Yes I made this suggestion in the armour slot thread but it seems to have been ignored, I REALLY don't want to see an armour slot. It's shoe horning a ship class into a role; when it's the captain that is supposed to bring the role to the ship not the other way around.
In fact they could even bring out warp reactors, or whatever they call them, which have polarise hull or something similar as an ability like some shuttles have. Give it a 1 min cool down and you've appeased both crowds. Choose between 2 types, ones that give a constant buff or ones that give you a useful activated ability to augment certain styles. So many things you could do with it and it would make sense in 95% of situations.
This would be definitely something that would help giving Cruisers more flexibility.
An additional armor slot would do only one thing: making cruisers even more boring and unpopular.
Obviously this is exactly the thing Cryptic and especially a certain dev wants cruisers to be, very unprofessional IMO.
"...'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied--chains us all irrevocably.' ... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today--"
- (TNG) Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie
As you can see it's not completely optimal but it's quite a good build, and I can tank, heal, do some DPS. EPTS 3 is almost constantly up and EPTW too, so my fire at will III is always powered up, with batteries, nadion inversion and EPS power transfer if i need even more additional power to weapons.
And yes, I can solo a side in KAGE, if you mean handling probes and killing a cube at the same time. I can also draw all aggro, allowing tacs to move freely and get at optimal range (2km) safely in most situations.
Now, this is my current build. But i've worked on something a bit different for a possible Ambassador ship:
Gear: 6 romulan plasma beams, 1 experimental plasma beam array, 1 romulan torp
Keeping my eng consoles, my sci consoles but switching the assimilated module for the point-zero console. Switching to plasma tac consoles.
Doffs: 3x damage control engineers, 2x energy weapon officer (chance to reduce CD for beam special attacks).
Estimated cost: ~75M EC (including the ship modules and purple doffs) + ~150k dil.
This is an expensive cruiser build (although cheaper than my galor one), but it's probably good enough to be extremely competitive.
The Galor is a great Ship; However, the Fed needs a ship performing at that level that is widely available. The Excel is nice, but its turn rate and Boff layout leaves a little to be desired.
I would think in the high energy production science fiction of warp engines and the like that it would be efficiency and possibly size that makes the difference in output capacity and power availible to ship functions.
Making ships more interdependent would utterly kill gameplay for me, in support of chuckingram's arguement. A big part of the appeal of this game is that you self sufficient. It meshes with Trek in general and helps give the game the appeal of being an awesome space captain. No sane captain would ever fly a ship that is utterly dependent upon another /in the Trek universe/.
In general Healers and Tanks are the 'responsible' and the '*****' roles. A healer and a tank only exist to make the majority of the peoples play time more fun. Some people enjoy that role, for sure, but they are a dedicated few. The general populace wants to be the 'hero', and a great part of that means you are a force to be reckoned with by your lonesome. The 'hero', after all, does not bring a feather duster to a battle.
By emphasizing that you, and only you, are responsible for your ships survival, you make sure that everyone includes some skills to stay alive in their build, makes their deaths their own fault, and forces people to consider whether trading damage for survivability is worthwhile. The end game content not being challenging has nothing to do with the trinity. And it is a fallacy to think that making the trinity hardcore will add challenge.
I can tell you that by reinforcing the trinity you would get a lot more frustration, general hatred of grouping, and elitism. It will give you that. I do not call frustration a challenge. Maybe that is just me.
I would think in the high energy production science fiction of warp engines and the like that it would be efficiency and possibly size that makes the difference in output capacity and power availible to ship functions.
I think this is something we wont know until we get there. Its easy to imagine that some kind of portable fusion will fit in a suitcase, so you can have the same weapons/shields on anything that has physical space for it. Maybe some problems with energy distribution, etc., means "physical space" restrictions are more than just room on the hull. Dunno.
What we have in STO is something else altogether. What's more ridiculous--that a shuttlecraft can mount 2 space battleship weapons, or that a space battleship can only fit 8 shuttlecraft weapons.
What we have in STO is something else altogether. What's more ridiculous--that a shuttlecraft can mount 2 space battleship weapons, or that a space battleship can only fit 8 shuttlecraft weapons.
Well considering how (when it comes to canon) phaser arrays get their strength not from the quality of the emitters or the amount of power devoted but the number of them (I mean, you can charge 100 emitters with 1 joule every hour and still fire the weapon dealing a huge amount of damage whereas you could charge 10 relays to capacity in 1 second and still not get the same output) so I think it is more ridiculous that cruisers don't get more damage out of these things rather than the number mountable...
You might say its off topic but you issued a challenge to the devs which as per usual has gone unanswered, the thread should not be closed until such time as an answer is given to your challenge.
Also we got some good discussion going and ideas with the exception of the two old ladies throwing their handbags around.
There is something similar to the galor, the assault cruiser refit, takes a bit of saving for but well worth it. Unless you already have a D'Kora or Galor in which case you don't need the regent.
Back on topic you can get decent damage out of a cruiser but have to use certain things all of which are in an effort to reduce weapon power drain, I think there really needs to be some ways for cruisers to help mitigate some of that. As for science ships, well I have no clue anymore how to get good damage out of them, they just plain suck now. However I'll save that for another thread.
Making ships more interdependent would utterly kill gameplay for me, in support of chuckingram's arguement. A big part of the appeal of this game is that you self sufficient. It meshes with Trek in general and helps give the game the appeal of being an awesome space captain. No sane captain would ever fly a ship that is utterly dependent upon another /in the Trek universe/.
In general Healers and Tanks are the 'responsible' and the '*****' roles. A healer and a tank only exist to make the majority of the peoples play time more fun. Some people enjoy that role, for sure, but they are a dedicated few. The general populace wants to be the 'hero', and a great part of that means you are a force to be reckoned with by your lonesome. The 'hero', after all, does not bring a feather duster to a battle.
By emphasizing that you, and only you, are responsible for your ships survival, you make sure that everyone includes some skills to stay alive in their build, makes their deaths their own fault, and forces people to consider whether trading damage for survivability is worthwhile. The end game content not being challenging has nothing to do with the trinity. And it is a fallacy to think that making the trinity hardcore will add challenge.
I can tell you that by reinforcing the trinity you would get a lot more frustration, general hatred of grouping, and elitism. It will give you that. I do not call frustration a challenge. Maybe that is just me.
You're not alone. Thanks for finding a new angle for what I've been trying to say.
...the two old ladies throwing their handbags around.
I don't know who this snide comment was directed against, and I don't care. It would, however, be helpful to the forum if you kept things like this to yourself.
While DPS-ing things into oblivion remains the most efficient way to achieve objectives in STO, cruisers and science ships will continue to feel lacklustre. Making people feel like they're slowing down the team by playing anything other than Tac Escort is a good way to drive away players that enjoy the tactics and teamwork aspect of games. I don't think anyone wants that.
Some ideas to improve this:
1) - Increase the general lethality of enemies, and reduce in "one hit kill" weapons. Playing a cruiser tank feels crappy because the only things capable of killing escorts and science vessels is just as effective at killing you, so your chosen strength isn't really useful.
2) - Shorten the cooldown on utility abilities such as Tractor Beam or Repulsors, and bump their damage. Playing a science ship feels crappy because your reposition and hold abilities are not as effective as just destroying the target with guns.
3) - Either devalue DPS in STF placements, or give awards for different criteria (damage, healing, damage received, objectives etc). Watching the three escorts in the map get 1st/2nd/3rd every time feels crappy.
4) - Let every ship equip cannons. If an engineer captain manages to get you inside a 45 degree arc with his 6 turn rate Ody... you deserve to eat some damage. If a science captain wants to zoom around with his agile little Nova spitting cannon fire, why not let him?
None of these things take anything away from Escorts. They still have their niche and deal the most damage, while other classes get a bit more flexibility and recognition without resorting to weapon buffs.
Comments
An additional armor slot would do only one thing: making cruisers even more boring and unpopular.
Obviously this is exactly the thing Cryptic and especially a certain dev wants cruisers to be, very unprofessional IMO.
R.I.P
In general Healers and Tanks are the 'responsible' and the '*****' roles. A healer and a tank only exist to make the majority of the peoples play time more fun. Some people enjoy that role, for sure, but they are a dedicated few. The general populace wants to be the 'hero', and a great part of that means you are a force to be reckoned with by your lonesome. The 'hero', after all, does not bring a feather duster to a battle.
By emphasizing that you, and only you, are responsible for your ships survival, you make sure that everyone includes some skills to stay alive in their build, makes their deaths their own fault, and forces people to consider whether trading damage for survivability is worthwhile. The end game content not being challenging has nothing to do with the trinity. And it is a fallacy to think that making the trinity hardcore will add challenge.
I can tell you that by reinforcing the trinity you would get a lot more frustration, general hatred of grouping, and elitism. It will give you that. I do not call frustration a challenge. Maybe that is just me.
What we have in STO is something else altogether. What's more ridiculous--that a shuttlecraft can mount 2 space battleship weapons, or that a space battleship can only fit 8 shuttlecraft weapons.
Well considering how (when it comes to canon) phaser arrays get their strength not from the quality of the emitters or the amount of power devoted but the number of them (I mean, you can charge 100 emitters with 1 joule every hour and still fire the weapon dealing a huge amount of damage whereas you could charge 10 relays to capacity in 1 second and still not get the same output) so I think it is more ridiculous that cruisers don't get more damage out of these things rather than the number mountable...
Also we got some good discussion going and ideas with the exception of the two old ladies throwing their handbags around.
There is something similar to the galor, the assault cruiser refit, takes a bit of saving for but well worth it. Unless you already have a D'Kora or Galor in which case you don't need the regent.
Back on topic you can get decent damage out of a cruiser but have to use certain things all of which are in an effort to reduce weapon power drain, I think there really needs to be some ways for cruisers to help mitigate some of that. As for science ships, well I have no clue anymore how to get good damage out of them, they just plain suck now. However I'll save that for another thread.
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.
You're not alone.
I don't know who this snide comment was directed against, and I don't care. It would, however, be helpful to the forum if you kept things like this to yourself.
Some ideas to improve this:
1) - Increase the general lethality of enemies, and reduce in "one hit kill" weapons. Playing a cruiser tank feels crappy because the only things capable of killing escorts and science vessels is just as effective at killing you, so your chosen strength isn't really useful.
2) - Shorten the cooldown on utility abilities such as Tractor Beam or Repulsors, and bump their damage. Playing a science ship feels crappy because your reposition and hold abilities are not as effective as just destroying the target with guns.
3) - Either devalue DPS in STF placements, or give awards for different criteria (damage, healing, damage received, objectives etc). Watching the three escorts in the map get 1st/2nd/3rd every time feels crappy.
4) - Let every ship equip cannons. If an engineer captain manages to get you inside a 45 degree arc with his 6 turn rate Ody... you deserve to eat some damage. If a science captain wants to zoom around with his agile little Nova spitting cannon fire, why not let him?
None of these things take anything away from Escorts. They still have their niche and deal the most damage, while other classes get a bit more flexibility and recognition without resorting to weapon buffs.