Escorts DO NEED a nerf, it is obvious in both PVP and PVE. Their hulls are little high and their dmg output makes everyone want to play one, and leave cruisers in the dust and unwanted in elite STF's anymore now a days.
However, do not try and argue this point to current Escort/Tac Officer lovers because they do not listen to reason. They will bring you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
Maybe one day, Cruisers/Engineers will be useful again :"(
The issue with the game comes down to a battle between show logic, reality and game logic.
The game needs to have flexibility so Cryptic can sell ships to the largest amount of people thus they continue to make bigger and more powerful ships.
Turns out the most popular ships in STO tend to be the warships which kinda makes sense when your in a glorified wargame.
The normal trinity system of Tank / DPS / Heal is woefully broken in this game due to the flexibility and complete lack of any kind of threat management tools.
As a result the highest DPS ends up being the tank because they get the highest threat.
If the game were to drop the stupid trinity concept completely then it would potentially get people cruisers that can compete with Escorts... but its gonna come with a hilarious price that you will not like.
How much of this games PvE is just glorified easy kill content...
Depends if they bring back the D'Deridex Defender again, gives the KDF their Wave Motion Gun back, allows the Reman Captains their mind clones, and the Legates their holo emitter strike teams, methinks.
Rambling ahead.
From a strict "regular game"-player view: I find the Mogai Escorts the most challenging of the game's AI because it actually uses some skills like APa or TT. Mind you, they always use them like clockwork and you can always counter them like clockwork. I do like that I have to approach them differently depending upon the ship I'm in. And each culture does require different boff skills to counter the signature dirty trick attack of whoever you fight.
Imagine the mobs having more skill options to choose from. That would really kill a lot of the complaints about Escorts being OP since the only skill you need to fly them is to point them in the right direction and pull the trigger. It'd probably cause some "OMG! Buff escorts!" threads, but what can yah do?
The only thing I'd want is a heads up from Cryptic over an improvent in the mobs AI.
Depends if they bring back the D'Deridex Defender again, gives the KDF their Wave Motion Gun back, allows the Reman Captains their mind clones, and the Legates their holo emitter strike teams, methinks.
Rambling ahead.
From a strict "regular game"-player view: I find the Mogai Escorts the most challenging of the game's AI because it actually uses some skills like APa or TT. Mind you, they always use them like clockwork and you can always counter them like clockwork. I do like that I have to approach them differently depending upon the ship I'm in. And each culture does require different boff skills to counter the signature dirty trick attack of whoever you fight.
Imagine the mobs having more skill options to choose from. That would really kill a lot of the complaints about Escorts being OP since the only skill you need to fly them is to point them in the right direction and pull the trigger. It'd probably cause some "OMG! Buff escorts!" threads, but what can yah do?
The only thing I'd want is a heads up from Cryptic over an improvent in the mobs AI.
Rambling over.
Didn't they already dumb down and de-power the Borg already because of too many Escort Captains who don't know how or don't want to do anything but point and shoot - were getting blown up all the time?
So that's all this game is becoming - come in blow some stuff up fast and get out? Sad! With the power creep/hull creep and dumbing down of enemies I guess more people can casually play and not learn to play.
Whats with all the nerf this, nerf that BS. Three things that could be done to make cruisers worth playing without shafting those of us that use escorts:
1. Increase the hull strength by atleast 50%
2. A moderate increase in the cruiser shield modifier.
3. Adjust beam arrays power requirements so that broadsiding can be effective without weapons power at 125. Something like 4 or 5 power per shot rather than 10.
Bottom line, instead of trying to bring the effectiveness of escorts down to be "balanced" with cruisers how about suggesting some ways to improve cruisers and even science ships. I have spent allot of time and resources building up escorts and will not take to kindly to some nerfing just to appease cruiser players.
Didn't they already dumb down and de-power the Borg already because of too many Escort Captains who don't know how or don't want to do anything but point and shoot - were getting blown up all the time?
So that's all this game is becoming - come in blow some stuff up fast and get out? Sad! With the power creep/hull creep and dumbing down of enemies I guess more people can casually play and not learn to play.
The Borg are quite capable of nuking even cruisers to death with insane torpedo hits.
Oh right, this was yet another useless rant of anti-escort garbage.
You know... if you want to play a game with lots of ship complexity try EVE Online. Perhaps you want STO to adopt EVE Online's system ?
Since I played EVE Online for years I would happily shift to that system but somehow I dont think anyone would be happy with the idea of it taking a year to be able to fly a Galaxy then another year to fly it well.
I have made posts about what cruisers need and its that ability to Chain abilities into a powerful attack like escourts can. A Tac in an Escourt can chain AP Alpha, or Beta, Fire on my mark, Go down fighting, with his CFR3 and strip facing shields and half the hull in one good crit pass. The cruisers need the hyperflux off of the Romulan beam with a seperate cooldown from BO3 and change the Buff that directed Energy Modulation gives so that a Cruiser when he chains his abilities to his BO2 or 3 can do aprox the same spike damage that an Escourt can. Currently thay can chain heal abilities to become almost invincible, so they need 1 good ability to add to the beam override like the Hyperflux to give them that good spike crit hit that they need, They should at least be able to one shot BOP's in Cure space with this ability. And about a 2 min cooldown is fair.
In summary: Beam Hyperflux + DEM (or some ability that gives shield pen) + BO3 = BOOM!
The Borg are quite capable of nuking even cruisers to death with insane torpedo hits.
Oh right, this was yet another useless rant of anti-escort garbage.
You know... if you want to play a game with lots of ship complexity try EVE Online. Perhaps you want STO to adopt EVE Online's system ?
Since I played EVE Online for years I would happily shift to that system but somehow I dont think anyone would be happy with the idea of it taking a year to be able to fly a Galaxy then another year to fly it well.
I would not say I am anti-escort. On the Fed side I have Defiant retro and Adv mvam + the Breen ship + patrol escort
I just feel we are starting to see too much hull creep on the escort side to make them last longer vs players knowing how to use that class properly.
If most people flew a 24k bop and did fine they would know that 33-37.5k escort hulls are excessive.
Most of the ships classified by STO as Escorts are in fact Cruisers.
In Star Trek all ships are cruisers with the one exception of the Defiant.
In the actual ST universe the Patrol Escort, the Akira, the Prometheus, etc, are all really cruisers made like bigger Defiants....few science labs but lots, and lots of shields, guns, armor, engines and then a second layer of guns!
But, in STO escorts are really smallish cruisers with better maneuverability, and more weapons at the cost of some durability. If it makes people feel better to think of escorts that way I say go for it!
I still say all careers should get bonuses in their career skills, and lose a percentage from off career skills.
Then escorts won't be able to EPtX their way through a fight, cruisers can tank better, and science ships will be good at something again.
The only problem is that cruisers need better threat generation and since its a Tac skill...
Its thinking like this that demonstrate you simply do not have a clue what your proposing.
This game used to have exactly what you proposed by having people specialise in the ships they flew - turns out people didnt like that because it railroaded them into specific ships and it hurt Cryptics ability to sell ships.
Not to mention that originally the game had a very clear distinction between Science, Cruiser, Escort.
That has changed massively because Cryptic have saturated the game with multiple ship types with various loadouts inorder to milk every last bit of money they can.
Its harder to sell an Escort to a science character if they will never be able to use it like a tactical officer can. As a result, Cryptic has a much bigger financial intrest in keeping ships universally appealing.
Sorry, but fixing what dosent work now by going back to what didnt work before is completely stupid.
If anything Cryptic should actually do the opposite of what you suggest.
A) Completely remove the Tactical / Science / Engineer professions from space COMPLETELY thus any captain can train any power onto their Bridge Officers as long as they have enough ranks into the skill.
The class specific abilities like Photonic Fleet etc. ditch the useless ones, make others passives (Tactical / Science / Engineering Fleet like it used to be) and tie them to specific ships or just give them to everyone.
C) Make 'modes' for ships like stances work in most game. Aggressive, Defensive or Support. Call it whatever you like.
The point being that the stances will affect stats so that a cruiser in the Escort stance will be all guns and glory. Alternatively, if an Escort decides to go Defensive they can become a tank.
Seriously, MMOs have been doing this stuff for years but the real thing you have to realise is: Most MMOS have competent developers behind the wheel. So far Cryptic are the master of lockboxes.
Maybe when that changes you might see a decent semblence of ship balance rather than them simply creating more powerful ships than the last to sell them.
THAT is why your getting power creep.
In defence of cruisers. Give Fed cruisers the same turn rates and weapon punch of Klingon cruisers. Turn rates are woeful for fed cruisers and one of the reasons I don't play them much yet I play cruisers all the time as a KDf. I actually feel i can contribute to the battle more because I can turn faster and bring my main guns to bear better. I still cant keep up with raptors and BOPS for sheer damage dealing but i can actually do significant damage in my own right.
Another option is to give Fed cruisers universal stations. Fed Cruisers IMHO should be flexible jack of all trades vessels, yet maintain its engineering slant. An extra pair of Uni slots would be a huge help if you want a little extra punch. Thats the one good thing about the freebie Oddy last year. The uni stations gave me the chance to increase my tactical options and made the ship useful in a fight.
Against cruisers.
This is mainly aimed at Cruiser jockeys. Learn how to use your ships properly I wonder how many of you who complain dont know how to build your ships properly.
A friend of mine used nothing but clever use of Boffs and Doffs to turn his Galaxy retrofit into a flying fortress. We tested his build in a 1v1 battle. He in his Galaxy R. Me in my Defiant retrofit. Unfair fight you are thinking right? Wrong! I couldn't kill him, his Boff and Doff layouts meant i couldn't kill him with my best Tac in a Def Ret with full maximum weapons. He did say his DPS was very low. Even so his weapons were enough to destroy me. It took him ten mins but he did it.
In summing up.
Yes more turn and firepower for Fed cruisers.
More uni slots because cruisers should have flexibility due to their Federation nature.
Cruiser owners. Make sure your boffs and doffs are the right ones for what you want and need before firing off complaints. I bet a lot of you don't know what you are doing on that score.
Monkey see, Monkey do. Monkey flings Feathered Monkey poo...
But to say that Escorts should not tank is a statement that does not make sense to me. The escort is merely a platform. The ability to tank is in build layout and timing.
Once again you're forgetting that this isn't Star Trek in the form of a game, it's a game based on Star Trek. It has to be a game first. If you make one class of ship excel at two things, it will dominate.
The normal trinity system of Tank / DPS / Heal is woefully broken in this game due to the flexibility and complete lack of any kind of threat management tools.
As a result the highest DPS ends up being the tank because they get the highest threat.
Yep. That's what happens any time you try to muck with the trinity, in a health-based damage system.
If the game were to drop the stupid trinity concept completely then it would potentially get people cruisers that can compete with Escorts... but its gonna come with a hilarious price that you will not like.
Nope. It's their trying to drop the trinity that caused this. The only ways to fix it are:
1) Stop trying to drop the trinity, and start trying to balance for it; make Escorts excel at DPS, Cruisers excel at Tanking, and Science excel at Healing.
2) Move to a subsystem-based damage system and a size-based accuracy system, so that Escorts are hardest to hit but have the fewest subsystems, Cruisers are easiest to hit but have the most subsystems, and Science are in the middle, and then balance the tradeoffs of this so that Cruisers can have the most damage and Escorts the least, and you can eliminate the trinity entirely.
The first is by far the easiest; just move all the hull heal powers over to Science and give Cruisers some decent taunts, and voila, problem solved.
Any time you have a health-based system, every action a player takes contributes to one (or a combination of, but beware the balance) of three things:
1) Removing health. (DPS)
2) Adding health. (Healing)
3) Preventing loss of health. (Tanking)
If you attempt to mess with that but you keep health, you imbalance the system, and when it's imbalanced, DPS will always become ascendant, because Tanking and Healing extend fights, but DPS ends them.
By all means, divorce the Captain type from the ship type, so that we can be an Engineer in an Escort (and thus Tank on the ground and DPS in space), to allow changing space roles by changing ships; but the only way to have all three ships necessary for endgame teamed content is to stop pretending the trinity is something that Ultima Online made up.
I know that on Star Trek cruisers are king, and that it's scientifically realistic that a larger ship would have more power, more armor, and due to the greater power more weapons and shields. And if you want to look out and see nothing but cruisers, and have everybody forced to play the same role in space that they do on the ground, you can certainly make the cruisers that versatile; in that case, you might as well get rid of escorts and science and just re-jigger the ships around so that the smaller ships are the lower levels, and the larger ships the higher levels, and now to implement the roles you've got to completely redesign the system, and now congratulations, they've got to spend two years doing nothing but that change, while they steadily lose players. Just fix the trinity; it's quicker, it's cheaper, and it's guaranteed to work.
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
Once again you're forgetting that this isn't Star Trek in the form of a game, it's a game based on Star Trek. It has to be a game first. If you make one class of ship excel at two things, it will dominate.
.
This is the problem, they are making 1 class really start to dominate the game. And it only seems to be getting worse.
I guess the real problem is this is mostly a solo play game - focased on DPS and rewards based on time and kills - so it's everyone for themselves.
Cryptic see's that escorts are not getting heals dropped on them and the people flying them want to Kirk it out and go pop - so their solution is to increase hull and heal ability to the escorts. At the pace this is going with the latest ships, soon Crusiers/science ships will be mothballed. It will be interesting to see what they do with the Andorian ship.
The other thing that I think was a bad idea was making the death timers on an increasing scale. People now are more likely to hold back heals and transfers to other players so they don't get popped themselves and get stuck with long waits.
This is the problem, they are making 1 class really start to dominate the game. And it only seems to be getting worse.
I guess the real problem is this is mostly a solo play game - focased on DPS and rewards based on time and kills - so it's everyone for themselves.
Cryptic see's that escorts are not getting heals dropped on them and the people flying them want to Kirk it out and go pop - so their solution is to increase hull and heal ability to the escorts. At the pace this is going with the latest ships, soon Crusiers/science ships will be mothballed. It will be interesting to see what they do with the Andorian ship.
The other thing that I think was a bad idea was making the death timers on an increasing scale. People now are more likely to hold back heals and transfers to other players so they don't get popped themselves and get stuck with long waits.
I'm an engineer in an Armitage escort carrier. My Boffs are all geared towards self heal because of the points you made. yes if i can dump a tac team on a passing ship then yes but that's about it.
Cruiser will always have a place in this game if only for the fact that people want to fly ships canon to the Trek TV shows/ movies.
As i said in a post above, cruisers need to be made more flexible and to bring up their turn and punch to enable them to hold their own better against the escort types.
Monkey see, Monkey do. Monkey flings Feathered Monkey poo...
However, do not try and argue this point to current Escort/Tac Officer lovers because they do not listen to reason. They will bring you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
However, do not try and argue this point to current Cruiser lovers because they do not listen to reason. They will bring you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
_____________________
Come join the 44th Fleet.
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Escorts DO NEED a nerf, it is obvious in both PVP and PVE. Their hulls are little high and their dmg output makes everyone want to play one, and leave cruisers in the dust and unwanted in elite STF's anymore now a days.
However, do not try and argue this point to current Escort/Tac Officer lovers because they do not listen to reason. They will bring you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
Maybe one day, Cruisers/Engineers will be useful again :"(
Yeah, that's why I see more cruisers around Sol than escorts. :rolleyes:
And you've obviously never come across a team of zombie cruisers in PVP.
However, do not try and argue this point to current Cruiser lovers because they do not listen to reason. They will bring you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
I'm hoping the both of ya beat each other to death, with yer 'experience'...
So that us Science Captains can finally get all the glory! :P
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
This game used to have exactly what you proposed by having people specialise in the ships they flew - turns out people didnt like that because it railroaded them into specific ships and it hurt Cryptics ability to sell ships.
See, there's a reasonable, non-jackass thing to write. And it didn't hurt at all, did it?
The main problem with getting rid if the roles is that once the sole uber-build is stuck upon, that's all you'll see in the game. And in the long run, that will hurt their bottom line more because there'd be no need to buy New Ship X because Old Ship Y does the exact same thing.
We need to improve the system that's there now. Not make a new one since its both unrealistic, and your desired game is Starship Unreal Tournament. Which I'd like to play some day but this ain't that game.
Its a bit obvious that yours is a PvP focused view of the game. If this were a PvP game it'd make sense to have that sort of level playing field some of you are screeching for... Even you don't realize it... But as it is, if it comes down to "Kirk"ing in the PvE MMO game, or PvP balance in the non-PvP MMO game, PvP can go take a flying leap.
If cruisers performed there intended role then there would be no need for escorts to tank. As it stands now, you have so many cruiser players that run with threat reduction consoles, zero points in threat control, no threat generating abilities on their bofff, and just an all around attitude of trying to be super captain in a cruiser.
The best way for me to complete an ESTF with an escort in a pug is to be setup to tank, since again it is a dime a dozen as to whether or not you'll get a cruiser that will actually do his job.
How the Devs see Star Trek, apparently:
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
But to say that Escorts should not tank is a statement that does not make sense to me. The escort is merely a platform. The ability to tank is in build layout and timing.
words of a wise Klingon warrior
Grinding for MkIV epic gear?
Ain't Nobody Got Time for That
If you asked 100 Cruiser captions if they liked the role cryptic wants them to play
Maybe 1 would say yes
Thats the problem
Fact is my Fleet Defiant Face roles the Elite STFs to the point their boring its so powerful
5 ships of this class in a SFT is comedy
I am seeing a lot of 5 escort sTFs
Tactical characters in escorts are so powerful i have made 3 Dilithium farmers just to farm elite stfs for dilithium and Loot and free Doffs, in 1:30 minutes i can gather 24K Dilithium from them
The Tactical Escort + character is dominating PvE
Thats just a fact
So do you Nerf it or buff up the Entire game and the other 2 character classes to match it
or
Allow it to continue until everyone is flying a escort with a
TaC , thats the question
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
The trinity is broken, game content supports 1 side of the it only, but the ships themselves aren't unbalanced.
Hull creep is a ridiculous statement of escort tankiness, it has absolutely nothing to do with the situation. So you can conclude the thread is started by a bad cruiser captain that has little game mechanic knowledge. The real problem is 2 rep systems full of defensive buffs that are far far more powerful than the lame offense options given, every escort took the defenses.
My eng cruiser is doing a lot of damage now, single target I am nearly on par with my escort damage but it does degrade quite a bit with multiple targets.
The trinity is broken, game content supports 1 side of the it only, but the ships themselves aren't unbalanced.
Hull creep is a ridiculous statement of escort tankiness, it has absolutely nothing to do with the situation. So you can conclude the thread is started by a bad cruiser captain that has little game mechanic knowledge. The real problem is 2 rep systems full of defensive buffs that are far far more powerful than the lame offense options given, every escort took the defenses.
My eng cruiser is doing a lot of damage now, single target I am nearly on par with my escort damage but it does degrade quite a bit with multiple targets.
You do realize that base hull gets a boost from skills/bonuses - the larger the base hull the more it gets boosted. So now some escorts are topping 50k hulls.
You do realize that base hull gets a boost from skills/bonuses - the larger the base hull the more it gets boosted. So now some escorts are topping 50k hulls.
Since these ships had "bonus shield" anyway, the difference is +-100. The real difference is in regeneration values.
"Cryptic Studio’s Jack Emmert (2010): Microtransactions are the biggest bunch of nonsense. I like paying one fee and not worrying about it – like my cellphone. The world’s biggest MMO isn’t item based, even though the black market item GDP is bigger than Russia … microtransactions make me want to die.”
Comments
However, do not try and argue this point to current Escort/Tac Officer lovers because they do not listen to reason. They will bring you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
Maybe one day, Cruisers/Engineers will be useful again :"(
The game needs to have flexibility so Cryptic can sell ships to the largest amount of people thus they continue to make bigger and more powerful ships.
Turns out the most popular ships in STO tend to be the warships which kinda makes sense when your in a glorified wargame.
The normal trinity system of Tank / DPS / Heal is woefully broken in this game due to the flexibility and complete lack of any kind of threat management tools.
As a result the highest DPS ends up being the tank because they get the highest threat.
If the game were to drop the stupid trinity concept completely then it would potentially get people cruisers that can compete with Escorts... but its gonna come with a hilarious price that you will not like.
Depends if they bring back the D'Deridex Defender again, gives the KDF their Wave Motion Gun back, allows the Reman Captains their mind clones, and the Legates their holo emitter strike teams, methinks.
Rambling ahead.
From a strict "regular game"-player view: I find the Mogai Escorts the most challenging of the game's AI because it actually uses some skills like APa or TT. Mind you, they always use them like clockwork and you can always counter them like clockwork. I do like that I have to approach them differently depending upon the ship I'm in. And each culture does require different boff skills to counter the signature dirty trick attack of whoever you fight.
Imagine the mobs having more skill options to choose from. That would really kill a lot of the complaints about Escorts being OP since the only skill you need to fly them is to point them in the right direction and pull the trigger. It'd probably cause some "OMG! Buff escorts!" threads, but what can yah do?
The only thing I'd want is a heads up from Cryptic over an improvent in the mobs AI.
Rambling over.
Didn't they already dumb down and de-power the Borg already because of too many Escort Captains who don't know how or don't want to do anything but point and shoot - were getting blown up all the time?
So that's all this game is becoming - come in blow some stuff up fast and get out? Sad! With the power creep/hull creep and dumbing down of enemies I guess more people can casually play and not learn to play.
1. Increase the hull strength by atleast 50%
2. A moderate increase in the cruiser shield modifier.
3. Adjust beam arrays power requirements so that broadsiding can be effective without weapons power at 125. Something like 4 or 5 power per shot rather than 10.
Bottom line, instead of trying to bring the effectiveness of escorts down to be "balanced" with cruisers how about suggesting some ways to improve cruisers and even science ships. I have spent allot of time and resources building up escorts and will not take to kindly to some nerfing just to appease cruiser players.
The Borg are quite capable of nuking even cruisers to death with insane torpedo hits.
Oh right, this was yet another useless rant of anti-escort garbage.
You know... if you want to play a game with lots of ship complexity try EVE Online. Perhaps you want STO to adopt EVE Online's system ?
Since I played EVE Online for years I would happily shift to that system but somehow I dont think anyone would be happy with the idea of it taking a year to be able to fly a Galaxy then another year to fly it well.
In summary: Beam Hyperflux + DEM (or some ability that gives shield pen) + BO3 = BOOM!
I would not say I am anti-escort. On the Fed side I have Defiant retro and Adv mvam + the Breen ship + patrol escort
I just feel we are starting to see too much hull creep on the escort side to make them last longer vs players knowing how to use that class properly.
If most people flew a 24k bop and did fine they would know that 33-37.5k escort hulls are excessive.
Nothing needs to be nerfed, your skills just need to be improved. Please stop wasting forum space for these useless threads.
Suck it up, and move on.
In Star Trek all ships are cruisers with the one exception of the Defiant.
In the actual ST universe the Patrol Escort, the Akira, the Prometheus, etc, are all really cruisers made like bigger Defiants....few science labs but lots, and lots of shields, guns, armor, engines and then a second layer of guns!
But, in STO escorts are really smallish cruisers with better maneuverability, and more weapons at the cost of some durability. If it makes people feel better to think of escorts that way I say go for it!
Then escorts won't be able to EPtX their way through a fight, cruisers can tank better, and science ships will be good at something again.
The only problem is that cruisers need better threat generation and since its a Tac skill...
Its thinking like this that demonstrate you simply do not have a clue what your proposing.
This game used to have exactly what you proposed by having people specialise in the ships they flew - turns out people didnt like that because it railroaded them into specific ships and it hurt Cryptics ability to sell ships.
Not to mention that originally the game had a very clear distinction between Science, Cruiser, Escort.
That has changed massively because Cryptic have saturated the game with multiple ship types with various loadouts inorder to milk every last bit of money they can.
Its harder to sell an Escort to a science character if they will never be able to use it like a tactical officer can. As a result, Cryptic has a much bigger financial intrest in keeping ships universally appealing.
Sorry, but fixing what dosent work now by going back to what didnt work before is completely stupid.
If anything Cryptic should actually do the opposite of what you suggest.
A) Completely remove the Tactical / Science / Engineer professions from space COMPLETELY thus any captain can train any power onto their Bridge Officers as long as they have enough ranks into the skill.
C) Make 'modes' for ships like stances work in most game. Aggressive, Defensive or Support. Call it whatever you like.
The point being that the stances will affect stats so that a cruiser in the Escort stance will be all guns and glory. Alternatively, if an Escort decides to go Defensive they can become a tank.
Seriously, MMOs have been doing this stuff for years but the real thing you have to realise is: Most MMOS have competent developers behind the wheel. So far Cryptic are the master of lockboxes.
Maybe when that changes you might see a decent semblence of ship balance rather than them simply creating more powerful ships than the last to sell them.
THAT is why your getting power creep.
In defence of cruisers. Give Fed cruisers the same turn rates and weapon punch of Klingon cruisers. Turn rates are woeful for fed cruisers and one of the reasons I don't play them much yet I play cruisers all the time as a KDf. I actually feel i can contribute to the battle more because I can turn faster and bring my main guns to bear better. I still cant keep up with raptors and BOPS for sheer damage dealing but i can actually do significant damage in my own right.
Another option is to give Fed cruisers universal stations. Fed Cruisers IMHO should be flexible jack of all trades vessels, yet maintain its engineering slant. An extra pair of Uni slots would be a huge help if you want a little extra punch. Thats the one good thing about the freebie Oddy last year. The uni stations gave me the chance to increase my tactical options and made the ship useful in a fight.
Against cruisers.
This is mainly aimed at Cruiser jockeys. Learn how to use your ships properly I wonder how many of you who complain dont know how to build your ships properly.
A friend of mine used nothing but clever use of Boffs and Doffs to turn his Galaxy retrofit into a flying fortress. We tested his build in a 1v1 battle. He in his Galaxy R. Me in my Defiant retrofit. Unfair fight you are thinking right? Wrong! I couldn't kill him, his Boff and Doff layouts meant i couldn't kill him with my best Tac in a Def Ret with full maximum weapons. He did say his DPS was very low. Even so his weapons were enough to destroy me. It took him ten mins but he did it.
In summing up.
Yes more turn and firepower for Fed cruisers.
More uni slots because cruisers should have flexibility due to their Federation nature.
Cruiser owners. Make sure your boffs and doffs are the right ones for what you want and need before firing off complaints. I bet a lot of you don't know what you are doing on that score.
Once again you're forgetting that this isn't Star Trek in the form of a game, it's a game based on Star Trek. It has to be a game first. If you make one class of ship excel at two things, it will dominate.
Yep. That's what happens any time you try to muck with the trinity, in a health-based damage system.
Nope. It's their trying to drop the trinity that caused this. The only ways to fix it are:
1) Stop trying to drop the trinity, and start trying to balance for it; make Escorts excel at DPS, Cruisers excel at Tanking, and Science excel at Healing.
2) Move to a subsystem-based damage system and a size-based accuracy system, so that Escorts are hardest to hit but have the fewest subsystems, Cruisers are easiest to hit but have the most subsystems, and Science are in the middle, and then balance the tradeoffs of this so that Cruisers can have the most damage and Escorts the least, and you can eliminate the trinity entirely.
The first is by far the easiest; just move all the hull heal powers over to Science and give Cruisers some decent taunts, and voila, problem solved.
Any time you have a health-based system, every action a player takes contributes to one (or a combination of, but beware the balance) of three things:
1) Removing health. (DPS)
2) Adding health. (Healing)
3) Preventing loss of health. (Tanking)
If you attempt to mess with that but you keep health, you imbalance the system, and when it's imbalanced, DPS will always become ascendant, because Tanking and Healing extend fights, but DPS ends them.
By all means, divorce the Captain type from the ship type, so that we can be an Engineer in an Escort (and thus Tank on the ground and DPS in space), to allow changing space roles by changing ships; but the only way to have all three ships necessary for endgame teamed content is to stop pretending the trinity is something that Ultima Online made up.
I know that on Star Trek cruisers are king, and that it's scientifically realistic that a larger ship would have more power, more armor, and due to the greater power more weapons and shields. And if you want to look out and see nothing but cruisers, and have everybody forced to play the same role in space that they do on the ground, you can certainly make the cruisers that versatile; in that case, you might as well get rid of escorts and science and just re-jigger the ships around so that the smaller ships are the lower levels, and the larger ships the higher levels, and now to implement the roles you've got to completely redesign the system, and now congratulations, they've got to spend two years doing nothing but that change, while they steadily lose players. Just fix the trinity; it's quicker, it's cheaper, and it's guaranteed to work.
This is the problem, they are making 1 class really start to dominate the game. And it only seems to be getting worse.
I guess the real problem is this is mostly a solo play game - focased on DPS and rewards based on time and kills - so it's everyone for themselves.
Cryptic see's that escorts are not getting heals dropped on them and the people flying them want to Kirk it out and go pop - so their solution is to increase hull and heal ability to the escorts. At the pace this is going with the latest ships, soon Crusiers/science ships will be mothballed. It will be interesting to see what they do with the Andorian ship.
The other thing that I think was a bad idea was making the death timers on an increasing scale. People now are more likely to hold back heals and transfers to other players so they don't get popped themselves and get stuck with long waits.
I'm an engineer in an Armitage escort carrier. My Boffs are all geared towards self heal because of the points you made. yes if i can dump a tac team on a passing ship then yes but that's about it.
Cruiser will always have a place in this game if only for the fact that people want to fly ships canon to the Trek TV shows/ movies.
As i said in a post above, cruisers need to be made more flexible and to bring up their turn and punch to enable them to hold their own better against the escort types.
Yeah, that's why I see more cruisers around Sol than escorts. :rolleyes:
And you've obviously never come across a team of zombie cruisers in PVP.
However, do not try and argue this point to current Cruiser lovers because they do not listen to reason. They will bring you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
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See, there's a reasonable, non-jackass thing to write. And it didn't hurt at all, did it?
The main problem with getting rid if the roles is that once the sole uber-build is stuck upon, that's all you'll see in the game. And in the long run, that will hurt their bottom line more because there'd be no need to buy New Ship X because Old Ship Y does the exact same thing.
We need to improve the system that's there now. Not make a new one since its both unrealistic, and your desired game is Starship Unreal Tournament. Which I'd like to play some day but this ain't that game.
Its a bit obvious that yours is a PvP focused view of the game. If this were a PvP game it'd make sense to have that sort of level playing field some of you are screeching for... Even you don't realize it... But as it is, if it comes down to "Kirk"ing in the PvE MMO game, or PvP balance in the non-PvP MMO game, PvP can go take a flying leap.
The best way for me to complete an ESTF with an escort in a pug is to be setup to tank, since again it is a dime a dozen as to whether or not you'll get a cruiser that will actually do his job.
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- Give cruisers a special stacking passive (like Sensor Analysis) that increases their resilience (damage resistance) as they take damage over time.
Maybe 1 would say yes
Thats the problem
Fact is my Fleet Defiant Face roles the Elite STFs to the point their boring its so powerful
5 ships of this class in a SFT is comedy
I am seeing a lot of 5 escort sTFs
Tactical characters in escorts are so powerful i have made 3 Dilithium farmers just to farm elite stfs for dilithium and Loot and free Doffs, in 1:30 minutes i can gather 24K Dilithium from them
The Tactical Escort + character is dominating PvE
Thats just a fact
So do you Nerf it or buff up the Entire game and the other 2 character classes to match it
or
Allow it to continue until everyone is flying a escort with a
TaC , thats the question
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The trinity is broken, game content supports 1 side of the it only, but the ships themselves aren't unbalanced.
Hull creep is a ridiculous statement of escort tankiness, it has absolutely nothing to do with the situation. So you can conclude the thread is started by a bad cruiser captain that has little game mechanic knowledge. The real problem is 2 rep systems full of defensive buffs that are far far more powerful than the lame offense options given, every escort took the defenses.
My eng cruiser is doing a lot of damage now, single target I am nearly on par with my escort damage but it does degrade quite a bit with multiple targets.
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You do realize that base hull gets a boost from skills/bonuses - the larger the base hull the more it gets boosted. So now some escorts are topping 50k hulls.
Well...speaking of tankiness, there's also this from the Feb 8th Tribble notes: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=7963751
Since these ships had "bonus shield" anyway, the difference is +-100. The real difference is in regeneration values.
Did they just buff the base shields or did they buff the base shield modifier?