree that this is only an issue that effects torps.”
It’s not an issue that only effect torps it’s just torps are in what I feel are in a x10 worse state with x10 more bugs or badly designed systems over energy weapons. EDIT Still viable just you have to be more careful with how you fit and use projectiles due to the amount of problems they have.
Your mines didn't all hit at once. That is the point. The kemo hits do all hit at one time. The server doesn't get 100 ticks to calculate it. The mines land over 3-5s. The kemos happen instantly and it has to calculate radius off each hit because it can chain... your mine hits don't. (ok some mines do have a radius of explosion... but the math is no where near as intense)
You get 2 kemo hits because it is an AOE. Its working as intended. (its simply a terrible design)
The explosion point has a 1k AOE. So if I land a torpedo spread think about it...
If the spread is only 2 torpedos... and the land on 2 targets... I get 4 hits. That isn't broken that's intended. 2 targets 2 explosions... if the targets are with in 1k of each other they both get hit by both explosions = 4 hits.
So if you have a spread 3 hitting targets the number of kemo hits can pretty much be unlimited. (only limited by the number of targets)
Spread 3 with fire 8 torps at a max of 5 targets... that is 40 AOE strikes. However everyone of those hits will also hit the other 4 main targets for another 32 (subtracting its own kemo hits) x 4 = 128 hits + the first 40 = 168. (That is how many kemo WILL go off if you have 5 targets with in 1k of each other)
However the calculations don't end there... because that 1k aoe isn't limited by anything target wise. So if you manage to well up say 10 targets... you have another 5 secondary targets that will also get hit by all 40 kemos hits... and as crazy as it sounds if you manage to get another 5 targets in that well its another 200 kemo hits. (in theory assuming the targets lived that long, which they will not... you could have the server doing 368 calculations all in ONE server tick. Which yes will evaporate all the targets which we have ALL seen happen... and make the server go AHHHHHHH which we have also all seen happen.)
The Cryptic dev that devised and programmed kemo was simply not thinking at all that day. There are a few fixes I can think of... 1) reduce the 100% chance to something like 33%... 2) Limit the AOE explosion to a numbered amount of targets like (1-2) extra.
Right now you get MASSIVE reward for lining up additional targets in a 1k Kemo ring of death. When the server pukes its because someone has managed to line up more targets then there spread can target in that 1k sphere. Every extra target in that box forces the server to do 40 more calculations.
Comments
I understand hwat you are saying... and yes HY 3 reduces base dmg to around 70-75% depending on the torp type. My point is that is by design. HY and spread always give the correct numbers to the torp you are firing. Yes some torpedos where giving lower numbers ON PURPOSE as a balance measure. My point is if you take the base number on any torpedo and calculate the % difference at each level of the skills you will see they are consistent. The % of dmg increased for each type of torpedo is going to be with in a couple % points. Specific rep and mission torps have been tuned by developers on purpose.
Fair enough if you can't upgrade specific consoles you should report that. I have never ever ever wasted resources on the +crth consoles so I wouldn't know I guess. No doubt that should be fixed. The omega plasma is consistent perhaps if you are seeing something different it has a small aoe that may account of your log being odd. Honestly though why fire a spread with that torp. (I half kid, honestly can't remember the last time I wasted a spread on that torp so you may be right) The neutronic however you are dead wrong about. As someone who helped test that torp on tribble I can tell you that with out the reduction in the number of torps it was the most hillariously OP weapon in the game. As it is when I run that torp I Spread it every chance I can cause its still stupid OP. The Thoron Quantums are NOT missing a mod... they give up a mod for a proc... just like Dual Proc energy weapons. If you have every used Phased Tetryon you know what I mean... they trade one proc for a MOD. The same logic was applied to the Thoron, they gain a free proc.. they give up one mod for it.
The tool tips in this game are terrible no one will argue that... and they should fix some of the bugs like your upgrades on specific consoles ect. A lot of the things being mentioned however are simply not bugs or broken mechanics at all. They are 100% intended.
If you are planning to run a torpedo boat... you should plan on having at least a lt cmd sci slot. imo. Ships that don't have that are terrible torpedo platforms As I see it it would be like taking a science ship with only one lt tac and trying to build a faw boat out of it.
I assume you mention your running quants, because you can't run the grav photon. Just wanted to point out one effective way to build a torp boat is to not use Quantum/photon/plasma consoles ect... instead use Warheads... The Spire +torp consoles give you 95% of the buff but it effects all torps including some of the specials like the Harpang that get no buff from anything else. Running those allows you to mix and match just about any torpedo setup. Also if you run those only get the +crtd ones... the locators are beyond useless, and I know you can upgrade the exploiters.
lol good one. Seriously though I am simply pointing out that 95% of the things people are QQing about are working as intended.
Well, that invalidates all my builds, then. Back to the drawing board.
Fleet Defiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support | Fleet Manticore Kinetic Strike Ship | Tactical Command Kinetic Siege Refit | Fleet Defiant Quantum Phase Escort | Fleet Valiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support
Turning the Galaxy-X into a Torpedo Dreadnought & torpedo tutorial, with written torpedo guide.
"A good weapon and a great strategy will win you many battles." - Marshall
I knew using Kinetics would be playing the game on hard mode, but what I didn't realize was how bad the deck is stacked against Kinetics.
You make some very good points on some of your posts, of which a few I 100% agree with you on. In this post, you're wrong. I'll compile the list of issues that @wardcalis @jarvisandalfred @pottsey5g @cepholapoid @snipey47a @agresiel2 and others, as well as myself, have discovered or pointed out as not following the mechanics, have some absurd condition placed on it, or not working as intended (either in part, or in full).
A note on Kemocite: Where people are "complaining" about torps benefiting the most from them is due to the double-proc from using TS. The same happens with FaW and CSV, but due to the much lower chance to proc, not many notice. It's the same phenomena that has let FaW users experience double [Pen] procs.
[Note: As of the results of last testing]
Edit: Here's a scenario for you, @bobs1111 and please correct me if I missed something. I suspect that you GWell targets, then TS them after activating Kemo. Lets suppose that you do NOT use Neutronic. Each torpedo will proc Kemo. Kemo has a 1km damage radius. Each target within 1km will be hit with that Kemo damage. So, if you have 4 targets within 1km from the torpedo impact, that's FIVE (5) targets receiving Kemo damage from that ONE (1) torpedo in that spread. Assuming you're using TS3 with a Photon, that would mean 4 torpedoes per target, and therefore, 4 procs of Kemo to 5 targets. If TS3 sends 4 torps per target to FIVE (5) targets that are within 1km from each other, that's ONE HUNDRED (100) procs of Kemo to calculate.
Now, since there's a double-proc bug w/ the AoE powers, double the number of procs. You said you had 186 procs of Kemo on a spread. This is very close to the theoretical 200 procs for the conditions above. I suspect that a target moved in or out of range for the procs during the time period.
EDIT: How can I forget this tiny detail... Under HY, some torps do not benefit from Kemo being applied to the target at all. Kemo is being applied to the 'pet' torp upon launch at 0km from the launcher. The Kemo will cause damage to the 'pet' torp in question, and anything else in range of it. Although I haven't used mines w/ Kemo, I can easily see the same thing happening w/ and w/o a dispersal pattern, as well as some of the mine delivery systems (cluster 'torp' weapons).
Fleet Defiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support | Fleet Manticore Kinetic Strike Ship | Tactical Command Kinetic Siege Refit | Fleet Defiant Quantum Phase Escort | Fleet Valiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support
Turning the Galaxy-X into a Torpedo Dreadnought & torpedo tutorial, with written torpedo guide.
"A good weapon and a great strategy will win you many battles." - Marshall
I knew using Kinetics would be playing the game on hard mode, but what I didn't realize was how bad the deck is stacked against Kinetics.
Fleet Defiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support | Fleet Manticore Kinetic Strike Ship | Tactical Command Kinetic Siege Refit | Fleet Defiant Quantum Phase Escort | Fleet Valiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support
Turning the Galaxy-X into a Torpedo Dreadnought & torpedo tutorial, with written torpedo guide.
"A good weapon and a great strategy will win you many battles." - Marshall
I knew using Kinetics would be playing the game on hard mode, but what I didn't realize was how bad the deck is stacked against Kinetics.
SCM - Hive (S) - [02:31] DMG(DPS) - @jarvisandalfred: 30.62M(204.66K) - Fed Sci
Tacs are overrated.
Game's best wiki
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Is there a thread or wiki somewhere with this list? I don't have any torp boats yet but I like to include at least 1 torp on my builds so they are a little more Trek.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Having it scale with current shield level as mentioned earlier might make more sense. If a shield is at 8% it only has (say) 10% kinetic resistance.
No doubt... and I agree Kemo isn't working properly. It is part of what I consider that 5% that needs to be looked at. Kemo has lots of issues of course. I still say it shouldn't proc 100% of the time on Spreads though. WIth the radius yes your right it turns into a lot of calculations and a ton of dmg. (even if it where not double procing)
As for my 186 counted... yes you have it about right. Well up a bunch of spheres and spread them. If 200 was the theoretical max it didn't get there only because they where ALL dead before it could count the last hanful of dmg hits.
@Jarvisandalfred is looking for the same thing w/ FaW, just like the double [Pen] proc under FaW that we accidentally found, @snipey47a
I guess it's video time again.
Fleet Defiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support | Fleet Manticore Kinetic Strike Ship | Tactical Command Kinetic Siege Refit | Fleet Defiant Quantum Phase Escort | Fleet Valiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support
Turning the Galaxy-X into a Torpedo Dreadnought & torpedo tutorial, with written torpedo guide.
"A good weapon and a great strategy will win you many battles." - Marshall
I knew using Kinetics would be playing the game on hard mode, but what I didn't realize was how bad the deck is stacked against Kinetics.
Outside of the double-proc/no proc issue, I think Memo should be left as-is. With things like Sub warp Sheath, Weapon haste, Iconian bonuses, point blank shot, etc, it's about time that kinetics got some sort of love that didn't result in a slap in the face afterwards.
Now, it becomes a mandate to fix the bugs so that the have-not's won't be discouraged to the point that they quit before they become the have's.
Fleet Defiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support | Fleet Manticore Kinetic Strike Ship | Tactical Command Kinetic Siege Refit | Fleet Defiant Quantum Phase Escort | Fleet Valiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support
Turning the Galaxy-X into a Torpedo Dreadnought & torpedo tutorial, with written torpedo guide.
"A good weapon and a great strategy will win you many battles." - Marshall
I knew using Kinetics would be playing the game on hard mode, but what I didn't realize was how bad the deck is stacked against Kinetics.
There is no single list I am aware off. I posted a thread in the bug forum with a few items on. Odenknight and others have done some good videos. But there is no single source.
I understand some specific rep and mission torps have been tuned by developers on purpose. I was talking about the basic normal every day torpedoes which can have the damage lowered by anywhere from 55% to 74.2% depending on torpedo. Over 4 torpedoes shots there is a damage variance of 72.8% depending on torpedo type. What makes you think it was on purpose and not a bug? As a balancing measure it makes no sense at all. I cannot see any good reason to balance it like that. Just like I cannot see why the advanced radiant torpedo is worse than normal torpedoes. Advanced should mean improved not half damage with spread.
I have reported it and they don’t care. Just like they don't seem to be bothered about mines getting a useless ACC mod when upgraded to gold level. For me the crit chance ones are the only ones worth using as the crit severity ones are broken unless I missed a fix. When you use mines with disposal patterns the generic ones mean a very large drop in damage/DPS. So for me crit chance are the only ones worth using.
Last time I used it there was no consistency sometimes it hits 5 targets or less, sometimes it hits as many as 10 targets. The plasma DoT is different than expected as well. I think that video link I posted showed some of the crazy things it does.
It’s meant to have upgraded high yield and upgraded torpedo spread shots. For spread it double targets so you hit up to 10 targets and it used to work. High yield is also upgraded over normal high yield shots. At some point it got broken and now hits random targets.
I wasn’t on about the neutronic I was talking about the advanced Radiant Quantum torpedo which does half the damage of other torpedoes with spread 3. Its high Yield and normal shots are fine. But with spread its damage is so low its one off if not the lowest damage torpedoes in game.
But other torpedoes do not lose a mod for example Radiant get a bonus Serv mod, bonus Radiant mod. The devs treat torpedoes and mines inconstantly.
I strongly disagree with that as my favourite torpedo boats have zero sci slots. My preference is to shoot off a high yield every second or 2 with lots of disposal mines. darkknightucf has some great torp boats which are a completely different style to me and don’t use sci.
As for only one lt tac with the right setup and doffs that works well for a FaW boat.
you're missing my point about sci abilities and torpedoes. A torpedo should be fired and inflict a considerable amount of damage and not require magic sci stuffs to be usefull. It's a torpedo, perhaps the single most effective and deadly catalog of weapons in star trek (against shields and hull). Often the first weapon fired especially in battles where the aim is to severely disable or destroy an enemy so much so that if a torpedo did not do the job not one star trek officer ever followed up with "fire all 8 phaser banks" thus destroying the enemy, because phasers could not hold a torch to torpedoes. Perhaps that's a personal thing, an annoyance of the design of weaponry in this game compared to the IP it is derived from.
And yes, 75% innate kinetic resistance for shields is the primary offender for why so many captains abandon their use and struggle to make desirable builds. I would still like an answer to the question "if shields have innate kinetic resistance which virtually castrates the canon effectiveness of torpedoes against shields for reasons, then why haven't beams received an equally severe penalty when fired against hull? Why create this kind of discrepancy in the first place?" You are right in one thing that these design styles are with a purpose and deliberate but for reasons I think only a Ferengi would understand.
And I will again point to this as one of the more severe issues with torpedo mechanics. Go ahead and run the test yourself, add the numbers up and tell me why you don't have a problem with the hidden mechanics which further nullify torpedo damage to shields even after shield resistance is applied.
Are torpedoes useless? Not by any stretch. But the gymnastics required to make a good torpedo build seem far more stressful and costly than an equivalent beam build and I can't see any reason why this has become Cryptics design philosophy.
You don't want to get me going on a Faw is the worst skill in any MMO ever made rant... been there done that. My point is NOTHING in this game forces the server to calculate 100s of dmg numbers in <1s. Which is exactly what Kemo + spread forces the server to do. Its broken badly... and I can only assume Cryptic is stupid enough to have not thought that one through at all. Bottom line is you CAN not do the same thing with a cluster which forces the server to calculate 16 hits... and perhaps as many as 32 if you can group a few things up. Its no where close to the 200 (in theory) that a kemo spread can force the server to crunch. The reason things lag all to heck when a torp spread kemo ship is around is pretty obvious to see. The server plain can't handle it.
I know that HY2-3 are working as intended because I remember having conversations with the developers that where in charge of creating it that way almost 5 years ago now.
I do agree that if some consoles can't be upgraded that does need fixed. (my comment was a just cause) it does need fixed.
As for ACC being useless on torps and mines... who ever told you that doesn't know what they are talking about. Acc does effect mines and torpedos and it is important. Do mines always hit ? Yes... does acc still matter... you bet your backside. It still gets used in Acc VS Def calculations and will create higher dmg to a target if there defense is degraded with debuffs and the like. So no not a worthless mod... just not as good as the others overall, which is the same for every weapon that gets a ACC mod for the most part.
Fair enough if you can document it well Cryptic should look into it. That stupid torp has been bugged in one way or another since day one... so who knows how baddly the code for it is really botched. I haven't run that torp in forever to be honest it simply isn't that great... it can be fun to see the stupid massive HY, was never really a very useful torpedo in general though. (hopefully they look at)
I know the HY is the massive ball... don't remember the spread every being buffed, but if it was cool. If it isn't working thought to be honest I'm sort of glad that is all we need is people firing torps that have the potential to trigger 400+ kemo hits.
Fair enough... I know what they say about those that assume. My bad.
I haven't done any testing for Cryptic in a long time and stopped paying attention to there tribble stuff. (why test things for people that don't listen or plan to listen ever again) Just saying it is very possible that is also by design for some reason... and it is possible your right and something is funny with the math. Either way it would be nice to hear from a Cryptic dev. (unless someone knows of an old Tribble thread about it or something)
Well all the extra proc Torps/Mines SHOULD only have 2 mods... and they all do accept thoron. So in that case you are right someone there Fd up Thoron should be a 2 mod weapon not 3. (Bio-photons, and Radiant Quantums are both 2 mod weapons if you look a the store versions... don't compare the one off specials which are balanced on there own just like one off weapons)
Again I would say be specific. Because from what I have read from people, I'm seeing lots of working as intendeds and not very many real bugs. Dmg tunings on specific torps are not bugs (some people are assuming they are when they are not). There are some things that seem inconsistent (which you also find in energy weapons though) things like the dual proc dual mod rule that started way back with the first lockbox weapon (Phased-Tet). Cryptic follows that 95% of the time and the odd time release something like the thoron weapons where they seem to forget there own rule.
PS... one note on quantums... I think Cryptic has confused themselves on that weapon. The quantums used to have extra crew killing power, and I think they consider that a "proc" like a chron proc, or plasma burn. So they added the +10% crtd to the rads instead. (which means adding the Radiant Proc =2 so 2 mods)... and on the thoron the Rad proc was intended to replace the crew kill proc so they allowed it to have 3. Bottom line ya its all confused. (I don't even remember when they changed the crew killing proc from quantums... I don't think it ever worked the way it was intended anyway). - I am just guessing as to how they seem to have messed up the number of mods/procs on the quantum torps. (they have it right on the bio photons they get a bonus proc and loose a mod as they should)
I do hear what you are saying. No Science skills are not REQUIRED to make torps viable. However they very much help, torps are one hit weapons meaning they get massive boosts from sci skills that degrade defense and resistance.
The 75%... I can tell you why it exists. Because before the game launched and players got there hands on STO beta... it took all of a day for the first person to realize energy was stupid. (I'm not kidding at all, there was no kinetic resist on shields early beta). So guess what all the game was at that point was throw some torps around and watch people blow up. So Cryptic decided people should have to use energy to get though the shield first. Thing was back then energy didn't mean 1,000,000 DPS faw boats... or 50k DPS Strings of Cannon blaps. Eating someones hull with energy in STO 1.0 was NOT easy to do... There where also not 1001 passives that would keep your shield facing up... There was no Tac team to spin your shield facing. So if you used energy and got someones shield down, if they didn't turn you could fire your HY torps in on the hull and finish them. My point is the issue is NOT the resist on the shields. (I can still drop a shield facing with ONE torpedo on a good torp boat... which means anyone with a spread one and unbuffed torps can do the same) The issue is these days... when someones shield facing hits zero the passive rep stuffs, the console heals, the Intel Spec... ect ect ect all replace that lost shielding almost instantly. If they don't the player hits tac team and the shield facing is also replaced. (with tac team in now means a torp needs to eat in most cases 48k in shields instead of 12k on a player anyway) That is what has made it hard for people to drop shields for torps.
Honestly the game was a lot more fun when it was about dropping a facing so you could slid in some Burst dmg. (which used to be mainly torps... with a few people using overloads for the same effect.) Its all the magic heal passives and shield spins that have destroyed torps not the shield resistance.
What has killed torpedos and the game in general... Reps/Doffs/Silly Uni Consoles (that includes teh spire/res/embassy/mine consoles as well as well as Tac Team. Remove all of that stuff and the game would be 10x more fun.
Being a mine fan I love laying a mine field into an area I know a large tight group of NPC are about to warp in and watch as 100’s of hits wipe out the group in the same way as kemo. Azure Nebula is one of my favorite missions for that, have you seen someone place 24+ mines into the path of 7+ tightly grouped NPC’s ships? Same for grav wells I will happily drop a ton of mines and watch the AoE blast overlap hitting large numbers.
I don’t see how kemo is that different from I have been doing for years.
So HY1 lowering the damage of many basic torpedoes by 86% of normal damage while boosting other basic torpedoes by 111% is not a bug. Ok then it’s a badly balanced and badly deigned system that need re doing.
Anyway I am still not convinced it’s not a bug. You say HY1 is intended to boost damage but around 1/3 of torpedoes in game lose damage per shot. I am not talking about rep or special hand made torpedo's. But the basic torpedo.
The devs told me and testing confirmed. ACC does not work on auto hit weapons. There is no Acc VS Def calculations for AoE blasts. There is no crit acc overflow for auto hit weapons. ACC is sometimes useful on torps but it’s useless for torp spread and completely useless on mines or other AoE Blasts.
Anyway perhaps only half the problems are bugs and the other half is working as intended. But that doesn't mean there isn't a problem. To me it doesn't matter if its a bug or a badly designed or thought out system. For me there is a large list of either bugs or badly designed system related to projectiles. Mines being a good example as upgrading them to Epic level is working as intended as they get ACC as the devs deigned it but its a badly designed system as mines get zero benefit from ACC and cost a massive amount to upgrade only to get ACC.
Torpedoes have different rates of fire and different base damage per torpedo. Low rate of fire torpedoes have a high individual damage than a faster rate of fire torpedo. But the torpedo buffs don't care for the rate of fire of the base weapon - they have their own cooldown. A high rate of fire torpedo with a lower base damage thus needs a bigger buff to get a similar benefit from high yield torpedo than a low rate of fire torpedo with a higher base damage.
Like I said before, everything in this game evolved, except torpedo mechanics. When you fly 5x faster than your own photon torpedoes, you know something is fishy.
That would make sense but the way it works doesn’t match that for example a Chroniton has 2631 damage and gets 86% of normal damage. A Photon has 2979 damage and gets a 111% of normal damage bonus at high yield 1.
I won't deny that the normal torps are badly balanced in light of the current game. I just disagree that this is only an issue that effects torps. I mean Tet procs at one time where ok they are now junk. Phaser procs at one time could not be resisted and where a death sentence as well, and that proc is now junk. All the base weapons have outdated procs. That is the way Cryptic sells new shiney lockbox/rep junks. Its the same for all weapons. The base stuff is only useable these days if you really want a fancy new crafted [mod].
It's a lot different. Run the experiment you are talking about... pull your log both times and simply count.
If you drop a spread of 16 mines... or breen cluster some spheres. You go for it and see if you can count 186 (kemo) only hits. With kemo you hit ALL the stuff you just listed + all the kemo... and it has to calculate all bonus dmg off the radius from each kemo hit in a chain reaction.
I'm sorry there simply isn't anything else in the game that requires the engine to do that much math. I mean, I am not going crazy am I... do people not notice that a spread + kemo landing is EXACTLY when the game lags to heck. lol
As I said a few pages back when I do that I get about 2 kemo hits. Stupid bugs and broken systems.
It’s not an issue that only effect torps it’s just torps are in what I feel are in a x10 worse state with x10 more bugs or badly designed systems over energy weapons. EDIT Still viable just you have to be more careful with how you fit and use projectiles due to the amount of problems they have.
You get 2 kemo hits because it is an AOE. Its working as intended. (its simply a terrible design)
The explosion point has a 1k AOE. So if I land a torpedo spread think about it...
If the spread is only 2 torpedos... and the land on 2 targets... I get 4 hits. That isn't broken that's intended. 2 targets 2 explosions... if the targets are with in 1k of each other they both get hit by both explosions = 4 hits.
So if you have a spread 3 hitting targets the number of kemo hits can pretty much be unlimited. (only limited by the number of targets)
Spread 3 with fire 8 torps at a max of 5 targets... that is 40 AOE strikes. However everyone of those hits will also hit the other 4 main targets for another 32 (subtracting its own kemo hits) x 4 = 128 hits + the first 40 = 168. (That is how many kemo WILL go off if you have 5 targets with in 1k of each other)
However the calculations don't end there... because that 1k aoe isn't limited by anything target wise. So if you manage to well up say 10 targets... you have another 5 secondary targets that will also get hit by all 40 kemos hits... and as crazy as it sounds if you manage to get another 5 targets in that well its another 200 kemo hits. (in theory assuming the targets lived that long, which they will not... you could have the server doing 368 calculations all in ONE server tick. Which yes will evaporate all the targets which we have ALL seen happen... and make the server go AHHHHHHH which we have also all seen happen.)
The Cryptic dev that devised and programmed kemo was simply not thinking at all that day. There are a few fixes I can think of... 1) reduce the 100% chance to something like 33%... 2) Limit the AOE explosion to a numbered amount of targets like (1-2) extra.
Right now you get MASSIVE reward for lining up additional targets in a 1k Kemo ring of death. When the server pukes its because someone has managed to line up more targets then there spread can target in that 1k sphere. Every extra target in that box forces the server to do 40 more calculations.