So, i just started to play on march last year, so i don't know how the things were prior F2P, but this is my personal oponion anyway, based just on my personal experiences.
I would't say cruisers and sci are obsolete, neither useless, i just will say the aren't necessary.
you can allocate you skills and make build good enough and have a cruiser/science vessel with good performance, but which content needs them anyway?
you can made builds for 'tanky' or 'sci' escorts; sure, those builds don't wanna be optimal, nor (necessaryly) better than the cruiser/sci vessels builds; but those tank/sci escorts just need to be just good enough to get the jobe done, and is relatively easy to make an escort like that, while keeping the benefits of the high dps.
Sure, it's a balance issuse but i think is a problem of the way the content is made.
Do you need science abilities on ESTFs?, I know, doing it well those abilities can make the things a lot easier, but do you really need them?, or just to be clear do you need a science vessel with science abilities? or a escort with a Sci LtCmdr just will be enough?
I think thats the problem, you can make good cruisers and science builds, but currently the game content just doesn't need those builds , all you need is a escort able to use some eng and/or sci abilities and thats all.
If the content, specially the end-game content required synergies between escorts cruisers and science vessels, scenarios where you either use dedicated crowd controllers and tanks or you will spend all the night tryng to beat them whitout succes
If those synergies were required to successfuly play the game, then we wouldn't say X or Y class is useless
The problem is not "escorts are OP" or "cruisers/science vessels are UP" the problems is "average player doesn't really need a cuiser/sci to get the job done, (s)he just need an escort with some sci/eng powers" and that's because how the in-game missions/content/events/whatever (especially the end game content) are designed
"In every age,
In every place,
The deeds of men remain the same..."
So, i just started to play on march last year, so i don't know how the things were prior F2P, but this is my personal oponion anyway, based just on my personal experiences.
I would't say cruisers and sci are obsolete, neither useless, i just will say the aren't necessary.
you can allocate you skills and make build good enough and have a cruiser/science vessel with good performance, but which content needs them anyway?
you can made builds for 'tanky' or 'sci' escorts; sure, those builds don't gonna be optimal, nor (necessaryly) better than the cruiser/sci vessels builds; but those tank/sci escorts just need to be just good enough to get the jobe done, and is relatively easy to make an escort like that, while keeping the benefits of the high dps.
Sure, it's a balance issuse but i think is a problem of the way the content is made.
Do you need science abilities on ESTFs?, I know, doing it well those abilities can make the things a lot easier, but do you really need them?, or just to be clear do you need a science vessel with science abilities? or a escort with a Sci LtCmdr just will be enough?
I think thats the problem, you can make good cruisers and science builds, but currently the game content just doesn't need those builds , all you need is a escort able to use some eng and/or sci abilities and thats all.
If the content, specially the end-game content required synergies between escorts cruisers and science vessels, scenarios where you either use dedicated crowd controllers and tanks or you will spend all the night tryng to beat them whitout succes
If those synergies were required to successfuly play the game, then we wouldn't say X or Y class is useless
The problem is not "escorts are OP" or "cruisers/science vessels are UP" the problems is "average player doesn't really need a cuiser/sci to get the job done, (s)he just need an escort with some sci/eng powers" and that's because how the in-game missions/content/events/whatever (especially the end game content) are designed
wrong they're nessecary for STF. While it's possible to do well in an escort. since S& it's better to be in a cruiser. trust me i've tried. I die alot more and in STF tyhat makes a difference. Once again the arguement is mute for in tyhe end it's player skill and ship build
wrong they're nessecary for STF. While it's possible to do well in an escort. since S& it's better to be in a cruiser. trust me i've tried. I die alot more and in STF tyhat makes a difference. Once again the arguement is mute for in tyhe end it's player skill and ship build
If they are really necessary... then why I can run Elite STFs with the optionals on teams made only of escorts?
If i were wrong/you were right i shouldn't be able to do that
Obviouly a cruiser will be allways a better tank than an scort (unless you have a really bad build)
but Do you really NEED an optimal cuiser?
again on my personal experience an escort whit 'tanking' capabilities will be enough, just enough... even just barely enough if you want, but actually you don't NEED anything else
"In every age,
In every place,
The deeds of men remain the same..."
If they are really necessary... then why I can run Elite STFs with the optionals on teams made only of escorts?
If i were wrong/you were right i shouldn't be able to do that
I didn't say it was impossible but how many times did you die. I personally see more cruisers in STF than escorts now. And any team I do see is most of the time half escort half cruiser
I didn't say it was impossible but how many times did you die. I personally see more cruisers in STF than escorts now. And any team I do see is most of the time half escort half cruiser
Exactly... is not impossible, and not only is not impossible, is relatively easy to do that, at least if you have a competent team, and thats my whole point, and you can made an optimal team, and that optimal team will need cuisers escorts an science vessels whit good builds.... but as long you can do the stfs with just escorts, then the average player will say "who cares? i got my escort that's the only thing i really NEED "
"In every age,
In every place,
The deeds of men remain the same..."
Exactly... is not impossible, and not only is not impossible, is relatively easy to do that, at least if you have a competent team, and thats my whole point, and you can made an optimal team, and that optimal team will need cuisers escorts an science vessels whit good builds.... but as long you can do the stfs with just escorts, then the average player will say "who cares? i got my escort that's the only thing i really NEED "
You really shouldn't die in an STF except maybe Hive, at the first part. It doesn't matter what ship you use. Most things in an STF are passive. They don't shoot back. If you get killed by a cube in Cure while you are attacking nanites, you are doing it wrong. If you get blown up by the gateway in Khitomer, again, doing it wrong. Infected? Same thing. In most of the STF missions, when there is an enemy that can fight back, its usually a whole team fighting it, not 1on1. Even if it is 1on1, an escort should be able to beat a Negh'var in cure, or even the cubes in Khitomer. Maybe not the Tactical Cube, but the normal ones? Shouldn't be that much of a problem. The Carrier at the end of Cure? That thing gets nuked by everyone in a matter of seconds. Donatra can be tricky, but usually her torp spread is spaced out enough you can heal between them. Infected is just a gateway and another tac cube, with all 5 players blowing it up.
I made an account and all I used was the free level 40 escort and Mk XI blue weapons/consoles. Nothing above that. I could go a whole elite STF without dying -and- pulling agro (somehow). People let probes go by in Khitomer all the time. I was able to kill probes -and- go help vs transformers and cubes. I couldn't quite solo the cube, but enough to help. It isn't about gear, it's about a basic understanding of the game.
The question isn't "are cruisers/sci vessels obsolete because they're too weak?". They aren't too weak. The question is, are they needed? No. Escorts can handle the defensive role well enough that they don't need someone else to tank for them (if they have any brains).
The fix shouldn't need to involve buffing cruisers. Sci vessels are only messed because actual sci skills, which is a different situation altogether. The fix would be to improve the AI of enemy ships and incorporate more constant combat in the STF missions. So many things -don't shoot back- that it's more like a list of things to do, instead of an actual battle. If probes/bops etc shot back in Khitomer/Cure/Infected, you would see more need for support builds, making cruisers useful. Do they need to be buffed? No, but maybe like a +20 weapon power drain resistance (like nadion inversion, but much smaller) would be fair. Sci vessels are underpowered because the best sci abilities are nerfed. If they were fixed, sci vessels would be useful because of their boff positions. Escorts should probably have less hull, but too many would whine over that. Having the enemy ships firing back in more missions would be "good enough" to help balance things. The point of a glass cannon is that they die fast, but do a lot of damage. Taking the "getting hit by enemy ships" out of the equation just makes them imbalanced.
Exactly... is not impossible, and not only is not impossible, is relatively easy to do that, at least if you have a competent team, and thats my whole point, and you can made an optimal team, and that optimal team will need cuisers escorts an science vessels whit good builds.... but as long you can do the stfs with just escorts, then the average player will say "who cares? i got my escort that's the only thing i really NEED "
But you always don't get a compentant team. While I could do the elite in my escort the dying is just to annoying so i went back to cruisers. But we agree on one thing. The cruisers are not obsolete as the OP claims. My main toon is a tac in a beam cruiser and that has never let me down
kaiserkacto - you make some good points about STF design that have contributed to this damage centric situation (ok.. giant mess). I doubt Cryptic/Perfect World are welling to take the time and effort required to fix them, but maybe something like adding shields to some stuff might encourage shield debuffs (if those skills are fixed). But, even if they fix current STFs or add in new ones, there are underlying balance issues that would ruin those efforts.
First Cruisers - They can tank, but often burning targets with DPS nets better results than sustained damage with a good tank.
Also , even if you wanted to tank for your group you can't grab and maintain agro. Escort damage is just too high. Threat control needs to become a boff skill, maybe with an engineering version, a tac version, and a sci version... Maybe even give some or all cruisers a bonus to that skill... heck that might be a way to give the Galaxy line a role. It would be nice if cruisers could do more than be meat shields that can't attract the damge they could shield someone from, which is mostly limited by the bland and tank centric boff skills.
Second Weapons - DHCs are king, fix that buff/nerf whatever is needed. Give people reasons to need/want other weapons. Maybe a stacking penalty or power drain or just buff beams and torps. Beams could use some help, give them a good role like shield penetration or fighter shredders. Anything to make them a good solid alternative to cannons. Such a buff would help Science vessels and Cruisers which mostly use beams.
Third Science Skills - Science skills are really messed right now. Science skills need to be de-nerfed, give them a variety of debuffs and crowd control with some good dps thrown in. Make shield drains and rifts nice and powerful, make it so that it helps the team and the science vessel captains better shred their targets.
Fourth Escorts - Escorts are too hard to kill. Make them more of a glass cannon, Encourage weapon variety and hit-and-run tactics. A decrease to hull HP and speed tanking would be nice.
Engineering Boff skills need looking at, more variety. Give them some nice damage abilites with some team buffs. Also why doesn't the Engineer have some sort of useful skill like Hazard Emitters? Seems like even some of the nicest defense buffs are not engineering skills. Like Tac Team and Hazard Emitters.
Tac skills should not buff science skills the way they do, maybe some minor adjustments to other things.
Make some of these changes and the game would be less repetive and even bad STF design would be less of a problem.
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.
I do it in a B'Rel BoP.
..Uncloaked.
....With an Engineer captain.
If they are really necessary... then why I can run Elite STFs with the optionals on teams made only of escorts?
If i were wrong/you were right i shouldn't be able to do that
Obviouly a cruiser will be allways a better tank than an scort (unless you have a really bad build)
but Do you really NEED an optimal cuiser?
again on my personal experience an escort whit 'tanking' capabilities will be enough, just enough... even just barely enough if you want, but actually you don't NEED anything else
So by your standards, if you don't NEED a cruiser in an STF because escorts can do anything;
(Btw, would like to see escorts tank gates without exploits or all escorts in Hive)
then why don't you flip your statement around. If you had 5 cruisers in an STF do you NEED escorts? No, never. You won't miss one optional and you are far far more likely to get them all in Hive.
Starsvoid I think he was meaning sitting as in not moving and so you don't get the defence bonus. I know you can be at 0 range and tank the tac cube but it does require dancing on the top of the cube and its odd shaped invisible wall.
As for what someone was saying about classes and obsolescence. I had a science in an ody and it was very tanky, I say was because now the Borg seem to have a new attack which bypasses shields completely. I'm not referring to the cutting beam,it's something else, all I know was I had 100% health and 2/3 on all shield facings while tanking the gate in ISE next second down to 30% health with full shields still.
If I was a tac in escort the gate would die in 30s or less, most people will not get chance to die in that time.
Now I'm not saying that having the Borg being strong isn't a good thing but no one likes NPCs that cheat and does things that players would be cried at and the devs would say NERF.
I think enough people are whining about science skills that we could get the rebalance we've needed, as in go back to exotic damage and remove tactical captains buffing of them.
Some kind of way for high rank abilities to interact with each other for big AoE damage would be a great idea too. Example gravity well will do nice damage but if you used photonic shock wave in the gravity well maybe it would do something to it causing quite a bit more damage.
cruisers need a slight look at the weapon system they are using AND engineering is missing decent damage causing skills.
but as for sci we are hit by lack of weapons(senor analysis isn't a good compromise anymore) and the fact we ALSO use beams which need a looking at as well our damage skills were nerfed into the floor due to its synergy with tactical captains buffs! previously our skills counteracted the lost weapons by a large amount.
now we are shooting squirt guns and using foam bats for our skills.
both classes have major disadvantages to escorts im not going to speak lightly of this issue and i PLAN on posting weekly posts for science and suggest a cruiser pilot do the same for your class too keep this in their view and hopefully cryptic will have no choice but to act and fix what is wrong
if they do not fix this within 2 months i will start posting DAILY and after 2 more months of them not fixing it i am leaving and taking my disposable income with me. and suggest the rest of you do too!.
in eve online when CCP didn't do what the gamers wanted we walked and took our money with us and they HAD NO CHOICE but to act and fix what they did wrong and they did so while apologizing to their community if cryptic wants to stay in business they will have to do this as well!
Fact: Sto is an MMO and therefore progression is a big part of it Fact: Some ships complete content at a much slower pace than others Fact: No ship is required for progression (I don't see any enchanters in STO)
Fact: I will continue to progress at an accelerated pace compared to many because I fly warships exclusively (escorts). That means bad PuGs don't matter to me, I can carry them. It means my dailies take half the time to complete. It means I get the bonus loot from fleet actions.
If that is ok with you then I'll stop complaining about it myself as well.
cruisers need a slight look at the weapon system they are using AND engineering is missing decent damage causing skills.
but as for sci we are hit by lack of weapons(senor analysis isn't a good compromise anymore) and the fact we ALSO use beams which need a looking at as well our damage skills were nerfed into the floor due to its synergy with tactical captains buffs! previously our skills counteracted the lost weapons by a large amount.
For engineer captains, EPS power transfer + Nadion Inversion can be very nice for damage. Your power level won't drop below like 122 no matter how many beams you are firing. That increases damage quite a bit. As for cruisers, as I said before, it makes sense that they would get ~1/10th the amount of power drain resistance as nadion inversion gives as a passive. They have more power potential than the other ships, so it doesn't make sense why they drain power the fastest. Even if an escort is built for weapon power, a cruiser would still have more.
As for sci, I agree with that, mostly. When a sci captain is not the best at sci abilities, something is wrong. At the same, a sci shouldn't be able to fill the role of a tac(dps). I think beams are fine where they are. The real problem is just that sci abilities are too weak -and- kinetic, instead of exotic.
Beams are ineffecient to the point that when you have target in pvp they do not do enough to be a threat. Couple this with poor turn rates and you can not do damage enough before the target has moved and has a fresh shield facing, much less turn your on facing away to continue tanking said target.
Otherwise the ability to buff damage through BOff powers is fine but it doesnt hit hard enough in the short time you have to make a difference.
Buffing beams will just mean escorts would start using them more. Surprisingly, escorts do well with beam builds as they are now. If anything, cruisers need the power drain resistance I said earlier.
Beam DPS ~900 x6, Cutting Beam ~1100. 6500 dps broadside. Can be more if there's another beam in front, but probably a torp would be there, but it wouldn't be fired most of the time. If there is another beam, 6500 + 900 = 7400.
Cannon DPS, ~1300 x3, 2x Turrets ~650, Cutting Beam ~1100 = 6300 dps forward facing. For this one, adding the torp dps of ~900 would bring it up to ~7200 dps.
These are relatively average dps values. I know some are higher, but some are lower. I think a big part of the reason beams do less is because of power levels. Escorts have more damage -per weapon-, so their power drain is lower than a cruiser firing more weapons. Escorts also have 10 more weapon power than the average cruiser.
The real shame is that feds don't have a plasmonic leech console But then there would be even less reasons to play KDF...
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.
This is the kind of posts I like to see. people speaking truthfully from experience.
I have recently started a Sci alt just out of curiousity. After seeing this post, It shows me that Science is a role worth working towards and it makes me want to work that much harder to work my alt up.
Thanks.
Star Trek Battles Channel - Play Star Trek like they did in the series!Avatar: pinterest-com/pin/14003448816884219Are you sure it isn't time for a "colorful metaphor"? --Spock in 'The Voyage Home' SCE ADVISORY NOTICE: Improper Impulse Engine maintenance can result in REAR THRUSTER LEAKAGE. ALWAYS have your work inspected by another qualified officer.
Of the many posts i read I do miss the old skill tree for weapon type specific skills. I am pretty much specced for energy dps and tanking. I can hold my escort at 1-2km and kill a tac cube solo without dying and I can't imagine anyone taking it down faster. (I dont see the need to be at 0km from a kill time rate and it lets me evasive/polarize hull to get away before core breech).
I don't have a problem with tac having too much dps, i have a problem that dps is the only thing that wins battles. When was the last time you won an stf or any mission in space without killing everything.
Remember in the shows:
Captain - "Target their weapons, Fire"
Tactical - "Their weapons are offline"
COmms - "They are hailing us"
Captain - "Open a channel"
Or what if in cap and hold the science and engineers had ways of capping points faster. Perhaps the science could cap faster, but the engineer could be 2nd quickest with the escort slower. This would mean that a kdf escort and a fed cruiser would on a point would still let the point slowly come under fed control.
Or what if we had a compelled energy and kinetic weapon slots, say 1 forward facing torpedo on every ship. End the beam and cannon boats that are an anomaly to a pathetically shallow skill tree.
Finally and this is required. Break the skill tree and ship loadouts into pve and pvp options. Maintaining balance in both pvp and pve with the same systems makes the game shallow and the compromises made are like agreements in congress. When you get something that works neither side is happy.
These are just a couple of the ideas i have put on other forum posts that I would like to get feedback on and become popular if they are well accepted.
There are more ways to make a star trek game than leaving a sector of space littered with broken and burned hulks. This game is becoming more and more brainless and less involved. The old science tree was complicated, and needed work, but dumbing it down to the 4th grade level was not a fix.
PvE Jem'Hadar motto:Participation Ribbonsare life.
well I'm glad you feel the way you do gypsy but as is a tact officer would be hands down a better option in a sci vessel than a sci captain.and ironically the scis best option right now is an Escort! if we let this stand why not just get rid of all other ship types and call this Star Trek Online:Battle Of The Escorts
not a real option but hey if they don't want to listen and just wana slap quick fixes on everything(read as lazy coding) fine by me other companies would love my money and make me feel i got something worth it too! By no means am i saying cryptic is a terrible company but what i am saying they sure are confused in what they need to be doing right now dont they?
Could not have said it better! That was a great history lesson.
Here's another one. When this game was designed, they like multiple other game titles failed to take into account that the code for pve and pvp skills need to be separate or you end up with this kind of problem. Or worse players having to respect constantly to get out of their characters as much as they possibly can.
Tonight I respeced my sci toon, I actually had to spec heavily into simple things that other ships take for granted because I am being forced to use an escort to survive. I had to leave points out of certain things sci captains usually use because I don't have enough sci slots anymore using an escort to use what I normally do. So now I have abilities trained on officers I won't use until they fix whats wrong with the science abilities.
Now I like my escort don't get me wrong, but the point is I shouldn't have to choose one, no one should. At first when i came back to this game I wanted to fly my Bellerophon but because they don't actually use the data from the shows for many of the advantages this ship had over even the intrepid I couldn't use it, it's subpar to the cannon of the ship in the lore. Both the intrepid and Bellerophon should have more precise sensors speeding up the SA abilities, they should have faster cooldowns on deflector abilities since they both come equipped technically with 2 deflectors, and they the consoles they have are a complete joke. The photonic shockwave hardly does any damage at all, the shield have always remained up on my enemies (they did fix it so any torpedo would work that was nice) and the Armor from the intrepid is too slow between the time the shields go down and the armor goes up there is plenty of time for any ship to do a kinetic hit to the hull and instantly destroy these ships. It's sad really.
Comments
I would't say cruisers and sci are obsolete, neither useless, i just will say the aren't necessary.
you can allocate you skills and make build good enough and have a cruiser/science vessel with good performance, but which content needs them anyway?
you can made builds for 'tanky' or 'sci' escorts; sure, those builds don't wanna be optimal, nor (necessaryly) better than the cruiser/sci vessels builds; but those tank/sci escorts just need to be just good enough to get the jobe done, and is relatively easy to make an escort like that, while keeping the benefits of the high dps.
Sure, it's a balance issuse but i think is a problem of the way the content is made.
Do you need science abilities on ESTFs?, I know, doing it well those abilities can make the things a lot easier, but do you really need them?, or just to be clear do you need a science vessel with science abilities? or a escort with a Sci LtCmdr just will be enough?
I think thats the problem, you can make good cruisers and science builds, but currently the game content just doesn't need those builds , all you need is a escort able to use some eng and/or sci abilities and thats all.
If the content, specially the end-game content required synergies between escorts cruisers and science vessels, scenarios where you either use dedicated crowd controllers and tanks or you will spend all the night tryng to beat them whitout succes
If those synergies were required to successfuly play the game, then we wouldn't say X or Y class is useless
The problem is not "escorts are OP" or "cruisers/science vessels are UP" the problems is "average player doesn't really need a cuiser/sci to get the job done, (s)he just need an escort with some sci/eng powers" and that's because how the in-game missions/content/events/whatever (especially the end game content) are designed
In every place,
The deeds of men remain the same..."
this whole artguement of cruisers and science being obsolete. They're not
wrong they're nessecary for STF. While it's possible to do well in an escort. since S& it's better to be in a cruiser. trust me i've tried. I die alot more and in STF tyhat makes a difference. Once again the arguement is mute for in tyhe end it's player skill and ship build
Did you face any KDF battlecruisers or BoPs?
It's not really a good measurement of PVP-prowess if you didn't get any data on how you do against Klingons.
Go back to your Lt. Commander character and wait for a Fed vs. KDF PVP to pop. Get back to us when you can.
If they are really necessary... then why I can run Elite STFs with the optionals on teams made only of escorts?
If i were wrong/you were right i shouldn't be able to do that
Obviouly a cruiser will be allways a better tank than an scort (unless you have a really bad build)
but Do you really NEED an optimal cuiser?
again on my personal experience an escort whit 'tanking' capabilities will be enough, just enough... even just barely enough if you want, but actually you don't NEED anything else
In every place,
The deeds of men remain the same..."
I didn't say it was impossible but how many times did you die. I personally see more cruisers in STF than escorts now. And any team I do see is most of the time half escort half cruiser
Exactly... is not impossible, and not only is not impossible, is relatively easy to do that, at least if you have a competent team, and thats my whole point, and you can made an optimal team, and that optimal team will need cuisers escorts an science vessels whit good builds.... but as long you can do the stfs with just escorts, then the average player will say "who cares? i got my escort that's the only thing i really NEED "
In every place,
The deeds of men remain the same..."
You really shouldn't die in an STF except maybe Hive, at the first part. It doesn't matter what ship you use. Most things in an STF are passive. They don't shoot back. If you get killed by a cube in Cure while you are attacking nanites, you are doing it wrong. If you get blown up by the gateway in Khitomer, again, doing it wrong. Infected? Same thing. In most of the STF missions, when there is an enemy that can fight back, its usually a whole team fighting it, not 1on1. Even if it is 1on1, an escort should be able to beat a Negh'var in cure, or even the cubes in Khitomer. Maybe not the Tactical Cube, but the normal ones? Shouldn't be that much of a problem. The Carrier at the end of Cure? That thing gets nuked by everyone in a matter of seconds. Donatra can be tricky, but usually her torp spread is spaced out enough you can heal between them. Infected is just a gateway and another tac cube, with all 5 players blowing it up.
I made an account and all I used was the free level 40 escort and Mk XI blue weapons/consoles. Nothing above that. I could go a whole elite STF without dying -and- pulling agro (somehow). People let probes go by in Khitomer all the time. I was able to kill probes -and- go help vs transformers and cubes. I couldn't quite solo the cube, but enough to help. It isn't about gear, it's about a basic understanding of the game.
The question isn't "are cruisers/sci vessels obsolete because they're too weak?". They aren't too weak. The question is, are they needed? No. Escorts can handle the defensive role well enough that they don't need someone else to tank for them (if they have any brains).
The fix shouldn't need to involve buffing cruisers. Sci vessels are only messed because actual sci skills, which is a different situation altogether. The fix would be to improve the AI of enemy ships and incorporate more constant combat in the STF missions. So many things -don't shoot back- that it's more like a list of things to do, instead of an actual battle. If probes/bops etc shot back in Khitomer/Cure/Infected, you would see more need for support builds, making cruisers useful. Do they need to be buffed? No, but maybe like a +20 weapon power drain resistance (like nadion inversion, but much smaller) would be fair. Sci vessels are underpowered because the best sci abilities are nerfed. If they were fixed, sci vessels would be useful because of their boff positions. Escorts should probably have less hull, but too many would whine over that. Having the enemy ships firing back in more missions would be "good enough" to help balance things. The point of a glass cannon is that they die fast, but do a lot of damage. Taking the "getting hit by enemy ships" out of the equation just makes them imbalanced.
But you always don't get a compentant team. While I could do the elite in my escort the dying is just to annoying so i went back to cruisers. But we agree on one thing. The cruisers are not obsolete as the OP claims. My main toon is a tac in a beam cruiser and that has never let me down
First Cruisers - They can tank, but often burning targets with DPS nets better results than sustained damage with a good tank.
Also , even if you wanted to tank for your group you can't grab and maintain agro. Escort damage is just too high. Threat control needs to become a boff skill, maybe with an engineering version, a tac version, and a sci version... Maybe even give some or all cruisers a bonus to that skill... heck that might be a way to give the Galaxy line a role. It would be nice if cruisers could do more than be meat shields that can't attract the damge they could shield someone from, which is mostly limited by the bland and tank centric boff skills.
Second Weapons - DHCs are king, fix that buff/nerf whatever is needed. Give people reasons to need/want other weapons. Maybe a stacking penalty or power drain or just buff beams and torps. Beams could use some help, give them a good role like shield penetration or fighter shredders. Anything to make them a good solid alternative to cannons. Such a buff would help Science vessels and Cruisers which mostly use beams.
Third Science Skills - Science skills are really messed right now. Science skills need to be de-nerfed, give them a variety of debuffs and crowd control with some good dps thrown in. Make shield drains and rifts nice and powerful, make it so that it helps the team and the science vessel captains better shred their targets.
Fourth Escorts - Escorts are too hard to kill. Make them more of a glass cannon, Encourage weapon variety and hit-and-run tactics. A decrease to hull HP and speed tanking would be nice.
Engineering Boff skills need looking at, more variety. Give them some nice damage abilites with some team buffs. Also why doesn't the Engineer have some sort of useful skill like Hazard Emitters? Seems like even some of the nicest defense buffs are not engineering skills. Like Tac Team and Hazard Emitters.
Tac skills should not buff science skills the way they do, maybe some minor adjustments to other things.
Make some of these changes and the game would be less repetive and even bad STF design would be less of a problem.
I do it in a B'Rel BoP.
..Uncloaked.
....With an Engineer captain.
So by your standards, if you don't NEED a cruiser in an STF because escorts can do anything;
(Btw, would like to see escorts tank gates without exploits or all escorts in Hive)
then why don't you flip your statement around. If you had 5 cruisers in an STF do you NEED escorts? No, never. You won't miss one optional and you are far far more likely to get them all in Hive.
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As for what someone was saying about classes and obsolescence. I had a science in an ody and it was very tanky, I say was because now the Borg seem to have a new attack which bypasses shields completely. I'm not referring to the cutting beam,it's something else, all I know was I had 100% health and 2/3 on all shield facings while tanking the gate in ISE next second down to 30% health with full shields still.
If I was a tac in escort the gate would die in 30s or less, most people will not get chance to die in that time.
Now I'm not saying that having the Borg being strong isn't a good thing but no one likes NPCs that cheat and does things that players would be cried at and the devs would say NERF.
I think enough people are whining about science skills that we could get the rebalance we've needed, as in go back to exotic damage and remove tactical captains buffing of them.
Some kind of way for high rank abilities to interact with each other for big AoE damage would be a great idea too. Example gravity well will do nice damage but if you used photonic shock wave in the gravity well maybe it would do something to it causing quite a bit more damage.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
but as for sci we are hit by lack of weapons(senor analysis isn't a good compromise anymore) and the fact we ALSO use beams which need a looking at as well our damage skills were nerfed into the floor due to its synergy with tactical captains buffs! previously our skills counteracted the lost weapons by a large amount.
now we are shooting squirt guns and using foam bats for our skills.
both classes have major disadvantages to escorts im not going to speak lightly of this issue and i PLAN on posting weekly posts for science and suggest a cruiser pilot do the same for your class too keep this in their view and hopefully cryptic will have no choice but to act and fix what is wrong
if they do not fix this within 2 months i will start posting DAILY and after 2 more months of them not fixing it i am leaving and taking my disposable income with me. and suggest the rest of you do too!.
in eve online when CCP didn't do what the gamers wanted we walked and took our money with us and they HAD NO CHOICE but to act and fix what they did wrong and they did so while apologizing to their community if cryptic wants to stay in business they will have to do this as well!
Fact: Some ships complete content at a much slower pace than others
Fact: No ship is required for progression (I don't see any enchanters in STO)
Fact: I will continue to progress at an accelerated pace compared to many because I fly warships exclusively (escorts). That means bad PuGs don't matter to me, I can carry them. It means my dailies take half the time to complete. It means I get the bonus loot from fleet actions.
If that is ok with you then I'll stop complaining about it myself as well.
For engineer captains, EPS power transfer + Nadion Inversion can be very nice for damage. Your power level won't drop below like 122 no matter how many beams you are firing. That increases damage quite a bit. As for cruisers, as I said before, it makes sense that they would get ~1/10th the amount of power drain resistance as nadion inversion gives as a passive. They have more power potential than the other ships, so it doesn't make sense why they drain power the fastest. Even if an escort is built for weapon power, a cruiser would still have more.
As for sci, I agree with that, mostly. When a sci captain is not the best at sci abilities, something is wrong. At the same, a sci shouldn't be able to fill the role of a tac(dps). I think beams are fine where they are. The real problem is just that sci abilities are too weak -and- kinetic, instead of exotic.
Otherwise the ability to buff damage through BOff powers is fine but it doesnt hit hard enough in the short time you have to make a difference.
R.I.P
Beam DPS ~900 x6, Cutting Beam ~1100. 6500 dps broadside. Can be more if there's another beam in front, but probably a torp would be there, but it wouldn't be fired most of the time. If there is another beam, 6500 + 900 = 7400.
Cannon DPS, ~1300 x3, 2x Turrets ~650, Cutting Beam ~1100 = 6300 dps forward facing. For this one, adding the torp dps of ~900 would bring it up to ~7200 dps.
These are relatively average dps values. I know some are higher, but some are lower. I think a big part of the reason beams do less is because of power levels. Escorts have more damage -per weapon-, so their power drain is lower than a cruiser firing more weapons. Escorts also have 10 more weapon power than the average cruiser.
The real shame is that feds don't have a plasmonic leech console
This is the kind of posts I like to see. people speaking truthfully from experience.
I have recently started a Sci alt just out of curiousity. After seeing this post, It shows me that Science is a role worth working towards and it makes me want to work that much harder to work my alt up.
Thanks.
SCE ADVISORY NOTICE: Improper Impulse Engine maintenance can result in REAR THRUSTER LEAKAGE. ALWAYS have your work inspected by another qualified officer.
I don't have a problem with tac having too much dps, i have a problem that dps is the only thing that wins battles. When was the last time you won an stf or any mission in space without killing everything.
Remember in the shows:
Captain - "Target their weapons, Fire"
Tactical - "Their weapons are offline"
COmms - "They are hailing us"
Captain - "Open a channel"
Or what if in cap and hold the science and engineers had ways of capping points faster. Perhaps the science could cap faster, but the engineer could be 2nd quickest with the escort slower. This would mean that a kdf escort and a fed cruiser would on a point would still let the point slowly come under fed control.
Or what if we had a compelled energy and kinetic weapon slots, say 1 forward facing torpedo on every ship. End the beam and cannon boats that are an anomaly to a pathetically shallow skill tree.
Finally and this is required. Break the skill tree and ship loadouts into pve and pvp options. Maintaining balance in both pvp and pve with the same systems makes the game shallow and the compromises made are like agreements in congress. When you get something that works neither side is happy.
These are just a couple of the ideas i have put on other forum posts that I would like to get feedback on and become popular if they are well accepted.
There are more ways to make a star trek game than leaving a sector of space littered with broken and burned hulks. This game is becoming more and more brainless and less involved. The old science tree was complicated, and needed work, but dumbing it down to the 4th grade level was not a fix.
The players lobbied and lobbied for ages to get that change made. This is the game they wanted.
I fly science ships for both PvE and PvP.... I have never once felt obsolete...
not a real option but hey if they don't want to listen and just wana slap quick fixes on everything(read as lazy coding) fine by me other companies would love my money and make me feel i got something worth it too! By no means am i saying cryptic is a terrible company but what i am saying they sure are confused in what they need to be doing right now dont they?
Actually the main request was to have each damage type cost the same or to have the more costly proc better/more.
Here's another one. When this game was designed, they like multiple other game titles failed to take into account that the code for pve and pvp skills need to be separate or you end up with this kind of problem. Or worse players having to respect constantly to get out of their characters as much as they possibly can.
Tonight I respeced my sci toon, I actually had to spec heavily into simple things that other ships take for granted because I am being forced to use an escort to survive. I had to leave points out of certain things sci captains usually use because I don't have enough sci slots anymore using an escort to use what I normally do. So now I have abilities trained on officers I won't use until they fix whats wrong with the science abilities.
Now I like my escort don't get me wrong, but the point is I shouldn't have to choose one, no one should. At first when i came back to this game I wanted to fly my Bellerophon but because they don't actually use the data from the shows for many of the advantages this ship had over even the intrepid I couldn't use it, it's subpar to the cannon of the ship in the lore. Both the intrepid and Bellerophon should have more precise sensors speeding up the SA abilities, they should have faster cooldowns on deflector abilities since they both come equipped technically with 2 deflectors, and they the consoles they have are a complete joke. The photonic shockwave hardly does any damage at all, the shield have always remained up on my enemies (they did fix it so any torpedo would work that was nice) and the Armor from the intrepid is too slow between the time the shields go down and the armor goes up there is plenty of time for any ship to do a kinetic hit to the hull and instantly destroy these ships. It's sad really.