Star Trek Online Discussion Thread (now free to play!)

[Squiggy]

I'm finally back to where I was before the unpleasantness a couple of weeks ago.

[SilentP]

Scout101 wrote:

---

I mean they haven't developed much of anything for you to DO at endgame, and the PvP is awful, so unless you just wanna keep rerunning the episodes, PvE (specifically STFs mostly) are pretty much all you have to do, and gear up for.

Sorry, was somehow thinking your comment about PVE was tied into Sci ships when you wrote it (my mistake).

Sure, with the regular mission episodes, and to a point. The STFs, though, are timed, and DPS is really the key there. Or, at the very least, tanking and threat control so that the DPS guys can just pound away without getting shot at.

As has been mentioned before, it doesn't matter what your ship's DPS is, if your ships keep blowing up, that's precious seconds spent respawning and getting back into the fray.

Thought you couldn't do the STFs until you hit Lvl 50?

Seems to be when you hit Rear Admiral Upper Half, you can do the normal difficulty STFs.

Not saying it might not be fun to play, and that there aren't uses, just saying that having a SCI show up in your STF group means your odds of winning (or getting the optional, at least) likely just went down. Every second counts, and if you can't put out damage, or absorb it so others can, you're not helping much. You basically just hope that you're the only one, otherwise you end up in an all-SCI group, and are almost definitely not gonna make it in time.
Been the only TAC in a group a few times (once with FOUR SCI ships!), and while they were all decent players, they just didn't have the guns to actually accomplish the mission in time. Cool in a support role, but you're basically dependent on the rest of the team, so not a huge help. If you don't get any TAC to support, you don't make it.

I'll be honest, I've only ever seen one instance where Sci ships/characters were in the majority. While in some cases, having the majority as Sci might be a hindrance, I think having a majority of anyone particular class can be a problem. In some cases, a Sci character can make it easier to make sure those optionals are easier to attain. For example, in Infected, using a combination of Gravity Well and Photonic Shockwave to keep the Nanite ships away from the Nanite Transformers etc.

i didn't really use it until i hit max level, for mostly that reason. The cruiser could take a lot more pounding while I learned to play, and made it easier. Tried an escort once or twice, but i was still flying it and gearing it like a cruiser, so it was sacrificing the ability to tank, and not taking advantage of the offensive ability correctly. Once I smoothed out my build, and had the character spec'ed right, it got a lot easier. Still can't take the pounding I can when i move over to my Gal-X, but generally the bad guys aren't still around to TRY and pound me once I've made a pass or two.

I'll level up my Tac/Escort, and see if it wins me over. To be honest, I have a feeling that my general play style favours slugging it out with the enemy and acting as tank/support rather than pure damage, so this might be my personal bias speaking in general.

Plus, after flying the escort for a bit, i can't stand the inability to turn in a cruiser. the Oddy mission to pick up the new ship was absolutely brutal. gotta make a 12-point turn to get out of spacedock, and need about 3 solar systems to complete a turn...

Can't argue with the cruiser turn rate Even with RCS Accelerator, most cruisers are laborious to get to turn. It's one of the things I like about Klingon cruisers, much more agile, even if not Escort level.

[Scout101]

SilentP wrote:

---

I'll be honest, I've only ever seen one instance where Sci ships/characters were in the majority. While in some cases, having the majority as Sci might be a hindrance, I think having a majority of anyone particular class can be a problem. In some cases, a Sci character can make it easier to make sure those optionals are easier to attain. For example, in Infected, using a combination of Gravity Well and Photonic Shockwave to keep the Nanite ships away from the Nanite Transformers etc.

Might be play style, but in your example, it's possible to do it that way, but not at all necessary. Simplest way to do that is just knock all 4 generators on one side to just under 10%, then blow all 4 at the same time. Everyone then pounds on the Transformer, and if you have decent DPS, the thing is destroyed long before the spheres wander over to repair it. You then just mop up and move to the other side.

Simpler, and doesn't require much coordination or special team builds to do. That's why it's the most common battle plan for that one.

Not that the other classes can't find a way to play a role, just that this is why DPS is favored so heavily; because you can wander into a new group (not a group that's from the same fleet and worked together), and there's an easy, straightforward way to make it work every time, as long as you brought decent DPS/survivability. I bring an Escort, and then split my skills between causing damage and surviving as much as I can. I can't take as much damage as a Cruiser, but can dish out a lot more.

SCI is looked down on a bit because while cruisers are all about tanking, and escorts are all about damage, SCI are somewhere in the middle, which means that they generally aren't really great at either, although they can certainly contribute, and a good build can overcome a certain amount of that.

Carriers get you better damage, but when you have specific mission goals, automated drones can be an issue. Like having your ship on autofire, or calling in photonic fleet, sometimes you need to STOP shooting at something, as most of the easiest ways to beat a space STF involve NOT blowing something up, but just taking out the support ships, or knocking the gate to 10%, etc.

Anyway, just different play styles, mostly. Main reason I stay away from SCI is that the BOFF abilities you get there just aren't as helpful to my play style as being able to pump lots of cannon fire or torpedoes out there, or repair my forward shield quickly...

[Samusaran11]

I think the game is decent but the Lockbox issues are concerning.

For the KDF players I started my KDF character whats a good Ship on the KDF side that is good in DPS.

I reached Lv 50 on my Fed character wanting to do something different.

[Timelord_Victorious]

Best DPS you find on the Raptors. Bird of Prey is also pretty decent. Not quite as much raw damage but it can use any bridge officer power thanks to the universal stations.
The BoP also has the Battlecloak and highest turn rate in the game (only rivaled by MVAM Prometheus when seperated) to make up for it's tissue paper hull.

[Xhiandra]

People (mostly on the official STO forums) love to argue that X ships aren't desirable for STFs and that Escorts are favoured.
And yes, I'll admit that nowadays I tend to prefer having other Escorts around than Cruisers/Science Vessels.


But is it due to inherent ship imbalance? No.
STFs oriented towards DPS alone? No.
No, the reason is: everyone tries to be a DD.
If everyone tries to be a DD, inevitably the ships slanted towards DDing (Escorts/Raptors) will be favoured over the ships built around tanking (Cruisers/Battle Cruisers) or healing/CCing (Science Vessels/Varanus); it's mostly a playerbase issue not a game issue.

In most MMOs (and how it was intended to work in STO), tanks grab attention away from healers and DDs, healers keep tanks alive and DDs try to maximise their damage-over-time and stay out of AoEs; in STO STFs many tanks let DDs have the Borg's undivided attention and healers sit on their heals, never really needing them since they rarely attract any attention... and everyone accepts that as a normal thing.

When I started doing STFs, I was glad to see Cruisers and Science Vessels, but nowadays I'd really rather not.
What's the point if I'm going to:
- top the parse (DD);
- have that Tactical Cube/Gateway/Donatra's attention from 100% to 0%, respawn time excluded (tank);
- have to rely on my own heals alone (heal).

When I fly a Cruiser (Bortas), I'm not content with firing at the target; I actually consider it a responsibility of mine not to let my teammates die.
I don't bemoan "that noob that always dies" because quite frankly, unless he's halfway across the map, i have some responsibility in his death.
When I fly a Science Vessel... well, actually, I don't. I'd like to try it, but I don't have the character slots.


Now, there are gameplay reasons behind that sad state of affairs, it's not entirely a playerbase issue:

1. There are very few tanking tools availlable.
Points in Threat Control help (and when I fly my Bortas, the Escorts don't get fired at too often), Fire at Will also helps focus a crowd on yourself, but that's still scarce tools to tank.
If it was up to me:

- ships would have a passive threat generation modifier based on their "tankiness":
Cruisers/Battle Cruisers: +25% threat
Carriers/Flight-Deck Cruisers: +15% threat
Science Vessels/Fleet Support Vessels: +10% threat
Escorts/Raptors/Destroyers: -10% threat
Raiders: -15% threat
Exact numbers obviously subject to change.
This encourages tanking AND mixing up: your team only benefits from this if there are different ship types in the group, obviously.

- I'd add some BOFF powers that fulfil new functions, like:
Timely arrival (engineering):
Level I, LT: diverts damage from a friendly ship to yourself for the next 15s and reduces it by 10%*.
Level II, LTC: diverts damage from a friendly ship to yourself for the next 20s and reduces it by 15%*.
Level III, C: diverts damage from a friendly ship to yourself for the next 30s and reduces it by 25%*.
*on top of your other resistances.
Cooldown: 150s->110s.
Shares cooldown with: nothing.
Modified by: Shield power level (+.05% damage reduction per point over 25).

It's a big staple of MMO tanking, the ability to shield an ally from damage.
For the canon-obsessed: think of the Enterprise-E shielding the Defiant towards the beginning of First Contact. Now you can reproduce that scene!
Potential issue: though this is meant for PVE, it could throw PvP balance off and I can't find a good name. I'm bad at naming things. "Cover" was another name I considered, but it's awfully generic.


2. PvE and PvP aren't separated.

Crowd Control and other debuff abilities for instance can't be balanced for both, not if they do the same thing: instantly and completely disabling a Tactical Cube for 10 seconds is useful, but not necessarily OP whereas instantly and completely disabling a BoP for 10s in PvP is OP; instantly immobilising 5 Spheres is nice but not OP whereas instantly immobilising the whole other PvP team is OP.

Those abilities need to have different magnitudes (or even completely different effects) in PvP and PvE; otherwise Science Vessels will always either be underpowered in PvE or overpowered in PvP, alternating between those 2 statuses with each nerf/buff cycle.


3. Gear is a bit of a mess.
A Science Vessel, a Cruiser and an Escort shouldn't strive for the same gear and to an extent, they don't... to a very limited extent.

The core idea was good:

Deflectors: Graviton Deflectors give boosts to Science abilities (meant for SVs), Neutrino Deflectors grant resistance to status effects (great for tanks - though I'd replace Sensors with Threat Control) and Positron Deflectors help make glass cannons slightly less glassy (other than Omega, the slot doesn't give boosts to DDing); Tachyons are a bit more all over the place.


Engines: Hyper-Impulse engines were meant for manoeuvrable, high Engine setting Escorts; Combat-Impulse to make Cruisers slightly less clumsy and Impulse a middleground for SVs.
Execution wasn't so good: Hyper-Impulse are basically best for everyone, the cut-off point is too low (Hyper-Impulse are faster than other engines at ~49+ Engine Power).


Shields: Regenerative Shields were probably meant for the long-lasting Cruisers, as they'll get more mileage out of the high regen, Covariants for the frail Escorts who can't get much benefit from the regen and Resilients for the "weak Hull, strong Shields" Science Vessels who'd welcome taking less Hull damage.

But endgame sets are all over the place! MACO has a mostly Positron (despite the name) Deflector, Impulse Engines and Resilient Shields; Omega a mostly Neutrino (despite the name) Deflector, Hyper-Impulse Engines and Regenerative Shields; KHG a mostly Tachyon (despite the name) Deflector, Impulse Engines and Covariant Shields... and since Set effects are so strong, mix-and-matching is kept to a minimum (the Borg consoles allows mix-matching 2 sets, better than nothing).

[Vendikarr]

I want to thank everyone for their advice with my problem. Using as many of the suggestions as I could, I get the dang Reman half way by the time he kills me. Perhaps I still have to figure out how to fight him. He closes on me and locks me in tractor beams. I can't seem to stop all the torpedoes and he takes me out. I don't have any room to add anything to block his tractor.

[SilentP]

Have you changed any of your Boff powers yet? Polarize Hull is going to be near vital in this fight.

[Vendikarr]

SilentP wrote:

---

Have you changed any of your Boff powers yet? Polarize Hull is going to be near vital in this fight.

Yes, that did help.

I finally got through it. When the Reman ship drops out of warp, he got me every time. After I was destroyed, I made the approach and fought him on my terms. Doing that I finally beat him.

Thank you all for your help and advice in showing me how to set up my ship. I think I will do a much better job setting up my next one.

[Scout101]

If you (or anyone else) gets stuck on something, feel freel to ask for help in the Fleet chat. Most of the time, sure there's someone that will be able to pop in and crush the opposition with you. Did it a few times when i was starting out, playing with a partner in the missions can be fun.

[Xhiandra]

Hey, so I started a Sci/sci char earlier.
I'd like to focus on shield-stripping abilities (Tachyon&so on), Kinetic damage (Torpedoes, Photonic Shockwave) as well as getting a good mileage out of Feedback Pulse... but my only Sci char flies a Sovereign and was always meant to, so i never really skilled into Sci-specific skills; would something like this work out well?

[Bird of Prey]

After several badly failed attempts at completing the STF Cure Space Elite, I finally got into a great group that completed the mission, though failed the optional objective. And the game sure rewarded me for my patience... 2 EDC's, a prototype Borg salvage, and prototype Engine. I was finally able to complete the MKXII MACO space set.

On a different topic, who here thinks the off-duty uniforms should be made available to our Boffs? I bought the DS9 bundle, and was hoping to put the vedek uniform on a purple Bajoran boff, but was disappointed when it was only available on my main toon.

[Scout101]

Bastard :P been trying to get that one for a while.

If anyone ever sees me on, up for any STF, and almost always running a group through. Getting fairly sick of them, but can breeze through most. Infected Ground Elite is the only one I don't run much, although I need the Optional for that one if anyone's good with it and the trigger lines...

[Timelord_Victorious]

Scout101 wrote:

---

Bastard :P been trying to get that one for a while.

If anyone ever sees me on, up for any STF, and almost always running a group through. Getting fairly sick of them, but can breeze through most. Infected Ground Elite is the only one I don't run much, although I need the Optional for that one if anyone's good with it and the trigger lines...

i don't know the exact trigger lines but know the save spots...

[intrinsical]

I don't know where the trigger lines are, but its alright so long as you're always behind a group member who knows where the trigger lines are. And be sure not to be fooled by clones and security escorts who run ahead.