How to fix the Galaxy Class?

f9thryker

Ok. As it stands, its great for taking damage, but not much else. There are lots of Gal fans out there, but still this bird isnt getting the respect it deserves.

How about this. The ship was designed to be modular - interchangeable with a refit to carry colonists, scientists, or troops into battle. It was also designed to be the centerpiece of an engagement.

While this is 40 years afterwards, and therefore it shouldnt be quite as epic as the Sovereign or Odyssey (I can hear people saying already), how about one of these two thoughts to turn it into the multi-mission flexible brick that it was designed to be...


Either:

1. Give it Sensor Analysis OR Subsystem Targetting, and change the Lt Cmdr Eng to Lt Cmdr Universal

The Nebula has this already, and since the Galaxy and Nebula share a common lineage, its not out of the question. Giving it both SA and SST would be a little overpowered I think, but either would make it more useful in a tactical role. Also, the Lt Cmdr Universal will at least put it on a par with the Excelsior, which it was designed to replace...


...or...

2. Make all the BOff slots Universal ones.

Think about it. It would truly be multi-role - Tacs would have the BOff seating, but would be unable to use DCs/DHCs or have an Escorts turn-rate so it would be a tradeoff. Engies could still tank if they wanted, or you could have a Sci ship without SA/SST.


Or maybe some combination of these ideas...?

avarseir

f9thryker wrote: »

2. Make all the BOff slots Universal ones.

Think about it. It would truly be multi-role - Tacs would have the BOff seating, but would be unable to use DCs/DHCs or have an Escorts turn-rate so it would be a tradeoff. Engies could still tank if they wanted, or you could have a Sci ship without SA/SST.


Or maybe some combination of these ideas...?

Just need a universal LtC boff slot will be good enough. Don't want it to outgun Sovvy/Oddy since they're years ahead of Galaxy.

jamesdax

avarseir wrote: »

Just need a universal LtC boff slot will be good enough. Don't want it to outgun Sovvy/Oddy since they're years ahead of Galaxy.

While I do agree with this statement if we go by Cryptics logic why not? After all the Galaxy is years ahead of the Excelsior and Ambassador and yet......

tinkerstorm

The best fix would be for the game to move on to Tier 6 and leave it and all of its variations in Tier 5.

snoggymack22

All universal slots has been pined for before. The KDF obviously would have issues giving the BOFF layout of their birds of prey ships to a Galaxy class. But more importantly you run into the item budget issue of the universal BOFF slot that ties Al Rivera's hands when making new ships. It's not a very likely scenario, no matter how often it gets asked for on a whole variety of federation ships.

areikou

The best way to fix the galaxy? Fix the lower level engineering skills. That is the inherent problem with all cruisers. Engineering skills in the ensign and LT range are junk. If they made them so that they increased damage power or made more sense to use 3 different ensign slots, the Galaxy could be a power house once more, along with every other cruiser.

But alas, this is too much for Cryptic to handle, what with the lockboxes, new seasons, new ships they want to release, and the brain damage...and the brain damage...and the brain damage.

altechachan

Just food for thought, the idea of making "Warp Core design" tied into a ship's combat ability was brought up in an interview posted two weeks ago:

http://www.gamersbook.com/scene/news/an-interview-with-star-trek-online-executive-producer/
[GB] Space combat is definitely one of the strongest game features, any plans for further improvement?

[DSTAHL] With the constant flow of new ships coming out of the shipyards, our next major update to ships will be to incorporate warp core design into how a ship performs in combat and what types of power it can bring to a fight.

In THEORY (which I can't stress hard enough) this "warp core design" could make Engineering skills more potent (Emergency Power to weapons, etc). This could also affect the power level settings for weapons, shields, engines, and auxiliary. So, for the Galaxy-class and all engineering heavy/focused ships like our cruiser, this could significantly improve our combat effectiveness.

Some people in the other Galaxy ship threads advocated the idea of making engineering skills more useful, which this theory plays into and I find intriguing. It also allows Cryptic to leave the current versions of the Galaxy alone and still tweak it.

As I said, food for thought.

nicha0

My first thought on the warp core announcement was pretty negative, not because its change, but because of what it undoubtedly represents. This is going to be a buff for cruisers, not a bad thing, but instead of them just fixing the problem they are now going to SELL you a fix to the problem. C-store or dil crazy warp cores? probably

snoggymack22

nicha0 wrote: »

but instead of them just fixing the problem they are now going to SELL you a fix to the problem.

This is my fear as well.

baudl

a ltcmdr science is all this ship needs to be atleast a consideration...anything else ontop would mean that it has to cost more in the c-store, more than the current 2k.

inktomi19

The first fix for the Galaxy is to fix Engineering powers. Having 3 ensign engineering powers is horrible because there are only 5 ensign powers, and they only use two systems. If you run a higher level EPtX power (which anyone in a cruiser will if they can) then that limits what you can do with the ensign slot. If you use the Damage Control Engineer DOff, then you can chain a single copy of an EPtX ability, so with two powers (say EPtS 3 and EPtW 1) you end up with all the EPtX powers you can possibly use.

That leaves ET for the ensign slot. ET is a good power, but it's the only team that there is a good reason for running the higher level copies of -- if you are relying on it as a heal then you don't want the first level of it. That's not to mention that ET shares it's cooldown with both TT and ST, so it's possible to have a valid build which doesn't have space for ET at all.

If engineering had just a little more variety at the low end, that would do a lot to help the Galaxy.



Fixing higher level engineering powers would also help a lot. At the higher levels, you basically have heals and Warp Plasma that are worth taking (and Warp Plasma is buffed by science consoles and skills, so it's harder to make it reach full potential on a cruiser). If things like Aceton Beam, DEM, and Boarding Party were made more useful that would help engineering heavy cruisers tremendously.



The last big problem is it's turn rate. The more I think about it, the more that I think no cruiser should start with less than an 8 turn rate, with a few like the Sovereign and Excelsior going to 9. It's not about how well it maneuvers compared to other ships -- the Galaxy and the other turn rate 6 ships have trouble even turning around.

areikou

Not really, I use the dreadnought regularly, and I can push it up to near vesta levels in most instances. Even slightly higher when under fire (Omega mk xii shield). The turn rate is not that big of a deal honestly, if you HAVE to turn around immediately, you can punch evasive and do an insta swirl with reverse.

altechachan

nicha0 wrote: »

My first thought on the warp core announcement was pretty negative, not because its change, but because of what it undoubtedly represents. This is going to be a buff for cruisers, not a bad thing, but instead of them just fixing the problem they are now going to SELL you a fix to the problem. C-store or dil crazy warp cores? probably

I suspect Warp Core to be ship equipment with common, uncommon, rare, and very rare versions. They will probably be dropped as regular rewards, or craftable, or in the dilithium store, or items in the reputation system, or part of a C-Store item, or all of the above. Heck, this could also expand ship equipment sets.

Who knows? I've been proven wrong before.

dan6526

As others have stated:

1. All other builds are occupied. AC-R Tac Heavy. SC-R Sci Heavy. Oddyssey Anything you want.

2. Ensign Engineer abilities are not varied enough. What Engineers lack really is variety, no real damage buffs beyond EPtW, DEM, AB, and EWP. Boarding Party is more of a debuff. EPtW would be fine except it's rather short in duration and does not slow the drain on Energy from using beams. It is still useful but not as useful as it could be. Engineering powers should be healing and buffing whereas Sci is debuff and healing. Problem is in that equation is that Engineer powers are so few. Any buffs likely will be added at the top, not the bottom.

Really, Engineering Powers need variation to make the Galaxy useful, they never really were in my opinion. ACs, AHC-Rs, and SCs used to be superior, even the (ugh can't believe I'm saying this) Gal-X was more useful.

orondis

The best way to fix the Galaxy is to fix/improve engineer powers.

Engineering team shares a cooldown with tact team, a very useful skill for shield tanking.

Other than engineering team, ensign engineering powers all share a cooldown period, which makes the Galaxy's extra ensign slot rather useless. To rectify this I'd suggest lowering some skills. Make aux2damp1 an ensign power for example.

Aceton beam is useless and should just be outright replaced, preferably with a much more offensive skill.

Boarding party is useless in STFs due to the Borg cubes immunity to it.

inktomi19

daiouvegeta2 wrote: »

Not really, I use the dreadnought regularly, and I can push it up to near vesta levels in most instances. Even slightly higher when under fire (Omega mk xii shield). The turn rate is not that big of a deal honestly, if you HAVE to turn around immediately, you can punch evasive and do an insta swirl with reverse.

Pushing the turn rate on a sluggish ship comes with high opportunity costs though.

First, the Galaxy gets half the effect out of an RCS console that a Vesta (for example) would. It takes 2 RCS consoles on a Galaxy to do what 1 does on a science ship. And it only gets worse when you compare to escorts. To match a Vesta's turn rate you need 3 RCS consoles, so you effectively only have one engineering slot for armor or whatever.

You can use EPtE or Aux2Damp for extra maneuverability, but again you lose useful powers to slot those.

The things that Make the Galaxy-X unique are dual cannons and the phaser lance, both of which have 45 degree arcs -- if anything that ship has more need of a better turn rate than other cruisers do.

Sure, you can overcome the flaw, but this thread is about fixing the Galaxy Class.

gpgtx

the only fix i ever really thought the galaxy needed was a uni ensign slot or make that slot ensign sci

but that just comes back to ensign level engineer powers need help

rakija879

OMG the galaxy has the "Saucer Separation Console" and in my opinion like the eng oddy that saucer is so useless that every captain when separated fells the relief because he lost the extra deadweight and why not make it more useful I don t know, and no one really cares but they turn rate is good and that is important :cool:

dan6526

rakija879 wrote: »

OMG the galaxy has the "Saucer Separation Console" and in my opinion like the eng oddy that saucer is so useless that every captain when separated fells the relief because he lost the extra deadweight and why not make it more useful I don t know, and no one really cares but they turn rate is good and that is important :cool:

I never saw a long term advantage to that console... even MVAM. But I think most people get it since you only rarely see it used in ESTFs. It may help the Gal-X in ESTFS, but it might not in PvP.

Back on topic: Cryptic needs to make better powers for Engineers at the Ensign and Lt levels, and buff the Science powers (not the healing ones) back up to reasonable levels.