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Torpedoes, why we dont use 'em and when we would
kaiserwilly
Member Posts: 61 Arc User
Pretty much every ship design since the 1870s has used a mixture of weapons including torpedoes, and so far as I can recall, pretty much every star trek show I have ever watched has seen ships with a mixed arsenal of guns and torpedoes. In the game hardly anyone who wants to build a competetive ship PvE will use a torpedo. Even less use a mixture of torps & guns. The reason is pretty straight forward, very poor synergy between the two weapon groups. Although some set bonusses encourge the use of mixed weapons, it is almost never a good choice when put against pumping all your buffs through one weapon class.
If we assume we would all be a bit happier if we had a reason to do this there are a few obvious methods of achieving it. We can encourage it or we can force it. Some set synergy has tried to encourage it, but with largely no effect. Unless the game is preapred to be far more generous in this area it seems unlikely to work. So we are left with forcing people to. Now that is likely to be very unpopular right? Well, not necessarily. We can force people to do something by giving it away for free with something people want.
So going back to historical ship designs, warships have various weapon classes, but through most of it ships have turrets and tubes. You can't fire a 15" naval shell out of a torpedo tube, but that is okay, because they don't actually have to reduce the number of guns on a warship significantly to include torpedo tubes. They go in different parts.
So... my suggestion is that in considering future ship releases there is a simple fix to encourage more 'Star Trek' like weapon loadouts by giving new ships new slots. You can do this in a lot of ways, but the tail gun is one model already in game where the slot is essentially free but limited. A new generation of ships called something like 'heavy ordnance vessels' could be released where they get a 'free' torpedo tube in the front, or even a specific torpedo to that class of ships. Rear facing mine racks could be incoroprated into some designs which alowed for only mines, and ordnace bays which could use either.
If we assume we would all be a bit happier if we had a reason to do this there are a few obvious methods of achieving it. We can encourage it or we can force it. Some set synergy has tried to encourage it, but with largely no effect. Unless the game is preapred to be far more generous in this area it seems unlikely to work. So we are left with forcing people to. Now that is likely to be very unpopular right? Well, not necessarily. We can force people to do something by giving it away for free with something people want.
So going back to historical ship designs, warships have various weapon classes, but through most of it ships have turrets and tubes. You can't fire a 15" naval shell out of a torpedo tube, but that is okay, because they don't actually have to reduce the number of guns on a warship significantly to include torpedo tubes. They go in different parts.
So... my suggestion is that in considering future ship releases there is a simple fix to encourage more 'Star Trek' like weapon loadouts by giving new ships new slots. You can do this in a lot of ways, but the tail gun is one model already in game where the slot is essentially free but limited. A new generation of ships called something like 'heavy ordnance vessels' could be released where they get a 'free' torpedo tube in the front, or even a specific torpedo to that class of ships. Rear facing mine racks could be incoroprated into some designs which alowed for only mines, and ordnace bays which could use either.
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This is really the root of the problem. Because a weapon slot can fit any single type of weapon within the restrictions of the weapon itself, it makes sense for players to pick one or the other because trying to equip both requires a splitting of tactical consoles, buffs and powers, and skill point spending. If we had some ship slots where only energy weapons could go and some where only torpedoes could go, it might encourage more mixing and would make more sense. Every ship obviously has torpedo tubes because every ship can use torpedoes, so why are the tubes unusable because I slotted all energy weapons when the two systems are obviously incompatible. Leaving some slots to be hybrid slots would allow tailoring of style, but a minimum of 1 of each type fore and aft could work (mines and torpedoes occupying the same slot requirement in the aft case). Players could still choose to specialize into energy weapons or torpedoes but at least there's more incentive to split the difference a bit.
Unfortunately, I can't imagine this ever really happening, the DPS min-maxers would cry bloody murder to have such an inefficient system be forced upon them and it would likely require a heavy rebuild of ship equipment slots in general.
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Torpedoes suffer heavily from shield resistances so you either gotta bypass then, overwhelm them, or negate them. All three of those tactics involves some planning and good piloting skills, knowing when and where to shoot.
So torpedoes are well used by those in the know or those with patience to use them, everyone else just assumes they are wasting their time as they don't have the patience to to properly learn how to use the things.
Sure, the consoles don't stack, but:
1) Energy weapons drain power. The drain lowers the effective damage, so there is a diminishing return.
2) Weapon buff powers often have shared cooldowns if they affect the same type of weapon. On a tactically focused ship, you will have more than enough BO ability slots to load multiple buffs - but you can't use them at the same time if they affect the same type of weapon.
In this regard, Torpedoes and Beams have the biggest benefit as "secondary" weapon. Both weapon types have potent buffs that affect only a single weapon or a single shot, so you only need one weapon of that type to get the most out of it. Beams have Beam Overload, an Torpedoes have Torpedo Spread or High Yield Torpedo (and theoretically now also Transport Warhead, but I don't think anyone is seriously using that).
The only "problem" is of course that many people love to fly Cruisers, and they usually don't have that many tactical slots, so they often don't have that many slots over.
But Escorts and Science Vessels have good reasons to use torpedoes.
Escorts simply because they have that many powers that it pays off to add a torpedo in the mix.
Science Vessels because they have to manage their energy levels and can't necessarily max out weapon power, and torpedoes lower the energy drain from weapons.
No need for a super Torp console
Unless of course they also make a Super Kinetic Resist console that can match.
As for ships having to equip certain weapons in certain slots.. not sure I like that.
Yet I can see your point about there being no incentive to make a ships loadout canonical.
The reason why mixed builds aren't popular IMO is that people will tend to follow the "best" builds. They'll look at the top DPS builds and follow that even though they won't be reaching such high numbers.
The main disadvantage of torps IMO are their travel speed and the innate resistance to kinetics from shields. Their travel speed makes it harder to land hits on higher DPS runs. Likewise, the kinetic resistance of shields make them more difficult to use with lower DPS runs where people have difficulties taking down shield facings.
I do not believe that forcing people to slot torps by setting hard points on a ship for that would work. I actually think doing so will only destroy torp builds since hard points for torps would mean limited torp slot options, and it would be far more efficient to simply skill for energy weapons and leave that torp on auto-fire normal shots.
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While the number of kinetic ships to pure energy builds found in PVE are currently small, more and more folks, like myself, have started making full and mostly torp builds, not just carrying 1 or 2 of them. Currently, my highest DPS ship IS a torp boat, so read into it what you'd like.
Whilst I understand the point, and I want to agree, this remains a fringe choice. Certainly there are sci low-wpn power torpedo build choices this is hardly any more 'Star Trek' than an total energy weapon configuration. I also have serious doubts that this would be genuinely better than running a pure beams configurationin the same ship and spamming the APB, BFAW, TT, rinse repeat, playstyle.
As someone else pointed out in here somewhere it is not that torpedoes don't work, or even that they are 'not good enough'. The problem is that they are not optimal.
I would love to hear from anyone who has broken the 30k barrier with a torpedo mounted fore and aft on this arrangament, and who feels genuinely this is delivering more DPS than having extra beams instead.
1) 1 fore slot reserved for torpedoes only.
2) 1 misc slot reserved for mines only.
3) Cruisers (and possibly sci vessels) would have a passive feature allowing them to fire torpedoes equipped in the torpedo slot at 250 degrees rather than 90.
if it's a question about what is optimal compared to what simply works then i would agree beams with faw and the like have an advantage. but that is only one way to play - cause as much damage as possible as quickly as possible. while this takes a certain amount of skill and expertise it is also the simplest of approaches when playing against a computer. its the brute force method or what i like to call the Romulan approach. there is nothing wrong with slowing the game down and playing in a more strategic way.
Would resolve some of the complaints, would it not?
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You are right, of course, but the knowledge that I am almost certainly reducing, or limiting your performance by doing this really sticks in my craw. Additionally, when I play with PuGs on ISA who commonly manage less DPS than the pets of a decent carrier I feel that performance of more 'natural' Star Trek layouts should perform better.
When it comes to the min-maxers and having mixed builds being forced upon them, I'd say "my deepest sympathies
The idea that "viable, just not optimal" just don't come anywhere near close to being right when adding torpedoes compromises a build as significantly as it does here. I say again, beams can keep first place, but is it asking too much for the other two to come in at a closer margin of 2nd and 3rd?
Fed - usually photons and quantums. If I can't fit both into my build, I choose one of the other.
KDF - photons
Romulan - Romulan Rep Hyper Plasma for the multi torpedoes and regular plasma for the rear. I like using both as they provide good DPS. Plus the regular plasma throws out a ton of small ones for a nice cloud like effect when it hits.
As for mines, I usually use those on my escorts types. Unless its my Breen ship. So I do use those as well.
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Sure they could do that, but do they need to? What if they would just turn the world from the BFAW fest it is to a Torpedo Spread fest? Is that really an improvement?
I think not.
First you need to establish torpedoes need a boost, and then you need to figure out what kind of boost and how much.
It's long overdue that STO got a correction, because the DPS inflation has gotten beyond ridiculous with people now claiming up to 200k DPS.
Originally Torpedoes supposed to be THE weapon to attack hulls with, but that stopped when energy weapons became far more effective doing the work. Nowdays Torpedos either got laughed at or regarded as spike weapons. Which the most famous is the Neutronic Torpedo, unless you got lucky with a high crit Tricobalt.
Alternatively you could replace this scaling mechanic, which is an intersting one, with a chance to penetrate shields altogether inversely proportionate to remaining shield strenth.
Either of these though, woud have profound effects on the way the game works currently as most of the 30k+ folk would be dead in a few seconds of ISA.
Torps not optimal for topping dps charts is only true if you chase dps in the map ISA. If one has a flexibility in maps, a full torp is superior to beams in certain maps. Considering that both dps leagues and parses have more than just ISA chart.
If I were to Guess, your torp build, which I would most likely outdps in ISA with my rom tac beam build, may already outdps my beam rom tac build in CCA.
In the current mechanics, the higher the shield effective HP the superior the Torps are to beams. Rather than changing the mechanics, why not first optimize what is currently available. play with Torps strengths rather than weaknesses, that's means bypassing shields where Torps are far superior than beams,is better than dealing direct damage to shields. There also of an issue with different maps, different difficulty. One can be playing mobs with 0 shield hp, or thousands of shield hp, while other maps have mobs having 2M+ shield hp.
Because if they do change that mechanics as you suggested and torp remains to be vastly superior in shield penetration mechanics, you end up with Overpowered Torps.
Another Idea though an Idea that would be shot down is limiting the of single energy type buffing consoles you can slot at a time based on the number of tact console slots. Though like i said this is very much a no go i am sure as it would impact the min-max extremely.
I do like the Idea of shields strength effecting the damage a torp can deal,or the effective resistance of the shield to the torp's damage. Though what if it was not based on the Shield's hp that determined how much of the torp's damage is reduced, but the shield power-level the ship has. This would make power draining more useful with torps as they would reduce the torp resistance of a ship by draining the ship's shield power. It also makes sense as really what would determine the strength of your shield bu the power you are pumping into it, and so by depleting or reducing the tartget's shield power levels would effectively make their shields weaker.
Hi. I'm @odenknight in game. I can state my rankings on whichever DPS League tables you want to reference, but ultimately, my ranking is irrelevant to addressing the issues at hand.
First off, I'd like to say that fixing the laundry list of bugs w/ torpedoes, including the major issue that robs torps of MOD damage beyond Mk XIV VR, would go a very long way into improving the quality of life for kinetics/projectiles.
Second, there have been some attempts to create a better situation for people who want to have a heterogeneous (or canon) build. The Command Tree Tier 1 Space attempted to make slotting a torpedo worthwhile, but, between the way the tree was designed, the performance of the Intel Tree at the time (aka STILL), and the point made above, it was relegated to torp boats attempting to shoe-horn a mechanic that wasn't designed for them into their builds. The same for Weapon System Synergy (T6 Vet Trait). Bugs notwithstanding, it is a very nice trait for anyone who wants to use torpedoes, but it requires energy weapons to use. The more energy weapons, the getter the chance that it will become active at a crucial time.
Third, the creation of the energy projectiles was an attempt to cater to the die-hards and followers in the "Energy Only" camp. These torpedoes initially were supposed to have drawbacks, but even those drawbacks were removed in an attempt to increase their appeal. The AP 'projectile' is a ball of energy boosted by AP Tac Consoles, Weapon Power, any +All Energy boosts (EPtW, Iconian, etc), any + All Damage boosts, Energy Skills, AND Projectile Skills, Concentrate Firepower, receives bonuses to Expose/Exploits (though it shouldn't?), and doesn't suffer from almost any of the drawbacks of either energy weapons (FBP doesn't work on it) or torpedoes (full damage potential to both shield and hull). It has also been demonstrated that if you can slot multiples of this weapon, the restriction that torpedoes face when attempting to fire more than one torpedo rapidly isn't in place with this weapon, demonstrating that the torpedo firing cd CAN be changed. This weapon has been designed to be as near perfect as possible to get the "Energy Only" crowd to use it, and calling it a torpedo is just "insulting" to the "purists" that exist within the Kinetic Kommunity.
Lets not even start about the new DOffs or Rep Trait (Omega Graviton Amplifier) that rely on a very high rate (aka beam RoF) of fire in order to proc, let alone be useful.
Kemocite has been, hands down, THE BEST thing for torpedo users, eclipsing the creation of the Neutronic & PEP torpedoes. Even then, it's still bugged w/ some torps depending on the firing mode. It double-procs under spread, and it fails to apply the debuff for some HY torps (still pending testing of the latest patch).
The points still stand that there are mechanics that are in place that COULD make projectiles better, but just aren't being utilized. If energy weapons are continuing to be favored in the frequency of buffs, functional mechanics, and new iterations, then lets fix the glaring bugs with projectiles and change the archaic mechanics that limit their functionality.
It's either that, or remove all Leech-like affects from the game
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Turning the Galaxy-X into a Torpedo Dreadnought & torpedo tutorial, with written torpedo guide.
"A good weapon and a great strategy will win you many battles." - Marshall
I knew using Kinetics would be playing the game on hard mode, but what I didn't realize was how bad the deck is stacked against Kinetics.