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Overcapping overview
endorfinator
Member Posts: 135 Arc User
I feel extremely incompetent about this particular gaming component. Could some one explain how this mechanic works and ways to adapt it to ship builds
Post edited by endorfinator on
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The way my testing suggests it works is like an invisible 5th subsystem and is as such affected by power transfer rate, so the weapons start at 125 and the extra power fills the gap at your power transfer rate, however I also found that too much power transfer with too little power results is inefficient overcapping, the reverse is also true so there is a balance to be struck.
(Again, this is just my observations from testing)
As to how to incorporate it into a build, set your base weapon power to 100 and then run Emergency power to weapons with full uptime, you can do this alongside Emergency power to shields if you have either 3 (Blue or better) Damage control engineers (Make sure they are the emergency to X cooldown ones as there are a lot of other types out there), that's the expensive option but to gain effectively 3 boff abilities is well worth it, the alternative is to use 2 copies of each skill and then hit each one as it comes off cooldown.
(The third method is Aux2Batt but I don't go there)
Goes into overcapping and a few other things.
EDIT:
Overcapping EXTRA!
So I guess I decided to explain why EPS console is included in the beam scimitars... or why we overcap at all!
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=12687621#post12687621
this post is kinda like misleading, it tells that you have 150 weapon power and that your drain is coming from 150 and not 125, truth is that eps will regenerate from overcapped power, it's not automaticly applied.
Let's make a fictional example of fictional weapons, you have a beam array that does 100 damage at 100 power, weapon power cap in this fictional instance is 100, each weapon power gives 1% damage, so 99 weapon power is 99% damage = 99 damage. That beam array drains -50 weapons when it is firing. it shoots 4 pulses over 4 seconds. which is the duration of the attack, which after it has 2 second cooling time(which doesn't have anything to do with anything)
I will fire my beam array with 100 weapon power, it will drain 50 power and it will deal damage to enemy target in this way:
0.5 sec activation of flight time and animation ending of first beam
50 damage with first pulse
after a second it fires another pulse for 50 damage,
after a second it fires another pulse for 50 damage,
after a second it fires another pulse for 50 damage,
0.5 sec pause
50 weapon power is applied back instantly due to the weapon not draining
how overcapping works is... or EPS that is, if your power transfer rate is 25 power per second and you have 150 weapon power aka 100/100 the cycle will look something like this
0.5 sec activation of flight time and animation ending of first beam
50 damage with first pulse
after a second it fires another pulse for 75 damage,
after a second it fires another pulse for 100 damage,
after a second it fires another pulse for 100 damage,
0.5 sec pause
50 weapon power is applied back instantly due to the weapon not draining(to the overcapping value)
if your power transfer rate is 25 power per second and you have 125 weapon power aka 100/100 the cycle will look something like this.
0.5 sec activation of flight time and animation ending of first beam
50 damage with first pulse
after a second it fires another pulse for 75 damage,
after a second it fires another pulse for 75 damage,
after a second it fires another pulse for 75 damage,
0.5 sec pause
50 weapon power is applied back instantly due to the weapon not draining(to the overcapping value)
So in theory improving both, weapon power and EPS is gonna boost your damage(since EPS draws from overcap and overcap is only there to give something to add into your weapon power)
This is basically how it works, but the numbers are different in terms of damage, boost per weapon power, maxium power etc. I used beam as a good example but remember that you can overcap with DHC and turrets aswell, and single cannons, and dual beam banks, so remember this
http://imgur.com/8bxJY5u
the arrow shows how many seconds you have to overcap using EPS with each weapon type, yes dual cannons can overcap better than dhcs can.... but beam arrays and dual beam banks are 2 times more effective than turrets and 4 times more effective than DHCs are. Remember that using CRF with DHC will lower the EPS efficiency from 1 second to 0.6 seconds(around 40% efficiency loss with all weapons). CSV does not change the values. BFAW does not change the time either.
And remember that this is STILL A THEORY but we have proof supporting it. it's still unkown(UNTESTED) if eps console is more dps than tachyokinetic console is(BUT IT IS DPS).
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
But here's the easy way.
Energy weapons deal extra damage the more power they are fired at. IE you fire a weapon at 50 weapons power, it deals 100 damage, 75 weapons power is 200, 100 weapons power is 300, 125 is 400 (not entirely exact or accurate but it's the idea behind it that matters, not the numbers).
Now your weapons power level cannot be set above 100, but you can gain bonus weapons power from consoles, skills, etc. HOWEVER, no matter how much energy you have in weapons, your weapons will never deal extra damage beyond 125 weapons energy, and the UI will never show your weapons power above 125.
Now what is overcapping? Overcapping is when you go beyond the 125 UI limit with your weapon energy. You will NEVER deal more damage beyond that 125, but you will have that excess energy to combat drain. So imagine your weapons are set at 100, and courtesy of skills, consoles, etc, your weapons are sitting at 121/100. Then you hit Emergency Power to Weapons 1. Now as long as you have 0 points in EPS, the EPtW1 will boost your power by 20. So now your UI will show your weapons power as 125/100, when in reality it's sitting at 141/100. BUT your weapons will still deal damage as though they were only at 125/100.
Confused yet? Good.
Now that extra 16 energy (141-125=16) does not benefit your damage at all. But it WILL combat weapon drain. So imagine you're firing two beam arrays at a target. If you hadn't hit EPtW1, you would be firing that second BA at 101/100 (from 121/100, -20 power from weapon power drain). You will still deal decent damage, but not maximum. Now imagine you hit EPtW1, which boosts your weapons up to 141/100 (even though it's still showing as 125/100). When you fire your BAs, your weapons power will ONLY DROP TO 121!! That's because of that extra 16 energy you overcapped. That extra energy is drained away BEFORE anything else.
So let's go to the theoretical extremes. You're an Engi flying a Fleet Assault Cruiser Refit (bonus +10 to weapons power) with your weapons set to 100/100, and you have Warp Core Potential and Weapons Performance both maxed (that's +5 and +9 power respectively), and say you also have the Zero Point Energy Conduit and Assimilated Module (+1.8 and +5 weapons power respectively) AND you have EPS maxed out and hit an EPtW3 (~45 weapons power) while also using EPS overcharge (+30 to all subsystems).
Do all the addition (10+5+9+6.8+45+30) and your weapons power SHOULD be sitting at 205.8/100. Crazy right? BUT your UI will never show your weapons being higher than 125, so you suddenly have an overcap of 80.8 weapons energy. Which means you could fire 8 BAs (-80 to weapons power due to drain) and never have your UI drop below 125 (would end up at 125.8). The way Geko described it (and probably the smartest thing I've ever seen him post) is that it's like having a buffer. You drain from that excess before you drain from your regular weapons power.
So that's essentially overcapping in a nutshell. HOWEVER myself and a number of other players have done extensive testing to see exactly what the max power one can achieve is. I have been using beam-cruisers basically since I've started (even though I do dabble in escorts and destroyers every so often, more often than not you'll see me in a cruiser using beams... NOT AUX2BAT!!!) so I've had loads of opportunities to test overcap mechanics. And what I've come up with is that the soft cap on weapons power is 125 (as in it won't show it higher, even though it can be exceeded), but the hard cap (as in you can't go above this no matter how many boosts you use) is actually around 155-160.
Now how have I tested this? I took my Odyssey Tactical Cruiser (+10 power to weapons passively, +5 from Assimilated module, +1.8 from Zero Point, +12 from skills) and put it's weapons to 100. UI showed 125/100 even though I knew it was actually 128.8/100 (129 for the sake of not having to worry about decimals). So I then used EPtW2 (courtesy of skills it boosted me by ~35) which then supposedly brought my weapons up to 164. I then hit EPS thingamawhatsit (it's quite sad, I've had my level 50 engi for quite a long time and I still can never remember what the ability is called) which should have boosted my weapons power up to 194. Then I shot off 8 BAs (I'm a cheapscate so I was using stock mk X phasers you get from C-store ships for free with the ship) at the same time. So according to no limit overcap mechanics my power levels should never have gone below 114. HOWEVER to my amusement/bemusement/annoyance, my weapons power level dropped to 75 then stabilized at 80.
So after doing this about a dozen times in a row (would have gone more, but my friend whom I was having sit as a target dummy was getting bored), with exactly the same results, I was forced to conclude that there is a hard cap. And it's ~160/100 (there were +5 and -5 variances pretty consistently throughout, but that's possibly due to lag/system delay with the weapons firing exactly at the same time).
Hopefully that helps OP.
Given that, pretty much the only way you'll get your true full power of an all out beam salvo is to use resistance to power drains. Which is where Marion comes in. Pity about the actual captain specific ability that's supposed to be for this purpose (Nadion Inversion) being a laughably inefficient gimmick.
The game tracks and will subtract from power levels over 125. It will never report or use power levels over 125.
Think power levels over 125 as a unreported reserve the game will draw from _before_ lowering a level below 125.
Just wanted to share how the power cost reduction actually works.
It's not 10 - (10 * 0.25) = 7.5...
It's 10 / (1 + 0.25) = 8.0...
I have found it works fine for Cannons and Dual Beam Banks. So if it fails on these silly 8 beam array boats then I would have to say it is yet another one of many many many reasons why that setup is poorly conceived.
However, Nadion Inversion means free Beam Overloads and other similar effects which is quite nice.
Sorry but that's false.
1) Two beams will drain 10 weapon power. Each additional beam will drain 10 more for a total of 70 with 8 beams.
2) You will always drain power from your weapon tank first.
3) Overcapped power exists but is added every .5 s to your weapon tank if it drops below 125 (because of drain) at an amount equal to your power transfer rate/2.
This mechanism is known for more than a year, when the *you know which fleet* goonsquad hit the queues and when people were busy complaining about "how bad beams are".
Saxfire's post actually explain it very well.
*sigh* And here it begins.
1) No, it's not false. Read the tooltip. X weapon drains X weapon power when fired with another weapon. That means THAT particular weapon is draining X power. With beams, it's 10. So EACH BEAM drains 10 power. It's not (n-1)*10, it's 10n. Big difference.
2) No... you drain weapons power from your overcap buffer first. That's why with over 125 energy you can fire beams and still have 125 energy. I would know. I've been doing it for months.
3) And no. Overcap does exist, but it is not added to your weapons power after you drop below 125. It is there to keep you from dropping below 125 in the first place. Again. Months of testing behind this.
Grab lordhavelock's powercalc - figure out what your overcapped Weapon Power is - fire some weapons - pay attention to what happens...
That people keep arguing such vastly different mechanics is trippy, imho, but oh well...you'll see what you see. It's better than picking a side and being wrong, eh?
edit: As an aside, I should mention it's a trap - btw. Yep, the results you get on one toon might not match the results you get on another. I can hop on Toon A to see it work like X and hop on Toon B to see it work like Y...literally just did. I was on A where it worked like X, flipped over to B to do something else - just happened to notice it working like Y. Fun stuff.