Starship Trait "Overwhelming Force" - How does it work?

highroller

So i thought it would be funny to make ma own torpedo build...
I put overwhelming force as one of my starship traits, aaand...
Now i am curious... Would the photonic shockwave you get from a HY torpedo
be able to trigger "aftershocks" from the photonic studies duty officer?

There is barely anything regarding any of this on the internet,
only a reddit post from 2015 who claims it DOES work.

However, i could not get any results myself, using one green doff
with a 20% chance to trigger an additional effect.
Now i may just have had really bad luck, or... It just doesn't work (anymore)...?

Can someone help me out here, please?

tom61sto

It doesn't work. If it ever did work it was only a short while, as AFAIK it's not actually called 'Photonic Shockwave' and thus won't trigger the condition the DOff is looking for.

darkknightucf

When I had used it, it did work. The Shockwave (and aftershocks) could not be buffed, sadly, but it did have uses in some STF's (Storming the Spire Elite and HSE).

I can check it again and see. I slotted 3 of the DOffs to ensure that I'd see at least one proc in a few torp salvo's.

darkknightucf

Did a video on it where I checked a few things, including if Overwhelming Force Photonic Shockwave proc'd the appropriate DOffs... sadly, they did not. BOOOOOO. They used to.

I am agreeing with @patrickngo on many levels, including lack of KDF love.

pwstolemyname

If overwhelming force was ever useful I must have missed it. The problem isn't so much with the trait, Its the abilities it triggers.

Photonic shockwave suffers from so many problems its silly.

1) The Disable.

If you don't have a ton of CtrlX the disables wont last more then a fraction of a second on a player, and on an NPC the value of disabling a ship for a few seconds pales in comparison to the value of destroying a ship in a few seconds.

If you do have a ton of CtrlX the few seconds of disabled time you get is completely wasted as you will have sacrificed the ability to capitalize on the period in which the target was disabled.

In the case of overwhelming force I think the disable may have been removed. I might be mistaken, its a long time since I tested the trait, so I could have imagined this. Please correct me If i am wrong.

2) The push.

AoE damage abilities have value only when multiple enemies exist withing the AoE. Photonic shockwave disburses groups of enemies with its push and thus reduces the number which you can simultaneously hit. This isn't a problem if the shockwave kills those enemies it hits, but it isn't that powerful most of the time.

There are some circumstances, not many, but some, in which a push has value. In these circumstances tractor repulsors are always better. They push more, and have better up time. There is a doff which is meant to increase the push of photonic shockwave. I have not tested it recently, but I did on release, and it was either broken, or too week to make any difference. As it didn't add anything to a regular shockwave, I assume it wont add anything to an overwhelming one either.

3) The damage.

It simply doesn't do enough for this to redeem its other faults. If your doing exotic damage then there is always a better thing you could have in its place. If your using scatter volley you don't get enough to compensate for the declumping, and if your using torpedos.. well maybe it can add something to some torpedo builds. But I will deffer to the knowledge of those that run them more often then I in those cases. I am guessing that as with science, the opportunity cost makes it impractical.

Charged Particle Burst dosnt have enough problems to earn itself a list.

It actually isn't too terrible if you use it with the corresponding secondary deflector for radiation damage and pump your exotics. But without that its a shield tickler. Which is to say it wont kill anything on its own. This could be usable, But it doesn't mesh to well with other things. Its a Player based AoE, whilst most other damage abilities are cone based. There is overlap, but it could be better. The shield damage it dose isnt too exciting and anything outside of the overlap area may simply regenerate the shield points before taking damage from anything else.

In the case of overwhelming force its range is reduced, and I don't believe it benefits from secondary deflectors (please correct if I am mistaken) the PbAoE downside is removed, but in its place that photonic torpedo you just launched probably pushed everything else out of its reduced area.