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Ground combat is still bad.
jarfaru
Member Posts: 579 Arc User
Why is it whenever we get a new FE with ground combat,we can't take our full away team but face anywhere up 5 or 8 mobs at a time and sometimes even more? This is why i aways skip the ground part of FE's because to me this is just stupid. Whats the point of a full away team if we can't use it.
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So "bad" must be a subjective word.
Firesworn Nation (@rswfire) - https://www.firesworn.com
Back in the good old days where you had explore ground missions it was fun. But i can't even remember taking my full away team into battle. I spend all this time gearing them up and never get to use a full team anywhere.
This I really do understand. You can take them all in missions but some places only allow two. I don't know what the rationale is but I have never really struggled with it, so I haven't felt concerned about it. I just take my first officer and a random boff on those. But sure, I can understand your pov.
Firesworn Nation (@rswfire) - https://www.firesworn.com
You melt eveything you see right. I must be doing it wrong because i'm getting 1 or 2 shotted over and over on that dam planet mission last stand and the respawn rate is crazy high too. I doesn't matter if i keep moving. Its like the mobs ignore my team of two and focus on me.
If that is the case, you may want to see how much skill you put into "threat control." Are you a tactical officer or something else? If you're not a tactical officer, you definitely want to bring one along -- especially one with traits that include threat and skills that focus more on melee (it will keep the mobs off you more.) If you are tactical, then security escorts are your friends.
/43secs (I hate you, cryptic)
/11secs (I hate you, pwe)
Firesworn Nation (@rswfire) - https://www.firesworn.com
I am tac and my security escort last a minute at most. Any other help would love to here please.
The opening salvo from an enemy group almost always fully depletes my shields (which is why I have an extra Engineer boff with Shield Recharge 3), which kind of makes me question why I even have shields in the first place rather than just a single large health pool. And then there's the psionics who completely ignore my primary defenses as an Engineer, thus utterly negating one of my Captain powers and a large number of my personal defensive abilities. Thankfully, psionic powers are much less common than they used to be, but it's still frustrating to run into an enemy for whom I have no hard counter on my own character, forcing me to rely on finicky AI for heals.
Ground combat always feels unresponsive and sluggish too. We're expected to move away from grenades, but often times even if I get out of the circle I still take damage. Dodge rolls take a second to register when I actually attempt to perform them, but it's so easy to accidentally perform them as well. Several Engineer abilities root me in place for the duration of the animation, and many of my abilities are more suited to holding a location which feels disjointed with how much of end-game PvE works (timers and objectives across the map). I can barely string together melee combos due to weird input lag. To be fair, I mostly use melee when I'm just messing around, maybe if I used it seriously more often I could get the hang of it. And I'm pretty sure it's not my internet connection causing input lag issues (at least not directly). Across a large number of games that I play online with various people, I am frequently the one with the most stable connection and least amount of lag.
Space combat has some of the same issues such as weird response lag, unclear enemy AoE ranges and timings, and messy friendly AI, but frequently I have more abilities and hit points at my disposal to deal with them, so it doesn't stand out as much. I can partially compensate for the shortcomings of my career with the bridge officer powers I select, because they all apply to the same entity and I control when and where they are put into effect, unlike ground combat.
The universe has a wonderful sense of humor. The trick is learning how to take a joke.
Which means whenever I do story missions that have a combination of ground and space I either have to split up my traits -- which is pretty counter-intuitive to splitting them up to begin with.
Or I just go with space traits and gimp myself on the ground.
Otherwise I enjoy ground combat a lot.
Ground combat is getting better. Mobs are using abilities smarter, they're using flanking and crouching now. I honestly think that the ground NPC AI is better then the space NPC AI now.
But the issue really now is that the ground PC abilities aren't so hot... and BOffs for some reaosn don't share the same AI as NPCs and are stupid. NPC AIs will flank you, they'll crouch, they'll use their abilities semi-intelligently. You're BOffs will use an ability simply because it's off it's cool down timer, priorities stupidly, never crouches, and will run into melee range even when using a rifle even when not using melee abilities.
There's a duty officer that can decrease the cooldown for security escort (at least I thought there was but it's not in my active roster list). There is a security officer doff that can sometimes beam down extra help... Your security escorts will stay with as long as there is combat, so the trick is to make sure you always have something to shoot at. If you kill all the mobs, run to where the next ones are.
Also it can't hurt to take a second tac officer with you. Besides that, some good gear. I find engineers helpful for shield bubbles, etc.
I've always split mine up equally. It doesn't feel counter-intuitive to me; it feels natural (more well-rounded).
Firesworn Nation (@rswfire) - https://www.firesworn.com
As for the responsiveness issues jbmaverick points out... while they're not exclusive to STO (for example, hit up the Path of Exile forums and search for 'desync'), I for one would be interested to hear what the devs can do to address them, given that not all the possible causes for such are in areas they have control of.
Lastly, there're some good tips presented in this thread; I would be remiss in not contributing...
yes your doing it wrong
Find a fleet with team speak/voice communications who are active and do ground and space combat so they can point out ...How it works...its too much to type out here or in game
But ground combat Is much easier/cheeper to gear for than space and you should be melting/dominating FE's in any character class
your combat log is your friend ...see what the enemy is hitting you with first you may have no resistance to it
Are you using ground duty officers and the right ones for your class ?
Science away team BO's can heal you, you will do more damage than your whole team
and much much more
good luck but rely on intel
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Story-wise I think they won't expect trouble enough to warrant the need of a full away team. Of course they're wrong most of the time.
A very few missions are known to be a challenge when you beam down without your Away team. Delta Rising missions have added a fair bunch of those, and some of them are definitely unbalanced even with a full away team. I am not sure they are intended to be a challenge on Normal difficulty or just an oversight, but some of those missions keep me on my toes as opposing to roflstomp everything as I usually do. Mind you I am an OP Engineer, so if a mission manages to overpower me (haven't happened so far, just a couple close calls) then I'd say it's unbalanced; and a sure defeat, or certain frustration, for the casual player.
STO Screenshot Archive
So we have this new area where...
1) the mobs hit rather hard and if your ground gear is not elite (and mine is not) it is challenging. (challenging is fine, that is not a complaint).
but
2) the mobs respawn very rapidly. So when some ubergoober just finished running thru ahead of you 30 seconds ago, and you are on a mission, and bam 20 enemy spawn. And its not just the camps where you EXPECT that if it is cleared there will be 20 guys coming in a moment, but out in the open too.
and add that to
3) you only get half your away team.
which compounds with
4) the new raygun of death (red beam that never stops) cuts thru terrain/cover
and
5) the new guys are smarter (not a bad thing but scaling damage, health, and AI all three is multiplicative in terms of difficulty scaling) and outnumber you (due to half away team) and so they flank you, a lot, by running in circles around you.
and only slightly related but an issue
6) the xp for these missions is less than a doff misssion.
which all adds up to "not really worth doing" --- its not fun to be cheezed to death by respawns with cheating weapons and vastly superior numbers.
As an engineer using 2 engineer boffs on kobali I just wander around and everything dies. I suggest some more experimentation on your part.
accounting for the quickbar/ability lag ... it's like long term planning or something
I constantly have envy for engineers that toss up resources that provide damage or support, 1/3 to 2/3 of the ground fight is taken care of for them if they place those resources well (they get to spend less time fighting ability lag)
but
it can be fun if you accept the challenge, or at the very least more fun and not horrible pain
EDIT: but yeah, it's not my fav, I don't seek it out as something high on my list of fun things to do. but I don't dread it like I did.
This, and along with one respawn/spawn technique that STO and SWTOR tend to overuse. Mobs that beam in right in front of your face. In SWTOR you have mobs that rappel from the sky, use their jetpacks to come up the side of a bridge right next to you, or they will just do a tuck and roll and appear right in front of you. STO just has the beam in...npcs beaming in behind you, in front of you...even animals and beasts (not npc pets) beam in. Somewhere out there is a starship crewed entirely by Dewan Scorpions, Hatham and Vivver Cats.
Mobs should come at you from a distance, so that you have time to see it and prepare for it or fall back. None of this surprize butseks beam down right on top of you and plugging you in the cornhole with some laser blasts.
well, a little bit of strategic and tactical beam in is good use of a transporter for military actions. But the game has to be playable, and some areas, it is not. There is only so much a 3 man team can handle, and I have literally had 3 groups of 5 vards appear at once on multiple occasions. That might be good use of a transporter and military tatics, but its not playable -- if we want to be *that* realistic, then I want my ENTIRE CREW OF MY SHIP with me ... all 2000+ of em.
I have about the same experience on my engineer, with a purple tac boff and a purple science boff. I just pop my shield hardening ability, and perhaps a shield recharge when hit by that red beam, and otherwise just kill the mob using it. My boffs heal me and kill the enemy while I do my engi thing.
Fights that I can take the whole team, I try to have 2 tacs, 1 engi, and 2 science, counting me, the player. So, my engi takes 2 science and 2 tac, my tac takes 2 sci, a tac, and an engi, etc. if I can only take three, I just keep the trio balanced, AND make sure they have useful abilities as well. On New Romulus, I take me and a healer, or me and a tac if I'm sci. I enjoy the ground combat, actually.
There are a few times they put you in a broom closet and drop stuff on you, but it's not that often. The last mission in the DR episode comes to mind. I didn't die at all in the space part of it, but I did die once toward the end of the ground part, when I had a dead healer, and I couldn't raise him between waves because of a damned cutscene interrupting me. I died when about eight mobs hit us all at once in the crackerbox we were in.
So engineer BOffs understand that a .01 cm change in elevation does not actually put the enemy into a different phase of matter making them totally invisible?
Do they also not decide to plink at runners with AoE and bring yet another pack to the already at capacity party?