- An escort can easily stay alive on its own. It has to keep moving at max speed though. Cycling two tactical teams, two emergency power to shields and a TSS is more than enough not to die. An escort has to dogde damage. People playing escorts as if they were sieges ships flying at 0 speed are doing a mistake and it's not because the game has been badly designed.
- Cruisers can of course send extra heals if needed.
Of course there are some rare circumstances where you get hit by a mega torp by a gateway but again most of the times it's tankable or you can dodge it.
I fly at max speed and use 2 tactical teams on my escort but their are times that no matter what I do I still die. I don't get 1 shot much but it does happen once in a wile and I hate it because only special weapons should be able to 1 shot someone.
I fly at max speed and use 2 tactical teams on my escort but their are times that no matter what I do I still die. I don't get 1 shot much but it does happen once in a wile and I hate it because only special weapons should be able to 1 shot someone.
Yes it happens to me too but it's pretty rare, and when it happens it's because i'm trying to tank for too long. Escorts are supposed to kill stuff quickly, but when you can't achieve that (because your team isn't great) well, you're going to die anyway. But the team factor matters. A lot.
On the L2P front, there are DEFINITELY things I need to learn-I simply contend that preparing CD's for spontaneous invisible damage isn't one of them. Even you guys who are telling me to L2P are saying there's spontaneous, invisible damage. Oh sure, it MIGHT have a buff indicator on the ship, but unless I'm constantly eating damage, I have no reason to believe I'm being targeted. I'm asking to be met halfway here (and if it didn't come across like that I apologize)-sure, there's things I could do. To quote my original post, "I might survive if I popped a defensive CD... maybe." I'd like the game to INDICATE that hey, maybe that defensive button? Maybe NOW would be a good time to press that.
A 20x20 icon tacked under my targeting reticle is not an acceptable warning mechanism. "Oh god that's a lot of torpedos" would be... except they are INVISBLE. Ergo Fake Difficulty. The fact that they also apparently spike 150k+ damage per torp is ALSO high on the Fake Difficulty check list. The two things with the torpedoes specifically-the random super crazy spike damage AND being invisible are things that are either buggy, or, in their best light, seriously questionable design decisions.
In the normal game, Emergency Power to Shields and Science Team are pretty much my go to buttons. I probably need to rethink that some. I probably need to switch up my engineering consoles. I apparently need to look at Tactical Team again because I thought it was purely an anti-boarding party button, but it seems like there's more to it than that.
Whether I agree with you specifically or not though, I'd like to thank you for making this a discussion. It's been very insightful.
Frankly, tac team is pretty much the end all be all of tanking, shield facings are too thin and manual redistribution too slow to withstand high spike damage or the constant uber cone of doom that is the front end of a cannon escort. But anyway, I would appreciate a massive hud warning like a giant red exclamation point showing up on screen telling me to hit my oh **** buttons when the game knows something big is about to hit, maybe about 5 seconds heads up so that if it's some kind of invisi-high yield with it's ridiculous slow speed, my uptime on my buffs won't have worn off by the time it actually gets to me.
On the L2P front, there are DEFINITELY things I need to learn-I simply contend that preparing CD's for spontaneous invisible damage isn't one of them. Even you guys who are telling me to L2P are saying there's spontaneous, invisible damage. Oh sure, it MIGHT have a buff indicator on the ship, but unless I'm constantly eating damage, I have no reason to believe I'm being targeted. I'm asking to be met halfway here (and if it didn't come across like that I apologize)-sure, there's things I could do. To quote my original post, "I might survive if I popped a defensive CD... maybe." I'd like the game to INDICATE that hey, maybe that defensive button? Maybe NOW would be a good time to press that
Tactical team will help you balancing your shields automatically very quickly. It's like having 4 times more shield.
For defensive abilities... Don't see it like powers. See it like an umbrella. When it's raining you just use it and don't try to look at drops to see if a bigger drop will fall. Here it's the same situation, if you cycle your emergency power to sheilds, TSS and TT you're safe and don't have to worry about drops coming from everywhere. Sometimes there is a huge drop which will rip apart your umbrella but it's an exception (and only gateways can do that).
Shared cooldowns are short and you have at most 5 seconds once in a while where you're not protected by your abilities, so use them.
As a reminder for everyone thinking there are too many "one shot" abilities in this game, you may be doing it wrong. There are only 3 elements you need to consider in elite stfs:
1 - where is the npc, is it in your firing arc, and am I in a one shot zone?
2 - how's my shields/hull doing?
3 - what abilities is the NPC getting ready to use? These are the small icons under the picture of it at the top of the screen. The abilities the NPC is going to use are in green squares. See a torpedo high yeld? get ready for it. See a torpedo spread? Well you better brace for impact, and so on.
1 isn't really important and don't need to be checked often (npcs are slow), and most people don't even know about 3, but it makes a huge difference between those who get surprised by a one shot and those who get ready for a massive amount of damage.
Your ship may be beautiful and you may enjoy looking at it in STFs but then you'll miss critical information.
In the normal game, Emergency Power to Shields and Science Team are pretty much my go to buttons. I probably need to rethink that some. I probably need to switch up my engineering consoles. I apparently need to look at Tactical Team again because I thought it was purely an anti-boarding party button, but it seems like there's more to it than that.
Yes, you're kind of doing that wrong.
Emergency Power to Shields is not for healing. The major point of EPtS is the shield resistance it gives you, which is why almost everybody tries to have two copies of it. With a 30s duration you can have 100% uptime, which will really help keep your shields up.
As pointed out in the previous post, Tac Team essentially quadruples that facing's strength as it'll automatically and near-instantaneously transfer shields from the other facings into the one taking damage.
Sci Team is a shield restore, and generally is inferior to Transfer Shield Strength because Tac Team shares a cooldown. TSS will give shield resistance as well, and since you tend to pop the shield regen while you're under fire, it'll reduce the amount of damage your shields are taking while also helping recover shield strength.
This is how we survive large kinetic damage spikes - shields make 75% of kinetic damage disappear, so if you keep your shields up and active you're only suffering the bleed-through on your hull.
I suppose it would be nice if we got bigger indicators of incoming attacks, Champs has a big displayed charge-up mechanic so you know when you hold block. On the other hand, there's honestly not a lot I can do against the giant spikes. Either I'm doing fine (and again, I haven't taken invisible OHKOs since fighters&CSV) or I just get pounded in a second by multiple 50k volleys that no abilities will help. I mean, two 50k volleys in the same second blows through my 1 Neutronium Alloy, EPtS2 and Aux2SIF2. I did see it coming and probably should have popped BFI, but I can't survive 50k either so it shouldn't have made a difference.
Other than that one time though, I haven't had OHKOs on me for a long time. The only other one that comes to mind is a Borg Negh'var tossing an isometric charge on me. It bounced off (and disintegrated) my fighters before hitting me for something like 6 digits of damage.
What this means, is that say you are 7km away from the gate and it launches a standard torp. You start moving away from the gate. Because the GFX travels at a fixed speed, you get "hit" once the torpedo has travelled 7km. And if you are at the same distance, your hull registers a "hit" and you see the torpedo. If you came closer, the torp visually could hit you, and then a few seconds later your hull registers the hit. If you went further away, the torp visually would never hit you, but you still register the hit. In both cases, you got "invisitorped" since the GFx was decoupled from the damage. This would also explain hits at 13+km away.
The damage amount does get mitigated by your buffs up when the timer expires.
My only solution is to keep an eye for when I have gate aggro, and press BFI after several seconds when I would expect a hit from a torpedo. Sometimes I get lucky, sometimes not.
An interesting experiment to try would be to have a cloaked fleetmate video the gate shooting at you, and see if torpedos disappear where expected.
Edited to add:
This also explains why high perf systems seem to experience this as well - it isn't due to gfx capability.
Also, would explain why running in front of the gate to get to the second transformer makes this more obvious. There's less weapon spam around, and you are rapidly changing your distance to/from the gate.
Actually, I'm using Emergency to Shields 'correctly' now with Science Team as a way to just ensure the shields stay up. BUT I'm not cycling it as a matter of always having a defense up because... most likely, still burned for how WoW put a stop to us playing DK's like that. See also you built the class like that, what do you mean you don't us to play it that way?
Using Emergency to Shields as a shield heal is... I PREFER to take the first couple hits on blank shields so I'm not 'wasting' the heal component, and I think anyone with 1/10th of a brain can see why, but clearly that's not the expectation here. Which is counter-intuitive, which is the textbook definition of why something is 'bad design.' But moving on...
If then, the whole point is to CONSTANTLY be bouncing double layered defensive CD's... There's some flavors of CO's multi layered defense mechanics going on there, which is probably why the insane spike damage exists in STO. And actually, this kinda' explains what sounded like a ridiculous three tactical stations on the Andorian Escorts.
Still, something like the Red Alert alarm klaxon going off, maybe accompanied with a Computer voice over saying ">chirps< Warning: High energy build up detected." It's very Star Trek, it's much cleaner, and again... it gives people an idea that hey! Now MIGHT be a good time to Brace for Impact! Besides the 'game mechanic' side of it, that would ALSO be cool. There's literally no reason to not do that. ...ideally you'd be able to turn it off once you 'get it' too. Could be annoying on the umpteenth run. *mentions that in case devs be lurking*
I find it frustrating to survive almost all the way through an elite STF only to have someone spill their raktajino on a console and trigger the self destruct.
One recent example I can think of, I was playing through Infected on elite difficulty, we were facing the Tactical Cube at the end and so far I had not been destroyed once in the entire mission. I am in an Odyssey tactical cruiser steadily chewing away at the cube, I brush off almost all of its attacks without losing all the shields. All of a sudden, my ship decides it has had enough and blows up......
There was no visual indication of anything hitting the ship like a shield or hull impact like you normally see when you take damage. TT and EPTS were still active at the time and the cube was only taking pot shots at me with one of its cannons which were not even making the shields twitch. Next thing I see is the ship with 100% in both shield and hull explode with a 6 figure number floating up the screen.
If it means anything, we had destroyed the conduit and all the remaining probes and spheres before we took on the tactical cube so that rules out anything sneaking one up the old exhaust port.
I was running rings around the cube at about 8km so I would have seen anything the cube tried to throw at me such as high yield torpedos etc.
Actually, I'm using Emergency to Shields 'correctly' now with Science Team as a way to just ensure the shields stay up. BUT I'm not cycling it as a matter of always having a defense up because... most likely, still burned for how WoW put a stop to us playing DK's like that. See also you built the class like that, what do you mean you don't us to play it that way?
Using Emergency to Shields as a shield heal is... I PREFER to take the first couple hits on blank shields so I'm not 'wasting' the heal component, and I think anyone with 1/10th of a brain can see why, but clearly that's not the expectation here. Which is counter-intuitive, which is the textbook definition of why something is 'bad design.' But moving on...
If then, the whole point is to CONSTANTLY be bouncing double layered defensive CD's... There's some flavors of CO's multi layered defense mechanics going on there, which is probably why the insane spike damage exists in STO. And actually, this kinda' explains what sounded like a ridiculous three tactical stations on the Andorian Escorts.
Still, something like the Red Alert alarm klaxon going off, maybe accompanied with a Computer voice over saying ">chirps< Warning: High energy build up detected." It's very Star Trek, it's much cleaner, and again... it gives people an idea that hey! Now MIGHT be a good time to Brace for Impact! Besides the 'game mechanic' side of it, that would ALSO be cool. There's literally no reason to not do that. ...ideally you'd be able to turn it off once you 'get it' too. Could be annoying on the umpteenth run. *mentions that in case devs be lurking*
The design isn't completely stupid although it makes playing at top level really complex. The name is terrible though, emergency power to x sounds like it's a healing power or an emergency button. "Additional power to x" would be a lot clearer and would allow people to understand how they should use it.
You're right with the layered defense mechanic, it makes the game unnecessarily complex with a lot of stuff to click, but once you get it you can really play a so called elite content like normal content. It leads to a situation where skilled players are invincible and doing stfs like a walk in the park and rookies get chained killed by "elite" NPCs. Just because there's an insane number of powers you can use at the same time. At least cryptic seems to learn from that mistake and didn't do that in their last game (neverwinter).
And since it's not going to stop, with the new ships and consoles, you better get ready to that.
Alright, so took everyone's advice, started running EPTS+TT with as much up time as I could manage. And... other than a moment where I decided to do my best Rambo (with predictable results), I have to admit, it worked very well. Only got nuked twice tonight, and both were my fault (wasn't paying enough attention the first time, cocky the second as described above).
...so...that said, I've got honestly mixed feelings about it. While to some extent, the Escorts are built to be battleships... it makes sense that they can take a beating. But it's a bit much.
I dunno. So much 'not what I expected' I guess? Still sorting out what I think about it. I definitely felt overpowered... and I managed to keep the Havoc befitting of its name, even if it is noticeably less so with a double dose of TT in my rotation.
The worst (most embarrassing) deaths are the ones with my "emergency" powers all untouched. Miracle Worker, Subspace Field Modulator, Quantum Singularity Manipulation, Brace For Impact...
I have the same problems with normal borg attacks suddenly wasting me with an insane amount of damage. I can usually handle it if my shields are full with various defensive abilities rotating all the time, but what more often gets me is when such a hit inflicts plasma damage over time; even the regular DoT from high level borg can quickly eat through hull, which means I have to try and make a tricky judgement call on when to use hazard emitters to clear it, and even though I've been doing the STF's for some time now I still frequently choose my time wrong and end up unable to clear a sudden pseudo-critical plasma fire that's eating ~10% of assault cruiser's hull per second.
What I don't understand is why a borg gateway should be able to deal so much damage in the first place; it's a bloody door in space, I could understand some minimal defences but these things are currently the most powerful borg constructs in the game, which is silly. I don't mind a Unimatrix ship vaporising me with a plasma energy bolt; that's my fault for not shooting it down, but when a gateway hits me with a couple of stray cannon blasts that eat through every defence I have then it's just frustrating, not challenging.
Tactical cubes able to lay waste to ships is semi-reasonable; though personally I'd prefer them to deliver less damage but to more targets simultaneously, based on threat, so that ships intentionally drawing threat get more damage hurled there way, but in the form of larger numbers of weaker attacks that they can actually handle for a while, rather than few sudden hits that turn your ship to dust.
The worst (most embarrassing) deaths are the ones with my "emergency" powers all untouched. Miracle Worker, Subspace Field Modulator, Quantum Singularity Manipulation, Brace For Impact...
I may have died stupidly, but the Havoc lived up to its name! ...also, need to remember to punch BFI. That mighta' saved me from todays "ohHai200ktorpedoTOTHEFACE" when I still had my shields... the other two big torps woulda' got me anyways 'cuz shields went DOWN.
Y'know, this is what I get for thinking heh heh, I've got a trick-something that works! I told all my friends "So, the trick is, ya keep EPTS and TT up as much as you can, and you'll... well, not be fine, but should be able to pull back, heal, and get back in!"
Tonight... oh lord, the absurdity.
WITH EPTS 2 up, full shields, and TT... got murdered straight out at least three times in Hive Onslaught Elite. One of those three times I actually survived the doom spread, only to die to a doom DoT that ate through the remaining 30% of my ship.
But it gets better. Mind you, what comes next, my shields were not full when the torpedos hit... they were full when they were FIRED, though...
Continued eating invisible high yield torps to IMMEDIATELY after having my front arc get dropped in three shots by something called Assimilator Beam. Bad day there. Even when I caught it with TT, I just got hollowed out.
The game apparently took it personally that I would DARE play with layered defenses, so it decided to one-two combo me with a shield neutralizer AND a torp spread. Even if I dumped the neutralizer quickly, it was too late.
It's plainly obvious I need to use BFI more, and that's fine-practice makes perfect. I'll get there. But this is still ridiculously cheap. Some complexity and the occasional cheap shot is ok, and probably good for the game. Tonight though, I just watched everyone in that STF just get repeatedly detonated.
And just for reference, I did die the second least in that one. Anyhow... wasn't all bad. Just wish it had been a little more friendly to everyone there. There was some rage in that one, and y'know... I can't help but feel it's justified.
damage that doesnt render is bad for the game and should be removed and replaced with a weapon that does render, seeing it comming and being taken down is ok with modt people but not seeing it is very demoralizing to most people.
kinitic seems to be the biggest invisable kiler so adjust your armor accordingly
Also anytime you try to run away you must hit brace for impact because the damage is comming if you try to get away
when i hit evasive manovers i hit brace for impact right behind it and always take 25,000 damage or more it seems
Before i always blew up , try this combo you may like it :P
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
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've noticed those pernicious instant-death bringers, but then again my current ship is a cruiser with little defence except in the boff abilities. Photonic Fleet is the best support I've found if you feel yourself dying and have time to recover.
On another note, I'm in a fiercely competitive search for longterm players to build a fleet with me, please read my thread STO Talent Search in the Starbase One section of the forums. Thank you.
a visible fix would be good, just please don't nerf borg damage.
The PVE is ridiculous stupid easy to begin with even on the hardest settings.
All this crying I don't get, I mean, seriously? WHO CARES if you got blown up twice in an Elite STF. it made u jump didn't it? How boring do you want these to be?
Just enter hit auto fire 'n pOw u win? no thanks.
if you're tired of being one shotted please stop crying for nerfs to npcs 'n just go play normal.
You'll have no problem.
Leave the ridiculously overpowered enemies to us who actually enjoy some semblance of challenge outside of pvp.
Make the torps visible yes, but don't nerf the damage,
a visible fix would be good, just please don't nerf borg damage.
The PVE is ridiculous stupid easy to begin with even on the hardest settings.
All this crying I don't get, I mean, seriously? WHO CARES if you got blown up twice in an Elite STF. it made u jump didn't it? How boring do you want these to be?
Just enter hit auto fire 'n pOw u win? no thanks.
if you're tired of being one shotted please stop crying for nerfs to npcs 'n just go play normal.
You'll have no problem.
Leave the ridiculously overpowered enemies to us who actually enjoy some semblance of challenge outside of pvp.
Make the torps visible yes, but don't nerf the damage,
Twice? I'm not talking about twice. I simply was ready with my combat log. I'm talking about getting looked at funny and exploding in a repeated, predictable pattern.
I don't really give a damn about your overreaction. The game is not designed well-specifically, there is no 'game' element to eating volleys of instant death to the face and surviving just enough to get out, heal up, and try again... or dying like you were expected to. But in defense of your point, you're correct-the game overall is too easy.
I *THINK* what happened in the dev process is that people by and large were saying it was too easy in the first few patches (seasons?), so when they released this content, they turned up to 11 and sat back smugly. But it seems like the result has been to split the player base on this, probably in a 20:1 ratio.
My complaint about what they did is that it's not really any more difficult than the standard STF. If you survive the ludicrous burst windows, the fight is pretty much the same. And it's not like normal doesn't have ludicrous burst windows in it either. Queeny and the Unimatrices just have more of them in Elite. Now I'm sure you're asking 'why is that bad design? Why are you whining about this? Go home, noob!'
And it's very simple. They could've made the fight more difficult by having players have more to keep track of. As has been a larger topic in several threads around here, Cruisers and Sci Vessels are looking for a place to shine, and honestly, things like this could very well be it. But rather than adjust the incoming damage in a sensible way, they just turned everything they could into blow you up in one volley. Either that's because the gap between too little and too much is very, very tight (unlikely), or it's because they didn't have any good ideas to make the fight more complicated AND dangerous, so they just cranked the numbers through the roof and called it hard mode.
And it is hard mode. It's hard mode like Contra was hard. It's not hard because it's a terribly tricky game, it's hard because everything kills you by touching you.
Comments
I fly at max speed and use 2 tactical teams on my escort but their are times that no matter what I do I still die. I don't get 1 shot much but it does happen once in a wile and I hate it because only special weapons should be able to 1 shot someone.
I always take 2 pieces of armor a 37.5% plasma resist(electro) and a 37.5% kinetic resist(mono)
Yes it happens to me too but it's pretty rare, and when it happens it's because i'm trying to tank for too long. Escorts are supposed to kill stuff quickly, but when you can't achieve that (because your team isn't great) well, you're going to die anyway. But the team factor matters. A lot.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
On the L2P front, there are DEFINITELY things I need to learn-I simply contend that preparing CD's for spontaneous invisible damage isn't one of them. Even you guys who are telling me to L2P are saying there's spontaneous, invisible damage. Oh sure, it MIGHT have a buff indicator on the ship, but unless I'm constantly eating damage, I have no reason to believe I'm being targeted. I'm asking to be met halfway here (and if it didn't come across like that I apologize)-sure, there's things I could do. To quote my original post, "I might survive if I popped a defensive CD... maybe." I'd like the game to INDICATE that hey, maybe that defensive button? Maybe NOW would be a good time to press that.
A 20x20 icon tacked under my targeting reticle is not an acceptable warning mechanism. "Oh god that's a lot of torpedos" would be... except they are INVISBLE. Ergo Fake Difficulty. The fact that they also apparently spike 150k+ damage per torp is ALSO high on the Fake Difficulty check list. The two things with the torpedoes specifically-the random super crazy spike damage AND being invisible are things that are either buggy, or, in their best light, seriously questionable design decisions.
In the normal game, Emergency Power to Shields and Science Team are pretty much my go to buttons. I probably need to rethink that some. I probably need to switch up my engineering consoles. I apparently need to look at Tactical Team again because I thought it was purely an anti-boarding party button, but it seems like there's more to it than that.
Whether I agree with you specifically or not though, I'd like to thank you for making this a discussion. It's been very insightful.
Tactical team will help you balancing your shields automatically very quickly. It's like having 4 times more shield.
For defensive abilities... Don't see it like powers. See it like an umbrella. When it's raining you just use it and don't try to look at drops to see if a bigger drop will fall. Here it's the same situation, if you cycle your emergency power to sheilds, TSS and TT you're safe and don't have to worry about drops coming from everywhere. Sometimes there is a huge drop which will rip apart your umbrella but it's an exception (and only gateways can do that).
Shared cooldowns are short and you have at most 5 seconds once in a while where you're not protected by your abilities, so use them.
As a reminder for everyone thinking there are too many "one shot" abilities in this game, you may be doing it wrong. There are only 3 elements you need to consider in elite stfs:
1 - where is the npc, is it in your firing arc, and am I in a one shot zone?
2 - how's my shields/hull doing?
3 - what abilities is the NPC getting ready to use? These are the small icons under the picture of it at the top of the screen. The abilities the NPC is going to use are in green squares. See a torpedo high yeld? get ready for it. See a torpedo spread? Well you better brace for impact, and so on.
1 isn't really important and don't need to be checked often (npcs are slow), and most people don't even know about 3, but it makes a huge difference between those who get surprised by a one shot and those who get ready for a massive amount of damage.
Your ship may be beautiful and you may enjoy looking at it in STFs but then you'll miss critical information.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Emergency Power to Shields is not for healing. The major point of EPtS is the shield resistance it gives you, which is why almost everybody tries to have two copies of it. With a 30s duration you can have 100% uptime, which will really help keep your shields up.
As pointed out in the previous post, Tac Team essentially quadruples that facing's strength as it'll automatically and near-instantaneously transfer shields from the other facings into the one taking damage.
Sci Team is a shield restore, and generally is inferior to Transfer Shield Strength because Tac Team shares a cooldown. TSS will give shield resistance as well, and since you tend to pop the shield regen while you're under fire, it'll reduce the amount of damage your shields are taking while also helping recover shield strength.
This is how we survive large kinetic damage spikes - shields make 75% of kinetic damage disappear, so if you keep your shields up and active you're only suffering the bleed-through on your hull.
I suppose it would be nice if we got bigger indicators of incoming attacks, Champs has a big displayed charge-up mechanic so you know when you hold block. On the other hand, there's honestly not a lot I can do against the giant spikes. Either I'm doing fine (and again, I haven't taken invisible OHKOs since fighters&CSV) or I just get pounded in a second by multiple 50k volleys that no abilities will help. I mean, two 50k volleys in the same second blows through my 1 Neutronium Alloy, EPtS2 and Aux2SIF2. I did see it coming and probably should have popped BFI, but I can't survive 50k either so it shouldn't have made a difference.
Other than that one time though, I haven't had OHKOs on me for a long time. The only other one that comes to mind is a Borg Negh'var tossing an isometric charge on me. It bounced off (and disintegrated) my fighters before hitting me for something like 6 digits of damage.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=8460701&postcount=13
What this means, is that say you are 7km away from the gate and it launches a standard torp. You start moving away from the gate. Because the GFX travels at a fixed speed, you get "hit" once the torpedo has travelled 7km. And if you are at the same distance, your hull registers a "hit" and you see the torpedo. If you came closer, the torp visually could hit you, and then a few seconds later your hull registers the hit. If you went further away, the torp visually would never hit you, but you still register the hit. In both cases, you got "invisitorped" since the GFx was decoupled from the damage. This would also explain hits at 13+km away.
The damage amount does get mitigated by your buffs up when the timer expires.
My only solution is to keep an eye for when I have gate aggro, and press BFI after several seconds when I would expect a hit from a torpedo. Sometimes I get lucky, sometimes not.
An interesting experiment to try would be to have a cloaked fleetmate video the gate shooting at you, and see if torpedos disappear where expected.
Edited to add:
This also explains why high perf systems seem to experience this as well - it isn't due to gfx capability.
Also, would explain why running in front of the gate to get to the second transformer makes this more obvious. There's less weapon spam around, and you are rapidly changing your distance to/from the gate.
Using Emergency to Shields as a shield heal is... I PREFER to take the first couple hits on blank shields so I'm not 'wasting' the heal component, and I think anyone with 1/10th of a brain can see why, but clearly that's not the expectation here. Which is counter-intuitive, which is the textbook definition of why something is 'bad design.' But moving on...
If then, the whole point is to CONSTANTLY be bouncing double layered defensive CD's... There's some flavors of CO's multi layered defense mechanics going on there, which is probably why the insane spike damage exists in STO. And actually, this kinda' explains what sounded like a ridiculous three tactical stations on the Andorian Escorts.
Still, something like the Red Alert alarm klaxon going off, maybe accompanied with a Computer voice over saying ">chirps< Warning: High energy build up detected." It's very Star Trek, it's much cleaner, and again... it gives people an idea that hey! Now MIGHT be a good time to Brace for Impact! Besides the 'game mechanic' side of it, that would ALSO be cool. There's literally no reason to not do that. ...ideally you'd be able to turn it off once you 'get it' too. Could be annoying on the umpteenth run. *mentions that in case devs be lurking*
I find it frustrating to survive almost all the way through an elite STF only to have someone spill their raktajino on a console and trigger the self destruct.
One recent example I can think of, I was playing through Infected on elite difficulty, we were facing the Tactical Cube at the end and so far I had not been destroyed once in the entire mission. I am in an Odyssey tactical cruiser steadily chewing away at the cube, I brush off almost all of its attacks without losing all the shields. All of a sudden, my ship decides it has had enough and blows up......
There was no visual indication of anything hitting the ship like a shield or hull impact like you normally see when you take damage. TT and EPTS were still active at the time and the cube was only taking pot shots at me with one of its cannons which were not even making the shields twitch. Next thing I see is the ship with 100% in both shield and hull explode with a 6 figure number floating up the screen.
If it means anything, we had destroyed the conduit and all the remaining probes and spheres before we took on the tactical cube so that rules out anything sneaking one up the old exhaust port.
I was running rings around the cube at about 8km so I would have seen anything the cube tried to throw at me such as high yield torpedos etc.
The design isn't completely stupid although it makes playing at top level really complex. The name is terrible though, emergency power to x sounds like it's a healing power or an emergency button. "Additional power to x" would be a lot clearer and would allow people to understand how they should use it.
You're right with the layered defense mechanic, it makes the game unnecessarily complex with a lot of stuff to click, but once you get it you can really play a so called elite content like normal content. It leads to a situation where skilled players are invincible and doing stfs like a walk in the park and rookies get chained killed by "elite" NPCs. Just because there's an insane number of powers you can use at the same time. At least cryptic seems to learn from that mistake and didn't do that in their last game (neverwinter).
And since it's not going to stop, with the new ships and consoles, you better get ready to that.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
...so...that said, I've got honestly mixed feelings about it. While to some extent, the Escorts are built to be battleships... it makes sense that they can take a beating. But it's a bit much.
I dunno. So much 'not what I expected' I guess? Still sorting out what I think about it. I definitely felt overpowered... and I managed to keep the Havoc befitting of its name, even if it is noticeably less so with a double dose of TT in my rotation.
The worst (most embarrassing) deaths are the ones with my "emergency" powers all untouched. Miracle Worker, Subspace Field Modulator, Quantum Singularity Manipulation, Brace For Impact...
What I don't understand is why a borg gateway should be able to deal so much damage in the first place; it's a bloody door in space, I could understand some minimal defences but these things are currently the most powerful borg constructs in the game, which is silly. I don't mind a Unimatrix ship vaporising me with a plasma energy bolt; that's my fault for not shooting it down, but when a gateway hits me with a couple of stray cannon blasts that eat through every defence I have then it's just frustrating, not challenging.
Tactical cubes able to lay waste to ships is semi-reasonable; though personally I'd prefer them to deliver less damage but to more targets simultaneously, based on threat, so that ships intentionally drawing threat get more damage hurled there way, but in the form of larger numbers of weaker attacks that they can actually handle for a while, rather than few sudden hits that turn your ship to dust.
Game Balance - Ship Size and Wingmates
I may have died stupidly, but the Havoc lived up to its name! ...also, need to remember to punch BFI. That mighta' saved me from todays "ohHai200ktorpedoTOTHEFACE" when I still had my shields... the other two big torps woulda' got me anyways 'cuz shields went DOWN.
Y'know, this is what I get for thinking heh heh, I've got a trick-something that works! I told all my friends "So, the trick is, ya keep EPTS and TT up as much as you can, and you'll... well, not be fine, but should be able to pull back, heal, and get back in!"
Tonight... oh lord, the absurdity.
WITH EPTS 2 up, full shields, and TT... got murdered straight out at least three times in Hive Onslaught Elite. One of those three times I actually survived the doom spread, only to die to a doom DoT that ate through the remaining 30% of my ship.
But it gets better. Mind you, what comes next, my shields were not full when the torpedos hit... they were full when they were FIRED, though...
Continued eating invisible high yield torps to IMMEDIATELY after having my front arc get dropped in three shots by something called Assimilator Beam. Bad day there. Even when I caught it with TT, I just got hollowed out.
The game apparently took it personally that I would DARE play with layered defenses, so it decided to one-two combo me with a shield neutralizer AND a torp spread. Even if I dumped the neutralizer quickly, it was too late.
It's plainly obvious I need to use BFI more, and that's fine-practice makes perfect. I'll get there. But this is still ridiculously cheap. Some complexity and the occasional cheap shot is ok, and probably good for the game. Tonight though, I just watched everyone in that STF just get repeatedly detonated.
And just for reference, I did die the second least in that one. Anyhow... wasn't all bad. Just wish it had been a little more friendly to everyone there. There was some rage in that one, and y'know... I can't help but feel it's justified.
kinitic seems to be the biggest invisable kiler so adjust your armor accordingly
Also anytime you try to run away you must hit brace for impact because the damage is comming if you try to get away
when i hit evasive manovers i hit brace for impact right behind it and always take 25,000 damage or more it seems
Before i always blew up , try this combo you may like it :P
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
On another note, I'm in a fiercely competitive search for longterm players to build a fleet with me, please read my thread STO Talent Search in the Starbase One section of the forums. Thank you.
The PVE is ridiculous stupid easy to begin with even on the hardest settings.
All this crying I don't get, I mean, seriously? WHO CARES if you got blown up twice in an Elite STF. it made u jump didn't it? How boring do you want these to be?
Just enter hit auto fire 'n pOw u win? no thanks.
if you're tired of being one shotted please stop crying for nerfs to npcs 'n just go play normal.
You'll have no problem.
Leave the ridiculously overpowered enemies to us who actually enjoy some semblance of challenge outside of pvp.
Make the torps visible yes, but don't nerf the damage,
Twice? I'm not talking about twice. I simply was ready with my combat log. I'm talking about getting looked at funny and exploding in a repeated, predictable pattern.
I don't really give a damn about your overreaction. The game is not designed well-specifically, there is no 'game' element to eating volleys of instant death to the face and surviving just enough to get out, heal up, and try again... or dying like you were expected to. But in defense of your point, you're correct-the game overall is too easy.
I *THINK* what happened in the dev process is that people by and large were saying it was too easy in the first few patches (seasons?), so when they released this content, they turned up to 11 and sat back smugly. But it seems like the result has been to split the player base on this, probably in a 20:1 ratio.
My complaint about what they did is that it's not really any more difficult than the standard STF. If you survive the ludicrous burst windows, the fight is pretty much the same. And it's not like normal doesn't have ludicrous burst windows in it either. Queeny and the Unimatrices just have more of them in Elite. Now I'm sure you're asking 'why is that bad design? Why are you whining about this? Go home, noob!'
And it's very simple. They could've made the fight more difficult by having players have more to keep track of. As has been a larger topic in several threads around here, Cruisers and Sci Vessels are looking for a place to shine, and honestly, things like this could very well be it. But rather than adjust the incoming damage in a sensible way, they just turned everything they could into blow you up in one volley. Either that's because the gap between too little and too much is very, very tight (unlikely), or it's because they didn't have any good ideas to make the fight more complicated AND dangerous, so they just cranked the numbers through the roof and called it hard mode.
And it is hard mode. It's hard mode like Contra was hard. It's not hard because it's a terribly tricky game, it's hard because everything kills you by touching you.
It used to be that STFs were a combination of space and ground, and would take hours. That effectively weeded out casual players.
Not to mention the end-game loot (Omega, MACO, etc) were essentially random drops. =\