We come to plot armour again. And this seems to be the universal handwave of anything someone wants to ignore in canon discussions.
If we go by plot armour and spectacle as written so things can be ignored then there is no available discussion of how the Galaxy or anything in Star Trek should be.
Because for every time we see the Enterprise do well, we can reference how a brush to her nacelle sends her in a flat spin and blows her up.
The truth is somewhere in between. Throughout the shows, especially the ones set in the 'TNG era' there are numerous references that can give us a clear idea of what is suposed to be what.
However, there's always the plot armor. That's nothing exclusive to ST. Star Trek is a show, therefore ment to entertain and under such circumistances having something established so hard, like for.ex let's say - Galaxy Class being the indestructible ship without any weakness, wouldn't be very entertaining without the plot armor. It will result with the TNG crew flying in, roflstomping everything in their way and saving the day in the same manner in each episode.
That's when the plot armor comes into play. Sometimes it's the Galaxy class' awesomeness that saves the day. Sometimes it's Picard with his delicate diplomacy and thoughtfullness. Sometimes it's Data because he's an android and can excite the audience with some action than no regular humaniod could preform. And so on and on, you get the idea.
One thing that is certain is that the plot armor would not allow for the hero cast to die, cause that would mean the end of the show. Sure, they can get rid of certain members to increase the suspense, like Tasha Yar, Jadzia Dax or Data in Nemessis, but you won't see the DS9 with the entire cast on board getting blown up by Gowron followed by Qapla'!
Now all of that said, there are consistencies throughout the shows on which one can base his/hers impressions of how are things suposed to work in ST.
Like for example the Galaxy class being the Federation's flagship. That point alone tells you that this is the heaviest ship they had built untill then. Because Gene's idea was not based on starships being flagships of fleets, or starships commanded by Admirals to be the flagships, but the Enterprise-D - an embodiment of Federation ideals, beliefs, power and technology was suposed to be 'the one' flagship that would be the face of the Federation.
Knowing all of this, regardless of some weird ideas people seem to have in these STO forums, you can be very certain that the Galaxy was build to be the heaviest, most advanced, hardest hitting and most armored ship in her time. The UFP wouldn't launch a flagship that could be pew-pewed by anyone because they are peacefull, because they are well aware that having their flagship destroyed like it's nothing would show weakness in a dangerous universe, especially with species like the Klingons on the border who don't respect weakness and would jump in on the opportunity to exploit it.
How does this translate in the game? It's simple - it doesn't. Canon has gone to the sharks in this game. And besides, the games are a different beast. They need a separate set of rules that would draw ideas from established canon, but apply them in the game in a manner that the gameplay of said game is suposed to work.
And that's the issue with STO. Cryptic messed things up. They decided that most of the ships could be T5, but being availible to have the same range/weapons/shields/etc. limits the variation in roles, especially within a certain class be it escort, cruiser or sci.vessels. Then they made the end-game content be resolved in the easiest possible way - you shoot more - you kill more - you loot more. That's what made things really wonky (in relation to canon) and enabled having an Excelsior that was superseded by an Ambassador, that was then superseded by the Galaxy, to be in fact more useful and powerfull in STO than the Galaxy. Because the Galaxy has a different role, a role that the end-game content is not tailored to.
But it doesn't stop there. Now because of their wonky ranking system, we're having ships trip all over each other. Just take a look at the Regent and then the Avenger.
This is just part of the reason why, unfortunatelly to me, the canon is not aplicable in STO any more. What we're doing here, or at least what I'm doing here is pushing an idea and voicing a concern that regardless of how far away from canon this game is - a ship that beared the name "Enterprise", a ship that has more time on air than any other and a hero ship in the entire TNG - the show that brought back Trek simply shouldn't be the most useless ship in the game. Especially when the first Galaxy created still has good 50 years to go behind her name in the timeframe STO is set in.
Cardassian ships are tough and they fought wars with the federation and the Klingons. But one nebula with her shields turned off takes out three of them in a few minutes.
And Klingons are the biggest and baddest warriors out there, till they invade a ridiculous space station, then they lose knife fights to small unarmed women and blindly charge around corners to be cut down by two cardassians with phaser pistols.
Starfleet ships have been portrayed to be vastly superior to Cardassian ships. And this is comming from a Cardassian fan and someone that has been begging and waiting for a Cardie faction in STO for years.
The only reason the Federation didn't roflstomp the Cardassians is because the Feds. are not like that. They'd rather try to peacefully show the Cardassians the wrong in their ways and slowly convince them to join the UFP than go on all out conquest. It's not the Federation's thing.
The Klingons went to invade Cardassia with only a fraction of their forces. And they would have succeeded if Sisko didn't warn Dukat about the impending invasion. Cardassian ships are by no means weaksauce, but the fact is that the Cardassians didn't have much experience in waging superwars against advesaries with empires similar in size to their own before the conflict with the Federation, which they lost.
As to the other - I'm gonna refer to plot armor again. For ex. the Klingons are established as the fiercest warriors in the Quadrant, but they lose a knife fight against a woman only to show how great said woman is. "Look, she beat up Klingons!!!".
If we go with ignoring source material and look at it purely from where the ship appears in the game. Is it functional as is or is there an issue?
Yes, it functional. But then again, in STO at end game any tier of ships has proven to be functional. Heck, I can do the new Voth content by headdesking on my keyboard hitting 'space' with my forehead. But that's another issue the game is having.
So in terms of gameplay and end-game content, if the question is wheather it's functional? The answer would be - yes it is. I can do any content in my Galaxy-R.
Compared to other player ships of the same tier - it's very lackluster. There's where the issues come from. I literally spent a ton of Zen and EC, spent an ungodly amount of time and grinded the entire grind just to make my Galaxy usefull in a group. Note the word 'usefull'. Not better, not the best, but merely usefull. The issue is when I hop on my Excelsior, a ship that has the same Zen price and I can do everything I do with the Galaxy, but with weaker equipment, regular Boffs and random Doffs not tailored for years to fit the ship.
I get it. There has to be one ship that will somehow end as 'the weakest' in Cryptic's model. But we're talking about the frickin' Galaxy here, this shouldn't be 'that ship' by any stretch.
I just tried the new STFs. And I really really hate them, for aesthetical reasons. I like the new rep style and I look forward to some of the rewards, but flying my Galaxy or Nebula through those structures just doesn't feel good. A frigate or shuttle could zip through that, but the new season really kills the classic Star Trek ships IMHO... EDIT: To clarify, I'm not talking about gameplay. I just hate flying my Starships through planetary atmospheres, basically.
Heh I'm like you on that one, flying starships through atmospheres just feels weird to me and not something I was looking forward to. I prefer the darkness of space. :cool:
I think you just came up with next summer's vessel.
I certainly hope so. That particular ship caught my attention ever since the first time I saw it in DS9. The concept of the Bajorans exploring space so far back in their history as well as the concept of using the solar power and solar winds as means of propulsion always seemed interesting and exciting to me.
TBH, i don't care if one ship has the same BOFF/Console layout as another ship in gameWhen i fly a ship i like, couldn't care less if the next ship has the same BOFF layout.
My whole point was about the silliness they have about non-factional ships the number of non-factional ships is starting to near the amount of KDF vessels, there is something really wrong with that. BOffs and Consoles are only one aspect of that. As far as not caring if ships having same consoles and layouts, why not just buy the ship that has the setup you like and buying holograms to make them look like another ship?
No, just Cryptics sense of "coolness".
Each of those 3 bridges are so much out of scale, you could put 4 "real" sized Galaxy Bridges in one of them, lol.
Every interior is out of scale, the Defiant looks spacious as well as the other ships too. I think the only properly scaled interior is the Constitution.
EDIT:
In-universe the Defiant was (just like the venegance) a try to militarize Starfleet. But this is not Starfleets way. They are Explorers defending the federation is only one of MANY other dutys they do perform.
Have you ever though why Starfleet ships have such a big volumina compared to Klingon or Romulan ships (canon, not Cryptics weird creations)?
I would argue that the Borg and Dominion changed the perspective that the Federation has taken to Starfleet. Much of the militarization is due to necessity for a more hostile universe.
There was no negotiation with the Borg, and the Federation was not in a position of strength of firepower when dealing with the Dominion. There Federation was somewhat complacent with its environment and had to make a serious change to survive. Honestly, the Federation should have a military/defense fleet in addition to the exploration ships that we saw.
Yes, it functional. But then again, in STO at end game any tier of ships has proven to be functional. Heck, I can do the new Voth content by headdesking on my keyboard hitting 'space' with my forehead. But that's another issue the game is having.
I agree with all you said, save for this. My issue is that cruisers from T1-T3 had a steady climb in ability and power. At each step I bought dilithium and got the weapons and mods off the dilithium store to make the ship that much more at each tier. At tier 4 I left my T3 Excelsior for my beautiful Galaxy and even with Mk VIII weapons and gear was getting my head handed to me on a platter. Same build as my Excelsior, just a higher tier. Used my Excelsior as a test and sure enough it was doing better on the same mission I was losing in my Galaxy. T5 hits and I got the next ship up that looks an aweful lot like the SW Phantom something ship. And it was better than the Excel. So the Galaxy took a dive in progression. That is why I support this thread.
Canon can tell us pretty things.
But game progression is where it misses the mark.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
the problem is not that some galaxy fan want that everyone be in line with the idea that the galaxy should be the best ship ever.
the problem is not that the non galaxy fan want that everyone be in line with the idea that the galaxy should be an inneficient brick.
in the end that is irrelevant.
what is relevant in the end, is that a compagny that design MMO do not use these bias point of view to intentionally make a ship bad in everyway just because they don't want it to be as good than an other ( here the sovereign ).
this is acceptable in a solo game where the player have acces to these ship in the progression of the game.
this is not acceptable in an MMO where ships should be as efficient as others but in different way, and not outright bad in everything... just because.
The ship was usable at launch, even counting the Assault Cruisers abilities at the time. The problem was that they upped the ante' on tac and science without considering engineering
forget about canon, forget that we are talking about a galaxy or sovereign, call them robert and peter if you want.
even without canon the problem is still here, there is no reason why robert should be les efficient than peter, but also less efficient than marie, lucie, gerard,ngyuen and brian.
That's fine, I have been trying to keep things pragmatic and not totally tied to a perspective view of canon I just wish other people would be more pragmatic, the fact is that it will never happen.
The ships should be equally efficient, but distinctive, making everything a tactical/science boat is the "me too" solution. I see bigger and better options if Cryptic would get cracking at it.
the engeneer class do need a revamp indeed, but this has nothing to do with the galaxy problem.
the galaxy is not useless because he suffer engeneer ineficiency.
the galaxy is useless because their is nothing he can do differently then other cruiser that are also engie heavy.
an enhanced engie galaxy would still be useless against an enhanced engie star cruiser.
in a role point of view there is nothing that you can do with a galaxy that you can not do with a star cruiser.
an ambassador can do things that a star cruiser can't because of it ltcommander sci.
why is this so difficult to anderstand?
better engie power may help your exelsior indeed, but will not give the galaxy a role, that for sure.
I disagree, The Galaxy does suffer from engineer inefficiency, the skills are inefficient in comparison to other classes and it has the most engineer skills and consoles. Make the skills and consoles more useful, with the Explorers holding the engineers cards, and it will be useful.
the bo layout in conjonction with turn and inertia determines the role of a ship, not the efficiency of it specific career power.
engineer-heavy cruiser is not a role it a class of ship, if it were, every cruiser would have the same role then.
stating that the role of the galaxy should be engie heavy cruiser daesn't mean anything.
this is not a fight to make cruiser closing the gap in term of firepower with escort, this is to make the galaxy a real choice in end game cruiser.
this guy said it better than me.
and i would concluded by... other than beeing a bad star cruiser clone.... with a galaxy skin.
Actually all of those aspects form the ships capabilities and thus determines the ships role. A ship that has effective engineering wizardry in a system that has parity with the other aspects is able to plow its way through and improve its offensive capabilities through engineering to help cut down its foes.
The ship was usable at launch, even counting the Assault Cruisers abilities at the time. The problem was that they upped the ante' on tac and science without considering engineering
the ship wasn't available at launch, only a tier 4 galaxy was along with the star cruiser.
the galaxy retrofit was introduced to the game when season 2: ancient enemy appear, along with the defiant retrofit and the intrepid, all 3 available with a token granted to you by leveling to the new level 50 ( or more exactly level 51 at that time ) or by direct purchase to the cstore.
that being said, to be usable, is not sufficient to be on part with other ship or worthy of a tier5 status.
tier 4 and 3 ships are also "usable"... like we already said a thousand time.
even at that time it was already a bad star cruiser clone.
The ships should be equally efficient, but distinctive, making everything a tactical/science boat is the "me too" solution. I see bigger and better options if Cryptic would get cracking at it.
but this is just pure conjecture, and so much on an concept level idea since no one have been able to clearly articulate what a "better and bigger" engi power would look like appart from just down some power to ensign level.
and it is also something that cryptic haven't got in mind since they rebuild the DDeridex bo layout for that reason, began the introduction of hybrid ship, and that the last 6 base turn ship introduced to the game are no engie heavy anymore.
would they do a complete refit to engie power, so drasticly, that it would at the same time changing the original role of all the ships that use them heavily? i don't think so.
so whatare the other choices left then?
I disagree, The Galaxy does suffer from engineer inefficiency, the skills are inefficient in comparison to other classes and it has the most engineer skills and consoles. Make the skills and consoles more useful, with the Explorers holding the engineers cards, and it will be useful.
of course the galaxy suffer engineer ineficiency, that is what we are talking about in this thread since 400 pages!!!
my point was that this is irrelevant to the role problem of the galaxy.
the galaxy is not "roleless " because he suffer ensign engie cooldown and poor efficiency engi power.
so is the star cruiser and the exelsior btw, and these one are not roleless.
it is "roleless" because he is too much carrier specific wich condamne him to not be able to do things differently than what a star cruiser can.
what the galaxy can do, the star cruiser can do also, but on the other hand, what the star cruiser can do, the galaxy CAN'T!!
being too much carrier specific is not good for any ship, the defiant is a good example of that with it 3 tactical ensign slot, and no one is calling for a revamp of tactical abilities to change that.
Actually all of those aspects form the ships capabilities and thus determines the ships role. A ship that has effective engineering wizardry in a system that has parity with the other aspects is able to plow its way through and improve its offensive capabilities through engineering to help cut down its foes.
no, effective engineering wizardry will improve.... efficiency.
just that.
in no way it will determine or change the ship role in comparison to what it was before.
turn rate and bo layout will do that.
give the galaxy +10 turn, a ltcommander tact and 2 lt commander sci for example and his role would be completely different.
give him more efficient engi power, and his role would not change for a bit.
yes, we are talking about role here, not efficiency.
and i have trouble to anderstand in what way more efficient engi power will improve its offensive abilitie other than making those abilitie more tactically oriented.
to me it look like an "me too" solution you were talking about.
before there were doffs, the galaxy was actually even more bad then it is now comparatively. its usefulness compared to the simple assault or star cruiser is much closer then it was when it launched. but at the same time theres been so many newer cruisers added that the space between best and worst is absolutely massive now.
false dichotomy.
canon when applied to a game, is a general guide, not a set blueprint.
I can accept that. It is when the guide is apparently ignored that people are the most upset.
you having heard of D&D?
regardless, rpg board games are the sourse of the attacker/defender/healer trinity, in computer games the dice rolls are simulated, this system was much more tolerant of latency and limited data rates that the systems used in shooters. hence its early success.
Played since AD&D, even tried to do a classic original game. Disliked that. Still had not heard of the 'trinity' of classes prior to EQ.
no. its just antiquated.
Making me quote princess bride here. "I don't think that word means what you think it means." As in a more accurate for your arguement would be obsolete.
it cant deal with the scale of modern computer games.
how do you challenge the 'defender' class without npc's ohking the attacker?
how do you challenge the 'attacker' without dps walling the defender?
how do you challenge the 'healer' without going so far as making it iether useless or immortal?
thats just one place the mechanical antiquation of the antique trinity shows.
it forces middling npc design that none of the classes find challenging, because it cant adapt to all at once due to how dynamic modern games are.
The same RPS system in NPC's as you use for PC's. In a modern game we should worry about a cloaked BoP decloaking and firing a more deadly surprise attack while we are slugging it out with a cruiser. The science ship should alert us that we need to be ready for when he uses his holds, environmental damage, and confuses on us. Challenge the tactics not the hitpoints directly.
not to mention... thats not how warships where designed. its just a side effect of the square-cube law.
Yes and no. I have had more than a few discussions with a naval ship designer and yes it is a consideration. I shall ask him if they referenced square-cube as well and get back to you on that.
barely accurate.
you are right, it is misapplied, its being applied to an environment it can not deal with because it was only designed for half a dozen friends sitting around a table rolling dice to kill monsters.
aka, 3 to 12 man pre-set team PvE.
which is only a small part of sto.
in this game everything (bar a few abilities) have a 10 km range.
as much as i would very much like to see otherwise thanks to the application of the volume based stats you are talking about.
I believe we disagree here on how it is applied, and I do think a few modern computer games do things well. I adored how the sniper weapons worked in ME as well as most of the other weapons. I think making each weapon and piece of gear have it's own stats and abilities can improve dynamic and can be done within a trinity frame work. It just takes more effort on both the designers as well as the players.
irrelevant to this game.
startrek weapons are tachyonic particle weapons, mounted on spaceships. not chemically propelled shells.
A parallel of accuracy versus damage does not need to be identical. Also as an accuracy statement, both for the guide that canon provides and challenge for compelling game play accuracy is a factor. If you can never miss then it is never about tactics it is who has thicker armour and who shot first.
you are conflating antique items with mechanical antiquation.
the trinity system doent work in sto for the same reason a wright flyer wont be a transatlantic passenger jet.
its too outmoded and wast designed to work that way.
Since the wright flyer was not a multi passenger vehicle for long distance travel, no I would not make that comparison. But as a system, the trinity is not the obsolete to be put in a museum, item as you see it. But a concept that needs to be better thought out before applying to any system.
Let me try a pen and paper example of poor trinity work.
Rogue, fighter, cleric. Standard trinity examples. But the rogue has been given a greatsword he can use at the same speed and abilites as he does a dagger. And he may wear chainmail with no penalty. The fighter we decided will use only shortswords because we know he is tough and has alot of hit points. So he does not need to hit back much. And those hit points look pretty good so yeah restrict him to chain as well. Cleric, we know this guy does the healing and we gave him all the level one abilities. along with a shortsword and chain.
In the example I just gave (yes I was breaking things) the rogue is much more powerful than the trinity says fast and hitting harder than any other version. And tougher too.
The fighter/tank is squishier and putting out less damage than regular versions do. But we will still call him the tank.
The cleric has a smattering of his job. Seems he is mostly using his heals to hope the fighter gets lucky enough to out last the rogue in a fight. He also has as much attack and defense as the fighter which takes away the unique effect the fighter is supposed to bring.
Is it a failure of the system? Or a failure to use the system to define a role and how they should be used?
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
pleasing trekkies with even with trek is like trying to herd rabid zombie cats.
:(:eek: hmm. Nope sorry I have nothing to argue with this statement.
interesting... the entire basis for the term comes from the primary 'class' archytypes.
Doesn't change that I only ever first heard the term much later. I will have to hang that one up with a different regions thought.
you mean RTS system?
yea, rts system gives the same stats to player entities as it does ai entities. but thats not what we have here by a long shot unfortunatly.
No I meant RPS. As in Rock Paper Scissors. Different things to defeat different opponents.
... no.
they way you win is by killing the target. not by getting killed.
thats another example of why the antique trinity is beyond its usefulness.
a dead target has had 100% of its possible dps mitigated.
making the attacker types better at damage mitigation than so called "tanks".
I shall assume this argument comes from misunderstanding my point. In current pve, a bop is just a minor target. Larger 'tanky' ships are ore a challenge as they need more time to take down. There is nothing inherently different in the npcs. How they should be is how they are made/used in pvp. This way a pve build is neary if not as effective in pvp as it is in pve. Also it makes people use different tactics to win in combat as opposed to mash B button ad nausea.
ME wasnt trinity based.
every class was attacker type with self healing abilities.
only thing that changed was HOW the classes did damage to targets.
there where no dedicated healers in ME, now where there any dedicated defenders.
Again off my point. I was speaking to liking the balance effect of they didn't balance everything to one set of parameters. IE the sniper rifle was not a slightly longer range weapon. It was a significantly longer range weapon, with great damage. The drawback built into them was speed of fire. You could not maintain fire for long at all. Moving and shooting accurately? Also unlikely. So the tactic is to let a sniper fire then charge the position dodging and weaving or have a sniper to counter sniper. Tactics to overcome a ability as opposed to a flat nerf or make all weapons essentially the same.
In this case I am arguing that a system can use many ranges and abilities and not be tied to narrow scopes.
and the trinity was never designed to simultaniously deal with solo pve(most of sto content) pug pve(random queue stf stuff) lobbied pve(premade stf stuff) sandbox pve (defera & sphere) pug pvp (random pvp queue) lobbied pvp (premade pvp) sandbox pvp (kerrat zone)
this game has ALL those environments, and the thing the antiquated trinity was designed of was just one of those, that being lobbied/premade PvE.
I agree the game has all those environments. I disagree that the balance system is what is broken in making these things work.
In a fantasy game the rogue does not have the big weapons and armour, nor does the mage. They are not the 'only' path to dps or success. EACH class has it's own method of achieving success and they can work solo or in teams. A well set up counter system means you can have one pve/pvp build and function.
Rogues move through and use stealth to maximize a first hit. Afterward their damage drops to painfully low levels and their next set of skills are getting away from attackers again.
Tanks don't have the raw single hit of a rogue but finish enemies by beating them down faster than they themselves are beaten down.
Mage types use control and ranged effects to bring down foes. If they are hitting people with their staff then something has gone wrong.
healer's meanwhile have a different approach to outlasting an opponent. They repair their own damage. meaning a big hit that a fighter could take will drop a healer. But lot's of small hits are easier for the healer to overcome.
That is all solo pve/p.
In a group, the rogue can do two things. Get initial attention a 'pull' a mob to a group. Or circle an active fight and look for openings to drop single targets.
The fighter works to keep attention on himself beating on the primary target.
The mage controls the surrounding mobs keeping them from ganging up on our fighter.
the healer watches everyone and keeps them alive. The healer role is the most straight translation between the two.
How I see to make things balanced, again, is to make the npc's operate the same way a pc would. Not just bludgeon with weapon till slain. Rogues avoid fire then hit with hard shots. Tanks duel it out with other tanks and the mage makes people swear at their monitors. It was mentioned by others that the current pve is too easy. That is another sign of the system not being used properly or evenly.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
the ship wasn't available at launch, only a tier 4 galaxy was along with the star cruiser.
the galaxy retrofit was introduced to the game when season 2: ancient enemy appear, along with the defiant retrofit and the intrepid, all 3 available with a token granted to you by leveling to the new level 50 ( or more exactly level 51 at that time ) or by direct purchase to the cstore.
that being said, to be usable, is not sufficient to be on part with other ship or worthy of a tier5 status.
tier 4 and 3 ships are also "usable"... like we already said a thousand time.
even at that time it was already a bad star cruiser clone.
I used the wrong word there. I meant when the Galaxy-R was launched and I did state that it was usable. One could put DBB's on it and have some fun when the saucer was seperated.
but this is just pure conjecture, and so much on an concept level idea since no one have been able to clearly articulate what a "better and bigger" engi power would look like appart from just down some power to ensign level.
and it is also something that cryptic haven't got in mind since they rebuild the DDeridex bo layout for that reason, began the introduction of hybrid ship, and that the last 6 base turn ship introduced to the game are no engie heavy anymore.
would they do a complete refit to engie power, so drasticly, that it would at the same time changing the original role of all the ships that use them heavily? i don't think so.
so whatare the other choices left then?
i am pretty sure you have seen what I have put forth in the past on my suggested improvements. As far as conjecture, everything is conjecture until it happens.
of course the galaxy suffer engineer ineficiency, that is what we are talking about in this thread since 400 pages!!!
my point was that this is irrelevant to the role problem of the galaxy.
the galaxy is not "roleless " because he suffer ensign engie cooldown and poor efficiency engi power.
so is the star cruiser and the exelsior btw, and these one are not roleless.
it is "roleless" because he is too much carrier specific wich condamne him to not be able to do things differently than what a star cruiser can.
what the galaxy can do, the star cruiser can do also, but on the other hand, what the star cruiser can do, the galaxy CAN'T!!
being too much carrier specific is not good for any ship, the defiant is a good example of that with it 3 tactical ensign slot, and no one is calling for a revamp of tactical abilities to change that.
Because tactical abilities aren't as much of a liability as engie abilities are right now. In regards to "role-less" because of career (engineer) specific skills, thats exactly what I was saying. Now, Cryptic could try to address it by making it another "me too" ship or make an engie heavy cruiser more effective by working on those skills and console choices. Otherwise the fixes that people want make it a Regent or Ambassador wanabee, and that would be a bigger disservice to the ship.
no, effective engineering wizardry will improve.... efficiency.
just that.
in no way it will determine or change the ship role in comparison to what it was before.
turn rate and bo layout will do that.
give the galaxy +10 turn, a ltcommander tact and 2 lt commander sci for example and his role would be completely different.
give him more efficient engi power, and his role would not change for a bit.
yes, we are talking about role here, not efficiency.
and i have trouble to anderstand in what way more efficient engi power will improve its offensive abilitie other than making those abilitie more tactically oriented.
to me it look like an "me too" solution you were talking about.
If they were to make higher end (CMDR,LTCMDR) engie skills (EPTX) to up the energy caps, namely to weapons (EPTW) and a cruiser could hit at, say, 150 power for a time, that would most certainly improve its offensive capability. Make Aceton beam someothing other than a joke and that improves its offensive capability. And (even though DDIS disagrees with me) up high ranking DEM output and that increases the ships offensive capability. ANd thats just for starters.
As far as a 10+ turn on a Galaxy class, really? Do you really think that should happen? Thats better than the Assault, Advanced Heavy and the Battlecruiser have.
than you are playing a completly different game to sto, and are creating a strawman fallacy to defend the antique trinity.
guess what, everyone has a 10 km range. dance around that again and i will consider you to to have admitted the trinity antiquated and not fit for use in sto.
Once again, not a strawman. I see the point of difference in our arguments now. I am not defending STO's use of the trinity balance system. In fact I think it is completely misapplied and broken here. I am saying the system itself can be used across multiple levels and still be functional. Let me see if I can make an analogy of my point that does not use combat.
Real world speed limit laws are there to allow people to move quickly and safely in various basic environments. As in slow to 25mph around schools and residential areas. On freeways you may move to 55 or 65mph. As a system this mostly works. (human beings don't always follow rules.) Now let's say we think it will be safer if cars get in and out of those residential areas faster. So we make residential speed 55mph and do the same at schools. The result would be the opposite of the intended purpose of the speed limit laws. increasing injury and death.
So to sum up what I have been trying to get across is the trinity itself is not broken. Only how it is used. And no I do not think it is used here very well at all.
Our rogue/escorts have the biggest damage and not much loss of defense. Making them a go to for the easy win.
The mage/science ships are as squishy as they should be but get less useful control to determine their style as effectively and try to be part of the healer role. and use their weapons as a primary effect. Which when shown in other media is not what that class option should be trying for.
And finally the fighter/cruiser has almost the weakest weapons, defenses barely better than the rogue. And not as much mobility, they get a slice of the healer role but not as much and not many special abilities to use. They fail because they made a circle to fit a triangle hole here.
Does this explain what we have been discussing?
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
As far as a 10+ turn on a Galaxy class, really? Do you really think that should happen? Thats better than the Assault, Advanced Heavy and the Battlecruiser have.
neo1nx wrote "give the galaxy +10 turn, a ltcommander tact and 2 lt commander sci for example and his role would be completely different."
Had you continued reading past "turn" and read the content they were writing before that you may have understood what they were writing about.
Because tactical abilities aren't as much of a liability as engie abilities are right now.
and you just proove my point by saying that.
imagine if tactical abilitie were as bad as engi one? one could said that it would be bad luck for the defiant, huh?.
but guess what... they are good, and still, STILL,with these very good powers, the defiant suffer general inneficiency because he is to tactical heavy.
so you see, better engie power will not change the state of the galaxy, it will be a little better yes, but still generally inneficient and roleless.
if these better engie power were to be applie only to the galaxy that would be different since it would be, then, something unique to the galaxy and thus give him a special role.
but we both known that there is no reasons to do it only to the galaxy.
and since other engie heavy will also benefit from it on top of having a general more flexible and efficient bo layout, guess what would change.... nothing.
just like with the cruiser command, same intention, same scenario, same results.
and if you bielieve that the galaxy will "make it out alive" because he got 1 more ensign BO power and 1 more engie console slot than a star cruiser... you are simply fooling yourself, or trying to fool others by stating so.
Otherwise the fixes that people want make it a Regent or Ambassador wanabee, and that would be a bigger disservice to the ship.
how so exactly?
not that i want it to be a regent clone nor that i think that it should now copie the ambassador layout but i would like to known why this would, in the absolute, do a disservice to the ship, and how.
If they were to make higher end (CMDR,LTCMDR) engie skills (EPTX) to up the energy caps, namely to weapons (EPTW) and a cruiser could hit at, say, 150 power for a time, that would most certainly improve its offensive capability. Make Aceton beam someothing other than a joke and that improves its offensive capability. And (even though DDIS disagrees with me) up high ranking DEM output and that increases the ships offensive capability. ANd thats just for starters.
so we are talking about boosting offensive engie power, well that also look like an "me too" solution don't you think?
you do realize that right now when you do it right you can outdps escort with cruiser already?
and not with cannon, but beam.
we are talking about build that do 30 to 40k, with cruiser, and you want to boost their offensive side?
As far as a 10+ turn on a Galaxy class, really? Do you really think that should happen? Thats better than the Assault, Advanced Heavy and the Battlecruiser have.
did you just stop at +10? they was also a lt commander TACT and 2 ( yes 2 ) lt commander sci.
can you explain to me how your brain end up to bielieve this was a serious proposal, even for a second?
so in case you are still wondering, this "build" was just to show you how bo layout and turnrate have much more impact on the ship role than the efficiency of a carrier power
neo1nx wrote "give the galaxy +10 turn, a ltcommander tact and 2 lt commander sci for example and his role would be completely different."
Had you continued reading past "turn" and read the content they were writing before that you may have understood what they were writing about.
Actually, I did read past that, I took it that what he put forth was what he wanted to make it have its role to be completely different. I may have misunderstood his statement as a suggestion, but I most certainly read it.
and you just proove my point by saying that.
imagine if tactical abilitie were as bad as engi one? one could said that it would be bad luck for the defiant, huh?.
but guess what... they are good, and still, STILL,with these very good powers, the defiant suffer general inneficiency because he is to tactical heavy.
so you see, better engie power will not change the state of the galaxy, it will be a little better yes, but still generally inneficient and roleless.
if these better engie power were to be applie only to the galaxy that would be different since it would be, then, something unique to the galaxy and thus give him a special role.
but we both known that there is no reasons to do it only to the galaxy.
and since other engie heavy will also benefit from it on top of having a general more flexible and efficient bo layout, guess what would change.... nothing.
just like with the cruiser command, same intention, same scenario, same results.
and if you bielieve that the galaxy will "make it out alive" because he got 1 more ensign BO power and 1 more engie console slot than a star cruiser... you are simply fooling yourself, or trying to fool others by stating so.
With engineer powers and class parity as is, yes. With parity, it is a different story altogether.
how so exactly?
not that i want it to be a regent clone nor that i think that it should now copie the ambassador layout but i would like to known why this would, in the absolute, do a disservice to the ship, and how.
Because (in a nutshell)all it is going to be, essentially, is one of those ships with a different skin and a lower turn rate. Making engineering on par with other class skills and consoles can at least allow it (and some other ships) to go in another direction and still be competitve.
so we are talking about boosting offensive engie power, well that also look like an "me too" solution don't you think?
you do realize that right now when you do it right you can outdps escort with cruiser already?
and not with cannon, but beam.
we are talking about build that do 30 to 40k, with cruiser, and you want to boost their offensive side?
Those abilities still wouldn't be a direct damage maker like the tactical ones are. It is possible to outdps with a cruiser, but only if you are parsing and using FAW. If its focused on one target, not so much.
did you just stop at +10? they was also a lt commander TACT and 2 ( yes 2 ) lt commander sci.
can you explain to me how your brain end up to bielieve this was a serious proposal, even for a second?
so in case you are still wondering, this "build" was just to show you how bo layout and turnrate have much more impact on the ship role than the efficiency of a carrier power
I most certainly went past +10, but figured that it wasn't even worth it making a statement about the ridiculous BOff layout. I have most certainly seen proposals like that thrown here as a serious proposal and it wouldn't shock me to see it again.
And when did we start talking about "carrier powers", what does launching fighters have to do with it?
I have a galaxy on my fed alt and it brings plenty of pain why wouldn't you want 5 en consoles massive resists are key to absorbing damage
Ofc the defiant gets 5 tac consoles its a damage dealer
The bortasqu isn't the best ship out there but I know many captains that can bring the rain in pvp and pve
Sounds to me like you've given up on the ship without trying harder to work round it's 6 turn rate which is about the only slight weakness I found with my ship
See that's where cryptic help out fed side characters there called beams amazing things have much more arc than cannons and work in perfect harmony with fruisers
i love the fleet gal but dont try to tell some of them anything some people only believe that by putting a tac slot on something then is worth it to captain silly little tac monkeys , dont like what they have done to it??? stay the hell outta my ship by the way almost 1500 replies 150 000 views and not a peep from a dev at all??? hmmm thats odd
yes. you are wrong.
your only way to defend the antique trinity is to refer to idealism of class roles in simpler games. games that arent sto, and if those systems where fully applied here in the idealised form you describe would fail faster than comunism did.
this would be because the different environments have different pressures dictating minimum requirements on both pc's and npc's. all of which are overcome faster by destroying threats than being victim to them.
Odd, as the open mmo that uses the trinity I was thinking successfully was Lotro.
They did not seem to die that fast and had a very immersive system with out in the open combat. Group and solo play and each class handling its role differently.
It seems one of us has blinders on and I think it is you. You want the system to be an absolute failure across all boards. The question is why?
I can accept that they tried to apply the system here and failed. It does not make the system broken just what was done here. Abandoning a role system. What would you suggest? Open builds? Everyone gets to decide what slots can go inside the hulls of their ships there for nothing is pigeon holed into a preset design?
Assuming that is what you are lobbying for, how would you balance that? Or is that the point also, do not have balance?
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
If they were to make higher end (CMDR,LTCMDR) engie skills (EPTX) to up the energy caps, namely to weapons (EPTW) and a cruiser could hit at, say, 150 power for a time, that would most certainly improve its offensive capability. Make Aceton beam someothing other than a joke and that improves its offensive capability. And (even though DDIS disagrees with me) up high ranking DEM output and that increases the ships offensive capability. ANd thats just for starters.
As far as a 10+ turn on a Galaxy class, really? Do you really think that should happen? Thats better than the Assault, Advanced Heavy and the Battlecruiser have.
any increase to energy effect cap would be the biggest damage booster they could introduce at this point.. if a ship could have an effect cap of 150, and over cap beyond that and run the drain res reducing cruiser aura with the season 8 drain reducing warp core, that 150 would be the exact same thing as heaving APA on at all times. yes, 150 compared to 125 is a 50% damage increase per shot at that power, unprecedented damage boost there.
if EPtW cased that effect cap increase, then escorts and scimitars and regents and avengers would use that incredible damage boost to massive effect, and the galaxy's effectiveness would not move in comparison. it would also completely break the game, damage like that.
DEM is already massively powerful, buffing it would be absurd. you don't see it do a ton to npcs, they have massive hitpoints but no shield distribution, so its a bit of a drop in the bucket vs them.
all the most powerful AtB cruisers can run DEM3 at best possible uptime too, the galaxy having to much eng does nothing to allow it to run it wile ships with less eng cant. on those tactical ships there's a certain amount of eng needed with AtB builds, and the galaxy has 2 too many, period. having 2 too many massively reduces its potential performance and suitability. a star cruiser ends up making a much better AtB tac cruiser by comparison! just because it doesn't have that too much eng, and instead there's a station or 2 in a place it can be used to massive beneficial effect. that's a double negative for just the galaxy. its role is simply to suck as a result. of course having that much eng and that little sci also makes it SUCK as a healer, AND tank. there is NO across the board change to any skill that makes the galaxy more useful that does not also make the ships that are better then the galaxy even better too.
aceton beam will always suck until HE stops instantly clearing it. it doesn't mater if it starts at ENS, or if the dot was 10 times as powerful, or if the debuff made your weapons do negative damage, being HE clearable kills that skill dead.
its sorta funny to hear about scoffing about giving the galaxy +10 turn rate. that's exactly what the sep console does. but, that's not +10 to base, so it sucks. a fleet galaxy can max wile separated with about 30 turn rate, wile a negvar with its starting place f 9 can have up to 40 turn rate. if there's 1 thing i agree all cruisers should receive as a buff, its a +2 to their base turn rate, across the board.
but cruisers as a whole currently, the last thing they need is an across the board buff. the ONLY problem with cruisers right now is the difference between what the galaxy can do, and what the also ran second stringer cruisers can do, never mind against the best of the damage dealers or best of the healers.
eng captains suck though, boosting them across the board, but not cruisers, im totally behind that. its them that should get a higher energy level cap across the board, but of 130, and with cores buffing up to 135. weapons energy cap of 135 would be a 10% boost on your final damage shot at that level, on all the time, like stacking EPtW1 twice. wile having higher shield power, engine power, and potential aux power, especially with the +10 to aux obolisk core. there would be a reason there to use a sci ship on an eng. it would give an eng synergy with every ship type, were it has no synergy with anything but a pug healer cruiser now.
havnt played it to say what they did different. not to mention whe effect an established fanbase can have on the sucess of a franchise riding game.
but guess what, you cant get much closer to D&D than tolkien.:rolleyes:
True, but does not counter that in an open world environment it does/did function. . . I should check to see if it is still running. they went f2p a few years ago.
who the hell is "abandoning a role system"? even cod(curse its existence) has classes & roles, so thats nothing but a strawman.
You seem to love that word as it assumes a dismissive nature. However I have always seen a class system in place. those that do not follow one quickly broke as people automatically took the one build to win approach. I believe in the beta for CoH they tried to let people mix and match powers as they saw fit and it quickly broke. So they instituted a system very much like if the trinity system. And it did well.
easy thing would be to use volume based stats and the dynamic att/def/agl system and then sort out how the 3 career choices go about doing damage.
Missed you linked a video I will watch after this reply. Is dynamic a game or a system?
I am asking so I may research accurately to continue discussing it.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
any increase to energy effect cap would be the biggest damage booster they could introduce at this point.. if a ship could have an effect cap of 150, and over cap beyond that and run the drain res reducing cruiser aura with the season 8 drain reducing warp core, that 150 would be the exact same thing as heaving APA on at all times. yes, 150 compared to 125 is a 50% damage increase per shot at that power, unprecedented damage boost there.
if EPtW cased that effect cap increase, then escorts and scimitars and regents and avengers would use that incredible damage boost to massive effect, and the galaxy's effectiveness would not move in comparison. it would also completely break the game, damage like that.
It doesn't have to be 150, it was a representative number. Also, if the boost was applied only to beam weapons (which are pretty low per shot) on cruisers. And even if the Galaxy didn't move up in comparison to the Regent, Avenger, and Scimitars, it would still be more effective in contrast to escorts and sci ships than it was before.
DEM is already massively powerful, buffing it would be absurd. you don't see it do a ton to npcs, they have massive hitpoints but no shield distribution, so its a bit of a drop in the bucket vs them.
My use of DEM3 in PvP (both with friends and PuG alike) only produces a slight uptick in damage against real players, its still very underwhelming for a CMDR level ability.
all the most powerful AtB cruisers can run DEM3 at best possible uptime too, the galaxy having to much eng does nothing to allow it to run it wile ships with less eng cant. on those tactical ships there's a certain amount of eng needed with AtB builds, and the galaxy has 2 too many, period. having 2 too many massively reduces its potential performance and suitability. a star cruiser ends up making a much better AtB tac cruiser by comparison! just because it doesn't have that too much eng, and instead there's a station or 2 in a place it can be used to massive beneficial effect. that's a double negative for just the galaxy. its role is simply to suck as a result. of course having that much eng and that little sci also makes it SUCK as a healer, AND tank. there is NO across the board change to any skill that makes the galaxy more useful that does not also make the ships that are better then the galaxy even better too.
So even if it makes it better (vs. escorts and sci ships), but not better than other cruisers, that should be a deal breaker?
aceton beam will always suck until HE stops instantly clearing it. it doesn't mater if it starts at ENS, or if the dot was 10 times as powerful, or if the debuff made your weapons do negative damage, being HE clearable kills that skill dead.
And wasn't I asking to make it more potent? Making it not clear-able (or a percentage of the damage based on level of HE) would certainly help in that endeavor, would it not?
its sorta funny to hear about scoffing about giving the galaxy +10 turn rate. that's exactly what the sep console does. but, that's not +10 to base, so it sucks. a fleet galaxy can max wile separated with about 30 turn rate, wile a negvar with its starting place f 9 can have up to 40 turn rate. if there's 1 thing i agree all cruisers should receive as a buff, its a +2 to their base turn rate, across the board.
Um, the separation consoles doesn't give the ship a 10+ base turn rate, its the actual seperation of the saucer itself, which comes along with a hitpoint drop and other small factors that essentially make it a light cruiser.
but cruisers as a whole currently, the last thing they need is an across the board buff. the ONLY problem with cruisers right now is the difference between what the galaxy can do, and what the also ran second stringer cruisers can do, never mind against the best of the damage dealers or best of the healers.
I will agree to disagree with your belief in the current state of cruisers. The amount of hitpoints a ship has between escorts and cruisers is too narrow vs average ship damage output d for starters.
I have mentioned several times about a LT uni so people can be "flexible". You want to be more sci than the Star Cruiser? There you go. Want to still be engineer king? All done! Want to have more of a tactical focus? Two LT tacts' can do that. But that flexibility should come at a price of not being the best at anything as well.
eng captains suck though, boosting them across the board, but not cruisers, im totally behind that. its them that should get a higher energy level cap across the board, but of 130, and with cores buffing up to 135. weapons energy cap of 135 would be a 10% boost on your final damage shot at that level, on all the time, like stacking EPtW1 twice. wile having higher shield power, engine power, and potential aux power, especially with the +10 to aux obolisk core. there would be a reason there to use a sci ship on an eng. it would give an eng synergy with every ship type, were it has no synergy with anything but a pug healer cruiser now.
I would be all for that, even though I actually enjoy and do more damage with my engi' than I do my tac (more time using the engi and mroe familiar with special abilities that work better for me). Engineer and cruisers in general should be a better source of power than other classes should.
Because (in a nutshell)all it is going to be, essentially, is one of those ships with a different skin and a lower turn rate. Making engineering on par with other class skills and consoles can at least allow it (and some other ships) to go in another direction and still be competitve.
yes, but given the state of the galaxy as of today, i hardly call that a disservice.
it is certainly not the best solution, and not one i would like to see implemented just for the idea that the galaxy should have a bo layout that not only give him a different role, but a role that feel right with what was show of it capabilitie in the show.
meaning something that is his signature of some sort.
but what i would call a real disservice is that cryptic let the ship as what it is now.
Those abilities still wouldn't be a direct damage maker like the tactical ones are. It is possible to outdps with a cruiser, but only if you are parsing and using FAW. If its focused on one target, not so much.
i anderstand the idea, and even if it sound reasonable, seeing how some did use them to great effect ( not just pure cruiser ) i am really reluctant to a boost of these one.
And when did we start talking about "carrier powers", what does launching fighters have to do with it?
bad spelling, i meant career not carrier.
With engineer powers and class parity as is, yes. With parity, it is a different story altogether.
i known that parity will do nothing ( notice that i use the word "known" here, and not "think" ).
and since you told me that you got a well define idea of how these power should be, let put it into pratice shall we?
show me a build ( bo layout and doff and console layout ) that could be use on a galaxy that would alow this ship to do things a star cruiser with the same new enhanced engi power could not do, that a odyssey could not do, that an ambassador could not do and that would result in either better firepower, better tanking/healing, support or crow control.
you can just stick to the build concerning galaxy and star cruiser if you wish.
it been a while since i try to explain to you that this will change nothing concerning the role of the galaxy, that it will still be a bad cruiser clone, hence have the same effect that what the cruiser command have , and that with many examples.
but you keep arguing the contrary but with no tangible proof, so now is your chance.
show me how your parity will proove me wrong.
And even if the Galaxy didn't move up in comparison to the Regent, Avenger, and Scimitars, it would still be more effective in contrast to escorts and sci ships than it was before.
the goal of the galaxy retrofit revamp, in cryptic own system, is not to reduced the gap in firepower with the regent, avenger or escort.
it need more firepower, that for sure, but more important than that, what he need is flexibility.
for example if an ensign tactical would be added to it, it will automatically give him more firepower, but more important than that, it will give him more choices in tactical build, so more flexibility.
it would not be just tactical team and a beam power, or tactical team and a torpedo power, or ( the ugly one ) beam power and torpedo power but not tactical team.
that just an example that what the ship need is more flexibility more than firepower ( if we stick with what cryptic want it to be )
the idea to give him more tact console is not a good one, even if i anderstand why some people would love that.
but it is the least efficient solution in comparison to others ways.
So even if it makes it better (vs. escorts and sci ships), but not better than other cruisers, that should be a deal breaker?
yes, because the galaxy problem is not to not be able to match escort firepower, it never was.
his problem is that he have no reason to exist in comparison to other cruiser, and especially the one fighting in his own categorie.
that with them that the competition exist, not with sci ship or escort.
and it not about making it better than other cruiser, but as good.
Um, the separation consoles doesn't give the ship a 10+ base turn rate, its the actual seperation of the saucer itself, which comes along with a hitpoint drop and other small factors that essentially make it a light cruiser.
yes, but that what drunk said too, you missread.
but, that's not +10 to base, so it sucks
when you saucer sep, this abilitie give +10 to turn rate, but not +10 to BASE turn rate, that is completely different.
hence his comparison with the negvar that ended up turning better with rcs console in the end ( that is just ridiculous imo, the fat negvar turning better than a galaxy separated )
it been a while since i try to explain to you that this will change nothing concerning the role of the galaxy, that it will still be a bad cruiser clone, hence have the same effect that what the cruiser command have , and that with many examples.
but you keep arguing the contrary but with no tangible proof, so now is your chance.
show me how your parity will proove me wrong.
Okay. Let me try to put it this way. There are currently two roles that the Galaxy has:
1) Extra heavy Eng focus. What can the Galaxy do mechanically that other cruisers can't? Force you to take 3 Ensign Eng powers. The problem here is not that there is no mechanical role for the ship, it's that people don't want that role.
2) Being a cruiser that reminds you of a ship that you liked from a show you liked. This is a legitimate role as well - it's the reason there was a push to put the Iconic ships into the game at VA level in the first place. The problem here is that some people feel like possibly having to choose between the mechanical role they like and the aesthetics that they like is "unfair", even though almost every player in the game has to make this very choice.
What Whamhammer is saying is that attempting to change the mechanical role of the Galaxy by changing its officer seating is unlikely to be a good one, since the options seem to either be stepping on the toes of another cruiser by replicating the seating, creating an op cruiser that obsoletes everything else, or creating a seating that shifts from one undesirable role to another.
Thus, the solution he proposes it to make the mechanical role of the Galaxy right now more desirable, by finding a way to make slotting 3 Eng powers something you would choose to do sometimes, rather than something you are forced to do because you want to fly the Galaxy.
What you and others are basically saying is that making all eng powers better doesn't solve your problem, because your problem isn't that the Galaxy isn't good enough to use. Instead, your problem is that you feel like other ships have advantages that the Galaxy doesn't, and that you will still prefer doing more damage or whatever over having a more efficient Eng heavy setup.
What that proves is that this is basically not about making the Galaxy mechanically better in a vacuum, it's about making the Galaxy mechanically better than other options. The thing that's sad is that Whamhammer is about the only one who has come up with a solution to the mechanical problem with the Galaxy that could actually result in what people profess to want (a "balanced" Galaxy with a defined, desirable mechanical goal that doesn't step on any toes), yet he can't get traction with it at all, because he was trying to solve the problem people said they had. Until people are willing to be honest about what they really want, there's no point to this thread.
Of course, from my perspective, the fact that people don't like the Galaxy's role is not even a problem that is worthy of consideration in principle. I'm not sure why Galaxy fans don't "deserve" to be on the bottom? Why is it totally unreasonable that, like the Aquarius, the Galaxy exists more as a fluff option than a competitive one?
Don't give me that "all ships should be equal" tripe - a game where all options are equal is one in which all choices are meaningless. Either the ship and power selection has a meaningful effect on game play, or it does not. If it does have a meaningful effect, then there must be winners and losers - powers/ships that work better or are easier to use, as well as options that are less optimal, but can be made to work with effort.
To be clear, the responses to this are all almost certainly going to miss my point, because they are all going to assume that what is necessary for "balance" is that ships take roughly the same amount of time to complete a mission, with roughly the same number of deaths (likely 0 in any PvE content). The problem with this is that (given how easy it is to stay alive in the game) it compresses the game down to exactly one factor - doing damage fast enough to be "competitive". The theory goes that we can create systems whereby any combination of ship and captain can expect to put out roughly the same overall mission DPS, just with different powers, or by varying up the spike/pressure damage equilibrium.
The disconnect is that doing this presupposes that doing more damage with my weapons because I pushed a red button is a meaningful play difference from doing more damage with exotic particles because I pushed a blue button. Those, to me, are the same play style - they both focus on doing damage as efficiently as possible to finish the mission ASAP. The only way for meaningful play differences to exist in my book is for some ships to be "better" than others in the sense that some will be more efficient about finishing missions faster. Put another way, I think play differences are all about the goals you have (do I want to go as fast as possible, or do I want to have fun dorking around with my friends? etc.), and not about how you choose to achieve what you perceive to be the goal everyone SHOULD have.
In this context, I feel like the Galaxy is able to do anything, even PvP, if you are good enough player. If you are not good enough, you have two options: Play something "better" for your style/skill, or try to become better at using what the Galaxy does have better.
you mean people playing a game may not feel like being there just to be a victim? thats a shocking insight.
or, maybe they might feel like being a useful part of a team, rather than a slot that could have been used by someone who could actually help win, rather than the weakest link?
why, i would never have thought of such a bizarrely obvious thing to miss. that would need it to be pointed out.
I presume that you are attempting to somehow respond to my point, but it's difficult to tell underneath all your unearned sense of superiority. Are you being hyperbolic here, or do you really think that taking Eng team 1 makes you a "victim" and "useless" on a team? In any case, you did, in fact, miss my obvious point. I'm saying that the problem is not that the ship is "useless" at all - I'm saying that the role the ship plays isn't a popular one. Just because you are too narrow-minded to find a use for the ship doesn't mean that everyone shares your lack of vision.
You are acting like if you're not optimal, you're useless, and you might be so hopelessly, myopically out of touch with reality that you feel that way. I guess I must be remarkable, because I can use a sub-optimal ship and setup, and not feel like I am holding back the team, and have fun - even if (SHOCK HORROR) someone parses the mission and I have the lowest DPS. This is because I typically enjoy using my ship to the best of my abilities, rather than needing a parser or timer or any other objective measure to tell me I'm having fun.
this is true if nobody has a clue about how to make a game with diverse and still competive classes.
which, has been true of dozens of titles outside of the cesspool of stagnant mmorpg development for over a decade in both shooters and rts titles.
Go play a shooter then. Seriously. You are welcome to feel like you have everything all figured out, and that "if only they'd LISTEN" the world would be a better place. Just know that the greatest likelihood is that you are off your rocker, and you will come to regret this phase of your life, in much the same way that many adults look back on the naive certainty we felt in our teen years that OF COURSE marxism/socialism/anarchy/objectivism/capitalism/etc is the way to go. In the meantime, if this game is unfulfilling to you, I suggest that rather that lording over us philistines because we are too ignorant to ever understand you, you go find a group/game that is more in tune with your desires.
not that there are ever willers and losers in either of those generas when two players face each other with equal gear, even cloned set-ups yet one player beats the other with superior tactics.
unlike an rpg, where gear decides who will win before the fight is started.
AH HAH! Here we go! You've fallen back on the scrub line of "It's not skill that matters, it's all build/gear". Yeah, I have an ugly truth for you - even in STO, skill matters much, much more than gear or build. If you get beaten in either PvP or PvE, it's almost certainly because the other player is better than you. You might tell yourself it's because the game is unbalanced, or that the other person's build is "op", or that the tactics the other person used were "unfair" or "cheesy", but the fact is that most of the time the fact is the other person just out played you. If you have the emotional maturity to be playing the game for fun, and not to prove something, then you can say GG and learn from it.
If you can't do that, I guess you could go on the forums and propose elaborate, unnecessary and impractical changes to the game to try to make the game bend more to your limited ability to understand and adapt, rather than improve yourself. That seems like something a person might do.
I'm not sure if this has been brought up and already spat on, and frankly I'm not bored enough to go read all 449 pages of this thread to find out, but I would love to see the Galaxy have a BOFF layout similar to a D'deridex.
I'm not really sure what's wrong with a ship having a similar BOFF layout to another ship. I mean there are only so many combinations you can have.
the only one acting superior here is you withyor falf baked flamebait L2P scrub comments toward the end of your post.
Are you honestly going to say that you don't know exactly how your tone comes across? I struggle to believe anyone can be as arrogantly dismissive as you are without it being a carefully cultivated act.
And yes, I do think my argument is superior to yours, and I do think you are basically acting like a scrub who wants to blame perceived failures in the game for personal failures. You may or may not actually be that thing, I don't know or care. The fact remains that in the Venn diagram of your attitude and the scrub attitude, I see more than a little overlap.
pfft optimal. been flying an all turret risian around for the last few days.
it still works better than an optimised galaxy.
When in doubt, double down on the Hyperbole, eh? Please define "works better". Let me help you a long a little bit: No, it doesn't do more damage, and even if it did, I would reject that kind of uni-dimensional analysis as a symptom of your myopic focus on STO as some kind of "competition" to be "won".
wth are you rambling all over the place about? lol
i pointed out the obvious, that shooters have had distinct balanced classes for years, without the redundancy of antiquated nonsence like tanks and you say well go play them? point missed
Try this: Shooters are not MMORPGs. What works in one genre doesn't necessarily work in others. A crucial distinction between the games you like and this one is that this one isn't necessarily competitive. My point, however, was not about the factual claims you were making. It was about the way in which you were advancing them - I have not more interest in debating with you about how "true" you think your position is, anymore than I have interest in debating with a teenager who just read (terrible philosophical or political tract) and thinks (hack author) has it all figured out. My point was, you want STO to be something that it is not, and advocate for changes that will never happen. If you feel like this game isn't up to your standards, the only rational choice is to do something else.
lol dude, just go check the pvp forums. everyone and their pet targ has at least one broken power, ability or item that iether too weak to be a gimmic of so powerful it has to be excluded due to breaking gameplay.
so trot on.
I... huh? I agree that people are constantly complaining about things... I especially agree that they generally complain about different things, which seems to me to be a pretty good indicator that I'm right that such complaints are more about bruised egos seeking to excuse a loss. When something is genuinely way out of control, you see a consensus against it, not lots of different threads complaining about lots of different things. I'm certainly not seeing how the fact that other people are also acting like scrubs makes the sentiment you are expressing any less scrubbish? You flat out said that in an RPG you think gear determines outcome. I believe that to be a false claim, because I have outplayed players with better gear/builds than me, and been outplayed by others with worse gear/builds. I recognize that when I lose, even if I feel like the other player had an OP build, I typically made the choice to engage in that fight. If I miscalculated my chances or had a bad strategy for dealing with the OP FOTM, that's on me.
but if i dont come on the forums i cant get you to cry me a river about being a scrub or mythical lands of balanced competitive game-play.
I'm not the one crying about some sort of mythical balance in competitive play - I'm saying that such a thing is likely impossible, possibly undesirable, and certainly unnecessary. Thanks for reinforcing that to you the game is all about competition, though. That's fine, but again, STO isn't really competitive, and treating it like it is might possibly be the source of much of your frustration. Instead of complaining that the problem is the game is broken (which, let's be honest, is basically one step removed from the NES classic scrub line of "the controller is broken"), maybe ask yourself if there's anything about the game you find fun, and build from that.
Enough with your little P***ing contest. Put your E-Peen's away. Tha Galaxy needs to be revisited, we all know it, we have differnet opinions on HOW it should be done.
All this should be friendly debates not shouting matches. So come on, get over yourselves and get back to the ship. Please.
Inertia just means you can do Powerslides in you carrier!
I am Il Shadow and i approve these Shennanigans!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Comments
The truth is somewhere in between. Throughout the shows, especially the ones set in the 'TNG era' there are numerous references that can give us a clear idea of what is suposed to be what.
However, there's always the plot armor. That's nothing exclusive to ST. Star Trek is a show, therefore ment to entertain and under such circumistances having something established so hard, like for.ex let's say - Galaxy Class being the indestructible ship without any weakness, wouldn't be very entertaining without the plot armor. It will result with the TNG crew flying in, roflstomping everything in their way and saving the day in the same manner in each episode.
That's when the plot armor comes into play. Sometimes it's the Galaxy class' awesomeness that saves the day. Sometimes it's Picard with his delicate diplomacy and thoughtfullness. Sometimes it's Data because he's an android and can excite the audience with some action than no regular humaniod could preform. And so on and on, you get the idea.
One thing that is certain is that the plot armor would not allow for the hero cast to die, cause that would mean the end of the show. Sure, they can get rid of certain members to increase the suspense, like Tasha Yar, Jadzia Dax or Data in Nemessis, but you won't see the DS9 with the entire cast on board getting blown up by Gowron followed by Qapla'!
Now all of that said, there are consistencies throughout the shows on which one can base his/hers impressions of how are things suposed to work in ST.
Like for example the Galaxy class being the Federation's flagship. That point alone tells you that this is the heaviest ship they had built untill then. Because Gene's idea was not based on starships being flagships of fleets, or starships commanded by Admirals to be the flagships, but the Enterprise-D - an embodiment of Federation ideals, beliefs, power and technology was suposed to be 'the one' flagship that would be the face of the Federation.
Knowing all of this, regardless of some weird ideas people seem to have in these STO forums, you can be very certain that the Galaxy was build to be the heaviest, most advanced, hardest hitting and most armored ship in her time. The UFP wouldn't launch a flagship that could be pew-pewed by anyone because they are peacefull, because they are well aware that having their flagship destroyed like it's nothing would show weakness in a dangerous universe, especially with species like the Klingons on the border who don't respect weakness and would jump in on the opportunity to exploit it.
How does this translate in the game? It's simple - it doesn't. Canon has gone to the sharks in this game. And besides, the games are a different beast. They need a separate set of rules that would draw ideas from established canon, but apply them in the game in a manner that the gameplay of said game is suposed to work.
And that's the issue with STO. Cryptic messed things up. They decided that most of the ships could be T5, but being availible to have the same range/weapons/shields/etc. limits the variation in roles, especially within a certain class be it escort, cruiser or sci.vessels. Then they made the end-game content be resolved in the easiest possible way - you shoot more - you kill more - you loot more. That's what made things really wonky (in relation to canon) and enabled having an Excelsior that was superseded by an Ambassador, that was then superseded by the Galaxy, to be in fact more useful and powerfull in STO than the Galaxy. Because the Galaxy has a different role, a role that the end-game content is not tailored to.
But it doesn't stop there. Now because of their wonky ranking system, we're having ships trip all over each other. Just take a look at the Regent and then the Avenger.
This is just part of the reason why, unfortunatelly to me, the canon is not aplicable in STO any more. What we're doing here, or at least what I'm doing here is pushing an idea and voicing a concern that regardless of how far away from canon this game is - a ship that beared the name "Enterprise", a ship that has more time on air than any other and a hero ship in the entire TNG - the show that brought back Trek simply shouldn't be the most useless ship in the game. Especially when the first Galaxy created still has good 50 years to go behind her name in the timeframe STO is set in.
Starfleet ships have been portrayed to be vastly superior to Cardassian ships. And this is comming from a Cardassian fan and someone that has been begging and waiting for a Cardie faction in STO for years.
The only reason the Federation didn't roflstomp the Cardassians is because the Feds. are not like that. They'd rather try to peacefully show the Cardassians the wrong in their ways and slowly convince them to join the UFP than go on all out conquest. It's not the Federation's thing.
The Klingons went to invade Cardassia with only a fraction of their forces. And they would have succeeded if Sisko didn't warn Dukat about the impending invasion. Cardassian ships are by no means weaksauce, but the fact is that the Cardassians didn't have much experience in waging superwars against advesaries with empires similar in size to their own before the conflict with the Federation, which they lost.
As to the other - I'm gonna refer to plot armor again. For ex. the Klingons are established as the fiercest warriors in the Quadrant, but they lose a knife fight against a woman only to show how great said woman is. "Look, she beat up Klingons!!!".
Yes, it functional. But then again, in STO at end game any tier of ships has proven to be functional. Heck, I can do the new Voth content by headdesking on my keyboard hitting 'space' with my forehead. But that's another issue the game is having.
So in terms of gameplay and end-game content, if the question is wheather it's functional? The answer would be - yes it is. I can do any content in my Galaxy-R.
Compared to other player ships of the same tier - it's very lackluster. There's where the issues come from. I literally spent a ton of Zen and EC, spent an ungodly amount of time and grinded the entire grind just to make my Galaxy usefull in a group. Note the word 'usefull'. Not better, not the best, but merely usefull. The issue is when I hop on my Excelsior, a ship that has the same Zen price and I can do everything I do with the Galaxy, but with weaker equipment, regular Boffs and random Doffs not tailored for years to fit the ship.
I get it. There has to be one ship that will somehow end as 'the weakest' in Cryptic's model. But we're talking about the frickin' Galaxy here, this shouldn't be 'that ship' by any stretch.
Heh
I certainly hope so.
My whole point was about the silliness they have about non-factional ships the number of non-factional ships is starting to near the amount of KDF vessels, there is something really wrong with that. BOffs and Consoles are only one aspect of that. As far as not caring if ships having same consoles and layouts, why not just buy the ship that has the setup you like and buying holograms to make them look like another ship?
Every interior is out of scale, the Defiant looks spacious as well as the other ships too. I think the only properly scaled interior is the Constitution.
I would argue that the Borg and Dominion changed the perspective that the Federation has taken to Starfleet. Much of the militarization is due to necessity for a more hostile universe.
There was no negotiation with the Borg, and the Federation was not in a position of strength of firepower when dealing with the Dominion. There Federation was somewhat complacent with its environment and had to make a serious change to survive. Honestly, the Federation should have a military/defense fleet in addition to the exploration ships that we saw.
Okay, that explains it. I always thought the Galaxy had a "handicap accessible" look about it, the changed it in Generations then.
I agree with all you said, save for this. My issue is that cruisers from T1-T3 had a steady climb in ability and power. At each step I bought dilithium and got the weapons and mods off the dilithium store to make the ship that much more at each tier. At tier 4 I left my T3 Excelsior for my beautiful Galaxy and even with Mk VIII weapons and gear was getting my head handed to me on a platter. Same build as my Excelsior, just a higher tier. Used my Excelsior as a test and sure enough it was doing better on the same mission I was losing in my Galaxy. T5 hits and I got the next ship up that looks an aweful lot like the SW Phantom something ship. And it was better than the Excel. So the Galaxy took a dive in progression. That is why I support this thread.
Canon can tell us pretty things.
But game progression is where it misses the mark.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
The ship was usable at launch, even counting the Assault Cruisers abilities at the time. The problem was that they upped the ante' on tac and science without considering engineering
That's fine, I have been trying to keep things pragmatic and not totally tied to a perspective view of canon I just wish other people would be more pragmatic, the fact is that it will never happen.
The ships should be equally efficient, but distinctive, making everything a tactical/science boat is the "me too" solution. I see bigger and better options if Cryptic would get cracking at it.
I disagree, The Galaxy does suffer from engineer inefficiency, the skills are inefficient in comparison to other classes and it has the most engineer skills and consoles. Make the skills and consoles more useful, with the Explorers holding the engineers cards, and it will be useful.
Actually all of those aspects form the ships capabilities and thus determines the ships role. A ship that has effective engineering wizardry in a system that has parity with the other aspects is able to plow its way through and improve its offensive capabilities through engineering to help cut down its foes.
the ship wasn't available at launch, only a tier 4 galaxy was along with the star cruiser.
the galaxy retrofit was introduced to the game when season 2: ancient enemy appear, along with the defiant retrofit and the intrepid, all 3 available with a token granted to you by leveling to the new level 50 ( or more exactly level 51 at that time ) or by direct purchase to the cstore.
that being said, to be usable, is not sufficient to be on part with other ship or worthy of a tier5 status.
tier 4 and 3 ships are also "usable"... like we already said a thousand time.
even at that time it was already a bad star cruiser clone.
but this is just pure conjecture, and so much on an concept level idea since no one have been able to clearly articulate what a "better and bigger" engi power would look like appart from just down some power to ensign level.
and it is also something that cryptic haven't got in mind since they rebuild the DDeridex bo layout for that reason, began the introduction of hybrid ship, and that the last 6 base turn ship introduced to the game are no engie heavy anymore.
would they do a complete refit to engie power, so drasticly, that it would at the same time changing the original role of all the ships that use them heavily? i don't think so.
so whatare the other choices left then?
of course the galaxy suffer engineer ineficiency, that is what we are talking about in this thread since 400 pages!!!
my point was that this is irrelevant to the role problem of the galaxy.
the galaxy is not "roleless " because he suffer ensign engie cooldown and poor efficiency engi power.
so is the star cruiser and the exelsior btw, and these one are not roleless.
it is "roleless" because he is too much carrier specific wich condamne him to not be able to do things differently than what a star cruiser can.
what the galaxy can do, the star cruiser can do also, but on the other hand, what the star cruiser can do, the galaxy CAN'T!!
being too much carrier specific is not good for any ship, the defiant is a good example of that with it 3 tactical ensign slot, and no one is calling for a revamp of tactical abilities to change that.
no, effective engineering wizardry will improve.... efficiency.
just that.
in no way it will determine or change the ship role in comparison to what it was before.
turn rate and bo layout will do that.
give the galaxy +10 turn, a ltcommander tact and 2 lt commander sci for example and his role would be completely different.
give him more efficient engi power, and his role would not change for a bit.
yes, we are talking about role here, not efficiency.
and i have trouble to anderstand in what way more efficient engi power will improve its offensive abilitie other than making those abilitie more tactically oriented.
to me it look like an "me too" solution you were talking about.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=528931&page=271
I can accept that. It is when the guide is apparently ignored that people are the most upset.
Played since AD&D, even tried to do a classic original game. Disliked that. Still had not heard of the 'trinity' of classes prior to EQ.
Making me quote princess bride here. "I don't think that word means what you think it means." As in a more accurate for your arguement would be obsolete.
The same RPS system in NPC's as you use for PC's. In a modern game we should worry about a cloaked BoP decloaking and firing a more deadly surprise attack while we are slugging it out with a cruiser. The science ship should alert us that we need to be ready for when he uses his holds, environmental damage, and confuses on us. Challenge the tactics not the hitpoints directly.
Yes and no. I have had more than a few discussions with a naval ship designer and yes it is a consideration. I shall ask him if they referenced square-cube as well and get back to you on that.
I believe we disagree here on how it is applied, and I do think a few modern computer games do things well. I adored how the sniper weapons worked in ME as well as most of the other weapons. I think making each weapon and piece of gear have it's own stats and abilities can improve dynamic and can be done within a trinity frame work. It just takes more effort on both the designers as well as the players.
A parallel of accuracy versus damage does not need to be identical. Also as an accuracy statement, both for the guide that canon provides and challenge for compelling game play accuracy is a factor. If you can never miss then it is never about tactics it is who has thicker armour and who shot first.
Since the wright flyer was not a multi passenger vehicle for long distance travel, no I would not make that comparison. But as a system, the trinity is not the obsolete to be put in a museum, item as you see it. But a concept that needs to be better thought out before applying to any system.
Let me try a pen and paper example of poor trinity work.
Rogue, fighter, cleric. Standard trinity examples. But the rogue has been given a greatsword he can use at the same speed and abilites as he does a dagger. And he may wear chainmail with no penalty. The fighter we decided will use only shortswords because we know he is tough and has alot of hit points. So he does not need to hit back much. And those hit points look pretty good so yeah restrict him to chain as well. Cleric, we know this guy does the healing and we gave him all the level one abilities. along with a shortsword and chain.
In the example I just gave (yes I was breaking things) the rogue is much more powerful than the trinity says fast and hitting harder than any other version. And tougher too.
The fighter/tank is squishier and putting out less damage than regular versions do. But we will still call him the tank.
The cleric has a smattering of his job. Seems he is mostly using his heals to hope the fighter gets lucky enough to out last the rogue in a fight. He also has as much attack and defense as the fighter which takes away the unique effect the fighter is supposed to bring.
Is it a failure of the system? Or a failure to use the system to define a role and how they should be used?
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Doesn't change that I only ever first heard the term much later. I will have to hang that one up with a different regions thought.
No I meant RPS. As in Rock Paper Scissors. Different things to defeat different opponents.
I shall assume this argument comes from misunderstanding my point. In current pve, a bop is just a minor target. Larger 'tanky' ships are ore a challenge as they need more time to take down. There is nothing inherently different in the npcs. How they should be is how they are made/used in pvp. This way a pve build is neary if not as effective in pvp as it is in pve. Also it makes people use different tactics to win in combat as opposed to mash B button ad nausea.
Again off my point. I was speaking to liking the balance effect of they didn't balance everything to one set of parameters. IE the sniper rifle was not a slightly longer range weapon. It was a significantly longer range weapon, with great damage. The drawback built into them was speed of fire. You could not maintain fire for long at all. Moving and shooting accurately? Also unlikely. So the tactic is to let a sniper fire then charge the position dodging and weaving or have a sniper to counter sniper. Tactics to overcome a ability as opposed to a flat nerf or make all weapons essentially the same.
In this case I am arguing that a system can use many ranges and abilities and not be tied to narrow scopes.
I agree the game has all those environments. I disagree that the balance system is what is broken in making these things work.
In a fantasy game the rogue does not have the big weapons and armour, nor does the mage. They are not the 'only' path to dps or success. EACH class has it's own method of achieving success and they can work solo or in teams. A well set up counter system means you can have one pve/pvp build and function.
Rogues move through and use stealth to maximize a first hit. Afterward their damage drops to painfully low levels and their next set of skills are getting away from attackers again.
Tanks don't have the raw single hit of a rogue but finish enemies by beating them down faster than they themselves are beaten down.
Mage types use control and ranged effects to bring down foes. If they are hitting people with their staff then something has gone wrong.
healer's meanwhile have a different approach to outlasting an opponent. They repair their own damage. meaning a big hit that a fighter could take will drop a healer. But lot's of small hits are easier for the healer to overcome.
That is all solo pve/p.
In a group, the rogue can do two things. Get initial attention a 'pull' a mob to a group. Or circle an active fight and look for openings to drop single targets.
The fighter works to keep attention on himself beating on the primary target.
The mage controls the surrounding mobs keeping them from ganging up on our fighter.
the healer watches everyone and keeps them alive. The healer role is the most straight translation between the two.
How I see to make things balanced, again, is to make the npc's operate the same way a pc would. Not just bludgeon with weapon till slain. Rogues avoid fire then hit with hard shots. Tanks duel it out with other tanks and the mage makes people swear at their monitors. It was mentioned by others that the current pve is too easy. That is another sign of the system not being used properly or evenly.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
I used the wrong word there. I meant when the Galaxy-R was launched and I did state that it was usable. One could put DBB's on it and have some fun when the saucer was seperated.
i am pretty sure you have seen what I have put forth in the past on my suggested improvements. As far as conjecture, everything is conjecture until it happens.
Because tactical abilities aren't as much of a liability as engie abilities are right now. In regards to "role-less" because of career (engineer) specific skills, thats exactly what I was saying. Now, Cryptic could try to address it by making it another "me too" ship or make an engie heavy cruiser more effective by working on those skills and console choices. Otherwise the fixes that people want make it a Regent or Ambassador wanabee, and that would be a bigger disservice to the ship.
If they were to make higher end (CMDR,LTCMDR) engie skills (EPTX) to up the energy caps, namely to weapons (EPTW) and a cruiser could hit at, say, 150 power for a time, that would most certainly improve its offensive capability. Make Aceton beam someothing other than a joke and that improves its offensive capability. And (even though DDIS disagrees with me) up high ranking DEM output and that increases the ships offensive capability. ANd thats just for starters.
As far as a 10+ turn on a Galaxy class, really? Do you really think that should happen? Thats better than the Assault, Advanced Heavy and the Battlecruiser have.
Once again, not a strawman. I see the point of difference in our arguments now. I am not defending STO's use of the trinity balance system. In fact I think it is completely misapplied and broken here. I am saying the system itself can be used across multiple levels and still be functional. Let me see if I can make an analogy of my point that does not use combat.
Real world speed limit laws are there to allow people to move quickly and safely in various basic environments. As in slow to 25mph around schools and residential areas. On freeways you may move to 55 or 65mph. As a system this mostly works. (human beings don't always follow rules.) Now let's say we think it will be safer if cars get in and out of those residential areas faster. So we make residential speed 55mph and do the same at schools. The result would be the opposite of the intended purpose of the speed limit laws. increasing injury and death.
So to sum up what I have been trying to get across is the trinity itself is not broken. Only how it is used. And no I do not think it is used here very well at all.
Our rogue/escorts have the biggest damage and not much loss of defense. Making them a go to for the easy win.
The mage/science ships are as squishy as they should be but get less useful control to determine their style as effectively and try to be part of the healer role. and use their weapons as a primary effect. Which when shown in other media is not what that class option should be trying for.
And finally the fighter/cruiser has almost the weakest weapons, defenses barely better than the rogue. And not as much mobility, they get a slice of the healer role but not as much and not many special abilities to use. They fail because they made a circle to fit a triangle hole here.
Does this explain what we have been discussing?
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
neo1nx wrote "give the galaxy +10 turn, a ltcommander tact and 2 lt commander sci for example and his role would be completely different."
Had you continued reading past "turn" and read the content they were writing before that you may have understood what they were writing about.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
and you just proove my point by saying that.
imagine if tactical abilitie were as bad as engi one? one could said that it would be bad luck for the defiant, huh?.
but guess what... they are good, and still, STILL,with these very good powers, the defiant suffer general inneficiency because he is to tactical heavy.
so you see, better engie power will not change the state of the galaxy, it will be a little better yes, but still generally inneficient and roleless.
if these better engie power were to be applie only to the galaxy that would be different since it would be, then, something unique to the galaxy and thus give him a special role.
but we both known that there is no reasons to do it only to the galaxy.
and since other engie heavy will also benefit from it on top of having a general more flexible and efficient bo layout, guess what would change.... nothing.
just like with the cruiser command, same intention, same scenario, same results.
and if you bielieve that the galaxy will "make it out alive" because he got 1 more ensign BO power and 1 more engie console slot than a star cruiser... you are simply fooling yourself, or trying to fool others by stating so.
how so exactly?
not that i want it to be a regent clone nor that i think that it should now copie the ambassador layout but i would like to known why this would, in the absolute, do a disservice to the ship, and how.
so we are talking about boosting offensive engie power, well that also look like an "me too" solution don't you think?
you do realize that right now when you do it right you can outdps escort with cruiser already?
and not with cannon, but beam.
we are talking about build that do 30 to 40k, with cruiser, and you want to boost their offensive side?
did you just stop at +10? they was also a lt commander TACT and 2 ( yes 2 ) lt commander sci.
can you explain to me how your brain end up to bielieve this was a serious proposal, even for a second?
so in case you are still wondering, this "build" was just to show you how bo layout and turnrate have much more impact on the ship role than the efficiency of a carrier power
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=528931&page=271
Actually, I did read past that, I took it that what he put forth was what he wanted to make it have its role to be completely different. I may have misunderstood his statement as a suggestion, but I most certainly read it.
With engineer powers and class parity as is, yes. With parity, it is a different story altogether.
Because (in a nutshell)all it is going to be, essentially, is one of those ships with a different skin and a lower turn rate. Making engineering on par with other class skills and consoles can at least allow it (and some other ships) to go in another direction and still be competitve.
Those abilities still wouldn't be a direct damage maker like the tactical ones are. It is possible to outdps with a cruiser, but only if you are parsing and using FAW. If its focused on one target, not so much.
I most certainly went past +10, but figured that it wasn't even worth it making a statement about the ridiculous BOff layout. I have most certainly seen proposals like that thrown here as a serious proposal and it wouldn't shock me to see it again.
And when did we start talking about "carrier powers", what does launching fighters have to do with it?
i love the fleet gal but dont try to tell some of them anything some people only believe that by putting a tac slot on something then is worth it to captain silly little tac monkeys , dont like what they have done to it??? stay the hell outta my ship by the way almost 1500 replies 150 000 views and not a peep from a dev at all??? hmmm thats odd
Odd, as the open mmo that uses the trinity I was thinking successfully was Lotro.
They did not seem to die that fast and had a very immersive system with out in the open combat. Group and solo play and each class handling its role differently.
It seems one of us has blinders on and I think it is you. You want the system to be an absolute failure across all boards. The question is why?
I can accept that they tried to apply the system here and failed. It does not make the system broken just what was done here. Abandoning a role system. What would you suggest? Open builds? Everyone gets to decide what slots can go inside the hulls of their ships there for nothing is pigeon holed into a preset design?
Assuming that is what you are lobbying for, how would you balance that? Or is that the point also, do not have balance?
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
any increase to energy effect cap would be the biggest damage booster they could introduce at this point.. if a ship could have an effect cap of 150, and over cap beyond that and run the drain res reducing cruiser aura with the season 8 drain reducing warp core, that 150 would be the exact same thing as heaving APA on at all times. yes, 150 compared to 125 is a 50% damage increase per shot at that power, unprecedented damage boost there.
if EPtW cased that effect cap increase, then escorts and scimitars and regents and avengers would use that incredible damage boost to massive effect, and the galaxy's effectiveness would not move in comparison. it would also completely break the game, damage like that.
DEM is already massively powerful, buffing it would be absurd. you don't see it do a ton to npcs, they have massive hitpoints but no shield distribution, so its a bit of a drop in the bucket vs them.
all the most powerful AtB cruisers can run DEM3 at best possible uptime too, the galaxy having to much eng does nothing to allow it to run it wile ships with less eng cant. on those tactical ships there's a certain amount of eng needed with AtB builds, and the galaxy has 2 too many, period. having 2 too many massively reduces its potential performance and suitability. a star cruiser ends up making a much better AtB tac cruiser by comparison! just because it doesn't have that too much eng, and instead there's a station or 2 in a place it can be used to massive beneficial effect. that's a double negative for just the galaxy. its role is simply to suck as a result. of course having that much eng and that little sci also makes it SUCK as a healer, AND tank. there is NO across the board change to any skill that makes the galaxy more useful that does not also make the ships that are better then the galaxy even better too.
aceton beam will always suck until HE stops instantly clearing it. it doesn't mater if it starts at ENS, or if the dot was 10 times as powerful, or if the debuff made your weapons do negative damage, being HE clearable kills that skill dead.
its sorta funny to hear about scoffing about giving the galaxy +10 turn rate. that's exactly what the sep console does. but, that's not +10 to base, so it sucks. a fleet galaxy can max wile separated with about 30 turn rate, wile a negvar with its starting place f 9 can have up to 40 turn rate. if there's 1 thing i agree all cruisers should receive as a buff, its a +2 to their base turn rate, across the board.
but cruisers as a whole currently, the last thing they need is an across the board buff. the ONLY problem with cruisers right now is the difference between what the galaxy can do, and what the also ran second stringer cruisers can do, never mind against the best of the damage dealers or best of the healers.
eng captains suck though, boosting them across the board, but not cruisers, im totally behind that. its them that should get a higher energy level cap across the board, but of 130, and with cores buffing up to 135. weapons energy cap of 135 would be a 10% boost on your final damage shot at that level, on all the time, like stacking EPtW1 twice. wile having higher shield power, engine power, and potential aux power, especially with the +10 to aux obolisk core. there would be a reason there to use a sci ship on an eng. it would give an eng synergy with every ship type, were it has no synergy with anything but a pug healer cruiser now.
True, but does not counter that in an open world environment it does/did function. . . I should check to see if it is still running. they went f2p a few years ago.
You seem to love that word as it assumes a dismissive nature. However I have always seen a class system in place. those that do not follow one quickly broke as people automatically took the one build to win approach. I believe in the beta for CoH they tried to let people mix and match powers as they saw fit and it quickly broke. So they instituted a system very much like if the trinity system. And it did well.
Missed you linked a video I will watch after this reply. Is dynamic a game or a system?
I am asking so I may research accurately to continue discussing it.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
It doesn't have to be 150, it was a representative number. Also, if the boost was applied only to beam weapons (which are pretty low per shot) on cruisers. And even if the Galaxy didn't move up in comparison to the Regent, Avenger, and Scimitars, it would still be more effective in contrast to escorts and sci ships than it was before.
My use of DEM3 in PvP (both with friends and PuG alike) only produces a slight uptick in damage against real players, its still very underwhelming for a CMDR level ability.
So even if it makes it better (vs. escorts and sci ships), but not better than other cruisers, that should be a deal breaker?
And wasn't I asking to make it more potent? Making it not clear-able (or a percentage of the damage based on level of HE) would certainly help in that endeavor, would it not?
Um, the separation consoles doesn't give the ship a 10+ base turn rate, its the actual seperation of the saucer itself, which comes along with a hitpoint drop and other small factors that essentially make it a light cruiser.
I will agree to disagree with your belief in the current state of cruisers. The amount of hitpoints a ship has between escorts and cruisers is too narrow vs average ship damage output d for starters.
I have mentioned several times about a LT uni so people can be "flexible". You want to be more sci than the Star Cruiser? There you go. Want to still be engineer king? All done! Want to have more of a tactical focus? Two LT tacts' can do that. But that flexibility should come at a price of not being the best at anything as well.
I would be all for that, even though I actually enjoy and do more damage with my engi' than I do my tac (more time using the engi and mroe familiar with special abilities that work better for me). Engineer and cruisers in general should be a better source of power than other classes should.
explain it as the ship has a larger power reserve as it was mentioned int he show a few times
i do nto think it;s console set up is what really hamper the ship it's the boff layout that makes it useless
yes, but given the state of the galaxy as of today, i hardly call that a disservice.
it is certainly not the best solution, and not one i would like to see implemented just for the idea that the galaxy should have a bo layout that not only give him a different role, but a role that feel right with what was show of it capabilitie in the show.
meaning something that is his signature of some sort.
but what i would call a real disservice is that cryptic let the ship as what it is now.
i anderstand the idea, and even if it sound reasonable, seeing how some did use them to great effect ( not just pure cruiser ) i am really reluctant to a boost of these one.
bad spelling, i meant career not carrier.
i known that parity will do nothing ( notice that i use the word "known" here, and not "think" ).
and since you told me that you got a well define idea of how these power should be, let put it into pratice shall we?
show me a build ( bo layout and doff and console layout ) that could be use on a galaxy that would alow this ship to do things a star cruiser with the same new enhanced engi power could not do, that a odyssey could not do, that an ambassador could not do and that would result in either better firepower, better tanking/healing, support or crow control.
you can just stick to the build concerning galaxy and star cruiser if you wish.
it been a while since i try to explain to you that this will change nothing concerning the role of the galaxy, that it will still be a bad cruiser clone, hence have the same effect that what the cruiser command have , and that with many examples.
but you keep arguing the contrary but with no tangible proof, so now is your chance.
show me how your parity will proove me wrong.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=528931&page=271
the goal of the galaxy retrofit revamp, in cryptic own system, is not to reduced the gap in firepower with the regent, avenger or escort.
it need more firepower, that for sure, but more important than that, what he need is flexibility.
for example if an ensign tactical would be added to it, it will automatically give him more firepower, but more important than that, it will give him more choices in tactical build, so more flexibility.
it would not be just tactical team and a beam power, or tactical team and a torpedo power, or ( the ugly one ) beam power and torpedo power but not tactical team.
that just an example that what the ship need is more flexibility more than firepower ( if we stick with what cryptic want it to be )
the idea to give him more tact console is not a good one, even if i anderstand why some people would love that.
but it is the least efficient solution in comparison to others ways.
yes, because the galaxy problem is not to not be able to match escort firepower, it never was.
his problem is that he have no reason to exist in comparison to other cruiser, and especially the one fighting in his own categorie.
that with them that the competition exist, not with sci ship or escort.
and it not about making it better than other cruiser, but as good.
yes, but that what drunk said too, you missread.
when you saucer sep, this abilitie give +10 to turn rate, but not +10 to BASE turn rate, that is completely different.
hence his comparison with the negvar that ended up turning better with rcs console in the end ( that is just ridiculous imo, the fat negvar turning better than a galaxy separated )
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=528931&page=271
Okay. Let me try to put it this way. There are currently two roles that the Galaxy has:
1) Extra heavy Eng focus. What can the Galaxy do mechanically that other cruisers can't? Force you to take 3 Ensign Eng powers. The problem here is not that there is no mechanical role for the ship, it's that people don't want that role.
2) Being a cruiser that reminds you of a ship that you liked from a show you liked. This is a legitimate role as well - it's the reason there was a push to put the Iconic ships into the game at VA level in the first place. The problem here is that some people feel like possibly having to choose between the mechanical role they like and the aesthetics that they like is "unfair", even though almost every player in the game has to make this very choice.
What Whamhammer is saying is that attempting to change the mechanical role of the Galaxy by changing its officer seating is unlikely to be a good one, since the options seem to either be stepping on the toes of another cruiser by replicating the seating, creating an op cruiser that obsoletes everything else, or creating a seating that shifts from one undesirable role to another.
Thus, the solution he proposes it to make the mechanical role of the Galaxy right now more desirable, by finding a way to make slotting 3 Eng powers something you would choose to do sometimes, rather than something you are forced to do because you want to fly the Galaxy.
What you and others are basically saying is that making all eng powers better doesn't solve your problem, because your problem isn't that the Galaxy isn't good enough to use. Instead, your problem is that you feel like other ships have advantages that the Galaxy doesn't, and that you will still prefer doing more damage or whatever over having a more efficient Eng heavy setup.
What that proves is that this is basically not about making the Galaxy mechanically better in a vacuum, it's about making the Galaxy mechanically better than other options. The thing that's sad is that Whamhammer is about the only one who has come up with a solution to the mechanical problem with the Galaxy that could actually result in what people profess to want (a "balanced" Galaxy with a defined, desirable mechanical goal that doesn't step on any toes), yet he can't get traction with it at all, because he was trying to solve the problem people said they had. Until people are willing to be honest about what they really want, there's no point to this thread.
Of course, from my perspective, the fact that people don't like the Galaxy's role is not even a problem that is worthy of consideration in principle. I'm not sure why Galaxy fans don't "deserve" to be on the bottom? Why is it totally unreasonable that, like the Aquarius, the Galaxy exists more as a fluff option than a competitive one?
Don't give me that "all ships should be equal" tripe - a game where all options are equal is one in which all choices are meaningless. Either the ship and power selection has a meaningful effect on game play, or it does not. If it does have a meaningful effect, then there must be winners and losers - powers/ships that work better or are easier to use, as well as options that are less optimal, but can be made to work with effort.
To be clear, the responses to this are all almost certainly going to miss my point, because they are all going to assume that what is necessary for "balance" is that ships take roughly the same amount of time to complete a mission, with roughly the same number of deaths (likely 0 in any PvE content). The problem with this is that (given how easy it is to stay alive in the game) it compresses the game down to exactly one factor - doing damage fast enough to be "competitive". The theory goes that we can create systems whereby any combination of ship and captain can expect to put out roughly the same overall mission DPS, just with different powers, or by varying up the spike/pressure damage equilibrium.
The disconnect is that doing this presupposes that doing more damage with my weapons because I pushed a red button is a meaningful play difference from doing more damage with exotic particles because I pushed a blue button. Those, to me, are the same play style - they both focus on doing damage as efficiently as possible to finish the mission ASAP. The only way for meaningful play differences to exist in my book is for some ships to be "better" than others in the sense that some will be more efficient about finishing missions faster. Put another way, I think play differences are all about the goals you have (do I want to go as fast as possible, or do I want to have fun dorking around with my friends? etc.), and not about how you choose to achieve what you perceive to be the goal everyone SHOULD have.
In this context, I feel like the Galaxy is able to do anything, even PvP, if you are good enough player. If you are not good enough, you have two options: Play something "better" for your style/skill, or try to become better at using what the Galaxy does have better.
While i love the Galaxy and its console setup, the Odyssey wins the Boff category, and that category is far more important.
I am Il Shadow and i approve these Shennanigans!
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I presume that you are attempting to somehow respond to my point, but it's difficult to tell underneath all your unearned sense of superiority. Are you being hyperbolic here, or do you really think that taking Eng team 1 makes you a "victim" and "useless" on a team? In any case, you did, in fact, miss my obvious point. I'm saying that the problem is not that the ship is "useless" at all - I'm saying that the role the ship plays isn't a popular one. Just because you are too narrow-minded to find a use for the ship doesn't mean that everyone shares your lack of vision.
You are acting like if you're not optimal, you're useless, and you might be so hopelessly, myopically out of touch with reality that you feel that way. I guess I must be remarkable, because I can use a sub-optimal ship and setup, and not feel like I am holding back the team, and have fun - even if (SHOCK HORROR) someone parses the mission and I have the lowest DPS. This is because I typically enjoy using my ship to the best of my abilities, rather than needing a parser or timer or any other objective measure to tell me I'm having fun.
Go play a shooter then. Seriously. You are welcome to feel like you have everything all figured out, and that "if only they'd LISTEN" the world would be a better place. Just know that the greatest likelihood is that you are off your rocker, and you will come to regret this phase of your life, in much the same way that many adults look back on the naive certainty we felt in our teen years that OF COURSE marxism/socialism/anarchy/objectivism/capitalism/etc is the way to go. In the meantime, if this game is unfulfilling to you, I suggest that rather that lording over us philistines because we are too ignorant to ever understand you, you go find a group/game that is more in tune with your desires.
AH HAH! Here we go! You've fallen back on the scrub line of "It's not skill that matters, it's all build/gear". Yeah, I have an ugly truth for you - even in STO, skill matters much, much more than gear or build. If you get beaten in either PvP or PvE, it's almost certainly because the other player is better than you. You might tell yourself it's because the game is unbalanced, or that the other person's build is "op", or that the tactics the other person used were "unfair" or "cheesy", but the fact is that most of the time the fact is the other person just out played you. If you have the emotional maturity to be playing the game for fun, and not to prove something, then you can say GG and learn from it.
If you can't do that, I guess you could go on the forums and propose elaborate, unnecessary and impractical changes to the game to try to make the game bend more to your limited ability to understand and adapt, rather than improve yourself. That seems like something a person might do.
I'm not really sure what's wrong with a ship having a similar BOFF layout to another ship. I mean there are only so many combinations you can have.
Are you honestly going to say that you don't know exactly how your tone comes across? I struggle to believe anyone can be as arrogantly dismissive as you are without it being a carefully cultivated act.
And yes, I do think my argument is superior to yours, and I do think you are basically acting like a scrub who wants to blame perceived failures in the game for personal failures. You may or may not actually be that thing, I don't know or care. The fact remains that in the Venn diagram of your attitude and the scrub attitude, I see more than a little overlap.
When in doubt, double down on the Hyperbole, eh? Please define "works better". Let me help you a long a little bit: No, it doesn't do more damage, and even if it did, I would reject that kind of uni-dimensional analysis as a symptom of your myopic focus on STO as some kind of "competition" to be "won".
Try this: Shooters are not MMORPGs. What works in one genre doesn't necessarily work in others. A crucial distinction between the games you like and this one is that this one isn't necessarily competitive. My point, however, was not about the factual claims you were making. It was about the way in which you were advancing them - I have not more interest in debating with you about how "true" you think your position is, anymore than I have interest in debating with a teenager who just read (terrible philosophical or political tract) and thinks (hack author) has it all figured out. My point was, you want STO to be something that it is not, and advocate for changes that will never happen. If you feel like this game isn't up to your standards, the only rational choice is to do something else.
Pot, meet Kettle.
I... huh? I agree that people are constantly complaining about things... I especially agree that they generally complain about different things, which seems to me to be a pretty good indicator that I'm right that such complaints are more about bruised egos seeking to excuse a loss. When something is genuinely way out of control, you see a consensus against it, not lots of different threads complaining about lots of different things. I'm certainly not seeing how the fact that other people are also acting like scrubs makes the sentiment you are expressing any less scrubbish? You flat out said that in an RPG you think gear determines outcome. I believe that to be a false claim, because I have outplayed players with better gear/builds than me, and been outplayed by others with worse gear/builds. I recognize that when I lose, even if I feel like the other player had an OP build, I typically made the choice to engage in that fight. If I miscalculated my chances or had a bad strategy for dealing with the OP FOTM, that's on me.
I'm not the one crying about some sort of mythical balance in competitive play - I'm saying that such a thing is likely impossible, possibly undesirable, and certainly unnecessary. Thanks for reinforcing that to you the game is all about competition, though. That's fine, but again, STO isn't really competitive, and treating it like it is might possibly be the source of much of your frustration. Instead of complaining that the problem is the game is broken (which, let's be honest, is basically one step removed from the NES classic scrub line of "the controller is broken"), maybe ask yourself if there's anything about the game you find fun, and build from that.
All this should be friendly debates not shouting matches. So come on, get over yourselves and get back to the ship. Please.
I am Il Shadow and i approve these Shennanigans!
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