The Cruiser Commands will affect non-small craft allies. This excludes things like torpedoes, mines and hangar pets. It includes things like saucer separation and pet toggles like those on the Bortasqu and Monbosh Battleship.
Regards,
Phil "Gorngonzolla" Zeleski
How about hangar frigates? If the Cruiser Commands affect a Jem'Hadar Attack Ship, would it affect all Jem'Hadar Attack Ships or only those that don't launch from hangars? Similarly, the various Birds of Prey can be both piloted by a player and launched from a hangar... if frigates are not counted for Cruiser Commands, do pilots of the JHAS or BoP's get excluded?
Minor, but important, point of clarification; after all, weren't the player controlled frigates the reason the Precise trait was modified to no longer affect frigates?
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
Ok, we can start to do some early math on those new Cruiser-Abilities, since we know at least a few numbers:
"Weapon System Efficency" is going to reduce the powerdrain of the weapons by 25%, so if you are using 8 Beam-Arrays (draining 10 Weaponpower each) on a Cruiser you can simply add-up all those Powerlevels. Starting at 125 Weaponpower (not using any softcap or what else might be around there) you get 720 for fireing them normal and 776 for fireing them with this Cruiser-Ability.
That means you get up to 7.78% Bonus-Firepower for your Cruiser.
If we now assume that the "Shield Frequency Modulation" is giving you an equivalent Bonus (so 7.78% over all), you could also assume that you get a resistance and regeneration-boost of sqrt(7.78)% = 2.8 %. That would be equivalent to a +10 Powerbonus to your shields (Formula is 0.28*shieldpower_setting=resistance(%) ).
Now we can look at a group of 2 cruisers near each other, one is using "Weapon System Efficency", the other is using "Shield Frequency Modulation". The result would be 1.078^2 over-all-boost, so 16.2% increasement compared to the cruisers without the new abilities.
Now we can take a look at a full group of cruisers (4 cruisers with 4 different abilities): Assuming that every ability is balanced compared to the others, you would get an over-all-boost of 1.078^4 = 1.35, so 35% boost to the whole team, if you stay close to each other.
But if you are Romulan, you don't get any of these boosts, you get your -40 Powerlevel, you get a few Singularity-Abilities (those boost only yourself for a short time and have a long Cooldown, you also loose some bonus-power from your Singularity-Core, if you are using them).
So, when do we get Balance Version 2.0?
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
So are these commands toggle abilities that are always on when one is selected (like hanger pets commands) or CD abilities?
always on
On a separate topic, Can people stop moaning about the romulan's not getting stuff, You've got built in battlecloaks in your cruisers which is better than the Standard cloaks the KDF have on their cruisers, and Feds cruisers don't get them at all ( exluding the Gal X which is a dread anyways and not strictly speaking a cruiser) not to mention the Singularity powers that you have that neither of the KDF or Fed ships have access too
are you seriously asking for cruiser commands to add on top of your sing jumping, decloak alpha striking Crit machines?
Some people really want all of the toys
These are the Voyages on the STO forum, the final frontier. Our continuing mission: to explore Pretentious Posts, to seek out new Overreactions and Misinformation , to boldly experience Cynicism like no man has before.......
On a separate topic, Can people stop moaning about the romulan's not getting stuff, You've got built in battlecloaks in your cruisers which is better than the Standard cloaks the KDF have on their cruisers, and Feds cruisers don't get them at all ( exluding the Gal X which is a dread anyways and not strictly speaking a cruiser) not to mention the Singularity powers that you have that neither of the KDF or Fed ships have access too
are you seriously asking for cruiser commands to add on top of your sing jumping, decloak alpha striking Crit machines?
Some people really want all of the toys
The new Avenger Class should be able to use the cloaking-device from the Defiant or Galaxy-X, according to some Redshirt-Screenshots it has got 5 fore and 3 aft weapons and the shield and hull-stats are superior to the Fleet Tor'Kath.
And no, I can't stop complaining about this :P
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
On a separate topic, Can people stop moaning about the romulan's not getting stuff, You've got built in battlecloaks in your cruisers which is better than the Standard cloaks the KDF have on their cruisers, and Feds cruisers don't get them at all ( exluding the Gal X which is a dread anyways and not strictly speaking a cruiser) not to mention the Singularity powers that you have that neither of the KDF or Fed ships have access too
are you seriously asking for cruiser commands to add on top of your sing jumping, decloak alpha striking Crit machines?
Some people really want all of the toys
If by "moaning" you mean simply asking Cryptic studio STO developers a question, or thought to ponder,... then indeed I may be guilty .
Cryptic,
I am interested in knowing, as previously posted in this thread, why the Romulan Warbird Cruisers, are not entitled to receive this awesome addition, that both the Federation and Klingons "cruiser class" will receive, to heighten the team play experience?
Comments have been made throughout this thread by fellow STO players, that this is due to the "battle cloak" ability, and or "singularity" abilities that the Romulan Warbird captains possess.:eek:
However, when reading the LoR Dev Blogs (see previous post in this thread for links) my understanding that the battle cloak has always been unique to the Romulan society, as the Romulans created the cloaking technology, and that the singularity which is also unique to Romulans starships, comes at the cost of reduced overall power (-40) compared to the warpcore.
More to the point, the term "warbird" would better translate as Romulan "vessel" as all Romulan ships with the battle cloak, and singularity are warbirds, because that is what makes them such. However, within the Romulan "warbird" class, exists all 4 types of ships we have come to love and enjoy in all STO, being science, escorts, dreadnoughts, and, yes, "cursers." Again, I am curious as to why the "cruiser" for the Romulan faction, has not been included as a cruiser worthy of this new "Advanced Communication Array?"
________________
Related, but on a slightly different train of thought, I could understand if this new "com array" was to offset the Romulan singularity abilities, of warbirds. If this was true, then should this ability not be for all ships classes for the Federation and Klingons, similar to the warbird abilities being useful to all four classes of ships, science, escort, dreadnoughts, and cruisers?;)
Further, if this was to be the case, that these new "com array" abilities were to offset singularity abilities, (which are allowed to be active all the time, compares to the singularity ability of one short glorious moment, and then nothing for 1-2 minutes) should not these ships also face a -40 power loss (-10 to each subsystem) that the Romulans suffer? Or, reverse, that the Romulans no longer have a -40 to their power levels?
_______
Thanks in advance Cryptic for reading and considering all of our opinions here on the forums, I look forward to the responses back.
I would like to request the option to hide the bar with the "Fire All" buttons at the top of the weapons tray. Many players do not use these buttons, relying on keybinds instead. I see from the dev blog that the new cruiser commands are being added to the bottom of the weapons tray. Many of us have smaller screens and do not like the idea of losing screen space.
Can you please make the Crusier Comm Array Powers strength dependent on a Cruiser offensive potential, so the less escort like a ship is the stronger are its Comm Array powers?
It could work like this:
No DhCs: +10% strength.
No Cloak capability: +10% strength.
Two Tactical consoles: +10 % strength.
For every point below a turnrate of 10: +2 % strength.
These are just examples but you get the point.
Such a mechanic would greatly help in keeping older ships (GCS, Star Crusier, various KDF Crusiers and so on) on a playable level and it would make them actually worth playing again.
"...'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied--chains us all irrevocably.' ... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today--"
- (TNG) Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie
With all the back and forth about why the Romulan Warbird Cruisers (basically the forms of the D'D' and the Ha'apax and its variants) should or should not be getting a form of advanced com arrays can a dev please end this argument by explaining why this is the situation given that the warbird battle cruisers already paid for their romulan singularity cores by having -40 systems power relative to ships using warp cores and the romulan battle cloaks are paid for with adjusted hull, shield, and turn rate values, so if fed and kdf cruiser types are getting a power boost, why would the romulan warbird heavy cruisers which were considered balanced against those ships previously, not get advanced com abilities. (if the devs have already said why romulan battle cruisers are not getting the abilities, other than 'no they aren't, I have missed that dev post' and as far as I can tell it seems to be intentional to boost the strength of fed and kdf cruiser types while ignoring romulan cruiser types. This can all but force romulan captains currently using a romulan battle cruiser to reconsider why they should continue to use such a ship instead of another warbird due to being less appreciated in group activities due to being unable to provide group support in the manner fed and kdf cruiser type captains will be able to. This this an attempt to penalize people who chose to deal with the cheaper zen store D'D and Ha'apax variants instead of the more expensive scimitar 3 pack?
As this current situation can be considered a relative nerf by omission as all federation and KDF cruiser types are getting a power boost, but the romulan ones are not receiving a simular power boost, if not being considered to being given the bird (pun intended), despite previously being considered to have parity with said ships before this addition. (And if they weren't previously balanced, then why wasn't that issue fixed early on in season 7 or in the pre-release for season 7 instead of now as season 8 draws near?)
Since Romulan characters are forbidden from using most of the t5 cruisers (only the lockbox ones are even possible due to being unable to use allied t5 ships) meaning that any player who is using a romulan faction character is pretty much being told, if you want to use this new toy in any capacity, you have to start up a new character or manage to get your hands on a lockbox ship that gets the abilities.
Given the aggressive nature of romulan warbird battle cruisers even if they are given access to some of the new abilities due to the devs chainging their minds they probably shouldn't get more than 2-3 abilities, possibly, but not necessarily the same 3 used by the KDF battle cruisers.
Now the other possibility is that Romulan Battle cruisers aren't going to get advanced com arrays due to something else being intended for them? Is this the case and the 'something else' just hasn't been shown off yet in a dev diary?
With all the back and forth about why the Romulan Warbird Cruisers (basically the forms of the D'D' and the Ha'apax and its variants) should or should not be getting a form of advanced com arrays can a dev please end this argument by explaining why this is the situation given that the warbird battle cruisers already paid for their romulan singularity cores by having -40 systems power relative to ships using warp cores and the romulan battle cloaks are paid for with adjusted hull, shield, and turn rate values, so if fed and kdf cruiser types are getting a power boost, why would the romulan warbird heavy cruisers which were considered balanced against those ships previously, not get advanced com abilities. (if the devs have already said why romulan battle cruisers are not getting the abilities, other than 'no they aren't, I have missed that dev post' and as far as I can tell it seems to be intentional to boost the strength of fed and kdf cruiser types while ignoring romulan cruiser types. This can all but force romulan captains currently using a romulan battle cruiser to reconsider why they should continue to use such a ship instead of another warbird due to being less appreciated in group activities due to being unable to provide group support in the manner fed and kdf cruiser type captains will be able to. This this an attempt to penalize people who chose to deal with the cheaper zen store D'D and Ha'apax variants instead of the more expensive scimitar 3 pack?
As this current situation can be considered a relative nerf by omission as all federation and KDF cruiser types are getting a power boost, but the romulan ones are not receiving a simular power boost, if not being considered to being given the bird (pun intended), despite previously being considered to have parity with said ships before this addition. (And if they weren't previously balanced, then why wasn't that issue fixed early on in season 7 or in the pre-release for season 7 instead of now as season 8 draws near?)
Since Romulan characters are forbidden from using most of the t5 cruisers (only the lockbox ones are even possible due to being unable to use allied t5 ships) meaning that any player who is using a romulan faction character is pretty much being told, if you want to use this new toy in any capacity, you have to start up a new character or manage to get your hands on a lockbox ship that gets the abilities.
Given the aggressive nature of romulan warbird battle cruisers even if they are given access to some of the new abilities due to the devs chainging their minds they probably shouldn't get more than 2-3 abilities, possibly, but not necessarily the same 3 used by the KDF battle cruisers.
Now the other possibility is that Romulan Battle cruisers aren't going to get advanced com arrays due to something else being intended for them? Is this the case and the 'something else' just hasn't been shown off yet in a dev diary?
This +1.
I have yet to see a response on this thread, or anywhere, explaining the rational behind the decision, not to include the Romulan Crusiers for the "advanced communication array." Anyone at Cryptic...?
I have yet to see a response on this thread, or anywhere, explaining the rational behind the decision, not to include the Romulan Crusiers for the "advanced communication array." Anyone at Cryptic...?
Romulan Boffs, is your answer. The fact that they already have a huge advantage... insta turn cloaks... we can go on and on.
Romulan Boffs, is your answer. The fact that they already have a huge advantage... insta turn cloaks... we can go on and on.
But as I said earlier the battle cloak was already paid for with reductions to base turn rate, base hull value, shield modifier, and inertia value before the implementation of advanced comm arrays, so boosting kdf and fed cruisers but leaving the romulan cruisers out seems like a flawed way to balance something that should have already been balanced. Your opinion that romulan faction unique boff races with space traits give romulan players an edge is not a bad opinion (in fact it's one I agree with ), but the idea that it needs to be balanced by nerfing the ships compared to other ships is a bad idea, you balance boffs among boffs and ships among ships, the two should not rely on each other to provide balanced gameplay.
I would like to hear that from a dev, since if a boff is overpowered then it should be balanced by other boffs, not by ship type, the devs have said in other threads they are going to work on more space boff powers, so I find your argument flawed in that your opinion in that your saying that to balance apples (Ships) you have to use oranges (Boffs), and nothing (codewise) prevents the races being used by the romulan faction to be allowed to kdf or fed factions if the devs allow it. Heck we can already get a breen boff, liberated borg boffs, a Reman boff, a Jem'hadar etc.. from featured episodes so why not allow normal remans and romulan boffs for fed and kdf as well. So saying a ship has to be nerfed due to specific boff races you can have on it but may not be using if someone wants to use something else sounds like a flawed approach to balancing ships. The devs should realize that you shouldn't balance ships by relying on boffs you balance boffs with boffs and ships with ships. So I seriously doubt that is the reason, but you do bring up a good point that Romulans have access to some nice boff space traits that feds and kdf should also get access to.
One option to resolve what I see is your true issue about boff races for fed and kdf that romulans can have is to simply allow ANYONE who has sufficient romulan rep to get romulan/reman/etc... bridge officer doff missions, and i don't know about you but having doff mission availability unlocked by rep tiers has a lot of potential to me. And before you say it can't be done, it is already coded within the Dilithium mine stuff, simply apply it to personal rep tracks. But that idea is a bit off topic as the question posed is why are romulan ships being left out.
Now can a dev please answer the question several of us have asked instead of leaving the players to making guesses to try and figure it out, especially before people start getting into heated arguments which could in itself necessitate moderator involvement as I've seen threads and good discussions derailed by flamewars...although that would be one way to get a dev involved to possibly get an answer :P , just a bad way that I hope no one resorts to.
One suggestion to allow larger Romulan Warbird "cruisers" to use the comm system would be another type of power core: Ancient Singularity Core. Adapted from the Hirogen long range communications network array, these cores swap out the normal Warbird singularity abilities for advanced command functions as well as increasing base power levels by 5.
One suggestion to allow larger Romulan Warbird "cruisers" to use the comm system would be another type of power core: Ancient Singularity Core. Adapted from the Hirogen long range communications network array, these cores swap out the normal Warbird singularity abilities for advanced command functions as well as increasing base power levels by 5.
Well, it's not so easy: Singularity-Abilities are ship-specific, it's not the Singularity-Core granting them, it's the ship: A T1 T'Liss/T'Varo comes with Plasma-Shockwave only, a Scorpion-Fighter has got only Singularity Overcharge and so on.
It would be more like "normal Singularity-Core enables Set A of Singularity-Abilities", "Ancient Singularity-Core enables Set B of Singularity-Abilities". But that would be what we don't need in STO - more itemized Powers.
I've got 2 Romulan characters and wouldn't like to buy those new singularity-cores, just to get the same nice toys FED and KDF players have got. The singularity-abilities should be already balance against the lower Base-Power Romulan Warbirds have got (and using those Singularity-Powers costs you the bonus-power the Singularity-Core gives you).
If you bring a new Singularity-Core into the game, how would you prevent non-Battlecruiser/Dreadnaught-Warbirds to put them on their ships? Can you imagine an Escort-Carrier-Warbird using those new abilities to increase their DPS a little?
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
Well, it's not so easy: Singularity-Abilities are ship-specific, it's not the Singularity-Core granting them, it's the ship: A T1 T'Liss/T'Varo comes with Plasma-Shockwave only, a Scorpion-Fighter has got only Singularity Overcharge and so on.
It would be more like "normal Singularity-Core enables Set A of Singularity-Abilities", "Ancient Singularity-Core enables Set B of Singularity-Abilities". But that would be what we don't need in STO - more itemized Powers.
I've got 2 Romulan characters and wouldn't like to buy those new singularity-cores, just to get the same nice toys FED and KDF players have got. The singularity-abilities should be already balance against the lower Base-Power Romulan Warbirds have got (and using those Singularity-Powers costs you the bonus-power the Singularity-Core gives you).
If you bring a new Singularity-Core into the game, how would you prevent non-Battlecruiser/Dreadnaught-Warbirds to put them on their ships? Can you imagine an Escort-Carrier-Warbird using those new abilities to increase their DPS a little?
They can already set up restrictions onto what kind of ships can slot particular consoles and weapons, I don't see why they couldn't add in another "layer" to that which specifically identifies, for example, the D'deridex and Ha'apax-class Warbirds as ships that can only slot the new core.
They can already set up restrictions onto what kind of ships can slot particular consoles and weapons, I don't see why they couldn't add in another "layer" to that which specifically identifies, for example, the D'deridex and Ha'apax-class Warbirds as ships that can only slot the new core.
The issue is that the singularity core item does not grant any singularity abilities, not counting the quasi battery powers found on VR cores, the abilities are built into the ship.
Besdies what about the existing fleet cores, your idea would force Warbird Battle Cruiser captains to have to abandon those singularity cores for whatever new type you recommend adding and they would be stuck using only the new type in order to function. It's a pointless and unfair penalty as it would be the same as forcing one type of ship to have only one type of shields that are most likely inferior to other shield types due to having to pay for the ability it grants, while every other ship has the normal option between resilient, regenerative, covariant, and normal shields. The devs aren't likely to restrict any ship to having no options for something as significant as a core, shield, engine, or deflector.
It's a pointless and unfair penalty as it would be the same as forcing one type of ship to have only one type of shields that are most likely inferior to other shield types due to having to pay for the ability it grants, while every other ship has the normal option between resilient, regenerative, covariant, and normal shields. The devs aren't likely to restrict any ship to having no options for something as significant as a core, shield, engine, or deflector.
Two points of clarification:
One, they already did that by locking in the Singularity Cores, Singularity Charge, Singularity Powers, and 160 base power levels to Warbirds. This was not unfair, as it helps to balance the Romulan Battle Cloak.
Two, amosov78 didn't suggest restricting the ships to those cores, he suggested restricting the cores to the ships. The distinction is fairly significant. In fact, that could be a replacement [Mod] in place of [Jump], [OLoad], [Res], [Shad], and [Wave]... and easily enough added to the Advanced/Elite Singularity Core lists on the Mine and drop tables. It could apply a base* power level bonus and prevent the activation of any and all Singularity Powers.
*by base, I mean allocable power, that would affect the scaling of Efficiency skills and traits.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
One, they already did that by locking in the Singularity Cores, Singularity Charge, Singularity Powers, and 160 base power levels to Warbirds. This was not unfair, as it helps to balance the Romulan Battle Cloak.
Two, amosov78 didn't suggest restricting the ships to those cores, he suggested restricting the cores to the ships. The distinction is fairly significant. In fact, that could be a replacement [Mod] in place of [Jump], [OLoad], [Res], [Shad], and [Wave]... and easily enough added to the Advanced/Elite Singularity Core lists on the Mine and drop tables. It could apply a base* power level bonus and prevent the activation of any and all Singularity Powers.
*by base, I mean allocable power, that would affect the scaling of Efficiency skills and traits.
Counterpoint to 1: The romulan warbird mechanic of using Singularity Cores instead of Warp Cores is a faction identifying move, if warbirds used Warp Cores there would be no real difference between Warbirds and a Raptor with a battle cloak instead of a normal cloak or bird of Prey with a different boff layout. Having it so certain warbirds must use specific types of Singularity Cores compared to other warbirds to properly function would be the issue I am referring to as being unbalanced.
Counterpoint to 2: Since these 'new abilities' would be only for the Warbird Battle Cruisers as a counterpart to the Cruiser and Battle Cruiser comm arrays, you can't have them as a new mod for Singularity Cores since then you'd have T'Varo making use of them, and STO is not coded to limit which types of ships can use an item based on the mods for that item, only the base item itself can have such limitations. And as for the just add new Advanced/Elite Singularity Cores, well then what about all the Warbird Battle Cruiser operators who already HAVE such a Fleet Core, they would have to BUY a second one with no reimbursement from having the first if they are to use the abilities being given to all other cruiser types in the game for free independent of what gear those ships use. This becomes a let's balance different ships based on gear which is an apples and oranges issue ships should be balanced by their features between other ships, and items should be balanced among other items, you should not need items to balance a ship.
As far as the Warp Core vs Singularity Core, removing the Singularity/Warp Core does not suddenly drop all your power levels to 0, the base 50 (warp core)/base 40 (singularity core) power levels is inherent in the ship itself independent of which items are actually placed within it. In fact comparing the two types of cores is an apples to oranges comparison as they are different types of items meant for different ships. What amosov78 suggested is that Warbird Battle Cruisers be forced into using a subgroup of Singularity Cores that provide the abilities that would be only available to them while the normal singularity cores ever Romulan ship uses right now (except the temporal and tal shiar lockbox ships) use the existing singularity cores, which would probably break EVERY Warbird Battle Cruiser a player is using right now as suddenly they would be suck with a ship that doesn't have a Singularity Core they can use, and may have invested quite a bit into the Singularity Core they could no longer use in that ship and not have a core of equivalent effectiveness on hand that they could use. That would not be a good move on the part of the devs. The Devs gave out the comm array powers to cruiser types for free, they didn't tie it into say the deflector arrays and then force cruisers to get new deflector arrays as that would have outraged people. (The same can be said if it was instead tied to Engines or a Shield.)
It seems to me that the new Cruiser abilities would not work while cloaked. Romulan Warbirds would have no use for such a device as it goes against their entire strategy in battle. It is primarily the FEDS and a few KDF who do not cloak in battle who could use and benefit from these new commands.
As a Romulan player, I support these new changes that help make the ship types and play styles more varied and unique. I anticipate similar changes/upgrades to Science Vessels, and after that, who knows...?
(PS) Maybe Romulans could be able to use Vulcan Ships in the future??? Please, I bought the D'Kyr a few years ago and now that it is visually fixed I would like to try it out. Slap a Battle Cloak on that ship and...logical, who said anything about logic?...now I see why we left you walking calculators on Vulcan...
It seems to me that the new Cruiser abilities would not work while cloaked. Romulan Warbirds would have no use for such a device as it goes against their entire strategy in battle. It is primarily the FEDS and a few KDF who do not cloak in battle who could use and benefit from these new commands.
As a Romulan player, I support these new changes that help make the ship types and play styles more varied and unique. I anticipate similar changes/upgrades to Science Vessels, and after that, who knows...?
(PS) Maybe Romulans could be able to use Vulcan Ships in the future??? Please, I bought the D'Kyr a few years ago and now that it is visually fixed I would like to try it out. Slap a Battle Cloak on that ship and...logical, who said anything about logic?...now I see why we left you walking calculators on Vulcan...
I agree that the abilities shouldn't work while cloaked for anyone (as both Feds and kdf have cruisers that can cloak even if they aren't battle cloaks), but not every Romulan pilots a T'varo, so when they attack they have to uncloak, and while uncloaked those abilities (or equivalent ones designed with Warbird tactics in mind) could be useful. Maybe a means to make it so cloaking is stronger or comes off cooldown faster, or one that creates sensor shadows to distract enemies from targeting the real ships (accuracy debuff for enemies within range perhaps). But I could see Romulans using different 'cruiser abilities' due to Romulan tactics differeing from both KDF and Feds, but right now the Romulan Warbird Battle Cruisers currently have no way to keep enemies from going after the squishy T'Varos and such by either making themselves more 'annoying' or making the squishies seem less squishy. Thus they aren't really able to function like cruisers at all.
But I agree I can so see a Romulan making a comment about Vulcans being walking calculators who fear their own emotions. Then again I think it would be amusing if a Romulan tried to get a Vulcan drunk enough to just let loose and tell logic to hang itself. And then afterwards use it to blackmail said vulcan into being less of a stick in the mud.
Want to really make these effective, give the other ships (Sci, carriers, etc) formation flying commands. Right click on the cruiser, pick a formation, and the ship automatically stays in that formation until you change it....That would be awesome....
I was thinking that as well. I've always wanted a standard orbit feature too to be honest.
The follow ship feature sounds interesting though, I'll have to try it out tomorrow.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
Has anyone said when these will be coming to other cruisers?
Very soon! I also wanted to pop in here and let you know which ships are affected by this:
Cruisers
Ships that fall into this category receive all four Cruiser Commands. Below is a list of ships that are classified as Cruisers:
Starfleet
Cruiser
Cruiser Refit
Heavy Cruiser
Heavy Cruiser Retrofit
Fleet Heavy Cruiser Retrofit
Advanced Heavy Cruiser
Advanced Heavy Cruiser Retrofit
Fleet Advanced Heavy Cruiser Retrofit
Support Cruiser
Support Cruiser Retrofit
Fleet Support Cruiser Retrofit
Exploration Cruiser
Exploration Cruiser Refit
Exploration Cruiser Retrofit
Fleet Exploration Cruiser Retrofit
Assault Cruiser
Assault Cruiser Refit
Fleet Assault Cruiser Refit
Mirror Assault Cruiser
Star Cruiser
Fleet Star Cruiser
Mirror Star Cruiser
Odyssey Operations Cruiser
Odyssey Star Cruiser
Odyssey Science Cruiser
Odyssey Tactical Cruiser
All Factions
Cardassian Galor
Battle Cruisers
Ships that fall into this category receive three Cruiser Commands: Command - Strategic Maneuvering, Command - Shield Frequency Modulation and Command - Weapon System Efficiency. Below is a list of ships that are classified as Battle Cruisers:
Starfleet
Battle Cruiser
Fleet Battle Cruiser
Klingon Empire
K'Tanco Battle Cruiser
K't'inga Battle Cruiser
K't'inga Battle Cruiser Retrofit
Fleet K't'inga Battle Cruiser Retrofit
Koro't'inga Battle Cruiser
Vor'cha Battle Cruiser
Vor'cha Battle Cruiser Retrofit
Mirror Vor'cha Battle Cruiser
Vor'Kang Battle Cruiser
Negh'Var Heavy Battle Cruiser
Fleet Negh'Var Heavy Battle Cruiser
Kamarag Battle Cruiser
Kamarag Battle Cruiser Retrofit
Fleet Kamarag Battle Cruiser Retrofit
Fleet Tor'Kaht Battle Cruiser Retrofit
Bortas Heavy Battle Cruiser
Bortasqu' War Cruiser
Bortasqu' Command Cruiser
Bortasqu' Tactical Cruiser
All Factions
Elachi Monbosh Battleship
Tal Shiar Adapted Battle Cruiser
Ferengi D'Kora Marauder
Flight-Deck Cruisers
Ships that fall into this category receive two Cruiser Commands: Command - Shield Frequency Modulation and Command - Attract Fire. Below is a list of ships that are classified as Flight-Deck Cruisers:
Klingon Empire
Marauder Flight-deck Cruiser
Corsair Flight-deck Cruiser
Corsair Flight-deck Cruiser Retrofit
Fleet Corsair Flight-deck Cruiser Retrofit
Dacoit Flight-deck Cruiser
Dreadnought Cruisers
Ships that fall into this category receive two Cruiser Commands: Command - Weapon System Effiency and Command - Attract Fire. Currently there is only a single ship classified as a Dreadnought Cruiser:
Comments
So uh, when will the KDF get a Dreadnought Cruiser and when will the Feds get a Flight-Deck Cruiser?
How about hangar frigates? If the Cruiser Commands affect a Jem'Hadar Attack Ship, would it affect all Jem'Hadar Attack Ships or only those that don't launch from hangars? Similarly, the various Birds of Prey can be both piloted by a player and launched from a hangar... if frigates are not counted for Cruiser Commands, do pilots of the JHAS or BoP's get excluded?
Minor, but important, point of clarification; after all, weren't the player controlled frigates the reason the Precise trait was modified to no longer affect frigates?
"Weapon System Efficency" is going to reduce the powerdrain of the weapons by 25%, so if you are using 8 Beam-Arrays (draining 10 Weaponpower each) on a Cruiser you can simply add-up all those Powerlevels. Starting at 125 Weaponpower (not using any softcap or what else might be around there) you get 720 for fireing them normal and 776 for fireing them with this Cruiser-Ability.
That means you get up to 7.78% Bonus-Firepower for your Cruiser.
If we now assume that the "Shield Frequency Modulation" is giving you an equivalent Bonus (so 7.78% over all), you could also assume that you get a resistance and regeneration-boost of sqrt(7.78)% = 2.8 %. That would be equivalent to a +10 Powerbonus to your shields (Formula is 0.28*shieldpower_setting=resistance(%) ).
Now we can look at a group of 2 cruisers near each other, one is using "Weapon System Efficency", the other is using "Shield Frequency Modulation". The result would be 1.078^2 over-all-boost, so 16.2% increasement compared to the cruisers without the new abilities.
Now we can take a look at a full group of cruisers (4 cruisers with 4 different abilities): Assuming that every ability is balanced compared to the others, you would get an over-all-boost of 1.078^4 = 1.35, so 35% boost to the whole team, if you stay close to each other.
But if you are Romulan, you don't get any of these boosts, you get your -40 Powerlevel, you get a few Singularity-Abilities (those boost only yourself for a short time and have a long Cooldown, you also loose some bonus-power from your Singularity-Core, if you are using them).
So, when do we get Balance Version 2.0?
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
always on
On a separate topic, Can people stop moaning about the romulan's not getting stuff, You've got built in battlecloaks in your cruisers which is better than the Standard cloaks the KDF have on their cruisers, and Feds cruisers don't get them at all ( exluding the Gal X which is a dread anyways and not strictly speaking a cruiser) not to mention the Singularity powers that you have that neither of the KDF or Fed ships have access too
are you seriously asking for cruiser commands to add on top of your sing jumping, decloak alpha striking Crit machines?
Some people really want all of the toys
The new Avenger Class should be able to use the cloaking-device from the Defiant or Galaxy-X, according to some Redshirt-Screenshots it has got 5 fore and 3 aft weapons and the shield and hull-stats are superior to the Fleet Tor'Kath.
And no, I can't stop complaining about this :P
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
If by "moaning" you mean simply asking Cryptic studio STO developers a question, or thought to ponder,... then indeed I may be guilty
Cryptic,
I am interested in knowing, as previously posted in this thread, why the Romulan Warbird Cruisers, are not entitled to receive this awesome addition, that both the Federation and Klingons "cruiser class" will receive, to heighten the team play experience?
Comments have been made throughout this thread by fellow STO players, that this is due to the "battle cloak" ability, and or "singularity" abilities that the Romulan Warbird captains possess.:eek:
However, when reading the LoR Dev Blogs (see previous post in this thread for links) my understanding that the battle cloak has always been unique to the Romulan society, as the Romulans created the cloaking technology, and that the singularity which is also unique to Romulans starships, comes at the cost of reduced overall power (-40) compared to the warpcore.
More to the point, the term "warbird" would better translate as Romulan "vessel" as all Romulan ships with the battle cloak, and singularity are warbirds, because that is what makes them such. However, within the Romulan "warbird" class, exists all 4 types of ships we have come to love and enjoy in all STO, being science, escorts, dreadnoughts, and, yes, "cursers." Again, I am curious as to why the "cruiser" for the Romulan faction, has not been included as a cruiser worthy of this new "Advanced Communication Array?"
________________
Related, but on a slightly different train of thought, I could understand if this new "com array" was to offset the Romulan singularity abilities, of warbirds. If this was true, then should this ability not be for all ships classes for the Federation and Klingons, similar to the warbird abilities being useful to all four classes of ships, science, escort, dreadnoughts, and cruisers?;)
Further, if this was to be the case, that these new "com array" abilities were to offset singularity abilities, (which are allowed to be active all the time, compares to the singularity ability of one short glorious moment, and then nothing for 1-2 minutes) should not these ships also face a -40 power loss (-10 to each subsystem) that the Romulans suffer? Or, reverse, that the Romulans no longer have a -40 to their power levels?
_______
Thanks in advance Cryptic for reading and considering all of our opinions here on the forums, I look forward to the responses back.
cheers,
| Join Date: January 2009 | Computer | Fleet: Broken Wings |
There are uber buffed Aux2Bat Warbird-Cruisers and Warbird-Dreadnaughts, that want those buffs, too :P
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
To be announced this winter!
| Join Date: January 2009 | Computer | Fleet: Broken Wings |
Can you please make the Crusier Comm Array Powers strength dependent on a Cruiser offensive potential, so the less escort like a ship is the stronger are its Comm Array powers?
It could work like this:
No DhCs: +10% strength.
No Cloak capability: +10% strength.
Two Tactical consoles: +10 % strength.
For every point below a turnrate of 10: +2 % strength.
These are just examples but you get the point.
Such a mechanic would greatly help in keeping older ships (GCS, Star Crusier, various KDF Crusiers and so on) on a playable level and it would make them actually worth playing again.
As this current situation can be considered a relative nerf by omission as all federation and KDF cruiser types are getting a power boost, but the romulan ones are not receiving a simular power boost, if not being considered to being given the bird (pun intended), despite previously being considered to have parity with said ships before this addition. (And if they weren't previously balanced, then why wasn't that issue fixed early on in season 7 or in the pre-release for season 7 instead of now as season 8 draws near?)
Since Romulan characters are forbidden from using most of the t5 cruisers (only the lockbox ones are even possible due to being unable to use allied t5 ships) meaning that any player who is using a romulan faction character is pretty much being told, if you want to use this new toy in any capacity, you have to start up a new character or manage to get your hands on a lockbox ship that gets the abilities.
Given the aggressive nature of romulan warbird battle cruisers even if they are given access to some of the new abilities due to the devs chainging their minds they probably shouldn't get more than 2-3 abilities, possibly, but not necessarily the same 3 used by the KDF battle cruisers.
Now the other possibility is that Romulan Battle cruisers aren't going to get advanced com arrays due to something else being intended for them? Is this the case and the 'something else' just hasn't been shown off yet in a dev diary?
This +1.
I have yet to see a response on this thread, or anywhere, explaining the rational behind the decision, not to include the Romulan Crusiers for the "advanced communication array." Anyone at Cryptic...?
Romulan Boffs, is your answer. The fact that they already have a huge advantage... insta turn cloaks... we can go on and on.
| Join Date: January 2009 | Computer | Fleet: Broken Wings |
I was looking for an official response from a STO developer...but thanks anyway!;)
But as I said earlier the battle cloak was already paid for with reductions to base turn rate, base hull value, shield modifier, and inertia value before the implementation of advanced comm arrays, so boosting kdf and fed cruisers but leaving the romulan cruisers out seems like a flawed way to balance something that should have already been balanced. Your opinion that romulan faction unique boff races with space traits give romulan players an edge is not a bad opinion (in fact it's one I agree with
I would like to hear that from a dev, since if a boff is overpowered then it should be balanced by other boffs, not by ship type, the devs have said in other threads they are going to work on more space boff powers, so I find your argument flawed in that your opinion in that your saying that to balance apples (Ships) you have to use oranges (Boffs), and nothing (codewise) prevents the races being used by the romulan faction to be allowed to kdf or fed factions if the devs allow it. Heck we can already get a breen boff, liberated borg boffs, a Reman boff, a Jem'hadar etc.. from featured episodes so why not allow normal remans and romulan boffs for fed and kdf as well. So saying a ship has to be nerfed due to specific boff races you can have on it but may not be using if someone wants to use something else sounds like a flawed approach to balancing ships. The devs should realize that you shouldn't balance ships by relying on boffs you balance boffs with boffs and ships with ships. So I seriously doubt that is the reason, but you do bring up a good point that Romulans have access to some nice boff space traits that feds and kdf should also get access to.
One option to resolve what I see is your true issue about boff races for fed and kdf that romulans can have is to simply allow ANYONE who has sufficient romulan rep to get romulan/reman/etc... bridge officer doff missions, and i don't know about you but having doff mission availability unlocked by rep tiers has a lot of potential to me. And before you say it can't be done, it is already coded within the Dilithium mine stuff, simply apply it to personal rep tracks. But that idea is a bit off topic as the question posed is why are romulan ships being left out.
Now can a dev please answer the question several of us have asked instead of leaving the players to making guesses to try and figure it out, especially before people start getting into heated arguments which could in itself necessitate moderator involvement as I've seen threads and good discussions derailed by flamewars...although that would be one way to get a dev involved to possibly get an answer :P , just a bad way that I hope no one resorts to.
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
Well, it's not so easy: Singularity-Abilities are ship-specific, it's not the Singularity-Core granting them, it's the ship: A T1 T'Liss/T'Varo comes with Plasma-Shockwave only, a Scorpion-Fighter has got only Singularity Overcharge and so on.
It would be more like "normal Singularity-Core enables Set A of Singularity-Abilities", "Ancient Singularity-Core enables Set B of Singularity-Abilities". But that would be what we don't need in STO - more itemized Powers.
I've got 2 Romulan characters and wouldn't like to buy those new singularity-cores, just to get the same nice toys FED and KDF players have got. The singularity-abilities should be already balance against the lower Base-Power Romulan Warbirds have got (and using those Singularity-Powers costs you the bonus-power the Singularity-Core gives you).
If you bring a new Singularity-Core into the game, how would you prevent non-Battlecruiser/Dreadnaught-Warbirds to put them on their ships? Can you imagine an Escort-Carrier-Warbird using those new abilities to increase their DPS a little?
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
They can already set up restrictions onto what kind of ships can slot particular consoles and weapons, I don't see why they couldn't add in another "layer" to that which specifically identifies, for example, the D'deridex and Ha'apax-class Warbirds as ships that can only slot the new core.
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
The issue is that the singularity core item does not grant any singularity abilities, not counting the quasi battery powers found on VR cores, the abilities are built into the ship.
Besdies what about the existing fleet cores, your idea would force Warbird Battle Cruiser captains to have to abandon those singularity cores for whatever new type you recommend adding and they would be stuck using only the new type in order to function. It's a pointless and unfair penalty as it would be the same as forcing one type of ship to have only one type of shields that are most likely inferior to other shield types due to having to pay for the ability it grants, while every other ship has the normal option between resilient, regenerative, covariant, and normal shields. The devs aren't likely to restrict any ship to having no options for something as significant as a core, shield, engine, or deflector.
Two points of clarification:
One, they already did that by locking in the Singularity Cores, Singularity Charge, Singularity Powers, and 160 base power levels to Warbirds. This was not unfair, as it helps to balance the Romulan Battle Cloak.
Two, amosov78 didn't suggest restricting the ships to those cores, he suggested restricting the cores to the ships. The distinction is fairly significant. In fact, that could be a replacement [Mod] in place of [Jump], [OLoad], [Res], [Shad], and [Wave]... and easily enough added to the Advanced/Elite Singularity Core lists on the Mine and drop tables. It could apply a base* power level bonus and prevent the activation of any and all Singularity Powers.
*by base, I mean allocable power, that would affect the scaling of Efficiency skills and traits.
Counterpoint to 1: The romulan warbird mechanic of using Singularity Cores instead of Warp Cores is a faction identifying move, if warbirds used Warp Cores there would be no real difference between Warbirds and a Raptor with a battle cloak instead of a normal cloak or bird of Prey with a different boff layout. Having it so certain warbirds must use specific types of Singularity Cores compared to other warbirds to properly function would be the issue I am referring to as being unbalanced.
Counterpoint to 2: Since these 'new abilities' would be only for the Warbird Battle Cruisers as a counterpart to the Cruiser and Battle Cruiser comm arrays, you can't have them as a new mod for Singularity Cores since then you'd have T'Varo making use of them, and STO is not coded to limit which types of ships can use an item based on the mods for that item, only the base item itself can have such limitations. And as for the just add new Advanced/Elite Singularity Cores, well then what about all the Warbird Battle Cruiser operators who already HAVE such a Fleet Core, they would have to BUY a second one with no reimbursement from having the first if they are to use the abilities being given to all other cruiser types in the game for free independent of what gear those ships use. This becomes a let's balance different ships based on gear which is an apples and oranges issue ships should be balanced by their features between other ships, and items should be balanced among other items, you should not need items to balance a ship.
As far as the Warp Core vs Singularity Core, removing the Singularity/Warp Core does not suddenly drop all your power levels to 0, the base 50 (warp core)/base 40 (singularity core) power levels is inherent in the ship itself independent of which items are actually placed within it. In fact comparing the two types of cores is an apples to oranges comparison as they are different types of items meant for different ships. What amosov78 suggested is that Warbird Battle Cruisers be forced into using a subgroup of Singularity Cores that provide the abilities that would be only available to them while the normal singularity cores ever Romulan ship uses right now (except the temporal and tal shiar lockbox ships) use the existing singularity cores, which would probably break EVERY Warbird Battle Cruiser a player is using right now as suddenly they would be suck with a ship that doesn't have a Singularity Core they can use, and may have invested quite a bit into the Singularity Core they could no longer use in that ship and not have a core of equivalent effectiveness on hand that they could use. That would not be a good move on the part of the devs. The Devs gave out the comm array powers to cruiser types for free, they didn't tie it into say the deflector arrays and then force cruisers to get new deflector arrays as that would have outraged people. (The same can be said if it was instead tied to Engines or a Shield.)
As a Romulan player, I support these new changes that help make the ship types and play styles more varied and unique. I anticipate similar changes/upgrades to Science Vessels, and after that, who knows...?
(PS) Maybe Romulans could be able to use Vulcan Ships in the future??? Please, I bought the D'Kyr a few years ago and now that it is visually fixed I would like to try it out. Slap a Battle Cloak on that ship and...logical, who said anything about logic?...now I see why we left you walking calculators on Vulcan...
I agree that the abilities shouldn't work while cloaked for anyone (as both Feds and kdf have cruisers that can cloak even if they aren't battle cloaks), but not every Romulan pilots a T'varo, so when they attack they have to uncloak, and while uncloaked those abilities (or equivalent ones designed with Warbird tactics in mind) could be useful. Maybe a means to make it so cloaking is stronger or comes off cooldown faster, or one that creates sensor shadows to distract enemies from targeting the real ships (accuracy debuff for enemies within range perhaps). But I could see Romulans using different 'cruiser abilities' due to Romulan tactics differeing from both KDF and Feds, but right now the Romulan Warbird Battle Cruisers currently have no way to keep enemies from going after the squishy T'Varos and such by either making themselves more 'annoying' or making the squishies seem less squishy. Thus they aren't really able to function like cruisers at all.
But I agree I can so see a Romulan making a comment about Vulcans being walking calculators who fear their own emotions. Then again I think it would be amusing if a Romulan tried to get a Vulcan drunk enough to just let loose and tell logic to hang itself. And then afterwards use it to blackmail said vulcan into being less of a stick in the mud.
I was thinking that as well. I've always wanted a standard orbit feature too to be honest.
The follow ship feature sounds interesting though, I'll have to try it out tomorrow.
Very soon! I also wanted to pop in here and let you know which ships are affected by this:
Cruisers
Ships that fall into this category receive all four Cruiser Commands. Below is a list of ships that are classified as Cruisers:
Starfleet
All Factions
Battle Cruisers
Ships that fall into this category receive three Cruiser Commands: Command - Strategic Maneuvering, Command - Shield Frequency Modulation and Command - Weapon System Efficiency. Below is a list of ships that are classified as Battle Cruisers:
Starfleet
Klingon Empire
All Factions
Flight-Deck Cruisers
Ships that fall into this category receive two Cruiser Commands: Command - Shield Frequency Modulation and Command - Attract Fire. Below is a list of ships that are classified as Flight-Deck Cruisers:
Klingon Empire
Dreadnought Cruisers
Ships that fall into this category receive two Cruiser Commands: Command - Weapon System Effiency and Command - Attract Fire. Currently there is only a single ship classified as a Dreadnought Cruiser:
Regards,
Phil "Gorngonzolla" Zeleski
thats exactly how i figured it would shake out. boy i wish
K'Tanco Battle Cruiser Retrofit
and
fleet K'Tanco Battle Cruiser Retrofit
were on that list somewhere. the kdf still lack a cruiser with the excelcior's station setup...