Beam Fire At Will - max targets?

tigeraries

I am a bit unsure on what the STO description means...

"This ability applies to both Beam Arrays and Dual Beam Banks. A standard beam attack cycle is four attacks against a single target. After activation, all beam weapons will randomly select up to two targets within their arc and attack them five times each (for a total of 10 beam attacks per cycle). The effect will apply to any firing cycle that begins during the ability's duration. If only one target is present, only five attacks are performed."

From reading this I am under the impression that you can only attack up to 5 random targets and that each target will be shot twice since there can only be a total of 10 beam attacks?

If that is right then would 5 beam weapons be best and slot the rest for torpedoes?

3 Beams front and 2 in aft with front and aft torpedoes. That way you can also use Torpedo Spread.

Or am I reading this wrong? If so assuming you fly into a swarm of ships that aren't made of paper... how many targets can you hit with Fire at Will? with a 100% beam load for front and aft. Or say you have 7 beam weapons and only 3 targets... do multiple beams hit the same target?

genesickaze

Multiple Beams can hit the same target. FAW works on a similar principle to Scatter Volley. It's increasing the number of shots within the Weapon's Arc. Normally arrays have 4 pulses per shot. So under the effects of FAW, a full cruiser will have 40 pulses in a single barrage (and then roughly 80-120 overall). If there are many targets, the EACH beam will randomly select two targets, within it's arc and range, and open fire on both of them, and since FAW increases the firing rate to 5 pulses per shot, both targets will be have 5 pulses flying at them. Also, this means that Arrays 2-8 could potentially all have the same target depending on the firing arc.

So, if you have two targets, and they are both in your broadside range, with FAW each will be individually hit 80-120 times, but, in total you've fired 160-240 shots within the same amount of time basically.

Is any of this making sense?

sgtstarfall

tigeraries wrote: »

"After activation, all beam weapons will randomly select up to two targets within their arc and attack them five times each (for a total of 10 beam attacks per cycle). The effect will apply to any firing cycle that begins during the ability's duration. If only one target is present, only five attacks are performed."

What this means is this:
> Your beams activates 5 times
> Each activation picks 2 targets at random
> If only one target is available, it only hits that target once per activation (a total of 5 times per beam array).

tigeraries wrote: »

Or am I reading this wrong? If so assuming you fly into a swarm of ships that aren't made of paper... how many targets can you hit with Fire at Will? with a 100% beam load for front and aft. Or say you have 7 beam weapons and only 3 targets... do multiple beams hit the same target?

Assuming your example of 7 beams and 3 targets, you will hit a total of 7*5*2 = 70 times in the entire activation cycle, unless two targets die in the middle of this. Previously mentioned, yes the beams will pick random targets, so there can absolutely be a case where 2 ships are hit 35 times but one is untouched (extremely unlikely).


With the above mentioned, I would like to point out that this is why many people like BFAW in PvE and PvP scenarios. Each beam picks random targets, making it an excellent spam clearing ability on Beam Boats. All you have to do is look a certain direction and the beams will fire at anything. An arguable side-effect of BFAW is that you'll be initially drawing a lot of aggro from PvE mobs, since they mostly target whatever hits them first.

baudl

it also means that having only one target in range, BFAW will not be as effective. still a small boost, but once there is more than 1 target it suddenly goes berserk.
you don't want too many ships around either, since the dmg gets spread too much.

in my experiance 3-5 targets is the sweet spot for this ability. scatter volley hits only 3 targets, ever.

virusdancer

vs. 1 target: 5 shots
vs. 2 targets: 10 shots, 0-10 per target
vs. 3 targets: 10 shots, 0-10 per target
etc, etc, etc...keeping in mind the difference between chance and probability (there's a chance with 2 targets one does not get hit, but it's not very probable).

doffingcomrade

FAW fires 5 bursts of 2 shots. The first shot is always aimed at your primary target if in arc, otherwise it is aimed at a random target. The second shot is aimed at a different random target. So if there are only two targets, both would always be shot at, because the second shot is being randomly chosen from a pool of one option. If there are no targets, then the shot is not fired.