Without these changes, the variance in effectiveness from the low-end to high-end was simply far too wide for us to even begin balancing the ability to any sort of standard use cases. There was no 'average' that could be used as a meaningful metric for establishing the power's overall effectiveness, and the existing range was too large to establish expected results.
How do things like GW/Tykens aftershock doffs fit in this picture? Don't they add a huge variance back in?
How do things like GW/Tykens aftershock doffs fit in this picture? Don't they add a huge variance back in?
To a certain extent, yes. But doffs are theoretically intended to be balanced against other doffs, not as part of the tuning of an ability's core functionality.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
And if the GW/Tyken Doffs make the abilities "too powerful", you could more than likely retune the proc for those doffs.
I applaud these science changes, and state: It's about time! Far too long, STO has been the "Escorts Online" game. It's time for Science and Cruisers to get their fair share of shine and polish.
I wouldn't worry about gravimetric doffs. You can only use 1 so you have to choose which one carefully. I'd rather go for deflector officer doffs.
About deflector officers though. Tyken's Rift and Gravity Well show the doff time reduction effect on the tooltip, but energy siphon and tachyon beam do not (I don't have the breen energy dissipator to check that one). If energy siphon and tachyon beam are not actually reducing the cooldown for GW and TR, then they need to be fixed.
About deflector officers though. Tyken's Rift and Gravity Well show the doff time reduction effect on the tooltip, but energy siphon and tachyon beam do not (I don't have the breen energy dissipator to check that one). If energy siphon and tachyon beam are not actually reducing the cooldown for GW and TR, then they need to be fixed.
I just ran a quick series of internal tests, and this Doff proc is being applied to Tachyon Beam and Energy Siphon. They are not displayed on the tooltip because those powers are not instant effects, but rather take place over a certain duration. It's not a clear-cut differentiation as far as many players are concerned, but it does control a few mechanical things internally.
We'll see about getting the tooltip to appear on powers that fall under that category.
But anyway... I don't want to derail this thread with Doff discussions. It will be far more useful if such concerns are posted into their appropriate subforum.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
I just ran a quick series of internal tests, and this Doff proc is being applied to Tachyon Beam and Energy Siphon. They are not displayed on the tooltip because those powers are not instant effects, but rather take place over a certain duration. It's not a clear-cut differentiation as far as many players are concerned, but it does control a few mechanical things internally.
We'll see about getting the tooltip to appear on powers that fall under that category.
But anyway... I don't want to derail this thread with Doff discussions. It will be far more useful if such concerns are posted into their appropriate subforum.
Not to contradict you, but I tried like crazy for the cooldown to work by using gravity well (when it didn't proc) and then energy siphon AND tachyon beam right after. It never worked. Posted a thread in the bugs section. (http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=12550431#post12550431) Ok, now back to Tyken's Rift, sorry for the interruption.
with cooldown reducers, they only have a chance to proc, and apply their cooldown reduction about a second after you activate an ability that can cause a proc, to abilities currently cooling down, the doff apply too.
I think (testing will verify) that ya'll may be reading too much in the boosts to the low-end scales of Tyken and GravWell. While they are definitely improvements for ships that are completely unskilled for the use of these abilities, they are not intended to make the powers superior to the versions used by properly geared/specced ships and players.
One of the purposes behind shoring up the bottom end of these abilities is so that we have a more solid, predictable level of impact being witnessed by all players and critters when the abilities in question are used in combat. Without these changes, the variance in effectiveness from the low-end to high-end was simply far too wide for us to even begin balancing the ability to any sort of standard use cases. There was no 'average' that could be used as a meaningful metric for establishing the power's overall effectiveness, and the existing range was too large to establish expected results.
In other words, these changes lay the ground work for us to be more capable of tuning and tweaking the abilities in meaningful ways that will lead to more predictable results in the long run. Players have been clamoring for Science improvements for years now, and this is the first step towards being able to deliver on those requests with fixes that aren't just band-aids.
Ok now this sounds actually hopeful. what kind of testing od you need.
Do you want us to parse numbers, and post our combat logs and layouts. Or are you interested in the more holistic feedback?
ala: "my crf3 + tr1 escorts lolaron escort still shuts subsystems down more easily compared to my, bfaw 2 4x polaron beams TR3 sci ship."
Do you worry more about pve performance, or pvp performance?
Borticus now that are u testing some sci powers, there is the chance of having shield drain values show in the combatlog? is really important have them in order to check how things like tetryon proc or tetryon glider work.
Borticus now that are u testing some sci powers, there is the chance of having shield drain values show in the combatlog? is really important have them in order to check how things like tetryon proc or tetryon glider work.
Tac buff testing is fine for a test that is trying to quantify the "feel" or "opinion" on a power, but not overall that helpful from a numbers standpoint, for the time being.
Just so everyone's aware, we're still considering the implication of having Tac buffs ONLY affect weapon output, instead of all other sources of damage. We're not ready to make that change, but it's something we're still considering when tuning abilities like the ones in question.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Just so everyone's aware, we're still considering the implication of having Tac buffs ONLY affect weapon output, instead of all other sources of damage.
This would be fantastic for every one. Tactical captains included. If a science power is ballenced for use with tactical captain buffs then not only is it substandard for enginears and science captains but tactical captains have to pop those buffs for it to be greater then substandard for them as well.
If the science power is un-effected by tactical buffs it can be implemented in a usable form for all captains and tacticals can save their buffs for less science-y uses... like alpha striking.
Tac buff testing is fine for a test that is trying to quantify the "feel" or "opinion" on a power, but not overall that helpful from a numbers standpoint, for the time being.
Just so everyone's aware, we're still considering the implication of having Tac buffs ONLY affect weapon output, instead of all other sources of damage. We're not ready to make that change, but it's something we're still considering when tuning abilities like the ones in question.
keep in mind that removing a tac captians ability to buff sci skill damage would destroy any tac/sci ship synergy. a goal should be to make there be some kind of positive synergy with all captain/ship combos, not destroying a synergy.
a tac captains only reason to exist is to cause the most damage no mater what he is using or doing. a sci's job is to control, befuddle and debuff. not to also deal more raw damage then a tac doing certain things.
TBR can be made pretty powerful with tac buffs. but its hardly game breaking. PSW deals knetic damage thats only ever going to hit shields, so its damage is irreverent, its GW thats worth any sort of concern. and in a tac's usual ship, full of cannons and all that, only GW1 is available to him on a few select ships. GW3 is still reserved for actual sci ships, that arent doing high weapons damage.
besides, getting nuked and scanned and GW3ed sounds more dangerous then a tac captain GWing me and trying to hold me there with just a TB, APO should get me out of that well enough. if he tried to debuff me with FOMM, TT takes care of that no problem. if i were nuked id be on the ropes with my options very limited, ST to clear both debuffs is far less common then TT too, but the clearing of active skills will still have been done. the force modifying from the sci captain using it is outdoing the raw damage a tac can do with it in overall effect.
Just so everyone's aware, we're still considering the implication of having Tac buffs ONLY affect weapon output, instead of all other sources of damage. We're not ready to make that change, but it's something we're still considering when tuning abilities like the ones in question.
I really hope this does not happen, it would indeed destroy the synergy between tactical officers and science vessels. Also, it would significantly limit the usefulness of a Lt. Commander Tactical Station on the Vesta, Fleet Nova, and Temporal Science Vessel. +15% all damage from Attack Pattern Omega I isn't much, but it is still a decent buff to damage dealing science abilities. The Conservation of Energy trait is +30% all science ability damage while Attack Pattern Alpha is +45% all damage. As such, Tactical officers may deal +15% more damage than a Science officer, but only when Attack Pattern Alpha is deployed, unlike the Science officer's almost 100% uptime on conservation of energy. Also as an extra downside, Tactical officers do not have subnuke beam to counter the healing from targets. I'm not counting Go Down Fighting or Tactical Fleet here because honestly Go Down Fighting is very situational (and dangerous to attempt on a low hull science vessel) and Tactical Fleet is applied to the full team. Science officers teamed with tactical officers already obtain the bonus from Tactical Fleet.
I really hope this does not happen, it would indeed destroy the synergy between tactical officers and science vessels. Also, it would significantly limit the usefulness of a Lt. Commander Tactical Station on the Vesta, Fleet Nova, and Temporal Science Vessel. +15% all damage from Attack Pattern Omega I isn't much, but it is still a decent buff to damage dealing science abilities. The Conservation of Energy trait is +30% all science ability damage while Attack Pattern Alpha is +45% all damage. As such, Tactical officers may deal +15% more damage than a Science officer, but only when Attack Pattern Alpha is deployed, unlike the Science officer's almost 100% uptime on conservation of energy. Also as an extra downside, Tactical officers do not have subnuke beam to counter the healing from targets. I'm not counting Go Down Fighting or Tactical Fleet here because honestly Go Down Fighting is very situational (and dangerous to attempt on a low hull science vessel) and Tactical Fleet is applied to the full team. Science officers teamed with tactical officers already obtain the bonus from Tactical Fleet.
Fine, you want to keep your precious tac based science skill buffs, then make ONLY science captains "all resistance" debuffs affect sci skill based counters like power insulators, countermeasure systems, and inertia dampeners. You win, we win. Lately you see plenty of tac captains flying a Wells because you get the best of both worlds. If, when a tac captain picks sci skills and consoles for a Wells ship, they actually had to think when choosing between defense or offense, this would level the playing field a bit more.
Back to the topic ... How I read this is that they made tr actually be useful against npc and players but the fear of escort backlash made them nerf it again. If you had any hope of science ever getting a fix the gw and tr fiasco should settle the matter once for all.
Science and engineers need parity with escorts or this game will continue to be escorts online and you will fail to sell any science ships, Wells classes excluded.
/thread
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Fine, you want to keep your precious tac based science skill buffs, then make ONLY science captains "all resistance" debuffs affect sci skill based counters like power insulators, countermeasure systems, and inertia dampeners. You win, we win. Lately you see plenty of tac captains flying a Wells because you get the best of both worlds. If, when a tac captain picks sci skills and consoles for a Wells ship, they actually had to think when choosing between defense or offense, this would level the playing field a bit more.
I have no idea why you are directing this at me specifically, I don't even use a Tactical captain in a Science vessel. I'm simply stating that killing the damage bonus from tactical abilities would kill a reasonable synergy. I'm not sure were you are getting the idea of "plenty of tac captains flying a Wells". I see far more JHAS, Defiant class, Andorian Escorts, and Fleet Patrol Escorts than I do Tactical captains in the Wells. If Tactical officers would like to fly around in a Wells class science vessel, good for them, they have effectively weakened themselves by dropping dual heavy cannons. I'm much more afraid of a Science officer in an escort than I am a Tactical officer in a science vessel. Tactical officers get decent damage out of science abilities, but they really don't have subnuke beam. And without subnuke beam, they have no method for countering anti-science counters. Whereas in a escort that Tactical officer would be able to put out far more burst damage.
keep in mind that removing a tac captians ability to buff sci skill damage would destroy any tac/sci ship synergy. a goal should be to make there be some kind of positive synergy with all captain/ship combos, not destroying a synergy.
Disagree.
A sci ship wll still do noticeably more damage with a tac captain boosting it's weapon output, stacking tac boosts on top of sensor analysis. Tac initiative will also compensate for the limited tac boff slots.
... GW thats worth any sort of concern. and in a tac's usual ship, full of cannons and all that, only GW1 is available to him on a few select ships. GW3 is still reserved for actual sci ships, that arent doing high weapons damage.
For one, GW I and TR I are currently being boosted with the currently planned update - despite having low Aux, no specific consoles and no dedicated skill points. Yes, this is part of the complete rework of these abilities - so the baseline being that these skills will be more viable alternatives in the future for tactical captains on ships with a LtCmdr Science or Universal slot. And currently, they also amplify the (increased) damage values of these abilities with their class skills.
Secondly, there are a few select ships which not only may use DHCs - but which also can slot GW/TR 3 (and for Energy Siphon 3 You will need the same Science or Universal slot):
any Vesta
Kar'fi
Vo'Quv
Ha'nom Guardian Warbird
Tal Shiar Adapted Battlecruiser
All these ships do not even have to sacrifice much of their Tactical versatility to do so.
Back @topic:
I am happy to read that the rework is indeed planned as a nod towards the science abilities and I hope that the feedback will help these changes along.
Tac buff testing is fine for a test that is trying to quantify the "feel" or "opinion" on a power, but not overall that helpful from a numbers standpoint, for the time being.
Just so everyone's aware, we're still considering the implication of having Tac buffs ONLY affect weapon output, instead of all other sources of damage. We're not ready to make that change, but it's something we're still considering when tuning abilities like the ones in question.
you are only talking about bo skills right not Captain skills?
because if that the case then i sure hope you plan similar effect on science captain powers and engineers.
I actually do hope the tac buffs decouple from sci damage.
Tac escort
Eng cruiser
sci sci
They are pretty obvious good combos
Sci escort
Tac cruiser
eng sci
These are all quite viable combos, eng sci power levels since the retraits can make sci ships pretty fantastic.
Eng escort
Sci cruiser
Tac sci
IMO, these should be the weaker combos, but right now the tac sci isn't weak because the tac buffs are making sci damage viable. There is little point in making an escort selfish tanky, a cruiser with sci support is non-sense and increasing a sci's firepower shouldn't be optimal.
A handful of tac scis will cry, but for the betterment of the sci class as a whole it just makes sense.
lol I said that about the tactical buffs a while ago. Wait till ussultimatum comes in here crying it's rediculous and sensor scan shouldn't buff weapon damage.
Sensor scan is only useful on hull damage. Alpha and Omega and other buffs give an increase to both hull AND shield damage.
At the end of the day if it tightens the spectrum of damage and usefulness then I'm all for it if it means science abilities can get buffed to be more useful and lead to quick completion times comparable to those 3minute Infected Space Elite runs escorts and cruisers are doing as well as other content.
Oh and about tykens rift, nice to see it getting some love. What's the drain like on it now with the changes?
I just ran a quick series of internal tests, and this Doff proc is being applied to Tachyon Beam and Energy Siphon. They are not displayed on the tooltip because those powers are not instant effects, but rather take place over a certain duration. It's not a clear-cut differentiation as far as many players are concerned, but it does control a few mechanical things internally.
We'll see about getting the tooltip to appear on powers that fall under that category.
But anyway... I don't want to derail this thread with Doff discussions. It will be far more useful if such concerns are posted into their appropriate subforum.
Sorry to bring the thread back off the rails, and to directly contradict you Bort. But I think you might have missed somthing. Is the current implementation of this doff the same on tribble and holo? Because after reading your post I decided to test it again, but I did so on holodeck if that makes a differance.
Hear is what I did. I slotted three very rare deflector duty officers of the cool down veriety.
I chose to test with tachyon beam(3) rather then energy syphon as it and tactical team naturaly have the same cool down time (30 seconds). This let me use tactical team to time tachyon beams cool down.
I used tachyon beam on an enemy, which starts a 5 second timer on the ability icon untill the beam stops firing, after that the 30 second cool down timer begins. At the moment the 30 second timer began I hit tactical team.
If the deflector officers are working on tachyon beam and if they proc then tachyon beam should finish cooling down before tacticle team does.
I repeated this ten times and they always finished cooling down at the same time.
So these are the posabilities as i see them:
1)There is some error in my methodolgy
2)This was fixed on tribble and not on holo
3)The RNG is broken so that 30 25% chances dont land a success a single time.
4)There is somthing wrong with the doff that you missed.
5)I am just very unlucky.
Sorry to draw your attention to this, if you already looked at it and thought it was working then I am guessing its going to be a headach to work out the problem and fix it... either that or I have failed to account for somthing and I am making a fool of myself. In which case I am definatly sorry to be making this post.
Edit: If it should turn out that I was just unlucky, it occurse to me to mention that another science doff I tested a year or so ago also failed to proc the expected number of times. Tests I ran with Juel duncan (subsystem disable on use of energy syphon, 25% chance) was working, but with three Juel duncans I was getting a much much smaller success rate then 25%. If I was just unlucky with the deflector doffs, then it might be worth checking to see if any code they share isnt playing nice with the RNG?
Just so everyone's aware, we're still considering the implication of having Tac buffs ONLY affect weapon output, instead of all other sources of damage. We're not ready to make that change, but it's something we're still considering when tuning abilities like the ones in question.
What ways are you considering limiting the other career powers in Ship types that don't suit their career role?
Honest question. If there is an overall design vision that this would be part of, then I am interested to see what that would be if it means some other possible positive changes.
lol I said that about the tactical buffs a while ago. Wait till ussultimatum comes in here crying it's rediculous and sensor scan shouldn't buff weapon damage.
Sensor scan is only useful on hull damage.
You rang.
If this is the design path, why should sensor scan increase weapon damage on targets?
If the goal is to establish "baseline performance" then this would also be a limiter as a Sci could no longer toss a Sensor Scan and fuel the damage that Tac deals.
Why stop there though?
Maybe RSF and MW should only function if an Engineer is flying a cruiser? :rolleyes:
What is the baseline survivability for an Escort? Should an Eng be able to push past that or should they only be able to do that in a cruiser?
Why does it make sense to remove a bit of synergy from only one captain type with what amounts to a small handful of skills?
Hopefully if the devs go through with this, they will also have Attack Pattern Beta, Omega also no longer provide any benefit for Science skills - it would be good since those 40k DPS Recluses pumping out Elite Tholian Pets with APB are getting a bit silly, wouldn't you say?
If this is the design path, why should sensor scan increase weapon damage on targets?
If the goal is to establish "baseline performance" then this would also be a limiter as a Sci could no longer toss a Sensor Scan and fuel the damage that Tac deals.
Why stop there though?
Maybe RSF and MW should only function if an Engineer is flying a cruiser? :rolleyes:
What is the baseline survivability for an Escort? Should an Eng be able to push past that or should they only be able to do that in a cruiser?
Why does it make sense to remove a bit of synergy from only one captain type with what amounts to a small handful of skills?
Hopefully if the devs go through with this, they will also have Attack Pattern Beta, Omega also no longer provide any benefit for Science skills - it would be good since those 40k DPS Recluses pumping out Elite Tholian Pets with APB are getting a bit silly, wouldn't you say?
I'm not going to bother with the list of strawman arguments you made but I do think APB is a much larger problem than anything else. With that said though I also do not think APA should buff exotic damage but it is less of an issue post S7 with the new sci trait. I do think go down fighting should continue to buff exotic damage as well though.
Did a double check test to make sure that Hazard Emitters does clear Tyken's Rift And it does.
Not sure if that is Working as intended or not, but it has been like that for some time now and thought I'd bring it up again, just in case that hadn't been answered.
You think that your beta test was bad?
Think about this: American Football has been in open beta for 144 years. ~Kotaku
What ways are you considering limiting the other career powers in Ship types that don't suit their career role?
Honest question. If there is an overall design vision that this would be part of, then I am interested to see what that would be if it means some other possible positive changes.
You rang.
If this is the design path, why should sensor scan increase weapon damage on targets?
If the goal is to establish "baseline performance" then this would also be a limiter as a Sci could no longer toss a Sensor Scan and fuel the damage that Tac deals.
Why stop there though?
Maybe RSF and MW should only function if an Engineer is flying a cruiser? :rolleyes:
What is the baseline survivability for an Escort? Should an Eng be able to push past that or should they only be able to do that in a cruiser?
Why does it make sense to remove a bit of synergy from only one captain type with what amounts to a small handful of skills?
Hopefully if the devs go through with this, they will also have Attack Pattern Beta, Omega also no longer provide any benefit for Science skills - it would be good since those 40k DPS Recluses pumping out Elite Tholian Pets with APB are getting a bit silly, wouldn't you say?
Ha ha, I'm glad you can take a joke
As far as conservation of energy goes it makes a sci better at buffing sci damage and one or two other things so it's not much use (not much use =/= useless) outside of a science ship or a hybrid escort. Even then it is limited to only half a dozen abilities.
The problem I see is that with APA and other self buffs like omega (omega of which I would also remove even though all can use it) is they're quite selfish but they also as I say buff not just your hull damage but your shield damage.
Indeed I think some of the 20k+ guys have started switching to omega3 because it helps them rip through shields faster to the hull as well as other buffs.
Compare APA on a science ship:
+50% damage to weapons and exotic abilities.
Sensor scan on a science ship:
-70 damage resistance to enemy hull only.
Now at the moment shield drains are laughably resisted by insulators so a true blue science ships and captain will have trouble getting through them to take advantage of that debuff. They will have to rely on their weapons.
A tactical captain will get through the shields 50% quicker with weapons, drains will be the same use and can then start pounding the hull of the vessel with almost as much force as the science captain will when they get through. In other words for a science captain to match that level of extra damage we would need to apply the resistance debuff to the shield as we'll doubling its effectiveness (with a perhaps slight dropping to -50)
But then here's the other reason, sensor scan and beta are TEAM related. I would say they're maybe a tad too strong if a full team uses and capitalises them but the idea isn't to boost your own damage it's to boost everyone's. Then again we go back to what is a sizable buff to the single player plucking along at missions is perhaps OP when an organised team stack it against 1 other player or team.
If we see a sizable buff to the performance of science abilities with far fewer extremities there might be no need to remove tactical buffs from it but then again in testing my tactical was able to get the same use out of GW1 with APB3 and APA as a science ship and captain with sensor scan, grav anchor with conservation of energy.
Do you really think it's a good design philosophy to make one captain and class better at not just energy, projectile attacks but also get the same from science attacks too with less investment? Science captains have a lot of potential but they also lose out drastically when a team is not as coordinated or don't capitalise on the science captains abilities, this is less so with the tactical captain.
I mean the number of times I use scattering field and have to chase down my team to give them protection is silly, it's like they have an aversion to living! All that shield damage resistance more or less gets wasted on me rather than the ones that need it. Or when I use sensor scan on some enemies my team goes off and shoots 1 or 2 others flying in the opposite direction.
The flip side of that coin is that if Tac Captain powers cannot improve damage with Science powers, every single existing Tac/Sci captain is instantly worthless, since without the ability to improve the only method your ship has of causing damage, there is zero reason to even fly a Sci ship as a Tac captain. Since many people have already bought rather expensive Sci Lockbox and C-Store ships for those captains, they will be very angry about having their entire character completely ruined with no recovery.
Furthermore, since the bulk of captains in the game are Tac Captains, it would kill the sale of Science ships to a large chunk of the population that now has no reason to ever be caught dead flying one.
The "Conservation of Energy" trait was a nice boost towards Sci captains trying to compete with Tac Captains in terms of dealing Science Damage: While APA is a slightly larger boost, it also has TRIBBLE uptime, whereas CoE has effectively 100% uptime as long as you can keep annoying things into shooting you. An always-on 30% boost is certainly competitive with an only-sometimes-up 50%.
The flip side of that coin is that if Tac Captain powers cannot improve damage with Science powers, every single existing Tac/Sci captain is instantly worthless, since without the ability to improve the only method your ship has of causing damage, there is zero reason to even fly a Sci ship as a Tac captain. Since many people have already bought rather expensive Sci Lockbox and C-Store ships for those captains, they will be very angry about having their entire character completely ruined with no recovery.
Furthermore, since the bulk of captains in the game are Tac Captains, it would kill the sale of Science ships to a large chunk of the population that now has no reason to ever be caught dead flying one.
The "Conservation of Energy" trait was a nice boost towards Sci captains trying to compete with Tac Captains in terms of dealing Science Damage: While APA is a slightly larger boost, it also has TRIBBLE uptime, whereas CoE has effectively 100% uptime as long as you can keep annoying things into shooting you. An always-on 30% boost is certainly competitive with an only-sometimes-up 50%.
Except for the fact that offensive science abilities are completely laughable compared to tac abilities of the same rank (oh hell, just in complete general), and to make matters worse are completely counterable just with powers most of us carry already full time (apo, hazards, sci team, etc.)
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Comments
To a certain extent, yes. But doffs are theoretically intended to be balanced against other doffs, not as part of the tuning of an ability's core functionality.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
I applaud these science changes, and state: It's about time! Far too long, STO has been the "Escorts Online" game. It's time for Science and Cruisers to get their fair share of shine and polish.
You do know that the Temporal Science Vessel is in fact...a Science Ship and that Energy Siphon 3 is not "Tyken's Rift", correct?
In the future if you intend to quote me and make some statement, I'd appreciate it if you would at the very least, actually read my post first.
About deflector officers though. Tyken's Rift and Gravity Well show the doff time reduction effect on the tooltip, but energy siphon and tachyon beam do not (I don't have the breen energy dissipator to check that one). If energy siphon and tachyon beam are not actually reducing the cooldown for GW and TR, then they need to be fixed.
http://tinypic.com/r/ipy3c2/5
I just ran a quick series of internal tests, and this Doff proc is being applied to Tachyon Beam and Energy Siphon. They are not displayed on the tooltip because those powers are not instant effects, but rather take place over a certain duration. It's not a clear-cut differentiation as far as many players are concerned, but it does control a few mechanical things internally.
We'll see about getting the tooltip to appear on powers that fall under that category.
But anyway... I don't want to derail this thread with Doff discussions. It will be far more useful if such concerns are posted into their appropriate subforum.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Not to contradict you, but I tried like crazy for the cooldown to work by using gravity well (when it didn't proc) and then energy siphon AND tachyon beam right after. It never worked. Posted a thread in the bugs section. (http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=12550431#post12550431) Ok, now back to Tyken's Rift, sorry for the interruption.
Ok now this sounds actually hopeful. what kind of testing od you need.
Do you want us to parse numbers, and post our combat logs and layouts. Or are you interested in the more holistic feedback?
ala: "my crf3 + tr1 escorts lolaron escort still shuts subsystems down more easily compared to my, bfaw 2 4x polaron beams TR3 sci ship."
Do you worry more about pve performance, or pvp performance?
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
If is not possible, can u please share the resistence that power insultors gives agaisnt them (tetryon proc and glider)? are the values of PI from this table correct? http://home.comcast.net/~amicus/Skill%20Point%20Effects.htm
Vin Naftero@playhard88 - FED Sciencie
K'tan@playhard88 - KDF Tactical
Argento@playhard88 - RRF Tactical (FED)
If shield drains and power drains showed in the combat logs, testing and figuring out all the drain mechanics would be pretty easy.
I think he wants sci captain feedback without buffing all over the place although it's always nice to see how tac captains benefit more than sci ones.
Just so everyone's aware, we're still considering the implication of having Tac buffs ONLY affect weapon output, instead of all other sources of damage. We're not ready to make that change, but it's something we're still considering when tuning abilities like the ones in question.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
This would be fantastic for every one. Tactical captains included. If a science power is ballenced for use with tactical captain buffs then not only is it substandard for enginears and science captains but tactical captains have to pop those buffs for it to be greater then substandard for them as well.
If the science power is un-effected by tactical buffs it can be implemented in a usable form for all captains and tacticals can save their buffs for less science-y uses... like alpha striking.
keep in mind that removing a tac captians ability to buff sci skill damage would destroy any tac/sci ship synergy. a goal should be to make there be some kind of positive synergy with all captain/ship combos, not destroying a synergy.
a tac captains only reason to exist is to cause the most damage no mater what he is using or doing. a sci's job is to control, befuddle and debuff. not to also deal more raw damage then a tac doing certain things.
TBR can be made pretty powerful with tac buffs. but its hardly game breaking. PSW deals knetic damage thats only ever going to hit shields, so its damage is irreverent, its GW thats worth any sort of concern. and in a tac's usual ship, full of cannons and all that, only GW1 is available to him on a few select ships. GW3 is still reserved for actual sci ships, that arent doing high weapons damage.
besides, getting nuked and scanned and GW3ed sounds more dangerous then a tac captain GWing me and trying to hold me there with just a TB, APO should get me out of that well enough. if he tried to debuff me with FOMM, TT takes care of that no problem. if i were nuked id be on the ropes with my options very limited, ST to clear both debuffs is far less common then TT too, but the clearing of active skills will still have been done. the force modifying from the sci captain using it is outdoing the raw damage a tac can do with it in overall effect.
I really hope this does not happen, it would indeed destroy the synergy between tactical officers and science vessels. Also, it would significantly limit the usefulness of a Lt. Commander Tactical Station on the Vesta, Fleet Nova, and Temporal Science Vessel. +15% all damage from Attack Pattern Omega I isn't much, but it is still a decent buff to damage dealing science abilities. The Conservation of Energy trait is +30% all science ability damage while Attack Pattern Alpha is +45% all damage. As such, Tactical officers may deal +15% more damage than a Science officer, but only when Attack Pattern Alpha is deployed, unlike the Science officer's almost 100% uptime on conservation of energy. Also as an extra downside, Tactical officers do not have subnuke beam to counter the healing from targets. I'm not counting Go Down Fighting or Tactical Fleet here because honestly Go Down Fighting is very situational (and dangerous to attempt on a low hull science vessel) and Tactical Fleet is applied to the full team. Science officers teamed with tactical officers already obtain the bonus from Tactical Fleet.
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Fine, you want to keep your precious tac based science skill buffs, then make ONLY science captains "all resistance" debuffs affect sci skill based counters like power insulators, countermeasure systems, and inertia dampeners. You win, we win. Lately you see plenty of tac captains flying a Wells because you get the best of both worlds. If, when a tac captain picks sci skills and consoles for a Wells ship, they actually had to think when choosing between defense or offense, this would level the playing field a bit more.
Science and engineers need parity with escorts or this game will continue to be escorts online and you will fail to sell any science ships, Wells classes excluded.
/thread
- Judge Aaron Satie
I have no idea why you are directing this at me specifically, I don't even use a Tactical captain in a Science vessel. I'm simply stating that killing the damage bonus from tactical abilities would kill a reasonable synergy. I'm not sure were you are getting the idea of "plenty of tac captains flying a Wells". I see far more JHAS, Defiant class, Andorian Escorts, and Fleet Patrol Escorts than I do Tactical captains in the Wells. If Tactical officers would like to fly around in a Wells class science vessel, good for them, they have effectively weakened themselves by dropping dual heavy cannons. I'm much more afraid of a Science officer in an escort than I am a Tactical officer in a science vessel. Tactical officers get decent damage out of science abilities, but they really don't have subnuke beam. And without subnuke beam, they have no method for countering anti-science counters. Whereas in a escort that Tactical officer would be able to put out far more burst damage.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
Disagree.
A sci ship wll still do noticeably more damage with a tac captain boosting it's weapon output, stacking tac boosts on top of sensor analysis. Tac initiative will also compensate for the limited tac boff slots.
Secondly, there are a few select ships which not only may use DHCs - but which also can slot GW/TR 3 (and for Energy Siphon 3 You will need the same Science or Universal slot):
any Vesta
Kar'fi
Vo'Quv
Ha'nom Guardian Warbird
Tal Shiar Adapted Battlecruiser
All these ships do not even have to sacrifice much of their Tactical versatility to do so.
Back @topic:
I am happy to read that the rework is indeed planned as a nod towards the science abilities and I hope that the feedback will help these changes along.
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you are only talking about bo skills right not Captain skills?
because if that the case then i sure hope you plan similar effect on science captain powers and engineers.
Tac escort
Eng cruiser
sci sci
They are pretty obvious good combos
Sci escort
Tac cruiser
eng sci
These are all quite viable combos, eng sci power levels since the retraits can make sci ships pretty fantastic.
Eng escort
Sci cruiser
Tac sci
IMO, these should be the weaker combos, but right now the tac sci isn't weak because the tac buffs are making sci damage viable. There is little point in making an escort selfish tanky, a cruiser with sci support is non-sense and increasing a sci's firepower shouldn't be optimal.
A handful of tac scis will cry, but for the betterment of the sci class as a whole it just makes sense.
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Sensor scan is only useful on hull damage. Alpha and Omega and other buffs give an increase to both hull AND shield damage.
At the end of the day if it tightens the spectrum of damage and usefulness then I'm all for it if it means science abilities can get buffed to be more useful and lead to quick completion times comparable to those 3minute Infected Space Elite runs escorts and cruisers are doing as well as other content.
Oh and about tykens rift, nice to see it getting some love. What's the drain like on it now with the changes?
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
Sorry to bring the thread back off the rails, and to directly contradict you Bort. But I think you might have missed somthing. Is the current implementation of this doff the same on tribble and holo? Because after reading your post I decided to test it again, but I did so on holodeck if that makes a differance.
Hear is what I did. I slotted three very rare deflector duty officers of the cool down veriety.
I chose to test with tachyon beam(3) rather then energy syphon as it and tactical team naturaly have the same cool down time (30 seconds). This let me use tactical team to time tachyon beams cool down.
I used tachyon beam on an enemy, which starts a 5 second timer on the ability icon untill the beam stops firing, after that the 30 second cool down timer begins. At the moment the 30 second timer began I hit tactical team.
If the deflector officers are working on tachyon beam and if they proc then tachyon beam should finish cooling down before tacticle team does.
I repeated this ten times and they always finished cooling down at the same time.
So these are the posabilities as i see them:
1)There is some error in my methodolgy
2)This was fixed on tribble and not on holo
3)The RNG is broken so that 30 25% chances dont land a success a single time.
4)There is somthing wrong with the doff that you missed.
5)I am just very unlucky.
Sorry to draw your attention to this, if you already looked at it and thought it was working then I am guessing its going to be a headach to work out the problem and fix it... either that or I have failed to account for somthing and I am making a fool of myself. In which case I am definatly sorry to be making this post.
Edit: If it should turn out that I was just unlucky, it occurse to me to mention that another science doff I tested a year or so ago also failed to proc the expected number of times. Tests I ran with Juel duncan (subsystem disable on use of energy syphon, 25% chance) was working, but with three Juel duncans I was getting a much much smaller success rate then 25%. If I was just unlucky with the deflector doffs, then it might be worth checking to see if any code they share isnt playing nice with the RNG?
What ways are you considering limiting the other career powers in Ship types that don't suit their career role?
Honest question. If there is an overall design vision that this would be part of, then I am interested to see what that would be if it means some other possible positive changes.
You rang.
If this is the design path, why should sensor scan increase weapon damage on targets?
If the goal is to establish "baseline performance" then this would also be a limiter as a Sci could no longer toss a Sensor Scan and fuel the damage that Tac deals.
Why stop there though?
Maybe RSF and MW should only function if an Engineer is flying a cruiser? :rolleyes:
What is the baseline survivability for an Escort? Should an Eng be able to push past that or should they only be able to do that in a cruiser?
Why does it make sense to remove a bit of synergy from only one captain type with what amounts to a small handful of skills?
Hopefully if the devs go through with this, they will also have Attack Pattern Beta, Omega also no longer provide any benefit for Science skills - it would be good since those 40k DPS Recluses pumping out Elite Tholian Pets with APB are getting a bit silly, wouldn't you say?
I'm not going to bother with the list of strawman arguments you made but I do think APB is a much larger problem than anything else. With that said though I also do not think APA should buff exotic damage but it is less of an issue post S7 with the new sci trait. I do think go down fighting should continue to buff exotic damage as well though.
Not sure if that is Working as intended or not, but it has been like that for some time now and thought I'd bring it up again, just in case that hadn't been answered.
Think about this:
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As far as conservation of energy goes it makes a sci better at buffing sci damage and one or two other things so it's not much use (not much use =/= useless) outside of a science ship or a hybrid escort. Even then it is limited to only half a dozen abilities.
The problem I see is that with APA and other self buffs like omega (omega of which I would also remove even though all can use it) is they're quite selfish but they also as I say buff not just your hull damage but your shield damage.
Indeed I think some of the 20k+ guys have started switching to omega3 because it helps them rip through shields faster to the hull as well as other buffs.
Compare APA on a science ship:
+50% damage to weapons and exotic abilities.
Sensor scan on a science ship:
-70 damage resistance to enemy hull only.
Now at the moment shield drains are laughably resisted by insulators so a true blue science ships and captain will have trouble getting through them to take advantage of that debuff. They will have to rely on their weapons.
A tactical captain will get through the shields 50% quicker with weapons, drains will be the same use and can then start pounding the hull of the vessel with almost as much force as the science captain will when they get through. In other words for a science captain to match that level of extra damage we would need to apply the resistance debuff to the shield as we'll doubling its effectiveness (with a perhaps slight dropping to -50)
But then here's the other reason, sensor scan and beta are TEAM related. I would say they're maybe a tad too strong if a full team uses and capitalises them but the idea isn't to boost your own damage it's to boost everyone's. Then again we go back to what is a sizable buff to the single player plucking along at missions is perhaps OP when an organised team stack it against 1 other player or team.
If we see a sizable buff to the performance of science abilities with far fewer extremities there might be no need to remove tactical buffs from it but then again in testing my tactical was able to get the same use out of GW1 with APB3 and APA as a science ship and captain with sensor scan, grav anchor with conservation of energy.
Do you really think it's a good design philosophy to make one captain and class better at not just energy, projectile attacks but also get the same from science attacks too with less investment? Science captains have a lot of potential but they also lose out drastically when a team is not as coordinated or don't capitalise on the science captains abilities, this is less so with the tactical captain.
I mean the number of times I use scattering field and have to chase down my team to give them protection is silly, it's like they have an aversion to living! All that shield damage resistance more or less gets wasted on me rather than the ones that need it. Or when I use sensor scan on some enemies my team goes off and shoots 1 or 2 others flying in the opposite direction.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
Furthermore, since the bulk of captains in the game are Tac Captains, it would kill the sale of Science ships to a large chunk of the population that now has no reason to ever be caught dead flying one.
The "Conservation of Energy" trait was a nice boost towards Sci captains trying to compete with Tac Captains in terms of dealing Science Damage: While APA is a slightly larger boost, it also has TRIBBLE uptime, whereas CoE has effectively 100% uptime as long as you can keep annoying things into shooting you. An always-on 30% boost is certainly competitive with an only-sometimes-up 50%.
Except for the fact that offensive science abilities are completely laughable compared to tac abilities of the same rank (oh hell, just in complete general), and to make matters worse are completely counterable just with powers most of us carry already full time (apo, hazards, sci team, etc.)
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