AP very good choice of weapon. That's all I use for beams. Look for ACC (accuracy) which will make sure they hit the target instead of wondering off it. Same for for torpedo's, cannons and mines (tip make sure they're not the type that can be shot down by the enemy) for mines.
Antiproton: +20% critical severity or higher
Look for ACC (accuracy) +10% or higher
MK II your using make sure you can use what your level allows you to use in MARK LEVEL. Higher always out ways the lower level. Now there is some typo's in MARK LEVEL Example Mark X Rare could be higher than Mark XI Very Rare. I've seen it happen many times.
No. They are not "better" than other energy types. In fact, unless you have a high critical chance build, AP is even worst than other options in some situations. I tested it in 5 of my toons, and in 3 of em i ended replacing em with a disruptor build, plasma build and a polaron build. In one of my rommies, cuz i have more or less high critical chance it seems that antiproton works far better, and in my karfi i have a fludic antiproton build because i like the visuals, nothing more.. lol.
Each weapon type has it's strenghts except tetryons and phasers which plain suck.
Unless your in a Gal-X,Malestrom and Chimera (If you equip the console) or use the quad phaser cannons from the Sao Palo then your pretty much stuck using phasers to maximize the bonus weapons they come with but I have to agree that PVE wise phasers do suck but PVP wise is another story. Never bothered with Tetryons as my other weapons shread through shields already.
I just made Commander TAC, I have a MK II antiproton beam and 2 cannons. Are they beeter than a MK 4 other type of beams or should I keep what I have.
To be honest, at such a low level you are at, the enemies are easy to beat. What I suggest is that you try the ones you have now. If they work good, I wouldn't bother replacing them. The higher MK weapons will work better than the MK II. The base damage alone of the MK IV is going to do more damage. However, if you are not needing to spend a noticeable amount of extra time with the slightly harder enemies, I wouldn't worry with it.
If you are spending more than half an hour playing, you should increase in another level or two quickly. As you have seen, you level fast. Therefore, if you buy new weapons now, you will be doing it again soon. What I did on my first character is use weapons till they didn't work as good anymore. Then I put them in my bank (to save for another character I was leveling later), and just collected loot drops. When I got a new collection of a single energy type, I popped them on my ship.
Also, I tried to stick with common weapons, consoles, and other gear at such low levels. When you are finished with them, you can sell them on the exchange, and make something off of them. Whereas the green and better are bound to either character or account. If I got something that was better quality, and was bind on pickup, I would go ahead and use it.
You do want all weapons on your ship of the same type, but I would suggest not focusing on trying to stay with a specific energy type from level 0-50. When you get a complete set, I would use it (just don't forget to switch out tac consoles also). This will do more for you. It will give you a chance to see which energy types you personally like best, and see what they do. Also, it can be cheaper that trying to buy a specific weapon at such a low level, because you are trying to match a specific set all the time.
I hope this is helpful.
Leader of Elite Guardian Academy.Would you like to learn how to run a fleet? Would you like to know how to do ship builds (true budget as well as high end)?The join the Academy today!
I just made Commander TAC, I have a MK II antiproton beam and 2 cannons. Are they beeter than a MK 4 other type of beams or should I keep what I have.
So you are still just leveling? if so get the highest mark weapons that you can. Once you get to level 50 then you can start worrying about what weapon type to get like antiproton vs disruptor vs plasma and beam array vs dual cannons. Also like coolhead said you want to check the mark and the quality (common, rare very rare). I dont think its a type but it is intended that a very rare quality mk x will be equal to a rare quality mk xi item. But a very rare mk xi will be better then a very rare mk x. So pay attention to the quality and the mark.
Also if you are getting close to level 40 you should start looking for advice on how to build your ship up. The level 40 ships you get with your free ship tokens are perfectly useable for level 50 content. And once you get to level 45 the quests/missions will start to reward MK X gear mostly uncommon but some are also rare quality. Some of the missions closer to 50 like the Dyson missions actually reward very rare gear. The weapons from the Solanae episodes reward very rare XI beam arrays, dual cannons and dual beam banks. And if you repeat one of the missions you can get a MK XII very rare deflectors, engines and shields.
Each weapon type has it's strenghts except tetryons and phasers which plain suck.
Agree about tetryons, but phasers works far better than tetryons. I love my Vesta with the aux phasers build and i love my dyson destroyer with a phaser beam build as well. Both ships perform really nice, and honestly they do a lot of harm anyways. Plus, you have the undine set that can help you to build a mixed / photon / phaser build and its performance is far better than a few months back.
I don't know about the rest of you all but AP beams both stock antiproton and fluidic antiproton are pretty good to me. I've tried the others even the BIO-MOLECULAR PHASER nah.. But again I've mention this prior but the: EPS and Power Transfer Rate: % (sec) rise the level. But again AP works for me.
Lol, you mentioned the one NPC that brushes off the phaser proc. Heck, you'd do better using tetryons against the Borg.
Its not only borg cubes. People keep saying phaser weapons are TRIBBLE, but you wrong. Im TIRED of killing with easy any ship around, even in elite difficulty with just phaser builds. They are not as strong as the others, but they are still effective. But i guess people forget again, that the proc is not the thing that makes the weapon useful or not. Its just the damage it deals to the target, thats all. Who cares about the proc?? nobody. Seriously.
P.D.: Hell, i even ended first in the CE event using my dyson phaser build :P, that says it all (in normal, of course).
Its not only borg cubes. People keep saying phaser weapons are TRIBBLE, but you wrong. Im TIRED of killing with easy any ship around, even in elite difficulty with just phaser builds. They are not as strong as the others, but they are still effective. But i guess people forget again, that the proc is not the thing that makes the weapon useful or not. Its just the damage it deals to the target, thats all. Who cares about the proc?? nobody. Seriously.
P.D.: Hell, i even ended first in the CE event using my dyson phaser build :P, that says it all (in normal, of course).
The content is pretty easy and standard weapons will work. But even though it is still pretty easy i will keep trying to find ways to challenge myself. I dont believe in taking off my gear or wearing white quality gear to handicap myself which makes things harder. Instead i'll improve my gear, my build and my ship as a whole and then i'll try to turn a 2, 3 or 4 man job into a one man job.
That's my ship, my offensive stats are 22.7% accuracy, 19.4% crit, 106.5% severity. WAY more then you need for old Borg ESTFs. I built the ship a few months ago and my plan was to get Rom Plas first then a few months later upgrade it to a full fleet AP and fleet AP consoles. But i just came back a few weeks ago and DR is close so i am holding off on upgrading. I actually just upgraded my shields and singularity to fleet a few days ago and that's it. The Rom Plas set is nothing but accuracy and 6% crit from the experimental array. If i had upgraded to Fleet AP weapons and consoles I would have gotten a bunch more crit and severity.
But again that's overkill for an ESTF right? you can go into battle with a rusty butter knife taped to the front of your ship and you can still kill borg like that. But like i said i like to challenge myself. My ship can melt Borg too...a probe, group of probes, spheres, a bunch of spheres, a tac cube, two tac cubes at the same time, two tac cubes at the same time along with 2 probes 2 nanites generators and a transformer, i can melt an entire side of KVE alone and a lot of times faster then the other 4 people on the other side unless they are equally geared and skilled. I can do an entire side of Cure Elite by myself, including any BoPs, Raptors and Negvhar that spawn and head for Kang. That includes the roaming Negvhar and roaming Raptor that spawns when you kill the first upper nanite. I'm not going to go to one side of KVE and just kill probes as they spawn. I'm going to do that and a bunch more.
BUT one other reason for keeping all my gear up to date, optimized and the best quality that i can get it because i am still hopeful that maybe they will add a bunch of new 5 mans that are actually fun and scaled for very rare XII. I tried the new Undine stuff and Voth 5 mans but i hate all the new gimmicks they keep trying to add.
I just made Commander TAC, I have a MK II antiproton beam and 2 cannons. Are they beeter than a MK 4 other type of beams or should I keep what I have.
In general, white mark 6 = green mark 5 = blue mark 4 = purple mark 3 (more true of consoles and engines than guns, but still a rough guide).
But there's tons of variation depending on mods etc. So while that is a rough guide, especially while leveling it is best to try and stick with the highest mark of gear you can.
As for the damage types, tetryons are by far the worst, avoid them unless you are willing and able to overcome their suckiness and/or you just like the color.
The top damage tends to be plasma disruptor and antiproton. Disruptor has an edge on teams as all your allies benefit from the -resistance they create. Antiproton require you to have a lot of critical hit chance for best effect. Plasma has a burn that bypasses shields, so it helps on the tougher enemies.
Polarons and phasers work best on builds that are aimed at weakening the enemy.
While leveling though, it is best to just stick to whatever your missions are giving you, don't worry too much about damage type.
Lol, you mentioned the one NPC that brushes off the phaser proc. Heck, you'd do better using tetryons against the Borg.
Yeah, the whole dumb reason behind this, is because if they don't clear it themselves, than they get the 10sec immunity afterwards.
I have been running the destabilizing tetryons, and I will say they come in quite handy against boss types, as they can never clear it often enough (max I have accomplished is 5 stacks @ -58 each shield facing per sec., for 15sec. per stack, or overall 4350 per facing in 15sec., with almost no pause between stacks, being able to keep it running).
They just keep ticking down their shields, till they eventually have no shields at all, big help to the team when dealing with these boss types.
No. They are not "better" than other energy types. In fact, unless you have a high critical chance build, AP is even worst than other options in some situations. I tested it in 5 of my toons, and in 3 of em i ended replacing em with a disruptor build, plasma build and a polaron build. In one of my rommies, cuz i have more or less high critical chance it seems that antiproton works far better, and in my karfi i have a fludic antiproton build because i like the visuals, nothing more.. lol.
Just this! If you max your build for crits/accuracy then AP can be dynamite! Otherwise it's not so hot. You need to match you build and weapon choice for max effect.
*STO*Its mission: To destroy strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations... and then kill them, to boldly annihilate what no one has annihilated before!
Yeah, the whole dumb reason behind this, is because if they don't clear it themselves, than they get the 10sec immunity afterwards.
I have been running the destabilizing tetryons, and I will say they come in quite handy against boss types, as they can never clear it often enough (max I have accomplished is 5 stacks @ -58 each shield facing per sec., for 15sec. per stack, or overall 4350 per facing in 15sec., with almost no pause between stacks, being able to keep it running).
They just keep ticking down their shields, till they eventually have no shields at all, big help to the team when dealing with these boss types.
If a teammate is running those nano disruptor, do your ticks benefit from bonus shield damage?
I suspect something like that is very hard to test and track.
They just keep ticking down their shields, till they eventually have no shields at all, big help to the team when dealing with these boss types.
It takes the same time even less to get rid of your target shields using any other energy type, so in the end , tetryons are the most useless weapons of all of em. And because once the shields are down, tetryons are by far the worst energy type out there.
It takes the same time even less to get rid of your target shields using any other energy type, so in the end , tetryons are the most useless weapons of all of em. And because once the shields are down, tetryons are by far the worst energy type out there.
While I can agree, that they do not offer up any form of DR benefit like disruptors, or cause hull burns like plasma, or even the CCO phaser/disruptors.
They still cause damage like any ordinary energy weapon, and the proc may seem pointless, but it does keep shields down longer on enemy bosses, much so more than more commonly used energy weapons, making is much easier for myself, and my teammates to continuously pound bare hull.
I still yield good dps from them, so they haven't made me unhappy with them.
I'm just thinking that I do team a fair bit in pugs with people who have different flavors of tetryons. I have a few of the nanite disruptors in my bank that I don't often use. Kinda wish I knew, because if it did buff the dots on refracting tets, then it's probably worth running over vanilla disruptors.
Each weapon type has it's strenghts except tetryons and phasers which plain suck.
Nah, Tetryon is fantastic in the right build. A full cannon Science career escort Tetryon build can strip the shield off a group of 5-10 same-level enemies on an alpha strike, then finish the job with torp point defense turret (HEC)
You just need to build to increase the proc.
Against singular enemies or groups of 2-3 it's not that great though.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] bloodpact.net
"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it."
requires crit build and tac captain fed/klingon.
romulans can get by pretty well with any captain type and AP's if they gather enough crit bonuses from consoles/etc gear and boff's.
weapons training, energy weapons, targeting systems, and most importantly> energy weapon specialization.
tetryon and polaron:
requires a drain build for maximum effectiveness.
flow capacitors and consoles that magnify flow caps.
disruptor, phaser, and plasma:
requires no specific build to be effective beyond boosting damage through consoles. general purpose choice.
i run every single energy type and torp boats. all are very effective if you build into them in the case of ap's, tet, and pol.
plasma atm seems to have the highest output of a non required skill build types, 1 or 2 plasma disruptor hybrids (for the dis debuff proc) with other esoteric hybrid plasma damage types does some pretty high damage when both the dis proc and plasma fires eat the ships up.
Dr. Patricia Tanis ~ "Bacon is for sycophants and products of incest."
Donate Brains, zombies in Washington DC are starving.
Nah, Tetryon is fantastic in the right build. A full cannon Science career escort Tetryon build can strip the shield off a group of 5-10 same-level enemies on an alpha strike, then finish the job with torp point defense turret (HEC)
You just need to build to increase the proc.
Against singular enemies or groups of 2-3 it's not that great though.
Well, i tested for 2 months 3 tetryon builds, using the apex set and the nukara one, in combination with maxed flow capacitors, blah blah bla, and i discarded tetryons for good. I mean, they are not bad, but why i should be using tetryons when i have more performance using any other energy type? that was my final conclusion.
I can also do what you say with any other energy type build, even with a phaser one. And faster. lol.
Well, i tested for 2 months 3 tetryon builds, using the apex set and the nukara one, in combination with maxed flow capacitors, blah blah bla, and i discarded tetryons for good. I mean, they are not bad, but why i should be using tetryons when i have more performance using any other energy type? that was my final conclusion.
I can also do what you say with any other energy type build, even with a phaser one. And faster. lol.
Hmm?
AP works for me, max power rate, and mixture of high rate weapons carefully tested to work with the ship I am using. Anyone wants to go for a run at 8472 at sphere just pick a time and I'll be there with the West Palm Beach Battleship! Or make it a team effort.. Good run to test who's has the best payload sets..
I test what I can get my hands on and use. Gone through a lot weapons and consoles. Not all weapons are the same even with the extra triggers on them along with the sets of consoles packs.
I just made Commander TAC, I have a MK II antiproton beam and 2 cannons. Are they beeter than a MK 4 other type of beams or should I keep what I have.
I usually just stay with my factions default weapon type until I reach level 50. That way you can always go to the faction requisition dealer to upgrade your newly procured ships if the exchange prices are ridiculous. I go common ("white") quality also, except for items I gain from in-game drops or are good deals on the exchange. You can sell the "white" items when you are done with them. You go through the lower levels fast enough that it is not worth it to me to put expensive high quality equipment on my ship.
There used to be a time when damage types were part of an element wheel, whereby baddies were weak vs. some and strong (in some cases, immune) vs. others. This concept wasn't restricted to just fantasy dungeon games or "train wildlife to become pit fighters" games. For example, Freelancer. You had shields that were effective against some energy types, while weak against others, and middling against everything else (Ex. Positron Shields, Good vs Tachyon, Poor vs Lasers).
The other half of this concept, the one that Cryptic/PWE got right, is that you almost never had to worry about being unprepared, since groups of baddies were almost always homogenous, and thus always dealt the same damage type (trolls were rarely found in the company of ice elves, flappy birds and bugs were never in the same place as fish monsters, and pirates never fought side-by-side with bounty hunters).
Comments
MK II your using make sure you can use what your level allows you to use in MARK LEVEL. Higher always out ways the lower level. Now there is some typo's in MARK LEVEL Example Mark X Rare could be higher than Mark XI Very Rare. I've seen it happen many times.
Time will only tell!
Unless your in a Gal-X,Malestrom and Chimera (If you equip the console) or use the quad phaser cannons from the Sao Palo then your pretty much stuck using phasers to maximize the bonus weapons they come with but I have to agree that PVE wise phasers do suck but PVP wise is another story. Never bothered with Tetryons as my other weapons shread through shields already.
To be honest, at such a low level you are at, the enemies are easy to beat. What I suggest is that you try the ones you have now. If they work good, I wouldn't bother replacing them. The higher MK weapons will work better than the MK II. The base damage alone of the MK IV is going to do more damage. However, if you are not needing to spend a noticeable amount of extra time with the slightly harder enemies, I wouldn't worry with it.
If you are spending more than half an hour playing, you should increase in another level or two quickly. As you have seen, you level fast. Therefore, if you buy new weapons now, you will be doing it again soon. What I did on my first character is use weapons till they didn't work as good anymore. Then I put them in my bank (to save for another character I was leveling later), and just collected loot drops. When I got a new collection of a single energy type, I popped them on my ship.
Also, I tried to stick with common weapons, consoles, and other gear at such low levels. When you are finished with them, you can sell them on the exchange, and make something off of them. Whereas the green and better are bound to either character or account. If I got something that was better quality, and was bind on pickup, I would go ahead and use it.
You do want all weapons on your ship of the same type, but I would suggest not focusing on trying to stay with a specific energy type from level 0-50. When you get a complete set, I would use it (just don't forget to switch out tac consoles also). This will do more for you. It will give you a chance to see which energy types you personally like best, and see what they do. Also, it can be cheaper that trying to buy a specific weapon at such a low level, because you are trying to match a specific set all the time.
I hope this is helpful.
So you are still just leveling? if so get the highest mark weapons that you can. Once you get to level 50 then you can start worrying about what weapon type to get like antiproton vs disruptor vs plasma and beam array vs dual cannons. Also like coolhead said you want to check the mark and the quality (common, rare very rare). I dont think its a type but it is intended that a very rare quality mk x will be equal to a rare quality mk xi item. But a very rare mk xi will be better then a very rare mk x. So pay attention to the quality and the mark.
Also if you are getting close to level 40 you should start looking for advice on how to build your ship up. The level 40 ships you get with your free ship tokens are perfectly useable for level 50 content. And once you get to level 45 the quests/missions will start to reward MK X gear mostly uncommon but some are also rare quality. Some of the missions closer to 50 like the Dyson missions actually reward very rare gear. The weapons from the Solanae episodes reward very rare XI beam arrays, dual cannons and dual beam banks. And if you repeat one of the missions you can get a MK XII very rare deflectors, engines and shields.
I don't know,... I seem to melt cubes quite handily with Phasers and Quantums,...
"There... are... four... lights!" ~Jean Luc Picard
Agree about tetryons, but phasers works far better than tetryons. I love my Vesta with the aux phasers build and i love my dyson destroyer with a phaser beam build as well. Both ships perform really nice, and honestly they do a lot of harm anyways. Plus, you have the undine set that can help you to build a mixed / photon / phaser build and its performance is far better than a few months back.
Time will only tell!
Lol, you mentioned the one NPC that brushes off the phaser proc. Heck, you'd do better using tetryons against the Borg.
Not to mention, the undine 2pc makes them stupid powerful.
Your Ramming Speed III deals 242658 (243540) Kinetic Damage (Critical) to you.
Why? When my phasers work so well,... if something is working just fine, no need to change it.
"There... are... four... lights!" ~Jean Luc Picard
but if you are a Klingon look me up in game ill deck you out with purple gear upto mk x for free.
Long live the KLINGON Empire
Its not only borg cubes. People keep saying phaser weapons are TRIBBLE, but you wrong. Im TIRED of killing with easy any ship around, even in elite difficulty with just phaser builds. They are not as strong as the others, but they are still effective. But i guess people forget again, that the proc is not the thing that makes the weapon useful or not. Its just the damage it deals to the target, thats all. Who cares about the proc?? nobody. Seriously.
P.D.: Hell, i even ended first in the CE event using my dyson phaser build :P, that says it all (in normal, of course).
The content is pretty easy and standard weapons will work. But even though it is still pretty easy i will keep trying to find ways to challenge myself. I dont believe in taking off my gear or wearing white quality gear to handicap myself which makes things harder. Instead i'll improve my gear, my build and my ship as a whole and then i'll try to turn a 2, 3 or 4 man job into a one man job.
http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=stonewbmod2_0
That's my ship, my offensive stats are 22.7% accuracy, 19.4% crit, 106.5% severity. WAY more then you need for old Borg ESTFs. I built the ship a few months ago and my plan was to get Rom Plas first then a few months later upgrade it to a full fleet AP and fleet AP consoles. But i just came back a few weeks ago and DR is close so i am holding off on upgrading. I actually just upgraded my shields and singularity to fleet a few days ago and that's it. The Rom Plas set is nothing but accuracy and 6% crit from the experimental array. If i had upgraded to Fleet AP weapons and consoles I would have gotten a bunch more crit and severity.
But again that's overkill for an ESTF right? you can go into battle with a rusty butter knife taped to the front of your ship and you can still kill borg like that. But like i said i like to challenge myself. My ship can melt Borg too...a probe, group of probes, spheres, a bunch of spheres, a tac cube, two tac cubes at the same time, two tac cubes at the same time along with 2 probes 2 nanites generators and a transformer, i can melt an entire side of KVE alone and a lot of times faster then the other 4 people on the other side unless they are equally geared and skilled. I can do an entire side of Cure Elite by myself, including any BoPs, Raptors and Negvhar that spawn and head for Kang. That includes the roaming Negvhar and roaming Raptor that spawns when you kill the first upper nanite. I'm not going to go to one side of KVE and just kill probes as they spawn. I'm going to do that and a bunch more.
BUT one other reason for keeping all my gear up to date, optimized and the best quality that i can get it because i am still hopeful that maybe they will add a bunch of new 5 mans that are actually fun and scaled for very rare XII. I tried the new Undine stuff and Voth 5 mans but i hate all the new gimmicks they keep trying to add.
In general, white mark 6 = green mark 5 = blue mark 4 = purple mark 3 (more true of consoles and engines than guns, but still a rough guide).
But there's tons of variation depending on mods etc. So while that is a rough guide, especially while leveling it is best to try and stick with the highest mark of gear you can.
As for the damage types, tetryons are by far the worst, avoid them unless you are willing and able to overcome their suckiness and/or you just like the color.
The top damage tends to be plasma disruptor and antiproton. Disruptor has an edge on teams as all your allies benefit from the -resistance they create. Antiproton require you to have a lot of critical hit chance for best effect. Plasma has a burn that bypasses shields, so it helps on the tougher enemies.
Polarons and phasers work best on builds that are aimed at weakening the enemy.
While leveling though, it is best to just stick to whatever your missions are giving you, don't worry too much about damage type.
Yeah, the whole dumb reason behind this, is because if they don't clear it themselves, than they get the 10sec immunity afterwards.
I have been running the destabilizing tetryons, and I will say they come in quite handy against boss types, as they can never clear it often enough (max I have accomplished is 5 stacks @ -58 each shield facing per sec., for 15sec. per stack, or overall 4350 per facing in 15sec., with almost no pause between stacks, being able to keep it running).
They just keep ticking down their shields, till they eventually have no shields at all, big help to the team when dealing with these boss types.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
Just this! If you max your build for crits/accuracy then AP can be dynamite! Otherwise it's not so hot. You need to match you build and weapon choice for max effect.
If a teammate is running those nano disruptor, do your ticks benefit from bonus shield damage?
I suspect something like that is very hard to test and track.
It takes the same time even less to get rid of your target shields using any other energy type, so in the end , tetryons are the most useless weapons of all of em. And because once the shields are down, tetryons are by far the worst energy type out there.
Would require some seriously thorough testing!
While I can agree, that they do not offer up any form of DR benefit like disruptors, or cause hull burns like plasma, or even the CCO phaser/disruptors.
They still cause damage like any ordinary energy weapon, and the proc may seem pointless, but it does keep shields down longer on enemy bosses, much so more than more commonly used energy weapons, making is much easier for myself, and my teammates to continuously pound bare hull.
I still yield good dps from them, so they haven't made me unhappy with them.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
I'm just thinking that I do team a fair bit in pugs with people who have different flavors of tetryons. I have a few of the nanite disruptors in my bank that I don't often use. Kinda wish I knew, because if it did buff the dots on refracting tets, then it's probably worth running over vanilla disruptors.
Nah, Tetryon is fantastic in the right build. A full cannon Science career escort Tetryon build can strip the shield off a group of 5-10 same-level enemies on an alpha strike, then finish the job with torp point defense turret (HEC)
You just need to build to increase the proc.
Against singular enemies or groups of 2-3 it's not that great though.
bloodpact.net
"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it."
-Michelangelo
antiproton:
requires crit build and tac captain fed/klingon.
romulans can get by pretty well with any captain type and AP's if they gather enough crit bonuses from consoles/etc gear and boff's.
weapons training, energy weapons, targeting systems, and most importantly> energy weapon specialization.
tetryon and polaron:
requires a drain build for maximum effectiveness.
flow capacitors and consoles that magnify flow caps.
disruptor, phaser, and plasma:
requires no specific build to be effective beyond boosting damage through consoles. general purpose choice.
i run every single energy type and torp boats. all are very effective if you build into them in the case of ap's, tet, and pol.
plasma atm seems to have the highest output of a non required skill build types, 1 or 2 plasma disruptor hybrids (for the dis debuff proc) with other esoteric hybrid plasma damage types does some pretty high damage when both the dis proc and plasma fires eat the ships up.
Donate Brains, zombies in Washington DC are starving.
Well, i tested for 2 months 3 tetryon builds, using the apex set and the nukara one, in combination with maxed flow capacitors, blah blah bla, and i discarded tetryons for good. I mean, they are not bad, but why i should be using tetryons when i have more performance using any other energy type? that was my final conclusion.
I can also do what you say with any other energy type build, even with a phaser one. And faster. lol.
Hmm?
AP works for me, max power rate, and mixture of high rate weapons carefully tested to work with the ship I am using. Anyone wants to go for a run at 8472 at sphere just pick a time and I'll be there with the West Palm Beach Battleship! Or make it a team effort.. Good run to test who's has the best payload sets..
I test what I can get my hands on and use. Gone through a lot weapons and consoles. Not all weapons are the same even with the extra triggers on them along with the sets of consoles packs.
Time will only tell!
I usually just stay with my factions default weapon type until I reach level 50. That way you can always go to the faction requisition dealer to upgrade your newly procured ships if the exchange prices are ridiculous. I go common ("white") quality also, except for items I gain from in-game drops or are good deals on the exchange. You can sell the "white" items when you are done with them. You go through the lower levels fast enough that it is not worth it to me to put expensive high quality equipment on my ship.
The other half of this concept, the one that Cryptic/PWE got right, is that you almost never had to worry about being unprepared, since groups of baddies were almost always homogenous, and thus always dealt the same damage type (trolls were rarely found in the company of ice elves, flappy birds and bugs were never in the same place as fish monsters, and pirates never fought side-by-side with bounty hunters).