Okay, it's official. I'm a Bad Influence(tm) on you people.
When I read this, the first thought that crossed my mind was ... "and someone else starts drinking the Protonic Kool-Aid and discovers they LIKE IT."
On a slightly different note, I had to go look to make sure it really has been that long. I started this thread on May 13th, and here we are 5.5 months later, and this thread is still bouncing up to the top of the forum with different people trying out and experimenting with new stuff every now and then and making new discoveries of FUN(tm) that they previously weren't experiencing in the game.
All of which is a really long segue into a slight bit of business I've been mulling over the past week in relation to this thread.
The first is that I've been contemplating the fact that I've proven (to my own satisfaction) that the whole "chuck lots of dice really fast" approach has some serious merit to it for dealing with the game's (admittedly easy) challenges. The whole Buff Stripper/Lights Out combo that I first discovered certainly "works" on its own merits without resorting to DPS chasing for success. Indeed, it has the potential to make a whole lot of "challenges" relatively trivial to overcome via the backdoor method of "crippling" opposition (via Drain and Buff Stripping), as opposed to "overwhelming" them (via sheer Damage Throughput).
But that still leaves my build(s) in a position of optimizing for [DrainX] (primary), so as to "turn the lights off" via Drain, and the whole Proton Burn on Critical+Proc as an add on "bonus" effect (nice if it happens, but not the "point" of what's going on or even really "needed" for everything to "work").
So I've been thinking about three divergent possibilities here.
The first one is actually more a question of pursuing the maximum potential for Proton Burn procs.
The second one is actually a "full circle" kind of thing of checking out the [Rapid] mod on crafted Polaron Turrets again.
And the third is a truly whacktastic notion that ... {wait for it} ... the [Snare] mod on crafted weapons isn't useless anymore, thanks to the Temporal Operative T4 Reputation Trait that offers +7% bonus weapon damage against Controlled targets, which near as I can tell, the [Snare] mod ought to be applying very reliably, even if only for a short duration (basically the weapon's active firing cycle).
Maximizing the Proton Burn procs basically comes down to 6 interrelated factors.
Traits that offer Critical Hit
Consoles that offer Critical Hit
Captain/Bridge Officer Traits that offer Superior Romulan Operative (for Critical Hits)
Weapons that offer Critical Hit
Accuracy Overflow bonuses that ultimately yield increased Critical Hit
Science Ultimate that temporarily sets Critical Hit chance at 50%
In theory, this would mean that a Romulan captain ought to be able to "get more" out of Protonic Polarons than any other captain around, simply because they can get Superior Romulan Operative on Bridge Officers other than just Tactical and thus maximize their overall Critical Hit rate. A side bonus of this would be the expectation that those Bridge Officers will also offer Subterfuge, making for a cooldown reduction on Cloaking, making for a rather unusual combo for a ship using Battle Cloak (such as the Romulan Dyson Science Destroyer line of ships?).
The Traits that will maximize Critical Hit chance are going to be Precision (Tier 2 Romulan) for +4% Critical Hit ... and Enhanced Rending Shots (Tier 4 Delta) for a stacking (up to 10) +1.5% Critical Hit chance per NON-critical hit from weapons with a 5 second cooldown after making a Critical Hit. Trust me, when "chucking lots of dice" at the problem with fast Turret volley fire, the Enhanced Rending Shots trait will spend most of its time on cooldown. Don't get me wrong, it'll still enhance your Damage throughput, but it'll be rare for the Trait to stack to 10 (+15% Critical Hit) without actually scoring a Critical from a fast volley of Turret fire.
Consoles that offer Critical Hit include everyone's "favorite" the Vulnerability Locators on up through the Universals (Assimilated Module, et al.) and so on.
Weapons that offer Critical Hit ... well, since we're talking about Protonic Polarons, that's basically something that you PICK on the weapons when you BUY them out of the Reputation Store. It's not like we're dealing with randomized mods here. Now, that said, the modifier you get when the weapon(s) go to Ultra Rare is going to be randomized, so that's pretty much the only time that this becomes a point of variance.
Accuracy Overflow is "definitely a thing" when dealing with serious Drain Pressure builds which can "turn the lights out" on a target by draining all power from them on a Polaron proc, which will then cause their Defense to "crash" to pitiable levels ... at which point your excess Accuracy "overflows" into additional Critical Hit (which won't show up in the Stats for your ship) and make both Critical Hits and thus Proton Burn "bonus damage" more likely to occur.
Science Ultimate? Yeah, 'nuff said.
And then ... there's the Auto Targeting Modules from the Dyson Reputation Store. Yes, these are roundly shunned as being self-gimped, since they take away from the [Mod] Damage Type to exchange for +Proton Damage, and they add a tiny smidgen of Accuracy. But here's the rub. They're just about the only way to enhance Proton Damage around, which (ironically?) is exactly what you want to power up a Point Defense Protocols Trait which does (guess what) Proton Damage to the nearest target (within 5km) every 0.5 seconds upon activation of a weapon enhancement (BFAW, CRF, CSV, SS), which can add up to being something of a contributor to damage throughput.
Anyway, I've had my Admiral Flowers experimenting with the Dyson Joint Command Technologies set to compare and contrast it with the Solanae Hybrid Technologies set, and on stats the two are relatively close to each other, which came as a surprise to me (even though it shouldn't). Where the buffs and bonuses come from shifts between the two (items themselves or set bonuses) but in aggregate the difference just isn't that large. And now, I've decided to try going "all in" on Proton Burn with Flowers while still sustaining as much [DrainX] as I can manage. A side effect of this is that this means I've switched out the Delta Alliance Ordnance 2-piece Neutronic and Bio-neural Gel Pack combo for the Protonic Arsenal, because, bonus to Proton Damage and Critical Hits.
This all makes for some rather interesting tradeoffs. I'm actually lowering my Polaron Damage output while attemping to make up the difference through a combination of [Acc] [CrtH] [CrtD] in combination with Reputation Traits and a Starship Trait. Haven't had a chance to "test drive" the rebuild yet so as to get a "feel" for the differences, but it should be interesting.
At the same time, I've been contemplating doing the "full circle" return to seeing if I can collect a full set of 7 crafted Polaron Turrets with the [Rapid] (preferably with [Acc]x2 on them all) to redo the cross comparison with Protonics.
The reason why I ditched the [Rapid] Turrets I originally started with had more to do with Space Barbie (the Protonics were a prettier color of Indigo instead of a purer Purple color) and the fact that I just couldn't "feel" the difference when the [Rapid] mod would actually proc. There's also the fact that the firing speed increase is actually pretty small (0.8 seconds of volley time for a single volley) and is really hard to notice in the flurry of sound that the Turret Hose makes routinely. But now there's Temporal Spec and the Temporal Cross-wiring skill which offers 5% firing haste for 10 seconds upon activation of Exotic Damage Abilities. Put these things together and ... life could get rather interesting.
In this case, the objective is to exchange Proton Burn bonus damage for the benefits of a sheer firing speed buff, which in turn could proc the Polaron Drain to "turn the lights off" even more often (and therefore, more reliably). Still a goodly bit of RNGesus involved, but this is definitely in keeping with the "chuck lots of dice" mentality that's been the driving force behind a lot of my discoveries in this thread ... except that this angle is "chuck lots of dice even more often" which could have some interesting implications.
What kind of implications? Well, I'm glad you asked ... because there's an "unloved" Trait over there in Omega Reputation that everyone thinks is "garbage" (predictably enough) that's relevant to the [Rapid] style of "chuck lots of dice as fast as you can" build strategy. It's Omega Graviton Amplifier ... which includes a rather interesting bit of text ...
Adds a chance to deal Kinetic damage with 100% Shield Penetration to your weapons. This works with Directed Energy Weapons, Torpedoes, and Mines. It has a higher proc chance for Torpedoes and Mines. Unlike other triggered effects, this proc can be triggered once per attack instead of once per attack cycle.
Okay ... wait a (fraction of a) half second.
Are you telling me that Omega Graviton Amplifier can proc (2.5% chance on energy weapons) on EVERY SHOT? Not per volley cycle, but EVERY SHOT? As in, Dual Cannons firing 4 shots per cycle have an advantage over Dual Heavy Cannons that fire only 2 shots per cycle? And Turrets and Single Cannons also fire 4 shots per cycle?
And Turrets are normally have a 0.5 second rate of fire for 2 seconds, with 1 second of cooldown time. But [Rapid] and Cannon: Rapid Fire both reduce that to a 0.3 second rate of fire for 1.2 seconds, with 1 second of cooldown time. And Temporal Cross-wiring will reduce the cooldown time by -0.05 seconds per proc (you can have up to 4 stacked) for ten seconds. Meaning ... with the right build, you could be looking at a "grab the firehose with both hands" kind of performance, even from Turrets (actually especially from Turrets since they only stop firing when there's either no target or you're beyond 10km from your target). And then the Omega Graviton Amplifier can proc on EVERY SHOT fired?
Are you telling me that Omega Graviton Amplifier can proc (2.5% chance on energy weapons) on EVERY SHOT? Not per volley cycle, but EVERY SHOT? As in, Dual Cannons firing 4 shots per cycle have an advantage over Dual Heavy Cannons that fire only 2 shots per cycle? And Turrets and Single Cannons also fire 4 shots per cycle?
yes, it does; in fact, i do believe i brought that up that very thing earlier in this thread
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
I'm pretty sure you (and/or I) already did. However, at the time, we didn't have Temporal Cross-wiring available, so there was a limit to how fast you could speed up your firing cycles. Now with the ability to speed up both the firing cycle itself AND the cooldown side of things, the relevance of being able to proc on every shot fired takes on new prominence.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
So ... Controlled Countermeasures from Temporal Reputation offers +7% bonus weapon damage to targets that are already controlled, including slows. And the [Snare] mod on weapons applies a -5% debuff to speed and turn rate on hit.
Reading the tooltip, it looks like the [Snare] mod doesn't have a chance to take effect, meaning it ought to be a 100% chance per volley. I'm assuming that the duration of the mod is for the length of the firing cycle (so either 2 or 3 seconds for Cannons, and 4 or 5 seconds for Beams), but the tooltip is rather (un)helpful about specifying the duration. And on the other side, the Controlled Countermeasures uses the word "bonus" in its tooltip, which will typically imply that what it is offering is (what r/stobuilds would consider) a Cat2 bonus instead of a Cat1, which makes a BIG difference in where the bonus appears in the Damage Formula used by the game engine.
So I asked around, and so far there isn't anyone who can confirm for me whether or not Controlled Countermeasures is a Cat1 or Cat2 bonus. The (untested) assumption is that it's a Cat1, meaning it's like having a +7% Damage Tactical Console when shooting stuff, since that's a safer assumption (presume it's lousy until proven otherwise) ... but what if it's not? What if that +7% bonus weapon damage is like the Auxiliary Power Configuration - Offense trait out of Nukara Reputation, which is a Cat2 bonus, and therefore NOT subject to diminishing returns as Mk numbers increase? What if it really is a +7% bonus to weapon damage, straight up?
If so, we might have a contender for unseating [Pen] as the dominant mod to get from crafting of weapons. Why? Because [Snare] would then trigger Controlled Countermeasures, and if the difference is a straight up +7%, that might be more than you'd otherwise net from [Pen], since that would then be +7% on EVERY hit, rather than just a big spike of damage when [Pen] procs due to mitigated Resistance (i.e. Pressure vs Spike).
Now, to be fair, this probably means that you'd be able to get the Controlled Countermeasures bonus +7% if you had ONE weapon with [Snare] on it (meaning the rest could stay [Pen] if you wanted to go that route) ... particularly with Beams and their "long" firing cycles ... but that's overlooking the potential for additional Accuracy Overflow courtesy of reduced Speed, and thus even further reduced Defense. My point being that if you stack [Snare] rather than [Pen] you could be looking at a not insignificant reduction in Speed and Turn Rate, such that your target(s) become significantly more likely to suffer from Critical Hits (and the Severity bonus that then ensues).
And that's not even including what kind of "ruin your day" experience what stacking a lot of [Snare] on Turrets and throwing a Cannon Scatter Volley and Gravity Well might do to maximize the "pull" power of the Gravity well and its ability to inflict Damage (which reduces with range from the center of the Well) and the resulting "popcorn" chain reaction of core breaches.
So yeah ... the range of options seems to be increasing ...
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
So then ... get ONE weapon with [Snare] on it so as to trigger Counter-Stroke which offers a Critical Severity bonus when controlled?
Suffice to say, we're going to have to test what's going on with [Snare] and Controlled Countermeasures/Counter-Stroke to know if there's any synergy to be had here.
So ... Controlled Countermeasures from Temporal Reputation offers +7% bonus weapon damage to targets that are already controlled, including slows. And the [Snare] mod on weapons applies a -5% debuff to speed and turn rate on hit.
Reading the tooltip, it looks like the [Snare] mod doesn't have a chance to take effect, meaning it ought to be a 100% chance per volley. I'm assuming that the duration of the mod is for the length of the firing cycle (so either 2 or 3 seconds for Cannons, and 4 or 5 seconds for Beams), but the tooltip is rather (un)helpful about specifying the duration. And on the other side, the Controlled Countermeasures uses the word "bonus" in its tooltip, which will typically imply that what it is offering is (what r/stobuilds would consider) a Cat2 bonus instead of a Cat1, which makes a BIG difference in where the bonus appears in the Damage Formula used by the game engine.
So I asked around, and so far there isn't anyone who can confirm for me whether or not Controlled Countermeasures is a Cat1 or Cat2 bonus. The (untested) assumption is that it's a Cat1, meaning it's like having a +7% Damage Tactical Console when shooting stuff, since that's a safer assumption (presume it's lousy until proven otherwise) ... but what if it's not? What if that +7% bonus weapon damage is like the Auxiliary Power Configuration - Offense trait out of Nukara Reputation, which is a Cat2 bonus, and therefore NOT subject to diminishing returns as Mk numbers increase? What if it really is a +7% bonus to weapon damage, straight up?
If so, we might have a contender for unseating [Pen] as the dominant mod to get from crafting of weapons. Why? Because [Snare] would then trigger Controlled Countermeasures, and if the difference is a straight up +7%, that might be more than you'd otherwise net from [Pen], since that would then be +7% on EVERY hit, rather than just a big spike of damage when [Pen] procs due to mitigated Resistance (i.e. Pressure vs Spike).
Now, to be fair, this probably means that you'd be able to get the Controlled Countermeasures bonus +7% if you had ONE weapon with [Snare] on it (meaning the rest could stay [Pen] if you wanted to go that route) ... particularly with Beams and their "long" firing cycles ... but that's overlooking the potential for additional Accuracy Overflow courtesy of reduced Speed, and thus even further reduced Defense. My point being that if you stack [Snare] rather than [Pen] you could be looking at a not insignificant reduction in Speed and Turn Rate, such that your target(s) become significantly more likely to suffer from Critical Hits (and the Severity bonus that then ensues).
And that's not even including what kind of "ruin your day" experience what stacking a lot of [Snare] on Turrets and throwing a Cannon Scatter Volley and Gravity Well might do to maximize the "pull" power of the Gravity well and its ability to inflict Damage (which reduces with range from the center of the Well) and the resulting "popcorn" chain reaction of core breaches.
So yeah ... the range of options seems to be increasing ...
I love you man XD
In a caring drunk dude kinda way hehe
I'll take your Kool-Aid and attempt a different spin on it. Eventually. Need to find the time.
I did some testing when I unlocked the controlled countermeasures from the rep quite a while ago now and I'm pretty sure it's a Cat2 boost (which in Cryptic parlance is usually associated with the word "bonus" I've found), and since then has been included on all of my ship builds since. It really is worth it imo. A must have for anyone chucking grav wells, TBRs around etc.
Combine that with control amp from skill tree and you've a -dmg resistance to enemy and +dmg bonus to self all in one from one effect.
I've liked control builds since I first started playing all those years ago and these two stand out particularly for helping DPS on control builds of late.
I haven't put pen to "paper doll" as such but I've been thinking a little bit about how I might pour some Kool-Aid into a control style build.
New energy types like the Nausicaan Disruptor and Chronoplasma stand out as something you can chuck dice with for speed reducing procs (thus control?), plus the perennial Bio-Molecular Disruptor with it's set bonus for 4% chance instead of 2.5%.
Nausicaan would be a certainty to trigger a "controlled" state I think with it's "hold" proc, but the others just reduce speed, I'm not sure if they count as being controlled when they proc.
In fact Nausicaan might be the way I go. With a Hold, Power steal/drain, and dmg resist debuff all in one, it may be my perfect choice.
Bio-moleculars could be interesting too because of radiation dmg on expiration?
Suppression barrage and Emit warp bubble then also come into play too as off the beaten track control types to trigger things. Both also reduce enemy dmg outputs which I conceptually also like as a tactic for my typically tanky ways, but has fallen away in usefulness because everything pops so quickly these days, even in elites.
I would like to play with dominion polarons and go back to pure drain builds again, but with limited weapons choice for that energy type and seemingly fixed mods, for the moment, meh. Although polarized disruptors which I have a few of (though not many turrets) might be interesting enough to try again, especially with infinity box drops.
Resonating Tetryons are ideal for sheild stripper builds. Did a shield strip build ages ago back when those were still 10% chance I think?? Was half decent with beams. Surely as good if not better with turrets even though chance has been since halved.
Herald Antiproton could be interesting too with "bonus" 7% energy dmg proc. But with only 3 stacks allowed and 20s up time, probs not as beneficial on a turrets build as that'd be easy to maintain most likely with just regular beam FAW use.
Anyway, back to my hopes and aspirations on my future Kool-Aid attempt. I like drains and controls in general but with part gens getting all the focus cause DPS it makes it hard to see anything else as being useful. Kool-Aid has given me hope.
I'm thinking Nausicaan turrets for the dual control/drain steal proc, with the build perhaps mostly focused on drains with a bit of control chucked in to keep the control dual control amp+countermeasures up and running.
Might nickname the build 'Dual-Aid'
And as I love me my hanger pets, would make interceptors for their dual slows and drains nice to fly again.
Will be fun nutting this concept out, but with control being almost useless in PvE I'm not sure it'll gain much traction as a pure drain build which can at least shut (many) things down.
I'll take your Kool-Aid and attempt a different spin on it. Eventually. Need to find the time.
Finding the time is ALWAYS the challenge.
And yes, feel free to seek alternative spins. That's part of the beauty of what I've discovered, that it's flexible enough to find a myriad of expressions. It isn't so "tightly bound" to a single cookie cutter that there is only One True Way of doing things that can be successful.
In a lot of ways, it feels a bit like I'm "leading" a revolution against the supremacy of BFAW as the be all/end all solution to every problem.
I did some testing when I unlocked the controlled countermeasures from the rep quite a while ago now and I'm pretty sure it's a Cat2 boost (which in Cryptic parlance is usually associated with the word "bonus" I've found), and since then has been included on all of my ship builds since. It really is worth it imo. A must have for anyone chucking grav wells, TBRs around etc.
Combine that with control amp from skill tree and you've a -dmg resistance to enemy and +dmg bonus to self all in one from one effect.
New energy types like the Nausicaan Disruptor and Chronoplasma stand out as something you can chuck dice with for speed reducing procs (thus control?), plus the perennial Bio-Molecular Disruptor with it's set bonus for 4% chance instead of 2.5%.
Nausicaan would be a certainty to trigger a "controlled" state I think with it's "hold" proc, but the others just reduce speed, I'm not sure if they count as being controlled when they proc.
In fact Nausicaan might be the way I go. With a Hold, Power steal/drain, and dmg resist debuff all in one, it may be my perfect choice.
The downside with the Nausicaan Disruptor is that you can't fill a ship with them. It's an "equip 1" limit item. It's also a Beam Array (so sloooow...). Now, if you're dropping it in to a collection of Polarized Disruptor Beam Arrays, that's probably the best possible option for mixing with a Drain build.
Chronoplasma would certainly work for the slow aspect to proc Controlled Countermeasures, but you'd be dropping the Drain potential of getting a proc to "turn the lights off" on your target (meaning no shield drop). So with THAT you'd be wanting to go to Embassy Plasma Consoles for extra Plasma Burn.
Bio-moleculars could be interesting too because of radiation dmg on expiration?
Yes, but you'd be dispensing with the whole Drain side of things, since Bio-moleculars won't have a Drain proc on them to "turn the lights off" on your target. That said, if going in that direction, you'd be wanting to switch over to Embassy Plasma Consoles rather than sticking with Research Lab [DrainX]x2 Consoles, so you'd be doing something remarkably different due to choice of weapons.
Although polarized disruptors which I have a few of (though not many turrets) might be interesting enough to try again, especially with infinity box drops.
Good luck collecting enough of those off the Exchange ...
Herald Antiproton could be interesting too with "bonus" 7% energy dmg proc. But with only 3 stacks allowed and 20s up time, probs not as beneficial on a turrets build as that'd be easy to maintain most likely with just regular beam FAW use.
They also don't have a Drain proc to "turn the lights off" which is what really cripples targets. Now, Phased Polarons, which combine a Drain proc and a Disable proc would be able to trigger the "controlled" condition for Controlled Countermeasures. So that would probably be an alternative to crafted Polarons with the [Snare] mod, if you want to go that route. Although, once again, good luck getting enough of those off the Exchange to fill out a ship build ...
Anyway, back to my hopes and aspirations on my future Kool-Aid attempt. I like drains and controls in general but with part gens getting all the focus cause DPS it makes it hard to see anything else as being useful. Kool-Aid has given me hope.
And as I love me my hanger pets, would make interceptors for their dual slows and drains nice to fly again.
Kind of sad how few Hangar Pets there are with Drain procs, since so few use Polaron weapons (mostly Dominion), and all of the Dominion Carriers are Tactical rather than Science ships, meaning that there's hardly any Science Console slots, which in turn very nearly "disqualifies" them from being effective Drain Boats.
Will be fun nutting this concept out, but with control being almost useless in PvE I'm not sure it'll gain much traction as a pure drain build which can at least shut (many) things down.
Ah, but that's the joy of it, you see. This is why I'm now curious about the [Snare] mod on crafted Polaron Turrets ...
And as I love me my hanger pets, would make interceptors for their dual slows and drains nice to fly again.
Kind of sad how few Hangar Pets there are with Drain procs, since so few use Polaron weapons (mostly Dominion), and all of the Dominion Carriers are Tactical rather than Science ships, meaning that there's hardly any Science Console slots, which in turn very nearly "disqualifies" them from being effective Drain Boats.
And the Breen, with the elite frigate that carries an energy dissipator. No idea how often it uses it, but that could be an interesting option on the Breen cruiser
And as I love me my hanger pets, would make interceptors for their dual slows and drains nice to fly again.
Kind of sad how few Hangar Pets there are with Drain procs, since so few use Polaron weapons (mostly Dominion), and all of the Dominion Carriers are Tactical rather than Science ships, meaning that there's hardly any Science Console slots, which in turn very nearly "disqualifies" them from being effective Drain Boats.
And the Breen, with the elite frigate that carries an energy dissipator. No idea how often it uses it, but that could be an interesting option on the Breen cruiser
Well, I did try an Atrox in Argala Elite. Shields went down fast with dual Adv Stalkers and the ships science skills, but hampered by 2 less weapons slots and only a lt tac. Still it worked at least against the hirogens, no deaths.
New energy types like the Nausicaan Disruptor and Chronoplasma stand out as something you can chuck dice with for speed reducing procs (thus control?), plus the perennial Bio-Molecular Disruptor with it's set bonus for 4% chance instead of 2.5%.
Nausicaan would be a certainty to trigger a "controlled" state I think with it's "hold" proc, but the others just reduce speed, I'm not sure if they count as being controlled when they proc.
In fact Nausicaan might be the way I go. With a Hold, Power steal/drain, and dmg resist debuff all in one, it may be my perfect choice.
The downside with the Nausicaan Disruptor is that you can't fill a ship with them. It's an "equip 1" limit item. It's also a Beam Array (so sloooow...). Now, if you're dropping it in to a collection of Polarized Disruptor Beam Arrays, that's probably the best possible option for mixing with a Drain build.
Yeah wasn't near the game to check, I thought Nausicaan disruptors were the new lock box energy type, but after getting home and checking, it unfortunately might just be a once off set piece energy type. Which is a massive shame
I guess that idea is off the table unless they're released in a rep or future lockbox. Thematically seems unlikely. Shame STO doesn't explore stories for the B grade species in each faction more.
Although polarized disruptors which I have a few of (though not many turrets) might be interesting enough to try again, especially with infinity box drops.
Good luck collecting enough of those off the Exchange ...
How important is acc for kool-aid? Pretty sure I've at least 4 turrets already from when these weapons were originally released but they'll probably be a mix of mods.
Now, Phased Polarons, which combine a Drain proc and a Disable proc would be able to trigger the "controlled" condition for Controlled Countermeasures. So that would probably be an alternative to crafted Polarons with the [Snare] mod, if you want to go that route. Although, once again, good luck getting enough of those off the Exchange to fill out a ship build ...
Any thoughts on mixing turret types?
So if we presume 8 weapons, with 2 for torps, leaves 6. Would 3 or 4 say polarized disruptors be enough to get lights out? So I can mix in 2 or 3 bio-moleculars to get the control happening. Or perhaps 5-1 ratio of drain to control?
Then the nausicaan console and torp from new episode, when they unlock, would make a good pairing for such a build.
Does Kool-aid rely entirely on weapon procs to get the drains to turn lights out? Or does it need siphon and tykens etc to get it across the line.
Just thinking, perhaps I can lean more on boff drains to get it over the lights out line, if dropping 1-2 drain turrets hurts that aspect in favour of some control turrets.
Going this direction currently because Phased polarons seem ok on face value, but looking at the wiki they have a subsystem offline proc, not a hold/slow, so don't count as a control method I believe. Subsystem offline I think is just more akin to 100% drain for X seconds. Perhaps I'm wrong?
The other thing is that disables and holds are always short duration, and the bonus from both skill tree and rep trait only works while the enemy is actually controlled, no fixed duration of effect or lingering, so like only 5 seconds for holds/disables versus some 8 seconds for slows.
Actually...
Just reading stowiki some more. Snare doesn't list a chance of applying?? Seems to be a guarenteed application on hit. In which case yeah SNARE modded polarons would be the best. Would actually only need 1 or 2 snare modded weapons in that case then to simply tag foes to get the control buff effects!
And as I love me my hanger pets, would make interceptors for their dual slows and drains nice to fly again.
Kind of sad how few Hangar Pets there are with Drain procs, since so few use Polaron weapons (mostly Dominion), and all of the Dominion Carriers are Tactical rather than Science ships, meaning that there's hardly any Science Console slots, which in turn very nearly "disqualifies" them from being effective Drain Boats.
Speaking from fed side? Then probably.
KDF side has long had interceptors which actively drain weapons and engines (they're like specialised polarons that activate separately and drain specifically only those two subsystems) or if you want to go without some dps, energy siphon drones are pure energy siphon multipliers. A carrier full of those would shut any enemy down imo.
Will be fun nutting this concept out, but with control being almost useless in PvE I'm not sure it'll gain much traction as a pure drain build which can at least shut (many) things down.
Ah, but that's the joy of it, you see. This is why I'm now curious about the [Snare] mod on crafted Polaron Turrets ...
Yeah, do let us know what you find with these if you get around to trying it. As I said above, I think you really only need 1 to tag foes to get the benefits as it's guaranteed slow on each hit.
Damn. Just reading the last few posts had made me realize I haven't begun to scratch the surface of this. And here I thought I was doing something by getting my FT-5U Kamarag up to 507 Drain Expertise.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
Yeah wasn't near the game to check, I thought Nausicaan disruptors were the new lock box energy type, but after getting home and checking, it unfortunately might just be a once off set piece energy type
Well, like I said, you could mix it with Polarized Disruptors and "not miss out" on the Drain side of things. The problem is acquiring enough Polarized Disruptors, since there aren't that many people supplying that market (let alone offering the mods that you "want" on them). The result is a "beggars can't be choosers" sort of situation.
How important is acc for kool-aid? Pretty sure I've at least 4 turrets already from when these weapons were originally released but they'll probably be a mix of mods.
Debatable. *I* like [Acc] (and the x2 or better varieties) because of what essentially amount to "aftermarket synergies" thanks to Accuracy Overflow. If (Your Accuracy)-(Target Defense)>100 Then the "excess" Accuracy converts into bonus [CrtH] and [CrtD] (think of it as being an overflow into [CrtX] if it helps).
And with a Drain Build structured around Plasmonic Leech, lots of [DrainX] mods and Polaron procs ... what will that all do in combination? It drains ALL POWER from the target. How much Power? Well, it depends on how much of a "stack" of Drains you can put together. With 350 Drain Expertise, you're looking at about -4.1 All Power per energy weapon, and something between -65 and -70 All Power per Polaron proc (my builds hover around -68.something, working from memory).
So if you've got 6 energy weapons (Polaron Turrets), that's -24.6 All Power for starters. Get ONE Polaron proc and you're heading upwards of -92 All Power with a 350-ish Drain Expertise skill ... which is usually enough to "turn the lights out" on your target. That means no power to Weapons, no power to Shields, no power to Engines, and no power to Auxiliary. And what happens when you've got no power to Engines? Well, your Defense crashes to zero (or negative!) ... meaning all of that extra [Acc] is stacking up even MORE advantageously for you for added [CrtX]. And why is that relevant? Well, Protonic Polaron Turrets proc an extra damage effect on chance when making a Critical Hit. This means that the Accuracy Overflow "cascades" on Drain proc into boosting your [CrtH] in ways that won't show up in your ship Stats window, but which can yield an increase in Damage Throughput.
At the same time, against targets that haven't been "parked" yet, the bonus to [Acc] is always working for you to ensure you are missing as few shots as possible. A Pressure Build like the Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser relies on a constant stream/barrage of successful hits to both weaken your target(s) while simultaneously buffing yourself, since the Plasmonic Leech Drain transfers All Power from them to you. Missing your target(s) then makes that transfer of Power less reliable and stable.
Now in most PvE situations, missing your target(s) is a pretty rare occurrence (particularly with BFAW spam), but when dealing with Turrets (and Cannons generally) you aren't necessarily "ignoring" Accuracy all the time, so missing both "hurts" you and "helps" your target in terms of lost opportunity (and wasted time and proc chances). So on balance, I figure that the much maligned [Acc] mod, which everyone else holds in disdain, is very useful in the build(s) that I've been experimenting with for my Drain Boats, to the point where you "have to drink the Kool-Aid" in order to even believe that such an inversion of the Conventional Wisdom has merit.
Because Protonic Polarons have such a synergistic relationship with [CrtH], there is an advantage to maximizing [CrtH] when equipping these weapons. But for the purposes of a successful Drain oriented build, you need to also HIT with your weapons reliably at all times, against not only ships but also Hangar Pets, Destructible Torpedoes and Mines ... and for me, those two purposes come together most effectively by increasing [Acc] and using the "overflow" to generate [CrtX]. It's all really "squooshy" when looking at the spreadsheet analysis, but it's something that comes out in actual gameplay.
Depends on what you're trying to accomplish with your procs, really.
*I'm* using my weapon procs to cripple my targets by Draining them, so that limits my choice of weapon types to those which proc for Drain, which is a pretty small number of choices. After that, it's a matter of stacking up types to try and "chuck as many dice as you can, as fast as you can" in order to "bingo!" and make the procs take effect.
Obviously, if the [Snare] mod happens on every cycle (100% chance), then you'd really only need a single weapon with that mod on it for it to be effective. However, if the [Snare] mod only applies during the firing cycle and not during the cooldown, in order to get maximal uptime you'll need to have multiple copies of [Snare] on your weapons so that the staggered firing of your energy weapons yields a minimal window in which the [Snare] mod is not active on your target (while you're shooting at it).
As I mentioned previously, I chose Protonics because I could easily obtain [Acc]x2 on all of the weapons I bought, and every single one offered an additional proc for bonus damage (that ignores shields entirely). I'm relying on the Drain proc to cripple my targets, and the Proton Burn is more a matter of "icing on the cake" rather the whole point and purpose of the exercise (because the Drain is the cake I'm having, and I get to eat it too!). I can then stack those up 6-7 deep and start getting somewhat reliable results out of the combination.
0.975 ^ 7 = 0.83759
1 - 0.83759 = 16.24%
So 7 procs of 2.5% chance have a 16.24% chance of proccing ONE of the Drains per firing cycle (I'm conveniently discounting the odds of proccing multiples for simplicity). That's very nearly a "roll a 1 on 1d6" kind of odds. And I'm throwing those "dice" every 3 seconds or less ... which can mean a LOT of chances to get a Drain proc. AND ... all it takes is ONE Drain proc to "turn the lights out" on my target and ruin their day.
Every single "diversification" you take away from that stack of proc chances impacts how "reliably" those procs can trigger, which will affect overall performance ... at which point you start getting into tradeoffs. Is exchanging THIS for THAT a superior combo? I can't answer that for you, since it depends in large part what you "value" most in your build, and how it all hangs together to produce the effects you're trying to get out of it.
Would 3 or 4 say polarized disruptors be enough to get lights out? So I can mix in 2 or 3 bio-moleculars to get the control happening. Or perhaps 5-1 ratio of drain to control?
0.975 ^ 4 = 0.903687
1 - 0.903687 = 9.63%
Is that an acceptable drop in odds for you of getting a Drain proc that would "turn the lights off" on your target? You're going from a "roll 1 on 1d6" to a "roll 1 on 1d10" kind of odds there. Only you can decide for yourself if the yield from the tradeoff is "worth it" to you.
Then the nausicaan console and torp from new episode, when they unlock, would make a good pairing for such a build.
If using Polarized Disruptors, certainly, since everything would be doing Disruptor Damage at that point. Otherwise ... not so much ... and remember that the energy weapon in this case is a Beam Array, not a Turret ...
Does Kool-aid rely entirely on weapon procs to get the drains to turn lights out? Or does it need siphon and tykens etc to get it across the line.
Not exclusively. I use the Drain from all the Turrets via Plasmonic Leech to create a "floor" of Power transfer (usually in the 24-30 range) that's a reliable foundation. After that, it's just a matter of picking what else to add on top of that in order to get "enough" to be able to "turn the lights out" on the target. Neutronic Torpedoes will hit for enough to do this on top of the Plasmonic Leech in a lot of cases. Tyken's Rift I will also in many cases be adequate for this purpose, although higher ranks have longer durations and stronger Drains (meaning increased duration of crippling). Same deal for Power Siphon, and so on and so forth. The Drain proc on Polarons is something that happens randomly, but with enough Turrets it'll happen "often enough" to be something you can rely on to create windows of opportunity to exploit.
Just thinking, perhaps I can lean more on boff drains to get it over the lights out line, if dropping 1-2 drain turrets hurts that aspect in favour of some control turrets.
If you've got the BOff Skill Slots to spare, knock yourself out. However, many of the seating arrangements available on ships will preclude this option, so choose wisely which path you want to take.
Going this direction currently because Phased polarons seem ok on face value, but looking at the wiki they have a subsystem offline proc, not a hold/slow, so don't count as a control method I believe. Subsystem offline I think is just more akin to 100% drain for X seconds. Perhaps I'm wrong?
Subsystem Offline is NOT like a 100% Drain for the duration ... because of how Hot Restarts work (see Iconian Space Set). Disables are more like "shutdowns" than they are like actual Drains. A Hot Restart will "cancel" a Disable, but it won't do anything against a total Power Drain ... because "restarting" at zero Power still yields zero Power, until the duration of the Drain expires. Not so with a Disable.
The EFFECTS might be similar, but the causes are not. Also, Phaser proc Disables have a 15 second lockout after proccing (a 5 firing cycle duration for Cannons!), while Drains do not have a lockout after being procced.
That being said, apparently the Disable proc of Phasers "counts" as a Control Effect for the purposes of Controlled Countermeasures, according to some people I've asked in-game. At the moment, I haven't verified this, so proceed accordingly.
The other thing is that disables and holds are always short duration, and the bonus from both skill tree and rep trait only works while the enemy is actually controlled, no fixed duration of effect or lingering, so like only 5 seconds for holds/disables versus some 8 seconds for slows.
Yup. So plan your build accordingly ...
You need to be mindful of not only the duration of the procs but also the timing of the firing cycles and of the cooldown times. Polarons proc for a 5 second drain, but the firing cycle on a Turret is 2 seconds (natively) with a 1 second cooldown. That means that a Turret that procs for a "turn the lights out" result can get in two whole firing cycles before the lights turn back on (assuming no more Drain procs happen in the meantime).
2 + 1 + 2 = 5
You can't get that kind of performance out of Beams, with their 4 second firing cycles with 1 second cooldown. A Drain proc on a beam is good for only 1 firing cycle, while for a Cannon it'll be good enough for 2(!).
Snare doesn't list a chance of applying?? Seems to be a guarenteed application on hit. In which case yeah SNARE modded polarons would be the best. Would actually only need 1 or 2 snare modded weapons in that case then to simply tag foes to get the control buff effects!
That's assuming that NOTHING will ever, under any circumstances, interrupt or interfere with the Autofire cycling of your weapons. If you feel comfortable with that kind of "perfect performance" expectation, feel free to build accordingly.
Yeah, do let us know what you find with these if you get around to trying it. As I said above, I think you really only need 1 to tag foes to get the benefits as it's guaranteed slow on each hit.
But ... as you (and I) have pointed out, the duration might be limited to only the firing cycle and not apply to the cooldown duration. And when Autofiring your energy weapons, there's a slight delay in the firing of your weapons, such that they chain sequentially rather than in perfect parallel. This means that weapon fire is slightly "staggered" to happen sequentially (and in parallel) rather than in a perfect parallel ... and because of this, if you've got only 1 [Snare] weapon to tag with, you're going to be "missing out" somewhere during the firing cycle because of a lack of overlap.
Additionally, if you've got [Snare] mods on more than one weapon, you're adding yet another way to being Accuracy Overflow into the equation for additional [CrtX] which potentially could be more valuable when expressed as being a collection of [Snare] modded Turrets instead of a collection of Protonic Polarons. Why? Because the Protonics have a chance to proc Proton Burn damage on Critical Hits ... but if using [Snare] and Controlled Countermeasures, you aren't relying on a proc chance and instead are adding a straight up +7% Weapon Damage on every single shot/hit. Which is "better" for your build? Depends on your build. I'm thinking you'd probably have to do a series of comparative parses to spot the difference in damage throughput, but the differences in performance ought to be pretty obvious ... since stacking 6x [Snare] ought to yield a -30% Flight Speed and -30% Turn Rate that should be significant enough to "notice" in actual combat (think of it as a "poor man's tractor beam" if it helps, albeit one with a 10km range!) which would then compound with the Accuracy Overflow stuff I've been talking about since post 1 in this thread.
My only regret is that there's no way to get [Snare] on Protonic Polarons ...
@autumnturning, some solid thought going on there. Love it.
Just thinking out loud. Target Engines Subsystems would be neat on this kind of build. To get instant stoppage from engines offlined or drained to low level. Although tbh the boff skill alone isn't too great in even this circumstance. All target abilities need a re-work imo to have CD like FAW/BO and be a guaranteed shutdown, not chance, plus need to work with cannons.
We do need duration info on snare proc to figure this out properly.
Trying to think what ship I could use. Ideally something with a hanger and temporal seating would be nice.
Looking for temporal seating ideally because I'm flying my Edoulg currently and found you can trigger timeline collapse which is a quasi grav well with it's pull and doesn't trigger CD on tykens/grav well. So would be a nice dual control/drain AoE combo.
I see in your original build you go for the Fleet support cruiser. 5 tac boff slots needed and only using 1 sci drain ability (tykens). Which suggests you're relying almost exclusively on turrets to drain. @autumnturning - T6 Science Star cruiser (Oddy) looks to be a very close upgrade for the support cruiser! Gives you higher ranked tac ability and a floating ensign uni to do more tac/sci with.
Annoyingly for me the KDF equivalent dropped sci console for more tac. So not really a Kool-aid option for my KDF ways.
Although there is the Nandi too, 4 sci consoles, 8 weapons, workable boff seats. Looks like a good alternative for Fleet Support/Kamarag too!
I really like my FDC's though, and I'm itching to use interceptors again. Surely some current T6 ships can give me something similar but with a hanger. Let's see...
I'm currently thinking the Denuos Dreadnought Carrier might be interesting to try. Loose one weapon mount but gain 2 hanger bays (interceptors would be fun for me, or siphon drones which back in the day could shut down an enemy just by themselves), plus it has innate subsystem targeting (although need a beam to work that).
Chronos, only 3 sci consoles
Paradox looks quite decent. Looses a weapon but gets all the sci perks including 5 sci sonsoles and hanger. A shame it ironically doesn't have temporal seating. Pretty near ideal though.
Klinzai, ok but not great boff seating, could be worked with.
Breen carrier, only 3 sci consoles. Nice boff arrangement though. plus 2 hangers
Annorax, nice console and boff layouts, but looses a weapon. Pretty near ideal.
Quas, ok boffs, but only 3 sci consoles
Tarantula, good boffs but only 3 sci consoles
Vonph, perfect, but you drop a weapon for dual hangers. Pretty near ideal.
Ateleth, not great seating, only 3 sci consoles.
So if only looking at 4+ sci consoled options, Klinzai, Denuos, Annorax, Vonph and Paradox.
Klinzai is a bit engineering heavy in the boffs but with command I could use suppression barrage and warp bubble to get the controls I'm after. Might be ok.
All the others only have 7 weapon slots, but have better seating, more hangers or more sci console slots.
@autumnturning, some solid thought going on there. Love it.
I like to think that the whole "some solid thought going on there" stuff is the reason why this thread is still active and relevant almost 6 months after I started it. That's because you have to leave behind a lot of Conventional Wisdom of how things are "supposed" to work in order to discover this heretofore "unknown" Island Of Stability lying out here beyond the Seas Of Madness. A lot of the assumptions that undergird many of the other strategies we know about get inverted or turned upside down out here, yielding a new appreciation for alternative ways to make things work.
So yeah, totally have to drink the Kool-Aid to "get it" ... but then once you do, you discover that "hey, there's something solid here..."
Just thinking out loud. Target Engines Subsystems would be neat on this kind of build.
If you're flying a Science Ship, with the Target Subsystem skills implemented "natively" (albeit on stupidly long cooldowns), I'd argue that Target Shields ought to have priority, followed by Target Engines. The first exposes Hull, while the second magnifies damage throughput. You could potentially cycle those in concert with Sensor Analysis to (slight) effect.
For any other ship, I'd argue that the Target Subsystem options are inferior to pretty much ANY other Tactical skill you could slot into that seating ... and that's before we get into the "Beams Only" nonsense of making use of Target Subsystem skills.
Although ... you can now craft Omni-Beams ... including Polaron flavor, if you want to sacrifice only 1 slot to a Beam and keep the rest as Turrets, and maintain your Drain proc potential.
We do need duration info on snare proc to figure this out properly.
That we do. Unfortunately, the tooltip doesn't change when the Controlled Countermeasures Trait is enabled, and weapons have a variance on how much damage they'll do, meaning there's the potential for a lot of noise to muck up the signal of what we're trying to determine.
I see in your original build you go for the Fleet support cruiser. 5 tac boff slots needed and only using 1 sci drain ability (tykens). Which suggests you're relying almost exclusively on turrets to drain.
That means I've got Plasmonic Leech (Turrets), Polaron proc (Turrets), Torpedo (Neutronic) and Tyken's Rift 1 for Drain ... and have Eject Warp Plasma 3, Gravity Well 1 and Tyken's Rift 1 as my Exotic abilities to proc Temporal Cross-wiring from Temporal Spec.
This past week though I dropped the Neutronic Torpedo+Bio Neural Gel Pack and one of the Protonic Turrets in favor of the Gravimetric Torpedo, Experimental Proton Weapon and Proton Particle Stabilizer to experiment with maximizing Proton Damage output from my Dyson Joint Command Technologies equipped Fleet Support Cruiser Retrofit, along with swapping out the 3 Tactical Consoles for Auto Targeting Modules [+Pol]. I haven't "field tested" the rebuild in combat yet, but I figure the Crystalline Catastrophe event will provide plenty of that.
T6 Science Star cruiser (Oddy) looks to be a very close upgrade for the support cruiser! Gives you higher ranked tac ability and a floating ensign uni to do more tac/sci with.
Requires Zen that I don't have. I bought the Ship Modules to purchase my Fleet Support Cruisers with EC off the exchange years ago now (back when they were cheaper!).
So if only looking at 4+ sci consoled options, Klinzai, Denuos, Annorax, Vonph and Paradox.
Klinzai is a bit engineering heavy in the boffs but with command I could use suppression barrage and warp bubble to get the controls I'm after. Might be ok.
All the others only have 7 weapon slots, but have better seating, more hangers or more sci console slots.
Decisions decisions...
It really comes down to what do you want to shoehorn into your build (and why).
For me, I want to be able to seat 5 Tactical skills, so as to do TT/HY/CRF/TS/CSV (not THAT picky about rankings). For Science, I want at LEAST a Lieutenant Commander, so as to get ST/TR/GW. For Engineering, I want at least a Lieutenant Commander to get ET/A2SIF/EPtW. I wanted to have a Cruiser so as to run the Weapon Aura to reduce power consumption from -8 to -6.4 for each Turret, which makes a difference, and for the +5 to All Power, which helps me get [Amp] into the x4 range that augments All Damage (including Exotic) by +13.2% (Cat2 mod). I wanted as many Science Consoles as I could get, for maximum [DrainX] stacking, which then pushes my build(s) towards having 125/125/125/125 Power once engaged in combat (EPS Manifold Efficiency helps with this on use of EPtW), which does WONDERFUL things for my Exotic Damage abilities and powers up my Auxiliary Power Configuration - Offense AND Defense Trait combo for significant boosts to both bonus damage and resistances, making my ship VERY ... sturdy.
By the end of all of those pre-reqs, there are precious few ships capable of meeting each of those criteria. Amazingly enough, the Fleet Support Cruiser Retrofit fits the bill, and is something that you can buy for (lots of) EC, although the price won't cost you hundreds of millions of EC (more like about 60-70 million). And it's something you don't see all that often, making it a remarkably unique ship to fly that is very nearly perfectly balanced.
If I was going to upgrade away from my Fleet Support Cruiser Retrofit T5-U to a Zen ship, I'd rather use the Science Star Cruiser than the Odyssey Science Cruiser T5-U, especially since I'd want to buy the ship bundle (of either). But since either bundle costs a huge pile of Zen, it's going to "be a while" before I can exercise either option. And that's not even including the desire to pick up the Battlecruiser bundle (which I don't have) for the Emergency Weapon Cycle Starship Trait for even more firing haste than I've already got.
Do you have the Nandi?
It WAS free during event last year. Perfect weapon, console and boff layout for you Matches all your requirements. Well, except for having cruiser auras as its a destroyer class ship.
However, its trait kind of makes up for no weapons aura: immunity to drains, -50% weapons drain to self when activating any drain ability and +2.5 all power levels.
Made some progress last night. Checked my bank and already had an accx2 polarised disruptor turret from when they originally launched. Had three others with random other mods.
Hit up exchange and found 2 more accx2 turrets, and got a couple of acc + critd single cannons. With torps up front no harm in favouring front arcs a tad more for dps. Saw dual (non heavy) cannons available too but in a cruiser the narrow 45 arc isnt really viable. The Nandi is more manoeuvrable than your typical cruiser though.
Just need the dili to rank them up to mk14
After I fully level my Edoulg I'll try my first Kool-aid build on the Denuos, which I haven't had a chance to fly yet.
Only 7 weapons, but being able to slot interceptors or siphon drones (or both!) in the hangers should more than make up for the loss.
12 elite power siphon drones... MWAHAHAHAHA!
After seeing that link, just remembered, they also return power they steal to your aux. Should easily allow maxing aux and weapon levels.
I was disgusted enough with STO last year to skip the summer event entirely and simply didn't play at all ... so no, I don't have the Nandi (and thanks to Cryptic exclusivity, probably never will).
I was disgusted enough with STO last year to skip the summer event entirely and simply didn't play at all ... so no, I don't have the Nandi (and thanks to Cryptic exclusivity, probably never will).
I don't have the Nandi, either. I don't feel cheated, though. I am also not going to get the new ground weapon from the CCE going on right now. I've jumped through enough hoops over the years. So I can look at this one and go, "Nope. Same old same old. So I'm not doing it. Try again Cryptic. Maybe next time you'll do something I want to play more of. Like more episodes which are on the same quality level as "Echoes of Light".
EDIT: That Proton 'burn' looks interesting enough I'm going to check it out.
Post edited by thunderfoot#5163 on
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
Ok a little more refined version of something I put over on the Sci Builds.
Essentially its a science pirate ship, using the protonic polaron cruiser build as a base, so a some stuff is the same or similar but on a T5-U nebula hull. I did the testing in Argala advanced/Elite no real problems, was kinda funny watching the malon having to stew in their own juices.
First thing, this is an extremely short range vessel, made for 2 KM or less. It's meant to keep the Demo teams coming and have a short distance for boarding parties to cover, close boarding action. The tractor beams are there to keep the enemy pinned in place, much like the grappling hooks that pirates used to use to keep their prizes from escaping (Ok so I binged on Black Sails before coming up with this). Viral Matrix serves a similar function. As far as I can tell, none of this stuff conflicts with the other so everything should fire off to keep the enemy ship subdued. Now I don't PvP so I don't know enough about how most of this stuff would work but I'm thinking the power drains, boarding parties and VM would make it really annoying to deal with.
In short: grapple, away boarders and burn em to the waterline.
Since sto Academy still doesn't have all the doffs skills listed:
2 Energy weapons doffs, 1%strip buff chance
1Flight Deck Doff Chance Double boarding Party shuttles
1 Assault squad doff Chance to arm BP shuttles
1 Deflector doff chance to reduce recharge on deflector skills (might use tractor beam drainer here instead)
With only 6 weapons slots I abandoned the torps, and used 5 prot/pol and the experimental proton (can trigger inate target subsys and use less power than a full beam.
Also hoping advanced rending shots can trigger the turrets secondary special abilities faster.
The lt universal should allow the ship to adapt to almost any situation, more damage or dice chucks switch to a tac, etc.
Hopefully most of the gear/doffs/traits can be gotten for minimal costs or substituted with lesser items
That Proton 'burn' looks interesting enough I'm going to check it out.
It's yet another case of needing to "drink the Kool-Aid" in order to believe that what you're giving up is more than paid off by your investment in that direction. I mean, you're giving up reliable damage so as to maximize intermittent/opportunity damage ... which for most people is a bad tradeoff. So far it "feels" approximately the same, except that the Gravimetric Rifts are rather ... dramatic ... when they occur, and ships that get caught by them are much more susceptible to Accuracy Overflow (since they're slowed down by the pull, which then affects Defense) and everything cascades from there.
The real key remains, however, to get as close to 125/125/125/125 Power as you can to maximize your throughput on ... well ... EVERYTHING ... and for me, the Cruiser continues to be the best option for doing that.
However ... now that we can get Romulan Bridge Officers from Duty Officer missions again, it's starting to become a lot easier/cheaper for a RR captain to field a full bridge of Superior Romulan Operatives ... which is +10% Critical Hit right there from 5 Bridge Officers. This makes me think that a Romulan captain might be able to get the "most" out of a dedicated Drain+Proton Burn build in terms of maximizing the Proton Burn. That -10 All Power penalty for having a Singularity Core, however, makes for a pretty high hurdle to getting the most out of a Core with [AMP] though.
Ok a little more refined version of something I put over on the Sci Builds.
I saw the post in the Sci Builds thread. I also saw that someone posted yet another Protonic Polaron build for a Romulan captain over on r/stobuilds that looked kind of interesting. However, when I saw it, my first thought was ...
was kinda funny watching the malon having to stew in their own juices.
I think that's what I so enjoy about the Pressure Drain builds. The design rather effectively cripples your target(s), leaving them remarkably weak and helpless. It takes what is considered "weak" in the Conventional Wisdom and turns it into a source of strength in order to level the playing field, and tilt it in your own favor. It is a jiu-jitsu style of play, that uses the strength of your opponent(s) to defeat them.
2 Energy weapons doffs, 1%strip buff chance
1Flight Deck Doff Chance Double boarding Party shuttles
1 Assault squad doff Chance to arm BP shuttles
1 Deflector doff chance to reduce recharge on deflector skills (might use tractor beam drainer here instead)
I'm curious to know why you didn't go for 3x Flight Deck Officers who add more Boarding Party Shuttles. I honestly wonder if you might potentially wind up with 6, 9 or even 12 Boarding Party shuttles launched on a single click that way, instead of merely 3.
I also wish that Demolition Teams synergized in any way with Boarding Party, such that each successful Boarding Party would "automatically" deliver enough Demolition Team stacks to inflict damage just in time to leave the target ship (so the Boarding Parties aren't suicide squads).
Also, the Tractor Beam Drainer DOff sounds like an interesting alternative path to wrecking shields and baring hull.
In just the past couple days, my captain Redline flying the Terran 4-piece set build managed to score 1st place on a CCA run (I was shocked!) ... which considering that her build is mostly Turrets was one of those "wait, what?" moments. I'm most accustomed to getting no higher than 3rd place on CCA runs.
Anyway, something that I've been thinking about is swapping out a couple pieces of the Terran Set 4-piece set, specifically the Impulse Engines and Shield, for the Omega Force (wait, what?) Impulse Engines and Shield ... which will then add the Tetryon Glider 2-piece set bonus (Shield Drain on EVERY shot!) along with an Energy Wake proc to add a little bit of Impulse Speed and a good bit of Turn (think RCS console bonus level of Turn boosting on a Cruiser). I've also dropped the Radiant Detonation Matrix Trait in favor of Omega Graviton Amplifier so as to be able to proc extra damage much more quickly.
Haven't taken the changes out for a test drive yet, but I imagine that the "shield pressure" of firing all those shots that fast ought to be remarkable, whether it be from the "chuck lots of dice" at the drain procs or the straight up shield stripping going on from the Tetryon Glider hitting shields that have been weakened by Plasmonic Leech (and are thus less resistant). It's one of those "hurt you both coming AND going" kinds of things that I want to try out. Meanwhile, the Turrets are hammering away nigh constantly at high speed to make the shields buckle (and fail!) so as to expose that vulnerable hull ...
With only 6 weapons slots I abandoned the torps, and used 5 prot/pol and the experimental proton (can trigger inate target subsys and use less power than a full beam.
Oh yeah ... I'd forgotten that point. The Experimental Proton Weapon can be used to fire off the Target Subsystems from Science Ships. That then gives you a range of options for stacking additional Power Drains as needed, above and beyond Plasmonic Leech and Polaron procs, letting you get somewhat surgical. I think I might just have to try this with my Romulan captain on the freebie DSD once I pick up another SRO Engineer and Science Bridge Officer to "complete the set" ... and angle for some really SERIOUS Proton Burn proc chances.
Also hoping advanced rending shots can trigger the turrets secondary special abilities faster.
It does, but then you have to think about it in terms of tempo. The reason I say that is the Rending Shots trait has a 5 second lockout after proc. Now, on a Beam Boat, particularly one with no firing or cooldown haste, that's no big deal. By the time you finish the current firing cycle, the cooldown will have expired and you can start building up Rending Shots again on the following cycle. Everything synchronizes together rather nicely. But that's not the case with Cannons and their shorter firing cycles. You're basically going to "miss" 1-2 firing cycles during the 5 second cooldown before building extra Critical Hit again.
I tried the Trait out with my Polaron Beam [Over] experiment, and I just had the Character window open and was watching the Critical Hit numbers fluctuate in real time while broadsiding. They would spin up plenty fast, and then crash back to baseline on a pretty quick cycle. I had enough Beam Arrays such that I was getting a Critical Hit somewhere out of every 1-2 firing cycles, with a number of times when I'd get a critical hit on EVERY firing cycle for a little bit, before missing a proc and having to wait for the next firing cycle. But the tempo of rise and fall was fast.
You'd get much the same kind of performance out of the Rending Shots trait with Cannons, but the timing doesn't match up quite so neatly anymore. Doing a little bit of Napkin Math, I figure that with enough Turrets, you're probably looking at getting a Rending Shots Critical Hit Proc about once every 3-ish firing cycles (with enough weapons), instead of once every 1-ish firing cycles (again, with enough weapons), simply because of how the cooldown time on the Trait interacts with the volley cycle tempo. Point being, the Cannons will spend more time shooting WITHOUT adding to the Rending Shots buildup than a set of Beam Arrays do, meaning that the Trait will be "less efficient" for you than it would be on a Beam Boat. It'll still "work" but the synchronization of the timing of when it does will be "off" from what you're wanting it to do for you.
Thus, given a choice, I'd recommend use of Precision over Rending Shots for Cannons, and the reverse for Beams, simply because of how the cooldown timer on Rending Shots synchronizes with Beam firing cycles relative to the same for Cannons.
Over infinite time (and infinite shots), the Effect is still the same either way ... but for game purposes, we aren't talking about infinite time. We're talking about finite time when shooting at stuff to make it blow up in a warp core breach. There are a finite number of shots to take against your target ... and the fewer shots you need to make, the more important that synchronization issue becomes because of the "granularity" of the sample that you're working with.
In 15 seconds, Beams will fire 3 times while Cannons will fire 5 times.
In that time span of 15 seconds, you'll probably proc Rending Shots twice, because of the 5 second cooldown lockout.
That's 2 Critical Hits out of 3 cycles for Beams, which is a significant improvement.
That's also 2 Critical Hits out of 5 cycles for Cannons, which is less of an improvement, on balance, since it's 2/5 instead of 2/3.
Why? Because with Turrets, each hit is smaller and you're making more of them. It's the small+lots versus big+few. In other words, your Cannons are firing more often WITHOUT the benefit of Rending Shots "working for you" because the firing cycle time of Cannons is faster, but the cooldown timer on Rending Shots is fixed, meaning Turrets spend more time shooting without building than Beams do. And when a Critical Hit happens, the Beam will hit "harder" with that Critical than the (in this case) Turret will.
So yeah, you can do it and it'll "work" for you ... but there will be a level of inefficiency built into the operation which might make other options more attractive for you in contrast. Just yet another example of how switching from Beams to Cannons can wind up turning the Conventional Wisdom on its head.
And now that I've written all that ... I want to see what it would be like to run the Vorgon Xyfius Heavy Escort ship with its Harasser Probes console (for +25% Tetryon Damage) and the Nukara Appropriated Munitions 3-piece set (another +8.9% Tetryon Damage) and load up on 1 Tetryon Beam [Snare] and have everything else be Tetryon Beam [Over] (which can then proc onto the Hyper-Refractive Dual Beam Bank too). Put the Terran Deflector and Core in for the Terran Task Force Starship Technologies 2-piece bonus, and the Impulse Engine and Shield from the Omega Force set for the 2-piece Tetryon Glider. Add Rending Shots, Energy Refrequencer, Auxiliary Power Configuration - Offense and Defense and ... Controlled Countermeasures ... for +7% bonus Damage against slowed (by [Snare]) target(s).
Now ... why does this whole notion have me thinking I've just been cast as the 25th century's Professor Fate ... with Max as my First Officer?
Ya know, autumnturning with all the detailed explanations and build details we're posting here, we've kinda moved away from the center of the beam on having fun. Some people could go so far as to point out, with justification, we might just be over near the min/max or theorycrafting part of the Kool-Aid. As a 'Filthy Casual', I am a bit uncomfortable with this, lol.
No matter, I am still having fun. Hadn't thought about the inherent advantages of a Romulan SRO bridge crew as it would apply to Kool-Aid builds. Whenever I see anything Romulan I always think Plasma. So I guess it is time to start looking at Rommie ships which would allow a Kool-Aid build to function effectively. The Singularity power discrepancy should not matter, since part of a Kool-Aid build is the ability to draw power from targets. It will probably start a little slower but there are ways around this as well.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
Okay, just did a quick skim of the available Rihannsu hulls to see what might be good. Criteria I used was number of Science Console Slots and Science or Universal Stations present. This was followed by checking the weapon slots to see how many are available. Turns out I own or did own most of these.
In a tie for third place we have the Fleet Ar'kif and the Ha'nom. The Fleet Ar'kif has only 3 Science Console slots but it has a LTC Universal BOff slot to make up for this. The deal breaker for me is the LT Science BOff slot. Not quite enough Space Magik goodness for me. The Ha'nom has 4 Consoles for Science but only has a LT Science BOff. The 3/3 weapons layout does not lend itself to being a Kool-Aid Boat as we have discussed in this thread.
In the second spot is the Fleet version of the Ha'nom. Five(!) Console Science slots. Commander(!) Science as well as a LT. Commander seat makes this one look worthy. Still has the 3/3 weapons layout though. and like a lot of the inhouse Cryptic Rommie designs, it turns like a sleepy cruise ship. I prefer that my Drain Boats do not move with the grace and agility of a wounded whale. Probably because I have flown KDF ships for so long.
And finally, we have my first choice for a Rommie Drain Boat. The T6 Jhu'ael Tactical Carrier. Yeah, I know it is 4/3 for weapons. But with four Science Consoles an LTC Universal and a LTC Science, it probably is going to be the best performer overall.
Also, I'm cheating. I already own one, along with the five SRO Bridge Officers, so it will be the easiest to work up. My only Rommie Char is an Engineer, so I can rely heavily upon his abilities rather than spend Console and BOff Abilties to to keep the vacuum out of the people lockers, lol. The Advanced Orion Interceptors I have also have a limited Drain ability. Which should make up for the lack of that fourth weapon slot aft a little bit.
Still having fun with this idea. But then again I can only say this: Ah Needs Moar Kool-Aid!
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
So, my little experiment into Kool-Aid didn't work out so well initially.
To me the idea of Kool-Aid simply equals dice chucking, although I get that I need to drink the Kool-Aid and go all in on the build as a whole, but I don't want to
I'm determined to find an alternative Kool-Aid build, and I might be on to something.
Testing on the new Denuos Dreadnought Carrier (T6) with a Kool-Aid like build, but used polarised disruptors instead.
Used 3 pieces of the Salanae set but used the Temporal shield instead of Solanae as the Temporal one gives an extra +30 to drains and the 4-piece solanae is meh.
Had siphon, tykens and ran with siphon drones plus interceptors.
Even with drain at 350ish, I didn't really find that I was shutting enemies down. Well, they got slower and hit less hard but I don't recall shields blinking off or they stop firing at me.
Not sure, but it didn't feel too satisfying for me. And while I was killing stuff it wasn't fast enough for me.
I'm sure in PvP this type of build would rock but for me it felt a little meh for PvE.
Also the 3-piece set bonus from solanae set didn't seem to be procing at all for me and was the major reason I started looking at major build revisions. (Is it broken? Hull leech thing. Set showed it was active but no weapons showed it as a possible proc chance)
So after messing around with my ship some more I had a bit of a brain wave that inspired me to take a completely different tangent. @autumnturning you seem to like the idea of draining enemies until they stop so as to get max accuracy overflow. With my penchant for control type abilities I decided to investigate slowing and perhaps stopping my foes more directly rather than via drains as an indirect method of stopping them dead in the water.
This lead me to Bio-Molecular Disruptors which tbh I kinda wanted to use anyway. This is when I had my light bulb moment.
Bio-Molecular Disruptors, like Protonic Polarons, have a secondary damage ability and this is where I started to see why you like the protonics so much (even though I haven't used them), and really why you're locked into using them. Their damage proc has a relatively high (if not the highest of all energy types) chance of being applied. All you need is a high base crit chance. As 25% of all crits proc the protonic damage. Which if you have a realistic 20% base critH means you've got a 5% chance on every hit, double normal weapon proc rates. And that only increases as you increase CritH.
Actually, to go off on a slight tangent, you should REALLY use the science captain ultimate power. Boosts you to 50% critH (so moves you up to 12.5% per hit) and if you get the Probability Window enhancement for the ultimate power it lasts for 30s! Your protonic hit count would go through the roof. Maybe you already knew this but I just thought of it
SO anyway, Bio-Molecular Disruptors. Like protonic polarons have a secondary damage but is radiation based which got me wondering about dropping drain altogether and going after radiation and exotics. As it turns out, the 2-piece set bonus from the CC set grants +2% chance of weapons proccing for a total of 4.5% which is much closer to protonic polarons proc chances (under normal circumstances). It'll never match protonics, especially on Rom toons or with sci ulimate playing a role, but it's definitely the next best energy type for chance rating, bar resonating tetryons which aren't useful for PvE damage.
2-piece also gives "bonus" disruptor damage (cat2) so I think the console plus this actually grants more disruptor damage than elite fleet locators, however you do give up on 2% critH.
On top of the 2 piece proc boost, the tac console boosts radiation and photon torp damage. Double Awesome.
Combine it with Kemocite for even more radiation output!
The 3-piece CC set also grants heavy turret barrage, a kind of AoE attack the guarantees anything within 5km gets hit with the bio-molucular proc.
The 4-piece set, which I'm not using for PvE, would be good dice chucking for PvP, 1% chance on all weapons for a whole bunch of hull heal debuffs.
I tried the Delta alliance 2-piece set bonus for even more radiation boost, but the console and torp other than the set bonus don't really gel well with this builds aims.
So switched them out for the Terran Task Force Munitions set. Not only do the weapons double in damage output as the enemy get closer to death, the DHC has withering radiation which is boosted by the radiation CC console, the 2-piece boosts torp dmg, and the 3-piece grants secondary torp launchers, for even more torp (dice?) chucking.
I thought about giving Withering disruptors a go instead of bio-moleculars, but the witherings base radiation damage is waaay less, and while it stacks, you need the max 5 stacks before it outperforms bio-moleculars (which simply have an 8s delay), plus withering only has the one proc effect, the radiation. Versus bio-moleculars (stacking?) slow, -resist debuff plus radiation damage (at the cost of one weapons modifier?) seemed better for this build and the whole dice chucking theme.
For deflector and impulse engines I went with the honor guard set. An epic deflector gives a lovely +50 control expertise for my build and also generous part gens plus a bunch of others.
Just as important, the 2-piece also gives another boost to my torps dmg as well as +8.9 aux power, which in the absence of leech and drain stuff in general is much needed.
For Warp core and shields I'm trying out the temporal defence set. Primarily because the 2-piece set bonus (+25% dmg all DOT stuff and hazards). With my part gen based boff skill stuff and temporal specialisation this seems a worthy thing to try. Need to study further what it boosts.
For space traits:
Controlled Countermeasures (my slows gives cat2 dmg boost to everything)
Radiant Detonation Matrix (even more radiation!)
Omega Graviton Amplifier (more dice chucking)
Omega Kinetic Shearing (gives torps an extra 40% damage as a DOT, syncs with temporal defence set bonus)
Precision (more critH)
For ship traits:
Weapon System Synergy (energy weapons boost torp damage)
Emergency Weapon Cycle (energy weapons cycle faster = faster dice chucking)
Withering Barrage (longer CSV uptime = longer dice chucking)
Particle Feedback Loop (using exotic abilities grants hull pen)
Rich target environment (while CSV is active increase energy damage)
(Another I may try is Checkmate, which grants + exotic and torp damage on control boffs)
For doffs:
Tac team CD doff
2x cannon ability CD doffs
2x torp CD doffs
Spawn extra Grav wells doff
All up, this build has performed markedly better than my first drain focused attempt. And enemies reliably come to a complete halt when I'm firing on them. I haven't parsed, but DPS still feels less than a typical FAW build but it's actually not far off (I'd wager 30K easy for non romulan engineers). The torp combination of guaranteed slows with something that ramps up in damage plus secondary launchers really seem to be the damage stars of the build. I need to parse to see how much radiation damage contributes to output.
Hull feels squishy and keeping the DHC on target it tricky but in PvE is manageable.
Now that I've maxed my Denuos skill rank I'm looking to try and improve on this build idea (slows + radiation/exotics) and try it on another ship. The Paradox seems interesting atm, might give that a try next.
Actually. Now that I've unlocked the Denuos trait (photonic shockwave grants radiation DoT plus -resist debuff) that might be worth a try.
And there's more radiation things to try too. Improved Weaponized Emitters grants radiation AoE with aceton beam (meh 2min CD) and greedy emitters which may sync well with a Klinzai/Geneva ship build.
See? This. The post above this one is what this thread is supposed to be doing. Someone is thinking hard and exploring options for ships which do not follow the usual path. He is also explaining the reasoning behind his choices where everyone can see them. This is indeed what autumnturning is on about when he is talking about people 'Drinking the Kool-Aid'.
BioMolecular Turrets and the Counter Command Weapon Set with the Terran Space Set is something I already use on a Fleet Qin Flight Deck Raptor for enhanced Control and Radiation effects. The initial build is posted in its entirety on page 6 of this thread. Obviously, I need to update it to current specs.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
I've taken my radiation kool-aid build and as I alluded to, converted in onto the Paradox. And boy am I getting some spectacular results!
I need to stick the build into a STO academy link for you guys first. Need to find some time to do that then I'll post it up with the extra changes I've made and reasonings.
I was looking forward to trying to convert this build onto my Klinzhai (KDFs Geneva) too which is the ship I always end up going back to flying, however I got bummed out when I saw that the "Improved Weaponized Emitters" trait is ONLY available for Feds. I was sad.
@borticuscryptic, unsure if you handle ship traits/consoles, but a lovely idea for a new KDF ship would be a new T6 Scourge Destroyer (or other Nausicaan designed ship anyway) with Command hybrid seating that has an updated Theta Radiation console that grants +radiation as a passive and the theta radiation plume could also apply radiation damage in addition to what the T4 Scourge console does. PLUS you can stick that Improved Weaponized Emitters trait on it to give KDF access to this trait. Thematically would work great!
I guess the only problem would be the console would be locked only for use with Nausicaan ships? Which is quite a sad trend I see lately. Limits build options with other ships.
Comments
Okay, it's official. I'm a Bad Influence(tm) on you people.
When I read this, the first thought that crossed my mind was ... "and someone else starts drinking the Protonic Kool-Aid and discovers they LIKE IT."
On a slightly different note, I had to go look to make sure it really has been that long. I started this thread on May 13th, and here we are 5.5 months later, and this thread is still bouncing up to the top of the forum with different people trying out and experimenting with new stuff every now and then and making new discoveries of FUN(tm) that they previously weren't experiencing in the game.
All of which is a really long segue into a slight bit of business I've been mulling over the past week in relation to this thread.
The first is that I've been contemplating the fact that I've proven (to my own satisfaction) that the whole "chuck lots of dice really fast" approach has some serious merit to it for dealing with the game's (admittedly easy) challenges. The whole Buff Stripper/Lights Out combo that I first discovered certainly "works" on its own merits without resorting to DPS chasing for success. Indeed, it has the potential to make a whole lot of "challenges" relatively trivial to overcome via the backdoor method of "crippling" opposition (via Drain and Buff Stripping), as opposed to "overwhelming" them (via sheer Damage Throughput).
But that still leaves my build(s) in a position of optimizing for [DrainX] (primary), so as to "turn the lights off" via Drain, and the whole Proton Burn on Critical+Proc as an add on "bonus" effect (nice if it happens, but not the "point" of what's going on or even really "needed" for everything to "work").
So I've been thinking about three divergent possibilities here.
Maximizing the Proton Burn procs basically comes down to 6 interrelated factors.
In theory, this would mean that a Romulan captain ought to be able to "get more" out of Protonic Polarons than any other captain around, simply because they can get Superior Romulan Operative on Bridge Officers other than just Tactical and thus maximize their overall Critical Hit rate. A side bonus of this would be the expectation that those Bridge Officers will also offer Subterfuge, making for a cooldown reduction on Cloaking, making for a rather unusual combo for a ship using Battle Cloak (such as the Romulan Dyson Science Destroyer line of ships?).
The Traits that will maximize Critical Hit chance are going to be Precision (Tier 2 Romulan) for +4% Critical Hit ... and Enhanced Rending Shots (Tier 4 Delta) for a stacking (up to 10) +1.5% Critical Hit chance per NON-critical hit from weapons with a 5 second cooldown after making a Critical Hit. Trust me, when "chucking lots of dice" at the problem with fast Turret volley fire, the Enhanced Rending Shots trait will spend most of its time on cooldown. Don't get me wrong, it'll still enhance your Damage throughput, but it'll be rare for the Trait to stack to 10 (+15% Critical Hit) without actually scoring a Critical from a fast volley of Turret fire.
Consoles that offer Critical Hit include everyone's "favorite" the Vulnerability Locators on up through the Universals (Assimilated Module, et al.) and so on.
Weapons that offer Critical Hit ... well, since we're talking about Protonic Polarons, that's basically something that you PICK on the weapons when you BUY them out of the Reputation Store. It's not like we're dealing with randomized mods here. Now, that said, the modifier you get when the weapon(s) go to Ultra Rare is going to be randomized, so that's pretty much the only time that this becomes a point of variance.
Accuracy Overflow is "definitely a thing" when dealing with serious Drain Pressure builds which can "turn the lights out" on a target by draining all power from them on a Polaron proc, which will then cause their Defense to "crash" to pitiable levels ... at which point your excess Accuracy "overflows" into additional Critical Hit (which won't show up in the Stats for your ship) and make both Critical Hits and thus Proton Burn "bonus damage" more likely to occur.
Science Ultimate? Yeah, 'nuff said.
And then ... there's the Auto Targeting Modules from the Dyson Reputation Store. Yes, these are roundly shunned as being self-gimped, since they take away from the [Mod] Damage Type to exchange for +Proton Damage, and they add a tiny smidgen of Accuracy. But here's the rub. They're just about the only way to enhance Proton Damage around, which (ironically?) is exactly what you want to power up a Point Defense Protocols Trait which does (guess what) Proton Damage to the nearest target (within 5km) every 0.5 seconds upon activation of a weapon enhancement (BFAW, CRF, CSV, SS), which can add up to being something of a contributor to damage throughput.
Anyway, I've had my Admiral Flowers experimenting with the Dyson Joint Command Technologies set to compare and contrast it with the Solanae Hybrid Technologies set, and on stats the two are relatively close to each other, which came as a surprise to me (even though it shouldn't). Where the buffs and bonuses come from shifts between the two (items themselves or set bonuses) but in aggregate the difference just isn't that large. And now, I've decided to try going "all in" on Proton Burn with Flowers while still sustaining as much [DrainX] as I can manage. A side effect of this is that this means I've switched out the Delta Alliance Ordnance 2-piece Neutronic and Bio-neural Gel Pack combo for the Protonic Arsenal, because, bonus to Proton Damage and Critical Hits.
This all makes for some rather interesting tradeoffs. I'm actually lowering my Polaron Damage output while attemping to make up the difference through a combination of [Acc] [CrtH] [CrtD] in combination with Reputation Traits and a Starship Trait. Haven't had a chance to "test drive" the rebuild yet so as to get a "feel" for the differences, but it should be interesting.
Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser
Immortal BOff Skills combo for Ground
The reason why I ditched the [Rapid] Turrets I originally started with had more to do with Space Barbie (the Protonics were a prettier color of Indigo instead of a purer Purple color) and the fact that I just couldn't "feel" the difference when the [Rapid] mod would actually proc. There's also the fact that the firing speed increase is actually pretty small (0.8 seconds of volley time for a single volley) and is really hard to notice in the flurry of sound that the Turret Hose makes routinely. But now there's Temporal Spec and the Temporal Cross-wiring skill which offers 5% firing haste for 10 seconds upon activation of Exotic Damage Abilities. Put these things together and ... life could get rather interesting.
In this case, the objective is to exchange Proton Burn bonus damage for the benefits of a sheer firing speed buff, which in turn could proc the Polaron Drain to "turn the lights off" even more often (and therefore, more reliably). Still a goodly bit of RNGesus involved, but this is definitely in keeping with the "chuck lots of dice" mentality that's been the driving force behind a lot of my discoveries in this thread ... except that this angle is "chuck lots of dice even more often" which could have some interesting implications.
What kind of implications? Well, I'm glad you asked ... because there's an "unloved" Trait over there in Omega Reputation that everyone thinks is "garbage" (predictably enough) that's relevant to the [Rapid] style of "chuck lots of dice as fast as you can" build strategy. It's Omega Graviton Amplifier ... which includes a rather interesting bit of text ...
Okay ... wait a (fraction of a) half second.
Are you telling me that Omega Graviton Amplifier can proc (2.5% chance on energy weapons) on EVERY SHOT? Not per volley cycle, but EVERY SHOT? As in, Dual Cannons firing 4 shots per cycle have an advantage over Dual Heavy Cannons that fire only 2 shots per cycle? And Turrets and Single Cannons also fire 4 shots per cycle?
And Turrets are normally have a 0.5 second rate of fire for 2 seconds, with 1 second of cooldown time. But [Rapid] and Cannon: Rapid Fire both reduce that to a 0.3 second rate of fire for 1.2 seconds, with 1 second of cooldown time. And Temporal Cross-wiring will reduce the cooldown time by -0.05 seconds per proc (you can have up to 4 stacked) for ten seconds. Meaning ... with the right build, you could be looking at a "grab the firehose with both hands" kind of performance, even from Turrets (actually especially from Turrets since they only stop firing when there's either no target or you're beyond 10km from your target). And then the Omega Graviton Amplifier can proc on EVERY SHOT fired?
/em polite cough ...
Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser
Immortal BOff Skills combo for Ground
yes, it does; in fact, i do believe i brought that up that very thing earlier in this thread
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser
Immortal BOff Skills combo for Ground
5% isn't overly impressive compared to that, even if it does stack
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Reading the tooltip, it looks like the [Snare] mod doesn't have a chance to take effect, meaning it ought to be a 100% chance per volley. I'm assuming that the duration of the mod is for the length of the firing cycle (so either 2 or 3 seconds for Cannons, and 4 or 5 seconds for Beams), but the tooltip is rather (un)helpful about specifying the duration. And on the other side, the Controlled Countermeasures uses the word "bonus" in its tooltip, which will typically imply that what it is offering is (what r/stobuilds would consider) a Cat2 bonus instead of a Cat1, which makes a BIG difference in where the bonus appears in the Damage Formula used by the game engine.
So I asked around, and so far there isn't anyone who can confirm for me whether or not Controlled Countermeasures is a Cat1 or Cat2 bonus. The (untested) assumption is that it's a Cat1, meaning it's like having a +7% Damage Tactical Console when shooting stuff, since that's a safer assumption (presume it's lousy until proven otherwise) ... but what if it's not? What if that +7% bonus weapon damage is like the Auxiliary Power Configuration - Offense trait out of Nukara Reputation, which is a Cat2 bonus, and therefore NOT subject to diminishing returns as Mk numbers increase? What if it really is a +7% bonus to weapon damage, straight up?
If so, we might have a contender for unseating [Pen] as the dominant mod to get from crafting of weapons. Why? Because [Snare] would then trigger Controlled Countermeasures, and if the difference is a straight up +7%, that might be more than you'd otherwise net from [Pen], since that would then be +7% on EVERY hit, rather than just a big spike of damage when [Pen] procs due to mitigated Resistance (i.e. Pressure vs Spike).
Now, to be fair, this probably means that you'd be able to get the Controlled Countermeasures bonus +7% if you had ONE weapon with [Snare] on it (meaning the rest could stay [Pen] if you wanted to go that route) ... particularly with Beams and their "long" firing cycles ... but that's overlooking the potential for additional Accuracy Overflow courtesy of reduced Speed, and thus even further reduced Defense. My point being that if you stack [Snare] rather than [Pen] you could be looking at a not insignificant reduction in Speed and Turn Rate, such that your target(s) become significantly more likely to suffer from Critical Hits (and the Severity bonus that then ensues).
And that's not even including what kind of "ruin your day" experience what stacking a lot of [Snare] on Turrets and throwing a Cannon Scatter Volley and Gravity Well might do to maximize the "pull" power of the Gravity well and its ability to inflict Damage (which reduces with range from the center of the Well) and the resulting "popcorn" chain reaction of core breaches.
So yeah ... the range of options seems to be increasing ...
Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser
Immortal BOff Skills combo for Ground
Yeah, Emergency Weapon Cycle does look like it would be pretty darn significant as far as that goes.
Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser
Immortal BOff Skills combo for Ground
when it triggers, it affects YOU, not your target
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Suffice to say, we're going to have to test what's going on with [Snare] and Controlled Countermeasures/Counter-Stroke to know if there's any synergy to be had here.
Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser
Immortal BOff Skills combo for Ground
In a caring drunk dude kinda way hehe
I'll take your Kool-Aid and attempt a different spin on it. Eventually. Need to find the time.
I did some testing when I unlocked the controlled countermeasures from the rep quite a while ago now and I'm pretty sure it's a Cat2 boost (which in Cryptic parlance is usually associated with the word "bonus" I've found), and since then has been included on all of my ship builds since. It really is worth it imo. A must have for anyone chucking grav wells, TBRs around etc.
Combine that with control amp from skill tree and you've a -dmg resistance to enemy and +dmg bonus to self all in one from one effect.
I've liked control builds since I first started playing all those years ago and these two stand out particularly for helping DPS on control builds of late.
I haven't put pen to "paper doll" as such but I've been thinking a little bit about how I might pour some Kool-Aid into a control style build.
New energy types like the Nausicaan Disruptor and Chronoplasma stand out as something you can chuck dice with for speed reducing procs (thus control?), plus the perennial Bio-Molecular Disruptor with it's set bonus for 4% chance instead of 2.5%.
Nausicaan would be a certainty to trigger a "controlled" state I think with it's "hold" proc, but the others just reduce speed, I'm not sure if they count as being controlled when they proc.
In fact Nausicaan might be the way I go. With a Hold, Power steal/drain, and dmg resist debuff all in one, it may be my perfect choice.
Bio-moleculars could be interesting too because of radiation dmg on expiration?
Suppression barrage and Emit warp bubble then also come into play too as off the beaten track control types to trigger things. Both also reduce enemy dmg outputs which I conceptually also like as a tactic for my typically tanky ways, but has fallen away in usefulness because everything pops so quickly these days, even in elites.
I would like to play with dominion polarons and go back to pure drain builds again, but with limited weapons choice for that energy type and seemingly fixed mods, for the moment, meh. Although polarized disruptors which I have a few of (though not many turrets) might be interesting enough to try again, especially with infinity box drops.
Resonating Tetryons are ideal for sheild stripper builds. Did a shield strip build ages ago back when those were still 10% chance I think?? Was half decent with beams. Surely as good if not better with turrets even though chance has been since halved.
Herald Antiproton could be interesting too with "bonus" 7% energy dmg proc. But with only 3 stacks allowed and 20s up time, probs not as beneficial on a turrets build as that'd be easy to maintain most likely with just regular beam FAW use.
Anyway, back to my hopes and aspirations on my future Kool-Aid attempt. I like drains and controls in general but with part gens getting all the focus cause DPS it makes it hard to see anything else as being useful. Kool-Aid has given me hope.
I'm thinking Nausicaan turrets for the dual control/drain steal proc, with the build perhaps mostly focused on drains with a bit of control chucked in to keep the control dual control amp+countermeasures up and running.
Might nickname the build 'Dual-Aid'
And as I love me my hanger pets, would make interceptors for their dual slows and drains nice to fly again.
Will be fun nutting this concept out, but with control being almost useless in PvE I'm not sure it'll gain much traction as a pure drain build which can at least shut (many) things down.
Finding the time is ALWAYS the challenge.
And yes, feel free to seek alternative spins. That's part of the beauty of what I've discovered, that it's flexible enough to find a myriad of expressions. It isn't so "tightly bound" to a single cookie cutter that there is only One True Way of doing things that can be successful.
In a lot of ways, it feels a bit like I'm "leading" a revolution against the supremacy of BFAW as the be all/end all solution to every problem.
Evil Overlord Pipe Organ Music(tm) swells ominously in the background!
The downside with the Nausicaan Disruptor is that you can't fill a ship with them. It's an "equip 1" limit item. It's also a Beam Array (so sloooow...). Now, if you're dropping it in to a collection of Polarized Disruptor Beam Arrays, that's probably the best possible option for mixing with a Drain build.
Chronoplasma would certainly work for the slow aspect to proc Controlled Countermeasures, but you'd be dropping the Drain potential of getting a proc to "turn the lights off" on your target (meaning no shield drop). So with THAT you'd be wanting to go to Embassy Plasma Consoles for extra Plasma Burn.
Yes, but you'd be dispensing with the whole Drain side of things, since Bio-moleculars won't have a Drain proc on them to "turn the lights off" on your target. That said, if going in that direction, you'd be wanting to switch over to Embassy Plasma Consoles rather than sticking with Research Lab [DrainX]x2 Consoles, so you'd be doing something remarkably different due to choice of weapons.
If there were Dominion Polaron Turrets I would totally be using them. But since there aren't, I don't.
Good luck collecting enough of those off the Exchange ...
They also don't have a Drain proc to "turn the lights off" which is what really cripples targets. Now, Phased Polarons, which combine a Drain proc and a Disable proc would be able to trigger the "controlled" condition for Controlled Countermeasures. So that would probably be an alternative to crafted Polarons with the [Snare] mod, if you want to go that route. Although, once again, good luck getting enough of those off the Exchange to fill out a ship build ...
Welcome to the Kool-Aid Drinking Club.
Kind of sad how few Hangar Pets there are with Drain procs, since so few use Polaron weapons (mostly Dominion), and all of the Dominion Carriers are Tactical rather than Science ships, meaning that there's hardly any Science Console slots, which in turn very nearly "disqualifies" them from being effective Drain Boats.
Ah, but that's the joy of it, you see. This is why I'm now curious about the [Snare] mod on crafted Polaron Turrets ...
Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser
Immortal BOff Skills combo for Ground
And the Breen, with the elite frigate that carries an energy dissipator. No idea how often it uses it, but that could be an interesting option on the Breen cruiser
Well, I did try an Atrox in Argala Elite. Shields went down fast with dual Adv Stalkers and the ships science skills, but hampered by 2 less weapons slots and only a lt tac. Still it worked at least against the hirogens, no deaths.
I guess that idea is off the table unless they're released in a rep or future lockbox. Thematically seems unlikely. Shame STO doesn't explore stories for the B grade species in each faction more.
How important is acc for kool-aid? Pretty sure I've at least 4 turrets already from when these weapons were originally released but they'll probably be a mix of mods.
Any thoughts on mixing turret types?
So if we presume 8 weapons, with 2 for torps, leaves 6. Would 3 or 4 say polarized disruptors be enough to get lights out? So I can mix in 2 or 3 bio-moleculars to get the control happening. Or perhaps 5-1 ratio of drain to control?
Then the nausicaan console and torp from new episode, when they unlock, would make a good pairing for such a build.
Does Kool-aid rely entirely on weapon procs to get the drains to turn lights out? Or does it need siphon and tykens etc to get it across the line.
Just thinking, perhaps I can lean more on boff drains to get it over the lights out line, if dropping 1-2 drain turrets hurts that aspect in favour of some control turrets.
Going this direction currently because Phased polarons seem ok on face value, but looking at the wiki they have a subsystem offline proc, not a hold/slow, so don't count as a control method I believe. Subsystem offline I think is just more akin to 100% drain for X seconds. Perhaps I'm wrong?
The other thing is that disables and holds are always short duration, and the bonus from both skill tree and rep trait only works while the enemy is actually controlled, no fixed duration of effect or lingering, so like only 5 seconds for holds/disables versus some 8 seconds for slows.
Actually...
Just reading stowiki some more. Snare doesn't list a chance of applying?? Seems to be a guarenteed application on hit. In which case yeah SNARE modded polarons would be the best. Would actually only need 1 or 2 snare modded weapons in that case then to simply tag foes to get the control buff effects!
Speaking from fed side? Then probably.
KDF side has long had interceptors which actively drain weapons and engines (they're like specialised polarons that activate separately and drain specifically only those two subsystems) or if you want to go without some dps, energy siphon drones are pure energy siphon multipliers. A carrier full of those would shut any enemy down imo.
Yeah, do let us know what you find with these if you get around to trying it. As I said above, I think you really only need 1 to tag foes to get the benefits as it's guaranteed slow on each hit.
Debatable. *I* like [Acc] (and the x2 or better varieties) because of what essentially amount to "aftermarket synergies" thanks to Accuracy Overflow. If (Your Accuracy)-(Target Defense)>100 Then the "excess" Accuracy converts into bonus [CrtH] and [CrtD] (think of it as being an overflow into [CrtX] if it helps).
And with a Drain Build structured around Plasmonic Leech, lots of [DrainX] mods and Polaron procs ... what will that all do in combination? It drains ALL POWER from the target. How much Power? Well, it depends on how much of a "stack" of Drains you can put together. With 350 Drain Expertise, you're looking at about -4.1 All Power per energy weapon, and something between -65 and -70 All Power per Polaron proc (my builds hover around -68.something, working from memory).
So if you've got 6 energy weapons (Polaron Turrets), that's -24.6 All Power for starters. Get ONE Polaron proc and you're heading upwards of -92 All Power with a 350-ish Drain Expertise skill ... which is usually enough to "turn the lights out" on your target. That means no power to Weapons, no power to Shields, no power to Engines, and no power to Auxiliary. And what happens when you've got no power to Engines? Well, your Defense crashes to zero (or negative!) ... meaning all of that extra [Acc] is stacking up even MORE advantageously for you for added [CrtX]. And why is that relevant? Well, Protonic Polaron Turrets proc an extra damage effect on chance when making a Critical Hit. This means that the Accuracy Overflow "cascades" on Drain proc into boosting your [CrtH] in ways that won't show up in your ship Stats window, but which can yield an increase in Damage Throughput.
At the same time, against targets that haven't been "parked" yet, the bonus to [Acc] is always working for you to ensure you are missing as few shots as possible. A Pressure Build like the Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser relies on a constant stream/barrage of successful hits to both weaken your target(s) while simultaneously buffing yourself, since the Plasmonic Leech Drain transfers All Power from them to you. Missing your target(s) then makes that transfer of Power less reliable and stable.
Now in most PvE situations, missing your target(s) is a pretty rare occurrence (particularly with BFAW spam), but when dealing with Turrets (and Cannons generally) you aren't necessarily "ignoring" Accuracy all the time, so missing both "hurts" you and "helps" your target in terms of lost opportunity (and wasted time and proc chances). So on balance, I figure that the much maligned [Acc] mod, which everyone else holds in disdain, is very useful in the build(s) that I've been experimenting with for my Drain Boats, to the point where you "have to drink the Kool-Aid" in order to even believe that such an inversion of the Conventional Wisdom has merit.
Because Protonic Polarons have such a synergistic relationship with [CrtH], there is an advantage to maximizing [CrtH] when equipping these weapons. But for the purposes of a successful Drain oriented build, you need to also HIT with your weapons reliably at all times, against not only ships but also Hangar Pets, Destructible Torpedoes and Mines ... and for me, those two purposes come together most effectively by increasing [Acc] and using the "overflow" to generate [CrtX]. It's all really "squooshy" when looking at the spreadsheet analysis, but it's something that comes out in actual gameplay.
/em shrug
Depends on what you're trying to accomplish with your procs, really.
*I'm* using my weapon procs to cripple my targets by Draining them, so that limits my choice of weapon types to those which proc for Drain, which is a pretty small number of choices. After that, it's a matter of stacking up types to try and "chuck as many dice as you can, as fast as you can" in order to "bingo!" and make the procs take effect.
Obviously, if the [Snare] mod happens on every cycle (100% chance), then you'd really only need a single weapon with that mod on it for it to be effective. However, if the [Snare] mod only applies during the firing cycle and not during the cooldown, in order to get maximal uptime you'll need to have multiple copies of [Snare] on your weapons so that the staggered firing of your energy weapons yields a minimal window in which the [Snare] mod is not active on your target (while you're shooting at it).
As I mentioned previously, I chose Protonics because I could easily obtain [Acc]x2 on all of the weapons I bought, and every single one offered an additional proc for bonus damage (that ignores shields entirely). I'm relying on the Drain proc to cripple my targets, and the Proton Burn is more a matter of "icing on the cake" rather the whole point and purpose of the exercise (because the Drain is the cake I'm having, and I get to eat it too!). I can then stack those up 6-7 deep and start getting somewhat reliable results out of the combination.
0.975 ^ 7 = 0.83759
1 - 0.83759 = 16.24%
So 7 procs of 2.5% chance have a 16.24% chance of proccing ONE of the Drains per firing cycle (I'm conveniently discounting the odds of proccing multiples for simplicity). That's very nearly a "roll a 1 on 1d6" kind of odds. And I'm throwing those "dice" every 3 seconds or less ... which can mean a LOT of chances to get a Drain proc. AND ... all it takes is ONE Drain proc to "turn the lights out" on my target and ruin their day.
Every single "diversification" you take away from that stack of proc chances impacts how "reliably" those procs can trigger, which will affect overall performance ... at which point you start getting into tradeoffs. Is exchanging THIS for THAT a superior combo? I can't answer that for you, since it depends in large part what you "value" most in your build, and how it all hangs together to produce the effects you're trying to get out of it.
0.975 ^ 4 = 0.903687
1 - 0.903687 = 9.63%
Is that an acceptable drop in odds for you of getting a Drain proc that would "turn the lights off" on your target? You're going from a "roll 1 on 1d6" to a "roll 1 on 1d10" kind of odds there. Only you can decide for yourself if the yield from the tradeoff is "worth it" to you.
If using Polarized Disruptors, certainly, since everything would be doing Disruptor Damage at that point. Otherwise ... not so much ... and remember that the energy weapon in this case is a Beam Array, not a Turret ...
Not exclusively. I use the Drain from all the Turrets via Plasmonic Leech to create a "floor" of Power transfer (usually in the 24-30 range) that's a reliable foundation. After that, it's just a matter of picking what else to add on top of that in order to get "enough" to be able to "turn the lights out" on the target. Neutronic Torpedoes will hit for enough to do this on top of the Plasmonic Leech in a lot of cases. Tyken's Rift I will also in many cases be adequate for this purpose, although higher ranks have longer durations and stronger Drains (meaning increased duration of crippling). Same deal for Power Siphon, and so on and so forth. The Drain proc on Polarons is something that happens randomly, but with enough Turrets it'll happen "often enough" to be something you can rely on to create windows of opportunity to exploit.
If you've got the BOff Skill Slots to spare, knock yourself out. However, many of the seating arrangements available on ships will preclude this option, so choose wisely which path you want to take.
Subsystem Offline is NOT like a 100% Drain for the duration ... because of how Hot Restarts work (see Iconian Space Set). Disables are more like "shutdowns" than they are like actual Drains. A Hot Restart will "cancel" a Disable, but it won't do anything against a total Power Drain ... because "restarting" at zero Power still yields zero Power, until the duration of the Drain expires. Not so with a Disable.
The EFFECTS might be similar, but the causes are not. Also, Phaser proc Disables have a 15 second lockout after proccing (a 5 firing cycle duration for Cannons!), while Drains do not have a lockout after being procced.
That being said, apparently the Disable proc of Phasers "counts" as a Control Effect for the purposes of Controlled Countermeasures, according to some people I've asked in-game. At the moment, I haven't verified this, so proceed accordingly.
Yup. So plan your build accordingly ...
You need to be mindful of not only the duration of the procs but also the timing of the firing cycles and of the cooldown times. Polarons proc for a 5 second drain, but the firing cycle on a Turret is 2 seconds (natively) with a 1 second cooldown. That means that a Turret that procs for a "turn the lights out" result can get in two whole firing cycles before the lights turn back on (assuming no more Drain procs happen in the meantime).
2 + 1 + 2 = 5
You can't get that kind of performance out of Beams, with their 4 second firing cycles with 1 second cooldown. A Drain proc on a beam is good for only 1 firing cycle, while for a Cannon it'll be good enough for 2(!).
That's assuming that NOTHING will ever, under any circumstances, interrupt or interfere with the Autofire cycling of your weapons. If you feel comfortable with that kind of "perfect performance" expectation, feel free to build accordingly.
But ... as you (and I) have pointed out, the duration might be limited to only the firing cycle and not apply to the cooldown duration. And when Autofiring your energy weapons, there's a slight delay in the firing of your weapons, such that they chain sequentially rather than in perfect parallel. This means that weapon fire is slightly "staggered" to happen sequentially (and in parallel) rather than in a perfect parallel ... and because of this, if you've got only 1 [Snare] weapon to tag with, you're going to be "missing out" somewhere during the firing cycle because of a lack of overlap.
Additionally, if you've got [Snare] mods on more than one weapon, you're adding yet another way to being Accuracy Overflow into the equation for additional [CrtX] which potentially could be more valuable when expressed as being a collection of [Snare] modded Turrets instead of a collection of Protonic Polarons. Why? Because the Protonics have a chance to proc Proton Burn damage on Critical Hits ... but if using [Snare] and Controlled Countermeasures, you aren't relying on a proc chance and instead are adding a straight up +7% Weapon Damage on every single shot/hit. Which is "better" for your build? Depends on your build. I'm thinking you'd probably have to do a series of comparative parses to spot the difference in damage throughput, but the differences in performance ought to be pretty obvious ... since stacking 6x [Snare] ought to yield a -30% Flight Speed and -30% Turn Rate that should be significant enough to "notice" in actual combat (think of it as a "poor man's tractor beam" if it helps, albeit one with a 10km range!) which would then compound with the Accuracy Overflow stuff I've been talking about since post 1 in this thread.
My only regret is that there's no way to get [Snare] on Protonic Polarons ...
Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser
Immortal BOff Skills combo for Ground
Just thinking out loud. Target Engines Subsystems would be neat on this kind of build. To get instant stoppage from engines offlined or drained to low level. Although tbh the boff skill alone isn't too great in even this circumstance. All target abilities need a re-work imo to have CD like FAW/BO and be a guaranteed shutdown, not chance, plus need to work with cannons.
We do need duration info on snare proc to figure this out properly.
Trying to think what ship I could use. Ideally something with a hanger and temporal seating would be nice.
Looking for temporal seating ideally because I'm flying my Edoulg currently and found you can trigger timeline collapse which is a quasi grav well with it's pull and doesn't trigger CD on tykens/grav well. So would be a nice dual control/drain AoE combo.
I see in your original build you go for the Fleet support cruiser. 5 tac boff slots needed and only using 1 sci drain ability (tykens). Which suggests you're relying almost exclusively on turrets to drain.
@autumnturning - T6 Science Star cruiser (Oddy) looks to be a very close upgrade for the support cruiser! Gives you higher ranked tac ability and a floating ensign uni to do more tac/sci with.
Annoyingly for me the KDF equivalent dropped sci console for more tac. So not really a Kool-aid option for my KDF ways.
Although there is the Nandi too, 4 sci consoles, 8 weapons, workable boff seats. Looks like a good alternative for Fleet Support/Kamarag too!
I really like my FDC's though, and I'm itching to use interceptors again. Surely some current T6 ships can give me something similar but with a hanger. Let's see...
I'm currently thinking the Denuos Dreadnought Carrier might be interesting to try. Loose one weapon mount but gain 2 hanger bays (interceptors would be fun for me, or siphon drones which back in the day could shut down an enemy just by themselves), plus it has innate subsystem targeting (although need a beam to work that).
Chronos, only 3 sci consoles
Paradox looks quite decent. Looses a weapon but gets all the sci perks including 5 sci sonsoles and hanger. A shame it ironically doesn't have temporal seating. Pretty near ideal though.
Klinzai, ok but not great boff seating, could be worked with.
Breen carrier, only 3 sci consoles. Nice boff arrangement though. plus 2 hangers
Annorax, nice console and boff layouts, but looses a weapon. Pretty near ideal.
Quas, ok boffs, but only 3 sci consoles
Tarantula, good boffs but only 3 sci consoles
Vonph, perfect, but you drop a weapon for dual hangers. Pretty near ideal.
Ateleth, not great seating, only 3 sci consoles.
So if only looking at 4+ sci consoled options, Klinzai, Denuos, Annorax, Vonph and Paradox.
Klinzai is a bit engineering heavy in the boffs but with command I could use suppression barrage and warp bubble to get the controls I'm after. Might be ok.
All the others only have 7 weapon slots, but have better seating, more hangers or more sci console slots.
Decisions decisions...
So yeah, totally have to drink the Kool-Aid to "get it" ... but then once you do, you discover that "hey, there's something solid here..."
If you're flying a Science Ship, with the Target Subsystem skills implemented "natively" (albeit on stupidly long cooldowns), I'd argue that Target Shields ought to have priority, followed by Target Engines. The first exposes Hull, while the second magnifies damage throughput. You could potentially cycle those in concert with Sensor Analysis to (slight) effect.
For any other ship, I'd argue that the Target Subsystem options are inferior to pretty much ANY other Tactical skill you could slot into that seating ... and that's before we get into the "Beams Only" nonsense of making use of Target Subsystem skills.
Although ... you can now craft Omni-Beams ... including Polaron flavor, if you want to sacrifice only 1 slot to a Beam and keep the rest as Turrets, and maintain your Drain proc potential.
That we do. Unfortunately, the tooltip doesn't change when the Controlled Countermeasures Trait is enabled, and weapons have a variance on how much damage they'll do, meaning there's the potential for a lot of noise to muck up the signal of what we're trying to determine.
Ensign Tac . Lieutenant Tac . Lieutenant Tac.
Commander Eng
Lieutenant Commander Sci
That gives me ...
TT1 . HY1/CRF1 . TS1/CSV1
ET1/A2SIF1/EPtW3/EWP3
ST1/TR1/GW1
That means I've got Plasmonic Leech (Turrets), Polaron proc (Turrets), Torpedo (Neutronic) and Tyken's Rift 1 for Drain ... and have Eject Warp Plasma 3, Gravity Well 1 and Tyken's Rift 1 as my Exotic abilities to proc Temporal Cross-wiring from Temporal Spec.
This past week though I dropped the Neutronic Torpedo+Bio Neural Gel Pack and one of the Protonic Turrets in favor of the Gravimetric Torpedo, Experimental Proton Weapon and Proton Particle Stabilizer to experiment with maximizing Proton Damage output from my Dyson Joint Command Technologies equipped Fleet Support Cruiser Retrofit, along with swapping out the 3 Tactical Consoles for Auto Targeting Modules [+Pol]. I haven't "field tested" the rebuild in combat yet, but I figure the Crystalline Catastrophe event will provide plenty of that.
Requires Zen that I don't have. I bought the Ship Modules to purchase my Fleet Support Cruisers with EC off the exchange years ago now (back when they were cheaper!).
It really comes down to what do you want to shoehorn into your build (and why).
For me, I want to be able to seat 5 Tactical skills, so as to do TT/HY/CRF/TS/CSV (not THAT picky about rankings). For Science, I want at LEAST a Lieutenant Commander, so as to get ST/TR/GW. For Engineering, I want at least a Lieutenant Commander to get ET/A2SIF/EPtW. I wanted to have a Cruiser so as to run the Weapon Aura to reduce power consumption from -8 to -6.4 for each Turret, which makes a difference, and for the +5 to All Power, which helps me get [Amp] into the x4 range that augments All Damage (including Exotic) by +13.2% (Cat2 mod). I wanted as many Science Consoles as I could get, for maximum [DrainX] stacking, which then pushes my build(s) towards having 125/125/125/125 Power once engaged in combat (EPS Manifold Efficiency helps with this on use of EPtW), which does WONDERFUL things for my Exotic Damage abilities and powers up my Auxiliary Power Configuration - Offense AND Defense Trait combo for significant boosts to both bonus damage and resistances, making my ship VERY ... sturdy.
By the end of all of those pre-reqs, there are precious few ships capable of meeting each of those criteria. Amazingly enough, the Fleet Support Cruiser Retrofit fits the bill, and is something that you can buy for (lots of) EC, although the price won't cost you hundreds of millions of EC (more like about 60-70 million). And it's something you don't see all that often, making it a remarkably unique ship to fly that is very nearly perfectly balanced.
If I was going to upgrade away from my Fleet Support Cruiser Retrofit T5-U to a Zen ship, I'd rather use the Science Star Cruiser than the Odyssey Science Cruiser T5-U, especially since I'd want to buy the ship bundle (of either). But since either bundle costs a huge pile of Zen, it's going to "be a while" before I can exercise either option. And that's not even including the desire to pick up the Battlecruiser bundle (which I don't have) for the Emergency Weapon Cycle Starship Trait for even more firing haste than I've already got.
Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser
Immortal BOff Skills combo for Ground
It WAS free during event last year. Perfect weapon, console and boff layout for you
However, its trait kind of makes up for no weapons aura: immunity to drains, -50% weapons drain to self when activating any drain ability and +2.5 all power levels.
Made some progress last night. Checked my bank and already had an accx2 polarised disruptor turret from when they originally launched. Had three others with random other mods.
Hit up exchange and found 2 more accx2 turrets, and got a couple of acc + critd single cannons. With torps up front no harm in favouring front arcs a tad more for dps. Saw dual (non heavy) cannons available too but in a cruiser the narrow 45 arc isnt really viable. The Nandi is more manoeuvrable than your typical cruiser though.
Just need the dili to rank them up to mk14
After I fully level my Edoulg I'll try my first Kool-aid build on the Denuos, which I haven't had a chance to fly yet.
Only 7 weapons, but being able to slot interceptors or siphon drones (or both!) in the hangers should more than make up for the loss.
12 elite power siphon drones... MWAHAHAHAHA!
After seeing that link, just remembered, they also return power they steal to your aux. Should easily allow maxing aux and weapon levels.
Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser
Immortal BOff Skills combo for Ground
I don't have the Nandi, either. I don't feel cheated, though. I am also not going to get the new ground weapon from the CCE going on right now. I've jumped through enough hoops over the years. So I can look at this one and go, "Nope. Same old same old. So I'm not doing it. Try again Cryptic. Maybe next time you'll do something I want to play more of. Like more episodes which are on the same quality level as "Echoes of Light".
EDIT: That Proton 'burn' looks interesting enough I'm going to check it out.
Essentially its a science pirate ship, using the protonic polaron cruiser build as a base, so a some stuff is the same or similar but on a T5-U nebula hull. I did the testing in Argala advanced/Elite no real problems, was kinda funny watching the malon having to stew in their own juices.
Granuaile-type
First thing, this is an extremely short range vessel, made for 2 KM or less. It's meant to keep the Demo teams coming and have a short distance for boarding parties to cover, close boarding action. The tractor beams are there to keep the enemy pinned in place, much like the grappling hooks that pirates used to use to keep their prizes from escaping (Ok so I binged on Black Sails before coming up with this). Viral Matrix serves a similar function. As far as I can tell, none of this stuff conflicts with the other so everything should fire off to keep the enemy ship subdued. Now I don't PvP so I don't know enough about how most of this stuff would work but I'm thinking the power drains, boarding parties and VM would make it really annoying to deal with.
In short: grapple, away boarders and burn em to the waterline.
Since sto Academy still doesn't have all the doffs skills listed:
2 Energy weapons doffs, 1%strip buff chance
1Flight Deck Doff Chance Double boarding Party shuttles
1 Assault squad doff Chance to arm BP shuttles
1 Deflector doff chance to reduce recharge on deflector skills (might use tractor beam drainer here instead)
With only 6 weapons slots I abandoned the torps, and used 5 prot/pol and the experimental proton (can trigger inate target subsys and use less power than a full beam.
Also hoping advanced rending shots can trigger the turrets secondary special abilities faster.
The lt universal should allow the ship to adapt to almost any situation, more damage or dice chucks switch to a tac, etc.
Hopefully most of the gear/doffs/traits can be gotten for minimal costs or substituted with lesser items
The real key remains, however, to get as close to 125/125/125/125 Power as you can to maximize your throughput on ... well ... EVERYTHING ... and for me, the Cruiser continues to be the best option for doing that.
However ... now that we can get Romulan Bridge Officers from Duty Officer missions again, it's starting to become a lot easier/cheaper for a RR captain to field a full bridge of Superior Romulan Operatives ... which is +10% Critical Hit right there from 5 Bridge Officers. This makes me think that a Romulan captain might be able to get the "most" out of a dedicated Drain+Proton Burn build in terms of maximizing the Proton Burn. That -10 All Power penalty for having a Singularity Core, however, makes for a pretty high hurdle to getting the most out of a Core with [AMP] though.
I saw the post in the Sci Builds thread. I also saw that someone posted yet another Protonic Polaron build for a Romulan captain over on r/stobuilds that looked kind of interesting. However, when I saw it, my first thought was ...
I think that's what I so enjoy about the Pressure Drain builds. The design rather effectively cripples your target(s), leaving them remarkably weak and helpless. It takes what is considered "weak" in the Conventional Wisdom and turns it into a source of strength in order to level the playing field, and tilt it in your own favor. It is a jiu-jitsu style of play, that uses the strength of your opponent(s) to defeat them.
I'm curious to know why you didn't go for 3x Flight Deck Officers who add more Boarding Party Shuttles. I honestly wonder if you might potentially wind up with 6, 9 or even 12 Boarding Party shuttles launched on a single click that way, instead of merely 3.
I also wish that Demolition Teams synergized in any way with Boarding Party, such that each successful Boarding Party would "automatically" deliver enough Demolition Team stacks to inflict damage just in time to leave the target ship (so the Boarding Parties aren't suicide squads).
Also, the Tractor Beam Drainer DOff sounds like an interesting alternative path to wrecking shields and baring hull.
In just the past couple days, my captain Redline flying the Terran 4-piece set build managed to score 1st place on a CCA run (I was shocked!) ... which considering that her build is mostly Turrets was one of those "wait, what?" moments. I'm most accustomed to getting no higher than 3rd place on CCA runs.
Anyway, something that I've been thinking about is swapping out a couple pieces of the Terran Set 4-piece set, specifically the Impulse Engines and Shield, for the Omega Force (wait, what?) Impulse Engines and Shield ... which will then add the Tetryon Glider 2-piece set bonus (Shield Drain on EVERY shot!) along with an Energy Wake proc to add a little bit of Impulse Speed and a good bit of Turn (think RCS console bonus level of Turn boosting on a Cruiser). I've also dropped the Radiant Detonation Matrix Trait in favor of Omega Graviton Amplifier so as to be able to proc extra damage much more quickly.
Haven't taken the changes out for a test drive yet, but I imagine that the "shield pressure" of firing all those shots that fast ought to be remarkable, whether it be from the "chuck lots of dice" at the drain procs or the straight up shield stripping going on from the Tetryon Glider hitting shields that have been weakened by Plasmonic Leech (and are thus less resistant). It's one of those "hurt you both coming AND going" kinds of things that I want to try out. Meanwhile, the Turrets are hammering away nigh constantly at high speed to make the shields buckle (and fail!) so as to expose that vulnerable hull ...
Oh yeah ... I'd forgotten that point. The Experimental Proton Weapon can be used to fire off the Target Subsystems from Science Ships. That then gives you a range of options for stacking additional Power Drains as needed, above and beyond Plasmonic Leech and Polaron procs, letting you get somewhat surgical. I think I might just have to try this with my Romulan captain on the freebie DSD once I pick up another SRO Engineer and Science Bridge Officer to "complete the set" ... and angle for some really SERIOUS Proton Burn proc chances.
It does, but then you have to think about it in terms of tempo. The reason I say that is the Rending Shots trait has a 5 second lockout after proc. Now, on a Beam Boat, particularly one with no firing or cooldown haste, that's no big deal. By the time you finish the current firing cycle, the cooldown will have expired and you can start building up Rending Shots again on the following cycle. Everything synchronizes together rather nicely. But that's not the case with Cannons and their shorter firing cycles. You're basically going to "miss" 1-2 firing cycles during the 5 second cooldown before building extra Critical Hit again.
I tried the Trait out with my Polaron Beam [Over] experiment, and I just had the Character window open and was watching the Critical Hit numbers fluctuate in real time while broadsiding. They would spin up plenty fast, and then crash back to baseline on a pretty quick cycle. I had enough Beam Arrays such that I was getting a Critical Hit somewhere out of every 1-2 firing cycles, with a number of times when I'd get a critical hit on EVERY firing cycle for a little bit, before missing a proc and having to wait for the next firing cycle. But the tempo of rise and fall was fast.
You'd get much the same kind of performance out of the Rending Shots trait with Cannons, but the timing doesn't match up quite so neatly anymore. Doing a little bit of Napkin Math, I figure that with enough Turrets, you're probably looking at getting a Rending Shots Critical Hit Proc about once every 3-ish firing cycles (with enough weapons), instead of once every 1-ish firing cycles (again, with enough weapons), simply because of how the cooldown time on the Trait interacts with the volley cycle tempo. Point being, the Cannons will spend more time shooting WITHOUT adding to the Rending Shots buildup than a set of Beam Arrays do, meaning that the Trait will be "less efficient" for you than it would be on a Beam Boat. It'll still "work" but the synchronization of the timing of when it does will be "off" from what you're wanting it to do for you.
Thus, given a choice, I'd recommend use of Precision over Rending Shots for Cannons, and the reverse for Beams, simply because of how the cooldown timer on Rending Shots synchronizes with Beam firing cycles relative to the same for Cannons.
Over infinite time (and infinite shots), the Effect is still the same either way ... but for game purposes, we aren't talking about infinite time. We're talking about finite time when shooting at stuff to make it blow up in a warp core breach. There are a finite number of shots to take against your target ... and the fewer shots you need to make, the more important that synchronization issue becomes because of the "granularity" of the sample that you're working with.
In 15 seconds, Beams will fire 3 times while Cannons will fire 5 times.
In that time span of 15 seconds, you'll probably proc Rending Shots twice, because of the 5 second cooldown lockout.
That's 2 Critical Hits out of 3 cycles for Beams, which is a significant improvement.
That's also 2 Critical Hits out of 5 cycles for Cannons, which is less of an improvement, on balance, since it's 2/5 instead of 2/3.
Why? Because with Turrets, each hit is smaller and you're making more of them. It's the small+lots versus big+few. In other words, your Cannons are firing more often WITHOUT the benefit of Rending Shots "working for you" because the firing cycle time of Cannons is faster, but the cooldown timer on Rending Shots is fixed, meaning Turrets spend more time shooting without building than Beams do. And when a Critical Hit happens, the Beam will hit "harder" with that Critical than the (in this case) Turret will.
So yeah, you can do it and it'll "work" for you ... but there will be a level of inefficiency built into the operation which might make other options more attractive for you in contrast. Just yet another example of how switching from Beams to Cannons can wind up turning the Conventional Wisdom on its head.
Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser
Immortal BOff Skills combo for Ground
Now ... why does this whole notion have me thinking I've just been cast as the 25th century's Professor Fate ... with Max as my First Officer?
Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser
Immortal BOff Skills combo for Ground
No matter, I am still having fun. Hadn't thought about the inherent advantages of a Romulan SRO bridge crew as it would apply to Kool-Aid builds. Whenever I see anything Romulan I always think Plasma. So I guess it is time to start looking at Rommie ships which would allow a Kool-Aid build to function effectively. The Singularity power discrepancy should not matter, since part of a Kool-Aid build is the ability to draw power from targets. It will probably start a little slower but there are ways around this as well.
Then you craft.
Then you test it out real good.
{ *KABOOM!* }
Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser
Immortal BOff Skills combo for Ground
In a tie for third place we have the Fleet Ar'kif and the Ha'nom. The Fleet Ar'kif has only 3 Science Console slots but it has a LTC Universal BOff slot to make up for this. The deal breaker for me is the LT Science BOff slot. Not quite enough Space Magik goodness for me. The Ha'nom has 4 Consoles for Science but only has a LT Science BOff. The 3/3 weapons layout does not lend itself to being a Kool-Aid Boat as we have discussed in this thread.
In the second spot is the Fleet version of the Ha'nom. Five(!) Console Science slots. Commander(!) Science as well as a LT. Commander seat makes this one look worthy. Still has the 3/3 weapons layout though. and like a lot of the inhouse Cryptic Rommie designs, it turns like a sleepy cruise ship. I prefer that my Drain Boats do not move with the grace and agility of a wounded whale. Probably because I have flown KDF ships for so long.
And finally, we have my first choice for a Rommie Drain Boat. The T6 Jhu'ael Tactical Carrier. Yeah, I know it is 4/3 for weapons. But with four Science Consoles an LTC Universal and a LTC Science, it probably is going to be the best performer overall.
Also, I'm cheating. I already own one, along with the five SRO Bridge Officers, so it will be the easiest to work up. My only Rommie Char is an Engineer, so I can rely heavily upon his abilities rather than spend Console and BOff Abilties to to keep the vacuum out of the people lockers, lol. The Advanced Orion Interceptors I have also have a limited Drain ability. Which should make up for the lack of that fourth weapon slot aft a little bit.
Still having fun with this idea. But then again I can only say this: Ah Needs Moar Kool-Aid!
To me the idea of Kool-Aid simply equals dice chucking, although I get that I need to drink the Kool-Aid and go all in on the build as a whole, but I don't want to
I'm determined to find an alternative Kool-Aid build, and I might be on to something.
Testing on the new Denuos Dreadnought Carrier (T6) with a Kool-Aid like build, but used polarised disruptors instead.
Used 3 pieces of the Salanae set but used the Temporal shield instead of Solanae as the Temporal one gives an extra +30 to drains and the 4-piece solanae is meh.
Had siphon, tykens and ran with siphon drones plus interceptors.
Even with drain at 350ish, I didn't really find that I was shutting enemies down. Well, they got slower and hit less hard but I don't recall shields blinking off or they stop firing at me.
Not sure, but it didn't feel too satisfying for me. And while I was killing stuff it wasn't fast enough for me.
I'm sure in PvP this type of build would rock but for me it felt a little meh for PvE.
Also the 3-piece set bonus from solanae set didn't seem to be procing at all for me and was the major reason I started looking at major build revisions. (Is it broken? Hull leech thing. Set showed it was active but no weapons showed it as a possible proc chance)
So after messing around with my ship some more I had a bit of a brain wave that inspired me to take a completely different tangent.
@autumnturning you seem to like the idea of draining enemies until they stop so as to get max accuracy overflow. With my penchant for control type abilities I decided to investigate slowing and perhaps stopping my foes more directly rather than via drains as an indirect method of stopping them dead in the water.
This lead me to Bio-Molecular Disruptors which tbh I kinda wanted to use anyway. This is when I had my light bulb moment.
Behold the Radioactive Kool-Aid build
Bio-Molecular Disruptors, like Protonic Polarons, have a secondary damage ability and this is where I started to see why you like the protonics so much (even though I haven't used them), and really why you're locked into using them. Their damage proc has a relatively high (if not the highest of all energy types) chance of being applied. All you need is a high base crit chance. As 25% of all crits proc the protonic damage. Which if you have a realistic 20% base critH means you've got a 5% chance on every hit, double normal weapon proc rates. And that only increases as you increase CritH.
Actually, to go off on a slight tangent, you should REALLY use the science captain ultimate power. Boosts you to 50% critH (so moves you up to 12.5% per hit) and if you get the Probability Window enhancement for the ultimate power it lasts for 30s! Your protonic hit count would go through the roof. Maybe you already knew this but I just thought of it
SO anyway, Bio-Molecular Disruptors. Like protonic polarons have a secondary damage but is radiation based which got me wondering about dropping drain altogether and going after radiation and exotics. As it turns out, the 2-piece set bonus from the CC set grants +2% chance of weapons proccing for a total of 4.5% which is much closer to protonic polarons proc chances (under normal circumstances). It'll never match protonics, especially on Rom toons or with sci ulimate playing a role, but it's definitely the next best energy type for chance rating, bar resonating tetryons which aren't useful for PvE damage.
2-piece also gives "bonus" disruptor damage (cat2) so I think the console plus this actually grants more disruptor damage than elite fleet locators, however you do give up on 2% critH.
On top of the 2 piece proc boost, the tac console boosts radiation and photon torp damage. Double Awesome.
Combine it with Kemocite for even more radiation output!
The 3-piece CC set also grants heavy turret barrage, a kind of AoE attack the guarantees anything within 5km gets hit with the bio-molucular proc.
The 4-piece set, which I'm not using for PvE, would be good dice chucking for PvP, 1% chance on all weapons for a whole bunch of hull heal debuffs.
I tried the Delta alliance 2-piece set bonus for even more radiation boost, but the console and torp other than the set bonus don't really gel well with this builds aims.
So switched them out for the Terran Task Force Munitions set. Not only do the weapons double in damage output as the enemy get closer to death, the DHC has withering radiation which is boosted by the radiation CC console, the 2-piece boosts torp dmg, and the 3-piece grants secondary torp launchers, for even more torp (dice?) chucking.
I thought about giving Withering disruptors a go instead of bio-moleculars, but the witherings base radiation damage is waaay less, and while it stacks, you need the max 5 stacks before it outperforms bio-moleculars (which simply have an 8s delay), plus withering only has the one proc effect, the radiation. Versus bio-moleculars (stacking?) slow, -resist debuff plus radiation damage (at the cost of one weapons modifier?) seemed better for this build and the whole dice chucking theme.
For deflector and impulse engines I went with the honor guard set. An epic deflector gives a lovely +50 control expertise for my build and also generous part gens plus a bunch of others.
Just as important, the 2-piece also gives another boost to my torps dmg as well as +8.9 aux power, which in the absence of leech and drain stuff in general is much needed.
For Warp core and shields I'm trying out the temporal defence set. Primarily because the 2-piece set bonus (+25% dmg all DOT stuff and hazards). With my part gen based boff skill stuff and temporal specialisation this seems a worthy thing to try. Need to study further what it boosts.
For space traits:
Controlled Countermeasures (my slows gives cat2 dmg boost to everything)
Radiant Detonation Matrix (even more radiation!)
Omega Graviton Amplifier (more dice chucking)
Omega Kinetic Shearing (gives torps an extra 40% damage as a DOT, syncs with temporal defence set bonus)
Precision (more critH)
For ship traits:
Weapon System Synergy (energy weapons boost torp damage)
Emergency Weapon Cycle (energy weapons cycle faster = faster dice chucking)
Withering Barrage (longer CSV uptime = longer dice chucking)
Particle Feedback Loop (using exotic abilities grants hull pen)
Rich target environment (while CSV is active increase energy damage)
(Another I may try is Checkmate, which grants + exotic and torp damage on control boffs)
For doffs:
Tac team CD doff
2x cannon ability CD doffs
2x torp CD doffs
Spawn extra Grav wells doff
All up, this build has performed markedly better than my first drain focused attempt. And enemies reliably come to a complete halt when I'm firing on them. I haven't parsed, but DPS still feels less than a typical FAW build but it's actually not far off (I'd wager 30K easy for non romulan engineers). The torp combination of guaranteed slows with something that ramps up in damage plus secondary launchers really seem to be the damage stars of the build. I need to parse to see how much radiation damage contributes to output.
Hull feels squishy and keeping the DHC on target it tricky but in PvE is manageable.
Now that I've maxed my Denuos skill rank I'm looking to try and improve on this build idea (slows + radiation/exotics) and try it on another ship. The Paradox seems interesting atm, might give that a try next.
Actually. Now that I've unlocked the Denuos trait (photonic shockwave grants radiation DoT plus -resist debuff) that might be worth a try.
And there's more radiation things to try too. Improved Weaponized Emitters grants radiation AoE with aceton beam (meh 2min CD) and greedy emitters which may sync well with a Klinzai/Geneva ship build.
BioMolecular Turrets and the Counter Command Weapon Set with the Terran Space Set is something I already use on a Fleet Qin Flight Deck Raptor for enhanced Control and Radiation effects. The initial build is posted in its entirety on page 6 of this thread. Obviously, I need to update it to current specs.
I've taken my radiation kool-aid build and as I alluded to, converted in onto the Paradox. And boy am I getting some spectacular results!
I need to stick the build into a STO academy link for you guys first. Need to find some time to do that then I'll post it up with the extra changes I've made and reasonings.
I was looking forward to trying to convert this build onto my Klinzhai (KDFs Geneva) too which is the ship I always end up going back to flying, however I got bummed out when I saw that the "Improved Weaponized Emitters" trait is ONLY available for Feds. I was sad.
@borticuscryptic, unsure if you handle ship traits/consoles, but a lovely idea for a new KDF ship would be a new T6 Scourge Destroyer (or other Nausicaan designed ship anyway) with Command hybrid seating that has an updated Theta Radiation console that grants +radiation as a passive and the theta radiation plume could also apply radiation damage in addition to what the T4 Scourge console does. PLUS you can stick that Improved Weaponized Emitters trait on it to give KDF access to this trait. Thematically would work great!
I guess the only problem would be the console would be locked only for use with Nausicaan ships? Which is quite a sad trend I see lately. Limits build options with other ships.