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If you really want to overhaul emergency power, here's an alternative
momaw
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
The changes to emergency power abilities up on Tribble are... unpopular. I'd like to offer this alternative as a compromise between what we have now and what I think Cryptic is trying to accomplish.
I believe that in total this system would be more fluid and intuitive while addressing the concerns of both sides.
1.) Emergency power as a persistent mode with persistent benefits.
Instead of getting an effect for 20 seconds when you trigger EPTx, emergency power gives you a status effect with no duration. The emergency power effect will never time out, turn off, or discontinue (unless removed by an outside force).
The effects of the emergency power would be:
1a.) Weapons. Increased power level to weapons by (20/25/30), and gives a (25%/33%/50%) resistance to weapon power drain. The reason for NOT making this a flat "+% damage" is that ships that are already running maximum power to weapons and not suffering from the effects of drain don't need more damage. They have logically reached the material limits of their ship's weaponry. Adding a resistance to power drain functionally increases weapon damage for ships that are having problems by pushing them closer to their rated maximum.
2.) Shields. Increased power level to shields by (20/25/30), increases shield hardness by an additional factor (as current), and constantly stores shield points at a rate equal to the current heal divided by the cooldown time; so, same heal per second but persistent instead of in lumps.
3.) Engines. Increased power level to engines by (20/25/30), increases turn rate, increases maximum speed, improves ship's inertia.
4.) Auxiliary. Increased power to auxiliary by (20/25/30), improves stealth and detection, improves science skills.
In all cases, emergency power to a system also improves the repair rate of that system, but will NOT immediately restore that system to functionality because the EPTx abilities are no longer applied in lumps.
2.) Emergency power as a shared system
It seems like the major driving force behind this overhaul is to prevent huge stacking buffs to multiple power levels. If a ship had sufficient power output to run large bonuses to multiple systems at the same time, then surely it's not "emergency" power yeah? So it makes logical sense that only one system can be boosted at a time.
But instead of forcing players to only use 1 EPTx ability via clunky cooldowns, have it so that turning on EPTx will remove all other EPTx status effects. There's only enough surplus to overdrive one system at a time, that's why it's emergency power. When using EPTx, there is a 10 second system cooldown on the use of any EPTx ability to prevent "frantic spider" style power distribution. The effects of the new setting apply immediately and the effects of the old setting are removed immediately, but then there is a cooldown period before you can change your EPTx allocation again. The cooldown is unaffected by anything that influences cooldown rates e.g. Aux2Batt, Photonic Officer, MACO set bonus, etc etc.
Providing constant power to a system of the captain's choice while also making it relatively quick to change allows emergency power to be used as a kind of "stance". When your ship needs maximum firepower, you put all your available power into weapons until such time as you need to defend against attack, or run away, in which case you change your ship's stance to support those actions.
3.) The role of damage control engineers (DCE)
Instead of having a chance to reduce cooldown, which would be obsolete when EPTx is a persistent mode, the DCE instead gives a repair rate bonus to a system if that system is receiving emergency power.
So the rate subsystems repair at could be illustrated as
1x = basic system rate
2x = with emergency power
3x = with emergency power and engineer
As a more general benefit, damage control engineers also add a small buff to all power levels when the ship is below 50% hull.
4.) Making low-level engineering more desirable
Because EPTx is now a mode and does not benefit from duplicate copies, we're left with some holes in low level engineering, particularly Ensign level. As such: Move the skills Tractor Beam and Polarize Hull into engineering instead of science.
The tractor beam is an all-around utility gadget. The role of the tractor beam is to move things, which is an engineering problem more than it's a science problem. The technology behind the tractor has effectively reached consumer-level point and click.
Polarizing the hull is by definition a defensive feature (engineering focus), and involves massive amounts of power, big cables, and giant slabs of the hull.
In the case of both technologies, there is canon support that these jobs were performed by the ship's engineer (Geordi LaForge and his tractors, Trip Tucker and his polarized hull) rather than the ship's science officer.
Ensign-level Science will still have the "killer apps" hazard emitters and transfer shield strength, and four other situational abilities only two of which share a cooldown.
I believe that in total this system would be more fluid and intuitive while addressing the concerns of both sides.
1.) Emergency power as a persistent mode with persistent benefits.
Instead of getting an effect for 20 seconds when you trigger EPTx, emergency power gives you a status effect with no duration. The emergency power effect will never time out, turn off, or discontinue (unless removed by an outside force).
The effects of the emergency power would be:
1a.) Weapons. Increased power level to weapons by (20/25/30), and gives a (25%/33%/50%) resistance to weapon power drain. The reason for NOT making this a flat "+% damage" is that ships that are already running maximum power to weapons and not suffering from the effects of drain don't need more damage. They have logically reached the material limits of their ship's weaponry. Adding a resistance to power drain functionally increases weapon damage for ships that are having problems by pushing them closer to their rated maximum.
2.) Shields. Increased power level to shields by (20/25/30), increases shield hardness by an additional factor (as current), and constantly stores shield points at a rate equal to the current heal divided by the cooldown time; so, same heal per second but persistent instead of in lumps.
3.) Engines. Increased power level to engines by (20/25/30), increases turn rate, increases maximum speed, improves ship's inertia.
4.) Auxiliary. Increased power to auxiliary by (20/25/30), improves stealth and detection, improves science skills.
In all cases, emergency power to a system also improves the repair rate of that system, but will NOT immediately restore that system to functionality because the EPTx abilities are no longer applied in lumps.
2.) Emergency power as a shared system
It seems like the major driving force behind this overhaul is to prevent huge stacking buffs to multiple power levels. If a ship had sufficient power output to run large bonuses to multiple systems at the same time, then surely it's not "emergency" power yeah? So it makes logical sense that only one system can be boosted at a time.
But instead of forcing players to only use 1 EPTx ability via clunky cooldowns, have it so that turning on EPTx will remove all other EPTx status effects. There's only enough surplus to overdrive one system at a time, that's why it's emergency power. When using EPTx, there is a 10 second system cooldown on the use of any EPTx ability to prevent "frantic spider" style power distribution. The effects of the new setting apply immediately and the effects of the old setting are removed immediately, but then there is a cooldown period before you can change your EPTx allocation again. The cooldown is unaffected by anything that influences cooldown rates e.g. Aux2Batt, Photonic Officer, MACO set bonus, etc etc.
Providing constant power to a system of the captain's choice while also making it relatively quick to change allows emergency power to be used as a kind of "stance". When your ship needs maximum firepower, you put all your available power into weapons until such time as you need to defend against attack, or run away, in which case you change your ship's stance to support those actions.
3.) The role of damage control engineers (DCE)
Instead of having a chance to reduce cooldown, which would be obsolete when EPTx is a persistent mode, the DCE instead gives a repair rate bonus to a system if that system is receiving emergency power.
So the rate subsystems repair at could be illustrated as
1x = basic system rate
2x = with emergency power
3x = with emergency power and engineer
As a more general benefit, damage control engineers also add a small buff to all power levels when the ship is below 50% hull.
4.) Making low-level engineering more desirable
Because EPTx is now a mode and does not benefit from duplicate copies, we're left with some holes in low level engineering, particularly Ensign level. As such: Move the skills Tractor Beam and Polarize Hull into engineering instead of science.
The tractor beam is an all-around utility gadget. The role of the tractor beam is to move things, which is an engineering problem more than it's a science problem. The technology behind the tractor has effectively reached consumer-level point and click.
Polarizing the hull is by definition a defensive feature (engineering focus), and involves massive amounts of power, big cables, and giant slabs of the hull.
In the case of both technologies, there is canon support that these jobs were performed by the ship's engineer (Geordi LaForge and his tractors, Trip Tucker and his polarized hull) rather than the ship's science officer.
Ensign-level Science will still have the "killer apps" hazard emitters and transfer shield strength, and four other situational abilities only two of which share a cooldown.
Post edited by momaw on
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even at ensign level it would still have a point to having them on engineer heavy ships unlike the current build on tribble
The only kind of problem I have with it is that while EPTW, EPTS, and EPTE all give clearly-defined bonuses, I feel like EPTA still gets the short end of the stick for science ships and science-focused captains.
I'm not sure what the best way to fix this is, but then I had an idea: what about a global reduction on the cooldown for science skills? Something like 5/10/15 second cooldown reduction with EPTA? It does sort of overlap with Photonic Officer, though....
how good is PO? i never really bothered to try it.
as for the ideas...I like them all, especially the first one.
Honestly this sounds overpowered a bit, though I usually like that stuff. Also, since EPTW would be useless for an escort, they would only run EPTS.
I would say leave Polraize hull at science, there is an already engineering version of it :
http://www.stowiki.org/Ability:_Auxiliary_to_Dampeners
Thing can't be overpowered when there aren't any numbers given. Clearly there is a point between does nothing/useless, and "OP" where it is useful but not insane.
Which is conveniently available only at Lt level, further exacerbating the shortage of Ensign-level utility. Given that there appears to be no such THING as Aux2Damp 3 or similar, it may be worth considering simply renaming SOME of the present Aux2Whatzits to Aux2Whatzit, so Aux2Whatzit 2 becomes Aux2Whatzit 3 and an Ensign version inferior to the original becomes 1. But not Aux2batt. Leave that one where it is, or it will get way OP.
I actually don't think your suggestions are bad, they have some merit and are overall well thought out.
I do think you have made a mistake with regards to what Cryptic is trying to accomplish.
The Cryptic dev team as a nebulous whole, at some point between CoH and STO, seems to have come to the conclusion that passive "always on" powers are not very exciting or dynamic (and in many ways they are not, but I personally don't think that's necessarily bad).
If you look at arbiter...I mean adjucatorhawk's posts, the first set of changes to EPTx were in fact to make it so you would "use them when you need them" instead of an "always on" keybind (i.e. a borderline passive toggle).
I think they are looking to add something interesting where it doesn't need to exist personally, I already have quite a lot of powers to click that are "active use".
They've also forgotten why the EPTS powers were designed like they were in the first place, as a bedrock of cruiser builds where they run 2 different EPTx cycles.
I'm not personally against a suite of passive powers, but the Devs seem to be - even though nearly every boff/captain power is a clicky "as you need it power".
Back to your thread.
The devs were very specifically trying to accomplish the direct opposite of what you are proposing. They don't want EPTx to be passive at all.
The problem is that just doesn't work in the current game very well, especially with regards to EPTS.
Unfortunately the current design has seen changes, added on top of changes, added on top of changes with two polar opposites of situations in combat:
> You are borderline invincible.
> You are vaporized in 5s.
The why?
The why is because the amounts of spike damage players and NPCs are capable of can vaporize the current base HULL/SHIELD values of ships but with stacked resistances and passives you can actually almost completely nullify that same tremendous spike.
They can't fix the toy city built ontop of the table by kicking out one of the table legs (EPTx), but they don't seem to be able (due to manhour investment ROI, not actual lack of ability) to go through and revise the whole thing head to toe.
changes to the effects, yep, i would also suggest removingthose powerlevel addition, cause most of our ships already run at max power if set to 100 (especially cruisers ...), therefore make the abilities themselves stronger!
eptW: reduce "additional weapons firing" drain, when skilled out rank1 10%(5% unskilled) up to 30%(15% unskilled) from rank3. for 20seconds. additionally your weapons become 20sec immune to any system offline/power drain by enemys!!!
eptS: 20seconds shieldresist buff and regeneration buff, and resist to drain energy from that system
sidenote: transfer shield strengh: adds reg, makes resist and please add: makes immune to capacity drain for 10secons
eptE: turnratebuff, thats great already, 20sec also immune to drain that system power levels, also a slight speedbuff (like it is now)
eptA: enhancing all scistats by 30 for 20 seconds, as much as it is now.
i want to express that i really like the emptSubsystem abilities WITHOUT more energy buff, because most ships actually needing a certain eptSubsystem run at max power already.
at the moment eptSubsystem is used from the negative: cruisers dont need anyone, but have slots for it ...
escorts explicit DO NEVER USE eptWeapons, cause they dont benefit any more from it
sciships wont ever use eptAuxiliary, yeah cause you fly them at max aux already.
removing the energypowerlevel buff was the correct way to my mind, but you must add some "resist versus drain" instead, and make the "buff" for the system not via powerlevel, but through plain effect.
instead of granting 30power to shields, which results in x% resist and regenerationrate, just add the % and rate, without the energylevel flat. cause this prevents this abilities from getting totally worthless for the kind of ship, that actually was supposed to use it. (like mentioned above)
to adress the minithread above: the problem started, when they drastically capped resistanced, but didnt proceed with capping maximum dps burst output as well. i think its unfair that nearly every ship now runs at 40% resist all standard, while only escorts can definetely NULLIFY resistance by one button. i think the abilities that lower resists should work this way:
lets say a ship has 50% resist all, now someone beta and fire on my mark-s you same time, these two debuffs should suffer from a deminishing return too. cause thats just fair somehow. cause when i fit my cruiser with 50% resist and activate polarize hull i go to 55%, while an escort that chains beta3 and fomM gets some kind of 100% debuff ... (beta3 is 30% and fomM can get to 70%, not counting self BUFF here ^^) i think when beta3 and fomM are chained, they should never NULLIFY a cruisers resistances with polarized hull. - this is at least sth that should be reconsidered somehow, cause flying a cruiser feels very obsolete in this game now, cause my escorts can run at the same resist levels.
I must hope that you are wrong, and I must hope that this is all some kind of misunderstanding or experiment, because the alternative is that Cryptic is about to castrate my favorite ship type for the sake of the baseless notion that building and maintaining a stack of passive abilities is somehow not a valid or entertaining school of gameplay. The entire mindset of playing an engineer captain in an engineering ship is to engineer solutions. Engineers don't play whackamole. That's not a solution. A solution is to build robots that can play whackamole longer, harder, and faster than any human.
(Or pull the plug out of the wall, which is probaby what will happen if my battlecruisers become pointless)
Some references.
And this change did that how exactly?
Does EPtW let me reduce the time to kill a target by half? No it does not you say, welp guess I'll just stick with my EPtS that lets me live twice as long and stick to the escort that can slap a crapton of offense with it.
Which brings me to an idea, much the same as the OP's where each emergency power runs one at a time, up all the time, and can be changed from one to another, in this case without a cool down. However, so far there has been no power for this emergency power to come from. Make a pool of "emergency power" that drains when EPtX is used. It recharges over time, and drains as the abilities are used. Turning them off for a bit will recharge your pool. Changing the subsystem the power goes to shuts off the other, and so on.
Then, to further define the roles of each ship and so on, make a difference in the pool available so cruisers have a larger amount to drain from. Make power drain more efficient for science, and a fast recharge but small pool for escorts. Something to that effect.
This would make using emergency powers trickier to use them all to their full potential, but if someone wants to just keep one power up, they can, but only for a set amount of time.
Idk, something I'm sure that will be too difficult to put in.
Except since running "emergency power" to shields constantly is standard operating procedure for a cruiser, and required for it to fulfill its combat role, you just set an upper limit on the amount of time the cruiser can stay engaged.
What you are describing is how batteries should work. Power builds over time, power can be drained out to a system of the captain's choice. (And cruisers should be able to charge their batteries a lot faster while the situation is favorable, using the currently misappropriated "auxiliary to battery" ability)
But I also think moving abilities from one kind of BOFF to another probably presents too many technical problems, and creates too much work for Cryptic to invest the time in it, especially as they are likely to receive negative community feedback for doing so.
Instead lets just get two or three new low level engineering abilities. these can be added to the list the boff generator draws from so as to avoid the mess that moving abilities from science to engineering boffs would create.
Personally I would like to see Engineers get some more abilities that actually relate to engines. Or maybe something that interacts with the new warp cores in some way.
I have to say the the current continual up-time EPtX arrangement does kinda' feel like pointless busywork to maintain, and does not constitute the "dynamic" ability feel that Ultimatus has quoted the devs as looking for. On the contrary, the clicking back and forth just kinda' feels like an extra distraction (and I really don't need busywork while I'm trying to maintain fire and cross-heal at the same time!).
But if the devs are looking for a dynamic "panic button" power... those already exist for what most of the EPtX powers-- in a loose sense, at least.
In combat, if your shields are flagging and you need an emergency respite, that's kinda' what Reverse Shield Polarity is for*.
Are you getting run circles around and need an emergency boost of maneuverability? That's kinda' what Aux to Dampers is for (at least, that's how I see it described in forum posts).
You have to move outside on Engineering for a "kill it now" emergency power, but the way that Beam Overload is set up, it really is the "emergency can of whoop-***" power for ships that mount beam weapons.
... There really isn't an emergency "science it harder!" bridge officer power that I can think of, though. Got me there.
My point is that for three out of the four EPtX powers, there already exists a dynamic panic-button power for that system, rendering an EPtX power in that position a little redundant. I wish I could remember who in the [Legacy of Romulus] Emergency Power to X being updated on Tribble thread said this, but "Combat is an emergency."
And as Doffingcomrade mentioned, there are plenty of non-combat systems on a Federation starship whose power drain is far from negligible (how many holodecks were on the Enterprise-D again?) and could certainly be put to more... pressing matters when your ship is getting assailed by g**d**n tactical cube.
Emergency enough for you? :P
*: Admittedly, RSP probably isn't at its most useful against the kinetic-happy Borg in STFs, but I understand it to work splendidly against almost everything else.
As a side-note, I'd rather Tractor Beam and Polarize Hull stayed science powers, if it's all the same to you. There are already a dearth of science powers that are really all that useful, and I would have immense trouble filling out a science vessel's two ensign powers and two lieutenant powers without them.
-- Winston Churchill
These klicky skills being changed into "stances" would be dynamic in that you may no longer need more power to weapons, you need it in shields, or you need it in aux for support. You were on the attack a moment ago with attack pattern beta/omega but now you've gone and pissed the enemy off and you need to switch to beta or evasive maneuvers. (I think evasive maneuvers should be a constant defense/maneuverability "stance" that potentially reduces damage output for the duration while the current evasive skill is renamed emergency evasive or something to that effect.)
But, of course, with these changes, I think every ship should have all the attack patterns (save captain-alpha), target subsystems, emergency power to x, and auxiliary power to x baked in. I don't recall voyager or the enterprise not being able to perform attack patterns because of some silly console layout nonsense. Nor was the defiant limited in where it could divert emergency/auxiliary power because of its tactical focus.
I feel that the devs have tried too hard to define stark contrast between the different ships when the differences between them in cannon isn't that great. They all have shields and weapons and engines and auxiliary power and emergency power and really, they just had relatively slight bonuses based on size and technology.
The defiant was one of the most powerful warships in the quadrant because it nearly had the armament of a full cruiser while cutting out all the "fat" giving it far greater evasion, maneuverability, and speed in combat. It was reasonably well defended, but because of the nature of the ship, when it did get hit, it got hit hard.
Cruisers really weren't evading much of anything, but because they are so massive, have large crews, lots of resources and power, they could really take a beating while also dishing out the punishment.
Voyager wasn't just a toothless vessel of science, she was arguably a war ship, unless there was some super sciency reason for her to be carrying tricobalt devices. "What? these? We were just going to experiment by blowing up a few small moons... that's science." And she didn't rely on "space magic" to win all her battles. She was small and agile with advanced shields that gave her the ability to evade while also being able to take a beating.
So I would really appreciate a game that has LESS differentiation between the ship classes so that you can play your favorite ship without being pigeonholed into a role you don't want.
I know some would argue that without forcing the different ships into different layouts and whatnot, that it would hurt sales, but I think it would improve them. How many of you have not bought a ship you really want because the layout was utter TRIBBLE? Or how many of you have bought a ship that was utter TRIBBLE because you are a fan? How many buy all the ships simply because you want the full experience and love everything trek? If a particular ship didn't force you into a role or have a TRIBBLE bridge officer layout, I think more people would be inclined to buy all of their favorite ships because they could actually enjoy flying them at all times, and not just for novelty sake, knowing they will under perform, "but damn it, this ship sure looks perty even when going down in flames."
But now I'm going off on a tangent. So, yes, I'm super in favor of emergency powers being a toggle/stance, yes, combat IS an emergency and if people have a problem with the 'branding' they can get over it or it can be renamed "reserve power to" perhaps? Either way, less freaking clicking/button mashing and staring down cool down timers on the dashboard, more watching the road and strategizing.
Ever played Diablo II? Okay, picture an aura-specialized paladin. They get... a bit dull...
I don't want to side-track this thread, but...
Taking your premise about the cannon at face value (I haven't seen Voyager or DS9), the reason you need a notable differentiation between ships is to create the necessary diversity in play-styles to keep gameplay from getting stale. Your ship is a big part of what determines your play-style, and I expect each ship to play differently. Yes, you will occasionally have a ship you want to use that doesn't fit what you currently do (a tactical officer in an Ambassador, to use my example), but the great thing about the bridge officer system is that you can juggle your BOffs around to fit these new BOff slots. That creates diversity between players, and within a single character's play style, depending on which ship you're using.
Just my two cents, there. Hope I don't start a long tangent here.
-- Winston Churchill
To build on Momaw's idea, how about adding a "power system" mod of some kind to all ships? A Power system mod of 1 is basic performance, but a large ship such as an Oddy or a Vo'Quv might have a power system mod of 1.2, i.e. 'Secondary Power to X' has 20% more effect; and the inverse too, a BoP or MVAE might have a mod of .85. It would be a small change, but perhaps enough to give some more use to cruisers.
On the topic of passive powers though I would like to add this to the discussion. While having active powers that we want to press in the proper situation instead of slamming them on CD is a great idea, almost all of STO's boff abilities are /passive/ and not active. For one thing their CD's are rather long, and most tend to simply give Positive effect for X seconds. There is not much, if any thinking involved in pressing any power, whether it be Cannon Rapid Fire, Emergency Power to Weapons, or Attack Pattern: Omega. You want that ability to have as high uptime as possible, so they are all practically passive anyway.
The only abilities that are not in this mold are ones like Beam Overload, the Torpedo Abilities, and some Science ones. The main part is they have massive draw backs, or situations where you can use them wrong. In comparison, the only wrong time to use Cannon Rapid Fire or Fire at Will is if you are not in range your target.
As such while I would /love/ more interesting abilities, I do not think there is much we can do with really any of the current patterns without overhauling all of combat. In lieu changes should be made to fit into this mold, unless /everything/ is changed. Making EPtX an interesting button to press with limited uptime is a great goal...but you have to make it fit with everything else. Changing to name to Power to X, and adding new abilities would be more beneficial and fun for everyone. As it keeps what some players like, and gives options for new builds and strategies to develop.
In short, while the current system is not ideal, it works and some players (like myself) enjoy it. Rather than wrecking the foundation, add new abilities so we can vary playstyle accordingly.
Still, I'm noticing some thoughts from the previous two posters similar to an idea I'm trying to carefully lay the groundwork for in the main EPtX thread to avoid making a fool of myself. (... again...)
The premise is this: for ships that do not chain EPtX for constant power (I run such a ship with my sci), the proposed changes to EPtX do not make the powers any more or less "dynamic." In general, I activate my Varanus' EPtW whenever I've lined up a broadside, and I activate my EPtS whenever I'm under attack and down a few points of shields. That way of using EPtX may be more along the lines of what the devs have in mind, but it never feels like a "panic button" power to me, and that will not change if the Tribble version of EPtX goes live.
In order to achieve that dynamic panic-button effect I think the devs want, they need to go further along the lines they're looking at now.
To this end, I would propose making a new line of four powers, called Reserve Power to X (I kinda' like "Reserve Power" a little more than "Secondary Power," but that's just me :P), which would function more or less exactly like what Momaw has suggested, though I would probably advise a slight reduction on the power bonus of RPtX to compensate for it only chewing up one engineering slot instead of two.
As a sharp contrast, I would propose taking the current EPtX powers, increasing their recharge time to 60 seconds, reducing their up-time to 10-15 seconds (whatever number in there best serves game balance) and substantially increasing the power level bonus that EPtX grants for its duration.
The catch? When EPtX's 10-15 second duration is up, the subsystem it was boosting immediately takes a substantial amount of power drain (reducible by Power Insulators), which can be recovered using standard power transfer rates, just like Beam: Overload.
Finally, EPtX trips the 10 second cooldown on Reserve Power to X (or however long of a cooldown is needed to make sure the EPtX boost doesn't coexist with the RPtX boost).
Although the percise numbers would (as always) need to be dialed in carefully, I think this arrangement would make both current EPtX cyclers happy, and would satisfy Cryptic's desire for a more dashing and dynamic EPtX that requires care and finesse to use, but can be devastating when used well.
... granted, this could also be a terrible idea. But I thought I'd throw it out there anyway.
What do you think?
-- Winston Churchill
However, in regards to this idea, if I am understanding it correctly, I would say that would make the situation far, far worse. The main thing that cruiser captains seem to dislike with this - or at least, I do - is that the boosts provided by EPtS and EPtW are seen - and rightly so - as essential to having a cruiser that does something more than get shot and heal. And without EPtS, even those are iffy.
Unless you want to make the Emergency Power to X abilities you propose separate from the current EPtX we have, and have them coexist, there is nothing to address these problems with cruisers, which still leave them up a creek. Burst power is of only limited value to cruisers, and the same can be said for a lot of ships because with so many cooldowns it is very difficult to manage the entire mess with your concentration literally pulled in dozens of directions at once. Cruiser burst damage is not typically very impressive, so they rely on being able to slug it out. Without EPtW they don't tend to have enough damage output to make a difference, and without EPtS they can't consistently strengthen and repair their shields to have the stamina to survive an extended exchange of heavy fire. Abilities such as these, with long cooldowns, are of only limited use in a cruiser context.
While I can get behind the idea of making a new set of powers for high-level, short-duration power boosts, it is ONLY with the current EPtX abilities in coexistence, and still capable of chaining without breaks popping up to make it all fall apart.
Of course when it comes to APO, it depends on what you are doing. In PvP you might reserve it, but I just pve, and there its damage boost is its prime function, so you want to maximize its uptime, usually with two copies. Granted breaking tractors is a nice function, but sadly its a bit redundant. For example everyone already starts with Evasive Maneuvers! You do not even need to slot anything. And then on top of that there are a few powers that cancel tractors on top of it. Its just a very silly system, which is what I suppose I was trying to emphasize.
If the devs want to change it, it would need a real full overhaul, as just changing one small part without changing the entire system will likely lead to basically...the devs running around on a sinking boat, constantly bailing water without plugging up the holes that lead to the leak in the first place. If that analogy makes any sense whatsoever.
I guess I wasn't all that clear in my post about this, but the change I proposed to EPtX was contingent on the introduction of the Reserve Power to X power suite, which would function exactly as our original poster had presented his Emergency Power to X revamp. Without the RPtX suite (the consistent power improvement capability which Momaw has described), yes, the way I described revamping EPtX would be just as bad for current EPtX chaining builds as Cryptic's current set-up, if not worse.
(If it turns out I actually just misunderstood you... oops. Sorry. Just skip to the next paragraph and that should help. :P )
Now that you mention it, though, being able to maintain multiple EPtX-equivalent powers would not be possible under both the OP's draft, nor would it be under mine. The ship would either have to switch back and forth between RPtS and RPtW during a battle, or (under the draft I've proposed) to fight in large doses of spike damage at by dropping your RPtS here and there to summon up large weapon power boosts from an EPtW.
Or, alternatively again, under either the OP's draft or mine, the cruiser could run EPtS-3 (or RPtS-3 under my proposal) to grant a very large power boost to shields, and then use that greater shield power increase in order to divert some of the ship's power setting over to weapons. (This would be much more feasible under these alternate powers, since it only requires the devotion of a single Lt.Commander slot, instead of the two Lt.Commander slots that chaining current EPtX at that level would provide.
Hopefully one of those two paragraphs hit something close to the mark.
-- Winston Churchill
I've never played diablo, but I don't think it would make the game less interesting to have more of the abilities be dynamic passive "toggles" or "stances" you can switch between with the ebb and flow of combat and I think it would fit more with a 'real' trek experience. For example, we're going into combat in an intrepid class starship with several other players on our team. The enemy is a borg tactical cube.
We're starting in attack pattern beta (active stance) as this will boost not only our damage but the group's damage by lowering enemy resists. Primary power is distributed to give maximum power to weapons with the remainder in aux. Reserve power to aux cause we're going to be using "SPACE MAGIC!". We are targeting weapons (active stance) as this will help the surviveability of the group, and several other ships are already targeting shields (the debuff stacks with diminishing returns to prevent OP-ness, so targeting shields would be a waste.)
We fire off a gravity well and a viral matrix (active abilities), "TRIBBLE!" The cube is pissed at us now and we have its attention. "Attack pattern delta!" (stance change)
It's no good, the cube is putting out too much damage for us to even maintain an aggressive defense posture.
"Evasive maneuvers!" (stance switch) Our weapon damage drops 20% to increase our defense, turn rate, and speed by 10% respectively.
"Jam their sensors!"(active power)... it's no good, they're still on us. "reserve power to shields!" (stance switch)
We're doing alright, we can't do as much damage as we were before, but we're doing our part by keeping the enemy's attention and surviving. <<WARNING>>Incoming borg-npc-torpedo-spread-3 of ultimate armageddon. "EMERGENCY POWER TO SHIELDS! BRACE FOR IMPACT!" (active abilities)
BLAM! we're in rough shape, but we weathered the storm. main power to auxiliary, we need to heal up. "Engage hazard emitters and divert auxiliary power to the structural integrity field!" (active abilities) Fortunately, a couple other ships have switched to targeting the enemy's weapons reducing the heat we're under. (stance switch)
The odyssey of the group was late to the party, but has arrived in attack pattern omega (stance) targeting the enemy's shields (stance) and firing off a salvo of high yield torpedoes immediately after a beam overload from the dual beam banks (active abilities) and has successfully drawn the cube's attention.
We switch back to attack pattern beta (stance) further enhancing the damage of the group, primary power to weapons, reserve power to auxiliary (stance).
The cube has caught the ody in a tractor beam and is using it's cutting beam on her! This is unacceptable, we fly in close with a charged particle burst (active ability) do disrupt this atrocity. We are successful but the cube takes a tricobalt mine to an unshielded facing and is going down and we're right next to it!
"EMERGENCY POWER TO SHIELDS! EMERGENCY EVASIVE! BRACE FOR IMPACT!"(active abilities) ~(X[*KABOOM!*]X)~ the shockwave nicks our aft shields, but we made it out of there safely.
The rest of the group has moved off to engage the borg transformers, we are assigned to intercept probes. This is a solo job, no assistance and the nature of our ship gives us no pets, attack pattern omega maximizes our damage potential in this situation. (stance switch) The probes we have been assigned for this stf are moving faster than usual, typically we should target their engines, but we have plenty of crowd control, so we will target their shields (stance switch) and use gravity well and tractor beams (active abilities) to get the job done most efficiently.
The probes are in range. "Fire at will and launch a spread of torpedoes once their facings are down." (I would actually prefer fire at will/focus fire, cannon scatter volley/cannon rapid fire, and torpedo spread/torpedo volley to be modes of fire instead of active abilities, which one would switch between. In which case one might "spread the love" to draw agro from multiple targets as a tank, or need to destroy multiple targets at the same time like with a few probes, or be surrounded by enemies but need to focus fire on a single one, or only be engaging a single enemy where focus fire would be best. Beam overload, High yield torpedo, and new! cannon overload, would be active abilities instead. Beam overload used in focus fire mode produces the single uber beam, in fire at will mode, it fires off a burst of very powerful beams at multiple targets. High yield applied to torpedoes in volley mode will fire a single high yield at a single target or several high yield at a single target, depending on if it's a plasma/tricobalt or one of the other torps, high yield in spread mode fires several high yields at several different targets, one high yield per target. Cannon overload in rapid fire gives one long, super pulse at one target, and in scatter volley fires a massive blast like the space version of a pulsewave weapon)
Our operations are running smoothly, however, the other vessel on probe duty has been knocked out of commission by biting off more than they could chew and one of the probes is making a getaway. Their starboard shield is the only one down and we're approaching from their port with them just a couple km away from the temporal portal. "We can't let them escape! Overload the beam emitters and fire a high yield torpedo!" (active abilities) The beam overload blasts through their port shield and the torpedo nearly obliterates them, but they're still going. "Emergency power to engines and ready the tractor beam!" (active abilities) We move into tractor range and catch them just in time, getting off the last few pulses needed to destroy them.
I really could go on and on... but I think I've done enough to show that none of the ships need to be limited or significantly gimped in one way or another compared to the others in order for gameplay to be dynamic and interesting. I personally prefer a game where everyone is capable of doing respectable amounts of damage and taking care of themselves instead of "needing" a healer or "needing" a tank or "needing" a damage dealer.
The primary differentiation I think should be between the ships is that the cruiser is the least maneuverable and thus can't escape the enemy's most powerful attacks or move to significantly take advantage of an enemy's weaknesses, however, it does high damage and can take a beating.
An escort isn't as outright powerful as a cruiser, but its speed and maneuverability allow it to stay on an enemy's weak shield facing giving it a tactical advantage. Its speed and maneuverability also make it hard to hit, so while it can't take the outright abuse a cruiser can, nor can it deal the same outright damage as a cruiser, it takes advantage of weaknesses the cruiser can't, and avoids the damage a cruiser can't.
A science ship doesn't do as much outright weapon damage as an escort or a cruiser, nor is it as fast and maneuverable as an escort, but its speed and maneuverability allow it to take advantage of weaknesses and avoid some damage that a cruiser can't and its advanced shields allow it to withstand direct hits that would wreck an escort's day. Its advanced sensors and deflector dish allow it to most quickly and efficiently identify weaknesses in subspace (and other such stuff) to allow it to target them and create phenomenon such as tykens rifts and gravity wells. Their advanced sensors make them the best at jamming and scrambling sensors. For these science abilities, they would be the 'best' but not have a monopoly on it, so they have shorter cooldowns on these abilities and more powerful effects on the abilities, but escorts and cruisers could less frequently and less powerfully perform these functions as well.
This type of a system, to me, creates great diversity and interest, where all ships can pretty much do all things, they just go about it differently and have different strengths. For example, the science vessel having the shortest cools and most powerful effects when using science powers. A cruiser would have shorter cools and stronger effects for using extend shields, reverse shield polarity, and other engineering powers. An escort would have improved attack patterns e.g. 10% loss in weapon damage rather than 20% when using evasive maneuvers stance, more powerful and shorter cools on dispersal patterns and overloads and high yield torpedoes.
So every ship would basically have every skill, just the type of ship would determine how often and how powerfully it can be used, and that would be most often and most powerfully if the skill falls in its "wheelhouse".
Also, with such a system, I would switch boffs from providing active powers when seated to passive improvement of abilities through specializations. So you can specifically reduce the cool/increase the damage/effect/heal of abilities by slotting bridge officers with those specialties. Gravitational Physicist could reduce the cool/boost the damage/pull of a grav well. Shield Dynamics Specialist could improve your extend shields, Advanced Starship Pilot Training could improve maneuver stances or generally the maneuverability of your vessel.
So in short, I would really do the game very differently, and much more like what was in the shows... and sorry for the novel, lol.
And to specifically tie it all into the topic of the thread, I support the OP's suggestion, but feel it could be taken much, much further. Yes, there's less frantic clicking, less mashing of buttons, less gnashing of teeth, but there's more strategy, "watching the road instead of the dashboard" as it were, more versatility, and to me, more fun.