Not every map is DPS centric. Just the popular ones are.
To be fair, most non-dps centric maps are horrendously annoying designed. Interruptable actions + endless enemy spawn, often with FAW ability which makes "tanking" pointless, dosen't lead to good or fun gameplay....
Agreed. Also, we have to close rifts there.
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Op as another poster pointed out with a laughing video he was right one. You are in need of a history lesson....
The devs already nerfed attack pattern omega, and they have made going down fighting nearly useless. So no nerfing another aspect of tac would just make them useless. The main problem right now is the insane amount of aoe dps from ALL classes and from mostly ALL end game npcs. So how about we say get rid of Beam fire at will three op? Id wager that would really tick you off? Please be considerate of other classes and players. I made a similar post recently and I at least admitted that their is a whole lot more to this problem in game then just aoes. It is a problem becoming more apparent.
To further my point the new Kelvin Dreadnought has a full broadside cannon ability, people are upgrading as many omni beam arrays as they can. I even saw a post to expand the arc of cannons. I also saw a post for broadside torpedoes lol. My point is too many people want a 100 percent firing circle around their ship for their weapon of choice. The result being would be a even more broken game. In my opinion and only my opinion. This type of weaponry, and aoes need to be changed back to the basics of the game.
Nobody has said anything about only making certain powers work on certain ship types. APA is too powerful because it buffs everything, including ALL secondary sources of damage such as Kemocite, Plasma Explosions, Kinetic Shearing, etc.
Limiting APA to weapons damage still makes it perfectly and more than equally viable for any ship type, or do you think that science ships don't use any weapons?
A Science Vessel has 6 weapon slots, and can generally not use dual cannons. That means every other ship class will deal more damage with its weapons then Cruisers or Escorts. A Science Vessel by neccessity has to get some significant portion of its weapon from exotic damage. If the Tactical Captains damage buff does not also affect exotic damage, it means he's at a disadvantage compared to being in a Cruiser, Escort or Raider. His buff counts for less.
As I said, there might be an argument for reducing APAs buff for exotic damage, simply because there are less other damage buffs in the category APA uses for exotic damage then there are for weapon damage. But removing it completely would be wrong.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Nobody has said anything about only making certain powers work on certain ship types. APA is too powerful because it buffs everything, including ALL secondary sources of damage such as Kemocite, Plasma Explosions, Kinetic Shearing, etc.
Limiting APA to weapons damage still makes it perfectly and more than equally viable for any ship type, or do you think that science ships don't use any weapons?
A Science Vessel has 6 weapon slots, and can generally not use dual cannons. That means every other ship class will deal more damage with its weapons then Cruisers or Escorts. A Science Vessel by neccessity has to get some significant portion of its weapon from exotic damage. If the Tactical Captains damage buff does not also affect exotic damage, it means he's at a disadvantage compared to being in a Cruiser, Escort or Raider. His buff counts for less.
As I said, there might be an argument for reducing APAs buff for exotic damage, simply because there are less other damage buffs in the category APA uses for exotic damage then there are for weapon damage. But removing it completely would be wrong.
The problem with that is APA still makes a ship with 6 weapon slots extremely powerful (the buff is just that good), and Exotic damage builds are so powerful that they don't need APA to make them even more overpowered.
A tactical officer in a science ship can still be ridiculously overpowered using 6 weapon slots with APA even if APA never buffed Exotic damage abilities like Gravity Well.
I use an Engineer with a Tal Shiar Adapted Battlecruiser who has no inherent APA or Exotic damage buff at all (unless you count the Aux power I get from EPS Power Transfer), and I still kill things in only a few seconds with Tractor Beam Repulsors (with the Doff that turns it into a Pull), with a dedicated EPG build. I often don't even need to fire my weapons.
So, I really don't see what "Disadvantage" a tactical officer would be at, since they'd be on the same playing field as an Engineer in regards to Exotic damage, but would still be able to pump out considerable "traditional" damage through their weapons.
This goes without saying that Science officers don't have APA either, and arguably have the short end of the stick when it comes to space captain ability (Subnuke is extremely situational in PvE), yet still pump out respectable damage with EPGs even without Conservation of Energy activated.
I can see either of the options given so far working to make the other two careers more competitive, as well as more appealing to play as. Whether that be removing attack-pattern alpha from effecting exotic/science-oriented damage, or merely reduce the amount of buff that non-weapon damage gains from Attack-pattern alpha while it is active. It would also fit kinda as even in the wiki's own words it says this about tactical officers: "They do this through maximizing the damage output of their Energy (Beams & Cannons) and Projectile weaponry (Torpedoes & Mines), and through increasing that potential through Attack Patterns (α, β, Δ, and Ω).", and even specifies energy beams and cannons alongside projectile weaponry (mines, and torpedoes). So in a way I can see the idea of attack-pattern alpha not affecting,or effecting non-weapon damage at a lesser degree than weapon-based damage, as quite sound to how tactical captains are regarded an as a measure to make the other careers more competitive with them.
Another idea that might work would be for your main-career's abilities to start off only affecting a narrow set of things, but than can be augmented by putting points into a skill/talent choice in the talent/skill tree of the other careers to expand that field. As an example a standard a tactical officer's attack-pattern alpha/tactical-fleet/fire on my mark might only affect weapon-based an non-exotic damage types, but than by putting points into the "science-training":skill/talent choice in the science career tree it might now be able to effect the exotic damage type to a degree. While if you put points into the "engineering training" of the engineer talent/skill tree it might give a weapon power-drain an also maybe a damage resistance buff.
Though I do also think that engineering specifically, and to a lesser degree science, could really use a balancing pass of their abilities to make them more appealing as well as valuable to slot. This could range from merely stat tweaks to full on rebuilds of some of the abilities, even maybe changing where some of the abilities are able to be put into the seating. Even tactical to me could use a change of something like moving the cannon or beam/torpedo abilities up or down one seating. Alos by rebalancing an changing some of the less useful/appealing abilities of the careers it might be able to see more value in ships with less tactical slots an seat, as you would not have so many wasted seats on inferior abilities.
The problem with that is APA still makes a ship with 6 weapon slots extremely powerful (the buff is just that good), and Exotic damage builds are so powerful that they don't need APA to make them even more overpowered.
It doesn't change however that 7 or 8 weapons deal more damage, and thus a weapon damage bonus is even more effective on ships with more weapons.
I don't remember all the specifics about damage boosts, and what category APA falls under. The numbers hear are pretty much fictional.
But a scenario, let's say a typical endgame ship with mark XIV has something like this:
+300 % in CAT 1, a +50 % bonus in Cat 2, and a +20 % bonus in Cat 3. That means the total multiplier in damage is +7.2.
If APA adds +50 % to CAT 1, that's a decent bonus, but it adds only up to a total of 8.1 multiplier, so it's only a net +12% damage.
Exotic damage however might usually have something like a +100 % in Cat 1, a +50 % bonus in Cat, and a +20 % bonus in Cat 3, a total multiplier in damage of 3.6.
If APA adds +50 % to CAT 1, that would amount of a total of 25 % extra damage.
That would suggest APA is more powerful on exotic damage then on weapon damage. This would be an argument to say that APA needs to have different damage bonus for weapon and exotic damage.
Alternatively, APA could be set to its own special category multiplier, and be readjusted for that. (So it might be listed as +12 % career bonus to damage, to coin a new category.)
I think this case might be true. But - I have not really seen many claims that Science Vessels are more powerful than the typical BFAW Cruiser build. So I still think it's not unlikely that the APA buffs are just too good for every type of damage, it doesn't matter if it's weapons, exotic, or a combination.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
The game is now playable on consoles. I expect an influx of new players. If such a new player ask what career can I best roll and his preference is space, we all can agree he/she can't go wrong with tac. Further, if this player wants to be a min/maxer, tac is mandatory. BTW, this is of course also the case if the new player is on PC. So this new player sees a game with one good career/class and two others that are less good and thus are bad. I think that is a shame for this game. Again, I am talking about space, the ground game is fine in my view, which means the careers are here better balanced.
My suggestion takes something away from each career, but they also get something back. It doesn't mean something gets better or something gets worse. A cooldown reduction on career specific abillities means a tac captain can use beam overload, fire at will, tac team, cannon rapid fire, etc, more often. That is a damage buff. If I could choose between AP Alpha or my suggested passive, I would certainly try it. Nobody complains about removing sensor scan and Rotate shield frequency. Probably a lot will use the passive cooldown reduction, I guess.
Fact is that my system gives a tac captain more benefit in a ship with alot of tac powers, a science captain in a science ship and engineer in a cruiser. I see that as a drawback, because each career can now fly each ship without seriously gimping himself. I see it as a good thing and I want to keep it.
Snoggymack. I wasn't aware that you can already have cooldown reductions by going deep into the talent trees. I do not come that far with my points (lol). I put points in all trees, something like 16-16-14. Non of my characters makes it to the big sexy end of a tree. Perhaps I should respec and try it. I am a lifer now, so respeccing is more or less free.
"ruins the enjoyment of the game for others, and in absolute worst cases even penalizes them outright."
How?
Because high end tactical builds rip everything to shreds in Queues before the average player has a chance to do much of anything, and in the most severe cases if a newbie ends up in a crack team of High End Tacs he/she can actually be so unfortunate as to be slapped with an AFK penalty.
"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
Because high end tactical builds rip everything to shreds in Queues before the average player has a chance to do much of anything, and in the most severe cases if a newbie ends up in a crack team of High End Tacs he/she can actually be so unfortunate as to be slapped with an AFK penalty.
Science captains debuff targets, Engineering captains heal themselves (and improve ship efficiency), Tactical captains improve damage. When Cryptic introduces traits/BoFF abilities/gear that improve the "average" damage (also known as "power creep"), the one class who's only gimmick is "do moar pew pew" is going to be above the curve. Since STO does a poor job of teaching a player the finer points of how things work in STO (see the number of questions from new console players in the Academy forum), the power range from one character to the next has the potential to be very wide.
The situation you describe is the result of a player having a solid grasp of Cryptic's damage stacking and multiplying rules, as well as shield and armor penetration sources, topped by "mapping" the most optimal route through an STF, including when and where to use powers and abilities, including APA. Pimp-slapping APA is just one factor here, and if you DID nerf it, the dedicated DPS players would simply find a new "optimal strategy" and new "optimal powers". Meanwhile, the "average dood" is going to find his/her "average" DPS of 9k dropped significantly.
If they're going to start balancing the game, they need to look into other areas instead of just APA.
APA I've always felt lasted to long as an attack pattern as it is. I think cutting the time down from a 30 second duration to 15 would be a good start.
I love the fabrication engineer playstyle on the ground, and I wish we could do the same in space.
What about giving engineers an ability that spawns a defense satellite in space, basically acting line a stationary weapons platform in space? Could similarly have repair satellites that heal allies within range, or restore shield power
Some reference numbers to consider from my PvP days;
Fully buffed (@130 Aux subsystem power) my sci in a sci ship can deal approx. (x3.8) reflected damage back to target with FBP III.
Comparatively;
Fully buffed - "with APA" (@130 Aux subsystem power) my Tac in the same science ship can deal approx. (x5) reflected damage back to target with FBP III.
Now, if you're ever curious, take a look at the "STO Hilbert Guide" - "PVP Leaderboards" page (which tracks PvP matches) the highest recorded Hits for feedback Pulse III are from Tacs using science ships.
(I just looked at the Leaderboards right now, apparently you can't search "All time" any more... Which is a little odd.)
But it was always the case that a Tac captain was outperforming a Sci captain with science abilities in a science ship, if all things are equal.
For a very long, long time Biebs (who I don't think plays anymore, sat a top that list for FBP III damage as Tac)
with a whopping 275,000 + FBPIII strike.
(It's actually the main reason many people really hate on FBP, because Tac's were and still are putting out Godly reflect damage enabled by the use of APA).
The whole issue has never sat quite right with me.
Its not a big deal I guess, as a Sci can still get "up there" generally, but they are certainly outmatched by a Tac using the same ship/build.
The most current leaderboards, when I filtered by month, has a Tac captain yet again doing the most damage with FBP III.
Another issue to consider; if my memory serves me, I believe at some point in time Devs had stated on these very forums that to rework APA would required a lot of time consuming work.
Which is one of the core issues preventing a rework from happening. Even though players frequently ask about it.
If it was easy/routine work, I'm sure they would've done something about it by now. As the Devs are well aware that 70%+ of all players run Tacs as their mains.
Anyway like I said, at this point I've learned to live with it. But, I understand why it bothers people.
EDIT: Other factors to consider that play a role in this phenomenon; Go Down Fighting / Tactical Fleet / Fire on my Mark. Which all help a Tac captain achieve damage levels the other two classes can't even hope to achieve with exotic based damage types.
Things get even crazier when you give all this to Romulan Tac Captains with their full compliment of SRO boffs.
New Starship Mastery Trait Ideas: Career Officer
You have mastered your career's special ability.
- Attack Pattern Alpha: When activating Attack pattern Alpha, you gain an additional +20 % defense bonus.
- Subnucleonic Beam: The target of your subnucleonic beam suffers -20 shield resists and suffers a -50 % penalty to incoming shield heals
- EPS Transfer: The target of your EPS Transfer gains a +25 % fire cycle haste buff and raises his maximum power levels by 10. (Maximum power level buffs do not stack.)
The APA buff is minor, the SNB and EPS Transfer buffs are very useful.
Alternate ideas for power buffs:
- Fire on my Mark: When activating fire on my mark, the target also suffers a -20 % penalty to defense.
- Sensor Scan: When activating Sensor Scan, you and your allies within 5 km cleanse all confuses and placates, and gain a +25 % accuracy bonus and a +50 % bonus to incoming hull heals for the next 15 seconds.
- Miracle Worker: When activating Miracle Worker, you also gain a +50 % bonus to all outgoing heals and a +10 bonus to maximum power levels for 15 seconds.
Not sure about what the actual effects should be, but I like the concept.
I disagree with removing APA entirely, and I don't really have a problem with it the way it is now. However, If it needs to be changed, it should still buff damage abilities such as weapon damage. I'm ok with removing the exotic damage bonus, but it needs to be replaced with something that increases the tactical officers survivability. Tactical officers depend on high amounts of damage to aid them with survivabilty. Tactical officers have high offensive abilities at the price of low defensive abilities, so if one lowers their offensive abilities then the defensive abilities should be raised.
End game is all about DPS the direction the game as gone in is what is wrong and needs fixing, I would like to see the end game balanced to require the trinity system give Sci and Eng Captains a boost too and make team play matter, right now its just everyone focus on DPS and blast through the STF's.
Removing AP Alpha would have all TAC captains go mental and rightly so, also the cool down buff would still have everyone running a TAC with the current state of the game as you will be able to use your TAC powers more and they are the only powers theat matter in space.
Well, Tac Powers arent the only ones that matter. If youre not running some healing abilities youre not going to be alive long enough to do the damage you want to do. Sure theres some serious hard hitting players in the game that can out DPS anything that is thrown at them. But the vast majority of players?
I love the fabrication engineer playstyle on the ground, and I wish we could do the same in space.
What about giving engineers an ability that spawns a defense satellite in space, basically acting line a stationary weapons platform in space? Could similarly have repair satellites that heal allies within range, or restore shield power
the command cruiser set is rather like this actually.
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
This discussion really highlights a central divide in how people think about the roles of the different careers in the game, I think, which is why people consistently talk past each other. By this I mean that I feel like there is a school of thought that says that the role of the Tac captain is to do the most damage, while the role of the Engineer is to buff/tank, and the Science captain is there for control/debuffs. The other school of thought is that the three careers should be three paths to the same end - namely completing missions efficiently (and in turn this is really code for "do the dee pea ess").
From the standpoint of those who feel like the careers should do different things, it is nonsense to lower a Tac damage buff just because it makes Tac captains do more damage - the whole raison d'etre for Tac is to do the most damage, after all. The issue with this view for what appears to be a majority of players (or at least forum posters) is that they find being shoehorned into a "role" to be distasteful - either because they feel that only one role really matters in gameplay, or they find that they aren't really suited for the non "pew-pew" roles. I should pause here and note that I'm not trying to denigrate the players who enjoy just blowing things up - I am one myself. Instead, my point here is that there is a bit both of "Cryptic designs missions to reward DPS primarily" as well as a bit of "I only want to do DPS, and not mess about with the fiddly stuff" going when people talk about how only DPS matters. Where you want to peg the line between those two is something we could debate in a different thread, but for now, lets accept that for whatever reason, a majority of players don't really care about "alternate play styles" in the sense of a trinity like division of support/tank/dps.
From that perspective, having Tacs do the most damage is anathema, because a majority of players view "doing damage" as the only viable play style, and thus "doing the most damage" makes Tacs the most fun, and only viable career. The problem here is that making design decisions that cater to this view might make a majority of players happy in the sense that it would make careers more "balanced", but by so doing it really restricts the design space of the game, and becomes something of a feedback loop, whereby missions (and queues) get set up so that they are notionally NOT just DPS-fests (see the respawning enemies while trying to close portals mentioned above), but players feel like all they have for tools in the game are hammers, so every mission looks like a collection of nails, if you take my meaning. Thus, the queues empty out because the missions are seen as "too hard", or "punitive", and people cry out for the missions to be made easier (read "require less DPS to overcome all the problems") while at the same time complaining that the missions are too similar, or only reward DPS play.
This then is the dilemma - we can foster trinity style play by making engineers tank better and sci officers support better, and allow for more interesting/nuanced missions and a more open design space for the game, but we have the problem that a majority of players aren't going to like that because they either aren't interested in playing those alternate styles (or at least aren't interested in being forced into specific roles to complete missions), or they perceive that the potential for more interesting missions simply isn't being realized by Cryptic (overlooking the question of whether the issue is that Cryptic isn't designing the missions for alternate play styles, or if it's just that players aren't really understanding where/how those styles fit into the missions).
On the other hand, we can balance the classes around doing the same rough amounts of DPS, but in slightly different ways (so, Sci gets the same effective numbers with exotic damage and debuffs as tacs do with weapons and self-buffs), but this means that all our missions are doomed to be focused on just doing enough DPS and/or proper target priority, and nothing else. This makes the game more accessible and fun for a majority of players, but it also limits the ability of the game to do more challenging/interesting content.
Personally, I feel like I'd rather have challenging/interesting mission design, but I also feel like that's a pretty far-fetched dream at this point. Specifically, I think that Cryptic HAS successfully designed missions that could potentially reward non-DPS play, and have a strong role for control/tank players, but they haven't done a good enough job teaching players how to play that way, and we as a player base have gotten complacent and used to just shooting stuff until it all blows up. I mean, think about missions like Borg Disconnected - it's pretty clear there that you COULD play that mission as an aggro-management and tanking mission, but almost nobody does, and if you try to convince people to do it, they either ignore you or outright tell you they don't want to mess around with all that when they could just kill everything instead. Thus, I think to really solve the problem, we (meaning both the players and Cryptic) have to find a way to build a community of players that understands how to do missions without just killing everything in sight, and we have to make sure that the missions that play that way are still fun and rewarding. Alternately, if what we really want is just different flavors of DPS, we can have that game, but I think we should be honest with ourselves and Cryptic about that.
As a primarily Engineering captain, I would also be in favor of boosting Engineering and Science captain abilities to be on par with that of Tactical captains, rather than simply nerfing Attack Pattern: Alpha. That just seems like the lazy way out of the problem.
I got to say, though, playing my Tactical Temporal Operative alt actually just reinforced my original decision to play as an Engineering captain. I really missed the tankiness that Rotate Shield Frequency and Miracle Worker provides.
"There will never be enough blood to wash away my need for vengeance! A single world...I could destroy a million worlds and it would not be enough! Your existence is an insult to the memory of my people! I will continue my fight, even if I must fight alone!"
I do agree that taking away attack-pattern alpha would be wrong, though there are good alternatives being put forth compared to just removing attack-pattern alpha completely. Things like allowing it to only affect weapon-based damage which fits a weapon-oriented career like tactical is (based on the wiki entry). You could also alter how attack pattern alpha works to make it instead of give a boost to damage/flight turn rate/crit chance/crit severity that it would improve the effect of your active attack-pattern, which would than allow it to be a more versatile based on what attack-pattern you use with it. Such as like if you used it with the attack-pattern delta or omega that give a bonus to resistance (an control for omega.), compared to using it on something like attack-pattern beta that is mostly used for damage buffing and stealth detection.
Though i prefer the idea of having it that your main-career's abilities can be augmented by taking talent/skill choices in the different skill/talent tree, which could either improve the existing effect by placing points into your main-career, or by adding additional effects thru speccing into the other two career's trees. Like that if you put points into the engineering tree it might give your attack-pattern alpha a bonus to hull healing/resistances while active; while if you went into the science tree it might make the damage bonus you gain from attack-pattern alpha affect both weapon an exotic-based damage on if apa was changed to only effect weapon damage base-line) as well as giving a boost to shield healing/resistance or capacity while it is active. This would also allow the player to tailor his captain to the ship type he is flying more, as a tactical captain using a science ship would delve into the science tree more to get more benefit from the high amount of science abilities at their disposal in that ship type, while one using a more engineering heavy ship might go more into the engineering tree to boost the innate strengths of such ship types.
What I feel should happen, feel free to disagree, it is a forum after all. I'm primarily a Tac captain, I have a sci toon as well who still with minimal effort throws out a lot of damage, mainly exotic however tac wise the alpha should only boost tactical skills (engineer stuff should be engineer skills a sci for sci stuff etc), not boost sci and Engi stuff. Also to aid in the whole trinity thing tac should have lower heals but higher damage, the point being then that sci captains boost shields, engis boost hull. You all work as a team. The problem is people want to kirk the game rather than work as a team, people want the call of duty easy mode playstyle rather than learning the skills required.
As a primarily Engineering captain, I would also be in favor of boosting Engineering and Science captain abilities to be on par with that of Tactical captains, rather than simply nerfing Attack Pattern: Alpha. That just seems like the lazy way out of the problem.
I got to say, though, playing my Tactical Temporal Operative alt actually just reinforced my original decision to play as an Engineering captain. I really missed the tankiness that Rotate Shield Frequency and Miracle Worker provides.
Its not lazy, Buffs and Nerfs are tools that need to be used in equal measure for a balanced game. Simply just buffing everything else is how we get runaway power creep.
"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 going to be the Devils advocate. I play 1 character, a tac with a million dil alts. My tac can fly anything from sv to carrier and do well. I have massive shipyards with loadouts saved depending on my mood.
My main craft shoots anomalies and phasers. My spec gets me value as I can make black holes chase you while still firing faster.
I resent you trying to end how I play.
"Last Engage! Magical Girl Origami-san" is in print! Now with three times more rainbows.
Actually, give us Tacs the option to teach Alpha to our Bridge officers, dangit!
Heh, don't you think there's been enough power creep lately ?
With the cooldown reductions on captain skills being what they are currently, alpha is already fairly quick to come up off cooldown.
Then again... if alpha was trainable, engi, and sci captains could make use of it. But, that's not really fair to the Tac class, to have one of their prime abilities given out to the other classes at the cost of a boff ability slot.
What about this as an alternative? At level 60, you can select a lesser version of one desired ability from one of the other careers. So if you're a Sci, you can pick APA1 or MW1. An Eng chooses between APA1 and....Subnucleonic Beam 1? And Tacs would then choose between MW1 and SNB1.
Comments
How?
I can only see that happening in PvP, which is so unbalanced anyways it ain't even funny.
People and their min/max vape builds... *mutters*
So that argument is impotent.
Agreed. Also, we have to close rifts there.
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The devs already nerfed attack pattern omega, and they have made going down fighting nearly useless. So no nerfing another aspect of tac would just make them useless. The main problem right now is the insane amount of aoe dps from ALL classes and from mostly ALL end game npcs. So how about we say get rid of Beam fire at will three op? Id wager that would really tick you off? Please be considerate of other classes and players. I made a similar post recently and I at least admitted that their is a whole lot more to this problem in game then just aoes. It is a problem becoming more apparent.
To further my point the new Kelvin Dreadnought has a full broadside cannon ability, people are upgrading as many omni beam arrays as they can. I even saw a post to expand the arc of cannons. I also saw a post for broadside torpedoes lol. My point is too many people want a 100 percent firing circle around their ship for their weapon of choice. The result being would be a even more broken game. In my opinion and only my opinion. This type of weaponry, and aoes need to be changed back to the basics of the game.
A Science Vessel has 6 weapon slots, and can generally not use dual cannons. That means every other ship class will deal more damage with its weapons then Cruisers or Escorts. A Science Vessel by neccessity has to get some significant portion of its weapon from exotic damage. If the Tactical Captains damage buff does not also affect exotic damage, it means he's at a disadvantage compared to being in a Cruiser, Escort or Raider. His buff counts for less.
As I said, there might be an argument for reducing APAs buff for exotic damage, simply because there are less other damage buffs in the category APA uses for exotic damage then there are for weapon damage. But removing it completely would be wrong.
The problem with that is APA still makes a ship with 6 weapon slots extremely powerful (the buff is just that good), and Exotic damage builds are so powerful that they don't need APA to make them even more overpowered.
A tactical officer in a science ship can still be ridiculously overpowered using 6 weapon slots with APA even if APA never buffed Exotic damage abilities like Gravity Well.
I use an Engineer with a Tal Shiar Adapted Battlecruiser who has no inherent APA or Exotic damage buff at all (unless you count the Aux power I get from EPS Power Transfer), and I still kill things in only a few seconds with Tractor Beam Repulsors (with the Doff that turns it into a Pull), with a dedicated EPG build. I often don't even need to fire my weapons.
So, I really don't see what "Disadvantage" a tactical officer would be at, since they'd be on the same playing field as an Engineer in regards to Exotic damage, but would still be able to pump out considerable "traditional" damage through their weapons.
This goes without saying that Science officers don't have APA either, and arguably have the short end of the stick when it comes to space captain ability (Subnuke is extremely situational in PvE), yet still pump out respectable damage with EPGs even without Conservation of Energy activated.
sto.gamepedia.com/Career_path#Tactical
Another idea that might work would be for your main-career's abilities to start off only affecting a narrow set of things, but than can be augmented by putting points into a skill/talent choice in the talent/skill tree of the other careers to expand that field. As an example a standard a tactical officer's attack-pattern alpha/tactical-fleet/fire on my mark might only affect weapon-based an non-exotic damage types, but than by putting points into the "science-training":skill/talent choice in the science career tree it might now be able to effect the exotic damage type to a degree. While if you put points into the "engineering training" of the engineer talent/skill tree it might give a weapon power-drain an also maybe a damage resistance buff.
Though I do also think that engineering specifically, and to a lesser degree science, could really use a balancing pass of their abilities to make them more appealing as well as valuable to slot. This could range from merely stat tweaks to full on rebuilds of some of the abilities, even maybe changing where some of the abilities are able to be put into the seating. Even tactical to me could use a change of something like moving the cannon or beam/torpedo abilities up or down one seating. Alos by rebalancing an changing some of the less useful/appealing abilities of the careers it might be able to see more value in ships with less tactical slots an seat, as you would not have so many wasted seats on inferior abilities.
I don't remember all the specifics about damage boosts, and what category APA falls under. The numbers hear are pretty much fictional.
But a scenario, let's say a typical endgame ship with mark XIV has something like this:
+300 % in CAT 1, a +50 % bonus in Cat 2, and a +20 % bonus in Cat 3. That means the total multiplier in damage is +7.2.
If APA adds +50 % to CAT 1, that's a decent bonus, but it adds only up to a total of 8.1 multiplier, so it's only a net +12% damage.
Exotic damage however might usually have something like a +100 % in Cat 1, a +50 % bonus in Cat, and a +20 % bonus in Cat 3, a total multiplier in damage of 3.6.
If APA adds +50 % to CAT 1, that would amount of a total of 25 % extra damage.
That would suggest APA is more powerful on exotic damage then on weapon damage. This would be an argument to say that APA needs to have different damage bonus for weapon and exotic damage.
Alternatively, APA could be set to its own special category multiplier, and be readjusted for that. (So it might be listed as +12 % career bonus to damage, to coin a new category.)
I think this case might be true. But - I have not really seen many claims that Science Vessels are more powerful than the typical BFAW Cruiser build. So I still think it's not unlikely that the APA buffs are just too good for every type of damage, it doesn't matter if it's weapons, exotic, or a combination.
My suggestion takes something away from each career, but they also get something back. It doesn't mean something gets better or something gets worse. A cooldown reduction on career specific abillities means a tac captain can use beam overload, fire at will, tac team, cannon rapid fire, etc, more often. That is a damage buff. If I could choose between AP Alpha or my suggested passive, I would certainly try it. Nobody complains about removing sensor scan and Rotate shield frequency. Probably a lot will use the passive cooldown reduction, I guess.
Fact is that my system gives a tac captain more benefit in a ship with alot of tac powers, a science captain in a science ship and engineer in a cruiser. I see that as a drawback, because each career can now fly each ship without seriously gimping himself. I see it as a good thing and I want to keep it.
Snoggymack. I wasn't aware that you can already have cooldown reductions by going deep into the talent trees. I do not come that far with my points (lol). I put points in all trees, something like 16-16-14. Non of my characters makes it to the big sexy end of a tree. Perhaps I should respec and try it. I am a lifer now, so respeccing is more or less free.
Because high end tactical builds rip everything to shreds in Queues before the average player has a chance to do much of anything, and in the most severe cases if a newbie ends up in a crack team of High End Tacs he/she can actually be so unfortunate as to be slapped with an AFK penalty.
The situation you describe is the result of a player having a solid grasp of Cryptic's damage stacking and multiplying rules, as well as shield and armor penetration sources, topped by "mapping" the most optimal route through an STF, including when and where to use powers and abilities, including APA. Pimp-slapping APA is just one factor here, and if you DID nerf it, the dedicated DPS players would simply find a new "optimal strategy" and new "optimal powers". Meanwhile, the "average dood" is going to find his/her "average" DPS of 9k dropped significantly.
APA I've always felt lasted to long as an attack pattern as it is. I think cutting the time down from a 30 second duration to 15 would be a good start.
What about giving engineers an ability that spawns a defense satellite in space, basically acting line a stationary weapons platform in space? Could similarly have repair satellites that heal allies within range, or restore shield power
Fully buffed (@130 Aux subsystem power) my sci in a sci ship can deal approx. (x3.8) reflected damage back to target with FBP III.
Comparatively;
Fully buffed - "with APA" (@130 Aux subsystem power) my Tac in the same science ship can deal approx. (x5) reflected damage back to target with FBP III.
Now, if you're ever curious, take a look at the "STO Hilbert Guide" - "PVP Leaderboards" page (which tracks PvP matches) the highest recorded Hits for feedback Pulse III are from Tacs using science ships.
(I just looked at the Leaderboards right now, apparently you can't search "All time" any more... Which is a little odd.)
But it was always the case that a Tac captain was outperforming a Sci captain with science abilities in a science ship, if all things are equal.
For a very long, long time Biebs (who I don't think plays anymore, sat a top that list for FBP III damage as Tac)
with a whopping 275,000 + FBPIII strike.
(It's actually the main reason many people really hate on FBP, because Tac's were and still are putting out Godly reflect damage enabled by the use of APA).
The whole issue has never sat quite right with me.
Its not a big deal I guess, as a Sci can still get "up there" generally, but they are certainly outmatched by a Tac using the same ship/build.
The most current leaderboards, when I filtered by month, has a Tac captain yet again doing the most damage with FBP III.
Another issue to consider; if my memory serves me, I believe at some point in time Devs had stated on these very forums that to rework APA would required a lot of time consuming work.
Which is one of the core issues preventing a rework from happening. Even though players frequently ask about it.
If it was easy/routine work, I'm sure they would've done something about it by now. As the Devs are well aware that 70%+ of all players run Tacs as their mains.
Anyway like I said, at this point I've learned to live with it. But, I understand why it bothers people.
EDIT: Other factors to consider that play a role in this phenomenon; Go Down Fighting / Tactical Fleet / Fire on my Mark. Which all help a Tac captain achieve damage levels the other two classes can't even hope to achieve with exotic based damage types.
Things get even crazier when you give all this to Romulan Tac Captains with their full compliment of SRO boffs.
Not sure about what the actual effects should be, but I like the concept.
Well, Tac Powers arent the only ones that matter. If youre not running some healing abilities youre not going to be alive long enough to do the damage you want to do. Sure theres some serious hard hitting players in the game that can out DPS anything that is thrown at them. But the vast majority of players?
the command cruiser set is rather like this actually.
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
From the standpoint of those who feel like the careers should do different things, it is nonsense to lower a Tac damage buff just because it makes Tac captains do more damage - the whole raison d'etre for Tac is to do the most damage, after all. The issue with this view for what appears to be a majority of players (or at least forum posters) is that they find being shoehorned into a "role" to be distasteful - either because they feel that only one role really matters in gameplay, or they find that they aren't really suited for the non "pew-pew" roles. I should pause here and note that I'm not trying to denigrate the players who enjoy just blowing things up - I am one myself. Instead, my point here is that there is a bit both of "Cryptic designs missions to reward DPS primarily" as well as a bit of "I only want to do DPS, and not mess about with the fiddly stuff" going when people talk about how only DPS matters. Where you want to peg the line between those two is something we could debate in a different thread, but for now, lets accept that for whatever reason, a majority of players don't really care about "alternate play styles" in the sense of a trinity like division of support/tank/dps.
From that perspective, having Tacs do the most damage is anathema, because a majority of players view "doing damage" as the only viable play style, and thus "doing the most damage" makes Tacs the most fun, and only viable career. The problem here is that making design decisions that cater to this view might make a majority of players happy in the sense that it would make careers more "balanced", but by so doing it really restricts the design space of the game, and becomes something of a feedback loop, whereby missions (and queues) get set up so that they are notionally NOT just DPS-fests (see the respawning enemies while trying to close portals mentioned above), but players feel like all they have for tools in the game are hammers, so every mission looks like a collection of nails, if you take my meaning. Thus, the queues empty out because the missions are seen as "too hard", or "punitive", and people cry out for the missions to be made easier (read "require less DPS to overcome all the problems") while at the same time complaining that the missions are too similar, or only reward DPS play.
This then is the dilemma - we can foster trinity style play by making engineers tank better and sci officers support better, and allow for more interesting/nuanced missions and a more open design space for the game, but we have the problem that a majority of players aren't going to like that because they either aren't interested in playing those alternate styles (or at least aren't interested in being forced into specific roles to complete missions), or they perceive that the potential for more interesting missions simply isn't being realized by Cryptic (overlooking the question of whether the issue is that Cryptic isn't designing the missions for alternate play styles, or if it's just that players aren't really understanding where/how those styles fit into the missions).
On the other hand, we can balance the classes around doing the same rough amounts of DPS, but in slightly different ways (so, Sci gets the same effective numbers with exotic damage and debuffs as tacs do with weapons and self-buffs), but this means that all our missions are doomed to be focused on just doing enough DPS and/or proper target priority, and nothing else. This makes the game more accessible and fun for a majority of players, but it also limits the ability of the game to do more challenging/interesting content.
Personally, I feel like I'd rather have challenging/interesting mission design, but I also feel like that's a pretty far-fetched dream at this point. Specifically, I think that Cryptic HAS successfully designed missions that could potentially reward non-DPS play, and have a strong role for control/tank players, but they haven't done a good enough job teaching players how to play that way, and we as a player base have gotten complacent and used to just shooting stuff until it all blows up. I mean, think about missions like Borg Disconnected - it's pretty clear there that you COULD play that mission as an aggro-management and tanking mission, but almost nobody does, and if you try to convince people to do it, they either ignore you or outright tell you they don't want to mess around with all that when they could just kill everything instead. Thus, I think to really solve the problem, we (meaning both the players and Cryptic) have to find a way to build a community of players that understands how to do missions without just killing everything in sight, and we have to make sure that the missions that play that way are still fun and rewarding. Alternately, if what we really want is just different flavors of DPS, we can have that game, but I think we should be honest with ourselves and Cryptic about that.
I got to say, though, playing my Tactical Temporal Operative alt actually just reinforced my original decision to play as an Engineering captain. I really missed the tankiness that Rotate Shield Frequency and Miracle Worker provides.
Though i prefer the idea of having it that your main-career's abilities can be augmented by taking talent/skill choices in the different skill/talent tree, which could either improve the existing effect by placing points into your main-career, or by adding additional effects thru speccing into the other two career's trees. Like that if you put points into the engineering tree it might give your attack-pattern alpha a bonus to hull healing/resistances while active; while if you went into the science tree it might make the damage bonus you gain from attack-pattern alpha affect both weapon an exotic-based damage on if apa was changed to only effect weapon damage base-line) as well as giving a boost to shield healing/resistance or capacity while it is active. This would also allow the player to tailor his captain to the ship type he is flying more, as a tactical captain using a science ship would delve into the science tree more to get more benefit from the high amount of science abilities at their disposal in that ship type, while one using a more engineering heavy ship might go more into the engineering tree to boost the innate strengths of such ship types.
I'm primarily a Tac captain, I have a sci toon as well who still with minimal effort throws out a lot of damage, mainly exotic however tac wise the alpha should only boost tactical skills (engineer stuff should be engineer skills a sci for sci stuff etc), not boost sci and Engi stuff.
Also to aid in the whole trinity thing tac should have lower heals but higher damage, the point being then that sci captains boost shields, engis boost hull. You all work as a team.
The problem is people want to kirk the game rather than work as a team, people want the call of duty easy mode playstyle rather than learning the skills required.
Its not lazy, Buffs and Nerfs are tools that need to be used in equal measure for a balanced game. Simply just buffing everything else is how we get runaway power creep.
They just get less sober.
My main craft shoots anomalies and phasers. My spec gets me value as I can make black holes chase you while still firing faster.
I resent you trying to end how I play.
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Heh, don't you think there's been enough power creep lately ?
With the cooldown reductions on captain skills being what they are currently, alpha is already fairly quick to come up off cooldown.
Then again... if alpha was trainable, engi, and sci captains could make use of it. But, that's not really fair to the Tac class, to have one of their prime abilities given out to the other classes at the cost of a boff ability slot.