What they need to do is design content with enemies who practically require things like SA or GI to kill. I mean most missions and PVE's are just "kill a bazillion npcs in X time". What we need is a situation where the whole dammed team needs to outwit the enemy ship, like the old Crystalline queue used to be.
Then at least support ships would have some slight purpose as they would be throwing out confuse, control, debuff abilities or using things like SA to help the guys with the big guns. Too much of STO's content is possible to be finished just by spamming BFAW or going Rambo on it, we need something where that approach will get you killed.
I mean we've got a few examples. Look at Counterpoint Elite; if you want to knock down Terrok Nor to about 25% and keep it there it takes a shed load of firepower, it's not instant. You ever seen how much easier this is with 5 players slapping SA on the station? It makes it a considerably easier task. That's what SA should be used for, that's the sort of scenario Cryptic need to replicate in queues.
I think it's ridiculous to punish good players who appreciate and can take advantage of the full depth of gameplay options available because there are players who are unable or unwilling to appreciate how best to utilize them.
This extends to people who think Sensor Analysis is "useless," or has no place in the current game, because if that were the case, highly-skilled players wouldn't be gravitating towards ships that offer it as an option. Don't blame the tool for the shortcomings of its user.
Now, I'll admit that I'd be one of the first players who would petition Cryptic for more content that would *require* full advantage of the depth and richness of gameplay options that are available, but so many people seem to shudder or cringe at the slightest hint of difficulty, I recognize that's a fool's errand...but again, the "solution" here isn't to start taking away gameplay options from the people who *can* appreciate and take advantage of it. That's just poor game design.
TL;DR: People seem to be rushing to solve problems that don't actually exist, here. Sensor Analysis is fine (Hell, I'd sooner make the argument that it's *too good* than that it's *too bad*), and it neither deserves being looked at nor being removed from the game.
.....Yeah, you're completely missing the point. The IDEA behind SA is great, but currently what can you do with it in most situations? Enemies drop dead if you flatulate in their general direction with even a halfway decent build, there's no time for SA stacks to build up on them. You can use it in STFs and RAs sure, but like I mentioned a lot of STF/RA bosses and even trash mobs have disable/confuse/placate/etc. abilities that frequently break SA and then you lose whatever stacks had built up. Nevermind the increasing number of people with enough damage output to practically instagib bosses.
I don't recall anyone asking for SA to be removed, a couple people suggested it might be good to rework it to make it simpler for console players to use but that was it.
I'm sorry you all feel this way, but the truth is, Sensor Analysis is an incredibly potent ability as has been well-documented (see here: https://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/4vgb84/trying_to_figure_which_category_of_damage_sensor/d5ydn91). Granted, it requires more thought and attention to maximize its effectiveness, but in the hands of a half-way skilled user it is an incredible tool, especially on ships like the Gorkon/Command Bortas'qu, Yorktown/Science Oddysey, and the Tal Shiar Adapted ships.
I don't think anybody is arguing that Sensor Analysis by itself is not a powerful tool, however, the general consensus seems to be that it has no practical purpose because of the current state of the game in which things seem to die within a few seconds of opening fire.
Abilities that are Single Target, or generate Stacks over Time on a particular target (like Gather Intel and SA) are becoming increasingly irrelevant when things die just by sneezing on them with AoE damage abilities, including enemies we would traditionally associate with being highly resilient to incoming fire, like cruisers and dreadnoughts.
It's not an ability that is a "big thing"... like carriers where you have less weapons to make up for having pets.... things with SA don't sacrifice anything to have it. It's not supposed to dominate the play style of every ship that has it.
Also you can set a key bind to highlight your current target with it.
If I recall, Sensor Analysis was there to make up for the lack of firepower Science ships have in comparison to Escorts (who have more Tac Consoles and forward-arc potential with DBBs and dual cannons), as well as Cruisers (who were quite competitive with 8 weapon slots, making beam arrays lucrative for broadsiding). SA was there to help compliment the Subsystem Targeting ability, and deal more damage to a target as it was scanned, while also allowing it to be used on allies to increase healing and survivability -- thus, not really pigeonholing science ships into either offensive ships or support ships, and making them more versatile as a result.
There is always going to be an 'arms race' between ship types as time goes on, with Cryptic attempting to find more and more ways to sell power creep while also attempting to ensure no ship type dominates the field.
However, Cryptic shifted the design focus from that versatility into making them masters at space magic with continual buffs to EPG builds and new ways to improve their AoE damage potential with Exotic damage. This wasn't really a zero sum game in regards to Sensor Analysis, but it does make it something of a fifth wheel unless it's under very specific circumstances.
Which again, isn't about how bad Sensor Analysis is (it's actually a nice ability), but in practice it's largely irrelevant, unless Cryptic finds some new ways to make Sensor Analysis practical again.
It's still useful, but only on boss ships.
Also.. isn't there a Scimitar variant with SA now? O-o'
What they need to do is design content with enemies who practically require things like SA or GI to kill. I mean most missions and PVE's are just "kill a bazillion npcs in X time". What we need is a situation where the whole dammed team needs to outwit the enemy ship, like the old Crystalline queue used to be.
Then at least support ships would have some slight purpose as they would be throwing out confuse, control, debuff abilities or using things like SA to help the guys with the big guns. Too much of STO's content is possible to be finished just by spamming BFAW or going Rambo on it, we need something where that approach will get you killed.
I mean we've got a few examples. Look at Counterpoint Elite; if you want to knock down Terrok Nor to about 25% and keep it there it takes a shed load of firepower, it's not instant. You ever seen how much easier this is with 5 players slapping SA on the station? It makes it a considerably easier task. That's what SA should be used for, that's the sort of scenario Cryptic need to replicate in queues.
totally agree on that assessment, however, I don't see a good reason not to make an ability more useful in a general sense, for more situations.
What I wanted to argue in my previous post was, that it adds one more button to the hopelessly overloaded UI as it is. I mean, that gives you a lot of micromanagement options, but at the end of the day most things explode before you went through your complete rotation of abilities.
And if Cryptic were to implement content that would require better micromanagement, well I'd say the majority of casual players are not going to enjoy those kind of missions.
Now that the devs have developed a more streamlined UI and controle scheme for the console, I really, really wish they would take a look at the current PC UI and condense controles down to something more intuitive and enabling a faster pase in gameplay.
I'm not missing the point. Sensor Analysis is awesome and kills TRIBBLE faster when you use it, even if you can't build it to full stacks, and there already exists content with big targets (including everyone's favorite, ISA) that you can get higher stacks of SA from - this whole idea that it's "irrelevant" is flawed, full stop, because it's not.
I'm not missing the point. Sensor Analysis is awesome and kills **** faster when you use it, even if you can't build it to full stacks, and there already exists content with big targets (including everyone's favorite, ISA) that you can get higher stacks of SA from - this whole idea that it's "irrelevant" is flawed, full stop, because it's not.
Didn't I just say it's useful on bosses in STFs and RAs? The problem is it's a core feature of the ships that have it, but due to the out of control power creep it serves almost no purpose in most of the game's content anymore. When you're running through story missions (which is a vast majority of the game's content) it's not like you can target yourself with it to buff healing, and with only a few exceptions the enemies you face in story missions die so quickly that using it on them has no noticeable effect.
There really needs to be a proper division between trash mobs and boss and mini-boss type enemies. And it should be more than just a matter of more hitpoints to chew through. Non-Trash mobs for one thing should have the ability to reliably heal, because right now, part of the function of SA is literally "pointless" in PvE, and that is that at full stacks it debuffs the healing of the target by 50%... only, NPC's don't heal, even on Elite.
Heck with enemies that can apply heals, things like Subnuke may also become relevant in PvE.
I mean image a new Infected Space Elite, where the tactical cube will pop a power like "Borg Regeneration" a super powerful heal that will restore massive amounts of hitpoints, or even heal it up to full strenght.
Now imagine it being debuffed by Sensor Analysis and only recieving half benfit, or the regeneration process being cleared entirely by a Subnuke!
Those are just some ideas.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
There really needs to be a proper division between trash mobs and boss and mini-boss type enemies. And it should be more than just a matter of more hitpoints to chew through. Non-Trash mobs for one thing should have the ability to reliably heal, because right now, part of the function of SA is literally "pointless" in PvE, and that is that at full stacks it debuffs the healing of the target by 50%... only, NPC's don't heal, even on Elite.
Heck with enemies that can apply heals, things like Subnuke may also become relevant in PvE.
I mean image a new Infected Space Elite, where the tactical cube will pop a power like "Borg Regeneration" a super powerful heal that will restore massive amounts of hitpoints, or even heal it up to full strenght.
Now imagine it being debuffed by Sensor Analysis and only recieving half benfit, or the regeneration process being cleared entirely by a Subnuke!
Those are just some ideas.
You mean like the HoT ability the regen probes use in the Borg RA? Subnuc works great to clear it from the Unimatrix.....or at least it did until power creep ramped up damage output so high a lot of people can simply outdamage what it heals for.
I'm not missing the point. Sensor Analysis is awesome and kills **** faster when you use it, even if you can't build it to full stacks, and there already exists content with big targets (including everyone's favorite, ISA) that you can get higher stacks of SA from - this whole idea that it's "irrelevant" is flawed, full stop, because it's not.
I think some of you don't realize you're talking to a guy who is one of the game's biggest build experts and speedruns HSE for fun, and I really gotta say, it makes me laugh that you're telling him it's not useful in the high-end, when not only can he do the math proving it is, he's got the record-tier parses to back him up.
SCM - Crystal C. (S) - [00:12] DMG(DPS) - @jarvisandalfred: 8.63M(713.16K) - Fed Sci
I'm not missing the point. Sensor Analysis is awesome and kills **** faster when you use it, even if you can't build it to full stacks, and there already exists content with big targets (including everyone's favorite, ISA) that you can get higher stacks of SA from - this whole idea that it's "irrelevant" is flawed, full stop, because it's not.
I think some of you don't realize you're talking to a guy who is one of the game's biggest build experts and speedruns HSE for fun, and I really gotta say, it makes me laugh that you're telling him it's not useful in the high-end, when not only can he do the math proving it is, he's got the record-tier parses to back him up.
I know who he is, and I never said he's wrong in asserting that it's useful in STFs and such. I'm saying it's gone from being generally useful to only being useful on a few things, and I'm not really happy that one of my favorite game mechanics has basically been turned into a niche ability by the out of control power creep.
I'll say remove the buildup time on it, just make it have full immediate potential right away, and then in addition, make it an AOE of like 3 km around the target of SA so that way in gravity wells and so on, all the clumped and nearby ships are also affected. That would give SA some more meaning quite easily. However I am very firm in believing it should stay the toggle that it is, it's more useful to me being able to choose what target is subject to SA while I target other things I don't wish to waste SA on.
Well SA can be useful to help heal a team member, something people seem to forget about. Stick it on someone who is in trouble and hit them with a heal and it'll boost the HP's they receive. This is what I use it for most often.
And I find on the bigger targets like gates in KSA it can be good, or any mission where I leave the biggest boss till last whilst i mop up the spam mobs. Let SA run it's course whilst you kill of everything else and it'll make the end fight easier.
It's not really useful for short fights but in the long drawn out combat situations its a nice extra.
true, but here's the catch...it needs time to stack up, and the way the game handles aggro it really doesn't warrent to keep it on a dedicated tank. Sometimes you find such a dedicated tank, but that one doesn't actually need YOU to heal him anyway.
IMHO, the stacking mechanic sverely limits its usefulness. Or make it a passive ability that affects any ship in range of X km (also a better option for console users, one button less)
When you use any sensor skill including those associated with cloaking btw, you scale the stacking rather quickly so you can effectively play a science ship for example that has many sensor skills that boost it to max quickly.
I do that on mine. And it does work quickly against larger bosses.
I have to agree though that it does nothing for short fights at all.
I'm not missing the point. Sensor Analysis is awesome and kills **** faster when you use it, even if you can't build it to full stacks, and there already exists content with big targets (including everyone's favorite, ISA) that you can get higher stacks of SA from - this whole idea that it's "irrelevant" is flawed, full stop, because it's not.
I agree. I feel Sensor Analysis is fine. You don't need to build full stacks for it to make a huge effect on your run. I apply it on almost everything on cooldown. It is very useful even in today's powercreep.
I'll say remove the buildup time on it, just make it have full immediate potential right away, and then in addition, make it an AOE of like 3 km around the target
That would make it OP IMO and put ships that don't have it at a disadvantage.
IMO AoE and single-target abilities need major rebalancing.
Ultimately there needs to be a good solid reason to use powers like Surgical Strikes and Beam Overload, Torpedo High Yield and Cannon Rapid Fire etc.
While I agree, imagine the QQ from some players if these skills were brought up to par with the AOE stuff we have. The Temporal abilities brought in some really useful single target nukes and debuffs and there have been multiple threads already about them being "OP". The same happened with Surgical Strikes when it was first out.
1) Drop the stacks down by half and increase the bonuses or increase stack speed.
or
2) Combine SA and subsystem targeting with either random chance or select-able. Stacks could affect offline chance.
or
3) remove the cooldown or make it 1 sec.
or
4) Give synergy with Surgical Strike
or
5) make SA have a brief scan time (2-4) seconds then applies full bonus.
I agree. I feel Sensor Analysis is fine. You don't need to build full stacks for it to make a huge effect on your run. I apply it on almost everything on cooldown. It is very useful even in today's powercreep.
Stuff dies even before it gets up to it's second stack... how's that useful?
That would make it OP IMO and put ships that don't have it at a disadvantage.
Yeah... because Science is currently completely on par with Escorts or even Cruisers... the latter definitely will be completely disadvantaged!
While I agree, imagine the QQ from some players if these skills were brought up to par with the AOE stuff we have. The Temporal abilities brought in some really useful single target nukes and debuffs and there have been multiple threads already about them being "OP". The same happened with Surgical Strikes when it was first out.
But without any kind of disadvantage, as already stated, AoE Abilities are completely OP... there's literally and absolutely no godforsaken reason to have anything but AoE because it works on anything and anyone and that is a general Problem with the Design of the Game...
All that is needed is to kill Stuff as fast as possible everything else from Tanking, to Healing, to Pure Support is nothing but a big fat hinderance.
What this game needs is a true 'Stay on Target' type option (similar but obviously different is the Option to auto target) that tells your Helmsman to keep the ship facing the current target.
I have a Helmsman for a reason. He flys the ship based on my orders. I tell him to keep the ship on the target, he takes care of that. I shouldn't have to tell him to come to course 153 Mark 17. My option.
'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.'
There is a reason why the Science Odyssey is one of the top DPS ships for feds. Do not underestimate the damage potential SA brings to the table. And I would say that sci ships are mostly on par with cruisers and ahead of escorts.
But without any kind of disadvantage, as already stated, AoE Abilities are completely OP... there's literally and absolutely no godforsaken reason to have anything but AoE because it works on anything and anyone and that is a general Problem with the Design of the Game...
Do you even know why people use AOE abilities vs single target abilities in the game right now (especially for energy weapons)?
STFs have a lot of trash mobs. They are best picked off by AOE.
Single target energy skills lock out weapons. That translates to a gap to your firing.
Single target skills are usually 1 shot affairs, which means you are left out without a weapon buff for the next 15s.
Shot per shot, single target abilities are already more powerful than something like FAW or CSV. The issue is that you aren't doing much after that shot is fired so you lose out compared to using FAW or CSV.
For you to improve on single target abilities, you need to either lower their cooldowns, increase their damage or remove the lockouts. In PVE that's fine (I was pushing for the removal of lockouts and lowering of single target CDs before) but that would make those skills really OP for PVP I think.
Your other option is to nerf AOE, but that wouldn't solve anything IMO due to the disadvantages single target energy weapons buffs have. You'd end up with unhappy players (because of the nerf) and solved nothing about the single target ability issue.
For torps it is different. There are torps that perform much better under HY and there are instances where you'd be better served using HY than torp spread. That's because for torps, both weapons buffs are single fire affairs. You can even chain them if you know what you are doing.
All that is needed is to kill Stuff as fast as possible everything else from Tanking, to Healing, to Pure Support is nothing but a big fat hinderance.
I disagree. I've played alongside the best tanks in the game (like @jarvisandalfred or @iusasset) and the best healers in the game (like @ltnylint) and they are godsends in elite STFs. If you think tanks or support players are hindrances, you probably never played with one that actually knows what he/she is doing.
I'm not missing the point. Sensor Analysis is awesome and kills **** faster when you use it, even if you can't build it to full stacks, and there already exists content with big targets (including everyone's favorite, ISA) that you can get higher stacks of SA from - this whole idea that it's "irrelevant" is flawed, full stop, because it's not.
I think some of you don't realize you're talking to a guy who is one of the game's biggest build experts and speedruns HSE for fun, and I really gotta say, it makes me laugh that you're telling him it's not useful in the high-end, when not only can he do the math proving it is, he's got the record-tier parses to back him up.
I know who he is, and I never said he's wrong in asserting that it's useful in STFs and such. I'm saying it's gone from being generally useful to only being useful on a few things, and I'm not really happy that one of my favorite game mechanics has basically been turned into a niche ability by the out of control power creep.
It was always niche. back when it was a passive ability, most enemies STILL died before you got much benefit out of it. How do I know?
I used to do STFs in that thing. Eridian is currently flying a Krenim sci ship.
I'm not missing the point. Sensor Analysis is awesome and kills **** faster when you use it, even if you can't build it to full stacks, and there already exists content with big targets (including everyone's favorite, ISA) that you can get higher stacks of SA from - this whole idea that it's "irrelevant" is flawed, full stop, because it's not.
I think some of you don't realize you're talking to a guy who is one of the game's biggest build experts and speedruns HSE for fun, and I really gotta say, it makes me laugh that you're telling him it's not useful in the high-end, when not only can he do the math proving it is, he's got the record-tier parses to back him up.
I know who he is, and I never said he's wrong in asserting that it's useful in STFs and such. I'm saying it's gone from being generally useful to only being useful on a few things, and I'm not really happy that one of my favorite game mechanics has basically been turned into a niche ability by the out of control power creep.
It was always niche. back when it was a passive ability, most enemies STILL died before you got much benefit out of it. How do I know?
I used to do STFs in that thing. Eridian is currently flying a Krenim sci ship.
Bottom tier trash mobs (Frigates) were always not worth using SA on, but with Cruisers, Battleships, and sometimes Escorts it helped to soften them up especially if you weren't a min-maxer who focused on damage output. It was absolutely not "always a niche ability" like it is currently where we have all sorts of things that boost damage output to ridiculous levels. Traits, specs, rep powers, etc. Like I keep saying, power creep has steadily pushed it toward the margins for usefulness.
Hell, even really big ships like the Unimatrix in borg RAs, the named Tholian flagships in Tholian RAs, and the Citadels in the contested zone in the Dyson space adventure area are sometimes getting vaped by people with insane damage output, and by vaped I mean full to dead in less than 10 seconds. What is the use of SA there? I can imagine similar situations in Breach the next time it returns. I'm not even going to mention CCA because we've all seen what happens there most of the time.
IMO AoE and single-target abilities need major rebalancing.
What I think would be a good idea is to make AoE powers damage scale per enemy being hit/affected by them, and as a result having a much much lower base damage than single-target abilities.
Interestingly some science powers like Gravity Well already sort of work like this, with the DPS being multiplicative of the number of enemies.
Ultimately there needs to be a good solid reason to use powers like Surgical Strikes and Beam Overload, Torpedo High Yield and Cannon Rapid Fire etc.
About two years ago, there was a Dev working on that. He left STO (*Amicably, we SWEAR). about a month before he was out seeking other opportunities, he mentioned in the PvP forum that he'd brought up the problem with Lead Developer Al Rivera...
and was told to forget about it because it would "Ruin the fun."
It was about three weeks to a month and Adjudicatorhawk was working somewhere that wasn't Cryptic.
His replacement (Borticus) likes AOE powers, as well as immunities, the DPS meta, etc. etc.
so no, that's a suggestion that isn't going to ever happen in a million years.
IMHO you should never hire a player or fan to develop a game, any game. Conflict of interests as you can't count on the developer being objective.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
I'm not missing the point. Sensor Analysis is awesome and kills **** faster when you use it, even if you can't build it to full stacks, and there already exists content with big targets (including everyone's favorite, ISA) that you can get higher stacks of SA from - this whole idea that it's "irrelevant" is flawed, full stop, because it's not.
I think some of you don't realize you're talking to a guy who is one of the game's biggest build experts and speedruns HSE for fun, and I really gotta say, it makes me laugh that you're telling him it's not useful in the high-end, when not only can he do the math proving it is, he's got the record-tier parses to back him up.
I know who he is, and I never said he's wrong in asserting that it's useful in STFs and such. I'm saying it's gone from being generally useful to only being useful on a few things, and I'm not really happy that one of my favorite game mechanics has basically been turned into a niche ability by the out of control power creep.
It was always niche. back when it was a passive ability, most enemies STILL died before you got much benefit out of it. How do I know?
I used to do STFs in that thing. Eridian is currently flying a Krenim sci ship.
Bottom tier trash mobs (Frigates) were always not worth using SA on, but with Cruisers, Battleships, and sometimes Escorts it helped to soften them up especially if you weren't a min-maxer who focused on damage output. It was absolutely not "always a niche ability" like it is currently where we have all sorts of things that boost damage output to ridiculous levels. Traits, specs, rep powers, etc. Like I keep saying, power creep has steadily pushed it toward the margins for usefulness.
Hell, even really big ships like the Unimatrix in borg RAs, the named Tholian flagships in Tholian RAs, and the Citadels in the contested zone in the Dyson space adventure area are sometimes getting vaped by people with insane damage output, and by vaped I mean full to dead in less than 10 seconds. What is the use of SA there? I can imagine similar situations in Breach the next time it returns. I'm not even going to mention CCA because we've all seen what happens there most of the time.
If that's your standard then everything is marginally useful or part of a spike vape build. In short your standard needs work.
IMHO you should never hire a player or fan to develop a game, any game. Conflict of interests as you can't count on the developer being objective.
One can be "biased" and still design "balanced" gameplay.
For example, me. If I was given the helm of STO for long enough to get a few things done, I can assure you that any "hypothetical 'super-science' T6 TOS Connie variant" would be "on a par, gameplay wise", with the existing Defiant/Galaxy/Intrepid collection and the equally hypothetical NX-homage mode on the Akira...
Same with balancing gameplay skills. Just because I'm a fan of DPS or AoE attacks, I'd make sure that they were "balanced" against single-target attacks, and make it very very hard to be able to specialize in both.
These are quality things that any "reasonable" developer tends to call "variety of gameplay", unlike the sometimes heavy handed "you'll play the game the way we like you to" that seems to issue forth from certain portions of the developerbase over at Cryptic...
Detecting big-time "anti-old-school" bias here. NX? Lobi. TOS/TMP Connie? Super-promotion-box. (aka the two hardest ways to get ships) Excelsior & all 3 TNG "big hero" ships? C-Store. Please Equalize...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
You know, sensor analysis sure sounds like a capability all ships should have. Like tractor beams and at least a small bay for launching shuttles. Things like that bother me in this game.
You know, sensor analysis sure sounds like a capability all ships should have. Like tractor beams and at least a small bay for launching shuttles. Things like that bother me in this game.
Not really, Sensor Analysis is supposed to be a very deep scan of an enemy ships, and even in Canon, Science vessels have far superior sensors than other ships.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
I could accept Sci ships having better sensors, or Sci captains making better use of them, but I insist that all ships should have some ability in areas like sensor scan and subsystem targeting. Really the tractor beam thing bugs me more, though.
Comments
Then at least support ships would have some slight purpose as they would be throwing out confuse, control, debuff abilities or using things like SA to help the guys with the big guns. Too much of STO's content is possible to be finished just by spamming BFAW or going Rambo on it, we need something where that approach will get you killed.
I mean we've got a few examples. Look at Counterpoint Elite; if you want to knock down Terrok Nor to about 25% and keep it there it takes a shed load of firepower, it's not instant. You ever seen how much easier this is with 5 players slapping SA on the station? It makes it a considerably easier task. That's what SA should be used for, that's the sort of scenario Cryptic need to replicate in queues.
.....Yeah, you're completely missing the point. The IDEA behind SA is great, but currently what can you do with it in most situations? Enemies drop dead if you flatulate in their general direction with even a halfway decent build, there's no time for SA stacks to build up on them. You can use it in STFs and RAs sure, but like I mentioned a lot of STF/RA bosses and even trash mobs have disable/confuse/placate/etc. abilities that frequently break SA and then you lose whatever stacks had built up. Nevermind the increasing number of people with enough damage output to practically instagib bosses.
I don't recall anyone asking for SA to be removed, a couple people suggested it might be good to rework it to make it simpler for console players to use but that was it.
Also.. isn't there a Scimitar variant with SA now? O-o'
My character Tsin'xing
totally agree on that assessment, however, I don't see a good reason not to make an ability more useful in a general sense, for more situations.
What I wanted to argue in my previous post was, that it adds one more button to the hopelessly overloaded UI as it is. I mean, that gives you a lot of micromanagement options, but at the end of the day most things explode before you went through your complete rotation of abilities.
And if Cryptic were to implement content that would require better micromanagement, well I'd say the majority of casual players are not going to enjoy those kind of missions.
Now that the devs have developed a more streamlined UI and controle scheme for the console, I really, really wish they would take a look at the current PC UI and condense controles down to something more intuitive and enabling a faster pase in gameplay.
Didn't I just say it's useful on bosses in STFs and RAs? The problem is it's a core feature of the ships that have it, but due to the out of control power creep it serves almost no purpose in most of the game's content anymore. When you're running through story missions (which is a vast majority of the game's content) it's not like you can target yourself with it to buff healing, and with only a few exceptions the enemies you face in story missions die so quickly that using it on them has no noticeable effect.
Heck with enemies that can apply heals, things like Subnuke may also become relevant in PvE.
I mean image a new Infected Space Elite, where the tactical cube will pop a power like "Borg Regeneration" a super powerful heal that will restore massive amounts of hitpoints, or even heal it up to full strenght.
Now imagine it being debuffed by Sensor Analysis and only recieving half benfit, or the regeneration process being cleared entirely by a Subnuke!
Those are just some ideas.
You mean like the HoT ability the regen probes use in the Borg RA? Subnuc works great to clear it from the Unimatrix.....or at least it did until power creep ramped up damage output so high a lot of people can simply outdamage what it heals for.
I think some of you don't realize you're talking to a guy who is one of the game's biggest build experts and speedruns HSE for fun, and I really gotta say, it makes me laugh that you're telling him it's not useful in the high-end, when not only can he do the math proving it is, he's got the record-tier parses to back him up.
SCM - Hive (S) - [02:31] DMG(DPS) - @jarvisandalfred: 30.62M(204.66K) - Fed Sci
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I know who he is, and I never said he's wrong in asserting that it's useful in STFs and such. I'm saying it's gone from being generally useful to only being useful on a few things, and I'm not really happy that one of my favorite game mechanics has basically been turned into a niche ability by the out of control power creep.
When you use any sensor skill including those associated with cloaking btw, you scale the stacking rather quickly so you can effectively play a science ship for example that has many sensor skills that boost it to max quickly.
I do that on mine. And it does work quickly against larger bosses.
I have to agree though that it does nothing for short fights at all.
Please no. That would be a massive step in the wrong direction, especially for players that like to multi-task during a fight.
I agree. I feel Sensor Analysis is fine. You don't need to build full stacks for it to make a huge effect on your run. I apply it on almost everything on cooldown. It is very useful even in today's powercreep.
That would make it OP IMO and put ships that don't have it at a disadvantage.
While I agree, imagine the QQ from some players if these skills were brought up to par with the AOE stuff we have. The Temporal abilities brought in some really useful single target nukes and debuffs and there have been multiple threads already about them being "OP". The same happened with Surgical Strikes when it was first out.
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1) Drop the stacks down by half and increase the bonuses or increase stack speed.
or
2) Combine SA and subsystem targeting with either random chance or select-able. Stacks could affect offline chance.
or
3) remove the cooldown or make it 1 sec.
or
4) Give synergy with Surgical Strike
or
5) make SA have a brief scan time (2-4) seconds then applies full bonus.
Stuff dies even before it gets up to it's second stack... how's that useful?
Yeah... because Science is currently completely on par with Escorts or even Cruisers... the latter definitely will be completely disadvantaged!
But without any kind of disadvantage, as already stated, AoE Abilities are completely OP... there's literally and absolutely no godforsaken reason to have anything but AoE because it works on anything and anyone and that is a general Problem with the Design of the Game...
All that is needed is to kill Stuff as fast as possible everything else from Tanking, to Healing, to Pure Support is nothing but a big fat hinderance.
If we had autofire for abilities, people could right-click on it and have it automatically apply when targeting, or use it manually if they so wanted.
I have a Helmsman for a reason. He flys the ship based on my orders. I tell him to keep the ship on the target, he takes care of that. I shouldn't have to tell him to come to course 153 Mark 17. My option.
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.'
Entropic abilities rarely get to their second stack in small targets, does that make them weak as well?
Even with just 1 stack, SA is a pretty hefty boost for its user. On bigger targets, it still stacks nicely.
An AOE SA will be OP especially when you consider how its bonus gets applied to overall damage. Couple that with the right secondary deflector (SA+Dmg) SA is no joke.
There is a reason why the Science Odyssey is one of the top DPS ships for feds. Do not underestimate the damage potential SA brings to the table. And I would say that sci ships are mostly on par with cruisers and ahead of escorts.
Do you even know why people use AOE abilities vs single target abilities in the game right now (especially for energy weapons)?
Shot per shot, single target abilities are already more powerful than something like FAW or CSV. The issue is that you aren't doing much after that shot is fired so you lose out compared to using FAW or CSV.
For you to improve on single target abilities, you need to either lower their cooldowns, increase their damage or remove the lockouts. In PVE that's fine (I was pushing for the removal of lockouts and lowering of single target CDs before) but that would make those skills really OP for PVP I think.
Your other option is to nerf AOE, but that wouldn't solve anything IMO due to the disadvantages single target energy weapons buffs have. You'd end up with unhappy players (because of the nerf) and solved nothing about the single target ability issue.
For torps it is different. There are torps that perform much better under HY and there are instances where you'd be better served using HY than torp spread. That's because for torps, both weapons buffs are single fire affairs. You can even chain them if you know what you are doing.
I disagree. I've played alongside the best tanks in the game (like @jarvisandalfred or @iusasset) and the best healers in the game (like @ltnylint) and they are godsends in elite STFs. If you think tanks or support players are hindrances, you probably never played with one that actually knows what he/she is doing.
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I used to do STFs in that thing. Eridian is currently flying a Krenim sci ship.
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Bottom tier trash mobs (Frigates) were always not worth using SA on, but with Cruisers, Battleships, and sometimes Escorts it helped to soften them up especially if you weren't a min-maxer who focused on damage output. It was absolutely not "always a niche ability" like it is currently where we have all sorts of things that boost damage output to ridiculous levels. Traits, specs, rep powers, etc. Like I keep saying, power creep has steadily pushed it toward the margins for usefulness.
Hell, even really big ships like the Unimatrix in borg RAs, the named Tholian flagships in Tholian RAs, and the Citadels in the contested zone in the Dyson space adventure area are sometimes getting vaped by people with insane damage output, and by vaped I mean full to dead in less than 10 seconds. What is the use of SA there? I can imagine similar situations in Breach the next time it returns. I'm not even going to mention CCA because we've all seen what happens there most of the time.
IMHO you should never hire a player or fan to develop a game, any game. Conflict of interests as you can't count on the developer being objective.
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One can be "biased" and still design "balanced" gameplay.
For example, me. If I was given the helm of STO for long enough to get a few things done, I can assure you that any "hypothetical 'super-science' T6 TOS Connie variant" would be "on a par, gameplay wise", with the existing Defiant/Galaxy/Intrepid collection and the equally hypothetical NX-homage mode on the Akira...
Same with balancing gameplay skills. Just because I'm a fan of DPS or AoE attacks, I'd make sure that they were "balanced" against single-target attacks, and make it very very hard to be able to specialize in both.
These are quality things that any "reasonable" developer tends to call "variety of gameplay", unlike the sometimes heavy handed "you'll play the game the way we like you to" that seems to issue forth from certain portions of the developerbase over at Cryptic...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
Not really, Sensor Analysis is supposed to be a very deep scan of an enemy ships, and even in Canon, Science vessels have far superior sensors than other ships.
"You left space dock without a tractor beam?!?"