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Assualt Cruiser sucks
sgtciscoinsa
Member Posts: 56 Arc User
Got the one in C store. OMG its terrible. Turn rate is way wrong on it.
Now let me explain. I was in a Excel with single cannons and the AtB build. I tried it out on the Assault C store version. I did number 2 on the DPS during a Pvp match. It was not nearly as effective or smooth as the Excel.
What do people use the Assault cruiser for? Beams will never do as much damage as cannons (least i haven't been able to).
Healing?
How is that Assault..just saying. LOL
The only assault is the fact that I grinded Zen for this.
Now let me explain. I was in a Excel with single cannons and the AtB build. I tried it out on the Assault C store version. I did number 2 on the DPS during a Pvp match. It was not nearly as effective or smooth as the Excel.
What do people use the Assault cruiser for? Beams will never do as much damage as cannons (least i haven't been able to).
Healing?
How is that Assault..just saying. LOL
The only assault is the fact that I grinded Zen for this.
Post edited by sgtciscoinsa on
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And not all cruisers are pure beam boats (which need high weapon power and high EPS power transfer rate to be effective); some use torpedoes in addition to beams, and it can work just as well.
I use 4 Torpedoes (Quantum) and 4 Beam Arrays on my Odyssey; it works quite well with Saucer Seperation, whether broadsiding or firing torpedoes
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
I managed to push beams quite a long way on my fleet excelsior to the point where it does BoPs in CSE :P
The reason I think you are unsatisfied with the Assault Cruiser is that you are accustomed to the Excelsior, and they are different ships. The Assault Cruiser trades manueverability for better tactical ability, and the Z-Store version features both the Gas Canisters and Wide Angle Torpedo consoles vice the Excelsior's built-in Transwarp ability. Tactical ability in this case doesn't necessarily mean more damage, but more options. This is doubly true when the Z-Store version has a universal BOFF position that lets you trade Science ability for enhanced damage endurance (with an Engineer in that slot), or more combat options (with a Tactical officer in the slot).
Also, the Z-store Assault Cruiser has a different power distribution plan, with more power going to weapons and less to engines. If you are used to having your ship move better, it probably doesn't help if it has this kind of power scheme.
This is why it's good to look at all the stats on a ship and get an idea what that ship will offer as opposed to what you will be giving up. If you expect it to perform in a way the info tells you it probably won't, then you have to be ready to accept that or not buy it.
The Assault Cruiser is a fine ship at what it does. It's just probably not what you are used to in an Excelsior, and you just have to work to find the new advantages the ship provides.
My own two cents.
Ok here is my question.
What does it do good?
I put the Galor beams on it and I barely made a dent on anyones shields. I know how to build a beam boat.
I had the right TAC consoles. I had the EPS Eng Console. I am speced correctly.
Is this ship more of an ENG Ship? I am curious how its been used effectively. I do PVE and PVP. I rarely see this ship in PVP. When I do I kill it so easy unless its an ENG. So I am curious what this ship does best.
My char is a science captain, and I use 4 beams (or five) and four torps (or three) in the front a quantum torp and a photon. On the aft, I set the same or only a photon.
About the new AC, i must say thank her high arc quantum torp is fantastic for the Oddy.
Back with the AC, It can mantain a fiere fight (with the proper engi skills) but with a science captain it is a very good ship for pvp (you can use some skills to kill your prey just when he thinks he is safe.
The problem isnt the AC, the problem is a Over powered Exdelsior (it become with better tactical bo loadout, more turn and the same firepower (Excelsior never can be over tier 3 ship... but Crypic does a mistake with the tier 5 excelsiors).
With beams you can take care, if you set too many, you will loose phaser efficiency. betwhen 4 or 5 beams is sufficient to have a good damage scheme. Of course, a good BO's skills still vital.
Probably because:
1) The game environment is slanted almost completely towards favoring DPS by a huge margin. This is a game environment issue, not an issue with Escorts - Escort simply do what they were designed to do.
2) There's no point to tanking anything, the best you can do is be a heal boat. One shot torps doing 200k+ damage pretty much kill anyone and the rest of the trash mobs aren't dangerous enough to warrant a tank - there is no proper Tanking middle ground in this game.
Hybrids rely on one of the following: a lot of tac consoles (3 isn't a lot, though it's a tease), at least LtC tac seat, and, ideally, cannons/turn rate.
Good examples include most KDF battle-cruisers and the Breen ship.
But with a Lt. and Ensign tac seat, no cannons, and low turn rate, the AC is not a dps cruiser at all.
I think the key to it is to treat the Ensign tac seat like any extra Ensign seat -- an opportunity to take different directions to fulfill the core role.
The AC is a cruiser. The tac slots should (IMO) be treated as a good source of Tactical Team. Get two of them (you only 'need' one if you have the right doffs, but now you can put other doffs in those spots)
Now, if you really want a damaging Federation cruiser, at least from what I can tell (I'm not an expert), the ideal one is the Advanced Heavy Cruiser Retrofit. It has a LtC Tac seat, which is unique in that group of ships, so you can actually put something like Beam Overload 3. It has 3 tac consoles, which is nice. It's turn rate is at the high end of pure cruisers.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Well, it's a matter of how you do it, I guess. My cruisers do quite well and rarely die in any fight. That aside, the role of a cruiser -is- as a heal boat, in my opinion. Engineering skills are designed around restoring hull to both the ship and allied ships, and that's the best role for an engineering-centered ship like a cruiser.
The Assault Cruiser is one of those ships that sacrifices some of this for increased damage output, but it's not going to equal an Escort, and shouldn't. It does very respectable damage, but this damage is over time, not all at once. An AC is all about sanding down an opponent, not trying to finish them off all at once, and having good firepower in all arcs, especially broadsides. That's what makes the Wide Angle Torp valuable..it works better with broadside strikes than normal torps.
And sometimes, DPS won't help. Alot of players who fail Cure and the Starbase Blockade do so because they rely on DPS, and can't keep the ships they are trying to save alive. This is the job of the cruisers, and they do it well.
I am still an old AC fan, she does not suck you just have to learn how to love her ;-)
With the old AC I used to fly the old wet navy doctrine of close on the target and than broadside them.
I.E. have a dual beam bank up front with 2 beam arrays and a torp up front and 3 arrays aft and torp rear.
Close on target, tac team and beam overload with nadion inversion or even the systems engineer duty office that works with DEM gives you 8 seconds of weapon power reduction of drain for 8 seconds and EPS transfer or a battery with decent skill points in battery skills.
Hit hard from the fore angle hit evasive or emergency to dampners rotate the ship give them a 5 array broadside keep rotating the ship and give the high yield torpedo from the aft and keep rotating to the fresh broadside.
You could mix into that a tractor beam to reduce there defence value and even use a duty officer, the tractor beam officer that drains shields.
Even mix eject warp plasma or vent theta radiation into the equation.
The regent class can be use in the similar way but she favours in my toon build 2 torps fore and 2 arrays and 3 arrays aft and a torp.
My main ship the oddy handles thing a little differently but that's a different topic for another thread.
The AC will pound the target but it will be damage over time, that's the key, the Excel has that bit more turn so favours the cannons.
The excel is just to easy sometimes, I respect anyone's build but it has no challenge to me personally but the AC has her charms you just have to know how to play to her strengths ;-)
Actually, the AC-R (the ship under discussion) has a LCDR and ENS Tac seats if I read it right, and the option to add a LT seat to that instead of having a LT Science or LT Engineering slot. That puts it on better DPS standing than the Excelsior, though it suffers in the Tanking or Science role to do so.
And the turn rate of 7 is pretty good considering most Fed cruisers have a 6.
The ACR is best used with the 6/2 or 7/1 setup. She has the tank, she has the damage, she's a good all around ship. But you cannot fly her like an excel. Your best bet would be to fly her more like a tank than a damage dealer (which in all honest you shouldn't be doing in a cruiser to begin with).
Take advantage of her engineering prowess, and use EPtW copiously, with lots of tac abilities thrown in. You can also try DEM (never really used it much, not gonna lie), and see if that helps to boost your damage output. But just remember: 1) Cruisers were not built to do huge damage, and 2) If you spec for damage you will sacrifice in survivability.
Enjoy!
And yes, it's a shame that the game is so DPS-centric, which reduces the value of non-escorts, but that's not the fault of the Regent, but the fault of the game balance and Cryptic's preferences in end-game content.
Don't let them promote you. Don't let them transfer you. Don't let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you're there... you can make a difference.
-Captain James T. Kirk
... Oh.
Ok, nevermind! The AC Refit actually looks pretty good, as a dangerous cruiser. Though I'd be tempted to put a sci in the universal because of vital sci defenses (like hazard emitters). Worth experimenting.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Alright back to business. I think where your problem is coming from is you're comparing one ship to another and feeling jilted or jaded because they are not the same. Of course they are not the same, that's like dumping one girlfriend because she was a crazy douche and assuming the next one will be a crazy douche as well. that's just wrong lol and in that case you might be the off one.
When you purchase a ship, Especially if you purchase it from the C-store, you need to do extensive background on it and find out if it's layout is for you, def don' just use the forum as your only barometer of if a ship is good or not. There are just as many threads for as their are against a particular ship. Go to STOWIKI and compare the ships it's pros and cones and accept what it can and can't do. Don't listen to people who say it is 'like', like means it is not, that is the same as saying poking someone constantly with your finger is 'like' annoying but not annoying. I know if I buy a ship I need to know everything about it before i waste my money. I hate sticker shock and i really hate buyers remorse because it's always going to be 'AS IS' purchases
Anuwho I hope that helped you a bit in your woes, maybe, maybe not, but the ship you purchased is a fine vessel, you just can't compare a banana to an apple and then you can't compare a green apple to a red one. Their will be distinct differences. You'll learn how to fly it or it will end up in the back of your shipyard collecting space dust until your account is either deleted or the game concludes.
If cruisers would do both high damage AND have high survivability this would make escorts/raiders pretty much useless. You are only supposed to excel in one field, not in two or more. Also, you should dismiss the idea of being a 'hero' in an online game. This is not a single player RPG in which the player is the 'chosen one' or whatever.
This actually is viable in MMOs, and has been done in a rather successful (albeit new) MMO.
On a similar note; Guild Wars 2, in their attempt to break away from the trinity of DPS/Healer/Tank, made it so that every class can do *somethng*, but in a different way. Minor (or major) differences aside, this kind of gameplay can be quite refreshing.
An "elementalist" (mage archetype), with its lowest base health pool and cloth armor, can be built to be more durable than a warrior, with its highest base health and heavy armor, by constantly keeping up boons/buffs and healing bit by bit every "attack". Built right, they can, obviously, also pour out insane amount of dakka, because you don't necessarily have to lose out DPS to the point of impotency by choosing to spec. for survivability ("dead DPS does no DPS")
A "thief" (rogue/assassin archetype), contrary to the "glass cannon"-ness some people expect out of them, can - with their superior mobility - constantly evade attacks (in this game, evading is considered tanking, albeit active one; everybody dodges, and facetanking will get you killed with any class) and whittle the enemy down with "condition damage" (damage over time), instead of straight-up direct damage (direct damage is, of course, still an option; both builds are just as viable).
A "guardian" ("Paladin" or "Cleric-ish" archetype; support-oriented heavy armorers), contrary to the "guardian" role some people may expect, can be built as excellent duelists, with hideous straight-up damage (or slower and just as painful condition damage/damage over time) with excellent condition (debuffs and damage over time) removals, while maintaining survivability by having "high defence, low health" where you greatly reduce incoming (direct) damage, so your (fixed, not percentage-based) healing abilities heal more (percentage; so a matter of having more "effective" HP so you get away with less focus on having uberheal; a counter to this will be "damage over time" that bypass defence stat), and being able to heal (comparatively little numerically, but due to high defence, significant amount of EHP) often.
Every class is capable of contributing to the overall damage of the team, as well as bringing in support abilities. To be a good (team) player, you are expected to be competent at both. Nobody is shoehorned into "I suck at DPS, I'm stuck as support" or "I AM UBER DPS GLASS CANNON BEHOLD MY SQUISHINESS AND TRY TO KEEP ME ALIVE".
My main Thief, for example, does slow bleeding (damage over time), while crippling enemies nearby (slowing them down) and throwing stealth+heal whenever an ally is downed. It also outlasts most warriors in PvP and PvE by the virtue of having built for survivability, at the cost of doing comparatively less damage. My guildie's Elementalist is a combat monster that can win most 1vs1 by the virtue of constantly having boons/buffs (including; damage increase, crit increase, defence increase, heal over time, mobility increase), but becomes rather impotent when someone counters that by removing those.
Everybody does damage, and everybody brings in support, just contributing differently.
tl;dr version would be that this kind of gameplay where all ships can deal damage could be perfectly viable, though probably not applicable to the game as-is.
Escorts, for example, could be burst damage. Perhaps tactical support skills could include increase in accuracy, crit rate or fire rate (buffs and debuffs).
Cruisers, for example, could do slow, steady constant damage. Perhaps engineering support skills could focus on hull resistance and repairs, and power levels (buffs and debuffs).
Science vessels, for example, could focus on crowd control damage over time. Perhaps science support skills could be focused on shield resistance/repairs, debuff removals, or just troll abilities.
Just as a rough idea of how such system could have been viable.
I've been playing on and off, but as of right now, I've heard quite a few chats in DS9 (back when it was full of STF crowd, presumably to redeem all the EDCs and salvages) back when, and now in ESD, that if you aren't in an escort, you shouldn't be in an STF. When there's smoke, there's fire. *Something* brought on that sentimentality.
I don't know. It's late, I have to work, but it's 40'C outside and I can't sleep.
As for "the ballance": Cryptic tried to do the trio and failed. Actually failed twice: first time not anticipating that their playerbase may want to play "Kirks": aka be the captain of most canonical starships ever in ST: cruiser. Second time when they failed to introduce the trio via captain skill ONLY and moved it also to starships.
Starship should be "the horse" of a captain: bigger, more powerfull, but slower and less manoeuvrable or quite the oposite. Horse does not define the rider. Horse should not make you knight or warrior or monk or priest or someone else. Yet in STO it does.
You cannot do anything about it, live with it and play the role you have chosen in ship you have chosen (aka: do what your horse tells you to do), or live with it and leave.
And I know that Cryptic will not change the structure. After all I said: live with it or leave the game.
But this is one or primary reasons why general gameplay and "funnyness" of the game is lower then it should and FAAAAR lower then what it could be if Cryptic done it right.
Actually, the choice of your mount has a lot to say in what you can do with it or how well you can do said purpose.
I would never equip a hot blood species like an Arabian with heavy plate armor, sit astride him in my own heavy armor with lance in hand expect such a small horse to perform well in the lists anymore than I would expect a Cold blood like a Sufolk destrier to skip lightly over the sands of Arabia without sinking under its own wieght.
R.I.P
See the issue?
What part of keeping allies alive through healing them or drawing fire (Hi there, Threat Control, it's a pleasure to meet you.) onto yourself is unheroic?
0:10 to 0:15 - watch the hero ship swoop in to protect the small, heavily armed, damage dealer.
Then watch at 1:12 to 1:30 as they coordinate and the assault from the front, again drawing fire, while supported by more, smaller, heavily armed damage dealing Escorts.
Not really.
I think the game, for the most part, got the whole concpet of classes and vessel corrrect and by allowing cross-classing in vessels (ie: Tac in Cruiser) one gets one what expects. A slightly better DPS Crusier at the loss of tanking. Just as I expect to be a better tanking Escort if I put my Engineer in one, but not the best DPS dealer I could be.
As I said I would not use an Arabian for jousting but that does not mean said rider/horse pairing could not compete, only that it is not the best choice for the event and will require an experienced rider to make work with any efficiency.
Some small issues with balance aside (like drain on beams or Cruisers turnrates) thats what we have in STO in my opinion.
R.I.P