I find it hilarious that in the post right above this, you propose the opposite. You're proposing no power reductions for anyone. Game imbalance is like a cancer; you have to cut it out. Making it BIGGER (in this case inflating EVERYONE'S damage by huge amounts) only worsens the issue. Balance is just as much lowing the cap as it is bringing up the bottom line. What YOU are proposing is a spiral upwards into oblivion, until we all just get to one-shot each other. Like it or not, SOME nerfs need to exist. Our only problem is that Cryptic couldn't balance their game to save their lives.
OH, and let's not forget, we rip open space-time rifts, generate black holes, rewind time itself and rip time apart as weapons in this game. I'm sorry, Bloctoad, but we've snapped the laws of physics over our KNEES. Hell, if you wanted to get "Laws of Physics" about it, since Cruisers have no weight of their OWN in space, they should be able to turn as fast as Escorts. In fact, according to physics (and the PROPER use of a ship's Maneuvering thrusters), we should all be able to turn on a DIME and fly straight up or down.
Also, what do the "laws of physics" have to do with an escort nerf in a video game? So, not only do I object on the premise of a flawed basis, I object on relevance to discussion.
Actually, if you've ever looked at the work done by Einstein, Hawking, Oppenheimer, etc, then you would know that not everything in Star Trek violates the laws of physics and many of them while seemingly outrageous given our present level of technology still do not violate relativity or thermodynamics.
It has already been stated in this thread that someone does not use cannons on their escort for the reason they want to pilot a ship not a WWII fighter. That's all fine and good for you. However, those ships you speak of operated on a two-dimensional plane. Those ships also had firing arcs for every weapon mounted.
It has been proposed that DHCs be limited to two hardpoints per ship. There is no basis for this sort of reasoning in Star Trek or otherwise. We now move on to the subject of weapon arcs and weapon targeting.
DHCs have an effective weapon arc of 45 degrees. Anything outside of this arc cannot be assaulted with said cannons. The weapons also require line of sight. How many asteroids, planets, or starbases have you fired through in this game successfully hitting a target on the opposite side? I'd would venture with absolute confidence the answer is zero.
The path of the projectile, in this case energy from a DHC or beam array, is not ballistic as it would be firing a mortar or an ICBM. No, firing a DHC or a beam array requires direct line of sight.
With that established, we continue on to beam arrays and the unanswered question I posed regarding their hardpoint locations on the cruiser or any other vessel with mounted arrays. A dorsal or ventral array could not possibly hit a target within a specific arc and distance to the opposite side. The same is true for arrays mounted port and starboard. Essentially, you are presently firing through your own ship. And keeping with the "ship" nature that some prefer to play, you would sink your own ship. In space that means a violent decompression and death of your crew into the vacuum of space. Even Spock could not argue with that logic.
The problem here is not those who wish to keep weapon mounts as they are but those who wish to restrict the number of equippable hardpoints of any given type for no valid reason while maintaining a wholly illogical and impossible aspect of beam arrays on all ships.
Your objections on premise and relevance have been noted and dismissed.
Jack Emmert: "Starfleet and Klingon. ... So two factions, full PvE content." Al Rivera hates Klingons Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert All cloaks should be canon.
It has been proposed that DHCs be limited to two hardpoints per ship. There is no basis for this sort of reasoning in Star Trek or otherwise. We now move on to the subject of weapon arcs and weapon targeting.
DHCs have an effective weapon arc of 45 degrees. Anything outside of this arc cannot be assaulted with said cannons. The weapons also require line of sight. How many asteroids, planets, or starbases have you fired through in this game successfully hitting a target on the opposite side? I'd would venture with absolute confidence the answer is zero.
The path of the projectile, in this case energy from a DHC or beam array, is not ballistic as it would be firing a mortar or an ICBM. No, firing a DHC or a beam array requires direct line of sight.
With that established, we continue on to beam arrays and the unanswered question I posed regarding their hardpoint locations on the cruiser or any other vessel with mounted arrays. A dorsal or ventral array could not possibly hit a target within a specific arc and distance to the opposite side. The same is true for arrays mounted port and starboard. Essentially, you are presently firing through your own ship. And keeping with the "ship" nature that some prefer to play, you would sink your own ship. In space that means a violent decompression and death of your crew into the vacuum of space. Even Spock could not argue with that logic.
The problem here is not those who wish to keep weapon mounts as they are but those who wish to restrict the number of equippable hardpoints of any given type for no valid reason while maintaining a wholly illogical and impossible aspect of beam arrays on all ships.
Your objections on premise and relevance have been noted and dismissed.
The Enterprise had two beam arrays on the saucer; one ventral and one dorsal. Theoretically it could have fired two phasers forward and that was only if the target was in the right position.
Why is it that I can have four beams firing directly forward on my exploration cruiser?
I forget the name of the episode that starts with the Defiant leaking plasma and its engines and weapons are down. Two JHAS attack. The Rotarran uncloaks and nails one JHAS. The Defiant re-activates its systems and drills the other. (One of my fave episodes but I don't remember episode names.) When it kills the JHAS it uses its quad cannons, perhaps using CRF. It doesn't use 3 or 4 sets or DHCs. Just one quad cannon. The Rotarran uses one set of cannons. Not 3 or 4 sets of DHCs.
Why is it that I can have 4 sets of DHCs on my Klink ships or my Defiant?
Cryptic has given each ship in the game more hardpoints than their tv counterparts. Why, I don't know, but they have. They've set their own arbitrary limits. What's to stop them from re-setting the amount of arbitrary hardpoints for the ships in their game? Nothing. If they choose to do so in the name of balance then not only is that a good measure but it's also NOT breaking away from tv cannon any more than the ship weapons in this game already have done.
Arguing about a basis of reasoning over a fictional system that has already departed from the fictional system it was based on is truly ridiculous. Instead, finding solutions that work to balance the game, regardless of the differences between the game and the tv show, is a much more logical and productive way to move forward. The game mechanics are so far removed from the tv mechanics that it's impossible to say whether limiting 2 out of 4 forward hardpoints to cannons is closer or further from the tv series.
Keep dying or keep trying. Evidently you've elected to keep whining.
Jack Emmert: "Starfleet and Klingon. ... So two factions, full PvE content." Al Rivera hates Klingons Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert All cloaks should be canon.
I'll accept your lack of actual argument as you having nothing intelligent to retort with. Greatly appreciated.
Your superior level of stupidity wins the day.
Jack Emmert: "Starfleet and Klingon. ... So two factions, full PvE content." Al Rivera hates Klingons Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert All cloaks should be canon.
You want to nerf the tac/escort damage and buff the cruiser/eng damage but what about all the uber tanking abilities engineer have?
lol fail nerf thread is fail we all know engineer are OP dont deny it.
Because anyone can survive PvE. It's easy. Escorts can do it, Science ships can do it, even pre-buff Fleet Norgh could do it if you set your mind to it. Even in PvP evenly skilled and equipped players can heal off more damage than a half-hearted strike can dish out. While it's true Eng/Cruisers can survive more concentrated fire than other ships, that's about all most of them can do in PvP without focusing on supporting their allies.
Escorts can clear missions a lot faster than Cruisers can just by killing the enemy extremely quickly in comparison. Their tanking ability becomes almost irrelevant when all but the toughest NPCs die in a couple volleys anyway, and those toughest NPCs can frequently dish out attacks that will often OHKO even Cruisers. Cruisers can survive... but when the Escort jockeys see the Cruiser survive focus fire from multiple sources at once, they just wonder why the Cruisers didn't just kill off the enemy before they got into that situation.
Funny you call it the "Escort" problem since my cruiser also uses AP:Omega! Weird wouldn't you say? The boff powers are the same, imagine that!
/facepalm
I like how you focused on that one part of my post and ignored everything else.
Your Cruiser doesn't have inherently high defense. Escorts do, and Attack Pattern Omega makes it better. It also provides hold immunity and damage resistance like Polarize Hull, additional damage like Emergency Power to Weapons, faster top speed like Emergency Power to Engines, and a turn rate boost like Auxiliary to Dampeners. Oh, and the additional speed also increases their evasion. See where I'm going with this? Escorts basically get access to two Ensign-level Engineering abilities, one Lieutenant-level Engineering ability, and one Ensign-level Science power for the cost of one Lieutenant Commander slot. Using this one ability practically triples their survivability. How is that balanced in any way, shape, or form?
I wouldn't have a problem with it if it didn't buff damage resistance and evasion, but in its current state, it's just completely over-the-top. Escorts get three different defensive buffs via the direct buff to evasion, indirect buff to evasion via faster speed, and flat damage resistance. They shouldn't be so hard to hit that their defense stat puts their durability on par with a Cruiser.
I like how you focused on that one part of my post and ignored everything else.
Your Cruiser doesn't have inherently high defense. Escorts do, and Attack Pattern Omega makes it better. It also provides hold immunity and damage resistance like Polarize Hull, additional damage like Emergency Power to Weapons, faster top speed like Emergency Power to Engines, and a turn rate boost like Auxiliary to Dampeners. Oh, and the additional speed also increases their evasion. See where I'm going with this? Escorts basically get access to two Ensign-level Engineering abilities, one Lieutenant-level Engineering ability, and one Ensign-level Science power for the cost of one Lieutenant Commander slot. Using this one ability practically triples their survivability. How is that balanced in any way, shape, or form?
I wouldn't have a problem with it if it didn't buff damage resistance and evasion, but in its current state, it's just completely over-the-top. Escorts get three different defensive buffs via the direct buff to evasion, indirect buff to evasion via faster speed, and flat damage resistance. They shouldn't be so hard to hit that their defense stat puts their durability on par with a Cruiser.
Basically, my point is:
Tactical powers should not be buffing durability.
As someone who almost exclusively plays tactical escorts, I agree completely with this post.
The problem is that there is no incentive within the game to actually think. Tactical captains flying escorts is the most common combination because it requires no thinking beyond whether to use single-target or spread abilities for a certain mission, and even that a large chunk of the tactical escort players TRIBBLE up on a regular basis. It's the beginner playstyle: easy to get into and effective. Where Cryptic screws up is in buffing and nerfing abilities such that tactical captains flying escorts are one of the most effective playstyles in the game. In any other legitimate game, the beginner playstyle is effective but not optimized, a crutch, so to speak, that keeps beginners from feeling overwhelmed. However, most other games balance this with other classes that may be harder to use, but are more effective, or at least no less effective, than the crutch class. This does not exist in STO. There is no endgame strategy beyond "blow everything up as quickly as possible", aside from choosing what to blow up first. The crutch class, in this case the combination of tactical and escort, is therefore the most effective, especially now that it has the durability of a cruiser due to inherently high defense. I can, as a tactical captain in an escort, hold aggro on a tactical cube until it dies without dying myself, without being healed by anyone else. This is something that should be impossible. Hell, I can solo my own side on elite Cure. This should also be impossible, and there is no logical reason why it should happen.
Even if we can't remove the idea of DPS being king, then at least rebalance the classes so that escorts have a higher spike DPS with a lower durability, while cruisers have a higher sustainable DPS due to the higher survivability.
Having thought some more about the current issues, I've boiled my short term balance favourites down to:
Fix Crew Damage - Currently crew die far too fast. Shields should offer the same 90% reduction to crew damage from weapons that they do to damage from kinetic weapons.
Fix/Scale Crew Recovery - I'm not really sure how crew recovery works in the first place, but it doesn't seem to scale well with crew size at all. But if cruisers could actually keep most of their crew while their shields are still up, it would make a big difference to their hull repair and crew-based abilities, which should at least help cruisers even if it doesn't balance them completely.
Add Penalties to Some Tactical Abilities - As others have been good at pointing out, many starship manoeuvres combine the bonuses of various science and engineering abilities into a single tactical ability. Worse, they only require a single skill to improve. I'm not sure I want these nerfed though, or rather, not in terms of bonus strength. Instead I'd like to see manoeuvres have penalties that balance them. For example, Attack Pattern Omega should have an offensive penalty to your ship, while you manoeuvre for maximum defence, while patterns beta and alpha should have defensive penalties so that they aren't such good abilities to use when you're under a lot of return fire; i.e - add some thought to using these things. I'd lump Tactical Team in with this; I'd like to see it actually draining shield strength from other facings in order to bolster whichever side is currently under fire, so it would be fine for buffing your front while you're making an attack run, but useless if you're under return fire from more than one ship.
Fix Science Abilities - As others have pointed out, many tactical abilities also improve science abilities, which mean science abilities can actually be more powerful when used by escorts, and that tactical captains can actually be better on science ships than science captains are. The fix is to make sure that there's no overlap from tactical abilities onto science ones, so that science abilities can be returned to their previous strength, or given larger buffs from science skills than they have right now.
These should solve most of the basic game mechanic problems. However the issue of PvE content is still one of the biggest; until we have NPC ships that are more like player ships, the divide between PvE and PvP play will remain large, with no clear role for tanks and science ships. Some decent AI for NPCs would go a long way to fixing this and allowing ships to play in more clearly defined roles again.
I think you have some good ideas. I especially like the idea of limiting DHCs/DCs/Quad cannons on a vessel...and this comes from a player whose TAC captain pilots a Bug ship with three DHCs forward and the Omega Launcher. I can melt an entire Tholian fleet in the Azure Nebula PvE event solo....and that just is not right.
Balance issues in this game go deeper than what is apparent. Early in the life of this game a change was made to how Tac vessels could move...and that resulted in a major and profound change in how combat was conducted. It became all about speed...and ship to ship battles became more like World War II dogfights, than capital-class starships slugging it out. Only Cruisers (and not even all of them), Carriers, and Sci vessels kept that stately exchange of broadsides...but TAC captains reigned supreme, with alpha strikes and burst damage that pegged the meters and shattered shields and hulls in one fell swoop.
Bottom line...balance in space combat needs to be addressed...but I think that the issues go way beyond what you have brought up here -- especially in regards to Science captains, which have suffered from nerf after nerf with very few, if any buffs. My instincts are telling me that there might be a way forward...but it would take some very smart and decisive action on the part of Cryptic to make it happen...and to be brutally honest, the changes that I think they would have to make to bring balance to the game would result in an enraged outcry from a huge segment of the player base - namely the players who play TAC captains as their "main." Some of the things that Cryptic might consider...
1. base the hull strength of a vessel on its mass and size...this would result in a major revision downward for most of the really fast tac vessels.
2. base manueverability and speed on size, mass, and warp core category/size. There is a hint in one of the more recent Cryptic interviews that hints that warp core power levels are going to be taken into consideration in the near future...but no details beyond that -- no hint as to how this will impact power levels, etc. Tac vessels could still zoom around like jet airplanes..but in order to do so, they would need to compromise on things like hull strength, and power allocation levels for weapons, shields, etc.
3. base power levels on the amount of power output a warp engine can generate -- this will result in a downward revision of available power for smaller vessels...and compromises will have to be made in regards to how how much power is available to weapons vs. engines, shields, etc -- much more than the system that is in place now. The size and mass of the vessel would counterbalance how energy works - for instance, it takes more energy to move larger vessels and to power the larger number of weapons it mounts, etc....that would prevent cruisers from becoming invulnerable fortresses...
4. Skills need to be relooked at in a major way. Too much there to really detail...you could fill volumes with what is wrong in terms of balance in skills sets.
I could go on and on...I like this game, and have invested a great deal of time (and money) in playing it...I really would like to see it revamped though...and balanced addressed in an intelligent and proactive way....
I agree with this man. These are the kinds of problems there are with the game. They are also the kinds of problems all MMOs face shortly after launch. However after 3 years none of them have been addressed.
MMOs constantly evolve. Major balance passes are required every year or so but we have never had a real one in 3 years.
Wellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
What they actually breached are theoretical limits, not laws. We are, as a species. arrogant enough to say that, with our limited understanding of the universe, we know what can or can not be done. A far less arrogant way to express the so-called Laws of Physics wold have been "Based on our limited understanding, we think it works this way".
even if you have the best build for a cruiser or sci ship, it still negate the fact that we don't need them at all for 99% of the content in this game. the fundamental balance of the game is heavily skewed towards damage and thus, many people have abandoned the original purpose of these ships for builds that maximize damage, even though these ships aren't meant in their current capacity to do so.
you can rebalance everything you want, but so long as this game continues to be a dps race, cruisers and science ships will continue to be irrelevant.
In debates personal attacks are the last resort of a defeated side.
I always provide a responsive salvo of equal verbal remuneration. If you don't like it, don't shoot first.
Jack Emmert: "Starfleet and Klingon. ... So two factions, full PvE content." Al Rivera hates Klingons Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert All cloaks should be canon.
I like how you focused on that one part of my post and ignored everything else.
Your Cruiser doesn't have inherently high defense.[/i]
...the extra 10%? You do realize cruisers can stay mobile while broadsiding right? So you can keep a cruiser's defenses up as well. Cruisers that stand still are just wasting defensive potential.
An orbit? It may get you as high as a 50% defense, but it's also a death spiritual. To be able to keep something in a broad side while orbiting you have to devote 80% of your time to piloting or get very very close so you can just hold down the turn key.
Your at close range and in a position you can not easily flee from, even if you had the innate turn rate and speed. Edit: It's also a position you have little time to react to something does suddenly happen that you have to flee.
A escort cannon strafing run officers a higher defense and better flexibility. The typical response is that you lose all this DPS as you reach turnover, keep going, and turn around at ~9 or 11Km.
To which my response is, "and?"
Because if in a escort you can sit still and expect to live, the question then becomes if nothing presents a threat to a ship that is by design the easiest to destroy, why fly anything else? Namely why fly ships designed to trade firepower for tanking ability you don't need?
Right now the game's combat math and how it all interacts does favor escort dps builds. That is not to say that other builds aren't viable or effective or that dps-maxed escorts are instant-win buttons, but other builds require a great deal more skill and a much more fundamental understanding of the game's obtuse mechanics in order to be viable. It simply takes less time, effort, energy, and thought-investment to be a marginally effective escort captain than it takes to be a marginally effective science or cruiser captain.
Actually, if you've ever looked at the work done by Einstein, Hawking, Oppenheimer, etc, then you would know that not everything in Star Trek violates the laws of physics and many of them while seemingly outrageous given our present level of technology still do not violate relativity or thermodynamics.
It has already been stated in this thread that someone does not use cannons on their escort for the reason they want to pilot a ship not a WWII fighter. That's all fine and good for you. However, those ships you speak of operated on a two-dimensional plane. Those ships also had firing arcs for every weapon mounted.
It has been proposed that DHCs be limited to two hardpoints per ship. There is no basis for this sort of reasoning in Star Trek or otherwise. We now move on to the subject of weapon arcs and weapon targeting.
DHCs have an effective weapon arc of 45 degrees. Anything outside of this arc cannot be assaulted with said cannons. The weapons also require line of sight. How many asteroids, planets, or starbases have you fired through in this game successfully hitting a target on the opposite side? I'd would venture with absolute confidence the answer is zero.
The path of the projectile, in this case energy from a DHC or beam array, is not ballistic as it would be firing a mortar or an ICBM. No, firing a DHC or a beam array requires direct line of sight.
With that established, we continue on to beam arrays and the unanswered question I posed regarding their hardpoint locations on the cruiser or any other vessel with mounted arrays. A dorsal or ventral array could not possibly hit a target within a specific arc and distance to the opposite side. The same is true for arrays mounted port and starboard. Essentially, you are presently firing through your own ship. And keeping with the "ship" nature that some prefer to play, you would sink your own ship. In space that means a violent decompression and death of your crew into the vacuum of space. Even Spock could not argue with that logic.
The problem here is not those who wish to keep weapon mounts as they are but those who wish to restrict the number of equippable hardpoints of any given type for no valid reason while maintaining a wholly illogical and impossible aspect of beam arrays on all ships.
Your objections on premise and relevance have been noted and dismissed.
I'm not proposing removing "hardpoints" (since those are the art assets on the ships that the fire comes from). I'm proposing limiting the equip number. Hardpoints have nothing to do with the matter. Also, beams in this game fire from several different hardpoints, even if it's the same beam array. Hell, the Defiant model has a beam array hardpoint squat in the middle of the deflector, and more on dorsal/ventral, that can all fire the same beam array. Your entire point is total nonsense. Hardpoints have NOTHING to do with the proposal. Go to the OP, hit Control-F, and type in hardpoint. Not a mention of them.
You want to nerf the tac/escort damage and buff the cruiser/eng damage but what about all the uber tanking abilities engineer have?
lol fail nerf thread is fail we all know engineer are OP dont deny it.
As it stands, a standard Escort build can eat ANY tank build for breakfast. I have an Eng Tank that can take simultaneous fire from fourteen battleships on Elite (go play Battleship Royal Rumble on Elite, last round is all at once) and survive it all. A single Escort can destroy it in 60 seconds. That's no good. Also, most Cruiser setups have all the equivalent DPS of two unbuffed DHCs. Escorts do way too much, Cruisers and Scis do next to nothing. Is that fair? No. So, I proposed to fix it. Why is this so hard to believe?
Having thought some more about the current issues, I've boiled my short term balance favourites down to:
Fix Crew Damage - Currently crew die far too fast. Shields should offer the same 90% reduction to crew damage from weapons that they do to damage from kinetic weapons.
Fix/Scale Crew Recovery - I'm not really sure how crew recovery works in the first place, but it doesn't seem to scale well with crew size at all. But if cruisers could actually keep most of their crew while their shields are still up, it would make a big difference to their hull repair and crew-based abilities, which should at least help cruisers even if it doesn't balance them completely.
Add Penalties to Some Tactical Abilities - As others have been good at pointing out, many starship manoeuvres combine the bonuses of various science and engineering abilities into a single tactical ability. Worse, they only require a single skill to improve. I'm not sure I want these nerfed though, or rather, not in terms of bonus strength. Instead I'd like to see manoeuvres have penalties that balance them. For example, Attack Pattern Omega should have an offensive penalty to your ship, while you manoeuvre for maximum defence, while patterns beta and alpha should have defensive penalties so that they aren't such good abilities to use when you're under a lot of return fire; i.e - add some thought to using these things. I'd lump Tactical Team in with this; I'd like to see it actually draining shield strength from other facings in order to bolster whichever side is currently under fire, so it would be fine for buffing your front while you're making an attack run, but useless if you're under return fire from more than one ship.
Fix Science Abilities - As others have pointed out, many tactical abilities also improve science abilities, which mean science abilities can actually be more powerful when used by escorts, and that tactical captains can actually be better on science ships than science captains are. The fix is to make sure that there's no overlap from tactical abilities onto science ones, so that science abilities can be returned to their previous strength, or given larger buffs from science skills than they have right now.
These should solve most of the basic game mechanic problems. However the issue of PvE content is still one of the biggest; until we have NPC ships that are more like player ships, the divide between PvE and PvP play will remain large, with no clear role for tanks and science ships. Some decent AI for NPCs would go a long way to fixing this and allowing ships to play in more clearly defined roles again.
Crew Damage: If I didn't address that in the OP, I did in one of my replies. This is agreed.
Crew Recovery: Again discussed (I think) and agreed upon.
Tactical Ability Penalties: Not a bad idea, if done right. I'd like to point out that what you said about Tac Team is how it is now. It's not a shield heal, it's an automatic redistribute. Others go down so the attacked shield can go up.
Fix Science Abilities: Addressed in OP; Section 1, Subsection 4.
PvE/PvP similarities: Addressed a few pages back.
Funny. Ive seen a single Cruiser tank five and more Escorts with only time being the factor deciding who wins. Often if the Cruiser is skilled and knows how to defend itself, the escorts give up the chase.
Just often they dont and the Cruiser dies after all.
Funny. Ive seen a single Cruiser tank five and more Escorts with only time being the factor deciding who wins. Often if the Cruiser is skilled and knows how to defend itself, the escorts give up the chase.
Just often they dont and the Cruiser dies after all.
I've tanked ISE Tactical Cubes indefinitely. I've faced down all of the NPC Battleships on Elite at once. I've designed a tanking build that can heal itself a hundred times over in a span of seconds. I've also seen a single Escort crush it in less than a minute with raw DPS alone, AND be beefy enough to withstand a direct broadside AND Torp Spread 3.
Sorry, but no. Your lone Cruiser may be a single exception, or the Escorts may have been absolutely terrible, but on the whole, Escorts are far too powerful. I've crushed Cubes in five seconds as a DPS.
I've tanked ISE Tactical Cubes indefinitely. I've faced down all of the NPC Battleships on Elite at once. I've designed a tanking build that can heal itself a hundred times over in a span of seconds. I've also seen a single Escort crush it in less than a minute with raw DPS alone, AND be beefy enough to withstand a direct broadside AND Torp Spread 3.
Sorry, but no. Your lone Cruiser may be a single exception, or the Escorts may have been absolutely terrible, but on the whole, Escorts are far too powerful. I've crushed Cubes in five seconds as a DPS.
Hardly an exception. I ve seen ot many times in Ker'rat and often enough in the ques. The cruiser is not the weak tank you make it out to be in the rigjt hands and there are more handy players out there than you may think.
The mirror same can be said of escorts. There are those players so adept at deliver spike damage that the only factor in survival is how much time one has left before the boom.
Those players are the exception on both vessels but not so rare as to be next to never encountered.
I am curiuos on that since healing is just as high in comparison and direct response to damage and damage is high in response to healing, what will happen to combat when escort damage is nerfed but healing remains the same?
Hardly an exception. I ve seen ot many times in Ker'rat and often enough in the ques. The cruiser is not the weak tank you make it out to be in the rigjt hands and there are more handy players out there than you may think.
The mirror same can be said of escorts. There are those players so adept at deliver spike damage that the only factor in survival is how much time one has left before the boom.
Those players are the exception on both vessels but not so rare as to be next to never encountered.
Hardly. Everyone I know flying an Escort can do that. And I KNOW how good Cruisers CAN be. But the disparity between Cruiser and Escort is more than you seem to be willing to see.
I am curiuos on that since healing is just as high in comparison and direct response to damage and damage is high in response to healing, what will happen to combat when escort damage is nerfed but healing remains the same?
It'll be this really weird thing called balance, where people will actually be able to survive against Escorts consistently.
Hardly. Everyone I know flying an Escort can do that. And I KNOW how good Cruisers CAN be. But the disparity between Cruiser and Escort is more than you seem to be willing to see.
It'll be this really weird thing called balance, where people will actually be able to survive against Escorts consistently.
I see it clearly as Cruisers and Science vessels perform worse in a damage dealing capacity but tank just fine. Many ideas have been put forth that may fix that for the better. I just dont agree that the ideas you put forth move in that direction, certainly not in a manner resembling balance.
I see it clearly as Cruisers and Science vessels perform worse in a damage dealing capacity but tank just fine. Many ideas have been put forth that may fix that for the better. I just dont agree that the ideas you put forth move in that direction, certainly not in a manner resembling balance.
We'll see if common sense returns to you after an Andorian ship melts you with five fully-buffed DHCs. Because you know as well as I do, that's exactly what will happen with a 5/3 ship.
An empty answer that echoes the lack of substance of your last few comments.
If you immediately know the candlelight is fire then the meal was cooked a long time ago.
Jack Emmert: "Starfleet and Klingon. ... So two factions, full PvE content." Al Rivera hates Klingons Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert All cloaks should be canon.
If you immediately know the candlelight is fire then the meal was cooked a long time ago.
Mister Frog, please admit defeat and come back when you have the capability of making sense. You're defeated, fighting a lost cause, and you can realize that a candlelight is a fire without having supper. You're making no sense, and I'd like you to stop.
Comments
Actually, if you've ever looked at the work done by Einstein, Hawking, Oppenheimer, etc, then you would know that not everything in Star Trek violates the laws of physics and many of them while seemingly outrageous given our present level of technology still do not violate relativity or thermodynamics.
It has already been stated in this thread that someone does not use cannons on their escort for the reason they want to pilot a ship not a WWII fighter. That's all fine and good for you. However, those ships you speak of operated on a two-dimensional plane. Those ships also had firing arcs for every weapon mounted.
It has been proposed that DHCs be limited to two hardpoints per ship. There is no basis for this sort of reasoning in Star Trek or otherwise. We now move on to the subject of weapon arcs and weapon targeting.
DHCs have an effective weapon arc of 45 degrees. Anything outside of this arc cannot be assaulted with said cannons. The weapons also require line of sight. How many asteroids, planets, or starbases have you fired through in this game successfully hitting a target on the opposite side? I'd would venture with absolute confidence the answer is zero.
The path of the projectile, in this case energy from a DHC or beam array, is not ballistic as it would be firing a mortar or an ICBM. No, firing a DHC or a beam array requires direct line of sight.
With that established, we continue on to beam arrays and the unanswered question I posed regarding their hardpoint locations on the cruiser or any other vessel with mounted arrays. A dorsal or ventral array could not possibly hit a target within a specific arc and distance to the opposite side. The same is true for arrays mounted port and starboard. Essentially, you are presently firing through your own ship. And keeping with the "ship" nature that some prefer to play, you would sink your own ship. In space that means a violent decompression and death of your crew into the vacuum of space. Even Spock could not argue with that logic.
The problem here is not those who wish to keep weapon mounts as they are but those who wish to restrict the number of equippable hardpoints of any given type for no valid reason while maintaining a wholly illogical and impossible aspect of beam arrays on all ships.
Your objections on premise and relevance have been noted and dismissed.
Al Rivera hates Klingons
Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert
All cloaks should be canon.
The Enterprise had two beam arrays on the saucer; one ventral and one dorsal. Theoretically it could have fired two phasers forward and that was only if the target was in the right position.
Why is it that I can have four beams firing directly forward on my exploration cruiser?
I forget the name of the episode that starts with the Defiant leaking plasma and its engines and weapons are down. Two JHAS attack. The Rotarran uncloaks and nails one JHAS. The Defiant re-activates its systems and drills the other. (One of my fave episodes but I don't remember episode names.) When it kills the JHAS it uses its quad cannons, perhaps using CRF. It doesn't use 3 or 4 sets or DHCs. Just one quad cannon. The Rotarran uses one set of cannons. Not 3 or 4 sets of DHCs.
Why is it that I can have 4 sets of DHCs on my Klink ships or my Defiant?
Cryptic has given each ship in the game more hardpoints than their tv counterparts. Why, I don't know, but they have. They've set their own arbitrary limits. What's to stop them from re-setting the amount of arbitrary hardpoints for the ships in their game? Nothing. If they choose to do so in the name of balance then not only is that a good measure but it's also NOT breaking away from tv cannon any more than the ship weapons in this game already have done.
Arguing about a basis of reasoning over a fictional system that has already departed from the fictional system it was based on is truly ridiculous. Instead, finding solutions that work to balance the game, regardless of the differences between the game and the tv show, is a much more logical and productive way to move forward. The game mechanics are so far removed from the tv mechanics that it's impossible to say whether limiting 2 out of 4 forward hardpoints to cannons is closer or further from the tv series.
Your argument is null and void. Sparky.
Keep dying or keep trying. Evidently you've elected to keep whining.
Al Rivera hates Klingons
Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert
All cloaks should be canon.
I'll accept your lack of actual argument as you having nothing intelligent to retort with. Greatly appreciated.
Your superior level of stupidity wins the day.
Al Rivera hates Klingons
Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert
All cloaks should be canon.
All you focus on is damage, damage, damage.
What about all the tanking and utility abilities?
You want to nerf the tac/escort damage and buff the cruiser/eng damage but what about all the uber tanking abilities engineer have?
lol fail nerf thread is fail we all know engineer are OP dont deny it.
Because anyone can survive PvE. It's easy. Escorts can do it, Science ships can do it, even pre-buff Fleet Norgh could do it if you set your mind to it. Even in PvP evenly skilled and equipped players can heal off more damage than a half-hearted strike can dish out. While it's true Eng/Cruisers can survive more concentrated fire than other ships, that's about all most of them can do in PvP without focusing on supporting their allies.
Escorts can clear missions a lot faster than Cruisers can just by killing the enemy extremely quickly in comparison. Their tanking ability becomes almost irrelevant when all but the toughest NPCs die in a couple volleys anyway, and those toughest NPCs can frequently dish out attacks that will often OHKO even Cruisers. Cruisers can survive... but when the Escort jockeys see the Cruiser survive focus fire from multiple sources at once, they just wonder why the Cruisers didn't just kill off the enemy before they got into that situation.
I like how you focused on that one part of my post and ignored everything else.
Your Cruiser doesn't have inherently high defense. Escorts do, and Attack Pattern Omega makes it better. It also provides hold immunity and damage resistance like Polarize Hull, additional damage like Emergency Power to Weapons, faster top speed like Emergency Power to Engines, and a turn rate boost like Auxiliary to Dampeners. Oh, and the additional speed also increases their evasion. See where I'm going with this? Escorts basically get access to two Ensign-level Engineering abilities, one Lieutenant-level Engineering ability, and one Ensign-level Science power for the cost of one Lieutenant Commander slot. Using this one ability practically triples their survivability. How is that balanced in any way, shape, or form?
I wouldn't have a problem with it if it didn't buff damage resistance and evasion, but in its current state, it's just completely over-the-top. Escorts get three different defensive buffs via the direct buff to evasion, indirect buff to evasion via faster speed, and flat damage resistance. They shouldn't be so hard to hit that their defense stat puts their durability on par with a Cruiser.
Basically, my point is:
Tactical powers should not be buffing durability.
As someone who almost exclusively plays tactical escorts, I agree completely with this post.
The problem is that there is no incentive within the game to actually think. Tactical captains flying escorts is the most common combination because it requires no thinking beyond whether to use single-target or spread abilities for a certain mission, and even that a large chunk of the tactical escort players TRIBBLE up on a regular basis. It's the beginner playstyle: easy to get into and effective. Where Cryptic screws up is in buffing and nerfing abilities such that tactical captains flying escorts are one of the most effective playstyles in the game. In any other legitimate game, the beginner playstyle is effective but not optimized, a crutch, so to speak, that keeps beginners from feeling overwhelmed. However, most other games balance this with other classes that may be harder to use, but are more effective, or at least no less effective, than the crutch class. This does not exist in STO. There is no endgame strategy beyond "blow everything up as quickly as possible", aside from choosing what to blow up first. The crutch class, in this case the combination of tactical and escort, is therefore the most effective, especially now that it has the durability of a cruiser due to inherently high defense. I can, as a tactical captain in an escort, hold aggro on a tactical cube until it dies without dying myself, without being healed by anyone else. This is something that should be impossible. Hell, I can solo my own side on elite Cure. This should also be impossible, and there is no logical reason why it should happen.
Even if we can't remove the idea of DPS being king, then at least rebalance the classes so that escorts have a higher spike DPS with a lower durability, while cruisers have a higher sustainable DPS due to the higher survivability.
In debates personal attacks are the last resort of a defeated side.
These should solve most of the basic game mechanic problems. However the issue of PvE content is still one of the biggest; until we have NPC ships that are more like player ships, the divide between PvE and PvP play will remain large, with no clear role for tanks and science ships. Some decent AI for NPCs would go a long way to fixing this and allowing ships to play in more clearly defined roles again.
Game Balance - Ship Size and Wingmates
Balance issues in this game go deeper than what is apparent. Early in the life of this game a change was made to how Tac vessels could move...and that resulted in a major and profound change in how combat was conducted. It became all about speed...and ship to ship battles became more like World War II dogfights, than capital-class starships slugging it out. Only Cruisers (and not even all of them), Carriers, and Sci vessels kept that stately exchange of broadsides...but TAC captains reigned supreme, with alpha strikes and burst damage that pegged the meters and shattered shields and hulls in one fell swoop.
Bottom line...balance in space combat needs to be addressed...but I think that the issues go way beyond what you have brought up here -- especially in regards to Science captains, which have suffered from nerf after nerf with very few, if any buffs. My instincts are telling me that there might be a way forward...but it would take some very smart and decisive action on the part of Cryptic to make it happen...and to be brutally honest, the changes that I think they would have to make to bring balance to the game would result in an enraged outcry from a huge segment of the player base - namely the players who play TAC captains as their "main." Some of the things that Cryptic might consider...
1. base the hull strength of a vessel on its mass and size...this would result in a major revision downward for most of the really fast tac vessels.
2. base manueverability and speed on size, mass, and warp core category/size. There is a hint in one of the more recent Cryptic interviews that hints that warp core power levels are going to be taken into consideration in the near future...but no details beyond that -- no hint as to how this will impact power levels, etc. Tac vessels could still zoom around like jet airplanes..but in order to do so, they would need to compromise on things like hull strength, and power allocation levels for weapons, shields, etc.
3. base power levels on the amount of power output a warp engine can generate -- this will result in a downward revision of available power for smaller vessels...and compromises will have to be made in regards to how how much power is available to weapons vs. engines, shields, etc -- much more than the system that is in place now. The size and mass of the vessel would counterbalance how energy works - for instance, it takes more energy to move larger vessels and to power the larger number of weapons it mounts, etc....that would prevent cruisers from becoming invulnerable fortresses...
4. Skills need to be relooked at in a major way. Too much there to really detail...you could fill volumes with what is wrong in terms of balance in skills sets.
I could go on and on...I like this game, and have invested a great deal of time (and money) in playing it...I really would like to see it revamped though...and balanced addressed in an intelligent and proactive way....
Wellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
What they actually breached are theoretical limits, not laws. We are, as a species. arrogant enough to say that, with our limited understanding of the universe, we know what can or can not be done. A far less arrogant way to express the so-called Laws of Physics wold have been "Based on our limited understanding, we think it works this way".
you can rebalance everything you want, but so long as this game continues to be a dps race, cruisers and science ships will continue to be irrelevant.
I always provide a responsive salvo of equal verbal remuneration. If you don't like it, don't shoot first.
Al Rivera hates Klingons
Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert
All cloaks should be canon.
...the extra 10%? You do realize cruisers can stay mobile while broadsiding right? So you can keep a cruiser's defenses up as well. Cruisers that stand still are just wasting defensive potential.
Your at close range and in a position you can not easily flee from, even if you had the innate turn rate and speed. Edit: It's also a position you have little time to react to something does suddenly happen that you have to flee.
A escort cannon strafing run officers a higher defense and better flexibility. The typical response is that you lose all this DPS as you reach turnover, keep going, and turn around at ~9 or 11Km.
To which my response is, "and?"
Because if in a escort you can sit still and expect to live, the question then becomes if nothing presents a threat to a ship that is by design the easiest to destroy, why fly anything else? Namely why fly ships designed to trade firepower for tanking ability you don't need?
I'm not proposing removing "hardpoints" (since those are the art assets on the ships that the fire comes from). I'm proposing limiting the equip number. Hardpoints have nothing to do with the matter. Also, beams in this game fire from several different hardpoints, even if it's the same beam array. Hell, the Defiant model has a beam array hardpoint squat in the middle of the deflector, and more on dorsal/ventral, that can all fire the same beam array. Your entire point is total nonsense. Hardpoints have NOTHING to do with the proposal. Go to the OP, hit Control-F, and type in hardpoint. Not a mention of them.
As it stands, a standard Escort build can eat ANY tank build for breakfast. I have an Eng Tank that can take simultaneous fire from fourteen battleships on Elite (go play Battleship Royal Rumble on Elite, last round is all at once) and survive it all. A single Escort can destroy it in 60 seconds. That's no good. Also, most Cruiser setups have all the equivalent DPS of two unbuffed DHCs. Escorts do way too much, Cruisers and Scis do next to nothing. Is that fair? No. So, I proposed to fix it. Why is this so hard to believe?
Crew Damage: If I didn't address that in the OP, I did in one of my replies. This is agreed.
Crew Recovery: Again discussed (I think) and agreed upon.
Tactical Ability Penalties: Not a bad idea, if done right. I'd like to point out that what you said about Tac Team is how it is now. It's not a shield heal, it's an automatic redistribute. Others go down so the attacked shield can go up.
Fix Science Abilities: Addressed in OP; Section 1, Subsection 4.
PvE/PvP similarities: Addressed a few pages back.
Just often they dont and the Cruiser dies after all.
R.I.P
I've tanked ISE Tactical Cubes indefinitely. I've faced down all of the NPC Battleships on Elite at once. I've designed a tanking build that can heal itself a hundred times over in a span of seconds. I've also seen a single Escort crush it in less than a minute with raw DPS alone, AND be beefy enough to withstand a direct broadside AND Torp Spread 3.
Sorry, but no. Your lone Cruiser may be a single exception, or the Escorts may have been absolutely terrible, but on the whole, Escorts are far too powerful. I've crushed Cubes in five seconds as a DPS.
An empty answer that echoes the lack of substance of your last few comments.
Hardly an exception. I ve seen ot many times in Ker'rat and often enough in the ques. The cruiser is not the weak tank you make it out to be in the rigjt hands and there are more handy players out there than you may think.
The mirror same can be said of escorts. There are those players so adept at deliver spike damage that the only factor in survival is how much time one has left before the boom.
Those players are the exception on both vessels but not so rare as to be next to never encountered.
R.I.P
R.I.P
It'll be this really weird thing called balance, where people will actually be able to survive against Escorts consistently.
I see it clearly as Cruisers and Science vessels perform worse in a damage dealing capacity but tank just fine. Many ideas have been put forth that may fix that for the better. I just dont agree that the ideas you put forth move in that direction, certainly not in a manner resembling balance.
R.I.P
We'll see if common sense returns to you after an Andorian ship melts you with five fully-buffed DHCs. Because you know as well as I do, that's exactly what will happen with a 5/3 ship.
If you immediately know the candlelight is fire then the meal was cooked a long time ago.
Al Rivera hates Klingons
Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert
All cloaks should be canon.
Mister Frog, please admit defeat and come back when you have the capability of making sense. You're defeated, fighting a lost cause, and you can realize that a candlelight is a fire without having supper. You're making no sense, and I'd like you to stop.