Ten Forward Weekly 8/1/23

protoneous · August 2023

Source: https://reddit.com/r/sto/comments/15pf707/ten_forward_weekly_8123/ Credit to: https://reddit.com/user/TheSajuukKhar/

Yeah, I totally forgot, my bad. The every other week thing throws me off so bad.
Cryptic has tried multiple times to make playable Borg Cubes work, its never worked out

Problem with the Maelstrom is that its possible to make pretty much everything perform really well in STO. Unlike building your ship to be extremely powerful, when you make one, very visually identifiable, weapon so powerful it makes the situations much more frustrating, and something of a rugpull, to see someone just melt the boss in one hit. Its "optimized for sadness" to have the game play that way, which isn't what developers want. That was combined with the QA team testing out bosses for new TFOs, only to have maelstroms just destroy the bosses instantly, made it obvious there was a problem.

Jonathan had two different fixes in mind, the elegant simple fix, and the complex targeted fix.

Complex targeted fix was have it do less damage against bosses in certain situations

The simple fix was when they first made it they figured a 90s cooldown would be the extreme upper end of what players would accept, not wanting to delay gratification for too long. It turned out to likely be more of a sweet spot. when they tried the lower cooldown paradigm they found that not only did the torpedo need all that muscle to do its job, which surprised Jonathan since he thought it would be able to do much of what it was trying to do at the lower cooldown, but they also found players liked the slower play pattern. The results of this showed they needed the precision solution.

There's never going to be a bunch of Maelstroms in the game because they're expensive on the back end. A normal torpedo has around 15 powers, the maelstrom has around 60. Though Jonathan does have ideas for a few more kinds of maelstrom torps.

The need for Maelstrom updates is intricately linked to getting more kinds of Maelstrom weapons. Jonathan is reluctant to just put something new into the game without a chance to test it in a live environment. There is no meaningful way to replicate the live environment internally, so any new kind of weapon system he intends to make more of will have to go through a few patch cycles unless he gets really lucky on the first shot. Maelstrom seemed like it was in a good spot from the start, but people became better at optimizing it, and the issues began to filter down into the casual environment, and content designers. They would've either done something to fix the maelstrom, or done something to all the bosses in the game to work around the Maelstrom. Jonathan was pretty instant that the Maelstrom would need time to wiggle before he started making more, so if there changes land well then he can start making more.

The Maelstrom starting off with max charges isn't really an issue with its over performance. That only really matters in the speedrun/DPS testing environment, but that isn't what they balance the game for. They don't mind or seek performance in that environment. Most encounters start off with low level enemies, so while you can use it to destroy an early wave you will need to sandbag it if you want to use it on something meatier.

When asked about wide angle maelstrom Jonathan says he doesn't know. Says he thought about a torpedo sidewinder situation, but hes more interested in making the weapons hes already made reach a healthy situation rather than adding more.

Also wants to proliferate already existing weapons that haven't. Calls out wide angle heavy dual beam banks, says the issue is that they use different art which makes them significantly more expensive to implement. Jonathan needs an artist to make more of those.

Jonathan plans to look at shield viability next. Says it might be awhile, the advanced consoles took a lot out of the systems team. Lots of burning the midnight oil(does specify Cryptic does not make them crunch), says getting the implementation right, especially on the science consoles, took a lot more then they thought it would. Wants to do a bit more to the advanced consoles, feels like the science ones, especially drain, are under performing a bit.

Wide angle dual heavy beam banks, maelstroms, spec affiliated fighters, proton weapons, and energy torpedoes, are all things Jonathan wants to proliferate more. But that's all the little stuff.

Bigger thing is shields, but that's a bit more tricky since the only real difference between shields and hull, and why people care about hull and not shields, is that you die when your hull hits zero, and STO isn't terribly threatening. Trying to make enemies keep up with power creep on normal is impossible due to how many new toys they give players. Trying to figure out what shields can take away from enemies is difficult. Shields are intrinsically tied to difficulty, and after shields, and perhaps joined at the hip with shields, is how to give players who want more difficult content that kind of content. Jonathan not sure what that means. Maybe something after elite, maybe changes to elite. Maybe a different reward or event structure, like an elite event.

Jonathan's current idea is a two prong attack. Prong one is the torpedo/shield interaction never really did what it was supposed to do, but how to do that without nerfing torpedo builds. 2nd prong is in the TV shows shields stop enemies from doing "TRIBBLE" to your ship, so he can imagine a world where there is a relation between shields and control resistance where enemies have more control effects, but so long as your shields are up you don't feel it as much. These are just pie in the sky ideas, but he thinks they wouldn't upset the game environment too much, make the game feel more like the show, and promote more of a rock/paper/scissors gameplay. Energy torpedoes are an under explored space that seem like they would torpedo builds a way to deal with enhanced torpedo interaction.

Very good chance Cryptic will create the new version of the Inquiry from PIC s3 at some point. Conversations have started.

New infinity lockbox ship Friendship class

Art was from Tobias Richter

Cryptic was tempted to use designs that included making the nacelles a rail gun, and similar stuff. But those lead into directions that don't feel Star Treky/unique.

Ship is a dedicated support ship since its been awhile since they made one, and it fits within how the Federation works with cooperation between various races, which ties into emerging real world strategy among many smaller nations banding together.

Despite being a FDC it has 4/4 weapons because it didn't feel right to give it 5/3.

Console was inspired a bit by the tethers we see in DSC S3.

Ship is an ENG carrier, and not a sci carrier, because sci carriers are in a weird place. Originally the hanger pet eng console was meant to be a sci console. But when Jonathan went through the game data he found there was like 3 ships with max console slots and hanger bays, but something like 20 with max eng slots and hanger bays. Sci may have originally been intended to be the carrier spec, but ENG has all the actual minion mancer stuff/functional ships with hanger bays. Cryptic wants to support sci carriers more, but that's not an immediate thing. Might be something they do if/when they do another round of advanced consoles. Might see a sci carrier console there, which would open the door to more science carrier ships.

Cryptic is looking into the entity cap issue, but its not something that can easily be addressed.

Jonathan is worried about starfleet cloak proliferation. Its something the shows introduced so they can't really avoid it. Not sure that updating Klingon cloaks is the right answer. More likely Klingon players will get access to some trait to buff cloaks or something.

AFK tech in STO is not just based off of damage dealing, its based off of doing anything.

Not immediate, but on Jonathan's radar, to add niche damage types like cold/fire damage to spire/advanced consoles. He wants to make sure weird energy types are pretty well served before getting into that. Doesn't want to just fill these items full of junk mods people have to re-roll. Might start off doing something like a new ship item that affects both fire and cold damage and work from there, etc.

Kael will bring up affect spam again. According to Jonathan it was on their radar, but programming got side swiped for several months on a different thing that meant that had to be put on hold.

Very good chance a ship from another Trek game will show up, but it isn't the Ark Royal.

Issue with the cyclone was that they were training people to help with ships, and something that was supposed to be a test rig got accidentally snuck into the live build.

Kael will follow up on the two Fed, and one KDF, bridges that aren't player usable made available since the issues around them have been solved.

'Jonathan isn't interested in unlocking a bunch of carrier pets since he thinks that washes out difference between the ships. He is more willing to unlock old ship consoles since some of those are meta relevant, but they're attached to ship that can't succeed, and the rest are kind of harmless.

Kael will ask again about the advanced/elite versions of recent TFOs being turned on/made.

Jonathan isn't happy with the way eng powers are on captains right now, but its acute enough of an issue to not be a priority. Admits eng captain powers are a little less appealing.

There has been some discussion about making like all Fed bridges available on all Fed ships

Cryptic keeps poking at "squadron player ships" ideas.

Older items will be updated if Jonathan can collect enough of them to do something like make a set bonus, or make a targeted improvement to a bunch of things. Unlikely to just go an update one off old things to be better since there's so much stuff in the game.

Can't really just bolt on a system like give certain BOFFs roles like #1 and have it affect the game in a meaningful way.

Jonathan went back and added auto execute functions for every ship he made where it could support it.

foxman00 · August 2023

Thank you for cross-posting the Cliff Notes from SajuukKhar on Reddit/STO

fleetcaptain5 · August 2023

The simple fix was when they first made it they figured a 90s cooldown would be the extreme upper end of what players would accept, not wanting to delay gratification for too long. It turned out to likely be more of a sweet spot. when they tried the lower cooldown paradigm they found that not only did the torpedo need all that muscle to do its job, which surprised Jonathan since he thought it would be able to do much of what it was trying to do at the lower cooldown, but they also found players liked the slower play pattern. The results of this showed they needed the precision solution.

I can relate to that.

The best gaming experience is at low level, when you only have a few things you can activate. A few phasers to fire, with one torp that you have to fire at the right time.

It's much more enjoyable than flying a ship with seven beams that use scatter volley (for preferential targeting), overload, kemocite and EPtW, plus weapon synergy if you're flying a miracle worker ship. You spend more time looking at your tray, which results in enemies getting destroyed faster, which in turn means you're looking at your tray sooner because there's a new group to use your powers on... And so on.

More powerful weapons that can be fired less often: I wouldn't even consider it a trade-off. It's a win-win regarding how I'd experience the game. I'd love for the game to become a bit more tactical/strategic. Instead of 'spam abilities and weapons fire as much as you can, as often as you can'.

spiritborn · August 2023

fleetcaptain5#1134 wrote: »

The simple fix was when they first made it they figured a 90s cooldown would be the extreme upper end of what players would accept, not wanting to delay gratification for too long. It turned out to likely be more of a sweet spot. when they tried the lower cooldown paradigm they found that not only did the torpedo need all that muscle to do its job, which surprised Jonathan since he thought it would be able to do much of what it was trying to do at the lower cooldown, but they also found players liked the slower play pattern. The results of this showed they needed the precision solution.

I can relate to that.

The best gaming experience is at low level, when you only have a few things you can activate. A few phasers to fire, with one torp that you have to fire at the right time.

It's much more enjoyable than flying a ship with seven beams that use scatter volley (for preferential targeting), overload, kemocite and EPtW, plus weapon synergy if you're flying a miracle worker ship. You spend more time looking at your tray, which results in enemies getting destroyed faster, which in turn means you're looking at your tray sooner because there's a new group to use your powers on... And so on.

More powerful weapons that can be fired less often: I wouldn't even consider it a trade-off. It's a win-win regarding how I'd experience the game. I'd love for the game to become a bit more tactical/strategic. Instead of 'spam abilities and weapons fire as much as you can, as often as you can'.

It's trade off in sense that you trade off dps for better gameplay, but yeah having impactful moves that you'd use less often so that it would be more tactical rather then just "push all buttons" fights these days tend to be. Have it be so that in your typical fight you can use the big buffs/attacks only once or twice, so you need to be mindful as to when to use them.

so in essence you could either be really powerful at start of the fight by using all your big buffs at once and then be much weaker rest of the fight as those buffs are on cooldown, or conserve your buffs and be not quite as powerful but for a longer time as all your big buffs aren't on cooldown at once.

fleetcaptain5 · August 2023

spiritborn wrote: »

fleetcaptain5#1134 wrote: »

The simple fix was when they first made it they figured a 90s cooldown would be the extreme upper end of what players would accept, not wanting to delay gratification for too long. It turned out to likely be more of a sweet spot. when they tried the lower cooldown paradigm they found that not only did the torpedo need all that muscle to do its job, which surprised Jonathan since he thought it would be able to do much of what it was trying to do at the lower cooldown, but they also found players liked the slower play pattern. The results of this showed they needed the precision solution.

I can relate to that.

The best gaming experience is at low level, when you only have a few things you can activate. A few phasers to fire, with one torp that you have to fire at the right time.

It's much more enjoyable than flying a ship with seven beams that use scatter volley (for preferential targeting), overload, kemocite and EPtW, plus weapon synergy if you're flying a miracle worker ship. You spend more time looking at your tray, which results in enemies getting destroyed faster, which in turn means you're looking at your tray sooner because there's a new group to use your powers on... And so on.

More powerful weapons that can be fired less often: I wouldn't even consider it a trade-off. It's a win-win regarding how I'd experience the game. I'd love for the game to become a bit more tactical/strategic. Instead of 'spam abilities and weapons fire as much as you can, as often as you can'.

It's trade off in sense that you trade off dps for better gameplay, but yeah having impactful moves that you'd use less often so that it would be more tactical rather then just "push all buttons" fights these days tend to be. Have it be so that in your typical fight you can use the big buffs/attacks only once or twice, so you need to be mindful as to when to use them.

so in essence you could either be really powerful at start of the fight by using all your big buffs at once and then be much weaker rest of the fight as those buffs are on cooldown, or conserve your buffs and be not quite as powerful but for a longer time as all your big buffs aren't on cooldown at once.

I'd like that.

Unfortunately, I suspect that any cooldowns of such new buffs would quickly be made circumventable by selling new traits, tokens or whatever.

I hope I'm wrong though.

spiritborn · August 2023

fleetcaptain5#1134 wrote: »

spiritborn wrote: »

fleetcaptain5#1134 wrote: »

The simple fix was when they first made it they figured a 90s cooldown would be the extreme upper end of what players would accept, not wanting to delay gratification for too long. It turned out to likely be more of a sweet spot. when they tried the lower cooldown paradigm they found that not only did the torpedo need all that muscle to do its job, which surprised Jonathan since he thought it would be able to do much of what it was trying to do at the lower cooldown, but they also found players liked the slower play pattern. The results of this showed they needed the precision solution.

I can relate to that.

The best gaming experience is at low level, when you only have a few things you can activate. A few phasers to fire, with one torp that you have to fire at the right time.

It's much more enjoyable than flying a ship with seven beams that use scatter volley (for preferential targeting), overload, kemocite and EPtW, plus weapon synergy if you're flying a miracle worker ship. You spend more time looking at your tray, which results in enemies getting destroyed faster, which in turn means you're looking at your tray sooner because there's a new group to use your powers on... And so on.

More powerful weapons that can be fired less often: I wouldn't even consider it a trade-off. It's a win-win regarding how I'd experience the game. I'd love for the game to become a bit more tactical/strategic. Instead of 'spam abilities and weapons fire as much as you can, as often as you can'.

It's trade off in sense that you trade off dps for better gameplay, but yeah having impactful moves that you'd use less often so that it would be more tactical rather then just "push all buttons" fights these days tend to be. Have it be so that in your typical fight you can use the big buffs/attacks only once or twice, so you need to be mindful as to when to use them.

so in essence you could either be really powerful at start of the fight by using all your big buffs at once and then be much weaker rest of the fight as those buffs are on cooldown, or conserve your buffs and be not quite as powerful but for a longer time as all your big buffs aren't on cooldown at once.

I'd like that.

Unfortunately, I suspect that any cooldowns of such new buffs would quickly be made circumventable by selling new traits, tokens or whatever.

I hope I'm wrong though.

Obviously this would need a new way of thinking about skills since doing this and then nullifying it with the next major ship release wouldn't really be worth the development time.

Since this wouldn't just be a sell new weapon like this, but whole reworking how powers work in combat. You could make the factions have their own identity this way, for example Romulans would get an additional damage boost if you opened combat by decloaking while, the Federation would be a more about grinding the opponent thru superior endurance.

rattler2 · August 2023

I find it interesting that they specifically mention the Ark Royal. lol

smokebailey · August 2023

rattler2 wrote: »

I find it interesting that they specifically mention the Ark Royal. lol

Lemme have a Saladin and I'll be happy. Or that ship from TAS, the early warp ship.

tom61sto · August 2023

rattler2 wrote: »

I find it interesting that they specifically mention the Ark Royal. lol

Given that the other cross-overs have been Hangar pets so far, that probably means the "Federation fighter" from that game is coming in pet form to STO.

rattler2 · August 2023

tom61sto wrote: »

Given that the other cross-overs have been Hangar pets so far, that probably means the "Federation fighter" from that game is coming in pet form to STO.

It already exists. The Kodai Fighters from the Legendary Akira.

stolok · August 2023

Older items will be updated if Jonathan can collect enough of them to do something like make a set bonus, or make a targeted improvement to a bunch of things. Unlikely to just go an update one off old things to be better since there's so much stuff in the game.

Existing sets from the ancient days of the Borg being actual dangerous enemies have set bonuses, but they aren't very useful compared to modern sets. How about updating the Assimilated Set? Increase the hull regen rate and chance to trigger the regen (Autonomous Regeneration Sequencer), increase the chance to trigger shield regen and to throw off debuff effects (Multi-Regenerative Shield Array), and give the Assimilated Shields the same ability to adapt to damage type as the Aegis shield. It seems odd that Aegis does this and the "Borg" tech shield does not anyway. Right now owning the Assimilated Set is just a waste of vault space. Nearly any other set is better.

Same for the Omega Adapted Borg Technology Set. They've got individual and set bonuses, but those are wimpy. Increase them a bit or at least increase the chance to trigger. The Assimilated Module is an absolute joke right now compared to things like Vulnerability Locators.

There is actually an interesting avenue to implementing this, if the next new episode sequence is going to be about the Borg from the Mirror Universe:

Look at all the Borg technology we've 'acquired' over the years. Star Fleet is practically a Borg client by now. Why is this never a liability when facing the Borg? Shouldn't tech 'borrowed' from the Borg be easier for them to subvert? It would be interesting to see the Mirror Borg re-assimilate our liberated Borg Boffs on the ground or shut down our Borg consoles in space.

But the story could end up with more learning and a new level of understanding of Borg tech, which would justify an upgrade to existing things like the Omega sets. Rather than adding completely new items to the Omega rep tree, you could have upgrade projects that take existing items and apply the newer stats. Only available to people who finish the new arc, of course...

crm14916 · August 2023

Very good chance Cryptic will create the new version of the Inquiry from PIC s3 at some point. Conversations have started.

Obviously, it’ll sell as another lockbox… but it would be super nice if it showed up as an option for those who already spent the efforts to get it…

Very good chance a ship from another Trek game will show up, but it isn't the Ark Royal.

I always get a bit excited when I read comments like this from the Weekly, then I realize, “Oh, it’ll be a lockbox ship and I’ll never get to fly it except on Tribble…”

Older items will be updated if Jonathan can collect enough of them to do something like make a set bonus, or make a targeted improvement to a bunch of things.

I’m just interested in a small handful of remaining T5 ships that need a T6 update… I spent a healthy chunk of Zen on the new Pack that included the Star Cruiser… It was great to see it done, especially since it was a bit of a surprise for me… Still would like to see the Dyson ships and a Vulcan Science Spearhead…

Anyway, thanks again for posting the notes! Love reading your synopsis…

rattler2 · August 2023

crm14916 wrote: »

I always get a bit excited when I read comments like this from the Weekly, then I realize, “Oh, it’ll be a lockbox ship and I’ll never get to fly it except on Tribble…”

Not necessarily.
The Valkyries came off C-Store ships, and they're originally from Star Trek: Invasion. The Kodai's came off the Legendary Akira, and they're from SFC 2 and Shattered Universe. Again off a C-Store ship.
So... C-Store is just as likely, especially the TNG era designs. Could open up the door to designs like the K'vortcha from Dominion Wars and the Fek'lhr class from SFC 3/Armada.

Ten Forward Weekly 8/1/23

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