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Plea for universal consoles to equip to device slots
wrathofachilles
Member Posts: 931 Arc User
This is not an original idea from me, I saw it when reading through a thread quite some time ago. The name of the one who suggested it escapes me, so unfortunately I can't give credit. But at the time I saw the suggestion, I didn't really think much of it, but as I've been playing and trying to figure out just how to outfit my ships while accommodating their "special consoles," I realized, "Wow... it really would be super helpful if these "universal consoles," particularly the ones that can only be used on the ship it came on, were a device so I wouldn't have to agonize over which arguably more useful console I was going to give up." Removing tactical consoles is out of the question, so the decision becomes, am I going to cripple my shields? have no armor? reduce turn rate cause I won't have room for an rcs?
It would also make the device slots not quite so freaking useless. If you don't spec into batteries, and even if you do, they do next to nothing and have a ridiculously long cool. Many "universal consoles" are just a nice to have, but not uber, thing anyway with relatively long cools or relatively low boosts, so it wouldn't be game breaking to make them a device. It would also give cruisers a bit of a boost by making those four device slots far more useful.
Though I do realize that some ships with few device slots could find universal consoles becoming devices to be a horrible and limiting change, so perhaps the best solution would be for most, if not all, universal consoles to have the special ability to be equipped to the device slots as well as console slots. That way ships with fewer device slots still have the option of giving up console space if they want to equip a whole bunch of universals, which I think would be quite fair, and the larger ships logically have more room to equip random universal consoles before they have to start giving up their 'standard compliment' to accommodate them.
So, what do the rest of you think? Would making universal consoles able to equip to console slots AND device slots break the game, or would it finally give you something to do with your device slots and make you far more interested in universal consoles?
It would also make the device slots not quite so freaking useless. If you don't spec into batteries, and even if you do, they do next to nothing and have a ridiculously long cool. Many "universal consoles" are just a nice to have, but not uber, thing anyway with relatively long cools or relatively low boosts, so it wouldn't be game breaking to make them a device. It would also give cruisers a bit of a boost by making those four device slots far more useful.
Though I do realize that some ships with few device slots could find universal consoles becoming devices to be a horrible and limiting change, so perhaps the best solution would be for most, if not all, universal consoles to have the special ability to be equipped to the device slots as well as console slots. That way ships with fewer device slots still have the option of giving up console space if they want to equip a whole bunch of universals, which I think would be quite fair, and the larger ships logically have more room to equip random universal consoles before they have to start giving up their 'standard compliment' to accommodate them.
So, what do the rest of you think? Would making universal consoles able to equip to console slots AND device slots break the game, or would it finally give you something to do with your device slots and make you far more interested in universal consoles?
Post edited by wrathofachilles on
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You realize that this is part of balance? If you want to equip a crit console, then you should have to give up on a field generator, armor console, or RCS accelerator. It means you have to trade one stat for another.
It would have made a total difference on my Aux built Vesta as a science captain.
Same goes for weapons, I'd love nothing more then to be able to place my aux cannons on my other science ships and can't imagine why not honestly if those were the only cannons to have.
Because I find it sad that I can't use my bellerophon because of the gimped beams, it would have been so fun, even if I purchased the fleet version of that ship (intrepid) it's still a chore to try to take down shields as a sci in a sci ship with beams. Sci ships need some serious help and it would restore some of the balance issues we're seeing.
This game is sooooo far from balanced it's not even funny, so I don't really see this idea tipping what "balance' the game has.
I agree that the game is out of balance; I just don't see any reason to make it worse. Do you think it's a good idea to make it so that escorts don't have to decide between universal consoles and defensive ones?
I think that plenty of escorts/escort type vessels are already so well defended despite sacrificing some defense consoles for universals, that it really wouldn't make much of a difference, additionally, escort type ships typically only have 2 device slots. Science ships have 3 and cruisers have 4, by allowing cruisers and science vessels to have access to more universal consoles without sacrificing their defensive or offensive boosts from their engineering and science consoles might actually provide a touch of balance in the right direction.
The problem is that escorts can mount DHCs, which means they derive greater benefit from offensive universal consoles than cruisers or science ships. I don't think being able to mount more universal consoles on a cruiser or science ship would make up for that difference. I suppose our judgments on this differ.
I never said it would make up for that difference, but I believe it would give cruisers and science ships the capacity to have more special abilities available to them and restore passive bonuses from their science and engineering consoles that would otherwise be removed for the universals, and I believe that would take a few steps toward there being a better balance in the game. Four universal consoles on a cruiser without compromising its standard console complement could be quite a boon for them.
The two very useful devices that have come to your mind are essentially the only two devices. Aside from those, there are batteries, which yes, can be useful, but are still relatively "meh." Especially considering they only last for 10 seconds, unless you care to invest a hefty sum of skill tree points, in which case you can extend that to a whopping... 20 seconds. And a 2 minute cool time is an eternity in STO combat, particularly for something with only a 10-20 second uptime. Yes, there are skills like RSP that can be immensely useful for the brief 10 seconds they are up despite their 2 minute cool, but a battery does not yield a "completely fills all shields and makes for near invulnerability for 10 seconds." Batteries are just... a power boost.
Regardless of all that, are we to assume that "Hey, there are a whopping two relatively useful devices!" and "Batteries can be useful sometimes too!... when they are available for use..." are your opinions on the matter? Is that a "no" vote on making some if not all universal consoles available to be quipped to device slots? Are you saying that red matter capacitor, which not everyone has, and field modulator and batteries are soooo very useful that it's unconscionable to consider allowing universal consoles to be devices?
I don't know about you, but the prospect of equipping a tachyon detection grid or a vent theta radiation or a cloaking device or the ability to separate my saucer or what have you as a device, makes me far more excited about "devices" than "batteries" or the red matter capacitor, or the field modulator.
It's also fairly ironic to me that there was recently a thread about adding an armor console, supposedly because the devs feel that cruisers need more surviveability... and yet they release the ody and bortas three pack with three universal consoles that will go... where?... if anywhere... engineering and or science (replacing the surviveability consoles)
If an ody did not have to give up engineering/sci consoles to separate its saucer so that it could finally turn at a decent pace, or give up a console for a meager heal that's barely noticeable from the worker bees, or launch an escort that will likely blow up within 20 seconds of launching, it would be more surviveable. Not to mention that one must equip all three (read-lose three surviveability consoles) to get the "set bonus" which is also, quite meager.
So, in short, I feel that many consoles have such long cools and provide such relatively little bonus that they can be virtually equated with batteries, and at least if we make them devices, we can spice up the devices department and give cruisers and sci vessels a very, ever so slight, touch of an 'edge' or benefit or uniqueness, or whatever you wish to call it.
Currently I have Metreon Gas Canisters slotted so I have an option for stopping enemy NPCs dead when I have to, but the rest of the time it's dead weight and if I didn't actually need it so often on Infected (Elite) I would swap it in a heartbeat as, while fun, it's not the most efficient use of a slot.
I don't know if it might need to be limited a bit, but you could make one of the device slots "universal", allowing it to slot a universal console (with ability) or a device. So this way a ship is only getting a single "free" slot.
Game Balance - Ship Size and Wingmates
Let those over-powered escort drivers whine over it! :P
Another idea would be to put 'special' console slots on ships that only take these univeral ones. It'd free up normal slots for normal consoles AND help cryptic sell stuff by showing players a bunch of empty places they can't fill w/o buying something. It'd drive them nuts!
Terrible idea... Marginal humans already load up enough on p2w consoles, the cost is a console slot, that's not an unreasonable place to be forced to put a console...
So I propose that they make armor enhancements add a defense bonus. They make new slots solely for these armor enhancements (previously consoles) they give cruisers and carriers three armor slots, science 2 armor slots and 1 slot to escorts.
Then take the consoles that improve power or affect abilities that one trains boffs to use and make those fit in the device slots, but those consoles that have powers of their own like antimatter spread or nadeon torpedo leave those as consoles.
This would keep the balance but allow those of us who are trying to improve upon the horrible design we're having to work around for cruisers and science ships the ability to make the proper improvements to these ships to be closer to a balanced game experience in lieu of the current escort crisis.
I live in an alternate universe, where j.j. abrams and cryptic never existed,
where R.S.E. is what it always should be.
How exactly does giving cruisers and sci vessels the advantage when it comes to universal consoles unbalance the game? The game is currently balanced entirely toward escorts. This idea favors sci ships and cruisers more heavily than escorts, so it would seem to be a step toward better balance.
completely agree, logic fail on the part of that poster. LOL escorts are imbalanced and can tank in elite STF's so let's make it so that they can't tank anymore...annnnd where's the problem again?! Some people are just weird. Some uconsoles should never have been consoles in the first place imo.
Devices provide active abilities ("launch work bees", "cloak ship", "activate ablative armor").
And then we have Universal Consoles which add active abilities and have really interesting names like Cloaking DEVICE, Manheim DEVICE, Transwarp Computer and a variety of other things (http://www.stowiki.org/Universal_Consoles).
Universal consoles blur the line between the two functional sets and then we end up with ships that have 10 console slots instead of 9 and the rest of the "Pay 2 Win" avalanche.
In the past I have been a proponent of separating passive from active abilities within consoles and devices; the developers almost certainly won't acknowledge the legitimacy of this "situation" though they undoubtedly know they created it and then exploited it as is particularly evident by the "3 PACK" nonsense.
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As a random example, the point defense system. It cleans up fighters and heavy torpedoes near you! Yay! ... Once per battle, effectively. You don't mount a point defense system and feel like your ship has an actual point defense that's helping you, it ends up feeling more like a Scroll of Fighter-B-Gone that you only use in the absolute most dire circumstances. But if you used something that improved your armor, shields, or fireopower, what are the odds that you wouldn't be in this situation in the first place? And of what possible use is that point defense system when the enemy you're facing isn't a fighter or heavy torpedo?
Basically the current system for universal consoles forces us to choose between basic performance boosts that are useful virtually all the time, or, things that help only in specific circumstances. The only fancy consoles I personally find worth using are the ones that provide significant, permanent bonuses (Assimilated console) or ones with short enogh cooldowns so that they can actually be relied on as a feature of your battle plan (Aceton assimlator). Those are the only ones that can justify their cost in console slots. Everything else just... isn't good enough considering what you have to give up. Pushing them to device slots solves some things.
Take many of the Universal Consoles that benefit Cruisers and Science Ships but not Escorts and make them devices. Escorts cannot use them to min/max because they are not consoles they really gain anything from, but Sci and Cruisers get a slight buff.
You could also have a few Universal Consoles be able to mount in weapon slots. Something an Escort is far less likely to want to do.
Instead you would end up with ships that are totally OP. The point of making someone sacrifice one console for another is to A: make that person think very carefully about what role they wish their ship to perform, and B: to get people to band together for various tasks.
Giving someone the ability to turn like a fighter, tank like an engi, heal like a sci and hit like an escort would drive down sales of any other ship type. In effect it would cause stagnation, and that my friend is a game killer.
EDIT: Instead of unbalancing the game further, it would be much simpler and much less destructive to the game to just re-balance the one class of ship that MIGHT be considered OP. Logical thinking seems to be lacking in this thread.
Sig by my better half.
This post is full of win. I like this idea and give it my support.
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