I don't think ship types in and of themselves need to be adjusted, but the way PVE works in general.
What most of the 'everything is fine' crowd fails to understand when they point out that cruisers tank, is that it doesn't matter how much more of a beating cruisers can take. You only have to tank 'good enough'. That's it. Cruisers could be near invincible and it wouldn't matter, as long as that escort can take the beating necessary while still dishing out far more damage than a cruiser could ever hope to do you have effectively rendered the cruisers a handicap to getting the STF done asap.
DPS should not be king, and neither should healing, CC, or tanking. There should be roles for all them to play, but as it is, there really isn't.
A pulsed cannon shot is like whacking something with a hammer, while a continuous beam is like pressing the hammer against the object. For the same amount of energy, the pulsed shot has a higher peak.
One thing that I think we need is to have 360 degree beam turrets to match with the existing cannon turrets. The damage would be scaled such that running all-turrets would give you less damage than an all-beam-array broadside, but more damage than facing the enemy and hitting him with only the forward beam arrays. This would also make a setup with Dual Beam Banks forward and Beam Turrets aft viable as a beam counterpart to the Dual Cannons / Cannon Turrets setup--you would get less damage overall than the cannons setup except at long range, but you would have a 90 degree forward cone instead of 45 degree and could use beam BOFF abilities. This would go a long way towards addressing the main weakness of beam weapons--the fact that you can only use your fore and aft weapons together in a broadside attack where your torpedoes and other forward-facing abilities are facing AWAY from the enemy.
Another possibility would be a broadside-only torpedo launcher, for shooting torpedoes at an enemy during a broadside beam strike. Instead of firing only in the fore/aft 90 degree cone, it would fire in the broadside arc (e.g. anywhere that is more than 60 degrees away from your fore/aft). You would need to have a fore, aft, and broadside torpedo launcher mounted (i.e. 3 weapons) in order to obtain near-360-degree torpedo coverage, which in practice would mean that you would have to sacrifice one of your beams to mount it (e.g. 3 beams / 1 torp fore and 2 beams / 1 regular torp / 1 broadside torp aft).
That is a very bad example, energy is energy whether it be a focused ammount in a small package or a stetched ammount is a long stream. A cannon shot vs a beam is more like saying what does more dmg a bullet traveling high speed or a bullet the length of a mile traveling the same speed, while we do have to factor out the weight, density and inertia of a bullet, because we are talking about energy and not a solid object like a bullet. Either way the same given ammount of energy is delivered on target and therefore should suffer the same results.
I don't think ship types in and of themselves need to be adjusted, but the way PVE works in general.
What most of the 'everything is fine' crowd fails to understand when they point out that cruisers tank, is that it doesn't matter how much more of a beating cruisers can take. You only have to tank 'good enough'. That's it. Cruisers could be near invincible and it wouldn't matter, as long as that escort can take the beating necessary while still dishing out far more damage than a cruiser could ever hope to do you have effectively rendered the cruisers a handicap to getting the STF done asap.
DPS should not be king, and neither should healing, CC, or tanking. There should be roles for all them to play, but as it is, there really isn't.
If we assume that escorts will always have more dps because the devs prefer it that way, then I guess I could settle for restructuring PVE missions to favor all ship classes, not just escorts because DPS is king.
Horrible examples of space combat.
Defiant vs. Dominon flagships? Throw your precious cruisers against it and lets see what happens. Dead long before the Defiants.
Galaxy class vs retired BoP? This is an argument for cruiser superiority?
How about Lakota vs Defiant? Defiant vs.. any other ship.
It was referred to many times on the show as the most heavily armed warship in the quadrant. Its weapons systems were, in canon, more efficient than beam arrays. It was only called an escort because they federation has never called any vessel a warship.
Escorts are made and designed to fight, they are doing to be superior at it. Game balance does have to happen, but its not the ships that are heavily flawed, it is the game content. Missions where a cruiser could use its resources and crew need to happen, but won't because pew pew is easier than thinking outside the box.
I do concede that, at the time, the defiant had the strongest weapons in the fleet. However, don't forget that we're now in the 25th century, and the Odyssey is the new flagship. Are you going to try to convince me that the tact. Oddyssey should be outclassed by a fleet defiant? Difficult to say which exactly is more powerful, but a cruiser designed for attack power should have more weapons power than a fleet defiant that is, what, 1/5 the size?
Only problem with beams is their drain mechanics, if they didn't murder their own power supply their damage would be fine (I have a spreadsheet, which can be provided if you wish to see it, that reinforces this), if they were to drain 2.5 power each time they fired a shot returning it at the end of the cycle they would be fine.
There is no need for a tank , I tank quite well in my Escort and deal 3x as much DPS as a cruiser does. I also heal quite well so much in fact i usually send Heals to cruisers
The REAL tragedy here is that just today I ran a Cure ESTF and out of the 3 cruisers NOT ONE was able to take a target's agro from my escort...I was using a threat reducing console and the NPCs would invariably end with me in their sights! Somehow MY cruiser alt never looses agro, how does that happen? How can it be that out of 3 cruisers none knew they were a tank and as far as I could tell none were healing anyone else either!
Lets talk about educating the mostly clueless cruiser piloting masses first. Its not even really their fault, the game in a cruiser is so forgiving you can coast right through, while the supposedly OP escorts pilots need to learn to play or get popped every other minute.
With the slow turn rate there is no reason dps from a cruiser should not equal a escort except for escort captions who think they should have a superior firepower when in lore and history and plain common sense they should have MUCH less.
What lore? I can't think of any instance in TNG where the Galaxy was anything other than a punching bag for the alien ship of the week! Unless of course you mean those times they were set against a clearly technologically inferior ship or when an enemy chose to not start an incident. What they did show was the Galaxy taking a beating and keep going. I realize it was all for drama, but it was the way it was portrayed most often.
For what its worth I do agree that for the STO gameplay the Galaxy is overly tanky, but I do think that may very well have been the intent. It was meant as the most noob-friendly and foolproof ship in the game where the most casual Star Trek fans could coast without feeling like they were in anything other than an indestructible super ship
The way I see this, and this is just me, is that since everything in PvE is a damage race, all ships should do damage equally over a long enough period of time. And this would work for PvP as well.
Escorts should do spike damage, take one shot of massive power with a good enough chance to blow up any reasonable target. Because yes, the defiant, and by this games extenction all escorts are the most heavily armed ships in the quadrant. And I want escorts to have that one chance, since if they blow it, a cruiser will then be able to hound and destroy them, one piece at a time with slow steady dps. They said that escorts are heavily armed, not armored. That would be the cruisers.
Sci ships would be more the tricky kind of damage, their abilities reducing the effectivity of the enemy ship to the point where their lower damage will do the equivalent of a cruiser or escort over the same period of time.
So, just plotting cruisers and escorts, on a scale of more damage over time to spike damage I think it would be:
Fed Cruisers, KDF cruisers and battlecruisers, Fed escorts and KDF raptors, and KDF BoPs.
This would also be the scale of toughness, with Fed cruisers having the most, and BoPs having the least.
Sci ships would be, again, not on this scale since their abilities would be hard to compare with the others directly.
And on the PvP side, yes this is balanced.
Escort vs Escort: First to good position with an alpha strike wins.
Escort vs Cruiser: Make your run and then escape, because if the cruiser catches you long enough, its all over.
Escort vs Science: Same as cruiser, but run before they have you all walking on the ceiling from whatever nasty power they have.
Cruiser vs Cruiser: Battleship duel, first to run out of heals loses.
Cruiser vs Science: Try and weather they wierdness and keep after them.
Cruiser vs Escort: Tank his run, then catch him before he gets away
Science vs Science: A battle of the blue elephants or whatever else they have.
Science vs Cruiser: Keep the cruiser off balance one way or another until you can get it.
Science vs Escort: Pretty much the same as vs cruiser.
I think this is the most logical idea for damage balance in STO, since it means that over some period of time, each ship properly skilled would do the same amount of damage, just in different ways and each ship can kill each other, just in different ways. It also gets rid of the mandatory healer ship, sure you can get a ship to be a healer, but you are not a stuck in that roll if you don't want to be.
Only problem with beams is their drain mechanics, if they didn't murder their own power supply their damage would be fine (I have a spreadsheet, which can be provided if you wish to see it, that reinforces this), if they were to drain 2.5 power each time they fired a shot returning it at the end of the cycle they would be fine.
That would be a good start to fix that first as it shouldn't take much work to change and try it out (resurrect the Redshirt test server for special testing on this).
I'm asking how is it that the base damage of an escort is higher than a cruiser when cruisers on the shows have larger beam arrays that do more base damage than the arrays on escorts.
So you want a technobabble reason why cruisers aren't a giant source of DPS?
Because cruisers, full stop, are not solely combatant ships. Sisko said it himself when they introduced the Defiant - this is a pure weapon, barely held together when it fires.
Cruisers are much more than firepower, they are also mobile science/research platforms, as well as chock full of dependents like spouses and children. And they may also have other support roles, such as cargo or medical/evac. You're not going to send a Defiant to investigate an anomaly in a nebula, or evacuate a planet under attack by the Borg.
Also, even though the power plant is larger, there is much more mass that needs to moved and protected with shields or emergency force fields etc, so there may not be the massive additional pool of energy that you think.
Really, the argument needs to be made instead that escorts are way, WAY too tanky. Give them weapon power, but give them a hit in shield power and/or hull strength. An escort alone shouldn't be able to tank a tactical cube. That doesn't mean they should immediately explode, but they should not be able to outlast the 30-45 seconds before a tac cube pops without backup and support.
That's where the disparity lies, not with "cruisers are weaksauce". Create a new variable, hull modifier, similar to shield modifier, that adjusts hull heals, total hull, and armor plating resistance, structural integrity and/or decrease the shield modifier as well.
Make escorts the glass cannons they are supposed to be, then groups will be begging for a tank with +threat consoles and that new APD DOFF to take with them into STFs.
For PvP, how about a new ability, Draw Fire, that pulls enemy targetting to you? Or a modified version of Scramble/Jam sensors that makes everyone else on your team invisible/same side as the enemy, except for you? That way attacks could be forced to your tank.
The TANK / DPS / HEAL does not work properly in this game because the game mechanics do not support it. Most normal MMOs have fixed classes in a SINGLE system but STO has tried to adopt the multi-class system where you have your GROUND and SPACE.
Unfortunatly, Space dosent work because there is no specific TANK / DPS / HEAL roles.
They blur badly because of the Boff / Doff skill system.
Waaa waaaa, DPS is unfairly balanced in favour of the DPS class.
REALLY ?
Waaa waaaa, Star Trek canon...
Just stop and walk away because anyone that has to sink to this level of stupidity should not be playing this game. Cryptic have already screwed over STO canon to sell warships to the Federation. Canon no longer applies and especially when it hurts Cryptics profit margin.
Food for thought: Funny how the warships of Star Trek seem to be really effective at warfare and that translates almost exactly the same in a game that... focuses on war.
Its almost as if people are expecting an Ocean Liner to be just as powerful as an Iowa Battleship.
Insert random example of an Ocean Liner being turned into a Battleship as provided by those that dont think long enough to get the point.
The only way this game has any chance of having parity between Cruisers, Science and Escorts is if Cryptic literally gutted the game down to its core by removing all of the flexibility..
Result: EVE Online
Somehow I dont think anyone here wants EVE Online's skill system or ship system.
Actualy to get around the Cruiser vs escort argument maybe we need to just look at the weapons.
Theoreticaly a cruiser has the same base damage potential (not factoring in buffs or consoles) as an escort given the same number and type of weapon.
However cannon weapons are mostly restricted, in fact they are the most varied class of weapon and their highest damage versions aren't available to every ship class.
As far as Dual cannon restrictsons im ok with that, what Needs to change is beam weapons.
Out of the 4 cannon type weapons the weakest 2 are available to everyone, while the highest 2 are restricted but enjoy a damage bonus with the highest getting a critical bonus.
While beams are available to everyone equaly with only 2 types and generaly have the lowest dps numbers and no special bonuses.
So perhaps there should be more beam weapons restricted from the cannon vessels with some kind of bonus at high end.
Personaly if cannons are the hammers then beams should be the swords.
Less potential damage but a higher chance to pierce.
In that vein maybe beam weapons should get a bonus to shield penetration to reflect the greater strain a sustained energy beam would place on an energy shielding system.
As a time traveller, Am I supposed to pack underwear or underwhen?
Not everything you see on the internet is true - Abraham Lincoln
Actualy to get around the Cruiser vs escort argument maybe we need to just look at the weapons.
Theoreticaly a cruiser has the same base damage potential (not factoring in buffs or consoles) as an escort given the same number and type of weapon.
However cannon weapons are mostly restricted, in fact they are the most varied class of weapon and their highest damage versions aren't available to every ship class.
AS far as Dual cannon restrictsons im ok with that, what Needs to change is beam weapons.
Out of the 4 cannon type weapons the weakest 2 are available to everyone, while the highest 2 are restricted but enjoy a damage bones with the highest getting a critical bonus.
While beams are available to everyone equaly with only 2 types and generaly have the lowest dps numbers and no special bonuses.
So perhaps there should be more beam weapons restricted from the cannon vessels with some kind of bonus at high end.
Personaly if cannons are the hammers then beams should be the swords.
Less potential damage but a higher chance to pierce.
In that vein maybe beam weapons should get a bonus to shield penetration to replect the greater strain a sustained energy beam would place on an energy shielding system.
It's not a bad thought. Doing this in addition to revising the current energy drain mechanics on beams could be interesting.
they dont translate well from movies to the game.....
the ST Cruiser in the movies and tv shows were the backbone of the fleet....they did everything and were efficient.
Sci Vessels and Tac vessels while being in seperate series were pretty much ignored otherwise and were not promoted as particulary useful...except for their repsective tv shows. Viyager and Ds9
I think the devs have translated them fairly well into jack of all trades and master of nothing....
A sci vessel can tank better and an escort can dps better the cruiser does them but nearly as well....
any debate to a sci vessel ebing a better tank take a look at my Fleet Advanced Research Vessel Retrofit....4 eng 4 sci slots i can muster enough shields and hull resists to tank anything in the game and can take a shot froom Donatras beam attack and still have hp to spare.....but I digress.
Today we fight the GAULS......monstrous and HAIRY beyond reason.
So perhaps there should be more beam weapons restricted from the cannon vessels with some kind of bonus at high end.
That kind of makes sense. Restrict 250* beam arrays to cruisers and science vessels only. For technobabble reasoning:
Beam arrays require 250* phaser strips around the whole ship. There are certain technical limitations on how those strips can be integrated into a ship, such as a limit on how much they can "bend". This precludes their installation on Escort-class ships.
DHCs do extra crit severity, perhaps the newBeams could be granted extra crit chance, basically a free [CrtH].
That kind of makes sense. Restrict 250* beam arrays to cruisers and science vessels only. For technobabble reasoning:
Beam arrays require 250* phaser strips around the whole ship. There are certain technical limitations on how those strips can be integrated into a ship, such as a limit on how much they can "bend". This precludes their installation on Escort-class ships.
DHCs do extra crit severity, perhaps the newBeams could be granted extra crit chance, basically a free [CrtH].
But basically I suggest the current 2 beam weapons stay as they are and 2 new weapons be added.
Keeping with they are the pinnacle of their type they keep wide arcs (one getting an even wider arc) and have more firepower than lesser versions.
I also proposed the heavier version get a crit chance bonus so we agree there but that also all beams get a shield penetration bonus. I believe even a small bonus would make them more viable and shouldn't upset game balance since it would only boost your damage to a shielded target but would do nothing for an un shielded target..
As a time traveller, Am I supposed to pack underwear or underwhen?
Not everything you see on the internet is true - Abraham Lincoln
The solution is to give us capital ship-grade beam arrays. Like regular beam arrays, but with reduced accuracy, greater damage (comparable to DHC), and fewer shots per cycle so they fire in powerful hammer blows instead of weak pew. Their poor accuracy will render them largely ineffectual at shooting escorts, much like on the show. And they can only be mounted on capital ships: The big cruisers frequently classified in-game as battleships. As such, it won't really change the cruiser vs. escort dynamic, but cruisers will become capable of actually slugging it out against each other with effect, instead of laughable jokes, while a cruiser that mounts these weapons will actually be LESS effective than they presently are vs. escorts.
I must say that i find Crptics interpretation of Star Trek ships really poor.
Other Games did a much better job, like Starfleet Command or Bridge Commander. Spoken in STO terms these where cruiser games, just as Star Trek is a crusier universe.
They are the iconic ships of Star Trek. Star Wars and BSG have space fighters and Star Trek has big powerful ships as "heroes". Cryptic completely ignored this, they just adapted Star Trek onto "their" BGS-ish game. That's what makes me really pi**ed about them. They just don't care about Trek IMO, i sometimes think they should have made a Star Wars or BSG game.
Don't missunderstand me here, i like BSG and Star Wars, but i absolutely HATE it when things get mixed up like that.
Cryptic designed crusiers as just big bricks with not even decent firepower, so their (beloved) escorts can zip around them, just like star fighters in Star Wars or BSG. This is not Star Trek in my opinion.
More than that i find this whole Escort/ Cruiser/ Science seperation just stupid. I know it is a MMO and MMOs tend to have their own logic, but this is a Star Trek game, for gods sake.
I must say that i am normally not into MMOs, i don't even like the premise of having to socialize with others very much. I would have preferred it if there was a Game like STO just for solo play. (Ground and space part, growing content, and so on.)
I just love to play this huge Star Trek game where things get permanently added and i love the mix of Ground and Space action.
Since this game is already running for 3 years now, i highly doubt they will change anything with their ship system.
I just hope they will release some Starfleet cruiser/escort hybrids, for less than 200 or 300$!
What also bothers me is the excessive amount of cannon using ships. I am not completely against those ships, i just HATE cannons. In my opinion cannon weapons should get a option to switch their FX to beam type weapon, Space Combat would look much more like Star trek in an instant.
What i am afraid of is that some people will actually start to believe that ships in Star Trek really work like they do in STO (stone/paper/scissor). And so, STO would become something like semi canon. On that day Star Trek is officially dead (at least for me).
In the past i got upset when thinking about ships in STO, but i try to see STO NOT as a Star Trek game.
Since then, it is actually a fun game.
EDIT:
I think they should at least introduce something like Heavy Beam Arrays, being able to do DC equivalent damage. Maybe a restriction of one or two per cruiser would be sufficient. It would greatly enhance the usefulness of cruisers.
Additionally Cryptic should introduce MACO or OMEGA versions of some popular ship classes.
These ships should be availlable through the reputation system.
MACO versions could have a more engineering focussed BOFF layout, while OMEGA versions would get more tactical focussed BOFF layouts.
I think it would be a nice way to get high end ships without having to join a big fleet.
"...'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied--chains us all irrevocably.' ... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today--"
- (TNG) Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie
They should simply make beam weapons not lose damage regardless of range and make cannons only do max damage under 2km range.
After all, escorts HAVE the speed and turn rate to close in and do devastating damage. It fits their role and performance.
Cruisers and other ships using beams get screwed by damage loss over distances they cannot cross fast enough or turn fast enough to control the battlespace.
Kind of sums it up. Folks may disagree with it, but the "fix" folks are looking for would actually be a complete redesign of the game from the ground up. Maybe somewhere down the road, Cryptic will do well enough with STO that PWE will see value in having STO run alongside an STO2 with a different design if they believe that such a game could generate the revenue for it...
...otherwise...well, yeah - folks will have to live with that design or they not. Given how the game continues to do better and better despite what some see as a flaw...well, yeah.
Edit: My personal opinion? There should be Escort missions like there are Shuttle missions as far as PvE goes. It doesn't matter enough to give any thought to how it would be handled on the PvP side, because it simply doesn't matter enough - not going to change.
They should simply make beam weapons not lose damage regardless of range and make cannons only do max damage under 2km range.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but beams already do not have a damage fall-off due to range, while cannons do.
Currently the effective range of cannons and turrets is 4km and under. You can spot newbies in STFs - just see who's sitting in their escorts 9.9km away from targets; they might as well be throwing rocks at that distance.
This isn't Star Trek as it is on the TV. On the TV a cruiser is like a city with amazing resources at its disposal. Science labs, engineering departments and the means with which to aid planets in distress. An escort, like the Defiant, goes in and hits hard. No real room for an infirmary. No means to prevent a moon with a decaying orbit from hitting a planet.
When you go in to an STF, all the labs in the world don't matter. It's hitting power, thus escorts rule this game as nothing can put out damage like an escort. What properly built Fleet Exploration Cruiser Retrofit can match the raw destructive power of a properly built JHAS? As the game mostly focuses on DPS (and whilst the Tactical captain abilities boost the damage of everything, including science powers) it's clear that tac is the golden child of this game.
I don't agree with this mentality. Maybe for the Klinks, but NOT for the Federation.
As we've seen on the TV series, the bridge of the Enterprise is larger than the bridge of the Voyager which is larger than the bridge of the Defiant. Why hasn't this translated in to more BOff slots for the larger ships? The Enterprise has a huge Medical area and the Defiant has almost nothing. Why don't the crew of cruisers heal at a far more rapid rate? We've seen the warp core size difference between the Enterprise and Voyager. Why does a cruiser not add more bonus points of energy?
Yes, escorts should always hit harder. That's they're job. Cruisers, however, have so many advantages that are just not shown in the game.
I really think PWE needs to address this balance. It's Star Trek Online, not Escorts Online.
As we've seen on the TV series, the bridge of the Enterprise is larger than the bridge of the Voyager which is larger than the bridge of the Defiant. Why hasn't this translated in to more BOff slots for the larger ships? The Enterprise has a huge Medical area and the Defiant has almost nothing. Why don't the crew of cruisers heal at a far more rapid rate? We've seen the warp core size difference between the Enterprise and Voyager. Why does a cruiser not add more bonus points of energy?
Yes, escorts should always hit harder. That's they're job. Cruisers, however, have so many advantages that are just not shown in the game.
I really think PWE needs to address this balance. It's Star Trek Online, not Escorts Online.
(Now we see the escort fan-boys cry foul...)
I 100% agree with you.
the differences wouldn't be so blatant if cruisers had more other uses, or abilities.
Since i started playing i have been wondering, why cruisers dont get much more Engergy for it's subsystems. They don't even get more BOFF slots or even DOFF slots...
If you look at it from that perspective i think Cryptic made Star Trek ships too equal.
I'm not saying escorts shouldn't get any advantage but compared to a 10x bigger ship which has way more resources, escorts are way too strong. They should be specialists on one field, but not being able to stand toe on toe with cruisers.
And yeah, escort lobbyists are already incoming.
If i where to make a Star Trek online game, i would have made the biggest=strongest ships availlable at a certain accolade score. (lets say 7000 or 8000, depending on the ship)
Everything below would be specialised ships like Science or Escorts.
I still absolutely hate the Ambassador and Galaxy class BOFF layout.
"...'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied--chains us all irrevocably.' ... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today--"
- (TNG) Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie
I'm on my cell phone, and therefore cannot type a long detailed reply. I do have some quick thoughts to leave, though.
The best forms of power generation increase exponentially - as physical space increases, power generation increases by a factor of 2. This is true with nuclear power, and would be true with any other form of power generated at the atomic or subatomic level.
Energy fields, meanwhile, work differently. As the size of the field increases, the power required to generate it increases GEOMETRICALLY, or by a factor of 3.
It actually makes more scientific sense for a smaller ship with energy weapons and energy shields to deal more damage (and have more shielding) than a larger ship with energy weapons and energy shields. The power generation-to-power consumption ratio will always favor the small ship.
In STO, we only see this in the form of escorts having higher damage. Cruisers still get better defenses in the form of better shield modifiers, more hull points, and a much larger selection of heals.
Conveniently, no one has tried to address this. It's funny how, when you bring actual science into play, the "cruiser godship" raving lunatics suddenly go silent...
It's also funny how, when you bring up the necessities of game design, those same raving lunatics try to side-step the issue. If we really copy on-screen references, the Galaxy class would be even more worthless than it currently is, doing nothing more than taking a beating in every encounter, the Sovereign class will be akin to an escort, but with beams, the Defiant class will blow everything up in 2 shots, and the Intrepid class will constantly run away from a fight. :rolleyes: Ironically, the in-game representation isn't all that far off the mark, now that I've reduced it to such simple descriptions.
Yet another in a long line of "nerf escorts, buff cruisers" threads. At least you didn't hide from the fact that you're asking for increased damage output without a corresponding decrease in defense, healing, or other measurable statistic that matters in combat. :rolleyes:
To you, I say "good try", but I won't actually ridicule you because you were at least open and honest with your "super cruiser" request.
if that's what you want, I say Okay!...make my fleet escort a tank like a cruiser, I give up walls for arrows..lol but good discussion question. ( I hope my escort see's you in space, lol)
This isn't Star Trek as it is on the TV. On the TV a cruiser is like a city with amazing resources at its disposal. Science labs, engineering departments and the means with which to aid planets in distress. An escort, like the Defiant, goes in and hits hard. No real room for an infirmary. No means to prevent a moon with a decaying orbit from hitting a planet.
When you go in to an STF, all the labs in the world don't matter. It's hitting power, thus escorts rule this game as nothing can put out damage like an escort. What properly built Fleet Exploration Cruiser Retrofit can match the raw destructive power of a properly built JHAS? As the game mostly focuses on DPS (and whilst the Tactical captain abilities boost the damage of everything, including science powers) it's clear that tac is the golden child of this game.
I don't agree with this mentality. Maybe for the Klinks, but NOT for the Federation.
As we've seen on the TV series, the bridge of the Enterprise is larger than the bridge of the Voyager which is larger than the bridge of the Defiant. Why hasn't this translated in to more BOff slots for the larger ships? The Enterprise has a huge Medical area and the Defiant has almost nothing. Why don't the crew of cruisers heal at a far more rapid rate? We've seen the warp core size difference between the Enterprise and Voyager. Why does a cruiser not add more bonus points of energy?
Yes, escorts should always hit harder. That's they're job. Cruisers, however, have so many advantages that are just not shown in the game.
I really think PWE needs to address this balance. It's Star Trek Online, not Escorts Online.
(Now we see the escort fan-boys cry foul...)
Make my escort a TANK, like a cruiser and I say okay, make em even. I give up walls for arrows,
Conveniently, no one has tried to address this. It's funny how, when you bring actual science into play, the "cruiser godship" raving lunatics suddenly go silent...
Applying modern science to argue your point of view in a fictional AND future arena? Isn't that like Alessandro Volta arguing with his peers as to how a smartphone works?
I don't want a godship. I want a game that focuses on combat to have all tiers on a level playing field. That's not wanting an unfair advantage. That's wanting balance. Something the tac fanboys don't understand.
New assault Cruiser Retrofit has a 180* quantum Launcher !!!!!
you are right, Make an escort (like my fleet escort) a tank like your cruisers and I am all in, we give up walls for arrows, go to PvP and attack a KDF cruiser with an escort, see how even they are on the defense thing...lol
you are right, Make an escort (like my fleet escort) a tank like your cruisers and I am all in, we give up walls for arrows, go to PvP and attack a KDF cruiser with an escort, see how even they are on the defense thing...lol
How many more times are you going to say give up walls for arrows? Saying it more times doesn't give it any more meaning than it had the first time.
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What most of the 'everything is fine' crowd fails to understand when they point out that cruisers tank, is that it doesn't matter how much more of a beating cruisers can take. You only have to tank 'good enough'. That's it. Cruisers could be near invincible and it wouldn't matter, as long as that escort can take the beating necessary while still dishing out far more damage than a cruiser could ever hope to do you have effectively rendered the cruisers a handicap to getting the STF done asap.
DPS should not be king, and neither should healing, CC, or tanking. There should be roles for all them to play, but as it is, there really isn't.
That is a very bad example, energy is energy whether it be a focused ammount in a small package or a stetched ammount is a long stream. A cannon shot vs a beam is more like saying what does more dmg a bullet traveling high speed or a bullet the length of a mile traveling the same speed, while we do have to factor out the weight, density and inertia of a bullet, because we are talking about energy and not a solid object like a bullet. Either way the same given ammount of energy is delivered on target and therefore should suffer the same results.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
If we assume that escorts will always have more dps because the devs prefer it that way, then I guess I could settle for restructuring PVE missions to favor all ship classes, not just escorts because DPS is king.
I do concede that, at the time, the defiant had the strongest weapons in the fleet. However, don't forget that we're now in the 25th century, and the Odyssey is the new flagship. Are you going to try to convince me that the tact. Oddyssey should be outclassed by a fleet defiant? Difficult to say which exactly is more powerful, but a cruiser designed for attack power should have more weapons power than a fleet defiant that is, what, 1/5 the size?
My comments in RED
Escorts should do spike damage, take one shot of massive power with a good enough chance to blow up any reasonable target. Because yes, the defiant, and by this games extenction all escorts are the most heavily armed ships in the quadrant. And I want escorts to have that one chance, since if they blow it, a cruiser will then be able to hound and destroy them, one piece at a time with slow steady dps. They said that escorts are heavily armed, not armored. That would be the cruisers.
Sci ships would be more the tricky kind of damage, their abilities reducing the effectivity of the enemy ship to the point where their lower damage will do the equivalent of a cruiser or escort over the same period of time.
So, just plotting cruisers and escorts, on a scale of more damage over time to spike damage I think it would be:
Fed Cruisers, KDF cruisers and battlecruisers, Fed escorts and KDF raptors, and KDF BoPs.
This would also be the scale of toughness, with Fed cruisers having the most, and BoPs having the least.
Sci ships would be, again, not on this scale since their abilities would be hard to compare with the others directly.
And on the PvP side, yes this is balanced.
Escort vs Escort: First to good position with an alpha strike wins.
Escort vs Cruiser: Make your run and then escape, because if the cruiser catches you long enough, its all over.
Escort vs Science: Same as cruiser, but run before they have you all walking on the ceiling from whatever nasty power they have.
Cruiser vs Cruiser: Battleship duel, first to run out of heals loses.
Cruiser vs Science: Try and weather they wierdness and keep after them.
Cruiser vs Escort: Tank his run, then catch him before he gets away
Science vs Science: A battle of the blue elephants or whatever else they have.
Science vs Cruiser: Keep the cruiser off balance one way or another until you can get it.
Science vs Escort: Pretty much the same as vs cruiser.
I think this is the most logical idea for damage balance in STO, since it means that over some period of time, each ship properly skilled would do the same amount of damage, just in different ways and each ship can kill each other, just in different ways. It also gets rid of the mandatory healer ship, sure you can get a ship to be a healer, but you are not a stuck in that roll if you don't want to be.
But what do I know.
Nouveau riche LTS member
That would be a good start to fix that first as it shouldn't take much work to change and try it out (resurrect the Redshirt test server for special testing on this).
So you want a technobabble reason why cruisers aren't a giant source of DPS?
Because cruisers, full stop, are not solely combatant ships. Sisko said it himself when they introduced the Defiant - this is a pure weapon, barely held together when it fires.
Cruisers are much more than firepower, they are also mobile science/research platforms, as well as chock full of dependents like spouses and children. And they may also have other support roles, such as cargo or medical/evac. You're not going to send a Defiant to investigate an anomaly in a nebula, or evacuate a planet under attack by the Borg.
Also, even though the power plant is larger, there is much more mass that needs to moved and protected with shields or emergency force fields etc, so there may not be the massive additional pool of energy that you think.
Really, the argument needs to be made instead that escorts are way, WAY too tanky. Give them weapon power, but give them a hit in shield power and/or hull strength. An escort alone shouldn't be able to tank a tactical cube. That doesn't mean they should immediately explode, but they should not be able to outlast the 30-45 seconds before a tac cube pops without backup and support.
That's where the disparity lies, not with "cruisers are weaksauce". Create a new variable, hull modifier, similar to shield modifier, that adjusts hull heals, total hull, and armor plating resistance, structural integrity and/or decrease the shield modifier as well.
Make escorts the glass cannons they are supposed to be, then groups will be begging for a tank with +threat consoles and that new APD DOFF to take with them into STFs.
For PvP, how about a new ability, Draw Fire, that pulls enemy targetting to you? Or a modified version of Scramble/Jam sensors that makes everyone else on your team invisible/same side as the enemy, except for you? That way attacks could be forced to your tank.
Unfortunatly, Space dosent work because there is no specific TANK / DPS / HEAL roles.
They blur badly because of the Boff / Doff skill system.
Waaa waaaa, DPS is unfairly balanced in favour of the DPS class.
REALLY ?
Waaa waaaa, Star Trek canon...
Just stop and walk away because anyone that has to sink to this level of stupidity should not be playing this game. Cryptic have already screwed over STO canon to sell warships to the Federation. Canon no longer applies and especially when it hurts Cryptics profit margin.
Food for thought: Funny how the warships of Star Trek seem to be really effective at warfare and that translates almost exactly the same in a game that... focuses on war.
Its almost as if people are expecting an Ocean Liner to be just as powerful as an Iowa Battleship.
Insert random example of an Ocean Liner being turned into a Battleship as provided by those that dont think long enough to get the point.
The only way this game has any chance of having parity between Cruisers, Science and Escorts is if Cryptic literally gutted the game down to its core by removing all of the flexibility..
Result: EVE Online
Somehow I dont think anyone here wants EVE Online's skill system or ship system.
Theoreticaly a cruiser has the same base damage potential (not factoring in buffs or consoles) as an escort given the same number and type of weapon.
However cannon weapons are mostly restricted, in fact they are the most varied class of weapon and their highest damage versions aren't available to every ship class.
As far as Dual cannon restrictsons im ok with that, what Needs to change is beam weapons.
Out of the 4 cannon type weapons the weakest 2 are available to everyone, while the highest 2 are restricted but enjoy a damage bonus with the highest getting a critical bonus.
While beams are available to everyone equaly with only 2 types and generaly have the lowest dps numbers and no special bonuses.
So perhaps there should be more beam weapons restricted from the cannon vessels with some kind of bonus at high end.
Personaly if cannons are the hammers then beams should be the swords.
Less potential damage but a higher chance to pierce.
In that vein maybe beam weapons should get a bonus to shield penetration to reflect the greater strain a sustained energy beam would place on an energy shielding system.
Not everything you see on the internet is true - Abraham Lincoln
Occidere populo et effercio confractus
It's not a bad thought. Doing this in addition to revising the current energy drain mechanics on beams could be interesting.
the ST Cruiser in the movies and tv shows were the backbone of the fleet....they did everything and were efficient.
Sci Vessels and Tac vessels while being in seperate series were pretty much ignored otherwise and were not promoted as particulary useful...except for their repsective tv shows. Viyager and Ds9
I think the devs have translated them fairly well into jack of all trades and master of nothing....
A sci vessel can tank better and an escort can dps better the cruiser does them but nearly as well....
any debate to a sci vessel ebing a better tank take a look at my Fleet Advanced Research Vessel Retrofit....4 eng 4 sci slots i can muster enough shields and hull resists to tank anything in the game and can take a shot froom Donatras beam attack and still have hp to spare.....but I digress.
That kind of makes sense. Restrict 250* beam arrays to cruisers and science vessels only. For technobabble reasoning:
Beam arrays require 250* phaser strips around the whole ship. There are certain technical limitations on how those strips can be integrated into a ship, such as a limit on how much they can "bend". This precludes their installation on Escort-class ships.
DHCs do extra crit severity, perhaps the newBeams could be granted extra crit chance, basically a free [CrtH].
I posted more on this in another thread(s)
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=533021
But basically I suggest the current 2 beam weapons stay as they are and 2 new weapons be added.
Keeping with they are the pinnacle of their type they keep wide arcs (one getting an even wider arc) and have more firepower than lesser versions.
I also proposed the heavier version get a crit chance bonus so we agree there but that also all beams get a shield penetration bonus. I believe even a small bonus would make them more viable and shouldn't upset game balance since it would only boost your damage to a shielded target but would do nothing for an un shielded target..
Not everything you see on the internet is true - Abraham Lincoln
Occidere populo et effercio confractus
Other Games did a much better job, like Starfleet Command or Bridge Commander. Spoken in STO terms these where cruiser games, just as Star Trek is a crusier universe.
They are the iconic ships of Star Trek. Star Wars and BSG have space fighters and Star Trek has big powerful ships as "heroes". Cryptic completely ignored this, they just adapted Star Trek onto "their" BGS-ish game. That's what makes me really pi**ed about them. They just don't care about Trek IMO, i sometimes think they should have made a Star Wars or BSG game.
Don't missunderstand me here, i like BSG and Star Wars, but i absolutely HATE it when things get mixed up like that.
Cryptic designed crusiers as just big bricks with not even decent firepower, so their (beloved) escorts can zip around them, just like star fighters in Star Wars or BSG. This is not Star Trek in my opinion.
More than that i find this whole Escort/ Cruiser/ Science seperation just stupid. I know it is a MMO and MMOs tend to have their own logic, but this is a Star Trek game, for gods sake.
I must say that i am normally not into MMOs, i don't even like the premise of having to socialize with others very much. I would have preferred it if there was a Game like STO just for solo play.
(Ground and space part, growing content, and so on.)
I just love to play this huge Star Trek game where things get permanently added and i love the mix of Ground and Space action.
Since this game is already running for 3 years now, i highly doubt they will change anything with their ship system.
I just hope they will release some Starfleet cruiser/escort hybrids, for less than 200 or 300$!
What also bothers me is the excessive amount of cannon using ships. I am not completely against those ships, i just HATE cannons. In my opinion cannon weapons should get a option to switch their FX to beam type weapon, Space Combat would look much more like Star trek in an instant.
What i am afraid of is that some people will actually start to believe that ships in Star Trek really work like they do in STO (stone/paper/scissor). And so, STO would become something like semi canon. On that day Star Trek is officially dead (at least for me).
In the past i got upset when thinking about ships in STO, but i try to see STO NOT as a Star Trek game.
Since then, it is actually a fun game.
EDIT:
I think they should at least introduce something like Heavy Beam Arrays, being able to do DC equivalent damage. Maybe a restriction of one or two per cruiser would be sufficient. It would greatly enhance the usefulness of cruisers.
Additionally Cryptic should introduce MACO or OMEGA versions of some popular ship classes.
These ships should be availlable through the reputation system.
MACO versions could have a more engineering focussed BOFF layout, while OMEGA versions would get more tactical focussed BOFF layouts.
I think it would be a nice way to get high end ships without having to join a big fleet.
After all, escorts HAVE the speed and turn rate to close in and do devastating damage. It fits their role and performance.
Cruisers and other ships using beams get screwed by damage loss over distances they cannot cross fast enough or turn fast enough to control the battlespace.
Kind of sums it up. Folks may disagree with it, but the "fix" folks are looking for would actually be a complete redesign of the game from the ground up. Maybe somewhere down the road, Cryptic will do well enough with STO that PWE will see value in having STO run alongside an STO2 with a different design if they believe that such a game could generate the revenue for it...
...otherwise...well, yeah - folks will have to live with that design or they not. Given how the game continues to do better and better despite what some see as a flaw...well, yeah.
Edit: My personal opinion? There should be Escort missions like there are Shuttle missions as far as PvE goes. It doesn't matter enough to give any thought to how it would be handled on the PvP side, because it simply doesn't matter enough - not going to change.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but beams already do not have a damage fall-off due to range, while cannons do.
Currently the effective range of cannons and turrets is 4km and under. You can spot newbies in STFs - just see who's sitting in their escorts 9.9km away from targets; they might as well be throwing rocks at that distance.
When you go in to an STF, all the labs in the world don't matter. It's hitting power, thus escorts rule this game as nothing can put out damage like an escort. What properly built Fleet Exploration Cruiser Retrofit can match the raw destructive power of a properly built JHAS? As the game mostly focuses on DPS (and whilst the Tactical captain abilities boost the damage of everything, including science powers) it's clear that tac is the golden child of this game.
I don't agree with this mentality. Maybe for the Klinks, but NOT for the Federation.
As we've seen on the TV series, the bridge of the Enterprise is larger than the bridge of the Voyager which is larger than the bridge of the Defiant. Why hasn't this translated in to more BOff slots for the larger ships? The Enterprise has a huge Medical area and the Defiant has almost nothing. Why don't the crew of cruisers heal at a far more rapid rate? We've seen the warp core size difference between the Enterprise and Voyager. Why does a cruiser not add more bonus points of energy?
Yes, escorts should always hit harder. That's they're job. Cruisers, however, have so many advantages that are just not shown in the game.
I really think PWE needs to address this balance. It's Star Trek Online, not Escorts Online.
(Now we see the escort fan-boys cry foul...)
I 100% agree with you.
the differences wouldn't be so blatant if cruisers had more other uses, or abilities.
Since i started playing i have been wondering, why cruisers dont get much more Engergy for it's subsystems. They don't even get more BOFF slots or even DOFF slots...
If you look at it from that perspective i think Cryptic made Star Trek ships too equal.
I'm not saying escorts shouldn't get any advantage but compared to a 10x bigger ship which has way more resources, escorts are way too strong. They should be specialists on one field, but not being able to stand toe on toe with cruisers.
And yeah, escort lobbyists are already incoming.
If i where to make a Star Trek online game, i would have made the biggest=strongest ships availlable at a certain accolade score. (lets say 7000 or 8000, depending on the ship)
Everything below would be specialised ships like Science or Escorts.
I still absolutely hate the Ambassador and Galaxy class BOFF layout.
I've already addressed this, all the way back on page 1 (or 2, depending on your forum preferences):
Conveniently, no one has tried to address this. It's funny how, when you bring actual science into play, the "cruiser godship" raving lunatics suddenly go silent...
It's also funny how, when you bring up the necessities of game design, those same raving lunatics try to side-step the issue. If we really copy on-screen references, the Galaxy class would be even more worthless than it currently is, doing nothing more than taking a beating in every encounter, the Sovereign class will be akin to an escort, but with beams, the Defiant class will blow everything up in 2 shots, and the Intrepid class will constantly run away from a fight. :rolleyes: Ironically, the in-game representation isn't all that far off the mark, now that I've reduced it to such simple descriptions.
What's wrong with the Ambassador (other than "It's not a Galaxy")?
if that's what you want, I say Okay!...make my fleet escort a tank like a cruiser, I give up walls for arrows..lol but good discussion question. ( I hope my escort see's you in space, lol)
Make my escort a TANK, like a cruiser and I say okay, make em even. I give up walls for arrows,
Applying modern science to argue your point of view in a fictional AND future arena? Isn't that like Alessandro Volta arguing with his peers as to how a smartphone works?
I don't want a godship. I want a game that focuses on combat to have all tiers on a level playing field. That's not wanting an unfair advantage. That's wanting balance. Something the tac fanboys don't understand.
How many more times are you going to say give up walls for arrows? Saying it more times doesn't give it any more meaning than it had the first time.