Honestly, STO has always been bad in this but its just getting ridiculous. It seems more and more, the only way the devs make levels more challenging is to either make the enemies do ridiculous damage/one hit you or spam you with 100s of enemy ships.

Am I the only one who finds this mindless stuff to be not fun?

There are some missions in game that work, and are a challenge without superweapons or ridiculous numbers of enemies, but I personally haven't seen anything like this in quite awhile. (Alpha was a well done KDF mission, and hell.. most of the STFs aren't bad in design, but they've been skewed from what they used to be...)

Please.. lets get rid of stupid missions like starbase 24, that spam us with enemies and come up with something.. I don't know.. more creative?

I don't know how this is a latest trend, the newer space maps don't function like what your describing. If anything, they are actually less entertaining because they try and be creative instead of challenging you with difficult odds and potential failure.

OP, you're complaining about a mission about a massive assault on a starbase having too many ships? I'm sorry, but I find no problem with the structure of SB 24, Gron Minefield and the like. In fact, it wouldn't make sense if they didn't spam you to death.

The Devs seem to not use subsystem attacks, DoT effects, interface screws and passive attacks as much as they should. I mean, the whole shtick of the Borg was the slow battle of attrition that was won by slowly subverting your defenses then adding your helpless ass to their continually advancing force. Now they just make you go boom.

The 1st things you mentioned are exactly what the Tholians love to do in STO (except for DoT effects thats the Borg and Romulan's gig).

As for the Borg if you watch the Battle of Wolf 359 shown in the pilot of DS9 and the Battle of Sector 001 in First Contact you will see the Borg one shoting everything in sight not named Enterprise or Defiant.

I dunno I think the Tholians are reasonably well designed. Azure Rescue and Vault Ensnared both have you racing the clock, and so their purpose is to eat your time by trapping you, targeting your weapons to slow response, and keep you out of full impulse using otherwise harmless fighters. It makes them freaking annoying to fight, but from a gameplay stance they do their job well without being about 1-shot kills.

As for challenge though, honestly I kinda want a level or two in the exact opposite direction, where its huge numbers of pathetic enemies that exist solely to die in amusing ways for my enjoyment. A challenge of 'how many can you mercilessly crush before the timer runs out' perhaps? I wanna re-enact Wolf 359 where I'm the Cube, and the 'challenge' is finding the most amusing, satisfying way to go on my killing spree.

And I think that's what makes them so interesting to fight. I can combat that sort of thing, I can work around it, I can't exactly fight against getting OHKO'ed.

Oh that would be amazing. There were lots of times the Enterprise came across some very piddly adversaries, and it would be incredibly therapeutic to make hundreds of outgunned jerks explode.

I can see it now.... kill the Pakleds! Kill the Pakleds! Kill the Pakleds!

Would be very out of character for a Federation Captain, but for a Klingon? I would play that mission at least once a week.

I'm with the OP on this one, and it is one of my biggest Gripe about STO.

I don't think a player in a Miranda flying in Starbase 24 and blowing up a gazillion starships ranging from BoP to the Dreadnoughts is realistic. It caters to the nature of the beast here, which means it is Arcade Gameplay.

Just wish CRYPTIC took a page from Bridge Commander for space and FEAR for Ground.

They also cheapen Starbase 24 by removing the story content from it, thus eliminating the ground portion of that fleet Action. Man the good old days

So basically we're having AI issues - STO is waaaay to DUMB to be of any challenge. It is like many threads before has mentioned - The only way to make it a challnge is by increasing the HP and having them throw at you volleys of Torps that do 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999% worth of Damage.

Remember the Invisible Torp, it is not your friend