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science ships (game mechanics, disadvantages)
sennahcherib
Member Posts: 2,823 Arc User
there is something very crappy with how the science ships are handled in this game.
- first of all, with a sci ship ( i mean with real sci ship, not the tac/sci ships) you can't do a lot of dps, so how you can earn purple gears from stfs
.
- most of the sci abilities seem really meh. My nebula has grav well3 with more than 1500 kinetic damage, + a lot of stuffs to increase exotic damages; but in fact i don't see a lot of efficiency.
- feedback pulse -> meh
- tractor beam -> meh
only the healing abilities are good.
There is also a real problem, with the power of these ships; i like to heal teamates but when i spend 15000 years for destroying a ship, during this time as a healer i'm useless. I don't want DPS monsters, but ships which has 2 tac consoles, should be upgraded to 3. btw in TNG a nebula was able to destroy a class Galor :P
i know the Luna class and the other with 4 tac consoles, but there are not interesting for a healer because they can't take a lot of damages. Same thing for the vesta ( i have this ship); i'm not interested by Tac/sci ships.
During a fight particularly in viscous cycle elite, even if i know that someone needs help; with all the bubbles, the undine grav well, most of the time i don't see this player. And if this guy uses a small ship, this is worse. I think that a red icon/bar should appear (above the fleet name) when a player need help ( - 50 % shield, - 50% hull).
when a sci ship helps someone, during this time it should have a protection bonus (+ x% damage resistance bonus or something like that)
- first of all, with a sci ship ( i mean with real sci ship, not the tac/sci ships) you can't do a lot of dps, so how you can earn purple gears from stfs
.- most of the sci abilities seem really meh. My nebula has grav well3 with more than 1500 kinetic damage, + a lot of stuffs to increase exotic damages; but in fact i don't see a lot of efficiency.
- feedback pulse -> meh
- tractor beam -> meh
only the healing abilities are good.
There is also a real problem, with the power of these ships; i like to heal teamates but when i spend 15000 years for destroying a ship, during this time as a healer i'm useless. I don't want DPS monsters, but ships which has 2 tac consoles, should be upgraded to 3. btw in TNG a nebula was able to destroy a class Galor :P
i know the Luna class and the other with 4 tac consoles, but there are not interesting for a healer because they can't take a lot of damages. Same thing for the vesta ( i have this ship); i'm not interested by Tac/sci ships.
During a fight particularly in viscous cycle elite, even if i know that someone needs help; with all the bubbles, the undine grav well, most of the time i don't see this player. And if this guy uses a small ship, this is worse. I think that a red icon/bar should appear (above the fleet name) when a player need help ( - 50 % shield, - 50% hull).
when a sci ship helps someone, during this time it should have a protection bonus (+ x% damage resistance bonus or something like that)
Post edited by sennahcherib on
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Please post your build and I would love to help suggest improvements.
This shows pretty good how little you know about sci...
Anyways, use Tractor Beam Repulsors, high partigens, and the doff that changes them to a pull, and leverage Sensor Analysis to proper use. Note that Feedback Pulse damage scales with Aux power.
Science is a debuffer, not a DPS machine. Why the heck are there all these threads wanting more DPS for Sci? It's not supposed to have much DPS!
Also, note that most Science castable heals have resists built in, namely Hazard Emitters and Transfer Shield Strength. Hence your suggestion is pointless.
IIRC, drop quality in STFs is not affected by DPS. Purple drops are random. Only fleet actions and Crystalline Entity are so affected.
Teammate health is displayed in the team sidebar. You can use it to target teammates as well, making it easy to cast heals.
It would be better if you posted your setup in case it can be improved.
I came here to defend Scis as I do for time to time, but this I did not expect to see. I have not seen a Feedback Pulse Build mentioned since way back in the day when it was broken. This, this interests me.
And hope that there isn't a cruiser with +threat and Command: Attract Fire.
Of course sci ships sux big time. And yeah as expected, PvPers will come, arrogantly offering advices for your build, even if you actually didnt requested them:rolleyes:.
IMHO, sci skills depend too much from the passive skills. Usually you have to sacrifice alot (both in skill points and console slots) for the results, unlike tac powers for example, wich arent so much skills dependent. An unspec grav well or feedback pulse will be rather weak, while an unspec attack pattern will be around the same as a speced one.
Also the heals are not scaled with the damage. Becouse of the "powercreep", damage increased alot but the heals have remained allmost the same as were 3-4 years ago. A ship can vape with spike damages of 30-60k, but can a sci ship spike heal that much? Same for DPS, tac ships can pull 30k DPS easy, but sci ships cant do 30k Heal per sec...
And same goes for gear and other abilities. Only heal boost that comes in mind is the bio patch trait, wich give +20% hull heal. While the damage was increased over the years with a variaty of sets and abilities, both passive and active.
But I think also a problem with sci is not mainly the lack of tac consoles, wich is expected, but rather the lack of weapon slots. I still dont see why the sci ships are been punished with only 6 weapons. Ok, I get they are not about DPS, but neither are the cruisers in their main role, as tanks, yet they have the largest weapons slots of any ships
The "only 6 weapons slots on sci ships" rule may have been justified at the begining when sci abilities were very powerfull, like VM, but certainly not now...
Sensor Analysis. Or so Cryptic says.
1) Bring down NPCs shields in seconds.
2) Make NPCs basically become sitting bricks you can just pew pew to death
3) Cause massive hull damage
The downside?
Sci requires you to spec heavily into the skill(s) you want to use.
Otherwise, classic grav well TBR crowd control builds and drain boats do well. Sci should pretty much always get 1st in Crystalline and sci is almost always overpowered in PvP.
I've never been able to equip more then 1 of those purple Doffs. How are you equipping 2?
[/SIGPIC]
If I can pull that off in the sci vesta class, any yahoo can setup a sci ship to do damage and do some impressive science abilities as well.
It's out there to be done, just gotta figure it out.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
I am often 1st at CCE and I think Vesta can eat that Scryer for lunch. Scryer have 2 tac consoles and no uni LTcmdr station. Maybe fleet version will get more versetile stuff, but Scryer is bad.
Healing gives a LOT more points than damage in CE. My Mogai retrofit (with common Mk IX/X wepons) would often get the 1st place because of Console - Universal - Shield Absorptive Frequency Generator. It's pretty hard not to get the 1st place with a Vesta.
Thought it was 2, but after posted I decided to check and it's 1.
Probably because if non-damaging Science powers were boosted to the level that they were as useful as raw DPS for running PVE missions, the PVP people would cry bitter tears about being debuffed and disabled and crowd controlled so that highest spike DPS doesn't automatically win.
Wait, what? People complains for years that cruisers were useless, and now that they actually have some tools to work with, people are annoyed when cruisers try to use them?
My tac escort avatar can rip most people into shreds within seconds, but its usually sci ships with those big shields and sci abilities that give me the hardest time.
People want more damage for Sci because this game revolves around damage if you haven't noticed that...plus coupled with the fact how absolutely trashed Sci was after the huge nerfs they suffered from Tac officers abusing Sci powers is a sour note that wont go away.
Sci actually did good damage once but Cryptic doesn't care...their cash cows are with the easy dps of sticking 5 forward slots or 5 tac consoles onto a ship and spam away.
I'm not complainings since I actually do that with my Galor class. I'm just saying it probably hurts anyone trying to play a Feedback Pulse build in PVE.
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Trait:_Conservation_of_Energy
Unfortunately you have Sci traits like that and abilities like feedback pulse both of which rely on getting hit. Its just like back in the day with WoW tanks where they had to take damage in order to gain resource. Prot Warriors needed mobs focusing on them so that they gain rage through hits and so they can convert that rage into attacks/threat. Prot pallys IIRC had a mechanic, i think it was tied to their shield block where if a mob hit them it would eat up a shield charge block and they would gain mana. I think they also had a passive or something where if they were missing health and they got healed they would gain mana back. I'm not 100% sure on that last one though. Even now with those old mechanics being gone or limited you still have some tanks complaining that mobs still need to be hitting them to be effective. They have Vengeance which was added i believe in Cata. The more mobs that are hitting the tank the more attack power they gain, meaning the more threat they can put out.
So yes, anytime you have abilities or passives that require you to get hit regardless of if you are a tanky tank of a ship, a sci or a tac, then people *will* get annoyed because that's basically lost dps. I mean...30% extra exotic damage? try and convince a tac captain to fight with 1 less tac console and see if they wouldnt be annoyed.
That being saidr, I'm enjoying the change of pace with my Sci character. I'm finding that there's more strategy involved with my Sci character than my Tac.
There is definately some research that goes into a sci build before you get started. Look at end game gear and powers, figure out what will best support that build and then start your toon.
I wish I had better advice.
good luck.
feeback pulse i use on my tactical excelsior, it reflects some damage taken back to the attacker in equal measure, along with some of their own damage returned to sender, bfaw spam can add insult to injury.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
That shows to me that Sci is not useless even with the most basic skills and equipment, before you start looking into full drain or shutdown builds that need more forwards planning.
Add in things like doffs that cause aftershock GW's and projectile cool-downs and you can wipe out most of the map before the rest of the team gets in range.
Plus you can set sensor analysis on the big boss targets and leave it to stack up to give you a boost when you need to deal with them. If everyone on the team puts sensor analysis on a boss ship and lets it stack for the whole match it has a dammed big effect when you go in for the kill.