Torpedo Issues

photonaxan · March 2017

Can Cryptic/Perfect World do something about the torpedoes? I'm referring to the reload times... photon torpedoes seemed to be unusually favored compared to other torpedoes...

Croniton
Croniton Torpedo - 10sec
Transphasic-Croniton Launcher - 8sec

Photon
Gravimetric Photon Torpedo - 8sec
Enhanced Bio-Molecular Photon Torpedo - 6sec
Terran Task Force Photon Torpedo - 6sec
Kelvin Timeline Torpedo - 4sec

Quantum
Advanced Radiant Quantum Torpedo - 8sec
Quantum Phase Torpedo - 10sec
Neutronic* Torpedo - 14sec

Transphasic
Rapid Reload Transphasic Torpedo - 8sec
Adaptive Transphasic Torpedo - 10sec
Resonant Transphasic Torpedo - 10sec

Plasma
Plasma Torpedo - 8sec
Omega Plasma Torpedo - ?sec
Romulan Plasma Torpedo - 8sec
Particle Emission Plasma Torpedo - 8sec
Hargh'Peng Torpedo - 15sec

Photon torpedoes reload time have being creeping slowly from 8 secs to 4 secs (Kelvin Timeline - Rapid Reload), while the other torpedoes haven't changed much at all, remaining at 8-15 seconds. The torpedoes have become unbalanced and need to be looked at in the near future.

And I'm running into problems loading more than 3 torpedoes... The Mercury T6 Escort (an obvious choice for a torpedo boat - torpedo console with 25% projectile damage bonus) allows for up to 5 (photon: grav, piezo, bio, terran, kelvin) torpedoes. But they start to interfere with each other after the 3 torpedo is fired. Maybe they need to fire all simultaneously or reduce the firing time to 0.5s or 0.25s instead of a full 1 sec.

fovrel · March 2017

You are right all weapons can fire similtaniously except torpedoes. Why? Is there only one tube? And more 360 fire arcs as if they are self seeking/targetting. Also let them retarget if the primary target is destroyed. It seems the mechanics we have are from the days torpedoes were the big hitters. They are no longer relatively.

postagepaid · March 2017

Might be one tube but going by torp spread 3 they can fit a shipload of munitions into it.

nccmark · March 2017

So...why aren't you running three projectile space duty officers?????
That would yield an immediate reduction for you.

baudl · March 2017

nccmark wrote: »

So...why aren't you running three projectile space duty officers?????
That would yield an immediate reduction for you.

because from what I have read so far, he is running a completely sub par torpedo build anyway.

OP you might want to look up some torpedo ship builds online...after that, the torp cooldowns aren't even an issue anymore and you'll understand why balancing projectile weapons is not an urgent issue.
Maybe take a look at this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_otv695KjUM

asuran14 · March 2017

The issue of photon torpedoes being abit more favored compared ot the other torpedoes might need a looking at, but before they do that they need to look at the entire idea of how torpedoes work to make them more viable an appealing to players to use. I would rather they first rework how torpedo damage against shields work, as having a static damage reduction specifically applied to torpedoes is abit weird. There is also the the lack luster implementation of the destructible torpedos like plamsa torpedoes, as well as the torpedo travel speed compared to beams as well as cannons.

I do agree though that it is weird that torpedoes even in the shows could be fired from multiple torp-tubes, but in the game we are limited to firing only one torpedo launcher thru the use of a internal shared cooldown between torpedo launchers. I could see having a shared torpedo cd if you are using two different types of torpedoes, such as slotting a photon an transphasic launcher, since having to switch between the two types would make some sense. Yet I believe we have consoles that reduce an affect the shared torpedo firing cooldown, which i believe the terran console is one of these consoles, but a change that make it that the shared torpedo-launching cd only applied between torpedoes of two different base types.

baudl · March 2017

the cooldown is there because torps have the highest burst dmg by far...the game would feel very onesided if you were able to fire multiple shots simultaniously from multiple torp tubes. The 8-15 seconds cooldown is there to average out the overall dps, which should be fairly similar throughout the various types of torpedos.
But since PVP isn't a balance issue anyway, I say why not. It's not like you can't alpha strike most NPCs anyway.
On the other hand, there are quite competitive torp builds...changeing how torps work in such a fundamental way would really unbalance more than it would fix.

darkknightucf · March 2017

Fascinating conversation. Please, continue. Yes, I'm still looking at you, @e30ernest

asuran14 · March 2017

baudl wrote: »

the cooldown is there because torps have the highest burst dmg by far...the game would feel very onesided if you were able to fire multiple shots simultaniously from multiple torp tubes. The 8-15 seconds cooldown is there to average out the overall dps, which should be fairly similar throughout the various types of torpedos.
But since PVP isn't a balance issue anyway, I say why not. It's not like you can't alpha strike most NPCs anyway.
On the other hand, there are quite competitive torp builds...changeing how torps work in such a fundamental way would really unbalance more than it would fix.

Yeah but also torpedoes have the highest static damage reduction applied to them, since if you hit a shield facing that even has 1 hp left on it, than you will have the damage cut by 75% (mind you this is not taking into account shield bypassing, and pen as these can be applied largely across the board), yet I do agree the reload speed is largely fine as is. If they removed or changed the torpedo damage reduction of shields (75% so long as a facing hit is still up), than the internal cooldown would make sense, but honestly look at the damage of torpedoes an then apply that damage reduction to it, and tell me it is still balanced comparatively to beams an cannons.

Type damage output damage per second
Photon: 2980 458
Quantum 3313 390
Plasma 2338 275
Chroniton 2551 243
Transphasic 2155 205
Tricobalt 14300 238.3
Beam arrays 220 176
H. dual cannons 384 256

lowy1 · March 2017

If anything, the 25% damage reduction should scale with how much shield is left so 25% would be at shield 90-100% and increase incrementally the lower the shield goes.

While I am not a torp expert by any means I find that it is better on a science ship to complement science abilities. My main science ship a daemosh is set up with a graga mal tbr2 gw3 with the protonic arsenal and either Terran or enhanced bio molecular. I also have bio molecular mines and harpengh torpedo aft.

lianthelia · March 2017

Torpedoes are all out of whack but the devs don't care...I swear they have some stupid vendetta against torpedoes or something (They have plenty of things in this game that die before their shields drop which screws torp boats)...because they refuse to do anything about them to give them any kind of balance.

Torpedoes need to be completely redone but they will never do it...this 75% shield reduction is complete BS and there is nothing at all in canon to support this.

tremere12 · March 2017

I'm a full torp boat fan. It's a different (and refreshing) approach than going for the typical energy route. I hope they fix whatever needs fixing here, as I'd like to see torp boats still viable in the future.

asuran14 · March 2017

It is not the full on 75% reduction that is the issue, as it is true that normally torpedoes are quite useless against a ship with their shield integrity fully intact, but it is more that this damage reduction is static disregarding how strong or weak the target's shields are. We see in the show a lot of times a torpedo merely shakes the ship upon impact with the ship's shields up, but than as the shields begin to weaken, or fail fully their impacts begin to do much more damage. If they made the damage reduction from hitting a ship with their shield's up dependent on either that ship's remaining shield hp (on the impacted shield facing) or the ship's shield power level, than the high damage reduction would feel more balanced an fair (as well as match closer to the show).

I would say if your torpedo hits a shield facing that has at least 85% of it's hp intact it's damage reduced by the 75% reduction we have now, but than this reduction is reduced by by 10% every 10% the shield's hp is reduced to a minimum of a 10% damage reduction while the shield is still online. So long as the shield is up it should give some amount of protection, but that protection should be variable based on differenet factors, like the Hp of the shield facings (I see this as the integrity of the shield), and the shield power the ship has (to me this should determine how much damage reduction is lost as your deplete a shield facing's hp.).

gpatton3 · March 2017

I don't know if this applies anymore, but your doff for Projectile weapons, reduces the time (except for certain torps like the hyper romulan plasma torp from the rom. reputation). Yes maybe in the show you see them firing torps after torp, but if we speed up the refire process then why have beams or cannons. Just put torps on instead. Each weapon has its plus and minuses, each have different rate of fires, different dps, etc.

The issues about torps not being great against shields has been around since the first day as far as I remember (meaning I was playing on day 1 when they released the game). Your primary means of takings down the shields has always been energy weapons and then the hull with torps. Remember torps are kinetic in damage while energy is well energy, hence the reason minimal amount of torp damage (except a torp like Transphasic which gets a 40% bonus on shield penetration. People got use to simply auto-fire all weapons instead of energy first, then torps to finish off, at least some people did. I use torps against shields even though they are less efficient.

In canon if I remember, Yesterdays Enterprise, they fired torps at the Kling Battlecruisers and did on minimal damage on impact. They destroyed one of them by rapid firing on the lasers.

Also we cannot always depend on canon. The reason, lets see, uniform codes and standards, fed/kdf piloting ships not even built by their shipyards (i.e. a Jem Dreadnought), and so many other issues that aren't exactly canon. Think of Operation Gamma or where you have a choice I think in wasteland mission undying as to whether to kill or capture him. If you are fed you shouldn't be given option to kill, that is the federation way, kdf might not matter (and no this is not an attack/negative comment on Klings so no flames). I would hate to be in charge of ordering parts for all the different ships both the fed/kdf/rom can use (yes they use replicators and stuff not like a car where you have to go to the parts department for new wipers or a new light).

Another thing is the torps could require different handling, etc. AFter all if you want to fire a different torps don't they have to load/auto-load it. It isn't like the torp launchers you just flip a switch and the torps becomes a different type and so on. Yes I do remember people building torp boats, I know people who still do and have no issues, so not sure what they are doing differently, if they could come and comment.

So these are my thoughts and comments, they might be wrong, they might be right, it is only my attempt to help/add to the comments.

Unknown · March 2017

This content has been removed.

lianthelia · March 2017

coolbatman wrote: »

fire a full spread of photon torpedo's........
i'm sorry captain, they're on shared cooldown

now really, the above conversation NEVER happened on any of the shows or movies

"Mr Worf, fire Phasers and Photon Torpedoes, when their shields are down." or "Mr Tuvok, fire the Photon Torpedoes once we've depleted their shields"

Unknown · March 2017

This content has been removed.

deadspacex64 · March 2017

i run a sci pilot raptor as a torp boat...unless there's a min/maxer in the group i've got ag. there's nothing wrong with torps, how ever if you're spamming space or whatever you're using to fire torps it's going to glitch torps firing. this is fairly new, before you could spam fire and it would tend to proc doff cd's (kind of an exploit) now it just tends skips torps that are ready and restarts CD's. ideally you have a steady stream of torps heading to the target, mix and match cd's on the torps themselves to get optimal timings so you never have a torp sitting idle or getting skipped because it wasn't ready.

adhering to that you should have a constant evenly spaced stream of kinetic goodness always heading to the target(s). and btw, i only use 2 torp doffs, 3 caused issues with a similar glitch behavior as shown when spamming fire. torps ready would skip, go on cd but not fire, etc.

it would be nice to have more tubes instead of just the one it seems all ships have...but then i think of the ag >.<

ssbn655 · March 2017

OP rethink the way your build is. As said before purple doffs with torpedo cool downs will really bring the Cd time down. IIRc there are some space traits that also reduce CD. Been awahile since I reviwed my Triats so I may be recalling incorrectly. Also Rapid reload Transphasic helps a lot as well, While it's damage may be less the shield penatration helps make up for it. Torps are fine they way they are otherwise a misssion would be over even faster then they are right now and we all are overly familer with the cry "I didn't get a reward as the mission was over to fast due to high dps players." . These cries would be worse if a savy torp build player had the faster CD you want. Maybe you want to compensate for an otherwise lack luster build that somehow makes you feel inadequete in missions. Shrug there are more important things that Cryptic needs to fix than something that really isn't broken.

ssbn655 · March 2017

asuran14 wrote: »

It is not the full on 75% reduction that is the issue, as it is true that normally torpedoes are quite useless against a ship with their shield integrity fully intact, but it is more that this damage reduction is static disregarding how strong or weak the target's shields are. We see in the show a lot of times a torpedo merely shakes the ship upon impact with the ship's shields up, but than as the shields begin to weaken, or fail fully their impacts begin to do much more damage. If they made the damage reduction from hitting a ship with their shield's up dependent on either that ship's remaining shield hp (on the impacted shield facing) or the ship's shield power level, than the high damage reduction would feel more balanced an fair (as well as match closer to the show).

I would say if your torpedo hits a shield facing that has at least 85% of it's hp intact it's damage reduced by the 75% reduction we have now, but than this reduction is reduced by by 10% every 10% the shield's hp is reduced to a minimum of a 10% damage reduction while the shield is still online. So long as the shield is up it should give some amount of protection, but that protection should be variable based on differenet factors, like the Hp of the shield facings (I see this as the integrity of the shield), and the shield power the ship has (to me this should determine how much damage reduction is lost as your deplete a shield facing's hp.).

The weakness against shields can be reduced by two Torpedoes... The Crystaline one that has Anti Proton as it's main damage (Event item if IIRC) and the new Nausican Disruptor Torpedo which deals Disruptor damage as it's primary damage. Both are boosted by the energy weapon console of that type Anti-P for the crystaline and Disruptor for the nausican plus the nauscian gets a bigger boost if ou run the 3 set.

asuran14 · March 2017

ssbn655 wrote: »

asuran14 wrote: »

It is not the full on 75% reduction that is the issue, as it is true that normally torpedoes are quite useless against a ship with their shield integrity fully intact, but it is more that this damage reduction is static disregarding how strong or weak the target's shields are. We see in the show a lot of times a torpedo merely shakes the ship upon impact with the ship's shields up, but than as the shields begin to weaken, or fail fully their impacts begin to do much more damage. If they made the damage reduction from hitting a ship with their shield's up dependent on either that ship's remaining shield hp (on the impacted shield facing) or the ship's shield power level, than the high damage reduction would feel more balanced an fair (as well as match closer to the show).

I would say if your torpedo hits a shield facing that has at least 85% of it's hp intact it's damage reduced by the 75% reduction we have now, but than this reduction is reduced by by 10% every 10% the shield's hp is reduced to a minimum of a 10% damage reduction while the shield is still online. So long as the shield is up it should give some amount of protection, but that protection should be variable based on differenet factors, like the Hp of the shield facings (I see this as the integrity of the shield), and the shield power the ship has (to me this should determine how much damage reduction is lost as your deplete a shield facing's hp.).

The weakness against shields can be reduced by two Torpedoes... The Crystaline one that has Anti Proton as it's main damage (Event item if IIRC) and the new Nausican Disruptor Torpedo which deals Disruptor damage as it's primary damage. Both are boosted by the energy weapon console of that type Anti-P for the crystaline and Disruptor for the nausican plus the nauscian gets a bigger boost if ou run the 3 set.

As true as that is, it is a bandage for a fact that the static reduction given to torpedoes is too harsh in its static form. Just a shift making the reduction being variable based on either the remaining shield hp , and/or the ship's shield power would be much better overall, as well as make torpedoes more appealing an competitive without making them op in the least.

nikeix · March 2017

Wow. Lets look at an entire weapon type using only one axis - cooldown. Because we dare not look at damage, or it might become bloody obvious that longer cooldowns are offset by higher damage per strike. Or that the DPS of torpedoes is much higher than other weapon types so that if you use them properly (landing them against low or depleted shield facings - as per canon) they outperform every other weapon type in the game.

No, no well have none of that. Instead let's demand torpedoes be (yet another) mash space bar weapon. Ug.

legendarylycan · March 2017

except that tricobalts deal the exact same damage as quantums while having over EIGHT TIMES the CD - and no, a 1 second disable does NOT offset that)

nikeix · March 2017

Yeah, Tricobalts used to be the gold standard in time-on-target violence. They got beat savagely with the nerf bat until they were basically a non-weapon.

redvenge · March 2017

shadowfang240 wrote: »

except that tricobalts deal the exact same damage as quantums while having over EIGHT TIMES the CD - and no, a 1 second disable does NOT offset that)

I remember someone using the Ferengi Rapid-fire Missle Launcher to proc Torpedo C/D reduction DoFFs to lower the cooldown on Tricobalts. Did they nerf that?

Even with a C/D reduction, they are terrible. Considerably slower and more fragile than quantums.

lianthelia · March 2017

ssbn655 wrote: »

asuran14 wrote: »

It is not the full on 75% reduction that is the issue, as it is true that normally torpedoes are quite useless against a ship with their shield integrity fully intact, but it is more that this damage reduction is static disregarding how strong or weak the target's shields are. We see in the show a lot of times a torpedo merely shakes the ship upon impact with the ship's shields up, but than as the shields begin to weaken, or fail fully their impacts begin to do much more damage. If they made the damage reduction from hitting a ship with their shield's up dependent on either that ship's remaining shield hp (on the impacted shield facing) or the ship's shield power level, than the high damage reduction would feel more balanced an fair (as well as match closer to the show).

I would say if your torpedo hits a shield facing that has at least 85% of it's hp intact it's damage reduced by the 75% reduction we have now, but than this reduction is reduced by by 10% every 10% the shield's hp is reduced to a minimum of a 10% damage reduction while the shield is still online. So long as the shield is up it should give some amount of protection, but that protection should be variable based on differenet factors, like the Hp of the shield facings (I see this as the integrity of the shield), and the shield power the ship has (to me this should determine how much damage reduction is lost as your deplete a shield facing's hp.).

The weakness against shields can be reduced by two Torpedoes... The Crystaline one that has Anti Proton as it's main damage (Event item if IIRC) and the new Nausican Disruptor Torpedo which deals Disruptor damage as it's primary damage. Both are boosted by the energy weapon console of that type Anti-P for the crystaline and Disruptor for the nausican plus the nauscian gets a bigger boost if ou run the 3 set.

You forgot the Plasma Torpedo from the Lobi store...

What if I don't want to be pigeon holed into not only having to use a specific energy weapon type but a single specific torpedo.

Besides...those things are a waste of space...if you're going to use a single torp that is a energy type...then you may as well just stick another beam or cannon in that slot instead of even bothering with those torps.

darkknightucf · March 2017

lianthelia wrote: »

Torpedoes are all out of whack but the devs don't care...I swear they have some stupid vendetta against torpedoes or something (They have plenty of things in this game that die before their shields drop which screws torp boats)...because they refuse to do anything about them to give them any kind of balance.

Torpedoes need to be completely redone but they will never do it...this 75% shield reduction is complete BS and there is nothing at all in canon to support this.

From what I have read and been told, the code for torps is... borked. No further details were given besides that.

It makes things harder to use and pinpoint areas that need to be addressed when there are inconsistencies between what is written/communicated, and what actually happens.

darkknightucf · March 2017

ssbn655 wrote: »

asuran14 wrote: »

It is not the full on 75% reduction that is the issue, as it is true that normally torpedoes are quite useless against a ship with their shield integrity fully intact, but it is more that this damage reduction is static disregarding how strong or weak the target's shields are. We see in the show a lot of times a torpedo merely shakes the ship upon impact with the ship's shields up, but than as the shields begin to weaken, or fail fully their impacts begin to do much more damage. If they made the damage reduction from hitting a ship with their shield's up dependent on either that ship's remaining shield hp (on the impacted shield facing) or the ship's shield power level, than the high damage reduction would feel more balanced an fair (as well as match closer to the show).

I would say if your torpedo hits a shield facing that has at least 85% of it's hp intact it's damage reduced by the 75% reduction we have now, but than this reduction is reduced by by 10% every 10% the shield's hp is reduced to a minimum of a 10% damage reduction while the shield is still online. So long as the shield is up it should give some amount of protection, but that protection should be variable based on differenet factors, like the Hp of the shield facings (I see this as the integrity of the shield), and the shield power the ship has (to me this should determine how much damage reduction is lost as your deplete a shield facing's hp.).

The weakness against shields can be reduced by two Torpedoes... The Crystaline one that has Anti Proton as it's main damage (Event item if IIRC) and the new Nausican Disruptor Torpedo which deals Disruptor damage as it's primary damage. Both are boosted by the energy weapon console of that type Anti-P for the crystaline and Disruptor for the nausican plus the nauscian gets a bigger boost if ou run the 3 set.

Lets not forget Neutronic and Quantum Phase, which do kinetic damage, AND have ways of weakening/removing shields. Both have secondary effects that are boosted by DrainX, and while there are some issues/bugs to work out with them, they are still potent vs shielded targets. With the right build, they will deal with shields far better than the AP or Naussican projectiles will.

darkknightucf · March 2017

lianthelia wrote: »

ssbn655 wrote: »

asuran14 wrote: »

It is not the full on 75% reduction that is the issue, as it is true that normally torpedoes are quite useless against a ship with their shield integrity fully intact, but it is more that this damage reduction is static disregarding how strong or weak the target's shields are. We see in the show a lot of times a torpedo merely shakes the ship upon impact with the ship's shields up, but than as the shields begin to weaken, or fail fully their impacts begin to do much more damage. If they made the damage reduction from hitting a ship with their shield's up dependent on either that ship's remaining shield hp (on the impacted shield facing) or the ship's shield power level, than the high damage reduction would feel more balanced an fair (as well as match closer to the show).

I would say if your torpedo hits a shield facing that has at least 85% of it's hp intact it's damage reduced by the 75% reduction we have now, but than this reduction is reduced by by 10% every 10% the shield's hp is reduced to a minimum of a 10% damage reduction while the shield is still online. So long as the shield is up it should give some amount of protection, but that protection should be variable based on differenet factors, like the Hp of the shield facings (I see this as the integrity of the shield), and the shield power the ship has (to me this should determine how much damage reduction is lost as your deplete a shield facing's hp.).

The weakness against shields can be reduced by two Torpedoes... The Crystaline one that has Anti Proton as it's main damage (Event item if IIRC) and the new Nausican Disruptor Torpedo which deals Disruptor damage as it's primary damage. Both are boosted by the energy weapon console of that type Anti-P for the crystaline and Disruptor for the nausican plus the nauscian gets a bigger boost if ou run the 3 set.

You forgot the Plasma Torpedo from the Lobi store...

What if I don't want to be pigeon holed into not only having to use a specific energy weapon type but a single specific torpedo.

Besides...those things are a waste of space...if you're going to use a single torp that is a energy type...then you may as well just stick another beam or cannon in that slot instead of even bothering with those torps.

To your point; isn't that a problem with a Star Trek game that features a variety of energy and torpedo weapons both on screen as well as in the game?

redvenge · March 2017

darkknightucf wrote: »

Lets not forget Neutronic and Quantum Phase, which do kinetic damage, AND have ways of weakening/removing shields. Both have secondary effects that are boosted by DrainX, and while there are some issues/bugs to work out with them, they are still potent vs shielded targets. With the right build, they will deal with shields far better than the AP or Naussican projectiles will.

Resonant Transphasics are not too bad. They ignore 40% of shield resist. If they proc, they reduce shield resist by 15% (with the set bonus).

Torpedo Issues

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