'Absolutely absurd console abilities' on a Vesta? I'd like to see those! :P I own 3 Vestas, but in practice never really use their consoles. Like most of those type of ship-specific consoles, they're mainly just gimmicks: you use em for a few days, then shelve em again.
funny enough i use all of them the Multidimensional Wave-Function Analysis Module works great whit Reverse Shield Polarity and Feedback Pulse to make your opponent damage themselves more that you. (work really good on cubes in KASE)
to than outlast them while your fighters and photonic fleet peck away at them you use the Sympathetic Fermion Transceiver, Transfer Shield Strength and Scattering Field.
should that fail you can still activate Quantum Focused Shield Bubble to make yourself invulnerable and flee(Evasive Maneuvers).
you need to have the Quantum Field Focus Controller equipped to do this but that still has a limited use when combined whit Tachyon Beam.
your main science ablities are still Tyken's Rift and Gravity Well but it provides a fun way to fill up some of the lower skill slots.
Why Science is not allowed to 'destroy 5 NPC freighters,' whereas Tacts are constantly pumped with even moar pwnage, is beyond me, however. Every time Science gets even remotely good, Cryptic has the nerve to nerf it... badly.
this is why i advocate having different skill tree's for each class and faction. science is all about the boff abilities. that's one of the reasons why science was OP at launch and why cryptic is afraid of making these abilities (to) good nowadays. if tacts can invest in the same skills they can make gravity well really good for them while they shouldn't be able to. by making each class have different skill trees science can have killer boff abilities while the other classes can't abuse them to much.
THE NEW CRAFTING SYSTEM IS TERRA-BAD First of all it's not even a crafting system! It's just a dumb game system that's nothing more than a glorified slots machine.
second the "special items" you hope will be the saving the saving grace are messed up to.
I think Damage done should be reduced by 50% across the board and repair lowered to match, keep hull and shield same, make fights last longer. Combat is so quick with any ship it's not fun. The combat has become a everything must die in 5 seconds or less. I rarely get to use my abilities because things die so fast.
Science Really should be about science, Stats should effect science abilities. I almost never put skill points in science because it doesn't do any good. Why can't I buff Photonic Fleet like I used to. I had my photonic fleet so skilled I had 2 of them out at once before.
I think Damage done should be reduced by 50% across the board
Not really. Damage output has not really changed that much..what has changed is the ability of the high dps ships to survive, thus enabling them to quickly add up their high burst damage into monstrous dps.
How do they survive to stack that damage up?
1-Tactical Team automatically balancing shields.
2- Attack Omega:
+10% All Damage strength for 15 sec
+15 All Damage resistance for 15 sec
+40% Flight Speed strength for 5 sec
+40% Flight Turn Rate strength for 5 sec
Immunity to Movement Debuffs for 15 sec
Immunity to Movement Debuffs for 15 sec
+18% Defense strength for 5 sec
Immunity to Teleport for 15 sec
LOOK at that. Attack Omega gives damage boost and about 85% strength of: resists of polarize hull or aux to dampeners, the speed boost of emergency to engines AND their full immunities (of polarizeHull and aux2damp)... and on top of all that it gives a big boost to defense rating (which is maxed out since the speed boost always brings the ship up to 80% def rating just be speed alone..even if you only have 25 engine power).
3- In Pre-F2P, turn rate of a ship was determined by its aux power. Now its not. The impact in survivability of turning to give a different shield facing to incoming fire and the gain of what was once aux power into weapons/engines/shields is obvious.
(I miss this a lot though... you could pull some really fun and amazing maneuvers by spiking your aux by draining engine power for it and turning and sliding).
4- Engineering and science slots can be used for healing/tanking. Since Omega provides all the movement,defense,turn rate, resists and immunities. Due to the nature of omega and dual-omega cycling (the common use of it), ships with two lt. cmdr tactical slots find themselves only having to 'tank' for 15 seconds out of an entire minute.
15 seconds under omega defense boosts, 15 seconds downtime till the 2nd omega can be used in the dual cycle. 15 seconds to 'tank' using 2x lt slots and 1 ensign slot of sci/engineer mix. A feat easily achieved by the escort's high natural defense rating due to their speed.
So.. if you took away tac team's shield autobalance, aux power determined turn rate and omega was:
+10% All Damage strength for 15 sec
+18% Defense strength for 5 sec
+40% Flight Speed strength for 5 sec
Immunity to Teleport for 15 sec
You would quickly see escorts losing a significant amount of overall dps because they would need to fly their ships in hit and run attacks... just like they used to in pre-F2P.
BUT.. this is not a nerf to them. Tac team not balancing shields affects all ships, including npcs. Moving shield power manually or with a macro cannot match tac team autobalance speed. Its hard coded (Ive tried with a macro just to see if I could save myself an ensign slot in tac station... there is a limit to how fast you can input the balance all shields command).
The result would be escorts that are DEADLY if they focus on hitting one shield facing...by using their superior speed and turn rate to keep firing on the facing they hammer. All this they must do while protecting themselves from holds/disables with their Engineer and Science abilities..and having at least one heal in case of emergency.
There is a reason why this game has 3 kinds of shields. Each shield type was 'best' for certain ships. Escorts benefited from covariants and their high HP buffer. Cruisers benefited from the Resilient shields since it cut down bleedthrough damage. Science ships worked great with regenerative shields since sci ships had the highest shield modifier and regen-boosting abilities.
Back then a sci ship dual cycling transfer shield strength 3 was HARD to get one shield facing down even when 2 escorts were hammering him... but when they got through the sci ship's weak hull and weak engineering consoles meant it died fast.
Back then a cruiser's shields were difficult to bring down and then its hull was just as hard to get to zero...all because engineering abilities focus on resists and instant healing of both shield and hull and both can be dual cycled. Back then Cruisers also had the highest overall DPS because they had the power bonuses to feed 6 to 8 beam arrays and fire nonstop thanks to their tanking power.
Back then an escort was terrifying to fight against because the little SOB's flew circles around you and hit you HARD as hell and then ran off. They were very hard to catch (holds/disables) because they spec'd to prevent that weakness... but if they timed their attacks badly or got too greedy and stayed longer than they shouldve after their defensive abilities wore off... they were in trouble (but not without means of escape.. you could break a tractor with evasive maneuvers for example). Escorts back then were like those little gnats whose purpose in life is to kamikaze against your eyeballs.. except these gnats had switchblades and were meth'd up.
Why can't I buff Photonic Fleet like I used to. I had my photonic fleet so skilled I had 2 of them out at once before.
...because it was science and it was working. It could not be allowed.
If this wasnt Star Trek this game would have flopped along time ago.
Problems with this game.
Percentages.
Diminshing Returns. (with Percentages)
Diminishing Returns. (in General)_
Unclear Skills.
Useless Skills.
Overblown Resists.
Overblown Abilties.
No real place for certain things.
And thats just the start.
I mean what does +99 really do.
What exactly is the return diminished by?
The math behind this game is far fetched and you need a math degree to sort it all out.
Then you have all these things that do exact amounts.
So you have.....
+ Exact Amounts
+ Arbitrary Numbers
+ Arbitrary Percentages
VS.
- Exact Numbers
- Arbitrary Numbers
- Arbitrary Percentages
The way it currently works is all wrong. Resists VS. Buffs. Buffs always work better than Resists. Until you overblow the Resists ( Zombie Cruisers).
A +31.9 Tac Console should negate a + 31.9 Eng console and Vice Versa.
Things getting shifted around with priorities is silly.
The entirety of the way the skill and console systems work should be changed, along with the Tooltips on weapons and such.
For examply you have +Crit type consoles, they dont always show up in your base on your ship. Also they do not show up on your weapons.
Nothing is straight forward. Its all murky and hidden behind mechanics that some of the DEVs dont even understand, How are we supposed to understand it?
The whole game and system is awful. SW: TOR is WAY better (system wise) {when i had playtime wise}
And thats about as far as i get for now. Im tired of the way this game works and how you are just running circles around the same content constantly all to increase your ability to...play that content over and over..
Inertia just means you can do Powerslides in you carrier!
I am Il Shadow and i approve these Shennanigans!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Boff abilities: Scrap them, they can't be balanced at this point and they are one of the three primary sources of imbalance in this game.
Doffs: They exacerbate the imbalance of the Boff abilities; lose them.
Captain abilities: These are the third branch of the imbalance triad; they need to go.
Skill Trees: They are redundant when you realize if you take them out and distribute the deficit amongst the consoles (and make a few new consoles), the skill tree would be completely obsolete and the consoles would be far more customizable than the skill tree (but that's probably why the skill tree exists, to sell respec tokens).
Now, what do we have left? Power subsystems, manual shield distribution, and gear. These things are already well-balanced on their own. You can heal shields by transferring power to the shield subsystem, you can increase weapon damage with more power, you get more speed with engines, and you get more sensors/cloak points with higher aux. Not a bad setup.
Consoles would need an update, one being the removal of all percentage modifiers. Others would need to be invented.
Armor/alloy consoles should be changed from resistance to simple linear hull point increase. That is to say, that resists would cease to exist. You increase your hull's survivability by laying on more and more armor. The thicker it is, the more of a beating it can take. The limitation of this being the number of engineering slots you can occupy.
Science consoles would obviously have many of them become useless. The remainders would be emitter amps (regen), field modulators (shield capacity), bio function monitors, stealth modules, and sensor probes. However, science could be the place to add new consoles such as a tractor beam console, adding a tractor beam to the ship.
Tactical consoles will no longer increase damage, but give tactical options. For instance, a directed energy distribution manifold would grant subsystem targeting and a energy type console would grant power efficiency in the form of lower power drain on the weapons subsystem. A variable geometry and a warhead yield console would grant dispersal patterns and torpedo spreads while specific torpedo types would provide higher yield warheads for the projectile type.
Speaking of torpedoes, every ship should have a fixed number of dedicated torpedo/mine slots (in addition to the existing slots which would become energy weapon only). They would be limited in quantity. Torpedoes would come in stacks of specific quantities (e.g. 10 tricobalts, 60 photon, 40 quantum) and mines would follow a similar pattern. When they're used up, you have to go to a star base to rearm. Shields would no longer have a resistance to torpedoes, hence the limited ammo and dedicated slots.
The leveling system would have to be revamped since there's no skill tree anymore, thus there is no ranks. You're a captain from the start to the end. The replacement is a rep system somewhat like the existing system, however, it would be strictly for accessing higher MK tiers of ships and gear. Every type of mission gives a time-scaled amount of rep points, so you can play whatever content you like. This broadens the way a player can build up their captain; you can build up your rep purely on foundry missions, STF's, or story missions. The player chooses what kind of history their captain has. So you can have a dozen Federation captains, but none of them would have the same history for their starfleet career.
Go here and show your support for a better Foundry!
Only a minority of players have these Uberbuff settings, the majority of players are still struggling to match the elitist DPS plague that believe the game most suit them and TRIBBLE the vast majority of players.
Boff abilities: Scrap them, they can't be balanced at this point and they are one of the three primary sources of imbalance in this game.
Doffs: They exacerbate the imbalance of the Boff abilities; lose them.
Captain abilities: These are the third branch of the imbalance triad; they need to go.
Skill Trees: They are redundant when you realize if you take them out and distribute the deficit amongst the consoles (and make a few new consoles), the skill tree would be completely obsolete and the consoles would be far more customizable than the skill tree (but that's probably why the skill tree exists, to sell respec tokens).
Now, what do we have left? Power subsystems, manual shield distribution, and gear. These things are already well-balanced on their own. You can heal shields by transferring power to the shield subsystem, you can increase weapon damage with more power, you get more speed with engines, and you get more sensors/cloak points with higher aux. Not a bad setup.
Consoles would need an update, one being the removal of all percentage modifiers. Others would need to be invented.
Armor/alloy consoles should be changed from resistance to simple linear hull point increase. That is to say, that resists would cease to exist. You increase your hull's survivability by laying on more and more armor. The thicker it is, the more of a beating it can take. The limitation of this being the number of engineering slots you can occupy.
Science consoles would obviously have many of them become useless. The remainders would be emitter amps (regen), field modulators (shield capacity), bio function monitors, stealth modules, and sensor probes. However, science could be the place to add new consoles such as a tractor beam console, adding a tractor beam to the ship.
Tactical consoles will no longer increase damage, but give tactical options. For instance, a directed energy distribution manifold would grant subsystem targeting and a energy type console would grant power efficiency in the form of lower power drain on the weapons subsystem. A variable geometry and a warhead yield console would grant dispersal patterns and torpedo spreads while specific torpedo types would provide higher yield warheads for the projectile type.
Speaking of torpedoes, every ship should have a fixed number of dedicated torpedo/mine slots (in addition to the existing slots which would become energy weapon only). They would be limited in quantity. Torpedoes would come in stacks of specific quantities (e.g. 10 tricobalts, 60 photon, 40 quantum) and mines would follow a similar pattern. When they're used up, you have to go to a star base to rearm. Shields would no longer have a resistance to torpedoes, hence the limited ammo and dedicated slots.
The leveling system would have to be revamped since there's no skill tree anymore, thus there is no ranks. You're a captain from the start to the end. The replacement is a rep system somewhat like the existing system, however, it would be strictly for accessing higher MK tiers of ships and gear. Every type of mission gives a time-scaled amount of rep points, so you can play whatever content you like. This broadens the way a player can build up their captain; you can build up your rep purely on foundry missions, STF's, or story missions. The player chooses what kind of history their captain has. So you can have a dozen Federation captains, but none of them would have the same history for their starfleet career.
My... gods... that... would... be... AMAZING. Of course, that means a fairly large buff to torpedoes... and where do Bridge Officers fit into all of this, now that they don't fire off skills?
You know what might help Science? Let the damage that Proton weapons do be determined by Exotic Particle skill. That would at least give them an alternative to stacking tactical consoles. The entire Dyson rep seems to be geared towards science officers anyway. I can dream...
Why is DPS so out of control in this game? Three things: Critical Chance, Antiproton, and Romulans.
Crit is completely unbalanced at the moment. The new Spire consoles just made the problem worse... I'm hitting above 20% with my engineer and my tactical, and that's largely because I've spent so much time trying to get that little number higher. Now, crit chance isn't much of a problem with my Tactical, because he uses Phasers, but...
Antiprotons are another reason why things are so unbalanced right now. As I mentioned before, my Tactical hits around 13k DPS, which is pretty decent, and lets me clip through things at a fairly rapid pace. It is my understanding that, that sort of DPS used to be considered "great." Now? It's mediocre. My engineer hits 20k on a bad run, with 25k+ being the norm if I run with people who know what they're doing. That's insane. The problem is that he uses antiproton, coupled with a high crit chance and fire at will, meaning I'm critting nearly half of the shots I land, and all those shots do insane damage. This problem is made worse by...
Romulans. Green-blooded hob-goblins. My science romulan, that does terrible DPS? Without even trying, I've hit 13% crit chance. He's liberated borg too, so he doesn't have the innate crit chance. This is achieved through bridge officers alone, too; no consoles besides the Assimlated are used to achieve this crit chance, and the assimlated is used more for the other bonuses. If I tried, I'm certain that I could hit 30% crit chance, or at least close to that, on my new tactical romulan who will be using romulan plasma arrays and a scimitar. That's too much.
So what's the solution? Cryptic likely won't chance the mechanics of the game at all, and Romulans are certainly here to stay, as are their boffs. So what do we do? Up the difficulty of STFs. Create new "Nightmare" level STFs, where enemies deal double damage and have triple the health. Heck, this might give science characters something to do, as enemies that deadly might actually need to be controlled and drained out. This will give min/maxed characters a place to play, and the guys on the lower end of the DPS spectrum won't be bothered.
Sardak (Science Officer): Captain of a 23k DPS R'Mor Temporal Science Vessel, R.R.W. Vathos Odan Brota (Science Officer): Captain of a 28k DPS Scryer Intel Science Vessel, U.S.S. Kepler Patiently waiting for a Romulan Science Vessel
So what's the solution? Cryptic likely won't chance the mechanics of the game at all, and Romulans are certainly here to stay, as are their boffs. So what do we do? Up the difficulty of STFs. Create new "Nightmare" level STFs, where enemies deal double damage and have triple the health. Heck, this might give science characters something to do, as enemies that deadly might actually need to be controlled and drained out. This will give min/maxed characters a place to play, and the guys on the lower end of the DPS spectrum won't be bothered.
So we keep playing the same old STFs over and over again? And that is until their greed comes again and they launch a new Set for the "Nightmare" that deals double damage against borgs and double resistance against borgs..
What we need is a lot (not just 2 or 3 raids) of challenge quests in PVE, they need to fix PVP and they need to STOP with the power creep. With out that, anything they do is going to be a temporary fix.
BUT, overpower ships, overpower consoles and I win buttons is what ppl want and what they want to paid for. Players that spend mony on their Star Trek favourite ships or uniform are long gone in this game, the population that Cryptis wants is the one they have, and they dont want this game to be a challenge if they can paid for that.
My... gods... that... would... be... AMAZING. Of course, that means a fairly large buff to torpedoes... and where do Bridge Officers fit into all of this, now that they don't fire off skills?
Boffs are what they've always been for in Star Trek, away missions. Though, I'd think it to be better that the captain does not lead the away mission in person(Though the captain would be used for purely RP elements), but does command the ground team. That way, it would be possible to control one Boff at a time and switch at will. You could also provide a list of rules for each AI Boff to perform that are triggered when certain criteria are met (e.g. ally health below 25%, use vascular regenerator).
In space, they're just redundant since you're performing all of their duties manually anyway.
Go here and show your support for a better Foundry!
Speaking of torpedoes, every ship should have a fixed number of dedicated torpedo/mine slots (in addition to the existing slots which would become energy weapon only). They would be limited in quantity. Torpedoes would come in stacks of specific quantities (e.g. 10 tricobalts, 60 photon, 40 quantum) and mines would follow a similar pattern. When they're used up, you have to go to a star base to rearm. Shields would no longer have a resistance to torpedoes, hence the limited ammo and dedicated slots.
This is probably the worst idea I've ever heard. Talk about putting a leash on your players. You don't want players to frustratingly have to limp home to Spacedock in the middle of a mission; that's just a frustrating time sink.
Folks, STO isn't the only game where you can min-max for DPS and rancor-roll your way to victory. That said, I've seen quite a few DPS-monkey Scimitar and Defiant pilots go pop in elite STFs while my "sub-optimal" tactical Odyssey is still there putting out steady damage and taking its licks in return.
In any game in the world, the DPS option will be the fastest and easiest. Someone will always find a way to get around mechanics that encourage crowd control. You can change the mechanics of STO to whatever you want and that will still be the case. Just roll with it.
The artist formerly known as PlanetofHats.
Actual join date: Open beta, 2009ish.
So what's the solution? Cryptic likely won't chance the mechanics of the game at all, and Romulans are certainly here to stay, as are their boffs. So what do we do? Up the difficulty of STFs. Create new "Nightmare" level STFs, where enemies deal double damage and have triple the health. Heck, this might give science characters something to do, as enemies that deadly might actually need to be controlled and drained out. This will give min/maxed characters a place to play, and the guys on the lower end of the DPS spectrum won't be bothered.
NPCs would be far more deadly is Cryptic actually gave them better abilities to use. Those FAW spamming Scimitars would quickly get into trouble if the AI threw a good feedback pulse back at them, and I'm not talking the 0 skill specced into it kind. Most NPCs except maybe the Voth, make poor or no use of abilities.
Science is also not completely broken and making radical changes like the one a couple of posts above this one would make things worse. A lot of science skills need to be given their teeth back, but only for people that actually spec into them heavily, and take out the tac buffs to them. If I have spent 200+ skill points on a sci skill, I actually want the person on the receiving side to feel the effect. I shouldn't need to use tac boff abilities to enhance sci skills, that is just plain wrong.
There are so many escorts with Lt Cmdr sci boffs, sci ships really don't have a place in PVE anymore. My Fleet Dhelan is using a2b to spam dofffed, but unspecced grav well 1 and tbr 1 at global cooldown and it does the crowd control job quite fine in pve, and is still putting out 5 tac console DHC damage at the same time. The way most PVE in STO is designed, the only sci ships that are somewhat useful are those that can contribute decent dps, like the Vesta or this new ship.
I think PVE is too easy and if some changes were made conventional sci ships and healers could be more useful, right now all that matters is damage. If NPCs were given more boff abilities some might complain, but I think it would be more fun and you might need sci ships to debuff them or heal you.
This is probably the worst idea I've ever heard. Talk about putting a leash on your players. You don't want players to frustratingly have to limp home to Spacedock in the middle of a mission; that's just a frustrating time sink.
In the middle of the mission? How many torpedoes do you plan to fire during a mission, 1,000? If we're assuming that a ship would have its standard allotment of weapon slots, with an additional set of torpedo slots, and shields no longer having a resistance to torpedoes, this would be a rational way to balance them and create a heuristic cost to the player to use their limited torpedoes efficiently. If you're going to spam torpedoes at random, sure you're going to run into issues. If you use them strategically, they'll last the whole mission. Having an infinite supply of torpedoes just diminishes their utility. But if you make them more powerful and put a limit on how many you can carry, they become a precious commodity that you need to conserve at times when they're really needed.
Go here and show your support for a better Foundry!
Yep - those who wanted an 'I win' button actually got what they wanted, and that's sad.
This is probably why I, personally, don't see as many of these stupid OP Scimitars in 'Storming the Spire' or 'The Breach' as ISE.
I can definitely relate to the frustration here. One thing I would like to point out though that it's been stated that many of the STF's and NPCs of old are being refactored just like the Undine and Terradome. The Voth have shown that Cryptic is not adverse to beefing up their NPC difficulty, but more inclined to do so in baby steps. I'm hoping that the next season or two will deliver us a better challenge for those that have been screaming for it in the form of new STFs specifically tuned for the level of gear that we all built up. Maybe in a year the argument on the forums is whether the newest content is too hard for new players.
Unfortunately, the people who buy cosmetic items are simply not enough to support a F2P game, though I wish it was. Many a F2P games have gone under trying to adhere to "Cosmetic Only" income model. For the most part, the C Store items have not been P2Win. Though the Lobi store and Locktery boxes is definitely another story altogether. Not sure what to tell you on that one except all of those game changing items are commonly found on the exchange, albeit at rather disturbing prices.
umm.. you do realize the voth are really the fed mirror universe (AI wise) and the ships are also practically copy/paste with new skins and a different ability put on them than the mirror universe ships right?
Cryptic has had the challenging AI in this game for years they just don't put it on the NPCs.
The mirror universe event was, up until the voth came in, the only time the AI fought remotely well. They just died too fast because of their laughably low HP and resists.
umm.. you do realize the voth are really the fed mirror universe (AI wise) and the ships are also practically copy/paste with new skins and a different ability put on them than the mirror universe ships right?
Cryptic has had the challenging AI in this game for years they just don't put it on the NPCs.
The mirror universe event was, up until the voth came in, the only time the AI fought remotely well. They just died too fast because of their laughably low HP and resists.
While we may disagree that the AI is relatively the same, the toolset is definitely not. NPC difficulty cannot exist without both being tuned appropriately. At one point in time prior to F2P, I remember the MU ships being less trigger happy with their abilities, so at the very least, they did get a balance pass somewhere.
However, going back to the OP and Sci in general;
I definitely agree that Sci needs more loving in the core mechanic area for scalability. My hope is when PVP is being rebalanced, Cryptic might have to rework either Tactical play or Science play to work out the fragfest there. Almost assuredly, this would trickle down elsewhere.
Concerning the gimicky consoles, I really dislike having to devote 30% or more of my console slots to get only a few abilities back which all seem to share a 20 sec CD and have 3 min CD on their own right. There's really not enough ROI on these consoles when comparing them to their stat boosting counterparts. A number of those abilities would truly make a Sci character shine if they could be easily fit and further define the intended roles of a ship. Especially considering nearly all of them scale off of science skills or aux.
Which is why I contend that these consoles need to be made devices instead. As for device slots, you could either make all ships have 3 slots or keep escorts at 2 slots, switch cruisers to 3, and bump science ships to 4.
WHAT!!!! Are you insane? only 2 or 3 consoles of a certain type? NO. GOSH NO!!!!!!
A2B doffs only work once on any boff abiltiy? Um no?
I only proposed the limit on consoles to allow more console space. I do however like the idea the poster in my second quote proposed.
So making technicians similar to photonic officer would be a bad thing? Well other than just having all abilities on a 15 sec cooldown all the time impossible. If you really need the extremely reduced cooldown there is photonic officer you can combine with it.
While we may disagree that the AI is relatively the same, the toolset is definitely not. NPC difficulty cannot exist without both being tuned appropriately. At one point in time prior to F2P, I remember the MU ships being less trigger happy with their abilities, so at the very least, they did get a balance pass somewhere.
However, going back to the OP and Sci in general;
I definitely agree that Sci needs more loving in the core mechanic area for scalability. My hope is when PVP is being rebalanced, Cryptic might have to rework either Tactical play or Science play to work out the fragfest there. Almost assuredly, this would trickle down elsewhere.
Concerning the gimicky consoles, I really dislike having to devote 30% or more of my console slots to get only a few abilities back which all seem to share a 20 sec CD and have 3 min CD on their own right. There's really not enough ROI on these consoles when comparing them to their stat boosting counterparts. A number of those abilities would truly make a Sci character shine if they could be easily fit and further define the intended roles of a ship. Especially considering nearly all of them scale off of science skills or aux.
Which is why I contend that these consoles need to be made devices instead. As for device slots, you could either make all ships have 3 slots or keep escorts at 2 slots, switch cruisers to 3, and bump science ships to 4.
I only proposed the limit on consoles to allow more console space. I do however like the idea the poster in my second quote proposed.
So making technicians similar to photonic officer would be a bad thing? Well other than just having all abilities on a 15 sec cooldown all the time impossible. If you really need the extremely reduced cooldown there is photonic officer you can combine with it.
I really like this idea. It gets my vote.
I don't really see a problem with the current console and aux2bat cool down, could you maybe tell me what you think is wrong with them?
umm.. you do realize the voth are really the fed mirror universe (AI wise) and the ships are also practically copy/paste with new skins and a different ability put on them than the mirror universe ships right?
The Voth are zero parts copy/paste. Their AIs are custom, their mechanics are custom - they were designed from the ground up to pose problems that damage alone could not solve, and in some cases problems that damage made harder (reflective hard shields). Any similarities they have to the behavior of other critter groups are purely coincidental.
Jeff "Adjudicator Hawk" Hamilton
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
In regards to the OP's premise, I understand where you're coming from. Damage is just one tool in any given ship's toolkit, but it's important to all ships - no content in the game is beaten by solely by healing NPCs, for instance, or solely by controlling them, but a large swath of our content can be beaten solely by damaging NPCs.
The most interesting content poses multiple "questions" to players, requiring them to "answer" each one in turn. If we throw an AoE shield DoT whose magnitude increases every tick at you, that's a question for which the best answer is a dispel, while the second-best answer is killing the source of it before the DoT kills you.
Science Bridge Officer Skills in general answer all of the questions that aren't just "How much damage can you do?" Power Drain, Repel, Holds, and other Crowd Control effects are all available from Science abilities, along with support powers like dispels and heals. These abilities' power levels scale inversely with the the power of damage in the game - as encounter times become shorter and shorter due to refined strategies and gear resulting in higher player damage, less damage and fewer mechanics need to be mitigated by control and support abilities.
I would actually posit that the Science Bridge Officer abilities are all pretty darn satisfying to use and do their function quite well, but that in PvE content, our NPCs just aren't tough enough to "require" control/support roles, and thus Science abilites can end up feeling extraneous. Many many players enjoy flying Science boats, however, and my own AoE control build I find extremely fun to play (anecdotally), even if it's not the most efficient in terms of rewards per minute.
There's no real conclusion here - I'm just musing in public. TLDR; Science is still fun; it's okay if Science ships get a little better at dealing damage; it's also fun when NPCs pose problems that aren't solved just by shooting them a lot.
Jeff "Adjudicator Hawk" Hamilton
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
The Voth are zero parts copy/paste. Their AIs are custom, their mechanics are custom - they were designed from the ground up to pose problems that damage alone could not solve, and in some cases problems that damage made harder (reflective hard shields). Any similarities they have to the behavior of other critter groups are purely coincidental.
Hawk, it's just a case that damage is so out of control in this game...that it's entirely reasonable that players would not have noticed that. They wham-bam-boom the Voth just like they do anything else...there's just so much damage being pumped out by players. We lean on our spacebars with our thumbs...things die...um yay?
But, one can see where previously Daniel and Geko were going and where D'Angelo and Geko are going to continue to go...
...but yeah, definitely that!
this is the problem. thats why sci ships and sci captains look silly and ineffective in the pve context. but they are the key to victory when you use them against other player ships.
seriously, pick any npc to start with, lower its hull hitpoints from 500,000 to 40,000, give it 5-8 weapon, give it subsystem power thats not 50/50/50/50, and give it between 6 and 12 station powers, including duplicate skills, with 9 points put into them so they can cycle something like FAW or EPtS like a player ships can. give them tactical team and have them use it only when a shield faceing goes down. if they are tractored have them use PH. change mission so you dont face 5 ships at once and have an average of 20 full size ship kills at the end.
i dont care if a new difficulty level has to be created were these only show up, but these kind of npcs are what this game needs. asid from the story part of missions, the pve is barrly playable as it is now because of how fail all npcs are. and gimmicks that drag out a fight like constant weapon offline or troll invinca shield facing are not making it better. pve will always be terrible unless npcs play by the same rules, and compete with player ships factor by factor.
there wouldn't be complaints about tanks and sci being useless in pve, they would be just as useful a thing as they are in pvp. facing npcs like this would actually prepare people for playing pvp too
I would actually posit that the Science Bridge Officer abilities are all pretty darn satisfying to use and do their function quite well, but that in PvE content, our NPCs just aren't tough enough to "require" control/support roles, and thus Science abilites can end up feeling extraneous. Many many players enjoy flying Science boats, however, and my own AoE control build I find extremely fun to play (anecdotally), even if it's not the most efficient in terms of rewards per minute.
There's no real conclusion here - I'm just musing in public. TLDR; Science is still fun; it's okay if Science ships get a little better at dealing damage; it's also fun when NPCs pose problems that aren't solved just by shooting them a lot.
I love my science ships, but like you've mentioned and others have said, there's no reason for them. You mentioned that the NPCS aren't just tough enough to "require" control/support roles. But as others have mentioned, unless you're soloing NPCs in missions, by end game, by the time you go to pop your control/support abilities, everything is gead because the DPS monkeys have already cleared the screen.
Case in point, I was doing an ISE the other day, with two scimitars. Used to be you needed a strategy to it, take the generators down to 20% first, pop them all at once, then start on the actual generator and a ship with grav well to huddle up the nano-spheres. Now the two scimitars literally just start chewing through everything, didn't even care that the spheres were coming. By the time I got in range to grav well the spheres (I wasn't that far away either) the main generator was already down to 30% and the nano-spheres weren't anywhere close.
By the time my grav well wore off, the two scimitars had already defeated the two spheres that pop in on top of the generator, and were already half way through the grav well'd group of spheres.
Two ships did all that. So how much fun was it for me, in my AoE Control build, to be worthless? Everything in the end game is about DPS. The only two things I know that aren't fully DPS in this game is a bit of the Breech, a bit of the Storming the Spire, and a bit of the Elachi Gate mission.
Hell the Gate mission is proof in point of the weakness of end game NPCs. Two ships can totally decimate the incoming Elachi ships, while three do nothing but sit on a few points and spam the "F" button to speed up the take over timer.
So it's fun solo, but once you go PvE end game, it's all about DPS. If you don't bother with DPS, you're overshadowed and practically worthless in the game. Hell, it's almost comically regular now that if you do anything end game, someone is parcing it, and if you don't do X dps, you're concidered worthless to the team.
Funny part about this is that there were so many crying eyes of science powers over the years that you pretty much can be a debuff player in pve only or energy stealer up to a point. The science powers just have too many handicaps where as dps there is no handicap on it other than diminishing returns on engineering consoles.
Space its a lot worse now for ground you can take issues like the anesthesine gas where it triggers a resist to it before its actually suppossed to be over with. With doffs and spec I've gotten it where it says it should last close to 30 seconds but no matter what you can only have it affect a target for a maximum of 10 seconds.
The true problem isn't gimmick consoles/built in dps but the fact that only a small fraction of science powers are usable which usually boils down to heals or damage resistance then the others are so heavily handicapped and doesn't take much to get a majority of the effects resisted that you make it a tactical players game. Its just a matter of if you can get enough people to cry with you... you can get it nerfed.
It is sad to see Cryptic unable and unwilling to fix science abilities (Boff abilities) and instead focusing on making science ships as escort-like as possible to bring them into the dps rat race.
When you think about how people setup their skills, you might as well just buy an escort or a science ship. You cannot make an effective tactical-science ship. Most people put their skills in engineering-tactical or engineering-science, for they will give you strong defense and offensive traits. If you create a tactical-science or science-tactical, you will lose out on the defensive capabilities granted by engineering.
If Cryptic really wanted to make science effective, they would roll back some of the nerfs they made to the science skills. Science-space and science-ground are horrible.
The Voth are a joke if I fight them in anything but my tac the battle just drags on. With my tac the battle is over in like 5 seconds because of the raw damage output. playing as a sci in pve is boring because you can do very little your powers are either wasted, or annoy other players because it throws npc's out of position or the npc is completely immune to them. as for pvp I know sci has a role there but I hate pvp. it would be nice if sci powers worked best for a sci and not for a tac who just boosts their dmg to insane lvls. all powers need to be balanced to the class the captain is. like dmg boosts only applies to weapons, heals are boosted if you are an engineer same with dmg migrating, and CC powers and those boosted by scis but who knows. till then tac is king in pve.
Comments
funny enough i use all of them the Multidimensional Wave-Function Analysis Module works great whit Reverse Shield Polarity and Feedback Pulse to make your opponent damage themselves more that you. (work really good on cubes in KASE)
to than outlast them while your fighters and photonic fleet peck away at them you use the Sympathetic Fermion Transceiver, Transfer Shield Strength and Scattering Field.
should that fail you can still activate Quantum Focused Shield Bubble to make yourself invulnerable and flee(Evasive Maneuvers).
you need to have the Quantum Field Focus Controller equipped to do this but that still has a limited use when combined whit Tachyon Beam.
your main science ablities are still Tyken's Rift and Gravity Well but it provides a fun way to fill up some of the lower skill slots.
this is why i advocate having different skill tree's for each class and faction. science is all about the boff abilities. that's one of the reasons why science was OP at launch and why cryptic is afraid of making these abilities (to) good nowadays. if tacts can invest in the same skills they can make gravity well really good for them while they shouldn't be able to. by making each class have different skill trees science can have killer boff abilities while the other classes can't abuse them to much.
First of all it's not even a crafting system! It's just a dumb game system that's nothing more than a glorified slots machine.
second the "special items" you hope will be the saving the saving grace are messed up to.
Science Really should be about science, Stats should effect science abilities. I almost never put skill points in science because it doesn't do any good. Why can't I buff Photonic Fleet like I used to. I had my photonic fleet so skilled I had 2 of them out at once before.
Not really. Damage output has not really changed that much..what has changed is the ability of the high dps ships to survive, thus enabling them to quickly add up their high burst damage into monstrous dps.
How do they survive to stack that damage up?
1-Tactical Team automatically balancing shields.
2- Attack Omega:
+10% All Damage strength for 15 sec
+15 All Damage resistance for 15 sec
+40% Flight Speed strength for 5 sec
+40% Flight Turn Rate strength for 5 sec
Immunity to Movement Debuffs for 15 sec
Immunity to Movement Debuffs for 15 sec
+18% Defense strength for 5 sec
Immunity to Teleport for 15 sec
LOOK at that. Attack Omega gives damage boost and about 85% strength of: resists of polarize hull or aux to dampeners, the speed boost of emergency to engines AND their full immunities (of polarizeHull and aux2damp)... and on top of all that it gives a big boost to defense rating (which is maxed out since the speed boost always brings the ship up to 80% def rating just be speed alone..even if you only have 25 engine power).
3- In Pre-F2P, turn rate of a ship was determined by its aux power. Now its not. The impact in survivability of turning to give a different shield facing to incoming fire and the gain of what was once aux power into weapons/engines/shields is obvious.
(I miss this a lot though... you could pull some really fun and amazing maneuvers by spiking your aux by draining engine power for it and turning and sliding).
4- Engineering and science slots can be used for healing/tanking. Since Omega provides all the movement,defense,turn rate, resists and immunities. Due to the nature of omega and dual-omega cycling (the common use of it), ships with two lt. cmdr tactical slots find themselves only having to 'tank' for 15 seconds out of an entire minute.
15 seconds under omega defense boosts, 15 seconds downtime till the 2nd omega can be used in the dual cycle. 15 seconds to 'tank' using 2x lt slots and 1 ensign slot of sci/engineer mix. A feat easily achieved by the escort's high natural defense rating due to their speed.
So.. if you took away tac team's shield autobalance, aux power determined turn rate and omega was:
+10% All Damage strength for 15 sec
+18% Defense strength for 5 sec
+40% Flight Speed strength for 5 sec
Immunity to Teleport for 15 sec
You would quickly see escorts losing a significant amount of overall dps because they would need to fly their ships in hit and run attacks... just like they used to in pre-F2P.
BUT.. this is not a nerf to them. Tac team not balancing shields affects all ships, including npcs. Moving shield power manually or with a macro cannot match tac team autobalance speed. Its hard coded (Ive tried with a macro just to see if I could save myself an ensign slot in tac station... there is a limit to how fast you can input the balance all shields command).
The result would be escorts that are DEADLY if they focus on hitting one shield facing...by using their superior speed and turn rate to keep firing on the facing they hammer. All this they must do while protecting themselves from holds/disables with their Engineer and Science abilities..and having at least one heal in case of emergency.
There is a reason why this game has 3 kinds of shields. Each shield type was 'best' for certain ships. Escorts benefited from covariants and their high HP buffer. Cruisers benefited from the Resilient shields since it cut down bleedthrough damage. Science ships worked great with regenerative shields since sci ships had the highest shield modifier and regen-boosting abilities.
Back then a sci ship dual cycling transfer shield strength 3 was HARD to get one shield facing down even when 2 escorts were hammering him... but when they got through the sci ship's weak hull and weak engineering consoles meant it died fast.
Back then a cruiser's shields were difficult to bring down and then its hull was just as hard to get to zero...all because engineering abilities focus on resists and instant healing of both shield and hull and both can be dual cycled. Back then Cruisers also had the highest overall DPS because they had the power bonuses to feed 6 to 8 beam arrays and fire nonstop thanks to their tanking power.
Back then an escort was terrifying to fight against because the little SOB's flew circles around you and hit you HARD as hell and then ran off. They were very hard to catch (holds/disables) because they spec'd to prevent that weakness... but if they timed their attacks badly or got too greedy and stayed longer than they shouldve after their defensive abilities wore off... they were in trouble (but not without means of escape.. you could break a tractor with evasive maneuvers for example). Escorts back then were like those little gnats whose purpose in life is to kamikaze against your eyeballs.. except these gnats had switchblades and were meth'd up.
...because it was science and it was working. It could not be allowed.
Problems with this game.
Percentages.
Diminshing Returns. (with Percentages)
Diminishing Returns. (in General)_
Unclear Skills.
Useless Skills.
Overblown Resists.
Overblown Abilties.
No real place for certain things.
And thats just the start.
I mean what does +99 really do.
What exactly is the return diminished by?
The math behind this game is far fetched and you need a math degree to sort it all out.
Then you have all these things that do exact amounts.
So you have.....
+ Exact Amounts
+ Arbitrary Numbers
+ Arbitrary Percentages
VS.
- Exact Numbers
- Arbitrary Numbers
- Arbitrary Percentages
The way it currently works is all wrong. Resists VS. Buffs. Buffs always work better than Resists. Until you overblow the Resists ( Zombie Cruisers).
A +31.9 Tac Console should negate a + 31.9 Eng console and Vice Versa.
Things getting shifted around with priorities is silly.
The entirety of the way the skill and console systems work should be changed, along with the Tooltips on weapons and such.
For examply you have +Crit type consoles, they dont always show up in your base on your ship. Also they do not show up on your weapons.
Nothing is straight forward. Its all murky and hidden behind mechanics that some of the DEVs dont even understand, How are we supposed to understand it?
The whole game and system is awful. SW: TOR is WAY better (system wise) {when i had playtime wise}
And thats about as far as i get for now. Im tired of the way this game works and how you are just running circles around the same content constantly all to increase your ability to...play that content over and over..
I am Il Shadow and i approve these Shennanigans!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Doffs: They exacerbate the imbalance of the Boff abilities; lose them.
Captain abilities: These are the third branch of the imbalance triad; they need to go.
Skill Trees: They are redundant when you realize if you take them out and distribute the deficit amongst the consoles (and make a few new consoles), the skill tree would be completely obsolete and the consoles would be far more customizable than the skill tree (but that's probably why the skill tree exists, to sell respec tokens).
Now, what do we have left? Power subsystems, manual shield distribution, and gear. These things are already well-balanced on their own. You can heal shields by transferring power to the shield subsystem, you can increase weapon damage with more power, you get more speed with engines, and you get more sensors/cloak points with higher aux. Not a bad setup.
Consoles would need an update, one being the removal of all percentage modifiers. Others would need to be invented.
Armor/alloy consoles should be changed from resistance to simple linear hull point increase. That is to say, that resists would cease to exist. You increase your hull's survivability by laying on more and more armor. The thicker it is, the more of a beating it can take. The limitation of this being the number of engineering slots you can occupy.
Science consoles would obviously have many of them become useless. The remainders would be emitter amps (regen), field modulators (shield capacity), bio function monitors, stealth modules, and sensor probes. However, science could be the place to add new consoles such as a tractor beam console, adding a tractor beam to the ship.
Tactical consoles will no longer increase damage, but give tactical options. For instance, a directed energy distribution manifold would grant subsystem targeting and a energy type console would grant power efficiency in the form of lower power drain on the weapons subsystem. A variable geometry and a warhead yield console would grant dispersal patterns and torpedo spreads while specific torpedo types would provide higher yield warheads for the projectile type.
Speaking of torpedoes, every ship should have a fixed number of dedicated torpedo/mine slots (in addition to the existing slots which would become energy weapon only). They would be limited in quantity. Torpedoes would come in stacks of specific quantities (e.g. 10 tricobalts, 60 photon, 40 quantum) and mines would follow a similar pattern. When they're used up, you have to go to a star base to rearm. Shields would no longer have a resistance to torpedoes, hence the limited ammo and dedicated slots.
The leveling system would have to be revamped since there's no skill tree anymore, thus there is no ranks. You're a captain from the start to the end. The replacement is a rep system somewhat like the existing system, however, it would be strictly for accessing higher MK tiers of ships and gear. Every type of mission gives a time-scaled amount of rep points, so you can play whatever content you like. This broadens the way a player can build up their captain; you can build up your rep purely on foundry missions, STF's, or story missions. The player chooses what kind of history their captain has. So you can have a dozen Federation captains, but none of them would have the same history for their starfleet career.
My... gods... that... would... be... AMAZING. Of course, that means a fairly large buff to torpedoes... and where do Bridge Officers fit into all of this, now that they don't fire off skills?
Why is DPS so out of control in this game? Three things: Critical Chance, Antiproton, and Romulans.
Crit is completely unbalanced at the moment. The new Spire consoles just made the problem worse... I'm hitting above 20% with my engineer and my tactical, and that's largely because I've spent so much time trying to get that little number higher. Now, crit chance isn't much of a problem with my Tactical, because he uses Phasers, but...
Antiprotons are another reason why things are so unbalanced right now. As I mentioned before, my Tactical hits around 13k DPS, which is pretty decent, and lets me clip through things at a fairly rapid pace. It is my understanding that, that sort of DPS used to be considered "great." Now? It's mediocre. My engineer hits 20k on a bad run, with 25k+ being the norm if I run with people who know what they're doing. That's insane. The problem is that he uses antiproton, coupled with a high crit chance and fire at will, meaning I'm critting nearly half of the shots I land, and all those shots do insane damage. This problem is made worse by...
Romulans. Green-blooded hob-goblins. My science romulan, that does terrible DPS? Without even trying, I've hit 13% crit chance. He's liberated borg too, so he doesn't have the innate crit chance. This is achieved through bridge officers alone, too; no consoles besides the Assimlated are used to achieve this crit chance, and the assimlated is used more for the other bonuses. If I tried, I'm certain that I could hit 30% crit chance, or at least close to that, on my new tactical romulan who will be using romulan plasma arrays and a scimitar. That's too much.
So what's the solution? Cryptic likely won't chance the mechanics of the game at all, and Romulans are certainly here to stay, as are their boffs. So what do we do? Up the difficulty of STFs. Create new "Nightmare" level STFs, where enemies deal double damage and have triple the health. Heck, this might give science characters something to do, as enemies that deadly might actually need to be controlled and drained out. This will give min/maxed characters a place to play, and the guys on the lower end of the DPS spectrum won't be bothered.
Odan Brota (Science Officer): Captain of a 28k DPS Scryer Intel Science Vessel, U.S.S. Kepler
Patiently waiting for a Romulan Science Vessel
So we keep playing the same old STFs over and over again? And that is until their greed comes again and they launch a new Set for the "Nightmare" that deals double damage against borgs and double resistance against borgs..
What we need is a lot (not just 2 or 3 raids) of challenge quests in PVE, they need to fix PVP and they need to STOP with the power creep. With out that, anything they do is going to be a temporary fix.
BUT, overpower ships, overpower consoles and I win buttons is what ppl want and what they want to paid for. Players that spend mony on their Star Trek favourite ships or uniform are long gone in this game, the population that Cryptis wants is the one they have, and they dont want this game to be a challenge if they can paid for that.
Division Hispana
www.divisionhispana.com
Boffs are what they've always been for in Star Trek, away missions. Though, I'd think it to be better that the captain does not lead the away mission in person(Though the captain would be used for purely RP elements), but does command the ground team. That way, it would be possible to control one Boff at a time and switch at will. You could also provide a list of rules for each AI Boff to perform that are triggered when certain criteria are met (e.g. ally health below 25%, use vascular regenerator).
In space, they're just redundant since you're performing all of their duties manually anyway.
This is probably the worst idea I've ever heard. Talk about putting a leash on your players. You don't want players to frustratingly have to limp home to Spacedock in the middle of a mission; that's just a frustrating time sink.
Folks, STO isn't the only game where you can min-max for DPS and rancor-roll your way to victory. That said, I've seen quite a few DPS-monkey Scimitar and Defiant pilots go pop in elite STFs while my "sub-optimal" tactical Odyssey is still there putting out steady damage and taking its licks in return.
In any game in the world, the DPS option will be the fastest and easiest. Someone will always find a way to get around mechanics that encourage crowd control. You can change the mechanics of STO to whatever you want and that will still be the case. Just roll with it.
Actual join date: Open beta, 2009ish.
NPCs would be far more deadly is Cryptic actually gave them better abilities to use. Those FAW spamming Scimitars would quickly get into trouble if the AI threw a good feedback pulse back at them, and I'm not talking the 0 skill specced into it kind. Most NPCs except maybe the Voth, make poor or no use of abilities.
Science is also not completely broken and making radical changes like the one a couple of posts above this one would make things worse. A lot of science skills need to be given their teeth back, but only for people that actually spec into them heavily, and take out the tac buffs to them. If I have spent 200+ skill points on a sci skill, I actually want the person on the receiving side to feel the effect. I shouldn't need to use tac boff abilities to enhance sci skills, that is just plain wrong.
I think PVE is too easy and if some changes were made conventional sci ships and healers could be more useful, right now all that matters is damage. If NPCs were given more boff abilities some might complain, but I think it would be more fun and you might need sci ships to debuff them or heal you.
In the middle of the mission? How many torpedoes do you plan to fire during a mission, 1,000? If we're assuming that a ship would have its standard allotment of weapon slots, with an additional set of torpedo slots, and shields no longer having a resistance to torpedoes, this would be a rational way to balance them and create a heuristic cost to the player to use their limited torpedoes efficiently. If you're going to spam torpedoes at random, sure you're going to run into issues. If you use them strategically, they'll last the whole mission. Having an infinite supply of torpedoes just diminishes their utility. But if you make them more powerful and put a limit on how many you can carry, they become a precious commodity that you need to conserve at times when they're really needed.
It might be better to simply ask that most NPCs that are worth using a sci ability on,wouldn't just happen to be all but immune to them.
Unfortunately, the people who buy cosmetic items are simply not enough to support a F2P game, though I wish it was. Many a F2P games have gone under trying to adhere to "Cosmetic Only" income model. For the most part, the C Store items have not been P2Win. Though the Lobi store and Locktery boxes is definitely another story altogether. Not sure what to tell you on that one except all of those game changing items are commonly found on the exchange, albeit at rather disturbing prices.
Cryptic has had the challenging AI in this game for years they just don't put it on the NPCs.
The mirror universe event was, up until the voth came in, the only time the AI fought remotely well. They just died too fast because of their laughably low HP and resists.
A2B doffs only work once on any boff abiltiy? Um no?
While we may disagree that the AI is relatively the same, the toolset is definitely not. NPC difficulty cannot exist without both being tuned appropriately. At one point in time prior to F2P, I remember the MU ships being less trigger happy with their abilities, so at the very least, they did get a balance pass somewhere.
However, going back to the OP and Sci in general;
I definitely agree that Sci needs more loving in the core mechanic area for scalability. My hope is when PVP is being rebalanced, Cryptic might have to rework either Tactical play or Science play to work out the fragfest there. Almost assuredly, this would trickle down elsewhere.
Concerning the gimicky consoles, I really dislike having to devote 30% or more of my console slots to get only a few abilities back which all seem to share a 20 sec CD and have 3 min CD on their own right. There's really not enough ROI on these consoles when comparing them to their stat boosting counterparts. A number of those abilities would truly make a Sci character shine if they could be easily fit and further define the intended roles of a ship. Especially considering nearly all of them scale off of science skills or aux.
Which is why I contend that these consoles need to be made devices instead. As for device slots, you could either make all ships have 3 slots or keep escorts at 2 slots, switch cruisers to 3, and bump science ships to 4.
I only proposed the limit on consoles to allow more console space. I do however like the idea the poster in my second quote proposed.
So making technicians similar to photonic officer would be a bad thing? Well other than just having all abilities on a 15 sec cooldown all the time impossible. If you really need the extremely reduced cooldown there is photonic officer you can combine with it.
I really like this idea. It gets my vote.
The Voth are zero parts copy/paste. Their AIs are custom, their mechanics are custom - they were designed from the ground up to pose problems that damage alone could not solve, and in some cases problems that damage made harder (reflective hard shields). Any similarities they have to the behavior of other critter groups are purely coincidental.
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
The most interesting content poses multiple "questions" to players, requiring them to "answer" each one in turn. If we throw an AoE shield DoT whose magnitude increases every tick at you, that's a question for which the best answer is a dispel, while the second-best answer is killing the source of it before the DoT kills you.
Science Bridge Officer Skills in general answer all of the questions that aren't just "How much damage can you do?" Power Drain, Repel, Holds, and other Crowd Control effects are all available from Science abilities, along with support powers like dispels and heals. These abilities' power levels scale inversely with the the power of damage in the game - as encounter times become shorter and shorter due to refined strategies and gear resulting in higher player damage, less damage and fewer mechanics need to be mitigated by control and support abilities.
I would actually posit that the Science Bridge Officer abilities are all pretty darn satisfying to use and do their function quite well, but that in PvE content, our NPCs just aren't tough enough to "require" control/support roles, and thus Science abilites can end up feeling extraneous. Many many players enjoy flying Science boats, however, and my own AoE control build I find extremely fun to play (anecdotally), even if it's not the most efficient in terms of rewards per minute.
There's no real conclusion here - I'm just musing in public. TLDR; Science is still fun; it's okay if Science ships get a little better at dealing damage; it's also fun when NPCs pose problems that aren't solved just by shooting them a lot.
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
Hawk, it's just a case that damage is so out of control in this game...that it's entirely reasonable that players would not have noticed that. They wham-bam-boom the Voth just like they do anything else...there's just so much damage being pumped out by players. We lean on our spacebars with our thumbs...things die...um yay?
This, this, this...this, this, this.
But, one can see where previously Daniel and Geko were going and where D'Angelo and Geko are going to continue to go...
...but yeah, definitely that!
this is the problem. thats why sci ships and sci captains look silly and ineffective in the pve context. but they are the key to victory when you use them against other player ships.
seriously, pick any npc to start with, lower its hull hitpoints from 500,000 to 40,000, give it 5-8 weapon, give it subsystem power thats not 50/50/50/50, and give it between 6 and 12 station powers, including duplicate skills, with 9 points put into them so they can cycle something like FAW or EPtS like a player ships can. give them tactical team and have them use it only when a shield faceing goes down. if they are tractored have them use PH. change mission so you dont face 5 ships at once and have an average of 20 full size ship kills at the end.
i dont care if a new difficulty level has to be created were these only show up, but these kind of npcs are what this game needs. asid from the story part of missions, the pve is barrly playable as it is now because of how fail all npcs are. and gimmicks that drag out a fight like constant weapon offline or troll invinca shield facing are not making it better. pve will always be terrible unless npcs play by the same rules, and compete with player ships factor by factor.
there wouldn't be complaints about tanks and sci being useless in pve, they would be just as useful a thing as they are in pvp. facing npcs like this would actually prepare people for playing pvp too
I love my science ships, but like you've mentioned and others have said, there's no reason for them. You mentioned that the NPCS aren't just tough enough to "require" control/support roles. But as others have mentioned, unless you're soloing NPCs in missions, by end game, by the time you go to pop your control/support abilities, everything is gead because the DPS monkeys have already cleared the screen.
Case in point, I was doing an ISE the other day, with two scimitars. Used to be you needed a strategy to it, take the generators down to 20% first, pop them all at once, then start on the actual generator and a ship with grav well to huddle up the nano-spheres. Now the two scimitars literally just start chewing through everything, didn't even care that the spheres were coming. By the time I got in range to grav well the spheres (I wasn't that far away either) the main generator was already down to 30% and the nano-spheres weren't anywhere close.
By the time my grav well wore off, the two scimitars had already defeated the two spheres that pop in on top of the generator, and were already half way through the grav well'd group of spheres.
Two ships did all that. So how much fun was it for me, in my AoE Control build, to be worthless? Everything in the end game is about DPS. The only two things I know that aren't fully DPS in this game is a bit of the Breech, a bit of the Storming the Spire, and a bit of the Elachi Gate mission.
Hell the Gate mission is proof in point of the weakness of end game NPCs. Two ships can totally decimate the incoming Elachi ships, while three do nothing but sit on a few points and spam the "F" button to speed up the take over timer.
So it's fun solo, but once you go PvE end game, it's all about DPS. If you don't bother with DPS, you're overshadowed and practically worthless in the game. Hell, it's almost comically regular now that if you do anything end game, someone is parcing it, and if you don't do X dps, you're concidered worthless to the team.
Space its a lot worse now for ground you can take issues like the anesthesine gas where it triggers a resist to it before its actually suppossed to be over with. With doffs and spec I've gotten it where it says it should last close to 30 seconds but no matter what you can only have it affect a target for a maximum of 10 seconds.
The true problem isn't gimmick consoles/built in dps but the fact that only a small fraction of science powers are usable which usually boils down to heals or damage resistance then the others are so heavily handicapped and doesn't take much to get a majority of the effects resisted that you make it a tactical players game. Its just a matter of if you can get enough people to cry with you... you can get it nerfed.
Tactical = DPS & Defensive Patterns
Engineering = Hull & Shields
Science = Heal, Support, & Light DPS
If Cryptic really wanted to make science effective, they would roll back some of the nerfs they made to the science skills. Science-space and science-ground are horrible.