On a positive note, this thread hasn't turned nasty. Yet.

But ultimatum is right. As long as most of the end-game content is damage based, ships that don't have high DPS/overall damage output will be left behind.

I fly a tac oddy that can deal some significant damage, but only because I designed it specifically for damage output. Even then though, I still have trouble keeping up other ships (like KDF battlecruisers) when it comes to damage output. As support and tanking go, even specced towards damage, my Oddy works wonderfully. Sufficed to say, if I am on the map and actually awake and paying attention on my engi, whoever has aggro is guaranteed to have at least 4 heals ready to throw at them at any given time, 2 HoTs, 1 big heal, and 1 small heal (HE1, TSS1/TSS2, ET3, Aux2SIF3). I occasionally reserve one or two of them for myself, but only when I have aggro.

So I can still deal some pretty nice damage while at the same time heal others AND tank if I need to. But since the game is geared almost purely towards damage, it makes it hard to justify using my tac oddy over my FPE (which runs standard 4 DHCs/3 turrets build).

So what I can tell, other than being a little clumsy and clunky, cruisers as a ship class are fine. The only problems appear to be that the game doesn't need them. Which tbh is true. As stated, you don't need a tank, because you just kill it faster to keep it from hurting you, and you don't need the supporting heals, since most damage dealing ships can stay alive easily. And against things they can't stay alive against, it kills you so fast that you can't outheal it, OR it one shots you.

Cruisers can kill anything an escort can. The difference is that it takes a cruiser much longer to do it. This is of course not news to anyone. Timed missions don't do cruisers any favors. Cruisers can go toe to toe with an enemy for days, problem is you don't have days because the mission clock is going tick...tick...tick. Meanwhile the escorts are darting about killing everything in sight. I can see where cruiser skippers get the feeling that they're underpowered. Cruisers aren't underpowered...it's just that so many missions in STO depend on killing the enemy as fast as possible and that's not the cruiser's strong suit. It's not cruisers that need an overhaul...it's the missions.

Not sure I agree as we have got the stage now where sci ships out damage cruisers. How many sci ships are there with 3 or 4 tactical slots and sensor analysis? Ships like assault cruiser are starting to feel very underwhelming as there role is DPS with tank but they cannot really do it.

Heavy (Energy) Beam Array

Cruiser/Battlecruiser only, restrict them to highest Tier.

Same arc as a standard beam array but with the punch of a DBB.

Thats how you give a Cruiser some more teeth. Thats how you give a Ship Of The Line its true Battleship firepower.

If anyone calls me a noob (like the arrogant prick that put 'noob' in the title of a certain sticked 'help' thread), I'll feed you to my pack of cannibalistic tribbles!
If you're a Liberated (or assimilated) Borg, they'll eat your implants as well! They aren't picky...

With that said...
I've found that science vessels are fantastic in how many debuffs they can do to pretty much cripple opponenets!
You only ever need one or two for most spots to really make things that much faster.
I doubt they're reading this, but hats off to the one or two science people who have the buffs to help other teammates who are low on shields. Saved meh more than once on occasion!

Escorts are crazy. Super high turn radius AND insane damage but squishy. I feel this is fitting fairly well with how the class works.

As for cruisers, meh. I'm in a light cruiser and the painfully-slow turn speed is terrible unless I'm using 'Evasive Maneuvers' about once every 1.5 minutes.
I believe cruisers could have a cruiser-specific weapon type that focuses on AoE damage. It would hit multiple targets and possibly apply a light DoT for continual damage in addition to the other effects that the energy type would give.

Perhaps restrict the best explosives/torpedoes/etc to cruisers? Make them focused on the big AoE burst while the escorts focus on burst single-target damage?

Cruisers (both factions) need 3 things:

1. A passive Threat generation bonus.

2. Harder PvE (endgame) content.

3. A smarter playerbase.



1&2 are all in PWE's hands, I'll keep trying to help with 3, as unlikely as it is to happen
Maybe an example will help, to show where many have a too immediate mentallity:

Consider 2 setups fighting a Tactical Cube:
A) Great Escort, good Cruiser.
B) Great Escort, good Escort.

Now, which of those setups has the best DPS? No, it's not B.
See, in setup B, both Escorts either blow up sometimes or they have to retreat or they're fighting from a safe distance where they take much less damage (but deal much less as well) whereas in setup A, the Cruiser tanks, allowing the Escort to stay point-blank to the target with no fear of destruction and that difference, on top of the Cruiser's own DPS, is what makes setup A more damaging.

Tanks are already beneficial. Not mandatory, but beneficial.


Problem is:
- Most Cruiser pilots don't even want to tank, they seem to just want a super-ship with an Escort's firepower AND massive durability. Pure munchkin mentallity.

- Most Escort pilots don't realise when someone else is tanking and they can unleash at point-blank.
I can tank a Gate or Tac Cube on the Bortas from 100% to 0% and the Escorts are still zipping around, wasting a lot of DPS.
Would I still be tanking if they didn't? Maybe, maybe not, but at least I'd be challenged: with maxed Threat Control, it's really trivial to hold Threat at present.

My problem with Threat Control is that its not toggleable. I'd very much want to spec into that; I have a cruiser and I love tanking in mmo gameplay.

Even as an escort, I'd like to hit the stance toggle, lose half HP, and Go Down Fighting, while drawing fire from someone else who's really about to go down. In PVP that stance would be active all the time.

Its very useful... just not all the damn time! Tanking would be more common if we had a choice to when we want to Draw Fire.

Give us a Ens Tac slot ability for Draw Fire, and remove that from our ground skills... Tacs can tank in space, not on the ground!!

The punch of a DBB with the arc of a beam array.
Its to OP a design for the HBA. It negates both standard and DB arrays at one time.

Better designs for a unrestricted Heavy Beam Array have been given.

I have a Tac Oddy. Fantastic ship, a great hearler and tank. I guess my biggest hangup about the bigger cruisers is mounting torps. I can't see wasting a slot, even the 180 torp, on an Oddy or Galaxy. Even 7 turrets and a torp will leave you motionless infront of your target, or having to turn once you pass to get that torp back in the firing arc.

Torps should be far more viable an option for the big boats, and not with a 2500 zen price tag.

Galaxy variant cstore ships need to be on par with the Oddy cstore ships.

Don't nerf escorts or sci ships, just try to find creative ways to make big boats more useful, and I say this as a guy who has been in elite stfs with 4 other cruisers, as well as flying an escort with 4 other escorts. The difference is night and day, and not the fault of the escort ship, but the design of the cruiser.

No. No. Just... NO. There is no justification for this. Anywhere. The Odyssey is supposed to be the superior ship. Why would you want to insult it by doing this? I agree the Galaxy is underpowered, but news flash, it's not the only cruiser out there. This is not a Galaxy thread. You want to bmw about cryptic insulting that particular ship, then go make a new thread. Just as I don't want this to turn into a cruiser vs escort thread, I am just as against it becoming another pointless Galaxy thread.

Don't take this the wrong way, but that's an outdated, overused, killed many times over from usage design. And no way in hell would I ever support a Galaxy being as powerful as an Odyssey. Ever.

-.-

*rage over*