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tractor beam II drains more shields than Tachyon beam III?
bertiewooster
Member Posts: 92 Arc User
Was tachyon beam nerfed into oblivion, or has it weekdays been this bad? I was asked to train it from my captain so I thought I'd give its shot-- I'd used it before at lower levels but hadn't tried it at level III. At the same time I got a doff that drains Shields with the tractor beam. Using them side by side, the tractor beam won hands down. Tachyon beam was a joke in comparison. This seems backwards to me: shouldn't the power designed from the ground up to drain shields that requires you to spec into it to train do more than a bonus ability from a doff I bought on the exchange?
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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Darius (TAC VA) USS Gahreesen (Chel Grett Cruiser), Shomat (SCI VA) ISS Selentic (Mirror DSSV), Napoleon (ENG Capt.) USS Fists of Latinum (Exploration Cruiser), Gothmog (Tac Capt.) IKS Nazgul (Hegh'ta Heavy BoP), Aaesia (Reman Sci Capt) RRW Arien III (Ha'Nom Guardian)Post edited by bertiewooster on
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With maxed out Flow caps, 4x Flow cap concoles and full aux power, what drain numbers are you seeing for these two?
Very interested in these numbers also... I have a sci captain with a Fleet Nebula and just put on Tachyon Beam 3 a few days ago, I guess to troll myself I don't know... It was just terrible, that was with 3 MK XII blues and 9 in flow caps... It was just terrible...
If you could replace the drain from the entire shield and drain that same amount from the facing shield, it might be worth it...
nebula
all sci slots are flow cap consoles (mk11 blue)
9 pnts in flow cap
tachyon beam 3.
125 aux
reputation ability of +100 to all science skills.
tachyon 3 still sucks so very, horribly bad that a simple subsystem shield 1 attack with a single beam array does more shield damage.
the grim reality of science abiities is they will never. ever. be fixed. the devs have bent the game over and offered its rear end to the tactical stuffs ability to monetize.
I've got 9 points in flow caps, I don't have the flow consoles in right now. I get something like -326.9 shields for tachyon each pulse, and -125 per pulse on the tractor beam. This is more inline with what I would expect it to be, and it performs as such. Here's the kicker though: it didn't do this before. I had retrained my officer with a different skill shortly after starting this post, but went back and gave them tachyon beam III again to get the numbers. I don't remember what they were exactly before, but they were sub 100 I think. Now they're over 300, and they actually work?I just tested, I was able to almost fully drain the shields of a borg BoP, which didn't happen before.
The only thing I can peg it as would be some sort of weird glitch I must have been experiencing. That being said, it's still too underpowered to be of much use outside of dealing with small targets in PVE. Anything bigger than a BoP, and it's not very useful.
It is a TRIBBLE skill, but remember to multiply the pulse value by 4 since there are 4 facings. Iirc I got ~450/pulse w/212 in flow cap. That's 1800/pulse if all shield facing are included. It may be ok in PvE w/turnrate debuff boff & tb w/shield drain boff combained to keep shields from regening (still need weapons to strip them) while applying torps. For PvP the buffer & resists & passive repairs/regen boosts make it pretty low in terms of cost effectiveness. W/the added arc, it may be more viable in a team setup.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
Recluse carrier. My total Flow Caps skill is 235. I run full aux power all the time as a matter of standard practice on this ship.
Tractor beam 1 with a tractor doff drains 243.9 x 10 shield.
Tachyon beam 1 drains 368.4 x 10 shield.
As other people have pointed out, tractor beam is a 360 power. Its primary feature is that it slows or immobilizes enemies. It also causes damage, which means it can intercept heavy torpedoes and shuttles. The fact that it's 2/3rds as effective as tachyon beam at draining shields is just gravy.
Tachyon beam has no reason to exist. My front beam weapon is rated at 421 damage. Which means it will do more shield damage, in less time, than tachyon beam. And that's with no power to weapons, no tactical abilities, and no damage boost consoles. :rolleyes:
I can promise, if a change from cryptic is done, it will be like:
Systems
Tachyon beam:
- Tachyon beam I to III is now befefit in effectiveness from tactical captain's powers
- At the same time, the shield damage is decreased for 50% if used by a science captain
- Escorts now get Tachyon beam III as a innate ability on a 10 sec cooldown
To be fair a shield drain build would use tach beam 3, not tach beam 1, and again it drains 4 facings, not just 1 multiply the damage times 4. Also toss in CBP3. But, it's still pretty worthless w/the resists (PvP) & cap level of shields these days.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
Fair enough, I didn't multiply by the facings. So my tachy beam 1 drains a total of 14736 shields in 30 seconds while my dual beam does a total of 10104 damage in 30 seconds. ...
Irrelevant? Not using the best? Tachyon beam 3 does 589.4x10 (x4). Which makes its total shield drain 23576 over 30 seconds, for a Lieutenant Commander ability.
So then I actually start shooting, and my weapon power level goes up to 65 because of plasmonic leech. My dual beam does 13214.4 damage in 30 seconds. Then I turn on Energy Siphon and my weapon power hits 105. Dual beam now does 20875.2 damage (well, less, because E-siphon is only active for 23 of 30 seconds, but you get the idea).
It bears repeating that I'm a drain boat. My ship is completely dedicated to Flow Caps (235!). I have no damage consoles. I have no tactical abilities. And tachyon beam is only marginally better than a single one of my weapon (I also have 3 turrets...) at taking down shields. Also don't forget that tachy beam can only drain shields. It does zero damage.
No. Sorry. It's TRIBBLE.
Fyi, I wasn't disagreeing w/your conclusion. Also, the better time period of comparison is 10 seconds (that's how long tach beam is applied for) than 30 seconds. Again, check my 1st post in the thread I agree w/your conclusion.
The main issue is even when adding CPBIII, a TB w/purp doff and if you really wanted Tet Glider the combination of Buffer HP and drain resists negate shield drain builds (not to mention all the passive repair/regen boosts in PvP) unless you have multiple players stacking the build type. Even then it's more of a novelty to try something different than more effective builds.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
Actually tachyon beam's strip lasts only 4 seconds. If you look at the skill description the duration is 0.4 and there's ten "pulses".
Basically NPC shields fall into two categories: Things that can be removed by tachyon beam, and things that can't. Generally only very small targets (frigates) will have their shields completely removed by tachyon beam. But frigates die so easily to anything that it's kind of irrelevant. Large dangerous targets like cubes and dreadnaughts have far more shield strength. Too much to be removed by tachy.
Tachy beam does have very performance if you only look at while it's operating. My level 1 beam at 368.4 drain per pulse (x4 for shield facings, x2.5 because of 0.4s pulse duration) is 3684 per second. That's VERY good. It's what I would expect from a specialized ability that has received maximum investment. The problem is that the beam doesn't last long enough to really make a significant dent in non-trivial targets. It's only draining for 4 out of 30 seconds. It lacks the spike to spike things, and its endurance performance is terrible.
And that's why I'm looking at 30 seconds.
It takes a huge investment in resources to make a sci ship equivilent to an underequiped escort. Boosting science abilities themselves may not be a good idea however. That boosts escorts with Lt.C sci or universal slots as well.
What we need is a boost to science ship's abilitie to use science skills. Some sort of built in cooldown reduction ability, built in power to auxilery, or somthing that multiplies the skill boost from your deflector dish.
And before some one wines about stun locks and disables in pvp. Escorts are currently the disable kings. You dont get more disabled then dead.
Honestly, I'm ok with that. Those escorts have given up their LtC tac slot for an LtC sci, they should get something worth using, and right now the only good option is GW, which makes them handy when something goes wrong or in certain specialized events, but weaker the rest of the time. There should be other things that are worth using there, and science abilities do need a huge boost, so it works out. Plus, if they're made to scale reasonably with Aux power, sci abilities will benefit massively from being on a ship that specializes in them anyway, so sci specialized escorts will still not be the best choice for sci abilities, as it should be. (Actually, right now an escort probably is the best sci ship, it can run GW (and TBR for CE) and still get tons of firepower.)
Quoted for truth. The trinity has been broken for ages. There will be a time when cruiser captains and sci captains will be non existent and my parody signature will be fully realised.
Do the devs play anything but tacs in escorts?:rolleyes:
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As for the trinity. I dont think we realy want the trinity in space do we? Star trek ships were always been largly capable in a veriety of roles. The captains may not be ballenced but the majority of our effectivness comes from our ships not our captains any way.
Science ships, with the exception of the vesta, suffer from a boost to the power level used by science abilities and an abundance of science ability slots. For which they sacrafice some hull points/manoverability (depending on sci ship) and a weapon slot. This wouldnt be a bad thing if science abilities were usefull.
Tachyon beam is too weak for purpose.
Energy syphon is most usfull as a buff rather then a debuff.
Tractor beams are pointless in PVE as large boss enemies can not be held and do not need to be, while small ones can be killed in far less time then it takes to recharge the ability. In pvp any oponent giving you enough trouble that you need to hold them is going to have an APO or Polarize hull so your tractor is pointless.
Tykens rift is... well just challenge a friend to a pvp dual and sit there while they use it on you. Imprseed by how it does just about nothing? I was.
The list goes on...
Which also includes subsystme targeting. And you can get out of the sci holds quite easy too.
The only sci skills that remained as useful as they were before are the heals.
Even the The Sci Captains Skill Sensor Scan isn?t as strong as it was before.
So lets see what we get, we get a bunch of not very usefull skill (thx to constant nerfing) and ships with less firepower. The innate target subsystem from sci ships is more or less useless also. Same as the Sensor Analysis (it just takes to long to build up and you loose it easy when you get a placate or the target is out of weapon range)
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
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Nice. I would also like to point out that for those comparing Tractor Beam vs Tachyon Beam, Tractor Beam does not, in fact, drain any shields by itself. To get that performance out of Tractor Beam, you need to also slot a particular Duty Officer. With Tachyon Beam, you can devote that Duty Officer slot to something else. As such, there IS an extra cost for Tractor Beam drain". It might still not be balanced, but it's not completely UNbalanced.
Someone was asking about Antiproton Sweep vs Charged Particle Burst; I use both on my main character, and they both drain roughly the same amount; AP has a slightly further range (6 km vs 5 km) but only fires in a forward arc, and only hits 5 targets vs CPB's 10. I'm not tricked out for drain, but I get about 3k x4 for each; against maximum targets, that's 180k shield damage spread across everything I can hit. (6k to four facings to five targets in the fore arc, and another 3k to four facings to another five targets within 5 km).
That being said, no I'm not going to strip shields entirely from anything larger than a frigate; but any damage I do with shield strippers will let my energy weapons and torps deliver more of their damage to the hull rather than the shields, and I'll take that.
You playing pve on normal, advanced or elite?
Since the resistences the drain abilities are basically useless, besides the comparison to the tractor doff. First nerf was when they introduced the field generator consoles, nearly everyon got more shields but hte drain stayed the same. But ok, that had an effect on the normal dmg also so it was mroe or less a shield dmg nerf to all classes.
But the really heavy nerf came with the resistences they introduced. I had someone used a cpb 1 in pvp against me today and i didn?t even noticed it, i just saw it cause of the icon you get for the stealth debuff effect. And i can asure you, it is basically the same with the higher versions of that skill.
And when you go on advanced or elite, the shield hitpoints of the npcs get high enough that the drains won?t make a real difference anymore anyways.
There is a reason why there are so less ships with shield strip /drain builds around.
Same with the target subsystem abilities, they lost a big deal of effectiveness also. And on sci ships they were also innate as compensation for the less firepower. You also see way less tacs using target subsystem then it was before the nerf, and guess what the reason for that is?
Btw the drain numbers for cbp, did you get it from the combat log, or is that the number the skill said? Cause that is not what you apply to the target if they have resistences.
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
Yes if you stack all those abilities like CPB, tractor beam + doff and tachyon beam 3 you will get some decent drain. What is required for that though? 3-4 flow caps consoles, 6-9 in flow caps, 3 boff skills and almost a complete commitment to shield draining with using projectile weapons as you have almost no weapon power. Can you honestly say you won't fair better by running max weapon power and using 1 tactical boff ability?
I also see a lot of people saying "It drains that on all shields so it's actually 4 times better". Yes very true but in PvE you don't need to drain all facings for most targets as they just don't move fast enough. Exception might be bosses but they have massive shields and once again you're probably be better off with energy weapons.
In PvP energy drains are so easily resisted you only need 6 in insulators that again you would need to go into it VERY heavily and most likely use consoles and pets to assist too to get a decent amount of drain. Not saying it's impossible even with insulators just very very hard. Though I would trust Sad Pandas judgement on PvP more than mine as I don't often do it.
I'd like to see science buffed in general and a way for those that choose to use science only to actually have that as their main focus. Perhaps special science weapons that buff all sci skills by 50-100 but it essentially locks out that weapon slot for direct damage.
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Has damage got out of control?
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Can't we have tachyon beam doffs that lower shield resistance?