" Put a bullet to me. Bullet in the
brain pan, squish.
"
Science is dead while escort jockeys and lockbox heroes spend hundreds of dollars on pew - pew toys and "I Win" lockboxes.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
There is no need to change Sci ships (or cruisers, for that matter). The problem is that with the post-F2P changes the only character/BOFF/DOFF class that moved along the game content were tacs. Scis simply need DPS-centric powers. They need to make GWa killer. GW on the target and it starts looking like killed Romulan ships - sucked in. They need TR to shut down thing for sure - TR3 on full aux and the target is dead fish in the water - not shields, armor fused, power lost, no defence - only raw hitpoints to chew through: something even 3/3 beamer like sci-ship will do in a second.
Sci does not need better or more ships. It just need science to use. And it has none.
Dunno why Cryptic does not want to earn money onengs and scis and is monetizing only tacs. One would think that earining money on three different things is better then on one but meh.
It's pretty clear how much Cryptic cares about science when the whole rommie faction is geared towards tac builds and when you consider how long it's taking for the grav well and tychen's rift changes to go live on holodeck. Of course, updating the new tac warbird is certainly more important than fixing science.
I think it's naive to think that there's even a chance that it will be fixed. Sci was thrown under the bus once F2P went live and there's no incentive to fix it. Case closed. Move on to the next topic.
A very long time ago, I suggested a very Science-y mechanic based on the idea that Science vessels should be better at sensor analysis, signal processing, and electronic warfare than anything else in space.
Give Science the ability to gather "intel" on opposing ships, as well as the ability to mask and/or alter the same kinds of information about their own ship.
That's the basic idea in a shell, but obviously we need to put something more inside it.
What kinds of intel would be useful?
Well, how about being able to identify other ships at a greater perception range than any other ship for one thing? Not terribly useful for PvE, but potentially very useful for PvP.
What about a snapshot of another ship's capabilities? What weapons loadout do they have? What powers does the ship have access to? If you had access to that kind of information, you might change your approach to a combat situation.
What about being able to make your ship look weaker or more powerful than it really is?
It would give Science a strategic place in team play and help to counteract the weaknesses of science ships and abilities in general.
Having said that, I can't imagine the Devs actually implementing anything like that. I CAN imagine a very vocal contingent of PvPers protesting it.
More thoughts, if you care to keep reading them...
What about a 'progressive' intel score that increments by so much every time an offensive science ability is used? It could represent the science officers learning more about the enemy vessel each time they're affected by a science power. As the score increases, you can learn more about the enemy vessel by doing a "mouseover" or something. The counter could be science team decreasing or even wiping out the intel score.
Even if we discount the idea of implementing an electronic warfare system, the notion that science abilities get more effective the more you use them on a given target could be applied to other things. You could have Science reliably doing useful things that aren't directly related to damage. Sensor analysis has a similar effect and perhaps that could be leveraged to do more than it does to boost science skills in addition to its other effects.
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A very long time ago, I suggested a very Science-y mechanic based on the idea that Science vessels should be better at sensor analysis, signal processing, and electronic warfare than anything else in space.
Give Science the ability to gather "intel" on opposing ships, as well as the ability to mask and/or alter the same kinds of information about their own ship.
That's the basic idea in a shell, but obviously we need to put something more inside it.
What kinds of intel would be useful?
Well, how about being able to identify other ships at a greater perception range than any other ship for one thing? Not terribly useful for PvE, but potentially very useful for PvP.
What about a snapshot of another ship's capabilities? What weapons loadout do they have? What powers does the ship have access to? If you had access to that kind of information, you might change your approach to a combat situation.
What about being able to make your ship look weaker or more powerful than it really is?
It would give Science a strategic place in team play and help to counteract the weaknesses of science ships and abilities in general.
Having said that, I can't imagine the Devs actually implementing anything like that. I CAN imagine a very vocal contingent of PvPers protesting it.
More thoughts, if you care to keep reading them...
What about a 'progressive' intel score that increments by so much every time an offensive science ability is used? It could represent the science officers learning more about the enemy vessel each time they're affected by a science power. As the score increases, you can learn more about the enemy vessel by doing a "mouseover" or something. The counter could be science team decreasing or even wiping out the intel score.
Even if we discount the idea of implementing an electronic warfare system, the notion that science abilities get more effective the more you use them on a given target could be applied to other things. You could have Science reliably doing useful things that aren't directly related to damage. Sensor analysis has a similar effect and perhaps that could be leveraged to do more than it does to boost science skills in addition to its other effects.
Great ideas, and I think they would work, but how can you guarantee us that they'll be viable if Cryptic introduced an electronic warfare skill? Biggest problem with sci is either you go heavy into grav and aux or drain build or shield tank/torp boat. If E warfare is introduced, it would have to be strong enough on its own to justify giving up points in those key science areas. And Cryptic doesn't know how to properly balance skills-either sci abilities are too strong, prompting whining and nerfs or they're too weak, prompting whining and buffs that have yet to see thr light of day.
Also, there is a tactical heavy status quo and most of the people playing this game have invested heavily into tac characters and tac ships. I doubt that PWE would want to risk pissing off the tac veterans of this game and risk turning Holodeck into a ghost town. If this mechanic is ever introduced, it will benefit tacs as much as sci captains. That's how PWE rolls now.
I could see tying sensors skill points to that kind of stuff. ~50 points able to view equipment loadout, ~75 able to view energy levels, ~120 able to view crew loadout, etc
I'm barely a week into the game(and just dinged 40 today, but that's another story)...; quite enjoying my Science officer, and I've gone with Science ships the majority of the way....
I'm not an offensive-combat oriented player in most games, preferring to stand back and let someone -else- draw all the fir-...er....attention...so I've gone with a fairly(I think) straight-forward weapons/abilities/skills/devices selection that allows me to do a bit of everything in PvE; I've little to no intention of going PvP unless it becomes absolutely necessary, sooo....
...though I -do- admit, it's a lot of fun being able to drop a mob's particular shield facing with one well-placed beam/ability volley, pop Viral Matrix on it, then shove 3 or 4 torps up it's nose before it can realize what's hit it!
Honestly, I feel that, aside from stuff they have added, science is mostly fine.
PvE-wise, they need to change two things:
1. Not make PvE so DPS-intensive
2. Stop giving any and all PvE enemies that are worth anything huge innate resists to all science skills. Not saying it should be super-easy, but with NPCs being essentially immune to any decent sci-skill is just a bit insane.
This. There's really not that much wrong with science skills, they're quite effective in PvP given the proper circumstances. Some could use buffing, like Tachyon Beam, but the only real problem with science skills is the fact that at least half of them are useless in PvE. Viral Matrix is useless, Tykens Rift is more or less useless, Tachyon Beam is useless, etc. That's because, as you say, the PvE is far too damage-intensive. It revolves around 'who can do the most damage in a match' rather than anything else that's balanced. Hence the term 'escorts online', because escorts normally have the highest potential for burst damage (though some cruisers can be pretty wicked at it nowadays).
Anyone who extensively plays PvP knows that escorts are no longer the undisputed king. Maybe it was at some point, but the devs HAVE been making changes to improve the role cruisers can play in the right hands (specifically, with bleedthrough builds), and science ships were never useless in PvP. They're great anti-cloaking vessels, for example, and great shield-tankers.
Lastly, however, there's a problem with making this kind of change to PvE: It would require more players to think about what kind of build they're running, and think about how they're using the powers and when they're using them. A lot of PvEers in this game love to howl and moan the instant anything is made more difficult or challenging. Take Crystalline Cataclysm for example: Not all of the complaints were just about graphics overload.
I definitely like the idea that Science ships might be particularly strong at spotting Cloaked Vessels.
This could actually be really interesting if the game used cloaked vessels with a decent ai. Science could actually help in spotting and targetting the enemy before they alpha the team. It'd be a form of mitigation that would matter. I still think you'd need a little more than that.
It occurs to me that one of the biggest problems with Science Vessels is the lack of synchronicity. An Escort can often handle much of the role of a Science ship and still have most of the benefits of the raw damage / evasive hit and run type build of synchronicity that an Escort can have.
Science on the other hand doesn't quite have that. Science Ships (and captains) don't quite have the multitude of buffs which magnify either damage output, Defense, or debuff damage resistance. Now granted one shouldn't necessarily expect them to, but most of the attacks a science can bother to stack aren't magnified by anything particularly, and are simultaneously very easily resisted by both player and npc alike. I'm still baffled at how easily someone can resist a fully specced power drain build without skipping a beat, all it takes is putting a few skillpoints in the resist.
I think the easy complaint that a dps player could make is that if it is too strong its unfair that you can just shut me down and kill me. Of course the same could be said that its not particularly fair that you can splatter me before I even see you. This is a wild generalization, clearly Sci ships can be tough, but at the cost of their dirty tricks build. I'm just making the point that the one reason I think everyone gravitates toward the Tactical is that it has so many buffs which stack upon buffs, and its simple. Point, click and fire.
How about not? This should not even be considered until the KDF and Romulan factions are brought to within screaming distance of the huge number of science vessels available to the Federation.
The KDF has 3, the Temporal Science Vessel (lockbox only), and the Varanus (available as C-store and Fleet version).
The Romulans only have ONE, the Temporal Science Vessel (lockbox only).
Without some form of parity, reworking science ship mechanics is simply more pandering to the Federation, which already has many great ships. See the Vesta 3 pack for an amazing science ship (that comes with a hangar). If you haven't tried it, check it out.
Science ships already have sensor analysis, and subsystem targeting as special abilities.
Science powers on the other hand should be improved a bit, to make them more effective. Stop nerfing science abilities. :mad:
KDF wasn't supposed to have science. The science was starfleet only and carriers kdf only. If your logic is followed you need to give starfleet a true carrier with defiant pets...
The Science, isnt the problem, its partly the captain's and partly that arrangement of systems.
Look at the various Fleets.
Sci - + to shield emitters
+ to to power insulators
reduces damage to shields.
Eng - + to eng skills
+ to warp core
+ all damamge resistance
Tac - + all damage
+ starship manuvers
+ Targeting systems
Which of these is actually useful? hmmmm....Tac, Eng and Sci dead last.
Then you have the places where real confusion comes into play. Eng has the hull, and resistance consoles. BUT Sci has all the essential taunt abilities. Nothing screams target like CC, and Sci got the +Th and - Th Embassy consoles.
This game is everywhere, the only group that has a clear role is Tac.
Eng is Tank/Heal? but Sci is Heal/CC? but sci easily takes threat away from eng, and tac takes it away from everyone.
Someone should really sit down and figure out Roles for these ships. Why are Sci all about Sensors and Targeting, but Tac gets the + to targeting.
Why is the only group that gets a + to its actualy skill sets as in Engineering training. self explained...
its like they tried to do a trinity with out doing a trinity while partially doing a trinity hybrid as they tried to not make any trinity content....
Inertia just means you can do Powerslides in you carrier!
I am Il Shadow and i approve these Shennanigans!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
KDF wasn't supposed to have science. The science was starfleet only and carriers kdf only. If your logic is followed you need to give starfleet a true carrier with defiant pets...
You have a true carrier. The Atrox is a true carrier. As for pets, you may not have frigate pets, but you've got a decent slate of 'em as it is. You also have a science vessel/carrier hybrid and an escort/carrier hybrid, neither of which the KDF has.
Timezarg makes good points. Federation also have abilities which the Klingons don't have in their pets. Tractor Control + ejecting plasma from one pet. Another can debuff the Crystalline Entity (Delta Flyer). I've been trying to see if any of the pets debuff the CE from KDF. I suspect Tachyon drones might, but they die so fast I've not seen anything come of that, so I just us Bops or Fer'jai frigates for my pure kdf builds (excluding lockbox stuff). The Atrox Carrier is awesome and has great hangars it can choose from. The Armitage is fantastic, and has nothing comparable on the KDF side, although one could say the Scimitar is like a better meaner version of the Armitage for the Romulans. Of course there's the Vesta which has nothing comparable to it in the game (though they really need tmake a way to ad other Aux-type weapons for this ship, and maybe other Sci Vessels).
One other point of note, the Varanus is a fantastic Science ship on the KDF side. I do think the Ha'nom is kind of a dog ship, with its lowered power levels it really has it rough compared to other faction ships. If there were Auxiliary weapons available this might help things a bit, but really it just can't perform as well, even with the few bonus singularity powers you get.
Also as a general point. I was specifically excluding Carriers from the 'Science ship' classification. Carriers do tend to be Sciencey, but they are not Science ships. They are and should be nearly Science ships with a couple of hangar ships and abilities to shore that up and project power. They're a completely different playstyle. The purpose of this thread is to talk about how Science ships can be made more relevant as the game develops.
How about giving pure science ships Photonic Officer as an inate ability?
Interesting thought, essentially a cooldown reduction on Science Class ships. Not a bad idea since it would help improve the diversity and pacing of the attacks a Science class ship can bring to the table.
How bout something simple....make the subsystem targeting that SCI ships come with a tier 2 skill instead if tier 1. Would be nice to target shields and actually do it.
How bout something simple....make the subsystem targeting that SCI ships come with a tier 2 skill instead if tier 1. Would be nice to target shields and actually do it.
The downer of the innate subsystem targetting is that they are such long cooldowns, and more importantly they work against one another. Additionally its rather difficult to get the best Subsystem Targetting abilities (Tier3) on a Sci ship where it likely most belongs.
Yea tier 3 would be even better....I mean when Janeway or whatever says target that ships engines....how many times have u heard..I missed? No no no, its always "direct hit" their engines are offline sir.
Make Science ships actually better with Science Abilities.
Maybe have a Science ship give you a +15 to all Science skills?
Maybe reduced all cooldown of Science Bridge Officer abilities by a few seconds for Science ships?
How about giving pure science ships Photonic Officer as an inate ability?
Just remove that two minute mandatory cooldown from the skill as it's no longer relevant in today's STO.
If they were to remove it, a player could use three photonic doffs to get the cooldown to 72 seconds. The buff lasts 60 seconds, so there is a 12 second window that the ability is down.
A2B users can do none stop cooldown buffs on their builds, so it's only reasonable that the photonic officer be on par with that.
You know Cryptic has Jumped the Proverbial Shark when they introduced Tractor Pulling to Star Trek Online!
While I feel a superior Crafting system would be nice, I'm not so sure there should be a Ship class that is only good at a minigame research. Picard was a Scientist. Janeway was a Scientist. Spock was a Scientist. Kirk was a Tactical. Sisko was a Tactical. That's the character class, and it played very little in how good of a captain each was, but you definitely got the sense that this was their origins. If you look at ship classes, the only Science class vessel was Janeway's, and she definitely held her own out there. In fact it almost seemed too easy. That being said I don't see why a Science vessel should be weak in combat, its just nonconventional. It uses the Deflector as a weapon more than everyone else. It should represent those moments in Trek when people come up with wierd new solutions to deal with a problem. Look, I realize that in terms of the shows these Ships used just about every ability listed in the game. I think the notion from the game perspective though, is that each class of ship majors in certain things. Cruisers are clearly meant to be the big battleships, taking heavy punishment, being reliable, hard to debuff and hard to damage. Science have potent shields and greater maneuverability, and are known for their wily dirty tricks. Escorts are about heaps of DPS. That basically sums it up. There are hybrid classes like the Carrier, whose dirty tricks are represented more greatly by the hangar bays and fit somewhere between Cruiser and Science for the most part. From a playability standpoint I don't see how adding a Research minigame is going to be fun while fighting a Borg cube, especially not given the mingames they have currently.
If you want to make Science Vessels better, you need to rebuff Science BOFF abilities.
Science BOFF abilities were nerfed to hell and beyond within 3-4 months of STO coming out in 2009. There was a vocal playerbase that complained that Science Vessels could actually fight on an equal, but very different style of footing and not rely on the usual energy weapon / torpedo style.
Crytic listened, nerfed Science to hell, and put Tactical on the pedestal which has been on top since those days.
There is no denying that Tactical and Engineering abilities do good in what the ships use them for. A TAC heavy ship or a ENG heavy ship will perform well in their intended styles. But that can no longer be said with Science Ships and their synergy with Science BOFF abilities in general.
There was a time, so long ago, when STO first came out, that "Target Subsystem" abilities were a SCIENCE ability, not Tactical.
The second deflector would be a great add on to the science class ships, Giving Science class ships an innate reduced cool down on science abilities would help as well. I honestly have no problem with science ships having the same hull rating as similar sized cruisers. Science ships with faster cool downs, 2 deflectors and increased hulls would be pretty great ships.
I remember those days. The Tgt Subs thing was pretty early on as I recollect though. As an aside, I love playing all classes of ship. The one class I feel that underperforms as a whole though is Science, particularly when you look at what the Feets have to offer. The Ha'nom I just feel sorry for unless you're a Engy that's good at keeping your power levels really high. One thing I think they should do as well is divorce Tgt Subsystems from weapons type. Its irrelevant what you hit the subsytem with in my view. If you want to give a higher magnitude or success rate for Beams I'm fine with that, but I think even a Torpedo should be able to attack a subsystem.
I wish some of the pre equipped abilities that came with ships scaled. So essentially you have 5 tiers of ships, T1 & 2 gets Target sub 1, T3 & 4 get Target sub 2 and T5 gets Target sub 3.
Same thing with Sensor Analysis, T1 & 2 get the basic version, T3 & 4 get a better version, and T5 gets a really good version.
Fleet clearly also gets the better versions.
A little hull and a console just doesnt cut it for leveling a ship. Innate abilites should improve too.
Inertia just means you can do Powerslides in you carrier!
I am Il Shadow and i approve these Shennanigans!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Science ships are not the problem, science skills are. the skills need major buffing so you dont have to specialize in one skill like drain or tractor beams. With only being able to do 1 skill type limits a science officers abilities because many of the skills compliment each other and would make them effective if used together. As it is we have to specialize in 1 skill to make it usefull but making all others rather useless.
A tac captain can specialize in cannons and beams, beams and cannons, cannons and torps, beams and torps, torps and mines, beams and mines, or cannons and mines with any combination else one can think of for weapons and not miss a beat. Engi can specialize in tanking and dealing damage with any combination a tac can do and be good. Mix 2 sci skills and you get 2 nearly useless sci skills. add a third and you have 3 useless sci skills. Add a fourth and you may as well never do space.
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Science is dead while escort jockeys and lockbox heroes spend hundreds of dollars on pew - pew toys and "I Win" lockboxes.
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Sci does not need better or more ships. It just need science to use. And it has none.
Dunno why Cryptic does not want to earn money onengs and scis and is monetizing only tacs. One would think that earining money on three different things is better then on one but meh.
I think it's naive to think that there's even a chance that it will be fixed. Sci was thrown under the bus once F2P went live and there's no incentive to fix it. Case closed. Move on to the next topic.
Give Science the ability to gather "intel" on opposing ships, as well as the ability to mask and/or alter the same kinds of information about their own ship.
That's the basic idea in a shell, but obviously we need to put something more inside it.
What kinds of intel would be useful?
Well, how about being able to identify other ships at a greater perception range than any other ship for one thing? Not terribly useful for PvE, but potentially very useful for PvP.
What about a snapshot of another ship's capabilities? What weapons loadout do they have? What powers does the ship have access to? If you had access to that kind of information, you might change your approach to a combat situation.
What about being able to make your ship look weaker or more powerful than it really is?
It would give Science a strategic place in team play and help to counteract the weaknesses of science ships and abilities in general.
Having said that, I can't imagine the Devs actually implementing anything like that. I CAN imagine a very vocal contingent of PvPers protesting it.
More thoughts, if you care to keep reading them...
What about a 'progressive' intel score that increments by so much every time an offensive science ability is used? It could represent the science officers learning more about the enemy vessel each time they're affected by a science power. As the score increases, you can learn more about the enemy vessel by doing a "mouseover" or something. The counter could be science team decreasing or even wiping out the intel score.
Even if we discount the idea of implementing an electronic warfare system, the notion that science abilities get more effective the more you use them on a given target could be applied to other things. You could have Science reliably doing useful things that aren't directly related to damage. Sensor analysis has a similar effect and perhaps that could be leveraged to do more than it does to boost science skills in addition to its other effects.
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Great ideas, and I think they would work, but how can you guarantee us that they'll be viable if Cryptic introduced an electronic warfare skill? Biggest problem with sci is either you go heavy into grav and aux or drain build or shield tank/torp boat. If E warfare is introduced, it would have to be strong enough on its own to justify giving up points in those key science areas. And Cryptic doesn't know how to properly balance skills-either sci abilities are too strong, prompting whining and nerfs or they're too weak, prompting whining and buffs that have yet to see thr light of day.
Also, there is a tactical heavy status quo and most of the people playing this game have invested heavily into tac characters and tac ships. I doubt that PWE would want to risk pissing off the tac veterans of this game and risk turning Holodeck into a ghost town. If this mechanic is ever introduced, it will benefit tacs as much as sci captains. That's how PWE rolls now.
I'm not an offensive-combat oriented player in most games, preferring to stand back and let someone -else- draw all the fir-...er....attention...so I've gone with a fairly(I think) straight-forward weapons/abilities/skills/devices selection that allows me to do a bit of everything in PvE; I've little to no intention of going PvP unless it becomes absolutely necessary, sooo....
...though I -do- admit, it's a lot of fun being able to drop a mob's particular shield facing with one well-placed beam/ability volley, pop Viral Matrix on it, then shove 3 or 4 torps up it's nose before it can realize what's hit it!
So yeah, I'm staying Science for awhile....
This. There's really not that much wrong with science skills, they're quite effective in PvP given the proper circumstances. Some could use buffing, like Tachyon Beam, but the only real problem with science skills is the fact that at least half of them are useless in PvE. Viral Matrix is useless, Tykens Rift is more or less useless, Tachyon Beam is useless, etc. That's because, as you say, the PvE is far too damage-intensive. It revolves around 'who can do the most damage in a match' rather than anything else that's balanced. Hence the term 'escorts online', because escorts normally have the highest potential for burst damage (though some cruisers can be pretty wicked at it nowadays).
Anyone who extensively plays PvP knows that escorts are no longer the undisputed king. Maybe it was at some point, but the devs HAVE been making changes to improve the role cruisers can play in the right hands (specifically, with bleedthrough builds), and science ships were never useless in PvP. They're great anti-cloaking vessels, for example, and great shield-tankers.
Lastly, however, there's a problem with making this kind of change to PvE: It would require more players to think about what kind of build they're running, and think about how they're using the powers and when they're using them. A lot of PvEers in this game love to howl and moan the instant anything is made more difficult or challenging. Take Crystalline Cataclysm for example: Not all of the complaints were just about graphics overload.
This could actually be really interesting if the game used cloaked vessels with a decent ai. Science could actually help in spotting and targetting the enemy before they alpha the team. It'd be a form of mitigation that would matter. I still think you'd need a little more than that.
Science on the other hand doesn't quite have that. Science Ships (and captains) don't quite have the multitude of buffs which magnify either damage output, Defense, or debuff damage resistance. Now granted one shouldn't necessarily expect them to, but most of the attacks a science can bother to stack aren't magnified by anything particularly, and are simultaneously very easily resisted by both player and npc alike. I'm still baffled at how easily someone can resist a fully specced power drain build without skipping a beat, all it takes is putting a few skillpoints in the resist.
I think the easy complaint that a dps player could make is that if it is too strong its unfair that you can just shut me down and kill me. Of course the same could be said that its not particularly fair that you can splatter me before I even see you. This is a wild generalization, clearly Sci ships can be tough, but at the cost of their dirty tricks build. I'm just making the point that the one reason I think everyone gravitates toward the Tactical is that it has so many buffs which stack upon buffs, and its simple. Point, click and fire.
KDF wasn't supposed to have science. The science was starfleet only and carriers kdf only. If your logic is followed you need to give starfleet a true carrier with defiant pets...
Look at the various Fleets.
Sci - + to shield emitters
+ to to power insulators
reduces damage to shields.
Eng - + to eng skills
+ to warp core
+ all damamge resistance
Tac - + all damage
+ starship manuvers
+ Targeting systems
Which of these is actually useful? hmmmm....Tac, Eng and Sci dead last.
Then you have the places where real confusion comes into play. Eng has the hull, and resistance consoles. BUT Sci has all the essential taunt abilities. Nothing screams target like CC, and Sci got the +Th and - Th Embassy consoles.
This game is everywhere, the only group that has a clear role is Tac.
Eng is Tank/Heal? but Sci is Heal/CC? but sci easily takes threat away from eng, and tac takes it away from everyone.
Someone should really sit down and figure out Roles for these ships. Why are Sci all about Sensors and Targeting, but Tac gets the + to targeting.
Why is the only group that gets a + to its actualy skill sets as in Engineering training. self explained...
its like they tried to do a trinity with out doing a trinity while partially doing a trinity hybrid as they tried to not make any trinity content....
I am Il Shadow and i approve these Shennanigans!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
You have a true carrier. The Atrox is a true carrier. As for pets, you may not have frigate pets, but you've got a decent slate of 'em as it is. You also have a science vessel/carrier hybrid and an escort/carrier hybrid, neither of which the KDF has.
One other point of note, the Varanus is a fantastic Science ship on the KDF side. I do think the Ha'nom is kind of a dog ship, with its lowered power levels it really has it rough compared to other faction ships. If there were Auxiliary weapons available this might help things a bit, but really it just can't perform as well, even with the few bonus singularity powers you get.
Also as a general point. I was specifically excluding Carriers from the 'Science ship' classification. Carriers do tend to be Sciencey, but they are not Science ships. They are and should be nearly Science ships with a couple of hangar ships and abilities to shore that up and project power. They're a completely different playstyle. The purpose of this thread is to talk about how Science ships can be made more relevant as the game develops.
But I respawn
I am duranium!
Interesting thought, essentially a cooldown reduction on Science Class ships. Not a bad idea since it would help improve the diversity and pacing of the attacks a Science class ship can bring to the table.
The downer of the innate subsystem targetting is that they are such long cooldowns, and more importantly they work against one another. Additionally its rather difficult to get the best Subsystem Targetting abilities (Tier3) on a Sci ship where it likely most belongs.
Maybe have a Science ship give you a +15 to all Science skills?
Maybe reduced all cooldown of Science Bridge Officer abilities by a few seconds for Science ships?
Just remove that two minute mandatory cooldown from the skill as it's no longer relevant in today's STO.
If they were to remove it, a player could use three photonic doffs to get the cooldown to 72 seconds. The buff lasts 60 seconds, so there is a 12 second window that the ability is down.
A2B users can do none stop cooldown buffs on their builds, so it's only reasonable that the photonic officer be on par with that.
they need to remake sci from the ground.
Science BOFF abilities were nerfed to hell and beyond within 3-4 months of STO coming out in 2009. There was a vocal playerbase that complained that Science Vessels could actually fight on an equal, but very different style of footing and not rely on the usual energy weapon / torpedo style.
Crytic listened, nerfed Science to hell, and put Tactical on the pedestal which has been on top since those days.
There is no denying that Tactical and Engineering abilities do good in what the ships use them for. A TAC heavy ship or a ENG heavy ship will perform well in their intended styles. But that can no longer be said with Science Ships and their synergy with Science BOFF abilities in general.
There was a time, so long ago, when STO first came out, that "Target Subsystem" abilities were a SCIENCE ability, not Tactical.
Same thing with Sensor Analysis, T1 & 2 get the basic version, T3 & 4 get a better version, and T5 gets a really good version.
Fleet clearly also gets the better versions.
A little hull and a console just doesnt cut it for leveling a ship. Innate abilites should improve too.
I am Il Shadow and i approve these Shennanigans!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
A tac captain can specialize in cannons and beams, beams and cannons, cannons and torps, beams and torps, torps and mines, beams and mines, or cannons and mines with any combination else one can think of for weapons and not miss a beat. Engi can specialize in tanking and dealing damage with any combination a tac can do and be good. Mix 2 sci skills and you get 2 nearly useless sci skills. add a third and you have 3 useless sci skills. Add a fourth and you may as well never do space.
"I'm drunk, whats your excuse for being an idiot?" - Unknown drunk man. :eek: