lower DPS with surgical strikes?

ryakidrys

I moved a sci toon in a Qib a few days ago in an effort to level it up for the starship mastery trait. I felt like I had a good grasp on what I could do with the ship and the sub-par setup I have. It's not optimal because I'm missing the DOFF's to make it work best and it's not the ship I'm going to be using in the end anyway. I'm planning on using the Matha and then deciding between it and the Korath, but that's something down the road.
I had 3 DCE's for EPTx cooldowns, so that's what I focused the ship setup and DOFF's on. Also, I have an intel officer in the CDR engineering station.
I had heard a lot of praise for surgical strikes and for override system safeties, so I set up with OSS1, OSS2, SS1, SS2.
Tac stations are TT1, TT1, APB1, APB2. Yep, no cannon modifiers. I'm relying on surgical strikes to give the punch, or I thought.
After running a few STF's, cure advanced and infected advanced in particular, with some fleetmates, I saw something odd in combat log reader.

Without surgical strikes, my dual heavy cannons had higher DPS. With surgical strikes, DPS was lower.
It's entirely possible I was doing something wrong.
I was chaining OSS, then EPTW3, Weapon battery, surgical strikes, then APB and Tac Team.

Has anyone else noticed a similar result when using surgical strikes?

questerius

There was a bug with SS in which damage was converted to phaser damage.
I am not sure if it has been fixed already, but it could explain the lower DPS

ryakidrys

Nothing in CLR was showing as phaser, all were disruptor, and recent patch notes indicate SS bug is fixed.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1302381

sohtoh

I tried looking for my parses from when I had tested Surgical Strikes vs Cannon Rapid Fire before; but couldn't find them. In those test runs, Surgical Strikes came out ahead. Could be the chaining order. My chaining order is EPtW-->OSS-->TT-->APB-->SS.

birzark

what many people i don't think realize which was brought to my attention is the Doff to reduce Canon abilities and beam abilities both work with surgical trikes to reduce CD. That might be able to make a difference.

sohtoh

westmetals wrote: »

Well, it slows down your firing cycle in exchange for higher damage per shot, supposedly. DHCs inherently do that also, so it could be that maybe the amount that the total of both of them are slowing you down is more than your damage increase per shot, and therefore actually making your total damage drop?

I.E. if it slows you down by 50% but only gives you an extra 40% per shot... your total DPS would be slightly lower...

But when you account for the increased CrtH, your DPS should be higher.

sohtoh

Had to dig through a post on my fleet's facebook page; but I found the average dps results when I compared CRF3 and SS2. The comparison tests were with CrtDx3 Phased Bio-Matter DHCs.

Cannon Rapid Fire III: 11,859.586
Surgical Strike II: 14,331.027

synthiasuicide

Were you running CRF or CSV before? SS should do less DPS vs CSV since your focused like CRF is.
I always ran a CSV ship so of course my DPS went down, but my Single target vapor went WAY up. The crits Im getting with Undine Rep DHC's and one DBB are ridiculous.

BUt, that is Phaser damage so can't check if its workign right with Disruptors lol.
My Rom Plasma Beam Boat with Surgical Strike sis definately working right though. Less DPS to FAW but amazing single target damage.

talonxv

SS is used better with arrays and DBBs than cannons. It can put out some IMPRESSIVE hits with arrays.

warmaker001b

There is one funny thing with DHCs and Surgical Strikes.

Your damage comes in "bursts" with some noticeable gaps in between. When you DO get those bursts in, the damage is typically astronomical if you already had a decent Crit Rate before SS is taken into account. This kind of style I believe fits in perfectly with Hit & Run ships that can't sit there and pummel away, but need to unload everything right then and there while still having DHCs.

SS slows down the firing rate where DHCs already are the lowest of the cannons. Theorizing here... I do wonder how it does with *shudder* faster firing Dual Cannons? They naturally shoot faster than DHCs, so SS would slow that down a bit. By how much, I don't know. But the +Crit Hit of SS would of course allow it to put out more dmg.

tom61sto

warmaker001b wrote: »

There is one funny thing with DHCs and Surgical Strikes.

Your damage comes in "bursts" with some noticeable gaps in between. When you DO get those bursts in, the damage is typically astronomical if you already had a decent Crit Rate before SS is taken into account. This kind of style I believe fits in perfectly with Hit & Run ships that can't sit there and pummel away, but need to unload everything right then and there while still having DHCs.

SS slows down the firing rate where DHCs already are the lowest of the cannons. Theorizing here... I do wonder how it does with *shudder* faster firing Dual Cannons? They naturally shoot faster than DHCs, so SS would slow that down a bit. By how much, I don't know. But the +Crit Hit of SS would of course allow it to put out more dmg.

With Override Subsystem Safeties keeping power levels higher, the gap between DHCs and DCs should close a bit, though the extra 10% Crit damage of DHCs combined with Surgical Strikes boost to Crit hit might swing it right back.

warmaker001b

tom61sto wrote: »

With Override Subsystem Safeties keeping power levels higher, the gap between DHCs and DCs should close a bit, though the extra 10% Crit damage of DHCs combined with Surgical Strikes boost to Crit hit might swing it right back.

That is quite correct.

Personally, I'm fine with the slower nature of DHCs and SS. They hit reliably hard. But some want that heavy, constant damage. Everyone I know uses DHCs instead of DCs, so I don't think they've gotten a fair shake at it yet Post-DR (IMO).

tom61sto

warmaker001b wrote: »

That is quite correct.

Personally, I'm fine with the slower nature of DHCs and SS. They hit reliably hard. But some want that heavy, constant damage. Everyone I know uses DHCs instead of DCs, so I don't think they've gotten a fair shake at it yet Post-DR (IMO).

Just tried DCs on a Qib, it seems to do nice constant damage with SuS active even without OSS going -- not done a parse or anything, just anecdotal watching how well it kills Tholians in CCA. The biggest problem I have with DCs and the Qib is where the hardpoints are for them, instead of on the weapon pods, on the wings somewhere, or even on the outside of the hammerhead, the emitters for DCs are on either side of the line on the nose. I had thought I mistakenly had gotten single cannons by mistake for a minute since the two pulses were so close together.

thissler

I think you're both overestimating the difference between those two weapon types unmodified. Granted the difference between what you use for DEM and what you use for CRF is substantial, but that's also really old news.

The argument at one time was that DC's were more power efficient so would do more damage, but that got put to rest. Not sure that anything with that mechanic has changed or not. Of course if you examine that test you would conclude that AP cannons would be even better. Anyways. Moving on.

Parses so far are not consistently showing DHC's out in front. Of course unbuffed they often fall behind due to arc/ROF considerations. Again, old news and more a crack at my poor piloting than anything else.

I'll do more parses, but for now I'd say if you were going to use an Eclipse and mix in DEM, use DCs. If you're gonna use a Phantom and mix in CRF use DHC's.

Peace.

EDIT: That test had an obvious flaw. Crit H. But just as obviously for our purposes we know SS grants MORE Crit H than you can effectively convert with severity. Anyhow were doing current parses so no bother there.

ryakidrys

An update:
I slotted a dual cannon and even a dual beam bank with crtdx3 modifier and found some even more puzzling things in the combat log.
Using CLR, I started finding Dual heavy cannons would sometimes show SS1 with higher DPS than unmodified DHCs, but SS2 was consistently below the unmodified DHCs. With Dual Cannons, I found SS1 was almost always having higher DPS then unmodified DCs, but sometimes SS2 is squeaking above the unmodified DCs.
I didn't try single cannons out yet, but I did try some dual beam banks. The DBBs are getting more consistent DPS with SS1 and SS2 above the unmodified DBBs, but still a few SS2 here and there are below.
Overall, the DHC build, no rapid fire at all, is coming in with higher DPS overall compared to dual cannons and dual beam banks, though dual beam banks are getting more consistent DPS with SS1 and SS2.
Another fun fact, the max hits are more often higher with DHCs when compared to the other weapon types I have tried, something you would expect.

It's sad that I must run the Qib to get the Mastery trait that boosts cannons so I can apply it to the Matha. Oh well, cryptic wanted to make sure us KDF folks had a reason to buy the only 2 available T6 faction ships, though the Feds seems to have 5 or 6 of them already.