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Beams, cannons, or combo?
devencombs
Member Posts: 225 Arc User
I have a fleet T6 Recon Destroyer with one phaser dual beam bank, two phaser DHC, and a quantum torp up front. Aft are the quantum phase catalyst torp and beam array, and a phaser omni-directional array.
Am I getting the most out of this weapon loadout? Would it be better for me to have all beams or all cannons? And which is more efficient at dealing damage, beams or cannons? The reason I ask is because I keep hearing conflicting stories about what is more useful.
Am I getting the most out of this weapon loadout? Would it be better for me to have all beams or all cannons? And which is more efficient at dealing damage, beams or cannons? The reason I ask is because I keep hearing conflicting stories about what is more useful.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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There are other reasons to mix too, often due to niche builds, but unless you are trying for top of the DPS list mixing only looses you a small percentage of DPS if you do it right, so it is not usually a problem either way. One thing I have taken to doing on my latest ship is to have one single canon up front since it can "see" though the visual spam that I often cannot and when I hear it firing I know to be ready to hit beam overload button because I have an enemy ship coming into arc (of course that only works because it is a Ba'ul cannon and sounds different from the others that NPCs and other players usually use, if they become too common that trick would not work anymore).
In general though, cannons put more raw damage downrange (dual heavys are the ones to use, plain duals have no advantages anymore except that they are supported on more more ships than the DHCs), but they have a narrower arc so you need a ship that can maneuver faster than than you need for a beam-armed one. It is really more about which works best with your ship and your play style. I have no idea what the Recon Destroyer handles like so I cannot recommend anything more specific.
Also, with beams there are two distinct styles. Dual beam banks force you to fly at the enemy like cannons do, but beam arrays favor a broadside style because both the front and rear array arcs overlap at the sides.
Energy weapons are only worth their money if they are properly supported by boff powers, even on an escort it'd be somewhat iffy to try supporting both beams and cannons along with torps. Either run with DBBs+omnis or DHCs+turrets to get the most out of your destroyer.
Also get rid of the standard quantum torp. Generally all the standard variants are pretty much a waste of space.
Use the special stuff that has some other effects like the quantum phase torp, gravwell torp, PEP-torp, etc. or some torp that's part of a useful set.
aut vincere aut mori pro imperio
either to conquer or to die for the Empire
I have a friend who's the same. All her ships are canon, as is her ground gear.
Me? I use different setups, according to my mood.
For the New Orleans, I'd say it depends on what you're doing with your uni boff. If you're using it as another tac, you can have enough tac powers to spare to enhance all your weapons. If not, though, I really wouldn't do it.
Cannons seem to pack a heavier punch than beams in most cases, but beams hit the target instantly; cannon shots take time to get to the target. The travel time is pretty short, but that difference can be important in certain situations. That's the main reason why I was mixing beams and cannons: each one makes up for the other's shortfalls.
This is all fairly accurate, yes. Cannons are definitely going to give you more damage.. that is what you use when you really want a ship that can clear the screen. As you said though, they do require more effort then beams, but I strongly recommend you try an all Cannon/Turret load out and practice with it. It's one of the few things in this game where you can put in some effort and gain a real reward. I was a 'beam only' guy for several years and when I finally decided to switch over to cannons.. I had a hard time with it. The more I played with Cannons though, the more I learned how to control my ship and keep my targets in my firing arc, and now I am a huge fan of the way 'front facing' ships fly.
My 2 cents though, Dual Beam Banks are not worth it. They require all the same effort as Dual Cannons/Dual Heavy Cannons they just do less damage. The ship flies just like a cannon ship.. the only thing you really do with Dual Beam Banks is nerf your output. Usually when I go Beams, I go single beams all around and keep the enemies on my sides. This technique is called 'Boradsiding' for obvious reason. It takes less effort and has a higher reward then using Dual Beams. DBB's are honestly in a pretty bad place right now IMO. I don't see a reason to use them.. pretty much ever. Your results my vary.
I understand where the thought process comes from, the issue is that isn't actually true. All it does is create more shortfalls for each weapon because now your bridge officer layout is a mess. I think once you try an 'all one type' build and see how much more efficient it is to build the ship, you'll understand why people mostly suggest you don't mix beams and cannons.
Best of luck to you.
wise, is she. this is scifi, not fantasy
aut vincere aut mori pro imperio
either to conquer or to die for the Empire
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With beams you want to keep your sides towards the enemy thus having overlapping fire from both your front and rear arc, due the 270 degree firing arc beams have, but you have less damage per weapon so having the enemy at front arc isn't as effective as using cannons for it. the effectiveness of beams depends on having 6-8 full power weapons firing at the enemy at once (cannons as only get max 5 as turrets trade DPS for firing arc)
Cannons in the other hand have 180 degree firing arc which makes them a poor at shooting at the side (you have to have the enemy exactly at center line or either the front or rear arc won't fire and the best way to use cannons in to have the enemy at your front arc and use turrets at the back (360 beams work too but they won't get benefits from cannon specific boff powers like turrets do). This however means that cannons are best on ships that have the turn rate to be able to keep their front pointing towards the target (you wouldn't want use the cannons on a D'deridex even though IIRC it's possible as they got so low turn rate that you cannon up time would be really low).
Note that you should never keep the enemy at your rear arc if you can avoid it.
EDIT:this difference in tactics becomes even more pronounced if you use dual cannons.
Dual Cannons and Dual Heavy Cannons are 45 degrees. This can be expanded to 90 degrees using Cannon Scatter Volley.
Singe Cannon firing arc is 180 degrees.
In my opinion, this is not true.
I use Cannons on mostly cruisers with lower turn rates and they work fine, especially if you use the Competitive Impulse Engines for the turn boost. Ships like the Romulan Scimitar, Tzenkethi Tzen-Tar, Vaaduar Juggernaut, and the Vengeance make some of the best cannon boats in the game.
But when you start sacrificing gear slots for more turnrate, you are basically cutting potential DPS for that slot.
That said, I also used a Scimitar with DHC for years..."worked just fine"
with DBB now it works a little bit "finer"
A fair point indeed.
After all if our goal is to help people rather then confuse them to point they quit the game, it's generally preferable that we start with the basics.
That's why I chose D'deridex as an example it's slow turning (might even be the slowest turning) that you get fairly early (it was either T3 or T4 IIRC) and also IIRC it doesn't have a T6 version atm. So someone leveling up shouldn't invest (or equip) cannons on the warbird as it turns way too slow and by the time you get the gear that can compensate for that there's better options out there.
cannons on a fast turning ship, beams on a slow turning ship is the basic rule, once they've learned that and learned why this is so they can start learning about the exceptions to those rules, for example how to build a cannon boat with a slow base turn rate.
Actually, the D'deridex does have a T6 version, the D'Khellra and its console forms part of a 3 piece set which does up its turn rate at 2 pieces. Also having battle cloak (which can be activated more frequently with 5 SRO) it has a built in button to boost turn rate that most other big ships just don't have. It is possible to do a cannon build on a D'Khellra, even if you probably shouldn't.
pretty hard to do considering over half the ships in the game are not canon, and there are arguments that even screen time ships are armed differently. search for the Akira... there are flame wars on if that ship even HAS beams. there are people out there that argue she was a torpedo, boat, pure and simple. and your T'liss.. are you really going to run that ship as a submarine with just the beach ball of death? nothing else?
OP. if you are chasing DPS, listen to the DPS league guys. otherwise just put what you want on it. you really have to mismatch to get to the point you can't beat all content on normal. my Odyssey with a regular photon forward tears through the ships in the even mission and I know it's sup-optimal because I am running the T5 3 pc set. but I think it's fun, and at the end of the day, I'm the one who is happy
Seriously, six of my Characters use cannons, split about half between Single and DHCs builds.
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 know you are just making a point, but whoever argues that the Akira is some kind of torpedo boat *without beam banks* - you can put that argument down because it's literally firing phaser beams on screen in the opening battle of First Contact. So...
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The Level I, II, III beam powers go in Ensign, Lieutenant, Lt Commander slots, so you only need a Tac Lt. Commander seat to get the top level beam powers. (As an aside, this is also true of torpedoes)
But the Cannon powers go in the Lieutenant, Lt Commander, Commander slots. This means you cannot use the CRF or CSV III powers without a ship that has a Tactical Commander BOFF seat, and those are less common by far.
I'm pretty sure we see the Akira fire beams in First Contact (the movie that is not the TNG episode), that said even the GCS had various ways of shooting from just 1 beam to dozen beams and several torps at once, so I'd say it's pretty safe to say if the model has a phaser array on it we can assume it can fire beams. As far as pure torp boats we got the example of 1 experimental ship (class?) the T'liss pretty much all other ships used by the major powers have used a mixed armament, in canon that is.
Cannons are another matter as we only seen the Defiant class from starfleet capital ships use them, though aliens use them more often.
Torpedo ships having no other weapons is, with one possible exception (the experimental BoP from "Balance of Terror"), only a thing in STO, because of the way the system works. The Akira could very well be a torpedo ship in canon since it seems to have more launchers than usual according to things pointed out in the original design by the designer.
Of course, people have also pointed out that the large pass-through shuttle bay could mean that it is some kind of carrier.
And it is not the only "torpedo boat" shown to have guns in Trek. Technically, the Intrepid class was supposed to be a torpedo destroyer large enough to ride the line between destroyer and cruiser, it was actually designed to be the Star Trek equivalent of the real world Arleigh Burke class missile destroyer, and part of the drama was the dwindling torpedo count which meant they had to rely more and more on their secondary weapon system, the phasers (the way the Nathan James had to rely more and more on its five-inch gun in The Last Ship in some seasons). The first few episodes actually have vestiges of the original survival-drama concept before it got Bermanized into just another generic cruiser-procedural story.
Yes, you are correct.. Beam Powers are one rank lower then cannons.
You should ALWAYS take the highest rank power you can for your main tactical attack. So if you're running Beams, your Lt. Commander Tactical should feature Fire At Will III. As you go down in rank the powers suffer a damage penalty and most importanly they lose accuracy to a frankly.. ridiculous degree. Fire At Will I for example is so bad it's actually a DPS loss most of the time over slotting nothing. It's awful.
For Cannons, most of the time you will likely find yourself using Scatter Volley or Rapid Fire at Rank II because it's a lot harder to find ships with a Full Commander slot to reserve to the Tactical. To combat this, most times on my cannon builds I use a console like Hostile Acquistion to make up the difference. It's a console that's very inexpensive from the exchange but will help with performance overall. For a Beam ship, honestly.. if I can't use FAW at Rank III I pick another ship.
The Intrepid-class is a downsized Galaxy class, it was never meant to be anything but that.
See:
If the presence of photon torpedoes means it is a "torpedo destroyer" then I guess. But not really.
Yes, the torpedo count was one part of the drama, however originally refueling was the big kicker. The above quoted guide mentiones replenishment of the matter/antimatter tanks to be the primary challenge the ship should face in the show, but I guess it didn't make it in the final draft
EDIT: Words
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As a rule I go beams on ships that have LtCmdr tac and cannons on my commander boats like the Chargh. Been playing around with a turret build on my B'rel and torpedo uboat on my T'liss