An idea on balancing damage

buccaneerdtb

Just a quick thought. Bring back the old weapon power drain mechanic that made EPS consoles a must have and gave Engineers some advantages in firing more weapons at once. This would also redefine the escort advantages in having extra engineering consoles. The weapon drain and slow regen helped lessen the gap between the ship classes with more or less weapon hardpoints.

dontdrunkimshoot

i don't think thats much of a solution to anything. whoever can have the most EPS consoles wins basically. making FAW as overpowered as it was at its worst again would go a long way to fixing pressure damage though, with all the power creep that would practically be balanced

radkip

Hmm, choosing between turning quickly to stay locked onto a target, or keeping your weapon energy up.

Granted... with the way my characters are specced, and throwing an EPS boosting warp core on top of that, I probably wouldn't need EPS consoles. It takes like three seconds to dump all of my weapon energy into aux for quick heals and vice versa.

antoniosalieri

I agree completely.

The current new power system is a complete fail.

The old system was much more balanced...

Did faw suck before... YES... but one broken skill isn't a good excuse for keeping the terrible system we have now.

There is a major reason why beams suck and cannons don't... its the current horrible drain mechanic.

Everyone gets a ton of free EPS in the skill tree now anyway... so for most people running an eps won't be a need have.... we are also getting more of it in the upcoming rep line... and i think there is a warp core that boosts it as well.

Bringing it back would go a long way to righting the engi class again.

dontdrunkimshoot

i seriously don't understand the ******** about power drain. you do realize theres a skill called EPtW right? and that any ship that would use beams can slot it easily right? you only need 1 copy with damage control doffs. or cycle 2 copies of AtB with tech doffs, all the weapons power you need there too.

their intent and what became reality could not be further apart. it was never intended for there to be all energy builds, but they stupidly gave shields a built in 75% res to kinetic that increses to the 90% range most of the time, so they are complacently unable to damage unless pared with shield pierceing spike. the ships with drainy beams cant use torps because they cant make holes, and they cant fire torps due to the narrow fire arc, that is also outside the broad side fire arc.


when looking at it, its seriously baffling why they did half the things they did.

antoniosalieri

The issue with the current system isn't drain its the lack of it.

Weapons with long fire cycles like beams lock that power up until the end of the cycle.

Weapons like cannons don't they fire and return the power instant like... which makes them the clearly better weapon type in almost every case.

The old mechanic penalized cannons fire having such a high fire rate by returning power at eps meaning that having a bunch of cannons going off drew power faster then it returned it unless you dedicated some of your build to EPS. This is what balanced them. 4 DHC was workable but only by giving up a armour unit or 2.
On the other hands beams that cycled at 4s each could often return there power for the next cycle anyway... so the new system in most ways had no real effect on beam dmg at all.

Faw was an issue its true... however the current fix for it is going to correct the phantom power drain it has now... so its likely to be super annoying again anyway under the new system.

Frankly the old system handicapped cannons slightly... and as a mainly cannon use I'm ok with that. There is no reason that we should have bugs running around with 2-3 armour units and still being able to pin there weapon power at 110+ at all times with all nrg setups.

It would also make that 30s of nadion on an engi useful. (at least a bit)
It would also make EPS transfer a real buff. (it used to be that if you threw it on a friendly escort they NOTICED.)

borgresearcher

dontdrunkimshoot wrote: »

i don't think thats much of a solution to anything. whoever can have the most EPS consoles wins basically. making FAW as overpowered as it was at its worst again would go a long way to fixing pressure damage though, with all the power creep that would practically be balanced

the same way whoever have the most tac consoles wins "basically"
and you have to admit, 50% or even more of eng consoles are useless

if this idea would fix something ? ... dont know, maybe, and maybe brake something else
what is faw's job anyway ? clear spam ? you can get an aceton assimilator for some bucks to do a better job than that, ruinning 30% of the builds in the game and you can still use cannons, damage ? i dont think so
you can get a bo, but it will drain too much and your damage could almost be compensated within the next seconds you are without energy if you dont have the right buiild
apb and apd fail most of the times

this makes cruisers or ships like that to have a hard time to find the skills to boost the beams

beams, skills related to them, and eng consoles are the problem, energy drain is somewhere in the middle

dalnar83

But But, bringing the old power system back would nerf escorts ! Imagine the forums, they would explode !

edna

buccaneerdtb wrote: »

Just a quick thought. Bring back the old weapon power drain mechanic that made EPS consoles a must have and gave Engineers some advantages in firing more weapons at once. This would also redefine the escort advantages in having extra engineering consoles. The weapon drain and slow regen helped lessen the gap between the ship classes with more or less weapon hardpoints.

engineers/cruiers are in theory meant to tank damage (which is useless now because you dont have any pvp/pve designed with that in mind(.If you want dps go to create character menu and create a tactical toon.

dontdrunkimshoot wrote: »

i seriously don't understand the ******** about power drain. you do realize theres a skill called EPtW right? and that any ship that would use beams can slot it easily right? you only need 1 copy with damage control doffs. or cycle 2 copies of AtB with tech doffs, all the weapons power you need there too.

Its much easier to redesign the game than go to the boff trainer:rolleyes:

mancom

How many Engineering slots does the Jem'hadar ship have?

havam

I'd say the current itteration of F@W, should be the template for redesigning power drain for CRF and CSV.

I know it wouldn't be balanced, but i m just sick n tired to wait for cryptic to fix beams or engs. Its been three years, the career traits are only going to make things worse.

buccaneerdtb

There are some interesting new class traits coming out that make balance discussions based on the current state difficult.