Before the nerf patch, combat looked a little like this...
--- BEGIN ---
A lone Federation Starship warps in near an apparently uninhabited world. The Captain expects trouble, but there's nothing on scanners. As the ship comes around a large asteroid, three Klingon Birds of Prey uncloak and attack.
The Captain rises from his chair and yells to his Tactical Officer, "OH TRIBBLE! NOT AGAIN!"
After scrambling around, using all available cooldowns, the Federation ship manages to kill one of the Birds of Prey and has another halfway down when the Federation ship explodes in a brilliant fireball, killing everyone on board.
A second death later, the Federation Starship limps away from the first of three battles toward the second spawn point, where there's a battleship. After 10 minutes of battling, running away, burning cooldowns, the Captain has managed to do 1% of damage to the battleship once. Finally, the Captain throws his hands up in disgust and warps out.
--- END ---
As you can guess, this was absolutely and stupidly frustrating, but that was ST:O Open Beta before they nerfed the NPC ships to pea shooters. Now combat missions look like this...
--- BEGIN ---
A lone Federation Starship warps in near an apparently uninhabited world. The Captain expects trouble, but there's nothing on scanners. As the ship comes around a large asteroid, three Klingon Birds of Prey uncloak and attack.
The Captain rises from his chair and yells to his Tactical officer, "LULZ PEW PEW LAZORZ!1!"
Moments later, the lone Federation Starship has destroyed all three Klingon ships without a scratch, looted something he's going to sell for a stupid amount on the Exchange and is flying to the next waypoint.
--- END ---
Now this is patently silly. It just is. There's no defending it. Last night, in a Fleet Action, I solo'd an entire battle group of Gorn NPC ships: 4 cruisers and 2 battleships. My toon is a Lieutenant Commander in an Excalibur. I even accidentally aggro'd a second group of Gorn cruisers and battleships and managed to kill half of the cruisers before I finally died.
Here's what needs to happen, Cryptic. Before, while fights were hard, they were realistic. The problem was SCALE. Presently, the problem is BALANCE. The solution is this:
Fewer Enemy Units AND Stronger Enemy Units.
There's no reason for a solo Captain finding himself in a fight against 3 enemy ships or a single enemy ship that is 2 or 3 classes better, with 3 forward firing weapons and 2 rear firing weapons and shields that we couldn't even dent. If there is more than one enemy, then both enemies must be weaker than the hero. A fight against two ships should be doable, but require the Captain to use every trick in the book to survive, but he should be able to survive, even if his ships suffers some damage in doing so.
My suggestion? Make enemies about 80% of their former strength, reduce the number of enemies encountered by 50%. So if an encounter has TWO Cruisers now, it should have ONE cruiser -OR- ONE frigate and FOUR fighters. At no point should a solo player be forced to fight a full strength battlecruiser class vessel, unless he is ALSO in a full strength battlecruiser. A single
damaged battlecruiser is okay, but nothing more, because the fire power even a damaged battlecruiser can output is more than enough to take down the shields of a light cruiser in a few volleys.
Please remember that our starter ships had only TWO forward firing weapons and ONE rear firing weapon, and unless we were VERY lucky, the best weapons we were going to have were the Commons we bought from vendors, and the greens we might have gotten from quests.
Thank you for reading.
Comments
i have noticed some times the more in your team the crazier the fighting.
though npcs should spawn at 2-3 lvls higher the average of the of the teams lvl
not sure how its set up but i think its similiar
for fun though until they fix the solo side of the house i would recomend mission frunning in full teams
It is so bad now, my friends and I will team up...to do missions solo. The increased number of ships from being in a team of 3 is the only way to make it even remotely challenging.
for posterity
You'd be surprised. There's a lot of people who play this game who literally want the game to hand you everything. Personally, I couldn't agree your points more.
Though, I don't disagree about the game getting insanely easy. Tier 0 and can take 2 Battleships, 2 cruisers, 4 similar craft - the Battleships will at least make it difficult to keep my shields up and it is a newbie zone where people are learning to play so its prolly about right for That area. If things are similar in others then things definately need to be tweaked more (the mission instances scale and that scaling could be harsher/better as well depending on the type of mission and the player record/journal).
I found the early combat difficulty nice to be honest. This newer combat is a bore 'n snore. I find that in combat I can just ignore whatever is going on and happily chat with my friends and fleet members without having to worry about every losing. Ground combat is the same as well. I walk around and pick up items and chat while my officers mop up whatever enemies are in the way.
Before the combat change I had some awesome battles with Romulan and Hirogen ships. Not so much anymore.
On the upside I read a dev post from Jackalope saying that they were considering adding in some difficulty sliders so we could adjust the missions to whatever we wanted. I don't have the post offhand but keep in mind it said "considering" and not "for sure". I will say though that I do want this. Down with bore 'n snore combat!
Edit: Found the dev post: http://forums.startrekonline.com/showpost.php?p=1859069&postcount=150
Now a battleship is about as hard as I expect an equal level cruiser to be.
They really need a Euro server. Trans-Atlantic gaming FTL.
I loled... i agree totally too.
But I do agree....I'd like to see the early game a bit more challenging
Ya Hya Chouhada
Huzzah! Another Dune fan! But, yes, it shouldn't take Plasma Torpedoes to make an enemy balanced.
I noticed you fixed your sig...lol
the Hirogens were tough without those damn torpedoes......how far along are you?
Please make Star Trek like STAR TREK
1 Klingons rarely hunt alone and are always a worthy advisary but like wolves hunt in packs
2 Romulans never enter a fight they cannot win that is simply illogical
3 Cardassians are arogant and make foolish moves dispite equal fire power they often loose
4 Borg have always been far superior in power and simply should not be beaten by any single ship (boarding party required)
5 The dominion, a worthy apponent always but still only equal in power to the Federation
6 Gorn well they are just too slow
7 Undine Like the Dominion
Fire at will Trolls but i too feel STO pve is out of balance
Take notes Cryptic, fewer ships, stronger ships.
Make it so.
But I must say, since hitting around Lt. Cmdr 6 or so, I've been having a little more trouble in my escort. Romulans are pretty tough.
defenatly too easy right now.
/signed
then when you add play style please note that some take heavy damage and others take almost no damage. small tweaks sure but tweaking like you suggest is like cutting bread with a jackhammer.
But the ships being so weak is ridiculus, so:
Did you play in Beta?
LOL! Who taught you to speak the fearsome "Human" language???
Both actually, while I could use an increase in difficulty, I am not ASSUMING that we NEED one.
A difficulty slider would be nice.
Ground battles are rediculously easy as well. I can walk away and come back 10 minutes later and still be alive with a full room of guys fighting me and just my away team. It is stupid and repetitive if I dont have to even try let alone be at the computer. I can just walk away on every encounter and come back with everything dead.
GIVE ME A GAME TO PLAY NOT SOME HELLO KITTY PANSY BS! I love strategy make me think for a second on how to win an encounter.