Weapons, power transfer rate and mixing types

aodhan · February 2018

Hey, a few questions, didn't wanna flood the forum with too many questions all at once so thought I'd put them all here

Xbox one player, played for 80 days+ (as in 80 24hour periods) so I'm not at all new, nor an expert

Question one is power transfer rate and weapons. get a few conflicting stories of this.

Sto gamepedia wiki quote
"Regeneration and EPS. The rate at which power is transferred between the subsystems is defined by the EPS (Electro Plasma System)"
"This only affects power being transferred from one subsystem to another, and will not recharge weapon power lost to weapon drain faster than normal"
Now I know the wiki is written by people like us, so its not necessarily 100% accurate but better than some sources. So why do many people believe that higher eps flow and ptr etc will help their attacks occur more frequently, which is firing cycle haste surely? Even another page on the same wiki says increasing power transfer rate improves speed of firing, which just sounds contradictory. Can't remember which page though
"Energy weapon cycles can be divided into two parts: firing cycle and recharge cycle. During the firing cycle, a weapon deals damage and power is drained from weapon subsystem. On cycle end, there is weapon lockout for 1-2 seconds during the recharge cycle when no damage or power drain will occur"
As far as I'm aware haste just shortens the firing and recharge time, but is proportionate and doesn't reduce or eliminate power drain or recharge. It's just hitting fast forward basically, right?

Am i missing something here? Or are others wrong? Is it a common misconception eps speeds weapons up, or is it that nobody really knows for sure

My second question is sadly not backed up by a quote from the wiki as i can't remember which page had it on. I've seen in a few places that mixing beams and cannons on the same ship incurs a 10% damage penalty. Is this true? Now i personally prefer to not mix, it makes bridge officer abilities easier to pick, and certain traits and consoles, so you're not being Jack of all trades master of none. So is there anywhere people can point me, other than "my mate Dave says its true" to either confirm or deny this? I know some friends do mix and I'd rather not give tips for people to think about if those tips aren't actually right

Thanks in advance for any help you can give

jaguarskx · February 2018

EPS increases the rate at which power is replenished to a subsystem. Typically only energy weapon power get drained due to energy weapon fire. Though the Auxiliary Power to Emergency Battery (Aux2Bat) does drain Aux power. The lower the power is in the energy weapon subsystem the less damage your energy weapons will do. This is why some players use an EPS Flow Regulator console. Higher transfer rates means energy weapons power drops slower for better overall damage during sustained fire. It is also the reason why ultra rare and epic Conductive RCS Accelerator consoles with the [EPS] modifier are very expensive on the Exchange; they generally sell for at least 70 million EC on the Exchange, but epic Mk XIV versions are listed at over 100 million EC.

EPS does not affect energy weapon firing cycle at all. There are things in STO that can hasten the firing cycle, but EPS is definitely not one of them. Energy weapons have a 5 second firing cycle as follows:

All Beams = 4 seconds fire / 1 second recharge
Dual Cannons = 3 seconds fire / 2 seconds recharge
Tiurrets = 3 seconds fire / 2 seconds recharge
Dual Heavy Cannons = 2 seconds fire / 3 seconds recharge

I am not exactly sure how hasten works because I run tests on it myself or researched it, but I assume a 10% haste on beam weapons will shorten the firing cycle to 3.6 seconds and the recharge rate to 0.9 seconds for a total of 4.5 seconds instead of 5 seconds.

There is no damage penalty from simply mixing beam and cannon weapons. The "penalty" is that beam abilities do not affect cannons and cannon abilities do not affect beams.

aodhan · February 2018

Thanks for the response jag.

Would you be able to explain why the wiki states : This only affects power being transferred from one subsystem to another, and will not recharge weapon power lost to weapon drain faster than normal

jaguarskx · February 2018

Not sure what that means. It could be either a typo or it is old information that is no longer applicable.

All of the videos and reddit posts I have seen / read more or less stated that EPS help replenish subsystem power more quickly.

jojo42h0 · February 2018

Hello. I can't answer your questions as i am super new to the game. I was hoping I could ask a couple of my own. Ive played for a total of 2 days (48hrs) and am at lvl 60 already on my 1 character. Is that normal? Also basically whats the best way to set up a solid ship? Some pve gamesbim beast and others i cant even bring down shields. Thanks in advance for any tips.

salvation4 · February 2018

jojo42h0#1375 wrote: »

Hello. I can't answer your questions as i am super new to the game. I was hoping I could ask a couple of my own. Ive played for a total of 2 days (48hrs) and am at lvl 60 already on my 1 character. Is that normal? Also basically whats the best way to set up a solid ship? Some pve gamesbim beast and others i cant even bring down shields. Thanks in advance for any tips.

Depends on what your playing as SCI/ENG/TAC and the type of ship tour using and setup..

aodhan · February 2018

Thanks jaguar,I'll try to access the wiki and see if an author there can clarify. The issue is that many people repeat information from others, and its faithfully repeated with often little scrutiny. Example is we pranked a friend if you eat a bajoran mapa bread and wear a hat it quadruples lockbox t6 drop rates. 5 minutes later we had to stop him as he asked us if x y and z count as hats.

If there are two prevailing pieces of information, either one is wrong or both are wrong.

where2r1 · February 2018

There was a video made a few years ago by @sarcasmdetector
That video explained how EPS and power transfer rate helped with weapons power via a mechanic called over capping.

I believe a lot of this "over capping" stuff got changed along the way. Though I believe it stlll works to an extent, not sure it is as big a cap as it used to be.

Check on STO Builds Reddit for the details. https://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/
They covered those changes to over capping back when it got tweaked. I read it back then, but I really never used that mechanic and I can not tell you what the changes were and how it effected the whole power transfer thing and by how much.

Here is where the video is on You Tube....I wish I knew how to make these You Tube videos just the link instead of a picture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_DmKQjWrcQ

tunebreaker · February 2018

aodhan#2460 wrote: »

Would you be able to explain why the wiki states : This only affects power being transferred from one subsystem to another, and will not recharge weapon power lost to weapon drain faster than normal

jaguarskx wrote: »

Not sure what that means. It could be either a typo or it is old information that is no longer applicable.

All of the videos and reddit posts I have seen / read more or less stated that EPS help replenish subsystem power more quickly.

The wiki is actually true. EPS only moves power faster into your weapons when your weapon power is bigger than 125, or overcapped, as it's usually referred to (refer to video posted earlier, or links below). When your weapon power is exactly at 125 or lower, EPS does nothing to replenish the weapon power that's being drained.
Here are 2 excellent write-ups of how it exactly works, if you're interested.
https://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/wiki/math/eps
https://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/3ydhn8/eps_and_fleet_spire_cores/cycl340/

aodhan · February 2018

Ah excellent thank you very much especially tune breaker

postinggum · February 2018

Three things to remember in all this:
1. emergency power to weapons can be run as petty much constantly up, and that takes you over the 125. For a cheap build use two copies, for pricier builds use one copy and cooldown reductions.

There are many other mechanisms that give you extra power, as your ship gains more power it functions better in pretty much every way.

2. EPS is about the cheapest thing in the game to boost to a high level.
plasma-integrated warp cores and singularities with 100 power transfer can be had on the exchange at low levels for peanuts, getting a mk 12 instead of a mk 2 only buys better stat increases on other mods the core might have. EPS consoles are also pretty cheap and various free consles have some eps.

vetteguy904 · March 2018

aodhan#2460 wrote: »

Thanks for the response jag.

Would you be able to explain why the wiki states : This only affects power being transferred from one subsystem to another, and will not recharge weapon power lost to weapon drain faster than normal

you can set your power levels to priortize your power setups. the left column being weaps, second shields third eng and last aux. sy you are going into combat with a sci ship. you click the right setting for max aux. you fire your grav well/wheever, then click the weps setting to get max power to your beams. your EPS rating is how fast the power shifts from aux to weaps , in my example.

ihatepwe735 · March 2018

WTF. I had a big post here, I edited it and it just vanished.

aodhan · March 2018

The thing is that on console you can't have your own cuwtomised presetdistibution versions of ssp like you can on pc. Besides, i run full to auxiliary (80 weps, 62 shields 30 eng 136 aux) i think. I'm tired and trying to recall figures isn't my forte ahah. I'm running the paradox so running subsystems to weapons for me makes no sense. I've maxed out EPG, and have exotic critch at 50% and critsev at 34%, my seating and setup is pretty much nonstop exotics. High aux also gives me far better healing and shortens recharge times on hangar bay it has (not a major thing but doesn't hurt to make most).

Due to consoles button setup, they have a lot of autoexecutes, otherwise you'd need to hold one button in while scrolling to n ability midmatch, so you're unable to steer......you get the idea. From what I've learned and seen, science ships have beams as their tertiary source of damage after boffs and torps. Example is i can run an entire deep space encounter in beta or alpha, alone, without using a single beam or torpedo and not get below 96% health. And in delta, doing a DSE, with just boffs and torps, no beams alone, not getting below 89% health

aodhan · March 2018

I get what ptr is for. And i get how it moves blocks of 5 energy faster. Highest eps means fastest recovery from full impulse,or switching from weaoins to engines. That i never questioned.

What i WAS confused at was people saying about faster regeneration of energy WITHOUT switching subsystems. Which the wiki says you can't do. So why do people say this? If it's not true, did it used ti be true? Or is it, it never used to be true but is now? Ir have they misunderstood a mechanic? Or is it that they're right but they're just explaining it in an abysmally misleading way?

aodhan · March 2018

So to clarify. I know how to boost EPS. I know how to increase haste. I know what each subsystem is for, and what the exact power level translates to in terms of stats. I just wanna prove or debunk a lot of things I've heard in parties on Xbox that the wiki is conflicting with, and the wiki is conflicting with itself with too

borg0vermind · June 2019

So does EPS rate help rebuild weapons power when fireing weapons ?

Does it affect transfer of shields between facings ?

seaofsorrows · June 2019

borg0vermind wrote: »

So does EPS rate help rebuild weapons power when fireing weapons ?

Does it affect transfer of shields between facings ?

No to both.

The exception to the first rule would be in an Aux2Bat where you're transferring power from your Aux to other systems, it will transfer over faster. This faster transfer can help refill your weapons capacitor, but it's not recharging it (creating new power) it's simply transferring it from another source.

Nice necro thread by the way.

tobiashirt · June 2019

As for firing cycle, iirc, the way it works is 100/(100+Sum(%haste)), so 10% haste would be 100/110*base firing cycle duration.

Edit: Didn't see this was a necro until after the post got put up.

baddmoonrizin · June 2019

Necro. /Thread

Weapons, power transfer rate and mixing types

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