Long-term, we believe the EPtX abilities would be more interesting if their effects were yet more substantial but they had significant downtime. However, changing the lockout between two abilities of the same type down to 20 seconds results in the original downtime I had intended for abilities of 11%, rather than the 33% that the previous patch introduced.
I must ask in all honesty what is the goal of the modifications to the EPtX abilities? Is it to make the powers other than EPtS desirable? To buff cruisers and/or engineers indirectly?
If so then these changes do not achieve that goal. You see there is a giant elephant in the room with EPtS and just how much of a defense boost it gives that has come to be relied upon by a great many ships. Are you aware that EPtS 1 will provide more defense for the first 15 seconds it is active than a 125 aux powered TSS 1 does when using decent gear? Not to mention the heal it provides or the longer duration? This is due to the extremely high shield regeneration rates mostly.
The only way to fix that particular problem is to increase the resistance amount provided by shield power while simultaneously reducing the regeneration boost it provides.
Simply put EPtS is too strong not to use. Is it possible to fly without it? Absolutely, it is also possible to complete end game content in a shuttle but that does not make it a good idea for one to do so.
That means your options to achieve the above goals are pretty basic. You can either nerf the living TRIBBLE out of EPtS and live with the QQ consequences, or allow players to rotate two different EPtX abilities without penalty. Preferably you would re-evaluate all defensive powers, gear, doffs, passives, etc and perform a complete balance pass on all but I doubt that is on your schedule.
Yeah the EPtX situation is still not right. But I like that the dev is responding to feedback and we are trying to figure this out as a community. See what we can do when we have a few weeks to test balance changes instead of 24 hours? We'll find a working compromise by May.
The devs have been responding way more than usual to feedback from all over the forum actually. It's really great.
You need to take a look at the 4 EPT scenarios and check what should happen to them.
1) Ship with 1 EPT
2) Ship with 2 of the same EPT
3) Ship with 2 different EPT
4) Cruiser with 4 EPT (2 + 2)
So let's see:
1) Should ships running 1 EPT have a gap? I say yes.
-On holodeck they have 30sec up + 15 sec gap. Seems fine to me.
-On tribble they have a 20sec up + 25 sec gap. Seems also fine and a needed nerf to escort survive-ability.
2) Should ships running 2 of the same EPT have a gap?
-On holodeck they have 100% up. It's kinda needed for game balance, but it does not fit into the spirit of an "emergency" power.
-On tribble they have 20sec up + 20sec up + 5sec gap. Seems fair to me. 2 powers reduce the gap, but don't eliminate it completely.
3) Should ships running 2 different EPT have a gap?
-On holodeck they have 15sec up + 15sec double up + 15sec up. Seems cool to me and is more viable with buffs to W E and A
-On tribble they have 15sec up + 5sec double up + 15sec up + 10sec gap. A nerf, but ok.
4) Now the big one. Should cruisers with 4 ETS have gap?
-On holodeck they have 100% double up. Again needed for game balance, but against "emergency"-spirit
-On tribble this is now a cooldown stepping over each other chaos were we run into the 15sec cooldown, let'see with S and W
5sec S
5sec S
5sec S
5sec S W
5sec W
5sec W
5sec S2 W
5sec S2
5sec S2
5sec S2 W2
5sec W2
5sec W2
(20sec gap for both powers + 10sec ability idle time after the 45sec cooldown)
or
5sec S
5sec S
5sec S
5sec S
5sec S2
5sec S2
5sec S2
5sec S2 W
5sec W
5sec W
5sec S W
(10sec gap for S, never a use for W2 + 5sec ability idle time after the 45sec cooldown)
I agree, keep the cooldowns at a clean 15/30/45, but change the buffs to 25sec to make a gap. (Hell change the buff to 15sec, so no 2 emergencies can run at the same time. You only have 1 emergency power, so I don't see how it can be in 2 subsystems at the same time, but this also kills 4EPT-cruisers)
"Updated the visual appearance of all existing Romulan ships."
what exactly does this mean?
have the NPC ships been updated with the new playermodel grafix? (if so then i would urge you to do the same for the LockBox Ships, the NPC Jem'Hadar Bug looks horrible compared to the player ship., Galor and D'Kora are also obviously different looking, not as bad as the bug ship though).
or have the player ships (that we don't even have seen yet) been updated again? and in what form?
or was this a simple texture update, because all ships use the same texture all have been updated?...
I'll add my voice to the comments about emergency power timers, and agree with the urge to keep the cd timers like they are currently on holodeck.
Let us take a look at the Galaxy class cruiser. This ship has three ensign-level engineering boff abilities. The only abilities that can be placed in an ensign engineering slots are eptX & engineering team 1. You really shouldn't run eng team 1 on a galaxy, since eng team 3 is a much stronger heal, and you have the slots for it. Running engineering team 1 & 3 together is stupid, since you can just use doffs to give eng team 3 a 15-second cooldown. This means that you'll be running at least 3 eptx abilities, and given the current changes, you are guaranteed to have wasted and inefficient cooldown cycles and an inability to use all your abilities on a regular basis.
Escorts can run perfectly efficient BO layouts (CRF 3 / Omega 1 x2 / CRF 1 / Delta / TT x2 , epts1x2, rsp, hazards, tss) that have no ability slots wasted. I can use every single one of those abilities when it comes off cd, gaining the benefit of every single BO ability over a 1-minute cycle.
Science ships (not going to bother with a build, there are so many) have long cooldowns on many of their powers, and have a sufficient variety of powers (though 3x ensign sci stations can be awkward) that you aren't going to have 'wasted' abilities.
Cruisers should have the same, and not be unable to cycle their powers efficiently as the other two ship classes. Keep the current duration timers, and buff the engine, aux & weapon powers for the full 30-second duration. The changes break the 4x eptx power relay that serves as the backbone of the most effective cruiser builds. Cruisers need to become more effective, not less.
yup now the engineer ensign of the gal-r is even more useless and a wasted slot on the ship
way to go i honestly did not think you could make the worst cruiser in the game any more pathetic brovo
Oh gods, I hope this change doesn't make it to live, I play cruisers on most of my characters, they are underpowered as it is already, now useless bridge officer slots, could we at least see them changed? maybe instead of a ensign only slot, they could be a Lt only slot? (were you still only have 1 slot but its tier 3 or 4)
though that second option requires more work I bet, just put it back the way it was.
The mission at Hotep in the Borg campaign is broken for the KDF [have not checked with FED]. When you have to escort the shuttles, the shuttles are classed as enemies [they are Federation aligned]. They will not move out like they should, and clearing the way of Borg contacts makes no difference either.
the EPtX situation just gets more laughable by the second. go ahead and keep the EPt cooldowns at 20, thats fine, that will actually cause them to sync better with tech doffed AtB. fix the global though, or your efforts to try to make the other EPtX skills more popular will have failed.
on another note, the kdf now have a bunch of repackaged fed missions in the regulus sector block too, the dialog has you continuing the story line from the martok missions, a nice touch. too bad this type of thing wasn't done around season 3, think of all the time the phrase 'kdf has no content' could have been avoided being typed if it had.
UI is far better with the changes but I am still concern about Emergency Power to weapons which is much lower DPS then before. Those 10 seconds without power to weapons 3 is around 60% DPS drop which is a far larger drop to DPS then the small boost you gain. overall we are loseing a lot of DPS with crusiers with the change.
Cruisers should have the same, and not be unable to cycle their powers efficiently as the other two ship classes. Keep the current duration timers, and buff the engine, aux & weapon powers for the full 30-second duration. The changes break the 4x eptx power relay that serves as the backbone of the most effective cruiser builds. Cruisers need to become more effective, not less.
If you reduce the global to 20s but keep the systm cooldown at 15s, you essentially kill all 2 EPtX + 2 EPtY builds because you force them into having a gap in their EPtS rotation that they could avoid by only doubling up on EPtS.
This looks like the worst possible change for cruisers that rely on a EPtS/EPtW 2+2 combination. Just bump everything from 20s to 30s or lower the system cooldown to 10s.
(Or make the duration scale between 20s and 30s from EPtX 1-3?)
Two great posts by Naldoran and Mancom.
I urge the devs to take these comments into consideration, and how the new CD adversely affects Cruisers the most.
I can appreciate adjucatorhawk's goal, but at the same time I don't think some passive toggle type powers (or powers that are keybound to be such) are a terrible thing.
As myself and others have been stressing chained EPTx is part of the bedrock of many cruiser builds.
You have cruisers in the game right now that are constantly derided for having too many ensign powers to optimize, and this change only exasperates that but not only for ships like the Excelsior and Galaxy but for most cruisers in general.
Just imagine for a moment, and this is for PvE so you don't think my only concern is PvP, you want to design a tanking Cruiser for STFs.
You want to take EPTS 3, maybe you take two copies of it.
At that point, what do you possibly slot into your Ensign stations that will not automatically force a longer gap in resistance coverage than just leaving your ensign stations empty?
Long-term, we believe the EPtX abilities would be more interesting if their effects were yet more substantial but they had significant downtime. However, changing the lockout between two abilities of the same type down to 20 seconds results in the original downtime I had intended for abilities of 11%, rather than the 33% that the previous patch introduced.
Adjudicator:
The real problem is not the duration of the effect of the boff abilities. Its the inane and insane bonuses the rank system gives.
Have you guys tried.. just once... to simply REMOVE the rank-up bonuses?
For example, when you start a KDF character (when it started at commander rank) and fly a bird of prey.... the instant you rank up to captain...even if you are in the middle of a fight when the rank-up happens... your ship instantly receives a massive bonus in speed, turn rate, damage ... everything. Its so noticeable its ridiculous.
If you remove those rank up bonuses and allow the game to determine performance based exclusively on ship gear and captain skill points the game would fall into a much more balanced and enjoyable combat level.
What you guys are doing with these epts and other changes is trying to compensate for the issues caused by the rank up bonuses.
If you remove them, ships become much slower and less able to turn..they do not do as much damage and their accuracy is not what it is now. A nerf? No. All these 'nerfs' are the direct result of the captain skill point training and ship setup. How many people do you think have no skill points in impulse engine? No skill points in warp coil? In subsystem repair? How many do you think have just 1 or 2 points in power insulators and dampening skill boxes? Almost everyone. Why? The rank up bonuses give you so much benefits in those areas that the skill boxes are pointless to take. But you take that bonus away and all the sudden the skill boxes count a lot.
Furthermore, I would like to ask that you and another dev do this experiment. It should only take up 5 minutes of your time:
One of you play an elite stf and the other one watches him play in the same screen.
The watcher should focus on seeing the ship and combat, not the icons being clicked or the combat log or anything. Just watch the ships in the screen duke it out.
The one playing play as normal but be aware, if possible, of how much time you spend watching the power tray, the shield status and the enemy status indicator... aka how much time you spend NOT seeing your ship actually shoot and do stuff.
Compare notes afterwards.
You will notice that the playing spends almost the entire time NOT watching the game but just watching the stuff he is clicking. The observer and the player experience two very different games.
This is a major problem in the gameplay here. The reason is simple: Things happen TOO FAST.
You need to slow the game down. A lot.
Increase the delay between weapon fire.. slow down ship engines... reduce weapon damage and shield/hull healing abilities. Make the player be able to click stuff and then have at least 10 seconds to watch his ship DO what he just clicked.
In short... just like STO is between level 1 to 10. The timers on the boff abilities (untrained) are long... the ships are slow and don't turn very well... natural healing regen becomes important just as active healing is. Its all a matter of activating things in the right time not just spamming them nonstop.
This is why I say the game's core issue in gameplay is the bonuses per rank. Remove them.
Try it. Just once. On redshirt or tribble.
Just try it. You'll see how big of a difference it makes.
This way you can use 2EPtS and 2 EPtX; However, this leads to a total downtime of 10 seconds every 60 seconds (16.67% downtime/minute as compared to the aim of 11.11%/45 seconds) but the downtime is split out to 5 seconds every 30 seconds.
I am not sure how this will be taken by the community. It's just an idea to try and solve this problem. What are your thoughts?
I'm curious what you mean about making Emergency powers "Interesting"?
They are already desirable. Simply because out of all Engineer powers they are the most useful per rank usually. Let's look at the BOFF powers.
Aceton Beam Minor Radiation Damage over time. Decreases target Energy Weapon Damage.- TRIBBLE. Time on target is pitiful, damage is pitiful. I know no one who uses it.
Auxiliary Power to the Emergency Battery Diverts Auxiliary power to Weapon, Shield and Engine power.- One of the most useful abilities due to DOFF synergy, but not available on ensign. Quite wonderful and highly recommended, and that usefulness is not limited to Cruisers.
Auxiliary Power to the Inertial Dampeners Increases Kinetic Damage resistance. Increases Flight speed strength and Turn rate strength. Increases Able/Alive Crewmen Resistance. Grants Immunity to Disable.- Not personally familiar with it, but as I'm outfitted with beam arrays and don't need to turn much not must have. Maybe I'll try it.
Auxiliary Power to the Structural Integrity Field Instant hull repair.
Increases Hull Damage Resistance.- A highly recommended heal, though only at rank 3.
Boarding Party Creates 3 level X+1 Boarding Party shuttles. Chance to disable random Subsystems. Chance to kill crew. Chance to add recharge time delay to one random system.-I used to run this, the chance to shut down someone's subsystem can be very useful...when it actually works. Between the fact that they can be shot down and the fact that it also has a large chance for failure, sometimes it's not worth it, when a more consistently reliable power can be slotted.
Directed Energy Modulation Increases amount of Energy Damage that penetrates a target's shields per pulse.- TRIBBLE for engineers. I removed the tier 3 version of it and didn't notice the slightest drop in attack effectiveness. Maybe Tactical officers can get more out of it.
Eject Warp Plasma Lays a stream of plasma behind the ship. Ships that enter the clouds take Plasma damage. Decreases target's Turn Speed, Impulse Speed and disables Cloak. - One of my favorites. Solid crowd control. Probably one of the most useful PvE abilities, though your mileage may vary.
Emergency Power to Auxiliary Repairs disabled Auxiliary systems.
Bonus Auxiliary power. Increased Stealth and Stealth Sight.- Just going through these threads I see Science officers who seem to swear by this ability, as they should I suppose.
Emergency Power to Engines Repairs disabled Engine systems. Bonus Engine power. Bonus Flight Speed.
Emergency Power to Shields Repairs disabled Shield systems. Bonus Shield power. Bonus Shield Regeneration rate. Practically a mandatory survival ability. Reduces Shield Damage.- The primary focus of debate.
Emergency Power to Weapons Repairs disabled weapons systems. Bonus Weapon power. Bonus Energy Damage.-Pretty much the only option a cruiser has to deal any decent damage.
Engineering Team Instant hull repair. Repairs disabled systems. - It's functional and great for an instant heal. Most people don't like using it because it doesn't cause any kind of "Hardening" resist increase like Aux to SIF does, and it interferes with the usage of tactical team.
Extend Shields Bonus Shield Regeneration and reduces Damage to Shields. - A good shield heal, but weakened by the inability to be used on self. TSS serves the purpose better.
Reverse Shield Polarity Converts incoming Energy Damage to Shields.- Many people's go to oh TRIBBLE button. But not useable constantly due to long cooldown.
Of all of these, only Engineering team and Emergency power to abilities are available on the ensign slot.
So we have 2 debuff abilities, 1 crowd control ability, 1 weapon buff (DEM), 7 subsystem energy transfer buffs, 2 heals (with a third shared with the subsystem abilities in A2SIF), and 1 dedicated shield heal in RSP. Anyone that wants to elaborate on these abilities and their utility, please do so.
But what makes any of these interesting? Or desirable..
Utility makes things desirable. How useful the ability is.
If you want cruisers to be tanks and/or healers, then they need to be able to survive on their own while also able to toss out heals to the team. OR survive on their own and be able to do consistent damage and heal themselves.
Why not instead of trying to weaken the power, why not go the direction that it's being played?
We cruiser captains don't run EptSx2 because it's the most fun, but because compared to the damage output we're facing at the elite level, it's the only way to survive. I'd like to be able to be a more dedicated damage dealer. Draw the aggro, keep the enemy on me, and let the escorts wail away with glee parked next to the enemy. But also able to take over a job if someone goes down.
Prime Example, Khitomer Space. The difference in time it takes for me to destroy probes versus what dual heavy cannons can put out is staggering. I wouldn't be able to do the job consistently at all without Eject Warp Plasma to slow them down. And the cause is virtually lost if someone spawns a Borg Cube off schedule and it decides to come after me. And I've had to cover for the person guarding the opposite gate being killed by such a scenario and having to race across the space to intercept their next spawn of probes. And I'm not talking about the real long survivors in this game, Borg Spheres.
If you want to spice up cruiser play without weakening it, then make the power level bonuses of EptS innate so we don't have to, and give us some new abilities so we can do our jobs effectively.
As an example, for Cruisers to assume a tanking roll, give us an ability that hacks an opponent's targeting sensors and automatically re-targets our own ship (or just out into space). And seriously Miracle worker should clear debuffs.
In my view Team Fortress should've been an engineer ability instead of an exclusive console (not that that can be changed now).
As for elite healing, I was thinking an ability that allows engineers to repair ship damage instead of just restoring hull.
It's good that we can now at least cycle one power effectively. But the lack of the double up, is still an unnecessary weakening of cruisers as a whole, as we'll be forced to break one cycle or another. Either do ineffectual damage and have strong shields, or do slightly less ineffectual damage and probably get torn to shreds.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
These changes hurt cruisers much more than any other vessel. It ruins the only good thing cruisers had going, which was the ability two chain two different EPtXs.
Long-term, we believe the EPtX abilities would be more interesting if their effects were yet more substantial but they had significant downtime. However, changing the lockout between two abilities of the same type down to 20 seconds results in the original downtime I had intended for abilities of 11%, rather than the 33% that the previous patch introduced.
Is it your intent to destroy space combat with these intrusive and unwarranted changes ? why are you forcing me to play ground combat with these new changes? ? thanks for being another dev that just listens to forum whining rather than getting the facts. I mean seriously ? I cant be bothered anymore i really i ccant, but you know this is bull
pointedears that is mean. Is he one of the new devs? I am not up to date on all the names.
Anyway he is currently the only dev that cares about abilities. And we desperately need a dev that cares about abilities. (*cough* Charged Particle Burst *cough* Tachyon Beam *) And if you scare him away, he will never touch an ability again.
So he set out to make Emergency abilities more emergency-feeling. That is perfectly fine. The buff to W A and E is also awesome and long overdue, because everybody only used S. That is a very good start!
Problem is, Cruisers require all "emergency" powers to be up 100% of the time and even double powers up 100% of the time. So all nerfs to it affect them. But I don't think a 5 sec gap would be so bad. So 45/30/15 cooldowns with 25sec uptime sounds fine to me.
edit:
Also I too think that Emergency Powers would be more fun and interesting to use situational instead of "bound to space bar perma spamming". Like:
"Oh sh** the Borg Cube is targeting me, my shields are going down" -> "Emergency Power to Shields" -> saved!
"Oh sh** a torpedo and 10 enemies are on to me, I need to get out of here and regroup!" -> "Emergency Power to Engines" -> whoosh! (that's kinda Evasive Maneuver already and I like it)
"The enemy is about to TRIBBLE we need to finish him off quickly!" -> "Emergency Power to Weapons" -> boom!
"Everything is going to sh** I need the next Debuff/Heal to be awesome powerful to save the situation" -> "Emergency Power to Auxiliary! -> victory!
pointedears that is mean. Is he one of the new devs? I am not up to date on all the names.
Anyway he is currently the only dev that cares about abilities. And we desperately need a dev that cares about abilities. (*cough* Charged Particle Burst *cough* Tachyon Beam *) And if you scare him away, he will never touch an ability again.
So he set out to make Emergency abilities more emergency-feeling. That is perfectly fine. The buff to W A and E is also awesome and long overdue, because everybody only used S. That is a very good start!
Problem is, Cruisers require all "emergency" powers to be up 100% of the time and even double powers up 100% of the time. So all nerfs to it affect them. But I don't think a 5 sec gap would be so bad. So 45/30/15 cooldowns with 25sec uptime sounds fine to me.
edit:
Also I too think that Emergency Powers would be more fun and interesting to use situational instead of "bound to space bar perma spamming". Like:
"Oh sh** the Borg Cube is targeting me, my shields are going down" -> "Emergency Power to Shields" -> saved!
"Oh sh** a torpedo and 10 enemies are on to me, I need to get out of here and regroup!" -> "Emergency Power to Engines" -> whoosh! (that's kinda Evasive Maneuver already and I like it)
"The enemy is about to TRIBBLE we need to finish him off quickly!" -> "Emergency Power to Weapons" -> boom!
"Everything is going to sh** I need the next Debuff/Heal to be awesome powerful to save the situation" -> "Emergency Power to Auxiliary! -> victory!
Sadly though the game doesn't work like that, and taking away cruisers ability to chain 2 powers only results in cruisers taking only EPtS. Then give it some time before the realize they might as well just fly an escort then.
The best 2-chain Engineering power is Tactical Team, has been Tactical Team as long as I've played this game, and will keep being Tactical Team for the forseeable future.
Cruisers do not "require" EPtX up "all the time". That's a ridiculous myth, no matter how many people on this forum drink the Kool-Aid.
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
The best 2-chain Engineering power is Tactical Team, has been Tactical Team as long as I've played this game, and will keep being Tactical Team for the forseeable future.
Cruisers do not "require" EPtX up "all the time". That's a ridiculous myth, no matter how many people on this forum drink the Kool-Aid.
troll
shoot DHCs at a cruiser once who doesn't have EPtS2 or 3 up and come back and say the same thing.
pointedears that is mean. Is he one of the new devs? I am not up to date on all the names.
Anyway he is currently the only dev that cares about abilities. And we desperately need a dev that cares about abilities. (*cough* Charged Particle Burst *cough* Tachyon Beam *) And if you scare him away, he will never touch an ability again.
So he set out to make Emergency abilities more emergency-feeling. That is perfectly fine. The buff to W A and E is also awesome and long overdue, because everybody only used S. That is a very good start!
Problem is, Cruisers require all "emergency" powers to be up 100% of the time and even double powers up 100% of the time. So all nerfs to it affect them. But I don't think a 5 sec gap would be so bad. So 45/30/15 cooldowns with 25sec uptime sounds fine to me.
edit:
Also I too think that Emergency Powers would be more fun and interesting to use situational instead of "bound to space bar perma spamming". Like:
"Oh sh** the Borg Cube is targeting me, my shields are going down" -> "Emergency Power to Shields" -> saved!
"Oh sh** a torpedo and 10 enemies are on to me, I need to get out of here and regroup!" -> "Emergency Power to Engines" -> whoosh! (that's kinda Evasive Maneuver already and I like it)
"The enemy is about to TRIBBLE we need to finish him off quickly!" -> "Emergency Power to Weapons" -> boom!
"Everything is going to sh** I need the next Debuff/Heal to be awesome powerful to save the situation" -> "Emergency Power to Auxiliary! -> victory!
Of course the true issue is that the Cruiser is supposed to be the tank, the one that can sit there and take the hit, not rush off.
And that's another problem in this game. Or perhaps something right. The tips that pop up on the loading screen specifically says "Don't wait until your shields are down to heal". They designed it so that you would keep EptS or some other shield heal active when under heavy fire.
By the time you notice your shields are going down, you're already taking heavy fire to your hull.
The best 2-chain Engineering power is Tactical Team, has been Tactical Team as long as I've played this game, and will keep being Tactical Team for the forseeable future.
Cruisers do not "require" EPtX up "all the time". That's a ridiculous myth, no matter how many people on this forum drink the Kool-Aid.
That's on your build. Not everyone wants to sacrifice one of the precious few Tactical boff slots for Tac Team.
I think it's better served with Attack Pattern Beta myself.
There's no improvement here, it's a weakening, and an unwarranted one.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
To be playing around with the fundamental game mechanics after 3 years is very worrying. It was bad enough when that A Hole Snix completely messed everything up, but now out of the blue to have this unwarrented and not needed change ?
I just give up with game devs who dont care or dont understand the fundamental principles.
I have been here since beta, i have over 22 level 50 characters of all classes and builds and this change will do nothing but to upset a lot of people, not just escorts, but cruisers and sci, and i can see it putting people off bothering with space combat.
All I ask is if a dev can reasonably explain why this change is needed then fine. But by cynicism feels like this is more a move to please FTP coming in dropping money in game, but find the basics of the game too hard, or come in and complain that they cant kill things easy enough.
As a LTS and someone who has supported this game since day 1 I have every right to hold any dev accountabl;e and say excuse me but what da fuq are you doing.
By all means change emptx powers but dont single out empts with the unwarranted witch hunt.
Besides you know what will happen, its easy, put all power into shields and replace empts in your build with emptw.
It doesnt address the issue, its merely a sheet of metal welded onto a ship with a huge crack in the hull.
I want to give the devs more credit, but this smacks of inexperience in the games industry, games development and game mechanics. And yes I can talk because I have gone to university, I have studied games design, and no im not boasting, I very very rarely post on the forums, but to put it another way, its a bit like being on the titanic and instead of navigating away from an iceberg, the captain (dev) steers the ship[ towards it to sink quicker.
YOou cannot just rush a change like this into game, by all means lets test it and give feedback, but i fear sadly, as usual for the STO development team, genuine feedback just gets thrown out and rubbished.
Never mind i will still have ground combat, unless that gets shafted also.
Anyway im gonna shut up now but i am deeply deeply disappointed in the direction this game is heading with changes to fundamental mechanics that snix himself went to great lengths to upset the playerbase, so the same is being done again. After 3 years it smacks of "hey were the devs and we dont have a dam clue what we are doing"
the issue comes in when you cycle 2 sets. if you only have 1 or 2 going you are fine but most cruisers have 3 to 4 EPTx (mostly just to fill up the slots as there are no choices at all)
this starts opening up the hole bigger then even just cycling 1 they start tripping over them selfs. the ships this hurts the most are ones with 2-3 ensign engineering slots ie cruisers
i guess you could not not use the power but then why the hell even have the slot in the first place if they gave more engineering ensign level powers this would nto be that big of a deal but there are none they do nto exist
edit: chaos beat me to it
but really this change makes the need for them to revamp the galaxy even more apparent. it now literally has a slot that serves no purpose do to efficiency. ET1 why use ET1 when you have the ability to use ET2 and ET3? can't use any more then 2 EPTx now as using more then 2 makes them step over each other so what function does the ensign engineering serve on the gal-r?
Comments
I must ask in all honesty what is the goal of the modifications to the EPtX abilities? Is it to make the powers other than EPtS desirable? To buff cruisers and/or engineers indirectly?
If so then these changes do not achieve that goal. You see there is a giant elephant in the room with EPtS and just how much of a defense boost it gives that has come to be relied upon by a great many ships. Are you aware that EPtS 1 will provide more defense for the first 15 seconds it is active than a 125 aux powered TSS 1 does when using decent gear? Not to mention the heal it provides or the longer duration? This is due to the extremely high shield regeneration rates mostly.
The only way to fix that particular problem is to increase the resistance amount provided by shield power while simultaneously reducing the regeneration boost it provides.
Simply put EPtS is too strong not to use. Is it possible to fly without it? Absolutely, it is also possible to complete end game content in a shuttle but that does not make it a good idea for one to do so.
That means your options to achieve the above goals are pretty basic. You can either nerf the living TRIBBLE out of EPtS and live with the QQ consequences, or allow players to rotate two different EPtX abilities without penalty. Preferably you would re-evaluate all defensive powers, gear, doffs, passives, etc and perform a complete balance pass on all but I doubt that is on your schedule.
The devs have been responding way more than usual to feedback from all over the forum actually. It's really great.
Btw: Love the EPS trait change.
You need to take a look at the 4 EPT scenarios and check what should happen to them.
1) Ship with 1 EPT
2) Ship with 2 of the same EPT
3) Ship with 2 different EPT
4) Cruiser with 4 EPT (2 + 2)
So let's see:
1) Should ships running 1 EPT have a gap? I say yes.
-On holodeck they have 30sec up + 15 sec gap. Seems fine to me.
-On tribble they have a 20sec up + 25 sec gap. Seems also fine and a needed nerf to escort survive-ability.
2) Should ships running 2 of the same EPT have a gap?
-On holodeck they have 100% up. It's kinda needed for game balance, but it does not fit into the spirit of an "emergency" power.
-On tribble they have 20sec up + 20sec up + 5sec gap. Seems fair to me. 2 powers reduce the gap, but don't eliminate it completely.
3) Should ships running 2 different EPT have a gap?
-On holodeck they have 15sec up + 15sec double up + 15sec up. Seems cool to me and is more viable with buffs to W E and A
-On tribble they have 15sec up + 5sec double up + 15sec up + 10sec gap. A nerf, but ok.
4) Now the big one. Should cruisers with 4 ETS have gap?
-On holodeck they have 100% double up. Again needed for game balance, but against "emergency"-spirit
-On tribble this is now a cooldown stepping over each other chaos were we run into the 15sec cooldown, let'see with S and W
5sec S
5sec S
5sec S
5sec S W
5sec W
5sec W
5sec S2 W
5sec S2
5sec S2
5sec S2 W2
5sec W2
5sec W2
(20sec gap for both powers + 10sec ability idle time after the 45sec cooldown)
or
5sec S
5sec S
5sec S
5sec S
5sec S2
5sec S2
5sec S2
5sec S2 W
5sec W
5sec W
5sec S W
(10sec gap for S, never a use for W2 + 5sec ability idle time after the 45sec cooldown)
I agree, keep the cooldowns at a clean 15/30/45, but change the buffs to 25sec to make a gap. (Hell change the buff to 15sec, so no 2 emergencies can run at the same time. You only have 1 emergency power, so I don't see how it can be in 2 subsystems at the same time, but this also kills 4EPT-cruisers)
what exactly does this mean?
have the NPC ships been updated with the new playermodel grafix? (if so then i would urge you to do the same for the LockBox Ships, the NPC Jem'Hadar Bug looks horrible compared to the player ship., Galor and D'Kora are also obviously different looking, not as bad as the bug ship though).
or have the player ships (that we don't even have seen yet) been updated again? and in what form?
or was this a simple texture update, because all ships use the same texture all have been updated?...
*confused*
yup now the engineer ensign of the gal-r is even more useless and a wasted slot on the ship
way to go i honestly did not think you could make the worst cruiser in the game any more pathetic brovo
though that second option requires more work I bet, just put it back the way it was.
on another note, the kdf now have a bunch of repackaged fed missions in the regulus sector block too, the dialog has you continuing the story line from the martok missions, a nice touch. too bad this type of thing wasn't done around season 3, think of all the time the phrase 'kdf has no content' could have been avoided being typed if it had.
Two great posts by Naldoran and Mancom.
I urge the devs to take these comments into consideration, and how the new CD adversely affects Cruisers the most.
I can appreciate adjucatorhawk's goal, but at the same time I don't think some passive toggle type powers (or powers that are keybound to be such) are a terrible thing.
As myself and others have been stressing chained EPTx is part of the bedrock of many cruiser builds.
You have cruisers in the game right now that are constantly derided for having too many ensign powers to optimize, and this change only exasperates that but not only for ships like the Excelsior and Galaxy but for most cruisers in general.
Just imagine for a moment, and this is for PvE so you don't think my only concern is PvP, you want to design a tanking Cruiser for STFs.
You want to take EPTS 3, maybe you take two copies of it.
At that point, what do you possibly slot into your Ensign stations that will not automatically force a longer gap in resistance coverage than just leaving your ensign stations empty?
Again.
Is there a timetable somewhere showing how long it will take for this not to be true?
Adjudicator:
The real problem is not the duration of the effect of the boff abilities. Its the inane and insane bonuses the rank system gives.
Have you guys tried.. just once... to simply REMOVE the rank-up bonuses?
For example, when you start a KDF character (when it started at commander rank) and fly a bird of prey.... the instant you rank up to captain...even if you are in the middle of a fight when the rank-up happens... your ship instantly receives a massive bonus in speed, turn rate, damage ... everything. Its so noticeable its ridiculous.
If you remove those rank up bonuses and allow the game to determine performance based exclusively on ship gear and captain skill points the game would fall into a much more balanced and enjoyable combat level.
What you guys are doing with these epts and other changes is trying to compensate for the issues caused by the rank up bonuses.
If you remove them, ships become much slower and less able to turn..they do not do as much damage and their accuracy is not what it is now. A nerf? No. All these 'nerfs' are the direct result of the captain skill point training and ship setup. How many people do you think have no skill points in impulse engine? No skill points in warp coil? In subsystem repair? How many do you think have just 1 or 2 points in power insulators and dampening skill boxes? Almost everyone. Why? The rank up bonuses give you so much benefits in those areas that the skill boxes are pointless to take. But you take that bonus away and all the sudden the skill boxes count a lot.
Furthermore, I would like to ask that you and another dev do this experiment. It should only take up 5 minutes of your time:
One of you play an elite stf and the other one watches him play in the same screen.
The watcher should focus on seeing the ship and combat, not the icons being clicked or the combat log or anything. Just watch the ships in the screen duke it out.
The one playing play as normal but be aware, if possible, of how much time you spend watching the power tray, the shield status and the enemy status indicator... aka how much time you spend NOT seeing your ship actually shoot and do stuff.
Compare notes afterwards.
You will notice that the playing spends almost the entire time NOT watching the game but just watching the stuff he is clicking. The observer and the player experience two very different games.
This is a major problem in the gameplay here. The reason is simple: Things happen TOO FAST.
You need to slow the game down. A lot.
Increase the delay between weapon fire.. slow down ship engines... reduce weapon damage and shield/hull healing abilities. Make the player be able to click stuff and then have at least 10 seconds to watch his ship DO what he just clicked.
In short... just like STO is between level 1 to 10. The timers on the boff abilities (untrained) are long... the ships are slow and don't turn very well... natural healing regen becomes important just as active healing is. Its all a matter of activating things in the right time not just spamming them nonstop.
This is why I say the game's core issue in gameplay is the bonuses per rank. Remove them.
Try it. Just once. On redshirt or tribble.
Just try it. You'll see how big of a difference it makes.
Emergency powers have a
45 second CD,
GCD for the same EP as 30 seconds,
GCD for a different EP as 15 seconds...
BUT a duration of 25 seconds
Example using a 2 EPts & 2 EPtX (X=aux, engine, weapon):
T0: EPtS1
T15: EPtW1
T25: EPtS1 ends
T30: EPtS2
T40: EPtW1 ends
T45: EPtW2
T55: EPtS2 ends
T60: Repeat from T0
This way you can use 2EPtS and 2 EPtX; However, this leads to a total downtime of 10 seconds every 60 seconds (16.67% downtime/minute as compared to the aim of 11.11%/45 seconds) but the downtime is split out to 5 seconds every 30 seconds.
I am not sure how this will be taken by the community. It's just an idea to try and solve this problem. What are your thoughts?
DISENCHANTED
They are already desirable. Simply because out of all Engineer powers they are the most useful per rank usually. Let's look at the BOFF powers.
Increases Hull Damage Resistance.- A highly recommended heal, though only at rank 3.
Bonus Auxiliary power. Increased Stealth and Stealth Sight.- Just going through these threads I see Science officers who seem to swear by this ability, as they should I suppose.
Of all of these, only Engineering team and Emergency power to abilities are available on the ensign slot.
So we have 2 debuff abilities, 1 crowd control ability, 1 weapon buff (DEM), 7 subsystem energy transfer buffs, 2 heals (with a third shared with the subsystem abilities in A2SIF), and 1 dedicated shield heal in RSP. Anyone that wants to elaborate on these abilities and their utility, please do so.
But what makes any of these interesting? Or desirable..
Utility makes things desirable. How useful the ability is.
If you want cruisers to be tanks and/or healers, then they need to be able to survive on their own while also able to toss out heals to the team. OR survive on their own and be able to do consistent damage and heal themselves.
Why not instead of trying to weaken the power, why not go the direction that it's being played?
We cruiser captains don't run EptSx2 because it's the most fun, but because compared to the damage output we're facing at the elite level, it's the only way to survive. I'd like to be able to be a more dedicated damage dealer. Draw the aggro, keep the enemy on me, and let the escorts wail away with glee parked next to the enemy. But also able to take over a job if someone goes down.
Prime Example, Khitomer Space. The difference in time it takes for me to destroy probes versus what dual heavy cannons can put out is staggering. I wouldn't be able to do the job consistently at all without Eject Warp Plasma to slow them down. And the cause is virtually lost if someone spawns a Borg Cube off schedule and it decides to come after me. And I've had to cover for the person guarding the opposite gate being killed by such a scenario and having to race across the space to intercept their next spawn of probes. And I'm not talking about the real long survivors in this game, Borg Spheres.
If you want to spice up cruiser play without weakening it, then make the power level bonuses of EptS innate so we don't have to, and give us some new abilities so we can do our jobs effectively.
As an example, for Cruisers to assume a tanking roll, give us an ability that hacks an opponent's targeting sensors and automatically re-targets our own ship (or just out into space). And seriously Miracle worker should clear debuffs.
In my view Team Fortress should've been an engineer ability instead of an exclusive console (not that that can be changed now).
As for elite healing, I was thinking an ability that allows engineers to repair ship damage instead of just restoring hull.
It's good that we can now at least cycle one power effectively. But the lack of the double up, is still an unnecessary weakening of cruisers as a whole, as we'll be forced to break one cycle or another. Either do ineffectual damage and have strong shields, or do slightly less ineffectual damage and probably get torn to shreds.
Couple of issues;
Lighting on the whole is terrible, far too dark compared to current lighting on holodeck.
Character select Screenshot on Tribble
Character select on Holodeck
Commander, Starfleet Corps of Engineers • 7th Fleet
Commanding Officer, U.S.S. HEART OF OAK • NX-1759-B • Odyssey class Star Cruiser ( Lexington Tactical Configuration))
(Steam - feel free to follow/friend me : )
Is it your intent to destroy space combat with these intrusive and unwarranted changes ? why are you forcing me to play ground combat with these new changes? ? thanks for being another dev that just listens to forum whining rather than getting the facts. I mean seriously ? I cant be bothered anymore i really i ccant, but you know this is bull
Anyway he is currently the only dev that cares about abilities. And we desperately need a dev that cares about abilities. (*cough* Charged Particle Burst *cough* Tachyon Beam *) And if you scare him away, he will never touch an ability again.
So he set out to make Emergency abilities more emergency-feeling. That is perfectly fine. The buff to W A and E is also awesome and long overdue, because everybody only used S. That is a very good start!
Problem is, Cruisers require all "emergency" powers to be up 100% of the time and even double powers up 100% of the time. So all nerfs to it affect them. But I don't think a 5 sec gap would be so bad. So 45/30/15 cooldowns with 25sec uptime sounds fine to me.
edit:
Also I too think that Emergency Powers would be more fun and interesting to use situational instead of "bound to space bar perma spamming". Like:
"Oh sh** the Borg Cube is targeting me, my shields are going down" -> "Emergency Power to Shields" -> saved!
"Oh sh** a torpedo and 10 enemies are on to me, I need to get out of here and regroup!" -> "Emergency Power to Engines" -> whoosh! (that's kinda Evasive Maneuver already and I like it)
"The enemy is about to TRIBBLE we need to finish him off quickly!" -> "Emergency Power to Weapons" -> boom!
"Everything is going to sh** I need the next Debuff/Heal to be awesome powerful to save the situation" -> "Emergency Power to Auxiliary! -> victory!
Sadly though the game doesn't work like that, and taking away cruisers ability to chain 2 powers only results in cruisers taking only EPtS. Then give it some time before the realize they might as well just fly an escort then.
Cruisers do not "require" EPtX up "all the time". That's a ridiculous myth, no matter how many people on this forum drink the Kool-Aid.
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
troll
shoot DHCs at a cruiser once who doesn't have EPtS2 or 3 up and come back and say the same thing.
And that's another problem in this game. Or perhaps something right. The tips that pop up on the loading screen specifically says "Don't wait until your shields are down to heal". They designed it so that you would keep EptS or some other shield heal active when under heavy fire.
By the time you notice your shields are going down, you're already taking heavy fire to your hull. That's on your build. Not everyone wants to sacrifice one of the precious few Tactical boff slots for Tac Team.
I think it's better served with Attack Pattern Beta myself.
There's no improvement here, it's a weakening, and an unwarranted one.
To be playing around with the fundamental game mechanics after 3 years is very worrying. It was bad enough when that A Hole Snix completely messed everything up, but now out of the blue to have this unwarrented and not needed change ?
I just give up with game devs who dont care or dont understand the fundamental principles.
I have been here since beta, i have over 22 level 50 characters of all classes and builds and this change will do nothing but to upset a lot of people, not just escorts, but cruisers and sci, and i can see it putting people off bothering with space combat.
All I ask is if a dev can reasonably explain why this change is needed then fine. But by cynicism feels like this is more a move to please FTP coming in dropping money in game, but find the basics of the game too hard, or come in and complain that they cant kill things easy enough.
As a LTS and someone who has supported this game since day 1 I have every right to hold any dev accountabl;e and say excuse me but what da fuq are you doing.
By all means change emptx powers but dont single out empts with the unwarranted witch hunt.
Besides you know what will happen, its easy, put all power into shields and replace empts in your build with emptw.
It doesnt address the issue, its merely a sheet of metal welded onto a ship with a huge crack in the hull.
I want to give the devs more credit, but this smacks of inexperience in the games industry, games development and game mechanics. And yes I can talk because I have gone to university, I have studied games design, and no im not boasting, I very very rarely post on the forums, but to put it another way, its a bit like being on the titanic and instead of navigating away from an iceberg, the captain (dev) steers the ship[ towards it to sink quicker.
YOou cannot just rush a change like this into game, by all means lets test it and give feedback, but i fear sadly, as usual for the STO development team, genuine feedback just gets thrown out and rubbished.
Never mind i will still have ground combat, unless that gets shafted also.
Anyway im gonna shut up now but i am deeply deeply disappointed in the direction this game is heading with changes to fundamental mechanics that snix himself went to great lengths to upset the playerbase, so the same is being done again. After 3 years it smacks of "hey were the devs and we dont have a dam clue what we are doing"
I mean... that is not something that will ruin space combat forever, unless the only thing you do is PVP with the most dangerous PVP-players.
In a cruiser-engineer, you can tank an elite tactical cube with only 1 copy of EPTS. (I cycle it with EPTW and EPTA)
I do, and I no longer want to.
Sure I can cycle one power, but what am I going to do with 3 ensign engineer slots?
this starts opening up the hole bigger then even just cycling 1 they start tripping over them selfs. the ships this hurts the most are ones with 2-3 ensign engineering slots ie cruisers
i guess you could not not use the power but then why the hell even have the slot in the first place if they gave more engineering ensign level powers this would nto be that big of a deal but there are none they do nto exist
edit: chaos beat me to it
but really this change makes the need for them to revamp the galaxy even more apparent. it now literally has a slot that serves no purpose do to efficiency. ET1 why use ET1 when you have the ability to use ET2 and ET3? can't use any more then 2 EPTx now as using more then 2 makes them step over each other so what function does the ensign engineering serve on the gal-r?