As the title suggest, I spend 20 minutes fighting a Vaadwaur Heavy artillary ship on a patrol ission, and I can only get it down to roughly 94-93%.
Are they supposed to be this tough and hard to kill or is there somthing wrong?
I am currently at lv. 56 beamboat engineer, the mission is a lvv. 55. All my gear are rare Mk. XI or above, ship is a Vanguard(tier 4).
Hast thou not gone against sincerity
Hast thou not felt ashamed of thy words and deeds
Hast thou not lacked vigor
Hast thou exerted all possible efforts
Hast thou not become slothful
As the title suggest, I spend 20 minutes fighting a Vaadwaur Heavy artillary ship on a patrol ission, and I can only get it down to roughly 94-93%.
Are they supposed to be this tough and hard to kill or is there somthing wrong?
I am currently at lv. 56 beamboat engineer, the mission is a lvv. 55. All my gear are rare Mk. XI or above, ship is a Vanguard(tier 4).
By the way, there Vaadwaur Heavy artillary sip have more than 700 000hp, Close to 800 000, is there a bug or is Everything as it shoul be?
Hast thou not gone against sincerity
Hast thou not felt ashamed of thy words and deeds
Hast thou not lacked vigor
Hast thou exerted all possible efforts
Hast thou not become slothful
Yah several people have reported that same thing. Just a day or so ago i leveled through the DR and did an episode mission "Revelations" and i saw a Heavy Artillery ship with 600K+++ health. I was in a T6 ship, rank 4 ship traits and full VR XII rep gear and some fleet pieces. The ship wasnt too hard but it did take relatively longer to kill since it has so much hull health.
I dont know what the deal is with these ships. Are the devs having a brain TRIBBLE and this mob is using the wrong health tables for its hull? there's been some issues going around with that right now with pet health getting affected by npc health tables or whatever. OR did they intentionally increase the health on that ship to give more tension to the episodes and missions they are in? Whichever the case may be its a fail on their part. Normal difficulty ship with 600k health...alrighty then.
id also wonder myself what have you been doing in game to be above lvl 50 and still be using any MK XI gear at all much less some of it being only rare...
and this is the i believe the 1st time i have ever made a post such as this because upto 50 we had no idea of how long a person had been at that rank and its possible they had just turned 50 and not gotten gear upgraded from lower ranks yet. but anything above 50 we know you have had the opportunity for some time now. and it just really makes me wonder what in the world you have been doing besides working on survival.
i mean really if you dont care about staying alive enough to upgrade your gear why should anybody else care including the devs.
Trophies for killing FEDS ahh those were the days.
its not just the hull strength the number times I have "Miss" on them is crazy I that theres a talent to help bypass that but still those ships take forever to kill I do more dmg everytime I use my photonic fleet than on normal times
If you have any gear below Mk X, purge it and replace it with XIIs at least. Do some reading on ship builds and skill trees. This sounds like a build issue more than anything else.
That is normal-ish as the HP scaling above 51 means enemies with stupidly high HP to try and goad you to buy fancier stuff. Even reasonably good players take a while to kill Vaadwaur.
That said, it does sound like you're having more trouble than most. Not sure what your build and tactics are, but picking one particular facing and sticking to is easier than trying to wear down all four shield facings.
If you need build help, put your ship together on stoacademy.com then post it in the subforum. Also list your rep levels and rough budget, so people will have an idea what is and isn't availale to you.
Unfortunately, according to one of the Dev Blog, they've actually seemed to have gone out of their way to make Vaadwaur a pain with "Artillary Barrage" special ability that's DESIGNED to be able to kill any player that gets caught in it and the Constriction Anchor that renders normal 'breakaway' techniques to evade holds like Polarize Hull ineffective.
Yeah, regrettably, it does seem that this is supposed to be the new 'normal', wave after wave of the new 'normal' in some cases...
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid." -- Q, TNG: "Q-Who?"
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
Make sure you don't have your game play on advanced or elite. use normal. It switched on me also when I started doing the story missions. ( hail star fleet...look at "in progress...bottom left. Make sure it says normal"
click on it and switch it to normal you will be fine.
A tactic I've found useable on those pain in backside ships is to focus on them first, ignoring any other ships there.
You'll take damage from the others, but you'll always take damage when there are a lot of ships about.
Like everyone else I have also found those ships to be seriously annoying and they do take a while to take down.
Conversely I do the exact opposite. I GW them all together, pop the lil ones, and let their warp explosions do the work for me on the Artie Ships. Though conversely I'll say this, if you're taking 20 minutes per ship, even on elite, then this tactic isn't for you as it'll take you too long to do in the smaller ships to take advantage of it.
Yeah, the Badwaars have the toughest shields of any enemy in the game. You need to find a way to soften them up.
I suggest utilizing any powers or abilities that drain system power, or outright knock systems offline. You might be able to get an Aceton Assimilator or Plasmonic Leech console for a decent price on the exchange. Also, playing a cruiser, you might wanna see about training bridge officers in Directed Energy Modulation (makes more of your damage go through shields), and Eject Warp plasma (does plasma damage that i -think- ignores shields, but I'm not sure). You may even want to look into Boarding Party, though you have to use it correctly (ie, when you know the enemy won't have any AoEs ready and you're really close).
Perhaps train a Tactical officer in "Target Shields": this will reduce their shield power and it has a -chance- to knock the whole subsystem offline for a few seconds. Attack Patern Delta will debuff enemy resistance, and you may want to look into Beam Overload, as well.
For Science, You may want to look into Tachyon beam, Charged Particle Burst and/or Energy Siphon. These require lots of points in the Flow Capacitor skill, something that, as an Engineering captain, you may not have thought to build up.
Also, since (I'm assuming) you've -survived- that whole 20 minute period, you might want to look at your traits and swap defensive ones for offensive ones.
I've been having a hard time with these guys, too, and most of my stuff is fleet gear, so I feel your pain!
Unfortunately, according to one of the Dev Blog, they've actually seemed to have gone out of their way to make Vaadwaur a pain with "Artillary Barrage" special ability that's DESIGNED to be able to kill any player that gets caught in it and the Constriction Anchor that renders normal 'breakaway' techniques to evade holds like Polarize Hull ineffective.
Yeah, regrettably, it does seem that this is supposed to be the new 'normal', wave after wave of the new 'normal' in some cases...
Making a video game that's challenging, and requires you to have a decent grasp of the basic gameplay mechanics by the time you hit endgame? Ridiculous!
If anything, the problem is that STO doesn't make "learning the basic mechanics" very easy. Nowhere in thegame itself does it tell you it's more effective to pick one energy type and stick with it, and use energy-specific consoles, or that you should be using engineering for armor consoles or make it clear what some of the more subtle abilities do, or that you shouldn't use tactical slots for universal consoles. I routinely see people using Attack Pattern Delta on ships where it makes no sense for APD to be used.
Attack Pattern Beta is one of the most critical abilities in the game, and you should (almost) always use your highest possible tactical station for APB. But rarely do I see it. Not quite "never", but infrequently. Nowhere near as frequently as you see tac team, EP2S, hazard emitters.
As for cannon barrage and constriction anchor.. yes, sometimes, you get killed. You'll get slammed with a cannon barrage while being held by the constriction anchor. It's not hard to kill a constriction anchor - you just need to make sure it gets done as quickly as possible - and hit evasive maneuvers and brace for impact as soon as you see the barrage being charged.
As the title suggest, I spend 20 minutes fighting a Vaadwaur Heavy artillary ship on a patrol ission, and I can only get it down to roughly 94-93%.
Are they supposed to be this tough and hard to kill or is there somthing wrong?
I am currently at lv. 56 beamboat engineer, the mission is a lvv. 55. All my gear are rare Mk. XI or above, ship is a Vanguard(tier 4).
As the title suggest, I spend 20 minutes fighting a Vaadwaur Heavy artillary ship on a patrol ission, and I can only get it down to roughly 94-93%.
Are they supposed to be this tough and hard to kill or is there somthing wrong?
I am currently at lv. 56 beamboat engineer, the mission is a lvv. 55. All my gear are rare Mk. XI or above, ship is a Vanguard(tier 4).
No, this is not normal. 20 min should rock out even the final mission space part where you kill like 10 or 15 groups of the things. No ship in the game that you should be soloing should last over 60 seconds ever. If it does, something is wrong. Now, if you get BBQtorped and live and run off to heal, that does not count against your time, I mean 60 seconds of sustained dps should kill any soloable enemy you face in the game, and that should be rare, normally 10-30 seconds is "average".
I am in a 3 tac console cruiser and I knock those guys out in under 30 seconds. My other toons have not hit the patrols yet, too much mirror event. But I have fleet weapons and rep consoles and a solid (not awesome, but decent) build.
FWIW I have a similar character with blue weapons in the mirror vanguard (or mirror star cruiser, whatever the name is). And I have the exact same problem -- beam arrays broadside and extreme low damage. Part of the problem is the ship -- this is easily the lowest damage ship I own. Part of it is being undergeared or not having either the right stuff to stack damage or the knowledge to do so (in my case, she has almost nothing, just got to 50 and parked -- farmed for the rep dil bonuses not really a serious character).
You have 2 choices. A new ship that is easier to deal damage with, or earning and learning enough to make what you have work anyway. Its doable, but a dps ship will get you there faster if you have the zen/EC for one. I hates to say avenger, but .... its popular for a reason.
Unfortunately, according to one of the Dev Blog, they've actually seemed to have gone out of their way to make Vaadwaur a pain with "Artillary Barrage" special ability that's DESIGNED to be able to kill any player that gets caught in it and the Constriction Anchor that renders normal 'breakaway' techniques to evade holds like Polarize Hull ineffective.
Yeah, regrettably, it does seem that this is supposed to be the new 'normal', wave after wave of the new 'normal' in some cases...
Highly skilled player can get out of these issues. I say just don't use 100% beam ship! Mix up the weapons, increase torpedo damage for all types of torpedo's. Increase sub system power levels. Use only what you need on your ship. Test your ship prior to going into a full battle with the Vaadwaur.
Sadly, this is hte new normal for STO and it scales back through out the game wit DR. Add in the XP nerf across the board, reduced DL, reduced loot, even more bugs, and the grind ramped up into full swing. Just the thought of what they have in store for us for the Christmas event makes me want to take a vacation far away from this game.
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Looking for a new fleet? Drop by the in-game chat channel, "tenforwardforum", and say hi to the members of A Fleet Called Ten Forward (Fed) and The Orion Pirates (KDF). If you already have a fleet you are happy with, please feel free to drop by our chat channel if you are looking for a friendly bunch of helpful people to socialize with.
The folks saying this is normal and the new stuff is tough etc are missing the big picture.
Cryptic has painted themselves into a corner. The dps gap between the top and bottom is MORE THAN TEN TIMES apart and it is unpossible to make content that is doable by the bottom and yet still at least interesting to the top. AND if they have to pick who to cater to--- its gonna be the top, the ppl that bought DR ship packs, the ppl that bought zen for dil to upgrade and to powerlevel crafting and so on. The ppl that pay money most often.
The gap has to narrow. It is borderline unplayable now for the weakest players. I challenge cryptic to start a new account, new char, play it to 60 straight through, using only mission rewards and drops and free ships --- and not allowed to buy any duty officers from exchange. Its doable, but only just and only if the player knows enough about the game to eek out a solid build with that gear due to a deep understanding of game mechanics. Its a little easier if we allow them to use one of the better mirror ships, but I am not feeling generous today.
Borderline? Try "literally" unplayable. There is a very obvious glaring reason the queues are empty. They're all borked up. Even "normal" isn't fun and the rewards have been cut to the level equivalent of "TRIBBLE."
Borderline? Try "literally" unplayable. There is a very obvious glaring reason the queues are empty. They're all borked up. Even "normal" isn't fun and the rewards have been cut to the level equivalent of "TRIBBLE."
rewards aside, its not totally unplayable. I am very far from hardcore (but way above a brand new level 50 character) and beat the mission arc, reached 60 yesterday, and manage normal STFs fine (which have a short delay as usual KDF side, but its far from empty). Yes, I died some along the way -- the new guys hit hard, ground was rough and the bombs in space are nasty.
IMHO A 4 tac console ship with 4 frontal DBBs and a FAW 1 & 2 officer with a lot of healing can beat the new content with blue XI weapons and consoles --- just barely. Anything less than that is going to be very, very hard.
Borderline? Try "literally" unplayable. There is a very obvious glaring reason the queues are empty. They're all borked up. Even "normal" isn't fun and the rewards have been cut to the level equivalent of "TRIBBLE."
I cant help but notice the fact that the MI event is currently running probably has a massive effect on player queues at the moment.
IMHO A 4 tac console ship with 4 frontal DBBs and a FAW 1 & 2 officer with a lot of healing can beat the new content with blue XI weapons and consoles --- just barely. Anything less than that is going to be very, very hard.
DBB and FAW?
.. why?
Honestly, I can't really advise using more than one DBB. DC/DHC and CRF kill things much better than DBB and FAW, IMO, regardless of how much bigger FAW will parse. Esp since the only way to have an aft mounted, forward facing weapon is turrets, or a ridiculously expensive omni.
None of my alts use anything more than XI blues and they still have no issues cruising through the content I've brought them through. The only ones that have any issues at all in MI are the ones in the ridiculous joke ships, like my main's T3 Thunderchild (it's a lethal joke ship) or my Klingon's T3 Kamarag (it's just a joke), and even those aren't too bad.
Once again, it goes back to the build. It's not the ship, it's the captain. You need to know what each ability on your ship does, if not "down to the specific amount of damage", at least the general idea of what it does, and if it doesnt do something you want your ship to do, get rid of it and replace it with something that does something useful. You also need to know your ship well enough to know when to start healing it before it dies.
But the OP here has, apparently, limited access to ships and gear and is struggling. While I did advocate getting a more damage oriented ship, his choices are probably limited to something cheap like the mirror escort. With his gear, slapping on DHC on a fragile ship with weak gear and getting into cannon range against a bunch of stuff that has high damage mines and bomblets and whatever seemed like a bad recommendation for HIM. Lets face it, I love cannons but the best cannon ships are more fragile and the weapons harder to use, making it a lot harder to play that way even with decent shields and such.
I think the mirror escort or whatever similar or better ship with DBB would be much safer for this player from my limited understanding of his problems and budget and current available gear. Stay back so he can avoid the bad stuff, hit harder, win.
The point to take away was hit harder while avoiding their high damage attacks (missiles, mines, and the blue balls).
And it may not be the ship, but squeezing 50k dps out of a 2 tac console ship with all engineering seats is a lot harder than changing to a ship that has actual tactical seating and actual damage consoles. Its not ALL the captain in the case of the OP. An expert might be able to build around the limitations, but a casual player may not be able to do it, ever. I mean we gonna spend 20 million on this ship to get a2bat dem marion / tech officers/ moar stuff build or we gonna change ships, buy 4 guns and 4 consoles and win?
I think the difficulty of things is spot on just how it is.
The ONLY issues I see right now is that the rewards for completing anything are so ridiculously low that unless you have a vast stockpile of dilithium and other resources you have precisely 0 chance of upgrading anything and therefore precisely 0 chance of getting better gear and therefore precisely 0 chance of playing any of the higher level content.
When you scrape through with 240 Dilith as a reward for the low level of STF and yet it costs hundreds of thousands to upgrade consoles and weapons it doesn't take a genious to work out that it will take years of grinding the same boring TRIBBLE over and over.
Rewards to need to be vastly boosted. Low level STF's need to reward the same as the old STF's and the new higher difficulty ones need to offer vastly more also to make people want to do them. Or offer them other rewards or drops alongside the dilith ? Some CrtDx3 weapons ? Some nice consoles etc to make things worthwhile ?
I myself do around 40k dps and enjoy the new challenge, but I can also see the vast issues that this power creep is creating.
It's also worth noting that I have now totally ditched all my other toons as the grind, even for me at 40k dps is just far to high to keep more than a single toon going whilst also being able to live a life in the real world :cool:
One does not simply fly into the Delta Quadrant with MK XI gear :P
And where exactly - pray tell - will a new player find better gear?
Yes, he might join a fleet to have access to fleet gear - which is all nice and fine as long as one has enough Fleet Credits and Dilithium (not to mention the neccessary fleet ressources). A new player rarely has that much Dilithium to spend, though.
Having compiled the list of free gear (see signature), I think I can say that being a new player in STO suddenly sucks a lot since DR - as it seems quite counter-intuitive to me to assume that players would not want to level their characters to the max without providing them with at least a modicum of neccessary gear to properly do so. Warp Cores, consoles - especially tactical ones - weapons beyond MK XII are sparsly found at best as an episode reward and the rewards in DR seem mostly redundant now that the Phaser Beam Arrays MK XII [Acc]x3 are gone in favor of even more rare Deflectors, Impulse engines and (turret) weapons.
But then again, gear is definitely not everything in STO: the entirety of the build and the player skills factor in more heavily.
first: really really check and make sure you are not on elite mode. elite is for ppl with mk xii gear minimum and with a very elaborated build.
second: its not necessary to have more than mk xi gear, im STILL only using my preDR gear and i can compete adv modes. (elite is out of question for me now, i would have had to upgrade with millions of dili just to make slightly more dili/timeplayed - so i dont even consider it anymore)
then third: make sure you have evrything in you bars and really try to elaborate these abilities. use skills, they are not for staring at them, use them.
and no: its not "normal" to need 20minutes for one ship.
BUT:
if you dont have at least 5 energyweapons firing at a shield, you NEVER EVER WILL BE ABLE TO KILL IT.
(i have a lvl 60 dauntless with 4 arrays firing, and somehow it feels VERY HARD to kill sth, so i conclude its the shieldreg/hullreg that actually make those ships so tough)
you need a DECENT BUILD now in DR, you cant have "fun builds" anymore, unless they are very thoughtfully choosen and geared for.
yes the gap between top and bottom players is huge, but it cant be solved by dumbing down everything to "i can kill it with one beam firing, cause in startrek there was only one beam firing" ...
have a decent build, with at least 5 firing energyweapons at a time (so breadside cruiser/sciship, frontal-cannon/turret with escort)
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the other big big possibility is, that this is a major "spawn" bug, where sometimes stronger ships are generated (from elite mode or teaming mode) that somehow appear on your single player patrol map.
the other big big possibility is, that this is a major "spawn" bug, where sometimes stronger ships are generated (from elite mode or teaming mode) that somehow appear on your single player patrol map.
Investigation over. We found an Elite Vaadwaur Battleship that was occasionally sneaking into the Normal encounter templates. After giving her Captain a stern talking-to, we plugged the hole she was sneaking in through.
The good news is, now you know how well (or not) your current ship fares when facing down an Elite battleship!
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.
20 minutes on one ship that supposedly has 700k-800k hull and you only brought it down to 93%?
In 20 minutes, on a 700k ship you only did 49k dmg? If it was 800k hull, you only did 56k dmg?
Sorry man, but it's you
As one of the repliers before me said, you need to post up your build. I'd even say how your typical attack routine goes. You are doing something terribly, terribly wrong.
Comments
By the way, there Vaadwaur Heavy artillary sip have more than 700 000hp, Close to 800 000, is there a bug or is Everything as it shoul be?
Hast thou not felt ashamed of thy words and deeds
Hast thou not lacked vigor
Hast thou exerted all possible efforts
Hast thou not become slothful
I dont know what the deal is with these ships. Are the devs having a brain TRIBBLE and this mob is using the wrong health tables for its hull? there's been some issues going around with that right now with pet health getting affected by npc health tables or whatever. OR did they intentionally increase the health on that ship to give more tension to the episodes and missions they are in? Whichever the case may be its a fail on their part. Normal difficulty ship with 600k health...alrighty then.
and this is the i believe the 1st time i have ever made a post such as this because upto 50 we had no idea of how long a person had been at that rank and its possible they had just turned 50 and not gotten gear upgraded from lower ranks yet. but anything above 50 we know you have had the opportunity for some time now. and it just really makes me wonder what in the world you have been doing besides working on survival.
i mean really if you dont care about staying alive enough to upgrade your gear why should anybody else care including the devs.
That said, it does sound like you're having more trouble than most. Not sure what your build and tactics are, but picking one particular facing and sticking to is easier than trying to wear down all four shield facings.
If you need build help, put your ship together on stoacademy.com then post it in the subforum. Also list your rep levels and rough budget, so people will have an idea what is and isn't availale to you.
position your ship so your front and back beam fire at the same time (set them to auto attack)
use tactical boff and captain abilities like tacteam fire at will attack pattern and so on
use tac consoles in tac console slots (watch out for the right energy type)
you have 5-6 space doff slots ... use them
lvl your rep to add rep traits
set all traits to space
setup your captains skill try to focus on stuff that does more dmg, gives you energy and lets you survive longer (in that priority order)
get a better ship
play a romulan
play a tactical captain
get better gear
watch out for set boni like assim set borg repair proc and so on
fleet shields are also great
use rep space abilities
Yeah, regrettably, it does seem that this is supposed to be the new 'normal', wave after wave of the new 'normal' in some cases...
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
click on it and switch it to normal you will be fine.
It was nothing you were doing wrong.
You'll take damage from the others, but you'll always take damage when there are a lot of ships about.
Like everyone else I have also found those ships to be seriously annoying and they do take a while to take down.
Conversely I do the exact opposite. I GW them all together, pop the lil ones, and let their warp explosions do the work for me on the Artie Ships. Though conversely I'll say this, if you're taking 20 minutes per ship, even on elite, then this tactic isn't for you as it'll take you too long to do in the smaller ships to take advantage of it.
I suggest utilizing any powers or abilities that drain system power, or outright knock systems offline. You might be able to get an Aceton Assimilator or Plasmonic Leech console for a decent price on the exchange. Also, playing a cruiser, you might wanna see about training bridge officers in Directed Energy Modulation (makes more of your damage go through shields), and Eject Warp plasma (does plasma damage that i -think- ignores shields, but I'm not sure). You may even want to look into Boarding Party, though you have to use it correctly (ie, when you know the enemy won't have any AoEs ready and you're really close).
Perhaps train a Tactical officer in "Target Shields": this will reduce their shield power and it has a -chance- to knock the whole subsystem offline for a few seconds. Attack Patern Delta will debuff enemy resistance, and you may want to look into Beam Overload, as well.
For Science, You may want to look into Tachyon beam, Charged Particle Burst and/or Energy Siphon. These require lots of points in the Flow Capacitor skill, something that, as an Engineering captain, you may not have thought to build up.
Also, since (I'm assuming) you've -survived- that whole 20 minute period, you might want to look at your traits and swap defensive ones for offensive ones.
I've been having a hard time with these guys, too, and most of my stuff is fleet gear, so I feel your pain!
Making a video game that's challenging, and requires you to have a decent grasp of the basic gameplay mechanics by the time you hit endgame? Ridiculous!
If anything, the problem is that STO doesn't make "learning the basic mechanics" very easy. Nowhere in thegame itself does it tell you it's more effective to pick one energy type and stick with it, and use energy-specific consoles, or that you should be using engineering for armor consoles or make it clear what some of the more subtle abilities do, or that you shouldn't use tactical slots for universal consoles. I routinely see people using Attack Pattern Delta on ships where it makes no sense for APD to be used.
Attack Pattern Beta is one of the most critical abilities in the game, and you should (almost) always use your highest possible tactical station for APB. But rarely do I see it. Not quite "never", but infrequently. Nowhere near as frequently as you see tac team, EP2S, hazard emitters.
As for cannon barrage and constriction anchor.. yes, sometimes, you get killed. You'll get slammed with a cannon barrage while being held by the constriction anchor. It's not hard to kill a constriction anchor - you just need to make sure it gets done as quickly as possible - and hit evasive maneuvers and brace for impact as soon as you see the barrage being charged.
I would segest you check this build out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPbOAbueL-I&list=UUn4zU6WXABPUvmUOpluwbTw it starts at the 15:50min mark.
and he battles the vaadwuar at the 35:40min mark in this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJC237RxD88&list=UUn4zU6WXABPUvmUOpluwbTw
No, this is not normal. 20 min should rock out even the final mission space part where you kill like 10 or 15 groups of the things. No ship in the game that you should be soloing should last over 60 seconds ever. If it does, something is wrong. Now, if you get BBQtorped and live and run off to heal, that does not count against your time, I mean 60 seconds of sustained dps should kill any soloable enemy you face in the game, and that should be rare, normally 10-30 seconds is "average".
I am in a 3 tac console cruiser and I knock those guys out in under 30 seconds. My other toons have not hit the patrols yet, too much mirror event. But I have fleet weapons and rep consoles and a solid (not awesome, but decent) build.
FWIW I have a similar character with blue weapons in the mirror vanguard (or mirror star cruiser, whatever the name is). And I have the exact same problem -- beam arrays broadside and extreme low damage. Part of the problem is the ship -- this is easily the lowest damage ship I own. Part of it is being undergeared or not having either the right stuff to stack damage or the knowledge to do so (in my case, she has almost nothing, just got to 50 and parked -- farmed for the rep dil bonuses not really a serious character).
You have 2 choices. A new ship that is easier to deal damage with, or earning and learning enough to make what you have work anyway. Its doable, but a dps ship will get you there faster if you have the zen/EC for one. I hates to say avenger, but .... its popular for a reason.
Highly skilled player can get out of these issues. I say just don't use 100% beam ship! Mix up the weapons, increase torpedo damage for all types of torpedo's. Increase sub system power levels. Use only what you need on your ship. Test your ship prior to going into a full battle with the Vaadwaur.
Time will only tell!
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Cryptic has painted themselves into a corner. The dps gap between the top and bottom is MORE THAN TEN TIMES apart and it is unpossible to make content that is doable by the bottom and yet still at least interesting to the top. AND if they have to pick who to cater to--- its gonna be the top, the ppl that bought DR ship packs, the ppl that bought zen for dil to upgrade and to powerlevel crafting and so on. The ppl that pay money most often.
The gap has to narrow. It is borderline unplayable now for the weakest players. I challenge cryptic to start a new account, new char, play it to 60 straight through, using only mission rewards and drops and free ships --- and not allowed to buy any duty officers from exchange. Its doable, but only just and only if the player knows enough about the game to eek out a solid build with that gear due to a deep understanding of game mechanics. Its a little easier if we allow them to use one of the better mirror ships, but I am not feeling generous today.
rewards aside, its not totally unplayable. I am very far from hardcore (but way above a brand new level 50 character) and beat the mission arc, reached 60 yesterday, and manage normal STFs fine (which have a short delay as usual KDF side, but its far from empty). Yes, I died some along the way -- the new guys hit hard, ground was rough and the bombs in space are nasty.
IMHO A 4 tac console ship with 4 frontal DBBs and a FAW 1 & 2 officer with a lot of healing can beat the new content with blue XI weapons and consoles --- just barely. Anything less than that is going to be very, very hard.
I cant help but notice the fact that the MI event is currently running probably has a massive effect on player queues at the moment.
DBB and FAW?
.. why?
Honestly, I can't really advise using more than one DBB. DC/DHC and CRF kill things much better than DBB and FAW, IMO, regardless of how much bigger FAW will parse. Esp since the only way to have an aft mounted, forward facing weapon is turrets, or a ridiculously expensive omni.
None of my alts use anything more than XI blues and they still have no issues cruising through the content I've brought them through. The only ones that have any issues at all in MI are the ones in the ridiculous joke ships, like my main's T3 Thunderchild (it's a lethal joke ship) or my Klingon's T3 Kamarag (it's just a joke), and even those aren't too bad.
Once again, it goes back to the build. It's not the ship, it's the captain. You need to know what each ability on your ship does, if not "down to the specific amount of damage", at least the general idea of what it does, and if it doesnt do something you want your ship to do, get rid of it and replace it with something that does something useful. You also need to know your ship well enough to know when to start healing it before it dies.
Star Trek Online Intro HD [3rd Fleet Anniversary]
Join Date: Jul 2009
well.... I am a diehard cannon guy myself.
But the OP here has, apparently, limited access to ships and gear and is struggling. While I did advocate getting a more damage oriented ship, his choices are probably limited to something cheap like the mirror escort. With his gear, slapping on DHC on a fragile ship with weak gear and getting into cannon range against a bunch of stuff that has high damage mines and bomblets and whatever seemed like a bad recommendation for HIM. Lets face it, I love cannons but the best cannon ships are more fragile and the weapons harder to use, making it a lot harder to play that way even with decent shields and such.
I think the mirror escort or whatever similar or better ship with DBB would be much safer for this player from my limited understanding of his problems and budget and current available gear. Stay back so he can avoid the bad stuff, hit harder, win.
The point to take away was hit harder while avoiding their high damage attacks (missiles, mines, and the blue balls).
And it may not be the ship, but squeezing 50k dps out of a 2 tac console ship with all engineering seats is a lot harder than changing to a ship that has actual tactical seating and actual damage consoles. Its not ALL the captain in the case of the OP. An expert might be able to build around the limitations, but a casual player may not be able to do it, ever. I mean we gonna spend 20 million on this ship to get a2bat dem marion / tech officers/ moar stuff build or we gonna change ships, buy 4 guns and 4 consoles and win?
The ONLY issues I see right now is that the rewards for completing anything are so ridiculously low that unless you have a vast stockpile of dilithium and other resources you have precisely 0 chance of upgrading anything and therefore precisely 0 chance of getting better gear and therefore precisely 0 chance of playing any of the higher level content.
When you scrape through with 240 Dilith as a reward for the low level of STF and yet it costs hundreds of thousands to upgrade consoles and weapons it doesn't take a genious to work out that it will take years of grinding the same boring TRIBBLE over and over.
Rewards to need to be vastly boosted. Low level STF's need to reward the same as the old STF's and the new higher difficulty ones need to offer vastly more also to make people want to do them. Or offer them other rewards or drops alongside the dilith ? Some CrtDx3 weapons ? Some nice consoles etc to make things worthwhile ?
I myself do around 40k dps and enjoy the new challenge, but I can also see the vast issues that this power creep is creating.
It's also worth noting that I have now totally ditched all my other toons as the grind, even for me at 40k dps is just far to high to keep more than a single toon going whilst also being able to live a life in the real world :cool:
Yes, he might join a fleet to have access to fleet gear - which is all nice and fine as long as one has enough Fleet Credits and Dilithium (not to mention the neccessary fleet ressources). A new player rarely has that much Dilithium to spend, though.
Having compiled the list of free gear (see signature), I think I can say that being a new player in STO suddenly sucks a lot since DR - as it seems quite counter-intuitive to me to assume that players would not want to level their characters to the max without providing them with at least a modicum of neccessary gear to properly do so. Warp Cores, consoles - especially tactical ones - weapons beyond MK XII are sparsly found at best as an episode reward and the rewards in DR seem mostly redundant now that the Phaser Beam Arrays MK XII [Acc]x3 are gone in favor of even more rare Deflectors, Impulse engines and (turret) weapons.
But then again, gear is definitely not everything in STO: the entirety of the build and the player skills factor in more heavily.
Taskforce 47 Falkenwacht (Federation) / Greifenreiter (KDF)
(at) deianirrah
Free Gear and where to get it
second: its not necessary to have more than mk xi gear, im STILL only using my preDR gear and i can compete adv modes. (elite is out of question for me now, i would have had to upgrade with millions of dili just to make slightly more dili/timeplayed - so i dont even consider it anymore)
then third: make sure you have evrything in you bars and really try to elaborate these abilities. use skills, they are not for staring at them, use them.
and no: its not "normal" to need 20minutes for one ship.
BUT:
if you dont have at least 5 energyweapons firing at a shield, you NEVER EVER WILL BE ABLE TO KILL IT.
(i have a lvl 60 dauntless with 4 arrays firing, and somehow it feels VERY HARD to kill sth, so i conclude its the shieldreg/hullreg that actually make those ships so tough)
you need a DECENT BUILD now in DR, you cant have "fun builds" anymore, unless they are very thoughtfully choosen and geared for.
yes the gap between top and bottom players is huge, but it cant be solved by dumbing down everything to "i can kill it with one beam firing, cause in startrek there was only one beam firing" ...
have a decent build, with at least 5 firing energyweapons at a time (so breadside cruiser/sciship, frontal-cannon/turret with escort)
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the other big big possibility is, that this is a major "spawn" bug, where sometimes stronger ships are generated (from elite mode or teaming mode) that somehow appear on your single player patrol map.
It might be...
20 minutes on one ship that supposedly has 700k-800k hull and you only brought it down to 93%?
In 20 minutes, on a 700k ship you only did 49k dmg? If it was 800k hull, you only did 56k dmg?
Sorry man, but it's you
As one of the repliers before me said, you need to post up your build. I'd even say how your typical attack routine goes. You are doing something terribly, terribly wrong.