Beams draw more power than cannons. "on paper", beams draw 10 and dhc 12. But the power management is different between beams and cannons. Also rapid fire doesn't drop the power as fire at will does. The "come back" to full power is better for dhc than beams. Especially after season 5, the cannon power draw "seems" to be less.
Exactly as per design beams draw power over there cycle and I believe its 4 shots per cycle. Cannons cycle power faster.
Beams are NEVER going to EVER create higher dmg then a cannon escort under 5k.... Beams have the advantage at long range... really if your in a sci or a cruiser you should be trying to keep cannon chuckers out 6-10k... at that range the beams will have the advantage. This is why the common logic (and the game design folks... looking at you silly beam escort people) is that the healers (who should not be looking to be in knife fight range) run the long range dmg weapons... and the sci that should be holding and controling there prey should both be tactically looking to keep that range on there weapons, especially if they themselves are under fire.
Cannons are DESIGNED to provide higher DPS... as long as you are in Escort Attack Range. 1-5k The original design (and mostly still the case outside a few fancy cruisers) is Dual / Dual H Cannons are ONLY fitted on escorts... Escorts are STOS assassin class, running one with beams... well its like taking your Rouge/Assassin class in any other MMO and equipping a poleaxe on him instead of the dagger he was designed to use.
I would have thought with 160 weapon energy with the smaller arc of dual beams and fast turn rates the spike damage on 1 target with fire at will would be higher than rapid fire cannons. Surly dual beams at a constant 125 power will beat out cannons with weapon drop draining below 125.
My favorite Beam type Escort to play in PVP is a SCI/Escort in support of a DPS Escort. To play the build below, it is best to fly with a heavy cannon Escort! Your job is simply to use your Sub-Nucleonic Beam appropriately and also to de-buff your target with sensor scan and your beam target subsystem abilities which means you need to spend skill points on Flow Capacitors and be Johnny on the spot transitioning between high Auxiliary power when targeting subsystems and back again to weapons and engines.
Now this build is just for fun and is not a high end PVP build. Enjoy!
When I took a lil STO vacation 6 months ago, FAW was broken, did it ever get fixed?
Ya it works as it was intended to as far as I know... beams no longer completely ignore ACC... so some people think its broken now... but there's nothing wrong with it. It clears spam very well, what it doesn't do any more is completely **** people no matter what defense buffs they are running.
Ya it works as it was intended to as far as I know... beams no longer completely ignore ACC... so some people think its broken now... but there's nothing wrong with it. It clears spam very well, what it doesn't do any more is completely **** people no matter what defense buffs they are running.
Good, then I'll keep a Boff with it on backup for when I need to go Dan00b swatting.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] Time played in game. as of 9/12/12 (on my mains) Total 2907 hours.K'zoontite has been on active duty for 34 days, 3 hours, Bot Fly has been on active duty for 55 days, 4 hours, Poppa Capp has been on active duty for 4 days, 12 hours, B'zooka has been on active duty for 12 days, 22 hours,Tater(fed) has been on active duty for 14 days, 10 hours,
Beams draw more power than cannons. "on paper", beams draw 10 and dhc 12. But the power management is different between beams and cannons. Also rapid fire doesn't drop the power as fire at will does. The "come back" to full power is better for dhc than beams. Especially after season 5, the cannon power draw "seems" to be less.
But at 165weapon power beams will never drop below full power. You can fire 4 dual beams and stay at 125power. That is why I thought beams might beat our cannons as cannons have worse come back to full power compared beams at high energy.
Good, then I'll keep a Boff with it on backup for when I need to go Dan00b swatting.
Ya works good for that... or for removing annoying one shotting tric mines. Ya just need to be running beams with acc on them now... I think many people had crith and crtd beams before seeing as acc was useless... so the change seemed like a big nerf.
But at 165weapon power beams will never drop below full power. You can fire 4 dual beams and stay at 125power. That is why I thought beams might beat our cannons as cannons have worse come back to full power compared beams at high energy.
You can't have 165 power... no matter what you can never have more then 135... 10 power is all you can over cap... and you can overcap the same 10 power if you run cannons to
Ya it works as it was intended to as far as I know... beams no longer completely ignore ACC... so some people think its broken now... but there's nothing wrong with it. It clears spam very well, what it doesn't do any more is completely **** people no matter what defense buffs they are running.
Did they fix the acc for faw? Meaning, is there a difference if I run faw with acc x3 vs lets say ctrd x3 beams? I know faw ignored acc modifier, bort said they may need to redesign it, I was not aware they already fixed that. Could you pls confirm?
Hear! Sons of Kahless
Hear! Daughters too.
The blood of battle washes clean.
The Warrior brave and true.
We fight, we love, and then we kill...
And this is why Starfleet Command (I, II and OP) was (is) so much better as a ship to ship combat game.
A battle that's over in a matter of seconds or in which one player cannot possibly compete has no drama, and no interest for me (and many others, I'm sure). It's a problem in many games these days.
That's what the forums are for.
OP, vids or it didn't happen.
_______________ CommanderDonatra@Capt.Sisko: ahhh is it supposed to do that? Norvo Tigan@dontdrunkimshoot: hell ya, maybe
But at 165weapon power beams will never drop below full power. You can fire 4 dual beams and stay at 125power. That is why I thought beams might beat our cannons as cannons have worse come back to full power compared beams at high energy.
I remember you are flying a cruiser. Now, there is something I never fully understood, and I had never tested myself. But, the general consensus (I think dontdrunk and mt backed this up) is that as high with the weapon power you go on a cruiser(I think that test was done with a 7 beam escort), as better. There were logs chunked at various power level, starting from 125, then 135, 145 etc. as you would go up, the dps increased. It used to be a hard cap at 135, I think till season 5 hit, then apparently that was removed. Honestly I can only hope dontdrunk reads this and can provide more real data analysis, I can say though that when I fly the bortie, I'm somewhere at 145 power, due to leech (not running epw) and the dps seems a bit better than at 125, but I've never did a log parse to see.
Hear! Sons of Kahless
Hear! Daughters too.
The blood of battle washes clean.
The Warrior brave and true.
We fight, we love, and then we kill...
You can't have 165 power... no matter what you can never have more then 135... 10 power is all you can over cap... and you can overcap the same 10 power if you run cannons to
You can with beams. When I rarely do not fly a torp boat I use 165 weapon power and never drop below 125. It?s something to do with the way beams reserve energy never worked with cannons Always liked my 180" cannon setup (Crusier) but due to power I found beams work better.
No lag spike, no me being newbie, no him being skillful.
1 point, 5 of us pounding him with no shields.... still couldn't knock his armor past 99% and guess what, it was flickign back and forth btween 99 and 100 for a very long time.
Makes me laugh... big community full of experienced gamers...
Yet no one believes cheats exsist...lol
Well I got this guy on fraps good and proper (him and his fleet) and he's been reported the correct way.
Funny tho, looking who is reply that's from the same fleet <GG> :P
Yeah... your such a hardened pvper you don't know what the term Spike Healing is. Sounds to me like he had Jevonite if he really did have no shields. Also it helps if your weapon power is above 50. Just saying. I got another on you probably never heard of. Focus Fire, and another. Cross Healing.
Yep, impossible to cheat in any computer game, so must be my lack of skills
<sigh>
No, I never said I was fighting a carrier. (but I did take a recluse out 5 times during the same few PvPs... Guess I'm noob)
<Sigh>
Tac flying an escort with better tank capabilities than a cruiser :P yeah ok
<Sigh>
I never said I was flying an escort.
Oh and by the way, I'm a PvPer, I have character builds just for PvP, im a 700+ veteran.
I run a fleet of over 300 people, I have nearly all the ship unlocks+the little gadgets and I was carrying alternative weapons and tac console...
Maybe you guys need to do some research yourselves... instead of just telling ppl to learn to play the game
That is all!
Actually it is your lack of skill, if you think a Tac Scort can out tank a well built Cruiser your experience with pvp is probably under 200 hours. Easy. Also Emergency power to weapons 3 really? LOL. I think you need to read my cruiser thread. Because your build is obviously lacking efficiency, and capability.
No you aren't a pvper. Not a good one, if you're running EPTW3. and that "300 people" fleet that you do in house pvp with? It doesn't count if not a single one of them runs a build better than your terribad Failcruiser.
Frankly, if I were in your place, the last thing I'd be doing is talking about how many days you've been playing. Because you've been playing for 700 days now and still haven't figured out the basics of sto pvp. If you really are a "pvper"
" Terribad Failcruiser", thats my next ship name right thar!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] Time played in game. as of 9/12/12 (on my mains) Total 2907 hours.K'zoontite has been on active duty for 34 days, 3 hours, Bot Fly has been on active duty for 55 days, 4 hours, Poppa Capp has been on active duty for 4 days, 12 hours, B'zooka has been on active duty for 12 days, 22 hours,Tater(fed) has been on active duty for 14 days, 10 hours,
" Terribad Failcruiser", thats my next ship name right thar!
Terribad Failscort has a ring to it too...
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] @Aquitaine985 Lag Industries STO PvP Fleet - Executive
A Sad Panda of Industrial calibre. 2010: This is Cryptic PvP. Please hold the line, your call is very important to us...
klink with 100% armor, kept knocking it down to 99% but less than a sec back to 100%
5 MKXII beams broadside on an escort, with no shields, disabled and stuck in warp plasma with 180 Quantum hitting his side too, with EPS3 and EPtW3 running on the beams.
This for maybe 25-30 secs... couldn't get his armor off 99%
BS!!!
Fellas, the OP is a cruiser and he did state he was firing on an escort.
OP: It is not BS. Birds of Prey (KDF escort) has universal stations. All of them. There are two ways how a BoP could do what you say it did:
1- It had Jevonite armor consumable which boosts total hitpoints by a ridiculous amount. A simple hazard 2 heal and polarize hull would keep it at 100% despite the damage you pumped into it.
2- The BoP was using a cmdr science or lt cmdr science bridge officer and had hazard 3 and hull resist increasing abilities. The BoP has a very weak hull but if your ship has no spike damage ability the BoP could keep its hull up for as long as the hazard3 and resist ability lasted.
You mention he was trapped in warp plasma... the duration of it closely matches that of the hazard heal.
Or it could've been a combination of both. Sci-oriented birds of prey tend to carry very nasty tricks since they're literally the ONLY ship in the game that can truly be a science ship (all stations science.. its a beautiful thing).
You can't have 165 power... no matter what you can never have more then 135... 10 power is all you can over cap... and you can overcap the same 10 power if you run cannons to
I thought whatever hard cap they did was undone months ago and the cap was back up to 150?
I would have thought with 160 weapon energy with the smaller arc of dual beams and fast turn rates the spike damage on 1 target with fire at will would be higher than rapid fire cannons. Surly dual beams at a constant 125 power will beat out cannons with weapon drop draining below 125.
If your power level was at 150 (which was what I thought the hard cap was reset to months ago), and the DHC drains -12 after the second shot (because there's no power drain on the first shot), the first two DHCs will be at 150. The third will be at 138. And the forth will be at 126. Your aft weapons will start feeling the weapon power decrease after that.
every one saying its different with cannons makes me want to try to double check, but im almost positive its just as useful with cannons and beams. all my ships run overcaped power usually at least 150, more with ether leach or maco, and i almost never see lower then 80 for even a split second. with my total power drain being about 80 max, that would put you as low as the 40s, especially when you use FAW or CRF.
BO is sorta bugged regarding over caped power, it always acts as if you have only 125 weapons power, even if you have much more, it will always drain 125-50 no mater what. VERY lame, thats an effectiveness shattering problem with BO when you invest in high power levels
every one saying its different with cannons makes me want to try to double check, but im almost positive its just as useful with cannons and beams. all my ships run overcaped power usually at least 150, more with ether leach or maco, and i almost never see lower then 80 for even a split second. with my total power drain being about 80 max, that would put you as low as the 40s, especially when you use FAW or CRF.
BO is sorta bugged regarding over caped power, it always acts as if you have only 125 weapons power, even if you have much more, it will always drain 125-50 no mater what. VERY lame, thats an effectiveness shattering problem with BO when you invest in high power levels
Thanks for re-posting the link! I think that always cannons were using a different power management than beams, so they always used up to 125. But with so many changes, lol, thats never a certainty. I bet they forgot to cap the beams with latest patches (season 5 or after?). I also remember having this conversation few months ago, at some point there was a cap for 125 for beams, then it vanished.
Hear! Sons of Kahless
Hear! Daughters too.
The blood of battle washes clean.
The Warrior brave and true.
We fight, we love, and then we kill...
klink with 100% armor, kept knocking it down to 99% but less than a sec back to 100%
5 MKXII beams broadside on an escort, with no shields, disabled and stuck in warp plasma with 180 Quantum hitting his side too, with EPS3 and EPtW3 running on the beams.
This for maybe 25-30 secs... couldn't get his armor off 99%
klink with 100% armor, kept knocking it down to 99% but less than a sec back to 100%
5 MKXII beams broadside on an escort, with no shields, disabled and stuck in warp plasma with 180 Quantum hitting his side too, with EPS3 and EPtW3 running on the beams.
This for maybe 25-30 secs... couldn't get his armor off 99%
BS!!!
No, you're just bad. Don't mix beams and torpedoes on a cruiser. Run eight single beams and that's it.
Or better, quit this game and go play farmville. You'll never be good at STO PvP or any game that requires skill because your attitude stinks.
There are two types of bad players:
Those that seek help and don't stay bad very long.
Worthless, pitiful care bears that blame everything but themselves. They don't want to think, don't want to improve, and look at anything they can't faceroll through with disgust. They stay bad forever because they lack the tools to improve themselves in any capacity.
So do everyone here a favor swear off PvP for good.
Your using beams on an escort ?? I think that pretty much sums it up
^This... Broadsiding with an Escort... Pffft... Don't make me laugh. I could probably sit still, take my shields OFF my ship, and tank that all day long.
Hull Tanking is fully possible and with the right resistances you can knock down incoming damage to insanely tiny plinks off your hull.
shocking indeed. first thing that came to mind is the movie- robinhood men in tights, when hes sword fighting at the end and sparks fly he says "shocking".
No, you're just bad. Don't mix beams and torpedoes on a cruiser. Run eight single beams and that's it.
Or better, quit this game and go play farmville. You'll never be good at STO PvP or any game that requires skill because your attitude stinks.
There are two types of bad players:
Those that seek help and don't stay bad very long.
Worthless, pitiful care bears that blame everything but themselves. They don't want to think, don't want to improve, and look at anything they can't faceroll through with disgust. They stay bad forever because they lack the tools to improve themselves in any capacity.
So do everyone here a favor swear off PvP for good.
Not to pee on your parade here my friend but you are aware that there is now a torp launcher that allows you to sustain broadsides, and throw down burst right? It has a 180 degree firing arc. (Yes someone seriously thought THAT was a good idea. Just wait till I put my tacxcelsior together again)
Not to pee on your parade here my friend but you are aware that there is now a torp launcher that allows you to sustain broadsides, and throw down burst right? It has a 180 degree firing arc. (Yes someone seriously thought THAT was a good idea. Just wait till I put my tacxcelsior together again)
Yeah, I know of it. I have one myself actually, and that would be fine if you could equip eight of them. Since you cannot you're still better off min/maxing into beams.
Besides that though, do you think the average face-roller (such as the OP) is remotely capable of timing quantum torpedoes in PvP, from a cruiser no less? The only time those torps are going to see hull is through divine intervention and/or proper alignment of the stars. Switching to all beams is by far the best course of action our friend could take, assuming of course he even knows how to run full weapons power.
Comments
Exactly as per design beams draw power over there cycle and I believe its 4 shots per cycle. Cannons cycle power faster.
Beams are NEVER going to EVER create higher dmg then a cannon escort under 5k.... Beams have the advantage at long range... really if your in a sci or a cruiser you should be trying to keep cannon chuckers out 6-10k... at that range the beams will have the advantage. This is why the common logic (and the game design folks... looking at you silly beam escort people) is that the healers (who should not be looking to be in knife fight range) run the long range dmg weapons... and the sci that should be holding and controling there prey should both be tactically looking to keep that range on there weapons, especially if they themselves are under fire.
Cannons are DESIGNED to provide higher DPS... as long as you are in Escort Attack Range. 1-5k The original design (and mostly still the case outside a few fancy cruisers) is Dual / Dual H Cannons are ONLY fitted on escorts... Escorts are STOS assassin class, running one with beams... well its like taking your Rouge/Assassin class in any other MMO and equipping a poleaxe on him instead of the dagger he was designed to use.
My favorite Beam type Escort to play in PVP is a SCI/Escort in support of a DPS Escort. To play the build below, it is best to fly with a heavy cannon Escort! Your job is simply to use your Sub-Nucleonic Beam appropriately and also to de-buff your target with sensor scan and your beam target subsystem abilities which means you need to spend skill points on Flow Capacitors and be Johnny on the spot transitioning between high Auxiliary power when targeting subsystems and back again to weapons and engines.
Now this build is just for fun and is not a high end PVP build. Enjoy!
Fore Weapons:
Phaser Beam Array MKXII [ACC] [ACC] [ACC]
Photon Torpedo Launcher MKXII [ACC] [CRTD] [CRTD]
Photon Torpedo Launcher MKXII [ACC] [CRTD] [CRTD]
Dual Heavy Cannon MKXII [ACC] [ACC] [CRTD]
Aft Weapons:
Phaser Beam Array MKXII [ACC] [ACC] [ACC]
Phaser Turret MKXII [ACC] [ACC] [ACC]
Phaser Turret MKXII [ACC] [ACC] [ACC]
Commander Tactical:
Rank 1- Tactical Team I
Rank 2- Torpedo High Yield II
Rank 3- Beam Target Engines III
Rank 4- Cannon Rapid Fire III
Lieutenant Commander Tactical:
Rank 1- Tactical Team I
Rank 2- Torpedo High Yield II
Rank 3- Beam Target Shields III
Ensign Tactical:
Rank 1- Beam Overload I
Lieutenant Engineer:
Rank 1- Emergency Power to Engines
Rank 2- Emergency Power to Shield II
Lieutenant Science:
Rank 1- Hazard Emitters I
Rank 2- Jam Target Sensors
Engineering console 2x armor and an Impulse Capacitor Cell.
Science Console 2x Flow Capacitors
Tactical Consoles 4x console to buff photon damage
Ya it works as it was intended to as far as I know... beams no longer completely ignore ACC... so some people think its broken now... but there's nothing wrong with it. It clears spam very well, what it doesn't do any more is completely **** people no matter what defense buffs they are running.
Good, then I'll keep a Boff with it on backup for when I need to go Dan00b swatting.
Ya works good for that... or for removing annoying one shotting tric mines. Ya just need to be running beams with acc on them now... I think many people had crith and crtd beams before seeing as acc was useless... so the change seemed like a big nerf.
You can't have 165 power... no matter what you can never have more then 135... 10 power is all you can over cap... and you can overcap the same 10 power if you run cannons to
Did they fix the acc for faw? Meaning, is there a difference if I run faw with acc x3 vs lets say ctrd x3 beams? I know faw ignored acc modifier, bort said they may need to redesign it, I was not aware they already fixed that. Could you pls confirm?
Hear! Daughters too.
The blood of battle washes clean.
The Warrior brave and true.
We fight, we love, and then we kill...
OP, vids or it didn't happen.
CommanderDonatra@Capt.Sisko: ahhh is it supposed to do that?
Norvo Tigan@dontdrunkimshoot: hell ya, maybe
I remember you are flying a cruiser. Now, there is something I never fully understood, and I had never tested myself. But, the general consensus (I think dontdrunk and mt backed this up) is that as high with the weapon power you go on a cruiser(I think that test was done with a 7 beam escort), as better. There were logs chunked at various power level, starting from 125, then 135, 145 etc. as you would go up, the dps increased. It used to be a hard cap at 135, I think till season 5 hit, then apparently that was removed. Honestly I can only hope dontdrunk reads this and can provide more real data analysis, I can say though that when I fly the bortie, I'm somewhere at 145 power, due to leech (not running epw) and the dps seems a bit better than at 125, but I've never did a log parse to see.
Hear! Daughters too.
The blood of battle washes clean.
The Warrior brave and true.
We fight, we love, and then we kill...
Yeah... your such a hardened pvper you don't know what the term Spike Healing is. Sounds to me like he had Jevonite if he really did have no shields. Also it helps if your weapon power is above 50. Just saying. I got another on you probably never heard of. Focus Fire, and another. Cross Healing.
Actually it is your lack of skill, if you think a Tac Scort can out tank a well built Cruiser your experience with pvp is probably under 200 hours. Easy. Also Emergency power to weapons 3 really? LOL. I think you need to read my cruiser thread. Because your build is obviously lacking efficiency, and capability.
No you aren't a pvper. Not a good one, if you're running EPTW3. and that "300 people" fleet that you do in house pvp with? It doesn't count if not a single one of them runs a build better than your terribad Failcruiser.
Frankly, if I were in your place, the last thing I'd be doing is talking about how many days you've been playing. Because you've been playing for 700 days now and still haven't figured out the basics of sto pvp. If you really are a "pvper"
Terribad Failscort has a ring to it too...
@Aquitaine985
Lag Industries STO PvP Fleet - Executive
A Sad Panda of Industrial calibre.
2010: This is Cryptic PvP. Please hold the line, your call is very important to us...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1EG-MKy4so&feature=related
Fellas, the OP is a cruiser and he did state he was firing on an escort.
OP: It is not BS. Birds of Prey (KDF escort) has universal stations. All of them. There are two ways how a BoP could do what you say it did:
1- It had Jevonite armor consumable which boosts total hitpoints by a ridiculous amount. A simple hazard 2 heal and polarize hull would keep it at 100% despite the damage you pumped into it.
2- The BoP was using a cmdr science or lt cmdr science bridge officer and had hazard 3 and hull resist increasing abilities. The BoP has a very weak hull but if your ship has no spike damage ability the BoP could keep its hull up for as long as the hazard3 and resist ability lasted.
You mention he was trapped in warp plasma... the duration of it closely matches that of the hazard heal.
Or it could've been a combination of both. Sci-oriented birds of prey tend to carry very nasty tricks since they're literally the ONLY ship in the game that can truly be a science ship (all stations science.. its a beautiful thing).
Tried that a while ago, name is too long, at least for ship's name. Lol.
Hear! Daughters too.
The blood of battle washes clean.
The Warrior brave and true.
We fight, we love, and then we kill...
Just want to point out bops are raiders, they are unique.
Raptors are closer to fed escorts.
Bops are more agile, but more squishy that escorts (generally)
If your power level was at 150 (which was what I thought the hard cap was reset to months ago), and the DHC drains -12 after the second shot (because there's no power drain on the first shot), the first two DHCs will be at 150. The third will be at 138. And the forth will be at 126. Your aft weapons will start feeling the weapon power decrease after that.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Asu87Jb5VCBgdHFKbmdpZjlEMHk3YUhfNGRTbllNY0E&output=html
every one saying its different with cannons makes me want to try to double check, but im almost positive its just as useful with cannons and beams. all my ships run overcaped power usually at least 150, more with ether leach or maco, and i almost never see lower then 80 for even a split second. with my total power drain being about 80 max, that would put you as low as the 40s, especially when you use FAW or CRF.
BO is sorta bugged regarding over caped power, it always acts as if you have only 125 weapons power, even if you have much more, it will always drain 125-50 no mater what. VERY lame, thats an effectiveness shattering problem with BO when you invest in high power levels
hmm, seeing this post, i definitely need to double check cannons.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=5356691&postcount=36
this doesn't explain why when i fire 8 cannon weapons that my power doesn't drop below ~80 though
Please add me here is my in game tag.
Brandon Lovett@Cpt.Lovett
Thanks for re-posting the link! I think that always cannons were using a different power management than beams, so they always used up to 125. But with so many changes, lol, thats never a certainty. I bet they forgot to cap the beams with latest patches (season 5 or after?). I also remember having this conversation few months ago, at some point there was a cap for 125 for beams, then it vanished.
Hear! Daughters too.
The blood of battle washes clean.
The Warrior brave and true.
We fight, we love, and then we kill...
Think about this:
American Football has been in open beta for 144 years. ~Kotaku
Lolololo....Roflcopter
Yeah, that's right.
No, you're just bad. Don't mix beams and torpedoes on a cruiser. Run eight single beams and that's it.
Or better, quit this game and go play farmville. You'll never be good at STO PvP or any game that requires skill because your attitude stinks.
There are two types of bad players:
So do everyone here a favor swear off PvP for good.
^This... Broadsiding with an Escort... Pffft... Don't make me laugh. I could probably sit still, take my shields OFF my ship, and tank that all day long.
Hull Tanking is fully possible and with the right resistances you can knock down incoming damage to insanely tiny plinks off your hull.
i think we all need a lifesaver.
Not to pee on your parade here my friend but you are aware that there is now a torp launcher that allows you to sustain broadsides, and throw down burst right? It has a 180 degree firing arc. (Yes someone seriously thought THAT was a good idea. Just wait till I put my tacxcelsior together again)
Yeah, I know of it. I have one myself actually, and that would be fine if you could equip eight of them. Since you cannot you're still better off min/maxing into beams.
Besides that though, do you think the average face-roller (such as the OP) is remotely capable of timing quantum torpedoes in PvP, from a cruiser no less? The only time those torps are going to see hull is through divine intervention and/or proper alignment of the stars. Switching to all beams is by far the best course of action our friend could take, assuming of course he even knows how to run full weapons power.