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resoundingenvoy
Member Posts: 439
Problem:
Something has been puzzling me for a long time. Take for example the defiant family of ships, and the Caitian Atrox carrier.
Any tactical escort can almost fit within the hanger bay of a Atrox, but does dozen of times it's damage and I've seen hull ranging of the defiant family range from 80-110% of the Atrox's hull.
Suggest:
Remove the 'Base Hull' value from the game. Instead have all ships have a single base hull value. Have each ship have size modifier that works like a shield modifier to multiply (or divide) that base hull value.
Maybe have it tweak the base on weapons as well.
Justification:
Continuing my pet example? Why give a Atrox 100K to 500K hull points? Most of the same justification borg cubes in elite special task forces have such huge hull values.
Such large ships are terminally unable to control when or where they fight. In a fight between a dedicated escort (like a defiant) and a slow carrier (like a Atrox) the carrier loses by default.
The attacking escort can do something stupid, but the Atrox has no where to run. If the attacker starts to win a fight, the Atrox has no means to pin down or follow a fleeing attacker. Which is a useless bit of data until you flip that example...
Meaning the best a Atrox can hope for is a draw as it get's worn down or outright destroyed by harassment. It's attacker can escape and evade a Atrox as soon as a it starts to win a fight pretty much at will. Meaning the Atrox has zero chance of a victory unless a attacker choices keep fighting and die.
Something has been puzzling me for a long time. Take for example the defiant family of ships, and the Caitian Atrox carrier.
Any tactical escort can almost fit within the hanger bay of a Atrox, but does dozen of times it's damage and I've seen hull ranging of the defiant family range from 80-110% of the Atrox's hull.
Suggest:
Remove the 'Base Hull' value from the game. Instead have all ships have a single base hull value. Have each ship have size modifier that works like a shield modifier to multiply (or divide) that base hull value.
Maybe have it tweak the base on weapons as well.
Justification:
Continuing my pet example? Why give a Atrox 100K to 500K hull points? Most of the same justification borg cubes in elite special task forces have such huge hull values.
Such large ships are terminally unable to control when or where they fight. In a fight between a dedicated escort (like a defiant) and a slow carrier (like a Atrox) the carrier loses by default.
The attacking escort can do something stupid, but the Atrox has no where to run. If the attacker starts to win a fight, the Atrox has no means to pin down or follow a fleeing attacker. Which is a useless bit of data until you flip that example...
Meaning the best a Atrox can hope for is a draw as it get's worn down or outright destroyed by harassment. It's attacker can escape and evade a Atrox as soon as a it starts to win a fight pretty much at will. Meaning the Atrox has zero chance of a victory unless a attacker choices keep fighting and die.
Post edited by resoundingenvoy on
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Comments
I'm a little confused about the Justification section though. Which part? All of it really
Not flaming you, I just don't understand what you've said is all. The basic idea is cool though.
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
To try and put in two extremes in a defiant vs. Atrox fight?
A) If a Atrox starts to win, it has no way to chase down a defiant if it wants to run. Chance of victory for the Atrox? Near zero.
However there are not true ship escorts in STO. Tiny little fast ships like defiant or birds of prey fill in the roll of battleship and escorts all at once. Making things like a Atrox just a fancy graveyard with a warp core.
Don't get me wrong: would love something like that in STO too; but the trend in this game is ere to make everything easier (read: more pew-pew escort-like) than harder.
All I suggested was replacing base hull with a modifier like a shield modifier. I'd like to see damage scale on the same as well, but that would just be a wishlist thing.
...
I suppose you could increase or decrease accuracy based on the difference in that modifier, but that's more complicated then I suggested.
/headscratch
The Defiant has a crew of 50.
The Atrox has a crew of 3000.
You're looking at living quarters, holodecks, recreational areas, lounges, meeting rooms, additional hallways, medical facilities, storage, hangars, etc, etc, etc.
The size has already been taken into account in determining the ship's hull.
I'll use a balloon analogy. It's not perfect by any means, but take three balloons and...
A) Scrunch one up as small as you can.
C) Blow the third up and add some more popsicle sticks.
In this kind of space warfare, size can matter. Look at how much harder a Starbase hits compared to any single ship. Why? Simple, you can put a much bigger power plant in a larger hull. That didn't matter with the 32k ton aircraft carrier because it's weapons were not tied to it's power plant.
It (theoretically in the fake/fictional/physics of star trek) would not be perfect. A small ship specifically designed for combat (Defiant) would always have a greater efficiency when translating it's power plant into firepower. However given similar technological baseline, a larger hull could support a larger power plant, and thus more powerful weapons. Also more powerful shields, structural int fields, deflector power, and so on.
Anyway it's just a game, and balance takes precedence over logic in most cases. If the devs believe the current situation is fairly balanced, things won't change.
You're right, game balance is the important issue, and carriers certainly bring plenty of DPS, durability and utility. What the OP uses to justify the change in ship hull strength is the weather gage, which has to do with a ship's ability to press or depart an engagement at their option, and to be honest, it makes sense that a smaller, more agile ship has that advantage. But what he fails to consider is that with 7 science abilities and a bunch of fighters, if the captain of the carrier can't contrive to reduce the escort's maneuver advantage, it's due to BOFF choices he's made. It also ignores that the PVP balance is based on team play, not solo play, as it must do. Maybe your Atrox will be unable to press the advantage if the enemy escort's attack run goes sour, but your teammates in their own escorts ought to be able to capitalize on their misfortune.
But most importantly of all, PVP is neither balanced, nor important.
Hrmm...not important.
Well, it's true it does provide the opportunity for folks to tap their pinkytoes on their spacebars to gear up like PvE...
...but some folks do enjoy it, and it is important to them. They wouldn't be here otherwise.
Wouldn't quite dismiss things as not important like that...
The OP bypasses both issues entirely by assuming two things. :P
1) Ship designers are not a idiot that's going to send a couple hundred megatons of starship and effort into a front line without first assuring that, yes, in fact it can survive there.
2) Players are not idiots, and all players assumed equal. Each one is going to work their best for the desired out come no better or worse then the other.
EDIT: The OP also assumed such assumptions were a given when talking about a game, and didn't see the point of saying that in the OP. :P
Hrmm, not sure how that didn't make sense.
Scrunched Balloon: <->
Normal Balloon: <
>
Inflated Balloon: <
>
Different sizes...of the same thing.
The Scrunched Balloon will hold its shape well.
The Normal Balloon will need some support to hold its shape.
The Inflated Balloon is getting a little stretched out and needs some support.
Outside of the popsicle sticks, all three of them started with the same hull.
The Scrunched Balloon is more dense and doesn't require any additional support.
The Normal Balloon is a little flimsy and requires additional support (additional hull).
The Inflated Balloon is definitely going to require some additional support (even more additional hull).
The Defiant/Scrunched Balloon...and...the Atrox/Inflated Balloon - have hull strengths that are reflecting their size.
If the Atrox were just a Defiant the size of the Atrox, that would be a different story - but that's not the case. The Atrox has more empty space inside than the Defiant.
Scrunched Balloon vs. Inflated Balloon with some popsicle sticks.
If you follow the DS9 series, to my recollection it only ambushed or strafed multiple targets. Anytime it stood it's ground, it died or had to retreat.
The only time either does well is off screen using plot armor to ride to the rescue of our heroes.
But nobody is saying that. I didn't say that. Remember, I added the popsicle sticks to reinforce the structure? I added mass. This is reflected in the larger ships actually having more hull than the smaller ships.
It was a case of trying to be nice, without pointing out the idiocy of thinking that a ship that's 10-20 or more times the size of another ship should have 10-20 times the hull.
The interior of the different ships is going to be very different. There is going to be more open/empty space on a larger ship. You don't get additional hull for empty space.
It's not just empty space either. How much of the ship's volume is being taken up by wiring, lighting, screens, consoles, tables, chairs, beds, etc, etc, etc.
Again, if the Atrox were just a huge Defiant - it would be one thing. It's not.
The same pretty much goes for any ship in Star Trek. They were invincible until they needed to be destroyed for some reason.
The Canon arguments always strike me as funny in that sense...Canon is based upon whatever the writers were doing to move the story along.
Some of the folks out there argue Canon as if Star Trek was a series of documentaries - as if folks were watching the History Channel...Modern Marvels: Starfleet or something.
It's fiction...plot weapons, plot armor, plot gadgets and doohickeys out the wahzoo...
How many battleships were sunk because of the loss of 100% hull?
He also flip-flopped numerous times. He also played less and less of a role in the Star Trek franchise.
Hrmm, does the patrol boat go faster than the battleship? Is it more maneuverable? Just saying...
Doesn't mean STO is not inconsistent, but STO is so inconsistent that it goes far beyond Cruiser vs. Escort...it's even Escort vs. Escort.
That. :P The galley the size of a football field maybe essential function to normal day to day stuff, but the food supply disintegrating in a spray of atoms is hardly threatening to the intimidate fight.
Edit: Where are something powerful enough to take out a compartment that big -even one that's mostly open air- could mean the 100% loss of something smaller.
Also:
The gap in size vs. raw hull points takes a bigger hand then that to wave away. :P
Hull HP should be relative to HULL size for balance issues rather than any other atm. Atrox has TRIBBLE defense because of speed why shouldnt it have double the hull strength of a defiant class? Certainly be more entertaining taking a Atrox out. Escorts in this game really aren't the glass cannons they should be.
Ok, one thing you're forgetting, the Defiant class is what, about 1/10th, IF the size of, for this example, the Atrox, correct? Ok, even assuming all sorts of empty space, blah blah blah, that's still a huge amount of deck plating to have to eat through, to cause significant damage, compared to the Defiant. And everything, except maybe air itself, will contribute to the weakening of an energy source (even kinetic), as it's destroyed. So those tables, chairs, screens, hell even beds, as they get destroyed consume some of the energy from the weapon used against them.
Also, size isn't the only determinant factor, the material(s) used, will heavily factor in. Now, on most of the descriptions, especially for the fleet ships, and most C-Store ships are put on the same level as fleet ships (at least the high end ones are), they specifically state something to the effect, that they have been remanufactured with modern materials. So that 23rd century ship, using 23rd century hull material, sure, might not stand up to modern weaponry very well. However, that SAME ship, with 24th (or is it 25th by now, I keep forgetting) hull materials will do large factors better. Add to that, re-equipping it with modern weaponry & defenses, as well as engines, means, the bigger ship should have more hp value, than the smaller opponent. Also, the fact that there is a lot more crew on-board the larger ship, in my mind, would play a far larger role in combat, than they presently do, should factor in. Lose 50 men on a Defiant? Hell, they might have taken just about everyone who knows how to run the targeting routines for your phasers (or whatever flavour energy weapons you use). But on the 3000 man crew, sure losing 50 men might be a hindrance, they might have gotten lucky, and disable the crew for 1 weapon, but that's likely about it. And the fact that a large ship loses crew in this game, faster than the smaller ship, is just beyond ridiculous
So in summation, if the Defiant (or any other ship near it's size) gets around, say 30k hull, then the Atrox should be getting at least 150k. The reason I'm not sticking totally to my 1:10 ratio I used earlier, is to also factor in possible differences in SIF generator strengths. Something like a Defiant, with specifically engineered high power for it's size, may use far more powerful SIF's than the Atrox. However, that would be a special case. (and technically, I feel, if you "kitbash your ship, to look nothing like the Defiant, then you should lose the bonus along with that, to reflect, even within a class of ships, different MAKES of ships will perform slightly differently)
ANyway, my 2 cents on the matter, using as much logic, and "science" as can be mustered for a make-believe world (universe actually, lol) as can be conjectured given that even if these things could be made real, with our present level of tech, we really have no idea how some of the things would truly react.
butcher suspect, "What'd you hit me with?"
Temperance Brennan, "A building"
Someone did the math once, but the link is dead I think.
...but why do you ignore that the Atrox has 60x the crew? A ship that's only 10x the size has 60x the crew. Are the crew of the Atrox 1/6th the size (literally, short and skinny) or something? The density of the Atrox is not the same as the Defiant - it's not a case of them having the same hull stretched out - otherwise they'd have the same hull.
The Defiant Retro has 30k hull. That's less than a Fleet/Advanced Escort. Yes, the Fleet Defiant has more - Fleet Ships get that +10%. The Atrox is not a Fleet Ship. If there were a Fleet Atrox, it would have +10% as well.
When folks talk about the Defiant having more hull than the Atrox, that's a character build thing. They did something wrong.
Here's one of my guys playing musical ships.
Support Retro: (39,500) 51,351 +30%
MU Assault/MU Star: (39,000) 50,701 +30%
Chel Grett: (36,000) 46,801 +30%
MU/Advanced Escort: (31,000) 40,301 +30%
MU Recon: (28,500) 37,051 +30%
MU Deep Space: (27,000) 35,101 +30%
Yep, the +30% is consistent (outside of some extreme rounding). It's what the toon brings to each ship. It allows me to look at any ship's base hull and know around what it would be with this particular guy in it. Course, that's ungeared (the MACO Mk XII Deflector adds another 6.12% or so). So geared, it would be +37.958%...+38% or so.
So I can look at the Defiant and Atrox...
Defiant Retro: 30,000
Atrox: 40,000
Starts out with the Atrox having +10k hull.
Drop my guy in them...
Defiant Retro: ~39,000
Atrox: ~52,000
And it now has +13k hull.
Drop the guy in with the MACO Deflector...
Defiant Retro: 41,387
Atrox: 55,183
A diff of around 13.8k...
Some folks have tried to make the comparison between the Atrox and Fleet Defiant. The Atrox is not a Fleet Ship. That's a bad comparison. Let's do a comparison between a fictional Fleet Atrox and the Fleet Defiant though, eh?
Fleet Defiant Retro: 33,000
Fleet Atrox: 44,000
A diff of +11k for the Fleet Atrox.
Drop the guy and his deflector in...
Fleet Defiant Retro: 45,526
Fleet Atrox: 60,701
A diff of 15,175 hull.
The Atrox maintains its 1.33:1 ratio of hull compared to the Defiant throughout all of this.
So it may be a case that it's 10x the size, but it's also got 60x the crew, and so you're looking at 33% more hull.
It's not the amount of damage that has to be done to disintegrate the ship - it's the amount of damage needed to destroy the ship - there's still something leftover for the explosion. It's why I mentioned the damage needed to sink a battleship.
Of all the problems with Escorts that make them more powerful than they should be, imho...well, this isn't on my personal list. It's a long list - but this isn't one of them.
That's not taking into account any resists.
That's not taking into account shields and shield resists.
That's not taking into account any healing.
That's not taking into account different abilities because of BOFF layouts between the ships.
But yeah, if you pretty much ignore everything else in the game - it's about 1-2 seconds.