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Season 8 Dev Blog #55: Fleet Galaxy Dreadnought Stats

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  • whatinblueblazeswhatinblueblazes Member Posts: 200 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    Not me. My whole issue is that the only way to rebalance the game is to upgrade the legacy ships, and Cryptic refusing to do it with this "reboot" means it will never happen. I dont own the ship and I'm sure not buying it now, worse is that all of the other older ships that I would like to own are going to remain as useless vanity craft for the foreseeable future.

    I wish that I could argue with this statement.

    CaptainSmirk, I appreciate your candor earlier in this thread regarding player feedback vs. Cryptic's decision making. You seem to make a distinction between useful constructive feedback and less useful, possibly uncivil noise posts. In the interests of improving communication between devs and players, can you elaborate?

    What format of feedback is most useful to the development team? What is the best way (if any) to promote a useful, healthy dialog between players and devs? What is the best way to get valid, constructive feedback seen by the people who are in a position to do something about player concerns?

    In this particular instance, it seems to me that there was an abundance of well-reasoned, constructive, and useful feedback surrounding the Galaxy-X and especially the Galaxy-R. Yeah, there was a lot of hyperbole and fanboy drool to wade through, but the essential message could not have been missed:

    Many people are dissatisfied with the Galaxy class. (No bloody X, Y, or Z.)

    I won't repeat the various and sundry reasons that people are upset or disappointed by the Galaxy Reboot; that should be abundantly clear. It seems that a lot of the tooth-gnashing has to do with poor communication, leading to an update that almost seems to parody some of the most common player feedback. I don't think for a second that this was intentional, but at best the update to the Galaxy-X comes across as tone-deaf... if not slightly spiteful towards the Galaxy-R.

    What I would like is for us to work on a way to improve communication so that player interests are more clear to the devs, and so that the dev thought process and goals are more clear to players.
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  • iconiansiconians Member Posts: 6,987 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    CE/CCE still favors healing over damage. You can place 1st to get your crappy Mk X rewards without firing a single shot while just overhealing your teammates...

    You're looking at the small fish, I'm talking the entire ocean. When I say "rewarding" I don't mean just financial rewards, loot rewards, fleet action placement.

    I mean actually desirable to play. Where someone can hop into a Galaxy-R the way it currently exists and feel as if they are contributing just as much to a team as people with an aux2bat build, an escort-heavy team, or what have you.

    Where the entire team can say, "I really wish we had a cruiser with us." or "I really wish we had a science ship geared for crowd control for this."

    But who says that, really? That's my point. People will say they want high dps because that's what they know the game as. They aren't wrong, far from it.

    In the big picture, STO would offer fundamental gameplay changes at the very core in both PvE and PvP to the point where people won't want to look for additional tac boff slots or universal slots. Gameplay changes where people will want to look for extra Engineering boff slots.
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  • orangeitisorangeitis Member Posts: 5,222 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    greyhame3 wrote: »
    I don't care. I don't think this game needs a hard trinity system.
    Then it needs a complete overhaul, because its setup is optimalized for a trinity system. As I said, tactical, engineering, and science aspects of ships are presented equally, and if not handled equally in gameplay, the number of competitively viable builds would be small.
  • virusdancervirusdancer Member Posts: 18,687 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    iconians wrote: »
    You're looking at the small fish, I'm talking the entire ocean. When I say "rewarding" I don't mean just financial rewards, loot rewards, fleet action placement.

    I mean actually desirable to play. Where someone can hop into a Galaxy-R the way it currently exists and feel as if they are contributing just as much to a team as people with an aux2bat build, an escort-heavy team, or what have you.

    Where the entire team can say, "I really wish we had a cruiser with us." or "I really wish we had a science ship geared for crowd control for this."

    But who says that, really? That's my point. People will say they want high dps because that's what they know the game as. They aren't wrong, far from it.

    In the big picture, STO would offer fundamental gameplay changes at the very core in both PvE and PvP to the point where people won't want to look for additional tac boff slots or universal slots. Gameplay changes where people will want to look for extra Engineering boff slots.

    I was replying greyhame3...but forgot to quote him. Was just a case of pointing out that CE/CCE is still broken, should have been fixed, they said they took a look at overhealing angle, etc, etc, etc...but that it's still broken (or with it being Cryptic, quite likely it's simply been broken again after being fixed).

    Wasn't touching the overall issue that STO's got the depth of a Facebook or tablet game...that it's part Star Trek Ville and part Angry Star Trek Birds.
  • iconiansiconians Member Posts: 6,987 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    I was replying greyhame3...but forgot to quote him. Was just a case of pointing out that CE/CCE is still broken, should have been fixed, they said they took a look at overhealing angle, etc, etc, etc...but that it's still broken (or with it being Cryptic, quite likely it's simply been broken again after being fixed).

    Wasn't touching the overall issue that STO's got the depth of a Facebook or tablet game...that it's part Star Trek Ville and part Angry Star Trek Birds.

    Oh, carry on then.
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  • amosov78amosov78 Member Posts: 1,495 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    That is unless they plan to break up the damage abilities to be more evenly spread between Sci, Eng, and Tac.

    There always would have been a case for the beam abilities (overload, at least, and maybe Fire at Will with a different name) to be Eng powers since beam attacks on the shows were powered by the engines, not the power allocated to tactical systems.

    If we're moving away from the RPG trinity, maybe skills could be invented and reallocated so that the three trees focus on different weapon types and styles of damage rather than Tac being more damage focused.

    This actually happened on DS9 too, O'Brien channeled energy directly from the power core through a phaser array: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Pulse_compression_wave
    U.S.S. Endeavour NCC-71895 - Nebula-class
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  • greyhame3greyhame3 Member Posts: 914 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    orangeitis wrote: »
    Then it needs a complete overhaul, because its setup is optimalized for a trinity system. As I said, tactical, engineering, and science aspects of ships are presented equally, and if not handled equally in gameplay, the number of competitively viable builds would be small.
    The setup isn't optimal for that, otherwise DPS wouldn't be king and you couldn't do an STF with a group of ships where none can really tank or heal. Which, ultimately, is more the result of power creep than a conscience gameplay decision to change things. But the fact that the power creep has moved us to a soft trinity as opposed to a hard trinity.

    The difference being that you can do group content without any sort of ship that can take more damage, or someone with a build that can take more damage, but it makes things run more smoothly when you do. All that really needs to happen here is adjustments to ships that don't overly fit this model to the point where they do (which was what should have happened to the Galaxy-R).

    And if you want a hard trinity, as I said elsewhere, new difficulty level since going back to a hard trinity would not work at this point.
  • greyhame3greyhame3 Member Posts: 914 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    I was replying greyhame3...but forgot to quote him. Was just a case of pointing out that CE/CCE is still broken, should have been fixed, they said they took a look at overhealing angle, etc, etc, etc...but that it's still broken (or with it being Cryptic, quite likely it's simply been broken again after being fixed).

    Wasn't touching the overall issue that STO's got the depth of a Facebook or tablet game...that it's part Star Trek Ville and part Angry Star Trek Birds.
    To be honest, I didn't really know much about how that worked. I just remembered reading that it rewarded healing.
  • ak255ak255 Member Posts: 317 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    iconians wrote: »
    I've said it before and I'll say it again.

    The problem isn't with the Galaxy-class or the Galaxy-X, or whatever ship isn't built tac-heavy.

    The problem is with STO consistently favoring high damage and high dps since that is where the rewards are.

    If STO gave players who liked playing support a cookie to make them as desirable as people with high damage, you would stop seeing these complaints as often.

    People are only lashing out at the symptom of the problem, not the cause of it. It's not their fault. They only know what the game has shown thus far. High damage or get the hell out.

    You make support ships like cruisers and science ships as fun/desirable/rewarding as tac-heavy ships and this all goes away (for the most part anyway).

    Players spend too much time asking, "How will you fix that?" instead of asking, "Why does it need to be fixed to begin with?"

    I agree. However, the problem I'm having is that the Galaxy-X SHOULD be a heavy damage dealing ship! Why else call it a "Dreadnought" or let it equip Dual Cannons?

    This is the problem I have with this ship: it doesn't fit it's role and is pointless. If they just gave it a slightly better BOFF layout and turn rate, then I think a lot of people would be happy.

    I still say that everything that the Avenger Battle Cruiser is is what the Galaxy-X SHOULD have been!
  • virusdancervirusdancer Member Posts: 18,687 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    I think it's based around what's been said here and there by various folks at Cryptic...what their favorite series was. It's pretty clear which of the series STO is most like. Folks standing around on stations chatting or off blowing TRIBBLE up...which series does that sound like?

    Perhaps a little more on topic than that, though I believe that's at the root of many issues - there's also how much development work goes into certain things where it simply does not appear to be any content for it. Whether one is talking about Trinity mechanics or something along those lines - there are a bunch of things in STO that just do not appear to fit in STO. Oh, they definitely fit what a MMO typically offers - definitely fit what one might envision a Star Trek MMO offering...but when it comes to STO itself - does the left hand know what the right hand is doing?

    Yes, it's a themepark - it's not a sandbox - folks aren't going to get their personal journeys and babble to all their friends about how awesome it is...but even themeparks offer a variety of rides and not just variations of the same ride.
  • captsolcaptsol Member Posts: 921 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    I think it's based around what's been said here and there by various folks at Cryptic...what their favorite series was. It's pretty clear which of the series STO is most like. Folks standing around on stations chatting or off blowing TRIBBLE up...which series does that sound like?

    Perhaps a little more on topic than that, though I believe that's at the root of many issues - there's also how much development work goes into certain things where it simply does not appear to be any content for it. Whether one is talking about Trinity mechanics or something along those lines - there are a bunch of things in STO that just do not appear to fit in STO. Oh, they definitely fit what a MMO typically offers - definitely fit what one might envision a Star Trek MMO offering...but when it comes to STO itself - does the left hand know what the right hand is doing?

    Yes, it's a themepark - it's not a sandbox - folks aren't going to get their personal journeys and babble to all their friends about how awesome it is...but even themeparks offer a variety of rides and not just variations of the same ride.

    I think it's important to look at PWE's other games. It's obvious what STO is turning into based around that. As long as the veneer of Star Trek is there enough to please CBS then it doesn't matter if it turns into nothing but another Chinese MMO grindfest to the powers-that-be.
  • organicmanfredorganicmanfred Member Posts: 3,236 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    Maybe CBS isn't allowing a LTC Tactical Station and Cryptic isn't allowed to tell us. Smirk was very "cryptic" in his post a few hours ago and it is not hard to read between lines.

    Cryptic maybe wants to avoid a shotstorm raging towards CBS to not endanger (insert correct english word if wrong) the licence contract.
  • legetdumarlegetdumar Member Posts: 263
    edited March 2014
    Meet the new Galaxies, same as the old Galaxies....a niche unit without a niche.

    Tragic. :(
    Criticism, while never agreeable, is necessary. It is like pain in the body. It brings attention to an unhealthy state of things---Winston Churchill
  • iconiansiconians Member Posts: 6,987 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    ak255 wrote: »
    I agree. However, the problem I'm having is that the Galaxy-X SHOULD be a heavy damage dealing ship! Why else call it a "Dreadnought" or let it equip Dual Cannons?

    This is the problem I have with this ship: it doesn't fit it's role and is pointless. If they just gave it a slightly better BOFF layout and turn rate, then I think a lot of people would be happy.

    I still say that everything that the Avenger Battle Cruiser is is what the Galaxy-X SHOULD have been!

    I don't know. 4 tac console slots is nothing to sneer at. It's tankier than the Fleet Excelsior while still having the 4 console slots. The hangar bay is also something neither the excelsior or fleet assault cruiser has. Likewise with the saucer separation.

    Mixed opinion on the phaser lance, since I'm well aware of how inaccurate it is and the long cooldown timer. I think it would be much more 'dreadnoughty' if the phaser lance was given a buff to emphasise the 'all big gun' theme dreadnoughts have.
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  • lordfuzunlordfuzun Member Posts: 54 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    No, but I don't see them making this worse than it is.

    The upgrades are nice, but fall fatally short of a home run. It's almost as if the devs and the decision makers don't actually play the game at the same level as the rest of us.

    I understand why this ship would NOT get a Commander Tac position. But Lt.Com would raise the bar on the significantly to make this ship a MUST BUY as opposed to WTFNWIH.

    Yes. They do play the same the rest of us do. The problem is that we don't have the same view of the game they do We aren't in that privileged position. But you canread between the lines if you take in ALL that the devs have ever publicly said.

    Al Rivera (Captain Gecko) wields an very large amount of influence over the systems designs of the game (abilities, enemies, ships, weapons, gear etc). He's says that he doesn't have the final say so and that's it's a team effort for game design. He may e tehnically true, but that lefts out the amount of influence he has, even with the Executive Production (whomever that may be). Al Rivera has said in many interview he want's all of the player ships in STO to have a unique niche (and today a unique gimmick). Al won't allow a ship to step on another ship's "thing".

    Now with that background we can look at the Galaxy "reboot". The Galaxy and Galaxy-R are right where they wan't they stat-wise. Any BOFF layout would take them out of their niche. They each have their own unique gimmick which is now a 2 piece set.

    The Galaxy-X changes are just extensions of the Galaxy and Galaxy-R gimmicks. A change to having the Lt-Cmdr TAc station, that would stop on the toes of the Excelsior, Avenger and Odessey classes. So what to do i it's place. Looking at the ships porfolio...hanger. Lack of Fed Cruiser's with a hangers. Ok Now we're done.

    And for the record, I'm not defending the Galaxy changes. I don't consider these changes a reboot. They've bent the meaning of reboot beyond the breaking point. Cryptic you have all of your niches covered now. You don't have a lack of ships like in teh beginning. Start stepping on some toes. Let the ship gimmicks make them unique and desirable to players.
  • captsolcaptsol Member Posts: 921 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    Maybe CBS isn't allowing a LTC Tactical Station and Cryptic isn't allowed to tell us. Smirk was very "cryptic" in his post a few hours ago and it is not hard to read between lines.

    Cryptic maybe wants to avoid a shotstorm raging towards CBS to not endanger (insert correct english word if wrong) the licence contract.


    If dinosaurs with lasers on their heads added because 'It's just a game, let's have some fun!' doesn't void the license then I seriously doubt a proper Galaxy-class is going to.
  • greyhame3greyhame3 Member Posts: 914 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    lordfuzun wrote: »
    Yes. They do play the same the rest of us do. The problem is that we don't have the same view of the game they do We aren't in that privileged position. But you canread between the lines if you take in ALL that the devs have ever publicly said.

    Al Rivera (Captain Gecko) wields an very large amount of influence over the systems designs of the game (abilities, enemies, ships, weapons, gear etc). He's says that he doesn't have the final say so and that's it's a team effort for game design. He may e tehnically true, but that lefts out the amount of influence he has, even with the Executive Production (whomever that may be). Al Rivera has said in many interview he want's all of the player ships in STO to have a unique niche (and today a unique gimmick). Al won't allow a ship to step on another ship's "thing".

    Now with that background we can look at the Galaxy "reboot". The Galaxy and Galaxy-R are right where they wan't they stat-wise. Any BOFF layout would take them out of their niche. They each have their own unique gimmick which is now a 2 piece set.

    The Galaxy-X changes are just extensions of the Galaxy and Galaxy-R gimmicks. A change to having the Lt-Cmdr TAc station, that would stop on the toes of the Excelsior, Avenger and Odessey classes. So what to do i it's place. Looking at the ships porfolio...hanger. Lack of Fed Cruiser's with a hangers. Ok Now we're done.

    And for the record, I'm not defending the Galaxy changes. I don't consider these changes a reboot. They've bent the meaning of reboot beyond the breaking point. Cryptic you have all of your niches covered now. You don't have a lack of ships like in teh beginning. Start stepping on some toes. Let the ship gimmicks make them unique and desirable to players.
    This game is lacking enough niches to maked this viewpoint as good game design.
  • organicmanfredorganicmanfred Member Posts: 3,236 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    captsol wrote: »
    If dinosaurs with lasers on their heads added because 'It's just a game, let's have some fun!' doesn't void the license then I seriously doubt a proper Galaxy-class is going to.

    Thats why I have put the magically and universal fittable "Maybe" words twice in the post.
  • sevmragesevmrage Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    Sometimes, these decisions don't make sense to our players at the time, but all we ask is for your understanding and your patience in response to these changes, and changes to come.
    ~CaptainSmirk

    Just quoting the part I wanted to reference. I do appreciate your participating in the discussion, but if I may ask, why not try explaining the choices? If you don't mind, share with us why you did what you did? Maybe it will make sense to us if we knew why. Well, some of us, anyway. I've been a fan of the Gal-X for ages, but there are a few things I wonder about, and some input about the Dev mindset would be nice.
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    My name is Rage, and I too support a revised Galaxy family.
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    Firstly, be proud! You're part of the few, the stubborn, the Federation Dreadnought Captains.
  • usscapitalusscapital Member Posts: 985 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    Maybe CBS isn't allowing a LTC Tactical Station and Cryptic isn't allowed to tell us. Smirk was very "cryptic" in his post a few hours ago and it is not hard to read between lines.

    Cryptic maybe wants to avoid a shotstorm raging towards CBS to not endanger (insert correct english word if wrong) the licence contract.

    or it could just be an excuse :o
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  • organicmanfredorganicmanfred Member Posts: 3,236 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    usscapital wrote: »
    or it could just be an excuse :o

    Then he would have come up with a false explanation, but so it has an unknown factor on the real thing
  • usscapitalusscapital Member Posts: 985 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    Then he would have come up with a false explanation, but so it has an unknown factor on the real thing

    true but I would still like a gal-x that looks more like whats in the below vid when in battle , be we can all dream lol

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xut_OMlAVyY
    NERF NERF NERF ONLINE

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  • meimeitoomeimeitoo Member Posts: 12,594 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    Angry abusive posts wont get any of us anywhere, so keep in mind, the more pages upon pages of non-constructive posts will only bury constructive feedback posts, making it even harder to hear the things that could affect real change to our decision making process.

    I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone disagreeing with you on this, on principle.

    Still, mentioning 'pages upon pages of non-constructive posts' ('angry abusive posts' actually don't exist, as they are being removed/edited by a mod) feels a bit like a cop-out; because, even without actually reading any those allegedly non-constructive posts, you can still distill dissatisfaction from them. What I mean is, that when you stumble upon 'pages upon pages' of people complaining, in whatever tone, then that fact alone is itself a voice worthy of being heard. And I would think part of your job is to simply relay said 'mood' to the devs, right? Not in the habit of telling the Community Manager how to do this job, of course; but since you're telling us how to do ours...

    Anyway, I hope, for future reference, that you can simply see past the 'tone' of things; or, rather, not judge said tone of frustration, but convey to the powers that be that people are dissatisfied, and that there probably really *is* some kind of issue. And, lastly, that it's nothing personal.
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  • captyoung01captyoung01 Member Posts: 311 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    "The first time the Galaxy Dreadnought was introduced to the franchise was in the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation titled “All Good Things.” I don’t think any of us can forget the visual of a high speed Enterprise-D decloaking and vertically charging towards the Klingon vessel that was set out to destroy Captain Picard and the TNG crewmembers onboard the U.S.S. Pasteur, firing a massive phaser beam out of the Spinal Phaser Lance, obliterating the KDF Vessel with one powerful shot, and speeding through the debris with 3 nacelles on its back. Such a strong scene has certainly remained one of the most memorable in all of TNG lore."


    A very nice play on words, however the Dread on that episode fired 6-7 Phaser lances to destroy the Negh'Var. Keep in mind the Beams were thin as well (As if the Lance was the main weapon). The intrepretation of this lance in game doesn't fit right. . But it is something I can deal with.

    I am hoping the (Note: Details Subject to Change), really does come into play here. What many players like my self have dream of on this ship is more than an extra Tac Console and Hangar bay.
  • robeasomrobeasom Member Posts: 1,911 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    Does the Galaxy Dreadnaught have a cloaking console or is it able to cloak without the console like a B'rel and romulan ships
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  • captsolcaptsol Member Posts: 921 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    robeasom wrote: »
    Does the Galaxy Dreadnaught have a cloaking console or is it able to cloak without the console like a B'rel and romulan ships

    You need the console. Feddies have no ships that can cloak without a console.
  • reynoldsxdreynoldsxd Member Posts: 977 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    Yes, the feedback threads have been bookmarked, noted, and passed to the appropriate Devs, and they have also read/considered them.

    Please keep in mind that we do listen to all feedback, and take what we can from what is constructive, and try to base future decisions on what we hear from our player community.

    However, that does not mean that we can change everything in-game to what all players are asking for. There will always be the plain and simple truth that we cannot change everything to make everyone happy 100% of the time. But that doesn't mean we don't try to do things for the benefit of our players.

    When we work on reboots such as the Galaxy reboot, and when we add Fleet versions of desired ships, we have our own internal reasons behind every decision. Sometimes, these decisions don't make sense to our players at the time, but all we ask is for your understanding and your patience in response to these changes, and changes to come.

    Angry abusive posts wont get any of us anywhere, so keep in mind, the more pages upon pages of non-constructive posts will only bury constructive feedback posts, making it even harder to hear the things that could affect real change to our decision making process.

    The last thing we want is any of you to feel that you are being ignored or that your voices are unheard. That being said, sometimes those voices need to understand that even though you really really want something to change, if we do not change things to accommodate your requests, this is nothing personal.

    We will continue to listen to your feedback and take it into consideration.

    We sincerely appreciate your support, as well as your passion for STO.

    ~CaptainSmirk



    Wow. What a pompous statement.


    Dude, we have had these threads for years now, the right design choices were pretty damn clear.
    We will continue to listen to your feedback and take it into consideration.
    Evidently not.
    Angry abusive posts wont get any of us anywhere, so keep in mind, the more pages upon pages of non-constructive posts will only bury constructive feedback posts, making it even harder to hear the things that could affect real change to our decision making process.

    Keep on playing that card. Its not like having happy customers is impor... oh wait.
    Yeah, TRIBBLE you too.
    When we work on reboots such as the Galaxy reboot, and when we add Fleet versions of desired ships, we have our own internal reasons behind every decision. Sometimes, these decisions don't make sense to our players at the time, but all we ask is for your understanding and your patience in response to these changes, and changes to come.


    Dude its the first "reboot".
    And you went all ****** on it.

    And no, your decisions never make sense. At any time. Especially if actually talking about your reasoning would alleviate the problem.
    Yes, the feedback threads have been bookmarked, noted, and passed to the appropriate Devs, and they have also read/considered them.


    No you guys didn't. As evidenced by the BS you fabricate here.




    Wallet: slam shut.
  • kandorouskandorous Member Posts: 114 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    will the model be fixed

    the phaser lance has been misaligned for a very long time now
  • hawke89305092hawke89305092 Member Posts: 237 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    Firstly, I just want to say that I do appreciate our receiving a response from the Devs. Even if it's not what we want to hear, it's better than silence. So, thank you Smirk.

    Now, a disclaimer: I don't own the Gal-X. I doubt I ever will; I never cared for what it did to the smooth lines of the Galaxy. So the feedback that follows can be considered (at least somewhat) impartial.

    Onto the Galaxy-X, the Dreadnought Cruiser. From the outset, it's pretty clear that this is a tactical oriented ship. The "dreadnought" title, the 4 Tac Consoles and even the opening to this blog all emphasise this ship's battle directed nature. Okay, not a problem so far.

    The problem comes when this ship gets compared to the existing tactical cruisers, a niche of the Fed cruiser lineup that's reasonably saturated. The trick here is to make the ship appealing in its own right, but still competitive with the other options. The Excelsior/Sovereign comparison exemplifies this perfectly; the Sovereign offers that valuable Tac Ensign, but the Excelsior has +1 turn, which for a slow turning cruiser, can be quite important.

    Now, for the Galaxy-X, I very much see it's point of competition as its hangar. That's its selling point compared to the two aforementioned ships (I won't refer to the Avenger since that's just a +1 to the other Tac Cruisers); you have a worse turn rate than either of them, but gain the added versatility of a hangar. And with that inaccurate lance, some tractor beam and warp plasma dropping Yellowstones could be very useful indeed.

    Okay. So far so good. And then we come to the Boff layout.

    It's horrible. You compare this ship to the Excelsior or the Sovereign and the difference is obvious; that Lt Cmdr Eng slot kills the Gal-X. It can't hope to match up to either of them in terms of damage dealing ability; that Lt Cmdr Tac just opens up so many more options.

    Now, not having a Lt Cmdr Tac isn't necessarily a problem for a ship - no one would complain about that on the Ambassador, for example. The Support Cruiser is, funnily enough, a support ship, and the Boff and console layout reflects that. But as I mentioned earlier, the Dreadnought Cruiser is a tactical oriented ship... and while it's console layout reflects that, it's Boff layout does not.

    To put it bluntly, this is a ship that's worse at its job than any of its competitors. Why should I switch to this ship from my Fleet Sovereign, let alone my Avenger? It's just flat out worse.

    So, that's why the ship needs that Lt Cmdr Tac; to be viable and competitive in its role as defined both by its console layout and its description.

    Now let's look at what happens to the Fleet Galaxy-X when you change the Lt Cmdr slot from Eng to Tac with no other changes; you get:

    Cmdr Eng
    Lt Cmdr Tac
    Lt Tac

    Lt Sci
    Ens Uni

    Now, this is an interesting Boff layout for several reasons, the most interesting of which is that it's more Tac heavy than any of the existing cruisers. But isn't that a problem for the balance of the ship? Well... no. Look closely and you'll see that like the Tor'kaht, this Gal-X can only run one Lt Eng ability, limiting its ability to use an Aux2Bat build - part of what the other tac cruisers so deadly.

    I mentioned already that the benefits of a hangar are balanced by the low turn rate, and it seems to me at least that the benefits of a Lt Cmdr + Lt Tac are balanced by the poor Aux2Bat ability. So balance isn't a problem.

    And looking at the Fleet Galaxy Dreadnought with this proposed layout? It's a capable and competitive ship, but between the hangar and the Boff layout it's also more unique than any of the three current 4 Tac console cruisers are when compared to each other. Not to mention that it allows the ship to perform in its role.

    In closing, I don't see any reason at all to leave the ship with its current layout, which makes is poor at its intended role, and I see no reasons why it should not be given the Lt Cmdr tac, which would allow the Dreadnought to perform as it should whilst remaining distinct from the other Tac Cruisers.

    Whew, this post's long! If you made it this far, go get yourself a cookie; you've earned it! And to the devs, thanks for reading!
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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