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For once and for all: Overcapping
praxi5
Member Posts: 1,562 Arc User
Let's get down to the bottom of this, for once, and for all.
Is Weapons Power overcapping (having power levels above the 130 being displayed) working as intended? If so, why do Beams benefit whereas Cannons do not?
What's currently happening is that it's very very easy to have Weapons Power above 130 (Leech, EPtW, Aux to Batt, etc). As a result, Beam damage is being boosted more than it theoretically should, whereas Cannons are left in the dust as they are not benefiting at all, or are not nearly as much.
Is this working as intended? If not, what will the corrective action be? "Fixing" it so that Beam damage is correctly calculated, or boosting Cannon damage calculations so they are the same as Beams?
Is Weapons Power overcapping (having power levels above the 130 being displayed) working as intended? If so, why do Beams benefit whereas Cannons do not?
What's currently happening is that it's very very easy to have Weapons Power above 130 (Leech, EPtW, Aux to Batt, etc). As a result, Beam damage is being boosted more than it theoretically should, whereas Cannons are left in the dust as they are not benefiting at all, or are not nearly as much.
Is this working as intended? If not, what will the corrective action be? "Fixing" it so that Beam damage is correctly calculated, or boosting Cannon damage calculations so they are the same as Beams?
Post edited by praxi5 on
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There is no "invisible" cap
The "extra energy" fills in as you fire, speed dependant on eps transfer
Beams have a longer firing cycle then cannons thus the refill has an easier time.
That's about it without going into details
My PvE/PvP hybrid skill tree
We all know that is not how it works... that is how it was supposed to be working last I heard from a dev though.
If it did work that way beams would be hit the hardest as they would lock out the power drain from each one until the end of the cycle. (well how much would it really hurt when beams can overcap to 200+)
What needs to happen is the Current devs need to realize the launch devs understood things better then they did... and return the EPS based power drain from season 1. Power should be removed at the start of a cycle and return at EPS rate. This means any ship could push the mechanics by dedicating EPS consoles to power regen and give up Uni / Defense consoles to do it.
The first time they messed with power drain they completely messed the game up.
Blasphemy why should I have to spec into EPS and have EPS consoles for regen. Though I am sure TR/ES spammers would love this.
My PvE/PvP hybrid skill tree
The problem isnt the damage so much as the gameplay
Crusier design currently halfway reflects area-denial segment; they can make sphere of death all around them, and they can be really hard to kill even if you get past the firepower, so park them over a target and stay away. But they dont sit in one place and shoot stuff that comes to them, rather than chase targets down and engage in close combat. You could fix that by giving cruisers much much worse inertia, and if it took a long time to get moving and a long time to stop moving, they would be less of a factor in close combat scenarios and would be more about camping on a spot. But PVE maps are designed for moving from target to target as quickly as you can and ship mechanics have to reflect that or people will QQ.
There's a guy in the queues who runs an AtB Avenger with EPtE and APO on nearly full uptime, he flies faster than most escorts while spamming ball of death on everything in a 20k sphere. There's your problem.
/shifty eyes
My PvE/PvP hybrid skill tree
At this point you can sit at 115-125 with firing 8 beams simultaneously, i doubt this was supposed to work like that.
Anybody remember my arguments somewhat way back about AtB? The WTF are folks talking about low Aux/zero Aux? The videos...see...no low Aux/zero Aux? WTF are folks talking about? Then trying it on another toon...and...the hrmmm, this isn't consistent - cause this other guy I've got is having low Aux/zero Aux. Switching out BOFFs on that first toon - suddenly he was having low Aux/zero Aux. Later, without any changes - he was back not to having low Aux/zero Aux...while the other toon had consistently experienced it? Inconsistency...
Can't remember if it was a month ago, two months ago, whenever - but once again I was over in the Builds section arguing overcap with folks. The WTF are folks talking about dropping below 125? The videos...see...not dropping below 125 Weapon Power. WTF are folks talking about. Only this time, none of my toons did. There was no inconsistency on my end - just WTF are folks talking about? Then I did a Trait Respec on one of the guys - and - bam, suddenly he's working the way the folks I had been arguing with had been saying it worked - dropped well below 125 and EPS affected how fast it came back. Meanwhile, my other guys did not drop below 125? Inconsistency...
There's a bit of a difference between experiencing low/zero Aux with AtB...
There's a bit of a difference between Weapon Power dropping below 125 or not...
That both of the above can appear both ways - that's bugged...that inconsistency. Which unfortunately for me - leaves me wondering - what else is bugged that way? It's one of the main reasons that I've taken everything in this game less and less serious...cause how can one take it seriously never knowing if they're running a bugged boat or if the other guy is?
It's like back with the TIF discussions - my complaint being that it caused me to desync hard. Folks arguing OP or not, I'm just grumbling about the desync. One day out of the blue, no notes - never having the issues noticed with a comment from the devs - boom, no more desync issues (no changes on my part either).
In the end, it's been my thing...how can we argue stuff is OP or not - when we can't really be sure if it is working as intended when there are examples of things working in more ways than one?
If Cryptic got both AtB and overcapping working the same for everybody...then wheeeeeee...we could get into the discussions, eh? edit: Well, probably not me...I'd probably find some other bug or inconsistency to complain about.
Not originally but it does now, and it does it on purpose. Cryptic design over the last year has been all about making it easier to get more power into weapons.
engineer EPS Manfiold trait
EPtX redesign (esp EPtW at full up-time)
Marion working with DEM (ability used with cruisers not escorts)
Plasmonic Leach cross-faction
Cruiser Commands
Drain-Resistance Warp Core
that is just in the last year and I'm probably forgetting stuff (Assimilated 2-pc prior to that)
I still say the way to fix all these problems is to do subsystem drains on a per-ability basis (EPtX drains the other subsystems, or Evasive drains engines until depleted, stuff like that)
I don't think that was ever a good reason to not have the mechanic. That is what balanced weapons out in many ways.
The EPS requirement for high dps... meant that Power Cruisers had to dedicate 2-3 slots to EPS units. This was a good thing for balance. It was a REAL choice. Do I run 2-3 EPS units and do dmg... or do I run 2-3 armor / support consoles and heal. Now all we have is Every cruiser being DPS and still being able to load 4 armor/turn consoles which is crazy.
Ditto for escorts. Escorts where much more squishy when the most they could afford to run was one armor. There is nothing wrong with that in terms of balance.
For science ships... the old mechanic meant there 6 weapons where not as big a handicap. They could still load 6 beams if they really wanted to and not be much different in overall DPS compared to a cruiser running 8 if they had not dedicated a good number of there console slots to EPS units. It was a balancing factor for Sci ship DPS in a small way.
It also led to more people deciding to run more balanced ships. Loading things like torpedos and mines that ignored the drain mechanic issues.
Energy has just gotten way to easy to support build wise now. There is no down side to loadin 8 beams in terms of power drain... and there is now reason to not go Cannons / Overload builds on escorts. The idea of that 8th beam or 7th energy wepaon on a ship being an issue are long gone, and its to bad it was a good balancing mechanic. (not to mention overloads used to have an actual cost... not that it doesn't completely anymore but it feels that way when the power is back 2s later because nothing else is really drawing power.)
If they brought it back... it wouldn't be near as bad as the old days where new / dumb players not running EPS units would suck DPS wise... unlike before they have added EPS to the skill tree... and everyone has 6 points in there at least to support there EPTx skills.
The Drainers sure they would become more powerful... and we can either say that is a good thing... or they could simply change that mechanic so EPS no longer effected how fast hostile drains effected you.
I agree not to mentiont he Kirks should be here also supporting you. Making EPS a key skill will allow them to zerg in regen power faster.
Honestly at this point i think the better answer would be to throw power drain on weapons into the bin.
Sure if they are going to completely rebalance weapons.
Beam array base dmg is to high...
Beam array damage drop off is to high as well.
So sure if they are going to normalize weapon dmg drop off distances and reduce beam dmg 20%... go ahead and remove power drain as a mechanci completely,
Or they could revert to the system that did work in STO for 2 years until a new dev who had no idea what they where doing changed it.
i wouldn't give the at launch guys to much credit. if you look closely, the game feels like it was created and balanced with tier 2, maybe tier 3 ships in mind. at tier 2, player ships and npcs are pretty close to the same thing, its when you power creep all the way to tier 5 that everything goes sideways, and pve and pvp become 2 separate games. i think there's a good reason tier 2 pvp feels so right. its shear luck that everything works as well as it does at tier 5 in my opinion. but i suppose it pretty bullet proof, it must be, when you throw in sets, traits, rep and the pure unadulterated perversion doffs make possible, and it all actually still sorta works
in farness, running out of time sacrificed a lot of quality at launch im sure, but npcs are one of those things that they have had 4 years to revamp properly, instead with each new batch of npcs its the same terrible formula, with a new look. still NOTHING like player ships, having you face hundreds of them like they are some forest critter in a fantastic mmo and not a STAR SHIP, and still to simple for something like a sci ship or subnuking to have any effect on them.
Why would you say that?
I am not giving to much credit really... the game had bugs at launch don't get me wrong. However the intended idea bug free state at that point worked.
Don't forget at launch end game was 10 levels back from where it is now. There is some truth to what you are saying. Really though... if you leave everything in game that is in game right now, accept revert power mechancis and delete the last 10 levels making mk x once again king. The game is all of a sudden not to badly balanced even with doffs and everything else.
I know we can't undo the power creep. Really though considering how the pwoer drain mechanic is supposed to work right now... why have things like Cruiser weapon drain auras, and 2 piece borg weapon sets that resist drain or marion doffs.
Clearly something isn't working right... or the design is so confused that even Cryptic isn't clear how it is intended to be working.
Really I am a fan of a complete weapon overhaul... and yes part of that is I would return the weapon drain at the start of a cycle and regen at EPS. It was a good mechanic... and it balanced out ships with more weapon slots like Cruisers. Considering where we are now with ships that have 5 forward slots... the fact that that mechanic is no longer around really makes those ships stronger then they should be.
If I was the guy in charge at Cryptic I would do this to energy wepaons.
1) Weapons drain would drain at the start of a cycle and regen power at players EPS rate.
2) Increase cannon dmg fall off distance 20%
3) Decrease beam dmg fall off distance 20%
4) Add a 2.5s -50 weapon power lockout to Beam Overload.... after 2.5s the -50 power would return at EPS rate.
5) I would delete Fire at a Will. (I won't get into all the reasons why this skill is a plain bad mechanic)
6) I would rename Scannon Scatter volley Fire at Will... and I would change it so it would operate with cannon or beam weapons and any combo of the 2 someone wished to load.
7) I would rename Cannon Rapid fire... to Fire Everything (kiding); simply to Rapid fire and again allow its use with beams or cannons.
8) I would make the same changes to overload and target sub systems removing the required beam weapon to use them.
9) (This one isn't directly energy, but would lead to more balanced builds which would make change 1 less of an issue for a few people)... I would change Torpedo HY and Torpedo Spread slighly... giving them a target debuff that would increase kinetic dmg dealt to shields by 50% for 10s. This would not make torps instant shield killers. (energy would still be 40% at least better at shield debuffing)... however it would make torpedos better... and balanced builds using Torpedos and Energy would be much more attractive.
Because I can pull 40k+ DPS with nothing but supposedly low dmg beam arrays. Pretty obvious something isn't right there.
Beams have the second widest arc in the game second only to turrets.
Compare the dmg of a single canon turret and beam array... and then tell me with a straight face that beam base dmg is right.
Going on about weapon cycle times doesn't cut it... beams hit 4 times per cycle the overall dmg doesn't favor cannons because they hit less and cycle faster. Of course you then also have to take into account damage fall off distance. Which makes the beams the far superior weapon.
The only viable cannon weapon in the game is the DHC... and it is ONLY viable if you are going to park 2K< off your target all the time. Beams have no such limitation... both in terms of arc or distance to hit.
With out a proper drain mechanic to reign them in the only option balance wise would be to reduce there base dmg... or reduce there arc... or increase there fall off distance... or a combination of all of those things.
Single Cannon
Base Damage: 67-77 DPV (it's rough nailing the value down)
Rate of Fire: 4 shots/3 seconds
Base DPS: 89-103 DPS
Arc: 180 degrees
Turret
Base Damage: 45 DPV
Rate of Fire: 4 shots/3 seconds
Base DPS: 60 DPS
Arc: 360 degrees
Beam Array
Base Damage: 100 DPV
Rate of Fire: 4 shots/5 seconds
Base DPS: 80 DPS
Arc: 250 degrees
4x Single Cannons and 4x Turrets will do...Base Damage: 448-488 DPV in a 180 degree arc to a single target.
8x Beam Arrays will do...Base Damage: 800 DPV in a 70 degree arc to a single target.
In a 15s period...
4x Single Cannons will have done Base Damage: 5360-6160.
4x Turrets will have done Base Damage: 3600.
Combined Base Damage: 8960-9760.
8x Beam Arrays will have done Base Damage: 9600
Again, to a single target...the Cannons/Turrets are looking at 180 degrees vs. the 70 degrees of the Arrays.
That's without including the drain mechanics, where at equal power levels the Arrays will lose more damage than the Cannons/Turrets...but that's where you get into the loss Cannons/Turrets have with falloff over the Arrays.
So yeah, I can say it with a straight face.
When I look at the issue with Cannons vs. Beams, I look squarely at FAW.
First, let's look at Cannons.
Cannon Scatter Volley: Multiple target and increased damage.
Cannon Rapid Fire: Increased rate of fire and increased damage.
Okay, let's look at Beams with FAW.
Fire at Will: Multiple target, increased rate of fire, and increased damage.
Bazinga! FAW's the issue. FAW needs to be split into two abilities.
FAW: Multiple target and increased damage.
Some sort of Beam Rapid Fire: Increased rate of fire and increased damage.
Then again, I think they should all have three types...
Heavy - Rapid - Multiple Target
...whether talking Cannons, Beams, or even Torpedoes.
edit: Something else to consider while dismissing Cannons/Turrets would be both Tet Glider and DEM - which are per pulse rather than per cycle.
4/3 vs. 4/5 - they meet up at 15s, the 4/3 will have dropped out 20 pulses while the 4/5 will have dropped out 12 pulses.
edit2: Oh, and if you really want to have fun - check out the damage difference between CSV3 with DHCs and Turrets...build the skittles boat and fly around going wheee with a 360 arc. Course, it's most definitely a bug and would be exploiting.
edit3: Speaking of bugs, that folks are able to broadside with a greater than 70 degree arc is a bug - as weapon cycles will continue to fire outside of the arc instead of stopping...allowing somebody to shimmy their fore/aft Arrays to hit greater than 70 degrees.
edit4: There's also going to be what I mentioned earlier in the thread - the Drain Mechanics for Beams do not work the same way for everybody. That's another bug. There's all sorts of issues and bugs with Arrays...it's not a case of defending them - it's just a case of saying, yeah - base Beam Damage appears to be fine...leave it alone, fix all the other TRIBBLE.
im down with all that, with a few more additions
*cannon damage fall off starts at 2.5 range, 0-2.5 is 100% damage.
*'single cannon synergy', for every single turret you have equipped, 1 turret's damage is boosted 15%. because turrets KILL single cannon builds with how terrible they are. the combined DPS of 4 singles and 4 turrets is LESS then the combined DPS of 8 beam arrays, regardless of whatever virus is talking about.
*remove duel cannons, replace with quad cannons
*pipedream i know, but change how beam arrays work entirely on most fed cruisers and a few other select ships only, to ether a 1 shot per cycle or 2.
I get the rest, and agree with VD for the most part, but leech is silly OP.
Really though a weapon ability overhaul is what is needed. FaW, BO, CRF, CSV, and even the torpedo skills to a point, are no longer filling the proper roles in the game and give inconsistent performance across the various types and subtypes of weapons creating a massive amount of problems with corner case interactions.
They need to function much more like attack patterns and other strait up buff type abilities to perform in a consistent manner which can be tweaked and balanced much easier.
The power thing is problematic...but where would one even begin with that, eh?
Overcapping allowed folks to sacrifice power from one or more areas - when the game didn't ooze (simply ooze - it's well beyond just Leech - there's just so much power) power to the point that it is no longer a sacrifice.
Heh, it's come a long way since the nerf to power consoles...meh, there's folks that are running 500-700+ power because they're overcapped in everything - they're literally bleeding power.
Cryptic will never set a powercap though...their 125/130/135 and being able to overcap Weapon Power - just doesn't mean what it did a year ago, two years ago, three years ago...
Heck, [AMP] wanting folks not only to have the 135+ Weapon Power but 75+ in the other three as well...the game's a mess - where would one even dig down to start to try to fix things?
1) Reduce leech console skill mod to 25% of current.
2) Fix Aux 2 Batt to put the '5' hardcap back on AUX when it is active.
3) Reduce by half(?) power granted by Epower abilities, extreme but they did gain a ton of good secondary bonuses. Alternately have them reduce power to other subsystems by a small amount to make up the difference so to speak.
4) Fix the entire boff ability system that gives far too much incentive for doubling up on the same powers, typically via CDR doffs, into something with a bit more variety of options. All my escorts running double EPtX powers with nearly 100% uptime because other doffs just aren't as useful/affordable is silly without even touching on the Technician issue...
That is where I would personally start. But now we are getting a touch off topic. Bottom line is some of the core STO systems scale really well, most do not. Band-aids will help but at the end of the day boff ability design and cooldowns are causing many of the performance issues in STO right now.
DDIS - I like that idea. Turrets are a DPS loss even now with the odd power mechanic. If they reverted to the old system like I would like yes it would make turrets even worse. Your idea is valid. I'm not sure we need escorts dropping mines again. lol Of course they could do something as well like perhaps say a 10-20% dmg boost to rear mounted torpedos. Call it surprise shot buff or something. Cruiser pilots would like that... and it would give escorts on more viable weapon to slot back there and perhaps a reason to slot the fly by tricobalts again or something. lol
Your idea is great though.
I also like the idea of the change to dual cannons. They are plain bad.... perhaps another option for them is to play with the damage fall off on them as well. Perhaps single cannons should be somewhere in between in terms of dmg fall off between beams and heavy cannons.
Bareel - your point is also very valid. The plasmotic leech is one of the biggest broken items in the game no one wants to talk about. They all like there +30 per system power so they zip it. It was easy to say that console was stupid op and restrict it from tournaments when only the Klinigons had it. Now that we all do no one wants to talk about it anymore. lol
But that's kind of the point...the game should work as described in our various spreadsheets and the like - that "on paper" bit - but we obviously don't see that. That's where I point to all the various bugs/issues/etc that exist between the paper and the game.
If we adjust the base beam damage without addressing those issues...what have we really fixed? We've just slapped a convoluted bandage on the issue that could cause additional problems down the road.
I mean...c'mon...imagine if an Array where the first shot was in arc but the other three weren't...that they didn't fire. Meh, it was driving me crazy earlier in Ker'rat when my fore torps were popping out over the front of me because I'd already moved past the target by the time they actually fired - it looked ridiculous. It's kind of sad, that a quick turn can eat a Beachball so it never fires but that you can fire aft mounted Hypers out the front of the ship. It's really annoying that a quick turn will eat a HY/TS buff so that the torp only fires a single normal shot. If they fixed things like that - the arc overshooting that exists - well, of course not only would beams not be as good but many folks wouldn't be as good with their DHCS either.
Lol, if it weren't for the arc issue - I doubt I'd ever hit anything with DHCs...meh, the target just happens to pass in that 45 arc while I've got my eyes closed beating on the spacebar - the first shots catch and the rest continue to fire no matter where the target ended up.
I am not serously saying that beam base dmg needs to be nerfed. What I am saying is FAW needs to be removed... and power drain needs to be fixed / restored, to a working model. Then no you wouldn't have to drop base beam dmg. They really should increase there damage fall off though. The game will never be balanced weapon wise as long as one does 20% dmg at 9k... and another does 80%.
oh and i forgot to mention befor
*make single cannons into heavy cannons, with the 2 shots per cycle. TRIBBLE DPS, and TRIBBLE shots per cycle is a double dose of suck.
even if quads do suck, independent of the mods on the only one you can use currently, at least they would be cooler then DCs. i don't think anyone has done much examination of their damage dealing compared to DHCs, i haven't bought a single ship that comes with them so i have no idea.
oh and lose that joke of a -10 engine power, that's not even canon accurate, another bumbling interpretation. oh the cannons route power through the engines! let me nerd out for just a sec and explain what that means. the cannons run on plasma, the warp drive runs on plasma. the nacelles have the fattest plasma pipes anywhere on the ship, and the cannons tap off those huge pipes. doesn't mater through, plasma is plasma, it should only drain engine power if it tried fireing them at warp, which it probably couldn't even do anyway. that's all irreverent on any ship that's not the defiant, their hardpoints are of course in different locations.
short of the DC replacement, they should give DCs like a 10% higher DPS then DHCs. they still wouldn't actually be better then DHCs, for pvp at least, but with that buff npc crowd control scatter volley might be their very own reason to exist.