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roadrunner74
Member Posts: 5 Arc User
in The Academy
I'm new to this game. Actually new to gaming period just started playing because i love star trek. I don't understand the difference between the different ship weapons and their sub categories. can someone please point me somewhere that i can learn how to play this game please
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Truthfully the differences in the weapons really comes down to a whole lot of player preference in terms of what sort of effect you want to impose on your enemies... or in some people's cases which color of light-show you prefer to watch while playing the game.
Generally speaking however the different types of weapons can be categorized as follows:
Types of Energy Weapons
I am not going to go into the types of Torpedo's or Mines that exist other than to say that Quantum Torpedo's are generally the all around best Torpedo's unless you are a Romulan, in which case Plasma is clearly superior, or unless you are running some specialty Torpedo such as the Thermionic Torpedo's... I also don't want to really discuss the various types of Hybrid Energy Weapons as there are a large number of them... and there are even more types of Unique Energy Weapons that don't conform to any of the Basic Energy Types listed above. I especially don't want to talk about the Hybrid or Unique Energy Weapons because only a small number of them are easily accessible by the average new player without spending inordinate amounts of REAL WORLD MONEY on the various types of Lock Boxes... Not everyone is rich enough to continuously funnel money into those things that way...
That said the above list should help you get started in your quest to build a better Starship!
Beam Arrays: Mounted fore and aft, they have a 250-degree field of fire, which means that you can mount them and then perform a broadside attack on your enemies with your forward and aft arrays able to hit the target at the same time if they are at your 2-4 o'clock or 8-10 o'clock position (as opposed to facing the enemy head-on)
Dual Beam Banks: Mounted fore only, they have a 90-degree field of fire, but deal more damage than Beam Arrays. If you prefer to face your enemy, then use only these as your forward beams instead of Arrays.
Both types of Beam weapon use the Beam Overload (single big high-damaging blast attack) or Beam Rapid Fire (shoots everything near you) abilities.
Cannons come in not just two but four types:
Turrets can be mounted fore or aft (but are most useful aft) and have a 360-degree field of fire.
Single Cannons (or simply "Cannons"): Mounted fore only, they have a 180-degree field of fire. They deal more damage than Turrets, but less than Dual or Dual Heavy Cannons.
Dual Cannons: Mounted fore only, they have a narrow 45-degree field of fire, but deal more damage than Single Cannons. You will need to maneuver in order to keep facing toward your target. Only Tactically-oriented ships (Escorts/Battlecruisers/Raiders) can mount these--most Science ships and Cruisers that are not "Battle" cruisers can not.
Dual Heavy Cannons: Mounted fore only, these have a comparable field of fire to Dual Cannons, but fire in less frequent, heavier bursts, and have an innate 10% Critical Severity bonus. The majority of players prefer these over Dual Cannons because of their higher damage-per-time output despite the lower rate of fire. They can be mounted by any ship that can mount Dual Cannons.
All Cannon types use the Cannon Rapid Fire (deals increase damage output for 10 seconds) or Scatter Volley (shoots multiple enemies in a cone centered around your current target if they are within your cannons' field of fire) abilities.
In general, you want to choose either Beams or Cannons as your preferred weapon type for a given ship. Your choice of ship may dictate this choice, since only some ships can use Dual/Dual Heavy Cannons, and those which can do so usually get better damage output by doing it. You then want to decide whether you want to use the wider-angle weapons or the harder-hitting narrower-angle weapons--usually a slower-turning ship benefits more from the wider-angle weapons while a faster-turning ship can do more damage with the narrower-angle ones.
I would like to make a notation... Dreadnought Cruisers can in fact equip Dual and Heavy Cannons, however they are all categorically too massive and slow in maneuvering to truly be categorized as "Battle Cruisers."
To put this into a comparison using modern Naval Terminology, a Dreadnought is roughly equivalent to a Supercarrier, the smallest of the currently commissioned ships of this type weighs in at 1093 feet long, and 100,020 Metric Tons.
Whereas a Battle Cruiser would roughly be the equivalent to a Fleet Carrier, the largest of the commissioned models weighing in at around 36,500 tons...
Welcome!
there are 3 primary types of weapons:
beams, cannons, and projectile.
with a few exceptions at high levels, these weapons have "arcs" (really, a 3-d cone) of fire that ranges from full 360 (can hit anything anywhere in 10k of you) down to very narrow (45 degrees, I think is smallest), and this is the part that has an exception, the wider the arc, the less damage it does. So a ship with all turrets does less damage than a ship with dual beam banks, all other stuff being equal. Cannons do less damage the farther away you get, at an alarming rate, and are generally harder to use (cannon, dual cannon, turrets in this class). Beams are more forgiving and more commonly used and probably better for new players. For now, use projectiles sparingly to supplement your other weapons ... one mine launcher and 1 torp max, preferably only zero or one of them total until you get to ships with more weapon slots.
Also weapons have a damage type. For the most part this is all equally good, but you want to pick ONE and use it so all your tactical consoles boost all your weapons. Example: phaser.
As for playing the game -- its a very open game with tons of styles. But for ship side play, you want to learn early on to use your bridge officer skills and visit the trainer in your main city to beef those up. Things like tactical team, which moves your shields to where they are needed most, or fire at will (shoot everything around you with beams), or hazard emitters (remove things that are damaging you over time & heals your hull) are good starters, but study them all, most have a place in some build. Experiment! Try the various weapon types, try the various officer skills, try a couple of different kinds of ships as you level up, etc.
Ground is important too esp for the story arc play for a first timer. You want to learn about ground combat.
One thing that makes game much better for both ground and space: options, auto fire -- set it to toggle, never cancel. You will shoot constantly as long as you keep targeting enemy. Tab targets next enemy, by the way. Learn your keys, things like targeting are much easier with keys than mouse in some circumstances, and mouse is slow and awkward when trying to fight large groups.
It takes a while to learn to play. One thing that gets players early on are slow moving hard hitting enemy torpedos --- you can shoot them down or use a skill like gravity well or tractor beam repulsors to get rid of them, or even a mine launcher if you move behind your mines. This barely gets you started, but its some of the key points to think about for today. Read guides and wiki and then try stuff in game to see if it works for you.
for a new player in STO i'd say just go and enjoy the story. the more you progress the more you will understand and even than it'll be a huge library of information. Don't worry so much about this stuff. just a couple of pointers to start...
-there are a couple of different energy types that each do their own kind of extra damage.. disabling, shield, resistance debuff, burn and so on.. ignore it till you get to level 50.
-any and all items in game can have modifiers. these are way too numerous to sum up. dis acc arc pen crtd you name it.. don't worry and ignore till level 50.
-don't mix weapon types. so no disruptor + tetryon weaponry. (more important the higher you level up)
-try to stick to one of 2 energy weapon types.. either go cannons or go beams of the same energy type.
-for you tactical console slots on your ship use either beam energy damage bonus or the specific tac console for the weapon energy type you've chosen. example would be antiproton mag regulator for anti proton energy weapons.
-1 more thing i'd say could be very helpfull... when flying your ship and you're in system space check the power info bar on your screen. there is an option there top right of the image/icon to go to a 1 2 or 3.. pick number 3 and set weapons to full power and change back to view 1. this helps a lot with weapon power.
also eventually join a fleet there are a bunch of people who help out when they can.
enjoy!
Okay - you'll see those in upgraded rarities of weapons (green, blue, purple, gold, in order of rarity and the number of modfiiers).
Those modifiers indicate bonuses - if you mouse over the weapon, like on CrtD, you'll see like '+20 percent critical severity' - this indicates that critical hits hit harder than normal critical hits from that weapon. Those are per-weapon.
The mark of the weapon determines the base damage, so a Mk XII without modifiers will probably be more effective than a MK II with lots of modifiers (this isn't getting into the upgrade system) -
Here's the wiki's modifier list:
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
Hi, welcome to STO. In addition to the good advice provided in this thread, I've written a (long, sorry!) guide to help new players. It can be found here: http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1175643/early-decisions-ultimate-newbies-new-players-guide/p1