'Spider' Vorcha Beamboat

System

Okay, my 180 Cannon / Beam idea flopped. This one's much better!

Captain: Tactical

BOFFS:
Tactical: 2x Tac Team 1, Beam Fire at Will
Engineer: 2x EPTS1, RSM1, EPTW2, EPTW3, DEM2, Aux2SI3
Science: Tractor Beam 1, Polarize Hull 1

Weapons:
Fore: 3x Disrutor Beam Array, 1x Bio-Neural Warhead (alternative = Hargh'Peng / Tricobalt Torp)
Aft: 3x Disruptor Beam Array, 1x Tricobalt Mine

Items: 4x Borg Set (Shields, Eng, Deflector, Console)

Consoles:
Eng: EPS Flow Regulator x3 (+power regen for beams), 1x RCS Accelerator (+turn rate)
Sci: Borg Console, Field Generator
Tac: 2x + Disruptor Dmg, 1x +Tricobalt Dmg

This is an offensive cruiser geared for damage/utility. Vor'cha works great as it has benefits of a carrier (lots of engy Boffs / consoles, decent survivability) combined with great turn rate (10 - highest of any cruiser) which is important for getting out of enemy arcs (especially cannon Escorts) following alpha strikes.

Tactics: Chain EPTW and EPTS (ping all 4 skills alternatively every 15 seconds). This gives a massive damage and survivability boost, like the previously posted 'Dragon' (lol) build. Keep up Tac Teams in general (they're an absolute godsend for not dying and give a minor dmg boost), whip out RSM if you're being spiked. Aux2SI3 is an amazing hull heal.

The aim is to initiate the attack facing ur enemy with Bio Warhead. It needs a minimum 2.5km range to fire off, so your job is to speed in ahead of it (moves at Tricobalt torp speed), turn slightly outward (all 6 beams on target) and knockout the opponent's shields / snare. Once in range (5km) apply your Tractor Beam (you have 2: 1 boff skill and 1 bonus from having the entire Borg set).

When in nice and close set off Attack Pattern Alpha, FaW and DEM (beam array lightshow hitting everything around you PLUS piercing hulls). Epic damage. If all goes well your opponent will get a nasty surprise when the Bio Warhead smacks his (hopefully unshielded) hull with spike Tricobalt explosion boosted by your console - assuming he's not already dead and your AI Bio Warhead chases another target. Beams kill the shields (ideally), Torp kills the hull.

The recharge time for Tricobalt mine unfortunately sucks, but it's damage is epic. Use your solid turn rate (almost at the rate of an unboosted Escort) to spiral around your enemy. Particularly useful vs stupid Escort cannon DPSers, keep up the tractor to escape his LOLDPS weapons arc, get to his rear and pop a Tricobalt mine, slow down as necessary to work the mine side's shields with ur beams. Most opponents don't notice the mine, they're too busy working out how to escape / mashing keys. He might Polarize Hull / run away, but them's the breaks.

Oh, and the Disruptor proc of +10% enemy hull resist debuff has great synergy with your beams as shield-killers and add a nice bonus to Tricobalt weps. And fits canon / looks rather dapper.

Generally useful for PvE and PvP from my experience. The one thing I might change is the shields at some point. Survivability is generally good and the regen does really help in sustained battles, though other shields might be better for alpha strike survival. The bonus Borg tractor beam can work as a snare in a pinch between Boff cooldowns, but the 4 minute cooldown time is a pain. You could up survivability if you switched shields and ditched Tractor beam for a heal (hazards / shield heal), but I enjoy the utility of Tractors.

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A competent escort will be running APO and PH at a minimum. I doubt they are going to get caught by your mines.

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Why waste the turn rate of the Vor'cha, the highest of a cruiser as you noted, on beams and mines?

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Yeah to be honest that setup has quite a few flaws if your aiming it for pvp. First one already noted is the tractor beam issue which aside from APO and PH someone can also jam your sensors, disable you via viral matrix, target subsystem auxillary, phasers, list goes on and on and is a basis of that whole setup which is easily countered. As for those beams the only ships for the KDF that should be using beams are the bortas, varanus, kar'fi, vo'quv, and orion marauder. All the rest should for the most part be using cannons or brel has the ability to be a really good projectile boat. The emphasis on cannons is because they do more damage and the KDF battle cruisers have that as their perk.

A few of us back in spring and summer worked on the vorcha and neghvar for setups and this is what we did/found out with those 2 ships. Theres really 2 options (both use 4 turrets rear) 2 DHC's and 2 Single cannons or remove one single cannon for the use of 1 torpedo. Between everyone who was testing these setups out it bounced between using disruptor and tetryon weapons. With using rapid fire or scatter volley which ever you want single or multiple targets as a tact using your tactical initiative when needing back to back cannon skills due to the lack of tactical options.

To me the negh'var is the superior and better manuevering battle cruiser but take your pick for those new to these two battle cruiser I would recommend having atleast one aux to dampeners but throwing in emr to engines 1 and evasive you can turn quickly too just depends on your piloting skills they are basically giant escorts compared to fed ones.

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I can fiddle with using aux --> dampeners and emr --> engines, but what would you suggest I get rid of? For everything added to max out maneuverability something has to be lost, e.g. less shield/wep power via the EPTS/EPTW chain. More maneuverability --> less something else. Currently my maneuverability is okay (base 10 with a single +turn rate console) enough to keep firing broadsides (6 beams) most of the time, it's a lot easier getting perpendicular to the enemy than facing them.

Fair enough re the easy counters to tractor beam, but the counters have cooldowns too. The opponent won't always have the counter charged in time to stop a tractor beam. How often does an escort use APO as part of an alpha strike instead of countering tractors? And in the heat of battle / button mashing and an escort spinning with ridiculous g's within a small area, very often the little old tricobalt mine does get forgotten (assuming enemy doesn't have point defense), and with the shield stripping advantage of beams and a timely / temporary tractor, the spike damage very often 1-shots from my experience.

With all the emphasis in upping a battlecruiser's maneuverability to that of an escort just for the purpose of having a weapon which does more hull stripping / a bit less shield stripping, are the sacrifices made by less engy consoles such as def/power boost and boff skills to increase atk/def really worth it?

synkr0nized wrote:

Why waste the turn rate of the Vor'cha, the highest of a cruiser as you noted, on beams and mines?

Very reliable broadsiding & steady dps. It's also much easier to turn away from enemy fire on an exposed shield side between tac team cooldowns.

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Can you fill us in to how your Cannon build flopped? Kinda curious now.

After being a dedicated Raptor pilot, I thought Vor'chas were slower than molasses. Then I tried the Vo'Quv...

For giggles, one of my Vo’Quvs has the Bio-neural warhead, Dual Quad Cannon and a DHC. Beam arrays aft. Is actually fun to fly when I am up for goofing around.

saiphox wrote:

It's also much easier to turn away from enemy fire on an exposed shield side between tac team cooldowns.

I remapped Distribute Shields binding and I pound the **** outta that key between Tac team cooldowns.

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Can this build also be effective against the borg?

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Uus wrote:

Can you fill us in to how your Cannon build flopped? Kinda curious now.

It might be worth looking into later on, but I pretty dropped it because I couldn't land the right cone of fire (45 degree to the front half of either side of the ship) consistently.

The weps were 3x cannon (regular 180 degree) and 1x beam array up front, 4x beam arrays rear, meaning that I'd have 5 beams and 3x cannons firing at the same time. With the +energy charge consoles I can fit in a cruiser, that's solid dps right there. If you can stay in the right cone, which is actually a bit easier than doing if you want to equip DHCs.

I also chose the wrong skills (still learning them, I've only played a bit >1 month).

The current build seems way more flexible and has the opportunity for spike damage that it sorely needs.

Kecobe wrote:

Can this build also be effective against the borg?

With variability, yes. Obviously using beams is less effective than cannons on a hull. But 6x beams with high power constantly and hull breach / FaW lays down VERY respectable dps. On top of that is the ability to swoop into something like a borg ship (or any structure), pop a tricobalt, tractor beam / polarize hull as required and flip 180 degrees to escape, keeping the shields down for the mine to activate. Add to that attack pattern alpha and your mine will do LOTS of damage, imo more than making up for the reduced consistent hull damage caused by using beams instead of cannons. More often than not I end up drawing fire in a team full of tac cannon escorts. Handy when the survivability is pretty decent too. Not odyssey tank quality but respectable.

Uus wrote:

I remapped Distribute Shields binding and I pound the **** outta that key between Tac team cooldowns.

Call me 'noob' or whatever but I prefer the #2 hud setup where you can see the Boff visuals instead of just the grid. There's enough space for those + extra keybinds of 1 to 0 for me to click with mouse. It works for me and I'm fast enough to click the ship shield facings with the mouse and up tac team with minimal downtime while WASDing.

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Very nice im gonna have to try this on my klingon

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saiphox wrote:

It might be worth looking into later on, but I pretty dropped it because I couldn't land the right cone of fire (45 degree to the front half of either side of the ship) consistently.

it's 35 degrees, not 45. But, if you can get things in that 35 degree kill zone, it's really nice. I use the Single Cannon/Beam Array setup on a lot of cruisers.

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I tend to disagree with most of these cannon Vorcha builds. I've seen the parses of team mates using it and it is very very low. Takes too long to lineup your shot and the target is always moving on you.

All beams + One warhead, F@W2 and 3. 2xTac Teams
P2W, Aceton Beam, Reverse Polaity, Plasma. (can dump plasma for eng team but it does share cooldown with tact team)
Polarize Hull, Hazard Emitters.


The F@W3 will dish out HUGE numbers and will continue to hit a target that just used Jam Sensors / Scramble Sensors on you as it randomly hits anything and everything in range of it's arc.

F@W2 is also good, but not as deadly. Having two F@W's will also keep players off balance because they can't really tell if now is a good time to attack or on the next rotation.

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^ Those skills sound great and are things I'd experiment with. Though Vorcha doesn't have access to F@W3 - 2 only unfortunately. It'd be amazing if vorcha had 4 total tac slots for 2x tac team and 2x F@W.

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OP there's some good information in this thread here for you:
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=228624

I am very sad that the Vor'cha doesn't have one extra tactical slot to fully utilize it's potential for using cannons.

That being said, a while back I worked with a cannon/turret build that I had lots of fun with - although it was a bit anemic it was loads of fun. You needed a tac captain for the tactical initiative power to keep the damage coming by reducing the cooldown on the TT-1, AP:A, CRF-1, DEM-3 and EP2W-3 (in retrospect I probably could have gotten away with EP2W-1). Aux to Damp gave me the boost to turn rate when I needed it.

I'd have to dig through my notes to try to reconstruct it - but I was very, very happy with it, knowing that it was not going to be *great* at either being an escort or a cruiser but decent at being both at the same time.

Since then I have switched to a Raptor for the pure damage output for running STF's - but I will certainly revisit this build again especially for running with team PvP.

Hell, I just might rebuild it today just for s-n-g's...