FAW doesn't "miss" because under the hood it is really an AOE attack. The miss animation does something along the lines of create a dummy, invisible target and shoot it. But AOE attacks just process the first x targets within range.
I personally dont like the miss Idea. An energy beam will go at the speed of light so how can it miss ? a ship cant move out of the way of a beam unless its going warp speed.Were also talking about starships that can track things light years away so how can it miss a target thats practically in its face.
It misses for the same reason any other weapon can miss: it wasn't aimed properly.
I personally dont like the miss Idea. An energy beam will go at the speed of light so how can it miss ? a ship cant move out of the way of a beam unless its going warp speed.Were also talking about starships that can track things light years away so how can it miss a target thats practically in its face.
Starships have these funny things called jamming sensors, shields and deflectors.
It isnt that the starships weapons and high tech tracking systems are incapable of hitting something as large as three or more football fields; it is more that, the enemy ship has countermeasures that make it difficult to target and difficult to score a hit.
Deflector shields, while not strong enough to deflect a torpedo, do obscure sensor readings. This alone already makes targeting a starship have some degree of error; but not enough alone.
Jamming sensors, these are countermeasures designed to purposely interfere with the targeting sensors of another ship. These add to the difficulty of getting a solid target lock.
Shields also interfere with targeting sensors. To what degree, Im not sure, but Ive often heard the tactical officer state in Star Trek that the shields of some particular ship made it impossible to get decent scans of a vessel.
A Starships actual outer hull material sometimes has an effect on sensors and scans not being able to penetrate X,Y,Z material
Lastly, with all the above, the ships are moving, just adding to the difficulty so, I hope that helps.
FYI, I'm doing some testing on this myself, as well.
For what it's worth, I believe that the statements I made on STOked may have either been edited or misquoted. I I tried to make it clear that the graphical-hit situation (described above) is a separate consideration from any potential issues with a mechanical-hit situation. And while I can't do anything about the first, I can look into the second, and am currently doing so.
If I uncover anything in my investigation I'll be sure to get that information onto the forums.
here is an idea for fire at will :
if it misses -> give it a chance to hit a cloaked enemy
or better yet, let us fire, fire at will while no enemies are around just to look if there are cloaked enemies -> Picard did it in Nemesis
I personally dont like the miss Idea. An energy beam will go at the speed of light so how can it miss ? a ship cant move out of the way of a beam unless its going warp speed.Were also talking about starships that can track things light years away so how can it miss a target thats practically in its face.
Aren't Star Trek weapons FTL? Or was that Retconed? Impulse could get a ship up to light speed in TOS. If the weapons were limited to light speed, combat would be problematic.
(Per Memory Alpha, impulse can 'sustain warp 0.5' per Star Trek: The Motion picture. This is a retcon of TOS, and is problematic in other ways too... exactly what is slowing the ship to prevent further acceleration?)
Dealing with HYT plasmas in STFs, I can say that FAW will nearly guarantee taking out the torps (as will, oddly, torp spread), but I've OFTEN had the issue of targeting the torp and firing normally and missing as it closes in several KM and then one-shots me.
after looking closely at even the speediest, highest defense, targets in pvp matches i see a nice large yellow number for every single shot fired at them. if some of those numbers were zeros, or miss that would be one thing, but i haven't seen any of those.
can we just make FAW beam rapid fire and be done with it? it single handedly makes destructible useless. 90% of the time i use FAW because it acts like a beam rapid fire, the aoe is just gravy.
FAW should be a beam rapid fire, single target, a 5th beam added to the cycle.
then make a beam aoe, something like beam full spread, and make it look like the beam spread at the beginning of the nemisis fight. under the hood it could be photonic shockwave with 7-10 range and no knock back, and every one in range is dealt a single beam strike worth of damage. cloaked ships maybe have a base 33% chance of being detected with this, lessened with higher aux and stealth specing.
it sounds like a complete reprogram is needed, again, to fix it. quit wile your ahead and try this!
Aren't Star Trek weapons FTL? Or was that Retconed? Impulse could get a ship up to light speed in TOS. If the weapons were limited to light speed, combat would be problematic.
(Per Memory Alpha, impulse can 'sustain warp 0.5' per Star Trek: The Motion picture. This is a retcon of TOS, and is problematic in other ways too... exactly what is slowing the ship to prevent further acceleration?)
An active warp field is, what I think, would limit further speed. That or stronger deflectors in the absence of a warp field.
Shields should be removed from this particular discussion. If a phaser (or whatever) hits your shields, and your shields absorb or deflect it ... well not only is that how it already happens when you get hit ... the whole idea is that ... you got hit.
Now onto the idea of Duranium Shadows? I missed that. What is that all about?
Shields should be removed from this particular discussion. If a phaser (or whatever) hits your shields, and your shields absorb or deflect it ... well not only is that how it already happens when you get hit ... the whole idea is that ... you got hit.
Now onto the idea of Duranium Shadows? I missed that. What is that all about?
Shield need to be in the discussion, because they interact with targeting sensors... maybe not in this game, but in Trek lore.
An active warp field is, what I think, would limit further speed. That or stronger deflectors in the absence of a warp field.
There is negligible resistance in space... 'normally' thrust provides acceleration, not speed per se. The only limits are light speed itself and any relativistic effects.
There is negligible resistance in space... 'normally' thrust provides acceleration, not speed per se. The only limits are light speed itself and any relativistic effects.
Isn't he talking about reaching "light speeds" with impulse power. Thus, the relativisitc effectsw of FTL speed and the seemingly required warp field to be able to do that.
Otherwise, I'd agree, enoug thrust is needed. :cool:
I normally play tacs with DHCs and turrets but will often have at least 1 beam array for this skill. Especially if its a real facing beam array.
its uses
finishing off that target i just did a fly by on.
drawing agro off teammates that need a hand
finishing multiple targets that others have been working on (a little rude but fun)
and the biggy HEAVY PLASMA TORPS!!! these things are lethal and a pain to manually target and kill while doing anything else. This skill is pretty much 100% chance to stop those death balls not just coming at you but at others as well.
I do keep BO aswell as against a single target BO can deal impressive damage to shields allowing my cannons/torps to work on the hull.
my advice if your a tank take FAW and a lower level BO. the FAW draws agro and the BO does some damage good pair.
if your DPS based then you should use dual cannons (preferably heavys) as much as possible but a daul beam bank up front or single beam array at the back can be used to draw agro to good effect. its supprising how often even good tanks need a few seconds of not being shot at every now and then.
Isn't he talking about reaching "light speeds" with impulse power. Thus, the relativisitc effectsw of FTL speed and the seemingly required warp field to be able to do that.
Otherwise, I'd agree, enoug thrust is needed. :cool:
In TOS, you only needed warp to go beyond light speed. Furthermore, relativistic effects relate to how time is experienced, rather than actual ability. Thrust is thrust... a ship that is already travelling only needs enough thrust to overcome any resistance, of which there is little to none in space.
In the movies, they seemed to have retcon-nerfed impulse heavily. I am not sure about TNG, but appearantly Voyager's full impulse could achieve 80% lightspeed (which even though inexplicably still slower than in TOS would still be fast enough to make targetting speed of light weapons difficult).
FAW 1 and 2 cycled constantly are excellent for damage and aggro holding. Add directed energy modulation 3 and emergency power to weapons for an excellent damage boost.
Small video of it in action:
Disclaimer: I click on Red Alert in sector space and was dumped right into the end of borg defense mission. I had none of my shield resists or defenses up in the first few seconds as my brain was blown seeing two unimatrix bosses....thats when I got hit by the heavy plasma torp :mad:
Anyways..after that all my defense and offense abilities were activated.
Pay attention at the damage of the FAW and how many heavy torpedoes it shot down.
On my Fleet support Cruiser, I run with B-FAW I & II, I then have Beam Target Axillary Subsystems. I then also use DEM I and DEM III. I also have EPTW and run with an Engineer career. Lastly, I use the Thunder-child automated defense turret.
The rest of my abilities are heals. I play this character as: Anti-mine, Anti-High Yield Torpedo, Anti-Drones, and Anti-Fighters; as I also tank for escorts in taking agro.
It is a fun build, especially in some PVP matches when the Klingons try and spam drones it ends fast like a fireworks show. Down side is however that Im no match for a well-equipped DPS Escort or DPS Cruiser. I can only tank them for about two minutes; and only if Ive got RSP and dont have ally heals on cool-down.
The problem is that without an active warp bubble the ship is likely subject to the effects of relativistic mass and thus requires exponentially more energy to achieve further acceleration the faster it already is. This would naturally limit the maximum speed a starship can achieve without warp drive, since the impulse engines cannot provide infinite acceleration.
Another problem is that space is definitively not as empty as many believe it to be. And I'm not talking about this mysterious "dark matter" stuff but rather mundane things like micro-meteorites and dust and so on. The big picture on this site shows what happens when a tiny sphere with a weight of 1.2 g = 0.0012 kg = less than 0.003 lb hits a bunch of metal sheets with a speed of ~11 km/s = ~40000 km/h = ~24855 mph. This means that with increasing speed the deflector dish needs to create a rapidly growing (especially since the kinetic energy of the impact grows with the square of the ship's speed) protective field around the ship to prevent it from being turned into a really fast swiss cheese.
One reason I've heard why starships in Star Trek wouldn't follow neutonian flight mechanics (and thus couldn't reach arbitrary speeds by just keeping accelerating) was that the ships' inertia dampeners would reduce/lower/eliminate the ships' own inertia as well, thus requiring constant acceleration to keep a given speed.
FYI, I'm doing some testing on this myself, as well.
For what it's worth, I believe that the statements I made on STOked may have either been edited or misquoted. I I tried to make it clear that the graphical-hit situation (described above) is a separate consideration from any potential issues with a mechanical-hit situation. And while I can't do anything about the first, I can look into the second, and am currently doing so.
If I uncover anything in my investigation I'll be sure to get that information onto the forums.
Hi Borticus,
Here is the time link to that FAW question on STOked 114 - link.
As you can see, your response is not edited and is very much intact. It seems like your answer was confirming that the animation of FAW is 100% hit and that the hits used to have a chance to miss but that was not currently the case.
Thanks, Irish! That confirms that it was just a failure to communicate on my part. Such things happen in an off-the-cuff Q&A session.
My earlier statement in this thread stands: The power mechanics should have a chance to miss, even if it is not shown to players graphically, and I'm in the process of making sure that is the case.
Once I've nailed down the mechanics of how it's working, including any fixes that may need to be applied, I plan to give an in-depth explanation of how the power works. Because even with a fix, it may still appear to never miss.
Thanks, Irish! That confirms that it was just a failure to communicate on my part. Such things happen in an off-the-cuff Q&A session.
My earlier statement in this thread stands: The power mechanics should have a chance to miss, even if it is not shown to players graphically, and I'm in the process of making sure that is the case.
Once I've nailed down the mechanics of how it's working, including any fixes that may need to be applied, I plan to give an in-depth explanation of how the power works. Because even with a fix, it may still appear to never miss.
More info when I have it!
heres a test you can run, have some one fire a heavy plasma at you and try to shoot it down a few times without FAW. then try shooting it down a few times with FAW.
the result will be you will miss it about 10 times befor you shoot it down without FAW, and with FAW the first shot that hits it will destroy it every single time. i see it in stfs every single time i play them.
my suggestion in post #24 stands, and others appear to like it
heres a test you can run, have some one fire a heavy plasma at you and try to shoot it down a few times without FAW. then try shooting it down a few times with FAW.
the result will be you will miss it about 10 times befor you shoot it down without FAW, and with FAW the first shot that hits it will destroy it every single time. i see it in stfs every single time i play them.
my suggestion in post #24 stands, and others appear to like it
FAW is awesome. I use two copies on my Jem'Hadar ship and I rip things apart. People have told me that they dont believe that the same setup would work on a fed escort ship and I ran it on my defiant, fleet escort and multivec. Defiant and FE were awesome with it and the MVAM was decent with it.
Buddy is using it on a specialized bortas setup and he is getting 4k+ on all hits... whereas I would sit between 2k-4k on my jem.
heres a test you can run, have some one fire a heavy plasma at you and try to shoot it down a few times without FAW. then try shooting it down a few times with FAW.
the result will be you will miss it about 10 times befor you shoot it down without FAW, and with FAW the first shot that hits it will destroy it every single time. i see it in stfs every single time i play them.
my suggestion in post #24 stands, and others appear to like it
The problem is that without an active warp bubble the ship is likely subject to the effects of relativistic mass and thus requires exponentially more energy to achieve further acceleration the faster it already is. This would naturally limit the maximum speed a starship can achieve without warp drive, since the impulse engines cannot provide infinite acceleration.
If they can go zero to 0.5 light speed within a minute, they should be able to handle a higher velocity even if it acceleration started to taper off.
Another problem is that space is definitively not as empty as many believe it to be. And I'm not talking about this mysterious "dark matter" stuff but rather mundane things like micro-meteorites and dust and so on. The big picture on this site shows what happens when a tiny sphere with a weight of 1.2 g = 0.0012 kg = less than 0.003 lb hits a bunch of metal sheets with a speed of ~11 km/s = ~40000 km/h = ~24855 mph. This means that with increasing speed the deflector dish needs to create a rapidly growing (especially since the kinetic energy of the impact grows with the square of the ship's speed) protective field around the ship to prevent it from being turned into a really fast swiss cheese.
That is what the 'navigational deflectors' supposedly handle (Yes, I know the concept is problematic... the ship should be torn to shreds at any significant speed any time the forward shields are down, since weapons presumably knock the nav shields down too. Nevertheless it is the official answer)
One reason I've heard why starships in Star Trek wouldn't follow neutonian flight mechanics (and thus couldn't reach arbitrary speeds by just keeping accelerating) was that the ships' inertia dampeners would reduce/lower/eliminate the ships' own inertia as well, thus requiring constant acceleration to keep a given speed.
In TOS they didn't slow to impulse to fight, so again there is a continuity problem there. (There is of course another problem that even in TNG they were too proud to wear seat belts, regardless of how many lives they might have saved. The Battle Bridge was an exception, but they only actually used that once...). Regardless, Inertial dampners would only be an issue to the extent of acceleration or course change. It is only differences in acceleration that need to be compensted for. Since the dampners can already handle the initial 0 to 0.5, there is no reason they shouldn't be able to handle 0.5 to 1.0. It would be the same.
I have the same experience with Volley fire, it takes out heavy plasmas fast.
thats a true cone aoe though, everything in the cone should high a high chance of getting hit. FAW is supposed to be your beam arrays firing relativly normal shots at random targets, it shouldn't act like a 10 second, 360 degree, high damage buff, perfect accuracy aoe.
I love FaW, it does everything. Screens out torpedoes, mines, photonic fleets (at least enough to finish them with a torp spread), drones, fighters, uninvited relatives... There is ONE situation where you should never use it under any circumstance: If someone drops an Aceton Assimilator. A friend of mine bought the Draguas recently and never leaves home without that console, regardless of what ship he's flying. And if you use FaW while one of those things is out then your shields are going to drop like crazy and you'll have no-one to blame but yourself.
I do see my FAW miss a lot of times. The thing is this is only visible against players who have high +def ratings. Do FAW while an escort is running circles around you and you will see the beams fire wide and miss a lot.
Dont confuse the ability not 'missing' with the fact that you have good accuracy in your ship.
Heavy torpedos apparently get a bonus to defense when they are inside 3km. Thats when the miss-whiff-fest happens. For that you better have repulsors
BFAW is also great for shooting at stuff when you don't want to re-target... for example if you were to, say, use 4x Dual Beam Bank and 4x Turret, and your target left your DBB cone, you could fire off FAW to have your dual beams wreck a 2nd target while you turn about...
Really good for when you are using Sensor Analysis and don't want to retarget.
Comments
It's been fixed at least two times because having 100% accuracy wasn't intended. The bug's crept back in after both fixes.
It misses for the same reason any other weapon can miss: it wasn't aimed properly.
Starships have these funny things called jamming sensors, shields and deflectors.
It isnt that the starships weapons and high tech tracking systems are incapable of hitting something as large as three or more football fields; it is more that, the enemy ship has countermeasures that make it difficult to target and difficult to score a hit.
Deflector shields, while not strong enough to deflect a torpedo, do obscure sensor readings. This alone already makes targeting a starship have some degree of error; but not enough alone.
Jamming sensors, these are countermeasures designed to purposely interfere with the targeting sensors of another ship. These add to the difficulty of getting a solid target lock.
Shields also interfere with targeting sensors. To what degree, Im not sure, but Ive often heard the tactical officer state in Star Trek that the shields of some particular ship made it impossible to get decent scans of a vessel.
A Starships actual outer hull material sometimes has an effect on sensors and scans not being able to penetrate X,Y,Z material
Lastly, with all the above, the ships are moving, just adding to the difficulty so, I hope that helps.
here is an idea for fire at will :
if it misses -> give it a chance to hit a cloaked enemy
or better yet, let us fire, fire at will while no enemies are around just to look if there are cloaked enemies -> Picard did it in Nemesis
Aren't Star Trek weapons FTL? Or was that Retconed? Impulse could get a ship up to light speed in TOS. If the weapons were limited to light speed, combat would be problematic.
(Per Memory Alpha, impulse can 'sustain warp 0.5' per Star Trek: The Motion picture. This is a retcon of TOS, and is problematic in other ways too... exactly what is slowing the ship to prevent further acceleration?)
+1
I love this idea! Make it so...
An active warp field is, what I think, would limit further speed. That or stronger deflectors in the absence of a warp field.
Now onto the idea of Duranium Shadows? I missed that. What is that all about?
Shield need to be in the discussion, because they interact with targeting sensors... maybe not in this game, but in Trek lore.
There is negligible resistance in space... 'normally' thrust provides acceleration, not speed per se. The only limits are light speed itself and any relativistic effects.
Isn't he talking about reaching "light speeds" with impulse power. Thus, the relativisitc effectsw of FTL speed and the seemingly required warp field to be able to do that.
Otherwise, I'd agree, enoug thrust is needed. :cool:
I normally play tacs with DHCs and turrets but will often have at least 1 beam array for this skill. Especially if its a real facing beam array.
its uses
finishing off that target i just did a fly by on.
drawing agro off teammates that need a hand
finishing multiple targets that others have been working on (a little rude but fun)
and the biggy HEAVY PLASMA TORPS!!! these things are lethal and a pain to manually target and kill while doing anything else. This skill is pretty much 100% chance to stop those death balls not just coming at you but at others as well.
I do keep BO aswell as against a single target BO can deal impressive damage to shields allowing my cannons/torps to work on the hull.
my advice if your a tank take FAW and a lower level BO. the FAW draws agro and the BO does some damage good pair.
if your DPS based then you should use dual cannons (preferably heavys) as much as possible but a daul beam bank up front or single beam array at the back can be used to draw agro to good effect. its supprising how often even good tanks need a few seconds of not being shot at every now and then.
In TOS, you only needed warp to go beyond light speed. Furthermore, relativistic effects relate to how time is experienced, rather than actual ability. Thrust is thrust... a ship that is already travelling only needs enough thrust to overcome any resistance, of which there is little to none in space.
In the movies, they seemed to have retcon-nerfed impulse heavily. I am not sure about TNG, but appearantly Voyager's full impulse could achieve 80% lightspeed (which even though inexplicably still slower than in TOS would still be fast enough to make targetting speed of light weapons difficult).
Small video of it in action:
Disclaimer: I click on Red Alert in sector space and was dumped right into the end of borg defense mission. I had none of my shield resists or defenses up in the first few seconds as my brain was blown seeing two unimatrix bosses....thats when I got hit by the heavy plasma torp :mad:
Anyways..after that all my defense and offense abilities were activated.
Pay attention at the damage of the FAW and how many heavy torpedoes it shot down.
http://youtu.be/UG4ae0rxM-8
The rest of my abilities are heals. I play this character as: Anti-mine, Anti-High Yield Torpedo, Anti-Drones, and Anti-Fighters; as I also tank for escorts in taking agro.
It is a fun build, especially in some PVP matches when the Klingons try and spam drones it ends fast like a fireworks show. Down side is however that Im no match for a well-equipped DPS Escort or DPS Cruiser. I can only tank them for about two minutes; and only if Ive got RSP and dont have ally heals on cool-down.
Another problem is that space is definitively not as empty as many believe it to be. And I'm not talking about this mysterious "dark matter" stuff but rather mundane things like micro-meteorites and dust and so on. The big picture on this site shows what happens when a tiny sphere with a weight of 1.2 g = 0.0012 kg = less than 0.003 lb hits a bunch of metal sheets with a speed of ~11 km/s = ~40000 km/h = ~24855 mph. This means that with increasing speed the deflector dish needs to create a rapidly growing (especially since the kinetic energy of the impact grows with the square of the ship's speed) protective field around the ship to prevent it from being turned into a really fast swiss cheese.
One reason I've heard why starships in Star Trek wouldn't follow neutonian flight mechanics (and thus couldn't reach arbitrary speeds by just keeping accelerating) was that the ships' inertia dampeners would reduce/lower/eliminate the ships' own inertia as well, thus requiring constant acceleration to keep a given speed.
Hi Borticus,
Here is the time link to that FAW question on STOked 114 - link.
As you can see, your response is not edited and is very much intact. It seems like your answer was confirming that the animation of FAW is 100% hit and that the hits used to have a chance to miss but that was not currently the case.
Hope this helps.
My earlier statement in this thread stands: The power mechanics should have a chance to miss, even if it is not shown to players graphically, and I'm in the process of making sure that is the case.
Once I've nailed down the mechanics of how it's working, including any fixes that may need to be applied, I plan to give an in-depth explanation of how the power works. Because even with a fix, it may still appear to never miss.
More info when I have it!
heres a test you can run, have some one fire a heavy plasma at you and try to shoot it down a few times without FAW. then try shooting it down a few times with FAW.
the result will be you will miss it about 10 times befor you shoot it down without FAW, and with FAW the first shot that hits it will destroy it every single time. i see it in stfs every single time i play them.
my suggestion in post #24 stands, and others appear to like it
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showpost.php?p=4107357&postcount=24
FAW is for shooting down such objects. I blieve you get a bonus when using it to destroy these things, no?
Buddy is using it on a specialized bortas setup and he is getting 4k+ on all hits... whereas I would sit between 2k-4k on my jem.
I have the same experience with Volley fire, it takes out heavy plasmas fast.
If they can go zero to 0.5 light speed within a minute, they should be able to handle a higher velocity even if it acceleration started to taper off.
That is what the 'navigational deflectors' supposedly handle (Yes, I know the concept is problematic... the ship should be torn to shreds at any significant speed any time the forward shields are down, since weapons presumably knock the nav shields down too. Nevertheless it is the official answer)
In TOS they didn't slow to impulse to fight, so again there is a continuity problem there. (There is of course another problem that even in TNG they were too proud to wear seat belts, regardless of how many lives they might have saved. The Battle Bridge was an exception, but they only actually used that once...). Regardless, Inertial dampners would only be an issue to the extent of acceleration or course change. It is only differences in acceleration that need to be compensted for. Since the dampners can already handle the initial 0 to 0.5, there is no reason they shouldn't be able to handle 0.5 to 1.0. It would be the same.
thats a true cone aoe though, everything in the cone should high a high chance of getting hit. FAW is supposed to be your beam arrays firing relativly normal shots at random targets, it shouldn't act like a 10 second, 360 degree, high damage buff, perfect accuracy aoe.
Dont confuse the ability not 'missing' with the fact that you have good accuracy in your ship.
Heavy torpedos apparently get a bonus to defense when they are inside 3km. Thats when the miss-whiff-fest happens. For that you better have repulsors
Really good for when you are using Sensor Analysis and don't want to retarget.