making shield striping viable again, and making npcs especially week to it actually could make a sci/sci at least fun to pve in, theres a way to appease pve without breaking pvp. tac powers don't do anything to drain damage who's only resistance is power insulators, so this wouldn't benefit tac more then benifit sci. tac sci specializes in shield bypassing damage anyway, it has no need for striping.
I remember back in the day on my sci intrepid wasting my sci teams just to buff my shield drain. Those were the days
Condisidering tactical powers have always been able to buff sci damage since this game came out suggests it is working as intended.
No, it wasn't always like that. The F2P space revamp made non-weapon damage sources into weapon-damage. Hence gravity well became kinetic and so forth.
Photonic shockwave was tied in with photonic skill box in sciences. Gravity well was linked to anomalies.
Their damage types were not kinetic. I believe the only one that was kinetic damage was the tractor beam and repulsor beams but their damage output was always so very low the tac buff on them was never an issue.
Also of note, the abilities back then raised the base damage of the ability not their roof as they do now. Aux power used to raise the roof back then. That created a balance between those that could use a sci ability in a non-sci ship (aka multivectors) having to sacrifice skill points and power levels on the fly to make the ability function to a minimally decent level... whereas a sci ship it was natural to have high aux and high skills in the science ability.
No, it wasn't always like that. The F2P space revamp made non-weapon damage sources into weapon-damage. Hence gravity well became kinetic and so forth.
Photonic shockwave was tied in with photonic skill box in sciences. Gravity well was linked to anomalies.
Their damage types were not kinetic. I believe the only one that was kinetic damage was the tractor beam and repulsor beams but their damage output was always so very low the tac buff on them was never an issue.
Also of note, the abilities back then raised the base damage of the ability not their roof as they do now. Aux power used to raise the roof back then. That created a balance between those that could use a sci ability in a non-sci ship (aka multivectors) having to sacrifice skill points and power levels on the fly to make the ability function to a minimally decent level... whereas a sci ship it was natural to have high aux and high skills in the science ability.
Thanks for the clarification. I was starting to think the OP's main problem was that tac captains were taking impotent starships and making them useful instead of addressing the real problem being sci powers themselves not really useful unless they are doing any damage and even then only when piloted by a tac captain. With the current skill tree the way it is it seems like sci captain and sci boff powers need a complete rework. I would love to hear Ideas on how sci and sci boff powers could be reworked and make them more scary than just a tac captain firing off insane TBR crits.
I've seen some horrible ideas on this forum but that's right up there with the worst of them. For this particular player, the day that character and ship class mixing is limited or removed is the day STO is uninstalled from my computer and never touched again as that's a huge chunk of variety removed for no reason at all. It's bad enough Grav Well was nerfed because it wasn't canon looking, this just goes several steps further along that road.
as many other players have said, the reason because a tact toons use a sci/eng oriented ship is because tactical abilities buff everything, so if it loose something from weapons it get a lot from boff abilities buffed with tactical abilities... if tactical abilities will buff only energy weapons and torpedo/mine than you will have the same result I'd like, because no tact toon will have a so great advantage in using a non tactical oriented ship.
Moreover dev will be able to change tactical or science ore eng abilities with no strange effect on some other career/ship.
However It's the same: make tactical abilities buff only weapons direct damage or deny strange career/ship combination... You will have the same result.
Note that I have both tactical and sci toons, my tactical toons use escorts and are absolutelly funny and playable; my sci toon uses a LRSV it is funny because of exotic weapons but also disappointng because of its really low dps, non working abilities and ship fragility. While escorts fragility is counterbalanced by agility and dps, the LRSV fragility is not counterbalanced by anything else an moreover many sci boff abilities are AoE attacks that generate a lot of threat (try using GW in ISE and you will see many spheres firing at you whenever possible).
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
i think ppl are just stubborn to understand. This is what happens when setting cap+ship up:
Tac: mm this ofc, this , and this.. o this would be interesting, now some emergency power power or a lil heal just in case, mby tractor or a resist...etc etc etc
Sci: Sigh... useless, useless, useless, [...90% of skills later...] semi useless so lets try, some heals yeah...
Not only that, but hey here comes a tac, and with his better hull, better agility, hugely better weapon dmg... turn out he can also make better use of sci skills. Totally how it should be.
and what about sensors? A sci should be the part of the team that can see a cloaked foe coming... well that's interesting cuz with 4 sensor probes and scan u can't see squat.
as many other players have said, the reason because a tact toons use a sci/eng oriented ship is because tactical abilities buff everything, so if it loose something from weapons it get a lot from boff abilities buffed with tactical abilities... if tactical abilities will buff only energy weapons and torpedo/mine than you will have the same result I'd like, because no tact toon will have a so great advantage in using a non tactical oriented ship.
Moreover dev will be able to change tactical or science ore eng abilities with no strange effect on some other career/ship.
However It's the same: make tactical abilities buff only weapons direct damage or deny strange career/ship combination... You will have the same result.
Note that I have both tactical and sci toons, my tactical toons use escorts and are absolutelly funny and playable; my sci toon uses a LRSV it is funny because of exotic weapons but also disappointng because of its really low dps, non working abilities and ship fragility. While escorts fragility is counterbalanced by agility and dps, the LRSV fragility is not counterbalanced by anything else an moreover many sci boff abilities are AoE attacks that generate a lot of threat (try using GW in ISE and you will see many spheres firing at you whenever possible).
I see the reasoning and still don't agree that's it's any more than a bad idea. The loss of those Captain and Ship combinations in the hope that any character class problems will be resolved just seems like a band aid of an idea and will serve only to make Tac/ Sci useless.
I know some on these forums hold the Dev's in pretty low regard but I still hold them in fairly high regard and don't believe they need to make Tac/ Sci useless because they can't manage to balance the classes any other way. I get that the hope is that nerfing Tac/ Sci will allow Science BOff abilities to be buffed to acceptable levels of damage (without risk of Tac's one shotting people elsewhere) but even if Tac/ Sci gets hit with the nerf bat there's no guarantee that the Sci BOff abilities will be fixed later and it still doesn't fix what I feel is the most important issue; these aren't damage abilities yet the only use people have for them is the damage. When an AoE hold or stun is only used for the damage it deals that ability has much bigger issues than what a Tac can buff its damage to.
I agree that limiting the damage dealt by a Tac/ Sci to weapons only will have the same effect as not allowing the Tac into that ship in the first place as he'd be useless, that's primarily the reason I disagree with any changes to the way Tactical buffs interact with Science abilities. Personally I don't see an issue with Tacs dealing damage through both weapons and through Sci BOff abilities, I use both Tac/ Sci and Sci/ Sci but the reason my Tac feels more effective is because TBR buffed with Tac abilities still works; it's not some super amazing ability that's over powered and broken since the last patch, it just hasn't been nerfed yet.
Tac/ Sci may stand proud above some of the other character class/ ship combinations but when many of them are less effective because their bread and butter abilities are less effective than they used to be, reducing Tac to that level rather than buffing the others to the Tac/ Sci's level isn't a satisfying fix.
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I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this
I use both Tac/ Sci and Sci/ Sci but the reason my Tac feels more effective is because TBR buffed with Tac abilities still works; it's not some super amazing ability that's over powered and broken since the last patch, it just hasn't been nerfed yet.
What I also didn't go on to mention is that to make the damage good enough I had to run with as many Particle Generator consoles as I could squeeze in to push the damage as high as possible and it was still wholly reliant on Tac buffs to be useful. Even so it was more annoying than actually dangerous and was very dependent on the Tac buffs being available. Hardly nerf bait, in fact it was so impressive I brought a Fleet Ship Module so that I could get a Fleet Defiant instead.
Science ships have always been about support, debuffing the target so that an Escort or Tac Cruiser can finish the job easier and although Science is a little weak now nerfing a Tac's ability to buff his damage via his Captain skills won't fix that, instead it'll make Tac/ Sci non viable whilst Sci/ Sci and Eng/ Sci will still be a little weak. That doesn't seem like much of an improvement to me.
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I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this
sci ships are a joke
eng class is a joke
tac aren't the problem, although if i have the choice to wait for another two seasons to get sci ships, and eng classes buffed, or to nerf tacs tomorrow. i m not sure what i would prefer.
I hate it when I queue for fleet events and see someone using TBR. Every time I see TBR it is used to either grief myself or someone else.
Every time. I see it used for:
Moving an enemy out of a plasma cloud
Moving an enemy out of a tractor beam
Moving an enemy out of a tachyon beam
Moving an enemy out of weapons range
The world of STO would be made perfect if they buffed every sci ability except TBR and then nerfed TBR so it pushes at about 1/4 the power it does now. I would cry tears of joy.
I hate it when I queue for fleet events and see someone using TBR. Every time I see TBR it is used to either grief myself or someone else.
Every time. I see it used for:
Moving an enemy out of a plasma cloud
Moving an enemy out of a tractor beam
Moving an enemy out of a tachyon beam
Moving an enemy out of weapons range
The world of STO would be made perfect if they buffed every sci ability except TBR and then nerfed TBR so it pushes at about 1/4 the power it does now. I would cry tears of joy.
TBR is like anything else; Used properly it's great but used poorly it sucks. Unfortunately, the poorly used examples stick in the mind whilst the well used examples are quickly forgotten as they have little impact upon anyone else.
I do hate when someone uses TBR to push one of the Dreadnoughts out of a Tyken's with DOff proc just as its shields go offline so that it can recover, it's like some people don't even look to see what's happening around them.
I see the reasoning and still don't agree that's it's any more than a bad idea. The loss of those Captain and Ship combinations in the hope that any character class problems will be resolved just seems like a band aid of an idea and will serve only to make Tac/ Sci useless.
....
I agree that limiting the damage dealt by a Tac/ Sci to weapons only will have the same effect as not allowing the Tac into that ship in the first place as he'd be useless, that's primarily the reason I disagree with any changes to the way Tactical buffs interact with Science abilities. Personally I don't see an issue with Tacs dealing damage through both weapons and through Sci BOff abilities, I use both Tac/ Sci and Sci/ Sci but the reason my Tac feels more effective is because TBR buffed with Tac abilities still works; it's not some super amazing ability that's over powered and broken since the last patch, it just hasn't been nerfed yet.
Tac/ Sci may stand proud above some of the other character class/ ship combinations but when many of them are less effective because their bread and butter abilities are less effective than they used to be, reducing Tac to that level rather than buffing the others to the Tac/ Sci's level isn't a satisfying fix.
I completely disagree with this. Consider that if tac no longer buffs science abilities the tac would be flying the science ship and buffing its weapons with tac primary buff skills (sci ship = 6 weapon slots in 3/3 split, escorts = 6 or 7 weapon slots in 4/2, 4/3 split) and would do the SAME damage as a sci captain would via science boff abilities if he has spec'd in the skill boxes for that ability. For debuffing and such tac captain still has fire on my mark and the timer-reducing ability.
A tac captain in a sci ship that does not buff sci powers is essentially a high damage via weapons ship that has a lot of shielding and access to a bag of tricks.
Consider also that attack pattern alpha and fire on my mark.. ALONE... used by a tac captain with ZERO particle generator skills, is the equivalent of 9 points in particle generators AND 2 particle consoles installed on a ship. The ability buffs the damage in a % based and the buffs stack.
With minimum point spending, @ 3 pnt particle and 2 particle consoles the tac capt does the same damage as the 9 pnt +2 console sci captain.
So do kindly tell me how it can be justified that a character that does not spend points in the ability itself can click once and get the benefit boost of a full spec?
Its as silly as giving science and engineers an ability that enhance weapon accuracy and damage output so it is equivalent to full basic weapon+ energy/torp +specialization box @ 6 points each. That way the science and engineers would not need to 'waste' spec points into weapons and focus on all things science and engineer. Something like this is outright stupid and tac captains would be in an outroar if they had engineers and science captains outperforming them in escorts in weapon damage output.
So... why then is it ok for tac captains to outperform sci capts IN sci ships USING science...with minimum to zero training in sci skills?
What I also didn't go on to mention is that to make the damage good enough I had to run with as many Particle Generator consoles as I could squeeze in to push the damage as high as possible and it was still wholly reliant on Tac buffs to be useful. Even so it was more annoying than actually dangerous and was very dependent on the Tac buffs being available. Hardly nerf bait, in fact it was so impressive I brought a Fleet Ship Module so that I could get a Fleet Defiant instead.
Science ships have always been about support, debuffing the target so that an Escort or Tac Cruiser can finish the job easier and although Science is a little weak now nerfing a Tac's ability to buff his damage via his Captain skills won't fix that, instead it'll make Tac/ Sci non viable whilst Sci/ Sci and Eng/ Sci will still be a little weak. That doesn't seem like much of an improvement to me.
Actually it will fix that. The reason WHY the science abilities were nerfed was because tac captains were doing outrageous damage with them. Remove the REASON for the nerf and the nerfs can be removed.
Thing is, to fix the reason nothing has to be changed for tac capts. All that needs to be changed is the damage types and nerfs put to counter the tac buff via science.
Grav well can go back to anomaly damage. Resist' for this would be dampeners skill.
Holo Fleet/Photonic Shockwave can go back to photonic damage. Generic energy resist counters this.
Tachyon Beam/Particle Burst/siphon/tyken remains as they are and the innate 75% resist given by insulator skill needs to be reduced to 25% as it originally was.
Countermeasures needs to have the damage buffer for jam and scramble sensors ignore OTHER player's damage and only be affected by the player that jammed or scrambled the target. As it used to be, before the F2P patch.
Sensor skills needs to quadruple its stealth detection ability. This has been broken since the day of launch and it has been shown to devs that the stealth boost given by stealth skill / consoles is insanely higher than the max stealth detection counter that sensors and modules with stealth detect can possibly add up to. That is why no matter what, you will not detect players past 5km unless they first fly so close they get detected and then move out past 5km.
Science ship shield modifiers need to return to pre-f2p performance. Currently I think the best way to do this is to add a further modifier to the ships:
Science= + X% shield resists bonus
Cruisers = +X% hull resist bonus
Escorts already receive a very high defense bonus from their innate speed. This was a gift from the F2P space revamp patch which only kicks in for sci and cruisers if they put all power to engines (whereas escorts get it at half engine and lower due to their innate faster speed modifier).
Most importantly.. the biggest global gameplay issue that the F2P brought about that needs to be reversed:
Remove the movement speed bonus that is automatically granted per level gained. Pre-F2P the speed bonuses came from engines alone, Post F2P it came from just leveling up. Right now you can equip a level 1 engine and be almost as fast as you would with a level 50 engine.
Note that a speed reduction through these means does not lower the defense bonus of the escorts. That is tied to the speed setting, starship maneuvers, escort native def bonus based on engine settings and impulse engine skill.
Lowering the global speeds removes the zippy-swoosh arcade flying prevalent today and returns the game to tactical play. Flying and positioning your ship to attack a shield facing becomes crucial...and escorts are the kings of it.
This flight/combat can be experienced in the current game pre-level 20 which is when the speed bonuses from leveling up apparently kick in.
Do these changes and the game bounces back into balance when it comes to science and general combat experience.
It seems to be agreed that there is an imbalance between tactical captains and others - the debate essentially revolves around how this should be resolved.
Is that correct, or does anybody actually believe that all three captain classes are equally useful?
All three are equally useful and must fly their non-career ships with certain limitations and benefits. The problem is Tactical is the only one that has a massive benefit from flying science ships..so much it outperforms science captains in their own ships. As shown above, its nothing to do with tac capt. itself, its the background changes done to the game during F2P patch which suddenly granted the tac capt. such a performance.
With minimum point spending, @ 3 pnt particle and 2 particle consoles the tac capt does the same damage as the 9 pnt +2 console sci captain.
At 3 points in Particle Generators the Tactical Captain has spent a very similar amount of points in the skills tree to reach those numbers, just in different places. The Science character will have spent 18,000 points in Particle Generators with the Tac spending 9,000 in Attack Patterns and 6,000 in Particle generators. I'm not seeing the problem here.
Actually it will fix that. The reason WHY the science abilities were nerfed was because tac captains were doing outrageous damage with them. Remove the REASON for the nerf and the nerfs can be removed.
Which Science abilities have been nerfed due to Tacs? The only recent changes I can think of were to PSW3 and that was a bug that was fixed, Grav Well was nerfed just before (or just after) the F2P changes because someone felt it wasn't canon to have ships bouncing around an anomaly but I don't recall the damage it dealt ever being a problem (I may be wrong though, it's been a while).
This flight/combat can be experienced in the current game pre-level 20 which is when the speed bonuses from leveling up apparently kick in.
For me, pre level 20 the game is horrible to play as the ships are slow and they don't turn well. Personally, I can never wait to get to Commander so that I can start throwing points into the speed and turn rate skill (Impulse Thrusters?). I realise it's subjective but for me, faster turning and more agile ships are much more interesting, and much less frustrating, to maneouvre but that's my opinion.
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I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this
god we are still beating the dead horse of omg a tac in a sci ship can deal more damage then a sci in a sci ship. thats a class function properly. it also has the opposite objective of a sci/sci, which is to damage and not cc, because a damaging build cc's very poorly or not at all.
sci skills in the hands of a sci/sci could literally deal 0 damage as long as they performed thier other function well, that being enabling others to get kills
and the sci ship weapon, the irreverent sci ship weapons, the 6 worthless sci ship weapons that even with a tac captain couldn't out damage an eng cruiser with 8 weapons. my god there literally couldn't be more of a non factor then the weapons on a sci ship even when a tac is using it. no tac would fly a sci ship with buffing 6 beam arrays in mind as some master damage dealing plan. the reason tacs use sci ships is for the shield bypassing damage of the sci skills. a bunch of energy weapons do nothing to help deal shield bypassing damage. there should be transphasics or harpangs or phaser turrets for the procs, just something to help deal more hull damage.
At 3 points in Particle Generators the Tactical Captain has spent a very similar amount of points in the skills tree to reach those numbers, just in different places. The Science character will have spent 18,000 points in Particle Generators with the Tac spending 9,000 in Attack Patterns and 6,000 in Particle generators. I'm not seeing the problem here.
You misunderstand. As you say, a sci captain can train in attack patterns to gain the benefit from using attack patterns... although sci ships are limited to LT level tac consoles so no omega to get a direct damage boost.
However, we are not talking about atk pattern omega or beta or delta. Its Atk Pattern Alpha and go down fighting which any tac captain, which does train attack patterns as part of his setup as much as he has to train the basic weapon skill box which makes the sci abilities super-boosted in damage. That boost is added up upon the benefit from training in the science skill of the ability (particle in this case).
Hence, the tac captain becomes better at using a science ability in a science ship than the science captain. No contest about it.
The real question is: Why is an attack pattern boosting a science ability?
Which Science abilities have been nerfed due to Tacs? The only recent changes I can think of were to PSW3 and that was a bug that was fixed, Grav Well was nerfed just before (or just after) the F2P changes because someone felt it wasn't canon to have ships bouncing around an anomaly but I don't recall the damage it dealt ever being a problem (I may be wrong though, it's been a while).
All of them. Tac captains took onto grav well and PSW and with boosted damage brought the nerf bat on the abilities and the stats that govern them..because it was easier for cryptic to nerf a stat/ability than change the tac captain bonus.
You seriously believe the excuses for the nerfs? Not canon that ships bounce in a grav well? they never bounced around pre-nerf (unless 2 wells from different ships were popped in but that was extremely rare). The grav well also happened to be nerfed directly after a swelling of tac captains flying sci ships and the complaints that came from the pvp forums of gravity wells being impossible to heal or defend against due to the sheer damage they put out.
Tachyon Beam and other shield drains also went down the toilet after insane whining from escort pilots that their weenie shields vanished with just a tachyon 1 attack and after the wenching from escort pilots about drains leaving them unable to move/fire. Again, instead of tackling the real issue (drain strength) cryptic took the easy way to cater to the escort whining: they gave 75% resists to drains on a global scale. Pow... shield and energy drains ceased to function for sci ships (not sci captains..sci SHIPS).
Photonic shockwave was not popular until just a month or so ago when it begun to be seen in STF's and PVP in greater numbers... and as I said earlier, the shockwave 3 from a science ship with all the appropriate skills and power settings placed to max the damage did not do much more damage than what a regular torpedo would hit the naked hull for. With atk ptrn alpha/go down fighting buffing it however the thing did equivalent damage to a high yield 3..which as you may see is rather problematic for gameplay balance and particularly in PVP.
Interestingly enough it also coincides with the phased tetryon weapons being released. Shield stripping weapons with disable proc weapons go quite well with a shockwave blast of that magnitude when using a sci ship...as long as a tac capt is flying it.
Again, I do not know if that was the reason all I know for certain is a sci captain in a sci ship using PSW3 did not put out any impressive damage. It was practically just a bit better damage than the photonic shockwave torpedo did.
Why would the devs suddenly 'notice' there was a 'bug' in the shockwave? With the TONS of much more critical bugs on their list they nerf PSW? Cryptic only fixes little stuff like that when it becomes critical issue..and apparently photonic shockwaves doing brutal damage in pvp all the sudden became such an issue.
For me, pre level 20 the game is horrible to play as the ships are slow and they don't turn well. Personally, I can never wait to get to Commander so that I can start throwing points into the speed and turn rate skill (Impulse Thrusters?). I realise it's subjective but for me, faster turning and more agile ships are much more interesting, and much less frustrating, to maneouvre but that's my opinion.
And I agree we may like different flying styles and combat pace. I'm just pointint out pre-f2p the level 50 ships did not zip around at these reflex-arcade speeds (unless you were an escort using speed boosts). Combat used to be tactical in nature not reflex click (which is precisely what every game PWE buys is turned into..it sells more scamupgrades).
god we are still beating the dead horse of omg a tac in a sci ship can deal more damage then a sci in a sci ship. thats a class function properly. it also has the opposite objective of a sci/sci, which is to damage and not cc, because a damaging build cc's very poorly or not at all.
The issue is NOT the damage output of the gravity well not being 'high' when a sci captain fires it.
The issue is that by using a non-skill point spending ability atk alpha the gravity well gains the equivalent damage boost as 9+ points in particle skill.
Again, would you think it makes sense if sci or engineer captains did NOT train any weapon skills and yet, with one click, they gained the same damage output and accuracy as a fully weapon-trained tactical captain? And that if they DID train the weapon skills they'd get a massive damage advantage over the tactical captains when using tactical ships?
It doesnt. And what this design flaw has caused is the tac capt. abuse of sci abilities to get the sci abilities screwed with and nerfed to the point where they are barely of use to a sci captain. The irony is that a tac capt in a sci ship now does the same damage as sci capt did pre-f2p changes.
If you cannot grasp the concept that the sci ability was nerfed so that at its PEAK damage output (aka boosted by tac capt ability) it does its 'normal' damage... then you really have a denial problem.
Tell you what... if grav well was changed to ZERO damage and instead have particle skill directly debuff the target's damage resists in increasing tick-by-tick (like a power or shield drain) AND (most importantly) had an extremely powerful pull-in effect (and HOLD inside the well) ...
then Id not be complaining about anything. It would be an AWESOME science ability and tac capt. could not boost its performance with a click. The damage it does comes from the massive debuff.
No polarize hull or atk pattern omega or any 'hold' immunity ability works against its snare. The only way to counteract it is through aux to dampener or by increasing engine power to 100 and pulling out slowly.
...but then you'd probably have escort captains whining to high heaven about how a sci ship can turn their ships into putty with one click.
sci skills in the hands of a sci/sci could literally deal 0 damage as long as they performed thier other function well, that being enabling others to get kills
I agree. However all of our sci abilities got F'd over due to tac captains.
the reason tacs use sci ships is for the shield bypassing damage of the sci skills. a bunch of energy weapons do nothing to help deal shield bypassing damage. there should be transphasics or harpangs or phaser turrets for the procs, just something to help deal more hull damage.
That would apply in PVP only since in PVE the NPC shields are a joke.
...and btw, this is precisely why gravity well got the nerf bat. People whined how uber-damage gravity wells (back then, before the nerf) were being dumped on them... tac captains seeking the edge in hull bypassing damage in science ships.
Sadder still, the whiners were other tac captains whose dinky hull escorts would pop within seconds of being in the well.
That last comment alone should tell you how the constant exploiting of the tac damage boost to sci abilities get the attention of the nerf bat.
Change the damage types or change sci abilities to be highly damaging in the sense of debuffs and holds so that tac capt buff does not boost it and you will have removed the SOURCE of the exploits and thus remove the reason to keep the applied nerfs.
Yes we are still debating why tacs even when flying and escort (not necessarily a sci ship) does more dmg when using a SCI SKILL!!!!
what would u say if an engineer specing in AP would get a bigger bonus then a tac? or a sci specing in targeting would get a greater bonus in accuracy? u'd flip out!!!
lets just fathom that AP wn't buff sci skills anymore, it's not w/e deity u believe in coming down from the heavens, lets just pretend:
what does that mean for a tac flying a sci ship?
wel thx to APA, fire on mark, go down fighting and tactical initiative their weaps will still hands down out dps a sci running a sci (whose class skills make em a debuffer).
what will change is depending on how they spec, their sci skill dmg will be <= then a sci running a sci.
well... that would actually makes sense u say? we can revert all sci skills nerfes now, no1 can bug abuse a broken system? apparently not... when u'r s tac and u'r better then sci in every possible way, why would they want that to change?
and thus u can read the previous posts and everything will become clear.
Let me ask a simple question to all those who say tac abilities should be able to buff sci boff ability damage.
Show me how you would make it balanced for both a tac and a sci to use the ability so that it was not too weak for the sci nor too strong with the tac. I want to see your proposed formula for how it should work.
Try this:
Pick a certain damage value as an "acceptable limit". For example, 250% of an ability's base damage (which would equate to the base 100%, plus a further 150% from any other sources. e.g. 100% from maximum skillpoint investment of 99 into the appropriate skill, plus a little leeway leftover for a further buff from science skill consoles or raw damage buffs).
Cap the ability's damage to make pushing past this value unfeasible, by means of diminishing returns. (So technically it might be possible to get slightly higher than the "acceptable limit" - say up to 300% - but you'd have to have a specialised build that makes use of every damage buff possible in order to get there, and it still wouldn't attain much higher damage than a standard build could reach)
STO already has a diminishing returns mechanic in the game for resistances, and it was recently implemented to power drains (whether it's working or not, the intention is there). It shouldn't be too much of a stretch to apply it to Science Powers too.
So to those who thing a tac should deal more damage with sci/eng boff abilities than anyone else because tacs are supposed to deal damage with everything let me ask you how you would feel about this list of changes to give eng and sci a focused role
Nadion Inversion III: Added an increases the bonuses of energy levels by 30%.
EPS Power Transfer III: Removed bonus energy. Now increases the bonus from energy levels by 70%.
Miracle Worker III: Added a 20% bonus to all hull and shield heals.
Rotate Shield Frequency: Added a 30% bonus to all shield heals.
Engineering Fleet II: Removed skill bonuses. Now increases all hull healing by 50% and the bonus from energy levels by 20%.
*Right now 125 weapon power gives a 100% energy weapon damage boost. With EPS Power Transfer and Nadion Inversion active it would become a 200% damage boost.
Scattering Field: Now also adds a 30% bonus to all shield heals
Sensor Scan: Now also debuffs target power insulator and inertial damper skills
Science Fleet II: Now adds a 20% bonus to all shield heals
That way engineers are the best with healing and bonus energy and Sci at debuffs and healing as well. Of course these changes would soon follow because of broken combos:
Reduced effects of all shield and hull heal abilities by 30-50%
Reduced bonuses from high power levels so 125 power now acts as 100 did before
Reduced effects of all power drains by 30%
But that would be ok because tacs shouldn't be able to heal they are meant to deal damage right?
I have 6 mains, one of each career on both factions. I have flown nearly every combination, build, and style that I have seen on the boards and that I have come up with myself. The fact is if I go into an STF with any of my eng/sci and I'm not in an escort or carrier I am intentionally hurting my team. I do not partake in much content without being either a tac or an escort because it is inefficient. Removing the tac abilities effects on eng/sci boff abilities WOULD ALLOW THE ABILITIES THEMSELVES TO RECEIVE BUFFS THAT MIGHT MAKE THEM VIABLE FOR THE OTHER TYPES.
Although all sarcasm aside if EPS transfer alone was to instead or in addition to grant a 25% boost to the bonus of energy levels that would be pretty sweet.
You misunderstand. As you say, a sci captain can train in attack patterns to gain the benefit from using attack patterns... although sci ships are limited to LT level tac consoles so no omega to get a direct damage boost.
However, we are not talking about atk pattern omega or beta or delta. Its Atk Pattern Alpha and go down fighting which any tac captain, which does train attack patterns as part of his setup as much as he has to train the basic weapon skill box which makes the sci abilities super-boosted in damage. That boost is added up upon the benefit from training in the science skill of the ability (particle in this case).
Hence, the tac captain becomes better at using a science ability in a science ship than the science captain. No contest about it.
The real question is: Why is an attack pattern boosting a science ability?
A combination of me misunderstanding and not being clear.
IIRC APA requires points to be spent in the skills tree to buff its damage, CrtH and CrtD bonus so any buff from APA towards Science has been paid for by the player in the skills tree. The Sci player may have more points spent in Particle Generators but what the Tac hasn't spent there has been spent buffing his APA so he can buff his Sci abilities a little better. If anything the Tac has things a little worse, he doesn't get 100% uptime like he would from Particle Generators, gets to spend +99 in Attack Patterns as well as +54 in Particle Generators but gets the opportunity to deal a little more weapons damage and to spike a little harder with Sci abilities. I really don't see this huge issue.
You seriously believe the excuses for the nerfs? Not canon that ships bounce in a grav well? they never bounced around pre-nerf (unless 2 wells from different ships were popped in but that was extremely rare). The grav well also happened to be nerfed directly after a swelling of tac captains flying sci ships and the complaints that came from the pvp forums of gravity wells being impossible to heal or defend against due to the sheer damage they put out.
Whether I believe them or not is irrelevant, Geko gave virtually no background on what he was doing and why and the only time changes have been made since were the 'not canon' Grav Well changes and the fix to PSW3 a few weeks back.
Tachyon Beam and other shield drains also went down the toilet after insane whining from escort pilots that their weenie shields vanished with just a tachyon 1 attack and after the wenching from escort pilots about drains leaving them unable to move/fire. Again, instead of tackling the real issue (drain strength) cryptic took the easy way to cater to the escort whining: they gave 75% resists to drains on a global scale. Pow... shield and energy drains ceased to function for sci ships (not sci captains..sci SHIPS).
IIRC the complaints were about five Sci ships hitting TB3 and CPB3 and popping whole teams with a broken Spread to bare hull. Resists were asked for to prevent things like whole teams of CPB carrying Sci ships from stripping all shields in one hit but instead the passives were added which pretty much made all shield drains a joke in one pass.
Why would the devs suddenly 'notice' there was a 'bug' in the shockwave? With the TONS of much more critical bugs on their list they nerf PSW? Cryptic only fixes little stuff like that when it becomes critical issue..and apparently photonic shockwaves doing brutal damage in pvp all the sudden became such an issue.
I remember seeing multiple threads on the forum where people were discussing whether it was intended or not, whether it was deserving of such a rapid fix I neither know or, if I'm entirely honest, care but it is what it is. It just seemed to me it was less a case of it being noticed as of it being mentioned enough that it caught someone's attention.
The issue is that by using a non-skill point spending ability atk alpha the gravity well gains the equivalent damage boost as 9+ points in particle skill.
I'm fairly certain that APA requires points spending in the skill tree (it's been a while since I last respecced) to get the maximum buff so it's not free, it's +99 in AP and +54 in Particle Generators. It may be a little cheaper overall due to the difference in costs between T1 and T3 but it's not free, it's being paid for and has lower uptime compared to the always there buff from Particle Generators.
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I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this
IIRC the complaints were about five Sci ships hitting TB3 and CPB3 and popping whole teams with a broken Spread
In other news: 5 fully munchkinned escorts with 125 power to weapons, dual heavy cannons everywhere, maximum points in all weapon skills, and scatter volley 3/torpedo spread 3, all shooting in the same direction, still does this. Where is the "Munchkinned gunboats don't do 10,000 DPS to multiple targets" ability?
A combination of me misunderstanding and not being clear.
IIRC APA requires points to be spent in the skills tree to buff its damage, CrtH and CrtD bonus so any buff from APA towards Science has been paid for by the player in the skills tree. The Sci player may have more points spent in Particle Generators but what the Tac hasn't spent there has been spent buffing his APA so he can buff his Sci abilities a little better. If anything the Tac has things a little worse, he doesn't get 100% uptime like he would from Particle Generators, gets to spend +99 in Attack Patterns as well as +54 in Particle Generators but gets the opportunity to deal a little more weapons damage and to spike a little harder with Sci abilities. I really don't see this huge issue.
...
I'm fairly certain that APA requires points spending in the skill tree (it's been a while since I last respecced) to get the maximum buff so it's not free, it's +99 in AP and +54 in Particle Generators. It may be a little cheaper overall due to the difference in costs between T1 and T3 but it's not free, it's being paid for and has lower uptime compared to the always there buff from Particle Generators.
With zero points in attack patterns the bonus to damage in APA is 30%. 3 points gives it 45%. 6 points is 52'ish% and 9 is 60%.
The % is a problem since it literally takes the damage from the sci ability and boosts it beyond that of which sci capt. training the ability would take it up by for the same amount of points spent.
Finally, when you say 'spike a little harder with sci abilities' is not really a 'little' harder. Its a tremendous boost. The equivalent of doing nonstop critical hits with an energy weapon for the entire duration of APA. Remember its a difference of 1200/tick from a sci and 1900 a tick from a tac. 700 dmg difference direct to hull per tick over 30 seconds = 21k damage. 36k vs 57k damage total. Thats not 'little' spike, that's practically twice the damage. And this while his weapons are also boosted.
There is also the case of the skill points not reciprocating. Sci capt with the same atk pattern skillpoints and same particle skill points than the tac capt does not get the same benefit.
A sci capt should not outperform a tac capt when using weapons... . Likewise, the tac capt should not outperform the sci capt when using sci skills. Yet here he does...and without having to spend that much science skill points.
Finally, I highlighted in bold a sentence in your post. Do remember that both attack patterns and particle skill are in skill trees that are easily filled up when making any kind of spec. In short, the tac captain can have the same damage output with the sci ability as the sci captain (which im OK with IF he trains the points) ... but the uber boosting of it nor the less-skill points in sci spent and still significantly outdamage the sci capt with a sci ability is quite irritating and its the source of the woes that have got so many of our abilities nerfed.
sadly the tact captains won't admit they don't want a battlefield where they should be afraid of something....:rolleyes:
Fixing the damage types and then the damage of the skills would make it so a sci speced tact would still only do the same damage with sci skills as a similarly speced sci with the advantage of more weapon damage.
sci/sci used to be just as viable as others at our job now only a select few skills are actually worth using left sci and engies due to tact abusing our skills with a mechanic that should never have changed
so at the end of the day engineers and science ask themselves why dont i swap to a tact then i can do my job how i USED TO before ftp
Finally, when you say 'spike a little harder with sci abilities' is not really a 'little' harder. Its a tremendous boost. The equivalent of doing nonstop critical hits with an energy weapon for the entire duration of APA. Remember its a difference of 1200/tick from a sci and 1900 a tick from a tac. 700 dmg difference direct to hull per tick over 30 seconds = 21k damage. 36k vs 57k damage total. Thats not 'little' spike, that's practically twice the damage. And this while his weapons are also boosted.
And where's the Science characters Sensor Scan in all this? At 125 Aux, and if we're going for full damage then that Grav Well really should be at full aux, that's an almost -68 DR AoE debuff. I don't doubt that the Tac will still be doing more damage but that debuff, likely to be on everything within the anomaly, will go a long way towards catching up with the Tac and that requires absolutely no skill investment from the Sci at all.
A sci capt should not outperform a tac capt when using weapons... . Likewise, the tac capt should not outperform the sci capt when using sci skills. Yet here he does...and without having to spend that much science skill points.
And here is the what's likely to be the main difference between our viewpoints. I don't disagree but would rather Science had a way to improve Science abilities rather than take away Tactical's ability to buff their damage. I'd be happier if Sensor Scan got a small buff to Science abilities; APA buffs damage dealt, CrtD, CrtH and turn rate whilst SS slightly increases stealth perception and is an AoE debuff. Throw in a +25 (just an example) to all Science abilities for the duration and Science just got a way to buff its own abilities in the way that Tac can buff weapons.
Finally, I highlighted in bold a sentence in your post. Do remember that both attack patterns and particle skill are in skill trees that are easily filled up when making any kind of spec. In short, the tac captain can have the same damage output with the sci ability as the sci captain (which im OK with IF he trains the points) ... but the uber boosting of it nor the less-skill points in sci spent and still significantly outdamage the sci capt with a sci ability is quite irritating and its the source of the woes that have got so many of our abilities nerfed.
As I mentioned above I don't necessarily disagree but would rather that Science got a way to increase it's own abilities in a similar manner. A Tac won't out damage the Sci 100% of the time, just whilst the Tac buffs are up so why not instead allow Science characters to buff Science abilities? Outside of Science ships it'll not have a huge effect but get the strength of the buff right and it could even make Sci/ Sci fun again.
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I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this
And where's the Science characters Sensor Scan in all this? At 125 Aux, and if we're going for full damage then that Grav Well really should be at full aux, that's an almost -68 DR AoE debuff. I don't doubt that the Tac will still be doing more damage but that debuff, likely to be on everything within the anomaly, will go a long way towards catching up with the Tac and that requires absolutely no skill investment from the Sci at all.
Problem 1: Getting maximum benefit out of Sensor Scan requires full power to auxillary, which means driving weapons at a very low power level. You can debuff the enemy, sure, but you don't have the firepower to back it up, since science abilities themselves do absolutely pathetic damage. 2000 damage per second on a maxed out gravity well 3? Well, that's cute I guess; an escort will be pushing 2000 damage per second on each of his cannons.
Problem 2: Debuffing in an area is meaningless to a ship that doesn't attack in an area. Gravity well can affect a few enemies but as indicated it does comparatively low damage and has appalling "up time". To really benefit from AOE debuffs you need AOE abilities like Scatter and Fire At Will. Which requires weapon power. Which we don't have because we're maxing Aux.
I guess you could go with Sensor Scan, Charged Burst, Gravity Well, then Torpedo Spread... which requires that you use 4 abilities (one of them with a 2-minute cooldown!), to get the same kind of power that a Tactical captain will be using every 15 seconds with their chained Scatter Volleys.
The larger problem here is that none of Science's abilities offer good damage, and to get maximum benefit out of the abilities it does have, you have to take ship's power away from the system that DOES deliver good damage.
theres an ideology here that is preventing people from thinking strait. all i see is pissed of sci captains complaining that the class thats supposed to deal the most damage, deals the most damage. in what they think is their ships, as if sci ships own sci captains and how dare anyone else touch them. they seem to want their captain to damage as much as a tac can in it, which would make tac worthless and sci the merry sue class.
any captain type has the right to fly any ship type, and use their innate captain tools to what ever advantage they can. some captains are capable of doing things others cant, every class has strengths and weaknesses. well, in a game were eng was any good.
tacs deal damage, thats what they do, thats ALL they do. if all you do is pve, and im sorry if thats all you do, you think thats all that maters. the healing and resistance in this game is easily twice as strong as any potential damage is, when a healer is as min maxed as most damage dealers are min maxed. unfortunately it doesn't take an eng captain to do that like it should, the heals all being station power based and having really nothing to do with captain powers.
the sci captain is built to remove the impenetrable barrier of resistance, turn off an enemie's ability to do anything, drain them down so they cant more, shoot, heal or regenerate, and to keep people pushed away from team aid.
the sci cant do its job alone, and unfortunately due to non damage dealing sci skills being in bad shape, cant do pve very well. if only you guys turned your energies to wanting sci skills buffed. non of the weaker ones being fixed would benefit a tac at all actually, the ones that deal kinetic and energy dame would be the only ones that mater to him, and they work fine. since healing and resistance are twice as strong as damage dealing, removing that means you can start haveing more then 0 effect on a target, regardless of weather you have tac buffs or not, then the target will actually be in danger.
tacs can only deal damage, they have no method of really effecting the enemy other then shooting at them, and trying to shoot through healing and resistence thats twice as potent as their damage. its very easy for a tac to be worthless. but then theirs pve, were you shoot helpless, healless, hitpoint sponges that ether tickle or 1 shot you. since npcs are simplistic to the level that i would barely consider them place holders, none of the sci captains strengths really mater in pve.
now, like i sugested earlier, without derailing the system in place that works now, npc's could have a negative value for insulators or something, and a combo of shield striping and torpedo damage would give sci captains something fun to do in pve. it would also be in the spirit of their pvp role, weakening an enemy so his allies can get kills.
so really, stop with this tac captain hate, you would realize how silly it is the first time you are a part of a really competitive pvp team, the realities of the game balance would finally be clear. there would also be no tac/sci in a match like that, seeing as their damage would be nothing compared to an escort, and they can barley contribute at all to CC.
APA gives a 50% (the UI actually reports 49.6%) damage buff, IIRC it hasn't been 60% since the skill tree changes last year.
I had honestly not even noticed that. It still puts out higher damage than the particle skill since it is a direct % boost though.
And where's the Science characters Sensor Scan in all this? At 125 Aux, and if we're going for full damage then that Grav Well really should be at full aux, that's an almost -68 DR AoE debuff. I don't doubt that the Tac will still be doing more damage but that debuff, likely to be on everything within the anomaly, will go a long way towards catching up with the Tac and that requires absolutely no skill investment from the Sci at all.
The difference is again the % based bonus APA gets. -68 resist is not the same as -68% resist (if it was the grav well would crush anything even at low aux). Tac Capt gets single target Fire on my Mark that is a -45 to a single target as well.
And here is the what's likely to be the main difference between our viewpoints. I don't disagree but would rather Science had a way to improve Science abilities rather than take away Tactical's ability to buff their damage. I'd be happier if Sensor Scan got a small buff to Science abilities; APA buffs damage dealt, CrtD, CrtH and turn rate whilst SS slightly increases stealth perception and is an AoE debuff. Throw in a +25 (just an example) to all Science abilities for the duration and Science just got a way to buff its own abilities in the way that Tac can buff weapons.
....
As I mentioned above I don't necessarily disagree but would rather that Science got a way to increase it's own abilities in a similar manner. A Tac won't out damage the Sci 100% of the time, just whilst the Tac buffs are up so why not instead allow Science characters to buff Science abilities? Outside of Science ships it'll not have a huge effect but get the strength of the buff right and it could even make Sci/ Sci fun again.
+25 to ... particle..or whatever is like 1pnt more in the skill..which is barely 20~50 more damage increase to the ability. Even a +99 more as drunk suggested would not do it.
Moreover, making the sci 'buff up' to match the tac in grav well via a stat-based boost only opens a whole can of worms to other sci abilities also getting the boost and subsequently becoming overpowered and unbalanced. Particle burst would be insane if the +particle boost sci got to compensate for grav well affected it. Feedback pulse? holy crud.
You approach the issue by increasing the performance of one side to be competitive with the other... but that only worsens the situation. It is in my opinion a typical band-aid fix for a gaping chest wound that the devs love so much. To solve a problem it needs to be tackled at the source of the problem.
Either change the damage type of sci abilities or change the damaging sci abilities to be strong debuffs to resists so that weapon damage can do their job (sci ships are happy, escorts would be silly happy with that) and/or crowd control functions (very strong tractor-in pull, etc).
Problem 1: Getting maximum benefit out of Sensor Scan requires full power to auxillary, which means driving weapons at a very low power level. You can debuff the enemy, sure, but you don't have the firepower to back it up, since science abilities themselves do absolutely pathetic damage. 2000 damage per second on a maxed out gravity well 3? Well, that's cute I guess; an escort will be pushing 2000 damage per second on each of his cannons.
Or pop an Aux battery, full Aux for 15 seconds along with full weapons if that's your thing.
Problem 2: Debuffing in an area is meaningless to a ship that doesn't attack in an area. Gravity well can affect a few enemies but as indicated it does comparatively low damage and has appalling "up time". To really benefit from AOE debuffs you need AOE abilities like Scatter and Fire At Will. Which requires weapon power. Which we don't have because we're maxing Aux.
I may not be packing AoE damage abilities but you know that DHC Escort you mentioned earlier, he likely will be and I don't think he'll complain too loud if you throw a full Aux SS at the thing he's shooting at.
I guess you could go with Sensor Scan, Charged Burst, Gravity Well, then Torpedo Spread... which requires that you use 4 abilities (one of them with a 2-minute cooldown!), to get the same kind of power that a Tactical captain will be using every 15 seconds with their chained Scatter Volleys.
But a Sci isn't a Tac and their roles are different. My Sci isn't there to kill everything in sight, my Sci's there to make it easier for the Escort to kill everything in sight whilst carrying enough heals to keep myself in one piece and support anyone else who needs it. A Tac can't do that as well, they can deal a little more damage but they have less options to support others as those heals will be spammed on themselves.
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I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this
But a Sci isn't a Tac and their roles are different. My Sci isn't there to kill everything in sight, my Sci's there to make it easier for the Escort to kill everything in sight whilst carrying enough heals to keep myself in one piece and support anyone else who needs it. A Tac can't do that as well, they can deal a little more damage but they have less options to support others as those heals will be spammed on themselves.
We all know that, but STO is a very Pew-pew heavy game, and tends to reward those with the most pew-pewness. (particularly in PvP) It's very hard for Sci's and Engie's to match that. I'm not saying that tacticals need to get hit with the nerf bat, that hardly ever solves anything... but Sci's and Engie's could use something to make them more useful.
theres an ideology here that is preventing people from thinking strait. all i see is pissed of sci captains complaining that the class thats supposed to deal the most damage, deals the most damage. in what they think is their ships, as if sci ships own sci captains and how dare anyone else touch them. they seem to want their captain to damage as much as a tac can in it, which would make tac worthless and sci the merry sue class.
any captain type has the right to fly any ship type, and use their innate captain tools to what ever advantage they can. some captains are capable of doing things others cant, every class has strengths and weaknesses. well, in a game were eng was any good.
tacs deal damage, thats what they do, thats ALL they do. if all you do is pve, and im sorry if thats all you do, you think thats all that maters. the healing and resistance in this game is easily twice as strong as any potential damage is, when a healer is as min maxed as most damage dealers are min maxed. unfortunately it doesn't take an eng captain to do that like it should, the heals all being station power based and having really nothing to do with captain powers.
the sci captain is built to remove the impenetrable barrier of resistance, turn off an enemie's ability to do anything, drain them down so they cant more, shoot, heal or regenerate, and to keep people pushed away from team aid.
the sci cant do its job alone, and unfortunately due to non damage dealing sci skills being in bad shape, cant do pve very well. if only you guys turned your energies to wanting sci skills buffed. non of the weaker ones being fixed would benefit a tac at all actually, the ones that deal kinetic and energy dame would be the only ones that mater to him, and they work fine. since healing and resistance are twice as strong as damage dealing, removing that means you can start haveing more then 0 effect on a target, regardless of weather you have tac buffs or not, then the target will actually be in danger.
tacs can only deal damage, they have no method of really effecting the enemy other then shooting at them, and trying to shoot through healing and resistence thats twice as potent as their damage. its very easy for a tac to be worthless. but then theirs pve, were you shoot helpless, healless, hitpoint sponges that ether tickle or 1 shot you. since npcs are simplistic to the level that i would barely consider them place holders, none of the sci captains strengths really mater in pve.
now, like i sugested earlier, without derailing the system in place that works now, npc's could have a negative value for insulators or something, and a combo of shield striping and torpedo damage would give sci captains something fun to do in pve. it would also be in the spirit of their pvp role, weakening an enemy so his allies can get kills.
so really, stop with this tac captain hate, you would realize how silly it is the first time you are a part of a really competitive pvp team, the realities of the game balance would finally be clear. there would also be no tac/sci in a match like that, seeing as their damage would be nothing compared to an escort, and they can barley contribute at all to CC.
not tac captain hate, it's a flawed mechanic in the game. tac captains should not be able to buff sci skills. i understand you don't want your uberness taken away...but saying people are hating and it's an 'ideology' is bs. you just don't want even a hint of a chance that devs might fix the problem.
saying tacs are worthless? how desperate are you? scrabbling at straws because you know yourself it's broken...but you like it broken.
first started playing thought it was just a glitch they'd eventually fix...sheer stupidity to nerf sci abilities rather than fixing tac abilities so that they can no longer buff sci. so more than likely the broken mechanic will continue. with the multitude of other broken things in game that they are incapable of or just don't care enough to bother fixing.
for myself, i won't stick a tac in a sci ship, i know it's broken, i know it's basically an exploit and OP. i don't get my jollies being op with a broken mechanic...prefer a fair fight. obviously that doesn't apply to you...
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Comments
I remember back in the day on my sci intrepid wasting my sci teams just to buff my shield drain. Those were the days
No, it wasn't always like that. The F2P space revamp made non-weapon damage sources into weapon-damage. Hence gravity well became kinetic and so forth.
Photonic shockwave was tied in with photonic skill box in sciences. Gravity well was linked to anomalies.
Their damage types were not kinetic. I believe the only one that was kinetic damage was the tractor beam and repulsor beams but their damage output was always so very low the tac buff on them was never an issue.
Also of note, the abilities back then raised the base damage of the ability not their roof as they do now. Aux power used to raise the roof back then. That created a balance between those that could use a sci ability in a non-sci ship (aka multivectors) having to sacrifice skill points and power levels on the fly to make the ability function to a minimally decent level... whereas a sci ship it was natural to have high aux and high skills in the science ability.
Thanks for the clarification. I was starting to think the OP's main problem was that tac captains were taking impotent starships and making them useful instead of addressing the real problem being sci powers themselves not really useful unless they are doing any damage and even then only when piloted by a tac captain. With the current skill tree the way it is it seems like sci captain and sci boff powers need a complete rework. I would love to hear Ideas on how sci and sci boff powers could be reworked and make them more scary than just a tac captain firing off insane TBR crits.
as many other players have said, the reason because a tact toons use a sci/eng oriented ship is because tactical abilities buff everything, so if it loose something from weapons it get a lot from boff abilities buffed with tactical abilities... if tactical abilities will buff only energy weapons and torpedo/mine than you will have the same result I'd like, because no tact toon will have a so great advantage in using a non tactical oriented ship.
Moreover dev will be able to change tactical or science ore eng abilities with no strange effect on some other career/ship.
However It's the same: make tactical abilities buff only weapons direct damage or deny strange career/ship combination... You will have the same result.
Note that I have both tactical and sci toons, my tactical toons use escorts and are absolutelly funny and playable; my sci toon uses a LRSV it is funny because of exotic weapons but also disappointng because of its really low dps, non working abilities and ship fragility. While escorts fragility is counterbalanced by agility and dps, the LRSV fragility is not counterbalanced by anything else an moreover many sci boff abilities are AoE attacks that generate a lot of threat (try using GW in ISE and you will see many spheres firing at you whenever possible).
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
Tac: mm this ofc, this , and this.. o this would be interesting, now some emergency power power or a lil heal just in case, mby tractor or a resist...etc etc etc
Sci: Sigh... useless, useless, useless, [...90% of skills later...] semi useless so lets try, some heals yeah...
Not only that, but hey here comes a tac, and with his better hull, better agility, hugely better weapon dmg... turn out he can also make better use of sci skills. Totally how it should be.
and what about sensors? A sci should be the part of the team that can see a cloaked foe coming... well that's interesting cuz with 4 sensor probes and scan u can't see squat.
I see the reasoning and still don't agree that's it's any more than a bad idea. The loss of those Captain and Ship combinations in the hope that any character class problems will be resolved just seems like a band aid of an idea and will serve only to make Tac/ Sci useless.
I know some on these forums hold the Dev's in pretty low regard but I still hold them in fairly high regard and don't believe they need to make Tac/ Sci useless because they can't manage to balance the classes any other way. I get that the hope is that nerfing Tac/ Sci will allow Science BOff abilities to be buffed to acceptable levels of damage (without risk of Tac's one shotting people elsewhere) but even if Tac/ Sci gets hit with the nerf bat there's no guarantee that the Sci BOff abilities will be fixed later and it still doesn't fix what I feel is the most important issue; these aren't damage abilities yet the only use people have for them is the damage. When an AoE hold or stun is only used for the damage it deals that ability has much bigger issues than what a Tac can buff its damage to.
I agree that limiting the damage dealt by a Tac/ Sci to weapons only will have the same effect as not allowing the Tac into that ship in the first place as he'd be useless, that's primarily the reason I disagree with any changes to the way Tactical buffs interact with Science abilities. Personally I don't see an issue with Tacs dealing damage through both weapons and through Sci BOff abilities, I use both Tac/ Sci and Sci/ Sci but the reason my Tac feels more effective is because TBR buffed with Tac abilities still works; it's not some super amazing ability that's over powered and broken since the last patch, it just hasn't been nerfed yet.
Tac/ Sci may stand proud above some of the other character class/ ship combinations but when many of them are less effective because their bread and butter abilities are less effective than they used to be, reducing Tac to that level rather than buffing the others to the Tac/ Sci's level isn't a satisfying fix.
I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this
so you do not like that idea because you just have a tact/sci combination... :rolleyes:
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
Where did I say that? If you read the rest of the sentence I go on to say;
What I also didn't go on to mention is that to make the damage good enough I had to run with as many Particle Generator consoles as I could squeeze in to push the damage as high as possible and it was still wholly reliant on Tac buffs to be useful. Even so it was more annoying than actually dangerous and was very dependent on the Tac buffs being available. Hardly nerf bait, in fact it was so impressive I brought a Fleet Ship Module so that I could get a Fleet Defiant instead.
Science ships have always been about support, debuffing the target so that an Escort or Tac Cruiser can finish the job easier and although Science is a little weak now nerfing a Tac's ability to buff his damage via his Captain skills won't fix that, instead it'll make Tac/ Sci non viable whilst Sci/ Sci and Eng/ Sci will still be a little weak. That doesn't seem like much of an improvement to me.
I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this
eng class is a joke
tac aren't the problem, although if i have the choice to wait for another two seasons to get sci ships, and eng classes buffed, or to nerf tacs tomorrow. i m not sure what i would prefer.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
Every time. I see it used for:
Moving an enemy out of a plasma cloud
Moving an enemy out of a tractor beam
Moving an enemy out of a tachyon beam
Moving an enemy out of weapons range
The world of STO would be made perfect if they buffed every sci ability except TBR and then nerfed TBR so it pushes at about 1/4 the power it does now. I would cry tears of joy.
TBR is like anything else; Used properly it's great but used poorly it sucks. Unfortunately, the poorly used examples stick in the mind whilst the well used examples are quickly forgotten as they have little impact upon anyone else.
I do hate when someone uses TBR to push one of the Dreadnoughts out of a Tyken's with DOff proc just as its shields go offline so that it can recover, it's like some people don't even look to see what's happening around them.
I completely disagree with this. Consider that if tac no longer buffs science abilities the tac would be flying the science ship and buffing its weapons with tac primary buff skills (sci ship = 6 weapon slots in 3/3 split, escorts = 6 or 7 weapon slots in 4/2, 4/3 split) and would do the SAME damage as a sci captain would via science boff abilities if he has spec'd in the skill boxes for that ability. For debuffing and such tac captain still has fire on my mark and the timer-reducing ability.
A tac captain in a sci ship that does not buff sci powers is essentially a high damage via weapons ship that has a lot of shielding and access to a bag of tricks.
Consider also that attack pattern alpha and fire on my mark.. ALONE... used by a tac captain with ZERO particle generator skills, is the equivalent of 9 points in particle generators AND 2 particle consoles installed on a ship. The ability buffs the damage in a % based and the buffs stack.
To use simple numbers:
Sci captain:
0 pnt particle = 500 dmg.
9 pnt particle = 1000 dmg.
9 pnt particle + 2 particle console = 1200 dmg
Tac Captain:
0 pnt particle = 500 dmg
9 pnt particle = 1000 dmg.
9 pnt particle + 2 particle console = 1200 dmg
0 pnt particle + 2 particle console = 700dmg
0 pnt particle + 2 particle console + tac buffs (+60% minimum boost)= 1120 dmg
9 pnt particle + 2 particle console + tac buffs (+60% minimum) = 1920
With minimum point spending, @ 3 pnt particle and 2 particle consoles the tac capt does the same damage as the 9 pnt +2 console sci captain.
So do kindly tell me how it can be justified that a character that does not spend points in the ability itself can click once and get the benefit boost of a full spec?
Its as silly as giving science and engineers an ability that enhance weapon accuracy and damage output so it is equivalent to full basic weapon+ energy/torp +specialization box @ 6 points each. That way the science and engineers would not need to 'waste' spec points into weapons and focus on all things science and engineer. Something like this is outright stupid and tac captains would be in an outroar if they had engineers and science captains outperforming them in escorts in weapon damage output.
So... why then is it ok for tac captains to outperform sci capts IN sci ships USING science...with minimum to zero training in sci skills?
Actually it will fix that. The reason WHY the science abilities were nerfed was because tac captains were doing outrageous damage with them. Remove the REASON for the nerf and the nerfs can be removed.
Thing is, to fix the reason nothing has to be changed for tac capts. All that needs to be changed is the damage types and nerfs put to counter the tac buff via science.
Grav well can go back to anomaly damage. Resist' for this would be dampeners skill.
Holo Fleet/Photonic Shockwave can go back to photonic damage. Generic energy resist counters this.
Tachyon Beam/Particle Burst/siphon/tyken remains as they are and the innate 75% resist given by insulator skill needs to be reduced to 25% as it originally was.
Countermeasures needs to have the damage buffer for jam and scramble sensors ignore OTHER player's damage and only be affected by the player that jammed or scrambled the target. As it used to be, before the F2P patch.
Sensor skills needs to quadruple its stealth detection ability. This has been broken since the day of launch and it has been shown to devs that the stealth boost given by stealth skill / consoles is insanely higher than the max stealth detection counter that sensors and modules with stealth detect can possibly add up to. That is why no matter what, you will not detect players past 5km unless they first fly so close they get detected and then move out past 5km.
Science ship shield modifiers need to return to pre-f2p performance. Currently I think the best way to do this is to add a further modifier to the ships:
Science= + X% shield resists bonus
Cruisers = +X% hull resist bonus
Escorts already receive a very high defense bonus from their innate speed. This was a gift from the F2P space revamp patch which only kicks in for sci and cruisers if they put all power to engines (whereas escorts get it at half engine and lower due to their innate faster speed modifier).
Most importantly.. the biggest global gameplay issue that the F2P brought about that needs to be reversed:
Remove the movement speed bonus that is automatically granted per level gained. Pre-F2P the speed bonuses came from engines alone, Post F2P it came from just leveling up. Right now you can equip a level 1 engine and be almost as fast as you would with a level 50 engine.
Note that a speed reduction through these means does not lower the defense bonus of the escorts. That is tied to the speed setting, starship maneuvers, escort native def bonus based on engine settings and impulse engine skill.
Lowering the global speeds removes the zippy-swoosh arcade flying prevalent today and returns the game to tactical play. Flying and positioning your ship to attack a shield facing becomes crucial...and escorts are the kings of it.
This flight/combat can be experienced in the current game pre-level 20 which is when the speed bonuses from leveling up apparently kick in.
Do these changes and the game bounces back into balance when it comes to science and general combat experience.
All three are equally useful and must fly their non-career ships with certain limitations and benefits. The problem is Tactical is the only one that has a massive benefit from flying science ships..so much it outperforms science captains in their own ships. As shown above, its nothing to do with tac capt. itself, its the background changes done to the game during F2P patch which suddenly granted the tac capt. such a performance.
At 3 points in Particle Generators the Tactical Captain has spent a very similar amount of points in the skills tree to reach those numbers, just in different places. The Science character will have spent 18,000 points in Particle Generators with the Tac spending 9,000 in Attack Patterns and 6,000 in Particle generators. I'm not seeing the problem here.
Which Science abilities have been nerfed due to Tacs? The only recent changes I can think of were to PSW3 and that was a bug that was fixed, Grav Well was nerfed just before (or just after) the F2P changes because someone felt it wasn't canon to have ships bouncing around an anomaly but I don't recall the damage it dealt ever being a problem (I may be wrong though, it's been a while).
For me, pre level 20 the game is horrible to play as the ships are slow and they don't turn well. Personally, I can never wait to get to Commander so that I can start throwing points into the speed and turn rate skill (Impulse Thrusters?). I realise it's subjective but for me, faster turning and more agile ships are much more interesting, and much less frustrating, to maneouvre but that's my opinion.
I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this
sci skills in the hands of a sci/sci could literally deal 0 damage as long as they performed thier other function well, that being enabling others to get kills
and the sci ship weapon, the irreverent sci ship weapons, the 6 worthless sci ship weapons that even with a tac captain couldn't out damage an eng cruiser with 8 weapons. my god there literally couldn't be more of a non factor then the weapons on a sci ship even when a tac is using it. no tac would fly a sci ship with buffing 6 beam arrays in mind as some master damage dealing plan. the reason tacs use sci ships is for the shield bypassing damage of the sci skills. a bunch of energy weapons do nothing to help deal shield bypassing damage. there should be transphasics or harpangs or phaser turrets for the procs, just something to help deal more hull damage.
You misunderstand. As you say, a sci captain can train in attack patterns to gain the benefit from using attack patterns... although sci ships are limited to LT level tac consoles so no omega to get a direct damage boost.
However, we are not talking about atk pattern omega or beta or delta. Its Atk Pattern Alpha and go down fighting which any tac captain, which does train attack patterns as part of his setup as much as he has to train the basic weapon skill box which makes the sci abilities super-boosted in damage. That boost is added up upon the benefit from training in the science skill of the ability (particle in this case).
Hence, the tac captain becomes better at using a science ability in a science ship than the science captain. No contest about it.
The real question is: Why is an attack pattern boosting a science ability?
All of them. Tac captains took onto grav well and PSW and with boosted damage brought the nerf bat on the abilities and the stats that govern them..because it was easier for cryptic to nerf a stat/ability than change the tac captain bonus.
You seriously believe the excuses for the nerfs? Not canon that ships bounce in a grav well? they never bounced around pre-nerf (unless 2 wells from different ships were popped in but that was extremely rare). The grav well also happened to be nerfed directly after a swelling of tac captains flying sci ships and the complaints that came from the pvp forums of gravity wells being impossible to heal or defend against due to the sheer damage they put out.
Tachyon Beam and other shield drains also went down the toilet after insane whining from escort pilots that their weenie shields vanished with just a tachyon 1 attack and after the wenching from escort pilots about drains leaving them unable to move/fire. Again, instead of tackling the real issue (drain strength) cryptic took the easy way to cater to the escort whining: they gave 75% resists to drains on a global scale. Pow... shield and energy drains ceased to function for sci ships (not sci captains..sci SHIPS).
Photonic shockwave was not popular until just a month or so ago when it begun to be seen in STF's and PVP in greater numbers... and as I said earlier, the shockwave 3 from a science ship with all the appropriate skills and power settings placed to max the damage did not do much more damage than what a regular torpedo would hit the naked hull for. With atk ptrn alpha/go down fighting buffing it however the thing did equivalent damage to a high yield 3..which as you may see is rather problematic for gameplay balance and particularly in PVP.
Interestingly enough it also coincides with the phased tetryon weapons being released. Shield stripping weapons with disable proc weapons go quite well with a shockwave blast of that magnitude when using a sci ship...as long as a tac capt is flying it.
Again, I do not know if that was the reason all I know for certain is a sci captain in a sci ship using PSW3 did not put out any impressive damage. It was practically just a bit better damage than the photonic shockwave torpedo did.
Why would the devs suddenly 'notice' there was a 'bug' in the shockwave? With the TONS of much more critical bugs on their list they nerf PSW? Cryptic only fixes little stuff like that when it becomes critical issue..and apparently photonic shockwaves doing brutal damage in pvp all the sudden became such an issue.
And I agree we may like different flying styles and combat pace. I'm just pointint out pre-f2p the level 50 ships did not zip around at these reflex-arcade speeds (unless you were an escort using speed boosts). Combat used to be tactical in nature not reflex click (which is precisely what every game PWE buys is turned into..it sells more scamupgrades).
The issue is NOT the damage output of the gravity well not being 'high' when a sci captain fires it.
The issue is that by using a non-skill point spending ability atk alpha the gravity well gains the equivalent damage boost as 9+ points in particle skill.
Again, would you think it makes sense if sci or engineer captains did NOT train any weapon skills and yet, with one click, they gained the same damage output and accuracy as a fully weapon-trained tactical captain? And that if they DID train the weapon skills they'd get a massive damage advantage over the tactical captains when using tactical ships?
It doesnt. And what this design flaw has caused is the tac capt. abuse of sci abilities to get the sci abilities screwed with and nerfed to the point where they are barely of use to a sci captain. The irony is that a tac capt in a sci ship now does the same damage as sci capt did pre-f2p changes.
If you cannot grasp the concept that the sci ability was nerfed so that at its PEAK damage output (aka boosted by tac capt ability) it does its 'normal' damage... then you really have a denial problem.
Tell you what... if grav well was changed to ZERO damage and instead have particle skill directly debuff the target's damage resists in increasing tick-by-tick (like a power or shield drain) AND (most importantly) had an extremely powerful pull-in effect (and HOLD inside the well) ...
then Id not be complaining about anything. It would be an AWESOME science ability and tac capt. could not boost its performance with a click. The damage it does comes from the massive debuff.
No polarize hull or atk pattern omega or any 'hold' immunity ability works against its snare. The only way to counteract it is through aux to dampener or by increasing engine power to 100 and pulling out slowly.
...but then you'd probably have escort captains whining to high heaven about how a sci ship can turn their ships into putty with one click.
I agree. However all of our sci abilities got F'd over due to tac captains.
That would apply in PVP only since in PVE the NPC shields are a joke.
...and btw, this is precisely why gravity well got the nerf bat. People whined how uber-damage gravity wells (back then, before the nerf) were being dumped on them... tac captains seeking the edge in hull bypassing damage in science ships.
Sadder still, the whiners were other tac captains whose dinky hull escorts would pop within seconds of being in the well.
That last comment alone should tell you how the constant exploiting of the tac damage boost to sci abilities get the attention of the nerf bat.
Change the damage types or change sci abilities to be highly damaging in the sense of debuffs and holds so that tac capt buff does not boost it and you will have removed the SOURCE of the exploits and thus remove the reason to keep the applied nerfs.
what would u say if an engineer specing in AP would get a bigger bonus then a tac? or a sci specing in targeting would get a greater bonus in accuracy? u'd flip out!!!
lets just fathom that AP wn't buff sci skills anymore, it's not w/e deity u believe in coming down from the heavens, lets just pretend:
what does that mean for a tac flying a sci ship?
wel thx to APA, fire on mark, go down fighting and tactical initiative their weaps will still hands down out dps a sci running a sci (whose class skills make em a debuffer).
what will change is depending on how they spec, their sci skill dmg will be <= then a sci running a sci.
well... that would actually makes sense u say? we can revert all sci skills nerfes now, no1 can bug abuse a broken system? apparently not... when u'r s tac and u'r better then sci in every possible way, why would they want that to change?
and thus u can read the previous posts and everything will become clear.
Try this:
Pick a certain damage value as an "acceptable limit". For example, 250% of an ability's base damage (which would equate to the base 100%, plus a further 150% from any other sources. e.g. 100% from maximum skillpoint investment of 99 into the appropriate skill, plus a little leeway leftover for a further buff from science skill consoles or raw damage buffs).
Cap the ability's damage to make pushing past this value unfeasible, by means of diminishing returns. (So technically it might be possible to get slightly higher than the "acceptable limit" - say up to 300% - but you'd have to have a specialised build that makes use of every damage buff possible in order to get there, and it still wouldn't attain much higher damage than a standard build could reach)
STO already has a diminishing returns mechanic in the game for resistances, and it was recently implemented to power drains (whether it's working or not, the intention is there). It shouldn't be too much of a stretch to apply it to Science Powers too.
Nadion Inversion III: Added an increases the bonuses of energy levels by 30%.
EPS Power Transfer III: Removed bonus energy. Now increases the bonus from energy levels by 70%.
Miracle Worker III: Added a 20% bonus to all hull and shield heals.
Rotate Shield Frequency: Added a 30% bonus to all shield heals.
Engineering Fleet II: Removed skill bonuses. Now increases all hull healing by 50% and the bonus from energy levels by 20%.
*Right now 125 weapon power gives a 100% energy weapon damage boost. With EPS Power Transfer and Nadion Inversion active it would become a 200% damage boost.
Scattering Field: Now also adds a 30% bonus to all shield heals
Sensor Scan: Now also debuffs target power insulator and inertial damper skills
Science Fleet II: Now adds a 20% bonus to all shield heals
That way engineers are the best with healing and bonus energy and Sci at debuffs and healing as well. Of course these changes would soon follow because of broken combos:
Reduced effects of all shield and hull heal abilities by 30-50%
Reduced bonuses from high power levels so 125 power now acts as 100 did before
Reduced effects of all power drains by 30%
But that would be ok because tacs shouldn't be able to heal they are meant to deal damage right?
I have 6 mains, one of each career on both factions. I have flown nearly every combination, build, and style that I have seen on the boards and that I have come up with myself. The fact is if I go into an STF with any of my eng/sci and I'm not in an escort or carrier I am intentionally hurting my team. I do not partake in much content without being either a tac or an escort because it is inefficient. Removing the tac abilities effects on eng/sci boff abilities WOULD ALLOW THE ABILITIES THEMSELVES TO RECEIVE BUFFS THAT MIGHT MAKE THEM VIABLE FOR THE OTHER TYPES.
Although all sarcasm aside if EPS transfer alone was to instead or in addition to grant a 25% boost to the bonus of energy levels that would be pretty sweet.
A combination of me misunderstanding and not being clear.
IIRC APA requires points to be spent in the skills tree to buff its damage, CrtH and CrtD bonus so any buff from APA towards Science has been paid for by the player in the skills tree. The Sci player may have more points spent in Particle Generators but what the Tac hasn't spent there has been spent buffing his APA so he can buff his Sci abilities a little better. If anything the Tac has things a little worse, he doesn't get 100% uptime like he would from Particle Generators, gets to spend +99 in Attack Patterns as well as +54 in Particle Generators but gets the opportunity to deal a little more weapons damage and to spike a little harder with Sci abilities. I really don't see this huge issue.
Whether I believe them or not is irrelevant, Geko gave virtually no background on what he was doing and why and the only time changes have been made since were the 'not canon' Grav Well changes and the fix to PSW3 a few weeks back.
IIRC the complaints were about five Sci ships hitting TB3 and CPB3 and popping whole teams with a broken Spread to bare hull. Resists were asked for to prevent things like whole teams of CPB carrying Sci ships from stripping all shields in one hit but instead the passives were added which pretty much made all shield drains a joke in one pass.
I remember seeing multiple threads on the forum where people were discussing whether it was intended or not, whether it was deserving of such a rapid fix I neither know or, if I'm entirely honest, care but it is what it is. It just seemed to me it was less a case of it being noticed as of it being mentioned enough that it caught someone's attention.
I'm fairly certain that APA requires points spending in the skill tree (it's been a while since I last respecced) to get the maximum buff so it's not free, it's +99 in AP and +54 in Particle Generators. It may be a little cheaper overall due to the difference in costs between T1 and T3 but it's not free, it's being paid for and has lower uptime compared to the always there buff from Particle Generators.
I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this
In other news: 5 fully munchkinned escorts with 125 power to weapons, dual heavy cannons everywhere, maximum points in all weapon skills, and scatter volley 3/torpedo spread 3, all shooting in the same direction, still does this. Where is the "Munchkinned gunboats don't do 10,000 DPS to multiple targets" ability?
With zero points in attack patterns the bonus to damage in APA is 30%. 3 points gives it 45%. 6 points is 52'ish% and 9 is 60%.
The % is a problem since it literally takes the damage from the sci ability and boosts it beyond that of which sci capt. training the ability would take it up by for the same amount of points spent.
Finally, when you say 'spike a little harder with sci abilities' is not really a 'little' harder. Its a tremendous boost. The equivalent of doing nonstop critical hits with an energy weapon for the entire duration of APA. Remember its a difference of 1200/tick from a sci and 1900 a tick from a tac. 700 dmg difference direct to hull per tick over 30 seconds = 21k damage. 36k vs 57k damage total. Thats not 'little' spike, that's practically twice the damage. And this while his weapons are also boosted.
There is also the case of the skill points not reciprocating. Sci capt with the same atk pattern skillpoints and same particle skill points than the tac capt does not get the same benefit.
A sci capt should not outperform a tac capt when using weapons... . Likewise, the tac capt should not outperform the sci capt when using sci skills. Yet here he does...and without having to spend that much science skill points.
Finally, I highlighted in bold a sentence in your post. Do remember that both attack patterns and particle skill are in skill trees that are easily filled up when making any kind of spec. In short, the tac captain can have the same damage output with the sci ability as the sci captain (which im OK with IF he trains the points) ... but the uber boosting of it nor the less-skill points in sci spent and still significantly outdamage the sci capt with a sci ability is quite irritating and its the source of the woes that have got so many of our abilities nerfed.
Fixing the damage types and then the damage of the skills would make it so a sci speced tact would still only do the same damage with sci skills as a similarly speced sci with the advantage of more weapon damage.
sci/sci used to be just as viable as others at our job now only a select few skills are actually worth using left sci and engies due to tact abusing our skills with a mechanic that should never have changed
so at the end of the day engineers and science ask themselves why dont i swap to a tact then i can do my job how i USED TO before ftp
APA gives a 50% (the UI actually reports 49.6%) damage buff, IIRC it hasn't been 60% since the skill tree changes last year.
And where's the Science characters Sensor Scan in all this? At 125 Aux, and if we're going for full damage then that Grav Well really should be at full aux, that's an almost -68 DR AoE debuff. I don't doubt that the Tac will still be doing more damage but that debuff, likely to be on everything within the anomaly, will go a long way towards catching up with the Tac and that requires absolutely no skill investment from the Sci at all.
And here is the what's likely to be the main difference between our viewpoints. I don't disagree but would rather Science had a way to improve Science abilities rather than take away Tactical's ability to buff their damage. I'd be happier if Sensor Scan got a small buff to Science abilities; APA buffs damage dealt, CrtD, CrtH and turn rate whilst SS slightly increases stealth perception and is an AoE debuff. Throw in a +25 (just an example) to all Science abilities for the duration and Science just got a way to buff its own abilities in the way that Tac can buff weapons.
As I mentioned above I don't necessarily disagree but would rather that Science got a way to increase it's own abilities in a similar manner. A Tac won't out damage the Sci 100% of the time, just whilst the Tac buffs are up so why not instead allow Science characters to buff Science abilities? Outside of Science ships it'll not have a huge effect but get the strength of the buff right and it could even make Sci/ Sci fun again.
I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this
Problem 1: Getting maximum benefit out of Sensor Scan requires full power to auxillary, which means driving weapons at a very low power level. You can debuff the enemy, sure, but you don't have the firepower to back it up, since science abilities themselves do absolutely pathetic damage. 2000 damage per second on a maxed out gravity well 3? Well, that's cute I guess; an escort will be pushing 2000 damage per second on each of his cannons.
Problem 2: Debuffing in an area is meaningless to a ship that doesn't attack in an area. Gravity well can affect a few enemies but as indicated it does comparatively low damage and has appalling "up time". To really benefit from AOE debuffs you need AOE abilities like Scatter and Fire At Will. Which requires weapon power. Which we don't have because we're maxing Aux.
I guess you could go with Sensor Scan, Charged Burst, Gravity Well, then Torpedo Spread... which requires that you use 4 abilities (one of them with a 2-minute cooldown!), to get the same kind of power that a Tactical captain will be using every 15 seconds with their chained Scatter Volleys.
The larger problem here is that none of Science's abilities offer good damage, and to get maximum benefit out of the abilities it does have, you have to take ship's power away from the system that DOES deliver good damage.
any captain type has the right to fly any ship type, and use their innate captain tools to what ever advantage they can. some captains are capable of doing things others cant, every class has strengths and weaknesses. well, in a game were eng was any good.
tacs deal damage, thats what they do, thats ALL they do. if all you do is pve, and im sorry if thats all you do, you think thats all that maters. the healing and resistance in this game is easily twice as strong as any potential damage is, when a healer is as min maxed as most damage dealers are min maxed. unfortunately it doesn't take an eng captain to do that like it should, the heals all being station power based and having really nothing to do with captain powers.
the sci captain is built to remove the impenetrable barrier of resistance, turn off an enemie's ability to do anything, drain them down so they cant more, shoot, heal or regenerate, and to keep people pushed away from team aid.
the sci cant do its job alone, and unfortunately due to non damage dealing sci skills being in bad shape, cant do pve very well. if only you guys turned your energies to wanting sci skills buffed. non of the weaker ones being fixed would benefit a tac at all actually, the ones that deal kinetic and energy dame would be the only ones that mater to him, and they work fine. since healing and resistance are twice as strong as damage dealing, removing that means you can start haveing more then 0 effect on a target, regardless of weather you have tac buffs or not, then the target will actually be in danger.
tacs can only deal damage, they have no method of really effecting the enemy other then shooting at them, and trying to shoot through healing and resistence thats twice as potent as their damage. its very easy for a tac to be worthless. but then theirs pve, were you shoot helpless, healless, hitpoint sponges that ether tickle or 1 shot you. since npcs are simplistic to the level that i would barely consider them place holders, none of the sci captains strengths really mater in pve.
now, like i sugested earlier, without derailing the system in place that works now, npc's could have a negative value for insulators or something, and a combo of shield striping and torpedo damage would give sci captains something fun to do in pve. it would also be in the spirit of their pvp role, weakening an enemy so his allies can get kills.
so really, stop with this tac captain hate, you would realize how silly it is the first time you are a part of a really competitive pvp team, the realities of the game balance would finally be clear. there would also be no tac/sci in a match like that, seeing as their damage would be nothing compared to an escort, and they can barley contribute at all to CC.
I had honestly not even noticed that.
The difference is again the % based bonus APA gets. -68 resist is not the same as -68% resist (if it was the grav well would crush anything even at low aux). Tac Capt gets single target Fire on my Mark that is a -45 to a single target as well.
+25 to ... particle..or whatever is like 1pnt more in the skill..which is barely 20~50 more damage increase to the ability. Even a +99 more as drunk suggested would not do it.
Moreover, making the sci 'buff up' to match the tac in grav well via a stat-based boost only opens a whole can of worms to other sci abilities also getting the boost and subsequently becoming overpowered and unbalanced. Particle burst would be insane if the +particle boost sci got to compensate for grav well affected it. Feedback pulse? holy crud.
You approach the issue by increasing the performance of one side to be competitive with the other... but that only worsens the situation. It is in my opinion a typical band-aid fix for a gaping chest wound that the devs love so much. To solve a problem it needs to be tackled at the source of the problem.
Either change the damage type of sci abilities or change the damaging sci abilities to be strong debuffs to resists so that weapon damage can do their job (sci ships are happy, escorts would be silly happy with that) and/or crowd control functions (very strong tractor-in pull, etc).
Or pop an Aux battery, full Aux for 15 seconds along with full weapons if that's your thing.
I may not be packing AoE damage abilities but you know that DHC Escort you mentioned earlier, he likely will be and I don't think he'll complain too loud if you throw a full Aux SS at the thing he's shooting at.
But a Sci isn't a Tac and their roles are different. My Sci isn't there to kill everything in sight, my Sci's there to make it easier for the Escort to kill everything in sight whilst carrying enough heals to keep myself in one piece and support anyone else who needs it. A Tac can't do that as well, they can deal a little more damage but they have less options to support others as those heals will be spammed on themselves.
I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this
We all know that, but STO is a very Pew-pew heavy game, and tends to reward those with the most pew-pewness. (particularly in PvP) It's very hard for Sci's and Engie's to match that. I'm not saying that tacticals need to get hit with the nerf bat, that hardly ever solves anything... but Sci's and Engie's could use something to make them more useful.
not tac captain hate, it's a flawed mechanic in the game. tac captains should not be able to buff sci skills. i understand you don't want your uberness taken away...but saying people are hating and it's an 'ideology' is bs. you just don't want even a hint of a chance that devs might fix the problem.
saying tacs are worthless? how desperate are you? scrabbling at straws because you know yourself it's broken...but you like it broken.
first started playing thought it was just a glitch they'd eventually fix...sheer stupidity to nerf sci abilities rather than fixing tac abilities so that they can no longer buff sci. so more than likely the broken mechanic will continue. with the multitude of other broken things in game that they are incapable of or just don't care enough to bother fixing.
for myself, i won't stick a tac in a sci ship, i know it's broken, i know it's basically an exploit and OP. i don't get my jollies being op with a broken mechanic...prefer a fair fight. obviously that doesn't apply to you...
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