Some little Feedback

posted on September 15th, 2009, 10:49 am

First of all, after playing some time against the AI, I've noticed some things I want to suggest here:

Borg: If you capture an enemy ship with the borg, it is not able to gain experience any more. If you play any other fraction, you are. I'm for a consequent behavior. Either, you capture an enemy vessel you should be able to level it up or you leave it. The argument that borg cant level from themselves wont count, because when you capture an experienced vessel, it will use it. So you have to reset it back to zero if you take this argument. But the way we go now is not logic.

Next: The romulan defense pattern is really weak against others. We have the main cloaking station but what about little cloak generators by themselves that will cloak stations and freighters nearby in a certain radius? Or you let the cloaking ability be a self-used method. If enemy ships come into range, your stations will cloak and stay cloaked until the enemy is gone or you are out of energy. The manual setting for cloaking stations is hard to use, if you have many station bulking together. You cant use that very effectivly.

If you dont use that method, the romulan defense platforms must be balanced out in another way but they go down much too fast in my opinion.

Next: Linked with the topic before: Let the defense platforms use its abilities automatic. Like you pull on and off the special weapon autonomy, this should count for your defense patterns too. So the federation "organised defense" will act on its own and constantly drain the effectiveness of enemy fire-retes, as long as they are in range and you have energy. Thus, if you have two or three platforms, you may be able to do a constant defense patterns against the enemy.

Next: You defense platforms shall fire when the enemy is in range. I noticed that my defense platforms dont use its maximum range behavior. This is a huge disadvantage if you have to manage your defense yourself... this implies that you cant manage your fleet while you manage your defense platforms.

Balancing: I'm totally finde with the strength of the federation defense network. Even if people say it is sometimes too strong, I dont think so. It fits the turle-like strategy of the federation and the whole morale of them. It is a question of "how to use" a fraction right and not blaming a fraction to be too strong. Then you have to blame the borg also. The federation for example got no real ship in order to capture enemy vessels. This is a huge disadvantage when compared with the dominion and the klingon and the borg.

Only the klingons are a little bit too weak in my eyes. They can outbalance it with spamming, but their ships fall too fast. Even the Negh'Var is a hit & run ship.

Oh, and to this, I never really used the souvereign class. Dont know why.

Borg defense patterns: Well, I would like to see a "regeneration" modus on those. The borg are really tough in offense but their defense stations stay in no relation to that.

Next: The oberall artillery ships must get a real punch bonus. As they are now, they are useless. Look on the romulan artillery ship. There is no way it would survive longer than some shots and the punch it delivers can be done by a singe destroyer also. You can evade the shots, you have a slow fire rate, the ship itself is slow, it nearly got no defense and the effect is nearly zero if you fight against other destroyers or cruisers. Sure it is a thing of "how to use it correctly" but I didnt manage to level a single artillery ship up until now but only through luck.

When you capture enemy ships that have the ultimate level, why do they count to your queue. I capture a level 6 Vor'cha and thus, I'm not any longer able to do an upgrade to my own forces. I think it sohuld only count on your vessels. Then there is the question, if you can even level up captured ships. I would say "yes". Maybe your crew get a malus, because it is not a ship from your empire, but it would also get a bonus, because it will leran very much out of alien technology. So... everything is fine there... but only the legendary slot and the borg behavior is not o.k.

So my summary:
Do more for defense patterns. It is a mighty strategy and you should give the defense possabilities more credit. More advanced stations and ways to defend your base. It will clearly fall in no time after they break through. For this you have your fleet, but you clould also build not even a single ship and FIRST build up your defense (I do that) and THEN build up your fleet for your offense. This is a logical way of turtle tactics and I think legitim. 

Sure, when you face artillery ships and your platforms have only a long range, you are f***** up, but thats okay. To have really no ships to counter even small attacks is own fault

posted on September 15th, 2009, 12:02 pm

For using artillery it really helps if you can stash them in a blue nebula so that they are hidden till you want to use them.

posted on September 15th, 2009, 12:26 pm

Yeah, until I use them . But WHEN I use them they are down in no time.

Consider: Then romulan artillery already got cloak. I went in Player vs. AI throught the whole map (Nirvana) and never found a real good position to attack. Either the enemy was too fast (everything under a dreadnought) so my artillery wont be able to destroy the enemy because it will be destroyed before it will do so OR if the enemy was slow enough, there was only a borg cube and it would take hours to take him down with artillery. But within 30 seconds the whole battleflied changes its face and in no time you have 1000 other enemys nearby.

Sorry, but there is no real way to use the artillery on an effective way. Maybe as second liners in an group attack, but this will give you only some additional punch you can also deliver with a direct frontline ship with the same costs.

posted on September 15th, 2009, 3:31 pm

Besides that, another STUPID behavior I noticed in the Serkas is that they fire when the "center" of the target is in range. For small ships, that should be okay, if it wasn't for the fact they are the most manoverauble of the lot, and get away from the shot quite fast. Forget about targetting a moving ship: the only question is how far from the blast will it be when the shell is delivered. And you cannot "aim ahead".

The big problem lies with the base station: to get the center of the station in range, the ships cross from "artillery" to "long" range, and the stations do short work of them. And you cannot tell them to shoot to an "empty" area of space (equivalent to the modern US artilley, that targets ground, and not units) so at least the blast damage can reach the station from REAL artillery range and you only have to worry about incoming ships.

posted on September 15th, 2009, 4:00 pm

Why not just add a Hyper space Artillery styled  counter to a new weapond that deposits  several  mines (like the Romulan  support refit ability ) in the area you designate.That would solve the problem of not being able to target a area. or a nother way would be is to place a homing beacon  in a spot and then  launch  homeing torpedos at that spot. any active  torpedos  not arriving at the spot  before the Beacon are either Destroyed or go  "passive" and act like a mine  for all who contact  them. One  could Scale down the Cardassion Dreadnaught Missle  in size  to a scout sized vessel. with  a high  value for the  Homeing mode and a lower  destructive  yet dual mode for  use as a mine.

posted on September 15th, 2009, 4:08 pm

As far a Federation Organize defense ability. I set the autonomy of my construction ships to high special weapons autonomy and all the torpedo platforms I build with that ship will use organize defense automatically.

posted on September 15th, 2009, 9:35 pm

Besides that, another STUPID behavior I noticed in the Serkas is that they fire when the "center" of the target is in range. For small ships, that should be okay, if it wasn't for the fact they are the most manoverauble of the lot, and get away from the shot quite fast. Forget about targetting a moving ship: the only question is how far from the blast will it be when the shell is delivered. And you cannot "aim ahead".

The big problem lies with the base station: to get the center of the station in range, the ships cross from "artillery" to "long" range, and the stations do short work of them. And you cannot tell them to shoot to an "empty" area of space (equivalent to the modern US artilley, that targets ground, and not units) so at least the blast damage can reach the station from REAL artillery range and you only have to worry about incoming ships.

I aim ahead all the time, in fact I ALWAYS, without exception, manually target using Serkas. You can very easily target an empty area of space. Just hit "a". (set the vessels to green alert and low everything)

You get the

Borg: If you capture an enemy ship with the borg, it is not able to gain experience any more. If you play any other fraction, you are. I'm for a consequent behavior. Either, you capture an enemy vessel you should be able to level it up or you leave it. The argument that borg cant level from themselves wont count, because when you capture an experienced vessel, it will use it. So you have to reset it back to zero if you take this argument. But the way we go now is not logic.

Why do they have to reset it back to zero? The Borg have the drones that previously commanded and understood the ships, so they now have the "acquired experience"

Do more for defense patterns.

Just like ships, defense patterns should be micromanaged, not left to their own own.

When you capture enemy ships that have the ultimate level, why do they count to your queue.

They count because you have to crew them with your finest and best 

posted on September 16th, 2009, 4:17 pm

Why do they have to reset it back to zero? The Borg have the drones that previously commanded and understood the ships, so they now have the "acquired experience"

So you are telling me, that borg drones CAN actual have experience? Then why cant you level them up? Or do they have experience and in the moment they get borg they cant learn anymore? Thats not possible. Either you have experience or you have not. Not being able to learn but halt your exp is unlogic. Because you must be have a similar ability like "learning" to halt it.

posted on September 16th, 2009, 4:24 pm

So you are telling me, that borg drones CAN actual have experience? Then why cant you level them up? Or do they have experience and in the moment they get borg they cant learn anymore? Thats not possible. Either you have experience or you have not. Not being able to learn but halt your exp is unlogic. Because you must be have a similar ability like "learning" to halt it.

Put it this way, either give the exp to all Borg ships or have assimilation strip all drones of all knowlage. The way it is now makes it seem like getting experience upgrades the ship. More like a side effect of the experience that the Borg wouldn't remove from ships.

posted on September 16th, 2009, 4:38 pm

In most cases, if not all, a veteran ship is a field-refitted ship. It has additional circuits and nicknacks that make the enhancements work.

Capturing that ship means keeping those modifications. But if your race cannot make those ships advance, like the Borg, they stay as they are.

Take the Dominion B5, for example. the one and two gold bars provide "additional hangar space" for one fighter each level. So, if the ship is captured by the borg, it shrinks suddenly? If the borg captured a one gold bar B5, they could take advantage of the modification that provides an additional fighter, but they wouldn't be capable ( actually I suspect it's more "they wouldn't bother" ) of making the modifications to obtain the second goldbar level. After all, it's non-Borg captured technology and, by definition, inferior.

posted on September 16th, 2009, 4:46 pm

yep, exactly.
We are thinking (and actually working) on a good method to feature assimilation in the future, but that requires some time 

posted on September 16th, 2009, 6:07 pm

Okay. so then I have to look on the ships like a enhanced ship but the crew itself is irrelevant. And the borg wont do anything on the ship because they dont bother.

Damn, I thought about something like "borg adaption refit" but that would only make sense on two golden bars ships rep. veteran leveled ships. So you have to think at first what you want to capture...

posted on September 16th, 2009, 6:37 pm

Well, the borg are a special case in a lot of things.

Theoretically, any captured ship would be sent to a special structure and dismantled. Useful technology would be "added to their own", and the rest of the ship would be used for raw materials.

Of course, for us, human players, this is sooo unfun that even the devs don't have even tried to implement it.

And the Borg don't evolve or progress. They just adapt. So the not having ranked ships and being unable to level up any captured ship makes sense.

You can picture a Human, Romulan or Klingon engineer tinkering with the specifications and testing ways to improve the ship. Borg ships operate at peak efficiency, so they don't need tinkering. And you cannot imagine a Borg drone trying to improve the ship he belongs. Unless new (assimilated) tech provides a more efficient way of doing something, things will stay the same.

You could use that as argument for stating that any borg-captured ship should automatically rank up to Veteran status, due to the maximized efficiency. Well, no.

And I doubt the devs would agree on that.

posted on September 16th, 2009, 7:40 pm

Though I do think that all Borg-captured ships should get the basic Borg regeneration boost so long as they are owned by Borg.  Those drones may not be trying to further upgrade it, but they sure as hell will patch it up, and deploy nanites to repair it.

posted on September 16th, 2009, 7:46 pm

How about captured ships gain levels, but not experiance based? After a certain amount of time, they become more 'Borg' like this:

*At capture* Gain appearance addon > *1 minute after capture* Gains Regeneration/Anti-Gravity Mine ability > *3 minutes after capture* Replace 1 weapon with a Borg one.