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Power Drain Mechanics: Beams vs Cannons
aveimperator
Member Posts: 319 Arc User
Much of the community feels this game has become Escorts Online and they're not entirely wrong. Likewise, with the advent of LoR, many players feel the D'Deridex is "unacceptable" because of it's horrific turn rate, despite being able to mount DHCs. Personally, I think these are symptoms of the true disease. DHCs are such insanely powerful weapons and, as such, the turn rate necessary to facilitate their use has become the benchmark by which ships are measured (Look no further than KDF battlecruisers and the Vesta).
However, it has come to my attention after asking around among some of the playerbase, that one of the reasons cannons (and by extension DHCs) are leaps and bounds ahead of beams is because of how the power drain/damage calculations work for them.
Now, as I understand it, all weapons drain 10 power, with the exception of DHCs which drain 12. However, when you fire cannons at, let's say 125 Weapon Power, all the shots in that firing cycle, or volley if you will, are calculated at 125 Weapon Power. The damage calculations are frontloaded from the time the firing cycle begins.
Beams, however, don't work this way. You could consider beams to be a sort of DoT. When the firing cycle begins, the beam fires, is sustained, and applies it's damage in ticks over the duration of the firing cycle. However, unlike cannons, whose damage is frontloaded, only the first tick of damage in the firing cycle is calculated at 125 Weapon Power. The remaining ticks of damage are calculated in real-time, at the CURRENT, diminished Weapon Power when the tick occurs, thus resulting in drastically reduced damage.
Now, I think a great deal of the balance issues could potentially be alleviated it Cryptic normalized when damage was calculated in the firing cycle. Either cannons need to calculate in real-time like beams, or beams need to have their calculations frontloaded like cannons. I doubt this will ever happen, since Dstahl seems to feel that "beams are fine", reminding me of Clint Tasker, former balance designer of Relic's Dawn of War 2 in that he clearly doesn't PLAY the friggin' game he's in charge of, but I digress.
Discuss.
However, it has come to my attention after asking around among some of the playerbase, that one of the reasons cannons (and by extension DHCs) are leaps and bounds ahead of beams is because of how the power drain/damage calculations work for them.
Now, as I understand it, all weapons drain 10 power, with the exception of DHCs which drain 12. However, when you fire cannons at, let's say 125 Weapon Power, all the shots in that firing cycle, or volley if you will, are calculated at 125 Weapon Power. The damage calculations are frontloaded from the time the firing cycle begins.
Beams, however, don't work this way. You could consider beams to be a sort of DoT. When the firing cycle begins, the beam fires, is sustained, and applies it's damage in ticks over the duration of the firing cycle. However, unlike cannons, whose damage is frontloaded, only the first tick of damage in the firing cycle is calculated at 125 Weapon Power. The remaining ticks of damage are calculated in real-time, at the CURRENT, diminished Weapon Power when the tick occurs, thus resulting in drastically reduced damage.
Now, I think a great deal of the balance issues could potentially be alleviated it Cryptic normalized when damage was calculated in the firing cycle. Either cannons need to calculate in real-time like beams, or beams need to have their calculations frontloaded like cannons. I doubt this will ever happen, since Dstahl seems to feel that "beams are fine", reminding me of Clint Tasker, former balance designer of Relic's Dawn of War 2 in that he clearly doesn't PLAY the friggin' game he's in charge of, but I digress.
Discuss.
Post edited by aveimperator on
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Please stop it.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=654691
That thread will show you how to build a DPS cruiser that will out-DPS 99% of the escorts in PvE.
If you are unable to do this, the failure is on you.
Dude, RCS consoles got a major buff... go get some 'K?
Also, the whole power drain mechanic has been brought up several times before, and has been said to be working as intended by devs. While I cannot speak for others my own cruiser's weapon power never sees to fall below 100 these days, so I'm not sure what there's left to complain about in regards to any quality of life issues for cruisers.
Is it garbage when someone tells you how to address the core of your problem instead of a symptom? You DO realize that if beams were to ahve their drain mechanics this very instant their damage would be nerfed (re-balanced) so they do comparable damage as they do now? What you really want is to do more damage, we get that and you were just shown how to go about it and call it "garbage"??!!
You DO need to L2Play.
It's not lrn2play.
I'm pointing you in the exact direction that shows you how to mitigate the drain of beams, and output more DPS than escorts are capable of. I didn't even know of that builds existence until another player showed it to me.
We all have to learn somewhere.
If you want my honest opinion your thread, and the endless threads like it, come to consistently incorrect assumptions through faulty logic and reason.
The reason DHCs do more straight DPS than Beams is because they were specifically intended to do more damage than Beams. Drain mechanics are not the issue, they were designed to be lesser damaging weapons that have massively wide arcs and an ability to hit more targets than Cannons can.
There is no mystery or foul play at work. DHCs are the premier damage dealing weapons, Beam arrays were intended for Tanking setups.
Luckily, players are not always limited to original intent and a build that can improve the output of beams exists.
That's what I've linked for you.
As you said, we all have to learn somewhere.
Your first mistake was assuming that your ignorance somehow equated to a collective conclusion on the part of a community that you do not speak for.
Your second mistake was assuming that being calmly told that your entire position was based on flawed reasoning was a personal attack.
Your third mistake was then lashing out at the very people who were offering you exactly what you were asking for: a solution to your cruiser damage problem.
You just typed your own answer. Look at the ships allowed to slot DHC's and you will then see what they had to give up in being allowed to mount such powerful weapons.
It's give and take just fine, I don't see any imbalance and I play both types of ship builds. find a way to maximise and sustain your weapon power and build around that.
Basically I think the problem is with how the game content itself is being built. Pretty much all the content in the game comes down to "do more dps." Tanks aren't needed and crowd control/debuffs, while handy once in a while, aren't really needed either. You can beat everything in the game just by throwing enough damage at it.
I'll use STFs as an example since that's a big part of the endgame. A great deal of STFs involve destroying objects. Gates, transformers, nodes and the like. These don't need tanks since they don't shoot at you (except for gates, but they don't need to be tanked either) and they don't need any crowd control since they don't move. Add in a timer to these situations and the end result is just "do more damage as fast as you can." As far as enemies go, those can all be handled by just burning them down ASAP. Sure, a nicely timed GW3 can help, but with enough damage output you don't really need it.
The reason that escorts and cannons are getting the hate is that those are just the easiest to build. Slap some DHCs up front and slot CRF/CSV and you're done. Cruisers are a bit harder as they fill the role of tank beautifully. Too bad that role isn't needed. So instead people have to come up with builds to go full on DPS with them. I've seen cruisers put out the hurt, but it takes much more effort to get them up there. Science ships in general haven't been in a good position for a good while now. The Vesta did help with this but look at what had to be done with it. Slap cannons on it and add in a hangar slot. Instead of making science skills better, they just increased it's dps potential..."MOAR DAMAGE!"
I think that rather than nerfing escorts or cannons or having to buff up beams to match them, the game content should be shifted into needing all the other roles instead of just pure dps. Of course I don't expect that to happen but meh, that's just how I feel about all of this.
Mine Trap Supporter
So, your advice to people that think cannon escorts are a bit on the OP side, is to tell them that all they have to do to outdamage a canon escort is cram their beamboat to the gills with top-tier rep gear, embassy consoles, and lobi consoles. And you don't see any issues with that concept; that one player can grab an escort, chuck any old blues or purples on there, and pwn face, while another player has to spend months of time and either real cash or even more time to achieve only moderately superior results?
The only failure here is your failure to recognise how utterly ludicrous your "advice" is.
We are PWE. Your forums and game accounts will be added to our own. Your community will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.
That thread is a great resource. With that said however, you are wrong.
An Equally geared escort (So, t4-t5 rep gear, correct doffs and gear sets) will be able to make a mockery of the build suggested in the OP of that thread, in terms of damage, and will still be able to tank well enough to survive in STF's and other endgame content.
The thing you have to remember is that cruisers are tanks. At endgame, you will never out dps an escort that has the same standard of gear as you, so don't try. Instead, focus on tanking. Which means, doing enough damage to hold the less than tender attentions of that tac cube and enough tank to not die while the escorts do the nasty.
See, this is the reason that I'm one of the few who exclusively captains cruisers on my fed. For the sheer effort and resources it takes to build, you get a ship that will keep a pug alive for no thanks, and has trouble justifying it's place in more advanced groups. 5 escorts in a good pre-made will tear through ISE fast enough that they don't really need to tank.
On the flip side, you could build an escort in half the time that will still be of use in an ESTF.
EDIT: I got ninjad. This guy gets it
Considering that cruisers are by definition designed to be inferior to escorts in terms of damage output, the ability for a cruiser to outperform an escort as a DPS role in any situation makes your concern rather moot.
Of course carefully designed escorts built for maximum damage output are going to outdamage a non-escort built for damage. Just like a cruiser will outlast any escort if setup appropriately for survivability.
If a cruiser always outdamaged an escort, or an escort always outlasted a cruiser, what exactly would be the point of ship design roles?
This is correct.
That they are wrong.
If they want DPS, and an easy way to build it. Build an Escort.
If they want to float around in a giant whale ship with 250 degree arc beam arrays with AoE attacks that aren't limited to 3 targets, have more hull & more shields than an escort and also do the same or comparable damage than Escorts and also want it to be cheap and easy to do, then that is a mistake on the player's part.
The problem is as one astute poster noted, the design of PvE content.
There are a plethora of ship types available at this point. If your goal is DPS/Spike and you refuse to build your cruiser similar to that post I linked then play a ship that can use the weapons that were designed to have high damage output.
YES RCS consoles did get a buff, but just telling him to get some and then basically telling him to **** off and L2P is not really productive. Nor is linking him a post for an A2B build. Its a good build, but it's not for everybody.
There is a very glaring issue with DHCs vs Beams. Now, if the debate is PvP vs PvE, then just disregard this whole thing because beams are just as effective in PvE as cannons are, but in PvP, beams just flat out suck and produce net zero damage.
All of that being said, the idea of DHCs on the D'd is just silly. The way the model is done, its hard (at least for me) to see the front of the ship while flying it, so its very hard to tell if something is in your arc or not. Using DHCs on that ship with such a low turn is just, well, there are better options.
I actually have gone for a Dual Beams option.
Right now I have a fleet excelsior that runs 3 Mkxi blue (37.5%) RCS consoles, Tacho, 9 in SIT, and EPtE1. Running that with APA, and APO1, I can get the turn rate on that thing to 40.5, which is more than enough for Dual Beams.
Now the issue is the base turn of the D'd, which is 5. Each RCS gives me exactly 3 turn right now with a base of 8 on the Excelsior. (8 * .375 = 3) Each one would give me just over half the same turn rate increase (5 * .375 = 1.875). Bump those up to purple RCS Mkxii (40%) and you get 2 turn from each, but those start to get a bit pricey.
Now, assuming you go with 3 RCS that give 2 each, that will give you 6, plus the base of 5, plus Starship Impulse Thrusters at 9 (which the best I can figure give around 7 or 8 now), and a tachyonectic converter (5 * .229 = 1.145), you are looking at around 19-20 turn rate. Add in another 2 if you have the D'd special console, plus EPtE, engine power, APA and possibly APO1, and you can possibly push that up to 30, albeit only while APA and APO are active, without Battle Cloak.
Its a decent turn rate, but still not where DHCs would be very effective in PvP. PvE though, they would be fine though. Get yourself 6-9 in Threat control for the resist, and 6-9 in both armor skills, along with an armor console, and you'll be just fine.
30 turn though is just perfect for Dual beams though, which is what I would recommend for this ship.
Personally what's wrong with balancing issue in PvP fight is that, while in 1 on 1 fights all ships seems pretty balanced----a tanky cruiser can successfully sustain damage and heal itself against a single escort, in 5 on 5 fights or on a larger scale a tanky cruiser would be taken down in no time once it's got concentrated fire upon by multiple tac escorts. Even it use RSP the bleedthrough will still kill it. As for escorts, well there's practically nothing that could stop them from running away whenever their hp is low.
/disappointed.
PS: Balancing with power creep is one of the worst ways to go about it.
Like someone else already said it's not the ship roles or weapons platforms that are the problem, it's the content. I'v played a lot of different MMO's, and most(if not all) of the content in those other game just wasn't doable without a tank, or CC. In STO you don't need a sci vessel, or a cruiser to beat anything really, that's the problem.
If you want to do escort DPS, get an escort, if you want a cruiser tank, get a cruiser, and if you don't want to do anything particularly special at all get a sci vessel(if anything needs a buff its sci vessels/captains, not cruisers).
Not that it will matter as long as Cryptic continues to ignore the problem, but you are correct. There have been threads about this for a long while and you will find a number of people will agree with you on the subject. I'd suggest just ignoring the off topic response posts.