test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Cannons more effective against hull than beams?
nymysys1
Member Posts: 1 Arc User
Just looking around the wiki, and actually read the opening paragraph of the Ship Weapons section (http://sto.gamepedia.com/Ship_Weapon) which states (emphasis mine):
"There are three different forms of starship weapons: Energy Beam Weapons (which primarily damage a starship's shields), Kinetic Weapons (which primarily damage a starship's hull) and Energy Cannon Weapons (which do less damage to starship's hulls and shields, but is equally effective against both). "
Is there some hidden mechanic that makes cannons more effective against hull than beams? Or is this just a wiki error?
"There are three different forms of starship weapons: Energy Beam Weapons (which primarily damage a starship's shields), Kinetic Weapons (which primarily damage a starship's hull) and Energy Cannon Weapons (which do less damage to starship's hulls and shields, but is equally effective against both). "
Is there some hidden mechanic that makes cannons more effective against hull than beams? Or is this just a wiki error?
Post edited by nymysys1 on
0
Comments
That change was made Feb 23rd, 2012.
It's a curious change, eh?
For the life of me, I can't figure out why they let it go through nor why it has remained so long...
Huh. What prompted them to make the change, some sort of inside info on a possible game update or something?
All hands! Prepare the popcorn and tinfoil hats!
Energy vs. Shields
Kinetic vs. Hull
What it said before that change...definitely makes sense.
Cause a BO3 w/ 0 Tac Consoles will do more damage to Shields than a HY3 Quant w/ 5 Tac Consoles...
Cause a HY3 Quant w/ 0 Tac Consoles will do more damage to Hull than a BO3 w/ 5 Tac Consoles...
Couldn't find anything in the patch notes around the time of the change that reflected anything different from what it had been since the page was created back in Feb of 2010...
All hands! Prepare the popcorn and tinfoil hats!
having a torpedo on your ship should be mandatory, infact a torpedo tube (or multiple) should be a shipsystem similar do deflector or shields.
See this thread for a lot of information regarding getting the most out of your ship.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=295581
Beams work good against shields, but are the weakest against the hull.
Torpedoes are great against the hull, but the weakest against the shields.
Cannons, mainly the Dual Heavy Cannons, are the best against the shields, and are better against the hull than beams, but not as good as the torpedoes.
The problem, however, is that when you look at the numbers over the time frame of a STF, it shows that beams sometimes do more DPS over a period of time. The truth is that they do.
Over a longer time, the beams will end up racking up more DPS, because they spend more time hitting shields, and that DPS gets counted as well as the DPS to the hull. That is why if you run an escort with 4 Dual Heavy Cannons on the front of the ship, and 3 turrets on the back, you kill things faster than a ship with 7 beam arrays with the same, or slightly more base damage.
Think about it like this:
When you fire 7 beams, by broadsiding the enemy, your beams will fire over and over again. However, their DPS is spread out over the time of their firing cycle. Beams fire 4 long shots over their cycle before recharging. While this is happening, ships like spheres and cubes are in the process of rerouting power to their shields.
Now, let's look at how the Dual Heavy Cannons work:
When you fire 4 of them together, they fire a 4 shot burst. When they hit, they hit with the total DPS all together. As the enemy starts rerouting power to their shields, the DHC fire their next shot. They hit with another large amount of DPS all at once again. This is what allows the DHC to drop the shields faster. When the shields go down faster, this means that they can hit the hull directly, and more often, before the enemy's shields come back up.
I have run multiple test with both, beam arrays and dual heavy cannons. I have found that I almost always get higher DPS over the course of an STF, but it takes longer to kill the enemy.
Therefore, when running with beam arrays, it is better to have a torpedo, and having a skill to strip shields would be helpful as well. You might want to also have science skills that can also weaken the enemy's defense, or disable them.
With a dual heavy cannons build, you can go with a torpedo. However, I recommend that you use either the Omega, or the Hyper torpedo from the Romulus rep. These are better for most builds than the regular MK XII purple. Fleet torpedoes are also good to use as well.
I hope this helps to clear up the misinformation on the wiki site.
You have to really really really know what you're doing to even come close in a cannon boat vs a cookie cutter beam boat. And even then anyone who knew what they were doing with said cannon boat could do it twice as good in a beam boat.
How are you doing more DPS, but still have it take longer to kill the enemy?
Its true that SOME of the DPS is lost because its hitting things that regenerate, but its also true that top tier five 8 beam array ships clear STFs faster than top tier five 5(4) DHC/2(3) turret ships. BFAW is just flat out better than CRF against both multiple targets AND single targets. BFAWs weakness is it that it drains a lot of your weapon power... a weakness that has all but disappeared nowadays.
They're more effective against everything. There's barely any need to use something besides an escort besides roleplay or challenge. If beams had less power drop off per cycle they'd be desirable.
Really not a discussion.
What I mentioned was a higher DPS total over time. Since the total includes DPS that is done to shields, it will show more total DPS if you hit shields more with beams, than you would with DHC. Therefore, when you hit things that regenerate, you are not actually loosing any DPS. It is still totaled with the damage done to the hull.
You will need to be careful how you compare ships. This is because some ships are focused towards science, engineering, or tactical builds. So you may have different stations, and that means you may need to use different skills. If you are running a ship that cannot equip cannons, then it is not a proper comparison.
To properly test this, you will need to use more than one ship that has the ability to equip both, beams and cannons. Then you will need to test each ship with both. I did this, and even used MK XII purple weapons, with the same bonus in the brackets. I also used ships from different classes to test it.
The results were the same every time. Cannons win out in dealing more DPS in short burst, preventing the shields from recharging as much before hitting the hull. Beams were great at building up DPS over time. This resulted in the ability to kill quicker with DHCs.
If you go into a STF with ships that cannot equip cannons, then you will not be able to compare what that ship's potential could be with cannons on it. Also, if you are running with a ship that is focused towards engineering, or science, you will be able to do more DPS with your skills than a ship that is focused more towards Tactical.
If that is the case, then it doesn't mean that you are doing more DPS with your beams, than someone else could with their cannons.
Also, I have been in STFs before with people that had Tier 5 fleet ships, and I had my Tier 3 Defiant. They were using fleet beams, and I was using fleet cannons. When they started hitting a sphere, it took them longer to kill it, than it took me to kill the one I was hitting. When the numbers were looked at, I had much lower DPS, usually by 1-2 thousand. However, it took them longer to kill the enemy than it took me.
Some that I talked to wanted to do a test, so we went into the Vortex. They only attacked probes on one side, and I did the same on the other. Our numbers were usually close together, but I never had to budge to kill up to 4 of them before they even got close enough for their explosion to do anything to my ship, or shields. I only used Cannon Scatter Volley 1, then followed it up with either another run of it, or hit the remaining ones with Cannon Rapidfire 3. I have no Attack Patterns at all.
About Beam Fire at Will, it is really good at hitting a lot of enemies in all directions. In the cure, when a lot of people get close enough to hit multiple probes at once, they do have the upper hand in dealing out a higher total of DPS. This does help to drop the probes under the cubes faster. However, that doesn't mean that if a ship with Cannon Scatter Volley could hit 3 of those probes with each shot, that it wouldn't take them down faster. Just like the probes in the Vortex, if it is in front of the DHC, and you hit the proper skill, you can kill it faster.
That is the only major restriction to the DHC. Their firing arc is so small. Aside from that, they are very powerful. If their firing arc was up to 180 degrees, it would make them over powered.
I hope this helps to explain what I was trying to say. And please don't get me wrong, beams are good weapons. Otherwise, the ships that can't run cannons wouldn't be able to hold their own. Also, beams have a lot more skills that can be used to help make them more potent. For example, Beam Overload, and the ones that target subsystems. With the right setup, they hold their own, and are a lot better at hitting targets, without needing them right in front of you. That was one of the things I really missed about them.
I have a cruiser on one of my toons that I get out sometimes, and play around with. It does require retraining a few skills, but if running a beam boat was pointless, I would have gotten rid of it. Beam boats are good ships, just like the flying cannons.