Ie. I want all the goodies and free battle cloak, at zero cost :P perfect way to balance things. :rolleyes:
Very few people are saying that, and I haven't seen anyone recently say that, so really nice exageration.
Explain why most Battle Cloaks are 20 seconds, and yet Romulans, the Dev-mentioned masters of stealth, get a sub-standard 40 second Battle Cloak, just because they get a Trait, that when used with their BOffs, will now take them to... 20 seconds.
So the dev-mentioned masters of stealth, really aren't. They have to work with sub-standard equipment, to be the equals of everyone else. Not really all that great.
In the mean time, the KDF gets to keep their 20 second battle cloaks, and have BOffs that can buff other aspects.
Oh, and these other goodies, we're already being hit with a -5 energy reduction to all aspectsto make up for them. Those goodies also can only be used, if I understand the new notes right, every 45 seconds or so. So a few powers that we can only use ever ~45 seconds, we're already loosing 20 energy. You know I can live with that.
But becuase the devs over powered the traits of Romulan BOffs and Captain traits, traits that I may add are entirely optional, our baseline cloak is now WORSE then the KDF and the Federation cloaks, and can only really made equal to the KDF and Federation cloaks by giving up all other BOff enhancements.
Actually, the fed cloak is still worst, because it cost console, but that is not the issue here. I do not understand the latest change much like you - maybe it is because romulans have easy access to that trait. No idea, It is poor way to balance stuff around traits.
But if you check the whole discussion, the longer it drags, the less and less drawbacks there are and still people are not happy. So my sarcasm was aimed more at the people that are still not happy, and it will eventually lead to a free singularity powers and battlecloak.
Even the originially horrible Fleet D'Deridex is shaping to be much better ship than it's Fed mirror.
"Cryptic Studio’s Jack Emmert (2010): Microtransactions are the biggest bunch of nonsense. I like paying one fee and not worrying about it – like my cellphone. The world’s biggest MMO isn’t item based, even though the black market item GDP is bigger than Russia … microtransactions make me want to die.”
Ie. I want all the goodies and free battle cloak, at zero cost :P perfect way to balance things. :rolleyes:
Was that a response to me?
The guy asking to have no singularity powers? At all.
And if you have to balance the battle cloak (which in addition to having a 40s cooldown can also get you killed if you use it wrong), I'll take lower hull, lower shields, slower turning, or just slower in general, but I will not tolerate low power settings... Id even take no battle cloak...
So I'm not asking for "all the goodies" or a "free battle cloak". I want no stupid charge up and situational powers. I want my power levels to not be lowered.
And if I can have a battle cloak, Id say 40s worth of cooldown is balanced (considering thats a full 20s longer than Fed or KDF cloaking) but if its not, fine, I'll take a hull hit or something, but not power.
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archoncrypticMember, Cryptic DevelopersPosts: 0Arc User
edited May 2013
We're still testing possible ways of tweaking the Cloaking, power levels, singularity, etc. to ensure that the Romulans have a fun - and balanced - gameplay experience. None of the tuning points you're seeing in Beta are necessarily final.
The current iteration of Romulan Battle Cloak isn't intended to be a nerf to compensate for the Romulan racial trait. Rather, it comes from feedback from our internal testing, which indicated that Romulan ships were getting far too survivable compared to other factions when taking into account all their abilities.
Romulan Battle Cloak is, by default, harder to detect than Klingon Battle Cloaking - and only becomes easier to detect if you cloak at a high singularity level (roughly 60%) or higher. This is not taking into account the Romulan racial bonus to Cloaking, which makes it even harder to detect.
With these factors taken into consideration, as well as the added defensive capabilities of Singularity abilities, it was proving to be too easy to for Romulan ships to escape from combat without risk.
We still see Romulans as being experts at Cloaking technology, and that's why all their Warbirds have Battle Cloak and such a high base Stealth value. From a game mechanics standpoint, though, we still have to make sure they are properly balanced against other factions.
We are constantly discussing and testing different types of changes internally. Balance is an iterative process, and any time any type of ship has disadvantages when compared to another ship, *someone* is going to be disappointed.
If we give Romulans cloaking that is just better than Klingon cloaking in every way, there has to be a cost associated with that to maintain balance. As it stands, the base power level differences between Warbirds and other ships have not, in our testing, proven sufficient to compensate for both having a globally superior Cloak with no disadvantages and access to all of the Singularity powers. We may end up reverting to the 40 base power that all Warbirds used to have and giving the Romulans a globally superior cloak, or we might end up balancing these things in other ways - it's still an open discussion on the design team. We are paying close attention to player feedback and appreciate your comments.
Now, that's what I call proper dev response. Thumbs up archon!
"Cryptic Studio’s Jack Emmert (2010): Microtransactions are the biggest bunch of nonsense. I like paying one fee and not worrying about it – like my cellphone. The world’s biggest MMO isn’t item based, even though the black market item GDP is bigger than Russia … microtransactions make me want to die.”
We still see Romulans as being experts at Cloaking technology, and that's why all their Warbirds have Battle Cloak and such a high base Stealth value. From a game mechanics standpoint, though, we still have to make sure they are properly balanced against other factions.
I understand it needs to be balanced, but how can they be experts at Cloaking technology, if their cloaks take literally an entire battle to recharge? It becomes nothing more then a situational cloak.
Even in STFs and Fleet Mark battles, most of the "chunks" in the battles either don't require cloak at all, or happen in less incriments then 40 seconds. Heck Donatra cloaks faster then 40 seconds, so the Borgs have better cloaking technology then the Romulans do?
So as a question about balance, I thought the -5 energy to all systems was the balancing factor. Internally I assume that wasn't enough of a balance, or are you forgetting about that? The Romulan ships already turn slower then their KDF counterparts (except for a few) and yet that's not enough Balance for you? The KDF already has more ships with universal consoles, but that's not enough Balance either?
Can you let us know at least what factors you're trying to "balance" so maybe we can help you out? Because right now, its beginning to look a whole lot like the "balance" you did to the KDF at launch compared to the Federation, where it took years to get the KDF to be viable again.
We're still testing possible ways of tweaking the Cloaking, power levels, singularity, etc. to ensure that the Romulans have a fun - and balanced - gameplay experience. None of the tuning points you're seeing in Beta are necessarily final.
The current iteration of Romulan Battle Cloak isn't intended to be a nerf to compensate for the Romulan racial trait. Rather, it comes from feedback from our internal testing, which indicated that Romulan ships were getting far too survivable compared to other factions when taking into account all their abilities.
Romulan Battle Cloak is, by default, harder to detect than Klingon Battle Cloaking - and only becomes easier to detect if you cloak at a high singularity level (roughly 60%) or higher. This is not taking into account the Romulan racial bonus to Cloaking, which makes it even harder to detect.
With these factors taken into consideration, as well as the added defensive capabilities of Singularity abilities, it was proving to be too easy to for Romulan ships to escape from combat without risk.
We still see Romulans as being experts at Cloaking technology, and that's why all their Warbirds have Battle Cloak and such a high base Stealth value. From a game mechanics standpoint, though, we still have to make sure they are properly balanced against other factions.
We are constantly discussing and testing different types of changes internally. Balance is an iterative process, and any time any type of ship has disadvantages when compared to another ship, *someone* is going to be disappointed.
If we give Romulans cloaking that is just better than Klingon cloaking in every way, there has to be a cost associated with that to maintain balance. As it stands, the base power level differences between Warbirds and other ships have not, in our testing, proven sufficient to compensate for both having a globally superior Cloak with no disadvantages and access to all of the Singularity powers. We may end up reverting to the 40 base power that all Warbirds used to have and giving the Romulans a globally superior cloak, or we might end up balancing these things in other ways - it's still an open discussion on the design team. We are paying close attention to player feedback and appreciate your comments.
Can not stress that I would like the option to opt out of having to have the singularity powers and meter. (Including the decreased stealth at higher singularity levels).
Balance the cloak however you need... but dont mess with the power levels of the ship.
We're still testing possible ways of tweaking the Cloaking, power levels, singularity, etc. to ensure that the Romulans have a fun - and balanced - gameplay experience. None of the tuning points you're seeing in Beta are necessarily final.
The current iteration of Romulan Battle Cloak isn't intended to be a nerf to compensate for the Romulan racial trait. Rather, it comes from feedback from our internal testing, which indicated that Romulan ships were getting far too survivable compared to other factions when taking into account all their abilities.
Romulan Battle Cloak is, by default, harder to detect than Klingon Battle Cloaking - and only becomes easier to detect if you cloak at a high singularity level (roughly 60%) or higher. This is not taking into account the Romulan racial bonus to Cloaking, which makes it even harder to detect.
With these factors taken into consideration, as well as the added defensive capabilities of Singularity abilities, it was proving to be too easy to for Romulan ships to escape from combat without risk.
We still see Romulans as being experts at Cloaking technology, and that's why all their Warbirds have Battle Cloak and such a high base Stealth value. From a game mechanics standpoint, though, we still have to make sure they are properly balanced against other factions.
We are constantly discussing and testing different types of changes internally. Balance is an iterative process, and any time any type of ship has disadvantages when compared to another ship, *someone* is going to be disappointed.
If we give Romulans cloaking that is just better than Klingon cloaking in every way, there has to be a cost associated with that to maintain balance. As it stands, the base power level differences between Warbirds and other ships have not, in our testing, proven sufficient to compensate for both having a globally superior Cloak with no disadvantages and access to all of the Singularity powers. We may end up reverting to the 40 base power that all Warbirds used to have and giving the Romulans a globally superior cloak, or we might end up balancing these things in other ways - it's still an open discussion on the design team. We are paying close attention to player feedback and appreciate your comments.
Can not stress that I would like the option to opt out of having to have the singularity powers and meter. (Including the decreased stealth at higher singularity levels).
Balance the cloak however you need... but dont mess with the power levels of the ship.
So play a Klingon? They have ships with cloaks and battle cloaks with higher power levels and no singularity levels. Romulan ships will be different - as they should be.
So play a Klingon? They have ships with cloaks and battle cloaks with higher power levels and no singularity levels. Romulan ships will be different - as they should be.
I dont want to play a Klingon? I want to fly a Mogai without gimmicks... I want to play a Romulan... Honestly, the people who say "You dont like "blank", go play this other thing instead." are jerks. (Also... I already have a level 50 KDF character... so you know... been there, done that)
I want to fly a Romulan ship, as a Romulan character with no gimmicky charging powers. Id prefer to do it with the Romulan battle cloak (which is actually different from the KDF version). Id prefer to do it without my power levels being gimped, but I'll even tolerate that if I can remove everything even relating to the singularity system off of my ship.
I agree... the Romulan ships should be different... thats great. But I should be able to opt out of that system. (And honestly, the fix is to allow warbirds to equip M/ARA cores and then require a singularity core to enable the singularity system). It should be an option, Im not saying it should be standard... but it should really be an option.
If we give Romulans cloaking that is just better than Klingon cloaking in every way, there has to be a cost associated with that to maintain balance. As it stands, the base power level differences between Warbirds and other ships have not, in our testing, proven sufficient to compensate for both having a globally superior Cloak with no disadvantages and access to all of the Singularity powers. We may end up reverting to the 40 base power that all Warbirds used to have and giving the Romulans a globally superior cloak, or we might end up balancing these things in other ways - it's still an open discussion on the design team. We are paying close attention to player feedback and appreciate your comments.
Had to edit the massive ranting wall of insane person text.
Basically changes to the Romulan Battle Cloak I like it.
Bad problem is the B'rel and T'varo unless LoR is going to make it where they can fire torpedoes and compete in the DPS race I do not think anyone can stomach that after the problems of the b'rel in past few years and how it still has so many drawbacks yet today still.
Just to outline what I am talking about and to the design team just to see where I am coming from because usually the Enhanced Battle Cloak issue is not discussed at all.
First thing is the 3 second decloak, all the massive amount of sci abilities that disable a ship, disable cloak, or seek out like the emission torpedo and the fact it has no shields while in this mode are heavy heavy heavy drawbacks and at one point in the past you could go heavy sci power but those days are over you either fire 5 gazillion transphasic torpedoes and stay decloaked defeating the purpose or in pve with plasmas wait for plasma DoT's to kill a target or in PvP hope your target has never heard of brace for impact or hazard emitters.
To sum it up there is no tactics involved with using this ship if you are to use it you have to rely on several other players to keep a shield facing down it just becomes a nightmare to try to play with this ship. I don't believe it should ever be an I win ship but we either need some changes to the mechanics of some boff powers, ship consoles, d-store items or something that can give some tactics for fun ways to play the B'rel and the T'varo.
(Oh yes one last thing that has drove me crazier than usual is why a B'rel in its form most likely the most unwanted KDF ship in its current form the fleet version is a tier 5 and the t'varo is a tier 1 lol... even if I was in a fleet with a tier 5 shipyard I most likely would not buy it because of the most obvious reasons stated)
What exactly justifies the T'Varos stats been so much better then the B'Rels? Both have EBC but the B'Rel is like a shuttle in comparison...
That's a mystery much like Fleet Galaxy vs. Fleet Negh'Var. It seems we simply have to accept that some ships are simply better than their counterparts.
"Cryptic Studio’s Jack Emmert (2010): Microtransactions are the biggest bunch of nonsense. I like paying one fee and not worrying about it – like my cellphone. The world’s biggest MMO isn’t item based, even though the black market item GDP is bigger than Russia … microtransactions make me want to die.”
That's a mystery much like Fleet Galaxy vs. Fleet Negh'Var. It seems we simply have to accept that some ships are simply better than their counterparts.
You could be right but the word built should be changed to "cut and paste"
I dont want to play a Klingon? I want to fly a Mogai without gimmicks... I want to play a Romulan... Honestly, the people who say "You dont like "blank", go play this other thing instead." are jerks. (Also... I already have a level 50 KDF character... so you know... been there, done that)
I want to fly a Romulan ship, as a Romulan character with no gimmicky charging powers. Id prefer to do it with the Romulan battle cloak (which is actually different from the KDF version). Id prefer to do it without my power levels being gimped, but I'll even tolerate that if I can remove everything even relating to the singularity system off of my ship.
I agree... the Romulan ships should be different... thats great. But I should be able to opt out of that system. (And honestly, the fix is to allow warbirds to equip M/ARA cores and then require a singularity core to enable the singularity system). It should be an option, Im not saying it should be standard... but it should really be an option.
You know, I have to agree. The whole singularity stuff is a gimmick, pure and simple. Besides Rom ships never showed anything remotely like those stuff in the shows. Its usage is highly situational at best. And just useless at worst.
It is like they where designed to make players ohhh shiny, want want.
There is no way to balance those powers together with the battlecloaks and be fair and not render the rom ships into useless junk.
A small example, lets say we cut power by -40, that would translate into equivalent of 10 purple mk12 eng power consoles. If we cut it by -20 as it is right now, it is still 5 eng consoles equivalent.
So, if we remove the power penalty, do we reduce the console count by 5-10? Hardly practical since it would render the ships useless in the true meaning of the word.
How about this:
1) Singularity cores act just warp cores, plain and simple, just copy the stats over and rename the item. Done.
2) A new universal console only useable on warbirds, Call it the singularity combat harness or something. Comes in different versions, each version holds one singularity power at common, 2 powers at uncommon and 3 powers at rare, 4 powers at very rare Heck add a 5 power ultra rare/fleet version. And each power reduces the subsystems energy levels by 1. You can further mix it up by having single power versions with higher quality and lower power drain.
3) so a player can chose how to outfit her ship to a more fine grained detail, use no singuliarty stuff, get full power, or slot the combat harness and take the power hit for the stuff they want to use. And as side benefit, you also get a scaling power reduction with increasing use of the singularity powers compared to the same power drain across the board like now. And get the balancing factor between console count and singularity powers thrown in for free as well.
You could be right but the word built should be changed to "cut and paste"
Huh ? I bet you do not want me to repeat what stuff Fleet Negh'Var gets for meager 1100 hull points. Base stats have nothing to do with builds, but ship stat budgets. And that T'Var has pretty generous stat budget.
"Cryptic Studio’s Jack Emmert (2010): Microtransactions are the biggest bunch of nonsense. I like paying one fee and not worrying about it – like my cellphone. The world’s biggest MMO isn’t item based, even though the black market item GDP is bigger than Russia … microtransactions make me want to die.”
I kind of agree to the singularity core/power being a tacked on gimmick. The warbirds were advertises as "play a warbird and harness the power of the singularity core!" and I was like 'say what?'. Singularity cores were hardly the first thing that came to mind when I thought of romulan warbirds. Cloaking, though, seemed very relevant.
However, I don't want to be insensitive to the effort the Devs have put into this little brainchild of theirs - they probably have a lot invested in the singularity core concept by now and people like Archon are probably attached to the idea of 'making it work'.
Thing is, at low tiers, it's probably not much of a problem. Tier .5 ships (think Nova vs. Rhode Island) boasted an extra console slot holding a new power and slightly better bridge officer seating (2 Lt Sci). We can all acknowledge it's better, but not to the point where the power creep leaves the Nova all that much behind.
It's kind of the same deal with the Tier 1 warbird - it sort of equates a Tier 1.5 KDF Raider. It has that extra conditional power... but the B'rel isn't left behind all that much, and still has its distinctive all universal bridge seating.
It's in higher-level warbirds that it gets more touchy... at Tier 5, you've got 5 extra powers, still conditional with shared cooldown. That's more or less equivalent to a console set like the Vesta's (in which you can only use one console at a time). So, the power creep between a Klingon destroyer like the Peghqu' and a Tier 5 Mogai warbird is probably a 3 console difference.
3 universal consoles with adjoining set bonuses/capstones. That's probably what having the singularity core at endgame means balance-wise.
...so, the Battle cloak is probably not a problem. It's compensating for the singularity features that is.
A couple of the most recent people kind of hit the nail on the head on what I was thinking, but couldn't put into words.
When I think Romulan Warbirds, I think nasty, sneaky, cloaking ships with superior cloak that are a pain in the neck to find, and scare you simply because you don't know when they're going to pop out of warp.
I do not think of fancy singularity gimicks. Heck, even Shinzon, didn't have the Scimitar with warp shadows, and warp jumps, and singularity explosions, it was just losts of firepower with a near perfect cloak.
Enterprise... the Romulan ships were lots of firepower, and really decent cloaks. DS9, I don't remember the Federation wanting the Romulans on their side because they could warp shadow. They wanted them for lots of firepower, and really really good cloaks.
So, in developing STO Romulans, I think the devs are beginning to lose their focus on what it means to be Romulan, in the name of balance and gimmicks. We're loosing power, for the gimmicks already, I get it, but loosing the cloak so we can balance off the gimmicks? That's certainly not Romulan.
If they really want to balance things out, then make Warbird hulls weaker. Seriously.
Make Romulan ships not comparable in hull strength to Starfleet or Klingon vessels. That way we will need the battle cloak and singularity powers to even the odds against them.
It would also explain why the D'Deridex and Ha'apax fly like whales, they sacrifice mobility for the extra hull strength.
That's a mystery much like Fleet Galaxy vs. Fleet Negh'Var. It seems we simply have to accept that some ships are simply better than their counterparts.
The fleet Negh'Var might be a bit better than the fleet Galaxy in PvE. A bit. But there's only one small advantage: cannons. And using cannons with a fleet negh'var is a mistake, unless all you're doing is farming infected space. So all in all that's balanced.
The T'Varo is extremely resilient (33k base hull, 0.99 shield modifier), there's a ltcmdr eng to help it tank even more, it has 5 tac consoles, enhanced battle cloak, 3 tac slots to slot more +crit chance boffs... Just imagine this ship firing transphasic and tricobalt mines, transphasic torps and romulan torps while cloaked... That's just insane. This is going to be T'Varo online in may if they don't fix that.
My assumption is that there has been a miscommunication between cryptic teams (it seems to happen a lot these days) and someone gave the console layout of the fleet T'Varo to the fleet Dhelan and vice-versa, because the fleet Dhelan can't be so lousy, that's not possible.
The fleet Negh'Var might be a bit better than the fleet Galaxy in PvE. A bit. But there's only one small advantage: cannons.
Oh really ? +3 turn, free cloak, universal ensign, dhc access - at the cost of 1100 hull hps and few hundreds shield hps. That's really "a bit". :rolleyes:
My point was, that we have to accept that some ships simply are better than other in terms of ship stat budgets, and that's the way Cryptic handles the balance. Does it suck ? yeah ! will it change, most likely not.
"Cryptic Studio’s Jack Emmert (2010): Microtransactions are the biggest bunch of nonsense. I like paying one fee and not worrying about it – like my cellphone. The world’s biggest MMO isn’t item based, even though the black market item GDP is bigger than Russia … microtransactions make me want to die.”
Oh really ? +3 turn, free cloak, universal ensign, dhc access - at the cost of 1100 hull hps and few hundreds shield hps. That's really "a bit". :rolleyes:
My point was, that we have to accept that some ships simply are better than other in terms of ship stat budgets, and that's the way Cryptic handles the balance. Does it suck ? yeah ! will it change, most likely not.
DHCs on a Negh'Var are a mistake unless all you do is farming some very specific STFs. It may look better to you because you really like these STFs but trust me, DHCs on a cruiser are a pain outside of infected space elite and khittomer space. But if that's all you like in STO, fine, get a Negh'Var. But don't tell this ship is superior.
Anyway. I don't mind some slightly better ships, balance doesn't exist, but this is quite obvious, the T'Varo is currently a mistake. It's even worse than the Jem'hadar bug. All other ships look like shuttles in comparison.
So play a Klingon? They have ships with cloaks and battle cloaks with higher power levels and no singularity levels. Romulan ships will be different - as they should be.
I will agree with that simple statement... Klingon have good cloak but not he best, they make up with power levels and fire power. Romulans need cloak to make up the lack of other items.
I love the fact that the devs try to introduce different types of ships to play with. If you simply want Klingon ships painted in green, just play the real thing and roll a KDF, they could use the population...
DHCs on a Negh'Var are a mistake unless all you do is farming some very specific STFs. It may look better to you because you really like these STFs but trust me, DHCs on a cruiser are a pain outside of infected space elite and khittomer space. But if that's all you like in STO, fine, get a Negh'Var. But don't tell this ship is superior.
Anyway. I don't mind some slightly better ships, balance doesn't exist, but this is quite obvious, the T'Varo is currently a mistake. It's even worse than the Jem'hadar bug. All other ships look like shuttles in comparison.
lol, my fleet negvar with DHCs makes a fool out of 80% of the escort players in pvp, and can compete directly with the other 20%
Don't mind him drunk, he missed the point completely.
"Cryptic Studio’s Jack Emmert (2010): Microtransactions are the biggest bunch of nonsense. I like paying one fee and not worrying about it – like my cellphone. The world’s biggest MMO isn’t item based, even though the black market item GDP is bigger than Russia … microtransactions make me want to die.”
We're still testing possible ways of tweaking the Cloaking, power levels, singularity, etc........
the only way i know how to decloak a ship is using that Nebula Class with that horrible FPS eating blue grid power thingy...
so excuse me for being ignorant, but i don't think the majority of Players even knows how to counter a cloaking device, therefore IMHO the numbers how good the stealth is, as in *behind the screen*-Math is nothing that players really care about, but a 20 to 40 second cooldown change is something that is very IN YOUR FACE.
I'd rather see the numbers be made the same that Klingons have but the cooldown be left alone.
(i never uncloaked a Klingon Ship, not NPC not Player... so... it seems to me that any more efficiency than the default the Klingons / Defiant have is obsolete to begin with...
but maybe i'm just ignorant and don't know how this game works... it's not like that stuff is explained in the tutorial or at Starfleet Academy or anything like that)
Don't mind him drunk, he missed the point completely.
its sad, how few understand just how incredibly better the KDF cruisers are then the feds. first of all most wouldn't even make kdf characters, and if they did they would put beams on it and say gee, that extra turn sure was pointless.
i look at kdf cruisers and see what a cruiser should actually be in game. its damage, healing and tanking potential at the same time is perfect. fed cruisers cant tank as well due to their please camp on that shield facing maneuverability, and cant do even half the effective damage cause DHC are the only thing that isn't BO that deals effective damage. instead they can heal, thats it.
and the great tragedy is that the big romulan ships are batlecruisers, but robed of their ability to be awesome by the worst turn rates of any ships in the game. the fun i will be denied by their fail turn is so very frustrating.
The current iteration of Romulan Battle Cloak isn't intended to be a nerf to compensate for the Romulan racial trait. Rather, it comes from feedback from our internal testing, which indicated that Romulan ships were getting far too survivable compared to other factions when taking into account all their abilities.
To an extent, I can definitely see that.
However, not to be cruel to any group in particular, but a joke has started to creep up in regard to folks that haven't flown BoPs and what that will likely mean for them as they fly the Warbirds. I myself have seen this in Mirror Events.
They don't know that there are times they shouldn't cloak.
So undoubtedly, as they become more familiar with when to and when not to cloak - they'll likely have increased survivability because of the combination of variables involved (really happy to see things being taken into consideration like that, by the way - sometimes it doesn't seem like that's the case) - when they first start out and until they get the hang of it, they're going to have far less survivability. They're going to contribute to their own deaths...quite a bit.
Still though, isn't there an issue with making the "blanket" changes to the cloaking, power levels, etc, etc, etc...because the ships themselves are not the same?
A single change applied to a Fleet T'varo, Fleet Dhelan, Fleet Mogai, Fleet D'Deridex, Fleet Ha'apax, Fleet Ha'apax Refit...is going to have different results. Wouldn't it be a case of addressing things instead with the ships themselves rather than blanket changes?
We may end up reverting to the 40 base power that all Warbirds used to have and giving the Romulans a globally superior cloak...
I would prefer this as being aesthetically better and because I suspect I just wouldn't ever use a cloak with such a long cooldown.
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Comments
Very few people are saying that, and I haven't seen anyone recently say that, so really nice exageration.
Explain why most Battle Cloaks are 20 seconds, and yet Romulans, the Dev-mentioned masters of stealth, get a sub-standard 40 second Battle Cloak, just because they get a Trait, that when used with their BOffs, will now take them to... 20 seconds.
So the dev-mentioned masters of stealth, really aren't. They have to work with sub-standard equipment, to be the equals of everyone else. Not really all that great.
In the mean time, the KDF gets to keep their 20 second battle cloaks, and have BOffs that can buff other aspects.
Oh, and these other goodies, we're already being hit with a -5 energy reduction to all aspectsto make up for them. Those goodies also can only be used, if I understand the new notes right, every 45 seconds or so. So a few powers that we can only use ever ~45 seconds, we're already loosing 20 energy. You know I can live with that.
But becuase the devs over powered the traits of Romulan BOffs and Captain traits, traits that I may add are entirely optional, our baseline cloak is now WORSE then the KDF and the Federation cloaks, and can only really made equal to the KDF and Federation cloaks by giving up all other BOff enhancements.
But if you check the whole discussion, the longer it drags, the less and less drawbacks there are and still people are not happy. So my sarcasm was aimed more at the people that are still not happy, and it will eventually lead to a free singularity powers and battlecloak.
Even the originially horrible Fleet D'Deridex is shaping to be much better ship than it's Fed mirror.
Was that a response to me?
The guy asking to have no singularity powers? At all.
And if you have to balance the battle cloak (which in addition to having a 40s cooldown can also get you killed if you use it wrong), I'll take lower hull, lower shields, slower turning, or just slower in general, but I will not tolerate low power settings... Id even take no battle cloak...
So I'm not asking for "all the goodies" or a "free battle cloak". I want no stupid charge up and situational powers. I want my power levels to not be lowered.
And if I can have a battle cloak, Id say 40s worth of cooldown is balanced (considering thats a full 20s longer than Fed or KDF cloaking) but if its not, fine, I'll take a hull hit or something, but not power.
The current iteration of Romulan Battle Cloak isn't intended to be a nerf to compensate for the Romulan racial trait. Rather, it comes from feedback from our internal testing, which indicated that Romulan ships were getting far too survivable compared to other factions when taking into account all their abilities.
Romulan Battle Cloak is, by default, harder to detect than Klingon Battle Cloaking - and only becomes easier to detect if you cloak at a high singularity level (roughly 60%) or higher. This is not taking into account the Romulan racial bonus to Cloaking, which makes it even harder to detect.
With these factors taken into consideration, as well as the added defensive capabilities of Singularity abilities, it was proving to be too easy to for Romulan ships to escape from combat without risk.
We still see Romulans as being experts at Cloaking technology, and that's why all their Warbirds have Battle Cloak and such a high base Stealth value. From a game mechanics standpoint, though, we still have to make sure they are properly balanced against other factions.
We are constantly discussing and testing different types of changes internally. Balance is an iterative process, and any time any type of ship has disadvantages when compared to another ship, *someone* is going to be disappointed.
If we give Romulans cloaking that is just better than Klingon cloaking in every way, there has to be a cost associated with that to maintain balance. As it stands, the base power level differences between Warbirds and other ships have not, in our testing, proven sufficient to compensate for both having a globally superior Cloak with no disadvantages and access to all of the Singularity powers. We may end up reverting to the 40 base power that all Warbirds used to have and giving the Romulans a globally superior cloak, or we might end up balancing these things in other ways - it's still an open discussion on the design team. We are paying close attention to player feedback and appreciate your comments.
I understand it needs to be balanced, but how can they be experts at Cloaking technology, if their cloaks take literally an entire battle to recharge? It becomes nothing more then a situational cloak.
Even in STFs and Fleet Mark battles, most of the "chunks" in the battles either don't require cloak at all, or happen in less incriments then 40 seconds. Heck Donatra cloaks faster then 40 seconds, so the Borgs have better cloaking technology then the Romulans do?
So as a question about balance, I thought the -5 energy to all systems was the balancing factor. Internally I assume that wasn't enough of a balance, or are you forgetting about that? The Romulan ships already turn slower then their KDF counterparts (except for a few) and yet that's not enough Balance for you? The KDF already has more ships with universal consoles, but that's not enough Balance either?
Can you let us know at least what factors you're trying to "balance" so maybe we can help you out? Because right now, its beginning to look a whole lot like the "balance" you did to the KDF at launch compared to the Federation, where it took years to get the KDF to be viable again.
Can not stress that I would like the option to opt out of having to have the singularity powers and meter. (Including the decreased stealth at higher singularity levels).
Balance the cloak however you need... but dont mess with the power levels of the ship.
Thanks for popping in and posting. Any chance you could post in this thread http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=643611 to let us know what's going on internally?
So play a Klingon? They have ships with cloaks and battle cloaks with higher power levels and no singularity levels. Romulan ships will be different - as they should be.
I dont want to play a Klingon? I want to fly a Mogai without gimmicks... I want to play a Romulan... Honestly, the people who say "You dont like "blank", go play this other thing instead." are jerks. (Also... I already have a level 50 KDF character... so you know... been there, done that)
I want to fly a Romulan ship, as a Romulan character with no gimmicky charging powers. Id prefer to do it with the Romulan battle cloak (which is actually different from the KDF version). Id prefer to do it without my power levels being gimped, but I'll even tolerate that if I can remove everything even relating to the singularity system off of my ship.
I agree... the Romulan ships should be different... thats great. But I should be able to opt out of that system. (And honestly, the fix is to allow warbirds to equip M/ARA cores and then require a singularity core to enable the singularity system). It should be an option, Im not saying it should be standard... but it should really be an option.
Had to edit the massive ranting wall of insane person text.
Basically changes to the Romulan Battle Cloak I like it.
Bad problem is the B'rel and T'varo unless LoR is going to make it where they can fire torpedoes and compete in the DPS race I do not think anyone can stomach that after the problems of the b'rel in past few years and how it still has so many drawbacks yet today still.
Just to outline what I am talking about and to the design team just to see where I am coming from because usually the Enhanced Battle Cloak issue is not discussed at all.
First thing is the 3 second decloak, all the massive amount of sci abilities that disable a ship, disable cloak, or seek out like the emission torpedo and the fact it has no shields while in this mode are heavy heavy heavy drawbacks and at one point in the past you could go heavy sci power but those days are over you either fire 5 gazillion transphasic torpedoes and stay decloaked defeating the purpose or in pve with plasmas wait for plasma DoT's to kill a target or in PvP hope your target has never heard of brace for impact or hazard emitters.
To sum it up there is no tactics involved with using this ship if you are to use it you have to rely on several other players to keep a shield facing down it just becomes a nightmare to try to play with this ship. I don't believe it should ever be an I win ship but we either need some changes to the mechanics of some boff powers, ship consoles, d-store items or something that can give some tactics for fun ways to play the B'rel and the T'varo.
(Oh yes one last thing that has drove me crazier than usual is why a B'rel in its form most likely the most unwanted KDF ship in its current form the fleet version is a tier 5 and the t'varo is a tier 1 lol... even if I was in a fleet with a tier 5 shipyard I most likely would not buy it because of the most obvious reasons stated)
What exactly justifies the T'Varos stats been so much better then the B'Rels? Both have EBC but the B'Rel is like a shuttle in comparison...
That's a mystery much like Fleet Galaxy vs. Fleet Negh'Var. It seems we simply have to accept that some ships are simply better than their counterparts.
Its the current theme make the new ship better but leave the older ones right where they are at so players will buy the newer one.
Edit: Oh yeah the irony is the T'varo Fleet ship is tier 1 shipyard and Fleet B'rel is a Tier 5 shipyard go figure...
You could be right but the word built should be changed to "cut and paste"
You know, I have to agree. The whole singularity stuff is a gimmick, pure and simple. Besides Rom ships never showed anything remotely like those stuff in the shows. Its usage is highly situational at best. And just useless at worst.
It is like they where designed to make players ohhh shiny, want want.
There is no way to balance those powers together with the battlecloaks and be fair and not render the rom ships into useless junk.
A small example, lets say we cut power by -40, that would translate into equivalent of 10 purple mk12 eng power consoles. If we cut it by -20 as it is right now, it is still 5 eng consoles equivalent.
So, if we remove the power penalty, do we reduce the console count by 5-10? Hardly practical since it would render the ships useless in the true meaning of the word.
How about this:
1) Singularity cores act just warp cores, plain and simple, just copy the stats over and rename the item. Done.
2) A new universal console only useable on warbirds, Call it the singularity combat harness or something. Comes in different versions, each version holds one singularity power at common, 2 powers at uncommon and 3 powers at rare, 4 powers at very rare Heck add a 5 power ultra rare/fleet version. And each power reduces the subsystems energy levels by 1. You can further mix it up by having single power versions with higher quality and lower power drain.
3) so a player can chose how to outfit her ship to a more fine grained detail, use no singuliarty stuff, get full power, or slot the combat harness and take the power hit for the stuff they want to use. And as side benefit, you also get a scaling power reduction with increasing use of the singularity powers compared to the same power drain across the board like now. And get the balancing factor between console count and singularity powers thrown in for free as well.
Huh ? I bet you do not want me to repeat what stuff Fleet Negh'Var gets for meager 1100 hull points. Base stats have nothing to do with builds, but ship stat budgets. And that T'Var has pretty generous stat budget.
However, I don't want to be insensitive to the effort the Devs have put into this little brainchild of theirs - they probably have a lot invested in the singularity core concept by now and people like Archon are probably attached to the idea of 'making it work'.
Thing is, at low tiers, it's probably not much of a problem. Tier .5 ships (think Nova vs. Rhode Island) boasted an extra console slot holding a new power and slightly better bridge officer seating (2 Lt Sci). We can all acknowledge it's better, but not to the point where the power creep leaves the Nova all that much behind.
It's kind of the same deal with the Tier 1 warbird - it sort of equates a Tier 1.5 KDF Raider. It has that extra conditional power... but the B'rel isn't left behind all that much, and still has its distinctive all universal bridge seating.
It's in higher-level warbirds that it gets more touchy... at Tier 5, you've got 5 extra powers, still conditional with shared cooldown. That's more or less equivalent to a console set like the Vesta's (in which you can only use one console at a time). So, the power creep between a Klingon destroyer like the Peghqu' and a Tier 5 Mogai warbird is probably a 3 console difference.
3 universal consoles with adjoining set bonuses/capstones. That's probably what having the singularity core at endgame means balance-wise.
...so, the Battle cloak is probably not a problem. It's compensating for the singularity features that is.
When I think Romulan Warbirds, I think nasty, sneaky, cloaking ships with superior cloak that are a pain in the neck to find, and scare you simply because you don't know when they're going to pop out of warp.
I do not think of fancy singularity gimicks. Heck, even Shinzon, didn't have the Scimitar with warp shadows, and warp jumps, and singularity explosions, it was just losts of firepower with a near perfect cloak.
Enterprise... the Romulan ships were lots of firepower, and really decent cloaks. DS9, I don't remember the Federation wanting the Romulans on their side because they could warp shadow. They wanted them for lots of firepower, and really really good cloaks.
So, in developing STO Romulans, I think the devs are beginning to lose their focus on what it means to be Romulan, in the name of balance and gimmicks. We're loosing power, for the gimmicks already, I get it, but loosing the cloak so we can balance off the gimmicks? That's certainly not Romulan.
Make Romulan ships not comparable in hull strength to Starfleet or Klingon vessels. That way we will need the battle cloak and singularity powers to even the odds against them.
It would also explain why the D'Deridex and Ha'apax fly like whales, they sacrifice mobility for the extra hull strength.
The fleet Negh'Var might be a bit better than the fleet Galaxy in PvE. A bit. But there's only one small advantage: cannons. And using cannons with a fleet negh'var is a mistake, unless all you're doing is farming infected space. So all in all that's balanced.
The T'Varo is extremely resilient (33k base hull, 0.99 shield modifier), there's a ltcmdr eng to help it tank even more, it has 5 tac consoles, enhanced battle cloak, 3 tac slots to slot more +crit chance boffs... Just imagine this ship firing transphasic and tricobalt mines, transphasic torps and romulan torps while cloaked... That's just insane. This is going to be T'Varo online in may if they don't fix that.
My assumption is that there has been a miscommunication between cryptic teams (it seems to happen a lot these days) and someone gave the console layout of the fleet T'Varo to the fleet Dhelan and vice-versa, because the fleet Dhelan can't be so lousy, that's not possible.
Oh really ? +3 turn, free cloak, universal ensign, dhc access - at the cost of 1100 hull hps and few hundreds shield hps. That's really "a bit". :rolleyes:
My point was, that we have to accept that some ships simply are better than other in terms of ship stat budgets, and that's the way Cryptic handles the balance. Does it suck ? yeah ! will it change, most likely not.
DHCs on a Negh'Var are a mistake unless all you do is farming some very specific STFs. It may look better to you because you really like these STFs but trust me, DHCs on a cruiser are a pain outside of infected space elite and khittomer space. But if that's all you like in STO, fine, get a Negh'Var. But don't tell this ship is superior.
Anyway. I don't mind some slightly better ships, balance doesn't exist, but this is quite obvious, the T'Varo is currently a mistake. It's even worse than the Jem'hadar bug. All other ships look like shuttles in comparison.
I will agree with that simple statement... Klingon have good cloak but not he best, they make up with power levels and fire power. Romulans need cloak to make up the lack of other items.
I love the fact that the devs try to introduce different types of ships to play with. If you simply want Klingon ships painted in green, just play the real thing and roll a KDF, they could use the population...
lol, my fleet negvar with DHCs makes a fool out of 80% of the escort players in pvp, and can compete directly with the other 20%
the only way i know how to decloak a ship is using that Nebula Class with that horrible FPS eating blue grid power thingy...
so excuse me for being ignorant, but i don't think the majority of Players even knows how to counter a cloaking device, therefore IMHO the numbers how good the stealth is, as in *behind the screen*-Math is nothing that players really care about, but a 20 to 40 second cooldown change is something that is very IN YOUR FACE.
I'd rather see the numbers be made the same that Klingons have but the cooldown be left alone.
(i never uncloaked a Klingon Ship, not NPC not Player... so... it seems to me that any more efficiency than the default the Klingons / Defiant have is obsolete to begin with...
but maybe i'm just ignorant and don't know how this game works... it's not like that stuff is explained in the tutorial or at Starfleet Academy or anything like that)
its sad, how few understand just how incredibly better the KDF cruisers are then the feds. first of all most wouldn't even make kdf characters, and if they did they would put beams on it and say gee, that extra turn sure was pointless.
i look at kdf cruisers and see what a cruiser should actually be in game. its damage, healing and tanking potential at the same time is perfect. fed cruisers cant tank as well due to their please camp on that shield facing maneuverability, and cant do even half the effective damage cause DHC are the only thing that isn't BO that deals effective damage. instead they can heal, thats it.
and the great tragedy is that the big romulan ships are batlecruisers, but robed of their ability to be awesome by the worst turn rates of any ships in the game. the fun i will be denied by their fail turn is so very frustrating.
To an extent, I can definitely see that.
However, not to be cruel to any group in particular, but a joke has started to creep up in regard to folks that haven't flown BoPs and what that will likely mean for them as they fly the Warbirds. I myself have seen this in Mirror Events.
They don't know that there are times they shouldn't cloak.
So undoubtedly, as they become more familiar with when to and when not to cloak - they'll likely have increased survivability because of the combination of variables involved (really happy to see things being taken into consideration like that, by the way - sometimes it doesn't seem like that's the case) - when they first start out and until they get the hang of it, they're going to have far less survivability. They're going to contribute to their own deaths...quite a bit.
Still though, isn't there an issue with making the "blanket" changes to the cloaking, power levels, etc, etc, etc...because the ships themselves are not the same?
A single change applied to a Fleet T'varo, Fleet Dhelan, Fleet Mogai, Fleet D'Deridex, Fleet Ha'apax, Fleet Ha'apax Refit...is going to have different results. Wouldn't it be a case of addressing things instead with the ships themselves rather than blanket changes?
/concur
Now if only we could get a similar caliber response to the EPtX kerfuffle...
I would prefer this as being aesthetically better and because I suspect I just wouldn't ever use a cloak with such a long cooldown.
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