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Bad scaling makes too many builds dead ends.
rothnang
Member Posts: 18 Arc User
Every time I've played STO I run into the same problem, I make up a starship build that I have a lot of fun with, and then I find out that it simply doesn't scale up to the hardest content. That basically ends the fun right on the spot.
For example, I've been running a Fleet Carrier that uses a combination of science abilities coupled with the Vaadwaur cluster torpedo and its fighters to dish out damage. As long as I'm playing missions I'm having a blast with this thing, I can gather all the enemies into a neat little pile with a singularity, then blow up the pile, killing many of the smaller enemies instantly. Bigger foes usually require more than one attack, but between the fighters, and dropping some mines on them they also go down eventually.
It's not the most conventional way of fighting, but it works, and I have fun doing it. Not looking to be the most powerful ship there ever was, I just like playing as a support unit, and between launching fighters, being able to do some healing and occasionally chucking out a huge missile that's exactly what this ship feels like.
The problem is when I enter the difficult group content. The ship basically just stops being useful at all. The fighters do too little damage to even scratch the shields of the enemies. The exotic damage abilities don't really do much. The tricobalt torpedoes knock off maybe 10% of an opponent's hull, but that's long regenerated before I ever get another torpedo loaded. Tachyon Beams shave a few points off shields, but aren't even close to dropping them. Nothing adds up to an effective attack because all the enemies have so much health that these kinds of burst damage abilities just don't do anything. Meanwhile you see people just roll in with all their skills and consoles focused on cannons and beams and DPS those enemies down pretty quickly. Without that kind of sustained high damage output you simply can't really do much.
And yea yea, I'm going to get tons of replies telling me that I'm using my ship wrong and it's all my fault, and sure, I'll readily admit I didn't go for an optimal build. However, I think it's a serious problem with this game that things that are perfectly viable and fun to use when you're playing the missions are so completely useless in high end content. You shouldn't just suddenly find out that what you've been doing and what was working and enjoyable one second simply doesn't work the next, just because the enemies now have so much health and regeneration that any build that ran on burst damage can't ever kill them, and a build that runs on high sustained DPS is simply required.
For example, I've been running a Fleet Carrier that uses a combination of science abilities coupled with the Vaadwaur cluster torpedo and its fighters to dish out damage. As long as I'm playing missions I'm having a blast with this thing, I can gather all the enemies into a neat little pile with a singularity, then blow up the pile, killing many of the smaller enemies instantly. Bigger foes usually require more than one attack, but between the fighters, and dropping some mines on them they also go down eventually.
It's not the most conventional way of fighting, but it works, and I have fun doing it. Not looking to be the most powerful ship there ever was, I just like playing as a support unit, and between launching fighters, being able to do some healing and occasionally chucking out a huge missile that's exactly what this ship feels like.
The problem is when I enter the difficult group content. The ship basically just stops being useful at all. The fighters do too little damage to even scratch the shields of the enemies. The exotic damage abilities don't really do much. The tricobalt torpedoes knock off maybe 10% of an opponent's hull, but that's long regenerated before I ever get another torpedo loaded. Tachyon Beams shave a few points off shields, but aren't even close to dropping them. Nothing adds up to an effective attack because all the enemies have so much health that these kinds of burst damage abilities just don't do anything. Meanwhile you see people just roll in with all their skills and consoles focused on cannons and beams and DPS those enemies down pretty quickly. Without that kind of sustained high damage output you simply can't really do much.
And yea yea, I'm going to get tons of replies telling me that I'm using my ship wrong and it's all my fault, and sure, I'll readily admit I didn't go for an optimal build. However, I think it's a serious problem with this game that things that are perfectly viable and fun to use when you're playing the missions are so completely useless in high end content. You shouldn't just suddenly find out that what you've been doing and what was working and enjoyable one second simply doesn't work the next, just because the enemies now have so much health and regeneration that any build that ran on burst damage can't ever kill them, and a build that runs on high sustained DPS is simply required.
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Anyway. I think the end opponents and stf enemies should be less hit points and more player abilities. Heck have the different ships running the way they are supposed to. So science ships muddle with you and the escorts blow chunks off your ship. While the cruisers lumber in to help keep them alive versus your ire. Especially if the cruisers or some other effect means a dps boat can't one hit kill them and is thus in danger.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
But almost any build can do high DPS. Ok, maybe not easily break 100 or even 50k but getting more than sufficient DPS for advanced content out of a build is doable for almost any build I can think of.
Fighters on their own for example may not be able to do much (something that isn't always true btw) but they can be great for support. If you specialise in draining abilities such as Tachyon beams, and use these in combination with other abilities it does have a large effect on enemy shields (consider for example that special quantum torpedo from one of the Lukari arc episodes or Charged particle burst). Exotic builds can be insanely powerful - in fact, they're my most powerful builds (and I'm no 100k DPS'er, but my damage is respectable I think and more than sufficient for 90% of the game's content).
I've never used Tricobalt torpedoes but if the recharge times are too long, consider using a Projectile weapon officer doff.
It's probably not a matter of using your ship wrong, but I'm certain that if the result is not what you expected, that there are ways to improve.
And let's be reasonable here - just because others can use their optimised builds to take down enemies in mere seconds doesn't mean that you are not effective or not contributing to the team. It just means that they are more powerful, maybe even unnecessarily powerful, not that your ship is too weak. It's all a matter of what you are comparing your ship to. Taking 10% hull off an enemy ship with just one torpedo is not bad just because someone else who may have spend much more on his build can take off 80% with one volley.
Yeah, not so much.
I am finding that looking for lower level gear is a better way to deal with story content becoming too easy...not moving up to "Advanced" game content.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
I know some players that enjoy making quirky builds and they do just fine in advanced. I've played alongside pet spam and boarding party builds, mine builds, Warp plasma builds and many others and they do fine. With some thought, one can come up with Advanced STF capable fun ships. You don't really have to stick to the meta.
On Elites things get a bit more focused but build diversity is still there. Apart from the usual energy builds (where cannons and beams have been largely equalized), you've got pure torp ships, exotic-torps, pure exotic, drain-torps, pure drains, heal boats and tanks all doing really well.
If you want to bring your ship up to speed for STFs, you'd want to avoid spreading your builds too thinly. Pick out which aspects of your current build you enjoy the most and focus your build around that. You can build for exotic/CC and pets for example, or drain and pets (since you seem to enjoy sci-centric builds).
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Then you're definitely doing it wrong.
I am going to have to disagree on the extreme of your build comment. No level 1 ship with mk XII should be able to handle every end game encounter. Otherwise there is really no reason to level in the first place and have higher tiers.
I keep having to argue from another game's perspective. But here comes WoW again. You have a level 1 warrior with a level 60 sword. He is going to mop up level 1-10 mobs because his dps is insane. But against a level 60 he is going to go squish because he does not have the armour, hps, and various specialty moves higher levels gain to allow them to survive. But a level 60 with level 1 gear, he might, with a bit of skill, be able to handle level 60 content but take longer as he does have those hps and special class abilities.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
The problem the OP describes seems to me to be one of a lack of focus. In building a ship to do everything, he has created one which does nothing well, and in Advanced you can't make an impact with it.
The solution appears to me to be to find a mentor willing to help you decide on a focus and then helping to build your ship around it. The build process for end game ships can be extremely complex, with multiple layers of benefits from various sources. But when your feats support your skills and your skills support your gear and you learn power management and timing, you will have become a formiddable end content player.
This is not something you could have learned through playing the eps; this is something which dedicated number crunchers have been working on since the first Beta testing. You have to learn this from other players.
The thing is that it's the job of the designers to keep the DPS of all forms of attack close enough together that they don't simply become useless. Of course a tricobalt device can't simply one-shot endgame enemies the way it does random mooks on a single player mission, but if its DPS is so low that they fully regenerate before it can shoot again it's simply a broken weapon. Same goes for singularities, tachyon beams, whatever. They don't have to be 100% of the DPS of an assault ship, but maybe 50 or 60% would be reasonable instead of 5%.
About those enemies with increasing resists: that's usually more a matter of targeting the right enemies such as in the case of the Tzenkethi or moving around them like when fighting the Voth. It was a reaction to the complaints about easy targets like the Borg that could be killed with almost no effort. It's a good thing and it makes things a bit more challenging - just a bit, but still.
Wait, are we not supposed to build our ship like the Dyson ship in A step between stars?
That mission is painful.
I don't know to what singularities you are referring, but I have no problem killing stuff with Subspace vortex and Tyken's rift plus some torpedoes.
Don't take this personal, but I honestly think that the damage potential of such abilities isn't the problem here. The key is that, if you want to depend on such things, you need to specialise in the right skills and use them in combination with other abilities. And make sure they are properly buffed by adjusting your power settings if necessary (i.e., boost your Auxiliary power level).
actually it wouldn't be possible for a level 60 WoW character to beat a mob of equal level with level 1 gear as how hard the mobs hit is based on the assumption that everyone has at least green quality gear of same level or close enough, by level 60 or above most of your stamina (aka your health) will come from gear as the "natural" stat gain per level isn't that much.
I was a while back forced to use my mage's sword in the WoW PTR (which would be a rough equilevant of using a level 1 gear in a T6 ship in STO) due to a bug and while possible to kill mobs it wasn't really practical and mobs I can beat in live version without an effort were nearly unbeatble when dealt with pure melee since it's not what mages are intended to do.
Similary Tier 1 ships aren't meant to be used in end game regardless of the gear they have, it's not their purpose, there's a reason you can have up tier 5 for free.
Point. And you seem to also agree with my sentiment that lvl 1 stuff really isn't for end game content.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Going to point out the elephant in the room again. It's always the pilot. Always. When I do 50k in a build, a person like tunebreaker would do 150k in it. Simple as that. Gear and ships matter a little, of course, but (ironically) only in the highest echelons of the deeps players, where the full potential of the ship and gear can be assumed to have been maxed out already (and thus the difference in gear would start to show up a bit).
Going to clarify this a bit. Of course, a bad player slotting a Mk XII wep, or a Mk XIV one, is going to see a difference.
+1
Which is why I recommend a mentor. Because any attempt to correct the problem here will sound like criticism of the player.
@rothnang: when you meet a player in the queues successfully doing what you want to do, (playstyle, performance, ship type, etc.,) message the player with a request to discuss how his ship is built and his game strategy. Most players are happy to tell how and why they do what they do.
My point was that in both WoW and STO content at a certain level is made with some assumptions about the gear (and starships in STO) of an average player and neither Cryptic nor Blizzard can't make stats of NPCs based on people who intentionally down gear or refuse to upgrade as then the content would way too easy for those who have the "proper" gear for the level.
In order to compensate for higher gear level of players at higher character level, NPC have to hit harder, regenerate faster and have more health then simple "gearless" scaling would imply.
So yes I agree that level 1 gear has no place at end game, it's not the purpose of that gear at all.
+1
Wise words.
In that light, ppl might try that 'virtual' mentor Cryptic recently introduced: Build That Ship You've Always Wanted with Qthulu's Guides!