Destroyed Subsystems - Do They Occur Frequently Enough?

You feel like a battlecruiser is too weak or a race too strong? Go ahead and discuss it here :)
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posted on July 19th, 2013, 7:39 am
Hey!

This is more of a discussion topic then an opinion - what do you guys think about the current state of affairs when it comes to the frequency of destroyed subsystems in a typical battle? Here's my take on things:

In the movies, it seems like the Enterprise would lose subsystems even before the shields come down. Geordi/Scotty was always running in circles in engineering as the blast doors came down and the engine failed or auxiliary power had to be rerouted from different systems. The Enterprise would frequently have to repair their subsystems after light battles.

If FO ships had subsystem failures as frequently as cannon ships did, the game would become ridiculous. But on the other hand, shipwide subsystem failure should be a significant hazard in combat. Right now, a ship has to get to about 50%-25% hull integrity until it starts to lose subsystems. If we wanted subsystem failure to more properly reflect perilous space combat, we would move this marker to 90%-50% hull integrity.

Of course, different factions have different ship building techniques, and some ships are more sturdy then others. Therefore, I would propose a list from greatest to least subsystem soundness:

Borg
Romulan
Federation
Dominion
Klingon

The end! Discuss here!
posted on July 19th, 2013, 10:49 am
All I know is that for some reason when I play Klingons I have lots of ships that end up with damaged engines compared to when I play other races. When it happens I just leave them to die at the hands of any enemy ships that might come across them. After all they are pathetic excuses of warriors to have allowed that to happen in the first place.
posted on July 19th, 2013, 11:55 am
i like it the way it is now, fleetops takes place in a war, these ships are all configured for war. with ecm and extra redundancies instead of science labs and gyms. i think it's reasonable that the subsystems would be hard to kill.
posted on July 19th, 2013, 12:55 pm
Canon ships suffered failures so often because the plot says they do, FO does not have that problem.
posted on July 19th, 2013, 2:21 pm
Remember what Miles O`Brien said in epizode Destiny (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) ,

GILORA: What are the chances that both a primary system and its backup would fail at the same time?
O'BRIEN: It's very unlikely, but in a crunch I wouldn't like to be caught without a second backup.

So on federation ships even backup has a backup.

or Keevan in epizode Rock and Shoals,

It needs repair but I'm willing to bet that you've brought one of those famed Starfleet engineers who can turn rocks into replicators."
posted on July 19th, 2013, 4:35 pm
Even in the future problems would happen. What's the point of having system hit points if they aren't used? If your shields go down then all you're left with is the hull to take the impacts. if I start hitting your warp nacelles or impulse engines then they'll probably fail before say life support.

If I hit a phaser bank directly then your weapons would probably fail before the engines. I like the concept and think there should be chances to take out a system. I agree that in the shows systems failed left and right however, having them fail sometimes is realistic as opposed to either just live or die with no chance to limp home and repair or something.
posted on July 19th, 2013, 4:44 pm
One of the most irritating things to happen is to retreat a ship as its shields go down, only for it to start tumbling helplessly as the next hit takes out its engines; or trying to get that last hit on an enemy before it kills your freighter, but in five seconds of beating, everything seems to hit the subsystems bar the weapons, and the freighter goes down. Both are cases where luck has negated good micro, something games should be careful with.

On the other hand, some ships lose subsystems on the first good sneeze. The Centaur is an especially egregious case.

There's also a bug? feature? where if a subsystem is damaged but still functional, and then disabled, it needs to be completely repaired before it comes functional again. I exploit this when using officer Akira / Defiants to cripple Tavaras when bashing AI Romulans (officer Akiras deal shield-bypassing damage; some of this will likely hit the weapon subsystem; Defiant's Critical Shot then nukes the weapons totally offline, stopping cloaking and 144 offence value of guns).
posted on July 19th, 2013, 5:06 pm
MadHatter wrote:On the other hand, some ships lose subsystems on the first good sneeze. The Centaur is an especially egregious case.

the centaur has terrible system value, afaik low system value also means terrible subsystems, as well as terrible repair/special energy.
posted on July 19th, 2013, 5:28 pm
Myles wrote:the centaur has terrible system value, afaik low system value also means terrible subsystems, as well as terrible repair/special energy.


It does. I hesitated from discussing the link between system value, subsystem hitpoints, and special energy as, like many of the background mechanics in Fleet Ops, there's likely to be some weird "gotcha" to it that Dominus will feel compelled to correct us on.

(As an aside, Centaur is an example of one of the things I find irritating about FleetOps -- passives that are meaningless).
posted on July 19th, 2013, 5:35 pm
I see what you guys mean, but also consider the Centaur is not a frontline ship. I would think you can only do so much with a small, weak ship based on an old design. What is it even classed as a light destroyer?

I use very few specials in my personal mod and I've been killing myself trying to come up with what I feel is balance since most races without specials are more closely the same and don't want them to all be a clone of the next race and don't want to just make a spam fest game of the strongest ships.
posted on July 19th, 2013, 6:22 pm
MadHatter wrote:I hesitated from discussing the link between system value, subsystem hitpoints, and special energy as, like many of the background mechanics in Fleet Ops, there's likely to be some weird "gotcha" to it that Dominus will feel compelled to correct us on.

:lol: hopefully a lot of this background complicated stuff will be made more transparent in the next major version.

MadHatter wrote:(As an aside, Centaur is an example of one of the things I find irritating about FleetOps -- passives that are meaningless).

you mean the "military chassis" passive. yeah, i see what you mean, afaik that's just a lore explanation for having low system value.
posted on July 19th, 2013, 6:53 pm
rifraf wrote:I see what you guys mean, but also consider the Centaur is not a frontline ship. I would think you can only do so much with a small, weak ship based on an old design. What is it even classed as a light destroyer?

Centaur is a destroyer, yes, and absolutely it is a frontline ship. 90% of its offence is in its torpedoes, so it'll significantly underperform as a raider.

Of course, being a destroyer and having EPS Control Nodes means it's boned the second anything with pulses turns up ... which is a distressingly large amount of what it's expected to face. When AI bashing, I recycle them rather than attempt to use them. Same with the Rhode Island.

Myles wrote:you mean the "military chassis" passive. yeah, i see what you mean, afaik that's just a lore explanation for having low system value.

Really, it should be in the extended tooltip or the Guide entry for the ship. Hopefully this is being done for 4.0.
posted on July 19th, 2013, 7:01 pm
i tend to find klingons engines go pretty often, and fed life support.

i tend to cloak the klingon ships and have to wait what seems like forever for them to repair themselves enough to fly back to the shipyard
posted on July 19th, 2013, 7:12 pm
hellodean wrote:i tend to find klingons engines go pretty often, and fed life support.

i tend to cloak the klingon ships and have to wait what seems like forever for them to repair themselves enough to fly back to the shipyard

klingon system values aren't very good compared to other races. also other races have advantages: romulans have more system value, federation have most of their hitpoints in shields, which protect subsystems, borg also have good system values.

the kvort especially, it has a clearly labelled passive (SSEC) that makes its already fragile subsystems weaker. it's pretty much the epitome of the klingon combat style.

however the kbq has a passive (omni armour mounting slots [the neverending name]) that makes its subsystems stronger. and as the kbq has a slightly lower def than the kvort, it tanks for it.
posted on July 19th, 2013, 7:31 pm
Yes, as an aside, in V4 we have redone the impact of System Value :).

System Value in V4 describes the rate of energy regeneration, such that 120 minus System Value = #seconds until all energy is restored. System Values in general are quite a bit higher than v3 (usually doubled) to display this better. Disabling time now is only affected by distinct passives. System Value still impacts the number of hitpoints a subsystem has and affects the rate of shield/hull hitpoint repair.
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