1st off, thank you for asking for our input .. I list a few of the issues with some of the stuff I see...
1) Quit messing with science players, This is extremely annoying
A) Dual heavy Aux Cannons .. on a Sci ship? .. REALLY? .. so adding a weapon that disallows a science ship to some of it's special abilities? Extremely limits its arc of fire and reduces its overall damage across the board.. really?.. Aux Phasers beams or a beam bank or even a SINGLE phaser Aux cannon.. GREAT ..Heavy Cannons?!
Fused, nonstandard weapons, Another WTF idea, "hey lets force science captains to use a rainbow ship" No tactical consoles that are worth it to buff the weapon, only 1 other weapon of that type in the ENTIRE game. and they will have to use dil to get that too! *note that Tact players got an aft fused PHASER cannon they can buff*
To put those 2 into prospective, come out with a new tac ship that has one of its forward weapons as a Fused 360 Proton beam, that only works with Beam Overload and you will understand how badly the above "features" are regarded.
2) It's past time for a 4x3 Science ship. Unencumbered by added TRIBBLE. Tac and Engi's have 5x3s
A) remove any hanger, its a fair trade for a 4x3 ..
3) Subsystem targetting .. needs a serious relook. It's always been underpowered and its gotten worse.
A) Upgrade it to ST2 .. Make it an always on ability, like the cruiser commands.
4) Sci powers are understrength and need upgraded.
A) a tac power does X damage, an engineer power does x/2 damage and has an effect, sci powers do x/4 and little to no effects, this is what we traded boff commander slots for .. make it worthwhile. Sensor Analyst, once turned on should stay on with whatever we target, no turnning it off switching targets .. delay delay. . turn it back on .. remove the delay. Engineering ships get this too ..
Hangers, If a ship can USE a hanger legally, why not be able to BUY the hanger. Example. Orion Carrier, You can use Orion fighters on almost all KDF ships, fine, if you Buy the Fleet Orion Marauder, you cant buy the hangers, why? Quote "Because a fleet deck carrier isn't owned" .. WTF ?
5) Give fed players Mask Energy System .. compairing the Dyson ships the fed players lost a LARGE advantage with no cloaking, Roms=best KDF=good Fed=nothing .. Mask energy would give them something.
R&D
Romulan Dil weapons are still in the game .. why are there no versions in the research tab?
Quad Cannons, are in game .. nothing to research ?
Andorian Phasers .. Just a color change .. no research ?
Where are the Aux Weapons? (Science ships only, maybe)
Emission Tracking torpedo.. Old .. easily upgraded <Doctor Mccoy assisted with one during a battle> .. Can't research and build one of these ?
Remove limiters on some research weapons .. Wide angle cannons .. why limited to 1?
Suggestion for Stackable weapons upgrades in R&D .. Phased Disruptors, for example .. Anti-protonic Polarons etc. Kinetic Tetryons <now that actually sounds interesting!>
Beam Array Fire at Will: S2, E4, T3
Beam Array Overload: S1, E4, T3 (prior the changes: S1, E1, T1)
Tactical Team: S4, E4, T4
Torpedo High Yield: S3, E1, T3
Torpedo Spread: S3, E1, T3 (my personal preference: S4, E1, T4; before Dyson content: S2, E1, T2)
Target Weapons Subsystems: S2*, E1, T1 (* - built in in ship)
Target Engines Subsystems: S2*, E1, T1 (* - built in in ship)
Target Shields Subsystems: S2*, E1, T1 (* - built in in ship)
Target Auxiliary Subsystems: S2*, E1, T1 (* - built in in ship)
Attack Pattern Beta: S2, E3, T4
Attack Pattern Delta: S2, E2, T2
Cannon Rapid Fire: S1, E1, T4
Cannon Scatter Volley: S1, E1, T4
Dispersal Pattern Alpha: S1, E1, T1
Dispersal Pattern Beta: S1, E1, T1
Attack Pattern Omega: S1, E1, T3
summary:
- Hazard emitters and Tactical team are a "must" for everybody. This is the result of the Borg-STFs, where you are permanently plasma-dotted and have to fight borg beam-ins. In Addition the shield-shifting from TT is usefull simply everywhere. The new Undine Content did not change anything in this case. In contrary: you need these two powers more than before
- then you have powers, which are a "must" for one or two classes of captains: Stuff like Gravity well/Tykens Rift (Sci), E2W (Tac, Eng), APx (Tac, Eng). Here could be a kind of separation useful. e.g. Gravity Well is power, where Sci gets the most bang for the buck - the other two not that much. Maybe a shift in E2W (Eng gets more bang) and APx (Tac gets more bang) would help here...
- several powers become very important as soon as there are doffs involved, who change their respective behaviour: A2B, DEM. To a lesser extent TBR, TB. Here is a point, where one should consider a nerf/a bigger change in their respective mechanic. If a Tac / Eng captain can do significant DPS only by using A2B + x, then everybody will use / uses A2B + x.
- then there is a group of powers which are highly situational (those, which do not have any 3's or 4's), like: E2A, E2E, A2D, EWP, JTS, MES, &c. &c. Here you should consider either: adding significantly more situations to use them (e.g. A2D helps to escape those rifts the Undine Gila are spamming around) - or improve their usefulness (either by buffing or by Doffs)
- in the last group you will find powers almost nobody is using. The exception here are: noob players and "exotic setup testers": Boarding Party, Photonic Officer, Viral Matrix, Mine Dispersal Patterns. Most of these powers have been nerfed directly (VM, MDP) or indirectly (MDP) in the past or have been designed bad from begining (BP). The fix here would be a mix of the solutions from the group above this - combined with a sort of redesign of the power with a focus on "it this power useful in the typical endgame content?"
I've been tossing this idea around for a bit and have presented it to many of the PVP community with nothing but positive replies. i was planning to make a thread for it, but here you are, asking for ideas. so here is mine.
The Problems: Threat Control is useless. in PVE it's pretty useless too. in PVP it's doubly useless and Tanking is, for the most part, laughed at. indeed the term "zombie tank" is often used to attempt to insult a person. this is because a tank is easily ignored in PVP till all his friends are dead. but wait, a tanks job is to take the hits for his team. to save them from the damage. but he can't do this in PVP because forcing other players to shoot you is nothing more then frustrating for the other person. what i'm about to detail is an idea at making tanks the person you want to kill first, without making them deal obscene damage or forcing you to shoot them. the goal here is to make you WANT to shoot them and encourage better team work in the game in general.
The Solution:
Definition Clarification:
Threat: this is something you build up on NPCs by attacking them. normally, its a 1:1 scale. 1 damage = 1 threat. Threat Generation: Threat Gen is a modifier for the amount of threat you build by attacking. more threat gen = more threat per DPS. altering it from 1 damage 1 threat, to 1 damage 2 threat, or 1 damage 10 threat. and so on. Threat Control: By default, this skill grants a scaling bonus to Threat Gen and your ships Hull Damage Resistance. note that Threat Gen DOES NOT affect your hull damage resistance. ONLY Threat Control can do that.
first and foremost, the skill itself does not change much. it has 9 ranks with a scaling bonus to threat gen and hull damage resist as per current behaviour ingame. only 2 passive bonuses are added at 3 and 9 ranks respectively.
these two passives are: Threat Analysis and Threat Networking.
What they do:
Threat Networking(TN): This passive is gained at 3 Ranks of Threat Control. It allows you to benefit from other players stacks of Threat Analysis. Note: you must still build threat on your target and they must still have at least 1 Stack of Threat Analysis from someone with 9 ranks in Threat Control to be of benefit.
Threat Analysis(TA): This Passive is gained at 9 ranks of Threat Control. It grants your attacks a passive buff/debuff power. anyone hit by your attacks will gain 1 stack, with an internal cooldown of 30 seconds for each specific player.
EG: Shooting player 1 will grant 1 stack, trigger the 30 second CD. you may immediately hit player 2 and gain 1 stack on them and trigger a separate 30 second CD on them.
EG: Using BFAW will grant 1 stack on each player hit and will trigger separate 30 second CDs for each one.
A max of 10 stacks can be on any one player. however, multiple stacks of 10 can be on multiple players.
EG: 1 10 Stack for player A. 1 10 stack for player B. 1 10 stack for player C. ETC.
The Mechanic:
each stack grants a percentile bonus to Defence, Shield Damage Resistance and Hull Damage Resistance, scaled by how much threat you have generated with diminishing returns on a per player basis.
EG: you have generated 100k Threat on player 1, and have 1 stack of Threat Analysis on him. this grants you a 1% across the board bonus to Defence, Shield and Hull Damage Resistances (stacked with appropriate diminishing returns on your current numbers) to Player 1s attacks, however, this will NOT affect player 2s attacks, until you have built Threat and at least 1 Stack of Threat Analysis on him also.
each Stack of Threat Analysis uses your generated threat to generate a multiplier based number, such as this:
Threat X Stacks / 100,000.
in our example, this is: 100,000 x 1 / 100,000 = 1. which is the bonus we get. 1%.
so 10 stacks in our example would do this: 100,000 x 10 / 100,000 = 10 = 10% bonuses.
Clearing it: so, how do you clear this? Sensor scramble and jam sensors will clear this as it clears your targeting data and captains will alter their attacking style If they're finding it ineffective. Also, the debuff only lasts for 35 seconds per stack. So If you stop hitting them, after the 30 second application cd wears off, you will lose 1 stack every 5 seconds. This represents the enemy adapting to your defences while you're not watching their behaviour.
Extra clarification:
Remember that this is a per player bonus, so people who have no threat on the target and don't have at least 3 Ranks in Threat Control will not be affected by Threat Analysis.
+th consoles increase your threat gen. And will therefore increase the rate at which threat builds on players, these would there for increase the speed at which your bonuses scale up.
What this represents in an RP value:
Threat Control represents your ability to make yourself seem more dangerous then you really are. to appear more threatening. at 9 ranks, youre so skilled at this, that youre able to see the true threat of other captains that youre fighting, youre able to analyse their strengths. allowing you to see how to best protect yourself from that threat. The Threat Networking passive represents your ability to take advice from more experienced captains in how the target is most threatening and use that information to better protect yourself.
This Concludes my presentation.
~Astillius
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Most PVP'ers idea of winning: killing everyone.
Tanks idea of winning: not getting killed.
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.
Who cares what the top DPS people use? Aux2bat needs something done about it because currently,the only negative aspect to it is slower launching pets (if you have them). Nothing else.
Every other other boff power has negatives, even if its just that by using it you forgo the use of another power.
The only negative for aux2bat is low aux power, which no one cares about.
This has been posted in a different thread, but now this is official.
STO suffers from the Dog fighting idea that ships need to explode quickly. When, in terms of the RP, this simply did not happen. Combat was long and drawn out and the victory usually was the one who didn't ruin away. Also, ships became damaged during combat, not after they explode.
I've been thinking about this mechanic, and i think it might actually SAVE PvP...
Hear me out.
With this system, you would have three ways to defeat another player in combat. All of them balanced.
DPSers= Shoot it until it is dead.
Debuffers= overwhelm a target with debuffs and injuries until they are ineffective and crippled.
Tanks= Simply outlast your opponent, and let your pressure damage slowly breakdown.
I also thought about adding a chance effect for Engy team to remove a injury in combat, because.. you know, that is what the Engy teams should be doing. There could also be a doff that allows EPtX to remove an damage debuff of the same category. So Emergency Power to Engines has a chance to remove an engine damage debuff. Because you are rerouting power around the damaged portion of the ship to temporality give you full combat ability.
Doing this would rebalance tanks and the Engineering class as they are going to have the most skills to be able to actively fix your ship while in combat. This will increase the staying power of both you and your teammates so they everyone can have the time needed to break down a target. You also have a unique approach to each class and how they achieve their goals, besides pure DPS.
Science characters now have a greater chance to apply damage debuffs over time. Skills like Gravity well have a greater chance of appliyng hull stress and fractures. Viral Matrix can do computer system damage. Tachyon beam can damage the shield systems. All while ABOVE the 50% health damaging threshold. So while their DPS might not be enough to get a target below the breaking threshold initially, their science skills can sabotage and cripple the ship immediately, until they are crippled and easy to defeat.
DPSers do the exact same thing as before. but now it is more of a risk. The longer they sit and try to wail on a single target, the more risk they are at receiving damage debuffs. And since they have limited engy slots, they will not have the resources to repair themselves mid combat. Meaning long drawn out battles are NOT in their favor.
This change would make the game more canon, more challenging, and more balanced in one go. Again. this hinges on a major balancing pass of all damage and abilities FIRST.
This proposal would require a few mechanics changes. However, by using assets readily available in game, we can change the feel of combat to a more drawn out, tactical, and nail-biting experience with risk and rewards.
1) Lower overall damage output and increase base resistance.
Simply enough. No more one hit kills and insta-death moves. Have you work for your kills without the cheap shots.
2) Add damage debuffs as a roll based on your total hull
With this, I mean that the lower your hull gets, the more chance you have of receiving a damage debuff. The Lower your hull, the more severe the debuff. My proposed scale would be as follows:
At 50% hull: 25% chance of receiving a Minor Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
At 25% hull: 35% chance of receiving a Minor Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
15% chance of receiving a Major Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
At 15% hull: 45% chance of receiving a Minor Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
25% chance of receiving a Major Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
15%chance of receiving a Critical Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
This means the lower your hull, the more damaged you get. Also, the longer you are under the threshold, the more damaged you get. This would more accurately portray the battle damage a ship would receive in a firefight. Consoles blow out. EPS systems overload. Personnel are injured. All of this going on as you are in combat. This would make long drawn out fights a nightmare as you are attempting to hold together your ship that is falling apart at the seams.
3) Optional combat warp out sequence in order to avoid further damage and death.
So, with this current system I am proposing, you will build up damage debuffs while under fire, that will cost you in down time later on. Combat is slower and more drawn out so you can avoid these situations and make tactical decisions along the way.
My final suggestions would be an in combat "Tactical Retreat" warp out that you can activate under 25% hull. This would replace the current "abandon ship" power. This power would break combat and warp you out of the mission, without a leaver penalty. You would be essentially "forfeiting" the match and making a run for it while you can. This is literally a last resort button, as it takes you out of the mission and you receive no reward. (Partial rewards maybe possible for PVE queued mission, but not as much as the full reward for sticking it out. PvP will be discussed later on.)
This power would be negated by Tractor Beams, Gravity wells, or any power that holds a ship. It also will be negated by disabled engine power.
The motive for this would be to avoid death. The lost of a ship was a terrible thing for a captain's record and should be avoided at all cost. These vessels contain hundreds, if not thousands of crew members with families and homes and they entrust their lives to you. This tension would be played out with a death penalty of a a 1 hour cooldown on that vessel, that is non-interruptible. If your hull reaches zero percent, you will be transported to your Faction's home system and you will have to transfer command to another vessel until the burning hulk of your old command can be repaired. You will also forfeit the mission, with partial rewards handed out based on performance.
In PvP, the dynamic would basically be "last team standing." You would go until either one team is forced to warp out, or is destroyed. When you warp out, you will go into a spectator mode and will follow on of your allies. Participants will receive credit to the PvP dailies, plus the current EC and Expertise reward. However, if you can manage to actually KILL another player (since, this would be a rare occurrence now.) you would receive a nice dilithium reward plus a title. If you are within a team that gets a kill, and you are within 10 kms of the target in question, you will receive a smaller support reward. If you contributed 33% or more to the damage taken on a player, you will receive full credit for a kill.
Obviously, there are alot of things to consider with this, such as the dynamic of leaver's penalties, plus missions where loosing too many members will make the mission impossible to progress. This will also need a massive balancing pass to remove one hit kill builds and NPCs from the game. (With some exceptions, such as the Borg Beach ball and the Plasma Lances, as those are avoidable with proper tactics and situational awareness).
While not QUITE as terrible as permanent ship destruction, (which would have the players grabbing pitch forks and torches over losing purchases), it adds a dynamic between a ship and her command that seems to be missing from this game. This mechanic would hopefully curtail the Leeroy Jenkins moments, and bring players to pause.. and consider if they can actually WIN this fight with those three Borg Cubes over there. It would also allow people to more fully utilize those multiple ships that they will buy, in order to have a "reserve command" for when the TRIBBLE hits the fan.
This system could also be optional, a "hardcore mode" if you wish. However, the implementation of this would be troublesome, as hardcores players would essentially have to play with other hardcore players on their own teams and own rules.
Any other suggestions? Thoughts? Comments or edits you would like to add? Comment below.
Live on Earth. Work in Space. Play with Dragons. Join the best add on to STO, the Neverwinter holodeck program! Only 14 GPL a month.
First off my perspective of balance is from the PvP side, but I have always found that what works in PvP also is more than enough for PVE. Side note I would love having separate PvP and PVE mechanics, where abilities work in different ways if used against npc's or players.
Now, although I love having FBP do 3x normal damage I think sci abilities should be decoupled from Tac CAPTAIN abilities, I think decoupling them from normal attack patterns would just nerf allot of current sci builds that have a attack pattern beta or omega to buff grav well or something along those lines.
I have never found a huge problem with tac team having shield distro, because atleast from my perspective distributing shield to the side that is getting pummeled has always stricken me as a tactical move. If it's a balance issue I would say make the distro slower or something along those lines, or add secondary abilities to the other teams ( downside aux2bat builds would get buffed but I'll address that). Attack pattern omega also seems to be getting some hate right now, and I have not really seen why. Damage wise it is still less than beta, and the movement buff is a must have for escort if they wish to compete, if anything nerf the teir 1 ability to remove one of the bonuses and keep teir 3 the same.
Now while I am on the subject of escorts another issue strikes me. Cannons and their distance damage loss. I mean why? There's no point anymore, they don't benefit from overcap, and their abilities are a teir higher than other weapons.
Aux2bat and its many issues have already been mentioned A LOT, but I would like to throw in my two cents. I think their are a few workable workarounds. First one is keep the ability the same, but make the doffs act like damage control engis where it is a chance (30-20% maybe?) to reduce by x%. This adds a failure chance, and would leave some TRIBBLE in the armor. The other option is totally disable aux or aux regen during the time of the ability ( aux would only slowly come back after the ability is finished. Speed determined by EPS). To anyone who says aux2bat is weaker than a EptX cruiser damage wise try taking that EptX cruiser into normal pvp. You will usually get ripped a new one. Sure, damage might be a tad lower in PVE, but in pvp AND PVE aux2bat cruisers gain huge amounts of survivability while dishing out lots of damage. Minor changes like the ones I suggested would still keep cruiser viable in both PVE and pvp, but would also bring them more into line with other builds.
I've noticed everybody's bashing Aceton Beam, and I had to come in...
It's a 75% (at least in my Commander slot - II or III) energy damage reduction, very handy for mitigating an escort's CRF if your ship can't handle it. Its lower cooldown compared to RSP - as well as the fact that it deals (admittedly negligible) damage - is just icing on the cake.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
I would like to see an update to the Torpedo Abilities, as it is now torpedo's have become pointless because as long as there are shields 90% of the damage vanishes. Another problems is the low traveling rate of them so when the shield of your enemy is down and you fire them they will be already be back up before the torpedo hit.
I know there is the trait with DoT for torpedo's but there are other abilities like Beam Overload that makes Torpedo's to a third class weapon.
My suggestion would be to allow torpedo's with High Yield or Spread to do full dame to the shields (might be a bit too powerful), but at least increase the shield penetration to 25-35%
This has been posted in a different thread, but now this is official.
STO suffers from the Dog fighting idea that ships need to explode quickly. When, in terms of the RP, this simply did not happen. Combat was long and drawn out and the victory usually was the one who didn't ruin away. Also, ships became damaged during combat, not after they explode.
I've been thinking about this mechanic, and i think it might actually SAVE PvP...
Hear me out.
With this system, you would have three ways to defeat another player in combat. All of them balanced.
DPSers= Shoot it until it is dead.
Debuffers= overwhelm a target with debuffs and injuries until they are ineffective and crippled.
Tanks= Simply outlast your opponent, and let your pressure damage slowly breakdown.
I also thought about adding a chance effect for Engy team to remove a injury in combat, because.. you know, that is what the Engy teams should be doing. There could also be a doff that allows EPtX to remove an damage debuff of the same category. So Emergency Power to Engines has a chance to remove an engine damage debuff. Because you are rerouting power around the damaged portion of the ship to temporality give you full combat ability.
Doing this would rebalance tanks and the Engineering class as they are going to have the most skills to be able to actively fix your ship while in combat. This will increase the staying power of both you and your teammates so they everyone can have the time needed to break down a target. You also have a unique approach to each class and how they achieve their goals, besides pure DPS.
Science characters now have a greater chance to apply damage debuffs over time. Skills like Gravity well have a greater chance of appliyng hull stress and fractures. Viral Matrix can do computer system damage. Tachyon beam can damage the shield systems. All while ABOVE the 50% health damaging threshold. So while their DPS might not be enough to get a target below the breaking threshold initially, their science skills can sabotage and cripple the ship immediately, until they are crippled and easy to defeat.
DPSers do the exact same thing as before. but now it is more of a risk. The longer they sit and try to wail on a single target, the more risk they are at receiving damage debuffs. And since they have limited engy slots, they will not have the resources to repair themselves mid combat. Meaning long drawn out battles are NOT in their favor.
This change would make the game more canon, more challenging, and more balanced in one go. Again. this hinges on a major balancing pass of all damage and abilities FIRST.
This proposal would require a few mechanics changes. However, by using assets readily available in game, we can change the feel of combat to a more drawn out, tactical, and nail-biting experience with risk and rewards.
1) Lower overall damage output and increase base resistance.
Simply enough. No more one hit kills and insta-death moves. Have you work for your kills without the cheap shots.
2) Add damage debuffs as a roll based on your total hull
With this, I mean that the lower your hull gets, the more chance you have of receiving a damage debuff. The Lower your hull, the more severe the debuff. My proposed scale would be as follows:
At 50% hull: 25% chance of receiving a Minor Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
At 25% hull: 35% chance of receiving a Minor Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
15% chance of receiving a Major Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
At 15% hull: 45% chance of receiving a Minor Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
25% chance of receiving a Major Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
15%chance of receiving a Critical Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
This means the lower your hull, the more damaged you get. Also, the longer you are under the threshold, the more damaged you get. This would more accurately portray the battle damage a ship would receive in a firefight. Consoles blow out. EPS systems overload. Personnel are injured. All of this going on as you are in combat. This would make long drawn out fights a nightmare as you are attempting to hold together your ship that is falling apart at the seams.
3) Optional combat warp out sequence in order to avoid further damage and death.
So, with this current system I am proposing, you will build up damage debuffs while under fire, that will cost you in down time later on. Combat is slower and more drawn out so you can avoid these situations and make tactical decisions along the way.
My final suggestions would be an in combat "Tactical Retreat" warp out that you can activate under 25% hull. This would replace the current "abandon ship" power. This power would break combat and warp you out of the mission, without a leaver penalty. You would be essentially "forfeiting" the match and making a run for it while you can. This is literally a last resort button, as it takes you out of the mission and you receive no reward. (Partial rewards maybe possible for PVE queued mission, but not as much as the full reward for sticking it out. PvP will be discussed later on.)
This power would be negated by Tractor Beams, Gravity wells, or any power that holds a ship. It also will be negated by disabled engine power.
The motive for this would be to avoid death. The lost of a ship was a terrible thing for a captain's record and should be avoided at all cost. These vessels contain hundreds, if not thousands of crew members with families and homes and they entrust their lives to you. This tension would be played out with a death penalty of a a 1 hour cooldown on that vessel, that is non-interruptible. If your hull reaches zero percent, you will be transported to your Faction's home system and you will have to transfer command to another vessel until the burning hulk of your old command can be repaired. You will also forfeit the mission, with partial rewards handed out based on performance.
In PvP, the dynamic would basically be "last team standing." You would go until either one team is forced to warp out, or is destroyed. When you warp out, you will go into a spectator mode and will follow on of your allies. Participants will receive credit to the PvP dailies, plus the current EC and Expertise reward. However, if you can manage to actually KILL another player (since, this would be a rare occurrence now.) you would receive a nice dilithium reward plus a title. If you are within a team that gets a kill, and you are within 10 kms of the target in question, you will receive a smaller support reward. If you contributed 33% or more to the damage taken on a player, you will receive full credit for a kill.
Obviously, there are alot of things to consider with this, such as the dynamic of leaver's penalties, plus missions where loosing too many members will make the mission impossible to progress. This will also need a massive balancing pass to remove one hit kill builds and NPCs from the game. (With some exceptions, such as the Borg Beach ball and the Plasma Lances, as those are avoidable with proper tactics and situational awareness).
While not QUITE as terrible as permanent ship destruction, (which would have the players grabbing pitch forks and torches over losing purchases), it adds a dynamic between a ship and her command that seems to be missing from this game. This mechanic would hopefully curtail the Leeroy Jenkins moments, and bring players to pause.. and consider if they can actually WIN this fight with those three Borg Cubes over there. It would also allow people to more fully utilize those multiple ships that they will buy, in order to have a "reserve command" for when the TRIBBLE hits the fan.
This system could also be optional, a "hardcore mode" if you wish. However, the implementation of this would be troublesome, as hardcores players would essentially have to play with other hardcore players on their own teams and own rules.
Any other suggestions? Thoughts? Comments or edits you would like to add? Comment below.
Most intriguing... I'd say it's definitely worth looking at, but something tells me it's beyond Cryptic's ability to implement by October.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
I would like to see an update to the Torpedo Abilities, as it is now torpedo's have become pointless because as long as there are shields 90% of the damage vanishes. Another problems is the low traveling rate of them so when the shield of your enemy is down and you fire them they will be already be back up before the torpedo hit.
I know there is the trait with DoT for torpedo's but there are other abilities like Beam Overload that makes Torpedo's to a third class weapon.
My suggestion would be to allow torpedo's with High Yield or Spread to do full dame to the shields (might be a bit too powerful), but at least increase the shield penetration to 25-35%
Thanks for this Thread
Actually this. Exactly this.
Torpedoes should be highly desirable to use for ships. Right now they pretty much bounce off unless the target shields are already down, in which case you probably don't need the torpedoes to finish them off anyway.
Torpedoes should be highly desirable to use for ships. Right now they pretty much bounce off unless the target shields are already down, in which case you probably don't need the torpedoes to finish them off anyway.
I think that ship hull HP are way too low.
Let's just assume they had 3 times as much HP, torpedo dmg could be raised to really hurt them.
This would make Ship to Ship much more tactical since one had to time a attack much more, instead of simply hammering the enemies ship hull.
I would like to make a additional suggestion regarding space weapons:
I always felt that Starfleet cruisers lack of offensive power, like KDF battlecruisers have.
So how about introducing something like a Heavy Beam Array, capable of doing DHC equal damage but at a lower attack rate. (only installable on Starfleet Cruisers)
We shouldn't forget that in "real" trek Starfleet crusiers, are heavy hitters too unlike in STO.
I stongly feel that they should get something on their own, since they cannot rely on DHCs or something equal. (something Escorts and other ships cannot use.)
Here's something for the visual aspect:
In order to make STO feel and look more like a Trek game, i think it would be best to combine all equipped energy weapons and let them look like one single beam. This would make Space Combat look much more like seen on TV/Movies.
Of course special abilities like FAW would look the same, but space combat wouldn't look so cartoonish anymore IMO.
I think we should go away from the idea of beam array using ships being broadsiders. I mean this isn't some pirate game, Starfleet ships do have at least a 270 degrees forward fireing arc. I always found the idea of broadsiding a bit strange to be honest.
Sure this would require some heavy rework of the existing game mechanics, but since it has been asked what to improve...
"...'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
They face so many disadvantages compared to energy weapons.
It all starts with their ineffectiveness against shields, and their effective limitation to two launchers per aft or fore.
The second limitation is acceptable but not really ideal for funs sake, and if torpedoes get some love it may even be necessary, if you guys deem it isn't, you should give three torpedoes a chance at working together.
The first limitation is the big deal for torpedoes. You have to take shields down for torpedoes to be effective, so you have to use energy weapons too, or use one of the meager work arounds. The work arounds are almost never ideal by themselves, everyone knows that the bleed through torpedoes are only good for PVP and that tetryon shield drainage is weak as hell, elite fleet disruptors are pretty good, but only Klingons can get those and no one wants to be limited to one energy weapon type. Even if you spec into energy weapons too and use energy weapon boosting consoles, all the enemy has to do to is turn their ship and your attack is wasted.
It all effectively restrains torpedoes to one role, burst damage, their arc also assists in limiting them to this role. This is all because in both high level PVE and PVP shield regeneration is fast enough that you will likely strike shields with any torpedo ability and thus have your damage severely hindered. So the shield issue gives rise to another problem torpedoes face, the gamble. You have to hope that your allies pressure damage will keep their shields down in-between your energy attack and torpedo attack.
Dealing with the shield regeneration issue is a gamble, but another gamble comes up in PVP. THY has a terrible hit rate against players, in one of the threads covering the issue someone said a good pvper can reduce a highly accurate builds torpedoes hit rate to around 50%. This is so far from being fair when none of the highest damage builds even use torpedoes.
In the end the players who spec into damage more than any other player are left with sub par damage or terrible damage when the gamble doesn't pay off.
This is a lot of problems, and there are a few ways this could be fixed.
The first option that comes to me is to just straight boost THY damage. It's nothing short of silly that shooting three torpedoes doesn't do three torpedoes worth of damage. A couple of torps actually achieve this for THY1, and I don't see any reason for that trend to stop. THY accuracy is so bad that I can't see this being unbalanced in any way.
Torpedo Spread is a more interesting problem. But I think it holds the key to really making torpedoes a part of this game again. Since torpedo spread detonates against the shields and surrounding the target you guys should take away shield resistance for torpedo spread. If this is too powerful you make the damage hit all of the shield facings until the shields are down completely, then the remaining damage could hit the hull. This way the AOE attack for a weapon that is only really capable of doing burst damage could suddenly be useful in adding pressure damage to a group of targets. Cruisers and other slow turners would finally have a reason to do something other than fly around in circles. If that's all too complicated, a moderate boost to torpedo damage and a moderate nerf to torpedo shield resistance might work too.
*Edit*
Welp, looks I got beaten to a few of these ideas, consider my post vote in support.
ENGINEER CAPTAIN POWERS: (Need the most attention)
EPS and Nadion Inversion: These need reworking as they provide very little benefit from their original implementation as any captain class can now obtain high power levels from Plasmonic Leech and drain resistance from Warp Cores. Engineers are missing a debuff power, so maybe look at replacing EPS with (maybe something like reduce damage to targets shields), Tac has FOMM, Sci has Sensor Scan, Engineers having nothing in comparison so they are perceived as less desirable in a team.Replace Nadion Inversion with something like a Space variant of Support Drones.
Miracle Worker: A selfish ability that wouldn't go amiss if it could be cast-able on other targets. Friendly = heal (Enemy = shut down systems for example).
Engineer Bridge Officer Powers:
Aceton Beam: Recharge time is too long to be considered useful.
Ensign Slots: - Not enough choices, only Eng Team or an Emergency Power.
Aux to Bat: See Duty Officers comment below.
SCIENCE CAPTAIN POWERS:
Subnucleonic Beam: Great power, but not so fun to be on the receiving end when this is used in quick succession after clearing (most affected by PvP and PvE enemies like Breen and Jem'Hadar). I suggest that there be a Subnucleonic Beam resistance applied to the target for a reasonable 15 seconds after clearing before another one can be cast on the same target.
GENERAL POWERS / MECHANICS:
Diminishing Returns: On ALL abilities and consoles and this also applies to the same target from multiple players (Damage, Healing, Crit Chance, Crit Severity, Accuracy, Defence, Turn Rate, Drain, Buffs, Debuffs etc...).
This should have the following effects if implemented properly:
Fix Power Creep.
Fix Spike Damage.
Fix Spike Healing.
The casual player demographic would unlikely notice these changes have happened but they would have massive positive effects on overall balance and diversity of ship builds.
DUTY OFFICERS:
Prevent slotting more than one type of each which would help alleviate unforeseen problems of powers becoming overpowered. Fixes the AuxToBat concern and others.
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.
Very specific stuff: Underpowered bridge officer abilities
There are some powers you very rarely see used.
Aceton Beam. I can't think of any builds where it is more useful than alternatives. The damage it can inflict on NPCs or PCs is marginal, it's easily countered, and so the debuff itself is also not relevant.
Photonic Officer. It seems Aux2Batteries with DOFFs is far, far better.
Jam Sensors. It seems rather weak and rarely used. It's okay for PvP purposes to be fragile, but it seems too expensive to slot, and it doesn't really help in a team enviroment, since you can only jam a single enemy.
Eject Warp Plasma. It looks cool, feels cool, but is it really all that relevant to equip it as BO power where you could have something like Aux2SIF or Engineering Team?
Roles and Ship Classes
Science Vessels seem to have real trouble in PvE. You can do some crazy stuff with Gravity Well and Torpedo SPread with the Dyson Photon Torpedo, but still, most of the time you realize that your damage is just not that good, and the end result is just a longer lasting combat - but there is not really an additional challenge or anything. There just isn't much to do in an one on one fight against an NPC vessel with science abilities.
PvP metagame
I will say this - I haven't PvPed in a long time, but it seems to me the problems I encountered 2-3 years ago are still around, just expressed differently. (ROmulan Vapers weren't around when I stopped playing STO.)
The general thing is that STO space combat is cool, but it is also a thing of extremes. Your ship is as tough as a wet paper towel without buffs protecting. But if you're buffed up, it's really hard to take you down, no matter what ship you fly. It usually requires a team to take down anything. ANd it often includes a subnucleonic beam to just take out all the buffs currently running (and your side's teamwork and any spare powers you still have will be all about reapplying buffs or holding you together until you die.
Overall, I think for PvP purposes, powers just are too strong often. I mention underpowered abiltiies above - one could argue that some of these are underpowered because they work on a far more reasonable baseline. Cannon Rapid Fire on an Escort just is far stronger than an Eject Warp Plasma on a Cruiser, despite both requiring a Cmdr slot on their respective ships. A power like Aceton Beam could be interesting and dangerous if not most ships had at least one Hazard Emitter available or someone in the team had one for the target.
You can also see this in PvE. At Tier 1, 2 or probably even 3, soloing a Dreadnought level enemy is probably impossible. At Tier 5, you may need 20 seocnds or so with a fully buffed Escort to destroy it, and a Cruiser or Science Vessel would probably just not die to it (even if it took forever). If Elite PvE combat didn't have the occasional random super-damage invisible (or not invisible) torpedo hit, you might never die.
The game's combat really works more like DS9 combats where they couldn't afford shield SFX and ship blew up after afew salvos of the Defiant, not like the tall ship combat of Balance of Power, Wrath of Khan or Nemesis. I love DS9 and I love my Defiant blowing up ships left and right, but stilll - you may want to find a happier middle ground.
But I don't known if there is a realistic chance of achieving this, since it's a sh*tton of work and I personally would not know where to begin.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I've noticed everybody's bashing Aceton Beam, and I had to come in...
It's a 75% (at least in my Commander slot - II or III) energy damage reduction, very handy for mitigating an escort's CRF if your ship can't handle it. Its lower cooldown compared to RSP - as well as the fact that it deals (admittedly negligible) damage - is just icing on the cake.
But on the other hand it can only be fired in the forward arc and is cleared by Hazard Emitters, making it much less useful in PvP. Most enemies in PvE only seem to be threatening when they throw out torpedoes that deal as much damage as we wish we could.
I woludn't mind if every ship and captain class could fulfill multiple roles - just not all at a time.
But just saying we want to have roles and not limit classes too much on one isn't enough. WHat you really need to look at is how you can ensure that each role is actually useful.
Particularly in PVE, it seems you're never wrong with massive DPS. Infected Elite as the standard example. If your team happens to have poor DPS, yes, you probably want some science guy with repels to keep those damn nanite probes away. But it's very easy to actually have a team that has so much DPS (one could even argue a single guy with so much DPS) that it will just destroy the objectives so fast that the nanite probes never become a threat, even if the only strategy used is that the whole team focuses on one generator.
And this is everywhere in the game to some extent. Sure, it'S neat to have someone to patch you up, or do some crowd control, but seriously - just bring the real DPS, and you won't take enough damage to need a healer or need to control your foes. They are already dead by the time CC becomes relevant. (Example could be Undine Space Battle Zone - fly a science vessel focusing on CC and be accompanied by an Escort. By the time your first gravity well or whatever has finally completed casting and appears, the enemy already has lost most of his shields, and a few seconds later, he's destroyed. Your Gravity Well only gets to suck debris.)
It could be different if the escort after this fight was seriously damaged, and a crowd control ability in place could have lowered that, or a healer around could have patched him up already, but that's just not how it works.
Which isn't to say healing is weak - the problem is the enemies offensive abilities are weak.
But, back to roles. I prefer the D&D 4th edition approach to roles.
Controllers: Area Effects, debuffs, generally force the enemy to fight in ways good for your team but bad for him.
Defenders: Force enemies to attack the defender or suffer repercussions. It's not about magical aggro-drawing, it's about "If you don'T focus on this defender, who has a lot of defensive boosts and self-healing abilities, he will hurt you worse, stop you in your tracks, or lower the damage his allies take.).
Leader: Provide healing and buffs, often in a way encouraging your team to fight in a particular way or a particular target (like giving damage buffs against one target):
Strikers: Provide damage output and have mobiility options to get to foes or get out of trouble.
I think STO has BO powers that conform neatly to Controller, Leader and Striker role, but the Defender role is a bit short. Cruisers or Escorts could make the ideal candidate, and It hink there are a few powers that already work in that direction.
From the above roles, "Strikers" can be the most problematic - if their defensive and damage buffs are too good (and I think STO may have that problem in PvE), there isn't a need for something else.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Instead of buffing boarding party, fix it instead.
Currently the boarding party doffs that have 33% chance to launch extra 3 shuttles don't work how the description states it, in reality its 33% chance to launch 1-3 shuttles.
Boarding party breaks when you have less than 10% total crew on your ship, this would mean that if you had 400/4000 crew on your ship, you would be casting boarding party, no shuttles would be launched and you woud still trigger the cooldown of it. Boarding party shuttles cost 10 crew... not 400 crew...
Another list for unpowered abilities:
Emergency Power to Engines 2+3 -Nobody uses ranks higher than 1.
Emergency Power to Aux 2+3 -Nobody uses ranks higher than 1.
Tachyon beam - Nobody uses this.
Mask Energy Signature - Nobody uses this
Photonic officer - nobody uses this exept for me randomly
Magnetometric overload 3 min cooldown for tiny stun and knockback... gosh?
aceton beam - deals no damage, should be improved, too long cooldown and duration, scale duration and cooldown down, double or tripple or quadrupple the TOTAL damage.
tactical team 2+3 nobody uses ranks higher than 1.... make the redistribution time scalable by the rank?
photonic displacement, the moment you use this console, enemy gains 100% shield penetration
all console and set powers with 3 min or longer cooldown are just useless, reduce them to 2.5 min or something?
tyken's rift is not considered to be particle generator power, by adapted battlecruiser and adapted destroyer's standards, their 3 set piece does not apply radiation damage on use of tyken's rift, yet tykens rift damage is boosted by particle generators and alpha strike... wuttttt
I just cant figure out anything else on my current mind state sorry.
Say the word, it saves the world. CUUCUUMBEER!"-With slight partigen with it." Proud member or DPS-800"-We kill dem mines with our scitter turrets."
Eject Warp Plasma - Weak... for Big Romulans: EWP is one of my favorite abilities in the game, but using it on large romulan ships like the D'D or Scimitar is very frustrating because of the geometry effects involved. The large ships knock enemies out of the path to make the ability much less useful, or it's too big to fit through enemy groups so it gets stopped. It's very weird that a power's effectiveness is limited in such a strange way. Meanwhile, it works great on Fed cruisers with a much smaller frontal profile.
Aux2Batt with 3x Purple Tech Doffs - Strong: It's only ideal on certain BOFF layouts, but when it does work, it makes the ship excel. I have a hard time imagining playing cruisers without it. It's even great on Vestas and some escorts with lesser mandatory Tac seating. I feel it makes the game more enjoyable by bringing strong abilities into "once a battle" category, like Grav Well, EWP, and Directed Energy Manipulation. I don't know if it's too strong, but on the layouts that I build for it, it's an absolute must.
Boarding Party, Viral Matrix, Target Subsystems, Phaser procs, Weak in PvE - Subsystem disruption in PvE just isn't an effective strategy. Either the enemy is too weak to bother with a subsystem attack, or it lasts too short of a time. In the current PvE environment, only shield shutdown is useful, and marginally so. In the time it takes to setup a system disruption, you could have already knocked down the shields.
Zen Ship Consoles, Cooldowns in General - There are three types of abilities. Frequent use abilities used once or twice in an individual battle (30s CD), medium term abilities maybe used every other battle (60-90s CD), and long term abilities that can significantly change the battle (120s+ CD). Zen Consoles should be offered to fit into all three categories. Console slots are a premium, and giving one up for a pushbutton should add dimension in the ship's abilities. For example, a short cooldown damage enhancing console would be a good addition to a cruiser or science ship with few tac slots.
But as it stands right now, there is no reason to equip these 3m CD consoles. Their effects are not needed, they do not significantly alter gameplay, and they actively compromise the ship by removing the ability to equip a more useful console. However, if you consider something like Aceton Assimilator with a 45s CD, it's a really fun console. It's usable about every other battle, and has a substantial effect. It enhances and supplements gameplay and build options.
Make PvE enemies use abilities like Emergency power to shields, auilliary to structural, hazard emitters, transfer shield strength, tacteam. currently single enemy has 1-3 abilities that they never have time to use.
currently pve is just pew pew pew dead pew pew pew dead pew pew pew dead
make some strat involved, give heals to them dangit! then all the crowdcontrol would matter, also make more enemy ships use crowdcontrol abilities so we would have to counter them
Say the word, it saves the world. CUUCUUMBEER!"-With slight partigen with it." Proud member or DPS-800"-We kill dem mines with our scitter turrets."
Make PvE enemies use abilities like Emergency power to shields, auilliary to structural, hazard emitters, transfer shield strength, tacteam. currently single enemy has 1-3 abilities that they never have time to use.
currently pve is just pew pew pew dead pew pew pew dead pew pew pew dead
make some strat involved, give heals to them dangit! then all the crowdcontrol would matter, also make more enemy ships use crowdcontrol abilities so we would have to counter them
Last time they did that Pve heroes cried "please nerf".Lots of rage happend in the pve forum when borgs dared to use epte.
But, back to roles. I prefer the D&D 4th edition approach to roles.
Controllers: Area Effects, debuffs, generally force the enemy to fight in ways good for your team but bad for him.
Defenders: Force enemies to attack the defender or suffer repercussions. It's not about magical aggro-drawing, it's about "If you don'T focus on this defender, who has a lot of defensive boosts and self-healing abilities, he will hurt you worse, stop you in your tracks, or lower the damage his allies take.).
Leader: Provide healing and buffs, often in a way encouraging your team to fight in a particular way or a particular target (like giving damage buffs against one target):
Strikers: Provide damage output and have mobiility options to get to foes or get out of trouble.
I think STO has BO powers that conform neatly to Controller, Leader and Striker role, but the Defender role is a bit short. Cruisers or Escorts could make the ideal candidate, and It hink there are a few powers that already work in that direction.
From the above roles, "Strikers" can be the most problematic - if their defensive and damage buffs are too good (and I think STO may have that problem in PvE), there isn't a need for something else.
No offense, but all this sounds nice and fine, but it has nothing to do with Star Trek IMO.
All this doesn't help making STO more Trek, it just creates more complications and problems as before.
I'd say get rid of "roles" altogether and make ships much more as they where in "real" trek.
That's what most people expect when playing a Star Trek game. People play A STAR TREK game to experience Star Trek, not a generic MMO. In Trek ships work different, a Ambassador Class is not a support ship for escorts, nor is the Galaxy a Healer ship. All this doesn't make sense and STO should get rid of it.
It really hurts to see Star Trek ship put into a mold and in the end filling a "role" they don't belong to.
Why not look at thi issue without bias, without MMO goggles on.
Almost 90% of all Starfleet "cruisers" where multi mission ships, only a small part where much more specialized and filled actually a specific "role" like Escort or Science ship. Every other ship was more or less a multi mission ship.
Just because STO is a MMO doesn't mean everything has to be put upside down.
Now we have the chance to present a different model, why stay with the "role" mechanic at all?
I never understood what's the point of playing a specific role in a MMO.
We're not NPCs, people can think and understand what's needed to win a mission, why not make ships versatile enough for such a requirement? What was a rather "limited" idea for a tabletop RPG doesn't have to apply in a modern Computer Game, least of all a STAR TREK game.
I can't remember any other Star Trek game i know of struggeling with the question "what role" a Galaxy or Excelsior Class has for example.
I'm really sorry to see, such ideas (like roles) still around after four years of STO.
I always hoped that most ppl., would have noticed that Trek is much more than that.
"...'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
As a sci player and a keen user of Photonic Officer in my builds id really like it to be given a look over and maybe a buff. Not to the extent of the 3x tech double aux to battery. But still would be nice if it gave more of a reduction than it currently does.
Id also like to chime in about the shield stripping abilities. Ive always felt that they should also add a reduction to shield hardness as well as allow the drains to work. At the moment the only weapons that do so are elite disruptors and Tachyon mines. With the introduction Elite shields as well as the T4 undine resistance power. Having the shield striping powers counter those buffs might be an interesting way to balance them out in a pvp situation.
I have the feeling that the value of hard counters has less effect on sci attacks then it used to.
EG. tykens 3 drain can be cleared by HE, HE has a high uptime, so tykens should drain like hell. On the other hand PSW's stun can be soft countered by A2ID, if you know that it is coming, but once stunned no more counters. Hence the stun should affect Time to kill to a lesser degree.
I can't really put my finger on why and how this has changed, but counters are more plentiful then they used to. They fixed Chroniton (APO), HE clears everything, no more shared Cd between team skills, ke'eel doff, etc. but failed to simultaneously buff up sci cc effects in return.
Note this is not about the question of direct damage boost from things like APB, APO, and what not. But the CC, sort of the core of the sci ship and bo class, has gone out of the window. NPC just got magical resists, and Players have more and stronger counters available to them then ever before, and those on a short cd.
Subsystem disables from Target subsystem, VM, phaser proc, etc have suffered the most from this. While susbsytem repair skill was the running joke of the skill tree (*yay* third revamp coming soon(tm)) it is finally working, eptx, et, baterries, are all hard counters. For a rebalance and for future cc effects, the avaialbilty of hard counters should matter more in their design, imv. If counterplay can completely negate their effects, then the baselin cc effect should be much more powerful then they are now.
I never understood what's the point of playing a specific role in a MMO.
We're not NPCs, people can think and understand what's needed to win a mission, why not make ships versatile enough for such a requirement? What was a rather "limited" idea for a tabletop RPG doesn't have to apply in a modern Computer Game, least of all a STAR TREK game.
yea TRIBBLE the TV show ...just get the science ship be a cruiser or go to war,
not only you don't know how the game works but you also seem to never watched any star trek movie.
This thread exists to ask pve heroes how to TRIBBLE up the game even more ....then the same people will QQ about power creep and after effects.
Activating A2B brings aux power level to 5 for 10-15 seconds. If any copy of A2B is activated with only 5 aux power, then aux goes to zero for 10-15 seconds. I say up to 15 seconds because the global cooldown for this ability should also be changed from 10 to 15 seconds. Correcting power level issue.
Also make A2B(1) LtCmdr and A2B(2) Cmdr. If people want to dual A2B, they have to give up the better RSP/EPtX/DEM/A2Sif/A2D/ES/EWP etc. Also removes easy access for far too many ships being able to dual A2B <cough> escorts <cough>.
Finally, for tech doffs make the stacking effect have diminishing returns. One tech doff is 10%, two gives 18%, three gives 24%. Another solution would be to limit how many Technicians can be on Active Duty at once, to one.
I'd love to see a space combat (and even ground) that is more attrition based.
how would this translate into STO's combat? Answer is, it already does in low level combat. Weapons at the lower level are very few (3-4 per ship) and rather weak, while shield points and hull points are relatively high compared to the maximum possible dmg output of a ship.
There are other factors too, like energy levels and skillpoints, but i see the main reason in the disproportional increase of firepower compared to SP and HP.
Solutions: reduce the number of weapon slots per ship, or increase SP and HP of each ship class including NPC ships. (i'd do both, but also give dedicated slots for torps and mines)
examples:
shuttles only 1 weapon slot (shuttle only weapon type)
beginner ships 1 front, 1 rear + 1 torp launcher
all ships above this tier have the same amount of weapon slots and only distinguish themselves from lower tiers by the amount of HP, SP, the amount of console slots and BOFF slots. Additionaly they can only equip weapons with the corresponding MK level. T4 may only equip MK IX, not higher. cruiser: 2 front, 2 rear + torp launcher front and mine launcher rear (if they got a hangar, they loose the mine launcher) escort: 2 front, 2 rear + torp launcher sci vessel: 2 front, 2 rear + torp launcher front and mine launcher rear and the long promised secondary deflector (depending on the size of the sci vessel, smaller sci vessel like the nova lack the mine launcher, since they are more maneuverable as compensation or some like the vesta have a hangar instead) carrier: 2 front, 2 rear + 2 hangars
NPC ships in general are lacking 2 things: survivability and firepower, and the way they try to make this up is strength in numbers...which is bad for performance issues and frankly it doesn't feel very trek when you take out 3 undine (or any other race) frigates at once.
I'd say combine the 3 ship frigate grp into a single frigate with 3 times the SP and HP.
yea TRIBBLE the TV show ...just get the science ship be a cruiser or go to war,
not only you don't know how the game works but you also seem to never watched any star trek movie.
This thread exists to ask pve heroes how to TRIBBLE up the game even more ....then the same people will QQ about power creep and after effects.
I really think you need to stop this. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they "don't know how the game works."
This may be the single most important thread the game has ever had. Hawk is trying to engage players directly about the current way the game plays, and taking our direct feedback about all the powers and abilities. Everyone is getting a voice, and it sounds like he is actually reading them all. Some of the most experienced, best, and veteran players are sharing thoughts about how to make the game better, with everyone getting their turn to speak.
If you have specific arguments against some of the ideas, please state them. You probably are smarter about the game than most players - so explain why you think these 'PVE hero' ideas are going to 'TRIBBLE up the game.' I, and I assume others, honestly want to know what exactly you object to.
I really think you need to stop this. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they "don't know how the game works."
This may be the single most important thread the game has ever had. Hawk is trying to engage players directly about the current way the game plays, and taking our direct feedback about all the powers and abilities. Everyone is getting a voice, and it sounds like he is actually reading them all. Some of the most experienced, best, and veteran players are sharing thoughts about how to make the game better, with everyone getting their turn to speak.
If you have specific arguments against some of the ideas, please state them. You probably are smarted about the game than most players - so explain why you think these 'PVE hero' ideas are going to 'TRIBBLE up the game.' I, and I assume others, honestly want to know what exactly you object to.
How are they veterans?They are against team play (see all the reasons why TT should be changed) ,they want the support class to do escort's job (dps) ,they want sci powers (which already are a must have ) to be way way stronger than already are.
Maybe you can find since when you balance a game for pve?Have you ever seen a NPC (which also spends money...most pvp players not only play more than pve people but also tend to spend more money to buy all the new stuffs ) coming on the forums and complaning about not fair powers?The game will be changed by following ideas from people who only play pve and have no clue how is to play against something that uses boff powers back ...that is TRIBBLE up the game even more .
And why do you want to force players to use torpedos and mines? That goes against the freedom of choice. If you make weapons depending on ship, then it should be possible to slot what one wants to slot.
yea TRIBBLE the TV show ...just get the science ship be a cruiser or go to war,
not only you don't know how the game works but you also seem to never watched any star trek movie.
Strange, I can remember "Sci"-ships going into battle against the Borg and the Dominion in Star Trek. Surely they didnt know what to do, or it was simply a matter of "in times of need". Imo we are having multiple wars going on, so I guess anything gets the war-refit.
Even the Nebula was more cruiserlike than sci-like in the series. Same applies to the Armitage, and the prometheus. The Intrepid too wasnt that lightly armed and shielded.
And strangely, many sci-abilities dont exist like this in Star Trek, so if we go like Star Trek, we can just flush out Sciships completely.
Comments
1) Quit messing with science players, This is extremely annoying
A) Dual heavy Aux Cannons .. on a Sci ship? .. REALLY? .. so adding a weapon that disallows a science ship to some of it's special abilities? Extremely limits its arc of fire and reduces its overall damage across the board.. really?.. Aux Phasers beams or a beam bank or even a SINGLE phaser Aux cannon.. GREAT ..Heavy Cannons?!
To put those 2 into prospective, come out with a new tac ship that has one of its forward weapons as a Fused 360 Proton beam, that only works with Beam Overload and you will understand how badly the above "features" are regarded.
2) It's past time for a 4x3 Science ship. Unencumbered by added TRIBBLE. Tac and Engi's have 5x3s
A) remove any hanger, its a fair trade for a 4x3 ..
3) Subsystem targetting .. needs a serious relook. It's always been underpowered and its gotten worse.
A) Upgrade it to ST2 ..
4) Sci powers are understrength and need upgraded.
A) a tac power does X damage, an engineer power does x/2 damage and has an effect, sci powers do x/4 and little to no effects, this is what we traded boff commander slots for .. make it worthwhile.
Hangers, If a ship can USE a hanger legally, why not be able to BUY the hanger. Example. Orion Carrier, You can use Orion fighters on almost all KDF ships, fine, if you Buy the Fleet Orion Marauder, you cant buy the hangers, why? Quote "Because a fleet deck carrier isn't owned" .. WTF ?
5) Give fed players Mask Energy System .. compairing the Dyson ships the fed players lost a LARGE advantage with no cloaking, Roms=best KDF=good Fed=nothing .. Mask energy would give them something.
R&D
Romulan Dil weapons are still in the game .. why are there no versions in the research tab?
Quad Cannons, are in game .. nothing to research ?
Andorian Phasers .. Just a color change .. no research ?
Where are the Aux Weapons? (Science ships only, maybe)
Emission Tracking torpedo.. Old .. easily upgraded <Doctor Mccoy assisted with one during a battle> .. Can't research and build one of these ?
Remove limiters on some research weapons .. Wide angle cannons .. why limited to 1?
Suggestion for Stackable weapons upgrades in R&D .. Phased Disruptors, for example .. Anti-protonic Polarons etc. Kinetic Tetryons <now that actually sounds interesting!>
I will rate each power by following scale:
1- never ~ seldom
2- sometimes
3- often
4- never leave home without it
S - Sci Captain
E - Eng Captain
T - Tac Captain
Emergency Power to Auxiliary: S2, E1, E1
Emergency Power to Weapons: S1, E4, T3
Emergency Power to Engines: S1, E1, T1
Emergency Power to Shields: S2, E4, T3
Engineering Team: S3, E3, T3
Auxiliary to Battery: S2, E4, T3 (without technicians: S1, E2, T1)
Auxiliary to Dampeners: S1, E2, T1
Auxiliary to Structural: S3, E2, T2
Boarding Party: S1, E1, T1
Directed Energy Modulation: S1, E4, T3 (without Marion: S1, E2, T1)
Extend Shields: S1, E3, T1
Reverse Shield Polarity: S1, E3, T2
Aceton Beam: S1, E3, T2
Eject Warp Plasma: S1, E2, T1
Hazard Emitters icon: S4, E4, T4
Jam Targeting Sensors: S2, E1, T2
Mask Energy Signature: S2, E1, T2
Polarize Hull: S2, E1, T2
Science Team: S2, E2, T2
Tachyon Beam: S2, E1, T1
Tractor Beam icon: S3, E1, T3
Transfer Shield Strength: S3, E3, T3
Charged Particle Burst icon: S3, E1, T1
Energy Siphon icon: S3, E1, T1
Feedback Pulse: S2, E1, T1
Photonic Officer: S1, E1, T1
Tractor Beam Repulsors: S2, E1, T2
Scramble Sensors: S1, E1, T1
Tyken's Rift icon: S4, E1, T1
Gravity Well icon: S4, E2, T3
Photonic Shockwave: S2, E1, T1
Viral Matrix: S1, E1, T1
Beam Array Fire at Will: S2, E4, T3
Beam Array Overload: S1, E4, T3 (prior the changes: S1, E1, T1)
Tactical Team: S4, E4, T4
Torpedo High Yield: S3, E1, T3
Torpedo Spread: S3, E1, T3 (my personal preference: S4, E1, T4; before Dyson content: S2, E1, T2)
Target Weapons Subsystems: S2*, E1, T1 (* - built in in ship)
Target Engines Subsystems: S2*, E1, T1 (* - built in in ship)
Target Shields Subsystems: S2*, E1, T1 (* - built in in ship)
Target Auxiliary Subsystems: S2*, E1, T1 (* - built in in ship)
Attack Pattern Beta: S2, E3, T4
Attack Pattern Delta: S2, E2, T2
Cannon Rapid Fire: S1, E1, T4
Cannon Scatter Volley: S1, E1, T4
Dispersal Pattern Alpha: S1, E1, T1
Dispersal Pattern Beta: S1, E1, T1
Attack Pattern Omega: S1, E1, T3
summary:
- Hazard emitters and Tactical team are a "must" for everybody. This is the result of the Borg-STFs, where you are permanently plasma-dotted and have to fight borg beam-ins. In Addition the shield-shifting from TT is usefull simply everywhere. The new Undine Content did not change anything in this case. In contrary: you need these two powers more than before
- then you have powers, which are a "must" for one or two classes of captains: Stuff like Gravity well/Tykens Rift (Sci), E2W (Tac, Eng), APx (Tac, Eng). Here could be a kind of separation useful. e.g. Gravity Well is power, where Sci gets the most bang for the buck - the other two not that much. Maybe a shift in E2W (Eng gets more bang) and APx (Tac gets more bang) would help here...
- several powers become very important as soon as there are doffs involved, who change their respective behaviour: A2B, DEM. To a lesser extent TBR, TB. Here is a point, where one should consider a nerf/a bigger change in their respective mechanic. If a Tac / Eng captain can do significant DPS only by using A2B + x, then everybody will use / uses A2B + x.
- then there is a group of powers which are highly situational (those, which do not have any 3's or 4's), like: E2A, E2E, A2D, EWP, JTS, MES, &c. &c. Here you should consider either: adding significantly more situations to use them (e.g. A2D helps to escape those rifts the Undine Gila are spamming around) - or improve their usefulness (either by buffing or by Doffs)
- in the last group you will find powers almost nobody is using. The exception here are: noob players and "exotic setup testers": Boarding Party, Photonic Officer, Viral Matrix, Mine Dispersal Patterns. Most of these powers have been nerfed directly (VM, MDP) or indirectly (MDP) in the past or have been designed bad from begining (BP). The fix here would be a mix of the solutions from the group above this - combined with a sort of redesign of the power with a focus on "it this power useful in the typical endgame content?"
The Problems: Threat Control is useless. in PVE it's pretty useless too. in PVP it's doubly useless and Tanking is, for the most part, laughed at. indeed the term "zombie tank" is often used to attempt to insult a person. this is because a tank is easily ignored in PVP till all his friends are dead. but wait, a tanks job is to take the hits for his team. to save them from the damage. but he can't do this in PVP because forcing other players to shoot you is nothing more then frustrating for the other person. what i'm about to detail is an idea at making tanks the person you want to kill first, without making them deal obscene damage or forcing you to shoot them. the goal here is to make you WANT to shoot them and encourage better team work in the game in general.
The Solution:
Threat: this is something you build up on NPCs by attacking them. normally, its a 1:1 scale. 1 damage = 1 threat.
Threat Generation: Threat Gen is a modifier for the amount of threat you build by attacking. more threat gen = more threat per DPS. altering it from 1 damage 1 threat, to 1 damage 2 threat, or 1 damage 10 threat. and so on.
Threat Control: By default, this skill grants a scaling bonus to Threat Gen and your ships Hull Damage Resistance. note that Threat Gen DOES NOT affect your hull damage resistance. ONLY Threat Control can do that.
first and foremost, the skill itself does not change much. it has 9 ranks with a scaling bonus to threat gen and hull damage resist as per current behaviour ingame. only 2 passive bonuses are added at 3 and 9 ranks respectively.
these two passives are: Threat Analysis and Threat Networking.
Threat Networking(TN): This passive is gained at 3 Ranks of Threat Control. It allows you to benefit from other players stacks of Threat Analysis. Note: you must still build threat on your target and they must still have at least 1 Stack of Threat Analysis from someone with 9 ranks in Threat Control to be of benefit.
Threat Analysis(TA): This Passive is gained at 9 ranks of Threat Control. It grants your attacks a passive buff/debuff power. anyone hit by your attacks will gain 1 stack, with an internal cooldown of 30 seconds for each specific player.
EG: Shooting player 1 will grant 1 stack, trigger the 30 second CD. you may immediately hit player 2 and gain 1 stack on them and trigger a separate 30 second CD on them.
EG: Using BFAW will grant 1 stack on each player hit and will trigger separate 30 second CDs for each one.
A max of 10 stacks can be on any one player. however, multiple stacks of 10 can be on multiple players.
EG: 1 10 Stack for player A. 1 10 stack for player B. 1 10 stack for player C. ETC.
each stack grants a percentile bonus to Defence, Shield Damage Resistance and Hull Damage Resistance, scaled by how much threat you have generated with diminishing returns on a per player basis.
EG: you have generated 100k Threat on player 1, and have 1 stack of Threat Analysis on him. this grants you a 1% across the board bonus to Defence, Shield and Hull Damage Resistances (stacked with appropriate diminishing returns on your current numbers) to Player 1s attacks, however, this will NOT affect player 2s attacks, until you have built Threat and at least 1 Stack of Threat Analysis on him also.
each Stack of Threat Analysis uses your generated threat to generate a multiplier based number, such as this:
Threat X Stacks / 100,000.
in our example, this is: 100,000 x 1 / 100,000 = 1. which is the bonus we get. 1%.
so 10 stacks in our example would do this: 100,000 x 10 / 100,000 = 10 = 10% bonuses.
Clearing it: so, how do you clear this? Sensor scramble and jam sensors will clear this as it clears your targeting data and captains will alter their attacking style If they're finding it ineffective. Also, the debuff only lasts for 35 seconds per stack. So If you stop hitting them, after the 30 second application cd wears off, you will lose 1 stack every 5 seconds. This represents the enemy adapting to your defences while you're not watching their behaviour.
Remember that this is a per player bonus, so people who have no threat on the target and don't have at least 3 Ranks in Threat Control will not be affected by Threat Analysis.
+th consoles increase your threat gen. And will therefore increase the rate at which threat builds on players, these would there for increase the speed at which your bonuses scale up.
Threat Control represents your ability to make yourself seem more dangerous then you really are. to appear more threatening. at 9 ranks, youre so skilled at this, that youre able to see the true threat of other captains that youre fighting, youre able to analyse their strengths. allowing you to see how to best protect yourself from that threat. The Threat Networking passive represents your ability to take advice from more experienced captains in how the target is most threatening and use that information to better protect yourself.
This Concludes my presentation.
~Astillius
Most PVP'ers idea of winning: killing everyone.
Tanks idea of winning: not getting killed.
Who cares what the top DPS people use? Aux2bat needs something done about it because currently,the only negative aspect to it is slower launching pets (if you have them). Nothing else.
Every other other boff power has negatives, even if its just that by using it you forgo the use of another power.
The only negative for aux2bat is low aux power, which no one cares about.
STO suffers from the Dog fighting idea that ships need to explode quickly. When, in terms of the RP, this simply did not happen. Combat was long and drawn out and the victory usually was the one who didn't ruin away. Also, ships became damaged during combat, not after they explode.
I've been thinking about this mechanic, and i think it might actually SAVE PvP...
Hear me out.
With this system, you would have three ways to defeat another player in combat. All of them balanced.
DPSers= Shoot it until it is dead.
Debuffers= overwhelm a target with debuffs and injuries until they are ineffective and crippled.
Tanks= Simply outlast your opponent, and let your pressure damage slowly breakdown.
I also thought about adding a chance effect for Engy team to remove a injury in combat, because.. you know, that is what the Engy teams should be doing. There could also be a doff that allows EPtX to remove an damage debuff of the same category. So Emergency Power to Engines has a chance to remove an engine damage debuff. Because you are rerouting power around the damaged portion of the ship to temporality give you full combat ability.
Doing this would rebalance tanks and the Engineering class as they are going to have the most skills to be able to actively fix your ship while in combat. This will increase the staying power of both you and your teammates so they everyone can have the time needed to break down a target. You also have a unique approach to each class and how they achieve their goals, besides pure DPS.
Science characters now have a greater chance to apply damage debuffs over time. Skills like Gravity well have a greater chance of appliyng hull stress and fractures. Viral Matrix can do computer system damage. Tachyon beam can damage the shield systems. All while ABOVE the 50% health damaging threshold. So while their DPS might not be enough to get a target below the breaking threshold initially, their science skills can sabotage and cripple the ship immediately, until they are crippled and easy to defeat.
DPSers do the exact same thing as before. but now it is more of a risk. The longer they sit and try to wail on a single target, the more risk they are at receiving damage debuffs. And since they have limited engy slots, they will not have the resources to repair themselves mid combat. Meaning long drawn out battles are NOT in their favor.
This change would make the game more canon, more challenging, and more balanced in one go. Again. this hinges on a major balancing pass of all damage and abilities FIRST.
This proposal would require a few mechanics changes. However, by using assets readily available in game, we can change the feel of combat to a more drawn out, tactical, and nail-biting experience with risk and rewards.
1) Lower overall damage output and increase base resistance.
Simply enough. No more one hit kills and insta-death moves. Have you work for your kills without the cheap shots.
2) Add damage debuffs as a roll based on your total hull
With this, I mean that the lower your hull gets, the more chance you have of receiving a damage debuff. The Lower your hull, the more severe the debuff. My proposed scale would be as follows:
At 50% hull: 25% chance of receiving a Minor Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
At 25% hull: 35% chance of receiving a Minor Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
15% chance of receiving a Major Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
At 15% hull: 45% chance of receiving a Minor Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
25% chance of receiving a Major Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
15%chance of receiving a Critical Damage debuff, once every five seconds.
This means the lower your hull, the more damaged you get. Also, the longer you are under the threshold, the more damaged you get. This would more accurately portray the battle damage a ship would receive in a firefight. Consoles blow out. EPS systems overload. Personnel are injured. All of this going on as you are in combat. This would make long drawn out fights a nightmare as you are attempting to hold together your ship that is falling apart at the seams.
3) Optional combat warp out sequence in order to avoid further damage and death.
So, with this current system I am proposing, you will build up damage debuffs while under fire, that will cost you in down time later on. Combat is slower and more drawn out so you can avoid these situations and make tactical decisions along the way.
My final suggestions would be an in combat "Tactical Retreat" warp out that you can activate under 25% hull. This would replace the current "abandon ship" power. This power would break combat and warp you out of the mission, without a leaver penalty. You would be essentially "forfeiting" the match and making a run for it while you can. This is literally a last resort button, as it takes you out of the mission and you receive no reward. (Partial rewards maybe possible for PVE queued mission, but not as much as the full reward for sticking it out. PvP will be discussed later on.)
This power would be negated by Tractor Beams, Gravity wells, or any power that holds a ship. It also will be negated by disabled engine power.
The motive for this would be to avoid death. The lost of a ship was a terrible thing for a captain's record and should be avoided at all cost. These vessels contain hundreds, if not thousands of crew members with families and homes and they entrust their lives to you. This tension would be played out with a death penalty of a a 1 hour cooldown on that vessel, that is non-interruptible. If your hull reaches zero percent, you will be transported to your Faction's home system and you will have to transfer command to another vessel until the burning hulk of your old command can be repaired. You will also forfeit the mission, with partial rewards handed out based on performance.
In PvP, the dynamic would basically be "last team standing." You would go until either one team is forced to warp out, or is destroyed. When you warp out, you will go into a spectator mode and will follow on of your allies. Participants will receive credit to the PvP dailies, plus the current EC and Expertise reward. However, if you can manage to actually KILL another player (since, this would be a rare occurrence now.) you would receive a nice dilithium reward plus a title. If you are within a team that gets a kill, and you are within 10 kms of the target in question, you will receive a smaller support reward. If you contributed 33% or more to the damage taken on a player, you will receive full credit for a kill.
_________________________________________________________________________
Obviously, there are alot of things to consider with this, such as the dynamic of leaver's penalties, plus missions where loosing too many members will make the mission impossible to progress. This will also need a massive balancing pass to remove one hit kill builds and NPCs from the game. (With some exceptions, such as the Borg Beach ball and the Plasma Lances, as those are avoidable with proper tactics and situational awareness).
While not QUITE as terrible as permanent ship destruction, (which would have the players grabbing pitch forks and torches over losing purchases), it adds a dynamic between a ship and her command that seems to be missing from this game. This mechanic would hopefully curtail the Leeroy Jenkins moments, and bring players to pause.. and consider if they can actually WIN this fight with those three Borg Cubes over there. It would also allow people to more fully utilize those multiple ships that they will buy, in order to have a "reserve command" for when the TRIBBLE hits the fan.
This system could also be optional, a "hardcore mode" if you wish. However, the implementation of this would be troublesome, as hardcores players would essentially have to play with other hardcore players on their own teams and own rules.
Any other suggestions? Thoughts? Comments or edits you would like to add? Comment below.
Now, although I love having FBP do 3x normal damage I think sci abilities should be decoupled from Tac CAPTAIN abilities, I think decoupling them from normal attack patterns would just nerf allot of current sci builds that have a attack pattern beta or omega to buff grav well or something along those lines.
I have never found a huge problem with tac team having shield distro, because atleast from my perspective distributing shield to the side that is getting pummeled has always stricken me as a tactical move. If it's a balance issue I would say make the distro slower or something along those lines, or add secondary abilities to the other teams ( downside aux2bat builds would get buffed but I'll address that). Attack pattern omega also seems to be getting some hate right now, and I have not really seen why. Damage wise it is still less than beta, and the movement buff is a must have for escort if they wish to compete, if anything nerf the teir 1 ability to remove one of the bonuses and keep teir 3 the same.
Now while I am on the subject of escorts another issue strikes me. Cannons and their distance damage loss. I mean why? There's no point anymore, they don't benefit from overcap, and their abilities are a teir higher than other weapons.
Aux2bat and its many issues have already been mentioned A LOT, but I would like to throw in my two cents. I think their are a few workable workarounds. First one is keep the ability the same, but make the doffs act like damage control engis where it is a chance (30-20% maybe?) to reduce by x%. This adds a failure chance, and would leave some TRIBBLE in the armor. The other option is totally disable aux or aux regen during the time of the ability ( aux would only slowly come back after the ability is finished. Speed determined by EPS). To anyone who says aux2bat is weaker than a EptX cruiser damage wise try taking that EptX cruiser into normal pvp. You will usually get ripped a new one. Sure, damage might be a tad lower in PVE, but in pvp AND PVE aux2bat cruisers gain huge amounts of survivability while dishing out lots of damage. Minor changes like the ones I suggested would still keep cruiser viable in both PVE and pvp, but would also bring them more into line with other builds.
It's a 75% (at least in my Commander slot - II or III) energy damage reduction, very handy for mitigating an escort's CRF if your ship can't handle it. Its lower cooldown compared to RSP - as well as the fact that it deals (admittedly negligible) damage - is just icing on the cake.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
I know there is the trait with DoT for torpedo's but there are other abilities like Beam Overload that makes Torpedo's to a third class weapon.
My suggestion would be to allow torpedo's with High Yield or Spread to do full dame to the shields (might be a bit too powerful), but at least increase the shield penetration to 25-35%
Thanks for this Thread
Most intriguing... I'd say it's definitely worth looking at, but something tells me it's beyond Cryptic's ability to implement by October.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Actually this. Exactly this.
Torpedoes should be highly desirable to use for ships. Right now they pretty much bounce off unless the target shields are already down, in which case you probably don't need the torpedoes to finish them off anyway.
I think that ship hull HP are way too low.
Let's just assume they had 3 times as much HP, torpedo dmg could be raised to really hurt them.
This would make Ship to Ship much more tactical since one had to time a attack much more, instead of simply hammering the enemies ship hull.
I would like to make a additional suggestion regarding space weapons:
I always felt that Starfleet cruisers lack of offensive power, like KDF battlecruisers have.
So how about introducing something like a Heavy Beam Array, capable of doing DHC equal damage but at a lower attack rate. (only installable on Starfleet Cruisers)
We shouldn't forget that in "real" trek Starfleet crusiers, are heavy hitters too unlike in STO.
I stongly feel that they should get something on their own, since they cannot rely on DHCs or something equal. (something Escorts and other ships cannot use.)
Here's something for the visual aspect:
In order to make STO feel and look more like a Trek game, i think it would be best to combine all equipped energy weapons and let them look like one single beam. This would make Space Combat look much more like seen on TV/Movies.
Of course special abilities like FAW would look the same, but space combat wouldn't look so cartoonish anymore IMO.
I think we should go away from the idea of beam array using ships being broadsiders. I mean this isn't some pirate game, Starfleet ships do have at least a 270 degrees forward fireing arc. I always found the idea of broadsiding a bit strange to be honest.
Sure this would require some heavy rework of the existing game mechanics, but since it has been asked what to improve...
They face so many disadvantages compared to energy weapons.
It all starts with their ineffectiveness against shields, and their effective limitation to two launchers per aft or fore.
The second limitation is acceptable but not really ideal for funs sake, and if torpedoes get some love it may even be necessary, if you guys deem it isn't, you should give three torpedoes a chance at working together.
The first limitation is the big deal for torpedoes. You have to take shields down for torpedoes to be effective, so you have to use energy weapons too, or use one of the meager work arounds. The work arounds are almost never ideal by themselves, everyone knows that the bleed through torpedoes are only good for PVP and that tetryon shield drainage is weak as hell, elite fleet disruptors are pretty good, but only Klingons can get those and no one wants to be limited to one energy weapon type. Even if you spec into energy weapons too and use energy weapon boosting consoles, all the enemy has to do to is turn their ship and your attack is wasted.
It all effectively restrains torpedoes to one role, burst damage, their arc also assists in limiting them to this role. This is all because in both high level PVE and PVP shield regeneration is fast enough that you will likely strike shields with any torpedo ability and thus have your damage severely hindered. So the shield issue gives rise to another problem torpedoes face, the gamble. You have to hope that your allies pressure damage will keep their shields down in-between your energy attack and torpedo attack.
Dealing with the shield regeneration issue is a gamble, but another gamble comes up in PVP. THY has a terrible hit rate against players, in one of the threads covering the issue someone said a good pvper can reduce a highly accurate builds torpedoes hit rate to around 50%. This is so far from being fair when none of the highest damage builds even use torpedoes.
In the end the players who spec into damage more than any other player are left with sub par damage or terrible damage when the gamble doesn't pay off.
This is a lot of problems, and there are a few ways this could be fixed.
The first option that comes to me is to just straight boost THY damage. It's nothing short of silly that shooting three torpedoes doesn't do three torpedoes worth of damage. A couple of torps actually achieve this for THY1, and I don't see any reason for that trend to stop. THY accuracy is so bad that I can't see this being unbalanced in any way.
Torpedo Spread is a more interesting problem. But I think it holds the key to really making torpedoes a part of this game again. Since torpedo spread detonates against the shields and surrounding the target you guys should take away shield resistance for torpedo spread. If this is too powerful you make the damage hit all of the shield facings until the shields are down completely, then the remaining damage could hit the hull. This way the AOE attack for a weapon that is only really capable of doing burst damage could suddenly be useful in adding pressure damage to a group of targets. Cruisers and other slow turners would finally have a reason to do something other than fly around in circles. If that's all too complicated, a moderate boost to torpedo damage and a moderate nerf to torpedo shield resistance might work too.
*Edit*
Welp, looks I got beaten to a few of these ideas, consider my post vote in support.
https://youtube.com/channel/UCJZ5FBJ9bFaZ6yAFiNpZiRQ/featured?view_as=subscriber
Twitter:
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(Need the most attention)
EPS and Nadion Inversion: These need reworking as they provide very little benefit from their original implementation as any captain class can now obtain high power levels from Plasmonic Leech and drain resistance from Warp Cores. Engineers are missing a debuff power, so maybe look at replacing EPS with (maybe something like reduce damage to targets shields), Tac has FOMM, Sci has Sensor Scan, Engineers having nothing in comparison so they are perceived as less desirable in a team. Replace Nadion Inversion with something like a Space variant of Support Drones.
Miracle Worker: A selfish ability that wouldn't go amiss if it could be cast-able on other targets. Friendly = heal (Enemy = shut down systems for example).
Engineer Bridge Officer Powers:
Aceton Beam: Recharge time is too long to be considered useful.
Ensign Slots: - Not enough choices, only Eng Team or an Emergency Power.
Aux to Bat: See Duty Officers comment below.
SCIENCE CAPTAIN POWERS:
Subnucleonic Beam: Great power, but not so fun to be on the receiving end when this is used in quick succession after clearing (most affected by PvP and PvE enemies like Breen and Jem'Hadar). I suggest that there be a Subnucleonic Beam resistance applied to the target for a reasonable 15 seconds after clearing before another one can be cast on the same target.
GENERAL POWERS / MECHANICS:
Diminishing Returns: On ALL abilities and consoles and this also applies to the same target from multiple players (Damage, Healing, Crit Chance, Crit Severity, Accuracy, Defence, Turn Rate, Drain, Buffs, Debuffs etc...).
This should have the following effects if implemented properly:
Fix Power Creep.
Fix Spike Damage.
Fix Spike Healing.
The casual player demographic would unlikely notice these changes have happened but they would have massive positive effects on overall balance and diversity of ship builds.
DUTY OFFICERS:
Prevent slotting more than one type of each which would help alleviate unforeseen problems of powers becoming overpowered. Fixes the AuxToBat concern and others.
Boarding party needs replacing with some kind of damage ability.
Until those are fixed nothing can be done about a2b without making cruisers defunct.
Tac team 2 and 3 need to be replaced with entriley new abilities.
Photonic officer should boost exotic damage for its duration.
Sub system targeting tac abilities need a boost.
Photonic shockwave needs a buff.
Tachyon beam needs a buff.
Charged particle burst needs a buff.
Mask energy signature needs a buff.
Attack patterns should not effect fbp. With the craftable consoles tac scis are getting out of hand. 115k crits with fbp2 in PvP...lol
Very specific stuff: Underpowered bridge officer abilities
There are some powers you very rarely see used.
Aceton Beam. I can't think of any builds where it is more useful than alternatives. The damage it can inflict on NPCs or PCs is marginal, it's easily countered, and so the debuff itself is also not relevant.
Photonic Officer. It seems Aux2Batteries with DOFFs is far, far better.
Jam Sensors. It seems rather weak and rarely used. It's okay for PvP purposes to be fragile, but it seems too expensive to slot, and it doesn't really help in a team enviroment, since you can only jam a single enemy.
Eject Warp Plasma. It looks cool, feels cool, but is it really all that relevant to equip it as BO power where you could have something like Aux2SIF or Engineering Team?
Roles and Ship Classes
Science Vessels seem to have real trouble in PvE. You can do some crazy stuff with Gravity Well and Torpedo SPread with the Dyson Photon Torpedo, but still, most of the time you realize that your damage is just not that good, and the end result is just a longer lasting combat - but there is not really an additional challenge or anything. There just isn't much to do in an one on one fight against an NPC vessel with science abilities.
PvP metagame
I will say this - I haven't PvPed in a long time, but it seems to me the problems I encountered 2-3 years ago are still around, just expressed differently. (ROmulan Vapers weren't around when I stopped playing STO.)
The general thing is that STO space combat is cool, but it is also a thing of extremes. Your ship is as tough as a wet paper towel without buffs protecting. But if you're buffed up, it's really hard to take you down, no matter what ship you fly. It usually requires a team to take down anything. ANd it often includes a subnucleonic beam to just take out all the buffs currently running (and your side's teamwork and any spare powers you still have will be all about reapplying buffs or holding you together until you die.
Overall, I think for PvP purposes, powers just are too strong often. I mention underpowered abiltiies above - one could argue that some of these are underpowered because they work on a far more reasonable baseline. Cannon Rapid Fire on an Escort just is far stronger than an Eject Warp Plasma on a Cruiser, despite both requiring a Cmdr slot on their respective ships. A power like Aceton Beam could be interesting and dangerous if not most ships had at least one Hazard Emitter available or someone in the team had one for the target.
You can also see this in PvE. At Tier 1, 2 or probably even 3, soloing a Dreadnought level enemy is probably impossible. At Tier 5, you may need 20 seocnds or so with a fully buffed Escort to destroy it, and a Cruiser or Science Vessel would probably just not die to it (even if it took forever). If Elite PvE combat didn't have the occasional random super-damage invisible (or not invisible) torpedo hit, you might never die.
The game's combat really works more like DS9 combats where they couldn't afford shield SFX and ship blew up after afew salvos of the Defiant, not like the tall ship combat of Balance of Power, Wrath of Khan or Nemesis. I love DS9 and I love my Defiant blowing up ships left and right, but stilll - you may want to find a happier middle ground.
But I don't known if there is a realistic chance of achieving this, since it's a sh*tton of work and I personally would not know where to begin.
But on the other hand it can only be fired in the forward arc and is cleared by Hazard Emitters, making it much less useful in PvP. Most enemies in PvE only seem to be threatening when they throw out torpedoes that deal as much damage as we wish we could.
I woludn't mind if every ship and captain class could fulfill multiple roles - just not all at a time.
But just saying we want to have roles and not limit classes too much on one isn't enough. WHat you really need to look at is how you can ensure that each role is actually useful.
Particularly in PVE, it seems you're never wrong with massive DPS. Infected Elite as the standard example. If your team happens to have poor DPS, yes, you probably want some science guy with repels to keep those damn nanite probes away. But it's very easy to actually have a team that has so much DPS (one could even argue a single guy with so much DPS) that it will just destroy the objectives so fast that the nanite probes never become a threat, even if the only strategy used is that the whole team focuses on one generator.
And this is everywhere in the game to some extent. Sure, it'S neat to have someone to patch you up, or do some crowd control, but seriously - just bring the real DPS, and you won't take enough damage to need a healer or need to control your foes. They are already dead by the time CC becomes relevant. (Example could be Undine Space Battle Zone - fly a science vessel focusing on CC and be accompanied by an Escort. By the time your first gravity well or whatever has finally completed casting and appears, the enemy already has lost most of his shields, and a few seconds later, he's destroyed. Your Gravity Well only gets to suck debris.)
It could be different if the escort after this fight was seriously damaged, and a crowd control ability in place could have lowered that, or a healer around could have patched him up already, but that's just not how it works.
Which isn't to say healing is weak - the problem is the enemies offensive abilities are weak.
But, back to roles. I prefer the D&D 4th edition approach to roles.
Controllers: Area Effects, debuffs, generally force the enemy to fight in ways good for your team but bad for him.
Defenders: Force enemies to attack the defender or suffer repercussions. It's not about magical aggro-drawing, it's about "If you don'T focus on this defender, who has a lot of defensive boosts and self-healing abilities, he will hurt you worse, stop you in your tracks, or lower the damage his allies take.).
Leader: Provide healing and buffs, often in a way encouraging your team to fight in a particular way or a particular target (like giving damage buffs against one target):
Strikers: Provide damage output and have mobiility options to get to foes or get out of trouble.
I think STO has BO powers that conform neatly to Controller, Leader and Striker role, but the Defender role is a bit short. Cruisers or Escorts could make the ideal candidate, and It hink there are a few powers that already work in that direction.
From the above roles, "Strikers" can be the most problematic - if their defensive and damage buffs are too good (and I think STO may have that problem in PvE), there isn't a need for something else.
Currently the boarding party doffs that have 33% chance to launch extra 3 shuttles don't work how the description states it, in reality its 33% chance to launch 1-3 shuttles.
Boarding party breaks when you have less than 10% total crew on your ship, this would mean that if you had 400/4000 crew on your ship, you would be casting boarding party, no shuttles would be launched and you woud still trigger the cooldown of it. Boarding party shuttles cost 10 crew... not 400 crew...
Another list for unpowered abilities:
Emergency Power to Engines 2+3 -Nobody uses ranks higher than 1.
Emergency Power to Aux 2+3 -Nobody uses ranks higher than 1.
Tachyon beam - Nobody uses this.
Mask Energy Signature - Nobody uses this
Photonic officer - nobody uses this exept for me randomly
Magnetometric overload 3 min cooldown for tiny stun and knockback... gosh?
aceton beam - deals no damage, should be improved, too long cooldown and duration, scale duration and cooldown down, double or tripple or quadrupple the TOTAL damage.
tactical team 2+3 nobody uses ranks higher than 1.... make the redistribution time scalable by the rank?
photonic displacement, the moment you use this console, enemy gains 100% shield penetration
all console and set powers with 3 min or longer cooldown are just useless, reduce them to 2.5 min or something?
tyken's rift is not considered to be particle generator power, by adapted battlecruiser and adapted destroyer's standards, their 3 set piece does not apply radiation damage on use of tyken's rift, yet tykens rift damage is boosted by particle generators and alpha strike... wuttttt
I just cant figure out anything else on my current mind state sorry.
CUUCUUMBEER! "-With slight partigen with it."
Proud member or DPS-800 "-We kill dem mines with our scitter turrets."
Eject Warp Plasma - Weak... for Big Romulans: EWP is one of my favorite abilities in the game, but using it on large romulan ships like the D'D or Scimitar is very frustrating because of the geometry effects involved. The large ships knock enemies out of the path to make the ability much less useful, or it's too big to fit through enemy groups so it gets stopped. It's very weird that a power's effectiveness is limited in such a strange way. Meanwhile, it works great on Fed cruisers with a much smaller frontal profile.
Aux2Batt with 3x Purple Tech Doffs - Strong: It's only ideal on certain BOFF layouts, but when it does work, it makes the ship excel. I have a hard time imagining playing cruisers without it. It's even great on Vestas and some escorts with lesser mandatory Tac seating. I feel it makes the game more enjoyable by bringing strong abilities into "once a battle" category, like Grav Well, EWP, and Directed Energy Manipulation. I don't know if it's too strong, but on the layouts that I build for it, it's an absolute must.
Boarding Party, Viral Matrix, Target Subsystems, Phaser procs, Weak in PvE - Subsystem disruption in PvE just isn't an effective strategy. Either the enemy is too weak to bother with a subsystem attack, or it lasts too short of a time. In the current PvE environment, only shield shutdown is useful, and marginally so. In the time it takes to setup a system disruption, you could have already knocked down the shields.
Zen Ship Consoles, Cooldowns in General - There are three types of abilities. Frequent use abilities used once or twice in an individual battle (30s CD), medium term abilities maybe used every other battle (60-90s CD), and long term abilities that can significantly change the battle (120s+ CD). Zen Consoles should be offered to fit into all three categories. Console slots are a premium, and giving one up for a pushbutton should add dimension in the ship's abilities. For example, a short cooldown damage enhancing console would be a good addition to a cruiser or science ship with few tac slots.
But as it stands right now, there is no reason to equip these 3m CD consoles. Their effects are not needed, they do not significantly alter gameplay, and they actively compromise the ship by removing the ability to equip a more useful console. However, if you consider something like Aceton Assimilator with a 45s CD, it's a really fun console. It's usable about every other battle, and has a substantial effect. It enhances and supplements gameplay and build options.
currently pve is just pew pew pew dead pew pew pew dead pew pew pew dead
make some strat involved, give heals to them dangit! then all the crowdcontrol would matter, also make more enemy ships use crowdcontrol abilities so we would have to counter them
CUUCUUMBEER! "-With slight partigen with it."
Proud member or DPS-800 "-We kill dem mines with our scitter turrets."
Last time they did that Pve heroes cried "please nerf".Lots of rage happend in the pve forum when borgs dared to use epte.
All this doesn't help making STO more Trek, it just creates more complications and problems as before.
I'd say get rid of "roles" altogether and make ships much more as they where in "real" trek.
That's what most people expect when playing a Star Trek game. People play A STAR TREK game to experience Star Trek, not a generic MMO. In Trek ships work different, a Ambassador Class is not a support ship for escorts, nor is the Galaxy a Healer ship. All this doesn't make sense and STO should get rid of it.
It really hurts to see Star Trek ship put into a mold and in the end filling a "role" they don't belong to.
Why not look at thi issue without bias, without MMO goggles on.
Almost 90% of all Starfleet "cruisers" where multi mission ships, only a small part where much more specialized and filled actually a specific "role" like Escort or Science ship. Every other ship was more or less a multi mission ship.
Just because STO is a MMO doesn't mean everything has to be put upside down.
Now we have the chance to present a different model, why stay with the "role" mechanic at all?
I never understood what's the point of playing a specific role in a MMO.
We're not NPCs, people can think and understand what's needed to win a mission, why not make ships versatile enough for such a requirement? What was a rather "limited" idea for a tabletop RPG doesn't have to apply in a modern Computer Game, least of all a STAR TREK game.
I can't remember any other Star Trek game i know of struggeling with the question "what role" a Galaxy or Excelsior Class has for example.
I'm really sorry to see, such ideas (like roles) still around after four years of STO.
I always hoped that most ppl., would have noticed that Trek is much more than that.
Id also like to chime in about the shield stripping abilities. Ive always felt that they should also add a reduction to shield hardness as well as allow the drains to work. At the moment the only weapons that do so are elite disruptors and Tachyon mines. With the introduction Elite shields as well as the T4 undine resistance power. Having the shield striping powers counter those buffs might be an interesting way to balance them out in a pvp situation.
I have the feeling that the value of hard counters has less effect on sci attacks then it used to.
EG. tykens 3 drain can be cleared by HE, HE has a high uptime, so tykens should drain like hell. On the other hand PSW's stun can be soft countered by A2ID, if you know that it is coming, but once stunned no more counters. Hence the stun should affect Time to kill to a lesser degree.
I can't really put my finger on why and how this has changed, but counters are more plentiful then they used to. They fixed Chroniton (APO), HE clears everything, no more shared Cd between team skills, ke'eel doff, etc. but failed to simultaneously buff up sci cc effects in return.
Note this is not about the question of direct damage boost from things like APB, APO, and what not. But the CC, sort of the core of the sci ship and bo class, has gone out of the window. NPC just got magical resists, and Players have more and stronger counters available to them then ever before, and those on a short cd.
Subsystem disables from Target subsystem, VM, phaser proc, etc have suffered the most from this. While susbsytem repair skill was the running joke of the skill tree (*yay* third revamp coming soon(tm)) it is finally working, eptx, et, baterries, are all hard counters. For a rebalance and for future cc effects, the avaialbilty of hard counters should matter more in their design, imv. If counterplay can completely negate their effects, then the baselin cc effect should be much more powerful then they are now.
Thoughts?
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
yea TRIBBLE the TV show ...just get the science ship be a cruiser or go to war,
not only you don't know how the game works but you also seem to never watched any star trek movie.
This thread exists to ask pve heroes how to TRIBBLE up the game even more ....then the same people will QQ about power creep and after effects.
Activating A2B brings aux power level to 5 for 10-15 seconds. If any copy of A2B is activated with only 5 aux power, then aux goes to zero for 10-15 seconds. I say up to 15 seconds because the global cooldown for this ability should also be changed from 10 to 15 seconds. Correcting power level issue.
Also make A2B(1) LtCmdr and A2B(2) Cmdr. If people want to dual A2B, they have to give up the better RSP/EPtX/DEM/A2Sif/A2D/ES/EWP etc. Also removes easy access for far too many ships being able to dual A2B <cough> escorts <cough>.
Finally, for tech doffs make the stacking effect have diminishing returns. One tech doff is 10%, two gives 18%, three gives 24%. Another solution would be to limit how many Technicians can be on Active Duty at once, to one.
how would this translate into STO's combat? Answer is, it already does in low level combat. Weapons at the lower level are very few (3-4 per ship) and rather weak, while shield points and hull points are relatively high compared to the maximum possible dmg output of a ship.
There are other factors too, like energy levels and skillpoints, but i see the main reason in the disproportional increase of firepower compared to SP and HP.
Solutions: reduce the number of weapon slots per ship, or increase SP and HP of each ship class including NPC ships. (i'd do both, but also give dedicated slots for torps and mines)
examples:
shuttles only 1 weapon slot (shuttle only weapon type)
beginner ships 1 front, 1 rear + 1 torp launcher
all ships above this tier have the same amount of weapon slots and only distinguish themselves from lower tiers by the amount of HP, SP, the amount of console slots and BOFF slots. Additionaly they can only equip weapons with the corresponding MK level. T4 may only equip MK IX, not higher.
cruiser: 2 front, 2 rear + torp launcher front and mine launcher rear (if they got a hangar, they loose the mine launcher)
escort: 2 front, 2 rear + torp launcher
sci vessel: 2 front, 2 rear + torp launcher front and mine launcher rear and the long promised secondary deflector (depending on the size of the sci vessel, smaller sci vessel like the nova lack the mine launcher, since they are more maneuverable as compensation or some like the vesta have a hangar instead)
carrier: 2 front, 2 rear + 2 hangars
NPC ships in general are lacking 2 things: survivability and firepower, and the way they try to make this up is strength in numbers...which is bad for performance issues and frankly it doesn't feel very trek when you take out 3 undine (or any other race) frigates at once.
I'd say combine the 3 ship frigate grp into a single frigate with 3 times the SP and HP.
I really think you need to stop this. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they "don't know how the game works."
This may be the single most important thread the game has ever had. Hawk is trying to engage players directly about the current way the game plays, and taking our direct feedback about all the powers and abilities. Everyone is getting a voice, and it sounds like he is actually reading them all. Some of the most experienced, best, and veteran players are sharing thoughts about how to make the game better, with everyone getting their turn to speak.
If you have specific arguments against some of the ideas, please state them. You probably are smarter about the game than most players - so explain why you think these 'PVE hero' ideas are going to 'TRIBBLE up the game.' I, and I assume others, honestly want to know what exactly you object to.
How are they veterans?They are against team play (see all the reasons why TT should be changed) ,they want the support class to do escort's job (dps) ,they want sci powers (which already are a must have ) to be way way stronger than already are.
Maybe you can find since when you balance a game for pve?Have you ever seen a NPC (which also spends money...most pvp players not only play more than pve people but also tend to spend more money to buy all the new stuffs ) coming on the forums and complaning about not fair powers?The game will be changed by following ideas from people who only play pve and have no clue how is to play against something that uses boff powers back ...that is TRIBBLE up the game even more .
Strange, I can remember "Sci"-ships going into battle against the Borg and the Dominion in Star Trek. Surely they didnt know what to do, or it was simply a matter of "in times of need". Imo we are having multiple wars going on, so I guess anything gets the war-refit.
Even the Nebula was more cruiserlike than sci-like in the series. Same applies to the Armitage, and the prometheus. The Intrepid too wasnt that lightly armed and shielded.
And strangely, many sci-abilities dont exist like this in Star Trek, so if we go like Star Trek, we can just flush out Sciships completely.