Best Energy Weapon Type?

bubbafloyd · June 2013

This might be a stupid question, but what is the best type of energy weapon to have on a ship? I know that this might be dependent upon what types of consoles you have on your ship, the bofs you have, and who you plan on attacking. As I understand certain NPC ships have high levels of resistance or invulnerability against certain types of energy weapons.

However is there a superior energy weapons system that one should get?

Right now both of my ships (Ambassador and Defiant classes) are outfitted with plasma weapons, and for the most part these weapons have been quite effective against enemy ships up until the Romulan expansion. For whatever reason the Romulan ships seem very resistant to plasma and phase based weapons.

kurumimorishita · June 2013

Best is always arguable, but I think that (esp. pure) Disruptors are among the most useful. That said, I tend to use "canon" (color at least) energy weapons -> hence no Disruptors (except Spiral Wave Disruptors) for my Feds for example. My Klingon and Romulan chars all use Disruptors (if they use Klingon/Romulan ships) and if I use one of my Jem'Hadar ships, then it's Polaron/Phased Polaron which I also like very much (esp. in conjunction with the leech).

robeasom · June 2013

Disrupters and Antiproton are the most powerful ones at the moment but I don;t think any weapon type is better than the other as they all do different things. the only one I'm keeping is disrupter weaponry on my Breen chell grett and plasma on my roman

fraghul2000 · June 2013

However is there a superior energy weapons system that one should get?

As far as PVE is concerned, there isn't a "superior" energy type. Some of them might be a tiny bit more useful than others (e.g. disruptors), but in the end the differences are so small that you might as well go by whatever colour you like or whichever is cheaper on the exchange. I've parsed a few constant damage cycles with different weapon types of the same quality and the same modifiers and even across a 10-minute cycle, the difference was negligble.

The only that offsets that a bit, is when be when you use them in combination with sets that have a 2-piece bonus to certain energy types. Tets with the Nukara, Polaron with the jem'Hadar or plasma with the singularity harness.

hevach · June 2013

Disruptors and antiprotons have special effects that directly increase damage. Plasmas have a damage dealing special effect and can be urged to marginally higher damage by using embassy science consoles.

Borg resist phaser and proton special effects, but in general, there aren't any special weaknesses or resistances for a particular faction of enemies. There's some interesting effects, like Elachi's shields having very high capacity and resistance while their health is low and with poor resistances, or Borg's high hull resistances, or the Crystalline Entity's lower kinetic resistance, but generally your offensive build doesn't need to be tailored per enemy that much.

Your support abilities and defensive equipment are a different matter for countering what the enemy does to you. If you want to tailor yourself to different enemies, I find shields and science powers are the place to start.

bubbafloyd · June 2013

Hmmm... y'all have given me a lot to think about.

I will stick with Plasma for now, but might consider dumping plasma on my defiant and going with a disruptor platform, or a disruptor hybrid.

variant37 · June 2013

Get your hands on some elite fleet disruptors and you'll wonder why you ever used anything else. Available only to KDF or KDF-aligned Rommies of course.

Best Energy Weapon Type?

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