The Resistance of Starbase One: Transport ships exploding.

whiteknight1x

The transport ships are exploding with no damage. This is basically a copy and paste of Defense of Starbase One which I can play on elite in my sleep. These ships are just exploding with next to no hits of any at all. If you're not hugging a transport ship they just blow up. This was the only way I got the last ship through. I been killing these Borg ships with one shot using FAW III and believe me my FAW does a lot of damage.

The other players in this mission were useless. Seeing 4 players gang up on one ship and struggling to kill it is depressing. They didn't it even try to defend the transports.

lokharno

I've seen this, and I believe it's a consequence of the new Borg Spheres' ability to overload their own warp cores. I don't know whether it's intended to work this way, but it does seem to cause the transports to die seemingly without warning... and kind of a lot.

majorcharvenak

If a sphere is within 5km of a transport, it is not a bug and WAI. Best bet is to kill them before they get that close, control them in an area at distance from the transport flight path, or try to attract the sphere's attention and have them follow you.

roninwolf1981

majorcharvenak wrote: »

If a sphere is within 5km of a transport, it is not a bug and WAI. Best bet is to kill them before they get that close, control them in an area at distance from the transport flight path, or try to attract the sphere's attention and have them follow you.

That's the thing, when the sphere warps in, sometimes they're practically RIGHT ON TOP of the evacuating ship, and DPSers will shred the borg sphere right upon arrival, and there goes the evacuating ship.

pottsey5g

roninwolf1981#2968 wrote: »

majorcharvenak wrote: »

If a sphere is within 5km of a transport, it is not a bug and WAI. Best bet is to kill them before they get that close, control them in an area at distance from the transport flight path, or try to attract the sphere's attention and have them follow you.

That's the thing, when the sphere warps in, sometimes they're practically RIGHT ON TOP of the evacuating ship, and DPSers will shred the borg sphere right upon arrival, and there goes the evacuating ship.

By DPSers you mean the every day causal players who are often lacking in situational combat awareness.

whiteknight1x

No, he means players who's Damage Per Shot rating is 100k+. My FAW should be somewhere north of 200k. My best BO is just over 400k+ with a team that does a lot more damage than I do. Which means I am lucky to score that high because they kill everything very quick. Also, I am not chasing DPS, but designed for Elite Solo PVE. The best DPS players get over 1million so one shots are common. This is why we don't like doing Event TFO on normal. Too easy.

He's also pointing out, since the other players are not protecting the those ships there's not enough Argo to distract the Borg ships. Which is why on normal the Borg Warp Core explosions are so effective. I like flawless runs so I am probably being too critical. There's nothing that can be done about casual players. It is what it is.

So, I probably should stop complaining about this. If we get this mission on Elite, a team that knows what to do these explosions most likely won't be an issue.

By the way, the reason STO is forcing all players to do these Event TFO on normal is because the casual players have problems completing them, so the higher-end players are force to carry the team.

raijinmeister

These "new borgs" simply do too much dmg when they blow up. Happens all the time. They warp in, on top of some transport ship, I one-shot them, and they blow up and eat half or more of the transport ship's hp.
Bad design is to blame here. Not some bug.

baddmoonrizin

Transport ships start out with only 83% health. This is not a bug and WAI. Protect your transport ships. Thread /moved to General Discussion.

fleetcaptain5

raijinmeister#1931 wrote: »

These "new borgs" simply do too much dmg when they blow up. Happens all the time. They warp in, on top of some transport ship, I one-shot them, and they blow up and eat half or more of the transport ship's hp.
Bad design is to blame here. Not some bug.

Players just need to learn when to shoot and when to hold back a little.

It's not like the mission makes it necessary to kill the enemies as fast as possible. That's not the objective, so it shouldn't be a problem to not fire your weapons if the allied ship is too close to a Sphere.

Also, gravity well exists.

fleetcaptain5

whiteknight1x wrote: »

No, he means players who's Damage Per Shot rating is 100k+. My FAW should be somewhere north of 200k. My best BO is just over 400k+ with a team that does a lot more damage than I do. Which means I am lucky to score that high because they kill everything very quick. Also, I am not chasing DPS, but designed for Elite Solo PVE. The best DPS players get over 1million so one shots are common. This is why we don't like doing Event TFO on normal. Too easy.

He's also pointing out, since the other players are not protecting the those ships there's not enough Argo to distract the Borg ships. Which is why on normal the Borg Warp Core explosions are so effective. I like flawless runs so I am probably being too critical. There's nothing that can be done about casual players. It is what it is.

So, I probably should stop complaining about this. If we get this mission on Elite, a team that knows what to do these explosions most likely won't be an issue.

By the way, the reason STO is forcing all players to do these Event TFO on normal is because the casual players have problems completing them, so the higher-end players are force to carry the team.

If you don't destroy the ship, it won't explode.

You're blaming casual players while I've been in just as many instances where it's the people one-shotting everything who're responsible for the evacuation ships blowing up.


Everyone being forced to play normal difficulty content is bad design, that I certainly agree with.

baddmoonrizin

The transport ships fire back. Just today, I escorted a ship trying to keep it alive. Luckily, it seems the rest of the team was on the other side of the map, so no one was doing damage on my side. But the transport ship itself was firing on a Sphere that was too close. I had no abilities to push or pull the Sphere away, out of distance. All I had were my heal abilities and they were on cooldown. This damn transport ship ended up getting itself killed when the Sphere exploded just as the transport neared the end of its run. So, be careful for that, too.

rattler2

Honestly the main issue is not being able to prevent the Spheres from going Kamekaze Overload. Most players can eat at least one and survive the blast. NPCs... not so much.

fleetcaptain5

baddmoonrizin wrote: »

The transport ships fire back. Just today, I escorted a ship trying to keep it alive. Luckily, it seems the rest of the team was on the other side of the map, so no one was doing damage on my side. But the transport ship itself was firing on a Sphere that was too close. I had no abilities to push or pull the Sphere away, out of distance. All I had were my heal abilities and they were on cooldown. This damn transport ship ended up getting itself killed when the Sphere exploded just as the transport neared the end of its run. So, be careful for that, too.

Yeah, the captains commanding those evacuation ships aren't the brightest ones.

rattler2 wrote: »

Honestly the main issue is not being able to prevent the Spheres from going Kamekaze Overload. Most players can eat at least one and survive the blast. NPCs... not so much.

They can survive one explosion. It's the second one that kills them, if they're not healed in the meantime.

Today we had a few players throwing heals, the ships would have survived three explosions probably, if it ever came to that many.

I haven't really paid attention to this, but if it's a buff, maybe things like that one debuffing intel ability, subnucleonic beam and some traits that debuff enemies when firing at them might prevent the explosion.

leemwatson

fleetcaptain5#1134 wrote: »

baddmoonrizin wrote: »

The transport ships fire back. Just today, I escorted a ship trying to keep it alive. Luckily, it seems the rest of the team was on the other side of the map, so no one was doing damage on my side. But the transport ship itself was firing on a Sphere that was too close. I had no abilities to push or pull the Sphere away, out of distance. All I had were my heal abilities and they were on cooldown. This damn transport ship ended up getting itself killed when the Sphere exploded just as the transport neared the end of its run. So, be careful for that, too.

Yeah, the captains commanding those evacuation ships aren't the brightest ones.

rattler2 wrote: »

Honestly the main issue is not being able to prevent the Spheres from going Kamekaze Overload. Most players can eat at least one and survive the blast. NPCs... not so much.

They can survive one explosion. It's the second one that kills them, if they're not healed in the meantime.

Today we had a few players throwing heals, the ships would have survived three explosions probably, if it ever came to that many.

I haven't really paid attention to this, but if it's a buff, maybe things like that one debuffing intel ability, subnucleonic beam and some traits that debuff enemies when firing at them might prevent the explosion.

I always pack Hazard Emitters, but have taken Eng Team, Tac Team and Transfer Shield Strength with me. Helps loads when there's folk just one shotting the NPC's. Can't use subnuc on dying spheres those, as that's when the ability triggers.

However, as much as the few are hating this, keep it! (NPC RIGHTS!!!)

lianthelia

lokharno wrote: »

I've seen this, and I believe it's a consequence of the new Borg Spheres' ability to overload their own warp cores. I don't know whether it's intended to work this way, but it does seem to cause the transports to die seemingly without warning... and kind of a lot.

I've been noticing this and with my ship too where all the sudden I lose like 20-40% of my hull in a blink of a eye

spiritborn

There's that Lukari protomatter device that's a massive AoE heal too, I can't recall atm where I got it but if you got it, it's very useful here.

majorcharvenak

The lack of combat situational awareness and checking fire around friendlies, that @pottsey5g and @fleetcaptain5#1134 mentioned, are probably the key culprits with this issue. I run this TFO (a lot) and I can't tell you how many times folks get into a FAW/CSV/SIA and other EPG AoE frenzies and not watch where the spheres are spawning, where they are at or going at that moment and what else is happening on the map. Warnings in chat (Team and Local) are occasionally followed, but just as often ignored.

As others have mentioned, Gravity wells, Tractor Beam Repulsors, and other control effects can help keep the spheres immobilized or placed/pulled at a safe enough distance for the transports to survive, so long as the person using the effect knows where to place them (i.e. avoid on or close to the evacuation transport flightpath) or pushing targets in the direction of said paths. One possible 'oh hamster' ability I have found useful if heals or other abilities are on cooldown (ymmv depending on your piloting skills and, of course, if you have it) is the Tethered Non-Baryonic Asteroid, which can gather up the Spheres and probes and pull a good distance away. This is, of course, contingent on your teammates exercising good Combat SA, and checking their fire, as stated earlier, to avoid causing the sphere to detonate prematurely and committing fratricide.

Now if neither you or your teammates have any control effects slotted or available, all I can recommend is draw aggro, have them move toward you, kill them quickly once they are at a distance from the transport and have your heals ready. My two ec.

majorcharvenak

Not sure if my comment was moderated or just didn't post due to my connection (probably the latter) but, as others have stated combat situational awareness and checking one's fire is the key to minimizing unintentional transport loss. Control effects like GW, TBR and what not, can help in that regard so long as you target an add close enough for the pull to be effective but far enough away from the transports flight path so as not to be on top of them. The Disco rep ability Tethered Non-Baryonic Asteroid can also be useful to 'guide' the spheres away. But good awareness of where the spheres tend to spawn and fire control are the key to getting the transport to safety imho. If you see a sphere near a transport about to detonate, fire off that hull heal at the transport as you can respawn but it can't. My two ec.

spiritborn wrote: »

There's that Lukari protomatter device that's a massive AoE heal too, I can't recall atm where I got it but if you got it, it's very useful here.

^This...I keep this on my loadout and it's a godsend!

fleetcaptain5

spiritborn wrote: »

There's that Lukari protomatter device that's a massive AoE heal too, I can't recall atm where I got it but if you got it, it's very useful here.

It's from one of the Lukari ships. The triangle shaped one, if I'm not mistaken.

fleetcaptain5

leemwatson wrote: »

fleetcaptain5#1134 wrote: »

baddmoonrizin wrote: »

The transport ships fire back. Just today, I escorted a ship trying to keep it alive. Luckily, it seems the rest of the team was on the other side of the map, so no one was doing damage on my side. But the transport ship itself was firing on a Sphere that was too close. I had no abilities to push or pull the Sphere away, out of distance. All I had were my heal abilities and they were on cooldown. This damn transport ship ended up getting itself killed when the Sphere exploded just as the transport neared the end of its run. So, be careful for that, too.

Yeah, the captains commanding those evacuation ships aren't the brightest ones.

rattler2 wrote: »

Honestly the main issue is not being able to prevent the Spheres from going Kamekaze Overload. Most players can eat at least one and survive the blast. NPCs... not so much.

They can survive one explosion. It's the second one that kills them, if they're not healed in the meantime.

Today we had a few players throwing heals, the ships would have survived three explosions probably, if it ever came to that many.

I haven't really paid attention to this, but if it's a buff, maybe things like that one debuffing intel ability, subnucleonic beam and some traits that debuff enemies when firing at them might prevent the explosion.

I always pack Hazard Emitters, but have taken Eng Team, Tac Team and Transfer Shield Strength with me. Helps loads when there's folk just one shotting the NPC's. Can't use subnuc on dying spheres those, as that's when the ability triggers.

However, as much as the few are hating this, keep it! (NPC RIGHTS!!!)

People tend to forget how important the shields are.

I've seen it happening in Gravity Kills very often too. A tac team is usually sufficient there because the Jupiter has high shield regen, but it needs that automatic redistribution. TSS greatly helps too indeed, if (like here) the ships don't have high shield regen.

phoenixc

If you hit the Intelligence power that makes you untargetable just before the sphere hits zero the blast misses you (usually) but it is a bit flaky so you cannot depend on it.

fleetcaptain5#1134 wrote: »

raijinmeister#1931 wrote: »

These "new borgs" simply do too much dmg when they blow up. Happens all the time. They warp in, on top of some transport ship, I one-shot them, and they blow up and eat half or more of the transport ship's hp.
Bad design is to blame here. Not some bug.

Players just need to learn when to shoot and when to hold back a little.

It's not like the mission makes it necessary to kill the enemies as fast as possible. That's not the objective, so it shouldn't be a problem to not fire your weapons if the allied ship is too close to a Sphere.

Also, gravity well exists.

With autotargeting and uninterruptable firing cycles that it is not always possible to avoid firing and killing a sphere that is too close.

Of course, from what I have been seeing in chat, the phenomenon has had an unintended consequence and a lot of people have stopped bothering with the transports because they figure it is inevitable to lose at least one (and even all) of them so they concentrate on powering through instead. If the devs put the mechanic in for anything except trying to get players to broadside at extreme range instead of the usual forward firing charge at the target, then it blew up in their faces.

fleetcaptain5

phoenixc#0738 wrote: »

If you hit the Intelligence power that makes you untargetable just before the sphere hits zero the blast misses you (usually) but it is a bit flaky so you cannot depend on it.

fleetcaptain5#1134 wrote: »

raijinmeister#1931 wrote: »

These "new borgs" simply do too much dmg when they blow up. Happens all the time. They warp in, on top of some transport ship, I one-shot them, and they blow up and eat half or more of the transport ship's hp.
Bad design is to blame here. Not some bug.

Players just need to learn when to shoot and when to hold back a little.

It's not like the mission makes it necessary to kill the enemies as fast as possible. That's not the objective, so it shouldn't be a problem to not fire your weapons if the allied ship is too close to a Sphere.

Also, gravity well exists.

With autotargeting and uninterruptable firing cycles that it is not always possible to avoid firing and killing a sphere that is too close.

Of course, from what I have been seeing in chat, the phenomenon has had an unintended consequence and a lot of people have stopped bothering with the transports because they figure it is inevitable to lose at least one (and even all) of them so they concentrate on powering through instead. If the devs put the mechanic in for anything except trying to get players to broadside at extreme range instead of the usual forward firing charge at the target, then it blew up in their faces.

Not once have any of the transports in the missions I've been in exploded because people were firing not enough. It's always the case that players just keep shooting without thinking whether or what they should be shooting. (1)
'Powering through' is exactly the problem (combined with players throwing Gravity Wells precisely where they shouldn't be). If players are seeing that as the solution in this scenario, that's not the Devs' fault.

I mean, I don't even see how anyone could think that would be a logical solution. Especially since there's no point in blowing up the ships faster, too. If you had to destroy, say, five Spheres within the first ten seconds or so, it would be understandable. But nowhere does the game encourage destroying them as fast as possible. In fact, players are actively discouraged to do so. Them doing so anyway, is their choice.


It's all a matter of controlling one's own actions. And a tiny bit of situational awareness.

leemwatson

phoenixc#0738 wrote: »

If you hit the Intelligence power that makes you untargetable just before the sphere hits zero the blast misses you (usually) but it is a bit flaky so you cannot depend on it.

fleetcaptain5#1134 wrote: »

raijinmeister#1931 wrote: »

These "new borgs" simply do too much dmg when they blow up. Happens all the time. They warp in, on top of some transport ship, I one-shot them, and they blow up and eat half or more of the transport ship's hp.
Bad design is to blame here. Not some bug.

Players just need to learn when to shoot and when to hold back a little.

It's not like the mission makes it necessary to kill the enemies as fast as possible. That's not the objective, so it shouldn't be a problem to not fire your weapons if the allied ship is too close to a Sphere.

Also, gravity well exists.

With autotargeting and uninterruptable firing cycles that it is not always possible to avoid firing and killing a sphere that is too close.

Of course, from what I have been seeing in chat, the phenomenon has had an unintended consequence and a lot of people have stopped bothering with the transports because they figure it is inevitable to lose at least one (and even all) of them so they concentrate on powering through instead. If the devs put the mechanic in for anything except trying to get players to broadside at extreme range instead of the usual forward firing charge at the target, then it blew up in their faces.

No, it didn't blow up in Cryptic's faces. I've seen a notable shift in players NOT firing whilst transports are passing if there is a sphere within 5km, and just healing them. The NPC borg aren't strong enough to overcome players healing the transports. As I am flying a Sci ship, I've usually thrown a well to pull everything out of range too. This is a win....sorry.

fleetcaptain5

Players being limitedly aware of the situation isn't new behaviour either. Look at all the (half) failed instances of Infected Space (1) most of us have been in, and then tell me that a lack of situational awareness combined with spamming spacebar is something new.

It's just that it's being punished a bit more now. Which, in my opinion, is a very good thing. It should have happened years ago, discouraging this mindless spamming of abilities and just activating everything as soon as things come off cooldown.

There's nothing wrong with players being encouraged to actually think a bit before they act. Nothing wrong with players being encouraged to behave like actual humans instead of a NPC. I mean, we are supposed to play Starfleet captains in this game, aren't we?

Also, it's not as if it's a very big loss if they don't, event progress will be given anyway.

(1) To give just the clearest example, you might as well pick Infected Ground, Operation Wolf, Defend Rhiho station... Basically anything where there are some priority tasks or targets.

fleetcaptain5

As for autotargeting: I've noticed that the game tends to autoselect the probes, not the Spheres. In fact, I've even seen it happen multiple times that the Sphere was the first ship visible - and even when clicking it while at a safe distance, the game would have selected the probe as soon as I hit spacebar. Spheres are actually the hardest to select, even manually.

majorcharvenak

@leemwatson and @fleetcaptain5#1134 beat me to and summed up my response perfectly. Only better. While there is the occasional and sometimes unavoidable loss of a transport, there is little reason why flawless runs are not the norm with respect this TFO aside from lack of situational awareness and shot discipline on the part of players. Two more ec.

majorcharvenak

The other thing to watch out for are the pets, especially since nearly every third ship is either carrier-capable or an outright carrier these days.

phoenixc

majorcharvenak wrote: »

@leemwatson and @fleetcaptain5#1134 beat me to and summed up my response perfectly. Only better. While there is the occasional and sometimes unavoidable loss of a transport, there is little reason why flawless runs are not the norm with respect this TFO aside from lack of situational awareness and shot discipline on the part of players. Two more ec.

From what I have seen flawless runs are the norm for Defense of Starbase One but rare in Resistance of Starbase One. And judging from chat a large percentage the players simply don't care anymore because when they did try to keep all the transports alive it rarely ever worked, and they only tolerate so much frustration before saying "tribble it" and ignoring that optional.

The few perfect runs of it I have been in have with only one or two exceptions featured Cnidarians with their healing/defense fields up, which is good PR for those previously much maligned bioships, and one or two perfect runs without the jellyfish healing everything have been done with megawell builds sucking all the enemy ships out towards the outskirts (though relatively few people seem to run that powerful of megawell builds to pull it off without a few spheres getting through and killing the transports).

And it is especially hard for pet wranglers (not just fighters either, other pets like the power crystal and various summoning devices as well for example) to suddenly break off from spheres since the pets don't always do what you tell them and tend to get distracted by enemy units nearby.

annemarie30

that's why i fly a Megawell specifically in TFOs. if you see me in a tfo grind, I'm flying a sci ship, it's the only way to get any damage in against the zipflys blasting everything in 30 seconds

baddmoonrizin

I would say about a third of all the runs I've been in have lost at least one transport. Of those, it seemed that I was the only one even attempting to heal the transports. And also, those loses were due to lack of situational awareness or players just not caring about the transports. Quite often, it's been due to an uber-DPSer zipping around the map indiscriminately shooting at everything. I'm sure that's because the number of targets is finite, and the faster they are cleared, the faster the map goes.

phoenixc

I was in a run just an hour or so ago where none of the transports at all made it out. It had a Cnidarian in it too, but they never put up the field and in fact sat at the starting position for about half of the run before moving or doing anything else.

It also had someone zipping around hosing down large swaths with AoE cannonfire that seemed to cool down way too fast and they just kept flying toward the densest cluster towards their front without regard to what was in it or what would get damaged by the explosions.

All in all it was the perfect example of all the complaints here rolled into one FUBAR run (at least it was over quickly though).

I am finding the thing about substituting the assimilators for the cubes in order to make the cubes more impressive hilarious, the cube at the end is lucky to last more than five seconds and the only significant danger in the whole scenario is the sphere explosions. The new spheres are more appropriate for solo runs where you can take time to deal with the things and not get blindsided by someone blowing one or two up right behind you.