But the 64 dollar ? is....., "Would it really matter anyway?"
It does, all those extra layers would buy ample time to hit RSP, TS:engines, and then laugh at the Defiant as it limps away. Also, the spike was around... what? 20-25K damage? Maybe more? Your average PvP cruiser should have enough shields, Resistance and shield damage reduction on top of movement defenses to survive that.
Edit: Thinking of ways to improve my own Engi Cruiser alt, I just realized... I don't think we've mentioned the most powerful DPS upgrades to cruisers to come along recently! Of course I refer to th1 180 degree Q-torp and the 180 degree Ferengi Rapid Fire Missile. With one front and one back a cruiser captain can broadside with 6 beams and with a little maneuvering could fire both off constantly. Either way, they certainly add more firepower than the standard 90 degree torps would.
In EVE they solved this perfectly. Battleships, for instance, can fire high-DPS cruise missiles; they do a crapload of damage, but can't hit smaller targets for ****. Likewise, a (small) frigate can't output as much DPS, but hits small targets with great precision.
Maybe STO needs something like that too: have cruisers do high DPS (but at reduced accuracy), so they can hit the big targets (gates, heavy marauders, etc), and have escorts be accurate, but do less DPS. That way you kinda need each other again.
^^ this.
While I hated EVE as far as control goes, all you do is Click attack and orbit. But they got the above right for sure.
I aint given up on STO but rarely play until/unless something changes. In STO an Escort is a battle ship and a dreadnought is not.
It amazes me how off topic you two have taken the thread. Hate to be a spoilsport, but I will tell you guys some things I have found out the hard way.
1). Escorts should never be compared to cruisers. They are their own ships with their own problems.
I'm sorry, what problems do escorts have exactly? If you've been paying any attention at all to your own thread, you'd realize that escorts can pretty much tank as well as a cruiser while doing WAAAAAY more damage... so yeah, not too many problems.
2). The game system will never be overhauled enough to bring cruisers back to their positions of glory and power that they deserve as the hearts of the fleet. To put this into perspective, look at how many cruiser improvement threads there have been. And compare that to how many things have actually changed on cruisers. And out of all of those threads, there have been good ideas, stupid ideas, troll ideas, and ideas that really should never have been even thought of but were put down. And after all this, guess what, no change.
And? that means it's time to stop trying? There's a saying: "If it's important to you, you'll find a way, if not, you'll find an excuse." So sounds to me like you just really don't care enough about a proper trek game and would rather roll over and settle for the TRIBBLE cryptic is feeding you.
3). Take away tac team, and you basically TRIBBLE cruisers. Need more be said.
Hello?! I said they'd have to balance the game so that tac team's shield redistrobution isn't necessary, were you not paying any attention at all? There's a qualifier to that statement. If they took tac team away with the game as it is, everyone would be screwed. And it's pretty messed up that pretty much every ship/class NEEDS to have tac team, but eng team and sci team are "eh... if I can squeeze them in... maaaybe." Another clear display of the lack of balance.
4). Where did this damn torpedo discussion come from? That's not even remotely related to the intent of this thread.
Actually, it is. This thread is all about how the game isn't true to trek and cruisers are getting screwed. Cruisers can't fire awesome volleys of torps like they could in the show, they get stuck with lowbie TRIBBLE tac skills which also forces most people to go all beams and not use torps at all (again, absolutely not canon) because they don't have the skills to make the most of torps and beams.
And last but not least, THIS IS A GAME. You need to take certain aspects and make them into a "gaming mode". Like for example, your last post about attack patterns. I heard all the time Sisko, Riker, and Kirk telling their helmsman to use attack pattern this, evasive maneuvers that etc. So since that was not how you normally fly, you have something that can activate and have an effect. Also, because IT IS STILL A GAME, you will have class differences. As biteme pointed out, you make it so all classes can do the same thing(damage wise), you remove the variety in game. I mean hell if my cruiser could do the same damage as an escort, and still be tanky as hell, then why would I ever fly anything else? There is a reason that the roles are as is, and there is a reason that they did that. And I hate it, but I am playing anyways.
If you chose the escort, you've chosen the TRIBBLE. You're not a taker, you're a giver. You've got all the right moves and have the speed and maneuverability to touch your enemy in all the right places. And when your partner explodes, you're the one left with the smile on your face. You're not as big and impressive looking as the lumbering cruiser, but don't count out this little guy, you're scrappy, and your small size just makes the big gun in your hand look even bigger. You are nimble with high damage, high evasion, and the speed and maneuverability to get to the target, to take advantage of weak shield facings, and have high dodge so others are barely able to touch you. You get the thrill of high octane dog fights and dance around the big guys barely taking a hit, you're a generous lover and live by one simple truth: "Tis better to give than to receive."
If you're a crusier, you've chosen the TRIBBLE, you like it rough and want the enemy to slap you in the face over and over, it hurts soooo good. You're tough, you can take it, and that smirk on your face comes from knowing you can give as good as you get. Your mass lets you hold lots of weapons and ammo so you can obliterate things with heavy fire power, your mass also enables you to have a strong hull and powerful shields. you are slower and less maneuverable, you're not strategic like the escort or science ship, but you don't care, let those little guys dance and play... as long as they stay out of your line of fire. "Move out of the way, little guy, the big guns are coming through!"
Should you chose the science vessel, you've chosen the tease. You're fast and maneuverable, and frankly, diabolical. Everyone wants to touch your sleek, delicate hull, but you just won't let them. Maybe, if they're lucky, they might get to touch your rock hard shields a few times. Cruel by nature, you have a tendency to roofie your date. By the end of this dance, they'll be so upside-down and turned around, they won't know what hit them. You're a selfish lover, you'll walk away satisfied, while they just lay there, confused, not quite sure what happened... and trying to figure out if they hate you... or love you. "Was that as good for you as it was for me?"
I dunno... each of those classes sound fun and interesting to me... and I don't see a lack of variety, do you?
I see good points brought up by you guys in the last few posts (albeit a few of them VERY off topic), and I can agree with many of them. But be realistic. The only ideas that have a snowballs chance in hell of actually being implemented (and that's being optimistic) are maybe the slight turn buff to cruisers and battlecruisers, and MAYBE a slight alteration of beam arrays to make them a tad more powerful (maybe a 5 or 10% increase in overall damage output).
But in the end, it will always come down to this:
Tactical Captains in Escorts will do the most damage. Period. The smart ones will always be difficult to destroy. Period. However these players have put in time and effort to figure out how to be nasty little ships that can kill things and still survive. So give them credit for actually doing that, and don't gimp them because we can't keep up.
Engineering Captains will be able to survive pretty well. That's a given. We have the tankiest native ships (hull-wise). But we sacrifice damage to do it. A well built cruiser in the hands of an engineer will never die. That's a given. I have seen it. Granted they never kill anything, but that's not their job. They will NEVER die. My AC has proven that point over and over again. This is not the tankiest cruiser for it's tier (that goes to Star Cruiser, or the "Shovel") but if I go to pure defense and focus on heals and regens for my shields, my ship never dies. Ever. My dps is usually cut in half, but I always live. That's our job. Look pretty and heal things. *throws up in a quiet corner*
Science Captains will always be tanky and always be mind-fkers. They have the best shield modifiers on their native ships. They have the best heals and disrupts on their native ships. The unfortunate part is that their disrupts got nerfed, but hey, gravity well is still very aesthetically pleasing and also VERY effective if used right, as is almost any science ability. And if you have a ship like an Orb Weaver or Recluse, you will never die. Ever. IF you play it right. You can heal, mind-fk, and eventually kill a majorly derped target (or used to, not so sure now).
So in the end, we gotta come to terms with the fact that Escorts have the highest damage potential. That's their job. They sacrificed health and durability to get that job. Cruisers have the highest survivability. That's their job. They sacrificed maneuverability and firepower to get that job. Science Ships have the best mind-fks and shields. That's their job. They sacrificed two weapons and durability to get that job. Carriers are just mean so they don't count lol...
I'm sorry, but escorts hardly sacrifice health and durability, their shield modifiers are typically only 10% less than a cruiser and yeah, their hulls aren't as thick, but once through the shields, it pretty much doesn't matter how much resist you have, it will only take a couple seconds more (probably one volley more) to kill a cruiser than it would to kill an escort. Plus with their speed, manuverability, and dodge, they can keep out of other ship's "kill zones" thus making the escort even better equipped to survive than a cruiser.
So as much as I feel the game doesn't follow canon, and is imbalanced, it's more you just gotta stop trying what isn't going to work. I stopped trying to be a huge damage dealer with my cruiser. I'm a bloody engineer. It's not going to work. Instead I focused on what I was supposed to do, and things have been going a mite more smoothly since. I want to hit hard, and kill things. But at the same time I want to tank and be useful. As meimetoo pointed out, you can't have it all. So I make do with what I got.
I don't buy that, I think everyone can and should have it all, the escorts sure as hell seem to have the best of both worlds, so should the sci and cruisers. Escorts shouldn't be the star of this show, this is star trek online, not DS9 online. This "show" needs to make the enterprise and voyager look awesome, not just the defiant.
There is room for improvement, don't get me wrong, as I said, our space whales could use a little more swing to get our fat rears goin, and our little ticklers could at the least become bruisers. But as was stated many times before now, that's never going to happen. The devs may not care, they may not see the need, or they might not see what we do. Regardless of that, nothing has happened in two years to make cruisers better, and from what I have seen, they actually haven't changed much since launch. Maybe a little more hull, maybe a slight change here and there (probably visually), but they are like PvP. Static.
Get used to it. Cruisers are seemingly useless. Courtesy of how PvE is so damage oriented. Until that changes and their roles as tanks/healers/support are actually NEEDED, not nice to have, but a must have, they will remain that way.
We shouldn't have to get used to it, and if we get used to it and stop trying, then things definitely won't change. I think the best way to get some change is to make a petition. If the community could come together and reasonably settle on a way to make the game balanced and fun for us all, we could write up a "Declaration of Balance!" and get people to sign it and maybe then the devs will listen. And before you go back on about, "Look how many 'cruisers suck!' threads there have been with no change." There's a huge difference between a petition that people just sign off on and a thread like this where people are arguing back and forth about "YES! LOVE IT!" and "NO! TRIBBLE YOU! YOU'RE STUPID!" So while a thread with people going back and forth probably won't get them to change things, a petition with overwhelming support might.
This "show" needs to make the enterprise and voyager look awesome, not just the defiant.
You're asking Cryptic to do something even the TV show's own creators could not do. People don't get exited when they see the Enterprise or Voyager, but the moment the Defiant shows up... people want to get up and cheer for the upcoming awesomeness. Maybe that's just an effect of the quality of the show involved? I can't say for sure, but I DO know the Enterprise and Voyager are just hum drum sci-fi ships to me.
I'm sorry, but escorts hardly sacrifice health and durability, their shield modifiers are typically only 10% less than a cruiser and yeah, their hulls aren't as thick, but once through the shields, it pretty much doesn't matter how much resist you have, it will only take a couple seconds more (probably one volley more) to kill a cruiser than it would to kill an escort. Plus with their speed, manuverability, and dodge, they can keep out of other ship's "kill zones" thus making the escort even better equipped to survive than a cruiser.
That's what i am preaching for years now. Just a bit more hull doesn't outweigh the resounding advantages escorts have.
But no fear, it won't take long until the Escort (or KDF) lobbyists will hammer down your or a similar post piece by piece.
I don't buy that, I think everyone can and should have it all, the escorts sure as hell seem to have the best of both worlds, so should the sci and cruisers. Escorts shouldn't be the star of this show, this is star trek online, not DS9 online. This "show" needs to make the enterprise and voyager look awesome, not just the defiant.
Completely agree here, that's the whole point!
I wouldn't care much if this wouldn't be a Star Trek game, but 4/5 (if you count the NX01 as cruiser) of the "heros" of the shows are pictured as weak, passive and/or boring in this game, in favour of just ONE ship!
That's what engrages me the most.
You're asking Cryptic to do something even the TV show's own creators could not do. People don't get exited when they see the Enterprise or Voyager, but the moment the Defiant shows up... people want to get up and cheer for the upcoming awesomeness. Maybe that's just an effect of the quality of the show involved? I can't say for sure, but I DO know the Enterprise and Voyager are just hum drum sci-fi ships to me.
You just speak for yourself.
I DO feel like cheering when i saw the Enterprise -D in the last seconds of Enterprise finale. I even like Voyager (the ship) they both have personality, in contrast to the defiant, which is just a flying gun for me. I was completely unaffected when it got destroyed in DS9.
Btw. the defiants first battle wasn't impressive at all.
We shouldn't have to get used to it, and if we get used to it and stop trying, then things definitely won't change. I think the best way to get some change is to make a petition. If the community could come together and reasonably settle on a way to make the game balanced and fun for us all, we could write up a "Declaration of Balance!" and get people to sign it and maybe then the devs will listen. And before you go back on about, "Look how many 'cruisers suck!' threads there have been with no change." There's a huge difference between a petition that people just sign off on and a thread like this where people are arguing back and forth about "YES! LOVE IT!" and "NO! TRIBBLE YOU! YOU'RE STUPID!" So while a thread with people going back and forth probably won't get them to change things, a petition with overwhelming support might.
I am fully with you here.
I would love to do something constructive about it, but i am not so sure about the petition. I think there was a rule or something, like "no petitions allowed!". But i have no idea if that has changed when PWE did overtake the helm.
You are right, whining won't help, just look at the KDF, there has been whining (@Klingons: sorry, please don't take that personal) for nearly two year for more content. Well they got Quonos revamped, they got their academy. But not much else.
Other than a petition i wouldn't know a way to let the devs know exactly what we want. Maybe the next Ask Cryptic, there could be a overwhelming amount of Cruiser balance questions but i think they would be just ignored.
Anyway i would sign it, if it is legally ok. (yeah i'm a fraidy-cat when it comes to stuff like that, lol)
Thank you for reading or ignoring, depending on who you are.
"...'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
You're asking Cryptic to do something even the TV show's own creators could not do. People don't get exited when they see the Enterprise or Voyager, but the moment the Defiant shows up... people want to get up and cheer for the upcoming awesomeness. Maybe that's just an effect of the quality of the show involved? I can't say for sure, but I DO know the Enterprise and Voyager are just hum drum sci-fi ships to me.
You think that voyager wasn't a beast of a ship? That little science vessel taking out borg spheres and giving borg cubes a run for their money? No, they didn't destroy the cubes (pre transphasic-nuke) but they still managed to hold their own very impressively. Voyager went into many a battle where it was severely outnumbered/outgunned and managed to pull through if not absolutely win. The enterprise was the pride of the federation in each of its incarnations, typically the fastest, most durable, most feared ship in the fleet. Remember first contact? The defiant was basically floating debris and the enterprise came to save the day, not the other way round. If first contact were reenacted in this game, the enterprise would be belly up with the defiant coming to the rescue instead, and we wouldn't have Riker's "tough little ship." with Worf's "little? *glare*," Worf would say, "Stupid, slow, crappy, lazy, worthless, big TRIBBLE whale of a ship beached and helpless! I WOULD KILL YOU WHERE YOU STAND IF THIS GAME ALLOWED FRIENDLY FIRE!" And Picard would cry on Riker's shoulder, saying "You're right, Worf! Mr. Data, set the self destruct!" Data: "Aye sir."*BOOM*
And again, I recall the example of a war scene in DS9 where a galaxy class ship popped something like three bug ships in a row with three quick phaser array shots, so even in DS9, other ships weren't helpless, though most wouldn't have noticed since the focus was on the defiant. And again, the only reason they changed the dynamic to 1 shot=1 kill was for expediency of the war scenes. If they applied the typical 10 minute 1v1 ship battle/1v2-4 ship battle mechanics that are normally seen in star trek to the war scenes, the whole hour would have been taken up with ships firing back and forth. Not to mention the defiant had trouble handling an 80 year old, upgraded excelsior in one episode... so take out the sovie, state of the art, pride of the fleet, in two seconds flat? Definitely not.
But, regardless, I imagine you like the defiant best as it suits your personal style, that's fine, I like the defiant myself, just I also like voyager and the enterprise and want to be able to have fun playing all of them. I'd also like to be able to equip the defiant the way it was in the show without nerfing myself. I want to be able to have beam arrays and cannons and torps on the defiant instead of all cannon/turrets or all cannon/turrets with a torp launcher. You know the two most common cookie cutter escort types in the game. With the balances I suggest, all the ships could be effective mixing and matching weapon types instead of having to pretty much be all cannons or all beams with the occasional brave soul who throws in a torp launcher. And all the suggestions I've made don't make the escorts any less effective or fun to play, it just makes ALL the ships fun to play with equivalent damage, just dealt in different ways and catering to different play styles. Do you prefer to do your damage while tanking and maybe being able to throw some heals to your allies? Be a crusier. Would you rather do your damage while avoiding enemy fire, taking advantage of their weak spots with speed and maneuverability and less support skills? Be an escort. Would you like to damage while annoying/crippling/crowd controlling? Pick a science ship. But currently, the cruiser and sci ship don't really do any damage when compared to an escort. They can both heal, and the sci ship has more ability to crowd control/annoy, but most people fly escorts PVE and PVP with a cruiser or sci ship for heal boats, which aren't a necessity, mind you, just nice little safety nets to have, just in case. I still remember flying around in my cruiser in kerrat, not being able to kill a raptor/gurumba, and at best, it not being able to kill me. I remember the taunting "you're a floating hospital." And "such a useless ship." "Waste of space." type comments. And they were right, I mean yeah, if I spec out my cruiser to just be absolutely heal boat, I'm pretty darn hard to kill... but I won't even scratch their paint, and that's absolutely no fun at all. Plus, if they are keeping any amount of pressure on me, I can't really afford to be sending my heals to other people in a support role cause I'll need them to stay alive... so again, useless. And I didn't start playing star trek online to be a claric, I started playing to be the freakin enterprise.
And Keep in mind, I haven't suggested any changes to the captain skills. I think those are pretty well balanced, if you want to do more damage, go tac, if you want to tank more, go eng, if you want to have more TRIBBLE with the enemy skills, go sci. Except I probably would change evasive manuvers from a captain skill to a boff toggle like I suggested for attack pattern beta and delta (they also need to make a gamma) but basically with the evasive manuvers toggle on, it would increase maneuverability and evasion, the sacrifice being that you don't have delta or beta on for increased damage. I think this makes more sense, as, if the command for evasive maneuvers was given in the show, the con was performing evasive maneuvers until the captain said otherwise. It wasn't a "skill" with a quick burst of speed and maneuverability with a long TRIBBLE cool. It was a constant defensive tactic you engaged in when outnumbered/needing some time for repairs.
Cruisers should be much more buff, or actually, perhaps escorts should outright have their hulls reduced, and I say that as someone who flies escorts on my main.
As I read through this and think about it, if we keep everything else the same Escorts should have reduced hull.
Thanks for the Advanced Light Cruiser, Allied Escort Bundles, Jem-Hadar Light Battlecruiser, and Mek'leth
New Content Wishlist
T6 updates for the Kamarag & Vor'Cha
Heavy Cruiser & a Movie Era Style AoY Utility Cruiser
Yeah, well, no wonder you complain about cruisers doing too little DPS.
Now, two things can happen, in order of likelihood:
1) I get flamed again by the fanbois.
2) Or, you start having a hard and long look at how you fit, and realize thay maybe you're not the greatest fitter, after all. Like I said, I was surprised, really; because you speak with such authority in this thread, that I kinda assumed you knew how to fit a cruiser properly. Apparently not.
I even brushed over some of your other cruiser setups in this thread; and stumbled upon this:
You have no less than 5 (!) EPtX skills divided over 2 eng boffs!! Hello Kitty?! And even your suggested 'fix' still makes this utter fail, as the reduced cooldown will only ever work between max 2 copies of a skill (or skill-branch). Like between EPtS1 and EPtW2: press EPtS1, and EPtW will be available faster (with all other EPtX skils on same timer as the latter). So, 3 out of 5 of these EPtX skills remain unused all the time!
And what do your fanboi minions reply?
"Congratulations. Thats a totally viable build."
LOL. Am I the truly the only one willing to say the Emperor is not wearing any clothes?! Seriously, you peeps amuse me. As irony would have it, cruisers actually *may* need a buff; but a viable cruiser starts with a viable pilot. Maybe you should start with the latter?
You are correct. It is a terrible build. Both of them. That oddy cruiser build was more of a joke than anything else, I wanted to see what you guys would say to a ship with no bite but good tankage. And I got my answer. As for the EPtX skills all over, you're preaching to the choir. I said I was going to change that, and I fully intended to, and have. I am still working out the kinks, and when it is ready I will re-present it with questions on what to improve. So hold your horses lol...
Oh, and for the record, my DPS cruiser has a slightly different build, and it's tac consoles are all damage increasers. Currently on my tac oddy (yes I finally got one lol) my 3 tac consoles are all AP mag regulators mk XII (not purple, that #$%& is expensive, but I am working towards that). I am losing out on maybe 12% damage in total by not using mk XII purples, but that's a sacrifice I am willing to make for now. I have as of yet to revamp my skills, but again, going to do that. So as I said, hold your horses lol, let me get the ECs and time to be able to do it properly XD.
As for the rest of you guys. I agree with what you say. I agree that the imbalance is stupid. It is. But I stand by what I said. We all have our roles. As cruisers we chose to be the slow fat tanky whales. Which we are. And we had to give up firepower and turn rate to do it. But then ships like the regent and tac oddy came out. As did the galor and d'kora. All 4 of those are actually high dps cruisers. Or can be. But you can't have it all. If you build damage you lose out on durability. If you build durability you will lose out on damage. We can't be like the Borg Tac cubes, with their obscene amount of shields and hp and damage output. We can't be like the Breen npcs on elite, with their speed, damage and durability (hate chel'grets, really I do). Nor can we be like the d'deridex battleships with their stupidly high durability and the ability to destroy you in one combo (or at least until you know about it and can counter it). Instead we need to take what they've given us and use it.
It comes down to until the devs do ANY changes, we have no choice but to sit and take it. So why make a bad situation worse by complaining? Just do what I do. take that bad situation, and just tailor it to yourself to make it not so terrible.
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
As for the rest of you guys. I agree with what you say. I agree that the imbalance is stupid. It is. But I stand by what I said. We all have our roles. As cruisers we chose to be the slow fat tanky whales. Which we are. And we had to give up firepower and turn rate to do it. But then ships like the regent and tac oddy came out. As did the galor and d'kora. All 4 of those are actually high dps cruisers. Or can be. But you can't have it all. If you build damage you lose out on durability. If you build durability you will lose out on damage. We can't be like the Borg Tac cubes, with their obscene amount of shields and hp and damage output. We can't be like the Breen npcs on elite, with their speed, damage and durability (hate chel'grets, really I do). Nor can we be like the d'deridex battleships with their stupidly high durability and the ability to destroy you in one combo (or at least until you know about it and can counter it). Instead we need to take what they've given us and use it.
It comes down to until the devs do ANY changes, we have no choice but to sit and take it. So why make a bad situation worse by complaining? Just do what I do. take that bad situation, and just tailor it to yourself to make it not so terrible.
Actually, none of us "chose" to be the "slow, fat, tanky, whales." People who chose cruisers thought they were going to be epic like the enterprise but are sorely disappointed. That's why people end up grinding dilithium to get an escort after they take the star cruiser or assault cruiser. Making the best of the situation isn't rolling over and taking it, mr. "lay back and think of england." It's the squeaky wheel that gets the oil, if people stop complaining and 'accept' that cryptic is TRIBBLE the enterprise every day this game is up, then you are right, nothing will ever change.
Actually, none of us "chose" to be the "slow, fat, tanky, whales." People who chose cruisers thought they were going to be epic like the enterprise but are sorely disappointed. That's why people end up grinding dilithium to get an escort after they take the star cruiser or assault cruiser. Making the best of the situation isn't rolling over and taking it, mr. "lay back and think of england." It's the squeaky wheel that gets the oil, if people stop complaining and 'accept' that cryptic is TRIBBLE the enterprise every day this game is up, then you are right, nothing will ever change.
And raging on a forum is going to do any better? Have you actually looked through these forums and seen how many buff cruiser threads there are? There are literally one for every week this game has been around. That's almost 2 years. Almost 100 threads. NOTHING HAS CHANGED ABOUT CRUISERS SINCE LAUNCH. And no, I am not rolling over and taking it. I am making the best of a bad situation and still asking for improvements. But you need to be reasonable. And yes, if you bothered to look at stats when you got your ship, you would know what it was you were getting. A space whale.
Now that might not be fair to casual players who don't want to look at numbers, but since this is a game, you don't really have a choice. You look at numbers, and you get the best ship on paper. What it looks like is frankly completely unrelated to performance. I mean the best performing ship can be uglier than a borg drone, but it's still the best performing ship, while the sexiest ship can look as hot as an orion dancer but still be the worst performing ship in the game. And it still comes down to the fact that it's a game. And games are won by stats, not by looks.
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
And raging on a forum is going to do any better? Have you actually looked through these forums and seen how many buff cruiser threads there are? There are literally one for every week this game has been around. That's almost 2 years. Almost 100 threads. NOTHING HAS CHANGED ABOUT CRUISERS SINCE LAUNCH. And no, I am not rolling over and taking it. I am making the best of a bad situation and still asking for improvements. But you need to be reasonable. And yes, if you bothered to look at stats when you got your ship, you would know what it was you were getting. A space whale.
Now that might not be fair to casual players who don't want to look at numbers, but since this is a game, you don't really have a choice. You look at numbers, and you get the best ship on paper. What it looks like is frankly completely unrelated to performance. I mean the best performing ship can be uglier than a borg drone, but it's still the best performing ship, while the sexiest ship can look as hot as an orion dancer but still be the worst performing ship in the game. And it still comes down to the fact that it's a game. And games are won by stats, not by looks.
You said "quit complaining" so yes, you're talking about letting it go. If everyone stops complaining, then the devs will think everything is fine. And yeah, there may be lots of "fix the cruisers/sci ships" threads, I would know as I authored one myself before the forums got all switched up with the PWE merge. But it seems to me you expect things to change quickly if they are going to change at all. The women's rights movement in the US. took over 70 years. If they had given up before seeing change, then nothing probably would have ever changed. So the moral of history is not to lay back and take it or try to make the best of the situation, those people aren't the ones who affect change, those are the ones holding the movement back. And the discussion on these forums can help us as a community to figure out how to balance the game so we can present it to the devs. It helps weed out stupid ideas like a "cruiser only forward heavy beam array that can only be used by federation ships." So yeah, these fix the cruiser/sci ship threads are helpful, and their continued presence is what will most likely inspire the change we desire, not shutting up and trying our best to do what we can with the TRIBBLE we've been given.
Oh, and on paper, cruisers don't look like the suck fest they are when you get them in game. On paper they've got good hulls, good shields, lots of weapons... and then you get them into space and they turn like a brick and have so little damage that escorts laugh it off as they blow you out of the water with ease.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hereticknight085
And raging on a forum is going to do any better? Have you actually looked through these forums and seen how many buff cruiser threads there are? There are literally one for every week this game has been around. That's almost 2 years. Almost 100 threads. NOTHING HAS CHANGED ABOUT CRUISERS SINCE LAUNCH. And no, I am not rolling over and taking it. I am making the best of a bad situation and still asking for improvements. But you need to be reasonable. And yes, if you bothered to look at stats when you got your ship, you would know what it was you were getting. A space whale.
Now that might not be fair to casual players who don't want to look at numbers, but since this is a game, you don't really have a choice. You look at numbers, and you get the best ship on paper. What it looks like is frankly completely unrelated to performance. I mean the best performing ship can be uglier than a borg drone, but it's still the best performing ship, while the sexiest ship can look as hot as an orion dancer but still be the worst performing ship in the game. And it still comes down to the fact that it's a game. And games are won by stats, not by looks.
I understand what your saying
But understand this
The first two words of this game is
Star Trek
Not generic space warfare ..........wow/d&d based
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
all I am going to say on the matter is that unless you are willing to experiment with everything from character skills to BOFF abilities to ship equipment loadouts then you are doing nothing to try and improve the situation... I rarely see a Nebula in the game these days WHICH does not hurt my feelings it just means that people have not taken the time to really work with the ship to see what they can get it to do... I on the other hand have done some heavy Experimenting with the DSSV, Intrepid, Intrepid Retrofit, T3 Nebula, T5 Nebula and the Fleet Nebula I like to think I have solid builds and my DPS/Healing in PVP tell me what I already know... I have a VERY compitent ship for my role in a group.... sometimes its not about being the star so much as its being there to support your TEAM.
for those complaining, its not the Ship its User Error...
Major Xi'Zzin I.R.W. Raptor's Claw Storm Eagle Class WarbirdFleet Ha'feh I have never trusted humans, and I never will
all I am going to say on the matter is that unless you are willing to experiment with everything from character skills to BOFF abilities to ship equipment loadouts then you are doing nothing to try and improve the situation... I rarely see a Nebula in the game these days WHICH does not hurt my feelings it just means that people have not taken the time to really work with the ship to see what they can get it to do... I on the other hand have done some heavy Experimenting with the DSSV, Intrepid, Intrepid Retrofit, T3 Nebula, T5 Nebula and the Fleet Nebula I like to think I have solid builds and my DPS/Healing in PVP tell me what I already know... I have a VERY compitent ship for my role in a group.... sometimes its not about being the star so much as its being there to support your TEAM.
for those complaining, its not the Ship its User Error...
You assume that the people posting in the thread haven't done just that. And what you consider 'solid" and "competent" is a matter of perception. Additionally, you qualify that you are those things "for your role." So are you a competent heal boat? Can you really super annoy people by constantly tractor pushing them around or scrambling their sensors? Exactly what do you consider "solid" and "competent"?
Actually, none of us "chose" to be the "slow, fat, tanky, whales." People who chose cruisers thought they were going to be epic like the enterprise but are sorely disappointed.
I'm not sure I agree with that. By lvl 50 you KNOW what to expect from cruisers. Admittedly, you also haven't felt just how infuriating its slow turning is because the leveling pve content is super easy. But you KNOW cruisers are slow and tanky.
I have 1 of 2 builds I run in PVP the first is purely a Crowd Control Annoyance build that quickly makes me the focus of the entire enemy team, it has some ability to be tanky, it has the ability to put out a bit of damage but mostly it is there to anny you and frustrate you and make you make a mistake... it does this well, my second build is pure healing and tanking damage... this build ALSO works well when I am asked by the fleet Im in to come PVP I ask if they want my Annoyance Factor build or my healer... more times than not they want the annoyance facter as it usually frustrates someone into making a stupid mistake which we can capitolize on...
Major Xi'Zzin I.R.W. Raptor's Claw Storm Eagle Class WarbirdFleet Ha'feh I have never trusted humans, and I never will
all I am going to say on the matter is that unless you are willing to experiment with everything from character skills to BOFF abilities to ship equipment loadouts then you are doing nothing to try and improve the situation... I rarely see a Nebula in the game these days WHICH does not hurt my feelings it just means that people have not taken the time to really work with the ship to see what they can get it to do... I on the other hand have done some heavy Experimenting with the DSSV, Intrepid, Intrepid Retrofit, T3 Nebula, T5 Nebula and the Fleet Nebula I like to think I have solid builds and my DPS/Healing in PVP tell me what I already know... I have a VERY compitent ship for my role in a group.... sometimes its not about being the star so much as its being there to support your TEAM.
for those complaining, its not the Ship its User Error...
So what you are saying is, that no matter what other players are saying, you trust the devs ability to balance ships in a right way more than to believe the opinion of hundreds of players of which you have no idea about how much experience (in STO or other games) they could have. It's like if you are playing a game in beta and you just ignore what the players say, because the developers are always right.
Man that's what i call reliance, lol!
If you would had read some of the previous pages you would know that the cruiser role (to serve as a healboat) is first, not required and second a completely wrong interpretation of Star Trek by the devs.
I can only speak for myself but i am not interested in flying a healboat, i want to play a Star Trek game and fly the iconic ships i know from the shows, without having to be ashamed of their incapability to generate attack power or be even useful in this game.
For a "professional" made game, i just expect the ships to be like in "real" star trek.
For me, Cryptics work is just one huge disappointment.
I don't care if this game is a MMO and i don't buy that MMOs must have a stone/paper/scissor mechanic. We have shown more than enough ways to integrate "cruisers" better into this game then cryptic did. It's up to the devs to either ignore the fact that they are making a Star Trek game or to change cruiser ships in a way they are more like they where in the shows.
Maybe they are afraid that much less people would fly escorts if they would do that. But that wouldn't be the case because Cruisers would be OP (no one really wants that). No it's because there are a lot people wanting to fly the iconic Star Trek ships (thats why i was starting to play this game for instance) they know and like from the shows, or at least similar ships.
If they really would improve Cruisers to a point where they would be more than just dead freight in a STF (for example), much more people would fly them.
Let me just say one more thing. Besides DS9, Star Trek always was a show where the "hero" ship was a "cruiser" type ship. Cryptic just ignores that and uses the only non cruiser ship type (maybe because they think DS9 was "cooler" because there was a War and stuff like that :rolleyes:).
They took ONE ship (which was clearly a exception) and made a whole ship branch out of it and if that wouldn't be enough they made this ship type so powerful that it is virtually pointless to fly anything else.
It isn't the question if Star Trek is a cruiser universe (that's a given), but the question is why did cryptic come up with escorts in the first place?
In my opinion, the devs have either no idea about Star Trek in general and just do what they (or the people they are listening to) find "cool". Or they just do deliberately try to picture cruisers and bigger ships as weak because they like Star Wars like ship mechanics more.
Thank you for reading or ignoring, depending on who you are.
"...'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 have 1 of 2 builds I run in PVP the first is purely a Crowd Control Annoyance build that quickly makes me the focus of the entire enemy team, it has some ability to be tanky, it has the ability to put out a bit of damage but mostly it is there to anny you and frustrate you and make you make a mistake... it does this well, my second build is pure healing and tanking damage... this build ALSO works well when I am asked by the fleet Im in to come PVP I ask if they want my Annoyance Factor build or my healer... more times than not they want the annoyance facter as it usually frustrates someone into making a stupid mistake which we can capitolize on...
I have a mirror recon sci vessel I'm using on my fed engi, and I usually tank gates and cubes/tac cubes and in this last one I just did, I tanked donatra. Mostly because my back to back tyken's rifts cause mad agro, NPC hate power drain. And on cubes my back to back tractor repulsors do enough damage along with the rifts and weapons that I can usually attract the cube's wrath. But anyway, yeah, you can annoy the TRIBBLE out of people in a sci ship, particularly if you put points into enhancing those abilities, but to actually win anything with a sci ship in pvp (provided you are fighting a capable opponent and not a noob who has no idea how to fly their ship), you have to be what most players consider incredibly "cheap." Constantly scrambling sensors so people have trouble healing themselves and others, viral matrixing... I mean, to an extent you could even consider some sci vessels overpowered if you build them to their maximum annoyance factor, but frankly... that's not really fun for me, and usually it infuriates the people you use those tactics on so much that they may even ditch the arena instead of playing it out. I think many sci powers need a revamp, scramble sensors shouldn't make it so you're accidentally healing your enemies and attacking your friends. I think scramble sensors should severely reduce accuracy, making it more difficult to hit your targets, not make it so you're dying and send a tac team to a toduj fighter or a danube runabout. Which doesn't even make sense, as the premise of sending a tac team or an eng team or a sci team to another ship revolves around transporting personnel over to another vessel to assist in repairs. So the tac team I just sent over to my enemy ship was 1. Permitted to beam over by the enemy ship, and 2. my tac team was so stupid that instead of sabotaging the enemy while they had the chance, they politely sat down and started distributing shields for them... Wow. My crew is full of tards. This, of course, wouldn't be an issue if the devs would make the game true to trek in which ships don't really heal each other, they should only be able to heal themselves. In star trek, you'd never see captain Picard ordering someone to transfer the auxiliary power of the enterprise to the defiant's structural integrity field, lol. Extend shields is feasible as an ally assist ability as we've seen it used several times in the show, but alot of these typical "wow" or "d&d" mmo mechanics are just so incredibly wrong when applied to trek. Every ship should be relatively independent, able to hold their own, slightly different, but largely the same. Each ultimately as capable as the other and able to come together to get things done. But when you have the cruiser so weak damage wise that it's like the claric in many other games, basically NEEDING some damage dealer to kill things for it... that's just a slap in the face to all things trek. The type of mechanics this game needs is like the mechanics i read about for... oh TRIBBLE.. it was some game that I think was a one-time-buy mmo (rather than subscription). And they made a point of saying every character can take care of itself, no character "needs" a specific other type of character, there were no "support" roles or healers or tanks, everyone could take care of themselves. That's how star trek was, the defiant didn't really need other ships, neither did the enterprise, or voyager, aside from those instances that would basically be like an STF in the show, lol. And though I can find the game enjoyable and whatnot, I'm still severely dissatisfied at how far from canon it is.
I have a mirror recon sci vessel I'm using on my fed engi, and I usually tank gates and cubes/tac cubes and in this last one I just did, I tanked donatra. Mostly because my back to back tyken's rifts cause mad agro, NPC hate power drain. And on cubes my back to back tractor repulsors do enough damage along with the rifts and weapons that I can usually attract the cube's wrath.
But anyway, yeah, you can annoy the TRIBBLE out of people in a sci ship, particularly if you put points into enhancing those abilities, but to actually win anything with a sci ship in pvp (provided you are fighting a capable opponent and not a noob who has no idea how to fly their ship), you have to be what most players consider incredibly "cheap." Constantly scrambling sensors so people have trouble healing themselves and others, viral matrixing... I mean, to an extent you could even consider some sci vessels overpowered if you build them to their maximum annoyance factor, but frankly... that's not really fun for me, and usually it infuriates the people you use those tactics on so much that they may even ditch the arena instead of playing it out.
I think many sci powers need a revamp, scramble sensors shouldn't make it so you're accidentally healing your enemies and attacking your friends. I think scramble sensors should severely reduce accuracy, making it more difficult to hit your targets, not make it so you're dying and send a tac team to a toduj fighter or a danube runabout. Which doesn't even make sense, as the premise of sending a tac team or an eng team or a sci team to another ship revolves around transporting personnel over to another vessel to assist in repairs. So the tac team I just sent over to my enemy ship was 1. Permitted to beam over by the enemy ship, and 2. my tac team was so stupid that instead of sabotaging the enemy while they had the chance, they politely sat down and started distributing shields for them... Wow. My crew is full of tards.
This, of course, wouldn't be an issue if the devs would make the game true to trek in which ships don't really heal each other, they should only be able to heal themselves. In star trek, you'd never see captain Picard ordering someone to transfer the auxiliary power of the enterprise to the defiant's structural integrity field, lol. Extend shields is feasible as an ally assist ability as we've seen it used several times in the show, but alot of these typical "wow" or "d&d" mmo mechanics are just so incredibly wrong when applied to trek. Every ship should be relatively independent, able to hold their own, slightly different, but largely the same. Each ultimately as capable as the other and able to come together to get things done.
But when you have the cruiser so weak damage wise that it's like the claric in many other games, basically NEEDING some damage dealer to kill things for it... that's just a slap in the face to all things trek. The type of mechanics this game needs is like the mechanics i read about for... oh TRIBBLE.. it was some game that I think was a one-time-buy mmo (rather than subscription). And they made a point of saying every character can take care of itself, no character "needs" a specific other type of character, there were no "support" roles or healers or tanks, everyone could take care of themselves.
That's how star trek was, the defiant didn't really need other ships, neither did the enterprise, or voyager, aside from those instances that would basically be like an STF in the show, lol. And though I can find the game enjoyable and whatnot, I'm still severely dissatisfied at how far from canon it is.
Just an fyi, if you post long responses like this one, be sure to put in paragraphs and separations... I found it hard to read your response without losing both my place and interest... You see how in my longer posts I have things separated by double lines and such? Your post would be much easier to read if you did so, so I took the liberty of making those separations into smaller much easier to read portions.
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
Just an fyi, if you post long responses like this one, be sure to put in paragraphs and separations... I found it hard to read your response without losing both my place and interest... You see how in my longer posts I have things separated by double lines and such? Your post would be much easier to read if you did so, so I took the liberty of making those separations into smaller much easier to read portions.
If you had been paying attention to my earlier posts, you'd know that I normally do separate things into paragraphs, I simply neglected to do so in that post, but thanks for the assist.
I'm sorry, what problems do escorts have exactly? If you've been paying any attention at all to your own thread, you'd realize that escorts can pretty much tank as well as a cruiser while doing WAAAAAY more damage... so yeah, not too many problems.
Escorts are only seemingly gods, because you die too quickly against them in PvP, so you don't get to see their inherent weakness. Escorts are basically glass cannons, though. Some are more tanky than others. Fleet patrol escort, with 4x eng stations and uni ensign slot, for instance, is an ungodly tank for its class, whereas fleet defiant, having a fixed (kinda useless) tact ensign slot instead, is a lot less sturdy. Anyway, take an Escort into No Win Scenario, past wave 5, and it begins to crumble like dry paper. So, honestly, escorts can't do it all, either. They can do a lot, though. And probably a little too much.
You are correct. It is a terrible build. Both of them. That oddy cruiser build was more of a joke than anything else, I wanted to see what you guys would say to a ship with no bite but good tankage. And I got my answer. As for the EPtX skills all over, you're preaching to the choir. I said I was going to change that, and I fully intended to, and have. I am still working out the kinks, and when it is ready I will re-present it with questions on what to improve. So hold your horses lol...
+2 for honesty and sportsmanship. I'll be looking forward to your improved builds.
Escorts are only seemingly gods, because you die too quickly against them in PvP, so you don't get to see their inherent weakness. Escorts are basically glass cannons, though. Some are more tanky than others. Fleet patrol escort, with 4x eng stations and uni ensign slot, for instance, is an ungodly tank for its class, whereas fleet defiant, having a fixed (kinda useless) tact ensign slot instead, is a lot less sturdy. Anyway, take an Escort into No Win Scenario, past wave 5, and it begins to crumble like dry paper. So, honestly, escorts can't do it all, either. They can do a lot, though. And probably a little too much.
Yeah. Qin heavy raptor. Borg Tac Cube. Ouch. XD. My FPE doesn't die because it's too damn tanky as he stated, but my raptor kinda falls apart after a certain point, EPtS and TT can only take you so far lol, eventually you'll get out lasted by the blasted thing.
Escorts are only seemingly gods, because you die too quickly against them in PvP, so you don't get to see their inherent weakness. Escorts are basically glass cannons, though. Some are more tanky than others. Fleet patrol escort, with 4x eng stations and uni ensign slot, for instance, is an ungodly tank for its class, whereas fleet defiant, having a fixed (kinda useless) tact ensign slot instead, is a lot less sturdy. Anyway, take an Escort into No Win Scenario, past wave 5, and it begins to crumble like dry paper. So, honestly, escorts can't do it all, either. They can do a lot, though. And probably a little too much.
yeah that is true. most stfs give the illusion escorts could tank endlessly...but mostly the target dies before it really gets critical. For instance a cube in an elite stf, i can tank, but not endlessly. if the cube is not dead ata certain point...i must break off the attack. and wait for my CD's to be ready again...but thats where the skill of the player comes in. Mostly the cube dies before that. No win scenario makes this better clear...whre a cruiser can take the beating without flinching, and escort is already in great troubles.
Escorts are only seemingly gods, because you die too quickly against them in PvP, so you don't get to see their inherent weakness. Escorts are basically glass cannons, though.
While that was true in Season 1, it no longer is. The amount of free healing has made fedscorts no longer glass cannons, and that is the problem.
The bops still are glass cannons, but escorts not really. If you feel like you are in a glass cannon in a fed/scort you are doing it wrong.
Still, it's not undieable. A great deal depends on your team mates too. If all pull their weight, that Elite STF goes like a breeze. If, however, you're the only one pulling the wagon, as it were, and you're barely, but still, tanking a Borg cube in front (dual Tact Team and dual EPtS), and you suddenly get sidled or afted as well (can you use 'aft' as a verb?) by several spheres on your now weakened other facings, then you simply *will* die.
Also, cruisers have plenty more hull than their escort counterparts. Which makes escorts vulnerable to kinetic damage, far more so than a cruiser. Everyone who's ever been in an Elite STF will know this. Even with 3x Neutronium Alloy, you can maybe hope to take 1 hit of a heavy Borg plasma torp, but that's about it (preferably you should shoot them down first, of course, but I digress).
Also, escorts can't deal with hefty isometric charges too well, either (nobody can really tank for electric when it comes down it to, but escorts feel direct assaults on their hull just more pronouncedly).
In-game chat a few days ago, subsequent to playing Infected Space Elite, where the optional failed on an otherwise successful instance. There was myself, in my Wells class, another sci player in an Intrepid Retrofit, a Defiant Retro, a Fleet Defiant and a
Patrol Escort.
Subsequent to said mission, the conversation went like this:
Person X: Gg (then left)
Person A: No it wasn't- no optional and the loot was awful
Person B: Yeah, and the optional failed
Person A: That's because we had two sci players on the team
Person B: Yeah
Me: Oh - sorry - didn't realise that STF's were modified so that only Tac players, flying escorts, could join. Wonder why it let me in?
Person B: Sci ships just don't have the power to be effective in STF's
Me: They do if they're utilised properly; don't underestimate crowd control - why do you think that the nanite spheres didn't get within range of generator when someone failed to observe the 10% rule? Gravity well, Chroniton torpedoes and Temporal Inversion Field - if they can barely move then they're unlikely to get in range.
Person A: Well DPS is still poor.
Me: Yeah, okay, DPS is important, but again - you DPS 'Kings' are going to find killing the enemy ships takes less effort if they, for example, can't move due to gravity well, or have no shields courtesy of sub-system targeting.
Me: And you weren't complaining when I healed you earlier either.
No reply was forthcoming and the instance subsequently timed out. But serious - I know DPS is considered king, and I do have a tatical character, but I refuse to keep my sci character (my primary character) out of STF's simply because some think that it should be an escort-only affair.
Often i find its the sci ship that saves the day. When the escorts and cruisers fail to hold off the nanites coming through the gate because some player blows the generators early its my sci ship with Tykons rift/ Gravity well and photonic shockwave that keeps them at bay long enough to kill the transformer. Id they dont like sci toons or sci ships. lobby cryptic to have them all taken out of the game.
Monkey see, Monkey do. Monkey flings Feathered Monkey poo...
Often i find its the sci ship that saves the day. When the escorts and cruisers fail to hold off the nanites coming through the gate because some player blows the generators early its my sci ship with Tykons rift/ Gravity well and photonic shockwave that keeps them at bay long enough to kill the transformer. If they dont like sci toons or sci ships. lobby cryptic to have them all taken out of the game.
being a Science Captain myself... if they took out the science ships I would quite simply stop playing and move on to other things... I play Trek for the Sci Ships, that being said... I NEVER used a sci ship until I at least got to the Captain level I would always use a cruiser..... I detest escorts but thats more on a personal level than on the basis of how they are in game.... you hardly saw those "little" ships in the serise... but you DID see many of the Galaxy Class and Other Cruiser Classes... the Escorts were a novelty, NOT something that you build an entire taskforce on....(unless you are a Klingon) so while I don't disagree that Cruisers need a little help they should STAY AWAY from the Science ships they work just fine....and while I am on the subject here let me pour a little oil on the fire
Escorts = STO on easy mode (that includes the escorts on the KDF side) anyone can fly an escort and do relatively well
Raiders (KDF) = the True Glass Cannon which requires a fair amount of skill to use properly and not get it bown up
Raider = STO on Intermediate Difficulty
Science ships (examples are the DSSV, Intrepid Retrofit, and the Nebula) Requires moderate to advanced skill to get the most out of them
Science ships = STO on Intermediate Difficulty
Cruisers = STO Hardmode
Carriers = STO Hardmode same as cruisers (with exception to the Kar'fi)
Major Xi'Zzin I.R.W. Raptor's Claw Storm Eagle Class WarbirdFleet Ha'feh I have never trusted humans, and I never will
not being undieable, hardly qualifies as a glass cannon
Except the survival of the Escort has nothing to do with the Escort in particular and is more becuase of DOffs like the BFI or Attack patern DOff, the cycling of powers like two times EPTS or two times ApO, Tactical team and its great shield distribute ability, etc.
Most of these are options open to the Cruiser as well, so how are they not also surviving better?
As to the Escort being a required aprt of STF play becuase Damage output at a quick pace is needed to win or at least qualify for the optional, thats a failing in game/mission design and not the fault of the Escort iether.
Comments
It does, all those extra layers would buy ample time to hit RSP, TS:engines, and then laugh at the Defiant as it limps away. Also, the spike was around... what? 20-25K damage? Maybe more? Your average PvP cruiser should have enough shields, Resistance and shield damage reduction on top of movement defenses to survive that.
Edit: Thinking of ways to improve my own Engi Cruiser alt, I just realized... I don't think we've mentioned the most powerful DPS upgrades to cruisers to come along recently! Of course I refer to th1 180 degree Q-torp and the 180 degree Ferengi Rapid Fire Missile. With one front and one back a cruiser captain can broadside with 6 beams and with a little maneuvering could fire both off constantly. Either way, they certainly add more firepower than the standard 90 degree torps would.
^^ this.
While I hated EVE as far as control goes, all you do is Click attack and orbit. But they got the above right for sure.
I aint given up on STO but rarely play until/unless something changes. In STO an Escort is a battle ship and a dreadnought is not.
I'm sorry, what problems do escorts have exactly? If you've been paying any attention at all to your own thread, you'd realize that escorts can pretty much tank as well as a cruiser while doing WAAAAAY more damage... so yeah, not too many problems.
And? that means it's time to stop trying? There's a saying: "If it's important to you, you'll find a way, if not, you'll find an excuse." So sounds to me like you just really don't care enough about a proper trek game and would rather roll over and settle for the TRIBBLE cryptic is feeding you.
Hello?! I said they'd have to balance the game so that tac team's shield redistrobution isn't necessary, were you not paying any attention at all? There's a qualifier to that statement. If they took tac team away with the game as it is, everyone would be screwed. And it's pretty messed up that pretty much every ship/class NEEDS to have tac team, but eng team and sci team are "eh... if I can squeeze them in... maaaybe." Another clear display of the lack of balance.
Actually, it is. This thread is all about how the game isn't true to trek and cruisers are getting screwed. Cruisers can't fire awesome volleys of torps like they could in the show, they get stuck with lowbie TRIBBLE tac skills which also forces most people to go all beams and not use torps at all (again, absolutely not canon) because they don't have the skills to make the most of torps and beams.
If you chose the escort, you've chosen the TRIBBLE. You're not a taker, you're a giver. You've got all the right moves and have the speed and maneuverability to touch your enemy in all the right places. And when your partner explodes, you're the one left with the smile on your face. You're not as big and impressive looking as the lumbering cruiser, but don't count out this little guy, you're scrappy, and your small size just makes the big gun in your hand look even bigger. You are nimble with high damage, high evasion, and the speed and maneuverability to get to the target, to take advantage of weak shield facings, and have high dodge so others are barely able to touch you. You get the thrill of high octane dog fights and dance around the big guys barely taking a hit, you're a generous lover and live by one simple truth: "Tis better to give than to receive."
If you're a crusier, you've chosen the TRIBBLE, you like it rough and want the enemy to slap you in the face over and over, it hurts soooo good. You're tough, you can take it, and that smirk on your face comes from knowing you can give as good as you get. Your mass lets you hold lots of weapons and ammo so you can obliterate things with heavy fire power, your mass also enables you to have a strong hull and powerful shields. you are slower and less maneuverable, you're not strategic like the escort or science ship, but you don't care, let those little guys dance and play... as long as they stay out of your line of fire. "Move out of the way, little guy, the big guns are coming through!"
Should you chose the science vessel, you've chosen the tease. You're fast and maneuverable, and frankly, diabolical. Everyone wants to touch your sleek, delicate hull, but you just won't let them. Maybe, if they're lucky, they might get to touch your rock hard shields a few times. Cruel by nature, you have a tendency to roofie your date. By the end of this dance, they'll be so upside-down and turned around, they won't know what hit them. You're a selfish lover, you'll walk away satisfied, while they just lay there, confused, not quite sure what happened... and trying to figure out if they hate you... or love you. "Was that as good for you as it was for me?"
I dunno... each of those classes sound fun and interesting to me... and I don't see a lack of variety, do you?
I'm sorry, but escorts hardly sacrifice health and durability, their shield modifiers are typically only 10% less than a cruiser and yeah, their hulls aren't as thick, but once through the shields, it pretty much doesn't matter how much resist you have, it will only take a couple seconds more (probably one volley more) to kill a cruiser than it would to kill an escort. Plus with their speed, manuverability, and dodge, they can keep out of other ship's "kill zones" thus making the escort even better equipped to survive than a cruiser.
I don't buy that, I think everyone can and should have it all, the escorts sure as hell seem to have the best of both worlds, so should the sci and cruisers. Escorts shouldn't be the star of this show, this is star trek online, not DS9 online. This "show" needs to make the enterprise and voyager look awesome, not just the defiant.
We shouldn't have to get used to it, and if we get used to it and stop trying, then things definitely won't change. I think the best way to get some change is to make a petition. If the community could come together and reasonably settle on a way to make the game balanced and fun for us all, we could write up a "Declaration of Balance!" and get people to sign it and maybe then the devs will listen. And before you go back on about, "Look how many 'cruisers suck!' threads there have been with no change." There's a huge difference between a petition that people just sign off on and a thread like this where people are arguing back and forth about "YES! LOVE IT!" and "NO! TRIBBLE YOU! YOU'RE STUPID!" So while a thread with people going back and forth probably won't get them to change things, a petition with overwhelming support might.
You're asking Cryptic to do something even the TV show's own creators could not do. People don't get exited when they see the Enterprise or Voyager, but the moment the Defiant shows up... people want to get up and cheer for the upcoming awesomeness. Maybe that's just an effect of the quality of the show involved? I can't say for sure, but I DO know the Enterprise and Voyager are just hum drum sci-fi ships to me.
But no fear, it won't take long until the Escort (or KDF) lobbyists will hammer down your or a similar post piece by piece.
Completely agree here, that's the whole point!
I wouldn't care much if this wouldn't be a Star Trek game, but 4/5 (if you count the NX01 as cruiser) of the "heros" of the shows are pictured as weak, passive and/or boring in this game, in favour of just ONE ship!
That's what engrages me the most.
You just speak for yourself.
I DO feel like cheering when i saw the Enterprise -D in the last seconds of Enterprise finale. I even like Voyager (the ship) they both have personality, in contrast to the defiant, which is just a flying gun for me. I was completely unaffected when it got destroyed in DS9.
Btw. the defiants first battle wasn't impressive at all.
I am fully with you here.
I would love to do something constructive about it, but i am not so sure about the petition. I think there was a rule or something, like "no petitions allowed!". But i have no idea if that has changed when PWE did overtake the helm.
You are right, whining won't help, just look at the KDF, there has been whining (@Klingons: sorry, please don't take that personal) for nearly two year for more content. Well they got Quonos revamped, they got their academy. But not much else.
Other than a petition i wouldn't know a way to let the devs know exactly what we want. Maybe the next Ask Cryptic, there could be a overwhelming amount of Cruiser balance questions but i think they would be just ignored.
Anyway i would sign it, if it is legally ok.
(yeah i'm a fraidy-cat when it comes to stuff like that, lol)
Thank you for reading or ignoring, depending on who you are.
You think that voyager wasn't a beast of a ship? That little science vessel taking out borg spheres and giving borg cubes a run for their money? No, they didn't destroy the cubes (pre transphasic-nuke) but they still managed to hold their own very impressively. Voyager went into many a battle where it was severely outnumbered/outgunned and managed to pull through if not absolutely win. The enterprise was the pride of the federation in each of its incarnations, typically the fastest, most durable, most feared ship in the fleet. Remember first contact? The defiant was basically floating debris and the enterprise came to save the day, not the other way round. If first contact were reenacted in this game, the enterprise would be belly up with the defiant coming to the rescue instead, and we wouldn't have Riker's "tough little ship." with Worf's "little? *glare*," Worf would say, "Stupid, slow, crappy, lazy, worthless, big TRIBBLE whale of a ship beached and helpless! I WOULD KILL YOU WHERE YOU STAND IF THIS GAME ALLOWED FRIENDLY FIRE!" And Picard would cry on Riker's shoulder, saying "You're right, Worf! Mr. Data, set the self destruct!" Data: "Aye sir."*BOOM*
And again, I recall the example of a war scene in DS9 where a galaxy class ship popped something like three bug ships in a row with three quick phaser array shots, so even in DS9, other ships weren't helpless, though most wouldn't have noticed since the focus was on the defiant. And again, the only reason they changed the dynamic to 1 shot=1 kill was for expediency of the war scenes. If they applied the typical 10 minute 1v1 ship battle/1v2-4 ship battle mechanics that are normally seen in star trek to the war scenes, the whole hour would have been taken up with ships firing back and forth. Not to mention the defiant had trouble handling an 80 year old, upgraded excelsior in one episode... so take out the sovie, state of the art, pride of the fleet, in two seconds flat? Definitely not.
But, regardless, I imagine you like the defiant best as it suits your personal style, that's fine, I like the defiant myself, just I also like voyager and the enterprise and want to be able to have fun playing all of them. I'd also like to be able to equip the defiant the way it was in the show without nerfing myself. I want to be able to have beam arrays and cannons and torps on the defiant instead of all cannon/turrets or all cannon/turrets with a torp launcher. You know the two most common cookie cutter escort types in the game. With the balances I suggest, all the ships could be effective mixing and matching weapon types instead of having to pretty much be all cannons or all beams with the occasional brave soul who throws in a torp launcher. And all the suggestions I've made don't make the escorts any less effective or fun to play, it just makes ALL the ships fun to play with equivalent damage, just dealt in different ways and catering to different play styles. Do you prefer to do your damage while tanking and maybe being able to throw some heals to your allies? Be a crusier. Would you rather do your damage while avoiding enemy fire, taking advantage of their weak spots with speed and maneuverability and less support skills? Be an escort. Would you like to damage while annoying/crippling/crowd controlling? Pick a science ship. But currently, the cruiser and sci ship don't really do any damage when compared to an escort. They can both heal, and the sci ship has more ability to crowd control/annoy, but most people fly escorts PVE and PVP with a cruiser or sci ship for heal boats, which aren't a necessity, mind you, just nice little safety nets to have, just in case. I still remember flying around in my cruiser in kerrat, not being able to kill a raptor/gurumba, and at best, it not being able to kill me. I remember the taunting "you're a floating hospital." And "such a useless ship." "Waste of space." type comments. And they were right, I mean yeah, if I spec out my cruiser to just be absolutely heal boat, I'm pretty darn hard to kill... but I won't even scratch their paint, and that's absolutely no fun at all. Plus, if they are keeping any amount of pressure on me, I can't really afford to be sending my heals to other people in a support role cause I'll need them to stay alive... so again, useless. And I didn't start playing star trek online to be a claric, I started playing to be the freakin enterprise.
And Keep in mind, I haven't suggested any changes to the captain skills. I think those are pretty well balanced, if you want to do more damage, go tac, if you want to tank more, go eng, if you want to have more TRIBBLE with the enemy skills, go sci. Except I probably would change evasive manuvers from a captain skill to a boff toggle like I suggested for attack pattern beta and delta (they also need to make a gamma) but basically with the evasive manuvers toggle on, it would increase maneuverability and evasion, the sacrifice being that you don't have delta or beta on for increased damage. I think this makes more sense, as, if the command for evasive maneuvers was given in the show, the con was performing evasive maneuvers until the captain said otherwise. It wasn't a "skill" with a quick burst of speed and maneuverability with a long TRIBBLE cool. It was a constant defensive tactic you engaged in when outnumbered/needing some time for repairs.
As I read through this and think about it, if we keep everything else the same Escorts should have reduced hull.
You are correct. It is a terrible build. Both of them. That oddy cruiser build was more of a joke than anything else, I wanted to see what you guys would say to a ship with no bite but good tankage. And I got my answer. As for the EPtX skills all over, you're preaching to the choir. I said I was going to change that, and I fully intended to, and have. I am still working out the kinks, and when it is ready I will re-present it with questions on what to improve. So hold your horses lol...
Oh, and for the record, my DPS cruiser has a slightly different build, and it's tac consoles are all damage increasers. Currently on my tac oddy (yes I finally got one lol) my 3 tac consoles are all AP mag regulators mk XII (not purple, that #$%& is expensive, but I am working towards that). I am losing out on maybe 12% damage in total by not using mk XII purples, but that's a sacrifice I am willing to make for now. I have as of yet to revamp my skills, but again, going to do that. So as I said, hold your horses lol, let me get the ECs and time to be able to do it properly XD.
As for the rest of you guys. I agree with what you say. I agree that the imbalance is stupid. It is. But I stand by what I said. We all have our roles. As cruisers we chose to be the slow fat tanky whales. Which we are. And we had to give up firepower and turn rate to do it. But then ships like the regent and tac oddy came out. As did the galor and d'kora. All 4 of those are actually high dps cruisers. Or can be. But you can't have it all. If you build damage you lose out on durability. If you build durability you will lose out on damage. We can't be like the Borg Tac cubes, with their obscene amount of shields and hp and damage output. We can't be like the Breen npcs on elite, with their speed, damage and durability (hate chel'grets, really I do). Nor can we be like the d'deridex battleships with their stupidly high durability and the ability to destroy you in one combo (or at least until you know about it and can counter it). Instead we need to take what they've given us and use it.
It comes down to until the devs do ANY changes, we have no choice but to sit and take it. So why make a bad situation worse by complaining? Just do what I do. take that bad situation, and just tailor it to yourself to make it not so terrible.
Actually, none of us "chose" to be the "slow, fat, tanky, whales." People who chose cruisers thought they were going to be epic like the enterprise but are sorely disappointed. That's why people end up grinding dilithium to get an escort after they take the star cruiser or assault cruiser. Making the best of the situation isn't rolling over and taking it, mr. "lay back and think of england." It's the squeaky wheel that gets the oil, if people stop complaining and 'accept' that cryptic is TRIBBLE the enterprise every day this game is up, then you are right, nothing will ever change.
And raging on a forum is going to do any better? Have you actually looked through these forums and seen how many buff cruiser threads there are? There are literally one for every week this game has been around. That's almost 2 years. Almost 100 threads. NOTHING HAS CHANGED ABOUT CRUISERS SINCE LAUNCH. And no, I am not rolling over and taking it. I am making the best of a bad situation and still asking for improvements. But you need to be reasonable. And yes, if you bothered to look at stats when you got your ship, you would know what it was you were getting. A space whale.
Now that might not be fair to casual players who don't want to look at numbers, but since this is a game, you don't really have a choice. You look at numbers, and you get the best ship on paper. What it looks like is frankly completely unrelated to performance. I mean the best performing ship can be uglier than a borg drone, but it's still the best performing ship, while the sexiest ship can look as hot as an orion dancer but still be the worst performing ship in the game. And it still comes down to the fact that it's a game. And games are won by stats, not by looks.
You said "quit complaining" so yes, you're talking about letting it go. If everyone stops complaining, then the devs will think everything is fine. And yeah, there may be lots of "fix the cruisers/sci ships" threads, I would know as I authored one myself before the forums got all switched up with the PWE merge. But it seems to me you expect things to change quickly if they are going to change at all. The women's rights movement in the US. took over 70 years. If they had given up before seeing change, then nothing probably would have ever changed. So the moral of history is not to lay back and take it or try to make the best of the situation, those people aren't the ones who affect change, those are the ones holding the movement back. And the discussion on these forums can help us as a community to figure out how to balance the game so we can present it to the devs. It helps weed out stupid ideas like a "cruiser only forward heavy beam array that can only be used by federation ships." So yeah, these fix the cruiser/sci ship threads are helpful, and their continued presence is what will most likely inspire the change we desire, not shutting up and trying our best to do what we can with the TRIBBLE we've been given.
Oh, and on paper, cruisers don't look like the suck fest they are when you get them in game. On paper they've got good hulls, good shields, lots of weapons... and then you get them into space and they turn like a brick and have so little damage that escorts laugh it off as they blow you out of the water with ease.
Originally Posted by hereticknight085
And raging on a forum is going to do any better? Have you actually looked through these forums and seen how many buff cruiser threads there are? There are literally one for every week this game has been around. That's almost 2 years. Almost 100 threads. NOTHING HAS CHANGED ABOUT CRUISERS SINCE LAUNCH. And no, I am not rolling over and taking it. I am making the best of a bad situation and still asking for improvements. But you need to be reasonable. And yes, if you bothered to look at stats when you got your ship, you would know what it was you were getting. A space whale.
Now that might not be fair to casual players who don't want to look at numbers, but since this is a game, you don't really have a choice. You look at numbers, and you get the best ship on paper. What it looks like is frankly completely unrelated to performance. I mean the best performing ship can be uglier than a borg drone, but it's still the best performing ship, while the sexiest ship can look as hot as an orion dancer but still be the worst performing ship in the game. And it still comes down to the fact that it's a game. And games are won by stats, not by looks.
I understand what your saying
But understand this
The first two words of this game is
Star Trek
Not generic space warfare ..........wow/d&d based
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
for those complaining, its not the Ship its User Error...
I.R.W. Raptor's Claw
Storm Eagle Class Warbird Fleet Ha'feh
I have never trusted humans, and I never will
You assume that the people posting in the thread haven't done just that. And what you consider 'solid" and "competent" is a matter of perception. Additionally, you qualify that you are those things "for your role." So are you a competent heal boat? Can you really super annoy people by constantly tractor pushing them around or scrambling their sensors? Exactly what do you consider "solid" and "competent"?
I'm not sure I agree with that. By lvl 50 you KNOW what to expect from cruisers. Admittedly, you also haven't felt just how infuriating its slow turning is because the leveling pve content is super easy. But you KNOW cruisers are slow and tanky.
I.R.W. Raptor's Claw
Storm Eagle Class Warbird Fleet Ha'feh
I have never trusted humans, and I never will
Man that's what i call reliance, lol!
If you would had read some of the previous pages you would know that the cruiser role (to serve as a healboat) is
first, not required and
second a completely wrong interpretation of Star Trek by the devs.
I can only speak for myself but i am not interested in flying a healboat, i want to play a Star Trek game and fly the iconic ships i know from the shows, without having to be ashamed of their incapability to generate attack power or be even useful in this game.
For a "professional" made game, i just expect the ships to be like in "real" star trek.
For me, Cryptics work is just one huge disappointment.
I don't care if this game is a MMO and i don't buy that MMOs must have a stone/paper/scissor mechanic. We have shown more than enough ways to integrate "cruisers" better into this game then cryptic did. It's up to the devs to either ignore the fact that they are making a Star Trek game or to change cruiser ships in a way they are more like they where in the shows.
Maybe they are afraid that much less people would fly escorts if they would do that. But that wouldn't be the case because Cruisers would be OP (no one really wants that). No it's because there are a lot people wanting to fly the iconic Star Trek ships (thats why i was starting to play this game for instance) they know and like from the shows, or at least similar ships.
If they really would improve Cruisers to a point where they would be more than just dead freight in a STF (for example), much more people would fly them.
Let me just say one more thing. Besides DS9, Star Trek always was a show where the "hero" ship was a "cruiser" type ship. Cryptic just ignores that and uses the only non cruiser ship type (maybe because they think DS9 was "cooler" because there was a War and stuff like that :rolleyes:).
They took ONE ship (which was clearly a exception) and made a whole ship branch out of it and if that wouldn't be enough they made this ship type so powerful that it is virtually pointless to fly anything else.
It isn't the question if Star Trek is a cruiser universe (that's a given), but the question is why did cryptic come up with escorts in the first place?
In my opinion, the devs have either no idea about Star Trek in general and just do what they (or the people they are listening to) find "cool". Or they just do deliberately try to picture cruisers and bigger ships as weak because they like Star Wars like ship mechanics more.
Thank you for reading or ignoring, depending on who you are.
I have a mirror recon sci vessel I'm using on my fed engi, and I usually tank gates and cubes/tac cubes and in this last one I just did, I tanked donatra. Mostly because my back to back tyken's rifts cause mad agro, NPC hate power drain. And on cubes my back to back tractor repulsors do enough damage along with the rifts and weapons that I can usually attract the cube's wrath. But anyway, yeah, you can annoy the TRIBBLE out of people in a sci ship, particularly if you put points into enhancing those abilities, but to actually win anything with a sci ship in pvp (provided you are fighting a capable opponent and not a noob who has no idea how to fly their ship), you have to be what most players consider incredibly "cheap." Constantly scrambling sensors so people have trouble healing themselves and others, viral matrixing... I mean, to an extent you could even consider some sci vessels overpowered if you build them to their maximum annoyance factor, but frankly... that's not really fun for me, and usually it infuriates the people you use those tactics on so much that they may even ditch the arena instead of playing it out. I think many sci powers need a revamp, scramble sensors shouldn't make it so you're accidentally healing your enemies and attacking your friends. I think scramble sensors should severely reduce accuracy, making it more difficult to hit your targets, not make it so you're dying and send a tac team to a toduj fighter or a danube runabout. Which doesn't even make sense, as the premise of sending a tac team or an eng team or a sci team to another ship revolves around transporting personnel over to another vessel to assist in repairs. So the tac team I just sent over to my enemy ship was 1. Permitted to beam over by the enemy ship, and 2. my tac team was so stupid that instead of sabotaging the enemy while they had the chance, they politely sat down and started distributing shields for them... Wow. My crew is full of tards. This, of course, wouldn't be an issue if the devs would make the game true to trek in which ships don't really heal each other, they should only be able to heal themselves. In star trek, you'd never see captain Picard ordering someone to transfer the auxiliary power of the enterprise to the defiant's structural integrity field, lol. Extend shields is feasible as an ally assist ability as we've seen it used several times in the show, but alot of these typical "wow" or "d&d" mmo mechanics are just so incredibly wrong when applied to trek. Every ship should be relatively independent, able to hold their own, slightly different, but largely the same. Each ultimately as capable as the other and able to come together to get things done. But when you have the cruiser so weak damage wise that it's like the claric in many other games, basically NEEDING some damage dealer to kill things for it... that's just a slap in the face to all things trek. The type of mechanics this game needs is like the mechanics i read about for... oh TRIBBLE.. it was some game that I think was a one-time-buy mmo (rather than subscription). And they made a point of saying every character can take care of itself, no character "needs" a specific other type of character, there were no "support" roles or healers or tanks, everyone could take care of themselves. That's how star trek was, the defiant didn't really need other ships, neither did the enterprise, or voyager, aside from those instances that would basically be like an STF in the show, lol. And though I can find the game enjoyable and whatnot, I'm still severely dissatisfied at how far from canon it is.
Just an fyi, if you post long responses like this one, be sure to put in paragraphs and separations... I found it hard to read your response without losing both my place and interest... You see how in my longer posts I have things separated by double lines and such? Your post would be much easier to read if you did so, so I took the liberty of making those separations into smaller much easier to read portions.
If you had been paying attention to my earlier posts, you'd know that I normally do separate things into paragraphs, I simply neglected to do so in that post, but thanks for the assist.
Escorts are only seemingly gods, because you die too quickly against them in PvP, so you don't get to see their inherent weakness. Escorts are basically glass cannons, though. Some are more tanky than others. Fleet patrol escort, with 4x eng stations and uni ensign slot, for instance, is an ungodly tank for its class, whereas fleet defiant, having a fixed (kinda useless) tact ensign slot instead, is a lot less sturdy. Anyway, take an Escort into No Win Scenario, past wave 5, and it begins to crumble like dry paper.
+2 for honesty and sportsmanship. I'll be looking forward to your improved builds.
Yeah. Qin heavy raptor. Borg Tac Cube. Ouch. XD. My FPE doesn't die because it's too damn tanky as he stated, but my raptor kinda falls apart after a certain point, EPtS and TT can only take you so far lol, eventually you'll get out lasted by the blasted thing.
I posted an update on the sci oddy thread, need feedback on it.
yeah that is true. most stfs give the illusion escorts could tank endlessly...but mostly the target dies before it really gets critical. For instance a cube in an elite stf, i can tank, but not endlessly. if the cube is not dead ata certain point...i must break off the attack. and wait for my CD's to be ready again...but thats where the skill of the player comes in. Mostly the cube dies before that. No win scenario makes this better clear...whre a cruiser can take the beating without flinching, and escort is already in great troubles.
While that was true in Season 1, it no longer is. The amount of free healing has made fedscorts no longer glass cannons, and that is the problem.
The bops still are glass cannons, but escorts not really. If you feel like you are in a glass cannon in a fed/scort you are doing it wrong.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
I'd like to think I have one of the best (PvE) loadouts for the best tankable escort in game:
Fleet Patrol Awesomeness
Still, it's not undieable. A great deal depends on your team mates too. If all pull their weight, that Elite STF goes like a breeze. If, however, you're the only one pulling the wagon, as it were, and you're barely, but still, tanking a Borg cube in front (dual Tact Team and dual EPtS), and you suddenly get sidled or afted as well (can you use 'aft' as a verb?) by several spheres on your now weakened other facings, then you simply *will* die.
Also, cruisers have plenty more hull than their escort counterparts. Which makes escorts vulnerable to kinetic damage, far more so than a cruiser. Everyone who's ever been in an Elite STF will know this. Even with 3x Neutronium Alloy, you can maybe hope to take 1 hit of a heavy Borg plasma torp, but that's about it (preferably you should shoot them down first, of course, but I digress).
Also, escorts can't deal with hefty isometric charges too well, either (nobody can really tank for electric when it comes down it to, but escorts feel direct assaults on their hull just more pronouncedly).
So, escort, good tanky DD, but not invincible.
not being undieable, hardly qualifies as a glass cannon
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
true enough.
Often i find its the sci ship that saves the day. When the escorts and cruisers fail to hold off the nanites coming through the gate because some player blows the generators early its my sci ship with Tykons rift/ Gravity well and photonic shockwave that keeps them at bay long enough to kill the transformer. Id they dont like sci toons or sci ships. lobby cryptic to have them all taken out of the game.
being a Science Captain myself... if they took out the science ships I would quite simply stop playing and move on to other things... I play Trek for the Sci Ships, that being said... I NEVER used a sci ship until I at least got to the Captain level I would always use a cruiser..... I detest escorts but thats more on a personal level than on the basis of how they are in game.... you hardly saw those "little" ships in the serise... but you DID see many of the Galaxy Class and Other Cruiser Classes... the Escorts were a novelty, NOT something that you build an entire taskforce on....(unless you are a Klingon) so while I don't disagree that Cruisers need a little help they should STAY AWAY from the Science ships they work just fine....and while I am on the subject here let me pour a little oil on the fire
Escorts = STO on easy mode (that includes the escorts on the KDF side) anyone can fly an escort and do relatively well
Raiders (KDF) = the True Glass Cannon which requires a fair amount of skill to use properly and not get it bown up
Raider = STO on Intermediate Difficulty
Science ships (examples are the DSSV, Intrepid Retrofit, and the Nebula) Requires moderate to advanced skill to get the most out of them
Science ships = STO on Intermediate Difficulty
Cruisers = STO Hardmode
Carriers = STO Hardmode same as cruisers (with exception to the Kar'fi)
I.R.W. Raptor's Claw
Storm Eagle Class Warbird Fleet Ha'feh
I have never trusted humans, and I never will
Except the survival of the Escort has nothing to do with the Escort in particular and is more becuase of DOffs like the BFI or Attack patern DOff, the cycling of powers like two times EPTS or two times ApO, Tactical team and its great shield distribute ability, etc.
Most of these are options open to the Cruiser as well, so how are they not also surviving better?
As to the Escort being a required aprt of STF play becuase Damage output at a quick pace is needed to win or at least qualify for the optional, thats a failing in game/mission design and not the fault of the Escort iether.
R.I.P