Last time I played the badlands battlezone, I lagged out so bad, I ended up being killed about 4 to 5 times. Ends up being tiresome.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
I'm hoping it's just the usual new season malaise and that the lag will subside soon. Despite the fact that it's a copy and paste job I like battlezones and would like to make the badlands my main source of marks for the new rep.
I mean, really - I send my "Kirk" or "Picard" in my T6 Pathfinder to ferry the diplomat to Babel. You know that the Diplomat's either going to try to take over the ship, or get assassinated, or something. Most every survivor of an encounter with the flagship winds up with PTSD or other "trauma".
Of course, the good Captain needs 18 hours to write up the paperwork and answer questions over subspace as to how this happened, etc. etc.
Or, I send my Cadets, who, at most, need a couple of hours at the local Tanker-66 to top up their antimatter supplies (cause we don't trust cadets with full tanks... )
My thoughts exactly. Which is why I think they should change the word "maintenance" to a simple "cooldown." Let players imagine for themselves what ship and crew are doing while unavailable for assignment. And for the unimaginative, just watch an episode of Star Trek.
The only queues that reliably pop for me are the old Borg stfs, isa, ksa, csa. Cca, bhe, and ffa also pop, but ffa got bugged with the release of new dawn and has been removed. The only active multiplayer areas are the battlezones.
The queues are dead as dodos...and don't anyone tell me it's because of the launch, because they have been for months regardless. Bring back the scheduled events!
The captain's cat is sleeping on the helm console, so the ship is staying put until it decides to move. Don't tell the admiral. Say we're doing maintenance on the warp core instead.
You forgot, you're not in charge of these ships. They're running on NPC AI. Have you noticed how your BOffs behave? You just KNOW that while your ships are transporting that diplomat they're firing off Evasive Maneuvers for no reason, trying to fly through asteroids they could easily go around, venting warp plasma like it's going out of style... hell, if that Abandon Ship button lights up you KNOW they're going to pop it, even IF all their heals are off cooldown. So really, is it at all surprising they'd need major repairs and a baryon sweep or two after every mission?
they want to hear that cool klaxon from abandon ship
Personally, I think the maintenance times should have been shorter/nonexistent, and the missions should have taken longer. Ships should be spending more time on duty than in drydock.
Having a system filled with long-duration assignments would mean you only participate in the system in spurts on a daily basis. This system was designed with the potential to instead engage with it on a regular basis, as much or as little as you prefer.
(Other than the Tour of Duty which is intentionally time-gated.)
Additionally, the current design allows players that have already obtained a large selection of starships to play the system more than somebody that doesn't have those ships at their disposal. While this is not intended as a monetization strategy (we don't think it will significantly motivate additional ship sales), it is definitely intended to make purchasing a ship that you already intended to buy feel even better, since you'll now get additional use out of it after you no longer fly it.
Maintenance also offered us the means to make lower-tier starships, which were guaranteed to have lower stats than higher-tier ships, still have a purpose within the system. Though they aren't as good at completing or critting on assignments on their own, they become available again on a more regular basis. This additionally helps offset the fact that there aren't as many of these low-tier ships as their higher-tier counterparts.
The question of why it takes ~18 hours of Maintenance after a 15min Assignment is honestly pretty irrelevant, since all of the timers are complete abstractions of actual activities. Does anyone really think it only takes a starship 15 minutes to ... do anything? Even 4 hours is no where near what reality would require. With such drastic abstractions already in place, it doesn't seem very sensible to argue that several hours of maintenance is "unrealistic."
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
The maintenance doesn't really bother me, since I have tons of ships, but....
That leads to the pretty annoying task of having to claim and dismiss those tons of ships, having to type in their full names (even the stupid prefixes). While Federation and Romulan vessels have straight forward enough names, typing in klingon ship names is horrible.... I.K.S. Klhavtg'T-TRIBBLE.....
I dont really mind the CD. It makes me think more about what ships i should use. Should I use a T6 or a fleet of T4s. I havent found myselfe in a position where I dont have any ships to send out yet but then again I have 60 odd ships at my disposal.
Ironically, the game could use a player controlled fleet for the dead queue, play with your own ships on stf.
Is it me or is it even more dead than it's ever been it's just 100% singeplayer text clicking now.
20 hour timegates in 4 different text systems, see you tormorrow never interacted with anyone.
you credit NPC ships with a lot of intelligence if you think you could take 4 computer controlled ships into an stf in which you need to know just what to shoot at and in what order.
even a mission as easy as Crystalline cataclysm could soon fail if you don't know when to attack and when to back off.
or perhaps you think you are good enough to direct 4 ships of where to go and what to shoot while at the same time as you control your own ship while under fire in such an intense battle.
any mission that used non intelligent NCP ships would need to be set up for such, you cant expect to just be able to go into any of the queue missions and win without 5 intelligent players at the controls.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
What would have been a nice addition is to have a 'Claim All Ships I Own' button that would add all C-Store Ships unlocked for the character to the Admiralty Roster. Duplicates eliminated. Same for Event Ship Unlocks.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
You forgot, you're not in charge of these ships. They're running on NPC AI. Have you noticed how your BOffs behave? You just KNOW that while your ships are transporting that diplomat they're firing off Evasive Maneuvers for no reason, trying to fly through asteroids they could easily go around, venting warp plasma like it's going out of style... hell, if that Abandon Ship button lights up you KNOW they're going to pop it, even IF all their heals are off cooldown. So really, is it at all surprising they'd need major repairs and a baryon sweep or two after every mission?
HAHAHAHA! I needed a good laugh...so true, after playing enough ground missions.
This is why, right here, I am getting ready to take Cover Shield AWAY from one of my BOFFs, because it causes my BOFFs to get stuck trying to fly through it. Just like that asteroid you suggested they'd set a collision course for...
Mine always seem to drop the dang thing in a doorway.
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
Having a system filled with long-duration assignments would mean you only participate in the system in spurts on a daily basis. This system was designed with the potential to instead engage with it on a regular basis, as much or as little as you prefer.
And this couldn't this be done without maintenance?
Not if they also wanted it to be a meaningful decision which ships to send.
One could probably come up with different mechanical trappings to achieve something similar, but it might be just as arbitrary.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I mean there's just nothing fun or engaging about it at all is there?
It doesn't even give the ships the name you gave them... and nothing happens when you complete the tasks, not even a little description of what happened.
I also find it very confusing to use. There are little icons that aren't explained, and all the numbers. I don't really understand what part of it is a game.
Um, yeah, I stopped allowing boffs to use cover shield back in season 5. They use it almost as soon as they enter combat. And in random locations.
I hadn't used this BOFF in a very long time and got the unpleasant reminder that he had Cover Shield when I switched back to him a few nights ago. It may also be something to do with the new bridge officer training scheme, which I am not sure was active when I first put him in storage...I'll have to look but I may well have switched him to something else a long time ago only for him to default back to Cover Shield when I brought him back out.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
I mean there's just nothing fun or engaging about it at all is there?
It doesn't even give the ships the name you gave them... and nothing happens when you complete the tasks, not even a little description of what happened.
I would also like a better record of rewards won in the Assignment Log. Sometimes I miss exactly what a given assignment yielded.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Um, yeah, I stopped allowing boffs to use cover shield back in season 5. They use it almost as soon as they enter combat. And in random locations.
I hadn't used this BOFF in a very long time and got the unpleasant reminder that he had Cover Shield when I switched back to him a few nights ago. It may also be something to do with the new bridge officer training scheme, which I am not sure was active when I first put him in storage...I'll have to look but I may well have switched him to something else a long time ago only for him to default back to Cover Shield when I brought him back out.
Oh yeah, the boff training revamp caused a lot of boffs to remember old skills you told them to forget, not all, but many.
Ironically, the game could use a player controlled fleet for the dead queue, play with your own ships on stf.
Is it me or is it even more dead than it's ever been it's just 100% singeplayer text clicking now.
20 hour timegates in 4 different text systems, see you tormorrow never interacted with anyone.
you credit NPC ships with a lot of intelligence if you think you could take 4 computer controlled ships into an stf in which you need to know just what to shoot at and in what order.
Yes.
Fortunately, the game doesn't have many queues that need that. Simply having the ships follow you and attack your target, like hangar pets do, would be more than enough.
In fact, I'd say a computer controlled ship, as set up by a competent player, would perform better in missions like ISA than the average pug.
Ironically, the game could use a player controlled fleet for the dead queue, play with your own ships on stf.
Is it me or is it even more dead than it's ever been it's just 100% singeplayer text clicking now.
20 hour timegates in 4 different text systems, see you tormorrow never interacted with anyone.
you credit NPC ships with a lot of intelligence if you think you could take 4 computer controlled ships into an stf in which you need to know just what to shoot at and in what order.
Yes.
Fortunately, the game doesn't have many queues that need that. Simply having the ships follow you and attack your target, like hangar pets do, would be more than enough.
In fact, I'd say a computer controlled ship, as set up by a competent player, would perform better in missions like ISA than the average pug.
trouble with that is many queue missions rely on different players doing different things, not all following the leader and attacking the same target especially stf's as you mentioned first off.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
I think you've all forgotten that the missions they're running are STO missions. So let's say you send your three ships off to pick up the groceries (20 eng, 40 tac, 100 sci - yeah, we know that first ship you put in totally overkilled the first two requirements on its own.. put in two more anyway to at least fill that sci requirement to 3/4 full). They zone in at the grocery store and about a hundred enemy vessels immediately pop up all around them. Your brave ships immediately transfer all power to weapons and go nuts with FAW. The first torp that hits each ship wipes out 3/4 of the crew, the second leaves everywhere but the bridge a complete vacuum open to space. Eventually all the baddies are vaped, the groceries are secure in the cargo hold and your ships return home.
Those 18 hours are how long it takes your bridge crew to offload that cargo, repair the ship, and convince a new crew of redshirts to stand in front of the next torpedo volley.
____
In all honesty though.. the system is just borked. For most of the missions the first ship you assign is utterly overkill on its own in 2/3 of the requirements, and there just never seems to be enough ships with a decent level of science. I actually own all the T5 and T6 science ships and still had to go out and buy the mirror science ships and the T4 dilithium ones. I've also got like 42 ships and I am currently looking at an empty fifth mission slot because I don't have a single ship left to send out (and half the ones I've got out on missions now are consumables). I'm only running the longest missions I can get because anything less leaves me wasting precious on duty ships on missions that don't give any return.
Ironically, the game could use a player controlled fleet for the dead queue, play with your own ships on stf.
Is it me or is it even more dead than it's ever been it's just 100% singeplayer text clicking now.
20 hour timegates in 4 different text systems, see you tormorrow never interacted with anyone.
you credit NPC ships with a lot of intelligence if you think you could take 4 computer controlled ships into an stf in which you need to know just what to shoot at and in what order.
even a mission as easy as Crystalline cataclysm could soon fail if you don't know when to attack and when to back off.
or perhaps you think you are good enough to direct 4 ships of where to go and what to shoot while at the same time as you control your own ship while under fire in such an intense battle.
any mission that used non intelligent NCP ships would need to be set up for such, you cant expect to just be able to go into any of the queue missions and win without 5 intelligent players at the controls.
There has to be a reason why we are admirals no?
as I said any mission that used non intelligent NCP ships would need to be set up for such, I am sure if the devs put their minds to it they could make some missions that would utilize some of our ships similar to how boffs work in ground missions but that may be a long time coming.
as it stands most of the existing queue mission are just not set up to function that way, take "The Cure Found" as an example if the I.K.S. Kang is not protected by at least 2 players its game over, how would NCP ships know to do this.
now lets look at "Khitomer Vortex" if at least 1 of the players is not there to stop the Borg from entering the portal and too many get through again its game over, having said that the ship that is guarding the portal cant just sit there idly when there are no borg making for the portal he can focus on taking out other targets instead.
I could go on but you get the picture I am sure.
most if not all of the current queued missions require different players to concentrate on different objectives at some point or another and just going in with 4 other ships that are just going to follow you around and shoot what you shoot just wont get the job done.
having said that most of the single player missions aren't set up that way either, you might use say a pirate call for a brief assist but you would have a vastly unfair advantage if you had 4 other ships shooting at the same targets as you all the time.
you might think well i use a carrier and think whats the difference, but carrier drones have nowhere near the weaponry that most of your larger ships have at their disposal, they are like peashooters are to cannons in comparison.
Post edited by bobbydazlers on
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
I think you've all forgotten that the missions they're running are STO missions. So let's say you send your three ships off to pick up the groceries (20 eng, 40 tac, 100 sci - yeah, we know that first ship you put in totally overkilled the first two requirements on its own.. put in two more anyway to at least fill that sci requirement to 3/4 full). They zone in at the grocery store and about a hundred enemy vessels immediately pop up all around them. Your brave ships immediately transfer all power to weapons and go nuts with FAW. The first torp that hits each ship wipes out 3/4 of the crew, the second leaves everywhere but the bridge a complete vacuum open to space. Eventually all the baddies are vaped, the groceries are secure in the cargo hold and your ships return home.
Those 18 hours are how long it takes your bridge crew to offload that cargo, repair the ship, and convince a new crew of redshirts to stand in front of the next torpedo volley.
____
In all honesty though.. the system is just borked. For most of the missions the first ship you assign is utterly overkill on its own in 2/3 of the requirements, and there just never seems to be enough ships with a decent level of science. I actually own all the T5 and T6 science ships and still had to go out and buy the mirror science ships and the T4 dilithium ones. I've also got like 42 ships and I am currently looking at an empty fifth mission slot because I don't have a single ship left to send out (and half the ones I've got out on missions now are consumables). I'm only running the longest missions I can get because anything less leaves me wasting precious on duty ships on missions that don't give any return.
funnily enough have had no problem filling most requirements with the 3 ship allowance even sci, often I have filled it with two ships and just used the third to increase the crit chance and I am sure I have nowhere near the best ships at my disposal, far from it.
maybe a good variety but not the best.
tip - you don't have to use every slot if you don't have the ships to do so, just use the ones you can.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Yeah, Bort got a bit snippy about people questioning why a 15 minute Mission would require an 18 hour cooldowns for the ship. Said that people were taking it all too literally and it's all a device to make the system work.
Adding that kind of talk to the News Blog would have been useful and may have averted some of the head scratching.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Comments
Last time I played the badlands battlezone, I lagged out so bad, I ended up being killed about 4 to 5 times. Ends up being tiresome.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
My thoughts exactly. Which is why I think they should change the word "maintenance" to a simple "cooldown." Let players imagine for themselves what ship and crew are doing while unavailable for assignment. And for the unimaginative, just watch an episode of Star Trek.
The queues are dead as dodos...and don't anyone tell me it's because of the launch, because they have been for months regardless. Bring back the scheduled events!
Most unexpectedly, this turned into a flame-fest! Closed it goes!. /sigh What flamefestery is this? pwlaughingtrendy
Most unexpectedly, this turned into a flame-fest! Closed it goes!. /sigh What flamefestery is this? pwlaughingtrendy
they want to hear that cool klaxon from abandon ship
Having a system filled with long-duration assignments would mean you only participate in the system in spurts on a daily basis. This system was designed with the potential to instead engage with it on a regular basis, as much or as little as you prefer.
(Other than the Tour of Duty which is intentionally time-gated.)
Additionally, the current design allows players that have already obtained a large selection of starships to play the system more than somebody that doesn't have those ships at their disposal. While this is not intended as a monetization strategy (we don't think it will significantly motivate additional ship sales), it is definitely intended to make purchasing a ship that you already intended to buy feel even better, since you'll now get additional use out of it after you no longer fly it.
Maintenance also offered us the means to make lower-tier starships, which were guaranteed to have lower stats than higher-tier ships, still have a purpose within the system. Though they aren't as good at completing or critting on assignments on their own, they become available again on a more regular basis. This additionally helps offset the fact that there aren't as many of these low-tier ships as their higher-tier counterparts.
The question of why it takes ~18 hours of Maintenance after a 15min Assignment is honestly pretty irrelevant, since all of the timers are complete abstractions of actual activities. Does anyone really think it only takes a starship 15 minutes to ... do anything? Even 4 hours is no where near what reality would require. With such drastic abstractions already in place, it doesn't seem very sensible to argue that several hours of maintenance is "unrealistic."
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
That leads to the pretty annoying task of having to claim and dismiss those tons of ships, having to type in their full names (even the stupid prefixes). While Federation and Romulan vessels have straight forward enough names, typing in klingon ship names is horrible.... I.K.S. Klhavtg'T-TRIBBLE.....
I know, still first world problem...
That would be nice, but again that makes way to much sense.
you credit NPC ships with a lot of intelligence if you think you could take 4 computer controlled ships into an stf in which you need to know just what to shoot at and in what order.
even a mission as easy as Crystalline cataclysm could soon fail if you don't know when to attack and when to back off.
or perhaps you think you are good enough to direct 4 ships of where to go and what to shoot while at the same time as you control your own ship while under fire in such an intense battle.
any mission that used non intelligent NCP ships would need to be set up for such, you cant expect to just be able to go into any of the queue missions and win without 5 intelligent players at the controls.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Mine always seem to drop the dang thing in a doorway.
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
My character Tsin'xing
Not if they also wanted it to be a meaningful decision which ships to send.
One could probably come up with different mechanical trappings to achieve something similar, but it might be just as arbitrary.
It doesn't even give the ships the name you gave them... and nothing happens when you complete the tasks, not even a little description of what happened.
I also find it very confusing to use. There are little icons that aren't explained, and all the numbers. I don't really understand what part of it is a game.
I hadn't used this BOFF in a very long time and got the unpleasant reminder that he had Cover Shield when I switched back to him a few nights ago. It may also be something to do with the new bridge officer training scheme, which I am not sure was active when I first put him in storage...I'll have to look but I may well have switched him to something else a long time ago only for him to default back to Cover Shield when I brought him back out.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
I would also like a better record of rewards won in the Assignment Log. Sometimes I miss exactly what a given assignment yielded.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
My character Tsin'xing
Fortunately, the game doesn't have many queues that need that. Simply having the ships follow you and attack your target, like hangar pets do, would be more than enough.
In fact, I'd say a computer controlled ship, as set up by a competent player, would perform better in missions like ISA than the average pug.
trouble with that is many queue missions rely on different players doing different things, not all following the leader and attacking the same target especially stf's as you mentioned first off.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Those 18 hours are how long it takes your bridge crew to offload that cargo, repair the ship, and convince a new crew of redshirts to stand in front of the next torpedo volley.
____
In all honesty though.. the system is just borked. For most of the missions the first ship you assign is utterly overkill on its own in 2/3 of the requirements, and there just never seems to be enough ships with a decent level of science. I actually own all the T5 and T6 science ships and still had to go out and buy the mirror science ships and the T4 dilithium ones. I've also got like 42 ships and I am currently looking at an empty fifth mission slot because I don't have a single ship left to send out (and half the ones I've got out on missions now are consumables). I'm only running the longest missions I can get because anything less leaves me wasting precious on duty ships on missions that don't give any return.
as I said any mission that used non intelligent NCP ships would need to be set up for such, I am sure if the devs put their minds to it they could make some missions that would utilize some of our ships similar to how boffs work in ground missions but that may be a long time coming.
as it stands most of the existing queue mission are just not set up to function that way, take "The Cure Found" as an example if the I.K.S. Kang is not protected by at least 2 players its game over, how would NCP ships know to do this.
now lets look at "Khitomer Vortex" if at least 1 of the players is not there to stop the Borg from entering the portal and too many get through again its game over, having said that the ship that is guarding the portal cant just sit there idly when there are no borg making for the portal he can focus on taking out other targets instead.
I could go on but you get the picture I am sure.
most if not all of the current queued missions require different players to concentrate on different objectives at some point or another and just going in with 4 other ships that are just going to follow you around and shoot what you shoot just wont get the job done.
having said that most of the single player missions aren't set up that way either, you might use say a pirate call for a brief assist but you would have a vastly unfair advantage if you had 4 other ships shooting at the same targets as you all the time.
you might think well i use a carrier and think whats the difference, but carrier drones have nowhere near the weaponry that most of your larger ships have at their disposal, they are like peashooters are to cannons in comparison.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
funnily enough have had no problem filling most requirements with the 3 ship allowance even sci, often I have filled it with two ships and just used the third to increase the crit chance and I am sure I have nowhere near the best ships at my disposal, far from it.
maybe a good variety but not the best.
tip - you don't have to use every slot if you don't have the ships to do so, just use the ones you can.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Adding that kind of talk to the News Blog would have been useful and may have averted some of the head scratching.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'