How about giving us some synergy?

dassemsto

Right now, Tactical Captains have all the advantage in STO space missions.

All STO space missions are about killing the enemy as fast as possible, and...
- Tac captains have 3 damage-boosting abilities and one debuffing ability.
- Sci captains have 1 debuffing ability and one useful shiield resist buff (with low uptime)
- Eng captains have 2 self-heals +EPS as buff everything ability. Also, Nadion for small increase in damage dealing.

How about if you added the following buffs to captain classes:

- Tac captain: +50 points to Inertal Dampers, Engine Power Skill, Maneuvrability, Stealth
- Sci captain: +50 points to Flow capacitators, Graviton Generators, Particle Generators, Torpedo Weapons.
- Eng captain: +50 points to Threath Control, Particle Generators, Hull Repair, Weapon Power Skill, Energy Weapons.

(50 points is the same as adding two console in a specified system. By adding 50 points to a subsystem power, I do not increase the actual power level by 50! By maxing out a subsystem power skill, I invest 99 points in it. 50 points equals about 3 points on the skilltree.)

gthaatar

The better thing to do would be to add more abilities and/or redesign several of the abilities that Sci and Eng. Captains already have. Its far easier to add and balance things out than to cut things and try and balance that.

As of now, Tactical Captains and their abilities are just fine. Most everything is useful and nearly every power is used in at least one Tac. Build thats isn't considered worthless. With Sci and Engi Captains however, there are a lot of powers that aren't used at all on any build or are very tricky (or for that matter costly, in more ways than one) to make useful, which results in most Sci/Engi captains using very similar builds.

Add new abilities and redesign the old ones and the careers will see more balance. What should be added or redesigned is up for debate, but both the other careers do need more useful offensive powers

dareau

If you're talking about the "5 unique science captain skills"...

1 is the strongest debuff in the game - subnucleonic beam
2 is a useful area effect - sensor scan. Toss on the "appropriate" DOff, and the sensor scan both boosts accuracy & debuffs the damage caused by the affected enemies.
3 is a useful area team defensive effect - scattering field
4 is the required team-boost, again, a defensive boost
5 is the photonic fleet, which, if anything, could use a boost to it's time-on-station (making it the equivalent of a space security officer's skill) and/or damage boosts (ships spawn accessing the weapon type(s) of the generating ship and has access to the appropriate console(s).

Thing is, due to the prevalence and effectiveness of self-healing, I find that I almost never need to activate the 2 defensive powers.

To hear it, the same situation exists with engineers, of their mostly-heal oriented powers, they have little final usefulness because the BOff powers (and some of the DOff effects) make standard healing so strong that they're only useful in certain situations (gang-tackles by 3+ escorts in a PvP coordinating bursts)

dassemsto

dareau wrote: »

If you're talking about the "5 unique science captain skills"...

1 is the strongest debuff in the game - subnucleonic beam
2 is a useful area effect - sensor scan. Toss on the "appropriate" DOff, and the sensor scan both boosts accuracy & debuffs the damage caused by the affected enemies.
3 is a useful area team defensive effect - scattering field
4 is the required team-boost, again, a defensive boost
5 is the photonic fleet, which, if anything, could use a boost to it's time-on-station (making it the equivalent of a space security officer's skill) and/or damage boosts (ships spawn accessing the weapon type(s) of the generating ship and has access to the appropriate console(s).

Thing is, due to the prevalence and effectiveness of self-healing, I find that I almost never need to activate the 2 defensive powers.

To hear it, the same situation exists with engineers, of their mostly-heal oriented powers, they have little final usefulness because the BOff powers (and some of the DOff effects) make standard healing so strong that they're only useful in certain situations (gang-tackles by 3+ escorts in a PvP coordinating bursts)

As far as SNB goes, it's a PvP ability only. Sensor scan has **** uptime, and requires you to run very high aux power to be good.

SNB and SScan are mostly useful in PvP premade v. premade, where there can be minutes between kills. In pug play or PVE, where you need to kill 3 enemies a minute, or you have one enemy that takes 3 minutes to kill due to a million HP, SScan is horribly inefficient.

Scattering field is meh. It's useful against bleedthrough damage, and HE, wich everyone should carry, makes it mostly redundant.

Sci fleet, yes, this is a good defensive skill, with lousy uptime. It also doesn't bring any damage.

Photonic Fleet? Seriously? As a Tac, one of my aft turrets deals more damage than this one. And the aft turret deals it where it's needed. PF is good for phaser procs and screenspam, and it melts if you look at it. That's it. (btw: it also has looong cooldown.

So yeas, Sci captains have some advantages in PvP, especially for the premades, but for the 99% of the playerbase, who never have, nor will, find themself in this situation, it's pretty much all TRIBBLE.

mbomberdavid

When i saw the post about synergy i thought it was going to advocate some type of bonus for a team if they included all three classes of player. Still, i enjoyed reading it nonetheless.

quiscustodiet

I agree that many Captain abilities aren't up to scratch.
I disagree with the conspiracy theory-ish presentation that Tactical Captains are perfect and the others suck: atm, the best Captain (Space) skillset is Sci by a longshot but anyway, all 3 have weaker abilites and all 3 require work.


I agree that passive Skill boosts would be a nice addition to Careers.
I disagree with the amounts proposed (+50 is huge) and the exact choices: some make no sense (Tac and Dampeners? Sci and Torpedo Damage?), some are useless (Stealth, come on), some of it goes completely against roles and balance (Eng getting all the DPS Skills), Eng gets 5 Skills while Sci&Tac get 4 and the Skills aren't the same levels for all.
Also, Threat Control should, at least in Space, be tied to Ship type more than Captain: adding Threat Control to an Eng/Escort or Eng/SV makes his job harder, not easier.


Refined version:
Sci: Flow Capacitors+16, Particle Generators+16, Graviton Generators+16
Tac: Weapons Training+16, Maneuvers+16, Targetting Systems+16
Eng: Hull Repair+16, EPS+16, Warp Core Potential+16
Much more thematically appropriate, balanced across all 3 and not so overwhelmingly huge that mixing up Captain Career and Ship Type is completely discouraged.