As I've posted elsewhere, I still think the Mogai specs with the sci focus are more balanced then the new Eng focus build.
Also, with D'dex having a sci focus it lacks compensation for it's awful turn rate and speed.
The design of the ha'apax is awful (and all the ships that are based on it). The wings and necelles look great, but the neckless body, the underside, all of it looks un-romulan and half thought out. I've flown the Defender sci version of it as well, and hate if for sci. I felt the Vesta was a waste in terms of playability, and this has similar problems. However if the updated TNG Rom Sci ship comes out, it should (if true to cannon) be smaller, more maneuverable and posses all sci abilities which will at least give sci players a choice on what to fly. (I hope the TNG Sci ship is in the c store and not a lockbox drop, which I'm guessing would make sci players feel even more left out of the warbird line).
It puzzles me as to why the new warbirds are so un-sci friendly. The FEDS have balance of the three play types, the KDF has a heavy tac/eng focus, and if true to cannon the warbirds would be tac/sci focused. It's not reflecting in the choices cryptic is making, and it doesn't appear to be giving the game balance.
I still think, if players are equally divided on the issue, that the Mogai should be available at fleet ship level as both versions you've let us play, if you aren't going to revert it to the original build. The T'varo could be more universal, similar to the BoPs of the KDF, and the D'dex needs some major help, as it is very difficult to move. (BTW the Ha'apax has more mass then a D'dex, so maybe it should suffer the turn/movement problems, and the D'dex should get a boost).
I'm a two time VA Romulan and flying the Refit D'deridex and the turn rate is not an issue. You are not flying a Fed or KDF ship so you are mission part of it. With good traits you can have your battle cloak recharge at 12s and move to a better attack vantage. Also if you don't have the refit and would not know this but the console set adds a +2 to turn rate making it a 7 and +10 to engine power.
I also at first did not like the Ha'apax but after flying it for my first VA Fedrulan I love that ship. Unlike most of STO ship that are pull from canon this ship has the correct weapon mounts and feel right when you fly it. It is like a big owl swooping in and attacking its prey and then vanishing into the night.
It's kind of curious, how much the Ha'apax/Ha'nom have that look of Hawk's ship from Buck Rogers...outside of the - ahem - somewhat phallic head/saucer.
It's kind of curious, how much the Ha'apax/Ha'nom have that look of Hawk's ship from Buck Rogers...outside of the - ahem - somewhat phallic head/saucer.
The tail section looks similar other than that I don't see anything else that looks like Hawks ship but given that all Romulan ships are supposed to resemble birds it's natural that there would be some similarities.
A bug I've noticed is the texturing for the Valdore, the wings have some kind of mip mapping error, at a distance or up very close the wings appear normal but anywhere else they are a plain white.
If something is not broken, don't fix it, if it is broken, don't leave it broken.
Singularity power builds WAY to slow to be really of any use right now, it's build up rate should be at minimum double what it is now, a better place for it would be triple. The singularity powers are the real bonus to warbirds and putting the amount of time between their uses right now makes it pretty pointless, feels very unbalanced for the hit to subsystem power romulans get.
Is there a reason the Romulan ships defaultly have Plasma energy weapons instead of Disruptor energy weapons?
It looks like they want that every faction uses a special type of weapon.
Federation: Phaser
Klingon: Disruptor
Romulan: Plasma
By the way Engineering Mogai is a nice powerful and tank ship, thanks to the Engineering Console slots I have more flexibility than I would ever have with Science Consoles.
Why did you only allow new level 40 characters access to only the ha'fem and ha'nom variants of the Ha'Apox, i feel that this is severely limiting to the usefulness of engineering officers who can't afford, or reach C-store ships
Why are there no carriers or escort carriers for Romulans? Romulan rep even gives scorpion fighters for hangars, yet they have no ships to launch them from? That's even worse than federation.
Why are there no customization options for warbirds? Looking the same as everyone else of that level isn't very interesting. No layout/bridge choices, either.
Warp trails become green/blue once joining a faction. Should remain green.
Why do levelup tokens only give access to warbirds, but not the appropriate level ships of fed/kdf?
Singularity power builds WAY to slow to be really of any use right now, it's build up rate should be at minimum double what it is now, a better place for it would be triple. The singularity powers are the real bonus to warbirds and putting the amount of time between their uses right now makes it pretty pointless, feels very unbalanced for the hit to subsystem power romulans get.
Because then nobody would ever ever ever ever use anything less than rank five singularity power. They'd think to themselves "should I use it now or wait fo...oh, it's already full."
Why are there no carriers or escort carriers for Romulans? Romulan rep even gives scorpion fighters for hangars, yet they have no ships to launch them from? That's even worse than federation.
Give them time, it's a lot of work to set up a faction and get the core mechanics' bugs worked out. That being said, I wouldn't mind a light carrier a la the Armitage or Vesta...but if they're only going to give us an Atrox equivalent, I'll pass, thanks.
Why are there no customization options for warbirds? Looking the same as everyone else of that level isn't very interesting. No layout/bridge choices, either.
I think there will be a second set of parts from the Z-store ships, but I do hope they give us more options in the future as well.
Why do levelup tokens only give access to warbirds, but not the appropriate level ships of fed/kdf?
Because there's too many people who don't want to go through the process of figuring out how to properly fly the Warbird and would rush to an allied ship just so they can remake their old ship build, leaving you with a small (but deadly) population that figured out how to use the Warbird properly because they used it throughout their career, and a much larger contingent of people who said "-10 power levels?! I can't work with that!!!" and will jump over to their allies ships at first opportunity, returning to their cookie-cutter builds rather than, you know, trying and bringing something NEW to the game. And then at 40 that group will split between the ones that can afford lockbox ships vs the ones who can't and will then be forced back into a Warbird that they now have no real chance of learning how to use properly, and that last bunch will be extra whiny. The way it's set up now, people will have to use the Warbirds, will have to learn how to play them properly; but if they still refused to adapt, there's a way out...but they WILL have to work for it.
Cloak doesn't stop you from being hit by things fired before you cloaked. It's not faction specific.
The power siphons, though, being targettable pets (more or less), should probably not be able to continue tracking you relentlessly after you've cloaked and put more than 10 km between you and them.
I have flown the Ha'nom(nomnomnom!) Guardian Warbird for ten levels now, and I have to say that I absolutely love it! It combines a decent turn rate, good offence and a nice science feel, in addition to feeling rather sturdy. Now that I have flown it for a while I really dig the design of it as well, it is very warbirdy and imposing. It's sailing up as a contender for my favourite ship in-game - and this with basically TRIBBLE gear, too. Since I do not have access to a T5 shipyard, I am really hoping for a C-Store T5 version of the Ha'nom :rolleyes:
Joined in March, 2011. Lifer since December, 2011.
The "warp-clone" power (I'm not in a system instance so can't tell you the exact name) suffers from creating unusable clones - I used tier 4 of the power on my Mogai and although I got the spawns, only one ever did anything useful, and only fired a burst of fire once, so you might want to investigate the AI back-end.
However, a friend I was testing with used his fine on his Mogai when he used it to tier 1 on Saturday.
_____________________
Previously known as MGDawson.
Lifer since April 2010, and open beta tester.
Say "NO" to the Tier 5 Constitution!
First, let me say I really like the new improvements. I'd give this version 9 out of 10. I found the first ship somewhat difficult to fly. Poor turning ability, strangely more comparable to a heavy cruiser rather than a light ship. The second ship seemed far superior. In the past I felt a bit of remorse to leave my early ships behind, but here I found that I deleted it upon replacement. I didn't understand the whole material to strengthen the hull thing. I never got to use them, they just seemed to disappear. That felt a little odd.
I was concerned about the singularity weapon. Seemed like it would unbalance the game. I've seen more than a few ships like this in the game. Capable of taking down a Borg cube shield side in less then two seconds on an elite setting. I've been playing the game for three years and I have never even came close to such a weapon. But I found that the weapon was nicely balanced, it didn't unhinge the game. Thank you for that. I was afraid that this would just lead to more characters and ships with super weapons, leaving me more and more outclassed.
The one thing I missed was the ability to buy consoles. As a player I could get just about everything else, but not consoles.
It looks like they want that every faction uses a special type of weapon.
Federation: Phaser
Klingon: Disruptor
Romulan: Plasma
By the way Engineering Mogai is a nice powerful and tank ship, thanks to the Engineering Console slots I have more flexibility than I would ever have with Science Consoles.
What flexability you'll mostly be stacking armor consoles.. and then maybe rcs and universal consoles... I see much more flexibility with science you can go. You could use partical gens for mage damage, you could use placate and confuse consoles to possible use the less armor consoles. You could use flow cap for shield stripping, there's also power stripping consoles... Shield tank and heal with shield gen consoles and shield capacity and regen consoles...
I see a ton of possibilities to be honest... So I have to disagree there...
After some more testing of the singularity powers,
can i have a normal warp core instead?
In PvP they are gimmick junk. plain and simple. And in PvE noone needs them because its so easy everything is dead within seconds.
Please give us a optional singularity core without all that attached singularity power stuff, just with normal power levels.
Sure.
It's called "fly an allied faction ship, or fly a lockbox ship (at T5)".
Don't forget, the power levels are also paying for your Battle Cloak as well as the Singularity Core. But if you're dismissing the Singularity powers as "gimmick junk", well, you didn't bother to try to figure out how to use them properly. So buy a lockbox ship and then you can play your standard, run-of-the-mill build with it.
It's called "fly an allied faction ship, or fly a lockbox ship (at T5)".
Don't forget, the power levels are also paying for your Battle Cloak as well as the Singularity Core. But if you're dismissing the Singularity powers as "gimmick junk", well, you didn't bother to try to figure out how to use them properly. So buy a lockbox ship and then you can play your standard, run-of-the-mill build with it.
It's called "fly an allied faction ship, or fly a lockbox ship (at T5)".
Don't forget, the power levels are also paying for your Battle Cloak as well as the Singularity Core. But if you're dismissing the Singularity powers as "gimmick junk", well, you didn't bother to try to figure out how to use them properly. So buy a lockbox ship and then you can play your standard, run-of-the-mill build with it.
As someone who already said that he is only doing pve, you disqualified yourself in terms of giving ppl advices in terms of pvp builds.
And the singularity powers are more or less gimmicks, it just doesn't matter in pve if they are useful or not.
And as someone who is using or used cpb1 for the (nearly non existent) shield drain it provides, (as you said a few days ago in a post) you basically disqualified yourself in terms of advising ppl on pve builds also.
And yeah you are right, we pay for the cloak and the singularity core, but they are still not worth the price.
And you can repeat your lame "try to figure it out" phrase over and over again it still won't make it a decen't argument that is convincing ppl that the singularity powers and the cloak are worth the power price.
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
Gimmicks...schmmicks. It's Star Trek. Gimmicks aren't new to the game (almost everything is a gimmick) nor are they anything that were lacking in the shows or movies. Gimmicks are a major part of Star Trek...TV, Film, Game.
That being said, there are some things that I might suggest. I've kept this guy longer than the others which I rerolled in the 20s-30s.
[System] Willard the Rat has been on active duty for 2 days, 15 hours, 35 minutes, 20 seconds.
So let's look at the Singularity abilities, eh? They'll have the numbers for this guy - so they might not be your numbers.
Plasma Shockwave V
PBAoE 5km Sphere - affects max of 10 foes
0.5s activate
1,603.2 Plasma Damage
4,809.7 Plasma Damage Over Time So uh, where's the shock part of the shockwave? Where's the stun? Is it just because of the name and PSW that I'm looking for the stun? If it were Plasma Blastwave...hrmmm.
Singularity Jump V
Self teleport forward 5km in current facing
Creates singularity for 20s
- Repel -0.54/sec (negative repel is a pull)
- 153 kinetic damage/sec
- Accuracy -100 (debuff)
- Damage -56.5 (debuff) The text blurb lists a Perception debuff, but there's no Perception debuff in the stats.
What about adding a short (5s) turn buff since the facing is maintained?
Energy Weapons: Singularity Overcharge V
Overcharges energy weapons for 12s
(pseudo BO/CRF depending on Beam/Cannon) What about folks that do not use Energy Weapons though? They're being penalized/balanced for having this, even if they can't possibly use it because of the build. Since it's not optional to have (only optional to use) - shouldn't it also affect non energy weapons in some fashion? THY/DPB? Or maybe some special effect for the next torp fired/mine dropped, etc, etc, etc?
Warp Shadow V
Creates 5x Warp Shadows for 15s
Teleport to random location
After 19.5s, +6000 Stealth for 5s How about having that +6000 Stealth at the start instead of 4.5s after the Warp Shadows have disappeared, eh?
Or how about having each Warp Shadow provide a +Defense, so that the Warp Shadows need to be dealt with in some fashion to be able to hit the target?
(Yes, I see this as the weakest ability.)
Quantum Absorption V
0.5s activation
2,010 shield regen (single regen/heal) applied to each facing
300 shield regen (heal over time) applied to each facing for 15s
20,475 temporary hit points Not really much to add/say about this one - other than the name. It makes me think about some form of hull/shield RSP. Yet, that's not how it functions.
Um... Warp cores are the generic term for the power supply plants for the ships... the feds use a Dilithium matrix for their warp core...that apparently uses a different reaction with dilithium to get their energy from some other races like the klingons... the romulans use a singularity... but it's still a warp core...
So why doesn't Warp Core Theory seem to work on my Tribble Server Romulan? And if it's not supposed to by some odd developer theory...why does it show up for Romulan characters who don't HAVE a dilithium matrix warp core, not say specifically that it doesn't affect Singularity cores and not have a trait available that does the same thing for Singularity warp cores? And I mean same thing, not +(some amount) while you have X charge on your singularity core gauge...+10. I'm dreading finding out that the engineer skill might not work on Singularity cores either...despite it...again... just being a different reactor type of warp core from the fed and kdf ones.
This 40s stuff is horrible... and no, the sometimes used, drained while you're cloaked 'special ability' of them don't make up for the -10 points of power to every system. Do you realize how easy that makes it to shut off things with disabling and system draining skills? And no, a warp core that gives back some of the power based on the level of your charge doesn't help. That just further encourages you to not use it, while tipping the scale toward just plain not using cloak any time you expect combat and still have 50% of your hull...
(Something Nice Break)
By the way, I appreciate finally having a Romulan faction, and that you recognized that only some, and a small portion at that actually have that ridge bump (note: some Vulcans also have ridge bumps (usually the more logic driven, computer like ones)...though not as pronounced as some of the ones I've seen on the more evil Romulans...like it's some kind of 'hey, I'm the bad guy' marker...and no, most Romulans aren't evil!) I really appreciate being able to start with a TOS Warbird. Thank you.
(back to warp/singularity core)
The plasma shockwave doesn't seem to really do enough damage for something I had to charge (especially since I was using it a lvl 5 charge most of the time...and I think the lowest was a 3...) it should also be 100% of causing a bigger then normal plasma burn if we're expected to charge it (and don't cloak because that drains it, although that might just be because you 'leave' combat, I tended to not pay attention to it when not fighting) and then lose it for a while before starting to recharge (and or torps for a few seconds too, if I remember an earlier blog post and observed my torp disables correctly). Not to mention the lack of much of a shock wave. It seemed to push back a tiny bit but not much, and I doubt it would have disabled the cloak of any cloaked vessels which I believe the other shocks do.
I didn't try the absorption skill...but with a name like that, shouldn't it either just cancel a certain amount of damage for a while or channel the damage into shield and weapon energy instead of giving a temporary hull buff or a direct shield regen?
Unless you pull something cheap like using Threat Generation's defense buff without the threat pull that's it's supposedly a skill FOR (worst. Skill. Ever. in my opinion. As well as most heavily abused since even the pvp 'school' you guys had said to use it... You realize it's very bad to use in pve right? That's like saying 'no, pvp isn't messed up. just build 2 chars and make one the pvp one!' ... Either take off the resistance buff and only give a def buff against 'enraged' npcs that have been pulled by the threat...or just take out the skill and make some kind of tac tray skill (like the boff ones...) that works similar to Jam but pulls reduced fire to you...) I forgot where I...oh right... then I don't see how these would even be that useful in pvp, other then making it easier for fed and kdf players to disable your ship due to your inferior power levels...
And no, singularity warp cores that 'boost' a system (like Shields +5) per charge level don't make up for it. Partly because you have Warp (dilithium) cores that seem to have similar buffs, and probably just plain flat all the time boosts to systems... Plus... the buff the Singularity cores gives seem to be dependent on you HAVING a charge on your SC gauge. Which I believe I mentioned earlier only discourages you from using the 'great' abilities you put in (and further discourages cloaking...the Actual Signature of the Romulans besides plasma torpedoes that you put in the game...since you left out their armor, their huge shields, helped make almost all the Tal Shiar evil...when it was actually just a faction... and continued Nemesis' retcon of the population of Remus with those...things... that would have been used as shock troopers and assassins right away by the Romulans or broken free pretty quickly...being stronger, having tk, and pretty much the same tech...)
Honestly it wasn't even very helpful in pve...and only begs the questions 'why do the romulan npcs have these?' and 'if they do, why do they cloak so often when it lowers the charge, and how come they're harder to disable with 'beam target' then me?' I suppose it would have been useful (the shock wave) against a bunch of fighters... but that really doesn't happen that often, nor is it usually worth the loss in system power from the singularity cores you can equip. A science officer shock wave is better, or having a beam array and 'beam fire at will' or cannons/torps with a spread skill... or one of the defensive turrets...or a tricobalt warhead.
(Trying to End on Something Nice)
And remember, I do actually appreciate having a Romulan faction. And that we will be able to make Romulan and KDF characters that start at level 1. The new hairs look nice.
Because there's too many people who don't want to go through the process of figuring out how to properly fly the Warbird and would rush to an allied ship just so they can remake their old ship build, leaving you with a small (but deadly) population that figured out how to use the Warbird properly because they used it throughout their career, and a much larger contingent of people who said "-10 power levels?! I can't work with that!!!" and will jump over to their allies ships at first opportunity, returning to their cookie-cutter builds rather than, you know, trying and bringing something NEW to the game. And then at 40 that group will split between the ones that can afford lockbox ships vs the ones who can't and will then be forced back into a Warbird that they now have no real chance of learning how to use properly, and that last bunch will be extra whiny. The way it's set up now, people will have to use the Warbirds, will have to learn how to play them properly; but if they still refused to adapt, there's a way out...but they WILL have to work for it.
Feds get 3 ship types, KDF mostly get 2, one of which is very similar to warbirds but a lot more versatile thanks to universal slots. IMO the raider type warbirds should get at least some universal slots, too. Maybe not all of them, like birds of prey, but 1 or 2 per ship certainly wouldn't be a bad thing.
So, I did all the Subcommander missions in the D'Deridex, and...it's a pain. Especially because the Elachi are pretty much set up to be MOST annoying to a slow turning Fat Bird. Plus, I suddenly needed to skill up engineering Boffs.
Then at 40 I got the Ha'feh and it's back to the agile killer paradigm. Unfortunately the DD just doesn't fit well into the warbird progression, IMO. At the very least, the Romulans need an alternate warbird option for the 30's.
_________________________________________________ [Kluless][Kold][Steel Heels][Snagtooth] [Louis Cipher][Outta Gum][Thysa Kymbo][Spanner][Frakk] [D'Mented][D'Licious]
Joined October 2009. READ BEFORE POSTING
Feds get 3 ship types, KDF mostly get 2, one of which is very similar to warbirds but a lot more versatile thanks to universal slots. IMO the raider type warbirds should get at least some universal slots, too. Maybe not all of them, like birds of prey, but 1 or 2 per ship certainly wouldn't be a bad thing.
TBH, I think the devs are just choosing their battles here...they're under enormous time pressure, and rather than focusing on giving a variety of T1-T4 ships, they're putting the variety at the top with the T5 ships. After all, there's people who burned their way to RA in under three days playtime; when you get down to it, are you going to remember that three days of lack of variety, or the years you'll be spending in endgame ships? If you can only spare the time for one, you're going to focus on the endgame stuff. I HOPE they'll come back and fill in a bit more variety at lower levels, but I can't see it happening before launch.
I think there's also a factor the single-free-ship-per-tier progression (i.e. not counting C-store or ally ships) serves as a sampler for the captain; you spend a bit of time trying each of the offerings, and then at T5 the smorgasbord awaits...you'll be able to make a better decision because you know how each of the lower level ones behaved for you. If I played only a single character in the Federation, for example, if I took it into my head that cruisers were the way to go, I'd probably start cruiser and stay cruiser until tier 5, having no idea how a science vessel or escort works. As a single-character Romulan, I could look at any warbird a teammate is flying and have at least an idea of its capabilities because I've flown one at some point.
I'm not sure that this is the best way to do it, but there certainly are some merits to it.
I had an D?Deridex also and did pretty fine with it. It is well suited for hit and cloak.
I put 1 rcs console on it and under cloak i got a decent turnrate about 23 degree or so iirc.
Most npcs were dead after one pass anyways.
Basically you uncloak, open fire, pass the enemy, then cloak and initiate the turn to start over again.
With the right traits you get the cloak cd down to about 10 sec. You jsut have to take in account that the singularity abilites and the cloak have a shared 5 sec cd, if you use them, which is basically not needed anyways.
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
Comments
I'm a two time VA Romulan and flying the Refit D'deridex and the turn rate is not an issue. You are not flying a Fed or KDF ship so you are mission part of it. With good traits you can have your battle cloak recharge at 12s and move to a better attack vantage. Also if you don't have the refit and would not know this but the console set adds a +2 to turn rate making it a 7 and +10 to engine power.
I also at first did not like the Ha'apax but after flying it for my first VA Fedrulan I love that ship. Unlike most of STO ship that are pull from canon this ship has the correct weapon mounts and feel right when you fly it. It is like a big owl swooping in and attacking its prey and then vanishing into the night.
A bug I've noticed is the texturing for the Valdore, the wings have some kind of mip mapping error, at a distance or up very close the wings appear normal but anywhere else they are a plain white.
It looks like they want that every faction uses a special type of weapon.
Federation: Phaser
Klingon: Disruptor
Romulan: Plasma
By the way Engineering Mogai is a nice powerful and tank ship, thanks to the Engineering Console slots I have more flexibility than I would ever have with Science Consoles.
Why are there no carriers or escort carriers for Romulans? Romulan rep even gives scorpion fighters for hangars, yet they have no ships to launch them from? That's even worse than federation.
Why are there no customization options for warbirds? Looking the same as everyone else of that level isn't very interesting. No layout/bridge choices, either.
Warp trails become green/blue once joining a faction. Should remain green.
Why do levelup tokens only give access to warbirds, but not the appropriate level ships of fed/kdf?
Because then nobody would ever ever ever ever use anything less than rank five singularity power. They'd think to themselves "should I use it now or wait fo...oh, it's already full."
Give them time, it's a lot of work to set up a faction and get the core mechanics' bugs worked out. That being said, I wouldn't mind a light carrier a la the Armitage or Vesta...but if they're only going to give us an Atrox equivalent, I'll pass, thanks.
I think there will be a second set of parts from the Z-store ships, but I do hope they give us more options in the future as well.
Agreed.
Because there's too many people who don't want to go through the process of figuring out how to properly fly the Warbird and would rush to an allied ship just so they can remake their old ship build, leaving you with a small (but deadly) population that figured out how to use the Warbird properly because they used it throughout their career, and a much larger contingent of people who said "-10 power levels?! I can't work with that!!!" and will jump over to their allies ships at first opportunity, returning to their cookie-cutter builds rather than, you know, trying and bringing something NEW to the game. And then at 40 that group will split between the ones that can afford lockbox ships vs the ones who can't and will then be forced back into a Warbird that they now have no real chance of learning how to use properly, and that last bunch will be extra whiny. The way it's set up now, people will have to use the Warbirds, will have to learn how to play them properly; but if they still refused to adapt, there's a way out...but they WILL have to work for it.
The power siphons, though, being targettable pets (more or less), should probably not be able to continue tracking you relentlessly after you've cloaked and put more than 10 km between you and them.
Joined in March, 2011. Lifer since December, 2011.
However, a friend I was testing with used his fine on his Mogai when he used it to tier 1 on Saturday.
Previously known as MGDawson.
Lifer since April 2010, and open beta tester.
Say "NO" to the Tier 5 Constitution!
can i have a normal warp core instead?
In PvP they are gimmick junk. plain and simple. And in PvE noone needs them because its so easy everything is dead within seconds.
Please give us a optional singularity core without all that attached singularity power stuff, just with normal power levels.
I was concerned about the singularity weapon. Seemed like it would unbalance the game. I've seen more than a few ships like this in the game. Capable of taking down a Borg cube shield side in less then two seconds on an elite setting. I've been playing the game for three years and I have never even came close to such a weapon. But I found that the weapon was nicely balanced, it didn't unhinge the game. Thank you for that. I was afraid that this would just lead to more characters and ships with super weapons, leaving me more and more outclassed.
The one thing I missed was the ability to buy consoles. As a player I could get just about everything else, but not consoles.
What flexability you'll mostly be stacking armor consoles.. and then maybe rcs and universal consoles... I see much more flexibility with science you can go. You could use partical gens for mage damage, you could use placate and confuse consoles to possible use the less armor consoles. You could use flow cap for shield stripping, there's also power stripping consoles... Shield tank and heal with shield gen consoles and shield capacity and regen consoles...
I see a ton of possibilities to be honest... So I have to disagree there...
Sure.
It's called "fly an allied faction ship, or fly a lockbox ship (at T5)".
Don't forget, the power levels are also paying for your Battle Cloak as well as the Singularity Core. But if you're dismissing the Singularity powers as "gimmick junk", well, you didn't bother to try to figure out how to use them properly. So buy a lockbox ship and then you can play your standard, run-of-the-mill build with it.
<yawn> again the same stupid counter argument.
As someone who already said that he is only doing pve, you disqualified yourself in terms of giving ppl advices in terms of pvp builds.
And the singularity powers are more or less gimmicks, it just doesn't matter in pve if they are useful or not.
And as someone who is using or used cpb1 for the (nearly non existent) shield drain it provides, (as you said a few days ago in a post) you basically disqualified yourself in terms of advising ppl on pve builds also.
And yeah you are right, we pay for the cloak and the singularity core, but they are still not worth the price.
And you can repeat your lame "try to figure it out" phrase over and over again it still won't make it a decen't argument that is convincing ppl that the singularity powers and the cloak are worth the power price.
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
That being said, there are some things that I might suggest. I've kept this guy longer than the others which I rerolled in the 20s-30s.
[System] Willard the Rat has been on active duty for 2 days, 15 hours, 35 minutes, 20 seconds.
So let's look at the Singularity abilities, eh? They'll have the numbers for this guy - so they might not be your numbers.
Plasma Shockwave V
PBAoE 5km Sphere - affects max of 10 foes
0.5s activate
1,603.2 Plasma Damage
4,809.7 Plasma Damage Over Time
So uh, where's the shock part of the shockwave? Where's the stun? Is it just because of the name and PSW that I'm looking for the stun? If it were Plasma Blastwave...hrmmm.
Singularity Jump V
Self teleport forward 5km in current facing
Creates singularity for 20s
- Repel -0.54/sec (negative repel is a pull)
- 153 kinetic damage/sec
- Accuracy -100 (debuff)
- Damage -56.5 (debuff)
The text blurb lists a Perception debuff, but there's no Perception debuff in the stats.
What about adding a short (5s) turn buff since the facing is maintained?
Energy Weapons: Singularity Overcharge V
Overcharges energy weapons for 12s
(pseudo BO/CRF depending on Beam/Cannon)
What about folks that do not use Energy Weapons though? They're being penalized/balanced for having this, even if they can't possibly use it because of the build. Since it's not optional to have (only optional to use) - shouldn't it also affect non energy weapons in some fashion? THY/DPB? Or maybe some special effect for the next torp fired/mine dropped, etc, etc, etc?
Warp Shadow V
Creates 5x Warp Shadows for 15s
Teleport to random location
After 19.5s, +6000 Stealth for 5s
How about having that +6000 Stealth at the start instead of 4.5s after the Warp Shadows have disappeared, eh?
Or how about having each Warp Shadow provide a +Defense, so that the Warp Shadows need to be dealt with in some fashion to be able to hit the target?
(Yes, I see this as the weakest ability.)
Quantum Absorption V
0.5s activation
2,010 shield regen (single regen/heal) applied to each facing
300 shield regen (heal over time) applied to each facing for 15s
20,475 temporary hit points
Not really much to add/say about this one - other than the name. It makes me think about some form of hull/shield RSP. Yet, that's not how it functions.
So why doesn't Warp Core Theory seem to work on my Tribble Server Romulan? And if it's not supposed to by some odd developer theory...why does it show up for Romulan characters who don't HAVE a dilithium matrix warp core, not say specifically that it doesn't affect Singularity cores and not have a trait available that does the same thing for Singularity warp cores? And I mean same thing, not +(some amount) while you have X charge on your singularity core gauge...+10. I'm dreading finding out that the engineer skill might not work on Singularity cores either...despite it...again... just being a different reactor type of warp core from the fed and kdf ones.
This 40s stuff is horrible... and no, the sometimes used, drained while you're cloaked 'special ability' of them don't make up for the -10 points of power to every system. Do you realize how easy that makes it to shut off things with disabling and system draining skills? And no, a warp core that gives back some of the power based on the level of your charge doesn't help. That just further encourages you to not use it, while tipping the scale toward just plain not using cloak any time you expect combat and still have 50% of your hull...
(Something Nice Break)
By the way, I appreciate finally having a Romulan faction, and that you recognized that only some, and a small portion at that actually have that ridge bump (note: some Vulcans also have ridge bumps (usually the more logic driven, computer like ones)...though not as pronounced as some of the ones I've seen on the more evil Romulans...like it's some kind of 'hey, I'm the bad guy' marker...and no, most Romulans aren't evil!) I really appreciate being able to start with a TOS Warbird. Thank you.
(back to warp/singularity core)
The plasma shockwave doesn't seem to really do enough damage for something I had to charge (especially since I was using it a lvl 5 charge most of the time...and I think the lowest was a 3...) it should also be 100% of causing a bigger then normal plasma burn if we're expected to charge it (and don't cloak because that drains it, although that might just be because you 'leave' combat, I tended to not pay attention to it when not fighting) and then lose it for a while before starting to recharge (and or torps for a few seconds too, if I remember an earlier blog post and observed my torp disables correctly). Not to mention the lack of much of a shock wave. It seemed to push back a tiny bit but not much, and I doubt it would have disabled the cloak of any cloaked vessels which I believe the other shocks do.
I didn't try the absorption skill...but with a name like that, shouldn't it either just cancel a certain amount of damage for a while or channel the damage into shield and weapon energy instead of giving a temporary hull buff or a direct shield regen?
Unless you pull something cheap like using Threat Generation's defense buff without the threat pull that's it's supposedly a skill FOR (worst. Skill. Ever. in my opinion. As well as most heavily abused since even the pvp 'school' you guys had said to use it... You realize it's very bad to use in pve right? That's like saying 'no, pvp isn't messed up. just build 2 chars and make one the pvp one!' ... Either take off the resistance buff and only give a def buff against 'enraged' npcs that have been pulled by the threat...or just take out the skill and make some kind of tac tray skill (like the boff ones...) that works similar to Jam but pulls reduced fire to you...) I forgot where I...oh right... then I don't see how these would even be that useful in pvp, other then making it easier for fed and kdf players to disable your ship due to your inferior power levels...
And no, singularity warp cores that 'boost' a system (like Shields +5) per charge level don't make up for it. Partly because you have Warp (dilithium) cores that seem to have similar buffs, and probably just plain flat all the time boosts to systems... Plus... the buff the Singularity cores gives seem to be dependent on you HAVING a charge on your SC gauge. Which I believe I mentioned earlier only discourages you from using the 'great' abilities you put in (and further discourages cloaking...the Actual Signature of the Romulans besides plasma torpedoes that you put in the game...since you left out their armor, their huge shields, helped make almost all the Tal Shiar evil...when it was actually just a faction... and continued Nemesis' retcon of the population of Remus with those...things... that would have been used as shock troopers and assassins right away by the Romulans or broken free pretty quickly...being stronger, having tk, and pretty much the same tech...)
Honestly it wasn't even very helpful in pve...and only begs the questions 'why do the romulan npcs have these?' and 'if they do, why do they cloak so often when it lowers the charge, and how come they're harder to disable with 'beam target' then me?' I suppose it would have been useful (the shock wave) against a bunch of fighters... but that really doesn't happen that often, nor is it usually worth the loss in system power from the singularity cores you can equip. A science officer shock wave is better, or having a beam array and 'beam fire at will' or cannons/torps with a spread skill... or one of the defensive turrets...or a tricobalt warhead.
(Trying to End on Something Nice)
And remember, I do actually appreciate having a Romulan faction. And that we will be able to make Romulan and KDF characters that start at level 1. The new hairs look nice.
Feds get 3 ship types, KDF mostly get 2, one of which is very similar to warbirds but a lot more versatile thanks to universal slots. IMO the raider type warbirds should get at least some universal slots, too. Maybe not all of them, like birds of prey, but 1 or 2 per ship certainly wouldn't be a bad thing.
Then at 40 I got the Ha'feh and it's back to the agile killer paradigm. Unfortunately the DD just doesn't fit well into the warbird progression, IMO. At the very least, the Romulans need an alternate warbird option for the 30's.
[Kluless][Kold][Steel Heels][Snagtooth]
[Louis Cipher][Outta Gum][Thysa Kymbo][Spanner][Frakk]
[D'Mented][D'Licious]
Joined October 2009. READ BEFORE POSTING
TBH, I think the devs are just choosing their battles here...they're under enormous time pressure, and rather than focusing on giving a variety of T1-T4 ships, they're putting the variety at the top with the T5 ships. After all, there's people who burned their way to RA in under three days playtime; when you get down to it, are you going to remember that three days of lack of variety, or the years you'll be spending in endgame ships? If you can only spare the time for one, you're going to focus on the endgame stuff. I HOPE they'll come back and fill in a bit more variety at lower levels, but I can't see it happening before launch.
I think there's also a factor the single-free-ship-per-tier progression (i.e. not counting C-store or ally ships) serves as a sampler for the captain; you spend a bit of time trying each of the offerings, and then at T5 the smorgasbord awaits...you'll be able to make a better decision because you know how each of the lower level ones behaved for you. If I played only a single character in the Federation, for example, if I took it into my head that cruisers were the way to go, I'd probably start cruiser and stay cruiser until tier 5, having no idea how a science vessel or escort works. As a single-character Romulan, I could look at any warbird a teammate is flying and have at least an idea of its capabilities because I've flown one at some point.
I'm not sure that this is the best way to do it, but there certainly are some merits to it.
I put 1 rcs console on it and under cloak i got a decent turnrate about 23 degree or so iirc.
Most npcs were dead after one pass anyways.
Basically you uncloak, open fire, pass the enemy, then cloak and initiate the turn to start over again.
With the right traits you get the cloak cd down to about 10 sec. You jsut have to take in account that the singularity abilites and the cloak have a shared 5 sec cd, if you use them, which is basically not needed anyways.
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