Space Skills Revision
With today’s release on Tribble, we are proud to present to you the first step in a major overhaul of the STO skill system.
First, a big thanks to all those who participated in the forum thread we posted some weeks ago about this update. We received a lot of good feedback that we incorporated into this update. There was a lot of enthusiasm and excitement about the improvements, which encouraged us that we were on the right track. We hope everyone will find these changes to be big improvement to the game.
Second, a caveat. The changes that went to the Tribble test server today are the first revision of a very large overhaul. We fully anticipate bugs and balance problems. Nothing about the system is final, and we will be looking for your gameplay feedback. There is plenty of time for revisions, so we look forward to getting your feedback on the changes.
Coming with these changes will be a free respec. Technically it's not a respec token like we have done in the past—this one is not optional. When you log into the Tribble Test Server (and eventually on Holodeck when this goes live), all your skill selections will be reset and you must re-select all your skills.
This skill update is just the first step. Only space skills have been updated at this time. Ground skills remain unchanged, except 3 space skills were moved into the ground skill section. We plan on overhauling the ground skills after we get feedback on the space skill changes.
Let's go over why the skills are being revised. There are three main reasons for the changes:
- Starfleet/KDF Training skills kept players from changing ships - If you did spec into a Star Cruiser, you were discouraged from trying an Escort because you had to respec (or you had to spec your skills broadly and could not specialize if you wanted to change ships often).
- Tactical skills discouraged players from using anything but Phaser, Disruptors, Photons and Quantums – It has been too expensive to spec into skills like antiproton, since the skills cost almost twice as much for the same bonus.
- Skills are confusing - What the heck does Astometrics do anyway?! It has been very confusing to cross reference which skills are affecting which abilities.
Here what the skills changes will look like:
Starfleet/KDF Training skills all go away. Instead of a captain skill that buffs one particular ship's hull, shields, turn rate, etc, there will now be a skill that just buffs HPs, a skill that just buffs Shield HPs, a skill that just buffs turn rate and speed, etc. These skills affect all ships.
There will no longer be skills that just affect one damage type. There are now only 3 skills that directly buff starship weapon damage: Starship Weapon Training, Starship Energy Weapons, and Starship Projectile Weapons. You will no longer find Phaser skills, Photon Torpedo Skills, or even Beam and Cannon skills.
Many skills will now simply grant a passive bonus instead of affecting a handful of abilities. For instance, you can buy a skill that will buff your energy damage resistance, but that skill will not affect any of your click abilities.
Many skills will still continue to affect your click abilities, but they will be less obscure. For instance, you can buy a Starship Hull Repair skill. That skill will simply make all your ship hull healing abilities better. It will only make hull healing abilities better, it will only affect the healing aspect of those abilities, and no other skills will affect hull healing abilities.
There are a handful of skills that grant both a passive bonus, and also directly improve your click abilities. For Example, Starship Electro-Plasma Systems (EPS Skill) will improve your energy transfer rate, but will also improve any ability that adds power to one of your systems - e.g. Emergency Power to X.
All abilities used to use 3 skills to improve them. Now, all space abilities will only use one skill for a particular attribute. Weapons are the only abilities that actually use 2 skills to improve their damage. Some abilities may utilize more than one skill, however, each attribute of that ability will be affected by a different skill. For instance, Photonic Shockwave damage will be improved by the Starship Particle Generator Skill, its Repel will be improved by Starship Graviton Generators, and its Disable effect will be improved by your Starship Subspace Decompiler skill.
Some abilities will no longer utilize any skills at all. There are not many of these, but for those few that used to utilize a skill and no longer do, their effectiveness (magnitude or duration) has been modified to approximately 75% of what the old systems used to allow you to achieve with full skills. For example, if an ability would grant a base 10% debuff, and could be improved to a 20% debuff if you have maxed 9 levels in all 3 skills in the old system that affected that ability, then that ability now will just offer a flat 17.5% debuff. This raises the entry level into this ability, but slightly reduces it ceiling.
The number of available skills will be cut in approximately half, however, the costs of all skills have only been increased by 50%.
All Bridge Officer training nodes are still present and unlocked by one of the new skills. Since there are fewer skills than before, some skills unlock more than one Bridge Officer training node.v
All Deflector Dish items, most Console items, and any item or ability that buffed a skill that no longer exists has been updated to use the new skills. We did our best to match the original intent of the item or ability. Tactical Station items that buffs a damage type (like Buff Phaser Damage) have not changed, though they no longer use a skill to improve said damage (they just improve the damage directly).
The UI has been slightly tweaked to improved readability, and all descriptions have been revised for clarification.
As mentioned earlier, we have only updated space skills. Once the dust settles, we will work on updating ground skills.
Here is an overview of the new ship skill list:
Tier 1
- Starship Weapons Training - Improves all starship weapon damage.
- Batteries - Increases duration of battery consumables.
- Starship Hull Repair - Improves all Hull Healing abilities. Also improves Hull Regeneration rate (regeneration modified by percentage of alive crew).
- Emitters - Improves all Shield Heal abilities.
- Flow Capacitors - Improves all Shield Draining and Energy Draining abilities.
Tier 2
- Starship Energy Weapons Training - Improves all starship energy weapon damage (Beams and Cannons).
- Starship Projectile Weapons Training - Improves all starship projectile weapon damage (Torpedoes and Mines).
- Starship Subsystem Repair - Decreases the time it takes to get your subsystems back online (modified by percentage of alive crew).
- Starship Warp Core Efficiency - Adds bonus power to all subsystems when power is low in that subsystem.
- Structural Integrity - Adds bonus Ship HP.
- Shield Systems - Adds Shield HP.
- Power Insulators - Adds Resistance to Energy Drain and Shield Drain attacks.
Tier 3
- Targeting Systems - Improves Accuracy.
- Starship Maneuvers - Improves Defense.
- Electro-Plasma System - Improves Energy Transfer Rate. Improves abilities that grant power (e.g. Emergency Power to X).
- Starship Warp Core Potential - Bonus power to all systems.
- Impulse Thrusters - Improves Speed and Turn Rate.
- Graviton Generators - Improves Knock/Repel and Slow abilities (e.g. Tractor Beam, Photonic Shockwave, Gravity Well).
- Particle Generators - Improves all Exotic damage (e.g. Damage from Photonic Shockwave, Feedback Pulse, Isometric Charge).
Tier 4
- Attack Patters - Improves all Attack Pattern abilities.
- Stealth - Improves Stealth and Cloak.
- Starship Engine Performance - Adds bonus Engine Power.
- Starship Shield Performance - Adds bonus Shield Power.
- Hull Plating - Adds Energy Damage Resistance.
- Sensors - Improves Stealth Detection. Adds Resistance to Confuse and Placate.
- Inertial Dampeners - Adds Resistance to Holds, Disables, Knock and Slows.
Tier 5
- Energy Weapon Specialization - Improves energy weapon critical hit chance and critical severity.
- Projectile Weapon Specialization - Improves projectile weapon critical hit chance and critical severity.
- Starship Auxiliary Systems Performance - Adds bonus Auxiliary Power.
- Starship Weapon Systems Performance - Adds bonus Weapon Power.
- Armor Reinforcements - Adds physical damage Resistance.
- Subspace Decompiler - Improves Hold and Disable abilities (including disabling of subsystems).
- Countermeasure Systems - Improves Confuse and Placate abilities.
Note that Engineering Team Leader, Science Team Leader, and Tactical Team Leader have been moved to the career specific trees (and renamed). They are still Tier 1 skills, and all classes will continue to have access to all 3 skills. These skills, however, may change once we begin the ground skill revisions.
We fully expect that this new system to have some bugs and balance issues. We look forward to your feedback and helping us fine-tune this system.
Al Rivera
Lead Designer
Star Trek Online
Path to F2P Dev Blog Index
Link to the forum post
