I've said it time and again escorts don't live up to their name, they escort nothing but themselves. The hull strength and shield capacity is way too much compared to a cruiser, and the BA arc vs Cannons discussion is moot because a escort can turn fast enough to keep a 45* weapon on target often enough to match a BA's 225* arc all day long. So where is the advantage in using a BA in a pvp match other than BO or subsystem attacks? If escorts weren't overkill than you would find more variety of player's using other ships, but the vast majority of dps player's use escorts. Now don't get me wrong you can score high dps in pve missions with bfaw, but that is simply because you are lashing out at multiple enemies, but against a single enemy BFAW might as well not even be in your skill set as it's sub-par on a single enemy. Also the power consumption difference of a DHC vs a BA is a joke to say the least -10BA and -12DHC please I will gladly take the extra -2wp for the X2 dmg output of a dhc any day when facing a single enemy. Escorts might as well be renamed Assault ships because they don't escort nothing, unless you consider carrying weaker teammates escorting.
Escorts aren't necessarily more powerful on paper, they're just more powerful in a game like Star Trek Online. Why is this?
Star Trek Online is a dps race. Utility is "handy". Ship healing is "handy". Buffing/debuffing is "handy". DPS gets you 1st place. ( and by extension the best gear in less time.) There is no gold medal for tanking the hardest or keeping the team in the fight with heals. That's just in fleet actions though. In quests escorts merely get the job done faster and save you tons of time. There is no "analysis" or lab work in missions that calls for science systems to solve a mystery, just "warp here, pew pew bang bang". This isn't your fathers Federation.
Star Trek Online isn't hard. Healing and tanky ships are handy, as mentioned above. They just aren't handy enough to offset simply bringing another escort to the party when my Prometheus can tank entire borg cubes with the right shields and cooldown rotation without giving up a shred of dps. Ensign and Lt engineer and Science cooldowns are also much closer to their higher rank variants in terms of power than Ensign and Lt tactical abilities are to their Lt. Cmd and Commander variants, thus ensuring Escorts reap the best of both worlds.
Maybe in a different kind of game escorts would be balanced. Just not in Star Trek Online.
The tanking difference between tanking and dps classes in sto is far smaller than in other mmos, and dps difference far larger.
Correct.
When STO was released, I was there for the first 3-4 months before I left. Escorts at that time were "Glass Cannons." They could hit hard, move fluidly, but were easy to kill if you got into grips with them. They were not like today where they can take all the fire in the quadrant and come out okay.
STO back then also had far more balance between Escorts, Cruisers, and Sci Vessels.
I wonder why that all changed? I mean sure the Defiant and Prometheus Class ships are powerful, but that doesn't mean that they should be the be all end all ships now.
The game no longer has the feel of Star Trek but more of a 'I can kill stuff faster than you and fly like my reactor's going critical!'. No, just no.
I'd ask if the game would put a higher power restriction on the DHC so that people would have a different thought process than tacking on the strongest weapons, but sadly they won't do that. Make the Cannons have, I don't know, -12 power instead and make the DC have like -15 and the DHC have -18 or something. I know those numbers are steep, put the price to pay for that strength has to come from somewhere right?
Also, a zippy little escort would be strong, but it would have to have a glass jaw. I mean escorts sacrifice armor for that speed. These are not escorts, they sound more like tiny dreadnoughts.
Maybe the game needs to put down a restriction on the number of type of weapon. It's probably a dumb thought, but it would level the playing field and put escorts back in their face and shut the dpsers up along with the people arguing over which ship type is better, then I'm all for it.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] "Look at me I'm a target!" "Fire the Lance on my mark... MARK! "How many times have we gone into the breach again R'shee?" My proposal for a Galaxy bundle
-They're warships in a game the heavily revolves around combat and not much else. (What good is a science ship if you cannot even launch probes - let alone actually have a use for them?)
-They don't trade available weapon slots(I still stand by the opinion that 'escorts' would still be excellent damage ships with 3/2 slots instead of 4/3), bridge tactical slots(the ability to properly utilize equipped weapons), or turn rate(keeping weapons on a target) for each other. They get the benefit of all three at once while cruisers only get weapon slots and science ships only get (an inferior) turn rate.
-Weapon power drain mechanics are heavily biased towards Dual Heavy cannons, which only 'escorts' are truly able to make good use of. A part of me would almost prefer it if only a single 'heavy energy weapon' was allowed to be equipped on any given ship. The Alternative would be if power drain mechanics were normalized to make all weapons equally viable in their own way - if dual cannons, dual heavy cannons, and dual beam banks had equal performance(they don't), but embraced different playstyles.
Science ships and cruisers require a certain level of skill to be viable, but any average joe can slap some dhcs and tactical buffs on an escort and blow the living daylights out of everything NPCs have to offer.
However, put a clever person in an escort, and what you have is something that could be ridiculously lethal.
So truly enterprising players will choose escorts, and use their skills to improve something that is already competent, while the captains of science ships and cruisers are simply trying to bring their ships up to par.
A science vessel doesn't come built as a competent control/debuff/healer vessel - it has to be made into one.
A cruiser doesn't come built as a competent tank or healer - it, too, has to be forged into a useful thing by the player.
An escort, however, is pre-built for one purpose only, dealing damage, whereas the other two vessel types are less focused.
If we had pre-built healers, pre-built tanks, pre-built control vessels, and/or pre-built debuffers, the story might be different. But right now, escorts are the only ship class that comes prepared to do only one thing. (And unfortunately, that one thing is the thing that gets the best rewards in this game.)
Comments
http://youtu.be/H9RZfOAlO3Y
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
Star Trek Online is a dps race. Utility is "handy". Ship healing is "handy". Buffing/debuffing is "handy". DPS gets you 1st place. ( and by extension the best gear in less time.) There is no gold medal for tanking the hardest or keeping the team in the fight with heals. That's just in fleet actions though. In quests escorts merely get the job done faster and save you tons of time. There is no "analysis" or lab work in missions that calls for science systems to solve a mystery, just "warp here, pew pew bang bang". This isn't your fathers Federation.
Star Trek Online isn't hard. Healing and tanky ships are handy, as mentioned above. They just aren't handy enough to offset simply bringing another escort to the party when my Prometheus can tank entire borg cubes with the right shields and cooldown rotation without giving up a shred of dps. Ensign and Lt engineer and Science cooldowns are also much closer to their higher rank variants in terms of power than Ensign and Lt tactical abilities are to their Lt. Cmd and Commander variants, thus ensuring Escorts reap the best of both worlds.
Maybe in a different kind of game escorts would be balanced. Just not in Star Trek Online.
Correct.
When STO was released, I was there for the first 3-4 months before I left. Escorts at that time were "Glass Cannons." They could hit hard, move fluidly, but were easy to kill if you got into grips with them. They were not like today where they can take all the fire in the quadrant and come out okay.
STO back then also had far more balance between Escorts, Cruisers, and Sci Vessels.
That synergy is nonexistent today.
The game no longer has the feel of Star Trek but more of a 'I can kill stuff faster than you and fly like my reactor's going critical!'. No, just no.
I'd ask if the game would put a higher power restriction on the DHC so that people would have a different thought process than tacking on the strongest weapons, but sadly they won't do that. Make the Cannons have, I don't know, -12 power instead and make the DC have like -15 and the DHC have -18 or something. I know those numbers are steep, put the price to pay for that strength has to come from somewhere right?
Also, a zippy little escort would be strong, but it would have to have a glass jaw. I mean escorts sacrifice armor for that speed. These are not escorts, they sound more like tiny dreadnoughts.
Maybe the game needs to put down a restriction on the number of type of weapon. It's probably a dumb thought, but it would level the playing field and put escorts back in their face and shut the dpsers up along with the people arguing over which ship type is better, then I'm all for it.
"Look at me I'm a target!"
"Fire the Lance on my mark... MARK!
"How many times have we gone into the breach again R'shee?"
My proposal for a Galaxy bundle
-They're warships in a game the heavily revolves around combat and not much else. (What good is a science ship if you cannot even launch probes - let alone actually have a use for them?)
-They don't trade available weapon slots(I still stand by the opinion that 'escorts' would still be excellent damage ships with 3/2 slots instead of 4/3), bridge tactical slots(the ability to properly utilize equipped weapons), or turn rate(keeping weapons on a target) for each other. They get the benefit of all three at once while cruisers only get weapon slots and science ships only get (an inferior) turn rate.
-Weapon power drain mechanics are heavily biased towards Dual Heavy cannons, which only 'escorts' are truly able to make good use of. A part of me would almost prefer it if only a single 'heavy energy weapon' was allowed to be equipped on any given ship. The Alternative would be if power drain mechanics were normalized to make all weapons equally viable in their own way - if dual cannons, dual heavy cannons, and dual beam banks had equal performance(they don't), but embraced different playstyles.
I think it's because escorts are easy.
Science ships and cruisers require a certain level of skill to be viable, but any average joe can slap some dhcs and tactical buffs on an escort and blow the living daylights out of everything NPCs have to offer.
However, put a clever person in an escort, and what you have is something that could be ridiculously lethal.
So truly enterprising players will choose escorts, and use their skills to improve something that is already competent, while the captains of science ships and cruisers are simply trying to bring their ships up to par.
A science vessel doesn't come built as a competent control/debuff/healer vessel - it has to be made into one.
A cruiser doesn't come built as a competent tank or healer - it, too, has to be forged into a useful thing by the player.
An escort, however, is pre-built for one purpose only, dealing damage, whereas the other two vessel types are less focused.
If we had pre-built healers, pre-built tanks, pre-built control vessels, and/or pre-built debuffers, the story might be different. But right now, escorts are the only ship class that comes prepared to do only one thing. (And unfortunately, that one thing is the thing that gets the best rewards in this game.)
USS WARRIOR NCC 1720 Commanding Officer
Star Trek Gamers