Playing this Mission a few times now, and can only quote my above/before Posters. It's damn easy, even on elite.
Don't know, let teh Ships dish out more dmg (but not "The Finger" thing the two Uni's do in HSE) and use their abilitys more often,a nd with more power.
Besides that, i have a pure grafical feedback.
How about when Ships are destroyed, they not just explode like in normal space, but will start to drop down to teh ground while exploding. I mean, there must be some sort of Gravity in the Sphere <.<
SalemKane is Seel, still alive and kicking since 2009 Beta Tester Gone throu the Klingon hell and back.
Your One Man solution to Elite STF's.
Well, after getting to play a round or two on elite. The mission itself is fun, but way way to easy.
I think it could be two maned fairly well.
The Voth don't hit hard enough, it was barely noticeable that they even fired. And they also went down to fast.
And no, more ships are not a solution to that. they all will fall before a fire at will beam spam in mere seconds.
I would have to concur with this. Flying an Ark'if retrofit, I did not notice my hull dip below 100% even once until the dreadnought showed up, and even then I don't think I had to heal at all - there was no sense of urgency felt at any point.
I tried it today as well. Even on elite it wasn't too bad. I died on said elite, not realizing that the Super Star Destroyer...I mean Voth Citadel Dreadnought was firing it's giant-death-lasers at me. Aside from that, had no troubles at all.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
Normal is fairly easy, elite isn't all that much Harder.
I've been running this in a Recluse, MK XII borg set, advanced mesh weavers.
Ive noticed that I don't take a lot of damage, if any, with one notable exception, the Dreadnought did something that had me down to 20% of my 64K hull in fairly short order, but it wasn't overly life threatening, I had time to heal back up, it did wipe out all my pets though.
The shuttle part can be utterly locked down by two players with beam arrays if they take up position between were they spawn on the side of the spire. and they can be totally static doing this, you might Consider a bit of evasive maneuvering on the part of the shuttles to make that a bit more challenging, they are attempting to escape after all.
The Engine shut down is a nice addition, it caught me a couple times trying to get to a troop ship. The plasma fires however are, well lets say that I noticed the fire on my ship, not the damage I was taking. So you might look at tweaking the damage output a bit, especially on elite.
The big troops ships towards the end also only come to the same dock every time, which makes them utterly predictable, and you can just park and kill them. They really should pick a random port to try and assault every time.
I tried it today as well. Even on elite it wasn't too bad. I died on said elite, not realizing that the Super Star Destroyer...I mean Voth Citadel Dreadnought was firing it's giant-death-lasers at me. Aside from that, had no troubles at all.
This, pretty much. I think that it needs more telegraphing to know to prepare for it. I found myself trying to hover my mouse cursor over the (oddly flashing) buffs on the ship to try and figure out what was going on... which wasn't much use.
I'm dissappointed in the fact it feels like another Federation blockade helping the freighters get away
Not every imaginative.
On a side note: love the new graphics and the feel of the Spire though
Yeah its a clone of blockade with a different back drop. Sometimes I try to play it off like I'm wrong when trying to have fun into something new but nothing about this is challenging nor does it feel like territory control.
There needs to be more to it though for instance there needs to be some kind of advantages or abiltiies for when you as the allied group control a section of the spire which works in favor of the voth when they own it or either 2 different versions that would make it challenging for the player or npc.
Another aspect I've seen done in many games when it comes to territorial control but for STO it would have to be different based on instancing and so many ppl with so many alts. Something like a leader board for it. Just an example something like it gauging fleet population levels of active players in 1-25 50-100 100-200 300-400 401-500 member fleets where there is a leader board to see how you rank between your fleets weight class in involvement for all the characters tier 5 or more in the rep where based on your ranking you would have some kind of ability or power to invoke in these maps so it wouldn't be a pvp or pve balance issue if its limited to just the leader board content that its tied too in which this kind of thing maybe needed to help set it apart from other parts of the game to give it the feel it needs.
Tried to run Storming the Spire both Normal and Elite, both crashed to the crash report tool. Had no problems with the battlezone. Nor did I have problems with Spire prior to the latest patch.
I found it pretty easy on elite however one thing I think does need changing is how far apart these hangars are. I was in a recluse (I know one of the lowest turners) with 1.5 RCS consoles and it was pretty darn hard to get to where I needed to be and the large distances between docks was a problem. Sure it's not bad in a ship with good turn but even in a cruiser it is a massive penalty to them and even some science ships will have problems I dare say. I'll try it on the wells and see but that has exceptional turn also.
As for the voth themselves, everything died way too easily, the shield thing was a bit of an annoyance but I kept my distance and the photonic ships more or less did little to me.
I think the voth could really do with having tactical team, seriously, it will make their shields distribute for defensive and make tactical debuff spam less exploitable to roflstomp this.
I have attempted to start Storming the Spire in both "Normal" and "Elite" modes, but everytime, after the game starting countdown when the loading screen appears, I have been disconnected. I have tried this multiple times during the last two days, but the result has been the same everytime, I have been disconnected and have to do a safe login in order to get back into the game.
Finally was able to play it without any crashes. Here is what I have to think:
1) The white glare from the atmosphere was blinding, seriously hurt my eyes throughout the event. Was hard focusing on the targets at times, especially fighting the Dreadnought at the end, because of the glare and the special effects.
2) Lacked Clear objectives, wasn't sure what to do at the start or where to position myself. This will surely cause players to conflict with one another.
3) Transports - was rather difficult to take down in a Regent, they completed their drop off before I could finish them off. And there was times they got stuck in the terrain (loading bays) that made it impossible for me to attack them.
And seemed that even with 5 players, nobody could cover each bay, and it resulted with loses.
Federation NPCs was stupid and easily defeated by the Voth Turrets. While Voth Turrets shrugged off Federation turrets even without players attacking. And I have to question why Voth side has two turrets, while the Federation side has one turret.
Really the Federation side NPCs was not any help.
4) Shuttles and Dreadnought - Shuttle was easy to take down, the Dreadnought wasn't a killer but took some punishment (BTW, the new Cruiser Threat did nothing to gain aggro off the escorts in the group).
I have to question the strategy of having shuttles going one way and the dreadnought in the other. Wasn't sure if there was any importance.
All in all, I didn't feel the objectives was clear. And not sure if there was even a capability to fail. And I worry about moochers, this mission is too easy for them to not contribute since they are easily out of sensor range and players easily distracted by the fighting.
And if you haven't noticed, moochers have found ways of working around your new AFK system, so this will happen.
Thank you for fixing it, it works again. I got lucky before it we had the last disconnect bug in it, and got to play with Branflakes in it, and it was fun, even he and I took on the Dreadnaught while the others took on the shuttles. This was what a week ago, so I got to see how it was supposed to work.
Today, I saw, quite honestly, how it shouldn't work. Think the worst ISE pug you've ever been in, and that was how a few of them were today. Total disorganized mess, half the people couldn't fight their way out of a paperbag, let alone take on the Voth.
I say this because at the end of it all, it was practically impossible to lose, and I received the same amount of marks at the end of it as I did when fighting with Branflakes and a group that actually knew what it was doing.
I mean at one point, no one was fighting the dreadnaught, so I went and solo'd it, never got it past 50% health by myself, and we still got credit for killing it. Another I was the only person killing shuttles, while the other four were busy dying to the dreadnaught and failing to kill it, couldn't fail it, same amount of marks.
I'll also agree with the poster above me though. Federation turrets are worthless, they can't even breach the shields of the easy frigate size troop transports, and the Federation troop transports have a bit more health, but won't even touch the voth turrets
One other thing to look at. It seems that the Voth shuttles can only be shot at when you are within 9.75 meters, and not 10 meters. If you try and shoot at them between 9.75 and 10 meters, they'll just flash at you, eventually speed up and leave you behind, but no matter how long you track them between 9.75 and 10 meters they'll just blink at you and you'll never fire on them.
For my fellow players, at the end there are two spots on the map where a ship can sit, and hit half the shuttles that come out. So there is a way for two to kill shuttles and three to attack the dreadnaught.
Did the elite again a few times in my recluse, I still feel utterly un threatened by the voth ships, I got to 80% hull once, and that was fighting the dreadnought.
That being said, the immunity some voth ships have, the size of the zone, and the time crunch involved with some of the objectives leads this to heavily favor high dps ships, escorts, which all the other stfs already favor.
Carrier pets really need to be sped up, its very telling here were a carrier is typically having to drag its pets from target to target in rapid order, recall isn't working because by the time it kicks in, you've arrived at the net spot, and need the pets to start dps, only they are still way back over yonder.
Possible fixes could be to have optionals for engineers, sci, and tac officers. Such as sci gaining control over the voth turrets, instead of destroying them. Engineers being able to beef up the allied turrets, tacs being able to plant charges for troops ships. Something so that the basic tactic dosnt just become being the most maneuverable ships possible, escorts, to deal with the invuln shields, and win through raw dps.
As it stands the invuln abilities, and shield facing trick, plus the ward ships, are not bad ideas, and do add something, however they penalize ships with lower dps, or captains with more support functions.
As far as bugs go, the voth troop ships on the far left hanger, not sure if this affects any other hanger, have a tendency to park up inside the hanger, making them impossible to target or attack except from a very narrow area directly in front of the hanger. this appears to be something with were the script is deciding the stop point of the voth troop ship is, a bit too far into the hanger instead of at the landing pad.
The shuttles are still way to easy for two people to lock down, just park at the right spot with beam arrays and you can lock down two hangers at once. perhaps that's intended though, two people handle shuttles, three the dreadnought.
Had 3 first-timers with us, so the score was not that great.
City Ship has definitely improved...it's tougher. Before it was just a 'keep smashing it with a stick until it pops' routine. Now, it takes a little more effort. And I like that, it was getting boring before... that ship should be the best defended enemy we face in the game, in my mind.
Enemy ship tactics/motion seemed a LOT more stable to me.
Mission has improved considerably, which is important for replay-ability.
Only suggestion I have at this point is possibly a steady escalation of the Escape Pod spawn rate, over time. Slow at first to allow the minimal Player defenders to have a chance, but escalating to put pressure on the City Ship attack squad to hurry up and get back to help. The last minute or two of the mission is overly simple and therefore anticlimactic.
Maybe a stupid question, but why is it "Dreadnought destroyed: 50 of 50" when there is only 1 dreadnought at the end ?
I like the whole look and feel of the Dyson area, including these teamed missions. Personally, I like the size of the dreadnought just the way it is. And if i'm not mistaken, the dreadnought is not a city ship, the one in "The Breach" is. You'r flying through it, that says enough about it's size I would imagine !
Comments
...........its not there..............
Don't know, let teh Ships dish out more dmg (but not "The Finger" thing the two Uni's do in HSE) and use their abilitys more often,a nd with more power.
Besides that, i have a pure grafical feedback.
How about when Ships are destroyed, they not just explode like in normal space, but will start to drop down to teh ground while exploding. I mean, there must be some sort of Gravity in the Sphere <.<
SalemKane is Seel, still alive and kicking since 2009
Beta Tester
Gone throu the Klingon hell and back.
Your One Man solution to Elite STF's.
I would have to concur with this. Flying an Ark'if retrofit, I did not notice my hull dip below 100% even once until the dreadnought showed up, and even then I don't think I had to heal at all - there was no sense of urgency felt at any point.
I've been running this in a Recluse, MK XII borg set, advanced mesh weavers.
Ive noticed that I don't take a lot of damage, if any, with one notable exception, the Dreadnought did something that had me down to 20% of my 64K hull in fairly short order, but it wasn't overly life threatening, I had time to heal back up, it did wipe out all my pets though.
The shuttle part can be utterly locked down by two players with beam arrays if they take up position between were they spawn on the side of the spire. and they can be totally static doing this, you might Consider a bit of evasive maneuvering on the part of the shuttles to make that a bit more challenging, they are attempting to escape after all.
The Engine shut down is a nice addition, it caught me a couple times trying to get to a troop ship. The plasma fires however are, well lets say that I noticed the fire on my ship, not the damage I was taking. So you might look at tweaking the damage output a bit, especially on elite.
The big troops ships towards the end also only come to the same dock every time, which makes them utterly predictable, and you can just park and kill them. They really should pick a random port to try and assault every time.
This, pretty much. I think that it needs more telegraphing to know to prepare for it. I found myself trying to hover my mouse cursor over the (oddly flashing) buffs on the ship to try and figure out what was going on... which wasn't much use.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I'm dissappointed in the fact it feels like another Federation blockade helping the freighters get away
Not every imaginative.
On a side note: love the new graphics and the feel of the Spire though
Yeah its a clone of blockade with a different back drop. Sometimes I try to play it off like I'm wrong when trying to have fun into something new but nothing about this is challenging nor does it feel like territory control.
There needs to be more to it though for instance there needs to be some kind of advantages or abiltiies for when you as the allied group control a section of the spire which works in favor of the voth when they own it or either 2 different versions that would make it challenging for the player or npc.
Another aspect I've seen done in many games when it comes to territorial control but for STO it would have to be different based on instancing and so many ppl with so many alts. Something like a leader board for it. Just an example something like it gauging fleet population levels of active players in 1-25 50-100 100-200 300-400 401-500 member fleets where there is a leader board to see how you rank between your fleets weight class in involvement for all the characters tier 5 or more in the rep where based on your ranking you would have some kind of ability or power to invoke in these maps so it wouldn't be a pvp or pve balance issue if its limited to just the leader board content that its tied too in which this kind of thing maybe needed to help set it apart from other parts of the game to give it the feel it needs.
Relogged on Tribble two more times and when I clicked on my character, it CTDed on those attempts as well.
As for the voth themselves, everything died way too easily, the shield thing was a bit of an annoyance but I kept my distance and the photonic ships more or less did little to me.
I think the voth could really do with having tactical team, seriously, it will make their shields distribute for defensive and make tactical debuff spam less exploitable to roflstomp this.
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.
1) The white glare from the atmosphere was blinding, seriously hurt my eyes throughout the event. Was hard focusing on the targets at times, especially fighting the Dreadnought at the end, because of the glare and the special effects.
2) Lacked Clear objectives, wasn't sure what to do at the start or where to position myself. This will surely cause players to conflict with one another.
3) Transports - was rather difficult to take down in a Regent, they completed their drop off before I could finish them off. And there was times they got stuck in the terrain (loading bays) that made it impossible for me to attack them.
And seemed that even with 5 players, nobody could cover each bay, and it resulted with loses.
Federation NPCs was stupid and easily defeated by the Voth Turrets. While Voth Turrets shrugged off Federation turrets even without players attacking. And I have to question why Voth side has two turrets, while the Federation side has one turret.
Really the Federation side NPCs was not any help.
4) Shuttles and Dreadnought - Shuttle was easy to take down, the Dreadnought wasn't a killer but took some punishment (BTW, the new Cruiser Threat did nothing to gain aggro off the escorts in the group).
I have to question the strategy of having shuttles going one way and the dreadnought in the other. Wasn't sure if there was any importance.
All in all, I didn't feel the objectives was clear. And not sure if there was even a capability to fail. And I worry about moochers, this mission is too easy for them to not contribute since they are easily out of sensor range and players easily distracted by the fighting.
And if you haven't noticed, moochers have found ways of working around your new AFK system, so this will happen.
Today, I saw, quite honestly, how it shouldn't work. Think the worst ISE pug you've ever been in, and that was how a few of them were today. Total disorganized mess, half the people couldn't fight their way out of a paperbag, let alone take on the Voth.
I say this because at the end of it all, it was practically impossible to lose, and I received the same amount of marks at the end of it as I did when fighting with Branflakes and a group that actually knew what it was doing.
I mean at one point, no one was fighting the dreadnaught, so I went and solo'd it, never got it past 50% health by myself, and we still got credit for killing it. Another I was the only person killing shuttles, while the other four were busy dying to the dreadnaught and failing to kill it, couldn't fail it, same amount of marks.
I'll also agree with the poster above me though. Federation turrets are worthless, they can't even breach the shields of the easy frigate size troop transports, and the Federation troop transports have a bit more health, but won't even touch the voth turrets
One other thing to look at. It seems that the Voth shuttles can only be shot at when you are within 9.75 meters, and not 10 meters. If you try and shoot at them between 9.75 and 10 meters, they'll just flash at you, eventually speed up and leave you behind, but no matter how long you track them between 9.75 and 10 meters they'll just blink at you and you'll never fire on them.
For my fellow players, at the end there are two spots on the map where a ship can sit, and hit half the shuttles that come out. So there is a way for two to kill shuttles and three to attack the dreadnaught.
That being said, the immunity some voth ships have, the size of the zone, and the time crunch involved with some of the objectives leads this to heavily favor high dps ships, escorts, which all the other stfs already favor.
Carrier pets really need to be sped up, its very telling here were a carrier is typically having to drag its pets from target to target in rapid order, recall isn't working because by the time it kicks in, you've arrived at the net spot, and need the pets to start dps, only they are still way back over yonder.
Possible fixes could be to have optionals for engineers, sci, and tac officers. Such as sci gaining control over the voth turrets, instead of destroying them. Engineers being able to beef up the allied turrets, tacs being able to plant charges for troops ships. Something so that the basic tactic dosnt just become being the most maneuverable ships possible, escorts, to deal with the invuln shields, and win through raw dps.
As it stands the invuln abilities, and shield facing trick, plus the ward ships, are not bad ideas, and do add something, however they penalize ships with lower dps, or captains with more support functions.
As far as bugs go, the voth troop ships on the far left hanger, not sure if this affects any other hanger, have a tendency to park up inside the hanger, making them impossible to target or attack except from a very narrow area directly in front of the hanger. this appears to be something with were the script is deciding the stop point of the voth troop ship is, a bit too far into the hanger instead of at the landing pad.
The shuttles are still way to easy for two people to lock down, just park at the right spot with beam arrays and you can lock down two hangers at once. perhaps that's intended though, two people handle shuttles, three the dreadnought.
Elite
Had 3 first-timers with us, so the score was not that great.
City Ship has definitely improved...it's tougher. Before it was just a 'keep smashing it with a stick until it pops' routine. Now, it takes a little more effort. And I like that, it was getting boring before... that ship should be the best defended enemy we face in the game, in my mind.
Enemy ship tactics/motion seemed a LOT more stable to me.
Mission has improved considerably, which is important for replay-ability.
Only suggestion I have at this point is possibly a steady escalation of the Escape Pod spawn rate, over time. Slow at first to allow the minimal Player defenders to have a chance, but escalating to put pressure on the City Ship attack squad to hurry up and get back to help. The last minute or two of the mission is overly simple and therefore anticlimactic.
Do not try to pull the same **** that you tried to pull last year with the S7 launch...
I like the whole look and feel of the Dyson area, including these teamed missions. Personally, I like the size of the dreadnought just the way it is. And if i'm not mistaken, the dreadnought is not a city ship, the one in "The Breach" is. You'r flying through it, that says enough about it's size I would imagine !