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Compilation of why cruisers are UP
bareel
Member Posts: 3 Arc User
It has been brought to my attention that many feel a cruiser is underpowered in PvE and I am bored so here is a short list of the problems many but not all cruisers face.
Double Defense Penalty
To achieve the highest possible defense bonus you must be going at impulse speed ?23?. A cruiser has a lower defense bonus than an escort and a lower speed so they are forced to allocate more system energy to the engines to get a lower bonus. Does a ship get a lower amount of shield resistance from shield system power because of a low shield modifier? No they do not.
Resists and Heals Make the Tank
Let us be honest for a minute here. It typically does not matter what your maximum shield amount is, or hull when that tac cube gives you a dirty look. What matters is how high your resistances are from shield power and abilities along with how fast you can heal the damage. This makes the extra 'durability' of a cruiser translate into 'dies a few seconds later' because if the escort cannot tank it neither can that cruiser. Unless of course the team was selfish and refused to crossheal I suppose. In addition because of the crazy high amount % wise of combat damage/healing the passive ship regeneration amount differences are usually insignificant in determining if you tank the incoming damage or not.
+Damage Abilities Scale with Gear, Heals do Not
When you use that cannon rapid fire, or attack pattern beta, the bonus damage they grant is based on the amount of damage your ship and equipped weapons would do to begin with. On the other hand when you use emergency power to shields, or transfer shield strength you do not get a larger heal or more resistance because your ship is a cruiser. The escort next to you will get the same exact benefit aside from a minor passive shield regeneration amount assuming the same skills/aux power.
Its all about the boffs, and consoles
The reality of PvE is pretty simple, enough tank to survive and after that the more damage the merrier. Because Tac boffs offer the most damage, and the majority of needed heals/resist buffs are ensign eng/sci abilities, it stands to reason that a ship with high tac boff slots and low eng/sci boff slots would have better performance. This also extends to consoles where the eng resist consoles run into diminishing returns and you only need so many whereas the tac consoles do not have diminishing returns and maor damage the better.
MAD is BAD
A term from DnD 3E that means multiple ability score dependency and this can be extended/applied to STO as well in the subsystem energy area. An escorts only real concern is 125 weapons, enough engine to get max defense bonus and then they are free to dump the extra into shields. At the same time a cruiser wants over 125 weapons so their beams do some respectable damage, need more in engines for the bonus defense, and still want some auxiliary if they want to use a decent heal for a teammate and I haven't even covered shields yet. True they can cycle a pair of Epower abilities to mitigate that slightly at the cost of two more boff abilities but it is still a factor in their performance. This extends to Sci Vessels as well.
Disclaimer: I do not feel cruisers are extremely weak, useless, or anything of the sort. I do think they are underpowered for any content not requiring an uber-tank or uber-healer. I also think the idea of a true trinity or tank/healer in STO is not something I want to see content designed for as it is silly in concept and would harm the casual nature of the game.
Double Defense Penalty
To achieve the highest possible defense bonus you must be going at impulse speed ?23?. A cruiser has a lower defense bonus than an escort and a lower speed so they are forced to allocate more system energy to the engines to get a lower bonus. Does a ship get a lower amount of shield resistance from shield system power because of a low shield modifier? No they do not.
Resists and Heals Make the Tank
Let us be honest for a minute here. It typically does not matter what your maximum shield amount is, or hull when that tac cube gives you a dirty look. What matters is how high your resistances are from shield power and abilities along with how fast you can heal the damage. This makes the extra 'durability' of a cruiser translate into 'dies a few seconds later' because if the escort cannot tank it neither can that cruiser. Unless of course the team was selfish and refused to crossheal I suppose. In addition because of the crazy high amount % wise of combat damage/healing the passive ship regeneration amount differences are usually insignificant in determining if you tank the incoming damage or not.
+Damage Abilities Scale with Gear, Heals do Not
When you use that cannon rapid fire, or attack pattern beta, the bonus damage they grant is based on the amount of damage your ship and equipped weapons would do to begin with. On the other hand when you use emergency power to shields, or transfer shield strength you do not get a larger heal or more resistance because your ship is a cruiser. The escort next to you will get the same exact benefit aside from a minor passive shield regeneration amount assuming the same skills/aux power.
Its all about the boffs, and consoles
The reality of PvE is pretty simple, enough tank to survive and after that the more damage the merrier. Because Tac boffs offer the most damage, and the majority of needed heals/resist buffs are ensign eng/sci abilities, it stands to reason that a ship with high tac boff slots and low eng/sci boff slots would have better performance. This also extends to consoles where the eng resist consoles run into diminishing returns and you only need so many whereas the tac consoles do not have diminishing returns and maor damage the better.
MAD is BAD
A term from DnD 3E that means multiple ability score dependency and this can be extended/applied to STO as well in the subsystem energy area. An escorts only real concern is 125 weapons, enough engine to get max defense bonus and then they are free to dump the extra into shields. At the same time a cruiser wants over 125 weapons so their beams do some respectable damage, need more in engines for the bonus defense, and still want some auxiliary if they want to use a decent heal for a teammate and I haven't even covered shields yet. True they can cycle a pair of Epower abilities to mitigate that slightly at the cost of two more boff abilities but it is still a factor in their performance. This extends to Sci Vessels as well.
Disclaimer: I do not feel cruisers are extremely weak, useless, or anything of the sort. I do think they are underpowered for any content not requiring an uber-tank or uber-healer. I also think the idea of a true trinity or tank/healer in STO is not something I want to see content designed for as it is silly in concept and would harm the casual nature of the game.
Post edited by bareel on
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AND even if average PvEr or PvPer would love to get more DPV on their cruisers (DPS is pretty decent already) if they do it without forcing cruiser captains to sacrifice something it would kill whatever is left of the balance. And knowing how "well" Cryptics deals with balance are - they will do something like this.
So - live with the fact that it's better to have escort for all STO content but team-played PvP.
1. The expectaion. Many players think that Cruisers are the ultimative weapon of destruction, this leads to disapointmen. They imagine Kirk and Picard in their big flagships but it is not how STO works.
2. Poor quality and too easy PvE content in STO, which does not force people to actually learn the mechanics and synergies of various skills
3. Thus all ships can tank decently with basic BO skills, and there is no need for actual healers or tanks in PVE. Thus in STO, PVE is only DPS race.
4. Which leads to threads like this.
A cruiser can be very tough ship, while it does deal contant dps pressure on target. It lacks the spikes and burst of escorts, but is better prepared for battle. It is also invaluable in its team support role.
Doesn't translate well at all to startrek
I don't think it's possible to balance it I'n any respectable
Way either. Remember the cruiser has to be fun
And competive and that's where it fails miserably .
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
R.I.P
If devs play escorts, why are there so many more cruisers in the game, especially Klinkside?
vids and guides and stuff
[9:52] [Zone #11] Neal@trapper1532: im a omega force shadow oprative and a maoc elite camander and here i am taking water samples
I agree with this sentiment.
I was a tactical officer but now I'm an engineer, and I knew full well that in an eng cruiser I was not going to be the DPS murder machine I was. I accepted that and built my new character with a focus on support.
And I am loving it, in fact I am having more fun in my cruiser than I did in my old escort. It may not be a required role in STO, and yes I won't reap the rewards a higher DPS player could earn - but I have managed to score well in fleet actions just by playing my part.
Yup, I think you nailed it. If the devs added some STF's with a capture and hold component then all of a sudden tank cruisers would be more in vogue. The cruisers could be tweaked a bit to make them a bit more fun to play, but they will almost always take a second seat to DPS machines as things are.
I think the expectations part is the only real reason why we so see so many cruisers flying in sector space. Honestly, I thought STO was going to be a simplified Starfleet Command with an MMO captain, wow was I wrong!
in pve i can tank all enemys while flying with reverse speed.
4 Cannons 4 Turrets (Polaron) + TT1 + CRF1 (7,5 s cd doff) + EPtW1 + NAD + EPSFLOW and the Energy doffs the Mirror Assault Cruiser performs very well.
The average DPS witch is displayed in space is arround 4800 DPS @ 100 Weapons Energy.
But Torps are nearly Useless... Why did the big Ships has only 1 Torp Tube... it will be much more usefull if they have 2 Torptubs so the TS1 cann effect 2 launchers and give a massive Spread.
With the actual System you can do only damge if you are closer then 5 km... 180 Damage per Shot @ 10 km and 600 Damage per Shot @ 1 km...
The average DPS witch is displayed in space is arround 4800 DPS @ 100 Weapons Energy.
This sucks on cruisers.
At 1km you should be doing 100% of your possible damage with no drop-off for range. You state 600 damage per shot.
At 10km you should be doing 65% of your maximum damage. So at 10km you should be seeing roughly 350+ damage instead of 180.
180 DAMAGE PER SHOT makes it sound as if your beams are behaving as Cannons instead as they lose damage over range.
Cannons do 100% damage at 2km and at 10km they are suppossed to be doing 35% of maximum. So a cannon doing 600 points at 2km would do around 180 at 10km.
If you numbers are correct then it seems that beams may be bugged and are using the wrong depreciation of damage over range. Such a bug would greatly affect how Beams appear to be effective in combat and may be what is at the core of why Cruisers/Beam users seem to be weaker than they where before now.
Beams are meant to do more damage than cannons at longer ranges as part of the inherent stats they posses. If they are not then that is a error.
Beams = 100% damage at 1km / 65% damage at 10km. Depreciation is 4% per km starting at 2km.
Cannons = 100% damage at 2km / 35% damage at 10km. Depreciation is 8% per km starting at 3km.
R.I.P
No idea. I only noticed that the number provided showed a drastic drop off for beam over range than what is suppossed to happen.
Now I wonder if beams have been bugged this whole time that the "cruiser suck" mentality has been floating around.
R.I.P
He stated to be using cannons+turrets
Now I'm not saying that the game needs to play like it does on TV, but that's where people got their initial feel for star trek, on TV. They want their ship to be just like that... they want their defiant class ship to rip apart hostiles like its tearing through a wet paper sack, they want their big cruisers to blast holes in the sides of borg cubes, and they want their ships councilor to wear skimpy risa outfits. However, that doesn't translate well into STO. And unless they make some serious game breaking changes, it wont.
You mean they don't already?
Then his damage is straight on the money and there is nothing wrong.:o
R.I.P
If damage from NPCs get's much greater I'll go for 2 EPtW instead of EPtS and do as much DPS as I can before I die
There are a few extra reasons I'd like to add to the OPs post.
1. Way way back in season 1, when weapon power wasn't instantly replenished upon the end of a firing cycle, cruisers energy management abilities and consoles allowed them to be pretty competitive when it came to damage dealing.
2. The devs moved the shield consoles to science, effectively giving sci focused ships even tankier shields and taking away a good portion of tank from cruisers.
3. Devs halved the power boosting consoles.
4. The only really useful consoles engineering wise for cruisers are neutronium, the rest are traps for new players.
5. The difference between a cruiser and an escorts shields is tiny.
They don't effect them at all really. Elite difficulty isn't really all that different from normal difficulty, they just upped the hull, shields and damage dealt of NPCs. Since tanking is as insane as it is, an escort can happily tank an elite mob, with the only real visible difference being it takes 4 seconds to kill a ship rather then 3. Cruisers infact come off worse in elite difficulty, since they probably won't be able to get a shield down before the target has regenerated some of it. As such elite difficulty just compounds the cruiser issue.
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
As stated in a previous post (the one right above this one I believe), NPC Shields, Hull, and weapons are all significantly buffed between elites and normals. Also npcs have stronger damage resists on elite than on normal.
Ex.
Conditions:
No EPtW
Weapon Power at 125
Distance: 4k
Zilant Battleship on Normal: 1 mk XII AP BA shot: 1000 on hull
Zilant Battleship on Elite: 1 mk XII AP BA shot: 850 on hull
Lastly, NPCs on elite tend to be more proactive with their BOff abilities, and their AI is improved.
Escorts like the defiant only look that way because they are shown beating up smaller ships.
Remember the battle with the Lakota? A 80 year cruiser with a noname crew against the hero Worf commanded defiant. and all he managed was a stalmate.
Ingame? defiant is a death machine that can tank exceptionally well.
The super bug ship? they are just better fighters, once their special weaponry was equalized with adapted shields they went straight to cannon fodder material unless they rammed their way through the screen. Even stronger then the defiant.
And the list goes one.
Ships are setup to be mostly equal in power, even when they are not. You can fit the same weapons on all ships, even when some of those weapon systems are bigger then the entire ship they are fitted on. MK12 phaser array on a shuttle? Escort? no problem, whiel that array is bigger then those ships by itself.
Same number of weapon systems, basically, while cruisers can sport 8, escorts get 7 and sci ships 6. While in Trek cruisers have more like 2-4 times as many as an escort.
And the list goes one.
Make all ships equal is the problem.
I think there should be STFs tharequire all the specialties. a DPS fest for the escorts, and then STFs where engineers/cruisers are required and finally one that is sci power required.
People always talk about how cruisers are healers. so ok, lets be healers. first step: make sure we are needed by taking away the sufficient self healing escorts are capable of.
You want the damage? ok you get it- but you wont get the healing.
Escort heals both shield and hp wise should get crippled thus making sure that they actually need a crusier hanging around.
Better idea, just make all heals percentage based, job done
Better idea still: Make engineering consoles less pathetic, and actually give them straight out percentage values like tac consoles and have them cap at X% (which I know they already do, so keep that).