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Do dual beam banks & single cannons need some improvement?
telbasta7386
Member Posts: 761 Arc User
My fleet was talking about weapon types and their uses on discord the other night, and this was the general consensus:
-If your ship is agile enough to use dual cannons, they're the best option (usually)
-Omni beams are pretty much always better than turrets on rear hardpoints for dps, unless you're getting other benefits out of having cannons or using turrets to complete set bonuses
-If your ship isnt agile enough for cannons, beam arrays and broadsiding tend to be the best option
-Dual beam banks are outdone by cannons on agile ships, and beam array broadsiding on slow ships, because their firing arc doesnt overlap with rear arc weapons (except omnis)
-Single cannons, similarly, tend to get outdone by beam arrays and dont seem to have much use
Basically, when it comes down to min-maxing, dual beam banks and single cannons dont really ever see much use. I know that I only use them on two ships and I'm probably gimping myself a bit by doing so: The jemhadar carrier, because it only has two rear slots (thus, two omni arrays) and is -just- agile enough to make use of dual beam banks for frontal weapons. I use single cannons with turrets on a KDF vorral support battlecruiser because it's inertia causes it to powerslide like crazy which makes keeping dual cannons on target very difficult, but having cannon abilities with things like galvanized munitions helps out a bit.
It just seems to me that these two weapon classes tend to fall short in performance compared to the much more commonly used beam arrays and dual cannons. Not sure what the solution to single cannons should be, but I'd like to see dual beam banks get a slightly wide arc so that they gain some use with beam arrays on rear hardpoints - maybe a 135'-180' arc so there's just a slight overlap with the 250' arc on rear beam arrays.
-If your ship is agile enough to use dual cannons, they're the best option (usually)
-Omni beams are pretty much always better than turrets on rear hardpoints for dps, unless you're getting other benefits out of having cannons or using turrets to complete set bonuses
-If your ship isnt agile enough for cannons, beam arrays and broadsiding tend to be the best option
-Dual beam banks are outdone by cannons on agile ships, and beam array broadsiding on slow ships, because their firing arc doesnt overlap with rear arc weapons (except omnis)
-Single cannons, similarly, tend to get outdone by beam arrays and dont seem to have much use
Basically, when it comes down to min-maxing, dual beam banks and single cannons dont really ever see much use. I know that I only use them on two ships and I'm probably gimping myself a bit by doing so: The jemhadar carrier, because it only has two rear slots (thus, two omni arrays) and is -just- agile enough to make use of dual beam banks for frontal weapons. I use single cannons with turrets on a KDF vorral support battlecruiser because it's inertia causes it to powerslide like crazy which makes keeping dual cannons on target very difficult, but having cannon abilities with things like galvanized munitions helps out a bit.
It just seems to me that these two weapon classes tend to fall short in performance compared to the much more commonly used beam arrays and dual cannons. Not sure what the solution to single cannons should be, but I'd like to see dual beam banks get a slightly wide arc so that they gain some use with beam arrays on rear hardpoints - maybe a 135'-180' arc so there's just a slight overlap with the 250' arc on rear beam arrays.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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Refit 1701 had 3 visible banks on her upper and lower saucer area as seen in Wrath of Khan. The left side bank is even shown firing full left, if not *past* the 180' arc, in the side by side pass in the Mutara Nebula scene.
*edit* WOOHOO! First post!
I don't think that either one under performs simply because they do not fit in with the current meta.
Single cannons can be quite nasty (Try a single cannon/turret build on a support cruiser). That said i would love a new category for Heavy Single cannons.
Single Cannons on the other hand....yeah they do need some real love for sure.
Dual beams at 180 would destroy themselves. The given arc of Dual Beams is 90 deg to prevent one emitter destroying the other. There are emitters at 90 degrees from forward on each side except aft.
So my thought process is that the larger firing arc allowing me to stay on target more, running single cannons and turrets on those boats just might net me a bit of a DPS boost compared to running DHcs or broadsiding.
Also factoring in is that I always run with one torp, just because, so even on my beam boats I'm always putting my target, at least momentarily, into my frontal arc and I just happen to love the look and sound of cannons. Whether a CSV in a target rich environment or a CRF at a single target it is just a beautiful thing to watch, especially if they are all the same type.
I know that with the right gear, traits, skills, etc (and a good pilot), you can make almost anything turn fast enough to use DHCs but I am looking at my piloting skills, and gearing for more damage and survival instead of having to use up slots just for a better turn rate.
Single cannons could be solid option for ships who cant mount D(H)Cs and/or players having piloting problems but depending on how good you can get (with all the gear help as in comp engines, EPE ec) in pve they also end up lacking behind by a felt 50%.
I gave up on both DBB and SC for PvE after S13 though I realy tried to get them to work again for months. They just pale too much now and toons using them ended up frustrating me.
Both weapons could use major improvement. At the moment they are behind Exotics and even Kinetics from what I could check out with my toon gang.
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The only way for dual beams and single cannons could be made equally optimal to dual cannons and single beams respectively, would be to make them statistically identical to their counterparts.
LuL what? How would DBBs destroy themselves with a larger firing arc? weapons arent targetable at all in the game, and beam arrays are already firing 270 with turrets and omnis being a full 360 and they have no issues.
I have always felt that Beams and Cannons should work like this..
Cannons - The absolute hardest hitting energy weapon in the game. Hardest to use, highest reward. This is already the case for Cannons.. so we're good.
Beams - Easier to use with lower damage. Easier to keep on target, more accessible.. but with less payoff. This is also currently the case, the big problem is that the damage trade off is the size of the grand canyon.
Dual Beams should have a slightly better firing arc then cannons. They should be easier to use while still delivering quite a punch up front. This was the case before Scatter Volley was buffed and Beams in general were nerfed. But once again, Cryptic came in with it's heavy hand and no brain and just made DBB completely useless by comparison.
You can now buff the firing arc of cannons using scatter volley. It's not 100% uptime, but you can get it close. They take the same overall effort as cannons, but they do less damage and they're harder to build around with the Omni Beam restriction for your aft weapons.
If they upped the firing arc of DBB so that it exceeded that of cannons.. 120-180' and upped the damage to where they were say 15% less then cannons.. and relaxed the insane accuracy penalty on FAW.. then we might have something.
We all know that will never happen, Cryptic doesn't put in that type of effort into balancing. The way they 'balance' is take the most powerful thing and cut it's power by 60-80% rendering it completely useless.
For this reason, DBB will likely forever sit in the trash bin with our old Embassy Consoles. It just doesn't make sense to use them, Cannons give much better payout, and Single Beams are much easier to use.
Because they have 2 emitters that stick out. I'm speaking from a real-world point of view, and to be honest, hardpoints and weapon arcs in this game do not work in reality. Go play SFC to see how it should be done.
As for single cannons, i’d Like to see a rear mounted option as well as heavy variants of all the cannons. The Heavy could have a reduced arc, larger visual effect, less shots per cycle,more damage, and possibly more range like the Lobi tetryon cannon.
As for visual effect, the single cannons as they are now, look small and out of place on my D’deridex.
Though i would not mind seeing them bring out a slow firing/high damage output narrow arc beam weapon like the lance-weapons in concept, as this would give using omni-arrays an dual beams more appeal, since this narrow arc weapon would be best used in a build that uses an existing narrow arc weapon set up to keep it on target more (broadsiding would need to shift so much to bring it to bear on the target compared to a dual bank build).
I would still say give the single cannons an dual banks some unique interaction with the tactical beam/canon boff abilities, so that there is something outside of just stats to consider when using these two (honestly could expand this to all of the weapons). When you have just the general stats to compare between weapon you always will have some weapons that are just statwise seen as useless, but if you have some unique interactions for the weapons even a weapon with useless stats could still be appealing to use based on the interaction in question. Good example a single cannon that when using rapid fire instead of ramping up rate of fire actually slows down an fires a much higher damage output shots as well as maybe longer than normal range has some appealing aspects to it.
Many of us have given our reasons why DBB's are in a bad place.. care to share why you think they're 'fine as is?'
I am genuinely curious because they definitely don't seem 'fine' to me.
We could use some improvements to turrets to make them more appealing,since with them you would not need rear mounted single cannons. If the devs were to give them the treatment of the omni arrays with a limit of two on your ship, but with the heavy/dual turrets having the ability to be buffed up more to make them stat-wise more appealing to slot than single cannons might be more appealing to slot an use.
I personally want to see more unique interactions with boff abilities used to give more appeal to using the different weapon types, as stats alone will always leave some of the weapon types jsut not appealing to use. Making it that rapid fire instead of amping rate of fie on single cannons, it ramps up thier damage an range during the usage would give the weapon type a niche that dual cannons can't fill as a long range artillery weapon (though only during the use of that boff ability).
Yet also giving us something like a slow firing an high damage per shot (though might only fire once per cycle) weapon type for beams like a lance-beam array would be a nice addition. As something like this would make using the omni-array an dual beam bank weapon types more appealing with it, since using it with beam arrays would mean having to shift your arc to fir it alot more.
Also with scatter volley I always thought it should not make the firing arc 90 degrees as it seems it does now, but instead sould give a arc increase to the cannons affected. So something like it increases the cannon's firing arc by 15-20 degreeswhile under the effect, which would make dual cannons have a firing arc of 60-65 degrees (not the 90 we have now, but still decent), but something like single cannons would get a firing arc of 200-220 degrees under the effect, so in truth this would make for a good amount of appeal to use either cannon types based on ship type.THough I would still love to see them give dual cannons a firing arc increase of 10-15 degrees (so a arc of 55-60 degrees, much more appealing to use on slower turning ships), and keeping the dual heavy cannons as 45 degrees. Such a change would give more niches for the three cannon types to fill (single cannons on cruisers that can not equip duals, dual cannons on slow turning cruisers that can equip dual cannons, and dual heavies for nimble cruisers an escorts), and the wide arc cannons would still be appealing as using them on either slow turning cruisers or nimble cruisers an escorts is appealing as they have atleast a 30 degree higher firing arc than dual cannons (45 degree increase on dual heavies).
Single cannons: 250' firing arc, can mount both front and rear.
Beam arrays: 250' firing ar, can mount both front and rear.
Turrets and omni beams: 360 arc
Dual cannons, dual heavy cannons, and dual beam banks: 45 degree arc. Buff dual beam bank damage to compensate lower arc.
Add wide arc dual beam banks to match the 90 degree wide arc cannons.
Add heavy dual beam banks to match dual heavy cannons -slower fire rate and higher damage per shot.
The worst part about this is. If you look at all the ship schematics, only the Ent-D has 250' firing arcs, and then it's a 2/2, maybe a 3/2 if you consider torps, at best.
All the other ships, Ent A-C, E and F, Voyage, Defiant, etcetera only have 180' firing arcs.
So the first change needs to be all beam arrays and single cannons need to have their firing arc reduced. This one change will help mitigate the preference of this over that.
I wouldn't mind being able to broadside with single cannons, you'd have a tough time doing it with anything less than a LtCmdr Tac station. (Would such a broadside look better on a cruiser or escort say the Prometheus-class?) Of course it would look more like Star Wars than Star Trek but still cool...
> tacticoolfugga#9235 wrote: »
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> I think the dual beam banks are fine as is.
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> Many of us have given our reasons why DBB's are in a bad place.. care to share why you think they're 'fine as is?'
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> I am genuinely curious because they definitely don't seem 'fine' to me.
I use them on a couple of ships. On those ships, I also have dual heavy cannons mounted. The DBB with the HDC gives me FAW forward, slightly larger arc and hit harder than Single Beams. My protonic polaron DBB on one ship is hardly a useless weapon and it hits around 1950 (1560.7DPS), +25% chance 409.9 non-voth, +25% chance 354.4 proton damage non-voth in addition to the polaron proc (according to the mouse over on the weapon). I don’t use DBB as a primary weapon, but more as a supplemental .
Ah, ok.. you're using tool tip damage.. that makes sense.
DBB's aren't 'bad,' they can hit pretty hard, but the problem with them is that they're functionally identical to DC/DHC and when comparing actual damage in parses, they're significantly weaker. They don't need a huge boost, just a small one to close the large gap between them and Dual Cannons.
As for Single Cannons.. they actually have a place right now and that's on larger cruisers that can't use Dual Cannons. I have been playing with them on larger cruisers.. I currently run some single cannons with turrets on a Tucker Class and while they don't hit like Dual Cannons.. they do seem to out pace single beams.
It might be somewhat of a niche, but Single Cannons currently have a place for those that don't want to use beams but have a ship that doesn't allow dual cannons. They won't set any DPS records, but they're quite effective.. especially when used on something like the Tucker where you can boost them with Mixed Armaments and Narrow Sensor Bands.
The reason DBB are a bit weaker then DHC is because they get a wider arc making them easier to get and stay on target. Single cannons could use an arc buff and be able to mount on rear but DBB are fine as they are if you ask me. Not everything needs to be about max dps parses.
Cannons are used in conjunction with Scatter Volley which increases the Arc to 90' equal to Dual Beam Banks. Dual Cannons are superior to DBB in every way, as was already covered. I also already said that I agree that DBB should do less damage then Dual Cannons, and that the problem was just the severity in the damage gap.
I do however, agree that Single Cannons should be aft mountable, that would make them really interesting.
I'm not one who needs to vaporize my opponents to feel superior, I just need to outlast them.
That's me, and being lazy and using the Lukari polaron beam, in normal STF or Episode... all I really need to do is press spacebar. Things die, I seldom have to use an ability. I use my abilities a bit more in Adv, but not buy much. More.. just to speed things up there.
But, then, the majority of the players want Super Pew. Me, I'll just keep doing my thing over here. I really need to rename my fleet, "Wake Me When It's Over".
As for DBBs.. I think the best way to give them a unique place would be to give them a reduced damage falloff and slow down their re-fire rate - turn them into an 'energy sniping weapon'. They're already somewhat suited for this, but they still need a little buff to push them into their own league for it. Specifically, make them designed to maximize abilities like beam overload and surgical strikes while being less efficient than Arrays for BFAW. Furthermore, this gives DBBs a place as a long-range option for forward attack ships while D(H)Cs remain the king for close-range shredding. Alternatively, introducing a Dual Heavy Beam Bank with these properties might be a less cumbersome alternative to implement for the existing item database.