Like hell they were.
Yes partgens were very powerful, but they required a highly specialized equipment and builds to get them to their best, and even then they are nowhere remotely as powerful as BFAW spam which quite frankly any monkey can throw together with half a thought.
Partgens were fine where they were, where they are.(on holodeck)
No you're wrong on everything you've said so far. Shame.
Like hell they were.
Yes partgens were very powerful, but they required a highly specialized equipment and builds to get them to their best, and even then they are nowhere remotely as powerful as BFAW spam which quite frankly any monkey can throw together with half a thought.
Partgens were fine where they were, where they are.(on holodeck)
No you're wrong on everything you've said so far. Shame.
MIght I make a suggestion that could potentially solve the confusion for some people. Perhaps there could be a table of some type put up such as, x amount of skill in (insert skill here) is now the same as y in the new system. I've gotten a few questions about how the skills translate over and I think this could potentially help folks.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
Still not shedding any tears over the leech it's the other things that concern me. I'll try to do a comparison of the old and new drain skill maximums and how they affect said powers. Control is trickier since nobody used most of those powers although this revamp should fix that. Calculating the pull on powers should prove quite difficult.
I realy don't have time for any proper testing as my work week starts now (Friday is my Monday). But from the comments of others I believe my diminished Part Gen build performance came from Part Gens failing to effect the plasma emission torpedo cloud and the pull of gravity well failing to properly compact enemies into my AoE.
MIght I make a suggestion that could potentially solve the confusion for some people. Perhaps there could be a table of some type put up such as, x amount of skill in (insert skill here) is now the same as y in the new system. I've gotten a few questions about how the skills translate over and I think this could potentially help folks.
Sure.
1 pt of Flow Capacitors = 1 pt of Drain Expertise
1 pt of Graviton Generators = 1 pt of Control Expertise
Seeing a trend? They were all translated 1:1
If you're asking how much these Skills are used by individual abilities, then there's no easy-to-produce list. All abilities now gain the same benefit from these Skills on Tribble, whereas they do NOT currently do so on Holodeck. This is the crux of the changes people are seeing.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
MIght I make a suggestion that could potentially solve the confusion for some people. Perhaps there could be a table of some type put up such as, x amount of skill in (insert skill here) is now the same as y in the new system. I've gotten a few questions about how the skills translate over and I think this could potentially help folks.
You can see how the departure gets wider the higher up things go because of the slope change.
Plasmonic Leech:
Flow 100 vs Drain 100 = 2 vs 1.5
Flow 200 vs Drain 200 = 3 vs 2
Flow 300 vs Drain 300 = 4 vs 2.5
Flow 400 vs Drain 400 = 5 vs 3
Flow 500 vs Drain 500 = 6 vs 4.5
Energy Siphon 1
Flow 100 vs Drain 100 = 18 vs 13.5
Flow 200 vs Drain 200 = 27 vs 18
Flow 300 vs Drain 300 = 36 vs 22.5
Flow 400 vs Drain 400 = 45 vs 27
Flow 500 vs Drain 500 = 54 vs 31.5
Energy Siphon 2
Flow 100 vs Drain 100 = 24 vs 18
Flow 200 vs Drain 200 = 36 vs 24
Flow 300 vs Drain 300 = 48 vs 30
Flow 400 vs Drain 400 = 60 vs 36
Flow 500 vs Drain 500 = 72 vs 42
Energy Siphon 3
Flow 100 vs Drain 100 = 30 vs 22.5
Flow 200 vs Drain 200 = 45 vs 30
Flow 300 vs Drain 300 = 60 vs 37.5
Flow 400 vs Drain 400 = 75 vs 45
Flow 500 vs Drain 500 = 90 vs 52.5
1 pt of Flow Capacitors = 1 pt of Drain Expertise
1 pt of Graviton Generators = 1 pt of Control Expertise
Seeing a trend? They were all translated 1:1
If you're asking how much these Skills are used by individual abilities, then there's no easy-to-produce list. All abilities now gain the same benefit from these Skills on Tribble, whereas they do NOT currently do so on Holodeck. This is the crux of the changes people are seeing.
Bort, it's not that simple. Even if I ignore the R&D consoles, I get about +40 drain just from new gear changes.
Re: [DrainX] - each pt is <I>literally</I> half as effective as it used to be. 100 [Flow] used to be +25%-100% effectiveness (+0.25%-+1% for every skill level); 100 [DrainX] is now +50% effectiveness (+0.5% for every skill level).
For, say, Leech, I think that's appropriate - Leech is now under way more control than it used to be. It's still really good, of course.
It might be less appropriate for other drains, but the solution there might be to bump up their base effectiveness, rather than return to 1 skill Lv = 1% increase, especially given that [Ins] now contributes to [DrainX], so you *technically* have two sources from which to pick it up, rather than one (relevant for deflectors, secondary deflectors, [Ins] universal consoles, and Research Lab consoles that used to give [Ins] and [Flow]).
1 pt of Flow Capacitors = 1 pt of Drain Expertise
1 pt of Graviton Generators = 1 pt of Control Expertise
Seeing a trend? They were all translated 1:1
If you're asking how much these Skills are used by individual abilities, then there's no easy-to-produce list. All abilities now gain the same benefit from these Skills on Tribble, whereas they do NOT currently do so on Holodeck. This is the crux of the changes people are seeing.
So what you're saying is that Plasmonic Leech and other drain abilities were more heavily affected by Flow Capacitors than they should've been? Because as of right now it takes almost twice as much investment in Drain Expertise to get the same return with Flow Capacitors for Plasmonic Leech.
I honestly can't tell if you're seriously saying that there was no standard for Flow Capacitor modifiers or if you're just using that as a convenient cover for a nerf to a lot of drain abilities without really having to tell everyone you've nerfed them.
That being said, if the idea behind this Drain Expertise tweaking was to keep people from getting insanely high drain stats from having 600+ Drain Expertise, then why not introduce diminishing returns, like what you guys have done with aux power?
That way people without out a lot of investment in Drain Expertise won't be hit as hard while those that try to overcap and hit insanely high drain numbers are heavily limited? This way you'd prevent what you don't want happening with the skill revamp while at the same time keeping things for the Average Joe relatively constant.
Still not shedding any tears over the leech it's the other things that concern me. I'll try to do a comparison of the old and new drain skill maximums and how they affect said powers. Control is trickier since nobody used most of those powers although this revamp should fix that. Calculating the pull on powers should prove quite difficult.
Even at +1/sec on the leech, a cycling permabuff siphoning of a total of +40 power is quite a lot. At +2/sec, it's 80. If you don't run a dedicated or drain heavy build, while I agree that cryptic should have perhaps thought about this beforehand and not allowed people to make it essential to their builds, I honestly don't see why anyone who stops to think about it objectively should expect to get much more out of it.
"So my fun is wrong?"
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
So what you're saying is that Plasmonic Leech and other drain abilities were more heavily affected by Flow Capacitors than they should've been? Because as of right now it takes almost twice as much investment in Drain Expertise to get the same return with Flow Capacitors for Plasmonic Leech.
I honestly can't tell if you're seriously saying that there was no standard for Flow Capacitor modifiers or if you're just using that as a convenient cover for a nerf to a lot of drain abilities without really having to tell everyone you've nerfed them.
That being said, if the idea behind this Drain Expertise tweaking was to keep people from getting insanely high drain stats from having 600+ Drain Expertise, then why not introduce diminishing returns, like what you guys have done with aux power?
That way people without out a lot of investment in Drain Expertise won't be hit as hard while those that try to overcap and hit insanely high drain numbers are heavily limited? This way you'd prevent what you don't want happening with the skill revamp while at the same time keeping things for the Average Joe relatively constant.
By the way, just so you all understand because I oversimplified the equations. Here is how they look for energy siphon and plasmonic leech in the simplest form I can think of.
Drain = Base Drain*(1+(0.01*Flow caps))
Base drains in holodeck are (0 skill values or Y intercept of the equations):
Plasmonic leech = 1
ES1 = 9
ES2 = 12
ES3 = 15
What happened in Tribble?
New Drain = Base Drain*(1+[(0.01*Drain skill)/2])
They follow a y = mx + b linear equation. I just have to write them the way I do because the slope (m) depends on the base value of the ability.
Even at +1/sec on the leech, a cycling permabuff siphoning of a total of +60 power is quite a lot. At +2/sec, it's 120. If you don't run a dedicated or drain heavy build, while I agree that cryptic should have perhaps thought about this beforehand and not allowed people to make it essential to their builds, I honestly don't see why anyone who stops to think about it objectively should expect to get much more out of it.
Wait what? Where are you getting those numbers? Plasmonic Leech only applies its buff 8 times max. So at 1 per hit its a total of +/-8 power per subsystem. At 2 per hit that goes up to +/- 16 power per subsystem. Your estimates are ridiculously high, and with the current changes to Drain Expertise it now takes twice as much investment in the skill to even achieve numbers like that.
So what you're saying is that Plasmonic Leech and other drain abilities were more heavily affected by Flow Capacitors than they should've been?
"Should have" isn't really the best term here. But they did benefit more from Skills than other abilities did. We didn't consider this an issue previously, but decided that giving equal Skill benefit to all abilities under the new system was a very good idea so that the mechanics could be more easily communicated to players.
"1pt of X gives you Y."
vs.
"1pt of X gives you somewhere between Y and Z depending on the ability used."
That being said, if the idea behind this Drain Expertise tweaking was to keep people from getting insanely high drain stats from having 600+ Drain Expertise, then why not introduce diminishing returns
We've considered it. In fact, we still might at some point. Drains and Subsystem Offline effects weren't really intended to step on one another as much as they currently do. Drains were supposed to diminish effectiveness for longer periods of time (while sometimes also bolstering the user), while SS-Off would do so in a more binary fashion for shorter periods of time. Adding a diminishing scale to Drains could help reinforce that separation and balance of mechanics.
However, as friendly as Dim-Ret calculations can occasionally be for game mechanic balance, they remain very unfriendly for communication of outcomes to players. No tooltip is ever completely accurate when you put Diminishing Returns into the mix.
...like what you guys have done with aux power?
Aux has no diminishing returns. It's a flat value increase, point over point.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Science is a mess and they are attempting to clean things up and simplify them. Give them time to modify the base damage to compensate for the new scaling affects of Aux power and skill points.
Keep in mind drain and control skills can go much higher now then before thanks to the consolidation of skills. Probably 600-700 each.
wait six months for something to be done ?? in mean time sci captains do what?? we know that there is never a quick reaction to out of balance system in this game , you deal for months to a yr hoping the devs will get to bringing balance to the skills . how long was plasma doping broken?
Even at +1/sec on the leech, a cycling permabuff siphoning of a total of +60 power is quite a lot. At +2/sec, it's 120. If you don't run a dedicated or drain heavy build, while I agree that cryptic should have perhaps thought about this beforehand and not allowed people to make it essential to their builds, I honestly don't see why anyone who stops to think about it objectively should expect to get much more out of it.
Wait what? Where are you getting those numbers? Plasmonic Leech only applies its buff 8 times max. So at 1 per hit its a total of +/-8 power per subsystem. At 2 per hit that goes up to +/- 16 power per subsystem. Your estimates are ridiculously high, and with the current changes to Drain Expertise it now takes twice as much investment in the skill to even achieve numbers like that.
ok, yes. I stand corrected. 8x4 is still a total if 32 extra, cooldownless, in-combat power across all subsystems. And at +2, that's 64. Yes, it takes a little time to kick in, but regardless of my math skills, I stand by the spirit of my intitial point. If that's all you are using to drain/siphon, and you're not running 400+ DrainX, I still don't see why, if the console were new, and noone had it yet, it should do much more than that.
"So my fun is wrong?"
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
So what you're saying is that Plasmonic Leech and other drain abilities were more heavily affected by Flow Capacitors than they should've been?
"Should have" isn't really the best term here. But they did benefit more from Skills than other abilities did. We didn't consider this an issue previously, but decided that giving equal Skill benefit to all abilities under the new system was a very good idea so that the mechanics could be more easily communicated to players.
"1pt of X gives you Y."
vs.
"1pt of X gives you somewhere between Y and Z depending on the ability used."
That being said, if the idea behind this Drain Expertise tweaking was to keep people from getting insanely high drain stats from having 600+ Drain Expertise, then why not introduce diminishing returns
We've considered it. In fact, we still might at some point. Drains and Subsystem Offline effects weren't really intended to step on one another as much as they currently do. Drains were supposed to diminish effectiveness for longer periods of time (while sometimes also bolstering the user), while SS-Off would do so in a more binary fashion for shorter periods of time. Adding a diminishing scale to Drains could help reinforce that separation and balance of mechanics.
However, as friendly as Dim-Ret calculations can occasionally be for game mechanic balance, they remain very unfriendly for communication of outcomes to players. No tooltip is ever completely accurate when you put Diminishing Returns into the mix.
...like what you guys have done with aux power?
Aux has no diminishing returns. It's a flat value increase, point over point.
Ah, I see. I really appreciate you taking the time to respond to my somewhat aggressively-worded query. It gets frustrating for me to constantly post about things like bugs and other issues and not know if any of it has been addressed, acknowledged, or even seen by someone in the position to do something about it. This has restored my faith a bit in you guys, which was something I sorely needed.
I still look forward to seeing what other adjustments you guys make to the current skill revamp, as there are still a number of things in need of improvement (respeccing in particular comes to mind), but hopefully there can be some middle-ground between developer intentions and player desires that will prove amicable solutions for both parties.
MIght I make a suggestion that could potentially solve the confusion for some people. Perhaps there could be a table of some type put up such as, x amount of skill in (insert skill here) is now the same as y in the new system. I've gotten a few questions about how the skills translate over and I think this could potentially help folks.
Sure.
1 pt of Flow Capacitors = 1 pt of Drain Expertise
1 pt of Graviton Generators = 1 pt of Control Expertise
Seeing a trend? They were all translated 1:1
If you're asking how much these Skills are used by individual abilities, then there's no easy-to-produce list. All abilities now gain the same benefit from these Skills on Tribble, whereas they do NOT currently do so on Holodeck. This is the crux of the changes people are seeing.
That's more what I was meaning. The questions I've been getting are people asking how skill x is used by skill y and so on. The other thing was for example: 1 point of drain expertise being the same as 3 points of flow caps and power insulators under the current holodeck system, or something like that. If it's going to be too much of a pain then please disregard. Just me spitballing as I'm not entirely sure how to explain some of the numbers to people as far as how individual skills and so on are effected.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
So what you're saying is that Plasmonic Leech and other drain abilities were more heavily affected by Flow Capacitors than they should've been?
"Should have" isn't really the best term here. But they did benefit more from Skills than other abilities did. We didn't consider this an issue previously, but decided that giving equal Skill benefit to all abilities under the new system was a very good idea so that the mechanics could be more easily communicated to players.
"1pt of X gives you Y."
vs.
"1pt of X gives you somewhere between Y and Z depending on the ability used."
That being said, if the idea behind this Drain Expertise tweaking was to keep people from getting insanely high drain stats from having 600+ Drain Expertise, then why not introduce diminishing returns
We've considered it. In fact, we still might at some point. Drains and Subsystem Offline effects weren't really intended to step on one another as much as they currently do. Drains were supposed to diminish effectiveness for longer periods of time (while sometimes also bolstering the user), while SS-Off would do so in a more binary fashion for shorter periods of time. Adding a diminishing scale to Drains could help reinforce that separation and balance of mechanics.
Maybe Drain Expertise should always just buff the duration of the power, not the magnitude? Then it could always be a percentage. You might want to raise some energy drain values in turn, but it would seem to me that it would allow maintaining a clear "1 point of X gives you Y" relation.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
An adjustment to energy siphon and plasmonic leech would make things more bearable for drain boats, although I'd be happy if at least the debuff equation on the abilites and plasmonic leech was left intact from Holodeck. I do get the power buff is probably partly to blame for the game's current DPS centric mentality and the proliferation of using flow caps plasma consoles on high DPS builds.
Maybe Drain Expertise should always just buff the duration of the power, not the magnitude? Then it could always be a percentage. You might want to raise some energy drain values in turn, but it would seem to me that it would allow maintaining a clear "1 point of X gives you Y" relation.
Skills. Not abilities. The end results on tooltips don't help me - I want to know what the modifying factors are (Skills, and Skills from Equipment/Traits/etc), and how THOSE have changed from Holodeck.
Had to total them up manually (stat window is still disabled in Tribble) but so far they seem to check out:
Tribble:
PrtG - 362.5 (rounded to 363)
Drain - 205
Ctrl - 156.2 (rounded down to 156)
Holodeck
PrtG - 361.5 (rounded to 362)
Flow - 164
Ins - 40 (Flow+Ins=204)
Grav - 127.1
SubD - 28.1(SubD+Grav=155.2)
So they are within the expected number (+1 on Tribble due to the Skill Tree).
I'm a bit concerned about DRB's reduction. It seems to be a bit more than it should be given that it was close to the 0.5% per PrtG in Holodeck. Right now with 362/363 PrtG/EPG @ 130 Aux (Holodeck numbers at the left, Tribble on the right) it's:
DRB3 - 3282.4 -> 2000.4
TBR also got a pretty big reduction in effectiveness. I was expecting this to be reduced, but not this much:
Spent an hour on tribble tonight since we can finally copy our captains.
My Flow Cap builds no longer suck (This is not a good thing).
My Part Gen builds no longer rip things apart.
My Grav Gen builds no longer create new stars from the fleets of my enemies.
My Countermeasure and Subspace decompiler builds, have been dead for most of STOs life time now, didn't bother to test them.
Please tell me your just playing it cautious and planning to slowly tweek the science back up Bort.
BFaW is nice and all but I don't think I can stomach doing it every day. I need my science Bort. Give me back my science Bort. Waaaagh.
Ok I think I need some time to myself now. If any one wants me I will be in my room...
All of this!
Destabilizing Resonance Beam was taken out back and beat with a hunk of rebar. He is now in the hospital, missing teeth with a broken orbital bone and fractured skull. ATM Doctors don't think he will make it. Particle Emissions Torpedo plasma clouds were filled with argon gas as filler, the manufacturer is blaming some ferengi trader.
I would keep going, but nah.
Science is always getting the snot knocked out of it. It already takes a lot of work to get science to do good, but I guess they have always just want the entire game to be tactical escorts with beams, or (now) cannons.
Nope, they may have evened out the drop-off penalty between beams and cannons but other than that, it's still one BFAW to rule them all.
Back to the issue, I'm not overly pleased with the sci nerf after sci nerf after sci nerf, except of course when it comes to the Borg tachyon beams, in which case, shields get disabled under a different name. Add that to my growing list of reasons, my Fed sci is now an RP toon. As for the Klingon and Romulan scis I have none at all, given the lack of science ships. They don't and won't get them, particularly at T6. Geko has once again spoken on P1, and the answer is still translated from Geko-lying-ese "F**K YOU, KDF/Roms!!!"
This and the continuing deterioration of the game is giving me pause about a few things.
I did some comparisons between my main sci and his Tribble skill conversion. Aux power at 130.
Isokinetic cannon:
HD:13340.2
T:13994.5
Feedback Pulse I:
HD: 1
T:1.4
Destabilized Resonance Beam:
HD:2560.1
T:1581.8
Gravity Well I:
HD:1020.2
T:1329.3
Subspace vortex I:
HD:1969.4
T:2566.1
A thing that is making it difficult to compare skills is that I can't find where to see my total skills. On Holodeck I can find that under the ship stats screen in the character menu. So far from the conversion I gained 16.1 in exotic damage skills. Also despite having more skills to effect it Gravity well's pull power did not get a significant increase.
We've considered it. In fact, we still might at some point. Drains and Subsystem Offline effects weren't really intended to step on one another as much as they currently do. Drains were supposed to diminish effectiveness for longer periods of time (while sometimes also bolstering the user), while SS-Off would do so in a more binary fashion for shorter periods of time. Adding a diminishing scale to Drains could help reinforce that separation and balance of mechanics.
The problem I see with this approach is that short duration disables/placates just don't work well with the gameplay. You can certainly build around them, but it's more effective to just build for damage, be that weapon or exotic. It doesn't help that Placates, Confuses, and Disables basically accomplish nothing with the HP totals on Advanced and Elite because, assuming the abilities even work, nearly everyone spams AoE attacks and those effects are quickly broken by damage. Buffing drains to the point they disable is more effective/efficient than running disable abilities, since even if you don't disable, you've at least softened the target.
Also, I posted my stats in the main feedback thread. Surprisingly, the skills I was focused on are pretty much unchanged from Holodeck to Tribble. I have a feeling you may have reduced these abilities' base effectiveness too much, and could've probably left them alone. While it's certainly possible to push skills higher (my secondary skills are higher now), in practice, the focused skills aren't going to change much. The best source of EPG/DrainX, for example, is still an epic XIV science console that can't provide more than 37.5.
It gets worse the higher you go.
Flow 100 vs Drain 100 = 2 vs 1.5
Flow 200 vs Drain 200 = 3 vs 2
Flow 300 vs Drain 300 = 4 vs 2.5
Flow 400 vs Drain 400 = 5 vs 3
Flow 500 vs Drain 500 = 6 vs 4.5
The scaling off DrainX is half that of what it was with Flow. Subtract the base 1 drain from those numbers and you'll see a linear progression. This was already in place last patch, but not visible before the character copies were allowed. Please note that I'm not supporting or opposing this change in this post.
An adjustment to energy siphon and plasmonic leech would make things more bearable for drain boats, although I'd be happy if at least the debuff equation on the abilites and plasmonic leech was left intact from Holodeck. I do get the power buff is probably partly to blame for the game's current DPS centric mentality and the proliferation of using flow caps plasma consoles on high DPS builds.
Maybe Drain Expertise should always just buff the duration of the power, not the magnitude? Then it could always be a percentage. You might want to raise some energy drain values in turn, but it would seem to me that it would allow maintaining a clear "1 point of X gives you Y" relation.
That way worse of a nerf than current values.
That depends a lot on how much the base drain value is changed, doesn't it?
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Maybe Drain Expertise should always just buff the duration of the power, not the magnitude?
The "base drain" value in you say is a static value. They would have to make it a ridiculously high value and it would run counter to every other ability out there since drains scale in this game.
By the way, the way this change was done, the higher the base value, the worst point wise the reduction was.
Energy Siphon 3
Flow 100 vs Drain 100 = 30 vs 22.5
Flow 200 vs Drain 200 = 45 vs 30
Flow 300 vs Drain 300 = 60 vs 37.5
Flow 400 vs Drain 400 = 75 vs 45
Flow 500 vs Drain 500 = 90 vs 52.5
Percentage wise, ES3 stays in line with the other reduction, but it looks ugly just looking at the plain value difference.
Comments
Actually, he is right.
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I'll throw my stats in the feedback thread when I can get in-game.
Sure.
1 pt of Flow Capacitors = 1 pt of Drain Expertise
1 pt of Graviton Generators = 1 pt of Control Expertise
Seeing a trend? They were all translated 1:1
If you're asking how much these Skills are used by individual abilities, then there's no easy-to-produce list. All abilities now gain the same benefit from these Skills on Tribble, whereas they do NOT currently do so on Holodeck. This is the crux of the changes people are seeing.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
You can see how the departure gets wider the higher up things go because of the slope change.
Plasmonic Leech:
Flow 100 vs Drain 100 = 2 vs 1.5
Flow 200 vs Drain 200 = 3 vs 2
Flow 300 vs Drain 300 = 4 vs 2.5
Flow 400 vs Drain 400 = 5 vs 3
Flow 500 vs Drain 500 = 6 vs 4.5
Energy Siphon 1
Flow 100 vs Drain 100 = 18 vs 13.5
Flow 200 vs Drain 200 = 27 vs 18
Flow 300 vs Drain 300 = 36 vs 22.5
Flow 400 vs Drain 400 = 45 vs 27
Flow 500 vs Drain 500 = 54 vs 31.5
Energy Siphon 2
Flow 100 vs Drain 100 = 24 vs 18
Flow 200 vs Drain 200 = 36 vs 24
Flow 300 vs Drain 300 = 48 vs 30
Flow 400 vs Drain 400 = 60 vs 36
Flow 500 vs Drain 500 = 72 vs 42
Energy Siphon 3
Flow 100 vs Drain 100 = 30 vs 22.5
Flow 200 vs Drain 200 = 45 vs 30
Flow 300 vs Drain 300 = 60 vs 37.5
Flow 400 vs Drain 400 = 75 vs 45
Flow 500 vs Drain 500 = 90 vs 52.5
Bort, it's not that simple. Even if I ignore the R&D consoles, I get about +40 drain just from new gear changes.
For, say, Leech, I think that's appropriate - Leech is now under way more control than it used to be. It's still really good, of course.
It might be less appropriate for other drains, but the solution there might be to bump up their base effectiveness, rather than return to 1 skill Lv = 1% increase, especially given that [Ins] now contributes to [DrainX], so you *technically* have two sources from which to pick it up, rather than one (relevant for deflectors, secondary deflectors, [Ins] universal consoles, and Research Lab consoles that used to give [Ins] and [Flow]).
I honestly can't tell if you're seriously saying that there was no standard for Flow Capacitor modifiers or if you're just using that as a convenient cover for a nerf to a lot of drain abilities without really having to tell everyone you've nerfed them.
That being said, if the idea behind this Drain Expertise tweaking was to keep people from getting insanely high drain stats from having 600+ Drain Expertise, then why not introduce diminishing returns, like what you guys have done with aux power?
That way people without out a lot of investment in Drain Expertise won't be hit as hard while those that try to overcap and hit insanely high drain numbers are heavily limited? This way you'd prevent what you don't want happening with the skill revamp while at the same time keeping things for the Average Joe relatively constant.
Even at +1/sec on the leech, a cycling permabuff siphoning of a total of +40 power is quite a lot. At +2/sec, it's 80. If you don't run a dedicated or drain heavy build, while I agree that cryptic should have perhaps thought about this beforehand and not allowed people to make it essential to their builds, I honestly don't see why anyone who stops to think about it objectively should expect to get much more out of it.
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
By the way, just so you all understand because I oversimplified the equations. Here is how they look for energy siphon and plasmonic leech in the simplest form I can think of.
Drain = Base Drain*(1+(0.01*Flow caps))
Base drains in holodeck are (0 skill values or Y intercept of the equations):
Plasmonic leech = 1
ES1 = 9
ES2 = 12
ES3 = 15
What happened in Tribble?
New Drain = Base Drain*(1+[(0.01*Drain skill)/2])
They follow a y = mx + b linear equation. I just have to write them the way I do because the slope (m) depends on the base value of the ability.
"Should have" isn't really the best term here. But they did benefit more from Skills than other abilities did. We didn't consider this an issue previously, but decided that giving equal Skill benefit to all abilities under the new system was a very good idea so that the mechanics could be more easily communicated to players.
"1pt of X gives you Y."
vs.
"1pt of X gives you somewhere between Y and Z depending on the ability used."
We've considered it. In fact, we still might at some point. Drains and Subsystem Offline effects weren't really intended to step on one another as much as they currently do. Drains were supposed to diminish effectiveness for longer periods of time (while sometimes also bolstering the user), while SS-Off would do so in a more binary fashion for shorter periods of time. Adding a diminishing scale to Drains could help reinforce that separation and balance of mechanics.
However, as friendly as Dim-Ret calculations can occasionally be for game mechanic balance, they remain very unfriendly for communication of outcomes to players. No tooltip is ever completely accurate when you put Diminishing Returns into the mix.
Aux has no diminishing returns. It's a flat value increase, point over point.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
ok, yes. I stand corrected. 8x4 is still a total if 32 extra, cooldownless, in-combat power across all subsystems. And at +2, that's 64. Yes, it takes a little time to kick in, but regardless of my math skills, I stand by the spirit of my intitial point. If that's all you are using to drain/siphon, and you're not running 400+ DrainX, I still don't see why, if the console were new, and noone had it yet, it should do much more than that.
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
I still look forward to seeing what other adjustments you guys make to the current skill revamp, as there are still a number of things in need of improvement (respeccing in particular comes to mind), but hopefully there can be some middle-ground between developer intentions and player desires that will prove amicable solutions for both parties.
That's more what I was meaning. The questions I've been getting are people asking how skill x is used by skill y and so on. The other thing was for example: 1 point of drain expertise being the same as 3 points of flow caps and power insulators under the current holodeck system, or something like that. If it's going to be too much of a pain then please disregard. Just me spitballing as I'm not entirely sure how to explain some of the numbers to people as far as how individual skills and so on are effected.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
That way worse of a nerf than current values.
Had to total them up manually (stat window is still disabled in Tribble) but so far they seem to check out:
Tribble:
PrtG - 362.5 (rounded to 363)
Drain - 205
Ctrl - 156.2 (rounded down to 156)
Holodeck
PrtG - 361.5 (rounded to 362)
Flow - 164
Ins - 40 (Flow+Ins=204)
Grav - 127.1
SubD - 28.1(SubD+Grav=155.2)
So they are within the expected number (+1 on Tribble due to the Skill Tree).
I'm a bit concerned about DRB's reduction. It seems to be a bit more than it should be given that it was close to the 0.5% per PrtG in Holodeck. Right now with 362/363 PrtG/EPG @ 130 Aux (Holodeck numbers at the left, Tribble on the right) it's:
DRB3 - 3282.4 -> 2000.4
TBR also got a pretty big reduction in effectiveness. I was expecting this to be reduced, but not this much:
TBR2 - 3158.2 -> 2235.1
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Nope, they may have evened out the drop-off penalty between beams and cannons but other than that, it's still one BFAW to rule them all.
Back to the issue, I'm not overly pleased with the sci nerf after sci nerf after sci nerf, except of course when it comes to the Borg tachyon beams, in which case, shields get disabled under a different name. Add that to my growing list of reasons, my Fed sci is now an RP toon. As for the Klingon and Romulan scis I have none at all, given the lack of science ships. They don't and won't get them, particularly at T6. Geko has once again spoken on P1, and the answer is still translated from Geko-lying-ese "F**K YOU, KDF/Roms!!!"
This and the continuing deterioration of the game is giving me pause about a few things.
Holodeck (from gear, then from gear + skill points)
Flow Capacitors: 100 (199)
Graviton Generators: 0 (99)
Particle Generator: 175 (274)
Subspace Decompiler: 25 (25)
Tribble:
Drain Expertise: 100 (200)
Control Expertise: 0 (100)
Exotic Particle Generator: 175 (275)
I expect it's only going to be in rare cases where we see people's skill totals jump significantly.
Isokinetic cannon:
HD:13340.2
T:13994.5
Feedback Pulse I:
HD: 1
T:1.4
Destabilized Resonance Beam:
HD:2560.1
T:1581.8
Gravity Well I:
HD:1020.2
T:1329.3
Subspace vortex I:
HD:1969.4
T:2566.1
A thing that is making it difficult to compare skills is that I can't find where to see my total skills. On Holodeck I can find that under the ship stats screen in the character menu. So far from the conversion I gained 16.1 in exotic damage skills. Also despite having more skills to effect it Gravity well's pull power did not get a significant increase.
The problem I see with this approach is that short duration disables/placates just don't work well with the gameplay. You can certainly build around them, but it's more effective to just build for damage, be that weapon or exotic. It doesn't help that Placates, Confuses, and Disables basically accomplish nothing with the HP totals on Advanced and Elite because, assuming the abilities even work, nearly everyone spams AoE attacks and those effects are quickly broken by damage. Buffing drains to the point they disable is more effective/efficient than running disable abilities, since even if you don't disable, you've at least softened the target.
Also, I posted my stats in the main feedback thread. Surprisingly, the skills I was focused on are pretty much unchanged from Holodeck to Tribble. I have a feeling you may have reduced these abilities' base effectiveness too much, and could've probably left them alone. While it's certainly possible to push skills higher (my secondary skills are higher now), in practice, the focused skills aren't going to change much. The best source of EPG/DrainX, for example, is still an epic XIV science console that can't provide more than 37.5.
Yes, sorry for the temporary inconvenience. That bit of UI will return in a future patch, with the new Skills listed.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
The scaling off DrainX is half that of what it was with Flow. Subtract the base 1 drain from those numbers and you'll see a linear progression. This was already in place last patch, but not visible before the character copies were allowed. Please note that I'm not supporting or opposing this change in this post.
You said
The "base drain" value in you say is a static value. They would have to make it a ridiculously high value and it would run counter to every other ability out there since drains scale in this game.
By the way, the way this change was done, the higher the base value, the worst point wise the reduction was.
Energy Siphon 3
Flow 100 vs Drain 100 = 30 vs 22.5
Flow 200 vs Drain 200 = 45 vs 30
Flow 300 vs Drain 300 = 60 vs 37.5
Flow 400 vs Drain 400 = 75 vs 45
Flow 500 vs Drain 500 = 90 vs 52.5
Percentage wise, ES3 stays in line with the other reduction, but it looks ugly just looking at the plain value difference.