Tactical consoles (+x% Phaser/Disruptor/Beam/.. damage) broken - Only +5% instead of +37.5% (or x%)

fced

Hello,
I notified tactical consoles are broken on PS4, yesterday we tried to calculate how much real damages those consoles add to our weapons.
We removed everything, our ships and characters was empty with only one Phaser beam(no starship traits, no space trait, no consoles, no engine, shield, nothing, ship empty).

Then we measured the phaser damage in Ship & Crew screen... Then we added one tactical console (MK XII, MX VI), and we notified one terrible thing, really terrible !!!

Whatever the console MK is, whatever the quality is (Epic, Purple, Blue, Green, or white), those consoles add only +5% to our phaser weapon damages....

You really should fix this, because where is the point to have different console level (MK I,II,III,IV, V,V1, .., MKXIV), and console quality (Common, Uncommon, Rare, Very Rare, Epic) if all those different console add only +5% to our weapon ???

So I can affirm : Tactical consoles are broken on PS4...

Please STO Fans, can you confirm my Maths on XBOX and PC, we were 3 different players, with different levels, and we all got the same result... Epic MKXIV Tactical console, or Green MKVI Tactical console add only 5% to our ship weapon !!

tunebreaker

No, they are not bugged.

Most likely you fell into the common trap - namely believing that items in STO always give the exactly the same bonus as advertised, visibly. Actually, the math between STO damage boosts is pretty complicated, and situations just like yours are very common.

What happens is what is commonly called "damage boost saturation", or something similar. Meaning that every added dmg boost in the same damage category gives smaller final return.

Let's look at the formula that shows how weapon damage in STO is calculated.

[Dmg] = [Base] * (([WpnPwr]+100)/200) * (1+∑[Cat 1]) * (1+∑[Cat 2]) * (1+Π[Final])

where ∑ means sum (you add (+) all the boosts together) and Π means product (you multiply (*) all the boosts).

Tactical consoles fall into Cat 1/Set A category. That means that the 37.5% bonus is only applied to the (1+∑[A]) bracket. If that would be your only damage bonus to the weapon, you'd see exactly that 37.5% bonus, comparing tooltips with and without that console.
However, mk XIV weapon already has innate 230% Cat 1 buff, just because it's mk XIV. Every non-[dmg] modifier gives you additional 2.5% Cat 1 per modifier. Just by being level 30+ you have 50% Cat 1 dmg from Starship Weapons Training. You might also have 50% Cat 1 from Energy Weapons Training, from skilltree, as well as 2% from accolade.

So even without any piece of equipment or trait equipped, and even without any points in skilltree (to make this super simplified), you'd have 290% Cat 1 bonus already on a mk XIV epic weapon that has no [dmg] modifiers (that's assuming you're level 30+).
Assuming weapon power 100, that would already put your beam array damage to...

200*(1+2.3+0.5+(0.025*4))=780

Now let's add a tac console on top of that.

200*(1+2.3+0.5+(0.025*4)+0.375)=855

So, as you can see, even though you add a tactical console that gives you 37.5% cat1 damage bonus (and it does, it's all fair and square in the formula), your tooltip value will actually only change roughly 9%.

You only seeing a 5% change tells that you have even more Cat 1 damage boosts than I used in this example.

fced

Thankyou for your explanation, I am a bit lost with all that maths ^^, and need to think about it with clear head but that explanation clear a lot of things (turn rate and engineering consoles included)...
If I resume correctly and want to see if console are not broken, I just have to reset all my skills, clear my entire ship, and character by removing everything like I have done, and test again the damages, with and without console ? I will do this as soon I will get my last skill points (lv50 if I am correct)...

You are right about one thing, all my characters have Energy and Projectile weapon training (tactical, science and Engineering characters)

About Cat 1 boosts, not sure about it, because I was lv 26 with a science toon (4 points in tactical Energy+Projectile weapon training, 2 points in Improved targeting expertise, 4 pts in Tac weapon amplification, nothing more), and the MKV6 +15% Phaser returned me +5% phaser damage... About accolades, I was not aware they could give something interesting (my toon is really new, 3 days old - to give you an idea I am now in the middle of Freedom episode...)

Can we see somewhere which skills fall in cat1 ? I can imagine any skill or trait which give weapon damage it cat 1..

tunebreaker

fced wrote: »

Thankyou for your explanation, I am a bit lost with all that maths ^^, and need to think about it with clear head but that explanation clear a lot of things (turn rate and engineering consoles included)...
If I resume correctly and want to see if console are not broken, I just have to reset all my skills, clear my entire ship, and character by removing everything like I have done, and test again the damages, with and without console ? I will do this as soon I will get my last skill points (lv50 if I am correct)...

You are right about one thing, all my characters have Energy and Projectile weapon training (tactical, science and Engineering characters)

About Cat 1 boosts, not sure about it, because I was lv 26 with a science toon (4 points in tactical Energy+Projectile weapon training, 2 points in Improved targeting expertise, 4 pts in Tac weapon amplification, nothing more), and the MKV6 +15% Phaser returned me +5% phaser damage... About accolades, I was not aware they could give something interesting (my toon is really new, 3 days old - to give you an idea I am now in the middle of Freedom episode...)

Can we see somewhere which skills fall in cat1 ? I can imagine any skill or trait which give weapon damage it cat 1..

Those links are very helpful. First one also lists pretty much everything (and what's missing will be added soon) that gives +dmg and explains to which category they belong.
https://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/wiki/math/damage_categories
https://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/wiki/math/damage_formulas