newton special ability

posted on July 21st, 2009, 1:58 pm

sometimes i think the newtons are pretty useless for fedplayers..
they only repair hull, and most fed-ships have really low hull health.
so: what if the newton gains a special ability with the last field diagnostics, that allows the newton to recharge shields too? it would drain special energy ooorrrr, maybe it could transfer its OWN shield energy to the other ship, so it looses its shields, and the shield reg. rate of the target ship gets boosted.


what do you think about this? would it be too unbalanced?

posted on July 21st, 2009, 2:00 pm

The Descent already has a 'Shield boost' ability

posted on July 21st, 2009, 2:03 pm

Well... look at the Romulans. If you build 16 Generix class support refits, your warbirds are almost indestructible because of the shield recharge ability.
So I don't think it would be unbalanced since you can build only 3 newtons.
I like the idea.

posted on July 21st, 2009, 2:08 pm

@tyler
yeah, but it is really shortranged and only usabe every
4 or so min..

i just thought, that you could have the ability to repair a ship outside your base...

nah, it was just a idea^^

posted on July 21st, 2009, 2:10 pm

You are perhaps looking at the Newton in an incorrect fashion. It isn't a vessel of war like the Generix Support Refit is (hence no leveling up and an extremely light phaser which might be even removed). Instead, you can repair ships that were in the field of battle and were heavily damaged, not to mention repairing structures which have HUGE hull health or captured enemy vessels. In this regard, the Newton is quite succesful.

Lets not start mixing and matching tech among the factions please... maybe if we ever get more mixed tech option, but not as a basic ability.

posted on July 21st, 2009, 2:17 pm

i didn't mean it in the fashion of the support refit, i just ment, that you could repair your ships more effectivly, thats why i said it could maybe deactivate the newtons shields, so it wouldn't be able to simply rush into battle, repairing everything..
they could work as a kind of forward base(vorgeschobener stützpunkt^^), where you could repair and rescue the first few important ships....

posted on July 21st, 2009, 2:20 pm

Well, if you time it right, you can keep your Newtons to the aft of your fleet, and then retreat heavily damaged ships so that they might be repaire... of course this rarely works... but I stick to my earlier argument. In my opinion, the Newton is best used for recovery operations and for keeping base structures alive--and I don't think it needs a change from this.

posted on July 21st, 2009, 2:28 pm

i know what you mean, but  if you repair the hull of a fed ship, it doesn't help you much because a fed-ships schields won't recharge really fast..

i just thought about them having a kind of "repair mode":
the phaser ges deactivated, the defensive valuedecreases, and the newton gains the ability to repair in the kind of a yard..

posted on July 21st, 2009, 2:37 pm

The Federation have stronger shields than all the other factions in general and many have faster shield recharge (look at the system values: some Romulan ships exceed these... but then they have weaker shields to begin with).

posted on July 21st, 2009, 2:40 pm

In my opinion, Newtons are only useful for repairing stations and perhaps ships that have damaged engines and can't move on their own.
If they could recharge shields as well, it might become a good unit. It wouldn't be too strong because you can only have 3 of them and I can imagine it would take all of them to recharge shields of a Sovereign for example. And since they are going to lose their phaser, they could get some sort of shield recharging beam installed. It would be very limited because Newton has very low system value.
So it would not affect balance at all I think.