With all the talk of giving Cruisers something that makes them stand out when compared to other classes I was thinking that instead of giving them better Armor how about we give them stronger weapons?
To give them an escort's job? No thanks, I think I'll still encourage the devs to make engineering/defense the main focus of cruisers.
It seems that my views on what's holding Cruisers back differs from many of the rest of yours.
I don?t see a Cruisers as poor tanks, I see them has vessels that can pretty much only tank.
Has it was said by another poster there is just too much power being drained by beam arrays and very little damage being dealt out by them has a result.
I thought that maybe if we got new Heavy Mounted Beam Arrays that offered much better damage that it would make the power drain worth it.
Another rout might be to give Cruisers an innate ability that cuts the power consumption of their equipped weapons in half or something.
When you look at it a Cruiser should not be held to the same power limitations that the much smaller escorts and Science Vessels have but there is really no way to change that in-game that won?t further unbalance the classes.
I also agree that Escorts are quite a more Cannon than they are Glass these days and they can tank quite well on their own.
T5 Science Vessels also need to be given a 4th Forth forward Weapon Slot, I mean T5 Escorts in most cases are much smaller than the equivalent level Science Vessel and they can pack 4 x 3 and Science Vessels should be able to match or pack more than that.
To give them an escort's job? No thanks, I think I'll still encourage the devs to make engineering/defense the main focus of cruisers.
Because you really need a tank in space combat, right? It's not like the name of the game is all about killing something quickly before time runs out. It's also not about escorts being able to tank damage long enough to kill something, while a cruiser just kinda plinks at something and does nothing.
I believe Crytpic is content with the amount of damage Cruisers do. They don't want Cruisers to be DPS monsters. They want them to be Tanking monsters. A Cruiser should win something because it was able to outlast its opponent.
STFs and PvP should include no-die bonuses: the longer you go without dying the better the chance of getting a good drop or more XP.
I thought it was the players that dictated who wanted what, not the developers. Developers can suggest balancing tweaks and such but if the majority of the playerbase believes cruisers should be more than just space whales, then it should it should be that way.
Edit: Now that I think of it, the tactical Bortasqu' is the proper approach for cruisers in general if Cryptic is going to keep them as slow as they are. Meaning, slow speed is acceptable if we have some sort of a very powerful unidirectional attack that requires us to "bring weapons to bear" or to move our ship into firing position.
It would be also be cool if cruisers could be upgraded to have better shields or faster impulse speeds to make up for the lack of maneuverability.
Edit: To answer the OP, I am for heavy beam mount upgades for cruisers, but the firing arc should only be 90. Thus, the enemy would pretty much have to be directly in front of you before you fired at it.
I thought it was the players that dictated who wanted what, not the developers. Developers can suggest balancing tweaks and such but if the majority of the playerbase believes cruisers should be more than just space whales, then it should it should be that way.
Well first, you have that backwards. It's the developers who dictate and it's the players who can suggest balancing tweaks and such, and even if the majority of players on this forum suggest cruisers whould be 'more than just space whales' it should, and will, be the way the developers say it will.
For second, what you are engaged in here is a logical fallacy called the "false dichotomy" where in someone presents two choices as if they are the only choices. Thankfully this game is designed with more than two choices so we don't need to pick between "cruisers as space whales" and whatever you're trying to sell us on.
The game has a range of agile, dps oriented cruisers in both factions. Now the KDF's 'agile dps cruiser' choices are currently better than the Federations, and in my humble opinion every other option falls behind the Galor but in every case we see that the 'agile dps cruiser' pays for its speed, maneuverability and dps potential with reduced survivability, this is called game balance.
Well first, you have that backwards. It's the developers who dictate and it's the players who can suggest balancing tweaks and such, and even if the majority of players on this forum suggest cruisers whould be 'more than just space whales' it should, and will, be the way the developers say it will.
For second, what you are engaged in here is a logical fallacy called the "false dichotomy" where in someone presents two choices as if they are the only choices. Thankfully this game is designed with more than two choices so we don't need to pick between "cruisers as space whales" and whatever you're trying to sell us on.
The game has a range of agile, dps oriented cruisers in both factions. Now the KDF's 'agile dps cruiser' choices are currently better than the Federations, and in my humble opinion every other option falls behind the Galor but in every case we see that the 'agile dps cruiser' pays for its speed, maneuverability and dps potential with reduced survivability, this is called game balance.
So either I have to play KDF, spend tons of money on master keys to maybe unlock a galor, or just spend a lot of EC's on a galor on the exchange to get the kind performance you're describing. Balance works both ways. The galor has great turn rate and abilities so they give it a weaker hull. However, most of the fed cruisers have slow rates, but they aren't balanced out with some sort of special attack. The only mitigating factor here is the high hull hp of Fed cruisers. Besides that, they don't have much going for them.
And don't give me the Fed Cruisers have more survivability argument because that's bs. The majority of end game content requires better turn rates and high dps. That's how the Romulan STF's work; you are rewarded for releasing as many captured Romulan ships as possible which requires killing Tholians as quickly as possible. The same goes for the Tholian web, Romulan vault mission. You have to have a decent amount of dps to kill the initial groups quickly enough and then to ward off weavers before they complete the web. The same goes for the omega force missions. You aren't rewarded for being a high hp, shield tank punching bag in omega/romulan STF's.
I'd like to see Cryptic gradually increase the range of beams and decrease the range of cannons.
Say the first iteration is + and - 1km range for both. See how that works for a few weeks and then increase the disparity again.
A range advantage is only meaningful if you can cause enough damage while you have it in order to make the battle one sided. A rifle has an advantage over a pistol because the rifle can deliver hits much further away and if you hit the other guy at all you probably win. Making beams able to hit a target further away, when they suffer from drain issues and have attenuation just like cannons do, isn't going to change much. They would need to deliver massive damage at extreme range, enough to cripple a target before that target gets close enough to use cannons, to make the advantage more than illusory.
So either I have to play KDF, spend tons of money on master keys to maybe unlock a galor, or just spend a lot of EC's on a galor on the exchange to get the kind performance you're describing. Balance works both ways. The galor has great turn rate and abilities so they give it a weaker hull. However, most of the fed cruisers have slow rates, but they aren't balanced out with some sort of special attack. The only mitigating factor here is the high hull hp of Fed cruisers. Besides that, they don't have much going for them.
A Fleet Advanced Heavy Escort only loses 2 degrees of turn over the Fleet Tor'kaht however and is still a seriously effective DPS cruiser. If you absolutely MUST PLAY as a DPS cruiser with a better turn rate than that, then yes, grind for a Galor, a D'Kora or play a Klingon.
And don't give me the Fed Cruisers have more survivability argument because that's bs. The majority of end game content requires better turn rates and high dps. That's how the Romulan STF's work; you are rewarded for releasing as many captured Romulan ships as possible which requires killing Tholians as quickly as possible. The same goes for the Tholian web, Romulan vault mission. You have to have a decent amount of dps to kill the initial groups quickly enough and then to ward off weavers before they complete the web. The same goes for the omega force missions. You aren't rewarded for being a high hp, shield tank punching bag in omega/romulan STF's.
What you call "bs" the rest of us call "game balance." If you'd like to make a suggestion for a Federation cruiser with more turn and less hull than even the Fleet Excelsior, than do so, if you'd like to make an argument that hull strength is so useless in both PVE and PVP that an overall buff to cruisers is justified, than do so.
But if you try to tell me again that the developers should ignore everything they know about game design and bend to the will of some posters claiming to represent the majority of posters, I'm going to continue to find its hard to take your position too seriously.
I'd like to see Cryptic gradually increase the range of beams and decrease the range of cannons.
Say the first iteration is + and - 1km range for both. See how that works for a few weeks and then increase the disparity again.
Beams need a rapid fire that does for them what CRF does for cannons. If drain spike is an issue then factor that into the design of the power itself so that when used drain to is compensated for....
then there was the idea I saw elsewhere that mention Armor modifier score similar the Shiled Modifer score and with a similar effect on resitances depending on armor consoles used in a design.
What cruisers need is Heavy Beam Banks. Dealing THE SAME as a standard Array But firing Heavyer shots at a slower rate. Say a Beam deals 1000 Damage in 1 second. This beam would deal 2000 in 2 seconds., Draining 10 Power, On the same arc.
But for cruisers...
Cruisers should get +10% resistance to weapon power drain. 10 Drain should = 9. 100 drain would be 90. Giving them a broadside Advantage. And +20% Resistance to being Slowed. (The ship is very large, its engines are VERY strong) +40% Foreword Speed,(No turning effect) And Doubled their current Inertia.
and for Science Ships...
Science Ships would get the ability to deal bonus damage. A science ship would 10% of the weapon damage as partial damage directly to hull. And Sensor Scan should passively Increase the Science Ships accuracy 2% per Stack (Cap at 20) and -4% per Defense of the target per stack (Cap at 40) And Half their current Inertia (Sci ships should be able to have th emost balanced stats, and fastest Acceleration/Deceleration Because they have more advanced Engines..)
And finally The Escort...
-10% Hull. -0.1 Base Shield Mod. -10% Defence. -60 Inertial Dampeners Stat. -10% Resistance to Slows. Escorts should have a special setup. Same Acceleration. But should have 3x slower Deceleration. (less reverse propulsion available) And Finally,
That way they are balanced Out. Escorts wouldn't be so... Supergodlike.
I still think the best idea I've seen so far in these fora to address the escort/cruiser/science balance thing is connected to consoles and devices.
Think of it this way.
Cruisers and science ships should be able to do more than escorts, a wider range of things.
Escorts are stripped down warships, all systems devoted to the love of high DPS and not much else.
However, cruisers by virtue of their size and science ships by virtue of their design should be capable of a much wider range of actions.
Now, if many of the consoles that gave powers were redefined as devices, then we'd have a natural bottleneck of said powers.
If a cloak was a device, if an isometric charge was a device, if Andorian wing cannons were a device then cruisers and science ships could carry more of them than an escort.
To be fair, we'd have to slightly modify the number of device slots. Let's say 3 for an escort, 4 for a science ship and 5 for a cruiser.
That way, escorts could still get a set bonus as per things like the Andorian ship.
I'd except a couple of consoles from the change.
Things like the assimilated console and the zero point console are less about powers and more about stat buffs. Keep those as consoles.
Seems to me the above is a neater way to rebalance the various types of ships.
I love these threads, I really do. Most of the posters have no real idea of what they're asking much less of what their ships can do. How much easier it is to ask for a ship to be buffed than it is to learn to play it.
Have we already forgotten the threads of the 9-10K DPS cruisers? It was only a few weeks ago.
I love these threads, I really do. Most of the posters have no real idea of what they're asking much less of what their ships can do. How much easier it is to ask for a ship to be buffed than it is to learn to play it.
Have we already forgotten the threads of the 9-10K DPS cruisers? It was only a few weeks ago.
Sure, there's one build for Cruisers that can crank out as much DPS as an Escort, or more, and only really works well on a select few Cruisers (and a second one that does considerably less, but is still basically decent). Oh, and relies on a DOff that's only going to get more scarce as time goes by to get the most out of the build. Ah, and completely relies on three other Very Rare DOffs as well, putting the viability of any particular person completing the build in the hands of the marketplace. Beams do acceptable damage under a very narrow, prescribed set of circumstances.
This isn't even taking into consideration if you want to use beams on a Science vessel, god forbid. That demands that you maintain high power levels across three systems, so you don't have the easy out that Cruisers get in mitigating the power drain. Sure, there's all of one Science ship that can crank out a decent amount of damage, but that's just because you can set it up as a pocket Escort with a hangar.
So, we have Cruisers forced into one of two cookie cutter builds, the better of which only works on a couple of particular ships, and Science vessels forced to be either a Vesta, a dedicated Sci power boat, or a torpedo boat. Heck even compare beams and cannons on an Escort. Which one will get you laughed out of an STF, since it's just plain not effective? I'd love to be able to fly my Prometheus with beams, but I can't - I'd be sacrificing about half my damage right out of the gate with that choice, so it isn't a choice. Beams could really use some sort of help to be as effective as cannons, or cannons could use some sort of "help" to be brought closer in line with beams.
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Joined January 2010.
Few small ideas from me:
1. Change beam fall-off equation to increase efficient firing range by 25%.
2. Change fire at will. Not sure if it can be coded. Reduces reload and energy drain of beam banks,turrets and arrays. Weapons that can hit target will fire at it. Beams off the arc will attempt to fire at random other targets.
3. Beam overload add critical severity to it.
Crusiers:
Enginering DD abilities do more damage. Tractor beam and ramming speed bonus. Due to bigger mass and more powerfull warpcore.
Science ship:
Bonus to science DD abilities. Bonus to direct energy remodulation. Build in extra shield penetration.
Escorts: Escorts are fine, they can and often do use Dual Heavy Cannons (DHC) to great effect making them the highest damage dealers in the game.
Science Ships: Science ships already have a built in, however it is, shall we say less then spectacular. To quote the wiki: "Federation Science vessels come with built-in abilities. These abilities do not automatically rank up when acquiring higher tier Science starships and must be gained through Tactical Space Bridge officer abilities.
Beam Target Auxiliary Subsystems I
Beam Target Weapons Subsystems I
Beam Target Engines Subsystems I
Beam Target Shields Subsystems I
Sensor Analysis "
I think that keeping this AND adding a secondary deflector dish, allowing for a greater firing arc for Science abilities and a boost similar to the original deflector dishes to things like Graviton and Inertial Dampeners.
Cruisers are meant to be the Beastly Tankers seen in the Star Trek TV Series, not able to destroy an enemy ship outright but definitely able to take more damage then the other ship and perhaps out last it's hit points.
How do you balance that with Escorts dealing massive amounts of burst damage... Armor. Applying an Armor Slot that allows for new armor types that stack with existing Engineering consoles. This could lead to ships that are at an artificially installed cap for damage resistance (say 85%, not insurmountable, but the damage from an escort is suddenly not insurmountable).
This would lead to whole new play styles all while keeping the existing ones intact. You could still have very effective PVE Play with Tanking escorts doing what they do, but now a Cruiser could wade into battle as we see in Star Trek DS9 and TNG episodes without destruction the first time an escort shows it's face.
It would also lead to team PVP being more satisfying as a balance of Escort, Science and Tanking Cruiser could lead to more victory then burst damage alone.
Editing to add, increasing the decrease in damage caused by range for beam weapons, while keeping them at the lower damage would do a lot for balancing the game in and of itself, good call nightbringer83
Giving cruiser such a Weaponry Loadout, doesn't make them cruiser any more. Infact that makes the ships into dreadnought. Since dreadnought ships are meant to have heavy weaponry Loadout and every slow in movement and turning. So you see that wouldn't work well for cruisers.
"You ask why we give our ships computer normal emotions. Do you really want a warship incapable of loyalty?"
I still think the best idea I've seen so far in these fora to address the escort/cruiser/science balance thing is connected to consoles and devices.
Think of it this way.
Cruisers and science ships should be able to do more than escorts, a wider range of things.
Escorts are stripped down warships, all systems devoted to the love of high DPS and not much else.
However, cruisers by virtue of their size and science ships by virtue of their design should be capable of a much wider range of actions.
Now, if many of the consoles that gave powers were redefined as devices, then we'd have a natural bottleneck of said powers.
If a cloak was a device, if an isometric charge was a device, if Andorian wing cannons were a device then cruisers and science ships could carry more of them than an escort.
To be fair, we'd have to slightly modify the number of device slots. Let's say 3 for an escort, 4 for a science ship and 5 for a cruiser.
That way, escorts could still get a set bonus as per things like the Andorian ship.
I'd except a couple of consoles from the change.
Things like the assimilated console and the zero point console are less about powers and more about stat buffs. Keep those as consoles.
Seems to me the above is a neater way to rebalance the various types of ships.
I've seen that post somewhere before, and while it's not a bad idea, I think it's just a bit pre-mature. See, most of these Special abilities consoles (or "devices" if they change it) come from Z-Store ships. While this change will give ships with enough device slots much versatility, we'd also see a wave of complaints from people who can't acquire special consoles.
Cryptic/PWE would have to create more universal ability consoles to keep players happy about balance and such. If not done correctly, there'll be an even wider gap between new F2P players and people who buy Z-store ships / veteran players. There's also another chance that players that bought the Z-store ships for the consoles feeling bummed out by the fact that the new universal ability consoles may outmatch and/or overlap what they paid for. Overall, it's a slippery slope for the devs to implement.
The other issue is that, while cruisers would get 5 new toys to play with, we'd also be seeing escorts get 3. In my experience, it's not about who has the most uni consoles that wins a fight. It's about how well the console works around your build. In short, we'd see tacscorts charging up an alpha strike with even more ways to kill than before. The 5 consoles on a cruiser won't do it justice if it's dead. :eek:
But overall, I do find the idea intriguing and worth thinking about. :P It's just that there'd be much balance and changes to consider before implementing a huge change such as this.
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All hands! Prepare the popcorn and tinfoil hats!
Lol, do you also hold up a sign saying " I don't know how to play!! help me!!"
That's nicer than what I was thinking of saying. Somebody apparently doesn't realize that Aux to Batt Assault Cruisers with beam arrays can now handily out-DPS escorts.
Comments
I could agree to this, though i think it should be able to use all beam buffing powers.
R.I.P
4 phaser dual beam.
max Phaser tactical console and using level 3 beam overload.
Equals sniper.
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I don?t see a Cruisers as poor tanks, I see them has vessels that can pretty much only tank.
Has it was said by another poster there is just too much power being drained by beam arrays and very little damage being dealt out by them has a result.
I thought that maybe if we got new Heavy Mounted Beam Arrays that offered much better damage that it would make the power drain worth it.
Another rout might be to give Cruisers an innate ability that cuts the power consumption of their equipped weapons in half or something.
When you look at it a Cruiser should not be held to the same power limitations that the much smaller escorts and Science Vessels have but there is really no way to change that in-game that won?t further unbalance the classes.
I also agree that Escorts are quite a more Cannon than they are Glass these days and they can tank quite well on their own.
T5 Science Vessels also need to be given a 4th Forth forward Weapon Slot, I mean T5 Escorts in most cases are much smaller than the equivalent level Science Vessel and they can pack 4 x 3 and Science Vessels should be able to match or pack more than that.
Because you really need a tank in space combat, right? It's not like the name of the game is all about killing something quickly before time runs out. It's also not about escorts being able to tank damage long enough to kill something, while a cruiser just kinda plinks at something and does nothing.
Oh wait..
I thought it was the players that dictated who wanted what, not the developers. Developers can suggest balancing tweaks and such but if the majority of the playerbase believes cruisers should be more than just space whales, then it should it should be that way.
Edit: Now that I think of it, the tactical Bortasqu' is the proper approach for cruisers in general if Cryptic is going to keep them as slow as they are. Meaning, slow speed is acceptable if we have some sort of a very powerful unidirectional attack that requires us to "bring weapons to bear" or to move our ship into firing position.
It would be also be cool if cruisers could be upgraded to have better shields or faster impulse speeds to make up for the lack of maneuverability.
Edit: To answer the OP, I am for heavy beam mount upgades for cruisers, but the firing arc should only be 90. Thus, the enemy would pretty much have to be directly in front of you before you fired at it.
Well first, you have that backwards. It's the developers who dictate and it's the players who can suggest balancing tweaks and such, and even if the majority of players on this forum suggest cruisers whould be 'more than just space whales' it should, and will, be the way the developers say it will.
For second, what you are engaged in here is a logical fallacy called the "false dichotomy" where in someone presents two choices as if they are the only choices. Thankfully this game is designed with more than two choices so we don't need to pick between "cruisers as space whales" and whatever you're trying to sell us on.
The game has a range of agile, dps oriented cruisers in both factions. Now the KDF's 'agile dps cruiser' choices are currently better than the Federations, and in my humble opinion every other option falls behind the Galor but in every case we see that the 'agile dps cruiser' pays for its speed, maneuverability and dps potential with reduced survivability, this is called game balance.
So either I have to play KDF, spend tons of money on master keys to maybe unlock a galor, or just spend a lot of EC's on a galor on the exchange to get the kind performance you're describing. Balance works both ways. The galor has great turn rate and abilities so they give it a weaker hull. However, most of the fed cruisers have slow rates, but they aren't balanced out with some sort of special attack. The only mitigating factor here is the high hull hp of Fed cruisers. Besides that, they don't have much going for them.
And don't give me the Fed Cruisers have more survivability argument because that's bs. The majority of end game content requires better turn rates and high dps. That's how the Romulan STF's work; you are rewarded for releasing as many captured Romulan ships as possible which requires killing Tholians as quickly as possible. The same goes for the Tholian web, Romulan vault mission. You have to have a decent amount of dps to kill the initial groups quickly enough and then to ward off weavers before they complete the web. The same goes for the omega force missions. You aren't rewarded for being a high hp, shield tank punching bag in omega/romulan STF's.
Say the first iteration is + and - 1km range for both. See how that works for a few weeks and then increase the disparity again.
A range advantage is only meaningful if you can cause enough damage while you have it in order to make the battle one sided. A rifle has an advantage over a pistol because the rifle can deliver hits much further away and if you hit the other guy at all you probably win. Making beams able to hit a target further away, when they suffer from drain issues and have attenuation just like cannons do, isn't going to change much. They would need to deliver massive damage at extreme range, enough to cripple a target before that target gets close enough to use cannons, to make the advantage more than illusory.
A Fleet Advanced Heavy Escort only loses 2 degrees of turn over the Fleet Tor'kaht however and is still a seriously effective DPS cruiser. If you absolutely MUST PLAY as a DPS cruiser with a better turn rate than that, then yes, grind for a Galor, a D'Kora or play a Klingon.
What you call "bs" the rest of us call "game balance." If you'd like to make a suggestion for a Federation cruiser with more turn and less hull than even the Fleet Excelsior, than do so, if you'd like to make an argument that hull strength is so useless in both PVE and PVP that an overall buff to cruisers is justified, than do so.
But if you try to tell me again that the developers should ignore everything they know about game design and bend to the will of some posters claiming to represent the majority of posters, I'm going to continue to find its hard to take your position too seriously.
Forget not, there once was a time of the Circling Cruiser ball of forced focused BFAwking doom teams.
In cruisers.
R.I.P
Beams need a rapid fire that does for them what CRF does for cannons. If drain spike is an issue then factor that into the design of the power itself so that when used drain to is compensated for....
then there was the idea I saw elsewhere that mention Armor modifier score similar the Shiled Modifer score and with a similar effect on resitances depending on armor consoles used in a design.
R.I.P
What cruisers need is Heavy Beam Banks. Dealing THE SAME as a standard Array But firing Heavyer shots at a slower rate. Say a Beam deals 1000 Damage in 1 second. This beam would deal 2000 in 2 seconds., Draining 10 Power, On the same arc.
But for cruisers...
Cruisers should get +10% resistance to weapon power drain. 10 Drain should = 9. 100 drain would be 90. Giving them a broadside Advantage. And +20% Resistance to being Slowed. (The ship is very large, its engines are VERY strong) +40% Foreword Speed,(No turning effect) And Doubled their current Inertia.
and for Science Ships...
Science Ships would get the ability to deal bonus damage. A science ship would 10% of the weapon damage as partial damage directly to hull. And Sensor Scan should passively Increase the Science Ships accuracy 2% per Stack (Cap at 20) and -4% per Defense of the target per stack (Cap at 40) And Half their current Inertia (Sci ships should be able to have th emost balanced stats, and fastest Acceleration/Deceleration Because they have more advanced Engines..)
And finally The Escort...
-10% Hull. -0.1 Base Shield Mod. -10% Defence. -60 Inertial Dampeners Stat. -10% Resistance to Slows. Escorts should have a special setup. Same Acceleration. But should have 3x slower Deceleration. (less reverse propulsion available) And Finally,
That way they are balanced Out. Escorts wouldn't be so... Supergodlike.
Think of it this way.
Cruisers and science ships should be able to do more than escorts, a wider range of things.
Escorts are stripped down warships, all systems devoted to the love of high DPS and not much else.
However, cruisers by virtue of their size and science ships by virtue of their design should be capable of a much wider range of actions.
Now, if many of the consoles that gave powers were redefined as devices, then we'd have a natural bottleneck of said powers.
If a cloak was a device, if an isometric charge was a device, if Andorian wing cannons were a device then cruisers and science ships could carry more of them than an escort.
To be fair, we'd have to slightly modify the number of device slots. Let's say 3 for an escort, 4 for a science ship and 5 for a cruiser.
That way, escorts could still get a set bonus as per things like the Andorian ship.
I'd except a couple of consoles from the change.
Things like the assimilated console and the zero point console are less about powers and more about stat buffs. Keep those as consoles.
Seems to me the above is a neater way to rebalance the various types of ships.
Have we already forgotten the threads of the 9-10K DPS cruisers? It was only a few weeks ago.
Sure, there's one build for Cruisers that can crank out as much DPS as an Escort, or more, and only really works well on a select few Cruisers (and a second one that does considerably less, but is still basically decent). Oh, and relies on a DOff that's only going to get more scarce as time goes by to get the most out of the build. Ah, and completely relies on three other Very Rare DOffs as well, putting the viability of any particular person completing the build in the hands of the marketplace. Beams do acceptable damage under a very narrow, prescribed set of circumstances.
This isn't even taking into consideration if you want to use beams on a Science vessel, god forbid. That demands that you maintain high power levels across three systems, so you don't have the easy out that Cruisers get in mitigating the power drain. Sure, there's all of one Science ship that can crank out a decent amount of damage, but that's just because you can set it up as a pocket Escort with a hangar.
So, we have Cruisers forced into one of two cookie cutter builds, the better of which only works on a couple of particular ships, and Science vessels forced to be either a Vesta, a dedicated Sci power boat, or a torpedo boat. Heck even compare beams and cannons on an Escort. Which one will get you laughed out of an STF, since it's just plain not effective? I'd love to be able to fly my Prometheus with beams, but I can't - I'd be sacrificing about half my damage right out of the gate with that choice, so it isn't a choice. Beams could really use some sort of help to be as effective as cannons, or cannons could use some sort of "help" to be brought closer in line with beams.
Joined January 2010.
In regard to hating Star Trek 2009:
1. Change beam fall-off equation to increase efficient firing range by 25%.
2. Change fire at will. Not sure if it can be coded. Reduces reload and energy drain of beam banks,turrets and arrays. Weapons that can hit target will fire at it. Beams off the arc will attempt to fire at random other targets.
3. Beam overload add critical severity to it.
Crusiers:
Enginering DD abilities do more damage. Tractor beam and ramming speed bonus. Due to bigger mass and more powerfull warpcore.
Science ship:
Bonus to science DD abilities. Bonus to direct energy remodulation. Build in extra shield penetration.
Escorts: Escorts are fine, they can and often do use Dual Heavy Cannons (DHC) to great effect making them the highest damage dealers in the game.
Science Ships: Science ships already have a built in, however it is, shall we say less then spectacular. To quote the wiki:
"Federation Science vessels come with built-in abilities. These abilities do not automatically rank up when acquiring higher tier Science starships and must be gained through Tactical Space Bridge officer abilities.
Beam Target Auxiliary Subsystems I
Beam Target Weapons Subsystems I
Beam Target Engines Subsystems I
Beam Target Shields Subsystems I
Sensor Analysis "
I think that keeping this AND adding a secondary deflector dish, allowing for a greater firing arc for Science abilities and a boost similar to the original deflector dishes to things like Graviton and Inertial Dampeners.
Cruisers are meant to be the Beastly Tankers seen in the Star Trek TV Series, not able to destroy an enemy ship outright but definitely able to take more damage then the other ship and perhaps out last it's hit points.
How do you balance that with Escorts dealing massive amounts of burst damage... Armor. Applying an Armor Slot that allows for new armor types that stack with existing Engineering consoles. This could lead to ships that are at an artificially installed cap for damage resistance (say 85%, not insurmountable, but the damage from an escort is suddenly not insurmountable).
This would lead to whole new play styles all while keeping the existing ones intact. You could still have very effective PVE Play with Tanking escorts doing what they do, but now a Cruiser could wade into battle as we see in Star Trek DS9 and TNG episodes without destruction the first time an escort shows it's face.
It would also lead to team PVP being more satisfying as a balance of Escort, Science and Tanking Cruiser could lead to more victory then burst damage alone.
Editing to add, increasing the decrease in damage caused by range for beam weapons, while keeping them at the lower damage would do a lot for balancing the game in and of itself, good call nightbringer83
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Lol, do you also hold up a sign saying " I don't know how to play!! help me!!"
I've seen that post somewhere before, and while it's not a bad idea, I think it's just a bit pre-mature. See, most of these Special abilities consoles (or "devices" if they change it) come from Z-Store ships. While this change will give ships with enough device slots much versatility, we'd also see a wave of complaints from people who can't acquire special consoles.
Cryptic/PWE would have to create more universal ability consoles to keep players happy about balance and such. If not done correctly, there'll be an even wider gap between new F2P players and people who buy Z-store ships / veteran players. There's also another chance that players that bought the Z-store ships for the consoles feeling bummed out by the fact that the new universal ability consoles may outmatch and/or overlap what they paid for. Overall, it's a slippery slope for the devs to implement.
The other issue is that, while cruisers would get 5 new toys to play with, we'd also be seeing escorts get 3. In my experience, it's not about who has the most uni consoles that wins a fight. It's about how well the console works around your build. In short, we'd see tacscorts charging up an alpha strike with even more ways to kill than before. The 5 consoles on a cruiser won't do it justice if it's dead. :eek:
But overall, I do find the idea intriguing and worth thinking about. :P It's just that there'd be much balance and changes to consider before implementing a huge change such as this.
All hands! Prepare the popcorn and tinfoil hats!
That's nicer than what I was thinking of saying. Somebody apparently doesn't realize that Aux to Batt Assault Cruisers with beam arrays can now handily out-DPS escorts.