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WHY Cryptic lost money on the last Klingon ships...
patrickngo
Member Posts: 9,963 Arc User
This is just an unscientific hypothesis, but I think it fits the facts better than "Klinks don't spend money":
What was the last Klink ship in the c-store before the fleet system?
yup, it was the Bortasque, a "Klingon reskin job" of the Odyssey, and there's your problem...
Below L50, KDF ships have a very defined 'feel'-they're relatively manueverable. They have handling.
even cRaptors, with the pivot issue, still have some handling and line up well with every OTHER battlecruiser in the KDF arsenal..except the Bortasque, which is, I suspect the only KDF BC that a Galaxy-X can out-perform without the STF gear.
and Klink players NOTICED this.
an Oddy handling like an Oddy handles like MOST of the Federation's cruisers, and it LOOKS like a ship out of Star Trek. The Bortas looks like an office block laid on its side, handles like a city bus with bad brakes, and really isn't that good a performer even WITH five tac consoles-the main gun is hard to get on target, has a long cooldown, and is slaved to a spaceframe that is only slightly tougher than an unbuffed exploration cruiser...
What are the ships we see in Fleetmark events, or like to see in STF teaming?
Yeah-NOT Bortas.
The personality that runs a character to 50 (even from 21) on the KDF side, devotes time and money and time tuning and tweaking that Klink toon, is used to and expects from its ships a certain level of performance...which Cryptic completely missed when they put the Bortasque pack on sale.
A "Klink" BC should have a good turn rate-even a flagship should have a good turn rate, good accelleration, and good braking characteristics. It should be able to bring it's main weapons to bear against opponents with more than the 'undead shuffle' of the typical Borg cube. It should be tougher than a Raptor or BoP, and it should have some dirty tricks it can pull that fed ships just...can't, with the traditional trade-offs in place (Lower hull, lower shield mod, basic cloaking), but more than that, it should LOOK "Klingon"-that is, it should have a definite sense of menace in how it's laid out (look at the Vor'cha for hints here-kind of a winged-serpent-fangs thing there, a forked 'head' that just advertises "I gots me some weapons and I Likes to use'em"), with forward cannons as main weapons, it should be able to bring them to bear on a target, followed by torpedoes for the finishing hits.
Battlecruisers should have the appeal of the big, early sixties Muscle Cars-they should give off a sense of brute power.
Raptors are like the muscled out late 60's "pony Cars"-lots of power lowered weight.
BoPs are basically Motorcycles-they turn (and should turn) like a ferret on meth, with a nasty bite.
There is no room there for an office-block, and so, Cryptic lost money-if a guy wants to drive a '63 Impala with a 409, 4/11 gear and 4 speed (or '69 Olds Cutlass 4-4-2) he's not going to be happy with a '76 Buick Electra luxury barge (automatic, 455 with highway gears, soft brakes and suspension that 'floats'...)
it's the old "Detroit argument"-we'll buy your vehicle, if we think it's any good, but you have to look at what we LIKE to drive once in a while, capisce?
What was the last Klink ship in the c-store before the fleet system?
yup, it was the Bortasque, a "Klingon reskin job" of the Odyssey, and there's your problem...
Below L50, KDF ships have a very defined 'feel'-they're relatively manueverable. They have handling.
even cRaptors, with the pivot issue, still have some handling and line up well with every OTHER battlecruiser in the KDF arsenal..except the Bortasque, which is, I suspect the only KDF BC that a Galaxy-X can out-perform without the STF gear.
and Klink players NOTICED this.
an Oddy handling like an Oddy handles like MOST of the Federation's cruisers, and it LOOKS like a ship out of Star Trek. The Bortas looks like an office block laid on its side, handles like a city bus with bad brakes, and really isn't that good a performer even WITH five tac consoles-the main gun is hard to get on target, has a long cooldown, and is slaved to a spaceframe that is only slightly tougher than an unbuffed exploration cruiser...
What are the ships we see in Fleetmark events, or like to see in STF teaming?
Yeah-NOT Bortas.
The personality that runs a character to 50 (even from 21) on the KDF side, devotes time and money and time tuning and tweaking that Klink toon, is used to and expects from its ships a certain level of performance...which Cryptic completely missed when they put the Bortasque pack on sale.
A "Klink" BC should have a good turn rate-even a flagship should have a good turn rate, good accelleration, and good braking characteristics. It should be able to bring it's main weapons to bear against opponents with more than the 'undead shuffle' of the typical Borg cube. It should be tougher than a Raptor or BoP, and it should have some dirty tricks it can pull that fed ships just...can't, with the traditional trade-offs in place (Lower hull, lower shield mod, basic cloaking), but more than that, it should LOOK "Klingon"-that is, it should have a definite sense of menace in how it's laid out (look at the Vor'cha for hints here-kind of a winged-serpent-fangs thing there, a forked 'head' that just advertises "I gots me some weapons and I Likes to use'em"), with forward cannons as main weapons, it should be able to bring them to bear on a target, followed by torpedoes for the finishing hits.
Battlecruisers should have the appeal of the big, early sixties Muscle Cars-they should give off a sense of brute power.
Raptors are like the muscled out late 60's "pony Cars"-lots of power lowered weight.
BoPs are basically Motorcycles-they turn (and should turn) like a ferret on meth, with a nasty bite.
There is no room there for an office-block, and so, Cryptic lost money-if a guy wants to drive a '63 Impala with a 409, 4/11 gear and 4 speed (or '69 Olds Cutlass 4-4-2) he's not going to be happy with a '76 Buick Electra luxury barge (automatic, 455 with highway gears, soft brakes and suspension that 'floats'...)
it's the old "Detroit argument"-we'll buy your vehicle, if we think it's any good, but you have to look at what we LIKE to drive once in a while, capisce?
Nature doesn't HAVE to be nice, or polite.
Free Hong Kong.
Free Hong Kong.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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After all, they gave the freebie one away and that may have been enough for many KDF players (even though the C-Store versions are superior).
But there's other contributing factors as to why some may find the Bortasqu' unappealing.
The turn rate for starters - that thing is shockingly slow to turn for a KDF ship. If it were a kick-TRIBBLE carrier then maybe I'd be OK with it, but it's not - it's a Federation cruiser poorly disguised as a (very pretty) Klingon battle-cruiser.
The consoles are an issue too - most KDF C-Store ships are low-level but have interesting and unique consoles that you can buy and slot into whatever you want to fly - the Bortasqu' has only consoles that work in its variants giving players one less reason to buy it.
And lastly, the KDF has a pretty strong lineup of non-C-Store ships - the Vor'cha retrofit in my opinion is an outstanding ship for Tacs or Engineers (not so much for Sci) - my two KDF alts fly a K't'inga Retrofit (which really, is a slightly faster, prettier Vor'cha) and the Kar'fi (which is in a class all of its own) - I have a Peghqu' and a B'rel too but the K't'inga and the Kar'fi are just way more fun.
So much so in fact that I've bought other KDF ships just for equipment (Plasmonic Leech, Quad Disruptors, Bio-Neural Warhead) - the Bortasqu' offers me nothing over what I have and as such represents very poor value.
Fed-side, with the Odyssey it's a different story - it's a flagship Federation cruiser - it's the new 'Enterprise' - that in itself gives it a certain appeal to some - I have the free one but I never take it out of spacedock - it's always been a 'fail-whale' to me and I guess I see the Bortasqu' the same way.
funny you mention the 69 Oldds 442... I had one of these when I was in highschool,
I.R.W. Raptor's Claw
Storm Eagle Class Warbird Fleet Ha'feh
I have never trusted humans, and I never will
If you compare it to the Tor'Kaht, it has more hull, less shields, more Tactical Consoles and a Devastating autocannon and subspace snare to make escape difficult. So yes if it's ease of flying a ship by all means choose the Tor'Kaht but if you want to shock people with sheer firepower i prefer my Bortasqu'.
Well there's my two cents to offer, sorry for the long post
Nothing to do with Cryptic.
We are at fault, not because a crappy ship was released.
for me it was the "fly to these 3 ponts and scan " missions and the uselessness of the pet.
The oddy had the hazard skill that you can put on its pet and the oddy had chevron sep to do the scan missions.
Oddy is still the best ship on the fed side.
I am in almost toal agreement on this, i love my Oddy on the fed side because of the separation and tough as hell shields, but i agree the bortasqu' falls somewhat short on the, as you called them, "fly to these three points and scan" objectives in most cases, unfortunately that's why i maneuver almost entirely in full impulse in those missions. However, what the odyssey gives up for its extra base turn rate and shields is a loss of dps typical for federation cruisers in game (possible exceptions are the Fleet Excelsior and Regent). Therefore the Bortasqu' is my KDF Tactical toons weapons of choice.
yikes
I tried it out on tribble, and my problems with it included:
visual astetic - its a floating brick in space that looks toothless, plus a similar gripe i have with the oddesy, it just looks like a fat-er interpretation of other predecesors, oddesy=fat sovy, bortas = chunky vorcha/neg
turn rate for cannons - in pve with careful planning, easy, anything else.. yeah.. |:
consoles - a bop pet, not that handy, snare alright but too much cooldown, autocannon cool.. but turn rate/cooldown nulify usefulness
cloak with sensor analysis - something screwy happens, you target someone you get the stacking bonus, untarget you go to red alert and lose cloak >.>' (might have been bug, havent bothered to check)
lacks the slipstream bonus as the oddesy (why..)
also cruisers generally are not my strength, although a few of my toons are currently cruisers to try and FORCE myself into using them ^^'
the reason i think they lost money on the bortac was its pure TRIBBLE only a idiot would fly it.
as for not making money on other ships i dont bleive them for a second its just one reason one excuse as for why they are not providing for a faction.
i gave up hope long ago on them fixing or making ships for kdf it seems lockboxes are the only hope we got for any new good ships
Let's keep the word 'idiot' out of our opinions, okay? It tends to rile people up, even when you're using it in a general sense. ~Bluegeek
Are you guessing that cryptic set up the ship to fail so they wouldn't have to make any other?!??!?!??
Contraversyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!
In an ideal world they would make minor tweaks to the Bortasqu so that players will buy it, so they don't have to write off all the cost of developing its code and artwork. In a less ideal world they should take to heart the fact that KDF players are desperate for new ships but they will only buy new ships if they have solid features and fit into the performance continuity of other KDF ships.
Though, it's not the last thing that KDF got. They've gotten the temporal science ship, temporal destroyer, and the 1000-day heavy destroyer. Bortasqu is the last Z-store ship true, but let's not be completely hysterical here.
lol. ive got every kdf ship and it has to be my number 1 worst ship off all time.
also got all the lock box ships so when i say its the worst ship in the game i know what im talk bout. the thing flies liuke a bus with wings
have at it sir grammer the hell outa this.
I agree.
It's also pretty convenient that they first tell us they want to develop the KDF further...only to then, for the first time, tell us they lost money on some ships (whatever that means).
At least to me this feels like, if this is true, they deliberately kept this info until now so they have an appearently legitimate reason why it's not really profitable to invest into the KDF.
As for myself: I don't fly anything that doesn't have a decent turnrate. Therefore I never even considered it. Plus: it is damn fugly.
Turn rate: 5.5 => 8.0
Hull strength: -10%
All variants: Disruptor Autocannon. Unique front weapon. Effectively a single cannon (180 degrees) with reduced damage falloff, large accuracy bonus (faster than standard muzzle velocity) and a slightly boosted basic rate of fire.
Tactical Bortasqu: Tactical EPS Reroute console. For 15 seconds, all energy is transferred from Engines to Weapons. +50 weapon power, engines disabled. 1 minute 30 seconds cooldown.
Engineering Bortasqu: Augmented Reactive Plating. Passively adds +30 all damage resistance. Also adds 25% to the magnitude of any damage resistance abilities (Brace For Impact, Auxiliary to Structural, Polarize Hull, Attack Pattern Delta, etc) used on your ship.
Science Bortasqu: Subspace Snare is fine, though it could do with a shorter cooldown or a longer period of disabling on the target.
Full set bonuses:
+1.0 turn rate (becomes 9.0, same as Negh'var)
+10 starship energy and projectile weapons skills
+20 starship warp core potential skill
-5% all energy damage to shields
Worth 50$?
Very, very few people liked the free Bortas when it was released for the anniversary. It was, as has been said about the Bortasque, a whale. It was generally regarded as a joke. And then they went and wanted to charge people real money for it?
And then wonder why they lost money?
I used to be a Fed player, but since then i now play 90% on the klingon side and the rest doing STFs on feds with fleet mates who don't have klinks. I once flew a Dreadnought with a full cannon and turret set up, yes the turn rate was a problem sometimes, but i got used to it, I got consoles to counter it and turned it into a warship that was good in PVP. Once i saw the bortasqu' i immediately saw, as everyone else sees, the flaws: the bad turn rate, the TRIBBLE shields, the bulky design. And after a while of thought i came up with a build to counter the first two of these factors and i got used to the third one. I took a clumsy, slow and fairly weak cruiser who everyone believes is a passive ship and turned it into a Battleship, it has problems that cannot be fixed but i make do and stand by my decision to use it. And no Dreadnought I have faced has ever come close to killing it.
Yes, you may believe that a Fleet Vor'Cha or a Fleet K'Tinga are better Tactical Cruisers and perhaps they are, for almost everyone except me. I freely admit i am a megalomaniac, I chose it as the ship is huge, the cannon can do large amounts of damage if used right, if used wrongly it goes down like a cheap Orion on a Saturday night.
I was only contesting those who believe it has no good points, it breaks the mould and shouldn't be called a Battlecruiser: It is a Battleship. It is not comparable to the Vor'Cha, K'Tinga or Negh'Var, it's a new breed and should be treated as such, with careful thought and a lot of work and respect for its flaws.
And as for the car references, I have little or no knowledge of American cars, for I am not American, I am British.
As for it losing Cryptic money, I have no idea why it would as i seem to see tonnes of them around nowadays in PVE and PVP, and they've probably made that money back ten-fold in sales of lock-boxes anyway. Personally i think it was some of the Orion ships that lost them money as they're rarer to see
If there's one thing absolutely no Klingon ship is without (Orion ships excluded as they're not Klingon) it's damage output whether it be by use of pets or ship mounted Cannons. Fed cruisers are more about being giant bricks that take multiple ships to kill and can't kill anything else. Now we may have more Fed cruisers that get fire power such as the Regent, they're missing out on one of the weapons of choice for someone doing damage: Dual or Dual Heavy Cannons.
Will complaining and comparing it to cars make any difference to Cryptic or PWEs decision to leave it as it is: of course not. Will they ever change it? No. Then why complain, why not simply acknowledge that it's not the ship you're used to and adapt. The Borg never complain, so why should we.
Perhaps so, but you conveniently skipped my point of whether your original post using grand comparisons to cars and ignoring the simple fact that complaining will not make them change it. Whether you and hundreds of others think it lacks the flagship quality, an opinion i couldn't agree with due to my experience, does not matter. Imperfect world Entertainment have their money for it, why would they change it now and it may be the reason they're not taking the risk of making new ones. The designers of the ships may already have an idea that matches your idea of the Klingon Flagship cruiser, but it's the financiers who decide whether they go through with making it.
As i said before, don't complain adapt. Keep calm and carry on as someone from this side of the ocean would say.
Most of them then realize it requires a playstyle they are not used to. Some adapt, and use it succesfully in elite STF's, most don't. In PvP it's a one trick pony, but so are many other ships, too.
The tac Bortasq is the only KDF 5 tac console ship. It performs quite good vs. the more or less static targets in the 3 old STF's.
That beeing said, I think the OP is correct in it's assesment. You don't sell a pickup to people used to sportscars. Even if they do well in other markets.
In the video you can see Mr Shahl sitting in the chair and Brandon standing at his desk after he asked him one of the players questions that has been asked before dozens of times:
"Will Cryptic ever finish off the KDF":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztVMib1T4T4
:P
So you see there is not much else to say.
Klingons Battlecruisers are more about agility and power, The Bort does have power...but it has no agility to speak of. It carries one BoP, but it handles similar to a ship that can carry four...and four hundred more crew.
They're not 'muscle cars' or 'motorcycles'. They're Main Battle Tanks.
They're meant to be at the tip of the spear, and just BULLDOZE through an enemy formation, with nothing being able to stop them. They're not meant to be subtle, or fast turning. They're meant to wade in, stomp their way through, nab anyone who tries to get away from them, and stomp back out.
Quit trying to fly it like it's a BoP or a Raptor. It's not, and it's a grave disservice to the ship to try such.
You're meant to find the biggest, baddest thing in the enemy formation, tractor and snare it down, and then proceed to pound it into itsy-bitsy pieces.
And the Oddy is the single worst Fed Cruiser that I know of, not the best. Even the Dread is better than it.