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Commentary - Engineering - The State of Cruisers in the Federation
khayuung
Member Posts: 1,876 Arc User
The coming of the new Avenger movie-- I mean cruiser has got me thinking about cruisers in the modern day Federation.
Its definitely becoming more red. As the Federation progressed from the Excelsior --> Assault Cruiser --> Various non-C-store fleet retrofits --> Regent --> Avenger, the ship design became more and more tactical to the exclusion of everything else that a cruiser could be made to perform. In essence, what we're seeing (and on many fronts, what we are begging for intentionally or not), it is fast approaching an evolutionary dead-end where it becomes a damn good pve DPS ship, and can't perform any where else.
So, what exactly is a viable cruiser in the Federation? It really depends on the job. The metagame in STO is being hyperspecialized at something. DPS + survivability takes top priority as PVE is essentially turreting and getoutoftheHYT; this has led to cruisers becoming more and more tactical. Yet there is still demand for a healing platform and for that only 1 specific design fulfils best. However, a ship must be hyperspecialized in something is useful to progression in the game or else it gets dumped by the wayside.
Let's start with specialist cruisers
Specialist cruisers are, strangely enough, those cruisers designed to do one job really well, and do everything else rather well! Looking to the Assault Cruiser as an example, we find that she has been replaced by essentially 2 offspring designs:
The Avenger. She is the premier A2B DHC Federation DPS cruiser, with the highest focus fire potential. 5/3 weapons, reinforced hull styling, and stats that reflect a ship meant to give and take a beating. For all intents and purposes, the only thing out-dpsing this baby in a FA is a Scimitar. Like a famous captain once said of the latter, "She's a predator." However, the Avenger's a fat baffoon. Even at 9 turn, she's still going to have trouble chasing nimbler targets like BoPs and the arch nemesis of everything, the JHAS. Her 5/3 layout means that nimbler targets can and will sit on her tail and be safe from effective returning fire. You will need a teammate to bring movement control, and then you bring the Avenger down on the trapped foe like a hammer.
The Regent is the premier A2B BFAW Federation DPS cruiser, with the highest AOE dps potential. She also comes with a broadsiding projectile option for beamboats in PVE. In place of cannons, the Regent has beams which under the doff climate becomes the ship you turn to to melt the Star Carrier Online spam in order for the team to perform. Having no favored direction in weapon layout further plays to this.
A drawback of both designs is that with that much Red, its got less Blue and Yellow. You need the latter 2 to build a full heal cruiser. For that, there is the Yamaguchi. She replaces pretty much every single non-C-store Fleet cruiser because she's the ultimate support cruiser at Comm Eng, LtComm Sci and Lt Eng. She has good hull and shields. And she still has enough tactical to make a dent in something. Comes with a 2409 hull repaint too. Benefits from A2B BFAW DEMarion and I would recommend having those slotted, grabbing aux batteries and play with your power settings to ensure heal capacity is not gimped by low aux.
If the game needed tanks, if hull-damage resisting made sense, then the Galaxy Exploration Cruiser Retrofit would be perfect for that. But as far as I can tell, the Gal-R is a heal cruiser that brings an Eng Team cleanse rather than a Sci, and be still able to slot the standard skills that keep a cruiser alive. Her main advantages are not that much of an advantage since they are all insufficient buffs to aspects that require a lot more to help in combat. The Devs design ships using arbitrary balance instead of complex metrics grounded in reality. That's why the Galaxy should've had 25% more hull and 1 more eng console slot to a total of 11 consoles just because that's roughly how much those stats are worth in practice against things like more turn or more shields. This can be justified by the Galaxy being such a 452m fat, 47 deck tall lady. The Gal-R also doesn't have any other advantage outside of combat that isn't available to another comparable cruiser. Except save that she's the most beautiful ship ever built by the Federation, and that there will never be anything like her ever again.
Then comes the multi-role cruisers, the traditional design mentality for the ships:
The Odyssey. The Flagship of the Federation. And one hell of an expensive ship. She can be anything in effect especially if you forked out for all the options. But as a multi-role ship, she pays the hybrid tax by being as slow as Morga in the swamp of Tanagra and now having less shields or less hull than the specialists depending on which branch you are comparing the Odyssey to. The Excelsior is still a quicker means of sector space transport.
After that, comes the hybrids and things get really strange:
The Excelsior is in a pretty strange place, if she wasn't already there. She's a combination of a Regent and a normal 7 eng slot cruiser. She pays a relative hybrid tax (as compared to the Avenger and the Regent) for being both a dps and a support cruiser at the same time. This tax is that she's unable to slot DHCs, and turns at 8. Otherwise, most of the healing options are there, and she has an ability to flit around the galaxy far quicker than any cruiser, what with [Trans] warpcores and Astrometric scientists giving you a transwarp cooldown of ZERO.
The Galaxy-X Dreadnought Cruiser has been officially acknowledged as a separate class of its own. On hindsight, yes, the Gal-X was the first of Dreadnoughts to come. It is an evolution from the slow, preponderous cruiser design into a platform of high outgoing damage and high survivability at the cost of being virtually "unable to move". I put that in brackets because every single dreadnought after the Gal-X is far bigger, far beefier, and quite a tad more manoeuvrable thanks to their +1 degree of turn and higher inertia rating. Even so, the Gal-X pays a hefty hybrid tax for being a cruiser and a dreadnought that I dare say is in name only. Her combination of high eng slots, some tac punch, and that huge gun comes at the price of 2 of the best cruiser commands, all sensible manoeuvrability and at this point in time, having no hangar bay like a Dreadnought type ship should. She should have had a hangar. According to AES, the raised bridge and dual cannon pylons of the dreadnought were the result of expanding the Main Shuttle Bay to manage a full fighter wing and runabout support squadron. As it stand, the Gal-X's main advantage is her wave motion gun. The Phaser Spinal Lance remains the only not-ridiculously-telegraphed BFG attack in the game. We dreadnought captains have slogged long and hard to get to the state where we can force a target to fight on our terms and die in a phaser fire. We don't need saucer sep; All we need is that hangar bay and +10% stats, and we will be a force in PVP.
The Nebula Advanced Research Vessel Retrofit is arguably not a cruiser. But with her generous hull (for a science ship), slowish yet not totally gimped manouverability (9 turn on 40 inertia), more shields than a cruiser can shake a warp core at, and a potential to A2B like a cruiser, I consider her one. In effect, she's a hybrid of a cruiser and a science vessel, sacrificing hull, cruiser commands, 2 weapon slots and high eng slots for shields, speed, SST, SA, and high Sci slots. If you run with high aux, you gain improve sensor ability to see all the cloaked Roms. Converse, you can give my Aux-less Nebbie A2B ptg dps build a try; even I amaze myself at how effective it is in pve!
Alas, in a game where the specialists have few weaknesses, being a hybrid means a tax means lower maximum efficiency means being frowned upon in pvp.
The ultimate losers?
<insert whacky fleet retrofit here> They suffer the most. They are essentially various hybrids between cruiser and escort (sacrifices DHCs however) or cruiser and science (sacrifices Comm Sci slot however). Not enough red to dps, not enough blue to support, or has red or blue but suffers from silly hull and shield ratings. Sure they got variability, but in a game where specialists rule, the hybrid tax just comes down so hard on these poor buggers. And they all don't have C-store discounts, making them way too expensive in my opinion for what they're worth.
And there ends my long essay about the state of cruisers in the Federation. Please be a grammar TRIBBLE cos I'm actually practicing for my English exam this Saturday and I'm terrible at it!! :P
Its definitely becoming more red. As the Federation progressed from the Excelsior --> Assault Cruiser --> Various non-C-store fleet retrofits --> Regent --> Avenger, the ship design became more and more tactical to the exclusion of everything else that a cruiser could be made to perform. In essence, what we're seeing (and on many fronts, what we are begging for intentionally or not), it is fast approaching an evolutionary dead-end where it becomes a damn good pve DPS ship, and can't perform any where else.
So, what exactly is a viable cruiser in the Federation? It really depends on the job. The metagame in STO is being hyperspecialized at something. DPS + survivability takes top priority as PVE is essentially turreting and getoutoftheHYT; this has led to cruisers becoming more and more tactical. Yet there is still demand for a healing platform and for that only 1 specific design fulfils best. However, a ship must be hyperspecialized in something is useful to progression in the game or else it gets dumped by the wayside.
Let's start with specialist cruisers
Specialist cruisers are, strangely enough, those cruisers designed to do one job really well, and do everything else rather well! Looking to the Assault Cruiser as an example, we find that she has been replaced by essentially 2 offspring designs:
The Avenger. She is the premier A2B DHC Federation DPS cruiser, with the highest focus fire potential. 5/3 weapons, reinforced hull styling, and stats that reflect a ship meant to give and take a beating. For all intents and purposes, the only thing out-dpsing this baby in a FA is a Scimitar. Like a famous captain once said of the latter, "She's a predator." However, the Avenger's a fat baffoon. Even at 9 turn, she's still going to have trouble chasing nimbler targets like BoPs and the arch nemesis of everything, the JHAS. Her 5/3 layout means that nimbler targets can and will sit on her tail and be safe from effective returning fire. You will need a teammate to bring movement control, and then you bring the Avenger down on the trapped foe like a hammer.
The Regent is the premier A2B BFAW Federation DPS cruiser, with the highest AOE dps potential. She also comes with a broadsiding projectile option for beamboats in PVE. In place of cannons, the Regent has beams which under the doff climate becomes the ship you turn to to melt the Star Carrier Online spam in order for the team to perform. Having no favored direction in weapon layout further plays to this.
A drawback of both designs is that with that much Red, its got less Blue and Yellow. You need the latter 2 to build a full heal cruiser. For that, there is the Yamaguchi. She replaces pretty much every single non-C-store Fleet cruiser because she's the ultimate support cruiser at Comm Eng, LtComm Sci and Lt Eng. She has good hull and shields. And she still has enough tactical to make a dent in something. Comes with a 2409 hull repaint too. Benefits from A2B BFAW DEMarion and I would recommend having those slotted, grabbing aux batteries and play with your power settings to ensure heal capacity is not gimped by low aux.
If the game needed tanks, if hull-damage resisting made sense, then the Galaxy Exploration Cruiser Retrofit would be perfect for that. But as far as I can tell, the Gal-R is a heal cruiser that brings an Eng Team cleanse rather than a Sci, and be still able to slot the standard skills that keep a cruiser alive. Her main advantages are not that much of an advantage since they are all insufficient buffs to aspects that require a lot more to help in combat. The Devs design ships using arbitrary balance instead of complex metrics grounded in reality. That's why the Galaxy should've had 25% more hull and 1 more eng console slot to a total of 11 consoles just because that's roughly how much those stats are worth in practice against things like more turn or more shields. This can be justified by the Galaxy being such a 452m fat, 47 deck tall lady. The Gal-R also doesn't have any other advantage outside of combat that isn't available to another comparable cruiser. Except save that she's the most beautiful ship ever built by the Federation, and that there will never be anything like her ever again.
Then comes the multi-role cruisers, the traditional design mentality for the ships:
The Odyssey. The Flagship of the Federation. And one hell of an expensive ship. She can be anything in effect especially if you forked out for all the options. But as a multi-role ship, she pays the hybrid tax by being as slow as Morga in the swamp of Tanagra and now having less shields or less hull than the specialists depending on which branch you are comparing the Odyssey to. The Excelsior is still a quicker means of sector space transport.
After that, comes the hybrids and things get really strange:
The Excelsior is in a pretty strange place, if she wasn't already there. She's a combination of a Regent and a normal 7 eng slot cruiser. She pays a relative hybrid tax (as compared to the Avenger and the Regent) for being both a dps and a support cruiser at the same time. This tax is that she's unable to slot DHCs, and turns at 8. Otherwise, most of the healing options are there, and she has an ability to flit around the galaxy far quicker than any cruiser, what with [Trans] warpcores and Astrometric scientists giving you a transwarp cooldown of ZERO.
The Galaxy-X Dreadnought Cruiser has been officially acknowledged as a separate class of its own. On hindsight, yes, the Gal-X was the first of Dreadnoughts to come. It is an evolution from the slow, preponderous cruiser design into a platform of high outgoing damage and high survivability at the cost of being virtually "unable to move". I put that in brackets because every single dreadnought after the Gal-X is far bigger, far beefier, and quite a tad more manoeuvrable thanks to their +1 degree of turn and higher inertia rating. Even so, the Gal-X pays a hefty hybrid tax for being a cruiser and a dreadnought that I dare say is in name only. Her combination of high eng slots, some tac punch, and that huge gun comes at the price of 2 of the best cruiser commands, all sensible manoeuvrability and at this point in time, having no hangar bay like a Dreadnought type ship should. She should have had a hangar. According to AES, the raised bridge and dual cannon pylons of the dreadnought were the result of expanding the Main Shuttle Bay to manage a full fighter wing and runabout support squadron. As it stand, the Gal-X's main advantage is her wave motion gun. The Phaser Spinal Lance remains the only not-ridiculously-telegraphed BFG attack in the game. We dreadnought captains have slogged long and hard to get to the state where we can force a target to fight on our terms and die in a phaser fire. We don't need saucer sep; All we need is that hangar bay and +10% stats, and we will be a force in PVP.
The Nebula Advanced Research Vessel Retrofit is arguably not a cruiser. But with her generous hull (for a science ship), slowish yet not totally gimped manouverability (9 turn on 40 inertia), more shields than a cruiser can shake a warp core at, and a potential to A2B like a cruiser, I consider her one. In effect, she's a hybrid of a cruiser and a science vessel, sacrificing hull, cruiser commands, 2 weapon slots and high eng slots for shields, speed, SST, SA, and high Sci slots. If you run with high aux, you gain improve sensor ability to see all the cloaked Roms. Converse, you can give my Aux-less Nebbie A2B ptg dps build a try; even I amaze myself at how effective it is in pve!
Alas, in a game where the specialists have few weaknesses, being a hybrid means a tax means lower maximum efficiency means being frowned upon in pvp.
The ultimate losers?
<insert whacky fleet retrofit here> They suffer the most. They are essentially various hybrids between cruiser and escort (sacrifices DHCs however) or cruiser and science (sacrifices Comm Sci slot however). Not enough red to dps, not enough blue to support, or has red or blue but suffers from silly hull and shield ratings. Sure they got variability, but in a game where specialists rule, the hybrid tax just comes down so hard on these poor buggers. And they all don't have C-store discounts, making them way too expensive in my opinion for what they're worth.
And there ends my long essay about the state of cruisers in the Federation. Please be a grammar TRIBBLE cos I'm actually practicing for my English exam this Saturday and I'm terrible at it!! :P
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Thanks for Harajuku. Now let's get a real "Magical Girl" costume!
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Will You Give Up On That The Connie Is Obsolete In This Era.
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Besides... I use the Fleet Heavy Cruiser Retrofit as my main ship, and it's wonderful and aesthetically pleasing (as long as it's not the Cheyenne class that is)!
I was scratching for a single advantage that the Galaxy had that was relevant to the game. :P
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I'm not sure why they haven't seen that. They are really bad retreads of what's come before. For some strange reason, they happened to get the Heavy Cruiser designs right. Much to my great relief. I can't use the Connie effectively in high level gameplay where it matters. They don't even look right to boot, but I digress... I feel fortunate to have at least ONE endgame ship that I can look at and not be embarrassed about. It happens to be a great ship at that.
Before I get flamed for my comments, they are strictly my opinion, I stand by them nonetheless.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
My name is Rage, and I too support a revised Galaxy family.
I still hold hope for Neghvar but I suspect it will be seriously gimped somehow ... like turn rate.
- Judge Aaron Satie
Easiest bait of my life.
Jk, I was seriously trying to offer a solution. There are only two fed cruisers with a balanced eng heavy boff layout, the fleet heavy cruiser and the odyssey series. The galaxy has too much eng, and everything else has a sci or tac lieutenant commander. Those who were originally attracted to the idea of a cruiser are in a weird position and I understand Khayuungs concerns there.
On the other hand I disagree with his assertion that the tactical fed cruisers will be fine. As the stats are now the avenger can do everything the Regent can but better, excluding a device slot and a smidgen of health. The Excelsior has a big boff disadvantage over all, but the Avenger can't match that ensign eng boff technically. The sad part is that they won't nerf the avenger because it wrecks the fed cruisers, it will be because it upsets the precious lock box hierarchy.
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Great post. Truthfully I'm at that point where I'm just gonna stop spending cash til they start making an effort to keep older ships up to par. I'm not gonna keep pushing out cash just so every few months i can see they made something better that fully replaces my other purchases.
I own quite a few ships all fleet except my Galaxy-X. It's getting to the point where its not about making the customer happy and letting us enjoy the game. Seems to be about rep grinds and making newer better ships most of which come with the outrageous cost of buying keys to open lock boxes for a chance to win or having to save up lobi cystals. If that wasn't unpleasant enough you have ships like this new Avenger class which stomps all over the toes of the regent class. They say they don't wanna take away one ships design and paste it to another and then they steal most of what made the Regant good and put it on some weird looking kitbash ship.
Honestly like another poster said think I'll vote with my wallet. Either they can start making ships like the Galaxy and the G-X worth the price i paid and not have new releases stepping on their toes or objectives that make the game Dps centric, upgrade Engineer boffs or I'll just stop buying ships and Ship slots and keep what i have. They want to make tier 6's that replace our old ships that is one thing but to be bringing out these new ships and saying their on par with our older ones is just feeling like their insulting to my intelligence.
Sure you can make it way more nimble than basic stats, however if i do what you suggested on a Fleet Vorcha im close to 40 degrees Turnrate. And most Escorts are in the mid 30s without adding consoles .
Well see how well the Avenger will erform. Imho youll see alot of them in PvE and only very few in PvP once the new and shiney effect wears of.
Im looking forward to see what it can do, and i was waiting for a ship like that but combined with the looks and the new comm array options for cruisers in general , i think ill give that ship a pass.
Where are so many people getting that the Avenger resembles a TOS ship from? I seriously don't see it.
Unless you mean J.J. TOS, but even then...
The U.S.S. Vengeance is the ugliest pos that emerged since the beginning of mankind. When I have kids, I plan so scare them with the U.S.S. Vengeance if they missbehave. :P
While the Avenger is obviously meant to remind of the Vengeance due to the blocky design, she looks like Miss Columbia compared to it. :P
I hope you get my point - subjective opinion is subjective.
On the topic of the thread:
I have been using cruisers almost exclusively throughout my STO career. While I can't guarantee anything 100% before the actual Avenger hits holodeck with actual stats and experience how it preforms in game, I do believe that the Odyssey and Excelsior could have 'heads up' over it. Not so sure about the other cruisers though.
Currently, the Federation faction has cruisers of all flavours fit to fill in every possible role in the game. The thing is that the end-game itslef is very much DPS oriented and some of them lose their point besides fandom. I think Cryptic will eventually (very soon) need to create end game objectives that are something other than deal 'X' amount of damage over 'Y' period of time if they want to keep their game going. Because having everyone in the same ship will become boring really fast. I wouldn't be suprised if we see attempts to do this even in S8, because Cpt.Geko vaguely mentioned the possibility.
I also think that we're slowly getting very close to the breaking point where they'll have to figure out a way for players to upgrade their ships. I don't mind paying for it as long as there is a system like that in place. Personally I wouldn't mind paying the full price of a new ship (hey, the game has to keep funding to keep going somehow) to upgrade an old one that I happen to love. Because the essence of ST was the voyages of the ship and the crew, not swapping ships like socks. So especially now when they release new ships that really step on old ones and make them obsolete, they'll have to do something about it because like I said - shoehorning everyone into one design will become boring really fast in a MMO comunity cause traditionally MMO comunities like and demand diversity.
I do wish they stop trying to make us change ships...
But I think I might support the Avenger. We'll see; the Regent has my vote, if only for the WAQT.
Actually:
1. The Avenger isn't OP. She's just built for one job and does that well.
2. The Regent, Ambassador, Excelsior and Gal-X are viable even with the Avenger around, and have their niches.
3. The Nebula is a cruiser. :cool:
4. I mourn for the fleet redshirt cruisers. I really do.
@Kris: The hybrid tax applies to KDF and Warbirds. BUT because the devs use an arbitrary balance system, what they think is "balance" doesn't exactly translate well into reality.
Take Warbirds for example. So just "-40 power" in exchange for all the WTF the Romulans get? Its a tradeoff, but its not trading off enough.
KDF use the same system as Starfleet, so they are actually balanced against Fed ships. HOWEVER, Cryptic makes them pay for the built in cloak and DHC use, so at the maximum a Defiant can outperform all of them at dps.
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Agreed, its not all that hard to made the Excel' turn well. The ensign boff slot that most people think is useless houses my EPTE1 and gets used almost as much as my EPTS's. I coast at a 21', but only use one MKXII Blue RCS and the Lobi Console that gives a smaller turn rate boost. If I got serious about it, Im sure I could get to 30'. Not as agile as a BoP, but with 180' arc guns and weapons power that is almost kept above 120 all the time, I can make it hard for a BoP. Probably wont get the kill against them though (they can just up and run away). But it will make fighting slower Raptors, Escorts and Battlecruisers more interesting.
What is a "Fleet Redshirt Cruiser"?
If your talking about the Excel' I think you may be surprised a hard-driven Excel' will probably keep pace with a DHC setup Avenger.
DeltaFox
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The four nacelle heavy cruiser. And the poor, poor fleet star cruiser.
that's a fun ship, especially the fleet version
I also think the Heavy Cruiser and Star Cruisers are completely ignored even more than the GCS, because sadly both ships are much less popular and Cryptics does NOTHING against it.
Strangely, for me those ships are the best looking in STO and my favorite designs, and yet Cryptic made them the most boring ships...
I think we are doing a major mistake here by assuming that Crpytic is doing all that with a plan in mind. To be honest i can't see any draft here at all, they just seem to release one OP ship after another in the cruiser section. Knowing that Cruisers sell, but in reality they don't give much thought about it, as long as they can keep their beloved Escorts on top of every other ship.
Why on earth do people consider a hangar a boon? Unless you get a specific kick TRIBBLE hangar ship, you're basically stuck top yellowstones, which fire an warp plasma and tractor every blue moon which you cant even control...
Not to mention that its simply fandom wanking to put carrier abilities to all ships everywhere.
"All we need is that hangar bay and +10% stats, and we will be a force in PVP." No, you are not. THe lack ofa hangar is entirely not the problem this ship has.
The G-X main problems is:
While it can slot heavy forward firepower, it has no means of exploiting that potential. You cannot slot a rapid fire/scatter and a attack pattern beta/delta for example.
And just a scatter volley/rapid fire 1 does nothing really.
Fortunately the ship can be build as a decent beam boat, and canon wise thats what it should be anyway. It did not fire cannons at any point.
Well, with the return of powerful gravity wells the ship can at least get guns on target if someone pull them in for you. But as i said: your cannons lack buff-power so whats the point.
The other thing is the Lance itself: it really should not be a 3 min CD power.
Here's what i say the ship needs:
we give up on the dual cannons on behalf of how remarkably TRIBBLE the idea was to put them there in the first place both from a game play perspective and from the perspective of canon.
And no to saucer sep either because THE LANCE IS part of the Superstructure and if you could have weapons like that LEGO themselves together it raises the question why the fck we do not have ships that combine to a super gun.
It also loses the 4th aft weapon slot again.
In return for that:
The ship gets a unique weapon for itself:
Phaser Spinal lance
(stats before skills/consoles)
- Deals 1536 Damage per pulse (which is basically 4 dual heavy cannons forward) , fire 4 times per cycle, the cycle lasts 4 seconds and has a 3 second cooldown between cycles.
- Has a 25 degree Firing arc.
- It keeps the animation of course (so people know what is wailing down on them.).
- It drains 10 weapons and 15 engine power to fire.
- The lance is not affected by beam overload or fire at will.
So at the end you are looking at:
6144 base damage over 4 seconds every 3 seconds in a 20 degree arc.
Then you add whatever other weapons the ship carries.
This will, after skills, do very good frontal damage in a small arc, it will not fix the issue of keeping a target there but hey, you do have team mates.
The Rest of the ship stats remain unchanged because they are pretty good. Needs a fleet variant though (tied to having the base ship since only that comes with the lance)
The rationale is this:
- The spinal phaser should be a blunt hammer that you smash onto something until said something breaks or escapes the firing arc.
- The proposed damage is high, but does not come close to an aux2 bat beam boat or a well build escort. + its even more situational damage than dual cannons.
- one might argue that its too good in stfs but i counter with this: ISE was done in under 2 minutes by a beam spamming group so any argument you make is silly and you are wrong.
- as for pvp: yes. good. bring that ship to pvp... and get sodomized...
- You get 7 weapon slots and are sacrificing one for the lance, so your FAW a2b remains at 6 beams, and you will not get that lt com tac to make the whole thing truly powerfull.
None the less it would be cool to have a phaser lance that actually does some lancing.
This ship will pack a wallop, but a very defined one: if you sit in front of it it will hurt big time. But unlike say from escorts, you can get out of the front of this ship.... or the ship can get pushed away etc.
As far as the guramba goes: the lance needs a CD reduction to 1 min 30
As for the Bortasqu: make the auto turret into a weapon also. If the G-X gets that treatment, so should this ship.
As for Tholian tetryon grid: make it a toggle that drains 10 weapon and aux power per cycle and continuously applies it effect with every cycle.
Karfi/Voquv/Caitian carrier - Free AOE buffl effect for their pets (shield regen, resistance, energy weapons buff) and give the caitian some frigate pets.
Well, those things are basically my pet peeves.....
oh btw: the Vesta has that phaser thing, did you notice that you can get it to crit pretty reliably with consoles and romuland boffs so it turns into something around 12k+ per hit per second per 12 seconds?
Noone ever complained about that being op.
Yet you have ancient Andorian Escorts in this game.
And we shouldn't. we shouldn't have the NX either, or TOS Connie, Connie as a C store ship yeas and first Excel in her spot. In the end I'm talking damage control.
But it can't crit for 80k damage total in 1.5 seconds. That's the only point where a dreadnought cruiser is viable in pvp. That happening every 3 mins is fine too; my tac buffs don't recharge any faster.
Trust me, anyone who died to a phaser lance connecting get reminded not to annoy me in Kerrat when I leave them alone. :P
That is why I do not agree with most of your suggestions, they take away the dreadnought's one advantage.
As a compromise, I'd ask for is a buff to turn and innertia. Make it 7 degrees on 35 inertia like the other dreadnoughts. Then just +10% stats for being a fleet variant. Simple. Won't need the damn saucer sep too.
But since they are bent on giving it the saucer sep... Might as well make the best of it then. Saucer sep in pve to fly like a destroyer and space shotgun, and leave the saucer on in pvp so that I can tank and wave motion gun.
"Last Engage! Magical Girl Origami-san" is in print! Now with three times more rainbows.
Support the "Armored Unicorn" vehicle initiative today!
Thanks for Harajuku. Now let's get a real "Magical Girl" costume!
Honeslty, IMHO, the Star Cruiser and Exploration cruiser should be put together as one Exploration Cruiser config' and be the "typical" (for lack of better words) Fed' cruiser.