Originally posted by Raltar

Originally posted by kahulbane

In normal naval combat, there is electromic warfare, or science ships, and fast attack ships, like subs, that cannot take a hit, etc, this can go on for ever...

And so in ST there are the same, Logistics in large fights. 

 

So by that logic, I guess Voyager was only capable of "electronic warfare" since its a science ship? I guess someone should tell CBS to go back and erase all those episodes of Voyager where they were fighting toe-to-toe with larger ships.

Not to mention all those episodes where the Defiant got damaged, since they are just like a sub and "cannot take a hit" according to the rules of naval combat.

Star Trek isn't like naval combat!

And discussions with you are not like discussions with an intelligent adult.  Yes, we get it.

Originally posted by nAAtimus

Originally posted by Raltar

Originally posted by kahulbane

In normal naval combat, there is electromic warfare, or science ships, and fast attack ships, like subs, that cannot take a hit, etc, this can go on for ever...

And so in ST there are the same, Logistics in large fights. 

 

So by that logic, I guess Voyager was only capable of "electronic warfare" since its a science ship? I guess someone should tell CBS to go back and erase all those episodes of Voyager where they were fighting toe-to-toe with larger ships.

Not to mention all those episodes where the Defiant got damaged, since they are just like a sub and "cannot take a hit" according to the rules of naval combat.

Star Trek isn't like naval combat!

 

You're right, it's sort of like naval combat.

lol!

Originally posted by Raltar

Originally posted by kahulbane

In normal naval combat, there is electromic warfare, or science ships, and fast attack ships, like subs, that cannot take a hit, etc, this can go on for ever...

And so in ST there are the same, Logistics in large fights. 

 

So by that logic, I guess Voyager was only capable of "electronic warfare" since its a science ship? I guess someone should tell CBS to go back and erase all those episodes of Voyager where they were fighting toe-to-toe with larger ships.

Not to mention all those episodes where the Defiant got damaged, since they are just like a sub and "cannot take a hit" according to the rules of naval combat.

Star Trek isn't like naval combat!

Actually I think you just proved yourself wrong. As a cursory examination of naval vessels will tell you, while they are usually designed with one purpose in mind, they actually are quite decent at a number of roles. A sub may be a good stealthy attack vessel, but it may also be good in exploration, or mine hunting, etc. An aircraft carrier might have the best ability to dominate an area of the ocean, but it also serves quite well as a platform for carrying troops or resupply or what have you.

The Enterprise (TNG) was a diplomatic/exploration flag ship, but it was a cruiser. They did science stuff well, they explored well, they did well in combat. It's not one-dimensional just like naval vessels aren't one dimensional. As you quite rightly pointed out.

Originally posted by madeux

This actually makes more sense than the standard melee combat in an mmo... It's rather simplified, but it is sort of how naval combat works. 

No it isn't.  Navies have specialized ships, but they aren't specialized into "tank", "dps", and "buff/debuff" ships.  That's idiotic and wouldn't work in a Navy battle because no one would fire on the tanks.  After all, why the heck would you ever focus your attacks on a ship with high defenses and bad attacks?  That's stupid.  The heaviest armored ships in Naval History were Battleships, and they were also the biggest damage dealers.  Because they dealt the most damage they were big targets, hence they needed heavy armor to defend themselves.  So the "tanks" were also the "dps" and hence the whole "Holy Trinity" system just falls apart quite rapidly.

Generally various Navy ships have been made to fill various mission roles.  That might be speed, stealth, firepower, range, or the like, and they were given as much armor as practical to fulfill that role -- that said, modern ships generally have less armor than older ones, because modern weapons are so ridiculously effective it doesn't make much of a difference (generally the strategy is to avoid getting fired upon and strike from a long distance using missiles, planes, and the like).

In any case, the idea that this is "sort of how naval combat works" is not true at all.  It's "sort of" how fantasy combat works (with all the strengths and weaknesses ridiculously exaggerated).  It's not remotely how naval combat works.  It's not remotely how real life combat works either (for that matter).  One should not confuse "specialization" with tank-dps-caster/healer/debuff/buffer/whatever.  There are lots of ways to have specialized roles, just because most MMOs copy EQ and WoW doesn't mean that's the only way or even the best way; it just means a bunch of companies choose to copy two MMOs that were very successful during their day (WoW's day is still here of course, probably in part because everyone tries to copy it too much and innovate too little).

Heck, you want a better system?  They could have roughly copied Battlemech mechanics and tossed on shields.  That would have better emulated Starship combat and specialized roles (such as distance, weapon types, etc).  It's isn't hard to do, but they certainly didn't do it.

Originally posted by Blurr

A: Firstly, realistic naval combat does use things like "science" vessels. Radar jamming, electronic warfare, acoustic hunters, mine laying ships, resupply ships, need I go on?

B: Secondly, while it is reasonable to think of the Cruiser/Science/Escort as Tank/Support/DPS, it's not quite as black and white as that. Every ship should be able to solo.

C: Also you have to remember that it's not a one-dimensional being you're playing here. You're customizing your personal skills/equipment, but also the skills/equipment of your bridge officers, not to mention the loadout of your ship. The amount of choice you have in these matters is quite broad comparitively.

A: Yeah, because, just like I already pointed out several times now, Voyager as a "science ship" only used those support abilites you mentioned. They laid mines all the time and... oh WAIT... NO THEY DIDN'T. Star Trek was never like normal naval combat. All the ships could do a very wide array of things, not limited by being shifted into one of three types of ships.

B: They say every ship can solo, but Cryptic says that about all their games. Try taking a controller from level 1 to 50 in CoX without ever grouping. Yeah, it "can" be done... but it isn't fun.

C: Yeah, that was my hope too... until I saw this video. The video (made by Cryptic themselves to the best of my knowledge) directly says that in order to be successful you have to use Cruisers as tanks, science ships as support and escorts as DPS. It may be possible to use a different strategy but Cryptic is obviously building the game to make those three basic options the most effective.

You are right, every ship should be exactly the same. That would be a far more interesting game.... Wait, are you sure you're not just trolling?

Originally posted by Blurr

Actually, people are blowing this way out of proportion.

Firstly, realistic naval combat does use things like "science" vessels. Radar jamming, electronic warfare, acoustic hunters, mine laying ships, resupply ships, need I go on?

Secondly, while it is reasonable to think of the Cruiser/Science/Escort as Tank/Support/DPS, it's not quite as black and white as that. Every ship should be able to solo. Every ship will have mostly the same components with things like weapons and defenses and such. Where it differs is how you decide to load it out and what bonuses your type of ship gives you. There's nothing that says you couldn't be a Science officer flying an Escort with a really good tractor beam, or maybe you fly a science vessel but you've set up massive bonuses to your shields so people can't disable you as easily. Maybe you're a cruiser and you've loaded outself out with a kickass Tactical Bridge Officer and some really devestating weaponry. The cruiser just has more crew/warp core which makes it easier to tank with, and science vessels have massive bonuses to their deflectors and tractor beams and whatnot so they are slightly more powerful, and the escort is fast/maneuverable with good weaponry and the ability to equip cannons which makes it easier to load up with weaponry. To think each ship class can only fill one role is rather narrow-minded.

Also you have to remember that it's not a one-dimensional being you're playing here. You're customizing your personal skills/equipment, but also the skills/equipment of your bridge officers, not to mention the loadout of your ship. The amount of choice you have in these matters is quite broad comparitively.

This is the point here, logistics, and the diversity.
Yes Voyager was an exploration/science vessel. but unlike pure science ships, she was equipped to go out deep, and alone.
And in the series, adapted to the environment over time it was subjected to. And to that note, need help in large fights...
It is all logistics, and numbers. If i was a captain on a Guided missile cruiser, i can do well with my ship and crew, but i really would be happy with another Cruiser that was EW with me, and or a support ship or two near by.

If you look at the video in question here, most of the ships are solo, but not the ones you can tell are pure Science ships.

They've completely missed the fact that ST ships can be retrofitted for different roles. Did they do any research into ST lore at all?

Originally posted by kahulbane

I hate to be the one to say this first, but logistically speaking, it is true. There is no way around the analogy.
There are other ship classes, and things will be different, as we will all see, but the basics are there.
 

Even in real naval combat, or any combat force for that matter, or business merger.. there are the damage dealers, buffing and support, and tanks of sorts, it is a simple system to look at combat from, and no real way to get away from.

"Buffing and support" generally happen off the battlefield and are in the realm of logistics.  Yeah, soldiers need to eat, ships need to be maintained, stuff needs to get moved to keep the military machines effective, but once you engage in battle that sort of thing is generally not playing an active role at that point; certainly not big enough to make specialized player ships for it).  Now, there is some stuff with ECM and ECCM that can play a role, and some electronic warfare stuff, so there certainly is room for debuffing to an extent, but probably not a specialized ship doing just that.  Honestly, I can see how Star Trek has a problem here, since a lot of potential roles don't exist since they don't have point defense and other technologies that might help mix things up a bit (then again, playing a ship with automated point defense as your big role probably isn't a lot of fun).

As I said in my previous post, tanks just don't happen.

Originally posted by Slysar

You are right, every ship should be exactly the same. That would be a far more interesting game.... Wait, are you sure you're not just trolling?

Hmm, it seems a lot of people seem to think "specialized" HAS to mean "tank/caster/dps", which is completely untrue.

Originally posted by kahulbane

If you look at the video in question here, most of the ships are solo, but not the ones you can tell are pure Science ships. 

Exactly the problem I'm trying to address here. On the one hand Cryptic claims every ship will be able to solo, and yet they also are designing Science ships to be geared for grouping. Its just like when they claimed every class in city of Heroes could solo. Try soloing with a controller or a defender. It CAN be done, but its not fun. They are simply repeating the same default MMO style combat all over again with STO.

Am I wonrg here or is this not the EXACT thing we have all been afraid of from the very start: That Cryptic would make STO exactly like their previous games?

Originally posted by Drachasor

Originally posted by Slysar

You are right, every ship should be exactly the same. That would be a far more interesting game.... Wait, are you sure you're not just trolling?

 

Hmm, it seems a lot of people seem to think "specialized" HAS to mean "tank/caster/dps", which is completely untrue.

I agree with that. So it has inherent strengths. Who is telling you that you cant outfit your "tank" ship with equipment, bridge officers and mods to give it more support or offensive utility. 

Originally posted by Blurr

Also you have to remember that it's not a one-dimensional being you're playing here. You're customizing your personal skills/equipment, but also the skills/equipment of your bridge officers, not to mention the loadout of your ship. The amount of choice you have in these matters is quite broad comparitively.

And you have to remember how these games work.  If they make the mechanics to support tanking (e.g. you want one person to grab all or almost all aggro and get hit a lot), then they force players to make their tanks be Cruisers with special components and crews to enhance tanking.  They then force dpsers to be Escorts with specialized stuff for DPS (because if you make a cruiser for this you are just damaging total dps).  Within the context of how their universe works this makes sense too, because, for instance, it doesn't matter if your ship is extra tough if being tough does NOTHING because it won't get hit.

In short, if they make the specialized combat roles out to be tank, support, and dps, then naturally the most effective strategies will be maximizing the effectiveness of ships filling those roles.  There might be some room for creative variation, but usually there isn't in games like this (even in ones that allow hybrid characters...the hybrids just don't measure up unless you specialize them to the point they aren't really hybrids anymore).

Originally posted by Raltar

Originally posted by Blurr

A: Firstly, realistic naval combat does use things like "science" vessels. Radar jamming, electronic warfare, acoustic hunters, mine laying ships, resupply ships, need I go on?
 

A: Yeah, because, just like I already pointed out several times now, Voyager as a "science ship" only used those support abilites you mentioned. They laid mines all the time and... oh WAIT... NO THEY DIDN'T. Star Trek was never like normal naval combat. All the ships could do a very wide array of things, not limited by being shifted into one of three types of ships.

You're proving my point here actually, but I see your problem. You seem to think that an electronics warfare ship will do only that and nothing else. That is not the case. Generally while a naval vessel will be designed with a particular strength in mind (stealth, area domination, firepower, etc) it is also built to function in other roles. Just like star trek ships, naval vessels can do a wide array of things. That is why while it's reasonable to put the tank/dps/support label on these ships, it's not as concrete as you'd think.

I think you're honestly just reading too much into this latest video. You're hearing them say "effective captains know how to correctly use the strengths of their vessels" and thinking it means "You can only do one thing with each class of ship". This is not the case.

Think about this, in the second half of the video they talk about launching shuttles at enemy ships. Escort ships are small, fast, lightly-crewed ships with heavy weaponry like the defiant. Do you think they will be effective with boarding parties? I doubt they'll even be able to use them. In fact, i'd say the most likely candidate to do well with boarding parties is the cruiser class ships. They have a bigger crew, bigger ships, and more likely the ability to launch shuttles. What's that? A "tank" ship doing well with a damage/disable attack? Perish the thought! Just like an aircraft carrier can launch attack planes or troop carrying aircraft or sub-hunting aircraft. Multi-role warfare for each vessel.

Also, I'm going off more than just the latest video and what you or I may be reading into what it says. I highly suggest you do the same before claiming the sky is falling.

Originally posted by DeViLmAn0

Originally posted by Drachasor

Originally posted by Slysar

You are right, every ship should be exactly the same. That would be a far more interesting game.... Wait, are you sure you're not just trolling?

 

Hmm, it seems a lot of people seem to think "specialized" HAS to mean "tank/caster/dps", which is completely untrue.

 

I agree with that. So it has inherent strengths. Who is telling you that you cant outfit your "tank" ship with equipment, bridge officers and mods to give it more support or offensive utility. 

I was actually meaning to convey that you can have different combat mechanics.  Modern navies have Carriers, Anti-aircraft/missile ships (Aegis), anti-sub ships, subs (stealth ships), etc.  You don't have tanks there.  You do have ships that deal damage (pretty much all of them, even Aegis have missile capabilities), you do have support ships after a fashion (the aegis and anti-sub ships in particular here).  STO looks like it is picking a stupid system to go with for space combat, and a lot of people are assuming a system like that is the only thing that can exist.  My point is that is NOT TRUE AT ALL.  We have a lot of people so used to EQ and WoW and their "clones" that they can't imagine any other group combat mechanics, even though there are tons of other possible mechanics in real life and in many, many other games.

Originally posted by Drachasor

And you have to remember how these games work.  If they make the mechanics to support tanking (e.g. you want one person to grab all or almost all aggro and get hit a lot), then they force players to make their tanks be Cruisers with special components and crews to enhance tanking.  They then force dpsers to be Escorts with specialized stuff for DPS (because if you make a cruiser for this you are just damaging total dps).  Within the context of how their universe works this makes sense too, because, for instance, it doesn't matter if your ship is extra tough if being tough does NOTHING because it won't get hit.

In short, if they make the specialized combat roles out to be tank, support, and dps, then naturally the most effective strategies will be maximizing the effectiveness of ships filling those roles.  There might be some room for creative variation, but usually there isn't in games like this (even in ones that allow hybrid characters...the hybrids just don't measure up unless you specialize them to the point they aren't really hybrids anymore).

YES! EXACTLY!

Thats the point I've been trying to make from the very first post! Some people had to drag us off topic with pointless theories about naval combat and mean spirited insults, but in the end THIS is the real issue:

Cryptic wants everyone to be either a Tank, DPS or Support.

You can try to go off and do your own thing but Cryptic has designed the game to gimp you if you don't use one of the big three strategies, just like they did with their previous games.

http://www.shackvideo.com/?id=15758

"There's three basic types of ships that you can get in STO. The first one is a cruiser. Cruisers are really tough. They take a lot of damage to take them down. They have a lot of crews so they're hard to disable. This is really good for tanking."

WHY IN THE BLEEP DID THEY HIRE MMO DEVELOPERS TO MAKE A STAR TREK MMO??? Way to take another IP and bleep it up.

"The second kind is an escort. Escorts are really fast, they're pretty maneuverable, they can dish out a lot of damage at one time. But they're pretty weak, so they're a lot better for dealing DPS."

LFG for Borg raid! full on DPS.. LFM Science/Cruisers.. pst

"The third type is a science ship. Science ships are really good at increasing the abilities of you and your teammates or decreasing the abilities of the enemy. They do crazy stuff like bouncing things off deflector dishes or scrambling enemy sensors. It's really good at doing support."

STFU and heal.. deflector dish me damn it!

That's the first 2 minutes of the video, the next 2 minutes is talking about the phat lewts you'll be paying a monthly fee for so you can feel like a special snowflake in a sea of green borg piss.

Originally posted by Label_This

They've completely missed the fact that ST ships can be retrofitted for different roles. Did they do any research into ST lore at all?

I don’t think they missed it at all. The ships and crew are customizable. They make it a point to bring out the fact that you can alter your ship with fittings, and other items, as well as the type of crew.

One of the things that made Voyager stay alive so long was the crew, their abilities and the ships design set up allowing for adaption and upgrading.
I don’t think they missed a thing, and I think this actually brings us full circle here, where even though they may have chosen the words of what people are familiar with in MMO's to describe the ship classes, they really missed the point (even though it was said) and to drive the point of how customizable the ships are and how different they will be.
 

I also think they are kind of getting ship class and ship classification a little confused.
Class like Escort, or DD, vers EW OR CA, both Electronic warfare and Cruiser Armor (heavy) are cursers, just with different classifications. Same Hull, different equipment set ups, and armor levels, etc... As discussed in the Vid.
 

I may have a cruiser that you think is a tank in the game, but all my bridge crew have stuff for electronic warfare, like messing with your sensors, and such, jamming. So I have the normal fire power, but also have some other abilities a 'tank' would not.
 

All in all I think it will be fun.

Originally posted by Blurr

Originally posted by Raltar

Originally posted by Blurr

A: Firstly, realistic naval combat does use things like "science" vessels. Radar jamming, electronic warfare, acoustic hunters, mine laying ships, resupply ships, need I go on?
 

A: Yeah, because, just like I already pointed out several times now, Voyager as a "science ship" only used those support abilites you mentioned. They laid mines all the time and... oh WAIT... NO THEY DIDN'T. Star Trek was never like normal naval combat. All the ships could do a very wide array of things, not limited by being shifted into one of three types of ships.

 

You're proving my point here actually, but I see your problem. You seem to think that an electronics warfare ship will do only that and nothing else. That is not the case. Generally while a naval vessel will be designed with a particular strength in mind (stealth, area domination, firepower, etc) it is also built to function in other roles. Just like star trek ships, naval vessels can do a wide array of things. That is why while it's reasonable to put the tank/dps/support label on these ships, it's not as concrete as you'd think.

Hmm, that's intersting.  Stealth.  Area Domination.  Firepower (which is vague, since area domination is a type of firepower, all it means is long-range firepower).  So tell me, where are the tanks?  There aren't any.  Tanking makes no sense in real life combat, because in real life combat if you see a guy in full-body armor and only his fist as weapons, and another guy with a fully-automatic machine gun and no body armor then you shoot the later guy.  You generally focus on depleting the enemy's ability to fight and often that means killing the things that can hurt you as quickly as possible.  Navy combat doesn't fit into the categories Cryptic is using.  Neither does combat in Star Trek.  All they've done is make WoW in Space, essentially.

Originally posted by Raltar

Originally posted by madeux

 It's rather simplified, but it is sort of how naval combat works. 

 

Yeah... I guess I just totally forgot about all those Science ships they had back in WWII that ran around using their deflector dish to repair the other ships...

Oh wait...

No, but they did have an entire flotilla of support ships from Oilers to field repair ships to resupply and make repairs at sea. May not be as SciFi as Star Trek Science Vessels but they served the exact same purpose. Look, I know you feel you have to hate this game for some unknown reason but if your going to bitch about something at least make it good. This attempt was just plain pathetic... No offense.

Bren