The Herald Threat (How to make it)

rgzarcher

A number of people have been commenting on how they believe The Heralds are a bit on the underwhelming side when it comes to space combat. Due in no small part to the fact that players have progressed quite a bit beyond the AI of the game. This thread exists for the purpose of players submitting ideas for how they think The Heralds or any enemy in general could be made into a greater threat without simply ramping up their hull/health or adding additional zeroes to their damage output.

Additionally a complete teardown and rewrite of the AI is out. So what does that leave? To be honest, quite a few options when you get down to it, many of them from the players handbook. There are many powers and abilities we have that the enemy lacks, and implementing these would be a simple but effective way to add more difficulty without HP sponges.

Abilities and combinations that stand out to me:

The Aegis Effect: Remember that space set everyone use to use but now only a few still do? It has no offensive value which is why many stopped using it, but that stacking damage type resistance is very noticeable when it reaches it cap. Giving the Herald ships this as a passive would make even the smallest ship a threat and it would push players to have Science and Intelligence debuff powers instead of everyone stacking pure offense. This would also turn Beam Fire At Will into a liability since it would just raise the defense value of everything in range. Surgical Strike and Overload/Rapid Fire would also gain value.

Science Captain ability Scattering Field: Make this an option for the bigger ships, it grants a nice defensive bonus without simply giving them more health. It could then be stacked or combined with giving the smaller ships:

Transfer Shield Strength: A particular tactic of the Mirror Universe Feds that's always been annoying is their Miranda class ships moving in groups of two and three using this on each other (much like the Hazari) or on larger ships to keep them going. Smaller ships running this while their larger counterparts keep them safe with Scattering field would force players to split them up as clumping them together would only make them tougher.

Polarize Hull: An old player power that's rarely seen due to its limited value from many anchor powers being exempt from it now, in the hands of the enemy it would be much more effective thanks to the limited number of anchor powers available to players.

Reverse Shield Polarity: A longtime favorite of players that to date not ONE enemy has. Though due to how big a difference it would make I would suggest this only be on Elite difficulty.

'Voth Mirror Shield' Everyone remembers this nasty little power I'm sure, but I'm not suggesting the Herald ships gain this effect, rather the Iconian Probes. The main issue with the Heralds is debuff and lockdown are instrumental to their style, and the Iconian Probes are one of the big ways they do so. Making those probes a lot harder to kill would in turn make them that much more a threat.

Singularity Pull effect for Teleportation: Like the Romulan Singularity jump, give the Heralds some kind of effect when they use their teleportation power, it would force players to stay on their toes and diversify their Boff layout.

Comments? Thoughts? I look forward to hearing what others come up with.