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Improving Beam Arrays and Cruisers.
senatorvreenak
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
I don't think many can argue with the fact that Beam Arrays these days are pretty underwhelming, especially when it comes to PvP.
With a few exceptions they are pretty much outclassed by Cannons and Turrets, which are all more desirable not only due to the higher damage output, but also because of proc rates.
Beam array use a lot of power, have mediocre damage and a slow rate of fire.
DHC's on the other hand are extremely powerful and very energy efficient.
Now obviously one cannot just boost beam arrays right off to be as powerful as DHC's.
But perhaps one could add a more unique damage boosting mechanic to them.
Thing is, escorts were always about being fast and maneuvrable and packing a real whallop while being weaker defensively than cruisers.
While cruisers are slow and unwieldy but able to absorb a lot of punishment.
Unfortunately today beam cruisers are no longer able to keep up with escorts.
While they may be able to be virtually indestructible with a good build, the beams that they so often use can't reliably break down the defenses of good escort-type ships, as they lack any real bite or spike.
This is especially true for engineers attempting to fly cruisers.
So heres what I propose...
What If beam arrays had a "building damage" effect?
The idea is that they would be weak as usual from the get go, but over time while firing the damage they deal would build up to making the beam arrays extremely powerful, and able to match the damage output of DHC's and able to put some serious hurt on their targets.
Cannons of course would still be very useful, as they would still have their damage output at 100% from the start, and thus be the weapon of choice for burst damage.
This is a rough idea and i'm sure it needs to be refined for balance.
But honestly I think something like this could work to make beam arrays competitive again. :cool:
With a few exceptions they are pretty much outclassed by Cannons and Turrets, which are all more desirable not only due to the higher damage output, but also because of proc rates.
Beam array use a lot of power, have mediocre damage and a slow rate of fire.
DHC's on the other hand are extremely powerful and very energy efficient.
Now obviously one cannot just boost beam arrays right off to be as powerful as DHC's.
But perhaps one could add a more unique damage boosting mechanic to them.
Thing is, escorts were always about being fast and maneuvrable and packing a real whallop while being weaker defensively than cruisers.
While cruisers are slow and unwieldy but able to absorb a lot of punishment.
Unfortunately today beam cruisers are no longer able to keep up with escorts.
While they may be able to be virtually indestructible with a good build, the beams that they so often use can't reliably break down the defenses of good escort-type ships, as they lack any real bite or spike.
This is especially true for engineers attempting to fly cruisers.
So heres what I propose...
What If beam arrays had a "building damage" effect?
The idea is that they would be weak as usual from the get go, but over time while firing the damage they deal would build up to making the beam arrays extremely powerful, and able to match the damage output of DHC's and able to put some serious hurt on their targets.
Cannons of course would still be very useful, as they would still have their damage output at 100% from the start, and thus be the weapon of choice for burst damage.
This is a rough idea and i'm sure it needs to be refined for balance.
But honestly I think something like this could work to make beam arrays competitive again. :cool:
Post edited by senatorvreenak on
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BO's aren't that strong you've clearly never been on the receiving end of a tvaro double tap Marion BO strike
If buffed correctly they can hit without crit for 30k easily with crit 55-65k+
How come every thread ends up back to "we need what the romulans have got" or "why can't we be as good as the romulans at this" blah blah blah
If you buff beams the escorts will just run beams( a bit like some of these Risian corvettes spinning about)
You buff beams a bug slots 7 of them equips epte omega auxtodamps and starts spooling around you with 120%+ defence untargetable speed and a build able bonus to there weapons hmm great fun eh?
If there were to be any buff it would have to be to cruisers an then make it so if cruisers use beams they get a slight damage boost but even them it can't be too much as cruisers aren't meant for damage their meant for support
Then again escorts aren't meant to tank...
But more on topic I feel beams perform exactly as they should. They do good damage and are nearly always firing, plus if you're in a cruiser, you have the staying power to keep this up for a long time.
Of course you'll do less damage in PvP, but that's because you're supposed to fulfill a different (I believe now redundant) role, remember this is essentially a class based game. I know it doesn't feel like it anymore, but that's how it was designed.
The only other time you may have trouble is in Time-sensitive PvE. But I've had teams of 5 beam boats got optionals in all 3 STFs with time to spare.
I have also seen dozens, if not hundreds of people flying standard assault cruisers, often with an assortment of beams that I can only assume were Mk V. Who don't seem to have specced into any abilities, just wasting space in STFs. Although that's down to the individual, not the concept.
Please note: This isn't a "well clearly you're doing it wrong" post, more of a "try looking at it from a different angle"...
The day will not save them. And we own the night.
I'm sorry, what were you saying about not being able to break down an escorts defense?
That build is a current wrecker in PvP (unless you're using Aux2Bat, in which case you still use something similar to that build, should also be noted it is NOT an Aux2Bat build). OR you can use a BO2 with a DBB and a THY3, or BO3 and THY2 (both still cruiser capable, not even going to go into what escorts/warbirds/raiders can do). I'd say that will probably result in a dead escort. OR... you get the idea.
I'm not going to argue that beams require that you use a very specific set of builds for them, and you can't have as variable builds as you can with cannons, but they are far from ineffective. I've had to retreat from cruisers using this with my Tor'kaht (of course I then cloaked, came at them from another side and blew them away with a decloaking alpha, but that's besides the point... it's amazing what you can do with the 5 seconds between TTs... hehehehe), and I've had enemy CRUISERS retreating when I tried it out. The only thing I would support for BAs would be a slight reduction in power drain, maybe bring it down to 8.5 or 9 per BA. But anything more... yeeeah.
As for cruisers, their weakness is the same it's always been and always will be. They are space whales. They need a little more turn. Other than that, they're fine (not including the Gal-R or F-Gal-R or Gal-X or any galaxy variant, that's a whole different story and a massive thread in the fed shipyards).
On my fed engineer however i fly a beam boat, and no matter what I do i find it horribly ineffective.
R.I.P
I would however support an adjustment to their drain mechanics without a doubt
I just simply don't get killed by beam boats these days, not ever, nor can i seem to kill anything but noobs even trying with every imaginable beam combination myself.
Unless your a tactical officer they just don't seem to have the required damage output to be viable.
2 years ago on the other hand they were, very much so.
An escort was a force to be reckoned with, but if he failed to get in that spike damage he could not last long alone under sustained fire from a beam cruiser or a beam escort, the later was in fact actually even more dangerous.
Honestly the most succesful cruisers I have seen pretty much all use cannons and turrets of one kind of another.
And the fact that they are dominant suggests a significant imbalance.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=841851
So the more Beam Arrays a ship has equipped, the stronger the beam.
Additionally, it would look much cooler.
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As A primarily PvE player i would like to have some stank on my beams without havind to run silly aux2bat builds.
I am Il Shadow and i approve these Shennanigans!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
How about combining my idea with that?
Lets make Beam Arrays work as a single one (one forward, one aft), the more BAs are installed, the stronger it gets. So a Beam Array Crusier would get a harder Beam Overload then a escort using just one DBB for example.
This could even be refined. How about giving slightly more extra damage with each added Beam Array, so the combined damage would be higher than the sum of all individually installed BA.
@orangeitis
I see the problem there too.
Thats not actually a bad idea
And would make for a more canon portrayal of ships using beams, as they extremely rarely had beams flying out of every phaser strip.
Dominion War. Nuff said.
But then again, since DS9 seems to be the father from which the STO child was born, I think them doing it that style is somewhat more appropriate.
Be that as it may...
I always had the impression that a Starfleet ship could switch between fireing (relatively) low powered phaser shots and one powerful burst.
So depending on situation one fireing mode could be more advantageous than the other.
(fireing single shots with each Beam Array could improve the chance for a secondary weapons effect, while the singel heavy Burst would be for pure raw damage)
In all honesty, I think weapons fired in the show (as far as beams go anyways) were determined more by the current budget for that episode and how good technology had advanced by that time (hence why space battles in DS9 and Voyager, and especially in Enterprise were so much flashier and action packed as opposed to TNG and TOS).
So unfortunately, hard canon is not much help here. At least as hard canon goes. Soft canon (IE tech manuals and other things like that) are the only things to go on for this kind of thing atm, which sucks.
Why not give Beam weapons more utility or versatility to make them more attractive to be used?
Compared to the high damage DHCs, Beam Arrays just seem like slow fireing low damage weapons in STO.
Giving them a second fireing mode, like "unite and fire as one" would be cool and it would even help make STO look like "real" Star Trek.
I think in this case Trek canon can be a enrichment and inspiration for STO not a hinderance.
The main problem I see with that idea is you're sacrificing aesthetics for a more powerful blast.
The day will not save them. And we own the night.
So again: There's no need for more abilities or more powerfull Beams. You might need a Marion, but nothing more.
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
I never said we had.
The day will not save them. And we own the night.
20k dps aux2bat beam cruisers are last week. 40k dps kumaris are the new thing now.
If you've watched TNG, you have seen 3 though from different poi ts on the strip as the Enterprise moved away in combat......I remember the scene but not the episode unfortunately......
R.I.P
Best of Both Worlds (TNG) had simultaneous phaser fire from three different points on a Galaxy (think it was the saucer and two points on the engineering hull). Similarly, Sacrifice of Angels (DS9) had simultaneous fire from at least two, possibly three points from a single Galaxy (at least two from the saucer strip).
20k+ DPS on ISE, CSE.
For what I think is the aim of this thread, PvE, the damage is mostly genuine.
Against multiple target scenarios (nearly all of PvE) the damage is real.
NPCs rarely if ever heal themselves, or each other.
In scenarios like ISE or CSE, yes you have some parser inflation from extra targets however:
In ISE (one of the gold standards for parsing) you have around 7 or 8 targets where only 1 or 2 are healing.
Ex: Nanite Transformer, Nanite Probes (4), Gateway, Cube
= 7 targets, only 2 of which are healing (Gateway, Transformer) but one of those can actually be killed right through the healing if you have enough team firepower and debuffs (the transformer).
In CSE under a Cube+Probes
Ex: You have Nanite Probes (8), Cube, Raptor, Neghvar, BoPs.
This is anywhere from 9 to 12 targets at a single time.
You can in fact damage the upper probes while lower probes still exist.
Saying the damage is not real, is a misnomer.
It's not the damage you would do against a single target, this is a fact.
However I've taken my quickly whipped together Fleet ACR into NWS and held South without issue all the way to Wave 10 using nothing but 6x Beams, 1 KCB and 1 WA Quantum.
I say this, as someone who is decent at NWS but no where near the level as guys like Topset, V_Silverwings, or many of the other players in the Kirk's Protoge channel, those guys are my teachers on NWS (directly or indirectly) and some of them have put together a full Beam Array Cruiser only team and successfully defeated NWS.
TL;DR:
The damage is real, it just not pure single target focused (for reference, my Fleet ACR above actually put out about 8k DPS against SB234, just the SB. That is not bad).
If 5 Guys in Cruisers with BAs can defeat wave 10 on NWS, then the limit of beam arrays in PvE is pretty clearly a limit on the player side at this point.
This argument is only valid for STF's. Even then it's pretty weak, as on a good team, the things doing the healing die VERY quickly. On a team where everyone is doing 10k or more, the generators die in seconds.
That 40k dps in an escort really doesn't happen without FAW beamboats tagging EVERYTHING with APB - especially recluses, since their pets also use FAW3+APB3. remember, APB stacks - the more beamboats using FAW/APB, the more damage escort captains will do.
Edit: ninja'd ^
what he said.
Btw. having 6 or 8 beams fired simultaneously isn't what i would call aesthetic, it looks too much cartoonish for my taste.