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ADVANCED R&D CONSOLES!
baddmoonrizin
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A new type of Space Console is coming to Star Trek Online on PC!
https://www.playstartrekonline.com/en/news/article/11545483
https://www.playstartrekonline.com/en/news/article/11545483
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The pet boosting ones seem interesting but... well... most of the pets are already stupid and adding 200% bonus damage wont actually change that. Maybe some pets will be more useful but i don't really see them changing the meta, more likely to just give casual players some nice numbers to look at.
Pets have received a lot of attention of late. See. Hydra and the experimentation with the Legendary Akira/Mogai fighters. A single console won't shift the meta per favored build type (that expectation is rather silly as it would imply that consoles being extremely broken is the only form of development we'll cheer for). But if you're only looking at how balance is affected at the most extreme top end of the game you miss...well, most of the game as it exists across the population. There's more to this community than the reductive, in-group tribalism of meta chasers and "casuals."
What you have instead is a continuous distribution of power level and inclination that also deals with different facets of balance as non-linear scaling relationships in STO's design, plus thresholds in gameplay design effects, ex. not needing shield heals because everything dies in 0.1 seconds, changes what best practice means across that distribution. Ie. commenting on what's good/useful for players always comes at the caveat of "from where you are on the curve." And there's going to be plenty of players who'll get more from this update than "some nice numbers to look at" (which isn't that the sum total of effect of any update these days for the top "meta"? You're not significantly moving perceived gameplay between a 0.1 second kill and 0.09 sec. Where most of this stuff lives/dies for the meta is parse logs and whether your numbers got nicer to look at with any build tweak.) Ex. more viable build paths outside current trends (see also max power buffs and doing anything with drain), which is a major win per variety in builds and longevity in replay.
There's a lot to play with here and I don't see Cryptic doing anything with TAC consoles in the near future as those are already plenty powerful and aren't being subsumed by universal consoles. Ie. stuff like this is to get players to start equipping dedicated ENG/SCI consoles again with the effect scaling up to account for not having an activated ability (and how much power creep there's been with passives). It's good stuff, couple that to support for crafting and Elite TFO's. If these have a significant dil sink associated with them (the dil-ex is only healthy at the barest of margins now), then it's a trifecta of critically needed systems support through a small item set. Ie. a brilliant update.
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Personally I think Hangar Craft Power Transmission sounds like a brilliant idea and is just what Engineer carriers need and carriers in general. I plan to run 5 of these consoles. This is one of the best ideas and changes the devs have done in a while. Its a great change from my point of view.
All builds mentioned are perfectly viable and all this will do is add more power creep. EPG builds especially certainly didn't need that.
Nah we don't.
There already are good consoles for a couple of million EC (even for a casual player that's a few days worth of endeavours, tops) on the Exchange. Some C-store ships have interesting ones too.
While it's true that there are no pure pet-boosting consoles that are as easily available as, say, vulnerability locators or phaser relays, it isn't needed in my opinion. Carriers are, after all, more than just carriers, they can - depending on the specific ship - easily use a regular energy, torpedo or EPG build besides their carrier abilities.
Just yesterday, I saw one of my Mobulai frigates deal over 60k damage with a single quantum torpedo. Not impressive by itself, but that's just one pet, and one hit that wasn't even a critical one. For something that's supposed to be a nice extra on your ship, hangar pets are very potent already.
Anyway, nothing will change by me writing this, so I'm going to leave it at this. But even if the carrier stuff was needed: I find it rather silly to keep adding power creep everywhere when that's clearly the last thing this game needs. The game's content isn't designed to handle the amount of damage players can deal. These kind of updates and releases give off the impression that the dev team isn't really aware what the current state of the game or the players' experiences are.
These additions are nice in how they open the doors for more buildcraft. Such changes could also be indicative of other changes coming further down the road.
The kodai fighters are going to love those new fighter consoles with their constant torp spreads. Those consoles are also going to help Eng-heavy Carriers quite a bit.
That said, we're going to have to wait and see what the actual numbers for everything are. I'm hopeful, but also extremely dubious about the effectiveness of the drain consoles. Considering Elite TFOs are a source of obtaining these new consoles, is the drain of the consoles even going to be powerful enough to be relevant in the content they come from?
Economically speaking, this looks very much like a 'rich get richer' addition. People who can handle Elite will effectively get the resources for 'free', people who cannot will have to pay the EC/Zen tax.
If it's not powerful enough *by itself* then at least the new drain console is a start on making drain builds punchier. Bringing up under-used build paths isn't something that can be reasonably expected to be fixed by silver bullets, but the possibility is there conceivably. More likely it'll taken an effort, such as we've seen with hangar pets across successful updates and ships.
The other side to this economically is that you'll be able to farm for in-demand resources through gameplay. At present the hottest items are from loot boxes. Ie. you have to pay zen/dil to make EC quickly or in vast quantity which has propelled exchange inflation on top class items like ships and lobi costumes (the rich have outsized market power and there are very few channels for that EC to siphon back down to the player base). The other routes (doffing, R&D upgrades) haven't been meaningfully expanded on (in accessible ways) for many years. R&D has been actively undermined with the growing irrelevance of crafted items and phoenix upgrades neutering most of the system.
Ie. it's not as if this is launching into an egalitarian market. Giving players access to these materials through elite queues is a step up from current channels for acquiring in-demand, tradable consumables and gear. You also don't need to be rich to spec up for an elite queue, especially for ground (the critical gear for which is cheaper and elite balancing more forgiving than space).
Also, most active players don't play elite as it is, it's a largely dead format. So it's not like the well-speced are getting these resources for free in the first place. Most will have to put in more effort into their TFO's as a result of this update, moving up from their regular advanced grind.
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You really have to open or add the Elites to randoms etc now as well.
Depends on the drop rate. If it's like salvaged technology, where you get one every time you win a TFO, then yes.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Personally, I think any EPG boost is going to be 'too' much.
I'm by no means opposed to these builds, in fact, I fly - or mostly flew, I find the concept pretty lazy and boring nowadays to be honest - a highly effective one myself on my main toon.
But they don't need further boosts, with all the constant spam of anomalies and the Somerville's trait, stuff gets instantly destroyed already without much effort.
The Devs really need to ask themselves whether boosting these things even further will in any way improve the game's playability and other players' joy while playing. To be honest, I find it much more likely that it will mostly have a negative effect on those things.
Why not focus on something else instead, like special uniforms, special visual pieces to put on a ship like the Assimilated Technology set extensions or vanity shields? That would also have allowed players to have something special and show off their ability to pay (and thus keep the game alive) or play Elite content.
Why make it another power creep adding feature? It's not going to make the game healthier in the long run, unless another rounds of nerfs is already being planned to compensate for the ever growing list of things that add more damage. Which would both be an increasingly cynical, and an increasingly necessary thing to do.
No, from tonight's stream they'll be crafting projects available at R&D level 1 for the consoles (10 for the batteries IIRC). Each will require 5 of a certain type of new R&D material and those will be found in specific Elite TFO's (with a 50% rate of dropping at the end from your reward) or from the R&D promo packs (which are also getting a permanent price cut by 20%). The components can also be sold on the exchange. The rest of the requirements are identical to any console crafted at that tier in that discipline (so figure regular R&D mats and a small amount of dil). There's no additional item beyond the new elite TFO/R&D pack components.
From tonight's stream: they're absolutely doing that. Jonathan was very considerate with the effect and design goal here, hence why in addition to basic things like power level and EPG they targeted drain and pets. The goal is to broaden out build paths and lay a groundwork for further expansions. If these consoles under/over perform, they will be very deliberately buffed/nerf as it's absolutely not a case of fire and forget with these. And the design target is very clear with not wanting these to blow up the meta and replace it with a new regime (which Jonathan terms a "destructive" update.) We can expect *some* builds to do terrifying things with these consoles, but at the cost of heavy specialization in those paths (where now it's fairly easy call how to optimize). These are stacking consoles, meaning that to accommodate their full effect you are going to need to take out a lot from your build (sacrificing general clickies and miscellaneous passive buffs in favor of your chosen death flavor). Got an EPG/Torp/Carrier build? What you chose to focus on just got a lot more interesting to decide on.
Folks aren't going to bother otherwise. If materials drop from advanced TFO's they become trivial to acquire. See. all existing materials. You may as not bother with the effort in the first place of trying to revitalize interest in the system if it requires zero change to daily grinding habits. Adding new resources of value is key here, as it provides players with a notable reason for why they should care about crafting resources which at present are almost entirely invisible. There's something new, its' hard to get, you now have to make adjustments to your playtime if you want to speed run your way to a full set of new consoles. Selling the new elite marks is going to be a big revenue generator for free players, as ATM if you want to get rich you need to engage incrementally over long periods of time with low level systems (ex. selling doffs, contraband) or spend dil/zen on master keys to flog at the exchange. Want to talk about paywalls? There you go. Providing a path for EC to siphon back down to players for gametime is desperately needed in this economy.
Making them elite only provides incentive for build improvement that the game doesn't otherwise generally make. It's a gameplay goal. Most MMO's have these through gear progression through progressively harder raids. STO's adding one point of this at a very rudimentary level doesn't blow up the accessibility of the game. There is always the fallback of the exchange and no one is going to be forced to spend real money to get these materials. Got a good build? Throw it at elite, find more points to optimize. It's not a rarified space unavailable but to a chosen ken of 1337 players. Anyone can make it to elite content with care, attention, and goals consistently followed through on their build. It's just a scaling modifier. If that's not your cup of tea, then EC earned from anywhere else in the game will buy you these materials, translating any amount of alternative content into these components. They'll be expensive at first but that'll also incentivize maxing out the supply as folks who can run elite do so more for the extra reward.
Power creep here also isn't additive. Jonathan was very explicit about this tonight. The general design target is *as useful as spire consoles* but as a substitution for them, hence the mutual exclusivity. They are LATERAL expansions of build space without blowing the cap off the current top meta. If things do that on release, expect a quick nerf as Cryptic is being as considerate as they can with this update. They don't want to add new content destructively (such that existing builds MUST move to these consoles. It's a question of specialism vs. generalism. See for example that these being stacking consoles and not single unique consoles. It'll cost your build other choices to equip them for full effect, and that full effect using something other than tac console space is going to help other "non-meta" ships compete with the favored 5 tac console, universal packed, 5/3 default folks love.)
Ie. this is taking care of a wide set of needs the game has. Not being easy, cheap, automatic is not a bad thing by any possible stretch of the (objective) imagination. RPG's need something to strive for in order to keep players engaged. Doing so at the top end helps provide that structure even to those that aren't there yet.
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Conversely, the engineering consoles look great. The ability to roll tactical console damage modifiers on them in addition to their unique effects put them well above the majority of Universal Cat1 consoles. It's particularly fantastic news for Plasma and Tetryon builds because it really helps close the gap between damage types.
"Specific" elite TFOs? So like, gravity kills, days of doom, etc.?
Technically it is powercreep but I see it as good power creep as it bring pet builds closer up to the level of energy, torpedo or EPG builds allowing wider amount of player build options. As long as Carriers don't jump ahead of those builds, I see this as only a positive change.
"For something that's supposed to be a nice extra on your ship, hangar pets are very potent already."
That's not how I see them. I don't see pets as something extra. I see pets and summons as something to build around as the primary component of the ship.
Personally I think this is a brilliant idea as long as its balanced correctly which at a glance it looks to be. The idea to stop us mixing advanced consoles to force us to make a choice is in this case something I can get behind.
Not being able to equip "advanced" consoles from other departments seems like an unnecessary hamstring and complication. Science builds that focus on science aren't likely to have the existing "recategorized advanced" tac consoles anyway, and a science carrier can't equip the advanced science consoles to improve their science capabilities and the advanced engineering consoles to improve their pets at the same time. The science carrier seems to be the one that could have possibly gained the most from these consoles and it could have been really cool.
The EPG consoles might just be the new science meta, or a part of it at least, but every other console will be competing against the well-established meta of tac crit consoles. Also, are these spire tacs the only consoles getting recategorized? There are colony tac consoles and spire science consoles and dilithium mine engineering consoles and crit+eng and crit+sci and crit+tac consoles from discovery reputation that could all be considered "advanced," just to name a few. Some may have equipped discovery crit consoles on top of spire consoles, if they all get recategorized and can't interact, you'll be forcing players out of a build you previously permitted.
Consoles naturally compete for the existing slots on a ship, and I suspect most players feel like there's never enough slots for their perfect build already. I think this category limitation is unnecessary.
I understand attempting to avoid power creep, but the "meaningful choice" you are trying to force here just seems like a very bad idea, all things considered. At best, it's unnecessary, at worst, it could impact some existing builds to the point that players start jumping ship because they refuse to play a game that occasionally and arbitrarily invalidates their builds and investments. (Do remember that embassy plasma proc consoles got nerfed into oblivion, there are probably other examples, but this wouldn't be a first.)
Why are the hangar pet consoles engineering consoles? Carriers were always science based until a few tac and eng outliers came along and then "flight deck cruiser turned carriers" became a thing. Most carriers in the game are science heavy. It seems that these consoles could have been an answer to the issue of science-based carriers being considered less potent than their flight deck carrier counterparts and science vessels in their respective fields. Perhaps they should be universal consoles since carriers can be science, tac, or engineering heavy, even though science is the most common.
The drain consoles adding even more shield drain seems... I mean... more drain is better if you're going to bother with drains, but one of the biggest problems with drain is that there were nerfs put in place to make full energy drain extremely difficult (or perhaps impossible) because it was too OP. Also, there's so many ways to bypass shields entirely or substantially enough to not care about shields and many targets don't even have shields. Both of these factors mean that drain is just really not a very worthwhile investment generally speaking.
If drains converted some part of their drain potential to direct hull damage, for example, if shields are gone, or per shield facing depleted x% of shield drain DPS converts to hull DPS (you could justify this by saying it's interfering with the structural integrity field of the hull, which is supposed to be a type of forcefield technology). Power system drains could produce hull damage per system below x% or x number calling it "eps hemorrhage damage." I think this would make drain not fully crippling enemies (or players in pvp) still worthwhile due to the performance hit a drain target would receive, plus conversion to DPS once you hit a certain hard or soft cap of how far something can reasonably be drained.
What exactly does the particle amplifier console do? Is that 500 (max) dps increase based on EPG? So a gravity well that does 2000dps normally would go up to 2500dps if you have enough epg to hit the cap? Is that 500 max something that can be achieved with a single console? Or is that a max per console that can go even higher? Does it apply to all boff abilities or just science boff abilities? Does it add a base "max 500" dps to abilities that didn't used to have DPS? Will tachyon beam gain 500 "base" dps on top of the shield drain effect? Even if it's just 500 max but it gets applied to every sci dps boff ability and console, it would be a remarkable boost. If it is additional shield bypassing damage, like most science abilities are, it could just make drains even more useless... unless it adds normal DPS to drains that didn't used to have DPS, in which case it could be... interesting. Probably not enough to move the needle away from non-drain being science king.
Speaking of, if you want to really "fix shields" you need to eliminate shield bypass as a mechanic entirely. I would suggest that anything that currently adds shield bypass could convert to bonus shield damage. Anything that inherently bypasses shields, such as anomalies, could do equal damage to all shield facings (1/4 of total to each facing) but if any shield facing goes down it additionally does full damage to hull. Same with mines, equal (1/4) damage to all facings, any facing goes down and you receive full hull damage on top.
The isomagnetic plasma consoles could be interesting, but since they can't be equipped alongside existing meta tac consoles and this would be their direct competition... I expect if they don't outperform the tac consoles under at least certain circumstances, they'll be dead on arrival.
A player would have to use only their pets for them not to be considered an extra though and to not use any other type of damage.
I highly doubt there are many carrier captains - especially captains flying ships with only one hangar bay, which also stand to benefit from these changes - who only use their pets. That very small minority might indeed need these changes, but that's only because they deliberately handicap themselves. Which, for the record, is fine, if they want to play that way, that's their choice.
But to say that carriers needed a boost because there are captains who deliberately choose not to use their ship's full capabilities, seems a bit silly to me. That's like saying that ships with a 5-1 weapon layout are in need of a serious buff because I choose to fly them backwards and only use their aft weapon slots.
For every other carrier captain who - as intended, those weapon slots are there for a reason after all - uses his ship alongside his pets it really is what it is: another DPS boost that isn't needed.
Alright, that is slightly reassuring.
This will be good for Carrier Captains. They would have to be Pet Focused instead of using Pets as a side weapon.
I am not sure +Weapon Power consoles would be equal to the Locators/Exploiters. It sounds like it would be a downgrade.
Drain Consoles would be good if we ever get an Improved Tyken's Rift. Otherwise, as fast as things die, Drain is not particularly useful. Most groups of mobs are frequently gone before two ticks can occur.
EPG Consoles will be good if they have specific flavor of EPG Mods. Otherwise, they will really only be good for an unfocused Build. A Radiation Build, for example, would probably be better off sticking with the current +Radiation Consoles instead of swapping over to basic +EPG.
Yes, hopefully many more people will queue for missions like Azure Nebula elite now. Advanced is just way too boring there, regardless of whether I'm using a beam boat, EPG ship or even a carrier or drain toon.
I hope the people who plan on farming these recipes won't just restrict themselves to ISE or pre-mades.
The loss of crit will be a significant impact. HOWEVER, these consoles do effectively allow you to convert non-tac console slots into tactical console slots. These consoles are, effectively, 'console slot re-engineering' for ships.
In practice, this means you can convert traditionally low tactical console ships like a Voth Rampart or Nakuhl Acheros from a 3 tac console ship into an 8 tac console ship(before T6X). They wouldn't get the benefit of 4%~ extra crit chance of the locators, but what they get in exchange is tremendous. You can give a Fleet Europa/Nimitz firepower on par with most 'modern' escorts.
The current state of Drain is a big problem, shield drains need to be SUPERIOR to conventional damage options to even be considered worthwhile. Every shield drain activation should be putting out around 500k worth of shield damage in the current climate to even approach the realm feasible consideration. Anything less than that is simply not worth the sacrifice of a drain build with the current damage numbers of the game.
That said, it sounded like these drain consoles are bizarrely designed for tanking. As nonsensical as that is, this means the main use case for this console would not be Tyken's Rift, but instead something like Intrusive Energy Redirection(Eng Captain power) and Gravimetric Conversion(Temporal power).
The shield heal still probably needs another 0 added to the base value for serious consideration though; these are 'end game' consoles, afterall. The shield pen buff should probably be converted to shield hardness as well if the theme is meant to be tanking. Leaky shields is one of the main reasons that shield-tanking is objectively inferior to hull tanking. (The other major reason is the absurd scaling of NPC shield drains.)
Not really, considering the builds these are intended for wouldn't use Spire tac anyway. Science builds and carriers don't at any rate, and a drain build would use these as an alternative, or opt not to, at their leisure
They tested builds with spire tac consoles and these consoles and they were stupidly overpowered while being very simple in execution (maxing out two rows of consoles doesn't really leave much remaining creativity). It's worth noting that the new ENG/SCI consoles can come with weapon damage mods, allowing ENG/SCI slots to act as TAC consoles to much more potent degrees than most universals. These are not ordinary eng/sci buffs (and they're re-engineerable, so you wont' have to rely on crafting RNG to get the right mods).
The goal here is to make something else you'll slot instead of the universal default of STO builds ATM, creating new build paths. Ex. builds where you sacrifice tac consoles for key universals while maxing out on these advanced eng/sci consoles. Sure, it's a trade-off but they're designing these to be worth it (and if not in initial release they'll absolutely buff the console. This isn't a fire-and-forget update).
Basically, this injected a TRIBBLE-ton of life into STO build crafting, and that wouldn't have been the case at all if spire tac consoles were cross compatible.
This I'm really excited by. There's a looong list of ships to re-evaluate here for different builds and it's going to be a long process experimenting with those (coupled with the long process of getting a full set of consoles for any given build). STO's build-crafting end-game just got a lot more meat to it with just four consoles (which can be added to over time as well).
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!