I started STO with a Kling ENG captain flying cruisers with beam arrays and switched now to Kling TAC captain with cannons, specialized in flying raiders. I retired my ENG captain completly.
My impression is:
1. You generally don't need science and eng captains at all in PvE. Also, in PvP they perform subpar in their abilities compared to TAC captains.
2. Escorts/raider/raptors can take alot of damage if specced and equipped correctly. The gain in speed and turn rate make them mobile while retain good survivability. Cruisers lose alot of speed and turn rate, and also though their survivability is better than escorts they lose to much damage and maneuverability for this advantage.
3. Crew plays alomost no role. You can have a cruiser with 5000 people but not able to overwhelm an escort with 10 crewmen when their shields are down. Also, if your crew dfrops to zero there are virtually no drawbacks.
3. TAC BOFs are mostly straight forward damage, but offer also good defensive abilities and are well balanced in their teirs. There are some powerfull ENG BOFs, as EPTS, Aux2SIF, RSP mostly defense, but offer nearly no offense. I don't want to talk about SCI BOFs, the only usefull SCI power is HE, TSS which is available for most escport to heal them self and in higher teirs GW for PvE (useless in PvP) and VM which is useless in PvE, usefull in PvP, but generally too weak and too easy to counter.
.... why would escorts not be filled to the brim with shield emitters and generators?
Also, when taking hits from antimatter warheads i don't think its the ship's mass that prevents it getting instantly vaporized... its probably something like the hull integrity fields or something equally technobabbly. But I can tell you it is NOT the extra mass a cruiser has. They are not throwing snowballs around... its antimatter.
And I would turn your supposition around: with all the space devoted to being multi role where does a cruiser even fit weapons or shield generators? Or at least weapons and shield generators in excess of what an escort would have?
Its a game balance issue folks, you can take lots of damage so you deal less, simple as that. Some expertly piloted escorts seem to tank like nobody's business, but on the flip side some cruisers do damage like there's no tomorrow; but no escort can take damage like a cruiser and no cruiser can deal damage like an escort. With good pilots you can do optionals just as well regardless of the ship's involved.
Might I suggest reading up some of the excellent guides some forumites have posted? I know I've greatly benefited from them
I realize cannon is important to people, but you cannot balance a game around cannon. At least not a game set up like STO is.
"Why would escorts not be filled to the brim with shield emitters and generators?"
They are too SMALL to fit all that stuff. Escorts have very limited available hull space, and last I checked they pack a lot of heavy firepower and engines.
"Why dose mass matter?"
I'm not 100% certain of the size, but judging from pictures I would guess the SIZE of ONE Enterprise E Phaserbeam is a couple of SUV/pickup trucks in diameter. The smaller the target, the more surface area of that target is effected and greater the chance of something important getting wacked.
"Anti Matter Torpedos, Away!"
Shields reduce kinect damage by a drastic amount. Cruisers have the MASS-SIZE-VOLUME-HULLSPACE-ETC to pack powerful shield emitters. Have you ever seen the size of the Deflector generator inside the Enterrpise E-it's nearly as big an escort.
When a Cruiser takes a hit, an area is damage. When an Escort takes a hit, a huge swath of it takes damage. Throw a brick at a window, then throw the same brick at a shot glass. One is damage, the other is destroyed.
1. You generally don't need science and eng captains at all in PvE. Also, in PvP they perform subpar in their abilities compared to TAC captains.
Not going to disagree with the PvE part, but PvP is a different story. There is a reason that good PvP teams don't run all TACs, and its not because they like to handicap themselves.
_________________________ TRIBBLE | -Show Me Your Critz- Svarog | Veles | et al.
"Why would escorts not be filled to the brim with shield emitters and generators?"
They are too SMALL to fit all that stuff. Escorts have very limited available hull space, and last I checked they pack a lot of heavy firepower and engines.
"Why dose mass matter?"
I'm not 100% certain of the size, but judging from pictures I would guess the SIZE of ONE Enterprise E Phaserbeam is a couple of SUV/pickup trucks in diameter. The smaller the target, the more surface area of that target is effected and greater the chance of something important getting wacked.
"Anti Matter Torpedos, Away!"
Shields reduce kinect damage by a drastic amount. Cruisers have the MASS-SIZE-VOLUME-HULLSPACE-ETC to pack powerful shield emitters. Have you ever seen the size of the Deflector generator inside the Enterrpise E-it's nearly as big an escort.
When a Cruiser takes a hit, an area is damage. When an Escort takes a hit, a huge swath of it takes damage. Throw a brick at a window, then throw the same brick at a shot glass. One is damage, the other is destroyed.
You are assuming shield density is a one to one ratio; maybe cruisers, being so large, are far less efficient in how much shield benefit they get per ounce of power or shield equipment? Or maybe they are so structurally unsound the extra shielding is needed just to keep it from flying apart every time it gets hit?
I don't think you understand what i'm saying about size and mass not being that important, the amount of energy released by an antimatter or similar type of explosive device, once impacting ship hull would instantly destroy any ship in the size ranges seen in STO. Its little different than imagining a battleship getting hit by a small tactical nuclear missile. Both the battleship and the destroyer next to it would be instantly destroyed. Which is why I assume some technobabble reason is why ships can keep on fighting even though they sling antimatter around and unshielded ships can take more than one torpedo or mine hit.
so what is the most correct answer to balance the game? Nerf cannons? add 2 weapons slots to both cruisers and sci ships? adding a LCDR tac slot to a sci ship? reduce cooldowns on target subsystems?
so what is the most correct answer to balance the game? Nerf cannons? add 2 weapons slots to both cruisers and sci ships? adding a LCDR tac slot to a sci ship? reduce cooldowns on target subsystems?
you did't read the thread, right?
While there are some balance issues, those are very small for ship classes, and bigger but still not gamebreaking for career classes.
What really makes a differnce is player skill ... and you can't balance for that. Or do you want an IQ test on account creation, and if you're above ... say, 110, then you're not allowed to play? ('can't exclude the lower portion, they bring in the money - so the smart ones would have to go )
A bigger problem is: encounter design. The current content can simply be gunned down with a pure dps group. It's ... too easy. BUT: It's not easy enough either. STFs are being failed ... Fleet events are being failed.
Not because of balance issues, or even encounter design ... no, simply because it's still to hard for a group of weapon-power-30-rainbow-cruisers.
Sure, you could buff sci and cruisers, or nerf escorts (or escorts and battlecruiser with a cannon nerf, I'm sure the KDF will LOOOOVE you for that idea ...) - then escorts would be useless in the hand of a good captain and ... ummm ... how's that any better?
No, the truth is really simple: Customization options allow a bad player to simply be just too bad. And the few skill requirements in flying ships actually allow them to be inefficient at being bad. The range between the good and the bad has become too great ... and there's nothing you can do about it that won't result in a stale and boring game. Wouldn't be the first, though.
so what is the most correct answer to balance the game? Nerf cannons? add 2 weapons slots to both cruisers and sci ships? adding a LCDR tac slot to a sci ship? reduce cooldowns on target subsystems?
Most correct is entirely subjective, but I think a start would be to work on the enemy NPCs, before even contemplating a balance pass on the ships (judging from the comments here the movement based defense stat may need to be looked at, but I haven't done any excessive experimenting with numbers myself, so...).
At the moment, the NPCs lag behind top tier player ships in terms of weapon slots, useful BOff/captain abilities, and can only be made threatening with absurd stat padding, or combinations of abilities that human players cannot use (Tractor + 3 Heavy Plasmas). The combo abilities aren't too bad, but they're kind of fixed. You know it's coming so you give yourself an answer for it, and then there's no real challenge. And there's only so far you can push stat without it just being silly. As it was a few months ago when the Borg one shotted players in STFs whenever the mood took them. The only way around it was to look for blindspots or get out of range.
A start would be to give them more weapon slots on higher level missions and more abilities to use. Overall, the idea would be to give them more sustained DPS, but less burst/spike damage, so top level baddies wouldn't start one-shotting again. Stuff like that is not making a game difficult - it's just making it obnoxious. Upping the sustained DPS would make it harder for Escorts to hang in a fight with them. That way, there's more of a trade off in picking an Escort, you can't just stick in a fight with a Tac Cube or whatever. Then Cruisers would become a more viable option because they could stick in a fight indefinitely with it. Scis debuffing/CC abilities would become more relevant too.
Obviously you can't make them exactly like player ships because the AI can't think at the same level as a human player, but they could be better than they are atm.
Also, I may attract 'learn to play n00b' comments for this, but I'm not the biggest fan of the optional timer system in STFs (for what my word is worth, I have no difficulty in completing missions well within the optional times. I just don't like them). It encourages players to rush, and places even more emphasis on DPS than the missions would have without them. They perhaps could be lengthened as part of an STF or NPC rethink.
You are assuming shield density is a one to one ratio; maybe cruisers, being so large, are far less efficient in how much shield benefit they get per ounce of power or shield equipment? Or maybe they are so structurally unsound the extra shielding is needed just to keep it from flying apart every time it gets hit?
I don't think you understand what i'm saying about size and mass not being that important, the amount of energy released by an antimatter or similar type of explosive device, once impacting ship hull would instantly destroy any ship in the size ranges seen in STO. Its little different than imagining a battleship getting hit by a small tactical nuclear missile. Both the battleship and the destroyer next to it would be instantly destroyed. Which is why I assume some technobabble reason is why ships can keep on fighting even though they sling antimatter around and unshielded ships can take more than one torpedo or mine hit.
I don't really care if Lance Armstrong is powering the shields via a pedal wheel and lots of energy drinks.
Escorts tank too well in PVE to the point of being a deterent to players who want to command cruisers.
It is a very difficult problem they have created. As I said, I still think the core of the problem is the average amount of damage mitigation and regen that everyone can easily acquire. Are there any ship builds out there that don't use atleast one copy of emergency power to shields? Combined with a tac team? Not to mention shield batteries, brace for impact /w doffs, TSS, Hazard Emitter, etc etc. Which leads to much more tank than originally anticipated. If, however, escorts were limited to say one engineering boff ability and one science boff ability it wouldn't be so bad.
That link is about diablo 3 but the core argument he makes applies just as well to STO. Between the high resist amounts on shields, number of armor consoles, and abilities that buff resists that every ship can be packing it becomes borderline impossible to balance the damage of encounters. You end up with how it currently is, that some players just laugh at the enemy damage because of their builds, and others insta pop. It should take my escort longer than a minute to self regen/heal an amount equal to his max hull and shield but it doesn't. In addition with the removal of STF NPC abilities to crit for the most part having a solid defense rating just doesn't matter nearly as much as it should. Although the entire crit severity, accuracy overflow, and defense system also need to be looked at before space combat becomes just like ground combat currently is. Fortunately they have not been inflating character power very much which is a very good thing.
As far as cannon vs beam, I think if you just added 180 degree torpedo weapons and/or fixed the issue where escorts just sit there nose on target 100% of the time it would solve itself. Like how it has in PvP from my understanding.
*Disclaimer: I have very little pvp experience and just go by what I read. Although I have experienced the ships that just will not die (zombie cruisers), ships you cannot hit (zippy escorts), and those that just burst you in seconds (all pvp vets) if you don't have your o TRIBBLE button ready to go!
so what is the most correct answer to balance the game? Nerf cannons? add 2 weapons slots to both cruisers and sci ships? adding a LCDR tac slot to a sci ship? reduce cooldowns on target subsystems?
A very simple solution would be to shift all shield and hull healing abilities to higher BOF tiers (Lt. Com. and Com.), so that only Sci or Eng vessels can heal at all and parallely increase the strenght of these abilities.
A very simple solution would be to shift all shield and hull healing abilities to higher BOF tiers (Lt. Com. and Com.), so that only Sci or Eng vessels can heal at all and parallely increase the strenght of these abilities.
Right ... and everyone can use Tiken's and Grav-Well and Warp Plasma and ... at Ensign?
Or ... did you just propose to totally nerf Sci and Cruiser by having them chose between survival and being useful?
I don't know which way to read your proposed solution would be worse ... though I think I'd go for the Escort spamming Tiken's and Warp Plasma instead of self-heals, that one would probably be a lot better than the current state ............. NOT!
Nothing wrong with the ships or their timers. If you want to maximize your game, you need to push for EC Character Respec over a stupid token. There are a lot of bad skill builds out there in STO, mostly do to the fact that it costs $ to fix.
You know Cryptic has Jumped the Proverbial Shark when they introduced Tractor Pulling to Star Trek Online!
While thats important to respec. Thats not the issue at all. I'm sure thre are plenty of bad builds out there. Personally Ive spent enough respeccing each toon to maximize them.
While thats important to respec. Thats not the issue at all. I'm sure thre are plenty of bad builds out there. Personally Ive spent enough respeccing each toon to maximize them.
That still doesnt change the Cruiser situation.
There is no "Cruiser" situation. There is nothing wrong with them, just players.
You know Cryptic has Jumped the Proverbial Shark when they introduced Tractor Pulling to Star Trek Online!
When 95% of the content can be tanked by an escort. then a primarily Tank class(Cruiser) has no purpose.
I'd love to go into an STF and see 5 escorts and actually go "TRIBBLE, we got no healer, were doomed."
Instead of going into an STF with 5 escorts and thinking. "Well, this'll be quick. lol"
Since Cruisers arent broken, Escorts are. As a tac with 6 Points in Threat, and flying an escort, I can shrug off almost everything that hits me. ALMOST everything, a Tac cube or Gate sometimes kills me, but again only sometimes. Usually I can eat it and run a sec, heal and come back.
Although simply taking off Tac Teams Shield distribution would bring escorts back to what they should be, a Glass Cannon.
Whats the point in having 4 side sto your shields when a click of a Ensign level skill treats all 4 side slike 1 big pool?
It would fix the escort somewhat yes. However cruisers would take a big hit by that in PvP. They can already not turn fast fast enough to escapes a escorts wrath on a shield facing. Removing the transfer from the tac team would be a nail in a coffin.
It would fix the escort somewhat yes. However cruisers would take a big hit by that in PvP. They can already not turn fast fast enough to escapes a escorts wrath on a shield facing. Removing the transfer from the tac team would be a nail in a coffin.
Escorts would be squishy. Science would be dead even quicker. Cruisers MIGHT survive a couple seconds if they maxed out EPS and spammed shield distribution, but ... not much longer.
Same as for all the low-tier sci- and eng-heals, TT is nearly mandatory for every class of ship, and nerfing it would hurt all of them.
Nerfing Escort shields would make them too squishy for both PvP and solo-content, so that's a no-go, too.
Options are:
-completly rework the BOff-system ('don't see that happen anytime soon)
-make encounters that actually need tanks, CC and teamwork (possible for next season, but would make the game too hard for a lot of people)
-dumb down the game so far that choice is no longer an issue and skill even less (can be done at any time, would make the game too boring for a lot of people)
Basically: whatever they do, they TRIBBLE off SOMEONE. Doing nothing seems easiest, to be honest ...
Then forget cruisers and make more escort options and more carriers so thiers a choice. lol.
So they released the armitage as the perfect mix....sigh.
Basically you can fly whatever you want and have fun. but the fact is everything can be done better in all 3 carrers in an escort. and thats really too bad.
Only ships that really matter other then a carrier are ones that have good Tac consoles and Tac Boff slots/Uni slots.
Klink side they seem to put a proper mix in. Fed side, Guess that will change when the Sovie Refit hits. But that means there will only really be one cruiser on fed side with a proper bite in this DPS arena.
I would be already happy if cruisers would get a bit higher Tactical BO stations, so they could be a bit less passive in battle.
(Instead of having a Lt Tac, giving it a Lt. Cmdr. Tac station, for instance)
Additionally Cruisers could get a small maneuverability Buff like 2-4 degrees more per second.
These small changes would make Cruiser somehow more active, without making them overpowered IMO, AND it would be a lot more fun to fly them.
On a personal note,
i find it really sad that a Star Trek game favours small dogfighting ships, instead of the big powerful and majestic ships we all saw in the various series and movies.
I mean there are more than enough Sci Fi universes featuring dogfights and small spaceships zipping around. I would like the biggest (and only) current Star Trek game feature big and powerful Cruisers.
I don't care if some devs like escorts more than cruisers, this is a Star Trek game (a Cruiser centered universe).
It is not cryptics original work, cryptic should tread it like that. (if they would want escorts to be the most powerful ships around they should have made up their own IP)
Live long and prosper.
"...'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied--chains us all irrevocably.' ... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today--"
- (TNG) Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie
I was once DKnight1000, apparently I had taken my own name so now I'm DKnight0001. If I ask you a question it is not an insult but a genuine attempt to understand why. When I insult you I won't be discreet about it, I will be precise and to the point stupid.
IMO the main problem is, that eng. consoles -and that is the part most cruisers focus in - are close to useless. I only use them as slots for universal consoles.
-> improve engineer consoles (e.g simply (at least) double the energy bonus given by any eng. console, the +4 at mkXII purple is a joke) and most problems with crusiers will be solved...
SIF consoles are lovely, armour/alloys as well. EPS is always handy. Actually no console slot is "trash".
"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.”
I would be already happy if cruisers would get a bit higher Tactical BO stations, so they could be a bit less passive in battle.
(Instead of having a Lt Tac, giving it a Lt. Cmdr. Tac station, for instance)
Additionally Cruisers could get a small maneuverability Buff like 2-4 degrees more per second.
These small changes would make Cruiser somehow more active, without making them overpowered IMO, AND it would be a lot more fun to fly them.
On a personal note,
i find it really sad that a Star Trek game favours small dogfighting ships, instead of the big powerful and majestic ships we all saw in the various series and movies.
I mean there are more than enough Sci Fi universes featuring dogfights and small spaceships zipping around. I would like the biggest (and only) current Star Trek game feature big and powerful Cruisers.
I don't care if some devs like escorts more than cruisers, this is a Star Trek game (a Cruiser centered universe).
It is not cryptics original work, cryptic should tread it like that. (if they would want escorts to be the most powerful ships around they should have made up their own IP)
Live long and prosper.
You are right. It IS Star Trek, remember the last big war the feds fought? Where their big cruisers were basically shredded by small nimble dedicated warships? Where for all their might they needed the KDF and RSE fleets, and THEIR dedicated warships to delay defeat?
Lets talk Meta, not everyone likes to pilot the big bulky space whales. Heck, the best cruiser builds don't actually fly like space whales AND do decent damage! Wonder what their secret is? Perhaps cruiser pilots should look up the "secret" builds right here on these very forums instead of simply asking to be game be made even more loltastic for them? Just a thought.
Their are many smaller problems that all added up create the larger (escorts best in pve) problem that could be fixed without overhauling the entire system.
1) increase ship total HP while also lowering amounts healed and resists. This would apply to shields and hull.
2) balance pass on weapon types. Beam arrays perform much worse than they should because of how power drain mechanics work on them compared to cannons.
3) balance pass on boff abilities. Simply put the damage bonus of tac abilities are so much stronger than sci or eng boff abilities. Yes they do lack some of the extra effects but still the damage needs increased on many sci and eng abilities.
4) evaluate and change how tac abilities scale. Nearly everything in this game scales in a linear fashion and most bonuses add to each other. However, tac abilities manage to bypass this increasing their effectiveness. This is the no 1 issue in my eyes and I will elaborate using pretend numbers so don't burn me on those.
Attack Pattern Beta: This decreases an enemies hull resistance, typically into the negative in PvE. Lets say for example it decreases it by 30%. At the same time you use cannon rapid fire which increases your cannon damage by say 30%. But these are not additive they are multiplicative and your damage actually increases by 69%. By contrast Gravity Well simply deals it's damage, Directed Energy Modulation simply deals it's damage, etc. The more tac ablities you stack on one another the more effective they become (weapon buff + attack pattern) whereas the majority of sci/eng abilities do not have this synergy.
The problem with escorts is the ridiculous amount of damage they do coupled with the tac team shield balance ability AND omega attack ridiculous bonuses.
Science nor engineering have anything remotely close to this. To make it worse, tactical consoles stack since they are % based.. most engineering and science consoles are not so they get diminished returns.
And, while tactical consoles need only slot for the damage type they use, science and engineering have to pick and choose which one stat each they can really boost hard...out of four+ critical ones the ship needs to survive. Shields? Armor? Resists? Heals?
To make matters even worse, the escorts get access to the remove-effect heals with the ensign and Lt slots so even a cmdr rank science attack or engineering attack is 'removed' by using an ensign ability.
overall escorts are the focus of this game: dps. Its what the devs are gearing the game for and catering to the direct damage portion of the game. Back before F2P a science ship was deadly if spec'd right. A cruiser was ungodly hard to kill if spec'd right. Today both sci and engineer ships have no real role or niche. Its been all replaced and focused to damage via guns.
Its just bad, bad game design. I would be ashamed to have my name in the credits of this game really.
Escorts tank well in PvE because the NPCs we fight do not bring a deadly challenge to the PvE side of the game unless they designed to be like a boss or near boss level NPC. Much like Champions the minion level NPC is only deadly if it has numbers or a debuff gimmick or both it can bring to combat.
In PvP I only see well designed and/or well played escorts survive and tank like cruisers.
In PvP the well played Cruiser still tanks better than any escort, often taking five or more focus firong escorts to kill it. If it dies at all.
The fix to making the Cruiser a better DPS ship is not nerfing the escort.
Frankly PvE just needs to be tougher and smarter. Relying on more than just raw DPS to kill the player or raw DPS to win the mission.
The problem with escorts is the ridiculous amount of damage they do coupled with the tac team shield balance ability AND omega attack ridiculous bonuses.
Science nor engineering have anything remotely close to this. To make it worse, tactical consoles stack since they are % based.. most engineering and science consoles are not so they get diminished returns.
And, while tactical consoles need only slot for the damage type they use, science and engineering have to pick and choose which one stat each they can really boost hard...out of four+ critical ones the ship needs to survive. Shields? Armor? Resists? Heals?
To make matters even worse, the escorts get access to the remove-effect heals with the ensign and Lt slots so even a cmdr rank science attack or engineering attack is 'removed' by using an ensign ability.
overall escorts are the focus of this game: dps. Its what the devs are gearing the game for and catering to the direct damage portion of the game. Back before F2P a science ship was deadly if spec'd right. A cruiser was ungodly hard to kill if spec'd right. Today both sci and engineer ships have no real role or niche. Its been all replaced and focused to damage via guns.
Its just bad, bad game design. I would be ashamed to have my name in the credits of this game really.
Just one minor thing, atleast last time I checked it. Nearly everything in this game, all consoles included, stack in a linear manner on the base. If tac console 1 adds 100 dps, so will console 2, 3, 4, etc. If +skill console adds 100 damage to a skill, or 100 healing, so will console 2, 3, 4 etc. It even applies to armor consoles except for a built in diminishing returns that doesn't really factor in until you start to get close to 50% resist. In addition, if cannon scatter volley adds 200 dps with 1 tac console, it will still only add 200 dps with 5 consoles as it is determined by the base weapon damage and will only go up if the weapon's mark possibly rarity is increased and are not effected by +dmg mods to the weapon last I checked. On a side note this is also why +damage fails to perform as well as +crit/+acc because it does not scale as well with abilities even though it looks right on paper.
The only things that 'break' this rule are ones that effect crit chance/damage, and target resist debuffs. This is also why ground combat is so 'spikey' in play because of how high crit chance/damage and expose damage tacked on can get with -resists. It is also why any escort not packing AP:B 3 annoys me in STFs. Nothing like giving a gate -200ish resists with abilities and watching it melt in seconds.
I do have to give cryptic props for that. Most RPGs let everything multiply and it gets downright silly *cough* Dablo 3 *cough* and STO avoid that for the most part.
Comments
^^^This, just this
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
"Why would escorts not be filled to the brim with shield emitters and generators?"
They are too SMALL to fit all that stuff. Escorts have very limited available hull space, and last I checked they pack a lot of heavy firepower and engines.
"Why dose mass matter?"
I'm not 100% certain of the size, but judging from pictures I would guess the SIZE of ONE Enterprise E Phaserbeam is a couple of SUV/pickup trucks in diameter. The smaller the target, the more surface area of that target is effected and greater the chance of something important getting wacked.
"Anti Matter Torpedos, Away!"
Shields reduce kinect damage by a drastic amount. Cruisers have the MASS-SIZE-VOLUME-HULLSPACE-ETC to pack powerful shield emitters. Have you ever seen the size of the Deflector generator inside the Enterrpise E-it's nearly as big an escort.
When a Cruiser takes a hit, an area is damage. When an Escort takes a hit, a huge swath of it takes damage. Throw a brick at a window, then throw the same brick at a shot glass. One is damage, the other is destroyed.
Not going to disagree with the PvE part, but PvP is a different story. There is a reason that good PvP teams don't run all TACs, and its not because they like to handicap themselves.
TRIBBLE | -Show Me Your Critz-
Svarog | Veles | et al.
You are assuming shield density is a one to one ratio; maybe cruisers, being so large, are far less efficient in how much shield benefit they get per ounce of power or shield equipment? Or maybe they are so structurally unsound the extra shielding is needed just to keep it from flying apart every time it gets hit?
I don't think you understand what i'm saying about size and mass not being that important, the amount of energy released by an antimatter or similar type of explosive device, once impacting ship hull would instantly destroy any ship in the size ranges seen in STO. Its little different than imagining a battleship getting hit by a small tactical nuclear missile. Both the battleship and the destroyer next to it would be instantly destroyed. Which is why I assume some technobabble reason is why ships can keep on fighting even though they sling antimatter around and unshielded ships can take more than one torpedo or mine hit.
you did't read the thread, right?
While there are some balance issues, those are very small for ship classes, and bigger but still not gamebreaking for career classes.
What really makes a differnce is player skill ... and you can't balance for that. Or do you want an IQ test on account creation, and if you're above ... say, 110, then you're not allowed to play? ('can't exclude the lower portion, they bring in the money - so the smart ones would have to go
A bigger problem is: encounter design. The current content can simply be gunned down with a pure dps group. It's ... too easy. BUT: It's not easy enough either. STFs are being failed ... Fleet events are being failed.
Not because of balance issues, or even encounter design ... no, simply because it's still to hard for a group of weapon-power-30-rainbow-cruisers.
Sure, you could buff sci and cruisers, or nerf escorts (or escorts and battlecruiser with a cannon nerf, I'm sure the KDF will LOOOOVE you for that idea ...) - then escorts would be useless in the hand of a good captain and ... ummm ... how's that any better?
No, the truth is really simple: Customization options allow a bad player to simply be just too bad. And the few skill requirements in flying ships actually allow them to be inefficient at being bad. The range between the good and the bad has become too great ... and there's nothing you can do about it that won't result in a stale and boring game. Wouldn't be the first, though.
Most correct is entirely subjective, but I think a start would be to work on the enemy NPCs, before even contemplating a balance pass on the ships (judging from the comments here the movement based defense stat may need to be looked at, but I haven't done any excessive experimenting with numbers myself, so...).
At the moment, the NPCs lag behind top tier player ships in terms of weapon slots, useful BOff/captain abilities, and can only be made threatening with absurd stat padding, or combinations of abilities that human players cannot use (Tractor + 3 Heavy Plasmas). The combo abilities aren't too bad, but they're kind of fixed. You know it's coming so you give yourself an answer for it, and then there's no real challenge. And there's only so far you can push stat without it just being silly. As it was a few months ago when the Borg one shotted players in STFs whenever the mood took them. The only way around it was to look for blindspots or get out of range.
A start would be to give them more weapon slots on higher level missions and more abilities to use. Overall, the idea would be to give them more sustained DPS, but less burst/spike damage, so top level baddies wouldn't start one-shotting again. Stuff like that is not making a game difficult - it's just making it obnoxious. Upping the sustained DPS would make it harder for Escorts to hang in a fight with them. That way, there's more of a trade off in picking an Escort, you can't just stick in a fight with a Tac Cube or whatever. Then Cruisers would become a more viable option because they could stick in a fight indefinitely with it. Scis debuffing/CC abilities would become more relevant too.
Obviously you can't make them exactly like player ships because the AI can't think at the same level as a human player, but they could be better than they are atm.
Also, I may attract 'learn to play n00b' comments for this, but I'm not the biggest fan of the optional timer system in STFs (for what my word is worth, I have no difficulty in completing missions well within the optional times. I just don't like them). It encourages players to rush, and places even more emphasis on DPS than the missions would have without them. They perhaps could be lengthened as part of an STF or NPC rethink.
I don't really care if Lance Armstrong is powering the shields via a pedal wheel and lots of energy drinks.
Escorts tank too well in PVE to the point of being a deterent to players who want to command cruisers.
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=349053
That link is about diablo 3 but the core argument he makes applies just as well to STO. Between the high resist amounts on shields, number of armor consoles, and abilities that buff resists that every ship can be packing it becomes borderline impossible to balance the damage of encounters. You end up with how it currently is, that some players just laugh at the enemy damage because of their builds, and others insta pop. It should take my escort longer than a minute to self regen/heal an amount equal to his max hull and shield but it doesn't. In addition with the removal of STF NPC abilities to crit for the most part having a solid defense rating just doesn't matter nearly as much as it should. Although the entire crit severity, accuracy overflow, and defense system also need to be looked at before space combat becomes just like ground combat currently is. Fortunately they have not been inflating character power very much which is a very good thing.
As far as cannon vs beam, I think if you just added 180 degree torpedo weapons and/or fixed the issue where escorts just sit there nose on target 100% of the time it would solve itself. Like how it has in PvP from my understanding.
*Disclaimer: I have very little pvp experience and just go by what I read. Although I have experienced the ships that just will not die (zombie cruisers), ships you cannot hit (zippy escorts), and those that just burst you in seconds (all pvp vets) if you don't have your o TRIBBLE button ready to go!
A very simple solution would be to shift all shield and hull healing abilities to higher BOF tiers (Lt. Com. and Com.), so that only Sci or Eng vessels can heal at all and parallely increase the strenght of these abilities.
Right ... and everyone can use Tiken's and Grav-Well and Warp Plasma and ... at Ensign?
Or ... did you just propose to totally nerf Sci and Cruiser by having them chose between survival and being useful?
I don't know which way to read your proposed solution would be worse ... though I think I'd go for the Escort spamming Tiken's and Warp Plasma instead of self-heals, that one would probably be a lot better than the current state ............. NOT!
That still doesnt change the Cruiser situation.
There is no "Cruiser" situation. There is nothing wrong with them, just players.
"That doesnt fix the current escort Situation."
When 95% of the content can be tanked by an escort. then a primarily Tank class(Cruiser) has no purpose.
I'd love to go into an STF and see 5 escorts and actually go "TRIBBLE, we got no healer, were doomed."
Instead of going into an STF with 5 escorts and thinking. "Well, this'll be quick. lol"
Since Cruisers arent broken, Escorts are. As a tac with 6 Points in Threat, and flying an escort, I can shrug off almost everything that hits me. ALMOST everything, a Tac cube or Gate sometimes kills me, but again only sometimes. Usually I can eat it and run a sec, heal and come back.
I love cruisers and want a reason to fly them.
Whats the point in having 4 side sto your shields when a click of a Ensign level skill treats all 4 side slike 1 big pool?
It would fix the escort somewhat yes. However cruisers would take a big hit by that in PvP. They can already not turn fast fast enough to escapes a escorts wrath on a shield facing. Removing the transfer from the tac team would be a nail in a coffin.
Escorts would be squishy. Science would be dead even quicker. Cruisers MIGHT survive a couple seconds if they maxed out EPS and spammed shield distribution, but ... not much longer.
Same as for all the low-tier sci- and eng-heals, TT is nearly mandatory for every class of ship, and nerfing it would hurt all of them.
Nerfing Escort shields would make them too squishy for both PvP and solo-content, so that's a no-go, too.
Options are:
-completly rework the BOff-system ('don't see that happen anytime soon)
-make encounters that actually need tanks, CC and teamwork (possible for next season, but would make the game too hard for a lot of people)
-dumb down the game so far that choice is no longer an issue and skill even less (can be done at any time, would make the game too boring for a lot of people)
Basically: whatever they do, they TRIBBLE off SOMEONE. Doing nothing seems easiest, to be honest ...
So they released the armitage as the perfect mix....sigh.
Basically you can fly whatever you want and have fun. but the fact is everything can be done better in all 3 carrers in an escort. and thats really too bad.
Only ships that really matter other then a carrier are ones that have good Tac consoles and Tac Boff slots/Uni slots.
Klink side they seem to put a proper mix in. Fed side, Guess that will change when the Sovie Refit hits. But that means there will only really be one cruiser on fed side with a proper bite in this DPS arena.
(Instead of having a Lt Tac, giving it a Lt. Cmdr. Tac station, for instance)
Additionally Cruisers could get a small maneuverability Buff like 2-4 degrees more per second.
These small changes would make Cruiser somehow more active, without making them overpowered IMO, AND it would be a lot more fun to fly them.
On a personal note,
i find it really sad that a Star Trek game favours small dogfighting ships, instead of the big powerful and majestic ships we all saw in the various series and movies.
I mean there are more than enough Sci Fi universes featuring dogfights and small spaceships zipping around. I would like the biggest (and only) current Star Trek game feature big and powerful Cruisers.
I don't care if some devs like escorts more than cruisers, this is a Star Trek game (a Cruiser centered universe).
It is not cryptics original work, cryptic should tread it like that.
(if they would want escorts to be the most powerful ships around they should have made up their own IP)
Live long and prosper.
If I ask you a question it is not an insult but a genuine attempt to understand why.
When I insult you I won't be discreet about it, I will be precise and to the point stupid.
-> improve engineer consoles (e.g simply (at least) double the energy bonus given by any eng. console, the +4 at mkXII purple is a joke) and most problems with crusiers will be solved...
You are right. It IS Star Trek, remember the last big war the feds fought? Where their big cruisers were basically shredded by small nimble dedicated warships? Where for all their might they needed the KDF and RSE fleets, and THEIR dedicated warships to delay defeat?
Lets talk Meta, not everyone likes to pilot the big bulky space whales. Heck, the best cruiser builds don't actually fly like space whales AND do decent damage! Wonder what their secret is? Perhaps cruiser pilots should look up the "secret" builds right here on these very forums instead of simply asking to be game be made even more loltastic for them? Just a thought.
1) increase ship total HP while also lowering amounts healed and resists. This would apply to shields and hull.
2) balance pass on weapon types. Beam arrays perform much worse than they should because of how power drain mechanics work on them compared to cannons.
3) balance pass on boff abilities. Simply put the damage bonus of tac abilities are so much stronger than sci or eng boff abilities. Yes they do lack some of the extra effects but still the damage needs increased on many sci and eng abilities.
4) evaluate and change how tac abilities scale. Nearly everything in this game scales in a linear fashion and most bonuses add to each other. However, tac abilities manage to bypass this increasing their effectiveness. This is the no 1 issue in my eyes and I will elaborate using pretend numbers so don't burn me on those.
Attack Pattern Beta: This decreases an enemies hull resistance, typically into the negative in PvE. Lets say for example it decreases it by 30%. At the same time you use cannon rapid fire which increases your cannon damage by say 30%. But these are not additive they are multiplicative and your damage actually increases by 69%. By contrast Gravity Well simply deals it's damage, Directed Energy Modulation simply deals it's damage, etc. The more tac ablities you stack on one another the more effective they become (weapon buff + attack pattern) whereas the majority of sci/eng abilities do not have this synergy.
Science nor engineering have anything remotely close to this. To make it worse, tactical consoles stack since they are % based.. most engineering and science consoles are not so they get diminished returns.
And, while tactical consoles need only slot for the damage type they use, science and engineering have to pick and choose which one stat each they can really boost hard...out of four+ critical ones the ship needs to survive. Shields? Armor? Resists? Heals?
To make matters even worse, the escorts get access to the remove-effect heals with the ensign and Lt slots so even a cmdr rank science attack or engineering attack is 'removed' by using an ensign ability.
overall escorts are the focus of this game: dps. Its what the devs are gearing the game for and catering to the direct damage portion of the game. Back before F2P a science ship was deadly if spec'd right. A cruiser was ungodly hard to kill if spec'd right. Today both sci and engineer ships have no real role or niche. Its been all replaced and focused to damage via guns.
Its just bad, bad game design. I would be ashamed to have my name in the credits of this game really.
In PvP I only see well designed and/or well played escorts survive and tank like cruisers.
In PvP the well played Cruiser still tanks better than any escort, often taking five or more focus firong escorts to kill it. If it dies at all.
The fix to making the Cruiser a better DPS ship is not nerfing the escort.
Frankly PvE just needs to be tougher and smarter. Relying on more than just raw DPS to kill the player or raw DPS to win the mission.
R.I.P
Just one minor thing, atleast last time I checked it. Nearly everything in this game, all consoles included, stack in a linear manner on the base. If tac console 1 adds 100 dps, so will console 2, 3, 4, etc. If +skill console adds 100 damage to a skill, or 100 healing, so will console 2, 3, 4 etc. It even applies to armor consoles except for a built in diminishing returns that doesn't really factor in until you start to get close to 50% resist. In addition, if cannon scatter volley adds 200 dps with 1 tac console, it will still only add 200 dps with 5 consoles as it is determined by the base weapon damage and will only go up if the weapon's mark possibly rarity is increased and are not effected by +dmg mods to the weapon last I checked. On a side note this is also why +damage fails to perform as well as +crit/+acc because it does not scale as well with abilities even though it looks right on paper.
The only things that 'break' this rule are ones that effect crit chance/damage, and target resist debuffs. This is also why ground combat is so 'spikey' in play because of how high crit chance/damage and expose damage tacked on can get with -resists. It is also why any escort not packing AP:B 3 annoys me in STFs. Nothing like giving a gate -200ish resists with abilities and watching it melt in seconds.
I do have to give cryptic props for that. Most RPGs let everything multiply and it gets downright silly *cough* Dablo 3 *cough* and STO avoid that for the most part.