But in the end, no matter how much you "mix it up" (unless bosses specifically need another power other than DPS to destroy them), DPS still reigns the king in PvE. I don't care how you look at it.
DPS is the simplest thing to cater to, no doubt...otherwise you run into requiring something that may not be available. It's part of the homogenization that exists in STO...where to varying extents, everything can do everything. Unfortunately though, with that catering to DPS...that which can DPS best generally can win out...and with the addition of so many gimmicks, oh well...
What I think is needed is for beam arrays to get some love and be given some sort of "attrition" effect that over time stacks up on the target and diminishes the effectiveness of their healing and resistance powers.
Which could even the playing field as it would make beam arrays competitive but still different enough from cannons.
Senator Vreenak (one of my fave characters, BTW) this is an EXCELLENT idea!!! If this idea was implemented correctly there would be no nerfs required to achieve balance.
I'm sorry, but that's a weak way to do things. I very weak way with a side serve of weak with plenty of weak sauce on top. It should be the goal of ALL game developers to make their games better, even if some people aren't happy.
Funny how it was OK to nerf sci powers, though...
You would think that people would get sick of flying the same thing over and over and over yet I see it quite often. Certain players who are on every day fly the JHAS religiously. Me, I have 9 toons with a few different ships on each toon. If I flew the one ship non-stop I would have quit the game loooong ago.
Every time I see a thread like this my response is the same: Fly An Escort Then.
As for Sci nerfing, this is Star Trek not WoW Trek. The less magic in this game the better.
A Sci ship should be a weak pathetic thing devoted to research, not a Light Cruiser/ Slow Escort with all Beam Target powers built in.
Every time I see a thread like this my response is the same: Fly An Escort Then.
As for Sci nerfing, this is Star Trek not WoW Trek. The less magic in this game the better.
A Sci ship should be a weak pathetic thing devoted to research, not a Light Cruiser/ Slow Escort with all Beam Target powers built in.
Yeah, because if Star Trek is about anything, it's getting as many warships as possible to pile up as high a body count as possible in as short a time as possible. :rolleyes:
But, to be fair we need to remove all the 'magic' powers from the game. Which is pretty much everything except maybe EPTx and Weapon buffs.
As for Sci nerfing, this is Star Trek not WoW Trek. The less magic in this game the better.
A Sci ship should be a weak pathetic thing devoted to research, not a Light Cruiser/ Slow Escort with all Beam Target powers built in.
Strangely there is nothing "magic" about science, it is simply science and to un-nerf it would be nice and help make an entire class more useful in game but you can find my views on this discussion here.
But in the end, no matter how much you "mix it up" (unless bosses specifically need another power other than DPS to destroy them), DPS still reigns the king in PvE. I don't care how you look at it.
Now that actually IS the biggest problem in STO. They designed this game all around DPS, not strategy.
If I could change things, I would make targets like the Borg require disabling, tanking and DPS to kill. The player tanking has their DMG reduced due to adaptation from the Borg.
You know Cryptic has Jumped the Proverbial Shark when they introduced Tractor Pulling to Star Trek Online!
I'm sorry, but that's a weak way to do things. I very weak way with a side serve of weak with plenty of weak sauce on top. It should be the goal of ALL game developers to make their games better, even if some people aren't happy.
Funny how it was OK to nerf sci powers, though...
You would think that people would get sick of flying the same thing over and over and over yet I see it quite often. Certain players who are on every day fly the JHAS religiously. Me, I have 9 toons with a few different ships on each toon. If I flew the one ship non-stop I would have quit the game loooong ago.
My experience of STO a few months back was - DPS didn't matter. You needed burst. That's the only thing that got you through all the heals, resistances and what-you-have that the game had then.
5 gazillion damage in 5 seconds + 0 damage the next 5 seconds > 5 gazillion damage in 10 seconds.
AFAIK, that just got more with several Reputation abilities and new consoles and items.
Nerf Escorts, you make healing overpowered and make it impossible to kill something.
Nerf Healing, and everythnig die way too fast and it's like High Noon in Space.
Try to actually balance both, and have the player community explode and/or the devs die from exhaustion as they try to rebuild their system from the ground up.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
The problem goes much deeper than burst, magic wand healing, and so forth. The fact of the matter is some ships gain much more benefit from things than others and it almost always favors escort type ships.
Damage boost? Escorts deal the most base damage so gain the most.
Heals? Escorts avoid the most damage (+Def FTW) so gain the most.
Resists? Stacks best with avoidance, see above.
Debuff Enemy? Works best when you can kill it before it can recover, see above.
+Turn Rate? See above
Need I go on? The only thing that didn't benefit an escort type over other ships are passive regeneration rates on hull and shields. Unfortunately hull passive regen is based around crew %s now and guess which ship tends to have the highest % of active crew a minute or so into battle?
The problem goes much deeper than burst, magic wand healing, and so forth. The fact of the matter is some ships gain much more benefit from things than others and it almost always favors escort type ships.
Damage boost? Escorts deal the most base damage so gain the most.
Heals? Escorts avoid the most damage (+Def FTW) so gain the most.
Resists? Stacks best with avoidance, see above.
Debuff Enemy? Works best when you can kill it before it can recover, see above.
+Turn Rate? See above
Need I go on?
It's one of the things that I mentioned in another thread, multiple threads, only thought about while out smoking and forgot to post? Meh, I forget...lol.
Limits/Caps/Diminishing Returns. Doing away with some Fixed Ratios. Additional Ship Modifiers. Flat Bonuses instead of Percentage Bonuses. Scaling. Skill Return on Investment. Etc, etc, etc.
I've got a major headache right now, so I'm not going to go into detail...but there are so many things that could be done to reduce some of the extremes while still maintaining the various Ship Class Hierarchies.
1st) Fix crew mechanics. Have they ever worked properly?
2nd) All heals should be % based or effected by the user ship shield modifier for shield heals, or the ships hull.
3rd) All 3 teams need to be able to rebalance shields. It is silly for the strongest abilities of the engineer and science boffs to be ensign and require little offensive/utility sacrifice for ships with few eng/sci slots to use while a fundamental capability for survival in STO, that being tactical team's shield re-balancing, requires some ships to sacrifice most of their offensive capability. To put it another way a tac heavy ship doesn't give up many options to get the strong defensive eng/sci abilities while an eng or sci heavy ship does give up potent offensive options just to survive much endgame content. Alternately allow for an auto-distribute option that removes the heavy reliance on tac team to save my spacebar.
4th) Balancing of exotic special abilities to be useful in both PvE and PvP such as adding secondary effects like a shield resistance penalty being applied with tachyon beam which would be strong and easy to balance in both types of content.
Im a casual player, I dont get all mathy. But you guys pick apart these ideas:
What if they just took away Hull healing on friendly ships, you could only hull heal yourself. That brings escorts down a peg. I never heard Picard tell Data to give a Fed ship a hull heal, the whole concept sounds stupid in Trek to positively heal another ships hull. Shield healing makes sense to give to other ships.
I havnt looked seriously at the new warp cores, but they should have a power wattage rating, and then each ship has a max wattage rating it can accept. Escorts are smaller ships and shouldnt be able to equip big warp cores meant for big cruisers. Say an escort sized ship needs a warp core power level of 10 to run all its systems at max. It can equip at most a warp core with an output of 12. Only escorts can have that surplus equipped. They can surg that power for an alpha strike but it lowers their shields for x amounts of seconds. With no more cross hull healing and lowered shields, escorts cant even dream of staying around to tank. A big Odyssey type needs a warp core rated at 20 and csn only equip a 20. Its alpha strikes use up 50% auxillary and wont beat as deadly as an escort alpha.
STO: @AGNT009 Since Dec 2010
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
I still prefer the idea of making encounters more challenging and actually force the player to THINK about their moves and should a player make a mistake the AI should be intelligent enough to exploit it on elite at the very least if not right through the game, the problem then is that the PvE Tac/scort spacebar mashers will complain to high heaven, hence we have nothing nice in the game...
But still first and foremost the problem lies in how the AI works, second in the player skills and then in the ships at least from a PvE standpoint, from a PvP standpoint it's more about the skills.
Im a casual player, I dont get all mathy. But you guys pick apart these ideas:
What if they just took away Hull healing on friendly ships, you could only hull heal yourself. That brings escorts down a peg. I never heard Picard tell Data to give a Fed ship a hull heal, the whole concept sounds stupid in Trek to positively heal another ships hull. Shield healing makes sense to give to other ships.
I havnt looked seriously at the new warp cores, but they should have a power wattage rating, and then each ship has a max wattage rating it can accept. Escorts are smaller ships and shouldnt be able to equip big warp cores meant for big cruisers. Say an escort sized ship needs a warp core power level of 10 to run all its systems at max. It can equip at most a warp core with an output of 12. Only escorts can have that surplus equipped. They can surg that power for an alpha strike but it lowers their shields for x amounts of seconds. With no more cross hull healing and lowered shields, escorts cant even dream of staying around to tank. A big Odyssey type needs a warp core rated at 20 and csn only equip a 20. Its alpha strikes use up 50% auxillary and wont beat as deadly as an escort alpha.
I don't need crosshealing in PvE to survive with my escorts which by the way have average hull to begin with, it's sci vessels with the hull penalty.
But yes cruisers gaining a boost from warp cores would be nice since the armor slot idea seems to have been given up on. Which actually leads me to another minor rant.
- Weapon power. Best bonuses gained with DHCs and cannons thanks to drain mechanics. Oh sure you can min/max your way into beams being much less penalized but that is spending double the effort just to be almost as good.
- Shield power. Best regen bonuses gained for ships with high shield regeneration which on paper favors the Sci Vessel but in reality thanks to bonus defense avoidance actually gives more effective health boosts to escorts since every shield point is worth more on them.
- Engine power. Is there any doubt who gets the best bonus out of this?
- Auxiliary power. Does anyone still use the abilities this effects? I kid I kid but really it is not difficult at all the get it above 50 anyway.
The key to balancing escort type ships used to be keeping them power starved. They wanted AUX for turn rate, engine power for speed, shield to live, and weapons to kill. Now my escorts are flying around at 125/115/60/50 roughly and that is without getting doff silly (or steamrunner silly for that matter) to blend two EPtX powers for pretty much 125 across the board. And my engineer does run at 125 across the board for around half of an engagement as it is.
Why attack patterns are not effected by engine power I have no idea. Why AUX does nothing beyond a T4 passive rep ability and modifying a handful of mostly bad boff abilities I could not tell you.
And WHY on earth engineering +power consoles were nerfed with F2P because of subsystem power creep yet they continue to add so much creep that my power has skyrocketed to nearly max?
I still prefer the idea of making encounters more challenging and actually force the player to THINK about their moves and should a player make a mistake the AI should be intelligent enough to exploit it on elite at the very least if not right through the game, the problem then is that the PvE Tac/scort spacebar mashers will complain to high heaven, hence we have nothing nice in the game...
But still first and foremost the problem lies in how the AI works, second in the player skills and then in the ships at least from a PvE standpoint, from a PvP standpoint it's more about the skills.
*disclaimer not trying to offend*
The math in this game is so far beyond Fed up its not funny. Make the content more difficult and you will see escorts or GTFO by the elite PvE crowd. They are the best tanks (EPtS 3 + extend + over 100 bonus defense = best tank) armitage and steamrunner tank/healer combo FYI. The STO community is not very elite nor very good at learning mechanics or system maths. The Neverwinter community has already reverse engineered all the math in the game and has created and shared so many stupidly broken builds the game is in tatters because the balance is just as horrible as in STO but there are more MMO vets there who can find, expose, and understand these things. Perma stealth rogues and whatnot.
I am not very good at min/max, average at best, and yet I can see all the glaring flaws in STO mechanics and math. Believe me increasing difficulty will make the problem much worse.
And PvP in this game as in all others is much more about META than any true balance. PvP because of it's adaptability is a much different balancing beast especially when anyone is free to bring anything the other guy is bringing to the fight a meta is developed and the balanced around. Not a good approach for PvE balance.
My Fleet Defiant is so powerful in elite Stfs is boring
Dps is stupid strong
Tanking is better than the cruisers because i never slow down
The only heal i need is Hazzard 2
and i only use beam arrays and beam banks
The Fleet excelsior and Regent are great ships worthy of the name cruiser , The rest are garbage and cant shoot there way out of a wet paper sack. And Pve is about DPS and Dps alone
Tanking and healing dont matter, There unnessary as a ships role
Its not Escorts online
Its DPS Online
Want to Fix it ?
Cut hull healing shield healing and regeneration as follows
Cut Ensign Healing by 75%
Cut Lt healing by 50%
Cut Lt commander healing by 25%
if this was done there would be a role for support ships
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
What if they just took away Hull healing on friendly ships, you could only hull heal yourself. That brings escorts down a peg. I never heard Picard tell Data to give a Fed ship a hull heal, the whole concept sounds stupid in Trek to positively heal another ships hull. Shield healing makes sense to give to other ships.
Taking away cross healing would just hurt healer classes like Engineers more than balancing anything out. Most good escort pilots don't even need a healer on them. That's where most complaints are coming from, that escorts can be a little over tanky on their own if built right. While at the same time maintaining a large DPS output.
You can't compare canon mechanics to game mechanics in STO, since they're so far apart for good reasoning.
Escorts are easiest to fly, the easiest class of ships to compete in.
Why is that? Its not because they're 'OP' so to speak, Every game has to have its 'beginner' class of ships.
I would have expected it to be Cruisers in sto, but apparently that is not the case.
I fly a Galor, and Orb Weaver and a Recluse that smash escorts.
My Galor actually runs on escort tac captains tears.
Tears.
Here's the funny part.
Everytime you dO come up with a build on a ship that is not an escort that excels at killing escorts, they cry.
They cry foul, they cry nerf.
Even the "Elite" Pvpers, some of the guys others will tell u to ask when you have questions.
Pop their bug in an orb weaver 'n 'lol' as they tell you how bad you are at spaceships while they're waiting to respawn.
Here's another good one I've heard like 4 times in the last two days,
Oh I was tired of it, I wanted to die. (LOL)
Course u were, that's why u tripped GDF hit bfi 'n evasive right bfore u popped cause u wanted to die.
Really its rather silly.
Crys about spam, and 'OMG FBP LOL' (rofl whine) or 'lucky crit 'n u know it'
(LOL nevermind the fact that your escort crits 7 of every 10 shots derp)
They win its 'gg nice build' they lose its 'omg u suck at spaceships I cant believe u fly so bad u killed me w those abilities'
Next time u find yourself waiting to respawn, especially you 'elite' pvpers.
Take a moment to think about how ridiculous whatever it is you're about to say really sounds before you hit that enter key.
I for one, am going to start taking screenshots for further lolz.
Escorts are easiest to fly, the easiest class of ships to compete in.
Yea sure.Even some pvp'ers (as in not those who are full of BS) said that they prefer cruisers because its hard to keep target infront of your cannons while having to fly fast and with a good turn rate. :rolleyes:
Why is that? Its not because they're 'OP' so to speak, Every game has to have its 'beginner' class of ships.
I would have expected it to be Cruisers in sto, but apparently that is not the case.
I fly a Galor, and Orb Weaver and a Recluse that smash escorts.
My Galor actually runs on escort tac captains tears.
Tears.
Here's the funny part.
Everytime you dO come up with a build on a ship that is not an escort that excels at killing escorts, they cry.
They cry foul, they cry nerf.
Even the "Elite" Pvpers, some of the guys others will tell u to ask when you have questions.
Pop their bug in an orb weaver 'n 'lol' as they tell you how bad you are at spaceships while they're waiting to respawn.
Here's another good one I've heard like 4 times in the last two days,
Oh I was tired of it, I wanted to die. (LOL)
Course u were, that's why u tripped GDF hit bfi 'n evasive right bfore u popped cause u wanted to die.
Really its rather silly.
Crys about spam, and 'OMG FBP LOL' (rofl whine) or 'lucky crit 'n u know it'
(LOL nevermind the fact that your escort crits 7 of every 10 shots derp)
They win its 'gg nice build' they lose its 'omg u suck at spaceships I cant believe u fly so bad u killed me w those abilities'
Next time u find yourself waiting to respawn, especially you 'elite' pvpers.
Take a moment to think about how ridiculous whatever it is you're about to say really sounds before you hit that enter key.
I for one, am going to start taking screenshots for further lolz.
So you think its big sheet to kill a escort with a carrier with player owned NPCS?
when you will be able to kill a carrier (pvp carrier not PvE BS ) using a escort (without decloak alpha ) what you said there will be true.
The only way to do 1 vs 1 in this game is between escorts.Other ships for 1 vs 1 is a waste of time.
you will die less to not at all in PvP if you fly a recluse healer.That doesnt mean a escort pilot is a idiot who has no skills compared to your sitting tank click on powers to heal.That is easy ,you know it ,I know it ...everyone in opvp knows it.
*disclaimer not trying to offend*
The math in this game is so far beyond Fed up its not funny. Make the content more difficult and you will see escorts or GTFO by the elite PvE crowd. They are the best tanks (EPtS 3 + extend + over 100 bonus defense = best tank) armitage and steamrunner tank/healer combo FYI. The STO community is not very elite nor very good at learning mechanics or system maths.
This much is absolutely true but I'd very much like to oblige their "escorts or GTFO" when they are suffering from VMs and other disables.
The Neverwinter community has already reverse engineered all the math in the game and has created and shared so many stupidly broken builds the game is in tatters because the balance is just as horrible as in STO but there are more MMO vets there who can find, expose, and understand these things. Perma stealth rogues and whatnot.
Remind me never to play Neverwinter again...
I am not very good at min/max, average at best, and yet I can see all the glaring flaws in STO mechanics and math. Believe me increasing difficulty will make the problem much worse.
I'm also not great at min/max but I get by, on a side note, can I steal your spreadsheets regarding STO?
[/QUOTE]And PvP in this game as in all others is much more about META than any true balance. PvP because of it's adaptability is a much different balancing beast especially when anyone is free to bring anything the other guy is bringing to the fight a meta is developed and the balanced around. Not a good approach for PvE balance.[/QUOTE]
I actually think that were pvp properly balanced and pve remodelled based on it the game would benefit greatly, but that's just my opinion.
You make it sound as if "Interchangeability" is a good thing in this game, which it isn't.
Maybe not to you, do not presume to speak for everyone. The very way the classes are distinct from specific roles is one of STO's strongest selling points to some.
Easiest solution to all of this. Instead of nerfing the escorts, why not buff the cruisers? In Yesterday's Enterprise, the Enterprise-D takes a metric poo-ton of shots and isn't blown up. (only because Picard looks gallantly at the viewscreen while someone holds a candle under the camera xD)
In comparison, the C4 packed in the consoles on the Defiant is normally exploding and setting fire and generally trying to add action appeal to DS9 after, say, 5 shots? Compared to 20 on the Enterprise, where perhaps a small wisp of smoke emits after a while?
Add half again (or perhaps even double) to cruiser's hull, and be a proper MMO. Cruisers are for tanking, not damage. Escorts for DPS, not tanking. And sciences for healing/being annoying with skills, like in every other MMO out there. It shouldn't be that the DPS an escort can pump out is so disproportionate to the amount of health (or lack of atm) that a cruiser has. DPS's should have to rely on healers and tanks to stay alive, and healers and tanks have to rely on the DPS's to kill the enemy before they kill the healers, again like in every other MMO.
tl;dr buff cruisers hull rates, make them a tank like in every other MMO, so that they are needed on a team. A team of 5 DPS's shouldn't be able to survive.
That is all.
Also, let science abilities be OP again, it'd be nice for a change. Trying to answer this by giving the Vesta DHC's, when in the book it only has one anyway, is not the answer. Nice looking ship though.
Maybe not to you, do not presume to speak for everyone. The very way the classes are distinct from specific roles is one of STO's strongest selling points to some.
Keywords "to some". Having it where the class roles don't play a big part in the game makes it less fun. Best thing about most MMO's is the way the classes NEED (Meaning you need the classes for their goals instead of just having no problem with a group of 1 class) to work together for a common goal in missions. Without this element, it waters down the gameplay making the classes almost not even worth existing.
Easiest solution to all of this. Instead of nerfing the escorts, why not buff the cruisers? In Yesterday's Enterprise, the Enterprise-D takes a metric poo-ton of shots and isn't blown up. (only because Picard looks gallantly at the viewscreen while someone holds a candle under the camera xD)
Enterprise D ,at least the fleet version, is very tanky and can tank 2-3 escorts.If you dont know how to tank check the pvp forums or join pvp bootcamp.
btw Geko should do the same thing because he said "a cruiser wont survive if its attack by more than 1 players" ...which is very wrong.Cruisers tank very well and maybe they need abit more shields .
STFs require things to be destroyed in a set period of time. Tanking won't get you the optional extras. Which class can do that better AND tank against PvE enemies?
PvP is geared towards escorts that can lay down withering fire and not be made of paper.
What's broken? Hmm. I wonder what...
So a 10k DPS + cruiser that can tank won't get us the optionals in an STF? I see escorts pop constantly against the unimatrix and queen, so what class does do that better?
PvP is barely part of this game, it is a bolted on segment to appease a small percentage of people. It is broken by so many ways it has its own thread about it, and even if its all escorts on all escorts, its still broken.
You don't need nerf to balance the ships. All you need is a resource number on all weapons.
All ships have a total computer resource number that cannot be changed. This means you have to build you weapons around your ship's resource number.
(as an example)
High Resource Weapons(30): Dual Heavy Cannon, Dual Beam Array, and Torpedoes
Mid Resource Weapons(20): Dual Cannon and Beam Array
Low Resource Weapons(10) Cannon, Turret and Mines
Weapon rarity wouldn't change the amount of DMG the weapon can do. It would effect the resource number. A common MK XII Dual Heavy Cannon has a higher resource number than an uncommon or very rare MK XII Dual Heavy Cannon, but their base DMG is the same.
A cheesy example would be:
X Escort has a 100 resource number.
Common DHC have a resource number of 30.
X Escort has 4 weapon slots in the front and 3 in the back.
X Escort wants to maximize burst DPS with DHC.
4xCommon DHC=120 resource and cannot be done on this ship.
Very Rare DHC have a resource number of 25.
4xVery Rare DHC = 100 and can be loaded, but no further weapons will fit on the ship.
This opens up a weakness to those high burst chasing players.
(Let's try it again, but not chase the crazy burst DPS this time.)
Using Very Rare Weapons
DHC=25
DHC=25
DC=15
DC=15
Turret=5
Turret=5
Turret=5
Total resource used = 95 of 100
So yeah, if you want to balance ships with each other, this would be how I would do it.
You know Cryptic has Jumped the Proverbial Shark when they introduced Tractor Pulling to Star Trek Online!
The problem goes much deeper than burst, magic wand healing, and so forth. The fact of the matter is some ships gain much more benefit from things than others and it almost always favors escort type ships.
Damage boost? Escorts deal the most base damage so gain the most.
Heals? Escorts avoid the most damage (+Def FTW) so gain the most.
Resists? Stacks best with avoidance, see above.
Debuff Enemy? Works best when you can kill it before it can recover, see above.
+Turn Rate? See above
Need I go on? The only thing that didn't benefit an escort type over other ships are passive regeneration rates on hull and shields. Unfortunately hull passive regen is based around crew %s now and guess which ship tends to have the highest % of active crew a minute or so into battle?
I think a lot of people feel very passionate about this but they are getting tunnel vision.
Damage and Heal boosts help all ships, however the relative placement of various ship types in regards to damage and damage soaking do not change. Nor should they.
I do agree that there is one very big issue, what to do about the old ships? Old ships were made with a clearly different style of play. The galaxy, star cruiser and yes, even the intrepid and defiant are emblematic of this. Heck, the amby is superior to them simply because it manages to have a more hybrid boff layout. DO they update them to the new standarts? Sell a way to make them a little better through hybridization? Leave them as is and help push other ships as revenue generators? What can be done about them and will Cryptic do anything at all?
If any type of ship really benefits more than others from boosts is the hybrids/destroyers in the game. Which as we can see, are the way ships are designed now.
Comments
DPS is the simplest thing to cater to, no doubt...otherwise you run into requiring something that may not be available. It's part of the homogenization that exists in STO...where to varying extents, everything can do everything. Unfortunately though, with that catering to DPS...that which can DPS best generally can win out...and with the addition of so many gimmicks, oh well...
Leave my shi*p alone. Go nerf yourself.
He's a FAAAAAKE!!
Every time I see a thread like this my response is the same: Fly An Escort Then.
As for Sci nerfing, this is Star Trek not WoW Trek. The less magic in this game the better.
A Sci ship should be a weak pathetic thing devoted to research, not a Light Cruiser/ Slow Escort with all Beam Target powers built in.
Yeah, because if Star Trek is about anything, it's getting as many warships as possible to pile up as high a body count as possible in as short a time as possible. :rolleyes:
But, to be fair we need to remove all the 'magic' powers from the game. Which is pretty much everything except maybe EPTx and Weapon buffs.
Strangely there is nothing "magic" about science, it is simply science and to un-nerf it would be nice and help make an entire class more useful in game but you can find my views on this discussion here.
So you agree with removing the magic wand healing from the game and what that would mean for Escorts?
Now that actually IS the biggest problem in STO. They designed this game all around DPS, not strategy.
If I could change things, I would make targets like the Borg require disabling, tanking and DPS to kill. The player tanking has their DMG reduced due to adaptation from the Borg.
My experience of STO a few months back was - DPS didn't matter. You needed burst. That's the only thing that got you through all the heals, resistances and what-you-have that the game had then.
5 gazillion damage in 5 seconds + 0 damage the next 5 seconds > 5 gazillion damage in 10 seconds.
AFAIK, that just got more with several Reputation abilities and new consoles and items.
Nerf Escorts, you make healing overpowered and make it impossible to kill something.
Nerf Healing, and everythnig die way too fast and it's like High Noon in Space.
Try to actually balance both, and have the player community explode and/or the devs die from exhaustion as they try to rebuild their system from the ground up.
Damage boost? Escorts deal the most base damage so gain the most.
Heals? Escorts avoid the most damage (+Def FTW) so gain the most.
Resists? Stacks best with avoidance, see above.
Debuff Enemy? Works best when you can kill it before it can recover, see above.
+Turn Rate? See above
Need I go on? The only thing that didn't benefit an escort type over other ships are passive regeneration rates on hull and shields. Unfortunately hull passive regen is based around crew %s now and guess which ship tends to have the highest % of active crew a minute or so into battle?
It's one of the things that I mentioned in another thread, multiple threads, only thought about while out smoking and forgot to post? Meh, I forget...lol.
Limits/Caps/Diminishing Returns. Doing away with some Fixed Ratios. Additional Ship Modifiers. Flat Bonuses instead of Percentage Bonuses. Scaling. Skill Return on Investment. Etc, etc, etc.
I've got a major headache right now, so I'm not going to go into detail...but there are so many things that could be done to reduce some of the extremes while still maintaining the various Ship Class Hierarchies.
1st) Fix crew mechanics. Have they ever worked properly?
2nd) All heals should be % based or effected by the user ship shield modifier for shield heals, or the ships hull.
3rd) All 3 teams need to be able to rebalance shields. It is silly for the strongest abilities of the engineer and science boffs to be ensign and require little offensive/utility sacrifice for ships with few eng/sci slots to use while a fundamental capability for survival in STO, that being tactical team's shield re-balancing, requires some ships to sacrifice most of their offensive capability. To put it another way a tac heavy ship doesn't give up many options to get the strong defensive eng/sci abilities while an eng or sci heavy ship does give up potent offensive options just to survive much endgame content. Alternately allow for an auto-distribute option that removes the heavy reliance on tac team to save my spacebar.
4th) Balancing of exotic special abilities to be useful in both PvE and PvP such as adding secondary effects like a shield resistance penalty being applied with tachyon beam which would be strong and easy to balance in both types of content.
What if they just took away Hull healing on friendly ships, you could only hull heal yourself. That brings escorts down a peg. I never heard Picard tell Data to give a Fed ship a hull heal, the whole concept sounds stupid in Trek to positively heal another ships hull. Shield healing makes sense to give to other ships.
I havnt looked seriously at the new warp cores, but they should have a power wattage rating, and then each ship has a max wattage rating it can accept. Escorts are smaller ships and shouldnt be able to equip big warp cores meant for big cruisers. Say an escort sized ship needs a warp core power level of 10 to run all its systems at max. It can equip at most a warp core with an output of 12. Only escorts can have that surplus equipped. They can surg that power for an alpha strike but it lowers their shields for x amounts of seconds. With no more cross hull healing and lowered shields, escorts cant even dream of staying around to tank. A big Odyssey type needs a warp core rated at 20 and csn only equip a 20. Its alpha strikes use up 50% auxillary and wont beat as deadly as an escort alpha.
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
But still first and foremost the problem lies in how the AI works, second in the player skills and then in the ships at least from a PvE standpoint, from a PvP standpoint it's more about the skills.
I don't need crosshealing in PvE to survive with my escorts which by the way have average hull to begin with, it's sci vessels with the hull penalty.
But yes cruisers gaining a boost from warp cores would be nice since the armor slot idea seems to have been given up on. Which actually leads me to another minor rant.
- Weapon power. Best bonuses gained with DHCs and cannons thanks to drain mechanics. Oh sure you can min/max your way into beams being much less penalized but that is spending double the effort just to be almost as good.
- Shield power. Best regen bonuses gained for ships with high shield regeneration which on paper favors the Sci Vessel but in reality thanks to bonus defense avoidance actually gives more effective health boosts to escorts since every shield point is worth more on them.
- Engine power. Is there any doubt who gets the best bonus out of this?
- Auxiliary power. Does anyone still use the abilities this effects? I kid I kid but really it is not difficult at all the get it above 50 anyway.
The key to balancing escort type ships used to be keeping them power starved. They wanted AUX for turn rate, engine power for speed, shield to live, and weapons to kill. Now my escorts are flying around at 125/115/60/50 roughly and that is without getting doff silly (or steamrunner silly for that matter) to blend two EPtX powers for pretty much 125 across the board. And my engineer does run at 125 across the board for around half of an engagement as it is.
Why attack patterns are not effected by engine power I have no idea. Why AUX does nothing beyond a T4 passive rep ability and modifying a handful of mostly bad boff abilities I could not tell you.
And WHY on earth engineering +power consoles were nerfed with F2P because of subsystem power creep yet they continue to add so much creep that my power has skyrocketed to nearly max?
*disclaimer not trying to offend*
The math in this game is so far beyond Fed up its not funny. Make the content more difficult and you will see escorts or GTFO by the elite PvE crowd. They are the best tanks (EPtS 3 + extend + over 100 bonus defense = best tank) armitage and steamrunner tank/healer combo FYI. The STO community is not very elite nor very good at learning mechanics or system maths. The Neverwinter community has already reverse engineered all the math in the game and has created and shared so many stupidly broken builds the game is in tatters because the balance is just as horrible as in STO but there are more MMO vets there who can find, expose, and understand these things. Perma stealth rogues and whatnot.
I am not very good at min/max, average at best, and yet I can see all the glaring flaws in STO mechanics and math. Believe me increasing difficulty will make the problem much worse.
And PvP in this game as in all others is much more about META than any true balance. PvP because of it's adaptability is a much different balancing beast especially when anyone is free to bring anything the other guy is bringing to the fight a meta is developed and the balanced around. Not a good approach for PvE balance.
Dps is stupid strong
Tanking is better than the cruisers because i never slow down
The only heal i need is Hazzard 2
and i only use beam arrays and beam banks
The Fleet excelsior and Regent are great ships worthy of the name cruiser , The rest are garbage and cant shoot there way out of a wet paper sack. And Pve is about DPS and Dps alone
Tanking and healing dont matter, There unnessary as a ships role
Its not Escorts online
Its DPS Online
Want to Fix it ?
Cut hull healing shield healing and regeneration as follows
Cut Ensign Healing by 75%
Cut Lt healing by 50%
Cut Lt commander healing by 25%
if this was done there would be a role for support ships
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Taking away cross healing would just hurt healer classes like Engineers more than balancing anything out. Most good escort pilots don't even need a healer on them. That's where most complaints are coming from, that escorts can be a little over tanky on their own if built right. While at the same time maintaining a large DPS output.
You can't compare canon mechanics to game mechanics in STO, since they're so far apart for good reasoning.
Escorts are easiest to fly, the easiest class of ships to compete in.
Why is that? Its not because they're 'OP' so to speak, Every game has to have its 'beginner' class of ships.
I would have expected it to be Cruisers in sto, but apparently that is not the case.
I fly a Galor, and Orb Weaver and a Recluse that smash escorts.
My Galor actually runs on escort tac captains tears.
Tears.
Here's the funny part.
Everytime you dO come up with a build on a ship that is not an escort that excels at killing escorts, they cry.
They cry foul, they cry nerf.
Even the "Elite" Pvpers, some of the guys others will tell u to ask when you have questions.
Pop their bug in an orb weaver 'n 'lol' as they tell you how bad you are at spaceships while they're waiting to respawn.
Here's another good one I've heard like 4 times in the last two days,
Oh I was tired of it, I wanted to die. (LOL)
Course u were, that's why u tripped GDF hit bfi 'n evasive right bfore u popped cause u wanted to die.
Really its rather silly.
Crys about spam, and 'OMG FBP LOL' (rofl whine) or 'lucky crit 'n u know it'
(LOL nevermind the fact that your escort crits 7 of every 10 shots derp)
They win its 'gg nice build' they lose its 'omg u suck at spaceships I cant believe u fly so bad u killed me w those abilities'
Next time u find yourself waiting to respawn, especially you 'elite' pvpers.
Take a moment to think about how ridiculous whatever it is you're about to say really sounds before you hit that enter key.
I for one, am going to start taking screenshots for further lolz.
Yea sure.Even some pvp'ers (as in not those who are full of BS) said that they prefer cruisers because its hard to keep target infront of your cannons while having to fly fast and with a good turn rate. :rolleyes:
So you think its big sheet to kill a escort with a carrier with player owned NPCS?
when you will be able to kill a carrier (pvp carrier not PvE BS ) using a escort (without decloak alpha ) what you said there will be true.
The only way to do 1 vs 1 in this game is between escorts.Other ships for 1 vs 1 is a waste of time.
you will die less to not at all in PvP if you fly a recluse healer.That doesnt mean a escort pilot is a idiot who has no skills compared to your sitting tank click on powers to heal.That is easy ,you know it ,I know it ...everyone in opvp knows it.
This much is absolutely true but I'd very much like to oblige their "escorts or GTFO" when they are suffering from VMs and other disables.
Remind me never to play Neverwinter again...
I'm also not great at min/max but I get by, on a side note, can I steal your spreadsheets regarding STO?
[/QUOTE]And PvP in this game as in all others is much more about META than any true balance. PvP because of it's adaptability is a much different balancing beast especially when anyone is free to bring anything the other guy is bringing to the fight a meta is developed and the balanced around. Not a good approach for PvE balance.[/QUOTE]
I actually think that were pvp properly balanced and pve remodelled based on it the game would benefit greatly, but that's just my opinion.
Maybe not to you, do not presume to speak for everyone. The very way the classes are distinct from specific roles is one of STO's strongest selling points to some.
In comparison, the C4 packed in the consoles on the Defiant is normally exploding and setting fire and generally trying to add action appeal to DS9 after, say, 5 shots? Compared to 20 on the Enterprise, where perhaps a small wisp of smoke emits after a while?
Add half again (or perhaps even double) to cruiser's hull, and be a proper MMO. Cruisers are for tanking, not damage. Escorts for DPS, not tanking. And sciences for healing/being annoying with skills, like in every other MMO out there. It shouldn't be that the DPS an escort can pump out is so disproportionate to the amount of health (or lack of atm) that a cruiser has. DPS's should have to rely on healers and tanks to stay alive, and healers and tanks have to rely on the DPS's to kill the enemy before they kill the healers, again like in every other MMO.
tl;dr buff cruisers hull rates, make them a tank like in every other MMO, so that they are needed on a team. A team of 5 DPS's shouldn't be able to survive.
That is all.
Also, let science abilities be OP again, it'd be nice for a change. Trying to answer this by giving the Vesta DHC's, when in the book it only has one anyway, is not the answer. Nice looking ship though.
Keywords "to some". Having it where the class roles don't play a big part in the game makes it less fun. Best thing about most MMO's is the way the classes NEED (Meaning you need the classes for their goals instead of just having no problem with a group of 1 class) to work together for a common goal in missions. Without this element, it waters down the gameplay making the classes almost not even worth existing.
Enterprise D ,at least the fleet version, is very tanky and can tank 2-3 escorts.If you dont know how to tank check the pvp forums or join pvp bootcamp.
btw Geko should do the same thing because he said "a cruiser wont survive if its attack by more than 1 players" ...which is very wrong.Cruisers tank very well and maybe they need abit more shields .
So a 10k DPS + cruiser that can tank won't get us the optionals in an STF? I see escorts pop constantly against the unimatrix and queen, so what class does do that better?
PvP is barely part of this game, it is a bolted on segment to appease a small percentage of people. It is broken by so many ways it has its own thread about it, and even if its all escorts on all escorts, its still broken.
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Massive rebalancing patch loading there today, so take "broken builds not addressed" claims with a grain of salt, if not a small Siberian salt mine.
All ships have a total computer resource number that cannot be changed. This means you have to build you weapons around your ship's resource number.
(as an example)
High Resource Weapons(30): Dual Heavy Cannon, Dual Beam Array, and Torpedoes
Mid Resource Weapons(20): Dual Cannon and Beam Array
Low Resource Weapons(10) Cannon, Turret and Mines
Weapon rarity wouldn't change the amount of DMG the weapon can do. It would effect the resource number. A common MK XII Dual Heavy Cannon has a higher resource number than an uncommon or very rare MK XII Dual Heavy Cannon, but their base DMG is the same.
A cheesy example would be:
X Escort has a 100 resource number.
Common DHC have a resource number of 30.
X Escort has 4 weapon slots in the front and 3 in the back.
X Escort wants to maximize burst DPS with DHC.
4xCommon DHC=120 resource and cannot be done on this ship.
Very Rare DHC have a resource number of 25.
4xVery Rare DHC = 100 and can be loaded, but no further weapons will fit on the ship.
This opens up a weakness to those high burst chasing players.
(Let's try it again, but not chase the crazy burst DPS this time.)
Using Very Rare Weapons
DHC=25
DHC=25
DC=15
DC=15
Turret=5
Turret=5
Turret=5
Total resource used = 95 of 100
So yeah, if you want to balance ships with each other, this would be how I would do it.
I think a lot of people feel very passionate about this but they are getting tunnel vision.
Damage and Heal boosts help all ships, however the relative placement of various ship types in regards to damage and damage soaking do not change. Nor should they.
I do agree that there is one very big issue, what to do about the old ships? Old ships were made with a clearly different style of play. The galaxy, star cruiser and yes, even the intrepid and defiant are emblematic of this. Heck, the amby is superior to them simply because it manages to have a more hybrid boff layout. DO they update them to the new standarts? Sell a way to make them a little better through hybridization? Leave them as is and help push other ships as revenue generators? What can be done about them and will Cryptic do anything at all?
If any type of ship really benefits more than others from boosts is the hybrids/destroyers in the game. Which as we can see, are the way ships are designed now.