thats a real shame , considering rifles are supposed to the more unusual weapon to see outside of the hands of specific security personnel
Do Tactical captains have the option to specialise in assault weapons etc still in their skill tree? I know they used to...maybe weapon specialisation skills are the answer. Offer all classes pistol skills, offer tacticals rifle and assault so they're more inclined to sue them, and the sci/eng classes are more likely to use pistols.
And I'm saying when you look at it as a TV production, the various weapons had nothing to do with realism and everything to do with making a specific scene look more dramatic or look better on film, with a side goal of selling more toys.
So you have a diversity of weapons to suit different scenes... And the rifles get used not because "rifles are better" but because it sells the idea that "This battle is different because they're using new weapons." (Oh. And Voyager pulled out the rifles pretty heavy for a couple of seasons to help sell video games.)
Do Tactical captains have the option to specialise in assault weapons etc still in their skill tree? I know they used to...maybe weapon specialisation skills are the answer. Offer all classes pistol skills, offer tacticals rifle and assault so they're more inclined to sue them, and the sci/eng classes are more likely to use pistols.
Not every Tac should be Security. The three professions we have are supposed to each represent multiple paths.
Riker and Kirk spent their whole careers as Tac. I can think of one or two scenes of Kirk with a rifle.
There were TNG era wars and outside a few episodes of DS9, people used hand phasers in them.
Personally, large weapons look anachronistic to me. It's phallic overcompensation.
In the 25th century, I would imagine continent destroying power will fit in a package the size of an iPhone (I realize that exceeds the matter energy reaction potential of something that size in terms of pure destructive force but IT'S THE FUTURE and so you can have smart explosions). And computer aided targeting is a given.
In general, from a production standpoint, phasers were designed to highlight the athleticism of the actor and rifles were designed to compensate for that.
I guess I see the "rifles are better" as a symptom of the same issue that STO has had with blinky lights on weapons, large interiors, and the weird burlap sack costume textures at launch.
I call this the "opera makeup effect." (As an actor and director, one of the things I know about opera -- and its true for musicals but moreso in opera -- is that everything is designed to utilize massive casts and be viewed at a big distance. Whereas in non-musical theatre or even moreso in film and even moreso in television, you have to be more subtle because people will get up close views of things... and so there you want to highlight the motion and look of individual people and avoid things designed to be visual shorthand usable by a large group of people at a distance.)
In other words, everything was designed to be optimized when viewed at a large distance with dozens or hundreds of units. Rifles look better with a hundred people carrying them because it's visual shorthand. But in groups of less than ten, pistols look better because the motion and detail is optimum for the individual performer.
And then, when dealing with purely individual people being spotlighted, pistol versus rifle comes down to the athleticism of the performer and the aspect ratio you're shooting in. (Heck, that's why they blew the Enterprise-D up. It was proportioned for standard definition television and the E was stretched out not for scientific or purely aesthetic reasons but because it fit a movie screen aspect ratio better.)
Zoomed all the way out, rifles are easier to see. Burlap sack textures are easier to identify as fabric. Large interiors accommodate 20+ people.
The thing is, in an effort to accommodate the massive, a lot of the initial art direction eshewed subtlety and sacrificed the individual and the small co-op group. This was painfully transparent because the game itself wasn't as social as the art direction.
I have difficulty in justifying why hand weapons should be as powerful as rifles. No matter what argument you use, rifles are bigger. They can pump out more power per shot, maintain cohension of that shot, and can last longer with sustained fire than your hand weapon. Hand weapons were fine in TOS and much of TNG. Shields were rarely a concern and nor were prolonged firefights. Security teams responded to a situation with their hand weapons because that's all they needed. Didn't need to carry a bulky rifle because you didn't need that power.
DS9, ground troops carried rifles. Battles were prolonged, and you didn't really want your weapon to be sputtering out a few minutes into a large firefight. So hand weapons were relegated to secondary weapons. Rifle broke or ran out of energy, pull out that phaser. Not enough rifles because you were only meant to be there for awhile? You're not going to just sit there and watch your guys fighting Jem'Hadar, you'll use your sidearm to help. The hand phaser in Elite Forces was very nice when used on full power, but simply couldn't be sustained at that level for more than a handful of seconds.
Now we have shields to get through, and armours that mean a single shot just isn't enough. The stopping power of heavier weapons are required, and there's just no reason why a sidearm should be as powerful as a rifle. Neither realism nor Star Trek realism wise justify why a sidearm would be as powerful as a rifle. So I agree with those who suggest making hand weapons more appealing in other way. Melee and mobility related bonuses should be given to a character with an active sidearm during battle. DPS should remain lower than a rifle. I also like the idea about missions using concealed weaponry, but on the other hand, if we're thinking about our weapons the same way it was in Elite Forces, our weapons are stored in personal transporter buffers. Every weapon is concealable.
I have difficulty in justifying why hand weapons should be as powerful as rifles. No matter what argument you use, rifles are bigger. They can pump out more power per shot, maintain cohension of that shot, and can last longer with sustained fire than your hand weapon. Hand weapons were fine in TOS and much of TNG. Shields were rarely a concern and nor were prolonged firefights. Security teams responded to a situation with their hand weapons because that's all they needed. Didn't need to carry a bulky rifle because you didn't need that power.
DS9, ground troops carried rifles. Battles were prolonged, and you didn't really want your weapon to be sputtering out a few minutes into a large firefight. So hand weapons were relegated to secondary weapons. Rifle broke or ran out of energy, pull out that phaser. Not enough rifles because you were only meant to be there for awhile? You're not going to just sit there and watch your guys fighting Jem'Hadar, you'll use your sidearm to help. The hand phaser in Elite Forces was very nice when used on full power, but simply couldn't be sustained at that level for more than a handful of seconds.
Now we have shields to get through, and armours that mean a single shot just isn't enough. The stopping power of heavier weapons are required, and there's just no reason why a sidearm should be as powerful as a rifle. Neither realism nor Star Trek realism wise justify why a sidearm would be as powerful as a rifle. So I agree with those who suggest making hand weapons more appealing in other way. Melee and mobility related bonuses should be given to a character with an active sidearm during battle. DPS should remain lower than a rifle. I also like the idea about missions using concealed weaponry, but on the other hand, if we're thinking about our weapons the same way it was in Elite Forces, our weapons are stored in personal transporter buffers. Every weapon is concealable.
I have difficulty in justifying why, with replicator technology, safe, handheld fusion reactions, and Moore's Law, you'd NEED anything the size of a rifle.
These things aren't guns. They's nadion particle generators.
In the light of the working principle of Borg shields, as it is conjectured further down, we may explain why they block energy weapons, but not bullets. The shields obviously create a field that is supposed to interfere with the weapon's frequency, as opposed to an energy barrier. We may assume that an energy barrier is impervious to anything with less energy, be it solid matter, a matter wave or energy. An adaptive field that is made to cancel out one specific weapon type could not accomplish that.
The Daystrom Institute site covers capabilities nicely:
All of these are cited to the various tech manuals, emphasis mine:
This is a small hand unit, approximately the size of a pack of cards.16 They can fire up to Setting 817, which causes total vaporization of humanoids as 50% of affected matter transitions out of the continuum.18
...
This is a larger hand unit. Early models of the type 2 phaser used a type 1 phaser clipped into a pistol grip7, but modern weapons seem to have little in common with the smaller model.19 The modern type 2 phaser can fire up to setting 1620, which causes the destruction of some 3,900 metric tons of rock per 0.28 second discharge.21
...
The type 3 is a rifle version of the phaser weapon. The standard model as used in the mid 2360s used a somewhat similar ""business end"" as the type 2 then in service.20 It had 16 beam settings, with a fully autonomous recharge system. The weapon was gyrostabilised and had multiple target acquisition capability.22 Compared to the type 2 the weapon had a 50% greater energy reserve, but was no more powerful.23
(That last citation comes from page 135 of the Deep Space Nine Technical Manual.
I'll point out it's entry on 29th century phasers and why I expected them as destructive powerhouses rather than stun weapons:
The use of the weapon to vapourise an entire automobile in 20th-Century Los Angeles was supposedly meant to impress us with how much more powerful it is. Not entirely logically, though - the higher phaser settings on a 24th-Century weapon could obviously do that! However, the vapourisation effect was different - faster, and occuring instantaneously instead of gradually as seen on 'contemporary' Trek. Also, the beam appears faster as well, with a white pulse running at regular intervals through the energy stream.
See the gallery above for visuals of the 29th century phaser in use.
Oh... And the rifles were considered inferior for field use:
In the DS9 episode "Return to Grace," Kira Nerys says probably the most that's ever been said about phasers at any one time, while comparing the Type-3 and a Cardassian rifle: "This is a standard issue, Cardassian phase-disruptor rifle. It has a four-point-seven megajoule power capacity, three millisecond recharge and two beam settings. . . This is a good weapon, solid and simple. You can drag it through the mud and it'll still fire. . . Now this is an entirely different animal. It's Federation standard issue. A little less powerful, but with more options - sixteen beam settings, fully autonomous recharge, multiple target acquisition, gyrostablized - the works. It's more complicated, so it's not as good a field weapon. Too many things can go wrong. . . I think you should stick with the Cardassian rifle. It's smaller and easier to use. And if we get boarded, I don't want you to have to think too much about the weapon you're using." [Story by Tom Benko, Teleplay by Hans Beinler]
Another page on the Worfzooka from Insurrection has a user comment which notes: "It's way bigger than a phaser, and does much less."
Memory Alpha spotlights some discussion regarding the use of rifles in Trek:
The phaser rifle was retired from TOS after Roddenberry decided that, in common with smoking, guns were not to be shown on the series, either. Regarding the TOS design of phaser rifle, Bjo Trimble remarked, "The gun was just a little too lethal-looking for Gene's taste and he just didn't like it." (Starfleet Access for "Where No Man Has Gone Before", TOS Season 1 Blu-ray special features)
The energy from six phasers was capable of launching a small vessel or shuttlecraft into an unsustainable orbit around a planet for several hours... When overloaded, a 2260s type 2 phaser had the capacity to destroy a significant portion of a starship.
I'n tos a crew member was was transforming into
A powerful being after the enterprise went thru
A ion storm and the lightining from the storm
Affected some of the crew.
When Kirk decided to kill the crewman he called
For a away team to go kill him Spock showed up
With a phaser rifle, Kirk remarked it was overkill
Spock made a remark it was best to be prepared
It was the first time a rifle was seen I'n star trek
And it was implied to be more powerful than
Pistols
That's cannon by the creator
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
I'n tos a crew member was was transforming into
A powerful being after the enterprise went thru
A ion storm and the lightining from the storm
Affected some of the crew.
When Kirk decided to kill the crewman he called
For a away team to go kill him Spock showed up
With a phaser rifle, Kirk remarked it was overkill
Spock made a remark it was best to be prepared
It was the first time a rifle was seen I'n star trek
And it was implied to be more powerful than
Pistols
That's cannon by the creator
Actually, Roddenberry hated the rifle and outlawed it after he saw it, per my previous post. He didn't exactly have full control over TOS.
I think rifles look cool... But that's all it is. A cool look. And more optional gadgetry and a bigger battery.
If we go with canon, hand phasers are just as powerful but have fewer settings and a smaller battery. The battery self-recharges endlessly but the unit starts to overheat when you push past battery capacity with higher end blasts or rapid fire. The rifles just have better heatsink, a bigger battery (which makes it last longer without cooldown, not hit harder), and more targeting gadgetry. However, we do have the counter-example where Kira complains the Fed rifles are too complicated and less reliable than smaller weapons.
(And if you go by designs, used and unused, there's a running theme of putting handphasers in a casing or on a handle to get more life out of them.)
And the 29th century hand phaser is, pretty much to spec, a rifle in a smaller package. In particular the benchmarks it hits when it vaporizes a car, fires rapidly, and displays auto-aim. It's seriously as if they took the tech manual specs for the rifle and said, "Hey! Let's have a pistol do that!"
And, y'know, ultimately, I'm talking about the look.
Ships did barrel rolls and flips occasionally in Trek too but STO (I think wisely) avoided implementing full 3D space because the BULK of TOS and TNG was fought on a plane. The way I see it, pistols/handguns being EQUAL TO rifles (not superior, not identical, but equal to) is about the LOOK of the shows. Not in-universe logic.
They mainly used pistols outside of heavy combat, if you remember the maco team on enterprise or picard in the movie with the planet of non aging folks or even spock when it really the fan all had a rifle.
Add to that our star trek is in the future which gives them a lot of room for freedom or lee-way
They mainly used pistols outside of heavy combat, if you remember the maco team on enterprise or picard in the movie with the planet of non aging folks or even spock when it really the fan all had a rifle.
Add to that our star trek is in the future which gives them a lot of room for freedom or lee-way
Problem is that all weapons need to be seen as valid choices. That's currently not the case.
It's like saying that Escorts should be all-powerful because the Defiant was the Little Mary Sue That Could. It had the fancy armour. The fancy cannons. The fancy torpedoes. Was fast, agile and hard to hit because it was small.
Yeah, they COULD make Escorts the right answer to every problem (I mean aside from just gearing the game toward DPS) by giving Escorts hull in the Cruiser ranges... but that's bad for balance, and ultimately bad for the game.
The ground weapons need a revamp because ultimately the non-rifles are seen as inferior by... pretty much everyone. They need to balance the options, or there's really no options at all. May as well take out the hand phasers and other pistols in the game as they aren't "real" equipment, just fancy window dressing that's sitting around cluttering up loot tables.
They mainly used pistols outside of heavy combat, if you remember the maco team on enterprise or picard in the movie with the planet of non aging folks or even spock when it really the fan all had a rifle.
Add to that our star trek is in the future which gives them a lot of room for freedom or lee-way
My point is ultimately about LOOK.
When you have 15-20 people armed, rifles work well visually because they're visible from a distance and provide a military feel.
When you have 5 people or less, pistols win out because they highlight the athleticism of the performer and your focus is on a small group of people.
I think that's consistent with the shows and I think it shapes the attitudes of people who look at the trailers and see armored guys with rifles and say, "That doesn't feel Trek."
If pistols were showcased more equally, I think it might appeal less to the "military gung-ho" aspect of the audience by a BIT but it would appeal to the "OMG Star Trek" audience by a LOT.
I think they wisely have done a lot to make hand-to-hand fighting viable in the last eight months. Not because it makes sense but because it's Trek.
Likewise, I think this applies to pistols and hand phasers.
Heck... The guy on the box art for STO had a cobra phaser.
As for game balance it's already the case, that you have items that overpower everything, miniguns, (star) cruisers and regenerative shields and so on all completely useless.
But yeah that being said I don't think it would take a royal amount of effort to balance things out, pistols could have a shorter cooldown or alt attack or higher damage from x range, sure.
Visually I don't know like I said before any major battle from star trek I remember had rifles.
Remember the pilot in tos where they brought out a huge m60 like blaster to cut into the cave ?
I don't think it's over the top to ignore pistols but of course a more balance system where everything had a use would be much prefered
Not every Tac should be Security. The three professions we have are supposed to each represent multiple paths.
Riker and Kirk spent their whole careers as Tac. I can think of one or two scenes of Kirk with a rifle.
Well this is true, but then that's what the skill tree represents surely? Our choices in that path, a 'Tactical' Class captain who chooses to take a larger number of skill points into rifles could be presumed to be more a Security Class than Tactical. It's a limitation of how the game lets us define ourselves
As for game balance it's already the case, that you have items that overpower everything, miniguns, (star) cruisers and regenerative shields and so on all completely useless.
But yeah that being said I don't think it would take a royal amount of effort to balance things out, pistols could have a shorter cooldown or alt attack or higher damage from x range, sure.
Visually I don't know like I said before any major battle from star trek I remember had rifles.
Remember the pilot in tos where they brought out a huge m60 like blaster to cut into the cave ?
I don't think it's over the top to ignore pistols but of course a more balance system where everything had a use would be much prefered
If there's no direct plan to do that, they might as well take the melee approach to balance and start unleashing insane pistol BOffs while cautiously boosting the weapons themselves.
I noticed they've put the 29th century phaser pistol (and rifle variant) into the lobi store. Having seen a couple in action I actually quite like the looks of them, but mostly because they're pretty spartan in design.
Heck... The guy on the box art for STO had a cobra phaser.
Charlie Sheen is trying to kill you. :P
Back to conversation at hand, I still think that hand weapons should give stealth bonuses, and rifles should give threat gen.
A few other things that could make pistols viable options is have pistols give a speed bonus simply while walking and while sprinting. What would also be neat a neat addition is the ability to shoot a pistol while sprinting. Accuracy would go way down of course, but it would still be a unique addition.
Back to conversation at hand, I still think that hand weapons should give stealth bonuses, and rifles should give threat gen.
A few other things that could make pistols viable options is have pistols give a speed bonus simply while walking and while sprinting. What would also be neat a neat addition is the ability to shoot a pistol while sprinting. Accuracy would go way down of course, but it would still be a unique addition.
I would actually be fine if they added pistol DOffs for some of this as long as they didn't also add rifle DOffs or the pistol DOffs were better.
One perk of the DOff system I can see is that it becomes "Pay for Balance" if you want to use an odd build. I can actually admire that in a F2P game, if the default method of play is freely earnable and the quirky alternatives involve someone somewhere spending money to bring them up to par.
Like if they had a unique "Special Ops" DOFF who reduces threat by 25% when using pistols and a Security variant who increases stun pistol damage and range by 12%, stackable up to three. (Yes, that's high but it takes into account that pistol secondaries do less damage.)
I would actually be fine if they added pistol DOffs for some of this as long as they didn't also add rifle DOffs or the pistol DOffs were better.
One perk of the DOff system I can see is that it becomes "Pay for Balance" if you want to use an odd build. I can actually admire that in a F2P game, if the default method of play is freely earnable and the quirky alternatives involve someone somewhere spending money to bring them up to par.
Like if they had a unique "Special Ops" DOFF who reduces threat by 25% when using pistols and a Security variant who increases stun pistol damage and range by 12%, stackable up to three. (Yes, that's high but it takes into account that pistol secondaries do less damage.)
Of course wouldn't those DOffs not only need to exist, but be powerful enough that they not only offset the perceived difference between pistols and rifles, but also offset the loss of that DOff slot that others would be able to use...?
Also... I'm not sure those numbers are high when you consider that a very rare ground warfare specialist offers a 10% across the board damage bonus to the involved enemies.
I'll add, however, that one downside of balance via DOffing is the social factor.
They could make a DOff that makes rainbow builds better than specialization but that wouldn't stop players from groaning when they see it.
Right now, my melee tac has 80% shield pen and doesn't need a remod (being melee), does energy damage Borg cannot adapt to (Crystalline sword), 15% knockdown chance (ultrarare DOff, x2 when I'm not fighting Borg), 25% bonus crit chance and 76% bonus crit severity. Plus Tactical class boosts from speccing into it.
And I switch to a sniper rifle if people are trying the Infected optional or an area has too many Borg. Because, hey, tactics! You need them!
But if there are less than around 10 Borg, I go with melee. Guarding the nodes in Cure Ground? The sword is GREAT. The only way a sniper rifle would be better is if everyone needed help fighting off the three Borg going for their node. And if 3 Borg are overwhelming to a point where you can't wait for me to sprint for an assist, you probably aren't in full Mk X gear.
But even with stats that cause my punches and sword swipes to outdamage anything but the Breen cryo weapon, I STILL get the odd person who's like, "Melee sucks. Use a gun." And the thing is, I have bonuses that a gun can't get. My fists outdamage your gun. But there's a percentage of the population who thinks I'm lying when I say what melee DOffs do.
Of course wouldn't those DOffs not only need to exist, but be powerful enough that they not only offset the perceived difference between pistols and rifles, but also offset the loss of that DOff slot that others would be able to use...?
Also... I'm not sure those numbers are high when you consider that a very rare ground warfare specialist offers a 10% across the board damage bonus to the involved enemies.
Well, there's the trick and it seems to actually be handled well by the current DOff system. By and large, DOffs almost never buff anything that is already powerful.
Aside from Warfare Specialists, there is no DOff that boosts rifles. Likewise, a lot of DOffs boost gimmick space science and tanking builds but VERY few boost escort DPS and the ones that do are substantially less powerful.
So it works as long as rifles are ineligible or if rifle boosting DOffs are worse at what they do.
gotta throw my hat in for this, weapons defintatley need a visual and gameplay overhaul.
We need to have the same visual choices for weapons as we do for uniforms.
Boost pistols so they are more competitive, add a pistol to the Omega, MAco and KHG set, give us the option ot use pistols in STFs without gimping ousrselves
Then rescale the weapons so they are more realistic and add the capability to change the looks...as someone said, the Mk0 guns are the ones that look most liek the shows/movies
Looking for a great fleet, then try the UFP/House of Kular, visit ufplanets.comfor more infoA forum post should be like a woman's skirt, long enough to cover the subject matter but short enough to keep things interesting.
gotta throw my hat in for this, weapons defintatley need a visual and gameplay overhaul.
We need to have the same visual choices for weapons as we do for uniforms.
Boost pistols so they are more competitive, add a pistol to the Omega, MAco and KHG set, give us the option ot use pistols in STFs without gimping ousrselves
Then rescale the weapons so they are more realistic and add the capability to change the looks...as someone said, the Mk0 guns are the ones that look most liek the shows/movies
My preference would honestly be for the gear item we have called "weapons" to be a "weapons battery" effectively that could be dropped in any casing.
And the casing is either a separate unit that holds two batteries (and you get different effects from battery/casing combos)... Or we pick our weapon with our costume and can overwrite any weapon with a visual. The latter is arguably bad for PvP but PvP as it stands is built around the assumption that you're using a flavor of the month build anyway.
As long as melee weapons look like melee weapons, I don't know what harm it would do if people could use compression rifle or arcwave powers with pistols or stuns with an assault wave look.
I didn't say they never used big weapons on Star Trek. My point was that they didn't carry them always with them. Rifles where used when a situation was desperate or when they expected heavy combat.
But normally, pistols where good enough.
What really bothers me about STO hand weapons is that phaser pistols have two different appearances. (stun&wide beam/ compression & dualpistols)
I would prefer if phaser pistols would look more like Mk II or IV Stun Beam phasers (but without the holographic stuff on it). The Compression phaser model looks like a generic sci fi pistol, but not like a Starfleet phaser IMO.
Thank you for reading or ignoring, depending on who you are.
"...'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied--chains us all irrevocably.' ... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today--"
- (TNG) Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie
I always thought the compression & dual phaser pistols were non-Starfleet issue weapons, something colonists or traders might use. I assume that's why they took them out of the Starfleet stores but left them in the Ferengi black market ones.
What really bothers me about STO hand weapons is that phaser pistols have two different appearances. (stun&wide beam/ compression & dualpistols)
I would prefer if phaser pistols would look more like Mk II or IV Stun Beam phasers (but without the holographic stuff on it). The Compression phaser model looks like a generic sci fi pistol, but not like a Starfleet phaser IMO.
I agree, Cryptic should give them more of a uniform look across the board. The Mk XI stun pistol looks more like a club than a pistol. Also, the ability to turn off those annoying blue holos is a must. Never did a weapon in Trek have those until STO, dunno why they added it.
I always thought the compression & dual phaser pistols were non-Starfleet issue weapons, something colonists or traders might use. I assume that's why they took them out of the Starfleet stores but left them in the Ferengi black market ones.
I always looked at them as Cardassian weaponry as they use phasers as well but freighter or trade ship captains certainly makes sense as well. They should rethink this as well and take the direction they took with the Romulan/Jem'Hadar weapons. Each faction/race should have their own arsenal or armory.
I agree, Cryptic should give them more of a uniform look across the board. The Mk XI stun pistol looks more like a club than a pistol. Also, the ability to turn off those annoying blue holos is a must. Never did a weapon in Trek have those until STO, dunno why they added it.
I always looked at them as Cardassian weaponry as they use phasers as well but freighter or trade ship captains certainly makes sense as well. They should rethink this as well and take the direction they took with the Romulan/Jem'Hadar weapons. Each faction/race should have their own arsenal or armory.
Well, Nemesis had holo-targeting.
And on the stun pistol, does it by chance look like the TNG "cobra phaser"?
Comments
because in Trek they never used stuff like that...
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Isomagnetic_disintegrator
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Plasma_rifle?file=Plasma_rifle,_Broken_Bow.jpg
http://p2.la-img.com/930/21666/7457871_7_l.jpg
http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/rr251/tommisdabest/SniperAssaultCompressionRiflesComparrisonTestRender.png
Do Tactical captains have the option to specialise in assault weapons etc still in their skill tree? I know they used to...maybe weapon specialisation skills are the answer. Offer all classes pistol skills, offer tacticals rifle and assault so they're more inclined to sue them, and the sci/eng classes are more likely to use pistols.
And I'm saying when you look at it as a TV production, the various weapons had nothing to do with realism and everything to do with making a specific scene look more dramatic or look better on film, with a side goal of selling more toys.
So you have a diversity of weapons to suit different scenes... And the rifles get used not because "rifles are better" but because it sells the idea that "This battle is different because they're using new weapons." (Oh. And Voyager pulled out the rifles pretty heavy for a couple of seasons to help sell video games.)
Not every Tac should be Security. The three professions we have are supposed to each represent multiple paths.
Riker and Kirk spent their whole careers as Tac. I can think of one or two scenes of Kirk with a rifle.
There were TNG era wars and outside a few episodes of DS9, people used hand phasers in them.
Personally, large weapons look anachronistic to me. It's phallic overcompensation.
In the 25th century, I would imagine continent destroying power will fit in a package the size of an iPhone (I realize that exceeds the matter energy reaction potential of something that size in terms of pure destructive force but IT'S THE FUTURE and so you can have smart explosions). And computer aided targeting is a given.
I guess I see the "rifles are better" as a symptom of the same issue that STO has had with blinky lights on weapons, large interiors, and the weird burlap sack costume textures at launch.
I call this the "opera makeup effect." (As an actor and director, one of the things I know about opera -- and its true for musicals but moreso in opera -- is that everything is designed to utilize massive casts and be viewed at a big distance. Whereas in non-musical theatre or even moreso in film and even moreso in television, you have to be more subtle because people will get up close views of things... and so there you want to highlight the motion and look of individual people and avoid things designed to be visual shorthand usable by a large group of people at a distance.)
In other words, everything was designed to be optimized when viewed at a large distance with dozens or hundreds of units. Rifles look better with a hundred people carrying them because it's visual shorthand. But in groups of less than ten, pistols look better because the motion and detail is optimum for the individual performer.
And then, when dealing with purely individual people being spotlighted, pistol versus rifle comes down to the athleticism of the performer and the aspect ratio you're shooting in. (Heck, that's why they blew the Enterprise-D up. It was proportioned for standard definition television and the E was stretched out not for scientific or purely aesthetic reasons but because it fit a movie screen aspect ratio better.)
Zoomed all the way out, rifles are easier to see. Burlap sack textures are easier to identify as fabric. Large interiors accommodate 20+ people.
The thing is, in an effort to accommodate the massive, a lot of the initial art direction eshewed subtlety and sacrificed the individual and the small co-op group. This was painfully transparent because the game itself wasn't as social as the art direction.
It DOES have a passing resemblance, maybe we should contact CBS and let them know? Wouldn't want anyone to get confused and all that.
The phasers have them.
DS9, ground troops carried rifles. Battles were prolonged, and you didn't really want your weapon to be sputtering out a few minutes into a large firefight. So hand weapons were relegated to secondary weapons. Rifle broke or ran out of energy, pull out that phaser. Not enough rifles because you were only meant to be there for awhile? You're not going to just sit there and watch your guys fighting Jem'Hadar, you'll use your sidearm to help. The hand phaser in Elite Forces was very nice when used on full power, but simply couldn't be sustained at that level for more than a handful of seconds.
Now we have shields to get through, and armours that mean a single shot just isn't enough. The stopping power of heavier weapons are required, and there's just no reason why a sidearm should be as powerful as a rifle. Neither realism nor Star Trek realism wise justify why a sidearm would be as powerful as a rifle. So I agree with those who suggest making hand weapons more appealing in other way. Melee and mobility related bonuses should be given to a character with an active sidearm during battle. DPS should remain lower than a rifle. I also like the idea about missions using concealed weaponry, but on the other hand, if we're thinking about our weapons the same way it was in Elite Forces, our weapons are stored in personal transporter buffers. Every weapon is concealable.
I have difficulty in justifying why, with replicator technology, safe, handheld fusion reactions, and Moore's Law, you'd NEED anything the size of a rifle.
These things aren't guns. They's nadion particle generators.
Here's a good article from Ex Astris:
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/treknology-weapons.htm#phasers
Some highlights:
The Daystrom Institute site covers capabilities nicely:
http://www.ditl.org/pagweapon.php?WeaponID=11&ListID=Weapons
All of these are cited to the various tech manuals, emphasis mine:
(That last citation comes from page 135 of the Deep Space Nine Technical Manual.
And here's a site all about phasers:
http://www.phasers.net/
I'll point out it's entry on 29th century phasers and why I expected them as destructive powerhouses rather than stun weapons:
http://www.phasers.net/misc/29cphase.htm
See the gallery above for visuals of the 29th century phaser in use.
Oh... And the rifles were considered inferior for field use:
http://www.phasers.net/2360/type3.htm
Another page on the Worfzooka from Insurrection has a user comment which notes: "It's way bigger than a phaser, and does much less."
Memory Alpha spotlights some discussion regarding the use of rifles in Trek:
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Type_3_phaser
Oh... And for some phaser benchmarks, from MA:
A powerful being after the enterprise went thru
A ion storm and the lightining from the storm
Affected some of the crew.
When Kirk decided to kill the crewman he called
For a away team to go kill him Spock showed up
With a phaser rifle, Kirk remarked it was overkill
Spock made a remark it was best to be prepared
It was the first time a rifle was seen I'n star trek
And it was implied to be more powerful than
Pistols
That's cannon by the creator
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
I'm glade I'm not the only one who thinks this...
[/SIGPIC]
Actually, Roddenberry hated the rifle and outlawed it after he saw it, per my previous post. He didn't exactly have full control over TOS.
I think rifles look cool... But that's all it is. A cool look. And more optional gadgetry and a bigger battery.
If we go with canon, hand phasers are just as powerful but have fewer settings and a smaller battery. The battery self-recharges endlessly but the unit starts to overheat when you push past battery capacity with higher end blasts or rapid fire. The rifles just have better heatsink, a bigger battery (which makes it last longer without cooldown, not hit harder), and more targeting gadgetry. However, we do have the counter-example where Kira complains the Fed rifles are too complicated and less reliable than smaller weapons.
(And if you go by designs, used and unused, there's a running theme of putting handphasers in a casing or on a handle to get more life out of them.)
And the 29th century hand phaser is, pretty much to spec, a rifle in a smaller package. In particular the benchmarks it hits when it vaporizes a car, fires rapidly, and displays auto-aim. It's seriously as if they took the tech manual specs for the rifle and said, "Hey! Let's have a pistol do that!"
And, y'know, ultimately, I'm talking about the look.
Ships did barrel rolls and flips occasionally in Trek too but STO (I think wisely) avoided implementing full 3D space because the BULK of TOS and TNG was fought on a plane. The way I see it, pistols/handguns being EQUAL TO rifles (not superior, not identical, but equal to) is about the LOOK of the shows. Not in-universe logic.
Add to that our star trek is in the future which gives them a lot of room for freedom or lee-way
Problem is that all weapons need to be seen as valid choices. That's currently not the case.
It's like saying that Escorts should be all-powerful because the Defiant was the Little Mary Sue That Could. It had the fancy armour. The fancy cannons. The fancy torpedoes. Was fast, agile and hard to hit because it was small.
Yeah, they COULD make Escorts the right answer to every problem (I mean aside from just gearing the game toward DPS) by giving Escorts hull in the Cruiser ranges... but that's bad for balance, and ultimately bad for the game.
The ground weapons need a revamp because ultimately the non-rifles are seen as inferior by... pretty much everyone. They need to balance the options, or there's really no options at all. May as well take out the hand phasers and other pistols in the game as they aren't "real" equipment, just fancy window dressing that's sitting around cluttering up loot tables.
My point is ultimately about LOOK.
When you have 15-20 people armed, rifles work well visually because they're visible from a distance and provide a military feel.
When you have 5 people or less, pistols win out because they highlight the athleticism of the performer and your focus is on a small group of people.
I think that's consistent with the shows and I think it shapes the attitudes of people who look at the trailers and see armored guys with rifles and say, "That doesn't feel Trek."
If pistols were showcased more equally, I think it might appeal less to the "military gung-ho" aspect of the audience by a BIT but it would appeal to the "OMG Star Trek" audience by a LOT.
I think they wisely have done a lot to make hand-to-hand fighting viable in the last eight months. Not because it makes sense but because it's Trek.
Likewise, I think this applies to pistols and hand phasers.
Heck... The guy on the box art for STO had a cobra phaser.
But yeah that being said I don't think it would take a royal amount of effort to balance things out, pistols could have a shorter cooldown or alt attack or higher damage from x range, sure.
Visually I don't know like I said before any major battle from star trek I remember had rifles.
Remember the pilot in tos where they brought out a huge m60 like blaster to cut into the cave ?
I don't think it's over the top to ignore pistols but of course a more balance system where everything had a use would be much prefered
Well this is true, but then that's what the skill tree represents surely? Our choices in that path, a 'Tactical' Class captain who chooses to take a larger number of skill points into rifles could be presumed to be more a Security Class than Tactical. It's a limitation of how the game lets us define ourselves
If there's no direct plan to do that, they might as well take the melee approach to balance and start unleashing insane pistol BOffs while cautiously boosting the weapons themselves.
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
Charlie Sheen is trying to kill you.
Back to conversation at hand, I still think that hand weapons should give stealth bonuses, and rifles should give threat gen.
A few other things that could make pistols viable options is have pistols give a speed bonus simply while walking and while sprinting. What would also be neat a neat addition is the ability to shoot a pistol while sprinting. Accuracy would go way down of course, but it would still be a unique addition.
I would actually be fine if they added pistol DOffs for some of this as long as they didn't also add rifle DOffs or the pistol DOffs were better.
One perk of the DOff system I can see is that it becomes "Pay for Balance" if you want to use an odd build. I can actually admire that in a F2P game, if the default method of play is freely earnable and the quirky alternatives involve someone somewhere spending money to bring them up to par.
Like if they had a unique "Special Ops" DOFF who reduces threat by 25% when using pistols and a Security variant who increases stun pistol damage and range by 12%, stackable up to three. (Yes, that's high but it takes into account that pistol secondaries do less damage.)
Of course wouldn't those DOffs not only need to exist, but be powerful enough that they not only offset the perceived difference between pistols and rifles, but also offset the loss of that DOff slot that others would be able to use...?
Also... I'm not sure those numbers are high when you consider that a very rare ground warfare specialist offers a 10% across the board damage bonus to the involved enemies.
They could make a DOff that makes rainbow builds better than specialization but that wouldn't stop players from groaning when they see it.
Right now, my melee tac has 80% shield pen and doesn't need a remod (being melee), does energy damage Borg cannot adapt to (Crystalline sword), 15% knockdown chance (ultrarare DOff, x2 when I'm not fighting Borg), 25% bonus crit chance and 76% bonus crit severity. Plus Tactical class boosts from speccing into it.
And I switch to a sniper rifle if people are trying the Infected optional or an area has too many Borg. Because, hey, tactics! You need them!
But if there are less than around 10 Borg, I go with melee. Guarding the nodes in Cure Ground? The sword is GREAT. The only way a sniper rifle would be better is if everyone needed help fighting off the three Borg going for their node. And if 3 Borg are overwhelming to a point where you can't wait for me to sprint for an assist, you probably aren't in full Mk X gear.
But even with stats that cause my punches and sword swipes to outdamage anything but the Breen cryo weapon, I STILL get the odd person who's like, "Melee sucks. Use a gun." And the thing is, I have bonuses that a gun can't get. My fists outdamage your gun. But there's a percentage of the population who thinks I'm lying when I say what melee DOffs do.
Well, there's the trick and it seems to actually be handled well by the current DOff system. By and large, DOffs almost never buff anything that is already powerful.
Aside from Warfare Specialists, there is no DOff that boosts rifles. Likewise, a lot of DOffs boost gimmick space science and tanking builds but VERY few boost escort DPS and the ones that do are substantially less powerful.
So it works as long as rifles are ineligible or if rifle boosting DOffs are worse at what they do.
We need to have the same visual choices for weapons as we do for uniforms.
Boost pistols so they are more competitive, add a pistol to the Omega, MAco and KHG set, give us the option ot use pistols in STFs without gimping ousrselves
Then rescale the weapons so they are more realistic and add the capability to change the looks...as someone said, the Mk0 guns are the ones that look most liek the shows/movies
A forum post should be like a woman's skirt, long enough to cover the subject matter but short enough to keep things interesting.
My preference would honestly be for the gear item we have called "weapons" to be a "weapons battery" effectively that could be dropped in any casing.
And the casing is either a separate unit that holds two batteries (and you get different effects from battery/casing combos)... Or we pick our weapon with our costume and can overwrite any weapon with a visual. The latter is arguably bad for PvP but PvP as it stands is built around the assumption that you're using a flavor of the month build anyway.
As long as melee weapons look like melee weapons, I don't know what harm it would do if people could use compression rifle or arcwave powers with pistols or stuns with an assault wave look.
I didn't say they never used big weapons on Star Trek. My point was that they didn't carry them always with them. Rifles where used when a situation was desperate or when they expected heavy combat.
But normally, pistols where good enough.
What really bothers me about STO hand weapons is that phaser pistols have two different appearances. (stun&wide beam/ compression & dualpistols)
I would prefer if phaser pistols would look more like Mk II or IV Stun Beam phasers (but without the holographic stuff on it). The Compression phaser model looks like a generic sci fi pistol, but not like a Starfleet phaser IMO.
Thank you for reading or ignoring, depending on who you are.
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
I agree, Cryptic should give them more of a uniform look across the board. The Mk XI stun pistol looks more like a club than a pistol. Also, the ability to turn off those annoying blue holos is a must. Never did a weapon in Trek have those until STO, dunno why they added it.
I always looked at them as Cardassian weaponry as they use phasers as well but freighter or trade ship captains certainly makes sense as well. They should rethink this as well and take the direction they took with the Romulan/Jem'Hadar weapons. Each faction/race should have their own arsenal or armory.
Well, Nemesis had holo-targeting.
And on the stun pistol, does it by chance look like the TNG "cobra phaser"?