Someone posted a similar topic back in January but as far as I can tell it hasn't been addressed since then.
So here goes: Why is it when you click which side of your shield you want the other 3 shield sides to divert power to it only transfers power for about 4 seconds?
I know that you can bind what ever buttons you want to transfer power and you can put the commands for port, for, starboard, aft and equalize power to the tool bar, but I currently use the left, up, right and down arrow buttons, and mouse clicks on my little ship picture on my UI to do it. Because my left hand is always busy with the WASD 1234 ect... and Space Bar and my right had is on the mouse, looking around. So I usually use mouse clicks on the ship picture to transfer shield power.
But for example, when I am flying away from an enemy and he is hitting my aft shields, I click to transfer power to my Aft shields and it transfers power from my other shields to my aft shields. I have no problem with the amount it transfers or the speed in which it does. But my complaint is that it only transfers power for a few seconds, causing me to have to click the aft shield icon or push the down arrow repeatedly.
Why is that? Why can't I just select which shield I want to transfer power to and it does it until either the other shields deplete, the shield I am transferring power to gets full, I de-select it or select another shield, or chose to equalize them?
I like to picture what is going on in my ships bridge during a battle. So there I am broad siding an enemy ship and my left shield weakens to about 10% so I order my Chief Engineer to transfer shield power to my left shield, he does and my front, right and rear shields all go from 100% to 95% and my left shield goes from 10% to 25%, but the enemy is still shooting my left side so my shield goes down to 9%. That is all right, it's to be expected. What isn't expected is that after a few seconds of transferring power from my forward, right and rear shields, my engineer decides on his own that it's enough and stops transferring the power.
So I have to tell him again, WTF?
Picard never had to repeat an order in combat, why do I, can't my crew be smart enough to know that if I tell them to do something I want them to do it until it is done?
I think this stems from the guess/assumption that when cryptic was designing ship combat, they wanted the player to always be actively involved at all times. One way was to micro manage shields and a short timer on reinforcement does just that. Quite frankly I think its too short and I find myself being more annoyed that the shields need constant attention so much that I can't do my other bridge officer abilities when they are up. I find it very aggrivating.
What I find more agrivating is that I very frequently have to click several times on a BO ability or shield key (which are bound to 1,2,3,4) for them to actually work. about 90% of the time one press of a button does not activate an ability. I end up pressing the buttons 2-4 times for the ability to finally activate. This is the only game I have that does this, and my keyboard is brand new. Highly aggrivating!
You're right about Picard never having to repeat an order, but you also have to remember that you're not just playing the role of the captain, but the entire bridge crew! You are that engineer on the bridge seeing to it that the shields are exactly the way the captain wants them. I can see where it may get annoying having to punch in shield redistributions, but I'm rather pleased that it doesn't "stay on."
As an engineer captaining a cruiser, I will often distribute power to compensate for shields in the red once or twice, but then not touch it for a while because I've banked a different shield-side into enemy fire (and I need all the strength I can get in the currently full shields), meaning I can let the depleted shields regenerate instead of being redistributed.
@ Dave111
That's very odd...I've had this happen a few times (usually with my High Yield Torpedo BO ability, and a couple of times with my Quantum Torpedos) but it's fleeting and certainly isn't a constant problem for me.
Do you have any other latency issues that might be causing that?
Comments
I guess many players simply use an "autofire" macro for distribute-shield-power.
What is that? I never heard of one of those.
What I find more agrivating is that I very frequently have to click several times on a BO ability or shield key (which are bound to 1,2,3,4) for them to actually work. about 90% of the time one press of a button does not activate an ability. I end up pressing the buttons 2-4 times for the ability to finally activate. This is the only game I have that does this, and my keyboard is brand new. Highly aggrivating!
You're right about Picard never having to repeat an order, but you also have to remember that you're not just playing the role of the captain, but the entire bridge crew! You are that engineer on the bridge seeing to it that the shields are exactly the way the captain wants them. I can see where it may get annoying having to punch in shield redistributions, but I'm rather pleased that it doesn't "stay on."
As an engineer captaining a cruiser, I will often distribute power to compensate for shields in the red once or twice, but then not touch it for a while because I've banked a different shield-side into enemy fire (and I need all the strength I can get in the currently full shields), meaning I can let the depleted shields regenerate instead of being redistributed.
@ Dave111
That's very odd...I've had this happen a few times (usually with my High Yield Torpedo BO ability, and a couple of times with my Quantum Torpedos) but it's fleeting and certainly isn't a constant problem for me.
Do you have any other latency issues that might be causing that?