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[BUG REPORT] BORG Invisible Torpedo
aramyll
Member Posts: 149 Arc User
So I don't know how many times this has been mentioned and reported, or if there has been a response to this. But when is the invisible torpedo going to be fixed?
For those that don't know the Borg have a nasty habbit to shoot you with normal torpedoes, HY Torpedoes or Spread Torpedoes. That's all well and fine except for the fact that these are INVISIBLE. You are unable to target or see them as they approach your ship, so countering these becomes a game of chance, you are forced to play an anticipation game. Making it so that you need to pop all your defensive buffs just so you can wait for a torpedo that can take anywhere from 5-10 secs to reach you and hit. Lets ignore the fact that these torpedoes hit for 45k to over a million in damage. It is the Borg and they should be overpowered but please make it so we can see doom coming at us instead of randomly approaching a combat area only to be blown up instantly not knowing what the hell killed us.
Current Borg vessels that possess invisible torpedo technology
BORG PROBE
BORG SPHERE
BORG CUBE
BORG TAC CUBE
BORG UNIMATRIX SHIP (***** HIT ME FOR OVER 1,000,000 in DMG with a torpedo HY)
BORG QUEEN
BORG TRANSWARP GATE
BORG BOP
BORG RAPTOR
BORG NEGH'VAR
BORG SCIMITAR
BORG CARRIER
Please fix this issue, it happens in all BORG STF's, FLEET ACTIONS, RED ALERTS. Haven't gone into any space encounters in a while or done any borg related mission so don't know if it happens there.
For those that don't know the Borg have a nasty habbit to shoot you with normal torpedoes, HY Torpedoes or Spread Torpedoes. That's all well and fine except for the fact that these are INVISIBLE. You are unable to target or see them as they approach your ship, so countering these becomes a game of chance, you are forced to play an anticipation game. Making it so that you need to pop all your defensive buffs just so you can wait for a torpedo that can take anywhere from 5-10 secs to reach you and hit. Lets ignore the fact that these torpedoes hit for 45k to over a million in damage. It is the Borg and they should be overpowered but please make it so we can see doom coming at us instead of randomly approaching a combat area only to be blown up instantly not knowing what the hell killed us.
Current Borg vessels that possess invisible torpedo technology
BORG PROBE
BORG SPHERE
BORG CUBE
BORG TAC CUBE
BORG UNIMATRIX SHIP (***** HIT ME FOR OVER 1,000,000 in DMG with a torpedo HY)
BORG QUEEN
BORG TRANSWARP GATE
BORG BOP
BORG RAPTOR
BORG NEGH'VAR
BORG SCIMITAR
BORG CARRIER
Please fix this issue, it happens in all BORG STF's, FLEET ACTIONS, RED ALERTS. Haven't gone into any space encounters in a while or done any borg related mission so don't know if it happens there.
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I guess the gate got an "invisible" shot off before it exploded. LOL
In addition this next bug effects more then just borg. Donatra and the romulans in carraya both have done this to me lately, they fire a massive cluster of photon torpedos exactly like the 360 degree photon torpedo console on the armitage. 1 shots every time.
She killed all 5 of my team in 360 degree area yesterday. And there was no mistaking that it was a cluster of photons which romulans and donatra aret supposed to not have. Both times this occured that ive seen it happened outside 10km range of the closest enemy ship. And both times i had been outside that range for 1+mins so it shouldnt have been able to fire on me at all either time but all the sudden you see a swarm of red torps appear like 2km from you and pop you in 1 hit, full health brace for impact doesnt stop it.
Example: Infected: The Conduit (elite).
When going against the big gate and the only enemy around is the Tactical Cube which is about 14 Km, well out of firing range, I'll suddenly take a tone of damage sometimes and notice I have a plasma torpedo debuff on me. Never saw anything hit me. I've never noticed the big gate ever using torpedoes even when this problem was fixed.
I've also noticed when hitting evasive maneuvers and running from the tac cube just far enough to get out of range and heal up a bit (about 12-14Km), I'll suddenly get nailed with a plasma torpedo. My camera is facing the tac cube the whole time when I move away from it and never see what hits me.
Yesterday on the KDF side, I did the daily "Empire Defense: Borg" and saw the same thing, though they didn't use heavy plasma torpedoes, just regulars. Kinda strange I was getting hit with them sometimes a couple seconds or so after destroying a borg sphere and there are no other enemies around.
Sometimes it seems as if the tac cube in elite STFs has a very long range and can target me past 10Km and get me with plasma torps. Seems to be up to about 15Km is when it happens. The bottom line is something broke and make things revert back to what they were before in 1 of the recent patches. At least 2 weeks ago I think.
I have also been hit with high yield plasma torpedoes, and regular plasma torps, when there aren't any enemies around in STFs.
One time doing Azura Nebula Rescue, I went to an asteroid by myself. I defeated all Tholian ships and proceeded to disable the tractor beam to free the ship when suddenly I took a tiny amount of damage (less than 100 points) and was interrupted. I looked around thinking I missed a Tholian ship and there was nothing there. I started to disable the tractor beam and again, I took a tiny amount of damage and was interrupted. I waited a few seconds and took tiny amounts of damage a few more times. Again there was nothing around. I switched to the combat tab on my chat window and saw something like "unknown entity deals 89 damage to you with plasma torpedo" about 6 or 7 times. Then this mystery attacker stopped and I released the ship.
I've also had this mystery attacker immediately after respawning in Azura Nebula Rescue when I died. There are NO enemies at the spawn point. Heck I don't think you could even tank a Tholian ship and kite it that far.
I've also seen this happen at least once right after completing Infected: The Conduit (elite). tac cube destroyed, mission over, and suddenly I'm taking tiny amounts of plasma torpedo damage from an unknown source. These attacks even put the plasma torpedo debuff on me that was doing about 1 damage per tick.
Edit: I just remembered, I had this happen to me once doing a borg red alert in 1 of the space sectors. Don't remember which one though. It may have also happened at least once doing story episodes.
I knew I should have taken a screen shot of the combat logs.
What I find more annoying is that these torpedos even without any crits can deal over 40k worth of hull damage straight through shields, often one-shooting barely damaged ships. Combine it with the fact that they're invisible and come from nearly all borg vessels, and you're blowing up constantly not knowing what hit you. Large number of spheres are especially annoying, if they all decide to target you.
And FYI, those are neither HY targetable torps, nor TS, but simple plasma torpedos knocking out more than 3/4 of player's hull through shields even without crits (afaik only Gateway can crit with a torp atm). Just check the combat log after you die.
Yet Torpedo Spreads are way worse, since bosses tend to fire them as often as every 30 seconds, yet the only way to defend oneself against a salvo are dmg resistance buffs and BFI, which more than often have 45sec cd and leave you severely damaged anyway.
Saddest thing - the devs seem to have no idea what exactly is happening or refuse to accept it due to raw numbers they see on their end, which may not necessarily reflet the in-game situation. On the one hand I kind of got used to this, but on the other it's still annoying and encourages playing nimble escorts even more, since even well built cruisers can get one-shot in certain cirumstances. Heck, sometimes even escape isn't an option, as I've been killed by an invisitorp numerous times while over 25km away from an enemy that had me on target.
I know STFs are supposed to be challenging, but I wish this challenge didn't come mostly from cheap deaths...
At that point, the lost torpedo decides to spontaneously hit its target despite being nowhere near, so you are killed by this invisible torpedo despite the sky being completely clear and no weapons fire is seen anywhere, so it's not vfx overload.
I have seen this particular behavior way too often: You'll clear the left transformer, and on your way over to the right transformer, despite not being under fire in any way, you'll suddenly explode for no reason.
This makes these ghost torpedoes impossible to avoid because avoiding them is what causes this. So you just can't win: If you get hit, you die to a visible torpedo. If you evade the visible torpedo, you are killed by an invisible torpedo. This would be why it is impossible to see the torpedo, even in a totally clear sky, and impossible to target the torpedo, even with /target Heavy Plasma Torpedo. The Torpedo simply doesn't exist anymore, it's a ghost.
and i really hope they would find another way of making estfs challanging without stupid onehits
there is so much they could do
like a death zone around a tac cube where u get hit really often with medium dmg
in general high frequent medium dmg is much much more interesting and in the end challanging and fun than just a small amount of very high dmg to be avoided (or simply die
dont mattrer which ship which buffs / how many shields)
gice them more tractors more everything but less dmg
a taccube should be able to attack all 5 players in range in an stf, just with a different weapon so like thread generating cruisers take the large hits and escorts flying around get the smaller faster weapons
and image a taccube with like point defense and stuff like that, making it a really interessting target where a group has to work together, target same shield facing and so one instead of everyone just shooting at it till its dead or we are.
i know im sry thats more than the thread asked for, just had this on my mind for a long time now
Not entirely accurate, but not entirely incorrect either. Your premise, namely that torpedoes can appear to fire past the 10k barrier, is correct. This happens because standard torpedoes, just like cannons, roll their "to hit" when the projectile leaves the launching ship, not when the bolt/projectile reaches the target.
The damage isn't applied until the torpedo reaches it's target however, and unlike HY torps, regular torps don't have to "reach" you (since they've already been classed as hits at the moment of their launch). So you can quite commonly have a situation where you bug out of combat just as an enemy launches a torp, and get hit several seconds later at extreme ranges.
If you are at 5km from a Borg that launches a torpedo, it should take X sec to reach you.
Now, you hit Evasive Maneuvers and move away from the Borg at high speed. X sec still pass, and the torpedo still hits you at the point in time that was measured from your position at 5km, and you are hit with a torpedo even though you're now 15-20km away. But the actual torpedo FX are still traveling, because you outran them.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Would be nice if you actually could outrun non trico/heavy plasmas though. Give torpedos a finite range of 10k before they run out of steam and expire.
But I had thought that the "impact event" calcuation was a little more intelligent. A couple of times I've had a good view of players trying to avoid plasma torp spread with Evasive Maneuvers, jinking all over the place as if they were trying to "break lock" or something :P But the thing is, it looked as if they were delaying being hit. I guess it must have been wishful thinking.
Would it be possible to re-write the rules slightly for sub-space jump, changing all the outstanding "hits" into "misses". I had given up using SSJ to avoid torp spread because it didn't work. I suppose the argument against this change would be that if I was behind the target and triggered SSJ moving only 0.5km, should I really avoid getting hit? But usually you're going to be moving a greater distance than that.
On a similar thought, would it be possible to re-roll the hit/miss when Evasive Maneuvers or Ramming Speed were used? This would allow the increase defensive value from the increased speed be taken into account. I suppose the technical problem with that is the ship accelerates up to speed. So if the re-roll happened at the point of activation there is no increase to the defensive value yet.
I do realise that STO is not a true simulation and compromises will have been made to allow us to have 20 ship fights against countless NPC enemy ships and players potentially spread across the globe with different connection speeds. There are bound to be a few oddities.
You can. If a torpedo is targetable, then it's not just a dumb-FX. It can be forced to re-target, and can be outran, giving you extra time in which to shoot it down.
All such torpedoes also have finite lifespans, but they're usually around 60sec, which is a lot of running around.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Or having a few fighters get caught in a TS3 from the Rommie Hyper-Torp. It's fun to watch though.
I think he is talking about regular torps, not target-able ones. I can confirm from combat cloak vessels that (even normal) torps do have a limited life. Hitting cloak, evasive and an engine battery you can watch the torp trail you for some time, but when it finally hits you it misses (I've even seen this behavior from spreads and HYT). It seems like the longer they trail you the less damage/accurate they become, sometimes even fading away. When they do the animation for impact it will say either "0" dmg or flat out "miss". After my experience with cloaked vessels I started trying to and sometimes succeeding in out running in none cloaking vessels and found it holds true.
That being said, the one thing that doesn't seem to hold true and I haven't played in a while if this was patched or not, Borg torps. You can engage a Tac Cube/Gate, run like hell and be struck by something that is not rendered, after an extended period of time and instantly die or be at very low health. In the combat log it will say something about a torp and crit. This has been observed countless times, even in groups of fleet mates and people playing with max settings everything and still the stubborn torp will not render, will not trail off, will not retarget and will hit with a crit. As I mentioned, I've been on break from the game since the winter event do to live, but this has been a consistent experience when dealing with the big Borg ships.
LTS, here since...when did this game launch again?
I'm pretty sure I've had invisi-hits while moving at normal speeds in front of the gate from left to right. I'll try to pay attention next time and see if a torp "eventually" hits me. Should the GFx disappear after impact, or will they eventually catch up with me?
As a possibly related issue, could you confirm the code is using the correct location for the torpedo launcher? Perhaps the to-hit code is using the center of the gate while the GFx code is launching it from the top? Thus the torpedo would almost never hit the player the same time as the GFx.
Only if torpedoes fired from a B'rel had the effect of the borg invis torps
There's nothing to look into.
The "invisi-torp" is the result of the gfx engine failing to draw the torpedo properly which results in its actual animation lagging behind the damage it deals by a good margin. A cube could fire a torpedo and you could hit Evasive Maneuvers at the same time, get 15 Km away, and blow up from the damage and later see the torpedo's animation catch up.
Torpedo hit chance is calculated at the time they are fired and how long it takes them to reach you is calculated according to your distance from the target at the time. So if you were 7 Km away and it takes 4 seconds for the torpedo to reach you, if you hit Evasive Maneuvers and get out to 15 Km in those 4 seconds it will STILL hit you because only the ANIMATION of the torpedo is slower than your ship. It will catch up while you're waiting to respawn or it will blink out of existence from either being too far out to see or from reaching its animation duration lifetime (usually 60 seconds).
At the very least it should fire in spreads or with high-yield like the unimatrix ships do, which partly solves any visual problem.
But even so, the damage values in general need to change; anything that can potentially be invisible, shouldn't be able to deal upwards of 50k damage in a single (apparently non-critical) hit. I can understand a high level borg ship dealing lots of sustained damage that will wreck you in a short time if it remains focused on you alone rather than spread between multiple targets; this would at least encourage proper tanking and healing, but currently it's just a random chance to die any time you're in range.
So yeah, while it's great to have an explanation of what the bug really is, I'd rather the real problem of insane damage from attacks we might not see should actually be addressed.
At the very least, assuming Cryptic continues its policy of having NPC enemies be frustrating rather than challenging, high damage torpedo attacks should use targetable projectile graphics, even if they aren't actually targetable, so you at least know they're coming.
Game Balance - Ship Size and Wingmates
Some times i had 2 torpedo spreads of one unimatrixship in 10s in Hive. That one realy is a gamebreaker.
Seems like something with the cooldown is not right on the big tubes.
Please, please listen to this person. They make absolute sense.
I see my own torpedoes follow the intended target even tho I'm 15 km away from it, the torpedo is not and thus it will keep following. That is how it -should- work anyway.
A torpedoes roll on hit, miss and/or dodged, shouldn't even be done until the graphical object collides with player ship. That's the very basic of any warfare 3D game.
But I must agree with everyone else that the invisible bodies must be adressed. STF's are not fun any more the way things are with instant deaths no matter what kind of tanka you are flying. Healing has been rendered utterly useless since no one can keep up with the immense damage output from Elite Borg. Borg damage is to high, healing effects are to low, Borg cooldowns are to low, players healing cooldowns way to long etc etc etc.
If there wa ever anything unbalanced in STO that needs to be fixed, it's definately the Elite STF borg. I also like a good challenge, but when you have the best possible defense consoles and maximum healing and still get one-shotted by invisible irratic sub-space nukclear charges teleported directly to your bridge and the Borg press their "I Win" button of uberness...
Game has lost it's one and only purpose: To entertain players.
I can promise you all in the dev department, that stuff is not even remotely close to entertaining, wich is also why I seldom play any more. And of course, Cryptic don't get any of my money either. They aint earned it by adding new bugs instead of fixing the bad ones already existing. Not to mention that lately, a lot of old bugs previously fixed has returned as well. From bad to worse.