Let me detail what I would love to see a little bit for you with the equal but different both in character design and encounter.
Offense
Cruisers: Sustained damage output at long range and accurate.
Escorts: Spike damage output at close range, penetrating resists.
Sci Vessel: Mix of above
Defense
Cruiser: Resist tank, has highest resists
Escort: Speed tank, avoidance
Sci Vessel: Buffer/sustain tank, can regen shield quickly and has highest amount
Utility
Cruiser: Blend of minor CC and team defense abilities
Escort: Target debuffing
Sci Vessel: Movement CC, and hard CC
Right now we are kinda like that but not really. Now let us take an encounter and push it to that point.
KASE Mobs Redone.
Cubes: These will be as they are now but have a penetrating attack that will ignore a good portion of a cruisers resistance. They will also be vulnerable to a Sci Vessel's hard CC due to being encountered one at a time.
*So a cruiser would struggle a bit tanking these but with the right CC and/or burst from escorts they would go down pretty easily.
Spheres: Spawn in groups with high maneuverability and accurate attacks making them an escorts nightmare. Vulnerable to movement CC and have low resists but decent HPs.
*An escorts nightmare. Hard to line up and will hurt atleast until a gravity well or warp plasma stops their movement. Or the cruiser could simply FAW them to death.
Probes: High resist amounts but slow moving. Also the spawn cooldown will not begin until current ones are defeated allowing movement CC to be nearly as effective as killing them would be.
*An escort could quickly scatter volley them down, or repulsars could stall them, or whatever you desire really.
Gates: Get within 8km and die, simple as that.
*Escort would take longer to kill it provided beams did more dps than dhcs at extreme ranges when all is said and done. But an APB 3 will still get it dead faster for the party.
Tac Cube: Will have an accurate long range attack that has cannon range penalties and extremely high resist. Also be difficult to CC due to innate resist rates. However will also have a dead zone for the long range attack that escorts can exploit if in really close. This ship will also have the ability to target more than one player with different weapon abilities and attacks using a photonic shockwave that can be stripped before it goes off occasionally along with subsystem disabling abilities.
*And here we have a combination of the team cleansing, cross-healing, and fighting for proper positioning.
Different but equal. All could be taken down with a variety of ships and abilities without anyone feeling like they are not contributing because their ship lacks the 'raw DPS'.
While i do not have a KDF toon, I believe the real problem is, as stated earlier, nearly the entire PVE portion of this game is a gun fight. Even in ESTF no one has to tank especially if team mates cross heal.
All pve content is doable in all three ships. The reason for this is boff healing is too efficent at ensign at lt. lvl skills. This is allowing any class ship to "tank" with little to no support. Also it makes the cruisers upper tier boff abilities redundent as the lower ones work just as well.
If escorts had to actually pilot doing strafing runs instead of being able to yo-yo, dps would equal out. A couple easy fixes would be to either tie healing to ships intial shield/hull hp, or crew size. And/or have resistance penlties/bonuses based on ship classes.
Those little changes would actually allow a cruisers "support" ability to be usefull and needed, at least in end game content.
All pve content is doable in all three ships. The reason for this is boff healing is too efficent at ensign at lt. lvl skills. This is allowing any class ship to "tank" with little to no support. Also it makes the cruisers upper tier boff abilities redundent as the lower ones work just as well.
If escorts had to actually pilot doing strafing runs instead of being able to yo-yo, dps would equal out. A couple easy fixes would be to either tie healing to ships intial shield/hull hp, or crew size. And/or have resistance penlties/bonuses based on ship classes.
Those little changes would actually allow a cruisers "support" ability to be usefull and needed, at least in end game content.
No thank you. I do not want the holy trinity in any form especially in a game with a queue system like this one. Imagine getting a PuG with two cruisers who don't know how to tank or heal and three escorts exploding all the time it would be a nightmare.
Nerfs are not the answer, atleast not direct nerfs like you proposed. And it is not the healing that is the issue it is the resist stacking that allows a ship to tank the healing is of secondary importance.
You could achieve the same exact result by making current borg deal double their current damage then properly built cruisers could tank it or keep teammates alive in the current system. I doubt that would go over very well.
You could achieve the same exact result by making current borg deal double their current damage then properly built cruisers could tank it or keep teammates alive in the current system. I doubt that would go over very well.
Umm... No thanks? I don't like the idea of dying because I wanted my cruiser to have a 60/40 tank/dmg balance, thanks anyway
I've said many times before that If possible an equal but different approach to ship design would be better, but that it would require an NGE style shakeup that Cryptic just isn't capable of doing. They are incapable of getting even small things right the first time, can you imagine the giant mess it'd be if they really went at the way space combat and ship design works?
For me its a clear case of simply accepting that the game was designed a certain way (due to lack of time, wanting to be like WoW, not knowing any better, etc) and that I prefer it stay the way it is than expecting Cryptic to act against type and getting a total rework right. For what its worth I do believe an equal but different approach was the starting concept but it was changed partway through and implemented poorly to boot and has been tweaked to what we have now, a soft trinity. You don't have to have any specific kind of ship or captain class, all are good. In essence this is the cause of what you perceive as a problem and I as a design decision. You feel compelled to rage against the current design while I keep saying cruisers are designed to tend towards a role. KDF cruisers break this paradigm though, but I lump it in with all those other little benefits the KDF gets to get people to play them more (but in fact has ended up making the KDF a faction of farmers ).
Finally, I find I place higher when I take my cruiser to Starbase 24 than my escort. I will admit that may very well be a case of playstyle influencing things more than ship design. But for target rich environments cruisers are my preferred ship.
Part of the issue with cruisers is that the hull itself adds nothing.
I agree, the sheer mass differences between vessels should count for something but given how easy it is to kill hull, it doesn't play enough role in combat.
Finally the maneuverability and speed penalty does hurt sometimes but not always.
There is no doubts that Cruisers need a turn buff.
Speed penalty I do not understand. Only 10% seperates an escort from a Cruiser. All other bonuses from skills, equipment, etc to defense are availible to any class.
The other issue is the boffs. Engineering boff abilities beyond the ensign level do very little comparatively speaking.
Then the lower tier abilities need to be re-adjusted to not be so useful over the higher tier ones. Of course this exists on all classes to apoint. Take TT for example, TT1 is all you need to use ingame.
The final issue is the beam array under-performing by a long shot.
A truth I agree with but I feel they under perform do to drain issues. Spread thier drain on the firing cycle instead of how its is currently done on a shot per shot basis.
And no, it is not that I do not know how to build the ships
I did not think it was.
*edit addon*
It is not that I hate escorts either. Infact I love escorts.
I should have better clarified my use of dislike in my post. My mistake.
Even Hilbert and other PvP players, anyone really will tell you. If your going to PvE use an escort it is so much faster why wouldn't you?
I wouldn't but then again the game is not a race, so why should one feel the need to move so quickly if nothing is forcing you to do so?
Mainly though I was just curiuos if the time-sink issue was the primary issue of why Cruiser players are upset.
Mainly though I was just curiuos if the time-sink issue was the primary issue of why Cruiser players are upset.
Yes. Even if you sink all offense into the stupid things the difference is to large for myself to ignore.
To use a comparison you might relate to. When you build your PvP ships you tend to gravitate towards 'fun' builds as opposed to broken OP if I am not mistaken. You enjoy flying a variety of ships and styles of ships so to speak.
But you still have a 'minimum performance bar' no matter how fun the ship is or how much you like it. If it cannot hold its own then you will not fly it. It doesn't have to be the best ship or the best build but it does need to be competitive right?
Same with me except in PvE. I don't mind taking say ten or twenty percent longer to run a daily. I do mind taking nearly twice as long.
Time sink aside, Currently there is little if any content outside of pvp that require the resources a cruiser can provide. They can tank, but so too can an escort with the current enemies which are in game. They can heal, so too can escorts, not to the same level, but at a level necessary to compete in end game content.
Being self sufficient is ok in my book, but not at the cost of rendering a class of star ship moot.
If two captains (equally adept/inept) one commanding a cruiser and the other an escort, all things considered equal, which one would win the fight the vast majority of the times. If 60+% of the time one certain ship is dominant over the other (all things considered equal mind you) then there is something wrong.
I wish that the devs' would get involved in the debate, I would love to hear their take on it.
If two captains (equally adept/inept) one commanding a cruiser and the other an escort, all things considered equal, which one would win the fight the vast majority of the times. If 60+% of the time one certain ship is dominant over the other (all things considered equal mind you) then there is something wrong.
I wish that the devs' would get involved in the debate, I would love to hear their take on it.
Depends on the variables. What captain classes ar invovled? Do both sides specifically equip boff powers for the task?
For example, being hit with an full aux snb and not having countermeasures vs the cooldown increase would be bad.
Or a Engineer captains ability to add another shield heal + instant heal.
If we discard those cocnerns and base this on pure ship vs ship stats we have the following:
The escort fields superior firepower in any case, the argument that DHC have a small arc of attack is poitnless sicne all escorts turn exceedingly fast and certainly fast enoguh to hold a crusier in their sights.
+ they can sit in the cruisers 6 o clock position all day, because all the moves a cruiser captain pulls to turn its backside away are also available to the escort in order to STAY there.
Next we have the escorts ability to terminate the encounter any tiem it wants by simply flying away really fast.... yes. flying away really fast. And if it does so in the opposite direction of the cruiser, the escort will be far out of reach by the time the cruiser has turned. Fundamentally, this is what makes escorts such awesoem tanks: they can just fck off for a second to catch their breath which negates the whole limited defense boffs thing people prattle on about all day like it was an disadvantage.
The retreat srves to not only avoid a buffed cruiser (if it is a tac captain for example.) and as such preserve the defense buffs for later use (when it starts its attack for example.)
Its also an eat way out of the snb cooldown: just run away for a bit.
If you get down to it: the only times escorts die to cruisers is in team environments when they get crippled by team effort and the crusier gets the last shot in or when the escort captain turns out to be a dud.
Oh and btw: the escort gets to BO3 you over and over and at some point will crit you for wtf damage.
one might notice that BO3 is a beam buff power and as such one would expect the premiere beam users to use it but alas it seems the dedicated dual cannon ships get to use the dedicated beam power too.... hm....
Anyways, their BO3 is going to wreck the cruiser at some point while the cruiser... gets to fizzle around i guess.... The weapons the cruiser will get on target (which is usuaylly only half its complement anyway since the escort sits in the back of the cruiser) are not powerfull enough to break even entry level of shield hardening, not to mention actually burn the bull down fast enough.
You have no excuse to lose to a cruiser in a 1v1 in an escort.
Escpecialy not in the bug ship, escort carrier and patrols.
The only way for crew to become relevant is for Cryptic to enhance the Boff and Doff integration past keybind, macro, and proc placeholders to the point where they are the crew being injured or killed during space combat rather than the cosmetic crew figure.
We have a First Officer and a representative for the other departments. We acquire new Boffs from both missions and Doff assignments. There should be a hierarchy of battlestations after the officers regularly manning those stations. If a Boff is killed or incapacitated in combat, another should take their station. If another senior officer is not available then that post should fall to the first Doff in line under that department with the appropriate career proficiencies.
Since the assignment of new Boffs and Doffs can occur rather frequently, death of the officers in question should be permanent. More regarding the chance of this happening is discussed below. As they would not be using their armor and sidearms during space combat, their personal effects would be returned to your inventory. To keep it a little simpler, death of the officers would occur in sickbay following the battle and as Captain you would be informed of such.
Various injuries to the officers would induce various times for their recovery to complete recovery. Depending on the injuring sustained, you could have officers return to duty suffering a penalty to their stats relative to the type in injury sustained to the tasks they are required to perform.
Since the officers already have different rarities, they could also have different degrees of experience ranging from Green or Novice to Hardened with this being independent of rank. While the Very Rare officer would have a increased chance of survival because of his rarity his experience might be a detriment to that if he's a Green compared to a Rare or even an Uncommon officer who might be Hardened. The levels of experience could also have the effect of an additional percent to their skills much like the present achievments do for captains.
As the size of the crew generally increases with the size of the ship, Cruisers would have the crew advantage the number states they actually do and crew would finally be relevant. This would also add the possibility of loss to every encounter as the only penalty we have presently for failure is increased time spent at the respawn point and the use of a ship component.
Jack Emmert: "Starfleet and Klingon. ... So two factions, full PvE content." Al Rivera hates Klingons Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert All cloaks should be canon.
how does the non impact crew has relate to boffs?
How does killing boffs of permanently contribute to gameplay? it does not.
If you want to give crew more meaning, have ALL boff powers have their magnitudes scale based on Crew.
Ships with more crew get larger returns from boff powers, perhaps on such a scale that ships, who have small crews, compensate by getting higher grade boff powers.
So the cruisers crf 1 is as powerful as say 2.5 rapidfire from an escort, the crusiers healing and buffing is stronger early one and degrades as the fight drags on. Sci powers for example could benefit from additional crew based boosts, making carirers and other heavyly crewed science vessels a notch more dangerous (because right now the only danger from them is the incredibly amount of cheese they can deploy from their hangars).
Naturally, if you redo crew the first thing to look at is the wonky crew death ratio, where you end up with an empty ship after the first 30 seconds of the fight.
Actually, giving crew more meaning in ship operations might be the way to go here.
how does the non impact crew has relate to boffs?
How does killing boffs of permanently contribute to gameplay? it does not.
If you want to give crew more meaning, have ALL boff powers have their magnitudes scale based on Crew.
Ships with more crew get larger returns from boff powers, perhaps on such a scale that ships, who have small crews, compensate by getting higher grade boff powers.
So the cruisers crf 1 is as powerful as say 2.5 rapidfire from an escort, the crusiers healing and buffing is stronger early one and degrades as the fight drags on. Sci powers for example could benefit from additional crew based boosts, making carirers and other heavyly crewed science vessels a notch more dangerous (because right now the only danger from them is the incredibly amount of cheese they can deploy from their hangars).
Naturally, if you redo crew the first thing to look at is the wonky crew death ratio, where you end up with an empty ship after the first 30 seconds of the fight.
Actually, giving crew more meaning in ship operations might be the way to go here.
It contributes much in the same way rag doll physics is superior to SNES TMNT baddie body explosions. From launch to now, we don't actually COMMAND a starship. We just drive one around with no real command decisions or consequences. You seem like an arcade type though so perhaps cruisers and all ships should be left in their present arcade state.
Jack Emmert: "Starfleet and Klingon. ... So two factions, full PvE content." Al Rivera hates Klingons Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert All cloaks should be canon.
Naturally, if you redo crew the first thing to look at is the wonky crew death ratio, where you end up with an empty ship after the first 30 seconds of the fight.
Actually, giving crew more meaning in ship operations might be the way to go here.
Right.
Actually they are not dead but unconscious (orange). Is it even possible for them to die (grey)?
According to the in-game description "cruisers have a large crew compliment which improves their repair rate and other crew related abilities such as engineering teams and boarding parties."
Yet this is completely irrelevant because:
- Most of the crew is disabled pretty early in a fight anyway.
- Repairs are done by bridge officer-abilities, so the crews repair rate is negligible.
- Having a low crew-count does not seem to have much negative effect.
Cruisers are supposed to be able to hang in a fight longer because of their large crew (and hull). If 25 people are unconscious on a 1000-man cruiser, the ship is perfectly fine.
Escorts are supposed to be forced to withdraw from a fight more often and much earlier to heal/replace the unconscious crew.
If 25 people are unconscious on a 50-man escort, the captain has to withdraw from the fight or else he will gradually loose control of the ship.
Add in science vessels which can provide medical services (healing crews) and there is much more tactical depth instead of arcade fighter jet-combat.
First problem is: Finding the right balance for such mechanics to work.
Second problem is: People dont give money for tactical depth, people want shooting and 'splosions.
Mainly though I was just curiuos if the time-sink issue was the primary issue of why Cruiser players are upset.
As Bareel said, "Yes"
No. I'm also upset that I cannot use effectively the primary offensive eng powers in those ships that can slot the highest versions of them. This means: Aceton Beam and DEM.
Either change the cruisers so they can use them (which would turn them into escorts - bad idea) or change the BOFF powers and fix equipement issues. Aceton as AoE with some fancy graphics to tell anyone who the heck is TRIBBLE with their damage would be great. Idea with constant FAW on one target for beams also sound cool. Both together would make cruisers complete and fixed.
Idea with constant FAW on one target for beams also sound cool. Both together would make cruisers complete and fixed.
Single target BFAW with 100% uptime? Um... hell no... I mean have you seen what it does to single targets? I get on top of a tac cube in ISE or KASE and hit my BFAW2. Suddenly I see numbers flying, and I mean FLYING past. I mean... I would love it, since I love cruisers, but I would HATE it as an escort or sci ship. So as entertaining as this idea sounds, I will have to say no.
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.
Single target BFAW with 100% uptime? Um... hell no... I mean have you seen what it does to single targets? I get on top of a tac cube in ISE or KASE and hit my BFAW2. Suddenly I see numbers flying, and I mean FLYING past. I mean... I would love it, since I love cruisers, but I would HATE it as an escort or sci ship. So as entertaining as this idea sounds, I will have to say no.
Funny i see nubmers flying on all ships.... whats your aversion to numbers here? Heck, scatter volley and rapid fire will send more numbers your way than you might be able to handle so you betterr abstain.
And why do you constantly blabber on about how you cuddled that tac cube (yes we are all not impressed by your feats at pve) when the rest of us talk about pvp and the inherent imbalance between fed cruisers and everything else flying out there, especially since the reasoning initialy given for as to why fed cruisers are ****ty is not supported by the game at all.
No 100% BFAW 1, 2 or 3. 100% time BFAW "like": number of shots from one beam array. No additional damage, just more beams. And lot more ticks for DEM or simmilar abilities to work with. I think that was, more or less, Roachs idea. I may be wrong, but that's how I understood it.
No 100% BFAW 1, 2 or 3. 100% time BFAW "like": number of shots from one beam array. No additional damage, just more beams. And lot more ticks for DEM or simmilar abilities to work with. I think that was, more or less, Roachs idea. I may be wrong, but that's how I understood it.
Yes, you understood correctly.
Its just hereticknight085 again, following his tradition of not comprehending other peoples posts and on top of it confuse 2 different people giving different suggestions to then copy pasta the same alrerady debunked TRIBBLE he wrote over and over again.
Like hes throwing the suggestion to change the working of beam arrays to reflect the visual style and the feel of a single target FAW without changing the outgoing damage directly with suggestions about revamps for Beam arrays in general.
And maybe he will call you an idiot too because you do not debunk his copy pasta TRIBBLE over and over again like clockwork which he interprets as "hey im right".
Changing the Beam arrays cycle times and FX to be closer to the FAW style is a change that should be made on the basic principle of "it would look and feel so much better".
No. I'm also upset that I cannot use effectively the primary offensive eng powers in those ships that can slot the highest versions of them. This means: Aceton Beam and DEM.
Either change the cruisers so they can use them (which would turn them into escorts - bad idea) or change the BOFF powers and fix equipement issues. Aceton as AoE with some fancy graphics to tell anyone who the heck is TRIBBLE with their damage would be great. Idea with constant FAW on one target for beams also sound cool. Both together would make cruisers complete and fixed.
BFaw used to be possible to target a single player and it was way too powerful. Thats one of the reasons it was nerfed.
I would rather see the Beam Version of Rapid fire, like the cannon power. Make it a T1 to T3 power and thats one problem solved. Beams now have a middle of the road ability between Bfaw and BO that gives a good bonus (up to 45% like CRF).
As to why you can't use DEM 2 or 3, or Aceton beam 3. Why not? Many ideas on how to do so have been surfacing lately. The AtB1 build is my favorite becuase it gives really good uptime on all abilities and it can even be run as a Single AtB1 to open up more room.
My idea was the Beam rapid Fire ( Fire for Effect)
Basic InformationProfession: Tactical
Locale: Space
Game Description: Fire for effect improves your next beam attack. Quickly fires numerous beams. Each beam does less damage than a normal beam shot.
Detailed InformationUsed by: Captain
Target: Self
System: Beams
Ability Type: Buff
Activation:
Range: N/A
Shares cooldown with:
None
Starts cooldown on:
Beam: Fire at Will 15s
Modified by:
Skills
Starship Weapons Training - Improves all weapon damage.
Starship Energy Weapons - Improves energy weapons.
Starship Targeting Systems - Improves all weapon accuracy.
Starship Energy Weapon Specialization - Improves Critical Hit chance and Critical Hit
Subsystems Power Level
Weapon
Trained by:
Bridge Officer Trainer (Rank I, Rank II)
Captain training (Rank III)
Ability RanksAbility/User Rank CD SPR Ability Effects
Rank I: Lieutenant 30s 500 Increases the number of shots fired by each cannon volley for 10 sec.
Improves base damage by approx. 30%
Rank II: Lt Commander 30s 750 Increases the number of shots fired by each cannon volley for 10 sec.
Improves base damage by approx. 40%
Rank III: Commander 30s 1000 Increases the number of shots fired by each cannon volley for 10 sec.
Improves base damage by approx. 50%
Viola, Cruisers have access to an ability to help them do better damage and we have seen this idea used in the IP before so its canon. The only issue I feel it will cause is that it will over-drain Beams while firing so Beam Arrays would need a drain fix.
BFaw used to be possible to target a single player and it was way too powerful. Thats one of the reasons it was nerfed.
I would rather see the Beam Version of Rapid fire, like the cannon power. Make it a T1 to T3 power and thats one problem solved. Beams now have a middle of the road ability between Bfaw and BO that gives a good bonus (up to 45% like CRF).
As to why you can't use DEM 2 or 3, or Aceton beam 3. Why not? Many ideas on how to do so have been surfacing lately. The AtB1 build is my favorite becuase it gives really good uptime on all abilities and it can even be run as a Single AtB1 to open up more room.
Aceton beam is a frontal arc only power, on top of that its magnitude of effect is pitiful, its easily cleansed by the all around cleaner tool: hazard emmiters and to top it of its damag is almost non existent.
To make the farce complete, the klingons get an aceton generator thats dealing area of effect damge when shot an by enrgy weapons (its also impervious to those) And on top of it drains all targets in range of power which is an effect that stacks with every new generator in the area.
For an ability like aceton beam to suck that way it does when theres another member of the aceton familiy around not sucking is.. questionable.
As for DEM: DeM deals damage per pulse, that means cannon builds get a heckload more pulses than beam users, which is something that was already explained in this thread - the thread you constant naysayers never bother to read.
For the non readers:
- Fed crusiers get a massive turnrate debuff in comparision to klingion cruisers and all ships in general and have gotten no compensation for it. They have marginally more hp than their klingon counterparts, with the klinks being factually better despite the same console and boff layout (vorcha refit - assault cruiser, neghvar - galaxy R, for examples.) just by the merit of being able to turn the ship around properly and without resorting to boff powers.
We are talking about the basic ability to move here people.
To top it of: th HP debuff for klinks is meant to compensate for the ability to cloack, it does not relate to turnrate. (yes, the BOPS small hull vlaue is not because it turn on a dim, its because it has a battle cloack.)
- Fed cruisers, due to their abyssmal turnrate are basically forced to use beam arrays (we are talking PVP here, in pve you can fir whatever nonsens you want and still succeeed.)
And Beam arrays are just an all around horrible weapon after all the nerfs they got. The damage nerf, the power nerf that makes it impossible to overcap, the general buff to all ships hp and defenses (which was due to DHC wtf damnage which still is here without fail, fckning everything up for everyone.).
And there is no reason for this.
The 280 degree arc? Which is not an argument since the dual cannon bearing ships (aside the one fed crusier that can carry them btw) have the turnrate to make this a non-issue. Even klingon cruisers turn fast enough to make DualCannons viable.
The Beam braodside? Yeah good luck broadsiding ships that can out-maneuver you easily and minimize their exposure time to your, here it comes, Consitently self criplling DAMAGE OVER TIME weapons. Weapons that rely on beign on target for the maximum amount of time hoping to get licks in when buffs run out
I just want you to stop your naysaying and denial over this and consider this: The ships most reliant on the wide arc, damage over time (self crippling) weapons have such horrendous maneuverability that ships can consistently stay out of said wide arcs to effectively cut your damage in half. Now one might say "but hey, if only half the guns fire, will those not do more damage due to less power drain?" no they wont. It has been calculated here on the forums that 6 beam arrays is the most energy/damage efficient way of using them without paying extra in the power department and without losing on damage by using less than 6.
T otop it all off, all the beam buff powers are tactical only, which means that the ship class (essentialy: fed cruisers) that we have been told to be built around mounting beam weapons can not:
- actually support the beams power drain becaus no boff power in existence deals with the staggered drain which cripples the damage. No, there is no overcapping. There are only buffs that reduce weapon powerdrain. You can use emergency power to weapons, but its effect will only help the currently running cycle, then it goes poof due to overcap.
Nadion inversion is the only captain power which deals with it and has such a low up time its not even a factor.
- Buff the beams properly (since cruisers have not much room for tac powers like patterns) and cannot apply mode of operation change powers (FAW, BO) because those are all tac powers, even the beam related powers, when beams are the designated premier weapon for cruisers.
They also, contrary to popular propaganda, do not heal better than their klingon counterparts and in fact TANK worse due to not boing able to effing turn.
They also cannot deal supplemental burst damage like klingon cruisers can and of course also deal less sustained damage by virtue of getting outmaneuvered all the time.
NOONE ever asked for the return of "perfect shield cruisers" or "FAW = win" cruisers.
We just want some PARITY. (oh btw: yes, when i say turnrate i also mean intertia and every other bloody movement related stat, of course i assume that the values get changed in a mannner that makes sense so we dont end up with glitch ships.)
Giving cruisers a turn rate buff that puts them just below klingon cruisers is NOT changing the game for any other class. Fed escorts for example deal with klingon cruisers successfully, so no-one can expect them to suddenly fail just because fed crusiers start turning better. Its not a rigid systerm where the buff to one ship automatically requires buff to all others, heretic (yes i am meaning you.).
No other ship class is losing anything by fed cruisers being lifted out of the hole they got dumped in by gamedesign that is 3 years in the past.
Beam arrays suck and the designated premiere users of them suck too, so together you have a suck-festa and no im not going to rig a chuck testa pic for this.
There is some small truth in you post but a whole lot of false as well.
For one, I'm not a naysayer. I do wish to see the gameplay for Cruiser enhanced but not at the expense of balance, which is what most posts in here (and threads like this one) are wishing for - ego driven enhancement meant to boost the Cruiser and beams to deal damage out-of-balance with the rest of the game while ignoring options that achieve exactly what they wish to accomplish.
Beams need thier Drain mechanic fixed- they currently choke themselves when a player is constantly firing. Thats why they bottom out quicker on damage potential. They're very poor efficiency-wise.
And you may need to leave your KDF Battle Cruiser jealousy outside, next time.
A five player's team of cruisers can't do any mission on game with optionals (really can, but with very good players), a big part of them yes, all not.
A five player's team of science vesels can't do any mission on game with optionals (really happen the same than with cruisers).
A five player's team of escorts CAN do any mission on game with optionals (and they no need be equals on quality to cruiser and science players).
Someone need more to say: escorts are OP in the game.
That isn't a player problem, is a Cryptic problem... Maybe diferent energy profiles per ship, that can be solve. A cruiser can have a 150% more energy than escorts and science vessels can have a 125% more than a escort. That is, 200 energy points for escorts 250 for science and 300 for cruiser (and remove the +15/+10/+5 to energy, and allow set systems up of 100 and below of 25). Even we can adjust that for size of that ship in her category. A defiant tier 5 can't have the same power than a Prometheus (but she have more agility and defense, at least until Prometheus class use the MVAM... and then every part must be worse than a single defiant ship).
But many different things can be made to correct that problem.
A five player's team of cruisers can't do any mission on game with optionals (really can, but with very good players), a big part of them yes, all not.
A five player's team of science vesels can't do any mission on game with optionals (really happen the same than with cruisers).
A five player's team of escorts CAN do any mission on game with optionals (and they no need be equals on quality to cruiser and science players).
Then they need to fix the Timed mission completion parameters. As other have said time and time again, the EScort shines becuase STO is a DPS race in most of its missions and Damage output is what an Escort does best.
Beams need thier Drain mechanic fixed- they currently choke themselves when a player is constantly firing. Thats why they bottom out quicker on damage potential. They're very poor efficiency-wise.
...That might actually fix a lot, including a cruiser's chronic DPS problems... though normal Dual Cannons (and Singles) would probably need adjusting, too, to make them more viable in comparison to the current end-all-be-all that is the Dual Heavy Cannon.
Then they need to fix the Timed mission completion parameters. As other have said time and time again, the EScort shines becuase STO is a DPS race in most of its missions and Damage output is what an Escort does best.
This is also fairly true. Hive Onslaught is more difficult with a Tac-heavy group than it is with a balanced one, since the second and third parts need people who know how to survive severe spike damage (not just the Plasma bolts and lances, but everything else) as well as disables and such for the third to slow down the Queen.
...That might actually fix a lot, including a cruiser's chronic DPS problems... though normal Dual Cannons (and Singles) would probably need adjusting, too, to make them more viable in comparison to the current end-all-be-all that is the Dual Heavy Cannon.
This is also fairly true. Hive Onslaught is more difficult with a Tac-heavy group than it is with a balanced one, since the second and third parts need people who know how to survive severe spike damage (not just the Plasma bolts and lances, but everything else) as well as disables and such for the third to slow down the Queen.
What about the Quad cannon? Its the pinnacle of cannon design yet its worse than the DHCs in efficiency. And thats all DHCs are, very efficient in power consumption thanks to thier slow firing rate under the Season 1.2 weapon drain rules.
Comments
Offense
Cruisers: Sustained damage output at long range and accurate.
Escorts: Spike damage output at close range, penetrating resists.
Sci Vessel: Mix of above
Defense
Cruiser: Resist tank, has highest resists
Escort: Speed tank, avoidance
Sci Vessel: Buffer/sustain tank, can regen shield quickly and has highest amount
Utility
Cruiser: Blend of minor CC and team defense abilities
Escort: Target debuffing
Sci Vessel: Movement CC, and hard CC
Right now we are kinda like that but not really. Now let us take an encounter and push it to that point.
KASE Mobs Redone.
Cubes: These will be as they are now but have a penetrating attack that will ignore a good portion of a cruisers resistance. They will also be vulnerable to a Sci Vessel's hard CC due to being encountered one at a time.
*So a cruiser would struggle a bit tanking these but with the right CC and/or burst from escorts they would go down pretty easily.
Spheres: Spawn in groups with high maneuverability and accurate attacks making them an escorts nightmare. Vulnerable to movement CC and have low resists but decent HPs.
*An escorts nightmare. Hard to line up and will hurt atleast until a gravity well or warp plasma stops their movement. Or the cruiser could simply FAW them to death.
Probes: High resist amounts but slow moving. Also the spawn cooldown will not begin until current ones are defeated allowing movement CC to be nearly as effective as killing them would be.
*An escort could quickly scatter volley them down, or repulsars could stall them, or whatever you desire really.
Gates: Get within 8km and die, simple as that.
*Escort would take longer to kill it provided beams did more dps than dhcs at extreme ranges when all is said and done. But an APB 3 will still get it dead faster for the party.
Tac Cube: Will have an accurate long range attack that has cannon range penalties and extremely high resist. Also be difficult to CC due to innate resist rates. However will also have a dead zone for the long range attack that escorts can exploit if in really close. This ship will also have the ability to target more than one player with different weapon abilities and attacks using a photonic shockwave that can be stripped before it goes off occasionally along with subsystem disabling abilities.
*And here we have a combination of the team cleansing, cross-healing, and fighting for proper positioning.
Different but equal. All could be taken down with a variety of ships and abilities without anyone feeling like they are not contributing because their ship lacks the 'raw DPS'.
All pve content is doable in all three ships. The reason for this is boff healing is too efficent at ensign at lt. lvl skills. This is allowing any class ship to "tank" with little to no support. Also it makes the cruisers upper tier boff abilities redundent as the lower ones work just as well.
If escorts had to actually pilot doing strafing runs instead of being able to yo-yo, dps would equal out. A couple easy fixes would be to either tie healing to ships intial shield/hull hp, or crew size. And/or have resistance penlties/bonuses based on ship classes.
Those little changes would actually allow a cruisers "support" ability to be usefull and needed, at least in end game content.
No thank you. I do not want the holy trinity in any form especially in a game with a queue system like this one. Imagine getting a PuG with two cruisers who don't know how to tank or heal and three escorts exploding all the time it would be a nightmare.
Nerfs are not the answer, atleast not direct nerfs like you proposed. And it is not the healing that is the issue it is the resist stacking that allows a ship to tank the healing is of secondary importance.
You could achieve the same exact result by making current borg deal double their current damage then properly built cruisers could tank it or keep teammates alive in the current system. I doubt that would go over very well.
Umm... No thanks? I don't like the idea of dying because I wanted my cruiser to have a 60/40 tank/dmg balance, thanks anyway
I was being sarcastic it would be a bad idea.
I've said many times before that If possible an equal but different approach to ship design would be better, but that it would require an NGE style shakeup that Cryptic just isn't capable of doing. They are incapable of getting even small things right the first time, can you imagine the giant mess it'd be if they really went at the way space combat and ship design works?
For me its a clear case of simply accepting that the game was designed a certain way (due to lack of time, wanting to be like WoW, not knowing any better, etc) and that I prefer it stay the way it is than expecting Cryptic to act against type and getting a total rework right. For what its worth I do believe an equal but different approach was the starting concept but it was changed partway through and implemented poorly to boot and has been tweaked to what we have now, a soft trinity. You don't have to have any specific kind of ship or captain class, all are good. In essence this is the cause of what you perceive as a problem and I as a design decision. You feel compelled to rage against the current design while I keep saying cruisers are designed to tend towards a role. KDF cruisers break this paradigm though, but I lump it in with all those other little benefits the KDF gets to get people to play them more (but in fact has ended up making the KDF a faction of farmers
Finally, I find I place higher when I take my cruiser to Starbase 24 than my escort. I will admit that may very well be a case of playstyle influencing things more than ship design. But for target rich environments cruisers are my preferred ship.
R.I.P
Reason is because the crew-mechanisms are not working or to be more precise: They are in the game for cosmetic reasons.
Crew is irrelevant = cruisers are UP
Period.
(To avoid misunderstandings, by crew I mean: http://www.stowiki.org/Crew)
As Bareel said, "Yes"
Being self sufficient is ok in my book, but not at the cost of rendering a class of star ship moot.
If two captains (equally adept/inept) one commanding a cruiser and the other an escort, all things considered equal, which one would win the fight the vast majority of the times. If 60+% of the time one certain ship is dominant over the other (all things considered equal mind you) then there is something wrong.
I wish that the devs' would get involved in the debate, I would love to hear their take on it.
Depends on the variables. What captain classes ar invovled? Do both sides specifically equip boff powers for the task?
For example, being hit with an full aux snb and not having countermeasures vs the cooldown increase would be bad.
Or a Engineer captains ability to add another shield heal + instant heal.
If we discard those cocnerns and base this on pure ship vs ship stats we have the following:
The escort fields superior firepower in any case, the argument that DHC have a small arc of attack is poitnless sicne all escorts turn exceedingly fast and certainly fast enoguh to hold a crusier in their sights.
+ they can sit in the cruisers 6 o clock position all day, because all the moves a cruiser captain pulls to turn its backside away are also available to the escort in order to STAY there.
Next we have the escorts ability to terminate the encounter any tiem it wants by simply flying away really fast.... yes. flying away really fast. And if it does so in the opposite direction of the cruiser, the escort will be far out of reach by the time the cruiser has turned. Fundamentally, this is what makes escorts such awesoem tanks: they can just fck off for a second to catch their breath which negates the whole limited defense boffs thing people prattle on about all day like it was an disadvantage.
The retreat srves to not only avoid a buffed cruiser (if it is a tac captain for example.) and as such preserve the defense buffs for later use (when it starts its attack for example.)
Its also an eat way out of the snb cooldown: just run away for a bit.
If you get down to it: the only times escorts die to cruisers is in team environments when they get crippled by team effort and the crusier gets the last shot in or when the escort captain turns out to be a dud.
Oh and btw: the escort gets to BO3 you over and over and at some point will crit you for wtf damage.
one might notice that BO3 is a beam buff power and as such one would expect the premiere beam users to use it but alas it seems the dedicated dual cannon ships get to use the dedicated beam power too.... hm....
Anyways, their BO3 is going to wreck the cruiser at some point while the cruiser... gets to fizzle around i guess.... The weapons the cruiser will get on target (which is usuaylly only half its complement anyway since the escort sits in the back of the cruiser) are not powerfull enough to break even entry level of shield hardening, not to mention actually burn the bull down fast enough.
You have no excuse to lose to a cruiser in a 1v1 in an escort.
Escpecialy not in the bug ship, escort carrier and patrols.
The only way for crew to become relevant is for Cryptic to enhance the Boff and Doff integration past keybind, macro, and proc placeholders to the point where they are the crew being injured or killed during space combat rather than the cosmetic crew figure.
We have a First Officer and a representative for the other departments. We acquire new Boffs from both missions and Doff assignments. There should be a hierarchy of battlestations after the officers regularly manning those stations. If a Boff is killed or incapacitated in combat, another should take their station. If another senior officer is not available then that post should fall to the first Doff in line under that department with the appropriate career proficiencies.
Since the assignment of new Boffs and Doffs can occur rather frequently, death of the officers in question should be permanent. More regarding the chance of this happening is discussed below. As they would not be using their armor and sidearms during space combat, their personal effects would be returned to your inventory. To keep it a little simpler, death of the officers would occur in sickbay following the battle and as Captain you would be informed of such.
Various injuries to the officers would induce various times for their recovery to complete recovery. Depending on the injuring sustained, you could have officers return to duty suffering a penalty to their stats relative to the type in injury sustained to the tasks they are required to perform.
Since the officers already have different rarities, they could also have different degrees of experience ranging from Green or Novice to Hardened with this being independent of rank. While the Very Rare officer would have a increased chance of survival because of his rarity his experience might be a detriment to that if he's a Green compared to a Rare or even an Uncommon officer who might be Hardened. The levels of experience could also have the effect of an additional percent to their skills much like the present achievments do for captains.
As the size of the crew generally increases with the size of the ship, Cruisers would have the crew advantage the number states they actually do and crew would finally be relevant. This would also add the possibility of loss to every encounter as the only penalty we have presently for failure is increased time spent at the respawn point and the use of a ship component.
Al Rivera hates Klingons
Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert
All cloaks should be canon.
How does killing boffs of permanently contribute to gameplay? it does not.
If you want to give crew more meaning, have ALL boff powers have their magnitudes scale based on Crew.
Ships with more crew get larger returns from boff powers, perhaps on such a scale that ships, who have small crews, compensate by getting higher grade boff powers.
So the cruisers crf 1 is as powerful as say 2.5 rapidfire from an escort, the crusiers healing and buffing is stronger early one and degrades as the fight drags on. Sci powers for example could benefit from additional crew based boosts, making carirers and other heavyly crewed science vessels a notch more dangerous (because right now the only danger from them is the incredibly amount of cheese they can deploy from their hangars).
Naturally, if you redo crew the first thing to look at is the wonky crew death ratio, where you end up with an empty ship after the first 30 seconds of the fight.
Actually, giving crew more meaning in ship operations might be the way to go here.
It contributes much in the same way rag doll physics is superior to SNES TMNT baddie body explosions. From launch to now, we don't actually COMMAND a starship. We just drive one around with no real command decisions or consequences. You seem like an arcade type though so perhaps cruisers and all ships should be left in their present arcade state.
Al Rivera hates Klingons
Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert
All cloaks should be canon.
Right.
Actually they are not dead but unconscious (orange). Is it even possible for them to die (grey)?
According to the in-game description "cruisers have a large crew compliment which improves their repair rate and other crew related abilities such as engineering teams and boarding parties."
Yet this is completely irrelevant because:
- Most of the crew is disabled pretty early in a fight anyway.
- Repairs are done by bridge officer-abilities, so the crews repair rate is negligible.
- Having a low crew-count does not seem to have much negative effect.
Cruisers are supposed to be able to hang in a fight longer because of their large crew (and hull). If 25 people are unconscious on a 1000-man cruiser, the ship is perfectly fine.
Escorts are supposed to be forced to withdraw from a fight more often and much earlier to heal/replace the unconscious crew.
If 25 people are unconscious on a 50-man escort, the captain has to withdraw from the fight or else he will gradually loose control of the ship.
Add in science vessels which can provide medical services (healing crews) and there is much more tactical depth instead of arcade fighter jet-combat.
First problem is: Finding the right balance for such mechanics to work.
Second problem is: People dont give money for tactical depth, people want shooting and 'splosions.
No. I'm also upset that I cannot use effectively the primary offensive eng powers in those ships that can slot the highest versions of them. This means: Aceton Beam and DEM.
Either change the cruisers so they can use them (which would turn them into escorts - bad idea) or change the BOFF powers and fix equipement issues. Aceton as AoE with some fancy graphics to tell anyone who the heck is TRIBBLE with their damage would be great. Idea with constant FAW on one target for beams also sound cool. Both together would make cruisers complete and fixed.
Single target BFAW with 100% uptime? Um... hell no... I mean have you seen what it does to single targets? I get on top of a tac cube in ISE or KASE and hit my BFAW2. Suddenly I see numbers flying, and I mean FLYING past. I mean... I would love it, since I love cruisers, but I would HATE it as an escort or sci ship. So as entertaining as this idea sounds, I will have to say no.
Funny i see nubmers flying on all ships.... whats your aversion to numbers here? Heck, scatter volley and rapid fire will send more numbers your way than you might be able to handle so you betterr abstain.
And why do you constantly blabber on about how you cuddled that tac cube (yes we are all not impressed by your feats at pve) when the rest of us talk about pvp and the inherent imbalance between fed cruisers and everything else flying out there, especially since the reasoning initialy given for as to why fed cruisers are ****ty is not supported by the game at all.
Yes, you understood correctly.
Its just hereticknight085 again, following his tradition of not comprehending other peoples posts and on top of it confuse 2 different people giving different suggestions to then copy pasta the same alrerady debunked TRIBBLE he wrote over and over again.
Like hes throwing the suggestion to change the working of beam arrays to reflect the visual style and the feel of a single target FAW without changing the outgoing damage directly with suggestions about revamps for Beam arrays in general.
And maybe he will call you an idiot too because you do not debunk his copy pasta TRIBBLE over and over again like clockwork which he interprets as "hey im right".
Changing the Beam arrays cycle times and FX to be closer to the FAW style is a change that should be made on the basic principle of "it would look and feel so much better".
BFaw used to be possible to target a single player and it was way too powerful. Thats one of the reasons it was nerfed.
I would rather see the Beam Version of Rapid fire, like the cannon power. Make it a T1 to T3 power and thats one problem solved. Beams now have a middle of the road ability between Bfaw and BO that gives a good bonus (up to 45% like CRF).
As to why you can't use DEM 2 or 3, or Aceton beam 3. Why not? Many ideas on how to do so have been surfacing lately. The AtB1 build is my favorite becuase it gives really good uptime on all abilities and it can even be run as a Single AtB1 to open up more room.
My idea was the Beam rapid Fire ( Fire for Effect)
Viola, Cruisers have access to an ability to help them do better damage and we have seen this idea used in the IP before so its canon. The only issue I feel it will cause is that it will over-drain Beams while firing so Beam Arrays would need a drain fix.
R.I.P
Aceton beam is a frontal arc only power, on top of that its magnitude of effect is pitiful, its easily cleansed by the all around cleaner tool: hazard emmiters and to top it of its damag is almost non existent.
To make the farce complete, the klingons get an aceton generator thats dealing area of effect damge when shot an by enrgy weapons (its also impervious to those) And on top of it drains all targets in range of power which is an effect that stacks with every new generator in the area.
For an ability like aceton beam to suck that way it does when theres another member of the aceton familiy around not sucking is.. questionable.
As for DEM: DeM deals damage per pulse, that means cannon builds get a heckload more pulses than beam users, which is something that was already explained in this thread - the thread you constant naysayers never bother to read.
For the non readers:
- Fed crusiers get a massive turnrate debuff in comparision to klingion cruisers and all ships in general and have gotten no compensation for it. They have marginally more hp than their klingon counterparts, with the klinks being factually better despite the same console and boff layout (vorcha refit - assault cruiser, neghvar - galaxy R, for examples.) just by the merit of being able to turn the ship around properly and without resorting to boff powers.
We are talking about the basic ability to move here people.
To top it of: th HP debuff for klinks is meant to compensate for the ability to cloack, it does not relate to turnrate. (yes, the BOPS small hull vlaue is not because it turn on a dim, its because it has a battle cloack.)
- Fed cruisers, due to their abyssmal turnrate are basically forced to use beam arrays (we are talking PVP here, in pve you can fir whatever nonsens you want and still succeeed.)
And Beam arrays are just an all around horrible weapon after all the nerfs they got. The damage nerf, the power nerf that makes it impossible to overcap, the general buff to all ships hp and defenses (which was due to DHC wtf damnage which still is here without fail, fckning everything up for everyone.).
And there is no reason for this.
The 280 degree arc? Which is not an argument since the dual cannon bearing ships (aside the one fed crusier that can carry them btw) have the turnrate to make this a non-issue. Even klingon cruisers turn fast enough to make DualCannons viable.
The Beam braodside? Yeah good luck broadsiding ships that can out-maneuver you easily and minimize their exposure time to your, here it comes, Consitently self criplling DAMAGE OVER TIME weapons. Weapons that rely on beign on target for the maximum amount of time hoping to get licks in when buffs run out
I just want you to stop your naysaying and denial over this and consider this:
The ships most reliant on the wide arc, damage over time (self crippling) weapons have such horrendous maneuverability that ships can consistently stay out of said wide arcs to effectively cut your damage in half. Now one might say "but hey, if only half the guns fire, will those not do more damage due to less power drain?" no they wont. It has been calculated here on the forums that 6 beam arrays is the most energy/damage efficient way of using them without paying extra in the power department and without losing on damage by using less than 6.
T otop it all off, all the beam buff powers are tactical only, which means that the ship class (essentialy: fed cruisers) that we have been told to be built around mounting beam weapons can not:
- actually support the beams power drain becaus no boff power in existence deals with the staggered drain which cripples the damage. No, there is no overcapping. There are only buffs that reduce weapon powerdrain. You can use emergency power to weapons, but its effect will only help the currently running cycle, then it goes poof due to overcap.
Nadion inversion is the only captain power which deals with it and has such a low up time its not even a factor.
- Buff the beams properly (since cruisers have not much room for tac powers like patterns) and cannot apply mode of operation change powers (FAW, BO) because those are all tac powers, even the beam related powers, when beams are the designated premier weapon for cruisers.
They also, contrary to popular propaganda, do not heal better than their klingon counterparts and in fact TANK worse due to not boing able to effing turn.
They also cannot deal supplemental burst damage like klingon cruisers can and of course also deal less sustained damage by virtue of getting outmaneuvered all the time.
NOONE ever asked for the return of "perfect shield cruisers" or "FAW = win" cruisers.
We just want some PARITY. (oh btw: yes, when i say turnrate i also mean intertia and every other bloody movement related stat, of course i assume that the values get changed in a mannner that makes sense so we dont end up with glitch ships.)
Giving cruisers a turn rate buff that puts them just below klingon cruisers is NOT changing the game for any other class. Fed escorts for example deal with klingon cruisers successfully, so no-one can expect them to suddenly fail just because fed crusiers start turning better. Its not a rigid systerm where the buff to one ship automatically requires buff to all others, heretic (yes i am meaning you.).
No other ship class is losing anything by fed cruisers being lifted out of the hole they got dumped in by gamedesign that is 3 years in the past.
Beam arrays suck and the designated premiere users of them suck too, so together you have a suck-festa and no im not going to rig a chuck testa pic for this.
There is some small truth in you post but a whole lot of false as well.
For one, I'm not a naysayer. I do wish to see the gameplay for Cruiser enhanced but not at the expense of balance, which is what most posts in here (and threads like this one) are wishing for - ego driven enhancement meant to boost the Cruiser and beams to deal damage out-of-balance with the rest of the game while ignoring options that achieve exactly what they wish to accomplish.
Beams need thier Drain mechanic fixed- they currently choke themselves when a player is constantly firing. Thats why they bottom out quicker on damage potential. They're very poor efficiency-wise.
And you may need to leave your KDF Battle Cruiser jealousy outside, next time.
R.I.P
A five player's team of science vesels can't do any mission on game with optionals (really happen the same than with cruisers).
A five player's team of escorts CAN do any mission on game with optionals (and they no need be equals on quality to cruiser and science players).
Someone need more to say: escorts are OP in the game.
That isn't a player problem, is a Cryptic problem... Maybe diferent energy profiles per ship, that can be solve. A cruiser can have a 150% more energy than escorts and science vessels can have a 125% more than a escort. That is, 200 energy points for escorts 250 for science and 300 for cruiser (and remove the +15/+10/+5 to energy, and allow set systems up of 100 and below of 25). Even we can adjust that for size of that ship in her category. A defiant tier 5 can't have the same power than a Prometheus (but she have more agility and defense, at least until Prometheus class use the MVAM... and then every part must be worse than a single defiant ship).
But many different things can be made to correct that problem.
R.I.P
...That might actually fix a lot, including a cruiser's chronic DPS problems... though normal Dual Cannons (and Singles) would probably need adjusting, too, to make them more viable in comparison to the current end-all-be-all that is the Dual Heavy Cannon. This is also fairly true. Hive Onslaught is more difficult with a Tac-heavy group than it is with a balanced one, since the second and third parts need people who know how to survive severe spike damage (not just the Plasma bolts and lances, but everything else) as well as disables and such for the third to slow down the Queen.
What about the Quad cannon? Its the pinnacle of cannon design yet its worse than the DHCs in efficiency. And thats all DHCs are, very efficient in power consumption thanks to thier slow firing rate under the Season 1.2 weapon drain rules.
R.I.P