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3 tactical stations are NOT required
seazombie64
Member Posts: 114 Arc User
I have seen, in at least 3 threads, people insisting that any ship that doesn't have 3 tactical stations is just plain inferior.
For PvE this is just not true. Who are you to tell me my Vesta is no good for PvE? My Falchion also does quite well in anything I use it for. Neither of them has 3 tactical Boff stations working.
As a further heresy on my part...My Vesta is being commanded by an engineer and my Falchion by a scientist.
All these threads INSISTING that we must have 3 tacs to be viable just make no sense to me. I know nothing about PvP and I intend to keep it that way, for reasons that would be too inflammatory to post here. PvPers please remember that not everyone plays PvP. Builds that may be REQUIRED to do well there, will undoubtedly do well in PvE, but builds that will be very very good for anything PvE has to offer are not useless or invalid.
To read a majority of the threads here, one would believe that DPS is the only element in this game. DPS is only ONE element, and the game is completely playable without flying a min/maxed dps monster. There seems to be an institutional bias against anything other than dps monsters, but IMHO, other builds and play-styles are just as valid and useful...at least for PvE.
For PvE this is just not true. Who are you to tell me my Vesta is no good for PvE? My Falchion also does quite well in anything I use it for. Neither of them has 3 tactical Boff stations working.
As a further heresy on my part...My Vesta is being commanded by an engineer and my Falchion by a scientist.
All these threads INSISTING that we must have 3 tacs to be viable just make no sense to me. I know nothing about PvP and I intend to keep it that way, for reasons that would be too inflammatory to post here. PvPers please remember that not everyone plays PvP. Builds that may be REQUIRED to do well there, will undoubtedly do well in PvE, but builds that will be very very good for anything PvE has to offer are not useless or invalid.
To read a majority of the threads here, one would believe that DPS is the only element in this game. DPS is only ONE element, and the game is completely playable without flying a min/maxed dps monster. There seems to be an institutional bias against anything other than dps monsters, but IMHO, other builds and play-styles are just as valid and useful...at least for PvE.
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Vesta btw is a fine ship that can easily DPS with the best of them, flying it on an engineer, well that's another matter. 3 Tac stations is not needed for dps, in some cases its counter productive, but either a Cmdr Tac or atleast a Lt Cmdr/Lt Tac combo is needed.
You are correct in that anything less than 3 tactical stations is not required, but Cryptic has helped foster and nurture the idea that more damage/dps = better.
I've pointed out (multiple times) that support ships and their respective boff/console layouts are not the problem, but the DPS-focused 'meta' Cryptic has pandered to is the problem.
Dyson Science Destroyers, the Mogh and Avenger Battlecruisers, the Ar'kif, the Scimitar, the Andorian Escorts, the Tempest, the Fleet Galaxy Dreadnought.
These are all recent or semi-recent additions to the game which have a clear tactical slant to them. This is where Cryptic's innovation and creativity takes a steep nosedive.
In turn, players expect their ships to somehow resemble the tactical-focused ships we've had as of late. This means players prefer boff/console slotting with a tactical focus, regardless of whether or not it's necessary to progress (it isn't, but don't tell them that).
Their line of thought starts and stops at this point: "The only thing that matters in a mission is the end-of-mission reward, therefore the only viable ship/build is one that allows you to get through the mission as fast as possible. Since missions require things to be killed quickly, this means the current 'meta' is damage/DPS."
So, what has Cryptic done since coming to this realization?
"Good news for science ships! More tactical-focused science ships coming down the pipe!"
Instead of being creative and innovative in giving support ships a cookie in the same way escorts and other tactical-slanted ships get a cookie for killing things as fast as possible, Cryptic has decide to stay the course in simply making future support ships more escort-like.
Instead of making escorts wish they were more like science ships or cruisers.
As for the defiant, prometheus and such, it was a hindrance for a long time, as for a escort you just need a lt.+cmd. tac station for max-dps, but they were stranded with 3 Tac Slots, where the ensign was near useless.
But since the Embassy BOs were introduced, thats no longer true. And now with omni-directional beams you can outfit a faw or Beamoverload there, making it even more powerful.
An Example is the Plasmonic Leech Console. 10 Stacks, at 9 in Flowcaps with 2 Fleet Grade Flowcaps consoles, one can easily gain 2.5 to all 4 Settings each, per Stack. That way, you have 125 Weapon Power (even more overcapped due to ship bonuses and captain skills), 75 or more (without using any EptS Power) Shield, 40-60 Engines, and a good chunk of Aux.
This console is a 1k Zen purchase for KDF and KDF Romulans, or a possible prize from a certain Lockbox for FED and FED Romulans, which goes for a quite high rate on the Exchange.
Another 'lol what healing' is the Warbird specific console coming with the T3 Valdore Warbird variant from the store. 2.5% Chance to heal you for 200% of the damage dealt - and if you use Tactical Team, you make use of the fact that EACH Shield Sector gets this, not split among them or only to the most damaged. Tactical Team, 1 Sector gets drained, the TacTeam Autorebalances, Console refills all 4 Sectors, too.
But sure, nerf reputation passives......
2 tac ships and other builds work just slower. The problem is what do you do with the none tac slots. Healing and support isn't needed. So what do you do? I try and aim for at least 10k dps anything less and I feel like I am holding back the team.
For example, canonically starships would have to drop their shields to engage transporters. There could be (and indeed are) lots of situations during content where u need to transport things both in an aggressive way (bomb to destroy a shielded target, assault team to take over enemy target) or a non-aggressive way (beaming back survivors off an allied target etc..)
What if u had to drop ur shields to do that (whilst taking fire).
Cruisers/engineers would be good due to the hull tanking they could do (think aux2damp, aux2sif, etc)
Sci vessels/scientists would be good to confuse/placate enemies (scramble, jam, MES)
Your straight up pure dps ships wouldn't be that useful in these situations.
There could be other situations where allied vessels are taking fire and, as an optional objective which rewards more or speeds mission progress, you need to keep them alive (sort of like a mini NWS). Ships full of 3rd person healing (ET, ST, Extend Shields etc) would do better. Key thing is for this type of situation is that the enemies attacking the allied target need to be immune to your damage (unlike NWS) so it isn't about destroying them to keep the optional objective. For example: enemy develops perma shield that can't be penetrated. Science station 1 is working on analysing sensor scans to find a way to modulate weapons. Enemy attacks science station 1. If u keep it alive for 2 mins they work out how to defeat the shields, your weapons start working against the targets, you destroy them, and that part of the mission is complete (you get bonus reward). If u can't keep station alive then you need to fly over to science station 2 and do it all over again (or something else that makes the mission take longer).
I liked what the new mirror invasion did (sci vessels better at closing rifts/cruisers better at upgrading station defenses) and think there could be room for so much more of this type of thing in future content.
TLDR: STO PVE content is far too focused on kill kill uber DPS = faster = better. There are so many options for making situations that require tanking/CC/healing to make missions go faster/reward more. It just takes some effort and thought to put these together.
...#LLAP...
Specifically, having fewer than 3 tactical stations is often detrimental to DPS. However, that's just one aspect of ship performance.
Also, 'inferior' is not the same as 'not viable'. Sure, having less damage can most definitely be viable. But I doubt that it will be as good as having more, measuring in terms of damage.
Your assumption about PvP is also largely incorrect. It is PvE that focuses on damage almost to the exclusion of everything else, as seen in the existence of DPS channels. In PvP, on the other hand, crowd controllers and healers with little to no DPS are not only viable, but effective. So kindly avoid blaming this on PvP.
Back to the first question, how do we fix this? Do we increase the damage output of beams? Create two different kinds of single beam arrays: standard ship and a line dealing more damage that can only be mounted on the largest of cruisers such as the Galaxy, Sovereign, and Odyssey lines? This could result in people going back to large cruisers. But then where does that leave the other ships?
Until a reasonable fix is found, we are stick in a game strictly built on DPS.
I don't think it will ever happen, but it would be fun to see an episode where the player has to use at least three powers like Transfer shield strength, gravity well, tyken's rift, eject warp plasma, extend shields and aceton beam.
Sure, a tactical focused ship might have two or three of those powers, but most of the high DPS tac ships I've seen don't have three of the powers I just listed.
Yes, the tac-focused, high DPS crowd would scream if an episode like that was ever released but it's the easiest way to make eng/sci more relevant ... by making their unique abilities a REQUIREMENT for the successful completion of a mission (or missions).
Don't believe the lies in this forum. I am NOT an ARC user. I play STO on Steam or not at all.
I do want another crystal event and a rerun of the mirror event.
Thats a terrible idea, and sounds like something craptic would come up with. Instead what they need to do is design content that is difficult enough that a tank, healer, or control sci setup is actually useful or needed. If enemies actually used abilities and used them intelligently it wouldn't be so easy for us to just dps through them and some of these powers, and captain careers, would become useful.
Not every ship can rely on high level science magic. Some ships like the Galaxy -R or Star Cruisers, only "shine" with their engineering stations.
Sure you can do all PvE stuff with only 2 tac stations, but it can be done with Tier 4 ships too (somethimes even better).
Forget the MMO mechanics for a minute, in Trek bigger ships usually have more power and stronger weapons. Very simple IMO.
Sure there are some minor differences, but Cryptic totally made a total chaos with their game mechanic, confusing everyone even themselves IMO. lol.
I fully agree, the main problem for Starfleet cruisers in STO is the fact that they simply don't have access to equal strong weapons as DHCs.
Cryptic simply missed to give Starfleet ships (cruisers) some kind of offensive weapons to shine.
The current meta game is still strongly affected by the unholy trinity.
Viable? Yes.
Weaker? Yes.
Are Tier 1 ships viable in elite PvE content? Yes. Doesn't mean I want to fly one.
That's my opinion on the matter, anyhow.
I then stripped my Assault Cruiser and broke out my old Galaxy Refit. I put the "Cryptic fitting" on it: two phaser beam arrays and two photon torps fore and aft, all were the best from the old crafting system. Aegis set, and an elite fleet warp core with AMP. Boffs were dual aux2bat with three purple techs. Tac skills were BO1 and HY2, DEM3 as my CDR Eng skill, normal tank/healing skills elsewhere.
Consoles were a rare MK XI phaser relay and a very rare MX XI Photon console. Fleet neutroniums and rare field generators from the old crafting system. Only special console was the Assimilated console i got when it was a mission award, saucer sep and antimatter spread.
I ran a couple of Undie Space zone cycles and the Defera missions, and did just fine, things were blowing up just quick enough for my liking, I certainly did not feel underpowered at all. All without saucer sep, also.
After quitting the game for the night, I went to bed. As I drifted to sleep, I realized something; I was flying around with no traits assigned (as I often do after a respec).
What I have come to realize is that most players idea of "adequate" or "viable" DPS is subjective; furthermore, the metric that is almost always used is the amount of time it takes to clear content.
The subjective nature of this judgement means it cannot be quantified; since it cannot be quantified its's not going to EVER be addressed by the developers within the confines of game design and adherence to canon to the satisfaction of everyone, mainly because the metric the developers use to determine "viability" is if the ship in question is capable of completing the content AT ALL.
As players have proven many times, pretty much every ship in the game is "viable" for the purpose of completing content; Miranda's completing STF's, etc.
I also realized some things about the "Cryptic fit" that appears by default on T5 cruisers, especially the Galaxy. First; it's designed to match the VISUAL representation of the Galaxy from TNG, beams and torps spewing everywhere. Second, its designed to be "powerful" in the way ship fighting is SUPPOSED to work in the game; take down a shield facing with energy weapons and dump kinetic damage on the hull, a paradigm started in Trek games a long time ago.
There are several reasons the all beam cruiser dominates, but one reason that is not often discussed (if at all) is that it's the most EFFICIENT in terms of PLAYER effort, but not the most EFFECTIVE in COMPLETING THE CONTENT. Binding everything to the spacebar and just sitting there, not moving (aside from proper positioning, if even that), while your beams wear down the shield then hull is the easiest thing for the player to do. However, while such set ups do the "most DPS", that damage is less effictively applied. Properly applied, moderately bonused kinetic weapons bring down the hull quicker than any beam build, but it does take a smidgen of effort to do. And getting the hull of all enemy ships to zero is the goal of all space content that involves combat.
When flying the Galaxy, I have everything bound to the space bar and just spam it while trying to keep things in the arc of the photons. I do not "properly" time things, but I do notice sometimes when I come about, a BO from an array takes down a shield facing right when a HY from a torp launcher goes off, and it's a beautiful thing to behold and very "Trek". It a lot more satisfying and fun to me as well to actually be rewarded for moving the ship around.
i keep hearing people say that, am i the only who doesn't use the spacebar? i don't get the whole FAW/a2b is for lazy folks.
I do not spacebar spam because it's the most effective way to utilize abilities; I use it because it allows me to enjoy the spectacle of a space battle without constantly watching cooldowns.
I only PVE, and rapidly determined that to me, the rewards for properly timing abilities ALL the time were FAR outweighed by having them go off on cooldown expiration consistently. If the content I consume was altered to punish that behavior, I would change, but I doubt that will happen.
It also depends on the ship build; on my Fed Sci in a mega well tac vesta, things like subnuc and the grav wells are manually activated; but on my KDF Sci in a Kar'fi, eveyything is bound to spacebar. On the Fed Eng, the big defensive cooldowns (set abilities and Miracle Worker, for example) are manually activated as well, but all boff abilities are space bar bound.
I also do not mean FAW/A2B is FOR lazy folks; it just takes far less player effort to apply damage, especially on a cruiser, than other builds, since it relies on broadsiding beam arrays which, while the broadside arc is not huge, it's easier for a cruiser to maintain targets inside that arc than a fore arc, as well as fully realized double A2B with three VR techs essentially doubling the tac boff abiliites. Thats what people mean when they say FAW/A2B makes cruiser's "viable".
And that is where you are wrong. We would simply adapt. Remember, we damn elitists have channels to coordinate, which also means we can just go in with the most effective setup, roflstamp it and leave again.
Its not that we are only the high-dps-players, we are simply the most-effective-playing-players, and when the most effective is DPS, yes, in that case we are the high-dps-players.
And now imagine such in scenario with pugs. You dont hurt us with something like this. You only hurt the average player.
I agree with you, but I think pweistheworst has a point. I don't think the DPS channel crowd would scream but a lot of DPS puggers would totally cry. There the ones that copy your builds without knowing how they work other than they get higher scores on their parsers.
The LAST thing I want on ANY ship is 3 tactical boff slots. This is what makes the Defiant so terrible. 3 ensign tac skills? Do Not Want. Ensign skills for eng and science are quite viable, but given that a 3 tac boff seating assumably has commander and Lt Commander seats, that doesent leave much use for a third ensign tac.
3 tac ensign boffs = garbage.
true story man.. I like how people like the op do not even see that almost every ship released is heavily reliant on tac.. even ships that make no sense with tac abilities (ie, the new xindi carrier). everything is pew pew pew... bang bang bang.. destroy destroy destroy in this game..
the developers need to get creative and create content that has multiple levels needed skills and play styles.. forget tank and healer, while it would be nice to have, just having say missions wher eyou have to d something like evacuate a station (maybe a few engineers go an do that, while the rest of the team holds off the enemy..
or rescue a ship in space, sci and engineers need to bring its hull and shields to a certain percentage to get it to warp out, while tac goes and keeps the attacker busy..
or maybe an exploratory queue, where you go in, and its not about combat at all, and its about surviving some unknown, un explored thing, like the energy ribbon from geenrations, or the probe from the voyage home.. or even something like v'ger (not saying these examples have to be what the queue is, just making some examples that have happened in the show for comparison sake). that would be kind of cool..
cryptics idea of trying to make a sci, or engineer usefull was making a click f to activate an energy collector, or close a rift in the mirror event.. while applaud that they took the first step in trying to bring a need for said ships/careers in a queue, it still has a long way to go...
Thank you! I've been saying this for a long time! I'm glade someone else has noticed it.
[/SIGPIC]
I agree with everything your saying. I also think your right to ask if this topic should be about Consoles and not Boff slots.
[/SIGPIC]
I think they mean one tactical station with three usable abilities, essentially a Lt. Cmdr slot. It threw me there for a moment too.
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
Sadly, the IP might just need a new developer.
Chamipons Online in Space may be running its course
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
But the game is the game.
Those Klingons over there? I need to eliminate them, and the way to do that is to shoot their ship from the sky.
Science and engineering abilities, whether from a console or BOFF may help, or help keep my ship around to use those tac abilities and weapons, but it's all about my ship doing damage to those other ships.
It's the game that they invented.
I happen to play a tac captian, but I doubt that my traits and skills would pass muster.
I also noticed their "Science ships! Now with more tactical capability!" spin in some recent articles.
But hey, what do you expect? These same "leet" players that download combat parsers... What are they looking at? Not how much damage your ship took. Not how much damage you healed or prevented someone from taking.
It's all about damage, and if you don't achieve some arbitrary value, you are a failure in their minds.
But I am not even in a fleet. What do I know?
I just play the game and try to have some fun without paying any attention to the numbers.
If it takes me 5 minutes to do what someone else can do in 1, as long as I am enjoying those extra 4 minutes then I don't see the problem.
But if you think you will do good dps without bfawx2 through a second copy or doffs or ts/hyx2...I find your lack of comprehension disturbing.
If we are talking about tactical consoles...I'll still do 20-30k dps without them.
My PvE/PvP hybrid skill tree