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Quad Question
rinkster
Member Posts: 3,549 Arc User
I should know this, but I'm afraid I don't.
How do the quad cannons pull energy?
Most weapons pull from the weapons energy bar, but on the quad cannon tooltips it talks of pulling engine power.
Do the quads take their damage cue from weapons power, but pull actual energy from engines?
How does that mechanic work?
How do the quad cannons pull energy?
Most weapons pull from the weapons energy bar, but on the quad cannon tooltips it talks of pulling engine power.
Do the quads take their damage cue from weapons power, but pull actual energy from engines?
How does that mechanic work?
Post edited by rinkster on
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I'm not sure if that's current, though.
There may also be ramifications with damage output because they don't scale based off your weapons power -- but that's something I don't know.
So,
Pros: By drawing from engines, they don't reduce weapon power levels when fired. The benefit to that is that it keeps weapon power levels a bit higher, which in turn, further increases DPS.
Cons: By drawing from engines, they slow down your ship and reduce the defense you somewhat. By level 50 this isn't too bad, as players tend to have skills, traits, and equipment that can mitigate this to an extent.
When these were first released those were probably bigger deals than they are now.
The theory for this is, the cannons are so powerful, it's like pushing back against the forward velocity of the ship. The drain from Engines is not to boost the damage output, but to simulate a counter force for the ships forward velocity.
This is similar to the effect encountered by the real life A-10 Warthog ground attack plane, when it fires it's cannon at a target, the plane actually slows down slightly do to the push back from the cannons recoil.
The base damage for Quad Cannons at lvl 50 is 214 (287 DPS) per pulse, so 856 (1148 DPS) for each four pulse firing, before any weapon power, skill boost or ship, system or player traits are calculated.
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Quad_Cannons
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Phaser_Quad_Cannons
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Disruptor_Quad_Cannons
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Plasma_Quad_Cannons
I run Quad Cannons on my Defiant, B'rel and T'varo. They work just fine if you rig the rest of your ship in a reasonable manner.
The trick to effectively using Quads, is to build with the drain to Engine power in mind. Low Engine power builds are not going to be as effective/fun/fast and will have lower overall defense rating if running Quads.
All Quad Cannons function in the exact same way, drawing the same power and dishing out the same damage. They differ ONLY in their weapon energy type proc.
I may get flamed incessantly for it, but if you run the raw numbers, and build your ship around them, Quad Cannons are actually one of the highest DPS weapons in the game, if only by a small margin. I have and do regularly solo Borg Cubes with them. And no, I don't use ONLY Quads, but they are a staple weapon on my ships. I like the firing animation, the firing sound AND, I have found them to NOT be "underpowered wastes of pixels" that a lot of people seem to think they are.
"There... are... four... lights!" ~Jean Luc Picard
Thanks for the clarification that they pull weapons AND engine power. I had forgotten that part.
I don't think thatdescription is it at all. I think since they have 2x the cannons (quad vs dual) they pull 2x the power. Your commentary about the A-10 is also a bit of a red herring as even basic machine guns on planes would slow them down. Just the 6x .50cals on an F-86 Sabre would slow it down 30mph from maximum speed. That's just basic physics for solid-projectile weaponry.
However, phasers and phaser cannons do not fire solid projectiles. There is NO recoil whatsoever to deal with.
Sorry, but your description there is just whimsical fantasy.
EDIT: P.S. Since they don't scale past a certain point they most definitely are not the best DPS gun in the game. Not even close. I regularly solo borg cubes with blue and green Mk XI beam arrays. Does that make them the best? No. For anything the quads can do -- and they're "nice" don't get me wrong! -- other weapons can do more and do better. Especially when you get into ultra rare Mk. XIIs, fleet elites, etc. The quads are left miles behind.
Sure, it happens with all aircraft machine guns--it's just that the A-10 carries the biggest airborne machine gun ever put into mass production (both in terms of gun mass and in terms of sustained mass of ammunition fired per second per gun), resulting in the highest recoil force of any production aircraft. The recoil force is actually equal to slightly more than the maximum non-afterburner thrust of one of the A-10's twin jet engines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAU-8_Avenger
Yes, I'm familiar with the weapon system. The "myth" (and I hesitate to even call it that) is balderdash. It's made up fiction by folks that don't know better and mass-propogated by Internet fans. Actual records, pilots, video footage, shows the real story. A-10 pilots even say this claim is nonsense.
That aside, it's still about physics. There's no reason to include "recoil" into the quad cannons when the physics don't exist.
As I understand it the DHCs work well because of their cycle time and weapon draw as well as the innate crit severity. Do the quads trump an equal level DHC? Do the quads mess with the weapon energy draw.?
considering it's one of the highest DPS cannons "the people" are wrong IMHO. i think it pairs nicely with 2 heavy duals.
I don't know where you got that idea from but it's wrong. from canon, Sisko stated that they channel the engines directly to the cannons (similar to the refit Enterprise in TMP) the devs stated early on that the engine drain was to simulate the drain of the weapons on the engines. it was never mentioned that it was some sort or recoil.
incorrect. the weapons mounted on the AC130 Specter are much larger than the minigun on the A-10. in fact, there are a couple of the 30mms on the specter as well as a 76mm and 120mm.
remember wikipedia pages can be written and modified by anyone, and sometimes they are not correct