Without an ability to negate a ships shield innate kinetic resists [at 75% irrc] it would not matter how far away you can fire said torpedo since it won't even tickle the targets shields and if it is moving slower than the Hargh'peng [which irrc has the fastest to target time of any torp] your target will easily evade the long range torpedo.
In an earlier post I suggested giving some of the sci abilities a "reduce resistance to kinetic damage for 10sec when used"
Nope you want something like that add a new nitemare difficuly level to the game
I'd be ok with that too, provided Cryptic wasn't so stingy with the rewards...
All ships and factions should be able to do the same relative damage. The difference between them should be that some ships are more nimble, some ships can take more hits, and some ships don't necessarily use conventional weapons.
This is basically what we have now except for one critical flaw.
Tac Captains, and Romulan Boffs innately do more damage. This is a balance issue IMO. The game is half way across a street between what I'm describing and the MMO Holy Trinity. I loathe the MMO Holy Trinity. It doesn't belong in a canon where The Defiant can do as much damage as The Enterprise, they just use different techniques to do them. Tac (as in Tacticians) should be using crafty hit and run methods to do a lot of damage, while providing debufs through attack patterns. Engineers, should be doing sustained damage (Which is what's so "scary" about A2B apparently) while providing buffs, and Scis should be using space magic to do a lot of damage with Grav Wells and Tractor Beams.
Why don't people like this idea? I'm not quite sure. Maybe people are too engrossed into the holy trinity concept where everything doesn't resolve around DPS. STO resolves around DPS and I like it like that. Other PVEers do to.
And I don't see why it can't be applied to PvP. Engineers provide tanky DPS, while Tacs provide Burst DPS. Tank should counter Burst. Scis should provide Magic damage that cripples the low hulls of Tac Ships. And Engineers should shrug off Sci abilities due to their large hull / crew sizes.
Just going to repost this because people prefer to take bait rather than actual discussion.
I feel they should consolidate the beam and cannon abilities. Just make them analogues to each other, with different animations.
Making FAW function like CSV (cone, damage not divided) gets rid of the complaints over FAW.
Making BO function like CRF (rapid pulses of damage) gets rid of the balance concerns.
Balancing weapons once again becomes firing arc vs damage, instead of firing arc vs damage vs 2 pairs of disparate abilities.
I feel they should consolidate the beam and cannon abilities. Just make them analogues to each other, with different animations.
Making FAW function like CSV (cone, damage not divided) gets rid of the complaints over FAW.
Making BO function like CRF (rapid pulses of damage) gets rid of the balance concerns.
Balancing weapons once again becomes firing arc vs damage, instead of firing arc vs damage vs 2 pairs of disparate abilities.
That is rather boring way of fixing the issues, honestly you might as well do it the other way around.... either way it would break a lot of the interesting strategies you can preform with either one. Basically making generic as heck.
Without diversity this game would get stale fast...
That is rather boring way of fixing the issues, honestly you might as well do it the other way around.... either way it would break a lot of the interesting strategies you can preform with either one. Basically making generic as heck.
Without diversity this game would get stale fast...
Wrong. Consolidating the Energy weapon powers, INCREASES diversity in what weapons players will gear for. It also allows players to have more than just "Beam boats" or "Cannon/Turret boats". The Defiant (in canon) is equipped with both Phaser Cannons, and at least 1 Phaser Beam Array, as well as Quantum Torpedoes. Can the Defiant in STO be equipped as such, without nerfing it's damage output in one way or another? Consolidating the energy powers, DOES allow this.
I'll chime in for a bit now on opinions about a couple of things.
Not sure how many of you use subsystem targeting 3, but it's extremely powerful. Only the disable portion is weak. Frankly it doesn't need a boost on the other fronts, and I'm someone who actually uses it every day. The shared cooldown and long cooldowns on using these (specially the innate ones) certainly sucks.
Tyken's Rift, also very very powerful, specially with the aftershocks doff. Can be kept as-is. Yes, it sucks it doesn't move, but it's a pain for those whom the aftershocks trap.
As for ideas of combining CRF/FAW with subsystem targeting, it would be lolz drain everything in sight and blow it up (Specially on NPCs using Sub Targeting 3 shields) which is not good.
Yes, I do agree Tachyon Beam does need a boost, but on the high end, it shouldn't be more than 1K-4K+ overall if boosting the drain although it isn't my favorite approach as balance goes. A shield resistance debuff would make it way more useful and not throw everything out of whack. I'm actually thinking ahead here and considering MK XIV flow cap consoles/deflectors etc, which a boost to the drain would make a bit too powerful.
EPtE +40 for level 1 seems like way too much. A ship with no engines and EPtE1 can travel faster than a ship with engines and no EPtE.
Tachyon Beam Fully speced into flow caps, Level 3 can be useful. level 2 can keep a shield facing down for a torpedo, but level 1 is worthless.
Tachyon drones They cant even take shields off of a NPC. I remember when they were totally OP but I think something in the middle would be nice.
Charged particle burst I use it to decloak people in pvp and that's it. Maybe it could debuff shields somehow rather than be a shield drain and be cleared by ST?
Engineer Captain Powers Science and Tactical captains have their usefulness but engineers are lacking because for everything an engineer is good at the other two captains can do now.
General Combat
PVE: I would like to see more fleet actions that have fewer but more powerful NPCs. By more powerful I mean, NPCs that use skills, even heals. This would make things like sub nuke, BO, CRF, THY, and other non-aoe powers more effective. Right now FAW, TS, and CSV are king because there are so many NPCs on the map that AOE damage is the best to use.
PVP and PvE: People are either almost invincible or die too quickly. I understand there are different levels of player skill, but besides that, both healing and damage are way too high. Even in 1v1 a player can be taken down to 0 shields and 1% hull and be 100% in both in a few seconds! I know it's probably out of the scope of any foreseen future updates, but I think both healing and damage need to be looked at. No one likes to be on the receiving end of 1 shot kills and no one likes endless battles.
Wrong. Consolidating the Energy weapon powers, INCREASES diversity in what weapons players will gear for. It also allows players to have more than just "Beam boats" or "Cannon/Turret boats". The Defiant (in canon) is equipped with both Phaser Cannons, and at least 1 Phaser Beam Array, as well as Quantum Torpedoes. Can the Defiant in STO be equipped as such, without nerfing it's damage output in one way or another? Consolidating the energy powers, DOES allow this.
Depends on how you consolidate them, if they both use the same mechanics not really, like what poster suggested. As who in their right mind would use dual beams over a Dual heavy cannons you enter similar issue as picking between dual heavies and just dual cannons. One is just superior in burst and efficiency.
I'm all for making them the same ability but different effects based on the energy weapon... Though that might TRIBBLE with certain rep rewards.
I tell you what, I'm going to give you more along the lines of my general feelings on certain powers and the like rather than any specific fixes I'd like to see. Frankly, although I do spend a good deal of time messing around with builds, I wouldn't call myself a hard number expert by any means and usually just go off of what feels right/fun. I'll probably repeat some things already said, but whatever. So here goes.
-Tactical
Torpedoes and torpedo abilities: Could really use some love. I absolutely love them and want to stick them on every ship I own. This is many because on the shows and movies, all ships were shown with some sort of torpedo. They were always shown as hard hitting, and a captain calling out "Torpedos! Full spread!" always meant there was some serious business going down. Although I understand we can't perfectly replicate what we see on screen, I don't feel that torps and torp powers have enough bite. Especially compared to energy weapons.
Attack patterns: APO feels like it does way too much. I don't think a single power should be able to do all that it does. APD doesn't seem to be useful compared to APB, maybe change it to do something else entirely. The dispersal patterns would be nice if mines were any good. Which bring me to...
Mines. They suck. I've tried to play with these so many times over the years and I just feel so gimp trying to use them. I don't even know why these are still in the game to be honest.
Subsystem Targeting: I don't even use these on my sci ships, and they get them for free. I have no idea what to do about these, but something does. I don't see them serving any purpose as they are right now.
-Science
My major issue here is that tac captains are better at science than science captains. Science captains should be the best at science skills. I don't think that any tac buffs should work on sci skills at all. That's also why it kills me hearing that there's more tac oriented sci ships coming. I don't mind switching sci to a damage class, but let us deal that damage through science. Leave the big guns and stuff for tacs.
Rather than list out each sci power and what I feel wrong with them, I'll just say that I feel the entire science tree should be redone. All of it. I fly a sci main and don't really feel like a science captain. I just feel like a gravity well dispenser.
Oh and I still don't like the new Sensor Analysis. That graphic still kills me. Please change that. I beg of you.
-Engineering
A2B: Well, the arguments about this one have been rehashed time and time again. I'll just say that it feels super cheap to me. I even farmed up a bunch of purple techs for it on several different captains. Made me feel like a dirty cheater using it. I can't support keeping it as is.
Extend Shields: Neat ability, but I think that it should have some sort of benefit to the user to justify using a skill slot. Maybe turn it into some kind of pbaoe skill like cruiser commands.
Boarding Party: I like the idea of boarding an enemy ship, but the fact that they can be shot down and don't seem to do all that much to NPCs makes it a waste. Also watching shuttles fly through enemy shields looks weird. If you can get through those shields, just transport over there instead of flying in a shuttle and risk getting blown away.
Ensign skills: Too many EPtX skills down there. Makes having more than 2 ens slots a handicap due to too many overlapping cooldowns. Either shuffle those around, make some new ens skills, or just make all ens only slots universals.
I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting, but that's what I've got for now.
In our preparation for Delta Rising, we've been taking a hard look at Space powers and abilities that are underperforming, as well as a select few that dominate the choices players make across the board. The purpose of this thread is for the community to come together and discuss what powers they feel meet either of these two categories, and to talk frankly about any problems with the current metagame of Star Trek Online.
I'm going to largely be lurking in this thread, but may chime in from time to time. Let's see if we can civilly and rationally discuss what we think are problems, and more importantly why we think those powers are problematic. I want to see what you all care about, and see what changes we can make to address things that you care about while making the game a better game, with a more interesting decision-tree structure that defines your "best action to take at any given time" during space combat.
As has been mentioned, the metagame marches towards the "apply damage ASAP" banner without wavering since much of the game is about plowing through encounters as quickly as possible. It didn't start with the revamped STF's, but it's been reinforced by them, and has become commonplace in the queued content. It stands to reason that the conclusion that players would draw would be to build their ships to blow stuff up as quickly as possible to get the most reward for their efforts.
I don't think it's problematic for the meta since the meta is a product of the game's design. If there's whisper on the wind that there's problems with the meta, then there's something about the game's design that's the influencing the meta in a way that makes it undesirable
While tweaking the powers we have to use would certainly affect the meta by manifesting in more diverse builds (admittedly there are a number that are straight up not used that could stand a little attention), I don't think it would change the meta in any meaningful way to have players shift away from the idea that they need to apply as much damage as possible in the shortest amount of time.
So, if there's a desire to move away from the current meta, then a change in design of how we interact with the game world, or at the very least it's foes, is needed.
There was a great suggestion in this thread to have NPC's act more like players by giving them the same sort of compliment of abilities that players have (BOff abilities, weapon slots, maneuvering, etc.), which making NPC foes more dangerous that it necessitates including more survival skills instead of damage ones. Or more disabling type skills instead of survival ones.
Having the variety of NPC's, as also mentioned, is crucial in order to create that meta that is diverse, and not devoted solely to damage application. It would be great to see more build discussion along the lines of "This resist build does great against the Kazon." or "This disable build I made for my Intrepid is the best for dealing with Malon." in Delta Rising.
The biggest issue for me is that there's little to no choice about when to use your abilities. Stuff like FAW, Tac Team, EPtX, and attack patterns just get used as soon as they're off cooldown, and the difference in between a captain who perfectly times their abilities for maximum effect and one who macros them to be used as soon as they're available is minuscule.
My major issue here is that tac captains are better at science than science captains. Science captains should be the best at science skills. I don't think that any tac buffs should work on sci skills at all.
I don't have a problem with this so far as tac exclusive skills go (eg: APA, TF), I don't have a problem with APO having an effect as all ships with LTC tac boff slots can carry it.
This goes without saying but, Auxillary to Battery 1
I am not sure of a good way to nerf the use of this as it's use is more addressing a core problem with playing tanky ships, then a problem with the actual power. It is allowing tanky ships to play and have something to do, constantly rather then waiting on cooldowns constantly, which really isn't fun. If it is a matter of the Power levels being an issue with the cooldowns, simply keep the technicians doing what they do but expand it to ANY Aux To power. Aux to Batt can only grant it once, so you are forced to use different powers to keep the cooldowns low.
Tactical Team I
Stable of EVERY build out there. It's rebalance is neccasary for most people's playstyle.
Perhaps actually making the Shield Balance powers everyone has innately DO something noticeable would manage to make this not be such a widely used power. Also the higher tier versions of it have no noticeable boost to anything, they just take longer to recharge, and thus aren't as good imho.
EPTS:1
Staple of Every Build
Boost those shields, Stay Alive...
TSS:1
Staple of Every Build
Boost those Shields, Stay Alive...
Hazard Emitters 1
Staple of most builds
Clears Plasma DOTs, one of the only things that will over time kill a shield tank.
Engineering Team 1
Almost too good to pass up for the sheer save your butt it can do, if you get to it in time.
Everyone gets low on health and Eng Team is the answer, if you hit it in time half your health just spouts back into being.
Attack Pattern: Omega 3 I see this choosen over the other advanced AP* 3 everytime, it's ability to ignore things like tractor beam and vent plasma, leads it to be the #1 choice in secondary attack patterns.
AOE Powers (Beam Fire At Will, Torpedo Spread)
These are the PVE I win Buttons for a lot of builds. There are Crit Chance builds out there where a single pass over Klingon ships will leave nothing but exploding hulls behind a ship with BFAW III active as it flys through what should be equivilent ships.
With Torpedo Spread III always hitting, and Gravemetric Torpedos, your almost gaurenteed a rift from the Gravemetrics, which changes playfield dramatically in PVE for your favor (it's fun but overused)
EPT Weapons: Very useful here, and used a lot, as damage boosts are always well appreciated.
Underused:
Tachyon Detection Grid: No point, it doesn't work well enough or in conjunction with others to make it worth actually running. The Sci Slot it would run in is worth more as a Haz Emitter, or a TSS.
Tractor Beam falls into the same boat, with an ease of use like AP:O there to counter it, or simply the Evasive Maneuvers everyone has, it has no purpose that you wouldn't better serve by filling the slot with TSS or HE
Boarding Party is notoriously underpowered and SLOW, it is insanely easy to country with a Beam Fire at Will, or a Tactical Team if you do get boarded. This skill needs a complete overhaul. It should at least in PVE be FAR deadlier, with a chance to lead to exploding a ship, or taking it over as a pirated vessel, following your lead with your boarding party at it's helm should the enemy crew be completely overwhelmed.
High Yield Torpedos, while violently powereful have three main disadvantages that lead to most people not even bothering outside of certain Torpedo boat builds. 1 is that they are targetable, 2 is that they are slow as molasses, in the cold of space, and 3 is that they can back draft the damage onto your ship, ESPECIALLY plasmas, which when compared to ground is hilarious as I can toss a plasma grendade at my own feet and not worry about it on my bare skin, but my ship launches a high yield torp, and though it is built to resist such things, it explodes, guess we know why we can respawn though... no damage to me from my own plasma ::snark::
Vent Plasma needs to be igniteable by targetting the plasma with an energy weapon (not with fire at will or cannon spread) this will lend to team play, as multiple players could seed an area, and other players could prep to ignite the various clouds.
Grav Well, is well liked and used, but I honestly think it should be a universal attractant, both enemy and ally ships should be affected along with, if code allowed, surrounding debris and space matter. Imagine getting dragged into a Grav Well III with a group of Asteroids, it would be a blender, and rightly so. Perhaps link extrenous objects to how much Aux is used when activating the ability.
Tyken's Rift, is kinda unclear to me what this power is trying to show. It needs to either do more damage or cause some kind of secondary effect to the surrounding area.
Directed Energy Modulation: Under-appreciated power, that cna make shield tanking completely useless if you have a DEIII running. That being said the entire DEM is VERY overpriced starting at the LT slot when DEM1 and 2 are basically useless for anything other then causing procs.
Polarize Hull is useful, but as I have stated before EPTS and TSS are where it is at for my ships thus far.
If I left any out it is becuase I use them so little on my main Tactical Officer, that I have no real experience with the power and don't use it.
SUGGESTIONS
I have seen a couple suggestions on boards other then this, about making the damage to subsystem, system, real time. As you fight in Elite and other higher difficulties you have a chance to take damage to subsystems which the crew then strives to fix as the fight wears on. This could make for some of those powers that have limited functionality now, (such as boarding party, science team, Beam Target Subsystem) to have added functionality that they would otherwise not have.
A Lot of the driving reason behind the popularity of the A2B design mentality is that it gives tanky ships something offensive to DO during combat. They are seeing powers pop back to useable faster, and thus are feeling more "in the fight" then if they were simply putting all power to shield, and popping heal every few rounds and soaking up a couple hundred thousand damage for the team. Dealing damage always will feel more proactive and objectively involved then taking and healing damage will. So you need to find a way to nerf Aux2Batt without taking away this feeling of involvement, or you will have a lot of bitter, angry player. My suggestion is to look at it like the Designers of the late great CoH looked at the use of Fitness in they're game. It was so Widely used, it had become a universal part of gameplay. A universal need for more stamina had become apprent, so they made it a universal power grant at early levels to get a that boost.
Instead of removing Aux 2 Batt entirely, remove it's stacking, so that you cannot continually drop Aux into Batt more then once in a 3 minute time frame. However allow the Technician DOFFs to continue to lower the recharge of Bridge Officer abilities, whenever an Engineer Bridge Officer ability is used. This keeps the cooldown reduction that Engineers are craving WITHOUT the game breaking energy boost.
The underlying problem that A2B, and Zemoks, DCEs, etc. solve is a simple one to state:
The space abilities design, with long cooldowns, which necessitates the need for duplicate abilities is flawed. The reason is simple:
1) It's boring. If you have only copy of each ability, like in low-level ships, you're bored out of your mind waiting for cooldowns. I get that the devs originally intended for space combat to happen at a slower pace than ground combat, but they went overboard. Having all your abilities take 30s to 2 minutes to refresh means most of the time you're just flying around waiting for things to happen
2) It makes having duplicate abilities a necessity for any build, removing real choice and replacing it with the illusion of choice. Every single competitive space build, every single one, relies on having TT, EptX, at least one Attack Pattern, and at least one cannon or beam attack, on global coodown. There is no real choice here. It makes for boring, cookie cutter builds, and very little real choice.
I propose a very simple solution to your problem:
1) Lower the cooldown of all abilities to their duplicate ability global cooldown.
2) Re-balance the powers around the assumption that now everyone has access to said abilities with the new cooldowns.
This completely solves the problem of A2B being "OP" by making it moot. A2B doffs would no longer do anything (they'd probably have to be modified to do something else entirely). So too with Zemoks etc. This levels the playing field. Now everyone has their key abilities "at global". It'll make space combat more fun, and it removes imbalances. Finally, it makes some builds and fittings more desirable, like torpedoes, since you have more room for abilities that buff them, while still staying "at global".
There, I solved your problem.
its a pretty great idea. seems that typically the best ideas also happen to the least convoluted.
unfortunately, if cryptic did bring all boff skills to global cd i reckon they would find it irresistible to raise the global to the old 2-copy threshold.
I know this is going to sound like kind of a simple and thoughtless suggestion, but just go play ST:Bridge Commander.
That was what I would consider perfect space gameplay. Obviously it can't translate 100% into STO, but as a good reference point, I think it'd be nice to aim for.
The individual's rights will be protected only so long as they don't conflict with the state.... nothing is so dangerous to a society.
Extend Shields: Neat ability, but I think that it should have some sort of benefit to the user to justify using a skill slot. Maybe turn it into some kind of pbaoe skill like cruiser commands.
It'd be nice if extend shields acted like the Counter-Command tier 5 Bio-Molecular Shield Generator ability, essentially an extended shield healing bubble centered around the cruiser that activates it, with more shield healing done the closer to the center (the player cruiser) the other ships are.
Attack patterns: APO feels like it does way too much. I don't think a single power should be able to do all that it does. APD doesn't seem to be useful compared to APB, maybe change it to do something else entirely. The dispersal patterns would be nice if mines were any good. Which bring me to...
Mines. They suck. I've tried to play with these so many times over the years and I just feel so gimp trying to use them. I don't even know why these are still in the game to be honest.
Subsystem Targeting: I don't even use these on my sci ships, and they get them for free. I have no idea what to do about these, but something does. I don't see them serving any purpose as they are right now.
APO does a lot, too much but I have seen some good ideas in this thread about fixing that.
Personally I like mines I just wish they were available starting at Ensign rank vs LT the new Bio-Molecular Photon mines are my current favorite, due to the slow and high damage especially with dispersal patterns.
Alternatively they could be recoded to disperse 6 mines vs 4 mines as the base value
This is the base rank of sci ships subsytems targeting:
Rank I: Ensign 85-45sec cd
To Self: Upgrades next beam weapon attack within 30 seconds
To Target: -24 Engines Power Setting for 15 seconds
To Target: 20% Chance to Disable Engines systems for 8 seconds
Maybe change it to this for the built in sci ship ability
Rank III: Sci ship ability 40sec cd
To Self: Upgrades next beam weapon attack within 30 seconds
To Target: -40 Power to targeted subsystem for 15 seconds
To Target: 20% Chance to Disable targeted subsystem for 8 seconds
High Yield Torpedos, while violently powereful have three main disadvantages that lead to most people not even bothering outside of certain Torpedo boat builds.
1 is that they are targetable,
2 is that they are slow as molasses, in the cold of space, and
3 is that they can back draft the damage onto your ship,
ESPECIALLY plasmas, which when compared to ground is hilarious as I can toss a plasma grendade at my own feet and not worry about it on my bare skin, but my ship launches a high yield torp, and though it is built to resist such things, it explodes, guess we know why we can respawn though... no damage to me from my own plasma ::snark::
I use torps on about 95% of my alts some with more than 1 type just for my personal fun value
The reason given previously for Hi-yield torps of certain types being targetable was otherwise you have a bunch of instant win weapons. [irrc]
*subnuked and tractor beamed target getting hit by hi-yield plasma torp, tricobalt, etc... creates an unfun situation especially if there is no chance to resist the 30k+ non crit damage. Kinda like the Borg do to us sometimes its not a fun experience especially if your APO or Polarize Hull is currently on cd.
But I do think that targetable torps and mines should have more HP before they are destroyed than currently which seems to be a hard glare in their direction and poof. :P
As a side why are the Borg standard "Hi-yield?" torps not subject to the same player targetable torp conditions at present.
PS any chance we can get a player version of the Borg Shield Neutralizer abiity for sci ships :P
I'm going to focus in on this. I do agree that giving different weapons different range characteristics is a good idea. It doesn't have to be additional range, though. Some weapons could do more damage closer in while others have more accuracy or better crit. We already have this to some extent, but I wouldn't mind seeing DBB's get an extra kilometer or two to compensate for limited arc. DHC's in contrast could get something like a shotgun effect at point-blank range.
I also like giving torps extended range. However. Most torps that are not high-yield are either hit or miss. You can't outrun them and you can't shoot them down. For this to work well, all torps would have to work like the HY torpedoes do... and I can't see Cryptic doing that.
I CAN see them making long-range torpedoes available as a power on a longer cooldown.
That's not what I meant. I'm looking at this from a Star Trek point of view. Torpedoes had more than double the range of a phaser array.
It would make some really cool tactics, like Artillery ships. As for energy weapons, I'm looking at the damage ratio per firing cycle. The lower the damage per cycle, the longer the range.
Don't forget, the further away the target is, the higher the chance to miss the target.
That's not what I meant. I'm looking at this from a Star Trek point of view. Torpedoes had more than double the range of a phaser array.
It would make some really cool tactics, like Artillery ships. As for energy weapons, I'm looking at the damage ratio per firing cycle. The lower the damage per cycle, the longer the range.
Don't forget, the further away the target is, the higher the chance to miss the target.
Without an ability to negate a ships shield innate kinetic resists [at 75% irrc] it would not matter how far away you can fire said torpedo since it won't even tickle the targets shields and if it is moving slower than the Hargh'peng [which irrc has the fastest to target time of any torp] your target will easily evade the long range torpedo.
In an earlier post I suggested giving some of the sci abilities a "reduce resistance to kinetic damage for 10sec when used"
Some of my thoughts on space abilities that could be reworked.
Tac Team
I love cruisers, but they typically have 2 or at best 3 tac slots. Thing is no matter what ship, escort or cruiser it's on 100% of my ship builds. This implies to me it's OP. I suspect largely (and for me is) because of the auto redistribute shields it provides.
STO is very DPS oriented for the most part and having to ALWAYS equp this and take 1/2 or 1/3 of my offensive slots for a defensive "secondary" ability of the skill is wasted DPS to me (despite TT minimal damage buff).
Auto distribution should be taken out, and made to directly replace the manual evenly balance shield thing you can do when clicking in centre of shield display (which is far too slow). When out of combat, have it evenly balance, when in red alert it acts like TT current redistribute.
Everyone uses it (or should be). To me just break it out and make it an innate captain ability to all classes or tie it directly to the ship controls via the manual shield distribution method (clicking in center of ship HP/Shield display down bottom).
A2B
The boff skill all by itself, needs buffing. I suspect its why it got one of the first special doffs in the game to help make it useful, but if you're going to nerf the doff (which I suspect you hawk, or gecko will be looking at doing) the base skill itself needs changing. EPtX skills are far better than this generalised power transfer skill. Many skills do or buff two things, one well the other not so much, A2B does one thing, acts like weird red matter capacitor at the expense of aux and that's it. Its a buff with an inbuilt self debuff for petes sake, why would you use this these days with leech and EPtX everywhere?
End game sub system power levels have no need at all for this skill all by itself.
Feel free to nerf doff, but make the base A2B ability itself meaningful at end game.
If leaving doffs as they are, make A2B a LTC or higher only ability, forces its use away from non cruisers.
Photonic Officer
50% uptime when doffed, isn't really good enough to square away opportunity cost let alone compete with doffed A2B. Unless doffed A2B gets nerfed down to this skills uptime/effectiveness levels, this needs improvement to make it viable. Base CD needs reduction. Maybe also allow mutli doff stack to help improve it, not just single slot doff only.
Aceton Beam
Generally only available to use on the slowest turning ships in the game, not being able to hit an escort on your backside with this thing makes it almost a team support only ability, not something you as a tank can always use as defence in PvP. 360 arc please.
Cool down needs halving too, something like Beam target weapons is generally the same end effect but cycles way faster and covers all arcs.
I like this ability but the CD kills it unless running A2B.
Directed Energy Modulation
I always felt this should be LTC and Com slot only. DPS ships have enough and getting easy Lt slot access for this I feel isn't fair for the engy class, being only one of its two weapon buff skills. Can stay as is I guess, just kinda always irked me.
Boarding Party
Absolutely completely worthless. Knock it down to only require ensign class slot for MK1 of ability. How you fix this I don't know, but the amount of AoE spam in game, the fact they're targetable, slow, and cleared with TT means it's effectively worthless. Pretty much always has been.
Change to instead of shuttles, beam party over when enemy shield facing drops?
Perhaps when activated a beam is sent to target knocking their facing offline briefly, then party beams in. Facing drops briefly again when they beam back.
Tachyon Beam
I don't use much but I feel all the doff buffs currently possible should just be rolled into the main skill. Maybe..
Or simply make the drain more powerful.
A doff kinda does this with a disable proc but this idea could work in unison anyway: I always thought when tach beam gets applied, it'd make the recipients shield act like a reverse TT and move shields away from incoming damage.
So what doesnt get drained was at least moved to the wrong side for them.
Scramble Sensors
I used to love many seasons ago in PvE. But its now largely useless, length of effect is the main problem. Speccing into sensors is too detrimental to dps these days to even bother with this once great skill.
PvP effect needs rework and buffing I believe too.
Beam Target Subsystem
For the DPS lost in choosing this I'd like to see this raised to 50% chance or 100% to disable. I'm not sure why anyone would be compelled to carry a boff ability that only works 1/5th of the times they use it.
Give receiver immunity to same effect (perhaps for all subsystems) after the fact so they can't be constantly perma disabled.
Decompiler
There's no consoles or itemised way to easily boost Sub Space Decompiler skills beyond captain skills and deflectors afaik.
Leaves a disabling type build pretty much impossible to spec well into despite having skill points and abilities that feed from it. Doesn't get any use from what I see.
Flow caps
I haven't run a drain build in a while since it became ineffective, but it would be good to be able to shutdown NPCs again.
In terms of game play generally, it would be nice to see a shift away from pure DPS for PvE. Tanking in the new Undine elites is a fairly solid option and having scores in CCE where heals count is great too towards shifting mindsets away from raw DPS.
It would be good to see sci ships be more important in PvE.
As icegavel mentioned, NPCs with full compliment of boff abilities including heals, attack patterns etc (much like Borg queen Diamond ship but to a lesser OP state for regular elite units) could actually make team work more important to defeat them, apparently that's supposed to be a good thing in MMOs. Rather than just huge dumb bags of HP we have to sit and spam at *cough* planet killers *cough*.
A lot of replies in this thread seem to focus around "nerf the powers I don't like to the point that you need to set up your BOff abilities so you can do one or two things really stupidly well." It doesn't say that explicitly, but it certainly seems like it.
I would suggest that in many cases it might be more productive to look at where one can ENHANCE things to bring them up to par, as opposed to breaking other people's goodies (or in a few paradoxical cases, your own goodies).
Beam: Fire at Will
This is a skill that gets a lot of grief. I do understand why. I use it, because it will increase my accuracy on a single target beyond what it should do. Also, it is a rapid fire skill that nits either single, or multiple targets.
I know that it was said before that it will be changed in the future so that it is not as effective against a single target. However, it is not just a single target, it is all of them. So, for example, you were attacking two enemies. This will allow you to sit where you could hit both of them with the heightened accuracy, and rapid fire to kill them both about the same time.
I have mentioned before in other threads suggestions I had on this. Separate BFAW into two skills, a rapid fire skill, and a fire at will (multiple target) skill. BFAW needs to lose the rapid fire ability. This will still allow it to be used effectively for crowd control, but not be over powered. By doing so, it will help reduce it from being OP, because it will force players to choose if they want to do rapid fire damage, or scatter shots.
I know that some players might get upset with cannons having rapid fire on scatter volley, but beams not. However, if BFAW loses the rapid fire, it can keep the increased accuracy, and still hit things in a 360 degree radius. Whereas the cannon rapid fire skill loses a lot of accuracy in it.
The beams will still have all of their other skills, like target sub systems, and even beam overload. So, it will still offer more chooses to beams that cannons cannot, even though cannons were also able to target subsystems in the shows.
AUX2BAT
I do use this builds, so what I say comes from someone using it. This skill is given a lot of grief because of people that don't properly understand how it works, and assume other players are using it if they out DPS them. All that it does (with the proper BOFFs for it) is allow BOFF skills to come off of cool down sooner. This is helpful for ships that have limited tactical slots, but are not able to compete in the now DPS race that so many believe is needed to be efficient.
When a ship that has a Commander tactical, and one Universal Lt. Commander station, but use double AUX2BAT, they are treated poorly by those that assume it is the cause of their high DPS. The truth is that they will have almost the exact same DPS, by using the Universal Lt. Commander station as a tactical, and copying the tactical skills up to the Lt. Commander rank.
Running double skills will give the same amount of up time as double AUX2BAT. The only time it makes a difference with these type of ships is with heals. Therefore, in this case, if someone is upset because they are out DPSing them, it is NOT because of the AUX2BAT skill. It would be the same situation if they had double tac skills.
So far, there is nothing wrong with AUX2BAT itself. The problem is because of BFAW. The way it is set up now, even running 2 sets of it without AUX2BAT makes it OP. Though, now that BO has been changed to 100% crit, (as long as they don't Nerf it too much more) it has become more effective than before.
This has allowed others, and myself, to build better quick kill builds, instead of following the DPS obsession that has been around for a while.
Still, AUX2BAT is not the problem. It is some of the tactical skills that are. Nerfing AUX2BAT, or the DOFFs for it will only hurt the gameplay.
If I can think of something else, I will mention it.
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I hadn't really seen anything mentioned in the infromation above concerning this:
Carrier Pets - Namely the lower durability ones from a PVP standpoint.
The pets I'm mostly refering to are also knows as the "Squishy Pets"
Pets like the To'duj fighter, the Type 8 Shuttle, The S'kull fighter, just to name a few..
They have little use in some sceneros, even less in PVP, especially with the current A2B + Technician + Marion DEM + FAW Meta that's floating around right now in PVP.
They get killed just as soon as they are launched.
While this is more of a Faw problem, those types of pets are also hurt around the amounts of Torp-Spread also floating around. Most of the time being one shot by said spreads.
This squishyness of pets severly limits the carrier's ability to bring pets into the PVP arena since most of those Pets that are useful, or even unique to some carriers, are what would be brought.
Drain build would use Siphon Drones.. but those are in the squishy catagory, so poof.
And the Trait that gives an accuracy bonus vs "Smaller" targets doesn't help either. I'm not saying that anyone needs this trait these days with the amount of Accuracy currently in the game.
Also, while I'm on the subject, there are some specilized FAW builds that completely neutralize even the most durable of the Carrier Pets.. in seconds. And while that build is doing its job, and I reconize that, there is now so much FAW because of the super useful combination of Fire at Will + Technician Doffs + Aux to Battery + DEM + Marion that it makes it exceedingly pointless to even fly a Carrier into a PVP area if your build its self isn't either
A: Designed around being a "Tank"/healer.
B: A Faw Boat its self
Also I should clearify, that the Carriers I'm refering to are not the same as Flight Deck Cruisers and Escort Carriers. The Carriers I'm refering to are the ones that Allow for 2 Hanger bays, 3 Fore/3Aft Weapons, and Target subsystem abilities.
Those Carriers are: The Atrox, The Vor'quv, the mirror Vor'quv, and the Tholian Recluse.
The Tholian Recluse how ever, because of its lobi store nature, makes it superior to the Atrox, and the Vor'quv/Mirror Version. Not just because of its Lobi Nature. But because the ability to turn it into a Tank is superior, not to mention the pets its allowed to release compared to the other two.
To sum everything up to be perhaps eaiser to read..
The Games Damage, Accuracy, Critical hit, and Critical Severity is so high right now, its harmful to the Carrier's Pet based playstyle. And with no way to support those pets in the amount of firepower currently in the game, it makes a die hard carrier lover that I am wonder why even bother fly a carrier any more when apparently there are other ships being released, almost on a monthly basis, that are not carriers, but that are superior..
Note: The reason the Dreadnaught Carriers, and the Kar'fi were not mentioned in the list, is because while they are carriers as well, and are also effected by the currently super high damage that is the norm now adays, they have other ways to make themselves useful beyond just their pets. So pets being destroyed by heavy firepower, does not hurt them as harshly as it does their slower moving cousins.
You think that your beta test was bad?
Think about this: American Football has been in open beta for 144 years. ~Kotaku
Some random ideas for powers I see as under-performing/represented:
Beam Overload
Change: Changes firing mode to a sustained/pulse fire for all available beams, continuously channeling energy damage at the current target. Places all beams on (literal) cooldown for 3-6 seconds once the attack buff terminates. (This would provide a greater parity to Cannons:Rapid Fire; in focus-firing down a single target and allowing all beam weapons to benefit instead of just one.)
Boarding Party
Add: Each successful landing/boarding has a 60/80/100% chance to remove a buff on the target.
Extend Shields
Change: Regenerate and harden the shields of the nearest 2/3/4 ships within 5km of the user. Does not target fighters/projectiles or ships currently being 'extended' by other players.
Tachyon Beam
Add: Reduce energy weapon damage of target by 10/20/30%.
Jam Sensors
Change: Reduce targeting range and accuracy by 2km/5% per rank. (Rank 3 would reduce a target's ability to acquire targets to 4km and suffer -15% chance to hit)
Mask Energy Signature
Add: Ability to fire projectile weapons while 'cloaked' with a 50/40/30% recharge penalty.
AUX2BAT
I do use this builds, so what I say comes from someone using it. This skill is given a lot of grief because of people that don't properly understand how it works, and assume other players are using it if they out DPS them. All that it does (with the proper BOFFs for it) is allow BOFF skills to come off of cool down sooner. This is helpful for ships that have limited tactical slots, but are not able to compete in the now DPS race that so many believe is needed to be efficient.
When a ship that has a Commander tactical, and one Universal Lt. Commander station, but use double AUX2BAT, they are treated poorly by those that assume it is the cause of their high DPS. The truth is that they will have almost the exact same DPS, by using the Universal Lt. Commander station as a tactical, and copying the tactical skills up to the Lt. Commander rank.
Running double skills will give the same amount of up time as double AUX2BAT. The only time it makes a difference with these type of ships is with heals. Therefore, in this case, if someone is upset because they are out DPSing them, it is NOT because of the AUX2BAT skill. It would be the same situation if they had double tac skills.
The biggest problem with this ability, is not only does it allow for quick cd's across the board, but also that it generates power in 3 subsystems at the same time, this means even more wp overcapping, high shield strength when ep2s is on cd, and even high engpwr enabling you to obtain high impulse speeds, without the use of a battery for any of the 3 subs, nor the use of an emergency power either.
And as many have seen, even the auxpwr sapping from aux2batt, has a point where it still provides auxpwr being reapplied back to that system, even when you just spammed aux2batt.
So all in all, no single skill should provide the same results, as doubling up on skills, and ships limited by few tac slots, are not meant to be in the dps arms race in the first place.
I hear people argue, oh well that would make those ships pointless to use, or useless in battle.
No it doesn't, they serve a completely different purpose, it's just now with this ability you can multi-purpose the vessels outside of their original design.
You don't need a vessel doing 10k to complete pve, and you don't need a aux2batt ship in pvp either.
A lot of replies in this thread seem to focus around "nerf the powers I don't like to the point that you need to set up your BOff abilities so you can do one or two things really stupidly well." It doesn't say that explicitly, but it certainly seems like it.
I would suggest that in many cases it might be more productive to look at where one can ENHANCE things to bring them up to par, as opposed to breaking other people's goodies (or in a few paradoxical cases, your own goodies).
Hehe, yeah, totaly agree with this.
I dont think this thread will bold well, and in fact we will end up with alot of good skills nerfed to been useless, but anyway...
About skills, dont nerf AP: Omega, but rather buff Grav Well (its damage its a joke now) and give engineers a good skill that is available only at Lt.Com (rank I) and Com. level (rank II and III), like tac and sci have. Maybe a damaging skill or, why not, the Aux2bat skill redone. This way is ensured that only cruisers have full acces to it, and less acces the tac oriented ships, wich are powerfull enuf even without it.
Also about innate target subsystem skills from sci ships and carriers. They are old and obsolete, not to mention are strictly for beams. As some1 else suggested make them toggle and I'll add here for cannons too.
Or even better, add two toggle modes. One offensive mode that adds drain to attacks and other defensive mode that adds extra healing to heal skills. This will synergize well with the 2nd deflectors, since I rememebr a few discusions, from back then when Dyson ships were released, that those will come in 2 flavors too, for drain and heal (dunno tho if that still stands up...).
Another thing, not skill related, but involves meta game changes. Buff the duration of the phaser and polaron procs to 10 seconds and make the elite phaser shield heal proc a HoT for like 10 seconds. Every other procs have a duration of at least 10 secs, if not some even 15 seconds. But the phaser and polaron proc are having the shortest duration, been also very easy to resist via passive skills.
A longer duration will make them better, more used and competitive with the other procs. Until recently, phaser dmg still "sucked" and wasnt used much until another procs were added to dual proc hybrid phaser weapons, namely Bio-molecular and now Xindi Phased biomatter type. Same with polaron. Had a bit of succes with the polarized distruptor hybrids, then went back into a "lethargic" state from where even the protonic polarons couldnt bring them up.
Most of my issues have already been covered, so I won't rehash those.
One of my main gripes is a reshuffling of the skills themselves. Some skills shouldn't start at the Lieutenant level, just as some skills shouldn't have a level 2 and 3 that take up the same slot.
Spread it out more. No one uses a level 2 skill in a commander slot, when a quick inquiry in chat will get you someone who can train a level 3 skill that you don't have access to at no charge. Case and point Gravity Well 2/3 is a Commander level skill and Gravity Well 1 is a Lt. Commander. Drop that down to Lieutenant and bump Gravity Well 2 down to Lt. Commander. There are a few other skills that share the same issue, I was just using GW as an example.
On the other side of that argument, you can get FAW 1 at the ensign level, yet cannon skills don't start until Lieutenant. FAW arguably out DPS's cannon skills. Not to mention there is a great void present in terms of ensign skills available to use, to begin with.
Here's my thoughts on both abilities and general space combat things:
A2B
Although it is extremely popular and anyone using it will defend it to the death I think it needs looking at. I can completely understand its usefulness for cruiser captains to allow them to put out some decent damage. But having an ability that can be exploited so much (by stacking doffs) that it allows players to run all their other powers/abilities on 100% up-time is just wrong. It's why space combat is just one big mess of BFAW half the time.
Combat Pets
These need some serious love. I mean they can do a good amount of damage but they are so weak most of the time that i must admit i often never bother launching them on ships with only one hanger bay. You literally launch them and they get spammed with AOE affects or nuked by a warp core breach. They need to have some built in ability to get the hell away from exploding ships, not hang around and get killed. Also changes to BO seem to be affecting them too, making some pets a little overpowered at the moment.
BFAW/CSV
In my opinion these two powers should be pretty equal to each other, just using different hardware. BFAW at the moment hits too many targets, it should hit a maximum number of targets per rank of the the power you have slotted, up to a max of 5 for lvl3 CSV should be working in a similar fashion but for cannons.
Also the fact that BFAW is 360 and rapid firing makes it overpowered. It should not have the rapid fire component of the power, the whole idea of the power is that the tac officer picks their own targets, they don't get some rapid fire boost at the same time. Alternatively keep the rapid fire part but reduce the damage output
Torpedos
Torps in general are just neglected by most players because you can do everything a torp can do with energy weapons, only faster and better.
They can't penetrate shields, are slow moving and in the case of HY shots, most can be shot down.
You need to give them bonus damage against hull, or something that makes them a more obvious choice of weapon once the shields are down. I mean a player can literally melt shields with energy weapons and kill a targets hull before other torp boats even get a shot worth taking.
Torp impacts on shields should still be having some sort of effect on the target, make them reduce shield resistance or have a chance of knocking subsystems offline, something so they are not so overlooked.
I means the ship just got hit by a small nuke so it should be affected in some way.
Subsystem targeting
I mean the sci ship ability. This should have a toggle on/off like the cruiser commands do. It is daft having to select it every few mins and i'd guess most players never use it because of this. Make it so that once you select the option you want it adds a proc chance for all beam/energy weapons to knock out that system. The fact that it can be on constantly means the % chance should be pretty low so as not to be overpowered.
Boarding party
Competely pointless at the moment. It get shot to pieces by AOE spam and can be cleared almost instantly by even basic powers and abilities.
I think once a ship has lost a shield facing this ability should switch to using transporters, meaning you no longer need to launch the shuttles. In effect once a ship is vulnerable and the shields are down it makes more sense to beam straight over rather than fly through a space battle in a tiny shuttle.
Aggro from npcs
Seriously can this be explained a bit because i'm sure i'm not the only one who has trouble working out how it works?
How can me in my eng. Vesta be getting more aggro than the 3-4 BFAW cruisers than are roflstomping the npcs a few km away?
I can understand that some powers may get more aggro (eg. Grav Well, Tykens Rift, maybe HY torps) but if i'm putting out considerably less dps (because i've got less guns to start with) than the rest of my team surly that tac cube we're against should shoot them not me?
Yes there are -Th consoles availible and these could be stacking on some players bu the whole mechanic seems broken.
You see similar issues on the ground in the voth battlezone for example. A voth will be getting shot by a group of fed npcs but if i run within range he'll target me instead, even if i'm no threat to him and even though the rest of the npcs are still shooting him!
Comments
I'd be ok with that too, provided Cryptic wasn't so stingy with the rewards...
Just going to repost this because people prefer to take bait rather than actual discussion.
Making FAW function like CSV (cone, damage not divided) gets rid of the complaints over FAW.
Making BO function like CRF (rapid pulses of damage) gets rid of the balance concerns.
Balancing weapons once again becomes firing arc vs damage, instead of firing arc vs damage vs 2 pairs of disparate abilities.
That is rather boring way of fixing the issues, honestly you might as well do it the other way around.... either way it would break a lot of the interesting strategies you can preform with either one. Basically making generic as heck.
Without diversity this game would get stale fast...
Wrong. Consolidating the Energy weapon powers, INCREASES diversity in what weapons players will gear for. It also allows players to have more than just "Beam boats" or "Cannon/Turret boats". The Defiant (in canon) is equipped with both Phaser Cannons, and at least 1 Phaser Beam Array, as well as Quantum Torpedoes. Can the Defiant in STO be equipped as such, without nerfing it's damage output in one way or another? Consolidating the energy powers, DOES allow this.
Not sure how many of you use subsystem targeting 3, but it's extremely powerful. Only the disable portion is weak. Frankly it doesn't need a boost on the other fronts, and I'm someone who actually uses it every day. The shared cooldown and long cooldowns on using these (specially the innate ones) certainly sucks.
Tyken's Rift, also very very powerful, specially with the aftershocks doff. Can be kept as-is. Yes, it sucks it doesn't move, but it's a pain for those whom the aftershocks trap.
As for ideas of combining CRF/FAW with subsystem targeting, it would be lolz drain everything in sight and blow it up (Specially on NPCs using Sub Targeting 3 shields) which is not good.
Yes, I do agree Tachyon Beam does need a boost, but on the high end, it shouldn't be more than 1K-4K+ overall if boosting the drain although it isn't my favorite approach as balance goes. A shield resistance debuff would make it way more useful and not throw everything out of whack. I'm actually thinking ahead here and considering MK XIV flow cap consoles/deflectors etc, which a boost to the drain would make a bit too powerful.
EPtE +40 for level 1 seems like way too much. A ship with no engines and EPtE1 can travel faster than a ship with engines and no EPtE.
Tachyon Beam Fully speced into flow caps, Level 3 can be useful. level 2 can keep a shield facing down for a torpedo, but level 1 is worthless.
Tachyon drones They cant even take shields off of a NPC. I remember when they were totally OP but I think something in the middle would be nice.
Charged particle burst I use it to decloak people in pvp and that's it. Maybe it could debuff shields somehow rather than be a shield drain and be cleared by ST?
Engineer Captain Powers Science and Tactical captains have their usefulness but engineers are lacking because for everything an engineer is good at the other two captains can do now.
General Combat
PVE: I would like to see more fleet actions that have fewer but more powerful NPCs. By more powerful I mean, NPCs that use skills, even heals. This would make things like sub nuke, BO, CRF, THY, and other non-aoe powers more effective. Right now FAW, TS, and CSV are king because there are so many NPCs on the map that AOE damage is the best to use.
PVP and PvE: People are either almost invincible or die too quickly. I understand there are different levels of player skill, but besides that, both healing and damage are way too high. Even in 1v1 a player can be taken down to 0 shields and 1% hull and be 100% in both in a few seconds! I know it's probably out of the scope of any foreseen future updates, but I think both healing and damage need to be looked at. No one likes to be on the receiving end of 1 shot kills and no one likes endless battles.
I'm all for making them the same ability but different effects based on the energy weapon... Though that might TRIBBLE with certain rep rewards.
I tell you what, I'm going to give you more along the lines of my general feelings on certain powers and the like rather than any specific fixes I'd like to see. Frankly, although I do spend a good deal of time messing around with builds, I wouldn't call myself a hard number expert by any means and usually just go off of what feels right/fun. I'll probably repeat some things already said, but whatever. So here goes.
-Tactical
Torpedoes and torpedo abilities: Could really use some love. I absolutely love them and want to stick them on every ship I own. This is many because on the shows and movies, all ships were shown with some sort of torpedo. They were always shown as hard hitting, and a captain calling out "Torpedos! Full spread!" always meant there was some serious business going down. Although I understand we can't perfectly replicate what we see on screen, I don't feel that torps and torp powers have enough bite. Especially compared to energy weapons.
Attack patterns: APO feels like it does way too much. I don't think a single power should be able to do all that it does. APD doesn't seem to be useful compared to APB, maybe change it to do something else entirely. The dispersal patterns would be nice if mines were any good. Which bring me to...
Mines. They suck. I've tried to play with these so many times over the years and I just feel so gimp trying to use them. I don't even know why these are still in the game to be honest.
Subsystem Targeting: I don't even use these on my sci ships, and they get them for free. I have no idea what to do about these, but something does. I don't see them serving any purpose as they are right now.
-Science
My major issue here is that tac captains are better at science than science captains. Science captains should be the best at science skills. I don't think that any tac buffs should work on sci skills at all. That's also why it kills me hearing that there's more tac oriented sci ships coming. I don't mind switching sci to a damage class, but let us deal that damage through science. Leave the big guns and stuff for tacs.
Rather than list out each sci power and what I feel wrong with them, I'll just say that I feel the entire science tree should be redone. All of it. I fly a sci main and don't really feel like a science captain. I just feel like a gravity well dispenser.
Oh and I still don't like the new Sensor Analysis. That graphic still kills me. Please change that. I beg of you.
-Engineering
A2B: Well, the arguments about this one have been rehashed time and time again. I'll just say that it feels super cheap to me. I even farmed up a bunch of purple techs for it on several different captains. Made me feel like a dirty cheater using it. I can't support keeping it as is.
Extend Shields: Neat ability, but I think that it should have some sort of benefit to the user to justify using a skill slot. Maybe turn it into some kind of pbaoe skill like cruiser commands.
Boarding Party: I like the idea of boarding an enemy ship, but the fact that they can be shot down and don't seem to do all that much to NPCs makes it a waste. Also watching shuttles fly through enemy shields looks weird. If you can get through those shields, just transport over there instead of flying in a shuttle and risk getting blown away.
Ensign skills: Too many EPtX skills down there. Makes having more than 2 ens slots a handicap due to too many overlapping cooldowns. Either shuffle those around, make some new ens skills, or just make all ens only slots universals.
I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting, but that's what I've got for now.
Mine Trap Supporter
As has been mentioned, the metagame marches towards the "apply damage ASAP" banner without wavering since much of the game is about plowing through encounters as quickly as possible. It didn't start with the revamped STF's, but it's been reinforced by them, and has become commonplace in the queued content. It stands to reason that the conclusion that players would draw would be to build their ships to blow stuff up as quickly as possible to get the most reward for their efforts.
I don't think it's problematic for the meta since the meta is a product of the game's design. If there's whisper on the wind that there's problems with the meta, then there's something about the game's design that's the influencing the meta in a way that makes it undesirable
While tweaking the powers we have to use would certainly affect the meta by manifesting in more diverse builds (admittedly there are a number that are straight up not used that could stand a little attention), I don't think it would change the meta in any meaningful way to have players shift away from the idea that they need to apply as much damage as possible in the shortest amount of time.
So, if there's a desire to move away from the current meta, then a change in design of how we interact with the game world, or at the very least it's foes, is needed.
There was a great suggestion in this thread to have NPC's act more like players by giving them the same sort of compliment of abilities that players have (BOff abilities, weapon slots, maneuvering, etc.), which making NPC foes more dangerous that it necessitates including more survival skills instead of damage ones. Or more disabling type skills instead of survival ones.
Having the variety of NPC's, as also mentioned, is crucial in order to create that meta that is diverse, and not devoted solely to damage application. It would be great to see more build discussion along the lines of "This resist build does great against the Kazon." or "This disable build I made for my Intrepid is the best for dealing with Malon." in Delta Rising.
I don't have a problem with this so far as tac exclusive skills go (eg: APA, TF), I don't have a problem with APO having an effect as all ships with LTC tac boff slots can carry it.
Overused:
This goes without saying but, Auxillary to Battery 1
I am not sure of a good way to nerf the use of this as it's use is more addressing a core problem with playing tanky ships, then a problem with the actual power. It is allowing tanky ships to play and have something to do, constantly rather then waiting on cooldowns constantly, which really isn't fun. If it is a matter of the Power levels being an issue with the cooldowns, simply keep the technicians doing what they do but expand it to ANY Aux To power. Aux to Batt can only grant it once, so you are forced to use different powers to keep the cooldowns low.
Tactical Team I
Stable of EVERY build out there. It's rebalance is neccasary for most people's playstyle.
Perhaps actually making the Shield Balance powers everyone has innately DO something noticeable would manage to make this not be such a widely used power. Also the higher tier versions of it have no noticeable boost to anything, they just take longer to recharge, and thus aren't as good imho.
EPTS:1
Staple of Every Build
Boost those shields, Stay Alive...
TSS:1
Staple of Every Build
Boost those Shields, Stay Alive...
Hazard Emitters 1
Staple of most builds
Clears Plasma DOTs, one of the only things that will over time kill a shield tank.
Engineering Team 1
Almost too good to pass up for the sheer save your butt it can do, if you get to it in time.
Everyone gets low on health and Eng Team is the answer, if you hit it in time half your health just spouts back into being.
Attack Pattern: Omega 3 I see this choosen over the other advanced AP* 3 everytime, it's ability to ignore things like tractor beam and vent plasma, leads it to be the #1 choice in secondary attack patterns.
AOE Powers (Beam Fire At Will, Torpedo Spread)
These are the PVE I win Buttons for a lot of builds. There are Crit Chance builds out there where a single pass over Klingon ships will leave nothing but exploding hulls behind a ship with BFAW III active as it flys through what should be equivilent ships.
With Torpedo Spread III always hitting, and Gravemetric Torpedos, your almost gaurenteed a rift from the Gravemetrics, which changes playfield dramatically in PVE for your favor (it's fun but overused)
EPT Weapons: Very useful here, and used a lot, as damage boosts are always well appreciated.
Underused:
Tachyon Detection Grid: No point, it doesn't work well enough or in conjunction with others to make it worth actually running. The Sci Slot it would run in is worth more as a Haz Emitter, or a TSS.
Tractor Beam falls into the same boat, with an ease of use like AP:O there to counter it, or simply the Evasive Maneuvers everyone has, it has no purpose that you wouldn't better serve by filling the slot with TSS or HE
Boarding Party is notoriously underpowered and SLOW, it is insanely easy to country with a Beam Fire at Will, or a Tactical Team if you do get boarded. This skill needs a complete overhaul. It should at least in PVE be FAR deadlier, with a chance to lead to exploding a ship, or taking it over as a pirated vessel, following your lead with your boarding party at it's helm should the enemy crew be completely overwhelmed.
High Yield Torpedos, while violently powereful have three main disadvantages that lead to most people not even bothering outside of certain Torpedo boat builds. 1 is that they are targetable, 2 is that they are slow as molasses, in the cold of space, and 3 is that they can back draft the damage onto your ship, ESPECIALLY plasmas, which when compared to ground is hilarious as I can toss a plasma grendade at my own feet and not worry about it on my bare skin, but my ship launches a high yield torp, and though it is built to resist such things, it explodes, guess we know why we can respawn though... no damage to me from my own plasma ::snark::
Vent Plasma needs to be igniteable by targetting the plasma with an energy weapon (not with fire at will or cannon spread) this will lend to team play, as multiple players could seed an area, and other players could prep to ignite the various clouds.
Grav Well, is well liked and used, but I honestly think it should be a universal attractant, both enemy and ally ships should be affected along with, if code allowed, surrounding debris and space matter. Imagine getting dragged into a Grav Well III with a group of Asteroids, it would be a blender, and rightly so. Perhaps link extrenous objects to how much Aux is used when activating the ability.
Tyken's Rift, is kinda unclear to me what this power is trying to show. It needs to either do more damage or cause some kind of secondary effect to the surrounding area.
Directed Energy Modulation: Under-appreciated power, that cna make shield tanking completely useless if you have a DEIII running. That being said the entire DEM is VERY overpriced starting at the LT slot when DEM1 and 2 are basically useless for anything other then causing procs.
Polarize Hull is useful, but as I have stated before EPTS and TSS are where it is at for my ships thus far.
If I left any out it is becuase I use them so little on my main Tactical Officer, that I have no real experience with the power and don't use it.
SUGGESTIONS
I have seen a couple suggestions on boards other then this, about making the damage to subsystem, system, real time. As you fight in Elite and other higher difficulties you have a chance to take damage to subsystems which the crew then strives to fix as the fight wears on. This could make for some of those powers that have limited functionality now, (such as boarding party, science team, Beam Target Subsystem) to have added functionality that they would otherwise not have.
A Lot of the driving reason behind the popularity of the A2B design mentality is that it gives tanky ships something offensive to DO during combat. They are seeing powers pop back to useable faster, and thus are feeling more "in the fight" then if they were simply putting all power to shield, and popping heal every few rounds and soaking up a couple hundred thousand damage for the team. Dealing damage always will feel more proactive and objectively involved then taking and healing damage will. So you need to find a way to nerf Aux2Batt without taking away this feeling of involvement, or you will have a lot of bitter, angry player. My suggestion is to look at it like the Designers of the late great CoH looked at the use of Fitness in they're game. It was so Widely used, it had become a universal part of gameplay. A universal need for more stamina had become apprent, so they made it a universal power grant at early levels to get a that boost.
Instead of removing Aux 2 Batt entirely, remove it's stacking, so that you cannot continually drop Aux into Batt more then once in a 3 minute time frame. However allow the Technician DOFFs to continue to lower the recharge of Bridge Officer abilities, whenever an Engineer Bridge Officer ability is used. This keeps the cooldown reduction that Engineers are craving WITHOUT the game breaking energy boost.
unfortunately, if cryptic did bring all boff skills to global cd i reckon they would find it irresistible to raise the global to the old 2-copy threshold.
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That was what I would consider perfect space gameplay. Obviously it can't translate 100% into STO, but as a good reference point, I think it'd be nice to aim for.
It'd be nice if extend shields acted like the Counter-Command tier 5 Bio-Molecular Shield Generator ability, essentially an extended shield healing bubble centered around the cruiser that activates it, with more shield healing done the closer to the center (the player cruiser) the other ships are.
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
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APO does a lot, too much but I have seen some good ideas in this thread about fixing that.
Personally I like mines I just wish they were available starting at Ensign rank vs LT the new Bio-Molecular Photon mines are my current favorite, due to the slow and high damage especially with dispersal patterns.
Alternatively they could be recoded to disperse 6 mines vs 4 mines as the base value
This is the base rank of sci ships subsytems targeting:
Rank I: Ensign 85-45sec cd
- To Self: Upgrades next beam weapon attack within 30 seconds
- To Target: -24 Engines Power Setting for 15 seconds
- To Target: 20% Chance to Disable Engines systems for 8 seconds
Maybe change it to this for the built in sci ship abilityRank III: Sci ship ability 40sec cd
I use torps on about 95% of my alts some with more than 1 type just for my personal fun value
The reason given previously for Hi-yield torps of certain types being targetable was otherwise you have a bunch of instant win weapons. [irrc]
*subnuked and tractor beamed target getting hit by hi-yield plasma torp, tricobalt, etc... creates an unfun situation especially if there is no chance to resist the 30k+ non crit damage. Kinda like the Borg do to us sometimes its not a fun experience especially if your APO or Polarize Hull is currently on cd.
But I do think that targetable torps and mines should have more HP before they are destroyed than currently which seems to be a hard glare in their direction and poof. :P
As a side why are the Borg standard "Hi-yield?" torps not subject to the same player targetable torp conditions at present.
PS any chance we can get a player version of the Borg Shield Neutralizer abiity for sci ships :P
My previously posted thought on some abilities and possible changes
keep up the good work guys
That's not what I meant. I'm looking at this from a Star Trek point of view. Torpedoes had more than double the range of a phaser array.
It would make some really cool tactics, like Artillery ships. As for energy weapons, I'm looking at the damage ratio per firing cycle. The lower the damage per cycle, the longer the range.
Don't forget, the further away the target is, the higher the chance to miss the target.
From earlier and still applies
honestly the kinetic resistance should be effected by shield power.. anything below a certain power should get 50% rather then the full 75%
Tac Team
I love cruisers, but they typically have 2 or at best 3 tac slots. Thing is no matter what ship, escort or cruiser it's on 100% of my ship builds. This implies to me it's OP. I suspect largely (and for me is) because of the auto redistribute shields it provides.
STO is very DPS oriented for the most part and having to ALWAYS equp this and take 1/2 or 1/3 of my offensive slots for a defensive "secondary" ability of the skill is wasted DPS to me (despite TT minimal damage buff).
Auto distribution should be taken out, and made to directly replace the manual evenly balance shield thing you can do when clicking in centre of shield display (which is far too slow). When out of combat, have it evenly balance, when in red alert it acts like TT current redistribute.
Everyone uses it (or should be). To me just break it out and make it an innate captain ability to all classes or tie it directly to the ship controls via the manual shield distribution method (clicking in center of ship HP/Shield display down bottom).
A2B
The boff skill all by itself, needs buffing. I suspect its why it got one of the first special doffs in the game to help make it useful, but if you're going to nerf the doff (which I suspect you hawk, or gecko will be looking at doing) the base skill itself needs changing. EPtX skills are far better than this generalised power transfer skill. Many skills do or buff two things, one well the other not so much, A2B does one thing, acts like weird red matter capacitor at the expense of aux and that's it. Its a buff with an inbuilt self debuff for petes sake, why would you use this these days with leech and EPtX everywhere?
End game sub system power levels have no need at all for this skill all by itself.
Feel free to nerf doff, but make the base A2B ability itself meaningful at end game.
If leaving doffs as they are, make A2B a LTC or higher only ability, forces its use away from non cruisers.
Photonic Officer
50% uptime when doffed, isn't really good enough to square away opportunity cost let alone compete with doffed A2B. Unless doffed A2B gets nerfed down to this skills uptime/effectiveness levels, this needs improvement to make it viable. Base CD needs reduction. Maybe also allow mutli doff stack to help improve it, not just single slot doff only.
Aceton Beam
Generally only available to use on the slowest turning ships in the game, not being able to hit an escort on your backside with this thing makes it almost a team support only ability, not something you as a tank can always use as defence in PvP. 360 arc please.
Cool down needs halving too, something like Beam target weapons is generally the same end effect but cycles way faster and covers all arcs.
I like this ability but the CD kills it unless running A2B.
Directed Energy Modulation
I always felt this should be LTC and Com slot only. DPS ships have enough and getting easy Lt slot access for this I feel isn't fair for the engy class, being only one of its two weapon buff skills. Can stay as is I guess, just kinda always irked me.
Boarding Party
Absolutely completely worthless. Knock it down to only require ensign class slot for MK1 of ability. How you fix this I don't know, but the amount of AoE spam in game, the fact they're targetable, slow, and cleared with TT means it's effectively worthless. Pretty much always has been.
Change to instead of shuttles, beam party over when enemy shield facing drops?
Perhaps when activated a beam is sent to target knocking their facing offline briefly, then party beams in. Facing drops briefly again when they beam back.
Tachyon Beam
I don't use much but I feel all the doff buffs currently possible should just be rolled into the main skill. Maybe..
Or simply make the drain more powerful.
A doff kinda does this with a disable proc but this idea could work in unison anyway: I always thought when tach beam gets applied, it'd make the recipients shield act like a reverse TT and move shields away from incoming damage.
So what doesnt get drained was at least moved to the wrong side for them.
Scramble Sensors
I used to love many seasons ago in PvE. But its now largely useless, length of effect is the main problem. Speccing into sensors is too detrimental to dps these days to even bother with this once great skill.
PvP effect needs rework and buffing I believe too.
Beam Target Subsystem
For the DPS lost in choosing this I'd like to see this raised to 50% chance or 100% to disable. I'm not sure why anyone would be compelled to carry a boff ability that only works 1/5th of the times they use it.
Give receiver immunity to same effect (perhaps for all subsystems) after the fact so they can't be constantly perma disabled.
Decompiler
There's no consoles or itemised way to easily boost Sub Space Decompiler skills beyond captain skills and deflectors afaik.
Leaves a disabling type build pretty much impossible to spec well into despite having skill points and abilities that feed from it. Doesn't get any use from what I see.
Flow caps
I haven't run a drain build in a while since it became ineffective, but it would be good to be able to shutdown NPCs again.
In terms of game play generally, it would be nice to see a shift away from pure DPS for PvE. Tanking in the new Undine elites is a fairly solid option and having scores in CCE where heals count is great too towards shifting mindsets away from raw DPS.
It would be good to see sci ships be more important in PvE.
As icegavel mentioned, NPCs with full compliment of boff abilities including heals, attack patterns etc (much like Borg queen Diamond ship but to a lesser OP state for regular elite units) could actually make team work more important to defeat them, apparently that's supposed to be a good thing in MMOs. Rather than just huge dumb bags of HP we have to sit and spam at *cough* planet killers *cough*.
A lot of replies in this thread seem to focus around "nerf the powers I don't like to the point that you need to set up your BOff abilities so you can do one or two things really stupidly well." It doesn't say that explicitly, but it certainly seems like it.
I would suggest that in many cases it might be more productive to look at where one can ENHANCE things to bring them up to par, as opposed to breaking other people's goodies (or in a few paradoxical cases, your own goodies).
This is a skill that gets a lot of grief. I do understand why. I use it, because it will increase my accuracy on a single target beyond what it should do. Also, it is a rapid fire skill that nits either single, or multiple targets.
I know that it was said before that it will be changed in the future so that it is not as effective against a single target. However, it is not just a single target, it is all of them. So, for example, you were attacking two enemies. This will allow you to sit where you could hit both of them with the heightened accuracy, and rapid fire to kill them both about the same time.
I have mentioned before in other threads suggestions I had on this. Separate BFAW into two skills, a rapid fire skill, and a fire at will (multiple target) skill. BFAW needs to lose the rapid fire ability. This will still allow it to be used effectively for crowd control, but not be over powered. By doing so, it will help reduce it from being OP, because it will force players to choose if they want to do rapid fire damage, or scatter shots.
I know that some players might get upset with cannons having rapid fire on scatter volley, but beams not. However, if BFAW loses the rapid fire, it can keep the increased accuracy, and still hit things in a 360 degree radius. Whereas the cannon rapid fire skill loses a lot of accuracy in it.
The beams will still have all of their other skills, like target sub systems, and even beam overload. So, it will still offer more chooses to beams that cannons cannot, even though cannons were also able to target subsystems in the shows.
AUX2BAT
I do use this builds, so what I say comes from someone using it. This skill is given a lot of grief because of people that don't properly understand how it works, and assume other players are using it if they out DPS them. All that it does (with the proper BOFFs for it) is allow BOFF skills to come off of cool down sooner. This is helpful for ships that have limited tactical slots, but are not able to compete in the now DPS race that so many believe is needed to be efficient.
When a ship that has a Commander tactical, and one Universal Lt. Commander station, but use double AUX2BAT, they are treated poorly by those that assume it is the cause of their high DPS. The truth is that they will have almost the exact same DPS, by using the Universal Lt. Commander station as a tactical, and copying the tactical skills up to the Lt. Commander rank.
Running double skills will give the same amount of up time as double AUX2BAT. The only time it makes a difference with these type of ships is with heals. Therefore, in this case, if someone is upset because they are out DPSing them, it is NOT because of the AUX2BAT skill. It would be the same situation if they had double tac skills.
So far, there is nothing wrong with AUX2BAT itself. The problem is because of BFAW. The way it is set up now, even running 2 sets of it without AUX2BAT makes it OP. Though, now that BO has been changed to 100% crit, (as long as they don't Nerf it too much more) it has become more effective than before.
This has allowed others, and myself, to build better quick kill builds, instead of following the DPS obsession that has been around for a while.
Still, AUX2BAT is not the problem. It is some of the tactical skills that are. Nerfing AUX2BAT, or the DOFFs for it will only hurt the gameplay.
If I can think of something else, I will mention it.
Carrier Pets - Namely the lower durability ones from a PVP standpoint.
The pets I'm mostly refering to are also knows as the "Squishy Pets"
Pets like the To'duj fighter, the Type 8 Shuttle, The S'kull fighter, just to name a few..
They have little use in some sceneros, even less in PVP, especially with the current A2B + Technician + Marion DEM + FAW Meta that's floating around right now in PVP.
They get killed just as soon as they are launched.
While this is more of a Faw problem, those types of pets are also hurt around the amounts of Torp-Spread also floating around. Most of the time being one shot by said spreads.
This squishyness of pets severly limits the carrier's ability to bring pets into the PVP arena since most of those Pets that are useful, or even unique to some carriers, are what would be brought.
Drain build would use Siphon Drones.. but those are in the squishy catagory, so poof.
And the Trait that gives an accuracy bonus vs "Smaller" targets doesn't help either. I'm not saying that anyone needs this trait these days with the amount of Accuracy currently in the game.
Also, while I'm on the subject, there are some specilized FAW builds that completely neutralize even the most durable of the Carrier Pets.. in seconds. And while that build is doing its job, and I reconize that, there is now so much FAW because of the super useful combination of Fire at Will + Technician Doffs + Aux to Battery + DEM + Marion that it makes it exceedingly pointless to even fly a Carrier into a PVP area if your build its self isn't either
A: Designed around being a "Tank"/healer.
B: A Faw Boat its self
Also I should clearify, that the Carriers I'm refering to are not the same as Flight Deck Cruisers and Escort Carriers. The Carriers I'm refering to are the ones that Allow for 2 Hanger bays, 3 Fore/3Aft Weapons, and Target subsystem abilities.
Those Carriers are: The Atrox, The Vor'quv, the mirror Vor'quv, and the Tholian Recluse.
The Tholian Recluse how ever, because of its lobi store nature, makes it superior to the Atrox, and the Vor'quv/Mirror Version. Not just because of its Lobi Nature. But because the ability to turn it into a Tank is superior, not to mention the pets its allowed to release compared to the other two.
To sum everything up to be perhaps eaiser to read..
The Games Damage, Accuracy, Critical hit, and Critical Severity is so high right now, its harmful to the Carrier's Pet based playstyle. And with no way to support those pets in the amount of firepower currently in the game, it makes a die hard carrier lover that I am wonder why even bother fly a carrier any more when apparently there are other ships being released, almost on a monthly basis, that are not carriers, but that are superior..
Note: The reason the Dreadnaught Carriers, and the Kar'fi were not mentioned in the list, is because while they are carriers as well, and are also effected by the currently super high damage that is the norm now adays, they have other ways to make themselves useful beyond just their pets. So pets being destroyed by heavy firepower, does not hurt them as harshly as it does their slower moving cousins.
Think about this:
American Football has been in open beta for 144 years. ~Kotaku
Beam Overload
Change: Changes firing mode to a sustained/pulse fire for all available beams, continuously channeling energy damage at the current target. Places all beams on (literal) cooldown for 3-6 seconds once the attack buff terminates. (This would provide a greater parity to Cannons:Rapid Fire; in focus-firing down a single target and allowing all beam weapons to benefit instead of just one.)
Boarding Party
Add: Each successful landing/boarding has a 60/80/100% chance to remove a buff on the target.
Extend Shields
Change: Regenerate and harden the shields of the nearest 2/3/4 ships within 5km of the user. Does not target fighters/projectiles or ships currently being 'extended' by other players.
Tachyon Beam
Add: Reduce energy weapon damage of target by 10/20/30%.
Jam Sensors
Change: Reduce targeting range and accuracy by 2km/5% per rank. (Rank 3 would reduce a target's ability to acquire targets to 4km and suffer -15% chance to hit)
Mask Energy Signature
Add: Ability to fire projectile weapons while 'cloaked' with a 50/40/30% recharge penalty.
Charged Particle Burst
Add: 3/6/9% damage resistance reduction on effected targets.
Tyken's Rift
Add: Increase ability recharge time of effected targets by 5/10/15%.
The biggest problem with this ability, is not only does it allow for quick cd's across the board, but also that it generates power in 3 subsystems at the same time, this means even more wp overcapping, high shield strength when ep2s is on cd, and even high engpwr enabling you to obtain high impulse speeds, without the use of a battery for any of the 3 subs, nor the use of an emergency power either.
And as many have seen, even the auxpwr sapping from aux2batt, has a point where it still provides auxpwr being reapplied back to that system, even when you just spammed aux2batt.
So all in all, no single skill should provide the same results, as doubling up on skills, and ships limited by few tac slots, are not meant to be in the dps arms race in the first place.
I hear people argue, oh well that would make those ships pointless to use, or useless in battle.
No it doesn't, they serve a completely different purpose, it's just now with this ability you can multi-purpose the vessels outside of their original design.
You don't need a vessel doing 10k to complete pve, and you don't need a aux2batt ship in pvp either.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
Hehe, yeah, totaly agree with this.
I dont think this thread will bold well, and in fact we will end up with alot of good skills nerfed to been useless, but anyway...
About skills, dont nerf AP: Omega, but rather buff Grav Well (its damage its a joke now) and give engineers a good skill that is available only at Lt.Com (rank I) and Com. level (rank II and III), like tac and sci have. Maybe a damaging skill or, why not, the Aux2bat skill redone. This way is ensured that only cruisers have full acces to it, and less acces the tac oriented ships, wich are powerfull enuf even without it.
Also about innate target subsystem skills from sci ships and carriers. They are old and obsolete, not to mention are strictly for beams. As some1 else suggested make them toggle and I'll add here for cannons too.
Or even better, add two toggle modes. One offensive mode that adds drain to attacks and other defensive mode that adds extra healing to heal skills. This will synergize well with the 2nd deflectors, since I rememebr a few discusions, from back then when Dyson ships were released, that those will come in 2 flavors too, for drain and heal (dunno tho if that still stands up...).
Another thing, not skill related, but involves meta game changes. Buff the duration of the phaser and polaron procs to 10 seconds and make the elite phaser shield heal proc a HoT for like 10 seconds. Every other procs have a duration of at least 10 secs, if not some even 15 seconds. But the phaser and polaron proc are having the shortest duration, been also very easy to resist via passive skills.
A longer duration will make them better, more used and competitive with the other procs. Until recently, phaser dmg still "sucked" and wasnt used much until another procs were added to dual proc hybrid phaser weapons, namely Bio-molecular and now Xindi Phased biomatter type. Same with polaron. Had a bit of succes with the polarized distruptor hybrids, then went back into a "lethargic" state from where even the protonic polarons couldnt bring them up.
One of my main gripes is a reshuffling of the skills themselves. Some skills shouldn't start at the Lieutenant level, just as some skills shouldn't have a level 2 and 3 that take up the same slot.
Spread it out more. No one uses a level 2 skill in a commander slot, when a quick inquiry in chat will get you someone who can train a level 3 skill that you don't have access to at no charge. Case and point Gravity Well 2/3 is a Commander level skill and Gravity Well 1 is a Lt. Commander. Drop that down to Lieutenant and bump Gravity Well 2 down to Lt. Commander. There are a few other skills that share the same issue, I was just using GW as an example.
On the other side of that argument, you can get FAW 1 at the ensign level, yet cannon skills don't start until Lieutenant. FAW arguably out DPS's cannon skills. Not to mention there is a great void present in terms of ensign skills available to use, to begin with.
A2B
Although it is extremely popular and anyone using it will defend it to the death I think it needs looking at. I can completely understand its usefulness for cruiser captains to allow them to put out some decent damage. But having an ability that can be exploited so much (by stacking doffs) that it allows players to run all their other powers/abilities on 100% up-time is just wrong. It's why space combat is just one big mess of BFAW half the time.
Combat Pets
These need some serious love. I mean they can do a good amount of damage but they are so weak most of the time that i must admit i often never bother launching them on ships with only one hanger bay. You literally launch them and they get spammed with AOE affects or nuked by a warp core breach. They need to have some built in ability to get the hell away from exploding ships, not hang around and get killed. Also changes to BO seem to be affecting them too, making some pets a little overpowered at the moment.
BFAW/CSV
In my opinion these two powers should be pretty equal to each other, just using different hardware. BFAW at the moment hits too many targets, it should hit a maximum number of targets per rank of the the power you have slotted, up to a max of 5 for lvl3 CSV should be working in a similar fashion but for cannons.
Also the fact that BFAW is 360 and rapid firing makes it overpowered. It should not have the rapid fire component of the power, the whole idea of the power is that the tac officer picks their own targets, they don't get some rapid fire boost at the same time. Alternatively keep the rapid fire part but reduce the damage output
Torpedos
Torps in general are just neglected by most players because you can do everything a torp can do with energy weapons, only faster and better.
They can't penetrate shields, are slow moving and in the case of HY shots, most can be shot down.
You need to give them bonus damage against hull, or something that makes them a more obvious choice of weapon once the shields are down. I mean a player can literally melt shields with energy weapons and kill a targets hull before other torp boats even get a shot worth taking.
Torp impacts on shields should still be having some sort of effect on the target, make them reduce shield resistance or have a chance of knocking subsystems offline, something so they are not so overlooked.
I means the ship just got hit by a small nuke so it should be affected in some way.
Subsystem targeting
I mean the sci ship ability. This should have a toggle on/off like the cruiser commands do. It is daft having to select it every few mins and i'd guess most players never use it because of this. Make it so that once you select the option you want it adds a proc chance for all beam/energy weapons to knock out that system. The fact that it can be on constantly means the % chance should be pretty low so as not to be overpowered.
Boarding party
Competely pointless at the moment. It get shot to pieces by AOE spam and can be cleared almost instantly by even basic powers and abilities.
I think once a ship has lost a shield facing this ability should switch to using transporters, meaning you no longer need to launch the shuttles. In effect once a ship is vulnerable and the shields are down it makes more sense to beam straight over rather than fly through a space battle in a tiny shuttle.
Aggro from npcs
Seriously can this be explained a bit because i'm sure i'm not the only one who has trouble working out how it works?
How can me in my eng. Vesta be getting more aggro than the 3-4 BFAW cruisers than are roflstomping the npcs a few km away?
I can understand that some powers may get more aggro (eg. Grav Well, Tykens Rift, maybe HY torps) but if i'm putting out considerably less dps (because i've got less guns to start with) than the rest of my team surly that tac cube we're against should shoot them not me?
Yes there are -Th consoles availible and these could be stacking on some players bu the whole mechanic seems broken.
You see similar issues on the ground in the voth battlezone for example. A voth will be getting shot by a group of fed npcs but if i run within range he'll target me instead, even if i'm no threat to him and even though the rest of the npcs are still shooting him!