I'm going to pitch a horse shoe at the other goal post and say: Range is fine. It's annoying to fly in CLOSE formation, but staying within 5km doesn't seem like a huge problem if your team is working as a team. And if the battle gets more spread out, I don't see why it is so inconceivable to have more than one cruiser. The point of the command array is to help cruisers be an anchor around which things happen, and the range is fine for that.
This is exactly what I was thinking. In every engagement I've ever been a part of, there's always at least 3 cruisers on my team, if not all cruisers. And even if there was only 1, there's really no need to seperate beyond 5k from it. Based on just speed and manuverability, cruisers should not be chasing around their escort teammates and trying to keep up with them, it should be the other way around. There's no reason an escort can't keep pace with a cruiser and stay in the effective range of any and all buffs/heals. After all, isn't that what this is about? Teamwork and team tactics?
A secondary consideration for the Cruiser Comm Arrays is ... it's REALLY HARD TO NOTICE in the (relatively) fast pace of Space Combat where the Cruiser is, let alone which Aura it is running. Even worse, since there isn't any VISUAL indicator of how far the Aura extends (ie. which region of space it covers), it's really hard to know in advance] if it will be advantageous to get close to a Cruiser, or not, and if so ... how close do you need to be (ie. where do I need to fly)?
This is one of those cases where having a "soap bubble" visual FX would go a LONG WAY towards helping the situation because it would make the Aura VISIBLE in a game where everything is Visual Flight Rules for where to go and how to maneuver. Even doing something like having a 90% transparent spherical "bubble" around the Cruiser, tinted to show the "type" of Aura the Cruiser is projecting, which VISIBLY shows the limit of the Aura's range would be a tremendously useful addition. Heck, if you wanted to get "fancy" with it, you could make the bubble be 90% transparent from the outside (so it doesn't "clutter up" the view *too much*) and make it 95% transparent from the inside (so it's just a very faint "tinting" effect showing you what lies beyond the radius of effect. This would then help Cruiser Captains "fly better" by giving them the ability to VISUALLY process "where they need to go" in order to cover more allies, and what the "limits" of their maneuverability is if they want to "lend cover" to more than one ally at the same time by keeping them within the Aura radius.
This kind of situation ought to be plenty familiar to Adjudicator Hawk, thanks to his work on City of Heroes and dealing with "bubble" abilities such as the Force Fields and Sonic Resonance sets having Aura Toggles where the player *projecting* the Aura needs to be able to see how far the Aura extends in order to position themselves most effectively ... while OTHER players ALSO need to be able to see the limits of the Aura in order to position THEMSELVES most effectively relative to the player projecting the Aura. The "failure" to create such a visual effect for Cruiser Comm Arrays is, I believe, a major component for why the 5 km radius being used feels so completely inadequate ... and why it ends up being more of a "self buff" than a "team buff" (let alone an "ally buff") simply because of the increased workload needed to employ it on behalf of others being functionally prohibitive to Quick And Fast Gameplay. Instead of "flying the HUD" you wind up needing to "fly the gauges" ... which is NEVER a good thing for this kind of game.
This is exactly what the problem is. Cruiser captains should not be trying to cover escorts. Cruisers are too slow for that kind of work. Escorts can keep in range of a cruiser far more easily. Expecting the cruiser to come to you is not only selfish, but just plain wrong. Keep to your cruisers, keep them protected, and they'll do they're job far better.
To illustrate a point made earlier in this thread:
Someone has said that a sign of balance is, given the choice between "is the restriction on maneuver worth the benefit being given" - and when the answers are either "always" = OP and "never" = UP.
General consensus of this thread is that the answer to "is maneuvering within 5km of a cruiser worth the benefit" is, unfortunately, no. Therefore aura = UP.
However, there is a thought that perhaps the work to stay within 7.5km or even 10km of a cruiser is worth the benefit as it's written right now. Much better than saying "make the benefit even better than it is now for the cruiser(s) that have it all the time...
Detecting big-time "anti-old-school" bias here. NX? Lobi. TOS/TMP Connie? Super-promotion-box. (aka the two hardest ways to get ships) Excelsior & all 3 TNG "big hero" ships? C-Store. Please Equalize...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
I'd say its actually OP now, since there's no cost to using it. There's not even an opportunity cost, since you can switch between the modes at will with no cooldown.
If anything the only balance is with the other ships who have to pay the price of staying in range.
I'd say its actually OP now, since there's no cost to using it. There's not even an opportunity cost, since you can switch between the modes at will with no cooldown.
If anything the only balance is with the other ships who have to pay the price of staying in range.
Cruisers were already borderline useless in the game, and I firmly believe this was just the dev's way of ninja-buffing them and trying to sell it as a benefit to everyone. But cruisers and sci vessels in this game are all UP, except recent sci changes have been making them ridiculous crowd controlling kill you straight through your shields, evil, evil, EVIL, demons.
If you don't think the support of the cruiser is worth it, then don't go near the ship and this new feature will literally not affect you in any way. Is it a bad thing to add the possibility of a buff in exchange for accepting an addition burden of effort or danger? Why does everything have to be a pure and pristine bonus with no down side? Do players not like having to perform risk analysis?
You are still missing the point.
The Point: It is NOT feasible for ships in this game traveling at different speeds and with different turn rates to properly assail any combative mobile target while maintaining a 5KM distance to a Cruiser.
Is that clear enough for you?
The Conclusion then is Thus: The Aura should be extended to 10KM at bare minimum as this would be more feasible even if difficult OR it should be made a team buff that ignores range altogether which not only would make it more effective but would also make more sense with what the origin of the buff is supposed to be.
I think I mentioned the AoEs in my first posting... and that the decision to risk that in exchange for your buff is that of the player. If you want to argue the making sense aspect, does it even make sense for a Comm Array to reduce weapon drain or buff shields in the first place? Seriously, are they transmitting "By the Profits, don't drain!" to their allies' weapons or "Hold together petaQ!" to their allies' shields? From a gameplay perspective, if you look at most MMOs aura buffs tend to require players to stay close to the character producing the aura, rather than at the edge of their combat range... which thereby risks being subjected to AoEs. If you want to name your cruiser the Paladin, by the way, that is rather apt.)
This is not most MMO's. THIS... IS... STAR TREK ONLINE!!! *kicks you into the pit*
Sorry... Had to do it.
autumnturning is also quite correct. You notice that the Vesta's healing aura, the Scattering Field, and the Masking Field all at LEAST project a disk around the ship to show you "Hey! There is a buff field here that you might want to be in!" but the Auras are invisible and only show up when you enter them. It would also make it a lot easier to coordinate types of aura if I could easily tell who was running what.
recent sci changes have been making them ridiculous crowd controlling kill you straight through your shields, evil, evil, EVIL, demons.
Uh ... not to put too fine a point on things ... but if, as a Game Designer, you're trying to build a Rock, Paper, Scissors system that balances (relatively) evenly, and you set up the Science abilities as being the Crowd Control center of power ... um ... doesn't it make sense for Science to be able to Crowd Control Hard Enough to be able to succeed in killing their opposition?
Or to put it another way ... (and I'm just substitute/swapping for clarity here) ...
longstanding tac balance has been to give them insanely stackable spike damage capabilities that can kill you straight through your shields, evil, evil, EVIL, demons.
So if it's "okay" or even "to be expected" for Tactical Captains (in Escorts) to be able to Burst Kill their opponents as their signature "stock in trade" and reason for existing ... why is it somehow "wrong" or "unfair" or whatever (I know you didn't use those words or terms, but I'm extrapolating the notion here) for Science Captains (in Science Ships) to be able to achieve Pressure Kills when using their signature "stock in trade" abilities and skills to justify their existence as Crowd Controllers?
My point being that Science was set up as the Buff/Debuff/CONTROL side of the triangle ... so complaining that Science is able to do its job via DECISIVE Control seems rather disingenuous at best. And to be fair, I'm not aiming this critique at you, personally, but rather at the thought process and assumptions that produce the sentiment that you just happened to express. Crowd Control tends to be an All Or Nothing kind of affair, with relatively little middle ground for a "goldilocks zone" where it's just enough, but not too much ... meaning that the balance for it is going to be really ... finicky. The problem is that players hate being attacked with Crowd Control (since that limits their options, up to and including reducing them to being Spectators to the continuing action) since when Crowd Control is "up to snuff" and effective, it often results in what amounts to a "time out" for the victim in which their adrenaline rush that comes from competitively playing the game basically crashes (because their Control was taken away from them).
Again, the flipside of the argument would be that Crowd Control is "allowed" so long as it can't be effective ... which is a bit like saying that Tactical can do all the DPS it wants so long as you don't actually KILL anyone (or anything). Kinda defeats the purpose of even including that in the game at that point, no? :rolleyes:
So if a Tactical Captain can spec themselves out for Alpha Strike and incredible Burst Damage that can overwhelm and carry them to victory ... why can't a Science Captain spec themselves out for Crowd Control and ride THAT advantage into being victorious?
For extra bonus points, if someone can figure out how Engineers are supposed to leverage Healing and Hull Tanking as a path to offensive victory (as opposed to Stalemate Boredom), you win a Mk I Console. :P
Cruisers were already borderline useless in the game, and I firmly believe this was just the dev's way of ninja-buffing them and trying to sell it as a benefit to everyone. But cruisers and sci vessels in this game are all UP, except recent sci changes have been making them ridiculous crowd controlling kill you straight through your shields, evil, evil, EVIL, demons.
Cruisers are borderline useless eh? This is big news to me, last I checked Auxiliary to Battery Cruisers currently rule Space PvP. What recent science changes are you referring to exactly? The changes to gravity well fixed a bug in the pull factor while also nerfing the damage from the ability. Science abilities are very easy to counter via 3-6 points in Starship Power Insulators, Starship Inertial Dampers, and Starship Sensors. 6 points in those three skills will provide your ship with a 42% resistance to all science attacks. Not to mention the fact that you can also slot hard counters to counter all control abilities (Attack Pattern Omega, Auxiliary to Inertial Dampers, Polarize Hull), power drains (Science Team, Hazard Emitters), and subsystem disables (Engineering Team). On top of that, there is also currently a Warp Core Engineer with a 40% chance to remove any negative effect whenever you use Emergency Power to Anything.
Uh ... not to put too fine a point on things ... but if, as a Game Designer, you're trying to build a Rock, Paper, Scissors system that balances (relatively) evenly, and you set up the Science abilities as being the Crowd Control center of power ... um ... doesn't it make sense for Science to be able to Crowd Control Hard Enough to be able to succeed in killing their opposition?
Or to put it another way ... (and I'm just substitute/swapping for clarity here) ...
So if it's "okay" or even "to be expected" for Tactical Captains (in Escorts) to be able to Burst Kill their opponents as their signature "stock in trade" and reason for existing ... why is it somehow "wrong" or "unfair" or whatever (I know you didn't use those words or terms, but I'm extrapolating the notion here) for Science Captains (in Science Ships) to be able to achieve Pressure Kills when using their signature "stock in trade" abilities and skills to justify their existence as Crowd Controllers?
My point being that Science was set up as the Buff/Debuff/CONTROL side of the triangle ... so complaining that Science is able to do its job via DECISIVE Control seems rather disingenuous at best. And to be fair, I'm not aiming this critique at you, personally, but rather at the thought process and assumptions that produce the sentiment that you just happened to express. Crowd Control tends to be an All Or Nothing kind of affair, with relatively little middle ground for a "goldilocks zone" where it's just enough, but not too much ... meaning that the balance for it is going to be really ... finicky. The problem is that players hate being attacked with Crowd Control (since that limits their options, up to and including reducing them to being Spectators to the continuing action) since when Crowd Control is "up to snuff" and effective, it often results in what amounts to a "time out" for the victim in which their adrenaline rush that comes from competitively playing the game basically crashes (because their Control was taken away from them).
Again, the flipside of the argument would be that Crowd Control is "allowed" so long as it can't be effective ... which is a bit like saying that Tactical can do all the DPS it wants so long as you don't actually KILL anyone (or anything). Kinda defeats the purpose of even including that in the game at that point, no? :rolleyes:
So if a Tactical Captain can spec themselves out for Alpha Strike and incredible Burst Damage that can overwhelm and carry them to victory ... why can't a Science Captain spec themselves out for Crowd Control and ride THAT advantage into being victorious?
For extra bonus points, if someone can figure out how Engineers are supposed to leverage Healing and Hull Tanking as a path to offensive victory (as opposed to Stalemate Boredom), you win a Mk I Console. :P
First off, I did not say that, and you shouldn't present it so literally in a quote box as if I had. You can make your re-wording point and put it in standard text quotes. I kept getting stuck on the first sentence of your fake quote thinking, "Where the hell did I say this? It doesn't sound like me at all, I would never phrase something like... oooooh, this ISN'T me at all. Autumn, you con artist!" lol. Also, when I say sci can kill you right through your shields, I mean without even damaging your shields, tacs simply obliterate your shields and then your ship. See? there's a difference. :P lol.
Second, tacs shouldn't have such uber spike, the ridiculous stacking spikes in the game, from anyone really, just tacs are best at it, is what has made tac team an absolute must have because turning to present a healthy shield facing isn't a valid tactic when someone can blow through your facing and half your hull in a single volley, and manual distribution won't even remotely counter that kind of damage either. Why the Fing H do people bring up tacs every time I mention something about science ridiculousness as if I'm saying tacs are okay by not mentioning them in the same breath? Just because I don't say "recent sci changes have been making them ridiculous crowd controlling kill you straight through your shields, evil, evil, EVIL, demons. OH, and tacs are super evil too." Doesn't mean I am saying tac is fine simply by not mentioning them. Every time I file a complaint, do I have to list EVERY complaint I have with the game? Science is off balance because of x and so is tac because of y and so is eng because of z and here is what's wrong with cruisers also, this is why sci ships suck, and something needs to be done about escorts...? All grievances must be filed in one really long run on sentence to avoid being accused of favoritism?
100% shield bypassing damage should never have been a substantial mechanic of the game, it would have been better to have it so that the lower the integrity of a facing, the more bleed damage gets through, this allows a better mechanic for attacking weak facings other than "easier to burst through"
However, the direct to hull eject warp plasma damage coupled with a tyken's rift and grav well and transphasic cluster mines is just ridiculous, not to mention elachi procs, omega graviton passive, etc, etc. The problem I'm seeing is that first, devs made damage too good, tac team became essential to survival, and shield healing/resistance went up, these changes made shields too good and then the devs introduced a whole host of shield bypassing BS, we just keep going in a never ending cycle of what flavor of the month is OP.
I still firmly believe that captain powers should be removed from the game, the stacking spike from attack pattern alpha and go down fighting and the like is WAY too much on top of everything else. Science subnuke is perhaps the most OP power in the game in pvp when executed properly, and engineering is always going to be the obvious third place because in any combat game, damage must be able to overwhelm defense/healing or no one ever dies/wins, so by being stuck in the "defense/heal" department, they simply have to have the short end of the stick.
As someone else mentioned, I believe in another thread, the reputation passives should be a choice between an offensive and an offensive or a defensive and a defensive trait as this is easier to balance. When one person takes all defensive and the other takes all offensive, offensive, again, has to win out.
If the mechanic of lower shield facing=more bleed damage had been implemented, i.e. 100% shield facing=0% bypass, 60% shield facing=40% bypass then two things would happen, one would best be served by staying on a weak facing because more damage gets through, currently, if one is at 5% shields, if they can maintain that 5% shield against your damage, virtually none of your damage is going through to hull where it really counts. And this would allow for escorts to have a strength other than "most epic brute force." In fact, cruisers should have had the highest brute force and shields/hull but with TRIBBLE speed, TRIBBLE maneuverability, and no evasion (cruisers are the broad side of a barn, if your tactical officer misses a cruiser, you need to realign your sensors or blow him out an airlock.) Escorts wouldn't have quite as high damage as cruisers, but their speed and maneuverability would allow them to take advantage of weak facings with higher bleed, they would have no where near as good of shields or hull as cruisers, but have high evasion and their speed and maneuverability also allows them to easily exit bad situations/take up a better defensive posture in an enemy's weaker arcs. Science ships should still be doing most of their damage from standard weapons, like we saw with voyager, voyager wasn't pecking at things with crappy standard weapons and then ripping them to shreds by summoning a magic gravity well. Gravity well and other associated science skills should primarily be crowd control/debuffs, but not ridiculous all or nothing type holds/placates/scrambles that make people heal their enemy and then instapop because they just gave everything they had to the enemy. -.- large aoe (10km or larger) accuracy debuffs, slows, power drains, resistance debuffs, things that give an edge but don't break the game. Science ship defense would be a hybrid between cruiser and escort with good shields, reasonable evasion, with medium speed/maneuverability.
This type of balance would have allowed each of the ships to be competitive in the DPS race that is this game, it is a combat game after all, anyone who hopes it will one day be an exploration or... what? puzzle solving mystery game? Yeah... I'm fairly certain you will continue to be disappointed. It would also allow cruisers to naturally tank without the need of threat modifiers as they would have the highest outright damage, and they would have the "meat" of lots of hull and shields to soak up damage with high repair rates from lots of crew. Escorts are more strategic, their faster combat speed and maneuverability allow them to quickly move about the battle field to get on and stay on weak facings. Additionally, this creates a synergy where enemy ships distribute their shields to mitigate incoming heavy cruiser damage which allows an escort to fly around to the other sides to find weak facings for bonus shield penetration damage. Sci ships are also more maneuverable and fast (not as much as escorts, but more than cruisers) which allows them similar tactics plus they would have a whole host of the best debuff/crowd control skills to help turn the battle in favor of themselves and their allies.
All of the current skills in the game should be available to all ships and how well they use them and how frequently they can use them should be determined by ship type and the skill set of the captain and boffs seated. Boffs should have a skill tree like a captain, but isolated to their department that passively enhances your vessel's capabilities. This would increase the variety of tactics used and builds available with certain skills obviously working best from certain vessels, like an aoe "scramble sensors" that persists around a vessel with a radius of X for Y seconds and a cool time of Z that reduces the accuracy of all enemies within the bubble could be available on all ships, but the range, duration, and intensity of effect might be severely limited on non-sci ships. If a sci can have it at 20km range and -20% accuracy for 30 seconds with a cool time of 30 seconds, an escort might only be able to get it to 10km max with a 10% accuracy drop and 15 seconds of up time.
Also, these types of debuffs should not stack, if you are within range of two sci ships or an escort and sci both using this aoe scramble, the higher one is applied and that's it, so no stacking debuffs to ridiculous heights. This would also encourage coordination of ships to not waste their abilities by using them willy nilly but, for example, you use yours, then I'll use mine. Abilities should also, again, be slight edges, not the primary source of damage/heal. Passive crew repair healing should be the primary hull heal, powers like aux to structural should simply improve damage resistance which naturally improves your crew's ability to repair the hull as it takes less damage. Shield regeneration should be entirely based off of power level, no super magic heals from nowhere, emergency power to shields improves shield power and thus regeneration. Emergency power to weapons improves weapon damage only so far as it increases power allocated to weapons. The energy weapon drain should be eliminated as a mechanic, it's currently the only subsystem where overcapping is actually a thing to aim for, so lets stop that.
Also, many abilities would be turned into toggles, for example, every ship would have access to emergency power to weapons, shields, engines, and auxiliary only one could be active at any one time. These emergency powers would run off of a rechargeable battery that is a part of every ship. The battery recharges when not in use and constantly drains while in use. Once power in the battery reaches zero, it automatically disabled your emergency power to X and recharges. You can turn it off whenever you like, or even turn it back on even if it's only recharged by 10%, but you won't have a bonus for very long, so this makes is bonus power more strategic. Keep in mind, every other facet of the game will be changed so that near constant up time on one or two emergency powers will no longer be "necessary." Also, this battery could be itemized, so that there are equippable batteries with better recharge times or higher capacities, etc. Every ship would have auxiliary power to structural integrity field, dampers, and battery, only one could be active at a time and performance would obviously be tied to how much power you have allocated to auxiliary. Aux to structural would be straight damage reduction, aux to dampers would improve the vessel's inertia stat this improving maneuverability and would improve crew damage resistance and would reduce the impact/disable of shockwave type attacks/effects, and aux to battery would pull power from auxiliary to boost the other system power levels as it does currently. Related doffs such as the technician doff could provide a constant cool reduction improvement for as long as aux to bat is active. The doff that gives a chance for a bonus heal with aux to structural could improve crew repair rates as long as aux to structural is active. The doff that added energy damage resistance and increased duration of aux to dampers could simply improve the stats provided by aux to damp, I would prefer not to add other damage resistances to aux to damp as that is the realm of aux to structural, and the point is to choose what flavor you want active, so I would rather not blur the lines. All of these would be self-only, no more transferring your auxiliary power to someone else's structural integrity field from 10km away... lol.
Attack patterns/maneuvers would be toggles, if you choose attack pattern beta, it would continuously improve your damage against hull, if you choose attack pattern delta it would continuously improve damage to shields, attack pattern omega would lose all other current defense/damage/speed/maneuverability boosts but would continuously reduce the effect of crowd controls on the ship, evasive maneuvers would be removed as a one time power and made a "attack pattern/maneuver" toggle that increases ship evasion stat and increases speed/evasion. This way the attack patterns are a choice of offensive or defensive measures one can switch between as the situation calls for. Target sybsystem would become a toggle that would give all of your attacks a constant medium chance to reduce power in your enemy's subsystem and a small chance to knock the subsystem offline briefly (current shield facing, perhaps random shield facing, knocked offline for target shields, not whole grid.) I would remove cannon rapid fire and scatter volley as these skills don't make functional sense, fire at will and overload would instead apply to all weapons. Fire at will for targeted aoe, and overload for single target spike. Overload wouldn't affect one weapon, it would make them all overload firing off one highly boosted volley of fire from all energy weapons with an arc on the enemy. Overload would no longer drain weapon power.
The only cross-heal/support abilities would be hazard emitters, transfer shield strength, and extend shields. Hazard emitters would no longer provide a heal, but would 'clear hazards' and could be a field around the ship, thus one could activate their hazard emitters and fly by a ship stuck in warp plasma to clear the plasma. If a ship doesn't have hazard emitters available when a tyken's rift is thrown, they can fly within the hazard emitter field of a friendly ship to avoid ill effects for the duration. Transfer shield strength would be a literal transfer of shield points, so the giving ship loses as many points from their shields as they give to their ally in need. Extend shields would significantly increase the size of your shield bubble and allow allies to take refuge inside but would significantly reduce regeneration and capacity for the duration, as you would be 'spreading your shields thin.' to cover your allies. Which is what we would see in the show, extending shields was a risky proposition because it made the extended shields weaker. I would probably make extend a toggle since it's not a "free super shields for your ally" power anymore. So as long as your ally is within your extended shield range, any damage directed at them is absorbed by your weakened shields, and any bleed damage hits your hull at full as well as their shields. And yes, I think that level of risk/reward is appropriate for this power based on what we see in canon.
Speaking of shields, I would like to be able to choose between close to hull shields and a shield bubble, this may be impractical graphics wise, but we saw both bubble shields and close to hull shields, so if they could be implemented in graphics, I would make close to hull shields have higher capacity and regeneration but enemy bleed through damage would get a bonus as what bleeds through the shield wouldn't have any significant distance between it and the hull. Bubble shields would have reduced hull impact from bleed but would regenerate more slowly with a lower capacity. We could also introduce deployed armor as a "shield" option which would simply, vastly improve the damage resistance of the hull, depending on how much power was put into shields, but tactics like presenting a strong shield facing or distributing your shields would go out the window. Likewise, one would not be able to have shield points transferred to them if they have no shields, so there would be risks and benefits associated with each defense type.
I would probably make tac team, eng team, and sci team into toggles that boost their corresponding department's abilities. The only additional effect I would give to each team is tac team intercepts boarding parties while active, and sci team improves crew regeneration (medical is part of the science department.). I wouldn't give engineering anything special for two reasons, 1. I can't think of anything for engineering to do that wouldn't be way OP and not already covered by the engineering passives it would buff, and 2. engineering has 5 more passives than the other departments, so I think that evens out anyway.
Energy weapons should provide pressure damage while torps are the spike damage. Cannons should have normal shield penetration, i.e. when a facing is at 60%, 40% of cannon damage bypasses the shields, beams would have half bypass damage, so with a 60% facing they do 20% bleed, this makes beams better for lowering shields as more of their damage stays in the shield hp, while cannons are better at reducing hull through shields. Weapons with limited arcs, things like dual heavy cannons should have bonus damage on bare hull and their shield damage should be brought more in line with beam arrays, this makes their advantage wrecking hull, not wrecking hull AND shields. This would emphasize their use on escorts that (in this brave new world of balance) would have an emphasis on attacking weak facings to get dat hull damage. So, for example, a beam array and a dual heavy cannon and a dual beam bank all have the same damage against shields, cannons have better shield penetration, which makes them better for getting hull damage through shields, but the more of their damage bypasses the shields, the slower the shield facing drops. A dual beam bank would have lower shield penetration, so it would be better for bringing down shields so the point of equipping one would be to lower shields quickly in a frontal assault and then its bonus damage to hull could shine.
I would alter beam arrays to be 360 degree damage. Regardless of equipped in front or in back, their highest damage would be the forward 250 degrees of the ship with 1/2 maybe 1/3 damage in the back 110 degrees, this brings beam arrays more in line with what we see in the shows/movies where all ship's damage is primary forward/sides and lower in the aft. This allows ships with beam arrays to effectively do damage on targets ahead (chasing) or off to the side for orbiting broadsides with their weakest coverage in the back. Additionally, I would have multiple stacks of a type of weapon share a graphic, i.e. instead of equipping 6 beam arrays and getting beams firing all over the place, they would simply add all their damage together and fire as a single beam from the hard point arrays on our ship. Same with two or more dual beam banks or two or more of any other weapon. This brings the game more graphically in line with what we see on screen as well.
I would alter torpedoes so that they load into launchers over time, e.g. 1 torp every 6 seconds, you can choose to fire them off the moment they load, or you can save them up (maximum of 5, as a rough cap) so that you can fire off a nice barrage. This places more emphasis on being strategic with use of torpedoes. I am not sure if I would bother with giving ships a limited number of torps that they could exhaust while in combat, but replenish while out of combat, but if that would be a popular idea, then sure. Torpedo high yield would be a buff to torpedo damage for duration, so if you select high yield, any torps fired in the next 15 seconds (for example) would be high yield, not the current mechanic where torps pop off one every 8 seconds and when you "high yield" you actually get a torpedo volley. Torpedo spread would cease to be a power and would become a firing mode toggle, you can set your torps to single target in which case firing them off fires them one after another at a single target, or in spread mode, when you fire your torps, all torps you have saved up will fire off all at once, if there is only one target in your arcs, they will all hit that target, if there are multiple targets, each will take a different target. This would be most useful when dealing with multiple small targets like fighters where a single torp should be enough to take out something that small. or where a single torp will do significant damage to a target like a borg probe ship.
Well then... now that I've written my manifesto of all things that could/should be changed to make this game more balanced and true to trek... lol, and there's probably some things i still didn't address. However, most of these changes make the game more massively multiplayer simulation. "Simulation" being the word people use, almost like a dirty word, to mean "too realistic/canon," as if that is a bad thing , instead of more typical mmo like a space/trek themed world of war-craft.
Anyway, I think I've made my point as to why I should not be expected to air all of my grievances at once and why no one should assume that because I bring up X as a bad thing and don't mention Y or Z, that I have no grievance with Y or Z.
Cruisers are borderline useless eh? This is big news to me, last I checked Auxiliary to Battery Cruisers currently rule Space PvP. What recent science changes are you referring to exactly? The changes to gravity well fixed a bug in the pull factor while also nerfing the damage from the ability. Science abilities are very easy to counter via 3-6 points in Starship Power Insulators, Starship Inertial Dampers, and Starship Sensors. 6 points in those three skills will provide your ship with a 42% resistance to all science attacks. Not to mention the fact that you can also slot hard counters to counter all control abilities (Attack Pattern Omega, Auxiliary to Inertial Dampers, Polarize Hull), power drains (Science Team, Hazard Emitters), and subsystem disables (Engineering Team). On top of that, there is also currently a Warp Core Engineer with a 40% chance to remove any negative effect whenever you use Emergency Power to Anything.
Last I checked, it's still the escorts that blow everything apart in two seconds flat. Aux to bat cruisers have such compromised healing ability and sacrifice so much to create their ridiculously expensive niche build that they severely compromise what the devs intended for them to do only to still not put out as much uber doom as an escort. Not to mention that's a faw boat that spreads its damage so thin the only thing it will kill in group combat with player who even remotely know what they are doing is photonic fleets and fighters, which no, isn't anywhere near as useful as blowing through player after player like escorts.
Additionally, using a team other than tac team just removes the essential shield distribution that is the only thing keeping an escort from blowing through you even faster, so no, you won't be subnuked/viral matrixed, but you will probably be dead.
Thanks for reminding me of that warp core engineer though... I was wondering what to slot on my ship if I removed the conn officers for tac team and went for two copies of it instead, and that will probably do nicely. ^^
Last I checked, it's still the escorts that blow everything apart in two seconds flat. Aux to bat cruisers have such compromised healing ability and sacrifice so much to create their ridiculously expensive niche build that they severely compromise what the devs intended for them to do only to still not put out as much uber doom as an escort. Not to mention that's a faw boat that spreads its damage so thin the only thing it will kill in group combat with player who even remotely know what they are doing is photonic fleets and fighters, which no, isn't anywhere near as useful as blowing through player after player like escorts.
Additionally, using a team other than tac team just removes the essential shield distribution that is the only thing keeping an escort from blowing through you even faster, so no, you won't be subnuked/viral matrixed, but you will probably be dead.
Thanks for reminding me of that warp core engineer though... I was wondering what to slot on my ship if I removed the conn officers for tac team and went for two copies of it instead, and that will probably do nicely. ^^
Escorts can't "blow everything up in 2 seconds flat". Even if an escort throws everything into an alpha strike, if both players are equally skilled the other ship will not die.
As for Aux2bat Cruisers, you underestimate the power of a 30% reduction to all abilities. I've seen Aux2bat cruisers tear escorts to shreds. FAW may have it's effectiveness reduced in a team setting, but there is nothing stopping players from running multiple Aux2Bat FAW/DEM Cruisers.
Tactical Team isn't the only thing that prevents a ship's destruction when fighting an escort. Transfer Shield Strength and other heals work very well in this area.
Escorts can't "blow everything up in 2 seconds flat". Even if an escort throws everything into an alpha strike, if both players are equally skilled the other ship will not die.
As for Aux2bat Cruisers, you underestimate the power of a 30% reduction to all abilities. I've seen Aux2bat cruisers tear escorts to shreds. FAW may have it's effectiveness reduced in a team setting, but there is nothing stopping players from running multiple Aux2Bat FAW/DEM Cruisers.
Tactical Team isn't the only thing that prevents a ship's destruction when fighting an escort. Transfer Shield Strength and other heals work very well in this area.
I've seen escorts that can blow through the tankiest of ships in just a couple volleys. I have seen escorts that can blow apart ships right through a tac team backed RSP, no subnuke required. With elachi weapons, a lucky crit overload can blow someone apart right through shields in one shot, not to mention several other abilities/consoles that have been introduced that can have similar results.
I have seen aux to bat crusiers tear escorts to shreds too, escorts that don't know what they are doing, or who have engaged the cruiser 1v1 where the damage is focused enough to be meaningful. And yes... there is something stopping the vast majority of players, and that would be the insane cost of building it with the doffs one needs. Doable? Yes. Reasonable for most players who don't dedicate all their free time to ec grind? No.
There's a thread in pvp forums titled "Tanking without tac team?" The conclusion is essentially that there are some incredibly rare magical unicorns in very specific, almost exclusively lock box ships that can get away without using tac team for their general tanking needs, but almost everyone/everything else will die without it in seconds. And I am not saying that tac team stands alone to tank, tac team is used to distribute shields while emergency power to shields, transfer shield strength and rsp are used to replenish them and various hull heals are used to repair the ship while tac team keeps people from blowing through your 8k facing in one volley. So... yeah.
As the title states that 5 KM radius is too tiny. STO is not a game where you can really fly in formation very well to begin with and clustering into balls was made a very bad idea a long time ago.
Also as this is a communications array supposedly designed to allow the Cruiser to coordinate the battle then why is it so notably limited in range? What is this advanced com array a walky-talky?
It would make the most sense to have these auras act a lot like the Fleet Buffs. That is to say that they would simply apply to all team mates regardless of where they were. If that is too much then it would be nice if at the very least they had a 10KM sphere of influence.
I've seen escorts that can blow through the tankiest of ships in just a couple volleys. I have seen escorts that can blow apart ships right through a tac team backed RSP, no subnuke required. With elachi weapons, a lucky crit overload can blow someone apart right through shields in one shot, not to mention several other abilities/consoles that have been introduced that can have similar results.
I have seen aux to bat crusiers tear escorts to shreds too, escorts that don't know what they are doing, or who have engaged the cruiser 1v1 where the damage is focused enough to be meaningful. And yes... there is something stopping the vast majority of players, and that would be the insane cost of building it with the doffs one needs. Doable? Yes. Reasonable for most players who don't dedicate all their free time to ec grind? No.
There's a thread in pvp forums titled "Tanking without tac team?" The conclusion is essentially that there are some incredibly rare magical unicorns in very specific, almost exclusively lock box ships that can get away without using tac team for their general tanking needs, but almost everyone/everything else will die without it in seconds. And I am not saying that tac team stands alone to tank, tac team is used to distribute shields while emergency power to shields, transfer shield strength and rsp are used to replenish them and various hull heals are used to repair the ship while tac team keeps people from blowing through your 8k facing in one volley. So... yeah.
I have to second all that. The normal Shield Distribution in this game is abysmal and this one fact makes TT invaluable.
Also the DOFF grind for A2Bat is rough and honestly I can accomplish a lot more single target damage with a cruiser without needing a single purple DOFF of any sort so it is not even that worth doing in the long run. Also A2Bat boats have some notable Achilles Heels if you know what you are doing.
I vote No to expanding those new buffs to anything over 5k range, speaking as an TER captain. Only single target buffs should be at 10k. Period.
I think 5k is perfect. Maintaining an AOE buff/debuff out to 10k is seriously OP. It would break PvP, and trivialize PvE even further.
Is it too much work to actually fly our ships, and use our throttles and flying skills to stay in 5k for some super buffed focused firing on a common target or targets, a.k.a. Teamwork??
Yes, the "lone wolves" of STO absolutely hate it, but they don't need it either. I do suspect it will be a great option with the introduction of the new content, but thats a different discussion.
If AOE buffs/debuffs were all over the 5k range, the risk vs. reward is severely diminished for the AOE Ship Command abilities, and would be heavily weighted on the reward side.
Why should we have every AOE buff from everyone out to 10k or beyond as some have stated. If these "Ship Commands" were out to 10k, Cruisers would become more than the FotM, it would become a ridiculously easy standard, more so than the Escorts and Sci ships became at some point during their "buffs".
For example. What will be the counter to the perfectly formed group (whatever it becomes next) makeup, flying in the perfect formation, in top gear, cross healing/buffing AND receiving all 4 buffs? At 10K there is none, period. At 5k and in, AOE from PvE or PvP becomes the direct counter. If we receive everything up to 10k range, what would you fear?
If we want those AOE buffs, we should be willing to stay close, as they will be very powerful and hard to counter, when receiving all 4,and executed and maintained properly by a good group. It would make a mockery of the PvE which is already trivialized for high end ships already. If the PvE content or opposing captains can work into our 'buff zone" and disrupt our perfect stacks, then better coordination is needed, not easier ways to get "stacks"
Paper(Escorts) and Scissors (Sci) already had their buffs, now Rock has his too, and it goes a long way to adding another viable space tactic into the game for all classes/builds wanting to do so.
I vote No to expanding those new buffs to anything over 5k range, speaking as an TER captain. Only single target buffs should be at 10k. Period.
I think 5k is perfect. Maintaining an AOE buff/debuff out to 10k is seriously OP. It would break PvP, and trivialize PvE even further.
First, what is TER? Expanding the buffs wouldn't break pvp or trivialize pve, it would make them actually possibly useful to the other people in a group because no one flies within 5km, nor should the for the PLETHORA of reasons that have already been mentioned in the thread, not the least of which is borg torp spread of doom. Clustering tightly=BAD.
Is it too much work to actually fly our ships, and use our throttles and flying skills to stay in 5k for some super buffed focused firing on a common target or targets, a.k.a. Teamwork??
Yes, the "lone wolves" of STO absolutely hate it, but they don't need it either. I do suspect it will be a great option with the introduction of the new content, but thats a different discussion.
No one actually "needs" these buffs, and they aren't THAT epic, and again, flying that close together is not a smart thing to do, and if escorts and sci ships limit their speed and maneuverability to stay in that itty bitty cruiser bubble, then what is the point of having that speed and maneuverability? We might as well cut their turn rates and speed to match cruisers then.
If AOE buffs/debuffs were all over the 5k range, the risk vs. reward is severely diminished for the AOE Ship Command abilities, and would be heavily weighted on the reward side.
Why should we have every AOE buff from everyone out to 10k or beyond as some have stated. If these "Ship Commands" were out to 10k, Cruisers would become more than the FotM, it would become a ridiculously easy standard, more so than the Escorts and Sci ships became at some point during their "buffs".
Actually, buffs and debuffs do need to be beyond the 5km range because practically no one flies that close together except for brief periods of time and typically not on purpose. Part of the reason devs make some skills like gravity well and tykens rift too weak for many players to find useful is because it's "aoe" the devs consider that, if energy siphon is single target and takes 100 power (for example) then if a tyken's rift can affect 5 or more people, it should be reduced in effect to like 25 power reduction. Thing is... people don't spend much time near a tyken's rift and if it's range is 5km, in the vastness of the battle field, it's range of influence is quite small. If tyken's rift had a 10km radius, it might actually be a worthy aoe debuff.
Similarly, to have a potent effect on the battle field, scattering field, as mentioned before, who actually tries to fly around within an allies scattering field instead of taking much faster and broader evasive action? Scattering field and these cruiser buffs need to go out to 10km to even BEGIN to make a difference to others on the team.
For example. What will be the counter to the perfectly formed group (whatever it becomes next) makeup, flying in the perfect formation, in top gear, cross healing/buffing AND receiving all 4 buffs? At 10K there is none, period. At 5k and in, AOE from PvE or PvP becomes the direct counter. If we receive everything up to 10k range, what would you fear?
Are you suggesting that gravity wells/tyken's rifts/scramble sensors are currently a counter to cruiser buffs? Because... they aren't. The counter to cruiser buffs is... that someone has to fly a cruiser for the buff to be present... you know, the broad side of a barn floating around waiting for an escort to blast through it? Yeah, that's the built in debuff. Additionally, the "fourth buff" isn't for allies, it buffs cruiser resistance based on the number of allies in the field, and since the number of allies within 5km is almost always between 1-0, it's a laughable buff, especially with diminishing returns.
If we want those AOE buffs, we should be willing to stay close, as they will be very powerful and hard to counter, when receiving all 4,and executed and maintained properly by a good group. It would make a mockery of the PvE which is already trivialized for high end ships already. If the PvE content or opposing captains can work into our 'buff zone" and disrupt our perfect stacks, then better coordination is needed, not easier ways to get "stacks"
These mild cruiser buffs, even with all four applied, is not the epic thing you think it is, again, for one, the fourth buff is just for the cruiser using it really, the other three aren't so powerful that they break anything, and PVE is already so easy that the difference felt by these buffs is quite small, what are you afraid of? That people who can do elite stf's in 2 minutes will now do it in 1:45? These buffs being extended to 10km will not break the game and the solution to making content more difficult/challenging or... whatever, is not to keep these buffs at 5km. At 5km, they are basically cruiser buffs, and frankly, that's fine, cruisers need a buff, but if we aren't just going to pretend these auras are meant to buff the team, then they need to extend to 10km, or affect everyone on a team, one or the other.
Paper(Escorts) and Scissors (Sci) already had their buffs, now Rock has his too, and it goes a long way to adding another viable space tactic into the game for all classes/builds wanting to do so.
Since when are escorts paper and sci are scissors? Escorts are scissors, made of steal and slice you in half. Sci is paper, it makes annoying crinkly sounds and throws itself on your windshield so you're like "AHHH! AHHH! *swerve swerve*" And yes, cruiser is rock... he mostly just sits there. The least we can do is expand his radiant buff to a reasonable range so that his allies can see a benefit from his presence.
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This is exactly what I was thinking. In every engagement I've ever been a part of, there's always at least 3 cruisers on my team, if not all cruisers. And even if there was only 1, there's really no need to seperate beyond 5k from it. Based on just speed and manuverability, cruisers should not be chasing around their escort teammates and trying to keep up with them, it should be the other way around. There's no reason an escort can't keep pace with a cruiser and stay in the effective range of any and all buffs/heals. After all, isn't that what this is about? Teamwork and team tactics?
This is exactly what the problem is. Cruiser captains should not be trying to cover escorts. Cruisers are too slow for that kind of work. Escorts can keep in range of a cruiser far more easily. Expecting the cruiser to come to you is not only selfish, but just plain wrong. Keep to your cruisers, keep them protected, and they'll do they're job far better.
Someone has said that a sign of balance is, given the choice between "is the restriction on maneuver worth the benefit being given" - and when the answers are either "always" = OP and "never" = UP.
General consensus of this thread is that the answer to "is maneuvering within 5km of a cruiser worth the benefit" is, unfortunately, no. Therefore aura = UP.
However, there is a thought that perhaps the work to stay within 7.5km or even 10km of a cruiser is worth the benefit as it's written right now. Much better than saying "make the benefit even better than it is now for the cruiser(s) that have it all the time...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
If anything the only balance is with the other ships who have to pay the price of staying in range.
Cruisers were already borderline useless in the game, and I firmly believe this was just the dev's way of ninja-buffing them and trying to sell it as a benefit to everyone. But cruisers and sci vessels in this game are all UP, except recent sci changes have been making them ridiculous crowd controlling kill you straight through your shields, evil, evil, EVIL, demons.
You are still missing the point.
The Point: It is NOT feasible for ships in this game traveling at different speeds and with different turn rates to properly assail any combative mobile target while maintaining a 5KM distance to a Cruiser.
Is that clear enough for you?
The Conclusion then is Thus: The Aura should be extended to 10KM at bare minimum as this would be more feasible even if difficult OR it should be made a team buff that ignores range altogether which not only would make it more effective but would also make more sense with what the origin of the buff is supposed to be.
This is not most MMO's. THIS... IS... STAR TREK ONLINE!!! *kicks you into the pit*
Sorry... Had to do it.
autumnturning is also quite correct. You notice that the Vesta's healing aura, the Scattering Field, and the Masking Field all at LEAST project a disk around the ship to show you "Hey! There is a buff field here that you might want to be in!" but the Auras are invisible and only show up when you enter them. It would also make it a lot easier to coordinate types of aura if I could easily tell who was running what.
Uh ... not to put too fine a point on things ... but if, as a Game Designer, you're trying to build a Rock, Paper, Scissors system that balances (relatively) evenly, and you set up the Science abilities as being the Crowd Control center of power ... um ... doesn't it make sense for Science to be able to Crowd Control Hard Enough to be able to succeed in killing their opposition?
Or to put it another way ... (and I'm just substitute/swapping for clarity here) ...
So if it's "okay" or even "to be expected" for Tactical Captains (in Escorts) to be able to Burst Kill their opponents as their signature "stock in trade" and reason for existing ... why is it somehow "wrong" or "unfair" or whatever (I know you didn't use those words or terms, but I'm extrapolating the notion here) for Science Captains (in Science Ships) to be able to achieve Pressure Kills when using their signature "stock in trade" abilities and skills to justify their existence as Crowd Controllers?
My point being that Science was set up as the Buff/Debuff/CONTROL side of the triangle ... so complaining that Science is able to do its job via DECISIVE Control seems rather disingenuous at best. And to be fair, I'm not aiming this critique at you, personally, but rather at the thought process and assumptions that produce the sentiment that you just happened to express. Crowd Control tends to be an All Or Nothing kind of affair, with relatively little middle ground for a "goldilocks zone" where it's just enough, but not too much ... meaning that the balance for it is going to be really ... finicky. The problem is that players hate being attacked with Crowd Control (since that limits their options, up to and including reducing them to being Spectators to the continuing action) since when Crowd Control is "up to snuff" and effective, it often results in what amounts to a "time out" for the victim in which their adrenaline rush that comes from competitively playing the game basically crashes (because their Control was taken away from them).
Again, the flipside of the argument would be that Crowd Control is "allowed" so long as it can't be effective ... which is a bit like saying that Tactical can do all the DPS it wants so long as you don't actually KILL anyone (or anything). Kinda defeats the purpose of even including that in the game at that point, no? :rolleyes:
So if a Tactical Captain can spec themselves out for Alpha Strike and incredible Burst Damage that can overwhelm and carry them to victory ... why can't a Science Captain spec themselves out for Crowd Control and ride THAT advantage into being victorious?
For extra bonus points, if someone can figure out how Engineers are supposed to leverage Healing and Hull Tanking as a path to offensive victory (as opposed to Stalemate Boredom), you win a Mk I Console. :P
Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser
Immortal BOff Skills combo for Ground
Cruisers are borderline useless eh? This is big news to me, last I checked Auxiliary to Battery Cruisers currently rule Space PvP. What recent science changes are you referring to exactly? The changes to gravity well fixed a bug in the pull factor while also nerfing the damage from the ability. Science abilities are very easy to counter via 3-6 points in Starship Power Insulators, Starship Inertial Dampers, and Starship Sensors. 6 points in those three skills will provide your ship with a 42% resistance to all science attacks. Not to mention the fact that you can also slot hard counters to counter all control abilities (Attack Pattern Omega, Auxiliary to Inertial Dampers, Polarize Hull), power drains (Science Team, Hazard Emitters), and subsystem disables (Engineering Team). On top of that, there is also currently a Warp Core Engineer with a 40% chance to remove any negative effect whenever you use Emergency Power to Anything.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
First off, I did not say that, and you shouldn't present it so literally in a quote box as if I had. You can make your re-wording point and put it in standard text quotes. I kept getting stuck on the first sentence of your fake quote thinking, "Where the hell did I say this? It doesn't sound like me at all, I would never phrase something like... oooooh, this ISN'T me at all. Autumn, you con artist!" lol. Also, when I say sci can kill you right through your shields, I mean without even damaging your shields, tacs simply obliterate your shields and then your ship. See? there's a difference. :P lol.
Second, tacs shouldn't have such uber spike, the ridiculous stacking spikes in the game, from anyone really, just tacs are best at it, is what has made tac team an absolute must have because turning to present a healthy shield facing isn't a valid tactic when someone can blow through your facing and half your hull in a single volley, and manual distribution won't even remotely counter that kind of damage either. Why the Fing H do people bring up tacs every time I mention something about science ridiculousness as if I'm saying tacs are okay by not mentioning them in the same breath? Just because I don't say "recent sci changes have been making them ridiculous crowd controlling kill you straight through your shields, evil, evil, EVIL, demons. OH, and tacs are super evil too." Doesn't mean I am saying tac is fine simply by not mentioning them. Every time I file a complaint, do I have to list EVERY complaint I have with the game? Science is off balance because of x and so is tac because of y and so is eng because of z and here is what's wrong with cruisers also, this is why sci ships suck, and something needs to be done about escorts...? All grievances must be filed in one really long run on sentence to avoid being accused of favoritism?
100% shield bypassing damage should never have been a substantial mechanic of the game, it would have been better to have it so that the lower the integrity of a facing, the more bleed damage gets through, this allows a better mechanic for attacking weak facings other than "easier to burst through"
However, the direct to hull eject warp plasma damage coupled with a tyken's rift and grav well and transphasic cluster mines is just ridiculous, not to mention elachi procs, omega graviton passive, etc, etc. The problem I'm seeing is that first, devs made damage too good, tac team became essential to survival, and shield healing/resistance went up, these changes made shields too good and then the devs introduced a whole host of shield bypassing BS, we just keep going in a never ending cycle of what flavor of the month is OP.
I still firmly believe that captain powers should be removed from the game, the stacking spike from attack pattern alpha and go down fighting and the like is WAY too much on top of everything else. Science subnuke is perhaps the most OP power in the game in pvp when executed properly, and engineering is always going to be the obvious third place because in any combat game, damage must be able to overwhelm defense/healing or no one ever dies/wins, so by being stuck in the "defense/heal" department, they simply have to have the short end of the stick.
As someone else mentioned, I believe in another thread, the reputation passives should be a choice between an offensive and an offensive or a defensive and a defensive trait as this is easier to balance. When one person takes all defensive and the other takes all offensive, offensive, again, has to win out.
If the mechanic of lower shield facing=more bleed damage had been implemented, i.e. 100% shield facing=0% bypass, 60% shield facing=40% bypass then two things would happen, one would best be served by staying on a weak facing because more damage gets through, currently, if one is at 5% shields, if they can maintain that 5% shield against your damage, virtually none of your damage is going through to hull where it really counts. And this would allow for escorts to have a strength other than "most epic brute force." In fact, cruisers should have had the highest brute force and shields/hull but with TRIBBLE speed, TRIBBLE maneuverability, and no evasion (cruisers are the broad side of a barn, if your tactical officer misses a cruiser, you need to realign your sensors or blow him out an airlock.) Escorts wouldn't have quite as high damage as cruisers, but their speed and maneuverability would allow them to take advantage of weak facings with higher bleed, they would have no where near as good of shields or hull as cruisers, but have high evasion and their speed and maneuverability also allows them to easily exit bad situations/take up a better defensive posture in an enemy's weaker arcs. Science ships should still be doing most of their damage from standard weapons, like we saw with voyager, voyager wasn't pecking at things with crappy standard weapons and then ripping them to shreds by summoning a magic gravity well. Gravity well and other associated science skills should primarily be crowd control/debuffs, but not ridiculous all or nothing type holds/placates/scrambles that make people heal their enemy and then instapop because they just gave everything they had to the enemy. -.- large aoe (10km or larger) accuracy debuffs, slows, power drains, resistance debuffs, things that give an edge but don't break the game. Science ship defense would be a hybrid between cruiser and escort with good shields, reasonable evasion, with medium speed/maneuverability.
This type of balance would have allowed each of the ships to be competitive in the DPS race that is this game, it is a combat game after all, anyone who hopes it will one day be an exploration or... what? puzzle solving mystery game? Yeah... I'm fairly certain you will continue to be disappointed. It would also allow cruisers to naturally tank without the need of threat modifiers as they would have the highest outright damage, and they would have the "meat" of lots of hull and shields to soak up damage with high repair rates from lots of crew. Escorts are more strategic, their faster combat speed and maneuverability allow them to quickly move about the battle field to get on and stay on weak facings. Additionally, this creates a synergy where enemy ships distribute their shields to mitigate incoming heavy cruiser damage which allows an escort to fly around to the other sides to find weak facings for bonus shield penetration damage. Sci ships are also more maneuverable and fast (not as much as escorts, but more than cruisers) which allows them similar tactics plus they would have a whole host of the best debuff/crowd control skills to help turn the battle in favor of themselves and their allies.
All of the current skills in the game should be available to all ships and how well they use them and how frequently they can use them should be determined by ship type and the skill set of the captain and boffs seated. Boffs should have a skill tree like a captain, but isolated to their department that passively enhances your vessel's capabilities. This would increase the variety of tactics used and builds available with certain skills obviously working best from certain vessels, like an aoe "scramble sensors" that persists around a vessel with a radius of X for Y seconds and a cool time of Z that reduces the accuracy of all enemies within the bubble could be available on all ships, but the range, duration, and intensity of effect might be severely limited on non-sci ships. If a sci can have it at 20km range and -20% accuracy for 30 seconds with a cool time of 30 seconds, an escort might only be able to get it to 10km max with a 10% accuracy drop and 15 seconds of up time.
Also, these types of debuffs should not stack, if you are within range of two sci ships or an escort and sci both using this aoe scramble, the higher one is applied and that's it, so no stacking debuffs to ridiculous heights. This would also encourage coordination of ships to not waste their abilities by using them willy nilly but, for example, you use yours, then I'll use mine. Abilities should also, again, be slight edges, not the primary source of damage/heal. Passive crew repair healing should be the primary hull heal, powers like aux to structural should simply improve damage resistance which naturally improves your crew's ability to repair the hull as it takes less damage. Shield regeneration should be entirely based off of power level, no super magic heals from nowhere, emergency power to shields improves shield power and thus regeneration. Emergency power to weapons improves weapon damage only so far as it increases power allocated to weapons. The energy weapon drain should be eliminated as a mechanic, it's currently the only subsystem where overcapping is actually a thing to aim for, so lets stop that.
Also, many abilities would be turned into toggles, for example, every ship would have access to emergency power to weapons, shields, engines, and auxiliary only one could be active at any one time. These emergency powers would run off of a rechargeable battery that is a part of every ship. The battery recharges when not in use and constantly drains while in use. Once power in the battery reaches zero, it automatically disabled your emergency power to X and recharges. You can turn it off whenever you like, or even turn it back on even if it's only recharged by 10%, but you won't have a bonus for very long, so this makes is bonus power more strategic. Keep in mind, every other facet of the game will be changed so that near constant up time on one or two emergency powers will no longer be "necessary." Also, this battery could be itemized, so that there are equippable batteries with better recharge times or higher capacities, etc. Every ship would have auxiliary power to structural integrity field, dampers, and battery, only one could be active at a time and performance would obviously be tied to how much power you have allocated to auxiliary. Aux to structural would be straight damage reduction, aux to dampers would improve the vessel's inertia stat this improving maneuverability and would improve crew damage resistance and would reduce the impact/disable of shockwave type attacks/effects, and aux to battery would pull power from auxiliary to boost the other system power levels as it does currently. Related doffs such as the technician doff could provide a constant cool reduction improvement for as long as aux to bat is active. The doff that gives a chance for a bonus heal with aux to structural could improve crew repair rates as long as aux to structural is active. The doff that added energy damage resistance and increased duration of aux to dampers could simply improve the stats provided by aux to damp, I would prefer not to add other damage resistances to aux to damp as that is the realm of aux to structural, and the point is to choose what flavor you want active, so I would rather not blur the lines. All of these would be self-only, no more transferring your auxiliary power to someone else's structural integrity field from 10km away... lol.
Attack patterns/maneuvers would be toggles, if you choose attack pattern beta, it would continuously improve your damage against hull, if you choose attack pattern delta it would continuously improve damage to shields, attack pattern omega would lose all other current defense/damage/speed/maneuverability boosts but would continuously reduce the effect of crowd controls on the ship, evasive maneuvers would be removed as a one time power and made a "attack pattern/maneuver" toggle that increases ship evasion stat and increases speed/evasion. This way the attack patterns are a choice of offensive or defensive measures one can switch between as the situation calls for. Target sybsystem would become a toggle that would give all of your attacks a constant medium chance to reduce power in your enemy's subsystem and a small chance to knock the subsystem offline briefly (current shield facing, perhaps random shield facing, knocked offline for target shields, not whole grid.) I would remove cannon rapid fire and scatter volley as these skills don't make functional sense, fire at will and overload would instead apply to all weapons. Fire at will for targeted aoe, and overload for single target spike. Overload wouldn't affect one weapon, it would make them all overload firing off one highly boosted volley of fire from all energy weapons with an arc on the enemy. Overload would no longer drain weapon power.
The only cross-heal/support abilities would be hazard emitters, transfer shield strength, and extend shields. Hazard emitters would no longer provide a heal, but would 'clear hazards' and could be a field around the ship, thus one could activate their hazard emitters and fly by a ship stuck in warp plasma to clear the plasma. If a ship doesn't have hazard emitters available when a tyken's rift is thrown, they can fly within the hazard emitter field of a friendly ship to avoid ill effects for the duration. Transfer shield strength would be a literal transfer of shield points, so the giving ship loses as many points from their shields as they give to their ally in need. Extend shields would significantly increase the size of your shield bubble and allow allies to take refuge inside but would significantly reduce regeneration and capacity for the duration, as you would be 'spreading your shields thin.' to cover your allies. Which is what we would see in the show, extending shields was a risky proposition because it made the extended shields weaker. I would probably make extend a toggle since it's not a "free super shields for your ally" power anymore. So as long as your ally is within your extended shield range, any damage directed at them is absorbed by your weakened shields, and any bleed damage hits your hull at full as well as their shields. And yes, I think that level of risk/reward is appropriate for this power based on what we see in canon.
Speaking of shields, I would like to be able to choose between close to hull shields and a shield bubble, this may be impractical graphics wise, but we saw both bubble shields and close to hull shields, so if they could be implemented in graphics, I would make close to hull shields have higher capacity and regeneration but enemy bleed through damage would get a bonus as what bleeds through the shield wouldn't have any significant distance between it and the hull. Bubble shields would have reduced hull impact from bleed but would regenerate more slowly with a lower capacity. We could also introduce deployed armor as a "shield" option which would simply, vastly improve the damage resistance of the hull, depending on how much power was put into shields, but tactics like presenting a strong shield facing or distributing your shields would go out the window. Likewise, one would not be able to have shield points transferred to them if they have no shields, so there would be risks and benefits associated with each defense type.
I would probably make tac team, eng team, and sci team into toggles that boost their corresponding department's abilities. The only additional effect I would give to each team is tac team intercepts boarding parties while active, and sci team improves crew regeneration (medical is part of the science department.). I wouldn't give engineering anything special for two reasons, 1. I can't think of anything for engineering to do that wouldn't be way OP and not already covered by the engineering passives it would buff, and 2. engineering has 5 more passives than the other departments, so I think that evens out anyway.
Energy weapons should provide pressure damage while torps are the spike damage. Cannons should have normal shield penetration, i.e. when a facing is at 60%, 40% of cannon damage bypasses the shields, beams would have half bypass damage, so with a 60% facing they do 20% bleed, this makes beams better for lowering shields as more of their damage stays in the shield hp, while cannons are better at reducing hull through shields. Weapons with limited arcs, things like dual heavy cannons should have bonus damage on bare hull and their shield damage should be brought more in line with beam arrays, this makes their advantage wrecking hull, not wrecking hull AND shields. This would emphasize their use on escorts that (in this brave new world of balance) would have an emphasis on attacking weak facings to get dat hull damage. So, for example, a beam array and a dual heavy cannon and a dual beam bank all have the same damage against shields, cannons have better shield penetration, which makes them better for getting hull damage through shields, but the more of their damage bypasses the shields, the slower the shield facing drops. A dual beam bank would have lower shield penetration, so it would be better for bringing down shields so the point of equipping one would be to lower shields quickly in a frontal assault and then its bonus damage to hull could shine.
I would alter beam arrays to be 360 degree damage. Regardless of equipped in front or in back, their highest damage would be the forward 250 degrees of the ship with 1/2 maybe 1/3 damage in the back 110 degrees, this brings beam arrays more in line with what we see in the shows/movies where all ship's damage is primary forward/sides and lower in the aft. This allows ships with beam arrays to effectively do damage on targets ahead (chasing) or off to the side for orbiting broadsides with their weakest coverage in the back. Additionally, I would have multiple stacks of a type of weapon share a graphic, i.e. instead of equipping 6 beam arrays and getting beams firing all over the place, they would simply add all their damage together and fire as a single beam from the hard point arrays on our ship. Same with two or more dual beam banks or two or more of any other weapon. This brings the game more graphically in line with what we see on screen as well.
I would alter torpedoes so that they load into launchers over time, e.g. 1 torp every 6 seconds, you can choose to fire them off the moment they load, or you can save them up (maximum of 5, as a rough cap) so that you can fire off a nice barrage. This places more emphasis on being strategic with use of torpedoes. I am not sure if I would bother with giving ships a limited number of torps that they could exhaust while in combat, but replenish while out of combat, but if that would be a popular idea, then sure. Torpedo high yield would be a buff to torpedo damage for duration, so if you select high yield, any torps fired in the next 15 seconds (for example) would be high yield, not the current mechanic where torps pop off one every 8 seconds and when you "high yield" you actually get a torpedo volley. Torpedo spread would cease to be a power and would become a firing mode toggle, you can set your torps to single target in which case firing them off fires them one after another at a single target, or in spread mode, when you fire your torps, all torps you have saved up will fire off all at once, if there is only one target in your arcs, they will all hit that target, if there are multiple targets, each will take a different target. This would be most useful when dealing with multiple small targets like fighters where a single torp should be enough to take out something that small. or where a single torp will do significant damage to a target like a borg probe ship.
Well then... now that I've written my manifesto of all things that could/should be changed to make this game more balanced and true to trek... lol, and there's probably some things i still didn't address. However, most of these changes make the game more massively multiplayer simulation. "Simulation" being the word people use, almost like a dirty word, to mean "too realistic/canon," as if that is a bad thing , instead of more typical mmo like a space/trek themed world of war-craft.
Anyway, I think I've made my point as to why I should not be expected to air all of my grievances at once and why no one should assume that because I bring up X as a bad thing and don't mention Y or Z, that I have no grievance with Y or Z.
Last I checked, it's still the escorts that blow everything apart in two seconds flat. Aux to bat cruisers have such compromised healing ability and sacrifice so much to create their ridiculously expensive niche build that they severely compromise what the devs intended for them to do only to still not put out as much uber doom as an escort. Not to mention that's a faw boat that spreads its damage so thin the only thing it will kill in group combat with player who even remotely know what they are doing is photonic fleets and fighters, which no, isn't anywhere near as useful as blowing through player after player like escorts.
Additionally, using a team other than tac team just removes the essential shield distribution that is the only thing keeping an escort from blowing through you even faster, so no, you won't be subnuked/viral matrixed, but you will probably be dead.
Thanks for reminding me of that warp core engineer though... I was wondering what to slot on my ship if I removed the conn officers for tac team and went for two copies of it instead, and that will probably do nicely. ^^
Escorts can't "blow everything up in 2 seconds flat". Even if an escort throws everything into an alpha strike, if both players are equally skilled the other ship will not die.
As for Aux2bat Cruisers, you underestimate the power of a 30% reduction to all abilities. I've seen Aux2bat cruisers tear escorts to shreds. FAW may have it's effectiveness reduced in a team setting, but there is nothing stopping players from running multiple Aux2Bat FAW/DEM Cruisers.
Tactical Team isn't the only thing that prevents a ship's destruction when fighting an escort. Transfer Shield Strength and other heals work very well in this area.
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Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
I've seen escorts that can blow through the tankiest of ships in just a couple volleys. I have seen escorts that can blow apart ships right through a tac team backed RSP, no subnuke required. With elachi weapons, a lucky crit overload can blow someone apart right through shields in one shot, not to mention several other abilities/consoles that have been introduced that can have similar results.
I have seen aux to bat crusiers tear escorts to shreds too, escorts that don't know what they are doing, or who have engaged the cruiser 1v1 where the damage is focused enough to be meaningful. And yes... there is something stopping the vast majority of players, and that would be the insane cost of building it with the doffs one needs. Doable? Yes. Reasonable for most players who don't dedicate all their free time to ec grind? No.
There's a thread in pvp forums titled "Tanking without tac team?" The conclusion is essentially that there are some incredibly rare magical unicorns in very specific, almost exclusively lock box ships that can get away without using tac team for their general tanking needs, but almost everyone/everything else will die without it in seconds. And I am not saying that tac team stands alone to tank, tac team is used to distribute shields while emergency power to shields, transfer shield strength and rsp are used to replenish them and various hull heals are used to repair the ship while tac team keeps people from blowing through your 8k facing in one volley. So... yeah.
Agreed, for whatever it's worth.
I have to second all that. The normal Shield Distribution in this game is abysmal and this one fact makes TT invaluable.
Also the DOFF grind for A2Bat is rough and honestly I can accomplish a lot more single target damage with a cruiser without needing a single purple DOFF of any sort so it is not even that worth doing in the long run. Also A2Bat boats have some notable Achilles Heels if you know what you are doing.
I think 5k is perfect. Maintaining an AOE buff/debuff out to 10k is seriously OP. It would break PvP, and trivialize PvE even further.
Is it too much work to actually fly our ships, and use our throttles and flying skills to stay in 5k for some super buffed focused firing on a common target or targets, a.k.a. Teamwork??
Yes, the "lone wolves" of STO absolutely hate it, but they don't need it either. I do suspect it will be a great option with the introduction of the new content, but thats a different discussion.
If AOE buffs/debuffs were all over the 5k range, the risk vs. reward is severely diminished for the AOE Ship Command abilities, and would be heavily weighted on the reward side.
Why should we have every AOE buff from everyone out to 10k or beyond as some have stated. If these "Ship Commands" were out to 10k, Cruisers would become more than the FotM, it would become a ridiculously easy standard, more so than the Escorts and Sci ships became at some point during their "buffs".
For example. What will be the counter to the perfectly formed group (whatever it becomes next) makeup, flying in the perfect formation, in top gear, cross healing/buffing AND receiving all 4 buffs? At 10K there is none, period. At 5k and in, AOE from PvE or PvP becomes the direct counter. If we receive everything up to 10k range, what would you fear?
If we want those AOE buffs, we should be willing to stay close, as they will be very powerful and hard to counter, when receiving all 4,and executed and maintained properly by a good group. It would make a mockery of the PvE which is already trivialized for high end ships already. If the PvE content or opposing captains can work into our 'buff zone" and disrupt our perfect stacks, then better coordination is needed, not easier ways to get "stacks"
Paper(Escorts) and Scissors (Sci) already had their buffs, now Rock has his too, and it goes a long way to adding another viable space tactic into the game for all classes/builds wanting to do so.
First, what is TER? Expanding the buffs wouldn't break pvp or trivialize pve, it would make them actually possibly useful to the other people in a group because no one flies within 5km, nor should the for the PLETHORA of reasons that have already been mentioned in the thread, not the least of which is borg torp spread of doom. Clustering tightly=BAD.
No one actually "needs" these buffs, and they aren't THAT epic, and again, flying that close together is not a smart thing to do, and if escorts and sci ships limit their speed and maneuverability to stay in that itty bitty cruiser bubble, then what is the point of having that speed and maneuverability? We might as well cut their turn rates and speed to match cruisers then.
Actually, buffs and debuffs do need to be beyond the 5km range because practically no one flies that close together except for brief periods of time and typically not on purpose. Part of the reason devs make some skills like gravity well and tykens rift too weak for many players to find useful is because it's "aoe" the devs consider that, if energy siphon is single target and takes 100 power (for example) then if a tyken's rift can affect 5 or more people, it should be reduced in effect to like 25 power reduction. Thing is... people don't spend much time near a tyken's rift and if it's range is 5km, in the vastness of the battle field, it's range of influence is quite small. If tyken's rift had a 10km radius, it might actually be a worthy aoe debuff.
Similarly, to have a potent effect on the battle field, scattering field, as mentioned before, who actually tries to fly around within an allies scattering field instead of taking much faster and broader evasive action? Scattering field and these cruiser buffs need to go out to 10km to even BEGIN to make a difference to others on the team.
Are you suggesting that gravity wells/tyken's rifts/scramble sensors are currently a counter to cruiser buffs? Because... they aren't. The counter to cruiser buffs is... that someone has to fly a cruiser for the buff to be present... you know, the broad side of a barn floating around waiting for an escort to blast through it? Yeah, that's the built in debuff. Additionally, the "fourth buff" isn't for allies, it buffs cruiser resistance based on the number of allies in the field, and since the number of allies within 5km is almost always between 1-0, it's a laughable buff, especially with diminishing returns.
These mild cruiser buffs, even with all four applied, is not the epic thing you think it is, again, for one, the fourth buff is just for the cruiser using it really, the other three aren't so powerful that they break anything, and PVE is already so easy that the difference felt by these buffs is quite small, what are you afraid of? That people who can do elite stf's in 2 minutes will now do it in 1:45? These buffs being extended to 10km will not break the game and the solution to making content more difficult/challenging or... whatever, is not to keep these buffs at 5km. At 5km, they are basically cruiser buffs, and frankly, that's fine, cruisers need a buff, but if we aren't just going to pretend these auras are meant to buff the team, then they need to extend to 10km, or affect everyone on a team, one or the other.
Since when are escorts paper and sci are scissors? Escorts are scissors, made of steal and slice you in half. Sci is paper, it makes annoying crinkly sounds and throws itself on your windshield so you're like "AHHH! AHHH! *swerve swerve*" And yes, cruiser is rock... he mostly just sits there. The least we can do is expand his radiant buff to a reasonable range so that his allies can see a benefit from his presence.