The flaw in your logic is that you expect the devs are just going to automatically fix sci after nerfing tac/sci
Where did you get any guarantee of that?
Regarding the tribble GW "boost"
You need to test it yourself, my results were far less than stellar. It feels like a nerf to the cc ability with an extremely small uptick to the damage of the commander ability, while lowering the damage of the lt and ltcomm versions. overall you will be able to do less damage with the ability in a chained sequence (GW3 followed up by GW2 for example)
The "reverse repel" as borticus seems to describe it, has lost a lot of its potency as well.
Fleet Admiral Rylana - Fed Tac - U.S.S Wild Card - Tactical Miracle Worker Cruiser
Lifetime Subscriber since 2012 == 17,200 Accolades = RIP PvP and Vice Squad
Chief of Starfleet Intelligence Service == Praise Cheesus
Well, this entire discussion was prompted by a dev coining that they were considering this, while they were fixing and tweaking gravity well.
I can only assume that means the discussion is situated within a larger discourse on sci damage skills, and, consequently, assume good faith and the intention to not make such a change half-bummed.
Sure, the cynical position would be to assume that it would be a nerf without offering fixes/buffs, but I'm going to go and be positive on this one. I think some good stuff's been done lately, and that's restored some of my optimism - go ahead and call me a fool :P
I wont call you a fool but I will definitely say that is a lot of wishful thinking.
After hearing some of the stories about what Cryptic/PWE has done in the past regarding game balance and mechanics, id be more inclined to believe the current tribble GW and tykens changes are all we would get as far as a balance pass for a very long time, regardless of any changes to attack pattern alpha.
Fleet Admiral Rylana - Fed Tac - U.S.S Wild Card - Tactical Miracle Worker Cruiser
Lifetime Subscriber since 2012 == 17,200 Accolades = RIP PvP and Vice Squad
Chief of Starfleet Intelligence Service == Praise Cheesus
However exotic damage should be lowered by 50% across the board
And science characters should get a Trait/Buff of abut 200% to exotic damage
This would put a science character in charge of science ships and not Tacs
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
It'd be a nice change, or maybe reduce how tac captain abilities stack since sci and eng abilities aren't nearly as complimentary. Something, since right now the best escort captain is tac, the best cruiser captain is tac, and the best sci ship captain is tac. Its not like sci ships don't have any weapons to buff after all, and could turn into some complimentary builds, particularly for ships that can bridge the space between tac and sci like the Vesta or the BoP. We'll see though.
"From what is said by the devs and hinted at it is worth mentioning that it looks like the plan is to normalise the damage from gravity well/tykens rift for all classes or at least bring them all into a similar range. This would then allow for the devs to increase the damage to a value they feel is more acceptable. The idea being that if the interaction was throwing the numbers off too much you're rewarded with a more damaging gravity well in general for all classes."
I will also show some tests I did on GW in tribble.
With my sci at 130 aux, 112 PrtG and with 4 Elite Mesh weavers (beta 3 x4), sensor scan and 3 stacks of conservation of energy I did this:
[4:52] [Combat (Self)] Your Gravity Well III deals 4993 (1927) Kinetic Damage to Tholian Recluse.
I then did the same test but did not use my mesh weavers to put APB3 x4 on the target and got this on average.
[5:27] [Combat (Self)] Your Gravity Well III deals 2036 Kinetic Damage to Tholian Recluse.
With similar premisses, except with PrtG at around 150-160, I think my GW3 currently ticks at around 1400-1500, generally. On my sci, that is. Tac-in-a-Vesta I've seen it hit 3k, I think (GDF, APA, FOMM, APB2). All numbers off the top of my head, mind you, might be off a bit.
Can't enter the tribble server myself, despite numerous zen purchases, but if this works out to a 33% boost for my sci's (and potentially quirky engineers), that'd be nice.
As for the reverse repel, yeah, if that was LESS than it is now, that'd be way weird. I guess I'll just have to wait and see, though.
Edit: and well, the debuff stacking mesh weavers, they pretend to be 4 extra cmdr tac slots. Not all of us are blessed with those :P
I think most of the proponents of homogenization don't even realize that's what they're pushing the game towards. They truly believe that making the 3 classes more specialized will somehow make players want to roll more scis. That's really flawed thinking, people like to pew pew above all else. Its not hard to figure out tbh, why is it that in most trinity games there's ALWAYS a lack of tanks and healers? And why so may tanks and healers only play those roles for the good of their group of friends? Actual dedicated only healers and tank players are incredibly rare.
I am one of those rare people and I enjoy being a healer!
(background on one of my captains)
I played an engineering captain in a science ship and on a ESTF I was able to heal teammates and when the cube focused on me, keep myself alive!
For me the disadvantages are that when I go into an ESTF it becomes very difficult to destroy things, pile in a weak group it is very hard to complete and makes the experience really bad. Taking in a header also feels like a massive letdown on the group (with plasma sets/weapons + borg set it's not too bad), you are required to do damage to complete it quickly (within the 15 mins).
If we go down the balancing route and do have a healer, there needs to be some way to turn that into an advantage and so it is viable. For example, -attacking +defense/healing on myself and on the "protected ship" (think like extend shields) +weapons damage +shields/hull or even on the enemy attacking ship -accuracy -weapon damage.
For me the disadvantages are that when I go into an ESTF it becomes very difficult to destroy things, pile in a weak group it is very hard to complete and makes the experience really bad. Taking in a header also feels like a massive letdown on the group (with plasma sets/weapons + borg set it's not too bad), you are required to do damage to complete it quickly (within the 15 mins).
I quite enjoy playing the healer role when I do play it. Mine is practically a zombie itself and should it be healing someone else that person becomes a better tank than the healboat itself. Although I don't have much problem dealing damage in pve even using my pvp healboat build, I just swap my power levels from balanced shields/aux to max weapons and 50 aux so my beams do damage and use my APD as a weapon casting upon allies under fire rather than a defensive skill for allies as I do in pvp.
I think in pve I still get as high as 2 or 3k DPS rather than my main cruiser's 7 to 8k DPS.
You should know that way back in the day, when Crypit would tell us stuff about their design philosophy they clearly stated that they wanted people to "explore" the skill and various systems, and that they had made the tooltips vague and inintuitive on purpose so that players wouldn't just figure out the best numeric values for stuff and use only that. One obvious interpretation of that is that they WANTED some builds to be gimped and players not notice.... yeah, I ain't kidding.
Not news to me. You can still see ambiguity written all over the skills. Like where it gives 'examples'. Regardless of our interpretations, when I said face value I implored the pragmatism of working skills only.
However exotic damage should be lowered by 50% across the board
And science characters should get a Trait/Buff of abut 200% to exotic damage
This would put a science character in charge of science ships and not Tacs
Think I agree with Jellico here (more or less; not sure the damage reduction is necessary myself). The problem has never really been tac abilities, they were just what highlighted it. The real problem is that there is no reason for sci captains to fly sci ships; not that there is a reason for tac captains to do so.
I think most of us are distrustful of a proper fix and that concern is warranted but it's not really all that complex to me:
Linked skills:
To be a successful tac(and for this purpose we'll choose a pure dps build), you'll have to wrap your mind around how you'll want to finish off your targets and what skills/gear you'll want to augment that. I know a lot of people think it's brainless but it's just as fine tuned as a sci/sci. The only difference is that tacs aren't gimped for what and how they do what they do.
Leaving weapons out of the equation, we'll focus purely on skills and why linked skills will continue to give tac captains exactly what they need without nerfing or dramatically changing what current bridge officer skills offer.
So we'll visit Attack Pattern Omega. If linked skills existed for tac captains he or she would need to consider their desirable results:
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX/ Maneuvers Attack Patterns
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX\ Weapons Training
(So leaving out any of the attack pattern immunities, it grants a weapon buff/resistance buff and you end up with more turn rate than ya know what to do with.
So for this example if a tac captain only had 2/3rds (6 pts devoted to the skill) of meaneuvers, it's zippy turn rate would be 1/3rd less effective. Same scale of understanding for weapons training. If the tac captain wants to use attack patterns for their build, they'll have to keep the other two in mind. This forces the tac captain to seriously consider spec for all 3 for ultimate results when in use of this skill)
We already know that sci skills are linked. I don't see a need to change that in the slightest. The problem are the artificial shelves that have been placed against the overall ability.
So we'll visit Photonic Shockwave. It already works on this scale:
(We know all three fields work in tandem and yet the results are dismal.)
So what does this mean and how does it tie into the big picture? Well linked skills provide augmentation, selectivity and give an overall wide variety of combinations and playstyles. For this I'll use loose examples to the effect it implies.
A grab 'n hold/DPS build will likely want saturation in most of the tactical skills while reaching into sci for graviton generators. Most tacs however will usually have shield performance and emitters maxed. In order to gain insulators or anything beyond they'd have to start sacrificing points from engineering and that could come at a terrible price; fragility/core power levels/weapon power.
So here we reach the point of fear with Attack Pattern Alpha. Does this tac want the all powerful gravity well? Under linked skills, without any of the devs recent augmentations, a complexity of issues arrive. In order to do so they'll need to also spec into particle generators, devote some console space, time their APA to enact during said process, AND consideration of the deflector. It'd be a lot of sacrifice into engineering and the more iconic ship classes that deliver that firepower.
In effect this makes the feat harder to accomplish and returns the power sci captains need. This even begins to give engineering captains more reach into their builds as well.
(Note: The points allocation is on a depreciating scale. But for the purpose of linked skills rough examples were given)
I am one of those rare people and I enjoy being a healer!
(background on one of my captains)
I played an engineering captain in a science ship and on a ESTF I was able to heal teammates and when the cube focused on me, keep myself alive!
For me the disadvantages are that when I go into an ESTF it becomes very difficult to destroy things, pile in a weak group it is very hard to complete and makes the experience really bad. Taking in a header also feels like a massive letdown on the group (with plasma sets/weapons + borg set it's not too bad), you are required to do damage to complete it quickly (within the 15 mins).
If we go down the balancing route and do have a healer, there needs to be some way to turn that into an advantage and so it is viable. For example, -attacking +defense/healing on myself and on the "protected ship" (think like extend shields) +weapons damage +shields/hull or even on the enemy attacking ship -accuracy -weapon damage.
You sir, are a rare thing. I know of almost nobody that actually likes the healer role, because by yourself, you're useless (no offense). That's why the majority of ships are hybrid healer/killers. I run a FACR and an Odyssey that can heal themselves til the enemy is blue in the face, and can deal a ton of damage as well. And they are also quite capable of maintaining a good 7k DPS minimum while still healing my team.
Granted if I went for full damage, I would increase my DPS up to around 9k easily, but my heals would all become self heals. But I applaud you sir, for not many have the gonads to go pure healer outside of PvP.
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the reason sci in pvp is preferred is because of the ability to strip your opponents buffs (apo, apa, etc)?
question if tactical "captain" ability could only buff weapon damage, but boff damage boosts such as apo were left as is since any class has access to those depending on ship boff seating would that help?
sci damage abilities could be boosted a little and have the CD shortened.
Engy still need some better damage dealing options that Ewp, acetone beam, and dem.
Its been a very long time since new boff powers were added and I personally hope we get some new skills if just to give us more variety in useful builds.
but that would probably require a lot of dev time to come up with some new skills and balance everything.
I think that tactical buffs should just buff tactical things, it is ridiculous that a tac can buff science to do more damage than a science captain can. And the whole "conservation of energy" trait argument requires that you be taking energy damage on a regular basis to stack up and keep it up, it's a unknown chance that energy weapon fire will grant conservation of energy, so it is by no means a guaranteed better up time than attack pattern alpha.
Additionally, if they actually are taking attack pattern alpha and or go down fighting being used to buff science and engineering skills into account when balancing them, that may be exactly why science and engineer captains are so lack luster. A tac should not be able to buff warp plasma or aceton beam or directed energy modulation to do more damage than an engineer captain. A tac should not be able to buff gravity well or any other science attack power to do more damage/have greater effect than a sci captain.
I don't say this as someone who doesn't have and use a tac or who doesn't want to use a tac, my three mains (one for each faction) is a tac, why? Because as everyone else has said, the tac is basically the best captain for every ship. When I started this game, I started as an engineer until I realized that tacs were blowing through everything while I was just putting along, so I switched, and didn't bother making any more engineers and only made one more science for the hell of trying it out, but, again, aside from the pvp use of subnuke beam and some pretty good defensive buffs, it's still almost always more useful to blow things up as quickly as possible than to be able to survive like a champ. Typically survive like a champ=not doing enough damage to hold agro, so not tanking, or in pvp, people give up on trying to kill you and then pretty much ignore you, so unless you can switch to epic damage or super heals, you're not going to be doing much good for your team being able to tank.
This, as discussed before, has been the woeful reality for healers and tanks in other games, every party only typically needs one tank and one healer, and if the damage dealers are good enough, they may not even need a tank or healer. I remember playing other mmo's with a trinity and seeing, and being, a healer or tank sitting around waiting for someone to pick me PUHLEASE! to join a party. Why? in a party of eight, you need 6 damage dealers and typically on one healer and a tank... though many times if the healer was good enough, no tank was needed either, or if the tank was good enough, the healer was dead weight.
So no, I don't want those mechanics applied to STO, I want each ship to be balanced so that they can all do about the same amount of damage, all things considered, tank about as well, heal about as well, etc. A crusier and an escort can have the same tactical weapon damage without being unbalanced if a crusier hull/shield tanks and an escort speed/maneuverability/evasion tanks. Science wouldn't be as high in tac damage output but would make up for it with the additional damage from science skills and would be a hybrid in the defense department between meaty shields and decent maneuverability/evasion.
Also, as has been said by others, if all non-tac skills get a boost from not being tac buffable, it makes these skills better for everyone else and ultimately doesn't detract from tacs using the skills at all... so what's not to love? Except those tacs who want to keep their position firmly at the top of the totem pole...
I am very tired of this particular debate those on the tact favored side won't admit that with tac skills not buffing sci gravity well could be brought to a level that its useful for all 3 if a tact was in a sci ship they can spec the same way a sci would and then be able to buff weapons as well as use the sci spec!
what does that mean well in basic terms it means they will get more dps then a sci can get out of the ship package if they wanted a more tact oriented sci ship well the recon and the vesta would be what they should look at..
basically what bothers me the mots about this debate is the fact that as is if you want damage your only choice is tact there is nothing else.
there was a short time when all three classes were very balanced with each other engineers got left in the dust in the weapons power change.science left back in the unwarranted nerf to our skills to avoid superbuffed tacts in sci ships
and that goes for all damage skills that are in the engineering and science departments bring us universal useability no excuse accepted!
recently cruisers got some bite back but mainly as a tact captain science if aiming for dps is a tact captain...do we realy want to continue down the road where the only choice is tact?that gets pretty boring fast.
TLDR:
if the science skills were normalized and not buffed by tact skills EVERYONE could use them effectivly not just tact captains science speced in science ships.
currently i am happy with the fix to gravity wells pull.But its bite isnt there for me why? Because it cant be put back to a higher damage number until tactical skills don't buff it.
The reason this happens is because of one thing only:
APO, APA, and TF buff ALL outgoing damage. Not just energy and kinetic, but ALL (this ends up including exotic, not sure if by accident or WaD).
Now if this was rectified to include ONLY energy and kinetic damage, and NOT exotic damage, then that would fix this whole thing and end this debate here and now.
Buuut that's not going to happen.
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
The reason this happens is because of one thing only:
APO, APA, and TF buff ALL outgoing damage. Not just energy and kinetic, but ALL (this ends up including exotic, not sure if by accident or WaD).
Now if this was rectified to include ONLY energy and kinetic damage, and NOT exotic damage, then that would fix this whole thing and end this debate here and now.
Buuut that's not going to happen.
and one reason why it won't change is because gecko is in denial that there is any issue with the class balancing as such. i would like it if he realy took a look at the way the game is played now by actual players and not just the numbers he sees in his back room.
With 256 points of PtG, some fancy flying and 3 stacks of Joule's Law, TBR2 will tear a BoP or Defiant in half with hull ticks of 3-4k damage per second and that's through shields.
The same number of PtG makes your FBP hit as hard too.
Lastly, if you coordinate with an escort, that ptg stat + PSW3 on bare hull can hit for 40k damage. Even if the shields are up, if you got the doffs or the Aux2batt running, that's still 4000 damage to the shields, enough to cripple the facing it hits. And the target is also stunned.
If you insist on forcing GW and TR to dps when the coefficient is so terrible, Sci damage will suck. But if you're using the ones that have great coefficients, then it really racks up.
Not like pointing and shooting a DHC you say? Actually, no. Its impossible to do good damage just pointing and shooting in PVP. You need to somehow stop the target otherwise enough misses for the escort to live before flying out of range. Even Accx3 won't guarantee a hit against a speeding JHAS or RiCov. You need EWP, tractors, TargSubEng, Danubes, you get the picture.
You need to set up the kill as much as Science does. And you need to be using the right tools, just like Science.
But if you insist on using GW on a SV for dps, then its just like BAs on a scort, using the wrong tool for the job.
"Last Engage! Magical Girl Origami-san" is in print! Now with three times more rainbows.
The reason this happens is because of one thing only:
APO, APA, and TF buff ALL outgoing damage. Not just energy and kinetic, but ALL (this ends up including exotic, not sure if by accident or WaD).
Now if this was rectified to include ONLY energy and kinetic damage, and NOT exotic damage, then that would fix this whole thing and end this debate here and now.
Buuut that's not going to happen.
How does that help scis? Clearly this whole thing is aobut scis wanting to do more damage so how does preventing them from getting more buffs help them? My sci uses APO just as well as anyone else, so I just don't understand why there's so much misplaced anger (not from you, from a lot of scis though, they're clearly ticked off) to tac boff abilities that they should be taking themselves to begin with.
Actually this topic was made because Bort mentioned they were weighing up the pros and cons of this and it was derailing the gravity well or tykens rift feedback thread.
Also Khayuung, pretend that most people are not PvPing and have to do tasks on their own for at least some of the missions for efficiency. A good example is KASE where you split with 1 person taking out a cube and transformer each while one person is the probe killer.
Unfortunately things have shields and while there are drains to make them effective you need to buff up on FlwC which then makes your PSW poor. The problems for sci is it's buff by the skill points from consoles to an equal if not more degree and you can only buff one aspect out of 5 by my counting. This ends up making mixing and matching abilities for good effectiveness much harder if not almost impossible outside of very one dimensional builds.
I mean if you could strip a shield with Tractor and Tachyon then detonate a PSW you'd be about on par with how other classes can damage, though your options for that damage are more limited and would require timing and using abilities in a certain order and positioning etc.
At the end of the day a lot of people I've seen do not have science captains and far less captains I see lying science ships (though that changed recently with GW and TR changes) and whether anyone likes it or not that is detrimental to the game both in selling ships, lockbox stuff and in gameplay. Likewise I thing engineering captain abilities do need a little extra jazz as subsystem power is given out like candy.
Also Khayuung, pretend that most people are not PvPing and have to do tasks on their own for at least some of the missions for efficiency. A good example is KASE where you split with 1 person taking out a cube and transformer each while one person is the probe killer.
I think this highights part of the problem, Some players want fully buffed/powered/specced sci abilities to be as lethal as actual weapons.
This is not likely to happen. Reason being that any CC that also does comparable damage to weapons becomes the new weapon. Sci vessels still have 6 weapon slots, just enough to run 5 beams + the rom beam for power efficiency. that leaves more than enough juice to power any sci abilities should the player choose to not go around with max power to shields. Is that the real issue though? That powering both weapons and sci abilities results in less than max power to shields? If you want to do lots of damage and have powerful CC some choices have to be made, power shields or aux?
My sci uses APO just as well as anyone else, so I just don't understand why there's so much misplaced anger (not from you, from a lot of scis though, they're clearly ticked off) to tac boff abilities that they should be taking themselves to begin with.
It's not about the tac boff powers, as you mentioned those are (for the most part) universal. the problem is with with how tactical captain buffs affect science skills. While i disagree this connection should be outright removed, I do agree with those who say that tac captain buffs should be limited to base stats and that skill modifiers (Particle gens, aux power, etc) should have far greater effect meaning that while a tac will gain a damage bonus over a same spec sci, if a sci specs in they will gain greater benefit than a tac who doesn't in all manners.
Yeah I get about 8-10k out of my wells and it's more useful with the GW and tykens changes.
The problem is when the stick by which everything is measured is how fast you destroy enemies then that's where people want it improving. What I really want is for offensive/debuff science abilities to be as flexible and help complete missions in the same manner as tactical abilities are.
I mean there are very few missions where I would ever have to switch what weapons I'm using or abilities. Where as if I had a load of drains and there were lots of structures...oh now I have to switch all my boffs, switch out my doffs etc for that as drains are not really gonna do anything.
Couple that with the frankly insane resistances some enemies have to some abilities lik scramble sensors and VM and you're starting to get into the territory of abilities that are becoming under used in PvE which is very bad. Also once again confusing enemies might help if there was heavy pressure damage but there isn't, players either lol or get one shot.
Science fairs a lot better in PvP I believe but when you're stood there with 20k+ builds capable of roflstomping everything then come to the science and go...um...er...well I could stack this that the other and get something decent...ah nvm my team killed it already. That or they came over and finished the job for you because you just can't help complete the objective.
There's a lot of problems with science, most of it is a sort of stacking of problems, nerfs, buffing, not buffing balancing, missions and some player stubbornness to learn.
Yeah I get about 8-10k out of my wells and it's more useful with the GW and tykens changes.
The problem is when the stick by which everything is measured is how fast you destroy enemies then that's where people want it improving. What I really want is for offensive/debuff science abilities to be as flexible and help complete missions in the same manner as tactical abilities are.
I mean there are very few missions where I would ever have to switch what weapons I'm using or abilities. Where as if I had a load of drains and there were lots of structures...oh now I have to switch all my boffs, switch out my doffs etc for that as drains are not really gonna do anything.
Couple that with the frankly insane resistances some enemies have to some abilities lik scramble sensors and VM and you're starting to get into the territory of abilities that are becoming under used in PvE which is very bad. Also once again confusing enemies might help if there was heavy pressure damage but there isn't, players either lol or get one shot.
Science fairs a lot better in PvP I believe but when you're stood there with 20k+ builds capable of roflstomping everything then come to the science and go...um...er...well I could stack this that the other and get something decent...ah nvm my team killed it already. That or they came over and finished the job for you because you just can't help complete the objective.
There's a lot of problems with science, most of it is a sort of stacking of problems, nerfs, buffing, not buffing balancing, missions and some player stubbornness to learn.
Completely valid. Most of my experience has been tactical in the handful of years. You can slot most if not almost all of the tac skills and have a wide variety of DPS related build options, yet with Sci, it's more pick and choose pro and cons.
I actually don't mind thinking about how my sci builds will work because that's part of the fun for me. It's just wildly disappointing when specific planning is met with some burried nerf I never realized existed along the way and you end up waffling in combat just like lame stream media while everybody is watching and you just end up getting all your facts completely wrong.
To me, it feels like the the devs have been so resistant in the past to change how you can maximize DPS because the greenhorn players might try out the game and think, geez I already suck or in general may seem too difficult to achieve results. I get that albeit they'd likely wouldn't relay that sentiment without a worthy reason to do so. At least that is the most logical sense I can make of it.
That's why linked skill would work. As a tac, I'd be more than happy to pick and choose which skills would augment my ship the best with the same results. I would likely have to stick with emitters/performance in the sci fields and dare only reach into the sci realm at the loss of maybe one or two eng skills/performance thereof but it creates a more pragmatic approach to builds all together.
Interesting subject. I've noticed with MMOs that they all start off with good intentions about defined roles, and that role definition usually sticks to some extent with PvP (PvP meta is usually more balanced, team-wise), but it soon goes out the window in PvE. The main problem I think is really just the relative stupidity and lack of surprise with AI. Many casual players would probably whine if PvE is unpredictable and tricky, and requires teamwork; also solo PvE for a casual player with a damage-gimped class is no fun to grind through - unless you're a really dedicated healer/tank type (in which case you should have an opportunity to level by teaming mostly). And presumably there's never enough opportunity to invest time in making PvE interesting enough anyway.
So eventually ... damage is king. Always, always, always.
Given that, I don't see why the "classes" shouldn't be equally capable of high damage, if specced for it, and doing it in different "flavours".
I'm in two minds about the OP - on the one hand, using APB1 or ABD1 are effective ways I can help my own overall damage as Sci/Sci. But on the other hand, if Tac captains can use their AP abilities even better than I can, and exploit it, that's obviously a balance problem for the game.
If it's true that this was the cause of the big Sci nerf, to tone down Sci abilities so that Tac captains couldn't maximize their use, then that seems absolutely the wrong way to go about balancing it. But it was probably cost-effective at the time, I guess. These things take time to implement, and dev have to make their own cost/benefit calculations.
I wonder if it should be like this:-
Lore-wise, if you're a Tac captain in a Sci ship, you ought theoretically to be able to get somewhat "more out of" the fewer Tac BOFF slots that are on that Sci ship, than a Sci captain would, but less out of the many Sci BOFF slots on that ship, than a Sci captain could, since that's not your speciality. IOW, you are able to "inspire" the BOFFs of your class, so they perform a bit better on an unfamiliar ship, but you aren't quite simpatico with the BOFFs not of your class, so they perform substantially less well than they would do if they had their class of Captain captaining them on an unfamiliar ship.
So effectively, your Tac Lt BOFF's APB1 would become upgraded to an effective APB1 + 1/2, but your Sci Cmdr BOFF's Tyken's Rift III would be automatically downgraded to an effective Tyken's Rift I + 1/2. i.e., you could not get an effective II or III level ability on a Sci ship like a Sci captain could.
The net result would be that flying another ship class would give you more BOFF slots to play with of the classes that you aren't, which would be a change in flavour from flying your normal type of ship. You would have a slight advantage in the BOFF stations of your class relative to a captain of that ship's class in that ship, but a notable disadvantage in the BOFF stations of the ship's class, relative to a captain of that ship's class in that ship.
That way, your personal Tac abilities would not be buffing the damage of II and III Sci abilties, but only I and II say.
But I guess something like this would be too difficult to implement, otherwise they'd have done it already.
My two cents here is that its a good thing that tatical abilities buff any abilitie that inflicts damage. As a sci-sci myself, I don't feel any panic in the idea. I do a lot of exotic damage in my wells, and I know I could do more if I were a tac captain, but I also know that my high damage is a pressure-spam residual from high CC, and I get more kills thanks to that + subnuke and my scan that I'd get with an Alpha Pattern, cause in any case or very rarely it's about spike.
To get high (and I mean high at its best) sci damage you usually sacrifice your weapon power, so you actually don't get high damage from your weapons along with your sci-damage, or you just go for a torp boat to use all your energy reserve to your aux, and we all know torps arent anything like energy weapons to do damage in most cases.
That's for PVP at least. For PVE tac-sci can be fun and useful, and I have the opinion that limiting any combo that can be fun and useful at the same time in PVE is a waste...
Edit: Oh and an important side is that there's not an inverse application cause the game is not ballanced, and while all tac captain abilities are useful, only half of sci captain abilities are, and none of engie captain abilities are useful at all, at least in comparsion. If there was any ballance -just dreaming-, engie capt would buff escorts giving em more engine power and higher proc chance to put an example, and scies would buff weapons abilites as well like adding draining to the target or maybe adding an aoe debuff in the weapon impact radious, to put another example...
How does that help scis? Clearly this whole thing is aobut scis wanting to do more damage so how does preventing them from getting more buffs help them? My sci uses APO just as well as anyone else, so I just don't understand why there's so much misplaced anger (not from you, from a lot of scis though, they're clearly ticked off) to tac boff abilities that they should be taking themselves to begin with.
I wasn't trying to help scis persay. I was merely offering a suggestion as to what would fix all this complaining about how tac BOff and tac captain powers are buffing sci damage, when ideally the two should be very VERY separate. I mean in all honesty, an attack pattern should not affect an artificial singularity. Just like an attack pattern shouldn't affect a subspace rift, and so on and so forth.
In all honesty, I am in the camp that says tac powers should affect weapons only, and not exotic damage, and exotic damage should be completely separated from all other sources of damage. But seeing as this won't happen, the only recourse is simply to facepalm at the fact that this is the case, and then abuse it to it's fullest (in all honesty, there is nothing more amusing than hitting something with a GW3 backed by 5 mk XII purple prtg with 99 in prtg skill, the full reman set, and an apa3 and tf2. the tics hit somewhere around 6-7k, and when the aftershocks appear... it's just gravy at that point).
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
Comments
Where did you get any guarantee of that?
Regarding the tribble GW "boost"
You need to test it yourself, my results were far less than stellar. It feels like a nerf to the cc ability with an extremely small uptick to the damage of the commander ability, while lowering the damage of the lt and ltcomm versions. overall you will be able to do less damage with the ability in a chained sequence (GW3 followed up by GW2 for example)
The "reverse repel" as borticus seems to describe it, has lost a lot of its potency as well.
Fleet Admiral Rylana - Fed Tac - U.S.S Wild Card - Tactical Miracle Worker Cruiser
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I can only assume that means the discussion is situated within a larger discourse on sci damage skills, and, consequently, assume good faith and the intention to not make such a change half-bummed.
Sure, the cynical position would be to assume that it would be a nerf without offering fixes/buffs, but I'm going to go and be positive on this one. I think some good stuff's been done lately, and that's restored some of my optimism - go ahead and call me a fool :P
After hearing some of the stories about what Cryptic/PWE has done in the past regarding game balance and mechanics, id be more inclined to believe the current tribble GW and tykens changes are all we would get as far as a balance pass for a very long time, regardless of any changes to attack pattern alpha.
Fleet Admiral Rylana - Fed Tac - U.S.S Wild Card - Tactical Miracle Worker Cruiser
Lifetime Subscriber since 2012 == 17,200 Accolades = RIP PvP and Vice Squad
Chief of Starfleet Intelligence Service == Praise Cheesus
No i dont agree
However exotic damage should be lowered by 50% across the board
And science characters should get a Trait/Buff of abut 200% to exotic damage
This would put a science character in charge of science ships and not Tacs
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
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"From what is said by the devs and hinted at it is worth mentioning that it looks like the plan is to normalise the damage from gravity well/tykens rift for all classes or at least bring them all into a similar range. This would then allow for the devs to increase the damage to a value they feel is more acceptable. The idea being that if the interaction was throwing the numbers off too much you're rewarded with a more damaging gravity well in general for all classes."
I will also show some tests I did on GW in tribble.
With my sci at 130 aux, 112 PrtG and with 4 Elite Mesh weavers (beta 3 x4), sensor scan and 3 stacks of conservation of energy I did this:
[4:52] [Combat (Self)] Your Gravity Well III deals 4993 (1927) Kinetic Damage to Tholian Recluse.
I then did the same test but did not use my mesh weavers to put APB3 x4 on the target and got this on average.
[5:27] [Combat (Self)] Your Gravity Well III deals 2036 Kinetic Damage to Tholian Recluse.
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.
With similar premisses, except with PrtG at around 150-160, I think my GW3 currently ticks at around 1400-1500, generally. On my sci, that is. Tac-in-a-Vesta I've seen it hit 3k, I think (GDF, APA, FOMM, APB2). All numbers off the top of my head, mind you, might be off a bit.
Can't enter the tribble server myself, despite numerous zen purchases, but if this works out to a 33% boost for my sci's (and potentially quirky engineers), that'd be nice.
As for the reverse repel, yeah, if that was LESS than it is now, that'd be way weird. I guess I'll just have to wait and see, though.
Edit: and well, the debuff stacking mesh weavers, they pretend to be 4 extra cmdr tac slots. Not all of us are blessed with those :P
I am one of those rare people and I enjoy being a healer!
(background on one of my captains)
I played an engineering captain in a science ship and on a ESTF I was able to heal teammates and when the cube focused on me, keep myself alive!
For me the disadvantages are that when I go into an ESTF it becomes very difficult to destroy things, pile in a weak group it is very hard to complete and makes the experience really bad. Taking in a header also feels like a massive letdown on the group (with plasma sets/weapons + borg set it's not too bad), you are required to do damage to complete it quickly (within the 15 mins).
If we go down the balancing route and do have a healer, there needs to be some way to turn that into an advantage and so it is viable. For example, -attacking +defense/healing on myself and on the "protected ship" (think like extend shields) +weapons damage +shields/hull or even on the enemy attacking ship -accuracy -weapon damage.
I quite enjoy playing the healer role when I do play it. Mine is practically a zombie itself and should it be healing someone else that person becomes a better tank than the healboat itself. Although I don't have much problem dealing damage in pve even using my pvp healboat build, I just swap my power levels from balanced shields/aux to max weapons and 50 aux so my beams do damage and use my APD as a weapon casting upon allies under fire rather than a defensive skill for allies as I do in pvp.
I think in pve I still get as high as 2 or 3k DPS rather than my main cruiser's 7 to 8k DPS.
Not news to me. You can still see ambiguity written all over the skills. Like where it gives 'examples'. Regardless of our interpretations, when I said face value I implored the pragmatism of working skills only.
Think I agree with Jellico here (more or less; not sure the damage reduction is necessary myself). The problem has never really been tac abilities, they were just what highlighted it. The real problem is that there is no reason for sci captains to fly sci ships; not that there is a reason for tac captains to do so.
Linked skills:
To be a successful tac(and for this purpose we'll choose a pure dps build), you'll have to wrap your mind around how you'll want to finish off your targets and what skills/gear you'll want to augment that. I know a lot of people think it's brainless but it's just as fine tuned as a sci/sci. The only difference is that tacs aren't gimped for what and how they do what they do.
Leaving weapons out of the equation, we'll focus purely on skills and why linked skills will continue to give tac captains exactly what they need without nerfing or dramatically changing what current bridge officer skills offer.
So we'll visit Attack Pattern Omega. If linked skills existed for tac captains he or she would need to consider their desirable results:
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX/ Maneuvers
Attack Patterns
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX\ Weapons Training
(So leaving out any of the attack pattern immunities, it grants a weapon buff/resistance buff and you end up with more turn rate than ya know what to do with.
So for this example if a tac captain only had 2/3rds (6 pts devoted to the skill) of meaneuvers, it's zippy turn rate would be 1/3rd less effective. Same scale of understanding for weapons training. If the tac captain wants to use attack patterns for their build, they'll have to keep the other two in mind. This forces the tac captain to seriously consider spec for all 3 for ultimate results when in use of this skill)
We already know that sci skills are linked. I don't see a need to change that in the slightest. The problem are the artificial shelves that have been placed against the overall ability.
So we'll visit Photonic Shockwave. It already works on this scale:
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX/ Graviton Generators
Subspace Decompiler
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX\ Particle Generators
(We know all three fields work in tandem and yet the results are dismal.)
So what does this mean and how does it tie into the big picture? Well linked skills provide augmentation, selectivity and give an overall wide variety of combinations and playstyles. For this I'll use loose examples to the effect it implies.
A grab 'n hold/DPS build will likely want saturation in most of the tactical skills while reaching into sci for graviton generators. Most tacs however will usually have shield performance and emitters maxed. In order to gain insulators or anything beyond they'd have to start sacrificing points from engineering and that could come at a terrible price; fragility/core power levels/weapon power.
So here we reach the point of fear with Attack Pattern Alpha. Does this tac want the all powerful gravity well? Under linked skills, without any of the devs recent augmentations, a complexity of issues arrive. In order to do so they'll need to also spec into particle generators, devote some console space, time their APA to enact during said process, AND consideration of the deflector. It'd be a lot of sacrifice into engineering and the more iconic ship classes that deliver that firepower.
In effect this makes the feat harder to accomplish and returns the power sci captains need. This even begins to give engineering captains more reach into their builds as well.
(Note: The points allocation is on a depreciating scale. But for the purpose of linked skills rough examples were given)
You sir, are a rare thing. I know of almost nobody that actually likes the healer role, because by yourself, you're useless (no offense). That's why the majority of ships are hybrid healer/killers. I run a FACR and an Odyssey that can heal themselves til the enemy is blue in the face, and can deal a ton of damage as well. And they are also quite capable of maintaining a good 7k DPS minimum while still healing my team.
Granted if I went for full damage, I would increase my DPS up to around 9k easily, but my heals would all become self heals. But I applaud you sir, for not many have the gonads to go pure healer outside of PvP.
question if tactical "captain" ability could only buff weapon damage, but boff damage boosts such as apo were left as is since any class has access to those depending on ship boff seating would that help?
sci damage abilities could be boosted a little and have the CD shortened.
Engy still need some better damage dealing options that Ewp, acetone beam, and dem.
Its been a very long time since new boff powers were added and I personally hope we get some new skills if just to give us more variety in useful builds.
but that would probably require a lot of dev time to come up with some new skills and balance everything.
forgive the spelling errors stupid auto-correct
Additionally, if they actually are taking attack pattern alpha and or go down fighting being used to buff science and engineering skills into account when balancing them, that may be exactly why science and engineer captains are so lack luster. A tac should not be able to buff warp plasma or aceton beam or directed energy modulation to do more damage than an engineer captain. A tac should not be able to buff gravity well or any other science attack power to do more damage/have greater effect than a sci captain.
I don't say this as someone who doesn't have and use a tac or who doesn't want to use a tac, my three mains (one for each faction) is a tac, why? Because as everyone else has said, the tac is basically the best captain for every ship. When I started this game, I started as an engineer until I realized that tacs were blowing through everything while I was just putting along, so I switched, and didn't bother making any more engineers and only made one more science for the hell of trying it out, but, again, aside from the pvp use of subnuke beam and some pretty good defensive buffs, it's still almost always more useful to blow things up as quickly as possible than to be able to survive like a champ. Typically survive like a champ=not doing enough damage to hold agro, so not tanking, or in pvp, people give up on trying to kill you and then pretty much ignore you, so unless you can switch to epic damage or super heals, you're not going to be doing much good for your team being able to tank.
This, as discussed before, has been the woeful reality for healers and tanks in other games, every party only typically needs one tank and one healer, and if the damage dealers are good enough, they may not even need a tank or healer. I remember playing other mmo's with a trinity and seeing, and being, a healer or tank sitting around waiting for someone to pick me PUHLEASE! to join a party. Why? in a party of eight, you need 6 damage dealers and typically on one healer and a tank... though many times if the healer was good enough, no tank was needed either, or if the tank was good enough, the healer was dead weight.
So no, I don't want those mechanics applied to STO, I want each ship to be balanced so that they can all do about the same amount of damage, all things considered, tank about as well, heal about as well, etc. A crusier and an escort can have the same tactical weapon damage without being unbalanced if a crusier hull/shield tanks and an escort speed/maneuverability/evasion tanks. Science wouldn't be as high in tac damage output but would make up for it with the additional damage from science skills and would be a hybrid in the defense department between meaty shields and decent maneuverability/evasion.
Also, as has been said by others, if all non-tac skills get a boost from not being tac buffable, it makes these skills better for everyone else and ultimately doesn't detract from tacs using the skills at all... so what's not to love? Except those tacs who want to keep their position firmly at the top of the totem pole...
what does that mean well in basic terms it means they will get more dps then a sci can get out of the ship package if they wanted a more tact oriented sci ship well the recon and the vesta would be what they should look at..
basically what bothers me the mots about this debate is the fact that as is if you want damage your only choice is tact there is nothing else.
there was a short time when all three classes were very balanced with each other engineers got left in the dust in the weapons power change.science left back in the unwarranted nerf to our skills to avoid superbuffed tacts in sci ships
and that goes for all damage skills that are in the engineering and science departments bring us universal useability no excuse accepted!
recently cruisers got some bite back but mainly as a tact captain science if aiming for dps is a tact captain...do we realy want to continue down the road where the only choice is tact?that gets pretty boring fast.
TLDR:
if the science skills were normalized and not buffed by tact skills EVERYONE could use them effectivly not just tact captains science speced in science ships.
currently i am happy with the fix to gravity wells pull.But its bite isnt there for me why? Because it cant be put back to a higher damage number until tactical skills don't buff it.
lol, you know 2 + 2 = 4 and is more then 3 ??
So the majority of your toons aren't science !!
Majority science if you average them. :P
APO, APA, and TF buff ALL outgoing damage. Not just energy and kinetic, but ALL (this ends up including exotic, not sure if by accident or WaD).
Now if this was rectified to include ONLY energy and kinetic damage, and NOT exotic damage, then that would fix this whole thing and end this debate here and now.
Buuut that's not going to happen.
and one reason why it won't change is because gecko is in denial that there is any issue with the class balancing as such. i would like it if he realy took a look at the way the game is played now by actual players and not just the numbers he sees in his back room.
The same number of PtG makes your FBP hit as hard too.
Lastly, if you coordinate with an escort, that ptg stat + PSW3 on bare hull can hit for 40k damage. Even if the shields are up, if you got the doffs or the Aux2batt running, that's still 4000 damage to the shields, enough to cripple the facing it hits. And the target is also stunned.
If you insist on forcing GW and TR to dps when the coefficient is so terrible, Sci damage will suck. But if you're using the ones that have great coefficients, then it really racks up.
Not like pointing and shooting a DHC you say? Actually, no. Its impossible to do good damage just pointing and shooting in PVP. You need to somehow stop the target otherwise enough misses for the escort to live before flying out of range. Even Accx3 won't guarantee a hit against a speeding JHAS or RiCov. You need EWP, tractors, TargSubEng, Danubes, you get the picture.
You need to set up the kill as much as Science does. And you need to be using the right tools, just like Science.
But if you insist on using GW on a SV for dps, then its just like BAs on a scort, using the wrong tool for the job.
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How does that help scis? Clearly this whole thing is aobut scis wanting to do more damage so how does preventing them from getting more buffs help them? My sci uses APO just as well as anyone else, so I just don't understand why there's so much misplaced anger (not from you, from a lot of scis though, they're clearly ticked off) to tac boff abilities that they should be taking themselves to begin with.
Also Khayuung, pretend that most people are not PvPing and have to do tasks on their own for at least some of the missions for efficiency. A good example is KASE where you split with 1 person taking out a cube and transformer each while one person is the probe killer.
Unfortunately things have shields and while there are drains to make them effective you need to buff up on FlwC which then makes your PSW poor. The problems for sci is it's buff by the skill points from consoles to an equal if not more degree and you can only buff one aspect out of 5 by my counting. This ends up making mixing and matching abilities for good effectiveness much harder if not almost impossible outside of very one dimensional builds.
I mean if you could strip a shield with Tractor and Tachyon then detonate a PSW you'd be about on par with how other classes can damage, though your options for that damage are more limited and would require timing and using abilities in a certain order and positioning etc.
At the end of the day a lot of people I've seen do not have science captains and far less captains I see lying science ships (though that changed recently with GW and TR changes) and whether anyone likes it or not that is detrimental to the game both in selling ships, lockbox stuff and in gameplay. Likewise I thing engineering captain abilities do need a little extra jazz as subsystem power is given out like candy.
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 think this highights part of the problem, Some players want fully buffed/powered/specced sci abilities to be as lethal as actual weapons.
This is not likely to happen. Reason being that any CC that also does comparable damage to weapons becomes the new weapon. Sci vessels still have 6 weapon slots, just enough to run 5 beams + the rom beam for power efficiency. that leaves more than enough juice to power any sci abilities should the player choose to not go around with max power to shields. Is that the real issue though? That powering both weapons and sci abilities results in less than max power to shields? If you want to do lots of damage and have powerful CC some choices have to be made, power shields or aux?
It's not about the tac boff powers, as you mentioned those are (for the most part) universal. the problem is with with how tactical captain buffs affect science skills. While i disagree this connection should be outright removed, I do agree with those who say that tac captain buffs should be limited to base stats and that skill modifiers (Particle gens, aux power, etc) should have far greater effect meaning that while a tac will gain a damage bonus over a same spec sci, if a sci specs in they will gain greater benefit than a tac who doesn't in all manners.
The problem is when the stick by which everything is measured is how fast you destroy enemies then that's where people want it improving. What I really want is for offensive/debuff science abilities to be as flexible and help complete missions in the same manner as tactical abilities are.
I mean there are very few missions where I would ever have to switch what weapons I'm using or abilities. Where as if I had a load of drains and there were lots of structures...oh now I have to switch all my boffs, switch out my doffs etc for that as drains are not really gonna do anything.
Couple that with the frankly insane resistances some enemies have to some abilities lik scramble sensors and VM and you're starting to get into the territory of abilities that are becoming under used in PvE which is very bad. Also once again confusing enemies might help if there was heavy pressure damage but there isn't, players either lol or get one shot.
Science fairs a lot better in PvP I believe but when you're stood there with 20k+ builds capable of roflstomping everything then come to the science and go...um...er...well I could stack this that the other and get something decent...ah nvm my team killed it already. That or they came over and finished the job for you because you just can't help complete the objective.
There's a lot of problems with science, most of it is a sort of stacking of problems, nerfs, buffing, not buffing balancing, missions and some player stubbornness to learn.
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.
Completely valid. Most of my experience has been tactical in the handful of years. You can slot most if not almost all of the tac skills and have a wide variety of DPS related build options, yet with Sci, it's more pick and choose pro and cons.
I actually don't mind thinking about how my sci builds will work because that's part of the fun for me. It's just wildly disappointing when specific planning is met with some burried nerf I never realized existed along the way and you end up waffling in combat just like lame stream media while everybody is watching and you just end up getting all your facts completely wrong.
To me, it feels like the the devs have been so resistant in the past to change how you can maximize DPS because the greenhorn players might try out the game and think, geez I already suck or in general may seem too difficult to achieve results. I get that albeit they'd likely wouldn't relay that sentiment without a worthy reason to do so. At least that is the most logical sense I can make of it.
That's why linked skill would work. As a tac, I'd be more than happy to pick and choose which skills would augment my ship the best with the same results. I would likely have to stick with emitters/performance in the sci fields and dare only reach into the sci realm at the loss of maybe one or two eng skills/performance thereof but it creates a more pragmatic approach to builds all together.
So eventually ... damage is king. Always, always, always.
Given that, I don't see why the "classes" shouldn't be equally capable of high damage, if specced for it, and doing it in different "flavours".
I'm in two minds about the OP - on the one hand, using APB1 or ABD1 are effective ways I can help my own overall damage as Sci/Sci. But on the other hand, if Tac captains can use their AP abilities even better than I can, and exploit it, that's obviously a balance problem for the game.
If it's true that this was the cause of the big Sci nerf, to tone down Sci abilities so that Tac captains couldn't maximize their use, then that seems absolutely the wrong way to go about balancing it. But it was probably cost-effective at the time, I guess. These things take time to implement, and dev have to make their own cost/benefit calculations.
I wonder if it should be like this:-
Lore-wise, if you're a Tac captain in a Sci ship, you ought theoretically to be able to get somewhat "more out of" the fewer Tac BOFF slots that are on that Sci ship, than a Sci captain would, but less out of the many Sci BOFF slots on that ship, than a Sci captain could, since that's not your speciality. IOW, you are able to "inspire" the BOFFs of your class, so they perform a bit better on an unfamiliar ship, but you aren't quite simpatico with the BOFFs not of your class, so they perform substantially less well than they would do if they had their class of Captain captaining them on an unfamiliar ship.
So effectively, your Tac Lt BOFF's APB1 would become upgraded to an effective APB1 + 1/2, but your Sci Cmdr BOFF's Tyken's Rift III would be automatically downgraded to an effective Tyken's Rift I + 1/2. i.e., you could not get an effective II or III level ability on a Sci ship like a Sci captain could.
The net result would be that flying another ship class would give you more BOFF slots to play with of the classes that you aren't, which would be a change in flavour from flying your normal type of ship. You would have a slight advantage in the BOFF stations of your class relative to a captain of that ship's class in that ship, but a notable disadvantage in the BOFF stations of the ship's class, relative to a captain of that ship's class in that ship.
That way, your personal Tac abilities would not be buffing the damage of II and III Sci abilties, but only I and II say.
But I guess something like this would be too difficult to implement, otherwise they'd have done it already.
To get high (and I mean high at its best) sci damage you usually sacrifice your weapon power, so you actually don't get high damage from your weapons along with your sci-damage, or you just go for a torp boat to use all your energy reserve to your aux, and we all know torps arent anything like energy weapons to do damage in most cases.
That's for PVP at least. For PVE tac-sci can be fun and useful, and I have the opinion that limiting any combo that can be fun and useful at the same time in PVE is a waste...
Edit: Oh and an important side is that there's not an inverse application cause the game is not ballanced, and while all tac captain abilities are useful, only half of sci captain abilities are, and none of engie captain abilities are useful at all, at least in comparsion. If there was any ballance -just dreaming-, engie capt would buff escorts giving em more engine power and higher proc chance to put an example, and scies would buff weapons abilites as well like adding draining to the target or maybe adding an aoe debuff in the weapon impact radious, to put another example...
I wasn't trying to help scis persay. I was merely offering a suggestion as to what would fix all this complaining about how tac BOff and tac captain powers are buffing sci damage, when ideally the two should be very VERY separate. I mean in all honesty, an attack pattern should not affect an artificial singularity. Just like an attack pattern shouldn't affect a subspace rift, and so on and so forth.
In all honesty, I am in the camp that says tac powers should affect weapons only, and not exotic damage, and exotic damage should be completely separated from all other sources of damage. But seeing as this won't happen, the only recourse is simply to facepalm at the fact that this is the case, and then abuse it to it's fullest (in all honesty, there is nothing more amusing than hitting something with a GW3 backed by 5 mk XII purple prtg with 99 in prtg skill, the full reman set, and an apa3 and tf2. the tics hit somewhere around 6-7k, and when the aftershocks appear... it's just gravy at that point).