Captain Skills

colonelmarik · September 2023

You know, I've always wished our Captains had other options for their skills. I mean, I never use skills like Photonic Fleet (it defies both actual and fictional Trek science), Neural Neutralizer or Co-opt Weapons, so it would be cool if there were other options for us to take.

Maybe we could get two or three options at each of the levels the skills are granted?

What do you think? What skills might we like to see added?

peterconnorfirst · September 2023

I like this idea.

The handful of captain skills/abilities are pretty much the only thing that differentiates the 3 classes we have in game. Yea, some few traits and on ground kit modules on ground ad to that but that’s about it.

Would be cool if any form of selection could straighten the classes out a bit as far as dmg dealing is concerned *and*/*or* making them even more distinct if a player wishes to that.

Frustrates a bit that tacs always seem to do stuff best even in un-tac business like tanking or exotics.

postagepaid · September 2023

They gave up on the MMO trinity a fair while back and probably won't ever return to it

phoenixc · September 2023

I just figure that Photonic Fleet is the visible part of an ECCM attack that allows more hits to get through, or that and just nother of the equally unlikely summoning powers (really, why would reinforcements just hang around a few seconds to fire a few volleys and leave?). There are a lot of things that don't make sense in the game (and the shows themselves) if you think about it too much.

Likewise, Co-opt Weapons seems to tag enemy ships with some sort of device or energy construct from the visuals, it probably does something like watch the weapons build up to firing and synchronizes the shields with them in a way that converts the energy into something useable by the structural integrity fields or whatever for a short time.

Neural Neutralizer is probably the furthest-out of the unlikely effects. It comes from the TOS episode Dagger of the Mind and was supposed to be a beam that suppresses higher function thought to force a suggestible state on the patient (more like victim). Apparently, the best the beam can do in the chaos and ECM noise and whatnot of a space battle is fuzz up someone's thinking enough to put them off their A-game for a few seconds.

Those abilities are actually tame compared to the often-wild flights of space fantasy that routinely happens in NuTrek, so personally I don't worry about them making real sense since if they did do new alternates, they would probably come from NuTrek and make even less sense than the current ones.

As for captains of one department being intrinsically better than others, that is heavily dependent on the player's style of play. For instance, for me Tac is the least effective, Sci the best, and Eng a reasonable second place option.

knightmare · September 2023

I thought the Photonic Fleet was from Voyager where they used a Photonic fleet in a battle, but those didn't do any damage or anything. I often use it though on my Science captains, as for the Tactical version I've never used it.

leemwatson · September 2023

I always use Photonic fleet, whether it breaks the laws of physics or not, it's the equivalent of Security Team on the Ground and goes well with summoning fleet support. Used correctly, it can draw aggro when you need to move somewhere else. All the Sci captain's abilities are useful, and I don't think there would be anything better for Sci.

phoenixc · September 2023

knightmare#8708 wrote: »

I thought the Photonic Fleet was from Voyager where they used a Photonic fleet in a battle, but those didn't do any damage or anything. I often use it though on my Science captains, as for the Tactical version I've never used it.

Yes, it is from Voyager, but they used it for a distraction to startle and intimidate an enemy who thought it was a real ship decloaking (or whatever) a trick which would not work more than once. The game version is not like that since they do damage, so I think of it as a sort of wild weasel, or another summon ability, or something when I think about it at all instead of just using it (and I use it a lot).

I suppose the devs may be thinking of projecting holodeck matter and making a temporary physical device, which might work if they used nothing but torpedoes, but it is still unlikely at best.

rattler2 · September 2023

Well... if you think about it, if you turn off the holodeck safeties even a holographic bullet can kill. We saw this in First Contact with Picard gunning down two drones with a Tommy Gun. So it would make sense if, with enough research, a holographic ship can cause damage. And the Holographic ships only use energy weapons to my knowledge. No torpedoes.

husanakx · September 2023

Photonic fleet was always intended to be more of a spam creation distraction skill. Its just that power creep has sort of made that pointless. Early in the game it was a good way to distract some NPCs, or players in PvP. The game just has so much spam now photo fleet isn't a big deal.

Photo fleet could use a revamp really. They should probably do zero hull dmg... but have a taunt and +500% threat generation or something and after 20-30s they should all Barclay the closest enemy doing shield (or electrical) damage. Such a revamp would make co-opt weapons a little more attractive. Make sci tank a bit better.

As for differences in the 3 careers and people thinking tac is the only class that can do dmg. That isn't really true all 3 are capable of very high end damage. Tac is without a doubt however the most versatile class. Science is really going to shine and = tacs with EPG (even then specific sci favoring builds)... and Engi is really a pointless class to play with a torp/kinetic build. Tac can do play any role equally well.

phoenixc · September 2023

Like I said earlier though, any new abilities would probably be based on the space fantasy nonsense they use all too often in the new shows, and so they would make even less sense than what we have now.

lianthelia · September 2023

colonelmarik wrote: »

The issues I have with Photonic Fleet specifically are:
It was previously established several times in several shows that holograms cannot exist outside of a holodeck or other enclosed space with holoemitters within.
It makes NO sense that weapons fired from holographic ships would have ANY effect on anything. Why build ships from normal materials when you can make everything from holograms and have them be just as effective? On the show, of course, this wasn't an issue, as the weapons didn't do damage, but it is an issue in the game.
The power costs would be prohibitive. We saw this many times in the shows, holodecks use substantial amounts of power. This is even more the case if the holographic ships are going to do damage. I mean, ships have just enough power for their OWN weapons, let alone a fleet of holographic ships, who MUST be getting power from the projecting ship.
Enemies should be easily able to tell which ships are real and which are not, as holographic ships would have NO MASS... so it's not particularly effective, even as a distraction.

Now, I'm not saying the ability should be changed or removed or anything like that, and I only mentioned it specifically because it is one I do dislike for the reasons above. My goal here is to see if we can suggest new abilities that can be presented as alternatives for Captains, abilities that are somewhat more "realistic," which I would prefer.

Well technology evolves...perhaps they deploy some kind of temporary holoprojectors, holoprojectors also have safeties, when deactivated they can kill

Remember this is the 25th century...after technology like the mobile emitter was studied

Not to mention all the timey wimey stuff we've encountered...knowledge of ships up to the 32nd century

Captain Skills

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