Last time around (with the level cap increase) cryptic gave us inflated NPC health to give us "not canon fodder." That didn't work out well (see. subsequent NPC health rescaling, also the whining/feedback.)
Now this time we have reasonably balanced enemies that provide a challenge (apppriate for the difficulty setting selected, rule one of gaming) and once that incidentally isn't just re-hashing the Vaadwuar's combat tactics.
Its good. Problem? None than I can see, except in certain peoples' expectations (waaaaah, we haven't all died yet. If this your criterion for what would have made S10 good you do have some serious issues.)
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
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Wait, if you were sent back during the Breen arc... how did you even know about the Iconian invasion or impending war? We didn't even know about the Dyson spheres at that point. Hell, we weren't even in the DQ to make Delta Recruits.
It's a predestination paradox.
Past-You knows to research the Iconians because Future-You told you to prepare for the war.
Future-You knows to tell Past-You to prepare for the war, because when Future-You was Past-You, Future-You showed up to tell Past-You to prepare for the war.
In that last mission, we already raided the Preserver database for information on the Iconians as a Delta Recruit, I dunno what more we were supposed to ask.
I quite like the Heralds. Yes on normal their ships are made of sticks and leaves, on ground they actually have a few insta-death tricks though. But advanced and elite are there for a reason.
Vissually I love having them in game, on ground and in space they look brilliant IMO.
I also like the story thus far, and the air of desperation it breathed into the story line. Blood of Ancients is one of the few episodes in this game where there was real emotional impact. It also does make the whole delta recruit time-travel thing make more sense too. Delta Flight was also a nice change of pace, it felt very different to most STO missions which is a good thing. Hopefully we get more soon, and hopefully it holds the feel of desperation and we're doomed for a while longer, everything else in STO is just endless victories (outside the queues;)) after all.
With the stories, I think we all have to remember that STO just rips off Stargate SG-1 & Atlantis, Babylon 5 and pretty much anything, instead of coming up with original content.
Their Magic tricks are annoying on Elite. They just need better DPS.
If people actually play storyline missions on anything less than "Advanced" I can understand your disappointment. But do you really expect a challenge on Advanced or normal?
I found them quite fun. Especially on the ground. Yes it is true the undine are harder but just like the undine and voth these guys have a distinct feeling to their battle. You know you are not fighting gown or nausicaans because of how the fight plays out differently.
For those without a super high damage team mobility is key to survival so the fights play put very appropriate to an enemy meant to show off the value of command and pilot powers in the hands of the PCs.
Doing the queues last night having some one mark targets with the highly visible com!amder powers and mark areas to go while guarding the kdf transports etc really helped the people who didn't know what the mission strategy was. Exactly as command is supposed to do.
And man, the people who tried to park and shoot got slaughtered. Mobility to avoid the emprobes and ionic turbulense zones was crucial.
On the ground they were again, fast and mobile. Not like the tholian or undine mobile HP sacks with artillery style powers.
Perhaps the challenge could be scaled up, I took them in a kobali cruiser with green mark 11 gear are pure junk consoles. So I can totally see where people are underwhelmed by their lack of oomph. But their flavor and feel were spot on.
I wonder, for the people complaining, how would you fix them?
The caveat is to do so in a way that is within Cryptic's wheelhouse, so no revamping the AI beyond maybe a scripted action ala Vaadwaur, keeping them still easy enough that the Joe Average captains with a 3k dps ship can still beat them on Normal (if just barely), and keeping the power suites not as full PC-style layouts but more in line with Cryptic's normal NPC structure and Use-Everything-When-Available AI in general and the Heralds' theme of Intel powers in particular? So for powers, say Frigates get 2 powers, Escorts get 3, Cruisers get 4 and a console-type ability, Dreads get 5 boff powers plus a captain power.
Its easy to complain. How would you fix it without restructuring the game?
I wonder, for the people complaining, how would you fix them?
The caveat is to do so in a way that is within Cryptic's wheelhouse, so no revamping the AI beyond maybe a scripted action ala Vaadwaur, keeping them still easy enough that the Joe Average captains with a 3k dps ship can still beat them on Normal (if just barely), and keeping the power suites not as full PC-style layouts but more in line with Cryptic's normal NPC structure and Use-Everything-When-Available AI in general and the Heralds' theme of Intel powers in particular? So for powers, say Frigates get 2 powers, Escorts get 3, Cruisers get 4 and a console-type ability, Dreads get 5 boff powers plus a captain power.
Its easy to complain. How would you fix it without restructuring the game?
As was mentioned, I believe in this thread (still getting the caffeine going)...simply reduce their numbers while maintaining the difficulty that was presented by those numbers. A few mobs vs. a truckload of mobs...simply will make them appear more powerful. The overall difficulty hasn't changed, but the appearance of it being a complete slaughter will go away with the complete slaughter of so many enemies being reduced to a few.
Superman vs. the shoplifting kid with the power of 30 shoplifting kids...
Superman vs. 30 shoplifting kids....
It's still Superman vs. the equivalent of shoplifting kids...but one doesn't quite make him look like a bully.
Cause at what point do we start feeling bad for the Heralds? Like watching a bunch of guys with sticks charging a machine gun nest...when do we just turn away from the horror of the slaughter?
I wonder, for the people complaining, how would you fix them?
The caveat is to do so in a way that is within Cryptic's wheelhouse, so no revamping the AI beyond maybe a scripted action ala Vaadwaur, keeping them still easy enough that the Joe Average captains with a 3k dps ship can still beat them on Normal (if just barely), and keeping the power suites not as full PC-style layouts but more in line with Cryptic's normal NPC structure and Use-Everything-When-Available AI in general and the Heralds' theme of Intel powers in particular? So for powers, say Frigates get 2 powers, Escorts get 3, Cruisers get 4 and a console-type ability, Dreads get 5 boff powers plus a captain power.
Its easy to complain. How would you fix it without restructuring the game?
Tactics.
Have you ever watched the voth in the free-for-all phase of the undine battlezone? They die so fast most people miss what is going on because 15 people have too much massed firepower. But whatever Dev scripted it did a fantastic job given the NPC powers and ai.
First the palisade frigates warp in in a narrow ring, often mixed in with the players. They immediately hit aoe disables and cloak/teleport. A half second later the cruisers appear in a wide circle, usually outside the PCs. Their invulnerable shields come online pointing in and they open up with all of their grav wells, tykens rifts and torp spreads. Meanwhile the frigates are uncloaking and dogfighting. On later waves a dreadnaught comes right after the initial aoe barrage directly into the center of the fight.
This is really smart, and should be a hell of a lot more effective than it is. But we all know the pattern so stay spread out and thus the aoes only get one ship at a time, etc. Bfaw spam fest they all die. If the voth had three attack patterns and alternated them, they would make that fight way harder without new powers or different stats.
Same idea with the heralds. A little bit of scripting, and then look at the player response and script a second scenario that ruins the player response to the first. Then a third that ruins the second and make it random which happens. Do you spread put? What of they use the "all appear on this flank and gravity well the close people, then use frigates to disable the far ones so they can't get here on time to help"? Bunch up? See strategy one, now everyone is disabled and getting hamered by aoe.
I don't know the new queues well enough to script the right strategy. But that is how I would do it. Small clusters of three or four appearing at long range and closing in slowly is just giving the beam faw people a meat grinder scenario.
Though, I would also make one power change and make it throughout the game: take the nerfs off of scramble sensors and give the power to more NPCs. Turn the power of a 180kdps monstrosity on his own teamates. The 3k players will shrug it off. Confuse is an equalizer. The weaker you are the less it matters. The stronger you are the more of a threat it is.
As was mentioned, I believe in this thread (still getting the caffeine going)...simply reduce their numbers while maintaining the difficulty that was presented by those numbers. A few mobs vs. a truckload of mobs...simply will make them appear more powerful. The overall difficulty hasn't changed, but the appearance of it being a complete slaughter will go away with the complete slaughter of so many enemies being reduced to a few.
Superman vs. the shoplifting kid with the power of 30 shoplifting kids...
Superman vs. 30 shoplifting kids....
It's still Superman vs. the equivalent of shoplifting kids...but one doesn't quite make him look like a bully.
Cause at what point do we start feeling bad for the Heralds? Like watching a bunch of guys with sticks charging a machine gun nest...when do we just turn away from the horror of the slaughter?
This is what the dust to dust mission had and the new mission fight on new romulus lacks: dead allies. In dust to dust there are kobali wounded to rescue, corpses strewn around and People dying. We have our boffs and the vaadwaur are in small groups, so they appear dangerous.
In the undine attack on ESD, Quinn has guards that die off as the undine waves keep coming. Quinn has at first 6 guards plus the player and tuvok vs only three or four undine at a time. The undine appear very powerful, that fight rocks.
The new romulus fight is furious, but the romulans don't die. I'd prefer if there were two or three romulan npcs for every herald. Let the corpses pile up. They've done it before, I know they know how.
As was mentioned, I believe in this thread (still getting the caffeine going)...simply reduce their numbers while maintaining the difficulty that was presented by those numbers. A few mobs vs. a truckload of mobs...simply will make them appear more powerful. The overall difficulty hasn't changed, but the appearance of it being a complete slaughter will go away with the complete slaughter of so many enemies being reduced to a few.
Superman vs. the shoplifting kid with the power of 30 shoplifting kids...
Superman vs. 30 shoplifting kids....
It's still Superman vs. the equivalent of shoplifting kids...but one doesn't quite make him look like a bully.
Cause at what point do we start feeling bad for the Heralds? Like watching a bunch of guys with sticks charging a machine gun nest...when do we just turn away from the horror of the slaughter?
Were you playing on Normal, Advanced or Elite? I ran the two FEs on Elite and they seemed to have some significant hitpoints and damage output. I wouldn't say it was substantially beyond anything else in the game but that warlock in the gate room could insta-kill if you got caught up in his attack. It required some creative BO positioning to prevent my crew from getting wiped out. He was definitely using some attacks I haven't seen before.
I think the problem is how they were made out to be this unstoppable force which required the armies of a thousand worlds to overcome... Now granted they probably didn't have BFAW3 back then so maybe that's why it took so many LOL
The Heralds were fun on the ground. I even got to lightsaber them!
In space my FAW cruiser just clowned on them.
Thats becouse there isnt a ground equivalent of something brokenly op like BFAW. Try fighting them with an escort with DHCs (not a beamescort... one of the most silly things ever I saw after DR hit) and you have a complete different feel.
For the ground part, I agree, they are fun to fight.
Anyway, I must say STO team has outdone themselves by providing a challanging foe, both on ground and space. Kudos to them.
The fact that is easy on space for certain builds like BFAW just shows again how big of an imbalance there is between beams vs cannons, between various builds and playstyles and so on...
One could even say their HP could be toned down. I mean... after DR difficulty came, the HP increase was an escuse becouse skills wouldve been too much. Well... now there are skills... yet the massive HP are there too
Were you playing on Normal, Advanced or Elite? I ran the two FEs on Elite and they seemed to have some significant hitpoints and damage output. I wouldn't say it was substantially beyond anything else in the game but that warlock in the gate room could insta-kill if you got caught up in his attack. It required some creative BO positioning to prevent my crew from getting wiped out. He was definitely using some attacks I haven't seen before.
I think the problem is how they were made out to be this unstoppable force which required the armies of a thousand worlds to overcome... Now granted they probably didn't have BFAW3 back then so maybe that's why it took so many LOL
Oh, I've said that the Ground part is more difficult than the Space part...but I've said that about most things and for a bit of time - really wish that Space combat was anywhere near as dangerous as Ground combat is. My unprepared 53 Tac was getting slaughtered on Ground - the same unprepared 53 Tac in a normal T5 B'rel, not T5U nor FT5U...using CRF and HY...with 34.8k hull and 6.5k shields...with Mk X weapons (from the Delta Recruit level 40 box) was just slaughtering the Heralds in Space. Wait, she did die once in Space...hit by a breach the second before a Baltim rammed her wee BoP...boom. And yeah, that's on Elite.
edit: Hell, it really isn't just the Heralds like that...can die more fighting the Vaadwaur for a couple of hours on Ground in Normal than a year of fighting everything else in Space on Elite. There's just such a massive discrepancy there.
IMHO, the ground was as easy as space. I lost my Tac Klingon Tank twice, but my alien Tac DPS, Rigelian Engineer and Betazoid Medic and my Tac with an UR Voth Shock Trooper cannon were killing and healing machines.
My mistake was using the 2 piece Rom Navy set with Rom Flamethrower on my tank. I need to put that on my Engineer or Tac DPS and take the Voth Armor off my JH Tank and put it on my Klink.
But STO's never really been about that kind of progression, eh? Everything's kind of on a horizontal plane and sometimes things are above - sometimes things are below...just the way it goes.
Oh come on..... try them on advanced or elite. have fun with that.
I did, and for the first time in a LONG time, I must say, I find the ground fights interesting and more challenging then in previous Seasons (IE I actually enjoyed the ground combat as it wasn't just an auto-kill cakewalk - YMMV).
The Iconians in space though, yeah, they seem a bit squishier then many of the various enemies encountered in the DR expansion. I honesty don't really mind that though as I found a lo of the DR Expansion space combat more tedious then challenging. At least (both on ground and space) they are using multiple powers/methods that can catch you off guard if you're not paying attention.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Thats becouse there isnt a ground equivalent of something brokenly op like BFAW. Try fighting them with an escort with DHCs (not a beamescort... one of the most silly things ever I saw after DR hit) and you have a complete different feel.
For the ground part, I agree, they are fun to fight.
Anyway, I must say STO team has outdone themselves by providing a challanging foe, both on ground and space. Kudos to them.
The fact that is easy on space for certain builds like BFAW just shows again how big of an imbalance there is between beams vs cannons, between various builds and playstyles and so on...
One could even say their HP could be toned down. I mean... after DR difficulty came, the HP increase was an escuse becouse skills wouldve been too much. Well... now there are skills... yet the massive HP are there too
There have been always been NPC skills for quite sometime. The only time you will not notice this is because you are too much enthralled with propaganda in the forums. If you have been going around in pve, certain specific mobs do Sub nukes, sensor scram, feedback pulse, etc not unless you are stuck with normal missions on one specific mission.
Oh, I've said that the Ground part is more difficult than the Space part...but I've said that about most things and for a bit of time - really wish that Space combat was anywhere near as dangerous as Ground combat is. My unprepared 53 Tac was getting slaughtered on Ground - the same unprepared 53 Tac in a normal T5 B'rel, not T5U nor FT5U...using CRF and HY...with 34.8k hull and 6.5k shields...with Mk X weapons (from the Delta Recruit level 40 box) was just slaughtering the Heralds in Space. Wait, she did die once in Space...hit by a breach the second before a Baltim rammed her wee BoP...boom. And yeah, that's on Elite.
edit: Hell, it really isn't just the Heralds like that...can die more fighting the Vaadwaur for a couple of hours on Ground in Normal than a year of fighting everything else in Space on Elite. There's just such a massive discrepancy there.
I've not had much issue myself vs them on ground. they have a few annoying abilities, but nothing too bad,
It's kinda cute how their footsoldiers think they're gonna melee me. Nanopulse to the FACE!
I've not had much issue myself vs them on ground. they have a few annoying abilities, but nothing too bad,
It's kinda cute how their footsoldiers think they're gonna melee me. Nanopulse to the FACE!
then I go back to shooting their leaders.
They're more likely to flank, is what I guess it comes down to...teleporting behind you. On my Tac lacking the abilities of my Sci, it can be problematic.
As for the overall Ground vs. Space thing...I find the % of health thing curious.
Ground: Health / Avg Incoming Damage = X%
Space: Health / Avg Incoming Damage = Y%
I have only done the new mission on my Delta Recruit, I was 51 with only gear that could be got/crafted in the game to that point, (no rep gear) I was using a T6 command battle cruiser but it is only lvl 2 ATM and both the Space and Ground of Ancients gave me a good run for my money and yes it was on normal difficulty. Delta Flight was a little eaiser but the Icoians do have some difficulty to them. Now when I switch to my main char or one of my alts that I have at lvl 60 with mk xiv gear they will probably drop like flies, but i like the new missions.
what I find to be a huge dissapointment is that war and battle are the sum of all content . In the TV series ( all of them ,in fact ) the conflict was the backdrop for the stories but the stories were very seldom about that war or battle .
Comments
Now this time we have reasonably balanced enemies that provide a challenge (apppriate for the difficulty setting selected, rule one of gaming) and once that incidentally isn't just re-hashing the Vaadwuar's combat tactics.
Its good. Problem? None than I can see, except in certain peoples' expectations (waaaaah, we haven't all died yet. If this your criterion for what would have made S10 good you do have some serious issues.)
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
It's a predestination paradox.
Past-You knows to research the Iconians because Future-You told you to prepare for the war.
Future-You knows to tell Past-You to prepare for the war, because when Future-You was Past-You, Future-You showed up to tell Past-You to prepare for the war.
In that last mission, we already raided the Preserver database for information on the Iconians as a Delta Recruit, I dunno what more we were supposed to ask.
Vissually I love having them in game, on ground and in space they look brilliant IMO.
I also like the story thus far, and the air of desperation it breathed into the story line. Blood of Ancients is one of the few episodes in this game where there was real emotional impact. It also does make the whole delta recruit time-travel thing make more sense too. Delta Flight was also a nice change of pace, it felt very different to most STO missions which is a good thing. Hopefully we get more soon, and hopefully it holds the feel of desperation and we're doomed for a while longer, everything else in STO is just endless victories (outside the queues;)) after all.
If people actually play storyline missions on anything less than "Advanced" I can understand your disappointment. But do you really expect a challenge on Advanced or normal?
For those without a super high damage team mobility is key to survival so the fights play put very appropriate to an enemy meant to show off the value of command and pilot powers in the hands of the PCs.
Doing the queues last night having some one mark targets with the highly visible com!amder powers and mark areas to go while guarding the kdf transports etc really helped the people who didn't know what the mission strategy was. Exactly as command is supposed to do.
And man, the people who tried to park and shoot got slaughtered. Mobility to avoid the emprobes and ionic turbulense zones was crucial.
On the ground they were again, fast and mobile. Not like the tholian or undine mobile HP sacks with artillery style powers.
Perhaps the challenge could be scaled up, I took them in a kobali cruiser with green mark 11 gear are pure junk consoles. So I can totally see where people are underwhelmed by their lack of oomph. But their flavor and feel were spot on.
The caveat is to do so in a way that is within Cryptic's wheelhouse, so no revamping the AI beyond maybe a scripted action ala Vaadwaur, keeping them still easy enough that the Joe Average captains with a 3k dps ship can still beat them on Normal (if just barely), and keeping the power suites not as full PC-style layouts but more in line with Cryptic's normal NPC structure and Use-Everything-When-Available AI in general and the Heralds' theme of Intel powers in particular? So for powers, say Frigates get 2 powers, Escorts get 3, Cruisers get 4 and a console-type ability, Dreads get 5 boff powers plus a captain power.
Its easy to complain. How would you fix it without restructuring the game?
As was mentioned, I believe in this thread (still getting the caffeine going)...simply reduce their numbers while maintaining the difficulty that was presented by those numbers. A few mobs vs. a truckload of mobs...simply will make them appear more powerful. The overall difficulty hasn't changed, but the appearance of it being a complete slaughter will go away with the complete slaughter of so many enemies being reduced to a few.
Superman vs. the shoplifting kid with the power of 30 shoplifting kids...
Superman vs. 30 shoplifting kids....
It's still Superman vs. the equivalent of shoplifting kids...but one doesn't quite make him look like a bully.
Cause at what point do we start feeling bad for the Heralds? Like watching a bunch of guys with sticks charging a machine gun nest...when do we just turn away from the horror of the slaughter?
Have you ever watched the voth in the free-for-all phase of the undine battlezone? They die so fast most people miss what is going on because 15 people have too much massed firepower. But whatever Dev scripted it did a fantastic job given the NPC powers and ai.
First the palisade frigates warp in in a narrow ring, often mixed in with the players. They immediately hit aoe disables and cloak/teleport. A half second later the cruisers appear in a wide circle, usually outside the PCs. Their invulnerable shields come online pointing in and they open up with all of their grav wells, tykens rifts and torp spreads. Meanwhile the frigates are uncloaking and dogfighting. On later waves a dreadnaught comes right after the initial aoe barrage directly into the center of the fight.
This is really smart, and should be a hell of a lot more effective than it is. But we all know the pattern so stay spread out and thus the aoes only get one ship at a time, etc. Bfaw spam fest they all die. If the voth had three attack patterns and alternated them, they would make that fight way harder without new powers or different stats.
Same idea with the heralds. A little bit of scripting, and then look at the player response and script a second scenario that ruins the player response to the first. Then a third that ruins the second and make it random which happens. Do you spread put? What of they use the "all appear on this flank and gravity well the close people, then use frigates to disable the far ones so they can't get here on time to help"? Bunch up? See strategy one, now everyone is disabled and getting hamered by aoe.
I don't know the new queues well enough to script the right strategy. But that is how I would do it. Small clusters of three or four appearing at long range and closing in slowly is just giving the beam faw people a meat grinder scenario.
Though, I would also make one power change and make it throughout the game: take the nerfs off of scramble sensors and give the power to more NPCs. Turn the power of a 180kdps monstrosity on his own teamates. The 3k players will shrug it off. Confuse is an equalizer. The weaker you are the less it matters. The stronger you are the more of a threat it is.
In the undine attack on ESD, Quinn has guards that die off as the undine waves keep coming. Quinn has at first 6 guards plus the player and tuvok vs only three or four undine at a time. The undine appear very powerful, that fight rocks.
The new romulus fight is furious, but the romulans don't die. I'd prefer if there were two or three romulan npcs for every herald. Let the corpses pile up. They've done it before, I know they know how.
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Were you playing on Normal, Advanced or Elite? I ran the two FEs on Elite and they seemed to have some significant hitpoints and damage output. I wouldn't say it was substantially beyond anything else in the game but that warlock in the gate room could insta-kill if you got caught up in his attack. It required some creative BO positioning to prevent my crew from getting wiped out. He was definitely using some attacks I haven't seen before.
I think the problem is how they were made out to be this unstoppable force which required the armies of a thousand worlds to overcome... Now granted they probably didn't have BFAW3 back then so maybe that's why it took so many LOL
Captain Ariel Trueheart Department of Temporal Investigations
U.S.S. Valkyrie - NCC 991701
=/\= ================================= =/\=
In space my FAW cruiser just clowned on them.
Actual join date: Open beta, 2009ish.
Thats becouse there isnt a ground equivalent of something brokenly op like BFAW. Try fighting them with an escort with DHCs (not a beamescort... one of the most silly things ever I saw after DR hit) and you have a complete different feel.
For the ground part, I agree, they are fun to fight.
Anyway, I must say STO team has outdone themselves by providing a challanging foe, both on ground and space. Kudos to them.
The fact that is easy on space for certain builds like BFAW just shows again how big of an imbalance there is between beams vs cannons, between various builds and playstyles and so on...
One could even say their HP could be toned down. I mean... after DR difficulty came, the HP increase was an escuse becouse skills wouldve been too much. Well... now there are skills... yet the massive HP are there too
Oh, I've said that the Ground part is more difficult than the Space part...but I've said that about most things and for a bit of time - really wish that Space combat was anywhere near as dangerous as Ground combat is. My unprepared 53 Tac was getting slaughtered on Ground - the same unprepared 53 Tac in a normal T5 B'rel, not T5U nor FT5U...using CRF and HY...with 34.8k hull and 6.5k shields...with Mk X weapons (from the Delta Recruit level 40 box) was just slaughtering the Heralds in Space. Wait, she did die once in Space...hit by a breach the second before a Baltim rammed her wee BoP...boom. And yeah, that's on Elite.
edit: Hell, it really isn't just the Heralds like that...can die more fighting the Vaadwaur for a couple of hours on Ground in Normal than a year of fighting everything else in Space on Elite. There's just such a massive discrepancy there.
My mistake was using the 2 piece Rom Navy set with Rom Flamethrower on my tank. I need to put that on my Engineer or Tac DPS and take the Voth Armor off my JH Tank and put it on my Klink.
The Baltims...when they jump through the gate doohickey and ram you. Blow up the gate doohickeys and they can't do it.
Fight Vaadwaur on Elite
Fight Heralds on Elite
...and that the Vaadwaur shouldn't be tougher.
But STO's never really been about that kind of progression, eh? Everything's kind of on a horizontal plane and sometimes things are above - sometimes things are below...just the way it goes.
I did, and for the first time in a LONG time, I must say, I find the ground fights interesting and more challenging then in previous Seasons (IE I actually enjoyed the ground combat as it wasn't just an auto-kill cakewalk - YMMV).
The Iconians in space though, yeah, they seem a bit squishier then many of the various enemies encountered in the DR expansion. I honesty don't really mind that though as I found a lo of the DR Expansion space combat more tedious then challenging. At least (both on ground and space) they are using multiple powers/methods that can catch you off guard if you're not paying attention.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
There have been always been NPC skills for quite sometime. The only time you will not notice this is because you are too much enthralled with propaganda in the forums. If you have been going around in pve, certain specific mobs do Sub nukes, sensor scram, feedback pulse, etc not unless you are stuck with normal missions on one specific mission.
It's kinda cute how their footsoldiers think they're gonna melee me. Nanopulse to the FACE!
then I go back to shooting their leaders.
My character Tsin'xing
They're more likely to flank, is what I guess it comes down to...teleporting behind you. On my Tac lacking the abilities of my Sci, it can be problematic.
As for the overall Ground vs. Space thing...I find the % of health thing curious.
Ground: Health / Avg Incoming Damage = X%
Space: Health / Avg Incoming Damage = Y%
Y% is tiny compared to X%.
My character Tsin'xing
Though to be fair, the latter series did a good enough job delivering junk stories.