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Abilities: All or Nothing
stevehale
Member Posts: 437
What would it be like if holds became slows? No more long term disables, drains, placates and the like.
What if counters weren't an on/off button but rather boosts to resistance levels and other mitigation skills? No more ignoring Gravity Wells, Tykens Rifts or Warp Plasma.
Tractor beam doesn't stop you but your Engine speed (and turn rate) is cut by 1/4th for TB1 up to 3/4 for TB3. Defense (avoidance/evasion) wouldn't hit 0 or negative territory and control wouldn't be taken out of a players hands. TB range could be increased or even it's cool down could be decreased.
Sounds like a Science nerf doesn't it?
Attack Pattern Omega doesn't give you immunity from holds but it boosts your speed (scaled equally between the three ranks), damage, and movement debuff resistance.
Now assume this version of TB1 (the slow, not the hold) is used on an unbuffed target. The target has a 1/3 reduction in speed and turn rate but this can be over come by diverting more power to engines, away from weapons or shields making them less dangerous and less tanky. Alternatively they ignore it and their defense is reduced making them more prone to critical hits as well as leaving a weaker shield facing exposed to focus fire. Most importantly abilities are still effective (and could actually be boosted like a longer duration or greater range on TB) without taking control out of a players hands or creating powers that are absolutely required.
This brings us to Attack Pattern Omega. In the current version if you pop it you can dance within TB range with impunity, making Omega an almost necessity (or isn't it entirely necessary?) and giving some folks the impression that Sci is worthless or being marginalized. What then if Omega was a resistance rather than an immunity? As in the previous example with TB1, you could still just divert power to engines if you are a Cruiser or Science ship, but in an Escort you can also pop Omega. In all three ship classes you have options to counter without losing control or making a power either useless or an absolute necessity.
Think about the implications for Gravity Well. The slow effect and damage could be stronger near the center but you could also extend the range. The ability could be buffed on the basis that anything can get away using basic tactics (diverting power to engines to escape or shields to reduce damage) and there wouldn't need to be fear of it being wasted because someone can be immune to it.
The basic idea here is that if abilities become less about all or nothing it would be easier to balance. No one wants to be disabled and lose control just as no one wants powers or classes to feel marginalized. I'm looking specifically at Science in these examples because it is the strongest and weakest depending on just a few things. Tricobalt damage variance is being reduced to normalize damage. That is kind of what I am suggesting here. Change the floor (hold/disable) and ceiling (immunity) effects so that abilities are stronger or weaker but not on or off; yes or no.
What if counters weren't an on/off button but rather boosts to resistance levels and other mitigation skills? No more ignoring Gravity Wells, Tykens Rifts or Warp Plasma.
Tractor beam doesn't stop you but your Engine speed (and turn rate) is cut by 1/4th for TB1 up to 3/4 for TB3. Defense (avoidance/evasion) wouldn't hit 0 or negative territory and control wouldn't be taken out of a players hands. TB range could be increased or even it's cool down could be decreased.
Sounds like a Science nerf doesn't it?
Attack Pattern Omega doesn't give you immunity from holds but it boosts your speed (scaled equally between the three ranks), damage, and movement debuff resistance.
Now assume this version of TB1 (the slow, not the hold) is used on an unbuffed target. The target has a 1/3 reduction in speed and turn rate but this can be over come by diverting more power to engines, away from weapons or shields making them less dangerous and less tanky. Alternatively they ignore it and their defense is reduced making them more prone to critical hits as well as leaving a weaker shield facing exposed to focus fire. Most importantly abilities are still effective (and could actually be boosted like a longer duration or greater range on TB) without taking control out of a players hands or creating powers that are absolutely required.
This brings us to Attack Pattern Omega. In the current version if you pop it you can dance within TB range with impunity, making Omega an almost necessity (or isn't it entirely necessary?) and giving some folks the impression that Sci is worthless or being marginalized. What then if Omega was a resistance rather than an immunity? As in the previous example with TB1, you could still just divert power to engines if you are a Cruiser or Science ship, but in an Escort you can also pop Omega. In all three ship classes you have options to counter without losing control or making a power either useless or an absolute necessity.
Think about the implications for Gravity Well. The slow effect and damage could be stronger near the center but you could also extend the range. The ability could be buffed on the basis that anything can get away using basic tactics (diverting power to engines to escape or shields to reduce damage) and there wouldn't need to be fear of it being wasted because someone can be immune to it.
The basic idea here is that if abilities become less about all or nothing it would be easier to balance. No one wants to be disabled and lose control just as no one wants powers or classes to feel marginalized. I'm looking specifically at Science in these examples because it is the strongest and weakest depending on just a few things. Tricobalt damage variance is being reduced to normalize damage. That is kind of what I am suggesting here. Change the floor (hold/disable) and ceiling (immunity) effects so that abilities are stronger or weaker but not on or off; yes or no.
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Foundry: Yet Another Borg MissionIt'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.
Post edited by stevehale on
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While Omega gives damage and turn rate, polarize hull gives damage resistance.
Engineers....well...
Sure. My first suggestion would be to evenly distribute mitigation resources across all three ship types.
Second, I would ensure that I knew exactly what abilities would be present on each ship and how they interacted with each other. Half of this job is done using boff stations. Limiting captain abilities would be my next step.
Third, we would need to take a good look an the way inertia is handled in this game, and bring it back closer to a real world model. Closer, not exactly. Dim as I may be even I know that a lesser mass traveling at high velocity is viewed as having the same inertia as a greater mass traveling at low velocity. I DO know that both of them should be virtually ignoring tractors from sources further down on the inertia scale. Sadly, this game rates inertia backwards. Oh well.
Movement is huge in STO. And it is linked to hull size. Without any allowance for cruiser size engines or (make something up and put it here) to prop up the huge hulls that the defense/resistance/damage arms race has given us.
Cheers.
So actually reverse the order I gave. You need to start at the lowest level, and in STO that would be ship movement. Then we need to know what abilities we are working with. And then we can distribute resources. And finally we can balance.
The typical: Full Effect, Reduced Effect, Reduced Effect, Immunity.
With the addition of resists: Reduced Effect, Reduced Effect, Reduced Effect, Immunity.
With the addition of additional opportunity costs for those resists to try to balance the reduced effect of them?
Should such things be treated in a similar manner as damage? I've wondered about changing the Engineering consoles that add a little bit of power to consoles that add various resistances. But that's an over there, elsewhere, sort of discussion, eh? Maybe? Maybe not.
Something that I've always found funny is how certain things work/don't work...here's a quirky example:
You have a leaky pipe. It's starting to flood the kitchen floor. You dispatch a Team to deal with it. They turn the water off and mop the floor. However, they do not fix the pipe. Turn the water on again, it floods again.
There's no hardening done. Not even temporary hardening. For many things, it's a try to fix it after it's done over and over again...instead of trying to harden/prevent against it again...even temporarily.
There's the supposed placate immunity. Even there, though - that's the on/off thing. It's not a Full, Reduced, Reduced, Immune sort of thing. It's all or nothing. That's not even there for most things. It's there or it's not - a simple dance of CDs rather than an elaborate dance of DR and CDs.
Could go on and on, but I think it's simply a case that the for the most part NPCs simply don't use all the abilities and for the vast majority of the game players don't need to use the abilities. STO's a damage and damage resistance game...that's where all the focus has gone.
Are you still killing people with TBR? I haven't been killed by that in a long time since they fixed the particle generator issue with that, since around when s7 started I think.
How well have energy drains, which function similarly to what you are proposing, been balanced lately in relation to power insulator skill and flow capacitor skills?
Even with tac buffs, a fully speced TBR isn't going to kill anyone by itself. However, it still can do decent damage and help finish someone off that is already low on hull if they are only getting shield heals or they RSP.
TRIBBLE | -Show Me Your Critz-
Svarog | Veles | et al.
Though they can kill your turning more easily than your speed, So any time someone tractors you, you end up flying away really fast in a straight line.