If possible, could we have some information on the design intent for the various ships? It would help us find things that are out of place or not working.
indeed,i know this issue might be a trifle..but,is there anyway the beams emitting from the voth ships could be "polished" as you put it,abit more?
the beams are completely two dimensional,while that might be true of alot of ingame beam effects close up,with alot of the older beam weapons you cant see it easily from a distance because of the way the graphic is designed..
two dimensionsal beam weapons just seems out of place for a game like sto...
also with the new voth beams,both large and small,there seems to be some kind of peculiar repeating black diamond shape in the middle of the beam
whilst that might be fine for a repeating texture on the small scale...the voth beams are quite bright and easy to see
so in final summary..id suggest a view locked repeater sprite,these things were used alot in older computer games to bypass certain technical problems involving 3d objects
and also.design the repeating sprite from an image grain..what i mean by that is like sawing a chunk of wood out of a beam of wood,you could match up chunks of the same grain of wood without a relative intteruption..
or better yet,compare the voth beams graphic to the dominion polaron or even antiproton...the dominion polaron and antiproton being smooth,3d,and continuous without interruption...while the new voth beams look basically like neon measuring tape
All graphics including beams are still being worked on, we want an idea of how the devs intended these ships to perform first to see if there are any areas for improvement.
If possible, could we have some information on the design intent for the various ships? It would help us find things that are out of place or not working.
We have a Dev Blog planned about this topic that should be out in the next few weeks. In the meantime, feel free to leave feedback on what you're seeing now
We have a Dev Blog planned about this topic that should be out in the next few weeks. In the meantime, feel free to leave feedback on what you're seeing now
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=
Well they disabled voyager so quick and fast I want them to do that to me too and just blow me up with one shot. Gotta keep it canon you know... Happy Birthday :P
Is that one mission around the spire the only way we can fight these guys? Id love to leave feedback but I had to sit around for 30 min just to get in there once and combat was sporadic enough I'm not sure I really know what these guys can and cant do.
Great work on the ship designs.
Love the ongoing battle damage on the dreadnoughts, lots of detail.
A lot of tricks with them will keep things interesting once ironed out.
I do like that they have abilities against energy damage they can use and a weakness vs kenetic damage.
Please tone down the blur and blinding effects of the Voth abilities. I am not talking about the phase type ability but the bubbles the frigates hit you with that make it so you can not see your ship and the capital ship ability that makes it like you are looking at the world through jello being wiggled.
These effects spoil the great graphics and if you have larger battles later on, they will likely cause massive lag.
Voth Dreadnought power, I guess its an antiproton lance on fire at will.
Whats the firing arc of it? like normal beam arrays? as it looks awkward when out of the nose those large antiproton beams come nearly behind it
also the beams seems still to be bugged for me from the look. large corners are in them almost looking like a tartan pattern. is it intended to be that way?
A bunch of Voth Ship functionality got updated on Tribble today. If you get to do Spire Assault again, please take another look at the Voth Space critters and let me know how they're feeling!
Jeff "Adjudicator Hawk" Hamilton
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
A bunch of Voth Ship functionality got updated on Tribble today. If you get to do Spire Assault again, please take another look at the Voth Space critters and let me know how they're feeling!
My first impression is that the invulnerability power seems off. It is an incredibly powerful ability, but when they kick it off, they don't DO anything with it. When a player uses their big defense buff ability, they will use it as an opportunity to light off their best other powers as well, or to retreat so they can buy time to heal. With the Voth, it feels like they are just doing it to annoy the player.
A bunch of Voth Ship functionality got updated on Tribble today. If you get to do Spire Assault again, please take another look at the Voth Space critters and let me know how they're feeling!
How we do Spire Assault? When I was on tribble the event wasn't available.
A bunch of Voth Ship functionality got updated on Tribble today. If you get to do Spire Assault again, please take another look at the Voth Space critters and let me know how they're feeling!
Only thing that changed really is the animation and an increase in hull other than that they are cute cuddly explosions.
I like the fact that Voth ships don't always explode when destroyed. Sometimes a Ward Healing Ship will show up and revive the listing hulk. This adds an interesting new element, where keeping an eye on a critically disabled ship might pay off, but doesn't always.
This element could be applied to other ships, too. Not the healing drone, but it'd make the combat seem a little less ruthless when some defeated enemies aren't entirely obliterated. It'd be more believable that escape pods could get away when some of the hulks don't immediately blow up. Player ships might need to explode just so the 'respawn' mechanic works the same, but battlefields littered with disabled enemies (that eventually fade away when you're not looking or graphical clutter gets too much) would be nice.
Take a look at my Foundry missions! Conjoined, Re-emergence, and . . .
Well I really like how the Voth are fighting now. They are no longer a pushover. The final citadel ship in normal mode feels more like an elite mode ship now when you consider that normally only 2 ships of the fleet will be killing it since the rest of team has to take out the shuttles. In normal mode, it is way tougher then an elite tac cube.
Now this is good. But that means the elite version is likely way too hard.
Until tribble opens up to more players, I will never know as there is rarely enough players to even get the normal one going.
Also, get rid of the artificial floor, we can not longer fly among the towers after the match. That was fun to do after a match before.
According to the Dev blog the Voth ships are fairly defensive in nature. Anti-proton beams that reduce your damage dealt and reflective shielding that returns the damage you deal to that facing.
So I have to ask does the debuff from the anti-proton beams reduce the damage you deal to yourself when you hit a voth ship's reflective shielding? Seems like the defensive nature of the Voth lessens the chance that you'll one shot yourself.
I am really excited to see the Voth being introduced into the STO universe. Season 8 Dev Blog #5 references a "design language," or a set of characteristics that would be expected to show up on a Voth ship. The ships being introduced in Season 8 are really impressive, and the Bastion-Class Cruiser in particular is one of the most attractive ships I have seen in game. However, there are two major elements of the Bastion-Class Cruiser that seem, at least to me, to be inconsistent with what would be expected of the large Voth vessels, namely the Citadel-class Dreadnaught and the Bulwark-class Battleship.
First is the design of the bridge. The original Voth City Ship, now the Voth Citadel-class Dreadnaught, has a pronounced command tower. The command tower structures generally adhere to a convention of using shapes to convey a sense of power, relying on powerful structures that are pyramidal and ziggurat-like in presentation. This helps to channel the Voth essence of authority, with the tower looking over the entirety of the vessel, highlighting the hierarchical nature of the Voth. This form of command tower design language is also represented in the Bulwark-class Battleship. However, this powerful command tower form is missing from the cruiser, making it feel more demure and unimposing by comparison. On first glance, it is hard to discern the location of the bridge on the cruiser, with it either being represented by the two arches that cross over the small trench at the rear of the ship, or possibly by the smaller raised portion embedded at the far end of the trench. In either case, this really downplays the power of the bridge, and seems to defy the convention both set by the ships as shown in Voyager, as well as the design of the other ships.
Second is the design of the nose, or bow, of the ship. The design convention here seems to use the shape of a "beak" so that they are more reminiscent of the dinosaur-like appearance of the Voth themselves. This being said, the cruiser seems to lack this key element from the design language shared by Voth ships. As opposed to having a "beak" like the other Voth ships, it has more of a pronged design. This design seems more at home on a Jem'Hadar vessel. I have a feeling that if the cruiser were a playable ship, and a player were to put the fairly popular Jem'Hadar space set on it, that by the time it were color-shifted purple, the cruiser would look more like a Dominion ship than a Voth one.
I really respect the work of the design team, and think it has produced some really great ships. I am personally attached to the Voth, and by extension their ships, as they were one of my favorite races in Voyager, and as such, I care a lot about how they are represented in STO. Additionally, I really like the Bastion-class cruiser and think that it is just two elements short of being an amazing Voth ship instead of just a great ship. I want to thank the design team for all their hard work, and the time they put into listening to players about what we would like to see in the game.
First of all, excellent presentation, arcturus13531! *hugs*
I believe the ship design team has done a wonderful job creating these unique and epic ship designs for the Voth, but I do have to agree with arcturus13531 that the 2 areas of the cruiser seemed a bit inconsistent with the rest of the Voth ship designs.
THE SHIP'S "BEAK"
- Representative of the organic beak structuring of the Voth's ancestry, the Parasaurolophus
THE BRIDGE
- Representative of the hierarchical arrangement of the Voth
- Position of power and authority
Voth City Ship from Voyager "Distant Origins"
(Star Wars does the same thing with a highly pronounced bridge on Star Destroyers)
Thank you for illustrating this out, arcturus13531!
Live Long and Prosper!
Or Die Trying!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
==== Try my new Foundry Mission: "Operation Demon Storm" ====
Rather useless and pretty much cannon fodder, but being a frigate that's to be expected.
The photonic decoy power puts them just above the other frigates in the game.
Cruiser:-
Charged particle Burst 2 does very little, but then I do have 8 points in power insulators. Maybe CPB3?
Beam overload likewise hardly causes a scratch.
Battleship:-
Subnucelonic beam was a good choice as a power.
Most damage seems to come from the grav well.
Still dies pretty quickly. Give it or the cruiser tactical team?
Dreadnought:-
Pretty tough to get past it's shields, but once there's a hole made it dies very quickly. The normal version can be one manned. Maybe tactical team?
Seems to teleport/jump so that I end up behind it.
Misc:-
Their beam weapons weren't doing any bleedthrough damage in the contested zone, which seem to be partly caused by the Voth tower buff. Was using resilient shields if that helps, as were others who had the same issue. Unless this is deliberate that is.
[4:46] [Combat (Self)] Voth Bastion Cruiser gives 0 (881) Antiproton Damage to you with Voth Dual Phased Antiproton Banks.
[4:46] [Combat (Self)] Voth Bastion Cruiser's Voth Antiproton Array gives 175 (478) to your Shields.
[4:46] [Combat (Self)] Voth Bastion Cruiser gives 1 (738) Antiproton Damage to you with Voth Antiproton Array.
[4:46] [Combat (Self)] Voth Bastion Cruiser's Voth Dual Phased Antiproton Banks gives 205 (560) to your Shields.
[4:46] [Combat (Self)] Voth Bastion Cruiser gives 0 (864) Antiproton Damage to you with Voth Dual Phased Antiproton Banks.
[4:46] [Combat (Self)] Voth Bastion Cruiser's Voth Dual Phased Antiproton Banks gives 234 (639) to your Shields.
[4:46] [Combat (Self)] Voth Bastion Cruiser gives 0 (985) Antiproton Damage to you with Voth Dual Phased Antiproton Banks.
Also I swear I saw my ship getting healed by 1hp every so often.
All Voth ships seem to have a real accuracy issue. Even when my ship was stationary they were missing (bonus defense was 10%). Again this is in the contested zone, as I didn't want to mess up someones "Storming the spire".
Second is the design of the nose, or bow, of the ship. The design convention here seems to use the shape of a "beak" so that they are more reminiscent of the dinosaur-like appearance of the Voth themselves. This being said, the cruiser seems to lack this key element from the design language shared by Voth ships. As opposed to having a "beak" like the other Voth ships, it has more of a pronged design. This design seems more at home on a Jem'Hadar vessel. I have a feeling that if the cruiser were a playable ship, and a player were to put the fairly popular Jem'Hadar space set on it, that by the time it were color-shifted purple, the cruiser would look more like a Dominion ship than a Voth one.
Finally someone else sees the Jem'Hadar design there aside from just me!
Although...maybe I'm just being too picky, but this ship here looks way too similar to a JHDC to me. I'm not sure, it's just the way that the front comes down and the placement of the side nacelle/gun things. Widen it up a little bit and stick 2 more nacelles on it and you have a reskinned JHDC. Maybe I just need to see the bottom of the ship, but that was the first thought that came to mind when I saw it.
Glad to see I'm not alone in that. And I agree, that particular ship is much more suited to be a Dominion ship than a Voth ship. It looks great, it's just not as "Voth-y" as the others.
These ships really need to use some more active defenses. I'm blowing the Voth battleship up in a few seconds without a single buff. Granted you don't want to make them impossible, but there's no way a "defense focused" factions higher tier ship should go down that easily.
These ships really need to use some more active defenses. I'm blowing the Voth battleship up in a few seconds without a single buff. Granted you don't want to make them impossible, but there's no way a "defense focused" factions higher tier ship should go down that easily.
My goal is to put them in a place that's as defensive as possible for full mk XII geared players, while still allowing players in Mk X gear to have a chance of beating them. The performance delta between a fully decked-out endgame character and a fresh 50 is quite large.
Jeff "Adjudicator Hawk" Hamilton
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
My goal is to put them in a place that's as defensive as possible for full mk XII geared players, while still allowing players in Mk X gear to have a chance of beating them. The performance delta between a fully decked-out endgame character and a fresh 50 is quite large.
True, but what challenge is there in this game for a fully decked out 50? Many people who are that level and have stuck around for a year or more have most of the great gear (especially if in a decent Fleet). It's not that hard to get the great gear within a month or two of playing as a new 50 (and it only takes a week or two of playing to hit 50).
A team with 2-3 mostly or fully decked out 50s and 2-3 new 50s should have a decent challenge defeating a massive defense-minded ship.
A full team of fully decked 50s should have a small/mild challenge. A full team of new 50s should have a MAJOR challenge.
Cryptic has done a great deal of work over the years with adding things to work toward and do for level 40+ players and all of that is still there. Having something to work toward won't discourage people it'll provide incentive to players unable to access/complete it to work more.
I've seen this in playing EVE online which is still massively popular even though it's way older than STO and a subscription game, and Neverwinter that has Gear Score blocked dungeons.
True, but what challenge is there in this game for a fully decked out 50?
Maybe this is an indication that more events need a Normal and Elite mode, and that those modes need a bit more distance between them as far a minimum gear/skill go in order to complete them.
Or maybe the vector needs to be closed by having the FE gear sets be closer to the high end sets, and have the system do a better job of directing players to these episodes.
Since LOR I have leveled 3 characters to level cap, and you usually hit cap long before you are done with Cardassion space, and honestly, a lot of the old Cardassion episodes are just bad, maybe Cryptic and players would be better off if a lot of them were stipped out, with some of the more interesting ones remastered.
Comments
the beams are completely two dimensional,while that might be true of alot of ingame beam effects close up,with alot of the older beam weapons you cant see it easily from a distance because of the way the graphic is designed..
two dimensionsal beam weapons just seems out of place for a game like sto...
also with the new voth beams,both large and small,there seems to be some kind of peculiar repeating black diamond shape in the middle of the beam
whilst that might be fine for a repeating texture on the small scale...the voth beams are quite bright and easy to see
so in final summary..id suggest a view locked repeater sprite,these things were used alot in older computer games to bypass certain technical problems involving 3d objects
and also.design the repeating sprite from an image grain..what i mean by that is like sawing a chunk of wood out of a beam of wood,you could match up chunks of the same grain of wood without a relative intteruption..
or better yet,compare the voth beams graphic to the dominion polaron or even antiproton...the dominion polaron and antiproton being smooth,3d,and continuous without interruption...while the new voth beams look basically like neon measuring tape
We have a Dev Blog planned about this topic that should be out in the next few weeks. In the meantime, feel free to leave feedback on what you're seeing now
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=
Well they disabled voyager so quick and fast I want them to do that to me too and just blow me up with one shot. Gotta keep it canon you know... Happy Birthday :P
Love the ongoing battle damage on the dreadnoughts, lots of detail.
A lot of tricks with them will keep things interesting once ironed out.
I do like that they have abilities against energy damage they can use and a weakness vs kenetic damage.
Please tone down the blur and blinding effects of the Voth abilities. I am not talking about the phase type ability but the bubbles the frigates hit you with that make it so you can not see your ship and the capital ship ability that makes it like you are looking at the world through jello being wiggled.
These effects spoil the great graphics and if you have larger battles later on, they will likely cause massive lag.
Love what you are doing with this season.
Whats the firing arc of it? like normal beam arrays? as it looks awkward when out of the nose those large antiproton beams come nearly behind it
also the beams seems still to be bugged for me from the look. large corners are in them almost looking like a tartan pattern. is it intended to be that way?
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
A bunch of Voth Ship functionality got updated on Tribble today. If you get to do Spire Assault again, please take another look at the Voth Space critters and let me know how they're feeling!
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
My first impression is that the invulnerability power seems off. It is an incredibly powerful ability, but when they kick it off, they don't DO anything with it. When a player uses their big defense buff ability, they will use it as an opportunity to light off their best other powers as well, or to retreat so they can buy time to heal. With the Voth, it feels like they are just doing it to annoy the player.
How we do Spire Assault? When I was on tribble the event wasn't available.
Only thing that changed really is the animation and an increase in hull other than that they are cute cuddly explosions.
This element could be applied to other ships, too. Not the healing drone, but it'd make the combat seem a little less ruthless when some defeated enemies aren't entirely obliterated. It'd be more believable that escape pods could get away when some of the hulks don't immediately blow up. Player ships might need to explode just so the 'respawn' mechanic works the same, but battlefields littered with disabled enemies (that eventually fade away when you're not looking or graphical clutter gets too much) would be nice.
Conjoined, Re-emergence, and . . .
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Now this is good. But that means the elite version is likely way too hard.
Until tribble opens up to more players, I will never know as there is rarely enough players to even get the normal one going.
Also, get rid of the artificial floor, we can not longer fly among the towers after the match. That was fun to do after a match before.
So I have to ask does the debuff from the anti-proton beams reduce the damage you deal to yourself when you hit a voth ship's reflective shielding? Seems like the defensive nature of the Voth lessens the chance that you'll one shot yourself.
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
I am really excited to see the Voth being introduced into the STO universe. Season 8 Dev Blog #5 references a "design language," or a set of characteristics that would be expected to show up on a Voth ship. The ships being introduced in Season 8 are really impressive, and the Bastion-Class Cruiser in particular is one of the most attractive ships I have seen in game. However, there are two major elements of the Bastion-Class Cruiser that seem, at least to me, to be inconsistent with what would be expected of the large Voth vessels, namely the Citadel-class Dreadnaught and the Bulwark-class Battleship.
First is the design of the bridge. The original Voth City Ship, now the Voth Citadel-class Dreadnaught, has a pronounced command tower. The command tower structures generally adhere to a convention of using shapes to convey a sense of power, relying on powerful structures that are pyramidal and ziggurat-like in presentation. This helps to channel the Voth essence of authority, with the tower looking over the entirety of the vessel, highlighting the hierarchical nature of the Voth. This form of command tower design language is also represented in the Bulwark-class Battleship. However, this powerful command tower form is missing from the cruiser, making it feel more demure and unimposing by comparison. On first glance, it is hard to discern the location of the bridge on the cruiser, with it either being represented by the two arches that cross over the small trench at the rear of the ship, or possibly by the smaller raised portion embedded at the far end of the trench. In either case, this really downplays the power of the bridge, and seems to defy the convention both set by the ships as shown in Voyager, as well as the design of the other ships.
Second is the design of the nose, or bow, of the ship. The design convention here seems to use the shape of a "beak" so that they are more reminiscent of the dinosaur-like appearance of the Voth themselves. This being said, the cruiser seems to lack this key element from the design language shared by Voth ships. As opposed to having a "beak" like the other Voth ships, it has more of a pronged design. This design seems more at home on a Jem'Hadar vessel. I have a feeling that if the cruiser were a playable ship, and a player were to put the fairly popular Jem'Hadar space set on it, that by the time it were color-shifted purple, the cruiser would look more like a Dominion ship than a Voth one.
I really respect the work of the design team, and think it has produced some really great ships. I am personally attached to the Voth, and by extension their ships, as they were one of my favorite races in Voyager, and as such, I care a lot about how they are represented in STO. Additionally, I really like the Bastion-class cruiser and think that it is just two elements short of being an amazing Voth ship instead of just a great ship. I want to thank the design team for all their hard work, and the time they put into listening to players about what we would like to see in the game.
I believe the ship design team has done a wonderful job creating these unique and epic ship designs for the Voth, but I do have to agree with arcturus13531 that the 2 areas of the cruiser seemed a bit inconsistent with the rest of the Voth ship designs.
THE SHIP'S "BEAK"
- Representative of the organic beak structuring of the Voth's ancestry, the Parasaurolophus
THE BRIDGE
- Representative of the hierarchical arrangement of the Voth
- Position of power and authority
Voth City Ship from Voyager "Distant Origins"
(Star Wars does the same thing with a highly pronounced bridge on Star Destroyers)
Thank you for illustrating this out, arcturus13531!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Cruiser:-
Battleship:-
Dreadnought:-
Misc:-
Their beam weapons weren't doing any bleedthrough damage in the contested zone, which seem to be partly caused by the Voth tower buff. Was using resilient shields if that helps, as were others who had the same issue. Unless this is deliberate that is.
Also I swear I saw my ship getting healed by 1hp every so often.
All Voth ships seem to have a real accuracy issue. Even when my ship was stationary they were missing (bonus defense was 10%). Again this is in the contested zone, as I didn't want to mess up someones "Storming the spire".
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Finally someone else sees the Jem'Hadar design there aside from just me!
I posted this when the design was first shown:
Glad to see I'm not alone in that. And I agree, that particular ship is much more suited to be a Dominion ship than a Voth ship. It looks great, it's just not as "Voth-y" as the others.
Mine Trap Supporter
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
My goal is to put them in a place that's as defensive as possible for full mk XII geared players, while still allowing players in Mk X gear to have a chance of beating them. The performance delta between a fully decked-out endgame character and a fresh 50 is quite large.
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
True, but what challenge is there in this game for a fully decked out 50? Many people who are that level and have stuck around for a year or more have most of the great gear (especially if in a decent Fleet). It's not that hard to get the great gear within a month or two of playing as a new 50 (and it only takes a week or two of playing to hit 50).
A team with 2-3 mostly or fully decked out 50s and 2-3 new 50s should have a decent challenge defeating a massive defense-minded ship.
A full team of fully decked 50s should have a small/mild challenge. A full team of new 50s should have a MAJOR challenge.
Cryptic has done a great deal of work over the years with adding things to work toward and do for level 40+ players and all of that is still there. Having something to work toward won't discourage people it'll provide incentive to players unable to access/complete it to work more.
I've seen this in playing EVE online which is still massively popular even though it's way older than STO and a subscription game, and Neverwinter that has Gear Score blocked dungeons.
Maybe this is an indication that more events need a Normal and Elite mode, and that those modes need a bit more distance between them as far a minimum gear/skill go in order to complete them.
Or maybe the vector needs to be closed by having the FE gear sets be closer to the high end sets, and have the system do a better job of directing players to these episodes.
Since LOR I have leveled 3 characters to level cap, and you usually hit cap long before you are done with Cardassion space, and honestly, a lot of the old Cardassion episodes are just bad, maybe Cryptic and players would be better off if a lot of them were stipped out, with some of the more interesting ones remastered.