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The matter of DPS.... on a cruiser
pianowizzy
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
I'd like your input, on whether I am a noob and doing something horribly wrong, or if it's no one's fault.
- I'm flying a Mirror Star Cruiser [I'm cheap and poor and relatively a noob] so I only have 2 tactical buffs, both of which I put into Tactical Team [which has saved me from uncountable ship injuries and long, unpleasant trips back to space docks].
- I use 4 Antiproton/Disruptor Beam Arrays [yes sorry rainbow build haters] [3 aft, 1 fore], 1 Antiproton Double Beam Bank, 1 Disruptor Double Beam Bank, all Borg-requisitioned, Mk XII.
- The last two slots are swapped out between my Tricobalt torpedo [Mk XII, borg], Quantum torpedo [Mk XII, borg], and Tractor Beam Mines, whatever is appropriate for the mission.
- My two tactical consoles are a Warhead Yield Chamber and a Directed Energy Distribution Manifold [both rare Mk XI -- again, cheap, poor, kinda new still]
All power to weapons, weapons battery, and my DPS is still fail, and I still fly like a space elephant.
I heal other ships quite a lot while taking the aggro [yay maxed threat] to make up for it, but I got a complaint from a guy in CSE that I should have been staying in normal until I can get more DPS.
"The difference is, you're a tactical, I'm a science flying a cruiser."
"So?"
I'm mildly irritated. But does he have a point? Am I missing something?
I have enough prototype salvage to completely replace my weapons if you have alternate suggestions.
- I'm flying a Mirror Star Cruiser [I'm cheap and poor and relatively a noob] so I only have 2 tactical buffs, both of which I put into Tactical Team [which has saved me from uncountable ship injuries and long, unpleasant trips back to space docks].
- I use 4 Antiproton/Disruptor Beam Arrays [yes sorry rainbow build haters] [3 aft, 1 fore], 1 Antiproton Double Beam Bank, 1 Disruptor Double Beam Bank, all Borg-requisitioned, Mk XII.
- The last two slots are swapped out between my Tricobalt torpedo [Mk XII, borg], Quantum torpedo [Mk XII, borg], and Tractor Beam Mines, whatever is appropriate for the mission.
- My two tactical consoles are a Warhead Yield Chamber and a Directed Energy Distribution Manifold [both rare Mk XI -- again, cheap, poor, kinda new still]
All power to weapons, weapons battery, and my DPS is still fail, and I still fly like a space elephant.
I heal other ships quite a lot while taking the aggro [yay maxed threat] to make up for it, but I got a complaint from a guy in CSE that I should have been staying in normal until I can get more DPS.
"The difference is, you're a tactical, I'm a science flying a cruiser."
"So?"
I'm mildly irritated. But does he have a point? Am I missing something?
I have enough prototype salvage to completely replace my weapons if you have alternate suggestions.
Vulcan Science Officer -- Captain of the I.F.D. Gallifrey [Tholian Recluse]
Ambassador of The Order Of Gallifrey // Representative of the 1701 Renegades
"Be the person your dog thinks you are."
Ambassador of The Order Of Gallifrey // Representative of the 1701 Renegades
"Be the person your dog thinks you are."
Post edited by pianowizzy on
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if your trying to compare yourself to an escort then you will fail every time,
also do you have Antiproton Mag Regulators for tactical consoles? because that helps out a lot.
Noted. That's terrifyingly expensive. I'll have to get that at some future date.
I do have the question, though, what *exactly* do tacticals have as the DPS advantage? Is it just the BOff buffs?
Ambassador of The Order Of Gallifrey // Representative of the 1701 Renegades
"Be the person your dog thinks you are."
However, a star cruiser is much more tankish. You really should be using at LEAST an Assault Cruiser, which is middle-of-the-road between tank and DPS-ness, and is more inclined towards battle than the Star Cruiser's inclination towards support. Pick up the Mirror Assault Cruiser or the plain old Assault Cruiser and see how you do.
With an assault cruiser you could have two copies of TT1 and a copy of Attack Pattern Beta or Fire At Will. In order to free up a slot with your current ship you can also get a couple of insanely expensive purple Conn DOffs which halve the cooldown of Tactical Team, thus making it viable to cycle one (IIRC, double-check that math before you spend 5 mil EC on this).
Now, as per your weapons - you're using a rainbow build by your own admission. Don't do that, you're going to end up hurting for DPS. You need to pick one weapon type and go with it, and get the consoles for it that are dedicated. If antiproton stuff is too expensive now but you want to use it, well, shelve it for a bit, pick up the disruptor stuff, and later on get the antiproton stuff. If this is non-negotiable for you, there ARE strategies/consoles you can use, but you're going to be at an obvious disadvantage from a plain mathematical standpoint, and the fact that you're using multi-colored beams basically means that your teammates are going to know this.
In terms of the specific weapons you use, there have been many different questions as to what's best or not for a cruiser. The slower ones are best served not having many forward pointing weapons, because it's too hard to line up to hit an opponent hard. The "traditional" build for almost any cruiser is 3 beam arrays and 1 torp fore and aft. That generally works fairly well for me. However, there are threads on this forum that go into detail about many different configurations, e.g. a cannon boat - which would probably not be where you want to go given your admitted inexperience (coupled with the fact that it's a star cruiser and you'd get your face smashed into a fine paste for lack of tactical BOff slots to properly buff your cannon output). I've also had some decent luck with using ONE DBB, although I'm not sure how good this is from an objective standpoint - I may try to quantify that soon as I'm curious.
As for why tacs have better DPS in escorts, it's because:
* The power bonus (+15 to weapons as opposed to +5 all systems as most cruisers have).
* The tactical slots (escorts have tons).
* Dual cannons and dual heavy cannons, which do a LOT of DPS.
* The fact that the DC/DHC can be combined with turrets and Cannon Rapid Fire means you can have some of the strongest weapons in the game combined with backup from three turrets on the back, meaning you can have all seven of your weapons firing at once with at least one major weapon buff.
* Attack pattern alpha is the bread and butter of tac captains in a lot of ways, and that helps a great deal as well.
* Tac captains are also more likely to be heavily statted into the tactical categories. Engineers and science captains, for instance, don't usually have the Attack Patterns stat very heavily statted. Tacs, on the other hand, have what's probably the best attack pattern of the game built right into them, so there's incentive to stat in there, and while you have stats for that, why not grab some OTHER attack patterns, and then you've got the attack patterns helping you out as well.
* Tacs can also train their BOffs in some high-end skills that would require others to train on their BOffs in other circumstances, which can be a pain - and risky depending on who you do or don't know.
If you want flat-out more DPS, you should also look at your build. Unless you're a torp specialist, chances are points in the energy weapons stats will help more than in the torpedo stats. So if I were you I would make sure I have 9 levels in Starship Weapons Training and Starship Energy Weapons. Starship energy weapon specialization is MUCH more expensive and it's murkier as to just what it does, and you'd need to ask someone else about it, but those two stats are very helpful and rather important IMO. On my tac I don't have more than 3-4 ranks in Starship Projectile Weapons and NO ranks in Starship Projectile Weapon Specialization. You also should have at least six ranks in Starship Targeting Systems and Weapons System Performance (an engineering skill).
In short - your build would definitely benefit from re-evaluation. That said, there are a lot of people who think there are basically five or six viable general builds (they may use different ships, but ultimately it's a lot of tweaking of very similar ships producing a few similar outcomes) and anyone who does not use those is an idiot who should be burnt at the stake.
Another alternative could be turrets: less damage output per slot, but you'll maintain sustained fire regardless of your orientation with (-2) less weapons power drain than a Beam Array (-8 per turret vs. -10 per BA)
Having 2 sets of Tac Team is a good idea, but maybe your lieutenant-level tac power can be better spent - from what I can tell, tac team 2 is marginally beneficial over tac team 1, save for the cooldown reduction. A better use of that space could be Beam Overload, as it works with DBB too, or even Fire At Will. You'd have to experiment to find your right fit
Besides that, you question requires further elaboration. What are your power levels? Have you set up your weapon skills to maximise damage output?
You can buy the Blue Mk XI for 20K Dil from the Dil gear vendor. Sure they ain't the purple XIIs but you're only looking at a difference of 1.something% increase of base damage. Much better value for your $$
The Three types of doffs you should try are the Tac Team conn officer (using one TT), Technician (using Aux to Batt), and Projectile Weapon Officers (using HY or Torp Spread) or Energy Weapon Officers (the expensive FAW/BO one). These do everything they can to reduce the CD on your tac skills.
Use TT and Attack Patterns to increase your damage output.
Also grab the Mirror Assault Cruiser, as in grab it now; expect its price to go up very soon.
Pick one energy type, I favor Disruptors, Anti-Proton, and Phased-Tetryon. I will add the caveat that the only time you can rainbow build is IF you are building the mother of all support ships and you stick several universal consoles in those slots (say a Theta and Subspace Jump), at one time I did that with my Oddy (I put Theta and Workbees there); with that my buddies never died and the Borg never got in range of the Kang.
I've used DBB on cruisers and I would suggest not using them on the Starcruiser/Assault Cruiser unless you are putting a lot of effort in to your starship's maneuverability (RCS consoles and Aux to Dampeners). Your major advantage is in overlapping fields of fire with your beam arrays. If you are going to use DBB go all in and put two or three forward and perhaps even four turrets aft to maximize your forward DPS.
On the matter of turrets -- I hear good things about turrets, that the 360 factor and the fact that it does not take weapon power would make up for the loss of damage. Is that true?
I see that perhaps the investment in an Antiproton Mag console may be worth it, then.
*snatches mirror assault cruiser*
Any recommendations regarding my torpedos?
Ambassador of The Order Of Gallifrey // Representative of the 1701 Renegades
"Be the person your dog thinks you are."
Honestly if your broadsiding you will probaly only fire your torpedos occasionaly, so you could either go for tricobalys and just wait the minute but they can be shot down and the borg are good at this. Or go for mines and a hargh'peng The 'peng can be found in the doomsday mission as a reward and is a very powerful torpedo that also caused a radiation hazard and an aoe secondary explosion. it also does not benifit from torpedo buffing powers so there is no need to slot one freeing it up for anything else. Mines while show will fire regardless of where your target is and can be useful in many ways. If you go for chroniton mines they are nice to drop in infected and Khitomer to slow probes down you can also use plasma mines while circling a cube for the extra dps or go for photon or quantums for straight up damage. Also I don't know if anyone mentioned it but attack patter delta would be a good choice for your lt tac skill since it also buffs your defence and you have threat generation speced, this means when active anyone targeting you recieves a damage resistance debuff like beta but independant on who your firing on. Just a thought.
Not everything you see on the internet is true - Abraham Lincoln
Occidere populo et effercio confractus
First off - don't just have one AP mag. You want to fill up your slots with the energy type. You're not going to be firing your torps enough to justify investing consoles that could go into boosting energy DPS output into the torps. I'm not even sure that torp output consoles make sense for escorts or, really, anything that isn't a dedicated torp build.
I wouldn't hold too fast to the thought about turrets. Plus they don't fire too rapidly. My personal experience (which is limited) suggests strongly that turrets are best for cannon-based builds, in no small part because they keep you from having 'blind spots' with a ship that has most of it's DPS focused forward, and they respond to the cannon-based buffs, so if you use Cannon Rapid Fire they're all hammering away at the target rapid-fire.
As per the torpedoes, I stick with quantum myself, though I also use photon torpedoes, and on my Klingon (and occasionally a Feddie) I'll use the Har'peng.
Some will advocate the slower-moving torpedoes; I do not. Chronoton and transphasics seem to be fairly universally hated. Tricobalts I've had middling experience with. Some say that they're good. But others say that they're good but you have to strip the enemy's shields off first, and that's such basic advice for torpedoes (or even energy weapons!) that IMO it brings you back to "what's the point?" That said, I think that with tricobalts it's probably best if you try a non-binding one you can get off the Exchange, and resell it there if it turns out to suck for your play style. Though if you do that, give it a chance - don't just take it to one fight and declare it worthless if it doesn't work out.
Although I've heard plasma procs have more damage these days, the "old" advice is that you don't bother with plasma procs after you're leveling because it just doesn't do enough damage to matter. I have seen little to counter this, but usually my experience with plasma torps is from the Borg, where I just let plasma fires burn and barely notice, so player-fired weapons may be considerably nastier.
Such delightful and useful insight. All noted. Thanks!
Ambassador of The Order Of Gallifrey // Representative of the 1701 Renegades
"Be the person your dog thinks you are."
Ok... Firstly if you want to deal ANY damage in a Cruiser you MUST be a Tactical Captain.
Next you need a Cruiser capable of dealing damage which rules out a Star Cruiser. Assault Cruiser is the bare minimum while Tactical Odyssey with Saucer Sep is the optimal.
Forget going Rainbow because you can NEVER get good damage this way. Anti-Proton is the way to go, get yourself a Beam Overload going on, 3 Dual Beam Banks up front with a Hargh'Peng or the Transphasic Cluster Torp and 4 Arrays in back or 3 and a Torp. Or your rear could be Turrets and front could be 2 Cannons and a DBB with Torp or 3 Cannons and 1 DBB. Get Anti-Proton enhancing consoles for your tactical slots and do not skimp on Eject Warp Plasma 3. Power yourself up with Tactical Captain buffs and enjoy the carnage.
Also, the guy who criticized you DOES have a point. Not that Cruisers are incapable of dealing damage but that your setup is too sub par for Cure Elite which requires good DPS to be victorious.
To put it bluntly... Just look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jecJVdGJt-A
For example I used Tetryon beams and they give me a 1% chance of disabling a system and since I have 6 of them i have a 6% chance every time which does come up quite often.
However i am a Sci captain so it may be different if you have another build
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Corrected ya there,
- Phaser: 2.5% chance to disable a random subsystem
- Disruptor: 2.5% chance to lower the targets hull damage resistance by 10% for 15 sec
- Plasma: 2.5% chance to apply a non-stacking damage-over-time debuff
- Polaron: 2.5% chance to reduce all enemy subsystem power levels by 25
- Tetryon: 2.5% chance to deal additional shield damage
- Antiproton: +2.5% chance to inflict a Critical Hit
on topic:I'm a Tac in a oddy on the fed side and a bortasque on the KDF side, since I swapped over to the Tac variants of both I have redone my build tad to maximise my dps potential whilst keeping a survivability aspect (as your no good to the team if your dead). I will post up my updated build next I get on STO.
Twitter | Blog | Original Join Date: Dec 2007 | Gaming Setup | Raptr Profile | Gamer DNA
The opinions expressed in my posts are my own views and do not reflect on any other entity(s) or person(s) I may or may not represent at the time.
anti-proton is only the 'way to go' if you've got skills ranked up that can boost crit chance, else it's the worst weapon type you can run as it has nothing beyond crit severity which is meaningless if you rarely crit.
on the other appendage, disruptors require no specific skills and give a flat 10% bonus to your damage and everyone else's in the team when they proc.
unless there's something hidden, or a dev post stating AP has 2.5% chance to crit that is not the bonus, AP is crit severity. even in your link there is no crit chance bonus listed only bonus crit severity.
there seriously needs to be an anti-proton sticky somewhere...too many people think it's just uber without doing anything, i've had my frackin' tet build out damage AP escorts because they rarely crit, take forever to get through even the flimsy shields borg have, and when they hit hull they have no torps (because torps are such a dps loss :O...another fallacy) they can't kill anything in any reasonable amount of time.
all because some 'pro' told them AP was teh uberest without ever checking what it takes to make AP good.
besides the trait (accurate) you can pick on character creation 10% bonus accuracy
accuracy
specialization
both those skills ranked up help produce crits as does attack pattern alpha
you have those 4 above then AP is your best friend. if you have both skills above ranked up then AP is still a good choice even without APA.
Donate Brains, zombies in Washington DC are starving.
I copied that over from the wiki, forgot to recheck after I posted for AP.
here is my current build: Tac Oddy/Bort Build
8x AP Beam arrays
Full M.A.C.O/KHG XII (as per faction)
Consoles are:
Fed- Rule 62 Multipurpose Combat, Enhanced Plasma Manifold, 3 piece oddy set
Both - Theta Vent, Point Defense System, 3x AP mag regulators mk xii purple
KDF - Magnetometric Generator, Isometric Charge, 3 piece bort set
Twitter | Blog | Original Join Date: Dec 2007 | Gaming Setup | Raptr Profile | Gamer DNA
The opinions expressed in my posts are my own views and do not reflect on any other entity(s) or person(s) I may or may not represent at the time.
2 - keep healing others a lot, you'll be usefull enough to be in a stf. By healing a lot I mean sending the big heals such as aux power to dampeners III or extend shields III to escorts or sci ships (if other cruisers die let them die because it means they have a poor build anyway).
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Totally agree here. I have some purple tricobalts I got from Borg drops on some of my cruisers and I've since abandoned them for beam array replacements
You're pro, this is totally on point, every word of this post is correct. So many people waste so much money on antiproton because they heard it's "the best" when really you shouldn't sleep on good old phaser or disruptor which is much more cost effective and canon to boot!
This is terrible, terrible, terrible advice. STF objectives are to kill, and that should ALWAYS be your primary objective too. In STFs you go long stretches shooting at structures that don't shoot back at all if you have the right range (KASE structures, ISE) or shooting at stuff that needs to go down fast (CSE, KASE probes). If you can't contribute dps AND aren't throwing heals because they're not needed, you're not effective.
My character Tsin'xing
Tac buffs are like a person getting ready to sneeze. "Ah, ah, ah, ah..." Then you put the Tac in a cruiser force him to sneeze though a straw. "...pffft." Put the tac in an escort and it's like putting a megaphone in front of his mouth "...Chooarrblblblargghh."
That said, we need to make a distinction between pressure dps and spike. Cruisers can't bring the spike like an escort, but they can be optimized to do the best possible job at pressure. Damage is used "at best as an equal partner" to healing and support.
Hate to break it to you, but you are officially a rainbow build hater. You are dissatisfied with your ships performance and ready to min/max. Around Christmas time I rename my ship Bad Elf or Turducken and run AP and Disruptors for the holiday season. It has a time and a place, but STFs are neither. Why? Because the biggest boost you can get from tactical consoles are weapon type specific. I have to address this before I redirect you because it's so basic that it's not even mentioned in the cruiser guide.
Now that's out of the way, here it is, the last cruiser guide you'll ever need (at least until the forums force a 4.0):
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=379591
CommanderDonatra@Capt.Sisko: ahhh is it supposed to do that?
Norvo Tigan@dontdrunkimshoot: hell ya, maybe
Delightful! I shall be adjusting accordingly.
----
Summary,
- Quantum, maybe Photon torps? Both sides? [That mission was exhausting, I don't think I'll put up the effort to get a Har'peng, but I will definitely have it in future reference]
- Switching just the energy type to full antiproton -- the arrangement of DBBs and BBs are okay, or shall I go full BBs due to low turn rate?
- Antiproton Mag Regulator -- check, thank you @oldkirkfan
- Conn officers, TT2 only
- Skills in crit, acc, energy wep specialization -- check
Ambassador of The Order Of Gallifrey // Representative of the 1701 Renegades
"Be the person your dog thinks you are."
Heals are always needed, even the best escorts can't tank a gate, several cruisers/spheres or a tac cube.
Anyway, if you want to learn how to do more dps with a heal boat, get closer. Since you can also heal yourself, you'll do far more dps at 2km range. This is often enough to fix the "cruiser issue". Actually, there is no "cruiser issue", I often see people complaining about that but it's just because they don't know how the game works.
I have an engineer on a cruiser, and it can:
- heal
- tank like mad
- deal enough damage not to be useless.
In bad pug I often got the "two loots bags", and most of the times the purple loot in FAs, which means I've had the biggest dps in the team. With an eng on a heal boat.
But when I send even a single heal I save between 20 and 60 seconds of dps an escort can deal, which is always a better choice than getting the worst build ever, ie the tac on cruiser with a "dps build". They are always the first to blow up and always have the lowest dps no matter what.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Old site, but this is still accurate and helpful:
http://theenginescannaetakeit.wordpress.com/articles-3/starship-weapons-overview/#dpscompare
CommanderDonatra@Capt.Sisko: ahhh is it supposed to do that?
Norvo Tigan@dontdrunkimshoot: hell ya, maybe
But per you questions.
Disruptor beam array and 1 torp for front and 1 mine in back. The thing about mines is you have to be close to the bas guy.
For your tac boff spots do TT1 and BFaW. (spam this. It will increase dps substantially)
For tact consoles they should all be to increase disruptor dmg
You should also get the (eng console i believe) that increases power transfer rate.
Besides heals for you eng boff one spot ahould be emegency power to weapons.
The other advice i can give is to get comfortable with what you are supposed to do in the different stf's.
I've got several captains in cruisers. I've got a Sci-Oddy, an Excelsior, Galaxy-X, and a Klingon Tactical Bortosqu. If you are looking for straight up damage on a cruiser pick one that has the tactical consoles. (Excelsior, Sov, Galaxy-X, etc.) You still wont out DPS an escort but you will be more setup for damage than anything else. Star cruisers are really for healing and tanking as they are more Sci/Eng spec'd. I used to fly the regular star cruiser before I switched to the Oddy.
Also I'd avoid the rainbow build and just use one weapon type. You are probably draining your weapon power and the lower your weapon power the worse your damage. If you can't keep it above 75% - 80% your damage isn't going to really matter. Keeping with one specific weapon type will help you with that.
Also your console layout will be important, just as much as your actual spec. Some of that takes a bit of in-depth investigation and tweaking, but anyway that's just my own experience flying cruisers.
This is not correct. 4 disruptor beam arrays and 4 plasma beam arrays will cause the same energy drain as 8 beam arrays of the same type. DPS loss occurs when maxing your tac consoles for one energy type, then loading two different energy types.
CommanderDonatra@Capt.Sisko: ahhh is it supposed to do that?
Norvo Tigan@dontdrunkimshoot: hell ya, maybe
Ambassador of The Order Of Gallifrey // Representative of the 1701 Renegades
"Be the person your dog thinks you are."
My character Tsin'xing