Torp boat, which ship ?

soll50

Hia folks,

I'm currently using a normal recon science vessel as a torpedo boat. I'm not concerned with PvP since I don't like PvP in any game.

I fly with max power in Aux (and minimal in weapon since I have no energy weapons) and use Tachyon beam 2/3 and tractor beam to drain shields. 3 purple Doffs to reduce cooldowns are a given. I'm currently making 2 piecer of the adapted maco set.

As torpedoes I use 3 advanced fleet quantums in front and Romulan plasma/breen cluster/tricobalt in the rear.
The romulan torp is in the rear because most of the time I fly faster than the speed of the romulan torps and I don't really like being hit by my own torpedoes when I pass the enemy ship.

I'm enjoying this build and play style a lot and want to improve on what I have now.

I'm currently trying to decide between 2 ships that might improve on the current ship I'm using (recon sci vessel):
-- Multi mission recon
-- Borg adapted destroyer.

As pro's for the multi mission recon
-- Better shields (1.35 vs 1.1 shield modifier
-- Hangar bay
-- Cmdr Sci Boff -> Gravity Well 3

As pro's for the destroyer:
-- Console (shrapnel torp) fits better with torpedo build than deflector phaser blast
-- 1 front weapon slot
-- cmdr Tac Boff -> Attack pattern Omega

The Armitage won't really work since it doesn't have enough sci boff slots to hand me the shield strip abilities.
For the extra front weapon slot on the destroyer I'm thinking of putting a long cooldown torpedo in it (tricobalt/breen cluster), since with my Doffs I'm already hitting the limits of the amounts of quantums I can fire.

My questions are:
-- Did I forget about any ships that might work well as torpedo boats with sci shield stripping ?
-- Can a fighter wing outperform the front weapon slot on the destroyer ?

I'm very curious what you folks think about torpedo boats in general and about the questions I posed here

raly95

I've been trying to get a good torpedo boat build; I've tried sci ships, escorts, even a cruiser. While I can get a setup that gives a fairly consistent rate of fire (1 torp about every other second), the problem I keep running into is enemy ships closing range too quickly.

What I mean is, from the initial approach, when the target(s) are at 10k to when you inevitably close to within 2k or so there isn't enough time to land sufficient torpedo hits to do damage on par with conventional energy weapons. I haven't done the math, so this is based mainly on my perception, but what typically happens is NPC ships will close with you, then you are turning and trying to re-acquire the target. Im typically only able to keep the target lined up for 1-3 launches during each engagement window before having to realign the front of the ship. As a 'sniper' type ship at range, I think it works ok. And as part of a team, a torp boat hanging out behind the other ships and throwing torpedo spam at the larger enemy ships can contribute, but I'm not convinced that you would be doing more to help the team (and more damage) by just shooting at the target with beams / cannons.

I think a build with torps requires a fairly high / consistent crit rate to keep its dps worthwhile.

The only build I was able to get to perform noticeably well (for me) was an escort with two photons up front, and the usual two DHC / x3 turrets. This seemed to work only because so many photons were in transit toward the target that the chances for hits (and crits) on unshielded hull were increased by the constant pressure applied by the guns.

What I haven't tried is maybe a slow moving ship, with Aux and Shields maxed, that sort of creeps toward the target at 1/4 impulse that maybe shoots enough torpedos during its slow approach to score enough crits to kill medium to large NPC ships.

Anyway, I think any torp boat either needs a high turn rate, to keep the narrower firing arc aligned, or needs to have more than 3 weapon slots to be able to keep dps up. Curious to see what others might have come up with.

malkarris

First, a note, this is my build, and I do things my way sometimes, so this may not work for you. This is also probably not optimal.

I run an Armitage torp boat with an Engineer captain. I don't even bother with shild stripping abilities, from what I have heard they are worthless anyway. Mine is a full plasma torp build, three slots for and aft loaded with plasma torps, or the omega and Romulan rep plasma torps. The forth forward slot has the Rom plasma beam. I run high yield and torp spread, and a beam overload for the third tac ensign slot. And for fighters, I have ultra elite scorpions from the tier 5 Rom rep. I've had other people tell me this is a horrible build, and honestly, I run it mostly for laughs (doubly so since I put boarding party on it with the DOFFs that put PDS on boarding shuttles. Fun fact, if you kill the target before the shuttles get there, they just sit there and keep firing at anything in range).

But I laugh a lot. I never took the final build into PvP, I might someday, but this build could do probe duty on KASE when I switched boarding party with EWP. It owned CE when the event was running, took first place with pure damage. Yes its pure spam, yes its crazy, but yes I love it, and as long as it can do its job, thats all I care about.

Now, I know someone else in this game who has a torp fleet defiant build, with quantum torps. He has a beam weapon or two in the front, but everything is is torps last I heard. Again, no shield stripping, he just hits hard enought that the shields don't matter, or uses beam overload to strip them, like I usually do. BO3 can do ungodly ammounts of damage if you buff weapons power right before the attack, and you can even do that with batteries. Plus, normal fire from energy weapons doesn't drain weapons power if they are the only weapon firing.

Now for the OP questions, hangers might not be able to outperform a weapons slot, but some can come close, and some of the pets can be nasty. Runabouts all have some sort of hold on them, Delta flyers have tachyon beams, etc. You're flying fed, so there are fewer nasty choices, but they are still there.

Personally, if I were you and wanted a torp boat, I'd pick the destroyer, load up the front weapon slot with a dual beam bank of your choice and throw on some beam overload on a tac slot (you have two universal BOFF slots). I'd rather use a Vesta as a cannon sci boat, since it has the aux cannons and doesn't need weapons power. But again, that's my opinion. But I hope I've pointed out that you don't need sci powers to run a torp boat, and that there is more than one way to get there.

soll50

I've had some problems with npc range as well. I notice that I slow down to keep firing quantums for a bit, then I go full speed, pass the mob and shoot my rear torpedoes. Since those have longer cooldowns I turn back around at about 9km and start the whole thing over again. By the time I turn around my tachyon beams are off cooldown as well.

The tachyons do about 600 shield dam every pulse. It's enough to remove all shields from a frigate in 1 go. The effect on STF bosses (Valdore, Borg Tac Cube) is a lot less impressive, but all the beam/cannon boats there can handle the shields.

The thing I like about my build now is that I don't have anything in weapon power and I can use all my tac boff slots for torpedo skills (and tac team)
On the destroyer I would use my tac boff slots for TacTeam (x2), THY (x2) and 1 Torp Spread

Sooo... if I want to keep with my idea (torp boat with sci shield stripping) I can do 2 things:
-- Multi-mission with Delta Flyers (or advanced Delta Flyers)
-- Destroyer with Polarized Tetryon dual Beam.
Can anyone verify that the Tetryon shield drain proc amount is based on Aux power ?(and not weapon power) The 10% proc rate on Polarized might be pretty nice in this role.

Of course I know that my idea won't be the most damaging build out there (if I wanted that I'd fly dual cannon escorts...) but I'm having a blast trying to figure out the best way to make this concept work.
I'm also a bit weird in that I always want to find a build that hardly anyone uses because it's considered insane :P

Of course this doesn't bring me much closer to a choice between the 2 ships, because they both showcase different aspects of the idea.
Multi-mission showcases the sci shield strip aspect, Destroyer showcases the torp boat aspect.

So I'll continue gathering resources and see which opportunities arise

Unknown

This content has been removed.