Passive Ability - Biologic Adaption Systems (Breen Only)

posted on July 9th, 2010, 2:13 pm

Passive Ability: Biologic Adaption Systems

The Origin:
The Breen are known for having Biologically based ship systems if not partially biological. The details are rather vague since little is known of the Breen. However, according to the best assumptions of what I think Thot Gor is telling me. This is a way how to take advantage of the Breen's biological computer systems. The Biologic Adaption Systems uses the sensors to analyze the shield impacts from their weapons fire to attempt to determine the shield frequencies of the target vessel. It then reconfigures the weapons to try penetrating the shields, the longer the one ship continues in battle with the same target, the more likely its next attempt will penetrate their shields (because of process of elimination). Once there are a significant amount of weapons that successfully penetrated the shields, it will maintain that configuration. The weapons will continue to penetrate the enemies shields until either a new target is selected or until the enemy changes its shield configuration.

The Purpose:
Often times the way I see it is that the Breen would slowly become more dangerous to tangle with the longer you are fighting with them. Once they start penetrating your shields, you may start loosing some critical systems like Weapons, shields, or even Life Support. And if you continue to fight, your condition will slowly degrade unless you use some ability that would change the shield configuration (Some of them are the Akira's special, Shield Recharge of the Generix, Shield Reset of the Descent, Auto Repair of the Leahval, or the Regeneration of the Borg Mixed B'rel).

The Flaws:
There are the chances of the computer making a major miscalculation making the torpedo do a whole lot less damage. This means that there are slim chances of damage variations, however it is possible. Ships with advanced shields (Support ships, Frigate Generix,etc.) or dual layer shields (Descent, Fed-Mixed B-5 Fighter Carrier) will take more time to adapt against.

Also another flaw is that if sensors are disabled, then the weapon's effectiveness in combat will be like regular torpedoes, they won't adapt.

Overall:
Overall I think that this would really fit the mysteriousness of the Breen, and at the same time, fit the feel that the Breen are a people that many would have a hard time tangling with. But overall it is a fair trade off. A chance to increase damage against targets as battle progresses, and also make the Breen more effective against craft that would usually take on a lot of heat. This would make longer battles be more favorable for the Breen making them a good Late Game advntage. But it would of course make them more vulnerable to sensor disabling abilities since they would pretty much KO the Passive.

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Alright, I am open for opinions on this.

posted on July 9th, 2010, 3:29 pm

Awesome but impractical http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AwesomeButImpractical

The problem here is that you'd need to keep the same ship in combat with the same other ship for extended periods of time, by which point either one of the ships could become damaged and need to repair.
If this was made better so that it was practical, then it would just be unbalanced.

Organic ships are interesting, but I don't think they would lead to constantly-adapted torpedoes, that would indicate that the ship is deciding to change the torpedoes to try new things and is learning what works, the same could be said about any ship with its crew rather than the ship itself making the decisions and trying out things.
I do agree Breen ships need passives to show just how different they are from regular ships, but modifying torpedoes just isn't the way to go.

posted on July 9th, 2010, 8:56 pm

Hmm.... I understand the fact that it would be hard to make good use of it. I was thinking about the scenario of when you would have a fleet of 8 Breen Cruisers trying to take down a Tavara. Long Battles would be possible. What if instead of against one ship. It made the Breen vessel more effective against that class of ship? Where this would be more like an Anti-spam passive. Where you can achieve shield penetration against one class, and it will continue as long as you consistently fight against that specific class. (Then after 5 seconds of not attacking that class, then it resets to adapt against a new class.)

This would simply make Dominion a good spammer, but at the same time a race that is good against spam (Like someone who knows their strategy and has the ability to use counteractions incase if one was to steal their strategy). Of course most people that are experienced would mix their fleets. But there are still some that would spam from time to time. And often times the spammed ships of choice have great strengths and not so many weaknesses (or weaknesses that are not commonly used against it). And I believe that passives such like this for the Breen would fit their style, and be strategically valid.

The only hard part would be to maintain adaption through all ranks of its class as well as between the different avatars or mix tech variants. But overall I think taking this approach might make it more practical.

posted on July 9th, 2010, 9:25 pm

Shield re-modulation... anyone?

[Nebula_Class_Ftw]

posted on July 9th, 2010, 9:34 pm

Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on July 9th, 2010, 9:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You should have been more clear about it applying to a class of ship, not an individual ship.

In the case of things like the Tavara, the Breen Cruiser does more damage to large sized vessels, so ther's not really a need to break thru a Tavara's shields, when you can just take the shields down.

Shield-ignoring weapons in general are Awesome but Impractical because if you don't have enuff of them and you don't get lucky enuff to knock out subsystems, you're just going to have to kill the shields anyways to get to the now damaged hull. This is why I never consider cloaked K'Vorts a threat, as they just take out a third of my Intrepid's hull and then I don't even have to bother to repair it until it is starting to get its shields damaged.

5 seconds of not attacking a class it resets? Wow, that's extremely impractical in any engagement against someone who isn't doing a pure spam (or maybe a tactical cube with no diamond.) This will make it even more useless than K'Vort torps, at least those still work if you decide to change targets and quickly snipe an escaping ship or use them to kill a miner for a little raiding.

Shield re-modulation... anyone?

And thus only one torpedo got thru, leaving barely a scratch. Might explain why the K'Vort can only do one shot per ship.

posted on July 10th, 2010, 4:44 am

i like the idea but maybe they can get it as a vet

sounds similar to battleship special - maybe at vet they can get the what is now borg special to disable random sub system each hit... ( i think they already have this skill at vet...? )

posted on July 10th, 2010, 11:31 pm

I was under the assumption that ever sense Wolf 359 or First Contact All Fed ships  had auto rotating phaser and shield frequency's to prevent enemy from getting through there shields and to prevent the enemy from negating phaser effectiveness. 

posted on July 11th, 2010, 12:46 am

I was under the assumption that ever sense Wolf 359 or First Contact All Fed ships  had auto rotating phaser and shield frequency's to prevent enemy from getting through there shields and to prevent the enemy from negating phaser effectiveness. 

this assumption is false. they only did that against borg.

the rest of the time shield settings were kept constant. generations is evidence of this.

[Anonymous]

posted on July 11th, 2010, 2:04 am

Last edited by Anonymous on July 11th, 2010, 7:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

Generation.... heh i hate that movie... its just wrong 

anyway phasers had auto rotating phaser frequencies... i think they said something like this
and auto rotating shield frequencies later

posted on July 11th, 2010, 2:55 am

this assumption is false. they only did that against borg.

the rest of the time shield settings were kept constant. generations is evidence of this.

I knew YOU were going to reply and say that.  Generations is full of crap. I dont care if that rust bucket BOP had the exact shield frequency the E-D still should have EASLY destroyed that BOP.  The shield frequency being static was one of the major goofs I spotted in that move  typical of Berman and Bragas disregard for continuity.  shiz once you have that kind of Tech you dont just use it against ONE enemy you use it against ALL.

posted on July 11th, 2010, 4:52 am

well gordie was in engineering at all times so they could just keep looking at shield frequency if jordie kept looking at console.. so.. maybe that's why?

posted on July 11th, 2010, 7:19 am

Generation.... heh i hate that movie... its just wrong 

anyway phasers had auto rotating phaser and shield frequencies... i think they said something like this

Awe!!! Way to diss on my favorite movie! Riker burned Worf bad 

posted on July 11th, 2010, 7:29 am

Considering that Voyager and DS9 had a ton of situations where you hear orders of "rotate shield frequencies" and "modulate the phaser frequencies", it would be highly improbably that they were on automatic settings  .

posted on July 11th, 2010, 11:29 am

indeed dom, it seems to me that rotating shield frequencies constantly is a nonstandard procedure, maybe requiring more power or computer usage. so against non adaptive races (ie non borg) they wouldnt waste their time rotating shield frequencies.

I knew YOU were going to reply and say that.  Generations is full of crap. I dont care if that rust bucket BOP had the exact shield frequency the E-D still should have EASLY destroyed that BOP.   The shield frequency being static was one of the major goofs I spotted in that move  typical of Berman and Bragas disregard for continuity.  shiz once you have that kind of Tech you dont just use it against ONE enemy you use it against ALL.

i disagree, we've seen many times that without shields the hull isnt very strong. i'm surprised the enterprise didnt die faster to those shield ignoring weapons. if they had targetted the deflector dish it would have made a large explosion, or the warp core etc. or the bridge to kill riker (that would be perfect )

1 photon torpedo can destroy entire ships when their shields are down. the enterprise might as well have had shields down as the weapons passed straight through.

and about the enterprise destroying the bop easily, the bop still had shields, the ent cant one shot them. maybe the first couple shots from the bop damaged the ent, removing some of its teeth.

posted on July 12th, 2010, 1:53 pm

So...... This could likewise be a probably effective passive for the Breen? I was thinking that this would simply be a purely Anti-Spam passive. Since I find that there are few solutions against a spam of a certain ship without spamming its prefered counter. As I would think, the Breen would have Biologically based computers, and I'd assume it'd be able to 'learn' the shield frequencies and adapt its weapons against them. This would quickly make the Breen a good counter for both spams and rushes on late game ships (since they would have a somewhat longer fight against those, it would be probable to think that this passive would be effective agaisnt Excell II and Warbird Rushes).

Overall I think that some might be looking at the downsides more so than the positives. The 5 second reset could be exchanged for maybe 8 seconds if it helps make it more 'practical'. I just don't want someone to be carrying the adaption through long periods of time in-game if they are not continuously attacking that class.

Overall I believe that this would prove great overall. So far I think there is a need for ships that have certain things counted against spam without being spammed.