Personally, those ISE runs that are full of OP Scimitars and last less than a minute bore me to tears. I much prefer the STB method, involving ships with DPS intentionally kept at reasonable levels. I mean, we even use the long-forgotton/obsolete 10% rule on occasion. Instances where I can take my sci ships into an STF and feel useful. Where healing and crowd control are actually of benefit to hte team. Where an instance of ISE lasts around five minutes and you are left feeling that you've acheived something and worked for the reward at the end.
I do notice the 10% rule seems nearly extinct (in a way it should be, I more like have the 20%/25% rule, that's close enough for blowing them near same time), but trouble is sometimes the team still doesn't have the firepower to take it all down before the nanite spheres arrive, everyone just assumes the dps is there when it isn't always so. For that reason I get very uncomfortable about having no crowd control on a vessel going into ISE, cause people assuming that the rule isn't needed anymore is in fact increasing the danger of the optional failing. So as any Sci should do, I make sure I have the means to stop them just in case with both firepower and crowd control.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
Personally, those ISE runs that are full of OP Scimitars and last less than a minute bore me to tears. I much prefer the STB method, involving ships with DPS intentionally kept at reasonable levels. I mean, we even use the long-forgotton/obsolete 10% rule on occasion. Instances where I can take my sci ships into an STF and feel useful. Where healing and crowd control are actually of benefit to hte team. Where an instance of ISE lasts around five minutes and you are left feeling that you've acheived something and worked for the reward at the end.
^^^ This. So much this.
I suppose I'd consider myself a 3. Still like to melt things from time to time though.
STO: Where men are men and the women probably are too.
I support the Star Trek Battles channel.
Again, my PREFERENCE is for the scenario(s) I described in my earlier posts.
On saying that, I do have tactical characters - a KDF Tac with a Mogh, and a Fed Tac with a Fleet Defiant, for those times when I want to make things explode quickly. I just don't tend to enjoy those instances quite as much as I enjoy some strategic flying in my Fleet Rhode Island.
Well I recently bought the Odysee in a sudden irrational act.... I always hated that ugly whale... don't know what drove me to that purchase.. and and I must say I enjoy that fracking thing much more then I thought.
Compared to my Scimitar it blows up much less (next to never^^) and kills much slower... which puts the feeling of actually fighting things back into the game.
But honestly, ultimately that problem is, in my opinion, an immersion problem that could be fixed "relatively" easy:
Changing the "kill condition".... which means "stuff shouldn't just blow up".
On the NPC side that means ships that are "beaten" usually either retreat from the battle or are disabled (may be the "disabled ship hull" as loot container), and only as an exception actually explode.
On the player side... similar. Beeing disabled when "beaten" rather then blow up. Beeing able to be resurrected by teammates like on ground. (Obviously still counting as "kill" in pvp and similar, and obviously still getting ship injuries). Something like that would help that feeling of being over and underpowered A LOT.
Overall, I usually try to build ships towards number 2.
I'm not knocking min-maxing (I enjoy understanding how to push a ship to its limits), but I've found the game to be more enjoyable when you don't intentionally try to break the game. Flying around with 'canon' builds can actually be pretty fun when you get out of the 'needs-to-be-dead-yesterday' mindset. Vorchas with cannons and beams are a treat to fly around in, as is using chase cam on high agility escorts/raiders.
Personally, those ISE runs that are full of OP Scimitars and last less than a minute bore me to tears. I much prefer the STB method, involving ships with DPS intentionally kept at reasonable levels. I mean, we even use the long-forgotton/obsolete 10% rule on occasion. Instances where I can take my sci ships into an STF and feel useful. Where healing and crowd control are actually of benefit to hte team. Where an instance of ISE lasts around five minutes and you are left feeling that you've acheived something and worked for the reward at the end.
Captain 07,
As what the above Captain mentioned I myself prefer the challenge. When I created Star Trek Battles, aka STB, the goal was to enjoy the end game content. When I was running around in full gear missions like ISE were getting done in like mins and they were getting boring FAST and it did not suite how I like to play. I was an escort captain parking and shooting... forward backward etc...
At this time also I kept seeing people complain about "power creep" so I decided to do something about it. I slapped on some MK X phasers/quants fore and aft and decided to actually fly my ship as they did in ST.... this STB was born.
I have found that a full group of STB members sometimes would be able to finish missions with just seconds left in the optional for example ISE with only like a min or CSE with 27 seconds left... It made me feel like we had to actually work to complete the mission which made it rewarding to complete. It also forced us to work as a team!
The recent Mirror event that was even more important to work as a team... and TBH a group of STB members normal or elite did much better with MK X weapons then some PUGS I had to do.
So to answer the original question... I want to be a #3 but it still ends up sometimes like a #2.
Though I haven't played Magic the Gathering in a while; I think the three player types would be better categories to go by.
Essentially there are three main categories:
Timmy: Likes to use the biggest and most powerful thing available, regardless of cost or drawbacks. In Magic, this meant playing 7+cmc creatures because they're awesome. In STO, I think Timmy is your run of the mill Scimitar driver.
*Standard Complaint: Their big thing can be destroyed in any way; anything other than direct damage is unfun.*
Johnny: Tends to like whatever is unconventional. In Magic, Johnny sits down and playes a mill deck. In STO, Johnny absolutely loves the Dyson Destroyer or science ships in general, anything with a non-damage gimmick really.
*Standard Complaint: Their alternate win strategy fails to produce wins; straight damage makes the game unfun.*
Spike: Straight up Min/Maxer. In Magic, a spike will play RDW (Red Deck Wins), Reanimate or a deck that will lay down a land that's worth more than your entire collection on turn 1, just to fetch another land that's worth more than an average laptop (and so on). In STO, Spikes are your PvPers.
*Standard Complaint: 'X' is OP, plz nerf (because it has to be that thing that caused me to lose, not anything I did).*
Hybrids (in STO):
Timmy/Spike: Scimitar DPS Gods and Scimitar Vapers
Timmy/Johnny: Atrox lovers.
Johnny/Spike: The always experimenting PvPer; makes an A2B/A2D single cannon dogfighter (and beats you with it).
Timmy/Johnny/Spike: Wants to do it all but does none well.
RPers, Collectors and Uber Casuals fall into those other categories of Melvins and others.
I tend to be an all three kind of guy. My favorite deck is my Green/Blue Momir Vig EDH deck. It has control and straight beating with a few tricks. Similarly, in STO I like ships like the Mobius as its a pretty flexible ship while still doing good damage. It's not the best ship to do certain things in, but it does all things fairly well and that's all I need.
Vorthos would be the guy in STO who's obsessed with lore. Like that one guy who complains about how Starfleet ships shouldn't have fins... and stuff like that.
And Melvin is the guy who plays(or wants to play) the new hotness regardless of whether it's good. But he does so not because it's "cool" but because he wants to tinker with it and figure out the exact mechanisms behind how it works. It's not quite the same as mini/maxing. Min/Maxers care primarily about how powerful things are.
Vorthos would be the guy in STO who's obsessed with lore. Like that one guy who complains about how Starfleet ships shouldn't have fins... and stuff like that.
But the Enterprise-A had fins, and so does the Excelsior class. :P
Though I haven't played Magic the Gathering in a while; I think the three player types would be better categories to go by.
Essentially there are three main categories:
Timmy: Likes to use the biggest and most powerful thing available, regardless of cost or drawbacks. In Magic, this meant playing 7+cmc creatures because they're awesome. In STO, I think Timmy is your run of the mill Scimitar driver.
*Standard Complaint: Their big thing can be destroyed in any way; anything other than direct damage is unfun.*
Johnny: Tends to like whatever is unconventional. In Magic, Johnny sits down and playes a mill deck. In STO, Johnny absolutely loves the Dyson Destroyer or science ships in general, anything with a non-damage gimmick really.
*Standard Complaint: Their alternate win strategy fails to produce wins; straight damage makes the game unfun.*
Spike: Straight up Min/Maxer. In Magic, a spike will play RDW (Red Deck Wins), Reanimate or a deck that will lay down a land that's worth more than your entire collection on turn 1, just to fetch another land that's worth more than an average laptop (and so on). In STO, Spikes are your PvPers.
*Standard Complaint: 'X' is OP, plz nerf (because it has to be that thing that caused me to lose, not anything I did).*
Hybrids (in STO):
Timmy/Spike: Scimitar DPS Gods and Scimitar Vapers
Timmy/Johnny: Atrox lovers.
Johnny/Spike: The always experimenting PvPer; makes an A2B/A2D single cannon dogfighter (and beats you with it).
Timmy/Johnny/Spike: Wants to do it all but does none well.
RPers, Collectors and Uber Casuals fall into those other categories of Melvins and others.
I tend to be an all three kind of guy. My favorite deck is my Green/Blue Momir Vig EDH deck. It has control and straight beating with a few tricks. Similarly, in STO I like ships like the Mobius as its a pretty flexible ship while still doing good damage. It's not the best ship to do certain things in, but it does all things fairly well and that's all I need.
i noticed some bias against complainers in this post, although some do complain like that, there are times when the complaint is sound, and there is a better way of representing:
Timmy: The "Big/Poweful thing* doesn't feel like one, it needs a buff
an excellent example would be the galaxy, and maybe the atrox.
Johnny: being forced to rely on DPS only, hurts the science class, and makes the game simpler than it could be, in favor of damage-oriented mechanics
this is perfectly true, considering how little damage sci abilities, and how useless a fair share of them are.
Spike: power creep is creating far too powerful players, please look into it or there are multiple far too powerful consoles that need some reworking and also too many far too powerful doffs are forcing players into unique builds to be effective
power creep doesn't even need examples, consoles like the valdore, plasmonic, aceton, the elachi console are good examples, also doffs like the technicians, marion, the beam overload doffs, the warp core doff that removes debuffs and others.
basically everyone got a point in one way or another, when you get down to it.
also there should be another type of player, the one that complains about others complaints, especially in this forum, considering things like the "doom thread".
The most fun I have had in this game were in situation 3 scenarios. Before I understood how the game worked, etc... I entered things like Terradome alone (when it was still accessible) and managed to actually defeat the sulu imposter and most of the enemies coming in for the attack....of course, it took many hours to do so and once I realized that the level wasn't over I inevitably quit. But the sense of accomplishment was immense nevertheless. Not least of all because I had only ever accomplished this much alone in the Breen Cruiser from two christmas' ago.
All this to say that number 2 and 3 are the best way to go. Being OP and one hit wins bore me...especially when its happening to me! (regardless of PVP or PVE - remember the one hit invisible torps from the Borg?) :P
"The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward." - Rocky Balboa (2006)
I guess the best way I could put it is I'd like the endgame to feel more like levelling.
While you level, due to ability and gear constraints, I think the combat is far more enjoyable. NPC ships have some degree of threat to them and could in fact get the better of you if you aren't paying attention. Romulans with their tractors and high yield plasmas come to mind. You learn to make use of what you have.
Once you hit 50, grab even the cheapest space set from a reputation and some other goodies, the game is suddenly a cakewalk. Abilities and traits coming out your ears, weaponry that could probably do the job as they are never mind procs and so on. It can be fun sometimes to dominate everything in your path, but it soon gets boring.
As it is I think I am comfortably between option #1 and #2, but I'd like to be between #2 and #3.
RPers, Collectors and Uber Casuals fall into those other categories of Melvins and others.
I really feel that these two types are a special type of player. In this game they're the ones who post things like: "you're breaking my immersion", "I feel trolled by 'x'", "stop making non-faction ships", "I hate all these non-faction ships/items", any debate about a ship where they refer to memory alpha/beta to prove that their point is correct.
They're the players that will sit there and say you're tapping your lands incorrectly, or rage about some other rules/flavor/lore minutia. To each their own I guess.
i noticed some bias against complainers in this post, although some do complain like that, there are times when the complaint is sound
I really tried to be as fair as I possibly could to all sides. And the complaint thing is a characterization of the most common complaint those players have- or at least the ones that appear on the forum most.
I didn't say that calls for the Gal-X to be buffed were unwarranted. But there are frequent posts for the most OP ship in the game, the Scimitar, needing to be buffed simply because they die. Similarly, when Timmy plays Magic and lays down a Shivan Dragon and it gets killed by Doom Blade, he rages that his thing died.
Anyway, Timmys don't like the Gal-X or Atrox, they like the JDread or Scimitar.
I agree each type of player needs to be addressed, Magic does this well, STO does not (Johnny gets the shaft).
I seek demigod status in game. In the real world I am a weak, pathetic nobody, but in game I have power (enough to solo a cube in Khitomer Vortex Elite) and that makes me happy.
I'm a number 3. I kinda wanna be a number 2, though, but I'm fine with being 3. Why? Because it's fun. I know my builds are TRIBBLE - my MVAE with Mk X Borg gear and two pieces of the Adapted Borg set combined with DHC Photonic Polaron weaponry only hits under 4K DPS, my old Mirror Heavy Cruiser was, like 3.5K DPS and my Fleet Gal-X barely broke 3.1K.
And it's fun. It shows worry and danger and provides me with reasoning to keep going! It's fun being weak!
I'm mostly 3. I play elite, have all defensive passives (for the meantime), run torp boats, and I'm sturdy in Sci ships, not invulnerable or op at all.
On my Romulan, I'd go for 1. Just faceroll enemies with Scimitar and see them struggling to keep themselves in one piece. It's how that ship is meant to fly. The set is too good and I tend to use the set 3 for console power. :cool:
On Fed it's between 1 and 3, be aware of surroundings as I'm without cloaking.
I have the game set on elite. In PvE I like to feel vulnerable for the challenge but being in an Oddy you can tank both the Tactical Cube and the Gate in Infected. Donatra's beam of death no longer kills me. In PvP though I try to be as over powered as I can mainly for the team. I'm too lazy to have a PvE setup with weaker equipment so I end up just being a God in space PvE...my ground that's another story
Fleet Admiral Thomas Winston James a.k.a. The Grayfox Fleet Leader of:
Liberty Task Force/Liberty Honor Guard
Pride of the Federation/Pride of the Empire
Liberty Guardians U.S.S. Liberty, NX-42813-L, T-6 Legendary Odyssey Class
I feel powerful. Not as powerful as some people seem to be, but powerful enough.
Truth be told I'd like to feel more vulnerable.
That said, this isn't a typical "everything is OP NERF PLZ" thread, it's more that if I blow up, at least in space... mission's over for me. Even though I try to rationalize it (time-space last-chance device on the ship, or something like that), most of the time I can't get past that factor. I went down with the ship there, and a replacement ship will not work, especially how it was deployed in 2 minutes flat for some inexplicable reason. As such, while I enjoy a challenge, I value immersion a bit more, at least for STO. If there were another mechanic for ships being defeated without exploding (no explosion in any form whatsoever, not even with a 'reduced chance'), I'd probably start playing more dangerously.
As a consequence, my builds tend to be on the tanky side, even on DPS-oriented characters.
That said, I do enjoy being able to feel quite powerful. I'm actually developing an alternate build for episodes and Foundry missions, to dull my teeth a bit, so to speak.
Comments
I do notice the 10% rule seems nearly extinct (in a way it should be, I more like have the 20%/25% rule, that's close enough for blowing them near same time), but trouble is sometimes the team still doesn't have the firepower to take it all down before the nanite spheres arrive, everyone just assumes the dps is there when it isn't always so. For that reason I get very uncomfortable about having no crowd control on a vessel going into ISE, cause people assuming that the rule isn't needed anymore is in fact increasing the danger of the optional failing. So as any Sci should do, I make sure I have the means to stop them just in case with both firepower and crowd control.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
^^^ This. So much this.
I suppose I'd consider myself a 3. Still like to melt things from time to time though.
I support the Star Trek Battles channel.
I feel to powerful and to vulnerable at the same time.
To powerful: beating up cubes for breakfast, killing litarally hundreds of supposed to be equal... That's ridiculous.
On the other hand... There are those 1hit kills all over the place, the invisible plasma torps ect. A ship shouldn't blow up that fast, on both sides.
Well I recently bought the Odysee in a sudden irrational act.... I always hated that ugly whale... don't know what drove me to that purchase.. and and I must say I enjoy that fracking thing much more then I thought.
Compared to my Scimitar it blows up much less (next to never^^) and kills much slower... which puts the feeling of actually fighting things back into the game.
But honestly, ultimately that problem is, in my opinion, an immersion problem that could be fixed "relatively" easy:
Changing the "kill condition".... which means "stuff shouldn't just blow up".
On the NPC side that means ships that are "beaten" usually either retreat from the battle or are disabled (may be the "disabled ship hull" as loot container), and only as an exception actually explode.
On the player side... similar. Beeing disabled when "beaten" rather then blow up. Beeing able to be resurrected by teammates like on ground. (Obviously still counting as "kill" in pvp and similar, and obviously still getting ship injuries). Something like that would help that feeling of being over and underpowered A LOT.
I'm not knocking min-maxing (I enjoy understanding how to push a ship to its limits), but I've found the game to be more enjoyable when you don't intentionally try to break the game. Flying around with 'canon' builds can actually be pretty fun when you get out of the 'needs-to-be-dead-yesterday' mindset. Vorchas with cannons and beams are a treat to fly around in, as is using chase cam on high agility escorts/raiders.
Captain 07,
As what the above Captain mentioned I myself prefer the challenge. When I created Star Trek Battles, aka STB, the goal was to enjoy the end game content. When I was running around in full gear missions like ISE were getting done in like mins and they were getting boring FAST and it did not suite how I like to play. I was an escort captain parking and shooting... forward backward etc...
At this time also I kept seeing people complain about "power creep" so I decided to do something about it. I slapped on some MK X phasers/quants fore and aft and decided to actually fly my ship as they did in ST.... this STB was born.
I have found that a full group of STB members sometimes would be able to finish missions with just seconds left in the optional for example ISE with only like a min or CSE with 27 seconds left... It made me feel like we had to actually work to complete the mission which made it rewarding to complete. It also forced us to work as a team!
The recent Mirror event that was even more important to work as a team... and TBH a group of STB members normal or elite did much better with MK X weapons then some PUGS I had to do.
So to answer the original question... I want to be a #3 but it still ends up sometimes like a #2.
Essentially there are three main categories:
Timmy: Likes to use the biggest and most powerful thing available, regardless of cost or drawbacks. In Magic, this meant playing 7+cmc creatures because they're awesome. In STO, I think Timmy is your run of the mill Scimitar driver.
*Standard Complaint: Their big thing can be destroyed in any way; anything other than direct damage is unfun.*
Johnny: Tends to like whatever is unconventional. In Magic, Johnny sits down and playes a mill deck. In STO, Johnny absolutely loves the Dyson Destroyer or science ships in general, anything with a non-damage gimmick really.
*Standard Complaint: Their alternate win strategy fails to produce wins; straight damage makes the game unfun.*
Spike: Straight up Min/Maxer. In Magic, a spike will play RDW (Red Deck Wins), Reanimate or a deck that will lay down a land that's worth more than your entire collection on turn 1, just to fetch another land that's worth more than an average laptop (and so on). In STO, Spikes are your PvPers.
*Standard Complaint: 'X' is OP, plz nerf (because it has to be that thing that caused me to lose, not anything I did).*
Hybrids (in STO):
Timmy/Spike: Scimitar DPS Gods and Scimitar Vapers
Timmy/Johnny: Atrox lovers.
Johnny/Spike: The always experimenting PvPer; makes an A2B/A2D single cannon dogfighter (and beats you with it).
Timmy/Johnny/Spike: Wants to do it all but does none well.
RPers, Collectors and Uber Casuals fall into those other categories of Melvins and others.
I tend to be an all three kind of guy. My favorite deck is my Green/Blue Momir Vig EDH deck. It has control and straight beating with a few tricks. Similarly, in STO I like ships like the Mobius as its a pretty flexible ship while still doing good damage. It's not the best ship to do certain things in, but it does all things fairly well and that's all I need.
Vorthos would be the guy in STO who's obsessed with lore. Like that one guy who complains about how Starfleet ships shouldn't have fins... and stuff like that.
And Melvin is the guy who plays(or wants to play) the new hotness regardless of whether it's good. But he does so not because it's "cool" but because he wants to tinker with it and figure out the exact mechanisms behind how it works. It's not quite the same as mini/maxing. Min/Maxers care primarily about how powerful things are.
My character Tsin'xing
But the Enterprise-A had fins, and so does the Excelsior class. :P
i noticed some bias against complainers in this post, although some do complain like that, there are times when the complaint is sound, and there is a better way of representing:
Timmy: The "Big/Poweful thing* doesn't feel like one, it needs a buff
an excellent example would be the galaxy, and maybe the atrox.
Johnny: being forced to rely on DPS only, hurts the science class, and makes the game simpler than it could be, in favor of damage-oriented mechanics
this is perfectly true, considering how little damage sci abilities, and how useless a fair share of them are.
Spike: power creep is creating far too powerful players, please look into it or there are multiple far too powerful consoles that need some reworking and also too many far too powerful doffs are forcing players into unique builds to be effective
power creep doesn't even need examples, consoles like the valdore, plasmonic, aceton, the elachi console are good examples, also doffs like the technicians, marion, the beam overload doffs, the warp core doff that removes debuffs and others.
basically everyone got a point in one way or another, when you get down to it.
also there should be another type of player, the one that complains about others complaints, especially in this forum, considering things like the "doom thread".
My character Tsin'xing
All this to say that number 2 and 3 are the best way to go. Being OP and one hit wins bore me...especially when its happening to me! (regardless of PVP or PVE - remember the one hit invisible torps from the Borg?) :P
While you level, due to ability and gear constraints, I think the combat is far more enjoyable. NPC ships have some degree of threat to them and could in fact get the better of you if you aren't paying attention. Romulans with their tractors and high yield plasmas come to mind. You learn to make use of what you have.
Once you hit 50, grab even the cheapest space set from a reputation and some other goodies, the game is suddenly a cakewalk. Abilities and traits coming out your ears, weaponry that could probably do the job as they are never mind procs and so on. It can be fun sometimes to dominate everything in your path, but it soon gets boring.
As it is I think I am comfortably between option #1 and #2, but I'd like to be between #2 and #3.
I am aware of the new ones. Thus this line:
I really feel that these two types are a special type of player. In this game they're the ones who post things like: "you're breaking my immersion", "I feel trolled by 'x'", "stop making non-faction ships", "I hate all these non-faction ships/items", any debate about a ship where they refer to memory alpha/beta to prove that their point is correct.
They're the players that will sit there and say you're tapping your lands incorrectly, or rage about some other rules/flavor/lore minutia. To each their own I guess.
I really tried to be as fair as I possibly could to all sides. And the complaint thing is a characterization of the most common complaint those players have- or at least the ones that appear on the forum most.
I didn't say that calls for the Gal-X to be buffed were unwarranted. But there are frequent posts for the most OP ship in the game, the Scimitar, needing to be buffed simply because they die. Similarly, when Timmy plays Magic and lays down a Shivan Dragon and it gets killed by Doom Blade, he rages that his thing died.
Anyway, Timmys don't like the Gal-X or Atrox, they like the JDread or Scimitar.
I agree each type of player needs to be addressed, Magic does this well, STO does not (Johnny gets the shaft).
Not only do I only use very basic equipment as stated in my original post, I have yet to:
1. Optimize my Boff abilities
2. Put Doffs into the Space / Ground slots
3. Choose 4 additional traits for my toons
4. Start any of the Rep Systems
And it's fun. It shows worry and danger and provides me with reasoning to keep going! It's fun being weak!
Kirk is more powerful than Q?
You all had a chance to blow up and if you didn't cross heal it took a lot longer .
That's how "powerful" I like to feel .
I enjoy teamwork .
And this was why God needed a starship.
I support the Star Trek Battles channel.
On Fed it's between 1 and 3, be aware of surroundings as I'm without cloaking.
Fleet Leader of:
Liberty Task Force/Liberty Honor Guard
Pride of the Federation/Pride of the Empire
Liberty Guardians
U.S.S. Liberty, NX-42813-L, T-6 Legendary Odyssey Class
Game Handle: Grayfox@GrayfoxJames
Website: https://www.libertytaskforce.com
Armada (STOFA Member Fleet): https://www.libertytaskforce.com/stofa
Discord: https://discord.gg/bGp9N7z
Twitter: STOFA@LTFGrayfox
Email: CSDynamix@Hotmail.com
Truth be told I'd like to feel more vulnerable.
That said, this isn't a typical "everything is OP NERF PLZ" thread, it's more that if I blow up, at least in space... mission's over for me. Even though I try to rationalize it (time-space last-chance device on the ship, or something like that), most of the time I can't get past that factor. I went down with the ship there, and a replacement ship will not work, especially how it was deployed in 2 minutes flat for some inexplicable reason. As such, while I enjoy a challenge, I value immersion a bit more, at least for STO. If there were another mechanic for ships being defeated without exploding (no explosion in any form whatsoever, not even with a 'reduced chance'), I'd probably start playing more dangerously.
As a consequence, my builds tend to be on the tanky side, even on DPS-oriented characters.
That said, I do enjoy being able to feel quite powerful. I'm actually developing an alternate build for episodes and Foundry missions, to dull my teeth a bit, so to speak.