Venture Class Refractive Shielding

posted on March 28th, 2011, 3:36 am

So why dont the shields go down on the scout when it enters this mode so it can be taken or destroyed easily if spotted

posted on March 28th, 2011, 8:45 am

a better reason why it should lose its cloak detect special: balance.

if you give it the ability to scout well, it shouldnt have the ability to cloak detect well.

btw tcr, as much as you all caps its not a cloak, it is 90% as effective as a cloak. stations cant be controlled by the user, so a venture that isnt auto targetted could walk straight through any base without getting shot, even if spotted. and any ships you bring in wont shoot, so you have to click attack, at which point the ship will get to just within range and stop, and the 180 speed scout will zoom off. so it makes it very hard to kill.

maybe if it is temporary (20 seconds sounds enough for me) and slows the ship a lot and disables the ability of shields to block weapons, as they are now focussed on making the ship hard to see. this will balance it, as the ship could be more easily destroyed. i was toying with the idea of making it not stop beaming, but then it would easily be captured lol.

but to be honest the fed scout is already quite good, it doesnt need this boost progressive scan allows scouting bases from afar. this special should go to a scout that isnt as useful, i was thinking borg scout, but that is tougher to kill. the dom scout already has its probes as well. but i think it would be better for the borg or dom.

posted on March 28th, 2011, 12:07 pm

I agree with Myles. Scouts are usually taken out by auto targeting them at the beginning of the game, since FO pathing makes manual targeting quite difficult(later on with more ships that take out the Scout with one shot it'd something different).
With a special/passive like this the Scout would become even better than a Talon refit, which has a better cloak detection but is not cloaked and has 3times the costs of the Venture. A venture like that would have to cost something between 400 to 500 dilithium.

posted on March 28th, 2011, 2:10 pm

So why dont the shields go down on the scout when it enters this mode...

Because the shields are being used to hide the vessel.

posted on March 28th, 2011, 4:32 pm

As i understand it this wouldn't need a new class label............ in the fed fighter odf there is a command(i only remember it vaugely) that hides the footprint on the minimap........ but it does not mess with auto-targeting........

a better reason why it should lose its cloak detect special: balance.

if you give it the ability to scout well, it shouldnt have the ability to cloak detect well.

btw tcr, as much as you all caps its not a cloak, it is 90% as effective as a cloak. stations cant be controlled by the user, so a venture that isnt auto targetted could walk straight through any base without getting shot, even if spotted. and any ships you bring in wont shoot, so you have to click attack, at which point the ship will get to just within range and stop, and the 180 speed scout will zoom off. so it makes it very hard to kill.

maybe if it is temporary (20 seconds sounds enough for me) and slows the ship a lot and disables the ability of shields to block weapons, as they are now focussed on making the ship hard to see. this will balance it, as the ship could be more easily destroyed. i was toying with the idea of making it not stop beaming, but then it would easily be captured lol.

but to be honest the fed scout is already quite good, it doesnt need this boost progressive scan allows scouting bases from afar. this special should go to a scout that isnt as useful, i was thinking borg scout, but that is tougher to kill. the dom scout already has its probes as well. but i think it would be better for the borg or dom.

He Said it all

posted on March 28th, 2011, 7:22 pm

How about this:

Make it so that the Venture Class can beam an operative aboard a ship or station, just like the stock Romulan spy.  Effect lasts 30 seconds and takes up 37 special energy.  It'll use the special energy that would otherwise be used for the cloak detect.  Maybe make it so that it takes 15% longer to recharge the special energy and reduce shield rate by 10%.

PS:  I'm using the Unit Value Calculator for these calculations.

Old Venture:
healthRate = 0.078 // Fleet Ops = 0.079
shieldRate = 0.278 // Fleet Ops = 0.279
specialEnergyRate = 0.308 // Fleet Ops = 0.311

New Venture:
healthRate = 0.078
shieldRate = 0.250
specialEnergyRate = 0.262

This wouldn't be as good (in my opinion) as the refractive shielding, but it would give the Federation a pretty good advantage.

Then we can give the Borg something similar for the Detector.  The Dominion already have Breen that can cloak using expensive "scouts."

posted on March 28th, 2011, 7:47 pm

it would give the Federation a pretty good advantage.

indeed it would.

posted on March 28th, 2011, 7:53 pm

Well, TCR, as you say yourself: it's like the ROMULAN spy. Totally non-Fed like.
If you combined your shield idea with the special weapons energy and gave it a time restriction I wouldn't complain. But still the question would stay: why? Why give the Fed scout two special weapons when it's already useful for its costs?
The only thing I could think about is a change of its weaponsystem, which could become a 5%chance or so to disable shields for 1second, representing what Data did to Ruafos ship in Insurrection.

posted on March 28th, 2011, 8:04 pm

I guess I wasn't clear enough in my previous post.  I was thinking that the operative could be used instead of the refractive shielding.  Maybe something similar to the way Species-8472 revealed the enemy base.  Something like a communications tap.  It would be more Fed-like for the scout to tap into a stations communication systems to reveal the enemy base.  But I think that if the scout is destroyed, the communication tap will be lost.

But it's either going to be a communications tap or the refractive shielding.  I like the communications tap better.

posted on March 28th, 2011, 8:07 pm

In order to use this comm-tap, I suggest the venture be stationary.

posted on March 28th, 2011, 8:41 pm

Maybe not stationary.  But using the Species-8472 clairvoyant link weapon with "toggleweapon" and "clairvoyantLink" classLabels, maybe the special energy could be drained at a rate of 1 special energy unit per second.  And without the sprites on it, so that the enemy doesn't know that they've been hit with this communications tap.

posted on March 28th, 2011, 9:03 pm

Again why make the feds stronger tho, ask anyone who plays online and they will tell you I love playing as feds. So why make feds stronger because they already are very strong

posted on March 28th, 2011, 9:15 pm

The Federation cannot cloak.  To compensate for this, they need some way to monitor what the base is doing.  A communications tap is the best thing to use to compensate for the fact that the Federation cannot cloak.  I think that the Borg should have this too.

The Dominion already have ships that can cloak with a specific avatar.  And besides, their super sensor station is very effective, and I believe it should be moved down the tech tree a little and cost some supply every time a long-rang scan is conducted.  And that scan should last for 15 seconds.

posted on March 28th, 2011, 9:20 pm

they can use progressive scan to see quite a distance, hover outside their base and use it. norway can recharge it for gayson so you can use it over and over. the nebula sensor version gets a sensor special too.

feds can already switch strats rather easily as it is, move from intrep to monsoon with ease, so that its hard to be caught with your trousers down. their need for cloaked scouts is lower than for other races.

posted on March 28th, 2011, 9:43 pm

Or they could ally with Romulans and cloak to their heart's content. With battleships, no less.