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T6 Excelsior? Here is my suggestion for the BOFF and Console Layout
davidwford
Member Posts: 1,836 Arc User
Tagging onto my other post about a possible Excelsior set(http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1430731), I started thinking about a T6 Excesior's layout. Below is my proposal for both the T6 and Fleet T6 versions
T6 BOFF: CDR Eng/Command, Lt CDR Eng/ Pilot, LT. CDR Tactical, Lt. Sci, Ens Universal
T6 Consoles: 3 Tac, 5 Eng, 2 Sci
T6 Fleet Consoles: 4 Tac, 5 Eng, 2 Sci
T6 BOFF: CDR Eng/Command, Lt CDR Eng/ Pilot, LT. CDR Tactical, Lt. Sci, Ens Universal
T6 Consoles: 3 Tac, 5 Eng, 2 Sci
T6 Fleet Consoles: 4 Tac, 5 Eng, 2 Sci
Post edited by davidwford on
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Yep, exactly.
The Command Cruisers feel like the evolution of the Excelsior which is one of the things I really like about them. As much as I like the Excelsior, it's too hard to explain a T6 Refit of such an old ship that's already been refit so many times already.
The other issue I have is the proposed Eng/ Pilot station. I am personally hoping that Pilot is a specialization restricted from Cruisers and given to smaller and more maneuverable ships. I would like to see Pilot Ships be Escorts, or maybe even a badly needed Federation Destroyer (a real Destroyer, not like the Chimera.)
If they want to do that, then hopefully they will restrict Pilot slots to Lt or Lt Commander on larger ships. Give the smaller ships the full Commander Pilot Stations. Nova Class would make a great Pilot Ship, as would several other of your smaller Science Ships.
I'm a little disappointed to see they'll slap it on Cruisers as well, but I can't say I'm surprised.
I'd love to know your reasoning for this, if you read the details on the powers, its a suite of anti escort powers, perfect for a cruiser or science ship trying to shake an escort, very little in there benefits an escort.
The sovereign is essentially already slated to get one imho.
Its the sleek nimble ship that does turns and tumbles and rolls around. Riker was in command with joystick and he was a good pilot. So of course it needs a pilot sot. ^^
And dreadnoughts....
the t6 scimitar... since that ship too, was pretty mobile....
I haven't seen any information released on the Pilot powers, if you have that, I would appreciate a link so I can check it out.
I'm not doubting you, in fact just the opposite. I was hoping that Cryptic would do something to encourage variety, but of course they won't. The way the game sits right now, there is no advantage at all to playing an Escort. If you play one, you do it for one reason.. to be different. I was hoping that they would use the Pilot specialization as an opportunity to give smaller, faster ships more of an advantage to help return them to some stage of usefulness.
I fly a Cruiser myself, I love my Presidio.. I don't want anything taken away from us Cruiser Captains, but having options is always a good thing. Simply put, Cruisers have gotten enough as it is, they should focus a little attention on the highly neglected Escort Class.
Just my opinion, obviously not one shared by Cryptic.
As for the Excelsior, although I have a personal preference, if Cryptic upgrades the ship to T6 then I'll buy a Lifetime Sub at full price as a reward to the company for fulfilling my dream.
Otherwise, she is stout as-is.
Pilot skills blog: http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9111383
Pilot skill tweaks: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=23268301&highlight=Pilot#post23268301
Also, I just read the boff layout suggested by the OP, I would adjust it to the following:
LTC Tac, CMD Eng, LT Eng, LTC Sci, Ens Uni
Six engineering skills as laid out in this fashion is enough to give a solid foundation to any build, the three tac skills give it reasonable damage output with the sci providing flexibility in support powers, the universal slot gives the user the ability to specialise into an area. It would turn this ship into the multi-purpose platform it was designed in canon to be.
I would also amend the consoles to this end giving the ship a 4/2/4 (Eng/Sci/Tac) layout at T6 and a 4/3/4 at fleet.
I just dont see them making any ship a doube hybrid anytime soon, especially a CMDR and a LCDR slot from the same family.
As far as the consoles, why wouldnt it go paralell to the FT5's 4 Eng/4 tac and FT5U's 5 Eng/ 4 Tac?
To be honest though, as much as I love my Excel, I just cant see them justifying a T6 of it, especially with the command battlecruisers.
I agree. The gap between speed/maneuverablity between escorts and anything else has gotten very large and the defense bonuses too high. Between cloak attacks and the unGodly speed of escorts these days, its hard for a run-of-the-mill cruiser to deal with a run-of-the-mill escort as far as engagement goes.
I really think they need to work on the speed issue, I can see the escorts turning on a dime, but the speed needs to come down some. I am surprised that some escorts dont accidentally experience time-dilation
I'll have to agree with this one, aside from the JHSS there have been no ships with dual specializations, and I doubt there ever will be (aside from lockbox/lobi/R&D gamble ships), and I personally don't believe the Excelsior is suited to be a command ship (I am aware that Starfleet Admirals used them as command ships in the past, but look how that turned out? lol), I can see a T6 Excelsior with a Lt./Lt. Com(?) Pilot seat, the Excelsior has always been fairly manuverable compared to larger cruisers.
That said, I like my T5-U Excelsior and neither have the zen nor inclination to upgrade to a T6 of that ship at the moment, sorry Cryptic.
Also worth noting the "Fly her apart" pilot ability is likely a nod to Sulu's quote from ST: VI when the Excelsior was flying to aid the Enterprise over Khitomer.
Edit: Yay 100th post!
I totally forgot the who fly her apart bit
The lack of existing specialist boff stations that railroads you into a very small selection of ships is already a bad enough problem--let's not make it worse. One thing I greatly appreciate about STO is the flexibility you have to mix and match careers with ship classes and boff loadouts, and anything that arbitrarily restricts a particular career or specialization to a specific type of ship is a bad idea that should die before the first line of code is written.
Eclipse Class Intel Cruiser U.S.S. Dioscuria NX-91121-A - Interactive Crew Roster
You completely missed my point.
There are already multitudes of reasons to play Cruisers.
There is little to no reason to play anything else.
Introducing options that provide other options goes toward what you want, and what I want as well.. flexibility.
The state you wish to avoid is the current state of the game. Where you create a Captain, progress through the game, reach max level, and then you face a choice...
Am I a Science Officer?: If Yes, I fly a Science Vessel. I have a small amount to pick from.
Am I anything but a Science Officer?: If Yes, then I have 2 choices here.. Pick a Cruiser, or Suck.
What's needed is more options for Non Cruiser Captains. The desire isn't to take anything away from Current Captains.. I'm a Cruiser guy myself, I fly a Presidio and LOVE it.
I'm advocating more options here, not less. It starts with offering other types of ships, and revamping weapons like Cannons and Torpedos to make them more desirable to use. Right now, there is a BFAW Cruiser Meta that everyone uses. The reason for this, is lack of viable end game options.
I think maybe the defence curve could be levelled off a little more at high speed levels, though I can understand why it's not been done yet, afterall speeds like we have now simply weren't possible when the system was made, but I'd like for the speed itself to be left as it. The speed I can get out of my escort and the turn that pilot spec gives me is THE selling point for the ship (though the nadion bomb helps :P), I'd hate to lose that... I'd have to make my sci my main... That's horrific :eek:
Yes they are. I'm really hoping for a normal nacelle option at some point tho.
Not a fan of the two nacelle per pylon look myself.
I've been seing escorts in Kerrat that move so fast that fire and fly past before the other ship gets a second volley (not mentioning the heavy damage the target takes, but the damage the escort gets is minimal. I cant speak for PvP queue since I stopped going when the Faeht SS vape volleys were all that I saw in them.
Also, escorts have access to all o f the same plus DHCs and have been able to make max use of them. They are far from the glass canons they were in the most early seasons.
The tradeoff for that though being that you can't do it frequently so if someone can survive the initial volley, they aren't likely to die of future attempts. It sounds like escort pilots trying (and failing) to be vaper pilots.
This is true, although I noticed my survivability dropped a fair bit with DR due to a mix of NPC HP going through the roof and damage also rising, I still don't think speed is right place to attack from a stats point of view, rather the effects of the speed, levelling out the defence curve at about 75% would be a start, it would make [Acc] more useful again. The other way is a gameplay method of using science, preferably things like SNB (or variants thereof) or VM, or scrambles would weaken or outright stop the attack at the price of an LTC sci seat. Another suggestion is to keep changing course when you know there is one of them about, vape runs take time to line up, if you make it difficult to line up or make it look like the second volley might hit a full shield, chances are they wont bother.
I placed the layout as I did because the T6 Galaxy, Negh'Var, and D'D do NOT have the same layout as the Fleet T5-U versions. It does stand to reason that the Fleet T6 version would have the same minimum number of each console slot type as both the Fleet T5-U and the T6 versions.
That may have been what you thought you were advocating, but that is the exact opposite of what you communicated by writing this: Your disclaimers about what you aren't trying to suggest say one thing, but the suggestions you are actually making say another. Something to perhaps consider if that is not your intent.
Eclipse Class Intel Cruiser U.S.S. Dioscuria NX-91121-A - Interactive Crew Roster
I believe I'm just going to chalk this up to a case of written text not properly conveying meaning. Chances are, our brains just work differently, because it still reads clearly to me. Doesn't mean it is, just means it makes sense to me. Apologies if it came across wrong, I'll try and be more clear in the future.
I just wanted to see something given to other classes. I think the confusion came when I said I wanted Cruisers to be 'restricted' from using Pilot seats. That sounds like taking something away, but that's not what I meant. They don't have it now, so not giving it to them isn't taking anything from them. Making Escorts more desirable to play creates variety.
The problem now is that it's kind of hard to find a reason to play an Escort. Cruisers have SO much to offer, that it just doesn't create enough variety which is why Sector Space is full of cruisers. The only things Escorts really offer is speed and outside of PvP.. who cares? It's a moot point anyway, because they already basically confirmed that Pilot is for all ships including Cruisers, so I'm arguing a dead end. It's a shame because it would have been a good chance to give smaller ships a 'shiny' that Cruisers didn't have. But instead, the next ship release will likely be yet another wave of Cruisers. The Pilot Cruisers will be the final death knell for the Escort Class taking away the last little thing that Escorts still had.
Oh well, that seems to be how Cryptic wants it.. who am I to argue right? I have a Cruiser, I love the ship.. just would have been nice to see more choices. Oh well, saves me some money.
Maybe the Mirror Universe Mogai Heavy Warbird Retrofit?
It's probably pretty cheap on the Exchange, not many people buy Mirror ships anymore.
That said, I do feel there needs to be some incentive to fly an escort or science ship, I have several of each and the only ships I generally fly other than cruisers are my Sarr Thelns or Vestas, so there should be some extra attention given to escorts/sci ships...
I think the main reason people don't fly escorts/sci ships is they are just more difficult to use effectively, escorts tend to be squishy in combat while sci ships generally have a high learning curve which makes it difficult to make a good build for one. (This and the fact that there aren't nearly as many of these ship classes compared to cruisers.)
Perhaps if a few more escorts/sci ships were made with specialist stations (perhaps not a significant command station on escorts, as the required equipment would likley take up too much space on a small ship like an escort).
I can see escorts having a larger Intel/Pilot presence than cruisers, but to restrict something to escorts just because people don't use them much seems to me like an arbitrary punishment/exclusion to cruser captains.
I havent seen too many escorts that qualify as glass cannons since about season four what happaened in the last month or so to make escorts not worth playing? (Other than the small number avaiable to choose from for t6)
Look at all the T5 ships that have made the transition to T6:
Feds: Intrepid, Galaxy
KDF: Negh'Var
Roms: D'Deridex
Non-Faction: Jem'Hadar Bug
Notice a trend?
They're all canon ships. The non-canon T5 ships have not made that transition at all. Not a single one but 5 canon T5 ships have. When DR released, I predicted that the canon Trek ships will be the first lower tiered ships to transition to T6. So far, that has remained true. The Vesta, Temporal Science/Destroyer, DSD, and other non-canon ships no matter how popular they were have not made a single move to T6.
I'm confident we'll see more canon ships make that move to T6 than we'll see the non-canon ones. Canon ship designs carry a lot of weight because they were stars in the movies and TV shows. We're likelier to see T6 Defiant, Excelsior, Vor'Cha, Mogai than we are to see DSD, Vesta, Temporal ships moving to T6. There's way too much money to be made on that.
Seeing Excelsior, Defiant, Vor'Cha, B'Rel, Mogai, JHDC (that one would be a huge circus, mark my words), Sovereign, Nebula, etc going to T6? There's lots of profit to be had there. They are also canon ships with followers.
:P
The Excelsior has such a wonderful classic look it
Nah.... People who love the old Enterprise ships have different taste. I don't like "new sleek looks." The appeal to the Excelsior is it's rugged design.
I have the fleet version. I've upgraded it. It's pretty much one of the only ships I use because of it's classic feel. I think people who grew up on the old star trek etc.... have a love for the era.
I would like to see a T6 Excelsior. You could design any RP needed. You could design a mini-mission with an old admiral pushing for the re-design in honor of blah blah blah. I would also like to see the Enterprise from the original movies brought back. You don't even have to call it a retrofit. Just throw some extra engine and design options on it and sell it. I would buy it. It's too small to be a cruiser.... make it a science ship. Hell retrofit it as a science ship. Either way... I still fly around in the low level one lol. It's decked out with fleet stuff.
The ships are like cars. Every generation has different taste. But IMO.. the original enterprise and Excelsior ships are the best looking in game. The Klingon counterpart (D6) is also really nice and I would love to see it brought back. Like I said.... throw in some extra "options" for customization and people will make their own RP.