As with the Science skills discussed in the previous post, only a few Engineering Bridge Officer skills are really effective in PvP.
Engineering Officer:
- Emergency Power to Shields 1 - This is the basic Engineering ability that almost all players receive with their first Engineer Bridge Officer. It provides a healthy dose of shield regeneration, reduces damage done to shields for its duration but more importantly it increases Shield Power (and thus overall shield regeneration) for its entire duration. Since when maxed the cooldown of the skill is 30 seconds and the duration of the buff is also 30 seconds - you can keep the shield damage resistance and power buff on you indefinitely.
Defensive use: Pop this as soon as you get a bit of damage in PvP, if needed combine with max shield power and a high regeneration shield. This will allow you to outlast an opponent in 1v1 situations, provided you can maneuver enough to have him hit different shield facings.
- Emergency Power to Weapons 1 - Provides an immediate boost to Weapon Power causing all energy weapons to do more damage. The buff lasts as long as the cooldown once the skill is maxed, so it is a great way of buffing your damage in preparation for an alpha strike.
Offensive use: Use Emergency Power to Weapons just as you engage and try to couple it with other damage enhancing skills such as Beam Overload, Attack Pattern Alpha or Sensor Scan. The large damage boost gained from stacking all the buffs will allow you to rip through the enemy shields in but a few seconds. Another use is to pop it as soon as you drop from Full Impulse into combat, thus shortening the recharge time of your Weapon Power.
- Emergency Power to Engines 1 - A really overlooked ability, Emergency Power to Engines allows you to temporarily boost your speed and either chase a fleeing adversary or, when used in conjunction with Evasive Maneuvers, escape an encounter.
Offensive use: A common tactic you will encounter, especially when facing Klingons, is the Engine Battery - Evasive Maneuvers trick, which allows a ship to gain a huge speed bonus for a few seconds and fly out of combat range. Using the same trick, plus Emergency Power to Engines will allow a ship to chase the target and reengage it before it has a chance to drop combat and cloak or go to Full Impulse.
Defensive use: Rather than staying in a losing fight you can always try to pop an Engine Battery and use Emergency Power to Engines along with Evasive Maneuvers to run out of weapon range and drop combat. If you do not have a battery available you can simply use Emergency Power to Engines while switching Power from Weapons or Shields to full Engines - thus allowing you to reach maximum speed (and thus maximum efficiency for Evasive Maneuvers) much faster.
Engineering Team 1 - A large instant hull heal that can be used on others coupled with a moderate resistance buff that lasts a relatively long time (30 seconds) plus a chance to repair damage subsystems - all these are contained in a single ability: Engineering Team. The only downside is that it shares a 20 second cooldown with all other team abilities, meaning that after using Engineering Team you will not be able to use Science or Tactical Teams for 20 seconds.
Defensive use: The large heal should be saved until you have actually suffered enough hull damage to make it worth while, but do not be afraid to use it on an ally in need. Anything to keep more ships in the fight is useful, as that means a lower chance of being focus fired by the enemy team.
sâmbătă, 13 februarie 2010
marți, 9 februarie 2010
Tier 1 PvP - Bridge Officer Skills of Choice!
If one wants to fight more than just mindless and quite often extremely weak NPCs one has to venture into one of the many PvP Scenarios and face off against cunning, deviant and downright nasty opposing faction players.
The most important choice in PvP is not necessarily the equipment your ship sports, but what Bridge Officer powers you have at your disposal. In this matter the B'Rel Bird-of-Prey has the advantage as it can bring any type of officer in any combination, while the Miranda Light Cruiser is stuck with one Science, one Engineering and one Tactical. That doesn't mean that a Miranda cannot compete with a B'Rel - on the contrary it only means that a Miranda will always have both offensive and defensive powers available, while a B'Rel can specialize.
Here is a short list of Tier 1 Officer powers you should invest in if you are planning to PvP:
Science Officer:
- Jam Sensors 1 - This extremely wonderful ability is as useful for Lieutenants in their Miranda as it is for Admirals in their Sovereign. Practically it erases you from your target's sensors (aka computer screen) for a number of seconds. You can still shoot and heal and in general act normally, except the target will not be able to see you.
Offensive use: use this when your target turns to face you to blind him while you pound away on his shields and hull.
Defensive use: Jam a target (even if attacked by multiple ones) to reduce incoming damage and maybe give you time to escape.
Counter: Science Team 1 removes all Science debuffs and if applied on the target it will clear Jam Sensors.
- Tractor Beam 1 - The Tractor Beam is an offensive tool, made to slow a target down and prevent turning in order to present fresh shield faces to incoming fire. This is a purely offensive ability best used against the side or rear of enemy ships. It is more effective the more Auxiliary Power you have, but at Tier 1 you will likely be running in full Weapon Power mode as there is little use for high auxiliary.
Offensive use: Use Tractor Beam while behind an enemy to keep it in place while you break its shields and rip through the hull. Especially useful when the enemy has a tendency to bolt if severely damaged, as is the case with Klingon Bird-of-Preys.
Counter: Polarize Hull removes Tractor Beam.
- Polarize Hull 1 - Provides a large Energy Damage Resistance bonus and makes your ship immune to Tractor Beams for the duration. This is both a situational cooldown (to be used when Tractor Beams hold you in place) and a defensive one as the damage resistance increase is significant.
Defensive use: Either use Polarized hull when focus fired by multiple ships or simply save it if you know the adversary has Tractor Beam. Of note is the fact that even though it says that the Damage Resistance only applies to your hull, it actually applies to your shields as well.
Counter: Don't use Tractor Beam if you see the enemy glowing orange. Wait out its 15 second duration then you can safely Tractor him to death.
- Science Team 1 - Provides an instant Shield boost to yourself or a targeted ally, reduces damage done to Shields for 30 seconds and has a chance of removing Science debuffs for 30 seconds. All in all this is an ability that continues to be useful all the way up to the final Ranks. The fact that it does not rely on Auxiliary or Shield Power and always functions at maximum efficiency is just an added bonus.
Defensive use: The Shield restore part of the Power make it useful no matter what the circumstances, but the real strength of this Bridge Officer Power comes from its ability to remove debuffs. At Tier 1 these are limited to Jam Sensors, but you can really muck up a Klingon's day if you remove his Jam Sensors just as he is about to flee for his life. You can also use it on any ally in a 10 km radius to boost his Shields or clear his debuffs, a useful little option that will help you much more than if you hold on to it for just yourself.
The following posts in this blog will deal with Engineering and Tactical Powers. Once those are done I will focus on some basic PvP offensive and defensive tactics - from initiating an attack to escaping to fight another day.
The most important choice in PvP is not necessarily the equipment your ship sports, but what Bridge Officer powers you have at your disposal. In this matter the B'Rel Bird-of-Prey has the advantage as it can bring any type of officer in any combination, while the Miranda Light Cruiser is stuck with one Science, one Engineering and one Tactical. That doesn't mean that a Miranda cannot compete with a B'Rel - on the contrary it only means that a Miranda will always have both offensive and defensive powers available, while a B'Rel can specialize.
Here is a short list of Tier 1 Officer powers you should invest in if you are planning to PvP:
Science Officer:
- Jam Sensors 1 - This extremely wonderful ability is as useful for Lieutenants in their Miranda as it is for Admirals in their Sovereign. Practically it erases you from your target's sensors (aka computer screen) for a number of seconds. You can still shoot and heal and in general act normally, except the target will not be able to see you.
Offensive use: use this when your target turns to face you to blind him while you pound away on his shields and hull.
Defensive use: Jam a target (even if attacked by multiple ones) to reduce incoming damage and maybe give you time to escape.
Counter: Science Team 1 removes all Science debuffs and if applied on the target it will clear Jam Sensors.
- Tractor Beam 1 - The Tractor Beam is an offensive tool, made to slow a target down and prevent turning in order to present fresh shield faces to incoming fire. This is a purely offensive ability best used against the side or rear of enemy ships. It is more effective the more Auxiliary Power you have, but at Tier 1 you will likely be running in full Weapon Power mode as there is little use for high auxiliary.
Offensive use: Use Tractor Beam while behind an enemy to keep it in place while you break its shields and rip through the hull. Especially useful when the enemy has a tendency to bolt if severely damaged, as is the case with Klingon Bird-of-Preys.
Counter: Polarize Hull removes Tractor Beam.
- Polarize Hull 1 - Provides a large Energy Damage Resistance bonus and makes your ship immune to Tractor Beams for the duration. This is both a situational cooldown (to be used when Tractor Beams hold you in place) and a defensive one as the damage resistance increase is significant.
Defensive use: Either use Polarized hull when focus fired by multiple ships or simply save it if you know the adversary has Tractor Beam. Of note is the fact that even though it says that the Damage Resistance only applies to your hull, it actually applies to your shields as well.
Counter: Don't use Tractor Beam if you see the enemy glowing orange. Wait out its 15 second duration then you can safely Tractor him to death.
- Science Team 1 - Provides an instant Shield boost to yourself or a targeted ally, reduces damage done to Shields for 30 seconds and has a chance of removing Science debuffs for 30 seconds. All in all this is an ability that continues to be useful all the way up to the final Ranks. The fact that it does not rely on Auxiliary or Shield Power and always functions at maximum efficiency is just an added bonus.
Defensive use: The Shield restore part of the Power make it useful no matter what the circumstances, but the real strength of this Bridge Officer Power comes from its ability to remove debuffs. At Tier 1 these are limited to Jam Sensors, but you can really muck up a Klingon's day if you remove his Jam Sensors just as he is about to flee for his life. You can also use it on any ally in a 10 km radius to boost his Shields or clear his debuffs, a useful little option that will help you much more than if you hold on to it for just yourself.
The following posts in this blog will deal with Engineering and Tactical Powers. Once those are done I will focus on some basic PvP offensive and defensive tactics - from initiating an attack to escaping to fight another day.
joi, 4 februarie 2010
Tier 1 PvP - The Miranda versus the B'Rel Bird-of-Prey
The introductory PvP Tier can be a harrowing experience for new players, especially those that join a Scenario having faced nothing but the early NPC squadrons you fight in the first few missions. The experience can be quite negative, as the difference in playstyle between PvE and PvP and between Klingons and Federation are quite staggering.
This post will focus more on the ships involved than on the actual tactics, because fitting a ship the right way for PvP is as important as knowing how to fly it.
First lets take the Miranda:
Hull: 10000
Shields: 3600 (Covariant MK1)
Turn Rate:11.4
Weapon Ports: 2 Forward, 1 Rear
Bridge Officer Slots: 1 Ensign Tactical, 1 Ensign Engineering, 1 Ensign Science
The shields come from one of the very early quests, so it is quite likely that a Fed player will have better shields by the end of T1.
Now the B'Rel:
Hull: 8000
Shields: 3600
Turn Rate: 23
Weapon Ports: 2 Forward, 1 Rear
Bridge Officer Slots: 3 Ensign Universal
You can clearly see that a B'Rel, while less resilient than a Miranda, is a more versatile ship. The B'Rel is also built from the start as a damage dealing vessel, using forward facing cannon and torpedo launcher and a rear turret. The Miranda on the other hand is handed to the player as a Cruiser, set up for broadsiding then turning to face the unshielded side of the target to let loose a torpedo. This does not work in PvP, where the B'Rel will fly circles around a Cruiser Miranda. A Miranda needs to hit hard and fast as well to be able to take out a B'Rel before the superior maneuverability of the Klingon ship takes its toll. Going the forward facing cannon/torpedo route with a turret behind is a good idea, same as going with 3 beam arrays and simply broadsiding the fragile BoP into submission. What you don't really want to do is combine the setups, like Cruisers do. You cannot effectively broadside with just 2 arrays and you cannot effectively burn down a BoP with a cannon up front and mines behind.
The next important difference is the Bridge Officer slots. The Miranda has 1 of each, meaning it can never really specialize in anything, while the Klingon Bird-of-Prey can field any combination of Bridge Officers. What that means for a Miranda Captain is that he needs to have a good balance of both offensive and defensive abilities, preferably PvP oriented like Polarize Hull, Engineering Team, Science Team, High Yield Torpedo, Jam Sensors etc.. and be ready to react to any situation. The BoP is usually more specialized, few go the Federation route and stick one of each type of Bridge Officers on their bridge.
Overall the matchup between ships really comes down to experience in flying the ship. New Klingons will struggle with the forward facing Bird-of-Prey while new Federation Captains will not know how to handle a fast moving, hard hitting target. They will join a Scenario fielding their PvE Bridge Officers and fittings and wonder why the Klingons tear them up.
This post will focus more on the ships involved than on the actual tactics, because fitting a ship the right way for PvP is as important as knowing how to fly it.
First lets take the Miranda:
Hull: 10000
Shields: 3600 (Covariant MK1)
Turn Rate:11.4
Weapon Ports: 2 Forward, 1 Rear
Bridge Officer Slots: 1 Ensign Tactical, 1 Ensign Engineering, 1 Ensign Science
The shields come from one of the very early quests, so it is quite likely that a Fed player will have better shields by the end of T1.
Now the B'Rel:
Hull: 8000
Shields: 3600
Turn Rate: 23
Weapon Ports: 2 Forward, 1 Rear
Bridge Officer Slots: 3 Ensign Universal
You can clearly see that a B'Rel, while less resilient than a Miranda, is a more versatile ship. The B'Rel is also built from the start as a damage dealing vessel, using forward facing cannon and torpedo launcher and a rear turret. The Miranda on the other hand is handed to the player as a Cruiser, set up for broadsiding then turning to face the unshielded side of the target to let loose a torpedo. This does not work in PvP, where the B'Rel will fly circles around a Cruiser Miranda. A Miranda needs to hit hard and fast as well to be able to take out a B'Rel before the superior maneuverability of the Klingon ship takes its toll. Going the forward facing cannon/torpedo route with a turret behind is a good idea, same as going with 3 beam arrays and simply broadsiding the fragile BoP into submission. What you don't really want to do is combine the setups, like Cruisers do. You cannot effectively broadside with just 2 arrays and you cannot effectively burn down a BoP with a cannon up front and mines behind.
The next important difference is the Bridge Officer slots. The Miranda has 1 of each, meaning it can never really specialize in anything, while the Klingon Bird-of-Prey can field any combination of Bridge Officers. What that means for a Miranda Captain is that he needs to have a good balance of both offensive and defensive abilities, preferably PvP oriented like Polarize Hull, Engineering Team, Science Team, High Yield Torpedo, Jam Sensors etc.. and be ready to react to any situation. The BoP is usually more specialized, few go the Federation route and stick one of each type of Bridge Officers on their bridge.
Overall the matchup between ships really comes down to experience in flying the ship. New Klingons will struggle with the forward facing Bird-of-Prey while new Federation Captains will not know how to handle a fast moving, hard hitting target. They will join a Scenario fielding their PvE Bridge Officers and fittings and wonder why the Klingons tear them up.
luni, 1 februarie 2010
Smooth Headstart?
January the 29th was the day STO officially launched its Headstart for all the faithful that preordered. Many hoped and many dreamed that it would be a smooth launch, that the servers would stay up, that issues found in Open Beta were resolved in a final massive patch... unfortunately the same people realized that STO will have a rocky launch and that at best the issues discovered in Open Beta would only be solved weeks if not months down the road.
Things started well. On January the 29th at 10 am ( 6 pm Gmt) the servers went up. Actually they went up a few minutes early, but that's a side bonus. They were laggy and they were crowded and yet they didnt crash... the first 30 minutes. With the number of people hammering the Log In buttons it was a small miracle that the servers managed to survive the first 10 minutes, let alone 30 minutes. Nobody was really surprised when they crashed. It was prime-time in Europe after all.
Forums were flooded with encouragement posts - "this is the smoothest launch ever"; "you should've seen the Champions Online crap!"; "be grateful this isn't like the Anarchy Online debacle" etc. People were genuinely happy that the game had launched even though the servers were down.
This sentiment would change over the coming days. Saturday and Sunday both saw scheduled and unscheduled "Server Maintenance" lasting several hours at a time. The mood on the forums darkened as Dev response was poor and well... cryptic. Issues had not been solved. Missions became impossible to complete for seemingly arbitrary reasons. GM response was late (understandable with the number of issues and complaints present) and usually not very helpful.
Finally the Devs implemented the only solution they could think of until they managed to get more and better servers: institute log in queues. On paper it was a good idea... but in reality the queues rarely budged, often your position in them went up rather than down and after hours of waiting you were still number 1121.
As you can imagine the forums were not so peaceful during the frequent server failures and the subsequent queues. Headstart was marketed as play time, not down time . If people can't use an item they paid for, they get angry.
On the other hand the massive problems come from the very large number of people wanting to try the game out. This basically means that at least for the near future, the funding for STO is assured. Great news considering the game was released early due to lack of funds. Hopefully this will provide the necessary resources for Cryptic to truly create a viable 2 faction (or any number of factions) game.
In conclusion, seeing as the official launch is tomorrow, here's a big "GOOD LUCK" to Cryptic and its servers. If they stay up during prime time tomorrow it will be a big PR plus.
Things started well. On January the 29th at 10 am ( 6 pm Gmt) the servers went up. Actually they went up a few minutes early, but that's a side bonus. They were laggy and they were crowded and yet they didnt crash... the first 30 minutes. With the number of people hammering the Log In buttons it was a small miracle that the servers managed to survive the first 10 minutes, let alone 30 minutes. Nobody was really surprised when they crashed. It was prime-time in Europe after all.
Forums were flooded with encouragement posts - "this is the smoothest launch ever"; "you should've seen the Champions Online crap!"; "be grateful this isn't like the Anarchy Online debacle" etc. People were genuinely happy that the game had launched even though the servers were down.
This sentiment would change over the coming days. Saturday and Sunday both saw scheduled and unscheduled "Server Maintenance" lasting several hours at a time. The mood on the forums darkened as Dev response was poor and well... cryptic. Issues had not been solved. Missions became impossible to complete for seemingly arbitrary reasons. GM response was late (understandable with the number of issues and complaints present) and usually not very helpful.
Finally the Devs implemented the only solution they could think of until they managed to get more and better servers: institute log in queues. On paper it was a good idea... but in reality the queues rarely budged, often your position in them went up rather than down and after hours of waiting you were still number 1121.
As you can imagine the forums were not so peaceful during the frequent server failures and the subsequent queues. Headstart was marketed as play time, not down time . If people can't use an item they paid for, they get angry.
On the other hand the massive problems come from the very large number of people wanting to try the game out. This basically means that at least for the near future, the funding for STO is assured. Great news considering the game was released early due to lack of funds. Hopefully this will provide the necessary resources for Cryptic to truly create a viable 2 faction (or any number of factions) game.
In conclusion, seeing as the official launch is tomorrow, here's a big "GOOD LUCK" to Cryptic and its servers. If they stay up during prime time tomorrow it will be a big PR plus.
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