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Difficulty Mode Inconsistent in Patrols

alcyoneserenealcyoneserene Member Posts: 2,414 Arc User
Elite patrols specifically, when game mode is set to Elite, the enemies' damage output is much higher when with at least 1 other player in your team. This much is fine and would be expected to ensure a challenging experience, and appears consistent.

Yesterday, however, doing my usual elite patrols, in the same exact ship and build (T5UX Dyson Harpia on a Sci), with valid skill points, the enemy damage output seemed much greater than usual. I was testing and polishing my build with very minor modifications (epic iconian shield vs elite fleet adaptive resilient epic reengineered) but kept getting obliterated over and over. I did finish them otherwise, but that required spending much more time tanking damage with max shield power, flying out of range, flaking, being cloaked longer (cooldowns), and just 'abusing' dumb predictable NPC AI.

The one critical factor that I strongly believe explains this inconsistency is these patrols are the current admiralty objective, complete 3 of them. Somehow I suspect this fact creates the scenario (or bug?) which treats elite patrols as if you have one or more team members with you even though you don't.


The point isn't a complaint about the difficulty, my ship & skill can handle it, it's something I actually enjoy and get to improve with in STO outside of boring advanced TFOs where a 'billion' dps meta-chasing builds wipe the screen for you and "gg" while worthless punching bag NPCs barely fire at anyone. It's the lack of consistency in what qualifies as an elite patrol. Either keep it the way it is, truly hard mode, or keep it the way it was, so we have some baseline to work with.


This is very frustrating as I've been trying to perfect something that can complete elite patrols solo, that's properly challenging to pilot, that's unique, and that can deal as much damage as possible without coming too close to ever blowing up save for piloting errors. Now the testing environment isn't even consistent, as I am sure after this admiralty event, elite mode will revert to the usual single player 'elite' variant where my build and piloting skills have proven more than adequate.

This is on my alt account where I don't have a ton of stuff still, but that's the point, enjoying discovering, building, and testing on my own. I do this for fun, to squeeze some enjoyment from this game, so I don't uninstall altogether. I don't chase DPS but in the past managed 100K ISA pug in a CRF T6 Scimitar.

My ship has some of the hardest shields I could find in game, carefully selected skill respec using 1/3 shield hardness, 2/3 shield regen, 1/3 shield restoration, many sources of shield healing, hull that buffs with damage from 25-80% all dmg res with an average of about 50-65%, on a tac-sci hybrid (about 70% sci 30% tac) also flown to keep defenses high at high throttle, with 2/3 EPS to shuffle subsystem power around quickly enough as needed, using Tyken's 3 & Energy Siphon (still not boosted by drainx yet - still working on getting fleet marks & dil & upgrades) & 2x Polaron DHC [rapid] which should reduce enemy non-torpedo damage output.
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Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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