Consider - if buff-stripping were part of the engineering ultimate, any ship carrying it is gonna inherently be nice and hull-tanky. Having the buff-stripper acts like a real life working taunt - "Ermagerd! That guy on the left has EPS corruption! We. Must. Take. It. DOWN!"
Now you have an actual role for tanks- the incredibly tough ship carrying the dreaded Subnuc effect. Every team wants one, but because you can't have it AND stack loads of blue or red skill choice, not every ship wants to be 'that guy'. It could create some real tension pulling players towards different roles on the team.
Will the separation pets be revised so they can be more effective in combat?, so far, separation pets deals very low damage (When they stay, at least the bug is getting work on), it would be great if separation pets DO more combat and you can rely on them.
Philosophical question: You've mentioned you don't want science captains to be the only profession able to play vampire at the highest levels of effectiveness. What do you see as the desired level of performance and gameplay experience of ships focused on drain but without Deflector Overcharge? In your opinion, what should being a 'space-vampire' feel like when you're in properly built/equipped vessel and you are playing that role well?
Can you point to any instanced content where you feel bringing a vampire to the team would be/should be preferable to a straight DPS ship?
Any captain can play vampire at the highest levels. A +50 with deflector overcharge is a tiny drop in the bucket on a dedicated drain boat.
CrypticSpartan, do you anticipate a phase of this project comparing and maybe normalizing the performance of the various damaging "clicky" consoles out there? Things like the Tholian web cannon or shrapnel torpedoes are immensely satisfying visually, but not really that good compared to the opportunity cost of the slot they're taking up. Do you think there are any that are wildly better or worse than the norm? Considering how rarely any of them appears as part of the best parsing builds, could we see some reduced cooldowns, shorter delays warming up, or bigger numbers?
ALL clickies need a good look-over, not just ones that deal damage
case in point, Grappler...a shittier version of a tractor beam 1 (because it does no damage and i don't think the slow scales with CtrlX) that has 4x the CD...yeah, that needs serious looking at
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Subnucleonic Beam's effectiveness and the changes related to it becoming a Bridge Officer ability are all things I am paying very close attention to, however, so I cannot guarantee that its state on Tribble (or the state of anything else) is how it will go live.
I do have a few concerns about the Subnucleonic Beam change that stand out:
This noticeably biases Science Captains towards Science ships - all ships can easily make use of it, but it is much better at some than others. There is already some amount of precedent for this in all the careers, but this is the most clear-cut case yet.
This makes Science Captains less useful in PvP, and the bridge officer power will be especially strong there.
As a Bridge Officer Power, it is going to be difficult to make the Commander rank something desirable over the Lt. Commander rank without breaking the power, and its balance relative to Subnucleonic Carrier Wave is also a point of concern.
.
.
For the one Sci char I have I went a bit (a bit very far) out of my comfort zone getting her a Voth Bulwark back when they where in the promo doff box. I sure get a new boxed one when the changes go live? Or at least a donkey hat? >:( (<- thats the grumpy smiley I have been told; if not imagine one).
This SubNuc change feels more and more like the one removed domino which starts an undesired accidental domino effect.
And for the sake to get the massive damage numbers in check it feels like a complete unnecessary move; like a change for the sake of a change; something sidetracked that went horribly wrong.
Why aren't Engineers 'superior' at Engineering Skills and Science 'superior' at Science with this rebalance. As many state, it's easy for Tac's to out-'science' the Science guys in everything Science. It seems that this a missed opportunity to actually give the Careers actual meaning in Space Combat. All the Skill refurbishment did was give all classes equal stats in effect for everything. Surely no class should be better than another at it's native 'art'!?
Next question.
As my main is a Science, I use Sub Nuc very often, and it's one of the unique skills that defines the Science Career. Making it available to all careers means each class can now debuff as effectively, although I'm sure someone on a Tac has made it more effective for that class than a science! Deflector Overcharge is, to me, just a copy of Science Fleet, except for just for me, and yes, it does shoe-horn me into Sci Ships (although I do actually use them alot). Add to the vast plethora of skills available already, having Sub Nuc at Boff level now removes options I use. For example in a Lt/Cmdr and Cmdr Sci ship I have Hazard Emitters, Tac Beam, Tractor Replusors, Grav Well, Scramble Sensors, Resonance Beam and Jam Target Sensors, and if I'm in a ship with specialist Sci seating then I've a mix of those in too. I have no room to actually include Sub Nuc!
Lastly, thank you for taking the time to answer our questions.
PS: Please work on a better AFK system that auto-kicks these people!!!
"You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
And I'd still like a way to get [Over] and [Rapid] on lockbox weapons. The absolute dream being some sort of crafted consumable item that lets me select an existing mod on an item and re-roll it or even ...swoon... choose what mod to replace it with!
+1 for an option to add [Rapid] to non-crafted weapons! I love equipping cannons, and [Rapid] and the variety of lockbox and Reputation and mission-reward weapons are my two favorite aspects of the game. It'd be amazing to be able to enjoy both at the same time .
While most of the changes from Spartan are good in the sense I would try again, making SNB a boff power is a pain.
Well.. its a big mistake and a lot of Pll. wrote this.
Its not to late to fix that.. but Spartan dont want hear that.. really sad.
Btw.
What do you think about a Cap for shield bleedthrough and Hull Pen. I meen.. in PvP shields are most useless these days.. and tba. Hull pen is to strong. A Cap. for both would be nice.
So, re-reading the OP, it seems the AMA was a very, very short-lived thing and was not designed to answer questions from people outside of his own time zone. That is extremely disappointing.
I think it's acceptable for a dev to sleep and go home at some point. He is not an app. Just have some patience.
Any chance we'll be getting a skill reset token to deal with all these changes to the fundamentals of space combat? Torpedoes possibly being viable again, changes to beams, engineering console changes juggling your eng skill choices, et-cetera.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Any chance we'll be getting a skill reset token to deal with all these changes to the fundamentals of space combat? Torpedoes possibly being viable again, changes to beams, engineering console changes juggling your eng skill choices, et-cetera.
Yes, that will happen, it was already mentioned. (And it's pretty common for them to do when it comes to major changes like this.)
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Do you have plans to revisit the ground changes made earlier? Such as restoring Stealth Module to a state where it isn't horrible and useless or adding career-specific team buffs to the list of things Tactical Initiative affects?
Like most players there's been a lot of changes that impact my build and the way I play, many for the negative, and I'm ok with that if the big picture ends up better gameplay all round. But the ground changes to the Stealth module just doesn't make sense, and if there's one change that has really annoyed me it's that one. So I hope the changes to the Stealth Module will be revisited or Crypticspartan can explain why it was changed in this manner.
First off, thanks for making this discussion. It should help a lot with people's understanding of the game and recent changes being made. Also, thanks for the huge effort being put into balancing the game. It's such a big effort, even PvP will become more playable.
Here are my questions:
What is the difference between abilities and traits that give +All Damage Resistance and those that give +All Damage Bonus Resistance? All I can tell is that +All Damage Bonus Resistance boosts your resists by much more than +All Damage Resistance, and even will let you go past the theoretical 75% hard-cap. (I've boosted mine into the 90% range, most notably with the Solanae 4 piece set bonus ability)
Is there any mechanic in game currently that I am missing that will prevent damage from bypassing your shields and going directly from your hull? I have been wanting to bring out my Nebula shield tank/healer again, and am looking for a way to make shields viable again.
I know I have a 3rd question but I can't remember what it is.
Anyways, thanks for your time and effort into both creating this discussion and your work on the game.
from what i remember a dev saying back when the first bit of bonus resist was added to the game (that one dyson rep trait), bonus resist ignores the diminishing returns formula of regular DRR, so you are always getting exactly what is shown in the tooltip regardless of how much other DRR you have
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
from what i remember a dev saying back when the first bit of bonus resist was added to the game (that one dyson rep trait), bonus resist ignores the diminishing returns formula of regular DRR, so you are always getting exactly what is shown in the tooltip regardless of how much other DRR you have
That's what I heard, and that definitely makes sense. Thanks for the explanation!
I can't get over about how pissed I am about this half-assed attempt to seem like he was listening to the players. This extremely short and thus useless AMA was really, really a bad move. Almost as if someone ordered him to do something he didn't want to do, and then he paid lip service to the order, and nothing more.
One of Cryptic's spectacular PR disasters, and thus nothing new? Probably. But it is actually bothering me. Quite a lot.
He answered several questions in a thorough and fairly easy to understand way.
But because he didn't answer your questions, it was an unmitigated disaster.
The point of the AMA however is to be ready to reply to the thread in a timely fashion. He couldn't guarantee that beyond the scope of the AMA's duration, since he actually is usually working on Star Trek Online tasks, not on reading and posting on the forums. THe AMA probably meant he cleared part of his regular schedule for it.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Comments
Now you have an actual role for tanks- the incredibly tough ship carrying the dreaded Subnuc effect. Every team wants one, but because you can't have it AND stack loads of blue or red skill choice, not every ship wants to be 'that guy'. It could create some real tension pulling players towards different roles on the team.
Any captain can play vampire at the highest levels. A +50 with deflector overcharge is a tiny drop in the bucket on a dedicated drain boat.
case in point, Grappler...a shittier version of a tractor beam 1 (because it does no damage and i don't think the slow scales with CtrlX) that has 4x the CD...yeah, that needs serious looking at
and that's 1 console out of literal HUNDREDS
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
For the one Sci char I have I went a bit (a bit very far) out of my comfort zone getting her a Voth Bulwark back when they where in the promo doff box. I sure get a new boxed one when the changes go live? Or at least a donkey hat? >:( (<- thats the grumpy smiley I have been told; if not imagine one).
This SubNuc change feels more and more like the one removed domino which starts an undesired accidental domino effect.
And for the sake to get the massive damage numbers in check it feels like a complete unnecessary move; like a change for the sake of a change; something sidetracked that went horribly wrong.
Why aren't Engineers 'superior' at Engineering Skills and Science 'superior' at Science with this rebalance. As many state, it's easy for Tac's to out-'science' the Science guys in everything Science. It seems that this a missed opportunity to actually give the Careers actual meaning in Space Combat. All the Skill refurbishment did was give all classes equal stats in effect for everything. Surely no class should be better than another at it's native 'art'!?
Next question.
As my main is a Science, I use Sub Nuc very often, and it's one of the unique skills that defines the Science Career. Making it available to all careers means each class can now debuff as effectively, although I'm sure someone on a Tac has made it more effective for that class than a science! Deflector Overcharge is, to me, just a copy of Science Fleet, except for just for me, and yes, it does shoe-horn me into Sci Ships (although I do actually use them alot). Add to the vast plethora of skills available already, having Sub Nuc at Boff level now removes options I use. For example in a Lt/Cmdr and Cmdr Sci ship I have Hazard Emitters, Tac Beam, Tractor Replusors, Grav Well, Scramble Sensors, Resonance Beam and Jam Target Sensors, and if I'm in a ship with specialist Sci seating then I've a mix of those in too. I have no room to actually include Sub Nuc!
Lastly, thank you for taking the time to answer our questions.
PS: Please work on a better AFK system that auto-kicks these people!!!
+1 for an option to add [Rapid] to non-crafted weapons! I love equipping cannons, and [Rapid] and the variety of lockbox and Reputation and mission-reward weapons are my two favorite aspects of the game. It'd be amazing to be able to enjoy both at the same time
David
*** Aktiv since 03.06.10 ***
I think it's acceptable for a dev to sleep and go home at some point. He is not an app. Just have some patience.
Any chance we'll be getting a skill reset token to deal with all these changes to the fundamentals of space combat? Torpedoes possibly being viable again, changes to beams, engineering console changes juggling your eng skill choices, et-cetera.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Yes, that will happen, it was already mentioned. (And it's pretty common for them to do when it comes to major changes like this.)
Like most players there's been a lot of changes that impact my build and the way I play, many for the negative, and I'm ok with that if the big picture ends up better gameplay all round. But the ground changes to the Stealth module just doesn't make sense, and if there's one change that has really annoyed me it's that one. So I hope the changes to the Stealth Module will be revisited or Crypticspartan can explain why it was changed in this manner.
Here are my questions:
I know I have a 3rd question but I can't remember what it is.
Anyways, thanks for your time and effort into both creating this discussion and your work on the game.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
That's what I heard, and that definitely makes sense. Thanks for the explanation!
He answered several questions in a thorough and fairly easy to understand way.
But because he didn't answer your questions, it was an unmitigated disaster.
Riiiight...
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