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The End of the Dominion of Escorts
janewaywarrior
Member Posts: 93 Arc User
During a recent interview, Geko suggested a nerf to Dual Heavy Cannons. May I say that this is first sensible idea he has ever had. Escorts Alpha Strike has gone from mildly annoying in Season One to outright ridiculous in Season Six.
I am aware that Cryptic prefer Escorts over Cruisers and Science Vessels. Possibly because they fail to understand that Starfleet is a cruiser heavy organisation, vessels they classed as escorts are not actually escorts, for example;
Saber = Frigate
Steamrunner = Cruiser
Akira = Heavy Cruiser
Intrepid = Light Cruiser (Classed as Science Vessel only because Janeway of Voyager was a former Science Offficer)
Perhaps it is time to go further and change the "ship trinity" completely for one more in keeping with traditional Starfleet. Cryptic has already shown they are willing to do this by classing the Chimera as a "Destroyer", a comfortable mix between Escort and Cruiser.
So maybe Engineering and Science powers need to be completely reworked and we need to lose the "Escort" catagory, to which the Defiant-Class is the only true escort in that sense and provide uniqueness to each vessel rather then just being one of a catagory.
Lets finally remove all the barriers and let people truly be creative with their own vessels. I find it really hard to get attached to my ships if it has such gaping flaws which are not apparent in canon.
So maybe this game could learn from EvE Online's success with their ship catagories and provide more.
I am aware that Cryptic prefer Escorts over Cruisers and Science Vessels. Possibly because they fail to understand that Starfleet is a cruiser heavy organisation, vessels they classed as escorts are not actually escorts, for example;
Saber = Frigate
Steamrunner = Cruiser
Akira = Heavy Cruiser
Intrepid = Light Cruiser (Classed as Science Vessel only because Janeway of Voyager was a former Science Offficer)
Perhaps it is time to go further and change the "ship trinity" completely for one more in keeping with traditional Starfleet. Cryptic has already shown they are willing to do this by classing the Chimera as a "Destroyer", a comfortable mix between Escort and Cruiser.
So maybe Engineering and Science powers need to be completely reworked and we need to lose the "Escort" catagory, to which the Defiant-Class is the only true escort in that sense and provide uniqueness to each vessel rather then just being one of a catagory.
Lets finally remove all the barriers and let people truly be creative with their own vessels. I find it really hard to get attached to my ships if it has such gaping flaws which are not apparent in canon.
So maybe this game could learn from EvE Online's success with their ship catagories and provide more.
Post edited by janewaywarrior on
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And during a recent post Geko said, "There is no plan to Nerf Cannons. NONE!"
Couldn't you just participate in one of the dozens of other threads on this topic?
I switched from an Escort to an Cruiser. In many Public Elite STF i do more damge then my whole team together :eek:.
Beam Array's are great, DHC are great too. But DHC are to Special for me.
I will challenge your statement that Starfleet is a cruiser heavy force. Based on what we see in the various series I'd say that TNG starfleet was mostly Mirandas/Nebulas and smaller ships. The series follows the Enterprise but it hardly ever meets up with other cruisers.
Post Dominion War I'd assume Starfleet is rebuilt, in part with more combat capable vessels. These more combat oriented vessels are what we now call "escorts". Their classification is not based on size but on function. Starfleet makes warships that are fast, heavily armed and heavily shielded, their purpose to never again find themselves with no recourse should diplomacy fail. But Starfleet also uses other, less combat oriented ships. This is where cruisers and sci vessels come in.
While the original design intent is lost to us, its not hard to imagine that a pre launch STO was planned to include more than just combat. Imagine if there were also diplomatic or scientific type encounters along with the combat encounters we have now? Cruisers and Sci Vessels would shine in such situations. As we all know, Cryptic was unable to bring to life such an implementation. BUT! I find it interesting that there was mention of other uses becoming available for cruisers and sci vessels. Maybe we'll see another system that revolves around tasks that cruisers and sci vessels would excell at? We can only hope.
If they are so willing to correct a mistaken assumption, perhaps it would be wise to clear the air further on some other issues. I would love to know their opinions on Federation cruisers, of course. And why is it that Mirror Patrol Escorts can mount Multi-Vector Attack Modules, while Mirror Star Cruisers are unable to mount Metreon Gas Canisters? Surely that wouldn't be so hard to do, or so easy to miss? I wonder why they have not bothered to incorporate such a simple change...
I don't have any particular objections against escorts, because I think the issue of their supremacy has more to do with the deficiencies of other vessel types and flaws in the overall game design. As for Dual Heavy Cannons, the only thing that really bugs me about them is that they are functionally identical to regular cannons. They basically work the same way, only that they're generally better. I may be missing out on something, but I can't quite understand why they're in the game at all.
Wow. That's a lot of anger towards the SDC. What did Sughiro ever do to you?
Not to nitpick, but I believe only two vessels have ever been referred to on screen as cruisers, two as scouts, and one as an escort. Everything else is a somewhat non-canon reference and Cryptic is clearly using the designation as a matter of gameplay.
I think it is easy to throw out random suggestions, but it might be difficult and time consuming for Cryptic to completely rework the game to eliminate ship classes in a way that is significantly beneficial to game play. The current paradigm is good because it forces players to sacrifice some things to gain others and provides a wide variety of abilities within a single ship class.
What is really needed is balance between the classes, not the scrapping of them.
Nah, it's more like they're not taking the complaints of some loudmouth Fed cruiser pilots seriously, because those cruiser pilots INSIST that their cruisers match escorts in terms of damage, in contravention to the way the game's ship classes are set up.
Let me spell it out for you, and other Fed cruiser captains: YOUR FED CRUISERS AND SCI SHIPS WILL NOT BE A BIG, BAD DAMAGE-DEALERS. GET USED TO IT. Learn the role of the ships and get used to the role, or fly escorts. Or, better yet, join KDF and fly the cruisers that are SUPPOSED to focus on DPSing and less on supporting a team with heals. Stop trying to defang the only weapons (and thus vessels) that can cut through a cruiser's tanking ability.
If this game needs to nerf anything, it needs to nerf self-tanking, especially for escorts. That will bring things back into balance, as cruisers suddenly realize why they're so friggin important in certain situations (especially PvP, which is where the real effing challenge is). Tanking AND healing others.
Except that the current paradigm does not actually promote equilibrium as a result of those sacrifices. An escort can be built to be quite durable without ever needing to significantly compromise its firepower, which will still exceed that of a cruiser. However, a cruiser attempting to invert that approach by increasing firepower will end up with much lower durability than usual and less damage than most escorts. Even science vessels have more flexibility than cruisers in that regard, despite all other problems regarding their usefulness.
In practice, the class system has been rendered down in such a way that it is no longer relevant. Escorts can accomplish everything without needing the support of other types of vessels because they don't suffer from any significant flaws or short-comings that limit their effectiveness. They can be built for far better "balance" between various characteristics, and while they might not match cruisers or science vessels for raw durability or support output, they will significantly outperform either one because they perform some of their functions while still outputting a significant amount of damage. At this point in time, I'm starting to come to the conclusion that the current pattern of distributing boff/console layouts according to vessel type needs to be discontinued.
Why give Mirror Patrol Escorts the ability to mount the MVAM, but not Mirror Star Cruisers the ability to mount Metreon Gas Canisters? Such a change in of itself would improve the viability of both in the non-offensive tanking/support role that you claim for cruiser captains. The very least that can be assumed of this and other oversights in game design is that the developers are not at all concerned with the role of support in gameplay.
What about cruisers "that are SUPPOSED to focus on DPSing and less on supporting a team with heals"? Why is it that the KDF has equivalents with far better firepower, and for that matter, why can't the Federation have access to such vessels? I also fail to see where I mentioned "de-fanging" escorts, as I have very clearly stated that, "I don't have any particular objections against escorts, because I think the issue of their supremacy has more to do with the deficiencies of other vessel types and flaws in the overall game design."
The way that ship classes are set up right now is that escorts can pretty much do everything on their own. However, neutralizing the ability of escorts to absorb damage is a far trickier matter than simply making other vessel types viable combatants. I hope you realize that making escorts into wet napkins without repair or support is far more crippling for them than the current situation with cruisers and science vessels. Making them require cruisers as a crutch could make them so crippling to use that the balance pendulum would swing dramatically back in favour of cruisers as the primary combat vehicles for all situations. That is something that I am not comfortable with, either.
Furthermore, I don't think you quite understand what it means to tank. I've spent entire PvP games without so much as getting shot at or seriously threatened by more than one or two players. This is because any player worth their salt knows that cruisers are yes, tanky. However, they also know that cruisers are incapable of posing a direct threat to them and that their real adversaries are the escorts because they are the ones who are actually capable of posing a threat. So even though I may push out heals, spam mines, and eject plasma/radiation everywhere, I'm not always going to be targeted unless they are sure that they can actually kill me. If you've ever looked at something like DotA or even most other RPGs, you'll find that tanks are not only made to take damage and dish it out, but to also force enemies to engage them. At present, cruisers can not do the latter two effectively and are incapable of doing them all of them together.
Any initiative even approaching the N-word for Gecko's precious escorts is guaranteed to fail.
Everything Gecko wrote in the post linked by centersolace contradicts himself.
1) He DID say beams are "working as designed".
2) He DID NOT say cannons are "working as designed".
3) He DID say there will be no nerfs for cannons.
Did not happen. ESTF Borgs got buffed to "balance" the extra damage escorts do.
He failed this one, too. Gave escorts a turn rate boost, while every single cruiser still have the exact same stats they were released with. Not a single cruiser was touched.
I don't want my science ship to be a big, bad DPS dealer. I just want science abilities that actually make a difference. I also want science abilities to NOT be given to everyone else free. Romulan rep ability Sensor Targeting Assault? It's a free version of Jam Sensors. Which escorts can use without fear of losing something that's valuable to them like Hazard Emitters or Transfer Shield Strength. Which will proc more often for escorts as they fire more shots per second than the other classes. Leave escorts to their DPS. That's their field. DON'T give them my science abilities free of charge unless you're prepared to give science ships something in return. (If science captains got something like APO free you'd think the wambulance was coming for the escort captains. Waa-waaaa waa-waaaa waa-waaaa.)
The ability to deal damage in battle is crucial. Tactics and special strategies are just as important and that's what science ships and cruisers should bring but don't.
I think the problem you're having, is in YOUR understanding of what STO atually is. You seem to be looking more for a canon, simulation, gaming experience. Which is not what STO was designed to be. It's a cookie cutter, me too, MMORPG, in a Star Trek wrapper. A Trek theme park, if you will. Other than the licensed IP, it has about as much to do with Trek, as running a bubblegum factory does. Look around. We have 300 year old Starships flying around. Federation fighter carriers. Uniforms out of Victoria's Secret. Time travel, that's as mundane as buying milk at the grocery store. Instead of Command, Engineering, Medical, and Science, you have Tank, Healer, DPS. That's what the game was set up for, from the ground up. What you're asking to be done, is design a whole new game, from soup to nuts. Not gonna happen. Cryptic has a hard enough time designing new, bug-free, grind content, that doesn't break anything that's already working. Which is what their owners, PWE, wants them to do. My advice to you, is just stay out of PvP. the free Sci, and cruiser vessels that are available are more than capable, when configured correctly, for any PvE content. Your only other options are quit playing, or design, and publish your own game, the way you want it to be.
Then the Escort crowd will start belly-aching about being locked out in the cold. For the record, the Miranda, and Nebula are cruisers, and the Enterprise met up with other cruisers when the episode writers required it, for plot developement.
For the record, I think StarFleet would have moral objections, to storing multiple, cannisters of a highly unstable, explosive, gas on ANY of it's starships.
Eh sorry to burst your bubble here but that is what Warp Plasma is... energized warp plasma is just as unstable, its just Starfleet has the control measures in place to channel it correctly. Hence the "EPS" System.
NP, my bubble is still intact. Warp plasma is necessary, it serves a purpose, until someone invents something safer, think of nuclear power today. Metreon gas has no purpose, save as a weapon, a highly unstable, weapon. Think of the phrase "hoisted by one's own petard". Try again.
The thing is we're wanting change. Balance.
Obviously Cryptic fears that changing anything in their beloved MMO trinity would overstrain most MMO player, not to speak of they like to see their beloved Escorts as Super Ships.
Off-topic I know, but I couldn't get that quote out of my head.
Ha!! Good quote!! I know this is considered sacrilege to a lot of people but DS9 was my fave by a long way!
Item description says that the gas has not only been stabilized, but also made available through the replicator.
If you don't know this already, Metreon Gas Canisters come in the form of a universal console with the Assault Refit. They're a total waste on that ship, but potentially useful on the Mirror Star Cruiser due to the latter's decreased emphasis on offensive capability in favour support and healing.
Agreed...this is a vicious circle...would be nice if they could focus on "balancing" ships/skills a bit more. After all this is becoming ESCORTS online....if you dont have one you are missing alot of gameplay. I'm all for balancing all ships to skills equally...they already nerfed SCIENCE in lieue of TACTs for profit making....isnt time to balance the game again....:cool:
Actually, starfleet is a cruiser heavy organization. Thing is, the only 'escort' ever shown was the defiant. As the ship of the main character it was obviously made to look larger than life.
however, if you actually watch DS9 and see what the defiant actually did in combat.
The entire series has it shooting at jemhadar attack ships, birds of prey, shuttle sized ships and in the few instances it attacks cruisers it is shown taking a beating and generally forced to withdraw. The only time it killed a cruiser sized ship was when it shot down 2 breen cruisers...and it did so in just 2 bursts of phaser cannon and 1 volley of quantum torps... so it can hardly be considered realistic to think it alpha striked them down but more likely the ships were already heavily hurt (shields down).
I guess I didn't explain myself very well. I meant cruisers as we know them today. The big general purpose ships. In cannon I think everything was a cruiser of some variety with the exceptions of the Defiant and maybe the Oberth.