[PC] Details on Space Balance Changes

ambassadorkael

Like with ground, we're introducing some changes to space abilities in favor of game balance.

Full details here:
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10426883

questerius

Let's see how it turns out.
One thing i have not seen mentioned is Attack Pattern Alpha and the stacking of damage for various tactical powers.
Is that being looked at?

Unknown

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lucho80

Lol, PvP revamp activated. Immunity junk out. Now if they could fix entropy junk.

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orondis

Okay, first I'll add my own disclaimer for this post - I'm aware that things aren't set in stone.


Like:-

• Fire at Will - I like the proposed changes and that's speaking as a FAW boat captain. It's simply too overpowered at the moment.
• Hanger pets - Much needed.
• Beam Overload - It was pretty ridiculous that it didn't drain any power AND always critted. So yeah, I like the sound of it, though it'll depend on the dmg buff.
• Reflected damage (FBP) - Oh this is a much needed change.
• Targetable torpedoes - Good proposed change, should make them more attractive.
• Photonic Fleet - At the moment they're just themed ballons, so this might make them more worthwhile.
• Immunities - Star Trek Online is rather full of them, so giving them a cooldown and allowing them to be stripped is a good change. Honestly, sme people were chaining these to have almost 100% uptime.
• Hold and disable resistances - Yeah, that should put an end to the over reliance on them that you get in both PVP and PvE.

Not sure on:-

• Nerfing Hot restarts: Not sure what I feel on this one. It's essentially also a nerf to Override Subsystem Safties, which is really the only Intel power that's any good.

Dislike:-

• Subnucleonic Beam as a Lt Cmdr Sci Bridge Officer power - No, as a PvPer I really don't like this. Unless it's heavily nerfed when it becomes a boff power, it's going to put tactically focused cruisers at a distinct disadvantage (since most don't have access to lt Cmdr sci stations) and pretty much kill any tanking, whether it's shield, hull or speed tanking. Even as a captain power it pretty much spells doom if you slapped with it in PvP. Maybe make it like the subnucleonic carrier wave, but targetted.

somtaawkhar wrote: »

IT BEGINS!

Fire at Will now has a slight penalty to the weapon’s damage instead of an increase at ranks II and III, and has an accuracy debuff as well.

THE TEARS LET THEM FLOW!

As someone who uses it primarily, I'm all for it. It's insane that an AOE power is so immensely powerful.

themetalstickman

Carrier Pets are getting some significant changes that should make them feel much more useful in space combat. All Carrier Pets:

• Have received updated AI to be more responsive.
• Are immune to one torpedo every 30 seconds.
• Are unaffected by Warp Core Breaches.
• Receive a health and damage increase. Carrier Pets that already have Scratch the Paint have received a few other buffs to account for this.

Finally. Now when (not if) my pets hug an exploding cube, they won't die!

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evilmark444

somtaawkhar wrote: »

IT BEGINS!

Fire at Will now has a slight penalty to the weapon’s damage instead of an increase at ranks II and III, and has an accuracy debuff as well.

THE TEARS LET THEM FLOW!

Not exactly the kind of nerf I was looking for, personally I was looking for a huge single target nerf but only a slight multi target nerf, but this could be interesting ... that has to be poorly worded though, cause that makes it sound like rank 1 will be all-around better than ranks 2 and 3

leemwatson

orondis wrote: »

Okay, first I'll add my own disclaimer for this post - I'm aware that things aren't set in stone.


Like:-

• Fire at Will - I like the proposed changes and that's speaking as a FAW boat captain. It's simply too overpowered at the moment.
• Hanger pets - Much needed.
• Beam Overload - It was pretty ridiculous that it didn't drain any power AND always critted. So yeah, I like the sound of it, though it'll depend on the dmg buff.
• Reflected damage (FBP) - Oh this is a much needed change.
• Targetable torpedoes - Good proposed change, should make them more attractive.
• Photonic Fleet - At the moment they're just themed ballons, so this might make them more worthwhile.
• Immunities - Star Trek Online is rather full of them, so giving them a cooldown and allowing them to be stripped is a good change. Honestly, sme people were chaining these to have almost 100% uptime.
• Hold and disable resistances - Yeah, that should put an end to the over reliance on them that you get in both PVP and PvE.

Not sure on:-

• Nerfing Hot restarts: Not sure what I feel on this one. It's essentially also a nerf to Override Subsystem Safties, which is really the only Intel power that's any good.

Dislike:-

• Subnucleonic Beam as a Lt Cmdr Sci Bridge Officer power - No, as a PvPer I really don't like this. Unless it's heavily nerfed when it becomes a boff power, it's going to put tactically focused cruisers at a distinct disadvantage (since most don't have access to lt Cmdr sci stations) and pretty much kill any tanking, whether it's shield, hull or speed tanking. Even as a captain power it pretty much spells doom if you slapped with it in PvP. Maybe make it like the subnucleonic carrier wave, but targetted.

somtaawkhar wrote: »

IT BEGINS!

Fire at Will now has a slight penalty to the weapon’s damage instead of an increase at ranks II and III, and has an accuracy debuff as well.

THE TEARS LET THEM FLOW!

As someone who uses it primarily, I'm all for it. It's insane that an AOE power is so immensely powerful.

Agree with most of what you put here, and I totally agree about SubNuec. It should remain Sci career specific as it's not an offensive ability. There's already a shed ton of must have Sci Boff abilities, and this essential one for Sci Captains only removes a great strategic asset. There's also plenty of Sci skills buffs and the new one is worthless and Sci Fleet takes care of this too.

mneme0

*giggle*

antonine3258

This is going to be interesting; the new power changes for sci and engineering are interesting (it puts intel ships in an interesting position - group buff-strip or single target with the much longer slowdown). PVP I can't comment on.

Carrier pets being better about warp cores is a HUGE change, and improving them and photonic fleet should see some real effects. Digging out the Voq'quv from behind the couch. FAW my only worry is how it effects it as a point-defense ability.

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iconians

In lieu of a text-based response, I will be stating all of my opinions in appropriate animated gifs that should be easy to interpret by a reasonable person. I hope this feedback is acceptable.

Carrier Pets are getting some significant changes that should make them feel much more useful in space combat. All Carrier Pets:

Have received updated AI to be more responsive.
Are immune to one torpedo every 30 seconds.
Are unaffected by Warp Core Breaches.
Receive a health and damage increase. Carrier Pets that already have Scratch the Paint have received a few other buffs to account for this.

Weapons are undergoing a lot of changes targeted at making the various types and firing modes more relevant. Beam Overload no longer always critically hits, but has had its damage increased, and additionally gives your basic attacks with beam weapons a significant amount of bonus damage and critical severity for a short duration after being activated.

Fire at Will now has a slight penalty to the weapon’s damage instead of an increase at ranks II and III, and has an accuracy debuff as well.

Kinetic weaponry has received some changes as well. Targetable torpedoes now fly faster, and both targetable torpedoes and mines are no longer affected by “Hazard” abilities such as Gravity Well or Tyken’s Rift. This should make them feel less sluggish and eliminate situations where they would detonate instantly on launch, while still allowing time for them to be actually shot down.

Subnucleonic Beam is now a Lieutenant Commander or higher Science Bridge Officer Power. In its place, Science Captains now gain Deflector Overcharge, which significantly increases outgoing healing, exotic damage, control abilities, and drain abilities for a short duration.

Miracle Worker’s healing is significantly increased, and now also gives a significant amount of Secondary Shielding for a short duration.
EPS Power Transfer now also gives the target an increase to all Maximum Subsystem Power Levels for the duration. This can be stacked with other increases to Maximum Subsystem Power Levels.

All abilities that reflect damage now deal the damage type they are reflecting.
Reflected damage can no longer critically hit or be buffed by damage increases.

All "Hot Restart" powers that automatically remove a subsystem offline can no longer apply more than once per 60 seconds.
All holds now give their target hold resistance for a short duration when they end.
All disables now give their target disable resistance for a short duration when they end.
All player damage immunities now place a 15 second lockout on you, during which you cannot activate or otherwise be affected by any more damage immunities, and are all now “buffs” that can be removed.

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lnblade

Only thing I'm not sure about here is the change to subnuc. Seems like the Deflector Overcharge ability replacing it is much less useful for sci captains who aren't flying sci ships

daviddxx

Subnucleonic Beam as a Lt Cmdr Sci Bridge Officer power

Ya as PvP'ler i can say this is TRIBBLE ! Dislike ! Jesus... -.-

jiralinria

Sounds all interesting. Looking forward to testing it.

djf021

evilmark444 wrote: »

somtaawkhar wrote: »

IT BEGINS!

Fire at Will now has a slight penalty to the weapon’s damage instead of an increase at ranks II and III, and has an accuracy debuff as well.

THE TEARS LET THEM FLOW!

Not exactly the kind of nerf I was looking for, personally I was looking for a huge single target nerf but only a slight multi target nerf, but this could be interesting ... that has to be poorly worded though, cause that makes it sound like rank 1 will be all-around better than ranks 2 and 3

I agree. When I read that, I thought "Then why would I want rank 2 or 3?"

risian4

Good to see the changes being made to FAW. Firing faster, in more directions and with all weapons and still getting a buff made little sense.

Also good to see that hangar pets are getting some attention.

cidstorm

Hooray for better A.I., but making pets randomly immune to torpedoes is not okay. Buffing targetable torpedoes will not balance this out for most torpedo users and so far this patch looks like a torpedo nerf to me. Pets should just get scratch the paint and if they have a death wish that's their problem, carriers should not be flying like other ships if you want to enhance their unique qualities and gameplay.

FAW getting an accuracy debuff is random as hell and will only relegate a certain command ability further into the trash compactor. Nerfing its damage is overkill too, at most you should be starting with a removal of its damage buff, that is the DPS bastion for most of the player base.

Tykens rift is an energy drain and thus should not affect torpedoes unless it has somehow been buffed to do damage. Gravity well is a damage ability that targets cloaked ships so it should affect targetable torps, as should anything else that does damage.

Subnuke is what made sci an important part of the trifecta in PVP and boss fights, making it a boff ability is a HUGE mistake. You could argue that this will help against PVP immunity spam, but that already seems to be addressed separately. Subnuke being a key part of PVP makes its placement on the boff matte a huge sci nerf in that capacity. WTF.

Overcharge deflector should be tastefully added to science fleet, which for some reason buffs drain but not control.

When I started playing I thought photonic fleet was cool as hell, it could grow a lot but what I personally want to see is ship choice control for the summon with significance in that choice. A pain in the butt I'm sure, feel free to ignore this note.

Hooray for miracle worker and EPS transfer buffs.

I'm all for nerfing reflected damage.

Control abilities are often highly situational or only good for Control Amplification. Extreme thought should be put into how a nerf to these should apply. I can all ready see TBR target switching due to distance making it more difficult to save teams from their own mistakes in PVE. My grav torps are going to upset a lot of other sci players.

Nerfing high weapon power makes me less excited for an EPS transfer buff.

risian4

evilmark444 wrote: »

somtaawkhar wrote: »

IT BEGINS!

Fire at Will now has a slight penalty to the weapon’s damage instead of an increase at ranks II and III, and has an accuracy debuff as well.

THE TEARS LET THEM FLOW!

Not exactly the kind of nerf I was looking for, personally I was looking for a huge single target nerf but only a slight multi target nerf, but this could be interesting ... that has to be poorly worded though, cause that makes it sound like rank 1 will be all-around better than ranks 2 and 3

The point is, I think, that FAW 3 is only accessible on ships that are already very Tac oriented.

This change will therefore hit those who completely build around FAW, not the more casual users who don't mind using FAW 1 or those who fly cruisers or Sci ships with only room for FAW 1. And that's a good thing.

redvenge

So, Weapon power gives significantly less benefit over 100, but significantly more benefit under 100...

No penalties for low power; no reward for high power. Let's just get rid of Subsystems entirely. What's the point? Why bother managing power levels?

novapolaris

The proposed changes so far look VERY interesting, but I'm concerned that the bit about hangar pets leaves out any mention of separation pet powers, like with the Galaxy and Prometheus, which suffer from a lot of the same kinds of problems as hangar pets.

Also, the change to torpedoes looks very nice.

orondis

cidstorm wrote: »

Hooray for better A.I., but making pets randomly immune to torpedoes is not okay.

That does seem rather an artificial/fake way to buff them. A far better way would be to fix Torp spread so it's affected by ACC and no longer has a 100% chance of hitting (maybe even make it debuff ACC). In turn maybe increase small pets bonus defense a bit more. This way torps would organically miss, rather than pets just being immune every once in a while.

mustrumridcully0

The subnucleonic beam change will probably be quite signifant for PvP. Suddenly, any ship with a Lt.Cmdr Science station can subnuke, you don't need an Intel seat or a Science Captain.

It will also be a significant change for every science captain to suddenly have a different ability in his repertoire. It might not be bad, Deflector Overcharge seems basically an Attack Pattern Alpha for science powers. Drawback I see is that it locks you further into a Science Vessel. Or maybe not, since it also buffs healing at least, so the only ship it's not so hot on is Escorts, it seems.

totenmet

And Cryptic does it again. What a disappointment for me.

All my current builds become useless. Have to start over again min maxing all my stuff and toons. All this time and money spend to get the things i needed to optimize my build, going through te window.

Can't say I am happy now. People who anyway have no clue how to build good setups, are the least affected again. And the people who cannot build ships dont do DPS, but always become rude ingame because some one did spend money and effort to build a good ship getting good DPS are very happy with these nerfing and changes.

And this is absolutly nonsens

[1] Increase the fun – Games are about having fun, and players should not be made to feel that their fun is “wrong.” [2] Player investment retains value – While things need to be adjusted, a setup that was optimized before should still be useful and effective afterwards. [3] Choices should be meaningful – Anywhere the game gives you a choice, there should be no choice that you always take nor one you never take.

Because:

[1] Actualy my current playstyle and builds are considered "wrong" by Cryptic hence they render it useless now. [2] Player investment retains value: is BS. If things get nerfed they become less valuable. [3] So my current choices minmaxing my builds are considered not meaningfull according to Cryptic.

neppakyo

So, where is the fun part?

mustrumridcully0

redvenge wrote: »

So, Weapon power gives significantly less benefit over 100, but significantly more benefit under 100...

No penalties for low power; no reward for high power. Let's just get rid of Subsystems entirely. What's the point? Why bother managing power levels?

I bet with you that running 125 weapon power with overcap is still the best way to go when you use energy weapons. The same as before. And everyone not using energy weapons and relying on torps and exotic damage can still get away with 15 weapon power as before.

The difference is really oly that the ceiling and bottom get closer together, which might be good for the game.

The point of energy management was basically gone once everyone could afford his Plasmonic Leech and an EptX power. The energy dials in your UI are mostly for show.

evilmark444

risian4 wrote: »

evilmark444 wrote: »

somtaawkhar wrote: »

IT BEGINS!

Fire at Will now has a slight penalty to the weapon’s damage instead of an increase at ranks II and III, and has an accuracy debuff as well.

THE TEARS LET THEM FLOW!

Not exactly the kind of nerf I was looking for, personally I was looking for a huge single target nerf but only a slight multi target nerf, but this could be interesting ... that has to be poorly worded though, cause that makes it sound like rank 1 will be all-around better than ranks 2 and 3

The point is, I think, that FAW 3 is only accessible on ships that are already very Tac oriented.

This change will therefore hit those who completely build around FAW, not the more casual users who don't mind using FAW 1 or those who fly cruisers or Sci ships with only room for FAW 1. And that's a good thing.

Ok, but give me one example of another ability that gets worse at higher ranks? There aren't any, therfore the only logical conclusion is that the description of the BFAW nerf was poorly worded.

maxustroy

hot retstart change is a joke tbh will kill intel like orondis said OSS is the only good thing there .

Feedback change from a pve view dont make sense to get the crazy feedback numbers it anit as simple as just flying in a isa and hitting feedback need a perfect run really , pvp view ye feedback needs to be nerfed big time lol

Changes to pets are very welcome anit no down side to that