Why not an actual Boff skill: Emergency Power to Cloak? The higher the rank the skill the more time is removed from the 40 seconds? Ensign rank: 5 seconds, Lieutenant rank: 10 seconds, Lt. Cmdr rank: 15 seconds, and Commander rank: 20 seconds.
I could go for something like this only I like EPTC 1 to be 10 sec's
Why not an actual Boff skill: Emergency Power to Cloak? The higher the rank the skill the more time is removed from the 40 seconds? Ensign rank: 5 seconds, Lieutenant rank: 10 seconds, Lt. Cmdr rank: 15 seconds, and Commander rank: 20 seconds.
I would prefer a hit to hull and/or being reduced to two device slots rather than having the horrible cooldown on cloak. Before the patch it was fun playing a warbird. Today I wished I could kill N'Vek in Sleepers. Not because he's a sleazy Tal'Shiar aft shuttlebay door but because he hailed me right after I cloaked when the cooldown was done.
FKA K-Tar, grumpy Klingon/El-Aurian hybrid. Now assimilated by PWE.
Sometimes, if you want to bury the hatchet with a Klingon, it has to be in his skull. - Captain K'Tar of the USS Danu about J'mpok.
But if you raise your aux you already get bonus to stealth. Same goes for EpTA.
"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.”
While playing on the previous patch (forget which day) I found that the 45 power and the singularity abilities were as a combo too powerful. When my roommate and I talked it over we came up with an unusual solution (at least I consider it unusual) weapons and shields at 40 and engines and aux at 45, leave the number of levels in the singularity charge alone but have each one of the powers have a set level that uses one of the charge levels when used with a 30s to 1 minute cool down on that power.
The current problem is the singularity powers IMHO, with out those the romulans with battlecloak and the singularity charge for the power boost is worth the -5 to all power stats
personally I would like the cool down reduced to 20s and a power and hull health hit for the combination if necessary I can use battlecloak to hide and heal having done it when I was first facing the unknown battleship I would regularly cloak and heal watching it run into me
Edit: Our computers are beside each other so I can not hide what I am playing especially when in the middle of a space battle
20 seconds is standard for all cloaks and should be no different for the Romulans.
If a change was needed at all it should have been to the Operative Trait itself.
Either remove the Superior level of the Romulan Operative Trait and only have Romulan Operative and hard cap it so that each Bridge Officer with the Trait reduces the Cloaks cool down buy 1 second for a max reduction of 5 seconds.
You could also keep the Superior Operative level of the Trait and give it a 2 second reduction of the Cloaks cool down for a max of 10 seconds (which I don't see a problem with)
This Change makes the Romulans seem to have the worst Cloaking Devices of all the Factions.
The time is way too high, it basically eliminates the ability to effectively use the cloak in battle.
Romulans are WW2 submarines, they are supposed to to dive and then pop up and attack, then dive again. The cycle time on cloak already makes it dangerous to re-cloak while active enemies are in range. The long cooldown makes it impractical to use. If the concern is making the CD too low vis buff stacking, a better solution is to limit that.
As a dev already stated Romulans still have the best cloaks, considering that they come with higher stealth-value, boost turnrate and are all battlecloaks. They however also have the worst cooldown which is ok I guess because a player can still reduce it to a reasonable amount by choosing an all Romulan/Reman bridge crew.
So far Romulans don't have a shipclass which completely depends on the cloak like the KDF BoP. Except for the loss of 20 power they also lack a considerable weakness. Especially the Fleet T'Varo is with its current layout a lot better than the best Federation Escorts and IMO even superior to the Bugship. There must be some drawbacks for all these advantages and the devs have already considered plenty. Would you prefer to loose a console- or BOff-slots instead like dev Archon proposed a few days ago?
As far as "giving the Romulans a disadvantage" goes I will take extending the cloak cooldown over annihilating console or BOFF slots 100 times out of 100, as both of the latter would pretty much be "I've changed my mind about thinking LoR was a good expansion" level of ideas.
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
Cloak and run strikes is the unique Romulan playstyle -at least for me. It makes Romulans distinct from FED or KDF. Sure, KDF have that too, but no very limited Battle-Cloak system.
Therefore, I think it is not the best way to "balance" it as you said archon. I think Cloak time needs to be restored or altered. 40s is way too harsh for balancing it out in any way.
A 40s CD leaves me there where all other ships and factions are. Threre is no - or limited differentiation left when I cannot cloak away and return for a strike.
Now, my suggestion would be 30s instead of 40s. With the CD reduction from Officers it would be way more balanced and fair. It closes the gap and still offers a unique gameplay. This is at least what I found out while playing around a few hours since the patch.
I don't get it why some people think this is too harsh. The Romulan faction has as it stands no ships in their fleet which entirely depend on their battlecloak. They don't need to stick to 'cloak and run strikes'. The T'Varo and the Mogai can easily go toe to toe with the Defiant without ever having to cloak.
If you want Romulan ships to behave like Klingon BoPs, the devs would have to entirely revamp them. In the end this would lead to ships that would gain turnrate but on the other hand loose hullpoints, shieldpower and weaponslots.
I don't get it why some people think this is too harsh. The Romulan faction has as it stands no ships in their fleet which entirely depend on their battlecloak. They don't need to stick to 'cloak and run strikes'. The T'Varo and the Mogai can easily go toe to toe with the Defiant without ever having to cloak.
If you want Romulan ships to behave like Klingon BoPs, the devs would have to entirely revamp them. In the end this would lead to ships that would gain turnrate but on the other hand loose hullpoints, shieldpower and weaponslots.
Nice nice but uhm try fighting in a D'deridex or Ha'apax when everything except for a vo'quv or atrox can out turn you.
With the BC as it is the D'deridex and ha'apax are nothing more then sitting ducks ,targets those two ships depend on the BC to turn.
As it is right now with the BC nerfed the D'deridex and Ha'apax cannot out turn anyone cannot out run anyone and cannot cloak fast enough to get away from anyone.
Nice nice but uhm try fighting in a D'deridex or Ha'apax when everything except for a vo'quv or atrox can out turn you.
With the BC as it is the D'deridex and ha'apax are nothing more then sitting ducks ,targets those two ships depend on the BC to turn.
As it is right now with the BC nerfed the D'deridex and Ha'apax cannot out turn anyone cannot out run anyone and cannot cloak fast enough to get away from anyone.
That's an argument for ridiculously low turn rate ships to have a balance pass, not an argument for the Romulan fleet to not have an Achilles Heel in relationship to Federation and KDF ships.
Simply put, if your ship relies on a gimmick to be functional (in this case the BC), the ship and the gimmick needs a change. They've un-gimmicked the gimmick, now they just need to do something about turn rates.
Nice nice but uhm try fighting in a D'deridex or Ha'apax when everything except for a vo'quv or atrox can out turn you.
With the BC as it is the D'deridex and ha'apax are nothing more then sitting ducks ,targets those two ships depend on the BC to turn.
As it is right now with the BC nerfed the D'deridex and Ha'apax cannot out turn anyone cannot out run anyone and cannot cloak fast enough to get away from anyone.
Sounds to me that they will just face the exact same problems every other cruiser faces in this game (except some klingon battlecruisers maybe). Besides the Fleet D'Deridex has 5 eng-consoles, more than enough to reach a decent turnrate by stacking RCS-consoles.
Sounds to me that they will just face the exact same problems every other cruiser faces in this game (except some klingon battlecruisers maybe). Besides the Fleet D'Deridex has 5 eng-consoles, more than enough to reach a decent turnrate by stacking RCS-consoles.
But for players not in a fleet they are going to suffer ,man i think cryptic hates cruisers
So I have 3 of my 4 boffs with Romulan Operative and I took it as well. So that should be 4 x 10% to my battle cloak recharge. With that it changes my battle cloak to 29s in game but my math tells me that I should be at 24s?
A possible solution maybe when you have the same negatives to cloaking kick in on the singularity core at 60% your battle cloak recharges at twice the speed. It would introduce an interesting duality to the bonus and a drawback.
well.... dont you already feel like you are forced to have a certain bridge crew.
My Vulcan is forced to have Humans and Saurians I dont want for the bonus. I just want Vulcans.
My Klingon is forced to mostly have Lethian and Nauscicaan officers since the Klingons have no bonuses.
As a Romulan I dont want any other species on my ship at all.
True, but it's not "YOU HAVE TO DO THIS OR YOU'RE COMPLETELY INCAPABLE OF DOING X!" like the Romulans are. You can do just fine with non-Human, non-Saurian boffs as a Federation player because the buffs, even when combined, aren't THAT important. Similarly, you can get away with not having all Letheans and Nausicaans on a Klingon. But you HAVE to have 5 Romulans to get any sort of functionality out of the cloak.
Edit: Me, I might have cared a bit less if it weren't for the fact that one of the bridge officers introduced in the story (the part of my crew that I do NOT want to get rid of in any way) is a Reman, and one of the Romulans doesn't have the cooldown reduction.
Re-edit: Furthermore, you're not forced to play a Lethean or Saurian yourself, it's just that having a full bridge of them is useful. In this case, however, being a non-Romulan will be just as bad as having Veril in your bridge staff. In fact, I think it'll even be worse.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
From all the threads past and present about how broken the cloaks are i doubt we will see them reverse this nerf we will get "Working as intended" garbage again.
Unfortunately, I'm not in the beta test, but I'd agree with others in this thread that the 40-second Cloak/Battle Cloak cooldown for Romulans seems ridiculous.
If they increased the cooldown due to the improved survivability of Warbirds running multiple copies of BOFFs with the appropriate trait, they're assuming everyone playing Romulans will run them as a matter of choice. For those that don't, well, they'll either now be REQUIRED to run them or be in for a world of hurt.
By doing this, they're effectively turning a "choice" into a "requirement", which isn't good, IMO. What would stop Klingon-aligned Romulans from just running Bird of Preys with these same BOFFs? Going to nerf Klingon cloaks now?
I'd either modify the BOFF trait to reduce the amount of cooldown reduction or implement a Minimum Cooldown cap for all varieties of cloaks (in the area of 10 to 15 seconds).
The other alternative would be to reduce hull values (BoPs would really be hurt with this one).
I gotta say that modifying the boffs instead of the cloak itself sounds like the way to go imo.
diminishing returns, sure why not? that way if i do not use cloak enhancing boffs then I still get the full benefits of an unmodified cloak that time is comparable to Fed or Kdf cloakspeed
You guys didn't really read Archon's Dev posts, have you?
He already responded in the main RomShip/Singularity feedback thread how the cloak wasn't altered to make up for the possible racial boosts and rather to try and lower the survivability of warbirds/ability to escape.
Though Romulan Boffs with the right traits would certainly help in mitigating the larger cooldown, it apparently (surprisingly so) isn't the issue at hand for that change.
Comments
I could go for something like this only I like EPTC 1 to be 10 sec's
system Lord Baal is dead
Mmmm,we likes the sound of that
Sometimes, if you want to bury the hatchet with a Klingon, it has to be in his skull. - Captain K'Tar of the USS Danu about J'mpok.
Well, just because YOU like it doesn't mean EVERYBODY likes it. I, for one, DESPISE it. :mad:
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Much better suggestion. Aux is probably the better approach anyways.
The current problem is the singularity powers IMHO, with out those the romulans with battlecloak and the singularity charge for the power boost is worth the -5 to all power stats
personally I would like the cool down reduced to 20s and a power and hull health hit for the combination if necessary I can use battlecloak to hide and heal having done it when I was first facing the unknown battleship I would regularly cloak and heal watching it run into me
Edit: Our computers are beside each other so I can not hide what I am playing especially when in the middle of a space battle
20 seconds is standard for all cloaks and should be no different for the Romulans.
If a change was needed at all it should have been to the Operative Trait itself.
Either remove the Superior level of the Romulan Operative Trait and only have Romulan Operative and hard cap it so that each Bridge Officer with the Trait reduces the Cloaks cool down buy 1 second for a max reduction of 5 seconds.
You could also keep the Superior Operative level of the Trait and give it a 2 second reduction of the Cloaks cool down for a max of 10 seconds (which I don't see a problem with)
This Change makes the Romulans seem to have the worst Cloaking Devices of all the Factions.
Romulans are WW2 submarines, they are supposed to to dive and then pop up and attack, then dive again. The cycle time on cloak already makes it dangerous to re-cloak while active enemies are in range. The long cooldown makes it impractical to use. If the concern is making the CD too low vis buff stacking, a better solution is to limit that.
So far Romulans don't have a shipclass which completely depends on the cloak like the KDF BoP. Except for the loss of 20 power they also lack a considerable weakness. Especially the Fleet T'Varo is with its current layout a lot better than the best Federation Escorts and IMO even superior to the Bugship. There must be some drawbacks for all these advantages and the devs have already considered plenty. Would you prefer to loose a console- or BOff-slots instead like dev Archon proposed a few days ago?
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
Therefore, I think it is not the best way to "balance" it as you said archon. I think Cloak time needs to be restored or altered. 40s is way too harsh for balancing it out in any way.
A 40s CD leaves me there where all other ships and factions are. Threre is no - or limited differentiation left when I cannot cloak away and return for a strike.
Now, my suggestion would be 30s instead of 40s. With the CD reduction from Officers it would be way more balanced and fair. It closes the gap and still offers a unique gameplay. This is at least what I found out while playing around a few hours since the patch.
If you want Romulan ships to behave like Klingon BoPs, the devs would have to entirely revamp them. In the end this would lead to ships that would gain turnrate but on the other hand loose hullpoints, shieldpower and weaponslots.
The only time that's shown is with the TOS T'Liss. And that playstyle is preserved in the T'Liss' successor, the T'Varro (with the EBC).
Every other combat situation a Romulan ship has been shown to be in is a stand up fight.
Actually I think this is an incredibly terrible idea.
There's no way they should be forcing me to have a specific bridge crew in order to be viable.
Yes, precisely!
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Nice nice but uhm try fighting in a D'deridex or Ha'apax when everything except for a vo'quv or atrox can out turn you.
With the BC as it is the D'deridex and ha'apax are nothing more then sitting ducks ,targets those two ships depend on the BC to turn.
As it is right now with the BC nerfed the D'deridex and Ha'apax cannot out turn anyone cannot out run anyone and cannot cloak fast enough to get away from anyone.
well.... dont you already feel like you are forced to have a certain bridge crew.
My Vulcan is forced to have Humans and Saurians I dont want for the bonus. I just want Vulcans.
My Klingon is forced to mostly have Lethian and Nauscicaan officers since the Klingons have no bonuses.
As a Romulan I dont want any other species on my ship at all.
That's an argument for ridiculously low turn rate ships to have a balance pass, not an argument for the Romulan fleet to not have an Achilles Heel in relationship to Federation and KDF ships.
Simply put, if your ship relies on a gimmick to be functional (in this case the BC), the ship and the gimmick needs a change. They've un-gimmicked the gimmick, now they just need to do something about turn rates.
Sounds to me that they will just face the exact same problems every other cruiser faces in this game (except some klingon battlecruisers maybe). Besides the Fleet D'Deridex has 5 eng-consoles, more than enough to reach a decent turnrate by stacking RCS-consoles.
I could go for an orion slave girl or twenty not as BOFFs but for my own personal...uh entertainment
But for players not in a fleet they are going to suffer ,man i think cryptic hates cruisers
A possible solution maybe when you have the same negatives to cloaking kick in on the singularity core at 60% your battle cloak recharges at twice the speed. It would introduce an interesting duality to the bonus and a drawback.
True, but it's not "YOU HAVE TO DO THIS OR YOU'RE COMPLETELY INCAPABLE OF DOING X!" like the Romulans are. You can do just fine with non-Human, non-Saurian boffs as a Federation player because the buffs, even when combined, aren't THAT important. Similarly, you can get away with not having all Letheans and Nausicaans on a Klingon. But you HAVE to have 5 Romulans to get any sort of functionality out of the cloak.
Edit: Me, I might have cared a bit less if it weren't for the fact that one of the bridge officers introduced in the story (the part of my crew that I do NOT want to get rid of in any way) is a Reman, and one of the Romulans doesn't have the cooldown reduction.
Re-edit: Furthermore, you're not forced to play a Lethean or Saurian yourself, it's just that having a full bridge of them is useful. In this case, however, being a non-Romulan will be just as bad as having Veril in your bridge staff. In fact, I think it'll even be worse.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Calling the T'Varo the successor to the T'Liss is kind of like calling the NX the successor to the Constitution.
If they increased the cooldown due to the improved survivability of Warbirds running multiple copies of BOFFs with the appropriate trait, they're assuming everyone playing Romulans will run them as a matter of choice. For those that don't, well, they'll either now be REQUIRED to run them or be in for a world of hurt.
By doing this, they're effectively turning a "choice" into a "requirement", which isn't good, IMO. What would stop Klingon-aligned Romulans from just running Bird of Preys with these same BOFFs? Going to nerf Klingon cloaks now?
I'd either modify the BOFF trait to reduce the amount of cooldown reduction or implement a Minimum Cooldown cap for all varieties of cloaks (in the area of 10 to 15 seconds).
The other alternative would be to reduce hull values (BoPs would really be hurt with this one).
diminishing returns, sure why not? that way if i do not use cloak enhancing boffs then I still get the full benefits of an unmodified cloak that time is comparable to Fed or Kdf cloakspeed
He already responded in the main RomShip/Singularity feedback thread how the cloak wasn't altered to make up for the possible racial boosts and rather to try and lower the survivability of warbirds/ability to escape.
Though Romulan Boffs with the right traits would certainly help in mitigating the larger cooldown, it apparently (surprisingly so) isn't the issue at hand for that change.