Wall of text to follow, you were warned. TLDR...look down



The biggest issue I've noticed so far is that there is almost no way to even come close to what an escort can produce dps wise. At least not without highly specialized builds that become less effective everywhere else.

And that is as it should be.. well sorta. Yes the escort's role is dealing damage, but, shouldn't there be a way to at least come close in the other types of ship? I'm talking about pre buffing here, obviously an escort should out damage with all the tac buffs available but there should at least be comparable weapons available to the other ship classes.

As it stands a mk xii standard dual heavy cannon deals 384 dpv and 256d ps, where as a mx xii dual beam bank deals 287 dpv and 229 dps. Which is a marked difference in potential. Granted the beam bank has doubble the firing arc but I feel that is countered by the fact that of the vessels that can't use dual cannons only the science vessels really have the turn rate to employ them properly (with a few exceptions).

Really most of this problem applys to cruisers but afew other vessels can fall into this rut. The fact is there are plenty of ships (mostly fed side I'm sure) that fall into the no mans land of beam arrays, where the only option is arrays and nothing else will work properlly (I'm looking at you 6 degree turn rates).

So we can either up the turn rates on the slower ships (but honestly I doubt that would help much), or we can introduce more beam weapons to fill the gap in effectiveness.

So far there are 4 cannon type weapons and only 2 beam type. With the cannon weapons having the widest arc weapons and the highest damage weapons. They also favor the narrow arc weapons having 2 narrow arc 1 medium arc and one wide arc available. So far beams only haave a medium and wide arc weapon. I propose 2 new beam type weapons to balance this out favoring the wide arc

The first type would be the heavy version of a beam array
270 degree firing arc
440 dpv 176 dps
-14 weapons power levels

The second would be a beam version of a turret
360 degree firing arc
132 dpv 99 dps
-8 weapons power levels

I also find it strange the the highest level beam skills can only be used on a select few ship classes, most of which are also capeable of using dual cannons. This seems to further push the bias against the beam type since at those levels cannon skills can do more damage. I would propose moving the tier 3 beam weapon skills down a rank. Since none of them are available to the skills trainers anyway I don't think this would affect balance too much. However I would also suggest beam overload 3 get a higher power drain to discourage its use on the already stacked escorts.

Thoughts?

TLDR? Give us 2 more beam weapon types and move the high level beam weapon skills down a rank.

Better stuff here http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/sh...d.php?t=533021

Cruiser captains will love this idea, escort captains will conceal their fear of this idea by saying it's "unnecessary". And nothing will change.

To be fair tho it can benifit an escort captain too. The beam skills at lower levels means they could still take say a bo3 and have room for 2 ltc abilitys. Or use 4 froe bhc's and a rear beam turret with a subsyem ability or bo.
A
nd beam turrets favor science vessels more since they could use foreward dbb's and still use the innate sub system targeting with a rear beam turret.

Really is odd there are so many beam skills and so few beam weapons.

I would just add a simple toggle, for beam arrays.

Option One: Fire individual emmiters

Situation we have now, many beams shooting the target.

• Can be used with FAW and subsystem targeting
• Higher accuracy and dmg on longer ranges (like current beams)
• Not that energy efficient

Option Two: Link forward and aft emmiters to single forward and aft array

Creates a situation where one single beam comes from array

• Can only be used with beam overload
• Lower accuracy and dmg over longer ranges (like cannons)
• Arc decresed to 135 degrees (so no broadside)
• Would work like DHC, higher dmg per hit (depends on amount of linked arrays), less hits per volley
• Energy efficient

I favor this as long as:

Sci doesn't get jacked in the process (and I don't fly any sci ships). (I suspect this means some serious subsystem targeting buffs and shield tanking improvements.)

Escorts get their own form of tanking/survivability. Because a totally DPS focused cruiser will still out-tank an escort. And if we're looking at how to do this, I think it means a third resource beyond shields and hull that measures evasion capability.

The net effect would be:

Cruisers have maximum sustained durability.
Science would be inbetween (probably have enhanced DOT resist).
Escorts would have maximum burst resistance by flat out avoiding being hit or through partial avoidance on a high percentage of burst weapon attacks.

But declaring DPS king (which means Cryptic waving the white flag on novel encounter design or building in the assumption that people's gear is good) and balancing DPS means everyone needs equal survivability.

If a cruiser can do escort-like damage, an escort needs cruiser-like survivability.

Honestly I doubt even with the 2 new weapons a cruiser will ever out dps an escort.

An oddy with its ltc station devoted to a tac looses qhite a bit of survivability add to that a tac captain and you are left with only 7 abilitys that you can devote to healing add to that tier 1 and 2 engineering powers tend to all share a cd. So not that tanky there is a trade off. and the point is moot on the kdf since everything can use cannons

On the flip side the only thing that could possibly support multiple heavy arrays would be an engineer class and even then with a 14 point power drain I don't imagine you could support many for long. Plus I left the dps equal to regular beam arrays so its probably still not as good as a set of DHC's.

Plus nothing I suggested is restricted. So each ship class has equal access.

- Science Vessels already have the best sustained tanking thanks to their high shield modifier and extremely powerful regenerative doff abilities. If desired you can push their natural regen to nearly 1k shield per 6 seconds.

- Escorts already have strong tanking and burst resistance. First off they have the highest amount of damage ignored/mitigated of any ship thanks to higher defense and the ability to pack the same quantity of resistance. Combine that with things like attack pattern omega that pretty much says enemy will miss 3 out of 4 shots for burst and their you go. If you doubt this please tell me how many non immobilized escorts get killed in PvP when teams are skilled.

If this was a standard MMO that had tank and spank encounters they would have escort main tanks and Sci Vessel healers. That is not to say cruiser tank capability is lacking, it really isn't nor is it required to push tankability to an extreme in this game, but they already are the hybrid. Incidentally that is also why they are useless from a min/max perspective.

And this right here is the core of the issue. Cruiser fanbois don't understand that they can't have their cake and eat it too. If you're going to give escort-like damage to a tank, you have to give tank-like capabilities to the escort. Balance must be maintained, or everyone would just fly cruisers.

As it stands, I see a nice healthy mix of escorts and cruisers every day. The only ships that I think need more representation (i.e. more help in the form of some kind of buff) are science vessels.

I agree Science vessels need more representation, however, imho escorts are tanky in their own right. Just ask all the escorts that brag about their tanking skills and exploits. Oh and by the way, I fly an escort too. I'm not just a cruiser fanbois. Not asking to dish out dps like a scort, which btw will never happen because you need tac captain skill for the burst, just saying we need either the ability to inflict more damage or lessen the ability of escorts to grab aggro and tank. Anyway that's just my 2 cents worth.

Threat-scaling consoles.

Seriously, any escort captain who deliberately grabs aggro is an idiot. Escorts simply cannot tank as well as a cruiser can, no matter how "defensive" your skillpoint and BOFF setup is. Whenever my fleet gets the embassy up to T1, I plan to run the -50% console from the embassy store for precisely that reason.

By the same token, cruisers can run the +50% consoles for the same result - less aggro to the escorts, more to the cruisers.