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Gravity Kills/ Tzenkethi ships Broken/OP?

scrappyjwgscrappyjwg Member Posts: 23 Arc User
i dont think this is just limited to this TFO but ive noticed it here more.

for context i run a tank build and usually run advanced. however even on this run i can die and when looking a the damage report on average on this run i take 50-70k hits on average even from things like the cruisers. if they all hit at once doesnt matter what build you have you can kiss your TRIBBLE goodbye. this also makes things like the optionals of defending the jupiter ship and finishing in 15 minutes Impossible and the rewards garbage.

for example run that took half hour at least - 20 marks.

other fleet mates that run DPS builds find they are getting one shotted.

i dont mind tough enemies and a challenge but this run and the tzenkethi in the run are so broken its no fun at all to fight them.

feels like running elites not advanced.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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  • darkbladejkdarkbladejk Member Posts: 3,698 Community Moderator
    If you're getting hit by multiple ships at once, you're getting hit by the combined power of all of them. So if you get hit for 250k damage, and there are 5 ships, then that means each of them hit you for 50k which isn't that op in the grand scheme of things, it simply means you just had some bad luck. I run a tank myself and even as a tank I'm not invincible, nor should I be invincible. Unless I just want to horse around, if there is no risk of actually getting killed then it sucks the fun out of it. Gravity Kills isn't a mission that folks can just mindlessly press the space bar and expect to clear it, nor should it be.

    If you're the tank in the run I'm assuming you will have access to the Protomatter Field Projector or some similar type of power. If so you can use that to help keep the Jupiter from getting rolled as well as your teammates. If you don't have access to anything like that then you need to adjust your tactics accordingly. The entire goal of that queue isn't to fight all the tzenkethi ships, but to grab the particles, bring them to the Jupiter and nuke the stations. The trash mobs around the map are there purely to stop you. Plus you can just shove them into the black hole if someone has repulsors. I will agree that the reward scaling on that one is a bit steep but the queue itself is easily doable with the proper tactics. Also if you feel you're getting killed too easy then feel free to post your build info below and I can perhaps offer some suggestions. Tanking is my specialty in game.
    "Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations

    Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
  • rebuilthk47rebuilthk47 Member Posts: 94 Arc User
    The scaling isn't working right past 50. I've discussed this with others. I've been able to tear through ships in Borg Disconnected Adv as dps easily before. Now the times I can do that are random. Sometimes it even changes in the middle of the STF/TFO. One moment I'm ripping through them, the next they're taking little damage and tearing me up. And I've done nothing but grab the good stuff (still no lobi bioneural whatchamacallit crit console) for most traits and gear for not having loads of $ to throw at this game.
  • lianthelialianthelia Member Posts: 7,820 Arc User
    The scaling isn't working right past 50. I've discussed this with others. I've been able to tear through ships in Borg Disconnected Adv as dps easily before. Now the times I can do that are random. Sometimes it even changes in the middle of the STF/TFO. One moment I'm ripping through them, the next they're taking little damage and tearing me up. And I've done nothing but grab the good stuff (still no lobi bioneural whatchamacallit crit console) for most traits and gear for not having loads of $ to throw at this game.

    This and if I remember correctly they do a lot of kinetic damage which is really wonky with the scaling recently.
  • darkbladejkdarkbladejk Member Posts: 3,698 Community Moderator
    The scaling isn't working right past 50. I've discussed this with others. I've been able to tear through ships in Borg Disconnected Adv as dps easily before. Now the times I can do that are random. Sometimes it even changes in the middle of the STF/TFO. One moment I'm ripping through them, the next they're taking little damage and tearing me up. And I've done nothing but grab the good stuff (still no lobi bioneural whatchamacallit crit console) for most traits and gear for not having loads of $ to throw at this game.

    The ships in Borg Disconnected have access to damage reducing buffs just like players do and can use abilities like torpedo spread and so on. We players aren't the only ones that can throw up buffs to defend ourselves, however the NPC toolkit isn't as robust as ours is. If you notice you seem to be dealing less damage, then I would look at the enemy's list of buffs and see what exactly they're using. I've seen several of them pop an emergency power to shields which means they take about 18-30% less damage to their shields depending on the rank of power it is they're using. Voth are one of the enemies you can face in there and if you're not careful you'll find yourself shooting one of those damage reflection shields of theirs which reflects damage back to you or harmlessly into space. Thus it's possible you can kill yourself if you're not careful. I know I've done it a couple of times and I'm sure some of the other veteran players in here can vouch that they've done it at least once themselves. From the way you're describing it here it sounds like you're running into them while some type of buff is active, and just have some rotten luck. Certain types of builds also perform better in certain queues than others simply due to the nature of the queue mechanics, and the queue itself. If enemies are spread all over the map then a sci build might not do as well due to not being able to group foes as easily where as an escort rocking cannons may do quite a bit better. Without seeing your build and knowing what you have it's possible you could have something that's just not as effective as another ship/build you may have.

    As for the scaling issues, most of those have been addressed in recent patches. Simply because something hits you hard doesn't per say mean there is a scaling issue at play. No matter how much you prepare and so on there will always be that one "perfect storm" type moment that gets you. Happens to everyone.

    With that in mind if scaling issues are indeed happening, then that's another argument entirely and would be a bug and not the fault of the queue itself. Part of my duties include bug bashing as I pull double duty as a Bug Hunter in addition to being a moderator. If you have evidence to suggest there is still a scaling issue at fault, be it through video, combat logs, screenshots etc, then drop that evidence to me through PM and I will personally see to it that it's passed up the chain.

    Otherwise from the vague descriptions you guys are giving, it sounds like you're just having bad luck. Without some additional info there is no way for any of us to know for certain either way.
    "Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations

    Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
  • bendalekbendalek Member Posts: 1,781 Arc User
    @darkbladejk

    Not everyone has access to Video Capture software, or combat logs, and most don't even think about taking screenshots when they die. But tell me seriously, do you honestly believe that thee is no issue"bug" in the enemy scaling since the RTFO system and the re-organization of the Mission Journal (to make some TFO's at available to lower ranks) were introduced?

    Despite the hundreds (now perhaps thousands?) of posts by people claiming this to have happened to them?

    You "could" for instance just try loading the game up on a PC NOT connected to the Dev servers and play on the goode olde Holodeck server every once in a while, just to actually verify that these things are happening. I know you can't "diagnose" issues on those machines, but you could at least verify/dismiss issues.

    And calling them "vague descriptions" and dismissing these claims, does come across as a wee bit condescending.
    Oh, hoho hohhhhh, Oh,, hoho, hohhhhh
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  • darkbladejkdarkbladejk Member Posts: 3,698 Community Moderator
    bendalek wrote: »
    @darkbladejk

    Not everyone has access to Video Capture software, or combat logs, and most don't even think about taking screenshots when they die. But tell me seriously, do you honestly believe that thee is no issue"bug" in the enemy scaling since the RTFO system and the re-organization of the Mission Journal (to make some TFO's at available to lower ranks) were introduced?

    Despite the hundreds (now perhaps thousands?) of posts by people claiming this to have happened to them?

    You "could" for instance just try loading the game up on a PC NOT connected to the Dev servers and play on the goode olde Holodeck server every once in a while, just to actually verify that these things are happening. I know you can't "diagnose" issues on those machines, but you could at least verify/dismiss issues.

    And calling them "vague descriptions" and dismissing these claims, does come across as a wee bit condescending.

    There's a couple of misconceptions that need to be corrected here. The first one being that I actually work for Cryptic. In fact that's in my signature every time I post something. Moderators like myself were recruited from the player base. Due to our position we have more frequent contact with some of the folks at Cryptic. Otherwise the only things I have that you don't are the green text next to my name and an in-game title of Bug Basher when I was recruited to that initiative a few years back. While I am not an employee I pull double duty helping them out as a Bug Basher and Moderator.

    You actually do have access to combat logs as it's a built in feature of the game, you simply have to type in the code to start it recording. "/combatlog 1" to prime it and then after the first shot it will keep going until you turn it off for what most folks need it for. "/combatlog 0" will turn it off again and stop it recording. The log file will then be available in the Logs folder in game files under "Star Trek Online>Live>logs". As for access to the dev servers, I wish I had access to some type of private dev server that my crew and I could test for bugs on, but like everyone else in the playerbase all we have is the Tribble server and the Holodeck server. This means that the several hundred hours that I and my testing crew have put in over the years have been because we choose to do so of our own accord because we enjoy the game and want it to stick around as long as possible.

    There are several factors to look at when you get attacked that go on behind the scenes. Examples being damage resists present, rank of power used, energy type used, difficulty of the queue, and so on. Some attacks will hit you harder than others and some builds will perform better on certain maps than others simply by design. On a map where enemies can't be grouped up as easily, a sci build may be at a disadvantage because they can't hit all the foes with their sci powers, where as a zippy escort can get to all the foes with no issues. Simply because an enemy hits you very hard, an enemy is able to kill you, or because you're not knocking them down as fast as you would like or think you should be, does not automatically mean there is a bug or scaling issue at play.

    If/when a bug is going on and I have to make a bug report or someone else makes a bug report, it has to be extremely specific so the devs know where to look, and more importantly are able to fix it. If I were to say "the odyssey tactical computer is broken" and leave it at that, then it doesn't help anyone because of how vague it is. If I say "the odyssey tactical computer is broken because it's giving exotic damage bonus instead of the haste bonus it's supposed to give," and then provide them screenshots, video, or combat logs as evidence, then that is far far more helpful than the first statement could ever hope to be. In the second example they would then know what's broken about the odyssey tactical computer and what they needed to do in order to fix it. Simply because alot of folks are experiencing something does not automatically make it a bug or scaling issue either. Without more information there is no way of knowing if there is a legitimate issue or if someone went into a mission in a tier 1 starship with all mk i weapons and got stomped because of that.

    What I'm saying is if you believe it to be a scaling issue, then show me what evidence you have to support the claim. Without having something to go on I have nothing I can present to the devs and they have nothing to tell them what to fix. Just like a criminal court can't convict without evidence of some type, if an issue is present the devs can't fix it without knowing what to fix.
    "Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations

    Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
  • darkbladejkdarkbladejk Member Posts: 3,698 Community Moderator
    luckyyahoo wrote: »
    Normals have the same problem in some instances. Scaling has made the game way too temperamental. As I said in another thread, I was in a cure normal scaled to 63 with my 65 oddy outfitted in all gold XV equipment as a tank/mid-dps hybrid and I got completely destroyed by two raptors that did 100k damage with hvy plasma torpedoes and 5k a hit with their cannons.

    I would have to ask what queue you were doing and what buffs were active on the enemy ships at that time. Just because it's a normal doesn't mean you can't get that perfect storm of events that absolutely steam rolls you. It's alot rarer on normal than it is in advanced or elite but it can still happen. Like I said If you guys can get some combat logs, video, screenshots, or some kind of something to demonstrate an issue, then it can be looked at and the scaling can be adjusted as need be. However without data there's nothing that can be done.
    "Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations

    Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
  • tmassxtmassx Member Posts: 826 Arc User
    Gravity kills is not a hard mission, for pre-made team. Unfortunatelly, you will often get it on a random queue too. That mission contains repetetive activity, collecting stupid particles, where at the third base you can not fly out without evasive maneuvers. So you have to wait every time on your evasive maneuvers cooldown and try to survive 50-70k tetryon torpedo hits. So there are three bases (last one is pain in the TRIBBLE), dreadnought boss and his minions (with teryon torp spread of course), with pug team about half an hour of repetitive activity and frequent deaths. A result? The same reward as 2-4 min ISA. That means most players will leave it before it starts.
  • spiritbornspiritborn Member Posts: 4,248 Arc User
    sophlogimo wrote: »
    tmassx wrote: »
    Gravity kills is not a hard mission, for pre-made team. Unfortunatelly, you will often get it on a random queue too. That mission contains repetetive activity, collecting stupid particles, where at the third base you can not fly out without evasive maneuvers. So you have to wait every time on your evasive maneuvers cooldown [...]

    Emergency Power To Engines is very useful there, you can slot two of those and be much faster the whole way.
    Any sort of (self-)teleport powers aid too as the pull is determined by distance, just teleport early enough.
  • feliseanfelisean Member Posts: 688 Arc User
    if you want to move fast, epte+emergency conn hologram + competitive engine. solves all your speed problems.

    and since you normaly have some kind of cd reduction, you need only one copy of epte. the second one should be always an eptw (for builds using energy weapons).
  • darkbladejkdarkbladejk Member Posts: 3,698 Community Moderator
    sophlogimo wrote: »
    Bold assumption for an averagely equipped player ship.

    Although I suspect felisean and I would disagree on some of the finer points of our building philosophies, in this instance I will agree. You actually get access to several bits of cooldown reduction for free without ever having to touch a a console or doff. In the skill tree you can get up to a 20% cooldown reduction on your science, tac, and engineering based powers. You also are able to pick up free cooldown reduction from Chrono-Capacitor Arrays in the temporal rep for 9.4% cooldown reduction after hitting tier 6 rep and unlocking rank 2 of that power. Rank 1 you get at tier 2 temporal. so potentially you're staring down the barrel of a 29.4% cooldown reduction if you use the rank 2 version of that power and put at least 3 skill points into one of the Readyness abilities. Not everyone will choose to use those powers however they are indeed available to you.
    "Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations

    Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
  • scrappyjwgscrappyjwg Member Posts: 23 Arc User
    If you're getting hit by multiple ships at once, you're getting hit by the combined power of all of them. So if you get hit for 250k damage, and there are 5 ships, then that means each of them hit you for 50k which isn't that op in the grand scheme of things, it simply means you just had some bad luck. I run a tank myself and even as a tank I'm not invincible, nor should I be invincible. Unless I just want to horse around, if there is no risk of actually getting killed then it sucks the fun out of it. Gravity Kills isn't a mission that folks can just mindlessly press the space bar and expect to clear it, nor should it be.

    If you're the tank in the run I'm assuming you will have access to the Protomatter Field Projector or some similar type of power. If so you can use that to help keep the Jupiter from getting rolled as well as your teammates. If you don't have access to anything like that then you need to adjust your tactics accordingly. The entire goal of that queue isn't to fight all the tzenkethi ships, but to grab the particles, bring them to the Jupiter and nuke the stations. The trash mobs around the map are there purely to stop you. Plus you can just shove them into the black hole if someone has repulsors. I will agree that the reward scaling on that one is a bit steep but the queue itself is easily doable with the proper tactics. Also if you feel you're getting killed too easy then feel free to post your build info below and I can perhaps offer some suggestions. Tanking is my specialty in game.

    i agree with you that tanks shouldn't be invincible but should be hard to kill. i can understand bad luck dont have a problem with it but when its constantly happening and not just to me then i start to think okay whats wrong here. i agree on tactics have tried a variety however recently its been me having to get the particles or attempting to as of late because no other ships have been surviving or can survive long enough and we use the DPS ships to protect the Jupiter. its definitely not a just press spacebar mission.

    once i get the chance to will definitely post my build. its a mostly work in progress build as still need to upgrade a few things but ive already got a very high resist and tank build on it.
  • scrappyjwgscrappyjwg Member Posts: 23 Arc User

    bendalek wrote: »
    @darkbladejk

    Not everyone has access to Video Capture software, or combat logs, and most don't even think about taking screenshots when they die. But tell me seriously, do you honestly believe that thee is no issue"bug" in the enemy scaling since the RTFO system and the re-organization of the Mission Journal (to make some TFO's at available to lower ranks) were introduced?

    Despite the hundreds (now perhaps thousands?) of posts by people claiming this to have happened to them?

    You "could" for instance just try loading the game up on a PC NOT connected to the Dev servers and play on the goode olde Holodeck server every once in a while, just to actually verify that these things are happening. I know you can't "diagnose" issues on those machines, but you could at least verify/dismiss issues.

    And calling them "vague descriptions" and dismissing these claims, does come across as a wee bit condescending.

    There's a couple of misconceptions that need to be corrected here. The first one being that I actually work for Cryptic. In fact that's in my signature every time I post something. Moderators like myself were recruited from the player base. Due to our position we have more frequent contact with some of the folks at Cryptic. Otherwise the only things I have that you don't are the green text next to my name and an in-game title of Bug Basher when I was recruited to that initiative a few years back. While I am not an employee I pull double duty helping them out as a Bug Basher and Moderator.

    You actually do have access to combat logs as it's a built in feature of the game, you simply have to type in the code to start it recording. "/combatlog 1" to prime it and then after the first shot it will keep going until you turn it off for what most folks need it for. "/combatlog 0" will turn it off again and stop it recording. The log file will then be available in the Logs folder in game files under "Star Trek Online>Live>logs". As for access to the dev servers, I wish I had access to some type of private dev server that my crew and I could test for bugs on, but like everyone else in the playerbase all we have is the Tribble server and the Holodeck server. This means that the several hundred hours that I and my testing crew have put in over the years have been because we choose to do so of our own accord because we enjoy the game and want it to stick around as long as possible.

    There are several factors to look at when you get attacked that go on behind the scenes. Examples being damage resists present, rank of power used, energy type used, difficulty of the queue, and so on. Some attacks will hit you harder than others and some builds will perform better on certain maps than others simply by design. On a map where enemies can't be grouped up as easily, a sci build may be at a disadvantage because they can't hit all the foes with their sci powers, where as a zippy escort can get to all the foes with no issues. Simply because an enemy hits you very hard, an enemy is able to kill you, or because you're not knocking them down as fast as you would like or think you should be, does not automatically mean there is a bug or scaling issue at play.

    If/when a bug is going on and I have to make a bug report or someone else makes a bug report, it has to be extremely specific so the devs know where to look, and more importantly are able to fix it. If I were to say "the odyssey tactical computer is broken" and leave it at that, then it doesn't help anyone because of how vague it is. If I say "the odyssey tactical computer is broken because it's giving exotic damage bonus instead of the haste bonus it's supposed to give," and then provide them screenshots, video, or combat logs as evidence, then that is far far more helpful than the first statement could ever hope to be. In the second example they would then know what's broken about the odyssey tactical computer and what they needed to do in order to fix it. Simply because alot of folks are experiencing something does not automatically make it a bug or scaling issue either. Without more information there is no way of knowing if there is a legitimate issue or if someone went into a mission in a tier 1 starship with all mk i weapons and got stomped because of that.

    What I'm saying is if you believe it to be a scaling issue, then show me what evidence you have to support the claim. Without having something to go on I have nothing I can present to the devs and they have nothing to tell them what to fix. Just like a criminal court can't convict without evidence of some type, if an issue is present the devs can't fix it without knowing what to fix.


    just out of curiousity to get that combat log up do you type that in the chat. just to clarify
  • feliseanfelisean Member Posts: 688 Arc User
    edited November 2018
    to use 2 different copies of emergency power you actually just need 2-3 damage control engineers with that ability (you get a rare and a very rare one from your replicator for 100k/1000k ec after reaching t4 engineering). thats the easiest way. in addition like said b4, you get several other cd reductions. strategist secondary spec with threat stance active and a self heal every 20 seconds woudl be a 20% cd reduction, focused frenzy (with all 3 points) would reduce the cooldowns all down to their shared cds if the target actually stays that long. in addition the ~30% you could get from skilltree+ rep for free.
    on top of that there are several consoles with cd reductions too.
    another possibility would be the build itself and use a photonic officer 1, than you get 30% cd reduction 50% of the time. in combination with other cd reductions its pretty easy to manage that.
    and a last thing would be a2b. 2 copies + 3 technicians and here we go. and you dont need to actually buy those doffs, you could get them for free from the b'tran cluster assignment chain. another benefit of a2b would be the uptime of "give your all" rnd trait. thats a 20% dmg reduction for 3 out of 10 seconds alone which could help a lot to survive ;)

    and for the survivability, high end dps builds are actually pretty tough and have quite a bit of survivability. because normaly we draw all of the aggro and we need to survive that.

    if there are problems with dying its most likely a build and a buff use problem not that the enemies are too strong ;)

    oh and for the calculation of reduction it works like this:
    cooldown / (1+ cd reduction in decimal)

    which mean: eptx (45 sec cd) with 30% reduction =>
    45 sec/(1+0.3) = 34.6 sec
    =>
    shared cd from an eptx with itself is 30 seconds, so we're actually close with the ~30% reduction @darkbladejk mentioned before.
    for the damage control doffs, its one cd reduction attemp every 15 seconds with 2 different emergency power to x because shared cd with another ept is 15 seconds. thats why it work in most cases pretty well.

    a possible way to reduce faw+eptw:
    20% from skilltree (eng+tac readiness 3 points)
    9.4% chronotachion capacitor II
    7.5% defense drone guardians
    7% bioneural gelpack
    10% from competitive engine (eng)

    this alone could reduce your eptx to below 30 seconds => you could keep 2 versions running all the time
    faw would be at 20.8 seconds which would be slightly over the 20 sec shared cd but i'm sure its possible to find a few more points somewhere too ;)

    and for survivability, there are several ways to improve that too
    rsp+doff
    epts+shield overload trait
    honored dead trait
    dynamic power redistributor (cheap for kdf (+ aligned) and rom)
    promotatter console from lukari ship
    protomatter consoles from the colony
    invincible (oh TRIBBLE trait)
    active hull hardening reputation trait
    protomatter influx reputation trait
    agent nerul (with beta but expensive)
    ....

    normaly a few things of those possibilities used are enough to survive close to anything the game throws at you ^^
    Post edited by felisean on
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