I think the bit about Rock>Scissors>Paper doesn't quite work here because it's an over simplification. That set up works if everyone can either be the same Rock, the same set of Scissors, or the same piece of Paper. In this game though there are a lot of different complexities that can make a pair of Scissors > Rock, for example.

The only way to ensure that level of perfect harmony would be to eliminate customization and that's the absolute wrong way to go, in my opinion.

Ya this isn't sounding like that great of a idea the moroe I think about it you bring up good points tho about the buffs stacking. That might be where the true trouble is.

Thats just it... the Rock Paper S setup wouldn't work in this game... as you can customize your ship too a point where it works almost like another class of ship. If they did something like dmg or defense buffs for one class over the other... it would be about 2 days before people figuered out what class with X or Y setup was OP and we would be back to square one.

Ya I run a BoP mostly i would be 100% verse them getting rid of cusomization I like changing from DPS to heals on the fly.Guess this idea sounded better than it really was.Oh well you don't know unless you brainstorm what ideas might come up infact Im kinda on board with the idea of some buffs not stacking now.

Ya its cool to get some diffrent ideas on things. Like I was saying I honestly think the classes and the ships are very well balanced one on one. The issue I think ends up being the stacking of buffs. DMG buffs can be stacked to crazy heights... and even still a good team will Pile heals on a target.... honestly if you do the math in some of the higher end games... there is literally 200k in dmg heading to one target in 5 seconds, sometimes less... and there are teams that can still catch that kinda spike and heal it... and you see a target that will have 3 Hazards... an engi team... a couple TSS... mabey even an extend shields... and likely someone popped a sci fleet. lol

IMHO anyway.... if Cryptic next patch did what every other mmo in the world did and make NO buffs stack... meaning that the best version applys and thats it. So if you have a Hz 3 and a Hz1 on you only the Hz 3 applys.
Like wise for tac teams and tac fleets... and aux to sifs.... and everything else that can stack. The game would be much more balanced. After that they could look into diminishing return values for things like shield resists... and tac buffs. Running more then one skill that effects a system should help... but there needs to be less upside to popping off every single skill you have all at once.

Baby steps though... remove stacking of same type first.

Nothing wrong with brainstoming ideas... RPS works for some games... but they almost never have much for customization either.

Husanak always says it better, lol. But yeah, it's always good to think it through and talk it out. Not everyone is going to agree all the time, but that doesn't necessarily mean that something is wrong either.

In terms of space combat in STO there's just much more variance than there are with other games who employ the Paper>Rock>Scissors balance paradigm. Other MMOs, for instance, have archetypes set in stone which are the Tank, Healer, DPS trinity. And while players in STO can build their characters/ships to fit such archetypes, they can also build their characters/ships to branch off from these archetypes as well, and this doesn't even begin to include team composition, which only compounds the issue.

If all engineers were tanks, and all science were heals, and all tacs were DPS, then Paper>Rock>Scissors may be more applicable, but this isn't the case. And this is not a bad thing, by any means. The abundance of available variance, and the depth which has one into Space Combat in STO is quite possibly it's best aspect. Unfortunately, this probably makes it that much more difficult to balance; but even so... and while there are some more obvious examples of imbalance here and there... I feel like, for the game being what it is, it is close enough to balanced (in Space) to be enjoyed by most.

Maybe a better balance could be achieved if the game was enforcing some team composition rules, similar to what is done with some of the PvP tournaments.
- No more than 3 of the same Captain Type
- No more than 3 of the same ship type.
- At least 1 of every Captain Type.
- At least 1 of every ship type.

2 Cruisers vs 2 Escorts might see the Cruisers as winner. But 2 Cruisers vs 1 Escort + 1 Science Vessel might look very different.

This would help PuGgers because now, despite not being premade, they have at least a fair chance to have every role at their disposal.

Take out peng from pvp game insta balanced