EMP Release: Your weapons have a 1%/2%/3% chance to placate your enemy for 3 seconds.
I like it in theory, but I think in practice random placates are just gonna be too annoying in PvP with players flickering in and out. Probably needs a substantial (45 seconds?) internal cooldown.
Tactical Reserve Power: Your energy weapons drain 90%/80%/70% of their normal weapons subsystem power and instead draw 10%/20%/30% from auxiliary subsystem. (This could also be used in the other direction, from weapons to shields/engines/aux.)
Lots of potential there. I feel like the "Auxiliary Phasers" tech isn't used enough by the game and this gives everything a little taste of that. I also like how you don't gain subsystem power from this, it just lets you shift an increasing percentage of the load around.
Return Fire Coordination: When being struck by energy weapons, the enemy hitting you loses 10%/20%/30% defense and 5%/10%/15% shield hardness against you.
I think the numbers are a little high compared to other skill point investments, but the idea of opponents debuffing themselves by shooting you is very cool.
Platform Control Mastery: All your deployable assets (torpedo launchers, Sensor Interference, command battleship platforms, Aceton Assimilator, etc.) gain 10%/20%/30% increase to all effects.
I REALLY like this, as this branch of equipment is available to everyone and yet sorely under used.
Here are some skills focused around getting into Red Alert. Problem for me is a bit that they boost skills that you only unlock later, which I think is a bit confusing.
Defensive Emergency Drills
When you first enter Red Alert, you gain a +25 bonus to shield hardness, hull plating and and defensive maneuvering for 10 seconds. This can occur no more than once every 3 minutes.
Offensive Emergency Drills
When you first enter Red Alert, you gain a +25 bonus to weapon training, targeting expertise and, hull plating and and defensive maneuvering for 10 seconds. This can occur no more than once every 3 minutes.
Something that interacts with Captain skills might be interesting. Some ideas (reusing previous titles)
Ship Command
All your Captain abilities have their cooldowns lowered by 25 %.
Improved Ship Command
All your Captain abilities have their duration increased by 33 %.
Advanced Ship Command
All your Captain abilities have their magnitude increased by 50 %.
Emergency Drills
When you enter Red Alert, all Captain abilities on cooldown have that cooldown reduced by 50 % of the base cooldown. This can occur no more than once every 3 minutes.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
So a while back Borticus mentioned that they might be able to combine some of the parallel directed energy/projectile trees if there were suitable replacements offered for the resulting gaps.
I feel it's EXTREMELY desirable for the Lieutenant Tier directed energy damage and projectile damage skill-lines to be combined. This is pretty much the first choice aggressive new captains have to make and as it stands it's immediately teaching them that lore-appropriate beam-and-torp hybrids are stupid and cost twice as many points as going purely one way or the other. Combining them brings up the performance of hybrid builds without giving major gains to beam boats or science-y torpedo boats. It teaches that hybrids are reasonable when the player is most open to being taught, moving emergent gameplay towards what's seen in the established setting.
I would insert a new 3-point line into the gap to promote our less used weapons in a QoL/utility way rather than direct bonus to DPS...
Projectile Speed: Your cannon fire, torpedoes, and actively seeking mines gain +25%/+40%/+50% speed.
(I've rounded the middle point down slightly from the 50/85/100 pattern just to present more human readable numbers and to make the 3rd point seem slightly more appealing.)
Yes...please...I think I love you...devs, plz, if you are a kind god you will do this.
The current Projectile Training skill improves Mines.
The concept here is to find a way to try and combine it with Energy Training.
Why trade one problem for another, by splitting it out again?
I very much liked the Starship Traits "Super Charged Weapons" & "Weapon System Synergy"
> "Firing a Torpedo grants 10% Damage ; Critical Hit and critical Severity"
> "Activation of Energy Weapons improves Projectiles Damage and Bleedthrough"
Those two Traits created a awesome synergy.
Maybe a possible solution is to tie them even closer together
The implementation of a automated mechanic which creates a Advantage, a mechanic you could argue with:
On impact the Torpedo Bursts into shrapnel that scatter all over the hull,
these Torpedo shrapnel is designed to charge themself by Energy Weapon attacks
creating a Special "bla..bla" Field , which weakens / siphons the structual integrity
--> effect improvments could be programmed into both "Energy Weapon Training" and "Projectle Weapon Traing" skill points
Player who choosing not to add a Torpedo, couldn´t use this mechanic because:
Reasson: Energy Fluctions on (pure) "Beam Boats" make it impossible to adjust to the specific shrapnel frequency
... now it is on you guys to rip that idea into pieces :-D
"Projectile Speed"
This doesn't solve issues. It's still a Projectile-specific skill, being proposed as a solution to the Energy/Projectile split. You included Cannon bolts in your write-up, but even that would leave Beams out in the cold.
Bort, not to sound rude, but Beams are HARDLY the red-headed stepchild of the game right now... I know you don't want to disrupt the meta, but that just makes it even more important to buff the underdogs if you wont nerf the overwhelming majority.
What happened to being 'open to suggestions'? It's getting rather disheartening... When all you're gonna do is shoot everyones idea's down, why even bother to ask people for alternatives?
And it's even worse when you say "we COULD use that one, but it would take too much effort". As others have said, we already have the framework in game for increasing weapon procs through secondary abilities (increasing the Radiation proc of Bio-molecular weapons with the 2Pc CC weapon bonus, and increasing the proc rate of the Advanced Radiant AP weapons Temp HP bonus)
Real Temporal Operative: Purchased the Special Temporal Agent pack before it was even officially announced!
Well generically boosting all weapons is one thing while having a skill to add an interesting effect to one of them (in this case torpedos) is somewhat different.
Still, I tend to agree there are better ideas here. I particularly like the one about increasing weapon proc chances, and weapons arcs.
As a basis I used my - as I know seen faulty - memory of the skills already in the game. I remembered that the first pick of Control Expertise I granted basically 60 % of the possible bonus - but that in turn just translates to a +30 % bonus to the actual ability, not +60 % as I thought.
So more in line would be something like:
Ship Command
All your Captain abilities have their cooldowns lowered by 10 %.
(Tactical/Science/Engineering reduction is 10 % on the first pick)
Improved Ship Command
All your Captain abilities have their duration increased by 20 %.
Since Captain abilities are pretty broad, the bonus should be lower than that of more specific skills like Control or Drain Expertise, also, this is the second pick in the "tree".
Advanced Ship Command
All your Captain abilities have their magnitude increased by 15 %.
Same as before but the third pick in the tree.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Something like a "Debuff Expertise" set of Skill nodes?
That would be a start. Call it, "Tactical Expertise" "Sensor Enhancements" (forgot this is to replace the shift in Science), and have it run down the list of basic debuff enhancements via % effectiveness.
Conversely, you could keep things as-is (or do a tree shuffle again), but address the weaknesses with cannons, mines, and torps: fix the non-working mods (innate critD w/ DHC's, and some torps having no working mods), ditch the archaic flight speed, or "easily shot down", or both, for heavy torps, make [Acc] useful for mines (or ditch the mod even showing up on them), decrease activation time, and reduce deployment cd for all standard mines.
The idea here is to trade spikey RNG based damage for more linear, consistent damage.
Wide Angle Targeting: Increased firing arc for all weapons and abilities: 5 degrees/8 degrees/10 degrees
Pretty obvious, slightly better firing arc for everything. Zero chance for increasing maximum damage potential, but a decent quality of life improvement.
What happened to being 'open to suggestions'? It's getting rather disheartening... When all you're gonna do is shoot everyones idea's down, why even bother to ask people for alternatives?
Getting shot down (a lot) is part of the creative process. You might not believe the number of ideas that get killed on a daily or hourly basis here.
There have been a couple of not-bad suggestions in this thread. I'm hesitant to jump on board with them, or call them out publicly, since it might be too late for a major change like this. I have to check a lot of variables on my end before pulling any triggers.
The GOOD news of this thread is that it contains a whole bunch of ideas that, while they might not be excellent suggestions for a Skill, would definitely make the cut for Traits, Starship Traits, Spec Abilities, Set Bonuses, or Doff Abilities. So while I might shoot them down now, I'm also bookmarking the thread for later reference.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Getting shot down (a lot) is part of the creative process. You might not believe the number of ideas that get killed on a daily or hourly basis here.
Believe me when I say I'm not put out (or surprised) that there's an extremely high bar for any idea to get adopted. We are playing around under the hood of a multi-million dollar engine. That's not something you bolt parts on to willy-nilly. Title says it all: this was going to be challenging.
There have been a couple of not-bad suggestions in this thread. I'm hesitant to jump on board with them, or call them out publicly, since it might be too late for a major change like this. I have to check a lot of variables on my end before pulling any triggers.
The GOOD news of this thread is that it contains a whole bunch of ideas that, while they might not be excellent suggestions for a Skill, would definitely make the cut for Traits, Starship Traits, Spec Abilities, Set Bonuses, or Doff Abilities. So while I might shoot them down now, I'm also bookmarking the thread for later reference.
Tactical Reserve Power: Your energy weapons drain 90%/80%/70% of their normal weapons subsystem power and instead draw 10%/20%/30% from auxiliary subsystem. (This could also be used in the other direction, from weapons to shields/engines/aux.)
Oh, I like this one. It's a shame we only have 3 points to work with, I'd like this as a tree where the first rank gives a small flat reduction to weapons cost, then there are 3 different skills to draw a percentage of power from Shields, Engines, and Aux. I guess it could work as a purely horizontal tree...
Something like a "Debuff Expertise" set of Skill nodes?
Debuffs have a lot of potential forms and effects, but they do all have ONE thing in common...
Duration.
Maybe a 3-point skill line that makes non-Drain, non-Control debuffs last longer?
(This would definitely require a bit more shuffling than something that could be plopped directly into the Lieutenant-tier Tactical, but maybe it's got potential....?)
What happened to being 'open to suggestions'? It's getting rather disheartening... When all you're gonna do is shoot everyones idea's down, why even bother to ask people for alternatives?
Getting shot down (a lot) is part of the creative process. You might not believe the number of ideas that get killed on a daily or hourly basis here.
There have been a couple of not-bad suggestions in this thread. I'm hesitant to jump on board with them, or call them out publicly, since it might be too late for a major change like this. I have to check a lot of variables on my end before pulling any triggers.
The GOOD news of this thread is that it contains a whole bunch of ideas that, while they might not be excellent suggestions for a Skill, would definitely make the cut for Traits, Starship Traits, Spec Abilities, Set Bonuses, or Doff Abilities. So while I might shoot them down now, I'm also bookmarking the thread for later reference.
On that note... how about shifting the Projectile Speed to a Starship Trait called "Relative Velocity", that increases the speed of cannon, torp, and certain boff abiliy projectiles by the user's current Impulse Speed? I know, not a Skill, but that's what came to mind when I saw the Skill suggestion shot down (pun intended ).
For a Skill suggestion, what about:
Tactical Retreat: This skill reflects your captain's awareness of his or her surroundings and understanding of the flow of combat. Each rank decreases the amount of time your crew remains at Red Alert after leaving combat, allowing your crew to more quickly shift from battle stations to repairs and maneuver into a superior position under Full Impulse. (-25%/-40%/-50% time spent at Red Alert after disengaging; alternatively, disabling Red Alert could become an active ability at the third tier, with say a 10 sec cooldown if your enemy manages to cut off your retreat and trigger Red Alert again)
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
Famous Maneuvers:
Level 1> The Picard Maneuver, Basically Warp Shadow, but with two ships firing simultaneously at Target.
Level 2> Death Blossum, if already an escourt with this module, DMG, and length increased.
Level 3> The Lance. Turn your deflector into a destructive lance of energy dealing 50k Exotic Dmg, based on deflector type.
Admiral: I believe being an Admiral should be about controlling more than one ship, so I've adjusted the skill tree to support this:
Fleet Response Tree
Tactical Escourt: Increase Number of Ships, and reduce cooldown of Emergency Response Fleet.
Tactical Hanger: Increase number of Hanger Bay's By 1, must have at least one bay already.
Fighter Swarm: Increase number of ships/fighters, if fighters, by 2, if ships, by 1.
"Projectile Speed"
This doesn't solve issues. It's still a Projectile-specific skill, being proposed as a solution to the Energy/Projectile split. You included Cannon bolts in your write-up, but even that would leave Beams out in the cold.
@borticuscryptic He has a good idea with the Cannon projectile speed. The reason cannons are falling behind beams so bad right now is the fact that it takes forever for cannon fire to actually hit the target. Beams are just there. Cannon bolts take awhile to travel to their targets. lets get a skill to fix this.
I do like the projectile/cannon pulse speed increase idea, though. Those would make neat starship traits, I think. Tying them to your ship ("High Velocity Torpedo Launchers" or something along that line) makes a lot more sense than a skill to me, too.
Getting shot down (a lot) is part of the creative process. You might not believe the number of ideas that get killed on a daily or hourly basis here.
There have been a couple of not-bad suggestions in this thread. I'm hesitant to jump on board with them, or call them out publicly, since it might be too late for a major change like this. I have to check a lot of variables on my end before pulling any triggers.
The GOOD news of this thread is that it contains a whole bunch of ideas that, while they might not be excellent suggestions for a Skill, would definitely make the cut for Traits, Starship Traits, Spec Abilities, Set Bonuses, or Doff Abilities. So while I might shoot them down now, I'm also bookmarking the thread for later reference.
On that note... how about shifting the Projectile Speed to a Starship Trait called "Relative Velocity", that increases the speed of cannon, torp, and certain boff abiliy projectiles by the user's current Impulse Speed? I know, not a Skill, but that's what came to mind when I saw the Skill suggestion shot down (pun intended ).
At the risk of tooting my own horn on this subject ...
I'm sure that @darkknightucf and @e30ernest will remember when I posted this back in January. I'm quite sure that Odenknight will remember going Full Sisko Rant (epic performance, by the way, Oden) during a certain episode of THE SHOW after I posted this idea in the main forums.
@borticuscryptic ... even getting a comment on the FEASIBILITY of putting "Complimentary Projectile Flight Speeds" into the game as a "native" feature of how the game works for Cannons, Torpedoes and Mines (see link provided) would be appreciated by the Kinetic Kommunity, among others. Look no further than Torpedo (and Mine!) performance during the "trench" and "wall" run portions of The Breach Event for evidence of the need for such a ... modulation ... of how the game engine currently handles these issues (under the hood) with respect to "outrunning" Torpedo projectiles, rendering anything but Beams a waste of effort at such high Impulse Speeds. Yes, this is an Edge Case ... but it's also a very prominent and consistently repeatable Edge Case, so not exactly something to ignore, methinks.
@borticuscryptic I posted this idea in the main feedback thread: (now closed)
I understand there was some question a while back on what would be a good Tac line to replace tier 1 if they combine torps and energy as weapon skills...
May I suggest Tactical Weapon Drills:
Tier 1: +5% energy weapon cycle Haste and +.25 second Torpedo cool down reduction.
Tier 2: +8.5% energy weapon cycle haste and + .4 second Torpedo cool down reduction.
Tier 3. +10% energy weapon cycle haste and + .5 second Torpedo cool down reduction.
Grants skill "Reload" captain skill, 2 minutes cool down removes weapons offline and resets Torp global Cooldown.
This would be in place of the tier 1 torp skill. The tier 1 weapon skill would add + torp damage. It would use mechanics that exist in the game already, and not be a waste of a slot for tactical.
but basically if you want to avoid having a weapon/torp specific skill... and take advantage of the existing mechanics... why not combine the cycle haste with the torp haste we get off items. That way it affects booth.
You end up with a first tier that one side affects damage of all weapons, other side affects speed of all weapons. Very nicely symmetrical.
Maybe all of this can be avoided by just giving people 4 more space points to spend, bring the total to 50.
Not at all. More points doesn't address the essential goal of getting rid of the strong disincentives energy-and-torpedo hybrids suffer. People will just take those points and use them to further exaggerate the power of all-beam and all-torpedo builds.
@borticuscryptic ... even getting a comment on the FEASIBILITY of putting "Complimentary Projectile Flight Speeds" into the game as a "native" feature of how the game works for Cannons, Torpedoes and Mines (see link provided) would be appreciated by the Kinetic Kommunity, among others. Look no further than Torpedo (and Mine!) performance during the "trench" and "wall" run portions of The Breach Event for evidence of the need for such a ... modulation ... of how the game engine currently handles these issues (under the hood) with respect to "outrunning" Torpedo projectiles, rendering anything but Beams a waste of effort at such high Impulse Speeds. Yes, this is an Edge Case ... but it's also a very prominent and consistently repeatable Edge Case, so not exactly something to ignore, methinks.
As a player who regularly overruns my own Biomatter Torpedo (my goodness those things are SLLLLLLOOOOOOWW...) I can certainly understand the appeal. But... I shudder to think what happens when you click Lock Trajectory...
Advanced Ship Command
All your Captain abilities have their magnitude increased by 15 %.
Same as before but the third pick in the tree.
The problem there is Captain abilities don't all conform to a single pattern you can make sweeping statements about. e.g. +15% magnitude meaning what when you cast photonic fleet?
@borticuscryptic I posted this idea in the main feedback thread: (now closed)
I understand there was some question a while back on what would be a good Tac line to replace tier 1 if they combine torps and energy as weapon skills...
May I suggest Tactical Weapon Drills:
Tier 1: +5% energy weapon cycle Haste and +.25 second Torpedo cool down reduction.
Tier 2: +8.5% energy weapon cycle haste and + .4 second Torpedo cool down reduction.
Tier 3. +10% energy weapon cycle haste and + .5 second Torpedo cool down reduction.
Grants skill "Reload" captain skill, 2 minutes cool down removes weapons offline and resets Torp global Cooldown.
This would be in place of the tier 1 torp skill. The tier 1 weapon skill would add + torp damage. It would use mechanics that exist in the game already, and not be a waste of a slot for tactical.
but basically if you want to avoid having a weapon/torp specific skill... and take advantage of the existing mechanics... why not combine the cycle haste with the torp haste we get off items. That way it affects booth.
You end up with a first tier that one side affects damage of all weapons, other side affects speed of all weapons. Very nicely symmetrical.
I can support this idea. Would need to add something for mine deployment & activation, and still need to address torpedo flight speed, but that can be done elsewhere.
Advanced Ship Command
All your Captain abilities have their magnitude increased by 15 %.
Same as before but the third pick in the tree.
The problem there is Captain abilities don't all conform to a single pattern you can make sweeping statements about. e.g. +15% magnitude meaning what when you cast photonic fleet?
Yes, that would be a good example of a problem with the skill. I could think of things that this could feasibly do, but they are probably not generic and not intuitive, either.
So maybe we forget about that bonus and instead do a 1-2 split tree, like with Control and Drain Expertise: Ship Command
All your Captain abilities have their cooldowns lowered by 10 %.
(Tactical/Science/Engineering reduction is 10 % on the first pick)
Improved Ship Command
All your Captain abilities have their duration increased by 20 %.
Since Captain abilities are pretty broad, the bonus should be lower than that of more specific skills like Control or Drain Expertise, also, this is the second pick in the "tree".
Combat Drills
When entering Red Alert, all Captain abilities instantly recharge x % of their maximum cooldown duration. This effect can occur no more than once every y minutes.
with x = 10, 20, 25, 33 or 50? y = 2, 3, 5 or 10?
A long cooldown might be bad for an ability like this, since it will trigger on your first combat of the day, and then you can't get anythnig out of it, quite possibly for the entire duration of a mission or queue. But if it can be used more often, then the recharge value should probably be lower. But there might be abusal potential since there ara few powers that can trigger red alert without any enemies nearby. (That said, how much abusal potential? Going through those steps and through the cooldowns of those powers is likely also cost you a lot of time.)
Yet another Alternative: Cool under Pressure
When your hull hit points are reduced to 50 % or less, all Captain abilities instantly recharge x % of their maximum cooldown duration. This effect can occur no more than once every y minutes.
Or, staying in the unsplit tree, an alternative take for Advanced Ship Command. Advanced Ship Command [Redux]
Evasive Maneuvers, Brace for Impact and Fleet Support gain an additional 10 % cooldown reduction and a 15 % longer duration. (Much narrower than before, therefore combining the lower tier bonuses.)
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Comments
I like it in theory, but I think in practice random placates are just gonna be too annoying in PvP with players flickering in and out. Probably needs a substantial (45 seconds?) internal cooldown.
Lots of potential there. I feel like the "Auxiliary Phasers" tech isn't used enough by the game and this gives everything a little taste of that. I also like how you don't gain subsystem power from this, it just lets you shift an increasing percentage of the load around.
I think the numbers are a little high compared to other skill point investments, but the idea of opponents debuffing themselves by shooting you is very cool.
I REALLY like this, as this branch of equipment is available to everyone and yet sorely under used.
Defensive Emergency Drills
When you first enter Red Alert, you gain a +25 bonus to shield hardness, hull plating and and defensive maneuvering for 10 seconds. This can occur no more than once every 3 minutes.
Offensive Emergency Drills
When you first enter Red Alert, you gain a +25 bonus to weapon training, targeting expertise and, hull plating and and defensive maneuvering for 10 seconds. This can occur no more than once every 3 minutes.
Something that interacts with Captain skills might be interesting. Some ideas (reusing previous titles)
Ship Command
All your Captain abilities have their cooldowns lowered by 25 %.
Improved Ship Command
All your Captain abilities have their duration increased by 33 %.
Advanced Ship Command
All your Captain abilities have their magnitude increased by 50 %.
Emergency Drills
When you enter Red Alert, all Captain abilities on cooldown have that cooldown reduced by 50 % of the base cooldown. This can occur no more than once every 3 minutes.
Yes...please...I think I love you...devs, plz, if you are a kind god you will do this.
WAAAAAAAAAAAY overpowered dude!
I very much liked the Starship Traits "Super Charged Weapons" & "Weapon System Synergy"
> "Firing a Torpedo grants 10% Damage ; Critical Hit and critical Severity"
> "Activation of Energy Weapons improves Projectiles Damage and Bleedthrough"
Those two Traits created a awesome synergy.
Maybe a possible solution is to tie them even closer together
The implementation of a automated mechanic which creates a Advantage, a mechanic you could argue with: --> effect improvments could be programmed into both "Energy Weapon Training" and "Projectle Weapon Traing" skill points
Player who choosing not to add a Torpedo, couldn´t use this mechanic because:
... now it is on you guys to rip that idea into pieces :-D
That seems really, really complicated for something new players would be making a decision about at Level 5...
Bort, not to sound rude, but Beams are HARDLY the red-headed stepchild of the game right now... I know you don't want to disrupt the meta, but that just makes it even more important to buff the underdogs if you wont nerf the overwhelming majority.
What happened to being 'open to suggestions'? It's getting rather disheartening... When all you're gonna do is shoot everyones idea's down, why even bother to ask people for alternatives?
And it's even worse when you say "we COULD use that one, but it would take too much effort". As others have said, we already have the framework in game for increasing weapon procs through secondary abilities (increasing the Radiation proc of Bio-molecular weapons with the 2Pc CC weapon bonus, and increasing the proc rate of the Advanced Radiant AP weapons Temp HP bonus)
Still, I tend to agree there are better ideas here. I particularly like the one about increasing weapon proc chances, and weapons arcs.
As a basis I used my - as I know seen faulty - memory of the skills already in the game. I remembered that the first pick of Control Expertise I granted basically 60 % of the possible bonus - but that in turn just translates to a +30 % bonus to the actual ability, not +60 % as I thought.
So more in line would be something like:
Ship Command
All your Captain abilities have their cooldowns lowered by 10 %.
(Tactical/Science/Engineering reduction is 10 % on the first pick)
Improved Ship Command
All your Captain abilities have their duration increased by 20 %.
Since Captain abilities are pretty broad, the bonus should be lower than that of more specific skills like Control or Drain Expertise, also, this is the second pick in the "tree".
Advanced Ship Command
All your Captain abilities have their magnitude increased by 15 %.
Same as before but the third pick in the tree.
That would be a start. Call it, "Tactical Expertise" "Sensor Enhancements" (forgot this is to replace the shift in Science), and have it run down the list of basic debuff enhancements via % effectiveness.
Conversely, you could keep things as-is (or do a tree shuffle again), but address the weaknesses with cannons, mines, and torps: fix the non-working mods (innate critD w/ DHC's, and some torps having no working mods), ditch the archaic flight speed, or "easily shot down", or both, for heavy torps, make [Acc] useful for mines (or ditch the mod even showing up on them), decrease activation time, and reduce deployment cd for all standard mines.
Fleet Defiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support | Fleet Manticore Kinetic Strike Ship | Tactical Command Kinetic Siege Refit | Fleet Defiant Quantum Phase Escort | Fleet Valiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support
Turning the Galaxy-X into a Torpedo Dreadnought & torpedo tutorial, with written torpedo guide.
"A good weapon and a great strategy will win you many battles." - Marshall
I knew using Kinetics would be playing the game on hard mode, but what I didn't realize was how bad the deck is stacked against Kinetics.
Sustained Fire: Firing cycle haste, projectile cooldown reduction, and reduced CritH: 20%/30%/35%
The idea here is to trade spikey RNG based damage for more linear, consistent damage.
Wide Angle Targeting: Increased firing arc for all weapons and abilities: 5 degrees/8 degrees/10 degrees
Pretty obvious, slightly better firing arc for everything. Zero chance for increasing maximum damage potential, but a decent quality of life improvement.
Getting shot down (a lot) is part of the creative process. You might not believe the number of ideas that get killed on a daily or hourly basis here.
There have been a couple of not-bad suggestions in this thread. I'm hesitant to jump on board with them, or call them out publicly, since it might be too late for a major change like this. I have to check a lot of variables on my end before pulling any triggers.
The GOOD news of this thread is that it contains a whole bunch of ideas that, while they might not be excellent suggestions for a Skill, would definitely make the cut for Traits, Starship Traits, Spec Abilities, Set Bonuses, or Doff Abilities. So while I might shoot them down now, I'm also bookmarking the thread for later reference.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Believe me when I say I'm not put out (or surprised) that there's an extremely high bar for any idea to get adopted. We are playing around under the hood of a multi-million dollar engine. That's not something you bolt parts on to willy-nilly. Title says it all: this was going to be challenging.
Ok, that's flattering
Oh, I like this one. It's a shame we only have 3 points to work with, I'd like this as a tree where the first rank gives a small flat reduction to weapons cost, then there are 3 different skills to draw a percentage of power from Shields, Engines, and Aux. I guess it could work as a purely horizontal tree...
My character Tsin'xing
Not a debuff.
And a good example of how something that might seem simple on the surface, actually isn't when it comes to dealing with player expectations.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
On that note... how about shifting the Projectile Speed to a Starship Trait called "Relative Velocity", that increases the speed of cannon, torp, and certain boff abiliy projectiles by the user's current Impulse Speed? I know, not a Skill, but that's what came to mind when I saw the Skill suggestion shot down (pun intended
For a Skill suggestion, what about:
Tactical Retreat: This skill reflects your captain's awareness of his or her surroundings and understanding of the flow of combat. Each rank decreases the amount of time your crew remains at Red Alert after leaving combat, allowing your crew to more quickly shift from battle stations to repairs and maneuver into a superior position under Full Impulse. (-25%/-40%/-50% time spent at Red Alert after disengaging; alternatively, disabling Red Alert could become an active ability at the third tier, with say a 10 sec cooldown if your enemy manages to cut off your retreat and trigger Red Alert again)
What about a separate Skill called "Connect the DoTs", that increases the duration of your DoTs from all sources?
For Tactical Skill Revamp, I Propose
Ensign Level
Tactical Dmg Enhancement.
Level 1 > +30 %??? DMG Boost,
Level 2 > +20%??? DMG Boost,
Level 3 > +15%??? DMG Boost,
Tactical Severity Enhancement
Level 1 > +30% Critical Severity
Level 2 > +20% Critical Severity
Level 3 > +15% Critical Severity
Lt.
Tactical Penetration < Combine Shield and Hull Penetration
Level 1 > +30% Hull/Shield Pen
Level 2 > +20% Hull/Shield Pen
Level 3 > +15% Hull/Shield Pen
Tactical Critical Chance
Level 1 > +3% Critical Chance
Level 2 > +2% Critical Chance
Level 3 > +1% Critical Chance
Lt. Cmdr
Tactical Aim
Level 1 > +30% Accuracy
Level 2 > +20% Accuracy
Level 3 > +15% Accuracy
Tactical Ranging - Value not to exceed 10k
Level 1 > +30% Distance to Range/Power Falloff
Level 2 > +20% Distance to Range/Power Falloff
Level 3 > +10% Distance to Range/Power Falloff
Captain: Famous Maneuvers and regular maneuver stat increases:
Tactical Piloting
Level 1 > +30% Alpha / Delta /Beta /Omega stats
Level 2 > +20% Alpha / Delta /Beta /Omega stats
Level 3 > +10% Alpha / Delta /Beta /Omega stats
Famous Maneuvers:
Level 1> The Picard Maneuver, Basically Warp Shadow, but with two ships firing simultaneously at Target.
Level 2> Death Blossum, if already an escourt with this module, DMG, and length increased.
Level 3> The Lance. Turn your deflector into a destructive lance of energy dealing 50k Exotic Dmg, based on deflector type.
Admiral: I believe being an Admiral should be about controlling more than one ship, so I've adjusted the skill tree to support this:
Fleet Response Tree
Tactical Escourt: Increase Number of Ships, and reduce cooldown of Emergency Response Fleet.
Tactical Hanger: Increase number of Hanger Bay's By 1, must have at least one bay already.
Fighter Swarm: Increase number of ships/fighters, if fighters, by 2, if ships, by 1.
Hanger Tree:
Increase Damage 1 >25%
Increase Damage 2 >25%
Increased Health 1 >25%
Increased Health 2 >25%
2311 days and counting.
At the risk of tooting my own horn on this subject ...
[Recommendation] Complimentary Torpedo Flight Speeds
I'm sure that @darkknightucf and @e30ernest will remember when I posted this back in January. I'm quite sure that Odenknight will remember going Full Sisko Rant (epic performance, by the way, Oden) during a certain episode of THE SHOW after I posted this idea in the main forums.
@borticuscryptic ... even getting a comment on the FEASIBILITY of putting "Complimentary Projectile Flight Speeds" into the game as a "native" feature of how the game works for Cannons, Torpedoes and Mines (see link provided) would be appreciated by the Kinetic Kommunity, among others. Look no further than Torpedo (and Mine!) performance during the "trench" and "wall" run portions of The Breach Event for evidence of the need for such a ... modulation ... of how the game engine currently handles these issues (under the hood) with respect to "outrunning" Torpedo projectiles, rendering anything but Beams a waste of effort at such high Impulse Speeds. Yes, this is an Edge Case ... but it's also a very prominent and consistently repeatable Edge Case, so not exactly something to ignore, methinks.
Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser
Immortal BOff Skills combo for Ground
but basically if you want to avoid having a weapon/torp specific skill... and take advantage of the existing mechanics... why not combine the cycle haste with the torp haste we get off items. That way it affects booth.
You end up with a first tier that one side affects damage of all weapons, other side affects speed of all weapons. Very nicely symmetrical.
Not at all. More points doesn't address the essential goal of getting rid of the strong disincentives energy-and-torpedo hybrids suffer. People will just take those points and use them to further exaggerate the power of all-beam and all-torpedo builds.
As a player who regularly overruns my own Biomatter Torpedo (my goodness those things are SLLLLLLOOOOOOWW...) I can certainly understand the appeal. But... I shudder to think what happens when you click Lock Trajectory...
The problem there is Captain abilities don't all conform to a single pattern you can make sweeping statements about. e.g. +15% magnitude meaning what when you cast photonic fleet?
I can support this idea. Would need to add something for mine deployment & activation, and still need to address torpedo flight speed, but that can be done elsewhere.
Fleet Defiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support | Fleet Manticore Kinetic Strike Ship | Tactical Command Kinetic Siege Refit | Fleet Defiant Quantum Phase Escort | Fleet Valiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support
Turning the Galaxy-X into a Torpedo Dreadnought & torpedo tutorial, with written torpedo guide.
"A good weapon and a great strategy will win you many battles." - Marshall
I knew using Kinetics would be playing the game on hard mode, but what I didn't realize was how bad the deck is stacked against Kinetics.
So maybe we forget about that bonus and instead do a 1-2 split tree, like with Control and Drain Expertise:
Ship Command
All your Captain abilities have their cooldowns lowered by 10 %.
(Tactical/Science/Engineering reduction is 10 % on the first pick)
Improved Ship Command
All your Captain abilities have their duration increased by 20 %.
Since Captain abilities are pretty broad, the bonus should be lower than that of more specific skills like Control or Drain Expertise, also, this is the second pick in the "tree".
Combat Drills
When entering Red Alert, all Captain abilities instantly recharge x % of their maximum cooldown duration. This effect can occur no more than once every y minutes.
with x = 10, 20, 25, 33 or 50? y = 2, 3, 5 or 10?
A long cooldown might be bad for an ability like this, since it will trigger on your first combat of the day, and then you can't get anythnig out of it, quite possibly for the entire duration of a mission or queue. But if it can be used more often, then the recharge value should probably be lower. But there might be abusal potential since there ara few powers that can trigger red alert without any enemies nearby. (That said, how much abusal potential? Going through those steps and through the cooldowns of those powers is likely also cost you a lot of time.)
Yet another Alternative:
Cool under Pressure
When your hull hit points are reduced to 50 % or less, all Captain abilities instantly recharge x % of their maximum cooldown duration. This effect can occur no more than once every y minutes.
Or, staying in the unsplit tree, an alternative take for Advanced Ship Command.
Advanced Ship Command [Redux]
Evasive Maneuvers, Brace for Impact and Fleet Support gain an additional 10 % cooldown reduction and a 15 % longer duration. (Much narrower than before, therefore combining the lower tier bonuses.)