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[Guide] Starship Equipment, Weapons and Consoles for New Players
ultimatenewbie
Member Posts: 269 Arc User
Introduction
This New Player's Guide is part of a series on STO - see also:
Ideally, over time I will add additional guides on other topics.
The information in this guide is current as at February 2016, including for Season 11: A New Dawn. This Guide will be biased towards Federation players, given they are the large majority of the player base - however they will be broadly applicable to KDF and Romulan characters too. As with all of my guide threads, I express my opinion but I try to be fair and balanced. In addition, please feel free to suggest additions/improvements below and I'll include them in the main thread (and credit you for it).
As this is a guide for new players, I have deliberately limited references to high-end ships, powers and Zen store items; it is unlikely that a newbie can afford a 200 million Energy Credit item from the Exchange to support a particular high-end build, so I have not addressed that here unless for context only. However, for a detailed discussion of the game mechanics (for advanced users), then I recommend @mustrumridcully0 's excellent thread on combat mechanics.
tl;dr - the dot points are a summary.
Guide - Starship Equipment, Weapons and Consoles for New Players
The overwhelming majority of players install STO to get their hands on a starship and go fly around the universe and seek out new life and new civilisations blast their enemies out of the stars. The purpose of this guide is to outline some of the general points to getting the most out of your ship's equipment, weapons and consoles in a fairly simple and straightforward way. The emphasis is on advice that is general to help new players understand the system, rather than specific high-end builds catered to specific play styles - advice on high-end equipment and builds can be found on the excellent website: r/stobuilds.
Mark Levels
All items in STO will have a 'Mark Level' summarised below. In essence, a higher mark level will have a higher base number (damage, +stats to skills etc) but lower ranked characters cannot use it. Therefore, as a general principle (ceteris paribus) an item of a higher mark will be better than one of a lower mark, and therefore you should be looking to equip your ships (and away teams) with items at the highest available tier. However, items can have various modifiers on them (such as [Dmg]) that could make it worthwhile to keep lower-tier items in order to take advantage of those modifiers - this is a decision to be made on a case by case basis.
Deflectors, Impulse Engines, Warp Cores and Shields
These items are the core of your starship and are key to driving the various skills and bonuses that you're trying to achieve with your builds.
I encourage new players to visit the in-game Exchange to see if there is relevant equipment listed for sale there that can materially help you. Often, waiting for just the right bit of kit to drop means you'll just die waiting.
Deflectors
Deflectors are great. Early on with a new character, there is not much to be gained from them as their availability is pretty limited to the mission rewards. However, in late-game a deflector is a key piece of equipment that really underpins your starship's entire build. There is a huge array of different modifiers that can apply to many skills in the game (such as Starship Shield Emitters or Power Insulators) making finding the 'right' deflector for your build easier. In addition, there are a huge number of reputation-level deflector arrays, reflecting the centrality of them in starship builds.
There are four different types of deflector arrays that are then built on with various modifiers. Graviton, Positron, Tachyon and Neutrino deflector arrays serve different purposes. Graviton deflectors are very helpful for offensive science builds that seek to heavily utilise high-end science powers such as gravity wells and viral matrix. Tachyon arrays are also offensive, supporting science drain builds, but also increase the damage from science powers such as gravity wells. Neutrino deflectors can be thought of as defensive in nature, helping to counter attacks from science ships wielding powers amplified by graviton or neutrino deflectors. Positron deflectors are also defensive in nature, increasing hull and shield strength from conventional energy and torpedo attacks and are therefore handy for cruisers and escorts alike.
The more modifiers your deflectors have, the higher their 'quality' - ie green will have one or two modifiers such as [Em] for extra shield emitters, whereas purple will have three or four powers. As with most equipment in STO, you should be looking for the highest quality type of deflector that suits what you're doing with the most helpful additional modifiers at the highest mark you have available.
Secondary Deflectors
Secondary Deflectors are cool. They are only available to dedicated science ships; even science 'aspected' ships such as the T6 Flagship Yorktown does not have a secondary deflector despite having other science powers (such as consoles, boff seating [and Sensor Analysis]).
There are three kinds of secondary deflector. Deteriorating secondary deflectors focus on boosting debuff-related science powers plus adding radiation damage. Inhibiting deflectors boost control-related science powers and add radiation damage. Resonating deflectors are more defensive in nature, which applied a shield hardness boost when you use healing-type science powers.
Impulse Engines
Impulse Engines have an obvious role to play in STO, underpinning your speed and turn-rate in battle. Impulse engines are a key piece of equipment in many reputation sets.
Generally, if your engine power is relatively low (<75, but particularly <50) you should opt for combat impulse engines. Therefore, they tend to be handier for escorts that are trying to direct every joule into weapon power. Cruisers, on the other hand - particularly when running an Aux2Battery builds, will have high enough power levels to opt for hyper impulse engines, helping move those space-bricks around a little better.
Some impulse engines can boost sector space travel speeds - namely the Assimilated Impulse Engine and the MACO Impulse Engine, both from the Omega Reputation System. The Assimilated engine boosts sector speed travel to about Warp 14 (instead of the normal maximum of 9.98) and the MACO Impulse Engine boosts it to about Warp 13 in a cool bubble effect. These engines are pretty much essential kit if you want to complete (note: not the same as run) the daily mission 'Tour the Galaxy' for considerable energy credits.
Warp Cores
Warp Cores are central to your ship's power levels and therefore are also a key piece of equipment in STO. Hyper-injection cores favour engine power, Overcharged cores favour auxiliary power, and field-stabilising cores favour shield power.
Similar to deflectors and shields, there are a huge number of cores on the Exchange including rare/very rare quality that aren't very expensive - shop around!
Typical core modifiers include (for example) [W->A] adding a percentage of weapon power to your auxiliary power levels. Picking useful modifiers can go a long way to solving power level problems for your builds.
When levelling up I prefer to pick Field Stabilising warp cores at the highest level I can equip to boost my shields, which can free up boff slots for more offensive powers. Also helpful are any [W-x] modifiers, particularly to shields. The Level-50 Mission "Sphere of Influence" awards a purple quality self-levelling "Obelisk Subspace Rift Warp Core" that is actually pretty good, particularly when used as part of the Ancient Obelisk Technology set.
In addition, warp cores can facilitate faster sector space travel, which is very handy for the daily mission Tour the Galaxy which awards Energy Credits. Boosts to Slipstream speed, turn and recharge rates, faster Transwarp cooldowns, and additional Driver Coil skill points can all improve your base speed in sector space to finish the race in time.
[Singularity Cores]
Shields
Shields are fundamental equipment in STO and your primary defensive mechanism. In general terms, Regenerative Shields trade away shield capacity for a higher regen rate; covariant shields are the inverse by trading away regeneration rate for capacity. Normal Shield arrays are balanced between these two, and Resilient shields reduce bleedthrough (so you take 5 per cent damage through your shields rather than 10 per cent) but at a cost of about 5 per cent lower capacity and regen rate.
Helpfully, there are both a huge variety of shields to choose from (including relatively cheaply on the Exchange - eg purple quality Mk XII Covariants for about 40k EC), and some really good shields (based on one of the four general types) that can be acquired through the Reputation system with additional set bonuses.
Personally, I prefer Covariant shields because when they're up they're up. However, it is very important to have abilities that improve your shields' resilience; because when Covariant shields are down they are down. Therefore, these shields favour short, sharp battles rather than long-duration slogs where you have to manage your shield resistance powers more thoughtfully. Regeneration shields, on the other hand, can drop rather suddenly but do actually come back up again - however the meta in STO strongly disadvantages shields that drop quickly. Generally, I've found resilient shields' special ability not worth the loss in capacity, but having said that I've seen players with full shields still explode because they were copping too much damage through their shields; a resilient array is meant to prevent that.
In addition to having good equipment, it is important to also understand how to use shields to their fullest extent. If your enemy brings a shield facing down to red (or zero), keep turning your ship to present another facing to minimise incoming damage. When broadsiding an enemy, you'll generally be taking damage to just one facing: manually keep redirecting shield power to the facing that needs it; use bridge officer abilities such as Tactical Team to redistribute shields; and use boff abilities such as Emergency Power to Shields and Transfer Shield Strength to improve the damage resistance of your shields.
Weapons
Energy Weapon Types
The base types of energy weapons are differentiated by the colour of their beam and their 2.5 per cent chance to do a particular thing (known as 'procs'). There are: Phasers (disable a random subsystem for 5 sec); Disruptors (lower the target's damage resistance by 10% for 15 sec); Plasma (additional plasma burn damage-over-time); Polaron (reduce all enemy subsystem power levels by 25 for 5 sec); Tetryon (deal additional shield damage); and Antiproton (officially no proc).
Ask anyone on the street and they'll say that Antiproton (AP) beams are the best in the game - indeed many will say that if you're not running AP then you're a moron and should be put to the sword - dont listen to this folly. The main reason why AP beams are good is because of their inherent +20 per cent critical severity bonus (in lieu of a proc), which makes them well suited to builds that can deliver a strong critical chance through the rest of the ship's equipment. However, achieving this can get expensive quickly.
In all seriousness, all energy weapon types are playable provided they're matched with the right tactical console (mentioned in the next post, below). Even the perceived weakest type, Tetryon, has become more popular due to an omni-directional beam array and other bonuses from recent sets.
Separately, in addition to the 'base' energy types such as phasers, there are modified energy types such as bio-molecular phasers, phased biomatter and so on that have different procs in addition to the base proc that can be, pretty cool, optimised for fighting certain enemies (eg, Species 8472, the Voth, the Iconians etc), or a different colour. Some (all?) of them come at a cost of a weapon modifier such as [Dmg] or [CritH] which can affect decision-making for which weapons you use. The full list of energy weapon types and what they do can be found on the STO Wiki.
Beams
Beam Arrays are your bread-and-butter weapons in STO and they are very solid equipment. The current game meta favours beams due to a combination of: the ability to sustain high power levels; the ability to quickly refresh multiple copies of the boff power "Beam Fire At Will"; and that damage dropoff at range is less for beams than cannons.
Generally, if your ship can turn (ie, escorts, most science ships, some cruisers) then it is generally best to equip dual beam banks up front and omni-directional (360 degree) beams at the rear; this will make your ship feel like an escort/claymore (ie, point front at enemy) and do considerable damage in a slightly wider arc than a similarly-equipped cannon escort. Some late missions have omni-directional beam arrays as mission rewards; collect these as they can be equipped alongside crafted and 'standard' weapons of the same energy type.
However, if you're running a less agile cruiser (like the Sovereign Assault Cruiser or some of the Odyssey Cruisers) then generally it is better to equip normal beam arrays in both the front and the back and keep your enemies on your side (ie, broadsiding), above or below you so all (up to) 8 beams can fire at once.
Having 8 beams firing at once will greatly drain your weapon power though, which can materially reduce the effectiveness (ie damage output) of your marginal beam array. Therefore, ensure that you're paying attention to your weapon power levels (ie, use batteries, the boff skill Emergency Power to Weapons, or other things).
Cannons
Although the current meta of STO favours beams, there is something special about running up into an enemy's face and strafing the living daylights out of them as you zoom away. It really brings a level of joy.
If you're equipping cannons up front, remember to utilise turrets in the rear because bridge officer skills such as Cannon Scatter Volley and Cannon Rapid Fire will also boost your rear turrets for higher damage output. The other thing to be aware of - particularly when running Dual Heavy Cannons - is to keep your weapon power high; they really drain your power levels when you bring all guns to bear.
I personally don't profess to know how to use cannons properly; I've found that the necessity of combat means your guns are not always facing the enemy and that the tradeoff (higher raw damage for narrower arc) means that your overall damage per minute tends to drop off. The Pilot Bridge Officer skill 'Lock Trajectory' can assist with keeping your front towards your target (thanks @ceewkay !)
Since the skill revamp (particularly a new skill that reduces the dropoff at range), the damage reduction of cannons at range isnt as bad as it used to be making the disadvantage in DPS from equipping them smaller - this is healthy, as more variety is more fun. And cannons are very, very fun.
Torpedoes and Mines
Generally, torpedoes do significant kinetic damage to unshielded hulls, but little damage to shielded hulls. Therefore, the effectiveness of having torpedoes is low until you've already dropped the enemy's shields using your energy weapons - however by the time you've reached this point, your energy weapons will already be dealing significant burn directly to the enemy's unshielded hull anyway so many players simply dump the torpedoes altogether. This has the added advantage of limiting the number of skills you need to invest in - focusing scare skill points only on energy weapons rather than also needing to boost torpedo skills to improve their effectiveness.
However, I usually run at least one torpedo tube on my ships for two general reasons. The first is that the power drain requirements for having 8 beams or so (in various combinations) means that your marginal beam array is often firing at considerably less than 125 weapon power (except for certain high-energy endgame builds, which I wont go into details here). Therefore, you dont 'lose' much energy weapon damage for carrying a torp. The second reason is that some of the torpedos, including those that come as part of a set, are pretty rad and do cool things; the Neutronic torpedo is still effective against shielded targets it does both material radiation damage (bypassing shields) to all enemies within 3 km of the target (great for Torpedo Spread 3 which might hit up to five separate targets) and also reduces the enemy's power level by 15 for all subsystems - including shields making it easier for my beams to drop them faster.
High-end Science builds will often set aside energy weapons and instead rely on torpedo weapons as a major source of their damage (alongside their amped-up Gravity Wells, of course!) so they can redirect scarce power away from weapons into auxiliary to improve the strength/duration/recharge rate of their science powers. As torpedo tubes dont require weapon power, their ships can simply pump enemy targets with torps and rely on science powers (such as Tachyon Beam or Energy Siphon) to drain enemy shields and/or their large boosts to radiation damage to bypass enemy shields to kill without beams. You need to know what you're doing to make this work, of course.
Mines do very high damage at face value, however due to their static nature and their relatively slow travel time (and that they can be destroyed if spotted) means that in reality they're not very effective. The exception is when you have a ship with enhanced battle cloak, which means you can fire projectile weapons such as torpedoes and mines whilst cloaked. One of my Romulan characters cruises around in a T'Varo retrofit and spams transphasic mines using mine dispersal bridge officer powers for the lolz. But in most situations, equipping (and flying into!) mines is to be avoided.
***Continued in Next Post***
This New Player's Guide is part of a series on STO - see also:
- Early Decisions - Ultimate Newbie's guide for new players (the main thread);
- [Guide] Admiralty and Duty Officers for New Players; and
- [Guide] Captain Skill Points and Specialisation System for New Players.
Ideally, over time I will add additional guides on other topics.
The information in this guide is current as at February 2016, including for Season 11: A New Dawn. This Guide will be biased towards Federation players, given they are the large majority of the player base - however they will be broadly applicable to KDF and Romulan characters too. As with all of my guide threads, I express my opinion but I try to be fair and balanced. In addition, please feel free to suggest additions/improvements below and I'll include them in the main thread (and credit you for it).
As this is a guide for new players, I have deliberately limited references to high-end ships, powers and Zen store items; it is unlikely that a newbie can afford a 200 million Energy Credit item from the Exchange to support a particular high-end build, so I have not addressed that here unless for context only. However, for a detailed discussion of the game mechanics (for advanced users), then I recommend @mustrumridcully0 's excellent thread on combat mechanics.
tl;dr - the dot points are a summary.
Guide - Starship Equipment, Weapons and Consoles for New Players
The overwhelming majority of players install STO to get their hands on a starship and go fly around the universe and seek out new life and new civilisations blast their enemies out of the stars. The purpose of this guide is to outline some of the general points to getting the most out of your ship's equipment, weapons and consoles in a fairly simple and straightforward way. The emphasis is on advice that is general to help new players understand the system, rather than specific high-end builds catered to specific play styles - advice on high-end equipment and builds can be found on the excellent website: r/stobuilds.
Mark Levels
All items in STO will have a 'Mark Level' summarised below. In essence, a higher mark level will have a higher base number (damage, +stats to skills etc) but lower ranked characters cannot use it. Therefore, as a general principle (ceteris paribus) an item of a higher mark will be better than one of a lower mark, and therefore you should be looking to equip your ships (and away teams) with items at the highest available tier. However, items can have various modifiers on them (such as [Dmg]) that could make it worthwhile to keep lower-tier items in order to take advantage of those modifiers - this is a decision to be made on a case by case basis.
- Mk I-II : Cadet and Lieutenant
- Mk III-IV : Lt Commander
- Mk V-VI : Commander
- Mk VII - VIII : Captain
- Mk IX - X : Rear Admiral (Lower Half)
- Mk XI - XIV : Rear Admiral (Upper Half) to Fleet Admiral
- Infinity symbol : A self-levelling item (maxes out at Mark X - can often upgrade to Mk XII for free).
Deflectors, Impulse Engines, Warp Cores and Shields
These items are the core of your starship and are key to driving the various skills and bonuses that you're trying to achieve with your builds.
I encourage new players to visit the in-game Exchange to see if there is relevant equipment listed for sale there that can materially help you. Often, waiting for just the right bit of kit to drop means you'll just die waiting.
Deflectors
- Deflectors are a major source of bonus skill points to help you in combat;
- There are four different types of deflector; high-end reputation gear is based off one of these types; and
- For levelling up, I prefer the Positron Deflector as it provides extra healing and shield strength.
Deflectors are great. Early on with a new character, there is not much to be gained from them as their availability is pretty limited to the mission rewards. However, in late-game a deflector is a key piece of equipment that really underpins your starship's entire build. There is a huge array of different modifiers that can apply to many skills in the game (such as Starship Shield Emitters or Power Insulators) making finding the 'right' deflector for your build easier. In addition, there are a huge number of reputation-level deflector arrays, reflecting the centrality of them in starship builds.
There are four different types of deflector arrays that are then built on with various modifiers. Graviton, Positron, Tachyon and Neutrino deflector arrays serve different purposes. Graviton deflectors are very helpful for offensive science builds that seek to heavily utilise high-end science powers such as gravity wells and viral matrix. Tachyon arrays are also offensive, supporting science drain builds, but also increase the damage from science powers such as gravity wells. Neutrino deflectors can be thought of as defensive in nature, helping to counter attacks from science ships wielding powers amplified by graviton or neutrino deflectors. Positron deflectors are also defensive in nature, increasing hull and shield strength from conventional energy and torpedo attacks and are therefore handy for cruisers and escorts alike.
The more modifiers your deflectors have, the higher their 'quality' - ie green will have one or two modifiers such as [Em] for extra shield emitters, whereas purple will have three or four powers. As with most equipment in STO, you should be looking for the highest quality type of deflector that suits what you're doing with the most helpful additional modifiers at the highest mark you have available.
Secondary Deflectors
- Limited to pure Science ships only; and
- They add very helpful modifiers to Science powers, such as extra radiation damage.
Secondary Deflectors are cool. They are only available to dedicated science ships; even science 'aspected' ships such as the T6 Flagship Yorktown does not have a secondary deflector despite having other science powers (such as consoles, boff seating [and Sensor Analysis]).
There are three kinds of secondary deflector. Deteriorating secondary deflectors focus on boosting debuff-related science powers plus adding radiation damage. Inhibiting deflectors boost control-related science powers and add radiation damage. Resonating deflectors are more defensive in nature, which applied a shield hardness boost when you use healing-type science powers.
Impulse Engines
- There are three different types: Impulse Engine, Combat Impulse Engine and Hyper-Impulse Engine;
- For levelling up, I prefer the Combat Impulse Engine as it requires less Engine power to work properly; and
- Some Impulse Engines can boost warp speed velocities in sector space - these are very handy for the energy credit-generating mission Tour the Galaxy.
Impulse Engines have an obvious role to play in STO, underpinning your speed and turn-rate in battle. Impulse engines are a key piece of equipment in many reputation sets.
Generally, if your engine power is relatively low (<75, but particularly <50) you should opt for combat impulse engines. Therefore, they tend to be handier for escorts that are trying to direct every joule into weapon power. Cruisers, on the other hand - particularly when running an Aux2Battery builds, will have high enough power levels to opt for hyper impulse engines, helping move those space-bricks around a little better.
Some impulse engines can boost sector space travel speeds - namely the Assimilated Impulse Engine and the MACO Impulse Engine, both from the Omega Reputation System. The Assimilated engine boosts sector speed travel to about Warp 14 (instead of the normal maximum of 9.98) and the MACO Impulse Engine boosts it to about Warp 13 in a cool bubble effect. These engines are pretty much essential kit if you want to complete (note: not the same as run) the daily mission 'Tour the Galaxy' for considerable energy credits.
Warp Cores
- For Federation and KDF players here are four different types: Matter-antimatter warp cores; Hyper-injection; Overcharged; and Field-stabilising.
- Romulan players instead have access to Singularity Cores which follow the same pattern but generally boost science skills rather than engineering skills.
- Crafted and Fleet warp cores have different characteristics, such as resisting power drains, which supports high-end builds;
- When levelling up, I prefer to use Field-Stabilising warp cores for the additional defence, helping to free up scarce bridge officer powers for offensive (rather than defensive) powers.
Warp Cores are central to your ship's power levels and therefore are also a key piece of equipment in STO. Hyper-injection cores favour engine power, Overcharged cores favour auxiliary power, and field-stabilising cores favour shield power.
Similar to deflectors and shields, there are a huge number of cores on the Exchange including rare/very rare quality that aren't very expensive - shop around!
Typical core modifiers include (for example) [W->A] adding a percentage of weapon power to your auxiliary power levels. Picking useful modifiers can go a long way to solving power level problems for your builds.
When levelling up I prefer to pick Field Stabilising warp cores at the highest level I can equip to boost my shields, which can free up boff slots for more offensive powers. Also helpful are any [W-x] modifiers, particularly to shields. The Level-50 Mission "Sphere of Influence" awards a purple quality self-levelling "Obelisk Subspace Rift Warp Core" that is actually pretty good, particularly when used as part of the Ancient Obelisk Technology set.
In addition, warp cores can facilitate faster sector space travel, which is very handy for the daily mission Tour the Galaxy which awards Energy Credits. Boosts to Slipstream speed, turn and recharge rates, faster Transwarp cooldowns, and additional Driver Coil skill points can all improve your base speed in sector space to finish the race in time.
[Singularity Cores]
Shields
- There are four different types: Shield Arrays; Regenerative Shields; Covariant Shields; and Resilient Shields.
- For long-duration battles, Regenerative Shields are good; for short-sharp combat Covariant are best.
- When levelling up, re-do the mission Colesium for a great Reman Prototype Covariant Shield.
Shields are fundamental equipment in STO and your primary defensive mechanism. In general terms, Regenerative Shields trade away shield capacity for a higher regen rate; covariant shields are the inverse by trading away regeneration rate for capacity. Normal Shield arrays are balanced between these two, and Resilient shields reduce bleedthrough (so you take 5 per cent damage through your shields rather than 10 per cent) but at a cost of about 5 per cent lower capacity and regen rate.
Helpfully, there are both a huge variety of shields to choose from (including relatively cheaply on the Exchange - eg purple quality Mk XII Covariants for about 40k EC), and some really good shields (based on one of the four general types) that can be acquired through the Reputation system with additional set bonuses.
Personally, I prefer Covariant shields because when they're up they're up. However, it is very important to have abilities that improve your shields' resilience; because when Covariant shields are down they are down. Therefore, these shields favour short, sharp battles rather than long-duration slogs where you have to manage your shield resistance powers more thoughtfully. Regeneration shields, on the other hand, can drop rather suddenly but do actually come back up again - however the meta in STO strongly disadvantages shields that drop quickly. Generally, I've found resilient shields' special ability not worth the loss in capacity, but having said that I've seen players with full shields still explode because they were copping too much damage through their shields; a resilient array is meant to prevent that.
In addition to having good equipment, it is important to also understand how to use shields to their fullest extent. If your enemy brings a shield facing down to red (or zero), keep turning your ship to present another facing to minimise incoming damage. When broadsiding an enemy, you'll generally be taking damage to just one facing: manually keep redirecting shield power to the facing that needs it; use bridge officer abilities such as Tactical Team to redistribute shields; and use boff abilities such as Emergency Power to Shields and Transfer Shield Strength to improve the damage resistance of your shields.
Weapons
Energy Weapon Types
- The various kinds of energy weapon do the same base damage, but come in different colours and are distinguished by their 'procs';
- All weapon types are viable, but Antiproton weapons will deal 2-5 per cent more damage in a properly equipped high-end build;
The base types of energy weapons are differentiated by the colour of their beam and their 2.5 per cent chance to do a particular thing (known as 'procs'). There are: Phasers (disable a random subsystem for 5 sec); Disruptors (lower the target's damage resistance by 10% for 15 sec); Plasma (additional plasma burn damage-over-time); Polaron (reduce all enemy subsystem power levels by 25 for 5 sec); Tetryon (deal additional shield damage); and Antiproton (officially no proc).
Ask anyone on the street and they'll say that Antiproton (AP) beams are the best in the game - indeed many will say that if you're not running AP then you're a moron and should be put to the sword - dont listen to this folly. The main reason why AP beams are good is because of their inherent +20 per cent critical severity bonus (in lieu of a proc), which makes them well suited to builds that can deliver a strong critical chance through the rest of the ship's equipment. However, achieving this can get expensive quickly.
In all seriousness, all energy weapon types are playable provided they're matched with the right tactical console (mentioned in the next post, below). Even the perceived weakest type, Tetryon, has become more popular due to an omni-directional beam array and other bonuses from recent sets.
Separately, in addition to the 'base' energy types such as phasers, there are modified energy types such as bio-molecular phasers, phased biomatter and so on that have different procs in addition to the base proc that can be, pretty cool, optimised for fighting certain enemies (eg, Species 8472, the Voth, the Iconians etc), or a different colour. Some (all?) of them come at a cost of a weapon modifier such as [Dmg] or [CritH] which can affect decision-making for which weapons you use. The full list of energy weapon types and what they do can be found on the STO Wiki.
Beams
- Beam weapons are energy weapons that come in three types: Dual Beam Banks, Beam Arrays, and Omnidirectional Arrays;
- Beam weapons are the most ubiquitous form of weaponry in STO - for a good reason; and
- Rough rule of thumb: if your ship can turn well put Dual Beams in your fore weapon slots and omni-beams in the rear; if not then beam arrays in both front and back.
Beam Arrays are your bread-and-butter weapons in STO and they are very solid equipment. The current game meta favours beams due to a combination of: the ability to sustain high power levels; the ability to quickly refresh multiple copies of the boff power "Beam Fire At Will"; and that damage dropoff at range is less for beams than cannons.
Generally, if your ship can turn (ie, escorts, most science ships, some cruisers) then it is generally best to equip dual beam banks up front and omni-directional (360 degree) beams at the rear; this will make your ship feel like an escort/claymore (ie, point front at enemy) and do considerable damage in a slightly wider arc than a similarly-equipped cannon escort. Some late missions have omni-directional beam arrays as mission rewards; collect these as they can be equipped alongside crafted and 'standard' weapons of the same energy type.
However, if you're running a less agile cruiser (like the Sovereign Assault Cruiser or some of the Odyssey Cruisers) then generally it is better to equip normal beam arrays in both the front and the back and keep your enemies on your side (ie, broadsiding), above or below you so all (up to) 8 beams can fire at once.
Having 8 beams firing at once will greatly drain your weapon power though, which can materially reduce the effectiveness (ie damage output) of your marginal beam array. Therefore, ensure that you're paying attention to your weapon power levels (ie, use batteries, the boff skill Emergency Power to Weapons, or other things).
Cannons
- Cannons trade firing arc for more raw damage;
- Do not equip cannons on ships that cant turn or are otherwise not agile;
- If you equip cannons up front ensure you have turrets in the rear - the same bridge officer skills boost both; and
- Remember that cannon damage drops off rather quickly at range - stay up close and personal for maximum damage.
Although the current meta of STO favours beams, there is something special about running up into an enemy's face and strafing the living daylights out of them as you zoom away. It really brings a level of joy.
If you're equipping cannons up front, remember to utilise turrets in the rear because bridge officer skills such as Cannon Scatter Volley and Cannon Rapid Fire will also boost your rear turrets for higher damage output. The other thing to be aware of - particularly when running Dual Heavy Cannons - is to keep your weapon power high; they really drain your power levels when you bring all guns to bear.
I personally don't profess to know how to use cannons properly; I've found that the necessity of combat means your guns are not always facing the enemy and that the tradeoff (higher raw damage for narrower arc) means that your overall damage per minute tends to drop off. The Pilot Bridge Officer skill 'Lock Trajectory' can assist with keeping your front towards your target (thanks @ceewkay !)
Since the skill revamp (particularly a new skill that reduces the dropoff at range), the damage reduction of cannons at range isnt as bad as it used to be making the disadvantage in DPS from equipping them smaller - this is healthy, as more variety is more fun. And cannons are very, very fun.
Torpedoes and Mines
- Whilst many high-end players run ships with energy weapons only, I still prefer to equip one torpedo in my builds.
- The best torpedos are from Reputation projects, such as the Neutronic Torpedo or Gravimetric Torpedo.
- Dont use mines as they're far too situational to be effective in STO - the possible exception is the Nukara Web Mines as part of a set.
Generally, torpedoes do significant kinetic damage to unshielded hulls, but little damage to shielded hulls. Therefore, the effectiveness of having torpedoes is low until you've already dropped the enemy's shields using your energy weapons - however by the time you've reached this point, your energy weapons will already be dealing significant burn directly to the enemy's unshielded hull anyway so many players simply dump the torpedoes altogether. This has the added advantage of limiting the number of skills you need to invest in - focusing scare skill points only on energy weapons rather than also needing to boost torpedo skills to improve their effectiveness.
However, I usually run at least one torpedo tube on my ships for two general reasons. The first is that the power drain requirements for having 8 beams or so (in various combinations) means that your marginal beam array is often firing at considerably less than 125 weapon power (except for certain high-energy endgame builds, which I wont go into details here). Therefore, you dont 'lose' much energy weapon damage for carrying a torp. The second reason is that some of the torpedos, including those that come as part of a set, are pretty rad and do cool things; the Neutronic torpedo is still effective against shielded targets it does both material radiation damage (bypassing shields) to all enemies within 3 km of the target (great for Torpedo Spread 3 which might hit up to five separate targets) and also reduces the enemy's power level by 15 for all subsystems - including shields making it easier for my beams to drop them faster.
High-end Science builds will often set aside energy weapons and instead rely on torpedo weapons as a major source of their damage (alongside their amped-up Gravity Wells, of course!) so they can redirect scarce power away from weapons into auxiliary to improve the strength/duration/recharge rate of their science powers. As torpedo tubes dont require weapon power, their ships can simply pump enemy targets with torps and rely on science powers (such as Tachyon Beam or Energy Siphon) to drain enemy shields and/or their large boosts to radiation damage to bypass enemy shields to kill without beams. You need to know what you're doing to make this work, of course.
Mines do very high damage at face value, however due to their static nature and their relatively slow travel time (and that they can be destroyed if spotted) means that in reality they're not very effective. The exception is when you have a ship with enhanced battle cloak, which means you can fire projectile weapons such as torpedoes and mines whilst cloaked. One of my Romulan characters cruises around in a T'Varo retrofit and spams transphasic mines using mine dispersal bridge officer powers for the lolz. But in most situations, equipping (and flying into!) mines is to be avoided.
***Continued in Next Post***
Post edited by ultimatenewbie on
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Comments
Consoles are pretty much the major way to improve the combat performance of your ship in STO. The number and arrangement of Engineering, Science and Tactical consoles is a significant way that various ships are differentiated from each other (the other major way is through bridge officer seating).
Your first Tier 1 Starship (eg, the Light Cruiser/Miranda) has three consoles, Tier 2 Starships that you can choose from Lt Commander have four consoles, Tier 3 Starships have five consoles and Tier 4 Starships (Captain level) have 7 consoles. At each level, the C-Store variant will have one extra console slot (and either a unique console or a unique weapon, plus a cool skin).
From Tier 5, things become more complicated. The 'base' Tier 5 ships such as the Assault Cruiser that is the final 'free' promotion reward from Admiral Quinn (or Chancellor J'mpok) have 9 consoles. The C-Store versions of those ships also have 9 consoles, but with an 'Upgrade Token' they have 10 consoles. Base Tier 6 ships from the C-Store have 10 consoles unless they're special "fleet quality" ships such as the Pilot Escorts or Flagships in which case they have 11.
In general terms, given the strong game meta of producing DPS, ships with numerous Tactical consoles tend to be favoured by players; the exception are various kinds of Science builds running dedicated science ships with plenty of sci consoles. Generally, with end-game ships, you'd want at least three tactical console slots to be effective in most PVEs unless you know what you're doing with a specialist build.
Engineering Consoles
Engineering consoles are useful for keeping your ship alive (through armour consoles such as Neutronium Alloy) and for improving power levels (such as Plasma Distribution Manifold), but also for helpful things such as RCS consoles to improve turn rate - handy for cruisers and escorts alike.
However, many players in end-game ships prefer to slot high-end universal consoles (such as Reputation gear like the Console - Universal - Assimilated Module from the Omega Rep) in their engineering slots. This is because they use all of their science and tactical slots on improving their shields and weapons, leaving only engineering slots to stash handy items.
Science Consoles
Generally, there are two ways of doing Science consoles - if you aren't setting your ship up for high-end science pwning, then use the consoles to support your shields and/or equip cool science consoles awarded from missions like the Temporal Disentanglement Suite. Field Generators are great as they add a material increase to your overall shield capacity, though if you're still levelling up then finding consoles that increase your shield regeneration rate (such as a Shield Emitter Amplifier) will still be useful.
If you are going for a Science build, then it depends on what kind of build you're after: a drain build will generally have quite a few Flow Capacitors (particularly to support Polaron-based weaponry) to really suck the power out of your enemies. A crowd-control build will focus more on gravity generators (to keep those Gravity Wells' pulling power strong) and Particle Generators (so they do more damage to the enemy). If you're a new player, I once again strongly encourage you to research in advance before embarking on a Science build.
Tactical Consoles
Not all tac consoles are born equal. Consoles that boost a weapon type (eg, the Prefire Chamber that boosts all cannons) can be helpful if your ship is equipped with many cannons but each cannon is of a different energy type, eg phasers, disruptors, tetryon etc. However, this flexibility comes at a price; they provide a lower boost than those tac console that boost only one type of energy weapon (eg, Phaser Relay). Therefore, it is generally better to avoid a 'Rainbow' build of multiple energy types in favour of equipping all weapons with just the one energy type, and supported by the relevant tactical console. Still, at low levels (below Level 50), it doesnt really matter.
Random aside: I remember often being dissed in random STFs about my 'rainbow' build and how I should consolidate all my beams into one energy type, only I was running a mixture of normal phasers, retrofit phasers, andorian phasers and bio-matter phasers (see discussion on energy weapon types in the preceding post above) all boosted by Phaser Relay tactical consoles - dont let the haters get to you!
The exception to this energy weapon approach is certain Science torpedo-boat builds as they don't really use energy weapons to kill the enemy. Those players can use the relevant torpedo weapon console (or the Warhead Yield Chamber if running a mix of reputation-level gear).
At no time is it sensible to run mine consoles unless you really have nothing else and cannot access the Exchange. Just don't do it.
Space Sets
There are a huge number of different sets in STO which I wont go into here (see the STO wiki link here). One thing I should point out: you can have more than one set on your ship at a time, assuming that it doesnt conflict (ie, both sets need an impulse engine and you're trying to equip two full sets). For clarification, you can equip one or many partial sets, but you wont be able to access their full set bonuses (obviously).
In general terms, an item in a set is better than virtually any other equivalent item except for certain fleet-level items. Fleet items will possibly have better 'base' stats such as raw damage, or be a bit more flexible in its modifications (eg some fleet warp cores have a certain sought-after modifier such as [AMP]) whereas the set item will always have what it has been designed with and therefore could be considered less flexible).
Obviously, an additional consideration is that having multiple items of a set gives you set bonuses, but at a cost of less flexibility - you must carry that weapon and that console to get the 2-piece set bonus, which obviously means you cant use some other console or weapon in those slots and still get the bonus.
The set that is the current flavour of the month is the Iconian Reputation, however some people run separate cores and others are still running builds with the Nukara shields and etc. Recent reputation sets have come out with extra bonuses to science skills and torpedos, which support those kinds of builds. Really, as there is a lot to choose from, do some research for builds that you think you might enjoy and go explore from there. Again, STOBuilds on Reddit is an excellent place for advice.
Remember: the purpose of this game is to have fun
Once again, I cannot emphasise enough that the purpose of this game is to have fun - go pick something to experiment with and see if you enjoy playing with it or not - and then go try something else. Dont let others say 'You must use Antiproton Dual Beam Banks with Omni-beams in the back and spam Beam Fire At Will or you're just causing the team to lose' because it simply isn't true. You're winning if you're having fun and remember: nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
I still have to made some additions to the above - mainly around how singularity cores work and some general points about the various kinds of energy weapon (ie, how phasers differ to tetryon etc).
Ah, that's pretty cool - didnt know about that skill. Still, it would be for level 60+ given its a specialisation point skill.
Thanks!
That explains why I've not run into it yet, I've only recently acquired the pilot escorts and havent invested in the pilot boff skills yet. Thanks! I've edited my post above and credited you
No worries mate, a pleasure - feedback like this makes it all worthwhile!
I've just updated the section on energy weapon types above, so if you have any views feel free to post.
While it is indeed a neat skill, ... you fly-by the enemy, and then blast the other side of the ship, where the shields are still intact. You also lose flanking, if you have it. I tried this and went back to what I had, which was a reduced speed ship that takes advantage of pedal to the metal (a high level pilot specialty skill that adds damage if you stay at full throttle) and flanking, with a side benefit that I often show up behind other players so my fragile little raider does not get shot at -- by the time they realize I am a threat, its over. I also really like the pilot ships (different from a pilot officer seat) which can "teleport" in any of your 4 major directions (straight ahead, back, left, right). Popping backwards in these ships also retains flank and P2M bonus.
I found the skill to be must more potent on big slow ships, where it gives you a turn rate increase and manuverability that is extremely useful. The nandi, for example, is a little slow and can take advantage of this skill.