Dreadnought Carrier, Beam or Cannon?

fdashx497

hi
if i were to build a high DPS Jem'Hadar Dreadnought would you recommend beam arrays or heavy cannons?

from what i know:

beams have better arc and damage over distance, front and back beam gives a 70 degree firing arc on both side of ship. at the cost of low DPS

cannons have higher damage and DPS, but the targeting arc is 45 at front if i have turrets at back, for dreadnought carrier it works for things like borg cube but the small fast moving sphere i could hardly hit

so any pro advice would be welcome, thanks.

ollie4

Just build the thing how you feel it should be built, the way you want to play. I find cannons make for more involved play, but there is a lot to be said for the ice-berg like floating around with beams appearing from every angle as you soak up damage.

phalanx01

The dread *can* work with cannons, but you'll need a lot of boosts to your manoeuvrability like Emergency Power to Engines etc.

Beams are an easier solution but they do a lot less damage obviously. But I really don't see why the Dreadnaught can't use cannons, I've seen people in Galaxy Xs do decent damage with cannons/turrets while using a lot of powers to help with their turning. It might however be tricky in PvP with cannons however as player powers usually gimp your turning even more...

baudl

i mean single cannon is definately a way to go...problem with cannons only is/was that you need atleast a ltd boff slot for the powers related to them. JH dreadcarrier has plenty of them

Dual cannons...well, i wouldn't advice it, but can be pulled off.

doffingcomrade

fdashx497 wrote: »

beams have better arc and damage over distance

The "damage over distance" superiority of beams only manifests itself at the very outer limits of firing range, IIRC. Someone graphed this out and beams only did superior damage over cannons when the range was in excess of 8km.

Very few people will fight at this range for long, as this negatively impacts damage regardless of whether you are using beams or cannons. On top of that, ships that would even need to use beams, such as the JHDC, lack the mobility to choose the range at which the engagement will take place, as cannon-armed ships are far more agile and able to thus close rapidly. To make it worse, even if you had the mobility, in order to optimally use beams, you need to turn broadside to the target, automatically forfeiting any ability to control the range of the engagement, as you cannot turn towards or away from the target without losing your broadside.

In short, the range superiority of beams does not effectively exist outside of paper and cannot be considered an actual advantage.

fdashx497

have anyone measured their DPS with a meter? would be good if we can see what sort of damage people are dealing out in STFs etc.

asphe

Lots. Average, constant, mean, burst, forwards and backwards.

google for "sto dps parser" and look at the first 4-5 (also look for 'Hilbert').

---

Or look into the weapon calculator, this shows you the damage done by a weapon a a particular range at what power level.

http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=236545

Old but still relevant.

---

You got to differentiate between PvP and PvE too. PvE = digging a hole. PvP = pushing someone into the hole.

disturbeddudeex

I did a infected elite

http://s24.postimg.org/8zevl73id/DPS_1.png

http://s17.postimg.org/yk089ru5r/DPS_2.png

http://s17.postimg.org/nzqar6pnz/DPS_3.png

Running the jem'hadar dread with 4 advance antiproton dual heavy cannons, 2 advance antiproton turrets and the kcb

fdashx497

seems im dealing around 5k DPS with beam in elite STFs, ill try beam for a while