Was waiting for someone to bring this up. In an STF where sustained damage is sometimes more important, a warbird can just fight like any other ship. Keep the singularity at lv 5 to bring the power levels on par with other ships so that they can do the sustained damage necessary.
STF do have those "aww TRIBBLE.." moments like when someone misses the massive rush of probes to the gate in KA or a tac cube singles you out for that special high yield torpedo. In that case the warbird can cut loose and fire off its special ability (with current singularity power strength this obviously won't work. They're simply too weak)
That's true, but then, what's the difference in playing a Warbird when you're ignoring your Singularity powers? You're not bringing any of your unique abilities to bear on the situation, which feels a bit of a waste. The current mechanic has me using those abilities regularly as they become available (or when appropriate, if I feel I need to use them defensively).
For the strength of the powers, I'm keeping an eye out as I level up. Currently, on my level 25 science romulan, I can get up to 6.7k damage on up to 10 enemies out of Plasma Shockwave, 5.1k of which completely bypasses shields. That's potentially up to 67k damage out of a single skill use, and independent of power levels. I have to see when I hit higher levels how that scales (if at all), but I'm thinking Antiproton Sweep + Charged Particle Burst + Plasma Shockwave could make a devastating opening gambit on a large group of enemies (I'm thinking of the probes + spheres in KA Space at the moment). You're getting a lot of shields and a respectable chunk of hull out of the way in three clicks..and follow up with a torp spread...
For the other question about the power of singularity, we know there is one more offensive-related one coming, T5's Singularity Overcharge/Overload:
"It also has a small, highly efficient Singularity Warp Core capable of using the Singularity Overload ability to fire a devastating barrage of attacks." (from Dev blog 9; there's also a Singularity Core that gives that skill a +20% to crit...hmmm...probably severity. +20% crit chance seems likely overpowered.) Since Plasma Shockwave is an AoE, I'm guessing Overload will probably be a high-damage attack to a small number of targets (possibly even a single target). Will be interesting to see and evaluate, though.
If I play through the missions again I?ll have to try to use the burst defensively to destroy incoming torpedoes.
Once you can start getting dilithium, grab a core from the dilithium store that offers a 10% reduction on the singularity cooldown; I found that usually I could use a rank 2 or 3 plasma shockwave to clear one group and the singularity would be ready (or close enough to it) by the time I got to the next group of enemies.
EDIT: oh, and also, regarding burning through shields, if you look, Plasma Shockwave actually does a LOT more damage in its afterburn. About three times as much as the initial blast, and that's all shield bypassing. You're doing a lot more damage with it than you think.
That's true, but then, what's the difference in playing a Warbird when you're ignoring your Singularity powers? You're not bringing any of your unique abilities to bear on the situation, which feels a bit of a waste. The current mechanic has me using those abilities regularly as they become available (or when appropriate, if I feel I need to use them defensively).
You have a valid point. But then that brings us back to the heart of this issue, which is that some players feel that warbirds will consistently perform lower in situations such as STFs and that the addition of the singularity powers does not make up for the loss of power.
It has been stated that to address this issue, they will play with power levels, console slots, and BoFF seating to bring the base stats of the warbird up to par with equivalent ships. There is also an opinion that warbirds should be able to drop the singularity core for a warp core, which seems IMO somewhat stupid. If you want to play a warp core ship, play KDF or fed. If you want the best of everything... well.. a good compromise leaves everyone somewhat unhappy.
The current mechanic leaves you with what amounts to an extra console power like the nadion detonator or graviton pulse. I love the mechanic and simply want to make the warbird a unique experience. People should not just be able to get into one, fly it like any other ship, and not really notice a difference beyond clicking an extra button every few seconds. The battle cloak and singularity power should be always on the rom captains mind when he considers his options and goes into battle. Not just something you fire off when its convenient with no consequence beyond that now you have to wait 30 sec.
They should have given warp/singularity cores themselves slots (up to three slots at tier 5), which could only take the currently useless power setting consoles, that way you get to set up yourself how and where you want extra bonus power in your subsystems.
If engineering consoles that give subsystem power werent that TRIBBLE (see if you would not nerf them in the first place) people could of set the missing power through engineering console. And there would be no need to take the slot away from them.
Truth is, a -20 across board is like -4 engineering consoles (purple mk XII). That's pretty harsh. What about change the the consoles to +10 or even +15 ? Or better, change them to lovely percentages. Add +10% actual power in one subsystem. So it is +5 at 50 but +10 at 100.
Right now, I don't know anyone who uses +subsystem power consoles.
True to the best of my knowledge, ever since the console overhaul the only widely used engineering consoles are the armor/resists ones. I like your suggestions for changing the consoles.
I have to say even more, don't mess with console/boff slots.
If you want to keep powers at 40, fine. honestly i think 45 would be fine too. The singularity powers are great but they are so situational.
Plasma Shockwave has been proven to not really be that great of an offensive power except against removing torps and fighters.
Quantum Absorption got nerfed a bit though is still a great healing power and probably is what will be used by most people since it means they can skip a boff heal for that.
Warp Shadows and Singuarlity jump, while nice, are again very situational.
Energy weapons seems great, but they emphasis how brief it is, meaning again it probably won't be worth it, you'll be better off keeping your singularity level at 5 and waiting until you need to heal.
Time will tell, but from this blog, i have to say again, don't take away boffs, don't take away consoles. leave the power levels at 40 if you feel it's too much.
Once you can start getting dilithium, grab a core from the dilithium store that offers a 10% reduction on the singularity cooldown; I found that usually I could use a rank 2 or 3 plasma shockwave to clear one group and the singularity would be ready (or close enough to it) by the time I got to the next group of enemies.
My biggest problem with this one and a lot of other of your posts, is that you seem to be on the "you must play Warbirds with the Singularity, else go play another faction", and to be fair, you can't tell others how they want to play the game. Why do you care so much if someone doesn't use a Singularity? Why are you so venomously against some of these suggestions where the use of Singularity is optional? Short of the few "Take away all Singularity powers" which most people are rejecting, the optional idea seems to be the best of both worlds.
You get to use the Singulariy powers, they don't have to if they don't want to.
Personally I'm goig to use them, they make me feel more Romulan in some way, but I'm not going to demand everyone use them, or they should be banished from playing the faction and the game the way they want to, to have fun.
((edit: my apolgies if this seems to be an attack or snarky, it isn't meant to be so. I'm working off of four hours of sleep, and the portion of my brain that tries to keep me civil is on strike.))
It's been mentioned here and there in a few threads about the Warp Shadows...kind of standing out as the ability that has little to no use in PvP. It suffers the same problem that similar abilities have - while the NPCs can't tell the difference between the shadows and your ship, players do not have that problem in the least. Would it be possible for the shadows to display as if they were actually the player - thus - actually providing some of that potential confusion they do for NPCs for players?
My biggest problem with this one and a lot of other of your posts, is that you seem to be on the "you must play Warbirds with the Singularity, else go play another faction", and to be fair, you can't tell others how they want to play the game. Why do you care so much if someone doesn't use a Singularity? Why are you so venomously against some of these suggestions where the use of Singularity is optional? Short of the few "Take away all Singularity powers" which most people are rejecting, the optional idea seems to be the best of both worlds.
You get to use the Singulariy powers, they don't have to if they don't want to.
Personally I'm gonig to use them, they make me feel more Romulan in some way, but I'm not going to demand everyone use them, or they should be banished from playing the faction and the game the way they want to, to have fun.
Well, the issue is one of costs.
To be clear, there's a difference between being willing to use the abilities, and not feeling their cost is warranted, and refusing to use them and not feeling that their cost is warranted.
If someone doesn't want to use the Romulan's unique abilities, that's fine, but I can't really consider their opinion of the cost of those abilities that greatly.
Muddling around in my head trying to figure out how to phrase it, so I imagine this is muddled and not really topical .
I feel like the Singularity Core stuff is neat, but it needs a bit more info on the mechanics. ie. what causes the charge level to increase, range on the abilities, etc.
Also I think on the Plasma Shockwave it would be better if there was more visual feedback on whether a ship was hit by the ability or not. Sometimes I would activate the shockwave and while it looked cool, I wasn't sure if I'd hit my target unless I saw the DoT debuff on him.
I don't have the option to play on Tribble ATM, but looking over the singularity blog today I realized there wasn't a true T5 Valdore model coming with the LOR content. A reskinned T5 Mogai isn't an acceptable substitute for a ship that really should be in the game. Please consider adding a T5 variant to STO as the Valdore is one of Cryptics best looking designs added to STO in a long time.
Bonus if you can make it look like the concept art !
Please for the love of god DO NOT remove console slots. Between all the sets your adding T5 ships NEED all 10 of those slots. Even more so for romulans since the romulan cstore consoles get a set bonus.
Boffs i would probably be alright with, but honestly, i think i rather have the lower power levels than losing boffs or consoles
I agree, i'd rather have low power than be short on consoles or boffs.
I feel like the Singularity Core stuff is neat, but it needs a bit more info on the mechanics. ie. what causes the charge level to increase, range on the abilities, etc.
Also I think on the Plasma Shockwave it would be better if there was more visual feedback on whether a ship was hit by the ability or not. Sometimes I would activate the shockwave and while it looked cool, I wasn't sure if I'd hit my target unless I saw the DoT debuff on him.
We're getting more and more information about the abilities, fortunately; if you check your powers list while you're in system space (e.g. Sol system, as opposed to Sirius Sector or ESD), you should be able to check what each level of your Singularity Core power does.
As for the power feedback, AGREED! Maybe something like a wave of fire over the ship to light it up after the shockwave has passed?
It's been mentioned here and there in a few threads about the Warp Shadows...kind of standing out as the ability that has little to no use in PvP. It suffers the same problem that similar abilities have - while the NPCs can't tell the difference between the shadows and your ship, players do not have that problem in the least. Would it be possible for the shadows to display as if they were actually the player - thus - actually providing some of that potential confusion they do for NPCs for players?
Maybe a variant on the D&D Mirror Images and Blink spells? I seem to recall that there was one introduced variant that would cause you to have illusory copies appear (like Warp Shadows did), but that once per round you'd randomly swap places with one of those copies.
So, for the duration of the power, you'd be bopping back and forth among your various Warp Shadows before finally stealthing as they disappeared. It'd be kinda jarring to be doing it, but it would force the enemy to either a.) keep retargetting you or b.) just say a bad word and spamming AoE attacks, which tend to be less painful than direct attacks.
...although I'm thinking the constant bopping back and forth might be TOO jarring for the Romulan employing it. Maybe not a good idea.
Maybe a variant on the D&D Mirror Images and Blink spells? I seem to recall that there was one introduced variant that would cause you to have illusory copies appear (like Warp Shadows did), but that once per round you'd randomly swap places with one of those copies.
So, for the duration of the power, you'd be bopping back and forth among your various Warp Shadows before finally stealthing as they disappeared. It'd be kinda jarring to be doing it, but it would force the enemy to either a.) keep retargetting you or b.) just say a bad word and spamming AoE attacks, which tend to be less painful than direct attacks.
...although I'm thinking the constant bopping back and forth might be TOO jarring for the Romulan employing it. Maybe not a good idea.
That would be cool though, i think it should only do it once, and turn off auto attack you can start up by simply pressing space, all the clones should move as well.
That would be cool though, i think it should only do it once, and turn off auto attack you can start up by simply pressing space, all the clones should move as well.
That would get rid of the disorientation, yeah (you make a jump when you initiate Warp Shadows as-is). If the Warp Shadows moved in formation, with you, perhaps? As long as you kept your finger off the trigger, it'd be harder to tell which one it was coming from. Or maybe if the shadows appeared to mimic your attacks (the effects go off, but only yours do damage). I don't think any of these would be OP (other than the fact that they might actually confuse an enemy in PvP like it does in PvE).
-Power Penalties: make it 2 points of power drain per singularity ability available, that way it scales better through the levels. The -10 power for just one (and even two) singularity powers is just harsh at the lower levels.
-Console/Boff slot removal: Don't. The singularity core powers in my point of view are the Romulan Equivalent of Fed and KDF universal console powers. Rather than remove Boff or Console slots from a given warbird, I would propose you simply make warbirds unable to take the majority of faction specific Universal Consoles. Call it that the advanced KDF and FED console tech isn't compatible with Romulan systems. In this approach, you allow the warbirds to have unique powers and capabilities and a different build dynamic than FED or KDF ships. It also prevents a great deal of ?crossing the streams? with regards to basic faction power focuses.
It also gives an opening to develop later on down the road Universal Consoles specifically for Warbirds as part of future Romulan content.
-Singularity Powers: I'm ok with the basic powers, each has a nice niche use. The only change I'd really like to recommend is that when you light a skill off at a lower power level, that it has a lower cooldown time. That way you can game it a bit to fire off a weak plasma shockwave twice or a more powerful wave once in the same basic amount of time.
Maybe a variant on the D&D Mirror Images and Blink spells? I seem to recall that there was one introduced variant that would cause you to have illusory copies appear (like Warp Shadows did), but that once per round you'd randomly swap places with one of those copies.
So, for the duration of the power, you'd be bopping back and forth among your various Warp Shadows before finally stealthing as they disappeared. It'd be kinda jarring to be doing it, but it would force the enemy to either a.) keep retargetting you or b.) just say a bad word and spamming AoE attacks, which tend to be less painful than direct attacks.
...although I'm thinking the constant bopping back and forth might be TOO jarring for the Romulan employing it. Maybe not a good idea.
Well when you first use warp shadows, you jump to a new location and leave a number of shadows based on level.
Maybe they could have it where you ship jumps and leaves a warp shadow, then a few second later, you ship jumps again, leaves another warp shadow, and the first shadow moves, each higher level of charge would cause one additional jump and one additional shadow.
Also, any warp or singularity core provides power for the ship. I suggest that taking a core off a ship in space should make the power levels drop in some way. Say about 75% loss of power on all systems?
Also a warp core ejection system would be an idea. After all in the Trek series and films they could do this. Again, doing so could affect power levels. But it could be used as a "last chance" effect similar to the abandon ship ability (just an idea really).
These are both "immersion" issues. One could argue that one should not be able to "take the core off" in space or switch them out, but only do it at space dock....
Ejecting the warp core in this game won't do anything for us because it isn't our warp core breaching that's about to destroy us, it's the incoming torpedoes or cannons tearing us to shreds. The only way ejection would help is if we were flying through space, took a lucky hit that wouldn't normally destroy us, but the core is now going to overload. We eject the core, loose 75% power to every system, and then get instantly blown apart by whatever enemy we were facing anyway. And then we'd have to go buy a new warpcore cause the one we ejected got destroyed... Personally, I'd pass on all that.
It's been done, it's called a Bird of Prey. You don't like the warbird? Go Klingon and fly their BoPs. Problem solved.
That is exactly my point, dear. Compensating for a battle cloak has already been done. It's not rocket science, it doesn't require some new -10 penalty to all subsystems (the equivalent of more than -8 mk xii purple engineering power consoles) apparently it only warrants an 8% drop in shields, less than the cost of one field gen. I then suggested an additional 8% drop in turn rate or hull to compensate for the singularity powers.
Riddle me this, batman, why aren't you snidely telling the devs to scrap the warbirds entirely? Battle cloak has been done, it's called a bop, if people want to battle cloak they should just play a kdf bop. Problem solved.
But wait... that's how everything in the game is. They all have similar capabilities with slightly different stats and boff layouts and some little something that sets them apart. Oh pooh, I guess you're right, my suggestion was just too "inside the box," too "what they've already done." They really do need to gimp the TRIBBLE out of this thing in exchange for these features instead of the reasonable measures they've taken before. I suggest -15 to all power levels! And no quantum slipstream! And a slower maximum warp speed! YEAH! That'll really make it special! ...special ed. '-.-
I have a fair compromise. Instead of letting people entirely ditch the singularity core mechanic altogether in favor of a warp core, why not let them choose how many they have as long as it is at least 1 singularity power minimum. They could make it only -2 to all power levels if you only have 1 singularity power, and -2 more power for each more singularity power you have so it would add up to the same -10 to all systems if you want to have all 5 powers.
This could be done by way of equipping different cores or maybe toggling them on and off but would have to be out of combat.
maybe you should only be able to charge it to level 1 if you have only 1 singularity power, and so on too. That way players would still have a unique power but not have to totally gimp their power levels with -10 to each subsytem, that is just too much, and losing a console or boff slot isn't acceptable either
I have a fair compromise. Instead of letting people entirely ditch the singularity core mechanic altogether in favor of a warp core, why not let them choose how many they have as long as it is at least 1 singularity power minimum. They could make it only -2 to all power levels if you only have 1 singularity power, and -2 more power for each more singularity power you have so it would add up to the same -10 to all systems if you want to have all 5 powers.
This could be done by way of equipping different cores or maybe toggling them on and off but would have to be out of combat.
maybe you should only be able to charge it to level 1 if you have only 1 singularity power, and so on too. That way players would still have a unique power but not have to totally gimp their power levels with -10 to each subsytem, that is just too much, and losing a console or boff slot isn't acceptable either
I think the problem most people have is not feeling like the powers gained are worth the literal power lost. So it seems they can either increase the benefit of the singularity abilities by increasing the effect, or reducing the cool, or the "you can save up a few charges" mechanic, or it constantly charges thus giving you a definite ability once every X seconds that you can choose to use or not. That, or they can reduce the penalty for the abilities and leave them as is. On a D'deridex, if it is basically a cruiser, -5 to all subsystems amounts to "no bonus power" since most cruisers get +5 to all systems. No bonus power in exchange for these abilities seems like that could be a fair trade. Cutting past "bonus" power into "basic" power seems a bit excessive.
Battle cloak has several penalties built in already. You get the chance to reposition yourself with an attack bonus when you leave cloak at the cost that you might get blown up for lowering your shields to do so. Not to mention that your shields won't regenerate while cloaked and you can't actively heal your shields or hull while cloaked. So however much time you take repositioning yourself is technically a respite for your target to heal themselves where you will not be able to heal. So yeah... that ability pretty much provides its own balance.
With that taken into consideration, are the abilities gained by the singularity core really worth -10 to all subsystems? If you could equip a console that gave you +10 all power or one that would give a selection of abilities that you could properly use (properly being at full force) once every... what has it been calculated at? 90 seconds? Which would you choose? And it's not technically every 90 seconds, it only charges while in combat, so it will never be an opening gambit or even available for the first 30 seconds of the match (more than enough time for many ships to alpha you out of the sky, particularly if you're suffering from -10 to all power levels), it won't charge while cloaked (so the cloak and the new abilities are now providing "cons" for one another now), and if you saved your charge and won the match, you loose the charge while out of combat, so that saved charge won't be useful for your next battle unless you get into it quickly enough. Well damn... it sounds like both of these abilities provide a nice, interesting flavor to the romulans, but they hardly sound like they need balancing at all... it sounds like they balance themselves.
It still comes off as if folks are not considering the LEFT and the RIGHT in discussing how things are being balanced. Put all the things considered "bonuses" on the LEFT and all the things considered "negatives" on the RIGHT. I have a strange feeling that some folks are not taking into account certain things...
Go on, compare the Warbirds to several ships - compare them to Raiders/Raptors/Battle Cruisers/Cruisers/Escorts...notice how each of them give up something for something. Then notice that the Warbirds are not necessarily giving up some of those things for the things they gain...therefore, the balance has to come from somewhere.
Have to figure that much of it is coming from that apparent feeling of a lack of choice.
The Fed can choose Cruiser, Escort, Science Vessel, Carrier, etc.
The KDF can choose Raider, Raptor, Battle Cruiser, Support Vessel, Carrier, etc.
The Rom can choose...Warbird.
There's bound to be backlash...much like if Feds could only choose to fly one type or KDF could only choose to fly one type. Wouldn't matter if there were variations in that one type, it would still feel limited by comparison...no?
Comments
That's true, but then, what's the difference in playing a Warbird when you're ignoring your Singularity powers? You're not bringing any of your unique abilities to bear on the situation, which feels a bit of a waste. The current mechanic has me using those abilities regularly as they become available (or when appropriate, if I feel I need to use them defensively).
For the strength of the powers, I'm keeping an eye out as I level up. Currently, on my level 25 science romulan, I can get up to 6.7k damage on up to 10 enemies out of Plasma Shockwave, 5.1k of which completely bypasses shields. That's potentially up to 67k damage out of a single skill use, and independent of power levels. I have to see when I hit higher levels how that scales (if at all), but I'm thinking Antiproton Sweep + Charged Particle Burst + Plasma Shockwave could make a devastating opening gambit on a large group of enemies (I'm thinking of the probes + spheres in KA Space at the moment). You're getting a lot of shields and a respectable chunk of hull out of the way in three clicks..and follow up with a torp spread...
For the other question about the power of singularity, we know there is one more offensive-related one coming, T5's Singularity Overcharge/Overload:
"It also has a small, highly efficient Singularity Warp Core capable of using the Singularity Overload ability to fire a devastating barrage of attacks." (from Dev blog 9; there's also a Singularity Core that gives that skill a +20% to crit...hmmm...probably severity. +20% crit chance seems likely overpowered.) Since Plasma Shockwave is an AoE, I'm guessing Overload will probably be a high-damage attack to a small number of targets (possibly even a single target). Will be interesting to see and evaluate, though.
Once you can start getting dilithium, grab a core from the dilithium store that offers a 10% reduction on the singularity cooldown; I found that usually I could use a rank 2 or 3 plasma shockwave to clear one group and the singularity would be ready (or close enough to it) by the time I got to the next group of enemies.
EDIT: oh, and also, regarding burning through shields, if you look, Plasma Shockwave actually does a LOT more damage in its afterburn. About three times as much as the initial blast, and that's all shield bypassing. You're doing a lot more damage with it than you think.
You have a valid point. But then that brings us back to the heart of this issue, which is that some players feel that warbirds will consistently perform lower in situations such as STFs and that the addition of the singularity powers does not make up for the loss of power.
It has been stated that to address this issue, they will play with power levels, console slots, and BoFF seating to bring the base stats of the warbird up to par with equivalent ships. There is also an opinion that warbirds should be able to drop the singularity core for a warp core, which seems IMO somewhat stupid. If you want to play a warp core ship, play KDF or fed. If you want the best of everything... well.. a good compromise leaves everyone somewhat unhappy.
The current mechanic leaves you with what amounts to an extra console power like the nadion detonator or graviton pulse. I love the mechanic and simply want to make the warbird a unique experience. People should not just be able to get into one, fly it like any other ship, and not really notice a difference beyond clicking an extra button every few seconds. The battle cloak and singularity power should be always on the rom captains mind when he considers his options and goes into battle. Not just something you fire off when its convenient with no consequence beyond that now you have to wait 30 sec.
I rather like this concept.
True to the best of my knowledge, ever since the console overhaul the only widely used engineering consoles are the armor/resists ones. I like your suggestions for changing the consoles.
It also helps that the names already, somewhat, sound like components of a warp/singularity core too: Injector Assembly; Plasma Distribution Manifold; Booster Modulator; and Field Emitter.
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
I have to say even more, don't mess with console/boff slots.
If you want to keep powers at 40, fine. honestly i think 45 would be fine too. The singularity powers are great but they are so situational.
Plasma Shockwave has been proven to not really be that great of an offensive power except against removing torps and fighters.
Quantum Absorption got nerfed a bit though is still a great healing power and probably is what will be used by most people since it means they can skip a boff heal for that.
Warp Shadows and Singuarlity jump, while nice, are again very situational.
Energy weapons seems great, but they emphasis how brief it is, meaning again it probably won't be worth it, you'll be better off keeping your singularity level at 5 and waiting until you need to heal.
Time will tell, but from this blog, i have to say again, don't take away boffs, don't take away consoles. leave the power levels at 40 if you feel it's too much.
My biggest problem with this one and a lot of other of your posts, is that you seem to be on the "you must play Warbirds with the Singularity, else go play another faction", and to be fair, you can't tell others how they want to play the game. Why do you care so much if someone doesn't use a Singularity? Why are you so venomously against some of these suggestions where the use of Singularity is optional? Short of the few "Take away all Singularity powers" which most people are rejecting, the optional idea seems to be the best of both worlds.
You get to use the Singulariy powers, they don't have to if they don't want to.
Personally I'm goig to use them, they make me feel more Romulan in some way, but I'm not going to demand everyone use them, or they should be banished from playing the faction and the game the way they want to, to have fun.
((edit: my apolgies if this seems to be an attack or snarky, it isn't meant to be so. I'm working off of four hours of sleep, and the portion of my brain that tries to keep me civil is on strike.))
Thanks! Hadn't spottet that yet, will read when I get a chance.
Well, the issue is one of costs.
To be clear, there's a difference between being willing to use the abilities, and not feeling their cost is warranted, and refusing to use them and not feeling that their cost is warranted.
If someone doesn't want to use the Romulan's unique abilities, that's fine, but I can't really consider their opinion of the cost of those abilities that greatly.
Muddling around in my head trying to figure out how to phrase it, so I imagine this is muddled and not really topical
Also I think on the Plasma Shockwave it would be better if there was more visual feedback on whether a ship was hit by the ability or not. Sometimes I would activate the shockwave and while it looked cool, I wasn't sure if I'd hit my target unless I saw the DoT debuff on him.
Bonus if you can make it look like the concept art !
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
I agree, i'd rather have low power than be short on consoles or boffs.
It is not.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
We're getting more and more information about the abilities, fortunately; if you check your powers list while you're in system space (e.g. Sol system, as opposed to Sirius Sector or ESD), you should be able to check what each level of your Singularity Core power does.
As for the power feedback, AGREED! Maybe something like a wave of fire over the ship to light it up after the shockwave has passed?
Maybe a variant on the D&D Mirror Images and Blink spells? I seem to recall that there was one introduced variant that would cause you to have illusory copies appear (like Warp Shadows did), but that once per round you'd randomly swap places with one of those copies.
So, for the duration of the power, you'd be bopping back and forth among your various Warp Shadows before finally stealthing as they disappeared. It'd be kinda jarring to be doing it, but it would force the enemy to either a.) keep retargetting you or b.) just say a bad word and spamming AoE attacks, which tend to be less painful than direct attacks.
...although I'm thinking the constant bopping back and forth might be TOO jarring for the Romulan employing it. Maybe not a good idea.
That would be cool though, i think it should only do it once, and turn off auto attack you can start up by simply pressing space, all the clones should move as well.
That would get rid of the disorientation, yeah (you make a jump when you initiate Warp Shadows as-is). If the Warp Shadows moved in formation, with you, perhaps? As long as you kept your finger off the trigger, it'd be harder to tell which one it was coming from. Or maybe if the shadows appeared to mimic your attacks (the effects go off, but only yours do damage). I don't think any of these would be OP (other than the fact that they might actually confuse an enemy in PvP like it does in PvE).
-Power Penalties: make it 2 points of power drain per singularity ability available, that way it scales better through the levels. The -10 power for just one (and even two) singularity powers is just harsh at the lower levels.
-Console/Boff slot removal: Don't. The singularity core powers in my point of view are the Romulan Equivalent of Fed and KDF universal console powers. Rather than remove Boff or Console slots from a given warbird, I would propose you simply make warbirds unable to take the majority of faction specific Universal Consoles. Call it that the advanced KDF and FED console tech isn't compatible with Romulan systems. In this approach, you allow the warbirds to have unique powers and capabilities and a different build dynamic than FED or KDF ships. It also prevents a great deal of ?crossing the streams? with regards to basic faction power focuses.
It also gives an opening to develop later on down the road Universal Consoles specifically for Warbirds as part of future Romulan content.
-Singularity Powers: I'm ok with the basic powers, each has a nice niche use. The only change I'd really like to recommend is that when you light a skill off at a lower power level, that it has a lower cooldown time. That way you can game it a bit to fire off a weak plasma shockwave twice or a more powerful wave once in the same basic amount of time.
Well when you first use warp shadows, you jump to a new location and leave a number of shadows based on level.
Maybe they could have it where you ship jumps and leaves a warp shadow, then a few second later, you ship jumps again, leaves another warp shadow, and the first shadow moves, each higher level of charge would cause one additional jump and one additional shadow.
Yeah, that's why I kinda withrew the suggestion right after I made it. I should know better anyways, video games CAN make me motion sick.
These are both "immersion" issues. One could argue that one should not be able to "take the core off" in space or switch them out, but only do it at space dock....
Ejecting the warp core in this game won't do anything for us because it isn't our warp core breaching that's about to destroy us, it's the incoming torpedoes or cannons tearing us to shreds. The only way ejection would help is if we were flying through space, took a lucky hit that wouldn't normally destroy us, but the core is now going to overload. We eject the core, loose 75% power to every system, and then get instantly blown apart by whatever enemy we were facing anyway. And then we'd have to go buy a new warpcore cause the one we ejected got destroyed... Personally, I'd pass on all that.
That is exactly my point, dear. Compensating for a battle cloak has already been done. It's not rocket science, it doesn't require some new -10 penalty to all subsystems (the equivalent of more than -8 mk xii purple engineering power consoles) apparently it only warrants an 8% drop in shields, less than the cost of one field gen. I then suggested an additional 8% drop in turn rate or hull to compensate for the singularity powers.
Riddle me this, batman, why aren't you snidely telling the devs to scrap the warbirds entirely? Battle cloak has been done, it's called a bop, if people want to battle cloak they should just play a kdf bop. Problem solved.
But wait... that's how everything in the game is. They all have similar capabilities with slightly different stats and boff layouts and some little something that sets them apart. Oh pooh, I guess you're right, my suggestion was just too "inside the box," too "what they've already done." They really do need to gimp the TRIBBLE out of this thing in exchange for these features instead of the reasonable measures they've taken before. I suggest -15 to all power levels! And no quantum slipstream! And a slower maximum warp speed! YEAH! That'll really make it special! ...special ed. '-.-
This could be done by way of equipping different cores or maybe toggling them on and off but would have to be out of combat.
maybe you should only be able to charge it to level 1 if you have only 1 singularity power, and so on too. That way players would still have a unique power but not have to totally gimp their power levels with -10 to each subsytem, that is just too much, and losing a console or boff slot isn't acceptable either
I think the problem most people have is not feeling like the powers gained are worth the literal power lost. So it seems they can either increase the benefit of the singularity abilities by increasing the effect, or reducing the cool, or the "you can save up a few charges" mechanic, or it constantly charges thus giving you a definite ability once every X seconds that you can choose to use or not. That, or they can reduce the penalty for the abilities and leave them as is. On a D'deridex, if it is basically a cruiser, -5 to all subsystems amounts to "no bonus power" since most cruisers get +5 to all systems. No bonus power in exchange for these abilities seems like that could be a fair trade. Cutting past "bonus" power into "basic" power seems a bit excessive.
Battle cloak has several penalties built in already. You get the chance to reposition yourself with an attack bonus when you leave cloak at the cost that you might get blown up for lowering your shields to do so. Not to mention that your shields won't regenerate while cloaked and you can't actively heal your shields or hull while cloaked. So however much time you take repositioning yourself is technically a respite for your target to heal themselves where you will not be able to heal. So yeah... that ability pretty much provides its own balance.
With that taken into consideration, are the abilities gained by the singularity core really worth -10 to all subsystems? If you could equip a console that gave you +10 all power or one that would give a selection of abilities that you could properly use (properly being at full force) once every... what has it been calculated at? 90 seconds? Which would you choose? And it's not technically every 90 seconds, it only charges while in combat, so it will never be an opening gambit or even available for the first 30 seconds of the match (more than enough time for many ships to alpha you out of the sky, particularly if you're suffering from -10 to all power levels), it won't charge while cloaked (so the cloak and the new abilities are now providing "cons" for one another now), and if you saved your charge and won the match, you loose the charge while out of combat, so that saved charge won't be useful for your next battle unless you get into it quickly enough. Well damn... it sounds like both of these abilities provide a nice, interesting flavor to the romulans, but they hardly sound like they need balancing at all... it sounds like they balance themselves.
Go on, compare the Warbirds to several ships - compare them to Raiders/Raptors/Battle Cruisers/Cruisers/Escorts...notice how each of them give up something for something. Then notice that the Warbirds are not necessarily giving up some of those things for the things they gain...therefore, the balance has to come from somewhere.
Have to figure that much of it is coming from that apparent feeling of a lack of choice.
The Fed can choose Cruiser, Escort, Science Vessel, Carrier, etc.
The KDF can choose Raider, Raptor, Battle Cruiser, Support Vessel, Carrier, etc.
The Rom can choose...Warbird.
There's bound to be backlash...much like if Feds could only choose to fly one type or KDF could only choose to fly one type. Wouldn't matter if there were variations in that one type, it would still feel limited by comparison...no?