Rework the Sovereign for a different role.

posted on September 25th, 2011, 11:52 pm

This is an idea I've had brewing for a while and I think I've got it clear enough to put it down as a suggestion.

People have been talking about the Sovereign, how it's actually a good ship but we still don't see it being built, ever.  The cost for chassis level 3 is just too high for Mayson, and to put it simply Risner doesn't need them because she has the Avalon and later the Phalanx.  Its ablative armor plates will never be autotargeted and its neighbor the Defiant has the exact same tech requirements and also has ablative armor.

So what I want to suggest is a new defensive passive that will make it completely different from other Fed ships.  It needs a role that can't be filled by E2, Avalons, Defiants or Phalanx.

One of the most memorable scenes in all of Start Trek for me was when the Enterprise swoops in between the defiant and a cube and shrugs off the cube's attacks.  What if the Sovereign received the reverse of the spectre's passive, gaining damage reduction against either high-damage weapons?  The reduction would follow some sort of logarithmic curve so it reduces say 10% against a weapon that deals 15 damage but only 30-40% against a cube torpedo that deals 200 damage.  So cubes and diamonds don't get totally shut down but the effect also works against the battleships of most races.

This would give the Federation a dedicated anti-capital ship (I know they don't have any trouble dealing with large ships already, but the point is it's wildly different from the defiant and phalanx)

I thought about asking for some sort of protection special that would allow the Sovereign to force enemies to target it, but I decided against it.  The current Sovy special is awesome enough, and we don't want to make tanking cubes too easy for feds.  I just feel like the Ablative armor is wasted on this ship and only acts as a placeholder for cool things to come.  Plus, the more anti-large ship options we give to the players, the cheaper we can make warbirds, right?  ...right?

posted on September 26th, 2011, 12:17 am

Well presented tryptic, as usual. I like it. I would like to see that the sovereign somehow becomes auto targeted though. Since when mentioning the scene in first contact the enterprise essentially drew fire from the cube, despite a more inviting and easy target the defiant was. The ship would drop in it's defensive value so it would get auto targeted so it could tank fire while still having it's current shield strength. Hope that makes sense.

posted on September 26th, 2011, 12:48 am

Give it a Flagship Class or Command Ship passive that makes it a higher priority target, it would be believable.

Not sure First Contact would be the best example, Enterprise would naturally be a higher priority than the currently crippled and immobile Defiant.

posted on September 26th, 2011, 4:05 am

Not sure First Contact would be the best example, Enterprise would naturally be a higher priority than the currently crippled and immobile Defiant.

Well, in Fleetops the weaker and damaged ships are targeted first, but yeah in conventional battles I see your point. 

posted on September 26th, 2011, 4:15 am

I too would like to see the Soveriegn have a more interesting role than it does currently.

  I'm sure something in the future is planned, but I sympathize with you .  I'd love to see it be a command ship of sorts or something like that.  The Pre-Chassis 3 units are all basic role fillers based on their passives, so the heavier ships should be super-duper cool

posted on September 26th, 2011, 5:25 am

I'd like to see a total re-work or at least re-write of the passives to at least make sense, IE: armor affecting the damage done to ships with a certain range weapons.


As for the Sov, I could live with this, I only occasionally see them ingame currently, because they ARE that pointless currently, unless you want a few to pop the engines on a cube/diamond to stop the nanites.

posted on September 26th, 2011, 11:35 am

How about thinking outside the box. The sovereign has more transporter rooms than any other Starfleet vessel.

How about we give it a toned down special like the Tavara allowing it to do boarding actions. An increased crew and you have a ship which can defend itself and take over other ships.

I know the developers don't want the feds to have troopships, but it could be useful and with the Sovereign being high end tech balance should not be a problem.

posted on September 26th, 2011, 3:34 pm

I'm not so fond of a Starfleet boarding vessel if not even the Klingons have proper one. Yes they do have the Vutpa troop transport, but seriousely, that's even used less than the Sovereign .
Since a couple of Sovereigns destroyed a whole fleet of my ships I'm not so sure about them being useless. There special is a real fleet killer. If the enemy has single threads like cube/Tavara you may go for Defiant, but if you have to deal with overwhelming fleets I think the Sovereign already has some use. Perhaps one could elaborate on that. The Defiant is already good as anti-capital ship, so why not make the Sovereign even more useful against fleets? For example with additional photon torp launchers like in Nemesis enabling here to do proper damage against several ships at once.

posted on September 26th, 2011, 5:19 pm

You serious? The Vutpa is a monster.

posted on September 26th, 2011, 9:33 pm

You serious? The Vutpa is a monster.

Maybe, but its rarely used. I've only seen maybe twoish online games where players use it, but then again I'm not online much, so maybe its used more often now

posted on September 26th, 2011, 9:58 pm

So basically people need to try using these rare ships more, so we can get more feedback for balancing.

posted on September 26th, 2011, 10:09 pm

What they might need is publicity, like maybe a tutorial-style replay to show what they're good for.

posted on September 26th, 2011, 10:12 pm

What they might need is publicity, like maybe a tutorial-style replay to show what they're good for.

Aye.

But we're going off topic. What do you think of my suggestion (and the OP off course):

How about thinking outside the box. The sovereign has more transporter rooms than any other Starfleet vessel.

How about we give it a toned down special like the Tavara allowing it to do boarding actions. An increased crew and you have a ship which can defend itself and take over other ships.

I know the developers don't want the feds to have troopships, but it could be useful and with the Sovereign being high end tech balance should not be a problem.

posted on September 26th, 2011, 10:23 pm

Transporting more people than the other ships sounds believable, it probably has as many Transporter rooms as a Galaxy. I'd say the best idea is overriding the default transporter limit so it can send more with each transport, if possible.

For the OP, isn't it already better at capital ships than the Defiant? They're normally large-size and the Defiant is mainly Pulse-armed.

posted on September 26th, 2011, 10:30 pm

Transporting more people than the other ships sounds believable, it probably has as many Transporter rooms as a Galaxy. I'd say the best idea is overriding the default transporter limit so it can send more with each transport, if possible.

For the OP, isn't it already better at capital ships than the Defiant? They're normally large-size and the Defiant is mainly Pulse-armed.

Isn't the defiant medium sized so better avoidance of torpedoes?