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What qualities make a hanger/seperation pet great?
bareel
Member Posts: 3 Arc User
Some pets in STO are amazing. Some are decent. And some are simply terrible. A balance pass just might be the best thing to happen for those of us who like to use them.
Sensor Analysis provides up to a +30% bonus to damage and energy drain effects. This is what a carrier sacrifices in most cases (and 10% bonus defense at times as well) to have the pets and should be considered a baseline for desired effectiveness in my view. At the same time we should not get too hung up on that singular aspect of carrier pets.
The first thing necessary for any pet to be enjoyable to use is the delicate balance of it's survivability. They should not be so strong nothing can hurt them but neither should they explode constantly. At the moment some pets are in the first category, most are in the second. A persistent issue of pets dying to warp core explosions and/or any small amount of area attacks has plagued this balance and needs to be dealt with directly before any real improvement can be made in this area. It could be a resistance boost, immunity to warp core explosions, a scaling back of warp core explosion damage, faster and smarter pets, I don't know or care but this needs to be the first thing addressed.
Next up is utility. A pet doesn't have to deal 'tons of damage' if it provides useful utility for the player. But one has to be very careful here to keep PvP concerns and visual spam/lag in mind.
Finally we have the issue of scaling. If a player's pets should be capable of dealing around 30% of their damage who's 30% should it be? And how can they be made to scale with the player's capabilities / gear?
Sensor Analysis provides up to a +30% bonus to damage and energy drain effects. This is what a carrier sacrifices in most cases (and 10% bonus defense at times as well) to have the pets and should be considered a baseline for desired effectiveness in my view. At the same time we should not get too hung up on that singular aspect of carrier pets.
The first thing necessary for any pet to be enjoyable to use is the delicate balance of it's survivability. They should not be so strong nothing can hurt them but neither should they explode constantly. At the moment some pets are in the first category, most are in the second. A persistent issue of pets dying to warp core explosions and/or any small amount of area attacks has plagued this balance and needs to be dealt with directly before any real improvement can be made in this area. It could be a resistance boost, immunity to warp core explosions, a scaling back of warp core explosion damage, faster and smarter pets, I don't know or care but this needs to be the first thing addressed.
Next up is utility. A pet doesn't have to deal 'tons of damage' if it provides useful utility for the player. But one has to be very careful here to keep PvP concerns and visual spam/lag in mind.
Finally we have the issue of scaling. If a player's pets should be capable of dealing around 30% of their damage who's 30% should it be? And how can they be made to scale with the player's capabilities / gear?
Post edited by bareel on
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"Remove Sensor Analysis from an Orb Weaver while giving it two Hangars does not a Recluse make."
But it's a pretty involved and complex matter that goes beyond just Sensor Analysis is by no means the benchmark.
Dreadnought Cruisers have a Hangar.
Flight-Deck Cruisers have a Hangar.
Heavy Escort Carriers have a Hangar.
Multi-Mission Explorers have a Hangar.
Dreadnought Carriers aren't like normal Carriers even with 2 Hangars.
Can't forget the Dreadnought Warbirds and their Hangar.
And yeah, then you have the regular ol' Carriers with their 2 Hangars.
Different boats give up (or don't give up) different things for their Hangar or Hangars.
But is that where you would even start? Cause well, there's the pets themselves and which of the above ships have access to which pets, etc, etc, etc. Fighters, Fighter-Drones, Shuttles, Frigates, Frigate-Drones...and all sorts of pets.
And well, it's not just all of the above either - since we've got Normal, Advanced, and Elite pets.
You could have somebody that decides to run Normal Fighters out of a FDC while somebody else is running Elite Frigates out of a Dreadnought Carrier. Should they expect them to provide the same benefit?
That's before even looking into the restrictive nature of some the pets, the difficulty in acquiring them compared to other pets - that investment factor, etc, etc, etc.
Hangar Pets...are like a little microcosm of STO itself.
edit: Correction made to the Scimitar, courtesy of a doofus.
Isn't the scimitar good enough for you with 1 hangar? :rolleyes:
Hangar pets are shuttles (doesn't matter if you call them "fighters", they are lightly armed and armoured shuttles). Those aren't supposed to have much staying power but should support the "carrier" (I hate that term) with their abilities on a AoE level of effectiveness. Intercept small craft and projectiles, placate enemies, try to disable subsystems, expose them, heal and repair allies, that kind of stuff. Hangar pets are fragile but you can replace them indefinitely.
A separation or support pet is a full vessel in it's own right. Saucers are a third to a half of the whole ship, that's why they should be sturdy and of a comparable threat to the target. They should not deal player level damage but feature more damage potential and, more importantly, be able to draw the target's fire. They should be capable single target support and able to heal the "mothership". A separation/support pet cannot be replaced, if shot down it is out unless you rejoin and then face the two minute cooldown.
These differences have to count for something. Frigates, by the way, should be a hybrid of these two. In any case, pets need a control UI that's worth something, similiar to BOFFs. They need different stances and tactics and you need to control when they use their abilities (or set them to autocast). In case of separation pets it is also important that you are not punished for using them. Sure, the cruisers get a turnrate boost but loose such a big chunk of HP in the process that this is hardly a good trade, especially since the pets, right now, don't do anything remotely useful (for instance, the Galaxy saucer is supposed to use healing abilities, I think even the tooltip says so, but it doesn't. It never has done anything but swoop around, fire with it's shuttle-grade omni beam doing 100 dps and die). Also, some kind of manoeuvre to avoid warpcore breaches and deathtraps would be nice, like autocast a unique or very low version of TBR to push ships out of the blast radius (with a cooldown, of course).
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I had posted in the mechanics subforum a few weeks ago. I put down my thoughts and some suggestions on what i think would be nice to have on hangar pets. Not that i really expected anyone that could actually do anything to read it or implement it. I was kinda just talking to myself mostly
In regards to neos quote i did mention something about maybe giving hangar pets a passive similar to what WoW hunter and lock pets have. They have a passive that reduces their AOE damage by 90%. Unfortunately Blizz isnt always careful about how they flag boss abilities. There is a zone in WoW called Timeless Isle and there is this one boss type npc that has all of his attacks flagged as AOE. Because of that a lock or hunter can very easily solo this boss. I've actually done this myself with my very undergeared hunter where i've snuck up behind the boss and solo'd him with my pet and me. Thats the kind of thing you'dwant to avoid when giving pets or hangar pets a aoe reduction passive.