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Science Captains in Science Vessels
ladydragonfury
Member Posts: 32 Arc User
... What's wrong with a Science Captain in a Science Vessel? I read the forums and half of the threads in the Shipyards are about people wanting to buff Cruisers or debuff Escorts, but as soon as science ships are mentioned it's like people are reluctant to talk about them. Like they're the ugly stepchild of ships :S. I don't get it. I don't feel useless in my ship, except maybe on Khitomer Vortex because I'm never sure where to go. Don't have enough damage to take out the generators quickly, don't do enough damage to take out the Cubes quickly, or do enough damage to take out the Probes quickly... Not that I can't take the generators, Cubes or Probes out. It just takes me a while. Tractor Beams, Gravity wells, Tachyon beams, Subnucs, Photonic Fleets, Beam Overload and Torpedo High Yield can only do so much, after all. (Though a buff to Gravity Well would be much appreciated...)
But, on the other hand. That does not make my ship useless. For example, in a premade Khitomer, me and another Captain who had picked up an old ship that she hadn't used in a while and well, long story short ended up having to use MkVi shields. But between us we managed to keep the swarms of Probes out of the Portal. She was in a science ship too. In Hive Onslaught, I and a friend in his Defiant had to use our respective abilities to help each other out. I healed him, put out fires, extended my shields to save his Escort. When it was my turn to get mobbed by Spheres and Probes, he came in and blasted them away from me... does that make a sci ship useless? I think not. It just makes them need a communicative team who work as a team. Come to think of it, that's probably why you don't see many pure sci ships in public STFs. Noone talks, especially if they're just in it for the rewards and just want it over as quick as possible. My science ship has outlived the entirety of Hive Elite, kept Nanite Spheres at bay in Conduit and saved many a team member from exploding by drawing fire, jamming Tractors or simple heals. But still, I don't get it. What's wrong with a Science Captain in a Science Vessel? I do have two Cruisers as well as my two Sci ships, but to be honest, I prefer the Sci ships. Their turnrates are just right for my flight style, I don't think I'd even be comfortable in a Carrier.
But, on the other hand. That does not make my ship useless. For example, in a premade Khitomer, me and another Captain who had picked up an old ship that she hadn't used in a while and well, long story short ended up having to use MkVi shields. But between us we managed to keep the swarms of Probes out of the Portal. She was in a science ship too. In Hive Onslaught, I and a friend in his Defiant had to use our respective abilities to help each other out. I healed him, put out fires, extended my shields to save his Escort. When it was my turn to get mobbed by Spheres and Probes, he came in and blasted them away from me... does that make a sci ship useless? I think not. It just makes them need a communicative team who work as a team. Come to think of it, that's probably why you don't see many pure sci ships in public STFs. Noone talks, especially if they're just in it for the rewards and just want it over as quick as possible. My science ship has outlived the entirety of Hive Elite, kept Nanite Spheres at bay in Conduit and saved many a team member from exploding by drawing fire, jamming Tractors or simple heals. But still, I don't get it. What's wrong with a Science Captain in a Science Vessel? I do have two Cruisers as well as my two Sci ships, but to be honest, I prefer the Sci ships. Their turnrates are just right for my flight style, I don't think I'd even be comfortable in a Carrier.
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Post edited by ladydragonfury on
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Problem is, they're a support role - which is a thankless job. Locking down Donatra in KASE is not quantifiable by "numbers", but it makes a huge difference(especially if the lockdown ship also has access to Aceton Beam).
Furthermore, Science ships are not as toothless as most people assume. Most of them don't have access to the tactical boff slots to fully make use of torpedos and mines, but the ones that do(mainly the Vesta and Nebula) are nearly as potent as a proper escort and as tanky as a cruiser - at the same time - and are still able to use their various science abilities.
This thread hit the nail on the head in one post, I'm impressed
When it comes down to it, if I'm flying a "pure sci" ship vs a carrier I'm less effective, even in the much praised Vesta.
Fleet Admiral Space Orphidian Possiblities Wizard
As I said, the issue is that a Recluse or Atrox can accomplish this job just as well while ALSO dealing a good deal more damage.
The Vesta is the lone exception as its ability to equip DHCs lets it output respectable damage (and its hanger slot doesn't hurt either).
I tried an escort (fed) and the new mirror carrier on the klingon char but
cannot get a feeling for it. So I decided to just stick to the fleet dssv until I can afford that Fleet Nebula.
will definately try out pvp (again) soon but would love to see some builds as examples.
Thick-skulled dorks. The only reason escorts seem overpowered is cause they're EASY too fly and understand. Kind of like weapons. I'll hazard that with my gaming PC, and good training, I could do more damage from my computer than an army grunt could with an M-16. But most everyone understands how an M-16 works, even if they aren't accurate with it. Not everyone understands computers.
Not everyone understands science ships either. Science ships are debuff and kill ships. Grav well, sub drain, subneuc, tractor beam, tractor repulsors. These skills require you too focus and think outside the box, instead of just "Moodily staring out the window, and pressing the fire button." One of the more interesting setups I've heard of is using grav well and tractor repulsors as shield ignoring damage. Most escorts are able too negate the CC from grav well and repulsors, but I doubt any of them know that despite they can escape, they still recieve damage that goes right past shields.
See? Think outside the box, work with your friends, then you'll see some firepower.
I AM THE SWORD OF THE RIGHTOUS!
all sci powers are nerfed to hell, except grav well, and you want to buff it? it is pretty much the onlly offensive sci power, that is actually useful, and does not need a buff or least of all nerf
sci ships are fine, the problems come from sci powers, that are nerfed to hell, and are only there to make the battlefield pretty. you might as well equip your fireworks, and flash them at the borg, and achieve the same, as with a tykens rift
10k DPS Vesta threads: 1; 2
It is still useful, but it is nerfed as well.
KDF Eng: Boreas I.K.S. Demonon Nemesis {Fleet: HoS}
Rom Sci: Crius I.R.W. Noctem Aeternus {Fleet: LoS}
Fed Tac: Kronos U.S.S. Xibalba, I.S.S. Theogonia{Fleet: HSF}
When I'm flying sci/sci in stf's I tend to shut down Tac Cubes, using a combination of tykens rift, energy syphon, subsystem targeting and polaron weaponry. Using that setup it's not unheard of to get Donatra to drop shields and sit pretty for everybody to unload their full armaments on.
Drain builds work in stf's, because a half decent team can really lay down the pain on a target when presented with a 10 second interval that shields are offline. Even more so as energy weapons'll generally be offline to, so escorts don't need to watch their moves.
Coupled with grav well and some other tricks, such as EWP on my Wells, I can wipe out raptors before they reach the Kang in CSE, and easily hold off Negh'Vars until the team gets into range.
And when somehow the combination doesn't get me aggro of half the map, as it tends to, I share those heals like mad.
*shrug*
@OP: Sci/sci can definitely work, it's just got much more of a learning curve than escorts tend to have, and it shines in a team setting.
Sure, the sci carriers can perform sci duties fine, but that's a matter of personal preference: I know I saved a great many optionals by juggling fronts, zipping back and forth between targets while laying down CC skills, relying on my mobility to prevent bad things from happening while debuffing the team targets.
While I like the fast and nimble escorts with their huge damage output,
I love herding and holding enemies in pve (probes for example) with repulsors, grav well, tractor beam - add polaron weaponry and energy siphon and throw a subsystem disable in.
I tried the mirror carrier on my klingon sci yesterday a bit more. while it is a flying bunker nearly everyone can
circlestrafe me.
the only "healing" abilities I have atm are hazard emitters 3 (heals a lot with high aux), extend shields and transfer shield strenght.
I will get me some advice for pvp later the day, you may see me asking dumb questions in opvp channel.
PS: hit that emergency speed boost (what was its name?), repulsors and you can push ppl not careful enough half across the map
PPS: just an idea: why not give some bonus traits if you are a sci in a sci ship (or tac in escort, eng in cruiser)
since we wont get any penalty for using a ship of the "wrong" profession.
of course on the other hand when sci abilities get a lil bit too strong again the qq on the forums can be heard on beteigeuze too
Also, no I don't want Gravity Well to be buffed. Nor do I want it nerfed. I just said it would be appreciated if it was buffed. I'm not going to start a thread demanding it be buffed just because I happen to use it a lot.
Now, to the rest of it. I've heard that the Carriers are better at dealing damage but if Cruisers annoy me now with their turn rates then Carriers are just going to do the same and more XD. But then I don't have a Carrier. Might pick one up at some point though, just out of curiousity. I hear the Recluse is pretty good. But I'm sure I'll probably end up going back to my Mirror Reconnaissance Science Vessel.
I also am loving the tips from my fellow Science Captains. I didn't know that Repulsors caused shield ignoring damage though! That opens up a lot more ideas. One of my favourite things to do is to fire a Tachyon Beam at someone, throw a Grav Well at them and then catch them in a Borg, or normal, Tractor Beam whitst they're trying to escape and then watch them fall back into it heh.
Also that boost is Evasive Manouvres I think, speed and turn boost. I'm starting to realise how useful it is.
So, it seems that sci/sci is fine if you learn it right then. There is nothing wrong with it and not every person in a sci ship is automatically useless if they're not in a Vesta or Carrier. Good to know. Now if only we could get Cryptic to unnerf the Sci abilities...
I like the idea of a boost per the poster above me though! Say Sci Captains get a small boost to their Sci specific abilities and Boff skills for pairing up with the 'right' ship, and the same for Engineers and Tacticals. That'd be interesting-and the 'wrong' Captain couldn't abuse it either.
Oh yeah before I go again, I tried my main ship in PvP earlier. It really does shine in a team setting and isn't nearly as weak and toothless as half the stuff on here was starting to make me think. In fact I got six kills and no deaths (and it was 2-vs-2). My partner in his Escort (Tactical Kumari) also got 15 kills no deaths-because we were working together.
Thats because you never experienced science abilities before they were nerfed to hell, never to return.
Science abilities used to be very potent debuffers. Drain attacks would and did literally disable ships if you had the right build for it; aoe snares and damage ability did use to hold targets and/or suck them in unless they used polarize hull or evasive maneuvers...otherwise they'd be held until Gwell was over.
Then the stats the sci abilities were based upon got majorly nerfed. They stopped providing the same bonuses as before. I think right now they are set at 20% of what they used to be.
Then ships were given insane resists against sci abilities. Power insulators for example, just 2 points in that skill box completely negates 9 points in flow capacitors+3 flow cap consoles worth. Gravity well was turned into kinetic damage so ships suddenly received massive resists vs its damage and the tractor pull/hold effect was lowered to 5% of previous level. Now even an stf probe can just walk out of it no prob and not be seriously hurt.
AUX used to determine not only sci abilities but also a ship's turn rate.
Viral matrix used to REALLY shut a ship down if it wasn't cleansed fast enough.
basically every single science ability has been lowered in potency by 80% except for the abilities escorts use: ensign and lt level ones. Tractor, repulsors, hazard and sci team.
Whats wrong with sci ships today? Nothing. The stats sci abilities are based on however, are what is wrong.
You are better off today in a cruiser or escort or carrier than in a science ship. The game is no longer about roles but about dps. crowd control and debuffing does not translate into dps. especially if teh debuffing part is at 20% setting.
Okay, I can't have death ray cannons or uber torpedo spreads. But if I open up a flippin' rift in space every 45 seconds it should actually be a big deal. Science would be fine if their big powers were actually big powers. If science is the closest in video game terms to a Wizard class in Star Trek, then give me big bad wizard spells to work with. There is a lot of missed opportunity for fun and goofy Lt. Commander and Commander powers here that would be great to see science captains busting out.
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
You're not doing any science there. The ship's consoles are not science. Science is boff abilities mainly. All you did was fly in there with heavy weapons and click on a multitude of pay to win consoles.
I did not see you use drains, grav wells, disables, sensor attacks nor any form of crowd control ability that comes out of boff abilities. Hazard and heals ... yes... and low tier ones too. Thanks for proving my point about sci being nothing but lt level heal abilities for escorts... for you flew that ship exactly like one.
In PvE the goal is to destroy the enemy. Not to play with them, destroy them. Escorts rule that area and carriers give them a run for their money.
Now when an ability allows you to destroy the enemy faster (gravity well for example) it is nice but then their is the opportunity cost involved not to mention the best ability for that purpose is attack pattern beta.
And it comes down to do you care about optimum or acceptable. Any ship in this game is acceptable, the vast majority of PvE content can be conquered by shuttles for crying out loud.
Honestly, if you are a science captain then you need a Vesta class, the thing is an epic beast. Claim and dismiss it a few times to get 3 of the AUX cannons up front, run max AUX power and with a good build you can absolutely decimate anything.
I run mine with the 3 AUX cannons up front, 2 turrets and a transphasic mine launcher rear and the thing does amazing DPS while still having great survivability, plus with max AUX power you get more bang out of your science powers.
To each his own I suppose, but I have no problems with it.
I consider the Vesta a warship not a science vessel. Just like the Chet Grell(sp?) is a warship not a cruiser same with the Fleet Vor'Cha and many other ships.
Claiming Sci Vessels are fine because one has more in common with an escort than a science vessel just highlights the issue perfectly if you ask me.
if you could provide some hard data to back that claim up, i could drop all my character's power insulators from 6 to 3, and put the points elsewhere
but i would need solid proof before doing something that could potentially gimp me
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That looks like a mis-reading of this table:
http://home.comcast.net/~amicus/Skill%20Point%20Effects.htm
It shows the effect of maximum FlowCap on ES as being -18 Power Drain.
And it shows the effect of 2 points of Power Insulators as being 18% drain resistance.
In fact, the table shows that maximum Flow Capacitors increases various drain abilities by 50-100%, depending on the ability.
And it shows that maximum Power Insulators grants 50% drain resistance.
this is an old chart, plus I might be wrong, but isnt there a difference between -18 and 18%? just pointing out the obvious
10k DPS Vesta threads: 1; 2
Gravity well is next to useless for damage, unless I haven't yet found the magic "crush enemy ships [ ]" checkbox. GW3 with maximum aux power does somewhere around 1200 damage per second for 20 seconds. 24K points of damage might kill some kinds of frigates, I guess? If you can get their shields down first (being kinetic damage, gravity well does next to nothing against shields). It also has a cooldown time of a minute, which means its damage output is 24K per minute which is easily exceeded by just about any ordinary weapon. I facepalm repeatedly every time I see somebody trying to use one for damage.
If gravity well simply stayed there and continued doing damage for as long as you kept pointing your deflector at it, and if the damage it dealt were shield-penetrating, it might be a decent source of damage for science ships.
As it is, GW is for crowd control and making your team's escorts look like rockstars when they annihilate entire waves of enemies with one rolling barrage of scatter and torp spread.
sci/sci is awesome. the reason people complain about cruisers is that eng/cruisers is useless. Mainly because of the eng-part, not so much the cruiser.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
I can bosst this DPS a little bit with Fleet Weapons.
At the Moment i use HY3, HY2, TT1, EPtW1,GW3,ES2,TSS2,HE3,SciT1,PH1,TB2(with Duty Officer) 4x MK I Phaser Beam Array MK XI Accx2 crth, Quantum Mk XII Accx3, KCB.
I think with the Romulan Weaponset and an Romulan Add damage Sci console i can Push my damage up to 5000 DPS.
Place a 2 million point unarmed gate in a map
Shoot it with a Escort for 1 minute record damage
Repeat with science ship
Repeat with cruiser
Now we will know the rest of the story
Enterprising players could do this with a foundry mission to test real sustained DPS
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
I should clarify that stuff like sensor analysis, or the innate subsystem targeting, don't count; since they are available to science ships of all levels, and so are not part of the tier system. I suppose, considering those abilities, that it could be argued that they are overpowered until T5, rather than underpowered at T5; but having levelled up several characters in sci ships, I'd find that hard to swallow myself.
GW3 on max AUX + a well timed transphasic cluster torpedo can do some spectacular damage. I've managed to take out 3-4 ships with it at once. Not sure if it's a glitch or something in the game but the damage from the ship the mines hit transfers to the others around it and you get one huge massive burst of DPS.
To be honest, Sci ships are over powered compared to escorts and cruisers before t5. This tends not to be noticed because it takes some time to learn sci well and by the time you get a handle on it your are t5, but in the early levels sci ships are way out in front. Escorts don't even start to catch up till the first defiant, and even then sci pulls up ahead.
Low level escorts and cruisers are garbage compared to the sci ships. Getting their last round of goodies is what finally puts them in the same realm as sci.
The real problem comes with gear scaling. If we are all in blues everything works out about perfect. As better and better gear comes out average durability and DPS goes up across the board. This increases the value of DPS considerably. The higher DPS and durability rise compared to the content you face, DPS begins to rapidly reduce the incoming damage you take, which in turn increases your durability, and reduces the need for healing. As the situation continues, the gap increases. Higher DPS leads to faster kills leads to less damage and healing, increasing the value of DPS, in a vicious cycle that doesn't end unless the content we face increases in difficulty as we progress.
But... In STO we don't have that. The more recent content as a whole has been easier then the previous content. Fleet and rep events are easier then STFs. The only content we've seen that turns up the heat and starts to add some movement to the other side of the equation is the No Win Scenario and Hive Onslaught. Notice, in both of those 2 places healing and sci abilities start to become useful again? It is due to the increase in dificulty of the encounters. It puts the balance back in the equation.
The only problem with sci ships when the content is balanced vs player ability is the fact that a carrier is going to out perform it every time. The trade off is mobility. I can live with that. Doesn't matter how BA my carrier is, sometimes I feel like actually turning :P
Edit: One of the other things that puts a carrier up ahead is lack of Sensor Analyses. The carriers get their extra DPS from pets instead of SA. I don't ever have to think twice about breaking off my target to toss a heal or a CC, because I don't lose my SA stack to do so.
Fleet Admiral Space Orphidian Possiblities Wizard