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Proposal: Launcher slot (like the added warp core slot)
amalefactor
Member Posts: 511 Arc User
The reason for this proposal is threefold.
1. Torpedoes are a constant, everyday part of the Star Trek setting, yet "boating" as a tactic is rather hard to compete with in this game, even with equipment set bonuses that supposedly encourage it. One torpedo means one less energy weapon which to most min-maxers is a bad thing.
If torpedoes had a slot of their own, their use, even if not necessarily favored or emphasized, would now be part of the overall weapon use and rotation of each ship. I can imagine some synergies being formulated where certain energy weapons and certain torpedo weapons work well together.
2. Cryptic could introduce new special mechanics to the "launcher" slot, such as probes for science vessels that prefer to have utility instead of extra fire power. Imagine launcher slots fitted with science devices that did new kinds of debuffs to the enemy, or even did old ones remotely (like a true sensor probe that sensor scans upon impact or in a small AOE)
I can also imagine this torpedo slot being used both fore and aft, as in sharing the same cooldown yet different trajectories. In addition, I can imagine some ships having a second launcher slot (such as, perhaps, the Armitage).
3. This proposal would add more variety and more choices to this game, which is almost always a good thing. Boaters could still emphasize energy weapons but now have a little extra something they are free to ignore. Torpedo enthusiasts wont feel as marginalized.
Like the warp cores, this could add to the complexity of the game and to the design of overall builds.
Thanks for reading. If you like it, pass it on. If not, flame away, presumably at broadside angle with 8 arrays. :P
1. Torpedoes are a constant, everyday part of the Star Trek setting, yet "boating" as a tactic is rather hard to compete with in this game, even with equipment set bonuses that supposedly encourage it. One torpedo means one less energy weapon which to most min-maxers is a bad thing.
If torpedoes had a slot of their own, their use, even if not necessarily favored or emphasized, would now be part of the overall weapon use and rotation of each ship. I can imagine some synergies being formulated where certain energy weapons and certain torpedo weapons work well together.
2. Cryptic could introduce new special mechanics to the "launcher" slot, such as probes for science vessels that prefer to have utility instead of extra fire power. Imagine launcher slots fitted with science devices that did new kinds of debuffs to the enemy, or even did old ones remotely (like a true sensor probe that sensor scans upon impact or in a small AOE)
I can also imagine this torpedo slot being used both fore and aft, as in sharing the same cooldown yet different trajectories. In addition, I can imagine some ships having a second launcher slot (such as, perhaps, the Armitage).
3. This proposal would add more variety and more choices to this game, which is almost always a good thing. Boaters could still emphasize energy weapons but now have a little extra something they are free to ignore. Torpedo enthusiasts wont feel as marginalized.
Like the warp cores, this could add to the complexity of the game and to the design of overall builds.
Thanks for reading. If you like it, pass it on. If not, flame away, presumably at broadside angle with 8 arrays. :P
Post edited by amalefactor on
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We try stacking consoles to help but so far it seems unless its plasma (romulan mostly) torpedo you're using for the through shield plasma dot, its rather rough. Probably explains why the Voth use fire at will all the time, to shoot down those torps more often, or encourage players to get the romulan set to enhance the torpedo defense.
In any case those of us using photons, quantums, tricobalts, transphasics or chronitons (though the last two are most rare) are hurting. We can launch the one torpedo, once every 6 to 12 seconds or 2 to 8 if we're lucky on our DOFF procs. We try to help it out through consoels. However, use those same consoels for energy weapons and you're buffing something firing constantly. So its no wonder energy boating takes over.
Having a slot, and making it seperate from the overall gun arrangement (ex. tacticals still ahve 7 total weapon slots and now 1 additive torpedo slot) would still let us use the torpedo without feeling like we just nerfed ourself. We can do the "all our consoels buff our energy weapon damage" but still have that added punch. Or we can buff that one torpedo in its slot with consoles yet still have the guns to help bypass the shields so the things can actually land for appreciable damage.
Translation of your translation: "I GOT MINE."
Yes, good for you. You're totally fine with how things are. I am very skeptical you'd be as accepting of things if this was not the case.
Oh, and one more thing "suboptimal" is kind of the point here. This is a Star Trek game and the more it looks like one, the better. Shooting a rave of silly colored light as the only optimal way of dealing damage diminishes the overall game experience if you can look out from that bubble you're seeing the world from.
I also don't see how adding a launcher slot would "force" anyone to do anything, except maybe add a torpedo that doesn't even subtract from the rest of their loadout.
With this extra slot it gives everyone the chance to drop in that torpedo when a shield is down for a little more, and maybe through some alterations of torpedos with this slot change could allow torpedo focused or torpedo off-focused setups to be a good co-existant setup with the energy weapon focused setups
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=806681
Not a necessarily bad idea in that thread.
I like the idea of seperating it from weapon loadouts so there won't even be much of an issue with the energy boaters. Yet, to my surprise, one already came to this thread and completely missed the point, left some "u r inferior lol" insults and dragged his knuckles away.
True. Similar, and cruisers did certainly get a buff going, through the command options. In fact its more invited boating than ever. So many tacticals in cruisers running around with all beams and employing the command option to lower weapon drain.
Specifically we speak here on torpedos as a whole for any class of ship though. So even though that thing talked about above could persist maybe someone with a torpedo setup instead could catch up in a different way.
Othwersie we're all just the same, all hopping in one cruiser or another or somethign with enough means to fire more beams at once, or more cannons at once if the wheel turns again and sends us that direction once more.
It's the same way I'd ask that a Star Wars game have blasters and lightsabers and only a little bit of fringe gimmicks like lava guns, stone knives with diseases on them, or "mind fire" lances. Of course many years ago I asked for more incentive to use Star Wars weapons in Star Wars Galaxies and got a very similar to one post here response of "UR JUST BAD REROLL NEW BUILD L2P".
Whether the restricted slot was new or not, it would still be a restricted slot. You want an extra slot so you can put in an extra energy weapon, yes? But you don't want the "boaters" doing the same. They have to put in a torpedo.
Anyway, I don't think torpedoes are bad. What weapon is best depends on the target. But if they were, forcing everyone to use them would not fix anything.
If I could implement it, I'd do it something like this.
Science vessels: 1 fore, 1 aft
Only vessel type that can use probes.
Cruiser: 2 fore, 1 aft.
Cruisers get the option to use heavy launchers on the fore slots and heavy mines on the aft slots.
Heavy torps and mines do more damage. It makes sense for a cruiser to carry a larger load out.
Escorts: 2 fore.
They get Dual Heavy cannons, so they don't get anything in terms of special torps.
More hard-point variety per class would be interesting. Mine launcher, heavy artillery launchers, lances, etc.
I don't see any claims, anywhere, that energy weapons are in a bad state. It may be hard thinking outside of what you immediately use and prefer, but that's the state of things.
If energy weapons were, in some alternate universe, disfavored in place of all-torpedo ships, I'd definitely suggest an energy weapon slot for the same reasons.
I like this idea because it gives science vessels some extra utility, and actually means they dont necessarily need to use torpedoes, and can instead add some probe abilities.
The cruiser idea I like too, but I dont know how to do the "heavy mines/torpedoes" thing fairly.
Escorts almost never fired aft torpedoes in the shows or movies, if ever, and due to their maneuverability, I doubt they'd miss them. Two front sounds great.
By the way, I specifically said "add, don't move or subtract" expecting to get less rage from boaters. Mixed results so far.
Lances from the "launcher" hardpoint?
Hmm, if done right, I could see that work, especially on specific ships. "Artillery" isn't that bad an idea either, if you meant perhaps 15km slow firing AOE-blast-at-impact weapons.
I myself think that some kind of "omni directional" idea, one (or two) slots depending on ship could be good. Wouldn't have to worry about fore/aft balance though that has been how ship designs for all weapons has been for the game so far. The cooldowns could share based on facing. However this could mean the wepaons would put themselves in a 360 degree mode, but not nessicerly. The T'varo console torpedo I believe only manages a forward 45 or little higher degree arc front. So possibly the degrees could be limited.
Still if it did come to a seperate fore aft torpedo/energy weapon slotting setup, I think I'd be fine with that too.
If it was seperated it'd leave room for mixing types. After all, the Enterprise-E had both photons and quantums.
Mind you if it was necessary to prevent power creep I'd be fine with knocking off a weapon slot or two from each ship to match the new system. Of course that'd get even more screaming sent my way but I leave it there as an option.
At any rate it could help to say, find cloaked ships in an area. Provide a targeting bonus against ships it is around in an area. Scramble snesors in an area. Something like current science powers but at a smaller constant effect for the life duration of the probe.
Ohh. What if someone could launch a probe designed to counter science powers. Close gravity wells or tyken's rifts. Photonic absorbtion to dissipate the photonic wave or evenmy photonic fleets.
Maybe science ships get inherent bonuses to probe use, and escorts get inherent reload/cooldown bonuses. Cruisers are in a pretty good spot right now, and perhaps they could be the standard that other models are compared to.
Quite possibly. I'm sure they got people at cryptic that can math this and manage it better than I can.
The big point is, making torpedos another slotted item. You mount your energy ewapons, your engine and your deflector. With New Romulus we got to put in Warp Cores and Singulariteis. Now through this we can expand it is make torps and mines the next slotted thing.
Think of it as a fantasy MMO. Everyone's got the main weapon. It can be a sword or hammer or axe or something. Their off hand is a shield or magical orb or holy symbol. Seperate but benefecial to the activity you're pursuing.
In any MMO Gameplay is king, it goes before anything else, story, graphics, and before any kind of realism in the universe it is set in, so ya in Star Trek they alway fire a lot of torpedoes, but in gameplay that doesn't translate well.
Using a ham fisted way to force everyone to use torpedoes hurts the gameplay.
It is more important to let everyone have fun, playing the way they want within limits, then setting up the game just for trekkie purists, and I am such a purist, but I am also an MMORPG player since 2000, I know how these games work by now.
It's like saying in a fantasy MMO that Warriors can only use 1 sword and a shield, because you want that shield to be used, because the lore of the Universe says so, but some players would like to use a large 2 handed sword, or dual wield 2 axes.
In this case with the torpedoes, gameplay goes before universe realism.
How does it hurt the gameplay?
By "gameplay" you mean "YOUR gameplay" because, as I said of one poster before, you got yours. Good for you, unfortunately, you're not the only player here.
How exactly is firing torpedoes not "translate well" compared to spacebar mashing? Is it such a bad thing to have a followup secondary attack (which fits well in setting AND adds some variety)? This isn't Everquest 1 and we shouldn't necessarily be satisfied with standing in one place and double-poking a guy with daggers on autoattack. Well, apparently you're fine with that if you think that secondary weapons are that much of a derailment.
I'm an MMO player since Everquest 1 in the very early 2000s, and I don't see how your opinion is any more valid than mine regarding any of those. The "muh freedum" card isn't helping here either, considering how cut-throat and demanding min-maxers already are, screaming at people who use weapons or setups that aren't within 99% of their predetermined standards. If there was a projectile/secondary weapon slot independent of the normal weapon banks, how exactly does it hurt your "let everyone have fun" issue anyway?
Your fantasy examples are rather lacking, as well. Tanks in Blizzard's MMO all but must carry a shield, period, with druids being the only exception. People like you already utterly removed even the possibility of a melee shaman using a two handed weapon (so much for choice there). I think in the balance variety matters a LOT more than your pretense of "gameplay" as a vague abstract.
If "Gameplay is King" your King is very hard to identify outside of "stuff you like and nothing that you don't".
I don't see how this would hurt gameplay. Wouldn't it enhance it? We're all forced to equip engines. Forced to equip deflectors. Now with Legacy of Romulus we're forced to equip warp cores and singularities. Can't go back to the days without them. This just changes the iffy subject of torps and mines from "should I equip them? This coudl make a mess of things if I do or don't" to "What kind will I equip" Kind of like looking at energy weapons right now and people saying "What kind will I use?"
And once again I'm a dumbass and didn't think trough what I posted, I didn't do my research I jumped the gun, AGAIN, like I did in the other topic today, and posted what came into my head, I was wrong, very wrong, and my example was bloody poor, and I apologize for upsetting maybe derailing this.
This wouldn't hurt gameplay one dang bit, it might enhance it, but not hugely, it would mostly just change it, people would just have to min-max their build with with at least 2 torps (front and back) permanently slotted, on the other hand it would indeed help universe realism a great deal.
Again, I am sorry I was dumb, I jumped the gun and while I sometimes think I might be the expert here with years of MMO playing, I am also the player who never did raids in any MMO, never min-maxed my build, just leveled my main and my alts, and got into the lore.
So I think I know a lot about gameplay, but really don't.
Ok from both you guys, no derailing. Lets talk about the idea yes or no and how or how not involving the possiblities of having a torpedo/mine slot. Benefits, drawbacks, etc
I'm a little confused with what you're doing with this post. I mean that genuinely. Is this sarcasm? Is it an apology stretched over three paragraphs?
If its sarcasm I'm not finding anything persuasive in it, inverted to adjust for the flood of it.
If it's an apology that's fine, though it's not necessary here. Disagreement is a large part of forum posting, and I already said enough to challenge the assumption that "the way I like to play = gameplay", which I still find very presumptive and wrong.
To answer this, I'm undecided on whether it would be better to add this secondary weapon/projectile slot, or to trade weapons lots that already exist for it.
The latter might actually work better overall, but of course all the worst fears and accusations of the naysayers would have more ammunition if I endorsed it.
I can definatly see the problem from taking away. It's the fear of those who are worried of the "force" of it and detracting from energy weapon focused builds.
However there is the flip side of adding it as a slot and something completely new could add to any power creep. This could involved recalculation of base numbers of everything so as to avoid creep.
It's certainly a hurdle, but it's something that could be the possible answers with the right approach to "make torpedoes of many kinds a viable inclusion or neat consistancy with known vessels."
Come to think of it most vessels in star trek when asked about their taactical situation said "X energy weapon X torpedoes" Kinda just thown in there like everythign has warp cores and nacelles.