I admit I skipped it as it started off talking about mechanics from the shows. However, while your idea does have potential, I think there is far easier ways to fix the problem.
For example, beams actually do pretty incredible damage on paper. A beam boat will put out respectable damage, even in pvp. The problem is that it doesn't really count.
When anyone is running EPtS and has anything other than 25 power in shield, their shields regen. The way beams fire, there is always a gap between shots. However unlike other weapons, even if the shield is down to red and only has 8 HP left, and your beam hits it for 1000, you take off that 8 HP and then nothing goes to the hull. By the time the next beam hits, because of the timing mechanic, the shield has ticked to at least 1 HP. You can occasionally get a full beam onto a bear hull when firing, but the regen pops their shield to at least one HP, so your next beam does nothing.
Do one damage, nothing to hull, next beam, rinse and repeat. With 8 beams, you effective only getting the benefit from 4, 6 is only getting 3, and so on. That is, if it is exactly hit and and then miss. I haven't actually been able to find the pattern.
The DPS tracker still shows you doing the full damage of the beam, but it isn't bleeding through to the hull.
I have tested this quite a bit, and at least from my numbers this is what seems to be happening.
I admit I skipped it as it started off talking about mechanics from the shows. However, while your idea does have potential, I think there is far easier ways to fix the problem.
For example, beams actually do pretty incredible damage on paper. A beam boat will put out respectable damage, even in pvp. The problem is that it doesn't really count.
When anyone is running EPtS and has anything other than 25 power in shield, their shields regen. The way beams fire, there is always a gap between shots. However unlike other weapons, even if the shield is down to red and only has 8 HP left, and your beam hits it for 1000, you take off that 8 HP and then nothing goes to the hull. By the time the next beam hits, because of the timing mechanic, the shield has ticked to at least 1 HP. You can occasionally get a full beam onto a bear hull when firing, but the regen pops their shield to at least one HP, so your next beam does nothing.
Do one damage, nothing to hull, next beam, rinse and repeat. With 8 beams, you effective only getting the benefit from 4, 6 is only getting 3, and so on. That is, if it is exactly hit and and then miss. I haven't actually been able to find the pattern.
The DPS tracker still shows you doing the full damage of the beam, but it isn't bleeding through to the hull.
I have tested this quite a bit, and at least from my numbers this is what seems to be happening.
This is such a huge flaw in the game if true! I honestly haven't payed attention, so I cannot confirm or deny that this is how the shield-hull damage mechanic works. Beams need a change, that's for sure.
Damage should never be lost. Plain and simple as that. Any damage over the shield health should hit the hull.
It's not Escorts as much as power creep. Everyone has stupid high healing and resists now.
A half decent Escort with Elite Fleet Shields and Rep passives can tank just as well as (if not better) than a Cruiser of yesteryear. Sure, they might take a bit more damage, but they won't die and they'll be able to dish out a LOT more of it in return.
I don't think that's how it works, if you use BO and rip a hole in a shield arc you'll definitely notice hull damage as well.
I thought I had mentioned that, but I guess I did not. You are right though, BO is the only beam skill I have found that the damage will continue to hull.
I don't know what all the whining about nerfing Ecorts is about.
I am an Escort pilot, but have several Alts that fly Cruisers and enjoy sawing away at opponents with broadside beams.
I guess you just need to know how to fly a class of ships to get the best out of them. Try an Engineer to power all those beams and have fun.
I smell a troll. Or someone who has never faced a competent tac player in an escort. Try it a few times, then come back and make a post. Enjoy trying to saw through epts1 with those awesome engineer powered beams, mate!
I wonder how much of the cries for nerfs/buffs would go away if they stripped all damage modifiers from the captain classes, and made them purely ship- and skill-based. GDF would be okay, I think, with the current Tribble changes, but I'd rather see the captain abilities debuff and heal rather than increase damage done.
Honestly I think a few fixes are in order to simply change survivability across the board instead of just focusing on escorts, here is what I mean:
1. Nerf leadership, this is already coming and the difference is astounding, if you don't know what I mean, ships normally running with 125% hull regen per min are now going to be dropped down to only 33%. Not to mention its now based properly on your crew amount, meaning cruisers are going to get a hull regen advantage over others.
2. Nerf elite fleet shields hard or get rid of them entirely, it seems like all the problems in pvp come from the elite fleet shields, while passives are only compounding the issue. Fleet shields are single-handedly the BEST shields if you want to do any kind of shield tanking, they can stack to crazy high resistances combined with EPtS chaining and passives that you can't sub nuke off and require almost no user input other than being shot and mashing space bar. If this makes you mad because 'wtf elite fleet stuff will be useles!@451' then give elite fleet equipment set bonuses like all the other unique ship equipment in the game. I would say make the set bonus the shield resistance stacking, that would be fair.
3. Rework magical NPC one shots, and make boss npc damage more heavy pressure based, this may be one of the sole reasons why many don't slot threat control, because even maxed threat control with polarize hull, aux2sif, and 3 neutroniums cant defend against a magical 100k torp that will likely be pointed at you thanks to the fact you have constant aggro. What I mean by making them heavy pressure based is make their damage less 'massive burst' and more 'consistent heavy damage that will wear down most ships', this will encourage tank roles in STFs as they can use their healing to fight the damage instead of just being shot with a single torp and being blown out of the game.
4. Give NPCs more teeth, and no I don't mean 'more magical 100k dmg murder balls' I mean give them more abilities to use and have them use it often, almost like a player. Romulans and tholians are a nice step in this direction but it needs to be spread over all npcs, have some chaining EPtS1 or throwing subnukes, have them using HE to heal and clear debuffs, tac team for shield distribution, TSS for shield healing, and other stuff like aceton beam, attack patterns, beam overload, etc. Even give specialty ships their own specials, like an NPC wells being able to backstep. I am aware npcs can already do some of this, but they throw out their abilities haphazardly and don't do it very often or very tactically, which isn't what im talking about.
5. Consolidate skills for sci, right now most ships can run with a cookie cutter build and do just fine, however sci skills are so spread out all over the damn place that you have to make constant sacrifices, its made even worse by the fact that most of the best skills for a sci to have are placed on the end of the spectrum, combine this with the weird skill system and you can barely put anything there if you run with a basic pvp spec to counter TRIBBLE like the uber klink build so it doesn't flatline your power (which is basically what nearly every klink is running these days.)
1. Nerf leadership, this is already coming and the difference is astounding, if you don't know what I mean, ships normally running with 125% hull regen per min are now going to be dropped down to only 33%. Not to mention its now based properly on your crew amount, meaning cruisers are going to get a hull regen advantage over others.
That WOULD be a good thing if crew wasn't so easy to injure or kill. When you have some torps with a chance to injure or kill 20% of a ships crew even when they don't hit hull it nullifies crew size advantage in a big hurry, what possible explanation is there for 200 out of 4000 crew being taken out of commission from a single photon or quantum torpedo that's stopped by shields?
Of course, the main disadvantage to having a large crew is the boff ability cooldown penalties you get when they start getting injured or killed.
I highly disagree that escorts could not take a beating in the series.
The best known Escort, the Defiant, held up the fight with a Borg cube for a more than extended period, from the typhoon sector to sector 001, from the time that took the Enterprise to get from the neutral zone to earth, when most other ships were destroyed (even the admirals ship).
Sure... She was damaged beyond recognition, but she she did survive, and she was still fighting.
OF CAUSE any ship should be able to hold up under fire... Destroying ships in 2-3 volleys is no fun... Even I think that, and I generally like to feel really powerful.
When I say balance, I mean Rock -> Paper -> Sissors, and something inbetween, that allows for anyone to punch out damage, while still not just ripping things apart.
And I don't think a nerf to anything is the answer... Again... There was a time where people said Sci ships were over powered (personally I still belive that)... People cried for a nerf, and they got it... Now... how well did that work out? Same goes for Cruisers btw.
No ship should be a "Glass cannon", or a "Whale"...
Heres an idea I had that, admittedly needs work, still could work if implemented properly:
The diffrence would be that each class would deal a equal amount of damage, but it would make room for say cruisers and sci ships to turn and/or restore shields. So the escorts would need to work in packs, or with the support of cruisers and sci ships.
Again... this idea needs work, and it needs to be balanced towards skills and powers, but its a basic concept that seems infinitely wiser than just nerfing classes to extinction in turns.
Meh... guess I can forgive you... This time..
Well in fairness, a captain in a Delta flyer could probably tank donatra on elite... NPC's ain't that bright.
On a side-note, freely buffing things might not be the best thing either.
As I'd mentioned in another thread, one thing they could do with the upcoming warp cores is to make different classes of warp cores that are specific to ship type. In general, a cruiser would likely be capable of equipping a larger warp core than an escort. Obviously the system would need to be a bit more refined than just that, but that's the basic idea.
Honestly the escorts that can tank the elite cubes and stuff area already fully kitted out with the best gear in game, and so they should be able to do it.
But the actual escort you get when you hit Va will not be able to do that. Those are not tank-worthy at all. Even mark XII purple shields, run with two tactical teams and EPT shields abilities, will be drained by a normal cube in an ESTF in a few seconds, I tested it in a defiant retrofit at shield power level 100.
Nerfing escort suriviability maybe would make PVP cruisers invincible, but it would pretty much bar escorts from elite STFs until they got a full tier V Omega reputation.
And honestly, that would be a mean move. Yeah, I dislike it when people want to have the most tanking ship do the most damage.
Let us wear Swimsuits on Foundry maps or bridges please! I would pay zen for that.
Honestly the escorts that can tank the elite cubes and stuff area already fully kitted out with the best gear in game, and so they should be able to do it.
But the actual escort you get when you hit Va will not be able to do that. Those are not tank-worthy at all. Even mark XII purple shields, run with two tactical teams and EPT shields abilities, will be drained by a normal cube in an ESTF in a few seconds, I tested it in a defiant retrofit at shield power level 100.
Nerfing escort suriviability maybe would make PVP cruisers invincible, but it would pretty much bar escorts from elite STFs until they got a full tier V Omega reputation.
And honestly, that would be a mean move. Yeah, I dislike it when people want to have the most tanking ship do the most damage.
You tested survivability in a defiant. Your test in is invalidated. Try doing it again with a patrol escort, or any escort that has an ensign and Lt engy slot. MV and defiant I don't have much of a problem with. Its the ones that can run epts x2 and RSP.
Oh, and my patrol escort and Blockade runner have T1 omega and rommie rep, with blue and green gear. Haven't invested much of anything in them yet, but yes, they can in fact tank in eSTFs. They cannot gun turret as much, as I have to slightly pivot to the right or left once in a while between tac teams. But I assure your, they have no issue what so ever in eSTFs without any end game gear.
As for escorts being too survivable. . .it depends. Some are more survivable than others. The Fleet Patrol Escort is rather crunchy, for example. The Fleet Defiant is less so.
I would recommend to people this: Don't judge escorts (or any ships, for that matter) by their performance in PvE. You can't balance a damn thing with PvE, because it will never tax your ship to the maximum. That's why balancing is usually done with PvP as the measuring stick, because PvPers draw every bit of performance out of the ships while fighting.
The NPCs in this game rely on one-hit superattacks (especially the boss opponents), and their methodology is rather predictable. Under such circumstances. . .yeah, an escort can seem 'tanky'. Put that same escort in a challenging PvP scenario, and suddenly it's not so tanky.
Of course, most people in this game seem to be PvE Kirks who thumb their noses at PvP, so my words will have little merit with them. Oh well.
i guess that must be why cryptic done that wonderful tricobalt nerf, thus rending it useless in both pve and pvp, oh and plasma pre-season 7, also mines, and many others things, yes pvp balancing is answer *laughs* :rolleyes:
Not only dont they work, but seperating saucer or parts of a ship (Galaxy, odyssey etc), when combining those parts back again, the crew in those parts commit suicide.
Comments
I admit I skipped it as it started off talking about mechanics from the shows. However, while your idea does have potential, I think there is far easier ways to fix the problem.
For example, beams actually do pretty incredible damage on paper. A beam boat will put out respectable damage, even in pvp. The problem is that it doesn't really count.
When anyone is running EPtS and has anything other than 25 power in shield, their shields regen. The way beams fire, there is always a gap between shots. However unlike other weapons, even if the shield is down to red and only has 8 HP left, and your beam hits it for 1000, you take off that 8 HP and then nothing goes to the hull. By the time the next beam hits, because of the timing mechanic, the shield has ticked to at least 1 HP. You can occasionally get a full beam onto a bear hull when firing, but the regen pops their shield to at least one HP, so your next beam does nothing.
Do one damage, nothing to hull, next beam, rinse and repeat. With 8 beams, you effective only getting the benefit from 4, 6 is only getting 3, and so on. That is, if it is exactly hit and and then miss. I haven't actually been able to find the pattern.
The DPS tracker still shows you doing the full damage of the beam, but it isn't bleeding through to the hull.
I have tested this quite a bit, and at least from my numbers this is what seems to be happening.
This is such a huge flaw in the game if true! I honestly haven't payed attention, so I cannot confirm or deny that this is how the shield-hull damage mechanic works. Beams need a change, that's for sure.
Damage should never be lost. Plain and simple as that. Any damage over the shield health should hit the hull.
sig
http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/5451/om71.jpg
It is a peculiar phenomenon that we can imagine events that defy the laws of the universe.
A half decent Escort with Elite Fleet Shields and Rep passives can tank just as well as (if not better) than a Cruiser of yesteryear. Sure, they might take a bit more damage, but they won't die and they'll be able to dish out a LOT more of it in return.
I thought I had mentioned that, but I guess I did not. You are right though, BO is the only beam skill I have found that the damage will continue to hull.
I am an Escort pilot, but have several Alts that fly Cruisers and enjoy sawing away at opponents with broadside beams.
I guess you just need to know how to fly a class of ships to get the best out of them. Try an Engineer to power all those beams and have fun.
I smell a troll. Or someone who has never faced a competent tac player in an escort. Try it a few times, then come back and make a post. Enjoy trying to saw through epts1 with those awesome engineer powered beams, mate!
I read your thread thru OP and I agree, I just don't understand why people keep crying nerf Escorts.
If you can't beat an Escort, then fly one as well.
As for PvP, Sci captain in a BoP.
1. Nerf leadership, this is already coming and the difference is astounding, if you don't know what I mean, ships normally running with 125% hull regen per min are now going to be dropped down to only 33%. Not to mention its now based properly on your crew amount, meaning cruisers are going to get a hull regen advantage over others.
2. Nerf elite fleet shields hard or get rid of them entirely, it seems like all the problems in pvp come from the elite fleet shields, while passives are only compounding the issue. Fleet shields are single-handedly the BEST shields if you want to do any kind of shield tanking, they can stack to crazy high resistances combined with EPtS chaining and passives that you can't sub nuke off and require almost no user input other than being shot and mashing space bar. If this makes you mad because 'wtf elite fleet stuff will be useles!@451' then give elite fleet equipment set bonuses like all the other unique ship equipment in the game. I would say make the set bonus the shield resistance stacking, that would be fair.
3. Rework magical NPC one shots, and make boss npc damage more heavy pressure based, this may be one of the sole reasons why many don't slot threat control, because even maxed threat control with polarize hull, aux2sif, and 3 neutroniums cant defend against a magical 100k torp that will likely be pointed at you thanks to the fact you have constant aggro. What I mean by making them heavy pressure based is make their damage less 'massive burst' and more 'consistent heavy damage that will wear down most ships', this will encourage tank roles in STFs as they can use their healing to fight the damage instead of just being shot with a single torp and being blown out of the game.
4. Give NPCs more teeth, and no I don't mean 'more magical 100k dmg murder balls' I mean give them more abilities to use and have them use it often, almost like a player. Romulans and tholians are a nice step in this direction but it needs to be spread over all npcs, have some chaining EPtS1 or throwing subnukes, have them using HE to heal and clear debuffs, tac team for shield distribution, TSS for shield healing, and other stuff like aceton beam, attack patterns, beam overload, etc. Even give specialty ships their own specials, like an NPC wells being able to backstep. I am aware npcs can already do some of this, but they throw out their abilities haphazardly and don't do it very often or very tactically, which isn't what im talking about.
5. Consolidate skills for sci, right now most ships can run with a cookie cutter build and do just fine, however sci skills are so spread out all over the damn place that you have to make constant sacrifices, its made even worse by the fact that most of the best skills for a sci to have are placed on the end of the spectrum, combine this with the weird skill system and you can barely put anything there if you run with a basic pvp spec to counter TRIBBLE like the uber klink build so it doesn't flatline your power (which is basically what nearly every klink is running these days.)
god dammit
That WOULD be a good thing if crew wasn't so easy to injure or kill. When you have some torps with a chance to injure or kill 20% of a ships crew even when they don't hit hull it nullifies crew size advantage in a big hurry, what possible explanation is there for 200 out of 4000 crew being taken out of commission from a single photon or quantum torpedo that's stopped by shields?
Of course, the main disadvantage to having a large crew is the boff ability cooldown penalties you get when they start getting injured or killed.
Interesting stuff
I like this idea as well
But the actual escort you get when you hit Va will not be able to do that. Those are not tank-worthy at all. Even mark XII purple shields, run with two tactical teams and EPT shields abilities, will be drained by a normal cube in an ESTF in a few seconds, I tested it in a defiant retrofit at shield power level 100.
Nerfing escort suriviability maybe would make PVP cruisers invincible, but it would pretty much bar escorts from elite STFs until they got a full tier V Omega reputation.
And honestly, that would be a mean move. Yeah, I dislike it when people want to have the most tanking ship do the most damage.
You tested survivability in a defiant. Your test in is invalidated. Try doing it again with a patrol escort, or any escort that has an ensign and Lt engy slot. MV and defiant I don't have much of a problem with. Its the ones that can run epts x2 and RSP.
Oh, and my patrol escort and Blockade runner have T1 omega and rommie rep, with blue and green gear. Haven't invested much of anything in them yet, but yes, they can in fact tank in eSTFs. They cannot gun turret as much, as I have to slightly pivot to the right or left once in a while between tac teams. But I assure your, they have no issue what so ever in eSTFs without any end game gear.
i guess that must be why cryptic done that wonderful tricobalt nerf, thus rending it useless in both pve and pvp, oh and plasma pre-season 7, also mines, and many others things, yes pvp balancing is answer *laughs* :rolleyes:
Not only dont they work, but seperating saucer or parts of a ship (Galaxy, odyssey etc), when combining those parts back again, the crew in those parts commit suicide.