What some people are misunderstanding here, (and "what we have here, is a problem to communicate") is that ever class has a set of roles. Tac, primarily damage. Engineer, primarily tanking and healing support. Science Enemy Neutralisation and Crowd control.
When it comes to this particular argument for threads like this, I misunderstand nothing. PvP I can't speak to, since I rarely do it, but for PvE...none of this matters. Tanking is not needed, you only have to be just tough enough. CC does not matter, when we have so many abilities to kill large groups at once. Healing only matters slightly, and plays into the just tough enough aspect. Damage on the other hand, is top dog. And second, and third.
The classes themselves may be fine, the ships themselves may be fine, but let's not kid ourselves here. The way this game is built, the way the AI works, all of PvE in general is centered around how much damage you can do and how fast you can do it. That's always been this game's primary failure in my eyes, its just too easy.
People claim to hate the trinity other MMOs have, but fail to recognize this game is built around that same trinity as for how the classes and ships work. The problem comes in when on of the trinity is really the only one who's job is actually needed.
I will add to the OP's post concerning the extremely unfair advantage Tac captains have compared to the other 2 careers:
1- Damage boost abilities are global.
Yes, that means a tac captain in a science ship will do more damage with science abilities than a full fledged sci capt in a sci ship. Hit atk Alpha, Go down Fighting and gravity wells/photonic shockwave/repulsor beams/tractor beams/ ANYTHING sci based that does damage... gets a ~300% damage boost. A sci captain cannot even creep close to that damage output with sci capt abilities alone. All other abilities available to science boffs are broken and the stats they are associated with dont provide any noticeable boost to the ability (aside from healing..im talking offensive/crowd control abilities).
The same damage bonus applies to engineer damage abilities. Warp Plasma, Directed Energy Modulation... you name it.
Its ABSURD that a Tactical captain performs better in sci ships than a sci captain and than an engineer in a cruiser.
2- Escorts have access to all the defensive and navigation engineer and science bonuses via their tactical boff abilities.
Case in point: Attack Pattern Omega.
Defense boost = None. Unique.
Speed Boost = Emg Pwr to Engine
Immunity to holds = Polarize Hull
Damage boost = Emg Pwr to Weapons
Turn rate boost = Aux2Dampeners
HOLY TRIBBLE. With this one ability the escort ship gets the EQUIVALENT of having Lt Cmdr engineer and Science station abilities.
Atk Omega is one of the primary reasons escorts, and particularly tac captains in escorts, are so ridiculously overpowered.
3- Stat bonuses are heavily biased to benefit tactical captains. This is the result of BAD design from the devs when they went F2P. The space revamp bunched all energy weapon types, all projectile weapon types, all the weapon-related damage boosting stats ...into an extremely simplistic 'this works for all' skill box. This resulted in all tac captains not needing to sacrifice skill points to gain max performance with which to stack upon their tac-capt dmg boosting abilities and their escort-based (lt cmdr tac+) station abilities.
Engineer and Science on the other hand, their skill boxes remained largely the same. Science in particular lost several stat-types and got them bunched into other stats... but by doing so the devs broke the stats and they have not provided any noticeable boost ever since.
Case in point: Gravity Well.
Pre-F2P a grav well 3 fired by someone with ZERO particle/graviton skills would be what we have now @9pnts in both. Assuming both being fired @ max aux. A grav well 3 with 9pnts in grav/particle + max aux on the other hand, was so effective that ships would be sucked into the center of the anomaly and be held there the entire duration UNLESS they used polarize hull or evasive maneuvers. Atk Omega did not use to break you free from holds, it used to prevent holds (aka you had to had omega active before a hold hit you or it would not protect you).
Today, the particle skill hardly gives you any damage bonus and graviton skill barely affects the super weak strength of the tractor effect.
We know for a FACT that it is the bonus to these stats that is intentionally set so low that they are useless. How do we know? In season 3 or 4 (I forget which) there was a patch that boosted these stats...and for a few days grav wells had returned to pre-f2p levels.
Case in point: Sensor abilities.
Jam and Scramble Sensors used to have long durations and used to take a LOT of damage before the effect broke. A sci ship COULD crowd control with them back in pre-f2p. Now however the effect is so weak a single hit by a mk1 white turret will break a jam sensor 3 fired by a sci ship @ max aux +9pnts in countermeasures.
Case in point: Tachyon Beam.
Pre-F2P this ability was incredibly useful. It drained a darn good amount of shields and most importantly it used to prevent shield balancing while active (10 seconds). It was a true support ability and was an important asset for any team to have.
Today, because the stat associated with it is so weak, tachyon beam 3 is a wasted slot. It doesnt even prevent shield balancing (no idea why this was removed in space revamp!).
Case in point: Power Drains
Same old story. Before a single siphon 3 could make a cruiser captain sweat... now its another wasted slot because flow capacitors bonus is very low. Plus the added power drain resists (which were never needed to begin with!).
So, overall, tac abilities received an impressive boost while sci and engineer abilities got tossed and flushed down the toilet.
Before F2P the game was balanced in the sense that escorts were NOT the highest damage dealers (cruisers were) but they were the only ships with the speed and turn rate to focus on one shield facing and pummel it down. Cruisers were the most difficult ships to shoot down since they were monster tanks AND they had the highest firepower..but their turn rate and speed were TRIBBLE. Sci ships were the best shield tanks but had very weak hulls so they could only buffer tank...and while they had the lowest dps of all ships, they did their fighting with science abilities... a disable, tractor, energy drain, grav well, sensor jam... all these were used to turn powerful enemies into weak enemies so that their low dps could take them down.
Cruisers used to fear sci ships, sci ships used to fear escorts, escorts used to be VERY afraid of both cruisers and sci ships when under 5km range and REALLY flew to avoid cruiser broadsides and sci ship's forward aspect (most sci abilities fire forward)... but even though they were afraid of them the escort could shoot them both down quickly IF he attacked the same shield and IF he used his weapons and abilities right.
That was the balance. It is gone now. Replaced by sheer idiotic raw DPS and ungodly tanking ability given to escort ships... its point/click/boom gameplay...and the 'brainplay' that used to be sci and engineer has been twisted into 'ooh look i can heal' spamming.
How to FIX the game and return it to balance:
1- Remove ALL speed/turn/rate/damage/healing bonuses granted by any skill box. Let ship equipment determine this.
* the effect this will have is that it will make all ships return to pre-f2p tactical combat rather than stupid arcade fighting. By removing the rank-based boosts to all these, ship combat once again becomes a matter of who uses and flies their ships better not just who can stack damage abilities or healing abilities and spam them regardless of where their ship is pointing or flying.
2- Split Atk Omega into Attack and Evasive Pattern.
Atk Omega:
Small Damage resist debuff
Medium Damage boost
Medium Turn rate boost
Large Accuracy buff
Evasive Gamma (?)
Immunity to holds
Large Speed Boost
Medium Defense boost
Medium turn rate boost.
3- Increase stat effect of all sci and engineer skill boxes by a significant amount.
4- Remove tactical captain boost abilities from affecting non-weapon based damage.
I know the tac boosts do this because the damage done by non-weapons is always classed as kinetic... so how about simply re-assigning that non-weapon damage to a new damage type: Exotic damage. Just like pre-f2p.
The only way to resist exotic damage should be through armor, consoles and boff ability resistance. Defense rating should not be factored into damage reduction equations since sci abilities are not 'aimed' like weapons are.
... ditto. someone else quote this in like 20 minutes so they see it again:p
Stop already please, there is way to much nerfing as it is. Put time and effort into your builds like the rest of the pros instead of expecting a hand out because you keep blowing up.
Remember asking for nerfs -- nerfs everything and more then you ask for.
When eng and sci captains start investing half of the time and trouble perfecting their skills and ships that tac captains do then you might have a right to complain, but until then...please shut up and go away.
Such constructive comments! In one sweeping gesture assuming Engineer and Science players are just being lazy and stupid and that this thread is proposing that escorts should be made rubbish, and thus entirely missing the point.
I don't think anyone's proposing that escorts be made useless, but rather that they need to have balance. Specifically they need weaknesses because currently escorts do more damage than any other ship-type, but still have access to multiple defensive abilities that make them far too durable and thus allowing them to function as stationary turrets rather than agile burst-damage dealers. While I'd like to see some fall-off in damage to avoid the current situation of more tactical consoles = better ship, escorts should absolutely still deliver tons of damage, but they shouldn't be so good at absorbing return fire at the same time as that's not what they're for. Escorts should be delivering lots of firepower in a short window before peeling away to let their shields regenerate as they come round for another pass.
I do agree with some folks that part of the problem are the PvE NPC's; if they actually used abilities properly then it would be difficult for damage alone to destroy things like Borg cubes (as it should be), and might let reduced NPC damage be rolled in as well to reduce instant kills. But even so, escorts just don't play like escorts should as I rarely feel that I'm under so much pressure that I need to peel away to recover, instead I just sit where I am (well, drifting back and forth) while hitting tactical teams to keep my shields at full strength.
I dont know that tacs need to be nerfed as much as the game needs fixing... My tac officer is in a patrol escort and I rarely if ever die in stf's and just decimate anything in front of me.
My sci officer is in a Vo'quv with advance hangar pets and I rarely die in it as well, but if I was to change to a sci in an escort with the change in appropriate gear I would still rarely die and be able to complete the same stf's in much quicker time.
The problem i see isnt really inherent in the classes, its that the answer to every question is DPS... I could grav well that group of enemies and take them out one at a time, or I could just come in with an escort and csv and torp spread with omega running and wipe out entire group in seconds.
As long as the powers that be design the game where every encounter can be overcome just by bringing enough DPS, then dps is all that really matters. Buff every mobs HP by millions and get rid of extreme dmg spikes but increase the overall dps they do and tanking/healing becomes very important while not devaluing dps overall. Increase the effectiveness of crowd control as well and we start having a more balanced game that actually has a more tactical, and planning feel to it instead of the dps fest we have now, and also allows the other classes/ship types to feel actually needed instead of being a detriment since we could have brought a useful escort instead.
Then again what do I know, I am just an armchair warrior flying my chosen pixels around wishing for better and wishing I felt important to actually completeing the mission at hand instead of feeling like I could just sit afk and the mission would still be completed either way.
Tanking is not needed, you only have to be just tough enough. CC does not matter, when we have so many abilities to kill large groups at once. Healing only matters slightly, and plays into the just tough enough aspect. Damage on the other hand, is top dog. And second, and third.
Those are environment design issues, not Ship design issues.
Saying Survival is not important (healing/resistances) is a misnomer, the typical escort has 12 boff powers, and usually at least half of those are dedicated to survivability.
Patrol Escort for STFs:
Survival Powers = 9
TT 1 x 2
EPTS 1 x 2
RSP 1
HE 1
TSS 2
APO x 1
Offense Powers = 5
CRF/CSV 2 copies
2 optional skills (torps/mine/APB, etc)
APO x 1 (double duty)
You probably meant a dedicated healer, but if you look at the above, the multi-functional design of ships and consider how many people tend to use DOFFs for survivability vs. offense you can see why "damage" is king is true, but it doesn't mean there is not equal or greater emphasis on survivability.
A tac in a science vessel, (I preshent you, the ballishtic misshile Submarine, Red October), can do more damage, because it will buff up it's weapons damage. But a science will perform the crowd controls, and science evil a LOT better.
Really. A sci captain will do better CC... With what? Sensor scan the TRIBBLE out of ships? wow. A sci captain is completely gimped compared to a tac in a sci vessel. No wait, sci is gimped in every ship compared to our tac brothers.
Can someone link to old youtube videos of times were sci and eng were viable? We might get some condolence out of it. My sci-sci main will spend his time DOFFing and trading in the meantime :-(
1: Set all ships to have 20 HP
2: Set all shields to have 40 HP
3: Set all weapons to 1 Damage pr hit
4: Get rid of Skills and abilities
There... no more reason for people to get frustrated with their bad builds.
If you *really* think this has something to do with "bad builds" you don't get the point. Or are you afraid that your main get's nerfed and want to stay OP.
Part of the solution is:
1) Attack pattern alpha / Go down fighting should not affect science abilities.
2) Buff the damage of science abilities (in some cases significantly). They were nerfed because the damage were to high in combination with Tac buffs.
Me and my ship has been through my share of nerfs...
My eng is viable in STF's and PvP and so is my sci... I quite often do equal or more damage than Tacs with them.
Fix your builds
A good tac will always (!) out-dps a sci. The point is, is that a Tac in a science vessel will outperform (or perform equally) a Sci in every aspect. Again, this has nothing to do with "builds". You can repeat yourself as a parrot, but that is just ignoring the facts.
Four points of interest that do not apply to everyone or even in this order:
1) I actually don't want to nerf anything given the choice. I just want balance. I have actually made half a dozen threads suggesting chances that had nothing to do with directly increase non-tactical roles DPS.
So nice to be blindly pigeon holed...
2) The counter point about cruiser/science ships/engineers/science role is not DPS. Ok, fine. Problem, DPS is not king because I'm not having fun. DPS focus is king because it can overcome any debuff and still destroy the debuffer focus before they do 1/2 the damage in return. What's more even DPS focus builds need to suffer more then half the damage before being stopped.
If you want to make that argument?
Look past your nose long enough to see if it actually in fact does works that way. Before waving your hand to say "Yea, is should that work that way, and that's enough. Now go away."
That also assume two ship in space that never move, and just sit there fire back at each other like in some archaic British style "gentleman" fight.
3) In five pages I've seen a grand total of one poster that's tried to show me how I'm wrong and done more then reply "Whatever noob, go away!". [Edit]Assuming you didn't agree with me, that is.[/edit]
Not helpful or useful.
What do know something else? One of the top two tanks I know is actually afraid to tank for fear someone is going to start a massive whine fest and get him nerfed!
4) The "there should be a low skill easy to use class" bit? On the one hand, I can have mercy and allow such a thing. On the other? That basically sets everyone not them up for failure. That I don't have so much mercy on.
Personally, I think it could be better if you get a bonus to skills of your career, and a slight negative to skills not of your career.
Right now even cannon fodder like birds of prey just chuckle and fly away from Gravity Well. Having a ship full of space marines this would make sense. A ship full of eggheads? That should be like flypaper.
EPS Transfer: Make it a toggle that gives +20 energy to each subsystem until switched off, but cuts recharge rate down to 25% of normal for the duration.
This would basically render EPST worthless given the drain mechanics on beam arrays. You'd be constantly flipping it on and off between firing cycles just to recover enough power to do any damage, god forbid you do something like beam overload or phaser lance with it on. Its fine the way it is IMO, I get more energy out of it than that anyway.
THE SKY IS FALLING!! THE SKY IS FALLING!!! NERF THE SKY!!!!
Too late. It happened in the F2P patch.
They only rational thing to do is buff things that are under performing not nerf what many players are enjoying.
Learn and think before you post such rubbish about ban this and ban that cause it think its op.
You fail to understand what 'balance' is. Bringing two BROKEN lines of skill sets up in power to match one that was given an insane performance boost through bad design will only result in the entire game become more and more an arcade shooter and there will be balance whatsoever.
Look up the old skill trees and you will see why pre-F2P there was balance. A tac captain wanting to do brutal damage (what we have now) had to spend nearly all his skill points on weapons and maneuver boxes...and had little left over for healing abilities. Thus, an escort used to be a very fast, maneuverable glass cannon. Engineers and Science skill trees also required a lot of skill points to get a tank or science build and this left very few points for weapons. That is why the sci and eng ships excelled in their assigned roles. Very few captains back then did well in 'balanced' skill point allocation since they ended up failing at their class role and failing at the two other roles they were trying to have access to. The ship flown determined the skill points assigned.
Today the skill points system was dumbed down so much that tac captains need spend only 1/3rd of their points to do max damage and the rest can go into tanking abilities. Glass cannons have become battleships. Sci and Engineer stats were broken so badly that they NEED to focus on DPS and healing to be able to contribute to the team... but not in their assigned role pre-F2P. A sci ship today simply does not do science as it did before. Look at the sci ship builds and you'll see they gear for DPS whereas back then they geared for sci abilities.
They need to return to pre-f2p balance if this game is to get its 'trek' feel back. Starting with the removal of the idiotic speed boosts.. it feels like im playing X-Wing of old with the way ships fly so damn fast theres no point in maneuvering for position or hitting a specific shield..just shoot and dps it down. No tactics. No strategy. Just pewpewpewpew.
. Sci and Engineer stats were broken so badly that they NEED to focus on DPS and healing to be able to contribute to the team... but not in their assigned role pre-F2P. A sci ship today simply does not do science as it did before. Look at the sci ship builds and you'll see they gear for DPS whereas back then they geared for sci abilities.
So your solution to the problem of a lack of science in science ships is not to put the science back in science ships, but to take the tactical out of tactical ships?
THE SKY IS FALLING!! THE SKY IS FALLING!!! NERF THE SKY!!!!
They only rational thing to do is buff things that are under performing not nerf what many players are enjoying.
Learn and think before you post such rubbish about ban this and ban that cause it think its op.
Not helpful. Nor is dismissing a possible complain as rubbish without taking the time to actually debunk it. If I am wrong? I need to be shown as such. If I am right, I would think action needs to be taken at least.
This is part of a over all plan. Granted, my demeanor slipped in the last post.
The plan? My suggestions thus far have been greeted as just a nice idea or a possible change, not as shoring up a broken scale. So, before what I have to say taken as worth something I have to show cause why they are needed.
This thread is to show cause why they are needed.
Edit: Another way to put it would be? In a broad sense, Tactical roles are having fun at the cost of other's fun. There is no way to fix it without either knock tactical roles down a peg or bleeding everyone else into their domain. There is no way to do that until I expose the problem for what it is.
Engy are not threat controled, that was a feature added in f2p conversion. Im an engineer, and i refuse to go down that route due to simple minded people who only understand trinity style games of healer/dps/tank.
I agree I am a eng as well please he just needs to reroll and actually study the game
The real problem is that tac captain abilities have great synergy with what they do. Their abilities increase their firepower greatly. As well as increase what boff abilities can accomplish.
Not so much for eng and sci capatins, especially sci captains. I do have one of each all at 50 before f2p. While eng captains have just floated in the void, sci have had their tactics beaten to a bloody pulp. Take away sub nuc and sci is very sad
I believe captain abilities should help their respective classes boff abilities as well. And boff abilities should be tied to different skills like they were before f2p.
Ultimately nerfs reduced abilities due to circumstances which have since changed, however the nerfs were left in place.
Yeah, tactical captains just do too much damage in PVP (intended?), and this is coming from someone who has a Klingon tactical officer. As far as what to do to balance it, I have no idea.
I can tell you that nerfing tactical officers across the board isn't the answer, because that will further pigeon-hole players into specific ship types instead of letting us diversify with a variety of ships from which we can choose and employ into a variety of different combat scenarios.
I've long been an advocate for improving beam weapons, so that Star Trek purists can enjoy being a red shirt captaining their own Cruiser just as well as they can an Escort. Design balance is key between weapon types, not nerfing one class to oil wheels only squeaky when wet.
So your solution to the problem of a lack of science in science ships is not to put the science back in science ships, but to take the tactical out of tactical ships?
Yeah that makes sense.
On the contrary.
I'm saying science and engineer stats need to be re-boosted to pre-f2p levels. You know, when they actually DID something.
Tactical ships are not getting nerfed. They are returning to their role. There is no 'tactical' in the current tac captain/escort combo. The damage output and tanking ability is so ludicrous that tactics are not needed. Unless of course, you count clicking the damage boosting abilities as 'tactics'.
Imagine it for a moment. In an STO where all the speed/dmg/turn rate/heal bonuses from ranking up and skill boxes were removed what do you get?
Equipment determines damage, speed, turn rate, etc. Ships slow down, ships don't turn as well, ships dont heal as well as they do now.
You can see this kind of gameplay if you start a new character and really pay attention to these things before you rank up the first time.
In this environment, TACTICS play a huge role. The shield you attack plays a huge role. Science and engineer abilities (from boffs and capt) have even stronger effect precisely because the skillbox&rankup stat boosting were removed. Tactical abilities as well.
Do this little test yourself: Grab you level 50 ship and put on it white mk1 engine on it. Go fly a combat mission. You will notice your ship is roughly almost as fast as it is with mk12 engines.
Grab a level 1 ship and put mk12 engines and see how fast it goes. Put the mk1 on it. Same speed.
Now start a new character (fed side for level 1) and compare how fast it goes compared to the level50 character flying the mk1 ship using white mk1 engine. There is a vast, noticeable difference. That is the rank up + skill box bonus at work. Its massive. Its UN-neccesary. Similar boosts and similar un-needed boosts are applied to weapons.
Escorts would use their much higher speed and turn rate (this is a VERY noticeable difference in the first level and it was just as noticeable in max level pre-f2p) to focus on one shield. Their damage is nominally higher than a cruiser's broadside but it is delivered fast and constantly on one shield facing. Since cruisers and sci ships also get the 'nerf' to their turn rate and speed they end up flying very slowly in comparison and hardly being able to turn to show an escort a different shield facing (aka not as easily as they do now)
Since shield healing is not the insta-heal-to-full we have now nor can shields be balanced more than once per 2 seconds (manually, tac team does work for duration..this is how it was pre-f2p) the escort is the premier 'kill by maneuver focused fire' ship. It is WEAK in defenses so it must deliver the damage fast and get out of harm's way.
Instead of boosting damage directly the skill boxes could boost secondary effects (stronger plasma burn from plasma, stronger speed debuff from chronitons, etc). Instead of weapon specializations we could have emphasis on accuracy and critical chance (which it does now except it also boosts damage..which is not needed!).
Aside from all of this you need to consider how these changes affect another, little know used/known factor in today's STO: Power levels.
Pre-F2P a fight between max level characters involved a lot of power level shifting. Since the speed of the ships in the game was dramatically lower and the firepower and healing was lower there was TIME to actually make use of your ship's full abilities.
I remember in my nebula switching from medium shield power to max shield when the cruiser I was fighting was about to finally get a broadside on me. I remember having time AFTER if maneuvered out of his broadside and into his aft (raking fire!) to switch to max weapon for a couple of broadsides and then to max aux as my forward aspect finally reached him to fire off sci abilities.
Notice how IMPORTANT positioning was? How IMPORTANT it was to not let your enemy's high damage facing be pointed at you (for sci ships it was fore due to sci abilities)?. How the gameplay involved even power level management in combat and there was TIME to actually do it?
The sweetest thing of pre-F2p is that you had time to click on abilities and combos and look UP from the powers tray and SEE it happen.
Now things move so fast, hit so hard, heal so much that there is simply no point trying. Power levels are pre-set to the highest dps setting or tanking setting, turning is hardly a factor unless its to get more guns to bear (aside from the atrox and voquv no other ship has any issue with this) and tactics? what tactics? stack dmg boosting abilities or spam healing abilities nonstop.
I've said it before in other threads: If the devs would just TRY this on redshirt they'd be amazed how this would improve the game. Just TRY it.
All the need to do is remove the skill point and rank up bonuses to speed/healing/wep damage/turn rate.
Comments
When it comes to this particular argument for threads like this, I misunderstand nothing. PvP I can't speak to, since I rarely do it, but for PvE...none of this matters. Tanking is not needed, you only have to be just tough enough. CC does not matter, when we have so many abilities to kill large groups at once. Healing only matters slightly, and plays into the just tough enough aspect. Damage on the other hand, is top dog. And second, and third.
The classes themselves may be fine, the ships themselves may be fine, but let's not kid ourselves here. The way this game is built, the way the AI works, all of PvE in general is centered around how much damage you can do and how fast you can do it. That's always been this game's primary failure in my eyes, its just too easy.
People claim to hate the trinity other MMOs have, but fail to recognize this game is built around that same trinity as for how the classes and ships work. The problem comes in when on of the trinity is really the only one who's job is actually needed.
... ditto. someone else quote this in like 20 minutes so they see it again:p
Remember asking for nerfs -- nerfs everything and more then you ask for.
I don't think anyone's proposing that escorts be made useless, but rather that they need to have balance. Specifically they need weaknesses because currently escorts do more damage than any other ship-type, but still have access to multiple defensive abilities that make them far too durable and thus allowing them to function as stationary turrets rather than agile burst-damage dealers. While I'd like to see some fall-off in damage to avoid the current situation of more tactical consoles = better ship, escorts should absolutely still deliver tons of damage, but they shouldn't be so good at absorbing return fire at the same time as that's not what they're for. Escorts should be delivering lots of firepower in a short window before peeling away to let their shields regenerate as they come round for another pass.
I do agree with some folks that part of the problem are the PvE NPC's; if they actually used abilities properly then it would be difficult for damage alone to destroy things like Borg cubes (as it should be), and might let reduced NPC damage be rolled in as well to reduce instant kills. But even so, escorts just don't play like escorts should as I rarely feel that I'm under so much pressure that I need to peel away to recover, instead I just sit where I am (well, drifting back and forth) while hitting tactical teams to keep my shields at full strength.
Game Balance - Ship Size and Wingmates
My sci officer is in a Vo'quv with advance hangar pets and I rarely die in it as well, but if I was to change to a sci in an escort with the change in appropriate gear I would still rarely die and be able to complete the same stf's in much quicker time.
The problem i see isnt really inherent in the classes, its that the answer to every question is DPS... I could grav well that group of enemies and take them out one at a time, or I could just come in with an escort and csv and torp spread with omega running and wipe out entire group in seconds.
As long as the powers that be design the game where every encounter can be overcome just by bringing enough DPS, then dps is all that really matters. Buff every mobs HP by millions and get rid of extreme dmg spikes but increase the overall dps they do and tanking/healing becomes very important while not devaluing dps overall. Increase the effectiveness of crowd control as well and we start having a more balanced game that actually has a more tactical, and planning feel to it instead of the dps fest we have now, and also allows the other classes/ship types to feel actually needed instead of being a detriment since we could have brought a useful escort instead.
Then again what do I know, I am just an armchair warrior flying my chosen pixels around wishing for better and wishing I felt important to actually completeing the mission at hand instead of feeling like I could just sit afk and the mission would still be completed either way.
Nerf the World!
Corks for all forks.
R.I.P
Those are environment design issues, not Ship design issues.
Saying Survival is not important (healing/resistances) is a misnomer, the typical escort has 12 boff powers, and usually at least half of those are dedicated to survivability.
Patrol Escort for STFs:
Survival Powers = 9
TT 1 x 2
EPTS 1 x 2
RSP 1
HE 1
TSS 2
APO x 1
Offense Powers = 5
CRF/CSV 2 copies
2 optional skills (torps/mine/APB, etc)
APO x 1 (double duty)
You probably meant a dedicated healer, but if you look at the above, the multi-functional design of ships and consider how many people tend to use DOFFs for survivability vs. offense you can see why "damage" is king is true, but it doesn't mean there is not equal or greater emphasis on survivability.
If you are dead, you deal no damage.
Which...was kind of the whole point of everything I said? Thanks for repeating it.
1: Set all ships to have 20 HP
2: Set all shields to have 40 HP
3: Set all weapons to 1 Damage pr hit
4: Get rid of Skills and abilities
There... no more reason for people to get frustrated with their bad builds.
If you *really* think this has something to do with "bad builds" you don't get the point. Or are you afraid that your main get's nerfed and want to stay OP.
Part of the solution is:
1) Attack pattern alpha / Go down fighting should not affect science abilities.
2) Buff the damage of science abilities (in some cases significantly). They were nerfed because the damage were to high in combination with Tac buffs.
My eng is viable in STF's and PvP and so is my sci... I quite often do equal or more damage than Tacs with them.
Fix your builds
A good tac will always (!) out-dps a sci. The point is, is that a Tac in a science vessel will outperform (or perform equally) a Sci in every aspect. Again, this has nothing to do with "builds". You can repeat yourself as a parrot, but that is just ignoring the facts.
1) I actually don't want to nerf anything given the choice. I just want balance. I have actually made half a dozen threads suggesting chances that had nothing to do with directly increase non-tactical roles DPS.
So nice to be blindly pigeon holed...
2) The counter point about cruiser/science ships/engineers/science role is not DPS. Ok, fine. Problem, DPS is not king because I'm not having fun. DPS focus is king because it can overcome any debuff and still destroy the debuffer focus before they do 1/2 the damage in return. What's more even DPS focus builds need to suffer more then half the damage before being stopped.
If you want to make that argument?
Look past your nose long enough to see if it actually in fact does works that way. Before waving your hand to say "Yea, is should that work that way, and that's enough. Now go away."
That also assume two ship in space that never move, and just sit there fire back at each other like in some archaic British style "gentleman" fight.
3) In five pages I've seen a grand total of one poster that's tried to show me how I'm wrong and done more then reply "Whatever noob, go away!". [Edit]Assuming you didn't agree with me, that is.[/edit]
Not helpful or useful.
What do know something else? One of the top two tanks I know is actually afraid to tank for fear someone is going to start a massive whine fest and get him nerfed!
4) The "there should be a low skill easy to use class" bit? On the one hand, I can have mercy and allow such a thing. On the other? That basically sets everyone not them up for failure. That I don't have so much mercy on.
Right now even cannon fodder like birds of prey just chuckle and fly away from Gravity Well. Having a ship full of space marines this would make sense. A ship full of eggheads? That should be like flypaper.
:rolleyes:
They only rational thing to do is buff things that are under performing not nerf what many players are enjoying.
Learn and think before you post such rubbish about ban this and ban that cause it think its op.
This would basically render EPST worthless given the drain mechanics on beam arrays. You'd be constantly flipping it on and off between firing cycles just to recover enough power to do any damage, god forbid you do something like beam overload or phaser lance with it on. Its fine the way it is IMO, I get more energy out of it than that anyway.
Too late. It happened in the F2P patch.
You fail to understand what 'balance' is. Bringing two BROKEN lines of skill sets up in power to match one that was given an insane performance boost through bad design will only result in the entire game become more and more an arcade shooter and there will be balance whatsoever.
Look up the old skill trees and you will see why pre-F2P there was balance. A tac captain wanting to do brutal damage (what we have now) had to spend nearly all his skill points on weapons and maneuver boxes...and had little left over for healing abilities. Thus, an escort used to be a very fast, maneuverable glass cannon. Engineers and Science skill trees also required a lot of skill points to get a tank or science build and this left very few points for weapons. That is why the sci and eng ships excelled in their assigned roles. Very few captains back then did well in 'balanced' skill point allocation since they ended up failing at their class role and failing at the two other roles they were trying to have access to. The ship flown determined the skill points assigned.
Today the skill points system was dumbed down so much that tac captains need spend only 1/3rd of their points to do max damage and the rest can go into tanking abilities. Glass cannons have become battleships. Sci and Engineer stats were broken so badly that they NEED to focus on DPS and healing to be able to contribute to the team... but not in their assigned role pre-F2P. A sci ship today simply does not do science as it did before. Look at the sci ship builds and you'll see they gear for DPS whereas back then they geared for sci abilities.
They need to return to pre-f2p balance if this game is to get its 'trek' feel back. Starting with the removal of the idiotic speed boosts.. it feels like im playing X-Wing of old with the way ships fly so damn fast theres no point in maneuvering for position or hitting a specific shield..just shoot and dps it down. No tactics. No strategy. Just pewpewpewpew.
So your solution to the problem of a lack of science in science ships is not to put the science back in science ships, but to take the tactical out of tactical ships?
Yeah that makes sense.
Not helpful. Nor is dismissing a possible complain as rubbish without taking the time to actually debunk it. If I am wrong? I need to be shown as such. If I am right, I would think action needs to be taken at least.
This is part of a over all plan. Granted, my demeanor slipped in the last post.
The plan? My suggestions thus far have been greeted as just a nice idea or a possible change, not as shoring up a broken scale. So, before what I have to say taken as worth something I have to show cause why they are needed.
This thread is to show cause why they are needed.
Edit: Another way to put it would be? In a broad sense, Tactical roles are having fun at the cost of other's fun. There is no way to fix it without either knock tactical roles down a peg or bleeding everyone else into their domain. There is no way to do that until I expose the problem for what it is.
I agree I am a eng as well please he just needs to reroll and actually study the game
For clarity: Would "he" be rajathomas or wildweasal?
Not so much for eng and sci capatins, especially sci captains. I do have one of each all at 50 before f2p. While eng captains have just floated in the void, sci have had their tactics beaten to a bloody pulp. Take away sub nuc and sci is very sad
I believe captain abilities should help their respective classes boff abilities as well. And boff abilities should be tied to different skills like they were before f2p.
Ultimately nerfs reduced abilities due to circumstances which have since changed, however the nerfs were left in place.
I can tell you that nerfing tactical officers across the board isn't the answer, because that will further pigeon-hole players into specific ship types instead of letting us diversify with a variety of ships from which we can choose and employ into a variety of different combat scenarios.
I've long been an advocate for improving beam weapons, so that Star Trek purists can enjoy being a red shirt captaining their own Cruiser just as well as they can an Escort. Design balance is key between weapon types, not nerfing one class to oil wheels only squeaky when wet.
On the contrary.
I'm saying science and engineer stats need to be re-boosted to pre-f2p levels. You know, when they actually DID something.
Tactical ships are not getting nerfed. They are returning to their role. There is no 'tactical' in the current tac captain/escort combo. The damage output and tanking ability is so ludicrous that tactics are not needed. Unless of course, you count clicking the damage boosting abilities as 'tactics'.
Imagine it for a moment. In an STO where all the speed/dmg/turn rate/heal bonuses from ranking up and skill boxes were removed what do you get?
Equipment determines damage, speed, turn rate, etc. Ships slow down, ships don't turn as well, ships dont heal as well as they do now.
You can see this kind of gameplay if you start a new character and really pay attention to these things before you rank up the first time.
In this environment, TACTICS play a huge role. The shield you attack plays a huge role. Science and engineer abilities (from boffs and capt) have even stronger effect precisely because the skillbox&rankup stat boosting were removed. Tactical abilities as well.
Do this little test yourself: Grab you level 50 ship and put on it white mk1 engine on it. Go fly a combat mission. You will notice your ship is roughly almost as fast as it is with mk12 engines.
Grab a level 1 ship and put mk12 engines and see how fast it goes. Put the mk1 on it. Same speed.
Now start a new character (fed side for level 1) and compare how fast it goes compared to the level50 character flying the mk1 ship using white mk1 engine. There is a vast, noticeable difference. That is the rank up + skill box bonus at work. Its massive. Its UN-neccesary. Similar boosts and similar un-needed boosts are applied to weapons.
Escorts would use their much higher speed and turn rate (this is a VERY noticeable difference in the first level and it was just as noticeable in max level pre-f2p) to focus on one shield. Their damage is nominally higher than a cruiser's broadside but it is delivered fast and constantly on one shield facing. Since cruisers and sci ships also get the 'nerf' to their turn rate and speed they end up flying very slowly in comparison and hardly being able to turn to show an escort a different shield facing (aka not as easily as they do now)
Since shield healing is not the insta-heal-to-full we have now nor can shields be balanced more than once per 2 seconds (manually, tac team does work for duration..this is how it was pre-f2p) the escort is the premier 'kill by maneuver focused fire' ship. It is WEAK in defenses so it must deliver the damage fast and get out of harm's way.
Instead of boosting damage directly the skill boxes could boost secondary effects (stronger plasma burn from plasma, stronger speed debuff from chronitons, etc). Instead of weapon specializations we could have emphasis on accuracy and critical chance (which it does now except it also boosts damage..which is not needed!).
Aside from all of this you need to consider how these changes affect another, little know used/known factor in today's STO: Power levels.
Pre-F2P a fight between max level characters involved a lot of power level shifting. Since the speed of the ships in the game was dramatically lower and the firepower and healing was lower there was TIME to actually make use of your ship's full abilities.
I remember in my nebula switching from medium shield power to max shield when the cruiser I was fighting was about to finally get a broadside on me. I remember having time AFTER if maneuvered out of his broadside and into his aft (raking fire!) to switch to max weapon for a couple of broadsides and then to max aux as my forward aspect finally reached him to fire off sci abilities.
Notice how IMPORTANT positioning was? How IMPORTANT it was to not let your enemy's high damage facing be pointed at you (for sci ships it was fore due to sci abilities)?. How the gameplay involved even power level management in combat and there was TIME to actually do it?
The sweetest thing of pre-F2p is that you had time to click on abilities and combos and look UP from the powers tray and SEE it happen.
Now things move so fast, hit so hard, heal so much that there is simply no point trying. Power levels are pre-set to the highest dps setting or tanking setting, turning is hardly a factor unless its to get more guns to bear (aside from the atrox and voquv no other ship has any issue with this) and tactics? what tactics? stack dmg boosting abilities or spam healing abilities nonstop.
I've said it before in other threads: If the devs would just TRY this on redshirt they'd be amazed how this would improve the game. Just TRY it.
All the need to do is remove the skill point and rank up bonuses to speed/healing/wep damage/turn rate.