Orbital Bombardment and spidersense dodging

tilarta

I've got characters who use specific kit modules to have access to variants of orbital bombardment:
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Tactical_Kit_Module_-_Polaron_Bombardment
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Universal_Kit_Module_-_Protomatter_Munition_Deployment

With both of these and the traditional Orbital Strike available to Engineers, as soon as the marker hits the ground, the enemy NPCs instantly move out of the target zone, causing the ability to miss them and making me feel like it was pointless using an ability that can be dodged before it even completes activation.

Orbital Strike can at least be modified with the Orbital Devastation Trait to track, but the other two cannot.

So I am requesting that whatever spidersense is causing the enemy NPCs to unerringly dodge these abilities to be removed.

odinforever20000

Site to site transport..cryo visor are my favorites for those critical few seconds.

strathkin

I think I agree with the Thread author on this note. I mean it's bad enough Orbital Strike on most engineer barely does that much damage even with a 'high' KIT rating.

They shouldn't be able to dodge it before it strikes; and it should have Resistance Penetration as well! My goodness it's an Orbital Strike from Above; not a simple ground weapon.

Two Thumbs Up!

spiritborn

Yeah I agree as well while orbital strike isn't the only ability that is next to useless thanks to NPCs having jedi reflexes (granades for tac officers suffer from the same thing) Orbital Stike is also really weak for what it is suppose to be.

It should be like limit breaks in final fantasy games or (good) ultimate abilities in MOBAs something you can't use often but when you can it's devestating to the enemy (and before anyone says that wouldn't work in a MMO such abilities do work just fine in FF14) and if balance is the issue why Orbital Strike does such poor damage (or more accurately scales so poorly as it's devestating at lower levels) give Tactical and Science officers similar "high cooldown but really powerful" abilities and yes it doesn't have to "high damage" it can be massive buff to you regular abilities for the duration of the "limit break" ability.

tilarta

While I have never experienced that personally, I did know that the NPC spidersense will also allow them to dodge grenades as well.
Which is why I'm glad I gave up grenades in favor of kit modules that launch microtorpedoes instead.

So two types of skills will benefit from fixing this bug.

And to be honest, it's a frickin deathbeam, turret bombardment or missile salvo from an orbital starship, it should do a lot of damage to the target!

tobywitczak

I will agree to the spidersense IF and ONLY if the strike damage is like 10 times what it is now. I mean you requesting a freaking beam from your ship. Is Criptic saying that hand phasers are just as powerful as a ships orbital bombardment IF? Maybe reduce the activation down to 1.5 seconds so the NPC cant fully escape the beam.

angrytarg

Well, the dodge can be countered by rooting/slowing the enemies beforehand. It makes sense to build up for such a powerful strike - IF ONLY it was powerful. It's damage and AoE are a joke. But if it gets buffed to serious levels, enemies dodging the hazard zone are okay as long as you have means to root them before.​​

tilarta

Yeah, but I'm not exactly enthused about using a kit module slot up to compensate for a flaw in the game mechanics.

To explain, I've made unique kit loadouts that are fun for me and to toss out a module that entertains me for the sake of one I'm not using would detract from my enjoyment of the gameplay.
Simply because I'm trying to compensate for a flaw that should not exist and I find the idea of ruining my kit loadout to compensate for it disconcerting.

tobiashirt

Perhaps make it work more like Sompek lightning, that the time from button press to strike is much quicker. The lightning module at least equals if not outperforms orbital strike on most of my toons.

Or, have a charging time for the ability once you press the key, but the enemies only become aware of it right before it hits. Something along the lines of "I communicate with my ship to set this up so it's ready to be called down on my mark"