does weapon type matter?

upshurg · December 2018

Some shooter games I play offer different weapon types and different shield types...destiny comes to mind...where certain weapon types deal more damage against apecific shield types. Does sto operate like this? I searched and it seems people choose weapons based on color and sound effects mostly

snowwolf · December 2018

Well early in the game. You can get shields that for example protect more against Disruptor or Phaser damage, so when other people fire at you. Using a weapon apart from those two will do more damage, since the shields only protects more against those two.

However as the game advances and you level up, shields and stuff will usually protect against all types of weapon damage instead of just a few ones in general, and I think NPC's rarely have any powers that protect them from specific types of energy damage.

I think there's also different number of things you can do to boost damage, some types of energy damage have a lot of consoles, space sets or traits that boost damage. While another type of energy damage might not have as many options for extra damage.

So in the end I guess it's just picking the one you like the most, the color and sound you like the most.. And which one has sets, traits and other consoles you can use.

Personally I just use phasers.

lordsteve1 · December 2018

Weapons in sto are of two types mainly; energy and kinetic.

Energy is anything beam array based and things like cannons, turrets and similar.
Kinetic is anything that lobs a projectile that must impact the target so pretty much all torpedoes and mines.

The energy weapons have different energy types though and those are different in terms of what extra affect they cause; their proc type.

Shields in the game are super resistant to kinetic weapon damage and take energy damage as normal. So generally you need to remove a target’s shields before slinging kinetic weapons at it.

spiritborn · December 2018

Unless you planning to be at very top of the DPS charts the energy types (like phaser, disruptor, etc.) doesn't really matter from a practical standpoint, only exceptions being "kinectic" and "physical", physical since borg cannot adapt to pure physical damage (or pure kinetic) on ground and shields of all factions are high resistant to kinetic in space (and possibly physical, but so few things do physical damage in space that it's hard to know).

EDIT:In both ground or space it's better so choose your energy type according to what visuals you like, unless you're planning on winning the DPS race.

ihatepwe735 · December 2018

Weapon damage types in STO are largely optional. There are a few drivers to weapon type:

* While levelling the game will tend to hand out phaser to feds, plasma to romulans and disruptors to Klingons.
* Tactical consoles boost one damage type at a time, so choose your weapons to all have the same type so you can use just one type of tactical console.
* Certain weapon and ship sets boost particular damage types. So if you have your mind set on a specific set, you obviously need to go with the matching damage type.
* PvP I can imagine can get a bit rock-paper-scissors if you want it to as you can try and match your armor to the damage type most commonly inflicted, but you're going to need some serious log analysis to see what armor type your opponents fly. I don't PvP so I don't know if this is actually a consideration. Being chain crowd controlled or something probably is making the whole thing moot.
* Once you start (if you start) chasing Elite content you'll be chasing whatever damage type the current meta is.

dracounguis · December 2018

Energy weapon type only matters 2.5% of the time.

spiritborn · December 2018

dracounguis wrote: »

Energy weapon type only matters 2.5% of the time.

I'm not sure it's even that often.

does weapon type matter?

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