Nadion Inversion has a cd of 3 min its too long and by more dmg I meant the basic dmg:)
I know Inversion has a 3 minute cooldown and presently isn't good for much.I was using it as a way to demonstrate that the problem with beams is the power drain. Because when you turn off the drain (for a very brief time, yes) the damage output goes up enormously.
Single cannons even do more than beams. The damage type says less but the DPS is higher. DPS is what you need to wear down shields or destroy hull faster. Beams don't do hardly TRIBBLE to hull. In the canon Star Trek world, cannons and beams do the same amount of damage with different looking effects. The only reason players tend to arm all their escorts and battlecruisers with cannons is because they are the quickest way to deliver damage. This has caused an imbalance and made people choose one type of ship over another. If weapon types were more balanced, then you would see more beams being employed on escorts and battlecruisers and more ships would be able to share in the damage dealing.
On an overcomming resistance standpoint, beams actually do more than single cannons/turrets because the damaged is lumped into one hit. If a target has low resistance or the proc' per shot is for damage, then yes, single cannons do more. Honestly, single cannons, turrets and beams should be pretty much lumped into one group of its own: Not DHC/DC.
Also, it is my opinion (take it for what you will) that cruisers shouldn't be running any of the 45' arc weapons, even a slightly above average turning Excelsior would have problems using them effectively.
beams need nothing more than a change to their power drain. it's expected that anyone running beams is running 6 of them. it should be possible with 125/100 power to maintain 95+ power (cruiser only) while firing 6 beams.
easiest way to handle this would be to give a -power drain when using beams passive to cruisers.
Uh. What. A beam array broadside cruiser will always want their side shield to the enemy, which means the same shield facing is always taking damage. These ships are not agile enough to choose where to get hit.
When you're broadsiding, the fact that you're doing so means you can orbit the target and get top defence values while doing it. Something escorts cannot so when they sit and shoot.
could be to give a -power drain when using beams passive to cruisers.
D Stahl mentioned in one of his recent interviews that ships will be getting warp cores that give ships different powers.
Perhaps they'll play a part in it.
With the constant flow of new ships coming out of the shipyards, our next major update to ships will be to incorporate warp core design into how a ship performs in combat and what types of power it can bring to a fight.
When you're broadsiding, the fact that you're doing so means you can orbit the target and get top defence values while doing it. Something escorts cannot so when they sit and shoot.
Never seen an escort just sit and shoot. What I have seen is for them to turn and weave to take advantage of shield facings in between firings of major weapon volleys, they have no problem keeping up their defensive values. Escorts are more than capable of constant fire on a target while keeping the ability to give a good shield facing when they need it.
The yellowed arcs should have a higher crit rating than cannons, and with the overlapping effect, a combined assault from beam overload should strip shields unquestionably in any encounter. In the hands of a Tac Officer, such a fitted cruiser should be able to contend with a tac officer in an escort, provided they can fly a disciplined broadside.
Is it the ideal solution? Probably not, but it is a sensible one as far as "concentrating" the firepower of beams, go. As far as dual beams go, however, I think maybe the arc could be narrowed slightly in exchange for a significant damage increase to let them at LEAST compare to DCs (not necessarily DHC's).
Probably not the solution y'all were looking for, but providing one is sure better than arguing over one. At least with more ideas in the box, you might be able to construct something out of sensible components, rather than trying to build a firearm entirely out of wood.
The yellowed arcs should have a higher crit rating than cannons, and with the overlapping effect, a combined assault from beam overload should strip shields unquestionably in any encounter. In the hands of a Tac Officer, such a fitted cruiser should be able to contend with a tac officer in an escort, provided they can fly a disciplined broadside.
Is it the ideal solution? Probably not, but it is a sensible one as far as "concentrating" the firepower of beams, go. As far as dual beams go, however, I think maybe the arc could be narrowed slightly in exchange for a significant damage increase to let them at LEAST compare to DCs (not necessarily DHC's).
Probably not the solution y'all were looking for, but providing one is sure better than arguing over one. At least with more ideas in the box, you might be able to construct something out of sensible components, rather than trying to build a firearm entirely out of wood.
What happens why the cruisers are outside that proposed arc, continued negligible damage? What about those of us who use DBB, should all of our shots just go bouncey on the escorts? Not trying to shoot down you concept necessarily, but the problem with beams is that they do piddly amounts throughout the whole arc (single cannons too) and are just bouncing off of escorts.
Because beams weren't cutting it anymore for my Science captain... Target whatsystems now?... I switched to an all turret build.
It is the shizznit. I'm dealing far more more in the way of ouchies to the game's mobs than before with beam arrays, and that's with the weapons that are supposed to suck and you should only use for the proc. That's in regular play, I can't imagine it being any better in PvP or STFs.
To sum up: Beams do need some help.
Yeah. I recently tried out a 5 turret/1 torpedo build on a sci ship and was surprised by how dramatically the rapid fire cannons skill upped the ship's DPS. A single lt. commander tac officer basically turns the ship into an omni-directional laser hose. Overall DPS was higher than when I used 5 beams instead and I got procs and criticals more often. I'm going to try this on a cruiser later today, but I'm pretty sure a six-turret/two torp setup on a cruiser's going to be pretty much the same.
When the weakest cannon in the game is far more useful in general than any beam weapon, there is a problem.
Yeah. I recently tried out a 5 turret/1 torpedo build on a sci ship and was surprised by how dramatically the rapid fire cannons skill upped the ship's DPS. A single lt. commander tac officer basically turns the ship into an omni-directional laser hose. Overall DPS was higher than when I used 5 beams instead and I got procs and criticals more often. I'm going to try this on a cruiser later today, but I'm pretty sure a six-turret/two torp setup on a cruiser's going to be pretty much the same.
When the weakest cannon in the game is far more useful in general than any beam weapon, there is a problem.
really? and you parsed this?
becaus from my parsing in my jem'hadar dreadnought - 7 turrets, 4k dps. 6 turrets + 180 torpedo - 4.1k dps. 6 turrets and regular fleet mk xii quantum torp - 4.1k dps. 7 turrets and 2 torps - 3.8k dps
i used the foundry mission 'battleship 1 on 1' for all of the parsing. this is a mission that keeps you in battle for 15-20 minutes straight and only has you fighting one target at a time, no aoe cheesing
and even if tehre WERE aoe cheesing, the 360 degree nature of beam fire at will > cannon rapid fire with just turrets.
i used the foundry mission 'battleship 1 on 1' for all of the parsing. this is a mission that keeps you in battle for 15-20 minutes straight and only has you fighting one target at a time, no aoe cheesing
and even if tehre WERE aoe cheesing, the 360 degree nature of beam fire at will > cannon rapid fire with just turrets.
anecdotal evidence is bad.
No. I didn't parse it. Instead, I simply timed how long it took me, on average, to kill a battleship one on one with the build I was using. Not quite the same, but far from anecdotal. Average engagement time dropped from 35 to 24 seconds.
No. I didn't parse it. Instead, I simply timed how long it took me, on average, to kill a battleship one on one with the build I was using. Not quite the same, but far from anecdotal. Average engagement time dropped from 35 to 24 seconds.
and you timed this how exactly?
i would believe you, due to the fact taht both weapons have a 1s activation but the beams draw 2 more power per activation that the dps was the same but to say that turrets were flat out better may have more to do wtih your driving. i'm guessing that you routinely rotate so that the front or rear 90 of your ship cna fire a torpedo. if this is the case then many times you have only your front or rear beams hitting your target
if you had one of the 180 degree torps you would not need to do anytihng but straight broadside - allowing full beams + torp to hit your target 100% of the time. yes the 180 torp is lower dmg than a standard torp or the omega torps, but i just did 8k on ise with the build with - again - only tier 1 in omega and romulan rep right now as i just came back to the game and rolled a new character.
i would believe you, due to the fact taht both weapons have a 1s activation but the beams draw 2 more power per activation that the dps was the same but to say that turrets were flat out better may have more to do wtih your driving. i'm guessing that you routinely rotate so that the front or rear 90 of your ship cna fire a torpedo. if this is the case then many times you have only your front or rear beams hitting your target
I did not say they were flat out better. I said that they were far more useful. They can maintain a constant DPS no matter the ship's facing and benefit from the punchier cannon tac skills. The boosted rate of fire they benefit from also means they can potentially make more critical hits and trigger more procs. Your mention of maneuvering only reinforces my point: I can carefully maneuver a ponderous cruiser around in order to maintain my 6 beams slightly higher base DPS against a target and rely on a combination of engineering skills, maneuvering patterns, and tac team to boost DPS, or I can simply be within 10 km and constantly cycle tac team 1/cannon rapid fire and do nearly as much damage with little to no effort on my part. Furthermore, I can pretty do that boosted damage pretty much constantly.
if you had one of the 180 degree torps you would not need to do anytihng but straight broadside - allowing full beams + torp to hit your target 100% of the time. yes the 180 torp is lower dmg than a standard torp or the omega torps, but i just did 8k on ise with the build with - again - only tier 1 in omega and romulan rep right now as i just came back to the game and rolled a new character.
While certainly handy, your 2500 cryptic point torpedo weapon isn't relevant to the discussion. I am glad you're enjoying your new character, though, and hope you have a great time either way.
With three consoles, I can bring a DBB up to 1100-1200 DPS on a cruiser. I can make an array go from 700-1000 DPS. I suspect it is not the gear, but the tactics behind it and the person trying to fit it that is the problem.
With three consoles, I can bring a DBB up to 1100-1200 DPS on a cruiser. I can make an array go from 700-1000 DPS. I suspect it is not the gear, but the tactics behind it and the person trying to fit it that is the problem.
Yes, captain genius, we all know you can buff beams to have, nominally decent damage. What you have chosen to ignore is the fact that the weapons will cripple themselves via massive powerdrain. + The deisganted beam ships have little in ways to modify and buff the weaposn they are desiganted to use. All beam skills are lakcluster AND locked away in the TAC tree.
Everything that makes a engineering captain is UP his ship his weapons his career skills ! Eng bof skills can use anyone efficiently tac and sci, what bring the question what makes a eng cruiser captain a tanker? He is no better tanker that a sci captain btw sci have even better bof tanking skills"PH, TSS, HE and why do they have them they are no tanks" And the damage from beam arrays and torp is not noticable in most cases, and why its because we have bug tanks and thick shield sci. So why bother you can see almost no eng in a cruiser in pvp space that doesnt pop like popcorn in the first 30 sec, maybe if he uses RSP that will give few exciting seconds. So much for the balance the cruiser ships from the ST series are myths for our cruisers they just share the same look!:D btw I have all three career on my account so I know:cool:
With a stop watch. Not as fancy as a DPS parser, but pretty reliable technology.
I did not say they were flat out better. I said that they were far more useful. They can maintain a constant DPS no matter the ship's facing and benefit from the punchier cannon tac skills. The boosted rate of fire they benefit from also means they can potentially make more critical hits and trigger more procs. Your mention of maneuvering only reinforces my point: I can carefully maneuver a ponderous cruiser around in order to maintain my 6 beams slightly higher base DPS against a target and rely on a combination of engineering skills, maneuvering patterns, and tac team to boost DPS, or I can simply be within 10 km and constantly cycle tac team 1/cannon rapid fire and do nearly as much damage with little to no effort on my part. Furthermore, I can pretty do that boosted damage pretty much constantly.
While certainly handy, your 2500 cryptic point torpedo weapon isn't relevant to the discussion. I am glad you're enjoying your new character, though, and hope you have a great time either way.
beams slightly higher base dps?
beams are about 40-50% higher base dps than a turret. on my ship with 4 blue mk xii consoles and 125 weapon power turrets are just under 700 dps, beams are well over 1k. that's on the mouseover.
and i've parsed 7 turrets, 6 turrets and a torpedo, 5 turrets and 2 torpedos, 5 beams and a torp and 6 beams with a torp. which which two were the highest? it wasn't the turrets.
fact is that turrets have larger damage drop off from what i'm seeing, and they do less damage per proc. the dmg listed on the romulan consoles on my beams is 71 dmg. on turrets it. 0.03 dmg. that's not a typo and bears out in the parse.
my 2500 point cryptic torpedo came with the assault cruiser refit, which does dps nearly on par with my jem'hadar dread but with substantially more survivability - again with beams.
parse your results. anecdotes and your 'stopwatch' do not count due to rng.
beams are about 40-50% higher base dps than a turret. on my ship with 4 blue mk xii consoles and 125 weapon power turrets are just under 700 dps, beams are well over 1k. that's on the mouseover.
and i've parsed 7 turrets, 6 turrets and a torpedo, 5 turrets and 2 torpedos, 5 beams and a torp and 6 beams with a torp. which which two were the highest? it wasn't the turrets.
fact is that turrets have larger damage drop off from what i'm seeing, and they do less damage per proc. the dmg listed on the romulan consoles on my beams is 71 dmg. on turrets it. 0.03 dmg. that's not a typo and bears out in the parse.
my 2500 point cryptic torpedo came with the assault cruiser refit, which does dps nearly on par with my jem'hadar dread but with substantially more survivability - again with beams.
parse your results. anecdotes and your 'stopwatch' do not count due to rng.
I understand the desire to eliminate "anecdotal" evidence from the conversation, but you must understand that quoting your DPS numbers without any context or methodology description is very much anecdotal evidence itself.
So, let me break this down for you using science. All values presented are estimated sustaned DSP derived from the Starship Weapons Calculator 4.0:
All things being equal and before taking into account any skill-based or weapon-based variables, and assuming a starting power level of 100 and a distance of 2 km:
6 vanilla mk xi turrets will do approximately 1440 DPS no matter what direction a ship is facing.
6 vanilla mk xi beam arrays will do approximately 1579 dps on a broadside and 1112 DPS in the fore and aft firing arcs.
Under ideal circumstances, the beams do approximately 10%more damage. Under less-than-ideal circumstances, they do 23% less.
Now, let's talking about adding in skills:
6 vanilla mk xi turrets + Cannon Rapid Fire 1 + Tac Team 1 = 1984 DPS @ 1 target
6 vanilla mk xi beam arrays + Beam Fire at Will 1 + Tac Team 1 = 2006 DPS broadside, 1412 fore and aft.
Under ideal circumstances, beams will deal 1% more DPS, under less than ideal circumstances, they deal 15% less.
Things change the further out you go, of course, but the overall damage for turrets continues to be between the ideal and less-than-ideal values for beams and the boost from Cannon Rapid Fire effectively brings it up to par with BFAW at all ranges against single targets.
Simple math. In most cases, turrets are preferable to a similar number of beam arrays in situations where you cannot maintain ideal DPS for more than 50% of the engagement.
foundry mission fed side: battleship 1 on 1. pits you against a single klingon neg'var which also has boarding party. 20 of them, one at a time. you are in constant combat the entire time
i used act
1st test - 6 turrets and cutting beam. cycled between rapid fire, scatter volley (because of boarding party). apb2 on cooldown. on a ship wit a turn rate of 7 and inertia of 70 vs. cruisers that turn and try to get their forward arcs towards you constantly ie. not slow TRIBBLE borg ships.
4198 dps over 15 minutes of continual combat. 6,783 hits, 98.61 hit rate, 6% crit rate
2nd test - 5 turrets and cutting beam, one 180 degree quantum torpedo. same as above only also threw in torp spread 1 and 2.
4191 dps over 16 minutes. 7,169 hits, 98.52 hit rate, 5% crit
3rd test - 5 beams and cutting beam, one 180 degree torp. beam fire at will 2 and 3. apb 3. spread 1 and 2.
5071 dps over 13 minutes. 4467 hits, 97.51 hit rate, 6% crit rate
beams may not be better than dhc or even regular cannons - but don't feed me or the community bull that replacing them all with turrets is better. it's not. not unless you are always facing towards or or away from your opponent and in that case with that amount of manueverablity you should be in a ship using dhc.
foundry mission fed side: battleship 1 on 1. pits you against a single klingon neg'var which also has boarding party. 20 of them, one at a time. you are in constant combat the entire time
i used act
1st test - 6 turrets and cutting beam. cycled between rapid fire, scatter volley (because of boarding party). apb2 on cooldown. on a ship wit a turn rate of 7 and inertia of 70 vs. cruisers that turn and try to get their forward arcs towards you constantly ie. not slow TRIBBLE borg ships.
4198 dps over 15 minutes of continual combat. 6,783 hits, 98.61 hit rate, 6% crit rate
2nd test - 5 turrets and cutting beam, one 180 degree quantum torpedo. same as above only also threw in torp spread 1 and 2.
4191 dps over 16 minutes. 7,169 hits, 98.52 hit rate, 5% crit
3rd test - 5 beams and cutting beam, one 180 degree torp. beam fire at will 2 and 3. apb 3. spread 1 and 2.
5071 dps over 13 minutes. 4467 hits, 97.51 hit rate, 6% crit rate
beams may not be better than dhc or even regular cannons - but don't feed me or the community bull that replacing them all with turrets is better. it's not. not unless you are always facing towards or or away from your opponent and in that case with that amount of manueverablity you should be in a ship using dhc.
Ok, your numbers have some problems. If you insist on using parsing to determine the numbers, then you need to parse using otherwise identical equipment and eliminate as many variables as possible. No cutting beams, no torps, no set bonuses that significanly boost weapons energy or severely reduce energy weapon drain like the Borg set does. Beams are power-hungry, which is why their sustainable DPS isn't much higher than turrets when used in numbers of 5 or more. Furthermore, the weapons need to have identical modifiers all around.
I did so! It seemed fair to do it myself, afterall:
I ran two separate types of encounters: one on one vs. a battleship and 4 on x vs Nausicans in the Japoori Tau Dew sector patrol.
The ship was a science ship. Loadout was 6 vanilla mk xi tetryon weapons. No special item set bonuses were used that would adversely effect the consistency of the results either by providing power bonuses to weapons or by generating effects to reduce weapons drain. The turret loadout used two tac team 1's and cannon rapid fire 2 and 3. The beam array loadout used two tac team 1's, BFaW2, and attack pattern omega 1. No other powers were used that would otherwise effect overall DPS. The only other powers used were EPtS1, evasive manuevers, and aux2sif 1. I parsed the data using act 3 and was careful to avoid long lapses in combat in both instances.
In the patrol mission, the beam ship came out ahead slightly with an overall DPS of 20% more than the turret ship, but only finishing the patrols an average of 13% faster. A big help in this was the fact that there were multiple allies available to take advantage of the extra DPS generated by BFAW2, meaning less damage was wasted.
In the battleship one on one, the turrets came out ahead, dealing 8% less damage while finishing the individual engagement an average of 21% faster. Aiding in this was the turrets ability to consistently deal DPS regardless of facing, meaning I could loiter close to the Klingon battleships and concentrate solely on staying within the same shield arc for most of each engagement. Much of the additional DPS generated by the beams seems to have been directed at the incoming shuttles or was scattered over several shield facings, having no appreciable effect on overall engagement time.
In a follow-up 1 v X match run a single time for both kicks and also giggles, the turrets came out ahead again, dealing slightly less damage, while reducing the engagement time by about 15%. Without additional powers to take advantage of the BFaW-generated DPS, enough of it was healed to make the real-world usefulness of the extra damage less impressive than the raw numbers would seem to indicate.
Again, I simply state that turrets are, in general, more useful than arrays. The slower the ship turns and the more weapons it has, the more exaggerated and more pronounced this difference in utility becomes. Try it for yourself.
Ok, your numbers have some problems. If you insist on using parsing to determine the numbers, then you need to parse using otherwise identical equipment and eliminate as many variables as possible. No cutting beams, no torps, no set bonuses that significanly boost weapons energy or severely reduce energy weapon drain like the Borg set does. Beams are power-hungry, which is why their sustainable DPS isn't much higher than turrets when used in numbers of 5 or more. Furthermore, the weapons need to have identical modifiers all around.
I did so! It seemed fair to do it myself, afterall:
I ran two separate types of encounters: one on one vs. a battleship and 4 on x vs Nausicans in the Japoori Tau Dew sector patrol.
The ship was a science ship. Loadout was 6 vanilla mk xi tetryon weapons. No special item set bonuses were used that would adversely effect the consistency of the results either by providing power bonuses to weapons or by generating effects to reduce weapons drain. The turret loadout used two tac team 1's and cannon rapid fire 2 and 3. The beam array loadout used two tac team 1's, BFaW2, and attack pattern omega 1. No other powers were used that would otherwise effect overall DPS. The only other powers used were EPtS1, evasive manuevers, and aux2sif 1. I parsed the data using act 3 and was careful to avoid long lapses in combat in both instances.
In the patrol mission, the beam ship came out ahead slightly with an overall DPS of 20% more than the turret ship, but only finishing the patrols an average of 13% faster. A big help in this was the fact that there were multiple allies available to take advantage of the extra DPS generated by BFAW2, meaning less damage was wasted.
In the battleship one on one, the turrets came out ahead, dealing 8% less damage while finishing the individual engagement an average of 21% faster. Aiding in this was the turrets ability to consistently deal DPS regardless of facing, meaning I could loiter close to the Klingon battleships and concentrate solely on staying within the same shield arc for most of each engagement. Much of the additional DPS generated by the beams seems to have been directed at the incoming shuttles or was scattered over several shield facings, having no appreciable effect on overall engagement time.
In a follow-up 1 v X match run a single time for both kicks and also giggles, the turrets came out ahead again, dealing slightly less damage, while reducing the engagement time by about 15%. Without additional powers to take advantage of the BFaW-generated DPS, enough of it was healed to make the real-world usefulness of the extra damage less impressive than the raw numbers would seem to indicate.
Again, I simply state that turrets are, in general, more useful than arrays. The slower the ship turns and the more weapons it has, the more exaggerated and more pronounced this difference in utility becomes. Try it for yourself.
wrong on too many counts
the borg 2pc proc actually is more advantageous to the turret system. the proc has no icd, can proc multiple times in a row and due to the higher proc rate of turrets meant more time well above 100 power. yet it still could not overcome a 1k dps difference.
it's not my fault you refuse to fly your ship in pve in any other way other than face on, stopped or rolling in reverse like i see so many. with all of my beam testing in this foundry mission, i was able to keep all 5 beams and the 180 torp on target 100% of the time for the entire duration. you think i did this standing still when the spawn point of each battleship is somewhat random? it's also something i can maintain in elite stf's, hitting upwards of 15k dps in my lowly cruiser with enough tac debuffs on target, and a median dps of 8.2k over 18 ise's.
YOU parse your numbers. act is free. it's easy to set up. i also ran the same tests in the excelsior fleet refit and the assault cruiser refit and the results were the same - a full turret boat or turret boat + torp regardless of torp (i have fleet quantums and fleet plasmas, mk xii as well as 3 purple torp doffs) with lazy TRIBBLE driving was 800-1200 less dps than a proper beam layout with a 180, lower-base-damage-torp setup that was driven properly. the only time turrets became close was when the beam boat was driven lazily and constantly face first.
yes yes whine whine 'oh you just said i need a cstore ship module to make that work'. so? the assault cruiser refit due to it's boff layouts is the ideal aux2batt platform for engineers and of the cruisers even though it has one less tac slot than the excelsior fleet does the most damage for a non-carrier. if you don't want to spend the money, or convert your dil into zen to buy it, then more power to you. but don't straight say that turrets are better than beams. even with DEM and lots of plasma dot procs, they are only better if you're a lazy face-forward player and iF YOU ARE you should be in a ship with DHC.
Interesting read through this thread. It would seem that everyone has different likes in weaponry but like some of the replies said, it all boils down to each person's liking.
For instance I personally like the Tetryon's as they do shield damage. I disagree with the fact that they are the weakest weapons because I actually had them all and found out that they all do the exact same damage when all the appropriate equipment is applied or depending on the modifiers they have. As far as torpedoes go, I favor the Transphasics as they do shield penetrating damage. My load out is two mkXI rapid reload transphasics coupled with two mkXI tetryon dual beam banks up front with two mkXI tetryon beam arrays and one mkXI croniton torpedo launcher and one breen transphasic clustor torpedo launcher in the rear. With all the skills and gear that I have, I do considerable amount of damage. I also favor the resiliant shields as they only have a 5% bleed through. This all works well in PvE as I have yet done any PvP so I have no idea how I would fair in that respect. I also have the Odyssey class cruiser as I favor the cruiser class.
I'm currently trying to get beamscort working. I want to feel the ship, so I deleted old toon and created new tac one for this.
For first two level (lt.cmdr and cmdr.) it's kinda working. The further one goes the more "one trick pony" it becomes, but currently combination of HYT1 and BO 2 with TT (yeah, I'm silly guy who is using TT for attack buff), FOMM, APA and APO is pretty deadly. Especially if I can get the timing right and lock TB on the target between his APO cycles (when we are talking about escort) or TT when it comes to pretty much everything else.
IF BO hits then the target is toast. following torps are enough to finish the target. Problem is that when it misses, torps are splashing on the shield and I have nothing to harm even squishiest BoP. I also pay pretty heavily for this setup because I need ens. tac. for HYT so only one TT and it is used for attack buff. And with all eng consoles being dedicated to EPS transfer to quicker recover after BO (following shots keep the shield down) such setup is true glass cannon (beam).
No - I know that I could run DBB and DHCs but I'm still cmdr so it's either BO2 with APO1 or CRF2+BO2 without APO at all. Not to mention that there are only 3 forward slots so with DBB and torp there would be only one place left for DHC.
So far so good and it works. If I get good team (good sci for some debuff) then it is a one-shot killer setup. I'm tempted to get the C-Store cmdr Akira for lt. tac so that I could slot two TT and HYT II, but meh.
I only wonder how it will look like when I reach admiral levels not to mention VA. I suppose it would be pretty decent, as I only PUG, but still. Meh, will see when I get there. Combination of BO 3, HYT III and APO III should be pretty deadly. Would just need AE (maybe invest into MVAE for console?) for some VM and TB debuffs.
In PvE everything works. In PvP getting something out of beams is pretty hard. I just got some hard lesson what happens when my BO misses and that Raptor survives and shoots back.
I like my Excelsior-R with 3x Polaron DBB and 1 transphasic fore and 4x Polaron turrets in rear. Beams have been working for me in that sense
Dual beams have WAY less of a drain problem than arrays do, and in my experience will usually outperform an unbuffed dual heavy cannon in practical conditions owing to its wider arc of fire and lesser damage reduction from range.
(Though, I run mine with 4 single cannons and 3 turrets, with Rapid Fire 1 and 2... shreds stuff awfully nice.)
T oget the best possible damage out of beams you need high end equipment (ship, BOFF abilities , DOFFs, Weapons, consoles, ship equipment).
This can get veeeery expensive.
To get most out of your beams you have to choices. Spike damage or pressure damage.
Beam Overload II and III are very potent powers espeacialy if they crit. I did 50000 point hits.
However against targets with high defence values you have to imobilize them to get a good chance to hit the target. This is the weakness of Beam Overload - its only one shot , so you wont see alot of crits with it, and it can miss quite alot against speedtanking escorts or BoPs.
If it hits its devastating, as long as you can either restore weaponspower qikly enough to keep on doing respectable damage.
With Fire at Will II or III you can increase the rate of fire alot, especialy against single target that can do quite some damage especialy because you do more shots in the same time wich increases your chance to do hits and crits. this is what brings up dps. However against multiple targets it spreads out the damage, fine against low defendet weak targets like those on the gorn minefields, not very usefull against multiple songer opponents, but it also has defencive value. Against a singe target it is usefull but against carriers or multiple strong oponents it tends to get you into trouble more than anything else.
Compared with cannons combined with rapid fire or scatterfire, beams, no matter what power are weak.
Imho a little less energy drain and natural accuracy bons would help beams alot. And maybe a boff ability along the lines of Fire at will but made for single targets.
And on a estetical side note, please make Dual Beam arrays use the same hadpoints as normal beam arrays. This would be benificial for two reasons. First it would look right, and second we could get rid of those red pimples on the ships, especialy on the older models.
although beam overload is a nice bit of spike damage, it's not a dps gain over fire at will because of how far it drops your weapon power. this is even more evident when you have 5 or more beams all hitting the target when you do hit overload - you may have to hit a consumable or another boff power to recover.
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I know Inversion has a 3 minute cooldown and presently isn't good for much.I was using it as a way to demonstrate that the problem with beams is the power drain. Because when you turn off the drain (for a very brief time, yes) the damage output goes up enormously.
On an overcomming resistance standpoint, beams actually do more than single cannons/turrets because the damaged is lumped into one hit. If a target has low resistance or the proc' per shot is for damage, then yes, single cannons do more. Honestly, single cannons, turrets and beams should be pretty much lumped into one group of its own: Not DHC/DC.
Also, it is my opinion (take it for what you will) that cruisers shouldn't be running any of the 45' arc weapons, even a slightly above average turning Excelsior would have problems using them effectively.
easiest way to handle this would be to give a -power drain when using beams passive to cruisers.
D Stahl mentioned in one of his recent interviews that ships will be getting warp cores that give ships different powers.
Perhaps they'll play a part in it.
With the constant flow of new ships coming out of the shipyards, our next major update to ships will be to incorporate warp core design into how a ship performs in combat and what types of power it can bring to a fight.
Never seen an escort just sit and shoot. What I have seen is for them to turn and weave to take advantage of shield facings in between firings of major weapon volleys, they have no problem keeping up their defensive values. Escorts are more than capable of constant fire on a target while keeping the ability to give a good shield facing when they need it.
http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h178/Jarek301/Star%20Trek%20Online/STOCruiserArcCrits.jpg
The yellowed arcs should have a higher crit rating than cannons, and with the overlapping effect, a combined assault from beam overload should strip shields unquestionably in any encounter. In the hands of a Tac Officer, such a fitted cruiser should be able to contend with a tac officer in an escort, provided they can fly a disciplined broadside.
Is it the ideal solution? Probably not, but it is a sensible one as far as "concentrating" the firepower of beams, go. As far as dual beams go, however, I think maybe the arc could be narrowed slightly in exchange for a significant damage increase to let them at LEAST compare to DCs (not necessarily DHC's).
Probably not the solution y'all were looking for, but providing one is sure better than arguing over one. At least with more ideas in the box, you might be able to construct something out of sensible components, rather than trying to build a firearm entirely out of wood.
What happens why the cruisers are outside that proposed arc, continued negligible damage? What about those of us who use DBB, should all of our shots just go bouncey on the escorts? Not trying to shoot down you concept necessarily, but the problem with beams is that they do piddly amounts throughout the whole arc (single cannons too) and are just bouncing off of escorts.
Yeah. I recently tried out a 5 turret/1 torpedo build on a sci ship and was surprised by how dramatically the rapid fire cannons skill upped the ship's DPS. A single lt. commander tac officer basically turns the ship into an omni-directional laser hose. Overall DPS was higher than when I used 5 beams instead and I got procs and criticals more often. I'm going to try this on a cruiser later today, but I'm pretty sure a six-turret/two torp setup on a cruiser's going to be pretty much the same.
When the weakest cannon in the game is far more useful in general than any beam weapon, there is a problem.
really? and you parsed this?
becaus from my parsing in my jem'hadar dreadnought - 7 turrets, 4k dps. 6 turrets + 180 torpedo - 4.1k dps. 6 turrets and regular fleet mk xii quantum torp - 4.1k dps. 7 turrets and 2 torps - 3.8k dps
6 beams+180 torp - 5.08k dps. 3 dhc, 3 turret, 1 torp - 5.4k dps
i used the foundry mission 'battleship 1 on 1' for all of the parsing. this is a mission that keeps you in battle for 15-20 minutes straight and only has you fighting one target at a time, no aoe cheesing
and even if tehre WERE aoe cheesing, the 360 degree nature of beam fire at will > cannon rapid fire with just turrets.
anecdotal evidence is bad.
No. I didn't parse it. Instead, I simply timed how long it took me, on average, to kill a battleship one on one with the build I was using. Not quite the same, but far from anecdotal. Average engagement time dropped from 35 to 24 seconds.
and you timed this how exactly?
i would believe you, due to the fact taht both weapons have a 1s activation but the beams draw 2 more power per activation that the dps was the same but to say that turrets were flat out better may have more to do wtih your driving. i'm guessing that you routinely rotate so that the front or rear 90 of your ship cna fire a torpedo. if this is the case then many times you have only your front or rear beams hitting your target
if you had one of the 180 degree torps you would not need to do anytihng but straight broadside - allowing full beams + torp to hit your target 100% of the time. yes the 180 torp is lower dmg than a standard torp or the omega torps, but i just did 8k on ise with the build with - again - only tier 1 in omega and romulan rep right now as i just came back to the game and rolled a new character.
With a stop watch. Not as fancy as a DPS parser, but pretty reliable technology.
I did not say they were flat out better. I said that they were far more useful. They can maintain a constant DPS no matter the ship's facing and benefit from the punchier cannon tac skills. The boosted rate of fire they benefit from also means they can potentially make more critical hits and trigger more procs. Your mention of maneuvering only reinforces my point: I can carefully maneuver a ponderous cruiser around in order to maintain my 6 beams slightly higher base DPS against a target and rely on a combination of engineering skills, maneuvering patterns, and tac team to boost DPS, or I can simply be within 10 km and constantly cycle tac team 1/cannon rapid fire and do nearly as much damage with little to no effort on my part. Furthermore, I can pretty do that boosted damage pretty much constantly.
While certainly handy, your 2500 cryptic point torpedo weapon isn't relevant to the discussion. I am glad you're enjoying your new character, though, and hope you have a great time either way.
Yes, captain genius, we all know you can buff beams to have, nominally decent damage. What you have chosen to ignore is the fact that the weapons will cripple themselves via massive powerdrain. + The deisganted beam ships have little in ways to modify and buff the weaposn they are desiganted to use. All beam skills are lakcluster AND locked away in the TAC tree.
beams slightly higher base dps?
beams are about 40-50% higher base dps than a turret. on my ship with 4 blue mk xii consoles and 125 weapon power turrets are just under 700 dps, beams are well over 1k. that's on the mouseover.
and i've parsed 7 turrets, 6 turrets and a torpedo, 5 turrets and 2 torpedos, 5 beams and a torp and 6 beams with a torp. which which two were the highest? it wasn't the turrets.
fact is that turrets have larger damage drop off from what i'm seeing, and they do less damage per proc. the dmg listed on the romulan consoles on my beams is 71 dmg. on turrets it. 0.03 dmg. that's not a typo and bears out in the parse.
my 2500 point cryptic torpedo came with the assault cruiser refit, which does dps nearly on par with my jem'hadar dread but with substantially more survivability - again with beams.
parse your results. anecdotes and your 'stopwatch' do not count due to rng.
Make that 102 uses for a stopwatch. YOUR 101 USES ARE ARCHAIC AND OUT-DATED!!!
I understand the desire to eliminate "anecdotal" evidence from the conversation, but you must understand that quoting your DPS numbers without any context or methodology description is very much anecdotal evidence itself.
So, let me break this down for you using science. All values presented are estimated sustaned DSP derived from the Starship Weapons Calculator 4.0:
All things being equal and before taking into account any skill-based or weapon-based variables, and assuming a starting power level of 100 and a distance of 2 km:
6 vanilla mk xi turrets will do approximately 1440 DPS no matter what direction a ship is facing.
6 vanilla mk xi beam arrays will do approximately 1579 dps on a broadside and 1112 DPS in the fore and aft firing arcs.
Under ideal circumstances, the beams do approximately 10%more damage. Under less-than-ideal circumstances, they do 23% less.
Now, let's talking about adding in skills:
6 vanilla mk xi turrets + Cannon Rapid Fire 1 + Tac Team 1 = 1984 DPS @ 1 target
6 vanilla mk xi beam arrays + Beam Fire at Will 1 + Tac Team 1 = 2006 DPS broadside, 1412 fore and aft.
Under ideal circumstances, beams will deal 1% more DPS, under less than ideal circumstances, they deal 15% less.
Things change the further out you go, of course, but the overall damage for turrets continues to be between the ideal and less-than-ideal values for beams and the boost from Cannon Rapid Fire effectively brings it up to par with BFAW at all ranges against single targets.
Simple math. In most cases, turrets are preferable to a similar number of beam arrays in situations where you cannot maintain ideal DPS for more than 50% of the engagement.
foundry mission fed side: battleship 1 on 1. pits you against a single klingon neg'var which also has boarding party. 20 of them, one at a time. you are in constant combat the entire time
i used act
1st test - 6 turrets and cutting beam. cycled between rapid fire, scatter volley (because of boarding party). apb2 on cooldown. on a ship wit a turn rate of 7 and inertia of 70 vs. cruisers that turn and try to get their forward arcs towards you constantly ie. not slow TRIBBLE borg ships.
4198 dps over 15 minutes of continual combat. 6,783 hits, 98.61 hit rate, 6% crit rate
2nd test - 5 turrets and cutting beam, one 180 degree quantum torpedo. same as above only also threw in torp spread 1 and 2.
4191 dps over 16 minutes. 7,169 hits, 98.52 hit rate, 5% crit
3rd test - 5 beams and cutting beam, one 180 degree torp. beam fire at will 2 and 3. apb 3. spread 1 and 2.
5071 dps over 13 minutes. 4467 hits, 97.51 hit rate, 6% crit rate
beams may not be better than dhc or even regular cannons - but don't feed me or the community bull that replacing them all with turrets is better. it's not. not unless you are always facing towards or or away from your opponent and in that case with that amount of manueverablity you should be in a ship using dhc.
Ok, your numbers have some problems. If you insist on using parsing to determine the numbers, then you need to parse using otherwise identical equipment and eliminate as many variables as possible. No cutting beams, no torps, no set bonuses that significanly boost weapons energy or severely reduce energy weapon drain like the Borg set does. Beams are power-hungry, which is why their sustainable DPS isn't much higher than turrets when used in numbers of 5 or more. Furthermore, the weapons need to have identical modifiers all around.
I did so! It seemed fair to do it myself, afterall:
I ran two separate types of encounters: one on one vs. a battleship and 4 on x vs Nausicans in the Japoori Tau Dew sector patrol.
The ship was a science ship. Loadout was 6 vanilla mk xi tetryon weapons. No special item set bonuses were used that would adversely effect the consistency of the results either by providing power bonuses to weapons or by generating effects to reduce weapons drain. The turret loadout used two tac team 1's and cannon rapid fire 2 and 3. The beam array loadout used two tac team 1's, BFaW2, and attack pattern omega 1. No other powers were used that would otherwise effect overall DPS. The only other powers used were EPtS1, evasive manuevers, and aux2sif 1. I parsed the data using act 3 and was careful to avoid long lapses in combat in both instances.
In the patrol mission, the beam ship came out ahead slightly with an overall DPS of 20% more than the turret ship, but only finishing the patrols an average of 13% faster. A big help in this was the fact that there were multiple allies available to take advantage of the extra DPS generated by BFAW2, meaning less damage was wasted.
In the battleship one on one, the turrets came out ahead, dealing 8% less damage while finishing the individual engagement an average of 21% faster. Aiding in this was the turrets ability to consistently deal DPS regardless of facing, meaning I could loiter close to the Klingon battleships and concentrate solely on staying within the same shield arc for most of each engagement. Much of the additional DPS generated by the beams seems to have been directed at the incoming shuttles or was scattered over several shield facings, having no appreciable effect on overall engagement time.
In a follow-up 1 v X match run a single time for both kicks and also giggles, the turrets came out ahead again, dealing slightly less damage, while reducing the engagement time by about 15%. Without additional powers to take advantage of the BFaW-generated DPS, enough of it was healed to make the real-world usefulness of the extra damage less impressive than the raw numbers would seem to indicate.
Again, I simply state that turrets are, in general, more useful than arrays. The slower the ship turns and the more weapons it has, the more exaggerated and more pronounced this difference in utility becomes. Try it for yourself.
wrong on too many counts
the borg 2pc proc actually is more advantageous to the turret system. the proc has no icd, can proc multiple times in a row and due to the higher proc rate of turrets meant more time well above 100 power. yet it still could not overcome a 1k dps difference.
it's not my fault you refuse to fly your ship in pve in any other way other than face on, stopped or rolling in reverse like i see so many. with all of my beam testing in this foundry mission, i was able to keep all 5 beams and the 180 torp on target 100% of the time for the entire duration. you think i did this standing still when the spawn point of each battleship is somewhat random? it's also something i can maintain in elite stf's, hitting upwards of 15k dps in my lowly cruiser with enough tac debuffs on target, and a median dps of 8.2k over 18 ise's.
YOU parse your numbers. act is free. it's easy to set up. i also ran the same tests in the excelsior fleet refit and the assault cruiser refit and the results were the same - a full turret boat or turret boat + torp regardless of torp (i have fleet quantums and fleet plasmas, mk xii as well as 3 purple torp doffs) with lazy TRIBBLE driving was 800-1200 less dps than a proper beam layout with a 180, lower-base-damage-torp setup that was driven properly. the only time turrets became close was when the beam boat was driven lazily and constantly face first.
yes yes whine whine 'oh you just said i need a cstore ship module to make that work'. so? the assault cruiser refit due to it's boff layouts is the ideal aux2batt platform for engineers and of the cruisers even though it has one less tac slot than the excelsior fleet does the most damage for a non-carrier. if you don't want to spend the money, or convert your dil into zen to buy it, then more power to you. but don't straight say that turrets are better than beams. even with DEM and lots of plasma dot procs, they are only better if you're a lazy face-forward player and iF YOU ARE you should be in a ship with DHC.
For instance I personally like the Tetryon's as they do shield damage. I disagree with the fact that they are the weakest weapons because I actually had them all and found out that they all do the exact same damage when all the appropriate equipment is applied or depending on the modifiers they have. As far as torpedoes go, I favor the Transphasics as they do shield penetrating damage. My load out is two mkXI rapid reload transphasics coupled with two mkXI tetryon dual beam banks up front with two mkXI tetryon beam arrays and one mkXI croniton torpedo launcher and one breen transphasic clustor torpedo launcher in the rear. With all the skills and gear that I have, I do considerable amount of damage. I also favor the resiliant shields as they only have a 5% bleed through. This all works well in PvE as I have yet done any PvP so I have no idea how I would fair in that respect. I also have the Odyssey class cruiser as I favor the cruiser class.
For first two level (lt.cmdr and cmdr.) it's kinda working. The further one goes the more "one trick pony" it becomes, but currently combination of HYT1 and BO 2 with TT (yeah, I'm silly guy who is using TT for attack buff), FOMM, APA and APO is pretty deadly. Especially if I can get the timing right and lock TB on the target between his APO cycles (when we are talking about escort) or TT when it comes to pretty much everything else.
IF BO hits then the target is toast. following torps are enough to finish the target. Problem is that when it misses, torps are splashing on the shield and I have nothing to harm even squishiest BoP. I also pay pretty heavily for this setup because I need ens. tac. for HYT so only one TT and it is used for attack buff. And with all eng consoles being dedicated to EPS transfer to quicker recover after BO (following shots keep the shield down) such setup is true glass cannon (beam).
No - I know that I could run DBB and DHCs but I'm still cmdr so it's either BO2 with APO1 or CRF2+BO2 without APO at all. Not to mention that there are only 3 forward slots so with DBB and torp there would be only one place left for DHC.
So far so good and it works. If I get good team (good sci for some debuff) then it is a one-shot killer setup. I'm tempted to get the C-Store cmdr Akira for lt. tac so that I could slot two TT and HYT II, but meh.
I only wonder how it will look like when I reach admiral levels not to mention VA. I suppose it would be pretty decent, as I only PUG, but still. Meh, will see when I get there. Combination of BO 3, HYT III and APO III should be pretty deadly. Would just need AE (maybe invest into MVAE for console?) for some VM and TB debuffs.
Dual beams have WAY less of a drain problem than arrays do, and in my experience will usually outperform an unbuffed dual heavy cannon in practical conditions owing to its wider arc of fire and lesser damage reduction from range.
(Though, I run mine with 4 single cannons and 3 turrets, with Rapid Fire 1 and 2... shreds stuff awfully nice.)
This can get veeeery expensive.
To get most out of your beams you have to choices. Spike damage or pressure damage.
Beam Overload II and III are very potent powers espeacialy if they crit. I did 50000 point hits.
However against targets with high defence values you have to imobilize them to get a good chance to hit the target. This is the weakness of Beam Overload - its only one shot , so you wont see alot of crits with it, and it can miss quite alot against speedtanking escorts or BoPs.
If it hits its devastating, as long as you can either restore weaponspower qikly enough to keep on doing respectable damage.
With Fire at Will II or III you can increase the rate of fire alot, especialy against single target that can do quite some damage especialy because you do more shots in the same time wich increases your chance to do hits and crits. this is what brings up dps. However against multiple targets it spreads out the damage, fine against low defendet weak targets like those on the gorn minefields, not very usefull against multiple songer opponents, but it also has defencive value. Against a singe target it is usefull but against carriers or multiple strong oponents it tends to get you into trouble more than anything else.
Compared with cannons combined with rapid fire or scatterfire, beams, no matter what power are weak.
Imho a little less energy drain and natural accuracy bons would help beams alot. And maybe a boff ability along the lines of Fire at will but made for single targets.
And on a estetical side note, please make Dual Beam arrays use the same hadpoints as normal beam arrays. This would be benificial for two reasons. First it would look right, and second we could get rid of those red pimples on the ships, especialy on the older models.