And in typical manner, you misunderstood what i was saying. Given the current state of the singularity core, i prefer the warpcore because it does not gimp my ship and loads up with hardly useful extra powers.
Where does I stated that i want it to be like the other ships? Oh wait I did not. But it has to be on par with them, otherwise it is junk.
I have not misunderstood you in the slightest.
Take away the singularity core, and it plays like damn near any other ship, except you can have a heavier ship that cloaks. Just go play one of those other ships if you don't want to muck with the Singularity Core mechanics.
Ok, I would like to get my input here about the D'deridex, and the Bridge Officer layout that I saw at both the level 30, and the retro-fit at level 50. They both seem to be clones of the Galaxy, or at best a variant of the Starcruiser. The thing I despise is that it puts the D'deridex as the same type of ship the Galaxy is. Which is just not the case.
The D'deridex is by far ment to be Scientific, it is this way because the NPC version is deadly only for the reason that it can use disables and other scientific assits to help it kill a potential enemy.
Here is a bit more of a rational arguement, the Klingons have cruisers ment more for damage, the Federation is more for tanking, the Romulans should be more science based. They have more advanced technology in the scientific areas, such as cloak. Its just not right to see the D'deridex made into a ship that will be useless outside of annoying Borg just prior to your death.
Please don't make the D'deridex as useless as the Galaxy.
The BOFF/Console layout for the "current" T5 D'Deridex Retrofit is that of the Mirror Vor'cha.
The "current" for the Ha'apax RA vessel is that of the non-Fleet Heavy Cruiser Retrofit.
Thinking about it, I realized why the devs probably consider the slower spin-up from beginning charge to full charge on the core to be a "good thing"; we're just thinking about it wrong.
They've said all along that the whole Romulan playstyle is centered around risk vs rewards; the battle cloak and the Singularity Core both work to this effect. For the cloak, you take the risk of losing shields while potentially under fire to reposition yourself and to get a potent damage boost, maybe to break away long enough to lick your wounds before getting back into the fight. For the Singularity Core, it's tempting to think of it as its level 5 powers, and anything less than that isn't worth using, but we should think of them as their level 1 powers that grow over time. Before the recent change, the singularity core (once it was off cooldown) would rather quickly jump from 1 to 5. Now it takes a bit of time to build up, so, when you need its powers, you have to ask yourself "should I use it NOW and hope it's good enough, or should I wait til it's fully charged...and hope I'm still alive then?". Rather than "Should I wa...never mind, it's at 5 already."
With this mindset, I'm now feeling that the system is working as it should. We're still in the first phase of testing, so we have limited access to items, DOffs, and such that can offset the disadvantages, but even so, I feel the flexibility the warbird has JUST with its singularity core and cloak more than makes up for those penalties. Comparing the T'Liss with my memories of the Miranda (or the NX-Enterprise I'd usually fly instead), I realized that even with the reduced power, I was killing things a heck of a lot faster, courtesy of the coming-out-of-cloak damage buff and the Plasma Shockwave. In the Dhelan, I was actually a bit more fragile, because I was being more cocky and pulling in more aggro than was prudent...but thanks to Quantum Absorption, I was getting away with it even when I was getting myself in over my head. That situation only improved once I got the Mogai and Warp Shadows, giving me the chance to pop in, fire my defenses, heals, and resists, then leave the Warp Shadows to take the heat while I continued to hammer away and gave my heals and resists a chance to recover for another round. And NONE of these trip cooldowns on any of my BOff skills, allowing me to kit out my BOffs knowing I have the singularity core skills to back them up.
Overall, I'm satisfied with the balance they've struck (with one exception, which I'll get to in a bit). I'd wager that, if they had hidden the power penalty from me, I'd probably not have noticed the difference. Tackling groups in a warbird was less painful than I ever remember limping about in a T1/T2 fed ship.
My only complaint is about the higher-quality singularity core's power buff; it ranges from 0 to 7.5 depending on your charge level, and I strongly feel it should always offer a minimal amount of power, even when discharged and on cooldown. 2.5 to 7.5 would be appropriate, in my not-so-humble opinion.
Thinking about it, I realized why the devs probably consider the slower spin-up from beginning charge to full charge on the core to be a "good thing"; we're just thinking about it wrong.
They've said all along that the whole Romulan playstyle is centered around risk vs rewards; the battle cloak and the Singularity Core both work to this effect. For the cloak, you take the risk of losing shields while potentially under fire to reposition yourself and to get a potent damage boost, maybe to break away long enough to lick your wounds before getting back into the fight. For the Singularity Core, it's tempting to think of it as its level 5 powers, and anything less than that isn't worth using, but we should think of them as their level 1 powers that grow over time. Before the recent change, the singularity core (once it was off cooldown) would rather quickly jump from 1 to 5. Now it takes a bit of time to build up, so, when you need its powers, you have to ask yourself "should I use it NOW and hope it's good enough, or should I wait til it's fully charged...and hope I'm still alive then?". Rather than "Should I wa...never mind, it's at 5 already."
With this mindset, I'm now feeling that the system is working as it should. We're still in the first phase of testing, so we have limited access to items, DOffs, and such that can offset the disadvantages, but even so, I feel the flexibility the warbird has JUST with its singularity core and cloak more than makes up for those penalties. Comparing the T'Liss with my memories of the Miranda (or the NX-Enterprise I'd usually fly instead), I realized that even with the reduced power, I was killing things a heck of a lot faster, courtesy of the coming-out-of-cloak damage buff and the Plasma Shockwave. In the Dhelan, I was actually a bit more fragile, because I was being more cocky and pulling in more aggro than was prudent...but thanks to Quantum Absorption, I was getting away with it even when I was getting myself in over my head. That situation only improved once I got the Mogai and Warp Shadows, giving me the chance to pop in, fire my defenses, heals, and resists, then leave the Warp Shadows to take the heat while I continued to hammer away and gave my heals and resists a chance to recover for another round. And NONE of these trip cooldowns on any of my BOff skills, allowing me to kit out my BOffs knowing I have the singularity core skills to back them up.
Overall, I'm satisfied with the balance they've struck (with one exception, which I'll get to in a bit). I'd wager that, if they had hidden the power penalty from me, I'd probably not have noticed the difference. Tackling groups in a warbird was less painful than I ever remember limping about in a T1/T2 fed ship.
My only complaint is about the higher-quality singularity core's power buff; it ranges from 0 to 7.5 depending on your charge level, and I strongly feel it should always offer a minimal amount of power, even when discharged and on cooldown. 2.5 to 7.5 would be appropriate, in my not-so-humble opinion.
You as killing stuff faster cause they are closer to esorts then to cruisers. I kill stuff with the T3 Mogai also faster then i did with my t3 sci ship, cause i can mount dhc(Would be faster in a fed escort also). But cause of the lower power you have less speed, less shiedling, less defense and less weapon dmg, when the out of cloak effect is gone. As the poster before already stated.
Also it depends if you play the missions on normal, or at a higher difficulty lvl. The stronger shields/hitpoints make the short bonus less effective if you see the whole fight cause it lasts longer. You probably won?t have a higher average dmg then with any other Escort.
And you need to stay in combat a while till the charge of the singularity core is full. So no hit and run with benefit Power from the singularity core anymore.
The power bonus from the singularity core is just not on par with the warpcores.
Why do the Singularity cores have to be charged for the Powerbonus? You pay already for the Singularity Core skills with the -10 to each system. In add you have a core which gives its full bonus only when it is fully charged. So you pay twice.
Reynolds/Thokal
U.S.S. Helios -Vesta Class/R.R.W. Dark Science - Dyson Surveillance Science Destroyer U.S.S. Donut - Fleet Advanced Research Vessel Retrofit TheWiseGuys
Take away the singularity core, and it plays like damn near any other ship, except you can have a heavier ship that cloaks. Just go play one of those other ships if you don't want to muck with the Singularity Core mechanics.
No one's suggesting the singularity should be taken away, they're arguing that the abilities aren't worth the cost. Personally, I don't think they're worth the cost either, I can do a lot more with +10 to each subsystem than I can do with a selection of weak abilities that take a while to charge and have a negligible effect when they are available (assuming I even need them then).
I appreciate the abilities are there to distinguish Romulan game play from the Fed's and KDF, but right now they're so situational and/ or weak that they're more a penalty than an option.
lets talk about war bird philosophy for a bit, especially when it it applied to large ships. first of all, they should all be destroyer like ships, and the first 3 and the retrofits are. then we get to the d'deridex, and its just a cruisers. the worst cruiser ive ever seen i might add. the ha'apax might actually be worse. the D'deridex has an ensign sci now, but a 3rd tac console, and the ha'apax has a tac ens with a 3rd sci console! who signed off on that?!
why are the first 3 ships so interesting, dynamic and powerful wile the 2 big ships are the 2 worst cruisers ive ever seen? more then anything, it seems to be about what the devs think big d'deridex philosophy is. its huge, it should have a bad turn rate. it has slower maximum warp then a galaxy class from tin man, more evidence that it should have a lower turn rate. but these things dont equate to me having all that much to do with turn rate at all. maximum sprint warp speed has nothing to do with combat mobility at impulse. the negvar is about the same size and volume as a galaxy class, yet it turns 3 better, for no justifiable reason, other then people thing kdf cruisers should turn beter, regardless of any lack of canon evidence ether way. the negvar has a better turn rate then the excelsior even! when doing some tests with as many RCS consoles as i could fit on a fleet galaxy and fleet negvar, i could get the negvar to turn 20 better then the galaxy. the base turn rate is the most important stat a ship can have, it determines everything about what it can actually use or do in game.
i talked at length about turn rate floors here- http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=9301751#post9301751, and its a change the marginalized cruisers in this game desperately need. partly for just a quality of life increase, but also for a defensive increese. its too easy for an escort to sit behind a slow cruiser and pownd away at 1 shield faceing and there being nothing a cruiser can do about it, in kdf cruisers i can rotait the ship and make whoever is shooting at me hit multiple shield facings, going a long way to protect myself.
in the case of war birds, these ships should have more in common with battle cruisers then carriers and fed cruisers. they have a more similar philosophy to be sure. from what i have seen in star trek of romulna ships, i take away something very differetn then what the devs seem to have. the D'deridex is esetually a huge bird of prey, not a tanky cruiser so much as an alpha strikeing giant with below average armor. the single nose cannon it has, that makes up most of its forward offense, can hit so hard that it could remove 10% of a galaxy class's shields in each shot. basicly a single cannon version of an in game DHC. in the defecter, 2 of these ships decloaked and shot the enterprise several times each, at minimal power. if they had used full power, the enterprise would have been destroyed befor it could react, and picard knew it. in DS9, these ships flew uncloaked and in formation as ships of the line, and they suffered greatly. it was clear they were taking much more damage then federation and klingon ships when hit by cardasian weapons platforms, they were out of their element. romulans are also very sneeky, and i equate that with a good amount of sci powers on thier ship.
so maybe you can see why i think you guys got these big war birds completely wrong. you just made them more big dull cruisers, unable to attack effectively, unable to defend themselves or have any maneuverability, just made them more useless heal boats, with battle cloaks, so they can spend time invisible and not suporting. thats totally what a ship that couldn't serve any purpose other then being a heal boat needs, a battle cloak. that station setup isn't even that great of a heal boat setup, the recluse, odyssey, and ambassador trump its setup by a wide margin. pared with the lowest turn rate of any healer cruiser, it cant even stay with the ships its trying to support. all this plus how its the exact opposite of how this ship actually acted in canon, which i went over last paragraph, leaves the D'deridex and ha'apax in a terrible, even worthless position.
the D'deridex is a tactical predator. tactical predators need high base turn rates. this ship was observed haveing weak hull in ds9, it should NOT have the highest hull of any cruiser in the game. as if that makes up for its turn rate at all, and has the same weight and value as turn rate. the ship should have a turn rate of 9, matching the negvar. the ship should have a low fro cruiser hull, like 34k, to balance that. the ship should have a much more interesting station setup, a setup like the ambasidor, the odessy, even something like what the nebula has. romulans dont have access to anything like this yet, and these are good station setups, a good match for a ship like this. people are complaing about a lac of sci on these ships, and i think the setup that would match the d'deridex best is this
COM tac LTC sci LT eng
LT eng ENS uni
specializing in the high end sci skills, havering very strong tactical, and a good number of lower end eng skills, thats what the d'deridex should be, that would be a romulan's take on a cruiser. pared with a battle claok and a beter turn rate this ship can be played as it was observed in canon, thats what we all want. the ha'apax, that should have the odessy/bortas station setup. the romulans should have access to that good setup like the kdf and feds do.
when people say they want to play the romulan faction, what they mean is they want to use the d'deridex. making that ship worse in every way then a tier 5 star cruiser that was available to the feds at game launch, and then charging retrofit ship price for it is a cruel joke. it does not fit what we can observe of the ship from canon, and its not a ship that will be any fun to use. making the d'deridex bad is the sure fire way to making this grand new expansion a failure. its bad enough that wile leveling you go from a tac heavy 14 turn mogai to a 5 turn snore fest cruiser, with no other options. what are players supposed to do when they reach tier 4? use the mogai until tier 5 and buy a retrofit of a more usable ship? you want players to skip over what they have been waiting to use specifically all this time? locking that ship they have wanted behind stats that make the shp unusably bad? how could you go down a path that disastrous to the success of this expansion?
on a more minor note, both the retrofit tier 1 and tier 2 ships are basically escorts with a COM tac and a LTC eng station. though they are a bit different, and i like both station setups, that seems a bit redundant. its been said that there will be a romulan vet ship too, so there will be yet another war bird that can have basically the same station setup the tier 2 retrofit ship can have soon. there is also no sci ship war birds to speak of, well i think that tier 2 retrofit can fit the bill with a bit of modification. a setup like this
COM sci LTC tac
LT tac LT eng ENS uni
this is nearly the setup the fleet vorcha has, only it has a commander sci instead of a commander eng. that tier 2 retrofit can still basically act like an escort, i wouldn't change any other thing about it, it would have access to the highest end sci skills. to me it looks like the warbird version of a sci ship, like my proposed D'deridex is the war bird version of a battle cruiser.
why are the first 3 ships so interesting, dynamic and powerful wile the 2 big ships are the 2 worst cruisers ive ever seen? more then anything, it seems to be about what the devs think big d'deridex philosophy is. its huge, it should have a bad turn rate.
Because that's how it's always been.
Personally, I think they need to stop thinking of starships as boats in water. There's nothing to resist a starship in the vacuum of space, once you adopt that philosophy, you can rebuild the paradigm on starship maneuvers.
You're still trading a permanent -10 power to everything against highly situational abilities with a 1 minute minimum cooldown and about a 1:30 cooldown if you want to use the ability at full power.
Still not a fan. Still not worth it. Too much doing nothing and too little power to everything else during the majority of time when your singularity powers aren't available.
* Singularity core should ALWAYS recharge, in combat or out of combat. The default state of your reactor should be "full power".
* Singularity abilities should only have 1 degree of use: "full power". They consume one level of charge from your core when used.
* Abilities should have a 30 second self cooldown and a 10 second system cooldown. Yes: 10 seconds.
* Singularity core should provide 40 base power to everything when fully charged, and 20 when fully depleted. Yes: 20. Yes: this means some things will stop working unless you have power buffs!
* Core recharges slower at low power levels, and slower while in cloak. Super-slow if you're at low power and cloaked.
Now, players are more free to use their singularity powers "casually". Faster cooldown, good recharge speed when you're only recovering from 4 to 5 during sustained combat. You can use them pretty much whenever you want. This offsets the 40 base power handicap. But you decide it's time to pull out all the stops: you can use everything in rapid succession. Everything else on the ship suffers brownouts if you do. So you fly straight and level using an occasional at-will piece of space voodoo and keeping your power levels high, or, you go totally crazy with the singularity stuff and hope whatever you did can finish off the enemy because now you're a wounded bird with your drained core.
Agreed. The current state of -10 power to all subsystems (forever) is basically terrible and in no way compensated for the occasionally available and highly situational console-equivalent ability you recieve in return.
If I could completely drop the singularity core, return the power levels to normal and plug in a regular warp core I would do so without a moment of hesitation. Higher base power levels are utterly superior to what is being offered as the alternative.
At the very least have the singularity core actually provide the missing power levels while it remains fully charged, just as suggested above.
And yes, they should be charging at all times unless you're suggesting the crew uses non combat situations to turn on all the holodecks for vodka parties between skimishes.
lets talk about war bird philosophy for a bit, especially when it it applied to large ships. first of all, they should all be destroyer like ships, and the first 3 and the retrofits are. then we get to the d'deridex, and its just a cruisers. the worst cruiser ive ever seen i might add. the ha'apax might actually be worse. the D'deridex has an ensign sci now, but a 3rd tac console, and the ha'apax has a tac ens with a 3rd sci console! who signed off on that?!
why are the first 3 ships so interesting, dynamic and powerful wile the 2 big ships are the 2 worst cruisers ive ever seen? more then anything, it seems to be about what the devs think big d'deridex philosophy is. its huge, it should have a bad turn rate. it has slower maximum warp then a galaxy class from tin man, more evidence that it should have a lower turn rate. but these things dont equate to me having all that much to do with turn rate at all. maximum sprint warp speed has nothing to do with combat mobility at impulse. the negvar is about the same size and volume as a galaxy class, yet it turns 3 better, for no justifiable reason, other then people thing kdf cruisers should turn beter, regardless of any lack of canon evidence ether way. the negvar has a better turn rate then the excelsior even! when doing some tests with as many RCS consoles as i could fit on a fleet galaxy and fleet negvar, i could get the negvar to turn 20 better then the galaxy. the base turn rate is the most important stat a ship can have, it determines everything about what it can actually use or do in game.
i talked at length about turn rate floors here- http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=9301751#post9301751, and its a change the marginalized cruisers in this game desperately need. partly for just a quality of life increase, but also for a defensive increese. its too easy for an escort to sit behind a slow cruiser and pownd away at 1 shield faceing and there being nothing a cruiser can do about it, in kdf cruisers i can rotait the ship and make whoever is shooting at me hit multiple shield facings, going a long way to protect myself.
in the case of war birds, these ships should have more in common with battle cruisers then carriers and fed cruisers. they have a more similar philosophy to be sure. from what i have seen in star trek of romulna ships, i take away something very differetn then what the devs seem to have. the D'deridex is esetually a huge bird of prey, not a tanky cruiser so much as an alpha strikeing giant with below average armor. the single nose cannon it has, that makes up most of its forward offense, can hit so hard that it could remove 10% of a galaxy class's shields in each shot. basicly a single cannon version of an in game DHC. in the defecter, 2 of these ships decloaked and shot the enterprise several times each, at minimal power. if they had used full power, the enterprise would have been destroyed befor it could react, and picard knew it. in DS9, these ships flew uncloaked and in formation as ships of the line, and they suffered greatly. it was clear they were taking much more damage then federation and klingon ships when hit by cardasian weapons platforms, they were out of their element. romulans are also very sneeky, and i equate that with a good amount of sci powers on thier ship.
so maybe you can see why i think you guys got these big war birds completely wrong. you just made them more big dull cruisers, unable to attack effectively, unable to defend themselves or have any maneuverability, just made them more useless heal boats, with battle cloaks, so they can spend time invisible and not suporting. thats totally what a ship that couldn't serve any purpose other then being a heal boat needs, a battle cloak. that station setup isn't even that great of a heal boat setup, the recluse, odyssey, and ambassador trump its setup by a wide margin. pared with the lowest turn rate of any healer cruiser, it cant even stay with the ships its trying to support. all this plus how its the exact opposite of how this ship actually acted in canon, which i went over last paragraph, leaves the D'deridex and ha'apax in a terrible, even worthless position.
the D'deridex is a tactical predator. tactical predators need high base turn rates. this ship was observed haveing weak hull in ds9, it should NOT have the highest hull of any cruiser in the game. as if that makes up for its turn rate at all, and has the same weight and value as turn rate. the ship should have a turn rate of 9, matching the negvar. the ship should have a low fro cruiser hull, like 34k, to balance that. the ship should have a much more interesting station setup, a setup like the ambasidor, the odessy, even something like what the nebula has. romulans dont have access to anything like this yet, and these are good station setups, a good match for a ship like this. people are complaing about a lac of sci on these ships, and i think the setup that would match the d'deridex best is this
COM tac LTC sci LT eng
LT eng ENS uni
specializing in the high end sci skills, havering very strong tactical, and a good number of lower end eng skills, thats what the d'deridex should be, that would be a romulan's take on a cruiser. pared with a battle claok and a beter turn rate this ship can be played as it was observed in canon, thats what we all want. the ha'apax, that should have the odessy/bortas station setup. the romulans should have access to that good setup like the kdf and feds do.
when people say they want to play the romulan faction, what they mean is they want to use the d'deridex. making that ship worse in every way then a tier 5 star cruiser that was available to the feds at game launch, and then charging retrofit ship price for it is a cruel joke. it does not fit what we can observe of the ship from canon, and its not a ship that will be any fun to use. making the d'deridex bad is the sure fire way to making this grand new expansion a failure. its bad enough that wile leveling you go from a tac heavy 14 turn mogai to a 5 turn snore fest cruiser, with no other options. what are players supposed to do when they reach tier 4? use the mogai until tier 5 and buy a retrofit of a more usable ship? you want players to skip over what they have been waiting to use specifically all this time? locking that ship they have wanted behind stats that make the shp unusably bad? how could you go down a path that disastrous to the success of this expansion?
on a more minor note, both the retrofit tier 1 and tier 2 ships are basically escorts with a COM tac and a LTC eng station. though they are a bit different, and i like both station setups, that seems a bit redundant. its been said that there will be a romulan vet ship too, so there will be yet another war bird that can have basically the same station setup the tier 2 retrofit ship can have soon. there is also no sci ship war birds to speak of, well i think that tier 2 retrofit can fit the bill with a bit of modification. a setup like this
COM sci LTC tac
LT tac LT eng ENS uni
this is nearly the setup the fleet vorcha has, only it has a commander sci instead of a commander eng. that tier 2 retrofit can still basically act like an escort, i wouldn't change any other thing about it, it would have access to the highest end sci skills. to me it looks like the warbird version of a sci ship, like my proposed D'deridex is the war bird version of a battle cruiser.
Nice write up again. Time will tell if any of this feedback is listened to at all.
just made them more useless heal boats, with battle cloaks, so they can spend time invisible and not suporting. thats totally what a ship that couldn't serve any purpose other then being a heal boat needs, a battle cloak.
This is one of those "funny because it is true" things.
I enjoy playing my Odyssey. But it also has a mini-escort, saucer sep, and that work bees skill since I bought the bundle. It turns slow but it comes with "stuff" and I can deal with that. My feeling on the D'Deridex is I need to see how it's console will work, and what will the "set bonus" with the tier IV warbird be, before I can really decide if this is going in a direction I can't like or not.
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
Highly situational powers (which sometimes arent even ready when you need them) that must be charged over time to be of any real use are not worth a -10 to every subsystem. If I could... I would opt out of using the singularity system entirely.
First, a warning - this isn't a clearly thought out post. Just something I thought about whilst doing a few other things.
The Singularity powers are along the lines of having additional consoles. As we level up and get higher level ships, it is like having a console with multiple powers we can select to use at various ranks. To an extent, they have multiple advantages over consoles - ability to use different ranks and a shorter cooldown. Balancing that to an extent is the time it takes to charge up for the "5" of any ability. Also, we face the -10 power per subsystem.
Again, this is rough - I may or may not come back to it...but what are the thoughts on:
The reduced power per subsystem taking place after the use of a power and lasting during the duration of the cooldown?
SC1 -2 power
SC2 -4 power
SC3 -6 power
SC4 -8 power
SC5 -10 power
Obviously the devs would have to tinker with the various durations, coolddowns, actual drain, etc, etc, etc.
But rather than it being a case of the Singularity constantly sucking up that power so we can use a power...how about the use of the power itself actually sucking up the power?
Oh well, I return you to your regularly scheduled complaining...
lets talk about war bird philosophy for a bit, especially when it it applied to large ships. first of all, they should all be destroyer like ships, and the first 3 and the retrofits are. then we get to the d'deridex, and its just a cruisers. the worst cruiser ive ever seen i might add. the ha'apax might actually be worse. the D'deridex has an ensign sci now, but a 3rd tac console, and the ha'apax has a tac ens with a 3rd sci console! who signed off on that?!
why are the first 3 ships so interesting, dynamic and powerful wile the 2 big ships are the 2 worst cruisers ive ever seen? more then anything, it seems to be about what the devs think big d'deridex philosophy is. its huge, it should have a bad turn rate. it has slower maximum warp then a galaxy class from tin man, more evidence that it should have a lower turn rate. but these things dont equate to me having all that much to do with turn rate at all. maximum sprint warp speed has nothing to do with combat mobility at impulse. the negvar is about the same size and volume as a galaxy class, yet it turns 3 better, for no justifiable reason, other then people thing kdf cruisers should turn beter, regardless of any lack of canon evidence ether way. the negvar has a better turn rate then the excelsior even! when doing some tests with as many RCS consoles as i could fit on a fleet galaxy and fleet negvar, i could get the negvar to turn 20 better then the galaxy. the base turn rate is the most important stat a ship can have, it determines everything about what it can actually use or do in game.
i talked at length about turn rate floors here- http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=9301751#post9301751, and its a change the marginalized cruisers in this game desperately need. partly for just a quality of life increase, but also for a defensive increese. its too easy for an escort to sit behind a slow cruiser and pownd away at 1 shield faceing and there being nothing a cruiser can do about it, in kdf cruisers i can rotait the ship and make whoever is shooting at me hit multiple shield facings, going a long way to protect myself.
in the case of war birds, these ships should have more in common with battle cruisers then carriers and fed cruisers. they have a more similar philosophy to be sure. from what i have seen in star trek of romulna ships, i take away something very differetn then what the devs seem to have. the D'deridex is esetually a huge bird of prey, not a tanky cruiser so much as an alpha strikeing giant with below average armor. the single nose cannon it has, that makes up most of its forward offense, can hit so hard that it could remove 10% of a galaxy class's shields in each shot. basicly a single cannon version of an in game DHC. in the defecter, 2 of these ships decloaked and shot the enterprise several times each, at minimal power. if they had used full power, the enterprise would have been destroyed befor it could react, and picard knew it. in DS9, these ships flew uncloaked and in formation as ships of the line, and they suffered greatly. it was clear they were taking much more damage then federation and klingon ships when hit by cardasian weapons platforms, they were out of their element. romulans are also very sneeky, and i equate that with a good amount of sci powers on thier ship.
so maybe you can see why i think you guys got these big war birds completely wrong. you just made them more big dull cruisers, unable to attack effectively, unable to defend themselves or have any maneuverability, just made them more useless heal boats, with battle cloaks, so they can spend time invisible and not suporting. thats totally what a ship that couldn't serve any purpose other then being a heal boat needs, a battle cloak. that station setup isn't even that great of a heal boat setup, the recluse, odyssey, and ambassador trump its setup by a wide margin. pared with the lowest turn rate of any healer cruiser, it cant even stay with the ships its trying to support. all this plus how its the exact opposite of how this ship actually acted in canon, which i went over last paragraph, leaves the D'deridex and ha'apax in a terrible, even worthless position.
the D'deridex is a tactical predator. tactical predators need high base turn rates. this ship was observed haveing weak hull in ds9, it should NOT have the highest hull of any cruiser in the game. as if that makes up for its turn rate at all, and has the same weight and value as turn rate. the ship should have a turn rate of 9, matching the negvar. the ship should have a low fro cruiser hull, like 34k, to balance that. the ship should have a much more interesting station setup, a setup like the ambasidor, the odessy, even something like what the nebula has. romulans dont have access to anything like this yet, and these are good station setups, a good match for a ship like this. people are complaing about a lac of sci on these ships, and i think the setup that would match the d'deridex best is this
COM tac LTC sci LT eng
LT eng ENS uni
specializing in the high end sci skills, havering very strong tactical, and a good number of lower end eng skills, thats what the d'deridex should be, that would be a romulan's take on a cruiser. pared with a battle claok and a beter turn rate this ship can be played as it was observed in canon, thats what we all want. the ha'apax, that should have the odessy/bortas station setup. the romulans should have access to that good setup like the kdf and feds do.
when people say they want to play the romulan faction, what they mean is they want to use the d'deridex. making that ship worse in every way then a tier 5 star cruiser that was available to the feds at game launch, and then charging retrofit ship price for it is a cruel joke. it does not fit what we can observe of the ship from canon, and its not a ship that will be any fun to use. making the d'deridex bad is the sure fire way to making this grand new expansion a failure. its bad enough that wile leveling you go from a tac heavy 14 turn mogai to a 5 turn snore fest cruiser, with no other options. what are players supposed to do when they reach tier 4? use the mogai until tier 5 and buy a retrofit of a more usable ship? you want players to skip over what they have been waiting to use specifically all this time? locking that ship they have wanted behind stats that make the shp unusably bad? how could you go down a path that disastrous to the success of this expansion?
on a more minor note, both the retrofit tier 1 and tier 2 ships are basically escorts with a COM tac and a LTC eng station. though they are a bit different, and i like both station setups, that seems a bit redundant. its been said that there will be a romulan vet ship too, so there will be yet another war bird that can have basically the same station setup the tier 2 retrofit ship can have soon. there is also no sci ship war birds to speak of, well i think that tier 2 retrofit can fit the bill with a bit of modification. a setup like this
COM sci LTC tac
LT tac LT eng ENS uni
this is nearly the setup the fleet vorcha has, only it has a commander sci instead of a commander eng. that tier 2 retrofit can still basically act like an escort, i wouldn't change any other thing about it, it would have access to the highest end sci skills. to me it looks like the warbird version of a sci ship, like my proposed D'deridex is the war bird version of a battle cruiser.
Quoted for truth. I hope the devs read this post and make the appropriate changes to this iconic ship.
Give D'Deridex anything you want, as long as Galaxy get's that universal ensign so it is not THAT far behind :P
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Give D'Deridex anything you want, as long as Galaxy get's that universal ensign so it is not THAT far behind :P
Yeah, honestly - I mainly plug that En Uni for the Gal/Negh - but I don't believe any ship should have 3 En of the same...that spare En should always be Uni, whether Tac/Eng/Sci.
Ships: My largest concern right now is that there is only one warbird avaliable at tier 5 for free, I would really love to see at least two other choices which are more geared to tactical and science for players who do not purchase the refits. As it stands right now romulans seem to have a distinct disadvantage in that regard when compared to the federation and kdf characters. Another possibility, since romulans only have one ship class, to work more with a balanced console layout and universal bridge officer layouts so every warbird is in essence a hybrid.
Singularity Core: The singularity core mechanic is interesting, but only starts to become fun once you have to choose between abilities. While the first 10 levels with only the shockwave power available are not that bad, it might be more fun to give the T'liss (and T'varo) access to the first two singularity powers. To what extent the abilities are strong enough to need the lower power levels to balance them I am not sure, but I will probably need to fly the tier 5 ships to make a judgement.
Ugh Don'tDrunk. You know I think CM tacs in Cruisers is TRIBBLE.
Why? It's not like that would make them tactically superior to escorts if thats what your worried about. It would just give the ship a little flexibility in combat. Right now cruisers, at least fedside are lucky to have 3 tac seats.
I like heal boats. Now you made the D'Dridex even better with the ensign science. I may level up an eng now... And 40k hull is awesome, especially with battle cloak. Silly devs.
The last changes to the singularity mechanics aren't good. The recharge time is too slow or the downtime is too long. 1min30 for nerfed powers (I've been a fan of the tanking power) isn't a good idea. You made it less powerful with a longer downtime. Why are you so afraid of powerful abilities with long CDs and high costs? Please fix this, there are many possibilities (buff powers, reduce downtime, reduce energy cost), just pick one. And you'll make people happy if it's not just shiny but a bit useless gimmicks.
Now one critical concern: You devs should be ashamed of what you've done to the free ship: it's really, really, ugly (did you stole the concept to the soviet army?), it's as slow as a Voquv without pets, and there's only one choice. Not even a free bop so that people can make a choice. I don't mind paying as long as it's not a freemium, but it looks like LoR is one. Disappointing.
You're still trading a permanent -10 power to everything against highly situational abilities with a 1 minute minimum cooldown and about a 1:30 cooldown if you want to use the ability at full power.
Still not a fan. Still not worth it. Too much doing nothing and too little power to everything else during the majority of time when your singularity powers aren't available.
* Singularity core should ALWAYS recharge, in combat or out of combat. The default state of your reactor should be "full power".
* Singularity abilities should only have 1 degree of use: "full power". They consume one level of charge from your core when used.
* Abilities should have a 30 second self cooldown and a 10 second system cooldown. Yes: 10 seconds.
* Singularity core should provide 40 base power to everything when fully charged, and 20 when fully depleted. Yes: 20. Yes: this means some things will stop working unless you have power buffs!
* Core recharges slower at low power levels, and slower while in cloak. Super-slow if you're at low power and cloaked.
Now, players are more free to use their singularity powers "casually". Faster cooldown, good recharge speed when you're only recovering from 4 to 5 during sustained combat. You can use them pretty much whenever you want. This offsets the 40 base power handicap. But you decide it's time to pull out all the stops: you can use everything in rapid succession. Everything else on the ship suffers brownouts if you do. So you fly straight and level using an occasional at-will piece of space voodoo and keeping your power levels high, or, you go totally crazy with the singularity stuff and hope whatever you did can finish off the enemy because now you're a wounded bird with your drained core.
Something more in that direction.
I agree that it doesn't make sense that the singularity core provides this "charge" from being in combat/taxed. Romulan warp cores, or "singularity cores" are unique in that once you start them up, they can not be shut down. It makes far more sense that the core is always functioning at maximum capacity, which allows it to fill this extra "capacitor" when out of combat as the ship's standard operations do not make full use of the core's constant high output. It makes more sense for your singularity capacitor to stop charging/slow charging once in combat.
I also think it makes sense to eliminate the ability to prematurely use a skill and thus fire off a gimpy version of the power if you aren't patient. You either have a charge to expend on the skill or you do not. So a singularity capacitor could hold several charges, and for each charge you can use a skill. Each of the singularity skills could have a longer self cool, perhaps your proposed 30 seconds and relatively short global cool, perhaps the 10 you suggest. This way, the singularity capacitor works somewhat like the omega plasma torpedo launcher, you can save up your charges and fire them off in rather rapid succession, or you can fire them off as they come available.
When in combat, the singularity capacitor could gain one charge per minute, or whatever is deemed appropriate, allowing you to fire off one power per minute if you have expended all your charges. Out of combat, it could gain one charge every 15 seconds or something. Again, this makes more sense as out of combat=surplus power, not vice versa.
Now, in canon, the romulan D'deridex warbird was limited to lower maximum speed than the enterprise as a result of the nature of their forced singularity drives. I agree with dontdrunk that having a lower maximum warp speed does not indicate that the ship is slower or less maneuverable than the galaxy at impulse speeds. The specific reason as to why the D'deridex was slower at warp was not explained. Is it the result of moving the core through subspace? Does this cause a less stable and thus less efficient warp field reducing the safe maximum speed? Did exceeding this safe maximum result in such an unstable warp field that it caused the irreparable warp engine damage the warbird experienced? Did the core possess the efficient qualities of not needing to refuel and a constant high power level but lack an antimatter/matter warp core's ability to consume more fuel to achieve higher peak output and thus higher maximum warp? The performance bottleneck of the latter explanation could justify the lower power levels of warbirds, and would explain a surplus of power when out of combat to charge a capacitor allowing the use of these special abilities once in combat. However, it would not explain how the warbird managed to exceed its maximum warp, nor justify failing to have sufficient power for subsystems while in combat but still somehow having a surplus to charge a capacitor.
Hmm...
Aha! I have it. Singularity cores produce a constant and reliable source of power, but also suffer from regular spikes in output. These spikes, which could destabilize the ship's main power network and damage ship systems, are safely siphoned off into a capacitor. The nature of capacitors allows for swift charging, but also discharge at high speed. As a result, converting the energy collected by the capacitor into a smooth source of power for the ship's standard systems would require far too many large conversion systems to be efficient. However, it was realized that the swift discharge of large amounts of power could be used to create these tactically advantageous effects. Additionally, when the vessel is out of combat and not fully utilizing the stable power of the core, the excess energy is siphoned off into the capacitors resulting in quicker charging when out of combat. This explains how warbirds have lower reliable power levels than their federation or klingon counterparts, but also have this secondary energy for these special abilities.
Now, to explain how the warbird in tin man managed to exceed the maximum warp speed typically permitted by a forced singularity core. Simple. The warbird did not siphon off the spikes of power from the core into its capacitors and instead permitted this power to go directly into the main power systems. These powerful spikes permitted the vessel to exceed their maximum warp to catch up with the enterprise, however it severely damaged their engines resulting in their "one way trip."-I do believe I have just demonstrated a master's level of "making technical TRIBBLE up." Feel free to applaud.
Now all that remains is to find the careful balance of maximum number of charges, charge rates in and out of combat, self and global cool rates for the singularity abilities, and ability power/effect to make them valuable enough to warrant the sacrifice of a total 40 points of power, while not becoming OP.
In case you did not notice, the Romulan T4/5 BoP has more weapon slots than their Klingon counterparts.
I'd be willing to lose a rear weapon slot for a higher turn speed.
It also has 4 Tac consoles, something Klingons only get when they purchase the Fleet Hoh'Sus.
And... I don't know what to do about this "Klingons have more choices than you and two of their choices are inferior in this way" complaint.... I guess if they add another T5 Romulan BoP I'd be happy to see it have 3 Tac consoles.
Therefore in comparison to Klingon BoPs the Romulan BoP is currently better in all aspects except turnrate. Another buff would make it overpowered.
Well the poster asked for a turn rate of 20 or 22, lets say 20 just to make you feel better.
In comparison it would still turn slower than the B'Rel, and we're hypothesizing the same number of weapon slots. The T'Varo would turn slower, 20 to 23 and the T'varo would have an ensign power and tac console versus full universal slots and an engineer console. I guess the T'Varo could be considered slightly ahead here in damage, but it would take speccing and consoling to dog fight with the B'Rel.
In comparison to the Hoh'Sus, and we're still hypothesizing the same number of weapon slots. The T'Varo would turn slower, 20 to 21, the T'Varo would have an enhanced battle cloak versus a standard battle cloak, and an ensign slot versus full universals. Maybe the BoP would pull marginally ahead.
In comparison to the Ning'Tao, and we're still hypothesizing the same number of weapon slots. The T'Varo would turn slower, 20 to 22, the T'Varo would have an enhanced battle cloak versus a battle cloak, the T'Varo would have one tactical console over, oh and the T'Varo would have one ensign slot to put up against a a third Lieutenant Commander power AND full universals. The Fleet Ning'Tao beats the fleet T'Varo handily. Actually, giving the average DPS increase of a turret, the Fleet Ning'Tao would still beat a 20 turn rate T'Varo handily with the current weapons layout.
So, your best BoP is easily better than the suggestions made to our best BoP. Your concern is now invalid.
Had a look at the cstore Romulan refit ships. I'd say ships like the Valdore are worse than the free Mogai in terms of Boff layout because in all likelihood, you are going to have epts 1 plus reverse shield polarity and I would gladly trade an ensign eng and lt universal for a lt eng and ensign science.
I like heal boats. Now you made the D'Dridex even better with the ensign science. I may level up an eng now... And 40k hull is awesome, especially with battle cloak. Silly devs.
Now one critical concern: You devs should be ashamed of what you've done to the free ship: it's really, really, ugly (did you stole the concept to the soviet army?), it's as slow as a Voquv without pets, and there's only one choice. Not even a free bop so that people can make a choice. I don't mind paying as long as it's not a freemium, but it looks like LoR is one. Disappointing.
I would prefer if the ensign was switched to a tac so I could use that for the requisite tac team with two purple conn doffs allowing for the back to back use that is pretty much essential for surviving most elite end game content/high end pvp. That way I could still have two attack tactical skills. Of course they could always throw us a lovely bone and make that one little ensign a universal and let us take the heavily engineering cruiser in a slightly more tac or slightly more sci direction depending on personal preference.
That or they could fix it so that tac team is no longer the gold standard in ship defense. I suggest making the shield distribution skills move shield points from one facing to another as quickly as tac team and have a 15 second cool with a 10 second effect similar to what is achieved by having two copies of tac team. This would preserve tac team's usefulness in that it would still intelligently distribute shields and have a 'set it and forget it' type effect, which is particularly helpful for escorts that are quickly zipping around and taking damage to different facings, and of course continue to reduce the damage inflicted by tactical debuffs and boarding parties. However, manual distribution would become effective enough to reduce dependence on tac team but would require more attention for optimal distribution. Thus making tac team more of an optional but still highly desired skill instead of what most who have the slightest clue what they are doing would argue is a mandatory skill.
Additionally, the current dependence on back to back tac team and the ensuing wide deployment of this capability pretty much invalidates the boarding party skill and fire on my mark skill while also reducing the effectiveness of attack pattern beta, and attack pattern delta. Thus I would suggest that tac team reduces the intensity of boarding party effects rather than removing/preventing them entirely. I.E. only one subsystem gets sabotaged rather than 2, half the crew that normally would have been killed get saved, bridge officer powers are less affected, etc. The effect of fire on my mark/attack pattern beta/attack pattern delta should be lessened, but not entirely cleared.
I would also suggest that several other powers become "blow softeners" rather than "hard counters" to skills. Engineering team shouldn't clear viral matrix but rather speed up its effect clearing it from your systems more quickly nor should it be a hard counter to subsystem debuffs/offlines but should speed their recovery/lessen their effect instead. Hazard emitters should clear the damage of eject warp plasma and aceton beam, but not the movement debuff or energy weapon damage debuff, or, conversely, can clear the movement debuff and energy weapon debuff but not the damage over time, or simply reduce duration/intensity of effect. However, allowing hazard emitters, a skill most everyone carries, to completely clear both of these high end engineering powers severely impacts engineering heavy vessels.- This is relevant to the discussion of the D'deridex as it is engineering heavy and having so many high end engineering skills be so easily and constantly cleared by abilities most everyone carries is what contributes to engineering being considered so undesirable. This is mostly true for PVP, but what one can not effectively use in pvp won't likely make it into their pve build if they engage in pvp at all, so I strongly feel that this should be addressed.
Science team should not clear subnuke beam, but should reduce the effect/duration, same for scramble sensors and jam sensors. Again, allowing a single ability to be a hard counter to so many abilities reduces playability. The effect of this, of course, has thus far been mitigated by few people making room in their builds for science or engineering team as they interfered with the requisite use of back to back tac team making the other team abilities redundant. On the topic of scramble sensors/antimatter spread. These should fuzz the screen and severely reduce sensor range and accuracy, however, interfering with friend or foe identification so that a victim ends up healing their attacker is not only intolerably frustrating, but frankly ludicrous. This mechanic suggests that when one attempts to use their tactical team-for example, to distribute their shields, that the enemy vessel lowered their shields/permitted the transport to pass through their shields so that the team could board the vessel. They then managed to force the team to sit at their consoles and distribute their shields for them at gun point, before ultimately shooting them in the head after 10 seconds. That or it supposes that your vessel's scrambled sensors some how mentally TRIBBLE your away team, preventing them from realizing they had boarded an enemy vessel so that they simply went about their work as if everything was normal... and the crew of the enemy ship allowed them to do so, as they some how knew the invading away team is being helpful at their consoles, not attempting to sabotage their ship. Both scenarios-beyond stupid. Also, gravity well and tyken's rift require greater crowd control, if not higher damage. These skills barely tickle as it is, so if they aren't going to do damage, gravity well should have a nigh inescapable pull. I'm not entirely sure what to suggest for tykens rift, but if we were to base it directly from canon, it could 100% disable a vessel's power, but would also render them immune to damage as incoming energy weapon fire would be absorbed just like the victim ship's power and torpedoes would be disabled, making it a nice, hard disable. Incredibly inconvenient, an excellent crowd control, but if implemented just right, should not be OP.
Additionally, keep the buffs to emergency power to weapons, engines, and auxiliary, but bring back the former uptime/cool mechanics currently on holodeck. I realize that the relatively long up time and ability to have more than one up at a time didn't "feel" like "emergency power," however, these abilities are the bread and butter of engineering heavy vessels, particularly at the ensign level. Bolstering the non-shield emergency powers was a great step in the right direction, but reducing the ability to use two different ones at about the same time or forcing people to click them more frequently makes them more limiting and distracting rather than "dynamic." Additionally, if semantics or "branding" is the issue, rename them to "non-essential power to:" or "secondary power to:" or "reserve power to:" and call it a day.
If these changes were implemented, I am certain that the dev team would be receiving far less criticism for the "failaxy" layout and the near carbon copy proposed "D'derpidex." If you permit the "special" abilities like crowd controls and dots and debuffs to be so easily and completely countered, all that remains is pure weapon damage, and in that race, we all know who wins: escorts.
I believe that all these changes should be relatively easy to implement and would instantly improve the game across the board and make the players far more receptive to many of the currently "fail" and "lame" ship builds the devs would like to create. The only downside I foresee to heeding these suggestions would be that the player's excitement over the sudden presence of balance might overshadow the coming of the romulans... but I think it would just blow their minds and make this expansion all the sweeter. We would all fall madly in love with the devs, and the romulans foreverty ever. "The Legacy of Romulus brought ROMULANS and REMANS and BALANCE and PURE AWESOME!"
Devs, I know this is what you want. You know this is what you want... so lets do it. Lets make the Legacy of Romulus a double rainbow, romulans AND balance. It'll freakin' blow our miiiiinds.
There's nothing to resist a starship in the vacuum of space, once you adopt that philosophy, you can rebuild the paradigm on starship maneuvers.
There is still inertia; it is harder to rotate a massive object.
FYI, in water large ships are actually FASTER if all else is equal (i.e. if the power to weight ratio is the same.) This is because larger ships have proportionally less surface area to cause drag.
In space there is no drag, so ships with the same power/mass ratio should be equally maneuverable.
when people say they want to play the romulan faction, what they mean is they want to use the d'deridex.
Actually, I want the T'varo Retrofit. But yeah...big ponderous ships aren't fun, partly because beam arrays NEED TO BE BUFFED!
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Joined October 2009. READ BEFORE POSTING
What concerns me after some testing on tribble is that the singularity core's only give 40 power to each subsys even worse its only possible to do power settings to a max of 90.
The fed/kling Warpcores have a more constant power bonus of 5+ the system to system bonus of 7,5% so a total bonus of 12,5 % and a higher base power of 50/100.
I really can't see how a Romulan ship can match any task effective when it's impossible to bring a system to 125, while the feds can run 3 systems at 125 with ease.
More than this the three other systems suffer from a insane powerloss due to the lower power cap and base power of singularity cores, without maxed out skills some system are below 25 power.
I understand that the Warbirds needs to be balanced in some way to cover the advantages from the cloak and the cannons but with this power setting they are crippled.
Comments
I have not misunderstood you in the slightest.
Take away the singularity core, and it plays like damn near any other ship, except you can have a heavier ship that cloaks. Just go play one of those other ships if you don't want to muck with the Singularity Core mechanics.
The D'deridex is by far ment to be Scientific, it is this way because the NPC version is deadly only for the reason that it can use disables and other scientific assits to help it kill a potential enemy.
Here is a bit more of a rational arguement, the Klingons have cruisers ment more for damage, the Federation is more for tanking, the Romulans should be more science based. They have more advanced technology in the scientific areas, such as cloak. Its just not right to see the D'deridex made into a ship that will be useless outside of annoying Borg just prior to your death.
Please don't make the D'deridex as useless as the Galaxy.
The "current" for the Ha'apax RA vessel is that of the non-Fleet Heavy Cruiser Retrofit.
The "old" layout for the D'D was the Gal...
They've said all along that the whole Romulan playstyle is centered around risk vs rewards; the battle cloak and the Singularity Core both work to this effect. For the cloak, you take the risk of losing shields while potentially under fire to reposition yourself and to get a potent damage boost, maybe to break away long enough to lick your wounds before getting back into the fight. For the Singularity Core, it's tempting to think of it as its level 5 powers, and anything less than that isn't worth using, but we should think of them as their level 1 powers that grow over time. Before the recent change, the singularity core (once it was off cooldown) would rather quickly jump from 1 to 5. Now it takes a bit of time to build up, so, when you need its powers, you have to ask yourself "should I use it NOW and hope it's good enough, or should I wait til it's fully charged...and hope I'm still alive then?". Rather than "Should I wa...never mind, it's at 5 already."
With this mindset, I'm now feeling that the system is working as it should. We're still in the first phase of testing, so we have limited access to items, DOffs, and such that can offset the disadvantages, but even so, I feel the flexibility the warbird has JUST with its singularity core and cloak more than makes up for those penalties. Comparing the T'Liss with my memories of the Miranda (or the NX-Enterprise I'd usually fly instead), I realized that even with the reduced power, I was killing things a heck of a lot faster, courtesy of the coming-out-of-cloak damage buff and the Plasma Shockwave. In the Dhelan, I was actually a bit more fragile, because I was being more cocky and pulling in more aggro than was prudent...but thanks to Quantum Absorption, I was getting away with it even when I was getting myself in over my head. That situation only improved once I got the Mogai and Warp Shadows, giving me the chance to pop in, fire my defenses, heals, and resists, then leave the Warp Shadows to take the heat while I continued to hammer away and gave my heals and resists a chance to recover for another round. And NONE of these trip cooldowns on any of my BOff skills, allowing me to kit out my BOffs knowing I have the singularity core skills to back them up.
Overall, I'm satisfied with the balance they've struck (with one exception, which I'll get to in a bit). I'd wager that, if they had hidden the power penalty from me, I'd probably not have noticed the difference. Tackling groups in a warbird was less painful than I ever remember limping about in a T1/T2 fed ship.
My only complaint is about the higher-quality singularity core's power buff; it ranges from 0 to 7.5 depending on your charge level, and I strongly feel it should always offer a minimal amount of power, even when discharged and on cooldown. 2.5 to 7.5 would be appropriate, in my not-so-humble opinion.
Weapon: -Damage
Pretty straightforward.
Shield: -Shield Regeneration, -Shield Resistance
But it also affects Extend Shields.
Engine: -Speed, -Turn, -Defense
But it will also affect damage because of positioning.
Auxiliary: -Heal, -Damage, -Various Effects
And it will also affect Stealth and Stealth Detection.
There are various things, that even though it looks like a small change (-10)...well, those things can start to add up, no?
Yeah, I found that the HoT/DoT of the singularity core doesn't make up for the missing power levels. I just feel so hamstrung in battle.
You as killing stuff faster cause they are closer to esorts then to cruisers. I kill stuff with the T3 Mogai also faster then i did with my t3 sci ship, cause i can mount dhc(Would be faster in a fed escort also). But cause of the lower power you have less speed, less shiedling, less defense and less weapon dmg, when the out of cloak effect is gone. As the poster before already stated.
Also it depends if you play the missions on normal, or at a higher difficulty lvl. The stronger shields/hitpoints make the short bonus less effective if you see the whole fight cause it lasts longer. You probably won?t have a higher average dmg then with any other Escort.
And you need to stay in combat a while till the charge of the singularity core is full. So no hit and run with benefit Power from the singularity core anymore.
The power bonus from the singularity core is just not on par with the warpcores.
Why do the Singularity cores have to be charged for the Powerbonus? You pay already for the Singularity Core skills with the -10 to each system. In add you have a core which gives its full bonus only when it is fully charged. So you pay twice.
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U.S.S. Donut - Fleet Advanced Research Vessel Retrofit
TheWiseGuys
No one's suggesting the singularity should be taken away, they're arguing that the abilities aren't worth the cost. Personally, I don't think they're worth the cost either, I can do a lot more with +10 to each subsystem than I can do with a selection of weak abilities that take a while to charge and have a negligible effect when they are available (assuming I even need them then).
I appreciate the abilities are there to distinguish Romulan game play from the Fed's and KDF, but right now they're so situational and/ or weak that they're more a penalty than an option.
why are the first 3 ships so interesting, dynamic and powerful wile the 2 big ships are the 2 worst cruisers ive ever seen? more then anything, it seems to be about what the devs think big d'deridex philosophy is. its huge, it should have a bad turn rate. it has slower maximum warp then a galaxy class from tin man, more evidence that it should have a lower turn rate. but these things dont equate to me having all that much to do with turn rate at all. maximum sprint warp speed has nothing to do with combat mobility at impulse. the negvar is about the same size and volume as a galaxy class, yet it turns 3 better, for no justifiable reason, other then people thing kdf cruisers should turn beter, regardless of any lack of canon evidence ether way. the negvar has a better turn rate then the excelsior even! when doing some tests with as many RCS consoles as i could fit on a fleet galaxy and fleet negvar, i could get the negvar to turn 20 better then the galaxy. the base turn rate is the most important stat a ship can have, it determines everything about what it can actually use or do in game.
i talked at length about turn rate floors here- http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=9301751#post9301751, and its a change the marginalized cruisers in this game desperately need. partly for just a quality of life increase, but also for a defensive increese. its too easy for an escort to sit behind a slow cruiser and pownd away at 1 shield faceing and there being nothing a cruiser can do about it, in kdf cruisers i can rotait the ship and make whoever is shooting at me hit multiple shield facings, going a long way to protect myself.
in the case of war birds, these ships should have more in common with battle cruisers then carriers and fed cruisers. they have a more similar philosophy to be sure. from what i have seen in star trek of romulna ships, i take away something very differetn then what the devs seem to have. the D'deridex is esetually a huge bird of prey, not a tanky cruiser so much as an alpha strikeing giant with below average armor. the single nose cannon it has, that makes up most of its forward offense, can hit so hard that it could remove 10% of a galaxy class's shields in each shot. basicly a single cannon version of an in game DHC. in the defecter, 2 of these ships decloaked and shot the enterprise several times each, at minimal power. if they had used full power, the enterprise would have been destroyed befor it could react, and picard knew it. in DS9, these ships flew uncloaked and in formation as ships of the line, and they suffered greatly. it was clear they were taking much more damage then federation and klingon ships when hit by cardasian weapons platforms, they were out of their element. romulans are also very sneeky, and i equate that with a good amount of sci powers on thier ship.
so maybe you can see why i think you guys got these big war birds completely wrong. you just made them more big dull cruisers, unable to attack effectively, unable to defend themselves or have any maneuverability, just made them more useless heal boats, with battle cloaks, so they can spend time invisible and not suporting. thats totally what a ship that couldn't serve any purpose other then being a heal boat needs, a battle cloak. that station setup isn't even that great of a heal boat setup, the recluse, odyssey, and ambassador trump its setup by a wide margin. pared with the lowest turn rate of any healer cruiser, it cant even stay with the ships its trying to support. all this plus how its the exact opposite of how this ship actually acted in canon, which i went over last paragraph, leaves the D'deridex and ha'apax in a terrible, even worthless position.
the D'deridex is a tactical predator. tactical predators need high base turn rates. this ship was observed haveing weak hull in ds9, it should NOT have the highest hull of any cruiser in the game. as if that makes up for its turn rate at all, and has the same weight and value as turn rate. the ship should have a turn rate of 9, matching the negvar. the ship should have a low fro cruiser hull, like 34k, to balance that. the ship should have a much more interesting station setup, a setup like the ambasidor, the odessy, even something like what the nebula has. romulans dont have access to anything like this yet, and these are good station setups, a good match for a ship like this. people are complaing about a lac of sci on these ships, and i think the setup that would match the d'deridex best is this
COM tac
LTC sci
LT eng
LT eng
ENS uni
specializing in the high end sci skills, havering very strong tactical, and a good number of lower end eng skills, thats what the d'deridex should be, that would be a romulan's take on a cruiser. pared with a battle claok and a beter turn rate this ship can be played as it was observed in canon, thats what we all want. the ha'apax, that should have the odessy/bortas station setup. the romulans should have access to that good setup like the kdf and feds do.
when people say they want to play the romulan faction, what they mean is they want to use the d'deridex. making that ship worse in every way then a tier 5 star cruiser that was available to the feds at game launch, and then charging retrofit ship price for it is a cruel joke. it does not fit what we can observe of the ship from canon, and its not a ship that will be any fun to use. making the d'deridex bad is the sure fire way to making this grand new expansion a failure. its bad enough that wile leveling you go from a tac heavy 14 turn mogai to a 5 turn snore fest cruiser, with no other options. what are players supposed to do when they reach tier 4? use the mogai until tier 5 and buy a retrofit of a more usable ship? you want players to skip over what they have been waiting to use specifically all this time? locking that ship they have wanted behind stats that make the shp unusably bad? how could you go down a path that disastrous to the success of this expansion?
on a more minor note, both the retrofit tier 1 and tier 2 ships are basically escorts with a COM tac and a LTC eng station. though they are a bit different, and i like both station setups, that seems a bit redundant. its been said that there will be a romulan vet ship too, so there will be yet another war bird that can have basically the same station setup the tier 2 retrofit ship can have soon. there is also no sci ship war birds to speak of, well i think that tier 2 retrofit can fit the bill with a bit of modification. a setup like this
COM sci
LTC tac
LT tac
LT eng
ENS uni
this is nearly the setup the fleet vorcha has, only it has a commander sci instead of a commander eng. that tier 2 retrofit can still basically act like an escort, i wouldn't change any other thing about it, it would have access to the highest end sci skills. to me it looks like the warbird version of a sci ship, like my proposed D'deridex is the war bird version of a battle cruiser.
Because that's how it's always been.
Personally, I think they need to stop thinking of starships as boats in water. There's nothing to resist a starship in the vacuum of space, once you adopt that philosophy, you can rebuild the paradigm on starship maneuvers.
You're still trading a permanent -10 power to everything against highly situational abilities with a 1 minute minimum cooldown and about a 1:30 cooldown if you want to use the ability at full power.
Still not a fan. Still not worth it. Too much doing nothing and too little power to everything else during the majority of time when your singularity powers aren't available.
* Singularity core should ALWAYS recharge, in combat or out of combat. The default state of your reactor should be "full power".
* Singularity abilities should only have 1 degree of use: "full power". They consume one level of charge from your core when used.
* Abilities should have a 30 second self cooldown and a 10 second system cooldown. Yes: 10 seconds.
* Singularity core should provide 40 base power to everything when fully charged, and 20 when fully depleted. Yes: 20. Yes: this means some things will stop working unless you have power buffs!
* Core recharges slower at low power levels, and slower while in cloak. Super-slow if you're at low power and cloaked.
Now, players are more free to use their singularity powers "casually". Faster cooldown, good recharge speed when you're only recovering from 4 to 5 during sustained combat. You can use them pretty much whenever you want. This offsets the 40 base power handicap. But you decide it's time to pull out all the stops: you can use everything in rapid succession. Everything else on the ship suffers brownouts if you do. So you fly straight and level using an occasional at-will piece of space voodoo and keeping your power levels high, or, you go totally crazy with the singularity stuff and hope whatever you did can finish off the enemy because now you're a wounded bird with your drained core.
Something more in that direction.
If I could completely drop the singularity core, return the power levels to normal and plug in a regular warp core I would do so without a moment of hesitation. Higher base power levels are utterly superior to what is being offered as the alternative.
At the very least have the singularity core actually provide the missing power levels while it remains fully charged, just as suggested above.
And yes, they should be charging at all times unless you're suggesting the crew uses non combat situations to turn on all the holodecks for vodka parties between skimishes.
Nice write up again. Time will tell if any of this feedback is listened to at all.
This is one of those "funny because it is true" things.
I enjoy playing my Odyssey. But it also has a mini-escort, saucer sep, and that work bees skill since I bought the bundle. It turns slow but it comes with "stuff" and I can deal with that. My feeling on the D'Deridex is I need to see how it's console will work, and what will the "set bonus" with the tier IV warbird be, before I can really decide if this is going in a direction I can't like or not.
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Highly situational powers (which sometimes arent even ready when you need them) that must be charged over time to be of any real use are not worth a -10 to every subsystem. If I could... I would opt out of using the singularity system entirely.
The Singularity powers are along the lines of having additional consoles. As we level up and get higher level ships, it is like having a console with multiple powers we can select to use at various ranks. To an extent, they have multiple advantages over consoles - ability to use different ranks and a shorter cooldown. Balancing that to an extent is the time it takes to charge up for the "5" of any ability. Also, we face the -10 power per subsystem.
Again, this is rough - I may or may not come back to it...but what are the thoughts on:
The reduced power per subsystem taking place after the use of a power and lasting during the duration of the cooldown?
SC1 -2 power
SC2 -4 power
SC3 -6 power
SC4 -8 power
SC5 -10 power
Obviously the devs would have to tinker with the various durations, coolddowns, actual drain, etc, etc, etc.
But rather than it being a case of the Singularity constantly sucking up that power so we can use a power...how about the use of the power itself actually sucking up the power?
Oh well, I return you to your regularly scheduled complaining...
Quoted for truth. I hope the devs read this post and make the appropriate changes to this iconic ship.
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Tac, Tac - Tac, Eng - Tac, Sci
Eng, Eng - Eng, Tac - Eng, Sci
Sci, Sci - Sci, Tac - Sci, Eng
Does pretty much define the standards for the vessels we love and hate...outside of the ships with the Uni Cmdr, eh?
And they've pretty much stuck to that with the Warbirds. The Escort/Raptor/Raider/Destroyer-like Warbirds and the Battle Cruiser-like Warbirds.
We might see the Cmdr, LCdr with the Scimitar...
We might see the Cmdr, LCdr with the Ha'apax Refit...
The Cmdr...is MIA...if it is going to exist at all.
Unless they break out a LCdr Scimitar with a Cmdr, eh?
Yeah, honestly - I mainly plug that En Uni for the Gal/Negh - but I don't believe any ship should have 3 En of the same...that spare En should always be Uni, whether Tac/Eng/Sci.
Singularity Core: The singularity core mechanic is interesting, but only starts to become fun once you have to choose between abilities. While the first 10 levels with only the shockwave power available are not that bad, it might be more fun to give the T'liss (and T'varo) access to the first two singularity powers. To what extent the abilities are strong enough to need the lower power levels to balance them I am not sure, but I will probably need to fly the tier 5 ships to make a judgement.
Why? It's not like that would make them tactically superior to escorts if thats what your worried about. It would just give the ship a little flexibility in combat. Right now cruisers, at least fedside are lucky to have 3 tac seats.
The last changes to the singularity mechanics aren't good. The recharge time is too slow or the downtime is too long. 1min30 for nerfed powers (I've been a fan of the tanking power) isn't a good idea. You made it less powerful with a longer downtime. Why are you so afraid of powerful abilities with long CDs and high costs? Please fix this, there are many possibilities (buff powers, reduce downtime, reduce energy cost), just pick one. And you'll make people happy if it's not just shiny but a bit useless gimmicks.
Now one critical concern: You devs should be ashamed of what you've done to the free ship: it's really, really, ugly (did you stole the concept to the soviet army?), it's as slow as a Voquv without pets, and there's only one choice. Not even a free bop so that people can make a choice. I don't mind paying as long as it's not a freemium, but it looks like LoR is one. Disappointing.
I agree that it doesn't make sense that the singularity core provides this "charge" from being in combat/taxed. Romulan warp cores, or "singularity cores" are unique in that once you start them up, they can not be shut down. It makes far more sense that the core is always functioning at maximum capacity, which allows it to fill this extra "capacitor" when out of combat as the ship's standard operations do not make full use of the core's constant high output. It makes more sense for your singularity capacitor to stop charging/slow charging once in combat.
I also think it makes sense to eliminate the ability to prematurely use a skill and thus fire off a gimpy version of the power if you aren't patient. You either have a charge to expend on the skill or you do not. So a singularity capacitor could hold several charges, and for each charge you can use a skill. Each of the singularity skills could have a longer self cool, perhaps your proposed 30 seconds and relatively short global cool, perhaps the 10 you suggest. This way, the singularity capacitor works somewhat like the omega plasma torpedo launcher, you can save up your charges and fire them off in rather rapid succession, or you can fire them off as they come available.
When in combat, the singularity capacitor could gain one charge per minute, or whatever is deemed appropriate, allowing you to fire off one power per minute if you have expended all your charges. Out of combat, it could gain one charge every 15 seconds or something. Again, this makes more sense as out of combat=surplus power, not vice versa.
Now, in canon, the romulan D'deridex warbird was limited to lower maximum speed than the enterprise as a result of the nature of their forced singularity drives. I agree with dontdrunk that having a lower maximum warp speed does not indicate that the ship is slower or less maneuverable than the galaxy at impulse speeds. The specific reason as to why the D'deridex was slower at warp was not explained. Is it the result of moving the core through subspace? Does this cause a less stable and thus less efficient warp field reducing the safe maximum speed? Did exceeding this safe maximum result in such an unstable warp field that it caused the irreparable warp engine damage the warbird experienced? Did the core possess the efficient qualities of not needing to refuel and a constant high power level but lack an antimatter/matter warp core's ability to consume more fuel to achieve higher peak output and thus higher maximum warp? The performance bottleneck of the latter explanation could justify the lower power levels of warbirds, and would explain a surplus of power when out of combat to charge a capacitor allowing the use of these special abilities once in combat. However, it would not explain how the warbird managed to exceed its maximum warp, nor justify failing to have sufficient power for subsystems while in combat but still somehow having a surplus to charge a capacitor.
Hmm...
Aha! I have it. Singularity cores produce a constant and reliable source of power, but also suffer from regular spikes in output. These spikes, which could destabilize the ship's main power network and damage ship systems, are safely siphoned off into a capacitor. The nature of capacitors allows for swift charging, but also discharge at high speed. As a result, converting the energy collected by the capacitor into a smooth source of power for the ship's standard systems would require far too many large conversion systems to be efficient. However, it was realized that the swift discharge of large amounts of power could be used to create these tactically advantageous effects. Additionally, when the vessel is out of combat and not fully utilizing the stable power of the core, the excess energy is siphoned off into the capacitors resulting in quicker charging when out of combat. This explains how warbirds have lower reliable power levels than their federation or klingon counterparts, but also have this secondary energy for these special abilities.
Now, to explain how the warbird in tin man managed to exceed the maximum warp speed typically permitted by a forced singularity core. Simple. The warbird did not siphon off the spikes of power from the core into its capacitors and instead permitted this power to go directly into the main power systems. These powerful spikes permitted the vessel to exceed their maximum warp to catch up with the enterprise, however it severely damaged their engines resulting in their "one way trip."-I do believe I have just demonstrated a master's level of "making technical TRIBBLE up." Feel free to applaud.
Now all that remains is to find the careful balance of maximum number of charges, charge rates in and out of combat, self and global cool rates for the singularity abilities, and ability power/effect to make them valuable enough to warrant the sacrifice of a total 40 points of power, while not becoming OP.
I'd be willing to lose a rear weapon slot for a higher turn speed.
And... I don't know what to do about this "Klingons have more choices than you and two of their choices are inferior in this way" complaint.... I guess if they add another T5 Romulan BoP I'd be happy to see it have 3 Tac consoles.
Well the poster asked for a turn rate of 20 or 22, lets say 20 just to make you feel better.
In comparison it would still turn slower than the B'Rel, and we're hypothesizing the same number of weapon slots. The T'Varo would turn slower, 20 to 23 and the T'varo would have an ensign power and tac console versus full universal slots and an engineer console. I guess the T'Varo could be considered slightly ahead here in damage, but it would take speccing and consoling to dog fight with the B'Rel.
In comparison to the Hoh'Sus, and we're still hypothesizing the same number of weapon slots. The T'Varo would turn slower, 20 to 21, the T'Varo would have an enhanced battle cloak versus a standard battle cloak, and an ensign slot versus full universals. Maybe the BoP would pull marginally ahead.
In comparison to the Ning'Tao, and we're still hypothesizing the same number of weapon slots. The T'Varo would turn slower, 20 to 22, the T'Varo would have an enhanced battle cloak versus a battle cloak, the T'Varo would have one tactical console over, oh and the T'Varo would have one ensign slot to put up against a a third Lieutenant Commander power AND full universals. The Fleet Ning'Tao beats the fleet T'Varo handily. Actually, giving the average DPS increase of a turret, the Fleet Ning'Tao would still beat a 20 turn rate T'Varo handily with the current weapons layout.
So, your best BoP is easily better than the suggestions made to our best BoP. Your concern is now invalid.
What Cryptic should consider before releasing anything.
I would prefer if the ensign was switched to a tac so I could use that for the requisite tac team with two purple conn doffs allowing for the back to back use that is pretty much essential for surviving most elite end game content/high end pvp. That way I could still have two attack tactical skills. Of course they could always throw us a lovely bone and make that one little ensign a universal and let us take the heavily engineering cruiser in a slightly more tac or slightly more sci direction depending on personal preference.
That or they could fix it so that tac team is no longer the gold standard in ship defense. I suggest making the shield distribution skills move shield points from one facing to another as quickly as tac team and have a 15 second cool with a 10 second effect similar to what is achieved by having two copies of tac team. This would preserve tac team's usefulness in that it would still intelligently distribute shields and have a 'set it and forget it' type effect, which is particularly helpful for escorts that are quickly zipping around and taking damage to different facings, and of course continue to reduce the damage inflicted by tactical debuffs and boarding parties. However, manual distribution would become effective enough to reduce dependence on tac team but would require more attention for optimal distribution. Thus making tac team more of an optional but still highly desired skill instead of what most who have the slightest clue what they are doing would argue is a mandatory skill.
Additionally, the current dependence on back to back tac team and the ensuing wide deployment of this capability pretty much invalidates the boarding party skill and fire on my mark skill while also reducing the effectiveness of attack pattern beta, and attack pattern delta. Thus I would suggest that tac team reduces the intensity of boarding party effects rather than removing/preventing them entirely. I.E. only one subsystem gets sabotaged rather than 2, half the crew that normally would have been killed get saved, bridge officer powers are less affected, etc. The effect of fire on my mark/attack pattern beta/attack pattern delta should be lessened, but not entirely cleared.
I would also suggest that several other powers become "blow softeners" rather than "hard counters" to skills. Engineering team shouldn't clear viral matrix but rather speed up its effect clearing it from your systems more quickly nor should it be a hard counter to subsystem debuffs/offlines but should speed their recovery/lessen their effect instead. Hazard emitters should clear the damage of eject warp plasma and aceton beam, but not the movement debuff or energy weapon damage debuff, or, conversely, can clear the movement debuff and energy weapon debuff but not the damage over time, or simply reduce duration/intensity of effect. However, allowing hazard emitters, a skill most everyone carries, to completely clear both of these high end engineering powers severely impacts engineering heavy vessels.- This is relevant to the discussion of the D'deridex as it is engineering heavy and having so many high end engineering skills be so easily and constantly cleared by abilities most everyone carries is what contributes to engineering being considered so undesirable. This is mostly true for PVP, but what one can not effectively use in pvp won't likely make it into their pve build if they engage in pvp at all, so I strongly feel that this should be addressed.
Science team should not clear subnuke beam, but should reduce the effect/duration, same for scramble sensors and jam sensors. Again, allowing a single ability to be a hard counter to so many abilities reduces playability. The effect of this, of course, has thus far been mitigated by few people making room in their builds for science or engineering team as they interfered with the requisite use of back to back tac team making the other team abilities redundant. On the topic of scramble sensors/antimatter spread. These should fuzz the screen and severely reduce sensor range and accuracy, however, interfering with friend or foe identification so that a victim ends up healing their attacker is not only intolerably frustrating, but frankly ludicrous. This mechanic suggests that when one attempts to use their tactical team-for example, to distribute their shields, that the enemy vessel lowered their shields/permitted the transport to pass through their shields so that the team could board the vessel. They then managed to force the team to sit at their consoles and distribute their shields for them at gun point, before ultimately shooting them in the head after 10 seconds. That or it supposes that your vessel's scrambled sensors some how mentally TRIBBLE your away team, preventing them from realizing they had boarded an enemy vessel so that they simply went about their work as if everything was normal... and the crew of the enemy ship allowed them to do so, as they some how knew the invading away team is being helpful at their consoles, not attempting to sabotage their ship. Both scenarios-beyond stupid. Also, gravity well and tyken's rift require greater crowd control, if not higher damage. These skills barely tickle as it is, so if they aren't going to do damage, gravity well should have a nigh inescapable pull. I'm not entirely sure what to suggest for tykens rift, but if we were to base it directly from canon, it could 100% disable a vessel's power, but would also render them immune to damage as incoming energy weapon fire would be absorbed just like the victim ship's power and torpedoes would be disabled, making it a nice, hard disable. Incredibly inconvenient, an excellent crowd control, but if implemented just right, should not be OP.
Additionally, keep the buffs to emergency power to weapons, engines, and auxiliary, but bring back the former uptime/cool mechanics currently on holodeck. I realize that the relatively long up time and ability to have more than one up at a time didn't "feel" like "emergency power," however, these abilities are the bread and butter of engineering heavy vessels, particularly at the ensign level. Bolstering the non-shield emergency powers was a great step in the right direction, but reducing the ability to use two different ones at about the same time or forcing people to click them more frequently makes them more limiting and distracting rather than "dynamic." Additionally, if semantics or "branding" is the issue, rename them to "non-essential power to:" or "secondary power to:" or "reserve power to:" and call it a day.
If these changes were implemented, I am certain that the dev team would be receiving far less criticism for the "failaxy" layout and the near carbon copy proposed "D'derpidex." If you permit the "special" abilities like crowd controls and dots and debuffs to be so easily and completely countered, all that remains is pure weapon damage, and in that race, we all know who wins: escorts.
I believe that all these changes should be relatively easy to implement and would instantly improve the game across the board and make the players far more receptive to many of the currently "fail" and "lame" ship builds the devs would like to create. The only downside I foresee to heeding these suggestions would be that the player's excitement over the sudden presence of balance might overshadow the coming of the romulans... but I think it would just blow their minds and make this expansion all the sweeter. We would all fall madly in love with the devs, and the romulans foreverty ever. "The Legacy of Romulus brought ROMULANS and REMANS and BALANCE and PURE AWESOME!"
Devs, I know this is what you want. You know this is what you want... so lets do it. Lets make the Legacy of Romulus a double rainbow, romulans AND balance. It'll freakin' blow our miiiiinds.
There is still inertia; it is harder to rotate a massive object.
FYI, in water large ships are actually FASTER if all else is equal (i.e. if the power to weight ratio is the same.) This is because larger ships have proportionally less surface area to cause drag.
In space there is no drag, so ships with the same power/mass ratio should be equally maneuverable.
Actually, I want the T'varo Retrofit. But yeah...big ponderous ships aren't fun, partly because beam arrays NEED TO BE BUFFED!
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The fed/kling Warpcores have a more constant power bonus of 5+ the system to system bonus of 7,5% so a total bonus of 12,5 % and a higher base power of 50/100.
I really can't see how a Romulan ship can match any task effective when it's impossible to bring a system to 125, while the feds can run 3 systems at 125 with ease.
More than this the three other systems suffer from a insane powerloss due to the lower power cap and base power of singularity cores, without maxed out skills some system are below 25 power.
I understand that the Warbirds needs to be balanced in some way to cover the advantages from the cloak and the cannons but with this power setting they are crippled.