That's a good point--that it's the team. I used to think it was just me, that caused the Borg Red Alerts to fail, because of being a sci in a science ship, or just thinking I was an awful player. Then I started paying more attention to what was going on around me and noticed why it was I seemed to win in certain sectors (I tend to do well in Cardassian territory) and not in others (Alpha Centauri...ouch). So I started to notice there were certain things that the new players in those sectors tended to do that would kill the mission, versus in the sectors where more experienced players tended to be.
And it became clear that what would often do a team in was lack of coordination--stuff like splitting up to go after 2 battle groups at once, or not having someone deal with the regeneration probes to stop the mother ship from constantly healing.
Obviously none of that is news to you, but the upshot of it is that I found that once I learned the proper strategy--and my proper role as a sci--I even started to have success in "weaker" sectors with newer players (provided they don't split up), by harassing the regen probes to the point where even new players can land blows on the mother ship.
(Admittedly I still haven't really ever gotten comfortable with the engineering play style. But I feel comfortable as both a sci and tac.)
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My Fed SCI flies a sci ship, my KDF SCI flies a battlecruiser..(and if I should manage to score the mirror temporal destroyer she'll be flying that instead)
If thier powers/abilities/damage has been nerfed I really haven't noticed it that much over the least few years.
On the other hand I have seen weapons nerfed substancially time and again. And recently it seemed damage got turned down across the board.
I find myself having to lug an armorys worth of weapons about so I can change to what ever the target of the mission is more vulnerable to.
I love my SCI's In space I can debuff and otherwise make the target more vulnerable to the damage I can dish out. Fed Science ships are over all the most powerfull ships in the game with a good turn rate, decent firepower, marvelous shields. I have non sci captains that fly them I like them so well..
KDF Side my Sci is in a battlecruiser (no stock sci ship..funny how there seems to be no real issue with taking what makes the KDF unique and giving it to the feds, but give the KDF SCI ships.. oh no, not done, bad things will happen, star fall from sky, storms, earthquakes, volcano's tsunami's bad bad bad KDF, ask not for fair treatment)
I like my battlecruiser.. Thinking seriously of moving into a fleet K'tinga.. good turn rate, sweet pivit point, solid hull (as good as the stock vorcha) good BO lay out ((should be a sci ship version really should be)) good amount of console space... Nice to see a K'tinga with big nasty teeth.. With a KDF Battlecruiser I am easily able to bring the DPS and use my sci captain abilities to enhance my damage dealings..
Many players swear that eng should only be in cruisers, TAC in escort types, sci in sci ships. Those that insist on this are missing the subtleties of the game...do the math....and consider that giving yurself more options might just make you even more dangerous in battle,,, Min maxed characters/builds always have a nearly glaring critical weakness.
Mixing things up a bit narrows that vulnerability significantly. Its been that way in every computer game I've played over the last 30 years.. consider something totally different.
The problem lies here in the energy system and the talent trees. A tac should spend points in weapon energy, energy and projectile weapons. There is no discussion here (I am talking about the last tier). A sci and eng should of course spend points in aux, but also in weapons and energy and projectile weapons. you do want to shoot, I suppose. A tac can forget about aux, eng and sci cannot ignore the weapon department.
So the tac is the expert, while eng and sci are or weak damage dealers, or a kind of jack of trades.
As a matter of fact, some of my eng and sci captains have no points in aux energy, just so they too can have some bite. I do fly escorts though and I want my eng and sci captains keeping up with the tac captain. As far as it is possible.
Zero skill point emphasis on speed, crew survival, stealth, threat control, auxiliary power, subsystem repair, or anything else. I only spend points on ground skills because I have to.
Do damage, withstand damage, repair damage. That's it. I also mainly fly Defiants.
See... If they worked in a reverse hybrid tax, pushing everyone to avoid matching Tacs to Escorts, Sci to Sci, and Eng to Cruisers, it would be considerably more balanced.
The problem is ultimately that the Damage/Damage synergy of Tacs in Escorts is probably what's OP.
An Eng or Sci in an Escort isn't. A Tac in a cruiser or sci ship isn't.
The solution is either to penalize matching...
Or create buffs to incentivize mismatching (the shows always mismatched).
The advantage with the latter is that they could tailor the Buffs.
A Tac is a sci would get a bigger buff than a Tac in a cruiser. Tac in an escort needs no buff.
An Eng in a sci would get a bigger boost than an Eng in an escort and both would probably be a bit bigger than the boost Tacs would get in Cruisers but maybe smaller than the Tac + Sci combo boost.
See... If they worked in a reverse hybrid tax, pushing everyone to avoid matching Tacs to Escorts, Sci to Sci, and Eng to Cruisers, it would be considerably more balanced.
The problem is ultimately that the Damage/Damage synergy of Tacs in Escorts is probably what's OP.
An Eng or Sci in an Escort isn't. A Tac in a cruiser or sci ship isn't.
The solution is either to penalize matching...
Or create buffs to incentivize mismatching (the shows always mismatched).
The advantage with the latter is that they could tailor the Buffs.
A Tac is a sci would get a bigger buff than a Tac in a cruiser. Tac in an escort needs no buff.
An Eng in a sci would get a bigger boost than an Eng in an escort and both would probably be a bit bigger than the boost Tacs would get in Cruisers but maybe smaller than the Tac + Sci combo boost.
Two things - good to see you back, and
any buffing of the Sci/Eng or debuffing of Tac gets a huge whine fest going
Tac Captains want Buff after buff and nerf after nerf to the others - I remember listening to some premadona Tac in a Escort whining after they did something a while back to Sci to boost it a little and he was pissed that it normally took 10 sec to Destroy the crusier and now it took 15 sec - "I'm going to have to tell the Dev's(mommy) this is way OP"
any buffing of the Sci/Eng or debuffing of Tac gets a huge whine fest going
Tac Captains want Buff after buff and nerf after nerf to the others - I remember listening to some premadona Tac in a Escort whining after they did something a while back to Sci to boost it a little and he was pissed that it normally took 10 sec to Destroy the crusier and now it took 15 sec - "I'm going to have to tell the Dev's(mommy) this is way OP"
Thanks!
Here's the deal, though: It would come alongside Tac+Cruiser and Tac+Science Vessel buffs. Now, the buffs would not necessarily all be perfectly proportional.
But the idea is to raise effectiveness to something more like Tac+Escort for all other combos.
Now, that also means that Engineers and Science captains who want the best DPS would fly escorts, which I think is the design goal anyway.
But what it would do is end the idea that captain profession and ship are supposed to match by creating strong buffs to encourage mismatching.
Tac+Escort would still do the best DPS but the buffs would be strong enough to genuinely make Sci vessels (and to a lesser extent cruisers) more appealing for Tac Captains than escorts are.
Basically, mismatching would become the ideal while matching would be suboptimal and useful for specialization.
Pretty much this, I only fly one toon these days. An engineer in an escort.
Yeah, I probably cannot put out as much spike damage as a tac can, but then I last much longer in a fight.... :cool:
I do not agree that the Tactical is the be all and end all class in the game. Escorts however, seem to be the best suited for most of the pve content within sto.
Here's the deal, though: It would come alongside Tac+Cruiser and Tac+Science Vessel buffs. Now, the buffs would not necessarily all be perfectly proportional.
But the idea is to raise effectiveness to something more like Tac+Escort for all other combos.
Now, that also means that Engineers and Science captains who want the best DPS would fly escorts, which I think is the design goal anyway.
But what it would do is end the idea that captain profession and ship are supposed to match by creating strong buffs to encourage mismatching.
Tac+Escort would still do the best DPS but the buffs would be strong enough to genuinely make Sci vessels (and to a lesser extent cruisers) more appealing for Tac Captains than escorts are.
Basically, mismatching would become the ideal while matching would be suboptimal and useful for specialization.
I like this idea. I enjoy mismatching anyway, and I enjoy having options. This gives flexibility and lets tac+escort still have their epeen bragging rights and lets everyone else get some cybercookies too.
It probably won't ever happen for all of those reasons.
Wait, it's still too soon after Christmas to be that cynical... It's a great idea and I want to subscribe to your newsletter.
I can agree, that aspect of STO is unbalanced. Hull is not near as important as it should be in STO
Though one more of these Tactical/Escort whinefests and they will win free toaster.
Well, if I could redesign it all...
Firepower and sustained DPS between types of ships would be equal but not equally distributed over time or direction.
I'd have made mines/probes/platforms a sci thing. I'd have given all cruisers shuttles. I'd have made escorts forward cannons.
All three would also be roughly equally durable, with three defensive stats: Evasion (which goes down quickly but guarantees a total miss), Shields (which goes down less quickly and aborbs), and Hull (which goes down slowest). The classes would be generally great at one, good at another, and bad at one although something like a Carrier might be a special case where it's bad at two and that much better at hull as a result and, on the other end, fighters and shuttles might be similarly beyond great at evasion and balanced for regular ship combat, with lousy shields and hull to make up for amazing evasion.
Overall, equal firepower and durability for all classes but different rates of damage/resistance.
Against an enemy with a one shot weapon, for example, the ideal tank would be an escort because it would avoid sporadic damage entirely. Against a sustained DPS enemy, cruisers would be the tank.
I agree that tac captains are overpowered - if and only if they are set into a tac ship, particularily in a cannon build. The synergies of tac boff powers, tac captain powers and a high base weapon damage are just too extreme. On the other hand, the balance of a tac in a cruiser seems fine. You could probably build around this somehow, by having all attack patterns share cooldowns across boffs and captain, or something like that.
But I think the problem is actually more fundamental in the way roles are split up traditionally in games like this one.
The trinity of "damage dealer - healer - crowd controller" is very satisfying for the damage dealer, possibly acceptable for the crowd controller and rather frustrating for the healer. The damage dealer gets to defeat the enemy, the crowd controller blows away small stuff, and the healer... well... at best, he prevents deaths.... which is neither especially visible nor very measurable for the game engine.
Why not split up the roles differently, for example, by having three types of enemies? Say:
One class is best at defeating the slow big enemies: Lots of damage potential, lots of hitpoints, but bad accuracy to hit small agile targets. This would be the cruiser route.
One class is best at defeating the smart ability enemies: Mediocre damage, mediocre hitpoints, but lots of immunity abilities that only a captain/ship of the same type can penetrate - and not for its team by debuffing the target, but for themselves by buffing themselves. This would be the science ship route.
And finally, one class that is good at defeating small, agile targets that are hard to hit and, indiviually, do not that much damage, but can be rather annoying because they won't be easy to hit by the big guys. These would be escort captains in STO, with some AOE added.
Ideally, these three classes would be balanced out so that on 1v1, each class has about a 50% chance to defeat any other or its own class... but same class vs. same class would be the shortest fight among such duels.
Carriers would be a middle route between the cruiser and the escort route, having some of both but not being especially good in either.
Captain-wise, this could boil down to something like this:
Engineer Captains, beeing intended as cruiser captains, add raw damage potential and hitpoints/survivability.
Tactical Captains add accuracy and defense to their ship.
Of course, this would mean to completely redesign captain and boff powers in STO, which is not going to happen for obvious reasons. But a new game should probably do something like this. Complaints about one class being best at killing everything would vanish, because simply, PvE would include opponents of all three types, and in PvP, that would sort of balance itself out as long as both teams have a similar composition.
You just described how BSGO used to be, but then all the little fighter pilots whined about how they were getting killed too easily and how they couldn't do anything against debuffs, and then they got buffed and everything got nerfed... and now they are invincible with their full avoidance builds. So at this point, I just stopped playing.
Your idea is ideal, but too open for problems and exploiting. And it would have to stay that way with no changes. So it's ideal, but not modular, so it will never be implemented.
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 can agree, that aspect of STO is unbalanced. Hull is not near as important as it should be in STO
Though one more of these Tactical/Escort whinefests and they will win free toaster.
I mean it's more glaring with the KDF ships - yes I fly mostly Bops - B'rel and heavy Bop - and they should have low hull as they are usually small and lightly armored
But the fact that a jem bug can have 80%+ the Hull of a Fleet Vor'cha or 70% the Hull of a Fleet Neg'var - the most heavily armored ships just below the Dominon Dreadnought - is Laughable
How can the Fleet Neg'Var which is basically a flying hunk of metal have only 20% more hull then a Jem Bug or a Defiant??
You do realize that sci characters sci ships are next to useless in STF's, right?
Thats because they don't know how to make a stf build. When I took my sci in a sci ship in elite STF the first time, I made sure it had enough dps and crowd control to guard 4 probes at once in KASE, and enough dps and survivability to solo a cube, and has a lot of heals to give out to team at same time. Been in lots of groups where the tac escorts couldnt solo a cube or guard probes.
Also some, but not many tac escorts can solo the cube while guarding probes, very easy for me as sci.
I hadn't noticed any changes. Ship combat is still good. I can take and dish it out. Which I rarely get killed now. Ground I win that most of the time. So far 2 missions handed me a good beating. So that was a challenge.
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There are SO many people in STO who talk ad nauseam about space combat and somehow SO few who just don't get it. You, sir, get it and thank you for educating the unwashed masses. You simply are not going to do much of anything within the established timers with a bunch of beam cruisers plinking away, and that's a fact.
Cruisers serve no role other than to soak up damage which isn't the most useful function except in a very limited number of scenarios:
Certain PVP encounters
Hive Onslaught Elite where you need to tank and heal
Boldly They Rode or Tholian Red Alerts...wherever there's copious NPC spam
Cruisers need a small buff to damage like Science got with Sensor Analysis, and wouldn't mind a similarly-sized insta-heal nerf since there's too much of that in STO space combat anyway. Specifically I'd like to see cruisers with beam arrays be able to hit out from 12km, and if you stack some Energy Weapons doffs, up to 15km max. If not that, then give beam arrays on cruisers a flat accuracy bonus.
This is usually more trouble than it's worth since you only fly one ship at a time anyway. But I do keep certain ships on all my Fed toons since they're so effective: Patrol Escort, Advanced Escort w/ MVAM, Freebie Odyssey, and Armitage.
Regarding damage-buffs for cruisers. . .you already have one, technically. Emergency Power to Weapons. What needs to happen is the Emergency Power system needs to be tweaked a bit, as it's very difficult to fit more than 2-3 on the ship at once, and people prefer the shields or aux one, or engine. The weapons one doesn't last long enough, the damage buff is 5 seconds, the power boost is 30 seconds. The level 1 weapon boost is just 7.5%, as well, which is pretty marginal. Increase the damage buff to 15 seconds and rework the emergency power abilities so they interfere with each other less, and you'll have the weapon buff you need for cruisers. Maybe buff the percentages by 5 points per level, as well?
Mind, this would definitely be in exchange for the uber-tanking abilities cruisers have. I'd hate to see an uber-tanking cruiser dishing out DPS like that.
My PvP toon is Krov, of The House of Snoo. Beware of my Hegh'ta of doom.
I mean it's more glaring with the KDF ships - yes I fly mostly Bops - B'rel and heavy Bop - and they should have low hull as they are usually small and lightly armored
But the fact that a jem bug can have 80%+ the Hull of a Fleet Vor'cha or 70% the Hull of a Fleet Neg'var - the most heavily armored ships just below the Dominon Dreadnought - is Laughable
How can the Fleet Neg'Var which is basically a flying hunk of metal have only 20% more hull then a Jem Bug or a Defiant??
This makes absolutly no sense!
I agree though such is just one of many issues with STO.
The biggest issue is that almost all PvE is nothing but a DPS race and players are freaking out because the Tac is best at this simple feat.
If they could fix that things would be better
Healing though is actually stronger in the game but unfortunately counts for very little PvE-wise.
I agree though such is just one of many issues with STO.
The biggest issue is that almost all PvE is nothing but a DPS race and players are freaking out because the Tac is best at this simple feat.
If they could fix that things would be better
Healing though is actually stronger in the game but unfortunately counts for very little PvE-wise.
It's true - I guess we will never have a system that makes ship classes vastly different like in real life - or even on the show.
In real life naval warfare you would never have a Frigate Captain with 20 guns sighting a Heavy Man-O-war with 120 guns and say - "hey look over there - man-o-war - let's dance"
Or a Japaneese Destroyer out hunting subs comes in sight of the USS Iowa Battleship - "I think we can take Her she only has 9 -16in main guns and 2 layers of Hull"
No - in Both cases they would use their superiour speed to: RUN!!
It's true - I guess we will never have a system that makes ship classes vastly different like in real life - or even on the show.
In real life naval warfare you would never have a Frigate Captain with 20 guns sighting a Heavy Man-O-war with 120 guns and say - "hey look over there - man-o-war - let's dance"
Or a Japaneese Destroyer out hunting subs comes in sight of the USS Iowa Battleship - "I think we can take Her she only has 9 -16in main guns and 2 layers of Hull"
No - in Both cases they would use their superiour speed to: RUN!!
Vastly different... no. They could just bump the hull of Cruisers, though healing may have to take a hit in the process.
Not neccassarily a bad thing considering it would lower the healing of escorts as well.
That hits another point of missconception that I think many Cruisers pilots are under, that Escort heal as well as Cruiser.
They do not.
What escorts are doing to survive in combat is stacking thier resists, which any cruiser can do better.
Most escorts only have access to EPTS1 or EPTS2 which gives a 30 second damage reduction of 18% and 24% respectively.
Most cruisers can use EPTS3 which gives a 30% damage reduction.
The same can be said for the science abilites of PH, HE, TSS.
Basically cruisers often have access to the better resist skills allowing thenm to cap out thier resists quicker and easier.
Vastly different... no. They could just bump the hull of Cruisers, though healing may have to take a hit in the process.
Not neccassarily a bad thing considering it would lower the healing of escorts as well.
That hits another point of missconception that I think many Cruisers pilots are under, that Escort heal as well as Cruiser.
They do not.
What escorts are doing to survive in combat is stacking thier resists, which any cruiser can do better.
Most escorts only have access to EPTS1 or EPTS2 which gives a 30 second damage reduction of 18% and 24% respectively.
Most cruisers can use EPTS3 which gives a 30% damage reduction.
The same can be said for the science abilites of PH, HE, TSS.
Basically cruisers often have access to the better resist skills allowing thenm to cap out thier resists quicker and easier.
Agreed. Cruisers do have a better capability to survive an attack, especially the Fleet Galaxy and Engineer Odyssey with 5 engineer consoles. Most cruiser captains have problems with survival because they dont know how to work as a team. A formation of 5 cruisers that are healing and buffing each other as well as proving fire support for each other can be a scary (and rarely seen) event in a PvP zone.
Also, when it comes to the "Starbase Blockade" stf, my sci Nebula is 5 times more capable of saving the freighters than ,y Armitage or other escorts can.
Agreed. Cruisers do have a better capability to survive an attack, especially the Fleet Galaxy and Engineer Odyssey with 5 engineer consoles. Most cruiser captains have problems with survival because they dont know how to work as a team. A formation of 5 cruisers that are healing and buffing each other as well as proving fire support for each other can be a scary (and rarely seen) event in a PvP zone.
Also, when it comes to the "Starbase Blockade" stf, my sci Nebula is 5 times more capable of saving the freighters than ,y Armitage or other escorts can.
Rare event now, but once the fedball of Cruisers focus firing on targets blotted out the suns........
Thats because they don't know how to make a stf build. When I took my sci in a sci ship in elite STF the first time, I made sure it had enough dps and crowd control to guard 4 probes at once in KASE, and enough dps and survivability to solo a cube, and has a lot of heals to give out to team at same time. Been in lots of groups where the tac escorts couldnt solo a cube or guard probes.
Also some, but not many tac escorts can solo the cube while guarding probes, very easy for me as sci.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
IF your goal is to complete content as quickly and efficiently as possible than no, nothing is even close to the tac/escort/dhc combo 95% of the time. Hence why I stick to having 2 out of those 3 on the majority of my toons.
I noticed an STF story so i'll share one. Just got done in a KASE, I took guard left right as tac cube blew I evasive over and pop one of the gens, then killed the two probes. Killed other gen and cube, then two probes. Killed back two gens and started working on the big one, killed one more wave of probes. Then finished off the big one. No other combination could do that solo by the time the 5th spawn hit and infact it was the first big gen (sorry i'm terri-bad remembering silly names) down. Ok maybe a tric bomber but thats about it. I gotta say I impressed myself a bit as I hadn't quite noticed how much higher his DPS had become with the few alterations and additions in gear he received with season 7.
On the other hand if your goal is simply to complete content you can fly any ship you want with white/green Mk 10 gear provided you use the right build/setup for that particular ship.
And if you want to be a top dog at PvP your only choice is to make a premade group focusing on whatever broken uber combo your heart desires for the times. Right now I hear Tric-bomber groups are popular and FaW sub nuke doff groups with a good healer and an escort or two for killing whoever gets stripped works well too.
Comments
And it became clear that what would often do a team in was lack of coordination--stuff like splitting up to go after 2 battle groups at once, or not having someone deal with the regeneration probes to stop the mother ship from constantly healing.
Obviously none of that is news to you, but the upshot of it is that I found that once I learned the proper strategy--and my proper role as a sci--I even started to have success in "weaker" sectors with newer players (provided they don't split up), by harassing the regen probes to the point where even new players can land blows on the mother ship.
(Admittedly I still haven't really ever gotten comfortable with the engineering play style. But I feel comfortable as both a sci and tac.)
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If thier powers/abilities/damage has been nerfed I really haven't noticed it that much over the least few years.
On the other hand I have seen weapons nerfed substancially time and again. And recently it seemed damage got turned down across the board.
I find myself having to lug an armorys worth of weapons about so I can change to what ever the target of the mission is more vulnerable to.
I love my SCI's In space I can debuff and otherwise make the target more vulnerable to the damage I can dish out. Fed Science ships are over all the most powerfull ships in the game with a good turn rate, decent firepower, marvelous shields. I have non sci captains that fly them I like them so well..
KDF Side my Sci is in a battlecruiser (no stock sci ship..funny how there seems to be no real issue with taking what makes the KDF unique and giving it to the feds, but give the KDF SCI ships.. oh no, not done, bad things will happen, star fall from sky, storms, earthquakes, volcano's tsunami's bad bad bad KDF, ask not for fair treatment)
I like my battlecruiser.. Thinking seriously of moving into a fleet K'tinga.. good turn rate, sweet pivit point, solid hull (as good as the stock vorcha) good BO lay out ((should be a sci ship version really should be)) good amount of console space... Nice to see a K'tinga with big nasty teeth.. With a KDF Battlecruiser I am easily able to bring the DPS and use my sci captain abilities to enhance my damage dealings..
Many players swear that eng should only be in cruisers, TAC in escort types, sci in sci ships. Those that insist on this are missing the subtleties of the game...do the math....and consider that giving yurself more options might just make you even more dangerous in battle,,, Min maxed characters/builds always have a nearly glaring critical weakness.
Mixing things up a bit narrows that vulnerability significantly. Its been that way in every computer game I've played over the last 30 years.. consider something totally different.
So the tac is the expert, while eng and sci are or weak damage dealers, or a kind of jack of trades.
As a matter of fact, some of my eng and sci captains have no points in aux energy, just so they too can have some bite. I do fly escorts though and I want my eng and sci captains keeping up with the tac captain. As far as it is possible.
1) Weapon power/skill.
2) Shields. Strength/healing.
3) Hull. Strength/healing.
Zero skill point emphasis on speed, crew survival, stealth, threat control, auxiliary power, subsystem repair, or anything else. I only spend points on ground skills because I have to.
Do damage, withstand damage, repair damage. That's it. I also mainly fly Defiants.
Engineers weak damage dealers?? I do not think so as well. They also can do fine dealing damage.
The Tactical is an expert at combat!! Well of course he is. Its all a Tac does.
To compare the Science and Engineering classes damage output to a Tactical is silly. Of course the Tac is a better DD.
R.I.P
See... If they worked in a reverse hybrid tax, pushing everyone to avoid matching Tacs to Escorts, Sci to Sci, and Eng to Cruisers, it would be considerably more balanced.
The problem is ultimately that the Damage/Damage synergy of Tacs in Escorts is probably what's OP.
An Eng or Sci in an Escort isn't. A Tac in a cruiser or sci ship isn't.
The solution is either to penalize matching...
Or create buffs to incentivize mismatching (the shows always mismatched).
The advantage with the latter is that they could tailor the Buffs.
A Tac is a sci would get a bigger buff than a Tac in a cruiser. Tac in an escort needs no buff.
An Eng in a sci would get a bigger boost than an Eng in an escort and both would probably be a bit bigger than the boost Tacs would get in Cruisers but maybe smaller than the Tac + Sci combo boost.
Two things - good to see you back, and
any buffing of the Sci/Eng or debuffing of Tac gets a huge whine fest going
Tac Captains want Buff after buff and nerf after nerf to the others - I remember listening to some premadona Tac in a Escort whining after they did something a while back to Sci to boost it a little and he was pissed that it normally took 10 sec to Destroy the crusier and now it took 15 sec - "I'm going to have to tell the Dev's(mommy) this is way OP"
Thanks!
Here's the deal, though: It would come alongside Tac+Cruiser and Tac+Science Vessel buffs. Now, the buffs would not necessarily all be perfectly proportional.
But the idea is to raise effectiveness to something more like Tac+Escort for all other combos.
Now, that also means that Engineers and Science captains who want the best DPS would fly escorts, which I think is the design goal anyway.
But what it would do is end the idea that captain profession and ship are supposed to match by creating strong buffs to encourage mismatching.
Tac+Escort would still do the best DPS but the buffs would be strong enough to genuinely make Sci vessels (and to a lesser extent cruisers) more appealing for Tac Captains than escorts are.
Basically, mismatching would become the ideal while matching would be suboptimal and useful for specialization.
Pretty much this, I only fly one toon these days. An engineer in an escort.
Yeah, I probably cannot put out as much spike damage as a tac can, but then I last much longer in a fight.... :cool:
I do not agree that the Tactical is the be all and end all class in the game. Escorts however, seem to be the best suited for most of the pve content within sto.
My opinion mind
I like this idea. I enjoy mismatching anyway, and I enjoy having options. This gives flexibility and lets tac+escort still have their epeen bragging rights and lets everyone else get some cybercookies too.
It probably won't ever happen for all of those reasons.
Wait, it's still too soon after Christmas to be that cynical... It's a great idea and I want to subscribe to your newsletter.
I can agree, that aspect of STO is unbalanced. Hull is not near as important as it should be in STO
Though one more of these Tactical/Escort whinefests and they will win free toaster.
R.I.P
Well, if I could redesign it all...
Firepower and sustained DPS between types of ships would be equal but not equally distributed over time or direction.
I'd have made mines/probes/platforms a sci thing. I'd have given all cruisers shuttles. I'd have made escorts forward cannons.
All three would also be roughly equally durable, with three defensive stats: Evasion (which goes down quickly but guarantees a total miss), Shields (which goes down less quickly and aborbs), and Hull (which goes down slowest). The classes would be generally great at one, good at another, and bad at one although something like a Carrier might be a special case where it's bad at two and that much better at hull as a result and, on the other end, fighters and shuttles might be similarly beyond great at evasion and balanced for regular ship combat, with lousy shields and hull to make up for amazing evasion.
Overall, equal firepower and durability for all classes but different rates of damage/resistance.
Against an enemy with a one shot weapon, for example, the ideal tank would be an escort because it would avoid sporadic damage entirely. Against a sustained DPS enemy, cruisers would be the tank.
You just described how BSGO used to be, but then all the little fighter pilots whined about how they were getting killed too easily and how they couldn't do anything against debuffs, and then they got buffed and everything got nerfed... and now they are invincible with their full avoidance builds. So at this point, I just stopped playing.
Your idea is ideal, but too open for problems and exploiting. And it would have to stay that way with no changes. So it's ideal, but not modular, so it will never be implemented.
I mean it's more glaring with the KDF ships - yes I fly mostly Bops - B'rel and heavy Bop - and they should have low hull as they are usually small and lightly armored
But the fact that a jem bug can have 80%+ the Hull of a Fleet Vor'cha or 70% the Hull of a Fleet Neg'var - the most heavily armored ships just below the Dominon Dreadnought - is Laughable
How can the Fleet Neg'Var which is basically a flying hunk of metal have only 20% more hull then a Jem Bug or a Defiant??
This makes absolutly no sense!
(Although part of that is that I think torpedoes should possibly be longer cd, less likely to hit, but do a HUGE amount of damage)
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Thats because they don't know how to make a stf build. When I took my sci in a sci ship in elite STF the first time, I made sure it had enough dps and crowd control to guard 4 probes at once in KASE, and enough dps and survivability to solo a cube, and has a lot of heals to give out to team at same time. Been in lots of groups where the tac escorts couldnt solo a cube or guard probes.
Also some, but not many tac escorts can solo the cube while guarding probes, very easy for me as sci.
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Regarding damage-buffs for cruisers. . .you already have one, technically. Emergency Power to Weapons. What needs to happen is the Emergency Power system needs to be tweaked a bit, as it's very difficult to fit more than 2-3 on the ship at once, and people prefer the shields or aux one, or engine. The weapons one doesn't last long enough, the damage buff is 5 seconds, the power boost is 30 seconds. The level 1 weapon boost is just 7.5%, as well, which is pretty marginal. Increase the damage buff to 15 seconds and rework the emergency power abilities so they interfere with each other less, and you'll have the weapon buff you need for cruisers. Maybe buff the percentages by 5 points per level, as well?
Mind, this would definitely be in exchange for the uber-tanking abilities cruisers have. I'd hate to see an uber-tanking cruiser dishing out DPS like that.
I agree though such is just one of many issues with STO.
The biggest issue is that almost all PvE is nothing but a DPS race and players are freaking out because the Tac is best at this simple feat.
If they could fix that things would be better
Healing though is actually stronger in the game but unfortunately counts for very little PvE-wise.
R.I.P
It's true - I guess we will never have a system that makes ship classes vastly different like in real life - or even on the show.
In real life naval warfare you would never have a Frigate Captain with 20 guns sighting a Heavy Man-O-war with 120 guns and say - "hey look over there - man-o-war - let's dance"
Or a Japaneese Destroyer out hunting subs comes in sight of the USS Iowa Battleship - "I think we can take Her she only has 9 -16in main guns and 2 layers of Hull"
No - in Both cases they would use their superiour speed to: RUN!!
Vastly different... no. They could just bump the hull of Cruisers, though healing may have to take a hit in the process.
Not neccassarily a bad thing considering it would lower the healing of escorts as well.
That hits another point of missconception that I think many Cruisers pilots are under, that Escort heal as well as Cruiser.
They do not.
What escorts are doing to survive in combat is stacking thier resists, which any cruiser can do better.
Most escorts only have access to EPTS1 or EPTS2 which gives a 30 second damage reduction of 18% and 24% respectively.
Most cruisers can use EPTS3 which gives a 30% damage reduction.
The same can be said for the science abilites of PH, HE, TSS.
Basically cruisers often have access to the better resist skills allowing thenm to cap out thier resists quicker and easier.
R.I.P
Agreed. Cruisers do have a better capability to survive an attack, especially the Fleet Galaxy and Engineer Odyssey with 5 engineer consoles. Most cruiser captains have problems with survival because they dont know how to work as a team. A formation of 5 cruisers that are healing and buffing each other as well as proving fire support for each other can be a scary (and rarely seen) event in a PvP zone.
Also, when it comes to the "Starbase Blockade" stf, my sci Nebula is 5 times more capable of saving the freighters than ,y Armitage or other escorts can.
Rare event now, but once the fedball of Cruisers focus firing on targets blotted out the suns........
R.I.P
Can you post your build for that?
True. But now people don't know how to use the special ability:
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I noticed an STF story so i'll share one. Just got done in a KASE, I took guard left right as tac cube blew I evasive over and pop one of the gens, then killed the two probes. Killed other gen and cube, then two probes. Killed back two gens and started working on the big one, killed one more wave of probes. Then finished off the big one. No other combination could do that solo by the time the 5th spawn hit and infact it was the first big gen (sorry i'm terri-bad remembering silly names) down. Ok maybe a tric bomber but thats about it. I gotta say I impressed myself a bit as I hadn't quite noticed how much higher his DPS had become with the few alterations and additions in gear he received with season 7.
On the other hand if your goal is simply to complete content you can fly any ship you want with white/green Mk 10 gear provided you use the right build/setup for that particular ship.
And if you want to be a top dog at PvP your only choice is to make a premade group focusing on whatever broken uber combo your heart desires for the times. Right now I hear Tric-bomber groups are popular and FaW sub nuke doff groups with a good healer and an escort or two for killing whoever gets stripped works well too.
better than tac / escort in MOST missions if you play zero death