That's a "little" bit of an understatement.

and these type of threads have gotten a "little" bit old.

A "little" tip that ENGosters of the buff-the-cruiser threads always seem to forget.

What about a TAC in said cruiser...

I think it's more about buff the ENG captain and not buff the cruiser.

Then I really doth protest!

The ENG already have innate abilities. Any more would just be unreasonable.

And if these are Boff abilities, all classes can just train them too.

If you want 'balance', remember that anyone can buff a character at creation to make them, if not comparable directly to the typical Tac, at least competitive with him.

It's called "Elusive+Accurate" at the rolling up stage.

Based on Eialu (my Orion Sci-third character I've built total), those two abilities together have made her roughly the equivalent of either of my 'more normal' Tacs (Fed OR KDF), and she's got more kills in Kerrat than either of my tacticals at any given level.

I'm currently working up an Engineer via Ker'rat and the occasional eternal-waiting-on-the-que. (i.e. I am damned and determined to level THIS ONE with PvP in the old style, even if it takes forever-I figure I'll have time, given that the "reputation" system coming in S7 will be an eternal grind and exercise in frustration, rather than fun...)

given prior experiments in mostly-PvP levelling (Fed Tac, and Orion Science) and the limited entertainment value of rerunning the same missions over-and-over-and-over-and-over again (endlessly, it seems) going to Low-Level PVP for the fun/growth/development phase is a good option, but even if you dont' do that, remember that for PvP, preparation begins at creation, and if you've played long enough to level at least ONE character to 50, bother to read teh forums, and can find the link to STOwiki, planning out a new character is NOT that difficult.

It certainly doesn't require asking Cryptic/PWE to do FOR you, what you should be doing YOURSELF within the existing rules.

Yes the forum title was a "lil" misleading, sory for that, but my goal was not, seems that everyone that reads my ideas has an idea or two why they are wrong or I must not know how to play. Those kinds of comments are "a lil" misleading from the point of this forum post.

Back to the point... the idea was to find some balance in class make up in the 5v5 ques.... right now the only viable classes are tacs and science , tacs can dps better than an engineer, science can dps better than an engineer and bring in useful group oriented abilities, the engineer has the potential but falls short of being useful, yes I have heard they make good cruiser healers, so can a science with a subnuke. Engineer can be a tanking aggro machine, that would give them a role that would be desirable in pve/pvp.

I`m not suggesting applying all of my abilities, I tend to like the damage/aggro transfer ability more than the rest, But I had other ideas to so I shared them as well. The ideas I have seen, like heavy beam array for cruisers, would not help the engineer class imbalance, the class itself needs something that stands out, like alpha does for tacs, and subnuke does for sci.

Yeah I know there have been alot of ideas floating around about balance, alot of them have been focused in different areas, and alot here. I`m not asking to make the engineer a dps machine, or healing machine, those roles are taken, I wanna see them get a role that is unique to them. And tanking/aggro management seems to be the role we all share.

The engineers role as it is, self heals, self/group buffs (worthless however)(ex: eps transfer), preasure dps (to low to be a threat), nothing that is a strong or attractive power or role for pvp. The damage transfer would give them a role, couple that with more damage they take the more they deal effect.(this idea is not a go down fighting effect, its just like the warriors and paladins have in wow when they spec protection to maintain aggro) I`d say make that effect scale slowly, buffing up to 15% or 20% damage output, but falls off fast if you stop taking damage.
This would increase there preasure dps role at the same time becoming the tank for a group, a focused target to heal, and a threat in pvp.

Threat does not work in PvP. It's an artificial mechanic in PvE. It's ruined PvE. Players are not mindless zombies that will ignore the actual largest threat to them while attacking the smallest threat.

"NPC" Intelligence vs. "PC" Intelligence

There's a guy wearing a ton of armor, the size of a house, that eats his Wheaties. Behind him, there's the guy that can toss so many heals - he can play with his little toe while watching reruns of Car 54, Where Are You?, and there's three guys that can do enough damage to level planets.

The "NPC" attacks the guy that it is least likely to be able to kill, while ignoring the guy keeping that guy alive and ignoring the three guys that are actually going to kill the "NPC"...

The "PC" kills the healer, kills the DPS, and then kills the tank.

Why is that so difficult to grasp? The Trinity - utilizing threat mechanics/aggro is a bogus system. Bringing that to PvP? Why? Why?? WHY???

The only thing separating the three career choices in space are the five innate abilities. The Eng space abilities fail to reflect the ground abilities in the same way that the Tac (almost perfect) and Sci do...

One can look at them and see what they were trying to do (failed to do, but were trying to do)...

Tac <--> Sci <--> Eng

Offense <--> Mix Offense/Defense <--> Defense

Defense does not mean being a Trinity Tank - doesn't mean artificial aggro/threat mechanics.

And it's not just all Defense. I wish I could find my other posts on this, but I'm too lazy to look, tbh.

Leave RSF and Engineering Fleet as is, but take a look at EPS_PT, NI, and MW.

Make EPS_PT a drain field instead of a ST EPS buff.
Make NI an AoE drain resist buff instead of a ST drain buff.
Make MW launch a support platform that launches drones.

As is, the Eng Space Abilities make little sense when looking at the Ground Abilities. Tac matches up very well, one can see what they were doing with Sci, but when it comes to Eng - it makes no sense. It's as if they tried to squeeze a Trinity Tank in at the last moment...

This is the simple way that I see it (doesn't mean it's right, better, or any of that - just my opinion):

Ground -
Tac = DPS
Eng = Offensive Support/Defensive Support
Sci = Defensive Support/Offensive Support

Space -
Tac = DPS
Eng = Defensive Support/Offensive Support
Sci = Offensive Support/Defensive Support

The primary/secondary for Eng/Sci switch whether you're on the ground or in space.

None of it involves any sort of Trinity Tank.

Ship selection, BOFF/DOFF choice, team comps, etc - would offer additional variables so somebody did not feel locked into play "X" when they want to play "Y"... the min/max crowd would invariably argue that "A" is better at "X" while "B" is better at "Y" - but at that level, outside of fail builds - it should be relatively close and not match deciding.