Seriously it is far to strong. It plays out as an avoidance stat. That type of mechanic plays wonderfully with all the other mitigation stats. It is very unpredictable as to how much damge it will save a player from.
Before you think that that isn't true, consider that avoidance doesn't take into account the magnitude of the incoming attack. You avoid it you avoid it. Avoid a BO3 60k hit is equal to avoiding a turret's autofire as far as the stat is concerened. Resistances are a known factor we know exactly how much damage they will save us from.
The downside is the way defense plays into cruiser stats. Its way to low. There is no logical reason for this. None. Simply consider that defense decreases an attackers ability to hit a ship effectively and not "at all". Currently defense mechanic is an avoidance mechanic, it shows up as a miss after all. Some silly notion of 'speed tanking'. Oh okay, sure. The guys that can pilot a ship across the quadrant can't track another ship that's RIGHT THERE strictly becuase it's fast? Be serious.
There must be something else involved. Like electronic countermeasures, better shielding, stronger hulls, all sorts of "baked in" methods to assure that a ship isn't instantly locked on and vaporized.
But only for Escorts. The only way to gain defense is via tactical abilities. Please don't count evasion. Sure it's there. Yah you can doff it. Still Cruisers and Scis can't compete in the defense department with Escorts, yet Escorts can compete easily in resistances and heals.
Acc alone will never overcome Def. Def is way to high. There are methods to reduce a targets Def but the BEST ways to counter those methods reside squarely in the tactical domain and ALL the counters are available to Tac. And Def starts far to low for Cruisers and Sci considering they have no real ability to raise it.
At the least consider adding plus defense consoles for eng and sci. Construe them as electronic countermeasure or armor bracing consoles, but make them available. Have the ALSO reduce the chance to be critically hit. Is it reasonable that a dinky little ship can crit a cruiser out of existence in moments? Not so much.
Escorts need to have thier chance to be critically hit INCREASED. It seems pretty reasonable that you may miss an escort, but it seems equally reasonable that if you did, you'd hit something vital and not one of the five million holodecks, bars, lounges, crew quarters, cargo holds that a cruiser might feature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NINTlwpVAz8
More pics of stuff happening that likely shouldn't. It can happen to anyone, and it does. All the live long day.
Cheers happy flying, and to my cruiser and Sci ships brothers I hope they increase your def one way or the other!!
Comments
Anyway I think you forget why defense was added... can we argue that some ships get to much of it... yes perhaps we can, however the mechanic is good... and I for one sure as heck wouldn't want to go back to cruisers online... where no one flies escorts cause they pop 4s after getting into range of another player.
Perhaps the mechanic needs a slight tuning where Misses simply don't ever happen any more... and instead we replace it with a Glancing blow. Where defense reduces the dmg by X amount.... The fact that we are missing with weapons designed 400 years in our future when we can put a bomb down a bunkers blow hole today does seem pretty preposterous anyway.
It's supposed to NOT "take into account the magnitude of the incoming attack". What difference does it make if you dodge some guy throwing a ball at you- be it a tennis ball or bowling ball you still managed to NOT GET HIT.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
And no escort can compete with a sci/cruiser in resistance/defense if your cruiser is as squishy as a escort you are doing it wrong...
about alpha striking in general, sometimes its just not going to kill. sure it works great for lone targets in a C&H, but in an arena the hectic cross healing environment leaves much less opportunities. focus firing, and firing for pressure are plenty important, especially when its all you can do at the time.
i agree about defense score, these ships have computer cores with a subspace fields so they can process faster then should be physically possible, faster then the speed of light, LOL @ missing a target. defense score would be much more about your ship generating sensor interference, not how fast your moving, but maybe of how big you are. you fool their sensors into thinking you are were your not, then they miss, that should be what acc/defense score should be about.
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[9:52] [Zone #11] Neal@trapper1532: im a omega force shadow oprative and a maoc elite camander and here i am taking water samples
Why not add in said glance mechanic (or something similar) for non-escorts? Give Scis (to a lesser degree) and Cruisers another layer of passive defenses to make up for the fact that they have such a significantly lower avoidance stat.
I always kinda liked the fluff text on the Aegis (set? shield? I forget) where it said how you were using sensor residual images to fool targeting computers, and hence extra Def score. It does make a bit more sense than someone simply saying "attack pattern Riker" to go really fast or whatever.
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[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 still do get killed by attacks like this but it is rare and usually when i am getting ganked or someone gets a lucky shield prock!
The difference is from a game design standpoint you can't manage how much damage will be avoided. Could be a little, could be a lot.
I'm really not sure what your point here is.
Yes xantris, I am that guy. If by handful of seconds you mean "two".
And Antonio, no it isn't silly. You seem found of nautical comparisons. Go compare a Dread to a Corvette and see what one is most likely to take critical damage from capital ship fire. I'm not here to get into a debate on interior life support force fields etc. I'm here to point out that its fairly clear massive ships are massive, and clearly could take more damage before, or would be less likely to be, critically hit. And no I didn't forget why it's in the game, nor is that important to my actual arguement. And yes the entire 'miss' concept seems silly when u look at it that way. The interplay between damage recieved via the defense/critical hit system is way out of proportion in favor of escorts.
No ones even answered the fact that Escorts have FAR greater defensive options than any other ship. Seriously.
It would balance out the careers somewhat allowing all to serve an equally important role. Escorts could continue to perform their offensive role, but be somewhat more dependent on team support to shine instead of them being run-away freight trains in ever match.
R.I.P
I'm not sure where you're going with this. Who is having a problem with Beam Overload?
Well, yes... it's because (on paper) snoozers have higher defensive (Eng and Sci) stations, plus more of them.
Even then, the only real advantages escorts have is a small innate boost and the ability to slot AP:O. Without AP DOffs a 'scort has a huge window of vulnerability, visually it may look fast but its score is not really much higher than that of any other ship once AP:O isn't running.
To be honest I'm not sure where you're going with this... at first I thought you were having issues with BO (what with the BoP sig and everything) but at the same time you seem to be arguing that snoozers/non-scorts are at a disadvantage. I mean, again, the only skill that's notorious for missing is BO. Unless your target's defensively buffed to the walls you shouldn't have much of a problem hitting him with anything else.
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[9:52] [Zone #11] Neal@trapper1532: im a omega force shadow oprative and a maoc elite camander and here i am taking water samples
You do know that resistance/defense are two different stats do you not? And you understand that a cruiser just plain can't have nearly as much defense as an escort can right? And that escorts are only marginally less effective in gaining resistance? I'm not sure what you don't get here.
No ships have as much defense as escorts. It's an avoidance stat and as such is very problematic for game balance as you can't dictate the damage that is avoided as implemented in STO. Period. And on the other end of it, you're crit to death and you die. Period. Seems fishy to me.
Add in all the extra's like +10% from Elusive, +10% from Aegis and what ever skilling gives you, is when Bonus defense gets tricky.
At the base of it all though is just a 10% difference between Cruiser/Science and Escorts.
Possibly the issue is that Bonus Defense can go too high? I do know that some rather crazy numbers can be achieved.
R.I.P
Hmm...okay well lets assume my post is my post and my sig is a pretty picture that comes after the post and shows what a great artist my friend is.
And the scorts advantage is huge. Because they CAN slot omega. Or two of them. Or a delta and an omega. Or some combination. And the actual speed is pretty good. Just move your engine power up a bit and scoot out of range..
But most cruisers and scis can't do those things. And they are starting from a deficit that they have no reasonable way out of, for no solid reasoning.
If defense was just no longer considered to be entirely based on speed, that would make a lot of this go away. Just because a sci/cruiser is slower shouldn't mean that they have lesser abilities to avoid damage. They are just DIFFERENT and something like tractor beam shouldn't allow an escort to pin a cruiser and beat the snot out of it. And that's what can be done currently.
Delta doesn't apply a Defense buff, and any ship that passes a certain speed threshold maxes out their innate Defense as is.
I suppose you can make arguments about tractor beams being goofy and stuff but it's just odd that someone would post on the subject when if anything Defense (or "speed tanking") has taken major nerfs while CC has been hugely buffed. Evasives DOffs were about the only way other than expensive AP DOffs and the Aegis set to min-max Defense, and after those were "fixed" we got even more VM DOffs to complement the warp plasma holds/hard stuns, the time stuff, chrons, the new fancy Sci ships (both C-store and lockbox-wise) with innate TSS, etc.
If I set up an in-house game against my team and tell them not to hold back, our best Sci/snoozer players will render me 110% worthless and have me on complete lockdown as an escort. It's absolutely possible, if you want to cripple an escort at the knees now is really a golden age.
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[9:52] [Zone #11] Neal@trapper1532: im a omega force shadow oprative and a maoc elite camander and here i am taking water samples
Also, isn't the defense rating differential just 10 between an Escort and a Cruiser in terms of base defense?
If anything it's the destroyers/multimode hybrid style ships that can both build a solid defense, dps potential, and or CC/debuffs. Also, in the past year a ton of Escorts got buffed hull and shield values. Various Doffs have reduced cooldowns allowing for more self defense possibilities.
I will say there's far too much potential for boosting CritH. The rep system nearly adds 5% between T2 skill and Romulan console. 6% from Weapons' 3x CritH, than add Borg Console and your pushing close to 15% w/o counting Captains skills or powers.
Then it's just a matter of debuffing a target's defense. VM, TB, 3 Part Omega set, EWP, Stuns are all usefull for this. Not to mention Sci drain focused builds like Tyken's + Doffs w/VM + Doffs and a TB.
As far as the Tac Tree defensive boosts, it's true APO and APD are helpfull. But, APO is only the 1st 5 seconds and I heard (haven't tested) APD only aids hull resists.
Imo there are solid defensive oriented buffs to other ships
EPTS3 - only 1 fed escort can use this iirc
RSP - most escorts only have a single lt eng slot and it's risky to use it on RSP, TRIBBLE is 2 EPTx powers
Aux2Damp - See above, stun immunity movement boost
Aux2Sif - See above, nice resists and short cooldown for a repair
ES - Very helpful to keeping teammates alive
TBR - pushes tacklers out of TB range, also can reduce cannon damage significantly
PH3 - Very high resist very strong TB resist
ST3, ET3 - Provide counters and high repairs depending on spec
HE3 - single highest repair value per activation, also long resists and clears some debuffs
TSS3 - similar to HE3, but for shields
Edit: Outside of game mechanics, I think of Escorts like Stealth fighters in that they have made adjustments to their ships to reduce the tracking capabilities of enemy ships on them. Scis and Cruisers in general just have too large of a signature to do that effectively.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
Something I did not know. Wow!
I'm using my first KDF toon who was never traited for PvP and does not have the best equipment to push the minmax barrier and was rather proud of 94.8%.
Wow! No wonder I hate those vessels so much. :P
R.I.P
Curious, how did you manage this?
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[9:52] [Zone #11] Neal@trapper1532: im a omega force shadow oprative and a maoc elite camander and here i am taking water samples
Idk, I can get around that w/a perma cloaked B'rel, but that includes the cloaking defensive boost. Perhaps he/she's including an Evasive Deut chain combo?
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
Recall Mode Flight Deck Doffs. You can get an extra 30% base defense (10% x3 for purples) and lump an EM/ApD on top to hit that crazy cap. Base defense is about 100-110% in an Armitage depending on engine choice and power settings.
In theory it can work for any ship with a hangar bay, but pure carriers end up sacrificing way too much of their damage output to make it really viable I think.
facepalm X 2
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
Imagine that w/MEF and -ACC from Shield proc lol.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
I'm of kind of mixed feelings on the defense issue. I've been playing a pretty vanilla Patrol Escort lately, without access to most of the better gear yet. I'm playing a human captain without the specialized space traits either.
I can tell you that the basic escort, not min-maxed gets hit plenty. Speed helps, but I do take hits in that.
On the other hand, I see a lot of other escorts that just don't get hit, even when I'm matching their speed at half-throttle.
I'd think the best way to fix it would be to just make it so the cap effects the bonuses too. They'd still be an advantage, because they'd let you coast at minimum speed and still get significant defense, but it would end the silliness where you stream CRF into a target for 10 seconds and every single shot misses.