well where to begin? i have been playing STO for a few years now and i like to play carrier type of ship but i have noticed some things with them,
Control, Support, Power/Gear, Options.
Control: hangar pets tend to be quite unresponsive and spamming the spawn new squad button can be quite annoying to keep the numbers up
to improve responsiveness i dont know what to do as i dont know the code and its interactions and on but the spawning of new crafts can be made to a toggle that spawns the ships when its toggled on and tells them to dock when toggled off and make it a single ability (for all or each pet type?).
Support: well there is a total lack of supportive skills except for a few passives and on skill(tree?), so it would be nice if there was a Bridge officer spec available on any spot or a new type of Boff available to pure carrier type ships,
with new skills and commands like formations, tactics, eng/sci tricks (maybe even add a spec tree for the captain?)
Power/Gear: as most already know hangar pets Scale pretty bad and a few reasons behind that is well there is no way to boost them up with gear and equipment as they come in a Prefab package that has This set of weapons and stuff only, what if we broke them up in a similar way to ship or small craft? lets say we gave them normal gear when it comes to weapons,
so we would need a hangar pet Frame(the ship it self) Armour, Weapons, structure and other parts being Weapons engi/sci/tac consoles same as the ships and for auto/passives use ability's we would have Pilot teams of different skill and training and races/types.
Options: well for starter most if not all ships lore wise should have a hangar bay of some sort, so will it work to have a hangar bay on every ship? i dont think so at least not the current system there needs to be different sizes or types for example the smallest will only be able to hold 2 smalls ships, where the bigger one might be able to hold a Frigate Class of ship or two, or we change so the ship have a total cap that is split evenly between equipped ships, also for ppl that prefer to not have hangar pets could refit the hangar to more gear space?
i have more to say on this stuff but any more and other ideas?
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Ok improvement... We need more dedicated tools to make this a carrier!. I want to be able to spec my guy so that my pets become the Hamner and I become the support. I Would like the ability to upgrade pets with different weapons or be able to set them up to be support pets, healing pets. Or make the skills or traits I chose benefit my pets.
ingame: @.Spartan
Original Cryptic Forum Name: Spartan (member #124)
The Glorious, Kirk’s Protegè
So you get from the store the basic "hull" of the pet at whatever rarity you choose and then can upgrade it via the usual means.
Plus, you also have the ability to add new "modules" to your pet to boost things like speed, hit points, defence, shields, respawn time etc weapon potency etc. And all of these modules can be upgraded just like ground kit ones.
Essentially what you end up with is pets that can be either bog standard or super duper elite level, vastly improving their effectiveness.
Aside from that, there's at least one starship trait that affects hangar pets, Overwhelming Force . Hmm, reading the description, I see nothing about pets, yet I recall being convinced it applied to pets. Perhaps I got that from some other conversation in this most excellent of sub-forums...
i love my carrier style of play but its like been way down the developers priorities for ages while the escort pilots have gotten all the love
some of the best things to support your pets:
attack pattern beta from yourself
other resistance debuffs to the target
concentrate firepower
skilling things in the skilltree
iconian set
they are already pretty powerful. right now ships with a hangar are just better than normal ships. to be fair, most people are getting outdps by pets only (including fleet support) in several missions so buff them even more is not the best idea.
ingame: @Felisean
Spot on. On average I get 8k-15k out of pets, with Fleet Support capable of doing 15k just by itself (in luckiest runs) - that makes my pets stronger than at least 2/3 of players I meet in pugs.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
Do you know if Hangar Pets were recently buffed?
I remember them being horrible and useless, but yesterday I took out my Engineer in her Jupiter for the first time in quite a while. She has 2 hangers of Elite Swarmers and it seemed like they were doing far more damage then I remember them doing. I know they added 'scratch the paint' to all hangar pets a while back which is a HUGE help, but did they get an overall buff?
I was actually really surprised at the performance I was getting out of my carrier. The biggest problem I see right now is that they still lag behind when you're at full impulse, and that's annoying.
Yeah, with all the nerfs S13 brought, it also introduced pretty hefty buffs for pets. Immunity to core breaches, increased base dmg and, I believe, even improved AI.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
Wow, I must say I'm surprised to hear that.
I remember shortly after DR dropped, Cryptic just cut the balls off all hangar pets and ever since then they have seemed pretty hell bent on keeping things that way.
At least one good thing came out of the Season 13 'balance' pass. I have to admit, they did a good job, my Pets weren't doing all the work for me, but they were making a very obvious contribution. I actually think they got it just about perfect. It was the most fun I have had playing a carrier in a very long time.
Thank you for the information.
To be clear, I'm all for continuing to improve life for carrier captains. While I think that the buff to pets was a nice start, there is still work to do for sure.
I agree that we need more carrier focused items. Traits, consoles, heck.. I wouldn't mind seeing the next specialization be one for Carriers specifically. I'm a big fan of carriers and I have always had to shy away from them in STO which sucks. I feel they're on the right track right now, but I agree with you that there is more to be done. It's a balancing act though, you can't have pets doing all the work because then that just takes all skill out for the captain. Anyone can click the 'launch fighters' button and sit there and watch pets do all the work.
Personally im a carrier pilot and stick you my jupiter class even thought i have stronger and tankier carriers (t6 jem'hadar dreadnought carrier) but what keeps be to the jupiter is the shear dps and health of the frigates, untill i can unlock ( big if) the frigate pets for the jem'hadar it pretty much useless because the pets die so quickly and easily they cant deal sustained dps and it makes it harder to use. This is a big balance point to me at least because pets need to be useful, but having to constantly spam spawn fighters to have decent dps sucks when i can get a hell of alot more dps and focus on managing my ship and officers and dealing more dps personally with the frigates, with all in all makes me more effective.
Seeing more frigate class pets (or at least more of the more easily available) and a distinct difference between them and fighter, kind like choosing cannons or beams, higher dps and damage per shot with cannons but less fire arc, ore more fire arc and less dps with beams. There are already so many things in sto that make you weight your choices and decide if i want this or that to make ships more personal, so why not pets.
It's not just Frigates, it's all pets.
I changed my Jupiter from Callisto's to Swarmers because of this issue, but while the Swarmers behave a little more consistently, they still lag way behind my carrier. In a Borg alert for example, I have usually destroyed the cube before my pets even reach me.
I still propose the same solution I have been pushing for years. When you press the 'dock' button on your hangar and you're out of combat, pets should instantly teleport back inside your carrier. I wouldn't allow it at Red Alert, but otherwise, it should just warp our pets instantly back into your bay. That way after a battle, you can just click the dock button, go to impulse and relaunch them at the next fight.
Wow I used the word "dock" a bunch lol