I think it's time for a change in the way universal consoles work. Let me start by giving an example.
The Vesta's Quantum Field Focus Phaser deals "857.7* Phaser Damage per sec for 12 secs" and has a cooldown of 3 minutes. While it is a fun weapon to use, its effectiveness is simply too low to be of any use. I could use the console slot for a phaser relay that gives a bonus of 25-30 percent, depending on its level and rarity. Let's say we have three cannons equipped that deal a basic damage of 750 per second. If we add the phaser relay, that means we will have a bonus of about 200 phaser damage per second. In those three minutes, we can deal about 36000 extra phaser damage.
Of course, if you have the full set equipped, you will get some other bonuses as well. But with the extremely long cooldown, there is no way these consoles will be more effective than normal ones that are active 100 percent of the time.
The same goes for the Odyssey's consoles. The Chevron seperation and Aquarius Escort are a fun thing to have, but they do fill up console slots. The little extra damage they do, before you have to wait a few minutes to use them again when they are destroyed, could be easily done by putting other consoles on your ship.
So here's the idea: shouldn't the cool down times of at least most of the Universal Consoles (Those of the Odyssey, Vesta, but also Chimera and countless other ones) be reduced to make them more useful?
Or even better: why not make one extra console slot on those ships that can equip an universal console? For example, if you have an Oddy with 4 Eng, 2 Sci and 4 Tac consoles, add one Universal slot where the Chevron seperation or the Aquarius may be equipped. By adding just one slot, and making it only useable for the universal consoles that come with the same ship, the captain would still have to make choices and miss some slots if he/she wants to use a full set of universal consoles, but at least this would make it possible to use one Universal Console without having to miss a normal one. Also, it would allow players to be much more flexible in building their ship.
The Quantum Field Focus Phaser is meant to be used in an alpha strike for sustained damage. Making it any stronger would give the Vesta trio an unfair advantage.
The answer is to reduce the cold down on most of these console. 3 mins is way too long. However it is a no on the extra slot. Would be another pay to win feature.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
1. Yes, I would absolutely love to have some extra console slots where we could stick set bonus consoles in to make our ships with those consoles just lolpowerful. (My Kumari puts all three of the consoles into the Engineer slots, yeah I'd totally love to dump 3x Neutroniums in there...my Ody puts all of it's consoles into the Sci slots, sure I'll take a couple of extra Field Gens)
2. Never, ever...ever...put a Universal into the Tac Slots, only Energy Damage of the type you're using should go there imo
3. Always use the corresponding energy type weapons to whatever "Superweapon" your ship comes with...which basically means Fed = Phasers (Dreadnought Lance, Kumari Wing Cannon, etc), KDF = Disruptors (Bortasqu Autocannon, Guramba Javelin, etc) and you'll see A LOT more damage being pulled by those.
Quite a number of these Universal Consoles with abilities do not need a CD reduction. Most of all, anything related to the Vesta series which is already a potent ship pack and console set.
My goodness, can you imagine if this applies to the Bortasqu' set's Disruptor Autocannon? You can shred ships apart with a decloaking attack, and it's a 3 minute CD. The set reduces it to 2:30. Shorten the CD on that some more?
The obvious solution is to go back to the old system by making these abilities that are tied to the ship rather than a console.
However, since Cryptic are pathetic wallet raiders... that would make it harder to sell sets across multiple ships.
Cant have that, cant increase the number of slots so instead you get a bunch of gimick consoles.
Then again, it would be more sensible to make them passive traits and skills tied to the character much like the Rep Store abilities but Cryptic loves to make a fast buck even if anyone with a brain could see the growing train wreck the console gimick generation would cause.
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- Judge Aaron Satie
2. Never, ever...ever...put a Universal into the Tac Slots, only Energy Damage of the type you're using should go there imo
3. Always use the corresponding energy type weapons to whatever "Superweapon" your ship comes with...which basically means Fed = Phasers (Dreadnought Lance, Kumari Wing Cannon, etc), KDF = Disruptors (Bortasqu Autocannon, Guramba Javelin, etc) and you'll see A LOT more damage being pulled by those.
My goodness, can you imagine if this applies to the Bortasqu' set's Disruptor Autocannon? You can shred ships apart with a decloaking attack, and it's a 3 minute CD. The set reduces it to 2:30. Shorten the CD on that some more?
However, since Cryptic are pathetic wallet raiders... that would make it harder to sell sets across multiple ships.
Cant have that, cant increase the number of slots so instead you get a bunch of gimick consoles.
Then again, it would be more sensible to make them passive traits and skills tied to the character much like the Rep Store abilities but Cryptic loves to make a fast buck even if anyone with a brain could see the growing train wreck the console gimick generation would cause.