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Should bare hull resist Energy Weapons the same way Shields resist Torpedoes?
praxi5
Member Posts: 1,562 Arc User
Torpedoes get screwed over in that even the tiniest sliver of a shield grants a massive (I believe 75%? I might be higher, I can't remember for sure) damage resistance against the damage that torpedoes do.
Why do Beams/Cannons get a free pass and do the same damage versus shields and hull?
Yes, Energy Weps are dependent upon Weapons Power, but is power really that hard to come by nowadays? (Hint: It's not).
With all that in mind, why are there no (other than easily obtainable Weapons Power) drawbacks to using Energy Weapons versus using Torps and Mines?
Before you start, no, there is no canon precedent for this either way. In the movies/shows, Beams and Torpedoes are equally as effective against both. This mechanic (torps for hull, energy for shields) started with Star Trek Legacy and was adopted by STO.
EDIT:
This solution was brought up in this thread. It's a simple and easy to implement idea that would both make torpedo builds far more viable overnight, as well as preventing the issue of having "Godmode" ships by stacking Hull Armor consoles.
Instead of buffing torp damage, another idea that I'm a huge fan of would be to implement a "sliding scale" of resistance for torpedoes vs shields. Instead of a tiny sliver of shields giving the full resistance, it should only give a fraction of the resistance that full strength shields would give.
Why do Beams/Cannons get a free pass and do the same damage versus shields and hull?
- Beams have significantly larger arcs.
- FAW does way more than Torp Spread, in damage, effect (Aggro or Passive buff) and procs.
- Aft energy weps can fire forward (Omnis/Turrets), where as Torps can not and Mines have a short range.
- Beams can be broadsided with; torps can not.
- The Rate of Fire of energy weps is laughable when compared to kinetic weapons
- You'll get significanty more procs with energy vs Kinetic
- There are tons of traits that not only boost effectiveness of Energy Weapons, but also give them highly desirable bonus procs. Kinetic ones are few and less desirable.
- The timed nature of Attack Patterns favors Energy Weapons more.
Yes, Energy Weps are dependent upon Weapons Power, but is power really that hard to come by nowadays? (Hint: It's not).
With all that in mind, why are there no (other than easily obtainable Weapons Power) drawbacks to using Energy Weapons versus using Torps and Mines?
Before you start, no, there is no canon precedent for this either way. In the movies/shows, Beams and Torpedoes are equally as effective against both. This mechanic (torps for hull, energy for shields) started with Star Trek Legacy and was adopted by STO.
EDIT:
Why does everyone only think in absolutes? That is the problem.
Give hulls an innate 25% resistance to energy weapons.
Bump up torpedo damage by 30%.
All builds are now viable.
This solution was brought up in this thread. It's a simple and easy to implement idea that would both make torpedo builds far more viable overnight, as well as preventing the issue of having "Godmode" ships by stacking Hull Armor consoles.
Instead of buffing torp damage, another idea that I'm a huge fan of would be to implement a "sliding scale" of resistance for torpedoes vs shields. Instead of a tiny sliver of shields giving the full resistance, it should only give a fraction of the resistance that full strength shields would give.
Post edited by praxi5 on
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That's not /entirely/ true though, is it? On the show Enterprise (yes, I know, but hey, it's canon and we have to live with it), the ship didn't even HAVE many decent torpedoes and it definitely didn't have shields. And yet, beam weapons were still effective. Also, of course, Star Trek II, the Reliant/Enterprise battle was almost all beam weapons and it tore those ships up like crazy.
So canonically, beam weapons are effective.
Conversely, there's a TON of evidence in the shows that torps act exactly as we have them act. Star Trek VI, for example - the difference between a torp hitting a shield versus hitting the hull when shields collapsed was HUGE, and they definitely made a very big deal out of it.
All of that said, it's not like we need to rely on canon too much when we're 40 years ahead of it. It's as simple as "hey, we've developed new metal X to build our starships, beam weapons practically reflect off of them" and call it a day. Cryptic gets to sell Tier 7 ships out of the new metal and make a TRIBBLE ton (because you know that's how they'd release it, of course), and we get a more balanced weapons system idea.
But honestly, I don't see a massive influx of beamboats out there. A few people go with it, but most of us like our torps because it FEELS quicker, watching hull drop multiple points in one hit as opposed to pecking them to death. Plus there's a whole feel to that strategy, "knock the shields down and unleash the torpedo spread NOW", that's really a lot of the fun in space combat. Even if beams are inherently superior, they're less FUN.
Tl;dr Why fix a "problem" that isn't really affecting anyone?
In my opinion, yes. It makes sense and requires a more dynamic gameplay.
EDIT: Of course, the type of armour you choose is important. The poster above mentioned massive hull damage due to energy weapons - they still do damage and I'd figure if you slot a disruptor armour and are hit with polarons you still take significant damage. Even disruptors would DO damage, but a lot less.
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However, the torpedo in ST is not meant to be the primary weapon, or better, was not meant.
Theoretically, one ran a laser bank, or some other form to kill shields, and then torp the hell out of the now shield-open vessel.
But like with virtually everything in ST: it all changed, changed more, and then some.
They were masters in contradicting their own stuff.
So yeah, I'm not sure what to say on this topic, I guess.
Both options are viable, when it comes to ST anti-lore. XD
To me yes hull has to resist as much as torpedoes do on bare hull. But this way PvErs would have to deal with loading a torpedo up front and TRIBBLE their AoE gimmicks like FAW, while PvPers would hardly get to get a kill because of the healcreep there is, which has been amplified by iconian rep.
But PvP is dead so it doesn't matter.
Do I care about this in the end? No I don't. I'm witnessing from outside the long list of fails of STO. lol
Unless you have the cash to donate to Cryptic to completely revamp space combat from the ground up, broadside beam spam will always be superior. FAW, weapon power, crit rates, skill points, and recharge times will all have to be fundamentally rebuilt to give cannons and torps more equality.
That would be balance wouldn't it ?
Scratch that then.............balance isn't a thing cryptic does
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
That being said, I like your concept. Energy weapons are precise but low yielded shot while torpedoes are very destructive. What we need is a new mechanic to reflect this. I think they should reevaluate the crew mechanic, torpedoes kill a lot of crew you see. Perhaps if they revamped this torpedoes would have that special effect that energy Weapons do not.
My phone is really messed up please excuse any errors.
You'd have to find a way to balance torps out against overcapped energy weapons, and even then balance them out against bad rolls. We've meta'd out one shot wonders.
HELL NO.
Projectiles do less damage against shields because they are basically a projectile, explosives, proximity based damage, kinetic etc...
It's throwing a cannon ball at a rubber sheet...
In addition if you tried making bare metal resistant to directed energy weapons, I suspect the remaining pvp diehards would lynch you because many of them do not use torps in their builds, all beam boats.
Endless cries about "dumb pve torp users" trying to nerf their "leet pvp bfaws".
Trust me, buy armoured underpants before suggesting this where they can hear you.
Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life...</b></size></center>
They just hate them plain and simple...nothing in canon to support that torpedoes had little to no affect on shields.
But STO isn't canon just the looks of a few ships are :P
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
..so please do it after I get my popcorn ready
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At least in canon treknology that's not true. Photon torpedoes are far from "cannon balls", they aren't dealing kinetic damag either. They create a matter/anti-matter reaction, they don't "punch" through armour like a cannon ball would. Unshielded starships would take severe damage/be destroyed even when they weren't taking a direct hit.
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(this comes from energy weapons only user)
At the same time however, I would also remove decreasing-damage-over-range "feature" from cannons.
They should print that on the box/download page as a disclaimer
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This. I have my KDF Eng running a Recluse with this build, set up to draw aggro from the elite mesh weavers. In PvE, shields or no shields doesn't matter on that boat - resistances are so high that nothing short of the CE's burst attack followed by multiple fragments hitting it before I can trigger MW can take it out. Anti-beam can be done, it just means you don't get to do as much DPS so people don't do it.
Give hulls an innate 25% resistance to energy weapons.
Bump up torpedo damage by 30%.
All builds are now viable.
Matter/Anti-Matter reaction is mutual destruction, the whole E=MC^2 thing... BANG...
An outward rush of heat energy and kinetic damage from other matter in the vicinity of the reaction being accelerated to C Fractional values, basically the torps casing is turned into near light speed atomic shrapnel.
Ships take severe damage from near misses because its a blast area affect, from the original matter/anti-matter reaction point.
You reduce said damage by keeping the blast further from your ship, so the torp hits your shields, detonates away from the hull, rather than hitting the hull and bang or even worse, punching though the hull and bang, inside the ship.
Forget TV show plot can on, and check out what said canon is actually referring to in scientific terms. Matter/anti-Matter is just fancy high end explosive, H-bomb Plus.
Edit.
A m/am reaction would also put out large quantities of hard radiation, gamma, xrays, radio, as well as heat and visible light...
Unshielded crew members close to a torp blast area would suffer burns and radiation sickness if they survived the blast it's self
Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life...</b></size></center>
That's not the point. Shields innately resists kinetic damage.
Hull does not innately resist energy damage.
*AP torpedo aside
If tac consoles started running into DR like Armor consoles do so you wouldn't be gimping yourself by running half energy and half projectile consoles, it would start bringing mixed loadouts into play. But right now, you're all energy or all projectile.
Command would be awesome for a torpedo boat but you've got to proc it with an energy weapon and non-torpedo boats don't run torpedoes as energy doesn't suffer against hulls. I can see how they wanted to encourage a more canon loadout but the tac consoles don't support it.
There are ways to make a build with massive torp damage while not sacrificing the energy tac consoles, especially if you use the grav photon. Stack that with the set bonuses from the voth weapon 2/3 piece, the KHG/Adapted MACO 2-piece and the undine weapon 2-piece sets and maybe the ferengi torp console if you have room and you will not be disappointed with the torp damage while leaving your tac slots all free. Add in a 360 beam with BO to go knock-knock on the facing shield just before your overrun and your cannons and torp will absolutely wreak havoc.
Yeah, it's not as simple as just slapping 8 beams on your ship and spamming FAW, but it's not boring as TRIBBLE like that is either. It also doesn't generate as much area aggro, and is a lot less tolerant of mistakes made by your opponent being burst damage vs sandpapering.
So with just two rep sets and a lobi console you can be almost as good as an off-the-exchange beam boat.
Energy shields absorb the energy from energy weapons. Hulls absorb the impact of kinetic weapons.
If full shields give 75%, then maybe shields that are "red" should only give 15-20%?
This is a very valid point. Resistances might need reworked as well. But, someone else posted a this solution (see quote below).
This is actually a really simple and elegant solution. I like it.
Ideally, yes, a full re-work of mechanics would be the best thing to happen to this game in a loooong time.
But, in lieu of that, there are a few relatively easy fixes they could do to free us from the 'RAWR FAWSMASH!!!!' monotony.
You're onto me :P