im not being hostile, im just not using rational fallacy. since such tactics are intellectual dishonesty if deliberate, which means automatic admission of defeat.
I accept your concession gracefully, and humbly, in the spirit with which it was offered.
Oh, you meant I was using fallacy. That's awkward. Well, calling something a fallacy because you can't beat it is... you guessed it... a FALLACY. I notice too that you didn't even label anything I said as a fallacy, you simply asserted that I used one, and then went on to completely ignore the most important parts of my post. Let me demonstrate:
the tech level on the ships only applies if you limit ships ingame to the tech level they come fitted with....
snipped a whole lot of questionable factoids that proves my point about how different people can have totally different opinions on reality, let alone different opinions on what is 'real' in the make-believe world of Trek.
....which means you compare similar sized ships for comparison, because that means you will get comparable tolerances in systems due to comparable engineering science levels. hence my comparison between the heavy cruiser, adv escort and recon sci. all of which have reengineered versions, for quick comparison.
Two things are wrong here. I'll start with the minor one, which is that I directly engaged that exact example in my response, and pointed out that there is a 350 person difference in crew between those ships, which could possibly maybe account for the difference in engine performance if the space savings on the escort were used for, you know, impulse engines, inertial dampers and other technobabbles that make the ship 'go faster' (Red paint, if you're an Ork fan) You didn't respond to that, unless you want to seriously defend the claim that the 'engineering tolerances' of hypothetical ships made out of various alloys of unobtainium are knowable to the degree that it is worth our time calculating them, rather than simply going with what seems cool/good for game balance.
Second thing, which I suppose I should have mentioned first, is that you didn't respond to the idea that this size thing is an art concern, not a balance one, so this entire discussion is meaningless as far as balance is concerned. So, apologies to anyone who read the previous paragraph, since even though I'm right, it doesn't matter for the rest of the discussion.
The part that does matter is the balance discussion. I note that there is no response that I can see to my assertion that agility only matters secondarily to a ships ability in the Tanking/Damage/CC arena, and that therefore balancing based on Tanking/Damage/Agility is missing the boat. Are you conceding that?
...you go into vortex elite and the average escort can easlity hold probes on one side, an average cruiser will need help occasionally. drawing out the time needed making it harder to get the optiol sue to the lack of dps. same for cse.
cruisers will need to use the 10% rule since they wont dps the transformer otherwise.
where as a group of escorts at the same skill level con just blow through it.
If it is true that the 'average' cruiser can't hold probes on a side solo, then I weep for the state of the average cruiser player. Nobody I know has that problem, at least not once they finish outfitting their ship.
Making things a little harder is not the same as making them impossible, and as long as both classes can do it, I'm not seeing the gross injustice you are. What you seem to bent out of shape about is that running a cruiser may mean you have to play a game that you ostensibly enjoy for a few more minutes than someone running an escort would. Not seeing the real issue.
i
i did not say that escorts just 'do too much damage' i said they break balance due to their agility negating cannon firing arcs, and really, in this game pvp is a balance joke.
you just need to look at a lot of the tournament rules put in place to change things vaguely try and balance things.
Right, the effect of the agility of escorts is that they keep cannons on target longer, which breaks the balance of the game for reasons that are not damage? Please explain?
And those PVP rules have more to with balancing out perceived broken console powers, especially things like Grav Pulse etc. I don't think I've ever seen anyone ban RCS on escorts because they already 'turn too much'. Besides, if you are saying pvp is a mess and shouldn't be the basis for balance concerns, then that leaves us PVE, where things are more or less fine, as we've established.
How does one 'compete' with another player in an STF? Is it merely time to complete, or do you go ahead and run a parser on the logs and then only give 'gg' after the game to players who were in the top three DPS? I'm highly curious what competition you perceive there to be in those missions.
Edited for: Your response will likely be to bring up Fleet Actions as an example of competitive PVE. I reward you for your clever thinking, but:
1) You can still win first place on those in a cruiser (at least Gorn Minefield). I know because I have done it
2) Nothing says you can't have an escort that you run just for those missions, if winning them is really that important to you. Well, nothing but your stubborn insistence that all ships should be exactly equally good for all missions
3) Rep gear and fleet gear are still generally better than the rewards anyway, so again, the stakes here are fairly low.
And yet taking a shuttle into a STF is considered trolling so extreme the developer no longer allows it to happen.
Bottom Line
Do DHCs outperform beams by a vast degree?
Are escorts tanky enough to survive the vast majority of PvE content without support?
Is strong Sci really helpful compared to a dabble(Grav Well 1 vs 3) in PvE content?
Anyone who does not answer yes to the above needs to L2P simply put.
But the entire debate here comes down to how everyone looks at the game. I play mmos because for some strange reason I enjoy grind/farm/progression gaming and am honest enough to admit it. And really if you don't find a new genre honestly. But I am also an optimizer and part of the enjoyment of the grind is finding fun effective ways to do it. If it is not effective, its not fun, and its junk. To others the progression aspect does not need optimizing they just like it to exist in the back round.
Obviously they and I will not see eye to eye on what should be adjusted within the game. If you like to stop and smell the roses you really don't care how fast the shoes on your feet let you run. I want to get to the finish so to me it does matter.
I take a tiny issue with the end of your post here, in that I think it would be better to say that you want to finish FIRST, so speed matters - if I'm understanding your analogy, the 'stop and smell the roses' player is still finishing content successfully, just not optimally.
And I totally agree that this is a fundamental difference in play style. I also agree that cruisers are probably not optimal choices for most pve content. But then, very few things ARE optimal, since by definition only one build can be 'best' - making something else more powerful won't change that, it will just shift what is 'optimal' to something new. You will never reach a scenario where all builds are equally optimal, and I don't even think we want that, as it would make player choice much less relevant, and remove one avenue of player enjoyment from the game (learning systems to optimize builds)
For the beam discussion, before we go overboard on buffing beams, I think the place to start is simply to adjust the firing cycle to be closer to what DHC have, and see how that does. As I've said though, I'm not opposed to a general beam buff, we just don't need to have cruisers doing escort levels of damage.
i run a cruiser and i have to say i dont blame escorts for being op.My cruiser can hold up just fine against a escort.But once you start getting into 1 cruiser vs 3-4 (This happens after weaker ships get poped) you will find yourself in need of help.But the same goes for escorts if you are facing a cruiser you do just fine because your shields can take a cruisers dmg and a cruiser can take your escorts dmg.But once you start having 2-3 cruiser attacking you the low dps starts taking a toll on a escorts weaker shields.But what i have left out is science vessels (aside from the,wells,carriers maybe the avi) are useless against both other types of ships. They just dont have any roll and their buffs are waaay to weak.If that isnt enough they have the worst weapon slot setup in game.We need to increase sci powers and sci ship strength to much higher levels than they are now.Bottom line escorts are not op science ships are just up.
PoPeRz WiLl PoPeRz Ur BoPeRz UnTilz PoPeRz GeTz GaNkz
yes. that would be the strawmanning, red herring and hyperbole.
And where were these in my post? And where was your defense of the use of these terms? Declaring something a fallacy doesn't make it so, especially when you are not even citing what parts of the arguments are fallacious and explaining why. It sure feels like you are just throwing around words that you learned somewhere in an attempt to make them fit.
Here's what I understand a strawman to be: It's when you distort someone's argument so that it develops a logical flaw that was not present in the original argument for the purposes of defeating it. I don't think I did this, and I don't think you've ever made it clear where you think I did. Note that argument by analogy and taking an argument to its logical extremes are often mistaken for strawman-ing, but they are not at all the same thing, and in fact aren't even necessarily fallacious, since they allow us to test an argument in different situations, and see if they still make sense. Hence my example using a hypothetical all CC no weapons ship, which was intended to demonstrate a weakness in your balance model at the extreme ends of specialization, and to demonstrate that CC, rather than 'agility' should be used as a primary balancer.
Go ahead and defend your accusations with specific references and explanations, and I will rebut them or amend my arguments as needed. I suspect more of the former than the latter.
no, you snipped details about the iowa class ships from your own flawed comparison to modern naval forces, that to be consistant, would mean stripping them of the modern systems fitted to them.
you can add quote mining to the list of ''accolades''.
No, what I did was try to avoid getting sucked into a 'debate' about what exactly was and was not refit on an Iowa class battleship, which is a topic that I suspect neither of us is an expert on, was a misunderstanding of the battleship/carrier example (that example was meant to be between battleships and carriers built during WWII, not between WWII carriers and modern battleships), and in which you conceded that there were some things, like armor and propulsion systems, which didn't get refit because it wouldn't make sense to do so, which was all I was after anyway. The bit about ships from different decades was actually mostly about carriers and subs, and I believe that there are significant differences in the tech levels of ships built in different eras because they will have different electronics, etc. and given the Navy's assertion that some ships are becoming obsolete and need to be replaced, there seems to be a limit to what refitting those ships can do.
Oh, and lest we forget, none of that even matters anyway, because something seeming realistic to you is NOT ABOUT BALANCE.
crew size being a factor is that stats by size equasion. stop treating like its anything else.
not like the galaxy (as example of big canon ship) is given its 1000 to 3000 crew compliment.
even the fleet refeit only gets to 1000, so conoality of crew size isnt strictly used ingame.
So, you want to reassign crew levels arbitrarily to figures you like more than the ones in game so that you can avoid having to admit that ships with fewer crew members might be using the space saved by having a smaller crew on larger engines. Do you see how that's about what you prefer from an aesthetics standpoint? We already know from the movies and shows that most ships can be run by basically just the bridge crew, at least for a time. Heck, an Advanced Escort can evidently be run by a handful of Romulans, or a pair of holograms. There's no 'need' for any more crew beyond your sense that such small crews are unrealistic, but again, that's not a balance issue.
right, you want to push the trinity model. which is broken in this game unless you want to put a really hard nerf on escort survivability to balance their dps and agility and or by moving all the resist buffs from escorts to cruisers to fit that model.
No, what I want is for people to realize that in the trinity model, the nature of most combat based MMOs is that tanks and CCers often are less good at solo play since solo play is necessarily going to require killing something, which is what the DPS class is good at. On the other hand, in team based play, the support classes often shine, and make a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
yea, well, pugs are fun.
and even a new escort with green placeholder gear will perform this role easily. not so for any cruiser besides the chelgret.
actually, i just want to relax and enjoy content most of the time, and that is much easier in an escort where i dont even have to try.
So, cruisers are a bit harder to use well than escorts. So what? I've seen enough successful cruiser captains to believe that whatever notional disadvantages cruiser have, they are pretty easily overcome, at least in terms of being able to successfully complete content.
And if you feel like you enjoy playing in an escort more, why is that a reason to nerf escorts? Why not buff cruisers instead, so that they will be just as much fun for you?
if it was a ship like the heagh'ta... or however you spell it i wouldnt be so bothered.
i fully support small ships with lighter armor out turning and out dpsing a proportionally bigger ship at the same time thanks to the focus fire of dhc's.
but when you have 3 ships of similar size, with similar hulls and one class dominates two factors of the dps health and agility system, to the point that it fits the definition of an exploit, i have a broblem
Just because it annoys you doesn't make it an exploit. It doesn't even make it a balance issue. If the size thing bothers you so much, go complain about it in the art forum. And while you're there, tell them that my giraffe's spots are the wrong color, and that he needs a longer neck. It's totally unrealistic that his neck is as short as it is, given his crew compliment. It's practically an exploit!
sarcasm has an element of wit. you have not displayed that.
condescension is acting in a mockingly respectful manner to someone you mean to treat an inferior, you have displayed that. not me.
the most i did was point out fallacious reasoning.
I dunno, I'm pretty pleased with my level of wit, maybe you just missed it?
Also, at this point it seems like most of what you are taking issue with is how I'm presenting my arguments, not the arguments themselves, which is a sure sign this conversation has jumped the shark. I think the oh so interesting discussion of fallacies that I admittedly baited is probably well outside the point, since you've long since stopped denying that agility isn't a primary balance tool, because it only serves to amplify the role a ship plays, but is not, in itself a role, and I just don't think you are ever going to see why they fact that the size of the ships versus their stats annoys you isn't a balance issue, and isn't even necessarily unrealistic.
I take a tiny issue with the end of your post here, in that I think it would be better to say that you want to finish FIRST, so speed matters - if I'm understanding your analogy, the 'stop and smell the roses' player is still finishing content successfully, just not optimally.
And this is where the disconnect lies. I do not care about finishing first, that would mean I am in competition with everyone else and completely misses the mark. It has to do with my nature and personality. If I can do sample task in ten minutes with method A or five minutes with method B then method B wins every time provided the end result is the same. Even if I dislike method B I will use it or just not do the task. Now if method A took six minutes to method B taking five and I enjoyed method A more than I would use it, that is an acceptable variance.
And I totally agree that this is a fundamental difference in play style. I also agree that cruisers are probably not optimal choices for most pve content. But then, very few things ARE optimal, since by definition only one build can be 'best' - making something else more powerful won't change that, it will just shift what is 'optimal' to something new. You will never reach a scenario where all builds are equally optimal, and I don't even think we want that, as it would make player choice much less relevant, and remove one avenue of player enjoyment from the game (learning systems to optimize builds)
Actually this is also incorrect. I find beams to perform better in the new Romulan sector dailies where one blows up ships mostly because the pet spam and enemy displacement makes FaW win compared to CSV in my personal experience and has far less with the actual raw performance. An apples vs oranges if you will which is good design. The powers that is. And the idea of choice in your example is kind of silly. Choice means having valid and effective options. CSV or CRF on a ship is an example of choice, both are good but in different ways. Also there is an acceptable level of variance in good balance or anything when talking about systems really. Twice as good is not an acceptable level. No you will never have perfect balance but the disparity when you learn to mix/max is insane. I can kill all the probe spawns solo in ISE with my tac defiant before they can go active and heal. That is over 60k DPS burst. That is insane.
For the beam discussion, before we go overboard on buffing beams, I think the place to start is simply to adjust the firing cycle to be closer to what DHC have, and see how that does. As I've said though, I'm not opposed to a general beam buff, we just don't need to have cruisers doing escort levels of damage.
Why? Escorts are as tanky as cruisers out of the box. One has 10% more shield/hull, one has 10% more damage avoidance. The original basic design was a simple beams are better at long range, cannon at short range. The cannon abilities add more overall damage output while beam abilities have more utility. The weapons and ships when judged alone should be nearly equal before those mitigating factors enter the equasion.
No, what I want is for people to realize that in the trinity model, the nature of most combat based MMOs is that tanks and CCers often are less good at solo play since solo play is necessarily going to require killing something, which is what the DPS class is good at. On the other hand, in team based play, the support classes often shine, and make a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Actually the first trinity game I ever played, Everquest, well lets just say the DPS class did not solo very well. He died if he tried to solo. Only hybrids were even capable of soloing.
Then there was WoW where everyone could solo. Which is likely what your perception is shaped by and that is fine, although even in WoW kill speed was not everything. Nor did it vary by as large of a margin as it does in STO at least when I played.
But yeah the trinity. It is garbage in a casual style MMO. Sorry there are better ways to go about this for group content. Just a few examples that STO does well.
1) Splitting up the party! Like STFs or Azure Noobula
2) Force multipliers ! Attack pattern Beta o so delicious. Even a gravity well and tractor beam fall into this category.
3) Group buffs! Seriously lacking right now but oh well.
4) Debuffs! Oh wait the boss type mobs are immune at the moment.
Sadly for every step they take foward they take one back. *sigh*
And this is where the disconnect lies. I do not care about finishing first, that would mean I am in competition with everyone else and completely misses the mark. It has to do with my nature and personality. If I can do sample task in ten minutes with method A or five minutes with method B then method B wins every time provided the end result is the same. Even if I dislike method B I will use it or just not do the task. Now if method A took six minutes to method B taking five and I enjoyed method A more than I would use it, that is an acceptable variance.
The 'finish first' line was basically shorthand for 'completion time matters'. You want to do things faster. That's one valid way of looking at the game, but I think it is also valid to argue that finishing a leisure activity faster is not automatically better (insert your own 'that's what she said' here). I also think that arguing from the standpoint of "I can complete everything through methods A or B, but I would rather use method A and have the result be closer to method B" is much more clearly subjective, and is different from saying "Method A is totally useless and worthless because method B gets me the same result, but faster, and therefore method B needs to be brought 'inline' with A."
Actually this is also incorrect. I find beams to perform better in the new Romulan sector dailies where one blows up ships mostly because the pet spam and enemy displacement makes FaW win compared to CSV in my personal experience and has far less with the actual raw performance. An apples vs oranges if you will which is good design. The powers that is. And the idea of choice in your example is kind of silly. Choice means having valid and effective options. CSV or CRF on a ship is an example of choice, both are good but in different ways. Also there is an acceptable level of variance in good balance or anything when talking about systems really. Twice as good is not an acceptable level. No you will never have perfect balance but the disparity when you learn to mix/max is insane. I can kill all the probe spawns solo in ISE with my tac defiant before they can go active and heal. That is over 60k DPS burst. That is insane.
Choice means that choosing one option over another has an impact on completing the mission. The CRF versus CSV is a great example - in most PVE content, CSV is the better choice, IMO, because you are more often facing multiple targets than you are facing single targets. If I choose CRF instead, it means I have made a conscious choice to sacrifice a bit of optimization overall to gain a bit more damage against single targets, like STF bosses or PVP enemies, and that choice matters. If CRF and CSV (or even no cannon powers at all, and slotting an attack pattern or something instead) were equally effective in all situations (perfect balance), then my choice no longer matters as much.
In terms of the difference between a min/max and non min/max build, I think you are right that system knowledge makes a huge difference, but I think that's unavoidable
in any game, and I think STO actually does a better job of balancing for the middle than many games do. EVE, for example, requires far, far more out of players in terms of system knowledge in order for players to be minimally competent, while in STO, you are right that min/maxers will be much more effective (probably more than twice as effective, even), but the 'average' players will still be effective enough to complete all the content in the game.
Why? Escorts are as tanky as cruisers out of the box. One has 10% more shield/hull, one has 10% more damage avoidance. The original basic design was a simple beams are better at long range, cannon at short range. The cannon abilities add more overall damage output while beam abilities have more utility. The weapons and ships when judged alone should be nearly equal before those mitigating factors enter the equasion.
Mostly because I think the difference in effectiveness isn't as great as some people think, and I think fixing the drain difference and buffing damage runs the risk of making beam cruisers do so much damage that escorts are only worth taking because they look cool, unless you are going to add some special utility to escorts so that they still have a role to perform that no other ship does better.
And before you argue that cruisers are in that exact position now, I will say that cruisers do currently have a role that they can do better than escorts, its just that people don't value that role as highly as they do building for damage, so many people spec cruisers as solo generalists instead of team-based healer/tanks.
I'm also not trying to say everything is perfect and rosy, I'm just saying the problem isn't as bad as people think, and that drastic solutions may, in fact, cause more severe problems elsewhere. In other words, the current system has room for improvement, but it works adequately, so let's change things a little at a time, instead of making sweeping changes that are less predictable.
Actually the first trinity game I ever played, Everquest, well lets just say the DPS class did not solo very well. He died if he tried to solo. Only hybrids were even capable of soloing.
Then there was WoW where everyone could solo. Which is likely what your perception is shaped by and that is fine, although even in WoW kill speed was not everything. Nor did it vary by as large of a margin as it does in STO at least when I played.
But yeah the trinity. It is garbage in a casual style MMO. Sorry there are better ways to go about this for group content. Just a few examples that STO does well.
1) Splitting up the party! Like STFs or Azure Noobula
2) Force multipliers ! Attack pattern Beta o so delicious. Even a gravity well and tractor beam fall into this category.
3) Group buffs! Seriously lacking right now but oh well.
4) Debuffs! Oh wait the boss type mobs are immune at the moment.
Sadly for every step they take foward they take one back. *sigh*
You are right that I'm thinking of the trinity mostly in terms of the post-WoW iteration, as I think that is a more accurate representation of the state of the MMO field today, as they move more and more away from their roots in pen and paper RPGs with the inherent assumption of a group of 3-4 players. That, and I never played Everquest.
In a world where all players are expected to be able to complete the basic content solo, the classes that are designed to support other players will necessarily look weaker by comparison to the typical DPS class, especially if the support players actually spec for the support role. It's like a cruiser in STO running Extend III - great in a group with someone, but a waste of a slot if you are playing alone. Tactical powers, on the other hand, never run into that problem. There are no tac skills that don't also potentially benefit the escort as much, and they all help the escort do it's primary job of killing things better.
Thus, in general, DPS classes are better solo, because they don't have the same opportunity cost for specializing that the support classes do. For a solo player, then, the support classes look gimped, but for a player who regularly plays with a group, and who specs his ship specifically for the support role, those classes can be far more powerful than their solo performance would suggest. It's certainly not the only way to balance things, but it's what we've got.
"Method A is totally useless and worthless because method B gets me the same result, but faster, and therefore method B needs to be brought 'inline' with A."
Choice means that choosing one option over another has an impact on completing the mission. The CRF versus CSV is a great example - in most PVE content, CSV is the better choice, IMO, because you are more often facing multiple targets than you are facing single targets. If I choose CRF instead, it means I have made a conscious choice to sacrifice a bit of optimization overall to gain a bit more damage against single targets, like STF bosses or PVP enemies, and that choice matters. If CRF and CSV (or even no cannon powers at all, and slotting an attack pattern or something instead) were equally effective in all situations (perfect balance), then my choice no longer matters as much.
Yes, although I would argue that perfect balance is not desirable but instead the choices are relatively balanced in some way like we do in fact see with CSV/CRF. I actually prefer CRF myself most times although my Tacs cheat and take both.
In terms of the difference between a min/max and non min/max build, I think you are right that system knowledge makes a huge difference, but I think that's unavoidable
in any game, and I think STO actually does a better job of balancing for the middle than many games do. EVE, for example, requires far, far more out of players in terms of system knowledge in order for players to be minimally competent, while in STO, you are right that min/maxers will be much more effective (probably more than twice as effective, even), but the 'average' players will still be effective enough to complete all the content in the game.
I agree with the factual part of what you are saying. I disagree that a heavy reliance upon a player having a deep system knowledge granting such a significant advantage is desirable though. I blame Cryptic entirely for allowing this to happen with the various minor imbalances, number of counter intuitive mechanics, and lack of documentation. Examples in order beams vs cannons, default ship weapon setups, and just about every single mechanic. I know how weapon power over-capping actual works and the math of it I doubt even 1% of the player population knows or has bothered to properly test it.
Mostly because I think the difference in effectiveness isn't as great as some people think, and I think fixing the drain difference and buffing damage runs the risk of making beam cruisers do so much damage that escorts are only worth taking because they look cool, unless you are going to add some special utility to escorts so that they still have a role to perform that no other ship does better.
And before you argue that cruisers are in that exact position now, I will say that cruisers do currently have a role that they can do better than escorts, its just that people don't value that role as highly as they do building for damage, so many people spec cruisers as solo generalists instead of team-based healer/tanks.
First off the difference in effectiveness is as great as some people think. However, how important that difference is and how much of a priority fixing it should be varies greatly. This is the big disconnect I still believe.
Secondly escorts are the best tanks. Tank = Damage Mitigation/Avoidance. All ships have the same capacity for mitigation and escorts have the best capability to avoid it as do their boff slots. A properly setup Akira or Steamrunner are absolutely ridiculous in this respect especially with proper support. Science vessels are the best healers provided you pick the right one. Finally for a self sustaining tank science once again wins the day by pushing over 2k shield regen per facing every 6 seconds and I did not make that up, very doable along with 5 proc based heals on consoles for more silliness.
Cruisers are hybrids by design. Strong tank (EPtS 3), strong support (Extend), moderate CC (EWP), bit of DPS (DEM), and a touch of healing (ET/Aux 2 Strut). Base avoidance, slight advantage in hull repair aside from borked crew mechanic, base shield, scattered power bonus. Hybrids tend to fair poorly when pushed to the limits fortunately STO doesn't do that and most fail to realize this.
I'm also not trying to say everything is perfect and rosy, I'm just saying the problem isn't as bad as people think, and that drastic solutions may, in fact, cause more severe problems elsewhere. In other words, the current system has room for improvement, but it works adequately, so let's change things a little at a time, instead of making sweeping changes that are less predictable.
I agree nothing drastic needs to be done especially with how this game's mechanics work. The only issue facing beams is the power drain mechanics that need fixed. A big part of the, well the largest part really, of the too tanky problem is the vastly overpowered shield power math combined with ensign level EPtS although Borg 2 Piece + Leadership might give that one a run for it's money. And turn rate mechanics are a quality of life issue it just makes some ships not fun but it has very little to do with balance.
I just want them to do something, anything, to fix one of those underlying issues. Well beyond adding a reputation beam array that is obviously over powered (compared to other beam arrays) and will now cause issues if they ever get around to fixing beams in general.
Oh and almost forgot, Tac Math is Bad. By that I mean damage multipliers (APA, APO, GDF, EPtW, NOT consoles/skill) actually multiplying one another is also bad and needs fixed.
not once did i say agility wasnt a balance tool.i have maintained all along that agility is part of balance all the way through this thread
and not once did i claim 'agility' was a 'role'.
theres an example as requested.
An example of what? I didn't say that you said that agility isn't a balance issue. Hell, I didn't even say that I thought agility wasn't a balance issue. What I said was that you stopped defending the claim that agility was a more important balance consideration than CC, which was the core of the balance discussion until you got sidetracked further into accusing me of fallacies and defending the claim that your understanding of Starfleet engineering is better than mine.
For the last time (I promise), the balance argument I am making is this: You say ships should be balanced based on damage, healing, and AGILITY. It's right there in your sig. I am saying I disagree with your prioritization of agility over crowd control in your balance scheme because agility only matters in so far as it makes it easier to deliver heals, tank damage, deliver damage, and deliver crowd control. I haven't seen you respond to that claim, and I was pointing that out. Do you have a reason why anything I just said is not true?
while ignoring that contemporary systems on those ships would be of similar tech level and subject to similar material tolerances that would apply to both.
even if they can be run with just the bridge crew, something pretty common ingame when ships lose all their crew to kinetics they didnt run well, and given that maintenence of any system will require x level of manpower depending on its size and complexity, it is far from out of the question that a larger ship at teh same tech level will require proportionally larger crews to be optimal.
So now my fictional ship can't have bigger fictional engines because my fictional equipment requires a larger fictional crew to keep up with the fictional maintenance schedule? I mean, at some point you have to realize how insane this is sounding, yeah? Why is it so hard to accept that even if ships share a similar tech level, core differences in design might create different performance profiles on similar sized ships? I'm not even saying you have to like that interpretation, I'm just saying that it is POSSIBLE, and that means that your concerns about ship size are a matter of opinion, and not fact.
Hell, what you are saying might even make sense, if there was a 'maintenance' stat, or if crew level determined how often I had to return to port for regular upkeep, or something. As it is, however, in this game what my ship looks like has nothing to do with how it operates, because, again, this is a GAME, with some necessary abstractions. Just follow me on my thought experiment here: If my advanced escort model were changed to something different, would that change how it operated from a game balance standpoint? Couldn't your issue be resolved equally well by reducing the physical model size of the ship? Doesn't that mean that this is not about balance, but rather about how you feel about what the game looks like?
that is fine when it is working, which it clearly is not.
given the tacit recognition that escorts are superior. as backed up by the popularity of sci escort vestas, the escort cruiser chelgrets, and the better return for investment for investment demonstrated by the jhas that has had people throwing money for keys in order to acquire.
Vestas are popular because they can do everything, and they are carriers to boot. Chel Grets are popular? I guess maybe, but I still see more oddys than I do breen ships. JHAS are popular because they are the BEST escort, which would be reason enough to prefer them, in much the same way that Vestas are the best Sci ships. Also, you know, facts not in evidence, you have no real idea how many players are running those ships, only your anecdotal experience, yadda yadda.
Sure, escorts might be a bit better at killing things quickly than the other ships, and that might mean that they are FASTER at finishing most PVE content, but that imbalance is not a big deal as long as all ships can, in fact, be reasonably expected to finish all the content in the game, which they can. Not being as fast isn't 'useless', unless you only define 'useful' as 'the optimal'. If you want to say that there is room to make cruisers do a bit more damage, that's fine. If you want to say that escorts need to be nerfed to make cruisers look good by comparison, that's not helping you finish missions faster, so I don't know why you want that, other than spite. And if you want to keep making claims like "Cruisers are useless", that's just factually wrong.
who, other than those seeking self imposed difficults is going to go for a deal that involves them putting forth the same effort for clearly lesser reward, except because it is skinned as a startrek game that gives expectations and an outside of game source of canon.
People for whom success is not measured by how fast you complete a mission, but by how much fun you had while doing it? People who are willing to admit that while broadsiding with a cruiser isn't as effective as a scatter volley from a slowly reversing escort, it is more emotionally satisfying? People who don't mistake 'this isn't as easy for me as it is for him' for 'This is impossible and I should go cry on the forums'?
it is not a nerf. i will still have all the dps i had before.
i will still have all the hull a had before
at best i might need to use a braincell to think of best attack vectors, and even funnier, if a took a cannon build hec with stats be size, i could get even more dps, and it would still be balanced by its again slower turn rate given its closer to the size of an ambassador and in canon has a crew compliment of 500, not the 200(for fleet hec) ingame.
If it is not a nerf, then what is the point? If it is making it harder or the escort to play, and your problem is that cruisers aren't as much fun to play because they are too slow through the content, how is this doing anything other than punishing other players so that everyone can have equal unfun together, instead of making cruisers more fun to play?
deductive reasoning time is the ingame balence of dhc's against beams limited by firing arc - yes is a conflict between 2 vorchas, one with dhcs one with beams balanced - yes is a fight between two escorts one with dhc's balanced -questionable, powers could be a big wildcard is a fight between a heavy cruiser and an advanced escort balanced - no
what changes? agility
but nice example of hyperbole you had there
Deductive reasoning doesn't mean stating a bunch of opinions as fact and then incorrectly asserting as your conclusion that a non-related example about the disconnect between art assets and balance is hyperbole, but okay.
I'll agree to your first 'fact'.
I'll agree to your second 'fact'
I'll assert that if the answer to the second question was 'yes', you haven't done nearly enough work to establish why the escort scenario is different, other than saying powers matter here. Didn't they matter in the fight between two Vor'chas? Why is this different?
Which brings us to our last point - I don't agree that the fight is necessarily unbalanced, because a poorly built escort could lose to a well built cruiser, and vice versa, and if they are equally skilled that fight is probably a draw.
What does that prove, anyway? That in a one on one the escort might have an advantage? What happens in a team match? Who cares about PVP balance anyway, since you've been arguing about PVE this whole time?
You 1 v 1 Romulan Warbirds? How? The Countdown is still what, 5 days away?
It takes tact and cunning with a good choice of tactics, it's come close a few times, it's the episodes where i fight warbirds
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
I hate to say this but here goes. When i do estfs i know from the very beginning what will happen. jump into a group of mostly to all escorts/bops? easy 5 min optional win!
However if i jump in and im surrounded by sovereigns and gals? i know its gonna be awhile and slim to no chance of optional. DPS in sto is king, all pve content is accomplished more efficiently the faster you can burn stuff down. Thats it. Thats as far as cryptics creativity goes.
PvP? this is what i spend most my time on. While yes its not good to have all escort teams, sci captains will choose carriers or timeships 9/10 times over cruisers. most cruisers in pvp are just zombies floating around that the opposing team ignores and kill last, if ever, wiping out his team around him.
engineers? sadly mostly irrelevant in team pvp as they re captain heals are solo only
yes, and where do they pay for that advantage? as it stands, they dont.
the basic model is founded on att (dps regardless of spike/sustained) def (health, passive regen rate etc) and spd (responsivness, accelleration, max speed)
to put the endgame ships into this model upon which the mmorts trinity is based, escorts dominate both ''att'' and ''spd'' uncontested.
the issue isnt that they can spike higher, or have highe base damage potential
its that the firing arc of the hagh dps weapons, intended to be a 'balance factor' is broken thanks to escorts like my adv escort being able to turn on a diam, eliminating the narrow arc from consideration in balance, thus breaking part of the game, and becoming an 'exploit'.
Escorts pay for it with lesser crew and lesser consoles for eng and sci.
There is a balance factor.
You just dont want to see it, or you have met too many un-skilled cruiser captains who have no idea of what they are doing how to skill.
The firing arc is a restriction, no matter the turn rate you can not always have your weapons aimed at your enemy.
And i"f," if you could you have cooldowns on abilities like crf and csv, so even if you do have your nose directed at enemy at all time you will not be giving burst damage all the time.
When all of your specialized attacks are on cooldown your cannons do not do more much damage than beam weapons do because cannon fire rate cooldowns 3-4 seconds on each cannon or something i think it is.
its a cruiser in cannon.
i was pointing out the stupidity of the ship classification system just to fluff out/pad out the so called escort class to fit the PvE mmorpg model that doesnt work in PvP, or with technology, or with ST canon expectation
That's an opinion you have.
Your expectations will not always be met "just because".
that is why its an exploit.
the narrow firing arc is supposed to be escapable, that is why it is only a narrow arc in the first place.
that is why the only real counter to an average escort, is another escort, or half the average team
No the narrow firing arc is because of the high capability to do massive damage.
A good example is csv, it does alot lesser damage than crf, and that is because it spreads cannon burst to wider angle.
That is about skilling, still.
The whole thing is connected.
Do you feel like steering a cruiser, then you skill for that and if you know what you are doing, an escort will not be a problem.
oh good, you understand that much, others havnt...
that is why i say cannons vs beams are balanced, but the ship stats that are breaking it.
The ships are balanced also.
But most people when they skill, using a cruiser or escort concentrate on doing damage.
On an escort that is just perfect, on a cruiser however, it is not.
Cruisers are not intended for high damage, they are there for support and taking aggro.
If you use a cruiser in pvp, you can not skill as when you use an escort, then you are doomed.
that, being the source of the problem. there is no reason for it other than the rational fallacy of circular reasoning...
Actually there is no "circular reasoning behind it.
Ship that have a concentrated tactical lay out will have a a lower impulse mod, to go in quick and do damage.
Ships with a higher impulse mod also will also have another tactical lay out to fit it's purpose more.
That means that a ship with a higher impulse mod will have lesser tac consoles, mainly consoles for eng and sci and their boff slots will also be different to reflect what the ship is capable of doing.
In this case when it concerns escorts, they are out to do heavy damage.
Guess what a cruisers role in this is....
i generally avoid pvp for the reasons i have stated and use an escort for the sake of it being so much easier
It's too bad you feel that way.
For me pvp is the most fun and challenging there is!
Pve is... Well too easy.
yes, they are broken, granted a bonus that fits the definition of an ''exploit'' due to negating other balance factors in the game.
they have the same health as the other classes yet dominate the att and spd factors of ships the same cost and of the same level with the same gear.
You still miss the point about skilling...
You still miss the point that ships that are not escorts will have another role to play.
same for all ship classes.
except the only ones with meaningfuil dps are escorts.
escorts that can and do use the tractor beams you mention.
It is, but the rate at which you loose crew is set when you go in a trap, a ship with a small crew will make the ship crewless alot faster than it will do on a cruiser that have 100's of people on it, some even have more than 1000 in crew.
So a ship with that much crew have alot more survivability than an escort does.
I've said this many times...
A properly skilled cruiser will not have a problem with taking out escort.
Yes escorts can use tractors...
But if you skill for damage, you probably dont concentrate so much on grav gens....
So the tractor beams hold is weak.
i dont need another ''star trek'' mmo for comparison, just other games. demanding such is disingenuous at best and usually cretinous.
Ofcourse you dont!
Other games must ofcourse set the standards for what STO has to be!
*blink*
Perhaps every single game should be exactly alike as the other...
Yes, that is fun!
yes, it is connected together, enen the entire purpose of a narrow firing arc that would actually matter if escorts wherent given agility by magic.
It's not called magic, it's called impulse modifier, actually a working thing on all ships.
The firing arc is restricted in that way that it is capable to do heavy damage in bursts, not all of the time, like BO you can't use that all the time either.
A weapon loadout like that on a cruiser makes it too restricted to be able to function properly.
And that is why escorts are quicker, more nimble to be able to utilize the narrow firing arc of cannons.
the impulse modifer ingame is part of the problem its part of what is granting escorts the superiority that peple use them for, justifying the impulse modifier by using the impulse modifier is circular reasoning. a rational fallacy.
Escorts need that superiority to be able to use cannons in the way they are supposed to be used, dealing heavy damage in bursts.
It's a modifier that all ships have built in, and the settings are adjusted for what type of ship it is, like boff slots and console slots are also adjusted in the same way.
for one thing it negates heavy cannon narrow firing arc, like i said.
for another, it grants the escort class control over the enguagment since it is the faster ship under all circumstances
Yes exactly like an escort is supposed to be.
That is like our todays Corvettes used in the naval fleets.
They are quicker more manouverable and do have an impressive firepower.
Though, not as much as a battleship or destroyer it does it's job well, get in, sting painfully and out, and continue doing so.
It has been tested countless times and it is a strategy that keeps working.
yet it is still easy mode to sue an escort.
Yes, why it that so?
dont need a ''startrek'' game. i can compare the models of both eve and planetside.
except the scale difference in st is nowhere even close to eve...
that would be like taking shuttles into hive elite at best ?_?
I've tried EVE, didn't fall to my liking at all.
Anyways, there is different mechanics between these games and how they are setup to work.
Aparently Star Trek Online do not follow their setup in their game.
With all rights.
and they cannot fight remotly as well.
its like a fight between a wrecking ball & a concrete wall. and saying its even because occasionally a lump of building breaks the crane swinging the ball.
and guess what, i survive better in an escort than a cruiser.
why? because my escort can kill whatever attacking me 3 times faster if not quicker.
and if it cant? i can actually get out out the way. enless of course, its another escort.
They are not meant to fight aswell.
Why do you think the Jem'Hadar used their attack ships on all fronts?
And why they had so many of them?
Because it is a working strategy.
The klingons know this with their BOP's, the Jem'Hadar, Breen...
Ofcourse you can get away, that is what's it built for, it supposed to go into the fight, unleash hell, get out and continue to do so.
If you can survive better in your escort, you have the wrong skillset for the cruiser.
I've been saying this alot now.
You need to make a judgment on what you want to use, if you want a cruiser, you skill your Captain for steering a cruiser.
Understand that skilling is a very important thing to think about depending on what type of ship you want to use, what your playstyle is.
If your ship has mainly eng and sci consoles and Com and Lt.com eng/sci stations it's not the smartest thing to skill your captain for damage doing/ escort ship.
That takes away the main survivability for your ship.
I have no idea what you're talking about, I made myself perfectly clear, as any objective reader will admit. Saying something is not primary is not the same as saying it doesn't matter at all, and pointing out that you haven't responded to something is not the same as arguing that you've actively admitted it. Don't blame me if you assumed what I said wasn't precisely what I meant.
yes, agility makes things easier, my point.
thing is, i am saying that with a 2x advantege in base turn is negating dc's limited arc is easily ott.
And my point is the only reason you are saying that this is OP is because it allows escorts to do more damage, and thus makes them faster through missions. You keep asserting that this is not about nerfing escort damage, but the reason you keep coming back to again and again is that agility means escorts keep their cannons on target longer than you think they should, which I am assuming means you think they are doing too much damage, since that is the only connection I can see there that makes sense. I'm saying that yes, agility matters, but the 'problem' you have identified could be solved by lowering escort damage directly, increasing cruiser agility, increasing cruiser damage, or decreasing escort agility. The one you have chosen and are fixated on is the last one, and that is the one that seems aimed and making the game less 'fun' overall.
The reason this is important is that you say things like 'it's not fun to be slower in a mission than an escort', but your solution to that is seeking to punish the escort so that you don't, I dunno, feel bad by comparison anymore? If you can't have fun in the game because someone in a hypothetical STF with all escorts could do the mission faster, or even because the escort in the mission you are on is making things easier for you and you feel like you're not the star, that's sad. I've got bad news for you, Mary Sue: You AREN'T the star of the show, and if your fun depends on always being the 'top dog', then that sounds exhausting. When I am in an STF with other people, my goal is not to show them up, my goal is for us, as a team, to beat the mission, and have fun doing it. I will assert that my philosophy is far healthier than yours, and maybe you would have more fun if you adopted it.
because it is so unbelievable that two combat ships with comparable tech willl have similar levels of maintenance demands?
No, because it is not necessarily true that they will. See, I've never said that your version isn't possible, I've said that it's not the ONLY possible version of canon, and I am saying there are two problems with your assertion that you've got a 'lock' on the correct way to think of ship design - the first is that it is causing you to argue for game balance from a perspective that is colored by your aesthetic preferences, and thus causes questionable priorities in terms of improving said balance. The second point is that even if your interpretation of canon is POSSIBLE, it is not the only one, and there is no objective reason for anyone to prefer your version over mine, there is only your subjective view that your version 'makes more sense'. Both versions can be made internally consistent, as well as be made consistent with 'canon'. You just like your version better. That's fine, just don't keep acting like your aesthetic preference is the same thing as an objective balance issue.
You have even accepted that design differences can create SOME difference in performance, but stubbornly refuse to see that there is no clear bright line we can draw and say "This level of difference is okay, but that one over there is not". There is only what feels 'ridiculous' to you, versus what feels 'ridiculous' to me, and there is no reason anyone but you should value your feelings on the matter, just like nobody but me needs to value mine.
didnt say yes did i, so that is not my position is it.
rare to see beam escorts, abusing the z-axis blindspots could be an option to neutralise incoming dps
Reading is fundamental. I didn't say you said 'yes' to the third item, I said if you say yes to the second item (which you did), then you need to explain in more detail why the answer to the third is suddenly 'maybe' and not 'yes'. Your explanation here about 'abusing the Z-axis' seems to indicate that the beam escort will win? How does that interact with your earlier and oft-repeated claim that the balance problem is that cannon escorts can keep their cannons on target too long? And why is it that only escorts can spiral upwards? Evasive, AP:O, E power Engines, a Deuterium battery, and Aux to ID all give the cruiser the ability to use a quick agility burst to get out of cannon arc for a few moments. It might not be as easy as an escort can do it, but then a cruiser can carry more heals/resists, so doesn't need to dodge as much damage.
Oh, and remember, PVP doesn't matter for balance discussions, because PVP balance is 'a mess'. If you really want to keep at this PVP comparison, then I again suggest you go talk to PVPers and see what they think of your ideas. Unless you really think you understand PVP balance better than the people who actually play it.
the att def spd model is not pve or pvp centric. though is that you finally admitting that escorts have easymode?
No, that's me repeating myself again by saying that I agree that escorts are better at finishing PVE content faster in many cases, but that the extent to which I find that a 'balance issue' is pretty small, because I don't feel like 'finish faster' is a worthwhile reward anyway, assuming both groups are getting the optional, because I don't feel punished or cheated or whatever when someone else has an easier time doing something that I'm doing for fun anyway, and because in a cooperative team setting, like PVP or STFs, cruisers and support science ships have the potential to be much more useful in their support roles than an additional escort would be in the same team as simply MAOR DPS!.
very basic eg
a generalist high level ship in this model would have stats totalling 30 in 10-10-10(joat cruiser)
an att slanted ship would still be 30 total, but its could be 30 total with 17-3-10(average speed glass connon.)
a spd slanted ship 5-10-15 (hunting dog)
you could then take these 3 stats and apply them to 3 ships providing it didnt stray a stupid amount from established canon, then deal with any disparities from boff powers
what is better is that at this point you can apply whatever console & boff slots to give them class specialisation that opens it up to players as to the route to take.
and guess what. your halloed rpg holy trinity is based on this!
the rpg trinity done right is when it adheres to this model.
so you could still have ships adhering to the classic model if you so wish
agile glass cannon? get a b'rel or other small tac slanted ship
want a tank? get a galaxy or some other lumbering monstrosity
want a CC ship? could be any size ship with the spec for the way you want to run your cc ship.
maybe you would like to balance it out?
some nice moderate size ships like the recon sci, adv escort or heavy cruiser
but in sto, its not done right, sto uses a broken pve balance model.
This would make sense if we knew what '10' tanking versus '3' tanking actually meant, for example. We don't however, and whatever value you choose to set as the 'average' is going to be just as arbitrary a choice as the 'fairy magic' system you are seeking to replace. The only difference is it will be an arbitrary assignment that you like more.
Also, it's not at all clear to me how size enters into this equation - when you say 10 is average maneuverability, does that mean objectively, across all ship sizes every ship with a '10' in the maneuver stat has basically the same impulse mod, inertia stat and turn rate? Does that then mean that if I make a ship more agile, it automatically must be smaller, have fewer hit points, etc? If so, how do I stat up the Defiant under your system, since it is a small ship that is maneuverable, hard hitting, and can take a beating in return? If I give it straight tens, like the 'generalist' I guess it is supposed to be, then doesn't it have to be increased in size to justify the 'average' maneuver stat? If I give it the higher maneuver stat so that I can justify its smaller size, how do I give it high enough Dmg and tanking ability to perform those roles effectively?
Or does the 'agility' value get pro-rated based on the ship's size, such that a large cruiser could be constructed that gives over relatively more mass for engines, and is more agile than an average vessel of its size, while simultaneously being less agile than a smaller craft with 'average' agility for that size band. If this is the way you are doing things, what does 'average' mean for each 'size' band, and why is the number you pick there less arbitrary than the numbers Cryptic has already assigned?
Finally, how do I stat up a sci heavy ship in this scheme? Or any 'support' focused ship, for that matter? Say I want a small, relatively agile, moderately tac-focused sci ship (Nova, basically). How do I do that? What does that ship 'give up' in return for having a bunch of crowd control and disable powers? None of your current categories seems to account for those powers, so how do I balance them? You say I can choose a ship of any size to be a CC boat, by giving it a 'CC' spec, but I have no idea how I'm supposed to 'pay' for those abilities in your system. If there's no 'CC' category, that I have to 'pay for' by reducing stats elsewhere, why not just give all ships in the game the maximum level of CC ability? This is the hole in your system that I've been pointing out all along. BTW, this is also part of the answer to the Defiant puzzle above - the reason it is possible in the current system to have a tough, small, strictly combat vessel like the Defiant is that its weakness is that it is not a viable support/CC ship.
In the end, what it boils down to is this: Right now, Cryptic builds an art asset for a ship and assigns that ship a role based on their interpretation of how the ship should fit into the classification system in the game, and then they assign stats to that ship based primarily on making sure it can perform its given role. You find that to be arbitrary and aesthetically unpleasant. You, instead, would prefer a system where the size of a ship determined nearly everything about that ship, based on your own arbitrary and incomplete model of balance. I am saying there is no reason to prefer your fairy magic over Cryptic's, and that your system is incomplete in any case.
I rest my case, and leave it to the reader to decide who has defended their claims better.
Cryptic should consider adjusting doff spots by ship type; obviously escorts, with their small crew compliments, would offer the fewest active doff slots, while cruisers, so heavily devoted to their large crews, can offer the most active doff slots.
"Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society." - Aristotle
Cryptic should consider adjusting doff spots by ship type; obviously escorts, with their small crew compliments, would offer the fewest active doff slots, while cruisers, so heavily devoted to their large crews, can offer the most active doff slots.
That's a neat idea.
I'd also consider reducing the raw power of tactical consoles by introducing a diminishing returns mechanic to stacking same-type console, just like having more energy weapons has a diminishing return because of power loss.
It'd also encourage using torpedoes and energy weapons in balance
your problem.
i gave you the quote you where looking for
when i never claimed agility wasnt a balance tool, to deny it in the first place
Like I said in my last post, I am comfortable with where this discussion has ended, and nothing you've said in this post does anything but reinforce my belief that your system is both flawed and based only on your personal vision of what Trek should be, not any objective standard of balance. That said, this bit still gets under my skin, so let me lay it out for you.
This is the quote from me that you are taking issue with:
"since you've long since stopped denying that agility isn't a primary balance tool, because it only serves to amplify the role a ship plays, but is not, in itself a role, and I just don't think you are ever going to see why they fact that the size of the ships versus their stats annoys you isn't a balance issue, and isn't even necessarily unrealistic."
This is your response:
"i never claimed agility wasnt a balance tool, to deny it in the first place"
Here's why you are wrong: I said you stopped denying (as in did not respond to) my argument that CC ability is more important than agility as a balancing tool. Your response is to deny having made the claim that agility was unimportant. That is non responsive, and distorts or misunderstands my very clear sentence.
I hope this helps make my position more clear.
In any event, I think your quest to implement your conception of balance is quixotic at best, so rather than waste more time on a dead argument, I wish you luck in your attempt. To quote Han Solo, "you're gonna need it".
Here's how I know that beams CAN kill escorts, or even cruisers (and that they can win first place in Gorn minefield etc): I run them on an escort, and it works fine. I don't even run 6 of them, I run 4 (and then 3 torps), and yet I can still do enough damage to burn down most PVP targets.
That right there is the stupendously huge flaw in your argument: You are running "it" on an escort. Escorts have a natural +15 to weapon power, which directly translates into higher overall DPS. Escorts have more tactical console slots, which (somewhat) directly translates into higher overall DPS. Escorts have more tactical bridge officer slots, which directly translates into higher overall DPS. Escorts have much higher top speed, turn rate, and acceleration which allows them to keep torpedo launchers in arc for much longer, which directly translates into higher overall DPS.
Why don't you try it again in an actual cruiser? Cruisers don't have dual cannons, which directly translates into loss of overall DPS. Cruisers have less tactical console slots, which directly translates into loss of overall DPS. Cruisers have less tactical bridge officer slots, which directly translates into loss of overall DPS. Cruisers have far lower top speed, turn rate and acceleration which prevents them from reliably keeping torpedo launchers in arc, which directly translates into loss of overall DPS.
Your argument of flying a "fail boat" escort is misleading at best. It is exceedingly difficult to build a true fail boat on an escort. Even one running rainbow cannons can output decent DPS. Cruisers, on the other hand, is extremely easy to build fail boats. Even a well-built cruiser will have difficulty keeping up with a rainbow escort.
And your other argument that you fly a Galaxy for solo play is irrelevant. Why don?t you try flying one in an ESTF, or even PvP.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Well this thread has pretty much devolved into 'You're wrong!' followed by 'Nuh uh! YOU'RE wrong!'
Because it's the same old tired arguments, and same old lack of action.
It's also because too many people make arguments to the contrary, without actual firsthand experience to back it up.
Then there's the people who make a point of pursuing a vendetta against others, and a particularly bad sign of this is when they start breaking posts and quoting them out of context.
Comments
Oh, you meant I was using fallacy. That's awkward. Well, calling something a fallacy because you can't beat it is... you guessed it... a FALLACY. I notice too that you didn't even label anything I said as a fallacy, you simply asserted that I used one, and then went on to completely ignore the most important parts of my post. Let me demonstrate:
snipped a whole lot of questionable factoids that proves my point about how different people can have totally different opinions on reality, let alone different opinions on what is 'real' in the make-believe world of Trek.
Two things are wrong here. I'll start with the minor one, which is that I directly engaged that exact example in my response, and pointed out that there is a 350 person difference in crew between those ships, which could possibly maybe account for the difference in engine performance if the space savings on the escort were used for, you know, impulse engines, inertial dampers and other technobabbles that make the ship 'go faster' (Red paint, if you're an Ork fan) You didn't respond to that, unless you want to seriously defend the claim that the 'engineering tolerances' of hypothetical ships made out of various alloys of unobtainium are knowable to the degree that it is worth our time calculating them, rather than simply going with what seems cool/good for game balance.
Second thing, which I suppose I should have mentioned first, is that you didn't respond to the idea that this size thing is an art concern, not a balance one, so this entire discussion is meaningless as far as balance is concerned. So, apologies to anyone who read the previous paragraph, since even though I'm right, it doesn't matter for the rest of the discussion.
The part that does matter is the balance discussion. I note that there is no response that I can see to my assertion that agility only matters secondarily to a ships ability in the Tanking/Damage/CC arena, and that therefore balancing based on Tanking/Damage/Agility is missing the boat. Are you conceding that?
If it is true that the 'average' cruiser can't hold probes on a side solo, then I weep for the state of the average cruiser player. Nobody I know has that problem, at least not once they finish outfitting their ship.
Making things a little harder is not the same as making them impossible, and as long as both classes can do it, I'm not seeing the gross injustice you are. What you seem to bent out of shape about is that running a cruiser may mean you have to play a game that you ostensibly enjoy for a few more minutes than someone running an escort would. Not seeing the real issue.
Right, the effect of the agility of escorts is that they keep cannons on target longer, which breaks the balance of the game for reasons that are not damage? Please explain?
And those PVP rules have more to with balancing out perceived broken console powers, especially things like Grav Pulse etc. I don't think I've ever seen anyone ban RCS on escorts because they already 'turn too much'. Besides, if you are saying pvp is a mess and shouldn't be the basis for balance concerns, then that leaves us PVE, where things are more or less fine, as we've established.
I apologize, I do enjoy being snarky, but you're right, you brought enough condescension for the whole class, so I suppose I could keep some of mine.
How does one 'compete' with another player in an STF? Is it merely time to complete, or do you go ahead and run a parser on the logs and then only give 'gg' after the game to players who were in the top three DPS? I'm highly curious what competition you perceive there to be in those missions.
Edited for: Your response will likely be to bring up Fleet Actions as an example of competitive PVE. I reward you for your clever thinking, but:
1) You can still win first place on those in a cruiser (at least Gorn Minefield). I know because I have done it
2) Nothing says you can't have an escort that you run just for those missions, if winning them is really that important to you. Well, nothing but your stubborn insistence that all ships should be exactly equally good for all missions
3) Rep gear and fleet gear are still generally better than the rewards anyway, so again, the stakes here are fairly low.
I take a tiny issue with the end of your post here, in that I think it would be better to say that you want to finish FIRST, so speed matters - if I'm understanding your analogy, the 'stop and smell the roses' player is still finishing content successfully, just not optimally.
And I totally agree that this is a fundamental difference in play style. I also agree that cruisers are probably not optimal choices for most pve content. But then, very few things ARE optimal, since by definition only one build can be 'best' - making something else more powerful won't change that, it will just shift what is 'optimal' to something new. You will never reach a scenario where all builds are equally optimal, and I don't even think we want that, as it would make player choice much less relevant, and remove one avenue of player enjoyment from the game (learning systems to optimize builds)
For the beam discussion, before we go overboard on buffing beams, I think the place to start is simply to adjust the firing cycle to be closer to what DHC have, and see how that does. As I've said though, I'm not opposed to a general beam buff, we just don't need to have cruisers doing escort levels of damage.
Here's what I understand a strawman to be: It's when you distort someone's argument so that it develops a logical flaw that was not present in the original argument for the purposes of defeating it. I don't think I did this, and I don't think you've ever made it clear where you think I did. Note that argument by analogy and taking an argument to its logical extremes are often mistaken for strawman-ing, but they are not at all the same thing, and in fact aren't even necessarily fallacious, since they allow us to test an argument in different situations, and see if they still make sense. Hence my example using a hypothetical all CC no weapons ship, which was intended to demonstrate a weakness in your balance model at the extreme ends of specialization, and to demonstrate that CC, rather than 'agility' should be used as a primary balancer.
Go ahead and defend your accusations with specific references and explanations, and I will rebut them or amend my arguments as needed. I suspect more of the former than the latter.
No, what I did was try to avoid getting sucked into a 'debate' about what exactly was and was not refit on an Iowa class battleship, which is a topic that I suspect neither of us is an expert on, was a misunderstanding of the battleship/carrier example (that example was meant to be between battleships and carriers built during WWII, not between WWII carriers and modern battleships), and in which you conceded that there were some things, like armor and propulsion systems, which didn't get refit because it wouldn't make sense to do so, which was all I was after anyway. The bit about ships from different decades was actually mostly about carriers and subs, and I believe that there are significant differences in the tech levels of ships built in different eras because they will have different electronics, etc. and given the Navy's assertion that some ships are becoming obsolete and need to be replaced, there seems to be a limit to what refitting those ships can do.
Oh, and lest we forget, none of that even matters anyway, because something seeming realistic to you is NOT ABOUT BALANCE.
So, you want to reassign crew levels arbitrarily to figures you like more than the ones in game so that you can avoid having to admit that ships with fewer crew members might be using the space saved by having a smaller crew on larger engines. Do you see how that's about what you prefer from an aesthetics standpoint? We already know from the movies and shows that most ships can be run by basically just the bridge crew, at least for a time. Heck, an Advanced Escort can evidently be run by a handful of Romulans, or a pair of holograms. There's no 'need' for any more crew beyond your sense that such small crews are unrealistic, but again, that's not a balance issue.
No, what I want is for people to realize that in the trinity model, the nature of most combat based MMOs is that tanks and CCers often are less good at solo play since solo play is necessarily going to require killing something, which is what the DPS class is good at. On the other hand, in team based play, the support classes often shine, and make a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
So, cruisers are a bit harder to use well than escorts. So what? I've seen enough successful cruiser captains to believe that whatever notional disadvantages cruiser have, they are pretty easily overcome, at least in terms of being able to successfully complete content.
And if you feel like you enjoy playing in an escort more, why is that a reason to nerf escorts? Why not buff cruisers instead, so that they will be just as much fun for you?
Just because it annoys you doesn't make it an exploit. It doesn't even make it a balance issue. If the size thing bothers you so much, go complain about it in the art forum. And while you're there, tell them that my giraffe's spots are the wrong color, and that he needs a longer neck. It's totally unrealistic that his neck is as short as it is, given his crew compliment. It's practically an exploit!
I dunno, I'm pretty pleased with my level of wit, maybe you just missed it?
Also, at this point it seems like most of what you are taking issue with is how I'm presenting my arguments, not the arguments themselves, which is a sure sign this conversation has jumped the shark. I think the oh so interesting discussion of fallacies that I admittedly baited is probably well outside the point, since you've long since stopped denying that agility isn't a primary balance tool, because it only serves to amplify the role a ship plays, but is not, in itself a role, and I just don't think you are ever going to see why they fact that the size of the ships versus their stats annoys you isn't a balance issue, and isn't even necessarily unrealistic.
And this is where the disconnect lies. I do not care about finishing first, that would mean I am in competition with everyone else and completely misses the mark. It has to do with my nature and personality. If I can do sample task in ten minutes with method A or five minutes with method B then method B wins every time provided the end result is the same. Even if I dislike method B I will use it or just not do the task. Now if method A took six minutes to method B taking five and I enjoyed method A more than I would use it, that is an acceptable variance.
Actually this is also incorrect. I find beams to perform better in the new Romulan sector dailies where one blows up ships mostly because the pet spam and enemy displacement makes FaW win compared to CSV in my personal experience and has far less with the actual raw performance. An apples vs oranges if you will which is good design. The powers that is. And the idea of choice in your example is kind of silly. Choice means having valid and effective options. CSV or CRF on a ship is an example of choice, both are good but in different ways. Also there is an acceptable level of variance in good balance or anything when talking about systems really. Twice as good is not an acceptable level. No you will never have perfect balance but the disparity when you learn to mix/max is insane. I can kill all the probe spawns solo in ISE with my tac defiant before they can go active and heal. That is over 60k DPS burst. That is insane.
Why? Escorts are as tanky as cruisers out of the box. One has 10% more shield/hull, one has 10% more damage avoidance. The original basic design was a simple beams are better at long range, cannon at short range. The cannon abilities add more overall damage output while beam abilities have more utility. The weapons and ships when judged alone should be nearly equal before those mitigating factors enter the equasion.
Actually the first trinity game I ever played, Everquest, well lets just say the DPS class did not solo very well. He died if he tried to solo. Only hybrids were even capable of soloing.
Then there was WoW where everyone could solo. Which is likely what your perception is shaped by and that is fine, although even in WoW kill speed was not everything. Nor did it vary by as large of a margin as it does in STO at least when I played.
But yeah the trinity. It is garbage in a casual style MMO. Sorry there are better ways to go about this for group content. Just a few examples that STO does well.
1) Splitting up the party! Like STFs or Azure Noobula
2) Force multipliers ! Attack pattern Beta o so delicious. Even a gravity well and tractor beam fall into this category.
3) Group buffs! Seriously lacking right now but oh well.
4) Debuffs! Oh wait the boss type mobs are immune at the moment.
Sadly for every step they take foward they take one back. *sigh*
The 'finish first' line was basically shorthand for 'completion time matters'. You want to do things faster. That's one valid way of looking at the game, but I think it is also valid to argue that finishing a leisure activity faster is not automatically better (insert your own 'that's what she said' here). I also think that arguing from the standpoint of "I can complete everything through methods A or B, but I would rather use method A and have the result be closer to method B" is much more clearly subjective, and is different from saying "Method A is totally useless and worthless because method B gets me the same result, but faster, and therefore method B needs to be brought 'inline' with A."
Choice means that choosing one option over another has an impact on completing the mission. The CRF versus CSV is a great example - in most PVE content, CSV is the better choice, IMO, because you are more often facing multiple targets than you are facing single targets. If I choose CRF instead, it means I have made a conscious choice to sacrifice a bit of optimization overall to gain a bit more damage against single targets, like STF bosses or PVP enemies, and that choice matters. If CRF and CSV (or even no cannon powers at all, and slotting an attack pattern or something instead) were equally effective in all situations (perfect balance), then my choice no longer matters as much.
In terms of the difference between a min/max and non min/max build, I think you are right that system knowledge makes a huge difference, but I think that's unavoidable
in any game, and I think STO actually does a better job of balancing for the middle than many games do. EVE, for example, requires far, far more out of players in terms of system knowledge in order for players to be minimally competent, while in STO, you are right that min/maxers will be much more effective (probably more than twice as effective, even), but the 'average' players will still be effective enough to complete all the content in the game.
Mostly because I think the difference in effectiveness isn't as great as some people think, and I think fixing the drain difference and buffing damage runs the risk of making beam cruisers do so much damage that escorts are only worth taking because they look cool, unless you are going to add some special utility to escorts so that they still have a role to perform that no other ship does better.
And before you argue that cruisers are in that exact position now, I will say that cruisers do currently have a role that they can do better than escorts, its just that people don't value that role as highly as they do building for damage, so many people spec cruisers as solo generalists instead of team-based healer/tanks.
I'm also not trying to say everything is perfect and rosy, I'm just saying the problem isn't as bad as people think, and that drastic solutions may, in fact, cause more severe problems elsewhere. In other words, the current system has room for improvement, but it works adequately, so let's change things a little at a time, instead of making sweeping changes that are less predictable.
You are right that I'm thinking of the trinity mostly in terms of the post-WoW iteration, as I think that is a more accurate representation of the state of the MMO field today, as they move more and more away from their roots in pen and paper RPGs with the inherent assumption of a group of 3-4 players. That, and I never played Everquest.
In a world where all players are expected to be able to complete the basic content solo, the classes that are designed to support other players will necessarily look weaker by comparison to the typical DPS class, especially if the support players actually spec for the support role. It's like a cruiser in STO running Extend III - great in a group with someone, but a waste of a slot if you are playing alone. Tactical powers, on the other hand, never run into that problem. There are no tac skills that don't also potentially benefit the escort as much, and they all help the escort do it's primary job of killing things better.
Thus, in general, DPS classes are better solo, because they don't have the same opportunity cost for specializing that the support classes do. For a solo player, then, the support classes look gimped, but for a player who regularly plays with a group, and who specs his ship specifically for the support role, those classes can be far more powerful than their solo performance would suggest. It's certainly not the only way to balance things, but it's what we've got.
Pretty much what I was trying to say yes.
Yes, although I would argue that perfect balance is not desirable but instead the choices are relatively balanced in some way like we do in fact see with CSV/CRF. I actually prefer CRF myself most times although my Tacs cheat and take both.
I agree with the factual part of what you are saying. I disagree that a heavy reliance upon a player having a deep system knowledge granting such a significant advantage is desirable though. I blame Cryptic entirely for allowing this to happen with the various minor imbalances, number of counter intuitive mechanics, and lack of documentation. Examples in order beams vs cannons, default ship weapon setups, and just about every single mechanic. I know how weapon power over-capping actual works and the math of it I doubt even 1% of the player population knows or has bothered to properly test it.
First off the difference in effectiveness is as great as some people think. However, how important that difference is and how much of a priority fixing it should be varies greatly. This is the big disconnect I still believe.
Secondly escorts are the best tanks. Tank = Damage Mitigation/Avoidance. All ships have the same capacity for mitigation and escorts have the best capability to avoid it as do their boff slots. A properly setup Akira or Steamrunner are absolutely ridiculous in this respect especially with proper support. Science vessels are the best healers provided you pick the right one. Finally for a self sustaining tank science once again wins the day by pushing over 2k shield regen per facing every 6 seconds and I did not make that up, very doable along with 5 proc based heals on consoles for more silliness.
Cruisers are hybrids by design. Strong tank (EPtS 3), strong support (Extend), moderate CC (EWP), bit of DPS (DEM), and a touch of healing (ET/Aux 2 Strut). Base avoidance, slight advantage in hull repair aside from borked crew mechanic, base shield, scattered power bonus. Hybrids tend to fair poorly when pushed to the limits fortunately STO doesn't do that and most fail to realize this.
I agree nothing drastic needs to be done especially with how this game's mechanics work. The only issue facing beams is the power drain mechanics that need fixed. A big part of the, well the largest part really, of the too tanky problem is the vastly overpowered shield power math combined with ensign level EPtS although Borg 2 Piece + Leadership might give that one a run for it's money. And turn rate mechanics are a quality of life issue it just makes some ships not fun but it has very little to do with balance.
I just want them to do something, anything, to fix one of those underlying issues. Well beyond adding a reputation beam array that is obviously over powered (compared to other beam arrays) and will now cause issues if they ever get around to fixing beams in general.
Oh and almost forgot, Tac Math is Bad. By that I mean damage multipliers (APA, APO, GDF, EPtW, NOT consoles/skill) actually multiplying one another is also bad and needs fixed.
An example of what? I didn't say that you said that agility isn't a balance issue. Hell, I didn't even say that I thought agility wasn't a balance issue. What I said was that you stopped defending the claim that agility was a more important balance consideration than CC, which was the core of the balance discussion until you got sidetracked further into accusing me of fallacies and defending the claim that your understanding of Starfleet engineering is better than mine.
For the last time (I promise), the balance argument I am making is this: You say ships should be balanced based on damage, healing, and AGILITY. It's right there in your sig. I am saying I disagree with your prioritization of agility over crowd control in your balance scheme because agility only matters in so far as it makes it easier to deliver heals, tank damage, deliver damage, and deliver crowd control. I haven't seen you respond to that claim, and I was pointing that out. Do you have a reason why anything I just said is not true?
So now my fictional ship can't have bigger fictional engines because my fictional equipment requires a larger fictional crew to keep up with the fictional maintenance schedule? I mean, at some point you have to realize how insane this is sounding, yeah? Why is it so hard to accept that even if ships share a similar tech level, core differences in design might create different performance profiles on similar sized ships? I'm not even saying you have to like that interpretation, I'm just saying that it is POSSIBLE, and that means that your concerns about ship size are a matter of opinion, and not fact.
Hell, what you are saying might even make sense, if there was a 'maintenance' stat, or if crew level determined how often I had to return to port for regular upkeep, or something. As it is, however, in this game what my ship looks like has nothing to do with how it operates, because, again, this is a GAME, with some necessary abstractions. Just follow me on my thought experiment here: If my advanced escort model were changed to something different, would that change how it operated from a game balance standpoint? Couldn't your issue be resolved equally well by reducing the physical model size of the ship? Doesn't that mean that this is not about balance, but rather about how you feel about what the game looks like?
Vestas are popular because they can do everything, and they are carriers to boot. Chel Grets are popular? I guess maybe, but I still see more oddys than I do breen ships. JHAS are popular because they are the BEST escort, which would be reason enough to prefer them, in much the same way that Vestas are the best Sci ships. Also, you know, facts not in evidence, you have no real idea how many players are running those ships, only your anecdotal experience, yadda yadda.
Sure, escorts might be a bit better at killing things quickly than the other ships, and that might mean that they are FASTER at finishing most PVE content, but that imbalance is not a big deal as long as all ships can, in fact, be reasonably expected to finish all the content in the game, which they can. Not being as fast isn't 'useless', unless you only define 'useful' as 'the optimal'. If you want to say that there is room to make cruisers do a bit more damage, that's fine. If you want to say that escorts need to be nerfed to make cruisers look good by comparison, that's not helping you finish missions faster, so I don't know why you want that, other than spite. And if you want to keep making claims like "Cruisers are useless", that's just factually wrong.
People for whom success is not measured by how fast you complete a mission, but by how much fun you had while doing it? People who are willing to admit that while broadsiding with a cruiser isn't as effective as a scatter volley from a slowly reversing escort, it is more emotionally satisfying? People who don't mistake 'this isn't as easy for me as it is for him' for 'This is impossible and I should go cry on the forums'?
If it is not a nerf, then what is the point? If it is making it harder or the escort to play, and your problem is that cruisers aren't as much fun to play because they are too slow through the content, how is this doing anything other than punishing other players so that everyone can have equal unfun together, instead of making cruisers more fun to play?
Deductive reasoning doesn't mean stating a bunch of opinions as fact and then incorrectly asserting as your conclusion that a non-related example about the disconnect between art assets and balance is hyperbole, but okay.
I'll agree to your first 'fact'.
I'll agree to your second 'fact'
I'll assert that if the answer to the second question was 'yes', you haven't done nearly enough work to establish why the escort scenario is different, other than saying powers matter here. Didn't they matter in the fight between two Vor'chas? Why is this different?
Which brings us to our last point - I don't agree that the fight is necessarily unbalanced, because a poorly built escort could lose to a well built cruiser, and vice versa, and if they are equally skilled that fight is probably a draw.
What does that prove, anyway? That in a one on one the escort might have an advantage? What happens in a team match? Who cares about PVP balance anyway, since you've been arguing about PVE this whole time?
Nah, I'm okay, I'm pretty comfortable with how this has gone.
It takes tact and cunning with a good choice of tactics, it's come close a few times, it's the episodes where i fight warbirds
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
However if i jump in and im surrounded by sovereigns and gals? i know its gonna be awhile and slim to no chance of optional. DPS in sto is king, all pve content is accomplished more efficiently the faster you can burn stuff down. Thats it. Thats as far as cryptics creativity goes.
PvP? this is what i spend most my time on. While yes its not good to have all escort teams, sci captains will choose carriers or timeships 9/10 times over cruisers. most cruisers in pvp are just zombies floating around that the opposing team ignores and kill last, if ever, wiping out his team around him.
engineers? sadly mostly irrelevant in team pvp as they re captain heals are solo only
A monumental oversight there on the part of Cryptic methinks but what has it been three years?
ingame: @.Spartan
Original Cryptic Forum Name: Spartan (member #124)
The Glorious, Kirk’s Protegè
There is a balance factor.
You just dont want to see it, or you have met too many un-skilled cruiser captains who have no idea of what they are doing how to skill.
The firing arc is a restriction, no matter the turn rate you can not always have your weapons aimed at your enemy.
And i"f," if you could you have cooldowns on abilities like crf and csv, so even if you do have your nose directed at enemy at all time you will not be giving burst damage all the time.
When all of your specialized attacks are on cooldown your cannons do not do more much damage than beam weapons do because cannon fire rate cooldowns 3-4 seconds on each cannon or something i think it is.
That's an opinion you have.
Your expectations will not always be met "just because".
No the narrow firing arc is because of the high capability to do massive damage.
A good example is csv, it does alot lesser damage than crf, and that is because it spreads cannon burst to wider angle.
That is about skilling, still.
The whole thing is connected.
Do you feel like steering a cruiser, then you skill for that and if you know what you are doing, an escort will not be a problem.
The ships are balanced also.
But most people when they skill, using a cruiser or escort concentrate on doing damage.
On an escort that is just perfect, on a cruiser however, it is not.
Cruisers are not intended for high damage, they are there for support and taking aggro.
If you use a cruiser in pvp, you can not skill as when you use an escort, then you are doomed.
Actually there is no "circular reasoning behind it.
Ship that have a concentrated tactical lay out will have a a lower impulse mod, to go in quick and do damage.
Ships with a higher impulse mod also will also have another tactical lay out to fit it's purpose more.
That means that a ship with a higher impulse mod will have lesser tac consoles, mainly consoles for eng and sci and their boff slots will also be different to reflect what the ship is capable of doing.
In this case when it concerns escorts, they are out to do heavy damage.
Guess what a cruisers role in this is....
It's too bad you feel that way.
For me pvp is the most fun and challenging there is!
Pve is... Well too easy.
You still miss the point about skilling...
You still miss the point that ships that are not escorts will have another role to play.
It is, but the rate at which you loose crew is set when you go in a trap, a ship with a small crew will make the ship crewless alot faster than it will do on a cruiser that have 100's of people on it, some even have more than 1000 in crew.
So a ship with that much crew have alot more survivability than an escort does.
I've said this many times...
A properly skilled cruiser will not have a problem with taking out escort.
Yes escorts can use tractors...
But if you skill for damage, you probably dont concentrate so much on grav gens....
So the tractor beams hold is weak.
Ofcourse you dont!
Other games must ofcourse set the standards for what STO has to be!
*blink*
Perhaps every single game should be exactly alike as the other...
Yes, that is fun!
It's not called magic, it's called impulse modifier, actually a working thing on all ships.
The firing arc is restricted in that way that it is capable to do heavy damage in bursts, not all of the time, like BO you can't use that all the time either.
A weapon loadout like that on a cruiser makes it too restricted to be able to function properly.
And that is why escorts are quicker, more nimble to be able to utilize the narrow firing arc of cannons.
Escorts need that superiority to be able to use cannons in the way they are supposed to be used, dealing heavy damage in bursts.
It's a modifier that all ships have built in, and the settings are adjusted for what type of ship it is, like boff slots and console slots are also adjusted in the same way.
Yes exactly like an escort is supposed to be.
That is like our todays Corvettes used in the naval fleets.
They are quicker more manouverable and do have an impressive firepower.
Though, not as much as a battleship or destroyer it does it's job well, get in, sting painfully and out, and continue doing so.
It has been tested countless times and it is a strategy that keeps working.
Yes, why it that so?
I've tried EVE, didn't fall to my liking at all.
Anyways, there is different mechanics between these games and how they are setup to work.
Aparently Star Trek Online do not follow their setup in their game.
With all rights.
They are not meant to fight aswell.
Why do you think the Jem'Hadar used their attack ships on all fronts?
And why they had so many of them?
Because it is a working strategy.
The klingons know this with their BOP's, the Jem'Hadar, Breen...
Ofcourse you can get away, that is what's it built for, it supposed to go into the fight, unleash hell, get out and continue to do so.
If you can survive better in your escort, you have the wrong skillset for the cruiser.
I've been saying this alot now.
You need to make a judgment on what you want to use, if you want a cruiser, you skill your Captain for steering a cruiser.
Understand that skilling is a very important thing to think about depending on what type of ship you want to use, what your playstyle is.
If your ship has mainly eng and sci consoles and Com and Lt.com eng/sci stations it's not the smartest thing to skill your captain for damage doing/ escort ship.
That takes away the main survivability for your ship.
I have no idea what you're talking about, I made myself perfectly clear, as any objective reader will admit. Saying something is not primary is not the same as saying it doesn't matter at all, and pointing out that you haven't responded to something is not the same as arguing that you've actively admitted it. Don't blame me if you assumed what I said wasn't precisely what I meant.
And my point is the only reason you are saying that this is OP is because it allows escorts to do more damage, and thus makes them faster through missions. You keep asserting that this is not about nerfing escort damage, but the reason you keep coming back to again and again is that agility means escorts keep their cannons on target longer than you think they should, which I am assuming means you think they are doing too much damage, since that is the only connection I can see there that makes sense. I'm saying that yes, agility matters, but the 'problem' you have identified could be solved by lowering escort damage directly, increasing cruiser agility, increasing cruiser damage, or decreasing escort agility. The one you have chosen and are fixated on is the last one, and that is the one that seems aimed and making the game less 'fun' overall.
The reason this is important is that you say things like 'it's not fun to be slower in a mission than an escort', but your solution to that is seeking to punish the escort so that you don't, I dunno, feel bad by comparison anymore? If you can't have fun in the game because someone in a hypothetical STF with all escorts could do the mission faster, or even because the escort in the mission you are on is making things easier for you and you feel like you're not the star, that's sad. I've got bad news for you, Mary Sue: You AREN'T the star of the show, and if your fun depends on always being the 'top dog', then that sounds exhausting. When I am in an STF with other people, my goal is not to show them up, my goal is for us, as a team, to beat the mission, and have fun doing it. I will assert that my philosophy is far healthier than yours, and maybe you would have more fun if you adopted it.
No, because it is not necessarily true that they will. See, I've never said that your version isn't possible, I've said that it's not the ONLY possible version of canon, and I am saying there are two problems with your assertion that you've got a 'lock' on the correct way to think of ship design - the first is that it is causing you to argue for game balance from a perspective that is colored by your aesthetic preferences, and thus causes questionable priorities in terms of improving said balance. The second point is that even if your interpretation of canon is POSSIBLE, it is not the only one, and there is no objective reason for anyone to prefer your version over mine, there is only your subjective view that your version 'makes more sense'. Both versions can be made internally consistent, as well as be made consistent with 'canon'. You just like your version better. That's fine, just don't keep acting like your aesthetic preference is the same thing as an objective balance issue.
You have even accepted that design differences can create SOME difference in performance, but stubbornly refuse to see that there is no clear bright line we can draw and say "This level of difference is okay, but that one over there is not". There is only what feels 'ridiculous' to you, versus what feels 'ridiculous' to me, and there is no reason anyone but you should value your feelings on the matter, just like nobody but me needs to value mine.
Reading is fundamental. I didn't say you said 'yes' to the third item, I said if you say yes to the second item (which you did), then you need to explain in more detail why the answer to the third is suddenly 'maybe' and not 'yes'. Your explanation here about 'abusing the Z-axis' seems to indicate that the beam escort will win? How does that interact with your earlier and oft-repeated claim that the balance problem is that cannon escorts can keep their cannons on target too long? And why is it that only escorts can spiral upwards? Evasive, AP:O, E power Engines, a Deuterium battery, and Aux to ID all give the cruiser the ability to use a quick agility burst to get out of cannon arc for a few moments. It might not be as easy as an escort can do it, but then a cruiser can carry more heals/resists, so doesn't need to dodge as much damage.
Oh, and remember, PVP doesn't matter for balance discussions, because PVP balance is 'a mess'. If you really want to keep at this PVP comparison, then I again suggest you go talk to PVPers and see what they think of your ideas. Unless you really think you understand PVP balance better than the people who actually play it.
No, that's me repeating myself again by saying that I agree that escorts are better at finishing PVE content faster in many cases, but that the extent to which I find that a 'balance issue' is pretty small, because I don't feel like 'finish faster' is a worthwhile reward anyway, assuming both groups are getting the optional, because I don't feel punished or cheated or whatever when someone else has an easier time doing something that I'm doing for fun anyway, and because in a cooperative team setting, like PVP or STFs, cruisers and support science ships have the potential to be much more useful in their support roles than an additional escort would be in the same team as simply MAOR DPS!.
This would make sense if we knew what '10' tanking versus '3' tanking actually meant, for example. We don't however, and whatever value you choose to set as the 'average' is going to be just as arbitrary a choice as the 'fairy magic' system you are seeking to replace. The only difference is it will be an arbitrary assignment that you like more.
Also, it's not at all clear to me how size enters into this equation - when you say 10 is average maneuverability, does that mean objectively, across all ship sizes every ship with a '10' in the maneuver stat has basically the same impulse mod, inertia stat and turn rate? Does that then mean that if I make a ship more agile, it automatically must be smaller, have fewer hit points, etc? If so, how do I stat up the Defiant under your system, since it is a small ship that is maneuverable, hard hitting, and can take a beating in return? If I give it straight tens, like the 'generalist' I guess it is supposed to be, then doesn't it have to be increased in size to justify the 'average' maneuver stat? If I give it the higher maneuver stat so that I can justify its smaller size, how do I give it high enough Dmg and tanking ability to perform those roles effectively?
Or does the 'agility' value get pro-rated based on the ship's size, such that a large cruiser could be constructed that gives over relatively more mass for engines, and is more agile than an average vessel of its size, while simultaneously being less agile than a smaller craft with 'average' agility for that size band. If this is the way you are doing things, what does 'average' mean for each 'size' band, and why is the number you pick there less arbitrary than the numbers Cryptic has already assigned?
Finally, how do I stat up a sci heavy ship in this scheme? Or any 'support' focused ship, for that matter? Say I want a small, relatively agile, moderately tac-focused sci ship (Nova, basically). How do I do that? What does that ship 'give up' in return for having a bunch of crowd control and disable powers? None of your current categories seems to account for those powers, so how do I balance them? You say I can choose a ship of any size to be a CC boat, by giving it a 'CC' spec, but I have no idea how I'm supposed to 'pay' for those abilities in your system. If there's no 'CC' category, that I have to 'pay for' by reducing stats elsewhere, why not just give all ships in the game the maximum level of CC ability? This is the hole in your system that I've been pointing out all along. BTW, this is also part of the answer to the Defiant puzzle above - the reason it is possible in the current system to have a tough, small, strictly combat vessel like the Defiant is that its weakness is that it is not a viable support/CC ship.
In the end, what it boils down to is this: Right now, Cryptic builds an art asset for a ship and assigns that ship a role based on their interpretation of how the ship should fit into the classification system in the game, and then they assign stats to that ship based primarily on making sure it can perform its given role. You find that to be arbitrary and aesthetically unpleasant. You, instead, would prefer a system where the size of a ship determined nearly everything about that ship, based on your own arbitrary and incomplete model of balance. I am saying there is no reason to prefer your fairy magic over Cryptic's, and that your system is incomplete in any case.
I rest my case, and leave it to the reader to decide who has defended their claims better.
That's a neat idea.
I'd also consider reducing the raw power of tactical consoles by introducing a diminishing returns mechanic to stacking same-type console, just like having more energy weapons has a diminishing return because of power loss.
It'd also encourage using torpedoes and energy weapons in balance
Like I said in my last post, I am comfortable with where this discussion has ended, and nothing you've said in this post does anything but reinforce my belief that your system is both flawed and based only on your personal vision of what Trek should be, not any objective standard of balance. That said, this bit still gets under my skin, so let me lay it out for you.
This is the quote from me that you are taking issue with:
"since you've long since stopped denying that agility isn't a primary balance tool, because it only serves to amplify the role a ship plays, but is not, in itself a role, and I just don't think you are ever going to see why they fact that the size of the ships versus their stats annoys you isn't a balance issue, and isn't even necessarily unrealistic."
This is your response:
"i never claimed agility wasnt a balance tool, to deny it in the first place"
Here's why you are wrong: I said you stopped denying (as in did not respond to) my argument that CC ability is more important than agility as a balancing tool. Your response is to deny having made the claim that agility was unimportant. That is non responsive, and distorts or misunderstands my very clear sentence.
I hope this helps make my position more clear.
In any event, I think your quest to implement your conception of balance is quixotic at best, so rather than waste more time on a dead argument, I wish you luck in your attempt. To quote Han Solo, "you're gonna need it".
That right there is the stupendously huge flaw in your argument: You are running "it" on an escort. Escorts have a natural +15 to weapon power, which directly translates into higher overall DPS. Escorts have more tactical console slots, which (somewhat) directly translates into higher overall DPS. Escorts have more tactical bridge officer slots, which directly translates into higher overall DPS. Escorts have much higher top speed, turn rate, and acceleration which allows them to keep torpedo launchers in arc for much longer, which directly translates into higher overall DPS.
Why don't you try it again in an actual cruiser? Cruisers don't have dual cannons, which directly translates into loss of overall DPS. Cruisers have less tactical console slots, which directly translates into loss of overall DPS. Cruisers have less tactical bridge officer slots, which directly translates into loss of overall DPS. Cruisers have far lower top speed, turn rate and acceleration which prevents them from reliably keeping torpedo launchers in arc, which directly translates into loss of overall DPS.
Your argument of flying a "fail boat" escort is misleading at best. It is exceedingly difficult to build a true fail boat on an escort. Even one running rainbow cannons can output decent DPS. Cruisers, on the other hand, is extremely easy to build fail boats. Even a well-built cruiser will have difficulty keeping up with a rainbow escort.
And your other argument that you fly a Galaxy for solo play is irrelevant. Why don?t you try flying one in an ESTF, or even PvP.
yeah, makes me wish there was a 'Report thread to moderator' button somewhere so it could get shut down quickly
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Because it's the same old tired arguments, and same old lack of action.
It's also because too many people make arguments to the contrary, without actual firsthand experience to back it up.
Then there's the people who make a point of pursuing a vendetta against others, and a particularly bad sign of this is when they start breaking posts and quoting them out of context.
R.I.P
Not in STO math.