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Making Canon Builds More Viable
e30ernest
Member Posts: 1,794 Arc User
In Trek, ships usually have a loudout that combines energy weapons and kinetics. However, the way the game is structured, it is better to focus on single-weapon type builds. So after reading Virusdancer's post, I had an idea. For reference, here is his post:
If we take that a step further, we can make more canon ship loadouts more viable and create a better "Trek" experience in my opinion:
These changes will allow a better mix of kinetics and energy weapons without sacrificing a lot of damage potential. It'll also allow more build diversity since captains can now mix beams, cannons, torpedoes and mines in their ship loadouts.
These changes can also make the following more possible/feasible:
Those changes will allow the stripping of shields through energy weapons and quick kills through kinetics vs hull rather than just spamming the same AOE shots over and over again.
Thoughts?
virusdancer wrote: »1) Convert Mine Launchers to Cluster Launchers.
2) Remove DPA.
3) Remove DPB.
4) Have HY apply DPB to the Cluster (dropping a larger cluster of mines at the target).
5) Have TS apply DPA to the Cluster (dropping a string of mines along the way to the target).
6) Convert Mine PWOs to Torp PWOs.
7) Have Torp PWOs affect Cluster Launchers.
8) Make the Tethered Quantums Friendly Target (attach to self or ally).
9) Convert Generic Mine Consoles to Generic Torp Consoles.
10) Convert Mine boosts to Torp boosts.
11) Have Torp boosts affect Clusters.
12) Add blind fire Cluster to R&D (Cluster that doesn't require a target and travels a specific distance).
Etc, etc, etc...you get the idea.
If we take that a step further, we can make more canon ship loadouts more viable and create a better "Trek" experience in my opinion:
- Remove DPA.
- Remove DPB
- Have HY apply DPB to the Cluster
- Have TS apply DPA to the Cluster
- Remove CRF
- Remove CSV
- Make FAW affect cannons like CSV (may need ability rename)
- Have BO have the same affect as CRF in canons (will need an ability rename).
- Merge all generic weapon bonus consoles (+Beam, +Torp, +Mine) into one (+Weap) with the same current bonus. Individual energy or weapon type (+Phasers, +Photons, etc.) will remain the same.
These changes will allow a better mix of kinetics and energy weapons without sacrificing a lot of damage potential. It'll also allow more build diversity since captains can now mix beams, cannons, torpedoes and mines in their ship loadouts.
These changes can also make the following more possible/feasible:
- Increase kinetic effectiveness against hull vs energy weapons than the current game does.
- Increase energy weapon effect on shields vs kinetics than the current game does.
Those changes will allow the stripping of shields through energy weapons and quick kills through kinetics vs hull rather than just spamming the same AOE shots over and over again.
Thoughts?
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To make torpedo mixes more viable I'd simply add to hulls a inherent high resistance to energy weapons, as shields have to torpedoes. Problem (kinda) solved.
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No, they won't. Merging the weapon abilities would make mixing cannons and beams more viable (in those niche situations where you'd even want to), but an all-energy weapon build remains superior. The generic weapon bonus consoles are irrelevant, because nobody uses them (now that plasma doping was fixed).
It's not just tac consoles either. There are now torpedoes that work exactly like energy weapons and are affected by energy weapon consoles, but people don't seem to be using them much either. Probably because they'd still need skill points in projectile weapons and boff abilities to use it effectively...so its still better to use another beam or DHC.
Better to double up on TT/APB/BFAW than waste boff slots on torp abilities, even on ships that have that many. Better to not have skill points in projectile weapons that would mean less points for something else.
And people want to spam the same AOE shots over and over again. They want to put all weapons on autofire and just point at the target. Because thats simple, lag resistant, effective against all targets and doesn't waste DPS. Timing torpedo shots for hull strikes is genre-inappropriate, fails utterly against bosses who's shields you simply can't drop ever...and it's not even canon.
Without a total rewrite of the way weapons, weapon abilities and the skill point grid interact, I doubt anything is going to make energy+kinetic combo builds popular among the DPS-concerned part of the playerbase. Making torpedoes powerful enough to be popular through sheer damage is not going to happen (see what happened to neutronics recently), and all the multipliers strongly favor a one-type build.
As for merging torp and mine abilities...wouldn't that just mean a torp+mine build could only use them half as often as before?
when it comes to dps, the ranking is something like this:
1. (dual) beam faw
2. exotic dmg
3. cannons/turrets
4. torpedoes/mines
Take away that inherent advantage, you basically take away its effectiveness and ease of use.
However, the current mechanics make sense. It's like the stuff in stargate, more power to the ZPM, more powerful Asgard weapons, just like in the current STO mechanic.
Torps don't have that same mechanics as energy weapons while cannons have less benefits than beams. If you put weapons power to zero, kinetics are stronger.
We have come to the point of game which has too much power, power drain resistance and with the release of Astika, more likely the pattern of the game wherein they will keep bringing more buffs to power management.
So if you want to know the difference between cannons, torps and beams, you got to set your weapons power to zero. At optimal conditions for the weapons, you have to consider all aspect the comes with the build not just the weapons which will brings us back to power management.
This makes kinetic weapons the clear choice for hull killing. Energy for clearing off the shields, but even lower shields can leave a ship vulnerable now.
Yes, that sounds good. Removing abilities and further simplifying everything as the OP suggested not as much.
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1) Remove damage fall off (if it exists) Have all weapons as effective at 10km as it is at 1km.
2) Up the bleed through of torpedoes, say 25% to 50% instead of the current 10%, (or reduce the resistance of shields to torpedos, whichever is easier).
#1) Would make cannons viable and hard hitting again while doing nothing to attenuate the usefulness of beams in all their variations.
#2) Would up the usefulness of torpedos.
Much less complicated than trying to rewrite the entire combat engine as the early posts suggest. No renaming abilities, no combining anything to discover unforeseen bugs.
Accomplishes the same thing, with much less work and far fewer complications.
"There... are... four... lights!" ~Jean Luc Picard
All space energy weapons regardless if they either cannons or beam weapons should be simply made into energy weapons. There could be a dropdown menu to choose to use either cannon or Beam FX. (similar like you can choose to enable/disable visuals of some set items)
So energy weapons would only differ in their fireing arc and damage.
By doing this, all weapon BOFF abilities like Beam overload, FAW, Scatter Volley and Rapid Fire would apply to all space energy weapons.
This would allow much more diverse builds and tactics.
Now a rather radical idea i picked up in game chat yesterday:
(i hope it's allright for the guys there, i just find the idea way too good to ignore it)
Similar like the Experimental Proton Weapon from the "Protonic Arsenal" space set. This means for every Critical hit, there's a 25% chance the proc will apply.
This mechanic could be applied to all energy weapon procs.
Of course, some weapon Types like Phasers would need to get some restrictions, so it won't be possible to completely disable a enemy ship just by shooting at it.
Personally i would like phaser proc to be changed into something more predictable like radiation damage or enemy weapon output reduction, etc.
The idea behind this is, that a player should be able to actively affect a weapons proc chance, for all energy types. Not just Antiproton which proc chance you can boost by increasing the Crith chance.
This would make other weapon types much more useful and would end the Antiproton monotony we have right now.
Thoughts?
sto lost its realism when players got their hands on foreign ship designs for the federation and kdf forces. further to the point the 8472 ship meant that realism is long dead as far as the developers were putting it. tell you what, if the developers get rid of these foreign ships for the fleets completely, then i can see your idea making some headway...
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Damage fall off can be negated by pilot quality and have the same result as a beam damage falloff. By taking out damage fallof you basically want a noob to deal same Dps as a wizard.
Assuming you have the same optimal pilot skills, the only issue would be weapon overcapping which can be solved by builds.
Torps don't benefit from power management. Hence the current situation while energy weapons do.
Cannons are viable and hard hitting in the current mechanics. difference would be the pilot if that pilot can bring a cannon build to the same high performance as beams.
Torpedoes are useful except not optimal in the current mechanic.
Since we are talking about viability in the thread, all weapons are viable except beams, specifically, DBb are the optimal choice. Anything beyond viability is optimization or trying to optimize.
A top DPser in the DPS table is using a beam +torp combo. But it has something to do with pilot skils and secondly, the group quality. So basically all these changes to the mechanics with regards to optimization on torps and cannons is hinged in your pilot quality and should not hinged if the Devs changes the mechanics because certain players can't do it.
Example, given the target saturated environment you are attacking with scatter volley a group of ships and one of them manages to get to your flank, behind you, and gets targets, what happens? The entire attack gets to that ship, while your front mounted dual cannons can't fire on it because it is out of arc, just your rear mounted turrets can. There fore your skill use is wasted. While with BAW, it matters much less because you spew your beams all over the place anyway.
2nd is that the skill use duration is significantly less for cannon skills then it is for beams.
Make cannons act strictly to the front of the ship, sorta like a shooter mode for space, even the rear mounted turrets. give it a toggle to turn it on and off. And give cannons back the same skill active time as it was in the past before it got changed. And while you are at it, give the skills the same boff slot requirements as beam skills.
As for torpedoes, hey fire to slow in comparison. you get a max of 1 shot per second out of them. unless you use a special torpedo like the omega, that can fire for a shot duration more but those then fall silent for a longer time after wards.
And frankly torpedoes are not kinetic weapons. Those are nuclear warheads and other assorted explosive stuff. Let them act like that. This is not Star Trek 5 or Voyager where torpedoes are less then fire crackers.
You wipe out cities with them, not smash holes into single buildings in a city.
How does it simplify things? You can still run the builds you used to run or you can choose more hybrid builds. It also separates the use of energy (for shields) and kinetic weapons (for hull).
TBH, it cannot get any simpler than today's BFAW spam fest.
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Canon or Hybrid builds are viable in the current mechanics. They are not the optimal build of all DBB front and all omni at back.
There are Hybrid, beams+torps and cannons+torps builds that have effective damage output. The secret sauces apparently havent reached the public Forums.
I guess the first question is did you ask someone who actually knows how to build one at the top tier DPS channels and actually asked/viewed how they pilot it.
the next question is aim. if the aim is high/very high damage effectivity, the current mechanic works just need to know how to do it. If the aim is to take #1 DPS from beam builds, then current mechanic does not cater to hybrids on that regard.
The main downside I can see to this is that it would reduce the appeal of running an aux-only scitorp boat, but only because adding weapon power would then make them more effective, not because they'd be less viable than before.
Would actually give rise to a new build option as well: a fully-weap-powered tactorp boat.
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No response from the Devs, nor any indication that they took notice.
The consoles that boost energy and torpedo are few and far between and generally unique. And then there's the mine/cluster torp damage issue.
Cryptic lately seems to be pushing mixed builds, especially with command, but the consoles to pull it off just aren't generally accessible enough to make work for most. If you run a torp boat weapon power is your dump stat. If you run an energy boat you're not likely to drop an energy console for a torp one. And then your boff abilities don't apply to all your weapons anymore.
It's far too late now but having no consoles for torps and boosting their innate damage levels to compensate would have solved a lot of problems. Make them entirely self contained weapon systems so you can drop one in without having to worry about consoles or weapon power at all. It's not like they are all pre-manufactured warheads or anything.
"Viable" might be a poor choice of words in my part. Sure it can be used, but splitting console and power bonuses makes such builds less accessible to most. I'm not aiming for canon loadouts to beat the top DPS beam builds, but I am hoping that what is "optimal" would include a wider range of builds.
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