Conservation of energy looks decent, but could you please add a Flow Capacitor bonus so that we get a boost to shield strips. Ideally, the trait should boost the whole gamut of offensive powers, but it can't do that if it ignores drains.
This shouldn't be used as a band aid for the sorry state of science powers though.
I know this may be unpopular and naive but why do Accurate and Elusive function differently than most of the other general traits available? Why do they still add a flat 10% to accuracy or defense when the other traits add to a character's skills. Shouldn't these two traits add to Starship Maneuvers and Starship Targeting Systems?
This of course does come from the viewpoint of a strictly PvE player so as they are working now might be vital to the mechanics of PvP.
I'd like to voice my concern about Plasma Weapon Specialist currently available to Romulans. They are the only race in the game (that I've seen, at least) that have their own special ground trait to increase weapon damage based on weapon type.
Why is this a big deal? Offensive power creep has gotten bad enough as it is. With more traits being allowed for flat damage increases while only... one for flat damage resistance, it's already going to be bad in terms of defense in ground PvP. Throwing in an extra 10% damage for just one race seems counterproductive if the team is working towards balancing ground PvP. Granted, it's on a race that everyone has access to, but it just seems silly.
As a non-Caitian, "Season 8" offered me a bit of relief in that I could work towards bringing my Humans, Aliens and Trill up to snuff. Now, in order to be a top damage dealing Tac, I'm going to have to roll a Romulan. In order to be a top survivability Tac, I'm going to have to roll a Caitian.
Joined: January 2010
Fanfiction! ZOMG! Read it now!
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I feel the Engineer Fabrication trait is weak. I dont find my pets dieing very fast, and the cooldown on the fabrication powers is short enough that if they do die, its not a big deal.
Instead, what if the trait increased the utility of each pet? Say Seeker drones gain suppressing fire, Support Drones gain medical tricorder, Mortars shots having a decreased travel time, Phaser/Disruptor Turrets gaining an expose chance. Though the Medical and Shield generators probably should get the increased damage resistance as it is now, since they tend to get targeted and destroyed very quickly.
The trait also does nothing for engineers who prefer mines and bombs. Essentially, the trait is not designed with multiple kits in mind.
I just took a look at the new traits and well, some things are good, others are really bad ideas:
- The most mixing of traits to the new species trait is good for most races I play, except for the Andorian: Fury wasn't a required trait, but it got mixed into the new species-trait. Some people dislike Fury, because you can draw aggro with it, when you are allready nearly dead.
- The science traits are - compared to the tactical traits - a bad joke. Even if you've got 3 charges on the space-trait "Conservation of Energy", you are unable to hit somebody hard. It would be much better, if we'd get something like Tetryon Glider instead of this.
- The tactical space trait sounds a little bit like "tanktical", you can get about 10% critical chance, the typical Escort/BoP Setup uses AP to get Bonus critical damage and then these tankticals also get something like a defense-bonus?
- Techie and Warp-Theorist are those typical bad traits, that you wanted to compensate, let me compare them to Elusive: Elusive means you get hit less and it also reduces critical hits from Bonus-Accuracy, so you get at least 10% less incoming damage. Techie allows you to heal your hull about 10% faster (passive regeneration) and heal your hull better with abilities, but it's still a minor advantage. Warp-Theorist gives you an incredible boost to all your powerlevels of about 0.5 + a very minor advantage when you are using emergency-power-abilities or EPS-Power-Transfer. Mix those two traits into 1 trait and we - the players - won't laugh so loud.
- Astrophysicist... Well, does it provide a 10% buff to all your energy-drain-abilities (even if fully speced)? Is it somehow competitive to Accurate? - No, it is not. The Bonus to Sensor-Scan or Fire-on-my-Mark is useable every 2 or 3 minutes.
- "Resilient" how is it compareable to "Peak Health"? If I understood the formula for resistance correct, this trait gives you a maximum of (500/105)% = 4.76% resistance to physical and energy-damage, thanks to the reduction through top-gear this bonus decreases. Compare that to 10% additional hitpoints and another bonus-effect.
Well, when you are down to 9 traits in total and everybody can choose 9 of them, then the game is balanced (at least the traits).
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
I tested a little bit more... I've created a new character and I was forced to take this new character with the preselected traits you chose, not a good start. You should expect everybody to think: "I know better what I'll need, then Cryptic/Perfect-World does...", so everybody will directly use a respec-token to clear the selection you made.
And this makes me a little angry: Once you hit that button "respec traits", you are not asked again, if you really want to use a respec token... And you can't choose new passives from the Reputation-System or Reskill, if you use that button. Here you've got to do a little more work.
The adaptive ground shield trait for engineers works great, I want that for my SCI in space... Maybe increasing on sensors-skill, countermeasure-systems and shield-powersetting. That would be nice, if a tactical officer on an Escort can't get a shield-facing down :rolleyes:...
What's about our Bridge-Officers? They've got still the old "unbalanced" traits... Will they be upgraded to the new trait-system, do we get random traits we don't want to have on them, will we need to spend reskill-/retrait-tokens on them to make them a little more usefull? Will only premium Bridge-Officers get new traits or just newly bought Bridge-Officers (I talk about the Bridge-Officers from the C-Store or those veteran Androids)? I was really a little disappointed, when I saw my liberated Borg Bridge Officers still needed 3 traits for "beeing Borg" (ok, 2 + the click-power to slow targets) .
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
My issue is still with certain "Species/Race" Traits.....
Here is what I mean. My main Fed is a Vulcan. At release I couldnt take any Vulcan specific traits because they seemed like a complete waste. Well they were compared to the other choices. I mean things like Mind Meld, Nerve Pinch, Telepathy etc. These are all ground traits and IMO very situational. So I was excited when I read the the blog post on Traits.
I found out its basically the same situation. My Species Traits still seem like a complete waste of points and I dont have any of them. Compared to all the other choices.
I would prefer that we get choose one as a FREE ground trait. So you could get Mind Meld or Nerve Pinch but would have to spend traits for others.
Like I say to me these are more vanity powers and not major OP inducing balance breaking powers.
I havent played most of the other races but I would love to see more Species specific powers. Like maybe a Tellarite could complete mission objectives that require and Engineer even if they are Sci or tac.
Regardless, I like the new choices but still feel like there are no brianers about which powers to pick and if you take X, Y or Z instead of A,B or C then you are gimped.
Space traits still seem favorable over spending points in ground traits
I feel the Engineer Fabrication trait is weak. I dont find my pets dieing very fast, and the cooldown on the fabrication powers is short enough that if they do die, its not a big deal.
totally agree. It sounds good on paper but isnt that needed. Even if they do die fast another one is ready.
Rather than add bells and whistles which would take animations and what not, why not add procedures or something to their damage. Exploit or expose bonuses, weapons malfunction, stun, stasis.
I don't feel like most of the traits are really... defining. Some are amazing. Others, meh. It's the same problem that the existing pick-at-start captain traits have. Like +10 to hull repair? Seriously? Players who anticipate a lot of healing already have at least 85 in this (6 points), making this trait less than a 1/8th improvement to one damage-control feature. Who is seriously going to take that over a 10% accuracy bonus.
If I have only a handful of traits for my character, and I spend a trait slot on something that boosts my hull repair, I want to be able to actually lean on my hull repairing as a defining feature of my strategy! Like, any hull heals also restore 5% of the target's final hull strength (e.g. you have final hull strength of 50K, any self heals give 2.5K more than normal) AND you gain a percentile damage reduction buff for 15 seconds. Then, when you take the trait for improved hull repair, you fly into battle with your hull heals primed and know that you are one tough son of a gun thanks to the effect your character building decisions have on your gameplay.
You have hundreds of thousands of skill points. You have 8 traits. A trait should be really powerful.
Empty trait slots should not just say "Available slot" but smth like "Slot available at level XY". Can be a bit confusing for fresh players who simply wonder what to do with'em.
I don't think the trait system is ready to be used just yet. It is very buggy. On one time through I could delete all my traits and then never reset them or add new ones.
The biggest problem I see is this just seems like a money thing. People are going to run out of tokens to respec their traits, and then its going to cost Zen. The whole idea seems stupid if that is the purpose of them.
I don't think the trait system is ready to be used just yet. It is very buggy. On one time through I could delete all my traits and then never reset them or add new ones.
The biggest problem I see is this just seems like a money thing. People are going to run out of tokens to respec their traits, and then its going to cost Zen. The whole idea seems stupid if that is the purpose of them.
Well, the idea is to balance the traits, so that one trait isn't so overpowered compared to others. Since "old characters" didn't have access to the new traits, it's only fair to allow them to choose new ones, especially if you think about a "new character" with 10 traits (inclusive species-trait) compared to an "old character" with only 4.
The first character one creates in the game has usually never the optimal traits, so you've got to create a new one with better traits.
Balancing the traits is a little difficult, because some provide only a good feeling while you can calculate the effects of others with basic math. For example: Lucky increases your critical chance by 3%, with the base critical-servity of 50% you get to 1.5% increasement of your damage (with weapons) on ground. If you use the same trait with other weapons (AP) you get critical-servity of more then 70%, or even more if you use the Omega-Ground-Set.
So, the big problem with "Lucky" is that it gives you the best effect only when you choose the correct gear (and who knows, when he/she is playing the game for the first time, what the endgame gear is like?). If it should perform better with "all builds" (maybe on a SCI), then it should have an effect on Expose-Chance, Exploit-Damage or Proc-Rate (for other weapons then just AP) as well.
If you would take a look at my previous 2 posts in this thread, you would see some more examples of traits that are unbalanced compared to others.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
Why does Limited Telepathy grant resistance to flanking, while Telepathic does not? It seems backwards that Limited Telepathy provides all the benefits of Telepathic and a very powerful additional benefit. It seems like it would make sense to just get rid of the Telepathic trait, and replace it with Limited Telepathy on those races that have access to it.
Ok, I just saw that my human Boffs got an updated Leadership-trait. I thoght you wanted to balance the traits without nerfing any of them. Since I read "+20 Starship Subsystem Repair; + 0.03 Hull Regeneration (in Combat); +0.05 Hull Regeneration (out of Combat)" this seems to be untrue. Leadership was always "+20 Starship Subsystem Repair; +20 Starship Hull Repair", so the new trait should read as follows: "+20 Starship Subsystem Repair; +20 Starship Hull Repair + 0.01 Hull Regeneration (in Combat); +0.03 Hull Regeneration (out of Combat)".
That way we should get a higher passive Hull Regeneration, while maintaining the boosts to Engineering Team, Hazard-Emitters and so on. The problem about this is that the human captain is missing the last two effects at the moment.
I also saw that the description of the traits during the character creation differ from those on the trait-screen. For example "Resilient" displays as +7.5 Bonus during creation and as +5 Bonus on the trait-screen.
One more thing about Astrophysicist: Can't you add additional Bonuses to Skills like graviton generators, subspace decompiler or power insulators to it? A little boost for these abilities gives you a wider varity of abilities you can choose from, in the case of subspace decompiler you could also think about using subsystem targeting or Tricobalt Weapons again...
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
Romulans however have access to the Operative trait which boosts their critical hit and severity value in space combat. A decent tradeoff IMO.
Not really, since rom ships also have lower over all power, which results in less heals and resistance values. Making you much more fragile. And getting easier to hit makes for hurting.
I rather think the base traits like accurate, elusive, warptechy etc should be available to everyone. And then you balance the racials against that baseline. So everyone can be on the same footing.
Ok, I just saw that my human Boffs got an updated Leadership-trait. I thoght you wanted to balance the traits without nerfing any of them. Since I read "+20 Starship Subsystem Repair; + 0.03 Hull Regeneration (in Combat); +0.05 Hull Regeneration (out of Combat)" this seems to be untrue. Leadership was always "+20 Starship Subsystem Repair; +20 Starship Hull Repair", so the new trait should read as follows: "+20 Starship Subsystem Repair; +20 Starship Hull Repair + 0.01 Hull Regeneration (in Combat); +0.03 Hull Regeneration (out of Combat)".
That way we should get a higher passive Hull Regeneration, while maintaining the boosts to Engineering Team, Hazard-Emitters and so on. The problem about this is that the human captain is missing the last two effects at the moment.
Ok, I tried a few more things with the new Trait-System:
Techie might be a bad trait, but Efficent is even worse: You get the best effects on systems that run on low powersetting, for the Boff-version you get a boost of up to 7.5/6=1.25 - twice that for the Captain-Trait - to 2 of your subsystems and the third subsystem on Powersetting 50 gets a boost of 0.625 for the Boff-version or 1.25 for the Captain-Trait (calculations based on stowiki/Efficent-Boff and ingame-numbers).
So it grants you a total power-increasement of (best case) 6.25 for the Captain-Trait. If you think about those "10% Traits" this should be more something like +20, meaning the magnitude has to be increased to "+48 Warpcore-Efficency" for the Captains-Trait, maybe "+16 Warpcore-Efficency" for the Boff-version (I know that this would be just 1/3 of the the Captains-Trait, but this would be allready more then twice as much as the current version).
Since these changes would be almost equivalent to 4,500 Skillpoints put into Warpcore Efficency, you should overthink the whole trait.
<EDIT>: I forgot the worst-case: On balanced preset the Captains-trait gives you +1.25 to every subsystem, this means only +5 to the whole ship. If you would base your calculations on this, you would get "+60 Warpcore-Efficency". This would be equivalent to more then 4,500 skillpoints in Warpcore-Efficency. If you would want the efficent Boffs to have at least 1/3 of this, they would need "+20 Warpcore-Efficency", so their current boost multiplied by almost 3.</EDIT>
A combined Trait with the effects of "Techie" and "Warp-Theorist" would give you at least a fixed Bonus of 0.5 (so 2.0 in total - still 40% of the worst case or 32% of the best case) to all Power-Systems, a better Power-Transfer-Rate and a boost to emergency-power-abilities additional to improved hull-heals (I'm not sure, but I think about 6% hull-regeneration per minute passive and better heals).
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
Anyway, for what it is worth, I sort of inclined to think things would be much simpler for people if all the racial traits were percentage based with a single element cap at 40% of whatever the variable value is after all other modifiers are applied to the element. Moreover grouped elements could cap out at four with a max of 10% each. Such a method would add real value to various captain builds which I think is the ultimate goal with traits.
If you are looking for an excellent PvE fleet consider: Omega Combat Division today.
Former member of the Cryptic Family & FriendsTesting Team. Sadly, one day, it simply vanished - without a word or trace...
I rather think the base traits like accurate, elusive, warptechy etc should be available to everyone. And then you balance the racials against that baseline. So everyone can be on the same footing.
I agree. We especially need the PvP friendly traits to be available across all races (of course, I say that of consoles as well)
Ok, I thought about how to change Efficent, but the problem is that you would have to change the whole math behind Warpcore-Efficency:
1.) The Bonus-Power you gain from an Efficent Boff/Captain should give you a real boost (10% trait for the Captain-version).
2.) You shouldn't get a penalty from the math for running (almost) balanced powersettings, so the restriction that powerpresets above 75 won't gain a bonus has to be changed, since the maximum preset we can make is 100, we should take this value.
3.) An efficent Captain should give you a bonus-pool of 20 Energy-Points, an efficent Boff at least 5 (this is just an example, I thought a quater of the captain-trait would be a good value to begin with).
So at a Subsystem_Power_preset of 100, you don't gain any bonuses to that Subsystem, with an efficent Captain you would always gain additional 20 Power across Subsystems that are on powerlevels below 100, but you don't get a penalty, if you run 1 or 2 subsystems on a presetting of 75 or above.
I think this would finally balance the trait (the skill, too) against others, the next step would be to make engine-power, weapon-power, shield-power and auxilary-power similar efficent...
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
@Torsten- I dont think Cryptic's calculations are that straight forward. Nonetheless it makes things much easier to figure out balance wise to be sure.
On a side note, I also think a single BO power should equal 100% of the captain's power bonus if all of them had the same power; cumulatively.
If you are looking for an excellent PvE fleet consider: Omega Combat Division today.
Former member of the Cryptic Family & FriendsTesting Team. Sadly, one day, it simply vanished - without a word or trace...
I've asked in a couple of places without getting a direct answer, but perusing this thread - it appears that Romulans can't take Elusive. It never becomes an option. I've asked here and there, even in a Rom50 thread - to see if it ever became an option; but I never got an answer - just others wondering the same thing.
So a couple of things to consider here in regard to this.
1) Elusive gives +10% Bonus Defense.
2) I haven't seen a Warbird that has the Escort's +10% Bonus Defense.
This means that a Romulan in a Warbird will have 20% less Bonus Defense compared to a Fed/KDF Alien (or other species capable of taking Elusive) that is flying an Escort/Raider/Raptor/(ship with the +10% Bonus Defense).
Yes, the Warbirds have a Battle Cloak. So does the Raider.
Yes, the Rom has Subterfuge and Operative. So is that saying they should only fly cloaked vessels, otherwise they'll be at even more of a disadvantage compared to another species flying that non-cloaked ship?
It's all still a symptom of a larger problem that there aren't enough space traits, or at least not enough that distribute actually interesting numbers.
I am pretty positive about LoR overall, but I still think this was a missed opportunity to re-work space traits in general.
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
Simple fix, change elusive and the accuracy trait to only grant 5%. Yes people will complain. Yes they will get over it.
Given that the traits are supposedly balanced around each other, were you to nerf Accurate/Elusive...you'd have to nerf all the other traits as well. Would people still get over it?
That's kind of a circular argument since it leads right back to "accurate and elusive are clearly the best traits though". But I am pretty sure you know you're playing Devil's advocate here, so this is probably a captain obvious observation.
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
Comments
This shouldn't be used as a band aid for the sorry state of science powers though.
This of course does come from the viewpoint of a strictly PvE player so as they are working now might be vital to the mechanics of PvP.
Why is this a big deal? Offensive power creep has gotten bad enough as it is. With more traits being allowed for flat damage increases while only... one for flat damage resistance, it's already going to be bad in terms of defense in ground PvP. Throwing in an extra 10% damage for just one race seems counterproductive if the team is working towards balancing ground PvP. Granted, it's on a race that everyone has access to, but it just seems silly.
As a non-Caitian, "Season 8" offered me a bit of relief in that I could work towards bringing my Humans, Aliens and Trill up to snuff. Now, in order to be a top damage dealing Tac, I'm going to have to roll a Romulan. In order to be a top survivability Tac, I'm going to have to roll a Caitian.
Fanfiction! ZOMG! Read it now!
kate-wintersbite.deviantart.com/art/0x01-Treachery-293641403
The trait also does nothing for engineers who prefer mines and bombs. Essentially, the trait is not designed with multiple kits in mind.
I hope not, that was my favorite one.
Said I got it after completing 1 lap, but there was nothing in the Trait Selections, nor was there any BUFF Icon signifiying it was active.
Also, why did this just take a Respec Token? They should be seperate Respecs!
Yeah, I liked that Trait.
- The most mixing of traits to the new species trait is good for most races I play, except for the Andorian: Fury wasn't a required trait, but it got mixed into the new species-trait. Some people dislike Fury, because you can draw aggro with it, when you are allready nearly dead.
- The science traits are - compared to the tactical traits - a bad joke. Even if you've got 3 charges on the space-trait "Conservation of Energy", you are unable to hit somebody hard. It would be much better, if we'd get something like Tetryon Glider instead of this.
- The tactical space trait sounds a little bit like "tanktical", you can get about 10% critical chance, the typical Escort/BoP Setup uses AP to get Bonus critical damage and then these tankticals also get something like a defense-bonus?
- Techie and Warp-Theorist are those typical bad traits, that you wanted to compensate, let me compare them to Elusive: Elusive means you get hit less and it also reduces critical hits from Bonus-Accuracy, so you get at least 10% less incoming damage. Techie allows you to heal your hull about 10% faster (passive regeneration) and heal your hull better with abilities, but it's still a minor advantage. Warp-Theorist gives you an incredible boost to all your powerlevels of about 0.5 + a very minor advantage when you are using emergency-power-abilities or EPS-Power-Transfer. Mix those two traits into 1 trait and we - the players - won't laugh so loud.
- Astrophysicist... Well, does it provide a 10% buff to all your energy-drain-abilities (even if fully speced)? Is it somehow competitive to Accurate? - No, it is not. The Bonus to Sensor-Scan or Fire-on-my-Mark is useable every 2 or 3 minutes.
- "Resilient" how is it compareable to "Peak Health"? If I understood the formula for resistance correct, this trait gives you a maximum of (500/105)% = 4.76% resistance to physical and energy-damage, thanks to the reduction through top-gear this bonus decreases. Compare that to 10% additional hitpoints and another bonus-effect.
Well, when you are down to 9 traits in total and everybody can choose 9 of them, then the game is balanced (at least the traits).
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
And this makes me a little angry: Once you hit that button "respec traits", you are not asked again, if you really want to use a respec token... And you can't choose new passives from the Reputation-System or Reskill, if you use that button. Here you've got to do a little more work.
The adaptive ground shield trait for engineers works great, I want that for my SCI in space... Maybe increasing on sensors-skill, countermeasure-systems and shield-powersetting. That would be nice, if a tactical officer on an Escort can't get a shield-facing down :rolleyes:...
What's about our Bridge-Officers? They've got still the old "unbalanced" traits... Will they be upgraded to the new trait-system, do we get random traits we don't want to have on them, will we need to spend reskill-/retrait-tokens on them to make them a little more usefull? Will only premium Bridge-Officers get new traits or just newly bought Bridge-Officers (I talk about the Bridge-Officers from the C-Store or those veteran Androids)? I was really a little disappointed, when I saw my liberated Borg Bridge Officers still needed 3 traits for "beeing Borg" (ok, 2 + the click-power to slow targets)
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
Here is what I mean. My main Fed is a Vulcan. At release I couldnt take any Vulcan specific traits because they seemed like a complete waste. Well they were compared to the other choices. I mean things like Mind Meld, Nerve Pinch, Telepathy etc. These are all ground traits and IMO very situational. So I was excited when I read the the blog post on Traits.
I found out its basically the same situation. My Species Traits still seem like a complete waste of points and I dont have any of them. Compared to all the other choices.
I would prefer that we get choose one as a FREE ground trait. So you could get Mind Meld or Nerve Pinch but would have to spend traits for others.
Like I say to me these are more vanity powers and not major OP inducing balance breaking powers.
I havent played most of the other races but I would love to see more Species specific powers. Like maybe a Tellarite could complete mission objectives that require and Engineer even if they are Sci or tac.
Regardless, I like the new choices but still feel like there are no brianers about which powers to pick and if you take X, Y or Z instead of A,B or C then you are gimped.
Space traits still seem favorable over spending points in ground traits
totally agree. It sounds good on paper but isnt that needed. Even if they do die fast another one is ready.
Rather than add bells and whistles which would take animations and what not, why not add procedures or something to their damage. Exploit or expose bonuses, weapons malfunction, stun, stasis.
If I have only a handful of traits for my character, and I spend a trait slot on something that boosts my hull repair, I want to be able to actually lean on my hull repairing as a defining feature of my strategy! Like, any hull heals also restore 5% of the target's final hull strength (e.g. you have final hull strength of 50K, any self heals give 2.5K more than normal) AND you gain a percentile damage reduction buff for 15 seconds. Then, when you take the trait for improved hull repair, you fly into battle with your hull heals primed and know that you are one tough son of a gun thanks to the effect your character building decisions have on your gameplay.
You have hundreds of thousands of skill points. You have 8 traits. A trait should be really powerful.
Empty trait slots should not just say "Available slot" but smth like "Slot available at level XY". Can be a bit confusing for fresh players who simply wonder what to do with'em.
STOWiki admin.
The biggest problem I see is this just seems like a money thing. People are going to run out of tokens to respec their traits, and then its going to cost Zen. The whole idea seems stupid if that is the purpose of them.
Well, the idea is to balance the traits, so that one trait isn't so overpowered compared to others. Since "old characters" didn't have access to the new traits, it's only fair to allow them to choose new ones, especially if you think about a "new character" with 10 traits (inclusive species-trait) compared to an "old character" with only 4.
The first character one creates in the game has usually never the optimal traits, so you've got to create a new one with better traits.
Balancing the traits is a little difficult, because some provide only a good feeling while you can calculate the effects of others with basic math. For example: Lucky increases your critical chance by 3%, with the base critical-servity of 50% you get to 1.5% increasement of your damage (with weapons) on ground. If you use the same trait with other weapons (AP) you get critical-servity of more then 70%, or even more if you use the Omega-Ground-Set.
So, the big problem with "Lucky" is that it gives you the best effect only when you choose the correct gear (and who knows, when he/she is playing the game for the first time, what the endgame gear is like?). If it should perform better with "all builds" (maybe on a SCI), then it should have an effect on Expose-Chance, Exploit-Damage or Proc-Rate (for other weapons then just AP) as well.
If you would take a look at my previous 2 posts in this thread, you would see some more examples of traits that are unbalanced compared to others.
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
Romulans however have access to the Operative trait which boosts their critical hit and severity value in space combat. A decent tradeoff IMO.
That way we should get a higher passive Hull Regeneration, while maintaining the boosts to Engineering Team, Hazard-Emitters and so on. The problem about this is that the human captain is missing the last two effects at the moment.
I also saw that the description of the traits during the character creation differ from those on the trait-screen. For example "Resilient" displays as +7.5 Bonus during creation and as +5 Bonus on the trait-screen.
One more thing about Astrophysicist: Can't you add additional Bonuses to Skills like graviton generators, subspace decompiler or power insulators to it? A little boost for these abilities gives you a wider varity of abilities you can choose from, in the case of subspace decompiler you could also think about using subsystem targeting or Tricobalt Weapons again...
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
Not really, since rom ships also have lower over all power, which results in less heals and resistance values. Making you much more fragile. And getting easier to hit makes for hurting.
I rather think the base traits like accurate, elusive, warptechy etc should be available to everyone. And then you balance the racials against that baseline. So everyone can be on the same footing.
The devs decided to nerf leadership, because its current strength on Holodeck is unintended. See this post:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=9004741&postcount=25
You seem to misunderstand how leadership functions on Holodeck. It does not increase the skill "Starship Hull Repair". For the exact mechanics, see this post:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=8340431&postcount=3
That said, leadership seems to be broken on Tribble. See this thread:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=630351
Techie might be a bad trait, but Efficent is even worse: You get the best effects on systems that run on low powersetting, for the Boff-version you get a boost of up to 7.5/6=1.25 - twice that for the Captain-Trait - to 2 of your subsystems and the third subsystem on Powersetting 50 gets a boost of 0.625 for the Boff-version or 1.25 for the Captain-Trait (calculations based on stowiki/Efficent-Boff and ingame-numbers).
So it grants you a total power-increasement of (best case) 6.25 for the Captain-Trait. If you think about those "10% Traits" this should be more something like +20, meaning the magnitude has to be increased to "+48 Warpcore-Efficency" for the Captains-Trait, maybe "+16 Warpcore-Efficency" for the Boff-version (I know that this would be just 1/3 of the the Captains-Trait, but this would be allready more then twice as much as the current version).
Since these changes would be almost equivalent to 4,500 Skillpoints put into Warpcore Efficency, you should overthink the whole trait.
<EDIT>: I forgot the worst-case: On balanced preset the Captains-trait gives you +1.25 to every subsystem, this means only +5 to the whole ship. If you would base your calculations on this, you would get "+60 Warpcore-Efficency". This would be equivalent to more then 4,500 skillpoints in Warpcore-Efficency. If you would want the efficent Boffs to have at least 1/3 of this, they would need "+20 Warpcore-Efficency", so their current boost multiplied by almost 3.</EDIT>
A combined Trait with the effects of "Techie" and "Warp-Theorist" would give you at least a fixed Bonus of 0.5 (so 2.0 in total - still 40% of the worst case or 32% of the best case) to all Power-Systems, a better Power-Transfer-Rate and a boost to emergency-power-abilities additional to improved hull-heals (I'm not sure, but I think about 6% hull-regeneration per minute passive and better heals).
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
Anyway, for what it is worth, I sort of inclined to think things would be much simpler for people if all the racial traits were percentage based with a single element cap at 40% of whatever the variable value is after all other modifiers are applied to the element. Moreover grouped elements could cap out at four with a max of 10% each. Such a method would add real value to various captain builds which I think is the ultimate goal with traits.
ingame: @.Spartan
Original Cryptic Forum Name: Spartan (member #124)
The Glorious, Kirk’s Protegè
I agree. We especially need the PvP friendly traits to be available across all races (of course, I say that of consoles as well)
1.) The Bonus-Power you gain from an Efficent Boff/Captain should give you a real boost (10% trait for the Captain-version).
2.) You shouldn't get a penalty from the math for running (almost) balanced powersettings, so the restriction that powerpresets above 75 won't gain a bonus has to be changed, since the maximum preset we can make is 100, we should take this value.
3.) An efficent Captain should give you a bonus-pool of 20 Energy-Points, an efficent Boff at least 5 (this is just an example, I thought a quater of the captain-trait would be a good value to begin with).
How should the new math look like:
Efficent_Bonus_Pool=20*count(efficent_captains)+5*count(efficent_boffs)+modifier*warpcore-efficency-skill
Now we make it a linear function that hits 0 at a presetting of 100 power:
b=Efficent_Bonus_Pool
m=-Efficent_Bonus_Pool/100
y=m*x+b ||in this case: y=system_power_bonus , x=Subsystem_Power_preset & b=Efficent_bonus_pool
system_power_bonus= Efficent_Bonus_Pool-(Efficent_Bonus_Pool/100)*Subsystem_Power_preset
So at a Subsystem_Power_preset of 100, you don't gain any bonuses to that Subsystem, with an efficent Captain you would always gain additional 20 Power across Subsystems that are on powerlevels below 100, but you don't get a penalty, if you run 1 or 2 subsystems on a presetting of 75 or above.
I think this would finally balance the trait (the skill, too) against others, the next step would be to make engine-power, weapon-power, shield-power and auxilary-power similar efficent...
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
On a side note, I also think a single BO power should equal 100% of the captain's power bonus if all of them had the same power; cumulatively.
ingame: @.Spartan
Original Cryptic Forum Name: Spartan (member #124)
The Glorious, Kirk’s Protegè
So a couple of things to consider here in regard to this.
1) Elusive gives +10% Bonus Defense.
2) I haven't seen a Warbird that has the Escort's +10% Bonus Defense.
This means that a Romulan in a Warbird will have 20% less Bonus Defense compared to a Fed/KDF Alien (or other species capable of taking Elusive) that is flying an Escort/Raider/Raptor/(ship with the +10% Bonus Defense).
Example:
Romulan, Warbird, >24 Impulse, 9 Maneuvers, Aegis Engine, Aegis 2pc = 70%
Alien, Raider, >24 Impulse, 9 Maneuvers, Elusive, Aegis Engine, Aegis 2pc = 90%
Consider the following as well...
Alien, Cruiser, >24 Impulse, 9 Maneuvers, Elusive, Aegis Engine, Aegis 2pc = 80%
Yes, the Warbirds have a Battle Cloak. So does the Raider.
Yes, the Rom has Subterfuge and Operative. So is that saying they should only fly cloaked vessels, otherwise they'll be at even more of a disadvantage compared to another species flying that non-cloaked ship?
It's all still a symptom of a larger problem that there aren't enough space traits, or at least not enough that distribute actually interesting numbers.
I am pretty positive about LoR overall, but I still think this was a missed opportunity to re-work space traits in general.
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
Given that the traits are supposedly balanced around each other, were you to nerf Accurate/Elusive...you'd have to nerf all the other traits as well. Would people still get over it?
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom