Yes beams have no gcd, you can fire all the ones you have equipped together.
Yes plasma high yield are slow and shoot-able but their regular torpedoes are not, they are just like other torpedoes
And yes the consoles do stack.
Orxlayer -
just retested 3 heavys, they do still work, albeit at the whim of lag, 1 second in a 3 second duration isn't actually all that noticable, but it still works.
Embsers of satin -
Yes the +15 plasma projectiles would be better to use if you have plasma torpedoes equipped however make sure its plasma projectiles its buffing (ambienvelope plasma console) and not the energy weapons plasma its buffing (plasma infuser) as they are separate stats.
I dunno man. Dont get me wrong id like it to work considering with all my dmg buffs my rapid fire canons do ~2.9k dps. But Ive tested it for about half hour and it looks to me that when using 2 heavys the 1 cools down just as the last 1 is done fireing just as using 2 normal dual cannons. Anyone else try it out. Maybe its just lag, but it seems to me like the 3rd heavy is just sitting there.
But i see what ur saing tho about the cooldowns. Technically if ur right and they go on a 3 sec cd with a 1 sec global, then yeh u should be able to equip 3. first cannon fires (3sec cd)... 2nd fires ( 3sec cd) , 1st canon has 2 sec cd left ... 3rd cannon fires (3 sec cd) , 2nd cannon (2 sec cd left) and first should be cooldowned rdy to fire again. In theory if indeed the cooldowns are corect it SHOULD work, but when i tested it it seems that the cooldowns on the heavys arent 3 sec more like 2 (+ .2 sec for lag or wtv). Cryptic needs to fix these.
I dont mind running 2 front cannons and 2 beam banks (3 would be nicer ), but id like an official response.
personally I get the third one firing just right but if in doubt or having trouble getting it to fire right (only takes a half second delay on weapons firing for third one to be useless) stick with 2 duals.
a single heavy definitly has a 3 second cooldown but strange things happen when you put more on and spam the spacebar
Guys a question whether the info here or ingame is wrong:
Plasma weapons state ingame (at least the cannons looked at) they add the dot no matter what. No chance to apply or anything, they apply their dot-damage
Here stands there is a chance they do this. Which is correct?
the devs stated its a chance, tooltips are slightly broken, hence why disruptors didn't show any proc until they were finally fixed and why some tooltips are still slightly off (polarons - - 25 for example...)
If they have in fact changed this since beta I will be happy to update the thread
Cryptic is infamous for tooltips that leave as many questions as they answer. Panda has a point though, the plasma weapons (space at least) say the DoT is not a proc (think it says XX plasma damage over X seconds) but it wouldn't surprise me if it was a proc.
It was nice to see them recently change weapon tooltips to include the secondary functions of the types (i.e. chance to disable random system for phasers and so forth).
Can multiple dots stack or is there always only 1 active?
For example I use several plasma beams/cannons, can I activate 2 or more simultaneous plasma dots?
Well this point was brought up in beta and devs replied that the same dot will not stack but refresh but different ones will stack.
For example the plasma beam dot will stack with the torpedo plasma dot.
But the beam dot if applied again will refresh the dot.
What wasn't made clear is if the beam and cannon dot are counted as the same (both being energy weapons) or whether the same dot from different people stacked or not (say 2 people using beams)
At Ltc. Commander 8 it seems to be the right time to figure out which beam weapon is best in the late game regarding the individual playstyle. I prefer beam arrays, but I cant decide wheter it should be phaser or plasma beam arrays. Your comments are highly appreciated. What are the differences between those two options?
What I figured out in this thread:
- Phasers have a random chance to temporarily knock out an enemys system.
- Plasma Beams seem to have a chance to light a fire onboard the enemies ship.
So far, the fire sounds better . Maybe more DPS. Lets Go Plasma!!! Hmm, maybe not...
Here are the Plasma Cons I figured out:
- You can specialize by your skills at captain level - one later than with phaser beams.
- I takes 300 skill points per level - 100 more than with phasers.
- You benefit later.
What do you think? Did I foregt something?
And one further question: Does the plasma fire directly yields hull damage?
Last PVP ground match Klingons complained about my Split Beam Distruptor Rifle,cause it often made mega-damage and "Vaporized" the Enemys.They said that this happens when a stunned person gets hit by a Disruptor Special Attack,is that true??
plasma are good as long as you don't mind paying a little extra for the skill boost.
The DoT is hull damage only.
And weedus all ground weapons can vaporize using the expose/exploit attack system. Once an enemy is exposed (they will have a big orange circle on them and usually also get stunned) use an exploit attack on them, this will do huge damage and if it kills them, they vaporize.
Would just like to point out that the original post regarding cannons has been updated since the last few patches after some more tests.
I posted this over in the Escort forums first, but here's a re-post of the testing I did about Dual Cannons versus Dual Heavy Cannons
]Ive done some extensive testing of the Dual Cannon (DC) vs Dual Heavy Cannon (DHC) debate.
First, setup info. Im using a joystick with JoytoKey converting the inputs to keyboard inputs for STO. I have the trigger mapped to the spacebar; Ive tried a few different repeat rates. Initially, I tried 10/sec but found that sometimes interfere with other controls. For most of the testing here, I used 4/sec, but I finally settled on 5/sec.
For my initial testing I used one Plasma DC Mk IV and one Plasma DHC Mk IV. Since Im specced pretty heavily into Escorts and Cannons, these combined with my +Plasma Tactical consoles was causing enough DPS to make testing difficult. When I started doing multiple cannon sets, I bought some Disruptor DC I and Disruptor DHC I. For all tests, I used an unshielded target (The Borg Sphere in Pilatus until it accidentally popped during testing, then a turret).
Bottom Line up Front: We were all wrong about the fire rate of DCs. They fire at essentially exactly the same rate as DHCs. How can this be? We all assumed that DCs take only one second to do their firing; it actually takes 2 seconds for the DC to finish firing. This missing second is how the DPS of the DC and DHC is the same despite the longer pause for DHC between shots.
I figured this out by testing the individual cannons. I used a turret that was shooting at me (So I was at red alert). I started my watch when I squeezed the trigger, hit the lap timer every time the cannon fired and recorded 10 full cycles of the cannon. Through repeated tests, both the DC and the DHC averaged 3.5 seconds per cycle. I havent figured out where the other 0.5 second comes from My JoytoKey was hitting the spacebar every 0.25 seconds.
This is supported by the tooltip DPS stats. For the DC, the DPS is 1.3333 (4/3) times the base damage. For the DHC, the DPS is 0.6667 (2/3) of the base damage. In other words, the DPS assumes 3 seconds between activations and either 4 or 2 hits.
I also did some extensive DPS testing. I did a bunch of tests where I held the trigger for 12 seconds, then 21 seconds (for a bunch more tests) and recorded the individual shot damages from the single installed cannon. I found the the DC and DHC, barring abnormal numbers of criticals (One test my DHC got 7 criticals in 10 shots) the difference in damage between two sets of tests was <1%.
So, a single DC does the same damage as a single DHC in other words, the tooltip is correct that the two cannon types are matched.
I also tested Cannon: Rapid Fire. The tooltip says the DC gets an 18.2% advantage to DPS over the DHC once C:RF is activated. For that test, I set a 5 second countdown followed by a 13 second countdown. With two seconds left on the first countdown, I activated C:RF. When my watch beeped the first time, I squeezed the trigger and held it until it beeped at the end. In 13 seconds, the DC got 20 hits, the DHC got 10 hits. The average damage for numerous tests again ended up being equal. So the tooltip is WRONG once you activate C:RF on the DPS; it indicated that the per-shot damage remains exactly 1:2, which is correct.
The next step was to test multiple cannons at the same time. The setup was the same as timing a single cannon above, except I was using 5 spacebars/sec (0.2 seconds each). The average time for the twin DCs was 3.55 seconds for same cannon refire. For the DHCs, the average for same cannon refire was 3.54 seconds. So essentially, two cannons are each firing at the same speed as one cannon in other words twice the DPS.
But when I went to three cannons, the story changed. The DC same cannon refire rate went to 4.48 seconds. The DHC same cannon refire rate was 4.48 seconds. In other words, 3 of EITHER cannon results in the SAME timing hit. What does that extra second mean to your DPS? The third gun really only adds 1/3 of its DPS to the fight when compared to 2 guns.
Finally, I tested 3 guns with C:RF. This is where things got messed up. First off, C:RF is NOT supposed to affect the refire rate. But it does. The DHC same gun refire went to 4.40 seconds. The DC Same gun refire rate went wacky. I couldnt get a consistent three gun fire. What I mean is that except for the DCs under C:RF, the guns fired in the same order every time. With DCs and C:RF, the guns fired in a random order. To measure the net result, I instead measure the time between EVERY shot. This came out to be 1.568 seconds which equates to a same gun refire rate of 4.70 seconds.
Overall Bottom Line: Except for the wacky performance of the Triple DC setup under C:RF, the two types of cannons are essentially identical. If you are going to run three cannons, Id recommend going with the DHCs since they were more consistent under C:RF. However, unless you cant find a turret or beam that gives you at least 35% of your single cannon DPS, I wouldnt run three cannons at all. Since the base DPS of a Plasma Turret IV is 83 and the base DPS of a Plasma DHC IV is 185 (Turret = 45% of cannon), the turret would be a better third front gun; consideration could also be given to a dual beam up front (as previously discussed) unless it pulls your weapon power down too far.
I just wanted to thank all of the posters in this thread. Thanks for taking the time to do the research and share it with all of us. I know I really appreciate it.
EVIL Proud Capt. of the NCC-93949 U.S.S. Fury and I.K.S. Scamp
This thread has gotten pretty long, and if the answer to this has already been posted, sorry.
I notice from my tooltips, that the higher my weapons energy setting the higher the dps for weapon. Since I run a science class ship utilizing phaser beam arrays, what I'm wondering is this.... Is there a point where when broadsiding that an additional array has a negligible impact? Since the additional array would be dropping your energy quicker, thereby decreasing the dps of all arrays... Is there a point where firing array x no longer really helps, and in fact drops the energy too quickly?
I'm currently an LC8, utilizing forward and aft phaser arrays, an aft turrent, and a forward quantum torpedo launcher. So when I hit Commander, I'll be wondering if adding another forward array won't really help and whether I'd be better off adding another torpedo launcher. Or a multiude of other possible weapons loadouts. If it matters for any of the theorycrafters here, I current run with an 85 weapon power setting, and all weapons are currently Mk IVs.
if your looking at dps wise, then yes definitely and thats the point where your ship cannot regenerate the power between shots, EPS flow regulators and staggered group firing can help but will never totally eliminate it. this will kill your burst damage.
If its burst damage, then no, another beam in a burst fire will always add more damage, granted each one adds less than the last but its still more damage in your burst, but that method kills your dps.
nice post about the DC and DHC for DPS and rate of fire, but my question is what the power drain on the weapon systems between the two?
Does the DC drain less then the DHC's? and if so then it stands with the same DPS and rate of fire with C:RF then the DC would ber better to stain HIGH DPS over a longer period of time ?
Well, being an escort player myself (and stuck in a BoP) since open beta, and having used DHC's and DC's myself, i can say this with certainty: They both make for okay damage dealers, but there's a serious difference in usage.
Dual Cannons.
Best usage: Sustained shots/rapid fire, charging an enemy line whilst firing two of these in rapid succession (even with a global cooldown, having 2 means always firing 1 whilst the other cools down) will cause massive damage, you can use this as you enter the 10km range, and cruisers are pure suckers for this, overwhelming shields with rapid fire and dealing massive hull damage on larger ships seems to be the best use for these.
The problem: If you're targeted, be prepared to break off with little chance to do damage with those rapid fires. You need to stay in range for the entire volley to hit, which means flying in a straight line or going slower than usual. It means you have a limited time to act, and it's harder to hit small, agile targets.
Heavy dual Cannons.
Best usage: Burst shots/hitting where it hurts, chasing down a ship and only having to fire twice to deal the most damage is good for heavy cannons. Fitting these babies can bag you an escort/science/bird of prey, especially when they're flying around crazily. This sort of weapon is best used on targets with weak shields, where heavy hits will take it out for your torpedoes.
The problem: As you've figured the playstyle is the exact opposite. As such, usage against larger vessels is restricted at best. I've seen a Bird of Prey with heavy cannons just get shredded by a cruiser i nearly killed with no damage to myself. (didn't feel like feeding his teammates a kill so i fled when his three buddies arrived.) Heavy cannons can't deal enough constant damage to lower shields properly. they don't fire fast like regular duals, but deal heavy damage. you could call these the 'mini torpedoes'. They're faster than torpedoes, yet much slower than dual cannons and it shows too:
My escort couldn't finish a fleeing BoP, but someone with heavy duals can, conversely i can rip a battleship to shreds, whilst someone with heavy duals would have a hard time keeping up with shield regen.
Ships can have different resistances to different damage types. There also seems to be some other subtle side-effects to the different types:
Space energy types:
Phaser: Chance to disable a random subsystem
Disruptor: Chance to debuff damage resistance
Plasma: Chance to proc a fire based DoT
Tetryon: Chance to proc Shield damage
Polaron: Chance to drain power from all subsystems
Anti-Proton: Bonus Crit damage
Also Ground based damage types:
Phaser: Chance to stun
Disruptor: Chance to debuff damage resistances
Plasma: Chance to proc fire based DoT
Tetryon: Chance to proc Shield damage
Polaron: Chance to proc weapon disable
Anti-Proton: Bonus Crit damage
Projectile:
Photon: Less damage but faster fire rate. Regular boff effect.
Quantum: More damage but slow fire rate. Regular boff effect.
Plasma: medium damage with a chance to apply a DoT that ignores shields (decent against both unshielded and shielded targets). Plasma's version of High Yield fires a Plasma Ball that can be targetted and shot down.
Transphasic - low damage, but more of it penetrates shields (very good against shielded targets, mediocre against unshielded targets). Comes with standard Boff powers.
Chroniton - can slow down enemies. (nice for making enemies' weakened shields harder to protect, or as a rear launcher to use when running away). Comes with standard Boff powers.
Tricobalt - very high damage, and a short disable effect (stops target from using any powers for a moment). has a very long cooldown and doesn't get modified by Boff powers.
Quick question, my tooltip for anti proton weapons mentions it's special is bypassing shields ocassionally... Has this been confirmed as its proc, or is it really just a higher crit chance?
Not sure, the tooltip states one thing but no proc is stated in the lower info like other weapons and the only information from official sources about procs was from beta and that was that it will be the crit chance.
If someone tests and find some proof that its otherwise I have no problem changing it.
I see Tetryons have a -80 shield proc. I suspect that at a 2.5% chance to proc, the proc in fact lowers the shield power setting by 80%, rather than doing 80 extra shield damage as that is a very small amount when facing an 8,000 HP shield.
I see Tetryons have a -80 shield proc. I suspect that at a 2.5% chance to proc, the proc in fact lowers the shield power setting by 80%, rather than doing 80 extra shield damage as that is a very small amount when facing an 8,000 HP shield.
Yes, it's the same chance as the other energy type procs, but no, it's 80 damage to all facings (so 320 damage in total), not a reduction in shield power.
Yes, it's the same chance as the other energy type procs, but no, it's 80 damage to all facings (so 320 damage in total), not a reduction in shield power.
Really? That makes the proc pretty useless on higher levels where as mentioned, you're facing 8.000 or stronger shields. Esp. compared to Phasers' proc to take down an entire system (so it could be the shields - all of them, or at least the facing that's been hit).
Yes, it's the same chance as the other energy type procs, but no, it's 80 damage to all facings (so 320 damage in total), not a reduction in shield power.
Really? That makes the proc pretty useless on higher levels where as mentioned, you're facing 8.000 or stronger shields. Esp. compared to Phasers' proc to take down an entire system (so it could be the shields - all of them, or at least the facing that's been hit).
If indeed it only does 80 damage to all shield facings on a 2.5% proc, I would probably choose phasers for skillpoint savings.
I have a few questions still after reading all the above posts.
I have defiant class escort with 3 heavy cannons and 2 turrets (and one torp).
I have 3 "prefire chamber" tactical consoles that add +15 cannon weapons each (I read earlier that they stack).
1. 3x(+15) = +45 cannons, but what exactly does that mean. Does every cannon shot land with +45 damage, meaning that a 180 damage plasma cannon now becomes a 225 damage plasma cannon?
2. If the +45 is added to damage on each volley, then is it preferred to have normal dual cannons instead of dual heavy cannons? Although dual cannons have half the damge , but twice the fire rate (making dps normaly the same as dual heavy) having +45 dmg bonus applied each volley would mean that the bonus is added twice as often for dual cannons vs dual heavy cannons, giving more dps to the dual cannons.
3. I have read a lot of posts stating that the 3rd heavy cannon (or dual cannon) only gets 1/3 of its normal dps due to the overlapping cooldown times with the other 3 heavy cannons. If that is the case, what is the preferred configuration for escorts with 4 weapons in front and 2 int eh back? I plan to keep using 2 turrets in the back to add to my head-on dps, and one torp in front for shield-down dps, but what abou tthe other 3 slots? My choices seem to be:
- 3 dual heavy cannons
- 2 dual heavy cannons and a front turret
- 2 dual heavy cannons and a front beam weapon.
I have a few questions still after reading all the above posts.
I have defiant class escort with 3 heavy cannons and 2 turrets (and one torp).
I have 3 "prefire chamber" tactical consoles that add +15 cannon weapons each (I read earlier that they stack).
1. 3x(+15) = +45 cannons, but what exactly does that mean. Does every cannon shot land with +45 damage, meaning that a 180 damage plasma cannon now becomes a 225 damage plasma cannon?
2. If the +45 is added to damage on each volley, then is it preferred to have normal dual cannons instead of dual heavy cannons? Although dual cannons have half the damge , but twice the fire rate (making dps normaly the same as dual heavy) having +45 dmg bonus applied each volley would mean that the bonus is added twice as often for dual cannons vs dual heavy cannons, giving more dps to the dual cannons.
See the Starship Weapons Overview link in my sig for details of how damage modifiers appear to work (you want the Damage Modifiers section of the article).
3. I have read a lot of posts stating that the 3rd heavy cannon (or dual cannon) only gets 1/3 of its normal dps due to the overlapping cooldown times with the other 3 heavy cannons. If that is the case, what is the preferred configuration for escorts with 4 weapons in front and 2 int eh back? I plan to keep using 2 turrets in the back to add to my head-on dps, and one torp in front for shield-down dps, but what abou tthe other 3 slots? My choices seem to be:
- 3 dual heavy cannons
- 2 dual heavy cannons and a front turret
- 2 dual heavy cannons and a front beam weapon.
Personally, I would try both 2 Dual/Dual Heavy + 2 torps and 2 Dual/Dual Heavy, 1 Dual Beam Bank and 1 torp and see how you find them.
Comments
I dunno man. Dont get me wrong id like it to work considering with all my dmg buffs my rapid fire canons do ~2.9k dps. But Ive tested it for about half hour and it looks to me that when using 2 heavys the 1 cools down just as the last 1 is done fireing just as using 2 normal dual cannons. Anyone else try it out. Maybe its just lag, but it seems to me like the 3rd heavy is just sitting there.
But i see what ur saing tho about the cooldowns. Technically if ur right and they go on a 3 sec cd with a 1 sec global, then yeh u should be able to equip 3. first cannon fires (3sec cd)... 2nd fires ( 3sec cd) , 1st canon has 2 sec cd left ... 3rd cannon fires (3 sec cd) , 2nd cannon (2 sec cd left) and first should be cooldowned rdy to fire again. In theory if indeed the cooldowns are corect it SHOULD work, but when i tested it it seems that the cooldowns on the heavys arent 3 sec more like 2 (+ .2 sec for lag or wtv). Cryptic needs to fix these.
I dont mind running 2 front cannons and 2 beam banks (3 would be nicer
a single heavy definitly has a 3 second cooldown but strange things happen when you put more on and spam the spacebar
Plasma weapons state ingame (at least the cannons looked at) they add the dot no matter what. No chance to apply or anything, they apply their dot-damage
Here stands there is a chance they do this. Which is correct?
If they have in fact changed this since beta I will be happy to update the thread
It was nice to see them recently change weapon tooltips to include the secondary functions of the types (i.e. chance to disable random system for phasers and so forth).
Can multiple dots stack or is there always only 1 active?
For example I use several plasma beams/cannons, can I activate 2 or more simultaneous plasma dots?
For example the plasma beam dot will stack with the torpedo plasma dot.
But the beam dot if applied again will refresh the dot.
What wasn't made clear is if the beam and cannon dot are counted as the same (both being energy weapons) or whether the same dot from different people stacked or not (say 2 people using beams)
There is a wonderful maneuver from Star Fleet Command 2 called the 'Gorn Anchor'. Full tractor beams and plasma torps.
Imagine a 7 foot lizard grabbing you by the collar and slapping you in the face over and over and over and over and......well, it hurts.
What I figured out in this thread:
- Phasers have a random chance to temporarily knock out an enemys system.
- Plasma Beams seem to have a chance to light a fire onboard the enemies ship.
So far, the fire sounds better
Here are the Plasma Cons I figured out:
- You can specialize by your skills at captain level - one later than with phaser beams.
- I takes 300 skill points per level - 100 more than with phasers.
- You benefit later.
What do you think? Did I foregt something?
And one further question: Does the plasma fire directly yields hull damage?
Does Disruptors vaporize stunned Enemys??
The DoT is hull damage only.
And weedus all ground weapons can vaporize using the expose/exploit attack system. Once an enemy is exposed (they will have a big orange circle on them and usually also get stunned) use an exploit attack on them, this will do huge damage and if it kills them, they vaporize.
Would just like to point out that the original post regarding cannons has been updated since the last few patches after some more tests.
]Ive done some extensive testing of the Dual Cannon (DC) vs Dual Heavy Cannon (DHC) debate.
First, setup info. Im using a joystick with JoytoKey converting the inputs to keyboard inputs for STO. I have the trigger mapped to the spacebar; Ive tried a few different repeat rates. Initially, I tried 10/sec but found that sometimes interfere with other controls. For most of the testing here, I used 4/sec, but I finally settled on 5/sec.
For my initial testing I used one Plasma DC Mk IV and one Plasma DHC Mk IV. Since Im specced pretty heavily into Escorts and Cannons, these combined with my +Plasma Tactical consoles was causing enough DPS to make testing difficult. When I started doing multiple cannon sets, I bought some Disruptor DC I and Disruptor DHC I. For all tests, I used an unshielded target (The Borg Sphere in Pilatus until it accidentally popped during testing, then a turret).
Bottom Line up Front: We were all wrong about the fire rate of DCs. They fire at essentially exactly the same rate as DHCs. How can this be? We all assumed that DCs take only one second to do their firing; it actually takes 2 seconds for the DC to finish firing. This missing second is how the DPS of the DC and DHC is the same despite the longer pause for DHC between shots.
I figured this out by testing the individual cannons. I used a turret that was shooting at me (So I was at red alert). I started my watch when I squeezed the trigger, hit the lap timer every time the cannon fired and recorded 10 full cycles of the cannon. Through repeated tests, both the DC and the DHC averaged 3.5 seconds per cycle. I havent figured out where the other 0.5 second comes from My JoytoKey was hitting the spacebar every 0.25 seconds.
This is supported by the tooltip DPS stats. For the DC, the DPS is 1.3333 (4/3) times the base damage. For the DHC, the DPS is 0.6667 (2/3) of the base damage. In other words, the DPS assumes 3 seconds between activations and either 4 or 2 hits.
I also did some extensive DPS testing. I did a bunch of tests where I held the trigger for 12 seconds, then 21 seconds (for a bunch more tests) and recorded the individual shot damages from the single installed cannon. I found the the DC and DHC, barring abnormal numbers of criticals (One test my DHC got 7 criticals in 10 shots) the difference in damage between two sets of tests was <1%.
So, a single DC does the same damage as a single DHC in other words, the tooltip is correct that the two cannon types are matched.
I also tested Cannon: Rapid Fire. The tooltip says the DC gets an 18.2% advantage to DPS over the DHC once C:RF is activated. For that test, I set a 5 second countdown followed by a 13 second countdown. With two seconds left on the first countdown, I activated C:RF. When my watch beeped the first time, I squeezed the trigger and held it until it beeped at the end. In 13 seconds, the DC got 20 hits, the DHC got 10 hits. The average damage for numerous tests again ended up being equal. So the tooltip is WRONG once you activate C:RF on the DPS; it indicated that the per-shot damage remains exactly 1:2, which is correct.
The next step was to test multiple cannons at the same time. The setup was the same as timing a single cannon above, except I was using 5 spacebars/sec (0.2 seconds each). The average time for the twin DCs was 3.55 seconds for same cannon refire. For the DHCs, the average for same cannon refire was 3.54 seconds. So essentially, two cannons are each firing at the same speed as one cannon in other words twice the DPS.
But when I went to three cannons, the story changed. The DC same cannon refire rate went to 4.48 seconds. The DHC same cannon refire rate was 4.48 seconds. In other words, 3 of EITHER cannon results in the SAME timing hit. What does that extra second mean to your DPS? The third gun really only adds 1/3 of its DPS to the fight when compared to 2 guns.
Finally, I tested 3 guns with C:RF. This is where things got messed up. First off, C:RF is NOT supposed to affect the refire rate. But it does. The DHC same gun refire went to 4.40 seconds. The DC Same gun refire rate went wacky. I couldnt get a consistent three gun fire. What I mean is that except for the DCs under C:RF, the guns fired in the same order every time. With DCs and C:RF, the guns fired in a random order. To measure the net result, I instead measure the time between EVERY shot. This came out to be 1.568 seconds which equates to a same gun refire rate of 4.70 seconds.
Overall Bottom Line: Except for the wacky performance of the Triple DC setup under C:RF, the two types of cannons are essentially identical. If you are going to run three cannons, Id recommend going with the DHCs since they were more consistent under C:RF. However, unless you cant find a turret or beam that gives you at least 35% of your single cannon DPS, I wouldnt run three cannons at all. Since the base DPS of a Plasma Turret IV is 83 and the base DPS of a Plasma DHC IV is 185 (Turret = 45% of cannon), the turret would be a better third front gun; consideration could also be given to a dual beam up front (as previously discussed) unless it pulls your weapon power down too far.
EVIL Proud Capt. of the NCC-93949 U.S.S. Fury and I.K.S. Scamp
I notice from my tooltips, that the higher my weapons energy setting the higher the dps for weapon. Since I run a science class ship utilizing phaser beam arrays, what I'm wondering is this.... Is there a point where when broadsiding that an additional array has a negligible impact? Since the additional array would be dropping your energy quicker, thereby decreasing the dps of all arrays... Is there a point where firing array x no longer really helps, and in fact drops the energy too quickly?
I'm currently an LC8, utilizing forward and aft phaser arrays, an aft turrent, and a forward quantum torpedo launcher. So when I hit Commander, I'll be wondering if adding another forward array won't really help and whether I'd be better off adding another torpedo launcher. Or a multiude of other possible weapons loadouts. If it matters for any of the theorycrafters here, I current run with an 85 weapon power setting, and all weapons are currently Mk IVs.
If its burst damage, then no, another beam in a burst fire will always add more damage, granted each one adds less than the last but its still more damage in your burst, but that method kills your dps.
/subscribed
Does the DC drain less then the DHC's? and if so then it stands with the same DPS and rate of fire with C:RF then the DC would ber better to stain HIGH DPS over a longer period of time ?
Thoughts?
Dual Cannons.
Best usage: Sustained shots/rapid fire, charging an enemy line whilst firing two of these in rapid succession (even with a global cooldown, having 2 means always firing 1 whilst the other cools down) will cause massive damage, you can use this as you enter the 10km range, and cruisers are pure suckers for this, overwhelming shields with rapid fire and dealing massive hull damage on larger ships seems to be the best use for these.
The problem: If you're targeted, be prepared to break off with little chance to do damage with those rapid fires. You need to stay in range for the entire volley to hit, which means flying in a straight line or going slower than usual. It means you have a limited time to act, and it's harder to hit small, agile targets.
Heavy dual Cannons.
Best usage: Burst shots/hitting where it hurts, chasing down a ship and only having to fire twice to deal the most damage is good for heavy cannons. Fitting these babies can bag you an escort/science/bird of prey, especially when they're flying around crazily. This sort of weapon is best used on targets with weak shields, where heavy hits will take it out for your torpedoes.
The problem: As you've figured the playstyle is the exact opposite. As such, usage against larger vessels is restricted at best. I've seen a Bird of Prey with heavy cannons just get shredded by a cruiser i nearly killed with no damage to myself. (didn't feel like feeding his teammates a kill so i fled when his three buddies arrived.) Heavy cannons can't deal enough constant damage to lower shields properly. they don't fire fast like regular duals, but deal heavy damage. you could call these the 'mini torpedoes'. They're faster than torpedoes, yet much slower than dual cannons and it shows too:
My escort couldn't finish a fleeing BoP, but someone with heavy duals can, conversely i can rip a battleship to shreds, whilst someone with heavy duals would have a hard time keeping up with shield regen.
Quick question, my tooltip for anti proton weapons mentions it's special is bypassing shields ocassionally... Has this been confirmed as its proc, or is it really just a higher crit chance?
If someone tests and find some proof that its otherwise I have no problem changing it.
I see Tetryons have a -80 shield proc. I suspect that at a 2.5% chance to proc, the proc in fact lowers the shield power setting by 80%, rather than doing 80 extra shield damage as that is a very small amount when facing an 8,000 HP shield.
Any info on this, please? Thanks!
Yes, it's the same chance as the other energy type procs, but no, it's 80 damage to all facings (so 320 damage in total), not a reduction in shield power.
Really? That makes the proc pretty useless on higher levels where as mentioned, you're facing 8.000 or stronger shields. Esp. compared to Phasers' proc to take down an entire system (so it could be the shields - all of them, or at least the facing that's been hit).
If indeed it only does 80 damage to all shield facings on a 2.5% proc, I would probably choose phasers for skillpoint savings.
Thanks for the replies!!!
I have defiant class escort with 3 heavy cannons and 2 turrets (and one torp).
I have 3 "prefire chamber" tactical consoles that add +15 cannon weapons each (I read earlier that they stack).
1. 3x(+15) = +45 cannons, but what exactly does that mean. Does every cannon shot land with +45 damage, meaning that a 180 damage plasma cannon now becomes a 225 damage plasma cannon?
2. If the +45 is added to damage on each volley, then is it preferred to have normal dual cannons instead of dual heavy cannons? Although dual cannons have half the damge , but twice the fire rate (making dps normaly the same as dual heavy) having +45 dmg bonus applied each volley would mean that the bonus is added twice as often for dual cannons vs dual heavy cannons, giving more dps to the dual cannons.
3. I have read a lot of posts stating that the 3rd heavy cannon (or dual cannon) only gets 1/3 of its normal dps due to the overlapping cooldown times with the other 3 heavy cannons. If that is the case, what is the preferred configuration for escorts with 4 weapons in front and 2 int eh back? I plan to keep using 2 turrets in the back to add to my head-on dps, and one torp in front for shield-down dps, but what abou tthe other 3 slots? My choices seem to be:
- 3 dual heavy cannons
- 2 dual heavy cannons and a front turret
- 2 dual heavy cannons and a front beam weapon.
Personally, I would try both 2 Dual/Dual Heavy + 2 torps and 2 Dual/Dual Heavy, 1 Dual Beam Bank and 1 torp and see how you find them.