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Cruisers and sci ships - obsolete comparing to escorts
fratar
Member Posts: 49 Arc User
Hi. I have been playing this game for over a year now and now when I tried almost everything out... I don't feel like playing anymore.
The reason is that this game does not need any other ship/class but escorts.
Example would be a regular STF. Take 5escorts and you can finish STF on elite in a matter of 4minutes!
That can't be done with science or cruiser ships.
Now one might argue that those ships are not designed for damage and you would be right... But man, why do we have time limits on STFs and all kinds of fleet actions, events etc. when they struggle for them already?
I can destroy a group of ships in azure nebula just as an escort can while im in a science ship, but the thing is it will take me 3minutes and it takes escort to do so 30secs!
When I enter gorn minefield with an escort, almost every time I am rank 1 because I do insane DMG comparing to others - especially if they are flying cruisers or science ships, so I always get best rewards and after a while I feel sorry for them.
Question for developers - do you not see all of this?
You need to redesign this ASAP, we have been on this system since the start and its not working out.
You need to make roles mean something and needed. Why don't you make science ships more fun by lets say making it like this.
Grav well 3 - meh just a power
Photonic shockwave - meh just a power
But if you combine them, and use shockwave while target is being pulled by well, they would somehow react and cause massive aoe DMG.
You should also add class/ship only abilities and class/ship buffs!
So for example tanks would have debuffs that reduce enemys DMG, while science has sens analysis.
Also tanks would have some kind of buffs to improve passive repair of allied ships, while science would do the same for shields and escorts could buff its friends with small dmg buff.
This would make all classes and ships needed and desirable!
It would also break this linear, simple gameplay and add a lot of diversity.
Also this would mean that science ships could take a roll of damage - which they should be able to!
This post that I made is because I love this game a lot. And it pains me to see that you are developing it in a wrong way. Don't get me wrong, rep system is kinda fun, but its not even nearly important as making classes and ships fully work!
I bet that there is no player that can see at least some truth in what I said here.
Please comment on this matter, I would like to see everyone's opinions.
The reason is that this game does not need any other ship/class but escorts.
Example would be a regular STF. Take 5escorts and you can finish STF on elite in a matter of 4minutes!
That can't be done with science or cruiser ships.
Now one might argue that those ships are not designed for damage and you would be right... But man, why do we have time limits on STFs and all kinds of fleet actions, events etc. when they struggle for them already?
I can destroy a group of ships in azure nebula just as an escort can while im in a science ship, but the thing is it will take me 3minutes and it takes escort to do so 30secs!
When I enter gorn minefield with an escort, almost every time I am rank 1 because I do insane DMG comparing to others - especially if they are flying cruisers or science ships, so I always get best rewards and after a while I feel sorry for them.
Question for developers - do you not see all of this?
You need to redesign this ASAP, we have been on this system since the start and its not working out.
You need to make roles mean something and needed. Why don't you make science ships more fun by lets say making it like this.
Grav well 3 - meh just a power
Photonic shockwave - meh just a power
But if you combine them, and use shockwave while target is being pulled by well, they would somehow react and cause massive aoe DMG.
You should also add class/ship only abilities and class/ship buffs!
So for example tanks would have debuffs that reduce enemys DMG, while science has sens analysis.
Also tanks would have some kind of buffs to improve passive repair of allied ships, while science would do the same for shields and escorts could buff its friends with small dmg buff.
This would make all classes and ships needed and desirable!
It would also break this linear, simple gameplay and add a lot of diversity.
Also this would mean that science ships could take a roll of damage - which they should be able to!
This post that I made is because I love this game a lot. And it pains me to see that you are developing it in a wrong way. Don't get me wrong, rep system is kinda fun, but its not even nearly important as making classes and ships fully work!
I bet that there is no player that can see at least some truth in what I said here.
Please comment on this matter, I would like to see everyone's opinions.
Post edited by fratar on
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Let me tell you a little story....
Of how this game was before whatever amateur up the cryptic food chain decided to destroy the role of ship classes in this game and turn it into a stupid space shooter (read: dps -centric).
Before free-to-play the ships performed very differently.
Escorts: Did not have the ungodly damage output they have now. In fact they were the 2nd best at dealing raw damage. The escorts were very vulnerable because of their low shield and hull rating. Their primary role was focused heavy fire...they were the only ships that had the speed and turn rate to keep hitting one shield facing. They were focused spike damage dealers.
Cruisers: Cruisers used to have the highest raw damage output. 8 weapon slots. They were darn strong tanks and were the best at threat control, tanking and team buff support.
Science: Sci ships used to be very good shield tanks but their paper thin hulls made them poor battle tanks. In fact their heavy shields were supposed to give them a chance to survive until the cruiser or escort took aggro away. The sci ship used to be extremely potent at its role: debuffing and crowd control.
A single gravity well used to suck a ship into its center and HOLD it there HARD for the entire duration of the well. It was so good that an escort could only break off if he used evasive maneuvers/polarize hull/emg to engine 2+/full power to engines. There was no other way to get out (aka atk omega did not break it). Grav well used to do in excess of 2500 damage PER TICK. It used to be EXOTIC damage type.
Power drains used to REALLY mess a ship up. The only way to counter drains was to use emg2X abilities, stun or jam the target or simply run out of weapon range to break the drain.
photonic shockwave/particle burst used to be really effective. It was hazardous to get close to a sci ship equipped with these.
atk omega used to grant immunity to holds and snares only IF it was active already. It did not use to be that if you get tractored you just hit omega and break free.
tac captain abilities did NOT use to buff sci ability damage.
Overall a sci ship used to have really weak weapon power but was a dangerous opponent to face because of its debuffing capability.
The balance was: Sci ships were the biggest danger to cruisers (debuffs), cruisers were the biggest danger to escorts (tank+hold&massive broadside shots), escorts were the biggest danger to sci ships (burst focused damage knock shields off and thump the weak hull out).
The diversity in ship loadouts and templates allowed people to become better or worse at certain tasks and targets. People used to recognize other players BY those ship templates.
Then came F2P.
In one patch science stats lost nearly 80% of their potency. Grav wells and other sci-based damage abilities were switched to kinetic damage.
The greatest irony and greatest proof of incompetence at the highest level of whoever was in charge of game design in STO is that they made the sci abilities be kinetic damage.
Why? Well, this made tac captains be the only ones that could use and abuse science ships. Overnight in the F2P patch the tac captain in a sci ship became the greatest killer in the game.
A sci captain using grav well 3 for example, at full skillpoint training for it.. barely did 800 dmg a tick. tac captain was pulling over 3000 a tick. How? Atk omega+atk alpha+go down fighting+fire on my mark+kinetic damage tac consoles (yes they boosted the grav well since it was kinetic) + sci particle consoles.
In the space of 6 months, cryptic nerfed sci again and again and again because of tac captains abusing the ship. Eventually the tac captains left the sci ship exploit to go back to their now ungodly buffed up escorts (tac capt skill boxes had become cookie-cutter simplified so they had full max damage potential with half the skill points spent than before..this was not the case for sci or engineers).
Ever since then, sci ships have been nothing more than really crappy ships at their role and barely useful as backup tanks. they dont have the weapon dps nor the sci dps...their crowd control role cannot be performed well since the abilities are nerfed so bad even slow STF drones laugh at it.
Escorts on the other hand have received buff after buff after buff. Hull HP increased, defense modifiers increased, weapon damage constantly increased.
The reason? Monetizing.
Sci cannot be monetized. It does not rely on lockbox or zen-pack weapons/ships. Upping science to what it used to be would not be profitable. Escorts on the other hand, require much pew-pew items and high dps ships are much sought after... because the game has been increasingly made into a dps-centric format.
The andorian ship, the vesta line, the odyssey...the lockbox ships...what do they have in common? increasing reliance on damage output rather than science or engineering performance.
Vestas are literally a cruiser with sci ship abilities but their primary benefit is weapon/damage output. aux cannons? Hello?
Sci is dead and nailed down into the coffin... by order of cryptic higher ups. It will never be fixed or given a role in the game.
The sad truth is as of this moment sci captains are best putting their skillpoints into tactical and tanking abilities and flying escorts, cruisers or carriers.
This game does rely on escorts and cruisers here and there because they are a safe way of money making for this game.
This game is so grindy now that its becoming unplayable and not fun at all.
There are no combinations of powers, no buffs, no situatonal CDs, and if we are to see some new power it will be some kind of a console that will keep things fun for 10minutes maybe.
But saying that it will never be fixed is kinda harsh, who knows, maybe devs check this out and other players and actually listen to us
On the other hand a tank (engi in cruiser) in a stf team makes the stf real easy...easier than 5 escorts even.
personally i think the game is too easy, that favours escorts...no doubt, but there are certain builds and specific non escort ships that work in this environmentvery well too.
when you compare grp content to other MMOs, you see whats wrong with STO. The grp finder creates grps regardless of role, which aren't clearly defined anyway. I know many players like it that way, but when it comes to creating challenging grp content you need some set of rules and predefined roles to work on.
it would probably be easier if every ship came instead of a boff layout with certain powers already equipped. Instead of you putting the boffs in, the powers are already there...some unique to the ship and some available to any ship.
Like DOTA for instance, the hero being your ship in that case.
They don't care if it fits to a Star Trek game or not, they degraded every other shipclass to support their beloved escorts, and i believe they aren't interested in making a star trek game at all.
Sorry if this sounds negative but thats what have experienced in three years.
also there are several players in pvp which perform very good, being sciscorts or in a vesta (fleet recon, ...), or eng in cruisers, or... there's some diversity
guess the problem is the much higher hp's of ai-enemies. they're just less impressed by anything except damage.
so may a solution would be to lower ai-hp's and to raise it's smartness + may more abilites (tt f.e.).
But now comes the best part: With only one sci and one cruiser, you can do Hive (at least) as fast as 5 tac/esc. Because the cruiser can tank and is less vulnerable against spreads and co. The sci can subnuk the nasty feedbackpulses. You shouldnt underestimate that.
And, another point: Its true that Sci/Eng might be inferior to tac (in space), but people who know what they do will do damage with every ship in every carreer. And then -on the other side- there are the pugs...^^
Problem 1 - Season 1's change to ship skills
Link - http://www.stowiki.org/Release_notes/20100324
This resulted in a boost to hull and shields and pushed escorts out of the danger zone and ended them being glass cannons. Strangely enough it also resulted in Klingons losing their lower hull/shield disadvantage (different stat boost originally?).
This also coincided with the end of glass cannon complaints, from people who didn't realise that was the whole point of escorts.
With the change to the recent skill table, it appears to have took this into consideration so people will have the same hull and shields they did with the season 1 change.
Problem 2 - Season 1.2's change to weapon power drain mechanics.
Link - http://www.stowiki.org/Release_notes/20100603
Cryptics changing of how weapon power drains work gave a massive advantage to escorts and took away the EPS flow reg (and an engineers EPS power transfer) advantage from cruisers. Before the change, a cruiser could stack EPS flow regulators to allow it to compete with an escorts firepower. Now the only reason to take an EPS flow reg is for beam overload.
Not only that, but it took away some of the thinking aspect of space combat.
Problem 3 - Cryptic giving the tactical escort retrofit another engineering console slot.
Link - http://www.stowiki.org/Release_notes/20111201
Problem 4a - Season 2's Inclusion of field generators
Link - There are no release notes or other documentation found that mention field generators being added to the game. If I remember correctly they were added the same time the emblem currency was added.
If the last shield and hull buff took the Escorts out of the glass cannon zone, this firmly took them out of the danger zone. Now escorts had plenty of room to tank and resist alpha strikes.
Problem 4b - Field Generators becoming science consoles and stackable
Link - http://www.stowiki.org/Release_notes/20120202
Link - http://www.stowiki.org/Release_notes/20120329
This removed one of the biggest advantages cruisers had in the way of shield tanking. A very questionable solution to the old science console problem. Now you can get advanced escorts with more shields than an assault cruiser.
Problem 5 - Escorts innate 10% bonus defense.
Link - http://www.stowiki.org/Release_notes/20110202
No they didn't, they performed exactly the same. Escort overpoweredness has been a problem for over two years now.
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
No, not exactly the same. The changes you show are pre-f2p and its great you linked the evidence of it.
The change I mention came with the simplification of tactical skill boxes which freed a crazy amount of skill points that could be fed into tanking abilities from sci and engineer.
I had a tac, sci and engineer capt. pre-f2p. I can tell you that even with the pre-f2p changes gearing an escort was no easy task. You had a lot of vulnerabilities vs sci ships and vs cruisers. There were no longer the super fragile glass cannons..they could tank a bit (not much but they could) and they were DEAD if they did not use hit and run tactics.
When the space revamp allowed my tac capt. to have all-weapons-in-one-box of skillpoint investment I suddenly was able to REALLY cap out the engineering armor/shield/repair/etc boxes as well as the science shield boxes. Result: The moderately survivable escort was suddenly able to sit in space shooting AND tank damage like nobody's business. The changes to speed tanking made it so that I no longer had to use hit and run .. I could just keep speed high and circle the target blasting it with a very high degree of confidence that no matter the target or how many targets were shooting at me, I could stay in the fight spewing DPS.
Sci and cruisers on the other hand, received minimal benefit from the space revamp. Sci got F'd in the rear end BADLY from the stat-changes (benefit per point reduced nearly 80% of previous levels) and engineers basically remained the same except they could spec into weapons a bit more...which was not that big of a benefit since they had to still tank the old fashioned way.
The day before F2P patch I was in PVP and it took nearly 4 escorts working together to slap my Nebula tier 5 down. I would be able to take 3 of them down through massive debuff + damage abilities while keeping my shield tank up. The moment they wisened up and all hit the same shield at once was when I went down.
The week after the patch? A single escort could kill that nebula in one or two passes. Debuffs no longer worked, sci damage abilities no longer worked, escorts were now firing weapons at max possible damage (skillbox benefit) and had insane defense (speed tanking) as well as damn good healing ability (full eng. tanking skill box trained up) so the sci ship's weaponry simply could not gun them down.
Adding insult to injury, some escorts could literally pump huge damage into you with guns and drop a grav well 1 that did more damage than the sci ship's fully trained grav well3..simply because that grav well 1 was boosted via kinetic consoles+tac capt. dmg boosts+boff dmg boosts (lt cmdr level+).
This game is so easy Sci Vessels and Cruisers are still viable.
Because so many players are so absolutely bad at the game they fail to realize the difference. Or they simply do not care about optimal and then complain the game is too grindy / the grind takes too long.
Science has been continually nerfed for ages.
It all started with Viral Matrix.
The game is grindy. I mean, even in the most tricked out ship, that churns through the grind like butter, the game is still grindy.
It used to try and focus on story and content. But not anymore. That's really a different thread though.
Absolutely. My main is a science captain and I flew him in a science ship right up until free to play. Then I respected him for ground combat to do the STF ground missions. When I finally started doing elite space missions, I realized how pointless having him in a nebula or intrepid was and how everyone who was playing on elite was starting to show up in escorts, so I switched his nebula with a Prometheus. Sure, the prometheus is a weak tank in STFs, but with three other escorts drawing aggro and science healing abilities, he can usually survive the entire STF unless he gets one-shotted, usually by lag.
And while the old space STFs allowed 5 science captains to kill a tactical cube in under 30 seconds by debuffing and draining it, dropping its shields, and smashing torpedoes against the hull, anything less than an escort with high weapons power and DHC is basically a joke now.
If a science captain throws out a buffed gravity well with 125 aux power, it should take 125 engine power and buffed engine capabilities to escape it, but my prometheus at 20 engine power can usually just stroll away.
Stahl, PWE... mainly PWE... run by something more greedy than Ferengi but worse at making profit, at least Ferengi would make a balanced game and make more money as everything would be valuable...
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Virtually no ship in the game, other then a sci ship, can sit at 0 range and dps the tac cube on elite. My shields are virtually not an issue either. In the vesta my sci officer can tank without breaking a sweat. I entreat any tac officer to do the same thing and not pop like a cheap bottle of champagne. In the meantime the torpedos strike my shields and do massive damage to the cube. On a one to onw basis I do better then any escort could ever do in part to the cubes own weapon harming it and also having 125aux and full aux dual hvy cannons pounding away at 0 range and also the Sci officers innate damage resist debuff coupled with the tactical dmg resistance debuff I am just lethal as hell. I also can do this in other sci ships with similiar results.
The cruiser, as I have stated in many other posts, is an auxillary ship. It does all things the other classes do but not as well. It is a healthy mix of dps and heals and tanking.
Why anyone could consider this an obsolete ship is beyond me. In a game of MIN/MAX the cruiser does suffer from "ELITE" mentalities that they cant own the game with any one ability but in a game of good and poor someone has to be the worst at something.....the cruiser is worst at everything and good at everything.
Edit: It also seems to me people want the ships in the game and their respective abilities to be exactly equal.....A sci, if designated a dps should be on par with an escort, A cruiser should be able to dps as well as an escort...I have never understood the min/maxer mentality. This game would be terribly boring if all ships had equal skill potential for dps, heals, and tanking.
People who claim the nerfing and tweaking of the abilities over the lifetime of this game have ruined it ..I laugh .
Lets take gravity well.....I have no issues keeping mobs in the gravity wells.....it is quite fun watching 5 spheres spin around each other in a strange dance of death as each pops and in turn kills its ally. IMO people need to gear their ship with the appropriate consoles and power levels for most sci abilities to be effectual.
A guy in the STF , the other day, was crying that his abilities were nerfed. His GW was weak and they escaped. I talked to him about his gear and skills........ROTFLMAO he was not speccd out for the abilitiy but used it with 43 aux power and virtually no bonuses from gear to the ability. I did find that the gravity well in the early day to be way overpowered too.
Can be done, my tac/scort is beginning to make a habit of this
Do it all the time with my Tac in his KDF raptor, Fleet Tor'Kaht, my fed tac in his Fleet Defiant, Chel'Gret, my fed Engi in his Fleet Defiant and Fleet Patrol Escort... I could go on for a while.
It's not hard to do, and escorts do more damage and can tank anything thrown at them.
The obsolete cruisers are those with nearly no tactical ability, but then again they were never any good. The oddy, excelsior and sov refit are all excellent cruisers able to tank and deal very good damage when speced right. The problem is they are never speced right, they are kirked and then complained about over and over on the forums.
Science ships that are heavy in science has little use, but the same can be said for too heavy tac escorts or heavy eng cruisers. The vesta and temp sci ships are quite effective. Even then science is a bit of the underdog, too many broken abilities, nerfed to prevent tacs from exploiting instead of being properly fixed. Science needs a development/balance pass.
When it comes to escorts/cruisers they are pretty well balanced, so much that I'm a little surprised. Yes, the rep system passives make escorts better tanks, and the rep system gear makes cruisers better damage dealers. The favour for this is on the side of the tank though. Beam drain mechanics need to be looked at to increase cruiser damage a bit more, though not a lot.
Science has to have all their damage abilities changes so tac's can't buff them, then they need to be restored to their old damage values.
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Cruisers are tankers and healers, with sustained DPS. The sustained DPS isn't terribly useful in PvP due to the way everything's set up. However, the tanking plus healing is very important in a team setup.
The best kind of team (at least, in PvP) is one with 1-2 cruisers, 1-2 sci ships/carriers, and 2-3 escorts.
PvE. . .yeah, escorts have an edge against most enemies. Deliver enough firepower, and you don't need to tank very much. However, cruisers can still play a role in the form of drawing aggro, and science ships can still be supporting healers/debuffers.
If its obsolecence then thats a issue that can be remedied.
If its that doing a STF takes too long, thats silly.
Of course the gun will be fastest in a game where only the DPS matters on how one completes a task. In PvP I see plenty of viable Cruisers and Science vessels all the time.
This is not to say an issue does not exist but I think the feeling of its importance has grown beyond common sense and into the levels of near pancnthat existed when SNB, VM and other science powers where out of balance and when zombie cruisers flew witha BFAW that did not miss and could be used all on target like a second Beam Overload.
Science suffered due to this reactions from over nerfing that they never recovered from, Cruisers suffered as well from over reactions and nerfing. Escorts will suffer as well and we will then have three nerfed ship classes and yet no balance.
The game needs fixes that work. Not more nerfing that doesnt.
R.I.P
What is the best offensive team buff in the game? Attack Pattern Beta
What is the best defensive buff in the game? Attack Pattern Omega
What rank are the good engineer/science abilities at? Ensign
What is the best tanking method? Resist & Avoidance
Hmm, wonder why all my toons fly escorts/warships. BTW Vesta is a warship, not a Sci Vessel in my view.
sci will always be stuck in the back of the class with the thought that we are not worth the effort.
at this point give up either quite the game or fly an escort as a tactical officer. and the final option do your best with what you got knowing full well it ain't going to get you halfway up the grinder pole to your rewards
while the half baked escort pilots get to sit on top with little work or input (even a vender trash bop can do more good in a team atmosphere then the average sci.)
sad but true.
Its not about cruisers and sci ships competing 4minute run in STFs its about them not being needed for many reasons!
Why would i ever join or want some cruiser/sci to join if i can do my STF in 4minutes?
Tanking and sci? Guys, whatever argument you make how it is still good is pointless and invalid.
The more escorts i see in my party - happier i am and thats for a good reason.
Tanking you say? why would i have you at 0km in a sci ship with 0dmg comparing to me while all i have to do is kite the cube at 11km till i lose aggro, wait i dont need to do that, i still have tac team, EPtS, reverse shield polarity, hazard emitters and some of those from my party members as well.
Now tell me im not right and ill blast you out of the sky in my shuttle on 25weapon power I DARE YOu.
The system we have right now is broken, weather you want to admit it or not.
If you are looking for reasons that keep you playing here and convince yourself that both sci and cruiser ships are just fine where they are and that your 0dmg from grav well while you are spinning those cubes is fun to watch then thats all you get im afraid.
It's not that it can't be monetised, and be careful what you wish for.
Game balance, I do agree, comes second to making money.
But the fact is that, if I can't enjoy playing an Engineer captain in a cruiser after investing so much time into building it up...
Well, I'm going to lose interest and eventually stop playing, because what's the point if my primary character is going to be always second fiddle to something else in every single respect possible?
i am tired of them choosing to ignore balance to make a quick buck in the short term sure its profitable in the long term though it will and i repeat WILL have dire consequences to the longevity of this game.Though they choose to ignore our many warnings ive taken the first step to making them just as unhappy as i am.
i simply have stopped buying things from them usually i put in my fair share but at this point why pay for stuff from a company that acts like EA and treats its customers like dirt?