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A question of Size, balance
cmdrskyfaller
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
The size of a ship should be taken into account when it comes to the weapons it can load.
In the game a small escort (heck even a shuttle) can equip beams, cannons and torpedoes that a cruiser ten times the size can equip.
That got me thinking... if the coming 'warp core' slot in may update is to influence power levels on ships then would it not be an excellent time to address weapon size/capability?
Without needing to make a bunch of different new weapon to fit them in 'size' , the devs could simply build in modifiers to the existing weapons. Those modifiers would be based on hull size.
There would be 7 hull size/type modifiers. The modifiers would include: power drain and ROF.
Below is a list of the hull types and the 'weapon that matches their size for no bonuses or penalties':
Shuttle - beam-S, turrets, microtorpedoes
Fighter - single cannons
Frigate - transphasic and chroniton torpedoes, beam array
Escort - dual cannons (not heavy), photon and quantum torpedoes.
Cruiser - tricobalt and plasma torpedoes, dual beam array.
Battlecruiser - dual heavy cannons
Carrier/Dreadnought - n/a
The modifiers would be placed to make the weapons behave more like weapons that would be limited to be mounted on hull types.
Rule of thumb is the heavier the weapon (aka dual heavy cannons) the higher the penalties when equipped in smaller hulls.. like slower ROF, lower damage and higher power drain.... Large hulls receive bonuses to equipping lighter weapons (aka single cannons) in terms of ROF and power drain for example.
The result of such a system would mean that escorts would probably not be able to equip four dual heavy cannons fore but rather just one along with a mix of lighter cannons (dual cannons are 'escort' size..no penalty or bonuses) and beam arrays.
Cruisers get bonuses to all weapons escort and below and weapons 'its size' include the heavier torpedoes and dual beam array.
Battlecruisers receive no penalty or bonus from dual heavy cannon since its 'their size' and receives bonuses for all previous weapon types.
Carriers and dreadnoughts receive bonuses on all the weapon types. Note 'carriers' means 2-hangar carriers.
What would this mean in the game? Simply put, if a VoQuv decides it wants to equip beam array-S (yes it should be allowed) to have 360 beam coverage then it can...and it would receive a huge bonus to the beam-S rate of fire and the power drain would be practically negligible. It would not have a damage bonus but those beam-S would be firing extremely fast.
oth, an escort equipping 4 dual heavy cannons receives a not so pleasant penalty..those weapons would fire half as fast and eat up more power than they do now.
These changes would limit the min/maxing capability we see now with the absurdly overpowered damage bonuses from skill points and boff abilities... it would re-introduce into the game the concept of power system management and using the abilities that already exist in the game to compensate for the penalties of equipping heavier weapons.
I believe this would bring a tremendous balance to the game and would make hull and ship type roles functional once more.
For example, in the above mentioned escort equipping four dual heavy cannons... the player can still equip them...its just that he will need to use other abilities found in the game to have their ship be able to make them work.
compensate for rate of fire: CRF does it.
Compensate for power drain: emg to weapons/power system management/siphon/auxtobattery...or use a battery or special console.
Moving away from 'stack dps abilities on top of the heaviest weapon in the game = win button' mentality and more into a balanced tactical combat system where all ships have their pros and cons.
In the game a small escort (heck even a shuttle) can equip beams, cannons and torpedoes that a cruiser ten times the size can equip.
That got me thinking... if the coming 'warp core' slot in may update is to influence power levels on ships then would it not be an excellent time to address weapon size/capability?
Without needing to make a bunch of different new weapon to fit them in 'size' , the devs could simply build in modifiers to the existing weapons. Those modifiers would be based on hull size.
There would be 7 hull size/type modifiers. The modifiers would include: power drain and ROF.
Below is a list of the hull types and the 'weapon that matches their size for no bonuses or penalties':
Shuttle - beam-S, turrets, microtorpedoes
Fighter - single cannons
Frigate - transphasic and chroniton torpedoes, beam array
Escort - dual cannons (not heavy), photon and quantum torpedoes.
Cruiser - tricobalt and plasma torpedoes, dual beam array.
Battlecruiser - dual heavy cannons
Carrier/Dreadnought - n/a
The modifiers would be placed to make the weapons behave more like weapons that would be limited to be mounted on hull types.
Rule of thumb is the heavier the weapon (aka dual heavy cannons) the higher the penalties when equipped in smaller hulls.. like slower ROF, lower damage and higher power drain.... Large hulls receive bonuses to equipping lighter weapons (aka single cannons) in terms of ROF and power drain for example.
The result of such a system would mean that escorts would probably not be able to equip four dual heavy cannons fore but rather just one along with a mix of lighter cannons (dual cannons are 'escort' size..no penalty or bonuses) and beam arrays.
Cruisers get bonuses to all weapons escort and below and weapons 'its size' include the heavier torpedoes and dual beam array.
Battlecruisers receive no penalty or bonus from dual heavy cannon since its 'their size' and receives bonuses for all previous weapon types.
Carriers and dreadnoughts receive bonuses on all the weapon types. Note 'carriers' means 2-hangar carriers.
What would this mean in the game? Simply put, if a VoQuv decides it wants to equip beam array-S (yes it should be allowed) to have 360 beam coverage then it can...and it would receive a huge bonus to the beam-S rate of fire and the power drain would be practically negligible. It would not have a damage bonus but those beam-S would be firing extremely fast.
oth, an escort equipping 4 dual heavy cannons receives a not so pleasant penalty..those weapons would fire half as fast and eat up more power than they do now.
These changes would limit the min/maxing capability we see now with the absurdly overpowered damage bonuses from skill points and boff abilities... it would re-introduce into the game the concept of power system management and using the abilities that already exist in the game to compensate for the penalties of equipping heavier weapons.
I believe this would bring a tremendous balance to the game and would make hull and ship type roles functional once more.
For example, in the above mentioned escort equipping four dual heavy cannons... the player can still equip them...its just that he will need to use other abilities found in the game to have their ship be able to make them work.
compensate for rate of fire: CRF does it.
Compensate for power drain: emg to weapons/power system management/siphon/auxtobattery...or use a battery or special console.
Moving away from 'stack dps abilities on top of the heaviest weapon in the game = win button' mentality and more into a balanced tactical combat system where all ships have their pros and cons.
![http://media.tumblr.com/160cacdb395f8340dac90864182ebe16/tumblr_inline_mx9yxhItkb1qg9pkt.jpg[/SIGPIC]](http://media.tumblr.com/160cacdb395f8340dac90864182ebe16/tumblr_inline_mx9yxhItkb1qg9pkt.jpg[/SIGPIC]){kind=link}
Post edited by cmdrskyfaller on
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and you're probably right about balance, except that it would turn to 'cruisers online' rather than 'escorts online' 'n we'd have to begin this whole evolution into 'escorts online' all over again.
kudo's on the title though, I lol'd
I don't think it would turn into cruisers online. Even though trek is mostly cruisers (ergo, its canon) the escort retains very high damage potential along with its speed and turn rate bonuses.
I admit the most hit by this would be escorts since they are essentially the ship that everyone has been using to min/max.
Keep in mind that I'm suggesting this come along with the new warp core system...which will very probably be the equipment that determines a ship's power levels and it will very likely also have pros and cons depending on hull type it is loaded upon.
(ok cryptic may just make warp core be all bonuses and we might see escorts with space station type warp cores poppin unimatrix ships with one shot... I wouldnt put it past them to do it.... but i can only hope they dont)
I also feel that any ship should be able to target different parts of a ship, not just science ships. You shouldn't have to set an ability to target an enemy ships engines, it makes no sense. I'd love to have a more tactically focused space combat, like the days of Starfleet Command & Bridge Commander.
For example:
The Steamrunner, Akira, and Prometheus classes are all medium to heavy cruisers (by size and weight), yet they're tagged as Escorts.
Please review my campaign and I'll return the favor.
The bonus/penalty would go into the weapons not the hulls though. Much easier to manage.
...and oh lame! mods edited my threat title :P
They are escorts in this game because of their speed/bonuses/weapon layout so there is no ship outside 'a category'.
Elim Garak
But it's not and I think Geko's pretty much addressed this issue time and time again, with each new ship released to the C-Store. From the days of defending the Excelsior's layout to the days when the Nebula was released alllll the way up to the Kumari.
And then there's lockbox ships like the Galor and D'Kora.
The game just doesn't follow that idea, and the developers have been pretty clear about it not following that.
The only thing they seem to use size for is turning, inertia, and crew complement (even though the crew mechanic is not very good in terms of in-game application).
Along with exploration revamp, new hair tech, and the Children of Khan, it's something DStahl said is in the works.
I did not know that.
Anyways... Random thought: Why can't cruisers/sci ships/carriers have weapons that are specific to them? Like for example (And this is just an example): Cruisers can have a Heavy beam array of sorts. It would do more damage, but fires slower or can't use BFAW or something like that. And it could only be put on a cruiser/sci ship/carrier.
Just a random thought.
Elim Garak
To introduce size it would be easier to just give ships a size classifier (as there are large escorts and small cruisers so the classifications you've listed don't really make much distinction). This would scale their damage with all weapons (so they can still pick what they want), but to compensate smaller ships would have higher defence (harder to hit), so a larger ship would be best at shooting other large ships, but have a hard time pinning down smaller ones (better to leave that to friendly escorts of similar size range to do). A smaller ship against bigger one would hit more, but innate damage penalties wouldn't make them much of a threat on their own, though over time it would work out roughly even (1v1 the two would have a hard time destroying each other).
Since this would be a change to damage outputs, it would actually benefit science ships since their abilities wouldn't really care what size a ship is, giving them a bit of a boost in that regard.
One of the main problems with STO is that all ships are balanced as if they were the same size; so you have silly situations where a Tactical Escort Retrofit is ripping an Odyssey to shreds, which shouldn't happen at all. I discussed in a thread of mine a way to scale ships by size without weakening players, by letting you file a group of small ships, or a single capital ship, or some mixture of the two.
Regarding weapons limited by ship; it would be nice to see capital ship specification weapons. Specifically, a broadside only weapon (90 degree arc to either side) or a quad beam bank (45 degree arc), these be more powerful than similar weapons to account for the greater difficult in deploying them. So a quad beam bank would actually be stronger than dual cannons/dual heavy cannons, since cruisers will have a much harder time bringing such a weapon to bear. Likewise broadside banks would be better than standard arrays (probably just under dual beam banks) because they far only into the overlap areas, so if you take too many then you're screwed when an enemy is in front or behind. Either that or they'd have the same kinds of basic DPS, but with innate critical chance and critical severity. This wouldn't be unfair to escorts as capital ships would only be able to use them effectively against other slow moving ships (or things that don't move at all), and escorts still have the advantage on tactical abilities and often tactical consoles as well.
Game Balance - Ship Size and Wingmates
Only paralytically correct.
With dual-beam arrays forward, and beam arrays aft there is a 20 degree dead zone your firing arcs. Did you know if a target is large enough that setup can still hit it with both for and aft weapons?
Ponder that and "balance" for a little while.
I wasn't arguing the point, I was adding to it. :P
As for "what idiot is going to sit there and let you him them"? Haven't been flying carriers I take it?
I haven't bothered to really read into the OP's post. From what I gathered, it criticizes the fact that escorts have superior armament to cruisers and that this should not be. I don't agree with such a point of view, but would like to point out that logically speaking, the difference in sizes should come with very apparent advantages and drawbacks. Escorts simply shouldn't have the capacity to take damage as they do now. They should also be more subject to some disadvantages concurrent to their size, such as having their mobility more affected by tractor beams or other status effects, or suffering far more from crew casualties than otherwise. Simply put, having less mass should affect the performance of escorts in significant ways when compared to cruisers, which is the result of a compromise in order to obtain desired characteristics.
It takes throttle control, RCS modules, A2B use, ApO cycling and low CDs on EVM and no small measure of skill in flying under STOs rules of flight.
Its not near as simple as you make. No more simple in fact than timing a good alpha burst with CRF, TF, ApA or slapping up defenses with EPTS, TSS, ST or HE.
There are no magical fairy boots but there are some smart builds that are adapted to the games mechanics and good pilots.
There are also plenty of bad ones just like there are plenty of bad cruiser pilots.
R.I.P
Qins dont have gamebreaking turnrates at all. They have the pivot points of cruisers and only turn well when uses throttle and turn buffing abilities.
Vorchas dont have gamebreaking turn rates at all, they have a lower turn rate then the Qins.
It takes work to keep DHCs equipped on iether of these vessels on target.
The more I read your posts saying agility is broken the more I disagree with them.
R.I.P
The Akira also comes in a Tier 5 variant besides the Tier 3. The T5 is what you would fight in PvP. It has a 15 turnrate and is classified as a Heavy Escort.
Of course its going to be more nimble than a Heavy Cruiser with a turn rate below 10.
The Qin is a Raptor with a 15 turn rate and is suppossed to turn faster than a cruiser being smaller than a cruiser. Its got good hull becuase its Klingon and subpar shielding becuase its klingon. Its no where near the mass and size of a the cruiser its fighting.
Your whole complaint that certain Escorts are too nimble for thier size and mass is incorrect.
R.I.P
That like saying a Large sports car should never out handle a smaller economy car.
It doesnt make sense and as others have pointed out, and you have even stated yourself, Cruiser will turn faster and the escorts will not under your idea of balance.
I dont find it balanced at all and it makes sense the ship with a higher stat performs better in that stats purpose over a ship that has a lessor value in that same stat.
R.I.P
There's a lot of flaws in this game. Everything from the bugs, to the story content, to the grind setup, to the currencies, to the Crystaline Entity, to Fleet Actions on the KDF side.
There's sooooo many flaws in this game.
And many of them are unlikely to be fixed by Cryptic anytime soon due to flaws in their QA process.
Now, takign a moment to look at their track record. Taking another moment to look at who's in charge of ship layouts, and ship balance ...
Do any of you really trust the major changes that keep getting suggested in these types of threads will ...
1- Be possible? This dev team can't put out regular mission content, and is responsible for the state of the game as is.
2- Will get implemented? This dev team has some folks on record sayign things like WAD.
3- Could get implemented in a time frame within say the next three years?
At some point you just have to take what you can get. And really, sit down and ask yourself, do you truly think the people working on this game have the time, resources or capability to make your ideas a reality?
They haven't even fixed the Diplomacy event on DS9.
Have fun selling everyone on the notion that magically their ships aren't allowed to maneuver like they did yesterday because you want to introduce a fundamentally game-changing mechanic simply because you don't like the way the ships you like handle.
Its one of two stats that effect a vessel mobility and agility. Its the base on which players build to determine how thier ship can move.
Its buffed by many abilities, skills and equipment choices. Thats how those zippy vessels get zippy. Not the base turn rate but what is built upon it and applied to it to improve it.
You would have us believe that it is inapropiate or wrong for a vessel thats agile to begin with, built and designed by the player to accent that agility is wrong.
Your wrong.
Cruisers needs a turn rate buff. Escorts do not need a turn rate nerf.
R.I.P
A ship functioning in-game as it was designed to is now using a crutch?
You do realize that your solution to said "arbitrary decision" (which in fact all forms of game balance are) is to substitute a different arbitrary decision; this time to use a piece of data that, in most cases, doesn't even exist as the basis for your vision of ship balance?
Congratulations on completely ignoring defensive capability and healing potential in your omniscient analysis of game balance.
You and Gecko been drinking the same Kool-Aid?
You can't change the game's core classification system of ships since its built into every weapon, unique item, captain type and other equipment.
Weight of a ship is not indicative of its class either. A ship through its design can be really heavy and still be fast or turn very well.
For simplicity leave the current ship classification as it is. its not based on weight but on boff station layout and weapon slot layout. Aka cmdr tactical slot ships = escorts.
It balances damage output with the ship's flight performance and boff station buff capability. An escort takes a penalty for equipping the biggest, heaviest weapons in the game if they choose to BUT they do have a means of counter-acting that penalty..not completely but there are ways. Cruisers and larger ships receive the benefit of their size and larger power systems... the 'lighter' weapons get boosts while they only have one weapon that is bigger than them they will take a penalty to (DHCs).
The point is to make ships have their role as close to canon as possible. The Defiant and Jemhadar bug ships never one-shotted cruisers...they one-shotted each other. To take out a galaxy class three or four bug ships hit it at once for some time and ended up ramming it to take it out. The defiant in the Sacrifice of Angels episode was not one-shotting galor class cruisers or jemhadar carriers..nor breen cruisers...it was flying around popping enemy escort size ships. In fact the one ship the defiant took out that was cruiser sized was one breen ship they were engaging...and it took them several passes and friendly firepower support from a couple of galaxy class ships to do it.
The balance these changes would bring are quite simply a step towards bringing ships more into focus with their role and ship type. An escort is fast and nimble.. and very small. To give it 100% performance with the heaviest weapon in the game is simply unbalancing. It is why today escorts have such a ridiculous damage output. Dual Cannons oth do just fine ..they still put out a high amount of damage...higher than a cruiser with beams... but it should not be able to put out more damage than a battlecruiser/dread with a facefull of DHC's.
Smaller ships get shafted when it comes to using heavier weapons yes. Larger ships get bonuses from lighter weapons and have no-penalty access to heavier weapons. Balance? Speed, turn rate, boff station damage stacking capability. The escort will remain the premier damage dealer its just that cruisers and heavier ships now present a clear danger to the escort.
I read that. problem with it is too many changes to the core code (ship classification, AI issues, etc).
Thats the idea except without adding weapons for specific ship sizes, we merely use the existing ones and give them ship-size based pros and cons.
His ideas on Escorts are way off and do not even take into consideration the skills, equipment choices and build designs of BOff abilities that accent Escort mobility.
He just harps on the subject without evidence.
All Escorts and Escort hybrids have a higher turn rate than cruisers with an enertia rating to match to show that that these vessels are more nimble than Cruisers as part of thier design.
He player can further enhance this aspect with high skills that effect turn rate, BOffs powers like EvM (with a DOff to lower its CD), cycling ApO to increase turn and speed, A2B to increase Engine power and ApO cool down, A2D for its movement buff or even RCS consoles to increase the vessels turn rate score.
Thier are no magic boots, just already existing game mechanics that smarter players have learned how to use.
The only change I can see that is needed that will effwct Escorts mobility is removing the Movement protection buff from ApO. Then Escorts would suffer the downside again of being Tractored, covered in Warp plasma and other movement debuffs that where once thier weakness.
R.I.P
You are blind to the actual issue.
R.I.P
Nice of you not to answer the question that was asked. How is a ship functioning in-game the exact way it was designed to using a crutch?
You're predicating your entire argument on somehow applying mass, tonnage and dimensions to STO ships. Please provide for me those exact specifications on every in-game ship. You can't, because for a majority of STOs ships that data doesn't exist.
I'm sorry, whose the one that jumped straight to personal insults instead of actually trying to defend their position with facts and information?
I see things like energy efficiency, cycle time, dpv, BOFF skills and drop off aren't concepts you've factored in.
See above. I've provided counterpoints for your positions, and you respond with nothing but personal insults. Either back up your claims and assertions with information, or stop spewing your venom at people who disagree with you.
For the second time now, you've not answered the question:
How is a ship that is functioning in-game as it was designed somehow using a crutch?
Either stop dancing around a question that you know is going to make you look like foolish, or simply admit that your premise was inherently flawed.
I suppose you have source documentation to back up that those aren't 100% made up figures? I see zero citations on any of those links.
I also see you've left out the Centaur, Shi'Kar, Oberth, NX, Nova, Aurora, Quasar, Saber, Rapier, Ushuan, Gladius, Excalibur, Vesper, Exeter, Cheyenne, Dakota, Stargazer, Akira, Oslo, Zephyr, Thunderchild, Olympic, Hope, Horizon, Ambassador, Celestial, Envoy, Venture, Vigilant, Gallant, Sau Paulo, Intrepid, Cochrane, Discover, Bellerophon, Sovereign, Majestic, Noble, Imperial, Regent, Cerberus, Phoenix, Hephaestus, Destiny, Oracle, Trident, Nimbus, Polaris, Sol, Comet, Dervish, Gryphon, Hermes, Maelstrom, Avenger, Vanguard, Emissary, Nomad, Odyssey, Gal-X, Armitage, Chimera, Steamrunner, Vesta, Atrox, Kumari, Charal, and Kyzon classes.
How about the entire Klingon fleet? Do you have dimensions and masses for every one of them?
I'll save you the trouble, you don't. Because the vast majority of the above named classes do not exist outside of STO, and many of those that do have either no official data, or contradictory data as to their mass and dimensions. How exactly do you plan on implementing a system linchpinned by size and tonnage when you can't provide accurate size and tonnage information?
No, you've done nothing but incoherently rage at people who have expressed serious concerns at a radical proposal that would do far more harm to the "balance" that you claim to champion.
R.I.P
And yet you still haven't answered the question, despite repeating the assertion later in the same post. You don't get it both ways.
Translation: I don't have the facts requested, and will therefore refuse to talk about my lack of facts.
Secondly, you need a hell of a lot more than a relative size to a known object to accurately calculate things like mass. Or had you not realized that different objects are made from different things and in different internal configurations?
And we're back to personal attacks. If you don't have the information you're basing your entire position on, just admit it instead of jumping straight at people with insults. Admitting a flawed argument is flawed is a lot more acceptable than continuing to TRIBBLE and moan when people call you out on the gaping holes in your proposal.
I'll also leave you with this little nugget as an example of how relative size calculations based on a single observation are hilariously vague.
So you're now arguing that you don't need mass and dimensional data to balance ships based on mass and dimensional data? Gotta love that logic.
You were slinging mud at people who disagreed with you long before I entered the conversation. Don't try to pin your vitriol on those who have done little more than identify the massive logical flaws in your argument.
Because it was designed to. The Prometheus is a bleeding edge warship that far outsrips the two classes you're comparing it to.
Coherent enough for you?
So now DHCs are unbalanced by their narrow firing arcs? Werent you making the argument a few posts ago that the exact opposite was true?
I don't think so. Despite being at times misguided, Soph at least sticks to a single premise most of the time. This guy is just all over the place.
Ok back to OP idea, what if the "warp core module" will be based on ship class?
Cruiser core - bonus power, + various bonuses based on subtype kinda like the differing shields, deflectors,etc... ex( you could select "x" type of cruiser core that would boost your base turn,engineering stats, and negates "x" amount of weapon energy drain)
but only cores for your ship class could be outfitted.
So we could have Science cores, Escort cores, Cruiser cores each with several subtypes the player could then select the best fit for their current needs. This would seem easier since it would essentially grant a special console bonus to the base ship stats, and we know the first go round of whatever it ends up being will be bugged
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