So if I am to understand all of this correctly, SOME people here want the Beam Arrays to do as much DPS as a DHC but they want it to keep the firing arc... which would make the BA completely overpowered when placed on a Cruiser. You would have a BA doing the DPS of a DHC on a 250' firing arc.. you want to talk abot AFK'ers being bad now? Just wait until they do what DHC does, with 8 BA broadsiding.
Think about what you're recommending. Please.
IMHO...
DHCs/Turrets on an Escort.
Beam Arrays on the same Escort.
Should do the same overall DPS.
The DHCs/Turrets will have a higher DPV - higher burst DPS.
The Beam Arrays will have a lower DPV - lower burst DPS.
Overall though, they should be balanced to have the same overall DPS. It's the trade-off of the higher DPV/burst DPS and keeping on target (while also maneuvering to avoid damage). Tada, that balance - that trade-off that's so often mentioned.
It sounds...logical, no?
How about an analogy?
You've got two piles of bricks - equal size/amount. You've got two wheelbarrows. One's larger than the other (can hold more bricks). You can put more bricks in that one wheelbarrow, but you have to move slower and take longer breaks. than you do with the wheelbarrow that holds fewer. You have to make more trips with the smaller wheelbarrow, each trip delivering fewer bricks. When all's said and done though, you've moved the same number of bricks.
On target time shorter because of varying factors - more damage delivered while on target though. On target time longer - less damage delivered. Overall damage...the same.
But it doesn't work out that way. The time on target issue, either because of the arc or the need to move for defensive reasons, simply doesn't play out. The DHCs/Turrets are superior because the balancing aspect simply no longer exists in the way it was likely envisioned.
Okay, step two then...Escorts and Cruisers! But let's stay with Beam Arrays for a moment, k?
Beam Arrays on an Escort - higher DPV. Tac consoles/Tac BOFFs.
Beam Arrays on a Cruiser - lower DPV. Lack of Tac consoles/Tac BOFFs.
Given the Cruiser's "better tank" vs. the Escort's "need to retreat" - overall DPS again should remain the same. I mean, that's the reason given for the Escort being able to do more damage at a given point - that the Cruiser has better survivability, right? Kind of goes back to cannons and arrays on the Escort...the Escort has better survivability while moving with the beams than when sitting with the cannons.
But again...it doesn't work out that way. The Beam Arrays on the Escort are superior because the balancing aspect simply no longer exists in the way it was likely envisioned.
Okay, step three then...not only Escorts and Cruisers, but Escorts with DHCs/Turrets and Cruisers with Beam Arrays!
Well, this one's pretty easy... we've already seen where the balancing aspects of the DHCs/Turrets and Beam Arrays on the Escort are somewhat moot and we've already seen where the balancing aspects of the Escorts and Cruisers are somewhat moot.
Tada, the balancing aspects of the DHCs/Turrets on the Escort and the Beam Arrays on the Cruiser...somewhat moot.
Unfortunately, I cannot deny this means addressing balance issues. One could say it's a case of nerfing Escorts, nerfing Cannons, buffing Beam Arrays, or Buffing Cruisers... but I think that's the wrong way to go about it. If you nerf Escorts to address Issue A, you're likely just going to create Issue B and maybe Issue C, etc, etc, etc. If you nerf Cannons, the same - buff this or that - the same this or that.
It's not a case of looking at Escorts, Cannons, Cruisers, or Beams - it's a case of looking at the logic behind the differences that were envisioned.
If something's supposed to do more damage during a period of time because of an increased difficulty of staying on target - then there should be that increased difficulty of staying on target that's meaningful in regard to the buffed damage. If part of that difficulty in staying on target is supposed to arise from less survivability, then that less survivability should exist in a meaningful manner for the buffed damage.
You don't even need to bring Cruisers into the mix, to see that Cannons and Beams are broken with just the Escort. How this is broken becomes more obvious as you do bring Cruisers into the mix.
Now, there's a very large caveat here that I seriously need to point out - because some Cruiser Captains have probably grabbed pom pons and are dancing in front of their computers.
That overall DPS...the balance there...yeah, that's going to be rare.
What? But? What? Huh?
Most encounters/engagements are not going to last long enough for the Cruiser's overall DPS to match the Escort's overall DPS. The Escort will do superior damage. It's that simple, really - I mean, they're Escorts. Against the majority of ships, the Escort's simply going to do more damage. It's only with certain enemies and over the duration of multiple encounters/engagements, that we should see the Cruiser DPS approach the Escort DPS because of the Escort having to maneuver for survival reasons and then get back on target - that loss of DPS that balances for their burst DPS while on target.
And...
What? There's more? What?
Don't forget that everything that you can also do that is not DPS - should balance out a reduction in your DPS. If the Escort's not built to toss any heals but you are built to toss some heals in your Cruiser, that's only going to favor the Escort's DPS in the end. You shouldn't expect the same overall DPS as the Escort in your Cruiser. Course, the Escort really shouldn't expect that you're there to toss heals (imho) - given there are six healing abilities and all ships can toss out at least 5 of 6...well, yeah - that's a separate discussion. Still though, if you're doing something other than DPS - don't expect the same level of DPS. That's pretty simple.
Basically, damage is too high in the game versus the threat NPCs pose for those balancing aspects to come into play in most engagements/encounters. So the Escort will do more.
Doesn't mean that there are not issues with Beams vs. Cannons nor Escorts vs. Cruisers. It's a case of having realistic expectations and taking a look at the overall picture before asking for X or Y or even Z...
Besides, outside of the folks with epeen measuring sticks...anybody looking to DPS can for the most part (there are a few exceptions) do more DPS than is required. Some people need the Ferrari to go to the 7-Eleven to buy a gallon of milk...but you can pick up that gallon of milk even if you're driving a Pinto.
Course, this discussion also ignores Science, torpedoes, mines, etc, etc, etc, etc. There are just so many variables at play. Whether you're in the Ferrari, the Pinto, or riding a bicycle - as long as you can get the gallon of milk in a reasonable time, it should all be good, no?
Arc and damage levels
I can't see anything wrong with these, you trade time on target for more damage. Cannon ships deal in burst damage, cruisers in consistent damage. By the numbers, these weapons are balanced well. A cruiser broadsiding puts out very similar damage to an escort on the front arc, in theory, without buffs, etc.
Power drain
We do have a problem here. DHCs trade a long cooldown for a short burst of damage, allowing for efficient power usage. DC are less efficient, less desirable for most, but every cannon user has been in that situation where they just can't hold on for that next burst of DHC firing and need to back off, it happens fairly often. DBB don't have an issue, but BAs are messed up on power drain. Even engineers have serious drain problems with BAs.
They can modify BA drain, or do something a little more fancy to fix it like new variants of weapons.
Abilities
This is a very serious part of the lack of BAs being effective. BO is not a cruiser ability, Target subsystems is not a cruiser ability, so that leaves the admittedly bugged BFaW. Cannon abilities increase the damage dealt on attacks to the enemies it is firing on, BFaW just spreads it around. If BFaW could give 140% of damage to up to 5 enemies just like CSV, it'd be impressive.
Efficiency
Often overlooked, this isn't calculated anywhere. An escort buffs, attacks, rips one shield facing away and then the hull. It uses all of its efficient damage output to kill the enemy with the least amount of damage needed. A cruiser fires and eliminates a shield, but as shield facing drop the enemy turns, and the cruiser fires on a 2nd shield facing, or maybe a third or all four. Lets say an enemy has 10k shields, and 50k of hull; an escort gets through 60k of damage and it done. The cruiser hits 3 shield facings, the hull and the regeneration/healing brought in from the longer kill time, so they need to do 80-90k for the same target. Now if you are facing fodder enemies, its nothing, the cruiser or escort stops and kills, but take out a group of spheres on elite and you will explode pretty fast, even a cruiser can't stand up to that without some help.
Defense
We can't go into serious cruiser/escort defenses, its too much and this shouldn't be a cruiser/escort thread. A cruiser will always be better defended than an escort, saying any different and you don't know how to build a cruiser. I'll put my escort defenses against any other escort as well, but it can't match a cruiser.
BFaW, as bugged as it is, does a pretty great job of knocking out incoming torpedos. The cycle time of BAs for targeting is a bit of a challenge though.
I love how you take my exact math, and then promptly focus on only a single aspect while supporting your own argument with opinion, conjecture, and not a single bit of hard evidence.
I don't see the problem with ignoring your "exact math" given that it is based on a disingenuous premise.
Unless you're comparing shuttles, the comparison is never between a single DHC and a single beam array. The comparison is 4 DHCs + 3 Turrets in a 45 degree arc, versus 8 Beam Arrays with 70 degree broadsides. Beam Arrays have only a 25 degree greater firing angle where all their weapons come into play.
Try running Cure Elite or Hive Elite in an escort of your choice and tell me tanks are unnecessary. You'll change your tune after you blow up a couple times while watching the nearest cruiser shrug off the same amount of damage seemingly effortlessly.
Tanks are utterly unnecessary for CSE and HSE. :rolleyes:
CSE is just a few Negh'vars and cubes, very straight forward. HSE requires knowing how to do the whole map (firing lines, positioning, and luring). My Fleet runs both without issues, with nobody tanking. The last HSE I was in, it was all Escorts and Vestas.
"Tanks" that deal low damage make both maps harder.
I fly a fleet escort retrofit (defiant) with four fleet mk xii and three fleet mk xii plasma turrets. I have plasma enhancing consoles to power them along with attack pattern alpha/beta/omega and cannon rapid fire 1 and 2. I routinely go over 2k dps when fully powered. You are correct about beam boats being a choice between hull strength vs weapons dps. You should hope to see my ship in the pve's, and dread to see it in the pvp's
Do we really need a threat about cruiser/beam array captains complaining that they can't DPS like an escort in every thread and every week?
As soon as escorts get 4 device slots, increased hull, increased shield, and more tanking abilities we can talk about making beam array cruisers do escort DHC level damage.
YES DHC are a superior weapon, as they are the "perk" of flying squishy little escorts. This has been rehashed over and over and over, no it is not getting changed no matter how much forum spam you and your buddies try and cook up.
Wonder how it would look if we had a 'Beam Array Rapid Fire' ability? Like 'Fire at Will', but on a single target.
The thing about cannons is, when they are really dealing out the damage, they aren't generally firing at their normal rate; which makes the differences between the weapon types seem much more pronounced. While I suspect that the weapon types could do with a balance pass (what couldn't really?), I wonder if one of the biggest problems isn't the abilities that can be used on them.
This was a viable tactic used on the borg in a couple episodes, but it was mainly used to cut down on the chances of the borg adapting to the weapons frequency. While it can be altered to be used in a different manner, this was just a suggestion to make a cruisers limitations of using only single cannons or beam arrays and turrets with fewer tac consoles a more viable balance. I'm not suggesting they give ba's a dmg boost in general, just compiling ideas with all others into maybe a new boff ability, allowing for all facing beam arrays to focus fire in short speed burst allowing for half the wp drain of say faw, with a slight acc peanlty and a 1-2min boff skill cd. It's basically telling the tac officer to fire facing beam arrays in a daisy chain effect allowing each array to fire with minimal power loss, instead of all facing beam arrays firing together.
Do we really need a threat about cruiser/beam array captains complaining that they can't DPS like an escort in every thread and every week?
As soon as escorts get 4 device slots, increased hull, increased shield, and more tanking abilities we can talk about making beam array cruisers do escort DHC level damage.
YES DHC are a superior weapon, as they are the "perk" of flying squishy little escorts. This has been rehashed over and over and over, no it is not getting changed no matter how much forum spam you and your buddies try and cook up.
I fly a Fleet Defiant and hold agro on donatra the Tac cube at infected most of the time and seek out and take down the Neg'vars that spawn at Cure elite.
Not only do i tank there damage i kill the target
Nothing squishy about that , if your squishy in a escort you need more time in the big chair
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Explain the difference in Beams and DHCs on the same squishy little Escort then...hrmm?
edit: I mean it, totally ignore the Cruisers. Explain the difference on Escorts then...
Or look at this the other way, ignore escorts. Compare a six beam array two other setup with a cannon/turret set up on the same cruiser. Has anyone done a test like that? I might do that myself, I think I have a spare cruiser somewhere. This would be a fairer test since you can "broadside" with both setups. Actually, since you could "broadside" anywhere 180 degrees ahead of you with this and fire torps as well, this is again better than a beam array set up.
And to answer the question earlier about how many of these threads there have to be, how about until we get a dev to answer some questions on this?
Or look at this the other way, ignore escorts. Compare a six beam array two other setup with a cannon/turret set up on the same cruiser. Has anyone done a test like that? I might do that myself, I think I have a spare cruiser somewhere. This would be a fairer test since you can "broadside" with both setups. Actually, since you could "broadside" anywhere 180 degrees ahead of you with this and fire torps as well, this is again better than a beam array set up.
And to answer the question earlier about how many of these threads there have to be, how about until we get a dev to answer some questions on this?
The cannon/turret combo does infact out DPS beam setups provided the cruiser has a decent quantity of tac boff slots. Keep in mind though cannons and turrets suffer from half the issue beam arrays do, being that half their shots are at low power. Three out of four shots from a beam array are at low power. None, zero, zilch, of a DHCs shots are at low power.
How is it that on 9 pages of comments, nobody has mentioned the most significant thing noticed in the OPs test? It isn't that BAs are inefficient, which we already knew, its most of the power-boosting stuff designed to mitigate that inefficiency doesn't work. To me thats a heck of a lot more significant than a rerun of the beams-vs-cannons flame-fest.
How are you getting such low damage numbers o.0 are you powering them by treadmill?
Read more closely. I said the test took place at 9.5km. My target had to simply sit and take my fire, so I went to long range to make it easier for him to stay alive. The absolute damage fell dramatically due to range, but relative difference in damage between the different power profiles is valid.
It makes sense that such powerful beam weapons will drain energy out of the weapon capacitators.
What does not make sense, though, is that there are weapons (all types of cannons, most notably the DHC's) for which this is somehow not the case, yet they do even more damage. WTF.
actually that makes perfect sense. Cannons utilize short self contained highly charged intermittent bolts of energy. As such they do not drain as much energy as Beam Arrays which use highly charged continuous beams of the same kind of energy. A Continuous beam is always going to be a larger drain on a system than a short intermittent bolt of energy.
I mean there is a reason that Sub Machine Guns are still the weapon of choice in this day and age and not Directed Energy Weapons which do actually exist in this day and age but which are so bulky as to make them unwieldy.
Over the course of 15 seconds, DHCs consume 60 power (12 per second for 1 second per firing * 5 firings) and generate what we will call 1X damage (at mark 1, 188 damage * 2 shots per volley * 5 firings = 1880). A beam array consumes 120 power (10 per second for 4 seconds per firing * 3 firings) and does 0.63X damage (at mark 1, 100 damage * 4 shots per volley * 3 firings = 1200).
In other words, a beam array consumes twice as much power to generate around 2/3 as much damage.
Your argument is that because cannons buffer their drain with capacitors, so are not as hard on the ship's power grid and that's why they don't drain as much. The problem is that cannons don't drain power all at the time, only when they fire, which leads to them being ridiculously more efficient despite the whole problem of adding a level of capacitance, which would not be lossless.
This is all kind of moot though since the way STO's power mechanics work makes no sense as a whole because weapons "refund" their power at the end of their firing cycle. The total effect is to model a system with infinite power output but only limited transmission such that multiple simultaneous devices can overwhelm the transmission grid. If that were the case, the logical conclusion would be to build your ship to have only 1 weapon connected directly to your infinite power source, and that single weapon would be a beam whose constant throughput is only limited by the melting point of the systems involved.
Nothing about the weapon power situation makes sense, either with our physics or with theirs. *shrug*
actually that makes perfect sense. Cannons utilize short self contained highly charged intermittent bolts of energy. As such they do not drain as much energy as Beam Arrays which use highly charged continuous beams of the same kind of energy. A Continuous beam is always going to be a larger drain on a system than a short intermittent bolt of energy.
By that logic, the beam should deal as much, if not greater, amounts of damage than cannons.
What I would love to see from those who claim beams are 'fine'.
Video of you killing the starbase in the Tau system. I can do it in all of my cannon ships but have yet to see a beam boat do it.
I did it before with my eng in a command bortasqu using 8 disruptor beams. You have to use multiple ways of mitigating power drain and giving more power to weapons, then having 8 beams actually gets pretty powerful. I use the eng captain abilities, 2 aux2bat with technician doffs, warp core engineer doff, eptw, and weapon batteries with battery doff.
If you think escorts can "tank/evade on par with cruisers", you're sadly mistaking. First off, cruisers don't evade, they're slow lumbering boats. They get more hull points, more engineering stations, and when flown by an engineer, get innate heals and even greater healing bonuses. Cruisers can, and always will, out-heal an escort. They will ALWAYS be capable of absorbing more damage than an escort.
The only thing an escort can do is kill its target before its target kills the escort. We escort pilots have become quite good at that, which is why many players seem to be under the incredibly wrong assumption that escorts can tank.
Well I don't know about how some people fly cruisers but I am at 70% def bonus on my oddy, bortasqu, or regent, and I go up to 80 when I use the 2 pc aegis set sometimes. Escorts only get 10% more innate defense, and a cruiser when built right can easily reach enough speed to cap its defense bonus. I circle targets full speed while maintaing broadside and see them miss a lot. I even do it in a voquv.
Tanking in a cruiser isn't only about armor, resists and healing, keeping def bonus high causes many misses, and when they do hit they are less likely to crit.
I fly a Steamrunner with 2x EPtS, 2x Aux2Strut, 1x HE, 2x Tactical Team. MACO shield, skill points in starship armor, shields, blah, blah, over 70 shield power, red matter capacitor, etc. That's about as "tanky" as you can make an escort. It still doesn't match the tanking capabilities of even a "half-decent" cruiser.
you only need 1 aux2struc since it has a short cooldown you can just keep spamming it and you can switch the other one out for RSP1 and become tankier. Also make sure if you are running so much power to your shields you are still moving fast enough to max your def bonus.
If that were the case, the logical conclusion would be to build your ship to have only 1 weapon connected directly to your infinite power source, and that single weapon would be a beam whose constant throughput is only limited by the melting point of the systems involved.
Wouldn't this be a good explanation of what a cannon is? 'We can't run this continuously without destroying it.'
It reminds me a lot of continuous vs. pulse lasers, except that pulse lasers are (I believe) much less efficient than continuous beams, just WAY WAY WAY more powerful. And both devices point straight ahead.
It seems quite reasonable that beam arrays are much less damaging, and somewhat plausible that they are less efficient. The degree of inefficiency, particularly given the link between weapon power and damage itself, seems possibly excessive.
Mind you, I think this highlights some of the weirdness with the way weapon power works in the first place.
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How is it that on 9 pages of comments, nobody has mentioned the most significant thing noticed in the OPs test? It isn't that BAs are inefficient, which we already knew, its most of the power-boosting stuff designed to mitigate that inefficiency doesn't work. To me thats a heck of a lot more significant than a rerun of the beams-vs-cannons flame-fest.
Because some of the escort pilots are afraid the devs will steal their cannons and so they respond with an attack. Others are just so used to every thread being about beams vs cannons they they see it even when the topic is something else entirely.
But it's actaully cool that you pointed it out.
and to get back on to the original topic: it was determined that nadeon inversion works wonders. So from a purely practical standpoint, it appears that power buffs are barely useful but power "anti-debuffs" are really what we need to maximize our beam boats.
So are there any other available -drain abilities/consoles etc? Nadeon is an engineer innate ability with a 2minute cooldown. Do any of the science console or deflector dish mods protect against energy drain in the same way? Insulators maybe?
Over the course of 15 seconds, DHCs consume 60 power (12 per second for 1 second per firing * 5 firings) and generate what we will call 1X damage (at mark 1, 188 damage * 2 shots per volley * 5 firings = 1880). A beam array consumes 120 power (10 per second for 4 seconds per firing * 3 firings) and does 0.63X damage (at mark 1, 100 damage * 4 shots per volley * 3 firings = 1200).
In other words, a beam array consumes twice as much power to generate around 2/3 as much damage.
Add in the fact that a having beam arrays on both the front and the back of the ship means that you have practically 360 degree's of firing radius with consistent damage. Where as a Dual Heavy Cannon boat only has an effective 46 degree firing radius where it can effectively hit any targets and be of any real use. This means that the Cruiser with the Beam Arrays can survive LONGER and thus do more DPS than the Escort flying with the Dual Heavy Cannons. Basically just because a weapon does more DPS in a narrow range of fire, does not make that weapon better when comparing it to a weapon that has a wider firing arc.
By that logic, the beam should deal as much, if not greater, amounts of damage than cannons.
Conservation of energy, natch.
I disagree, once the cannon volleys are launched out of the ship they are self contained balls of energy (just like Torpedo's). Thus they require less energy to maintain than the Beam Arrays which require a constant flow of energy from the ship to maintain the beam.
It's kind of like what takes more energy to fire... a Star Wars Repeating Blaster Rifle, or a Star Trek Phaser... easily the Phaser uses more energy.
So are there any other available -drain abilities/consoles etc? Nadeon is an engineer innate ability with a 2minute cooldown. Do any of the science console or deflector dish mods protect against energy drain in the same way? Insulators maybe?
It's worth pointing out that ALL those tests would have been made with "omega weapon amplifier" kicking in occasionally. I forgot about that one. If you don't use two pieces of the omega set, your power mitigation attempts are even more irrelevant.
I disagree, once the cannon volleys are launched out of the ship they are self contained balls of energy (just like Torpedo's). Thus they require less energy to maintain than the Beam Arrays which require a constant flow of energy from the ship to maintain the beam.
It's kind of like what takes more energy to fire... a Star Wars Repeating Blaster Rifle, or a Star Trek Phaser... easily the Phaser uses more energy.
You can only get as much energy out of a thing as you put into it; if a beam requires more power, then it should be doing more damage.
Experienced engineers can do it with no problem, my eng is only specced for energy weapons so there isn't anything else I can use the weapon slots for, and have enough ways to power it and mitigate its drain so why not.
You can only get as much energy out of a thing as you put into it; if a beam requires more power, then it should be doing more damage.
I suppose that depends on how we are defining energy. You are correct in that regard when using the term to define Potential and Kinetic Energy. But that need not apply to other forms of energy such as Electricity, Plasma, Nuclear Energy, etc... I mean seriously, have you seen the amount of concussive force that you get just by smashing a tiny little atom apart?
Comments
IMHO...
DHCs/Turrets on an Escort.
Beam Arrays on the same Escort.
Should do the same overall DPS.
The DHCs/Turrets will have a higher DPV - higher burst DPS.
The Beam Arrays will have a lower DPV - lower burst DPS.
Overall though, they should be balanced to have the same overall DPS. It's the trade-off of the higher DPV/burst DPS and keeping on target (while also maneuvering to avoid damage). Tada, that balance - that trade-off that's so often mentioned.
It sounds...logical, no?
How about an analogy?
You've got two piles of bricks - equal size/amount. You've got two wheelbarrows. One's larger than the other (can hold more bricks). You can put more bricks in that one wheelbarrow, but you have to move slower and take longer breaks. than you do with the wheelbarrow that holds fewer. You have to make more trips with the smaller wheelbarrow, each trip delivering fewer bricks. When all's said and done though, you've moved the same number of bricks.
On target time shorter because of varying factors - more damage delivered while on target though. On target time longer - less damage delivered. Overall damage...the same.
But it doesn't work out that way. The time on target issue, either because of the arc or the need to move for defensive reasons, simply doesn't play out. The DHCs/Turrets are superior because the balancing aspect simply no longer exists in the way it was likely envisioned.
Okay, step two then...Escorts and Cruisers! But let's stay with Beam Arrays for a moment, k?
Beam Arrays on an Escort - higher DPV. Tac consoles/Tac BOFFs.
Beam Arrays on a Cruiser - lower DPV. Lack of Tac consoles/Tac BOFFs.
Given the Cruiser's "better tank" vs. the Escort's "need to retreat" - overall DPS again should remain the same. I mean, that's the reason given for the Escort being able to do more damage at a given point - that the Cruiser has better survivability, right? Kind of goes back to cannons and arrays on the Escort...the Escort has better survivability while moving with the beams than when sitting with the cannons.
But again...it doesn't work out that way. The Beam Arrays on the Escort are superior because the balancing aspect simply no longer exists in the way it was likely envisioned.
Okay, step three then...not only Escorts and Cruisers, but Escorts with DHCs/Turrets and Cruisers with Beam Arrays!
Well, this one's pretty easy... we've already seen where the balancing aspects of the DHCs/Turrets and Beam Arrays on the Escort are somewhat moot and we've already seen where the balancing aspects of the Escorts and Cruisers are somewhat moot.
Tada, the balancing aspects of the DHCs/Turrets on the Escort and the Beam Arrays on the Cruiser...somewhat moot.
Unfortunately, I cannot deny this means addressing balance issues. One could say it's a case of nerfing Escorts, nerfing Cannons, buffing Beam Arrays, or Buffing Cruisers... but I think that's the wrong way to go about it. If you nerf Escorts to address Issue A, you're likely just going to create Issue B and maybe Issue C, etc, etc, etc. If you nerf Cannons, the same - buff this or that - the same this or that.
It's not a case of looking at Escorts, Cannons, Cruisers, or Beams - it's a case of looking at the logic behind the differences that were envisioned.
If something's supposed to do more damage during a period of time because of an increased difficulty of staying on target - then there should be that increased difficulty of staying on target that's meaningful in regard to the buffed damage. If part of that difficulty in staying on target is supposed to arise from less survivability, then that less survivability should exist in a meaningful manner for the buffed damage.
You don't even need to bring Cruisers into the mix, to see that Cannons and Beams are broken with just the Escort. How this is broken becomes more obvious as you do bring Cruisers into the mix.
Now, there's a very large caveat here that I seriously need to point out - because some Cruiser Captains have probably grabbed pom pons and are dancing in front of their computers.
That overall DPS...the balance there...yeah, that's going to be rare.
What? But? What? Huh?
Most encounters/engagements are not going to last long enough for the Cruiser's overall DPS to match the Escort's overall DPS. The Escort will do superior damage. It's that simple, really - I mean, they're Escorts. Against the majority of ships, the Escort's simply going to do more damage. It's only with certain enemies and over the duration of multiple encounters/engagements, that we should see the Cruiser DPS approach the Escort DPS because of the Escort having to maneuver for survival reasons and then get back on target - that loss of DPS that balances for their burst DPS while on target.
And...
What? There's more? What?
Don't forget that everything that you can also do that is not DPS - should balance out a reduction in your DPS. If the Escort's not built to toss any heals but you are built to toss some heals in your Cruiser, that's only going to favor the Escort's DPS in the end. You shouldn't expect the same overall DPS as the Escort in your Cruiser. Course, the Escort really shouldn't expect that you're there to toss heals (imho) - given there are six healing abilities and all ships can toss out at least 5 of 6...well, yeah - that's a separate discussion. Still though, if you're doing something other than DPS - don't expect the same level of DPS. That's pretty simple.
Basically, damage is too high in the game versus the threat NPCs pose for those balancing aspects to come into play in most engagements/encounters. So the Escort will do more.
Doesn't mean that there are not issues with Beams vs. Cannons nor Escorts vs. Cruisers. It's a case of having realistic expectations and taking a look at the overall picture before asking for X or Y or even Z...
Besides, outside of the folks with epeen measuring sticks...anybody looking to DPS can for the most part (there are a few exceptions) do more DPS than is required. Some people need the Ferrari to go to the 7-Eleven to buy a gallon of milk...but you can pick up that gallon of milk even if you're driving a Pinto.
Course, this discussion also ignores Science, torpedoes, mines, etc, etc, etc, etc. There are just so many variables at play. Whether you're in the Ferrari, the Pinto, or riding a bicycle - as long as you can get the gallon of milk in a reasonable time, it should all be good, no?
Lets look at the weapons and conditions of combat
Arc and damage levels
I can't see anything wrong with these, you trade time on target for more damage. Cannon ships deal in burst damage, cruisers in consistent damage. By the numbers, these weapons are balanced well. A cruiser broadsiding puts out very similar damage to an escort on the front arc, in theory, without buffs, etc.
Power drain
We do have a problem here. DHCs trade a long cooldown for a short burst of damage, allowing for efficient power usage. DC are less efficient, less desirable for most, but every cannon user has been in that situation where they just can't hold on for that next burst of DHC firing and need to back off, it happens fairly often. DBB don't have an issue, but BAs are messed up on power drain. Even engineers have serious drain problems with BAs.
They can modify BA drain, or do something a little more fancy to fix it like new variants of weapons.
Abilities
This is a very serious part of the lack of BAs being effective. BO is not a cruiser ability, Target subsystems is not a cruiser ability, so that leaves the admittedly bugged BFaW. Cannon abilities increase the damage dealt on attacks to the enemies it is firing on, BFaW just spreads it around. If BFaW could give 140% of damage to up to 5 enemies just like CSV, it'd be impressive.
Efficiency
Often overlooked, this isn't calculated anywhere. An escort buffs, attacks, rips one shield facing away and then the hull. It uses all of its efficient damage output to kill the enemy with the least amount of damage needed. A cruiser fires and eliminates a shield, but as shield facing drop the enemy turns, and the cruiser fires on a 2nd shield facing, or maybe a third or all four. Lets say an enemy has 10k shields, and 50k of hull; an escort gets through 60k of damage and it done. The cruiser hits 3 shield facings, the hull and the regeneration/healing brought in from the longer kill time, so they need to do 80-90k for the same target. Now if you are facing fodder enemies, its nothing, the cruiser or escort stops and kills, but take out a group of spheres on elite and you will explode pretty fast, even a cruiser can't stand up to that without some help.
Defense
We can't go into serious cruiser/escort defenses, its too much and this shouldn't be a cruiser/escort thread. A cruiser will always be better defended than an escort, saying any different and you don't know how to build a cruiser. I'll put my escort defenses against any other escort as well, but it can't match a cruiser.
BFaW, as bugged as it is, does a pretty great job of knocking out incoming torpedos. The cycle time of BAs for targeting is a bit of a challenge though.
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Unless you're comparing shuttles, the comparison is never between a single DHC and a single beam array. The comparison is 4 DHCs + 3 Turrets in a 45 degree arc, versus 8 Beam Arrays with 70 degree broadsides. Beam Arrays have only a 25 degree greater firing angle where all their weapons come into play.
Tanks are utterly unnecessary for CSE and HSE. :rolleyes:
CSE is just a few Negh'vars and cubes, very straight forward. HSE requires knowing how to do the whole map (firing lines, positioning, and luring). My Fleet runs both without issues, with nobody tanking. The last HSE I was in, it was all Escorts and Vestas.
"Tanks" that deal low damage make both maps harder.
I'm flying a Recluse right now, and I call shenanigans! :eek:
As soon as escorts get 4 device slots, increased hull, increased shield, and more tanking abilities we can talk about making beam array cruisers do escort DHC level damage.
YES DHC are a superior weapon, as they are the "perk" of flying squishy little escorts. This has been rehashed over and over and over, no it is not getting changed no matter how much forum spam you and your buddies try and cook up.
This was a viable tactic used on the borg in a couple episodes, but it was mainly used to cut down on the chances of the borg adapting to the weapons frequency. While it can be altered to be used in a different manner, this was just a suggestion to make a cruisers limitations of using only single cannons or beam arrays and turrets with fewer tac consoles a more viable balance. I'm not suggesting they give ba's a dmg boost in general, just compiling ideas with all others into maybe a new boff ability, allowing for all facing beam arrays to focus fire in short speed burst allowing for half the wp drain of say faw, with a slight acc peanlty and a 1-2min boff skill cd. It's basically telling the tac officer to fire facing beam arrays in a daisy chain effect allowing each array to fire with minimal power loss, instead of all facing beam arrays firing together.
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Explain the difference in Beams and DHCs on the same squishy little Escort then...hrmm?
edit: I mean it, totally ignore the Cruisers. Explain the difference on Escorts then...
I fly a Fleet Defiant and hold agro on donatra the Tac cube at infected most of the time and seek out and take down the Neg'vars that spawn at Cure elite.
Not only do i tank there damage i kill the target
Nothing squishy about that , if your squishy in a escort you need more time in the big chair
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Or look at this the other way, ignore escorts. Compare a six beam array two other setup with a cannon/turret set up on the same cruiser. Has anyone done a test like that? I might do that myself, I think I have a spare cruiser somewhere. This would be a fairer test since you can "broadside" with both setups. Actually, since you could "broadside" anywhere 180 degrees ahead of you with this and fire torps as well, this is again better than a beam array set up.
And to answer the question earlier about how many of these threads there have to be, how about until we get a dev to answer some questions on this?
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A dps cruiser ought to focus on torps -- my engineer with Romulan hyper-plasmas in a cruiser can compete with escorts (at least in pve).
Or in other words, beam arrays are less damaging, by design.
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The cannon/turret combo does infact out DPS beam setups provided the cruiser has a decent quantity of tac boff slots. Keep in mind though cannons and turrets suffer from half the issue beam arrays do, being that half their shots are at low power. Three out of four shots from a beam array are at low power. None, zero, zilch, of a DHCs shots are at low power.
Read more closely. I said the test took place at 9.5km. My target had to simply sit and take my fire, so I went to long range to make it easier for him to stay alive. The absolute damage fell dramatically due to range, but relative difference in damage between the different power profiles is valid.
You're silly. :P What would be the point of conducting tests on power drain if I didn't have my power set to maximum.
actually that makes perfect sense. Cannons utilize short self contained highly charged intermittent bolts of energy. As such they do not drain as much energy as Beam Arrays which use highly charged continuous beams of the same kind of energy. A Continuous beam is always going to be a larger drain on a system than a short intermittent bolt of energy.
I mean there is a reason that Sub Machine Guns are still the weapon of choice in this day and age and not Directed Energy Weapons which do actually exist in this day and age but which are so bulky as to make them unwieldy.
No it doesn't.
Over the course of 15 seconds, DHCs consume 60 power (12 per second for 1 second per firing * 5 firings) and generate what we will call 1X damage (at mark 1, 188 damage * 2 shots per volley * 5 firings = 1880). A beam array consumes 120 power (10 per second for 4 seconds per firing * 3 firings) and does 0.63X damage (at mark 1, 100 damage * 4 shots per volley * 3 firings = 1200).
In other words, a beam array consumes twice as much power to generate around 2/3 as much damage.
Your argument is that because cannons buffer their drain with capacitors, so are not as hard on the ship's power grid and that's why they don't drain as much. The problem is that cannons don't drain power all at the time, only when they fire, which leads to them being ridiculously more efficient despite the whole problem of adding a level of capacitance, which would not be lossless.
This is all kind of moot though since the way STO's power mechanics work makes no sense as a whole because weapons "refund" their power at the end of their firing cycle. The total effect is to model a system with infinite power output but only limited transmission such that multiple simultaneous devices can overwhelm the transmission grid. If that were the case, the logical conclusion would be to build your ship to have only 1 weapon connected directly to your infinite power source, and that single weapon would be a beam whose constant throughput is only limited by the melting point of the systems involved.
Nothing about the weapon power situation makes sense, either with our physics or with theirs. *shrug*
Conservation of energy, natch.
I did it before with my eng in a command bortasqu using 8 disruptor beams. You have to use multiple ways of mitigating power drain and giving more power to weapons, then having 8 beams actually gets pretty powerful. I use the eng captain abilities, 2 aux2bat with technician doffs, warp core engineer doff, eptw, and weapon batteries with battery doff.
Well I don't know about how some people fly cruisers but I am at 70% def bonus on my oddy, bortasqu, or regent, and I go up to 80 when I use the 2 pc aegis set sometimes. Escorts only get 10% more innate defense, and a cruiser when built right can easily reach enough speed to cap its defense bonus. I circle targets full speed while maintaing broadside and see them miss a lot. I even do it in a voquv.
Tanking in a cruiser isn't only about armor, resists and healing, keeping def bonus high causes many misses, and when they do hit they are less likely to crit.
you only need 1 aux2struc since it has a short cooldown you can just keep spamming it and you can switch the other one out for RSP1 and become tankier. Also make sure if you are running so much power to your shields you are still moving fast enough to max your def bonus.
Wouldn't this be a good explanation of what a cannon is? 'We can't run this continuously without destroying it.'
It reminds me a lot of continuous vs. pulse lasers, except that pulse lasers are (I believe) much less efficient than continuous beams, just WAY WAY WAY more powerful. And both devices point straight ahead.
It seems quite reasonable that beam arrays are much less damaging, and somewhat plausible that they are less efficient. The degree of inefficiency, particularly given the link between weapon power and damage itself, seems possibly excessive.
Mind you, I think this highlights some of the weirdness with the way weapon power works in the first place.
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thats complete bs.
i dont recall seeing anywhere that a ship is "supposed" to equip energy and torps anywhere.
Do you even Science Bro?
Because some of the escort pilots are afraid the devs will steal their cannons and so they respond with an attack. Others are just so used to every thread being about beams vs cannons they they see it even when the topic is something else entirely.
But it's actaully cool that you pointed it out.
and to get back on to the original topic: it was determined that nadeon inversion works wonders. So from a purely practical standpoint, it appears that power buffs are barely useful but power "anti-debuffs" are really what we need to maximize our beam boats.
So are there any other available -drain abilities/consoles etc? Nadeon is an engineer innate ability with a 2minute cooldown. Do any of the science console or deflector dish mods protect against energy drain in the same way? Insulators maybe?
Add in the fact that a having beam arrays on both the front and the back of the ship means that you have practically 360 degree's of firing radius with consistent damage. Where as a Dual Heavy Cannon boat only has an effective 46 degree firing radius where it can effectively hit any targets and be of any real use. This means that the Cruiser with the Beam Arrays can survive LONGER and thus do more DPS than the Escort flying with the Dual Heavy Cannons. Basically just because a weapon does more DPS in a narrow range of fire, does not make that weapon better when comparing it to a weapon that has a wider firing arc.
I disagree, once the cannon volleys are launched out of the ship they are self contained balls of energy (just like Torpedo's). Thus they require less energy to maintain than the Beam Arrays which require a constant flow of energy from the ship to maintain the beam.
It's kind of like what takes more energy to fire... a Star Wars Repeating Blaster Rifle, or a Star Trek Phaser... easily the Phaser uses more energy.
It's worth pointing out that ALL those tests would have been made with "omega weapon amplifier" kicking in occasionally. I forgot about that one. If you don't use two pieces of the omega set, your power mitigation attempts are even more irrelevant.
You can only get as much energy out of a thing as you put into it; if a beam requires more power, then it should be doing more damage.
Experienced engineers can do it with no problem, my eng is only specced for energy weapons so there isn't anything else I can use the weapon slots for, and have enough ways to power it and mitigate its drain so why not.
Beam array technology may be essentially less efficient than a cannon.
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I think they set the game up for phaser-kills-shield-torps-kills-hull, but cannon-kills-all sort of made it meaningless.
I suppose that depends on how we are defining energy. You are correct in that regard when using the term to define Potential and Kinetic Energy. But that need not apply to other forms of energy such as Electricity, Plasma, Nuclear Energy, etc... I mean seriously, have you seen the amount of concussive force that you get just by smashing a tiny little atom apart?