I could be wrong but my escort seemed to be tougher and last longer than any BoPs that I came up against, it could be an equipment difference but it seemed fairly consistent.
"fedballing" would vanish completely if Feds had Cloaking technology. You'd see a lot more hit-n-runs from escorts and more actual Tactics because the Escorts wouldn't be so afraid to leave their Cruisers side.
Not all Escrots are Engineers, and according to the BO skill system that we've been given, are *supposed* to be more effective for Tactical officers.
And again, you shouldn't have to mess with equipment and BOs to make yourself as effective as the other guy is by default.
You think a tactic like fed-balling would go away if the feds were given cloak? I just wonder how many of the STO subs even played MMOs before.
It would not go away, it is an effective tactic and it would continue with fed cloaks. So your solution is no good.
on that note; was anyone else slightly disturbed at the raw size of the t3 escort: the Akira? That things bigger then a t2 cruiser!
I dont think the scaling is off by to much. I thought the size was decent. If I recall correctly from the ship comparison charts, the Akira-class is no small tomato.
but in my T3 fed escort I felt like one fat slow ****. BoPs could just sit behind me and adjust without any problems to any of my movements. Not funny getting your behind blasted away by the full frontal weapons of a BoP at point blank range....now I´m the one blasting fed behinds^^
The problem with this (and I'm not saying it's not viable or possible. You're absolutely right about tactics) is that Klingon Escorts don't have to do this. Cloaking is their defense. No need to equip for it directly, no need to train BOs for it, no need to rely more heavily on teammates for heals. Just Cloak and you've escaped after your initial burst.
Fed Escorts have comparable shields and hull and lack the GTFO button that Klingons have. It's not balanced. And won't be as long as Klingons have something as basic as stealth all to themselves.
Wut? Yes we do we'd be murdered if we didn't take powers like polarise hull/engi/sci team etc, a BoP is even more fragile than a normal escort and a raptor is just as fragile as one.
1. I (as in me, the player) am not attached to one faction or another. I'm neither Fed or Klingon. Nor do I have a preference
2. They fixed MES. It's still not even half as effective as Battle Cloak, even maxed out. Which BO slot takes up Battle Cloak again? I always forget what Klingons give up for that particular power.
Only the BoP has battle cloak and it's got the least hp in game iirc. Also as said before in this thread, battle cloak really isn't all it's cracked up to be, if you're being focus fired, you're more likely to get killed from using it than escape, all my escapes with it, I either wasn't being hit very hard or was out of weapons range.
in beta i had TRIBBLE phaser arrays front and rear, front canon, and torps front and rear .... coupled with 3 torpedo powers phaser overload, tacyon, reinforce sheilds, and proper consoles and equipment i did plenty for damage. hi had high mauveabillity thanx to a +25 turn rate engy console, and good combat engine.
there were plenty of pvp where i went 10+:1 or 10+:0 K/D ratio. lots of time i would be pretty banged up, but not dead.
one "secret" that seemd to work ofr me was the resilinet sheilds ..... they have lower total power but the 5% bleed thru vs the normal 10% seemd to help alot.
Suuuuure... they could give escorts something more, right after they restrict sci and cruiser ships from T2 pvp and sci ships from T3 and T4 additionally. :rolleyes:
And btw, raptors have to use play defensively just like everyone else, RSP basically stops incoming damage, if the guy getting FF'd pops it your not going to kill him without completely unreasonable levels of coordination. (everyone turns off all energy weapons, using ONLY shield disables or drains and torps, etc)
Escorts can use this in T3, right when klingons get something other than escorts.
So cloak is pretty much the 'we get less hulls, shields, ship types (2 different focus leaning ships for each type in T5) but get the first shot' ability.
If one of the escorts didnt usually end up dying early in the fight from 5 dps ships focusing, klingons would just plain be at a disadvantage, being squishier with no support and their opening barrage advantage being worthless.
on that note; was anyone else slightly disturbed at the raw size of the t3 escort: the Akira? That things bigger then a t2 cruiser!
The scaling of the class itself isn't too far on the large side; Akira class shpis are a rather large 1.6 million cubic meters (give or take) in volume, and are over 400m long. That's 2/3 of the size of the Sovereign class. In fact, the in-game Akira class is too small, because it only seemed to be about the length of a Constitution class when I pulled my Connie up next to one at Earth space dock.
The class it right, if a little conservative on the size, but what's silly is making one of the Federation's largest heavy cruisers (and sixth largest ship ever built) an ESCORT of all things
The scaling of the class itself isn't too far on the large side; Akira class shpis are a rather large 1.6 million cubic meters (give or take) in volume, and are over 400m long. That's 2/3 of the size of the Sovereign class. In fact, the in-game Akira class is too small, because it only seemed to be about the length of a Constitution class when I pulled my Connie up next to one at Earth space dock.
The class it right, if a little conservative on the size, but what's silly is making one of the Federation's largest heavy cruisers (and sixth largest ship ever built) an ESCORT of all things
Ya, I was also pretty dumbfounded when I heard that the Akira was an escort :P, from the designer of the ship.
"This was my gunship/battlecruiser/aircraft carrier. It has 15 torpedo launchers and two shuttlebays &nash; one in front, with three doors, and one in the back. I really got into it with this one, with the whole idea that the front bay would be the launching bay, and then to return they'd come into the back, because they'd be protected by the rest of the ship."
imho, they need to drop the stargazer, throw in the Akira properly scaled, and design a new fed t3 escort.
Seemed 3 out of 4 ships I saw in open beta were escorts, don't see how they're aren't enough of them.
I was science in OB, not sure if I'll do that again or go escort, leaning toward escort. 2 bars from 11 when the server went down. :mad:
Seemed 3 out of 4 ships I saw in open beta were escorts, don't see how they're aren't enough of them.
I was science in OB, not sure if I'll do that again or go escort, leaning toward escort. 2 bars from 11 when the server went down. :mad:
T2 escort is fun because its frontloaded, t3 escort is bland because it isnt frontloaded (might as well as be broadsiding), t4 is stupid fun because its frontloaded with the ability to broadside, didn't have enough time to play t5 stuff
Lets keep this to a discussion guys n gals, not an argument.
I agree that the battlecloak isn't the "best" thing in the world. but it is an advantage over federation escorts.
Feds can't have a cloak. This will never happen. If you want to discuss that, theres about 100 other posts on that topic
What do you guys think to the idea of a federation only ability?
Maybe an attach pattern which boosts shields and engines 500% for 5 seconds. A bit like evasive maneuvers but more of a "get away".
On seconds thought. The other dps escort for klingons doesn't have a battle cloak. Maybe they should give a look at "get away" abilities for all the escorts.
All i know is that they're the first thing i target. A smart man won't target a tanky science/cruiser over a nice max weapons escort. This is a problem that needs to be addressed.
Please keep the discussion coming, more constructive ideas to promote change.
Unless the klingons have grown a brain, they will still all target you and spam beams while you pop Reverse Shield Polarity and laugh for 15 seconds while your friends kill 3 or 4 of them.
'fedballing' is how the federation fights, even in the show. Cruisers are designed for it, they obviously are not designed for turning. They sit there with their weapons and just shoot everything that comes close. And focused cruiser fire tears BoPs apart
Escorts are not skirmishers, they are cavalry. This means they have to work with the fedball
Actually didn't the Federation steal a Romulan cloaking device in TOS episode "The Enterprise Incident"? Scotty was able to make it work on the Enterprise so that should mean that from there on in Federation ships COULD be able to use some form of stealth tech.
Whether or not this was utilized in further series/lore is another matter of course...
I think a big problem is a lotta escort players focus purely on DPS, I know I'm gonna be snagging science team and emergancy power to sheilds to keep my survivability in an escort as high as I can
You wont last past the alpha stirke., Escorts are DPS what should we focus on? Anything we defer to be able to survive cuts our dmg and being we have almost no hull thats all we are good at. Would you want to survive along time and not do any dmg? Can play a cruiser for that.
Actually didn't the Federation steal a Romulan cloaking device in TOS episode "The Enterprise Incident"? Scotty was able to make it work on the Enterprise so that should mean that from there on in Federation ships COULD be able to use some form of stealth tech.
Whether or not this was utilized in further series/lore is another matter of course...
The Defiant uses a cloaking device borrowed from the Romulans in DS9 aswell, but I don't think the Federation ever actively designed their own or built ships with it in mind.
Actually didn't the Federation steal a Romulan cloaking device in TOS episode "The Enterprise Incident"? Scotty was able to make it work on the Enterprise so that should mean that from there on in Federation ships COULD be able to use some form of stealth tech.
Whether or not this was utilized in further series/lore is another matter of course...
It wasn't. There were treaties in place to prevent Feds using cloaking technology. There were a couple of eps where there were moral dilemmas about having to retrieve a cloaking device from a Fed ship that only had it on the sly for a black op that went wrong. If it all went wrong, full war with the Romulans would have ensued and other diplomatic relations would have been in the toilet from breaking such an important treaty.
Unless the klingons have grown a brain, they will still all target you and spam beams while you pop Reverse Shield Polarity and laugh for 15 seconds while your friends kill 3 or 4 of them.
Funny, I remember many times in t3-t4 where 90% of the players had Reverse Shield Polarity. So when you popped it and started laughing... usually your target did too... then you were back to square one.
It wasn't. There were treaties in place to prevent Feds using cloaking technology. There were a couple of eps where there were moral dilemmas about having to retrieve a cloaking device from a Fed ship that only had it on the sly for a black op that went wrong. If it all went wrong, full war with the Romulans would have ensued and other diplomatic relations would have been in the toilet from breaking such an important treaty.
Ahh ok. I thought as much or there likely wouldn't be this debate right?
I confess, I watched TOS when it first started in repeats back in the 70s when I was a kid, and I have seen those episodes quite a few times, but I'm not really caught up on any of the newer series. :O
Actually didn't the Federation steal a Romulan cloaking device in TOS episode "The Enterprise Incident"? Scotty was able to make it work on the Enterprise so that should mean that from there on in Federation ships COULD be able to use some form of stealth tech.
Whether or not this was utilized in further series/lore is another matter of course...
The federation focuses on cloak detection technology. They are very good at it. They could create a cloak just with that kind of knowledge, but they don't because its just not their style.
Much like 'warships' are not their style. But that changes, i guess cloaking could also, if it becomes necessary.
Cloaks are more useful for hit and run attacks though and it seems like normally the federation prefers to play a defensive game until they want to do a massive push, which is less useful.
As we know lots of ships warping together create large subspace disturbances which could be detected even if the entire fleet is cloaked, so cloaking a fleet wont disguise their movements.
We all know that fed players don't like playing a small, agile glass cannon of a ship. But why?
With the current pvp system in place, it's a zerg fest. Glass cannons don't last long when tab targeted.
Well, since I don't PvP I cannot comment on that, but I am playing an Escort on the PvE side, two reasons:
1. I love the ship classes/designs there = personal taste
2. I prefer the fast and agile ships over the heavy and large ones = personal taste.
Maybe it is just more people's taste to fly one of the larger, heavier ships? Especially considering these typically featured in the movies and series, heh.
On the other hand, for some time in Open Beta I was fearing everyone would just go grab an Escort for their high dps... good luck I was wrong and people go for their personal tastes, heh.
Cloaks are more useful for hit and run attacks though and it seems like normally the federation prefers to play a defensive game until they want to do a massive push, which is less useful.
As we know lots of ships warping together create large subspace disturbances which could be detected even if the entire fleet is cloaked, so cloaking a fleet wont disguise their movements.
it's not that its a perfer'd style, its just what works the best since attacking blindly in the dark tends to get yourself killed.
TBH, forgetting all the game mechanics, I wouldnt be an escort captain, because, at my max level, I wont be able to have an Akira.
Its sad I know, but if my Akira was the top line excort, I would have it, as it is, I will have to go cruisers for a Sovereign.
Im sorry, im not a "power" player, I just want something cool, that I know how to play with.
That would be why, in SWG (jump to lightspeed (less borked than the ground game)), you will find me in an X-wing rather than a jedi fighter. Because I am of the generation that thinks X-wings are cool.
Which BO slot takes up Battle Cloak again? I always forget what Klingons give up for that particular power.
Klingons give up shields and hull across the board for Battle Cloak. And at T2, they give up an entire BO slot. At T3 and T4 they lose a ranked BO slot. At T5 They give up an entire BO slot.
And if you whine about battle cloak, keep in mind you're only talking about one Klink ship class.
Klingons give up shields and hull across the board for Battle Cloak. And at T2, they give up an entire BO slot. At T3 and T4 they lose a ranked BO slot. At T5 They give up an entire BO slot.
And if you whine about battle cloak, keep in mind you're only talking about one Klink ship class.
You can't point out these differences and not take a look at some of the more major ones.
I'd trade my Fed escort for a BoP in 2 seconds.
The BoP is VASTLY superior to the Fed Escort and the Klingon Raptors for a variety of reasons.
The biggest one is the neutral BO slots. That makes the BoP the most versatile ship in the game; you can use any set of abilities you want. You can grab a bunch of Reverse Shield Polarities when every other escort can only use one. You could grab other high tier Engineering cooldowns and your survivability will be vastly superior to any other kind of escort. You can grab amazing CC like Viral Matrix.
Fed Escort and Raptor? Yay, you get to run Tactical Team and a bunch of Torpedo skills!
The BoP also has vastly superior maneuverability so in any kind of dogfight assuming you're a decent pilot you should be able to dominate the Fed Escorts or the Raptor.
And that's all without even mentioning the battle cloak. I'd give up 1 Ensign BO slot and a little bit of hull and shields for the BoP's maneuverability and neutral BO slots easily.
Neutral BO slots are so fricking amazing I can't believe so many Klingons actually complain about their ship. It's ridiculous.
You can't point out these differences and not take a look at some of the more major ones.
I'd trade my Fed escort for a BoP in 2 seconds.
The BoP is VASTLY superior to the Fed Escort and the Klingon Raptors for a variety of reasons.
The biggest one is the neutral BO slots. That makes the BoP the most versatile ship in the game; you can use any set of abilities you want. You can grab a bunch of Reverse Shield Polarities when every other escort can only use one. You could grab other high tier Engineering cooldowns and your survivability will be vastly superior to any other kind of escort. You can grab amazing CC like Viral Matrix.
Fed Escort and Raptor? Yay, you get to run Tactical Team and a bunch of Torpedo skills!
The BoP also has vastly superior maneuverability so in any kind of dogfight assuming you're a decent pilot you should be able to dominate the Fed Escorts or the Raptor.
And that's all without even mentioning the battle cloak. I'd give up 1 Ensign BO slot and a little bit of hull and shields for the BoP's maneuverability and neutral BO slots easily.
Neutral BO slots are so fricking amazing I can't believe so many Klingons actually complain about their ship. It's ridiculous.
Comments
You think a tactic like fed-balling would go away if the feds were given cloak? I just wonder how many of the STO subs even played MMOs before.
It would not go away, it is an effective tactic and it would continue with fed cloaks. So your solution is no good.
I dont think the scaling is off by to much. I thought the size was decent. If I recall correctly from the ship comparison charts, the Akira-class is no small tomato.
I noticed this until I slapped some combat engines in.
Wut? Yes we do we'd be murdered if we didn't take powers like polarise hull/engi/sci team etc, a BoP is even more fragile than a normal escort and a raptor is just as fragile as one.
Only BoP has battle cloak, the raptor doesn't, klings get 2 escort type ships remember.
Only the BoP has battle cloak and it's got the least hp in game iirc. Also as said before in this thread, battle cloak really isn't all it's cracked up to be, if you're being focus fired, you're more likely to get killed from using it than escape, all my escapes with it, I either wasn't being hit very hard or was out of weapons range.
there were plenty of pvp where i went 10+:1 or 10+:0 K/D ratio. lots of time i would be pretty banged up, but not dead.
one "secret" that seemd to work ofr me was the resilinet sheilds ..... they have lower total power but the 5% bleed thru vs the normal 10% seemd to help alot.
And btw, raptors have to use play defensively just like everyone else, RSP basically stops incoming damage, if the guy getting FF'd pops it your not going to kill him without completely unreasonable levels of coordination. (everyone turns off all energy weapons, using ONLY shield disables or drains and torps, etc)
Escorts can use this in T3, right when klingons get something other than escorts.
So cloak is pretty much the 'we get less hulls, shields, ship types (2 different focus leaning ships for each type in T5) but get the first shot' ability.
If one of the escorts didnt usually end up dying early in the fight from 5 dps ships focusing, klingons would just plain be at a disadvantage, being squishier with no support and their opening barrage advantage being worthless.
90% of all ships I see, and this is not an exagerrated amount, are escorts.
The scaling of the class itself isn't too far on the large side; Akira class shpis are a rather large 1.6 million cubic meters (give or take) in volume, and are over 400m long. That's 2/3 of the size of the Sovereign class. In fact, the in-game Akira class is too small, because it only seemed to be about the length of a Constitution class when I pulled my Connie up next to one at Earth space dock.
The class it right, if a little conservative on the size, but what's silly is making one of the Federation's largest heavy cruisers (and sixth largest ship ever built) an ESCORT of all things
I imagine it's based on the fact it was built as a warship, which is what the term escort really means.
Ya, I was also pretty dumbfounded when I heard that the Akira was an escort :P, from the designer of the ship.
imho, they need to drop the stargazer, throw in the Akira properly scaled, and design a new fed t3 escort.
I was science in OB, not sure if I'll do that again or go escort, leaning toward escort. 2 bars from 11 when the server went down. :mad:
T2 escort is fun because its frontloaded, t3 escort is bland because it isnt frontloaded (might as well as be broadsiding), t4 is stupid fun because its frontloaded with the ability to broadside, didn't have enough time to play t5 stuff
I agree that the battlecloak isn't the "best" thing in the world. but it is an advantage over federation escorts.
Feds can't have a cloak. This will never happen. If you want to discuss that, theres about 100 other posts on that topic
What do you guys think to the idea of a federation only ability?
Maybe an attach pattern which boosts shields and engines 500% for 5 seconds. A bit like evasive maneuvers but more of a "get away".
On seconds thought. The other dps escort for klingons doesn't have a battle cloak. Maybe they should give a look at "get away" abilities for all the escorts.
All i know is that they're the first thing i target. A smart man won't target a tanky science/cruiser over a nice max weapons escort. This is a problem that needs to be addressed.
Please keep the discussion coming, more constructive ideas to promote change.
Unless the klingons have grown a brain, they will still all target you and spam beams while you pop Reverse Shield Polarity and laugh for 15 seconds while your friends kill 3 or 4 of them.
Escorts are not skirmishers, they are cavalry. This means they have to work with the fedball
Whether or not this was utilized in further series/lore is another matter of course...
You wont last past the alpha stirke., Escorts are DPS what should we focus on? Anything we defer to be able to survive cuts our dmg and being we have almost no hull thats all we are good at. Would you want to survive along time and not do any dmg? Can play a cruiser for that.
The Defiant uses a cloaking device borrowed from the Romulans in DS9 aswell, but I don't think the Federation ever actively designed their own or built ships with it in mind.
It wasn't. There were treaties in place to prevent Feds using cloaking technology. There were a couple of eps where there were moral dilemmas about having to retrieve a cloaking device from a Fed ship that only had it on the sly for a black op that went wrong. If it all went wrong, full war with the Romulans would have ensued and other diplomatic relations would have been in the toilet from breaking such an important treaty.
Funny, I remember many times in t3-t4 where 90% of the players had Reverse Shield Polarity. So when you popped it and started laughing... usually your target did too... then you were back to square one.
Ahh ok.
I confess, I watched TOS when it first started in repeats back in the 70s when I was a kid, and I have seen those episodes quite a few times, but I'm not really caught up on any of the newer series. :O
The federation focuses on cloak detection technology. They are very good at it. They could create a cloak just with that kind of knowledge, but they don't because its just not their style.
Much like 'warships' are not their style. But that changes, i guess cloaking could also, if it becomes necessary.
Cloaks are more useful for hit and run attacks though and it seems like normally the federation prefers to play a defensive game until they want to do a massive push, which is less useful.
As we know lots of ships warping together create large subspace disturbances which could be detected even if the entire fleet is cloaked, so cloaking a fleet wont disguise their movements.
Well, since I don't PvP I cannot comment on that, but I am playing an Escort on the PvE side, two reasons:
1. I love the ship classes/designs there = personal taste
2. I prefer the fast and agile ships over the heavy and large ones = personal taste.
Maybe it is just more people's taste to fly one of the larger, heavier ships? Especially considering these typically featured in the movies and series, heh.
On the other hand, for some time in Open Beta I was fearing everyone would just go grab an Escort for their high dps... good luck I was wrong and people go for their personal tastes, heh.
it's not that its a perfer'd style, its just what works the best since attacking blindly in the dark tends to get yourself killed.
Its sad I know, but if my Akira was the top line excort, I would have it, as it is, I will have to go cruisers for a Sovereign.
Im sorry, im not a "power" player, I just want something cool, that I know how to play with.
That would be why, in SWG (jump to lightspeed (less borked than the ground game)), you will find me in an X-wing rather than a jedi fighter. Because I am of the generation that thinks X-wings are cool.
Klingons give up shields and hull across the board for Battle Cloak. And at T2, they give up an entire BO slot. At T3 and T4 they lose a ranked BO slot. At T5 They give up an entire BO slot.
And if you whine about battle cloak, keep in mind you're only talking about one Klink ship class.
You can't point out these differences and not take a look at some of the more major ones.
I'd trade my Fed escort for a BoP in 2 seconds.
The BoP is VASTLY superior to the Fed Escort and the Klingon Raptors for a variety of reasons.
The biggest one is the neutral BO slots. That makes the BoP the most versatile ship in the game; you can use any set of abilities you want. You can grab a bunch of Reverse Shield Polarities when every other escort can only use one. You could grab other high tier Engineering cooldowns and your survivability will be vastly superior to any other kind of escort. You can grab amazing CC like Viral Matrix.
Fed Escort and Raptor? Yay, you get to run Tactical Team and a bunch of Torpedo skills!
The BoP also has vastly superior maneuverability so in any kind of dogfight assuming you're a decent pilot you should be able to dominate the Fed Escorts or the Raptor.
And that's all without even mentioning the battle cloak. I'd give up 1 Ensign BO slot and a little bit of hull and shields for the BoP's maneuverability and neutral BO slots easily.
Neutral BO slots are so fricking amazing I can't believe so many Klingons actually complain about their ship. It's ridiculous.
ya, birds of prey are pretty freaking awesome