I would love to see photonics shock wave get a once over. It is a good skill, suggested changes would be 30 second cool down 15 shared, and 25% shield pen at 50 aux power. The pen should go up based on power levels. Let the part gen skill base the damage not aux power. We could add it to the deflector skills also to allow cool down from doff.
Either way I love to see powers get a once over. Great work on tachyon beam. I would like to know if the vet ship beam is also effected and the Andorian tachyon cannon burst, power name eludes me now.
I remember the good old PvP times with Science Tri-Cobalt / Charged particle Burst / Tachyon Beam / Photonic Shockwave bombers.
That was fun, but with the skill revamp and more resists to the shield drain abilities in place, it became non-viable. And it was never that great in PvE, because NPCs are hit point bags that lacked the shield resists players had from TSS or EPtS that make bypassing them via shield drains so valuable.
I hope CPB also sees some buffs.
Maybe TB coud lower the targets shield damage reduction (including for kinetic damage?) and CPB could act as a limited Subnucleonic Beam for dispelling shield buffs?
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
should have just given it a 300% boost across the board. but even then, a flow cap build would still have to compete with a particle build, and that can skip shields entirely, and is still 10 times more deadly. might be interesting to slot tach beam on an escort with a LTC sci, and not more then basic skill tree flow buffing though, don't think stiper builds are worth baseline a sci ship around yet.
just had a thought, perhaps more components of certain sci skills should depend on more types of sci skills. TBR already depends on particle for damage, and graviton for push, maybe it and FBP should depend on flow for shield penetration amount, incentive more diverse skill buffing, wile roundaboutly nerfing out of control exotic damage.
Quick question cuz Im not an expert on topic. Will the tachyon beams of NPC opponents in the Borg STF will now hit me with more like 300% effectiveness or is it more like 40%?
If I recall correctly always critting beam overloads already added much fun to VCEs planet killers.
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Shared cooldown reduced from 20 seconds to 10 seconds.
All individual cooldowns reduced from 30 seconds to 20 seconds.
But with these, especially the shared cooldown reduced from 20 seconds to 10 seconds, you can rapidly cycle together with Energy Siphon, and their should be much rejoicing!
For now, this change affects only actual Tachyon Beam abilities. But that applies if they are used by Players or NPCs.
This concerns me. Not having a dig at you here Bort as yu are one of the good ones who communicate with us. However given Cryptics past I am also concerned that thei will "accidentally" affect other skills reliant on these when released.
Also why has this not been tested instead of just going straight to live? I have gone through Febs and Jans tribble notes and note seen it mentioned. I may have missed it and if so please someone link to it. If I haven't this increases my concern of it 2accidentally" affecting other skills and powers that rely on these.
Try doing the same thing with weapons and the skills that affect them and see what happens.
For now, this change affects only actual Tachyon Beam abilities. But that applies if they are used by Players or NPCs.
Some NPCs have their own, unique variants of existing abilities. If the Breen Raiders fall under the latter category, they will remain unaltered.
And, generally speaking, this change was meant to improve player effectiveness with this ability, and not pets.
So which catergory does it fall under? The hangar item's description says it has Tachyon Beam, but how are we supposed to know if it's an actual Tachyon Beam or some "unique variant" that doesn't count if you don't tell us?
Quick question cuz Im not an expert on topic. Will the tachyon beams of NPC opponents in the Borg STF will now hit me with more like 300% effectiveness or is it more like 40%?
If I recall correctly always critting beam overloads already added much fun to VCEs planet killers.
Good question.
But it could be that they in fact use a different, NPC only version of the ability. I never got the impression that NPC ships have much in the way of skills and use anything but the average power settings (e.g. 50 to everything). But the Sphere drain doesn't seem that ineffective to me.
So if it is using "actual" Tachyon Beam, I'd say it would be a notable increase, but it seems very likely it is not.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Quick question cuz Im not an expert on topic. Will the tachyon beams of NPC opponents in the Borg STF will now hit me with more like 300% effectiveness or is it more like 40%?
If I recall correctly always critting beam overloads already added much fun to VCEs planet killers.
Borg uses a shield drain alright. Don't think it's a regular Tachyon beam, though. More like specialized shield neutralizers.
Borg uses a shield drain alright. Don't think it's a regular Tachyon beam, though. More like specialized shield neutralizers.
Spheres seem to use tachyon beam going by the animation and cubes and the log use the Borg shield neutraliser which shows up as a debuff above my ship icon. I don't see the neutraliser debuff icon when I get hit with the spheres skill.
This is only going by what I have seen in red alerts and that Borg area accessed by the transwarp gate. I don't do STFs so can't comment on those.
It's good to see Tachyon Beam getting a buff, been needed for quite some time. When the servers back up after it's patched I'll be sure to give it a good testing, though I feel it still won't be good enough to compete with the going Sci ship designs.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
Patch notes aren't meant to relay the entire picture. They're just too succinct a format to work for that.
So, to hopefully ally a few fears I already see floating about, I'll share a few example figures of the changes being applied to Tachyon Beam in tomorrow's patch:
- Base magnitudes increased dramatically
- Benefit that can be gained from Auxiliary Power and Flow Capacitors reduced.
Examples:
* 0 Flow Capacitor Skill and 15 Aux Power = ~194% increase to Drain amount (close to triple the current value)
* 100 Skill + 100 Aux Power = ~75% increase to Drain amount
* 300 skill + 135 Aux Power = ~39% increase to Drain amount
So, as you can see, even at extremely-high end, the ability will be receiving an improvement.
I hope that helps. If it's still unclear, please ask any additional questions here and I'll attempt to answer them.
I noticed one thing however - the reduction of the shared cooldown to 10 seconds - is that even notable? Isn't there also a 15 second "Deflector Dish" system cooldown that would "overwrite" this?
Or are the shared/system cooldowns no longer a thing?
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I noticed one thing however - the reduction of the shared cooldown to 10 seconds - is that even notable? Isn't there also a 15 second "Deflector Dish" system cooldown that would "overwrite" this?
Or are the shared/system cooldowns no longer a thing?
There no longer a thing. You can spam sci like mad these days. Only real cool down between skills is GW and Tykens sharing a 15s.
For now, this change affects only actual Tachyon Beam abilities. But that applies if they are used by Players or NPCs.
Some NPCs have their own, unique variants of existing abilities. If the Breen Raiders fall under the latter category, they will remain unaltered.
And, generally speaking, this change was meant to improve player effectiveness with this ability, and not pets.
Borg Spheres seem to use TB. I think they will become way too powerful if they benefit from this change. It is already easy for a single sphere to completely drop an escort's shields, in my pre-DR experience, when I used to play those STFs often.
Not to mention the Borg Cube shield neuralizer, but I think/hope it's a completely separate ability that won't get affected by this change.
The people crowing about the lack of difficulty should be happy then, except for the ones that just want things to be difficult for others and hate having to sully their loadout with consoles that don't make their DPS bigger.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Unfortunately I don't find this a welcome change at all, at least not the on the npc side of it. I got a full 9 bars filled on the Power Insulators as if it means any thing since borg are still sucking my shields dry. Prior to the level 60 cap I would get my drained but not as bad as it is now.
For now, this change affects only actual Tachyon Beam abilities. But that applies if they are used by Players or NPCs.
Some NPCs have their own, unique variants of existing abilities. If the Breen Raiders fall under the latter category, they will remain unaltered.
And, generally speaking, this change was meant to improve player effectiveness with this ability, and not pets.
On the one hand I'm overjoyed...on the other I'm terrified. Borg Spheres were already annihilating my shields with Tachyon Beam.
BUT, I don't do the math and figures. If this makes my Tachyon Beam as effective as a Borg Sphere's...heck I'd take half, I may have too look at using this again....AND thanks to the new BOFF skills system, testing it will be as simple as a hot swap.
This is bigger news than what Mr. Randall had to post. :eek:
Well...I tried it cause it came on a BOFF....then I noticed it didn't work. Always wanted to use it again, especially after my first encounters with a Borg sphere. Tried it again...still didn't work. Then slapped a Transfer Shield strength on and never looked back.
It's nice to see the skill getting looked at.. but I don't think this will really make the skill worthwhile again. It's generally easier/more effective to simply brute force a shield down with weapon fire or to shut down shields directly through energy drain.
What Tachyon Beam really needs is some kind of secondary effect.. like lowering shield resistance, increasing the bleed-through percentage or at the very least a hefty shield-healing penalty.
Agreed. I think increasing bleed through will make it highly viable. And it makes sense. Recall the Tachyon bursts from the Cousteau in Insurrection. It was expressly stated that if they didn't reset their shields then they would get radiation from the collector via bleedthrough of the shields. It's perfect.
I've always had the opinion it should work like Subnucleonic Beam, only it strips any Shield buffs currently applied to the target over a period of time (with higher ranks having a longer time). Emergency Power to Shields, Transfer Shield Strength, RSP, Metaphasic Shields, Covariance Capacitor, Adaptive Resistance (from Elite Fleet and Aegis shields), etc.
As has been noted since... well, pretty much January-February 2010, Tachyon Beam is constantly overshadowed by simply brute forcing an opponent's shields down with energy weapons. Picking Tachyon Beam in any Science Bridge Officer slot is something many consider to be a "false choice", since there is plenty of other powers to choose from which are simply better.
If Tachyon Beam was used more like Subnuke for Shield buffs/heals, or a reverse-Hazard Emitters for Shield Buffs (and providing a shield DoT maybe), I think it would be seen as a far more devastating weapon, particularly in the end game when shields are especially beefy from both a PvE and PvP perspective.
That all looks good.
Use Rotate Shield Frequencies to counter the effect.
should have just given it a 300% boost across the board. but even then, a flow cap build would still have to compete with a particle build, and that can skip shields entirely, and is still 10 times more deadly. might be interesting to slot tach beam on an escort with a LTC sci, and not more then basic skill tree flow buffing though, don't think stiper builds are worth baseline a sci ship around yet.
just had a thought, perhaps more components of certain sci skills should depend on more types of sci skills. TBR already depends on particle for damage, and graviton for push, maybe it and FBP should depend on flow for shield penetration amount, incentive more diverse skill buffing, wile roundaboutly nerfing out of control exotic damage.
That's an excellent idea. It would make crippling overspecialization actually crippling. A meaningful trade off.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
Unfortunately I don't find this a welcome change at all, at least not the on the npc side of it. I got a full 9 bars filled on the Power Insulators as if it means any thing since borg are still sucking my shields dry. Prior to the level 60 cap I would get my drained but not as bad as it is now.
The spheres have a souped up version of Tachyon Beam. Frankly I wish more NPCs packed a punch like that.
The spheres have a souped up version of Tachyon Beam. Frankly I wish more NPCs packed a punch like that.
Also, quite often, you aren't feeling the sting of one Sphere's tachyon beam, but the whole group. Good thing sci vessels get so much shield bonuses from mastery, cause Grav Well aggro and spheres in ISA equals no shields for me...
This is bigger news than what Mr. Randall had to post. :eek:
I used it when the pathfinder came out with its secondary deflector. Used it for radiation damage, never for shield drain since that seemed like a futile endeavour given the massive shields and multiple ways to counter it.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
I used it when the pathfinder came out with its secondary deflector. Used it for radiation damage, never for shield drain since that seemed like a futile endeavour given the massive shields and multiple ways to counter it.
Radiation damage? How well does it work?
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
The spheres have a souped up version of Tachyon Beam. Frankly I wish more NPCs packed a punch like that.
If theirs is suped it it shows just how weak it is. I have yet to have my shields taken down by a spheres TB. The shield neutraliser used by the cubes and log on the other hand is an entirely different kettle of fish.
If theirs is suped it it shows just how weak it is. I have yet to have my shields taken down by a spheres TB. The shield neutraliser used by the cubes and log on the other hand is an entirely different kettle of fish.
The shield neutralizer is total BS. You can get 5 at once, and a single one takes you from full shields WITH high resists (EPTS running and high power levels) to no shields in 2 seconds. And... if you CLEAR it, you don't get those shields back. You just stop the drain.
You want to make sci chars viable and useful again? Give them a new boff skill that starts at ENS and goes to LtCDR: Borg Shield Neutralizer. Affected by flow caps and subspace decompiler. Do NOT gimp it for players. Give us what the borg get. It still will only be partially effective against citadels and the like, but it will do something. Against lesser bosses it will be much more useful.
I'm thinking 1 minute cooldown, 20 seconds shared cooldown, 20 seconds duration (because that's how long it seems to last when used on us, but the borg get to use it much more often).
And all shall rejoice who splurged and got a ship 3 pack. Those that just bought the one trait... that will teach ya.
Well if they tie a sub par science skill to every new ship trait... perhaps in a year they will have all gotten a once over sales buff. lol
Presidio is the best one of the pack. Geneva is a good healboat but looks like a pigeon, Concorde bare useless with cmdr/ltcmdr engies, not meant for combat or healing.
So no, huzzah to who bought just one ship
to me, the others are useless and the trait doesn't justify their purchase
Comments
Either way I love to see powers get a once over. Great work on tachyon beam. I would like to know if the vet ship beam is also effected and the Andorian tachyon cannon burst, power name eludes me now.
That was fun, but with the skill revamp and more resists to the shield drain abilities in place, it became non-viable. And it was never that great in PvE, because NPCs are hit point bags that lacked the shield resists players had from TSS or EPtS that make bypassing them via shield drains so valuable.
I hope CPB also sees some buffs.
Maybe TB coud lower the targets shield damage reduction (including for kinetic damage?) and CPB could act as a limited Subnucleonic Beam for dispelling shield buffs?
just had a thought, perhaps more components of certain sci skills should depend on more types of sci skills. TBR already depends on particle for damage, and graviton for push, maybe it and FBP should depend on flow for shield penetration amount, incentive more diverse skill buffing, wile roundaboutly nerfing out of control exotic damage.
If I recall correctly always critting beam overloads already added much fun to VCEs planet killers.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
It's always been a kinda crappy ability.
Shared cooldown reduced from 20 seconds to 10 seconds.
All individual cooldowns reduced from 30 seconds to 20 seconds.
But with these, especially the shared cooldown reduced from 20 seconds to 10 seconds, you can rapidly cycle together with Energy Siphon, and their should be much rejoicing!
As for borg-stfs, we might all be hulltanks in a few hours... something ppl would have laughed at a few years, even a few months ago...
Thy for confirming!
I was just wondering if cryptic squeezed in yet another nerf with this change after all... just for the weekly quota.
Think the casual kasa run will decide if this change to an ability almost nobody ever uses was a needed one.
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This concerns me. Not having a dig at you here Bort as yu are one of the good ones who communicate with us. However given Cryptics past I am also concerned that thei will "accidentally" affect other skills reliant on these when released.
Also why has this not been tested instead of just going straight to live? I have gone through Febs and Jans tribble notes and note seen it mentioned. I may have missed it and if so please someone link to it. If I haven't this increases my concern of it 2accidentally" affecting other skills and powers that rely on these.
Try doing the same thing with weapons and the skills that affect them and see what happens.
Good question.
But it could be that they in fact use a different, NPC only version of the ability. I never got the impression that NPC ships have much in the way of skills and use anything but the average power settings (e.g. 50 to everything). But the Sphere drain doesn't seem that ineffective to me.
So if it is using "actual" Tachyon Beam, I'd say it would be a notable increase, but it seems very likely it is not.
Borg uses a shield drain alright. Don't think it's a regular Tachyon beam, though. More like specialized shield neutralizers.
Spheres seem to use tachyon beam going by the animation and cubes and the log use the Borg shield neutraliser which shows up as a debuff above my ship icon. I don't see the neutraliser debuff icon when I get hit with the spheres skill.
This is only going by what I have seen in red alerts and that Borg area accessed by the transwarp gate. I don't do STFs so can't comment on those.
I noticed one thing however - the reduction of the shared cooldown to 10 seconds - is that even notable? Isn't there also a 15 second "Deflector Dish" system cooldown that would "overwrite" this?
Or are the shared/system cooldowns no longer a thing?
There no longer a thing. You can spam sci like mad these days. Only real cool down between skills is GW and Tykens sharing a 15s.
Borg Spheres seem to use TB. I think they will become way too powerful if they benefit from this change. It is already easy for a single sphere to completely drop an escort's shields, in my pre-DR experience, when I used to play those STFs often.
Not to mention the Borg Cube shield neuralizer, but I think/hope it's a completely separate ability that won't get affected by this change.
STO Screenshot Archive
Last I checked 3 x 0 is still 0.
Hey, with a good Flow Caps build, you can get it pretty high. Now that it's being buffed, I wonder...
Your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes. He saved 800 lives, including your mother's, and yours.
I dare you to do better.
I'm glad to see it.
On the one hand I'm overjoyed...on the other I'm terrified. Borg Spheres were already annihilating my shields with Tachyon Beam.
BUT, I don't do the math and figures. If this makes my Tachyon Beam as effective as a Borg Sphere's...heck I'd take half, I may have too look at using this again....AND thanks to the new BOFF skills system, testing it will be as simple as a hot swap.
Well...I tried it cause it came on a BOFF....then I noticed it didn't work. Always wanted to use it again, especially after my first encounters with a Borg sphere. Tried it again...still didn't work. Then slapped a Transfer Shield strength on and never looked back.
Agreed. I think increasing bleed through will make it highly viable. And it makes sense. Recall the Tachyon bursts from the Cousteau in Insurrection. It was expressly stated that if they didn't reset their shields then they would get radiation from the collector via bleedthrough of the shields. It's perfect.
That all looks good.
Use Rotate Shield Frequencies to counter the effect.
That's an excellent idea. It would make crippling overspecialization actually crippling. A meaningful trade off.
The spheres have a souped up version of Tachyon Beam. Frankly I wish more NPCs packed a punch like that.
Also, quite often, you aren't feeling the sting of one Sphere's tachyon beam, but the whole group. Good thing sci vessels get so much shield bonuses from mastery, cause Grav Well aggro and spheres in ISA equals no shields for me...
I used it when the pathfinder came out with its secondary deflector. Used it for radiation damage, never for shield drain since that seemed like a futile endeavour given the massive shields and multiple ways to counter it.
Radiation damage? How well does it work?
Huh. I've been using them since my first SCI could use them. Didn't know others thought they weren't useful.
Then again, I'm still a noob to the game, so I think everything is still useful. :: shrug ::
If theirs is suped it it shows just how weak it is. I have yet to have my shields taken down by a spheres TB. The shield neutraliser used by the cubes and log on the other hand is an entirely different kettle of fish.
The shield neutralizer is total BS. You can get 5 at once, and a single one takes you from full shields WITH high resists (EPTS running and high power levels) to no shields in 2 seconds. And... if you CLEAR it, you don't get those shields back. You just stop the drain.
You want to make sci chars viable and useful again? Give them a new boff skill that starts at ENS and goes to LtCDR: Borg Shield Neutralizer. Affected by flow caps and subspace decompiler. Do NOT gimp it for players. Give us what the borg get. It still will only be partially effective against citadels and the like, but it will do something. Against lesser bosses it will be much more useful.
I'm thinking 1 minute cooldown, 20 seconds shared cooldown, 20 seconds duration (because that's how long it seems to last when used on us, but the borg get to use it much more often).
Presidio is the best one of the pack. Geneva is a good healboat but looks like a pigeon, Concorde bare useless with cmdr/ltcmdr engies, not meant for combat or healing.
So no, huzzah to who bought just one ship
to me, the others are useless and the trait doesn't justify their purchase