Flight control doffs of the Recall variant grant a bonus to the carrier's defense when fighters are set to passive (or recall). With purple doffs, that's 10% per doff, for a maximum of 30% bonus defense.
In my Armitage, that basically makes me unhittable. It's an Engscort, but I rarely have to use my engineer abilities or even Emergency Power to Shields when fighting a single opponent because, well... they don't do much damage due to all the misses.
I find that unbalanced.
My proposal would be to make the number of bonus granted dependent on the number of your fighters flying around, with 10% per doff being the number that comes up when you have 2 hangars and a full 2 wings per hangar out. With every destoyed fighter, that bonus defense should be lowered, down to 0 when there are no fighters out.
With all the other broken stuff in the game... this would be one of the lowest things on my worry list. Frankly 30 more defense is no big deal. If you really honestly want to trade all the pet annoyance possibilities for 30 defense... good on you... have at it. I would imagine if I saw a engi scort running around with there pets on passive mode the entire time... I would just laugh and kill there teammates for them. Engi scorts are laughable dps as it is... sitting out your pets if you choose to run that ship for 30 Defense seems silly.
My proposal would be to make the number of bonus granted dependent on the number of your fighters flying around, with 10% per doff being the number that comes up when you have 2 hangars and a full 2 wings per hangar out. With every destoyed fighter, that bonus defense should be lowered, down to 0 when there are no fighters out.
Seems odd that it doesn't work that way as is...hrmmm.
(A)Accurate, 9 pts Targeting, ACCx3 vs (B)Elusive, 9 pts Maneuvering, Speed>=24 = 13-20% chance to miss
(A) vs. (B) +30 (if flat bonus) = 31-36% chance to miss
16-18% additional chance to miss...in many cases doubling the chance to miss.
And it's not taking into account APO, EM, SFM, etc...
Also, it's not taking into account the effect that CritPlacs, BeingCritPlacs, potential of using FKHG, regular ol' placs/etc also reducing the number of shots being fired...
ooo.... this sounds like an awesome doff to have with shield repair drones...
-checks the exchange-
In the past week or two, I've seen a couple of Vo'quv - a few Karfi - a few Atrox - and a couple of Vestas running shield drones on themselves. For the most part, it's still the ASD and ADR stuff going on...
It's funny, in thinking about the Vesta as the better RSV - about thinking about using the hangar as a Defense bonus for the RSV while you go about having that improved RSV fun and taking fewer hits...hrmmm.
Seems odd that it doesn't work that way as is...hrmmm.
(A)Accurate, 9 pts Targeting, ACCx3 vs (B)Elusive, 9 pts Maneuvering, Speed>=24 = 13-20% chance to miss
(A) vs. (B) +30 (if flat bonus) = 31-36% chance to miss
16-18% additional chance to miss...in many cases doubling the chance to miss.
And it's not taking into account APO, EM, SFM, etc...
Also, it's not taking into account the effect that CritPlacs, BeingCritPlacs, potential of using FKHG, regular ol' placs/etc also reducing the number of shots being fired...
In the past week or two, I've seen a couple of Vo'quv - a few Karfi - a few Atrox - and a couple of Vestas running shield drones on themselves. For the most part, it's still the ASD and ADR stuff going on...
It's funny, in thinking about the Vesta as the better RSV - about thinking about using the hangar as a Defense bonus for the RSV while you go about having that improved RSV fun and taking fewer hits...hrmmm.
While I agree with the OP that this is probably not working as intended, I think what Antonio is saying is that +30 Def on the ships that could potentially use pet commands isn't really a big deal. You'd be giving up a lot of CC/damage, DOff slots and awkwardly wasting your pets for the sake of a resist.
While I agree with the OP that this is probably not working as intended, I think what Antonio is saying is that +30 Def on the ships that could potentially use pet commands isn't really a big deal. You'd be giving up a lot of CC/damage, DOff slots and awkwardly wasting your pets for the sake of a resist.
Lol (not at you or Antonio), but a lol at me. So I went for a smoke before deciding to see what this actually did - and - on my toon with a carrier, I looked at my DOFFs. I was still sporting my FDOs while in a Chel - I didn't even notice anything was wrong. That's sad.
So I grabbed a Vo'quv with my Tac (Elusive, 9 pts Maneuvers).
33/25 Eng Power, 17.6 Impulse...and she's sitting at 54% bonus Defense.
I equip a single Green (5%) FDO-Recall. Before I deploy any fighters, I toggle Recall, and... Defense starts flipping back and forth between 59% and 64%. Again, that's a 5-10% bonus flipping back and forth...without any fighters launched. All I did was toggle Recall (without any fighters out).
I launch a wing - it's still doing the 59/64% dance. I launch the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th wings - it's still doing the 59/64% dance.
So it's giving a 5-10% bonus whether I have 4 wings or 0 wings launched, as long as I'm in Recall mode.
Okay, even though I'm cheap and didn't want to spend much for this experiment - I drop out the second Green (5%) FDO-Recall.
It's bouncing 64%/74%.
Can't tell if that's just a visual glitch or if one second it's 64% and the next second it's 74%..before going back to 64% the next second. It's literally dancing like that.
I relogged, but no - it's doing the same thing.
Two Green (5%) FDO-Recall DOFFs... no fighters launched but set in Recall... is taking her Defense from 54% to a dancing 64%/74%. So it's a visual glitch...or every other second I'm looking at a double bonus from the DOFFs without even having any fighters launched.
I went ahead and grabbed a White (2.5%) and a Blue (7.5%). I'm cheap, so I didn't spend 950k for a Purple (10%) KDF when a Fed is only 640k...for this little test.
Same thing though...both of them do the dancing double buff while in Recall with no pets launched (or four wings launched for that matter).
So I'm wondering if that's what was going on... three Purps would give you that flickering +30%/+60% Defense...
Don't forget you can have 3 part MEF bonus as well. MEF is chainable w/4 people iirc.
[Zone] Dack@****: cowards can't take a fed 1 on 1 crinckley cowards Hahahaha you smell like flowers
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
Don't forget you can have 3 part MEF bonus as well. MEF is chainable w/4 people iirc.
2 Armitage + 3 Vesta with KHG. Doesn't matter if pets are out - so pets out to act as chaff against FAW/CRF/TS/mines for additional "defense". Run all five as Torp/Mine boats (Vesta with the rear BA for BTs) - so you can 25 Weapons. Mix of Trans/Plasma for hull eating goodness. PWOs wouldn't be as much of a concern. With the chaff pets, additional Defense bonus, higher shield regen/resists...could drop the SDO/BFI DOFF(s). 2-3 FDO/Recall and 2-3 various Tac/Sci boosting DOFFs. Overall reduced need to BOFF defensively/healing and the ability to BOFF more offensively/more annoying Sci goodies. PlacOnCritProc and other Sci breaking goodies to kill tractors. Rom Sci Consoles, Rom Tac BOFFs, a Human BOFF... toss in some Theta and...
...yeah, I know - I'm out there at the convenience store across the street from the parking lot next to left field drinking a diet Mountain Dew Big Gulp and watching a butterfly go by.
I wasn't saying it wasn't a powerful doff option... I am simply pointing out that...
It costs you ALL your hanger dmg....
It costs you 3 of your 5 doff slots....
for 30 more defense... on the escort that is LEAST likely to be doing any real dmg on its own.
Or a carrier that has such bad inertia that it is one of the few ships in the game that will never get to defense cap and will have to dip into the low low end of the defense spectrem to even make a proper turn.
Considering that... and all the other broken options a player could choose for there carrier. I'll take someone trying to survive this way any day.
Its not that doing this is a terrible way to go as Mai says you can run shield drones for a bit more heal anyway... its just that to me it sounds very much like something Sophie would run.... the type of ship that can be completely ignored because they have sacrificed ALL there offense to live 10s longer.
Tested this out, and there actually *is* an issue with it.
Every other tick, the game 'forgets' that you've benefited from the doffs.
So it constantly cycles between +30% defense and +60% defense. (or at least the tooltip does).
Purchased 3 purples to test this out, and noticed some interesting things.
1. Pets in recall mode do nothing. Shield drones don't heal, fighters don't shoot. They just take up space.
2. While I did notice that enemies in pvp missed more often, these doffs did not make me 'invincible' as claimed by the OP. Enemies can and did still hit me, even NPCs, and the loss of ability taken up by the three doff slots was, IMO, greater than the gain of that extra defense.
And just for the record, I did my best to run the tests as a maximum effectiveness- I used an alien tactical officer with elusive, Aegies 2 part (engines and deflector), so I was seeing a 'bonus defense score' total of aroun 110 (which fluctuated between 110 and 140 every other second due to the aformentioned bug)
This sounds like a giant amount of defense, but in testing it was virtually worthless.
These doffs are not broken in the sense that they're overpowered. They're broken in the sense that there is actually an issue with how the game calculates and applies their bonus.
Personally, when I think of these Doffs, I think of the Vor'quv with 2x Bro'loth BoP pets.. Because they can cloak while on Passive. And You can use them in cloak and try to get them in a position to set them to attack and give a pretty nasty Alpha strike..
I suppose on the Armatige it has a use but like it has been mentioned, there are better options out there then this. Same for the Vesta. And the Kar'fi.
You think that your beta test was bad?
Think about this: American Football has been in open beta for 144 years. ~Kotaku
Well, maybe the people I was playing against were just very bad at hitting - but still, any other flight control doff's bonus can be negated by destroying the pets. Why not this one?
You don't even need to have any pets out for this to work.#
Edit: Of course, when testing, it will matter a lot if you go up vs people with or without [acc]x3 weapons. That might explain the different experiences.
not to mention the 87 other things factoring into defense (fear my tractor beam)
1. Pets in recall mode do nothing. Shield drones don't heal, fighters don't shoot. They just take up space.
So it's kind of like how they "work" in Escort mode most of the time as well? They're just as likely to sit at the spot you launched them in space than do anything else...meh.
The "stat flipping" is a stacking error that has been fixed internally. Basically, the buff refreshes every 1sec, but has a duration of 1.5sec to allow for server/client latency, but is currently (on Holodeck) set to allow the buff to stack. The result is that for half the duration, it's on you twice. We've removed the buff's ability to stack with itself, and so the bonus Defense will no longer fluctuate.
Having multiple FDOs equipped will still result in a stacking benefit.
I honestly like the idea of linking the Defense bonus directly to the number of active hangar pets you have in play, but without prototyping anything out I'm honestly not certain how to make it work. It may also introduce an imbalance between players that prefer to use Frigate-type pets (like Birds of Prey and such) which launch far fewer pets than a standard wing of fighters. I'll look into it, though.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
I wasn't saying it wasn't a powerful doff option... I am simply pointing out that...
It costs you ALL your hanger dmg....
It costs you 3 of your 5 doff slots....
for 30 more defense... on the escort that is LEAST likely to be doing any real dmg on its own.
Or a carrier that has such bad inertia that it is one of the few ships in the game that will never get to defense cap and will have to dip into the low low end of the defense spectrem to even make a proper turn.
Considering that... and all the other broken options a player could choose for there carrier. I'll take someone trying to survive this way any day.
Its not that doing this is a terrible way to go as Mai says you can run shield drones for a bit more heal anyway... its just that to me it sounds very much like something Sophie would run.... the type of ship that can be completely ignored because they have sacrificed ALL there offense to live 10s longer.
As someone who runs a smiliar build to evasion tank in ESTFs on an Armitage, I can attest to the fact that it's not as powerful as folks thinks. You're still getting hit, you're still taking damage, but you've sacrificed any hangar utility for RNG armor that (to be entirely honest) isn't worth much at all when you get double torpedo tapped by a tac or gate, or eat a full torp spread from donatra.
The "stat flipping" is a stacking error that has been fixed internally. Basically, the buff refreshes every 1sec, but has a duration of 1.5sec to allow for server/client latency, but is currently (on Holodeck) set to allow the buff to stack. The result is that for half the duration, it's on you twice. We've removed the buff's ability to stack with itself, and so the bonus Defense will no longer fluctuate.
Having multiple FDOs equipped will still result in a stacking benefit.
I honestly like the idea of linking the Defense bonus directly to the number of active hangar pets you have in play, but without prototyping anything out I'm honestly not certain how to make it work. It may also introduce an imbalance between players that prefer to use Frigate-type pets (like Birds of Prey and such) which launch far fewer pets than a standard wing of fighters. I'll look into it, though.
Hi Bort!
IDK how others would feel about the fairness of this, but I think the frigates having a lower obtainable bonus defense might be balanced by their toughness. Having a super high defense bonus because you have multiple scorpion fighters out doesn't do much good when they're so easy to kill. So the lower bonus would end up being easier to maintain, ya dig?
On a related note, since we have you, is there any news on improved AI for pets? I was really excited about that because I hoped you could build on it for NPCs in general.
On an unrelated note, what's up with the ID description?
_______________ CommanderDonatra@Capt.Sisko: ahhh is it supposed to do that? Norvo Tigan@dontdrunkimshoot: hell ya, maybe
The hard to swallow part is that the pets themselves with the proper doffs gives a defense bonus other than that the way they were nerfed their projectiles are the only damage that is worth using them since their energy damage was nerfed so much.
The hard to swallow part is that the pets themselves with the proper doffs gives a defense bonus other than that the way they were nerfed their projectiles are the only damage that is worth using them since their energy damage was nerfed so much.
Their debuffs are still valuable, IMO. Aceton Beam is something I'd never load but coming from a Fer'Jai it's decent. Danube Tractor Beam, of course. And I think the orion interceptors are way more useful than they get credit for.
But yeah, pet DPS is negligible. Spike is nearly so as well outside of a properly herded BoP decloak alpha, maybe an odd fer'jai tric, or a scorp torp volley.
Am I completely misremembering or didn't captain skills boost pet damage at some point? Was that back in the day when you had to pick your energy weapon flavor?
_______________ CommanderDonatra@Capt.Sisko: ahhh is it supposed to do that? Norvo Tigan@dontdrunkimshoot: hell ya, maybe
Am I completely misremembering or didn't captain skills boost pet damage at some point? Was that back in the day when you had to pick your energy weapon flavor?
I don't believe so, but things get fuzzy when you start getting back into the three active flights days.
I've been using this build for a very long time on the Armitage. With the Armitage its a nice combo, but you are hardly anywhere close to unhittable in PvE, you get hit very often because there are far more abilities that never miss than you think (check combat logs and you'll see a lot of 100% hit rates)
Like mentioned, shield drones don't work in recall mode, if you have fighters out and they get destroyed your recall status resets fairly often, so that is a downside. The only benefit would be to have cheap expendable fighters on recall sucking up BFaW or Torp spread targets for monsters like the queen in HOSE.
With it the Armitage becomes possibly the lowest damage escort there is, but has a lot of staying power. While most pets don't do a lot of damage, the elite scorpions pack a punch. It seems balanced to me. In PvP I could see the defense bonus as an issue, but loosing the lt. cmd tactical slot seriously harms your burst potential, you are also sacrificing the power of the Danubes.. which is significant in PvP.
Comments
-checks the exchange-
Do you even Science Bro?
Seems odd that it doesn't work that way as is...hrmmm.
(A)Accurate, 9 pts Targeting, ACCx3 vs (B)Elusive, 9 pts Maneuvering, Speed>=24 = 13-20% chance to miss
(A) vs. (B) +30 (if flat bonus) = 31-36% chance to miss
16-18% additional chance to miss...in many cases doubling the chance to miss.
And it's not taking into account APO, EM, SFM, etc...
Also, it's not taking into account the effect that CritPlacs, BeingCritPlacs, potential of using FKHG, regular ol' placs/etc also reducing the number of shots being fired...
In the past week or two, I've seen a couple of Vo'quv - a few Karfi - a few Atrox - and a couple of Vestas running shield drones on themselves. For the most part, it's still the ASD and ADR stuff going on...
It's funny, in thinking about the Vesta as the better RSV - about thinking about using the hangar as a Defense bonus for the RSV while you go about having that improved RSV fun and taking fewer hits...hrmmm.
While I agree with the OP that this is probably not working as intended, I think what Antonio is saying is that +30 Def on the ships that could potentially use pet commands isn't really a big deal. You'd be giving up a lot of CC/damage, DOff slots and awkwardly wasting your pets for the sake of a resist.
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
Lol (not at you or Antonio), but a lol at me. So I went for a smoke before deciding to see what this actually did - and - on my toon with a carrier, I looked at my DOFFs. I was still sporting my FDOs while in a Chel - I didn't even notice anything was wrong. That's sad.
So I grabbed a Vo'quv with my Tac (Elusive, 9 pts Maneuvers).
33/25 Eng Power, 17.6 Impulse...and she's sitting at 54% bonus Defense.
I equip a single Green (5%) FDO-Recall. Before I deploy any fighters, I toggle Recall, and... Defense starts flipping back and forth between 59% and 64%. Again, that's a 5-10% bonus flipping back and forth...without any fighters launched. All I did was toggle Recall (without any fighters out).
I launch a wing - it's still doing the 59/64% dance. I launch the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th wings - it's still doing the 59/64% dance.
So it's giving a 5-10% bonus whether I have 4 wings or 0 wings launched, as long as I'm in Recall mode.
Okay, even though I'm cheap and didn't want to spend much for this experiment - I drop out the second Green (5%) FDO-Recall.
It's bouncing 64%/74%.
Can't tell if that's just a visual glitch or if one second it's 64% and the next second it's 74%..before going back to 64% the next second. It's literally dancing like that.
I relogged, but no - it's doing the same thing.
Two Green (5%) FDO-Recall DOFFs... no fighters launched but set in Recall... is taking her Defense from 54% to a dancing 64%/74%. So it's a visual glitch...or every other second I'm looking at a double bonus from the DOFFs without even having any fighters launched.
Same thing though...both of them do the dancing double buff while in Recall with no pets launched (or four wings launched for that matter).
So I'm wondering if that's what was going on... three Purps would give you that flickering +30%/+60% Defense...
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
2 Armitage + 3 Vesta with KHG. Doesn't matter if pets are out - so pets out to act as chaff against FAW/CRF/TS/mines for additional "defense". Run all five as Torp/Mine boats (Vesta with the rear BA for BTs) - so you can 25 Weapons. Mix of Trans/Plasma for hull eating goodness. PWOs wouldn't be as much of a concern. With the chaff pets, additional Defense bonus, higher shield regen/resists...could drop the SDO/BFI DOFF(s). 2-3 FDO/Recall and 2-3 various Tac/Sci boosting DOFFs. Overall reduced need to BOFF defensively/healing and the ability to BOFF more offensively/more annoying Sci goodies. PlacOnCritProc and other Sci breaking goodies to kill tractors. Rom Sci Consoles, Rom Tac BOFFs, a Human BOFF... toss in some Theta and...
...yeah, I know - I'm out there at the convenience store across the street from the parking lot next to left field drinking a diet Mountain Dew Big Gulp and watching a butterfly go by.
It costs you ALL your hanger dmg....
It costs you 3 of your 5 doff slots....
for 30 more defense... on the escort that is LEAST likely to be doing any real dmg on its own.
Or a carrier that has such bad inertia that it is one of the few ships in the game that will never get to defense cap and will have to dip into the low low end of the defense spectrem to even make a proper turn.
Considering that... and all the other broken options a player could choose for there carrier. I'll take someone trying to survive this way any day.
Its not that doing this is a terrible way to go as Mai says you can run shield drones for a bit more heal anyway... its just that to me it sounds very much like something Sophie would run.... the type of ship that can be completely ignored because they have sacrificed ALL there offense to live 10s longer.
Every other tick, the game 'forgets' that you've benefited from the doffs.
So it constantly cycles between +30% defense and +60% defense. (or at least the tooltip does).
Purchased 3 purples to test this out, and noticed some interesting things.
1. Pets in recall mode do nothing. Shield drones don't heal, fighters don't shoot. They just take up space.
2. While I did notice that enemies in pvp missed more often, these doffs did not make me 'invincible' as claimed by the OP. Enemies can and did still hit me, even NPCs, and the loss of ability taken up by the three doff slots was, IMO, greater than the gain of that extra defense.
And just for the record, I did my best to run the tests as a maximum effectiveness- I used an alien tactical officer with elusive, Aegies 2 part (engines and deflector), so I was seeing a 'bonus defense score' total of aroun 110 (which fluctuated between 110 and 140 every other second due to the aformentioned bug)
This sounds like a giant amount of defense, but in testing it was virtually worthless.
These doffs are not broken in the sense that they're overpowered. They're broken in the sense that there is actually an issue with how the game calculates and applies their bonus.
I suppose on the Armatige it has a use but like it has been mentioned, there are better options out there then this. Same for the Vesta. And the Kar'fi.
Think about this:
American Football has been in open beta for 144 years. ~Kotaku
not to mention the 87 other things factoring into defense (fear my tractor beam)
So it's kind of like how they "work" in Escort mode most of the time as well? They're just as likely to sit at the spot you launched them in space than do anything else...meh.
Having multiple FDOs equipped will still result in a stacking benefit.
I honestly like the idea of linking the Defense bonus directly to the number of active hangar pets you have in play, but without prototyping anything out I'm honestly not certain how to make it work. It may also introduce an imbalance between players that prefer to use Frigate-type pets (like Birds of Prey and such) which launch far fewer pets than a standard wing of fighters. I'll look into it, though.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
As someone who runs a smiliar build to evasion tank in ESTFs on an Armitage, I can attest to the fact that it's not as powerful as folks thinks. You're still getting hit, you're still taking damage, but you've sacrificed any hangar utility for RNG armor that (to be entirely honest) isn't worth much at all when you get double torpedo tapped by a tac or gate, or eat a full torp spread from donatra.
IDK how others would feel about the fairness of this, but I think the frigates having a lower obtainable bonus defense might be balanced by their toughness. Having a super high defense bonus because you have multiple scorpion fighters out doesn't do much good when they're so easy to kill. So the lower bonus would end up being easier to maintain, ya dig?
On a related note, since we have you, is there any news on improved AI for pets? I was really excited about that because I hoped you could build on it for NPCs in general.
On an unrelated note, what's up with the ID description?
CommanderDonatra@Capt.Sisko: ahhh is it supposed to do that?
Norvo Tigan@dontdrunkimshoot: hell ya, maybe
But yeah, pet DPS is negligible. Spike is nearly so as well outside of a properly herded BoP decloak alpha, maybe an odd fer'jai tric, or a scorp torp volley.
Am I completely misremembering or didn't captain skills boost pet damage at some point? Was that back in the day when you had to pick your energy weapon flavor?
CommanderDonatra@Capt.Sisko: ahhh is it supposed to do that?
Norvo Tigan@dontdrunkimshoot: hell ya, maybe
I don't believe so, but things get fuzzy when you start getting back into the three active flights days.
Like mentioned, shield drones don't work in recall mode, if you have fighters out and they get destroyed your recall status resets fairly often, so that is a downside. The only benefit would be to have cheap expendable fighters on recall sucking up BFaW or Torp spread targets for monsters like the queen in HOSE.
With it the Armitage becomes possibly the lowest damage escort there is, but has a lot of staying power. While most pets don't do a lot of damage, the elite scorpions pack a punch. It seems balanced to me. In PvP I could see the defense bonus as an issue, but loosing the lt. cmd tactical slot seriously harms your burst potential, you are also sacrificing the power of the Danubes.. which is significant in PvP.
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Yep, discovering this myself today. Kinda ironic considering they're purely defensive pets