Ok, i know the reason escorts get the "defense bonus" is because they're agile and whatnot, why then don't cruisers get a native free hull resist bonus? And why don't don't science ships get a free native shield resist bonus?
They get more hull (cruisers) and a higher shield modifier (cruisers and science).
But escorts have less hull for the turn rate. The extra defence has no drawback elsewhere. Me personally, I do not understand why science ships have better shields in first place.
"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.”
the extra hull the cruisers get is a joke over other ships. the shield mod on sci ships is a bit better, but resistance is like twice as helpful as actual hitpoints. the heal still heals the same number, but the incoming damage takes less hitpoints away.
thats why hitpoints should be ballooned and resistance levels nerfed considerably. then pressure would do something again.
But escorts have less hull for the turn rate. The extra defence has no drawback elsewhere. Me personally, I do not understand why science ships have better shields in first place.
Here's how I see it:
Escorts - high defense, highest turn rate
Cruisers - highest hull, high shields
Science - medium turn rate, highest shields
If Science didn't have the highest shields, no one would fly one. Well, at least less science ships than there are currently.
But escorts have less hull for the turn rate. The extra defence has no drawback elsewhere. Me personally, I do not understand why science ships have better shields in first place.
Escorts have both less hull and less shields. The bonus defense is only while moving.
Science Vessels are "imaginary" for the most part. They're specialized Escorts and Cruisers. In either case, they're giving up hull. Sometimes they're giving up hull from a Cruiser and sometimes they're giving up hull from an Escort. The shield modifier reflects this. Sometimes they're gaining turn on a Cruiser and sometimes they're losing turn on an Escort.
An issue arises with everything that's been lumped on top of that. The -/--hull is not as bad as it might have been. The --shields are not as bad as they might have been. The ++shields are near evil. Meanwhile the Escort kept it's damage (even slightly improved - which can help against the improved tankiness of everything) and Mr. Bill Nye beefed up so he can better hang around to disperse his dirty bag o' tricks.
The Cruiser...the Cruiser. The Cruiser was already the tank. It was already subject to the better damage of the Escort after Mr. Bill Nye reached into his bag. So it's a little more tanky - even a lot more tanky - it's still subject getting slapped silly by Mr. Bill Nye and Escort. At the same time, its damage which was never anything to write home about...well, with everything tankier - yeah, um...yeah...
Here's how I see it:
Escorts - high defense, highest turn rate
Cruisers - highest hull, high shields
Science - medium turn rate, highest shields
If Science didn't have the highest shields, no one would fly one. Well, at least less science ships than there are currently.
Yes well, I have always imagined science ships as good with auxiliary systems like sensors and other specialized equipment. Shields look like pure engineering thing to me. If anything, I would give science ships defence buff, something like ECM.
"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.”
Yes well, I have always imagined science ships as good with auxiliary systems like sensors and other specialized equipment. Shields look like pure engineering thing to me. If anything, I would give science ships defence buff, something like ECM.
See, that gets into another issue with STO though. Science in STO is not Science in Star Trek.
Star Trek:
Command Divisiion (Command/Helm/Conn/etc)
Operations Division (Tactical/Security/Engineering/Etc)
Science Division (Grey's Anatomy, Big Bang Theory (not Wolowitz), etc, etc, - Doctors, Physicists, etc, etc, etc)
It's very easy to look at Science to see where they harvested Engineering and Tactical. Heck, Science Vessels having Subsystem Targeting? Um...hello?
Yep, so the shield thing definitely doesn't make sense from that angle... but it was just another thing that Science got in an attempt to fit them into the game and offer an additional layer to that illusion of balance.
Escorts got boosted around Season 5 in terms of base buffer HPs. Also, way back when Turnrate was based off Aux power not Engine power.
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Ok, i know the reason escorts get the "defense bonus" is because they're agile and whatnot, why then don't cruisers get a native free hull resist bonus? And why don't don't science ships get a free native shield resist bonus?
Just curious.
Originally each ship was meant to tank in different ways.
I actually PvPed a few times in a cruiser with no shields (I guess that was before 1.2 or so?). At that time ET had a big hull resist on it which lasted 15 seconds, so if you specced for it you could cycle two copies of ET 3 and in addition to each copy healing you to full they'd make you nearly immune to damage. It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure that when I added HE 1 on top of it that gave me near 100% resistance. I know I only had about a 15 second window in which my hull resistance was low enough to be damaged at all. And since ET didn't care about power levels you could keep weapons maxed while throwing out your biggest heal/resist.
I'm not saying that was good design, but having more hull made a difference in that context.
Since then, hull-tanking was pretty much abolished, while every ship was given good shield-tanking capabilities. At about the same time speed-tanking was buffed by making it so engine power increased turn instead of aux (you can't run at high speed if you can't turn).
So now it's basically:
Cruisers = shield tank
Science = better shield tank
Escorts = shield tank + speed tank
I'm finding that with all the CC's, drains, toys, passives, doffs and other broken junk, Shields are pretty much irrelevant in PvP right now. A few thousand extra HP isn't going to make a whole lot of difference, thus tanking is irrelevant. Spike damage is through the roof while sustained damage is shruggable by escorts.
And since Cruisers can't pop Omega, make an about-face and get out of Dodge when the ***** hits the fan, they handicap a team more then help them.
Healing is easily interrupted and SNB and SNB doffs make cruisers a floating waste of space.
Yeah, back when the game first came out things were pretty balanced for the classes. If the posts back from that time still exist, you'll find a few threads moaning about the escorts being glass cannons. These people of course didn't realise that's exactly the point.
Anyway, a hull+shield buff, bonus defense buff, change to weapon drain (and thereby buffing DHCs and removing a cruisers/engineers power management advantage) and a field generator later, escorts are pretty much uber powerful.
Yeah, back when the game first came out things were pretty balanced for the classes. If the posts back from that time still exist, you'll find a few threads moaning about the escorts being glass cannons. These people of course didn't realise that's exactly the point.
Anyway, a hull+shield buff, bonus defense buff, change to weapon drain (and thereby buffing DHCs and removing a cruisers/engineers power management advantage) and a field generator later, escorts are pretty much uber powerful.
I'm not sure I would call it balanced -- like I said, I ran a cruiser without shields occasionally, and with shields my cruiser was virtually indestructible as long as I wasn't caught with my heals on cooldown from helping a team-mate.
The thing is that ET 3 being overpowered covered up the basic weakness of cruisers, since cruisers and BoPs were the only ships which could use it.
Basically cruisers need a second look now that things have changed.
tl;dr: Cruisers (and Engineers) are teh lulz and need buffed.
Personally, I rate the order as:
Engineering BOFFs
Cruisers
Engineers
It's funny how even folks that play Engineers will argue amongst themselves on the order. The reason I place them in the order that I do?
Engineering BOFFs would help everybody to some extent.
Cruisers could potentially help anybody.
Engineers...well...that pretty much sums it up - Engineers.
All the resistances and the health pools have been turned up. It isn't working out quite as intended. Now the perception is that they're to strong. To some folks. Other folks think the healing is to strong. And both of those statements may in fact objectively be true, but not in all situations. Anyways. They certainly aren't the cause of the problem, they are symptoms of it.
Okay take a look at a full health full resistance cruiser or carrier being destroyed in 2 seconds flat. Hmmm. Double hmmm. How can that be? How can healing and resistances be so strong on the one hand, yet so pathetically weak on the other?
Its because of the way acc/def/crit relate to each other. That is the only reason. That's the root.
As crit damage spiraled up the ONLY controls the devs used to mitigate it was through turning up the resistance values, hull values, and shield mods on the ship models themselves. This was absolutely tragic for cruisers, as all that netted them was large slow hulls that made thier defense deficit even more woeful. Even for Scis it was no great boon as it became apparent that even with capped resistances tactical team was required to balance the shields fast enough to hold off an alpha induced crit death.
So now we have a situation where "resistances are to strong, and healing is op".
No you don't. Because it can be CLEARLY demonstrated that that is not true. What IS true is that those values have been turned up so high to offset the huge weakness of cruisers and scis due to acc/def/crit. Such huge resistances make NON Alpha level damage trivial. Fix acc/def/crit and you can begin to back off of this foolishness where everyship in the game can run around res capped yet STILL be one shot.
So to be REALLY CRYSTAL CLEAR, resistances and healing isn't out of hand, acc/def/crit IS.
Oh and as a funny aside. Resistance on the hull work so crazy well for escorts because they've already got evasion on thier side. And we know resistances diminish so you get more out of it per point invested the lower you start on the scale. So extra points that escorts put in via consoles or abilities will net a better return than what Cruisers get.
So things that get added above the level of acc/def/crit inherit all the issues that that particular mess brings with it. Placates based on crits? Roger that. There's one for you. Go ahead, pick your own. And you can trace it right back to.....
Its not acc. Its not def. Its not crit. It is how those three things interact, and it is most astonishing when def leaves the room. Things get very wonky.
I'm not sure how distributing mitigation tools evenly across all the ship classes is a bad idea. Does it even really seem rational to anyone that you're trying to balance an evasion stat (and a DERIVED one at that) against straight up (and now capped) resistances? Oh and increase hull size again? Cause that's working out for cruisers. They'd need be well over 100K to be reasonably safe from an alpha. How's that ID rating looking guyz? Not good I bet.
Personally I'd say the Sci ship/Sci hybrids have made off like bandits, espesh compared to 'scorts which can't really break the ~1.0 barrier. My Wells sits at around 19k shields per facing. I don't even need TT half the time unless a dude is mega-buffed and out for blood; I just do lazy circles, manually distro and telepathically taunt the enemy with, "Come at me bro".
Personally I'd say the Sci ship/Sci hybrids have made off like bandits, espesh compared to 'scorts which can't really break the ~1.0 barrier. My Wells sits at around 19k shields per facing. I don't even need TT half the time unless a dude is mega-buffed and out for blood; I just do lazy circles, manually distro and telepathically taunt the enemy with, "Come at me bro".
"Don't phase me bro!"
-gets a phaser proc on shields-
- explodes-
"Well that escalated quickly."
Comments
But escorts have less hull for the turn rate. The extra defence has no drawback elsewhere. Me personally, I do not understand why science ships have better shields in first place.
thats why hitpoints should be ballooned and resistance levels nerfed considerably. then pressure would do something again.
Escorts - high defense, highest turn rate
Cruisers - highest hull, high shields
Science - medium turn rate, highest shields
If Science didn't have the highest shields, no one would fly one. Well, at least less science ships than there are currently.
Take the Cruiser as the Base.
Escort: -hull, --shields, +defense, ++turn
Science: --hull, ++shields, +/- defense, +turn
Escorts have both less hull and less shields. The bonus defense is only while moving.
Science Vessels are "imaginary" for the most part. They're specialized Escorts and Cruisers. In either case, they're giving up hull. Sometimes they're giving up hull from a Cruiser and sometimes they're giving up hull from an Escort. The shield modifier reflects this. Sometimes they're gaining turn on a Cruiser and sometimes they're losing turn on an Escort.
An issue arises with everything that's been lumped on top of that. The -/--hull is not as bad as it might have been. The --shields are not as bad as they might have been. The ++shields are near evil. Meanwhile the Escort kept it's damage (even slightly improved - which can help against the improved tankiness of everything) and Mr. Bill Nye beefed up so he can better hang around to disperse his dirty bag o' tricks.
The Cruiser...the Cruiser. The Cruiser was already the tank. It was already subject to the better damage of the Escort after Mr. Bill Nye reached into his bag. So it's a little more tanky - even a lot more tanky - it's still subject getting slapped silly by Mr. Bill Nye and Escort. At the same time, its damage which was never anything to write home about...well, with everything tankier - yeah, um...yeah...
Yes well, I have always imagined science ships as good with auxiliary systems like sensors and other specialized equipment. Shields look like pure engineering thing to me. If anything, I would give science ships defence buff, something like ECM.
See, that gets into another issue with STO though. Science in STO is not Science in Star Trek.
Star Trek:
Command Divisiion (Command/Helm/Conn/etc)
Operations Division (Tactical/Security/Engineering/Etc)
Science Division (Grey's Anatomy, Big Bang Theory (not Wolowitz), etc, etc, - Doctors, Physicists, etc, etc, etc)
STO:
Tactical - Command/Operations
Engineering - Operations/Command
Science - Operations/Command/Science
It's very easy to look at Science to see where they harvested Engineering and Tactical. Heck, Science Vessels having Subsystem Targeting? Um...hello?
Yep, so the shield thing definitely doesn't make sense from that angle... but it was just another thing that Science got in an attempt to fit them into the game and offer an additional layer to that illusion of balance.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
Crusiers = hull tanking
Science = shield tanking
Escorts = speed tanking
I actually PvPed a few times in a cruiser with no shields (I guess that was before 1.2 or so?). At that time ET had a big hull resist on it which lasted 15 seconds, so if you specced for it you could cycle two copies of ET 3 and in addition to each copy healing you to full they'd make you nearly immune to damage. It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure that when I added HE 1 on top of it that gave me near 100% resistance. I know I only had about a 15 second window in which my hull resistance was low enough to be damaged at all. And since ET didn't care about power levels you could keep weapons maxed while throwing out your biggest heal/resist.
I'm not saying that was good design, but having more hull made a difference in that context.
Since then, hull-tanking was pretty much abolished, while every ship was given good shield-tanking capabilities. At about the same time speed-tanking was buffed by making it so engine power increased turn instead of aux (you can't run at high speed if you can't turn).
So now it's basically:
Cruisers = shield tank
Science = better shield tank
Escorts = shield tank + speed tank
And since Cruisers can't pop Omega, make an about-face and get out of Dodge when the ***** hits the fan, they handicap a team more then help them.
Healing is easily interrupted and SNB and SNB doffs make cruisers a floating waste of space.
Anyway, a hull+shield buff, bonus defense buff, change to weapon drain (and thereby buffing DHCs and removing a cruisers/engineers power management advantage) and a field generator later, escorts are pretty much uber powerful.
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
The thing is that ET 3 being overpowered covered up the basic weakness of cruisers, since cruisers and BoPs were the only ships which could use it.
Basically cruisers need a second look now that things have changed.
And the Engineer class as well while we're at it.
Science: +Shields, Sensor Analysis, Subsystem Targeting
Cruiser: +Hull... and nothing else, really.
tl;dr: Cruisers (and Engineers) are teh lulz and need buffed.
Personally, I rate the order as:
It's funny how even folks that play Engineers will argue amongst themselves on the order. The reason I place them in the order that I do?
Engineering BOFFs would help everybody to some extent.
Cruisers could potentially help anybody.
Engineers...well...that pretty much sums it up - Engineers.
Okay take a look at a full health full resistance cruiser or carrier being destroyed in 2 seconds flat. Hmmm. Double hmmm. How can that be? How can healing and resistances be so strong on the one hand, yet so pathetically weak on the other?
Its because of the way acc/def/crit relate to each other. That is the only reason. That's the root.
As crit damage spiraled up the ONLY controls the devs used to mitigate it was through turning up the resistance values, hull values, and shield mods on the ship models themselves. This was absolutely tragic for cruisers, as all that netted them was large slow hulls that made thier defense deficit even more woeful. Even for Scis it was no great boon as it became apparent that even with capped resistances tactical team was required to balance the shields fast enough to hold off an alpha induced crit death.
So now we have a situation where "resistances are to strong, and healing is op".
No you don't. Because it can be CLEARLY demonstrated that that is not true. What IS true is that those values have been turned up so high to offset the huge weakness of cruisers and scis due to acc/def/crit. Such huge resistances make NON Alpha level damage trivial. Fix acc/def/crit and you can begin to back off of this foolishness where everyship in the game can run around res capped yet STILL be one shot.
So to be REALLY CRYSTAL CLEAR, resistances and healing isn't out of hand, acc/def/crit IS.
Oh and as a funny aside. Resistance on the hull work so crazy well for escorts because they've already got evasion on thier side. And we know resistances diminish so you get more out of it per point invested the lower you start on the scale. So extra points that escorts put in via consoles or abilities will net a better return than what Cruisers get.
So things that get added above the level of acc/def/crit inherit all the issues that that particular mess brings with it. Placates based on crits? Roger that. There's one for you. Go ahead, pick your own. And you can trace it right back to.....
Its not acc. Its not def. Its not crit. It is how those three things interact, and it is most astonishing when def leaves the room. Things get very wonky.
I'm not sure how distributing mitigation tools evenly across all the ship classes is a bad idea. Does it even really seem rational to anyone that you're trying to balance an evasion stat (and a DERIVED one at that) against straight up (and now capped) resistances? Oh and increase hull size again? Cause that's working out for cruisers. They'd need be well over 100K to be reasonably safe from an alpha. How's that ID rating looking guyz? Not good I bet.
Cheers happy flying!
Cause they have the lower hull of all the ships in the game?
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"Don't phase me bro!"
-gets a phaser proc on shields-
- explodes-
"Well that escalated quickly."
Do you even Science Bro?