Now that this is in the light, I'll ask politely again, if you have nothing meaningful or helpful to contribute, please do not post in this thread.
Like with your start post, you seem to think that asking nicely (or veiled nicely, rather) entitles you to getting your way. Not so.
(and no, attacking me is not only pointless, but also is not constructive of helpful in any sense of the word).
Like you calling me 'moron' and 'idiot' is constructive, you mean? No worries, btw, doesn't bother me in the least. Just, the irony, is all.
As for my contribution to this thread, think Newton's Third Law of Motion: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Aka: for every force pushing to give their own ships moar, there should be forces pushing back. I am that force pushing back.
Having said that, this is (naturally, almost) a fanboi thread, so 'meaningful or helpful' tend to have rather self-serving definitions in here. Nonetheless, should the devs ever read this, I deem it good they realize not everyone is in favor of just giving cruisers more DPS, without them losing something too.
I've a tank/semi dps skill set configuration. Almost all my ships are cruisers. I'm pretty powerful in STFs and all PvE content when it comes to dealing damage and keeping my team mates up. I also do give fair dps.
Now in PvP, my Soverign stands better than my Regeant, but I suppose if I re-skill my self to certain aspect Regeant lacks - I can fix that too.
It's not all about ships, it's about how you alot your skill points too and using the ship with what your character has.
I'm happy with the cruiser performance really. It can be slightly better, but yea.
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5 FED Fleets | 3 KDF Fleets - T5 Colony on both factions
As for my contribution to this thread, think Newton's Third Law of Motion: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Aka: for every force pushing to give their own ships moar, there should be forces pushing back. I am that force pushing back.
Thank you for your clarification. You are actually absolutely correct that there should be something pushing back. And I respect this. However I wish you hadn't done it in quite such a negative fashion, hence why my responses were less than polite.
Be that as it may, since you are the "force pushing back", what exactly is wrong with what we are asking? I only ask this because all sides must be taken into account, and tbh I am rather interested in what it is you have to say (despite my dislike for your methods and mannerisms, both of which I may be (and probably am) wrong on).
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.
So 3,500 are your Cruiser DPS numbers... a 3,000 DPS gap.
3,500 DPS is enough to, in your words; "actually had your shields down."
(And that is a Cruiser that only exists KDF side or in the form of the Galaxy X Fed side.)
But not kill or really threaten you.
I can see why that might sound ridiculous to someone that doesn't pvp, but in practice if the cruiser has any competency at all it usually takes 3 ships to bring it down. Its why the deaths in space pvp are usually made up of escorts. Again, its why pvp is a team event.
Be careful Meimeitoo, he might bust out the green font again.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] Time played in game. as of 9/12/12 (on my mains) Total 2907 hours.K'zoontite has been on active duty for 34 days, 3 hours, Bot Fly has been on active duty for 55 days, 4 hours, Poppa Capp has been on active duty for 4 days, 12 hours, B'zooka has been on active duty for 12 days, 22 hours,Tater(fed) has been on active duty for 14 days, 10 hours,
Something that's kind of bugged me in this thread (and other discussions you can now only get to by heading to the Gateway system) is my belief that it's not that Cruisers turn too slow, but rather it's a case that Escorts turn too fast. No doubt the Escort should turn faster, but c'mon - it's like flying a fighter - all the crew should be strapped into their seats while making sure there are no objects that can go flying around.
Something else that's kind of bugged me in general is the curious need for things to be balanced - it's artificial - woefully and massively artificial. With all the Cruiser v. Escort debates, the thing that most often comes to mind is the RV towing the compact car.
Say what?
If you're driving across the country, would you rather do it in a compact car or an RV? Well, you'd likely enjoy having the RV instead, eh?
If you're driving around the city, would you rather do it in that boat of an RV or a nimble car? Well, you'd likely enjoy having the compact car instead, eh?
STO tries to treat Escorts as compact RVs and Cruisers as RV compacts. No... one's a RV and one's a compact car (not literally, just an analogy of two vehicles with different roles - roles that are ignored in STO).
Here's a pair of simple pictures that might illustrate it better for some:
Imagine if Defiant had been the ship in TNG or Voyager...yet almost all the episodes remained the same. How silly would that have been?
Imagine if Enterprise or Voyager had been the ship in DS9...yet almost all the episodes remained the same. How silly would that have been?
Yeah...that's STO for you and it's also the majority of the discussions about X vs Y vs Z.
If I ever found a decent tac in a cruiser I'd post it, but they are rare. The good tacs are sitting in escorts, the bad tacs are dual beaming in cruisers like the Kirks they think they are.
We'll go over this one more time, because apparently people here are slow..
Sci/Cruiser 3500 DPS
Eng/Escort 4500 DPS
Eng and Sci put out around the same amount of DPS, Eng might be slightly higher with their power bonuses, as Sci only has single target debuffs.
1000 DPS from a cruiser to an escort is more than fair and balanced. Your suggestion to buff a cruiser by only 1000 DPS completely and utterly eliminates escorts.
You say cruiser's can't multi-role? What of the tanking, heals, the zone control and moderate to high DPS. Cruisers are flexible. Just because you don't know how to make it flexible isn't a game design problem.
A cruiser can do a lot, but you can't be have high damage, high tanking and zone control all at the same time.
This is why escorts excel, they don't have the options for anything other than a primary and secondary function.
Science ships are awful because unless they are speced as support all their crazy global cooldowns stop any primary function from being completely effective.
Cruisers often fall flat on their face for the same reason, trying to do too much with the wrong tools.
The tac escort for 6500 dps is my ship, with a Armitage equipped with very high end gear.
The sci cruiser for 3500 dps is an excellsior refit, with decent gear but not great, flown by someone still learning. Its a tanking build with enough DPS to pull agro from me with his threat control. There are more aggressive versions
The eng escort for 4500 dps is a patrol escort flown by something with very good gear who is experienced. Its a standard layout but has no P2W anything.
Me flying my ship out DPSs Jem bugs, so take my numbers as high. In most of my logs other tactical escorts rarely (1 in 10 matches maybe) break the 3000 dps mark. The fact is most players are beyond terrible,
I've logged long time playing escorts with different torps (not using a torp boat layout mind you) 2 beam arrays and a dual beam for an ineffective 600 dps. So based on arguments in this thread escorts need a huge buff right? Look only 600 dps, lets not learn anything , instead lets argue about buffing everything to compensate for our lack of understanding.
The reality is the balance of escorts/cruisers is actually impressively dead on. Science is the problem, not cruisers. The balance of content to require different roles is horribly lop-sided. This isn't going to change, most cruisers are actually squishy because of bad captains so making high tanking and healing missions will just result in more complaints.
All of that said, I'm in favour of a cruiser turn buff slightly across the board. My bigger concern is the Kirks who are going to dual beam it more and be even less effective. In the shows we don't see cruisers manoeuvring, but we do see the Defiant tilting, circling back and whipping around DS9 far faster than we do in the game.
For those who might actually understand that in life, you have to work at things to improve. That mommy isn't always going to be there to hold your hand through your battles. I present, Knowledge.
I know it's not as easy as crying for a new diaper, errr, buff i mean. But if you decide you want to be more than a waste of pixels in any team event, please feel free to learn how you can improve yourself. I have no doubt i will find it much harder to splode you with my DPS cruiser after you've learned how2doitright.
Qapla'
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] Time played in game. as of 9/12/12 (on my mains) Total 2907 hours.K'zoontite has been on active duty for 34 days, 3 hours, Bot Fly has been on active duty for 55 days, 4 hours, Poppa Capp has been on active duty for 4 days, 12 hours, B'zooka has been on active duty for 12 days, 22 hours,Tater(fed) has been on active duty for 14 days, 10 hours,
Yeah... I know that my post will be ignored, even though I did put lots of time, effort and thought into it (despite the fact it seems mostly like raging). But tbh, what else can we do? I am hoping that a dev will read this thread
The real question that ties everything tightly together is...the players realize there is a real problem with cruisers, yet the Devs supposedly play the game too. Therefore, we must conclude 1 of 2 possible outcomes.
#1 The Devs just do not care what the players want. Despite them saying they always put the players best interests first when designing the game.
OR
#2 The Devs who play the game have very, very little knowledge of the game that they designed and are actually so incompetent, that they fail to see there is a problem.
The real question that ties everything tightly together is...the players realize there is a real problem with cruisers, yet the Devs supposedly play the game too. Therefore, we must conclude 1 of 2 possible outcomes.
#1 The Devs just do not care what the players want. Despite them saying they always put the players best interests first when designing the game.
OR
#2 The Devs who play the game have very, very little knowledge of the game that they designed and are actually so incompetent, that they fail to see there is a problem.
There can be NO OTHER CONCLUSION DRAWN.
What about they don't really fly cruisers? What about they have access to the best gear and they roll random PUGs so they think cruisers are fine? There are many conclusions that can be drawn... perhaps they test cruisers by having cruisers fight other cruisers and cruisers look fine. It goes on and on...
What about they don't really fly cruisers? What about they have access to the best gear and they roll random PUGs so they think cruisers are fine? There are many conclusions that can be drawn... perhaps they test cruisers by having cruisers fight other cruisers and cruisers look fine. It goes on and on...
Perhaps they like the role they have given Cruisers and Science in the game and have yet to redesign things to allow them to be viable in thier predesigned roles in PvE?
I came back after 4 month hiatus, love the game, but not liking the cruiser damage at all, i can tank like a mo-fo but i want to spec for damage also, what happened?
I came back after 4 month hiatus, love the game, but not liking the cruiser damage at all, i can tank like a mo-fo but i want to spec for damage also, what happened?
Only Tac Toons have the Captain abilities to buff damage to the levels that make a difference and this high damage is best put through an escort for the obviuos Tac BOff reasons and this is seen as an unfairness for Cruiser players whom can not achieve the same in a Engineer heavy Tac Light BOff set-up even though they can tank like the rock of Gabraltor?
I am a very new player (I've been on for about a week), as such I haven't played around with character builds or ship layouts and cannot contribute to this thread as was intended. But I do want to give some background as to why I started reading this thread in the first place.
I've built my character to resemble a NPC in a game I used to run (he was obviously the captain. With my group of players, I damn well wasn't letting them defect or turn the ship into a floating distillery). So I designed him with that in mind. The game had them in a Galaxy Class so that's what I've been angling for. I started reading this thread as I was concerned it might under-powered etc.
I want to thank every poster in this thread. You've reminded me that I'm not playing a tabletop RPG, Bridge Commander or Rouge Squadron. I've been soloing (as I'm still getting my feet wet) and have felt I'd be a detriment to other players because of my lack of experience. As I've said I was reminded I am not in a single player game and as such, need to remember what I enjoyed about City of Heroes when I used to play that. I played a healer. A healer with 2 attack powers, maybe three. I couldn't solo worth a darn.
That being said it seems I can get the best of both worlds (my god that wasn't intended, but I typed it so it stays) and pick up some cruisers to heal in team play and escorts to solo or putz around.
I said I wanted to thank you all and I mean it. As a new player, every one of you has smacked my face (in a good way) and made me re-evaluate my current play style and build. I'll be keeping my Engineering captain and might pay for a few extra ship and bridge officer slots so I can team play and solo. I just hit commander and picked up an Akria Class to try and ease myself into the game better (Like I said, I'm used to single player, and they call for different tactics, even with the big ships).
I'll still be getting my Galaxy class, but now I have a ton more research to do to spec it out correctly. I suspect it will be my LFG ship that will offer all the heals and buffs it can, sacrificing power (like my CoH character) so I just float in the background hitting my heal macros.
Again, thank you. It was awesome reading you all breaking down the system and getting my interest sparked in numbers and builds (rather than flying around going "Whee!!").
To an extent, because of the way PvE's generally set up - you really can do that whole fly around and go wheee! thing. If you're playing STO as a single player game, it's a world of difference than when you involve other players.
Great thing is you're not limited to a single toon - it's not that expensive/long to pick up more; so you can have several wheeee! toons and then your group toons.
I admit I spend too much time going wheee! - even in group environments. There's just something about a Skittles BoP corkscrewing that makes me go wheeeeeeee!
The U.S.S. Enterprise - F would be a useless ship in a typical elite STF run because encounter design heavily favors DPS for objective completion and thus renders its strongest assets to the field of battle of little worth. I wonder, how would the IP ownership feel if it was brought to their attention that their most prized possession and ships of its class are cast in such poor light for play that only die hard fan boys would want them for show rather rather than as the ultimate goal?
While you can quibble, Star Trek has always been about the big ships of the line for their times and shares more ship design philosophy with the age of battle ships than with modern carrier warfare. In one sense this is a great fault of the game. It does not represent the IP well and people expect their massive cruisers to be the ultimate war machines as represented in the shows and books. I have to say that in light of the IP they pay to experience they are right to do so. This will ALWAYS be a bone of contention but STO is what it is...
One of my biggest issue with cruiser / engineer play mechanics is the fact that the core engineering BOFF powers like emergency power to weapons and shields suffer a 45 second cool down preventing effective old school chaining while tactical powers such as cannon rapid fire and scatter volley only require 30 seconds. This needs to change now. Make them 45 seconds too to lower escort DPS.
Currently, escorts can take damage far too well for tanks or healers to be valued members of a team. They need reduced hull and shield values.
This is a ?biggie? and would result in some screaming. Turn rates are fine but escorts need reduced overall speed so they can not run away so easily to evade damage. Accuracy values might should more easily trump defense. In this case, they might actually start to remember why extend shields should be respected rather than zipping away and a tank is valuable again.
When it comes to the viability of engineering powers and their usefulness I have come to belive that extend shields needs to be effective out to 10K like other powers but might should provide less resistance in compensation (15/20/25 base.) It might also should reduce threat generation on the protected target to aid in tanking with today?s high DPS builds.
Axillary to the Structural Integrity might should become the engineer?s tractor break too in order to compare with science polarize hull and tactical attack patterns.
Directed energy modulation sounds good on paper but sucks in application for beam weapon usage and that needs to change. It?s not good enough in threat generation or damage dealing ability to be useful to the typical engineer cruiser beam builds. It favors cannons too heavily and when looking over the ?great" FED cruisers uhm... cannon mounts...
I hate to say this, but to be honest, overall STO has an increasingly rotten set of play mechanics that need to be reevaluated from the bottom up from ship layouts to BOFF powers and weapon effects. I?d almost say that its time for STO 2.0.
More than anything, I?d like to see an engineer in his role with a cruiser as a valuable part of a space team again rather than waiting to here: ?Oh great, less DPS to meet the optional...?
I hate to say this, but to be honest, overall STO has an increasingly rotten set of play mechanics that need to be reevaluated from the bottom up from ship layouts to BOFF powers and weapon effects. I?d almost say that its time for STO 2.0.
More than anything, I?d like to see an engineer in his role with a cruiser as a valuable part of a space team again rather than waiting to here: ?Oh great, less DPS to meet the optional...?
While I agree with what you are saying here I think it would be easier and more viable to work with what we have here and now to make cruisers more useful to a team, I think that on top of a beam damage change to make them more useful to an unbuffed engineer I think the engineering powers need to be rethought and science... well science just needs a complete reset...
Perhaps they like the role they have given Cruisers and Science in the game and have yet to redesign things to allow them to be viable in thier predesigned roles in PvE?
I've been thinking this as well, but if that's the case then I wish they would just tell us that and save the teeth gnashing.
The U.S.S. Enterprise - F would be a useless ship in a typical elite STF run because encounter design heavily favors DPS for objective completion and thus renders its strongest assets to the field of battle of little worth. I wonder, how would the IP ownership feel if it was brought to their attention that their most prized possession and ships of its class are cast in such poor light for play that only die hard fan boys would want them for show rather rather than as the ultimate goal?
While you can quibble, Star Trek has always been about the big ships of the line for their times and shares more ship design philosophy with the age of battle ships than with modern carrier warfare. In one sense this is a great fault of the game. It does not represent the IP well and people expect their massive cruisers to be the ultimate war machines as represented in the shows and books. I have to say that in light of the IP they pay to experience they are right to do so. This will ALWAYS be a bone of contention but STO is what it is...
One of my biggest issue with cruiser / engineer play mechanics is the fact that the core engineering BOFF powers like emergency power to weapons and shields suffer a 45 second cool down preventing effective old school chaining while tactical powers such as cannon rapid fire and scatter volley only require 30 seconds. This needs to change now. Make them 45 seconds too to lower escort DPS.
Currently, escorts can take damage far too well for tanks or healers to be valued members of a team. They need reduced hull and shield values.
This is a ?biggie? and would result in some screaming. Turn rates are fine but escorts need reduced overall speed so they can not run away so easily to evade damage. Accuracy values might should more easily trump defense. In this case, they might actually start to remember why extend shields should be respected rather than zipping away and a tank is valuable again.
When it comes to the viability of engineering powers and their usefulness I have come to belive that extend shields needs to be effective out to 10K like other powers but might should provide less resistance in compensation (15/20/25 base.) It might also should reduce threat generation on the protected target to aid in tanking with today?s high DPS builds.
Axillary to the Structural Integrity might should become the engineer?s tractor break too in order to compare with science polarize hull and tactical attack patterns.
Directed energy modulation sounds good on paper but sucks in application for beam weapon usage and that needs to change. It?s not good enough in threat generation or damage dealing ability to be useful to the typical engineer cruiser beam builds. It favors cannons too heavily and when looking over the ?great" FED cruisers uhm... cannon mounts...
I hate to say this, but to be honest, overall STO has an increasingly rotten set of play mechanics that need to be reevaluated from the bottom up from ship layouts to BOFF powers and weapon effects. I?d almost say that its time for STO 2.0.
More than anything, I?d like to see an engineer in his role with a cruiser as a valuable part of a space team again rather than waiting to here: ?Oh great, less DPS to meet the optional...?
Really good insights. I tend to agree with them from the PVE standpoint.
The U.S.S. Enterprise - F would be a useless ship in a typical elite STF run because encounter design heavily favors DPS for objective completion and thus renders its strongest assets to the field of battle of little worth. I wonder, how would the IP ownership feel if it was brought to their attention that their most prized possession and ships of its class are cast in such poor light for play that only die hard fan boys would want them for show rather rather than as the ultimate goal?
While you can quibble, Star Trek has always been about the big ships of the line for their times and shares more ship design philosophy with the age of battle ships than with modern carrier warfare. In one sense this is a great fault of the game. It does not represent the IP well and people expect their massive cruisers to be the ultimate war machines as represented in the shows and books. I have to say that in light of the IP they pay to experience they are right to do so. This will ALWAYS be a bone of contention but STO is what it is...
One of my biggest issue with cruiser / engineer play mechanics is the fact that the core engineering BOFF powers like emergency power to weapons and shields suffer a 45 second cool down preventing effective old school chaining while tactical powers such as cannon rapid fire and scatter volley only require 30 seconds. This needs to change now. Make them 45 seconds too to lower escort DPS.
Currently, escorts can take damage far too well for tanks or healers to be valued members of a team. They need reduced hull and shield values.
This is a ?biggie? and would result in some screaming. Turn rates are fine but escorts need reduced overall speed so they can not run away so easily to evade damage. Accuracy values might should more easily trump defense. In this case, they might actually start to remember why extend shields should be respected rather than zipping away and a tank is valuable again.
When it comes to the viability of engineering powers and their usefulness I have come to belive that extend shields needs to be effective out to 10K like other powers but might should provide less resistance in compensation (15/20/25 base.) It might also should reduce threat generation on the protected target to aid in tanking with today?s high DPS builds.
Axillary to the Structural Integrity might should become the engineer?s tractor break too in order to compare with science polarize hull and tactical attack patterns.
Directed energy modulation sounds good on paper but sucks in application for beam weapon usage and that needs to change. It?s not good enough in threat generation or damage dealing ability to be useful to the typical engineer cruiser beam builds. It favors cannons too heavily and when looking over the ?great" FED cruisers uhm... cannon mounts...
I hate to say this, but to be honest, overall STO has an increasingly rotten set of play mechanics that need to be reevaluated from the bottom up from ship layouts to BOFF powers and weapon effects. I?d almost say that its time for STO 2.0.
More than anything, I?d like to see an engineer in his role with a cruiser as a valuable part of a space team again rather than waiting to here: ?Oh great, less DPS to meet the optional...?
Finally a really good post on this thread that i can comment on. To much bickering on this thread... But the main problem with cruiser isn't that they are weak or bad. They just don't offer much to stf's or fleet events. Where dps trumps, tank always. The encounter designs of these instances needs to be reworked, along with new engineer boff abilities ensign tier and commander. Hopefully a balance pass on the systems as whole would be good too.
Unfortunately with free to play unless something is just so unbalanced that it starts to loose them players who pay for ships etc. Many of these minor to moderate design and balance complaints, will likely go unnoticed or really really low on the devs list.
I hope they surprise us maybe make blog or reply acknowledging at least some of the complaints we have and are in the works to be worked on or reviewed. I just hope as a cruiser engineer pilot that we will eventually get looked at least. Becuase i would like to feel like tanking actually helped in stfs....
PvE is way too easy in this game. If you can't complete an STF without an Escort, then you must be one of those guys I have to keep throwing TacTeams to in STFs so you don't blow up.
Alright enough. I think I'll derail my own thread. To everyone who said L2P, I hate to admit it, you're right. I made a lot of mistakes and finally did something about it last night. I altered my BOff setup on my AC, and switched to a support tank instead of an offensive tank.
Here's what happened:
Map: KASE
Ship: Assault Cruiser
Cap type: Engineer
My build:
Fore Weapons:
3x Antiproton Beam Array mk XII [crth][acc][borg]
1x Quantum Torpedo Launcher mk XII [crth][acc][borg]
Aft Weapons:
Same as Fore
Shield:
MACO Resilient Shield Array mk XII
Deflector:
MACO Graviton Deflector mk XII
Engine:
Borg Assimilated Sub-Transwarp Engine
Devices:
Scorpion Fighters (nowhere else to put them), Subspace Field Modulator, Large Shield Battery, Large Weapon Battery
Tac Consoles:
Antiproton Mag Regulator mk XII [uncommon] x3
Engi Consoles:
Neutronium Alloy mk XI [rare] x4
Sci Consoles:
Field Generator mk XII [uncommon], Assimilated Module
BOff Setup:
Lt. Tac: TS1, BFAWII
Ensign Tac: TT1
Cmdr Engi: EPtS1, EPtW2, ET3, AuxtSIFIII (going to modify that)
LtCmdr Engi: EPtA1, EPtE2, EPtS3 (again, going to modify that)
Lt Sci: HE1, TB2 (probably going to modify that as well)
DOff:
Conn Officer (tt reducer)x2 [very rare]
Technician [very rare]
(whatever the DOff is that reduces cds on EPtX) x2 [very rare]
Power Settings Used:
100/50/25/25 <--- most used
25/50/25/100 <--- not as often but still used
50/100/25/25 <--- used at the end
Anyways, now that I have all the numbers down, started off KASE by dashing in and drawing aggro from the tac cube, and basically held aggro whilst tanking the entire time through a mix of EPtW and EPtS. I was on Offensive power mode so I was able to keep up a good 6-700 dph, and since it's a tac cube I was able to keep on torping it the entire time, used BFAW to increase DPS, and TS1 to keep it annoyed at me. Sufficed to say, my shields never went down until the end, and it never targetted anyone else. Then did the usual sit and shoot at probes until we cleared all the transformers and gates. Fought Donatra, and didn't hold aggro this time, but instead spent the whole match on my aux setting healing. Sufficed to say the only time any escorts died was when either my heals were on CD, or donatra one shotted them. In the end, donatra started targetting me, so I simply went defensive and just shot at her while keeping EPtS cycling.
Now as sad as this is going to sound, that was probably my best match as a cruiser. Which in my mind is pathetic. But I did my role, of tank and healer... and it went smoothly. Boring as fk for me, but it went smoothly. So I will concede that cruisers are not entirely useless. But their usefulness is not nearly as great as an escort... and in all honesty I would play a sci just because of their total mindfk ability lol...
Anyways, if you have any comments on my build that would be appreciated (as long as they are constructive, but feel free to trash me too, at this point I kinda dgaf...)
However, I would still like it if cruisers were a little stronger in damage dealing capability, if nothing else to draw aggro better without having to sacrifice skill points in threat control...
(I also did a few more ESTFs doing the same thing, just tanking and healing, and all of them except CSE went smoothly, even though in one of the ISEs the tac cube was being particularly nasty with crits and I ended up dying... also didn't help that the escorts that I had with me blew at dps... anyways yeah)
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.
Well, of course you can do good as an Engie in a cruiser like that.
The prob I have is A Tac is great at DPS in both an escort OR a cruiser.
And engie is only good at DPS in an escort. In a cruiser you really only got one thing, Tank/Heal.
To me it seems busted that if you use a Tac Officer you can kinda do whatever the hell role you want to do and still provide good DPS while doing it.
For fun I put my Tac back in the Dread tonight and had a blast. Jump Lance + Tricobalt is psycho Damage. And feels great seing them kinda Crits. Making a cruiser do what an Engie could never do. lol
That's precisely the problem with this threat to begin with: of course, nobody is literally gonna say: "I want it ALL." They just word around it, saying stuff like they don't want to sacrifie too much in one area -- which is pretty much the same for anyone being able to see thru the BS.
With utter boredom at your all to common train of thought(If I think this way so must everyone else) I respond.
Nope. Don't want the same or even equal damage to escorts.
Go ahead, hook me up to whatever legitimate lie detector test you want to it won't change.
If we go by the shows and the tech manuals yes. Cruisers are the supreme ships in Star Trek. But guess what. That was botched from day one. And it doesn't matter what I would like to see happen if a complete ground up design change happened. It won't.
So working with what the game has presented and the limits of the engine and community I would like to see a dps gain from Cruisers so that they can feel that they are again a meaningful contributor in PvE and PvP. Not the terminator that you have convinced yourself we are all asking for. I don't care for a 31/31/31 spec in an MMO.
Single player lol, well. Thats a different story +)
More damage even? LOL. Exaggerate much?
I'd have to ask you wouldn't I.
Erm, OP *did* say he want cruisers to be the best:
In the context of the show they are the best.
In this game they are not what they should be, and we know that and have acknowledge that. He is trying to work within the system as it is now. But you already know that but just want to argue and look like the bad boy on the block tossing out zingers and awesome one liners.
(Yes, before you object, 'flagship' means the best)
No it doesn't.
The flagship is wherever the admiral's flag is being flown.
Really, this obfuscation-game is getting tiresome.
The prob I have is A Tac is great at DPS in both an escort OR a cruiser.
And engie is only good at DPS in an escort. In a cruiser you really only got one thing, Tank/Heal.
To me it seems busted that if you use a Tac Officer you can kinda do whatever the hell role you want to do and still provide good DPS while doing it.
For fun I put my Tac back in the Dread tonight and had a blast. Jump Lance + Tricobalt is psycho Damage. And feels great seing them kinda Crits. Making a cruiser do what an Engie could never do. lol
Well tac captains are the main damage dealers in this game, and unless you restrict ships to classes, they will always do highest dps in whatever ship they choose and be able to use whatever ship they want to enhance that. I know I posted that tac captains in cruisers confuse me, but after doing some experimentation on my KDF side with the vor'cha, I can see why. The natural high damage ability of the tac captain coupled with the tankiness of a cruser/battlecruiser is scary. From personal experience, I have been out-dps'd by a tac in an orb weaver. You can imagine how embarrassing that was, esp since I had two more weapons than he did, and better positioning, and he still drew aggro off of me.
Ultimate embarrassment to me though was I was out-aggro'd by an atrox. I almost quit the game out of shame after that stf lol... Granted it was a tac captain, but you're right, it's kinda odd that they are able to fill any role with almost stupid ease. Hell my tac on my kdf side has it easy street. I have no trouble building him, no trouble finding what works and what doesn't. There just is no issue there.
What it really comes down to is that the captain abilities on a tac are universally useful and universally powerful (APA3, FOMM, GDF etc) . Engi captains have miracle worker (not nearly as impressive as I want it to be, but hey, the full shield heal is nice), nadion inversion (surprisingly usefulless lol), EPS transfer, and rotate shields. They are good tanking abilities (within reason), but not quite as powerful or universal as tac captain abilities. As for sci, I will say nothing since I know nothing. Really, I don't. Never rolled a sci, have no idea how to even build a sci ship, or even what abilities etc. Sci is my undiscovered country persay lol...
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.
Thank you for your clarification. You are actually absolutely correct that there should be something pushing back. And I respect this. However I wish you hadn't done it in quite such a negative fashion, hence why my responses were less than polite.
Be that as it may, since you are the "force pushing back", what exactly is wrong with what we are asking? I only ask this because all sides must be taken into account, and tbh I am rather interested in what it is you have to say (despite my dislike for your methods and mannerisms, both of which I may be (and probably am) wrong on).
I find it amusing that there is no response from this person now that it has been said that we are (or at least I am) open to possible input from him. I guess he only posts when he thinks there will be resistance... oh wells, his loss.
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.
I fly a Cruiser with my Engie. I certainly contribute to my team quite well, more than some escorts that I've been with in terms of damage in elite STFs. I tank, I heal, I hit decently. So on that regard I've no problems with where cruisers currently are.
In my Sci ship with my Sci captain, it's a similar story. I don't tank as much, but I heal a lot and control as much as you can against the Borg in elites. I'd like to hit harder, but can live with where I am, especially with the crowd control I have outside of STFs.
My problem isn't about feeling useful to a team, contributing to getting the mission done or anything like that. My problem is when it comes to getting the optional. The optionals essentially demand only one thing, firepower. A good coating of teamwork helps, but firepower is largely the be all, end all of the optionals. Doesn't matter how well I can keep myself or others alive, or control the battlefield if you can't put the damage into where it's needed. I may be able to kill every Borg of Prey on Cure and destroy the nanite probes in my cruiser with little difficulty, but getting the required efficiency of doing both is difficult. I can hold the nanite spheres away from Nanite Transformer in Infected for all eternity if I want and slash the resistance on the Transformer as well as two tacs doing Fire on my Mark, but if it's not practically dead by the time the first gravity well has faded, it doesn't bode well for getting the optional.
Put simply, I feel the reason why Escorts are hailed as the kings of STF is simply their ability to get it done quickly, which because of the optional, is exactly what everyone wants. Otherwise, I enjoy flying Cruisers and Science ships, and in various missions, outperform my Tac captain who chews through cubes on elite like my Sci chews on probes.
Comments
Like with your start post, you seem to think that asking nicely (or veiled nicely, rather) entitles you to getting your way. Not so.
Like you calling me 'moron' and 'idiot' is constructive, you mean? No worries, btw, doesn't bother me in the least. Just, the irony, is all.
As for my contribution to this thread, think Newton's Third Law of Motion: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Aka: for every force pushing to give their own ships moar, there should be forces pushing back. I am that force pushing back.
Having said that, this is (naturally, almost) a fanboi thread, so 'meaningful or helpful' tend to have rather self-serving definitions in here. Nonetheless, should the devs ever read this, I deem it good they realize not everyone is in favor of just giving cruisers more DPS, without them losing something too.
I've a tank/semi dps skill set configuration. Almost all my ships are cruisers. I'm pretty powerful in STFs and all PvE content when it comes to dealing damage and keeping my team mates up. I also do give fair dps.
Now in PvP, my Soverign stands better than my Regeant, but I suppose if I re-skill my self to certain aspect Regeant lacks - I can fix that too.
It's not all about ships, it's about how you alot your skill points too and using the ship with what your character has.
I'm happy with the cruiser performance really. It can be slightly better, but yea.
5 FED Fleets | 3 KDF Fleets - T5 Colony on both factions
Thank you for your clarification. You are actually absolutely correct that there should be something pushing back. And I respect this. However I wish you hadn't done it in quite such a negative fashion, hence why my responses were less than polite.
Be that as it may, since you are the "force pushing back", what exactly is wrong with what we are asking? I only ask this because all sides must be taken into account, and tbh I am rather interested in what it is you have to say (despite my dislike for your methods and mannerisms, both of which I may be (and probably am) wrong on).
I can see why that might sound ridiculous to someone that doesn't pvp, but in practice if the cruiser has any competency at all it usually takes 3 ships to bring it down. Its why the deaths in space pvp are usually made up of escorts. Again, its why pvp is a team event.
Funny. Believe it or not my previous post was serious.
Something else that's kind of bugged me in general is the curious need for things to be balanced - it's artificial - woefully and massively artificial. With all the Cruiser v. Escort debates, the thing that most often comes to mind is the RV towing the compact car.
Say what?
If you're driving across the country, would you rather do it in a compact car or an RV? Well, you'd likely enjoy having the RV instead, eh?
If you're driving around the city, would you rather do it in that boat of an RV or a nimble car? Well, you'd likely enjoy having the compact car instead, eh?
STO tries to treat Escorts as compact RVs and Cruisers as RV compacts. No... one's a RV and one's a compact car (not literally, just an analogy of two vehicles with different roles - roles that are ignored in STO).
Here's a pair of simple pictures that might illustrate it better for some:
Imagine if Defiant had been the ship in TNG or Voyager...yet almost all the episodes remained the same. How silly would that have been?
Imagine if Enterprise or Voyager had been the ship in DS9...yet almost all the episodes remained the same. How silly would that have been?
Yeah...that's STO for you and it's also the majority of the discussions about X vs Y vs Z.
We'll go over this one more time, because apparently people here are slow..
Sci/Cruiser 3500 DPS
Eng/Escort 4500 DPS
Eng and Sci put out around the same amount of DPS, Eng might be slightly higher with their power bonuses, as Sci only has single target debuffs.
1000 DPS from a cruiser to an escort is more than fair and balanced. Your suggestion to buff a cruiser by only 1000 DPS completely and utterly eliminates escorts.
You say cruiser's can't multi-role? What of the tanking, heals, the zone control and moderate to high DPS. Cruisers are flexible. Just because you don't know how to make it flexible isn't a game design problem.
A cruiser can do a lot, but you can't be have high damage, high tanking and zone control all at the same time.
This is why escorts excel, they don't have the options for anything other than a primary and secondary function.
Science ships are awful because unless they are speced as support all their crazy global cooldowns stop any primary function from being completely effective.
Cruisers often fall flat on their face for the same reason, trying to do too much with the wrong tools.
The tac escort for 6500 dps is my ship, with a Armitage equipped with very high end gear.
The sci cruiser for 3500 dps is an excellsior refit, with decent gear but not great, flown by someone still learning. Its a tanking build with enough DPS to pull agro from me with his threat control. There are more aggressive versions
The eng escort for 4500 dps is a patrol escort flown by something with very good gear who is experienced. Its a standard layout but has no P2W anything.
Me flying my ship out DPSs Jem bugs, so take my numbers as high. In most of my logs other tactical escorts rarely (1 in 10 matches maybe) break the 3000 dps mark. The fact is most players are beyond terrible,
I've logged long time playing escorts with different torps (not using a torp boat layout mind you) 2 beam arrays and a dual beam for an ineffective 600 dps. So based on arguments in this thread escorts need a huge buff right? Look only 600 dps, lets not learn anything , instead lets argue about buffing everything to compensate for our lack of understanding.
The reality is the balance of escorts/cruisers is actually impressively dead on. Science is the problem, not cruisers. The balance of content to require different roles is horribly lop-sided. This isn't going to change, most cruisers are actually squishy because of bad captains so making high tanking and healing missions will just result in more complaints.
All of that said, I'm in favour of a cruiser turn buff slightly across the board. My bigger concern is the Kirks who are going to dual beam it more and be even less effective. In the shows we don't see cruisers manoeuvring, but we do see the Defiant tilting, circling back and whipping around DS9 far faster than we do in the game.
Completed Starbase, Embassy, Mine, Spire and No Win Scenario
Nothing to do anymore.
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The cruiser thread, 3.0
Building successful DPS cruisers
I know it's not as easy as crying for a new diaper, errr, buff i mean. But if you decide you want to be more than a waste of pixels in any team event, please feel free to learn how you can improve yourself. I have no doubt i will find it much harder to splode you with my DPS cruiser after you've learned how2doitright.
Qapla'
The real question that ties everything tightly together is...the players realize there is a real problem with cruisers, yet the Devs supposedly play the game too. Therefore, we must conclude 1 of 2 possible outcomes.
#1 The Devs just do not care what the players want. Despite them saying they always put the players best interests first when designing the game.
OR
#2 The Devs who play the game have very, very little knowledge of the game that they designed and are actually so incompetent, that they fail to see there is a problem.
There can be NO OTHER CONCLUSION DRAWN.
What about they don't really fly cruisers? What about they have access to the best gear and they roll random PUGs so they think cruisers are fine? There are many conclusions that can be drawn... perhaps they test cruisers by having cruisers fight other cruisers and cruisers look fine. It goes on and on...
Perhaps they like the role they have given Cruisers and Science in the game and have yet to redesign things to allow them to be viable in thier predesigned roles in PvE?
R.I.P
Only Tac Toons have the Captain abilities to buff damage to the levels that make a difference and this high damage is best put through an escort for the obviuos Tac BOff reasons and this is seen as an unfairness for Cruiser players whom can not achieve the same in a Engineer heavy Tac Light BOff set-up even though they can tank like the rock of Gabraltor?
R.I.P
I am a very new player (I've been on for about a week), as such I haven't played around with character builds or ship layouts and cannot contribute to this thread as was intended. But I do want to give some background as to why I started reading this thread in the first place.
I've built my character to resemble a NPC in a game I used to run (he was obviously the captain. With my group of players, I damn well wasn't letting them defect or turn the ship into a floating distillery). So I designed him with that in mind. The game had them in a Galaxy Class so that's what I've been angling for. I started reading this thread as I was concerned it might under-powered etc.
I want to thank every poster in this thread. You've reminded me that I'm not playing a tabletop RPG, Bridge Commander or Rouge Squadron. I've been soloing (as I'm still getting my feet wet) and have felt I'd be a detriment to other players because of my lack of experience. As I've said I was reminded I am not in a single player game and as such, need to remember what I enjoyed about City of Heroes when I used to play that. I played a healer. A healer with 2 attack powers, maybe three. I couldn't solo worth a darn.
That being said it seems I can get the best of both worlds (my god that wasn't intended, but I typed it so it stays) and pick up some cruisers to heal in team play and escorts to solo or putz around.
I said I wanted to thank you all and I mean it. As a new player, every one of you has smacked my face (in a good way) and made me re-evaluate my current play style and build. I'll be keeping my Engineering captain and might pay for a few extra ship and bridge officer slots so I can team play and solo. I just hit commander and picked up an Akria Class to try and ease myself into the game better (Like I said, I'm used to single player, and they call for different tactics, even with the big ships).
I'll still be getting my Galaxy class, but now I have a ton more research to do to spec it out correctly. I suspect it will be my LFG ship that will offer all the heals and buffs it can, sacrificing power (like my CoH character) so I just float in the background hitting my heal macros.
Again, thank you. It was awesome reading you all breaking down the system and getting my interest sparked in numbers and builds (rather than flying around going "Whee!!").
Great thing is you're not limited to a single toon - it's not that expensive/long to pick up more; so you can have several wheeee! toons and then your group toons.
I admit I spend too much time going wheee! - even in group environments. There's just something about a Skittles BoP corkscrewing that makes me go wheeeeeeee!
While you can quibble, Star Trek has always been about the big ships of the line for their times and shares more ship design philosophy with the age of battle ships than with modern carrier warfare. In one sense this is a great fault of the game. It does not represent the IP well and people expect their massive cruisers to be the ultimate war machines as represented in the shows and books. I have to say that in light of the IP they pay to experience they are right to do so. This will ALWAYS be a bone of contention but STO is what it is...
One of my biggest issue with cruiser / engineer play mechanics is the fact that the core engineering BOFF powers like emergency power to weapons and shields suffer a 45 second cool down preventing effective old school chaining while tactical powers such as cannon rapid fire and scatter volley only require 30 seconds. This needs to change now. Make them 45 seconds too to lower escort DPS.
Currently, escorts can take damage far too well for tanks or healers to be valued members of a team. They need reduced hull and shield values.
This is a ?biggie? and would result in some screaming. Turn rates are fine but escorts need reduced overall speed so they can not run away so easily to evade damage. Accuracy values might should more easily trump defense. In this case, they might actually start to remember why extend shields should be respected rather than zipping away and a tank is valuable again.
When it comes to the viability of engineering powers and their usefulness I have come to belive that extend shields needs to be effective out to 10K like other powers but might should provide less resistance in compensation (15/20/25 base.) It might also should reduce threat generation on the protected target to aid in tanking with today?s high DPS builds.
Axillary to the Structural Integrity might should become the engineer?s tractor break too in order to compare with science polarize hull and tactical attack patterns.
Directed energy modulation sounds good on paper but sucks in application for beam weapon usage and that needs to change. It?s not good enough in threat generation or damage dealing ability to be useful to the typical engineer cruiser beam builds. It favors cannons too heavily and when looking over the ?great" FED cruisers uhm... cannon mounts...
I hate to say this, but to be honest, overall STO has an increasingly rotten set of play mechanics that need to be reevaluated from the bottom up from ship layouts to BOFF powers and weapon effects. I?d almost say that its time for STO 2.0.
More than anything, I?d like to see an engineer in his role with a cruiser as a valuable part of a space team again rather than waiting to here: ?Oh great, less DPS to meet the optional...?
While I agree with what you are saying here I think it would be easier and more viable to work with what we have here and now to make cruisers more useful to a team, I think that on top of a beam damage change to make them more useful to an unbuffed engineer I think the engineering powers need to be rethought and science... well science just needs a complete reset...
I've been thinking this as well, but if that's the case then I wish they would just tell us that and save the teeth gnashing.
Your avatar is awesome BTW.
Really good insights. I tend to agree with them from the PVE standpoint.
Finally a really good post on this thread that i can comment on. To much bickering on this thread... But the main problem with cruiser isn't that they are weak or bad. They just don't offer much to stf's or fleet events. Where dps trumps, tank always. The encounter designs of these instances needs to be reworked, along with new engineer boff abilities ensign tier and commander. Hopefully a balance pass on the systems as whole would be good too.
Unfortunately with free to play unless something is just so unbalanced that it starts to loose them players who pay for ships etc. Many of these minor to moderate design and balance complaints, will likely go unnoticed or really really low on the devs list.
I hope they surprise us maybe make blog or reply acknowledging at least some of the complaints we have and are in the works to be worked on or reviewed. I just hope as a cruiser engineer pilot that we will eventually get looked at least. Becuase i would like to feel like tanking actually helped in stfs....
You just have to learn how to make a proper build.
Check my siglink for info on how to make proper builds for different shiptypes.
PvE is way too easy in this game. If you can't complete an STF without an Escort, then you must be one of those guys I have to keep throwing TacTeams to in STFs so you don't blow up.
Here's what happened:
Map: KASE
Ship: Assault Cruiser
Cap type: Engineer
My build:
Fore Weapons:
3x Antiproton Beam Array mk XII [crth][acc][borg]
1x Quantum Torpedo Launcher mk XII [crth][acc][borg]
Aft Weapons:
Same as Fore
Shield:
MACO Resilient Shield Array mk XII
Deflector:
MACO Graviton Deflector mk XII
Engine:
Borg Assimilated Sub-Transwarp Engine
Devices:
Scorpion Fighters (nowhere else to put them), Subspace Field Modulator, Large Shield Battery, Large Weapon Battery
Tac Consoles:
Antiproton Mag Regulator mk XII [uncommon] x3
Engi Consoles:
Neutronium Alloy mk XI [rare] x4
Sci Consoles:
Field Generator mk XII [uncommon], Assimilated Module
BOff Setup:
Lt. Tac: TS1, BFAWII
Ensign Tac: TT1
Cmdr Engi: EPtS1, EPtW2, ET3, AuxtSIFIII (going to modify that)
LtCmdr Engi: EPtA1, EPtE2, EPtS3 (again, going to modify that)
Lt Sci: HE1, TB2 (probably going to modify that as well)
DOff:
Conn Officer (tt reducer)x2 [very rare]
Technician [very rare]
(whatever the DOff is that reduces cds on EPtX) x2 [very rare]
Power Settings Used:
100/50/25/25 <--- most used
25/50/25/100 <--- not as often but still used
50/100/25/25 <--- used at the end
Anyways, now that I have all the numbers down, started off KASE by dashing in and drawing aggro from the tac cube, and basically held aggro whilst tanking the entire time through a mix of EPtW and EPtS. I was on Offensive power mode so I was able to keep up a good 6-700 dph, and since it's a tac cube I was able to keep on torping it the entire time, used BFAW to increase DPS, and TS1 to keep it annoyed at me. Sufficed to say, my shields never went down until the end, and it never targetted anyone else. Then did the usual sit and shoot at probes until we cleared all the transformers and gates. Fought Donatra, and didn't hold aggro this time, but instead spent the whole match on my aux setting healing. Sufficed to say the only time any escorts died was when either my heals were on CD, or donatra one shotted them. In the end, donatra started targetting me, so I simply went defensive and just shot at her while keeping EPtS cycling.
Now as sad as this is going to sound, that was probably my best match as a cruiser. Which in my mind is pathetic. But I did my role, of tank and healer... and it went smoothly. Boring as fk for me, but it went smoothly. So I will concede that cruisers are not entirely useless. But their usefulness is not nearly as great as an escort... and in all honesty I would play a sci just because of their total mindfk ability lol...
Anyways, if you have any comments on my build that would be appreciated (as long as they are constructive, but feel free to trash me too, at this point I kinda dgaf...)
However, I would still like it if cruisers were a little stronger in damage dealing capability, if nothing else to draw aggro better without having to sacrifice skill points in threat control...
(I also did a few more ESTFs doing the same thing, just tanking and healing, and all of them except CSE went smoothly, even though in one of the ISEs the tac cube was being particularly nasty with crits and I ended up dying... also didn't help that the escorts that I had with me blew at dps... anyways yeah)
The prob I have is A Tac is great at DPS in both an escort OR a cruiser.
And engie is only good at DPS in an escort. In a cruiser you really only got one thing, Tank/Heal.
To me it seems busted that if you use a Tac Officer you can kinda do whatever the hell role you want to do and still provide good DPS while doing it.
For fun I put my Tac back in the Dread tonight and had a blast. Jump Lance + Tricobalt is psycho Damage. And feels great seing them kinda Crits. Making a cruiser do what an Engie could never do. lol
With utter boredom at your all to common train of thought(If I think this way so must everyone else) I respond.
Nope. Don't want the same or even equal damage to escorts.
Go ahead, hook me up to whatever legitimate lie detector test you want to it won't change.
If we go by the shows and the tech manuals yes. Cruisers are the supreme ships in Star Trek. But guess what. That was botched from day one. And it doesn't matter what I would like to see happen if a complete ground up design change happened. It won't.
So working with what the game has presented and the limits of the engine and community I would like to see a dps gain from Cruisers so that they can feel that they are again a meaningful contributor in PvE and PvP. Not the terminator that you have convinced yourself we are all asking for. I don't care for a 31/31/31 spec in an MMO.
Single player lol, well. Thats a different story +)
I'd have to ask you wouldn't I.
In the context of the show they are the best.
In this game they are not what they should be, and we know that and have acknowledge that. He is trying to work within the system as it is now. But you already know that but just want to argue and look like the bad boy on the block tossing out zingers and awesome one liners.
No it doesn't.
The flagship is wherever the admiral's flag is being flown.
Great word!
So stop hiding behind it.
ty
Well tac captains are the main damage dealers in this game, and unless you restrict ships to classes, they will always do highest dps in whatever ship they choose and be able to use whatever ship they want to enhance that. I know I posted that tac captains in cruisers confuse me, but after doing some experimentation on my KDF side with the vor'cha, I can see why. The natural high damage ability of the tac captain coupled with the tankiness of a cruser/battlecruiser is scary. From personal experience, I have been out-dps'd by a tac in an orb weaver. You can imagine how embarrassing that was, esp since I had two more weapons than he did, and better positioning, and he still drew aggro off of me.
Ultimate embarrassment to me though was I was out-aggro'd by an atrox. I almost quit the game out of shame after that stf lol... Granted it was a tac captain, but you're right, it's kinda odd that they are able to fill any role with almost stupid ease. Hell my tac on my kdf side has it easy street. I have no trouble building him, no trouble finding what works and what doesn't. There just is no issue there.
What it really comes down to is that the captain abilities on a tac are universally useful and universally powerful (APA3, FOMM, GDF etc) . Engi captains have miracle worker (not nearly as impressive as I want it to be, but hey, the full shield heal is nice), nadion inversion (surprisingly usefulless lol), EPS transfer, and rotate shields. They are good tanking abilities (within reason), but not quite as powerful or universal as tac captain abilities. As for sci, I will say nothing since I know nothing. Really, I don't. Never rolled a sci, have no idea how to even build a sci ship, or even what abilities etc. Sci is my undiscovered country persay lol...
I find it amusing that there is no response from this person now that it has been said that we are (or at least I am) open to possible input from him. I guess he only posts when he thinks there will be resistance... oh wells, his loss.
In my Sci ship with my Sci captain, it's a similar story. I don't tank as much, but I heal a lot and control as much as you can against the Borg in elites. I'd like to hit harder, but can live with where I am, especially with the crowd control I have outside of STFs.
My problem isn't about feeling useful to a team, contributing to getting the mission done or anything like that. My problem is when it comes to getting the optional. The optionals essentially demand only one thing, firepower. A good coating of teamwork helps, but firepower is largely the be all, end all of the optionals. Doesn't matter how well I can keep myself or others alive, or control the battlefield if you can't put the damage into where it's needed. I may be able to kill every Borg of Prey on Cure and destroy the nanite probes in my cruiser with little difficulty, but getting the required efficiency of doing both is difficult. I can hold the nanite spheres away from Nanite Transformer in Infected for all eternity if I want and slash the resistance on the Transformer as well as two tacs doing Fire on my Mark, but if it's not practically dead by the time the first gravity well has faded, it doesn't bode well for getting the optional.
Put simply, I feel the reason why Escorts are hailed as the kings of STF is simply their ability to get it done quickly, which because of the optional, is exactly what everyone wants. Otherwise, I enjoy flying Cruisers and Science ships, and in various missions, outperform my Tac captain who chews through cubes on elite like my Sci chews on probes.