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EPtX Reliance Alternative?
sethketa
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
DISCLAIMER: I am what many of you would consider a "Newbie". I joined Star Trek Online after the game had already gone Free 2 Play, and I've only clocked in approximately 100 hours of play. However, I have had a number of discussions with players who are veterans of this game in an attempt to understand how the changes to EPtX have affected cruisers, and understand why these players are tempted to leave.
So, with that out of the way, I'd like to address what may be the fundamental problem of cruisers: The necessary reliance on Emergency Power to X abilities.
From my understanding, on Holodeck a cruiser will typically run with two copies of EPtS and EPtW. The player will chain these abilities together so that EPtS and EPtW have an approximate 100% uptime. This gives the cruiser the necessary survivability it needs when under heavy fire, and the necessary damage it needs to remain relevant in the fight.
The fact that cruisers must rely on these abilities displays a fundamental design flaw in the game, something that Cryptic seems to want to address by altering these abilities. Cryptic's reasoning for changing these abilities was to make them "more interesting", and altering them is the first step in achieving that. However, if they intend to alter these abilities into a more reactionary role, then cruisers need compensation.
From what I have gathered on the forums, many players feel that the best choice of action is to simply revert the changes to the EPtX abilities. However, considering my view that a reliance on EPtX abilities is a fundamental flaw of cruiser design, I feel these ships should be compensated in a different way. My idea is very simple: A unique version of "Sensor Analysis".
I think it is a fair assumption to make that most players know how Sensor Analysis works, and if they don't it is easily found on the STO Wiki. Regardless, while an escort in STO is designed to deal damage, a cruiser in STO is designed to take punishment. With this in mind, the basic concept is as follows: The longer a cruiser takes damage, the more fervent the crew becomes. This allows the cruiser's crew to pull off incredible feats while under pressure, increasing the vessel's damage output and resistance to damage.
This ability would function similarly to how Sensor Analysis works. The moment a cruiser is attacked it gains a single stack of "Fervor". After ten seconds, if the cruiser is attacked again the stack increases up to a cap.
This ability would remove the necessity for cruisers to rely on chaining two EPtX abilities at all times by essentially building the functionality directly into the ship. This would also allow Cryptic to alter the EPtX abilities further and allow them to function like their namesake implies: An ability you use in an emergency.
Even if Cryptic decides against altering the EPtX abilities further, this ability shouldn't have any negative affects towards DPS-kitted cruisers, as chaining EPtW should be a viable option with another player fulfilling the 'tank' role.
As always, this is simply an idea. It may be a foolish idea based on something I simply don't understand about cruisers, but I felt it might be worthwhile to give another opinion that I've not seen.
So, with that out of the way, I'd like to address what may be the fundamental problem of cruisers: The necessary reliance on Emergency Power to X abilities.
From my understanding, on Holodeck a cruiser will typically run with two copies of EPtS and EPtW. The player will chain these abilities together so that EPtS and EPtW have an approximate 100% uptime. This gives the cruiser the necessary survivability it needs when under heavy fire, and the necessary damage it needs to remain relevant in the fight.
The fact that cruisers must rely on these abilities displays a fundamental design flaw in the game, something that Cryptic seems to want to address by altering these abilities. Cryptic's reasoning for changing these abilities was to make them "more interesting", and altering them is the first step in achieving that. However, if they intend to alter these abilities into a more reactionary role, then cruisers need compensation.
From what I have gathered on the forums, many players feel that the best choice of action is to simply revert the changes to the EPtX abilities. However, considering my view that a reliance on EPtX abilities is a fundamental flaw of cruiser design, I feel these ships should be compensated in a different way. My idea is very simple: A unique version of "Sensor Analysis".
I think it is a fair assumption to make that most players know how Sensor Analysis works, and if they don't it is easily found on the STO Wiki. Regardless, while an escort in STO is designed to deal damage, a cruiser in STO is designed to take punishment. With this in mind, the basic concept is as follows: The longer a cruiser takes damage, the more fervent the crew becomes. This allows the cruiser's crew to pull off incredible feats while under pressure, increasing the vessel's damage output and resistance to damage.
This ability would function similarly to how Sensor Analysis works. The moment a cruiser is attacked it gains a single stack of "Fervor". After ten seconds, if the cruiser is attacked again the stack increases up to a cap.
This ability would remove the necessity for cruisers to rely on chaining two EPtX abilities at all times by essentially building the functionality directly into the ship. This would also allow Cryptic to alter the EPtX abilities further and allow them to function like their namesake implies: An ability you use in an emergency.
Even if Cryptic decides against altering the EPtX abilities further, this ability shouldn't have any negative affects towards DPS-kitted cruisers, as chaining EPtW should be a viable option with another player fulfilling the 'tank' role.
As always, this is simply an idea. It may be a foolish idea based on something I simply don't understand about cruisers, but I felt it might be worthwhile to give another opinion that I've not seen.
Post edited by sethketa on
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So what do we do ? I think they need to revamp the EptXW into 2 new sets of powers. Emergencies, that will boost for a lot the subsystem, but will not last very long. And new powers that will add a lesser bonus, but you will be able to keep it up all the time with 2 of them, as it is now.
For example, removing the shield healing component of the lesser power of EptX, but keeping the damage resistance/power increase. Maybe add a shield regen. On the other hand, the emergency would have a huge shield healing, and maybe a huge shield resistance but would last only a few seconds.
Basically, you could run power to shield all the time, and emergency from time to time, when it's needed.
It is also already kinda in the game in the form of passive hull healing that cruisers are supposed to gain from having large crew complements. But any effect that they have is pretty much destroyed in PvP where your crew is reduced to 0 on an almost permanent basis. This would also become a problem if your suggestion was invariably linked to crew level.
With the ever present jam that escorts have access to, Sensor Analysis is a really bad joke in PvP and it would seem from the look of things, they are once again, unapologetically breaking an established game mechanic without rhyme or reason. These are two examples of a list of many, which show that escort pilots, their opinions and money are what make this game flow.
There are a lot of things that make this game break canon. Making all emergency powers a "reactionary" measure is a backward step in my opinion and one, which has been demonstrated by many, to benefit the group of people making most use out of the "emergency" power by having it always there.
I would like to congratulate all the people who suggested to have these powers nerfed. The game will be officially broken in May all to satisfy the demands of the already overpowered escort pilot.
/rant
That being said I do believe cruisers should be able to take a great deal of punishment, but not to the point to where fighting one 1 vs 1 is futile.
I think some of the players have developed a workaround by using just two copies of EPtS1. I don't think it provides the 100% uptime, but the coverage gap will be a lot smaller.
The big problem with this change is system cooldowns. Emergency powers account for a good majority of the engineering abilities, and engineering team is the only other ability at ensign, but they all share the battery system, which means when you activate one, the rest go on a 15 second system cooldown. This interferes with your basic ability to just use your boff abilities since half of your engineering abilites are going to be on cooldown at any one time.
One of the ... issues ... with EPtX skills is that they all share the same System ... Batteries. I mean, take a look at the Ensign level skills available and what System they're on:
- Batteries: EPtW I, EPtS I, EPtE I, EPtA I
- Beam Weapons: Fire at Will I, Overload I, TWS I, TSS I, TES I, TAS I
- Crew: Engineering Team I, Science Team I, Tactical Team I
- Deflector Dish: Tachyon Beam I
- Deflector Field: Transfer Shield Strength I
- Hazard: Hazard Emitters I, Polarize Hull I
- Sensor Array: Jam Sensors I, Mask Energy Signature I
- Torpedoes: High Yield I, Spread I
- Tractor: Tractor Beam I
By my counting, this means that in the Ensign Slot, the category breakdown is:Hmmm ... 4 of 5 skills in 1 System (out of 2 Systems) for Engineering in the Engineering Ensign slot. If I didn't know anything else about the game, I'd say that THAT, right there, is a glaring oversight. Engineers need MORE SKILLS TO CHOOSE FROM for the Ensign Engineering slot, because right now they've got a narrow gauge railway line with only one track (and a single switch and a short siding) with only one choo-choo train to drive in one direction when it comes to making choices for low end Boff skill selection.
Heck, just moving the Auxiliary Power System skills (Aux to Battery, Aux to Dampeners and Aux to Structural Integrity Field) DOWN ONE STEP so they first become available at ENSIGN, instead of at Lieutenant, would be an utterly MASSIVE AND NEEDED buff to Engineering Boff CHOICES ... since right now, we've basically got one choice (and it's mostly made for us).
Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser
Immortal BOff Skills combo for Ground
This reduction means that ships with 6 and fixed engineering slots will find it much harder to put together as efficient a build as an escort with 6+ tactical slots, or a science vessel with 6+ science slots, and this will further marginalise cruisers. Imagine if Cryptic decided that all weapon buff powers (from Fire at Will, to Torpedo High Yield) had to share a common global cooldown.
Cryptic already knows that cruisers have an image problem at end-game -- the Regent sold poorly* -- and this change, without anything to mitigate it, will worsen it.
* Although the poor sales can also be attributed to the fact that, in stat terms, the Regent was almost entirely a copy-paste of the free Sovereign with just a slight shuffling of bridge officer seating. The new model is great, but even with the console and torpedo launcher it wasn't worth the price.
If Cryptic sees a problem with cruisers absolutely requiring non stop EPTS, then all they need to do is increase the shield strength and regeneration of cruisers to a level that makes sense considering the fact that cruisers don't have the escort's capacity to outright negate incoming damage and that they are supposed to be the bricks of the fleet.
Fixing the crew system would help but probably not as much as people want to be believe. Survivability comes from shield performance. Your shields are harder than your hull is, and they regenerate. Fixing the crew system so that your hull is regenerating 40% per minute instead of 10% does nothing to keep you alive against the 20K damage per second you'll see in peeveepee nor the 50K plasma torpedoes you'll see in STF.
As far as EPTW, another easy fix as far as I can tell, all they need to do is make beam weapons fire sequentially instead of simultaneously. Instead of three different weapons going "zap zap zap zap" in parallel, which drains like a TRIBBLE, have them take turns firing a single "zap" which does 4 zap's worth of damage. This is much closer to the practical mechanics of DHCs and lets beams get closer to their rated damage i.e. the damage they are supposed to be doing.
Given the responses that Cryptic has given with respect to the way beam weapons interact with the power drain mechanic, they seem to regard cruisers using multiple beams and broadsiding as Doing It Wrong.
Edit: Actually, a bit more tongue in cheek, they seem to regard using cruisers as Doing It Wrong. :P
Primarily my idea is centered more around damage output as opposed to durability. The system could theoretically be used to increase durability, but that doesn't seem to be the intention Cryptic wants, as there are other ways to make cruisers more survivable that have already been listed in this thread.
So, as a cruiser takes damage their damage output increases, and their damage output only.
One thing I will say may be a carnal sin against all MMOs, but I feel in the case of "Escorts Online" that I should mention World of ********. I've not played that game in many years, but last I heard they altered it so that "tank" characters did just as much damage as pure DPS characters, but to reach that damage they needed to react to punishment taken.
One of the pitfalls of designing a game around the holy trinity is to make everyone weak except for the DPS class. If you do this, it makes the DPS class the only viable choice. Cruisers and Science Vessels need tools to stay competitive against Escorts, and while I cannot speak for SV, I can say that Cruisers appear to lack anything of the sort.
Second, Science vessels are supposed to have the superior shields. Giving just cruisers a boost to shield capacity and regen just screws over the survivability of science vessels. How did you quote his post and have it labeled with my name?
I think the stock loadout of ships gives a hint how Cryptic intended us to use the ships. For the most part cruisers have 2 torpedoes and 2 arrays fore and the same aft, so that would seem to indicate they intend most cruisers to have a balanced mix of weaponry. That's just as weak though, and the problem is not with cruisers, the problem is with weapons. The power drain is supposed to stop you from loading an all energy build and having that work, but cannon based vessels aren't punished enough and beam vessels are punished too much due to how the firing cycles work.
The design can work if the content is made for it. Hive Space is a decent example, you can't just go in and blitz it with DPS, you need to have some survivability (along with tactics). That's why people hate it so much, they go into it thinking they can just mindlessly shoot things and then they get rocked by NPCs when they overcommit.
The problem is most everything else is based off DPS. Other STFs don't get you shot near as much while a timer means you have to kill stuff fast, so DPS is the main goal. Most other end game content is the same, the goal is to kill something quickly before it does something (Kill weavers in the tholian vault mission, kill stuff attacking frighters in fleet actions, etc.) while the threat to your own ship is minimal. Cruisers aren't really even needed in STFs when escorts and science vessels can survive incoming fire for a while
As for staying competitive against escorts, Science vessels have nothing. Theoretically science powers and sensor analysis should make up for it, but sensor analysis doesn't always stack fast enough, and science powers suck. Drains (shield drains as well as power drains which reduce defense and resistance by stealing engine and shield power) do **** all made worse by power insulators while exotic damage doesn't make up for the lack of weaponry.
The issue isn't one of compensation.
The issue is that right now, many Cruisers have multiple lower tier engineering slots to fill.
If a Cruiser wants to take EPTS 3, for example, suddenly they are locked out of good choices in their ensign stations. Which nearly every cruiser has 2 of.
So the issue isn't just one of reliance on X, or a ship class that relies on chaining these.
The issue is much deeper, and completely embedded in the available ENG BOFF abilities, their shared cooldowns and the lack of better choices.
Adding a 'compensation' power, as you've suggested, won't actually solve that issue.
The devs, some of whom are relatively new to STO, are tinkering with some bits but not fixing the entire puzzle.
This is a mistake.
Buggered if I know. I just hit "Quote" and typed from there. Quoting, quick replies, and so on all seem a bit funky on this board.
One of the great irritations about the weapon system is how little synergy beam arrays have with anything but themselves. The arcs don't work well with torpedoes, except for the solitary example that comes with the Regent, and that one has crippled damage output compared to other q-torps. You can straight-up replace it on any beam-boat build with the Romulan experimental beam and gain DPS and FAW utility.
The use of torpedoes is further weakened by the lack of Tac slots to use torp buffs with, due to the omninecessity of Tactical Team. The shield distribution function of that ability should be added to all Team powers.
A friend of mine, who is an avid Star Trek fan, recently brought up something in relation to Tactical Team. When a ship is under attack, wouldn't it naturally cycle shields towards the direction it is being hit from? Didn't they do that in the show? Why do we need to use an ability to pull off what typically came natural in a combat situation?
I can understand that Cryptic may want to have as many things be as interactive as possible, but right now the micromanagement of cooldowns is getting a bit absurd.
QFT.
But really tactical team is the keystone of the absolutely horrid shift in combat pacing and design we all experience at high levels compared to the lower levels.
I could have swore it didn't do that when the game was first launched but it's hard to remember how EVERYTHING worked back then.
Many BOFF powers were changed when Free to Play hit. Including adding the shield distribution effect to TT.
I don't know although I have read in the past that it didn't, and the automatic shield distribution function was added following complaints that Tactical Team felt lacking compared to Engineering Team and Science Team. Take that with a grain of salt, though.
I would love to see the AUX2x powers moved down a rank, It would make cruisers so much more potent.(especialy since you could dump your aux2batt skills in the ens slot and still take higher level damage/healing skills.)
Alternatively you could add battery power to x along side emergency power to x. One could be a toggle supplying x amont of extra power and maybe some %buff to a subsystem and the other could be close to what it is now, probably toned down a bit. just as long as they dont stuff them all on the same cd.
OR.. do what bridge commander did, you have 4 subsystema and a battery reserve, if you push your total power levels over a certain amount it drained battery power.
STO could do something similar using the same mechanic they use for the romulan singularity powers. When your battery power is full you gain a cd reduction to boff abilitys but every emergency or aux to power drains this some what.
It would recharce overtime and could have mods applyed by warp corec for whatever you felt necessary, like recharge, or total power, ormagnitude of the cd bonus.
Each ship would be capped at a numerical limit for battery capacity with cruisers 1 sci 2 and esc 3
Not everything you see on the internet is true - Abraham Lincoln
Occidere populo et effercio confractus
Considering how underwhelming warp cores seem to be, it might be interesting to tie in something like this. However, this would mean that Warbirds are somewhat 'underpowered' when put in the same role, unless they have a special singularity power to match what this would allow us to do.
Same battery system would apply. and some of their singularity powers can be prety nasty
Not everything you see on the internet is true - Abraham Lincoln
Occidere populo et effercio confractus
Maybe they should move that down a rarity.
Another idea:
Reroute power. Have abilities that redue power in a system and grant a buff to a specific subsystem based on that power, so you sacrifice general stats for a specific stat For instance Engine Power to RCS: Reduces engine power to half (which reduces your flight speed) but provides a turn rate boost over what you were getting with your current power setting. Other abilites could be Engine Power to Thrusters (flight speed), Shield Power to field Generators (shield HP and resistance), Shield Power to Emitters (recharge rate and buff shield heals) Auxillary power to Grav gen, Aux to Flow Cap, Aux to Particle Gen