Time to put out my own post on this. Maybe it will help, maybe it won't.
Now, I'll be sticking to mostly BOFF abilities this go-around.
Team abilities: I think TT is fine, ET has a solid heal, and ST is good overall. Problem I have more lies with the Keel'el DOFF, but that's a separate issue.
Engineering:
EPTX abilities I think are fine right now. Keel'el is a problem, but it, and other DOFFs are a thread for another time I think, unless Hawk this one is meant to cover everything.
A2D and A2Sif, also fine. A2D has that wonderful MAM DOFF (though is nice even without it), while A2Sif is a solid heal and resistance bonus.
A2B I think people are using the thread too much as a soapbox. The ability itself is fine IMO, but it's the DOFF that can possibly use work.
Extend Shields generally gets it's usage in PvP, but honestly, with how many easily gained amounts of shield resist there are anymore, it's not as big a deal.
EWP's problem more lies in the engine not actually displaying it when there are multiple 'cloud' type abilities around.
Aceton Beam doesn't do enough to justify it's long CD, and is easily and effortlessly cleared by HE, so most of the time you don't get very much out of it.
DEM is actually great and I think it's fine right now where it is, at any level. The problem it has is a long-standing display bug that the tooltip doesn't actually show the correct damage it does, unless you are using phaser consoles. The ability itself is fine and does the right amount though in practice.
Boarding Party. Easily taken down and very slow to boot. Also, you once mentioned thinking about removing the crew mechanic from the game. Honestly, I wouldn't complain if you took it out.
Science:
TSS, perfectly a-ok, no changes needed.
HE as a heal is fine, but it's the mega-level of cleanses it can do that makes it insane. There are SO many things it can clear, that it really can negate a lot of things a person can do.
Jam and Scramble Sensors. Against players I think they are fine (Seggis is a PITA though). The problem I feel more lies in NPCs having high resists or immunity to these two abilities really doesn't help any usage they have in a PvE situation.
Energy Siphon and Tyken's, fine as-is, except for how the EPS skill affects drains, but that's all.
Tractor Beam, feels alright atm.
Polarize hull, also is pretty solid.
Tachyon Beam and CPB, while CPB might also be a de-cloak ability, neither drains enough shields from NPCs or players most of the time to justify using it. Again for NPCs, high resists or immunity really hurt their usage.
Gravity Well and TBR. It isn't any CC that they do that I am worried about. It's more the insane levels of damage, shield-ignoring damage I might add, that they can do, especially together. I mean, when you are looking at thousands of damage a second potentially, that adds up BIG time.
VM and PSW. These are hit hard by two things: 1. VERY VERY few ways of boosting SubD in the game, including ZERO sci consoles (yes there's one lobi store console) like the rest of the sci skills can get. 2. NPC resists making them not that great as well (notice a pattern?).
Photonic Officer, I'll give that it's own post later or tomorrow.
Mask Energy Signature, is fine. Again, give it's own post with PO because it deserves a longer explanation.
Tactical:
FAW: Too much of a rollercoaster to even get on atm.
BO: You removed the power drain, that alone I think needs to return, ASAP.
Torp and mine abilities: Like PO and MES, I'll make another post on these.
CSV and CRF: A-ok as-is
Target X: Not useful enough to justify using on most builds, and the builds that CAN use them generally don't have the tac slots to use them.
APB: Can still stack too much and often, though rather pointless in PvP.
APD: Excellent as it stands
APO: Can be too much of a 'necessary' skill in the same realm as TT sometimes.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
I've skimmed through the thread so I'd like to apologize in advance if anything I bring write has already be brought up. As a disclaimer I'm primarily a pve player who occasionally dips his toes into Kerrat. I do have 14 characters of all three professions across all three factions and do play with a verity of ship types.
When I'm putting together a new ship or just revamping a build I look at the powers available to me, and this is the general feeling I come away with: The distribution of engineering and science powers are wonky.
Engineering has 14 boff space abilities total, which I would describe the whole pool of abilities as being "top heavy." Only 5 powers from this set are available as ensign powers, and in my personal opinion this is part of the reason why cruisers with 3 eng ensign abilities are derided by the player base at large. At the same time most of it's "cool on paper" powers gravitate towards the higher ranks, but because of the way they function most ships with a commander eng station can't take full advantage of them.
Science on the other hand is bottom heavy. 18 powers, 8 of which are can be used on an ensign station. This bunch has something that works for every ship in the game. Conversely because of the way science powers are designed when you have a commander science boff station you pick your one commander boff power and then build your entire ship around it (your deflector, your consoles, your doffs, your skill points) and then you sift through the other science powers that synergize well with your commander choice. Depending on what you've chosen and what ship you're going to fly you may find yourself scratching your head and asking "now what do I put in that second lt. cmd science station?"
Also, some of the science power descriptions might be a little head scratchy for the new player coming into the game and could possible use a once over.
Tactical on the third hand (:P) is the one I feel is weirdly balanced in choice from ensign to commander, other than perhaps a neglect for mines (two dedicated mine powers out of 16). No matter what ship you want to fly you have perfectly valid options for every tactical boff station available, well unless you want to fly an all cannons and turrets Defiant.
So long story short, what I'm suggesting is maybe instead of trying to rethink the existing space boff powers, maybe it's time instead to consider adding new eng, sci, and tac boff powers.
What exactly is "Yo Yo" you ask? It's the sum of returning to full health anytime time a ship evades a killing blow. The two extremes, vaping and fast healing, has reduced this game to a never ending Yo Yo.
Damage to ships needs to mean something again! You cannot have a slugfest where either of those two extremes dominate the game. I recommend tripling, or more, the base hull points of every ship, npc included, in the game. Keep healing and damage outputs the same and remove the insanely high out of combat healing in the game.
All those elite injuries incurred within elite content should randomly happen as a ship sustains damage and only removed over time via repairing(healing) and not by some instant click token.
Generally, I'm seeing a lot of strongly held feelings or opinions, but very little reasoning or rationale provided behind posts. Please try to focus more on why you feel what you feel, as it's very difficult to sort through valid and invalid points without explanatory rationale.
I think damage is overemphasised to the point where it's directly impacting my enjoyment of the game. 'Elite' content can be done in less than five minutes, sometimes less than two minutes. Sometimes I've seen two scimitars in an ISE and my immediate thought is 'great, I can sit here knitting because this'll be over in two minutes.'*
*I don't actually knit
SO what can you do about it? I don't know, there's a lot of good ideas in this thread, there's a lot of bad ideas too. A lot of people are carrying their particular axe they want to grind.
Maybe we should take a step back and have a look at what the big picture is. Everyone wants to feel like they're part of the team. It's one thing to play the single-player content and feel like Kirk taking on everything yourself. That's fine. But with team play, well, everyone should feel part of the action. Every role should feel useful. While it's great to feel like you're the one doing damage, it should also feel great to be the one who can take fire and draw fire away from smaller team mates, or be ready to do something that prevents an optional or fail condition from happening.
That doesn't mean tac should get nerfed or that science abilities should be buffed or whatever, but that might be part of the solution. I don't know. A lot of abilities in the game and a lot of complicated stuff goes on under the hood. But let me put it like this, if I'm a tac flying an escort, I want to have a cruiser watching my back. I really do. I want someone to be able to cast hazard emitters on me, engineering team, extend shields whatever. I shouldn't have to roll my eyes and go 'oh great someone's in a Failaxy, I guess I'll be the one who carries the team.'* I want a sci ready with CC in case we need to slow down nanite spheres. Hell, I want to be that sci ready with GW3 sometimes, just like I want to be the eng ready to save my team mate from getting blown up by drawing fire. Each of the roles - tac, sci, eng, damage, tanking, cc and debuffing/buffing - needs to have a place that lets someone feel effective and part of the team. Now there actually is part of this already there, but it's just not front and centre stage, because damage overshadows everything else. More damage means the tac cube gets taken down that much faster, thereby lowering the damage it can do to anyone else, which means tanking and healing or drawing aggro isn't as necessary. More damage means those nanite spheres aren't a worry, so CC is less needed.
*I don't actually think this, but some do. I've literally had experiences where I was a sci in a team of engs and scis and the only tac player left and took the afk penalty because it would be so hard for him to be part of the team.
So that's how i feel, that's my reasoning for why I think the metagame needs to change. It used to be like this when I first started playing the game two years ago. My friend and I used to come in as different characters depending on the other one, we still do to a limited extent but it's less so. For example, I might be playing with my tac in a Defiant, he'll come in with his eng in an Odyssey. We tended to play together and stick together too in the map, so that we could lean on each other at various points. That's what's missing now. The three character careers should complement each other more than they currently do.
Also, one final point, you guys have made a lot of STFs that have interesting gameplay. I like Storming the Spire, I like Azure Nebula, I liked the Mirror Event when it was running, CCE is fun too, the undine stuff is ok (it has other problems which frustrate me though, like the planet killer in undine assault having a huge amount of HP). In some cases though, I feel that the reward for playing this content isn't as high as it could be. Storming the Spire is a solid 15 minute time investment. Its reward sucks. Sorry, I don't mean to be rude and I hope you don't take it as that, but I can't put it any plainer than that. For the time commitment, it should pay out a lot more marks than it does. Not only that, but there should be a greater bonus to be had for saving the troop transports vs taking out the voth transports. Sort of like how Starbase blockade gets you more fleet marks the more freighters make it through to be saved (at least, the last time I played blockade, which was ages ago). These missions are interesting and occasionally cool, but few people play them because they don't have great pay outs. Azure Nebula is another example. Though having said all this, I will say that the daily box is a GREAT thing that's gone a long way towards addressing this for me. Maybe tweak the rewards slightly, make it more dependent on the optionals being achieved and make bonus rewards something you can look at and feel chuffed about.
EDIT I hope this helps you guys and is the kind of reply you're looking for.
Remove PVP Ques unless you are willing to invest serious resources in making it balanced and accessible to a larger portion of the game's population. This is the same logic behind the recent removal of Exploration sectors: If exploration would be released today as new content, in its 'current form' what would the general response be?
- Remove the que, but allow people to set up pvp in private, where they can choose with whom and how they will play.
I cant see how limiting pvp to private engagements would be bad for pvp, and it might even make the pvp community better. One of the common lamentations of the best pvpers I know is that there arent enough challenging opponents. As long as ther is a disperity between casual players and players who have given considerable thought and resource investments into their pvp characters is so great, there is little point in having a que. No contest games are not enjoyable for the losers or the winners.
Consider the pvp que as it is now: Do you believe a new or casual player could enter the que right now and have an enjoyable time? - I can tell you this: They will enter the que and face 5 people. Win or lose, if they enter the que again they will face the same people in the next game, all night long. Its almost as if no one is interested in pvp. there must be a reason. Identify that reason, and deal with it, or remove the pvp que entirely and make it a private social feature of the game.
On PvE Meta:
There are a few skills that I just cant find a use for, but one set of skills that really stand out are the Target Sub-System attacks. First off, I dont believe that these skills should be limited to science ships. Every ship in the game should have access to these powers just like science ships do, but even if they would be available, no one would use them, because FAW and BO are just better in dealing raw damage. Granted, Fire at Will is a phrase used quite often in star trek canon, but I cant recall anyone ever issuing the command to Beam Overload. One command in virtually every combat sequence I have seen was : target their shields ( or engines, weapons, etc.)
the challenge then will come from making these target subsystem skills a desirable choice over BO and FAW, so changes to their mechanics would have to be made. We have already seen that Cryptic has the ability to refine combat with the BOP flanking mechanics, and Cruiser commands, could they not take it a step further and allow a toggle for what system on a ship gets targetted, and have a noticible impact? Something better then a 20% chance to knock a system offline for X seconds, (a pitifully small timeframe in pvp I might add) once every 45 seconds isnt even worth having in the game.
Aceton Beam
Game Description: Aceton Beam places a radiation hazard on the target, drastically reducing its energy weapon damage and delivers radiation damage over the duration. current
Rank III: Commander 2m 50s - 1m 30sec cd
Deals 50 radiation damage every second for 30 seconds (Ignores Shields)
-75% Target Energy Weapons Damage for 30 sec.
cleared by HE
full duration dmg = 1500 radiation suggested
Rank III: Commander 1m 50s - 45sec cd
Deals 100 radiation damage every second for 30 seconds in a 3km AoE(Ignores Shields)
-75% Target Energy Weapons Damage for 30 sec.
cleared by ET?
full duration dmg = 3000 radiation
After activation, an intense Radiation Field lingers in space around the primary target, creating a deadly hazard for enemies.
Tachyon Beam
Game Description: Tachyon Beam drains the target's shields. Increases in effectiveness based on current auxiliary power level. current
Rank III: Lt. Commander 1 min 10 sec - 30 sec cd
-2 All Shields each pulse*, 10 pulse max suggested
Rank III: Lt. Commander 1 min 10 sec - 30 sec cd
-2 All Shields each pulse*, 10 pulse max
Increases damage to shields from all energy types for 10 sec
potential problem in that several npcs notablely Borg gateways also use this ability
Charged Particle Burst
Game Description: Charged Particle Burst temporarily disables the cloaking devices of nearby hostile ships and damages their shields. Shield damage increases based on currently available auxiliary power level and skill. [The primary use for this skill is to detect and disable cloaked ships, while the shield damage is secondary] current
Rank III: Commander 1 min 25 sec - 45 sec cd
Disables Cloaking Systems for 12 secs
-672.8 to targets shields suggested
Rank III: Commander 1 min 25 sec - 45 sec cd
Disables Cloaking Systems for 12 secs
-1345.6 to targets shields
Lowers shields damage resistance from all kinetic energy types for 10 sec
Mask Energy Signature
Game Description: Mask Energy Signature shields the energy output of your starship, making it more difficult for enemies to detect you. Maintaining this ability drains some power from your weapon, shield, and engine systems. You cannot fire while under the effect of this ability. Cannot be used while at Red Alert ship status. current
Rank III: Lt Commander 60-20 sec cd
+4705 Stealth
-20 Weapon/Shield/Engine Power
+50% Defense for 5 seconds after dropping cloak suggested
Rank III: Lt Commander 60-20 sec cd
+4805 Stealth
-30 Weapon/Shield Power
+50% Defense for 5 seconds after dropping cloak
Maintaining this ability drains some power from your weapon and shield systems.
Photonic Officer
Game Description: Photonic Officer reduces the recharge time of all your bridge officer abilities. current
Rank III: Commander 5min - 3min cd
40% recharge time reduction to Bridge Officer abilities for 60 Sec. suggested
Rank III: Commander 2m 50s - 1m 30sec cd
40% recharge time reduction to Bridge Officer abilities for 40 Sec.
Photonic Shock Wave
Game Description: ability emits a blast of a 3 km radius around your ship, knocking back enemy ships, inflicting kinetic damage as well as disabling enemy ships for a couple of seconds. Shields drastically reduce the effect of kinetic damage. [The only effect that Auxiliary power has on this ability is to increase the repel] current
Rank III: Commander 90sec - 45sec cd
3576.5 Kinetic Damage (78.6 DPS)
Disable for 3.8 sec
+36.8 Repel suggested
Rank III: Commander 90sec - 45sec cd
3576.5 Kinetic Damage (78.6 DPS)
Disable for 3.8 sec
+36.8 Repel
Lowers shields damage resistance from all kinetic energy types for 10 sec
Aux power level increases the initial kinetic damage
Tactical Team
Game Description: Tactical Team deploys a security crew and grants a tactical buff for your own ship or an ally, along with automated shield strength distribution to shields under attack. Also removes crew and tactical debuffs for the duration. Tactical Team can be deployed even when held. current
Rank III: Lt Commander 30sec
Removes hostile boarding parties over 10 sec
Removes tactical debuffs over 10 sec
+30 Starship Energy Weapons Training for 10 sec
+30 Starship Projectile Weapons Training for 10 sec
Distributes shield strength to shields receiving damage for 10 sec Alternatively just move the [Distributes shield strength to shields receiving damage for 10 sec] to the manual Distribute shields skill
Science Team
Game Description: Science Team repairs shield damage for your own ship or an ally and removes any science debuff for the duration. Can be activated even if you are held or disabled. current
Rank III: Lt Commander
(in Tier 3 ship) 30 sec
1500 Shield Regeneration applied once to each facing
Removes science debuffs for 5 sec suggested
Rank III: Lt Commander
(in Tier 3 ship) 30 sec
1500 Shield Regeneration applied once to each facing
Removes science debuffs for 5 sec
+30 Starship power insulators for 10 sec
+30 Starship shield systems for 10 sec
Distributes shield strength to shields receiving damage for 10 sec
Engineering Team
Game Description: Engineering Team delivers a good instant hull heal. Also instantly repairs subsystem damage and engineering debuffs for the duration. Can be activated even if you are held or disabled. current
Rank III: Lt. Commander
(in Tier 3 ship) 30 sec
+4,500 Hit Points
Repairs disabled systems over 5 sec suggested
Rank III: Lt. Commander
(in Tier 3 ship) 30 sec
+4,500 Hit Points
Repairs disabled systems over 5 sec
+30 Starship Subsystem repair for 10 sec
+30 Starship Hull repair for 10 sec
Distributes shield strength to shields receiving damage for 10 sec
Beam Array: Rapid Fire Barrage
Game Description: Rapid Fire Barrage improves your next beam array attack. Quickly fires beam array attacks at a single target. Each doing less damage than a normal beam array attack.
Rank III: Lt. Commander 30sec
Increases the number of shots fired by each beam array for 10 sec.
Improves base damage by approx. 50%
Beam Array: Scatter Volley
Game Description: Scatter Volley improves your next beam array attack. Fires a cone area of effect spray centered on your target.
Rank III: Lt. Commander 30sec
Improves your next beam attack. Fires a cone AoE beam array spray centered on your target.
Moderate AoE Energy Damage. Improves base damage by approx. 25%
In our preparation for Delta Rising, we've been taking a hard look at Space powers and abilities that are underperforming, as well as a select few that dominate the choices players make across the board.
I play as a Fed science captain in science ships mostly, and play both PVE and PVP. I try to keep the same build for both PVE and PVP, so I am not exactly optimized for either, but to me that is more in keeping with the idea of Star Trek (same ship, gear, crew for everything).
I do not agree that simply optimizing for PVP will balance everything since NPCs and players do not play anywhere near the same way. Players buff up for an alpha strike and try to do enough damage to kill you before you can heal. Teamwork amongst players works the same way, in that debuffs work best together from multiple sources. When in trouble, a player will hit evasives and run for cover, heal, cloak, and wait for powers to recharge then alpha again. NPCs are rocks that barely move, think, or are even vaguely aware of other NPCs or non-targeted players. Their buffs seem random and they don't EVER seem to run away with any predictability. I think it is important to note the differences since my powers, tactics, and ABILITIES are rarely used the same way in PVE and PVP.
That being said, here are some powers I love and feel strongly about defending them:
Feedback Pulse This is my ultimate power for stopping an alpha, especially when Subnuc is on cooldown. When in PVE and i end up with way more threat than I should as a 6-weapon CC science, FBP is my only way to leverage that threat.
Grav Well My main form of CC, I really liked the changes to the power, but like most science captains feel speccing into it is 'expensive' and GW3 isn't strong enough compared to GW1. At least increase the radius of the -repel, or increase the magnitude of it. It , like many skills in general suffers from the "why is there a level 2 version of this at all" in my mind. Either 1 at LtCmd or 3 at Cmd. I know that is supposed to be the benefit of a sci captain in a science ship but with training and trading it never works out that way.
Subnucleonic BeamThis is the single biggest reason science is useful, and that is its PVP ability to stop a player dead in his/her tracks. The alpha is over if I am being attacked and my target is now at my mercy if I am attacking. TO me, the 'remove all buffs' part is what makes this such a sciencey ability in its wonderful usefulness for defending oneself. And the cooldown reduction is such a big help since I don't have a captain power to buff damage, and tac captains and eng captains will be relying on their buffs to defend themselves. By limiting those abilities, I stand a chance of actually taking them down. If the 30s duration needs to be cut back, fine, but give me a window where I can actually attack someone.
Here are the powers I think could be changed to make them either more or less useful:
Tactical TeamUsed for shield redistribution only. I only run one copy due to limited slots, but find that every time I die, it is when TT is not up. With such a high shield modifier for sci ships, I know I should run two copies, but then my damage dealing with weapons gets gimped. If shield distribution was moved to engineering, I would certainly benefit.
Hazard Emitters Remove this. Yeah, I said it. Hull healing should require engineering team or crew through the passive hull repair mechanic. Hazard debuffs should be cleared by Eng or Sci teams, and there are enough options for damage resistance that make more sense logically.
Mask Energy Signature This doesn't work in PVE since there is never a reason to cloak unless you would get a damage boost from it, which MES can't give. In PVP I can see it maybe being useful if it would also placate long enough for you to get away (since stealth is a distance-based mechanic). To make it useful for PVE, I highly recommend adding a -THreat modifer to at least give me a reason to consider it. If I could lower my threat and keep the boss from shooting me, I could focus more on offensive abilities without running the risk of killing myself.
Tactical FleetScience FleetEng Fleet These should not be 30s duration or even activatable powers, but should be passives that get applied to the entire team (not stackable). That way, it helps to have each captain class on a team.
Attack PatternsOnly one of these should be active on a ship at one time. In other words, Alpha should not stack with Omega, Delta, or Beta. I don't see how a ship can be running multiple attack patterns at once.
Hull Repair Rate / Hull Healing / Crew I really think ships die too fast, and repair too fast. With up to 20K hull healing over 15s with hazard emitters and Eng Team down to a 15s shared cooldown, combined with equipment sets, there are WAY too many options to heal up in a hurry. No reasonable player ship should be killed in less than 10 seconds, in my opinion. Boost hull HP across the board, but lower hull healing capabilities. That way, players can still feel powerful with those huge numbers, but if I am being attacked, I at least have time to both call for help AND try to defend myself. That encourages teamwork to kill a player, teamwork to keep one alive, and encourages strategizing on what abilities to use when and on whom. Also, please fix crew - after every mission, I need a fresh ship of recruits. Currently, this mechanic is broken - you either have the nurse Doff or you don't: those with it have crew, those without do not. Crew needs to be killed/disabled at a far lower rate. If hull healing were to be limited, keeping crew alive would become more important - so the mechanic would need to be addressed.
BOFF Space TraitsIF you are Romulan you need one Reman Infiltrator and the rest with Romulan Operative traits. Klingons need Naussicans, maybe a Lethean. Fed needs Saurians and humans. This is bogus and creates distortions between factions and species of BOFFs. Please either grant new space traits across other species, limit them from stacking (SRO especially), or remove them altogether. Personally, I say keep things the way they are but each space Boff trait can only apply to the ship once, and don't stack. It keeps the incentive of using them without imbalancing factions or species.
Thank you much for taking a look into our feedback, and looking forward to see what you have in store for us.
Hi. This is my first time posting ever so please forgive me if it looks like I'm responding to a certain person instead of the whole discussion.
I'm reading through this and people hate a2b. But they keep saying a2b is hated because everyone uses it.
Doesn't that mean it's pretty well liked then?
I don't want to play a game where things you don't use get taken away from other people just because you decided to hate on it. Side note, you are going to have a real hard time in life if you think that's how things work in the real world.
This skill is worthless at this time. If a ship's hull gets below 50%, an instant heal can make GDF unusable. In the opposite scenario, once below 50% Tacs in escorts don't survive for very long so any benefit from GDF is minimal at best.
I suggest making GDF usable at any time just make the base damage bonus smaller continuing to increase as hull damage increases. If hull damage decreases, so should the damage bonus.
and/or
Allow the GDF skill to be transferred to other team members.
TARGET SUBSYSTEMS
If you use a cannon build on an escort with Tactical Team I and doff to cut the cool down, you can have 1 - 2 Ensign lvl skill slots that are useless. Make all Target Subsystems skill available to all cannon weapons. This skill will only effect bolts fired at a normal rate. Target Subsystems will also share a cool down with Cannon Rapid Fire and Cannon Scatter Volley
BEAM ARRAY: OVERLOAD
If you use a cannon build on an escort with Tactical Team I and doff to cut the cool down, you can have 1 - 2 Ensign lvl skill slots that are useless. Make Beam Overload skill available to all cannon weapons. Cannon Overload skill would increase the DPS bolts deal ONLY. It would NOT increase the rate of fire like Cannon Rapid Fire and Cannon Scatter Volley do. Cannon Overload will also share a cool down with Cannon Rapid Fire and Cannon Scatter Volley
Attack Pattern Omega I
Reduce APO I to a Lieutenant lvl skill.
CANNON RAPID FIRE
Make this skill available to all beam weapons (Beam Rapid Fire). BRF would fire smaller bursts with more DPS at a single target while draining weapons power at a slower rate than Beam Overload does. (The visuals and sound effects would mirror the phaser fire of the Reliant & Enterprise in Wrath of Kahn.)
I think space traits shouldn't stack, and that the pool for space traits be more universal. No more only humans with leadership or Saurians with efficient. Also no more Romulan only Operative.
Hi. This is my first time posting ever so please forgive me if it looks like I'm responding to a certain person instead of the whole discussion.
I'm reading through this and people hate a2b. But they keep saying a2b is hated because everyone uses it.
Doesn't that mean it's pretty well liked then?
I don't want to play a game where things you don't use get taken away from other people just because you decided to hate on it. Side note, you are going to have a real hard time in life if you think that's how things work in the real world.
Think of it more as a necessary evil. But I don't think a2b needs to go completely.
I think space traits shouldn't stack, and that the pool for space traits be more universal. No more only humans with leadership or Saurians with efficient. Also no more Romulan only Operative.
I definitely think boffs need to have a trait revamp, for more customisation options and to break up some of the game's sillier mechanics. People metagame constantly with these things when it makes no sense thematically. Only roms get superior operative? Only saurians and letheans are efficient? Only humans have leadership? Really? Boffs should have customisation options at least broadly similar to what we get with our characters. Some fixed traits are fine, like vulcans being telepathic. But yeah you should be able to mix and match what ones you think suit your build, rather than just go all-in on roms with superior operative.
im glad feedback is being invited on this subject.
id first like to say, the meta is just fine frankly, the best its ever been. never has a larger variety of ships and builds and tactics been so equally valid and useful. or at least it was at about season 8, its been fouled a bit since then. with the crafting consoles that buff particle gens so much, there is an over abundance of incentive to build max exotic damage sci ships, that have no counter other then other sci ships and captains, tactical ships certainly cant just shoot at them with the uptime they have on FBP. if this thread changes a single thing, id hope its that FBP has MUCH less up time, something more like an RSP system cooldown.
the meta for pve and pvp is quite different, because who you shoot at couldn't be more different. adjudicatorhawk, cancel this space skill overhaul your thinking about, and use this time to fundamentally change the thinking behind NPC. it could not be a more perfect time to do this, your about to launch a half dozen new npc factions in the expansion.
in pve, you shoot what amounts to a hippoint sponge that has a fore and aft beam, a fore and aft torpedo, and maybe a duel cannon somewhere. they might have 1 or 2 station powers, on uptime as if you put no points into the skill, maybe a universal console power, and maybe something slightly unique. there is almost no measurable buffing to be found, at most they have some trick that stave's off their death for a few seconds, so there's nothing to debuff, other then hull resistance. NPCs are also thrown at you by the hundreds, and most debuffs are single target specific. it should be no surprise why so many players think sci is underpowered. but there's nothing you can do to fix that unless NPCs became much more similar to player ships. as it is now, nothing maters but DPS, nothing CAN mater if npcs aren't more complex.
in pvp the meta is entirely different, again because of what your shooting at. 5 other player ships, flying what are essentially houses of cards that owe everything to the equipment, traits and station powers they have running. a combination of debuffs make a player ships an order of magnitude more vulnerable, wile a combination of buffs make them an order of magnitude more powerful. this dynamic does not exist in pve. and its why whoever has more sci captains and ships on their team wins, whoever doesn't have a dedicated eng healer on their team loses, and a bunch of tac teamed together better hope they just run into another bunch of tacs.
so, how do we adjust the meta? well which one, there's 2 completely different metas operating in the same game. and the reason for that is player ships and NPCs are literal polar opposites. so, cancel skill tweeking, and make npcs more like player ships. then you will have 1 meta, sci ships will be most important, pve wont be exclusively about DPS, and the number of people using tech doff AtB will plummet, because thats only a factor in the DPS side of things.
here's a little NPC overhaul road map
frigate basics
5 weapons
-cycle 2 copies of 1 EPt skill, for full up time
-1 team skill (TT, ST, ET)
-4 other skills
scale it up from there to battleship and dreadnaught npcs. the important thing is they rely on pwers for performance, not a multiplier to their damage and hitpoints. survivability should come from healing, damage from number of weapons and tactical powers.
each npc you fight should be a meaningful pitched battle that should take minutes. frigate trios are 1 thing, but you shouldn't expect to blow up 20 ships and end the lives of 10 thousand crew each skirmish. and besides, a sci ship is for single target debuffing. if you lower the number of targets, but make each more a challenge, suddenly science and PVE fit together perfectly.
if you think NPC AI isn't up to the task, i think you will be surprised how well the equivalent of scripting bind everything to space bar would work. or to put in scripts to use a heal at 50% health, etc.
I've got less detailed testing than I'd like, but let's open this discussion up. I'll try and bring up stuff I haven't seen upthread. I mention skills more generally, as I find a substantial chunk of build disparity seems to source from frankly - relatively narrow building at that scale.
1) Defense: I can't help but sense that Defense scaling is weird - I can get really close to my Defense ratings on Escorts with my lighter Cruisers. Does that seem weird? That I can speed tank on a Cruiser arguably better than on my Defiant, especially given all the extra self-heals? That having been said, I do recognize that tweaks to Acc/Def balance can be super-tricky for PvP. So I'd be keen to see if anyone else has similar experience.
2) Stealth/Sensors: I think clear that anti-Stealth mechanics are essentially useless in PvE - and of limited utility even in PvP. I'd love to see Sensors get some kind of Acc buffing perhaps, to incentivize them. Perhaps a combined, lower-grade +Acc/+CritH (less than Targeting and Weapon Specialization, perhaps).
3) Driver Coil: I still have a few junk points sunk into it across characters; and it still feels like a deeply n00bular skill. Maybe give it a very low-grade combined speed/maneuverability/inertia buff at impulse? Or just at Full Impulse maybe?
4) Control: I've toyed and experimented with control and sapping builds on my Science toons as long as I've been playing; and I'm still reasonably confident that they just don't perform as consistently and reliably as grav or heal-based Sci builds. On one hand, I find they're much more useful in PvP - and far less so in most any PvE. I can see potential for overbuffing here, so I can understand treading lightly.
5) Aux Weapons for Sci: My Science Vessels will never match Cruisers or Escorts for DPS; but it's hard for me to fly anything (Fedside at least) other than a Vesta these days. Not being forced to powerjuggle makes Aux Phasers worth the price of admission alone - especially if I'm flying solo. Making similar (and maybe downtuned) weapons for other Science Vessels I'm hoping would improve diversity that I see in-game. Frankly, I don't know why Fleet versions of the Vesta phaser cannons don't seem to be on your radar - Andorian phasers are available for Fleet - why not Vestas?
In our preparation for Delta Rising, we've been taking a hard look at Space powers and abilities that are underperforming, as well as a select few that dominate the choices players make across the board. The purpose of this thread is for the community to come together and discuss what powers they feel meet either of these two categories, and to talk frankly about any problems with the current metagame of Star Trek Online.
I'm going to largely be lurking in this thread, but may chime in from time to time. Let's see if we can civilly and rationally discuss what we think are problems, and more importantly why we think those powers are problematic. I want to see what you all care about, and see what changes we can make to address things that you care about while making the game a better game, with a more interesting decision-tree structure that defines your "best action to take at any given time" during space combat.
First,
BIG THANKS for considering to listen to us!
Speaking as someone who likes to fly Starfleet Cruisers, please excuse if my point of view may be a bit one sided.
Tactical Team:
Important for quick shield distrubution, not much else.
The irony is that, slow ships need that skill the most...
(because they can't quickly turn and face another shield facing towards the enemy.)
...and most of those slow turning ships (starfleet cruisers) don't have enough Tactical BOFF stations.
So they end up with Tactical Team and one or two additional BOFF powers. (mostly FAW and a attack pattern). Let's face it, most ppl run Tactical team 24/7, but that's ok. Damage is way too high to survive without that. The problem is that ships with many tactical stations don't have to sacrifce their offensive potential for something that's a fundamental thing to survive in STO.
My sollution would be to remove the shield distribution aspect from TT entirely and buff "Distribute Shield Power" according to a ships turnrate. (the lower the turnrate the faster the shield distribution.)
This would open up much more tactical options for all ships, especailly those having only few tactical stations at hand.
Beam Overload, FAW, Scatter Volley, Rapid Fire
I find it very lacking that each of those powers are limited to one weapon type only. It would open much more possibilites if they where unlocked for all Energy weapon types.
For example:
Energy Weapons: Rapid Fire (increases the rate of fire at one single target, very high damage increase, chance to miss included)
Energy Weapons: Overload (keep as it is right now.
Energy Weapons: Scatter Volley (AOE attack to enemie ships near the target, medium damage)
Energy Weapons: Fire at Will (AOE attack at all ships in weapons arc, low damage)
This would open up much more tactical options, to ALL ships in the game not only those who are capable to use cannons and are alige enough to effectively use them (escorts).
The current game mechanic/design doesn't favour a good combination of Torpedo and Beam weapon combination, as seen on various Trek shows and Movies. Instead we are almost forced to focus on Beam weapons only. My point is not to nerf Beam weapons, but to give players more freedom to customize the availlable BOFF powers for their playstyle and to make STO more like Trek from the shows.:)
Attack Pattern Omega
I'm sorry but this power is simply too powerful. Damage Buff, Resistance AND Control Immunity? a bit too much , don't you think? It basicly makes a escort immune to almost everything, without drawback.
I'm ok with control imunity, but its resistance and first and foremost its damage bonus should be removed, thats what Attack Pattern Beta/Delta is in the game.
Auxiliary to Battery
I can understand that many players view it as too powerful. Escorts become OP, but if it gets nerfed Crusiers would be the teethless bricks as before the introduction of A2B CD reduction.
To prevent Escorts and similar ships to used A2B all the time (and become totally OP), why not make it more like Auxiliary to Structural?
Example:
Rank I: Lieutenant
CD: 15 sec
-30 Auxiliary Power Setting for 10 sec
Allowed Technicans: 1
Rank II: Lt. Commander
CD: 15 sec
-45 Auxiliary Power Setting for 10 sec
Allowed Technicans: 2
Rank III: Commander
CD: 15 sec
-60 Auxiliary Power Setting for 10 sec
Allowed Technicans: 3
As you can see the power buff has been removed and its CD reduction becomes really effetive at high level.
So only engineering Heavy ships would really benefit from A2B, without nerfing them too.
... Hull Repair Rate / Hull Healing / Crew I really think ships die too fast, and repair too fast. With up to 20K hull healing over 15s with hazard emitters and Eng Team down to a 15s shared cooldown, combined with equipment sets, there are WAY too many options to heal up in a hurry. No reasonable player ship should be killed in less than 10 seconds, in my opinion. Boost hull HP across the board, but lower hull healing capabilities. That way, players can still feel powerful with those huge numbers, but if I am being attacked, I at least have time to both call for help AND try to defend myself. That encourages teamwork to kill a player, teamwork to keep one alive, and encourages strategizing on what abilities to use when and on whom. Also, please fix crew - after every mission, I need a fresh ship of recruits. Currently, this mechanic is broken - you either have the nurse Doff or you don't: those with it have crew, those without do not. Crew needs to be killed/disabled at a far lower rate. If hull healing were to be limited, keeping crew alive would become more important - so the mechanic would need to be addressed.
...
100% agreed.
I would make it even more extreme by increasing all hull HP by 300% (or even more) across the board, while increasing hull healing powers CD by the same amount.
The point of this is that STO feely too much arcade if people are able to "heal" their ships from 10% hull HP to 100% in seconds (and get killed by the same amount of time).
Space Combat would become more tactical and less button smashing only as it is now. A player had to actually think when to use a hull heal.
- Sorry for my bad english today.
EDIT:
One more thing.
I think STOs meta game mechanics should favour big ships much more, instead of small, nimble, spacefighter like escorts.
Heavy ships, equipped with Beam Weapons and Torpedoes are a minority in STO and rather uneffective. But small nimble cannon fireing escorts rule the game head and shoulders above everything else.
Star Trek Online should focus on what makes Star Trek unique and encourage people to fly Star Trek ships in a classy way. I am glad you basicly said goodbye to the Stone/Paper/Scissor mechanic, but it shouldn't stop there.
Cruisers and escorts hould become more alike.
Only a players playstyle and personal preference should determine which ship type to fly, not the ships offensive effectivety.
You gladly have given Escorts already enough surviveability.
Cruisers only got A2B, which turns a them into into glass cannons IMO.
Why not rework the very basic of how Cruisers and Escorts work in STO?
Both ship types should be heavy hitters
Escorts fast and nimble, relying on their speed to survive
Cruisers slower, sturdier just as stong offense as escorts.
Just look at Bridge Commander, ST: Legacy or Starfleet Command series. All these games where about captaining a big Star Trek ship, they where not about zipping around in small nimble ships, shooting their cannons like a WWII airplane.
Please don't see the above as a rant, but as a constructive critique.
Many other people and myself simply want STO to FEEL like a Star Trek game finally.
- Sorry for my bad english (again).
Thanks for reading.
"...'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied--chains us all irrevocably.' ... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today--"
- (TNG) Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie
I suggest making GDF usable at any time just make the base damage bonus smaller continuing to increase as hull damage increases. If hull damage decreases, so should the damage bonus.
GDF used to be usable at any % of hull, even if you were fully alive, you could use it.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
I had some ideas whilst laying here considering the day, so I figured I'd post them.
I know you've been struggling with BO, and in particular how to make it viable without making it overpowered, especially in PvP -- well, why don't you make it more like Singularity Overcharge? Make it a power that increases single target DPS with beams by about double for a short time. Either remove the base damage boost and leave it at 100% CrtH, or remove the 100% CrtH and make it just have a +100% base damage for the duration. That way, it's a direct competitor against FAW, and at the same time heavily reduces vaping in PvP. You could change the name, too, if you wanted -- Beam Array: Direct Fire, or something. [EDIT: Just realised that this might compete a little too much with CRF. What if you gave CRF a bonus to Proc % chance? That gives it a unique and fun but not gamebreaking ability over the beam version)
Another idea I had was for Mask Energy Signature: Give it usefulness even to cloakers, by making it once again so that you can fire while under the effects of it -- but reduce the amount of stealth it grants. That way you can only fire 'cloaked' from range, which reduces damage, and science ships or ships with good sensors can see it easily out beyond firing range. For further balance, perhaps have it reduce shield hardness by 10% while active, in addition to the power drain -- make it a dangerous but effective ability to run.
Slow HY torps that can get shot down: these shouldn't get shot down anymore.
The HY of the enhanced bio-molecular torp can't be shot down, and it hasn't broken the game. Make all the other HY slowtorps work in a similar fashion. They're completely worthless if a ship with FAW is around, NPC or player. Their slow travel time is a good enough balancing factor, they don't need to pop the moment they encounter some flak on top of that.
I agree with that and more Hy torps should move faster as they move now.
After xindi lockbox,due to new space traits, ships in PVP move and turn faster than before and Hy torps don't get to them.
(the single exception is in C&H against stationary targets trying to cap,where Hy torps are efficient)
I used to slot a quantum torpedo but now days I am trying to ditch it because i see it doesn't hit almost anything in a dogfight.The bad news for me is that with BO nerf incoming and not being able to use efficiently torpedoes in dogfight i shall have to find some alternatives and in a kdf bop i dont get many
"There already is a Borg faction, its called the Federation. They assimilate everyone else's technology and remove any biological or technical distinctiveness and add it to their own."
I refuse to be content https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwI0u9L4R8U
@hawk: maybe you could tell us a little more about why Cryptic feels things are not ok. We have had these discussions threads thousands of times already, but without knowing what you guys are actually having in mind, there seems little use of them. And yes despite all the changes to powers, the ones considered useless are largely the same in every discussion thread. So here is my take on space powers, the suggestions are just meant as food for thought, i m sure i m missing some obvious unintended implications.
But you asked nicely....so here we go
Captain Powers
Abandon Ship I m not even sure what the design intention behind it was, how many people have it even in their power tray? The countdown is too long, the explosion doesn't do anything, ...its an RP skill but has no effect on gameplay
Eng
Nadeon Inversion Even on a beam boat there are now better ways of reducing energy drain, eptx changes did their part so have many other sources of power, even BO no longer drains power. The power simply no longer performs its designed function, compared to other cpt abilities. It has no team value, and very little effects for the caster. Its self only, but does not decrease drains from science powers. Lets not forget it competes with scattering field and tac initiative, both useful powers. Back to the drawing board. If you insist on it remaining energy drain related, make it castable and actually counter science based drain (tykens, acetone etc) really nifty if it could get a SA treatment where casting it on a friend has a different effect then casting it on a foe.
EPS Power transfer Suffers from similar problems as NI, although more useful. Even non engies can have +125 in all subsystems through other means constantly. It becomes more or less obsolete, it doesn't allow you to boost aux when using aux to bat. It competes with SNB (s.b.) and FOMM. Compared to those it just doesn't do anything worth writing home about. You have given our subsystems all this power, so i suggest looking at the secondary effects of all 4 eptx powers and implement something along these lines. Maybe allow it to boost the cap of all 4 subsystems while its active by 5 points.
Eng Fleet vastly inferior to its tac and sci cousins, the idea is good some slight buff of numbers might be in order
Science
Subnucleus Beam The great equaliser of PvP. In pug matches (and often organised matches as well) the team with the more science captains wins. It is a wonderful power, but in light of full disclosure, it might be a tad too good. Maybe eng and tac need some poor mans SNB to stay in the race.
In PvE, snb is almost useless. Since we have PvP mods, and PvP ship effects (raiders) maybe its time to give SNB different effect in PvE vs. PvP.
BO powers
Eng
Boarding Party Impossible to land, even fully doffed and skilled its a mega gamble, (broken mechanics aside) compare that to APO, HE3, VM3, .... they do their job 100% of the time. perm uptime of tac team kills Boarding party even when it lands, its a bad choice in all instances. Thematically i would think that sending over boarding parties would be different from eg. VM. It should mess with cpt, bo, or doff powers or all of the above, as opposed to subsystems. Obviously caution is required here, but the way it has been since launch i can't make heads or tales from this one.
Aceton Beam Radiation damage is laughable, even with special buffs (tal shiar lockbox, items ...) the debuff sounds good, until it gets cleared by the most widely shared skill in game = HE. Make HE clear the radiation and not the debuff, buff its effects and it might finally be useful to some for the first time in 10 season of STO.
Emergency Power to Engines a little too good on the secondary effect, defence is through the roof.
Science
MES Useless, in virtually 100% of cases other science powers are more valuable to the team or yourself. Many enemies see through MES and you can't use it to avoid damage when in red alert. OK visual is all i have to say about it on the up side. Something of an AOE ACC springs to mind to make it useful.
Tachyon Beam
Big enemies in STO are either unshielded, or have so many shield HP that given the piloting required to land all charges has obsoleted this skill. In PvP shield stripper builds (*RIP) are a much missed things of the past. Have it lower shield resists, while buffing Charged Particle Burst, and we could potentially see the return of a very popular cc build variant.
CPB s.a.
Photonic Officer Decidedly meh. PO 3 has a tooltip potential to lower CD to more then Global, however, global is global , so PO3 is useless. Not sure if PO2 or 1 are actually where they should be. Only very specialised builds might even consider them. I haven't in a long time, but being around for a little while i can tell that in most cases people try that plan something involving PO, quickly switch the power out of their load out, because it just doesn't cut it.
Jam Sensors with doffs good for 1v1 pvp. It could be a nice oh **** button, if it where AOE, but how often do you face a single enemy in PvP or PvE so even if the gate won't shoot me, the tac cube will, not worth the slot.
SS Pure evil with Doffs in PvP. In PvE eg. NWS, too many enemies have inbuilt resists to it. It used to be much more powerful and much more fun. Watching NPC shoot each other to hell, would love to see one of those one-shoot gate torp spreads go out to a tac cube, alas ....magical resists. The power is good as it is, the magical (might say lazy design) resists of NPC make it underwhelming. Compare the NPC damage of a fully buffed and specced SS3 with TAC buffed FBP3. And you see what i m talking about. Even in NWS or STFS FBP works, why not SS?? PSW you erred on the low side when nerving this one. Both stun and damage are too low.
TAC
Subsytem Targeting With too much power around, the extra drain or chance to disable has become mute. We used to be able to disable a shield facing via phaser procs, subsystem targeting, VM etc. You have removed all these from the game. I would like to see the return of a play style that focuses on temporarily (more then 0.8 seconds) disabling a shield facing to land a torp in PvE. For PvP this would need more consideration, but, while OP, ol phaser procs made sure that matches ended. I miss target callers switching targets because these brief but deadly windows of opportunities are presenting themselves. But with new ET up time this previously OP aspect might be a non issue.
Lastly, they share CD with BO and F@W pushing them further down the obsolete camp. Bo3 drains shields better then Target Sub Shields....why?
TT TT1 is too good. TT2 and 3 are useless. There have been many threads about it, and you can see quickly that everybody and their mother wants best possible TT uptime in PvE. Give it opportunity cost by making TT3 the current TT1, and make its effectiveness dependent on ship stats, slow turners need it more (accidentally this with more crew) then fast turners.
APO Does everything....wtf? Boost damage, increases defence, counters CC. Where is the Cmdr sci or eng skill that does it all, with doffs to push it to global cd. APO3 is too good (period).
The other dispersal pattern good on paper, little use for anything. TS and HYT are two separate powers with a clear distinction between them. The both dispersal patterns don't stand out against each other, maybe give us different CD when cycling both is a small step in the right direction. I d rather see something like wide net large damage boost (less chance of multiple mines hitting a target) vs. tight net small damage boost.
Generally
team power cd changes have made CC hard. Its weak in PvE mostly to magical powers of npcs. It still rules in PvP, but only because resists, HP, defence, and everything else has gone through the roof. Sci needs some quick kill abilities not boosted by tac captain powers. at a cost obviously, but something to make solo sci/sci play more enjoyable.
Tac has APA, FOMM, (GDF) -> fire
sci has SNB, SS, ->fire
they can perform these powerful attacks at level 17
eng has ???
all subsystem energy related eng skills are obsolete due to power creep, there is also very little synergy. Engie needs a combo, once more NI, and EPS compare to some of the most powerful abilities in game. Compared to these they are laughable.
Qapla, not expecting to see any good come out of this, but hi you asked, and since geko only sees rants on these forums, lets at least make it obvious that asinine forum posts, are a reaction to how the devs approach the player base, and nothing else. So thanks for asking.
Generally, I'm seeing a lot of strongly held feelings or opinions, but very little reasoning or rationale provided behind posts. Please try to focus more on why you feel what you feel, as it's very difficult to sort through valid and invalid points without explanatory rationale.
I am not going into "nerf this, buff that". I imagine this thread will have plenty of that type of "advice".
What I am going to do is to ASK for a new single target beam power because Beam Overload isn't working for that. Let me explain why, by comparing the cannon powers to the beam powers.
CRF and CSV are the cannon staple powers. They work in a straightforward manner. CRF simply increases the DPS of cannons in a linear fashion and CSV slightly increases it while adding area to the weapons effects. Also the more cannon weapons you have, the more effective they are.
There are more beam powers than cannon powers, yet they fail at being useful for beam boats. Both Beam Overload and the various Subsystem Targeting have the same problem. They use only ONE beam yet they put ALL beam powers in a 15 seconds cooldown period. That means that these powers reward you for having ONE beam and several cannons, since you can get the best results from them while also getting the benefits of the cannon powers.
Fire at Will then becomes the ONLY power that rewards you for having your ship full of beams. I am not getting into all the issues FAW has, just pointing out that at this time it is the only valid choice for an all beam build.
Therefore I propose that a new beam power be introduced into the game that mimics the results of CRF, even if the power itself looks quite different.
And changing the subject for a moment... there are a lot of strong opinions about Aux2bat, including some dev posts saying they don't like it. What I would like to know is what, in the eyes of the developers, is wrong with it so that any discussion about it can be channeled into something useful instead of the usual rants about it. If people want those there are plenty all over the forums.
Let's start by having aux2bat being unable to gain any auxillary at all while active.
And then have all team abilities dependent on auxillary.
NO.
This idea is bad; and you should feel bad for having even considered it.
DO NOT NERF A2B
People keep bringing A2B up. However, non of the top-dps builds are A2B. Top DPS build don't use A2B technicians. They all use Zemoks. Yet people aren't clamouring for a nerf to Zemoks. The reason is simple:
A2B doffs are lot more commonly used because they are, nominally, free. You do some doffing, and sooner or later you got 3 VR purple ones. Zemoks, OTOH, are only available to the "leet" players who can afford 100M+ ship builds.
If you nerf A2B techs you will manage only one thing: to widen the gap between the casual players, and the power players. You should be looking to do the opposite. So, instead of nerfing A2B, I propose you fix the underlying problem. The underlying problem is...
The underlying problem that A2B, and Zemoks, DCEs, etc. solve is a simple one to state:
The space abilities design, with long cooldowns, which necessitates the need for duplicate abilities is flawed. The reason is simple:
1) It's boring. If you have only copy of each ability, like in low-level ships, you're bored out of your mind waiting for cooldowns. I get that the devs originally intended for space combat to happen at a slower pace than ground combat, but they went overboard. Having all your abilities take 30s to 2 minutes to refresh means most of the time you're just flying around waiting for things to happen
2) It makes having duplicate abilities a necessity for any build, removing real choice and replacing it with the illusion of choice. Every single competitive space build, every single one, relies on having TT, EptX, at least one Attack Pattern, and at least one cannon or beam attack, on global coodown. There is no real choice here. It makes for boring, cookie cutter builds, and very little real choice.
I propose a very simple solution to your problem:
1) Lower the cooldown of all abilities to their duplicate ability global cooldown.
2) Re-balance the powers around the assumption that now everyone has access to said abilities with the new cooldowns.
This completely solves the problem of A2B being "OP" by making it moot. A2B doffs would no longer do anything (they'd probably have to be modified to do something else entirely). So too with Zemoks etc. This levels the playing field. Now everyone has their key abilities "at global". It'll make space combat more fun, and it removes imbalances. Finally, it makes some builds and fittings more desirable, like torpedoes, since you have more room for abilities that buff them, while still staying "at global".
There, I solved your problem.
Of course, this introduces a different problem. Namely, what do you do with all those extra boff seats now that you don't have to have duplicate abilities? Well, you're introducing Command BOFFs in the expansion (OK, you've only said a "new type" of BOFF, but I'm assuming they're command). You can make Command BOFFs to be "wildcards" or "universal", so they can be slotted into *any* existing ship bridge officer seats. So you could use a command boff in either a tac, engie, or sci seat. I'm assuming you're introducing brand new BOFF powers to come with your brand new BOFFs. This is a great way to give everyone access to those.
Oh, but you probably intended to give your shiny new T6 ships dedicated command boff seats; and this would likely make those ships less attractive. Easy solution. Make it so that command officers can only use their ensign and Lt. level abilities in non-command seats. That way you can use command boffs to fill in your now freed up Lt. and Ensign stations that were previously being used for duplicate abilities; but, if you want to use Lt. Cmdr+ command abilities you'd still need to get a T6 ship.
There is little benefit to having an Engineer on a PvP team unless you are forced by the rules to take them, Tacticals win on damage and Sciences win on healing and control, a tank is useless and Engineering Fleet as a power is often just mocked.
Saucer separation on Odyssey and Galaxy and the Aquarius escort pet all need buffing. If you're sacrificing a console slot that could be boosting dps or survivability into what is effectively a hanger pet, it should be as useful as a hanger pet. I also still don't know why they don't have the same UI and command options that hanger pets do. The aquarius seems less survivable than some fighters when it should IMO be more like a Fer'jai frigate (though slightly better as you can only launch one and it's on a longer cool down). Saucers would benefit from just being tougher and perhaps acting more like support vessels to make them a different choice.
My alt army: K'ymara, Orion Engineer. Caedera of Borg, Liberated Borg Tactical, Elyza Vix, Joined Trill Scientist. Christina Bellona, Augmented Human Tactical. T'Lana, Vulcan Scientist. Arbol, Martian Tactical. Ayzer Bryn, Joined Trill Engineer. Hawke, Betazoid Scientist. Karna Valkras, Klingon Engineer. Beth Parker, Human Tactical Sarel, Romulan Engineer (Federation). Yazuri, Reman Scientist (KDF)
Something I've thought about are the cleanses/immunities on stuff like hazard emitters and polarize hull.
With HE for example, the overall heal and resistance buff is aux-dependant. Why isn't the cleanse? By that, I mean: at 5 aux, it'll cleanse 500 damage per tick, at 135 it cleanses substantially more.
Same with PH: at 5 aux, you're basically going nowhere if tractored.
Comments
Now, I'll be sticking to mostly BOFF abilities this go-around.
Team abilities: I think TT is fine, ET has a solid heal, and ST is good overall. Problem I have more lies with the Keel'el DOFF, but that's a separate issue.
Engineering:
EPTX abilities I think are fine right now. Keel'el is a problem, but it, and other DOFFs are a thread for another time I think, unless Hawk this one is meant to cover everything.
A2D and A2Sif, also fine. A2D has that wonderful MAM DOFF (though is nice even without it), while A2Sif is a solid heal and resistance bonus.
A2B I think people are using the thread too much as a soapbox. The ability itself is fine IMO, but it's the DOFF that can possibly use work.
Extend Shields generally gets it's usage in PvP, but honestly, with how many easily gained amounts of shield resist there are anymore, it's not as big a deal.
EWP's problem more lies in the engine not actually displaying it when there are multiple 'cloud' type abilities around.
Aceton Beam doesn't do enough to justify it's long CD, and is easily and effortlessly cleared by HE, so most of the time you don't get very much out of it.
DEM is actually great and I think it's fine right now where it is, at any level. The problem it has is a long-standing display bug that the tooltip doesn't actually show the correct damage it does, unless you are using phaser consoles. The ability itself is fine and does the right amount though in practice.
Boarding Party. Easily taken down and very slow to boot. Also, you once mentioned thinking about removing the crew mechanic from the game. Honestly, I wouldn't complain if you took it out.
Science:
TSS, perfectly a-ok, no changes needed.
HE as a heal is fine, but it's the mega-level of cleanses it can do that makes it insane. There are SO many things it can clear, that it really can negate a lot of things a person can do.
Jam and Scramble Sensors. Against players I think they are fine (Seggis is a PITA though). The problem I feel more lies in NPCs having high resists or immunity to these two abilities really doesn't help any usage they have in a PvE situation.
Energy Siphon and Tyken's, fine as-is, except for how the EPS skill affects drains, but that's all.
Tractor Beam, feels alright atm.
Polarize hull, also is pretty solid.
Tachyon Beam and CPB, while CPB might also be a de-cloak ability, neither drains enough shields from NPCs or players most of the time to justify using it. Again for NPCs, high resists or immunity really hurt their usage.
Gravity Well and TBR. It isn't any CC that they do that I am worried about. It's more the insane levels of damage, shield-ignoring damage I might add, that they can do, especially together. I mean, when you are looking at thousands of damage a second potentially, that adds up BIG time.
VM and PSW. These are hit hard by two things: 1. VERY VERY few ways of boosting SubD in the game, including ZERO sci consoles (yes there's one lobi store console) like the rest of the sci skills can get. 2. NPC resists making them not that great as well (notice a pattern?).
Photonic Officer, I'll give that it's own post later or tomorrow.
Mask Energy Signature, is fine. Again, give it's own post with PO because it deserves a longer explanation.
Tactical:
FAW: Too much of a rollercoaster to even get on atm.
BO: You removed the power drain, that alone I think needs to return, ASAP.
Torp and mine abilities: Like PO and MES, I'll make another post on these.
CSV and CRF: A-ok as-is
Target X: Not useful enough to justify using on most builds, and the builds that CAN use them generally don't have the tac slots to use them.
APB: Can still stack too much and often, though rather pointless in PvP.
APD: Excellent as it stands
APO: Can be too much of a 'necessary' skill in the same realm as TT sometimes.
Boy, what a wonderful refutation of the ideas I posted. You should really apply for that nebula award.
When I'm putting together a new ship or just revamping a build I look at the powers available to me, and this is the general feeling I come away with: The distribution of engineering and science powers are wonky.
Engineering has 14 boff space abilities total, which I would describe the whole pool of abilities as being "top heavy." Only 5 powers from this set are available as ensign powers, and in my personal opinion this is part of the reason why cruisers with 3 eng ensign abilities are derided by the player base at large. At the same time most of it's "cool on paper" powers gravitate towards the higher ranks, but because of the way they function most ships with a commander eng station can't take full advantage of them.
Science on the other hand is bottom heavy. 18 powers, 8 of which are can be used on an ensign station. This bunch has something that works for every ship in the game. Conversely because of the way science powers are designed when you have a commander science boff station you pick your one commander boff power and then build your entire ship around it (your deflector, your consoles, your doffs, your skill points) and then you sift through the other science powers that synergize well with your commander choice. Depending on what you've chosen and what ship you're going to fly you may find yourself scratching your head and asking "now what do I put in that second lt. cmd science station?"
Also, some of the science power descriptions might be a little head scratchy for the new player coming into the game and could possible use a once over.
Tactical on the third hand (:P) is the one I feel is weirdly balanced in choice from ensign to commander, other than perhaps a neglect for mines (two dedicated mine powers out of 16). No matter what ship you want to fly you have perfectly valid options for every tactical boff station available, well unless you want to fly an all cannons and turrets Defiant.
So long story short, what I'm suggesting is maybe instead of trying to rethink the existing space boff powers, maybe it's time instead to consider adding new eng, sci, and tac boff powers.
What exactly is "Yo Yo" you ask? It's the sum of returning to full health anytime time a ship evades a killing blow. The two extremes, vaping and fast healing, has reduced this game to a never ending Yo Yo.
Damage to ships needs to mean something again! You cannot have a slugfest where either of those two extremes dominate the game. I recommend tripling, or more, the base hull points of every ship, npc included, in the game. Keep healing and damage outputs the same and remove the insanely high out of combat healing in the game.
All those elite injuries incurred within elite content should randomly happen as a ship sustains damage and only removed over time via repairing(healing) and not by some instant click token.
Brody
*I don't actually knit
SO what can you do about it? I don't know, there's a lot of good ideas in this thread, there's a lot of bad ideas too. A lot of people are carrying their particular axe they want to grind.
Maybe we should take a step back and have a look at what the big picture is. Everyone wants to feel like they're part of the team. It's one thing to play the single-player content and feel like Kirk taking on everything yourself. That's fine. But with team play, well, everyone should feel part of the action. Every role should feel useful. While it's great to feel like you're the one doing damage, it should also feel great to be the one who can take fire and draw fire away from smaller team mates, or be ready to do something that prevents an optional or fail condition from happening.
That doesn't mean tac should get nerfed or that science abilities should be buffed or whatever, but that might be part of the solution. I don't know. A lot of abilities in the game and a lot of complicated stuff goes on under the hood. But let me put it like this, if I'm a tac flying an escort, I want to have a cruiser watching my back. I really do. I want someone to be able to cast hazard emitters on me, engineering team, extend shields whatever. I shouldn't have to roll my eyes and go 'oh great someone's in a Failaxy, I guess I'll be the one who carries the team.'* I want a sci ready with CC in case we need to slow down nanite spheres. Hell, I want to be that sci ready with GW3 sometimes, just like I want to be the eng ready to save my team mate from getting blown up by drawing fire. Each of the roles - tac, sci, eng, damage, tanking, cc and debuffing/buffing - needs to have a place that lets someone feel effective and part of the team. Now there actually is part of this already there, but it's just not front and centre stage, because damage overshadows everything else. More damage means the tac cube gets taken down that much faster, thereby lowering the damage it can do to anyone else, which means tanking and healing or drawing aggro isn't as necessary. More damage means those nanite spheres aren't a worry, so CC is less needed.
*I don't actually think this, but some do. I've literally had experiences where I was a sci in a team of engs and scis and the only tac player left and took the afk penalty because it would be so hard for him to be part of the team.
So that's how i feel, that's my reasoning for why I think the metagame needs to change. It used to be like this when I first started playing the game two years ago. My friend and I used to come in as different characters depending on the other one, we still do to a limited extent but it's less so. For example, I might be playing with my tac in a Defiant, he'll come in with his eng in an Odyssey. We tended to play together and stick together too in the map, so that we could lean on each other at various points. That's what's missing now. The three character careers should complement each other more than they currently do.
Also, one final point, you guys have made a lot of STFs that have interesting gameplay. I like Storming the Spire, I like Azure Nebula, I liked the Mirror Event when it was running, CCE is fun too, the undine stuff is ok (it has other problems which frustrate me though, like the planet killer in undine assault having a huge amount of HP). In some cases though, I feel that the reward for playing this content isn't as high as it could be. Storming the Spire is a solid 15 minute time investment. Its reward sucks. Sorry, I don't mean to be rude and I hope you don't take it as that, but I can't put it any plainer than that. For the time commitment, it should pay out a lot more marks than it does. Not only that, but there should be a greater bonus to be had for saving the troop transports vs taking out the voth transports. Sort of like how Starbase blockade gets you more fleet marks the more freighters make it through to be saved (at least, the last time I played blockade, which was ages ago). These missions are interesting and occasionally cool, but few people play them because they don't have great pay outs. Azure Nebula is another example. Though having said all this, I will say that the daily box is a GREAT thing that's gone a long way towards addressing this for me. Maybe tweak the rewards slightly, make it more dependent on the optionals being achieved and make bonus rewards something you can look at and feel chuffed about.
EDIT I hope this helps you guys and is the kind of reply you're looking for.
Remove PVP Ques unless you are willing to invest serious resources in making it balanced and accessible to a larger portion of the game's population. This is the same logic behind the recent removal of Exploration sectors: If exploration would be released today as new content, in its 'current form' what would the general response be?
- Remove the que, but allow people to set up pvp in private, where they can choose with whom and how they will play.
I cant see how limiting pvp to private engagements would be bad for pvp, and it might even make the pvp community better. One of the common lamentations of the best pvpers I know is that there arent enough challenging opponents. As long as ther is a disperity between casual players and players who have given considerable thought and resource investments into their pvp characters is so great, there is little point in having a que. No contest games are not enjoyable for the losers or the winners.
Consider the pvp que as it is now: Do you believe a new or casual player could enter the que right now and have an enjoyable time? - I can tell you this: They will enter the que and face 5 people. Win or lose, if they enter the que again they will face the same people in the next game, all night long. Its almost as if no one is interested in pvp. there must be a reason. Identify that reason, and deal with it, or remove the pvp que entirely and make it a private social feature of the game.
On PvE Meta:
There are a few skills that I just cant find a use for, but one set of skills that really stand out are the Target Sub-System attacks. First off, I dont believe that these skills should be limited to science ships. Every ship in the game should have access to these powers just like science ships do, but even if they would be available, no one would use them, because FAW and BO are just better in dealing raw damage. Granted, Fire at Will is a phrase used quite often in star trek canon, but I cant recall anyone ever issuing the command to Beam Overload. One command in virtually every combat sequence I have seen was : target their shields ( or engines, weapons, etc.)
the challenge then will come from making these target subsystem skills a desirable choice over BO and FAW, so changes to their mechanics would have to be made. We have already seen that Cryptic has the ability to refine combat with the BOP flanking mechanics, and Cruiser commands, could they not take it a step further and allow a toggle for what system on a ship gets targetted, and have a noticible impact? Something better then a 20% chance to knock a system offline for X seconds, (a pitifully small timeframe in pvp I might add) once every 45 seconds isnt even worth having in the game.
Aceton Beam
Game Description: Aceton Beam places a radiation hazard on the target, drastically reducing its energy weapon damage and delivers radiation damage over the duration.
current
Rank III: Commander 2m 50s - 1m 30sec cd
Deals 50 radiation damage every second for 30 seconds (Ignores Shields)
-75% Target Energy Weapons Damage for 30 sec.
cleared by HE
full duration dmg = 1500 radiation
suggested
Rank III: Commander 1m 50s - 45sec cd
Deals 100 radiation damage every second for 30 seconds in a 3km AoE(Ignores Shields)
-75% Target Energy Weapons Damage for 30 sec.
cleared by ET?
full duration dmg = 3000 radiation
After activation, an intense Radiation Field lingers in space around the primary target, creating a deadly hazard for enemies.
Tachyon Beam
Game Description: Tachyon Beam drains the target's shields. Increases in effectiveness based on current auxiliary power level.
current
Rank III: Lt. Commander 1 min 10 sec - 30 sec cd
-2 All Shields each pulse*, 10 pulse max
suggested
Rank III: Lt. Commander 1 min 10 sec - 30 sec cd
-2 All Shields each pulse*, 10 pulse max
Increases damage to shields from all energy types for 10 sec
potential problem in that several npcs notablely Borg gateways also use this ability
Charged Particle Burst
Game Description: Charged Particle Burst temporarily disables the cloaking devices of nearby hostile ships and damages their shields. Shield damage increases based on currently available auxiliary power level and skill. [The primary use for this skill is to detect and disable cloaked ships, while the shield damage is secondary]
current
Rank III: Commander 1 min 25 sec - 45 sec cd
Disables Cloaking Systems for 12 secs
-672.8 to targets shields
suggested
Rank III: Commander 1 min 25 sec - 45 sec cd
Disables Cloaking Systems for 12 secs
-1345.6 to targets shields
Lowers shields damage resistance from all kinetic energy types for 10 sec
Mask Energy Signature
Game Description: Mask Energy Signature shields the energy output of your starship, making it more difficult for enemies to detect you. Maintaining this ability drains some power from your weapon, shield, and engine systems. You cannot fire while under the effect of this ability. Cannot be used while at Red Alert ship status.
current
Rank III: Lt Commander 60-20 sec cd
+4705 Stealth
-20 Weapon/Shield/Engine Power
+50% Defense for 5 seconds after dropping cloak
suggested
Rank III: Lt Commander 60-20 sec cd
+4805 Stealth
-30 Weapon/Shield Power
+50% Defense for 5 seconds after dropping cloak
Maintaining this ability drains some power from your weapon and shield systems.
Photonic Officer
Game Description: Photonic Officer reduces the recharge time of all your bridge officer abilities.
current
Rank III: Commander 5min - 3min cd
40% recharge time reduction to Bridge Officer abilities for 60 Sec.
suggested
Rank III: Commander 2m 50s - 1m 30sec cd
40% recharge time reduction to Bridge Officer abilities for 40 Sec.
Photonic Shock Wave
Game Description: ability emits a blast of a 3 km radius around your ship, knocking back enemy ships, inflicting kinetic damage as well as disabling enemy ships for a couple of seconds. Shields drastically reduce the effect of kinetic damage. [The only effect that Auxiliary power has on this ability is to increase the repel]
current
Rank III: Commander 90sec - 45sec cd
3576.5 Kinetic Damage (78.6 DPS)
Disable for 3.8 sec
+36.8 Repel
suggested
Rank III: Commander 90sec - 45sec cd
3576.5 Kinetic Damage (78.6 DPS)
Disable for 3.8 sec
+36.8 Repel
Lowers shields damage resistance from all kinetic energy types for 10 sec
Aux power level increases the initial kinetic damage
Tactical Team
Game Description: Tactical Team deploys a security crew and grants a tactical buff for your own ship or an ally, along with automated shield strength distribution to shields under attack. Also removes crew and tactical debuffs for the duration. Tactical Team can be deployed even when held.
current
Rank III: Lt Commander 30sec
Removes hostile boarding parties over 10 sec
Removes tactical debuffs over 10 sec
+30 Starship Energy Weapons Training for 10 sec
+30 Starship Projectile Weapons Training for 10 sec
Distributes shield strength to shields receiving damage for 10 sec
Alternatively just move the [Distributes shield strength to shields receiving damage for 10 sec] to the manual Distribute shields skill
Science Team
Game Description: Science Team repairs shield damage for your own ship or an ally and removes any science debuff for the duration. Can be activated even if you are held or disabled.
current
Rank III: Lt Commander
(in Tier 3 ship) 30 sec
1500 Shield Regeneration applied once to each facing
Removes science debuffs for 5 sec
suggested
Rank III: Lt Commander
(in Tier 3 ship) 30 sec
1500 Shield Regeneration applied once to each facing
Removes science debuffs for 5 sec
+30 Starship power insulators for 10 sec
+30 Starship shield systems for 10 sec
Distributes shield strength to shields receiving damage for 10 sec
Engineering Team
Game Description: Engineering Team delivers a good instant hull heal. Also instantly repairs subsystem damage and engineering debuffs for the duration. Can be activated even if you are held or disabled.
current
Rank III: Lt. Commander
(in Tier 3 ship) 30 sec
+4,500 Hit Points
Repairs disabled systems over 5 sec
suggested
Rank III: Lt. Commander
(in Tier 3 ship) 30 sec
+4,500 Hit Points
Repairs disabled systems over 5 sec
+30 Starship Subsystem repair for 10 sec
+30 Starship Hull repair for 10 sec
Distributes shield strength to shields receiving damage for 10 sec
Beam Array: Rapid Fire Barrage
Game Description: Rapid Fire Barrage improves your next beam array attack. Quickly fires beam array attacks at a single target. Each doing less damage than a normal beam array attack.
Rank III: Lt. Commander 30sec
Increases the number of shots fired by each beam array for 10 sec.
Improves base damage by approx. 50%
Beam Array: Scatter Volley
Game Description: Scatter Volley improves your next beam array attack. Fires a cone area of effect spray centered on your target.
Rank III: Lt. Commander 30sec
Improves your next beam attack. Fires a cone AoE beam array spray centered on your target.
Moderate AoE Energy Damage. Improves base damage by approx. 25%
I play as a Fed science captain in science ships mostly, and play both PVE and PVP. I try to keep the same build for both PVE and PVP, so I am not exactly optimized for either, but to me that is more in keeping with the idea of Star Trek (same ship, gear, crew for everything).
I do not agree that simply optimizing for PVP will balance everything since NPCs and players do not play anywhere near the same way. Players buff up for an alpha strike and try to do enough damage to kill you before you can heal. Teamwork amongst players works the same way, in that debuffs work best together from multiple sources. When in trouble, a player will hit evasives and run for cover, heal, cloak, and wait for powers to recharge then alpha again. NPCs are rocks that barely move, think, or are even vaguely aware of other NPCs or non-targeted players. Their buffs seem random and they don't EVER seem to run away with any predictability. I think it is important to note the differences since my powers, tactics, and ABILITIES are rarely used the same way in PVE and PVP.
That being said, here are some powers I love and feel strongly about defending them:
Feedback Pulse This is my ultimate power for stopping an alpha, especially when Subnuc is on cooldown. When in PVE and i end up with way more threat than I should as a 6-weapon CC science, FBP is my only way to leverage that threat.
Grav Well My main form of CC, I really liked the changes to the power, but like most science captains feel speccing into it is 'expensive' and GW3 isn't strong enough compared to GW1. At least increase the radius of the -repel, or increase the magnitude of it. It , like many skills in general suffers from the "why is there a level 2 version of this at all" in my mind. Either 1 at LtCmd or 3 at Cmd. I know that is supposed to be the benefit of a sci captain in a science ship but with training and trading it never works out that way.
Subnucleonic BeamThis is the single biggest reason science is useful, and that is its PVP ability to stop a player dead in his/her tracks. The alpha is over if I am being attacked and my target is now at my mercy if I am attacking. TO me, the 'remove all buffs' part is what makes this such a sciencey ability in its wonderful usefulness for defending oneself. And the cooldown reduction is such a big help since I don't have a captain power to buff damage, and tac captains and eng captains will be relying on their buffs to defend themselves. By limiting those abilities, I stand a chance of actually taking them down. If the 30s duration needs to be cut back, fine, but give me a window where I can actually attack someone.
Here are the powers I think could be changed to make them either more or less useful:
Tactical TeamUsed for shield redistribution only. I only run one copy due to limited slots, but find that every time I die, it is when TT is not up. With such a high shield modifier for sci ships, I know I should run two copies, but then my damage dealing with weapons gets gimped. If shield distribution was moved to engineering, I would certainly benefit.
Hazard Emitters Remove this. Yeah, I said it. Hull healing should require engineering team or crew through the passive hull repair mechanic. Hazard debuffs should be cleared by Eng or Sci teams, and there are enough options for damage resistance that make more sense logically.
Mask Energy Signature This doesn't work in PVE since there is never a reason to cloak unless you would get a damage boost from it, which MES can't give. In PVP I can see it maybe being useful if it would also placate long enough for you to get away (since stealth is a distance-based mechanic). To make it useful for PVE, I highly recommend adding a -THreat modifer to at least give me a reason to consider it. If I could lower my threat and keep the boss from shooting me, I could focus more on offensive abilities without running the risk of killing myself.
Tactical Fleet Science FleetEng Fleet These should not be 30s duration or even activatable powers, but should be passives that get applied to the entire team (not stackable). That way, it helps to have each captain class on a team.
Attack PatternsOnly one of these should be active on a ship at one time. In other words, Alpha should not stack with Omega, Delta, or Beta. I don't see how a ship can be running multiple attack patterns at once.
Hull Repair Rate / Hull Healing / Crew I really think ships die too fast, and repair too fast. With up to 20K hull healing over 15s with hazard emitters and Eng Team down to a 15s shared cooldown, combined with equipment sets, there are WAY too many options to heal up in a hurry. No reasonable player ship should be killed in less than 10 seconds, in my opinion. Boost hull HP across the board, but lower hull healing capabilities. That way, players can still feel powerful with those huge numbers, but if I am being attacked, I at least have time to both call for help AND try to defend myself. That encourages teamwork to kill a player, teamwork to keep one alive, and encourages strategizing on what abilities to use when and on whom. Also, please fix crew - after every mission, I need a fresh ship of recruits. Currently, this mechanic is broken - you either have the nurse Doff or you don't: those with it have crew, those without do not. Crew needs to be killed/disabled at a far lower rate. If hull healing were to be limited, keeping crew alive would become more important - so the mechanic would need to be addressed.
BOFF Space TraitsIF you are Romulan you need one Reman Infiltrator and the rest with Romulan Operative traits. Klingons need Naussicans, maybe a Lethean. Fed needs Saurians and humans. This is bogus and creates distortions between factions and species of BOFFs. Please either grant new space traits across other species, limit them from stacking (SRO especially), or remove them altogether. Personally, I say keep things the way they are but each space Boff trait can only apply to the ship once, and don't stack. It keeps the incentive of using them without imbalancing factions or species.
Thank you much for taking a look into our feedback, and looking forward to see what you have in store for us.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1159271
I'm reading through this and people hate a2b. But they keep saying a2b is hated because everyone uses it.
Doesn't that mean it's pretty well liked then?
I don't want to play a game where things you don't use get taken away from other people just because you decided to hate on it. Side note, you are going to have a real hard time in life if you think that's how things work in the real world.
This skill is worthless at this time. If a ship's hull gets below 50%, an instant heal can make GDF unusable. In the opposite scenario, once below 50% Tacs in escorts don't survive for very long so any benefit from GDF is minimal at best.
I suggest making GDF usable at any time just make the base damage bonus smaller continuing to increase as hull damage increases. If hull damage decreases, so should the damage bonus.
and/or
Allow the GDF skill to be transferred to other team members.
TARGET SUBSYSTEMS
If you use a cannon build on an escort with Tactical Team I and doff to cut the cool down, you can have 1 - 2 Ensign lvl skill slots that are useless. Make all Target Subsystems skill available to all cannon weapons. This skill will only effect bolts fired at a normal rate. Target Subsystems will also share a cool down with Cannon Rapid Fire and Cannon Scatter Volley
BEAM ARRAY: OVERLOAD
If you use a cannon build on an escort with Tactical Team I and doff to cut the cool down, you can have 1 - 2 Ensign lvl skill slots that are useless. Make Beam Overload skill available to all cannon weapons. Cannon Overload skill would increase the DPS bolts deal ONLY. It would NOT increase the rate of fire like Cannon Rapid Fire and Cannon Scatter Volley do. Cannon Overload will also share a cool down with Cannon Rapid Fire and Cannon Scatter Volley
Attack Pattern Omega I
Reduce APO I to a Lieutenant lvl skill.
CANNON RAPID FIRE
Make this skill available to all beam weapons (Beam Rapid Fire). BRF would fire smaller bursts with more DPS at a single target while draining weapons power at a slower rate than Beam Overload does. (The visuals and sound effects would mirror the phaser fire of the Reliant & Enterprise in Wrath of Kahn.)
Think of it more as a necessary evil. But I don't think a2b needs to go completely.
id first like to say, the meta is just fine frankly, the best its ever been. never has a larger variety of ships and builds and tactics been so equally valid and useful. or at least it was at about season 8, its been fouled a bit since then. with the crafting consoles that buff particle gens so much, there is an over abundance of incentive to build max exotic damage sci ships, that have no counter other then other sci ships and captains, tactical ships certainly cant just shoot at them with the uptime they have on FBP. if this thread changes a single thing, id hope its that FBP has MUCH less up time, something more like an RSP system cooldown.
the meta for pve and pvp is quite different, because who you shoot at couldn't be more different. adjudicatorhawk, cancel this space skill overhaul your thinking about, and use this time to fundamentally change the thinking behind NPC. it could not be a more perfect time to do this, your about to launch a half dozen new npc factions in the expansion.
in pve, you shoot what amounts to a hippoint sponge that has a fore and aft beam, a fore and aft torpedo, and maybe a duel cannon somewhere. they might have 1 or 2 station powers, on uptime as if you put no points into the skill, maybe a universal console power, and maybe something slightly unique. there is almost no measurable buffing to be found, at most they have some trick that stave's off their death for a few seconds, so there's nothing to debuff, other then hull resistance. NPCs are also thrown at you by the hundreds, and most debuffs are single target specific. it should be no surprise why so many players think sci is underpowered. but there's nothing you can do to fix that unless NPCs became much more similar to player ships. as it is now, nothing maters but DPS, nothing CAN mater if npcs aren't more complex.
in pvp the meta is entirely different, again because of what your shooting at. 5 other player ships, flying what are essentially houses of cards that owe everything to the equipment, traits and station powers they have running. a combination of debuffs make a player ships an order of magnitude more vulnerable, wile a combination of buffs make them an order of magnitude more powerful. this dynamic does not exist in pve. and its why whoever has more sci captains and ships on their team wins, whoever doesn't have a dedicated eng healer on their team loses, and a bunch of tac teamed together better hope they just run into another bunch of tacs.
so, how do we adjust the meta? well which one, there's 2 completely different metas operating in the same game. and the reason for that is player ships and NPCs are literal polar opposites. so, cancel skill tweeking, and make npcs more like player ships. then you will have 1 meta, sci ships will be most important, pve wont be exclusively about DPS, and the number of people using tech doff AtB will plummet, because thats only a factor in the DPS side of things.
here's a little NPC overhaul road map
frigate basics
5 weapons
-cycle 2 copies of 1 EPt skill, for full up time
-1 team skill (TT, ST, ET)
-4 other skills
example- miranda
1 beam arrays, 1 DBB, 1 photon/1 beam arrays, 1 photon
2xEPtE1, BO1, THY2, ET2, ES1, TSS2
example- brel
3 DHC, 1 photon/ 1 turret
2xEPtE2, CRF1, HY1, TT1, APO1, battle cloak
cruiser basics
-6 weapons
-cycle 2 copies of 1 EPt skill, for full up time
-2 team skill
-8 other skills
example- star fleet cruiser
2 beam arrays, 1 photon/2 beam arrays, 1 photon
2xEPtS2, 2xFAW1, TS2, ET2, ST3, DEM2, RSP1, TSS2
scale it up from there to battleship and dreadnaught npcs. the important thing is they rely on pwers for performance, not a multiplier to their damage and hitpoints. survivability should come from healing, damage from number of weapons and tactical powers.
each npc you fight should be a meaningful pitched battle that should take minutes. frigate trios are 1 thing, but you shouldn't expect to blow up 20 ships and end the lives of 10 thousand crew each skirmish. and besides, a sci ship is for single target debuffing. if you lower the number of targets, but make each more a challenge, suddenly science and PVE fit together perfectly.
if you think NPC AI isn't up to the task, i think you will be surprised how well the equivalent of scripting bind everything to space bar would work. or to put in scripts to use a heal at 50% health, etc.
1) Defense: I can't help but sense that Defense scaling is weird - I can get really close to my Defense ratings on Escorts with my lighter Cruisers. Does that seem weird? That I can speed tank on a Cruiser arguably better than on my Defiant, especially given all the extra self-heals? That having been said, I do recognize that tweaks to Acc/Def balance can be super-tricky for PvP. So I'd be keen to see if anyone else has similar experience.
2) Stealth/Sensors: I think clear that anti-Stealth mechanics are essentially useless in PvE - and of limited utility even in PvP. I'd love to see Sensors get some kind of Acc buffing perhaps, to incentivize them. Perhaps a combined, lower-grade +Acc/+CritH (less than Targeting and Weapon Specialization, perhaps).
3) Driver Coil: I still have a few junk points sunk into it across characters; and it still feels like a deeply n00bular skill. Maybe give it a very low-grade combined speed/maneuverability/inertia buff at impulse? Or just at Full Impulse maybe?
4) Control: I've toyed and experimented with control and sapping builds on my Science toons as long as I've been playing; and I'm still reasonably confident that they just don't perform as consistently and reliably as grav or heal-based Sci builds. On one hand, I find they're much more useful in PvP - and far less so in most any PvE. I can see potential for overbuffing here, so I can understand treading lightly.
5) Aux Weapons for Sci: My Science Vessels will never match Cruisers or Escorts for DPS; but it's hard for me to fly anything (Fedside at least) other than a Vesta these days. Not being forced to powerjuggle makes Aux Phasers worth the price of admission alone - especially if I'm flying solo. Making similar (and maybe downtuned) weapons for other Science Vessels I'm hoping would improve diversity that I see in-game. Frankly, I don't know why Fleet versions of the Vesta phaser cannons don't seem to be on your radar - Andorian phasers are available for Fleet - why not Vestas?
First,
BIG THANKS for considering to listen to us!
Speaking as someone who likes to fly Starfleet Cruisers, please excuse if my point of view may be a bit one sided.
Tactical Team:
Important for quick shield distrubution, not much else.
The irony is that, slow ships need that skill the most...
(because they can't quickly turn and face another shield facing towards the enemy.)
...and most of those slow turning ships (starfleet cruisers) don't have enough Tactical BOFF stations.
So they end up with Tactical Team and one or two additional BOFF powers. (mostly FAW and a attack pattern). Let's face it, most ppl run Tactical team 24/7, but that's ok. Damage is way too high to survive without that. The problem is that ships with many tactical stations don't have to sacrifce their offensive potential for something that's a fundamental thing to survive in STO.
My sollution would be to remove the shield distribution aspect from TT entirely and buff "Distribute Shield Power" according to a ships turnrate. (the lower the turnrate the faster the shield distribution.)
This would open up much more tactical options for all ships, especailly those having only few tactical stations at hand.
Beam Overload, FAW, Scatter Volley, Rapid Fire
I find it very lacking that each of those powers are limited to one weapon type only. It would open much more possibilites if they where unlocked for all Energy weapon types.
For example:
Energy Weapons: Rapid Fire (increases the rate of fire at one single target, very high damage increase, chance to miss included)
Energy Weapons: Overload (keep as it is right now.
Energy Weapons: Scatter Volley (AOE attack to enemie ships near the target, medium damage)
Energy Weapons: Fire at Will (AOE attack at all ships in weapons arc, low damage)
This would open up much more tactical options, to ALL ships in the game not only those who are capable to use cannons and are alige enough to effectively use them (escorts).
The current game mechanic/design doesn't favour a good combination of Torpedo and Beam weapon combination, as seen on various Trek shows and Movies. Instead we are almost forced to focus on Beam weapons only. My point is not to nerf Beam weapons, but to give players more freedom to customize the availlable BOFF powers for their playstyle and to make STO more like Trek from the shows.:)
Attack Pattern Omega
I'm sorry but this power is simply too powerful. Damage Buff, Resistance AND Control Immunity? a bit too much , don't you think? It basicly makes a escort immune to almost everything, without drawback.
I'm ok with control imunity, but its resistance and first and foremost its damage bonus should be removed, thats what Attack Pattern Beta/Delta is in the game.
Auxiliary to Battery
I can understand that many players view it as too powerful. Escorts become OP, but if it gets nerfed Crusiers would be the teethless bricks as before the introduction of A2B CD reduction.
To prevent Escorts and similar ships to used A2B all the time (and become totally OP), why not make it more like Auxiliary to Structural?
Example:
CD: 15 sec
-30 Auxiliary Power Setting for 10 sec
Allowed Technicans: 1
Rank II: Lt. Commander
CD: 15 sec
-45 Auxiliary Power Setting for 10 sec
Allowed Technicans: 2
Rank III: Commander
CD: 15 sec
-60 Auxiliary Power Setting for 10 sec
Allowed Technicans: 3
As you can see the power buff has been removed and its CD reduction becomes really effetive at high level.
So only engineering Heavy ships would really benefit from A2B, without nerfing them too.
100% agreed.
I would make it even more extreme by increasing all hull HP by 300% (or even more) across the board, while increasing hull healing powers CD by the same amount.
The point of this is that STO feely too much arcade if people are able to "heal" their ships from 10% hull HP to 100% in seconds (and get killed by the same amount of time).
Space Combat would become more tactical and less button smashing only as it is now. A player had to actually think when to use a hull heal.
- Sorry for my bad english today.
EDIT:
I think STOs meta game mechanics should favour big ships much more, instead of small, nimble, spacefighter like escorts.
Heavy ships, equipped with Beam Weapons and Torpedoes are a minority in STO and rather uneffective. But small nimble cannon fireing escorts rule the game head and shoulders above everything else.
Star Trek Online should focus on what makes Star Trek unique and encourage people to fly Star Trek ships in a classy way. I am glad you basicly said goodbye to the Stone/Paper/Scissor mechanic, but it shouldn't stop there.
Cruisers and escorts hould become more alike.
Only a players playstyle and personal preference should determine which ship type to fly, not the ships offensive effectivety.
You gladly have given Escorts already enough surviveability.
Cruisers only got A2B, which turns a them into into glass cannons IMO.
Why not rework the very basic of how Cruisers and Escorts work in STO?
Both ship types should be heavy hitters
Escorts fast and nimble, relying on their speed to survive
Cruisers slower, sturdier just as stong offense as escorts.
Just look at Bridge Commander, ST: Legacy or Starfleet Command series. All these games where about captaining a big Star Trek ship, they where not about zipping around in small nimble ships, shooting their cannons like a WWII airplane.
Please don't see the above as a rant, but as a constructive critique.
Many other people and myself simply want STO to FEEL like a Star Trek game finally.
- Sorry for my bad english (again).
Thanks for reading.
GDF used to be usable at any % of hull, even if you were fully alive, you could use it.
I know you've been struggling with BO, and in particular how to make it viable without making it overpowered, especially in PvP -- well, why don't you make it more like Singularity Overcharge? Make it a power that increases single target DPS with beams by about double for a short time. Either remove the base damage boost and leave it at 100% CrtH, or remove the 100% CrtH and make it just have a +100% base damage for the duration. That way, it's a direct competitor against FAW, and at the same time heavily reduces vaping in PvP. You could change the name, too, if you wanted -- Beam Array: Direct Fire, or something. [EDIT: Just realised that this might compete a little too much with CRF. What if you gave CRF a bonus to Proc % chance? That gives it a unique and fun but not gamebreaking ability over the beam version)
Another idea I had was for Mask Energy Signature: Give it usefulness even to cloakers, by making it once again so that you can fire while under the effects of it -- but reduce the amount of stealth it grants. That way you can only fire 'cloaked' from range, which reduces damage, and science ships or ships with good sensors can see it easily out beyond firing range. For further balance, perhaps have it reduce shield hardness by 10% while active, in addition to the power drain -- make it a dangerous but effective ability to run.
The ship could emit disco lights and 70s tunes while nearby allies could gain a defense bonus
I agree with that and more Hy torps should move faster as they move now.
After xindi lockbox,due to new space traits, ships in PVP move and turn faster than before and Hy torps don't get to them.
(the single exception is in C&H against stationary targets trying to cap,where Hy torps are efficient)
I used to slot a quantum torpedo but now days I am trying to ditch it because i see it doesn't hit almost anything in a dogfight.The bad news for me is that with BO nerf incoming and not being able to use efficiently torpedoes in dogfight i shall have to find some alternatives and in a kdf bop i dont get many
I refuse to be content https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwI0u9L4R8U
But you asked nicely....so here we go
Captain Powers
Abandon Ship
I m not even sure what the design intention behind it was, how many people have it even in their power tray? The countdown is too long, the explosion doesn't do anything, ...its an RP skill but has no effect on gameplay
Eng
Nadeon Inversion
Even on a beam boat there are now better ways of reducing energy drain, eptx changes did their part so have many other sources of power, even BO no longer drains power. The power simply no longer performs its designed function, compared to other cpt abilities. It has no team value, and very little effects for the caster. Its self only, but does not decrease drains from science powers. Lets not forget it competes with scattering field and tac initiative, both useful powers. Back to the drawing board. If you insist on it remaining energy drain related, make it castable and actually counter science based drain (tykens, acetone etc) really nifty if it could get a SA treatment where casting it on a friend has a different effect then casting it on a foe.
EPS Power transfer
Suffers from similar problems as NI, although more useful. Even non engies can have +125 in all subsystems through other means constantly. It becomes more or less obsolete, it doesn't allow you to boost aux when using aux to bat. It competes with SNB (s.b.) and FOMM. Compared to those it just doesn't do anything worth writing home about. You have given our subsystems all this power, so i suggest looking at the secondary effects of all 4 eptx powers and implement something along these lines. Maybe allow it to boost the cap of all 4 subsystems while its active by 5 points.
Eng Fleet
vastly inferior to its tac and sci cousins, the idea is good some slight buff of numbers might be in order
Science
Subnucleus Beam
The great equaliser of PvP. In pug matches (and often organised matches as well) the team with the more science captains wins. It is a wonderful power, but in light of full disclosure, it might be a tad too good. Maybe eng and tac need some poor mans SNB to stay in the race.
In PvE, snb is almost useless. Since we have PvP mods, and PvP ship effects (raiders) maybe its time to give SNB different effect in PvE vs. PvP.
BO powers
Eng
Boarding Party
Impossible to land, even fully doffed and skilled its a mega gamble, (broken mechanics aside) compare that to APO, HE3, VM3, .... they do their job 100% of the time. perm uptime of tac team kills Boarding party even when it lands, its a bad choice in all instances. Thematically i would think that sending over boarding parties would be different from eg. VM. It should mess with cpt, bo, or doff powers or all of the above, as opposed to subsystems. Obviously caution is required here, but the way it has been since launch i can't make heads or tales from this one.
Aceton Beam
Radiation damage is laughable, even with special buffs (tal shiar lockbox, items ...) the debuff sounds good, until it gets cleared by the most widely shared skill in game = HE. Make HE clear the radiation and not the debuff, buff its effects and it might finally be useful to some for the first time in 10 season of STO.
Emergency Power to Engines
a little too good on the secondary effect, defence is through the roof.
Science
MES
Useless, in virtually 100% of cases other science powers are more valuable to the team or yourself. Many enemies see through MES and you can't use it to avoid damage when in red alert. OK visual is all i have to say about it on the up side. Something of an AOE ACC springs to mind to make it useful.
Tachyon Beam
Big enemies in STO are either unshielded, or have so many shield HP that given the piloting required to land all charges has obsoleted this skill. In PvP shield stripper builds (*RIP) are a much missed things of the past. Have it lower shield resists, while buffing Charged Particle Burst, and we could potentially see the return of a very popular cc build variant.
CPB
s.a.
Photonic Officer
Decidedly meh. PO 3 has a tooltip potential to lower CD to more then Global, however, global is global , so PO3 is useless. Not sure if PO2 or 1 are actually where they should be. Only very specialised builds might even consider them. I haven't in a long time, but being around for a little while i can tell that in most cases people try that plan something involving PO, quickly switch the power out of their load out, because it just doesn't cut it.
Jam Sensors
with doffs good for 1v1 pvp. It could be a nice oh **** button, if it where AOE, but how often do you face a single enemy in PvP or PvE so even if the gate won't shoot me, the tac cube will, not worth the slot.
SS
Pure evil with Doffs in PvP. In PvE eg. NWS, too many enemies have inbuilt resists to it. It used to be much more powerful and much more fun. Watching NPC shoot each other to hell, would love to see one of those one-shoot gate torp spreads go out to a tac cube, alas ....magical resists. The power is good as it is, the magical (might say lazy design) resists of NPC make it underwhelming. Compare the NPC damage of a fully buffed and specced SS3 with TAC buffed FBP3. And you see what i m talking about. Even in NWS or STFS FBP works, why not SS??
PSW
you erred on the low side when nerving this one. Both stun and damage are too low.
TAC
Subsytem Targeting
With too much power around, the extra drain or chance to disable has become mute. We used to be able to disable a shield facing via phaser procs, subsystem targeting, VM etc. You have removed all these from the game. I would like to see the return of a play style that focuses on temporarily (more then 0.8 seconds) disabling a shield facing to land a torp in PvE. For PvP this would need more consideration, but, while OP, ol phaser procs made sure that matches ended. I miss target callers switching targets because these brief but deadly windows of opportunities are presenting themselves. But with new ET up time this previously OP aspect might be a non issue.
Lastly, they share CD with BO and F@W pushing them further down the obsolete camp. Bo3 drains shields better then Target Sub Shields....why?
TT
TT1 is too good. TT2 and 3 are useless. There have been many threads about it, and you can see quickly that everybody and their mother wants best possible TT uptime in PvE. Give it opportunity cost by making TT3 the current TT1, and make its effectiveness dependent on ship stats, slow turners need it more (accidentally this with more crew) then fast turners.
APO
Does everything....wtf? Boost damage, increases defence, counters CC. Where is the Cmdr sci or eng skill that does it all, with doffs to push it to global cd. APO3 is too good (period).
The other dispersal pattern
good on paper, little use for anything. TS and HYT are two separate powers with a clear distinction between them. The both dispersal patterns don't stand out against each other, maybe give us different CD when cycling both is a small step in the right direction. I d rather see something like wide net large damage boost (less chance of multiple mines hitting a target) vs. tight net small damage boost.
Generally
team power cd changes have made CC hard. Its weak in PvE mostly to magical powers of npcs. It still rules in PvP, but only because resists, HP, defence, and everything else has gone through the roof. Sci needs some quick kill abilities not boosted by tac captain powers. at a cost obviously, but something to make solo sci/sci play more enjoyable.
Tac has APA, FOMM, (GDF) -> fire
sci has SNB, SS, ->fire
they can perform these powerful attacks at level 17
eng has ???
all subsystem energy related eng skills are obsolete due to power creep, there is also very little synergy. Engie needs a combo, once more NI, and EPS compare to some of the most powerful abilities in game. Compared to these they are laughable.
Qapla, not expecting to see any good come out of this, but hi you asked, and since geko only sees rants on these forums, lets at least make it obvious that asinine forum posts, are a reaction to how the devs approach the player base, and nothing else. So thanks for asking.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
I am not going into "nerf this, buff that". I imagine this thread will have plenty of that type of "advice".
What I am going to do is to ASK for a new single target beam power because Beam Overload isn't working for that. Let me explain why, by comparing the cannon powers to the beam powers.
CRF and CSV are the cannon staple powers. They work in a straightforward manner. CRF simply increases the DPS of cannons in a linear fashion and CSV slightly increases it while adding area to the weapons effects. Also the more cannon weapons you have, the more effective they are.
There are more beam powers than cannon powers, yet they fail at being useful for beam boats. Both Beam Overload and the various Subsystem Targeting have the same problem. They use only ONE beam yet they put ALL beam powers in a 15 seconds cooldown period. That means that these powers reward you for having ONE beam and several cannons, since you can get the best results from them while also getting the benefits of the cannon powers.
Fire at Will then becomes the ONLY power that rewards you for having your ship full of beams. I am not getting into all the issues FAW has, just pointing out that at this time it is the only valid choice for an all beam build.
Therefore I propose that a new beam power be introduced into the game that mimics the results of CRF, even if the power itself looks quite different.
And changing the subject for a moment... there are a lot of strong opinions about Aux2bat, including some dev posts saying they don't like it. What I would like to know is what, in the eyes of the developers, is wrong with it so that any discussion about it can be channeled into something useful instead of the usual rants about it. If people want those there are plenty all over the forums.
NO.
This idea is bad; and you should feel bad for having even considered it.
DO NOT NERF A2B
People keep bringing A2B up. However, non of the top-dps builds are A2B. Top DPS build don't use A2B technicians. They all use Zemoks. Yet people aren't clamouring for a nerf to Zemoks. The reason is simple:
A2B doffs are lot more commonly used because they are, nominally, free. You do some doffing, and sooner or later you got 3 VR purple ones. Zemoks, OTOH, are only available to the "leet" players who can afford 100M+ ship builds.
If you nerf A2B techs you will manage only one thing: to widen the gap between the casual players, and the power players. You should be looking to do the opposite. So, instead of nerfing A2B, I propose you fix the underlying problem. The underlying problem is...
The space abilities design, with long cooldowns, which necessitates the need for duplicate abilities is flawed. The reason is simple:
1) It's boring. If you have only copy of each ability, like in low-level ships, you're bored out of your mind waiting for cooldowns. I get that the devs originally intended for space combat to happen at a slower pace than ground combat, but they went overboard. Having all your abilities take 30s to 2 minutes to refresh means most of the time you're just flying around waiting for things to happen
2) It makes having duplicate abilities a necessity for any build, removing real choice and replacing it with the illusion of choice. Every single competitive space build, every single one, relies on having TT, EptX, at least one Attack Pattern, and at least one cannon or beam attack, on global coodown. There is no real choice here. It makes for boring, cookie cutter builds, and very little real choice.
I propose a very simple solution to your problem:
1) Lower the cooldown of all abilities to their duplicate ability global cooldown.
2) Re-balance the powers around the assumption that now everyone has access to said abilities with the new cooldowns.
This completely solves the problem of A2B being "OP" by making it moot. A2B doffs would no longer do anything (they'd probably have to be modified to do something else entirely). So too with Zemoks etc. This levels the playing field. Now everyone has their key abilities "at global". It'll make space combat more fun, and it removes imbalances. Finally, it makes some builds and fittings more desirable, like torpedoes, since you have more room for abilities that buff them, while still staying "at global".
There, I solved your problem.
Of course, this introduces a different problem. Namely, what do you do with all those extra boff seats now that you don't have to have duplicate abilities? Well, you're introducing Command BOFFs in the expansion (OK, you've only said a "new type" of BOFF, but I'm assuming they're command). You can make Command BOFFs to be "wildcards" or "universal", so they can be slotted into *any* existing ship bridge officer seats. So you could use a command boff in either a tac, engie, or sci seat. I'm assuming you're introducing brand new BOFF powers to come with your brand new BOFFs. This is a great way to give everyone access to those.
Oh, but you probably intended to give your shiny new T6 ships dedicated command boff seats; and this would likely make those ships less attractive. Easy solution. Make it so that command officers can only use their ensign and Lt. level abilities in non-command seats. That way you can use command boffs to fill in your now freed up Lt. and Ensign stations that were previously being used for duplicate abilities; but, if you want to use Lt. Cmdr+ command abilities you'd still need to get a T6 ship.
There you go. I've fixed your game.
There is little benefit to having an Engineer on a PvP team unless you are forced by the rules to take them, Tacticals win on damage and Sciences win on healing and control, a tank is useless and Engineering Fleet as a power is often just mocked.
K'ymara, Orion Engineer. Caedera of Borg, Liberated Borg Tactical, Elyza Vix, Joined Trill Scientist. Christina Bellona, Augmented Human Tactical.
T'Lana, Vulcan Scientist. Arbol, Martian Tactical. Ayzer Bryn, Joined Trill Engineer. Hawke, Betazoid Scientist. Karna Valkras, Klingon Engineer. Beth Parker, Human Tactical
Sarel, Romulan Engineer (Federation). Yazuri, Reman Scientist (KDF)
With HE for example, the overall heal and resistance buff is aux-dependant. Why isn't the cleanse? By that, I mean: at 5 aux, it'll cleanse 500 damage per tick, at 135 it cleanses substantially more.
Same with PH: at 5 aux, you're basically going nowhere if tractored.