[Bridger]

Star Trek Online has been live for just over seven years at this point, during which time we have been adding and updating new content to play, new systems to interact with, and new mechanics to utilize. Now, we are excited to announce that one major project going on is a re-balancing of a great number of the abilities and items that players use in combat.

Given the opportunity to make such drastic changes to Star Trek Online’s experience, it was important to setup some guiding principles to ensure that the game, as much as possible, only gets better.

The goals boil down to these:

Increase the fun – Games are about having fun, and players should not be made to feel that their fun is “wrong.”
Player investment retains value – While things need to be adjusted, a setup that was optimized before should still be useful and effective afterwards.
Choices should be meaningful – Anywhere the game gives you a choice, there should be no choice that you always take nor one you never take.

One of the great strengths of Star Trek Online’s combat system is how expansive it is, and the freedom it gives players to choose the combinations of items and abilities that gives them the playstyle that they want. The vast number of choices already in-game means that as we re-visit the utility and strength of various options, players will have the opportunity to re-discover a lot of abilities and items they may have cast aside, and some things that you already use should become a lot more fun and enjoyable to use.



The immediate changes being made are to ground combat, with a bigger set of space changes coming to Tribble in the near future. As a preview, some of the changes coming to ground include:

A stealth module re-design to improve its general usefulness and unique feel. In its re-designed state, when you activate stealth module, you become cloaked; after a short duration, you can attack, gaining a damage buff while attacking from behind that lasts the duration the stealth buff would have, but ending the stealth early.
Your captain now uses a combadge to communicate - many of the Command kit modules that used to just affect an area near you now affect your entire team, no matter how far!

Tactical Initiative has also received a few changes - it now lasts longer, but cannot have its cooldown reduced, and only affects the caster’s kit modules. Those changes are intended to make it so that the Tactical Initiative remains valuable to use while active, but changes the amount of performance spike that non-tactical captains get due to tactical captains, and ensures that non-kit abilities designed around a long cooldown retain that balance point.

Security Escorts should now be more useful while in combat– they now move faster to keep up with you better, and hit harder while out, but in return players are limited to one pair at a time.

This is just a short list of some of the changes being made to ground – a Tribble patch shortly will have the full list and details. Keep your eyes peeled for that patch, and a blog talking about some of the bigger changes to space balance that will be coming soon!

John “CrypticSpartan” Leavens

Associate Systems Designer

Star Trek Online

[Bridger]

So this is probably the most important announcement ever made for Star Trek Online, and hopefully the gab between Tactical, Engineering and Science will be reduced significantly.

[Adster94]

Just read the article on their website - hopefully some good things will come from this! Would be nice to have things that have been broken in episodes and cutscenes fixed. But I guess that won't happen as it won't make them any money

[Mack]

I'm optimistic and looking forward to a more established list of game systems they will balance and how they intend to balance. A part of me thinks its not possible with all the OP modules for space flooding around as well, but lets see.

[Bridger]

One of the best things about this announcement is that it's from "CrypticSpartan" because he really knows what he is doing.

[Sorotia]

So this is probably the most important announcement ever made for Star Trek Online, and hopefully the gab between Tactical, Engineering and Science will be reduced significantly.

I'm hoping for this and some more balance between energy and projectile weapons...if they could do these two things I think I could be a lot more pleased with the game.

[Ariotex]

Although a lot of (maybe most) of the stuff in the STO forums needs to be taken with a grain of salt, if not the whole shaker, what I read so far last night says that the most notable change on the Tribble server is that engineer fabrications got a serious durability nerf. As most of my toons are engineers and heavily focus on turrets and mortars for ground DPS this is NOT a "balance" change but more of a greater imbalance change. My engineers have never even come close to equaling Tacs in ground DPS in the few times I've been in a parsed run and having my turrets and morrtars blow up with one or two hits will just widen the DPS gap, not close it.

[Babyhead4127]

Security Escorts should now be more useful while in combat– they now move faster to keep up with you better, and hit harder while out,

[Rellimie]

So this is probably the most important announcement ever made for Star Trek Online, and hopefully the gab between Tactical, Engineering and Science will be reduced significantly.

Me no like. Warrior class (Tactical) shall always rule over the weak (Eng and Sci). Braun over brains as I always say

I am of course kidding.

[Sorotia]

Although a lot of (maybe most) of the stuff in the STO forums needs to be taken with a grain of salt, if not the whole shaker, what I read so far last night says that the most notable change on the Tribble server is that engineer fabrications got a serious durability nerf. As most of my toons are engineers and heavily focus on turrets and mortars for ground DPS this is NOT a "balance" change but more of a greater imbalance change. My engineers have never even come close to equaling Tacs in ground DPS in the few times I've been in a parsed run and having my turrets and morrtars blow up with one or two hits will just widen the DPS gap, not close it.

This doesn't sound good...one of the things I love about Engineering ground is the fabrications...granted it has been a long time since I played my Engineer...last time I played a Engineer, fabrications were so fragile and it was literally like they taunted anything that moves...

If this is what is in store for the so called *balance*...just another boldfaced lie from them...another ruined attempted that the *claimed* was balance...will keep a eye out...but if this is their early idea...then this was just another empty promise from them.

[MaverickScot]

I have trepidation when companies talk about balancing their game. Being a casual player the fun of Eve Online was greatly reduced due to continual balancing and rebalancing that has gone on for the last four/five years. The division which I love is being constantly balanced which leaves me frustrated at times. The reason being that I get a character to a place where I enjoy what he is doing and 10 minutes later I have to build that character again to achieve what I want to get out of the game. I do not like having to spend large periods of time working out or relearning all the math's/talents/skills when I should be playing. It usually takes a long time to get everything you need to build a min/max starship and get it the way you like it then in comes the dev's and destroys that good work. I feel that the balance in the game is not too bad due to there not being one meta per sa and people do vary their builds and setups.

Having said that if Cryptic are balancing then I hope it is a little at a time and not massive changes all in one go.

Just my tupence worth.

[Mack]

I mean, its not like the Engineer Fabrications are OP, if anything they'd need to be buffed - they don't last long as it is. Most hit in terms of buffs would go to Tactical, but then again we are talking about logical balancing. Cryptic themselves has pushed buffs to support tactical thus far, and here we are today. If they created an open post about it, I don't think its just to simply say, I think they will re-work on it. This post seems to me like a beginning of a new project, and will happen over time - as well as pretty much asking the Captains to brace themselves.

[Chi]

Tbh, ive never noticed fabrication healing or buffing other fabrications, only way I thought you could heal them was through a ground trait.

[Mack]

Try placing your fabrications behind the cover shield, they tend to last a tad bit longer to give some support prior to being flanked. I also tend to leave swarmer mines behind at time. But yea, not a drastic improvement.

[Generator]

The most recent patch just went to the Tribble server, and it seems to deal with the fabrication issues somewhat.