Just leave FAW without it - even on one of my beam boats it still gets the 10k+ hits pop up.. Without crit, FAW is some what semi balanced at least. :rolleyes:
B*gger it, just remove the "Crit" chance from any Boff ability - Can't ever recall Picard shouting:
"Yeah baby, Look at the Crits our Beams are doing"
I'm all for leaving FAW without crits, but my reasons are probably different than yours. Basically, I don't want them breaking it further by trying to fix it again. Apparently Borticus is supposed to be working on rebuilding FAW sometime soon, and I think we should just hold out for that to happen. Like you said FAW, as it is, combined with other problems, is still very powerful and doesn't need the crits to perform well. An attempt at fixing that would probably bring back the double procs, or possibly revert it to a spam-clearing ability that is useless for pressure damage, and I don't want to see anything like that happen.
First off, overcapping was supposed to have a hard cap of 135. I'm not going through the archived posts, but it was stated during s3 that overcapping beyond 135 was a bug. They even fixed it. Then it broke again a while later (remember all the reversion bugs? the ones where they patched old code back in, and returned bugs that had already been fixed), people noticed and Geko proudly declared it WAD. I could be mistaken, but that's the way I remember it going down.
The larger arc of beams is supposed to be balanced by the enormous drain of firing 8 beams at once when broadsiding. Whereas cannons are balanced by their much smaller firing arcs (excepting turrets and single cannons which do significantly less damage). Beams do benefit more since it allows them to break their own balancing mechanics. You can't do anything to increase your arcs on DHC's. That's just the way I see it.
I feel it's just plain silly to allow overcapping at 180+ to exist in conjunction with all the ways there are to negate weapons power drain, while simultaneously keeping all other subsystem power levels very high (remember when +power consoles were nerfed? The reason was stated that it was not intended for captains to maintain such high power levels, lol). Restore the hard cap of 135 and the FAW would be a lot closer to WAAD (Working As Actually Designed, rather than working as designed because Geko declared it to be so instead of doing something about it) than it is right now.
As Mr. Salieri put it, FAW is a stupid mechanic to begin with. When you add in the problem of overcapping, drain negation and buff/passive/debuff stacking (also an issue that needs looking at, as well as heal and resist stacking), it's just plain, well, silly.
Beams also have a better damage ratio at range and instantly apply the damage. Cannons have travel time that can be out run for awhile allowing for time to apply resists and heals. Imo, the real problem started when they went fiddling w/the resist buffing/debuffing for the goal of a Time to Kill ratio they're never going to get.
Also, let's be honest Geko has always been clueless about the game's mechanics. He spent a very long time denying various bugs existed including the shield swapping bug that was caught in an old STOked video. Also, he didn't say it was WAD he said as far as he knew it was WAD and he hadn't looked at it for a long time.
[Zone] Dack@****: cowards can't take a fed 1 on 1 crinckley cowards Hahahaha you smell like flowers
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
Beams also have a better damage ratio at range and instantly apply the damage. Cannons have travel time that can be out run for awhile allowing for time to apply resists and heals. Imo, the real problem started when they went fiddling w/the resist buffing/debuffing for the goal of a Time to Kill ratio they're never going to get.
Also, let's be honest Geko has always been clueless about the game's mechanics. He spent a very long time denying various bugs existed including the shield swapping bug that was caught in an old STOked video. Also, he didn't say it was WAD he said as far as he knew it was WAD and he hadn't looked at it for a long time.
Also very good points.
I am aware that Geko said, "as far as I know," but that's all it takes for players to justify exploiting a broken mechanic. I would also be willing to bet money that he never did go back and take that look. In essence, he gave it his blessings.
Best thing for Cryptic to do is fix overcapping so that cannons benefit from it too, problem solved.
Isn't increasing the firing cycle of cannons to match that of beams the only way to do that? Would that not force everyone to become a min-maxer on weapons power and hurt anyone who doesn't run A2B+EPtW3+etc?
But they do...and they benefit at less of a cost. I'm not sure why this has to be repeated so many times...meh.
You want pretty stable 125 Weapon Power...?
Cannons - there's little point in going beyond 135.
Beams - at 180, you're likely wishing you were at 200.
135 Weapon Power vs. 180-200+ Weapon Power for the "stable" 125 Weapon Power.
All the folks suggesting that Cannons "benefit" the same as Beams, well - they're actually suggesting that 135 not be good enough and that Cannon folks should have to push that 180-200+ overcap...so they benefit from it too - like the Beam folks.
I can't honestly believe anybody (outside of some Beam folks that really hate Cannon folks) suggesting that...
If we go back to the Single Cannon vs. Beam Array discussion...
Single Cannon: Faster RoF, Same Drain - But Less Drain/Faster Return, Lower Need to Overcap, 180 Arc, Lower DPV, Higher DPS
Beam Array: Slower RoF, Same Drain - But More Drain/Slower Return, Higher Need to Overcap, 250 Arc, Higher DPV, Lower DPS
Hrmm, before I did the 4x DHC/4x Turret (45 Arc) vs. 8x Beams (70 Arc)...what about adding 4x Cannons/4x Turrets into the mix?
DHC/Turret: 876 Base DPS @ 45 degrees
Arrays: 800 Base DPS @ 70 degrees
Cannons/Turrets: 597 Base DPS @ 180 degrees
That's ~68.1% DHC/Turret DPS with 400% Arc. It's ~74.6% Array DPS with ~257% Arc.
So you can get almost 260% the Arc of Arrays for ~25.4% of your DPS. Giving up a quarter of one's DPS seems pretty bad...but again, that's while keeping a 180 Arc on target rather than a 70 Arc. If you can't keep that 70 Arc with the Arrays, you've cut your DPS in half - meaning you're doing ~150% DPS with the Cannons by comparison. While needing to worry less about overcap, being able to drop that power to Engines or elsewhere - and thus being even more likely to have that ~150% more DPS with the Cannons/Turret build than the Array build.
Yes, it's true that in being attacked from the rear in said boat - you're looking at 240 Base DPS vs. 320 Base DPS with the Turrets vs. Arrays. (They've the precedent with the Experimental Proton Weapon of allowing Aft Cannons - they should open all Cannons (Cannons, not DCs/DHCs) to being able to be mounted Aft, imho).)
There are all sorts of things like this...where it's obviously balanced. It's only when you start adding in oodles and oodles of other things, that it goes haywire.
Frosted Flakes are good, imho.
Cheese is good, imho.
Bacon is good, imho.
Diet Moutain Dew is good, imho.
I don't want bacon 'n cheese on my frosted flakes soaked in Diet Dew...
How is it not working?
With the way drain/return works differently between Cannons and Beams, there's little point of going above 135 with Cannons - you're already back at 125. With Beams on the other hand, 135 just isn't going to cut it.
Sure, there was the issue where FAW didn't drain at all - but that was a FAW bug - not an overcap issue...
So how is it not working?
I get what you're saying, but what about double beam banks? They don't get the benefit of that 180+ weapons power, they just get the 135. The whole thing is weird and not intuitive enough for any unknowing player to get.
First off, overcapping was supposed to have a hard cap of 135. I'm not going through the archived posts, but it was stated during s3 that overcapping beyond 135 was a bug. They even fixed it. Then it broke again a while later (remember all the reversion bugs? the ones where they patched old code back in, and returned bugs that had already been fixed), people noticed and Geko proudly declared it WAD. I could be mistaken, but that's the way I remember it going down.
The larger arc of beams is supposed to be balanced by the enormous drain of firing 8 beams at once when broadsiding. Whereas cannons are balanced by their much smaller firing arcs (excepting turrets and single cannons which do significantly less damage). Beams do benefit more since it allows them to break their own balancing mechanics. You can't do anything to increase your arcs on DHC's. That's just the way I see it.
I feel it's just plain silly to allow overcapping at 180+ to exist in conjunction with all the ways there are to negate weapons power drain, while simultaneously keeping all other subsystem power levels very high (remember when +power consoles were nerfed? The reason was stated that it was not intended for captains to maintain such high power levels, lol). Restore the hard cap of 135 and beams would be a lot closer to WAAD (Working As Actually Designed, rather than working as designed because Geko declared it to be so instead of doing something about it) than it is right now.
As Mr. Salieri put it, FAW is a stupid mechanic to begin with. When you add in the problem of overcapping, drain negation and buff/passive/debuff stacking (also an issue that needs looking at, as well as heal and resist stacking), it's just plain, well, silly.
Cannons do not benefit from overcap the way Beams do...hrmmm. That's not quite true. One could say, that since Cannons receive the same benefit for less investment - Cannons actually benefit more than Beams do.
~135 Weapon Power, there's little reason to continue pumping power into Weapons for Cannons. The same cannot be said for Beams. With Beams, you could be at ~180 Weapon Power and still wishing you had more...to get that stable 125 that Cannons get with an investment of ~135.
Yep, the Cannon guy is overcapping by 10 to get the same 125 Weapon Power that the guy with Beams is overcapping by 55+. The Beam guy is having to pull power from elsewhere or having to build to generate that additional power in some fashion.
There are a lot of complaints about overcapping as if it favors Beams - but the math doesn't really support that.
Do you have a thread where you go over logs or such for this? I am probably misunderstanding your explanation, but numbers on my cannon ship are anything but a stable 125, and I was under the impression that it wasn't that cannons didn't need overcapping so much as the power could not replenish fast enough to make a difference before the end of the firing cycle.
First off, overcapping was supposed to have a hard cap of 135. I'm not going through the archived posts, but it was stated during s3 that overcapping beyond 135 was a bug.
Honestly, you can't state something like that without a link to a source stating such was the case.
Could have sworn it was uncapped for Beams, then bugged it to 135 - where folks were all like, wtf? 135? that's odd, eh?, and then fixed to be uncapped again...all without a single patch note from them on the matter...meh.
It's difficult, because several quick searches during the time period are mainly about Turrets. Turrets, being a "Cannon-like" weapon when it comes to drain - outside of any other bugs (believe there were a few) - would show any overcapping beyond 135 as pointless (no additional gain).
They even fixed it. Then it broke again a while later (remember all the reversion bugs? the ones where they patched old code back in, and returned bugs that had already been fixed), people noticed and Geko proudly declared it WAD. I could be mistaken, but that's the way I remember it going down.
They still fork folks over with the forks...they've gotten better, imho, did a better job with S8 than they did with LoR/S7/S6(almost any fork they worked on separately without updating bugs from the main fork).
The larger arc of beams is supposed to be balanced by the enormous drain of firing 8 beams at once when broadsiding. Whereas cannons are balanced by their much smaller firing arcs (excepting turrets and single cannons which do significantly less damage). Beams do benefit more since it allows them to break their own balancing mechanics. You can't do anything to increase your arcs on DHC's. That's just the way I see it.
Broadsiding is a 70 degree arc. It's 25 degrees more than the fore arc of DHCs. Admittedly, it's on the port and starboard sides...but it's still just a 70 degree arc. It's not some massive arc.
Why do people think that broadsiding is some massive arc?
You have 360 degrees. Arrays have a 250 degree arc. For fore Arrays, there is a 110 degree hole aft. For aft Arrays, that hole is fore. Split the 360 degrees in half to reflect port/starboard broadsiding. That leaves you 180 degrees. Split the fore hole and aft hole (initially 110 degrees) in half. It gives you a fore and aft hole of 55 degrees each. Double that to reflect both holes in the arcs, and you're back at 110 degrees. Subtract the 110 degrees from the 180 degrees available, and you'll see that there is a 70 degree area of overlap that exists on either side of the ship that's broadsiding.
You can only bring all 8 Arrays on a target in a 70 degree arc to either side.
I feel it's just plain silly to allow overcapping at 180+ to exist in conjunction with all the ways there are to negate weapons power drain, while simultaneously keeping all other subsystem power levels very high (remember when +power consoles were nerfed? The reason was stated that it was not intended for captains to maintain such high power levels, lol). Restore the hard cap of 135 and beams would be a lot closer to WAAD (Working As Actually Designed, rather than working as designed because Geko declared it to be so instead of doing something about it) than it is right now.
Cap them at 135 and they would be gutted.
4x DHC/4x Turrets: 704 Base DPS, ~68 drain that's no longer noticed at 135.
8x Arrays: 640 Base DPS, ~70 drain that's still noticed until you're at 195+.
That would be ~60 drain experienced by Beam users. So let's look at that Base DPS of both at their respective Weapon Powers...rough numbers of course.
DHC/Turrets @125 Weapon Power (*2.5): ~1760 DPS
Arrays @65 Weapon Power (*1.3): ~832 DPS
You wouldn't even be doing half the DPS with Beams if there was a 135 cap on overcap. It would be a case of going from doing 90.9% of Cannon DPS with Beams to doing 48.4%...for being able to run a 70 arc instead of a 45 arc?
Yeah, you'd do more DPS with 8x Turrets having a 360 arc than with 8x Arrays and a 70 arc if you capped it at 135...
...I mean, c'mon. Even if somebody were to run as much drain resistance as possible, at what point would 8x Beams actually end up being better than 8x Turrets?
There's just so much garbage information being passed about in this thread. Mix that in with the personal attacks on Geko...c'mon, there's a big difference between saying that perhaps they didn't consider the extent that folks might stack things and it's another to say they're clueless.
Quite a few of the posts in this thread...well...it's kind of obvious who the clueless folks actually are...
I get what you're saying, but what about double beam banks? They don't get the benefit of that 180+ weapons power, they just get the 135. The whole thing is weird and not intuitive enough for any unknowing player to get.
They should take steps, imho (and with my 7000th post since they reset the forums (would hate to think how many it would be if they hadn't...meh)), to simplify things on the mechanics side.
There should be 0 overcap, imho, it shouldn't be needed as an artificial means to attempt to balance a weapon that's not really that great to begin with...
RoF, Falloff, Drain, Arc, Damage...balance those five factors.
Turret:
Cannon:
Heavy Cannon:
Dual Cannons:
Dual Heavy Cannons:
Beam Turret:
Beam Array:
Dual Beam Bank:
Create the "Base Weapon"...set what you want the damage to be. So for something like the Turret with a 360 arc, you would reduce the Damage. If the RoF was higher than base, you'd reduce the Damage. If the Drain was lower, you'd reduce the Damage. Work through each of the weapons...simplify it. Balance it as a whole, eh?
Cause as it stands, there's not much where they're balanced. The same things can be both woefully UP and painfully OP...depending on what you do outside of the weapons.
But it doesn't really matter in the end...the majority of folks in the game, whether PvP or PvE - care nothing about balance. They just want what they want to work the best...TRIBBLE the rest.
It's the rare person that points out the need to tweak down things they like or tweak up things they dislike.
(As the vast majority of my posts were made in the PvP section of the forums, I started posting in this thread as it seemed only fitting that I'd hit the 7000 number (again, meaningless because of the reset that was done)...but this is my last post in this section of the forums. I'm done with PvP in STO. There are a bunch of great folks out there - I hope they keep fighting the good fight and that at some point Cryptic takes even more notice of the efforts that some members of the community have really put into PvP...it's amazing the effort some have...but all in all, the vast majority of the PvP community is no different than the PvE community - but over there, well, you don't have to deal with their garbage while they're shooting at you. Course, I'm not touching the vast majority of the forums with a ten foot pole - the forums as a whole are a major trollfest. I'm likely just going to hang out in the mechanics section of the forums, I like discussing things in that nature - trying to share what I've learned and continuing to learn more from some of the gurus out there. So peace out, everybody - have a safe and happy New Year's!)
They should take steps, imho (and with my 7000th post since they reset the forums (would hate to think how many it would be if they hadn't...meh)), to simplify things on the mechanics side.
There should be 0 overcap, imho, it shouldn't be needed as an artificial means to attempt to balance a weapon that's not really that great to begin with...
RoF, Falloff, Drain, Arc, Damage...balance those five factors.
Turret:
Cannon:
Heavy Cannon:
Dual Cannons:
Dual Heavy Cannons:
Beam Turret:
Beam Array:
Dual Beam Bank:
Create the "Base Weapon"...set what you want the damage to be. So for something like the Turret with a 360 arc, you would reduce the Damage. If the RoF was higher than base, you'd reduce the Damage. If the Drain was lower, you'd reduce the Damage. Work through each of the weapons...simplify it. Balance it as a whole, eh?
Cause as it stands, there's not much where they're balanced. The same things can be both woefully UP and painfully OP...depending on what you do outside of the weapons.
But it doesn't really matter in the end...the majority of folks in the game, whether PvP or PvE - care nothing about balance. They just want what they want to work the best...TRIBBLE the rest.
It's the rare person that points out the need to tweak down things they like or tweak up things they dislike.
(As the vast majority of my posts were made in the PvP section of the forums, I started posting in this thread as it seemed only fitting that I'd hit the 7000 number (again, meaningless because of the reset that was done)...but this is my last post in this section of the forums. I'm done with PvP in STO. There are a bunch of great folks out there - I hope they keep fighting the good fight and that at some point Cryptic takes even more notice of the efforts that some members of the community have really put into PvP...it's amazing the effort some have...but all in all, the vast majority of the PvP community is no different than the PvE community - but over there, well, you don't have to deal with their garbage while they're shooting at you. Course, I'm not touching the vast majority of the forums with a ten foot pole - the forums as a whole are a major trollfest. I'm likely just going to hang out in the mechanics section of the forums, I like discussing things in that nature - trying to share what I've learned and continuing to learn more from some of the gurus out there. So peace out, everybody - have a safe and happy New Year's!)
Congrats on 7000 posts!!
See ya in the builds section and Happy New Year to you too!!
Over cap of 135???? I could have swore way back when when there were over capping issues, ie no over cap limit, they put soft cap in at 135 then hard capped everything at 125. I mean I could be wrong.
Hey I Used to be Captain Data, well I guess I still am in game but the account link really screwed everything up :rolleyes:
Take crit away from any ability that modifies the way a weapon works. BO, FAW, CRF, CSV, beam target subsystem, DEM. All of these are already increasing the amount of damage done, they don't need to be hitting with criticals too.
Well, I can't find the old dev response on the overcapping issue. Damned "Archived Posts". I did find, however, several old threads on the same subject.
The 125/135/135+ debate has been going on for a while. I really wish I could find that dev post.
That said, I can't find anything to prove or disprove either of our memories on the subject. I can say that there has been a Cap of 135 at one point. Beams weren't useless, you just didn't use 8, or you staggered their fire. I can also say that there was a cap of 125 at one point, beams were pretty much useless, but that was fixed when the 135 cap was restored.
For Broadside arcs, yes I know, it's 70 degree overlap on either side. You explain yourself why that allows broadsiding. Can you do that with DHC's, bring 8 to bear?
As for 135 cap gutting beams. I don't see how that would cut the DPS in half. Yes, some shots would be cut in half, others wouldn't be. So there's some wiggle room there, dontcha think? Also, who says you have to start all 8 firing cycles at the same time? Or use 8 BA's for that matter? I really think you over-simplified your DPS calculations there.
It's a shame that I won't get a reply from you. I really enjoy these discussions. I usually come out understanding something better than I did before, but never with any hard feelings towards you.
Oh, and I agree with your final post too. Drain mechanics and firing cycles of weapons need a rework to balance them against each other without any overcap necessary to achieve that goal. My arguments are based purely on my perceptions of the current state of the game.
Over cap of 135???? I could have swore way back when when there were over capping issues, ie no over cap limit, they put soft cap in at 135 then hard capped everything at 125. I mean I could be wrong.
That's the way I remember it too, then they restored the 135 because 125 hurt beams too much.
That's the way I remember it too, then they restored the 135 because 125 hurt beams too much.
Um, I believe that overcapping is really quite misunderstood. Cannons in fact, can overcap as much as a beam can.
How can this be true you ask? The long and short of it is your power transfer rate.
Power transfer rate does not affect your primary weapon drain cycle, but it does affect the speed at which the extra power which you obtain from overcapping fills into your weapons cycle.
The reason why cannon users, specifically DHCS, don't see much of a benefit, is because the firing cycle hardly lasts a second. The period at which the drain occurs is negligible, so unless you can buff your power transfer rate extremely high, you are not likely to notice the overcap.
Remember when people say the soft cap on cannons is 135? That is actually accurate in a sense, but also not the whole story. A lot of people who spec fully into EPS often see a power transfer rate of 10/s on their ships default. So yes, you would never see a benefit to overcap beyond 135 since the drain cycle of a DHC is 1 second, and your overcapping only has this 1 second to fill in its extra power.
This is also the reason that people say that beams benefit from overcapping more than a cannon, because they actually do. Since the drain cycle of beams lasts a whole 4? Seconds, with the default power transfer speed of 10, you can fill in 40 power over the drain cycle of a beam.
After much debate, testing and contemplating this myself, it is very clear to me that EPS transfer in relation to the drain cycle of your weapons is what determines the effectiveness of any overcap.
135? 150? nothing Geko said indicates a hidden limit.
crypticgeko said:
However, let say:
You are at 100/125.
You activate a buff that gives you 50 power.
You will be at 125/125.
Weapons fire based on 125 weapon power.
If multiple weapons are fired, power will start to drain. However, you still have 25 unclaimed power from your buff, so that fills in. Your weapon power level wont drop below 125 until you deplete that buff. Once that happens, then power levels will drop below 125 power.
I assume that's accurate because I've seen nothing to contradict it. But there's no limit on a cap mentioned. So let me change some numbers:
I modified that quote to say:
However, let say:
You are at 100/125.
You activate a buff that gives you 500 power.
You will be at 125/125.
Weapons fire based on 125 weapon power.
If multiple weapons are fired, power will start to drain. However, you still have 475 unclaimed power from your buff, so that fills in. Your weapon power level wont drop below 125 until you deplete that buff. Once that happens, then power levels will drop below 125 power.
If there's no hidden limit, the statement is still accurate.
I may misunderstand overcapping, but from what I've read, it's not accurate to say that cannons don't take advantage of it but beams do.
It seems more accurate to say that beams are at a disadvantage if you don't overcap them. The long firing cycle of beams means the power they use is gone longer and returned later, so they actually use "reserve" power.
A complement of cannons won't eat into that power reserve as much because their short cylce means the first cannons to fire will return their power before the last cannons fire. That's a built-in advantage, not a disadvantage. The only way to make cannons use more of that reserve would be to radically alter their firing cycle, a change from which they would gain nothing and which would harm almost everyone who uses cannons.
Also Antonio, maybe the tric mines are more useful in PvP but they have become next to useless in PvE to all but a tactical captain (even then not really useful). Sure they were OP but it was the top end (150% super boosted by everything a tactical captain in an escort can do) that needed reigning in, not a blanket nerf to all spike.
Sorry, gonna nip that one for you, Bpharma.
Could only tacs achieve those 250k hits for a million damage or more? Yes, so far as I know.
But even so, it was quite possible to achieve 6-digit crits on a non-tac. I should know, since I did it.
Hell, this was back when I was a bit more...shall we say, morally twisted about PvP. I had fewer qualms about what I used. My Orion Sci was made and leveled purely to abuse this fact at the time. Even to this day her B'rel is still named 'One Tric Pony' after a joke I heard here on the forum.
Anyways, in her B'rel, I could easily achieve 50k hits without even trying, sometimes 60-70k or so on a really good hit, and on a good crit (I used CrtD Tric mines, still have em too) I'd easily break 100k.
In PvE, I may not have one-shotted gates by myself, but I could take out cubes (sometimes) or transformers in a single DPB 3.
In Ker'rat, I'd often times fly around there dropping Tric mines on people, and actually got quite good at flying a BoP, because I started to understand the strengths and weaknesses. If Feds were spawn-camping I would mine the spawn area, often times going and purposefully dying just so I could make sure I was in the right spot at the spawn. I'd drop 4 tric mines, maybe a single 5th by itself on top of that, and wait for the restart since everyone started in the same spot at the time. When all the Feds warped in...BOOM! Dead.
Or weak enough to finish off. I'd get much rage in Ker'rat chat (fun times) for 'being cheap' (and that's putting it mildly, the real stuff they said sometimes...heh, couldn't put that on the forum) like that, from the very people who were spawn-camping in the first place.
Anyways, not trying to derail the thread, just wanting to tell Bpharma that. Trics weren't an issue because of tacs, or even people doing it in PvE, it could be abuse by anyone, anywhere.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
So no crits on BFAW or on beams in genera??l (sry a little confused) I want crits cus Im going with tac consoles with crit..
FAW isn't critting. Standard Beam attacks and Beam Overload still do.
My OP was basically a jab to get people discussing the issue again. I said to keep the crits out because, imo, over-capping is already allowing beams, with or without faw, to maintain their maximum possible output over long durations. In other words, they are already more powerful (in the right build) than they need to be. Restoring the crits to FAW would bring it back to its supper-bosted state, or break something else unintentionally that makes it even more OP or breaks it into uselessness. Either option is a no-go in my opinion. It's mostly working right now, still powerful and due for an overhaul. I only suggest that we wait for the overhaul and stop rolling the dice with FAW "fixes".
FAW isn't critting. Standard Beam attacks and Beam Overload still do.
My OP was basically a jab to get people discussing the issue again. I said to keep the crits out because, imo, over-capping is already allowing beams, with or without faw, to maintain their maximum possible output over long durations. In other words, they are already more powerful (in the right build) than they need to be. Restoring the crits to FAW would bring it back to its supper-bosted state, or break something else unintentionally that makes it even more OP or breaks it into uselessness. Either option is a no-go in my opinion. It's mostly working right now, still powerful and due for an overhaul. I only suggest that we wait for the overhaul and stop rolling the dice with FAW "fixes".
Ah, got ya, reasonable, wish it all worked as intended, my main is currently using bfaw build (waiting for T3 spire) engineer in a tac oddy, once I get her consoles and DOffs I can finally move on to my 2nd of 8 chars and finish my pvp build (cannons on an avenger/tac) so I would like to see actual balance... Considering the varied builds across ALL factions and careers it would be nice..
Ultimately what I find wrong with this whole thing is, too many cruiser pilots wanted an easy DPS cruiser that also fits in a team build. The old team team dynamics were, escorts, killed, sci did CC and debuff, cruisers healed and provided a tough target. There were good DPS cruiser builds but they made sacrifices on team healing and did not fit snugly in the cruiser role on a team. Now with all the healing and resists make a DPS cruiser also a hard target it throws the balance off in PvP in a 5 man DPS cruiser team will likely out last the old 5 man of 2 escorts 2 cruisers and a sci. BFAW is a joke power that allows focus without focusing and allows cruisers to heal at will since they really do not have to do the hard thing which is target.
I am sorry if this ruffles feathers but cruisers have always been the easiest ship to play, I used to be a cruiser pilot.
Hey I Used to be Captain Data, well I guess I still am in game but the account link really screwed everything up :rolleyes:
they should proboly rebalance how weapons drain, caps and all those sorts of things, like maybe the damage fall off from lower energy levles should be cut in half, and the hard cap should be 125.
but if they want to rebalanced within the current system, they should do this
- 150 power overcap hard cap for both beams and cannons, displayed clearly in the UI
- BO not sucking all your overcaped power, +50
- FAW not fireing 10 shots per cycle when theres more then 1 target around, those pvp ruining FAWmades nullified
- a doff that makes FAW a single target attack. with this, there would be a golden age of targetable deployable use again, they are all but dead these days
- leave AtB the hell alone, without tech doffs there would be 5-8 cruisers worth even bothering to putting weapons on. and the number of escorts and destroyers that can operate closer to a bugs level slashed down to none. lol @ biggest problem in the game, what about all the ships more powerful then any AtB ship? were do they stand in the problem rateing? 3 best FAW boats, scim, jem dread and breen chel, arent even inherently AtB boats, or even cruisers. COM tac station > cruiser commands
the result would be a more reasonable cap in possible damage, and cannon useing ships getting the same benifits from all the drain res and overcaping that beam users do. there would be a reward on all ships for going to the trouble of overcaping, something not as easy to do on escorts, without giving up EPtE.
Seriously, with overcapping it is still quite powerful.
Do we really need the crits back?
I vote NO.
Glad you're not an STO developer then.;)
(Of course, if they did keep FAW with no crits, CSV should have all crit chance removed as well<--- I could live with that level of AOE parity.)
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Remove overcapping entirely. It's an oversight/exploit that ONLY favors beams (specifically beams using FAW3). It's not intended to work that way, and it doesn't work that way for non-beams, and doesn't work that way for shields, engines, or aux.
It's harming the game right now. Yes, it should crit, but it should also drain normally.
Ideally this game would have beams doing less damage, but having monolithic NPCs with less hitpoints overall (and doing less 1-shot spike damage also).
(Of course, if they did keep FAW with no crits, CSV should have all crit chance removed as well<--- I could live with that level of AOE parity.)
its not apples to apples faw is the ability because of the weapon arcs a ship can have almost 360 degrees of DPS goodness because of this no need to select a target get 5 FAW LALA boats in a map and its instant facemelting goodness while they circle jerk each other for the 10% in shields one of them may have lost when someone shows resistance. CSV and TS you actually have to have those targets in the ark and they miss more than FAW
Hey I Used to be Captain Data, well I guess I still am in game but the account link really screwed everything up :rolleyes:
as for the CAP, either make it hard cap we can see or get rid of it. It is stupidly TRIBBLE to have gauge that goes to 125 but there is 10 or whatever over you can get. If you they want to keep it there should be use penalty to balance like if you over cap you have percent chance that each weapon slot has a chance to go offline and lose that weapon for a firing cycle. If people are going to use it like a nitrous boost there should be a risk involved the higher above the visual hard cap the more malfunction prone it would be. It would be hilarious if an escort or cruiser were to end up with only one energy weapon slot working because they were unlucky. If no one likes that the more above the cap the lower your crit chance and severity get and accuracy gets.
Hey I Used to be Captain Data, well I guess I still am in game but the account link really screwed everything up :rolleyes:
(As the vast majority of my posts were made in the PvP section of the forums, I started posting in this thread as it seemed only fitting that I'd hit the 7000 number (again, meaningless because of the reset that was done)...but this is my last post in this section of the forums. I'm done with PvP in STO. There are a bunch of great folks out there - I hope they keep fighting the good fight and that at some point Cryptic takes even more notice of the efforts that some members of the community have really put into PvP...it's amazing the effort some have...but all in all, the vast majority of the PvP community is no different than the PvE community - but over there, well, you don't have to deal with their garbage while they're shooting at you. Course, I'm not touching the vast majority of the forums with a ten foot pole - the forums as a whole are a major trollfest. I'm likely just going to hang out in the mechanics section of the forums, I like discussing things in that nature - trying to share what I've learned and continuing to learn more from some of the gurus out there. So peace out, everybody - have a safe and happy New Year's!)
I have a feeling you won't be able to help yourself and may pop up from time to time. I hope so anyway.. always enjoyed the back and forths... and didn't have to say anything myself many times when I agreed with you 100%. lol
Congrats one the crazy number of posts and have a good new year yourself.
Could only tacs achieve those 250k hits for a million damage or more? Yes, so far as I know.
My sci brel wasn't to far behind my tac... I can't remember the exact numbers. I seem to remember racking up 4 200-230k hits more then a few times on it though with proper application of Beta and Sensor scans. Not sure I broke the million mark... really wasn't to far behind though.
This is what I would like to see happen to energy wepaons in STO.
1) Firing Cycles standardization. No more 4s weapon firing cycles. Take cannons and beams and unify there cycles. Also unify cycles with in weapon types... no more odd firing times for DBB or DC vs DHC... unify the cycle times.
2) Fall off standardization. Take cannons and push there fall off curve up 2-3k and take beams and reduce there fall off cure 2-3k.
3) Fine tune Dmg and Power draw for each weapon based on its firing Arc. Taking into account there role... perhaps its time to have DHC and DC fire at the same rate... with an increase in arc on the DC (meaning lower dmg would be justified).
4) Standardization of Energy Weapons skills. Overload should work with cannons... Rapid fire should work with beams. Target Sub should work with cannons. (there is no reason a cannon can't shoot at a subsystem just as well as a beam)
5) Delete FAW in its current form. Change Scatter Volley to work with beams as well... rename Scatter Volley to Fire at Will.
Would it involve some work for Cryptic... well yes.... seems to me though that removing the terrible faw code. (if you can't patch it ever with out breaking it obviously the code is a mess) is needed no matter what. Firing cycles are what is destroying balance... it has ALWAYS been the case that either Cannons or Beams are superior at any given time... and it all goes to power draw and firing cycle issues. By standardization much of what makes them so different they end up being a true... ARC choice. (or perk in the case of DHC for specific ships that can equip them... not that the 45 degree doesn't keep them in check as well)
Weapon type should be more an RP choice then a specific build choice... Don't get me wrong arcs would still see most cruisers using beam arrays, and faster escort style ships going with cannons. Still wouldn't it be interesting to see builds that loaded both types of energy weapons. (not just for an overload spike). I think long term an overhaul like that would make the game much much easier to balance at least in part. No more wild swings between cannon boats and beam boats.
There's a pretty big difference between making things viable and making things superior. I'm all for viable - more options? Great! But superior? That's powercreep, pure and simple. FAW builds aren't being an alternative, they are becoming the new cookie cutter build. If they were equal, well - no problem. But when they are actually superior and easier to use.......there needs to be some tweaking.
(As the vast majority of my posts were made in the PvP section of the forums, I started posting in this thread as it seemed only fitting that I'd hit the 7000 number (again, meaningless because of the reset that was done)...but this is my last post in this section of the forums. I'm done with PvP in STO. There are a bunch of great folks out there - I hope they keep fighting the good fight and that at some point Cryptic takes even more notice of the efforts that some members of the community have really put into PvP...it's amazing the effort some have...but all in all, the vast majority of the PvP community is no different than the PvE community - but over there, well, you don't have to deal with their garbage while they're shooting at you. Course, I'm not touching the vast majority of the forums with a ten foot pole - the forums as a whole are a major trollfest. I'm likely just going to hang out in the mechanics section of the forums, I like discussing things in that nature - trying to share what I've learned and continuing to learn more from some of the gurus out there. So peace out, everybody - have a safe and happy New Year's!)
Sorry to hear that, old chap. See you in the build forums sometime, and happy new year to you too!
Comments
I'm all for leaving FAW without crits, but my reasons are probably different than yours. Basically, I don't want them breaking it further by trying to fix it again. Apparently Borticus is supposed to be working on rebuilding FAW sometime soon, and I think we should just hold out for that to happen. Like you said FAW, as it is, combined with other problems, is still very powerful and doesn't need the crits to perform well. An attempt at fixing that would probably bring back the double procs, or possibly revert it to a spam-clearing ability that is useless for pressure damage, and I don't want to see anything like that happen.
Beta player - forum knows jack as to when I started
_____________________________________________________
Beams also have a better damage ratio at range and instantly apply the damage. Cannons have travel time that can be out run for awhile allowing for time to apply resists and heals. Imo, the real problem started when they went fiddling w/the resist buffing/debuffing for the goal of a Time to Kill ratio they're never going to get.
Also, let's be honest Geko has always been clueless about the game's mechanics. He spent a very long time denying various bugs existed including the shield swapping bug that was caught in an old STOked video. Also, he didn't say it was WAD he said as far as he knew it was WAD and he hadn't looked at it for a long time.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
Also very good points.
I am aware that Geko said, "as far as I know," but that's all it takes for players to justify exploiting a broken mechanic. I would also be willing to bet money that he never did go back and take that look. In essence, he gave it his blessings.
Isn't increasing the firing cycle of cannons to match that of beams the only way to do that? Would that not force everyone to become a min-maxer on weapons power and hurt anyone who doesn't run A2B+EPtW3+etc?
I get what you're saying, but what about double beam banks? They don't get the benefit of that 180+ weapons power, they just get the 135. The whole thing is weird and not intuitive enough for any unknowing player to get.
This pretty much sums up what I think too.
Do you have a thread where you go over logs or such for this? I am probably misunderstanding your explanation, but numbers on my cannon ship are anything but a stable 125, and I was under the impression that it wasn't that cannons didn't need overcapping so much as the power could not replenish fast enough to make a difference before the end of the firing cycle.
Honestly, you can't state something like that without a link to a source stating such was the case.
Could have sworn it was uncapped for Beams, then bugged it to 135 - where folks were all like, wtf? 135? that's odd, eh?, and then fixed to be uncapped again...all without a single patch note from them on the matter...meh.
It's difficult, because several quick searches during the time period are mainly about Turrets. Turrets, being a "Cannon-like" weapon when it comes to drain - outside of any other bugs (believe there were a few) - would show any overcapping beyond 135 as pointless (no additional gain).
They still fork folks over with the forks...they've gotten better, imho, did a better job with S8 than they did with LoR/S7/S6(almost any fork they worked on separately without updating bugs from the main fork).
Broadsiding is a 70 degree arc. It's 25 degrees more than the fore arc of DHCs. Admittedly, it's on the port and starboard sides...but it's still just a 70 degree arc. It's not some massive arc.
Why do people think that broadsiding is some massive arc?
You have 360 degrees. Arrays have a 250 degree arc. For fore Arrays, there is a 110 degree hole aft. For aft Arrays, that hole is fore. Split the 360 degrees in half to reflect port/starboard broadsiding. That leaves you 180 degrees. Split the fore hole and aft hole (initially 110 degrees) in half. It gives you a fore and aft hole of 55 degrees each. Double that to reflect both holes in the arcs, and you're back at 110 degrees. Subtract the 110 degrees from the 180 degrees available, and you'll see that there is a 70 degree area of overlap that exists on either side of the ship that's broadsiding.
You can only bring all 8 Arrays on a target in a 70 degree arc to either side.
Cap them at 135 and they would be gutted.
4x DHC/4x Turrets: 704 Base DPS, ~68 drain that's no longer noticed at 135.
8x Arrays: 640 Base DPS, ~70 drain that's still noticed until you're at 195+.
That would be ~60 drain experienced by Beam users. So let's look at that Base DPS of both at their respective Weapon Powers...rough numbers of course.
DHC/Turrets @125 Weapon Power (*2.5): ~1760 DPS
Arrays @65 Weapon Power (*1.3): ~832 DPS
You wouldn't even be doing half the DPS with Beams if there was a 135 cap on overcap. It would be a case of going from doing 90.9% of Cannon DPS with Beams to doing 48.4%...for being able to run a 70 arc instead of a 45 arc?
8x Turrets @125 Weapon Power (*2.5): ~1200 DPS
Yeah, you'd do more DPS with 8x Turrets having a 360 arc than with 8x Arrays and a 70 arc if you capped it at 135...
...I mean, c'mon. Even if somebody were to run as much drain resistance as possible, at what point would 8x Beams actually end up being better than 8x Turrets?
There's just so much garbage information being passed about in this thread. Mix that in with the personal attacks on Geko...c'mon, there's a big difference between saying that perhaps they didn't consider the extent that folks might stack things and it's another to say they're clueless.
Quite a few of the posts in this thread...well...it's kind of obvious who the clueless folks actually are...
They should take steps, imho (and with my 7000th post since they reset the forums (would hate to think how many it would be if they hadn't...meh)), to simplify things on the mechanics side.
There should be 0 overcap, imho, it shouldn't be needed as an artificial means to attempt to balance a weapon that's not really that great to begin with...
RoF, Falloff, Drain, Arc, Damage...balance those five factors.
Turret:
Cannon:
Heavy Cannon:
Dual Cannons:
Dual Heavy Cannons:
Beam Turret:
Beam Array:
Dual Beam Bank:
Create the "Base Weapon"...set what you want the damage to be. So for something like the Turret with a 360 arc, you would reduce the Damage. If the RoF was higher than base, you'd reduce the Damage. If the Drain was lower, you'd reduce the Damage. Work through each of the weapons...simplify it. Balance it as a whole, eh?
Cause as it stands, there's not much where they're balanced. The same things can be both woefully UP and painfully OP...depending on what you do outside of the weapons.
But it doesn't really matter in the end...the majority of folks in the game, whether PvP or PvE - care nothing about balance. They just want what they want to work the best...TRIBBLE the rest.
It's the rare person that points out the need to tweak down things they like or tweak up things they dislike.
(As the vast majority of my posts were made in the PvP section of the forums, I started posting in this thread as it seemed only fitting that I'd hit the 7000 number (again, meaningless because of the reset that was done)...but this is my last post in this section of the forums. I'm done with PvP in STO. There are a bunch of great folks out there - I hope they keep fighting the good fight and that at some point Cryptic takes even more notice of the efforts that some members of the community have really put into PvP...it's amazing the effort some have...but all in all, the vast majority of the PvP community is no different than the PvE community - but over there, well, you don't have to deal with their garbage while they're shooting at you. Course, I'm not touching the vast majority of the forums with a ten foot pole - the forums as a whole are a major trollfest. I'm likely just going to hang out in the mechanics section of the forums, I like discussing things in that nature - trying to share what I've learned and continuing to learn more from some of the gurus out there. So peace out, everybody - have a safe and happy New Year's!)
See ya in the builds section and Happy New Year to you too!!
This space is intentionally left blank.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
Well, I can't find the old dev response on the overcapping issue. Damned "Archived Posts". I did find, however, several old threads on the same subject.
here's one [URL]="http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=246021"[/URL]
The 125/135/135+ debate has been going on for a while. I really wish I could find that dev post.
That said, I can't find anything to prove or disprove either of our memories on the subject. I can say that there has been a Cap of 135 at one point. Beams weren't useless, you just didn't use 8, or you staggered their fire. I can also say that there was a cap of 125 at one point, beams were pretty much useless, but that was fixed when the 135 cap was restored.
For Broadside arcs, yes I know, it's 70 degree overlap on either side. You explain yourself why that allows broadsiding. Can you do that with DHC's, bring 8 to bear?
As for 135 cap gutting beams. I don't see how that would cut the DPS in half. Yes, some shots would be cut in half, others wouldn't be. So there's some wiggle room there, dontcha think? Also, who says you have to start all 8 firing cycles at the same time? Or use 8 BA's for that matter? I really think you over-simplified your DPS calculations there.
It's a shame that I won't get a reply from you. I really enjoy these discussions. I usually come out understanding something better than I did before, but never with any hard feelings towards you.
Oh, and I agree with your final post too. Drain mechanics and firing cycles of weapons need a rework to balance them against each other without any overcap necessary to achieve that goal. My arguments are based purely on my perceptions of the current state of the game.
That's the way I remember it too, then they restored the 135 because 125 hurt beams too much.
Um, I believe that overcapping is really quite misunderstood. Cannons in fact, can overcap as much as a beam can.
How can this be true you ask? The long and short of it is your power transfer rate.
Power transfer rate does not affect your primary weapon drain cycle, but it does affect the speed at which the extra power which you obtain from overcapping fills into your weapons cycle.
The reason why cannon users, specifically DHCS, don't see much of a benefit, is because the firing cycle hardly lasts a second. The period at which the drain occurs is negligible, so unless you can buff your power transfer rate extremely high, you are not likely to notice the overcap.
Remember when people say the soft cap on cannons is 135? That is actually accurate in a sense, but also not the whole story. A lot of people who spec fully into EPS often see a power transfer rate of 10/s on their ships default. So yes, you would never see a benefit to overcap beyond 135 since the drain cycle of a DHC is 1 second, and your overcapping only has this 1 second to fill in its extra power.
This is also the reason that people say that beams benefit from overcapping more than a cannon, because they actually do. Since the drain cycle of beams lasts a whole 4? Seconds, with the default power transfer speed of 10, you can fill in 40 power over the drain cycle of a beam.
After much debate, testing and contemplating this myself, it is very clear to me that EPS transfer in relation to the drain cycle of your weapons is what determines the effectiveness of any overcap.
I assume that's accurate because I've seen nothing to contradict it. But there's no limit on a cap mentioned. So let me change some numbers:
If there's no hidden limit, the statement is still accurate.
I may misunderstand overcapping, but from what I've read, it's not accurate to say that cannons don't take advantage of it but beams do.
It seems more accurate to say that beams are at a disadvantage if you don't overcap them. The long firing cycle of beams means the power they use is gone longer and returned later, so they actually use "reserve" power.
A complement of cannons won't eat into that power reserve as much because their short cylce means the first cannons to fire will return their power before the last cannons fire. That's a built-in advantage, not a disadvantage. The only way to make cannons use more of that reserve would be to radically alter their firing cycle, a change from which they would gain nothing and which would harm almost everyone who uses cannons.
Sorry, gonna nip that one for you, Bpharma.
Could only tacs achieve those 250k hits for a million damage or more? Yes, so far as I know.
But even so, it was quite possible to achieve 6-digit crits on a non-tac. I should know, since I did it.
Hell, this was back when I was a bit more...shall we say, morally twisted about PvP. I had fewer qualms about what I used. My Orion Sci was made and leveled purely to abuse this fact at the time. Even to this day her B'rel is still named 'One Tric Pony' after a joke I heard here on the forum.
Anyways, in her B'rel, I could easily achieve 50k hits without even trying, sometimes 60-70k or so on a really good hit, and on a good crit (I used CrtD Tric mines, still have em too) I'd easily break 100k.
In PvE, I may not have one-shotted gates by myself, but I could take out cubes (sometimes) or transformers in a single DPB 3.
In Ker'rat, I'd often times fly around there dropping Tric mines on people, and actually got quite good at flying a BoP, because I started to understand the strengths and weaknesses. If Feds were spawn-camping I would mine the spawn area, often times going and purposefully dying just so I could make sure I was in the right spot at the spawn. I'd drop 4 tric mines, maybe a single 5th by itself on top of that, and wait for the restart since everyone started in the same spot at the time. When all the Feds warped in...BOOM! Dead.
Or weak enough to finish off. I'd get much rage in Ker'rat chat (fun times) for 'being cheap' (and that's putting it mildly, the real stuff they said sometimes...heh, couldn't put that on the forum) like that, from the very people who were spawn-camping in the first place.
Anyways, not trying to derail the thread, just wanting to tell Bpharma that. Trics weren't an issue because of tacs, or even people doing it in PvE, it could be abuse by anyone, anywhere.
FAW isn't critting. Standard Beam attacks and Beam Overload still do.
My OP was basically a jab to get people discussing the issue again. I said to keep the crits out because, imo, over-capping is already allowing beams, with or without faw, to maintain their maximum possible output over long durations. In other words, they are already more powerful (in the right build) than they need to be. Restoring the crits to FAW would bring it back to its supper-bosted state, or break something else unintentionally that makes it even more OP or breaks it into uselessness. Either option is a no-go in my opinion. It's mostly working right now, still powerful and due for an overhaul. I only suggest that we wait for the overhaul and stop rolling the dice with FAW "fixes".
Ah, got ya, reasonable, wish it all worked as intended, my main is currently using bfaw build (waiting for T3 spire) engineer in a tac oddy, once I get her consoles and DOffs I can finally move on to my 2nd of 8 chars and finish my pvp build (cannons on an avenger/tac) so I would like to see actual balance... Considering the varied builds across ALL factions and careers it would be nice..
I am sorry if this ruffles feathers but cruisers have always been the easiest ship to play, I used to be a cruiser pilot.
but if they want to rebalanced within the current system, they should do this
- 150 power overcap hard cap for both beams and cannons, displayed clearly in the UI
- BO not sucking all your overcaped power, +50
- FAW not fireing 10 shots per cycle when theres more then 1 target around, those pvp ruining FAWmades nullified
- a doff that makes FAW a single target attack. with this, there would be a golden age of targetable deployable use again, they are all but dead these days
- leave AtB the hell alone, without tech doffs there would be 5-8 cruisers worth even bothering to putting weapons on. and the number of escorts and destroyers that can operate closer to a bugs level slashed down to none. lol @ biggest problem in the game, what about all the ships more powerful then any AtB ship? were do they stand in the problem rateing? 3 best FAW boats, scim, jem dread and breen chel, arent even inherently AtB boats, or even cruisers. COM tac station > cruiser commands
the result would be a more reasonable cap in possible damage, and cannon useing ships getting the same benifits from all the drain res and overcaping that beam users do. there would be a reward on all ships for going to the trouble of overcaping, something not as easy to do on escorts, without giving up EPtE.
Glad you're not an STO developer then.;)
(Of course, if they did keep FAW with no crits, CSV should have all crit chance removed as well<--- I could live with that level of AOE parity.)
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
It's harming the game right now. Yes, it should crit, but it should also drain normally.
Ideally this game would have beams doing less damage, but having monolithic NPCs with less hitpoints overall (and doing less 1-shot spike damage also).
its not apples to apples faw is the ability because of the weapon arcs a ship can have almost 360 degrees of DPS goodness because of this no need to select a target get 5 FAW LALA boats in a map and its instant facemelting goodness while they circle jerk each other for the 10% in shields one of them may have lost when someone shows resistance. CSV and TS you actually have to have those targets in the ark and they miss more than FAW
I have a feeling you won't be able to help yourself and may pop up from time to time. I hope so anyway.. always enjoyed the back and forths... and didn't have to say anything myself many times when I agreed with you 100%. lol
Congrats one the crazy number of posts and have a good new year yourself.
My sci brel wasn't to far behind my tac... I can't remember the exact numbers. I seem to remember racking up 4 200-230k hits more then a few times on it though with proper application of Beta and Sensor scans. Not sure I broke the million mark... really wasn't to far behind though.
1) Firing Cycles standardization. No more 4s weapon firing cycles. Take cannons and beams and unify there cycles. Also unify cycles with in weapon types... no more odd firing times for DBB or DC vs DHC... unify the cycle times.
2) Fall off standardization. Take cannons and push there fall off curve up 2-3k and take beams and reduce there fall off cure 2-3k.
3) Fine tune Dmg and Power draw for each weapon based on its firing Arc. Taking into account there role... perhaps its time to have DHC and DC fire at the same rate... with an increase in arc on the DC (meaning lower dmg would be justified).
4) Standardization of Energy Weapons skills. Overload should work with cannons... Rapid fire should work with beams. Target Sub should work with cannons. (there is no reason a cannon can't shoot at a subsystem just as well as a beam)
5) Delete FAW in its current form. Change Scatter Volley to work with beams as well... rename Scatter Volley to Fire at Will.
Would it involve some work for Cryptic... well yes.... seems to me though that removing the terrible faw code. (if you can't patch it ever with out breaking it obviously the code is a mess) is needed no matter what. Firing cycles are what is destroying balance... it has ALWAYS been the case that either Cannons or Beams are superior at any given time... and it all goes to power draw and firing cycle issues. By standardization much of what makes them so different they end up being a true... ARC choice. (or perk in the case of DHC for specific ships that can equip them... not that the 45 degree doesn't keep them in check as well)
Weapon type should be more an RP choice then a specific build choice... Don't get me wrong arcs would still see most cruisers using beam arrays, and faster escort style ships going with cannons. Still wouldn't it be interesting to see builds that loaded both types of energy weapons. (not just for an overload spike). I think long term an overhaul like that would make the game much much easier to balance at least in part. No more wild swings between cannon boats and beam boats.
There's a pretty big difference between making things viable and making things superior. I'm all for viable - more options? Great! But superior? That's powercreep, pure and simple. FAW builds aren't being an alternative, they are becoming the new cookie cutter build. If they were equal, well - no problem. But when they are actually superior and easier to use.......there needs to be some tweaking.
Sorry to hear that, old chap. See you in the build forums sometime, and happy new year to you too!