the danubes def need to be fixed. ive specced full in Inertial Dampeners and i can pop APO and polarize and still be almost completely stopped by danubes, if that and screwed up i dont know wat is.
i must have missed something somewhere, or they changed it....
??????
i look at it this way, if you want to spend a total of 6 points on energy resistance, you will get more effect if you put 3 in threat and 2 in plating, plus a little bit of kinetic resist too for free. in that chart i posted you can see its benefit
Completely didn't read this past the first page, but did some data gathering recently for siphons and interceptors and found some stuff.
Siphon Drones
Number of drones increases effect, but with diminishing returns
Benefit from Flow Capacitors
Does not stack with Plasmonic Leach
Does not stack with Aceton Assimilator
Does not stack with Energy Siphon
Greatly reduces benefits from Polaron procs
Interceptors
Number of interceptors increases uptime
Does not benefit from Flow Capacitors
Does stack with Plasmonic Leach
Does stack with Aceton Assimilator
Does stack with Energy Siphon
Regular effect from Polaron procs
Given this, what I'd like to see for siphon changes is along these lines:
1)The tick based system is implemented in a slightly different manner
--Ticks implemented as a debuff stack, so a target starts with 1 and works to 5, then resets.
--A hard cap placed on the number of debuffs (Let's say 30, so a full hangar)
--Excess drones would not increase the size of the debuff, but rather the average stack size.
2)The debuff is applied in a manner that allows external drains to be applied in tandem.
--The carrier must now actively work with his siphons to achieve debilitating effects.
With those changes, a few questions beyond me remain:
1)Is the drain a static number, or a percentage?
2)Is this drain being effectively countered by power insulators?
3)Can the combination of siphons and external power drains be effective enough that siphons don't need to benefit from flow capacitors?
1) Threat Control to 3 (from 0)
2) Electro-Plasma Systems to 6 (from 7)
3) Armor Reinforcement to 1 (from 5)
4) Starship Hull Plating to 6 (from 7)
5) Power Insulators to 6 (from 0)
Threat Control 3 + Armor Reinforcement 1 gives me 7.4% resistance to Kinetic damage. That's down from 9.6% (with Armor Reinforcement 5), but I get an extra 4.9% to Hull Plating (but, with the loss of a skill point, it averages out to 4.3%, for a total of 15%).
I also get 6 points into Power Insulators, which gives me about 42% resistance to drain (but the 2-set bonus from the MACO set adds 15 points, I think, it should be about 50% resistance or more).
Everything else stays the same on my build (and irrelevant to this conversation) . Thoughts?
I think I'm going to stick with this. It looks like I'm not losing much from Electro-Plasma Systems if I drop it by one (in fact, I'm not really losing anything according to that chart). I am losing 2.2% in Kinetic Resistance, but I hardly ever die from torpedoes anyways.
Well if we're on the subjects of hanger pets in pvp, someone in cryptic needs to look at the Tachyon Drones. Not only are they relatively squishy even with the advanced version, they don't drain squat against an engineer or science ship, and even against a tactical captain in a tac ship their contribution is mediocre even if you tried to spec into buffing your tachyon drones and equip flow capacitor consoles.
You can only deploy 1 pair at a time. You have to use both hanger slots to just deploy 4, that even combined have mediocre drain, with one of the longer cooldowns for a hanger pet. AND they cost 60k dilithium for 2 of the advanced, i got them so i can properly test them... and i regret it immensely.
Even in a PVE setting they suck, they still attract aggro like flies to a corpse, causing practically everything within 10km to start blasting away at them. Their drain on mobs is also mediocre with 4. With both hanger slots used that's a large loss of potential DPS or CC for mediocre shield drain.
Ever since they've been nerfed I have not seen ANYONE using them, not once in months. Considering they are a c-store item that people payed for, their near uselessness is just wrong, I haven't posted anything before cause i figured it was a obvious issue.
I hope cryptic takes a serious look at them, and if its just been me using them completely wrong and that everyone just doesn't like them for a different reason, please tell us.
when are thye gonna be on tribble/are they on tribble? i see all kinds of pve stuff for season 7 on there already but no pvp stuff.
am i blind or are we not going to get to test this with plenty of time, like it was told to us?
Give 'em a couple weeks. This is just the first wave of stuff coming to Tribble. If you don't see any changes related to Sub-nuc DOffs, SDO Doffs, or Siphon Drones by Friday of the week after next... then break out the pitchforks and flamethrowers.
Poorly designed, over powered mechanics, like those related to siphons, typically are quite nice for the people who embrace them. That doesn't make them good for game play.
__________________________________________
Foundry: Yet Another Borg Mission
It's terrible but easy, and these Borg are way cooler than the mess STO and Voyager left us.
May not actually be "way" cooler or even "slightly" cooler.
This is an improved change and a way to deter players to play explicitly energy drain builds. Yet i remain critical until reliably tested, and it shows this has an impact.
Edit:
Not that I care that much since they are easily countered, but what about making a uniform change to all energy drain related items? Then im thinking about plasmonic leech and aceton assimilators. Are there any changes coming to them? If not, then im curios why the devs are only focusing soley on the drones and not on the whole specter of the drain issue.
Prey tell....
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A change will be included with Season 7 that alters the behavior of Siphon Drones. We still consider this a work in progress, and are anxious to hear your feedback on the changes once they land on Tribble (no, we don't yet have a date on that).
The new Siphon Drones will work a bit differently, but are still quite powerful. Keep in mind that the owner of these Drones must sacrifice a good deal of their carrier's potential DPS in order to utilize them, and so they need to remain effective without being as explosively powerful as they currently are. They should be easier to counter, as you'll have more time to react to their effects.
Here's the changes as they are currently checked in:
1) Instead of immediately diminishing the target's power by a large %, the drain of each individual Siphon Drone will slowly ramp up to full capacity.
2) This takes 5 seconds to happen, at which point the Drone will have 1 tick of drain at full capacity, and then shut down for 1.5 seconds before starting again. When the drain turns back on, it is again draining at a low rate and has to ramp back up.
3) This "full capacity" drain is still a % of the player's current power pool. Since the % of drain is low while the player has a large pool, and high while the player has a diminished pool, it causes the overall drain to follow a shallow bell curve in effective drain value, during the first cycle. Subsequent cycles will allow targets to partially regenerate their subsystem power at the edges of that curve, enabling more opportunities to activate abilities that may counter the drains.
4) The amount of benefit this drain receives from the owners' Flow Capacitors skill has been reduced, allowing Power Insulators to be more reliably effective. Although the effects of resisting each tick of a Drone's power drain are hard to see, the "floor" threshold of the overall drain is different for players with a high resistance.
We're still looking into potentially limiting the number of drones that a single carrier can field at any point in time, as well as seeing whether or not it becomes necessary to place a stacking limit (hard cap) on the drain itself (mainly for cases where teams of carriers are using these Drones in tandem). For now, the above changes are all that we've actually performed.
Great job, devs. I welcome your addressing this issue and appreciate that it is being address both from the perspective of power drain and power insulation. Let's see how it works in-game.
The new Siphon Drones will work a bit differently, but are still quite powerful. Keep in mind that the owner of these Drones must sacrifice a good deal of their carrier's potential DPS in order to utilize them, and so they need to remain effective without being as explosively powerful as they currently are. They should be easier to counter, as you'll have more time to react to their effects.
I disagree with the sacrifice of DPS. As I understand they are spawned from a slow moving carrier that is sitting duck.
Sacrifice an amount of drain or damage if they are used in addition to other siphon abilities.
2) This takes 5 seconds to happen, at which point the Drone will have 1 tick of drain at full capacity, and then shut down for 1.5 seconds before starting again. When the drain turns back on, it is again draining at a low rate and has to ramp back up.
3) This "full capacity" drain is still a % of the player's current power pool. Since the % of drain is low while the player has a large pool, and high while the player has a diminished pool, it causes the overall drain to follow a shallow bell curve in effective drain value, during the first cycle. Subsequent cycles will allow targets to partially regenerate their subsystem power at the edges of that curve, enabling more opportunities to activate abilities that may counter the drains.
4) The amount of benefit this drain receives from the owners' Flow Capacitors skill has been reduced, allowing Power Insulators to be more reliably effective. Although the effects of resisting each tick of a Drone's power drain are hard to see, the "floor" threshold of the overall drain is different for players with a high resistance.
We're still looking into potentially limiting the number of drones that a single carrier can field at any point in time, as well as seeing whether or not it becomes necessary to place a stacking limit (hard cap) on the drain itself (mainly for cases where teams of carriers are using these Drones in tandem). For now, the above changes are all that we've actually performed.
Number of paths to take.
Limit of drones with a large cap on drain sounds more balanced. For example if the limit lets say is 4 (or any other number) and they have a large cap in drain it becomes more balanced to counter. Additionally, you can have a bigger number of drones, but in order to spawn new ones all the old must be destroyed by the opposition first. Given that the DPS of the owner is not sacrificed as mentioned.
For more balancing 2 tests:
1.Test it with a build that is full of power drain abilities(drones plus other abilities) against 3 builds, 1st that has no resistances, 2nd that has the average resistances and 3rd that has full resistances.
2. Siphon drones with no other power drain ability against the 3 aforementioned builds.
The results will show if it balanced, overpowered or nerfed.
already got word of the "fix" and that it isnt effective enough. all it has done is extend your life by a couple a of seconds.
siphion drones need a hard cap on how much each drone can take.
Or how much you can be drained from a certain source.
Siphon Drones (the speed, but not magnitude of the drain can scale with multiple drones on you) drain for a maximum of X. Tyken's can drain for Y. Polarons can drain for Z.
You can get drained for X+Y+Z, but X/Y/Z all have a hard cap on the total amount that they can drain from you.
1500x4 so 6000 for each facing is pretty small, 1-4 dual heavy shots would destroy that defence and maybe the time it takes to activate that power could of been spent concentrating on getting behind your attacker etc. Only having it a one time shield heal is good but the heal should be a bit bigger (maybe make the heal the same as what the borg (or similar) shield capacity would be on the ship you are using so that people who are using lower capacity shields are not at a disadvantage but I still am afraid that won't be enough (maybe do it once then again 5 seconds later).
An alternative would be to decrease the amount of time the regen happens to lower than 15 seconds say 5-10secs (since the amount of time BFI is up is one of the bigger issues with it imo) and maybe also lowering the amount of regen per second.
Edit: I just tested power siphon drones (in a Kar'Fi) against my level seven char on an alt account (I know theirs nothing in insulators but its more the general way the drones work thats important) and the drain is still far to much in power that is about 100 (close enough to 125) which will still make escorts (usally where weapon power is critical) almost useless against a Kar'Fi or any other KDF carrier for that matter. I think that only one hanger should be able to be slotted and its wings decreased to 1 with a maximum deployment of 2 wings in total ever.
Also maybe disabling its use on the Kar'Fi since the drones should not be used on a ship with such offensive potential (although Vo'Quv isn't terribly far behind it) and should only help with a science ship that can't deal much damage (when teamed thats fair enough for the support thats what science is meant to do).
Also the Kar'Fi Fer'Jai Frigates also should have their Aceton beam weapon decrease divided by 2 or 4 and the Daube should also have a tractor beam lockout cooldown about double (or several seconds more of double) of the changes mentioned at some point is this thread (15/16 seconds?).
Note: Numbers in this post are almost always rough estimates
Or how much you can be drained from a certain source.
Siphon Drones (the speed, but not magnitude of the drain can scale with multiple drones on you) drain for a maximum of X. Tyken's can drain for Y. Polarons can drain for Z.
You can get drained for X+Y+Z, but X/Y/Z all have a hard cap on the total amount that they can drain from you.
How about something simple:
Your Power Insulators (to a small degree) and EPS Systems (to a large degree) increases the minimum power level you are left with while being drained.
So let's say if you take 50 points of both, you'd end up with roughly 50 power at the minimum while being drained.
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As my above post states (unclearly I must admit) for me its a 50% 1500 shield heal once (Edit: to each facing) ever when BFI is activated at purple doff level.
Edit: I just tested power siphon drones (in a Kar'Fi) against my level seven char on an alt account (I know theirs nothing in insulators but its more the general way the drones work thats important) and the drain is still far to much in power that is about 100 (close enough to 125) which will still make escorts (usally where weapon power is critical) almost useless against a Kar'Fi or any other KDF carrier for that matter. I think that only one hanger should be able to be slotted and its wings decreased to 1 with a maximum deployment of 2 wings in total ever.
Well technically anything can be very powerful against a passive target, so I wouldn't say that testing things like you did is enough. I think the purpose of the update is to give people time to escape. Of course if you do that on a zombie it can't work...
Try it out against an experienced escort pilot? I can help you if you want. :P
Then if it's too powerful, capping siphons will make them almost useless. They are too slow and too weak and having your hangar pets useful for let's say 3 seconds before your target escapes is a huge waste for a carrier. If they get capped they need to be able to chase their target too. Wouldn't be a bad change btw.
Comments
Glad you've figured it out, make sure though you have at least 6 in insulators.
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i look at it this way, if you want to spend a total of 6 points on energy resistance, you will get more effect if you put 3 in threat and 2 in plating, plus a little bit of kinetic resist too for free. in that chart i posted you can see its benefit
gimmie $5 for a respec craptic!
Siphon Drones
Number of drones increases effect, but with diminishing returns
Benefit from Flow Capacitors
Does not stack with Plasmonic Leach
Does not stack with Aceton Assimilator
Does not stack with Energy Siphon
Greatly reduces benefits from Polaron procs
Interceptors
Number of interceptors increases uptime
Does not benefit from Flow Capacitors
Does stack with Plasmonic Leach
Does stack with Aceton Assimilator
Does stack with Energy Siphon
Regular effect from Polaron procs
Given this, what I'd like to see for siphon changes is along these lines:
1)The tick based system is implemented in a slightly different manner
--Ticks implemented as a debuff stack, so a target starts with 1 and works to 5, then resets.
--A hard cap placed on the number of debuffs (Let's say 30, so a full hangar)
--Excess drones would not increase the size of the debuff, but rather the average stack size.
2)The debuff is applied in a manner that allows external drains to be applied in tandem.
--The carrier must now actively work with his siphons to achieve debilitating effects.
With those changes, a few questions beyond me remain:
1)Is the drain a static number, or a percentage?
2)Is this drain being effectively countered by power insulators?
3)Can the combination of siphons and external power drains be effective enough that siphons don't need to benefit from flow capacitors?
You can only deploy 1 pair at a time. You have to use both hanger slots to just deploy 4, that even combined have mediocre drain, with one of the longer cooldowns for a hanger pet. AND they cost 60k dilithium for 2 of the advanced, i got them so i can properly test them... and i regret it immensely.
Even in a PVE setting they suck, they still attract aggro like flies to a corpse, causing practically everything within 10km to start blasting away at them. Their drain on mobs is also mediocre with 4. With both hanger slots used that's a large loss of potential DPS or CC for mediocre shield drain.
Ever since they've been nerfed I have not seen ANYONE using them, not once in months. Considering they are a c-store item that people payed for, their near uselessness is just wrong, I haven't posted anything before cause i figured it was a obvious issue.
I hope cryptic takes a serious look at them, and if its just been me using them completely wrong and that everyone just doesn't like them for a different reason, please tell us.
am i blind or are we not going to get to test this with plenty of time, like it was told to us?
Instead of crying about it you should embrace siphons, especially as a Sci Lol. They are quite nice when properly used ^^
Give 'em a couple weeks. This is just the first wave of stuff coming to Tribble. If you don't see any changes related to Sub-nuc DOffs, SDO Doffs, or Siphon Drones by Friday of the week after next... then break out the pitchforks and flamethrowers.
It's terrible but easy, and these Borg are way cooler than the mess STO and Voyager left us.
bort, whens this gonna hit so we can test it?
Edit:
Not that I care that much since they are easily countered, but what about making a uniform change to all energy drain related items? Then im thinking about plasmonic leech and aceton assimilators. Are there any changes coming to them? If not, then im curios why the devs are only focusing soley on the drones and not on the whole specter of the drain issue.
Prey tell....
PaxOttomana: gawd mirror event is like fighting a tsi premade, they keep comin and comin!
Great job, devs. I welcome your addressing this issue and appreciate that it is being address both from the perspective of power drain and power insulation. Let's see how it works in-game.
I disagree with the sacrifice of DPS. As I understand they are spawned from a slow moving carrier that is sitting duck.
Sacrifice an amount of drain or damage if they are used in addition to other siphon abilities.
That is balance. Incremental.
Loop idea is good.
Agree.
Agree.
Number of paths to take.
Limit of drones with a large cap on drain sounds more balanced. For example if the limit lets say is 4 (or any other number) and they have a large cap in drain it becomes more balanced to counter. Additionally, you can have a bigger number of drones, but in order to spawn new ones all the old must be destroyed by the opposition first. Given that the DPS of the owner is not sacrificed as mentioned.
For more balancing 2 tests:
1.Test it with a build that is full of power drain abilities(drones plus other abilities) against 3 builds, 1st that has no resistances, 2nd that has the average resistances and 3rd that has full resistances.
2. Siphon drones with no other power drain ability against the 3 aforementioned builds.
The results will show if it balanced, overpowered or nerfed.
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It's actually already on Tribble, as it's included in our baseline for the next code branch.
It should show up on Redshirt this week, though. Along with the BFI-Doff changes.
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awesome, i dont recall seeing it on the tribble notes though. maybe more complete notes are needed :P?
siphion drones need a hard cap on how much each drone can take.
Or how much you can be drained from a certain source.
Siphon Drones (the speed, but not magnitude of the drain can scale with multiple drones on you) drain for a maximum of X. Tyken's can drain for Y. Polarons can drain for Z.
You can get drained for X+Y+Z, but X/Y/Z all have a hard cap on the total amount that they can drain from you.
An alternative would be to decrease the amount of time the regen happens to lower than 15 seconds say 5-10secs (since the amount of time BFI is up is one of the bigger issues with it imo) and maybe also lowering the amount of regen per second.
Edit: I just tested power siphon drones (in a Kar'Fi) against my level seven char on an alt account (I know theirs nothing in insulators but its more the general way the drones work thats important) and the drain is still far to much in power that is about 100 (close enough to 125) which will still make escorts (usally where weapon power is critical) almost useless against a Kar'Fi or any other KDF carrier for that matter. I think that only one hanger should be able to be slotted and its wings decreased to 1 with a maximum deployment of 2 wings in total ever.
Also maybe disabling its use on the Kar'Fi since the drones should not be used on a ship with such offensive potential (although Vo'Quv isn't terribly far behind it) and should only help with a science ship that can't deal much damage (when teamed thats fair enough for the support thats what science is meant to do).
Also the Kar'Fi Fer'Jai Frigates also should have their Aceton beam weapon decrease divided by 2 or 4 and the Daube should also have a tractor beam lockout cooldown about double (or several seconds more of double) of the changes mentioned at some point is this thread (15/16 seconds?).
Note: Numbers in this post are almost always rough estimates
How about something simple:
Your Power Insulators (to a small degree) and EPS Systems (to a large degree) increases the minimum power level you are left with while being drained.
So let's say if you take 50 points of both, you'd end up with roughly 50 power at the minimum while being drained.
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Well technically anything can be very powerful against a passive target, so I wouldn't say that testing things like you did is enough. I think the purpose of the update is to give people time to escape. Of course if you do that on a zombie it can't work...
Try it out against an experienced escort pilot? I can help you if you want. :P
Then if it's too powerful, capping siphons will make them almost useless. They are too slow and too weak and having your hangar pets useful for let's say 3 seconds before your target escapes is a huge waste for a carrier. If they get capped they need to be able to chase their target too. Wouldn't be a bad change btw.
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