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Akira torp heavy help
underdose35
Member Posts: 19 Arc User
Hello all,
I recently levelled up an engineer and got the akira (heavy escort carrier) in the ship sale. I've been looking to try something different, so am going for a torpedo heavy build with some beams for shield damage. Here's where I'm at so far, with some fairly basic starter gear:
http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=akiratorpcurrent_0
Note I pretty much only use phasers for canon, but the proc could be occasionally useful for the torpedos at least.
Doffs:
Projectile Weapons Officer
Projectile Weapons Officer
Projectile Weapons Officer
Energy Weapons Officer (beam overload varient)
??? (currently a completely superfluous tactical team cool down doff)
Power settings:
86/55
71/55
45/25
76/65
My current plan is to get the adapted MACO engines and deflector for the +25% torpedo damage bonus, the regular MACO shield and maybe the gravimetric photon and a biomolecular photon, but I'm not sure about consoles or rear weapons. I previously had some photon mines in the back, but there seemed to be some interference with the cooldowns (unless I accidentally had it on autofire), plus I don't think I could fit in a dispersal pattern boff power.
So, any thoughts on consoles, skills, general equipment? Are there any things that increase torpedo damage that I may not have heard about?
Many thanks for your help!
I recently levelled up an engineer and got the akira (heavy escort carrier) in the ship sale. I've been looking to try something different, so am going for a torpedo heavy build with some beams for shield damage. Here's where I'm at so far, with some fairly basic starter gear:
http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=akiratorpcurrent_0
Note I pretty much only use phasers for canon, but the proc could be occasionally useful for the torpedos at least.
Doffs:
Projectile Weapons Officer
Projectile Weapons Officer
Projectile Weapons Officer
Energy Weapons Officer (beam overload varient)
??? (currently a completely superfluous tactical team cool down doff)
Power settings:
86/55
71/55
45/25
76/65
My current plan is to get the adapted MACO engines and deflector for the +25% torpedo damage bonus, the regular MACO shield and maybe the gravimetric photon and a biomolecular photon, but I'm not sure about consoles or rear weapons. I previously had some photon mines in the back, but there seemed to be some interference with the cooldowns (unless I accidentally had it on autofire), plus I don't think I could fit in a dispersal pattern boff power.
So, any thoughts on consoles, skills, general equipment? Are there any things that increase torpedo damage that I may not have heard about?
Many thanks for your help!
Post edited by underdose35 on
0
Comments
http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=redqueen_2083
I think you did a little oopsie there, the Battle Module 3000 is a Ferengi D'Kora Marauder Console only.
You probably meant the Rule62 Multipurpose Combat Console?
Cheers for this, it's always useful to take a look at other peoples builds and see how they do things. I think I'm going to stick with pure photons rather than a mix, but your build did lead me to look at the protonic arsenal set, and oh my does it look good! I had no idea about the set powers, effectively giving all your photon projectiles free [CrtH] x6.5 mods and half a [CrtD] mod, as well as +22.9% damage, seems too good to pass up.
So, with that in mind, here's my possible future build:
http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=akiratorppossiblefuture_0
This would have a tactical team cool down doff to keep it up 50% of the time, and eventually a second (with 6 doff slots) to get it to global cool down.
So, is the protonic arsenal really as good as it sounds? Is it worth dropping a tactical team for a mine power? Any other thoughts?
Thanks very much
Personally i would replace one of the science slots for the borg console and the photon mine in the back with a KCB
The borg two piece is usually my first port of call for any ship, but I wasn't sure the bonus would be that useful on a torpedo heavy ship. Still, both are good things in their own right, and I'm not too convinced by mines yet either. Cheers!
When using more then 2 photon launchers you actually *do not* want to use any PWO doffs. And getting higher quality PWO doffs will just make it worse..
What ends up happening is launcher 1 will fire and start its CD timer, launcher 2 will fire and proc your PWO, and it will lower the CD on launcher 1. Possibly enough to where launcher 1 will fire again instead of launcher 3. I did some live testing on this a while back with 3 vr pwo doffs and 4 photon launchers. For sure with 4 photons you do not want PWO because it will just cycle back and forth between launcher 1 and 2 leaving 3 and 4 our of the firing sequence. With 3 launchers you would have to test it out, but it will probably still upset your firing sequence a bit. This should be easy enough to test out on your own just find a patrol or any of the enemy contact areas in space and find a strong enemy and shoot at it and pay attention to your torp launcher firing sequence.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=19350711&postcount=215
Thats a link to the huge torp boat thread. Now although my ship is a Tvaro it is a full photon build and some of the set pieces you can use. Disregard the deflectors, shields, engines, core (there is an equivalent warp core but you may not want that one either). And obviously disregard the Singularity Destabilizer and the Plasma Destabilizer. Your point defense console can actually take the spot of one of those and you can find another console to fill the other spot. You can use a deflector/eng/shields that is better for survivability or go with adapted maco deflector and engines and fleet shields. You might not want to copy my deflector/eng/shields/core because i chose them with my stealth Tvaro in mind.
The rest of the setup you can either copy or sub out your own pieces. But i chose my consoles and weapons because they had bonuses to photon projectile damage. Even that useless experimental proton cannon in the back of my ship which never fires because i'm in stealth all the time? it gives me a 3pc bonus which gives me +10% crit with photon projectiles and 10% severity. You might want to think about the Gravimetric photon launcher from Dyson rep and the Enhanced Bio-Molecular photon launcher from 8472 rep.
I'd never thought about this, thanks for the info! I'll have to do some proper testing, though I imagine with only three torpedoes, one of which will be the graviemtric with (I think?) an 8 sec cooldown, that at least one or two lower quality PWO would be useful. Again, I'll have to try it out. There's a lot more to torp boats than I realised!
Cheers all, this gives me a lot of useful info to base a build on
With the Dyson three piece set and the romulan rep crit chance trait, the crit chance for photons would be almost 20%. I figured at that point it's probably more effective to increase crit damage rather than adding more chance, though I haven't run any numbers. This build is a ways off for me anyway, just my current plan.
@OP
You have a few factors to consider. Look at the cool down timer of the torpedoes. The Gravimetric Torp has an 8 sec cd, the Enhanced Bio Torp has a cool down of 7 sec and regular torps have a cd of 6 sec. A shorter cd can mean a faster rate of fire if the PWO proc procs. Again, the PWO offer a chance, not guarantee, to reduce cd's. Your weapon placement from left to right can affect which weapon is fired first.
If you have 4 photon torp fore weapons slotted with two normal (6 cd) photon torps in the 3rd and 4th slot with 3 purple PWO's the 4th slotted photon torp will fire occasionally. There are different setups you can use with different torps and you may need to worry about shields and penetrating or/and bypassing them.
Definitely read the Guide to Torpedo Boat thread for ideas, play around with builds and use Bing, Dogpile and Google to search for torpedo boat builds and ideas.
If you are going to test it out try it with no PWO and see how your launchers go. If the cycle is able to go from launcher 1-2-3 then right back to 1 as it comes off of cooldown then there wont be any need for a PWO, not even 1. If you were to go with just 2 photon launchers and 1-2 other launchers that dont interfere with the GCD or 2 long CD launchers then PWO would be useful.
I forget how long the Grav launcher CD is but its 1 sec longer then all other photons so i think its 7sec. With my Grav and 3 other photons the firing sequence usually goes with grav being #1: 1-2-3-4 and by the time 4 fires 1 and 2 are both coming off CD. But since 1 is higher on the firing order it shoots first. My intention was always to go with 4 photon launchers so i never got around to testing it with just 3 launchers.
Just a very minor correction
But it isnt actually the launchers spot on the ships paper doll that determines autofire sequence. When you are in space and if you look at your weapon tray you can right click on each weapon to set it to autofire. The order you right click on the launchers is what determines autofire sequence. So on your weapon tray you have launchers 1-2-3-4 and underneath it your rear weapon slots 5-6-7. If you were to right click in order on 1-2-3-4 then the firing sequence will be 1-2-3-4. If you were to instead right click on the launchers in order 3-2-1-4 then the launchers will fire in sequence 3-2-1-4.
EDIT: correction to my correction...the way i mention it is how it used to work lol. I was just out trying to test timing on 3 photon launchers. My launchers physically sit grav - bio enh - bio - bio. When i set it to 4-3-2-1 it always fires the grav launcher first. But when i change my launchers to just 4 bio up front sometimes it will fire 4-3-2-1 but then sometimes it also fires 1-4-3-2 even though i have it set to fire 4-3-2-1. It might have something to do with my keybindings too but i doubt it, i had to change my bindings when going to an all launcher all mine setup was not letting spacebar fire my weapons. So i had to change spacebar to 'fire all torpedos' instead of its default setting of spacebar firing all phasers. I doubt that was the reason though, but it was one of the things i had changed since last testing my launchers which involved testing timing and firing sequence.
I would look into setting up a Aux2Bat build which can decrease the cooldown time on your Boff abilities. Naturally, Purple Technicians works best but it is expensive if you were to by them from the Exchange. The least expensive purple Tech that will reduce Doff abilities will set you back about 10 million EC on the Exchange (yesterday prices). You can try getting free purple techs from the B'tran cluster but it is hit or miss... I mostly miss...
You need to do the colony chain mission which contains 7 missions in total. The last mission is known as "Renown" which will reward you with a free blue tech and open a new mission "Support Colonization Efforts" which will reward you a purple tech on a critical success. This is hit or miss; many times I do not even see that mission being offered and even though every time I have attempted to do that mission with a 28% - 30% critical success rate for my Fed toon, I have not had a critical success in 12 attempts. However, my KDF Tactical toon got one on the 3rd attempt. However, my KDF toon is still trying to get a 2nd purple tech, but has failed to get a critical success (27% - 29% critical success rate) in 5 more attempts.
Anywaste... you will need to switch you EPtS2 to Aux2Bat1 for an Aux2Bat build that will trigger a cooldown of your Boff abilities when using technicians. Each purple tech can reduce ability cooldowns by 10%. For example, firing TS would normally have a 30 second cooldown which would be reduce to 24 seconds. THY would then have a 12 second cooldown instead of 15 seconds.
I would replace TSS2 with ST2. ST2 instantly regenerate a lot more shield strength than TSS2 (lower instant regen, but increase regen rate). It's a matter of personal taste I suppose...
You have not listed a warp core. I recommend an Overcharged Warp Core which provides +5 to Aux Power and I would look for a modifier that give a 7.5% power bonus from one subsystem to Aux. For example, I tend to choose the [W->A] modifier because usually most power is devoted to weapons so this will give a larger bonus to Aux subsystem. However, warp cores with any [W->x] modifier are usually more expensive than other similar modifiers. The [S->A] modifier would be a second choice because shields generally have a pretty good amount of power in that subsystem. Note that is bonus power, the power will not be deducted and transferred to the Aux subsystem.
The more Aux power you have the greater your repairs will be using Aux2SIF and more power will be transferred to other subsystems when Aux2Bat is used.
A2B doesnt reduce shared cooldowns. If you pop TS it goes on 30sec CD and it also puts THY and additional copies of TS on a 15sec shared CD. If you pop A2B immediately then the 30sec CD on the first TS gets reduced to 19sec (assuming 3 VR techs). But the 15sec shared CD is not affected it will still run its normal course. And another thing is A2B will interfere with A2SiF. If you pop A2Batt it puts A2Sif on a 10sec shared CD.
Also with 3 VR techs and just one copy of A2B you are only reducing 30sec abilities by 10sec, 45sec abilities by 15sec. Using that one A2B will put A2B on a 40sec CD, then a split second later it gets reduced to 27sec. It benefits his abilities that have CDs 45sec such as EPTS, TSS, HE and PH a lot more because he can use that same copy of A2B to reduce cooldowns on 45sec abilities twice. With abilities that have a CD of 30sec you can only use A2B to reduce their cooldowns once. By the time A2B is off its CD the reduced CD on your 30sec abilities will have finished.
If he decides to use two copies of A2B for back to back activations then he is maximizing his CD reductions. But now he only has 1 ensign engineering boff ability free to use for shield or hull heals. Not only that running on low to no aux a most of the time will affect aux based heals. And since torp ships tend to be huge aggro magnets he's going to need those heals.
I think a non A2B build would be best and he can load up on sci and eng boff survival abilities. he is in an escort so he can double up on torpedo buffing abilities. But of course we just have to convince him to drop the DBB up front so that he doesnt have to run double BO. Also running no energy weapons means he can max out shields and max out aux no problems. There is a space rep talent that can buff offense and defense stats further depending on how much aux you have. I normally run 125 aux on my Tvaro but if i drain it to zero aux i lose 40 dps on each launcher with that space talent (Auxiliary Power Configuration).
Well, my master plan for my own build just went out the door.... LOL...
Time to re-think... maybe some booze will help...
@stonewbie, I might go for a pure torpedo boat and drop the dbb's, but I don't understand how you do enough shield-bypassing damage to be effective. Is the gravimetric rift and bio-incubation enough? Or is it simply the volume of fire you put out? That's my thinking behind the beam bank, overload and energy weapon doff - to do enough damage even when shields are up.
Yah its pretty much just volume of fire along with a lot of shield penetration stuff like Omega Kinetic Shearing or i'll drop a Nukara mine right in their face even if they have shields on the facing still. I do mostly Borg STFs though where a lot of the targets are unshielded. But stuff like the 3 Raptors or 3 Negvhar arent a problem for me unless i get a bad string of non crits. On the rare occasions that i have 3 Raptors spawning and then 3 Negvhar spawning thats not a problem either. If i'm lucky the timing will allow all 6 of those ships to get sucked into my GW, and i use destab torp a HY2 grav torp and then when it is available a TS3 Grav torp (which will spawn a bunch of spatial disruptions). Same thing with all the spheres that come out of infected gate. I can head off to them lob a destab, THY2 grav torp, grav well, warp shadows to drop aggro (hopefully) then a TS3 grav torp. Same thing there unless i get a string of bad rng and nothing crits then they will survive. But a lot of times everything dies in just that salvo alone with no outside help. Obviously some of the abilities wont be available for you so you wont get nearly as much of an effect or as much survivability as a Tvaro or B'Rel.