[8:37] [Team] REDACTED: hold 5km distance from Donatras ship
[8:39] [Team] REDACTED: hold 5km distance
[8:40] [Team] REDACTED: 5km, 5km distance
[8:40] [Team] ME: not possible with trico mines
[8:41] [Team] REDACTED: don't fire the mines
Maybe that explains why this Captain only did 7% of all damage during this STF according to ACT ( i did 35 %).
Whats next? "Don't fire at him! He will cloak!"
with trics, its easy. you go in, get a few shots, get the aggro, and just escape dropping mines while she is following (and donatra basically moves into the mines). however if you cant hold aggro, then just leave it, and stay 5km away (I have so much fun with my gravity wells, keeping donatra in place, just to see how impatient tric captains are, while it would truly be faster if they just shot it at 5km)
also if that guy was on the other side, the combatlog would pretty much be inaccurate for him.
also here is a story of mine:
CSE, we group from elite stf (so thats a double fail, not even pugs), I just join the queue, we already start (well, I guess they talked strategy already, since the last sentence I caught was about describing mrrmll). one guy drops, we have to inv another, nothing is told, and start as soon as the replacement guy (whom I had a bad stf exp with, where we were the only two competent players, so guess it was a bad omen ), we start, no strategy is explained.
we go mrrmll as usual, and when the negvars pop, someone dies, and as he respawns cries that the kang is surrounded with BoPs. I tried to help, but when I saw its a lost cause, I just quit, since I did not want to take a timer on a CSE, that was failed because the match creator decided to be stupid, and I was a fool to assume that he is not an idiot.
on the other hand, the CSE I took after, I topped my best DPS ever, so in the end, I didnt care about the first try
So what is the true story regarding Donatras ship? From my experience the cloak initiates by extensive damage more that being close to her. What is your experience?
So what is the true story regarding Donatras ship? From my experience the cloak initiates by extensive damage more that being close to her. What is your experience?
the one who she targets has to be further than 5km, so the cloak wont start. if the targeted one gets close, she cloaks (unless her cloak is still on CD, which is not a long CD). if she targets someone outside 5km, but retartgets someone who is near her, donatra will cloak. simple as that
the one who she targets has to be further than 5km, so the cloak wont start. if the targeted one gets close, she cloaks (unless her cloak is still on CD, which is not a long CD). if she targets someone outside 5km, but retartgets someone who is near her, donatra will cloak. simple as that
This brings up a question I'm sure people here will be able to answer: Does Donatra's Cloak follow all the normal rules e.g. Not while tractored, not in a grav well, etc.
Could a well coordinated team keep her present by always having one cloak denying power active? Can she be denied by a CPB just after she cloaks? Or is her cloak magical (can't be knocked out from)?
This brings up a question I'm sure people here will be able to answer: Does Donatra's Cloak follow all the normal rules e.g. Not while tractored, not in a grav well, etc.
Could a well coordinated team keep her present by always having one cloak denying power active? Can she be denied by a CPB just after she cloaks? Or is her cloak magical (can't be knocked out from)?
Nope. Her cloak is perfect. There is no way to stop her from entering it, and no way to kick her out of it. Also her shields stay up while she's cloaked.
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
Got my Chel Grett for my engi yesterday. It was rather late but I wanted to test it. (4 DHC, 3Turrets, 1Cutting Beam).
So I enter an ISE with a failed optional, only three other players and spheres everywhere, swarming the left transformator. No one was answering my friendly "Hello". Oh my
Started to kill the spheres. Our two tacs in the beam cruisers where dying left and right. The SCI in the atrox was doing a good job.
We finally managed to kill the spheres and proceeded to destroy the transformator. Even with the low DPS output we managed to destroy it. The SCI with GW and TBR was a great help.
We flew over to the right side. I asked for 10% rule. No answer. Ok
The borg cube was rather fast down. We were still only 4 players.
I started to shoot on a gen. When mine was at 40% I looked around ... one was at 100%, the other at 60% (yeah tacs in cruisers) and the third just exploded :eek: Yep our tac bombed the gen where the atrox was shooting at :rolleyes:
Now the sci managed the nanites with a GW and I started shooting at the transformator... our tacs instead started chasing spheres -.-
There I started flying away and chatting with my fleetmates. Watched from far away how the cruisers where dying and dying and dying :P No talk on the zone or teamchat.
10 minutes later, the spheres were nearly all down. I flew back, helped with the last one and started shooting at the trans with the others ... it got healed back by a nanite sphere.
So I flew away, watched againg the dying tacs trying to handle the spheres. Lurked the chat in several channels. After 5 minutes I flew back, helped with the spheres and we finally managed to kill the transformator.
5min later, the gate and the cube were down. I got my loot and new players on my ignore list ;-)
I was probably an ******* not helping the others with the spheres. But I really thought we would never be able to kill them fast enough that we could start shooting at the transformator. Tricobalts for the win :-P
The new breen ship is good enough for ESTF's. It is a real jack of all trades, master of none. Perhaps the perfect ship for ESTF in a pug group :-)
One person decided to blow the generators before even attacking the cube.
then today, a couple of people decided to head right straight away. while we destroyed the left hand side and took out all the spheres they had managed to die a lot of take the cube down to 20%.
the other thing that generally annoys me is when we do the 10% and then people start attacking the normal spheres that warp in above it, instead of attacking the transformer and getting it to 0 as quick as. it just never makes any sense.
Khitomer Vortex - Everything was on track, except the guy on left probes was struggling... I was on right probes, because... well no one else went there even though it is a waste of my dps. I was taking care of my probes, then running across to help with the other side's - and back. A lot of leg work. Near the end, I was headed right to help, when a guy who had been getting killed by cubes runs up and uses his repulsor to push 4 probes - from behind, 6k... right into the gate. *sigh*
The Cure - Two of us run to bottom to get the BOPs and start on probes - no communications was happening, but I made the mistake of thinking the other 3 players would go left/right... nope. They are all sitting at the spawn point. By the time I noticed, Kang is already at 66% hull. Needless to say I gave a 1/2 effort hoping it would outright fail quickly.
Every Cure Space Elite....EVERY Cure Space Elite....
And I myself don't even know what the problem is. On one hand I'm inclined to believe that there comes a point where its too much (and that point is when you, at full health, are 1 shot with a plasma torpedo with full shields and each shot against you deals 1500 damage - from RAPTORS) on the other hand, Every time I die in Cure Space and get all built up about it, I think to myself "What am I doing? Why do I expect to hold out against these odds?"
The hardest part about it is I fly a cruiser, and when I can't do the one thing I'm supposed to be good at (TANK) well....y'know, if I'm gonna die anyway what's the point of not flying an escort? I feel useless...
Every time he hit his Scatter Volley looked like a Pack of Skittles exploded
FUNNY!
I found myself in a Vesta in the Cure a while back taking out both the nodes and the outgoing ships because nobody, and I mean NOBODY would even acknowledge a hail. They were clustered together the whole time and yes plenty of captain planet colours being fired by some of the ships.
The worst in my opinion though is ppl bailing mid-game during the the attack on the Borg Queen. So much time wasted.... sigh.
"The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward." - Rocky Balboa (2006)
Just gonna put this out there: The majority of your woes could be avoided by not pugging XD.
Anyways, here's a gem.
Was called into an IGE yesterday afternoon in one of the Elite STF channels (as per forum rules, not going to name which channel). I was thinking "Oh, it's guys from here, should be ok." Uh huh. XD. They needed a few more, so brought two of my friends with me.
We started out very well, I dropped mortars outside the starting force field, and the drones and my mortars got aggro'd. My EE procced, so I had 3 quantum mortars, which cleared out the first spawn literally in seconds. We drop the force field and we go, taking out that first hallway in about 5 seconds flat. I drop my next set of mortars and we begin the "snipe from hallway". One of my friends is half-trolling, so about 30 seconds after we start this and the borg are in full aggro, he runs in and rescues the survivor. Now this would have been bad if he had failed, but as is, he succeeded.
So we kept on going, got the first 3 survivors, no problem. Then we got to room 4, where there are 3 heavy tacs, 6 regular tacs, and that little doohicky thinkgymajig on the ground... um... node thingamawhatsit. Anyways, all of a sudden, out of the blue, one of the guys just runs in. He just runs in. Every drone is still alive, NONE of them are aggro'd. He just. Runs. In. Of course he is summarily terminated by the army of Borg, who then all begin to head towards the 4 of us sitting there in astonishment in the previous room. Sufficed to say, my two friends went down almost instantly, and I barely got away, courtesy of phaser turrets, my dedicated seeker drone, and a well WELL timed cover shield. Myself and the other survivor finished off the drones while my friends were asking this guy what he was on. And his reply "Oh, they were already assimilating him..." Which I know they weren't, since I was watching all the trigger lines, and HE WAS THE ONLY ONE TO EVER PASS THEM. -.-
Sufficed to say, we got to Becca pretty easily after that, since there were no survivors to rescue. And then in the room of plasma... well it was your typical horror story of IGE, idiots no targeting the same tac drone, idiot kirking it and trying to take on an entire platform by himself without a pulsewave (major fail there). And once we FINALLY got all the forcefields down at the same time, kirk was already dead, the other person from the channel was killed at the start, so my friends and I just slaughtered becca. 3 man kill on Becca. That and the actually decent drop was what made it somewhat worth it.
Buuuut yeah. Not pugging avoids most of this hell, but as I was reminded, sometimes even the non-pugs have that crouching stupid hidden moron in there.
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
Just finished one where two "experienced players" decided to do there own thing - No communication, no watching where the other players were going or doing, no teamsmanship...
Result was that there was too many nanite probes and spheres for the one remaining ship to deal with, heading to both generators at the same time... So the optional was lost
Of course it was not the two experienced players fault.....and they then moaned through the chat channel for the rest of the game. (and it was them who broke the 10% rule !!!)
I'm going to throw a few thoughts on slightly different topics but all concerning the PvE.
First - last night I had a little time to setup and try the Chel Gett. Did the same BOFF setup as my Fleet Cerberus, except that I exchanged the TS1 for EPtW - 3 cannons, Quantum torpedo and 4 turrets (I don't like the cutting beam because it's not buff-able). Took a run in KASE and the ship did pretty well. And a piece of advice - if you have a Lt.Cmd Science station on escort or cruiser - Gravity Well is a must - it can, and will make the difference between a failed and saved optional.
Second - "Don't PuG" is not an answer. It's boring. The one I don't PuG is ISE, because I don't run it at all. There are some bad PuGs, and some really good ones - like being done with 6-7 minutes on the timer in CSE. And this awesome topic wouldn't be here if we didn't
Third - Sometimes I think that there is definitely something off with the CSE - I usually dive under the cube and clear the probes from point blank. To do that I activate all my defensive buffs of course - most of the time I manage on time to intercept the freshly spawned BoPs and clean them, but sometimes I just get shot down. So...to the point - it was on 30th that I did my last full run of STFs - CSE - I dived and I got shot down, which in itself is not really surprising. I dived, and started to work on the first nanite - I swallow a Plasma HY, which takes my hull to about 75-80% - not a big deal - HE2 and continue. I proceed to the second nanite - it had around 10% left and the cube sent me a Plasma HY for a second time - right on schedule - it got me down to 45%....and less than 2 seconds later - Plasma HY again. I was like "Come ooon! You're kidding me!!!". I could't even activate RSP which I do in case that I receive a second HY so that I have enough protection to finish the last bottom nanite, but a third HY was just too much for me.
Forth - I left a STF in the middle of it for a first time for the last half an year, because I got annoyed (and me being annoyed is something very rare) with the misplaced humor of one of the players...and I wrote a three finger configuration and left....I hope I won't do that again because it wasn't a nice thing to do.....
That's my five cents at the start of the new year.
CSN, I tend to follow MRRMLL even though it's on Normal.
On a good day, and most of the time, I find that three will head Right, and one will head Left. The three usually blow the R probes and cubes while I still have around 3-4 of the M probes left (I'm an Eng in a Chimera for the record), then come over and we'll make short work of the M probes and cubes. Then the 4 of us go intercept the Borg Negh'vars before tackling L. On a really good day, whoever was covering L will be as least as competent as myself, and almost all of the probes will already be down. Generally though, it's pretty flawless - I head up M, others go R, and the last guy will see that and go L to cover that side.
So two nights ago I fly up the Middle, and I see two guys head Right, one head Left, and one follows me to Middle. That's fine, I quickly point out MRRMLL and that we're just taking out the probes, and I get an acknowledgement.
The guy with me (GC, the Glass Cruiser) has died twice by the time we'd taken out 2 probes, and GC doesn't come back to M after his 2nd death, joining the other 2 at R. I finish off the probes, and GC comes back alongside one of the other guys who were at R, and they start attacking the M cube. I tell them we're not supposed to blow the middle first, they ignore me, and I go join the player remaining at R (CC, the Competent Cruiser). At that point, I discover that only half the probes are done. That's right, three ships made less progress than me by myself. Me and CC finish off the probes around the time the M cube blows, and I'm thinking "Wait, that's pretty decent DPS". GC and the other guy come back and we blow the R cube in short order, at which point the four of us head over to L.
When we arrive I see that only one probe at L was taken down. I'm flabbergasted and we've got 3 minutes left for the Optional. After we very quickly take out the Negh'vars... I see everyone other than CC attack the cube. Ok, their autotargetting made them accidentally attack, right? CC and I take out another probe, I look over - and the other three are still attacking the cube! They actually took down a shield facing! I facepalm, and say "Guys, attacking the cube is pointless if the probes are up." CC comments "Yes, always take out the probes first." Then the probes quickly blow up, followed by the cube and carrier.
After the match, I have a short chat with CC and apparently GC blew up twice while at R, too. It also appeared that we very obviously had the DPS to do the optional. The reason the probes weren't down at R when I was done was because CC had been the only person actually shooting the probes - the other two went after spawns and then back to the cube. It's like it was the other three's first day or something, and they completely missed the fact that they weren't doing any appreciable damage to the cubes.
So I got my breen ship and fitted it out with brand new gear, so I decided to take it on some STF runs to put it through its paces. Over the past few days I had been doing CSN and ISN, so I decided to do KAN for a change. Instead of putting me in a new game, though, it put me into one that was already in progress, I presume replacing someone who had dropped. When I warped in it was apparent why whoever I was replacing had dropped?2 team members were AWOL (never did figure out where one of them was, I only ever saw 3 other players, and one of them was just sitting there doing next to nothing except firing the occasional rainbow beams), 6/10 probes had gotten through, naturally optional had failed. No one was guarding the gate on the right, none of the nanite generators where down on the right, and both gates had their transformers still up. I took up guard on the gate that had no one, assuming that someone else was working on the generators. They were, but were barely making a dent, and I realized that if *any* progress was going to be made I would have to help out. One of the guards on the right was getting beat up pretty badly by a sphere, so I ran over and took down the sphere?and at this point two more probes got through (my fault because I was trying to do too much at once), raising it to 8/10. By now, I knew we couldn't win, but I decided to stick it out to the end. I had a little bit of hope that it might still work, so I decided to try to help out the other side, which had all the generators down. I flew over as fast as I could to the nearest transformer, which this person had been working on for about 5 minutes but was at 75% still. I hit dispersal pattern beta, attack pattern alpha, dropped 3 tricobalt mines, and flew back to guard the gate. A few seconds later, the transformer blew behind me. I turned to see the other guard struggling to take down the probes, and I as I was flying over to help, I watched as a probe he was trying to take down barely made it through the gate, and then the one after it make it through as well, failing the mission. I never did figure out where the 5th player was in that team either.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
______________________________________________
Darius (TAC VA) USS Gahreesen (Chel Grett Cruiser), Shomat (SCI VA) ISS Selentic (Mirror DSSV), Napoleon (ENG Capt.) USS Fists of Latinum (Exploration Cruiser), Gothmog (Tac Capt.) IKS Nazgul (Hegh'ta Heavy BoP), Aaesia (Reman Sci Capt) RRW Arien III (Ha'Nom Guardian)
Ignoring is OK, you won't get that bunch in your pug again. But Reported? It ain't gonna do no good of any kind. They are just playing the game poorly.
I've played many STFs over the past week and the half. Let me tell you all the ways you can die by instant kill.
Heavy plasma torpedo: yeah, we all know this one. What still shocks me even though it's happened several times is how I can instantly die by nothing (invisible torpedo).
ISE spheres: I have no idea how, but a few times I have gotten instant or near-instant killed in ISE when I'm out of range from the gate.
Donatra: Instant kill if there ever was. I found out she can decide to only stay cloaked for a few seconds. I was in a KASE and someone got too close so she cloaked. Donatra had actually been slowly chasing me, so I stopped my ship and started typing. "I've never been chased by donatra before... TRIBBLE." A few seconds after cloaking, she decloaked, green lines streaming. I was in the middle of typing and she was directly facing me, seconds from firing. I couldn't react in time and pull off a subspace jump.
Isometric charge: yeah, another one most of us have been on the wrong end of.
Third - Sometimes I think that there is definitely something off with the CSE - I usually dive under the cube and clear the probes from point blank. To do that I activate all my defensive buffs of course - most of the time I manage on time to intercept the freshly spawned BoPs and clean them, but sometimes I just get shot down. So...to the point - it was on 30th that I did my last full run of STFs - CSE - I dived and I got shot down, which in itself is not really surprising. I dived, and started to work on the first nanite - I swallow a Plasma HY, which takes my hull to about 75-80% - not a big deal - HE2 and continue. I proceed to the second nanite - it had around 10% left and the cube sent me a Plasma HY for a second time - right on schedule - it got me down to 45%....and less than 2 seconds later - Plasma HY again. I was like "Come ooon! You're kidding me!!!". I could't even activate RSP which I do in case that I receive a second HY so that I have enough protection to finish the last bottom nanite, but a third HY was just too much for me.
Maybe you should like.., I dunno... Shoot them down....
Maybe you should like.., I dunno... Shoot them down....
You got me here.
I can't always shoot them down (you know you can't target them when they're in front of the cube....and only the turrets can fire upwards)....but basically, I try to do the job as fast as possible and zip out of there. If needed, I can handle one lane in around 8-10 minutes (spawns, nanites, Negh'var and Raptor), but most of the time I prefer not to - it's far more hustle than doing probe guard (meanwhile destroying a cube and a transformer) in KASE
I warp into ISE with my Breen ship, there's one other Breen ship and an Ody, and that's it. Only three of us for a whole ESTF. We manage the initial cube and spheres easily enough, we all head left, get all 4 gens down to 10%, and take them down together. I EM out to hit the spheres with a GW and back to help with the transformer, we kill it in plenty of time, and start clearing spheres. I'm thinking, "Wow, this is a really great team, we might even get the optional with just the 3 of us." When the spheres are cleared we have about 9 minutes left on the clock, pretty good for so few people.
Then 2 more people warp in. Seems great, right? We're guaranteed to win it with the optional now. Except that 2 of them gang up on one gen and kill it before any others are close to dead. I kill my gen as fast as I can and then try to hold off the spheres and help with killing further gens, but one GW can't hold them for nearly long enough for us to kill all the gens and the transformer, and so we lose the optional.
Not my worst experience of course, that goes to the 1 hour KASE, but pretty remarkable how a team of 3 very solid players can get screwed by one or two morons. That said, kudos to the two who ran the first part with me, it was really beautifully done.
Not my worst experience of course, that goes to the 1 hour KASE, but pretty remarkable how a team of 3 very solid players can get screwed by one or two morons. That said, kudos to the two who ran the first part with me, it was really beautifully done.
Welcome to pugs.
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
This is a common thing in CSN. For whatever reason 4 of the team ships will think they need to protect the Kang. IF all 4 had any DPS at all they would be able to protect the Kang. But all to often they all have Rainbow/Technicolor beams and/or have their weapons set on stun and lose the optional.
In reality, it only takes ONE properly set up ship to protect the Kang. That ship should be able to keep anything from ever firing a shot at the Kang.
I stopped protecting the Kang long ago. In fact I don't even worry about going after any ships being spawned. I just kill nodes and cubes and fly on over to the next. Using this tactic I can usually clear out all the cubes in 9 minutes or less by myself.
If the others are helping out at the cubes like they should be, then I'll help kill the spawns, otherwise NO WAY. If we lose because 4 ships setting at the Kang can't protect it then so be it.
well imo the base ship for any stf should be one, that is able to defend the kang against raptors. and I can even lower my expectations, to CSN raptors (which are basically CSE BoPs). the problem is, most people cant even kill CSN BoPs, and they bring those ships to elite, and create stupid scenarios
and yeah, I am with you on just attacking, and ignoring the bops, it is just a waste for me to turn (in an escort I might not lose that much DPS, but even then it would be a loss)
Not really my worst, but definitely one of those ".....really?" moments.
Did ISN earlier, can't remember the exact setup we had and thankfully I haven't seen a skittle escort/carebear cruiser (so named for their firing rainbows) yet.
Anyway, we take out the first transformer...or at least try to. Soon as we drop the generators I start taking on the transformer (me in my Prometheus escort, non-MVAM sadly) and I drop its health....only to see it rise instantly. Okay, blown optional, but hey, I'm accustomed to that. No big loss.
Except that no one learned from that and continued to attack the transformer, completely ignoring the nanite ships. So we have to repeat this three more times--including a grand lapse of memory resulting in a full heal from 14% .
Finally we take out the first transformer. Luckily there was no repeat of such on the second transformer.
It could have been worse, true, but it was just one of those head-scratchers.
ISE - entered with my all-time favorite ship, my Fleet Rhode Island. I won't go off on one of my long rants, but the transformers were popped early, and we had a fool, flying a Sovereign class with all the Borg-visual nonsense enabled who obviously had a sci BOFF in the uni slot, and seemed to love popping GW at every oportunity.
So when the time came to pop the generator, genius fires off his GW again - right at the generator. Suffice to say, the normal spheres that were hovering above the genny get pulled into the generator - needless to say, this caused targeting issues for some, and resulted in plasma spam for all.
I advise said fool to use GW for crowd control, and explain that it's usually better to fire it off at the approaching nanite spheres if you're going to use it at all.
Reply forthcoming? "GW causes kinetic damage and hurts the generator". I TRIED to explain that the kinetic damage it causes is not really significant in said context, and GW is far better utilised as a crowd-control measure. I proceeded to demonstrate by popping GWIII at the remaining nanite spheres, which bunched them together nicely - one blew and the resulting explosion severely damaged the others.
This was not, of course, sufficent to convince genuis who proceeded to do the exact same thing with the second generator. One of the other players present chastised him for it this time and I, again, tried to point out that his use of GW was far from useful.
"You don't know how to use GW" came the reply, despite my PROVING (earlier) that I was far more proficent with it than him. I actually pointed out that I was playing a Sci officer flying a pure sci ship, am very aware of Sci powers and their uses, and recommended that he either visit the forums or read up on them on the STO wiki. The reply? "The forum is for whiners and they don't know anything". I ignored the fool at this point - he clearly couldn't be taught and was either a troll, and idiot, or (probably) both.
So there you go - half the reason so many instances of ISE etc fail is because so many players fly in, thinking that they know SO much better than anyone else, and proceed to prove that they're actually WORSE than useless.
if your team had others with grav well, then he was right to use his grav well on the generator. it pulls in the spheres from above, which makes it easier to target them without moving, hence increasing group DPS. he was just far too good a player for you to notice
Yeah - the player in question proved how good a player he was numerous times. He was kind enough to explode frequently and spent healthy periods of time in respawn oblivion, where he was infinitely more useful to the mission. :P
nah. those were just a tactical uses of ramming speed
Have had folks GW spheres into the generators before. I just kill the spheres and AoE the whole clump when possible. Exploding spheres to a lot more damage to the generator than GW ever will.
Comments
with trics, its easy. you go in, get a few shots, get the aggro, and just escape dropping mines while she is following (and donatra basically moves into the mines). however if you cant hold aggro, then just leave it, and stay 5km away (I have so much fun with my gravity wells, keeping donatra in place, just to see how impatient tric captains are, while it would truly be faster if they just shot it at 5km)
also if that guy was on the other side, the combatlog would pretty much be inaccurate for him.
also here is a story of mine:
CSE, we group from elite stf (so thats a double fail, not even pugs), I just join the queue, we already start (well, I guess they talked strategy already, since the last sentence I caught was about describing mrrmll). one guy drops, we have to inv another, nothing is told, and start as soon as the replacement guy (whom I had a bad stf exp with, where we were the only two competent players, so guess it was a bad omen
we go mrrmll as usual, and when the negvars pop, someone dies, and as he respawns cries that the kang is surrounded with BoPs. I tried to help, but when I saw its a lost cause, I just quit, since I did not want to take a timer on a CSE, that was failed because the match creator decided to be stupid, and I was a fool to assume that he is not an idiot.
on the other hand, the CSE I took after, I topped my best DPS ever, so in the end, I didnt care about the first try
10k DPS Vesta threads: 1; 2
Seruk@HoodedSandman
And on that note, I just had a record (for me) run with random players from OPvP in Infected.
lol 10%. No trics either.
God I wish the pugs I team up with most of the time were as good as those guys.
the one who she targets has to be further than 5km, so the cloak wont start. if the targeted one gets close, she cloaks (unless her cloak is still on CD, which is not a long CD). if she targets someone outside 5km, but retartgets someone who is near her, donatra will cloak. simple as that
10k DPS Vesta threads: 1; 2
This brings up a question I'm sure people here will be able to answer: Does Donatra's Cloak follow all the normal rules e.g. Not while tractored, not in a grav well, etc.
Could a well coordinated team keep her present by always having one cloak denying power active? Can she be denied by a CPB just after she cloaks? Or is her cloak magical (can't be knocked out from)?
Nope. Her cloak is perfect. There is no way to stop her from entering it, and no way to kick her out of it. Also her shields stay up while she's cloaked.
Got my Chel Grett for my engi yesterday. It was rather late but I wanted to test it. (4 DHC, 3Turrets, 1Cutting Beam).
So I enter an ISE with a failed optional, only three other players and spheres everywhere, swarming the left transformator. No one was answering my friendly "Hello". Oh my
Started to kill the spheres. Our two tacs in the beam cruisers where dying left and right. The SCI in the atrox was doing a good job.
We finally managed to kill the spheres and proceeded to destroy the transformator. Even with the low DPS output we managed to destroy it. The SCI with GW and TBR was a great help.
We flew over to the right side. I asked for 10% rule. No answer. Ok
The borg cube was rather fast down. We were still only 4 players.
I started to shoot on a gen. When mine was at 40% I looked around ... one was at 100%, the other at 60% (yeah tacs in cruisers) and the third just exploded :eek: Yep our tac bombed the gen where the atrox was shooting at :rolleyes:
Now the sci managed the nanites with a GW and I started shooting at the transformator... our tacs instead started chasing spheres -.-
There I started flying away and chatting with my fleetmates. Watched from far away how the cruisers where dying and dying and dying :P No talk on the zone or teamchat.
10 minutes later, the spheres were nearly all down. I flew back, helped with the last one and started shooting at the trans with the others ... it got healed back by a nanite sphere.
So I flew away, watched againg the dying tacs trying to handle the spheres. Lurked the chat in several channels. After 5 minutes I flew back, helped with the spheres and we finally managed to kill the transformator.
5min later, the gate and the cube were down. I got my loot and new players on my ignore list ;-)
I was probably an ******* not helping the others with the spheres. But I really thought we would never be able to kill them fast enough that we could start shooting at the transformator. Tricobalts for the win :-P
The new breen ship is good enough for ESTF's. It is a real jack of all trades, master of none. Perhaps the perfect ship for ESTF in a pug group :-)
One person decided to blow the generators before even attacking the cube.
then today, a couple of people decided to head right straight away. while we destroyed the left hand side and took out all the spheres they had managed to die a lot of take the cube down to 20%.
the other thing that generally annoys me is when we do the 10% and then people start attacking the normal spheres that warp in above it, instead of attacking the transformer and getting it to 0 as quick as. it just never makes any sense.
Khitomer Vortex - Everything was on track, except the guy on left probes was struggling... I was on right probes, because... well no one else went there even though it is a waste of my dps. I was taking care of my probes, then running across to help with the other side's - and back. A lot of leg work. Near the end, I was headed right to help, when a guy who had been getting killed by cubes runs up and uses his repulsor to push 4 probes - from behind, 6k... right into the gate. *sigh*
The Cure - Two of us run to bottom to get the BOPs and start on probes - no communications was happening, but I made the mistake of thinking the other 3 players would go left/right... nope. They are all sitting at the spawn point. By the time I noticed, Kang is already at 66% hull. Needless to say I gave a 1/2 effort hoping it would outright fail quickly.
And I myself don't even know what the problem is. On one hand I'm inclined to believe that there comes a point where its too much (and that point is when you, at full health, are 1 shot with a plasma torpedo with full shields and each shot against you deals 1500 damage - from RAPTORS) on the other hand, Every time I die in Cure Space and get all built up about it, I think to myself "What am I doing? Why do I expect to hold out against these odds?"
The hardest part about it is I fly a cruiser, and when I can't do the one thing I'm supposed to be good at (TANK) well....y'know, if I'm gonna die anyway what's the point of not flying an escort? I feel useless...
FUNNY!
I found myself in a Vesta in the Cure a while back taking out both the nodes and the outgoing ships because nobody, and I mean NOBODY would even acknowledge a hail. They were clustered together the whole time and yes plenty of captain planet colours being fired by some of the ships.
The worst in my opinion though is ppl bailing mid-game during the the attack on the Borg Queen. So much time wasted.... sigh.
Anyways, here's a gem.
Was called into an IGE yesterday afternoon in one of the Elite STF channels (as per forum rules, not going to name which channel). I was thinking "Oh, it's guys from here, should be ok." Uh huh. XD. They needed a few more, so brought two of my friends with me.
We started out very well, I dropped mortars outside the starting force field, and the drones and my mortars got aggro'd. My EE procced, so I had 3 quantum mortars, which cleared out the first spawn literally in seconds. We drop the force field and we go, taking out that first hallway in about 5 seconds flat. I drop my next set of mortars and we begin the "snipe from hallway". One of my friends is half-trolling, so about 30 seconds after we start this and the borg are in full aggro, he runs in and rescues the survivor. Now this would have been bad if he had failed, but as is, he succeeded.
So we kept on going, got the first 3 survivors, no problem. Then we got to room 4, where there are 3 heavy tacs, 6 regular tacs, and that little doohicky thinkgymajig on the ground... um... node thingamawhatsit. Anyways, all of a sudden, out of the blue, one of the guys just runs in. He just runs in. Every drone is still alive, NONE of them are aggro'd. He just. Runs. In. Of course he is summarily terminated by the army of Borg, who then all begin to head towards the 4 of us sitting there in astonishment in the previous room. Sufficed to say, my two friends went down almost instantly, and I barely got away, courtesy of phaser turrets, my dedicated seeker drone, and a well WELL timed cover shield. Myself and the other survivor finished off the drones while my friends were asking this guy what he was on. And his reply "Oh, they were already assimilating him..." Which I know they weren't, since I was watching all the trigger lines, and HE WAS THE ONLY ONE TO EVER PASS THEM. -.-
Sufficed to say, we got to Becca pretty easily after that, since there were no survivors to rescue. And then in the room of plasma... well it was your typical horror story of IGE, idiots no targeting the same tac drone, idiot kirking it and trying to take on an entire platform by himself without a pulsewave (major fail there). And once we FINALLY got all the forcefields down at the same time, kirk was already dead, the other person from the channel was killed at the start, so my friends and I just slaughtered becca. 3 man kill on Becca. That and the actually decent drop was what made it somewhat worth it.
Buuuut yeah. Not pugging avoids most of this hell, but as I was reminded, sometimes even the non-pugs have that crouching stupid hidden moron in there.
Result was that there was too many nanite probes and spheres for the one remaining ship to deal with, heading to both generators at the same time... So the optional was lost
Of course it was not the two experienced players fault.....and they then moaned through the chat channel for the rest of the game. (and it was them who broke the 10% rule !!!)
First - last night I had a little time to setup and try the Chel Gett. Did the same BOFF setup as my Fleet Cerberus, except that I exchanged the TS1 for EPtW - 3 cannons, Quantum torpedo and 4 turrets (I don't like the cutting beam because it's not buff-able). Took a run in KASE and the ship did pretty well. And a piece of advice - if you have a Lt.Cmd Science station on escort or cruiser - Gravity Well is a must - it can, and will make the difference between a failed and saved optional.
Second - "Don't PuG" is not an answer. It's boring. The one I don't PuG is ISE, because I don't run it at all. There are some bad PuGs, and some really good ones - like being done with 6-7 minutes on the timer in CSE. And this awesome topic wouldn't be here if we didn't
Third - Sometimes I think that there is definitely something off with the CSE - I usually dive under the cube and clear the probes from point blank. To do that I activate all my defensive buffs of course - most of the time I manage on time to intercept the freshly spawned BoPs and clean them, but sometimes I just get shot down. So...to the point - it was on 30th that I did my last full run of STFs - CSE - I dived and I got shot down, which in itself is not really surprising. I dived, and started to work on the first nanite - I swallow a Plasma HY, which takes my hull to about 75-80% - not a big deal - HE2 and continue. I proceed to the second nanite - it had around 10% left and the cube sent me a Plasma HY for a second time - right on schedule - it got me down to 45%....and less than 2 seconds later - Plasma HY again.
Forth - I left a STF in the middle of it for a first time for the last half an year, because I got annoyed (and me being annoyed is something very rare) with the misplaced humor of one of the players...and I wrote a three finger configuration and left....I hope I won't do that again because it wasn't a nice thing to do.....
That's my five cents at the start of the new year.
On a good day, and most of the time, I find that three will head Right, and one will head Left. The three usually blow the R probes and cubes while I still have around 3-4 of the M probes left (I'm an Eng in a Chimera for the record), then come over and we'll make short work of the M probes and cubes. Then the 4 of us go intercept the Borg Negh'vars before tackling L. On a really good day, whoever was covering L will be as least as competent as myself, and almost all of the probes will already be down. Generally though, it's pretty flawless - I head up M, others go R, and the last guy will see that and go L to cover that side.
So two nights ago I fly up the Middle, and I see two guys head Right, one head Left, and one follows me to Middle. That's fine, I quickly point out MRRMLL and that we're just taking out the probes, and I get an acknowledgement.
The guy with me (GC, the Glass Cruiser) has died twice by the time we'd taken out 2 probes, and GC doesn't come back to M after his 2nd death, joining the other 2 at R. I finish off the probes, and GC comes back alongside one of the other guys who were at R, and they start attacking the M cube. I tell them we're not supposed to blow the middle first, they ignore me, and I go join the player remaining at R (CC, the Competent Cruiser). At that point, I discover that only half the probes are done. That's right, three ships made less progress than me by myself. Me and CC finish off the probes around the time the M cube blows, and I'm thinking "Wait, that's pretty decent DPS". GC and the other guy come back and we blow the R cube in short order, at which point the four of us head over to L.
When we arrive I see that only one probe at L was taken down. I'm flabbergasted and we've got 3 minutes left for the Optional. After we very quickly take out the Negh'vars... I see everyone other than CC attack the cube. Ok, their autotargetting made them accidentally attack, right? CC and I take out another probe, I look over - and the other three are still attacking the cube! They actually took down a shield facing! I facepalm, and say "Guys, attacking the cube is pointless if the probes are up." CC comments "Yes, always take out the probes first." Then the probes quickly blow up, followed by the cube and carrier.
After the match, I have a short chat with CC and apparently GC blew up twice while at R, too. It also appeared that we very obviously had the DPS to do the optional. The reason the probes weren't down at R when I was done was because CC had been the only person actually shooting the probes - the other two went after spawns and then back to the cube. It's like it was the other three's first day or something, and they completely missed the fact that they weren't doing any appreciable damage to the cubes.
So I got my breen ship and fitted it out with brand new gear, so I decided to take it on some STF runs to put it through its paces. Over the past few days I had been doing CSN and ISN, so I decided to do KAN for a change. Instead of putting me in a new game, though, it put me into one that was already in progress, I presume replacing someone who had dropped. When I warped in it was apparent why whoever I was replacing had dropped?2 team members were AWOL (never did figure out where one of them was, I only ever saw 3 other players, and one of them was just sitting there doing next to nothing except firing the occasional rainbow beams), 6/10 probes had gotten through, naturally optional had failed. No one was guarding the gate on the right, none of the nanite generators where down on the right, and both gates had their transformers still up. I took up guard on the gate that had no one, assuming that someone else was working on the generators. They were, but were barely making a dent, and I realized that if *any* progress was going to be made I would have to help out. One of the guards on the right was getting beat up pretty badly by a sphere, so I ran over and took down the sphere?and at this point two more probes got through (my fault because I was trying to do too much at once), raising it to 8/10. By now, I knew we couldn't win, but I decided to stick it out to the end. I had a little bit of hope that it might still work, so I decided to try to help out the other side, which had all the generators down. I flew over as fast as I could to the nearest transformer, which this person had been working on for about 5 minutes but was at 75% still. I hit dispersal pattern beta, attack pattern alpha, dropped 3 tricobalt mines, and flew back to guard the gate. A few seconds later, the transformer blew behind me. I turned to see the other guard struggling to take down the probes, and I as I was flying over to help, I watched as a probe he was trying to take down barely made it through the gate, and then the one after it make it through as well, failing the mission. I never did figure out where the 5th player was in that team either.
I get a kick out of "Ignored and Reported"
Ignoring is OK, you won't get that bunch in your pug again. But Reported? It ain't gonna do no good of any kind. They are just playing the game poorly.
Heavy plasma torpedo: yeah, we all know this one. What still shocks me even though it's happened several times is how I can instantly die by nothing (invisible torpedo).
ISE spheres: I have no idea how, but a few times I have gotten instant or near-instant killed in ISE when I'm out of range from the gate.
Donatra: Instant kill if there ever was. I found out she can decide to only stay cloaked for a few seconds. I was in a KASE and someone got too close so she cloaked. Donatra had actually been slowly chasing me, so I stopped my ship and started typing. "I've never been chased by donatra before... TRIBBLE." A few seconds after cloaking, she decloaked, green lines streaming. I was in the middle of typing and she was directly facing me, seconds from firing. I couldn't react in time and pull off a subspace jump.
Isometric charge: yeah, another one most of us have been on the wrong end of.
Pugs are the best entertainment in this game.
So.....
There I was.
I went over to do some of the new Romulus missions and started with the space daily.
I buzzed into the first planet I came to and healed the satellites like I was supposed to.
Then it says I have to defeat the two flights of ships incoming.
They never showed.
So I bailed and started over.
I zip back in and healed the satellites and then I'm supposed to kill off the 2 flights of incoming ships.
Well, it wasn't two flights, IT WAS FOURTY FLIGHTS!
There were several battle ships, a dreadnought, and about two dozen smaller ships along with a couple carriers.
The best I could do was get right out on the fringe of the group and drag them out one or two at a time.
I managed to get through the first group after dying one or two times in about 30 minutes.
Now for the dreadnought.
45 minutes after killing all the others the dreadnought finally dies and I won.
I tHink the game must have thought I was flying in with a fleet or something.
But HOLY ?@?&!
Maybe you should like.., I dunno... Shoot them down....
You got me here.
I can't always shoot them down (you know you can't target them when they're in front of the cube....and only the turrets can fire upwards)....but basically, I try to do the job as fast as possible and zip out of there. If needed, I can handle one lane in around 8-10 minutes (spawns, nanites, Negh'var and Raptor), but most of the time I prefer not to - it's far more hustle than doing probe guard (meanwhile destroying a cube and a transformer) in KASE
I warp into ISE with my Breen ship, there's one other Breen ship and an Ody, and that's it. Only three of us for a whole ESTF. We manage the initial cube and spheres easily enough, we all head left, get all 4 gens down to 10%, and take them down together. I EM out to hit the spheres with a GW and back to help with the transformer, we kill it in plenty of time, and start clearing spheres. I'm thinking, "Wow, this is a really great team, we might even get the optional with just the 3 of us." When the spheres are cleared we have about 9 minutes left on the clock, pretty good for so few people.
Then 2 more people warp in. Seems great, right? We're guaranteed to win it with the optional now. Except that 2 of them gang up on one gen and kill it before any others are close to dead. I kill my gen as fast as I can and then try to hold off the spheres and help with killing further gens, but one GW can't hold them for nearly long enough for us to kill all the gens and the transformer, and so we lose the optional.
Not my worst experience of course, that goes to the 1 hour KASE, but pretty remarkable how a team of 3 very solid players can get screwed by one or two morons. That said, kudos to the two who ran the first part with me, it was really beautifully done.
Welcome to pugs.
well imo the base ship for any stf should be one, that is able to defend the kang against raptors. and I can even lower my expectations, to CSN raptors (which are basically CSE BoPs). the problem is, most people cant even kill CSN BoPs, and they bring those ships to elite, and create stupid scenarios
and yeah, I am with you on just attacking, and ignoring the bops, it is just a waste for me to turn (in an escort I might not lose that much DPS, but even then it would be a loss)
10k DPS Vesta threads: 1; 2
Did ISN earlier, can't remember the exact setup we had and thankfully I haven't seen a skittle escort/carebear cruiser (so named for their firing rainbows) yet.
Anyway, we take out the first transformer...or at least try to. Soon as we drop the generators I start taking on the transformer (me in my Prometheus escort, non-MVAM sadly) and I drop its health....only to see it rise instantly. Okay, blown optional, but hey, I'm accustomed to that. No big loss.
Except that no one learned from that and continued to attack the transformer, completely ignoring the nanite ships. So we have to repeat this three more times--including a grand lapse of memory resulting in a full heal from 14% .
Finally we take out the first transformer. Luckily there was no repeat of such on the second transformer.
It could have been worse, true, but it was just one of those head-scratchers.
ROLL TIDE ROLL
if your team had others with grav well, then he was right to use his grav well on the generator. it pulls in the spheres from above, which makes it easier to target them without moving, hence increasing group DPS. he was just far too good a player for you to notice
10k DPS Vesta threads: 1; 2
nah. those were just a tactical uses of ramming speed
10k DPS Vesta threads: 1; 2