You know what I don't like? Now I have to wait the whole 90 seconds or whatever to have my pets special recharge and use again. Before I PREFERRED being able to launch out a wing of danubes with fresh tractor beams so as to save probes from escaping in khitomer vortex or keep nanite spheres away just long enough to destroy the transformer in infected conduit. It was a mission saver.
So here's my question first. Why is the recharge time for their ability even on the expensive fleet ones comparable to not putting any points into it? Its useless now I hope my danubes or delta flyers die so I can launch fresh ones.
Here's my only feedback: either fully rank up pet powers like tractor beam, tachyon beam etc so that its recharging at a speed my own tractor recharges at or have the special abilities recharge rank up all the way to "9 points" over the 5 ranks they can gain over time please.
OR
Have docked pets special abilities recharge fast like hull and shields so they're useful that way. That would make docking very useful bc as it is I won't dock them I'd rather them blow up for a fresh ability because the cool downs are way too long
I'm not being mean I am just posting my feedback bc that tractor someone's counting on to save a mission objective from failing or that tachyon beam someone counts on for that tactical cubes shields will be absolutely uses less unless some shuttles explode and need replacing
What I think would be fun. is if you have players in fighter who can get a bonus with a carrier. maybe re spawn at it, or maybe give heals. Better would be way a player in a shuttle or fighter can dock with a player and move around galaxy map with them. IF we are revamping fighters why not go all the way?
What I think would be fun. is if you have players in fighter who can get a bonus with a carrier. maybe re spawn at it, or maybe give heals. Better would be way a player in a shuttle or fighter can dock with a player and move around galaxy map with them. IF we are revamping fighters why not go all the way?
So, the summary. I like this, a lot. It isn't a game changer, but it does definitely effect carrier play, in my opinion.
My feedback on a few parts:
Size: The icons are a bit large, especially in a carrier with 2 hangars. I would recommend a default setting of approximately 60%-75% of the current default.
Positioning: The default position would work for me, but seemed counter-intuitive. As the skillbars are down at the bottom, I moved them down there, between my BO horizontal bars and the vertical bar, they fit nicely, and clearly displayed information. The current position does work, but I would move the lowest of the two hangars (in the case of a multi-hangar ship) up, and to the right, placing it side-by-side with the other hangar. This is a neglible difference, as it can be changed by the player, but I would recommend the move as making the default setup as user friendly as possible may help more players stick around with carriers.
Level-ups: To be honest, the level-up stuff seems cool, but it's also seemingly pointless. The upgrades on the Stalkers are too small to be noticable. Without some pretty extensive balance testing I cannot give a reasonable number to adjust by, but in my opinion, it needs to move upwards.
Also, not sure if the levelling is intended to be persistent or not, but I found that the Stalkers would "lose" their level if they were recalled and then another squad launched.
The ability for these ships to keep the levels persistently would change gameplay in a more significant way, without being overpowering.
Overall, I like the changes. I hope that there will be more carriers coming in the future (Hint: Dedicated Cruiser carrier :P) to further make use of this.
My biggest problem with this is that no respawns are possible so if, as it often happens, my fighters do something somewhere i have no ability to wuickly respawn them where i am and where they are needed.
Although the new UI is nice for sure i feel like what fighters really need would be an overhaul/rework of all the commands cause what good does a new UI do if the fighters still dont go where i want them to.
I used a Vesta and Elite Scorpions. I went into the closest thing I could find, which was a Deepspace Encounter in Sirius Sector.
Besides the enemies not spawning properly (they were -48), almost everything was fine. The new carrier UI looks gorgeous. My pets leveled properly, they launched speedily, and they killed those Klingons magnificently.
BUT...
I tried the Recall function: yes, they circled around me like they did before, but they shouldn't all redock at the same time. If they can't launch 6 fighters simultaneously, they can't dock 6 fighters simultaneously. This can be overlooked, I suppose.
The biggest problem is that they didn't relaunch! I tried all of the buttons: the ones above the weapons, the ones in the tray, and the ones attached to the new carrier UI. Nothing worked. I went to Red Alert and entered combat, but still nothing. I did a map change and came back into the Deepspace Encounter, then all the fighters launched normally with no problems.
Summary: recalling and redocking the fighters prevented relaunching in the same map.
I can provide more information if necessary.
Lifetime Subscriber since October 31st, 2014
Star Trek Online Captain since September, 2012
I tested some Advanced Slavers and noticed a few things.
1. The recall not working same as everyone else.
2. They start out with what seems to be alot less hull, alot less hull. A just spawned Advanced Slaver is 4k ish hull, it does get higher hear, but even at 4 stars is not as high as on holodeck.
3. If your going to increase the launch time of my fighters I want a cool animation like the Vesta got.
4. I agree that the high CDs for fighter abilities needs to be fixed to make up the lost dps that not allowing full respawns caused and boosted speed or at least a working recall.
5. The Good News is Escort finally works now! Still you should be able to set your own ship to be escorted. I got around this by clicking on one of my Advanced Slaver so that my advanced slavers escorted him around including himself! This means that Escort Flight Deck Officers should work right now, which I believe offer 10 percent damage boost per officer for purples. That's 30 percent with three purples, still would more exciting without the unintended and massive damage nerf.
Plans for tomorrow. I've deleted my tribble character and uploaded an unpdated verison with Elite Slavers, each having over 6000 hull on holodeck so I'll check them tomorrow along with the rest of the Slaver and Intercptors performance. I'll see how that goes.
this update is the best update i have heard of, ever since i started playing sto and flew a carrier.
an update that was long overdue, but finally arrived.
losing pets and resummoning them was awkward most of the times.
that got fixed.
not being able to see whats happening to your pets was terrible.
that got fixed.
and some more features got added, thats quite nice.
Let me add another voice mentioning concern about Skul fighters and Jem that use ramming speed being badly harmed by this change.
Also adding my voice to those mentioning powers like tractor beam or attack pattern beta, that don't recharge fast and we used to resummon the craft as a recharge.
Finally, since craft are no longer replaced, the fact that they get stuck far across the screen is a massive problem. We used to resummon to pull them to us, now there's simply nothing we can do.
Something needs to be done to address these three issues.
If you are playing at a resolution that makes it prohibitive to utilize this new UI element, you may simply turn it off, and lose nothing. Your gameplay is likely to be completely unchanged.
To hide the Hangar UI elements, Press F12 and click the "Hide" button on the Window Frames that will appear.
Try putting your chat box up in the top left corner, make it shorter, and spread the rest of your UI along the bottom, once you get used to it, it leaves alot more space for game play, and don't have everything clumped on one corner, it just makes people cranky..
My suggestion for a fix for this, reduce fighter ability CD by 50-66%, this 30-40% reduction in DPS is mainly caused by fighters not being able to spam abilities via refresh, bring the ability CD down to the old fighter refresh time.
I guess you can say this was an exploit though, so getting it fixed is not something that they need to undo or buff again.
Just like every tac player has apparently been exploiting poor coding for disruptors for a few years.
the fact that they get stuck far across the screen is a massive problem. We used to resummon to pull them to us, now there's simply nothing we can do.
Something needs to be done to address these three issues.
UI looks ok to me.
This didn't even occur to me, excellent point.
PLEASE, along with the standard carrier commands include the ability to DISMISS, either individual pets or wings so we are able to launch fresh ones. THANK YOU
I'd hate to have to resort to unslotting my hangars between red alerts to achieve this.
Silly pictures aside, This has bothered me somewhat because of a little minor problem that the special ability of my hangar pets is kamikaze. Where once I felt glee when my elite attack ships ram their target (looks exactly like DS9, so awesome!) is now going to be replaced by a sense of dread as my five star attack ship suicides! Not to mention it takes a whopping five minutes to rank up a ship. Most STFs are a third finished by then. Like the brave Jem'hadar who pilot my attack ships are considered elders when they live to be nine, it is rare for a hangar pet to live past two minutes, let alone five.
Another thing that has my concerned is the fact you can't replace already existing ships? I understand you guys are probably see this as an opportunity to stop the refreshing of hangar pet abilities through constant summoning, but this has a problem in pet control. I can't tell you how many times I've played Khittomer only to watch my pets stop attacking my target and just randomly fly to the other side of the zone. Constantly summoning my hangar was a way to ensure that they where with me attacking my target.
As a long time carrier captain, I have to say this update has made me a little sad
Silly pictures aside, This has bothered me somewhat because of a little minor problem that the special ability of my hangar pets is kamikaze. Where once I felt glee when my elite attack ships ram their target (looks exactly like DS9, so awesome!) is now going to be replaced by a sense of dread as my five star attack ship suicides! Not to mention it takes a whopping five minutes to rank up a ship. Most STFs are a third finished by then. Like the brave Jem'hadar who pilot my attack ships are considered elders when they live to be nine, it is rare for a hangar pet to live past two minutes, let alone five.
Another thing that has my concerned is the fact you can't replace already existing ships? I understand you guys are probably see this as an opportunity to stop the refreshing of hangar pet abilities through constant summoning, but this has a problem in pet control. I can't tell you how many times I've played Khittomer only to watch my pets stop attacking my target and just randomly fly to the other side of the zone. Constantly summoning my hangar was a way to ensure that they where with me attacking my target.
As a long time carrier captain, I have to say this update has made me a little sad
I have the same concerns, but that's what you get when you've been presented improvement built on top of a bad code.
Set the conrol range to 50km (obviously you can't fix the AI, if so you shoud have don e it by now) and let us spawn fighters to complement existing wings. There may be another approach to the problem, but what I read about here is very poorly thought up.
the new Carrier UI might be a good improvement to the gameplay, but on ships with only one hangar-bay (Vesta, Scimitar) you can't recall a single wing of fighters to keep those alive, you end up recalling all your fighters.
Using bigger pets (that don't blow up so quickly) would be one way to avoid this, but this is more a balancing problem. You started to standardize the launch-time and tried to balance the pets a little, so I'd suggest the following to be added, too:
If you would give all pets something like Hazard-Emitter or Aux2SIF, so they could heal themselfes for about 2k hitpoints (every 30 to 60 seconds), that would also be nice. And please give them the ability to automatically rebalance their shields.
2k isn't too much, but on a wing of fighters it's 6k hitpoints for a complete wing (76.8 % of the health of Elite Widows), 4k if you are using Runabouts/Delta-Flyers and it's still 2k hitpoints on frigates (Fer'jai, BoP, Attackship, Romulan Drone - about 6.4% of their health).
With these improvements to the survivability, it would be more likely for pets to reach max level, while it would also balance the pets a little bit more...
I think it might be a little overkill, if I'd also ask for further AI-improvements, so that the pets are able to cross-heal like average PvPers (or good PvEers). But it would be nice, too.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
just Ran Traelus with my engi in a vesta and my KDF tac in a kar'fai.
Two wings of Advanced Slavers Got trashed repeatedly, and I couldn't get them to survive that long. it was insta-kill fest on those guys as soon as they launched. This makes them even worse then they are now with the Loot being bugged.
the Vesta with elite scorps demolished everything, and seemed to be using their Frontal cannons more then I've noticed before., with only One dying the whole run.
thanks for the full impulse on fighters.they now keep up better and I can see them from further away.
also, Like the singularity Core sounds, the sound of 12 fighters leveling up will get rather annoying. the sound is not needed as much as the visual.
One more request. Can we at least get a command that functions like recall now, but does not
Dock? Command could be called hold together or something similar.
I have the same concerns, but that's what you get when you've been presented improvement built on top of a bad code.
Set the conrol range to 50km (obviously you can't fix the AI, if so you shoud have don e it by now) and let us spawn fighters to complement existing wings. There may be another approach to the problem, but what I read about here is very poorly thought up.
Add me to this list.
I love my new JHAS pets and took glee in their suicide runs ... now I hate that as it would be money wasted ... not that any fighters will ever reach rank five in PvE because the fights are over too quickly.
Or if they do make it to rank five, we don't get to really enjoy it because its over as soon as it begins.
One more request. Can we at least get a command that functions like recall now, but does not
Dock? Command could be called hold together or something similar.
Agreed and signed! ... I have several times I want them to follow me across the board from one fight to the next ... not sit docked where they lose their edge in the comfort of the couch in the pilot's lounge.
One more request. Can we at least get a command that functions like recall now, but does not
Dock? Command could be called hold together or something similar.
Im thinking Something like 'Regroup' of 'Form Up'. Either way, something which i strongly agree with :-)
Im thinking Something like 'Regroup' of 'Form Up'. Either way, something which i strongly agree with :-)
The "Intercept" or "escort" commands can both do this. Intercept puts the ships close by the carrier, focusing on intercepting fighters and missiles, and escort seems to do roughly the same, if you target yourself, then order them to escort.
Correction the fighters on holodeck are only 4650 hull, so the hull is still find. Don't know why I thought 6000.
Any who more impressions, they still get blown up in warpcore explosions, what may work better is to make them immune to warp core explosions.
I don't like the wierd launch delays after you hit the launch button.
I still agree the cds need to be fixed as that is part of the expectedvperform of the pets now.
I also would like to be able to find out more then just about thier hull when I click on a pet, such as expected damage, cds times, shield points, turn rate, procs for stealing and so on.
I'd replace the old carrier command bar with a formation bar like Baldur's gate had with thier party formation buttons.
So to sum up allow us access to more information when we click on one and hit i button, fixed the problems caused by the change to respawning, fix cds, add more commands/formations, allow us to pick our own ship for escort command,;and fix recall.
Here are some of my thoughts (I think most have already been said)...
The pets aren't skilled in their abilities
Carrier Captains are losing a ton of DPS because we have to wait for pet special abilities to come off CD. This is an even bigger nerf on the higher-end pets (that we paid Dilithium and/or up-leveled Rep/Fleets to get) with more abilities. This is currently overcome by respawning the pets, something we won't be able to do.
Pets do the craziest things
There are times pets will ignore commands, fly off to the wrong side of a map to aggro a different enemy set, or even occasionally get stuck in the scenery (I've seen pets lodge themselves in asteroids and gates). Sometimes it's just that the pets don't keep up when the battle/mission takes us to another point. Again, as it is now no problem, we can just refresh. With the new Carrier system, we'd be up a creek.
Being a Carrier Captain has become much more complicated
It can already be tricky enough to move these huge unwieldy ships, taking care that one's Carrier is in proper position to deliver not only DPS/Support where's currently needed, but to not get so out of position/angle that it's too difficult to get to the next location. Now we'll also have to be more mindful of our pets, especially the skilled ones. Otherwise we'll lose DPS if our vet pets are dying.
Carriers become less effective team healers
They'll be spending their attention and healing abilities on their pets and/or ignoring their pets, letting them die, and being unable to contribute their needed share of DPS to the team. It should be noted that we used to be able to "heal" our pets by summoning a fresh batch.
You're killing the need to reduce CD times.
We've currently got incentive to keep our Aux up, load CD-Reducing DOffs into our Active Roster, etc. We want to launch or pets as often as possible. Now that we want to keep our pets alive, it's not so important to be able to churn them out quickly.
Here's a few suggestions:
Allow Pet Summoning while Pets Exist
In the new system we can only summon replacement pets when there are vacancies in the wing. Put the system back to where it is now, that we can spawn pets as often as we like. This has the balance of getting refreshed pets (healed, abilities not on CD, near us ready for new orders), but the pets lose their vet status.
Add a "Self Destruct" button.
Allow us to manually Self-Destruct our pets if they misbehave or simply at our leisure :P Then we can summon fresh ones. Edit: To be clear, if the above is put in place, we don't need this option (could be fun though, lol).
Add a "Hold" option
Basically looking for an option to recall the pets, but do not dock.
Lessen Vet Build up Time
Five minutes to get to optimal level seems too long. Either lessen the whole time (3mins to V5 seems better) or make it scaling, where getting to V1 only takes 15s, V2 another 30s, V3 60s, V4 90s, and V5 120s.
Change Vet to Kill-Based
Instead of pets gaining Vet levels through time spent in battle, have them gain V though kill count. The more things they kill/participate in killing, the more experience/Vet levels they get. Edit: Upon further consideration, this is a bad idea as it doesn't take into account how Vet status would be built by Support Craft. Maybe DPS craft gain through kills, Support craft through time? Nah, that's probably too complicated.
Thanks for reading.
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
Let me add another voice mentioning concern about Skul fighters and Jem that use ramming speed being badly harmed by this change.
Also adding my voice to those mentioning powers like tractor beam or attack pattern beta, that don't recharge fast and we used to resummon the craft as a recharge.
Finally, since craft are no longer replaced, the fact that they get stuck far across the screen is a massive problem. We used to resummon to pull them to us, now there's simply nothing we can do.
Something needs to be done to address these three issues.
The "Intercept" or "escort" commands can both do this. Intercept puts the ships close by the carrier, focusing on intercepting fighters and missiles, and escort seems to do roughly the same, if you target yourself, then order them to escort.
Just a quick reminder here, lack of control in ships like MVAE and saucer separation ships are a more pressing issue.
I would agree that they need addressed, and there's no real reason they couldn't adapt this system for it as well. It would mean the addition of a third icon, probably, but it is plausible.
Comments
So here's my question first. Why is the recharge time for their ability even on the expensive fleet ones comparable to not putting any points into it? Its useless now I hope my danubes or delta flyers die so I can launch fresh ones.
Here's my only feedback: either fully rank up pet powers like tractor beam, tachyon beam etc so that its recharging at a speed my own tractor recharges at or have the special abilities recharge rank up all the way to "9 points" over the 5 ranks they can gain over time please.
OR
Have docked pets special abilities recharge fast like hull and shields so they're useful that way. That would make docking very useful bc as it is I won't dock them I'd rather them blow up for a fresh ability because the cool downs are way too long
I'm not being mean I am just posting my feedback bc that tractor someone's counting on to save a mission objective from failing or that tachyon beam someone counts on for that tactical cubes shields will be absolutely uses less unless some shuttles explode and need replacing
I like that idea
Resolution: 1280X1024
So, the summary. I like this, a lot. It isn't a game changer, but it does definitely effect carrier play, in my opinion.
My feedback on a few parts:
Size: The icons are a bit large, especially in a carrier with 2 hangars. I would recommend a default setting of approximately 60%-75% of the current default.
Positioning: The default position would work for me, but seemed counter-intuitive. As the skillbars are down at the bottom, I moved them down there, between my BO horizontal bars and the vertical bar, they fit nicely, and clearly displayed information. The current position does work, but I would move the lowest of the two hangars (in the case of a multi-hangar ship) up, and to the right, placing it side-by-side with the other hangar. This is a neglible difference, as it can be changed by the player, but I would recommend the move as making the default setup as user friendly as possible may help more players stick around with carriers.
Level-ups: To be honest, the level-up stuff seems cool, but it's also seemingly pointless. The upgrades on the Stalkers are too small to be noticable. Without some pretty extensive balance testing I cannot give a reasonable number to adjust by, but in my opinion, it needs to move upwards.
Also, not sure if the levelling is intended to be persistent or not, but I found that the Stalkers would "lose" their level if they were recalled and then another squad launched.
The ability for these ships to keep the levels persistently would change gameplay in a more significant way, without being overpowering.
Overall, I like the changes. I hope that there will be more carriers coming in the future (Hint: Dedicated Cruiser carrier :P) to further make use of this.
Although the new UI is nice for sure i feel like what fighters really need would be an overhaul/rework of all the commands cause what good does a new UI do if the fighters still dont go where i want them to.
But well... As always babysteps^^
Besides the enemies not spawning properly (they were -48), almost everything was fine. The new carrier UI looks gorgeous. My pets leveled properly, they launched speedily, and they killed those Klingons magnificently.
BUT...
I tried the Recall function: yes, they circled around me like they did before, but they shouldn't all redock at the same time. If they can't launch 6 fighters simultaneously, they can't dock 6 fighters simultaneously. This can be overlooked, I suppose.
The biggest problem is that they didn't relaunch! I tried all of the buttons: the ones above the weapons, the ones in the tray, and the ones attached to the new carrier UI. Nothing worked. I went to Red Alert and entered combat, but still nothing. I did a map change and came back into the Deepspace Encounter, then all the fighters launched normally with no problems.
Summary: recalling and redocking the fighters prevented relaunching in the same map.
I can provide more information if necessary.
Star Trek Online Captain since September, 2012
1. The recall not working same as everyone else.
2. They start out with what seems to be alot less hull, alot less hull. A just spawned Advanced Slaver is 4k ish hull, it does get higher hear, but even at 4 stars is not as high as on holodeck.
3. If your going to increase the launch time of my fighters I want a cool animation like the Vesta got.
4. I agree that the high CDs for fighter abilities needs to be fixed to make up the lost dps that not allowing full respawns caused and boosted speed or at least a working recall.
5. The Good News is Escort finally works now! Still you should be able to set your own ship to be escorted. I got around this by clicking on one of my Advanced Slaver so that my advanced slavers escorted him around including himself! This means that Escort Flight Deck Officers should work right now, which I believe offer 10 percent damage boost per officer for purples. That's 30 percent with three purples, still would more exciting without the unintended and massive damage nerf.
Plans for tomorrow. I've deleted my tribble character and uploaded an unpdated verison with Elite Slavers, each having over 6000 hull on holodeck so I'll check them tomorrow along with the rest of the Slaver and Intercptors performance. I'll see how that goes.
an update that was long overdue, but finally arrived.
losing pets and resummoning them was awkward most of the times.
that got fixed.
not being able to see whats happening to your pets was terrible.
that got fixed.
and some more features got added, thats quite nice.
Sirius - Tactical Kumari / Hatschy - Tactical Scimitar
lil - Engineer Corvette / Dark - Tactical Guramba
Also adding my voice to those mentioning powers like tractor beam or attack pattern beta, that don't recharge fast and we used to resummon the craft as a recharge.
Finally, since craft are no longer replaced, the fact that they get stuck far across the screen is a massive problem. We used to resummon to pull them to us, now there's simply nothing we can do.
Something needs to be done to address these three issues.
UI looks ok to me.
Try putting your chat box up in the top left corner, make it shorter, and spread the rest of your UI along the bottom, once you get used to it, it leaves alot more space for game play, and don't have everything clumped on one corner, it just makes people cranky..
I guess you can say this was an exploit though, so getting it fixed is not something that they need to undo or buff again.
Just like every tac player has apparently been exploiting poor coding for disruptors for a few years.
This didn't even occur to me, excellent point.
PLEASE, along with the standard carrier commands include the ability to DISMISS, either individual pets or wings so we are able to launch fresh ones. THANK YOU
I'd hate to have to resort to unslotting my hangars between red alerts to achieve this.
http://25.media.tumblr.com/52ea5db857163f7a0b6d5a75f999c62d/tumblr_mm4uevIz0o1rxhuq8o2_250.gif
But, When I found out that hangar rankings would be determined by a time lived during combat formula I was like,
http://25.media.tumblr.com/a3190893224debe1585cc2df29b9da67/tumblr_mlhgv4NN1I1rxhuq8o4_250.gif
Silly pictures aside, This has bothered me somewhat because of a little minor problem that the special ability of my hangar pets is kamikaze. Where once I felt glee when my elite attack ships ram their target (looks exactly like DS9, so awesome!) is now going to be replaced by a sense of dread as my five star attack ship suicides! Not to mention it takes a whopping five minutes to rank up a ship. Most STFs are a third finished by then. Like the brave Jem'hadar who pilot my attack ships are considered elders when they live to be nine, it is rare for a hangar pet to live past two minutes, let alone five.
Another thing that has my concerned is the fact you can't replace already existing ships? I understand you guys are probably see this as an opportunity to stop the refreshing of hangar pet abilities through constant summoning, but this has a problem in pet control. I can't tell you how many times I've played Khittomer only to watch my pets stop attacking my target and just randomly fly to the other side of the zone. Constantly summoning my hangar was a way to ensure that they where with me attacking my target.
As a long time carrier captain, I have to say this update has made me a little sad
secondly, why do siphon drones get stiffed?
Aside from the HP boost, all other hangars get damage buff or utility buff with rank...EXCEPT the siphon drones?
I have the same concerns, but that's what you get when you've been presented improvement built on top of a bad code.
Set the conrol range to 50km (obviously you can't fix the AI, if so you shoud have don e it by now) and let us spawn fighters to complement existing wings. There may be another approach to the problem, but what I read about here is very poorly thought up.
the new Carrier UI might be a good improvement to the gameplay, but on ships with only one hangar-bay (Vesta, Scimitar) you can't recall a single wing of fighters to keep those alive, you end up recalling all your fighters.
Using bigger pets (that don't blow up so quickly) would be one way to avoid this, but this is more a balancing problem. You started to standardize the launch-time and tried to balance the pets a little, so I'd suggest the following to be added, too:
If you would give all pets something like Hazard-Emitter or Aux2SIF, so they could heal themselfes for about 2k hitpoints (every 30 to 60 seconds), that would also be nice. And please give them the ability to automatically rebalance their shields.
2k isn't too much, but on a wing of fighters it's 6k hitpoints for a complete wing (76.8 % of the health of Elite Widows), 4k if you are using Runabouts/Delta-Flyers and it's still 2k hitpoints on frigates (Fer'jai, BoP, Attackship, Romulan Drone - about 6.4% of their health).
With these improvements to the survivability, it would be more likely for pets to reach max level, while it would also balance the pets a little bit more...
I think it might be a little overkill, if I'd also ask for further AI-improvements, so that the pets are able to cross-heal like average PvPers (or good PvEers). But it would be nice, too.
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
Two wings of Advanced Slavers Got trashed repeatedly, and I couldn't get them to survive that long. it was insta-kill fest on those guys as soon as they launched. This makes them even worse then they are now with the Loot being bugged.
the Vesta with elite scorps demolished everything, and seemed to be using their Frontal cannons more then I've noticed before., with only One dying the whole run.
thanks for the full impulse on fighters.they now keep up better and I can see them from further away.
also, Like the singularity Core sounds, the sound of 12 fighters leveling up will get rather annoying. the sound is not needed as much as the visual.
One more request. Can we at least get a command that functions like recall now, but does not
Dock? Command could be called hold together or something similar.
Add me to this list.
I love my new JHAS pets and took glee in their suicide runs ... now I hate that as it would be money wasted ... not that any fighters will ever reach rank five in PvE because the fights are over too quickly.
Or if they do make it to rank five, we don't get to really enjoy it because its over as soon as it begins.
U.S.S. Maelstrom, NCC-71417 (Constitution III-class/flagship) --- Fleet Admiral Hauk' --|-- Dahar Master Hauk --- I.K.S. qu'In 'an bortaS (D7-class / flagship)
Agreed and signed! ... I have several times I want them to follow me across the board from one fight to the next ... not sit docked where they lose their edge in the comfort of the couch in the pilot's lounge.
U.S.S. Maelstrom, NCC-71417 (Constitution III-class/flagship) --- Fleet Admiral Hauk' --|-- Dahar Master Hauk --- I.K.S. qu'In 'an bortaS (D7-class / flagship)
Im thinking Something like 'Regroup' of 'Form Up'. Either way, something which i strongly agree with :-)
The "Intercept" or "escort" commands can both do this. Intercept puts the ships close by the carrier, focusing on intercepting fighters and missiles, and escort seems to do roughly the same, if you target yourself, then order them to escort.
Any who more impressions, they still get blown up in warpcore explosions, what may work better is to make them immune to warp core explosions.
I don't like the wierd launch delays after you hit the launch button.
I still agree the cds need to be fixed as that is part of the expectedvperform of the pets now.
I also would like to be able to find out more then just about thier hull when I click on a pet, such as expected damage, cds times, shield points, turn rate, procs for stealing and so on.
I'd replace the old carrier command bar with a formation bar like Baldur's gate had with thier party formation buttons.
So to sum up allow us access to more information when we click on one and hit i button, fixed the problems caused by the change to respawning, fix cds, add more commands/formations, allow us to pick our own ship for escort command,;and fix recall.
t
Carrier Captains are losing a ton of DPS because we have to wait for pet special abilities to come off CD. This is an even bigger nerf on the higher-end pets (that we paid Dilithium and/or up-leveled Rep/Fleets to get) with more abilities. This is currently overcome by respawning the pets, something we won't be able to do.
Pets do the craziest things
There are times pets will ignore commands, fly off to the wrong side of a map to aggro a different enemy set, or even occasionally get stuck in the scenery (I've seen pets lodge themselves in asteroids and gates). Sometimes it's just that the pets don't keep up when the battle/mission takes us to another point. Again, as it is now no problem, we can just refresh. With the new Carrier system, we'd be up a creek.
Being a Carrier Captain has become much more complicated
It can already be tricky enough to move these huge unwieldy ships, taking care that one's Carrier is in proper position to deliver not only DPS/Support where's currently needed, but to not get so out of position/angle that it's too difficult to get to the next location. Now we'll also have to be more mindful of our pets, especially the skilled ones. Otherwise we'll lose DPS if our vet pets are dying.
Carriers become less effective team healers
They'll be spending their attention and healing abilities on their pets and/or ignoring their pets, letting them die, and being unable to contribute their needed share of DPS to the team. It should be noted that we used to be able to "heal" our pets by summoning a fresh batch.
You're killing the need to reduce CD times.
We've currently got incentive to keep our Aux up, load CD-Reducing DOffs into our Active Roster, etc. We want to launch or pets as often as possible. Now that we want to keep our pets alive, it's not so important to be able to churn them out quickly.
Here's a few suggestions:
In the new system we can only summon replacement pets when there are vacancies in the wing. Put the system back to where it is now, that we can spawn pets as often as we like. This has the balance of getting refreshed pets (healed, abilities not on CD, near us ready for new orders), but the pets lose their vet status.
Add a "Self Destruct" button.
Allow us to manually Self-Destruct our pets if they misbehave or simply at our leisure :P Then we can summon fresh ones. Edit: To be clear, if the above is put in place, we don't need this option (could be fun though, lol).
Add a "Hold" option
Basically looking for an option to recall the pets, but do not dock.
Lessen Vet Build up Time
Five minutes to get to optimal level seems too long. Either lessen the whole time (3mins to V5 seems better) or make it scaling, where getting to V1 only takes 15s, V2 another 30s, V3 60s, V4 90s, and V5 120s.
Change Vet to Kill-Based
Instead of pets gaining Vet levels through time spent in battle, have them gain V though kill count. The more things they kill/participate in killing, the more experience/Vet levels they get. Edit: Upon further consideration, this is a bad idea as it doesn't take into account how Vet status would be built by Support Craft. Maybe DPS craft gain through kills, Support craft through time? Nah, that's probably too complicated.
Thanks for reading.
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
Wait you can choose your own ship to escort, how?
By using F-keys to select your target, F1 through F5 cycles team mates, including yourself.
I would agree that they need addressed, and there's no real reason they couldn't adapt this system for it as well. It would mean the addition of a third icon, probably, but it is plausible.
plus always cool to have new toys and more control