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I am CrypticSpartan, the designer behind the rebalance, and I am here to answer your questions

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  • pottsey5gpottsey5g Member Posts: 4,251 Arc User
    edited March 2017
    What are the new ranges for different mines as they are not listed on the item?

    How do the new immunity’s work. What happens if I am on immunity lockout and an automatic immunity triggers? Do I lose that immunity? Does it just get delayed?

    What is the reasoning behind the 10 second nerf /changes to torpedo skills? I like to play like they do in the TV show which is as Captain I tell my tactical officer to prepare a torpedo spread on my mark. Then I fly in at range on full impulse and at the right tactical moment go mark and the tactical officer responds with the pre prepared orders. It’s fun and just like what they do in the TV show but this change stops me playing like this. I don’t understand the reasoning behind this change which is a lot less fun. I keep finding myself losing my torpedo bridge officer powers. Which is a frustrating experience and I don’t understand what problem the change is trying to fix or what its being balanced against.

    It doesn’t seem logical to me as a captain to give a bridge officer a command to fire my single torpedo spread or high yield at the next available moment then 12 seconds later when the torpedo is ready the bridge officer forgets to shoot torpedo spread and I have to wait a further 30s seconds to try again.
  • odinforever20000odinforever20000 Member Posts: 1,849 Arc User
    edited March 2017
    @crypticspartan#627

    Greeting and thankyou for providing a forum to ask questions.

    1.) Can you tell us what caused Feed Back Pulse to take so many hits (unhooking it from exotic buffs,unable to crit,reflected damage capped,reducing epg scaling/aux scaling?) to its effectiveness that its more or less back to the early days of STO.

    2.) Was Destabilized Resonance Beam over performing in its current state to necessitate its damage being reduced? (It does have a rather long cooldown)..

    3.) Any idea if Tractor Beams' damage display will be changed to a "kinetic damage per second?" The Current method is hard to gauge effectiveness.

    4.) Will the balance pass also cover the Dyson reputation consoles?(https://sto.gamepedia.com/Console_-_Science_-_Shield_Refrequencer)

    5.) Will the Drain levels currently assigned to tykens (on tribble) stay or do you think this might be modified again before going live?

    6.) What % have the destructible torpedoes on Tribble been sped up?

    Thankyou for your time.

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  • thelordofshadesthelordofshades Member Posts: 258 Arc User
    Rather than modifying the existing abilities, what about cloning them as a "new" ability at a lower rank, replacing future (but not existing) player crafted and vendor manuals with the "new" ones, replacing future boff drops with the "new" version, and linking the new and old versions with a full shared cooldown to prevent abuse?

    Why not simplify this algorithm with retaining two versions of the same ability a bit:
    1. Remove the "old" existing abilities.
    2. Introduce the "new" ones, a rank lower.
    3. Give out to everyone who had the old ones "free" training manuals for the "new" ones of corresponding rank.
    4. Replace the "old" manuals with "new" manuals across the board.

  • legendarylycan#5411 legendarylycan Member Posts: 37,284 Arc User
    Rather than modifying the existing abilities, what about cloning them as a "new" ability at a lower rank, replacing future (but not existing) player crafted and vendor manuals with the "new" ones, replacing future boff drops with the "new" version, and linking the new and old versions with a full shared cooldown to prevent abuse?

    Why not simplify this algorithm with retaining two versions of the same ability a bit:
    1. Remove the "old" existing abilities.
    2. Introduce the "new" ones, a rank lower.
    3. Give out to everyone who had the old ones "free" training manuals for the "new" ones of corresponding rank.
    4. Replace the "old" manuals with "new" manuals across the board.

    and how are you going to stop boffs that are already trained in the old skills from breaking when they are removed?​​
    Like special weapons from other Star Trek games? Wondering if they can be replicated in STO even a little bit? Check this out: https://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1262277/a-mostly-comprehensive-guide-to-star-trek-videogame-special-weapons-and-their-sto-equivalents

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  • sinn74sinn74 Member Posts: 1,149 Arc User
    Or, remove new versions of CSV3 from being created, buff CSV1&2 to the levels of 2 and 3, respectively, and add an ensign ability that is merely "Cannon Scatter Volley," without the numeral.

    There are two reasons that Exotic Damage and Healing are "Bonus" - 'Cat2', in player terms, and the control and drain are not. The first one is that we already have several sources of Bonus Damage and Bonus Healing; this means that these are not overpowered or unique. +50% Bonus Drain would mean that anyone who flies a drain build as not a science captain is completely outclassed by any science captain. Additionally, being Expertise means that it grants Control Resistance and Drain Resistance for the duration, which should help to make it more widely useful.

    This is a problem which exists with Attack Pattern Alpha buffing all damage, essentially making a Tactical captain better at total damage with an exotic heavy (but still having weapons, as all ships do) build than a Science captain. A tactical captain (even with changes) is still more effective using a science (exotic) build than someone choosing the Science career.

    Is the intent that Science would not have an advantage in exotic damage? If not, what is the intended role Science captains are meant to fulfill?

  • martakurillmartakurill Member Posts: 456 Arc User
    I am curious as to why with all the rebalancing that Attack Pattern Alpha still buffs all sources of damage instead of specifically weapons?

    This is a change many players have asked for, and would reduce the likelihood of things like plasma explosions will get out of hand again in the future.
  • crypticspartan#0627 crypticspartan Member Posts: 847 Cryptic Developer
    pottsey5g wrote: »
    What are the new ranges for different mines as they are not listed on the item?

    How do the new immunity’s work. What happens if I am on immunity lockout and an automatic immunity triggers? Do I lose that immunity? Does it just get delayed?

    What is the reasoning behind the 10 second nerf /changes to torpedo skills? I like to play like they do in the TV show which is as Captain I tell my tactical officer to prepare a torpedo spread on my mark. Then I fly in at range on full impulse and at the right tactical moment go mark and the tactical officer responds with the pre prepared orders. It’s fun and just like what they do in the TV show. I don’t understand the reasoning behind this change which is a lot less fun. I keep finding myself losing my torpedo bridge officer powers. Which is a frustrating experience and I don’t understand what problem the change is trying to fix or what its being balanced against.

    It doesn’t seem logical to me as a captain to give a bridge officer a command to fire my single torpedo spread or high yield at the next available moment then 12 seconds later when the torpedo is ready the bridge officer forgets to shoot torpedo spread and I have to wait a further 30s seconds to try again.

    I will see about adding mine ranges to the mine launchers; that is a better solution than me posting them all here, especially as they may change again.

    If you are on the immunity lockout and an automatic immunity would otherwise trigger, it does not. You do not lose it; it does not trigger until the next time that something attempts to trigger it and you do not have the lockout.

    The torpedo change was to be consistent with every other weapon enhancement and to remove the ability to "double-tap" Torpedo abilities.
  • ffttfftt Member Posts: 715 Arc User
    Subnucleonic Beam's effectiveness and the changes related to it becoming a Bridge Officer ability are all things I am paying very close attention to, however, so I cannot guarantee that its state on Tribble (or the state of anything else) is how it will go live.

    ...

    I do have a few concerns about the Subnucleonic Beam change that stand out:
    • This noticeably biases Science Captains towards Science ships - all ships can easily make use of it, but it is much better at some than others. There is already some amount of precedent for this in all the careers, but this is the most clear-cut case yet.
    • This makes Science Captains less useful in PvP, and the bridge officer power will be especially strong there.
    • As a Bridge Officer Power, it is going to be difficult to make the Commander rank something desirable over the Lt. Commander rank without breaking the power, and its balance relative to Subnucleonic Carrier Wave is also a point of concern.

    None of those are surprises; but that why I have put this out there with the initial set of changes and been asking for feedback.

    My feedback... Not a huge fan of this particular change. While many have claimed changing SubNuc to DefOver takes a science captain ability that had little use in PVE to something a little more applicable (yeah, yeah - 99.99% useless to 100% usable to paraphrase) there are plenty of non-science ship builds where this change would offer only marginal benefits. You've said it yourself: "This noticeable biases Science Captains towards Science ships" and I can't agree more. I've always picked my captain class based on ground kits knowing that the space abilities of the captain were pretty much agnostic to ship class: Engineering's healing and power usage applied to any ship; Tactical buffs, while admittedly more useful to escorts because they carried a lot of weapons with more tactical stations, were still useful in cruisers and science ships; and there wasn't a science captain ability that necessarily benefitted one class of ships over another. It was actually intriguing mixing and matching captains with ship types. Now however, I'd be hesitant in making a science captain because I'd feel restricted in the ships they should command.

    So I have to ask, what prompted this change? And if it has to be changed couldn't it be one more ship class independent?
  • thelordofshadesthelordofshades Member Posts: 258 Arc User
    and how are you going to stop boffs that are already trained in the old skills from breaking when they are removed?​​
    Maybe by, you know, coding it correctly ?
    If abilities can be added without messing up the exiting ones, so they should be removed without messing them up, either, -theoretically at least.
    Remember - we are removing the "old" version of this ability from every single one existing tactical BOFF indiscriminately without looking at whether they are trained in it or not.


  • legendarylycan#5411 legendarylycan Member Posts: 37,284 Arc User
    another question, @crypticspartan#0627 - will you consider buffing singularity core abilities? they were already kind of on the weak side and not really worth the trade-off of -40 power to warbirds even before delta rising

    now with NPCs having been buffed a good deal since in the HP and damage department, they could use some looking at, especially Warp Shadow​​
    Like special weapons from other Star Trek games? Wondering if they can be replicated in STO even a little bit? Check this out: https://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1262277/a-mostly-comprehensive-guide-to-star-trek-videogame-special-weapons-and-their-sto-equivalents

    #LegalizeAwoo

    A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
    An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
    A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
    A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"


    "It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
    "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
    Passion and Serenity are one.
    I gain power by understanding both.
    In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
    I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
    The Force is united within me.
  • pottsey5gpottsey5g Member Posts: 4,251 Arc User
    edited March 2017
    The torpedo change was to be consistent with every other weapon enhancement and to remove the ability to "double-tap" Torpedo abilities.
    But torpedoes have longer cooldowns then other weapons. So the other weapon powers don’t end up in a situation where you trigger the skill and the skill times out before the weapon has cooled down and got ready to fire. You never end up triggering Beam overload or FaW and losing them as the weapon is on cooldown.

    Due to bad joints I play with my weapons on auto fire and it’s a pain having to keep track of torpedo cooldowns. No other weapon has to keep track of weapon cooldowns to use a skill like Beam overload or FaW. Plus there is the fun factor like I described above that has been removed. The change has made the skill and combat less like Star Trek and we can no longer do what they did in the show. Personally I found flying like that a lot of fun which is why I am so against this change. As to me all its doing is removing fun and creating a frustrating experience where my torpedo skills fail to work.

    I don’t see why things have to be consistence. Making to many things consistence is boring, bland and less fun. Surly there is a better way to stop double tapping? Could we extend the timer to 14 or 15 seconds that would stop the double tab and reduce the problem of losing the torpedo power due to the torpedo being on cooldown.

    I have no problem getting rid of double tapping it’s just I see this change as more frustrating and doing more harm than the problems it’s trying to solve. (double tapping). Personally my setups are unable to double tap so all I see are failed torpedoes powers doing zero damage.

    Thank you for all the info.

    Post edited by pottsey5g on
  • evilmark444evilmark444 Member Posts: 6,951 Arc User
    Rather than modifying the existing abilities, what about cloning them as a "new" ability at a lower rank, replacing future (but not existing) player crafted and vendor manuals with the "new" ones, replacing future boff drops with the "new" version, and linking the new and old versions with a full shared cooldown to prevent abuse?

    Why not simplify this algorithm with retaining two versions of the same ability a bit:
    1. Remove the "old" existing abilities.

    This right here is exactly why they haven't done it yet and probably never will, because removing the existing versions would cause massive problems throughout the game.
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  • dragonsbrethrendragonsbrethren Member Posts: 1,854 Arc User
    It's worth noting that, for those calling for lower rank Cannon abilities, you can use the Subsystem Targeting abilities with them now, and that those abilities have been made very good.
  • lucho80lucho80 Member Posts: 6,600 Bug Hunter
    Why did you give preference to part gens and shield heals over control and drains with deflector overcharge instead of treating them all equally given the severe nerfs to half the power drain abilites? Consider that part gens have ship traits, consoles, personal traits, AND rep traits all that give bonus exotic damage %. Drains have none, and control has only 1.
  • crypticspartan#0627 crypticspartan Member Posts: 847 Cryptic Developer
    another question, @crypticspartan#0627 - will you consider buffing singularity core abilities? they were already kind of on the weak side and not really worth the trade-off of -40 power to warbirds even before delta rising

    now with NPCs having been buffed a good deal since in the HP and damage department, they could use some looking at, especially Warp Shadow​​
    I can't post speculation about anything else that might be changed until there are patchnotes that detail those changes. I don't want to promise a change when it's not set in stone.

  • edited March 2017
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  • doctheopdoctheop Member Posts: 34 Arc User
    Hi CrypticSpartan. We appreciate you doing this AMA.

    Not necessarily Re-Balance related, but I've discard mines upon receipt for almost all of the 5 years playing, and one day, would like to try a mine-centric build. Will they ever be considered a viable alternative to torpedos?
  • thelordofshadesthelordofshades Member Posts: 258 Arc User
    lucho80 wrote: »
    Why did you give preference to part gens and shield heals over control and drains with deflector overcharge instead of treating them all equally given the severe nerfs to half the power drain abilites? Consider that part gens have ship traits, consoles, personal traits, AND rep traits all that give bonus exotic damage %. Drains have none, and control has only 1.
    Wasn't that addressed already in a way ?
    There are two reasons that Exotic Damage and Healing are "Bonus" - 'Cat2', in player terms, and the control and drain are not. The first one is that we already have several sources of Bonus Damage and Bonus Healing; this means that these are not overpowered or unique. +50% Bonus Drain would mean that anyone who flies a drain build as not a science captain is completely outclassed by any science captain. Additionally, being Expertise means that it grants Control Resistance and Drain Resistance for the duration, which should help to make it more widely useful.

  • crypticspartan#0627 crypticspartan Member Posts: 847 Cryptic Developer
    doctheop wrote: »
    Hi CrypticSpartan. We appreciate you doing this AMA.

    Not necessarily Re-Balance related, but I've discard mines upon receipt for almost all of the 5 years playing, and one day, would like to try a mine-centric build. Will they ever be considered a viable alternative to torpedos?

    Viable is something players drive because 'viable' is about perception, which I do not control. There are changes to mines on Tribble that may be of interest to you.
  • tobiashirttobiashirt Member Posts: 630 Arc User
    edited March 2017
    Couple of questions, although you may be unable to provide specific magnitudes:

    Seeing GW3 go from 3600 on the tooltip to 5200 on Tribble due, presumably, to correcting the effect of aux power...and then hearing that it will be adjusted below what's currently on Holodeck makes me wonder where it will end up and why it and other exotic abilities are getting the downward adjustment that they are.

    Deflector Overcharge allows for these abilities to get back part of that damage for a limited time...is the intent to have the base value be below current live values with the overcharged value above in such a way that the average is the same? Or is it part of an overall adjustment to the damage output of that class of abilities?

    Asked above somewhere, but worth asking again in case I missed some info elsewhere:

    Is there ever going to be a change to the effect of APA/GDF on exotic powers, especially since there's at least one other instance of a buff being changed from general to specific in the patches?

    Mechanical Question:

    The change in Aux scaling is unclear to me...in it's prior/current state, how is power level affecting those abilities for which it'll be changed? What about it changes?
  • mattaukettmattaukett Member Posts: 190 Arc User
    Any plans to modify single cannons? The damage loss compared with dual cannons (and especially heavies) pretty much makes them something most people never use as the damage loss is too high compared with other options such as beams (if you're looking at larger effective arcs) of dual cannons/dual heavy cannons.
  • edited March 2017
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  • crypticspartan#0627 crypticspartan Member Posts: 847 Cryptic Developer
    tobiashirt wrote: »
    Asked above somewhere, but worth asking again in case I missed some info elsewhere:

    Is there ever going to be a change to the effect of APA/GDF on exotic powers, especially since there's at least one other instance of a buff being changed from general to specific in the patches?
    I can't post speculation about anything else that might be changed until there are patchnotes that detail those changes. I don't want to promise a change when it's not set in stone.
    tobiashirt wrote: »
    The change in Aux scaling is unclear to me...in it's prior/current state, how is power level affecting those abilities for which it'll be changed? What about it changes?

    To explain the Gravity Well/Subspace Vortex question as a whole:
    Before the skill revamp, most abilities had a multiplier of "Aux Power*/150+1/3", and were changed in the skill revamp to "Aux Power*/200+.5"; these two graphs are relatively similar, especially at the high end. When I changed Gravity Well and Subspace Vortex, I believed the equation they were using was the old one, as it was a similar one - "Aux Power/375+1/3". This meant that my auxiliary power change to those abilities, instead of having a slight buff at the low end and a very slight drop at the high end, increased their damage to 1.5x before at the low end and more than 1.7x before at the high end.
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  • kitsunesnoutkitsunesnout Member Posts: 1,210 Arc User
    edited March 2017
    Are there any plans for reworking ship cloaks that aren't battle cloak? I have long wished all cloaks were battle cloak, even if it meant trading some stealth value for cloaks that weren't original battle cloak as a tradeoff. (misread your original post, so I understand if this may not be possible to answer)
  • tobiashirttobiashirt Member Posts: 630 Arc User
    edited March 2017

    To explain the Gravity Well/Subspace Vortex question as a whole:
    Before the skill revamp, most abilities had a multiplier of "Aux Power*/150+1/3", and were changed in the skill revamp to "Aux Power*/200+.5"; these two graphs are relatively similar, especially at the high end. When I changed Gravity Well and Subspace Vortex, I believed the equation they were using was the old one, as it was a similar one - "Aux Power/375+1/3". This meant that my auxiliary power change to those abilities, instead of having a slight buff at the low end and a very slight drop at the high end, increased their damage to 1.5x before at the low end and more than 1.7x before at the high end.

    Ok, so the 3600 to 5200 is the result of that 1.7x, and the base that that it multiplies is going down? Or is it that they used the X/375 +1/3 and were standardized/changed to the X/200 +0.5? Or that they used X/200 and have always been supposed to use X/375?

    Edit: One thing that occurred to me while looking over the now 3 different Tribble patchnotes was that I don't know what the new c/d floors are on captain abilities. It seems to be about half of the unmodified duration, e.g. 1.5 min on a 3 min ability.

    When the Engineering captain ability 'Rotate Shield Frequency' says that it resists drain (I seem to remember it phrases it as "bonus" drain in the Tribble tooltip), how does that work vs, say, an incoming 3000/tick tachyon beam?

    Last question(s) for now, also regarding an engineering captain ability...similarly to temporary hull health, the temporary shielding on Miracle Worker gains no benefit from shield hardness, correct? When casting MW, what stat or other resources scales the amount of temp. shields, if at all?
  • crypticspartan#0627 crypticspartan Member Posts: 847 Cryptic Developer
    Is deploy times one of them for cluster torps. Things like the [Advanced Temporal Defense Chroniton Torpedo Launcher] still take far too long for deployment of the mines and I recall you saying in an interview that you wanted to change that.

    It seems unlikely that I indicated that in an interview as nobody has interviewed me, but it is possible that one of our designers who has been interviewed indicated that.

    tobiashirt wrote: »
    Ok, so the 3600 to 5200 is the result of that 1.7x, and the base that that multiplies is going down?
    Yes.

    Are there any plans for reworking ship cloaks that aren't battle cloak? I have long wished all cloaks were battle cloak, even if it meant trading some stealth value for cloaks that weren't original battle cloak as a tradeoff.
    I can't post speculation about anything else that might be changed until there are patchnotes that detail those changes. I don't want to promise a change when it's not set in stone.

  • theraven2378theraven2378 Member Posts: 6,015 Arc User
    Will science ships still e viable on Tacs?
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    • kyle223catkyle223cat Member Posts: 584 Arc User
      edited March 2017
      First off, thanks for creating this discussion. We all know that you developers are super busy so we're thankful that you are taking time to explain some mechanics to us players. Secondly, thanks for so many much needed changes. I know it probably took a lot of work to make all of them.

      I want to highlight these especially:
      1. Miracle Worker: This went from being worse than rally point marker to being the best insta-heal in game. I'm really glad that it is once again the king of healing abilities.
      2. The Underrated Embassy Consoles: Thanks for removing the global lockout from these consoles. I have literally been waiting this for years. :D
      3. Boosting items/traits to include all damage resistance: This will help tremendously against physical damage in PvP and is a major step in the right direction for increasing overall survivability in PvP.

      Now on to the questions I have:
      1. What is the difference between +All Damage Bonus Resistance and +All Damage Resistance and why is one used instead of the other on certain abilities? From my testing, +All Damage Bonus Resistance seems to be better (Dyson T2 Rep Trait, Shield Overload, etc) than +All Damage Resistance (Boff abilities like polarize hull, armor consoles, etc).
      2. Since many stats have been added to the ship's defensive stats page such as physical and electrical damage resistance, is it possible to have a shield hardness stat? Or is that too difficult because a shield is a piece of equipment and not the ship itself?
      3. Is there a mechanic currently in game to prevent damage from going through your shields directly to your hull? I'd like to be able to bring out my beloved nebula shield tank/healer and update it for use in ker'rat. :D

      Thanks for your time. :)
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    • kyle223catkyle223cat Member Posts: 584 Arc User
      edited March 2017
      Awww my comment disappeared. Is it completely gone or is it just not visible to me? I'd hate to have to rewrite that whole thing.
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