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Phalanx formation bug : command spec feedback : FDC VS 26c dread
avnas
Member Posts: 51 Arc User
Hi there, i'm sending this bug report as a ticket and not an ingame bug report since the bug report ingame asks me to select a power, but then lists traits and not bridge officer abilities. it also is not in alphabetical order - so i would like to ask you to forward this message to the devs. there is a very succinct summary at the bottom. i suggest the support person that sees this message doesn't even fully read the message since it's feedback/bug report for the devs.
in my opinion the bug report system should be changed to be in alphabetical order, and should obviously be updated to include all abilities.
this is a bug report and wider an explanation for devs as to why command is not popular, and why it needs to be changed, which considering there are command promotional ships, and a command lockbox ship coming in 5 days, this is highly important for game monetisation.
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the bug(s): tested with Phalanx formation 1 ability - this ability creates rings you have to fly through to get a buff, but because the rings are "random" it's very hard to get them to appear in a useful location - despite being potentially intentional, this has bugs associated with it because it places the one-way-only rings facing opposite to your direction of travel, and often opposite to the second ring it creates, coupled with the fact that you often have to totally fly away from combat to use the ability, since it puts the rings in random locations, this makes it almost totally unusable.
the rings also don't always pick up when you fly through them in the one-way direction. in short, this means that the ability is very concentration-intensive, it doesn't always work, it often involves flying around in circles, and it's flat worse than a lot of standard bridge officer abilities as a result.
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Phalanx formation summary:
this ability needs to simply activate 3km directly in front of the ship, and flying through any of the rings in any direction should provide the buff. there needs to be something done about the detection of when a ship flies through the ring, because it does not always detect it.
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General feedback: command
i would like to also mention that command is severely lacking when it comes to effectiveness in general, beyond the bugged way this particular ability works. because there are so few abilities in command that do anything useful, the only high level builds that use any command abilities are kinetic (torp) builds with the concentrate firepower ability.
if you compare command ships to miracle worker ships, they literally have nothing. the miracle worker ships get abilities that provide category 2 (BONUS) damage for no costs or disadvantages, where something like phalanx formation gets essentially a minigame and literal hoops you have to jump through to get a small acc and def buff. compared to bonus damage it's almost meaningless unless you have an acc overflow build.
and that's before you get into the miracle worker specialisation offering +1 console slot, which is a massive increase in power because of the potential set bonus combinations you can put in that extra slot.
if you had finished with the command specialisation, perhaps from a business standpoint you could justify leaving the command specialisation as trash. but the problem is that cryptic is still making command ships, i have it on good authority the kelvin is going to be pilot/command.
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ability by ability:
subspace interception: it might be a nice idea to have a teleport to ally ability, but limiting it to below 50% health just makes the ability totally useless, and that's the problem. most high tier builds aren't ever going to drop below, or stay below 50% health. so the ability stays greyed out potentially indefinitely, even then it has very limited range. this ability should be changed to be a group formation teleport that gives a bonus damage buff after teleporting. it should have the option to teleport the group to enemies location.
suppression barrage - it's a nice idea but it's essentially pointless outside of the context of pvp because enemies are already not very fast, aren't really effected that much by turning, and are defeated before -20% reduction in damage is really a concern.
reroute power from life support - inferior to emergency power to weapons and override subsystem safeties. since bridge officer recharges are one of the main things people seek to buff, ending up with an unbreakable -50% potential debuff to them that's not flushable by tac team is asking too much, and is too irregular. personally i'd change this to be more like the juggernaut trait and increase per shot weapon power drain instead. people would use it then.
rally point marker - this and concentrate firepower are the only two abilities i don't have a problem with, not every ability has to be dps.
overwhelm emitters - this is the single most disappointing command ability. currently it applies % of damage as shield drain to foe and shield heal to ally. in my opinion, this ability closely mirrors the part of star trek: first contact where picard orders a specific location targetted by the fleet on the borg cube. therefore it should give shield penetration based on the number of allies attacking (including hangar pets), forget the stuff about shield heals and drains, nobody cares about shields.
needs of the many - again with the shields. if i was sacrificing shields for team temporary damage buff, enemy resist debuff, team acc buff or something that's one thing. but im sacrificing shields for shields? literally why. all you need is 1% shields in this game.
concentrate firepower - meta kinetic build, do not change
call emergency artillery - this and the pilot reinforcements squadron ability should both just create permanent pets. pets that disappear after a minute are pretty bad compared to a lot of the other bridge officer abilities that are offered.
ambush point marker - while it's nice in theory there's literally only a handful of places this would be useful - but the most damning part of this ambush ability besides taking a valuable boff slot, would be that it only triggers within 3km of an enemy, and only buffs allies within 3km. while we're talking about this 20% bonus damage ability that literally neuters your ship, let's just remember that miracle worker gives out 50% bonus damage for free. you'd expect something with this many hoops to jump through to be giving a metric ton more bonuses than something with no hoops to jump through. personally since miracle worker gives this for free, i'd give "ambush" a 75% cat 2 bonus and make it so you can just pop it whenever you first enter combat. miracle worker still works out as better over time, but it's less of a joke ability for command.
__________________________________________
summary of general feedback:
command is lacking in a ton of ways compared to other specialisations. even if you don't compare command to miracle worker, just comparing it to intel, it's battery ability looks like a joke compared to override subsystem safeties, just for consistency's sake.
but then you come down to the really frustrating part of miracle worker, in that it's basically T-6-U, which means even ignoring the great cat2 bonus damage abilities, it outstrips command ships, or any other spec of ships just based on console amount. command really lacks compared to other specialisations for gimmicks. at least the intel ships get the sensor suite, temporal ships the deconstruction beam.
in my opinion command should get an extra weapon slot and/or an experimental weapon slot. this would make them very competitive compared to miracle worker ships.
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specific ship feedback explaining why the above feedback is relevant:
right now the 26c promo ships are flat worse than the discovery 23c ships, or specifically the miracle worker flight deck cruiser promo ships. this is particularly of note because of the 300 year difference between the ships.
if we look at the 26th century heavy dreadnought promotional ships, something people put a vast amount of resources to get a choice pack for, why would anyone ever choose the 26c over the 23c discovery miracle worker ships?
the 26c ship has one less console, the same amount of hangars, the same amount of weapons, worse bridge officer ability layout, worse specialisation abilities and a less offensive weapon loadout. the only benefit over a discovery miracle worker flight deck would be the hull multiplier, which is only 0.03 more than a lobi ship, worth approximately 800,000,000-1,000,000,000 credits less.
most of the issues here are down to the command and temporal specs being flat inferior to the miracle worker spec, but also due to the recent flight deck carrier update. the problem is that the 26th century dreadnought was previously only unique because it had 8 weapons, and 2 hangar bays, as well as being able to equip dual heavy cannons.
previous carriers all had 6 weapons, 2 bays, dhc or 8 weapons, 1 bay for fdc.
the change to fdc strips the 26c dread of a lot of uniqueness. you can't say it's that much of a hull tank because the kelvin vengence has a similar hull size. it's not really that great of a carrier anymore due to the gamma pack. it's not the best promo ship carrier due to the d7/donnie having an extra console slot and more cat2 damage buffs from mw spec.
my suggestion of adding an extra weapon slot to command ships, and buffing command abilities would probably make this ship more attractive for people to chase, and i might even dump my own [Special Requisition Choice Pack - Tier 6 Promotional Ship Choice Pack] on a durgath if the ship is buffed.
it just flat doesn't make sense that ships like the durgath are worse than 300 year old ships. since this only became truly an issue after all flight deck carriers were given two hangar bays, i would suggest that it's time to buff the 26c dreads in response to be even better hull tanks, to have more weapons than other ships, or even just give them the extra console slot miracle worker has, i mean its a one off promo.
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full summary/ TL;DR:
- buffing command means people will go out and buy command ships, buffing promo ships means people will go chase more promo packs.
- phalanx formation bugged, doesnt always work, the thing only works in one direction but its not always the same direction
- many command abilities look like jokes compared to modern miracle worker abilities. they should be buffed
- command ships should get an extra weapon slot to make up for not being miracle worker with the extra console slot, and having just generally less up their sleeve than other ship specialisations
- 26c dreads like the enterprise j and durgath look like a joke compared to the discovery miracle worker ships. they should be buffed to compensate for that. it's also worth noting there are a few other promo ships that were made into a bit of a joke by this change, specifically the temporal light cruiser which amusingly is also a command ship.
-older full carriers also look like a bit of a joke compared to FDC or non-MW carriers.
________________________________
if some brave soul actually read all this i commend you and i hope it improves the game. i might have been overly simplistic with some of my explanations in here, but it might not be immediately obvious why command is not popular so i thought it was necessary.
thanks for your time.
in my opinion the bug report system should be changed to be in alphabetical order, and should obviously be updated to include all abilities.
this is a bug report and wider an explanation for devs as to why command is not popular, and why it needs to be changed, which considering there are command promotional ships, and a command lockbox ship coming in 5 days, this is highly important for game monetisation.
__________________________________________________________________________________
the bug(s): tested with Phalanx formation 1 ability - this ability creates rings you have to fly through to get a buff, but because the rings are "random" it's very hard to get them to appear in a useful location - despite being potentially intentional, this has bugs associated with it because it places the one-way-only rings facing opposite to your direction of travel, and often opposite to the second ring it creates, coupled with the fact that you often have to totally fly away from combat to use the ability, since it puts the rings in random locations, this makes it almost totally unusable.
the rings also don't always pick up when you fly through them in the one-way direction. in short, this means that the ability is very concentration-intensive, it doesn't always work, it often involves flying around in circles, and it's flat worse than a lot of standard bridge officer abilities as a result.
______________
Phalanx formation summary:
this ability needs to simply activate 3km directly in front of the ship, and flying through any of the rings in any direction should provide the buff. there needs to be something done about the detection of when a ship flies through the ring, because it does not always detect it.
______________
General feedback: command
i would like to also mention that command is severely lacking when it comes to effectiveness in general, beyond the bugged way this particular ability works. because there are so few abilities in command that do anything useful, the only high level builds that use any command abilities are kinetic (torp) builds with the concentrate firepower ability.
if you compare command ships to miracle worker ships, they literally have nothing. the miracle worker ships get abilities that provide category 2 (BONUS) damage for no costs or disadvantages, where something like phalanx formation gets essentially a minigame and literal hoops you have to jump through to get a small acc and def buff. compared to bonus damage it's almost meaningless unless you have an acc overflow build.
and that's before you get into the miracle worker specialisation offering +1 console slot, which is a massive increase in power because of the potential set bonus combinations you can put in that extra slot.
if you had finished with the command specialisation, perhaps from a business standpoint you could justify leaving the command specialisation as trash. but the problem is that cryptic is still making command ships, i have it on good authority the kelvin is going to be pilot/command.
_________________
ability by ability:
subspace interception: it might be a nice idea to have a teleport to ally ability, but limiting it to below 50% health just makes the ability totally useless, and that's the problem. most high tier builds aren't ever going to drop below, or stay below 50% health. so the ability stays greyed out potentially indefinitely, even then it has very limited range. this ability should be changed to be a group formation teleport that gives a bonus damage buff after teleporting. it should have the option to teleport the group to enemies location.
suppression barrage - it's a nice idea but it's essentially pointless outside of the context of pvp because enemies are already not very fast, aren't really effected that much by turning, and are defeated before -20% reduction in damage is really a concern.
reroute power from life support - inferior to emergency power to weapons and override subsystem safeties. since bridge officer recharges are one of the main things people seek to buff, ending up with an unbreakable -50% potential debuff to them that's not flushable by tac team is asking too much, and is too irregular. personally i'd change this to be more like the juggernaut trait and increase per shot weapon power drain instead. people would use it then.
rally point marker - this and concentrate firepower are the only two abilities i don't have a problem with, not every ability has to be dps.
overwhelm emitters - this is the single most disappointing command ability. currently it applies % of damage as shield drain to foe and shield heal to ally. in my opinion, this ability closely mirrors the part of star trek: first contact where picard orders a specific location targetted by the fleet on the borg cube. therefore it should give shield penetration based on the number of allies attacking (including hangar pets), forget the stuff about shield heals and drains, nobody cares about shields.
needs of the many - again with the shields. if i was sacrificing shields for team temporary damage buff, enemy resist debuff, team acc buff or something that's one thing. but im sacrificing shields for shields? literally why. all you need is 1% shields in this game.
concentrate firepower - meta kinetic build, do not change
call emergency artillery - this and the pilot reinforcements squadron ability should both just create permanent pets. pets that disappear after a minute are pretty bad compared to a lot of the other bridge officer abilities that are offered.
ambush point marker - while it's nice in theory there's literally only a handful of places this would be useful - but the most damning part of this ambush ability besides taking a valuable boff slot, would be that it only triggers within 3km of an enemy, and only buffs allies within 3km. while we're talking about this 20% bonus damage ability that literally neuters your ship, let's just remember that miracle worker gives out 50% bonus damage for free. you'd expect something with this many hoops to jump through to be giving a metric ton more bonuses than something with no hoops to jump through. personally since miracle worker gives this for free, i'd give "ambush" a 75% cat 2 bonus and make it so you can just pop it whenever you first enter combat. miracle worker still works out as better over time, but it's less of a joke ability for command.
__________________________________________
summary of general feedback:
command is lacking in a ton of ways compared to other specialisations. even if you don't compare command to miracle worker, just comparing it to intel, it's battery ability looks like a joke compared to override subsystem safeties, just for consistency's sake.
but then you come down to the really frustrating part of miracle worker, in that it's basically T-6-U, which means even ignoring the great cat2 bonus damage abilities, it outstrips command ships, or any other spec of ships just based on console amount. command really lacks compared to other specialisations for gimmicks. at least the intel ships get the sensor suite, temporal ships the deconstruction beam.
in my opinion command should get an extra weapon slot and/or an experimental weapon slot. this would make them very competitive compared to miracle worker ships.
_________________________
specific ship feedback explaining why the above feedback is relevant:
right now the 26c promo ships are flat worse than the discovery 23c ships, or specifically the miracle worker flight deck cruiser promo ships. this is particularly of note because of the 300 year difference between the ships.
if we look at the 26th century heavy dreadnought promotional ships, something people put a vast amount of resources to get a choice pack for, why would anyone ever choose the 26c over the 23c discovery miracle worker ships?
the 26c ship has one less console, the same amount of hangars, the same amount of weapons, worse bridge officer ability layout, worse specialisation abilities and a less offensive weapon loadout. the only benefit over a discovery miracle worker flight deck would be the hull multiplier, which is only 0.03 more than a lobi ship, worth approximately 800,000,000-1,000,000,000 credits less.
most of the issues here are down to the command and temporal specs being flat inferior to the miracle worker spec, but also due to the recent flight deck carrier update. the problem is that the 26th century dreadnought was previously only unique because it had 8 weapons, and 2 hangar bays, as well as being able to equip dual heavy cannons.
previous carriers all had 6 weapons, 2 bays, dhc or 8 weapons, 1 bay for fdc.
the change to fdc strips the 26c dread of a lot of uniqueness. you can't say it's that much of a hull tank because the kelvin vengence has a similar hull size. it's not really that great of a carrier anymore due to the gamma pack. it's not the best promo ship carrier due to the d7/donnie having an extra console slot and more cat2 damage buffs from mw spec.
my suggestion of adding an extra weapon slot to command ships, and buffing command abilities would probably make this ship more attractive for people to chase, and i might even dump my own [Special Requisition Choice Pack - Tier 6 Promotional Ship Choice Pack] on a durgath if the ship is buffed.
it just flat doesn't make sense that ships like the durgath are worse than 300 year old ships. since this only became truly an issue after all flight deck carriers were given two hangar bays, i would suggest that it's time to buff the 26c dreads in response to be even better hull tanks, to have more weapons than other ships, or even just give them the extra console slot miracle worker has, i mean its a one off promo.
___________
full summary/ TL;DR:
- buffing command means people will go out and buy command ships, buffing promo ships means people will go chase more promo packs.
- phalanx formation bugged, doesnt always work, the thing only works in one direction but its not always the same direction
- many command abilities look like jokes compared to modern miracle worker abilities. they should be buffed
- command ships should get an extra weapon slot to make up for not being miracle worker with the extra console slot, and having just generally less up their sleeve than other ship specialisations
- 26c dreads like the enterprise j and durgath look like a joke compared to the discovery miracle worker ships. they should be buffed to compensate for that. it's also worth noting there are a few other promo ships that were made into a bit of a joke by this change, specifically the temporal light cruiser which amusingly is also a command ship.
-older full carriers also look like a bit of a joke compared to FDC or non-MW carriers.
________________________________
if some brave soul actually read all this i commend you and i hope it improves the game. i might have been overly simplistic with some of my explanations in here, but it might not be immediately obvious why command is not popular so i thought it was necessary.
thanks for your time.
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Comments
make the forum less of a maze, there is a bug report in the body of the text