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Should tactical buffs not buff science abilities?
bpharma
Member Posts: 2,022
As per title really but let's clarify things.
By tactical buffs I mean the ones that say +X% damage. They would still buff weapons by the amount that they currently do and still interact with other tactical abilities as they do.
By science abilities I mean the bridge officer abilities. Things like Feedback Pulse (FBP), Gravity Well (GW), Tykens Rift (TR), Tractor Beam Repulsors (TBR), Photonic Shockwave (PSW) and Tractor Beam (TB) which all cause damage.
Another thing worth thinking about is should we also remove it from buffing other engineering abilities such as aceton beam and Eject Warp Plasma (EWP)?
Would this lead to a tighter range of damage thus allowing things to be more balanced and less favouring to any particular class? Will it breath life into abilities where a damage component might as well not be there?
Please try to look at it from a balancing perspective and from multiple captains, roles, other ability interactions and ships too. It is not a simple thing and is not as clear cut as you might think.
Edit:
From what is said by the devs and hinted at it is worth mentioning that it looks like the plan is to normalise the damage from gravity well/tykens rift for all classes or at least bring them all into a similar range. This would then allow for the devs to increase the damage to a value they feel is more acceptable. The idea being that if the interaction was throwing the numbers off too much you're rewarded with a more damaging gravity well in general for all classes.
By tactical buffs I mean the ones that say +X% damage. They would still buff weapons by the amount that they currently do and still interact with other tactical abilities as they do.
By science abilities I mean the bridge officer abilities. Things like Feedback Pulse (FBP), Gravity Well (GW), Tykens Rift (TR), Tractor Beam Repulsors (TBR), Photonic Shockwave (PSW) and Tractor Beam (TB) which all cause damage.
Another thing worth thinking about is should we also remove it from buffing other engineering abilities such as aceton beam and Eject Warp Plasma (EWP)?
Would this lead to a tighter range of damage thus allowing things to be more balanced and less favouring to any particular class? Will it breath life into abilities where a damage component might as well not be there?
Please try to look at it from a balancing perspective and from multiple captains, roles, other ability interactions and ships too. It is not a simple thing and is not as clear cut as you might think.
Edit:
From what is said by the devs and hinted at it is worth mentioning that it looks like the plan is to normalise the damage from gravity well/tykens rift for all classes or at least bring them all into a similar range. This would then allow for the devs to increase the damage to a value they feel is more acceptable. The idea being that if the interaction was throwing the numbers off too much you're rewarded with a more damaging gravity well in general for all classes.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
Post edited by bpharma on
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Furthermore, the Bottom Line would be affected: Science ships would become unsaleable to 80% of the population, since some 80% of players are Tacs. The result is that Science would then get neglected even more than the KDF, as if it wasn't bad enough already, and you would see no Science ships being made again, as they would never sell.
Such a move would, ultimately, doom an entire class of ship.
80% of the population should roll a sci then. I have 2 tacs 3 sci and 2 engineers. Majority of my toons are sci :P
An engineer can make the shields super meaty with RSF but Nadeon loses some of it's potency by running 2 less energy weapons. Furthermore it has the least hull so while your shields can take a thrashing it won't stop all these direct to hull attacks or shield bypass attacks which are getting more common. An engineer would really benefit a bit better from an ambassador or sci cruiser than a science ship so they can pack more hull damage mitigation while keeping some sci abilities.
If the interplay was removed and it caused all classes to get the same lack lustre performance out of the ship then could they not be buffed to be useful? Would this not prove that science abilities are lacking?
Again think how other captains must feel piloting a science ship, essentially they're the ones that feel as you would feel about this change being made. Is it right to you that one and only one captain is useful in a science ship in your own words?
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
1st: Their would be just as much reason for a Tac to touch a science vessel as their currently is for an engineer to touch anything. Saying that an entire set of boff abilities should be designed and balanced to be viable for a single class and not the other two is silly.
2nd: Sci ships already don't sell, hence the true problem. Otherwise the Romulan line up would not be as tac heavy as it currently is.
3rd: If the abilities dealt enough damage to begin with that tac buffs were not required for them to be viable how does that change the current situation of a tac inside a sci vessel eh?
My opinion.
- Attack pattern Alpha and Beta should not effect exotic damage by any means.
- Go Down Fighting should effect exotic damage.
- Omega I'm still up in the air about and don't think it would significantly effect things if it were to remain capable of buffing it.
*edit* Forgot about FoMM, it should not effect exotic damage either.
Science Captains have the Subnookie, which allows them to remove the defenses the target could have otherwise used to counter those abilities.
All, of course, be flying a different flavor of Sci ship, either in the exact type, or the powers chosen.
Of course, whether or not an Engineer is useful at all in ANY ship is often questioned. It is widely acknowledged that Engi captains are easily the weakest of the 3 captain options regardless of the ship chosen, as they don't contribute as much to a team environment as Tac or Sci Captains.
The difference is not as much as it once was, with the Conservation of Energy trait. A Sci Captain can gain a permanent +30% damage with science that, unlike the Tac Captain's 45%-ish APA, is always on. Additionally, a Tac Captain can only use a science ship for ONE thing: Damage. A Tac captain running anything except damage on his Sci ship is mostly wasting his tactical abilities on a ship that isn't going to do damage. Sci Ships are the "magic" class of STO ships, and a Tac Captain in a Sci ship is basically your blaster wizard. A Sci captain can use the Sci ship to do so many other things.
However, your question does bring up a valid point: There's a reason why there are so many Tac captains out there, and that's because PvE content is entirely damage-centric. All content in the game is about hurling as much damage as possible against large bricks of hitpoints. This in turn creates the impression that non-Tac captains are useless, especially on a ship that is already the weakest in raw damage potential.
But Sci Captain is Best Captain. If you don't believe this, see the composition of serious PvP teams: The more Sci Captain, the better.
I wasn't away that energy drains, disables, holds, stuns, etc etc of science boff abilities didn't work when a tac captain was at the helm, good to know.
Also good to know you feel Sci ships are incapable of dealing damage without tac buffs. I see that as a bad thing, you don't, and no amount of debate will change either opinion.
See, people keep claiming this, and I don't see it. In no way would this change warrant such doomsday scenario's.
What's more, tac's would probably still outdamage even a damage-oriented sci captain with 3 stacks of the exotic damage trait, because the tac captain skills will still increase raw weapon damage, while Tactical Initiative will still help make the most of the very limited tac boff slots most sci vessels have. When compared to builds geared to other things than straight up damage, such as drains or disables, the tac captain will vastly out-dps the sci captain because of his captain skills.
Now, on the other side of that same picture, the damage dealing sci skills could be buffed slightly when such a change is implemented, potentially offsetting the damage loss for tac characters and bringing the viability of the other captain types up a notch. So that, you know, you're not shoehorned into rolling a tac if you want to do damage.
*shrug*
I really don't see how such a change would be game breaking. I think it would be a valuable change for sci (and even eng) captains, not that disastrous for tacs and definitely making it much easier to balance the damage dealing elements of science abilities.
You will see fewer science ships on the field
You will see fewer offensive science abilities on the field.
Fleet Admiral Rylana - Fed Tac - U.S.S Wild Card - Tactical Miracle Worker Cruiser
Lifetime Subscriber since 2012 == 17,200 Accolades = RIP PvP and Vice Squad
Chief of Starfleet Intelligence Service == Praise Cheesus
"A better way to fix the issue without stripping tacticals of the ability to buff science and engineering skill damage (Which would be by far the easiest and most effective way) is to lower the base damage of abilities while making that what tactical buffs apply themselves to, this combined with a mass buff to the skill tree mods to balance out and then making the power mods apply to the figures after the skill mods are accounted for to decide what percentage of the abilities capability you actually get (where 100 power is 100% effectiveness and anything above that is further buffing), then add a buff to each class of boff skill to the respective captain team skill.
As all three ship types can equip GW1 I'll use this as my example of how things should be after the changes.
All characters have 6 points in grav gens and particle gens and are running their ideal ship (Tac/scort, Eng/cruiser, Sci/sci)
Science ship (125 aux)
High pull, medium damage (gets just shy of the tactical's after consoles effect), High range
Escort (!25 wep)
Medium pull, high damage (post captain buffing, otherwise low due to aux mod), low range
Cruiser (125 wep, more spare power in aux thanks to lower demand on other systems)
Meduim Pull, meduim damage, medium range
Once this is in place it would of course require tweaking of the base damage and skill modifiers to reign in tacticals in science ships but the aux modifier would be key to its standard use and speccing into the skill would pay off better as oppose to just tac buffing skills to usefulness."
The most important bit of this being that the other two classes get 'buffed' and tac captains still hold the damage advantage.
I have seen that thread and said it was a fair evaluation in PvP. The thing is that you can't make PvE exactly like PvP. The reason for this is because while subnuc is a 10 in PvP using it on anything but a boss is just wasted or not even needed. Scattering field is nowhere near as useful in PvE either as many captains seem almost suicidal and run away from it. The one ability a science captain has that really shines in PvE is sensor scan. Even then as I explained it's only useful once past shields and enemies only drop shields for about 10s before starting to excessively regenerating them.
Then again should we automatically say PvE should conform to PvP when it is the minority? Who decided that was more deserving, why should PvP not conform to the majority and it be based on competing to complete objectives faster than the other team? Who said it always has to be direct fire versus?
Science is not the best captain in this game as it's performance lacks in certain areas and ships both ground and PvP but it is not the worst.
"A Tac captain running anything except damage on his Sci ship is mostly wasting his tactical abilities on a ship that isn't going to do damage."
Well why is s/he running a science ship if all he wants is damage? S/He should be using science abilities to put him/herself in a better position to be sending that 50% buffed THY straight to hull or for those tranphasic mines that are 50% stronger to fully finish off the opponent where another captain would need another pass.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
And most science captain abilities are pretty even with tac captain abilities. Sensor Scan is incredibly powerful. Scattering Field is a great tanking ability. Subnuc is what is. Photonic Fleet sucks, but what are you going to do?
Engineer captains need an offensive debuff ability on par with Sensor Scan or FOMM.
We already have the basic concept in game of +X% to damage type Y in the form of PG skills and boosts, the various tactical consoles, and even some 'type specific' abilities - CRF, HY, etc.
What if there was far more separation of buffs acquired from Boff abilities in that same vain?
Under this system, current Attack patterns would only increase damage from (or decrease resistance to) weapons fire - ie Torps, Beams OR Cannons.
Dipsersal Patterns would be NECESSARY to increase mine damage.
Then there would be space for something like 'Attack Pattern Psi' - similar to Beta or Omega, but for exotic damage.
We could make Tac Team Energy buff only, Eng Team (simply to put it somewhere) increase Kinertic in the way Tac Team does and Sci Team could increase Exotic in the same way.
I don't have time to present a fully fleshed out idea here, and besides, I kinda only just thought of, but the basic idea is that in the same way a Skittleboat is less effective in the long run, so too should a 'Rainbow' Bridge Crew set up.
Sure, it would mess with a lot of existing combos and keybinds, and might feel like a massive Tac nerf to some - and maybe they'd be right - but Ubernerfs have happened before.
Maybe it's time we entered the 3rd Age of STO combat?
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
I refer to voyager in a number of instances where all they had to do was do something sci in pressing situations but there was always something out of place. They either had to get close enough or far away enough or redesign engines/aux or shielding to polish the enduring effect they were looking for.
I often wonder if the devs have even watched star trek sometimes.. In my opinion revamping sci ships could be relatively easy without all the philosophy being tossed back and forth. So here's what I mean:
Science ships have skills that at face value seem great so why not have the skills work off a base value (so that even tacs can use those skills) appropriate to both or rather all 3 classes just like it does now but with a bit of a nerfed implication.
The abilities should diverge from base skills depending on 99 value(All fields) and begin to snowball in effectiveness from whatever makes that skill reach 100 or greater.
Break down:
Tactical ships devote their console slots to minimum or maximum defense/additional crit consoles and other status quo elements but you rarely see a tac captain stack 4 particle generators in their builds.
Sci captains stack said consoles/flow caps etc and by doing so those devoted slots should provide the power sci captains are looking for. So if sci decides to stack sky high, those results should return be it GW(damage/increased pull), PSW(Longer cooldown, shield disabling above 149 skill) etc etc
***
I'm outlining what I have here because the gruff here is that tac captains APA a science skill and poof you got extra damage but if they haven't specced for it above 99(thus sacrificing other valuable tac skills) that base damage should be depreciating in return. As you know APA isn't a continuous wheel so that would be fair. Just as fair if they DID stack a sci ship they should gain some unique benefits to their choice in build.
***
That way devs could add more teeth to sci skills without the fear of a super class.
* I thought I'd add a mathematical example just in case(none of the values are presented with actuals. These are only made up numbers for the rough idea):
Tac/Sci:
9 levels of particle generators(99) no particle generator consoles and a typical tac ship/layout per canon.
Using Feedback pulse should provide the deflection and operate as intended(With 99 it should be .5 of energy damage). 4000 damage received, 2000 sent back, 1000 makes it to the hull. If the tac pops an APA 45% increased damage could be very fair.
Sci/Sci:
9 levels of particle generators(99) and 2 particle generators(179) with your run of the mill sci layout. Using feeback pulse should provide the deflection and operate as intended with 4000 damage received(Yet with 179, instead of .5 that scale would increase according to the # of consoles up to a total of .99 refracted back). So with maxed particle generator devotion you could have nearly 100% energy weapon damage refracted back.
you should get a girl friend then u dont have to butt hurt strangers
BUT...hear me out.
They should be able to buff anything that does damage. Anything however that gets out of line for what the devs intended should be put on an 'exception list'.
Basically it'd be a list of any items, powers, BOFF abilities, etc that tacs were able to buff too far and if it is on the list, a tac could no longer super-buff it. Now of course, the list wouldn't include anything that was simply bugged after all. I mean, bugs are bugs, if the game isn't working as it should, how could we know how the ability or whatever is supposed to work until it is fixed?
This would do two primary things:
1. Devs wouldn't have to nerf something to insanely low levels just because tacs could super-buff it, and thus ruin any decent use the other two classes could get out of it.
2. Any new items/powers/etc or any adjustments they made to anything that deals damage could be done without worry, since if a tac is found to be able to super-buff it, all they have to do is put it on the list, and no more problems.
On the other end of the spectrum:
If tacs are allowed to keep it, they can keep buffing sci damage powers, that is true. But they wouldn't lose any potential effectiveness unless something was said to be errant.
My view is that if tac wants to run a dps sci build, let them. This game has always been on a basis of give/take. Classes shouldn't be uniform but rather able to be blurred but in order to do so the console allocations have to supply that to the captain. It's the fairest thing devs could ever do given its makeup and established systems.
You wouldn't have tac captains with pure tac builds taking enormous leaps with sci damage anymore.. unless that captain shops and specs for it.
That was the original design and intent and....that's how it used to be baby!
Where've you been?
So sure. It is EXTREMELY clear cut and simple.
Yup.. If it's anything this game needed back it's clarity. You know how many times over the past 2 years I've methodically planned out a build, spent the time to build it and watched it waffle like lame stream media while everybody was watching?
Mostly pure challenge comes from the number crunching geeks of this universe who know the ins and outs of gimped systems and that should never be the case. Every system and skill should be clear and face valued and allow players to combine/create or exemplify their play styles. That's what makes a team unique, players happy and less frustration over all.
I created this thread so the discussion did not interfere with the tykens rift thread it was mentioned in.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
3 classes should have ultimate prowess in their own respective fields.
Every class can exemplify those benefits of the other two by investing into spec/consoles like the general perception goes. However..
Idealistically if they don't want super dps ships with sci powers on top, then they'd want to start linking skills. Grav well needs particle generators for the damage and graviton for the pull. High DPS should require energy specialization and weapon training both for instance.
If a tac wants high energy/projectile damage then they'd need at least all 3 of these things as high as possible.
So if the backbone of a tac ship is weapon power levels then they'll most likely spec in weapon performance as well. By the time you get to engineering skills which are crucial to tacs there should be 1-2 fields left in sci so if that captain drops consoles on top to gain a boost, so be it.
For sci...
We've already got linked skills. Photonic shockwave for instance needs decompiler, grav gen and particle gen and yet the skill is completely gimped. It would be much more feasible if PSW gave a 10% chance to disable shields for 10 seconds or so in addition to make it more viable. So if a sci packs active space with photonic aftershocks then there's finally a real chance damage could be made.
Point is, the skills are gimped with sci even though this methodology for how they work is already in place. It wouldn't have to be if all captain classes had linked skills
However it is just one of multiple possible solutions, and determining weather it is the best is going to take a lot of carful thinking. I Jumped right in and praised Bort for putting it on the table as a possibility in the tribble discussion forum, but I may have been a little hasty.
This is just one part of the huge mess that is balance. We got into the mess, by changing one thing at a time in just this way, and it has not worked to refine balance. Instead the gaps between the performance of different ships and captains have gotten wider so its time we took a step back and considered everything, starting with what we want and how we got hear.
I think there are three big reason that the approach of small changes to achieve refinement hasn't worked.
Firstly:
Cryptic promote the classes, the ships and the abilities as they intend them to be. But the actuality is quite different to their intention. This has divided players into those playing the game as cryptic intended, and those playing the game as it is.
These two groups experience completely different levels of challenge, approach problems in entirely different ways and define a feature as broken under very different conditions.
The groups are further sub divided into dedicated PVPers, Dedicated PVEers and Generalists.
So we have six primary points of view past which no change will ever escape criticism of some sort.
Cryptic do not value these six different groups equally. Some of them represent a larger proportion of their income then others. And each developer falls into their own group as well, with whom they are more likely to emphasize and steer changes to appease.
Secondly:
The F2P business model can not stand stagnation.
For STO to continue to exist cryptic have to introduce new things that people are willing to shell out real world money for.
Cosmetic items require a much larger amount of time to develop (and thus more money) then copying the code from two consoles and pasting it into 1. What's more a larger number of people are willing to pay for the performance increase of the console (that took a developer half an hour to make) then the costume that took a couple of artists several days.
Now if STOs classes of captain and ship were clearly defined and limited then the performance bar could simply be raised by the same amount for each ship class and captain class at the same time and balance could be maintained.
But STOs classes and ships are not clearly defined, we have a large number of captain skills and abilities that work off them, all benefitting and synergizing to different degrees. There are a huge array of mechanics for us to exploit in ways cryptic can not be expected to predict.
So cryptic seam to just give us new 'cool' stuff and hope for the best. I cant say that I blame them. Under the current system they could spend weeks exploring the potential impacts of new items and still fail to identify what new way we will find to make it OP. So the time spent exploring possibilities would end up being wasted money and any nerfs they applied to the item before release would hurt sales and thus the whole point of introducing it.
Finaly:
We are still working with remnants of the old balance system that was in place at the games launch. Things were much more tightly controlled with regards to shared cool downs on abilities and the number of options available to boost them.
Many of these controls have been loosened or removed since but some remnants remain and hinder some classes more then others.
What's worse in addition to the old systems legacy we are also working with skills, abilities and doffs that simply don't work. Either because they are bugged and every one mistakes their miss-function for being resisted or failing to proc, or because design decisions have rendered them incapable of fulfilling their original function (yes I'm talking about you graviton generator consoles).
We should probably also ask the question; 'Is balance in STO actually broken?' Because there will be some who do not agree that it is.
It is easy for me to say that STO's balance is broken because I PvP alts up to max level using white gear but never the less dominate the leader board without any losses (something most experienced captains should be able to do easily).
It is easy for me to say that STO's balance is broken because I have seen all 4 members of a bad pug take 15 minutes to destroy their first transformer on one side of KASE, while I take probe duty destroy both cubes and both transformers and start working on the gate in the same amount of time solo. And I am not the best at this. I know there are people who can finish off that gate as well if they were in my place.
Granted In that example the cause of the imbalance is that those pugs don't know what the heck they are doing. But as I have a lot of ships and bridge officers and a generalist build on my character I know the ease with which I can do this is hugely effected by my access to just a few specific abilities.
Hear is the best possible example I can think of to support my premise that STO's balance is broken:
Science captains who regularly run their abilities under testing conditions have known that tykens rift was useless for over a year. What we didn't know until recently was that this was a bug!
Is this not a serious alarm bell?
An ability was noticed to be completely useless.
It was proven to be completely useless under testing conditions.
We dismiss it as working as intended for a whole year or more.
Why didn't we bug report that this ability wasn't working? Because we have become so habituated to the notion that the game is unbalanced that an ability being completely and totally useless under all circumstances (Don't even think about hitting the reply button those of you using it to take down plasma torps. Get some tractor repulsers and spend less time with your torp-be-gone ability on recharge) is normal.
Now to finally return to the topic. cryptic have some crazy notions about how they want the game to work and how much challenge we should face. They either see extreme DPS as the acceptable means to overcome these challenges or they consider such builds to represent such a small portion of the games population that it is not worth the time taken to limit them.
They do limit Engineers and science captains.
Last time I checked there was a hard cap on resistances. Is it 75%? I forget, some one please remind me.
Science abilities require very little investment to be completely resisted in some cases. Require no investment to be completely resisted in other casess, and in the final cases create very short duration moments of opportunity that are almost imposible to exploit in a science ship and can not be repeated for a very long time.
Low tear engineering abilities are a mess of shared cool downs, which isn't a problem for science, tactical or multi role ships but utterly messes up the range of viable builds we can put on dedicated engineering focused ships.
Also the most powerful defensive buff in the game is imparted by a level 1 tactical ability. So ships which were originally meant to have only two offensive abilities must choose between retaining them and dyeing a lot (the elite content is balanced on the assumption that people are using this ability, and PVP without it can be unpleasant) or giving up two or more duty officer slots and keeping one, or giving up conventional offensive abilities entirely.
So I believe the original question posed was should tactical damage buffs be prevented from effecting science powers? I think that as part of a complete reassessment of how we wish the game to be balanced and what purpose we want all ships, skills and abilities to serve this could be a very good thing.
On its own though, I think its just another patch on a gushing wound, and I have no idea if It would turn out for better or worse.
When all is said and done, a couple more builds will be off the table, and we will be one step closer to homogenization of the game.
The end result will be tac captains in more escorts or beamboats
Sci ships will be even less commonly played.
The next step will be to make a2b not available to tacs, and then we will truly see nothing but tacscorts out there.
One build to rule them all.
Dont do this.
Fleet Admiral Rylana - Fed Tac - U.S.S Wild Card - Tactical Miracle Worker Cruiser
Lifetime Subscriber since 2012 == 17,200 Accolades = RIP PvP and Vice Squad
Chief of Starfleet Intelligence Service == Praise Cheesus
+1 to above post.
Only thing I would like to expand upon (and I do agree 100% with everything) is the danger of stagnation. Look at the new Romulan Warbird for a case in point example. They released yet another tactical heavy romulan ship and sales were poor enough they felt the need to add a hanger to it.
Think about that for a minute. The sales of the eng/sci vessels already released were too low to justify creating another of that type. Yet the tac heavy versions also lost their appeal because it was too similar to existing ones.
So rylanadionysis and doffingcomradre the question becomes continue to try and sell the sci heavy ships to the small number of tactical captains willing to buy them which is not enough to justify the cost of new ones being created, or attempt to make them appeal to every single captain in the game and try to expand their marketability?
I even put my scis in escorts and my engies in tactical heavy ships (fleet torkaht)
With sci being such a joke right now, taking anything away from its viability just seems to be a really bad move.
Fleet Admiral Rylana - Fed Tac - U.S.S Wild Card - Tactical Miracle Worker Cruiser
Lifetime Subscriber since 2012 == 17,200 Accolades = RIP PvP and Vice Squad
Chief of Starfleet Intelligence Service == Praise Cheesus
Not everyone is a special snowflake.....
You should know that way back in the day, when Crypit would tell us stuff about their design philosophy they clearly stated that they wanted people to "explore" the skill and various systems, and that they had made the tooltips vague and inintuitive on purpose so that players wouldn't just figure out the best numeric values for stuff and use only that. One obvious interpretation of that is that they WANTED some builds to be gimped and players not notice.... yeah, I ain't kidding.
I think most of the proponents of homogenization don't even realize that's what they're pushing the game towards. They truly believe that making the 3 classes more specialized will somehow make players want to roll more scis. That's really flawed thinking, people like to pew pew above all else. Its not hard to figure out tbh, why is it that in most trinity games there's ALWAYS a lack of tanks and healers? And why so may tanks and healers only play those roles for the good of their group of friends? Actual dedicated only healers and tank players are incredibly rare.
But that's the whole point. Part of the reason that sci is a joke (only a part, but still) is that tacs can put ridiculous quantities of buffs on it. If something like PSW, FBP, or TBR were balanced for a sci or eng, a tac could take that and double it, and that's too much, so they scale back the ability until it's reasonable for tacs, which makes it far too weak for scis and engies. Now it is true that other parts of sci are jokes as well, not just the damage dealing stuff, but removing one of the reasons(/excuses) for sci to be weak might help. If you're not going to do that then you need to give scis some kind of equal ability to buff their own abilities, like an extra 120 second CD captain ability that gives +300 to all sci skills for 30 seconds, otherwise scis will forever be worse at sci than tacs.
Right now, the best option for everything (at least in PvE, and from what I've read PvP just had a rude awakening) is a tac in an escort or a tac in an A2B cruiser. That has to change. Maybe this could allow a step in the right direction.
This ^
Sci damage skills are in the situation they are in because of what tac captain skills did to them, by and large.
The damage on these skills need not be as pathetic as it is, if those tac skills did not affect them. They could be buffed, heck, to almost the level tacs are currently achieving. If that happened, well, how much of a nerf would that be to tac/sci? Right, hardly any. It would just be a way to stimulate non-tac captains as an alternative. All the while retaining tac/sci as the best way to get dps out of a sci ship, because tacs will still have their captain skills affect weapon damage output (plus tac initiative, a 1.33 modifier to tac boff slot use).
Sure, there's some issues with non damage sci builds, but tbh, many people opt for straight up damage because its easier. Drain builds work pretty well, actually, and GW CC is getting a boost soon. That just leaves disables and, frankly, the problem with those is mostly the resists NPC's have against those.