I'm not touching untested content, lol. We knew carriers were brokesauce in beta.

I remember pointing this out in beta and saying that if we were going to have a carrier at t5 there needed to be carriers at every tier so we could work out the gameplay issues, and everyone was like "lol a carrier at t2 wud be so op lawl"

Ok, so if it's op at level t2 it's... ok at t5? Explain how the concept works one place but not another?

I hate it when games introduce completely mechanic changing things late in the game. They are ALWAYS a disaster.

Well most games are initially balanced towards the end game. It is usually the best bet because most people 1 month from now could give a rats behind about the fights in T1/T2.

No carrier in T2 was probably because it just was not ready, and this gave them more time.

But ya it was thrown in there with little testing, and we have to sort out the BS from the actual good ideas for balancing the two sides. Which is a headache on its own

in t4 **** hits the fan in an absolutely fun, yet deranged, damage off the scales alpha strike fest

Yep - and I think we all know going into later tiers that none of this stuff is tested and most of it is broken. They released what they could, in the state they could get it in.

Coming from EVE, I knew right off the bad that no sensor recalibration time applied to cloaking would make it gruesomely powerful. That's okay, it's star trek, the Klingons have that as their defining schtick, so I knew what I was getting into. My experience in EVE has made me understand the roles of ECM, ganking, tackling, misdirection, and how to react when your ship is disabled. Simply put though, STO's pvp is far too fast.

Case in point, in all my tier 3 PVP matches, every single cruiser has reverse shield polarity, which is a neat skill with a rather restrictive cooldown, giving partial immunity for oh... All of six? Maybe nine seconds? Best ability ever, because under focus fire, six to nine seconds is far longer than you'd ever live without the ability to ignore energy damage, the healing is merely icing on the cake.

I'll confess, I'm used to getting the warning "Hey captain, you're being targetted, sucker! >" for the 4-5 second duration it took to lock something in EVE before the **** hit the fan. Maybe my reactions are slow, but in STO, the first indication I'm ever being shot at is usually "X arc shields failing". Which suprised me at first, until I figured I could do the exact same thing to a klingon cruiser with a single shot of beam overload at broadside.

Red alert, damage control! Where are my armor hardeners, aggh torpedoes! Death follows almost instantly, staved off maybe a second or so if I manage to get engineering team triggered and frantically spam the "Reinforce X-shield arc" key while trying to hit every kinetic damage resistance buff I have, to the point where the global cooldown of 1 second between activating buffs and BOFF powers is contributing to failure.

Ground PVP is slower than ship PVP. This is wrong, IMO, if I wanted to react this quickly in a cruiser, I'd play soul calibur as Astaroth, or something.

Edit: I forgot, ECM (viral matrix) is death. Being unable to target or fire for 20 seconds was bad enough in EVE, being unable to activate *defensive modules* in addition to this, combined with STO's speed, is certain death. I am aware (and use) the counter, it works, but it is not useful enough that it will save you from dying if you happen to get caught without pre-empting it first.

I agree... Balance can only be found on a utopic dimension. Even chess is not balanced unless you have two equal brains controlling both sides.

As far as in game stupidity... Well yes, both sides have it, but even that is not balanced. There is also no balance between player numbers (casual and hardcore).

we are only OP when we out number the Feds or the Feds play as lone-wolves and strike out on thier own.

ZOMG 5 Klingons killed me! OP'd!!!

I don't really see this as an op/etc. discussion - I think that the pace of combat at higher tiers is a little ugly.

It's cryptic - so - expect it to change.

Klingons are stupidly overpowered. People who think that Klingons just know how to play the game better in every way are just stupid.