Wing Commander MAD wrote:After being curious about the game since it went F2P you guys have finally gotten me to try this out with this thread. After a couple weeks my Federation Engineering captain is about to reach rank 40. I've got a few questions:
1. Nope, though I'm, a co-founder of a pretty large fed fleet and have a old klingon fleet I inherited.
2. I am going with cruisers on this character. Having flown the Galaxy for a bit, is there any point in mounting torpedoes on the late game cruisers? With the sluggish turning I'm finding that by the time I get a torpedo lined up on a downed shield facing as I'm circling the target in the broadside dance of death, the shields have already healed some causing the the torpedo to only do minimal (~25% IIRC) damage. This is not even thinking about the awkwardness of trying to line up an aft torpedo shot. I've also come to the conclusion that trying to mount more than one torpedo launcher on a facing is a wasted weapon slot on the late game cruisers due to the 3 second cooldown between torpedo launchers. Those Klingon ships certainly aren't going to stay with their downed shield facing in that 90 degree arc for that long. Would canons work any better? I'm honestly, considering sticking on all beam arrays with maybe a single mine launcher and calling it good, as that setup seemed to work decently on my Connie. My greatest concern with this would be the power drain from all the energy weapons firing simultaneously. Maybe replacing the all the torpedoes with one mine launcher and the rest turrets instead of beam arrays would help some, since they have a lesser cost to fire simultaneously?
I've heard a lot of people trying to do full turret builds but the problem is that cannon scatter volley has a limited arc compared to the 360 degrees of beam spam that is fire at will. Currently beams rule the effectiveness chart. As for Torpedoes, there are ways to play them effectively but in general you only want one, and usually the Romulan rep torpedo launcher Omega Force Torp or the Dyson Grav Torp. The Romulan torp has the highest dps as a siege weapon, but don't really rock with broadsides in my mind. The Omega torp will fire about six times in ~12 seconds before needing recharged at which point you can go back to broadsiding, it also has a higher plasma burn then any other torps. The Grav Torp is a crazy science weapon of murder that massacres mobs of enemys especially if you group them up with Gravity Well. You can do a pure torp build and be moderately successful but not mercilessly so.
Mines can be fun, but really not that useful. The romulan tractor mines are ok, Tricobalt are nuts, and the Web mines are pretty decent but not reliable. No point to Photon, quantum, transphasic, and only barely chroniton.
3. Ground is not liked by the majority of players for no good reason. You can get any ground queue to pop at end game but it takes ages or you use the publiceliteSTF channel to get a team. That or a fleet.
4. Difficulty is currently stupid. No real reason to do it while leveling and once you get good enough gear and doffs ELITE PVE queues are the only thing that is worth playing.
5. I went Star Cruiser cause... I actually like it's looks. Also now that it is possible to tank I'm drawing all the fire in Mirror Invasion when people don't stop the Typhoon battelship's from spam spawning. The higher shield mod on the star cruiser (or effective shield mod using sci-consoles) really allows you to soak firepower. On the other hand I do play offensive battle cruisers and they are fun enough.
As for just how bad turrets are I believe the STO forumites think they actually lose Dual heavy cannon ships dps over not mounting them. Though the new HEAVY turret might fix that some.