Rock and Roll:
Your ship performs an animated roll maneuver, preventing all incoming damage for a short duration.
WAT. I CAN HAS BARREL ROLL?! GIMME! GIMME NAO!!
Future updates may also result in the conversion of an existing Secondary Specialization into a Primary Specialization, expanded to include additional progression options within that specialization.
Hmm, maybe not so great. I don't know if I would want to have to choose between the current primary and any of the secondary other ones if they became converted to primaries.
Nitpicking is a time-honored tradition of science fiction. Asking your readers not to worry about the "little things" is like asking a dog not to sniff at people's crotches. If there's something that appears to violate natural laws, then you can expect someone's going to point it out. That's just the way things are.
Would it be that hard to give NPCs similar builds to player ships though? One would think they'd have to redo every NPC ship one at a time. But even then I'd think it would be worth it.
Yet another plea to do away with titles above "captain" in general terms. PLEASE!!!
Once again, I believe Star Trek, at its core, has always been about the captains. Consequently, any rank above captain should be reserved as optional ranks for members of fleets and only the fleet leader should be able to have the title "fleet admiral".
All the "admirals" running around all the time really hammers away the suspension of disbelief notion and the Star Trek universe.
If you are looking for an excellent PvE fleet consider: Omega Combat Division today.
Former member of the Cryptic Family & FriendsTesting Team. Sadly, one day, it simply vanished - without a word or trace...
My engineer's torpedo speedboat defiant is going to love this. And possibly his actual speedboat. I really hope the damage boost based on speed isn't capped really low, because I love putting everything together to get the highest speeds possible, and that's not easy to do without sacrificing everything else.
I personally think rock and roll should be renamed barrel roll also only certain types of ship should be able to use the ability. As I would hate to see something like a galaxy do it as if it could be done by a ship like that it would have been done in the show If a galaxy class did it pyshics dictates the ship would most likely tear itself apart.
NO TO ARC
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I love the system, though for most of my people I'd want the future trees - but we can't save up for them because they'll be turned into dilithium?
But.. Okay, if we have everything the skill points are converted into dilithium. So... if we wanted to save skill points up so when the next tree comes out we can grab everything from it rather than wait all we have to do is leave one skill unselected? Or would it see that final skill position and only save one skill point and turn any beyond that into dilithium?
I personally think rock and roll should be renamed barrel roll also only certain types of ship should be able to use the ability. As I would hate to see something like a galaxy do it as if it could be done by a ship like that it would have been done in the show If a galaxy class did it pyshics dictates the ship would most likely tear itself apart.
Space. We're in space. Anything can barrel roll, there is no wind resistance or gravity. ESD could barrel roll, that's how you get the spinning space station produce gravity trope.
Sounds like more of the same, and more plumbing you add to the pipes, the easier it is to stop up the drain(Scotty)and in that reguard, I have to ask , does this mean that skipper type(Tac/Sci/Eng ) and /faction(Rom/Kling/Fed) and ship classes(escort/destroyer/cruiser/Bcruiser/dread / etc will still be as horribly in-balanced as they are now? if not worse?
Who said Pilot Specialization is not science specific? I think not.
My main character flies a Voyager build that relies on speed for defense and finally I can imagine having Tom Paris on the helm. I have tried the updates on Tribble and the new grahpic effects your ship performs when your aft shields are fired upon is so so cool. Even with this effect, the Abalative Armor effect briefly shows up when not equiped just like with the Borg Set. Love the addition Devs.
There are some points that I will like on the current Primary Intelligence Spec, but I will save my points for a while on release. If new Primaries take time to come out then I may buy some of those points. Will only buy them when flying the Dauntless to unlock the Starship specialization trait to use for my other ships.
Overal, I like the new Captain Specializations system.
Go down fighting III / Die Hard = Rock&roll + Fire at will III + scatter volley III + fire all fore and aft torpedoes full spread III three times in a ten second maneuver.
To balance:
weapons offline for 10 seconds so better have an impulse burst handy.
15 min cooldown.
It would be visually brilliant, add a nice dynamic and imagine a captain shouting evasive maneuvers fire everything.
SBOff types beyond Intel have not been announced. Or even intimated.
My assumptions would be for every Primary Specialization we get there would be SBOff's to match. But Secondaries would not get any SBOff's. But this is purely conjecture at this point.
They stated somewhere that intel boffs are the first in the line of new hybrid specialization boffs. With delta rising only intel boffs will be available, but there are plans for more.
They also stated that secondary specializations might in time be expanded to primary spec.
I think primary spec = new hybrid boff.
But yeah, speculation at this point.
.. I will say that this (along with other changes) will give incentive for players with alts to consolidate their efforts on a select few toons.
Incentive? With the promise of ongoing specializations (and power creep) this ends any chance of being competitive in pvp if you play more than one alt. Since this is a game financed by selling ships and gear to those who have to be the best and/or have everything, it doesn't make a lot of sense to tell these people that they can no longer be the best if they try out something new.
Of course that could be fixed if each time you earned a skill point you got one for every toon on your account. Then people would have lots of toons to spend Zen/dilithium/ec on. Otherwise my main falls behind if I play anything else.
Great i take a power, next day cryptic nerv it to 000000.1 % and i'm stuck with something worthless (1 had grinded for 3 months??)
Yep, specialization means that your toon will be even more suseptible to the regular thursday alteration of universal law, ie. rules changes. And ongoing additions to the specialization system will mean perpetual opportunities for castration of your builds. Enjoy running the hamster wheel.
:eek: As for the traits, why has no one exploded over this?
Starship Trait:
Predictive Algorithms◦Activating any Weapon Enhancement Ability (such as Torpedo Spread or Beam Overload) will remove one Debuff from self, and grant a short-duration Accuracy boost.
Subnuc is a debuff and so is Sensor Scan. As is Viral matrix, all of the energy drain powers and procs, the confuse and placate abilites. Whereas tac team, cannon rapid fire, attack patterns... oh wait - every tac captain and tac BO power - is a weapon enhancement ability.
:mad: Which means the only ships worth flying in Delta rising are the T6 escort and the T6 raptor, and both need a tac Captain. No thank you. I've lost interest in pvp and most of the game because of this.
OK, so I do like the sound of these, and am looking forward to trying them out.
That said... Attack Pattern Omega doesn't bring enough benefits as it is? Now ships using it will give a ship damage absorption as well? And please tell me that we'd have to stop shooting while doing that barrel-roll thing.
While I don't play PvP much these days, I always thought I'd get back into it someday; but depending on how this works out, I might just not bother.
Then it's only a Roll. Rock and Roll only works if you're going Full Spread, Cannon Rapid Fire and Beam: Fire at Will as you roll.
I love the system, though for most of my people I'd want the future trees - but we can't save up for them because they'll be turned into dilithium?
But.. Okay, if we have everything the skill points are converted into dilithium. So... if we wanted to save skill points up so when the next tree comes out we can grab everything from it rather than wait all we have to do is leave one skill unselected? Or would it see that final skill position and only save one skill point and turn any beyond that into dilithium?
Apparently you can just not select the abilities from the specialization trees. That way you can have everything ready for the next one to come out.
Plus, you'll have a bunch of dil, which is not to be sneezed at.
This sounds really cool. Basically they stop our rank progression, but we still level up. Every time we "level up" we don't increase in rank, but get a token. So we get to level 60, and then have 45 more levels to go. I like this. Means that all that experience we end up with is not a waste anymore. I just hope that these things work good, and offer something that is worth the time spent on them.
Thank you for this.
Leader of Elite Guardian Academy.Would you like to learn how to run a fleet? Would you like to know how to do ship builds (true budget as well as high end)?The join the Academy today!
Many of us still have so many Expertise banked for playing mainly one characters, wish we can convert them to specialization points, the reason being that as you fly your ship for a very long time you get to be more specialized in its abilities.
I have 8 million expertise still to spend on my main character and wonder what they will be used for as time goes on.
The Captain Specialisations remind me of a hybrid version of what was going on in several mmos of the past and present. It definitely has flexibility and longevity for the future making it attractive to design I suspect as well as add further features to end game progression for us to play with which is nice.
The terminology though could be better to avoid Star Wars and other scifi nomenclature so I would suggest: Federation FactionKlingon FactionRomulan Faction
Abilities available in this Specialization:
Adaptive Target (Space): [yep sounds Trekkie]
Obliterate Defenses (Ground): [I would go for Enfiilade Pattern or Flanker!]
Opportunistic (Space+Ground): [Maybe something like Taking Advantage or Turn the Tables!]
Secondary Tree: Pilot Helmsman Imperial Helmsman Republic Helmsman
Pilot are more your little ships, these powers appear to be for capitals to use as well so more a helmsman's area of expertise when applied to a much larger ship.
Starship Trait:
Pedal to the Metal ◦ [I would avoid this reference to go for something like Full Combat Thrusters! as there are Thrusters on alot of ships in Star Trek which are used in combat, gives it a better Trek flavor]
Abilities (all Space), which include the following examples:
Attack Pattern Expertise: [I would call this Pattern Master]
Desperate Flight: [This one sounds fine imo though you could call it Evasive Omega]
Rock and Roll: [and make this Evasive Alpha]
Secondary Tree: Commando [Definitely needs Trekker love this name] Star Fleet Marine Imperial KDF Marine Republic Legionary
Starship Trait:
Demolition Teams ◦ [This one talked about explosives being transported, I could see a great trait here when a enemy shield is down to uinleash squads of prepared marines over to board a ship! This one would sound better as Combat Tranporters! to enhance the specialised equipment used to beam swiftly the hazardous material being sent as well as the skills and training that goes with this dangerous combat tactic]
Abilities:
Resilient Power Cells: [I would go for Safeties Off!]
Reduce the cooldown on all weapon Secondary Firing Modes
Headshot: [Maybe Sniper Shot! sounds better. As we cannot assume all enemies actually have a "head" to shoot at in Star Trek :P]
Juggernaut Shielding: [Avoid SWTOR here and go for something like Shield Overcharge! or Hot Shielding!]
Increased Shield Hardness and Max Shield Capacity
Anyways just some semantics and ideas here to give the text more Trek flavor, i just thought Star Wars at different points reading the blog. :P
This looks like an interesting way to continue improving our characters past level 60, but it definitely diminishes the value of using alts for anything other than random farming. This is adding yet another reason not to buy character slots, or ships to fly using alts, or ship slots for alts, or gear to equip alts, or gear Upgrades for alts, or boff/doff roster space for alts, or... well, you get the idea. Captain Specialization is a nice idea, but unless it's as quick a run to 60 Specialization Points as it is from character creation to level 50... it creates a massive disincentive to play more than one character. Farming might still happen, but that's about it...
I'd really love to see the Captain Specialization points applied account-wide, but then again Crafting is an incredibly long trek to maxing out and could've done with account-wide treatment as well. Maybe we'll at least see Sponsorship Tokens for Captain Specialization and/or Crafting at some point like we can acquire for the Rep Systems?
...get replaced by the Improved version you can unlock later, or can we slot both to add +7.5% Accuracy (per stack) and clear 2 debuffs each time we use a Weapon Enhancement Ability? For Federation captains this may not be an ideal route, but with the limited selection of T6 ships (and by extension Starship Traits) available to Klingon and Romulan captains I can see this being quite common... though for a Federation captain it would synergize well with Reciprocity, since you can keep multiple Weapon Enhancement Abilities at a faster cooldown, thereby allowing you to clear more debuffs and build more stacks. Hmmm...
...walkthrough of the current Tribble build for the Captain Specializations. I really like the UI there... it's a bit cleaner than the old UI and provides better information at-a-glance. Looks like they were listening to some of the doffing UI feedback, they just didn't apply it to doffing.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
Although, many are upgrades/additions to other Abilities, increases in Ranks, etc. It probably actually works out to less than half that many.
Example:
"Redundant Sensors I" is an Ability in the Intelligence Officer specialization which grants a 10% chance to immediately cleanse any Confuse or Placate effects you are hit by. But once you've purchased that one, you also open up the option of purchasing "Redundant Sensors II" which increases the chance to 20%.
So did I...
...totally miss something in the video?
...totally misunderstand what Bort said?
I already have Pilot in mind for my Bajoran Tac and her Fleet Defiant.
Agreed for my Main, Takeshi Yamato, a Human Male Tac, and his Fleet Sao Paulo, the Raging Tempest.
Since I don't know how easy/possible it'll be to switch from one primary or secondary spec to another, I won't be taking advantage of it on all my characters just yet - Just the characters that would fit with one or more of the ones becoming available.
Also, I'm kinda hopeful one of the Specializations that'll become available later will be Tactician - It'd likely be limited to Tac Careers, but I have a couple characters that would be able to take advantage of it. :cool:
Since I can't watch the video for a few days... What are you thinking is the discrepancy?
There did not appear to be anywhere that one selected a single ability from the abilities offered. Hate that they use the term ability, but that's what they called it. Likewise, the use of the term unlock - for both unlocking the abilities as well as the unlocks after spending a certain number of points.
But anyway...the video shows the player having spent the 10 points that were available since he was 60.
Intelligence Officer (Active)
Flank Protection I
Hide Weakness I -> Hide Weakness II
Automated Reinforcement I
Pilot (Active)
Maneuvering Thrusters I
Eat My Dust I
Desperate Flight I
Reckless Abandon
Commando (Inactive)
Resilient Power Cells I
Headshot I
So with Intelligence Officer and Pilot set as the respective active Primary and Secondary, it gives the appearance that the player has not just two abilities active (one Primary and one Secondary), but that he actually has seven abilities active.
Comments
http://youtu.be/DOP63wHJEvw?t=7s
Not sure if Galaxy Quest reference
WAT. I CAN HAS BARREL ROLL?! GIMME! GIMME NAO!!
Hmm, maybe not so great. I don't know if I would want to have to choose between the current primary and any of the secondary other ones if they became converted to primaries.
All hail the Syrup Legionnaires!
Joined January 2009
Just saying DDIS, it's not wise to insult someone you wish to join you.
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I love that I have something to strive for...
...maxing out my skills and earning dilithium with every kill. :-)
...and some of those skills look really good too.
Once again, I believe Star Trek, at its core, has always been about the captains. Consequently, any rank above captain should be reserved as optional ranks for members of fleets and only the fleet leader should be able to have the title "fleet admiral".
All the "admirals" running around all the time really hammers away the suspension of disbelief notion and the Star Trek universe.
ingame: @.Spartan
Original Cryptic Forum Name: Spartan (member #124)
The Glorious, Kirk’s Protegè
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
But.. Okay, if we have everything the skill points are converted into dilithium. So... if we wanted to save skill points up so when the next tree comes out we can grab everything from it rather than wait all we have to do is leave one skill unselected? Or would it see that final skill position and only save one skill point and turn any beyond that into dilithium?
Space. We're in space. Anything can barrel roll, there is no wind resistance or gravity. ESD could barrel roll, that's how you get the spinning space station produce gravity trope.
Rubber bands, gum, duct tape, and sandboxes.
My main character flies a Voyager build that relies on speed for defense and finally I can imagine having Tom Paris on the helm. I have tried the updates on Tribble and the new grahpic effects your ship performs when your aft shields are fired upon is so so cool. Even with this effect, the Abalative Armor effect briefly shows up when not equiped just like with the Borg Set. Love the addition Devs.
There are some points that I will like on the current Primary Intelligence Spec, but I will save my points for a while on release. If new Primaries take time to come out then I may buy some of those points. Will only buy them when flying the Dauntless to unlock the Starship specialization trait to use for my other ships.
Overal, I like the new Captain Specializations system.
Hull<25% unlocks:
Go down fighting III / Die Hard = Rock&roll + Fire at will III + scatter volley III + fire all fore and aft torpedoes full spread III three times in a ten second maneuver.
To balance:
weapons offline for 10 seconds so better have an impulse burst handy.
15 min cooldown.
It would be visually brilliant, add a nice dynamic and imagine a captain shouting evasive maneuvers fire everything.
Any takers?
They stated somewhere that intel boffs are the first in the line of new hybrid specialization boffs. With delta rising only intel boffs will be available, but there are plans for more.
They also stated that secondary specializations might in time be expanded to primary spec.
I think primary spec = new hybrid boff.
But yeah, speculation at this point.
Incentive? With the promise of ongoing specializations (and power creep) this ends any chance of being competitive in pvp if you play more than one alt. Since this is a game financed by selling ships and gear to those who have to be the best and/or have everything, it doesn't make a lot of sense to tell these people that they can no longer be the best if they try out something new.
Of course that could be fixed if each time you earned a skill point you got one for every toon on your account. Then people would have lots of toons to spend Zen/dilithium/ec on. Otherwise my main falls behind if I play anything else.
Yep, specialization means that your toon will be even more suseptible to the regular thursday alteration of universal law, ie. rules changes. And ongoing additions to the specialization system will mean perpetual opportunities for castration of your builds. Enjoy running the hamster wheel.
:eek: As for the traits, why has no one exploded over this?
Starship Trait:
Predictive Algorithms◦Activating any Weapon Enhancement Ability (such as Torpedo Spread or Beam Overload) will remove one Debuff from self, and grant a short-duration Accuracy boost.
Subnuc is a debuff and so is Sensor Scan. As is Viral matrix, all of the energy drain powers and procs, the confuse and placate abilites. Whereas tac team, cannon rapid fire, attack patterns... oh wait - every tac captain and tac BO power - is a weapon enhancement ability.
:mad: Which means the only ships worth flying in Delta rising are the T6 escort and the T6 raptor, and both need a tac Captain. No thank you. I've lost interest in pvp and most of the game because of this.
Nerfing is Fraud...
Then it's only a Roll. Rock and Roll only works if you're going Full Spread, Cannon Rapid Fire and Beam: Fire at Will as you roll.
Yup, Holy s#@t button
Apparently you can just not select the abilities from the specialization trees. That way you can have everything ready for the next one to come out.
Plus, you'll have a bunch of dil, which is not to be sneezed at.
Thank you for this.
I have 8 million expertise still to spend on my main character and wonder what they will be used for as time goes on.
The terminology though could be better to avoid Star Wars and other scifi nomenclature so I would suggest: Federation Faction Klingon Faction Romulan Faction
Primary Tree: Intelligence Officer
Star Fleet Intelligence Officer
Imperial Intelligence Officer
Republic Intelligence Agent
Starship Trait:
Predictive Algorithms [Sounds Trek enough imo]
Abilities available in this Specialization:
Adaptive Target (Space): [yep sounds Trekkie]
Obliterate Defenses (Ground): [I would go for Enfiilade Pattern or Flanker!]
Opportunistic (Space+Ground): [Maybe something like Taking Advantage or Turn the Tables!]
Secondary Tree: Pilot
Helmsman
Imperial Helmsman
Republic Helmsman
Pilot are more your little ships, these powers appear to be for capitals to use as well so more a helmsman's area of expertise when applied to a much larger ship.
Starship Trait:
Pedal to the Metal ◦ [I would avoid this reference to go for something like Full Combat Thrusters! as there are Thrusters on alot of ships in Star Trek which are used in combat, gives it a better Trek flavor]
Abilities (all Space), which include the following examples:
Attack Pattern Expertise: [I would call this Pattern Master]
Desperate Flight: [This one sounds fine imo though you could call it Evasive Omega]
Rock and Roll: [and make this Evasive Alpha]
Secondary Tree: Commando [Definitely needs Trekker love this name]
Star Fleet Marine
Imperial KDF Marine
Republic Legionary
Starship Trait:
Demolition Teams ◦ [This one talked about explosives being transported, I could see a great trait here when a enemy shield is down to uinleash squads of prepared marines over to board a ship! This one would sound better as Combat Tranporters! to enhance the specialised equipment used to beam swiftly the hazardous material being sent as well as the skills and training that goes with this dangerous combat tactic]
Abilities:
Resilient Power Cells: [I would go for Safeties Off!]
Reduce the cooldown on all weapon Secondary Firing Modes
Headshot: [Maybe Sniper Shot! sounds better. As we cannot assume all enemies actually have a "head" to shoot at in Star Trek :P]
Juggernaut Shielding: [Avoid SWTOR here and go for something like Shield Overcharge! or Hot Shielding!]
Increased Shield Hardness and Max Shield Capacity
Anyways just some semantics and ideas here to give the text more Trek flavor, i just thought Star Wars at different points reading the blog. :P
I'd really love to see the Captain Specialization points applied account-wide, but then again Crafting is an incredibly long trek to maxing out and could've done with account-wide treatment as well. Maybe we'll at least see Sponsorship Tokens for Captain Specialization and/or Crafting at some point like we can acquire for the Rep Systems?
Also, as a Trait unlock does... ...get replaced by the Improved version you can unlock later, or can we slot both to add +7.5% Accuracy (per stack) and clear 2 debuffs each time we use a Weapon Enhancement Ability? For Federation captains this may not be an ideal route, but with the limited selection of T6 ships (and by extension Starship Traits) available to Klingon and Romulan captains I can see this being quite common... though for a Federation captain it would synergize well with Reciprocity, since you can keep multiple Weapon Enhancement Abilities at a faster cooldown, thereby allowing you to clear more debuffs and build more stacks. Hmmm...
By the way, thanks for the video... ...walkthrough of the current Tribble build for the Captain Specializations. I really like the UI there... it's a bit cleaner than the old UI and provides better information at-a-glance. Looks like they were listening to some of the doffing UI feedback, they just didn't apply it to doffing.
BUT IT'S ALSO AN OBVIOUS CASH GRAB! /Sarcasm.
I'm sorry to people who I, in the past, insulted, annoyed, etc.
So did I...
...totally miss something in the video?
...totally misunderstand what Bort said?
Agreed for my Main, Takeshi Yamato, a Human Male Tac, and his Fleet Sao Paulo, the Raging Tempest.
Since I don't know how easy/possible it'll be to switch from one primary or secondary spec to another, I won't be taking advantage of it on all my characters just yet - Just the characters that would fit with one or more of the ones becoming available.
Also, I'm kinda hopeful one of the Specializations that'll become available later will be Tactician - It'd likely be limited to Tac Careers, but I have a couple characters that would be able to take advantage of it. :cool:
Since I can't watch the video for a few days... What are you thinking is the discrepancy?
There did not appear to be anywhere that one selected a single ability from the abilities offered. Hate that they use the term ability, but that's what they called it. Likewise, the use of the term unlock - for both unlocking the abilities as well as the unlocks after spending a certain number of points.
But anyway...the video shows the player having spent the 10 points that were available since he was 60.
Intelligence Officer (Active)
Flank Protection I
Hide Weakness I -> Hide Weakness II
Automated Reinforcement I
Pilot (Active)
Maneuvering Thrusters I
Eat My Dust I
Desperate Flight I
Reckless Abandon
Commando (Inactive)
Resilient Power Cells I
Headshot I
So with Intelligence Officer and Pilot set as the respective active Primary and Secondary, it gives the appearance that the player has not just two abilities active (one Primary and one Secondary), but that he actually has seven abilities active.