Make Combat Pets Useful

sasspect

Dear Cryptic.

The Aquarius and HoH'Sus are awesome little consoles that bring some great flavour to the ships that equip them. It seems sad that for all the work that went into them, they are pretty hard to justify using. Their poor AI and vulnerability to damage spikes (especially warp core breaches) gives them a tendency to gently coast to a stop next to the ship they just helped kill and explode in sympathy.

Any chance we could give these little guys some help? I feel the best option would be improved AI to avoid warp core breaches, but I appreciate that AI rewrites may be too much effort. An easier solution may be to give them immunity to warp core breaches, or perhaps a general cap on damage taken in a single hit. Something to stop them blinking out of existence before your very eyes.

These consoles/ships hardly have a massive DPS impact right now, people choose them for flavour and looks. They are also great for support oriented captains playing solo content: The player has something to use their buffs/heals which rewards them with DPS. The problem is you only get that benefit until the first enemy blows up, and then you're stuck with a wasted console for 5 minutes.

What do people think? Is a general resistance to big spikes too much? Would immunity to warp core breaches be useful? Is there anything else we can do for these consoles?

Cheers!

thechugster

carrier commands would be the easiest thing to add, they are already ingame, just add them to the Bortasqu, Oddy, Prommie and Galaxy.

Problem solved....but only if they listen to the commands :rolleyes:

momaw

I vote:

+ Immunity to warp core breaches for all frigate-class pets
+ When console-pets are "destroyed", they limp back to host ship and a 1 minute cooldown starts once they dock.

I'm a devout believer in sustained uptime. If you can't use a feature of your ship relatively often, then it has no reason to exist because a feature you COULD use often/persistently will bring more benefit.

reynoldsxd

momaw wrote: »

I vote:

+ Immunity to warp core breaches for all frigate-class pets
+ When console-pets are "destroyed", they limp back to host ship and a 1 minute cooldown starts once they dock.

I'm a devout believer in sustained uptime. If you can't use a feature of your ship relatively often, then it has no reason to exist because a feature you COULD use often/persistently will bring more benefit.

since the console pets are hardly any better then their hangar brethren, i vote for the proposed changes.

seannewboy

Personally i dont think those are the only ai things that should be improved, the horta ground combat pets arent any more useful. Also boffs with close combat weapons would do better if they had more initiative.

melisande77

momaw wrote: »

I vote:

+ Immunity to warp core breaches for all frigate-class pets
+ When console-pets are "destroyed", they limp back to host ship and a 1 minute cooldown starts once they dock.

I'm a devout believer in sustained uptime. If you can't use a feature of your ship relatively often, then it has no reason to exist because a feature you COULD use often/persistently will bring more benefit.

Basically this. Currently the only real console that is worthwhile on the Ody is Chevron Sep, though an argument could be made for Worker Bees because of its low cd. I would love to see them treated as Hangar pets in the first place, with that 1 min base cd, aux lowering it, and benefiting from Fighter commands and Flight Deck officers, though I do now know if that is too much.

However with you being able to stay in the Stardrive after you die in the upcoming patch, it really kills any reason to even have the Aquarius in the first place, which is a shame.

sasspect

Shorter cooldown would also be nice. It's just great fun having my little Aquarius zipping around and I just don't get the chance to do it often enough in late game content. 5 minutes is a long long time to wait.

wrathofachilles

Or they could simply make it so that when it's disabled, you just have to heal it back up rather than dock with it and start the 4-5 minute cool. They could perhaps be easier to disable as a result of their unkillable nature, or you can't just heal it back above disabled but must heal it back to full before it will go back into action.

sunfrancks

The eilte scorpions I use on my Fleet HEC are really nice, but they suffer with the same dumb AI as all pets do.
Their only saving grace, is the HY Plasma Torps they fire and the distraction they take off my ship, so I can make my move to destroy them...

wrathofachilles

sunfrancks wrote: »

The eilte scorpions I use on my Fleet HEC are really nice, but they suffer with the same dumb AI as all pets do.
Their only saving grace, is the HY Plasma Torps they fire and the distraction they take off my ship, so I can make my move to destroy them...

The fragile nature of many hangar summons are indeed annoying, however nothing on the order of a 5 minute cool to get it back. At least I read in a tribble patch that they're trying to make it so that if you die after saucer separation, when you respawn you won't be forced to be reunited with your saucer, so that's nice.

momaw

wrathofachilles wrote: »

Or they could simply make it so that when it's disabled, you just have to heal it back up rather than dock with it and start the 4-5 minute cool.

This might be fun as well.

Though I would probably make it so that instead of instantly becoming active, after you tag it with a healing ability it needs ooooooh, 30 seconds? before it starts moving again with full health. Or maybe it has to be healed to 50% before it can start fighting. Otherwise you end up with a zombie pet that shoots once, takes a hit and "dies", gets healed, shoots once, takes a hit and "dies", etc. Amusing but aggravating.

mirrorchaos

if the ai pet recognized a threat to itself nearby it should activate something like a polarize hull and hazard emitters, infact all large enough pets like the kdf bops, dreadnaught jem bug ship and kha'fi frigates should have some limited self regen ability to make them more useful in combat and the more advanced they come the more stronger these limited self defense systems work on themselves, but not to the point that when you shoot at them that it becomes impossible to destroy them, far from it. but just enough to be of some use in combat to make combat pets a bit more viable.

hasukurobi

sasspect wrote: »

Dear Cryptic.

The Aquarius and HoH'Sus are awesome little consoles that bring some great flavour to the ships that equip them. It seems sad that for all the work that went into them, they are pretty hard to justify using. Their poor AI and vulnerability to damage spikes (especially warp core breaches) gives them a tendency to gently coast to a stop next to the ship they just helped kill and explode in sympathy.

Any chance we could give these little guys some help? I feel the best option would be improved AI to avoid warp core breaches, but I appreciate that AI rewrites may be too much effort. An easier solution may be to give them immunity to warp core breaches, or perhaps a general cap on damage taken in a single hit. Something to stop them blinking out of existence before your very eyes.

These consoles/ships hardly have a massive DPS impact right now, people choose them for flavour and looks. They are also great for support oriented captains playing solo content: The player has something to use their buffs/heals which rewards them with DPS. The problem is you only get that benefit until the first enemy blows up, and then you're stuck with a wasted console for 5 minutes.

What do people think? Is a general resistance to big spikes too much? Would immunity to warp core breaches be useful? Is there anything else we can do for these consoles?

Cheers!

The HoH'SuS would be nicer if it used Battle Cloak and avoided some damage from time to time this way but honestly if you really want to help it out you need to get them to remove its Transphasic Torps and switch them to good ol' Photons.

I have no idea why they strapped that poor thing with the most worthless Torps in the entire game when they are not REMOTELY Klingon. The Aquarius at least got Quantums which are not so horrible.

But how about give these guys Brace For Impact III? lol. They can use it if ever a ship explodes near them? Or as you say make them move away from dying ships with AI or something. Give them greater immunity to all AoE attacks.

shadowmane20001

I would like to see some upgrades done to combat pets. Such as the Ability to assign Officers to them... Allowing them perhaps access to one tactical, one engineering, and one science officer power, allowing them say... two powers each.

For example the Saucer section of the Exploration cruiser could have access to 6 additional powers from bridge officers you command. Or you could set it up say... a LT engineering bridge officer, with an Ensign Tactical and Science.

Consoles could be the same way, as it is a cruiser it could have two engineering, one science, and one tactical.

For the Multivector escort it's combat pets would be Bridge officer and console wise... 1 engineering, 1 science, and two tactical.


Then You could allow us to set their weapons which could be limited to two front 1 aft, as well as shields, deflectors, and impulse engines. It would allow us to use some of the older gear we have, or actually make them more... effective for both PVP and PVE content.

nitehawk27

To be honest i would love to be able to choose the weapons for any spliting ships, galaxy, oddy, multi V, it never made sense to me that while the ship is in one piece my weapons are what i set them to, but as soon as I use the seperation my saucer has phasers for some reason... no sense at all...

well at least the fixed the thing where the seperation would create a generic saucer that didn't even have the same colours and pattern on it.

momaw

shadowmane20001 wrote: »

I would like to see some upgrades done to combat pets. Such as the Ability to assign Officers to them.

That would be VERY neat.

On your bridge stations layout, you get a new entry: pet. You put an officer in there, and then when your pet deploys it gets to use the same abilities that your chosen officer has.

But it's more important to get them alive and active more of the time, first. It's kind of pointless trying to improve a pet that spontaneously explodes 30 seconds after launch and then sits sulking the rest of the battle.