A couple points that haven't been mentioned explicitly when talking about getting more from your ship.
It cannot be overstated how HUGE the gain is for weapons to go from grade XII to XIV within the same rarity. Grades 1-12 are a linear progression. Grades 13 and 14 are ludicrous performance jumps. A grade XIV weapon does on the order of 250% of the damage a XII puts out.
If you want to hit harder/turn in safer, faster runs: make every weapon you have a XIV over all other upgrade priorities. DO NOT chase after epic rarity while you still have XIIIs you could be upgrading. Even if they're just placeholders while you do the Epic rarity hunting dance, get those XIVs in place. (There are perversely counterintuitive strategies for doing your upgrades to maximize rarity improvements, but that's a whole separate post...)
And second, while this is gonna step on some e-peens out there, truth is the skill cap for operating a ship ain't that high. 'Keep the target where you can hit them' kinda falls under 'duh'. Most high-end builds actually revolve around bringing enough copies of the same skill or managing enough cooldown manipulation to turn 3-4 essential buffs into what are effectively 100% uptime toggles rather than clickes... and then keeping those effects on cooldown forever. There's probably a little more thought and interaction involved defensively, as those clickies tend to be used situationally and reactively. "Kill it with fire!" is actually a very linear undertaking if your ship is well set-up.
There IS finesse involved in flying your ship right up to its performance envelope and smashing those always to be smashed buttons every time the can be smashed. But there is in my not entirely humble opinion more depth involved in understanding how to set that ship up in the first place so that it is a smoothly operating portable furball of death.
There's all kinds of Trait and Doff refinement we could talk about that'll make two player with identical ship setups and trays turn in RADICALLY differently DPS numbers. And even then we haven't touched on the dark sorcery of assigning your skill points...
A couple points that haven't been mentioned explicitly when talking about getting more from your ship.
It cannot be overstated how HUGE the gain is for weapons to go from grade XII to XIV within the same rarity. Grades 1-12 are a linear progression. Grades 13 and 14 are ludicrous performance jumps. A grade XIV weapon does on the order of 250% of the damage a XII puts out.
I once mathed it using photon grenades(since you can do that with just exchange tooltips). The DPS jump from 12 to 13 was equal to the DPS jump from 10 to 12. Back then there was no 14, but it'll be interesting to see how those go.
That's utterly base damage, no power changes, no active buffs - the percentage increase from XII to XIII compared to XI to XII is astonishing. No epics or the like (which are nice) - getting a really great set of modifiers is helpful, but even cheap, less good modifiers can be great until you've got your ideal build together.
Fate - protects fools, small children, and ships named Enterprise Will Riker
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
I didn't know that the performance jump from Mk 13 to Mk 14 was so great. Very interesting stuff here.
My KT Connie's KT phasers are all purple Mk 13, and I left them at Mk 13 for the time being because it's just so expensive dilithium-wise and I didn't want to spend all of my dil on upgrades just yet (still saving up for that 4-piece Iconian space set). But I do intend to upgrade them to Mk 14 as soon as I can afford to.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
I didn't know that the performance jump from Mk 13 to Mk 14 was so great. Very interesting stuff here.
My KT Connie's KT phasers are all purple Mk 13, and I left them at Mk 13 for the time being because it's just so expensive dilithium-wise and I didn't want to spend all of my dil on upgrades just yet (still saving up for that 4-piece Iconian space set). But I do intend to upgrade them to Mk 14 as soon as I can afford to.
To follow up with that suggestion, if you are planning on upgrading rarity of ship components, upgrade your consoles first to epic and then shields/engs/def/core and weapons for last. It's much cheaper to upgrade consoles and you get a bigger bang for the cost.
The Epic chase is a whole different ball game. Consoles remain linear up to XIV and their rarity upgrades are linear too. Weapon upgrade are far from linear and the benefits off the [Acc/Dmg] mod you always get for going epic SKUNKS anything a console upgrade dreams of. The accuracy bonus is beefy and equates to not insiginficant accuracy overflow bonuses while the 6% damage bonus is category two. That's pure profit compared to the category one bonuses you get off of consoles. I'd still go for gold on weapons first myself.
It's more the cost factor, you can upgrade tac/plasma consoles to epic for way cheaper than weapons. The tac consoles aren't much of an increase, but plasma consoles are a fairly nice increase. I believe the math was done on the plasma consoles and they were a higher benefit if you don't even factor in cost. This might change a bit the more plasma consoles you are using, since the increase you get isn't linear, but a Binomial Distribution, which is less than linear. If you are going Lobi or Rep for uni consoles, those can wait as they are also costly.
@ltminns: Oh, thanks for telling me! I haven't been on much lately so I didn't even know an upgrade weekend was coming.
@tempusmagus: I've been planning on replacing my purple Mk 14 phaser relays with fleet vulnerability locators for phasers and then upgrading those to epic Mk 14, but my fleet is tiny and we don't have our fleet holdings built up or provisioned for it yet. Still working on that.
@nikeix: Interesting, thanks. I didn't know that there was that big a difference between weapon upgrades and tac console upgrades. I'll definitely prioritize upgrading the weapons first.
A DBB BO3 combined with a CRF3 is a pretty hilarious combination. That's basically the original Alpha strike thats been around since the early days of PVP. The only problem is the DBB will only be useful when it's overloading. However if you have the trait from the Xindi cruiser and cooldown reduction to keep it on global it gets considerably more fun.
I use four dual heavy cannons on the fore section of my tier six neg'var. My aft section uses two turrets, and two torpedo launchers. Yes yes I know the two torps is a waste of slotting, and I would get better damage with turrets on the aft. Well doing everything perfect can be fun to some, but too me sometimes I go outside the lines for enjoyment. Anyways the build does work but as one poster stated you really have to control your speeds and movement to be effective. I am not sure what the turn rate of the fed battle cruiser is.
The other item is, you can get both Beam overload, and Fire at will III at LT commander. You can however only get rapid fire two or scatter volley two at LT commander. So your going to take a small hit should you decide to use cannons. Your also going to find that damage charts are always going to place you dead last or close to it, mainly because you wont be able to zoom around and shoot everything with beams quite easily. So there is also the aspect of you needing to race to the target before someone starts blowing everything up with beam fire at will III with some top end gear.
In short I would strongly recommend you do not use cannons unless you have experience in three areas. The first is getting out of tight spots with a cruiser, can adjust power levels for more engine power, and last but not least have used dual heavy or dual cannons on a escort for extended time. Otherwise you could find it a frustrating experience.
In the end its your choice, I hope my pointers were helpful. Just one players opinion.
Slotting a torp (or even two) isn't inherently a massive mistake. The whole point of mutli-weapon power drain is to put some diminishing returns on bank after bank of directed energy weapons. Plus a stray torpedo here and there is required to set up many strong set bonuses (like a quantum phase torp + console for +15% accuracy to all your weapons).
And personally I find the synergy between the Supercharged Weapons ship trait and one plain ol' KT photon torpedo up front to be ridiculously good. You have all three stacks up in 8 seconds and keep them until the landscape is entirely devoid of enemies. throw on at least two of the KT consoles, a phaser-based loadout, maybe the quantum phase weapons... If you know where all the by-weapon-type bonuses are, the combinations pretty much write themselves.
Thanks for sharing your builds and knowledge @e30ernest@peterconnorfirst@seaofsorrows (and others). While I don't copy builds looking at what others do is always food for thought. Experimentation and trying different things is what keeps this game fresh. You all represent excellence in game knowledge and the willingness to help others. Kudos
Thanks for sharing your builds and knowledge @e30ernest@peterconnorfirst@seaofsorrows (and others). While I don't copy builds looking at what others do is always food for thought. Experimentation and trying different things is what keeps this game fresh. You all represent excellence in game knowledge and the willingness to help others. Kudos
Sure thing and np. This thread is currently my favorite in forums as it is beautiful to see how we manage to work together constructively around here.
I also agree with you on your build copy statement. I for my part often do use the build recommendations of the STO league as inspiration what is most efficiently in shooting stuff (not to mention the in game advice of thier admins who happen to be in my FL as well). This works especially nice with gear as the game got very mono-directional towards energy weapon related DPS. Gear and especially upgrades are quiet expensive so I’m not that much in mood to experiment or to make compromises in that department.
What always work out fine however is an individual boff power layout tinkered around your individual play style. Such stuff does not cost at all. For me it’s always surprising for example how big of an influence 1-2 healing powers more have on the survivability of a ship and that without even considering more protective gear. In short even the most DPS centric builds can easily be adjusted to cope with the content when not in an elite premade. For me that’s perfect as I don’t want to look at how good my teammates are. I just want to have a good game experience with everybody who likes to have that as well.
Post edited by peterconnorfirst on
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Slotting a torp (or even two) isn't inherently a massive mistake. The whole point of mutli-weapon power drain is to put some diminishing returns on bank after bank of directed energy weapons. Plus a stray torpedo here and there is required to set up many strong set bonuses (like a quantum phase torp + console for +15% accuracy to all your weapons).
And personally I find the synergy between the Supercharged Weapons ship trait and one plain ol' KT photon torpedo up front to be ridiculously good. You have all three stacks up in 8 seconds and keep them until the landscape is entirely devoid of enemies. throw on at least two of the KT consoles, a phaser-based loadout, maybe the quantum phase weapons... If you know where all the by-weapon-type bonuses are, the combinations pretty much write themselves.
I believe I understand what your getting at. For me my build was a mix match between being good enough to do my part, but at the same time keeping a strictly Klingon approach. The motion picture aft torpedoes firing from the D7 class battle cruisers, one of the most Iconic Klingon scenes in Star Trek. So I wanted a couple aft Torpedoes. Given the point on target with Dual heavy cannons I feel anything less then four would be a mistake on the fore section. So I am not really comfortable with the idea of slotting a torp in the front section. The Important thing I got torps in the aft and plenty of Withering Disruptor bolts in the front. In the end thats me. Although I have not picked up the any fleet tact consoles yet. All in good time.
Well, it's one of those non-obvious things, but front and rear torpedoes are ENTIRELY DIFFERENT.
I have a Temporal distortion device. It's an incredibly slow, plodding weapon that always fires destructible warheads. And did I mention it's slow? No. Slower than that. It gets short of breath trying to chase glaciers. Really, really slow. If you put it in a front slot not only are you going to hate it, you'll actually be embarrassed you paid 200 lobi for the thing. It's AWFUL. Arguably one of the three worst torpedoes in the game.
Put it in a rear slot and suddenly you're an evil genius.
Torpedoes don't inherit your speed - they always start from universal full stop. In a forward slot where you may be starting your attack run from a full 10 KM away and are likely charging in full bore, you can overtake your own torpedoes because of this. you need a fast projectile, preferable non-destructible because it's gona be in the air several seconds making it's way to the object of your wrath. You can afford to be firing high damage/low shield penetration warheads because your other weapons will hopefully strip a shield facing before the torp gets there. This is torpedo 101, but worth mentioning.
All these rules are inverted for the rear-firing torpedo. You'll most likely be farting it out half a second after you've overflown the target. Your base range can be 1 km or less and that "I don't care what speed you've going, I have my own frame of reference" behavior means the rear firing torp launches like a bat out of hell. You can actually get away with destructible warheads and you are - wait for it, 'cause this part is CRAZY - not looking to do damage. You're almost certainly going to be smacking into an undamaged shield facing, which is terrible for most damage dealing torps. ....And irrelevant to CC torpedoes. If you're shooting torps with slow/stun/disable they basically give you a shot at crippling that thing you just blew past while you're laying space tracks pivoting for your next attack. Suddenly chroniton torpedoes get all kinds of sexy (and transphasic or cluster torps aren't too bad either). You can also pick relatively high cooldown warheads because you're only gonna be firing once per pass anyway.
Basically my loader down in the rear bay keeps a whole stack of pre-filed out post-it notes to stick on each Temporal Distortion warhead (100% chance to reduce Flight Speed and Turn Speed by 33%) that reads "please take a number, ****. I'll be right with you."
Well, it's one of those non-obvious things, but front and rear torpedoes are ENTIRELY DIFFERENT.
I have a Temporal distortion device. It's an incredibly slow, plodding weapon that always fires destructible warheads. And did I mention it's slow? No. Slower than that. It gets short of breath trying to chase glaciers. Really, really slow. If you put it in a front slot not only are you going to hate it, you'll actually be embarrassed you paid 200 lobi for the thing. It's AWFUL. Arguably one of the three worst torpedoes in the game.
Put it in a rear slot and suddenly you're an evil genius.
Torpedoes don't inherit your speed - they always start from universal full stop. In a forward slot where you may be starting your attack run from a full 10 KM away and are likely charging in full bore, you can overtake your own torpedoes because of this. you need a fast projectile, preferable non-destructible because it's gona be in the air several seconds making it's way to the object of your wrath. You can afford to be firing high damage/low shield penetration warheads because your other weapons will hopefully strip a shield facing before the torp gets there. This is torpedo 101, but worth mentioning.
All these rules are inverted for the rear-firing torpedo. You'll most likely be farting it out half a second after you've overflown the target. Your base range can be 1 km or less and that "I don't care what speed you've going, I have my own frame of reference" behavior means the rear firing torp launches like a bat out of hell. You can actually get away with destructible warheads and you are - wait for it, 'cause this part is CRAZY - not looking to do damage. You're almost certainly going to be smacking into an undamaged shield facing, which is terrible for most damage dealing torps. ....And irrelevant to CC torpedoes. If you're shooting torps with slow/stun/disable they basically give you a shot at crippling that thing you just blew past while you're laying space tracks pivoting for your next attack. Suddenly chroniton torpedoes get all kinds of sexy (and transphasic or cluster torps aren't too bad either). You can also pick relatively high cooldown warheads because you're only gonna be firing once per pass anyway.
Basically my loader down in the rear bay keeps a whole stack of pre-filed out post-it notes to stick on each Temporal Distortion warhead (100% chance to reduce Flight Speed and Turn Speed by 33%) that reads "please take a number, ****. I'll be right with you."
Getting off topic but oh well...
Anyways yea I treat my aft torpedoes just like the way you described it, however I never thought about using Chroniton or Transphasic torps in the aft. Right now I am using the Omega torp on the aft, but it does not have much punch. When I am done with the upgrade it will be the Terran photon torpedo for the set bonus, and the Romulan Plasma torpedo. I chose the Romulan Plasma torpedo specifically for the reasons you just mentioned above. It will take time before I am at that point.
Threads like this are one of the few good parts left on this forum. When people like the OP ask for opinions and then actually have an open mind toward those opinions. Good to see the exchange of ideas, there is actually some pretty useful information in this thread. Thank you @protoneous for the kind words, and to all my fellow American Posters, Happy Thanksgiving!
@nikeix: Very sound advice with the aft-mounted torpedo launchers, and that's why I have my Vaadwaur cluster torpedo launcher (and all other slow-moving destructible torpedos) facing aft. I basically treat it like a bomb that I'm dropping in an attack run on a target, especially a large, slow target with its shields down. I hit the target hard with beams and/or shield draining powers to take out its shields (or wait til teammates have already done so), then swoop in low at full speed til I'm right over the target, then I pull up as I fire the aft-facing cluster torpedo. Bombs away... lol
Comments
It cannot be overstated how HUGE the gain is for weapons to go from grade XII to XIV within the same rarity. Grades 1-12 are a linear progression. Grades 13 and 14 are ludicrous performance jumps. A grade XIV weapon does on the order of 250% of the damage a XII puts out.
If you want to hit harder/turn in safer, faster runs: make every weapon you have a XIV over all other upgrade priorities. DO NOT chase after epic rarity while you still have XIIIs you could be upgrading. Even if they're just placeholders while you do the Epic rarity hunting dance, get those XIVs in place. (There are perversely counterintuitive strategies for doing your upgrades to maximize rarity improvements, but that's a whole separate post...)
And second, while this is gonna step on some e-peens out there, truth is the skill cap for operating a ship ain't that high. 'Keep the target where you can hit them' kinda falls under 'duh'. Most high-end builds actually revolve around bringing enough copies of the same skill or managing enough cooldown manipulation to turn 3-4 essential buffs into what are effectively 100% uptime toggles rather than clickes... and then keeping those effects on cooldown forever. There's probably a little more thought and interaction involved defensively, as those clickies tend to be used situationally and reactively. "Kill it with fire!" is actually a very linear undertaking if your ship is well set-up.
There IS finesse involved in flying your ship right up to its performance envelope and smashing those always to be smashed buttons every time the can be smashed. But there is in my not entirely humble opinion more depth involved in understanding how to set that ship up in the first place so that it is a smoothly operating portable furball of death.
There's all kinds of Trait and Doff refinement we could talk about that'll make two player with identical ship setups and trays turn in RADICALLY differently DPS numbers. And even then we haven't touched on the dark sorcery of assigning your skill points...
My character Tsin'xing
That's utterly base damage, no power changes, no active buffs - the percentage increase from XII to XIII compared to XI to XII is astonishing. No epics or the like (which are nice) - getting a really great set of modifiers is helpful, but even cheap, less good modifiers can be great until you've got your ideal build together.
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
My character Tsin'xing
Great vid, great performance. Kudos.
My KT Connie's KT phasers are all purple Mk 13, and I left them at Mk 13 for the time being because it's just so expensive dilithium-wise and I didn't want to spend all of my dil on upgrades just yet (still saving up for that 4-piece Iconian space set). But I do intend to upgrade them to Mk 14 as soon as I can afford to.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
To follow up with that suggestion, if you are planning on upgrading rarity of ship components, upgrade your consoles first to epic and then shields/engs/def/core and weapons for last. It's much cheaper to upgrade consoles and you get a bigger bang for the cost.
@tempusmagus: I've been planning on replacing my purple Mk 14 phaser relays with fleet vulnerability locators for phasers and then upgrading those to epic Mk 14, but my fleet is tiny and we don't have our fleet holdings built up or provisioned for it yet. Still working on that.
@nikeix: Interesting, thanks. I didn't know that there was that big a difference between weapon upgrades and tac console upgrades. I'll definitely prioritize upgrading the weapons first.
My character Tsin'xing
"For most builds" the fleet plasma embassy consoles are much better than the spire ones. Torpedo boats and exotic heavy don't benefit much from them.
My character Tsin'xing
My character Tsin'xing
The other item is, you can get both Beam overload, and Fire at will III at LT commander. You can however only get rapid fire two or scatter volley two at LT commander. So your going to take a small hit should you decide to use cannons. Your also going to find that damage charts are always going to place you dead last or close to it, mainly because you wont be able to zoom around and shoot everything with beams quite easily. So there is also the aspect of you needing to race to the target before someone starts blowing everything up with beam fire at will III with some top end gear.
In short I would strongly recommend you do not use cannons unless you have experience in three areas. The first is getting out of tight spots with a cruiser, can adjust power levels for more engine power, and last but not least have used dual heavy or dual cannons on a escort for extended time. Otherwise you could find it a frustrating experience.
In the end its your choice, I hope my pointers were helpful. Just one players opinion.
And personally I find the synergy between the Supercharged Weapons ship trait and one plain ol' KT photon torpedo up front to be ridiculously good. You have all three stacks up in 8 seconds and keep them until the landscape is entirely devoid of enemies. throw on at least two of the KT consoles, a phaser-based loadout, maybe the quantum phase weapons... If you know where all the by-weapon-type bonuses are, the combinations pretty much write themselves.
Sure thing and np. This thread is currently my favorite in forums as it is beautiful to see how we manage to work together constructively around here.
I also agree with you on your build copy statement. I for my part often do use the build recommendations of the STO league as inspiration what is most efficiently in shooting stuff (not to mention the in game advice of thier admins who happen to be in my FL as well). This works especially nice with gear as the game got very mono-directional towards energy weapon related DPS. Gear and especially upgrades are quiet expensive so I’m not that much in mood to experiment or to make compromises in that department.
What always work out fine however is an individual boff power layout tinkered around your individual play style. Such stuff does not cost at all. For me it’s always surprising for example how big of an influence 1-2 healing powers more have on the survivability of a ship and that without even considering more protective gear. In short even the most DPS centric builds can easily be adjusted to cope with the content when not in an elite premade. For me that’s perfect as I don’t want to look at how good my teammates are. I just want to have a good game experience with everybody who likes to have that as well.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
I believe I understand what your getting at. For me my build was a mix match between being good enough to do my part, but at the same time keeping a strictly Klingon approach. The motion picture aft torpedoes firing from the D7 class battle cruisers, one of the most Iconic Klingon scenes in Star Trek. So I wanted a couple aft Torpedoes. Given the point on target with Dual heavy cannons I feel anything less then four would be a mistake on the fore section. So I am not really comfortable with the idea of slotting a torp in the front section. The Important thing I got torps in the aft and plenty of Withering Disruptor bolts in the front. In the end thats me. Although I have not picked up the any fleet tact consoles yet. All in good time.
I have a Temporal distortion device. It's an incredibly slow, plodding weapon that always fires destructible warheads. And did I mention it's slow? No. Slower than that. It gets short of breath trying to chase glaciers. Really, really slow. If you put it in a front slot not only are you going to hate it, you'll actually be embarrassed you paid 200 lobi for the thing. It's AWFUL. Arguably one of the three worst torpedoes in the game.
Put it in a rear slot and suddenly you're an evil genius.
Torpedoes don't inherit your speed - they always start from universal full stop. In a forward slot where you may be starting your attack run from a full 10 KM away and are likely charging in full bore, you can overtake your own torpedoes because of this. you need a fast projectile, preferable non-destructible because it's gona be in the air several seconds making it's way to the object of your wrath. You can afford to be firing high damage/low shield penetration warheads because your other weapons will hopefully strip a shield facing before the torp gets there. This is torpedo 101, but worth mentioning.
All these rules are inverted for the rear-firing torpedo. You'll most likely be farting it out half a second after you've overflown the target. Your base range can be 1 km or less and that "I don't care what speed you've going, I have my own frame of reference" behavior means the rear firing torp launches like a bat out of hell. You can actually get away with destructible warheads and you are - wait for it, 'cause this part is CRAZY - not looking to do damage. You're almost certainly going to be smacking into an undamaged shield facing, which is terrible for most damage dealing torps. ....And irrelevant to CC torpedoes. If you're shooting torps with slow/stun/disable they basically give you a shot at crippling that thing you just blew past while you're laying space tracks pivoting for your next attack. Suddenly chroniton torpedoes get all kinds of sexy (and transphasic or cluster torps aren't too bad either). You can also pick relatively high cooldown warheads because you're only gonna be firing once per pass anyway.
Basically my loader down in the rear bay keeps a whole stack of pre-filed out post-it notes to stick on each Temporal Distortion warhead (100% chance to reduce Flight Speed and Turn Speed by 33%) that reads "please take a number, ****. I'll be right with you."
Getting off topic but oh well...
Anyways yea I treat my aft torpedoes just like the way you described it, however I never thought about using Chroniton or Transphasic torps in the aft. Right now I am using the Omega torp on the aft, but it does not have much punch. When I am done with the upgrade it will be the Terran photon torpedo for the set bonus, and the Romulan Plasma torpedo. I chose the Romulan Plasma torpedo specifically for the reasons you just mentioned above. It will take time before I am at that point.
My character Tsin'xing