Full AP turret build, viable?

[Ice]

I recently acquired a Kelvin Intel Dreadnaught and i am absolutely inlove with it. I have experimented with beams, dual beams, dual heavies, and turrets, all Antiproton (my favorite energy type). Now, i am going to admit straight up that i am fully aware that it is going to be mathematically impossible for me to achieve the same "melt your face off with a look" level of damage that i achieved with dual heavy cannons on that ship using turrets. I know this. But i do not like how i have to play my dread when i have dual heavies installed, it feels very uncomfortable, and i very much love the aesthetic of seeing the hardpoints firing off orbs of death from any angle i shoot from when i have my turret build going.

I have started experimenting with Elite difficulty, because i am practicing being able to carry my own weight better and i am getting tired of popping up in groups where a single ship destroys a battleship in 0.2 seconds, Makes me feel useless, especially as even my cannon build doesn't kill things THAT fast. So my question after this long drawn out rant..... Bearing in mind all my gear is tier XV Epic, my tac consoles all cater to AP, all but 2 of my other universal consoles boost AP damage, and my turrets are the fleet variant, is there any way whatsoever that i can fly into an elite difficulty TFO or patrol with a full turret build and be capable of putting out the DPS necessary to not be a waste of space?

[cap-boulanger]

Any type-matched build with that many type-specific tac consoles and universal consoles, is very likely putting out an acceptable level of damage already. (Though maybe not at Elite levels, certainly enough to pull your weight in Advanced.)

A few ideas though... are you maximizing your criticals?

- CrtD mods where possible on all your weapons? (CrtD/Dm for epic)
- Are the tactical consoles, Vulnerability Locator [AP] ones? (if not you can get these from your Fleet Spire)
- Do you have all available +Critical Hit Chance and +Critical Severity personal and reputation traits active? (Don't forget "Terran Targeting Systems" (recent lockbox trait that gives +15 Critical Severity) and "Tyler's Duality" (Disco rep))
- Do you have a Protomatter Deflector with a [ColCrit] mod? (if not you can get this from your Fleet Colony)
- If you are Romulan (faction), do you have Bridge Officers with the "Superior Romulan Operative" trait in all BOFF seats?
- If you are not Romulan, do you have Romulan Tactical Officers with the "Superior Romulan Operative" trait in all Tactical BOFF seats? (you can get these from your Fleet Embassy)
- If you are not Romulan, do you have access to the Jem'Hadar Vanguard BOFFs? (if so you should be using the Science and Engineering ones)

Also, given that it is an intel ship, you can use "Override Subsystem Safeties" to produce a damage spike (as it will overcharge your weapons subsystem energy level)

[Jaynoble55]

With turrets? Probably not. Turrets are meant to be supplementary dps to be placed in the rear weapon slots. Besides, a full 4/4 beam setup pretty much has full coverage at any point provided you are flying correctly.

[Crowbot]

Disclaimer, I'm not a DPS pro.

Why not just go with beams? You can slot two AP 360 beam turrets and the borg kinetic beam in the rear and either dual or just regular beams up front. That's full coverage and it doesn't require you to pay a ton of attention to positioning like cannons do. Especially with regular beam arrays.

[Dama733]

I've tried a turret build before and it was sub par at best, yes you get full 360 degree coverage with every weapon and scatter volley looks cool AF, but your damage output will be lower than the average beam boat.

[cap-boulanger]

Originally posted by Dama733:

I've tried a turret build before and it was sub par at best, yes you get full 360 degree coverage with every weapon and scatter volley looks cool AF, but your damage output will be lower than the average beam boat.

Well, true... turrets have 75% of the base damage value of beam arrays. Of course, the arrays have about 70% of the firing arc, so there's a bit of a tradeoff, though that can be mitigated more or less depending on how you fly.

But... in general you're probably looking at a turret build having about 3/4 of the damage of the beam array equivalent.

[chemiman]

I once piloted a Malon Battlecruiser with eight Lukari Piezo-Polaron Turrets. This ship has a turn rate of 6, and I thought turrets would cover for the inability to turn to my opponents fast enough. And Piezo-Polarons, well, for the tankiness of course.

I could play most PvE endgame content without any problems. The battles were quite long, though. DPS wise, that ship was really bad, and in TFOs I couldn't contribute much, even as a tactical captain. I guess I was not the ideal teammate. Perhaps if you go Antiprotons, you should follow the tips from cap-boulanger above, that will help with your DPS.

But it was a lot of fun, and yeah, Scatter Volley looks cool.

[cap-boulanger]

Originally posted by chemiman:

I once piloted a Malon Battlecruiser with eight Lukari Piezo-Polaron Turrets. This ship has a turn rate of 6, and I thought turrets would cover for the inability to turn to my opponents fast enough. And Piezo-Polarons, well, for the tankiness of course.

I could play most PvE endgame content without any problems. The battles were quite long, though. DPS wise, that ship was really bad, and in TFOs I couldn't contribute much, even as a tactical captain. I guess I was not the ideal teammate. Perhaps if you go Antiprotons, you should follow the tips from cap-boulanger above, that will help with your DPS.

But it was a lot of fun, and yeah, Scatter Volley looks cool.

Those tips will actually help regardless of energy type, although Antiproton weapons have an extra +20 Crit Severity (effectively an extra CrtD mod) built in, so it's even better for those.

(Of course, you would vary the mod on the Locators to whichever energy type you are using.)

[Ice]

Thank you all very much for your answers and feedback, and cap-boulanger thank you very much for the detailed response. I had many of those items, but thanks to your reply i now know i need to make a trip to the Embassy and do some re-engineering on my weapons. I will also most likely switch to a beam boat, my turrets were there almost literally for the aesthetics that i loved but if i can never be adequate enough with them then it's time for me to grow up.

[cap-boulanger]

Originally posted by Ice:

Thank you all very much for your answers and feedback, and cap-boulanger thank you very much for the detailed response. I had many of those items, but thanks to your reply i now know i need to make a trip to the Embassy and do some re-engineering on my weapons. I will also most likely switch to a beam boat, my turrets were there almost literally for the aesthetics that i loved but if i can never be adequate enough with them then it's time for me to grow up.

If you do go over to beams, pretty much all of the non-weapon equipment is the same anyway.

For weapons, in terms of advising specific ones, it depends if you want to go to a dual beam/omni sort of build or an array build (I personally usually put omnis on arrays anyway, though some people don't; I do so because it still gives you a little bit of a forward skew in your damage availability).

There is an AP Omni from "Sphere of Influence".

As for your equipment... in addition to the Protomatter Deflector, I would personally look at using a 2pc Nukara set (+cat2 damage) since there is not a space gearset with +AP Damage. There is also a warp core (from the same episode) that makes a set with the omni with a +AP Damage set bonus, but using that warp core might be a big sacrifice. I personally prefer the Elite Fleet Plasma-Integrated that has both [AMP] and [W->E] (second from bottom of list at fleet spire vendor), as it has a nice +Power Transfer Rate, the AMP is a stackable +Damage, and the W->E will help stack AMP and is the best available of its type (with a possible match in W->A, but W->A will get sucked into the cycle if you are using Aux2Bat while W->E does not).

[MiKHA]

Try beams but using Kelvin timeline phasers -- you get beam dps but with the pulse fire feel.

[OldBoy87]

https://youtu.be/dlZBLv4_ML8

Yeah, full turret builds can be pretty viable - if you're willing to put in the effort and money...