Hello everyone, it is I again, the pain in the butt radical idealist, with yet another topic of discussion for improvements to our beloved Star Trek Online Massive Multiplayer PC Game.

Has it ever bothered you that our make believe virtual Star Ships could be near instantaneously repaired to full Hull Integrity and Strength? Something we have never seen in the TV series as a normal occurrence during battle.

Well, it has bothered me since the early BETA test days and, until now I haven’t thought of a good solution to the problem that would make good game mechanical sense and common sense with regard human intelligence and the Fantasy Universe of Star Trek. However, now I believe I’ve found the solution that would both fit into sensibility of the intellectual property of Star Trek and common sense that our engineering team can’t possibly recover over half of the ships blown out decks in just one second.

The Solution:

I believe the solution is to first make our Starships more resilient to damage so that instantaneous hull healing can be completely removed from the game altogether. To do this I propose that we remove the penalties associated with stacking or increased hull resistances from Console upgrades, skill point distribution and Abilities wherefore a hard cap of a maximum of 90% all damage resistance could be achieved.

This change will indeed allow our ships to be a lot more resilient in combat! However, with the removal of all instant and duration hull heals. Our ships will not repair much during combat. Therefore, ships whose hulls have taken damaged during combat will stay damaged during combat; and only repair from the natural hull regeneration rate existent as a game mechanic already. In this way, we might appreciate the damage artwork in the game and that we are actually in a Star Ship, not some space wizard thingy.

So what to do with the Instant and duration hull healing abilities in the game already? I propose the following:

Engineering Team:
Rank I: +18% to Starship Hull Repair & +18% to Starship Warp Core Potential for 15 seconds
Rank II: +26% to Starship Hull Repair & +26% to Starship Warp Core Potential for 15 seconds
Rank III: +32% to Starship Hull Repair & +32% to Starship Warp Core Potential for 15 seconds
Repairs Disabled subsystems over 10 seconds

The changes I proposed to the Engineering Team ability, I believe make more sense both gameplay wise and Star Trek Lore wise. These changes give you a very small increase in all subsystem power levels and a very small increase in your overall repair rate. Furthermore, the primary change is repairing subsystems over duration of time which is beneficial in PVP.

Auxiliary Power to Structural Integrity Field:
Rank I: repairs +1% Hull hit points & +15% all damage resistance over 15 seconds
Rank II: repairs +2% Hull hit points & +25% all damage resistance over 15 seconds
Rank III: repairs +3% Hull hit points & +35% all damage resistance over 15 seconds

The changes I proposed to Auxiliary Power to Structural Integrity Field I believe make perfect sense Star Trek Lore wise as a Structural Inegrity field would add to the durability and overall strength of a ships hull. Therefore, this is the only “duration” heal now available.

Hazard Emitters:
Rank I: Removes hazard de-buffs over 15 seconds & +13% all damage resistances for 15 seconds
Rank II: Removes hazard de-buffs over 15 seconds & +18% all damage resistances for 15 seconds
Rank III: Removes hazard de-buffs over 15 seconds & +20% all damage resistances for 15 seconds

I believe the changes I made to hazard emitters make good sense as well because I never understood why hazard emitters would increase your hull hit points or Strength. Rather, I think it makes more sense that the clean hazards from your hull and help to manage hazards; Which now I believe this skill under my proposed changes would do!

Miracle worker:
Rank I: +26% to Starship Hull Repair & +26% to Starship Warp Core Potential over 20 seconds
Rank II: +32% to Starship Hull Repair & +32% to Starship Warp Core Potential over 20 seconds
Rank III: +36% to Starship Hull Repair & +36% to Starship Warp Core Potential over 20 seconds
Heals +15% of maximum Hit Points to shields over 20 seconds
Reduce recharge of Emergency power to subsystem abilities by 35%
Repairs Disabled subsystems over 10 seconds

The Changes I made to Miracle work I believe would be worth of Scotty himself! Enough Said methinks?

Anyway, what are your thoughts folks? Does instant healing of ships even both you? Would you like to see your ship take on damage a little more slowly but see that damage remain as you fight to the death? Personally, I believe it would be a lot more fun to die a bit more slowly when my hull is exposed to enemy fire, but if I survive the exposure until I get my shields up, it would be neat to have the damage remain until my death or escape from deaths grips…

The instant healing is over the top. However the changes suggested above seem like it would take an entire Rebalance of PvE to make sure it was done right.. Why not make all healing a heal over time with diminishing returns? Ie heal 1 heals over time with 100% of stated skill
Heal 2 applied heals at 60% of the skills value, must ect.

The whole insta-heal would be avoided since you wouldn't have ships jumping back to 100% in 2 seconds.

Also I always thought it was rather unrealistic that a ship at 1% hull was just as combat effective as a ship at 100%. Weapon, engines, shields aux should all scale with ship condition. (less hull = less power)

The problem is not just the insta-Hull healing but that hull can be destroyed so quickly as well.

You can reduce a target to 50% or less hull as fast as a they can jump from 50% or less to 100%.

PVE is already a in a sad, sad state when it comes to player verses AI Starships! It is in fact a joke! PVE space combat in Star Trek online is nothing more than a turkey shoot for the player. Sure, sometimes a flock of turkeys is a bit hard to handle… but not often.

Basically, the only PVE space combat content I found entertaining was the Defender D’deridex Romulan war birds; which PW/Cryptic took out of the game for now, and the Elite STF Borg content. So as far as PVE goes, I would in fact encourage a PVE reload of PVE AI skill verses players and balance thereof.

Furthermore, I don’t see how the proposed changes above would have any ill affect with regard to the AI verses players. The AI does not heal! It barely uses Bridge Officer Abilities as it is! And if you are worried not being able to instantly heal verses the hordes of AI… will youreally need to worry when you are now hard capped at 90% all damage resistance on your hull?

Sure, you will take damage over the duration of time… but… honestly… you still have shield heals and the ability to just leave the combat area to have your hull heal back up.

But isn’t that issue solved with moving the hard cap on hull resistances to 90% while also removing the penalty on hull armor resistance stacks?

For example: if a player drops your shields and Alpha Strikes you while all your resistance buffs are up to 90%, and they deal 60,000 damage in a single volley, you will only receive 10% of that for a total of 6,000 damage. The difference now of course is, you can’t easily recover that many hit points lost.

So, doesn’t this solve the issue with how fast a ship will die?

You both are proposing a huge re-engineering of the game damage dynamic. In order to be more in sync with ST lore the shields should be able to stand a lot more damage than they do today.

Also, the hull should not drop as fast as it does now. Torpedoes would seen a lot less usefull... I dont know, it is a lot of change.

A properly specked and geared player will do good damage with Torpedo’s against a hull under the new system! Especially when you stop to consider that the hull will not instantly recover the damage if at all during the course of the engagement.

For example: A white MKXII Photo Torpedo does 2,980 Kinetic DPV. If a player put 9 points into Starship Projectile Weapons, a single torpedo currently does 5930 Kinetic DPV each. That is without de-buffs considered or tactical buffs added into the equation.

Under the proposed system, a torpedo hit to the hull would deal, 593 Kinetic damage each; assuming if the resistance to kinetic damage is maxed out at 90% and no tactical de-buffs or buffs are applied to a white MKXII photon torpedo. This damage would not be recovered quickly either. Thus, each hit to the hull has a lasting effect.

Now imagine if the opponent was de-buffed 20% all resistances from something like Attack Pattern Beta. That same torpedo would instead deal 1779 Kinetic DPV. Or 3.5% of the total hull strength of a cruiser with 50,000HP or 5.9% of the total hull strength of the Federation Tactical Escort Defiant Refit Class with its 30,000 HP. And again, that damage isn’t recovered in seconds but over perhaps a minute.

See, torpedo weapons are still viable and don’t need any change at all under the proposed changes to instant healing.

i'd say increase shield and hull max values
but have a hard damage resistance cap at 75%

with increase hull and shield values, you prevent players from being insta-nuked in pvp
however, with only a 75% damage resistance cap, you ensure that someone will eventually be worn down

The only problem I can see is that this would extend normal battles and prevent alpha strike kills (by single players). I personally would much prefer the longer battles that END, instead of the chance of either a 10-second fight or a never-ending one.

So your solution to the issue is to simply increase HP for shields and Hull values? I disagree strongly with increasing them and leaving the instant heals.

Already I personally can shield tank 3 escorts! I perhaps would actually die over time if it were not for the fact that I can simply instantly heal my hull. I mean, the entire point of this thread is to discuss removing the instant hull heals, not add more Hit Points overall and leave the instant heals.

I have given the original proposed change a whole lot of thought along with the issue of being able to instantly heal your hull. Please believe me that giving ships more HP in both Shields and Hull is not a good solution and probably won’t really stop those people who are being killed in less than ten seconds any more time alive than they already get, because they are actually really doing something terribly wrong to be dying that fast anyway. Not always, but often!

Now, adding more hull resistance capacity will indeed help those aforementioned folks whom are dying really rapidly live longer, but they still will die because of their error in gameplay. It will just be a slightly more forgiving death.

How will the change bold for the Regular veteran players? I believe they will no longer be frustrated that they just brought an enemy target down to 10% and now he/she is at full HP and out of range temporarily recharging shields because under the new system, dealing damage to someones hull will actually really matter a whole lot because it will stay with them probably for the duration of the battle.

Therefore, alpha strikes will in fact be devastating but probably not end in a single swing destruction of a ship. Instead, alpha strikes will devastate a ship but not destroy it immediately. Giving the player precious time to counter react and even perhaps another minute or so to do something!

Well, it would make it more StarTrek. Space combat in STO is too fast for the shows. Much too fast.

I actually like this idea.
Not only does it help with the instant dieing problem but helps with the crazy healing bursts.

Something like this probably may even create a battlefield in PvP where ships don't live forever and could make some abilities and weapons more useful overall such as Gravity Well, Directed Energy Modulation, Transphasic and Plasma Torpedoes since their type of damage isn't being instantly healed or cleansed.(and by type of damage I mean a way of doing meaningful damage that isn't overwhelming sustain or burst which seems to be the only way to make any sort of difference in the current state of burst damage/burst heal PvP)

Something like this would not only take a lot to do and get the numbers right but since most of your healing looks like it'll come from your passive hull regen it would make your crew a lot more important for every ship which would probably require a crew resistance and regen overhaul as well to prevent massive torp spam killing your crew off instantly.

Even PvE could benefit from this kind of change with having to change how damage is dealt to players instead of changing nothing in higher difficulties except making npc torps hit for 100k and calling it Elite.

I like every above possible change mentioned but sadly it wouldn't be easy so not sure Cryptic could or would make it happen.