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Federation Specialization Overhaul
yaisuke15
Member Posts: 421 Arc User
I have been thinking for a long time about how to balance the power between the three ship types given to federation captains and have seen many a things that quip my interest.
For one, why is it that massive cruisers, with all their technology on board do not have an inate sensor analysis? I know science ships have all the advanced technology, but you would think the Odyssey Class would at least have an ability similar to that because it's considered the Federation's Flagship.
Another is that the science vessels have inate subsystem targeting. Again, why is it that the uber advanded cruisers don't have this ability at all? I know it's for balance between the ship types, but this seems like a moot point when it comes to the fact that no one cares about subsystem targeting (okay maybe not no one, maybe only a few hundred onliners) and instead only wants more DPS.
I could go on and on about how escorts need their shields and hull nerfed, but that's part of a different thread. And one I partically don't care about because we'll always be complaining about which ship type needs this improvement or that nerf...
I'd like to propose that ship types (escort, cruiser, and science vessel) only equip weapons meant for that type; cannons, dual cannons, dual heavy cannons for escorts only (the dreadnought cruiser will have it's own type of dual cannons and the Vesta has it's own type so they don't count); beam arrays for cruisers, and... a new energy weapon for the science vessels....
(Yeah didn't think that completely through... then again neither did Cryptic with making a third neccesary weapon type to balance out the other two. I feel their is no third energy weapon type and if someone says torpedoes... really?)
Then the energy weapons would be all pushed down to the same level so that everyone has an even playing field. (Yes that's right, AFT cannons, dual cannons and dual heavy cannons... at the same power as beam arrays.)
I would then propose escorts having inate cannon rapid fire and cannon scatter volley with an inate tactical team. The cruisers would have inate beam overload and beam fire at will with an inate engineering team. And finally science vessels would have the same inate abilities as before, but with an inate science team.
I'd take only something else, like say, Science Vessels have the ability to speed up crew recovery or kill enemy crew, like a medical team; but then I'd need to balance it out with something else for engineering and tactical. Unfortunately I can't think of anything that balance it out. Maybe an Operations team for cruisers that give a 5 point power boost to all subsystems? And maybe a tactical team that... dangit, they made the too overreaching that there is nothing left to cover. Either they'd have to nerf the original one, or the two just now proposed teams are gone.
If there's anyone out there who can give constructive critisism, not flames, please tell me what you think and add your input. I'd love to hear about what other gamers think of my proposal.
For one, why is it that massive cruisers, with all their technology on board do not have an inate sensor analysis? I know science ships have all the advanced technology, but you would think the Odyssey Class would at least have an ability similar to that because it's considered the Federation's Flagship.
Another is that the science vessels have inate subsystem targeting. Again, why is it that the uber advanded cruisers don't have this ability at all? I know it's for balance between the ship types, but this seems like a moot point when it comes to the fact that no one cares about subsystem targeting (okay maybe not no one, maybe only a few hundred onliners) and instead only wants more DPS.
I could go on and on about how escorts need their shields and hull nerfed, but that's part of a different thread. And one I partically don't care about because we'll always be complaining about which ship type needs this improvement or that nerf...
I'd like to propose that ship types (escort, cruiser, and science vessel) only equip weapons meant for that type; cannons, dual cannons, dual heavy cannons for escorts only (the dreadnought cruiser will have it's own type of dual cannons and the Vesta has it's own type so they don't count); beam arrays for cruisers, and... a new energy weapon for the science vessels....
(Yeah didn't think that completely through... then again neither did Cryptic with making a third neccesary weapon type to balance out the other two. I feel their is no third energy weapon type and if someone says torpedoes... really?)
Then the energy weapons would be all pushed down to the same level so that everyone has an even playing field. (Yes that's right, AFT cannons, dual cannons and dual heavy cannons... at the same power as beam arrays.)
I would then propose escorts having inate cannon rapid fire and cannon scatter volley with an inate tactical team. The cruisers would have inate beam overload and beam fire at will with an inate engineering team. And finally science vessels would have the same inate abilities as before, but with an inate science team.
I'd take only something else, like say, Science Vessels have the ability to speed up crew recovery or kill enemy crew, like a medical team; but then I'd need to balance it out with something else for engineering and tactical. Unfortunately I can't think of anything that balance it out. Maybe an Operations team for cruisers that give a 5 point power boost to all subsystems? And maybe a tactical team that... dangit, they made the too overreaching that there is nothing left to cover. Either they'd have to nerf the original one, or the two just now proposed teams are gone.
If there's anyone out there who can give constructive critisism, not flames, please tell me what you think and add your input. I'd love to hear about what other gamers think of my proposal.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
"Look at me I'm a target!"
"Fire the Lance on my mark... MARK!
"How many times have we gone into the breach again R'shee?"
My proposal for a Galaxy bundle
"Look at me I'm a target!"
"Fire the Lance on my mark... MARK!
"How many times have we gone into the breach again R'shee?"
My proposal for a Galaxy bundle
Post edited by yaisuke15 on
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Also what did you mean by the fourth paragraph? Are you referring to my proposal of the inates or what already part of the game?
If the RPG trinity wasn't implemented then they shouldn't even have made this an MMORPG because then it's obivously missing an essential key that all RPGs have. People got bored of good and evil, so they made neutral. Same for this; why make Science vessels if it's not even completely balanced between the three classes?
"Look at me I'm a target!"
"Fire the Lance on my mark... MARK!
"How many times have we gone into the breach again R'shee?"
My proposal for a Galaxy bundle
The RPG trinity is wrong for this game your right
So many of the sci ships and some escorts are merely small cruisers all be it with sci tech
A lot of the destroyer size vessels are stuck in the escort class, and many of the cruisers should be battleships
This leaves the ships that should be battleships suffering from their RPG trinity treatment, lacking their canon firepower
One of the things i think Legacy got right, was SCOUT, DESTROYER , CRUISER and Battleship types
IMO scouts should be the scalpel, Destroyers the dagger , cruisers the broad sword and Battleships the Hammer
Ever noticed that science ships have a second deflector? (cosmetic wise).
I keep hearing that we might expect the ship "classes" to get a little more unique, and that science ships might just get a second deflector slot.
In fact, I realized, I haven't noticed that they have a second deflector. Do you have a quick example?
Giving Cruisers an innate Sci power might be good, something like Tractor beam.
Escorts are frankly too good in the game.
Green Mk XI [Acc] 4 DHCs, 3 Turrets, TT1x2 AP:Bx2, 2xCannon abilities and your T5 Escort is ready for Elite STF. You could use generic energy consoles and shoot the rainbow and still be fine.
That's enough DPS to do every job, Guard the Kang from 4 BoPs or 3 Raptors/Negh'vars, easily take out the probes.
Every other ship requires far more effort than that, you need to think about skills, BOFFs layout, gear etc.
Another simple solution would be to make Eng Team balance shields when used on Cruisers, Sci Team balance shields on Sci ships and allow Tac team to do it on all ships.
This change would actually make your 3rd Eng Ens on any Cruiser as useful as a Tac Team. It wouldn't debuff the same as Tac Team, but it could easily replace it.
If I ask you a question it is not an insult but a genuine attempt to understand why.
When I insult you I won't be discreet about it, I will be precise and to the point stupid.
It's a rather crude idea yes. But it is an idea nonetheless. I want to hear other peoples' views on it AND what they would take away, add or change to make the ship type balancing better. I don't want to hear what I've already heard; that escorts are the easiest to use, cruisers are moderate, and science vessels are difficult to use.
I KNOW all this already; I have told you what I want to do to rehaul the ship types and discuss them with others. I'd like it if people would post their rehaul ideas so that we may have a pool of ideas to actually think on and mix and match to get the perfect balance.
And the thing with the ship weapons was debatable when I put it in the OP; I think that we'd have to make the weapons drain different or something...
"Look at me I'm a target!"
"Fire the Lance on my mark... MARK!
"How many times have we gone into the breach again R'shee?"
My proposal for a Galaxy bundle
Don't all three of them already have something that could be used as a second deflector on their upper hulls? Memory's a little rusty but I'm fairly sure their models would be good for a secondary deflector as-is.
I think that those rpg trinity is still good. But need a realy good balance to work it. For example:
cruser shoud be the tank, but the lack of get and hold the "aggro" ability , so it is a little rough to do that. Therefor should they have build in aggro beam, like a deflector abiltiy, which instant taunt, or really help to build and hold the aggro.
escort should be the dps, as usual, nowaday theay are really good at it, buf, cmon, a tiny little escort can tank az enlite tac cube...its a joke...therefore have the escorts shield and hull lower much more. be the classcannon as they should be...
science ships have to be the healer or debuffer, depend on boff powers. therefore have them better sci abilities that help them, for example 2-3km wide aoe heal, like the vesta console have...
and of course the whole pve system should be balanced for that. Onslugh is a good way, to capatins learn, how to work together. but need much more stf, even lover lvls, to learn that.
Ok, so here's my idea to rebalance the ships.
First thing: offensive sci abilities need to be buffed pretty heavily, as they stand there's very little they can do (a 130 Aux 129 skill Tachyon Beam should be able to take at least half the shields off a Tac Cube, GW should not be significantly easier to escape than Tractor Beam, that kind of thing). Then we need to rebalance the PvE content away from massive hits and toward more sustained damage (and probably also away from kinetic and toward energy damage), so that tanking becomes something that's possible in all cases but extremely difficult if you're not really built for it (rather than being pretty easy most of the time except when you take a huge hit that's almost completely unsurvivable). Next, beam drain needs to be reduced, either by reducing the amount or the duration, so that they're not at such a huge disadvantage compared to cannons (all the high DPS beam boats are built around maxing out weapon drain resists, and they get pretty impressive, so it's pretty clear that's all that needs to be done). The threat boost from Threat Control probably needs to be boosted as well, and we might consider whether it might be wise to extend the range of healing abilities so that being the team healer is a little more practical.
And really, at least as far as PvE goes, that's it. That gives us sci ships that can do their CC/debuff thing, cruisers that can tank or heal effectively while still putting out decent DPS, and escorts that are still almost as potent as ever, just with a little less survivability thanks to the changes in incoming damage. That's pretty much what everyone wants, without making any major changes in the way the ships function.
Imagine having both 2 piece Honor Guard, and 2 piece OMEGA. Instant awesomeness.
As for Cruisers, I think an innate resistance to power drain would be pretty good (thanks to having larger warp core). Maybe an innate Beam Fire at Will.
I think fixing power drain issues for cruisers, the recent nerfage to sci skills (especially Grav Well) and giving shield rerouting to both Sci and Eng Team would go a LONG way to balancing fed ship classes.
I dont think escprt hould get anything else, at least nothing major (more flavour would be nice though). We're op in pvp as it is (and I include my Charal in that).
Then please fill out my dissertation survey on feline attachment, it'd be a massive help (-:
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/87XKSGH
What I am coming across as a problem is the fact the only way to balance the ships is the if we either boost up engineering Bridge officer powers and science bridge officer powers so they are not all entirely passive. And as an engineering captain, I know how frustrating it is to see and escort pummel away at a ship with it's 4 fore dual heavy cannons with only me getting a few shots in an Elite STF. (I don't know why, but my cruiser grabs aggro like nothing and only if an escort is around do I get saved from taking on four spheres by myself.)
It's that, or we gimp the escorts. *gets booed by tactical captains to get off the forum* Okay, okay, sheesh!
@skolluflr
I see your point that rpg trinity doesn't work... unfortunately, I don't believe the designers of STO realized that it wouldn't work because the made the game too DPS heavy with the Escorts being the easiest to utilize, cruisers medium difficulty with science vessels being the most difficult to use. And apparently adding on these cool little tricks to science vessels was their way of saying sorry then? Pfft.
I think the only reason why they made the trinity of ships is because you had the trinity of the most modern day Star Trek shows, ie, TNG, DS9 and VOY. And yes I saw the inherent flaw in my thought in the trinity in the fact we would have to run in battle groups of at least three with at least on cruiser, one escort, and one science vessel. Was it dumb on my part? Eeeeeeh... a little bit. It was meant to balance out the game, but if people want to solo like Sisko, Janeway, Kirk, Archer and Picard, then we'd need to find away to keep the solo play epic like the five mentioned above people yet have the group play where we don't feel that our cruiser is bad compared to an escort, or the Vesta, in an STF.
(I'm one of those poor grinder people, so I can hardly at times match the raw fire power some people have.)
But we would need some way to balance the edge between the three ship types just to see the parity between ships again.
Maybe specific weapons slots for a specific type of weapon design? Or maybe a limit on the number of the type of weapon carried? (Don't hate on my skollulfr, I'm trying my best to think up of something so everyone can have fun without raining on someone else's parade.)
"Look at me I'm a target!"
"Fire the Lance on my mark... MARK!
"How many times have we gone into the breach again R'shee?"
My proposal for a Galaxy bundle
I never understood why they took it out.
And no it wasn't a hard limit it was a soft limit as DHC's had a global cooldown on them so the 3rd and 4th wouldn't fire.
If I ask you a question it is not an insult but a genuine attempt to understand why.
When I insult you I won't be discreet about it, I will be precise and to the point stupid.
Trinity is a little outmoded, lacks true variety really since it channels you down one path rather than branching your
characters career and ship in new interesting ways
indeed
Better days, it confuses me why so many ships uses so many DHC's when the tv shows usually depicted them firing only a few at once
Why the- you know what, I don't even want to know why they did that. Either to troll or... well troll, I think it's better if we don't debate WHY they changed that and instead focus on how we can balance the cruisers and science ships so they won't be forgotten by the majority.
@adverbero
If we allow ships to branch too far, we'll end up with tanky escorts with no need for assistance from cruisers or science ships, because escorts are inherently easy and because they can choose some of the better abilities from other ship types and toss them out the window, while cruisers and science ships can't fully utilize some of the tactical skills.
...
Now that I think about it, maybe we should change the skill set model the game currently has so that some abilities that are powerful on some ship types are locked out to other career captains if they're not the specified type.
An example would be if a tactical captain has the highest skill level in starship attack patterns it unlocks a passive ability that cuts down on attack pattern cooldowns by n in escorts and 7/10n in other ship types and its only for tactical captains.
Or if an engineer has the highest skill level in hull repair it grants a passive to crew repair that increases hull repair by n% of the norm hull repair on a ship outside of cruiser and an increase by 7/10n% of the norm repair rate of cruisers and exclusive for engineering captains.
And for a science captain if they have the highest skill in starship flow capacitors, they get a passive boost that increases those abilities by n in a ship other than a science vessels and 7/10n in other ship types.
Then when a career captain gets to the highest level in the final tier skills, the passive wil be 1.1/1n instead.
Of course we'd have to look at all the skills and see which is more exclusive for a career captain and which is universal for all captains to see which is better for the passives so that it isn't completely unbalanced.
(If you're going to quote me, on the exclusive passives seperately, please be kind enough not to flame me without remembering the previous paragraph. Thanks.)
We need to not only look at the ship types, but the skills that benefit the ships as well while we discuss the overhauling issue so that we won't have to come back to the drawing board if an overhaul doesn't work.
"Look at me I'm a target!"
"Fire the Lance on my mark... MARK!
"How many times have we gone into the breach again R'shee?"
My proposal for a Galaxy bundle
Maybe I'm just complaining because all I hear is DPS this or DPS that. Maybe I should have just focused on my game instead. I think I'll just be xenophobic and ignore everyone else so I don't have to worry about raging.
Waiting for the T6 Assault Cruiser however. Can't wait! I can't wait for it's Fleet equivalant either! I'mma tear stuff up with that thing!
"Look at me I'm a target!"
"Fire the Lance on my mark... MARK!
"How many times have we gone into the breach again R'shee?"
My proposal for a Galaxy bundle
This is a bad, bad case of "necro". I'd say most of this thread is fairly irrelevant to today's game, which is why there's the whole "no necro" rule...
However, to address your "valid current points":
1. Science ships now have a secondary deflector dish, not deflector shield. And all secondary deflectors really do is maybe add a shield drain or radiation effect to specific science powers & give us a few more skillpoints to mess with...
2. Cruiser Commands (aka Auras) were first, and therefore might be possibly a bit behind the curve as far as "true worth", because they couldn't be tremendously better than the nothing Science had at the time, the nothing Escorts still have, and raider flanking...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
Still, if used properly, those skill points can do a great number of things. Things I know nothing about since I'm an engineer, not a scientist.
You know what, give me a Gundam to operate in this game. I think I'll be happy then. (Like that would happen.)
Don't forget everyone benefits from the commands. That just means Tac ships get attack boost due to less energy drain.
Oh the DPS war, how I hate you so.
"Look at me I'm a target!"
"Fire the Lance on my mark... MARK!
"How many times have we gone into the breach again R'shee?"
My proposal for a Galaxy bundle
At least the science variant could do with some science goodies, instead of just a Lt. Com. and another console slot, I'll agree with you there.
The escorts need a hull/shield nerf like I need a tentacles on the top of my head. For escorts to take even a 20% nerf in those categories can turn worthwhile attack ships into ships that wouldn't last half a minute, thus becoming the subject of multiple flame threads, banned accounts, even people trying lawsuits to recover money for ships they would not have bought in the first place. Calling for nerfing escorts is a dirty play and would result in some VERY UNSCRUPULOUS BUSINESS PRACTICES and that pandora's box should NEVER be opened.
Aft cannons sounds like an intriguing idea. I do like that mission where I'm in the Vaadwaur ship and shooting cannons and pounding the target into near nothing. It certainly is worth a look into.