This thread is not a bash the bort thread. It was not intended for that.
There are fixes the ship could use. This is not the thread for that. The primary purpose of this thread was to discuss the addition of a flight deck.
Something I think the flag ship of a faction should have. After all, what's the point if you can't even have your own little honor guard escort?
I saw mention of no BoP but if I recall you can only field those on the Voq anyways, right? But I do agree, it shouldn't be able to field them. I would probably think it would focus on fighters... Although really it'd be nice if we got those klink shuttles.
I do think command options for deployables like the special BoP (or the Oddy's DD, saucers, ect) should be integrated. That was a good idea.
It's not that either. It's more about the fact that the Borty seems like it should be considered and treated like a Dread, and have a little flight deck.
I don't think a flight deck would drastically buff it. Just change up how it plays a little bit and make up for the fact that one of its consoles is a little lackluster.
Ok, first things first - let's clear out some of the missconceptions:
- The Bortasqu' Class is not a dreadnought, it's a battlecruiser
- A hangar bay won't drastically buff the ship, but it will significantly nerf it
- The Bortasqu' is not a bad ship at all, it's just designed for a particular playstyle that's different than the majority of the Klingon starships.
Also, there are no rules about dreadnoughts or what makes a dreadnought. Please don't fall for the Cryptic marketing ploys saying that they slapped a hangar on the Galaxy-X "to bring it on par with other dreadnoughts". She's not on par with anything, just look at the Boff seating. They just slapped a hangar as patchwork, because it's their 'easy, mindless fix' for everything in STO lately. "When in doubt, slap a hangar" is a running joke around the forum already.
Now when that's out of the way, let me try to ellaborate a bit. For me, the Bort is a fantastic ship. I've been using it ever since it was released, it's my favourite ship in the game - maybe even the best, especially for my playstyle. However, I do fly a Galaxy Class on the Fed. side as well, so slow, heavy and clunky beam cruisers are no issue for me. It's a playstyle issue, not a Bortasqu' issue. KDF players are used to faster, cannon utilizing battlecruisers and the Bort is an oddity for many of them.
And now, after the changes to SA, the Command Bortasqu' is an entirely new beast.
Why is a hangar bay a bad thing on this? Because it's a battlecruiser! It's not a flight deck. Slapping a hangar not only would seem unnatural, but will also nerf my ship, taking away the 2 cruiser commands I utilize the most - the strategic maneuvering one that helps on this slow turning ship and the weapon system efficency that is a Godsend for this ship because it works best with beams. For what, for a clutter of shuttles that will distract me from my play and die gloriously from any and every AoE or warp core explosion? No, thanks.
If you want to fly a flight-deck, there are more than enough options. For ex. I own the Fleet Corsair on my Orion, it's a damn good ship with superb preformance if you're into FDCs. That's the way to go about it - you want a profile of a ship, then you look what ship fits the description. Not try to change whatever ship into what you happen to like playing.
What I agree could be done with the Bortasqu', is bring carrier commands for the Hoh'sus BoP. This should be done for every ship with detachable sections, including the Galaxy, Galaxy-X, Odyssey, MVAE and that fat Romulan thing. This would probably slightly improve the expereince players are having with those ships, without making a hot mess out of them.
This would actually be an improvement as oposed to a hangar bay, because it wouldn't take away anything from the ship and only add value in terms of somewhat controlling the big pet BoP.
IMHO they need to make the Bortas a dreadnought and just make her armor the toughest in the game. She already handles like a brick, may as well give her the thick skin to match.
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The best reason for the Bortas'qu to get a hangar bay (and the Odyssey for that matter) is so that their pets can be proper hangar pets, with decent respawn and carrier commands, but not compete against something more useful for a console slot. They're part of the art asset... players should not be penalised for wanting to use them. Plus it would, on paper, bring the ody/bort in line with their Rom counterpart (if you accept cryptic's logic about what constitutes parity).
I think they should just up the stats so the turn rate of the Bortasqu is 9.5 or 10. The Negh'Var has 39000 hull points and is a lvl 40 battlecruiser with 10 turn rating.
Right, it's a mislabeled Cruiser, or a Gimped Cruiser, not a BATTTLECruiser-even though it pays the balance-penalty that BC's pay. Calling it a 'Battlecruiser' is like slapping a fin and racing stripes on the back of a dump-truck and calling it a sports car. It can't make use of the "Battlecruiser" features it has (ability to mount DHC being the biggest) outside of tightly-scripted content and even with the best build for it's particular ability set, it still under-performs as a Cruiser while being utterly unable as a Battle Cruiser-it can't tank, and it doesn't have the mobility to play offense against anything but content you already know the enemy's 'script' for by heart. (IOW, it's okay as a beam-build in ISE, but hopeless for the Undine missions, as well as being ridiculously vulnerable and ineffective in UN-scripted content like PvP.)
When Gecko built the Federation's first 'officially' Battle-cruiser, he didn't base it on the Bort's performance envelope, even though the Bort's performance envelope is right in line with Federation designs going through the entire levelling process. This should be something of a clue as to the relative value of the Bort compared to other, actual Battle-Cruisers, being as the Avenger is, pretty much, a product-improvement over the Fleet Vor'cha/Tor'khat.
The Bort pays for being a BC, even though it's NOT a BC in terms of performance, making it a sub-optimal CRUISER...that does neither job well.
Before the Avenger, Battlecruisers paid very little for their performance. The Negh'var had the same hull as the Sovereign but 9 turn instead of 7 as well as a built in cloak, the Vor'cha Retrofit had 3k less base hull but 10 turn.
Before the release of Fleet ships, the Bortasqu' and the Ferengi D'Kora were the only Battlecruisers with the ability to use a more Tac-heavy layout than Lt + En seats. The Tor'Kaht was the only KDF Fleet Battlecruiser that got a LtCdr Tac seat until the Mogh.
Boff-wise, Battlecruisers and Cruisers have always been essentially indistinguishable (though the Excelsior beat out all the other Cruiser-types in getting a LtCdr Tac seat), and the only stat differences were the Klingon cloak, and a bit of hull vs turn rate play. Bortasqu' was simply the first "slow" Battlecruiser (others are the Apex, D'deridex, Ha'apax, and the Tal Shiar Battlecruiser), and at the time had the highest hull in the game (though it's since been surpassed).
It needs a little love (the Apex has the same hull, but .5 higher turn and .25 better shields, and who ever thought 18 Inertia was a good idea?), but it's not as big of an anomaly as you're making it out to be, and for a couple months (until people started getting high enough Shipyards for the Tor'Kaht) was potentially the most powerful Battlecruiser in the game... if you could get it into position.
Ok, first things first - let's clear out some of the missconceptions:
- The Bortasqu' Class is not a dreadnought, it's a battlecruiser
- A hangar bay won't drastically buff the ship, but it will significantly nerf it
- The Bortasqu' is not a bad ship at all, it's just designed for a particular playstyle that's different than the majority of the Klingon starships.
Also, there are no rules about dreadnoughts or what makes a dreadnought. Please don't fall for the Cryptic marketing ploys saying that they slapped a hangar on the Galaxy-X "to bring it on par with other dreadnoughts". She's not on par with anything, just look at the Boff seating. They just slapped a hangar as patchwork, because it's their 'easy, mindless fix' for everything in STO lately. "When in doubt, slap a hangar" is a running joke around the forum already.
Now when that's out of the way, let me try to ellaborate a bit. For me, the Bort is a fantastic ship. I've been using it ever since it was released, it's my favourite ship in the game - maybe even the best, especially for my playstyle. However, I do fly a Galaxy Class on the Fed. side as well, so slow, heavy and clunky beam cruisers are no issue for me. It's a playstyle issue, not a Bortasqu' issue. KDF players are used to faster, cannon utilizing battlecruisers and the Bort is an oddity for many of them.
And now, after the changes to SA, the Command Bortasqu' is an entirely new beast.
Why is a hangar bay a bad thing on this? Because it's a battlecruiser! It's not a flight deck. Slapping a hangar not only would seem unnatural, but will also nerf my ship, taking away the 2 cruiser commands I utilize the most - the strategic maneuvering one that helps on this slow turning ship and the weapon system efficency that is a Godsend for this ship because it works best with beams. For what, for a clutter of shuttles that will distract me from my play and die gloriously from any and every AoE or warp core explosion? No, thanks.
If you want to fly a flight-deck, there are more than enough options. For ex. I own the Fleet Corsair on my Orion, it's a damn good ship with superb preformance if you're into FDCs. That's the way to go about it - you want a profile of a ship, then you look what ship fits the description. Not try to change whatever ship into what you happen to like playing.
What I agree could be done with the Bortasqu', is bring carrier commands for the Hoh'sus BoP. This should be done for every ship with detachable sections, including the Galaxy, Galaxy-X, Odyssey, MVAE and that fat Romulan thing. This would probably slightly improve the expereince players are having with those ships, without making a hot mess out of them.
This would actually be an improvement as oposed to a hangar bay, because it wouldn't take away anything from the ship and only add value in terms of somewhat controlling the big pet BoP.
I don't think you know what you're arguing against.
By classic ship definition the Bort SHOULD be called a dread
I never said a hangar would drastically buff it. I don't see how it would nerf it at all unless in return they took something away from it. Which is not what I suggested.
Again, there are rules for what defines a ship as a dread in real life ships. They play fast and loose with it in sci-fi but if you're in to ship stuff then the Bort really comes off feeling like a dread.
I have no idea why they gave the Gal-X a hangar bay. I'm not falling for anything. I was taking a bit of a break at the time of the hangar bay's inclusion and was not active enough to even realize that the Galaxy was getting a bundle upgrade until after it was done.
I don't feel the Gal-X really needs one.. but my understanding is Galaxy class ships did get upgraded with a flight deck during the dominion war. The X is a wartime upgraded Galaxy. It makes sense that previous wartime upgrades would be included on the newer X variants. Now, because DS9 is so bad that's all really just second hand stuff I've heard as I've only watched a handful of painful episodes, but if it happened then it should be included.
Because this is becoming standard for dreads, and because I feel the Bort deserves to be classifid as a dread, I believe it should be allowed to launch fighters.
You really should learn not to phrase everything you say in a way that implies you're talking to some newbie. You really have no idea how much experience I have in game, or with the Bort, or whether or not I even like it or not. You don't know how much experience I have with battle cruisers or heavy cruisers. You don't know how much experience I have Fed or KDF side.
I don't understand how managing fighters is distracting for you, but managing the BoP would not be.
Again. This isn't a bash the bort thread. It never was. I just thought it deserved to have fighter pets. I never said take away any of its cruiser command abilities. I just think that the subspace snare is a lackluster console that takes up an important slot but is required to get the full benefits of the set.
I'm sure there are threads where you guys can go whine about the Bort needing new stats or not or complain that it's useless or perfect (since those seem to be the two dominating mindsets). This wasn't created to be that thread.
This thread is..
A. By common definition, the Bort should be called a dread.
B. If it's a dread, it should get a flight deck.
C. That's pretty much it! Although my BoP not ever cloaking is kinda weird...
Now, you may complain that it is not a dread, but it can, and mine does use some of the biggest, heaviest cannons I can put on it. You might run yours as a heavy cruiser (and no, it's NOT a battle cruiser if you don't have heavy guns on it. It's still a cruiser) but mine by definition is definitely a battle ship.
The bort could certainly do with some buffs, especially to turn/inertia. The Bortasqu' is supposed to be a flagship, but has some trouble even making average numbers compared to others. Amongst FED and KDF Cruisers/Battle Cruisers/Flight deck cruisers, it has the lowest turn and inertia. Compared to the Oddyssey line, it doesn't look too terrible (-.5 turn/-2inertia) until you realize that with its consoles, it gets +8/9 turn, giving turn that's on par with raptors/destroyers and better than any other cruisers. Even the flight deck cruisers have +2.5 turn/+.2 impulse/+12 inertia.
I think it could be interesting to see it fully brought in line with just the AVERAGES for either cruisers (~7 turn/~30 inertia/4 device slots/4 cruiser commands) or battle cruisers (~8.5 turn/~30 inertia/3 device slots/3 cruiser commands). In all honesty, as a flagship model of ship, it should be better than average.
I don't think you know what you're arguing against.
Ok so this time don't take my post so literally, I didn't mean to sound like I was talking to a noob, but I see that perhaps I sounded like that because I'm quite frankly tired of the 2000 threads about how the Bort sucks and the other 5 or 6 hundred that want a hangar bay on the ship. That and partially in my post I was adressing to the general audience, even though I initially started to reply to yours. So don't take me worng this time.
By classic ship definition the Bort SHOULD be called a dread
I never said a hangar would drastically buff it. I don't see how it would nerf it at all unless in return they took something away from it. Which is not what I suggested.
Here's the tricky part - by installing a hangar bay, they'll remove 2 of the cruiser commands - and those are the 2 useful ones on this ship: the 'strategic maneuvering' and the 'weapon system efficency'. Then they'll add the 'attract fire' and leave the 'shield system efficency', taking the cruiser commands to 2 instead of 3, losing the 2 important ones in the process. Hence, the nerf. Don't ask my why, those are Cryptic rules - FDC's must have and are limited to those 2 comm arrays.
Again, there are rules for what defines a ship as a dread in real life ships. They play fast and loose with it in sci-fi but if you're in to ship stuff then the Bort really comes off feeling like a dread.
I agree with this based on observation, yeah. The ship looks like a dread, or how some of us like to call it - a battleship.
However that's not the case here, since it's a game based on a sci-fi franchise. So they could make it's turn rate 17 and hull 25k if they wanted to - they don't really need to follow any real world or appearence rules. The bottom line being that this ship was created and sold as a battlecruiser, not a dreadnought.
I have no idea why they gave the Gal-X a hangar bay. I'm not falling for anything. I was taking a bit of a break at the time of the hangar bay's inclusion and was not active enough to even realize that the Galaxy was getting a bundle upgrade until after it was done.
Sorry, I may have misread that. The reason I mentioned it was because Cryptic justified slapping a hangar on the Galaxy-X with the statement "we're bringing the Galaxy-X on par with the other dreadnoughts", which is hillarious by itself, but probably best left for some other thread.
I don't feel the Gal-X really needs one.. but my understanding is Galaxy class ships did get upgraded with a flight deck during the dominion war. The X is a wartime upgraded Galaxy. It makes sense that previous wartime upgrades would be included on the newer X variants. Now, because DS9 is so bad that's all really just second hand stuff I've heard as I've only watched a handful of painful episodes, but if it happened then it should be included.
Actually no, this is not correct. The Galaxy Class ships were never flight-decks in canon, there is no statement, no on screen evidence or tech manual indication about the ship being capable or used in that manner. If anything, ships in Star Trek needed to lower the shields when a shuttle was departing from the shuttle bay, which is a very stupid thing to do while you're in combat.
The Galaxy Class being flight decks in the DW is just wishfull thinking by a few forumites here that would even want a B'rel that launches B'rels.
The X is non-existant in canon. It's not a wartime Galaxy, the wartime Galaxy was the Venture. The X is a figment of Q's imagination that never existed in the first place.
Because this is becoming standard for dreads, and because I feel the Bort deserves to be classifid as a dread, I believe it should be allowed to launch fighters.
See, this is why I mentioned the hangar on the X in my previous post. Because before that statement by Cryptic about the 'X' I previously posted, there was no such thing about "a standard for dreads". That was the first time the studio mentioned it, and it was to justify lazy patchwork they intended to turn into a fast money-grab.
Not saying anything, just explaining one more time why I reffered to the Galaxy-X before.
I don't understand how managing fighters is distracting for you, but managing the BoP would not be.
It's simple really. With fighters, I need to pay attention to 6 of them. They die like flies from any AoE. Their AI behaves in a TRIBBLE way. If I want to level them up to 5 stars, I need to pay a lot of attention to them, I need to use a crapload of abilities to heal them each individually, etc. And this will cost me 1 comm array, plus losing the 2 usefull ones.
With the single Hoh'sus, all I need is the carrier commands to keep track of what she's doing in order not to get stuck or pick a fight on the other side of the map. It has a lot of hull and shield points, it does much more damage and it'll be easier to keep track and heal a single strong ship than 6 flies. And with this I don't lose anything, I just gain more control over the auxilliary craft.
Again. This isn't a bash the bort thread. It never was. I just thought it deserved to have fighter pets. I never said take away any of its cruiser command abilities. I just think that the subspace snare is a lackluster console that takes up an important slot but is required to get the full benefits of the set.
This part I already explained as to why this would merit losing and changing the cruiser commands.
I'm sure there are threads where you guys can go whine about the Bort needing new stats or not or complain that it's useless or perfect (since those seem to be the two dominating mindsets). This wasn't created to be that thread.
This thread is..
A. By common definition, the Bort should be called a dread.
B. If it's a dread, it should get a flight deck.
C. That's pretty much it! Although my BoP not ever cloaking is kinda weird...
See this is the issue basically. Common definiton has nothing to do with the game, or to put it more precisely - it has as much to do with STO as the devs. want it to. By common definiton we shouldn't be able to command biological living ships, yet here we are with Undine lockbox ships in STO.
They call it a battlecruiser. So it's a battlecruiser. That's pretty much the point I'm making.
Now, you may complain that it is not a dread, but it can, and mine does use some of the biggest, heaviest cannons I can put on it. You might run yours as a heavy cruiser (and no, it's NOT a battle cruiser if you don't have heavy guns on it. It's still a cruiser) but mine by definition is definitely a battle ship.
Actually, I'm one of the few around here that uses DHCs on a Bortasqu' succesfully.
But your definiton is a bit wonky here. I can put those same biggest, heaviest cannons on my Mogh. Or my Vor'cha. My K'tinga. Kamarag.....you see where I'm going with this - the ability to mount the heaviest weapons is not an exclusive trait to dreadnoughts. In fact it was premierly exclusive to battlecruisers. And that's what the Bortasqu' is by intention - a battlecruiser.
You should check out the Fed. section of the forum though, you'll have a good laugh. There are people there claiming that the Odyssey should be a dreadnought because Cryptic in their infinite wisdom calls the NPC Oddys dreadnoughts.
1. Just remember that I didn't make this to address whatever issues the Borta may or may not have.
2. Fair enough logic there, but I propose that it does not lose those. It's the flagship of the Klingon fleet and should keep those command abilities so that it can, ya know, command! Seeing as the Spinal weapons for both the Scimitar and the Gal-X are not consoles, I think keeping the commands and getting a flight deck would be a nice trade off for the fact that the Borta NEEDS a console to use its spinal weapon and it's subspace console is subpar.
3. True. But since it plays like a battle ship, it'd be nice to see it given proper naming and the flight deck.
4. I am curious as to what other dreads they were talking about when they updated the Gal-X.
5. The X I assumed was a vision of the possible future, or at least that's how I interpreted it. And it seemed to be purpose built for war. So I translated it as being a wartime vessel. I don't remember where I picked up the information but I'd heard that the introduction of the peregrine fighters required the Galaxy to include a flight deck during the Dominion War or something like that. Perhaps it was somebody just trying to explain the presence of fighters but virtual lack of carriers in Starfleet.
6. Understood.
7. And my suggestion did not include the loss of cruiser commands.
8. To clear it up.
The standard combat vessel of sufficient size, fire power, and speed which serves as the back bone of the fleet to my knowledge is what qualifies a ship as a cruiser.
A larger, slower cruiser with a much better armored hull is defined as a heavy cruiser.
A cruiser which instead packs "big guns" is defined as a battle cruiser.
A vessel which does both the larger, slower hull and the big guns is classified as a battle ship.
A vessel which is a battle ship and dedicates most or all of its fire power to big guns is a dreadnought.
Dreadnoughts were eventually built much larger and heavier than standard battleships, and did tend to have a single launch catapult. Although ships which did have a flight deck were instead called Battle Carriers.
You don't quite seem to have a grasp on how ships were traditionally defined, so I'm clarifying if that's the case. Only because you seem to think that gun size and nothing else defines the ship class when talking about battle cruisers.
So to recap. Battle Cruisers are cruisers with battle ship fire power.
STO to me seems to follow a pattern with labeling NPC's as Dreads to signify they are simply hitting harder and have much more hull than normal targets.
Ships which are in world considered actual dreadnoughts however also seem to follow a distinct pattern. Or at least they do now. With their new pattern, literally the only thing keeping the Borta from being a dread is the flight deck. Although I freely admit that in my case I really enjoy pets (flew a voq for ages when KDF were the only guys with carriers of FDC's) and this is more of a case of looking for an excuse to give it a flight deck.
I really don't have a good game play reason to want it to have one. I just think it's an extremely regal ship and I love flying it and it'd be awesome if I could pump out little Elite Tudoj fighters. It'd REALLY make it feel like a proper flag ship. No, it'd not really buff it (although it would make the experience more unique compared to, again, say the mogh) but I don't care either.
Oh! And the Klingons deserve a dreadnought as it is.
KDF deserves a heck of a lot of things but odds are we are not going to get them.
Being that majority rules and majority are fed characters/players that most of what was true to be in canon is going to be sacrificed for the profit no matter how much it is. Its from lockbox stuff all the way down to our cheapest kdf ships they will always have it where fed playable characters will always out match an actual KDF character. Unless of course you like pvp, go to korat and kill new players who have no idea what they are doing then its a different story of course lol.
and the argument back in those days was the same one, "POTENTIAL damage means nothing if you can't Apply It."
and you're right in one respect-it's not an anomaly-Among Cruisers. it is among Klingon Battle Cruisers.
Neither fish, nor fowl, nor good red meat, and it lacks the ability to USE the high potential damage-it can not apply it, it might as well not have it.
When you're buying a Bort, you're not buying performance, you're buying a collection of Art Assets glued to pasteboard.
The only anomaly it has among Battle cruisers is that it has -3.5 base turn rate compared to the Negh'var and Mogh. That's it (well, besides having a more flexible Boff seating than most of the other Battle cruisers). Both of the Warbird "Battle cruisers" have the same problem, but currently mitigate it with Battle Cloak instead of Strategic Maneuvering.
Yes, its performance is lacking compared to the Mogh or the Tor'Kaht, but I don't think the Bortasqu' is necessarily the worst T5 battle cruiser out there. The standard Negh'var, for instance, has the agility to potentially use a DHC lineup, but doesn't have the seating to do so effectively. The only thing the standard Ha'apax has over the Bortasqu' is the access to Warbird traits instead of Cruiser Commands, and the Fleet Ha'apax is tougher but has slightly less flexible Boff seating. The Apex could also be considered better than the Bortasqu' (better shields and +.5 turn), but lacks Sensor Analysis (Command Cruiser is really the only viable version, and will be until Cryptic decides to rebalance the flagships, or really any non-Sci-ship that has SA) and the difference in Boff layout comes down to user preference.
The only anomaly it has among Battle cruisers is that it has -3.5 base turn rate compared to the Negh'var and Mogh. That's it (well, besides having a more flexible Boff seating than most of the other Battle cruisers). Both of the Warbird "Battle cruisers" have the same problem, but currently mitigate it with Battle Cloak instead of Strategic Maneuvering.
Yes, its performance is lacking compared to the Mogh or the Tor'Kaht, but I don't think the Bortasqu' is necessarily the worst T5 battle cruiser out there. The standard Negh'var, for instance, has the agility to potentially use a DHC lineup, but doesn't have the seating to do so effectively. The only thing the standard Ha'apax has over the Bortasqu' is the access to Warbird traits instead of Cruiser Commands, and the Fleet Ha'apax is tougher but has slightly less flexible Boff seating. The Apex could also be considered better than the Bortasqu' (better shields and +.5 turn), but lacks Sensor Analysis (Command Cruiser is really the only viable version, and will be until Cryptic decides to rebalance the flagships, or really any non-Sci-ship that has SA) and the difference in Boff layout comes down to user preference.
I'll add that its inertia is pretty bad. 7 points below Neg'var, 32 below Mogh.
Hangar? No. The KDF could use another single-hangar carrier or two that don't come from a lock-box, but what's lacking is an escort carrier or a Vesta-style support carrier (maybe some kind of Gorn/Orion collaboration), not really some big hulking dreadnought carrier. What the ship really needs is a mobility boost. Now I can't back this up entirely with stats, but the battlecruisers I've played always felt as mobile if not moreso than their equivalent tiered Federation cruisers (Kamarag v. Ambassador, Vor'Cha v. Galaxy, Negh'Var v. Sovereign, etc.). The Bortasqu'... Isn't.
It's not just less agile than the Negh'Var and Mogh, but the Odyssey as well. So the ship that is built around the fact that it can utilize cannons moves worse than the broadsiding cruiser. This makes no sense.
Admiral Katrina Tokareva - U.S.S. Cosmos, Yorktown-class Star Cruiser Admiral Dananra Lekall - R.R.W. Teverresh, Deihu-class Warbird General J'Kar son of K'tsulan - I.K.S. Dlahath, Vo'devwl-class Carrier
All I want is at the very very LEAST a display for the bop so i know when its gone belly up - perhaps even control set for it? Why doesn't it have these features anyway is there a particular reason ? i am genuinely curious.
I like the Bortasqu, but I agree it needs some love. Personaly I think that giving it the 4th curiser command would go a long way towards making it the ship many of us want it to be. Other changes like changing it's shields to 1.1 and the possible addition of a hanger bay would be pleasent bonuses though.
Comments
Ok, first things first - let's clear out some of the missconceptions:
- The Bortasqu' Class is not a dreadnought, it's a battlecruiser
- A hangar bay won't drastically buff the ship, but it will significantly nerf it
- The Bortasqu' is not a bad ship at all, it's just designed for a particular playstyle that's different than the majority of the Klingon starships.
Also, there are no rules about dreadnoughts or what makes a dreadnought. Please don't fall for the Cryptic marketing ploys saying that they slapped a hangar on the Galaxy-X "to bring it on par with other dreadnoughts". She's not on par with anything, just look at the Boff seating. They just slapped a hangar as patchwork, because it's their 'easy, mindless fix' for everything in STO lately. "When in doubt, slap a hangar" is a running joke around the forum already.
Now when that's out of the way, let me try to ellaborate a bit. For me, the Bort is a fantastic ship. I've been using it ever since it was released, it's my favourite ship in the game - maybe even the best, especially for my playstyle. However, I do fly a Galaxy Class on the Fed. side as well, so slow, heavy and clunky beam cruisers are no issue for me. It's a playstyle issue, not a Bortasqu' issue. KDF players are used to faster, cannon utilizing battlecruisers and the Bort is an oddity for many of them.
And now, after the changes to SA, the Command Bortasqu' is an entirely new beast.
Why is a hangar bay a bad thing on this? Because it's a battlecruiser! It's not a flight deck. Slapping a hangar not only would seem unnatural, but will also nerf my ship, taking away the 2 cruiser commands I utilize the most - the strategic maneuvering one that helps on this slow turning ship and the weapon system efficency that is a Godsend for this ship because it works best with beams. For what, for a clutter of shuttles that will distract me from my play and die gloriously from any and every AoE or warp core explosion? No, thanks.
If you want to fly a flight-deck, there are more than enough options. For ex. I own the Fleet Corsair on my Orion, it's a damn good ship with superb preformance if you're into FDCs. That's the way to go about it - you want a profile of a ship, then you look what ship fits the description. Not try to change whatever ship into what you happen to like playing.
What I agree could be done with the Bortasqu', is bring carrier commands for the Hoh'sus BoP. This should be done for every ship with detachable sections, including the Galaxy, Galaxy-X, Odyssey, MVAE and that fat Romulan thing. This would probably slightly improve the expereince players are having with those ships, without making a hot mess out of them.
This would actually be an improvement as oposed to a hangar bay, because it wouldn't take away anything from the ship and only add value in terms of somewhat controlling the big pet BoP.
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http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
DERP lol
Before the Avenger, Battlecruisers paid very little for their performance. The Negh'var had the same hull as the Sovereign but 9 turn instead of 7 as well as a built in cloak, the Vor'cha Retrofit had 3k less base hull but 10 turn.
Before the release of Fleet ships, the Bortasqu' and the Ferengi D'Kora were the only Battlecruisers with the ability to use a more Tac-heavy layout than Lt + En seats. The Tor'Kaht was the only KDF Fleet Battlecruiser that got a LtCdr Tac seat until the Mogh.
Boff-wise, Battlecruisers and Cruisers have always been essentially indistinguishable (though the Excelsior beat out all the other Cruiser-types in getting a LtCdr Tac seat), and the only stat differences were the Klingon cloak, and a bit of hull vs turn rate play. Bortasqu' was simply the first "slow" Battlecruiser (others are the Apex, D'deridex, Ha'apax, and the Tal Shiar Battlecruiser), and at the time had the highest hull in the game (though it's since been surpassed).
It needs a little love (the Apex has the same hull, but .5 higher turn and .25 better shields, and who ever thought 18 Inertia was a good idea?), but it's not as big of an anomaly as you're making it out to be, and for a couple months (until people started getting high enough Shipyards for the Tor'Kaht) was potentially the most powerful Battlecruiser in the game... if you could get it into position.
I don't think you know what you're arguing against.
By classic ship definition the Bort SHOULD be called a dread
I never said a hangar would drastically buff it. I don't see how it would nerf it at all unless in return they took something away from it. Which is not what I suggested.
Again, there are rules for what defines a ship as a dread in real life ships. They play fast and loose with it in sci-fi but if you're in to ship stuff then the Bort really comes off feeling like a dread.
I have no idea why they gave the Gal-X a hangar bay. I'm not falling for anything. I was taking a bit of a break at the time of the hangar bay's inclusion and was not active enough to even realize that the Galaxy was getting a bundle upgrade until after it was done.
I don't feel the Gal-X really needs one.. but my understanding is Galaxy class ships did get upgraded with a flight deck during the dominion war. The X is a wartime upgraded Galaxy. It makes sense that previous wartime upgrades would be included on the newer X variants. Now, because DS9 is so bad that's all really just second hand stuff I've heard as I've only watched a handful of painful episodes, but if it happened then it should be included.
Because this is becoming standard for dreads, and because I feel the Bort deserves to be classifid as a dread, I believe it should be allowed to launch fighters.
You really should learn not to phrase everything you say in a way that implies you're talking to some newbie. You really have no idea how much experience I have in game, or with the Bort, or whether or not I even like it or not. You don't know how much experience I have with battle cruisers or heavy cruisers. You don't know how much experience I have Fed or KDF side.
I don't understand how managing fighters is distracting for you, but managing the BoP would not be.
Again. This isn't a bash the bort thread. It never was. I just thought it deserved to have fighter pets. I never said take away any of its cruiser command abilities. I just think that the subspace snare is a lackluster console that takes up an important slot but is required to get the full benefits of the set.
I'm sure there are threads where you guys can go whine about the Bort needing new stats or not or complain that it's useless or perfect (since those seem to be the two dominating mindsets). This wasn't created to be that thread.
This thread is..
A. By common definition, the Bort should be called a dread.
B. If it's a dread, it should get a flight deck.
C. That's pretty much it! Although my BoP not ever cloaking is kinda weird...
Now, you may complain that it is not a dread, but it can, and mine does use some of the biggest, heaviest cannons I can put on it. You might run yours as a heavy cruiser (and no, it's NOT a battle cruiser if you don't have heavy guns on it. It's still a cruiser) but mine by definition is definitely a battle ship.
I think it could be interesting to see it fully brought in line with just the AVERAGES for either cruisers (~7 turn/~30 inertia/4 device slots/4 cruiser commands) or battle cruisers (~8.5 turn/~30 inertia/3 device slots/3 cruiser commands). In all honesty, as a flagship model of ship, it should be better than average.
Ok so this time don't take my post so literally, I didn't mean to sound like I was talking to a noob, but I see that perhaps I sounded like that because I'm quite frankly tired of the 2000 threads about how the Bort sucks and the other 5 or 6 hundred that want a hangar bay on the ship. That and partially in my post I was adressing to the general audience, even though I initially started to reply to yours. So don't take me worng this time.
Here's the tricky part - by installing a hangar bay, they'll remove 2 of the cruiser commands - and those are the 2 useful ones on this ship: the 'strategic maneuvering' and the 'weapon system efficency'. Then they'll add the 'attract fire' and leave the 'shield system efficency', taking the cruiser commands to 2 instead of 3, losing the 2 important ones in the process. Hence, the nerf. Don't ask my why, those are Cryptic rules - FDC's must have and are limited to those 2 comm arrays.
I agree with this based on observation, yeah. The ship looks like a dread, or how some of us like to call it - a battleship.
However that's not the case here, since it's a game based on a sci-fi franchise. So they could make it's turn rate 17 and hull 25k if they wanted to - they don't really need to follow any real world or appearence rules. The bottom line being that this ship was created and sold as a battlecruiser, not a dreadnought.
Sorry, I may have misread that. The reason I mentioned it was because Cryptic justified slapping a hangar on the Galaxy-X with the statement "we're bringing the Galaxy-X on par with the other dreadnoughts", which is hillarious by itself, but probably best left for some other thread.
Actually no, this is not correct. The Galaxy Class ships were never flight-decks in canon, there is no statement, no on screen evidence or tech manual indication about the ship being capable or used in that manner. If anything, ships in Star Trek needed to lower the shields when a shuttle was departing from the shuttle bay, which is a very stupid thing to do while you're in combat.
The Galaxy Class being flight decks in the DW is just wishfull thinking by a few forumites here that would even want a B'rel that launches B'rels.
The X is non-existant in canon. It's not a wartime Galaxy, the wartime Galaxy was the Venture. The X is a figment of Q's imagination that never existed in the first place.
See, this is why I mentioned the hangar on the X in my previous post. Because before that statement by Cryptic about the 'X' I previously posted, there was no such thing about "a standard for dreads". That was the first time the studio mentioned it, and it was to justify lazy patchwork they intended to turn into a fast money-grab.
Not saying anything, just explaining one more time why I reffered to the Galaxy-X before.
It's simple really. With fighters, I need to pay attention to 6 of them. They die like flies from any AoE. Their AI behaves in a TRIBBLE way. If I want to level them up to 5 stars, I need to pay a lot of attention to them, I need to use a crapload of abilities to heal them each individually, etc. And this will cost me 1 comm array, plus losing the 2 usefull ones.
With the single Hoh'sus, all I need is the carrier commands to keep track of what she's doing in order not to get stuck or pick a fight on the other side of the map. It has a lot of hull and shield points, it does much more damage and it'll be easier to keep track and heal a single strong ship than 6 flies. And with this I don't lose anything, I just gain more control over the auxilliary craft.
This part I already explained as to why this would merit losing and changing the cruiser commands.
See this is the issue basically. Common definiton has nothing to do with the game, or to put it more precisely - it has as much to do with STO as the devs. want it to. By common definiton we shouldn't be able to command biological living ships, yet here we are with Undine lockbox ships in STO.
They call it a battlecruiser. So it's a battlecruiser. That's pretty much the point I'm making.
Actually, I'm one of the few around here that uses DHCs on a Bortasqu' succesfully.
But your definiton is a bit wonky here. I can put those same biggest, heaviest cannons on my Mogh. Or my Vor'cha. My K'tinga. Kamarag.....you see where I'm going with this - the ability to mount the heaviest weapons is not an exclusive trait to dreadnoughts. In fact it was premierly exclusive to battlecruisers. And that's what the Bortasqu' is by intention - a battlecruiser.
You should check out the Fed. section of the forum though, you'll have a good laugh. There are people there claiming that the Odyssey should be a dreadnought because Cryptic in their infinite wisdom calls the NPC Oddys dreadnoughts.
2. Fair enough logic there, but I propose that it does not lose those. It's the flagship of the Klingon fleet and should keep those command abilities so that it can, ya know, command! Seeing as the Spinal weapons for both the Scimitar and the Gal-X are not consoles, I think keeping the commands and getting a flight deck would be a nice trade off for the fact that the Borta NEEDS a console to use its spinal weapon and it's subspace console is subpar.
3. True. But since it plays like a battle ship, it'd be nice to see it given proper naming and the flight deck.
4. I am curious as to what other dreads they were talking about when they updated the Gal-X.
5. The X I assumed was a vision of the possible future, or at least that's how I interpreted it. And it seemed to be purpose built for war. So I translated it as being a wartime vessel. I don't remember where I picked up the information but I'd heard that the introduction of the peregrine fighters required the Galaxy to include a flight deck during the Dominion War or something like that. Perhaps it was somebody just trying to explain the presence of fighters but virtual lack of carriers in Starfleet.
6. Understood.
7. And my suggestion did not include the loss of cruiser commands.
8. To clear it up.
The standard combat vessel of sufficient size, fire power, and speed which serves as the back bone of the fleet to my knowledge is what qualifies a ship as a cruiser.
A larger, slower cruiser with a much better armored hull is defined as a heavy cruiser.
A cruiser which instead packs "big guns" is defined as a battle cruiser.
A vessel which does both the larger, slower hull and the big guns is classified as a battle ship.
A vessel which is a battle ship and dedicates most or all of its fire power to big guns is a dreadnought.
Dreadnoughts were eventually built much larger and heavier than standard battleships, and did tend to have a single launch catapult. Although ships which did have a flight deck were instead called Battle Carriers.
You don't quite seem to have a grasp on how ships were traditionally defined, so I'm clarifying if that's the case. Only because you seem to think that gun size and nothing else defines the ship class when talking about battle cruisers.
So to recap. Battle Cruisers are cruisers with battle ship fire power.
STO to me seems to follow a pattern with labeling NPC's as Dreads to signify they are simply hitting harder and have much more hull than normal targets.
Ships which are in world considered actual dreadnoughts however also seem to follow a distinct pattern. Or at least they do now. With their new pattern, literally the only thing keeping the Borta from being a dread is the flight deck. Although I freely admit that in my case I really enjoy pets (flew a voq for ages when KDF were the only guys with carriers of FDC's) and this is more of a case of looking for an excuse to give it a flight deck.
I really don't have a good game play reason to want it to have one. I just think it's an extremely regal ship and I love flying it and it'd be awesome if I could pump out little Elite Tudoj fighters. It'd REALLY make it feel like a proper flag ship. No, it'd not really buff it (although it would make the experience more unique compared to, again, say the mogh) but I don't care either.
Oh! And the Klingons deserve a dreadnought as it is.
Being that majority rules and majority are fed characters/players that most of what was true to be in canon is going to be sacrificed for the profit no matter how much it is. Its from lockbox stuff all the way down to our cheapest kdf ships they will always have it where fed playable characters will always out match an actual KDF character. Unless of course you like pvp, go to korat and kill new players who have no idea what they are doing then its a different story of course lol.
The only anomaly it has among Battle cruisers is that it has -3.5 base turn rate compared to the Negh'var and Mogh. That's it (well, besides having a more flexible Boff seating than most of the other Battle cruisers). Both of the Warbird "Battle cruisers" have the same problem, but currently mitigate it with Battle Cloak instead of Strategic Maneuvering.
Yes, its performance is lacking compared to the Mogh or the Tor'Kaht, but I don't think the Bortasqu' is necessarily the worst T5 battle cruiser out there. The standard Negh'var, for instance, has the agility to potentially use a DHC lineup, but doesn't have the seating to do so effectively. The only thing the standard Ha'apax has over the Bortasqu' is the access to Warbird traits instead of Cruiser Commands, and the Fleet Ha'apax is tougher but has slightly less flexible Boff seating. The Apex could also be considered better than the Bortasqu' (better shields and +.5 turn), but lacks Sensor Analysis (Command Cruiser is really the only viable version, and will be until Cryptic decides to rebalance the flagships, or really any non-Sci-ship that has SA) and the difference in Boff layout comes down to user preference.
I'll add that its inertia is pretty bad. 7 points below Neg'var, 32 below Mogh.
It's not just less agile than the Negh'Var and Mogh, but the Odyssey as well. So the ship that is built around the fact that it can utilize cannons moves worse than the broadsiding cruiser. This makes no sense.
Admiral Dananra Lekall - R.R.W. Teverresh, Deihu-class Warbird
General J'Kar son of K'tsulan - I.K.S. Dlahath, Vo'devwl-class Carrier
You fell for the necro, man! :cool: