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Discussion: Shield Balancing (Tac Team/Manual shield balance)
cmdrskyfaller
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
This is a spinoff from my thread 'About the Patch Notes' so that the specifics of tactical team and the shield balancing issue can be discussed.
The Issue:
Tactical Team auto-balancing shields provides a huge benefit to ships that can afford to dual-cycle the ability. Essentially every shield facing becomes the HP equivalent of the combined HP of all 4 shields.
There is a manual 'shield balance' that all ships have which can be macro'd to provide similar benefit (not as fast or automatic as tac team but it does the job).
Now that -team abilities no longer share timers, the ships that have 4 tactical boff slots can now have full shield autobalancing with dual tac team cycling plus weapon buffing plus able to run science team and engineering team. This means in the case of escorts, which have the lowest hull and shield HP max, they can insta-heal almost their entire hull and shield with just -team ability II (or perma-heal by dual-cycling those abilities). Ships without 4 tactical boff slots do not get this superb benefit.
I propose that Tactical Team and the Shield Balancing native ability be changed.
Tactical Team Change: Remove shield auto-balance and replace it with a +def% bonus and a +resist to holds bonus (+dampeners stat)
Tac Team 1: +5% def bonus + 20 to dampeners
Tac Team 2: +10% def bonus + 40 to dampeners
Tac Team 3: +20% def bonus + 60 to dampeners
At the same time, Attack Omega should lose its defense bonus, resist bonus and immunities. Only then will attack omega and tactical team be synergistic and balanced.
Shield Balance native ability change: Instead of transfering shield power from one shield to another, change it so that it takes the shield heal/regen amount of all shields and shunts it towards the target the shield.
Re-name the ability to 'Reinforce X (left/right/aft/fore/all) Shield'
The ability should be a toggle. If you select to push the incoming shield heal amount into the left shield then all shield heal amount will be applied to that shield facing alone. The toggle is re-set to 'all shields' by selecting the 'all shields' existing icon.
This system prevents automated macro from functioning and adds dynamic shield management.
The Issue:
Tactical Team auto-balancing shields provides a huge benefit to ships that can afford to dual-cycle the ability. Essentially every shield facing becomes the HP equivalent of the combined HP of all 4 shields.
There is a manual 'shield balance' that all ships have which can be macro'd to provide similar benefit (not as fast or automatic as tac team but it does the job).
Now that -team abilities no longer share timers, the ships that have 4 tactical boff slots can now have full shield autobalancing with dual tac team cycling plus weapon buffing plus able to run science team and engineering team. This means in the case of escorts, which have the lowest hull and shield HP max, they can insta-heal almost their entire hull and shield with just -team ability II (or perma-heal by dual-cycling those abilities). Ships without 4 tactical boff slots do not get this superb benefit.
I propose that Tactical Team and the Shield Balancing native ability be changed.
Tactical Team Change: Remove shield auto-balance and replace it with a +def% bonus and a +resist to holds bonus (+dampeners stat)
Tac Team 1: +5% def bonus + 20 to dampeners
Tac Team 2: +10% def bonus + 40 to dampeners
Tac Team 3: +20% def bonus + 60 to dampeners
At the same time, Attack Omega should lose its defense bonus, resist bonus and immunities. Only then will attack omega and tactical team be synergistic and balanced.
Shield Balance native ability change: Instead of transfering shield power from one shield to another, change it so that it takes the shield heal/regen amount of all shields and shunts it towards the target the shield.
Re-name the ability to 'Reinforce X (left/right/aft/fore/all) Shield'
The ability should be a toggle. If you select to push the incoming shield heal amount into the left shield then all shield heal amount will be applied to that shield facing alone. The toggle is re-set to 'all shields' by selecting the 'all shields' existing icon.
This system prevents automated macro from functioning and adds dynamic shield management.
![http://media.tumblr.com/160cacdb395f8340dac90864182ebe16/tumblr_inline_mx9yxhItkb1qg9pkt.jpg[/SIGPIC]](http://media.tumblr.com/160cacdb395f8340dac90864182ebe16/tumblr_inline_mx9yxhItkb1qg9pkt.jpg[/SIGPIC]){kind=link}
Post edited by cmdrskyfaller on
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Comments
I find it hilarious how people are STILL b*tching about escorts when they can't even come close to the healing ability and DPS output of AUX2BAT cruisers. And its been that way for a long time. Furthermore ALL ships can equip at-least one copy of TT1 and many can equip two copies. Cruisers and Science ships can also equip higher tier levels of Engineering and Science Team so they still heal better.
HERE IS YOUR BIGGEST MISTAKE AND EVERYONE ELSES IN REGARDS TO THIS TOPIC.
The "Team" powers heal the EXACT SAME amount for every ship. Why do y'all keep saying "it heals escorts to full hull and shields" ? It is irrelevant, it only does this because Escorts have lower hull and shields to begin with. Which is not an advantage I assure you, regardless this phrase is pointless and I'm tired of hearing it.
You think escorts are so powerful? Than fly one... If not then shut up!
Keltoi Class... fan design. You KNOW you want one In-game!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
What YOU seem to misunderstand is that Cruisers only did rise to this point due to the Duty Officer System and the changes to 'Overcapping'.
As you probably know, Beams have 3 Pulses during their Cycle, Cannons have many bolts. Here is where it gets crazy: Beams calculate their damage on every cycle, while the 'Drain' is applied on the first, so without overcapping, even a 125 Weapon Power Cruiser does 2/3 of the 'Hits' during the cycle at (say it is a full on Beamboat, no Torpedoes or anything, so 8 arrays) around
55 Weaponpower. with the 'discount' from Cruiser Commands, it is still down to 72.5 Weaponpower.
A Cannon calculates ALL Bolts ONCE, so in a perfectly synchronized Volley, you have all bolts firing at 125 WP.
Aux2Bat, when running without the ridiculous 'reduces recharge' (which, limited to Tactical abilities, is available to Tactical Captains, too) Doffs, helps with overcapping AND speed, and as Escort Pilots know, the faster you are, the more Defense you get.
The Issue in the Game is not only a single ship or ability, it is the fact that there is WAY too much in terms of Cooldown reductions around, and too many ways to boost the Energy settings of a ship to ridiculous levels (to the point where 90% of the playerbase seems to hump Plasmonic Leech furiously, and 'reasons' for nerfs are based on 'but with PL, they have 175 in Weapons, and 75+ at least in everything else').
One big step to help the game, in MY opinion, would be the removal of the 'Shared Subsystem' Cooldown (like the 'Teams' got, while TT needs a hit with the Nerfhammer in the first place), but instead, Use of a Power sends every copy on every rank of the same ability on cooldown, to get rid of the 'Double and Triple it up'.
So a Science Ship firing up GW3 would put GW1 on a 1 Minute cooldown, an Escort using AP:O3 would lockout AP:O1 for a minute, and so on. Punish the 'Double Up' Playstyle, reward diversification.
Seems you have not given this much thought.
The shield autobalance problem is not from ONE copy. Its from TWO being ran nonstop providing permanent shield auto balancing. There is only a 5 second gap in between the shield balancing coverage.
The only ones that can equip two copies without sacrificing damage output are those with 4 tactical slots. If you can't figure it out, this does not mean 'a cmdr tac station' but rather 4 total. Aka a lt cmdr and an ensign or 2 lt tacticals. The other 2 slots are used for weapon buff abilities. Can you guess what ships always have 4 tactical slots or more?
Cruisers and science ships can equip all the higher level shield and hull heals they can.. fact is, they DO have bigger shield and hull HP than escorts PLUS the majority of them cannot permanently auto-balance their shields...and those shield heals , if one shield is at 25% and the other shields are at 100%, the 25% hp shield gets the shield heal amount that corresponds its shield facing (1/4th of the total shield heal HP)...and the other 3/4ths shield heal HP is lost. This is why shield autobalance is so damn effective when ran permanently: all shields drop their total HP to beef up the shield being hit..and a single shield heal gains them 100% of the shield heal ability's HP.
Its curious you do realize escorts have the lowest shields and hull yet don't realize this means the LT level heals from sci and engineering heals them to almost max with one click?
Go ahead and log in to your escort and see your shields and hull..then see your Sci Team 2 and Engineering team 2. The amount of hull and shield you get with one click is almost the entire amount.
Cruisers and Sci ships dont get that benefit with lower level tier heals...and if they use higher tier abilities they sacrifice their offensive sci/eng abilities.
So the end result is Escorts get one shield facing = all 4 of their shield hp with permanent shield autobalance yet cruisers and escorts do not. Escorts get to keep their massive dps buffs and they get insta-almost-max shield and hull HP heals ... but cruisers and sci ships must sacrifice their offensive class abilities to do the same.
Finally, something you seem to conveniently forget: Cruisers -ARE- supposed to be the tanks of the game. Your post seems to indicate you think escorts should tank just the same as cruisers.
DPS of cruisers is due to sustained area fire with 6+ beam arrays. The total dps at the end is not their effective dps. You can hit 20 spheres with those beams for 4 minutes taking out all their shields and armor and get very high dps numbers... but if you use an escort and single-target each one killing them in one pass by hitting the hull after taking down just one shield facing the escort will end up with far less dps.. yet both ships killed the same number of spheres. Except the escort will have killed them in half the time.
Of course escorts do the aoe vomiting game too...why? Because NOW they can do the same game as cruisers: tank while spewing AOE fire.
Removing tac team auto balance and omega's def bonus plus immunities brings escorts back into their role of hit&run high damage burst dealers. Back to speed tanking where they do very well.
Cruiser dps is also lowered with this change because they too can no longer auto balance their shields nor use attack omega's defensive bonuses in the lt cmdr tac capable cruisers. They go back to tanking.
Sci ships need quite a bit of changes to their abilities to return them to their role of debuffers and crowd controllers but overall by removing the element that makes escorts and cruisers output such massive dps in aoe the sci ships receive their role back.
I am all for buffing the manual shield distribution and nerfing the auto-balancing, perhaps coupled with other benefits for tactical team. (Before auto-balancing existed, Tact Team was pretty much worthless. You might have wanted it against the Borg's boarding parties, but that was pretty much it. The skill bonuses where marginal)
I do fly an escort and its irritating how superior it is in tanking and damage to any and all other ship types and it's not supposed to be that way. I was here pre-f2p when flying an escort required player input and skill.. actual FLYING and ability-mixing and tactics skills not just macro all abilities into space bar and spam it like you were getting for it while your ship sits still in space.
I care about the overall balance of the game. As it is, tac team and atk omega are a major source of the imbalance in the game. They're the first thing that needs to be tackled.