One problem is that most of the current game you end up facing enemies like the Mokai so much that people get used to getting right up in their face and using AoE weapons since they swarm you anyway with trash mobs. Also, their tendency to concentrate on narrow forward arc weapons and medium ranges is a disadvantage in "knife fight" style combat. So people come out of the gate and head straight towards them firing, at which point their AI has them milling around to bring their main weapons to bear.
They are not very good at spawn camping because the trash mob pack is essentially a kind of collective DoT that divides itself across all four shield facings with a high chance that a lot of them will be facing the wrong way and have to maneuver before firing their main weapons (and they are not particularly fast or agile), which is just enough time for your power levels to come back up, start moving, and even start launching pets.
The Vaadwaur are just the opposite. They are bursty, relatively quick and agile mixed with slower (but still more agile than average for the size) ships that tend to stand off a ways and lob persistent area denial weapons and ranged AoEs. And just to add insult to injury their energy weapons are drain types (polaron) and those anchors are a type of heavy movement drain, which when used on the player unit right after spawn can delay getting back to reasonably effective power levels and mobility. And getting close like the early game teaches you to do with Mokai is a bad idea because with some Vaadwaur units that triggers a targeting disable on the player unit and calls in enemy reinforcements.
With the early game training people to scream and leap the Vaadwaur can come as a nasty shock (similar to how enemies like the Mokai train players to use gravity wells as much as possible, so when they face the Tzenkethi who are nastier when packed up they ended up getting shredded by them).
The Tholian Red Alert used to be a good thing to break people out of that rut since shooting from near the spawn point would bring a bunch down on it and their crossfire with shield and power degrading weapons with relatively wide arcs was very bad news to respawning ships for much the same reasons as the Vaadwaur. Once people get the idea that sometimes it is better to loop around and attack from a different angle to draw them away from the point others like the Vaadwaur become easier to handle.
If they mixed things up more early in the game players would not get caught like that so much, but then again if they over did it it would make the game seem more homogenous and duller overall.
OK no judging of gear hear. You can beat even the hardest content with white junk.
The problem as I am reading it is not about your build as much as your piloting. Again no knock... this game was built to be very easy, and at some point along the way a handful of Cryptic devs have decided to add actual challenging content. (and that is relative) the difference between most of those older early missions and later game Vauudwar or Tzenkathi stuff ect can be jarring.
Basically most of the newer end game enemies have strategies that work against them. Where as the earlier enemies really you just have to go pew pew long enough. For the vaads you need to keep moving. You can not sit still. To break a spawn camp in PvE or PvP.... first understand your ship power settings. If you need to adjust your Engine power up... if you have to run it at 100 setting that is fine. Its not the end of the world if your weapons are not always at 100. Although a 100/25/50/25 type setup should be sufficient. When you respawn... use your EVASIVE MANUVERS skill. Everyone gets this skill for free... its got a pretty short cool down... and if you pop it while your engine power is set at 100 you will be 20k away from the vaads instantly. Then you can turn and fight. Watch for the obvious tell tale that they are firing charges and avoid them.
You can also use engine batteries and other tricks to get moving when you spawn. Emergency power to engines is a great option... pilot team if your flying a pilot ship (or pilot maneuvers if you are).
You can also use your kinetic resist skill Brace For Impact (again a skill everyone has for free). This will greatly reduce kinetic damage if you do take a few charge blasts. On the same lines you can also use skills like Aux to Dampeners or Aux to Structural Integrity, Polarized Hull, or Hazard Emitters to boost your resistance to kinetic damage.
Honstly by the time you hit Delta Rising, you should at least have synergized your damage types through a combination of drops and probably exchange purchases or even some fleet gear.
Funny thing is that for a long time, the core of my phaser build was the old mk XII purple phaser arrays that were originally mission rewards for those evil patrol wrappers we had at the start of Delta Rising. [Acc]x3 arrays? Best arrays I had for a long time. A fleetmate called them a PvPers Nightmare. And I was packing 6 of those bad boys. Still got them, but I've augmented that build with various mission reward and rep gear since then.
I may not have hit as hard, but I was hitting more often.
Vaadwaur aren't easy enemies. Especially if you're still levelling or have just made level 50.
Increasing the agility of your ship to at least avoid the powerful blasts, would probably help. Polarize hull or attack pattern omega can greatly help with this. Aux to inertial dampeners may also help.
Try using a shield that has additional resistance to polaron ([Pol] modifier). Maybe also use engineering consoles that boost polaron resistance.
[4:46] [Combat {self}] Your Haymaker deals 23337 (9049) Physical Damage(Critical) to Spawnmother
OK no judging of gear hear. You can beat even the hardest content with white junk.
If it is well chosen and logically laid out, hence my list of guidelines.
For example, a whole row of Disruptor Coil consoles does you no good if your weapons are Phasers.
The point, though, is you don't need to have damage boosting consoles at all. You can run a ship without any consoles and still win. You need weapons of course, and consoles help, as does making them work together in a cogent build. There's no question it helps, but it isn't going to be the difference between winning and losing if you're using bad tactics.
At the end of the day, if you're flying into every big damage move the Vaudwaar do, you're going to lose. Having phaser consoles with phaser weapons won't change that.
> @mysterion69 said: > stuck in a mission right now where i'm supposed to fight off 4 waves of vaadwaur... except that they are all (at least a dozen ships) camping the spawn point, so as soon as i respawn, i'm dead. i can't even kill a single ship in the second wave before i die, again. > > so, go ahead and explain how that's either fun or fair. go ahead. i'll wait.
I'm going to chime in here. I understand where you are coming from. There are moments when I'm playing the game at normal difficulty and it seems that I am just trying to stay alive with a tier 6 ship and level 15 gear with same weapon type etc..., and this is happening in both missions and some patrols. For those who say, "well, seems like you don't want to learn how to play the game or learn about game mechanics," I think you're missing the point. There are different levels that you can play STO in. Normal difficulty should be something you can log in to and play the game casually with reasonable gear even at level 12 and go through the missions without feeling like you're fighting for your life. If you want a bigger challenge then you can switch to Advanced or Elite. But you shouldn't have to feel frustrated in Normal level just trying to play through some of the missions or patrols. Sometimes you just want to go through the story and get your Star Trek fix, you don't want to worry about resistances, great piloting, or stellar dps output.
The OP has a very valid point. When I came back to STO after several years away, I ran into the same issue when I got to the Delta Rising content.
The fundamental flaw with Delta Rising, is that it was an expansion that was built to be a challenge for end game players when it came out. This means that the main enemy, the Vaadwaur, marks a significant increase in difficulty over the other enemies you run into up to that point. Both in terms of fire power and tactics, the Vaadwaur were designed to be a challenge for end game players back when the expansion came out. This is bad game design, because story content should never be designed to challenge end game players.
Another thing I've actually used against the Vaadwaur... is Reverse Shield Polarity. If I know I can't get out of the barrage in time, I'll pop RSP. Damage gets limited, and instead of losing shields the Vaadwaur are fueling my shields. Should buy enough time to get clear.
stuck in a mission right now where i'm supposed to fight off 4 waves of vaadwaur... except that they are all (at least a dozen ships) camping the spawn point, so as soon as i respawn, i'm dead. i can't even kill a single ship in the second wave before i die, again.
so, go ahead and explain how that's either fun or fair. go ahead. i'll wait.
Non-descriptive title changed, per FCT rules. -- WingedHussar
My strategy against Vaadwaur is always be in movement and as fast as possible. That way you don't get hit by the polaron bombardment which does the most damage.
C-Store Inc. is still looking for active members on the fed side. If you don't have a fleet feel free to contact me in game @stegi.
I was the idiot who suggested the OP ask for help from a teammate. My point was to help them get unstuck in the current mission they were having problems with, and was meant to be mildly helpful without knowing anything else.
However, I can see now that I started an argument I never meant to start. For that I apologise.
CM
p.s. I'll be there first to admit that I am probably an awful player by most of your standards and have no right to offer advice to anyone... Again, forgive me...
"Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure science." - Edwin Hubble
This can very well be a bug. I once died about twenty times in 'A Step between the Stars' fighting the Undine ships, because my allies, Bortasq'ue and Llisset did not engage in the fight and I stood on my own.
There is also this game mechanic that NPC's, space and ground, do not take damage. If that mechanic glitches, you get stuck. Leave the mission and returning into the mission can solve the problem. You can also leave the mission, remove it and start it over from the beginning.
Now the Vaudwaar. My tactic is to keep moving or fly with a higher speed. When they target you with those clusters, fly away from it.
I use the fly fast tactic as well along with fairly sturdy ships and it's not like my even now is super great, I play STO to have fun not to win some competion.
I was the idiot who suggested the OP ask for help from a teammate. My point was to help them get unstuck in the current mission they were having problems with, and was meant to be mildly helpful without knowing anything else.
However, I can see now that I started an argument I never meant to start. For that I apologise.
CM
p.s. I'll be there first to admit that I am probably an awful player by most of your standards and have no right to offer advice to anyone... Again, forgive me...
There is no need for YOU to apologize for anything. If anything, you are the hero of this thread because the OP ended up doing what you suggested, and it got him past his issue.
And the thing with coldnapalm really is not on you at all. Don't worry about that. He just thinks anyone who wants to play this game casually and just be able to move through the story is ignorance incarnate and "Learn how to play" is the only correct response...
Now, now, coldnapalm serves a useful role in these discussions; he represents the hardcore faction. It's true he can be somewhat abrasive at times, but I am occasionally guilty of the same thing, as are most of us. In his favor, I will say that I have often learned things from the posts of coldnapalm, and thereby become a better player.
Comments
They are not very good at spawn camping because the trash mob pack is essentially a kind of collective DoT that divides itself across all four shield facings with a high chance that a lot of them will be facing the wrong way and have to maneuver before firing their main weapons (and they are not particularly fast or agile), which is just enough time for your power levels to come back up, start moving, and even start launching pets.
The Vaadwaur are just the opposite. They are bursty, relatively quick and agile mixed with slower (but still more agile than average for the size) ships that tend to stand off a ways and lob persistent area denial weapons and ranged AoEs. And just to add insult to injury their energy weapons are drain types (polaron) and those anchors are a type of heavy movement drain, which when used on the player unit right after spawn can delay getting back to reasonably effective power levels and mobility. And getting close like the early game teaches you to do with Mokai is a bad idea because with some Vaadwaur units that triggers a targeting disable on the player unit and calls in enemy reinforcements.
With the early game training people to scream and leap the Vaadwaur can come as a nasty shock (similar to how enemies like the Mokai train players to use gravity wells as much as possible, so when they face the Tzenkethi who are nastier when packed up they ended up getting shredded by them).
The Tholian Red Alert used to be a good thing to break people out of that rut since shooting from near the spawn point would bring a bunch down on it and their crossfire with shield and power degrading weapons with relatively wide arcs was very bad news to respawning ships for much the same reasons as the Vaadwaur. Once people get the idea that sometimes it is better to loop around and attack from a different angle to draw them away from the point others like the Vaadwaur become easier to handle.
If they mixed things up more early in the game players would not get caught like that so much, but then again if they over did it it would make the game seem more homogenous and duller overall.
The problem as I am reading it is not about your build as much as your piloting. Again no knock... this game was built to be very easy, and at some point along the way a handful of Cryptic devs have decided to add actual challenging content. (and that is relative) the difference between most of those older early missions and later game Vauudwar or Tzenkathi stuff ect can be jarring.
Basically most of the newer end game enemies have strategies that work against them. Where as the earlier enemies really you just have to go pew pew long enough. For the vaads you need to keep moving. You can not sit still. To break a spawn camp in PvE or PvP.... first understand your ship power settings. If you need to adjust your Engine power up... if you have to run it at 100 setting that is fine. Its not the end of the world if your weapons are not always at 100. Although a 100/25/50/25 type setup should be sufficient. When you respawn... use your EVASIVE MANUVERS skill. Everyone gets this skill for free... its got a pretty short cool down... and if you pop it while your engine power is set at 100 you will be 20k away from the vaads instantly. Then you can turn and fight. Watch for the obvious tell tale that they are firing charges and avoid them.
You can also use engine batteries and other tricks to get moving when you spawn. Emergency power to engines is a great option... pilot team if your flying a pilot ship (or pilot maneuvers if you are).
You can also use your kinetic resist skill Brace For Impact (again a skill everyone has for free). This will greatly reduce kinetic damage if you do take a few charge blasts. On the same lines you can also use skills like Aux to Dampeners or Aux to Structural Integrity, Polarized Hull, or Hazard Emitters to boost your resistance to kinetic damage.
Funny thing is that for a long time, the core of my phaser build was the old mk XII purple phaser arrays that were originally mission rewards for those evil patrol wrappers we had at the start of Delta Rising. [Acc]x3 arrays? Best arrays I had for a long time. A fleetmate called them a PvPers Nightmare. And I was packing 6 of those bad boys. Still got them, but I've augmented that build with various mission reward and rep gear since then.
I may not have hit as hard, but I was hitting more often.
Increasing the agility of your ship to at least avoid the powerful blasts, would probably help. Polarize hull or attack pattern omega can greatly help with this. Aux to inertial dampeners may also help.
Try using a shield that has additional resistance to polaron ([Pol] modifier). Maybe also use engineering consoles that boost polaron resistance.
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
The point, though, is you don't need to have damage boosting consoles at all. You can run a ship without any consoles and still win. You need weapons of course, and consoles help, as does making them work together in a cogent build. There's no question it helps, but it isn't going to be the difference between winning and losing if you're using bad tactics.
At the end of the day, if you're flying into every big damage move the Vaudwaar do, you're going to lose. Having phaser consoles with phaser weapons won't change that.
If the OP is flying a sci ship for example, simply disabling or seriously weakening their weapons will also greatly help you survive.
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
> stuck in a mission right now where i'm supposed to fight off 4 waves of vaadwaur... except that they are all (at least a dozen ships) camping the spawn point, so as soon as i respawn, i'm dead. i can't even kill a single ship in the second wave before i die, again.
>
> so, go ahead and explain how that's either fun or fair. go ahead. i'll wait.
I'm going to chime in here. I understand where you are coming from. There are moments when I'm playing the game at normal difficulty and it seems that I am just trying to stay alive with a tier 6 ship and level 15 gear with same weapon type etc..., and this is happening in both missions and some patrols. For those who say, "well, seems like you don't want to learn how to play the game or learn about game mechanics," I think you're missing the point. There are different levels that you can play STO in. Normal difficulty should be something you can log in to and play the game casually with reasonable gear even at level 12 and go through the missions without feeling like you're fighting for your life. If you want a bigger challenge then you can switch to Advanced or Elite. But you shouldn't have to feel frustrated in Normal level just trying to play through some of the missions or patrols. Sometimes you just want to go through the story and get your Star Trek fix, you don't want to worry about resistances, great piloting, or stellar dps output.
The fundamental flaw with Delta Rising, is that it was an expansion that was built to be a challenge for end game players when it came out. This means that the main enemy, the Vaadwaur, marks a significant increase in difficulty over the other enemies you run into up to that point. Both in terms of fire power and tactics, the Vaadwaur were designed to be a challenge for end game players back when the expansion came out. This is bad game design, because story content should never be designed to challenge end game players.
My strategy against Vaadwaur is always be in movement and as fast as possible. That way you don't get hit by the polaron bombardment which does the most damage.
I was the idiot who suggested the OP ask for help from a teammate. My point was to help them get unstuck in the current mission they were having problems with, and was meant to be mildly helpful without knowing anything else.
However, I can see now that I started an argument I never meant to start. For that I apologise.
CM
p.s. I'll be there first to admit that I am probably an awful player by most of your standards and have no right to offer advice to anyone... Again, forgive me...
There is also this game mechanic that NPC's, space and ground, do not take damage. If that mechanic glitches, you get stuck. Leave the mission and returning into the mission can solve the problem. You can also leave the mission, remove it and start it over from the beginning.
Now the Vaudwaar. My tactic is to keep moving or fly with a higher speed. When they target you with those clusters, fly away from it.
Now, now, coldnapalm serves a useful role in these discussions; he represents the hardcore faction. It's true he can be somewhat abrasive at times, but I am occasionally guilty of the same thing, as are most of us. In his favor, I will say that I have often learned things from the posts of coldnapalm, and thereby become a better player.