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Remake cruisers
paragon92518
Member Posts: 268
Here's the Cruiser thread of the week:
Since this is basically DPS - Online, not Star Trek, why not just remove the "Cruiser" tag from the Cruiser line and make them some other type of ship classification? eg: Destroyer, Frigate, or *Something Else*
Or, on a small scale, remake all the MU Cruisers, into MU Destroyers?
This post has been edited to remove content which violates the Perfect World Entertainment Community Rules and Policies . ~Bluegeek
Since this is basically DPS - Online, not Star Trek, why not just remove the "Cruiser" tag from the Cruiser line and make them some other type of ship classification? eg: Destroyer, Frigate, or *Something Else*
Or, on a small scale, remake all the MU Cruisers, into MU Destroyers?
This post has been edited to remove content which violates the Perfect World Entertainment Community Rules and Policies . ~Bluegeek
![http://media.photobucket.com/image/dofftrader/yoreantiques/DOFFtrader.gif[/SIGPIC]](http://media.photobucket.com/image/dofftrader/yoreantiques/DOFFtrader.gif[/SIGPIC]){kind=link}
Post edited by paragon92518 on
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Edit: From a largely PvE perspective. I can't really speak to Cruiser's place in PvP at the moment.
Joined January 2010.
In regard to hating Star Trek 2009:
Lets just get rid of everything that isnt a Defiant or Bird of Prey because thats the obvious fix for everything.
Oh wait... what you actually mean is you want to change the title of cruisers to something else. Which basically means you would STILL be flying a cruiser except it has a different name.
Here is an idea: Go ingame, change the name of your ship and character . Has this magically made you any more or less effective ?
If the game is DPS online - asking for cruisers to be magically named something else does not make them do more DPS
This post has been edited to remove content which violates the Perfect World Entertainment Community Rules and Policies . ~Bluegeek
He's not suggesting JUST a rename. He's talking about eliminating their tanking ability, upping the turnrate, and making them DPS focused.
Effectively, delete all cruisers and replace them with cruiser-costumed escorts or at least destroyers.
Or
Star Trek: DS9 Online?
Hahaha hahaha hahahaha... no.
*insert picture of grumpy cat....
That would bring it more in line with how the game SHOULD be...
Escorts should have 0 tanking ability.
No.
It's not like Star Trek simply altered the classification of the Defiant to "Escort" rather than call it what it actually was: "Warship"
Even if you DO magically decided to derive the idea that cruisers should magically be changed to be 'DPS Focused' that accomplishes nothing. What exactly is 'DPS Focused' ?
Delete cruisers ? - The only difference ends up being how your ship looks.
Sure, I will go with that.
By your suggestion, I can now go and buy a Defiant then right-click change ship uniform to Dominion Dreadnaught.
I'm sure Cryptic would enjoy having their entire C-Store ruined because now they can only sell ship costumes the same way they sell uniforms. They cant play with the Universal Bridge Officer slots or different console abilities or even different hull types because all of that is now the same.
Since STO is supposedly DPS focused the simple solution is to make science,cruiser and escort able to do the same DPS in different ways.
Science are supposed to go through the debuff / control school of combat
Escorts are supposed to go through the pure high damage school of combat
Cruisers... the obvious gap they can fill is either making them proper tanks or turning them into group buffers via passives.
I.E Give the Cruisers abilities which help the entire team either as passives or as team based attack patterns. The Dominion Gamma Pattern Console demonstrates this is possible.
This post has been edited to remove content which violates the Perfect World Entertainment Community Rules and Policies . ~Bluegeek
They should redo the way aggro works in this game so escorts aren't always tanking, first.
Cruisers just don't have the tools they need to manage aggro. Escorts need to be able to take a beating, or Escort pilots will either stop fighting as hard, or will be constantly staring at 30- and 60-second respawn timers (in both cases, hampering the progress of groups).
IMO they should do about the same DPS and the point of difference be maneuverability vs. tank
There does seem to be a discrepancy between Fed Cruisers and KDF battlecruisers
The KDF versions just seem so much better with the ability to use dual can's and the extra turn rate the ships have. You can get KDF cruisers with 11 base turn? and the best you can do fed side is 8? It's actually quite a big gap.
Hard to gauge how much of the problem is to do with beam energy usage, but it does seem like a real issue. It seems to me like beams vs. cannons is balanced fairly well in terms of damage vs arc but the extra energy drain on beams just makes cannons that much better.
I find it funny on some cruisers with crews in the thousands, have less tactically than a ship with less than a hundred.
And KDF cruisers are so much worse than Feds. Nothing even close to the adaptability of the Excelsior, Ambassador etc..
I think we only have one that's halfway decent. And Feds will have access to their Tier V shipyards waaaay before any KDF fleet does.
So yea, KDF cruisers turn faster, and do way less damage.
Mayby I'm confused, whats your definition of tanking ?
If your talking about getting on someone tail and staying there while unloading everything and maintaining your front shield till he dies, then I do that all the time in my shuttle against BoP's in the vault.
:P
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
LT Cruiser 3 forward, 2 rear hardpoints
LTCMR 4 forward, 3 rear
CAPT 4 forward, 4 rear
RA/VA 6Forward, 5 year.
Now change beam array power drain or change cruisers to where they have 400 power total instead of 200, and allow weapons power to instead of maxing at 125, cruisers can max out at 225.
Hahahahaha. Oh man that's funny.
Universla slots, much higher turn, most can use cannons.....
Higher turn rate effectively becomes higher damage. With Fed cruisers being either 6, 7, or 8 at best, we are stuck wiith beams. Anyone with a resist shield knows how little of a threat those are. Or we can get a single cannon/turret or all turret build, but since most cruisers can't reliably cycle CRF while having any other tac abilities, cruisers have been reduced to nothing. Protect the escorts....science support the escorts....I'm tired of the entire game being centered around escorts. Yes I did cave and get one, sure. I just hate having the Regent and the Excel in the mothball fleet because my fleet patrol escort with all human boffs can tank just as well. I spent almost a year trying to find a viable pvp fed cruiser build.
The only conclussion Ican come to is that Fed cruisers are a joke.
I think Cryptics decision to make every ship being able to heal itself and thus more independent was a good step to make STO a more Star Trek like game. Before that ships where too much trapped in their standard MMO roles, which was completely out of place for a Star trek game.
To continue this process, i think both Escorts and Cruisers should be much more alike, when it comes to Firepower and durability. The big difference should be the way they archieve that.
Escorts should get their defense by moving fast and buffing themselves a bit, Cruisers by healing and buffing themselves. They are already pretty close when it comes to durability, but i think Firepower is what especially Starfleet cruisers need.
When it comes to firepower i think the difference between Escorts and Cruiser should be how they deliver it.
Cruisers should get some kind of bonus for using Beam Weapons like less energy drain or something like that.
Additionally i think there should be a couple of additional low level engineering powers, like a more narrowed Fire at Will power maybe 120 or 180 degrees fireing arc to the ships side. So a cruiser could do some AOE damage without getting the attention of every NPC ship around.
I could also imagine something like a Beam Array Rapid fire power to fight single enemies.
All ships could maybe get an built in "combine all beam weapons to one shot" power, which would work like an on/off switch and would just be cosmetical. I always though that battles in STO look much to arcade like.
An other possibility could be to incease cruisers maximum power to a subsystem from 125 to 150 while increasing its total power about ~150.
The funny thing is, Cryptic made Klingon Cruisers much better than Starfleet Cruisers and Starfleet Escorts much better than Klingon escorts, while it should be the other way round IMO.
The fact by now is that you can have a good dps cruiser with low survivability, or a medium-low dps cruiser with very high survivability, and with some builds as a romulan plasma based build in a tac toon, you can have your dps significantly increased by losing small survivability (for not being an engineer).
In my case i have this type of build on my fleet star cruiser, and i am very pleased of it, because i can catch aggro for a some time, do decent damage holding for so long on STF's, only dying 1 time every 10 STF's aprox., and providing some support to escorts on my team also.
What is the problem then? This strategy wipes out on any other energy type, and for pvp (i'm not interested in the boring pvp this game has by now, but is a fact) the damage output is reduced considerably as many people have more resistance to plasma than any other energy type, and if you replace the damage lose with other ways, then the cruiser loses its main utility: tanking (= holding damage and attention from multiple enemies without problems allowing the other teammates to freely attack the enemy (dps) or having you alive (healers)).
So, in conclusion, i think the only thing cruisers need is 1 or 2 changes to make them different, and as a tank lover and expert on every game i play, in my point of view this can be made by 2 ways:
1- increasing maximum cruiser energy to 300, what seems acceptable considering the big cores they have. This also needs small modifications of the maximum energy per system, of course, but nothing very difficult to make and understand. Increasing also the maximum weapon slots on 1 per side would also allow even better performance and adaptation to the new maximum energy output, but not completely necessary.
2- Modifying (reducing) the energy drain of beam arrays and increasing maximum weapon slots in 2 in front and 1 rear. On this case i think both parts go together to properly do the job. The only bad thing this have is making the energy reduction in a way escorts cannot benefit from it, or we will be again at the beginning with different numbers and weapons.
Both 2 ways should be fair to make cruisers good tanks, and if the teaming for group missions is also designed by roles, we should see a very different STO much more attractive and varied, because by now, as anyone knows, escorts (with some tanking capabilities some of them) are ruling the game, making it boring and out of its essence.
Have a good day
And which Klingon cruisers with universal slots would that be?
This is something I noted awhile back.
Overall, I think what's needed is:
Escorts need to be far less tank-y.
Cruisers need to be more tanky. (And the turnrate is still painful. As in my first gets cramps turning them.)
Aggro needs to make sense. Right now, it doesn't.
This probably needs to be accomplished in a way that doesn't wind up making escorts non-viable in solo content, which is the risk with these changes.
Escorts will retain their DPS advantage with higher damage in a shorter amount of time, but the gap would shrink so that DPS is not the only key to victory, since Cruisers would also have tank ability (which probably needs boosting for Cruisers)
Science ship would also get a similar advantage from beams and also have the sci disruption/AoE capabilities to boost damage effect.
Bottom line, Star Trek is a combination of ships so they all need to be part of the game (Cruisers, Science Frigate, and Escorts); STO just need to bring back the balance, especially before trying to revamp PvP. :rolleyes:
So my idea would be an equivalent to Sensor Analysis for cruisers, but one that does not increase damage but accuracy.
Call it "targetting arrays" if you will.
Big ships usually have rather large lateral sensor arrays that should make it very easy for cruisers to get a precise lock on a target wherever it goes.
If firepower is really that much of a problem, throw in a (sightly?) increased chance to do criticals.
This could very well offset most of the problems.
Some of you guys would say cruisers can be tank freaks I say yes if they are full heal no teeth, and there are also tac captains who fly cruisers and engage alpha strike and say I have seen a cruiser do ridiculous dmg in pvp hahaha yea really when they are attacked they are cracking like popcorn
There slow movement and ineffecient damage from beams ( among other weapons) do not deliver enough out going damage to hurt targets quick enough to allow that tanking to be effective.
Especially in pvp.
R.I.P
+1 for awesome.
in pvp in with fed eng Dom heavy escort ive been Fighting 2 Cruisers one ive been smashing to bits up front the other flanking me doing no noticable dmg any one useing a cruiser after a few monyhs of hitting lvl 50 most be a slow learner. if u ask me
I think this is pretty close to the truth.
Various factors in combination make things difficult for cruiser pilots.
You can't turn to keep targets in a narrow firing arc, so you need to rely heavily on wide-arc weapons just to get a shot.
Because you're using wide-arc weapons, it's more likely that more than one weapon will have a firing arc, so they all fire and drain power worse than a cannon would do.
Even if you get a shot, the escort's defense means it's likely you will miss with one or more weapons.
And even if you hit, you don't do as much damage because the wisdom says that wide-arc weapons should do less damage because they should be hitting more often. But they don't. And even when they do, the multi-weapon power drain makes them do less than optimal damage.
Sure, you can tank. But again, you can't turn. So it's harder to protect damaged shield-facings. Which the escort's alpha strikes tear through like wet toilet paper.
Does that about sum it up?
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Even using ACC2 and ACC3 weapons.
R.I.P
The battle between escort and cruiser should be a contest of spike vs attrition. The longer the fight lasts the more likely the cruiser should win.
Making escorts more fragile straight up is not viable, but changing the nature of an escort's survivability may be if done right.
Reduce hull and shields. Increase the defense mods (both positive and negative) from speed and increase the escort's top speeds. Make it so they need to be moving over 75% of top speed to have a viable defense, and so they are barely sitting over zero defense when at 50%. In PVE this will still work fine. You do attack runs and turnaround for another pass while farther than 10k from the enemy. In PVP slowing down to turn close to an enemy is begging to be snagged and killed. Parking your escort (currently the most popular way to fight with them PvE) is suicide due to the heavily negative defense being turned into massive crit bonuses.
For cruisers, start by #1 adding a power that is the inverse of placate (taunt) and forces an enemy to target you for a few seconds. #2 make their description true. When you read the description of a cruiser it says they have enough power to fire multiple beams. But the current game mechanics don't allow this. Fix this inconsistency (and not via a text change, narff).
After these changes had a tweak or two, and a chance for people to familiarize with hem I''d look at weapons. Giving people a reason to choose different weapons is always good. Right now there is barely a reason for dual and single cannons to exist. Dual heavys are simply that much better all around. This should never be the case. But the fix has to be in the form of giving people more options, not in nerfing their favorite toy. I like the idea of making dual cannons into exactly what heavys are today and giving heavy's a short cooldown between volleys (2 seconds or less) in return for higher damage and in inherent crit chance bonus of 1%.
Sorry, I'm wordy. TL/DR version:
1. Power boost doesn't work as intended, power drain resist does but only enginers get it and just 1 power on long cooldown.
2. in PvE against t1 and t2 enemies accuracy is the issue, against t3 and t4 it's weapon damage.
First: I forget the post but I've seen tests showing the effects of things like weapon batteries emergency power, and all sorts of consoles and red matter device on beam damage. Then comparing it to the engineer class ability that prevents energy drain. The difference is enormous.
A cruiser build with every console slot devoted to power mitigation (both science and engineering) and constantly rotating emergency power to weapons, weapon batteries and red matter devices has barely higher damage than one that uses none of these (I think it was like a 10 or 15% boost). Using the prevents energy drain power was nearly doubling the damage for its duration (my bad memory wants to say 88% boost in damage).
End result: none of the existing tools to control the power cost of beam arrays work as intended.
Second: There's also a bit of complication when looking strictly at PVE because player ships follow different rules than NPCs.
NPC escorts do the same damage as all other tier 2 enemies. So NPC starfleet escorts and NPC klingon BoPs, and raptors deal the same damage as say a mogai or whatnot even though the mogai is for all intents and purposes a "cruiser".
The true equivalent of PC cruiser class is the NPC "battleship" at tier 3 and it has vastly higher hull and shields PLUS vastly higher damage. an NPC Neghvar easily deals double or triple the damage of an NPC raptor and has, I think close to 5 times the hit points simultaneously.
What ends up happening in PvE is that PC escorts slaughter any tier 1 and 2 enemies nearly instantly. PC Cruisers end up in drawn out battles with them but usually win via attrition because the AI doesn't know how to focus its aim on one shield facing (which does happen in PVP as you described). The accuracy issue you described is the biggest one here, not as much the damage as t1 and t2 enemies tend to have lower hit points (especially the t1 enemies) so it is possible to get in enough lucky hits. It takes longer than for a PC Escort, but it still happens.
Against t3 and t4 enemies the PC escort can focus on a single facing (or two at most) and spike it down easily. Often while parked and letting the NPC lumber slowly toward them. The PC cruiser is most hurt in this battle not by defense but by the power drain. T3 and t4 enemies have enormous amounts of hit points and shields, and the power drain is just brutal for PC cruisers to slog through doing their pitiful damage.
In PvP you get both problems at once plus the human opponent is smarter than the AI and will focus on one facing.
I couldn't have said it any better myself.