Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
3 
Report this post
I'm going to hazard a guess that the best combo will be cannons fore and beams aft. I was told that beams and cannons don't mix otherwise. Best of luck!
Most of my MW ships tend to go the 3 beam arrays and a torp fore, omni, 2 beam arrays and a turret aft... turrets the triggerer, the rest get the buff (although the turret also gets the buff from the others but given its dps its purely there for triggering the buff for the other two weapon types).
It really is a bit situational.
Beam weapons have a wider firing arc than the equivalent cannon weapons (except for omnis vs turrets which are both 360), with the tradeoff being slightly less damage. (This is true in the case of beam arrays vs single cannons, and also with dual beam banks vs dual cannons) But if the target is in that area where a beam can hit it and a cannon can't.... then that "less" damage actually becomes more damage because the cannon's damage drops to zero.
If you're flying a cruiser or dreadnought type ship, especially one with a lower than average turn rate (say 7 or lower), any attempt at a cannon build is probably going to lead to frustration trying to keep the narrow firing arc on target. These ships are absolutely made for beam builds.
If you're flying an escort / Bird of Prey type ship with an unusually high turn rate (say 15+), a cannon build is almost certainly the way to go, because keeping the cannons on target is not an issue, and the cannons have higher damage.
With anything in between (turn rates in the 8-14 range roughly, which will include the above average cruisers and the below average escorts, as well as most science ships), it depends on your piloting skill and comfort level with the firing arc differences.
(Your comfort with various places on the turn rate spectrum may be different than mine - or anyone else's for that matter. (I know people who fly beams on EVERY ship.) These specific turn rate numbers are just an example.)
In any of those three cases, for Mixed Armaments, you do want one (possibly two) weapons of a different type, because the bonus damage is:
a) triggered by a weapon ACTUALLY FIRING
b) applied to the other three types of weapons than the one that fired (beams, cannons, torpedoes, mines)
So you need an off-type weapon (or two!) to actually fire. A torpedo could work, though I would recommend it not be your only option due to the long firing delay. As you mentioned, a 360 weapon (or even two!) - either an omni or a turret depending on the build's primary weapon type - is the more obvious answer, because it's more likely to fire when you need it to. (One 360 and one torpedo could also work.)
Also, those off type weapons will also be bonused after the first weapon of the primary type fires, because MAS can be triggered more than once. (I do not think the bonuses are stackable though, as in you don't get the same weapon bonused twice by firing a 360 and a torp.)
Also do not rely, specifically, on the Morphogenic Polaron set's 360 weapon as it can mutate back and forth between being a beam and a cannon.
Normally, you are correct, the advice is generally to stick to either all beams or all cannons. But the purpose of that is in order to maximize the effectiveness of the BOFF fire mode skills (and not need the other type). MAS is so good that it's worth having one or even two off type weapons, and eating the damage loss from the lack of fire mode, in order to have a trigger for MAS. (In a perfect world though, I'd toss the other fire mode on the ship, or fake it with Torp Spread + Entwined Tactical matrices trait, which has the benefit of also faking the other fire mode.)
Thanks for the help!
Probably neither, really. MAS doesn't stack, so you only need two weapon types to ensure that all weapon types get the full bonus. Since you're probably not going to want to trigger MAS until you're in a position to benefit from all that bonus damage against a serious enemy or a cloud of less serious enemies, you're likely to already be in a position that both your energy weapons and your torpedo will be firing - that's the only two types you'll need.
If you're flying a ship so slow that firing arcs are going to be an issue, then you'd be considering beams with a single turret. If you were using heavy cannons you'd already be well within any torpedo arc, so... you wouldn't need to bother with a rear omni.
Pretty much no enemies will do that, actually. With the possible exception of hurq swarmers that move very quickly, the only time you'll have enemies in your aft arc is when you put them there or they just spawned. Enemies in STO make no effort whatsoever to take up strategic positions relative to your ship.
In the case of Hurq swarmers you don't need to pop any damage cooldowns as a strong breeze destroys them. The biggest threat they pose is from their core breaches.
complicating things also are double heavies having slower firing modes and less energy usage per salvo.
how well is your weapon energy budget?
most ppl try to cram their build into whatever they have with whatevers available from rep or drops.
I only suggested the rear omni for cannons, since sometimes your torp might not be up when MAS is needed or wanted... where as a single omni will be pretty much firing all the time you have a target and be ready to give MAS's buff to your cannons/turrets and torp the moment you start it.
With cannons and torps longer firing times, loosing a couple of seconds on MAS means to me at least alot.
Two important points here:
First, you do understand that you control when your weapons fire, right? If you're aiming for maximized laziness then you can set all weapons to autofire, torpedoes included, but autofiring torpedoes are going to be a generalized DPS loss - firing a torpedo at the correct time versus "just whenever" is always key to getting the most out of them. Its fine if you just want a "press spacebar over and over" playstyle, but don't claim you're all about missing seconds of DPS in those cases.
Second, the effects of energy weapons and their modes are based on firing cycles not single-fire animations. A firing cycle is generally 5 seconds long, while your typical photon torpedo has a refire of 6.5 seconds, and there are quite a few with reduced cooldowns. If timing is a concern then any torpedo with less than a 5 second cooldown is going to trigger more often than an energy weapon's firing cycle, by default.
At that point, you could have arrays fore and aft and have double that overlap. Then fly in an arc around your target, keeping them to the side. That is in fact the usual idea behind the low turn rate cruiser option I mentioned above. For a MAS build, sub in a turret. Problem solved.
Were as it's true that in most cases, you want to go all beams or all cannons, there are lots of ships do best and even come standard with beams and cannons. If I mix beams and cannons, I like to put cannon turrets on the back, and beams on the front personally. That way you get a constant 360 degree fire arch from the turrets in the back, and a good beam overload and torpedo full spread in the front.
And you are right. Most of the people on this forum are quite eager to give you their two cents about anything you ask. The problem is that most of those people don't actually play the game and haven't for years, so they tend to be out of date with their advice.
Don't be so hard on yourself. Thinking the Kinetic Cutting Beam is a "great weapon" is a mistake anyone with very little understanding of the game could make.
Pretty sure Voodoo plays currently, and I know I do.