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Changes are needed to make science captains better at their role
lucho80
Member Posts: 6,600 Bug Hunter
So today I was bored and decided to once again go around testing the Energy Siphon drain and Plasmonic Leech, and it got me thinking of a couple of changes that are needed to make science captains and ships more viable. At the same time, it would make the procs in polaron and tetryon weapons useful again. The only reason you see polarons more in the game now is people trying to squeeze more DPS out of their Jem'Hadar ships.
Problem #1
Power insulators work as armor, but there is no way to debuff it-> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqEj142R71cpdHhtYnBuTE13MzROX0pYYmNmcUc1RGc&usp=sharing
I had an equation in another thread that ended up being incorrect since I didn't keep testing past 60 in the power insulator skill. The protection remains the same for plasmonic leech and the polaron proc, so shield drains should probably follow the same pattern.
While there are many ways to debuff energy weapon and kinetic damage, power insulators remain completely unaffected. You spec around 60-70 in power insulators and you're good with your permanent power armor. The "All Resistance" debuffs should include power insulators as well as other sci protection skills.
Problem #2
The Sensor Analysis ability is practically junk, and I'll prove my case.
How it works:
Each scan stack adds a 3.33% damage resistance debuff, up to a maximum of 33.3% (a stack of 10, over 60 seconds)
Counters
Jam Targeting Sensors
Cloaking
Romulan T4 Placate <- Probably the worst one of the 4 (PvP players hate this one for other reasons http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=817231)
Just plain fly past 10Km
Practical uselessness
Not even going into the PvP world, but in PvE, the enemies you actually take long enough for this to activate more than twice is extremely short.
Alternative that also it practically useless
Run an AMP warp core with a drain build and forget you ever needed sensor analysis in the first place since it practically (maybe takes 1 to 3 second to get the full effect) gives you an instant bonus equivalent to having to wait 40 seconds with sensor analysis and you don't even have to keep your target for this one to work.
Note: I'm equating 3.3% more damage to -3.3% damage resistance.
Solution
Maybe reduce the time it takes sensor analysis to stack once your are at VA rank. Maybe down to 5 seconds (which is still an eternity lately).
Problem #1
Power insulators work as armor, but there is no way to debuff it-> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqEj142R71cpdHhtYnBuTE13MzROX0pYYmNmcUc1RGc&usp=sharing
I had an equation in another thread that ended up being incorrect since I didn't keep testing past 60 in the power insulator skill. The protection remains the same for plasmonic leech and the polaron proc, so shield drains should probably follow the same pattern.
While there are many ways to debuff energy weapon and kinetic damage, power insulators remain completely unaffected. You spec around 60-70 in power insulators and you're good with your permanent power armor. The "All Resistance" debuffs should include power insulators as well as other sci protection skills.
Problem #2
The Sensor Analysis ability is practically junk, and I'll prove my case.
How it works:
Each scan stack adds a 3.33% damage resistance debuff, up to a maximum of 33.3% (a stack of 10, over 60 seconds)
Counters
Jam Targeting Sensors
Cloaking
Romulan T4 Placate <- Probably the worst one of the 4 (PvP players hate this one for other reasons http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=817231)
Just plain fly past 10Km
Practical uselessness
Not even going into the PvP world, but in PvE, the enemies you actually take long enough for this to activate more than twice is extremely short.
Alternative that also it practically useless
Run an AMP warp core with a drain build and forget you ever needed sensor analysis in the first place since it practically (maybe takes 1 to 3 second to get the full effect) gives you an instant bonus equivalent to having to wait 40 seconds with sensor analysis and you don't even have to keep your target for this one to work.
Note: I'm equating 3.3% more damage to -3.3% damage resistance.
Solution
Maybe reduce the time it takes sensor analysis to stack once your are at VA rank. Maybe down to 5 seconds (which is still an eternity lately).
Post edited by lucho80 on
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Comments
There's a doff that debuffs target damage resistance by -10 for 30s(?) every time a science ability is used on them.
Why not replace sensor analysis with this but make it -10 per science ability and 60s due to long cooldowns on abilities.
Oh wait AoE science abilities might put huge debuffs on a whole load of stuff kinda like what their ability class is supposed to do.
Also science captains rock (mostly) even in PvE. It's the ships that are lacking, not the class of captains.
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.
I like the idea of that doff as long as it includes debuffs to science skill protections like power insulators. By the way, sent you some interesting info since you seem to use mainly sci captains.
All Sci ships need a full out buffall stat raise.
Sci ships have Crippled:
Hull
Turn Rate
Survival
No Specials
Consoles
Sci ships need More hull, increase the turn rate, and give them more weapons:
After that, passive buffs to scis, Increase their Resistance to DIsables by 50%. if a VM will last for 8s it should only do 4s. - Sci ships with increased computer processing, and faster regeneration due to new tech.
a passive Regenerate 5% of shields/10seconds
Increase the yield on all Science Powers in general.
GW needs A MUCH bigger range, and Pull/hold
Tykens rift needs the same range increase
Photonic shockwave should be put back where it gained a 200% buff from particle Generators
Charged Partile Burst shouldn't be decreased by Resistance to Drain, as it isn't a drain
feed back pulse should Send feedback when a channeled skill is used as well...
FBP should deal Damage on players using TB, and Tachyon Beam.
DEM, should make weapons immune to FBP
Tachyon Beam needs its drain doubled.
Power Syphon should linger for 15 seconds after its done.
Remove Passive Subsystem targeting:
add a passive Shield Resistance Buff that removes 2.5% Bleedthrough on Resislant shields and 5% bleed on other shields.
And when a sci captain is in a sci ship there SHOULD be a synergy Buff.
Maybe +20 All sci skills.
I very much like this sensor analysis solution. By involving the player in a way beyond simple targeting it becomes much more Intresting.
Bpharma is also right to make the distinction between science ships, which need help, and sciance captains that do not. But I do feel one aspect of science captains is in need of attention. A tactical captain is better at using a science ship to fulfill the sciance role then a sciance captain is.
I think this is caused by a bias in cryptics ballence philosophy. Firstly they gave the imate ability cool down reduction ability to tacticals, who don't need it for tactical powers. Then they gave sciance powers abhorently long cool downs.
Secondly when a tactical uses a sciance or console ability and is able to buff up its damage to the point that it is OP cryptic nurf the ability. As it was balanced for engineers and sciance captains before it now under performs for them and works as Intended only for tacticals.
We really need to divorce sciance damage from a tactical captains ability to buff or give sciance captains a way to buff it to the same degree that is not available to tacticals.
Alternatively I would be happy for tacticals to do more damage with sciance powers provided sciance captains could use them more often, or get greater duration from them.
Now if sciance captains did get something to make them more useful in sciance ships we would then have a new problem. They don't need a buff in sci-scorts. So how do we keep them from over performing there?
Gravity Well and Tyken's Rift are being fixed, although the gravity well fix seems bad IMO on the damage end of things and I don't agree with non-sci captains getting a benefit off the fix while heavily invested sci captains get penalized. Tachyon Beam is partially junk because of power insulators and partially because engineer captains are in all essence immune to it. Energy Siphon 2 and 3 work great as they are now, not considering my other issues with protection against them.
That said, this Tac focus does not mean that Sci is 'useless' as some players would have us believe. If you want to be doing 10k+ DPS, then yea, you're gonna struggle, but it's also true to say that I think a great many players have real difficulty when it comes to settling into a sci captain flying a sci ship. It can be a very different way of playing. Even down to using things like combo keybinds, since the use of most sci abilities are, for the most part I feel, far more dependent on the situation. That's not to say that tac buffs, for example, are 'easy' to use, just that it's either time for an all-buff-melt-all-alpha or it isn't. It's not as common that a sci ship captain will 'fire everything' at one single (player) ship.
Most players (of all classes) I encounter in game are constantly trying to up their DPS and part of the problem with sci is that if you do that, all too often, the roles that the class was designed for are neglected. It's not impossible to have both, but harder I think and it is definitely easier to be a tac ship with sci than it is to be a sci ship with tac. My average DPS as a sci in a sci ship is low, really low, I'm lucky if I break 3k (using ACT), but I can still take out whole groups alone in decent enough time on Azure, NWS level 5+ and other maps. I'm not here to say 'L2P', not in the least, as I am still in that process myself, but I will say that I've seen far more examples of 4 tac defiants or Engi Sovvys struggling with T'liss Warbirds on Azure than I have seen 4 Intrepids having the same problem (partly because the former two are far more common, but that's another story). Essentially, I think what I'm saying here is that while there are class/ship related issues, power creep, achievable levels of tac DPS vs Eng/Sci equivalents, etc, these issues are not as clear cut as 'go tacscort or go home'. It's not even necessarily the case that DPS is 'easier'.
As far as I am aware or can theorize, Sci ships have only 3 forward weapon slots because the theory is that their damaging space magic is supposed to fill the role of that 4th DHC that escorts have and they have less hull because, at launch anyways, they were supposed to rely on their super strong shields. The problem with the damage is that there are too many abilities that allow you to get out of, say, a level III Gravity Well. In fact, you don't even really need active abilities, you can pretty much spec your character to be immune to it's pull and even with no shields, the actual damage that can be produced by one would take around 30-40 seconds to destroy an immobile ship with absolutely no damage resistance. That's one example. If there are shields and the ship is moving and has any damage resistance at all, your Science equivalent of CRF3/TorpS3/APX3/etc (which significantly/effectively increase dmg output) does all in all, on average, about 400-500 damage (on a hull that will be 30k+) and the 'Gravity' in the Well feels more like a gentle tug of a 5 year old who want some candy. Even a shuttle would probably be able to withstand that with little effort. A tractor beam 1 is more effective at what it says it does on the tin. I'm not advocating a huge buff or nerf to anything, but anyone who has had a grav well 3 fired at them in PvP will pretty much smile in appreciation at the pretty colours and move to more than 5k away with little problem, even if they've have their movement buff (APO, etc) removed one way or another.
Against players, there are lots of Boff abilities that are very effective and a good sci ship captain can be really difficult to beat when using them in the right combination, but there are other skills that are pretty much a waste of an ability slot since aside from the fact that some of them have as many as 4 counters (which is not unique to sci abilites), countered or not, they don't really do anything practically effective anyway. The same can be said of different skills in PvE.
The game already contains certain elements that have one effect in PvE and another in PvP. One exampl off the top of my head are the 'Increses accuacy against ___________' doffs. These doffs have an effect that DOES NOT apply to player characters. There are also certain stun weapons/abilities that have one duration/effect on PC's and another on NPC's, there may be more, but either I can't remember or I haven't come across them yet.
Much of the reason for complaints from players who concetrate on PvP OR PvE (PvP vs PvE 'communities') is that a thing is buffed/nerfed/added/taken away and it changes how 'their bit' of the game works and that's understandable. If we make cruisers able to tank instatorps or Unimatrix lances, they will be practically unkillable in PvP regardless of player skill. No-one wants that except 5 year old children. I, for one, want as much balance in this game as possible On both sides of the coin, super-easy or impossible-to-kill enemies are boring, whether they are PC's or NPC's.
There have been numerous suggestions on the froums about how to mitigate the effect that changes to PvE/PvP mechanics affect the other. My suggestion for pretty much all abilities, doffs, new lock box cheese consoles and even boff/captain traits is that they follow a similar line of thought to the above. Why not have a system where everything is made to be useful, in practical terms, in both PvE and PvP, but have the use of the same thing have one effect in PvE and another buffed/nerfed effect in PvP? This could, perhaps, be achieved by altering the way the diminishing returns mechanic works, for example. Harsher penalties in PvP and greater benefits in PvE - or the reverse, whichever ends up working best - so that using 5 damage consoles or 5 drain/shield consoles has one effect in PvP and another in PvE. Ideas... nothing more.
Apologies for the essay, but it ain't a simple issue.
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
Cannon scatter volley + torp spread + attack pattern beta.
One shreds the shield facing and procs the beta allowing the torp spread to hit hull for massive damage against NPCs.
What boff ability works well with gravity well?
Attack Pattern Beta/Omega to increase damage
Eject Warp Plasma for the hold and extra damage to hull
Tractor Beam for the hold
Notice the top two are not science. Additionally nearly all the sci abilities conflict with one another. Why bother going for a disable (Viral Matrix) if your draining their energy for example.
Now lets try this for a change. Let us turn gravity well into something worth using to kill others.
1st: Keep the 'pull' effect as it currently is.
2nd: Reduce DPS to about 600 on rank 3, cap at about 1k with high skill/aux.
3rd: Make the well apply a -10 kinetic resistance debuff on those effected by it each second that stacks with itself and lasts for the duration of the well plus say five seconds. Do not allow this debuff to stack from multiple gravity wells.
4th: Have the duration of GW be about 20 seconds.
So now the gravity well does minor abouts of damage to start but if you get all those stacks upon you (-200! kinetic resist) then it will become stupid high. It does not get silly with 5 sci stacking it any more so than 5 scatter volleys. It will have synergy with tractor beam, PSW, TBR, FBP, basically anything that will keep the target inside it. For PvP it actually creates counterplay as the victim can save their BFI until the last half to negate most of the damage, or use it right away if they think they can escape although then the sub nuke comes out with a PSW and yeah. VM would be a good opener for it and wait for a big target to loose engine or auxiliary and so on.
I hope that was a typo. Power insulators offer more than enough protection as it is. By the way, to all of you science loving captains, give some +1s to this bug report to see if it finally gets fixed. I don't want to spam my own bug report each morning.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=862411
Also to carasucia83:
The problem is greater than you realise. The thing I am annoyed by is that eventually when you start getting better and better at both piloting, building and equiping your ship etc you get over this hump where everything stops being a challenge.
Look at the record runs thread and you'll start to see the problem.
Or look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTYdY3ioGgY
In what way would a science ship contribute at all to that other than making it take longer?
Answer: Non, the science ship is irrelevant. I mean a traditional science ship btw not a commander sci with Lt.comm and Lt tactical with Lt and ensign eng or some other combo with large amounts of non science boff seating.
Now you can argue that a cruiser and escort is irrelevant as they're not used either but I have seen people get within a minute or two of these guys with cruisers and escorts. The same with sci? Never seen it. Never seen or had a team with 3-5 science ships do anything more than take 2-3 times longer.
It could be my lack of skill, it could be others, it could be many things but the fact no-one is doing record runs in science ships or even considering them is concerning.
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.
Lol, I realise exactly how serious the problem is. Apart from farming, I pretty much only play Sci and see people do stuff like this all the time. Stuff that in a 'pure' sci ship, you pretty much can't do. I was simply trying not to turn this into yet another 'Sci needs to be as uber as Tac QQ' thread. 'Irrelavent' Sci may be, but 'useless' no.
And I think my point was that, discounting the existence of 20k+ DPS builds - something which still escapes the vast majority of players - as far as the role for which the class was designed, no great changes are needed. What is needed is for high end space magic/tanking/healing to become relevant again. None of them are useless and a properly specced/equipped character can perform their role perfectly well.
Examples:
Protecting/Healing the Freighters in Blockade.
Kiting the cube on Infected.
'Holding the line' on Hive.
Cross healing.
Limiting incoming damage to Kang on Cure/Freighter on NWS
Keeping bogeys out of firing range of the above.
Holding the Nanite spheres at bay in a low DPS team on Infected.
Holding/Disabling/Debuffing enemies while someone else does the killing.
Etc.
Contrast this against DPS:
Buff myself in order to:
Stay alive.
Kill stuff.
The point here, is that those things are supposed to be the roles of Tanks/Magicians/Healers and if properly specced, they can be done. The problem is that they are totally irrelavent, as you rightly say, next to 20k, or even 10k+ DPS builds.
To summarise, it's not that Magic, Tanking and Healing are failing to perform effectively, it's that DPS is overperforming its role. Which is partly why I say it's not as simple as 'go tacscort or go home.'
Like I said, it's a complex issue. Many factors are involved. Anyone who plays the game - except Geko it seems... - can see that, at the top end, the game is now pretty much one dimensional and DPS trumps all. Science has its place in PvP, but even that seems to be in doubt after recent developments. But I stand by my point that irrelevant does not equal useless or under-performing its role. Put that statement in the context of a team where the highest single player's DPS is 6k - a not so uncommon occurance in PUG's - and suddenly we have a whole different argument going on.
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
This is precisely the problem we are faced with. The usefulness of science is capped by the competence of our team mates. The more competent our team, the lower the cap. So we can save the day for a bad group, but we hold a good one back.
The problem is further compounded by the fact that no matter how much we refine our scince builds an equally refined dps build is also able to save the day for a bad group without the disadvantage of holding back a good one.
The ability to hold pull and push enemies is fantastic, but the most effective crowed control in STO is crowed extermination. And the most effective debuff you can inflict on an enemy is a warp core breach.
This is exactly right. No science ability is useless (except tykens because its been bugged for ever, though a fix is finaly on tribble). Its just less useful then the tactical alternative . Why should I fly a science ship and disable a sub system for 8 seconds when in an escort I could destroy the ship in 8 seconds.
Now the question is, how do we change space magic so that it can keep up? The principle problem I see with it is the problem of cool downs and durations. As power creeps and dps rises we find we can destroy more and more targets in the time we must wait to use a science ability again.
The remaining time on a damage buff isn't wasted when an enemy is destroyed because the buff persists and can be applied to the next target. But when I pop a science debuff on something the remaining time is completely wasted as soon as the target pops.
Tactical debuffs exist as buffs on the users ship that debuff their target/attacker, so that when I use these debuffs I can annihilate as many ships as I like as quickly as I like without wasting a moment of the debuff.
A number of science abilities could be given this treatment which would help a fair amount to help science ships keep up in high dps groups as they would spend a lot less time contributing nothing.
As it stands right now my science captain with a generalist spec (no weapons specialization skill, 6 points in all science skills) can handle probe duty, tank and destroy both cubes, the nanite generators and both transformers in KASE (handle the entire side) solo while the other 4 members of a bad pug handle the other side. But its one heck of a lot easier and quicker in a defiant, Prometheus, Mobius, chimera or sovereign then it is in a wells, intrepid, nova, nebula or atrox.
That's probably working as intended. Science debuffs are meant to be best exploited by others rather then the science ship itself. My point is two fold, first that I am specialized for science, but still perform far better in an escort or cruiser. The second is that if I can do all that in an escort or cruiser without being specialized for them why would a need a science ship to provide me with any assistance?
So I say that while science is not useless, it is an inefficient use of a good team mate. Any that know enough about the game and how to play to do well with a science ship could do better with something else.
That is going to have to go in my sig. That is just hilarious...ly right. Don't often hear the word extermination used so aptly but, my, that was hilarious (well to me)
pwestolemyname makes a great arguement above. The problem for me is I do want to play in a science ship but I'm also playing at that level (completion times are not quite as good). What it really does is show up as I said and you agree with, that there isn't a need for the science ship to be there.
I like that you linked that thread btw, it's really caused a storm in the PvP camps now they're waking up to the idea that power creep has gone far far higher than they thought possible.
In your named examples:
Protecting/Healing the Freighters in Blockade. - 16k dps kills them in 15s
Kiting the cube on Infected. - dies in less than a minute
'Holding the line' on Hive. - most things die in less than a minute, total time about 7-10 mins for me.
Cross healing. - my escorts have HE and TSS as standard which is more than enough.
Limiting incoming damage to Kang on Cure/Freighter on NWS - why limit when you can destroy?
Keeping bogeys out of firing range of the above. - boogie's dead in 10s
Holding the Nanite spheres at bay in a low DPS team on Infected. - my own dps is enough to kill before they get there.
Holding/Disabling/Debuffing enemies while someone else does the killing. - why do that when you can kill them and then someone else can be doing something else more important?
I know they're not useless and they do do those things well but there's just no need. Look at the NWS set ups in the thread you linked, all FAE, Fleet Dhelan or escorts with lt.comm sci. Why no science ships? cooldowns, excessive globals etc making them not able to trully CC the whole thing making it easier for the others. That and the science ships just can't kill at the same rate or with such impunity.
I really want sci to be great and useful and contribute to getting missions done quicker or for having an advantage to them being there but at the top end there is just no place for them other than "awww it's so cute you brought a science ship. You sit there while we kill everything before you can even drain half its shield."
It's not to say I don't have some good science ships and builds, it's just all I'd be doing is dragging the team back. Some are ok with not doing missions fast but there's a line where I just cannot bring myself to say I am playing a science ship and I don't care if I'm mostly irrel....ah this is just getting me down about science.
It's not needed as it is now and if things go the way they have been it never will, heaven forbid someone not like having control taken away from them. Not like we all feel like **** for not even having anything ****** useful to do with our 10K Zen spent on science ships. What's worse than not having control? Not having anything meaning full to do.
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.
As I said in a previous post on this thread, Sci ships have 3 weapon slots and can 'only' use beams because in theory, space magic, heals and strong shields are supposed to compensate. To paraphrase Obisek: "In short, they do not."
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
Tactical Team is just better than Engineering team and Science team and has been so ever since they gave automatic shield balancing to it. I for one dislike that they're on the same cooldowns, as I'm not entirely sure why an engineering team is somehow interrupting the efforts of a tactical team. Seems like different crews on your ship to me. That being said if they will share cooldowns, the mechanic of automatic shield balancing should be attributed to all, that might help in some small way.
Secondly, a lot of abilities just have horrible cooldowns on science vessels. The innate isn't that interesting what with the cooldown on subsystem targetting being so long. The only way to improve those cooldowns is to specialize in a specific subsystem targetting in your Science ship, but of course that takes up precious real estate in your boff layout on a science ship doesn't it. Its not like your Sci ship had much in the way of real attacks to begin with and now you want to take more?
Some abilities are downright worthless now. From a pvp perspective you can be specced to the 9's (literally) for a power drain build, with 4+ Mk 12 purple flow cap consoles and not even dent a guy's power levels if he's got just a little resistance in his passive skills. I'm talking about a character firing off power draining pets, energy siphon 3's, and tykens rifts that are all rated to just obliterate the enemy's power levels. My Energy Siphon was easily in the 40's. Throw in target subsystems as well for good measure. What an absolute waste.
Gravity Well seems to roll a little better, but even then with tac abilities like evasive or omega they're a joke, and with moderate adjustments to things like inertial and your impulse modifier they're a joke. Versus npc ships the Grav Well and Tykens are rather nice, but as was pointed out earlier a LtC Sci Slotted ship of just about anything is better than an actual Science ship.
Next you have ships like the Vesta. They give you Cannons... and then they dont' give you the tac slots to use them. WHY? I've often though they really need to lower the range at which those abilities can be acquired. You're already losing subsystem targetting (which I'm not sure why Cannons can't do that either by the by, I seem to recall Klingons targetting systems with theirs in the shows) by using Cannons on the ship, its made worse that you can't actually stack them on a ship that was meant for it.
I for one agree, that as the game progresses Science Ships just feel more and more slapshod and things like Carriers and Escorts just look better and better and better. Don't get me wrong, I love both of those classes of ships, I just don't see why Science needs to be the Black Sheep.
As an aside, I'd also point out that a lot of top tier Engineer abilities are kind of stinky as well, excluding the Repair oriented stuff. I like Ejecting Warp Plasma, but I've always felt that the TRIBBLE poor maneuverability of a Cruiser really makes things like Ejecting Warp Plasma an ability that belongs on a lower tier than it takes. Maybe if the repair skills were higher up the rungs, they'd be more costly to acquire, and also more meaningful to the team, which would in turn see the Sci and Cruiser ships have higher utility.
Your quite right to identify this problem. Team abilities and shield balancing are a big issue that effects multiple unbalanced aspects of the game. The issue of shield balancing and teams hugely effect science ships, they also effect every other ship in the game. You might want to contribute your thoughts to the currently active shield balancing thread.
The main problem with the engineering abilities is the lack of choice. Choosing to use one emergency power ability locks you out of using another for half of your play time, choosing to use one auxilery power ability locks you out of using others for half of your play time.
This wouldn't be a problem but your alternatives to using those ability's are very few. and on many cruisers your number of engineering slots is very large.
Engineering team usually isn't an option as it shares a cool down with the more important tactical team that doesn't take an engineering slot.
Directed energy modulation is only amazingly good with a rare doff. Without it the best way to do hull damage is usually(there are exceptions) to do larger amounts of damage to take out shields faster rather then bothing to penetrait it.
Boarding Party would be fantastic if it didn't have to run the gauntlet to make contact with your targets hull and if every one and their mother wasn't running tactical team which clears it.
Reverse Shield Polarity is good when its running and is crucially important to some very specific builds, but for most people it is just a crutch that buys them a few seconds before the inevitable warp core breach. Its cool down is too long to rely upon it.
Aceton Beam one of the very best De-buffs you can put on a boss ship to help prevent yourself and your team mates from being killed by it. But the rest of the time its of little use.
Eject Warp Plasma is very good, but as you said, its usefulness is limited on less maneuverable ships. Keeping It at lt.comander level is important to keep it from becoming too common on escorts where it is OP though.
That Leaves Extend Shields 3. Which is the best possible defensive buff you can put on a friend. Not much use to your own ship though. And if your friend is good enough they wont need it, even if they are in a defiant fighting an elite cube.
Aceton Beam like the science abilities shares a common problem. Bad cooldowns, difficulty to fire off, etc. To be honest My favorite use of Aceton beam comes from my Kar'fi's pets. Its a cool power to be sure, and I can see why you need to be careful about warp plasmas. to be honest this ties into my thought, that i've always felt that mine patterns seem to belong more on the big boats than the little boats, yet its a top tier ability. Just feels odd to me.
Tactical abilities just have such fantastic payoffs. Take their debuffs. APB for instance. Scatter volley a mob, and you've just totally debuffed the crowd, but wait a second isn't that the Science ship's role? Oh wait, an Escort can do that and possibly better, and the only counter to it is using a tac team...
This is not to say Sensor Scan isn't awesome, but that's a Science Captain's skill, and who is to say you aren't a Tactical or engineer captain in that Sci ship.
I do agree with the general feeling of the thread though that the way Science ships are played have some oddball balancing. Some of that oddball balancing effects cruisers to a degree. I will grant Cruisers can do some great things, and people quite love their a2b builds, but there are some clear dog abilities, or abilities that just don't seem to equate to some of the alternatives.
Personally I'd love to see them look at ways to make some of these debuffing and controlling builds get a little love back, because to some degree they're just sad. (Btw my energy siphon atrox build is awesome vs. something... The Crystalline Entity)
I am a Tactical Captain. I am a Science Captain. I am an Engineering Captain. (Three Seperate toons.
My Tactical toon can take ANY ship and run with it pretty Efeectively with little to no clue whats going on.
My Science toon has a tough time staying alive sometimes, but is a great healer.
My Engineer once she's up there will be an Uber Tank.
Now let's break it down a little bit.
In terms of abilities Tactial are just about the best, Torp abilities share a CD, so do BO and FAW, Tac a bilities are very well seperated.
Next Science abilities are fairly well Spereated.
Engineering is almost completely tied into each other in one way or another and its total BS.
BUT Moving on. Science is great for say NWS, if Healing didnt pull the hell out of all the aggro.
So in short for something like say NWS, you need 1 Healer, 1 Tank, and 3 DPS monsters.
But nobody Tanks, so science ships are usually left hanging with their sterns in the wind.
Keep moving on NOBODY appreciates the science healer guy. The low DPS team calls you a NOOB, the Elitists call us NOOBS, but when we are healing the entire team and keeping their DPS on maximum uptime by doing so.
Science is underused, underappreciated and needs help....
I am Il Shadow and i approve these Shennanigans!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Specifically the Science focused Odyssey.
Extend shields is far and above the best ability to keep some one else alive. It works off your shield power rather then your aux and gives your target a hefty resistance bonuses as well as regeneration over a long duration, when it does wear off you don't need to wait long before you can use it again.
Transfer shield strength is also a fantastic shield heal you can use on yourself as well as others, but the reuse time on it is a failing that may mean you cant use it when your friend needs it, further more its resistance bonus is not so grate.
Auxiliary Power to Structural Integrity Field is also a grate heal you can use on yourself or others. The total healed is not as large as some other heals up its still significant with high aux and the resistance buff is quite large, Damage not taken is always better then damage healed. The best thing about Aux to Structural is the cool down. Pop this baby once every 15 seconds or 10 seconds if you double it up.
Hazard emitters is also a fantastic hull heal you can use on yourself or others. Once again its main failing is the long time before re-use.
Now hear is the thing. Engineering heals go up to Commander level. Science Heals only go to Lt. Commander.
So with the Odyssey Science Cruiser you can have:
Extend shields 3
Auxiliary power to structural 2
Transfer shield Strength 3
Hazard emitters 2
and still have slots to double up the science heals with:
transfer shield strength 2
hazard emitters 1.
And still have a few abilities to help you out when you take agro:
Emergency power to shields 2
Polarize Hull
Emergency power to shields/engines 1
See what I mean?
Science ships can't match that kind of dedicated support setup. Sure you can heal with a science ship. But healing is just something else they can do in addition to their main function which is supposed to be crowed control and de-buffs.
Cruisers with a science leaning are the real dedicated healers of STO. Or they would be if there was much use for dedicated healers.
While I feel your pain, the low dps team you talk about will eventually learn how to play the game - we hope....
Regarding the high DPS team, it's more a question of 'where does my sci ship fit in here?' They don't need debuffs, placates, holds and so on because they can kill stuff quick enough and because they can kill stuff quick enough, they don't need healing either.
I'll repeat, Sci is not useless or pointless in itself, just unnecessary in a team with high end DPS builds. This is best expressed by the fact that there are many players who feel that the Tulwar is a Romulan Sci ship. Why? Because with the DPS capability of that ship, and others, the Cmdr Sci slot is redundant.
Even the Crystalline entity, arguably the map where Sci is most needed, doesn't need a dedicated Sci ship.
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
PvE difficulty is defined by two things and two things only: The presence or lack of instakill invisitorps and quantity of hit points. The now not-so-recent addition of EPtE to many NPCs and the revamp of the Borg shield neutralizer have made it a little more complex, but not much.
If the Science and Engineering skills used by PvE NPCs on certain maps (namely those with Elite in their name) followed the same vain, ie Subnucleonic Beam V, Viral Matrix V, Scramble Sensors V, etc, HyperDoT effects, Level 5 damage debuffs etc etc, then I think we might see science and engineering have a kind of a rennaissance, since all those things would mean that only having EPtS1 and HE2 would no longer cut it and with the super damage debuffing, Hyper-DPS builds would need backup (ie the support roles of Eng and Sci) in order to function at maxmum efficiency.
A borg tac cube for example, should really have 5 Admiral level Boff Stations, right? That is to say, 5 Boffs that have 6 skills each. Two Tac, Two Eng and one Sci, for example. They are the Borg, they're supposed to be able to do everything at once and a Tac cube is like their ubership... anyways...
The problem is that if Cryptic continues to follow the same road it's on now, the power creep and focusing primarily on new players (rather than player retention - Stahl said this in almost as many words....), then this will only end up being invalidated (again) within a matter of months. Not to mention the 'it's too haaaaard......' forum QQ.
If you have a team that only focuses on one element of the game, be it tanking, magic or dps, then it should be too hard. That's the point of having different classes, right?
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
PvP metas are usually a bit more balanced on the whole, because of the upredictability of players. If mobs were as unpredictable, you'd see more use for things other than DPS in PvE too. But powerful CC is generally anathema in PvP, and that's a real quandary for devs.
At the end of the day, it's always just a question of dev resources. They have to juggle a whole load of factors, and I think, judging by how this same old story is repeated in MMO after MMO, advanced mob AI and shifting dungeon unpredictability must be more difficult to implement than power creep is containable (in the average life of an MMO).
Plus also, most players, being casuals, are likely to whine if mob AI gets too difficult and things become more unpredictable. Nobody's fault, lots of people are in the game to relax, not to be challenged, or to be only moderately challenged.
But all this does mean there's a kind of sad inevitability to the eventual uselessness of most CC/debuffing, etc., in PvE.
(Although curiously, CoH managed to avoid that fate - probably because the game was initially wholly balanced around PvE, and had insanely powerful aggro control and CC/debuffing, and mobs shed no tears at having control taken away from them and being turned into pansies. PvP is always the fly in the ointment when it comes to making interesting and powerful CC/debuffing. Let's hope a trend towards more "active" forms of anti-CC - as promised in Wildstar atm - changes this in the future.)