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Instead of nerfing escort damage...
haravikk
Member Posts: 278
Just a thought, but why don't we have the concept of flanking damage in space combat? I know shield bubbles mean that a ship could be equally shielded from all angles, but the shield strength is still dependent on emitter placement etc. and most ships have a bias towards forward firepower.
Basically what I'm proposing is that the damage of escorts would be reduced overall, but only against a ship's forward facing. But at the same time they would receive flank attack bonuses when firing at a ship's flanks or rear which brings them back to around their current level.
The idea is really to make escorts manoeuvre more, while other ships can deal consistent (but still low) damage.
It'd be a relatively small change, but I think it could help to shake up the dynamic a bit and mean that an escort's rapid turning isn't just about keeping your cannons on target 100% of the time.
Basically what I'm proposing is that the damage of escorts would be reduced overall, but only against a ship's forward facing. But at the same time they would receive flank attack bonuses when firing at a ship's flanks or rear which brings them back to around their current level.
The idea is really to make escorts manoeuvre more, while other ships can deal consistent (but still low) damage.
It'd be a relatively small change, but I think it could help to shake up the dynamic a bit and mean that an escort's rapid turning isn't just about keeping your cannons on target 100% of the time.
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Game Balance - Ship Size and Wingmates
Game Balance - Ship Size and Wingmates
Post edited by haravikk on
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Maybe back in the days of unkillable zombie cruisers this would have been a positive balance step.
Besides, it can create some fun in pve. Spheres have no rear to flank! Heck I bet most borg static objects would be made to break that coding so they couldn't be flanked! Making them relatively "harder" in this new space flanking universe.
What may be a nice idea for pve can be a bad idea for pvp. I believe when they said it would favor escorts even more they meant more from a pvp perspective. Which right now is pretty bleak in balance, about as bleak as how useless eng's and sci's can be in the dps race that is pve. lol
My thinking is that the easiest way to add this would be to make it a feature of cannons (possibly excluding turrets); i.e - all forward facing cannons would see their base damage reduced by 25%, but would have that damage returned when dealing flanking damage. So it wouldn't affect beams.
It kind of "fixes" cannons in a way as for escorts, which are the majority of ships using forward facing cannons, the limited arc isn't really a disadvantage at all.
The basic idea is that escorts can't do their current level of damage in a straight up battle line, but must manoeuvre continuously to remain in the target's flank or rear. It also gives beam boats the option of sacrificing firepower if they can bring their front to bear, but in doing so reduce the damage they suffer for even a little while.
Game Balance - Ship Size and Wingmates
I flew a cruiser from launch up to here recently and I have been on the other end of that NERF bat way too many times in the last 3 years.
Cryptic has created this over powered situation with the crusier/sci NERFs and the P2W escorts coming out of the C-Store/lockboxes. It was a mistake, period, to ever add 4 eng console escorts to the game. That was 1 of the things crusiers had to them over escorts, but not anymore.
I do agree that other ships need to be improved as well, by fixing crew damage to help cruisers, separate science abilities from tactical ones so science ships can have their past (and idiotic) nerf removed.
But this is just a proposal to reduce some of the dominance of cannons; currently if you're an escort there's not really any reason to take anything else unless you're building as a torpedo boat. With this kind of change beams would have some appeal, even on highly manoeuvrable ships. Plus this kind of change would give cruisers/science ships a new way of reducing incoming massed cannon damage by turning their front into it if they can. This forces an escort to move to get their cannons doing flank damage again, hopefully emphasising burst damage, while the cruiser/science ship just keeps hitting, even if their damage is less overall it would be continuous, which is sort of how it's supposed to work.
Game Balance - Ship Size and Wingmates
Rhetorical question - you're an escort pilot aren't you? Of course you are.
In the fiction, the bigger your power plant the more energy you have that can be used for propulsion, defenses, and guns; the Defiant was an exception, not the rule, but this game makes it out to be the holy grail of justification for bad design.
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It's only natural that a ship might focus shield emitters, or redundant emitters, to the front as that's where enemies are going to come from in a battle-line, it's also where a ship's deflector is focused since it's intended to aid with safe forward travel at warp. The choice of having that affect cannons rather than all damage is pure gameplay mechanic, but you can still spin it to a degree.
A ship's rear and sides are going to be harder to defend as the nacelles required for warp travel are in the way.
Game Balance - Ship Size and Wingmates
I can understand not wanting to see nerfs to your chosen ship type, and I think its a good idea, but not something that can be simply implemented. I'd rather it be a "from the ground up" type thing as opposed to tacked on. Certainly, if there was flanking? How would that affect other ships? Should they get shield bonuses on top of that? After all, it would make sense in that regard. Or more weapons? Should all ships get "Target subsystem" like Science vessels? There's a lot of "if" questions and considerations to be had.
If Cryptic got the license for a game with space-fighters, capital ships, etc? I'd love to see it take that level of detail (say, Babylon 5, Wing Commander, or something). It could be really amazing - ships are more than buckets of hull points, but have specific systems, areas, etc., that react differently when damaged, fighters protect cap ships from other fighters, try taking out ship defenses, etc. But, I also think that it should be something that is there from the ground up, and the design centered around it.
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Welcome to Pre-F2P escort 101. Take a seat. Have your hanky ready for ye shall weep.
Back in the day, escorts did not have immunity to holds (APO effect) nor did they have insane resists to drains or disables (season 6'ish) nor did they do so much damage (f2p tac skill tree dumbing down).
Back then, tactical team did not balance shields.
Back then, an escort's role and function was to be the one ship with the speed and turn rate to strike at a weak shield facing and hit the hull.
For you see.. without shield autobalance a ship's shields could collapse on one side only...not like today where one shield facing HP's literally becomes the sum of all shield facings with one click.
In the days when maneuvering was an important thing to consider to protect your ship and to attack an enemy ship...the escort had a role.
But since then all you need to do is point nose at target, click the god-mode immunity+def+speed+dmg bonus and tac team and shoot ships from any direction and not even bother to do anything other than keep nose to target.
First you say it has no validity in canon, then you point out that other things in STO have no basis in canon? Make up your frigging mind; my point is that it makes enough sense for it to be usable as a game mechanic. If something is a good mechanic then it doesn't really matter how much sense it makes so long as it makes enough sense that you're not taken out of the setting entirely.
More accurately it's a post you didn't even read; the proposal is that escorts do normal damage against a ship's side and rear, but reduced damage against a ship's front. So to do their current level of damage they have to manoeuvre. If you spend all your time on a ship's sides or rear then you won't notice any difference, but if they can bring their front round you'll certainly notice the difference. It would make escorts a bit more about positioning again, rather than just spewing damage from any position against any shield facing since it doesn't really matter otherwise.
I then posted that the change might make sense on 45 degree arc cannons specifically, essentially meaning they must cause "flank" damage (like on ground) to maintain the huge levels of damage they churn out at the moment.
Game Balance - Ship Size and Wingmates
No, I read your post, and even if you make it so that escorts do their current level of damage against the sides and rear but less damage against the front, THEY SPEND ALL THEIR TIME IN THE REAR/SIDES! So essentially you propose no change at all? Brilliant idea... "I have an idea for you, devs, you should do a whooooole bunch of code work that will essentially amount to nothing." Cruisers can't turn and the only way to keep the front side of any ship facing an escort would be to slow to minimum speed and keep turning to try and keep the front facing the escort. That would accomplish two things, one, make all ships look really stupid maneuvering that way, and two, remove what little defense bonus they get from moving more quickly. And if your proposition would affect escorts in that same "normal damage against the sides/rear and less damage from the front," if a cruiser hits an escort from the sides/back it will do normal damage, the damage it does currently, but from the front the damage would be reduced.... since escorts spend all their time facing the cruiser, you'd just be TRIBBLE what little damage a cruiser can do against an escort to complete oblivion.
The concept you propose actually makes escorts not really have to maneuver any more than they already do while forcing other ships to try and maneuver more. How so? Because escorts have 3/4 of the ship as a target for maximum effect, while cruisers/sci vessels would only have 1/4 of their shields as the "target to hide behind." So all around, massive fail idea.
The version of your idea that would force escorts to maneuver is if ships had a random rotating single facing (not 3 facings) that was vulnerable while the rest of the shield facings are hard as nails. So if some visual cue showed that the ship is currently vulnerable in the forward facing for the next 30 seconds, then the right for 30, then back to the front, then the aft, then some other random facing, In that scenario, the escort would have to zip around to stay on the vulnerable facing. But I imagine that would not go over at all well with escorts. And if the same mechanic was applied to escort shields, no ship would ever do damage against them ever so... yeah. Doubtful to be implemented.
Uh yeh you seem to be confused. you arent flying a "space tiger tank" sheild power unlike tank armor is not "thicker" in the front. space is 3 dimensional, attacks come from all angles. and where a ground based tank can position himself so as it would be harder to get into a flanking position, space craft do not have the luxury.
so logic would dictate equal power to all sheilds- front, rear, sides, TOP and BOTTOM.......see? 3 dimensional.
Why don't they just equalize damage between ship types at a base level instead and make all ships capable of outputting the same damage over time using a "standard configuration of weapons at an optimum level of skill point investment"?
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Because then you may as well only have one ship, one weapon set, one damage type and one race. You would also need a fresh copy of your CV, a decent amount of savings to live on and a fallback job to go to, because you would just have committed the stupidest possible error in the gaming industry and forever blacklisted yourself in the field of games development.
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