I have 2 science captain that use torpedo exclusively on their ships. A kdf aligned Reman flying a T5U fleet T'Varo and a human flying a fleet reconnaissance science ship. Both use Breen cluster torpedo and mostly photon based torpedos. The T'Varo can easily do 10k+ dps in ISA with an average team, unfortunately with high dps teams most target are gone by the time torps get to them because of the somewhat lower speed of torpedos. Like some said, Neutronic torpedo are awesome, I frequently get 20-30k + crit hits with it, Enhanced Bio torp come second not too far behind.
The best thing about using an all torpedo built with a science captain is that you don't need to use any power for energy weapons. You can max out Auxiliary and use the rest for shield and engine making for a tougher, faster ship, specialy if you use Auxiliary to dampener doffed (which gives max resist and speed). Maxed auxiliary gives great science so you have great Gravity Well or any auxiliary based power, great auxiliary based hull and shield heal, in short what a science captain should be good at in the first place without compromise.
Of course I could use energy based weapons, I use too, but in the end you have to compromise on other things and I wanted a pure science based built and torpedo help me attain that goal.
Torpedo are perfectly viable just have to make it work. I may even try my hand at making another T'Varo for my Romulan tac captain, I wonder how high I could get with it, since I got over 350k crits with destabilized plasma torp on a science captain, how high could I get with a tac captain stacking, Alpha, GDF, Tac fleet, Omega 3, fom and decloak attack bonus..... making me wonder :eek: :cool:
Jamal : Tactical space specialist. USS Bug Warrior and many others
E'Mc2 : Science Reman torp T'Varo, deadly annoyance :P
Kunmal: Tactical fed Klingon, ground specialist, USS Kanewaga
Ka -tet Tier 5 fleet fully completed Starbase and fleet property
Yeah this topic has been smelting match between the fed and kdf factions for years. If any change increased torpedo damage the fed only players would rage forum fires until they got their way. So what cryptic would do is let it stir for a couple weeks and then nerf it so you couldn't use it all because of the brel lol.
The other aspect is there is no evidence what so ever that torpedoes would do less damage against shields because its just a game mechanic they made in the beginning and based on the facts that with all the energy weapon and shield changes over the years it left the torpedo aspect alone in the dark much like the kdf, the romulans now, and ummm well every body because we love it like that. One thing might interest me in patching up this game ever again is if they would revamp the way the torpedoes work because really there are a lot of people who would love to play ships like the b'rel and t'varo with enhanced battle cloak but do to the mechanics its just not feasible or fun when it comes to builds able to compete with the meta game.
Although on this issue that hasn't budged much in half a decade is first they will loosely say yeah we'd like to change it one day. Then when asked about how far along they are with it if they ever respond they will say well its not really up to us its the player bases fault that they don't like how it works and not their problem. Then something will have to happen where majority of players want it before it'll get put on their schedule and thats even if they want to bother doing it. Because according to the info we have we like fighting dinosaurs, making flower picking romulan friends, going from no you cant use thalaron weapons to ohhh sure come on into our space with thalaron weapons pointed at us, and the copy and paste of fed space and call it the delta quadrant/fed sector space/DR. We absolutely love all that TRIBBLE.
A Pathfinder would probably be great for that Federation captain, with the armor console (since it blocks out energy weapons but does jack to torpedoes). Too bad it only works for 15 sec at a time.
I prefer the fleet recon for the 4 tac consoles, I found that torps work best if you can stack damage console as much as you can. I have no problem with survivability since shield, engine and auxiliary power are so high. In fact, I haven't met a NPC or group of NPC that can take down my shield yet.
Jamal : Tactical space specialist. USS Bug Warrior and many others
E'Mc2 : Science Reman torp T'Varo, deadly annoyance :P
Kunmal: Tactical fed Klingon, ground specialist, USS Kanewaga
Ka -tet Tier 5 fleet fully completed Starbase and fleet property
The problem can be corrected with just 3 things imo
1. increase the damage of or correct the omega shear proc
2. Remove the Global cool down of torps and have them fire just like everything else.
3. Get rid of the current Split of Mine and Torpedo Consoles, and combine them into one projectile console
Or
Start giving us the bonuses The rest of the weapons get, plasma damage procs of science consols, Energy steal from leech, Hull heals from integrity leech, Shield heals from valadore consols, and more Duty officer augments that benefit torpedoes + better abilities
And to those saying * I do over 10k dps with a torpedo energy weapon hybrid, so clearly They're doing just fine*
Consider the fact , 1 your not using pure torpedoes so how can you accuratly Judge their power, 2 10k dps isn't Anything anymore... 10k dps is 1/16th of what the best pure beam boats are doing. And a full team of 50k+ dps people are what is required these days to be the toughest matches. and thats with strategy and coordination ( tanks, healers , disables, etc)
I just want Torpedoes to have more tricks, manuverability in builds, options, and a dps somewhere in the same Zip code as Energy Builds.
1. increase the damage of or correct the omega shear proc
Omega Shear is pretty much already overpowered it must not be boosted anymore. Once you start using shear with amor pen and shield pen its damage gets crazy.
Start giving us the bonuses The rest of the weapons get, plasma damage procs of science consols, Energy steal from leech, Hull heals from integrity leech, Shield heals from valadore consols, and more Duty officer augments that benefit torpedoes + better abilities
We already have stuff like that that. Sci consoles boost some torpedoes damage . I changed my torpedo so it disables all ships in a 3km blast via traits when it fires and kills entire groups of NPC's in 1 volley, anything that survives cannot shoot back at me. You can gain shield power from using torpedoes which boosts healing and resistance. Torps have lots of tricks is just most people do not know about them or do not use them.
EDIT: Speaking of tricks this is one of the many ones you can do. A none stop stream of torpedo's with just 2 torpedo launchers. https://imageshack.com/i/5uplasmazxj I can keep that up constantly.
EDIT2: The Emissions and grav torps allow a lot of tricks as well. Create a grav well suckup all the targets close together. Shoot a grav or emissions torp with torpedo spread and watch how you just created 5 plasma fields all over lapping or with the right doffs up to and sometimes over 8 grav fields most over lapping. (grav torp + grav well + doff to spawn extra wells) Spikes DPS can balloon up to well over 50k or 100k+ like that. Its not too hard to end up with 5 lots of omega shear hear, 5 lots of plasma fields all ticking away high damage at a group of ships.
I think the global cooldowns needs to be modified so you don't lose dps with 4 torpedoes, so instead of global cooldown you fire all torpedoes in a sequence from left to right with a 0.5 second delay.
Also we need a new option for torpedo spread and high yield so you can choose which torpedo launcher gets the bonus, for example, a click in the ability loads the torpedo spread/high yield, and a click on the torpedo fires the spread/high yield.
You can also set it to autofire, right click in the ability and right click in the torpedo and every time you use that ability the designated torpedo gets the bonus.
The problem can be corrected with just 3 things imo
1. increase the damage of or correct the omega shear proc
2. Remove the Global cool down of torps and have them fire just like everything else.
3. Get rid of the current Split of Mine and Torpedo Consoles, and combine them into one projectile console
1) The OKS is 40% of the damage that hits hull over a 6 second period. Against most NPCs (can't recall if it is all), the amount of damage that hits hull is going to be 10% or more. They don't have Resilient Shields. The 10% can be increased through various abilities and traits.
So your raw damage is X. 10% of that gets through to hull. 0.1 * X. 40% of that will be the total damage applied by the DoT. 0.4 * 0.1 * X. That damage is applied over 6 seconds. (0.4 * 0.1 * X) / 6.
Your expected tick from the DoT would be 0.00667 * X.
A 10,000 raw hit against a shielded target would create a DoT that ticks for 66.7 per sec for 6 seconds.
That's before any debuffing...that's before any stacking.
2) Let's consider 4x DHC vs. 4x Quantum Torpedoes for this.
Yeah, the DHCs would do better against those "infinite" shields but still not as good against hull. And contrary to popular belief, NPCs do not have "infinite" shields.
But wait VD, that's just a single shot. What about DPS? Okay, say we keep the min 1s CD for the torps?
Yeah...PWOs, eh? Opportunistic reduces Weapon CDs too. So does 2pc MACO. So does the broken 3pc from Contractual Agreement (it reduces the CD of everything but the Active Rep clickies).
3) Let's take a look at what Energy Weapons have first, yeah?
The complaint being mixing Torp/Mine Generics, right? Er, kind of like mixing Beam/Cannon Generics, eh?
But you can't make a full Mine boat? Cluster Torps are Mines...we've got the Breen and Vaadwaur Clusters so far. You can run an eight Mine boat. Be nifty to have more variety of Clusters, no doubt.
4) But wait there was no 4 up there. No, the 4 goes back to what I said about it being content earlier. Sure, FAW can increase the RoF of a Beam by 250% and hit multiple targets in a 250 degree arc and is applied to all the Beams, meaning you can have four Beams up front doing that in their 250 arc and four Beams out back doing that in their 250 arc as well as eight beams doing that in a 70 arc to either side. Heinous, right? What if there weren't all the targets for them shoot at? What if instead of having the monster farm nonsense that we have, we had things less designed for stuff like that? What if instead of there being a half dozen or more targets there was one target, eh? Look what happens to FAW against a single target vs. handfuls of targets, eh? If FAW is the elephant you're tossing out in to the room to look at, you're missing the triceratops in the room...
The content in this game...it's just variations of target dummies. That's why folks fine tune their builds to the particular content they're running to maximize the DPS for it. Tada, content favors certain builds over other builds.
It's a content issue. If the content were more dynamic, laid out differently, less of a monster farm, etc, etc, etc...
1) The OKS is 40% of the damage that hits hull over a 6 second period. Against most NPCs (can't recall if it is all), the amount of damage that hits hull is going to be 10% or more. They don't have Resilient Shields. The 10% can be increased through various abilities and traits.
So your raw damage is X. 10% of that gets through to hull. 0.1 * X. 40% of that will be the total damage applied by the DoT. 0.4 * 0.1 * X. That damage is applied over 6 seconds. (0.4 * 0.1 * X) / 6.
Your expected tick from the DoT would be 0.00667 * X.
A 10,000 raw hit against a shielded target would create a DoT that ticks for 66.7 per sec for 6 seconds.
That's before any debuffing...that's before any stacking.
2) Let's consider 4x DHC vs. 4x Quantum Torpedoes for this.
Yeah, the DHCs would do better against those "infinite" shields but still not as good against hull. And contrary to popular belief, NPCs do not have "infinite" shields.
But wait VD, that's just a single shot. What about DPS? Okay, say we keep the min 1s CD for the torps?
Yeah...PWOs, eh? Opportunistic reduces Weapon CDs too. So does 2pc MACO. So does the broken 3pc from Contractual Agreement (it reduces the CD of everything but the Active Rep clickies).
3) Let's take a look at what Energy Weapons have first, yeah?
The complaint being mixing Torp/Mine Generics, right? Er, kind of like mixing Beam/Cannon Generics, eh?
But you can't make a full Mine boat? Cluster Torps are Mines...we've got the Breen and Vaadwaur Clusters so far. You can run an eight Mine boat. Be nifty to have more variety of Clusters, no doubt.
4) But wait there was no 4 up there. No, the 4 goes back to what I said about it being content earlier. Sure, FAW can increase the RoF of a Beam by 250% and hit multiple targets in a 250 degree arc and is applied to all the Beams, meaning you can have four Beams up front doing that in their 250 arc and four Beams out back doing that in their 250 arc as well as eight beams doing that in a 70 arc to either side. Heinous, right? What if there weren't all the targets for them shoot at? What if instead of having the monster farm nonsense that we have, we had things less designed for stuff like that? What if instead of there being a half dozen or more targets there was one target, eh? Look what happens to FAW against a single target vs. handfuls of targets, eh? If FAW is the elephant you're tossing out in to the room to look at, you're missing the triceratops in the room...
The content in this game...it's just variations of target dummies. That's why folks fine tune their builds to the particular content they're running to maximize the DPS for it. Tada, content favors certain builds over other builds.
It's a content issue. If the content were more dynamic, laid out differently, less of a monster farm, etc, etc, etc...
I wish real world STO tests functioned like this. But they don't. I Don't know where the missing damage is... but torp boats at their BEST, do 42.9% of the damage of a beam boat. and around 60% of the damage of a Cannon comparing the very best torp boat dps league people vs the very best cannon and beam builds. On paper it seems right, but in Sto I think the equations fall apart.
I wish real world STO tests functioned like this. But they don't. I Don't know where the missing damage is... but torp boats at their BEST, do 42.9% of the damage of a beam boat. and around 60% of the damage of a Cannon comparing the very best torp boat dps league people vs the very best cannon and beam builds. On paper it seems right, but in Sto I think the equations fall apart.
There is no missing damage and where are you getting this 40% of energy boats number from? Your average energy boat is 10k to 20k dps. Your average torpedo boat is 10k to 20k dps. In some missions like Azure nebula or crystal Entity a torpedo boat will do way more DPS then the best energy boat. Often a torpedo boat can kill a group of NPC's faster then energy boats. Not always as it depends on the content being played.
Torpedo boats are perfectly viable and high damage even if they are sometimes lower then energy boats.
I'm running a full Transphasic build on an Aventine class Patrol Escort with 5 Transphasic Locators and it's a blast to fly:) (no pun intended). I throw the Borg transphasic torpedo on there for extra damage during the Borg STF's but it really is a fun ship to fly. No gravity well but I use eject warp plasma plus a DOFF to immobilize the groups of NPC's.
For me the pure torpedo build really isn't about high DPS but more for fun. I used to could count on first in Gorn Minefield, Crystalline and always did very well in Azure Nebula so that was good enough to me. Now I'm curious so I'll bring it out of mothballs and see how it does. I was just thinking the other day that my Phantom would make a great torpedo boat, especially throwing out Kinetic magnet.
I use a pure Photon build on my Sci CPT. Enhanced Bio-Molecular, Gravimetric and Experimental Photon Weapon Fore with the Bio Mine, Nukara, mine, and HArghPeng Aft. The 3 piece Dyson set makes Photons a monster. Now they and most of the other "good Torps have a drawback because of the targettable HY. This is why I use TS3 with GW and stack part gens.
What I would like to see:
1. A modified HY Command in which targettable torps are not targettable and reduce the damage by 30-40% They are even useless in PVE with faw spammers.
2. Like the OP Said make The BoFF command fire ALL Torps in the arc.
3. make the Harghpeng's radiation damage modifiable with part gens and the 8472 Tac console.
1. A modified HY Command in which targettable torps are not targettable and reduce the damage by 30-40% They are even useless in PVE with faw spammers.
That's going to come down to the particular torpedo.
You could have a Salvo (bunch of torps fired at a single target).
You could have a biggun (targetable).
You could have a biggun (non-targetable).
Torpedoes are supposed to be monsters. The Battle of the Mutara nebula, torpedoes were critical hit weapons. It's partly to do with the way damage is handled in this game. A torpedo to bare hull in the series quite rationally did horrific damage. The Reliant had it's torpedo launcher destroyed, a nacelle completely blown off. The Enterprise-D considered it a suicidal risk to fire on a Borg cube at point blank range at warp. That same Enterprise-D was destroyed...but a Klingon Bird of Prey...via Torpedo Spread that wrecked its antimatter containment systems. Voyager in Year of Hell was perforated by the Chroniton Torpedoes of the Krenim, and we don't even need to go into the ungodly OP'ness of canon Transphasic Torpedoes.
In this game though their basically considered a single volley damage weapon. A haymaker if you will. In fighting game terms an all or nothing super move versus normal combos. If managing off line systems was a core principle of this game instead of a minor nuisance then torpedoes would have a natural home as a guaranteed knock something offline weapon that does serious damage. In this regard the game is too fast paced.
Yet still torpedoes are also slow. There's no logical ship mechanics reason why you can't fire all torpedoes at once. It's a magnetic catapult, that shouldn't even rate as a power drain on a ship with a warp core that can push a FTL drive. The only restriction on how fast torpedoes reload should be the length of time it takes to get the torpedo loaded into the tube. On that subject different ships should have different effects on torpedo abilities. The Galaxy can fire ten torpedoes at a time from its launcher, it should have a ten torpedo spread automatically. The Sovereign can fire what was it? Four Quantums a second sequentially? Those should be similar to the Omega torp, except you fire four torpedoes in a row before you go into the cooldown.
Another big problem is the shields. The fact is that shields for the amount of protection the provide on torpedoes....which is pretty much absolute barring add on abilities, they come back up way too fast. You knock down a shield, and by the time the torpedo travels the distance the shields are back up, which is especially hard to deal with when you're using one of the big heavy torpedoes.
As for a suggestion that wouldn't require major changes to the game, there should be an ability to scan the shield modulation. Set up a torpedo to bypass shields like the Duras sisters. It would most logically be an Intel ability. But who knows what the new Specs will bring?
Anyone level 50+ knows that torps are not that awesome. The shield regeneration of enemies (really all enemies) at that level is so high that powerful kinetic strikes with torps end up being nullified by the sliver of shield they may regenerate during that time.
The main reasons torps can be viable at end game are the utilitarian effects they have. We see this with things like the Bio-Molecular Photon Torpedo Launcher, with its Bio-Molecular Incubation mechanic. We see it with the Gravimetric Torpedo Launcher, with its anomalies it generates. Furthermore, we see it with the Neutronic Funpedo Launcher, with its powerful shield-ignoring radiation damage.
Viable torps are also tied in space sets for added bonuses, like the examples I mentioned.
Other than that, torps are really kind of meh. With some work, a player could conceivably make a transphasic torpedo boat work, building on its bleedthrough capability and capitalizing on making extremely damaging bleedthrough attacks.
So yes, most of us know torps aren't anywhere near as cool as they were at lower levels, but they have been making up for that with their secondary effects which make them useful for end-game content.
I honestly couldn't imagine my Bird of Prey without the Grav Torp. I drop it with Spread 3 and it's just beautiful.
Torps are good, in certain situations. The Neutronic torp is brutal in PvP (what's left of that). But the most important point is that torps hit a shield, and does nothing. If there was a way to scale bleedthrough to sheild hardness or hp, then maybe torps would be more viable. Until then, an energy weapon would almost always be better.
I have to agree there's no way that it makes any sense that a shield at 25% power gives the same protection as a shield at 100%. It's SUPER non-canon to begin with.
Look at the Battle of Khitomer. Chang's Bird of Prey tore the Enterprise apart...with torpedoes. Not a single disruptor shot fired. It doesn't hold up to canon or logic.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
There is no missing damage and where are you getting this 40% of energy boats number from? Your average energy boat is 10k to 20k dps. Your average torpedo boat is 10k to 20k dps. In some missions like Azure nebula or crystal Entity a torpedo boat will do way more DPS then the best energy boat. Often a torpedo boat can kill a group of NPC's faster then energy boats. Not always as it depends on the content being played.
Torpedo boats are perfectly viable and high damage even if they are sometimes lower then energy boats.
I'm getting it from Dps league.
Top Dpsers by type:
Projectile: 71k
Cannons: 89k
Beams: 163k
I care about utility as well. But chiefly I'd like to get into doing Elite matches. But that won't be happening unless we can 1. educate the public about mechanics, tactics etc 2. Can up my personal dps Hive for instance requires 50k dps against shielded targets... something I am whoa-fully short of... 3. I'd like to advocate for torpedoes because there is no reason they should be as gimped as they are in star trek online...even speaking canonically, and since Beam boats, and cannon buffs can now Out damage us against unshielded targets I feel every edge torps had has been taken, and now is the time to speak up about it.
It's not 100% about being a elitist number hungry dps fiend. But if thats the standard the matches set for us with the time gates in elite modes... then I think I'm in the right, to point out torp boats weaknesses that have been compounded by the Expansion
If that is the standard the matches set, and if anything other than 50k dps from each team member results in an automatic and unforgivable mission failure? Then yes, torps should be altered to reflect that standard.
I personally do not do Elite missions. So if you aren't being hyperbolic, I believe that torps should be looked at.
I also have to consider that the problem may not be with torps, but may be with the gameplay itself, which would make projectile weapons a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. This again is coming from someone who has not done Elite missions since Delta Rising, and is only speculation. Not first-hand experience.
However, if it really is just about "Dem Deeps", then all I can say on that topic is it ultimately doesn't matter what ship or set-up anyone flies, because the end result is simply wanting to min-max and do as much DPS as possible, and therefore the method of attaining those large numbers should be considered irrelevant.
I say the same thing when people mention Escorts of Science Vessels being 'unplayable' because the flavor of the month build or some people in a YouTube video figured out how to make lots of really large numbers they can't in a ship that isn't their preferred flavor.
To paraphrase Princess Leia, "If DPS is all you love, then that's what you'll receive."
However, I also believe Elite and Advanced missions should not be reliant on a min-max build.
And just because I see some posts in this thread that... I feel the need to remind people that Star Trek Online is a Star Trek game, not a Star Trek simulator.
Also, last point I need to make... it appears that the Command spec tree may be giving some love to torps, but I suppose we'll wait and see.
Top Dpsers by type:
Projectile: 71k
Cannons: 89k
Beams: 163k
Those are teams of ships working under very limited situations and do not represent normal gameplay, normal ship DPS or even normal mission runs. Those are not DPS numbers from solo ships.
Take that beam setup into crystal entity for example and the Projectile setup will most likely double the DPS over the beam setup. Then there is bug in crafting and how few people focus on torpedoes so few people have torpedo gear to max level.
Even with all that apart from the few odd beam setups, projectiles are within 20% of cannons and most beam setups. In some missions beams and cannons are 20% below Projectile’s.
No one weapon type is the best at everything or the highest DPS at everything.
Looking at the extreme end at limited situations is not a good way to judge a weapon system or balance weapon systems.
I also need to point out the DPS league it a tiny amount of players most of which do not even use torpedoes. So torp ships are very much unrepresented. I have never seen anyone with a maxed out torp ship enter the score into the league. I am pretty sure a maxed out torp ship can gain over 20% DPS over the score you posted.
EDIT: Which league are you looking at? The highest I see is 89dps.
Wow the new specialization looks stupidly powerful for torpedo's. Looks to be totally overpower although I haven't tested enough. I already hit for 50k+ none crit and 139k with crits in the current system. Omega Shearing is running at 3k dps.
So add in the new specialization at -150 Kinetic resistance from target and drain 719 shield and we get some crazy torp numbers.
As I was laughing at some of the stuff from yesterday, fighting off the urge to uninstall and skadoodle...
I did want to point out something that I wished they had done from the beginning for torps. Basically as part of the torp mechanics themselves, no traits consoles gimmicks needed - just part of the torps themselves (well, all projectiles).
Know that Tactical Advantage that reduces the target's damage resistance by a certain amount based on the target's hull? Something like that for projectiles with shields, as the shields were reduced that their penetration resistance was reduced...increased bleed.
Just that..."shields at 20%, Captain" and the torps hitting that much harder thing from the movies/shows...just something that always seemed to be missing.
As I was laughing at some of the stuff from yesterday, fighting off the urge to uninstall and skadoodle...
I did want to point out something that I wished they had done from the beginning for torps. Basically as part of the torp mechanics themselves, no traits consoles gimmicks needed - just part of the torps themselves (well, all projectiles).
Know that Tactical Advantage that reduces the target's damage resistance by a certain amount based on the target's hull? Something like that for projectiles with shields, as the shields were reduced that their penetration resistance was reduced...increased bleed.
Just that..."shields at 20%, Captain" and the torps hitting that much harder thing from the movies/shows...just something that always seemed to be missing.
I feel the same way about hull integrity in STO. I always thought having a 'top-heavy' survival mechanic was more engaging and required more attention paid to space combat.
I always thought after a certain point, like ~75% further damage you took resulted in more (or higher) critical hits as your hull integrity became increasingly unstable. This meant an emphasis on that last 25% of ship health for practical survivability. You never saw anyone in Star Trek say, "Structural integrity at ONE PERCENT." and everyone making it out okay.
Similarly, buildings in Starcraft continuing to tick downwards while they were pushed into the red, Battletech where once your armor is gone in an area, that part of your giant robot was increasingly vulnerable to critical damage which meant instant death in the right scenario (generally around your engine).
I always thought it was ridiculous we could miraculously survive having our starship hulls reduced to 1-3%.
I always thought it was ridiculous we could miraculously survive having our starship hulls reduced to 1-3%.
It's strikes me as stupid ridiculous that a BoP can be pounded down to 10% and still be able to engage it's cloak and (Bravely) run away like a little girl with a device depicted as fragile by the IP.
As for a suggestion that wouldn't require major changes to the game, there should be an ability to scan the shield modulation. Set up a torpedo to bypass shields like the Duras sisters. It would most logically be an Intel ability. But who knows what the new Specs will bring?
There is already a way to allow your torps to ignore a target's shields.
Comments
The best thing about using an all torpedo built with a science captain is that you don't need to use any power for energy weapons. You can max out Auxiliary and use the rest for shield and engine making for a tougher, faster ship, specialy if you use Auxiliary to dampener doffed (which gives max resist and speed). Maxed auxiliary gives great science so you have great Gravity Well or any auxiliary based power, great auxiliary based hull and shield heal, in short what a science captain should be good at in the first place without compromise.
Of course I could use energy based weapons, I use too, but in the end you have to compromise on other things and I wanted a pure science based built and torpedo help me attain that goal.
Here is my T'Varo built I used before Delta Rising. I haven't updated the built so a few things changed mostly a neutronic Torpedo in place of the Harpeng and a (pla) embassy particle console and upgraded equipement.
http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/index.php?build=emc2tvaropve_3842
Torpedo are perfectly viable just have to make it work. I may even try my hand at making another T'Varo for my Romulan tac captain, I wonder how high I could get with it, since I got over 350k crits with destabilized plasma torp on a science captain, how high could I get with a tac captain stacking, Alpha, GDF, Tac fleet, Omega 3, fom and decloak attack bonus..... making me wonder :eek:
E'Mc2 : Science Reman torp T'Varo, deadly annoyance :P
Kunmal: Tactical fed Klingon, ground specialist, USS Kanewaga
Ka -tet Tier 5 fleet fully completed Starbase and fleet property
The other aspect is there is no evidence what so ever that torpedoes would do less damage against shields because its just a game mechanic they made in the beginning and based on the facts that with all the energy weapon and shield changes over the years it left the torpedo aspect alone in the dark much like the kdf, the romulans now, and ummm well every body because we love it like that. One thing might interest me in patching up this game ever again is if they would revamp the way the torpedoes work because really there are a lot of people who would love to play ships like the b'rel and t'varo with enhanced battle cloak but do to the mechanics its just not feasible or fun when it comes to builds able to compete with the meta game.
Although on this issue that hasn't budged much in half a decade is first they will loosely say yeah we'd like to change it one day. Then when asked about how far along they are with it if they ever respond they will say well its not really up to us its the player bases fault that they don't like how it works and not their problem. Then something will have to happen where majority of players want it before it'll get put on their schedule and thats even if they want to bother doing it. Because according to the info we have we like fighting dinosaurs, making flower picking romulan friends, going from no you cant use thalaron weapons to ohhh sure come on into our space with thalaron weapons pointed at us, and the copy and paste of fed space and call it the delta quadrant/fed sector space/DR. We absolutely love all that TRIBBLE.
I prefer the fleet recon for the 4 tac consoles, I found that torps work best if you can stack damage console as much as you can. I have no problem with survivability since shield, engine and auxiliary power are so high. In fact, I haven't met a NPC or group of NPC that can take down my shield yet.
E'Mc2 : Science Reman torp T'Varo, deadly annoyance :P
Kunmal: Tactical fed Klingon, ground specialist, USS Kanewaga
Ka -tet Tier 5 fleet fully completed Starbase and fleet property
1. increase the damage of or correct the omega shear proc
2. Remove the Global cool down of torps and have them fire just like everything else.
3. Get rid of the current Split of Mine and Torpedo Consoles, and combine them into one projectile console
Or
Start giving us the bonuses The rest of the weapons get, plasma damage procs of science consols, Energy steal from leech, Hull heals from integrity leech, Shield heals from valadore consols, and more Duty officer augments that benefit torpedoes + better abilities
And to those saying * I do over 10k dps with a torpedo energy weapon hybrid, so clearly They're doing just fine*
Consider the fact , 1 your not using pure torpedoes so how can you accuratly Judge their power, 2 10k dps isn't Anything anymore... 10k dps is 1/16th of what the best pure beam boats are doing. And a full team of 50k+ dps people are what is required these days to be the toughest matches. and thats with strategy and coordination ( tanks, healers , disables, etc)
I just want Torpedoes to have more tricks, manuverability in builds, options, and a dps somewhere in the same Zip code as Energy Builds.
That would me massively overpowered. A tweak might be good but if you removed the cooldown DPS would be higher then most energy boats.
We already have that for when the mines match the torpedoes type.
We already have stuff like that that. Sci consoles boost some torpedoes damage . I changed my torpedo so it disables all ships in a 3km blast via traits when it fires and kills entire groups of NPC's in 1 volley, anything that survives cannot shoot back at me. You can gain shield power from using torpedoes which boosts healing and resistance. Torps have lots of tricks is just most people do not know about them or do not use them.
EDIT: Speaking of tricks this is one of the many ones you can do. A none stop stream of torpedo's with just 2 torpedo launchers. https://imageshack.com/i/5uplasmazxj I can keep that up constantly.
EDIT2: The Emissions and grav torps allow a lot of tricks as well. Create a grav well suckup all the targets close together. Shoot a grav or emissions torp with torpedo spread and watch how you just created 5 plasma fields all over lapping or with the right doffs up to and sometimes over 8 grav fields most over lapping. (grav torp + grav well + doff to spawn extra wells) Spikes DPS can balloon up to well over 50k or 100k+ like that. Its not too hard to end up with 5 lots of omega shear hear, 5 lots of plasma fields all ticking away high damage at a group of ships.
Also we need a new option for torpedo spread and high yield so you can choose which torpedo launcher gets the bonus, for example, a click in the ability loads the torpedo spread/high yield, and a click on the torpedo fires the spread/high yield.
You can also set it to autofire, right click in the ability and right click in the torpedo and every time you use that ability the designated torpedo gets the bonus.
1) The OKS is 40% of the damage that hits hull over a 6 second period. Against most NPCs (can't recall if it is all), the amount of damage that hits hull is going to be 10% or more. They don't have Resilient Shields. The 10% can be increased through various abilities and traits.
So your raw damage is X. 10% of that gets through to hull. 0.1 * X. 40% of that will be the total damage applied by the DoT. 0.4 * 0.1 * X. That damage is applied over 6 seconds. (0.4 * 0.1 * X) / 6.
Your expected tick from the DoT would be 0.00667 * X.
A 10,000 raw hit against a shielded target would create a DoT that ticks for 66.7 per sec for 6 seconds.
That's before any debuffing...that's before any stacking.
2) Let's consider 4x DHC vs. 4x Quantum Torpedoes for this.
9 Starship Weapon Training: +49.5%
9 Energy/Projectile Weapons: +49.5%
Accolate: +2%
4x G14 Vulnerability Locators: +150%
Mk XIV: +230%
Epic: +15%
[Ac/Dm] (Epic Mod): +5%
Total: +501%
125 Weapon Power (for the DHCs, and we'll even treat it as a constant 125): +150%
Just inside 10km (for the DHCs, Torps have no range penalty): -60%
DHC Base DPV: 174
Quantum Base DPV: 1503
Single DHC Hit: 174 * (1 + 1.5) * (1 + 5.01) * (1 - 60%) = 1045.74
Single Quantum Hit: 1503 * (1 + 0) * (1 + 5.01) * (1 - 0) = 9033.03
4x DHC Hits: 4182.96
4x Quantum Hits: 36132.12
Let's run that again a standard NPC, but give it infinite shields since that's often the complaint.
Standard NPCs have 14% Shield Damage Reduction, 90% Bleedthrough Resistance, and 0% Hull Damage Resistance. Shield shave an innate 75% Kinetic Damage Reduction.
4x DHC Hits: 4182.96
Shield: 4182.96 * 0.9 = 3764.664 * 0.84 = 3162.31776
Hull: 4182.96 * 0.1 = 418.296
4x Quantum Hits: 36132.12
Shield: 36132.12 * 0.9 = 32518.908 * 0.215 = 6991.56522
Hull: 36132.12 * 0.1 = 3613.212
But wait VD, that's just inside 10km. What if the DHC guy was just outside 0km?
4x DHC Hits: 4182.96 / 0.4 = 10457.4
Shield: 4182.96 * 0.9 = 3764.664 * 0.84 = 3162.31776 / 0.4 = 7905.7944
Hull: 4182.96 * 0.1 = 418.296 / 0.4 = 1045.74
Yeah, the DHCs would do better against those "infinite" shields but still not as good against hull. And contrary to popular belief, NPCs do not have "infinite" shields.
But wait VD, that's just a single shot. What about DPS? Okay, say we keep the min 1s CD for the torps?
4x DHC Hits (0km): 10457.4 / 3.5 = 2987.8
4x DHC Hits (10km): 4182.96 / 3.5 = 1195.1
4x Quantum Hits: 36132.12 / 1.5 = 24088.1
Yeah...PWOs, eh? Opportunistic reduces Weapon CDs too. So does 2pc MACO. So does the broken 3pc from Contractual Agreement (it reduces the CD of everything but the Active Rep clickies).
3) Let's take a look at what Energy Weapons have first, yeah?
Beams (Generic)
Cannons (Generic)
Antiproton (Specific)
Disruptor (Specific)
Phaser (Specific)
Plasma (Specific)
Polaron (Specific)
Tetryon (Specific)
So we've got two Generic and six Specific.
So let's look at what Projectile Weapons have, eh?
Torpedoes (Generic)
Mines (Generic)
Chroniton (Specific)
Photon (Specific)
Plasma (Specific)
Quantum (Specific)
Transphasic (Specific)
Tricobalt (Specific)
Yep, we've got two Generic and six Specific.
The complaint being mixing Torp/Mine Generics, right? Er, kind of like mixing Beam/Cannon Generics, eh?
But you can't make a full Mine boat? Cluster Torps are Mines...we've got the Breen and Vaadwaur Clusters so far. You can run an eight Mine boat. Be nifty to have more variety of Clusters, no doubt.
4) But wait there was no 4 up there. No, the 4 goes back to what I said about it being content earlier. Sure, FAW can increase the RoF of a Beam by 250% and hit multiple targets in a 250 degree arc and is applied to all the Beams, meaning you can have four Beams up front doing that in their 250 arc and four Beams out back doing that in their 250 arc as well as eight beams doing that in a 70 arc to either side. Heinous, right? What if there weren't all the targets for them shoot at? What if instead of having the monster farm nonsense that we have, we had things less designed for stuff like that? What if instead of there being a half dozen or more targets there was one target, eh? Look what happens to FAW against a single target vs. handfuls of targets, eh? If FAW is the elephant you're tossing out in to the room to look at, you're missing the triceratops in the room...
The content in this game...it's just variations of target dummies. That's why folks fine tune their builds to the particular content they're running to maximize the DPS for it. Tada, content favors certain builds over other builds.
It's a content issue. If the content were more dynamic, laid out differently, less of a monster farm, etc, etc, etc...
I wish real world STO tests functioned like this. But they don't. I Don't know where the missing damage is... but torp boats at their BEST, do 42.9% of the damage of a beam boat. and around 60% of the damage of a Cannon comparing the very best torp boat dps league people vs the very best cannon and beam builds. On paper it seems right, but in Sto I think the equations fall apart.
Torpedo boats are perfectly viable and high damage even if they are sometimes lower then energy boats.
For me the pure torpedo build really isn't about high DPS but more for fun. I used to could count on first in Gorn Minefield, Crystalline and always did very well in Azure Nebula so that was good enough to me. Now I'm curious so I'll bring it out of mothballs and see how it does. I was just thinking the other day that my Phantom would make a great torpedo boat, especially throwing out Kinetic magnet.
What I would like to see:
1. A modified HY Command in which targettable torps are not targettable and reduce the damage by 30-40% They are even useless in PVE with faw spammers.
2. Like the OP Said make The BoFF command fire ALL Torps in the arc.
3. make the Harghpeng's radiation damage modifiable with part gens and the 8472 Tac console.
That's going to come down to the particular torpedo.
You could have a Salvo (bunch of torps fired at a single target).
You could have a biggun (targetable).
You could have a biggun (non-targetable).
To match that up with the Photon stuff...
Photon - salvo.
Grav - targetable.
E-Bio - non-targetable.
In this game though their basically considered a single volley damage weapon. A haymaker if you will. In fighting game terms an all or nothing super move versus normal combos. If managing off line systems was a core principle of this game instead of a minor nuisance then torpedoes would have a natural home as a guaranteed knock something offline weapon that does serious damage. In this regard the game is too fast paced.
Yet still torpedoes are also slow. There's no logical ship mechanics reason why you can't fire all torpedoes at once. It's a magnetic catapult, that shouldn't even rate as a power drain on a ship with a warp core that can push a FTL drive. The only restriction on how fast torpedoes reload should be the length of time it takes to get the torpedo loaded into the tube. On that subject different ships should have different effects on torpedo abilities. The Galaxy can fire ten torpedoes at a time from its launcher, it should have a ten torpedo spread automatically. The Sovereign can fire what was it? Four Quantums a second sequentially? Those should be similar to the Omega torp, except you fire four torpedoes in a row before you go into the cooldown.
Another big problem is the shields. The fact is that shields for the amount of protection the provide on torpedoes....which is pretty much absolute barring add on abilities, they come back up way too fast. You knock down a shield, and by the time the torpedo travels the distance the shields are back up, which is especially hard to deal with when you're using one of the big heavy torpedoes.
As for a suggestion that wouldn't require major changes to the game, there should be an ability to scan the shield modulation. Set up a torpedo to bypass shields like the Duras sisters. It would most logically be an Intel ability. But who knows what the new Specs will bring?
I honestly couldn't imagine my Bird of Prey without the Grav Torp. I drop it with Spread 3 and it's just beautiful.
I have to agree there's no way that it makes any sense that a shield at 25% power gives the same protection as a shield at 100%. It's SUPER non-canon to begin with.
Look at the Battle of Khitomer. Chang's Bird of Prey tore the Enterprise apart...with torpedoes. Not a single disruptor shot fired. It doesn't hold up to canon or logic.
I'm getting it from Dps league.
Top Dpsers by type:
Projectile: 71k
Cannons: 89k
Beams: 163k
If that is the standard the matches set, and if anything other than 50k dps from each team member results in an automatic and unforgivable mission failure? Then yes, torps should be altered to reflect that standard.
I personally do not do Elite missions. So if you aren't being hyperbolic, I believe that torps should be looked at.
I also have to consider that the problem may not be with torps, but may be with the gameplay itself, which would make projectile weapons a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. This again is coming from someone who has not done Elite missions since Delta Rising, and is only speculation. Not first-hand experience.
However, if it really is just about "Dem Deeps", then all I can say on that topic is it ultimately doesn't matter what ship or set-up anyone flies, because the end result is simply wanting to min-max and do as much DPS as possible, and therefore the method of attaining those large numbers should be considered irrelevant.
I say the same thing when people mention Escorts of Science Vessels being 'unplayable' because the flavor of the month build or some people in a YouTube video figured out how to make lots of really large numbers they can't in a ship that isn't their preferred flavor.
To paraphrase Princess Leia, "If DPS is all you love, then that's what you'll receive."
However, I also believe Elite and Advanced missions should not be reliant on a min-max build.
And just because I see some posts in this thread that... I feel the need to remind people that Star Trek Online is a Star Trek game, not a Star Trek simulator.
Also, last point I need to make... it appears that the Command spec tree may be giving some love to torps, but I suppose we'll wait and see.
Take that beam setup into crystal entity for example and the Projectile setup will most likely double the DPS over the beam setup. Then there is bug in crafting and how few people focus on torpedoes so few people have torpedo gear to max level.
Even with all that apart from the few odd beam setups, projectiles are within 20% of cannons and most beam setups. In some missions beams and cannons are 20% below Projectile’s.
No one weapon type is the best at everything or the highest DPS at everything.
Looking at the extreme end at limited situations is not a good way to judge a weapon system or balance weapon systems.
I also need to point out the DPS league it a tiny amount of players most of which do not even use torpedoes. So torp ships are very much unrepresented. I have never seen anyone with a maxed out torp ship enter the score into the league. I am pretty sure a maxed out torp ship can gain over 20% DPS over the score you posted.
EDIT: Which league are you looking at? The highest I see is 89dps.
Science captains can abuse particle gens to make science torpedoes very nasty, too.
Odan Brota (Science Officer): Captain of a 28k DPS Scryer Intel Science Vessel, U.S.S. Kepler
Patiently waiting for a Romulan Science Vessel
So add in the new specialization at -150 Kinetic resistance from target and drain 719 shield and we get some crazy torp numbers.
I did want to point out something that I wished they had done from the beginning for torps. Basically as part of the torp mechanics themselves, no traits consoles gimmicks needed - just part of the torps themselves (well, all projectiles).
Know that Tactical Advantage that reduces the target's damage resistance by a certain amount based on the target's hull? Something like that for projectiles with shields, as the shields were reduced that their penetration resistance was reduced...increased bleed.
Just that..."shields at 20%, Captain" and the torps hitting that much harder thing from the movies/shows...just something that always seemed to be missing.
I feel the same way about hull integrity in STO. I always thought having a 'top-heavy' survival mechanic was more engaging and required more attention paid to space combat.
I always thought after a certain point, like ~75% further damage you took resulted in more (or higher) critical hits as your hull integrity became increasingly unstable. This meant an emphasis on that last 25% of ship health for practical survivability. You never saw anyone in Star Trek say, "Structural integrity at ONE PERCENT." and everyone making it out okay.
Similarly, buildings in Starcraft continuing to tick downwards while they were pushed into the red, Battletech where once your armor is gone in an area, that part of your giant robot was increasingly vulnerable to critical damage which meant instant death in the right scenario (generally around your engine).
I always thought it was ridiculous we could miraculously survive having our starship hulls reduced to 1-3%.
It's strikes me as stupid ridiculous that a BoP can be pounded down to 10% and still be able to engage it's cloak and (Bravely) run away like a little girl with a device depicted as fragile by the IP.
There is already a way to allow your torps to ignore a target's shields.