Legacy of Romulus Dev Blog #32

pwebranflakes · July 2013

Systems Designer Jeremy "BorticusCryptic" Randall shares details about the updated carrier command interface in this entry of the Legacy of Romulus News Dev Blog series.

Link to the blog.

topset · July 2013

This might tempt me into flying a carrier, I look forward to testing it out!

Good work

voporak · July 2013

nice

/10char

allenscott · July 2013

OMG I actually LIKE THIS! Time to dust off the ole Vo'Quv and Atrox (maybe)!:D Chrs!

thelastlegate · July 2013

Typo alert "Crafts" should be Craft I think.
Otherwise looks good.

supergaminggeek · July 2013

I like the idea of individual wing commands. I can have a wing defend a ship and the other to intercept Borg Spheres. I'm not too sure about ranking. Active Combat is what strikes me the most. I must make sure my pets don't die in five minutes of actually fighting to get the rank buffs.

gilion · July 2013

Yes!!

This post has been edited to remove content which violates the Perfect World Entertainment Community Rules and Policies . ~BranFlakes

ursusmorologus · July 2013

The UI looks good. One question about this

+5/10/15/20/25% Maximum Hull HP

* Tachyon Drones, Siphon Drones and Shield Repair Drones will instead gain +10/20/30/40/50% Max HP, due to their limited combat utility.

* Runabouts, Delta Flyers and all Frigate Hangar crafts will instead only gain +2/4/6/8/10% Max HP, due to their higher starting base value.

Are the B'Rel BoP considered frigates for this purpose?

ferdzso0 · July 2013

so we ask for one thing, and get a bunch of others.

we get a new UI tray, which in the old UI would not have been the problem, but the current UI takes too much screen away, and one more is just... too much
we get debuffs on all fighters, just because they can level up. good luck with fighters on that. owait, and feds dont have frigates either. gj
we get debuffs on carrier spawn, except for maybe the vesta, it gets a buff (well, yay for that, nay for the rest)

meddling with the pet AI is also a tricky thing, I do believe that the whole thing will just break carriers for a good week or so

shpoks · July 2013

This is actually an excellent improvement. I like it very much!

I just might start using my carrier a bit more when this goes live.
It seems that finally we'll be getting the opportunity to apply a bit more strategy and tactics while in carriers whit this new interface and the improved way of micromanaging the pets. That is very cool.

Also, a great move to improve the AI to aviod warp-core explosions. Even better move by making the same AI enhancement availible to the Saucer, Chevron, MVAE and the Romulan separation ships. It will greatly improve the gameplay of those ships as well, especially the MVAE I feel.

xelene13 · July 2013

As of last night on Tribble this was majorly BROKEN ... tell me you're not pushing this to Holodeck tomorrow! It will ruin carrier play. :eek:

Edit:
"After 15 seconds in recall mode, all active hangar crafts will now attempt to dock with their Carrier."
Last night, using this feature would dock your ships and they'd stay docked till map change. Today they've removed this feature, so standard recall applies.

"granted all summoned ships the added alertness necessary to have them avoid Warp Core explosions with a near-perfect frequency."
Last night it was suicide by warp core breach, today is better but still not totally avoided.

Today there is still confusion when using carrier commands on the tray and using them on the hangar HUDs. My frigates obeyed the tray over the hangar HUD.

Hopefully they'll have it ironed out by tomorrow.

seannewboy · July 2013

Xelene13, i hope your ticket has more info for the devs than just that, they will need details.

As for me i will be curious to know if the 5 min timer works at all, i might spend 5+ minutes on a non pvp map, but most of that time is spent travelling from one combat to the next. Some missions (in explore zone, check on the base) the combat is not really long at all.

perfectcryptic · July 2013

Guess there is something else incoming that will utilise this update

May be the next race is full of carrier ships rofl

ascaladar · July 2013

Will there be more control and status updates of other varities of pets, like separated saucers or the Aquarius?

zeuslegion1 · July 2013

I'll be happy if/when this is implemented for the little ships that come with the Odyssey and Bortasqu' cruisers. If I lose visual track of them during battle, I tend to assume they're dead and end up calling them back too soon, thus wasting them. Likewise, trying to heal them in battle requires a Where's Waldo? visual hunt as well.

xelene13 · July 2013

seannewboy wrote: »

Xelene13, i hope your ticket has more info for the devs than just that, they will need details.

Of course.

leosg1 · July 2013

Can we please have a Fed version of the BOP fighters frigate or Qaw'Dun Birds-of-Prey for the Atrox carrier.

trhrangerxml · July 2013

I'm not liking the not being able to refresh fighters, since their abilities already have really high CD. Generally a strategy that carrier Captains have had to use since the game came out to keep up with the long fighter ability CD (around 3 minutes) is to constantly refresh their fighters, best example would be Elite Scorpions which means a fresh batch of HYT at their targets or any other ability that a fighter may have. Someone in the feed back thread noted a 30-40% reduction of fighter damage.

http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=11432291&postcount=23

Having spend the last month creating a dedicated carrier captain and grinding out the Elite Scorpions, I feel rather hurt and insulted. Not only doesn't the Ramen/Romulan Set Bonus effect the Romulan Torpedo, but now the fighters I worked to get are getting nerfed along with all other fighters.

My suggestion for a fix for this, reduce fighter ability CD by 50-66%, this 30-40% reduction in DPS is mainly caused by fighters not being able to spam abilities via refresh, bring the ability CD down to the old fighter refresh time.

sampa4 · July 2013

Might it be possible to have that ui be brought up on other ships when they equip the Scorpion fighters we receive from the mission: The Vault? That way we won't be forced to just abandon the fighters once launched when we move to another map!

f8explorer · July 2013

Talk about a bug .... my fighters while in combat on tribble completely disappeared from the hangers as well as combat ... pooof ... gone.

Yeap ...THAT'S a bug.

Just when I was getting into carriers ....

khamseenair · July 2013

I've been waiting for this blog since you said it was happening. So excited, will have to copy one of my characters over to Tribble so I can test it.

xelene13 · July 2013

genhauk wrote: »

Talk about a bug .... my fighters while in combat on tribble completely disappeared from the hangers as well as combat ... pooof ... gone.

Yeap ...THAT'S a bug.

Just when I was getting into carriers ....

What are you using? I tested B'Rolth and Elite Scorps

mrkollins · July 2013

Nice .

dkeith2011 · July 2013

Not a carrier player and I wish the separated ships benefited from this, but looks like good stuff regardless.

lianthelia · July 2013

This looks pretty damn cool! I can't wait to try it!

breadandcircuses · July 2013

xelene13 wrote: »

"After 15 seconds in recall mode, all active hangar crafts will now attempt to dock with their Carrier."
Last night, using this feature would dock your ships and they'd stay docked till map change. Today they've removed this feature, so standard recall applies.

That's too bad. The best part of the new carrier commands was actually having a benefit from using recall (other than the "doesn't blow things up that you wanted at 10%" benefit, of course).

trhrangerxml wrote: »

I'm not liking the not being able to refresh fighters, since their abilities already have really high CD. Generally a strategy that carrier Captains have had to use since the game came out to keep up with the long fighter ability CD (around 3 minutes) is to constantly refresh their fighters, best example would be Elite Scorpions which means a fresh batch of HYT at their targets or any other ability that a fighter may have. Someone in the feed back thread noted a 30-40% reduction of fighter damage.

Ouch... the funny part is that I never noticed the long cooldown clocks since I was "spamming your hangar bays", which apparently "should no longer be necessary". If "activating your hangar bay while crafts are already summoned will no longer replace active crafts, but will only fill in ones that are missing", this might actually make carriers worse than before... especially since they receive reduced capability until 2 of your "5 minutes of active Combat time" has gone by, per fighter.

Overall, the intention is a good one, and the pet status is a great idea, but it will also add another object to the UI. A couple patches back I lost the ability to drag around my loot and mission dialog pop-up window around, so the thing keeps covering up the shield/hitpoint data on the bottom few teammates... which makes keeping them alive more troublesome as I usually favor cross-healing even in an offensive craft. If we add another immobile UI item that blocks out important combat information, I will be less than impressed :P

Has anyone on Tribble tried rearranging their Carrier UI object yet, and how is this accomplished?

artanisen · July 2013

its looks a little weird but its
very nice cant wait to try it.

xelene13 · July 2013

breadandcircuses wrote: »

Has anyone on Tribble tried rearranging their Carrier UI object yet, and how is this accomplished?

Hit Esc and then select Rearrange HUD. I moved my hangar UI under the group list.

lan451 · July 2013

I'm really, really looking forward to my fighters not hugging warp core breaches anymore. That's probably my favorite part of all this. I don't have to pretend that all my fighters are unmanned drones who have no sense of self preservation any more lol.

I do like the separate UI for pets though. Sometimes I'll be fighting and look around wondering where all my fighters went. It takes me a second to realize that they all got pasted and that I have to launch some new ones. And that's only with a Vesta, I don't know how the people with full carriers kept track of the buggers at all.

Good stuff all around.

salemkane · July 2013

\o/ Redocking, finally...
Who do i have to kiss for this?
.
..
...

Looking forward to this extremely cool remake of carrier commands.

...also, any chance i will get my Tholian Tarantula Supercap now >_>

chi1701d · July 2013

Will be interesting to see if we can issue shield re-distribute command to our pets so abilities such as tss is more effective.

Legacy of Romulus Dev Blog #32

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