Here is an idea I came up with a couple of days ago and have been kind of refining ever since. Designated Weapon Types for weapon slots.
Now, before you pull out the same argument you used the last time you heard something like this. You have to hear this part.
THIS IDEA would NOT 'break' anybody's build.
Here's the idea.
In the Canon, certain ships use certain weapons. You see Beam Arrays and torpedoes on the Galaxy... You see Cannons on the Defiant, and torpedoes to go with it. What would be a good way to promote ships using the weapons they were 'designed' for, without breaking your ability to set them up how you want?
Easy, you make the slotting not mandatory.
Suppose you have a Bird of Prey. Has 4 fore weapons, 2 aft...
Here's the key: THEY ARE NOT MANDATORY. You can still equip whatever weapon you want. However, if you choose to follow the pattern, and fit a torpedo in a torpedo slot. You would get bonuses to that weapon.
Let's say you fit the dual beam in the dual beam slot? Perhaps it behaves as if it gets an extra CritD. Or maybe uses less power.
Put a torpedo in a torpedo slot? Maybe it cools down faster, or penetrates shields better, or maybe even has a slightly bigger firing arc!
What would be great on top of this, is a 'full synergy' bonus.
Say you fit the exact weapon types that are designated, it would behave like set bonuses.
Say full synergy on this bird of prey would give you better decloak damage.
Or better flanking damage.
Or raise the energy cap in your weapons subsystems.
In the most extreme cases, maybe it might add a bonus active ability. Like you get a free 'Target Subsystems: Engines I." Or, maybe it allows your beam overload to behave as if it's one level higher. So Beam Overload 1 Behaves like 2.
Who would ever Fire at Will a single dual beam bank? Well maybe this synergy makes your dual beam bank hit like twice the number of targets it would usually when you use FAW.
Remember, you have to get the synergy to get this bonus on the Fire at Will, so it will only ever buff the one dual beam bank.
I think the best idea would be to provide a slight bonus, that increases as more weapons are slotted that fit the template.
The only purpose of these bonuses, is to offset what I call the "Hyper Specialization" bonus. To make builds other than 8x CritDx4 Antiproton Beam Arrays good.
Finally, this would not apply in any way to energy type. You can still put any energy type you want, it's all about the weapon type itself.
There's no way they'd put in so much bonuses that it would offset the enormous loss of DPS from a mishmash build. All it would accomplish is give newbies all the wrong advice about shipbuilding.
The game already promotes garbage mishmash builds by loading ships with them when bought and not telling the newbies that's bad. Last thing we need is even more people crying the game is "too hard" because the game teaches them to build ships wrong.
There's no way they'd put in so much bonuses that it would offset the enormous loss of DPS from a mishmash build. All it would accomplish is give newbies all the wrong advice about shipbuilding.
The game already promotes garbage mishmash builds by loading ships with them when bought and not telling the newbies that's bad. Last thing we need is even more people crying the game is "too hard" because the game teaches them to build ships wrong.
This.
I can see the genuinely good intentions of this to make the game more like the show but the game's mechanics just don't work that way and cryptic clearly has absolutely no intention to go that direction.
Agreed with the above. It wouldn't be worth using, bonus or no. Mishmash builds are just that bad. Now, if they made them mandatory and totally changed how the game was set up, that might be a different story. Of course, that would only eventually lead to ships with comparatively OP weapon layouts. Our current ships would get terrible loadout options, and those would be lifted over time to promote new ship sales. Sure, it'd work.. but nobody would like it.. at all.
In the end, the only reason to implement such a system would be to forcibly prevent good players from developing good setups, and even then.. we'd still come up with the best setups possible under the new restrictions.
There's no way they'd put in so much bonuses that it would offset the enormous loss of DPS from a mishmash build. All it would accomplish is give newbies all the wrong advice about shipbuilding.
The game already promotes garbage mishmash builds by loading ships with them when bought and not telling the newbies that's bad. Last thing we need is even more people crying the game is "too hard" because the game teaches them to build ships wrong.
Sorry, But I've got to agree with what Warpangel and others have said. Whilst it might work on paper and in theory, in practical application, its only going to serve to create a mess. It's bad enough that Cryptic doesn't put enough information in game to give players insight on how to build an effective ship.
Sorry, But I've got to agree with what Warpangel and others have said. Whilst it might work on paper and in theory, in practical application, its only going to serve to create a mess. It's bad enough that Cryptic doesn't put enough information in game to give players insight on how to build an effective ship.
Cryptic only tells players the wrong way to load out ships.
Torpedo, beam array, dual beam bank, dual cannon in your fore slots with a turret, 2 beam arrays, and a torpedo in the aft if you go by the basic ship loadout of a 4/4 ship.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
i dont know , i think you all are just being to attached to your way of building ships to see a bigger picture . what this game needs is dedicated types of hard points for weapons and gear . which certain ships might specialize in one type or another . does that make your build obsolete no though it might make the ship using that build so. this kind of thing might open up new builds and styles of play which is what this game lacks . and not playing the same build on EVERY SHIP . i think something drastic is needed to shake the game mechanics up rather than force players into a select builds to be viable .
thats my opinion .
In a word NO. Unless you restrict each faction to what they had as canon weapons and consoles a big NO. I.E. No cloaks for Fed, No phasers for Roms etc, No plasma torps for KDF. The OP had a nice intent but kind of ignores the facts everyone can use everyone elses gear with few exceptions. The game as far as weapons go is fine the way it is except nerfing Neu spread. Better move would have been buffing overload and leaving spread alone.
In a word NO. Unless you restrict each faction to what they had as canon weapons and consoles a big NO. I.E. No cloaks for Fed, No phasers for Roms etc, No plasma torps for KDF. The OP had a nice intent but kind of ignores the facts everyone can use everyone elses gear with few exceptions. The game as far as weapons go is fine the way it is except nerfing Neu spread. Better move would have been buffing overload and leaving spread alone.
The Defiant's cloak is canon.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
thank you I had forgotten about that. Then I should have said ONLY the canon Defient gets cloak for fed. Never really liked DS9 it was all to much about the religon thing.
As long as the game is about spamming weapon attacks and those attack only effect specific types of weapons, min-maxed weapon loadouts are always going to be the status quo.
I've personally been doing a lot of mixed weapon experiments the past couple months and I would say it's generally viable thanks to the easy of power generation these days. That said, the big hurdle is still how many tactical seat powers multi-weapon type setups consume. THAT is the reason it's not efficient to run different types of weapons - not the weapon slots/hardpoints themselves.
I personally think the weapon attacks need to be streamlined into 'energy weapon' and 'projectile' and apply to all weapons:
Fire at Will - Sequentially fires all energy weapons at random targets(with some range priorities).
Scatter Volley - Fires all energy weapons simultaneously at up to 5-7 targets in a cone.
Overload - Sequentially fires a single 'shot' from each energy weapon while draining the maximum weapon power level by 10% each time until depleted.
Rapid Fire - All energy weapons rapidly fire on a singular target.
Spread - Launches at multiple targets/a wide net.
Bombard - Launches multiple projectiles in 'waves'.
High Yield - Launches High-damage/penetration warheads.
Maximum Yield - Launches a single, targetable explosive projectile that does increasingly more AOE damage the further away the target is/the longer it is in flight.
thank you I had forgotten about that. Then I should have said ONLY the canon Defient gets cloak for fed. Never really liked DS9 it was all to much about the religon thing.
The federation didn't have cloaks because of a treaty with the romulans. The romulan empire no longer really exists, at least.. not like it used to. Instead, we've got a romulan republic that is more of an ally to us. Thus, the federation really doesn't have to abide by the treaty any longer.. those that they made it with in the first place aren't really in any position to force it on us any more. Not that they ever really did abide by it, they were secretly developing cloaking technology anyway.
So yeah, from a canonical perspective.. the federation developing cloaks at this point makes sense.
As long as the game is about spamming weapon attacks and those attack only effect specific types of weapons, min-maxed weapon loadouts are always going to be the status quo.
I've personally been doing a lot of mixed weapon experiments the past couple months and I would say it's generally viable thanks to the easy of power generation these days. That said, the big hurdle is still how many tactical seat powers multi-weapon type setups consume. THAT is the reason it's not efficient to run different types of weapons - not the weapon slots/hardpoints themselves.
I personally think the weapon attacks need to be streamlined into 'energy weapon' and 'projectile' and apply to all weapons:
Fire at Will - Sequentially fires all energy weapons at random targets(with some range priorities).
Scatter Volley - Fires all energy weapons simultaneously at up to 5-7 targets in a cone.
Overload - Sequentially fires a single 'shot' from each energy weapon while draining the maximum weapon power level by 10% each time until depleted.
Rapid Fire - All energy weapons rapidly fire on a singular target.
Spread - Launches at multiple targets/a wide net.
Bombard - Launches multiple projectiles in 'waves'.
High Yield - Launches High-damage/penetration warheads.
Maximum Yield - Launches a single, targetable explosive projectile that does increasingly more AOE damage the further away the target is/the longer it is in flight.
You're simplifying the problem somewhat though. Power levels and Boff abilities (while very important) aren't the only concern. You've also got to worry about firing arcs, and whether or not you can fire all weapons at the same time. We're locked into using one of two choices currently - Full arrays (broadside attacks), or full frontal with the largest number of smallest arc weapons possible (DHC/Turret or DBB/Omni).
If your loadout cannot even possibly fire all of its weapons simultaneously, you've already shot yourself in the foot. Continuing to add more such "out of arc" weapons is like emptying a clip into your foot.. because, you know.. it felt so good the first time?
However, if you choose to follow the pattern, and fit a torpedo in a torpedo slot. You would get bonuses to that weapon.
That's basically the core of your suggestion, and I think it's a good starting point.
Something like, apply a bonus for canonical weapon types, ie phasers for Feds, disruptors for Klingons, and plasma for Romulans.
I'm worried that anything more complex would be unwieldy for the average player and for Cryptic alike.
Not that phasers need it; if I'm not mistaken, they're already the highest damage type provided you're willing to use certain set pieces for their 2-piece bonus.
That's basically the core of your suggestion, and I think it's a good starting point.
Something like, apply a bonus for canonical weapon types, ie phasers for Feds, disruptors for Klingons, and plasma for Romulans.
I'm worried that anything more complex would be unwieldy for the average player and for Cryptic alike.
Not that phasers need it; if I'm not mistaken, they're already the highest damage type provided you're willing to use certain set pieces for their 2-piece bonus.
Season 1 was. Thankfully, it took a backseat in subsequent seasons.
Phasers are far from the highest damage. In fact, Antiproton is so far superior that it's better than anything else.. without its 2 piece bonus. Most don't use it, because it requires giving up your core.. which isn't good.
Their base damage is the same, but their procs are vastly different. Damage wise, phasers dropping shields is good. Kinda, it doesn't actually increase your dps.. but it may let you kill something slightly faster - if that makes any sense. However, it doesn't last long enough to make much use of (you might get in a single volley) and that 2.5% chance of proccing is split between 4 subsystems.. 3 of which won't really help at all, and the shields themselves even being only an extremely minor help. That's also assuming your target has shields. Or subsystems. A great many are missing one or the other. Or both. This leaves phasers on the far low end in terms of utility. Most with any know how consider them to be one of the least useful weapons in the game.
Antiproton deals a percent increase in damage when you crit. That means, the more you crit.. the more it procs. I crit a little over 21% of the time (before buffs), and romulans can get that much higher. So, right there the antiproton proc is already being triggered almost 10 times as often. Then you have to consider that the more damage you do, the more damage you're going to gain (as it's percent based). In the end, antiproton is so good because it "scales" with your other stats - not just in how much damage it does, but also in how often it does that damage. This is the same reason the CrtD mod (which is identical) is so good.
This wouldn't be any different, as I see it, from the mech quirks that are being pushed forward in Mechwarrior Online - something which is helping make the identity of each mech shine more, while not stopping people from optimizing things to their preference.
The meta is unlike what we see in the show because doing otherwise has not been greatly encouraged so far. Pushing for something like this would help diversify builds and make a statement that there is no longer just one right way to outfit vessels because of a single meta.
Phasers are far from the highest damage. In fact, Antiproton is so far superior that it's better than anything else.. without its 2 piece bonus. Most don't use it, because it requires giving up your core.. which isn't good.
That +10% AP bonus from the 2-piece isn't worth it.
There are a couple of sources of +Phaser/+Proton damage from set pieces. I'm not sure how they fit into Cryptic's fuzzy maths, but I could easily see them outweighing the value of a single [CrtD] mod, if not individually, then combined. It may also depend on whether you're using Surgical Strikes, and if so, what rank and how many copies; that's a sizable enough critical hit bonus that it could push AP back into being the superior weapon type.
EDIT: I'm trying to find the sets I'm referring to; the only one I could find off-hand was the counter-command ordinance set, which provides a ~7% phaser/disruptor damage buff on its 2-piece; if that's all there is, then yeah, AP is still king.
"Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society." - Aristotle
Oh I know it's not worth it. The AMP cores are too important. Even if the set bonuses made much difference, phasers still wouldn't be anywhere near the best, as there are other more useful energy types out there with set bonuses too, which are much easier to incorporate into a setup (like plasma).
There's a reason all the high dps ships still use antiproton, if it ever loses the top spot you can bet they'll all swap over.
Before any further discussion I would like to clarify the post.
The builds would not be willy-nilly like people think. Some of the weapon setups that come 'stock' on newly purchased ships are just plain irredeemable.
This idea would require that cryptic go back in, and re-think the stock setups, to tweak the particularly bad ones. (D'Deridex, I'm looking at you) to be more viable.
The idea is to give people a motivation to say, throw a dual cannon on their ship instead of a dual heavy cannon, so they can get a decent bonus that makes up for it not being a dual heavy.
Or actually include torpedoes in their builds at all.
Also, this idea has NOTHING to do with energy types, or torpedo types. You would still be free to use any energy type you used before, no bonus or penalties.
Think of how 'powerful' you could actually make some of these. For instance. Imagine, if on the previous D'Deridex, the one slot for dual heavy cannons? What if the cannon in that slot 'ALWAYS' rapid fired.
Or like the torpedo slot on some cruisers, What if, when you put a torpedo in that slot it 'became' a 180 degree torpedo, like the 180 quantums. And both the fore and aft ones did that, so you could broadside with six beams and two torpedoes....
Comments
The game already promotes garbage mishmash builds by loading ships with them when bought and not telling the newbies that's bad. Last thing we need is even more people crying the game is "too hard" because the game teaches them to build ships wrong.
This.
I can see the genuinely good intentions of this to make the game more like the show but the game's mechanics just don't work that way and cryptic clearly has absolutely no intention to go that direction.
In the end, the only reason to implement such a system would be to forcibly prevent good players from developing good setups, and even then.. we'd still come up with the best setups possible under the new restrictions.
Sorry, But I've got to agree with what Warpangel and others have said. Whilst it might work on paper and in theory, in practical application, its only going to serve to create a mess. It's bad enough that Cryptic doesn't put enough information in game to give players insight on how to build an effective ship.
Cryptic only tells players the wrong way to load out ships.
Torpedo, beam array, dual beam bank, dual cannon in your fore slots with a turret, 2 beam arrays, and a torpedo in the aft if you go by the basic ship loadout of a 4/4 ship.
thats my opinion .
No way the bonuses would offset the loss of DPS by having an unoptimized build and would make the game harder for new players.
Frankly, if the OP wants to shoehorn canon into STO, he is playing the wrong game because STO mechanics don't work like in the shows.
The Defiant's cloak is canon.
thank you I had forgotten about that. Then I should have said ONLY the canon Defient gets cloak for fed. Never really liked DS9 it was all to much about the religon thing.
I've personally been doing a lot of mixed weapon experiments the past couple months and I would say it's generally viable thanks to the easy of power generation these days. That said, the big hurdle is still how many tactical seat powers multi-weapon type setups consume. THAT is the reason it's not efficient to run different types of weapons - not the weapon slots/hardpoints themselves.
I personally think the weapon attacks need to be streamlined into 'energy weapon' and 'projectile' and apply to all weapons:
Fire at Will - Sequentially fires all energy weapons at random targets(with some range priorities).
Scatter Volley - Fires all energy weapons simultaneously at up to 5-7 targets in a cone.
Overload - Sequentially fires a single 'shot' from each energy weapon while draining the maximum weapon power level by 10% each time until depleted.
Rapid Fire - All energy weapons rapidly fire on a singular target.
Spread - Launches at multiple targets/a wide net.
Bombard - Launches multiple projectiles in 'waves'.
High Yield - Launches High-damage/penetration warheads.
Maximum Yield - Launches a single, targetable explosive projectile that does increasingly more AOE damage the further away the target is/the longer it is in flight.
The federation didn't have cloaks because of a treaty with the romulans. The romulan empire no longer really exists, at least.. not like it used to. Instead, we've got a romulan republic that is more of an ally to us. Thus, the federation really doesn't have to abide by the treaty any longer.. those that they made it with in the first place aren't really in any position to force it on us any more. Not that they ever really did abide by it, they were secretly developing cloaking technology anyway.
So yeah, from a canonical perspective.. the federation developing cloaks at this point makes sense.
You're simplifying the problem somewhat though. Power levels and Boff abilities (while very important) aren't the only concern. You've also got to worry about firing arcs, and whether or not you can fire all weapons at the same time. We're locked into using one of two choices currently - Full arrays (broadside attacks), or full frontal with the largest number of smallest arc weapons possible (DHC/Turret or DBB/Omni).
If your loadout cannot even possibly fire all of its weapons simultaneously, you've already shot yourself in the foot. Continuing to add more such "out of arc" weapons is like emptying a clip into your foot.. because, you know.. it felt so good the first time?
Something like, apply a bonus for canonical weapon types, ie phasers for Feds, disruptors for Klingons, and plasma for Romulans.
I'm worried that anything more complex would be unwieldy for the average player and for Cryptic alike.
Not that phasers need it; if I'm not mistaken, they're already the highest damage type provided you're willing to use certain set pieces for their 2-piece bonus.
Season 1 was. Thankfully, it took a backseat in subsequent seasons.
Phasers are far from the highest damage. In fact, Antiproton is so far superior that it's better than anything else.. without its 2 piece bonus. Most don't use it, because it requires giving up your core.. which isn't good.
Their base damage is the same, but their procs are vastly different. Damage wise, phasers dropping shields is good. Kinda, it doesn't actually increase your dps.. but it may let you kill something slightly faster - if that makes any sense. However, it doesn't last long enough to make much use of (you might get in a single volley) and that 2.5% chance of proccing is split between 4 subsystems.. 3 of which won't really help at all, and the shields themselves even being only an extremely minor help. That's also assuming your target has shields. Or subsystems. A great many are missing one or the other. Or both. This leaves phasers on the far low end in terms of utility. Most with any know how consider them to be one of the least useful weapons in the game.
Antiproton deals a percent increase in damage when you crit. That means, the more you crit.. the more it procs. I crit a little over 21% of the time (before buffs), and romulans can get that much higher. So, right there the antiproton proc is already being triggered almost 10 times as often. Then you have to consider that the more damage you do, the more damage you're going to gain (as it's percent based). In the end, antiproton is so good because it "scales" with your other stats - not just in how much damage it does, but also in how often it does that damage. This is the same reason the CrtD mod (which is identical) is so good.
This wouldn't be any different, as I see it, from the mech quirks that are being pushed forward in Mechwarrior Online - something which is helping make the identity of each mech shine more, while not stopping people from optimizing things to their preference.
The meta is unlike what we see in the show because doing otherwise has not been greatly encouraged so far. Pushing for something like this would help diversify builds and make a statement that there is no longer just one right way to outfit vessels because of a single meta.
There are a couple of sources of +Phaser/+Proton damage from set pieces. I'm not sure how they fit into Cryptic's fuzzy maths, but I could easily see them outweighing the value of a single [CrtD] mod, if not individually, then combined. It may also depend on whether you're using Surgical Strikes, and if so, what rank and how many copies; that's a sizable enough critical hit bonus that it could push AP back into being the superior weapon type.
EDIT: I'm trying to find the sets I'm referring to; the only one I could find off-hand was the counter-command ordinance set, which provides a ~7% phaser/disruptor damage buff on its 2-piece; if that's all there is, then yeah, AP is still king.
There's a reason all the high dps ships still use antiproton, if it ever loses the top spot you can bet they'll all swap over.
It's funny and a shame. Many of the initial load-outs on new ships look like they would be fun. But yeah, in reality they are just fail builds.
The builds would not be willy-nilly like people think. Some of the weapon setups that come 'stock' on newly purchased ships are just plain irredeemable.
This idea would require that cryptic go back in, and re-think the stock setups, to tweak the particularly bad ones. (D'Deridex, I'm looking at you) to be more viable.
The idea is to give people a motivation to say, throw a dual cannon on their ship instead of a dual heavy cannon, so they can get a decent bonus that makes up for it not being a dual heavy.
Or actually include torpedoes in their builds at all.
Also, this idea has NOTHING to do with energy types, or torpedo types. You would still be free to use any energy type you used before, no bonus or penalties.
Think of how 'powerful' you could actually make some of these. For instance. Imagine, if on the previous D'Deridex, the one slot for dual heavy cannons? What if the cannon in that slot 'ALWAYS' rapid fired.
Or like the torpedo slot on some cruisers, What if, when you put a torpedo in that slot it 'became' a 180 degree torpedo, like the 180 quantums. And both the fore and aft ones did that, so you could broadside with six beams and two torpedoes....