Science abilities that can "miss"? Along with gratuitously long cooldown, and their inability to actually kill anything?
No.
What science needs is:
1.) to not be affected by tactical captain abilities,
2.) to have meaningful magnitudes/effects on target,
3.) to have cooldowns short enough that a science ship can use their abilities freely instead of using them as occasional "gimmicks".
A fully charged gun can do well over a thousand damage per second, indefinitely, without any tactical buffs being applied; a fully charged level 3 tachyon beam can do half that, to shields only, for 10 seconds, with a 30 second cooldown. Hmmmmm.
I know what your saying Virus and I can see where your coming from. You want a chance to completely negate a skill if you invest in defence towards it.
I ask you though, can I get a chance that the escort pilots omega 1 will fail spectacularly and not grant them immunity to everything and a damage bonus? What about their FOMM and other debuffs, surely they should have a roll to hit too? While we're at it let's make the team abilities a roll to hit because they're targeting friends or foes too and it would be much harder to transport your engineering team to your teammate if they're zipping around like a tripping monkey.
This is the problem with making a skill roll to hit as well as what I have previously mentioned. You will have to do it to EVERY skill in the interest of fairness. Yes some affecting your own ship will probably be 100% hit but others will have to be calculated as a chance for fairness. Apart from this being a massive redesign (which we wouldn't get) it will cause the game to become desolate as no-one would find it fun.
It would be much easier to make the effects, damage and duration reduced by the counter skill level. I know it's not what you want but we have to make the recommendations we're more likely to get implemented using the systems already in the game. Which makes me think I need to go over some older posts and revise ideas.
at least we know for sure gecko is dead wrong that we don't know what we want....the majority of us want our skills put back to normal and tactical buffs to not affect them.
yet they or just he will not listen to us. wonder if there is anyway we can contact them since they are not visiting the forums anymore.
I have a fed sci toon, so let me share a little with you guys/girls.
Even though the addition of cannons to the Vesta was a nice touch, you don't fly sci ships for the raw weapon dps. You fly escorts for weapon dps. You fly sci ships for the sci powers, and quite frankly those sci powers are a little lame to the point of just causing nice fireworks in the back drop of a ship battle.
When I hit my EPtA and trigger my GW3 I want the tac/eng captain I used it on to wake up after the gravity well is gone, and feel like they've just been roofied and taken advantage of. What I don't want to see is someone side-stepping my GW3 using raw engine power, or evasive maneuvers and rendering it worthless.
I don't want to see a Aceton Assimilator console draining energy far better than my Energy Siphon, or Tykon Rift powers can. In fact I don't want to see any consoles preforming the role of a sci captain and doing it much better.
Once you look at it, if we couldn't cross heal or target subsystems we'd be obsolete.
You'd think it'd be an easy switch to move science damage over to the Isometric Charge's electrical damage, and then shift that entire damage type to exotic. Make it entirely reliant on Particle Generators and aux power...boom, easy to be balanced. Graviton Generators should also increase the pull of the gravity well, not a paltry amount of radius increase that does *nothing* to help the skill. Seriously, GravGens is a worthless skill, like half the science tree. I shouldn't have to use Graviton Pulse to maximize the efficacy of a GWIII fired at maximum aux power.
And is it just me, or should science powers get additional effects when you get their level III version? Nothing spectacular, but something to enhance the CC effects and make them worth having. Like, GWIII might have a chance to proc small TRs around it, TBRIII might shutdown a system, VMIII could cause a warp core breach that forms a small warp plasma cloud around the affected ship (ala a EWPI), and PSIII could have a chance to jam enemy sensors upon startup for a few seconds. If you play around with the secondary effects of science, I'm sure the damage increase required to make them effective would decrease. It can't be abused by tac powers or by escorts, since it's level III.
pushing this back to page 1 so people can read and discuss about this its important that not only science but engineering also get treated with more respect then a 2 dollar hooker....
Yes I do sort of agree however I would say that I'm finding a good balance between tanking and damage in my assault cruiser retrofit with a 2 piece assimilated set. When it procs the weapon power drain resistance you can get some pretty nice damage at <1km. It was about 2k per hit from each beam and plasma weapons may even do more with 2 piece Romulan set.
Now I do think this is one of the only ways I've seen to get good damage out of a cruiser so I would not say its balanced by any stretch of the imagination. I'm not saying cruisers are balanced or unbalanced but I do think its wrong that you must use certain sets otherwise you just plain suck at whatever mission you're doing.
Just throwing it out there since I'm clueless about the balance aspects of STO as things stand (my first whole week of level 50, y'know)... but I support EVERYONE getting to be cool.
After all... I want what I do to be special (re: firing cannons and beams and torpedoes at EVERYTHING and watching EVERYTHING get detonated as a direct result)... but I also want to see amazing Science special FX and go "WHOA, I wish I could do that!" or watch a cruiser do amazing, err... cruiser.. things. yes.
Point is, seeing everyone doing well and being happy-even borderline OP-makes me excited to play the game and talk to people.
Ah extra credit from the escapist, I'm well behind on that. Good point though. The recent tricobalt mine nerf is a great example, short of 1-2 very exploitable temporal ship powers you could counter them either by destroying them or just plain running away.
Some might have said yeah but I was held in a tractor beam and had no APO or polarise hull but wasn't that YOUR fault for not being prepared? There was only one instance where I thought they were unfair and that was deploying on the respawn point but surely that is Cryptics fault for not either having a safe respawn zone or 5s of invulnerability when spawning.
Anyway that's me getting side tracked. I like the idea of perfect imbalance but at the moment science does work in PvP but when enemies are resistant to all effects to a point where they laugh off a viral matrix (anyone remember what a computer virus did to the Borg in the last voyager episode?) and just stroll out of a gravity well even when they are over max skill points in the field.
Look at an escort and how they max damage, 9 points in skill (which everyone else will have at least 6 in) and max (4-5) tactical consoles. They also use DHC's which do more damage and have less power drain. They can also and do use rank 2-3 tactical skills which do about 25-50% more than their associated rank 1 skills which is only fair.
Damage resistance is easy to get to 30% but harder to get to 50% and very hard to max except for during bursts. While 6 points in science resist skills will more or less grant you immunity to it or at least give you a much higher than 50% resist in it.
Now translate that over to science. In general they have 2-3 tactical console slots which means off the bat they do about 150 dps less. Ok fair play. Most science ships (and cruisers) can NOT slot DHCs so must use the reduced damage DBB, beam arrays or single cannons. Now if you compare the wiki and damage numbers the difference isn't that big, it's only in the order of say 10-80 dps difference. All in all though you do seem to lose about 150-200 dps by dropping from DHCs to single cannons or DBBs which makes them 10-20% more powerful than other alternatives after skills and other things are taken into account. Science ships also have 1 less weapon slot fore than escorts and 2 less than cruisers.
So lets work out how much dps we lose by switching from 4DHC and 4 tactical consoles fore to 3DBB and 2 tactical consoles fore.
4DHCs total fore dps: 4828 (4 phaser consoles)
3DBBs total fore dps: 2845 (2 phaser consoles)
This is before we even get to higher ranking tactical abilities doing more damage and how a science ship and cruiser cannot use them.
So are our skills making up for this or would you be better off with an escort to just blast your way through?
Comments
No.
What science needs is:
1.) to not be affected by tactical captain abilities,
2.) to have meaningful magnitudes/effects on target,
3.) to have cooldowns short enough that a science ship can use their abilities freely instead of using them as occasional "gimmicks".
A fully charged gun can do well over a thousand damage per second, indefinitely, without any tactical buffs being applied; a fully charged level 3 tachyon beam can do half that, to shields only, for 10 seconds, with a 30 second cooldown. Hmmmmm.
I ask you though, can I get a chance that the escort pilots omega 1 will fail spectacularly and not grant them immunity to everything and a damage bonus? What about their FOMM and other debuffs, surely they should have a roll to hit too? While we're at it let's make the team abilities a roll to hit because they're targeting friends or foes too and it would be much harder to transport your engineering team to your teammate if they're zipping around like a tripping monkey.
This is the problem with making a skill roll to hit as well as what I have previously mentioned. You will have to do it to EVERY skill in the interest of fairness. Yes some affecting your own ship will probably be 100% hit but others will have to be calculated as a chance for fairness. Apart from this being a massive redesign (which we wouldn't get) it will cause the game to become desolate as no-one would find it fun.
It would be much easier to make the effects, damage and duration reduced by the counter skill level. I know it's not what you want but we have to make the recommendations we're more likely to get implemented using the systems already in the game. Which makes me think I need to go over some older posts and revise ideas.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
yet they or just he will not listen to us. wonder if there is anyway we can contact them since they are not visiting the forums anymore.
Even though the addition of cannons to the Vesta was a nice touch, you don't fly sci ships for the raw weapon dps. You fly escorts for weapon dps. You fly sci ships for the sci powers, and quite frankly those sci powers are a little lame to the point of just causing nice fireworks in the back drop of a ship battle.
When I hit my EPtA and trigger my GW3 I want the tac/eng captain I used it on to wake up after the gravity well is gone, and feel like they've just been roofied and taken advantage of. What I don't want to see is someone side-stepping my GW3 using raw engine power, or evasive maneuvers and rendering it worthless.
I don't want to see a Aceton Assimilator console draining energy far better than my Energy Siphon, or Tykon Rift powers can. In fact I don't want to see any consoles preforming the role of a sci captain and doing it much better.
Once you look at it, if we couldn't cross heal or target subsystems we'd be obsolete.
And is it just me, or should science powers get additional effects when you get their level III version? Nothing spectacular, but something to enhance the CC effects and make them worth having. Like, GWIII might have a chance to proc small TRs around it, TBRIII might shutdown a system, VMIII could cause a warp core breach that forms a small warp plasma cloud around the affected ship (ala a EWPI), and PSIII could have a chance to jam enemy sensors upon startup for a few seconds. If you play around with the secondary effects of science, I'm sure the damage increase required to make them effective would decrease. It can't be abused by tac powers or by escorts, since it's level III.
please one of you devs use the fair balance ideals of some other games dont make 2/3rds of your community nothing but support.
Now I do think this is one of the only ways I've seen to get good damage out of a cruiser so I would not say its balanced by any stretch of the imagination. I'm not saying cruisers are balanced or unbalanced but I do think its wrong that you must use certain sets otherwise you just plain suck at whatever mission you're doing.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
After all... I want what I do to be special (re: firing cannons and beams and torpedoes at EVERYTHING and watching EVERYTHING get detonated as a direct result)... but I also want to see amazing Science special FX and go "WHOA, I wish I could do that!" or watch a cruiser do amazing, err... cruiser.. things. yes.
Point is, seeing everyone doing well and being happy-even borderline OP-makes me excited to play the game and talk to people.
scis should deal damage with science stuff tacts with spike and engies with sustained dps
and thus you have this http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RbnlKb8kA70#t=322s
Some might have said yeah but I was held in a tractor beam and had no APO or polarise hull but wasn't that YOUR fault for not being prepared? There was only one instance where I thought they were unfair and that was deploying on the respawn point but surely that is Cryptics fault for not either having a safe respawn zone or 5s of invulnerability when spawning.
Anyway that's me getting side tracked. I like the idea of perfect imbalance but at the moment science does work in PvP but when enemies are resistant to all effects to a point where they laugh off a viral matrix (anyone remember what a computer virus did to the Borg in the last voyager episode?) and just stroll out of a gravity well even when they are over max skill points in the field.
Look at an escort and how they max damage, 9 points in skill (which everyone else will have at least 6 in) and max (4-5) tactical consoles. They also use DHC's which do more damage and have less power drain. They can also and do use rank 2-3 tactical skills which do about 25-50% more than their associated rank 1 skills which is only fair.
Damage resistance is easy to get to 30% but harder to get to 50% and very hard to max except for during bursts. While 6 points in science resist skills will more or less grant you immunity to it or at least give you a much higher than 50% resist in it.
Now translate that over to science. In general they have 2-3 tactical console slots which means off the bat they do about 150 dps less. Ok fair play. Most science ships (and cruisers) can NOT slot DHCs so must use the reduced damage DBB, beam arrays or single cannons. Now if you compare the wiki and damage numbers the difference isn't that big, it's only in the order of say 10-80 dps difference. All in all though you do seem to lose about 150-200 dps by dropping from DHCs to single cannons or DBBs which makes them 10-20% more powerful than other alternatives after skills and other things are taken into account. Science ships also have 1 less weapon slot fore than escorts and 2 less than cruisers.
So lets work out how much dps we lose by switching from 4DHC and 4 tactical consoles fore to 3DBB and 2 tactical consoles fore.
4DHCs total fore dps: 4828 (4 phaser consoles)
3DBBs total fore dps: 2845 (2 phaser consoles)
This is before we even get to higher ranking tactical abilities doing more damage and how a science ship and cruiser cannot use them.
So are our skills making up for this or would you be better off with an escort to just blast your way through?
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
for further posts