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Posts
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State of the Fleet, April 2017
Greetings fleet, first weekend of April, here’s your monthly 44th Fleet review.
As usual, first a “welcome aboard!” to our newest members:
@Romulanarmada (Wes) from Virginia
@losdos (Dave) from the UK
Some changes to the 44th Admiralty staff; Commodores Defcon, Horridperson and Silversera have been moved to reserve status as they are temporarily afk for a while, so we are proud to announce that Sovereign001 and Paradoxical have been elevated to Commodore rank – they will assist in slotting fleet projects and help keep track of your promotions etc.
Yesterday was April 1st, and Cryptic pulled a hilarious one this time, by replacing all soundeffects by human voices.
If you missed this, see this quick Japori run (thanks to ZEF) to listen to it in action and be amazed. 🙂There’s a new short anniversary event airing for the first time; First Contact Day. It’s a 5-captain mission rewarding a pet and a new evasive maneuver trait. Quick and easy, it also gives you plenty of marks.
Major news flash: New season 13 announced ! It will go live April 25th meaning a new featured episode, new episode replay awards and just overall progress in the current Tzenkethi arc. More about this on a later post.
The big elephant in the room of course is the coming controversial space mechanic re-balancing aka The Big Nerf Of 2017.
Short summary:
Overall, there will be 50% decrease in power / damage output. This will primarily effect the high-end +100K DPS captains, but casual players will notice it as well. It’s still a work-in-progress, but the changes are not all bad.First a general warning – do not upgrade weapons or buy expensive equipment untill more info is available. As it stands now, CrtD and Dmg will remain the modifiers of choice. Weapons with ACC modifiers will still not be top choice as extra ACC can be gained by other console/trait/Rep means. There was a short buying spree of ACC wpns on the exchange, so I hope you guys didn’t fell into that trap.
So basically the ‘meta build’ that was THE ship/build/traits setup for several years has gone out of the airlock, period.
Many of the weapons, consoles and traits you may have invested zen/dilithium/real $$$ in, may effectively become useless, I kid you not.I’m not going into too much detail here, but these are the main highlights that will directly impact you. But keep in mind that further changes / fixes are still in the pipeline:
The Bad:
Plasmonic Leech is massively nerfed, we’re talking a 97% drop (!) in efficiency. The remaining drip of drain/gain power is so small there will be other better options. 
Embassy plasma-generating (explosion) consoles are nerfed into uselessness, don’t bother buying / upgrading them. (K13 cnsls are alternatives). 
Beam Fire At will will no longer be “King of the Boff powers”, and Beam Overload will no longer automatically crit. This will effect cruiser DPS most of all. Cannons may (rpt: may) become a bit better, but how much is still unclear. 
Subsystem hot restart has been nerfed with an internal cooldown of 60secs (an eternity), and together with some other small changes the Iconian 3pc set may just have been reduced from “must have” to just “nice to have”. Do not buy and upgrade it yet if you were planning to. 
Atk Pattern Alpha reduced from 30sec to 20 secs. 
Feedback pulse nerfed, no longer worth it to slot, taking away one of the major damage dealers in the game for Aggro-tanks and Science-scorts. It may still be usefull in combination with the new science career Deflector Overcharge though.The Good:
* Carrier Pets will be significantly better compared to what they are now (incl. an improved A.I. and new immunities) – Hangar ships (carrier, carrier escorts, dreadnoughts) will get more viable (investment tip?).
* Dilithium Store Account Reclaim for faction specific starship traits (lockbox ships excluded). This way Klinks and Romulans get access to the many Fed-only ship traits.
*The Science captain-only Subnucleonic beam will also become available to Tacticals and Engineers, which will be interesting.
*In return Sci Captains receive Deflector Overcharge, which is basically a science capt “attack pattern Alpha” buff-equivalent for buffing science powers.
* Engineers will receive the equivalent of an Override Subsystem Safeties power boost married to an improved EPS flow (this means power levels will restore faster, meaning better shield/weapons etc). This will be a big overall boost.
* Tactical captains will receive some buffs as well, but not as dramatic as for Sci’s end Engies.
* Target Subsystem disable as found on cruisers, sci ships and Tac Boffs will become duration based, this means these (currently) garbage powers may actually become very attractive (Target Shield Systems + Torps may become a ‘thing’).Will STO be once again become “Cannon Escorts Online” ? We will have to wait and see, as carrier pets will improve and may plug the drop in DPS for many builds, and a lot of additional testing will be done before the launch of the rebalance on the 25th. And of course as with any major launch, there will be bugs in the first week, so let’s account for that too.
What I can say right now that most of the drama and doom and gloom has settled, and the number crunchers are carefully optimistic of what’s to come. But it will mean that certain consoles and traits that are core to your current builds, and which you may have virtually ‘bled’ for will be collecting dust soon.
A shout-out and big thanks to our Commodore Stompar for relentlessly crunching the numbers on the Tribble server.
We have a new fleet uniform ! Congratulations to AnganySamavu who’s blue Dyson design was chosen
by you guys as the favorite, and will now be our “official unofficial” fleet attire. As is the 44th’s custom, you are not obligated to wear it, but if there is a (fleet) event and you want to represent in style, the Blue Dyson is the one to bash Borgs in.There may be a new uniform contest in the coming months.
By now there will be another new poll up where you can vote for the most three interesting captains’ background stories, and there is a month-long April Fool’s contest created by paradoxical.
We will organize similar events like these more regularly.Speaking of fleet events, yesterday April 1st we concluded a Fleet vs Fleet PvP – your Mighty 44th Fleet stepped up to the challenge and no less than 9 other brave captains were on deck and ready to rumble to face 12th Legacy fleet, who came with-… Just one guy.
So after nearly a month of organizing and moving schedules to accomodate 12th, they barely showed up.
Good show 12th Legacy.Of course, your Mighty 44th just went ahead anyway and a verocious 5-vs-5 Arena and (buggy) Cap & Hold PvPs ended in lots of hoots, hollers and burning space hulks floating around. Thanks and congrats to all captains that had the courage to show up, even with non-pvp builds.
Cryptic made a nice gesture during the launch-day of Mass Effect: Andromeda by offering a 24hrs discount on the T6 Andromeda exploration cruiser from 3,000 to 1,500 zen (long closed now). It’s a nice Galaxy class variant with an average trait and an average Admiralty card, so if like me you were never really interested in it (T6 Odyssee beats it by miles) picking up a T6 at half price isn’t too shabby.
There will be some more blogs on this forum coming out on the new season and coming space mechanic changes, so keep an eye out for those if interested. Don’t forget to check for the usual contests (Search for Soolin will return soon).
As always, any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to post here or ask in chat.
See you, out there.
MarcasePodcast: The Show (STO mechanics)
Youtube: ZEF Films (Japori A.S.S. run)Zen/dilithium rate: ~280
Calendar:
April 6-10: Shuttle Weekend
April 20-24: Elachi Alert Weekend
April 25: Launch of Season 13
Previous Fleet Review, March here.
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This topic was modified 7 years ago by
. Reason: Subnuc back as Sci power, Deflector Overcharge removed in latest Tribble patch notes (thanks Damix)
"Boldly bashing Borg to bits since 2012..."Both game fly-in messaging and https://startrek.44thfleet.com/forums/topic/a-call-to-arms-44th-vs-12th-legacy-pvp/
No worries if you missed it, we’ll do some more if there’s interest.
"Boldly bashing Borg to bits since 2012..."Great update as usual Admiral. I can’t wait to see the new changes to mechanics. My dogfighting Mobius with the Omega Set and Elite Fleet Phasers might make a comeback woo! I don’t like them taking away my Subnuc from captain powers though, that was the ultimate PvP “I win” button – when timed correctly. I guess the LtCmdr sci seat on my Mobius will have to be Subnuc then.
Anyway, I finally have some time to log in this week, I look forward to seeing you all.
"You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe." - Marcus Cole, Babylon 5
Latest tribble patch reverted the change to Subnuc, and completely removed the Deflector Overcharge so we are back where we were. I really liked the boost from DO because it is more useful in pve-dps-centric game, oh well.
damn, figures I am on a work trip so they make changes I cant test, but yah, DO was an excellent addition for sci officers, it’s loss is bad news indeed. this is due to pvp’ers being upset that everyone had subnuc now. the reality was it wasn’t a great change as it made little sense to give up a boff slot for subnuc, so it would have become a rarely used ability, but people reacted with their guts rather than brains.
aka Stompar
Read up a little on upcoming changes. For me the biggest disappointment is that my “gold” embassy consoles are virtually useless if I understand it right.
I do like that carriers are more viable.
Just in case I’m trying to get use to a couple cannon builds but I was never great in an escort.
Anyway looking forward to seeing how the game changes.
The new Sci ability Deflector Overcharge was something I was really looking forward too, as it would make the also nerfed Grav Well/Tyken much better – a true science power buff – so I’m bummed about that.
Yeah the Embassy Plasma consoles are nerfed since the plasma proc has been ridiculously reduced, so one of the major DPS sources in the game has gone bye-bye. Thankfully we can use the K-13 science consoles as an alternative, but they won’t deliver anything near the DPS the plasma proc did.
The starship trait reclaim is nice; we have that now with the reward boxes (on the exchange) so those will prob disappear. With so many Fed ships my KDF/Roms will get some nice extra tricks.
We’ll do a proper write-up of the do’s and don’ts with the new mechanic when the dust has settled to properly inform the fleet.
"Boldly bashing Borg to bits since 2012..."So we’ll have to rewrite the epic Klingon opera we wrote for you ?
Welcome back 🙂
"Boldly bashing Borg to bits since 2012..."So, Plasmonic Leech still worth it after the coming rebalance ?
“Leech still gives 7.5 power per subsystem, or 30 power total. No other consoles come close.”
Answer – yes.
The number crunchers out there will do some more parsers and tests for a final verdict though.
Especially for power-starved Romulans (who’s Singularity Cores aren’t as efficient as Warp Cores) the Leech will still be worth it to boost power levels. Yes, a lot of the other super juicy (side) effects of the Leech have been nerfed into oblivion, but this extra +30 power when firing energy weapons is still decent. No longer absolute must have, but certainly very nice to have.
Again for Feds and Klingons with Warp Cores it’s no longer number #1 on the hot item list, and there are other better consoles to slot.
Plasmonic Leech consoles are relatively cheap now on the exchange (at least cheaper than the +hundred million ec they were for a long while), so if you don’t have one for your (Fed) Rom, pick one up if you have some ec to spare. KDFs have to buy the 1,000 zen Vandal destroyer, which may be a bit too steep a prize for it now.
I expect some more info on the coming rebalance to come out in the coming weeks and as always when we’ll know we’ll let you know.
"Boldly bashing Borg to bits since 2012..."Yeah that’s what everybody is seriously annoyed/angered/p****d about. SOB can be wrong (final rebalance ‘stacking’ formula may be changed still) but if he’s right they may up the stats from .75 to 7.5 (which I hope) and Cryptic may just change/correct the description again (which they’ve done many times before). As I said final word on the Leech isn’t said yet, but considering the outrage Cryptic may roll back part of the Leech nerf – a ‘mere’ +30 power is nice yet not gamebreaking good as it used to be.
To be continued…
"Boldly bashing Borg to bits since 2012..." -
This topic was modified 7 years ago by
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