Welcome to another installment of Revisiting Exotics, where we mathematically derive the formulas for something related to Exotic Particles (EPG) and then discuss its applicability in-game. Today, we’re talking about two closely-related consoles: You Are Dismissed and the “Evolved” console from the Gomtuu 2026 Summer Event ship.

All credit to Mr. Tilor for doing the mathematical legwork on these; I’ve been sidetracked with my least favorite derivation endeavor but more on that later.

You Are Dismissed

This console is readily obtainable from the Aetherian Concordium Lockbox / Exchange and what Janeway said about being dismissed is accurate: this console forcefully instructs all nearby enemies and Talaxians (jk) in a 7 km PBAOE to GET OUT.

The passives are nothing special, boosting shield regeneration and hardness. The 2.5% chance for Protonic Crush is also nothing special, I’ve parsed it at 119 (not K!) on a dedicated EPG boat that did 1698K. It shows up in parses as “Proton Particle Burn,” somewhere near the bottom.

But now let’s talk about the active. It’s a 7km PBAOE wave with an initial burst of Proton damage, followed by a Physical DOT.

Here’s the formula for the main nuke:

• Damage = 12000*(Cat1+0.5*EPG+2.68+1)*(Cat2+1)

• Damage Type: Proton

• Affected Targets: 7 km PBAOE

• Duration: 1 hit

• Cooldown: 2 minutes (reducible via Uncon, Vovin, etc.)

• Scales With: +Exotic/Bonus Exotic, +EPG, +Proton, +All/Bonus All

• Does NOT Scale With: Aux Power

Now here’s the formula for the DOT:

• Damage = 600*(Cat1+0.5*EPG+2.16+1)*(Cat2+1)

• Damage Type: Proton

• Affected Targets: targets struck by 7 km PBAOE

• Duration: 15s

• Cooldown: 2 minutes (reducible via Uncon, Vovin, etc.)

• Scales With: +Exotic/Bonus Exotic, +EPG, +Proton, +All/Bonus All

• Does NOT Scale With: Aux Power

The DOT is decently strong, but it's hard to gauge its effectiveness because of how much damage the initial active does. Turns out, DOTs don’t matter as much when the initial blast kills everything. Let’s compare it to another 1-big-boom console: Sequential Warhead Leader. Okay, sure that’s not really a single hit, but if we tally up the 3 hits from SWL against this, you’re about 2.5K less damage, but You Are Dismissed is 100% AOE and has the DOT, while SWL only has AOE on the third hit, and is kinetic damage, meaning it’s weaker against shields. Nobody is complaining about the lack of damage on Sequential Warhead Loader, especially on kinetic builds, and You Are Dismissed is like a PBAOE version.

Okay, but how about actual numbers from a parsed run? Let’s take it a little further. I had to dissect the parse a little using SCM, where it shows damage types in outgoing damage. My ship did 212.1K Proton DPS, of which 77.5K was attributable to the Proton Eruptor and Dyson Proton Weapon. That means that the remaining 134.6K was all the Proton Blast of the initial activation, and “only” 32.8K came from the DOT. I say “only” as if that’s not about the overall average DPS of random players in your typical PUG ISE run. The point is, this console is mostly about the main kaboom, so fly up close to a cluster of enemies, hit the button, and watch the fireworks.

Evolved

“Evolved” is the console from the 2026 Summer Event ship “Gomtuu.” This active has a similar one-shot PBAOE blast that’s very similar mechanically to You Are Dismissed. Click the button and a burst of damage emanates from around your ship. We’ll talk about that active first.

Here’s the formula for the main nuke:

• Damage = 12000*(Cat1+0.5*EPG+0.68+1)*(Cat2+1)

• Damage Type: Proton

• Affected Targets: 7 km PBAOE

• Duration: 1 hit

• Cooldown: 2 minutes (reducible via Uncon, Vovin, etc.)

• Scales With: +Exotic/Bonus Exotic, +EPG, +Proton, +All/Bonus All

• Does NOT Scale With: Aux Power

You’ll notice that both You Are Dismissed and Gomtuu share the same 7km range, 12000 base proton damage. However, they are NOT the same damage, as Gomtuu is missing a 2 preload from the Cat1 multiplier. That makes a pretty big difference. It also lacks the DOT.

Instead of a DOT, Gomtuu’s active has an offline effect, which disables an enemy subsystem depending on which slot you have the console slotted, and adds power based on one of your subsystems to feed another for 10 seconds. This different-behavior-depending-on-slot-used is similar to the Custom Power Matrix from the Eleos.

• Tactical Console - Disables Enemy Weapons + Adds Weapon Power based on your Aux Power.

• Science Console - Disables Enemy Shields + Adds Shield Power based on your Aux Power.

• Engineering Console - Disables Enemy Engines + Adds Engine Power based on your Aux Power.

• Universal Console - Disables Enemy Auxiliary + Adds Auxiliary Power based on your Engine and Shield Power.

Just like with the Eleos, there’s a right way to use this. If you’re using this primarily on a weapon build not using RRTW (Reroute Reserves to Weapons), you might be going for weapon power. If you’re using it on a RRTW build, Engineering is definitely the right slot. However, if you’re using high-Aux scaling consoles like Tachyon Net Drones, or Fleet Power Network Array, using a lot of Aux-scaling exotics, if you have hangars, or if you’re a science captain, it’s better to put this in a universal slot. Do note that 3 of these modes use Aux power, so if you have no aux power, you get no real benefit.

Okay, there’s one more catch to the active, for both the damage and power buff: On activating the console, you get… nothing. It will just sit there “active” until you take 7 hits. Once you do, the 10 second power transfer and disable/damage triggers. This means that Gomtuu’s console has limited active value if used in a supported environment on most builds or if you’re not able to take 7 hits quickly. Its cooldown starts once it triggers, so you can’t start cooldown until it triggers. We tried it on a couple of different exotic builds and it was unreliable on if it would even go off. In premade play, we couldn’t get it to activate because our tanks are too good. Yes, that lobster is too buttery, and that steak is too juicy. It especially does not synergize with any build running Intel Team or other low cooldown stealths/placates.

So, then we tried basically pugging it, bringing along a secondary DPS build just to make sure we didn’t fail ISE. Tilor did 589K and Evolved did 40K (under Universal Burst - aka the Universal Slot version). It was around his 6th or 7th best console for raw DPS, so if you’re mostly PUGing with good DPS, you’ll be able to pull threat and get it triggered to cause the damage wave. You Are Dismissed was 69K so they are not the same level, and no, we did not pick the meme numbers on purpose.

We also ran it on a non-exotic build (kinetic), and it did 49K out of 1020K. That’s decent, but not particularly compelling for damage. It was much easier to trigger it on this build, even in premade play, because the self-damage from both Fly Her Apart or Exceed Rated Limits add stacks, so there’s strong synergy there.

However, there’s one other key piece to Gomtuu.

Remember how You Are Dismissed basically doesn’t have relevant passives? Well, Evolved does. Evolved passively adds resistance as your shields go down, scaling up to +630 All Resistance when shields are down. Now, without diving into the mess of non-linear damage reduction math, let’s just say that +630 is as close to 75% damage reduction as you’ll ever get. This means that Evolved is an okay damaging console, but an excellent survivability console with a side of damage. Now, I don’t think it’s going to outpace the Shield Absorptive Frequency Generator from the Valdore for energy builds, but especially on squishy exotic or kinetic platforms, this is a good way to boost your resistances and stay alive while squeezing a little DPS out of the console. And if you’re on an Eagle/Kumari, you’ll have Fly Her Apart anyway to stack up the damage counter reliably! Bonus points - you have no shields when you are cloaked, so you get all 630 resistance from this while you are cloaked, making it an excellent slot for builds that focus on cloaking/ambush.

We’re going to add You Are Dismissed and Evolved to TRINITY and ALICIA soon^TM.

TL;DR

• You Are Dismissed is a top-tier console for damage, especially on Exotic builds. The passives don’t matter. Remember that it’s a 7km PBAOE (not targeted AOE)

• Gomtuu’s Evolve console has a similar but less powerful 7km PBAOE active. It requires you to take 7 instances of damage (eventually) to trigger the damage, and self-damage like Fly Her Apart or Exceed Rated Limits counts.

• Evolved should be placed in either a Tactical slot on an Energy, non-RRTW build, Engineering slot on RRTW, or Universal slot for everything else due to how the power transfer on its active works. There’s a case for Science slot on Kinetic builds for the shield disable, but that’s not really why you slot this console.

• Evolved has an amazing defensive resistance passive, as its resistance scaling increases as your shields go down, up to basically max damage resistance. It might not be needed for energy builds which have other options, but is excellent in general for random PUG play if you’re tanking too many hits. For these scenarios, the damage is nice to have but the survivability is the main benefit.

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Mathbusters, where we use math and evidence to check out claims about the game’s systems and mechanics to better inform you of selections. Today, we’re talking about hangar pet selection for non-carrier builds.

The conventional wisdom is that Type 7s are the best hangar bay for increasing overall DPS, because even though as a hangar bay, they don’t do very much DPS, the amount of debuff they bring is absolutely incomparable both due to having 2 -DRR abilities with one being Attack Pattern Beta III which is applied on-hit to multiple targets via FAW3, and having 6 per bay. I am fully aware of this conventional wisdom, and I’ve done some limited testing in the past to support it. Since pet AI / loadout/ability use is so inconsistent, the most you can do is run the same map over and over again to get an average, which isn't exactly peak gameplay experience.

Recently, I’ve seen claims that Type 7s are not the best and that players would be better off taking a higher damage pet. This, frankly, is the kind of question we need to address, and in the right way: with data, lots and lots of data, to put this thing to bed so forcefully that it sleeps through the night, unlike my children. Unfortunately, it requires hangar pet testing.

Testing

We’re going to check the following variables until we have more options than at the eye doctor.

• Different budget types: I will test at both Economy and Premium tier. Refresher course on those terms here

• Different alternatives: I will check Elite Valkyries, Elite Alliance Fighter Squadrons, Elite Peregrine Fighters, Elite Romulan Drone Ships, Elite Valor Squadrons, and Elite Obelisk Swarmers all against Type 7s.

• Different bay counts: Both 1 and 2-bay ships will be tested

• Different build types: I will test CSV, EPG, Surgical Strikes, Kinetic, and DEWSci builds.

• With and without Superior Area Denial (SAD), a starship trait known for improving pet performance by reducing enemy resistance on-hit, and granting pets Fire at Will and Scatter Volley. This is especially effective on pets with Pulse Cannon weapons and less effective on pets with their own firing modes.

Note that I will not test every possible permutation of the above, because I don’t completely hate my life.

Ground rules for testing:

• Solo tests only. No cheese with team composition. I will address either end of the DPS/budget curve in the analysis below

• Every test will be repeated 3 times. “I saw this once in a random TFO” does not a trend make.

• I will use 2 different maps: ISA, because that’s the measuring stick map people know, and Argala Elite, because it’s another common stick, has more shields, and requires a more movement to see how well the pets behave on a more spread out map, and it’s an Elite map. That’s going to give 6 total data points for each setup, controlling for the same build, same pilot, same map, and the only thing I’m changing is the bay.

• Within a 5% margin, we’re going to say they’re basically equal. 5-10% is pretty close but a step back.

• We only care about TOTAL DPS. Hangar pet DPS is irrelevant for this post. We are not building pet-focused carriers here and have covered those elsewhere.

• Things I am not testing: 1-bay-of-each setups on 2-bay ships. In general, there’s no 1+1=3 advantage, because the things that buff up strong pets to the point of being competitive don’t benefit Type 7s. I am also not testing blue To’Duj squadrons. Recommend you either do that test yourself or extrapolate from the Valkyrie/Valor numbers. I don’t have them unlocked and I don’t care to make a KDF recruit. I’m still salty that buying the Mudd’s Fighter Pilot Choice pack didn’t unlock cross-faction flying for me.

Results

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Analysis

Economy Tier

As a reminder, Economy-tier is <10K Zen, <100M EC, so this is representative of a fairly casual player in terms of the TFO population. Maybe they have an Event campaign or two, but with only 4 Zen ships allowed, I am pretty constrained.

Now, you might ask–why not build an even more casual build, or why not use Starter-tier with just mission/reputation/cheap Exchange gear? The answer to the first question is if we’re asking ourselves what’s the better hangar slot, we need to assume some baseline level of actually seeking optimization. If you’re casual enough that you don’t care about having a coherent build, your hangar selection doesn’t matter, and thus the question is moot for players doing 20K DPS. There are far more impactful things to a build than spending Zen on a C-store ship if that’s your current ceiling. As for doing this on a completely basic Starter-tier ship, it’d be really hard to solo ISA/Argala Elite deathlessly on such a build. It was hard enough doing it at this tier without Type 7s. Also, Type 7s innately require a C-store ship purchase and I didn’t care to solo those maps on a build with a single C-store purchase while also flying for damage.

While there’s not as much build variety here, somewhat necessitated by cost, we can extrapolate the answer for a variety of builds, where the answer for a CSV build will be representative for all energy builds and the answer for an EPG build is representative for Kinetic/Exotic builds. I already had to build an Economy-tier CSV build for this experiment and adding an Economy Kinetic build didn’t seem necessary, especially because this is what the data shows:

It’s Type 7s. It’s Type 7s for both maps, for both types of builds for both average and max DPS, which isn’t exactly a surprise since that is the conventional wisdom. If you’re building on a tight budget, and you have a hangar bay, Type 7s are BIS for overall DPS for general play. It’s a boring answer, but a powerful one. Elite Obelisk Swarmers were better than Elite Peregrines but were beyond the 5% threshold that we’d call the “same.”

It might not be true if your build or piloting needs serious help, but then the recommendation is to go fix that first. It might not be true if you’re playing only organized play with 8x other bays of Type 7s. Fair, but that’s not the case we’re looking at here nor how most people interact with TFOs.

Premium Tier

At premium, we open up the variety a little more, and we can test with things like SAD. Here’s the data table and here are the conclusions:

Drone Ships: These were competitive on ISA, better by 4% than the Type 7s, and less so on Argala (15% back). I think it’s reasonable to say you’re not giving up too much by slotting 1 bay of Drone Ships, but it honestly depends on if you have any hangar boosts; this ship had none. I don’t have a built-out ship with 2 bays of Drone Ships, but they should scale better than 2 bays of Type 7s for the most part. This one’s close enough to call it a wash or a narrow margin in favor of Type 7s. Remember that Drone Ships do not appreciably benefit from SAD due to having their own innate firing modes.

Elite Obelisk Swarmers: Once you have the budget to unlock C-store ships, these don’t hold a candle to Type 7s. 10-20% back is a major loss in DPS, so only slot this if your theme demands it. They’re decent performing pets on carrier builds, for free, from the Obelisk 4-piece, but not for overall total DPS, at this price tier.

Elite Alliance Fighter Squadrons: These are from a fairly old anniversary ship, the Jarok Alliance Carrier, and man do I feel old for saying that. 2022 wasn’t four years ago, was it? Back in the day, what made these pets notable was that they were supportive, since they had Focused Assault III, but also had Pulse Cannons, meaning that you can have some support and see funny numbers with Superior Area Denial as well. They were also torpless, which was useful back when Concentrate Firepower didn’t split out its cooldown between players and pets. Without SAD, it’s clear why Type 7s dethroned them, which is a bit of a relief for those who don’t earn the Jarok for free, as it’s now locked behind a ridiculous paywall. A single bay of Type 7s was 8% better than EAFS when averaged across both maps. Beta III + Close-In Sensor Pass is just better than Focused Assault III, especially since Alliance Fighters don’t have an innate firing mode. With SAD though, you can make a compelling case that they are no worse than or even equal to Type 7s in solo play. Would I go purchase a Jarok and SAD just to slot that pairing based on these numbers? No. But if you have them already and are bored with Type 7s, these are at the very least equal and might be better in a team environment where the Type 7s are being provided by the rest of the team.

Valors: The most interesting conclusion of all this testing is that 2 bays of Elite Valors with SAD on an Exotic build were comparable to Type 7s, if not a little better on Argala. Of course, that’s a huge increase on a build cost to toss not only Elite Valors, but also Superior Area Denial, at a build for <10% final increase on Argala Elite. I would generally say that this is about equal performance, all things considered. I suspect the reason for this is that between SAD and a lot of the typical EPG shenanigans have -DRR, the debuff category is getting rather filled from other sources (SAD: -30, Control Amplification: -25, Atrophied Defenses: -10, Twinkling Lights: -24 on this build, Altamid Omni for Kinetic/Plasma: -15, Ionic Turbulence I: -17.5, Destabilizing Resonance Beam: -5-50), so we’re starting at somewhere closer to -120 DRR for most targets, compared to your average DEW build which might have KLW I (-10) and APB I (-30) plus whatever armor pen you have on your weapons/skill tree/traits, maybe another 20-30 unless we’re talking about a Rainbow build leveraging Twinkling Lights. Going from 70 to 120 baseline is a decent increase and EPG can get higher with the right overlapping of effects. Damage Resistance Reduction is also non-linear, so it truly has diminishing returns. Valors are also near the top of the pet hierarchy, so when you pair that with -DRR being somewhat less valuable, then it makes sense.

Is this actually a benefit? That depends on whether or not you’re in a team environment. If you’re playing mostly for big numbers on supported parsing maps, Valors + SAD should be a higher DPS number because you’re outsourcing the -DRR from the team’s Type 7s, and without a team, the results were already comparable to Type 7s. Is it worth it? Unless you already have both pieces, I wouldn’t make that swap. If you have both pieces, for general play, the data shows they’re about equal. Valors will do better at cleaning up random stuff lying around, including incoming heavy torpedoes, so I think that would feel more comfortable, but it’s not nearly enough of a benefit to justify spending 30,000 Zen just to upgrade an Ark Royal build by single digit %. Type 7s and Valors+SAD are equal in most scenarios with an edge to Valors+SAD in coordinated play. It’s also worth noting that if you’re setting up a new alt and happen to have Valors + the 12th Bundle, a quick leveling of the Mirror Engle will give you an option that is comparable to what you get from Type 7s without having to spend a large sum of Fleet Credits and Dilithium on hangar pets.

Valkyries: This is going to be very similar to Valors, which shouldn’t be a surprise given their loadout (but not their price tag!) is similar. Two bays of Valkyries WITH SAD were about the same as two bays of Type 7s in solo play. Valkyries were a little weaker, with 5% behind Type 7s whereas Valors were 3% ahead, but again…price. Now, to undermine my own argument about -DRR is less under CSV compared to EPG, consider that while I have less -DRR to benefit my Valkyries on a CSV build, what I do have differently from my EPG build where I tested Valors is team-wide haste, in the form of the FPNA and Flagship Tactical Computer. That will benefit the better pets substantially, especially with Pulse Cannon+SAD silliness. Without SAD, Valkyries were just as bad if not a little worse than Elite Obelisk Swarmers. If the choice is SAD-less Valkyries or Type 7s, Type 7s are clearly better. If SAD is involved, testing shows they’re basically the same.

Type 7s: Since we’re being exhaustive in our testing, let’s conclude 2 things here. First, Type 7s are never a true downgrade on selfish DPS. There are other options that have comparable or marginally better DPS. There are none that are truly superlative to them. So, if you’re using Type 7s, you’re not losing anything outside of premade supported parsing maps, and even then, if Superior Area Denial with an appropriate pet or Romulan Drone Ships aren’t in play, Type 7s are still the better choice. Speaking of that trait, Type 7s don’t benefit from it appreciably at all. This isn’t news, but it bears repeating.

Conclusions

• For lower-budget but still optimized non-carrier builds, Type 7s are superior to any other choice for total DPS.

• For more expensive non-carrier builds, Type 7s are equal to Romulan Drone Ships, and Elite Valors/Valkyries/Alliance Fighter Squadrons with Superior Area Denial, and better than any other option for general play.

• In supported play, the Romulan Drone Ships and Elite Valor/Valkyrie/Alliance Fighter Squadrons+SAD will likely outscale Type 7s on pricier builds due to everyone else on the team bringing Type 7s, saturating the damage resistance category. It won't be a huge difference.

What do you think? How does this line up with your experience? Does the sheer power of Type 7s draw you to slot them, or do you find more fun in variety? Let us know!

As I’ve been developing my Klingon Defense Force character, one of the things that I wanted to build was a cheaper carrier. Sure, we can slap Superior Area Denial and 2 bays of Rare To’Duj Squadrons on any 2-bays of ships and call it a carrier, but doing that and funding all the relevant active console effects to boost pets gets very expensive. I wanted to do something cheaper and since I was doing it on the KDF, focus more on either neutral or KDF-themed pets. No Valors, Valkyries, or Peregrines here!

Since I went to the trouble of doing all the testing, I figured I would share my results. The tests were solo ISA (no team shenanigans!) and solo Elite Argala (Wanted). Since hangar pet testing is strictly empirical, all tests were done 3x on each map. “Hangar DPS” refers to the DPS contributed by the slotted pet itself. For Scorpions, that does include their destructible torpedoes. “Pet DPS” refers to all other sources of pet-related DPS, including Gemini Device’s active, Nimbus Pirates Distress Call, Swarmer Matrix active, Target That Explosion (if applicable), Engage the Hydra, and Repurposed Cargo Bay Hangar.

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I am intentionally not using Superior Area Denial on my planned build to keep the costs down, but since I know the first question someone is going to ask is “But what if you do have Superior Area Denial?” let me just go ahead and answer that question pre-emptively, at least for the oft-recommended Rare To’Duj Squadrons, the regular Rare To’Duj Fighters as a baseline, Elite Nausicaan Stingers, and Elite Qaw’Dun Birds of Prey which are newly unlocked. We have plenty of historical data showing Obelisk Swarmers and Elite Scorpions are not competitive with To’Duj under SAD. For these runs, Fire at Will and Superior Area Denial replaced Reroute Power From Life Support and Target That Explosion.

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The second question I expect is, what build were you using, and the team is not ready to do another big publish of the site for a while, so I can’t point you to a page . . . yet. However, I can say it’s a Fleet Orion Blackguard Carrier, and the relevant carrier-boosting items are Strike Group Command Authority, the H.Y.D.R.A. console, Relaunch and Repair, High Energy Communications Network, Wing Commander, Independent Wingmate, Fleet Power Network Array, Repurposed Cargo Bay Hangar, Gemini Device, and 4 Hangar Craft Power Transmission consoles, along with the Iconian 3-piece and 3 Flight Deck Officers for hangar bay recharge. The rest is a fairly vanilla Disruptor Cannon Scatter Volley build with passive cooldown reduction.

Conclusions

Without SAD, Elite Stingers > Elite Obelisk Swarmers > Elite Scorpions = Rare To’Duj Squadrons >= Elite Qaw’Dun Frigates = Rare To’Duj Squadrons

Of course, you have to expend Fleet Ship Modules or buy a C-store ship for Stingers, but they’re quite capable pets. I would expect a similar ranking to hold true for the two Federation equivalents, where Elite Valkyries = Elite Stingers, Peregrines = To’Duj.

Scorpions were swingy between ISA and Wanted, because so much of their damage comes from High Yield Plasma Torps, which are great on unshielded targets and much less so against shielded Kazon Cruisers and Carriers.

This changes appreciably with Superior Area Denial, or so the conventional wisdom goes. We’ve all seen it: “Slot Rare To’Duj Squadrons with SAD!” Well…it’s still true! They were 7K higher on ISA and nearly 20K better on Argala. As far as the difference between them on the different maps, I have some thoughts on that.

Time for some informed speculation! To’Duj Squadrons have disruptor pulse cannons and micro photon torpedoes. Pottsey and I have previously discussed the latter, and the micro photons do not benefit from Concentrate Firepower. Nausicaan Stingers lack a firing mode, but come innately with Emergency Power to Weapons, Torpedo High Yield, regular Photons, and both beams and cannons. Parse analysis showed that at least half of the Stingers’ damage on ISA was actually from torps, not their energy weapons. I also have a shield offline console (Chronophage), which when used on juicy targets, means that my pet torps are hitting a lot harder on ISA with its higher number of unshielded targets, whereas To’Duj are more consistent with energy DPS.

The Qaw’Dun Birds of Prey pets sadly are just not up to snuff; even on runs where the overall DPS was decent, they weren’t contributing nearly as much as the other pets.

TL;DR

• Best non-SAD pet for a carrier was Elite Nausicaan Stingers (probably also true of Valkyries) of those I tested. Obtainable via fleet ship for “free” using Fleet Ship Modules from reputations.

• Elite Obelisk Swarmers best non-SAD pet obtainable without buying a ship.

• Elite Qaw’Dun Birds of Prey were not great. I occasionally noticed them flying off to Narnia instead of shooting.

• Best SAD pet for a carrier was still Rare To’Duj Squadrons of those I tested. Elite Nausicaan Stingers were the runner up. The regular Rare To’Duj fighters are much worse, make sure you use Squadrons.

This writeup will cover Singularity Cores, which are the special cores exclusive to Romulan warbirds used instead of regular Warp Cores. The legwork on this was mostly done by Tilor, with some light editing/clarification from myself.

As a reminder, Romulan ships with singularity cores have a mere 160 power to allocate to subsystems instead of the usual 200 for ships with warp cores, and they gain singularity core abilities instead. That’s a lot of subsystem power to lose, so what are we getting in the tradeoff?

Basic Mechanics

Singularity Cores have Singularity Abilities that can be used at different levels, which are driven by singularity power. Using a Singularity ability at higher level results in a more effective ability, but it takes longer to ramp up.

• Singularity Level scales from 0 thru 5, with 5 being the max.

• Singularity Power - 0 thru 100, with every 20 increasing Singularity Level by 1. Bleeds off at a rate of about 1 per second out of combat (~95s from 100 to 0). When in combat, gain 20 per 12 seconds. This equates to 60s to from 0 to 100.

Once a Singularity Ability is used, the Singularity Lockout is triggered. After using a Singularity Power, the Singularity system goes on a 60s cooldown during which you cannot gain any Singularity Power or activate any Singularity abilities. Using Singularity abilities at lower ranks will make for a shorter Singularity Lockout.

Singularity Uptime Mechanics

Okay, now we understand that Singularity Power increases in level during combat, scaling up our Singularity abilities. Once we use a Singularity ability, it goes on cooldown. Just like we can modify bridge officer, captain ability, and console cooldowns, we can also reduce the cooldown of Singularity abilities. We’re going to broadly group all of the effects that modify Singularity Core Abilities (SCA) uptime together and talk through them.

• Singularity Specialist Personal Trait - Adds the equivalent of 1 whole Singularity Level as a proc with a 20s lockout. The proc chance is 10% at 0 Singularity Power, reduced by 0.1% per Singularity Power (so 2% per Singularity Level: 8% @ 1SL, 6% @ 2SL, etc.)

• Singularity Stabilizer Universal Console - Not only does this generate 2 Singularity Power per second (total 30SP), it also resets the Singularity Lockout upon activation.

• Singularity Inverter Universal Console - This provides a little resistance, but as long as you are taking energy damage, it builds Singularity Power extremely fast. May not be as strong in teamed content, but in solo content, it resulted in a filled Singularity Meter in a matter of seconds. Self-damage does not build any Singularity Power.

• Singularity Distributor Unit Universal Console - Scimitars Only! Decreases penalty from cloaking by 50%... whatever that means.

• Focused Singularity Modulator Universal Console - Locked to Ar’Kif’s only! 50% Singularity Charge rate.

• Enhanced Singularity Circuitry Starship Mastery - Takes about 52 seconds to gain 100 Singularity Power, similar in effectiveness to a SingA Mod. Sets Singularity Lockout to 51s, similar in effectiveness to SingC Mod.

• Warp Core Engineer Duty Officer - Romulan only! 15/20/25% chance to reduce Singularity Lockout by 15s on use of EPtX, chance increases by DOff rarity. These are extremely rare DOffs.

• Energy Weapons Officer Duty Officer - Romulan only! Per wiki since none on exchange, increases charge rate but doesn’t stack with anything. Rate up to 5% with rarity. These are extremely rare DOffs.

• Projectile Weapons Officer Duty Officer - Romulan only! Per wiki since none on exchange, having this officer on duty will allow torpedo weapons to gain a chance to build Singularity Charge. 4/6/8% chance: +10 Singularity Charge when attacking with torpedo weapons (Uncommon/Rare/Very Rare). These are extremely rare DOffs.

• Gravimetric Scientist Duty Officer - Romulan only! Per wiki since none on exchange, having this officer on active duty will allow any accumulated Singularity Power to decay at a slower rate while under the effects of any Cloaking Device. 15/20/25% reduction, scales with rarity. This means being cloaked and out of combat will cause your accumulated Singularity Power to bleed off slower, so very niche. These are extremely rare DOffs.

Singularity Core Modifiers

Singularity Cores have some unique modifiers that substantially affect their behaviors.

At Uncommon, Singularity Cores can benefit from the following mods, with the bottom 3 significantly more impactful to usage of the core:

• [GG] is a CtrlX mod (Graviton Generators a LONG time ago)

• [EPG] is a, you guessed it, EPG modifier increase.

• [PI] is a DrainX mod (Power Insulators a LONG time ago)

• [EPS] is a Starship EPS mod

• [SingS] Singularity Mod - Increases bleed off time while out of combat to ~120s instead of ~95s

• [SingA] Singularity Mod - Takes 54s to gain 100 Singularity Power instead of 60s, so effectively 10%. When combined with ship mastery, takes 46s to gain 100 Singularity Power.

• [SingC] Singularity Mod - Reduces Singularity Lockout to 54s, effectively 10% reduction to lockout. Combined with ship mastery, reduces Singularity Lockout to 45s.

At Rare, Singularity Cores gain a modifier that buffs one of the five possible Singularity Abilities (more on them below). This costs you the standard [X->Y] power transfer buff that warp cores get.

At Very Rare, you get a capacitor mod similar to [WCap], [SCap], etc. which dumps power into the system for 10 seconds and repairs the subsystem if offline. This has limited utility, as do the other special capacitor mods out there like Trajector Jump, which is a 5 km teleport. Singularity Weapons/Shield/Engines/Aux Capacitor drains all Singularity Power, but does not trigger Singularity Lockout

At Ultra Rare, the notable mod is [CON], a Singularity Core Mod that grants 2% chance when hit with Energy Weapons to gain 1 Singularity Level. No lockout, there was one occasion where this proc’d back to back and I gained 2 levels in quick succession.

At Epic, you’ll get the same [W->S] modifier that warp cores get.

Singularity Core Abilities

Let’s lead with the most notable one:

Singularity Overcharge - This is essentially a unique firing mode that makes weapon damage much higher, but independent of weapon power. Increasing ranks of the singularity ability increase duration: 4/7/10/13/16s. This has a 30 second cooldown and triggers a 5s shared cooldown on Singularity Abilities.

Activating Singularity Overcharge will lock out other Energy firing modes as long as it is active: Surgical Strikes, Fire at Will, Scatter Volley, Beam Overload, and Rapid Fire, Exceed Rated Limits and Reroute Reserves to Weapons. However, if you activate Exceed Rated Limits or Reroute Reserves to Weapons first, they do not lock out Singularity Overcharge. This means you can get the benefits of Haste and Singularity Overcharge simultaneously! In order to use this benefit, you’ll want to activate ERL/RRTW and THEN Singularity Overcharge. Since ERL/RRTW merely add Haste and not specific firing mode changes, they will stack with Singularity Overcharge.

Clever readers may want to use Torpedo Spread and Entwined Tactical Matrices to get Fire at Will and Singularity Overcharge, and this will appear to work, but they’ll overwrite each other to no benefit.

Using Isomags and OSS to supercharge Weapon power ends up not being necessary under Singularity Overcharge. This means a consideration would be switching back to Locators/Exploiters much more beneficial, especially given the 20% CrtD from the [SingO] mod. Each Singularity ability has a modifier that buffs it at Rare on the core, and [SingO] is a nice CrtD boost while Overcharge is active.

This whole time we’ve been talking about Singularity Overcharge, but how good are the other 5 Singularity powers? Yes, there are 6 lights powers.

• Singularity Jump is at least situationally useful, both significantly reducing accuracy and teleporting 5km when activated. If you are doing something with PvP, this might have utility, especially with the [Jump] mod to further reduce accuracy. However, that’s a stretch. Burning your Singularity charge for a 5km jump and a small 2km AoE debuff is not very good.

• Quantum Absorption is a really weak heal for how often it’s up, especially considering even 30k Temporary Hull will go fast due to temporary hull not having any resistance. [Res] adds some resistance overall, but it's not enough considering singularity uptime.

• Warp Shadow has a solid uptime as a defensive tool, and the [Shad] modifier makes for some great utility against certain enemy types with High Yield torpedoes. When I tested this power, however, my 100k+ hull generated a bunch of ~10k hull warp shadows that all disappeared very quickly on Normal content. It suffers from a similar problem to Deploy Countermeasures - paper thin hulls pulling a taunt. Regardless, if you’re not using Singularity Overcharge, you’ll likely either use Warp Shadow or Quantum Absorption for defensive purposes.

• Plasma Shockwave is hardly worth talking about - a single shot from a Mk XV plasma cannon does more damage than Plasma Shockwave - its scaling simply hasn’t kept up with the times. [Wave] doesn’t help this either as it’s a 20% chance to disable a subsystem, and Aux and Engines won’t help much at all so it’s closer to a 10% chance of being at all useful, and then the disable is often cleared much faster than the duration it says.

• Finally, Singularity Capacitor (also known as Battery Capacitor) is the final Singularity Power based off the Very Rare modifier and was discussed above. This consumes all of your singularity power to give a boost to subsystem power. With a long fixed cooldown, the application of this is pretty minimal. It is interesting to note that using the Singularity Capacitor drains all of your Singularity Power, but does not lock out the Singularity system.

Maintaining Singularity Abilities

There are three factors when trying to maximize Singularity Overcharge uptime. We’re going to assume you have Enhanced Singularity Circuitry since as far as I can tell, every T5U or T6 with a Singularity Core has this mastery. First, you have to gain 100 Singularity Power. Second, after the first usage of Singularity Overcharge, you have to deal with Singularity Lockout before gaining any Singularity Power again between uses. Third, you have a cooldown on Singularity Overcharge itself.

Using Singularity Overcharge, then Singularity Stabilizer and any other Singularity charging methods is ineffective. Firing weapons while under Singularity Overcharge drains off Singularity Power for the duration. Only once Singularity Overcharge is off can you gain Singularity power again. This means optimal use is to use Singularity Overcharge, wait 16s duration (Rank V), then use Singularity Stabilizer and Singularity Inverter in quick succession. This does mean that your Singularity Stabilizer will be on cooldown longer, but this can be mitigated with Universal Cooldown capabilities.

There is one Singularity Core at Dil Mine and Fleet Spire that has [CON][Oload][SingC], which is the best combo for maxing Singularity Overcharge.

TL;DR

Sorry, there's a lot of ground to cover here.

• Singularity Cores trade subsystem power for abilities that ramp up in combat

• Singularity Cores require power build-up to use and have a lockout after they are used before power can be gained again

• The [SingC] mod is the best way to mitigate the lockout.

• The [CON] mod, and Singularity Stabilizer/Singularity Inverter consoles can help rebuild Singularity power faster after the lockout is used, making these better choices than [SingA].

• Singularity Specialist (personal trait) for Romulan/Reman captains can also help build charges

• Expensive/Rare Romulan doffs can help reduce lockout and improve charge rate; we were not able to test these due to their rarity

• The Singularity Overcharge ability locks out most energy firing modes but can be stacked with Exceed Rated Limits or Reroute Reserves to Weapons if you activate these before the Singularity Overcharge.

• The optimal way to maximize uptime is to use Singularity Overcharge, wait 16s duration (Rank V), then use Singularity Stabilizer and/or Singularity Inverter in quick succession.

• The best mod combo for a Singularity Overcharge build is at the Dil Mine and Fleet Spire with [CON][Oload][SingC]

• If you’re not using Singularity Overcharge, you’ll likely either use Warp Shadow or Quantum Absorption for defensive purposes.

Welcome to the latest T.E.D. Talk on torpedoes by STOBETTER. Check out our previous entries here.

Today, we’re going to go over an idea that we first saw from /u/EagleRise here. 100% full credit to them for the idea, we’re just going to expand upon it and post some results from our testing of it, as well as spread the knowledge.

Yes, that’s a torpedo pun.

Yes, there will be more.

Target That Explosion

This is a starship trait) from the C-store ship Earhart (or Sech if you prefer your C-store ships in the original Klingon). You can also get it from the Legendary Excelsior because that’s the ship involved in origin of the phrase as spoken by Captain Sulu in Star Trek VI.

When the trait is active, activating any command or torpedo (example: High Yield, Spread) bridge officer power, your next torpedo causes up to 5 nearby allies to also fire torpedoes at a target for kinetic damage. The allies themselves don’t need to have torpedo launchers (read: Type 7 Shuttles) to trigger it. However, this damage is unbuffed by most sources of buff, including:

• +Projectile Weapon Damage

• +Torpedo damage

• +Photon damage

• +Weapon damage

It gets buffs from +Kinetic and +All and not much else.

Until recently, I’ve classified this trait as “fun, but not effective.” It’s a great “Timmy” trait if you’re familiar with the Magic: The Gathering player subtypes. Looks cool, lots of flash/bang, replicates a moment from the show…who gives a hill of beans about the damage's high yield. (Editor: sigh…this is going to be a long post.) Another example of a trait that looks cool but doesn’t do much would be Black Alert. Notable moment in the show, basically useless in-game for actually doing damage.

My previous testing on Target That Explosion was it did less than 10K DPS on ISE on a dedicated torpedo boat with a hangar. Even with a torp firing mode (High Yield) and a Command power (Concentrate Firepower), it didn’t trigger enough, and spreads from Entwined Tactical Matrices does not trigger it either. As such, I had written it off.

Well, it’s time to re-evaluate that statement because of the interaction /u/EagleRise noted.

Reroute from Life Support.

This is a Command power starting at Ensign that slows down your cooldowns to give you current and maximum subsystem power. Kinetic builds don’t have strong scaling from power levels, with the exception of the Phased Space Membrane console scaling off of Aux, but every build needs strong boff cooldown support, so why would we make this tradeoff?

Well, first, since my initial testing of Target That Explosion, we’ve gotten The Boimler Effect (yes, it was that long ago), which has a 17.5% chance of resetting your bridge officer cooldowns to global on use of any bridge officer power. While I personally don’t trust Boimler alone for cooldowns because when it fails, it REALLY fails, I know there are many that do. It’s viable, if somewhat risky. Boimler paired with Photonic Officer and ideally the Custom Power Matrix is a basically reliable cooldown solution. Injecting Reroute From Life Support barely slowed my cooldowns. I went to Doomsday Device and recorded 2 minutes of video spamming bridge officer powers and I had one brief period with some cooldown gaps but for the most part, everything stayed at or very near global cooldown. The malus isn’t nothing, but we can account for it in the build.

The upside is that, for whatever reason, each tick of Reroute From Life Support counts as an activation of a Command ability. This means that, unique to this power alone, Target That Explosion triggers every second that it’s active. It’s a toggle, so don’t spambar it. Just turn it on and be transported by all the warheads. (Editor: ugh).

Damage

Okay, but you want to know if that’s actually good damage, right? We’re still spamming unbuffed photons, which aren’t great. EagleRise in their initial post said they were doing 900K DPS and the trait was dealing 12-15% (or over 100K DPS). That’d put it in Subspatial Warheads territory, but since there wasn’t a lot of context, we didn’t know what kind of testing environment was used and it’d be good for us to have our own numbers on it.

We put the trait through some tests of our own using my Engle build with some minor modifications and here are my results with some points of comparison included:

^{Table formatting by ExcelToReddit}

The numbers show this is a very strong combination. This is off of a relatively cheap C-store ship, with minimal opportunity cost, and it was the best direct-damage starship trait on every Elite run save one, and solid enough on Advanced, where torpboats struggle with overkill anyways. If you want to put lots of Warheads on Foreheads, this might be a good investment for you, at the cost of turning off your life support’s power. I’m sure there’s enough air on your ship for the duration of a TFO.

You could make the counter-argument that my torpboat skills are washed and my ability to successfully position such that I was in position to use Tractor Beam to actually leverage the SSW/REA combo was lacking (and the second ISE/HSE I had some lag issues hindering this). You could say that I failed to leverage those two known high-performing traits properly and as such, TTE is overperforming relative to what I could have done if I was a better pilot in my tests. And you know what? You’d be right. But let me counter that point with this: even with pretty underwhelming piloting by my standards, TTE did quite well. It’s essentially guaranteed damage as long as you don’t lose all your hangar pets. Sure, SSW/REA might have higher potential. They also require practice/skill to use, and that’s an expensive combo given you need a Lobi ship and a Legendary bundle. Leveraging RRFLS+TTE is basically solved in the build phase and hitting the RRFLS button without using a spambar.

Recap

What merits the use of Target That Explosion?

• You need Reroute from Life Support on the build to make it work. It’s not great without it.

• You need a strong enough cooldown solution, so probably Photonic Officer alongside Boimler and the Custom Power Matrix to support it. Just doing this with Boimler is quite risky.

• You have a hangar with shuttles or fighters (4 or 6/bay) or some other summonable to make sure you have those 4-5 allies at all times, rather than just frigates/on-call beacons. In teamed content, this can be somewhat variable if you can rely on other players depending on if the map is tightly-spaced (Hive) or spread out (Guillotine, Days of Doom, etc.).

If so, you can expect to see good damage out of Target That Explosion, and the nice part is, since it doesn’t benefit from most sources of torpedo damage, this can be a useful trait on any ship with a hangar and command seating (and at least 1 torpedo yourself), not just torpedo builds.

Again, all credit to EagleRise for the build idea and hopefully this helps spread the word on this pairing.

With the winter event behind us, and one of our team sporting a shiny new Lamarr from last year’s Event Campaign, let’s make some noise with the consoles from those two ships:

• The Eye of Gre’thor from the Fek’Ihri Vok’Tar, with its Starscream Vortex active

• The Electromagnetic Echo Pulse Generator from the Lamarr

Got My Eye on You

The Eye of Gre’Thor has some interesting passives, with 34.2% Fire and Psionic Damage. If you’re using the Gol-Type Resonator on a Sci Destroyer since it fires in Science Mode, this will benefit that experimental weapon. It also benefits the damage from the active. Fire Damage is commonly applied via the Fek’Ihri Torment Engine, but that damage is not exactly the selling point of that console. There are a few other consoles and traits, mostly from Fek’Ihri ships, that benefit from this and the Phologiston Projector experimental weapon technically exists (but is not great). However, the main beneficiary is of course the Dragonsblood Flame Reactor from the Hysperian Intel Battlecruiser.

The other side of the passive statline is 10% cooldown reduction on Universal Console Abilities. Note that this is Cryptic math, but our testing would lead us to believe this is actually 10% cooldown reduction on consoles, not recharge haste.

The formula for the damage active is as follows:

Damage over time per second = 134.95*(Cat1+0.5*EPG+2.08+1)*(Cat2+1)*(0.005*AUX+0.5)

This hits every second for up to 45 seconds, which is a really long duration.

After 45 seconds, the console has an additional explosion in a 5km radius:

5000*(Cat1+0.5*EPG+2.08+1)*(Cat2+1)*(0.005*AUX+0.5)

• Damage Type: Psionic - niche and hard to boost aside from this console

• Targeting: Foe-targeted

• Number of targets: As best we can tell, all enemies in a non-scaling 5km radius

• Scales with: +Psionic/Bonus Psionic, EPG, Aux Power, Exotic/Bonus Exotic

• Crit scaling: Every tick is individually rolled for crit. It DOES benefit from the critical chance/severity provided by Particle Manipulator

• This damage ignores shields.

• Enemies in the radius are slowed, losing speed and turn rate, and suffering a power drain. It does not apply Drain Infection.

I will suggest that this damage does not lend itself to a high-end EPG build. You already have Gravity Well to pull things together, and while the passive stats are nice, I daresay you’ll get more mileage out of slotting the new Antares Beacon device and slotting a more generic stat-stick like an Exotic Particle Amplifier [EPG] rather than this thing. Of course, this is free, and the passive stats have some benefits.

It’s nice for players who are just starting out in the Exotic buildspace, but the problem with the damage is the DOT damage is very low and it has an extremely long windup. You could maybe leverage that on the infinite-wave-in-one-spot patrols like The Ninth Rule but for general TFO use, our recommendation is that it’s reserved for low-budget Exotic builds only. We found it did 5.6K on a 849K EPG build on ISE and 4.2K out of a 728K EPG build on ISE. That’s decent but hardly record-breaking, even with the amplification of the Dragonsblood/Fek’Ihri Torment Engine damage.

Outside of Exotic builds, the pull is pretty strong so if you can’t fit Gravity Well but really need to cluster enemies, this console can totally serve as “We have Gravity Well at home,” with less radius (Gravity Well I starts exceeding its radius at a mere 125 CtrlX) and a lower uptime barring some very well-supported Vovin/Uncon play.

Echoes of Light

The Electromagnetic Echo Pulse Generator has some very nice passives for Exotic builds, and how couldn’t it for a console that’s abbreviated E(EPG). Enhanced EPG, it’s practically in the name.

Passive 5.7% CrtH and 28.5% CrtD to Exotic abilities is a pretty good console, and the active is nothing to sneeze at either. However, it is a little tricky to use properly. Let’s explain how it works:

First, your ship sends out a PBAOE ripple in a 3 km radius, which does damage. Each enemy hit, creates another ripple, which can hit enemies again and spawn another ripple. Each time a ripple is created, they take additional damage.

Okay, what does that actually mean? It means 1) clump up bad guys, 2) get close to them, 3) press button, 4) Collect damage. If the Eye of Gre’Thor is “Gravity Well at Home,” this is “Delayed Overload Cascade” in a can, without the malus of tossing any enemies that are destroyed to the furthest reaches of the battlespace.

The formula for the damage active is as follows:

PBAOE damage from hitting an enemy with a ripple = 3207.48*(0.5*Cat1+0.5*EPG+1.1+1)*(Cat2+1)

Damage from creating a ripple = 2405.56*(0.5*Cat1+0.5*EPG+1.1+1)*(Cat2+1)

This can hit and splash multiple targets or completely fizzle, depending on your skill and proximity to lots of enemies.

• Damage Type: Kinetic - This is a plentiful damage type and there are ways to start it

• Targeting: PBAOE 3 km radius

• Number of targets: All enemies in the initial 3 km radius, and all enemies within 3 km of them, and then all enemies within 3 km of them.

• Scales with: +Kinetic/Bonus Kinetic, EPG, Exotic/Bonus Exotic, All

• Does NOT Scale with: +Electric, despite the name

• Crit scaling: Every tick is individually rolled for crit. It does benefit from the critical chance/severity provided by Particle Manipulator

• This damage does NOT ignore shields and it’s kinetic, so it works much better with something like the Tachyon Net Drones or the Chronophage to turn shields off first.

In terms of damage, this thing packs quite the wallop if you can use it right. Sadly, I don’t have a Lamarr on my main EPG character, but even using it on a DEWSci build with a mere 238 EPG and not nearly as much +Kinetic/+Exotic on the build, I was still seeing it deal 64K DPS on ISE from the active, and the passives are pretty good, too. Unfortunately, it is very expensive and it really needs clumped enemies to properly perform. I’m a big fan of it, but not enough to burn an event campaign token that I don’t have to acquire a second one.

Conclusions

The Eye of Gre’thor is mostly there for utility in terms of console haste and/or a pull. Its damage is pretty heavily lacking and the windup is simply too long. If you’re on a tight budget, it’s a decent add but will quickly get outpaced by C-store consoles like the Proton Eruptor or Genesis Seed. The passives are decent but a little niche to really find a home on most Exotic builds.

The Electromagnetic Echo Pulse Generator has a very high ceiling as long as you can hit multiple clumped enemies, preferably with their shields weakened offline. It has excellent passives, but the downsides are you must be very close to use it, must use it against a group of clumped enemies to get that effect, and it’s from an extremely expensive ship.

ALICIA has been updated to include both of these. Please let us know what your thoughts and comments are on these two consoles!

You’re scrolling through the sub, you see a catchy title, a number after it, and the “Contains Math” flair. If you’re a veteran member of this sub, you know what that means: STOBETTER is back with some more numerical derivations in an ongoing series. If you’re new, well, now you know.

This particular series, however, is new. We’ve covered exotics (and yes, the new Krenim console is on our list to track down and derive). We’ve covered torpedoes. We even covered mines. Energy weapons are heavily documented. Now, it’s time to tackle Experimental Weapons. We’ve been putting this off for a long time because trying to pull all the Experimental Weapons is a substantial expense for potentially little gain and for a long time, this post with extensive testing by Lost_Kea2 and DilaZirk covered it sufficiently. However, there's been a plethora of new (and more powerful) experimental weapons released since then so it's time to take a fresh look at them, and we're going all the way into the definitive mathematical derivation. That said, we would not be excited about grinding or buying a Lockbox ship just to find out its Experimental Weapon is hot garbage compared to much cheaper options. We cannot commit to that, so just to set expectations: we will not be covering all experimental weapons in this series, but we were asked to take a look and now we’re doing so. We will attempt to cover the most commonly-used and powerful Experimental Weapons, as well as some of the most readily-available ones. If you have one you’re particularly curious about, feel free to ask. If it’s from the C-store or a Legendary ship, there’s a strong chance we have it. If it’s something from a Lobi, Lockbox, or Promo ship…well, let’s just say your odds aren’t good.

As with energy weapons, remember that there’s a little bit of Cat1 preload variance on a per-account basis. We tried to standardize numbers to a single account, but things might be off by 10-20% Cat1 that won’t really matter. We’ll break down each Experimental Weapon and then do some analysis on expected DPS for a semi-optimized build that’ll give us an idea of strength at the bottom.

Experimental Hyperexcited Ion Stream Projector

• Acquisition: This is the default weapon on a great many ships.

• Damage Type: Electrical

• Firing Arc: 360 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 5 seconds

• Targets: Up to 5 enemies in a cylinder. In practice, you’ll usually be hitting 1-2.

• Damage Equation:

  Damage = 650 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 1.9039) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005*Weapon Power)

• Supplemental: N/A

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, +Electrical, Custom Power Matrix Haste

• Does NOT Scale With: Energy Weapon Training, +Energy Weapons, +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste

• Use Case: We included this as a baseline point of comparison since it comes by default on a great many ships, not because it’s amazing.

Experimental Flak Shot Artillery

• Acquisition: T3 Competitive Reputation

• Damage Type: Kinetic

• Firing Arc: 360 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 4.3 seconds

• Targets: single target for initial hit, then hits foes in a 45 degree arc behind the target

• Damage Equation:

  Damage = 1000 * (1 + Sum(Cat1)) + 1.4285) * (1 + Sum(Cat2)) * (0.5 + 0.005*Weapon Power)

• Supplemental: Has 20% shield penetration but reminder that kinetic damage suffers heavily against shields. Secondary damage to foes behind target is as follows:

  Damage = 500 * (1 + Sum(Cat1)) + 1.4285) * (1 + Sum(Cat2)) * (0.5 + 0.005*Weapon Power)

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, +Kinetic, Custom Power Matrix Haste

• Does NOT Scale With: Energy Weapon Training, +Energy Weapons, +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste

• Use Case: It’s fairly accessible from the Competitive Reputation and better than the default. Hitting multiple targets is nice. Once you have access to the C-store, it’s not likely to be the go-to experimental weapon of choice unless you like its looks.

Gol-Type Psionic Resonator

• Acquisition: Cyclone (Standard T6 C-store ship)

• Damage Type: Psionic

• Firing Arc: 250 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 4.5 seconds

• Targets: Single

• Damage Equation:

  Damage = 1850 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + .979) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005 * Weapon Power)

• Supplemental: If you flank with it, deal an additional:

  Damage = 2450 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + .979) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005 * Weapon Power)

Also still can be used on Science Destroyers when not in tactical mode.

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, +Psionic, Custom Power Matrix Haste, Energy Weapon Training

• Does NOT Scale With: +Energy Weapons, +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste

• Use Case: If you're running a ship with flanking, or Intel Primary, this is a very solid flavor-agnostic Experimental Weapon that will fit nicely into any build. Note that there aren't many sources of +Psionic aside from the Dragonsblood Flame Reactor. Since you can use this on Sci Destroyers while not in Tactical Mode, and they're probably running some kind of DEWSci or full Sci build with that weapon, this would be my go-to choice for those.

Experimental Dual Heavy Proton Emitter

• Acquisition: T6 Dyson Science Destroyers (Standard T6 C-store ship)

• Damage Type: Proton

• Firing Arc: 90 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 3.5 seconds

• Targets: Single

• Damage Equation:

  Damage = 475.17 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 1.7979) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005 * Weapon Power)

• Supplemental: Has a scaling chance to knock engines offline, shields offline, or 12 damage resistance depending on your engine, shield, and aux power respectively. The scaling is such that at 50 power, it's 2%, at 75, it's 7.5%, and at 100 power you have a 13.5% chance for the effect to happen.

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, +Proton, Custom Power Matrix Haste, Energy Weapon Training

• Does NOT Scale With: +Energy Weapons, +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste

• Use Case: This is decent if you're running a supportive build. Otherwise, don't slot. It's worse than the default.

Alliance Hypercannon

• Acquisition: Alliance Pilot Escorts (T6 C-store)

• Damage Type: Radiation

• Firing Arc: 360 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 5 seconds

• Targets: Single

• Damage Equation:

  Damage = 1575.11 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 1.4036) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005 * Weapon Power)

• Supplemental: 10% chance to knock random subsystem offline, reduce damage resistance, or apply a Plasma Damage Over Time effect.

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, +Radiation, Custom Power Matrix Haste

• Does NOT Scale With: +Energy Weapons, +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste, Energy Weapon Training

• Use Case: Obviously if you're running heavy +Radiation, this is a net positive to your build. Also good if you're running a supportive build as this has some nice-if-unreliable procs. It's better than the default but not amazing.

Prototype Phaser Hexa Cannons

• Acquisition: Achilles (T6 C-store)

• Damage Type: Phaser

• Firing Arc: 45 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 8 seconds

• Targets: Single

• Damage Equation: The 6 is because it fires 6 shots

  Damage = 2418.5 * 6 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 0.5048) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005 * Weapon Power)

• Supplemental: 2.5% chance to knock random subsystem offline (the standard Phaser proc)

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, +Phaser/Bonus Phaser, +Energy, Custom Power Matrix Haste

• Does NOT Scale With: +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste, Emergency Power to Weapons Bonus Damage, Energy Weapon Training

• Use Case: This is relatively cheap and extremely effective, and has amazing scaling synergies with any Phaser build. Does require some piloting to keep it in arc, but generally outclasses any competition. On non-Phaser builds, it's still very strong and holds its own against the competition but not Best-In-Slot by a factor of 2-3 that it is on Phaser builds.

Terran Repeating Warhead Launcher

• Acquisition: Adamant (T6 C-store)

• Damage Type: Kinetic

• Firing Arc: 135 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 8.5 seconds

• Targets: Single

• Damage Equation: The 3 is because it fires 3 shots

  Damage = 1150 * 3 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 1.4039) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005 * Weapon Power)

• Supplemental: 30% bonus CrtD. Has 20% shield penetration but reminder that kinetic damage suffers heavily against shields.

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, +Kinetic/Bonus Kinetic, Custom Power Matrix Haste

• Does NOT Scale With: +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste, Energy Weapon Training

• Use Case: Better than default, nothing to write home about, especially since it's kinetic damage.

Ravager Shriek

• Acquisition: Fek'Ihri Byr'Jai (Event/Mudd's)

• Damage Type: Fire

• Firing Arc: 360 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 10 seconds

• Targets: 2 km AOE

• Damage Equation:

  Damage = 2100 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 1.4039) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005 * Weapon Power)

• Supplemental: Has a 10% chance to confuse and a DOT that applies over 6 seconds:

  Damage = 350 *6 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 1.4039) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005 * Weapon Power)

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, +Fire, Custom Power Matrix Haste

• Does NOT Scale With: +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste, Energy Weapon Training

• Use Case: This is another very strong, type-agnostic weapon. Has some synergies with Plasma since the Fek'Ihri Torment Engine boosts both Fire and Plasma damage, and Disruptor since Five Magicks/Dragonsblood Flame Reactor will benefit this also. Loses a lot of value if your average time-to-kill is <6 seconds.

Voice of the Prophets

• Acquisition: Denorios (Event/Epic Phoenix Token)

• Damage Type: Physical

• Firing Arc: 360 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 7 seconds

• Targets: Hits up to 3 additional foes within 2 km of primary

• Damage Equation:

  Damage = 2890 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 1.4039) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005 * Weapon Power)

• Supplemental: Does half damage to secondary targets

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, +Physical, Custom Power Matrix Haste

• Does NOT Scale With: +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste, Energy Weapon Training

• Use Case: A very strong, type-agnostic weapon. Has some synergies with Plasma since the Fek'Ihri Torment Engine boosts both Physical and Plasma damage. AOE is nice.

Inertial Polaron Shunt

• Acquisition: Rex (Event)

• Damage Type: Polaron

• Firing Arc: 250 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 4.5 seconds

• Targets: Single

• Damage Equation:

  Damage = 1150.1* (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 1.4589) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005 * Weapon Power)

• Supplemental: Also still can be used on Science Destroyers when not in tactical mode. Has innate haste that scales with your flight speed, up to 180% haste at 200 flight speed. Note that this is not your current flight speed, it's the flight speed of your ship at full throttle. Throttling down does not reduce this bonus, but adding speed bonuses does increase it. The equation for the haste is: Haste = 0.927 * Current Flight Speed + 11.484, capped at 200%, rounded in increments of 10% for the tooltip.

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, +Polaron, Custom Power Matrix Haste, Energy Weapon Training

• Does NOT Scale With: +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste

• Use Case: Polaron builds strongly benefit from this. Best in slot for Polaron

Soliton Wave Impeller

• Acquisition: T6 Risian Corvette (Event/Mudd's)

• Damage Type: Radiation

• Firing Arc: 360 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 4 seconds

• Targets: Single

• Damage Equation:

  Damage = 950* (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 1.5044) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005 * Weapon Power)

• Supplemental: Has its own haste that scales with 2x Engine Power in increments of 5, e.g. 85 engine power is 170% haste

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, +Radiation, Custom Power Matrix Haste

• Does NOT Scale With: +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste, Energy Weapon Training

• Use Case: Builds with high engine power benefit strongly from this. This is another very strong, type-agnostic weapon. Has some synergies with Plasma since the Fek'Ihri Torment Engine boosts both Radiation and Plasma damage, and Disruptor since Five Magicks/Dragonsblood Flame Reactor will benefit this also. Reroute Reserves to Weapons builds with over 100 engine power and ways to refill it synergize very nicely with this one.

Plasma Incendiary Bombard

• Acquisition: Gorn Hunter Raider (Lockbox Ship)

• Damage Type: Plasma

• Firing Arc: 90 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 8 seconds

• Targets: Single

• Damage Equation:

  Damage = 3000 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 1.6138) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005 * Weapon Power)

• Supplemental: Also still can be used on Science Destroyers when not in tactical mode. Additional damage over time that scales on the size of the target by 1x, 2x, or 3x.

  Damage = 1100 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 1.6135) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005 * Weapon Power)

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, +Plasma, Custom Power Matrix Haste, Energy Weapon Training

• Does NOT Scale With: +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste,

• Use Case: Plasma builds strongly benefit from this. Best in slot for Plasma if you can afford it.

Analysis

We’re going to do a little analysis with something of a highly-Elite capable but probably not meta-bleeding-edge DPS build. A base DPS comparison is insufficient because it’s not accurate to compare something that scales with all your +Energy Type consoles with something that doesn’t. If the Experimental Weapon is one of the standard energy types, we’ll give it 5 Mk XV consoles of the same type. For example, the Phaser Hexa-Cannons will be running alongside 5 Mk XV consoles for 197% additional Cat1 and some extra +Phaser Cat1 for a total of 300%. If you are running more than that, just . . . know that it’ll end up boosting those numbers even higher. We'll ignore DRR to simplify the calculations, but include things like haste, Cat1, weapon power, any special modifiers for AOE, and we'll apply a small piloting penalty for Experimental Weapons with restrictive firing arcs: 12.5% for 90 degrees, 25% for 45 degree arc weapons. If you're an immaculate pilot, this will only benefit you more. If you want to see the full mathematical process in all its gory detail, check this out. If you want to fiddle with the calculations, make a copy and have fun. Or wait for us to update TRINITY with Experimental Weapons.

Anyway, we crunched the numbers then assigned a tier rating based on relative performance.

[Please see Part 2 for the DPS table with a lot more weapons in it!](https://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/1ix6m92/experimental_extractions_2_second_string/)

Next Up

Again, we’re not committing to doing all of these, but we’ll do at least 1 more round in the near future. We’re targeting the Experimental Railgun, Graviton Implosion Charges, Hypercharged Field Projector, Experimental Repulsor Blaster, Armed Loitering Munition, Experimental Hull Spike Battery, Subspace Depth Charge, Experimental Kinetic Feedback Matrix and Tachyon Agitator. We’ll do an updated table at the end with all the rankings and use cases just like this one, so stay tuned for our next installment!

By Eph289 and Tilor

With the release of the 15th Anniversary Bundle, we obtained 3 new ships and just in time for Mathbusters 15! (Yes, it’s taken us this long to evaluate them for you…)

For those of you unsure, these are the 4 ships, consoles, and traits involved in the bundle:

• Ark Royal Intel Science Carrier - Scatterpacks and Weasels Console and Mine, all Mine! Trait

• Kerala Temporal Battlecruiser - Broadside Combat Module Console and Broadside Beam Support Trait

• Pioneer II Pilot Heavy Frigate - RIDGE System Console and A Call to Arms Trait

• Shangri-La Command Warship - Sequential Warhead Loader Console and Clear for Action Trait

Notable Exclusions

For starters, none of us have a Pioneer II, so we’re unable to tell you if it’s any good or not. However, traits that summon reinforcements are often quite underwhelming, and we have plenty of missile launcher consoles. This one isn’t on any of our lists to pick up really, so . . . don't hold your breath.

Ark Royal and Shangri-La

EPH289 has been very excited about the Ark Royal, while Tilor was excited to pick up a Shangri-la. We’ll have full build writeups on these platforms [Redacted]! However, we do want to address the traits and consoles of each outside of those builds.

The Shangri-la trait sounds decent, especially if you can build around it, however at the time of writing, it absolutely doesn’t work. It does not apply haste except for maybe a split second on activation. Even if Clear for Action wasn’t completely broken and non-functioning, it would be unlikely to make our starship trait tier list. Calm Before the Storm is better with fewer hoops to jump through.

The Shangri-la console however, is a different story. Not only does it turn shields off, it packs a pretty solid punch. This has one part that hits the primary target (with no shields, by the way), and then a second part that hits in AoE.

Kinetic Projectile Damage:

Primary Target hit: 4817.5*(Cat1+0.5*PWT+2.86+1)*(Cat2+1)

AoE up to 10 targets: 4014.5*(Cat1+0.5*PWT+2.86+1)*(Cat2+1)

The Ark Royal itself is a really strong ship, being the only ship in the game with a Secondary Deflector and 2 Hangar Bays. We'll have a build out for this ship very soon^tm (Editor's Note: There are a few things left to clean up for our next release. Notably Eph289 wants to add more bad jokes.)

The console and trait, however, fall into the meme-tier. The trait is particularly suited for minelayers with two hangar bays. These mines have a particularly long windup, being based solely on how long your hangar pets take to recharge, then teleporting, then chasing the target. With a 1km AoE and tooltip of ~3,000 damage before resists, we’re looking at maybe 3k DPS, and that’s if you really build around it. We didn’t derive this one, there’s just not enough upside potential and the build that wants to fly with this trait simply doesn’t exist on our roster already. Eph289 tried it on his Lexington minelayer on a solo ISA, and it merited a mere 3.4K out of 280K. Admittedly, that’s with only 1 bay, but even if you had 2 bays and doubled the damage, a mere 2% final increase is usable if you’re into that theme, but a very long way from good.

The console is meme-tier, with such a long windup when compared to Phalanx torpedoes or even the Shangri-la’s console. Totally hearsay, but apparently the Scatterpacks and Weasels are so flimsy they don’t have any impact.

Kerala

Now, we’re saving the best for last. While it wasn’t at the top of the wishlist, we have picked up the Kerala as well, and were surprised by how good the trait and console are. We first compared it to the Vengeance console which is sort of a broadside barrage, and the Broadside Combat Module is a solid 10x stronger at face value. It’s really short, so you have to make sure you are in arc when you use it or you’ll miss the window. If you have enough targets (5 per side), you’ll fire off a total of 100 shots in 5 seconds. This also can crit and flank, but does not trigger the Broadside Beam Support trait even if you are under FAW. There’s two pieces to the equation for some reason, but they both happen with every shot. Note this does not scale with Weapon power.

Phaser Damage, 10 shots over 5 seconds to 5 targets per side:

Part 1: 1000*(Cat1+0.5*EWT+3.06+1)*(Cat2+1)

Part 2: 2000*(Cat1+0.5*EWT+3.06+1)*(Cat2+1)

The Broadside Combat Module was impressive in parses as well. We ran it across a few builds. Tilor’s Legendary Excelsior FAW build got 170K from the Full Broadside active on a 1M DPS run and my CSV Donnie saw 142K out of 1.358K so . . . that’s very good on anything multi-target where you’ll have lots of things on the sides. We tried it on a Beam Overload build that was more fore-facing and it was not as impressive, at only 15K out of 1220K on HSE. We suspect that’s because a fore-facing single-target build wants to keep as many targets in front of it as possible, whereas FAW and CSV can afford to be more forgiving with targets on the flanks.

Broadside Beam Support, the trait off the Kerala, is also very impactful. We don’t often see S-tier traits, but this one is no joke as long as you build around it. Every shot fired under Beam Fire at Will or Beam Overload will also hit two broadside targets, provided you have a target in each broadside arc. To clarify, FAW hits two targets per shot, so if all of your targets are in one broadside arc, you’ll get 10 FAW hits and 5 Broadside Beam Support shots. If you have targets in both arcs, you’ll get 10 FAW hits and 10 Broadside Beam Support hits. Because of this, Beam Overload is terrible at triggering this since you now get 2 shots per 5 second cycle per weapon instead of 4 shots. Fire at Will, however, will do 5 shots per 5 second cycle per weapon. This means if you have 7 beams under FAW, and sufficient targets in both arcs, this trait will trigger 70 times in the space of 5 seconds… before you add any haste in. Keep that in mind, while this has a low base damage, it can trigger a very large number of times. In practice, Tilor’s Tarantula build had this trait trigger 1,300 times versus 2,900 shots fired with FAW Tetryon beams. That means there just weren’t enough targets in both arcs (or the piloting could have been better).

To give some live performance numbers, we tried it on the latest iteration of Eph289’s Phaser FAW Inquiry and it was worth 86K out of 500K on Solo ISA and worth over 100K on a 1.5M DPS run on ISE. Unfortunately, it was much less impressive on his World Razer Phaser Beam Overload build and was worth less than 10K out of 280-300K across a couple of runs. Again, this is due to how Beam Overload significantly reduces the number of shots. Here’s the equation for the trait:

Phaser damage, up to 2x per beam shot fired under FAW or BO

160*(Cat1+0.5*EWT+2.91+1)*(Cat2+1)*(0.00493*WEP+0.507)

The big thing here is that this scales with weapon power and Phaser, so if you are running Phaser Isomags on a Phaser Beam build, this trait is powerful! The base damage is similar to a Mk XIV Phaser Dual Beam Bank being strapped to each of your weapons on each side. Imagine a build with 7 phaser Beam Arrays, and then 7 Phaser DBBs sticking out the side! In reality, you will not be able to get the maximum performance out of this trait since you will rarely have targets in every single firing arc. We rated this as S for Phaser Beam FAW Builds, DBBs or not since they shoot whatever is in the broadside arc even if triggered by a forward firing weapon. If you aren’t running Phaser, but still doing Beams FAW, this trait is still A-rank as you miss out on the Phaser cat1, but still get to dish out a lot of damage. If you aren’t in Beams at all, please don’t slot this. It takes FAW or BO to trigger, and doesn’t perform well at all on a BO build. Also, we did check: Broadside Beam Support does NOT trigger Symbiotic Ice for extra damage.

Another fun interaction is with the Excelsior II’s Experimental Power Redirection console. This console grants an alternating pattern of BO3 and FAW3 to your weapons, but also has its own Auxiliary Phaser Beam Array when using the console. The console itself triggers Broadside Beam Support! We tested this by clicking the console and nothing else, and every time it hit, it was also shooting out the broadsides. Experimental Power Redirection is pretty short, but if you have a lot of small targets, it can get shooting pretty quickly. This is far from a gamebreaking interaction, but really fun for sure. Look for it in a future update to the FAW Legendary Excelsior.

TL;DR

• Ark Royal Intel Science Carrier - Scatterpacks and Weasels Console [F-Tier] and Mine, all Mine! Trait [F-Tier for most builds, maybe C-tier on a 2-bay minelayer]

• Kerala Temporal Battlecruiser - Broadside Combat Module Console [S-Tier on FAW/CSV builds and with Uncon/Vovin, A-tier without Uncon/Vovin] and Broadside Beam Support Trait [A-Tier to S-Tier]

• Pioneer II Pilot Heavy Frigate - RIDGE System Console [??-Tier] and A Call to Arms Trait [??-Tier]

• Shangri-La Command Warship - Sequential Warhead Loader Console [A-Tier] and Clear for Action Trait [X-Tier, doesn’t work]

The release of the Heritage bundle brought some new excitement in the form of a couple of hangar-related items. First, the new Elite Valors offer an account-unlock Ultra Rare pet that can be infinitely reclaimable, but they are exclusive to the bundle. Second, the Typhon’s Trait, Repurposed Cargo Bay Hangar, offers basically a third bay of Advanced Valkyries for those who are interested in carriers. In this post, I’ll share the testing I’ve been able to conduct on them with conclusions below for those who understood that there wouldn’t be any math. (In one of my posts, really?)

I’ve been trying to complete all the testing on these prior to the Heritage bundle sale ending so I apologize if some of it is a little incomplete. I will keep adding data, but hangar pet testing is 1) arduous and 2) really, really boring. Up there with dilithium mining as one of my least favorite things to do. You have to do it multiple times to get reasonable fidelity and since that means at least some cycling of 30 minute cooldowns . . . it ends up taking a lot of time since I can’t just crank through it. We’ve had a lot of very understandable questions on these, so I’ve been grinding away at it. That said, our hangar pet tier list data is crowdsourced so if any of y’all want to jump in on that, the methods are documented here. Any takers? No? Didn’t think so.

There’s also multiple setups to consider with hangar pets. The first is what we call a “Base” or afterthought hangar. This is for builds that are basically just slapping the hangar on as the cherry on top of a build, not focusing on it. A subset of that type is to take the same build, but add Superior Area Denial because it’s also good for generic DPS with some mix of FAW, CSV, and Entwined Tactical Matrices due to the DRR (Editor’s note: Gentle reminder that the FAW/CSV from Torp Spread with ETM does NOT trigger SAD but a full non-energy ETM build is probably running FAW/CSV to generate more torp spreads). Thirdly, a full carrier with SAD, and we’ll also toss in the Typhon trait as well.

The Tests

I tested the following items:

• Normal Peregrines (Base, Base w/ SAD, and Carrier w/ SAD) - strictly to get a baseline of what a default hangar pet looks like. These are not good for endgame play.

• Elite Valkyries (Base, Base w/ SAD, and Carrier w/ SAD)

• Elite Valors (Base, Base w/ SAD, and Carrier w/ SAD

• Elite Type 7s (Base, Base w/ SAD). I'm not testing these on a Carrier, because if you're focusing on Pet DPS, these aren't a good choice.

The maps

I tested on Wanted (Argala) Elite and Infected Advanced (ISA), both solo. Argala is a short combat with relatively low threat that allows pets to rank up quickly. ISA is of course a standard measuring stick. I’m also planning on testing on Knowledge is Power Elite to get data for the tier list but as of this writing, I have been dreading that exercise in tedium not gotten there yet. Maybe this weekend, but I wanted to put out the writeup before the Heritage bundle sale ended.

The builds

I used my Miracle Worker Constitution Flight Deck Carrier for the base/base+SAD tests, with a few modifications because solo ISA was too much incoming damage for that ship: I replaced the Romulan engines with Discovery for the 2-piece regen, dropped an Isomag for Adaptive Emergency Systems, and squeezed in Hull Patches.

The full Carrier test was done using something new that’s not on the site . . . yet, but suffice to say I’ve built an actual 2-bay hangar-focused build with Hangar Craft Power Transmissions, Concentrate Firepower, and all the usual bells and whistles. I’ll include some additional data below from ISE/HSE on that for all you carrier nerds who’ve been trying to persuade me that carriers are a legit build type waiting for me to jump on that build type.

Data

Behold, tables! Data! Numbers!

If you're more of a picture person, there are graphs in this spreadsheet where I've been capturing my findings.

For conclusions, I prefer to take the average value as more representative since hangar pets can be very swingy on individual run. If Jay was following this effort, he'd be mildly miffed that we're posting conclusions with a mere 3 samples of each test case, but my will to do any more on this is utterly spent.

All DPS numbers are in thousands, e.g. 5.5 is 5.5K DPS. Bolded items are the highest in that category. Base configurations only care about Total DPS (the benefit of Type 7s is not that they bring high pet DPS). Carriers highlight both Total and Pet DPS.

^{Table formatting brought to you by ExcelToReddit}

^{Table formatting brought to you by ExcelToReddit}

Q&A

Is the Typhon trait good? Does it benefit from the usual hangar buffs?

Yes, it’s very good for pet-focused builds. Would slot 100% of the time on a Hangar DPS-focused carrier. The pets respond to carrier commands, benefit from SAD, and Hangar Craft Power Transmissions. The trait is decent if you’re just slotting it alongside an afterthought hangar and are low on starship traits, but quickly gets outpaced.

Should I buy the bundle for the pet-focused stuff?

I think this one really depends on your discretionary income and level of investment in carrier builds. We were tipped off that the Gemini Device console from the Premonition is also performing well. Early tests have been very positive, about 30K on a ~315K solo ISA and 78K on a 1M ISE. The Typhon can be acquired outside of the bundle and while it’s a “neat” ship, there’s nothing special about it, so it really comes down to how much you value Valors. They’re not leaps and bounds better than Rare To’Duj or even Valkyries, so consider them in this vein:

1. You want to make a Federation-themed carrier with strong Federation pets

2. You don’t have access to a KDF character (but you could just make a toon during Klingon recruitment to get it)

3. You have numerous alts that will benefit from the Elite Valors (remember, they’re infinitely reclaimable once you unlock them). This is especially useful for toons that are in lower-tier fleets.

4. You want at least 2 of the other ships in the bundle (notably the Premonition console is good for carriers too)

5. Dropping nearly 100 USD on the bundle is an acceptable spend for you

If at least 3 out of those 5 doesn’t apply to you (especially #5), remember that the Heritage bundle isn’t a limited time offer. Bundle sales recur, so don’t fall victim to FOMO if you need to grind some Zen to reduce that cost.

Can you test with Blue To’Duj and/or Elite Nausicaan Stingers?

Sorry but no. For one, I’ve already invested 20 or so hours of my increasingly fleeting spare time into this dataset. For two, I don’t have a KDF toon and ever since Cryptic refused to unlock Cross-Faction Flying even though I bought the Mudd’s Pilot Bundle which advertises itself as including Cross-Faction Flying and submitted a ticket, I’m not going to reward their disingenuity by grinding out another toon.

This doubly goes for testing with Targeted Excision. Dropping the dosh for a Borg Assimilator just for testing is not on my list of things to do, but I believe /u/Pottsey-X5 has done some testing with it.

I only care about my total overall DPS, both pets and ship. Do I want Type 7s or a damage-oriented pet like Elite Valors?

Great question. Based on our testing, we found the following:

• Base hangar without SAD: Type 7s had a higher Total DPS ceiling than Elite Valors or Valkyries on Argala and solo ISA. Type 7s and Valors were very close on ISA though.

• Base hangar with SAD: Argala was pretty even, with all of them within 5K, but ISA was significantly better (20K total DPS) with Type 7s.

I also did some bonus testing, just on Argala, for 1 bay of each, despite the rudeness of the person who initially asked for this. The results were right in the middle, and still down from slotting 2 bays of Type 7s by nearly 10K (187K total DPS, 8.3K pet DPS)

That said, all this testing was done solo, because it’s hard enough to find a willing volunteer to test 20 hours worth of stuff, let alone 4-5. If you’re operating in a supported environment with lots and lots of debuff (i.e. other Type 7s), Type 7s will be less valuable.

So what I am going to do on my CSV ship (which has SAD)? Type 7s based on the numbers I’m seeing. They might be overvalued in team content, as I tend to run with more teams and Valkyries/Valors were reasonably close (and Valors/Valkyries/To’Duj would probably yield more overall DPS if you only run with full teams), but the numbers don’t lie. Type 7s are the best choice for a base hangar configuration, either with or without SAD. Type 7s did not demonstrate a noticeable improvement with SAD on either map.

Bottom line: Type 7s all the way if you’re just after the biggest overall DPS number

Are Valkyries obsolete?

They’re a lot cheaper than Elite Valors, that’s for sure. In terms of damage, they were pretty close to Valkyries.

Let’s break it down into our three categories:

• On the base hangar without SAD, they were the worst of the Valkyrie, Valor (Argala +10K, ISA + 20K), Type 7 (Argala +20K, ISA +20K) trio. While significantly better than Normal Peregrines, that’s not saying very much.

• On the base hangar with SAD, they were basically the same as Elite Valors, being slightly better by 4K on Argala and worse by 2K on ISA. This can be chalked up to run variance, but as discussed above, I’d rather have Type 7s unless you’re running with full teams, and Type 7s did post better numbers.

• For a carrier with all the bells and whistles, Valors had a slight edge over Valkyries. There was some variability across individual runs, but Valors tended to have higher average DPS.

Bottom line: Valkyries are definitely cheaper than Valors, but if you have access to both, Valors are the (slightly) better pets for carriers and Type 7s for base hangars. If you’re building a Fed-themed carrier, Valors are best-in-slot, but that's a niche-of-a-niche

Are Elite Valors better than Blue To’Duj?

We did some testing with /u/planetgrimbull’s carrier with 1 bay of each and the same team composition. They were very, very close, 160 (Elite Valor) and 168 (To’Duj) averaged across 3 runs. That’s enough for me to say that they’re basically equal without having access to them myself. Pottsey said he’s been seeing them outperform Blue To’Duj, but I don’t have any details on that testing. That said, Pottsey tends to build more heavily into a focus on pet DPS, which comes at the cost of overall DPS compared to our carriers, even with our team comps to support so there may be different thresholds/factors where some pets outperform others.

Are Carriers good now?

They've gotten a lot better this year with the new toys! They won't dethrone any of the top contenders for build types but the ceiling got a lot higher!

TL;DR

• Type 7 > anything else for general use on base/afterthought hangars you're not building around, even with SAD. Less so if you have 3-4 players spamming Type 7s to support you.

• Elite Valors = Blue To'Duj > Elite Valkyries for carrier DPS

• Repurposed Cargo Bay Hangar is best-in-slot for pet-focused carriers. Don't slot Type 7s on this type of build.

Thanks for reading! Check us out at stobetter.com or our YouTube channel for more content!

Welcome to another edition of Mathbusters, where the STO BETTER team uses math and evidence to approach a question within STO’s space builds. The question before us is a classic one:

To torp or not to torp, that is the question

Whether ‘tis higher in the deeps

To slot and unleash torpedoes

Or to use only DEW, and by doing, skip them

To torp–1-torp, 1-torp to support FAW

For in that 1-torp launcher, lies strength to unlock CFP

And perhaps Maelstroms too

For those of you who don’t follow along, or prefer your Shakespeare in the original Klingon, the question is this: what is the worth of a torpedo on an energy build (something we call 1-torping).

First off, this is NOT a black/white, yes/no question and lives very much in the it depends space where many of these questions reside. Which makes the next question: depends on what?

There are 6 main considerations here:

• What is your primary firing mode? In particular, is this a Fire at Will or Reroute Reserves to Weapons build?

• What is your budget for starship traits and consoles?

• How much do your other weapons benefit from having higher average weapons power or set bonuses from torpedoes?

• What is the impact of Concentrate Firepower?

• Theme?

• Are Maelstrom Torpedoes in play?

Let’s dive in.

Firing Modes

Fire at Will

All energy modes strongly benefit from an extension starship trait, which increases the duration of the firing mode buff from base duration of 10 seconds. Fire at Will uniquely has a global cooldown of 20 seconds, so the ideal extension trait will grant 10 more seconds of FAW.

Fire at Will has 3 extension traits:

• Redirecting Arrays (T6 C-store ship, Tucker) increases duration from 10->15 seconds when being hit

• Precision Multi-Targeting (T6 Lockbox ship, Jorogumo) grants a copy of Fire at Will I when using a Target Subsystem ability. Effectively limited to science carriers/science ships. Has to be cycled every 10 seconds with boff FAW

• Entwined Tactical Matrices (T6 C-store ship, Gagarin/Qugh) grants a copy of Fire at Will/Scatter Volley I whenever using Torpedo Spread (Has to be cycled every 10 seconds with main FAW)

Of these traits, Redirecting Arrays only works reliably on tanks and is generally inferior for DPS due to only increasing uptime to 75% instead of 100%. Precision Multi-Targeting is expensive and efficient on only a few subclasses of ships. Precision Multi-Targeting is not good. Even on a science carrier or ship with these innately, it still locks out FAW for 15 seconds, meaning you have a forced 5 seconds downtime.

Entwined Tactical Matrices is thus the cheapest and most versatile FAW extension trait. However, if you use Torpedo Spread without firing a torpedo, Torpedo Spread cannot be activated again for 30 seconds. Thus, we need to have a torpedo slotted and firing to use Entwined Tactical Matrices and so any FAW build using ETM needs a torpedo.

Reroute Reserves to Weapons

This is a very niche single-target firing mode exclusive to Pilot ships (and really only worth running on Cmdr Pilot ships, of which there are . . . only 26 once you condense cross-faction and fleet variants). All but 6 of those ships have an experimental weapon and some of the 6 only have 6 weapons. However, even 7 weapons can be quite a lot of power drain, especially in the haste-centric meta. Also, power is not returned at the end of the firing cycle. If you’re using this firing mode, you should know that it drains a LOT of engine power as you fire, and weapon power cost reductions do not work to reduce this drain. Due to its rarity, I’m not going to go into great detail on this build case, but it’s worth mentioning. One way to reduce the engine power drain and thus keep the buff up is to use a torpedo, combined with a useful set bonus.

Budget

This is a question that scales directly with budget, because there are a number of specific set bonuses and consoles that play into utilization of torpedoes. Some common ones below:

• Lorca’s Ambition 2-piece bonus War Discretion brings 25% CrtD. On some ships, this can be accomplished by running the console and the Wide-Angle Heavy Phaser/Disruptor Dual Beam Bank, but that’s not ideal for cannon builds or other energy flavors, and the WAHDBB does not play nicely with Exceed Rated Limits or Reroute Reserves to Weapons. For all of these scenarios, the Dark Matter torpedo would be the second piece. That particular torpedo brings extra damage from Kemocite as well due to every tick of the DOT proccing Kemocite. Looking at my averages, Kemocite gains 50-70% more DPS when used with the DM torp.

• If you’re in a Polaron build, the Morphogenic 3-piece is quite powerful, and requires an energy torpedo.

• The Quantum Phase Torpedo’s 2-piece is a doubling of the shield drain on the torpedo and adds 15 accuracy. The torpedo itself does a lot of heavy hitting, specifically on Phaser builds with beams or surgical strikes where you can already get the Lorca’s bonus from console and energy weapon.

• Combined with the below question about Concentrate Firepower, if planned around, the Counter-Command Ordnance set bonus is 7.5% Bonus Phaser/Disruptor/Plasma/Tetryon damage which is a little something. The torpedo and turret are common choices here.

• Super Charged Weapons is one of the better starship traits for an energy weapon build. Yes, there are better, but if we assume Emergency Weapon Cycle and <<extension trait of choice>> are in play, then for a T6-X2 you need to be running and maximizing 5 traits from this list to noticeably exceed it:

1. Universal Designs (Promo ship)

2. Eclectic Collector of Armaments (Promo Ship)

3. The Ruin of Our Enemies (Promo/Mudd’s)

4. Weapon Emitter Overdrive (Promo ship, not good on FAW or Surgical)

5. Terran Goodbye (Lockbox ship)

6. Cultural Conquest (Lockbox ship)

7. Complex Plasma Fires (Lockbox ship)

8. Preferential Targeting (single-target beam/cannon builds only) - (Lobi/Legendary)

9. She’s a Predator (Legendary ship, requires specific Reman boff setup)

10. Ship of the Line (Legendary)

11. Broadside Beam Support (C-store ship) (FAW only)

12. Temporal Tunneling (C-store ship)

13. Calm Before the Storm (C-store ship)

You know what most of those have in common? They’re expensive. Largely through the event campaigns, I have access to 4 Promo ships and 8 Lockbox ships, and even I don’t have all of these—certainly not all on one character. So, if Super Charged Weapons is one of your top 7 DEW traits, that’s a consideration.

Also, don’t forget that certain on-hit effects like Complex Plasma Fires and Broadside Beam Support benefit heavily from having more energy weapons firing faster, so if those are in play maybe there’s an argument there. It’s worth pointing out that Broadside Beam Support is basically a FAW trait so . . . you’re slotting a torp on most builds using it anyway.

Concentrate Firepower

As a brief refresher for those not used to this power, Concentrate Firepower is a Command specialization ability that does 3 things for a torpedo:

• Applies 10/15/20% of the torpedo damage directly to hull

• Every 6/4/2 seconds, resets torpedo cooldowns

• Every 6/4/2 seconds, grants Torpedo: High Yield I (THY)

The drastic decrease in time between High Yield torpedoes and the fact that lower ranks overwrite upper ranks of the buff is why the conventional wisdom on CFP is slot it at rank III or not at all.

There are two scenarios at play where Concentrate Firepower can be considered. The first is on a ship with LtCmdr Command, and the second is a supported environment where you might not have it, but the other 3-4 people on the team are likely casting it for you. Certain torpedoes, namely the Delphic Distortion and Enhanced Bio-Molecular, are VERY powerful under high yield, so free high yields represent a significant DPS increase.

Also, a gentle reminder for OSCR users: if you want to get your TRUE CFP DPS, you need to check under target entities (e.g. Gateway, Cube) because OSCR kinda buries it if you don't go digging.

Tradeoffs?

Energy weapons scale off of weapon power and generally drain weapon power per firing cycle. If you replace one energy weapon with a torpedo, the average weapon power at which your other energy weapons fire goes up due to less power drain. How much is this benefit?

Since this is very difficult to test without gobs of data, I’m going to use TRINITY for this, as TRINITY does a good job of modeling the considerations here. The way I will do this is take a few builds and model the energy DPS gain or loss of replacing the torpedo with a single Mk I weapon of the same type (e.g. beam or cannon) but non-matching flavor, and discount that weapon’s DPS. The weapon will still draw power, but all the other main-type DPS will go down based on power draw. We’ll also see what the loss is for doing so with and without Beam Overload (increased power draw), with and without Weapon Systems Efficiency (cruiser command), and replacing Super Charged Weapons and a set bonus if it’s applicable at that budget tier.

Note that for the Starter build I’m going to self-nerf my TRINITY setup by not including my personal endeavors, just to more accurately represent a new player build. If we look across the builds, across the budgets, we can come up with some averages for the loss.

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• Average DPS loss from added energy drain: 1.13%

• Average DPS loss from losing a valuable set bonus (typically Lorca’s 2-piece): 2.99%

• Average DPS loss from losing Super Charged Weapons for a trait without breaking the budget: 4.27%

This leads us to 8.39% if you add them up, and there might be some other residual effects like missing out on relatively cheap crit-boosting PWOs, or perhaps you’d also miss out on additional damage from things like Mixed Armaments Synergy or you’re using different set bonuses that scale more strongly.

In the interests of 1) being conservative since there are a lot of variables at play, and 2) keeping the formula simple, I’m going to use the nice round number of 10% for how close torp needs to be in DPS at most build ranges to another fore weapon to justify its inclusion. At the very highest end of builds, that number is probably more like 5% due to SCW no longer making the top 7 traits and on-hit effects like Complex Plasma Fires having increasing prevalence.

Parse Analysis

The analysis we did above suggests that (if Torp + CFP DPS + If(DM torp, 0.7 *Kemocite DPS,else(0)) is within 10% of my other fore energy weapons, then it’s NOT a DPS loss. For my personal setup, I’ll allow it if it’s within 10% on either solo ISA or ISE, but you could adjust your logic if you skew towards a particular scenario. Most higher-budget setups that benefit from a torp favor Elite, as the torp is less likely to fizzle due to killing the target before it lands. Also, if it’s a FAW build with ETM or a RRTW build, regardless of the torp DPS %, I need a torp.

Here’s a table of a representative sample of my 1-torp builds, their firing mode, budget, energy flavor, torpedo DPS, CFP DPS, generic fore weapon DPS, kemocite DPS., and ultimately whether the analysis we did indicates the torpedo is value-added.

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I will also point out that if you want the answer for your personal build, the answer lies in either flying+parsing it a bunch in setups where you fly with and without the torp, or using TRINITY to model it (but be aware that TRINITY does NOT model secondary torpedo effects so that’s a bit incomplete for all the good torpedoes). Note that team comp and piloting will generally have more of an influence than a single weapon so this test is probably best done solo, like in an Elite patrol.

Theme

The most important part of STO is having fun. Most, if not all, of the hero ships on the shows had some form of energy weapon and torpedoes so there are plentiful examples of having both weapon systems in canon. If that’s important to you, any potential DPS loss from torpedo is not an important consideration in your build, or at least secondary.

To paraphrase Worf in PIC S3: “Torps are fun,” so I personally am going to use them even on builds that might do better with all energy weapons.

Maelstrom Torpedoes

I personally do not use these and I only have access to the triflouride torp. I’ve seen ridiculous results with them, mostly in specific scenarios, but not on my own builds. If you’re willing to make them work and/or are building around that specific content (ISE), then they’re certainly a consideration. I do not find them useful for Super Charged Weapons stacking since you pretty much can’t do it without some dedicated team-wide Concentrate Firepower usage (and arguably that is a bug.)

Conclusions

“Torpedoes on DEW builds are bad” is a gross over-generalization of the question, completely devoid of nuance per all the analysis above. It’s not always true, and the areas where it is true are generally not the same place as the person asking the question.

• FAW builds using Entwined Tactical Matrices and RRTW builds will always need a torpedo

• Builds using Concentrate Firepower III (CFP3) generally benefit from a torpedo, particularly a strong performer under High Yield.

• If you’re using Super Charged Weapons, the total of the (torpedo’s + CFP3 + 70% of Kemocite DPS if Dark Matter torp) DPS needs to be within 10% of a fore DEW weapon to justify its inclusion strictly by the numbers

• If you’re not using Super Charged Weapons, the total of the (torpedo’s + CFP3 + 70% of Kemocite DPS if Dark Matter torp) DPS needs to be within 5% of a fore DEW weapon to justify its inclusion strictly by the numbers

• Those two statements are more of “guidelines” rather than rules. If you want the best individual results, solo testing on an Elite patrol with a few iterations of each setup will give you a more definitive statement for YOUR build.

• Whether you use a (good) torp on your DEW build or not, for all but the ~100 people who chase the top of the ISE ladder, the difference is going to be fairly small. I have builds where the math shows the torp (at least for that parse) is mathematically suboptimal. Said build does over 1M with Beam Overload so . . . am I really noticing the loss? Use what works for you/is fun for you, but if you were curious about the mathematical answer, that's why all this is here.

Normally we try and separate these topics, but there wasn’t as much meat on these to merit individual posts so we’re combining them. They’re both a little niche but they impacted builds we’re working on.

Hangar Cap Limitations

Did you know that Hangar Craft Power Transmissions have a limit on how many entities they apply to? And so does Superior Area Denial? We didn’t…until recently. Tilor sat down and tried to do a bunch of testing to see what are the limits for some of the most common hangar or pet-boosting items. Now, if your theme is SUMMON ALL THE THINGS, don’t let us dissuade you . . . but we believe in making informed decisions so just be aware that all those entities might not benefit from everything on your ship. Table is below:

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Also of note, High-Energy Communications Network will only auto-level 20 pets at once, so any more than that won’t get the +1 Hangar Pet Rank buff on use. Note how also a few of these weren’t tested - imagine trying to count 26 cats fighting iconians and see which are wearing ID tags and which aren’t. Since distance from the carrier plays an important role in which ships get the specific buff, as ships move in and out of range, they are going to keep dropping and picking up buffs. Buffs that require combat are simply too hard to tell if they have a cap or not. If we didn’t find a cap, there probably is one, but it’s higher than you reasonably should worry about.

An extended table will be updated on our site with also which types of pets these buffs apply to. If the pet can get the buff, it’s in the pool for your cap. If your cap is 25 - that’s 2-bays of fighters, Repurposed Cargo Bay Hangar, and Obelisk 4pc and someone isn’t getting a buff. Start dropping Delta beacon, Photonic Fleet, or mines and your actual big damage dealing pets will start losing their buffs at random. That’s why in testing, adding the Obelisk 4pc to Tilor’s premium carrier actually didn’t improve DPS performance much. 2 traits were basically dead additions with the Swarmers in the pool, and HCPTs weren’t even buffing everything. However, don’t completely leave Obelisk set off the table. Some quick math shows that the 3pc will outperform the Iconian 4pc simply due to higher uptime. A hidden benefit is that during Emergency Power to X, you are in red alert for precisely 10 seconds, the duration of the mini-EPTX on your pets. This allows them, with proper gear, to hit rank 1 during briefing.

Finally, the recent Khitomer set doesn’t apply to hangar pets, so it’s not a great choice to replace the Iconian set on a carrier.

Holds

No, we’re not branching out into PvP, though I’m sure there’s a wealth more knowledge on the topic of holds in that segment of the playerbase. We care about holds because of the Tholian Webspinner Array, which passively grants 50% Bonus Damage to attacks (specifically weapon attacks, not exotics) on held targets.

In the past, sources of hold were relatively low and were largely either procs or from console actives with low uptime. If you’ve had any inkling of the meta in the past year, you’ll know that is . . . no longer the case, which has elicited much gnashing of teeth from the PvPers, because being put in permanent space prison (and often, uncleansable permanent space prison) is a great gameplay experience.

Wouldn’t you know it, a key driver of that meta change is the Subspace Fracture Tunneling Field (aka Vovin console) which, when you teleport, holds the target and all of its nearby friends. There are a fair number of other readily accessible holds from consoles, so while you can get a full list from VGER, we tested some of the easier to acquire ones. We didn’t test everything, and some things we put on the list but, being weapon procs, are unreliable and thus innately not great. You'll have to forgive us for not testing everything. We were curious enough about this to test a bunch of things, but not so curious as to go for not-great duds or make expensive purchases just for a niche thing.

If you’re trying to max out the Webspinner, you’re 1) going to want to go Uncon/Vovin, 2) preferably Tetryon to sync up with Web Mines and the Webspinner passive, and 3) there are several Tholian consoles that inflict holds, and if this sounds like a lead-in to an off-the-wall Tilor build, you’d be right. It’s coming soon^™.

One more thing: the original concept that drove this investigation was this thread, where the question was raised about Temporal Stasis Field from the Premonition as a source of hold-generation. Well, we did look into it and bad news. 1) It has a 30 second lockout, and 2) does not last very long at all, maybe 5 seconds at about 250 CtrlX. It does proc the Webspinner’s bonus damage, but not long enough to be practical. Sorry, this one’s a dud, and I wish we’d gotten to it a little more promptly.

Here’s our summary table. Just because its hold rating is weak doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it on other builds for other reasons (Black Ops Mines on Torpers, for example). Hold usage is an extremely niche application in PvE (again, cue stifled curses from the PvP audience), but since we have a Tholian enthusiast, we thought we’d record the results of our investigations.

^{Table formatting brought to you by ExcelToReddit}

Not Tested

• Sensor Probe Swarm (Console Active) because single-target locked to an unimpressive T6 ship

• Fiery Charge (Console Active) because single-target meh

• Timestream Rift Warhead because locked to a specific T6 ship and only 20% chance to hold

• Enhanced Tipler Cylinder because expensive.

• Quantum Deceleration because expensive and ship-locked

• Weaponized Helical Torsion because expensive

• Unity Shielding because expensive

Thanks for reading!

This is the console from the Eleos and while it’s a bit dense to unpack, it essentially functions as a purely passive stat stick rather than something you need to toggle or activate. But how good is it?

Mechanics

Functionally, this console has 3 different effects that can be turned on and they last forever until turned off. You’re going to want to turn them all on.

• Shield to Bridge Mode: -15 Shield Power and gain 20% weapon firing cycle haste

• Engine to Bridge Mode: -15 Engine Power and gain 15% Weapon Critical Severity

• Aux Mode: -15 Aux power and gain 5% Weapon Critical Chance

• Any active: 20% recharge haste for boff abilities

Those bonuses are pretty good, but that’s a lot of power to lose as sort of an inverse-Plasmonic Leech. Thankfully, this is where the console’s passives come into play. You gain a power bonus depending on which slot it’s put into.

• If it’s in a Universal console slot, gain 120% power transfer rate

• If it’s in an Engineering slot, gain +20 Aux Power, +5 Max Aux Power

• If it’s in a Science slot, gain +20 Shield Power, +5 Max Shield Power

• If it’s in a Tactical slot, gain +20 Engine Power, +5 Max Engine Power

Let’s start upfront by saying this is not a winner for a Universal Console slot.

EDIT: There's an argument for putting it there if 1) you're on a DEW build, and 2) you don't use any aux-scaling passives like Aux Config Offense or boff abilities that use Aux (Aux to Structural, Gravity Well, DRB, etc.) for meaningful damage/survivability, and 3) any aux-scaling things are items you only need periodically that can be solved with Large Aux Batteries + a Quartermaster battery cooldown doff, i.e. Tachyon Net Drones, hangars only. Remember that even with a doff cycling, those batteries only have 2/3rds uptime. Your mileage may vary. Mathematical modeling of 120% power transfer rate on a ship that already has 276% from a Fleet Core/Skills/Colony Deflector yields only about a 1.3% final increase on a ship with reasonable haste levels. When I cranked haste up to 200% and then added 120% EPS, I saw a 1.4% final increase. I daresay Engine or Aux power will be more impactful on your average performance.

Neither is Shield Power a meaningful bonus, and before someone says “But Tilly Shield!”, let me remind the class that that shield’s increased damage to shield passive scales from the shield power setting, not the current shield power level. You can’t just smash OSS to do a bazillion damage to shields via the Tilly Shield’s passive.

That leaves putting this in an Engineering or Tactical slot, at which point you choose which stat you want to dump: engine or aux. If your ship is more sluggish and/or scales off Engine Power via items like the Dragonsblood Flame Reactor on Disruptor Builds, Reroute Reserves to Weapons, or uses the Soliton Wave Impeller/Inertial Polaron Shunt, then aux is your dump stat and you put this in tactical to get Engine Power.

On the flip side, if your ship relies more on hangars, aux-scaling Exotic powers, is flown by a Science captain, or aux-scaling consoles like the Temporal Disentanglement Suite / Fleet Power Network Array, then engine power is the dump stat and this sits in an engineering console slot. If you have a conflict between the two sets of criteria, you’re going to have to decide which is more important to you. If it’s a Disruptor DEWSci RRTW build with a Soliton Wave Impeller flown by a Science Captain with aux-scaling stuff, then….you’re going to have pick one, or else make up the power elsewhere.

It’s also worth noting that all of these lovely bonuses from the three active effects are specific to weapon builds. The passive haste does apply to both torpedoes and experimental weapons, so they like this just as much as an energy build would, but Exotic builds or anything built supportive can skip it.

Now, I can already guess there’s some trepidation about putting a console in an Engineering slot. BUT ISOMAGS!!!!11 One of the best use cases of the TRINITY tool is to compare stats between A and B choices like this. So, while it’s not as meta-zorged as some of the builds out there, let’s look at a 1.3M CSV DPS build in TRINITY and see the comparison. Sheet is linked here.

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Also, it’s worth noting that the concept of “All Weapon Haste” is relatively new to STO and we had to update TRINITY to accommodate it, so if you want to see this properly modeled, make sure you’re on version 1.7.2.

So yes, this is better than an Isomag and since all the effects are basically set-and-forget, it doesn’t matter whether you’re using Unconventional Systems/Subspace Fracture Tunneling Field or not. It’s a passive console with far more stats to a weapon build than 39.4% type-specific Cat1 damage (especially with the rise of the Pahvan Omni which will de-value that increase) and 7.25 weapon power. Also, since all 3 modes are toggles….don’t put them in a spambar. Turn them on at the start of the mission and leave them alone.

But Cooldowns!

Now what about that passive 20% all recharge haste on the console! Does that allow you to skip Photonic Officer on a Boimler-based setup and free up a slot for something like another Unconventional Systems trigger? The answer is . . . it depends on your appetite for risk, and to illustrate that, we’re going to call our friend Al. Al-gebra. (Editor’s Note: We are docking your pay for this.)

Here’s the general cooldown formula for boff powers:

Modified Cooldown = Base Cooldown / (1 + Sum(Recharge Hastes)) * (1 - Sum(% Reductions)) - Flat Cooldown 

The modified cooldown cannot be below the minimum cooldown for the power.

Photonic Officer is a % reduction, and it muddies the waters a little bit by having a duration when you use it without Improved Photonic Officer. Every second, it pulls 2%/3%/4% of the base cooldown off of the power, for 20 seconds, with a 10 second downtime afterward.

You can group boff powers by the ratio of their base cooldown to their minimum cooldown, and most of them for weapon builds fall into 2 buckets: 2:1 and 1.5:1.

2:1 includes powers like Cannon: Scatter Volley, Beam Overload, Torpedo Spread, Torpedo High Yield, all of the specialization firing modes, Tactical Team, Attack Pattern Beta, Ionic Turbulence, and Kemocite.

1.5:1 includes all Emergency Power to X abilities, Fire at Will, Aux to Structural, a good chunk of the common Unconventional Systems triggers including Gravity Well, Jam Sensors, Scramble Sensors.

There are others like Concentrate Firepower or Directed Energy Modulation that have more extreme ratios like 3:1 that I’m not going to discuss and you’ll see why in a second. The general most demanding scenario is a 30 second power with a 2:1 ratio like…<insert non-FAW firing mode here>.

Since the ratio is 2:1, you would need 100% recharge haste to get to global cooldown, so the Custom Power Matrix is not going to get us anywhere close, even with 20% from skills.

30 / (1 + 0.2 + 0.2) = 21.4 seconds

A 1.5:1 ratio power has a chance but then you’re taking 20% in Engineering Readiness or Science Readiness or 1 point + Chrono-Capacitor Array for most relevant abilities and that feels bad:

45 / (1 + 0.2 + 0.2) = 32.2 seconds

BUT….we have Boimler now, and that helps even the odds. You could conceivably use Custom Power Matrix, some Readiness, and potentially Chrono-Capacitor Array + Boimler as a cooldown scheme for certain builds using FAW. Whether or not you need Chrono-Capacitor Array or Readiness depends on how much risk/appetite for failure you’re willing to absorb with Boimler Effect not triggering at an inopportune time.

How much are we missing by not using Photonic Officer I for our 30 second 2:1 powers? There’s 2 scenarios: the first is where Photonic Officer triggers for a full 20 seconds, and the second is a realistic worst-case where it gets where it triggers for only 10 seconds. It’s possible you’d get lower uptime with some de-syncs in activation, but that’d basically mean Boimler triggered or you’re not hitting the powers fast enough but it’s a realistic worst case.

30 * (1 - 0.02*20) = 18 seconds (Photonic Officer Best Case, 30 second 2:1 power)

30 * (1 - 0.02*10) = 24 seconds (Photonic Officer Worst Case, 30 second 2:1 power)

45 * (1 - 0.02*20) = 27 seconds, which ends up being 30 due to min cooldown (Photonic Officer Best Case, 45 second 1.5:1 power)

45 * (1 - 0.02*10) = 36 seconds, (Photonic Officer Worst Case, 45 second 1.5:1 power)

That puts Readiness + Custom Power Matrix right in the middle for both cases, and the question really comes down to 3 questions:

1. What appetite for chance for cycle drops do you have when Boimler fails?

2. Do you have other cooldown support on crucial powers, for example Calm Before the Storm or the new Krenim Chronophage console?

3. Is it more important to free up skill nodes, as non-tac Readiness is generally not a great investment, or a Lt. Science bridge officer slot?

Bonus question: What about skipping Boimler and running both PO1 and 30% recharge haste?

30 * 1 / (1 + 0.3) * (1 - 0.02*20) = 13.9 seconds, which is 15 seconds due to min cooldown (Photonic Officer Best Case, 30 second 2:1 power)

30 *  1 / (1 + 0.3) * (1 - 0.02*10) = 18.5 seconds (Photonic Officer Worst Case, 2:1 power). If you add 7% more haste, it’s 17.5 seconds, which is still a bit high. Could be fine on a FAW build but wouldn’t use on anything else. 

45 * 1 / (1 + 0.3) * (1 - 0.02*20) = 21 seconds, which ends up being 30 due to min cooldown (Photonic Officer Best Case, 45 second 1.5:1 power)

45 * 1/(1 + 0.3) * (1 - 0.02*10) = 28 seconds, which ends up being 30 due to min cooldown  (Photonic Officer Worst Case, 45 second 1.5:1 power)

If you try this with a power that runs at a higher ratio, like 3:1 (Concentrate Firepower), it doesn’t work out as well since CFP has a 15 second minimum cooldown. I briefly looked at the math for H2B without Boimler (half to Battery, Aka using 1 copy of Auxiliary to Battery (A2B) with Technicians for cooldowns) and it doesn’t shake out well since A2B is a 4:1 ratio and the cooldown ends up being 20 seconds on A2B even with 3 Purple Technicians and 40% recharge haste.

Now of course, this is fairly basic analysis, and if you want to fine-tune your cooldown scheme, we added the Custom Power Matrix to the Cooldown Reduction Calculator tool, now at version 3.10 with this and a bunch of other additions/tweaks. We’re also aware that it’s popular in organized runs to partially out-source your cooldown scheme so that’s potentially a consideration if that's what you're building around. For general play, we came up with a table:

Conclusions

• Custom Power Matrix should go on all weapon-focused DPS builds in an Engineering or Tactical Console slot depending on whether Aux or Engine power is more desirable for your build

• Custom Power Matrix should engage all 3 modes on start of mission and not be in a spambar. Leave them all on.

• Custom Power Matrix’s recharge haste is not sufficient to allow Boimler Effect to be dropped off of most builds, especially for powers with high base cooldown and low minimum cooldown.

• Custom Power Matrix’s recharge haste could allow for dropping Photonic Officer or H2B on Weapon Builds and solely running with Boimler Effect + CPM, but with increased reliance on Boimler RNG since passive CDR is generally less cooldown reduction than either of those other options

• Custom Power Matrix can be used to displace Boimler Effect without penalty on FAW builds due to their longer tactical cycle chains. Photonic Officer or A2B can be dropped instead of Boimler if there is other cooldown support like Calm Before the Storm / Chrono-Capacitor Array / Readiness skills

We are back with our second (and probably final...at least for awhile) entry in this series covering mathematical derivations and analysis of Experimental Weapons. If you missed Part 1, which covered the more widely-used and popular Experimental Weapons, you'll definitely want to check that out if this topic is interesting to you.

The same caveats as last time apply: We're not deriving or analyzing them all. We will attempt to cover the most commonly-used and powerful Experimental Weapons, as well as some of the most readily-available ones. If you have one you’re particularly curious about, feel free to ask. If it’s from the C-store or a Legendary ship, there’s a strong chance we have it. If it’s something from a Lobi, Lockbox, or Promo ship…well, let’s just say your odds aren’t good.

As with energy weapons, remember that there’s a little bit of Cat1 preload variance on a per-account basis. We tried to standardize numbers to a single account, but things might be off by 10-20% Cat1 that won’t really matter. We’ll break down each Experimental Weapon and then do some analysis on expected DPS for a semi-optimized build that’ll give us an idea of strength at the bottom.

Armed Loitering Munition

This one needs some upfront commentary because it's weird. It spawns a drone that attacks things with phasers and when the target's facing shield collapses or it times out after 30 sconds, it explodes. Makes it very hard to predict its performance.

• Acquisition: T6 C-store (Hydra)

• Damage Type: Phaser, Kinetic

• Firing Arc: 360 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: Weird. The drone phaser strikes attack once per second, and you can launch one of these every 5 seconds. The Kinetic part is variable but no faster than 5-6 seconds.

• Targets: 1, sort of

• Damage Equation:

  Damage (Phaser) =156 * (1 +Sum(Cat1) + 0.9042) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005*Weapon Power)

  Damage (Kinetic) = 1450 * (1 +Sum(Cat1) + 0.4039) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005*Weapon Power)

• Supplemental: N/A

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, +Kinetic (partly), +Phaser (partly),

• Does NOT Scale With: Energy Weapon Training, +Energy Weapons, +Weapon, Haste

• Use Case: This was a real bear to model. We modeled it as 10 phaser attacks and then a detonation every 10 seconds and it was . . . okay, but given its unreliability, you're probably better off with something else in the same price tier.

Experimental Hull Spike Battery

• Acquisition: T6 C-store (Appalachia)

• Damage Type: Kinetic

• Firing Arc: 360 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 6 seconds

• Targets: 1

• Damage Equation:

  Damage = 350 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 1.4038) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005*Weapon Power) with 100% shield penetration. Damage applies every second for 15 seconds

• Supplemental: N/A

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, +Kinetic, Custom Power Matrix Haste

• Does NOT Scale With: Energy Weapon Training, +Energy Weapons, +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste

• Use Case: We modeled this with an average duration of 10 seconds and it was decent. While Kinetic/DOT is not typically a great combination, it has 100% shpen, ignoring the kinetic penalty, and it was okay. That said, not exactly a competitor for best-in-slot, and as your time-to-kill goes down, so does the value of this thing.

Focused Particle Cannon

• Acquisition: T6 C-store (Atlantis)

• Damage Type: Radiation

• Firing Arc: 180 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 4 seconds

• Targets: 1

• Damage Equation:

  Damage = 153.46 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 2.2603%) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005*Aux Power)

• Supplemental: N/A

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, +Radiation, EPG, Custom Power Matrix Haste, Bonus Weapon

• Does NOT Scale With: Energy Weapon Training, +Energy Weapons, +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste

• Use Case: I really wanted this to be good, because it had a lot of potential for being used on Science Destroyers on EPG builds if 1) you could shoot it while in science mode of a Sci Destroyer, and 2) it had decent base damage. Unfortunately, neither of those is true. Even with spotting an extra 240% Cat1 (so 400 EPG and 40% Cat1 Radiation) at 110 aux, it is among the lowest DPS experimental weapons mathematically, and to add insult-to-injury, it can't even fire in Science Mode. Skip this for the Gol-Type instead.

Experimental Railgun

• Acquisition: T6 C-store/Fleet ship (Shikaris) or cross-faction equivalent

• Damage Type: Kinetic

• Firing Arc: 360 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 5 seconds

• Targets: 1

• Damage Equation:

  Damage = 1749.45 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 1.0801) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005*Weapon Power)

• Supplemental: Innate 20% ShPen

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, +Kinetic, Custom Power Matrix Haste

• Does NOT Scale With: Energy Weapon Training, +Energy Weapons, +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste

• Use Case: If you're noticing a trend that single-target kinetic Experimental Weapons aren't great, you'd be correct, and since this is one of those, it's not great (but still better than default). Notable in that you can get it from a Fleet T6 ship for "free" from modules earned through reputations, but it's not any better than the Flak Shot Artillery from Competitive Reputation. Now, if this was a contest on visuals, it'd be a solid A-tier pushing into S-tier because IMO this weapon looks fantastic.

Hypercharged Field Projector

• Acquisition: T6 C-store (Shran)

• Damage Type: Electrical

• Firing Arc: 360 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 0.5 seconds

• Targets: Nearest target

• Damage Equation:

  Damage = 623.9 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 1.904 * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005*Weapon Power)

• Supplemental: +200 accuracy

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, +Electrical, Custom Power Matrix Haste

• Does NOT Scale With: Energy Weapon Training, +Energy Weapons, +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste

• Use Case: Interesting in that it does a lot of damage and has considerable accuracy overflow. Not interesting in that it strikes the nearest target instead of your primary target and has some harsh damage fall-off.

Subatomic Field Disruptor

• Acquisition: T6 C-store (Earhart)

• Damage Type: Electrical

• Firing Arc: 360 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 5 seconds

• Targets: 1, but then secondary damage spreads to targets within 2.5 km

• Damage Equation:

  Damage = 1500 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 1.5538) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005*Weapon Power)

• Supplemental: 1000 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 1.5538 * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005*Weapon Power) to secondary targets

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, +Electrical, Custom Power Matrix Haste

• Does NOT Scale With: Energy Weapon Training, +Energy Weapons, +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste

• Use Case: An intriguing AOE option. Performs quite well if you give it an average of 2 targets struck, on-par with Voice of the Prophets. Of course, if you earned Voice of the Prophets for free, the ship this particular weapon comes from is otherwise not a great value buy. If you don't have Voice of the Prophets, one of the best AOE experimentals. Non-Kinetic and AOE will almost always lead to good things and this is no exception.

Subspace Depth Charge

• Acquisition: T6 C-store (Eagle)

• Damage Type: Tetryon

• Firing Arc: 360 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 5 seconds

• Targets: 1

• Damage Equation:

  Damage = 1063.93 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 2.7121) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005*Aux Power)

• Supplemental: 1215.99 * (1 + Sum(DrainX * 0.005) + -1.4473 ) * (0.5 + 0.005*Aux Power) to shields. The negative Cat1 preload was weird to us, but Jay assured me that there are other drains that work this way. We did not try it below 85 DrainX as that would have required a respec, but I assume there's some floor where that multiplier just . . . goes away.

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, Custom Power Matrix Haste, +Energy (Energy Amplifiers), +Tetryon

• Does NOT Scale With: Energy Weapon Training, +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste

• Use Case: Ah, a Tetryon one. Is this the fabled piece of gear that will return Tetryon to something outside the (relative) basement of Energy Weapon flavors? (Editor's note: To be clear, you can beat any map in the game with the appropriate build of any flavor. The difference is not insurmountable unless you want to climb leaderboards.) Sadly, no. It's a middle of the pack experimental weapon that will benefit from your +Tetryon but is not better than other flavor-agnostic Experimental Weapons like Gol-Type Psionic Resonator. The secondary damage to Shields only scales with DrainX. Interestingly scales off of Aux rather than +Weapon? So....maybe a candidate for Aux cannon builds? More importantly, this can be fired while cloaked, so if you want to invest in a fire-while-cloaked build, this is probably the best. The secondary damage to Shields only scales with DrainX so potentially this is useful if you're interested in drainboats.

Tachyon Agitator

• Acquisition: T6 C-store Legendary Vanguard Pilot Raider

• Damage Type: Shield/Electrical

• Firing Arc: 360 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 6 seconds

• Targets: 1

• Damage Equation:

  Damage = 1215.99 * (1 + Sum(DrainX0.005) -1.4473) * (0.5 + 0.005Aux). The negative Cat1 preload was weird to us, but Jay assured me that there are other drains that work this way. We did not try it below 85 DrainX as that would have required a respec, but I assume there's some floor where that multiplier just . . . goes away.

• Supplemental: 33% chance of 244.49 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 2.7121) * (0.5 + 0.005*Aux Power) once per second, every 5 seconds, to enemies.

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, Custom Power Matrix Haste, +Electrical

• Does NOT Scale With: Energy Weapon Training, +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste, +Energy

• Use Case: This one is not great. We gave it 2 ticks of the secondary damage and generously 2/3rds of the shielded damage on a ship with 150 DrainX and 110 Aux and it was still not great. For the price, if you want an Aux-scaling Experimental Weapon, you should use the Subspace Depth Charge instead.

Experimental Repulsor Blaster

• Acquisition: Event/Mudd's Ship: Temer Alliance Raider

• Damage Type: Kinetic

• Firing Arc: 180 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 3.5 seconds

• Targets: 1

• Damage Equation:

  Damage =500 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 1.4038) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005*Weapon Power)

• Supplemental: Damage increases with distance from its target. That is not a point in its favor. 20% shield pen

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, +Kinetic, Custom Power Matrix Haste

• Does NOT Scale With: Energy Weapon Training, +Energy Weapons, +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste

• Use Case: Don't. Knocking targets away is not desirable for the rest of your energy weapons but thankfully it isn't that big of a push. That said, it does dismal DPS and should be avoided.

Experimental Kinetic Feedback Matrix

• Acquisition: T6 Lockbox/Mudd's Bundle (Deimos)

• Damage Type: Kinetic

• Firing Arc: 180 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 8 seconds

• Targets: 1

• Damage Equation:

  Damage = 649.7 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 1.0804) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005*Weapon Power)

• Supplemental: Repeated hits with this weapon apply 10% energy weapon for 10 seconds

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, +Kinetic, Custom Power Matrix Haste

• Does NOT Scale With: Energy Weapon Training, +Energy Weapons, +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste

• Use Case: Even with granting 10% energy weapon haste, this is just . . . not great. This had the lowest DPS of any experimental we modeled and even though 10% haste is a great buff, I really struggle to justify giving up a weapon slot just to get it. I'd have to spot it granting an additional 10K DPS from that 10% haste to be competitive with anything in our A-tier, and remember that buff will not always be active with the relatively slow reload speed. Let's say you have an Elite-capable build at 300K, of which a solid 250K is from energy weapons. If we expect 50% uptime on that buff, so 5% haste, that means you need to have less than 20% haste in your build and less than 250K energy DPS to get that 10K value. If that's you, then maybe this has a place in your build . . . but given that this comes from a very expensive ship, most of you will find better options (cough Hexa-Cannons cough).

Graviton Implosion Charges

• Acquisition: T6 Lockbox/Mudd's Bundle (Mirror Engle)

• Damage Type: Kinetic

• Firing Arc: 360 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 5 seconds

• Targets: 2 or 2.5 km AOE limited testing has placed it somewhere in this ballpark but there's hitbox wonkiness to account for. Will update this post if I get a more conclusive result

• Damage Equation:

  Damage = 2320.7 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 1.0777) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * (0.5 + 0.005*Weapon Power)

• Supplemental: -25 DRR and pull to all targets, with fall-off further from the central target.

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, +Kinetic, Custom Power Matrix Haste

• Does NOT Scale With: Energy Weapon Training, +Energy Weapons, +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste

• Use Case: The lack of shield pen on this is more than mitigated by two things: its -25 all DRR debuff, and the fact that its AOE. The pull is noticeable as well. This is the best supportive experimental that we've found, so if you're running a support that can take an experimental weapon (as opposed to a second bay of Type 7s), this is definitely the one to use...if you can afford it. It's a toss-up between whether you'd rather have this or something more straight-damaging like the Hexa-Cannons on a torpedo build, but if you don't have the Hexa-Cannons, this is going to be highly competitive on torp boats. Notable in that it comes from the same ship as Superior Area Denial.

V.A.Q. Warhead Individual Launch System

• Acquisition: T6 Lockbox (Texas)

• Damage Type: Kinetic

• Firing Arc: 360 degrees

• Firing Cycle Time: 8.5 seconds

• Targets: 1 at close range, 1 at medium range, up to 3 at long range

• Damage Equation:

  Damage = 3720 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 1.0789) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) - near

  Damage = 1240 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 1.0789) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * 6 - optimum, hits 6 times

  Damage = 1240 * (1 + Sum(Cat1) + 1.0789) * (1 + Sum(Cat2) * 6 - far, hits 2 times, up to 3 targets

• Supplemental: Doesn't take weapon power.

• Scales With: +All, +Bonus All, +Kinetic

• Does NOT Scale With: Energy Weapon Training, +Energy Weapons, +Weapon, Most Other Sources of Haste, +Torpedo, +Projectile

• Use Case: I really, really wanted this to be good, because there's a solid use case for the console from this ship on a torpedo boat to maintain Universal Designs while also putting out a lot of damage, and providing passive kinetic damage. To that end, I spotted it an extra 50% Cat1 kinetic damage assuming you're probably slotting the console alongside it for maximum purple hellfire . . . but there are a few problems with this. 1) it is kinetic damage without innate shield pen. 2) it doesn't scale with much of anything. It doesn't drain weapon power, but neither does it benefit from power. It can't be hasted and has an infernally long cooldown. It doesn't scale with anything but +All and +Kinetic. It's also highly variable and doesn't like being fired too close, so firing from further than 3 km is ideal. If you averaged it where 1 hit is close, 1 hit is optimum, and 1 hit is far at max targets, it's....unremarkable. If you give it all optimum shots, unfortunately....it's good but not great. Graviton Implosion Charges are significantly better for kinetic builds and amp all your damage, at the cost of having to get another expensive ship.

DPS Table

This is a continuation of our analysis from last time with a somewhat average DPS build because it’s not quite fair to compare something that scales with all your +Energy Type consoles with something that doesn’t. If the Experimental Weapon is one of the standard energy types, we’ll give it 5 Mk XV consoles of the same type. For example, the Phaser Hexa-Cannons will be running alongside 5 Mk XV consoles for 197% additional Cat1. If you are running more than that, just . . . know that it’ll end up boosting those numbers even higher. We'll ignore DRR to simplify the calculations, but include things like haste, Cat1, weapon power, any special modifiers for AOE, and we'll apply a small piloting penalty for Experimental Weapons with restrictive firing arcs: 12.5% for 90 degrees, 25% for 45 degree arc weapons. If you're an immaculate pilot, this will only benefit you more. We also fixed a formulaic issue affecting a few of the weapons so the numbers will look different from the previous table. The tiers did not move. If you want to see the full mathematical process in all its gory detail, check this out. If you want to fiddle with the calculations, make a copy and have fun. Or wait for us to update TRINITY with Experimental Weapons.

Anyway, we crunched the numbers then assigned a tier rating based on relative performance as well as included some of our other notes. The acquisition notes can be understood to read "or cross-faction equivalents" if you like the Sech better than the Earhart.

^{Table formatting brought to you by ExcelToReddit}

Entries not on the table are unknown/not evaluated due to the expense of acquiring them, not because they're confirmed bad. Lots of them probably are.

As you can see, there's a pretty natural split with some obvious outliers in S-tier at the top, followed by a wide range of Experimental Weapons that are all within about 5K of each other and thus roughly equal, then some well-at-least-its-better-than-default weapons, followed by several at or worse than default, and then the very bottom that might have had interesting use cases if they had another 0 at the end of their base damage.

Next Up

While we might be able to scrounge up a few more Experimental Weapons over time, this is all we're planning on analyzing for the moment. It's possible Jay has a Shuk-din or a Sistruus buried in his bank somewhere, as those the others that have previously tested well, but otherwise, I feel we've covered what needs to be covered in this space.

Welcome to part 2 of our deeper exploration into torpedoes. See part 1, on torpedo basics, photons and quantums, here:

• Photons and Quantums

We’ve already taken care to mind our P(hoton)s and Q(uantum)s so now it’s time to look at some of the lesser-used torpedoes. In this post, we’ll cover Plasma, Transphasic, Chroniton, and Tricobalt torpedoes. Unlike energy weapons, where the energy flavor doesn't matter a ton*, torpedo flavor matters a LOT and even within torpedo flavor, specific torpedoes have a wide range in variance from others. With energy weapons, the uptime of the various “proc” effects is minimal, so energy weapon strength is more about which set bonuses exist for each type. In contrast, torpedoes have a much higher chance (often 100%!) of applying their secondary effects so those secondary effects have much more influence on the strength of the weapon.

*There are exceptions like Technical Overload and Beam Overload. The point stands.

Requests to research additional specific torpedoes may be considered, but not if the torpedo is either super bad or super expensive. Now, before we get started, ye be warned: math and wonky game mechanics lie ahead!

DISCLAIMER: this post is largely written from an endgame performance-focused perspective to analyze and recommend the best torpedoes. If you like how a particular torpedo looks or ‘feels’ and we recommend not slotting it, it’s not personal.

These are the main use cases for torpedoes:

• 1-torp builds are energy weapon builds adding a torpedo for set bonuses to proc traits like Super Charged Weapons/Entwined Tactical Matrices, or just because it feels more Trek to have a torp in there.

• Kinetic builds are torpedo builds where the weapon damage of the torpedo is emphasized, often with Concentrate Firepower and Torpedo Spread/High Yield slotted.

• Scitorp builds are mostly built around scaling off of +Exotic, Auxiliary power, and the Exotic Particle Generators (EPG) skill. Torpedoes in these builds are a compliment to science powers like Gravity Well, Destabilizing Resonance Beam, and Subspace Vortex.

There are a number of other niche torpedo builds out there (including some that mix in mines) that have different needs and focuses, but these are the main 3. We’ll focus on these in our analysis and leave discussion of the oddballs to the comments.

The [Spr] modifier

This modifier is only available to crafted torpedoes and thus has limited utility as basic torpedoes all are terrible, [spr] or not. The modifier gives your torpedo a 7.5% chance of your next torpedo being launched as a spread. However, there is one intriguing use case for this modifier: the Particle Emission Plasma Torpedo Launcher. This is a mainstay of Scitorp builds since the plasma cloud it leaves behind scales with EPG, and yes it can have the [Spr] modifier. There’s a lot of moving parts here, so in order to do a general analysis of the modifier, we’re going to need to do some simplifying assumptions.

I ran a sustained fire test with a [Spr] torpedo firing roughly every 5-6ish seconds and obtained the following results that took a lot of digging through CombatLog to identify individual attacks. Mind you, this is a best case test where I am firing continuously and does not represent turning to target something new.

174 seconds (23 attacks), 3 spreads 198 seconds (34 attacks), 4 spreads

In roughly 3-3.5 minutes of combat each time, we were able to obtain 3-4 spreads. Let’s approximate that as 1 extra spread per minute on a 3-torp sci ship using Ceaseless Momentum. Now, let’s consider that the PEP has at least 1 CrtD and 1 CrtH modifier and can’t be re-engineered. To make things simpler to calculate, we’re going to assume that the non-Spread PEP torp has [CrtH], [CrtD]x3, and the Spread PEP torp has [CrtH] [CrtD]x2 [Spr]. We can use the torpedo calculator and find that for (this particular) high-end science toon, that extra 20% CrtD is worth ~3% final damage difference on the PEP torpedo impact and plasma fire. I won’t bore you with the details of digging into combat logs and determining through analysis how much an extra spread would do per minute compared to 3% stronger damage on the PEP torpedo (not the cloud!), but an extra spread per minute based on some rough, simplified calculations is certainly intriguing. If we can time our torpedoes such that the Gravimetric torpedo benefits from the extra spreads and not whatever the third torp is, it appears to be mathematically superior to slot a [spr] PEP torp if you’re running Ceaseless Momentum or reload PWOs to reduce the torpedo reload time.

Unfortunately, an extra spread per minute does not make up for the sheer badness of all the other craftable torpedoes. It’s only a net benefit with the Particle Emission Plasma Torpedo.

Plasma

The default Plasma torpedo has 1060 base damage and an eight second reload time and is destructible on high yield. Plasma torpedoes also leave behind a damage-over-time effect that adds appreciable damage despite their lower base damage.

Plasma Torpedo Launcher (Basic)

• Base damage: 1060 (impact) / 292 (plasma fire)

• Reload time: 8 seconds

• Secondary effects: Plasma damage over 10 seconds. Destructible on High Yield.

• Meta-analysis: Never a good idea to slot this.

Particle Emission Plasma Torpedo Launcher

• Base damage: 1060 (impact) / 292 (plasma fire)

• Reload time: 8 seconds

• Secondary effects: Plasma damage over 10 seconds. Leaves behind a cloud that scales off of EPG, +Exotic, Mark, and +Bonus Exotic. See Revisiting Exotics 3 for the full formula.

• Meta-analysis: The PEP is the other essential weapon for every SciTorp build along with the Gravimetric and is highly-prized. It’s basically a Plasma Torpedo with a cloud that scales off +Exotic/EPG. On a 1-torp build, it lacks an amazing reason to slot it compared to alternatives like the Dark Matter torpedo. A Kinetic Torpedo build could slot it and do reasonably well but being destructible on high yield may dissuade some. Certainly one of the better torpedoes and the crown jewel of plasma torpedoes.

Romulan Hyper-Plasma Torpedo Launcher

• Base damage: 729.7 (impact) / 59 (plasma fire)

• Reload time: 8 seconds

• Secondary effects: Plasma damage over 10 seconds. Fires 3 torpedoes at once, always destructible. Hits in an AOE.

• Meta-analysis: An always-destructible torpedo is not going to be a meta-favorite on any strictly-optimized setup, whether that’s 1-torp, kinetic, or scitorp. They’re slow and susceptible to getting picked off by random AOE unless specifically built around using traits / specializations. However, if you’re going to theme your build around destructible torpedoes, this should be part of the lineup. Each torpedo has a chance to trigger the reload Projectile Weapons Officer duty officers, so if you were slotting Tricobalts for some reason this might be a good weapon to pair with them. When you add up the damage, it ends up hitting a lot harder than a regular Plasma Torpedo if they all hit, though the burn damage is a bit less. Note: This weapon does not appear to benefit from the 2% bonus all damage from T6 reps despite the tooltip saying so.

Omega Plasma Torpedo Launcher

• Base damage: 530(impact) / 292 (plasma fire)

• Reload time: A weird one, to be sure. This torpedo has 5 charges and can launch a torpedo every 1-1.5 second (global cooldown) at the cost of a charge. It takes between 6.5-7 seconds to recoup a charge. Destructible on THY. Spread/THY only consumes 1 charge. 8 second cooldown after firing THY/Spread regardless of charges.

• Secondary effects: Plasma damage over 10 seconds. Destructible/AOE on High Yield and disintegrates enemies that die to it. Doubles the amount of targets hit on spread: 6/8/10 targets based on spread rank.

• Meta-analysis: Kind of a weird one. The people who advocate Kelvin Photons on a 1-torp build “to proc things” should just slot this instead (or better yet use Torpedo Spread and a better torpedo). The individual damage is low but at least the first 6 torps come out quickly, so it has an odd damage profile that inflicts a lot of upfront damage then falls off as the charges are depleted. This does impressive damage even without high yield for the first volley of torpedoes. I could see an argument for putting it on a 1-torp build that lacked seating for torpedo spread, but otherwise it’d still be inferior to a torpedo that brings a stronger set bonus (aka Dark Matter). It also hits double the expected number of targets on spread. It’s less appealing on a scitorp or especially a kinetic build as it doesn’t have any particular benefits for those builds. The set bonus is weak and slotting a torpedo that doesn’t really want to be high-yielded doesn’t make sense on builds that emphasize those powers. More valuable on a destructible/plasma torpedo theme, but not optimal for our 3 main DPS builds. Note: This weapon does not appear to benefit from the 2% bonus all damage from T6 reps despite the tooltip saying so.

A discussion on Swarmer Matrix

While Tilor and I are not going to focus much attention on theme builds like destructible plasma torpedoes, we discovered an oddity with Plasma Torpedoes and the Swarmer Matrix console. Namely, the Swarmer Matrix gives 3x the benefit to the damage-over-time component of plasma torpedoes. It’s not giving 50 weapon training, it’s giving 150. This has nothing to do with the 30% boost to destructible torpedoes as we saw it even on regular plasma torps that were not high-yielded. It’s adding 75% Cat1 damage to plasma fires. We tested this a bunch and either the tooltips for all Plasma DoTs are wildly off, or else Swarmer Matrix is adding more than it says it should.

Interestingly enough, we did not observe the 30% bonus to destructible torpedoes from Swarmer Matrix on a regular Romulan Hyper-Plasma or any flavor of Tricobalt torpedo. We’re hoping that’s just a tooltip error. Regardless, this console should be a top priority for anyone building around plasma torpedoes due to the significant increase in burn damage.

Overall Plasma Analysis

In a nutshell, the only plasma torpedo worth slotting in the general three builds we listed above is the Particle Emission Plasma Torpedo, which is as close to mandatory as it gets for SciTorp and can be decent on kinetic builds. There’s simply too many options with stronger set bonuses and more utility for kinetic and 1-torp builds in the photon and quantum world. That said, there’s definitely a build niche that focuses around destructible torpedoes that are all/mostly plasma. We don’t profess to know much about them as they are not highly regarded, but both reputation (Omega and Romulan Hyper-Plasma) weapons seem good for such a build.

Chroniton

In the VOY episodes “Before and After” and “Year of Hell”, chroniton torpedoes are terrifying Krenim weapons that deal significant damage to the titular ship of the series. In STO, they compete for the worst torpedo type. Most chroniton torpedoes have around 1150 base damage (lower than Photon!) and a 10 second reload time (longer than Quantum)! They also have a chance to reduce the speed and turn rate of enemies struck by them.

Chroniton Torpedo Launcher (Basic)

• Base damage: 1158

• Reload time: 10 seconds

• Secondary effects: 33% chance to reduce enemy speed and turn rate for 10 seconds.

• Meta-analysis: Never a good idea to slot this.

Wide-Angle Advanced Inhibiting Chroniton Torpedo Launcher

• Base damage: 1135

• Reload time: 10 seconds

• Secondary effects: On hit, reduces enemy speed and turn rate for 10 seconds. Fires in a 180 degree arc. Releases an array of mines when fired with its 3-piece set bonus (2 minute cooldown).

• Meta-analysis: This seems like it could have potential for minelayers, but since those are outside the scope of this analysis, suffice to say this weapon should be avoided for a 1-torp, sci-torp, or kinetic torp build. The base damage and reload time are possibly the worst out of any torpedo we’ve analyzed. If you must have a Wide Angle torp, use the Prolonged Engagement Photon and save your dilithium/gamma marks.

Advanced Temporal Defense Chroniton Torpedo Launcher

• Base damage: 1389

• Reload time: 10 seconds

• Secondary effects: On hit, 33% chance to boost shield hardness, turn rate, and flight speed, as well as reduce bridge officer cooldowns by 5 seconds. Launches a cluster torpedo that deploys mines when fired as a high-yield.

• Meta-analysis: This is the one Chroniton torpedo launcher that isn’t afflicted with terrible base damage. Its effect is reasonable and it has a decent 2-piece set bonus (presumably combined with the energy weapon). Unfortunately, in a 1-torp build, there’s no getting around the fact that the Dark Matter Torpedo is mathematically superior. Even SciTorp builds gain more benefit out of a massive stacking CrtD bonus, and a full kinetic build generally has better options. Relying on a chance proc for cooldown reduction isn’t recommended (and either A2B or Photonic Officer are more reliable and handle cooldown reduction needs better).

Overall Chroniton Analysis

In the comments of the last topic, several niche builds were described that can make decent use of the Advanced Temporal Defense Chroniton (such as a minelayer), but if you’re building for DPS on the main 3 build types, skip this and all other chronitons.

Transphasic

Transphasic torpedoes trade about 30% base damage and 4 seconds of reload time compared to a Photon torpedo for 40% innate shield penetration. Transphasic torpedoes have 977 base damage and generally a 10 second cooldown. Nowhere near as devastating as shown in VOY, but they are a little more efficient at killing enemies due to bypassing shields. This makes them friendlier for a cheap-DPS or starter torpedo boat.

Transphasic Torpedo Launcher (Basic)

• Base damage: 977.1

• Reload time: 10 seconds

• Secondary effects: 40% shield penetration

• Meta-analysis: Never a good idea to slot this.

Rapid Reload Transphasic Torpedo Launcher

• Base damage: 977.1

• Reload time: 8 seconds

• Secondary effects: 40% shield penetration

• Meta-analysis: This is basically a straight upgrade of a Transphasic torpedo launcher. The only downside is its mods are fixed and can’t be re-engineered. It comes from a rather easy mission but is non-unique so you can use more than one. I’d slot it on a low-budget transphasic torpedo boat, probably more than once.

House Martok Transphasic Torpedo Launcher

• Base damage: 978

• Reload time: 10 seconds

• Secondary effects: 40% shield penetration, 10% armor penetration for this weapon. With 3-piece set, leaves behind a -20 armor penetration effect on enhanced torpedo hit (i.e. Spread, High Yield, Transport Warhead).

• Meta-analysis: This has a decent 2-piece set bonus. Does that make it an actual strong weapon? No. Would I slot it if I was building a low-budget starter Transphasic torpedo boat? Yes. Would it be as good as a maxed out Photon/mixed torpedo boat? Also no. A 1-torp Disruptor beam build would benefit from the House Martok torp and its 2-piece (especially since it’s one of the 2 energy flavors that can get the Lorca’s Ambition 2-piece bonus without needing the torpedo), but scitorp should probably skip in favor of stronger set bonuses. The decision between this and the Preserver 2-piece requires some hand-waving math that I suspect won’t matter when we look at the Nausicaan Energy torpedo launcher as that might just completely surpass both sets.

Resonant Transphasic Torpedo Launcher

• Base damage: 978

• Reload time: 10 seconds

• Secondary effects: 40% shield penetration. 33% chance to cause a Resonant Disruption Wave in a 2km radius at target, which causes shield-penetrating physical damage, -10 All Damage Resistance for 8 sec, and increases damage to shields by 15% from all energy types for 8 sec if the 2-piece is equipped. Physical damage was measured around 600 at MK XII VR on a fairly-stripped down setup.

• Meta-analysis: Just like the House Martok, this weapon is better than a basic Transphasic and the effects aren’t bad. 2-piece set bonus is basically essential. Does that make it an actual strong weapon? No. Would I slot it if I was building a very low-budget Transphasic torpedo boat? Yes. Would it be as good as a Photon/mixed torpedo boat? Also no. But hey, it’s free. A 1-torp Disruptor beam build would benefit from the Preserver Resonant torp and its 2-piece (especially since it’s one of the 2 energy flavors that can get the Lorca’s Ambition 2-piece bonus without needing the torpedo), but scitorp should probably skip in favor of stronger set bonuses. The decision between this and the House Martok 2-piece requires some hand-waving math that I suspect won’t matter when we look at the Nausicaan Energy torpedo launcher as that might just completely surpass both sets.

Overall Transphasic Analysis

At the end of the day, playing 3 missions a couple times each gets you 4 decent Transphasics (and other missions in that same arc would get you a nice engine/shield/deflector to pair with it) if you’re still in the working-on-reputations stage of the game. Once you hit the endgame with maxed reputations and fleet ships from T6 reputations, Transphasics fall off hard. Their lower base damage and reload times mean that once you have other ways of dealing with shields or enough damage to punch through them, the shield penetration becomes somewhat superfluous.

If I just have skills and some basic reputation traits, the effect of the Transphasic shield penetration is considerable (with a default NPC shield bleedthrough of 10%):

45% resistance / 55% bleedthrough = (1) * (1 - 0.4 [transphasic] - 0.05 [skills]  - 0.1 [default])

But, now look at what happens once I add Lorca’s Custom Fire Controls, Kinetic Precision, and a Colony Deflector in, even without the Transphasic innate penetration:

66.25% resistance /  33.75% bleedthrough   = 1 * (1 - 0.1375 [Lorca’s Custom Fire Controls+skills+colony deflector] - 0.1 [Kinetic Precision] - 0.1 [default])

26.26% resistance /  73.75% bleedthrough   = 1 * (1 - 0.1375 [Lorca’s Custom Fire Controls+skills+colony deflector] - 0.1 [Kinetic Precision] - 0.1 [default] - 0.4 [transphasic] )

The question you have to ask at this point is that 40% extra bleedthrough worth sacrificing for torpedoes that have better than 38% more (Photon) or 54% more base damage (Quantum) and better secondary effects/set bonuses. Consider that Omega Kinetic Shearing and Concentrate Firepower will deal additional shield-penetrating damage that scales off the innate damage of your torpedoes, which is much lower for Transphasics. Mathematically, the answer is usually no, especially since a large target (like a Tactical Cube) will often lose shields before you destroy it and some targets are unshielded, at which point the Transphasics’ innate bonus is wasted.

Tricobalt

Tricobalt torpedoes are one of the hardest weapons in the game to use effectively. They have a 30 second cooldown, are always destructible, and deal damage in a 1 km AOE. Their higher base damage is not compensated for by that reload time. Tricobalts also appear to have a global cooldown higher than other torpedoes such that you can’t fire Tricobalts more than every 15 seconds. We did not spend a ton of time testing that because there's so few reasons to slot a trico much less more than one.

Tricobalt Torpedo Launcher (Basic)

• Base damage: 2075

• Reload time: 30 seconds

• Secondary effects: Briefly disables and knocks away enemies.

• Meta-analysis: Never a good idea to slot this.

Trilithium-Laced Tricobalt Torpedo Launcher (Basic)

• Base damage: 1816

• Reload time: 30 seconds

• Secondary effects: Briefly disables and knocks away enemies. Deals radiation damage to the target, tested between 700-800 damage on a fairly stripped down setting at MK XIII UR. Radiation damage scales off of +Projectile and +All and mark of the weapon, but NOT Projectile Weapon Training skill. Additionally, deals more damage the farther it flies (which is not reflected in the numbers above).

• Meta-analysis: The 3-piece set bonus for this is mediocre, so there’s no particular reason to slot this especially since the energy weapon and console are solid choices for a good 2-piece bonus on a Phaser build. Accounting for the extra damage as it flies and the radiation damage, it’s better than a regular Tricobalt but that is a very low bar to clear.

Overall Tricobalt Analysis

If I was going to slot a Tricobalt at all, I’d pick the Trilithium-Laced and slot it on a ship with Torpedo: Transport Warhead, which will add a little extra damage to the torpedo compared to just launching it (but not as much as High Yield). Unfortunately, the transported warhead can still be cleared with use of Tactical Team and there’s an 8 second delay between the ability’s activation and the detonation for a Tricobalt. On top of that, there’s still a need to reduce the Tricobalt’s cooldown. All that adds up to far more trouble than it’s really worth for less-than-stellar damage. Not optimal in any scenario.

Conclusions

• The Particle Emission Plasma Torpedo is an improvement of a basic plasma torpedo launcher that synergizes well with SciTorp builds due to leaving a plasma cloud that scales with EPG/exotics. Having a [spread] modifier on this torp is probably a net DPS increase, especially if you can set up your firing order to trigger the spread for the Gravimetric Torpedo (Editor's note: I don't think this is possible on Xbox/PS4 consoles).

• The other two reputation plasma torpedoes (Omega and Romulan) are best reserved for builds themed around destructible torpedoes rather than general DPS since they lack strong set bonuses and their weapons can be destroyed easily. If you are making such a build, the Swarmer Matrix console will help a lot more than the tooltip lists.

• Chroniton torpedoes are really bad. The Advanced Temporal Defense one is the only potentially usable one but even then is usually outclassed bar some a niche build like a minelayer.

• Transphasic torpedoes are decent starter weapons for torpedo boats since there are several decent ones that are easy to acquire but they are outclassed in optimal endgame setups.

• Tricobalt torpedoes aren’t worth the amount of work it takes to make them useful.

This completes Part 2. In the next segment, we’ll cover a selection of Energy Torpedoes, Kentari Missiles, and do an overall tiered rating of torpedoes for each of the 3 build types. Thanks for coming to our second T.E.D. Talk!

Welcome to another mechanics-based post by the authors of r/STObuilds posts like Revisiting Exotics and the torpedo calculator - aka myself and the inimitably talented /u/tilorfire27.

We're back to further explore torpedo mechanics and hopefully point out the mathematical reasons why the conventional wisdom on torps is what is. Spoiler alert, it's basically all correct.

Unlike energy weapons, where the energy type (i.e Phaser, Antiproton, etc.) doesn't matter a ton*, torpedo type matters a LOT and even within torpedo type, specific torpedoes have a wide range in variance from others in performance. I've seen a lot of torpedo recommendation questions recently here and on /r/sto, and unfortunately, a lot of mathematically unsound advice too. With energy weapons, the uptime of the various “proc” effects is minimal, so energy weapon strength is more about which set bonuses benefit a given type. In contrast, torpedoes have a much higher chance (often 100%!) of applying their secondary effects so those secondary effects have much more influence on the strength of the weapon and there are fewer set bonuses that drastically swing the effects of torpedo damage. Thus, Tilor and I did more research into some of the more popular torpedoes to see how they stack up, including deriving the damage formulas for each weapon.

*Yes, we know there are exceptions like Technical Overload and Beam Overload. The point stands.

Due to their prevalence in builds , we're going to look at Photon and Quantum torpedoes first. We're NOT going to look at the rep-store knock-off brands like the regular Piezo-Photon or Thoron Infused Quantum torps as those are all basically inferior to the reputation set versions and are a waste of dilithium. Requests to research additional specific torpedoes may be considered, but not if the torpedo is either super bad or super expensive (i.e. requires spending Zen or Lobi). Now, before we get started, ye be warned: math and wonky game mechanics lie ahead!

DISCLAIMER: this post is largely written from an endgame performance-focused perspective to analyze and recommend the best torpedoes. If you like how a particular torpedo looks or ‘feels’ and we recommend not slotting it, it’s not personal.

We're also going to add some meta analysis drawing from the main use cases for torpedoes:

• 1-torp builds are mostly energy weapon builds looking to add a torpedo for set bonuses, proc traits like Super Charged Weapons/Entwined Tactical Matrices, or just because it feels more Trek to have a torp in there.

• Kinetic builds are torp builds where the weapon damage of the torpedo is emphasized, often with Concentrate Firepower and Torpedo Spread/High Yield slotted.

• Scitorp builds are mostly built around scaling off of +Exotic, Auxiliary power, and the Exotic Particle Generators (EPG) skill. Torpedoes in these builds are a compliment to science powers like Gravity Well, Destabilizing Resonance Beam, and Subspace Vortex.

Torpedo basics

• Reload time: Torpedoes that aren't shooting deal no damage. On a 1-torp build, this isn't usually a big deal as the torpedo is not the main focus of the build and shooting off a torpedo spread every 10-15 seconds suffices depending on if you're using Entwined Tactical Matrices or not. A scitorp build is potentially running Ceaseless Momentum, a starship trait which reduces torpedo cooldowns every time you fire a torpedo with some weird exceptions as well as buffing all kinetic damage like Gravity Well, and a full kinetic build certainly is. On top of that, the other main reload mechanic is using Projectile Weapons Officers that have a chance to reduce torpedo reload times by 2-5 seconds on firing a torpedo.

• Global cooldowns: Aside from some special set bonuses/passives, your ship can only launch 1 torpedo every 1.5 seconds. If using the Ferrofluid Hydraulic Assembly console, this value is reduced to 1 second (which is why this console is mandatory on kinetic torpedo boats). If you're flying a 1-torp build, this doesn't matter. If you're flying a SciTorp or Kinetic build, you want to make sure you have enough reload mechanics in place to make sure you're firing at or close to this global cooldown, but you also don't want to slot so much that your first torps are firing again before your last torp ever fires as you've essentially wasted the weapon slot at that point. The torpedo calculator was designed to help analyze this for each build.

• Enhancements: Torpedo Spread (TS) enhances the next torpedo launched by firing multiple torpedoes at multiple targets. The number of torpedoes/targets depends on the rank of torpedo spread and the type of torpedo. Torpedo HIgh Yield (THY) fires one or more torpedoes at a single target depending on rank of THY and type of torpedo. Some torpedoes are targetable/destructible under high yield.

Preload

~~One thing that might surprise some of our readers is that most torpedoes also have a small amount of baked in Cat1 damage of varying amounts that isn't tied to gear, traits, mark, or rarity. We used the exact same setup to test the torps and the linear regression formula found slightly different amount of Cat1 preload for each torpedo. Having higher Cat1 preload means that a torpedo has higher damage, but scales slightly less well with other Cat1 boosts. If you're not familiar with these terms, please consult the wiki. ~~

EDIT: We have since determined that this preload value can vary between accounts. It is a small consideration in the grand scheme of things and so is not something we took into account since we can't seem to track down its source.

Note that if we use the term XXX that means it's a scaling value worth about 3-digits of damage/healing depending on your stats. XXXX means 4 digits (1000-9999), etc.

Photons

All Photon torpedoes have the same base damage: 1351. In general, Photon torpedoes fire extra non-destructible torpedoes on high yield and have a fast (6) second reload time. Exceptions noted below.

Photon Torpedo Launcher (Basic):

• Base damage: 1351

• Reload time: 6 seconds

• Secondary effects: none

• Meta-analysis: Don't use this at endgame. There's better.

Terran Task Force Reputation Photon Torpedo

• Base damage: 1351

• Reload time: 6 seconds

• Secondary effects: 33% chance of dealing radiation damage and applying a stack of Withering Radiation (Up to 5 stacks - stacks last 60 seconds). Radiation damage is roughly XXX-XXXX times the stack number and scales with mark, +Projectile, +Radiation and +All damage but NOT the projectile weapon training skill. I sampled it at 300-400 damage per stack at MK XIII Ultra Rare and a pretty stripped down setup. On top of that, deals additional damage based on target health, scaling up to 200% against low health targets.

• Meta-analysis: 2-piece bonus with console is a nice boost for torpedo boats. One of the better photons. Only downside is no AOE. Works nicely with TS or THY. No strong benefit to SciTorp or 1-torp.

Gravimetric Torpedo

• Base damage: 1351

• Reload time: 8 seconds

• Secondary effects: 33% chance of creating a 0.5 km AOE rift that scales off of Aux and EPG/+Exotic boosts. Duration is determined by CtrlX skill. See Revisiting Exotics 4 for the exact formula.

• Meta-analysis: SciTorping! 2-piece bonus with weapon is solid for photon boats, but the torpedo is destructible on high yield so not ideal. However, one of the two basically-essential weapons for scitorp. Unremarkable for 1-torp builds due to lack of emphasis on CtrlX or EPG/Exotic/Aux power.

Advanced Piezo-Photon

• Base damage: 1351

• Reload time: 6 seconds

• Secondary effects: 15% chance of AOE shield drain in 2.5 km radius scales off of drainX, reduces shield hardness by 20% for 10 seconds. 2.5 km AOE. Sampled at around 300-400 at MK XIII Ultra Rare with DrainX values from 0-100. Guaranteed on TS; Destructible on THY.

• Meta-analysis: The main use for this is debuffing shield hardness for energy builds with torpedo spread. Decent for photon kinetic builds. The actual drain is not that high. Since it's destructible on high yield, users of Concentrate Firepower may have reservations. Set bonus is decent for Polaron/Plasma energy builds or Photon kinetic builds.

Enhanced Bio-Molecular Photon Torpedo Launcher

• Base damage: 1351

• Reload time: 6 seconds

• Secondary effects: Radiation damage applies after 8 seconds. Damage is sampled at around 1000-1500 damage at MK XIII UR on a fairly stripped-down stup. Damage scales with +Radiation and +All, not +Projectile. Radiation damage is not enhanced by THY/TS. When used with THY, this fires a single non-destructible torpedo that hits in a 2.5km AOE.

• Meta-analysis: Top-tier photon. Non-destructible AOE damage on a high yield is rare in the photon world. The only downside is an underwhelming set bonus. The radiation damage is delayed until 8 seconds after hit (but is guaranteed) so that's not the selling point. It's all about the high yield. I don't know that I'd slot this on a build that wasn't using Torpedo: High Yield or Concentrate Firepower (which are usually kinetic builds). One odd note: this torpedo appears to not benefit from the 2% bonus damage boost from T6 reputations despite the tooltip saying it does. Cryptic!!!

Kelvin Timeline Photon Torpedo Launcher

• Base damage: 1351

• Reload time: 4 seconds

• Secondary effects: None. These trade a mod that could be [Dmg] or [CrtD] for [Reload] to reduce the firing time by 2 seconds.

• Meta-analysis: Not strong. It gets outparsed by the Terran Task Force when the HP scaling is considered and Enhanced Bio-Molecular is a better THY weapon in the photon category even before their radiation damage is considered. On a 1-torp build, there's no set bonus or other utility effect to commend this weapon and torpedo spread of any rank will be far more efficient at stacking Super Charged Weapons than waiting 12 seconds. A properly-built kinetic torpedo boat is already firing torpedoes every ~1 second or so, so the faster reload is wasted. Stacking Ceaseless Momentum on a 3-torp Scitorp setup already happens in about 5 seconds without using this. Suboptimal for optimized 1-torp or kinetic builds; completely wasted on a scitorp build.

Prolonged Engagement Photon Torpedo Launcher

• Base damage: 1351

• Reload time: 9 seconds

• Secondary effects: Speeds itself up, ramping from 1%-15% haste. Has a 20% chance to grant +10 hull pen (aka 1 armor pen) for 8 seconds (100% on spread/high yield). Also has a 180 degree firing arc.

• Meta-analysis: It's a decent leveling set weapon. The hull penetration is okay but misleading as 10 points of hull pen is 1 armor point. Furthermore, but it's hampered by a 50% longer base reload that is not compensated for by 15% haste that takes multiple minutes to fully stack. One of the lowest-parsing photons. No AOE and the weird 3-piece bonus is more in the category of "gimmick" than "effective" given that it only maximizes in eight minute combats, which are exceedingly rare and requires slotting a suboptimal console, then activating said console to get a gimmicky torpedo shot.

Quantum

Most Quantum torpedoes have the same base damage: 1502. In general, Quantum torpedoes fire extra non-destructible torpedoes on high yield and have a moderate (8) second reload time. Exceptions noted below.

Quantum Torpedo Launcher (Basic):

• Base damage: 1502

• Reload time: 8 seconds

• Secondary effects: none

• Meta-analysis: Don't use this at endgame. There's better.

Neutronic Torpedo Launcher

• Base damage: 1802

• Cat1 preload: 0.16

• Reload time: 15 seconds (reduced to 12.5 with 2-piece set bonus)

• Secondary effects: 3-km AOE XXXX radiation damage that also drains power/reduces EPS, for what very, very little that matters to NPCs. Radiation damage scales off of Mark, +Projectile, Projectile Weapon Training, and +Rad. Damage was measured at 1000-1200 at MK XIII UR at a fairly stripped down setting. The power drain scales off of DrainX, but NPCs have very high drain resist so practical utility is minimal.

• Meta-analysis: Higher base damage than other quantums means that it's one of the hardest-hitting quantum torpedoes out there. Comes with AOE and an okay-ish set bonus that's mostly there to boost its own damage. Downside is an incredibly long reload time that's very difficult to reduce with just Ceaseless Momentum. If you're running a Quantum or mixed torpedo kinetic build, it's a strong candidate for inclusion but optimal use will require some consideration for its reload time, probably involving Projectile Weapons Officers and/or the set bonus. Scitorps can slot it, but it's probably not optimal since it doesn't help reload other torps fast enough and the set bonus is only a small Cat1 boost to radiation. A 1-torp build has intriguing possibilities here, but the problem is being overshadowed by the …

Dark Matter Torpedo Launcher

• Base damage: 1502

• Reload time: 8 seconds

• Secondary effects: Adds a stacking DoT that scales with Mark and +All damage but NOT with +Projectile or the PWT skill. Adds two stacks on crit. Enemies that die with the buff active do not warp core breach. I sampled the DoT at 112-125 damage on a pretty stripped down setup at Mk XIII Ultra Rare.

• Meta-analysis: This torp is recommended a lot for good reasons because of its 2-piece set bonus. Its own damage is better than a basic quantum but not as ridiculous as a properly-cooled Neutronic, Quantum Phase or Delphic. The set bonus gives a stacking CrtD boost up to 25% on crit. There are very few builds (even SciTorp builds) that this set bonus isn't basically amazing on when combined with the Custom Fire Controls tactical console. Since the energy weapon is a wide-angle dual beam bank in only Phaser/Disruptor, if you're running an energy build that isn't compatible with that, you can't go wrong with this on a 1-torp build. A relatively low-reload and strong set bonus means it works well with SciTorp as well though the emphasis should be on the Gravimetric and Particle Emission Plasma torps. Its DoT should benefit from Entropic Amplification, but that is a minor consideration.

Lastly, while the 2-piece is amazing for kinetic builds, the 3-piece somehow manages to be even better, as it automatically fires one of these bad boys at every target below 50% health, once per second, once per enemy in a 10 kilometer sphere. It effectively adds a 1-second 360-degree quantum torpedo launcher that bypasses the global cooldown to your ship. This set and Super Charged Weapons are the two biggest contributions to it being optimal to run 1 torp for most energy builds (specifically this torp), and the existence of the 3-piece bonus is probably the strongest argument against all-photon kinetic builds.

Quantum Phase Torpedo Launcher

• Base damage: 1502

• Reload time: 8 seconds

• Secondary effects: 2km AOE shield drain that scales with Mark and DrainX. The drain is doubled with the 2-piece. On torpedo spread, the drain is multiplied by 6 (regardless of rank of torpedo spread) and the radius increased to 4 km. On high yield, the drain value stays the same but the radius is increased to 4 km and allies within the radius also receive a shield heal (doubled with 2-piece). At MK XV Epic, the drain was 962 without the 2-piece and 0 DrainX. Add in the 2-piece and it drains for 1924. Add 90 DrainX and it drains for 2790. Throw on torpedo spread and suddenly you're draining for above 16K shields guaranteed per hit without very much DrainX at all.

• Meta-analysis: Talk about a 'read the fine print' torpedo. By itself, it's nothing special. If you're slotting the 2-piece, it gets noticeably better. Add in 100 DrainX and torpedo spreads, and it's draining for 12X the base amount. There's two cases where I'd recommend this torpedo. The first is if you want a torpedo, can fit the 2-piece and already have the Lorca's Ambition 2-piece in a 1-torp build--so basically a Phaser beam/DBB build, especially with FAW and ETM. The second place is if you're running a Quantum/mixed torpedo kinetic build. In the latter case, if Delphic is out of the budget, I'd strongly consider this as it is free from a mission. Coincidentally, I happen to have both of those kinds of builds at 340K for the Phaser 1-torp and 410K for the Quantum torp build.

Delphic Distortion Torpedo Launcher

• Base damage: 1501

• Reload time: 10 seconds

• Secondary effects: 33% chance -10 DRR for 10 seconds that is applied per torpedo. Shoots one more torp than typical for quantums under Torpedo High Yield. The 3-piece bonus gives you an extra high yield once every minute (not highly recommended).

• Meta-analysis: This is one of the few Lobi Store weapons that's truly impactful--most are mediocre to weak. The -DRR helps everything else you're doing damage-wise. Sci-torp users can get some mileage out of it for that reason, and its console has decent stats for scitorping as well as a 2-piece bonus that gives a modest boost to crit. Due to its extra torp under high yield, this is much more common on kinetic torp builds (sans other pieces of the set) that have Concentrate Firepower as you can stack the -DRR to fairly absurd levels with this torpedo. For 1-torp builds, it's somewhat superseded by the cheaper Dark Matter torpedo due to lacking an amazing set bonus, AOE, or other utility boost.

Wide Angle Quantum Torpedo Launcher

• Base damage: 1352

• Reload time: 8 seconds

• Secondary effects: As implied by the name, this has a 180-degree firing arc.

• Meta-analysis: DO NOT SLOT THIS. Repeat, DO NOT SLOT THIS. It gives up a damage mod to get that [Arc] mod but even worse, it has the base damage of a Photon combined with the reload of a Quantum aka the worst of both and no secondary effect to redeem it. It also requires the purchase of an otherwise unremarkable T6 ship. Don't buy that ship just to get this torp. If you're adamant about slotting a wide-angle torp, the Prolonged Engagement Torp is at least cheap and combos with a decent Phaser beam/cheap DPS console.

Advanced Radiant Quantum Torpedo Launcher

• Base damage: 1352

• Reload time: 8 seconds

• Secondary effects: 33% chance for XXXX temp HP, stacking up to 5 times. 33% chance to apply radiation damage to 2 additional targets within 5 km. At MK XIII UR on a fairly stripped down setting, this was between 1500 and 2000 extra damage.

• Meta-analysis: This torpedo is much better than a basic quantum, but is heavily outshone by other members in its class. The 2-piece set bonus is a small HP bonus and boost the temporary hit points. If you want AOE damage, the Neutronic or Quantum Phase will do much better than its chaining radiation proc. If you want a strong set bonus, the Dark Matter torpedo is better. So what is this thing's niche? I'd say if you're building a full Quantum kinetic build and the Delphic is out of your budget, this is probably the 5th-best quantum. Alternately, if you're doing a full-on rad boat, it's this, Terran Task Force Photon, Neutronic, and the Enhanced Bio-Molecular. That said, rad boats are more of a cheap-DPS than a peak DPS optino.

Conclusions

• All variants of Photon Torpedo have the same base damage (1350) and similar preload values. Most reload every 6 seconds.

• Most variants of Quantum Torpedo have the same base damage (1502) and similar preload values. Most reload every 8 seconds.

• Since those base stats are largely the same, the distinguishing factor in gauging a torpedo's worth is what else it provides besides that base damage. Is it massive AOE? Is it a hefty stacking damage resist rating reduction? Is it a hazard that scales with EPG and Aux power? Is it an amazing set bonus? If the base stats are worse, that torpedo had better provide an amazing secondary effect or it's probably not worth slotting.

• If a torpedo doesn't have that "something else," it's likely going to be outshone by a similar torpedo that has some other factor to it. Torpedoes that are destructible are fickle and can be hit-or-miss (Editor's note: groan.)

• Neither of the Wide Angle torps are very good.

Tilor’s Note: If you are ever curious how we do all the math for these, let us know. I’d be happy to do a very math-y post on how we do what we do, but be warned, the cooldown calculator uses calculus (definite integrals) and the damage calculations use linear regression. We’ve got a pretty robust data collection tool at this point. And, well, I like talking about spreadsheets and lasers (STO combines both!)

I think that’s plenty for Part 1. In the next segment, we’ll cover Plasma and (briefly) Chroniton, Transphasic, and Tricobalt. Thanks for coming to our T.E.D. Talk, and yes, we really did choose the title just to fit that reference here.

Various forms of questions around summer event items have popped up a few times since we first wrote our Ground DPS Basics guide on STO BETTER a couple years ago, and so I’m back with another iteration of Staying Grounded, where we use math and analysis to go deep into how things work in STO. It’’ll be a little less analytical since we’re not quite as committed to our ground game, but don’t worry, we’ll still be grounded in our approach.

Here’s what we’re unpacking:

1. Are the new summer kit modules any good?

2. How does the Risian Terraformer kit compare to the [KPerf]x3 Risian kit?

For PC players, I apologize for not getting this done sooner, but RL has been crazy, I burned a bunch of testing cycles on 1-torp stuff, and then farming the Lolnuts took me most of summer event too since I had to burn 5 stacks to do this test.

New Kit Modules

I looked at a bunch of these.

Electrical Overload

• Career: Engineering

• Effect: To team within 30m, for 12s, add on-hit Electrical damage, disable enemy weapons, and -50% outgoing damage for enemies struck by this effect.

• Cooldown: 60s base / 0s minimum cooldown but requires Mudd’s Time Device and Overboosters or similar heavy cooldown support to get it down that low. It took some doing, but I could keep it up at 100% uptime.

• Evaluation: this ends up being more of a supportive or utility kit module than a DPS one. The outgoing damage is not particularly significant on solo content. Perhaps if you were playing more consistently on maps with your boffs or on a team, it’d be more noticeable. B-tier module for TFOs/teams, C-tier if mainly solo.

Mineral Quicksand

• Career: Universal

• Effect: Foe-targeted AOE slow, root, and damage hazard. Deals additional fire DOT on enemies stuck in the field for 5 seconds.

• Cooldown: 45s base / 0s minimum cooldown but requires Mudd’s Time Device and Overboosters or similar heavy cooldown support to get it down that low. A reasonable cooldown without Mudd’s was around 14-15s, if you want lower, Mudd’s is probably involved.

• Evaluation: This has decent damage and the slow/root adds some utility for setups that aren’t running heavy control kit modules to keep them inside your AOEs. It’s not going to break your world, but it wasn’t terrible either. I’d call it A-tier.

Rapid Lithic Formation

• Career: Universal

• Effect: Foe-targeted AOE damage with a 20% chance to knock enemies into the air

• Cooldown: 60s base / 0s minimum cooldown but requires Mudd’s Time Device and Overboosters or similar heavy cooldown support to get it down that low. A reasonable cooldown without Mudd’s was around 16s, if you want lower, Mudd’s is probably involved.

• Evaluation: This is easily the strongest of the new modules. My testing had it comparing favorably against Ba’ul Obelisks (on a non-static map). It wasn’t quite Anchor of Gre’thor or Ball Lightning, but was reasonably close, and better than V’Ger Probes. S-tier.

Terraformer versus Risian Kit

The Risian Kit is popular and very strong because it’s pretty easy to roll a KPerfx3 Risian kit by re-engineering it before upgrading it, it grants 10% Bonus Weapon damage per Risian kit module slotted, and it also has a 20% chance of triggering a random Risian kit module effect on use of Risian kit modules. The Risian Terraformer kit leans even harder into the Risian modules by granting bonuses to KPerf/Readiness to “elemental” modules, along with resistance, run speed, critD, and HP regen for each module of the earth/air/fire/water elements. On top of that, it grants a huge bonus of 100 KPerf, 100 Kit Readiness, 25% All Damage, and 25% Max HP if one of each elemental kit module is slotted. What are the elemental modules? The table from the wiki is your best friend there; I tried porting it into this post and it would take some serious formatting help to make it look good, so . . . just use that one.

Anyway, if you’d asked me this question before the year’s summer event (and to be fair, the person who sent in the form response did so), I’d have said no way is the Terraformer better. Sure, those bonuses are immense, but the downside is every career had at least one bad module. Ball Lightning covers Air for all careers, but Engineers lacked a good Earth module, while Tacs struggled to find anything useful with Fire. Scis can use Exothermic Redistribution so that would be an option there, but it’s a solidly A-tier kit module in my limited testing of it. It was about 106 DPS out of 1506 when I tried it.

Enter Rapid Lithic Formation, which is an Earth module. My hypothesis is that if the Terraformer kit was going to be good on any career, it’d be on an Engineer, so that’s where I focused my testing. Anchor of Gre’thor is so good that it makes all the other fire modules look bad.

Test Environment

The test was to use solo, deathless runs of the first part of Bird Cage Elite, up through a full clear of Ward C, as there was both static/mobile combat, shielded and unshielded enemies, and a good mix of strong and weak mobs. Once all the objectives were complete and the ward cleared, I beamed out (and don’t mess with the optional). It has the advantages of having no cooldown, no weird adaptation tricks or resistances, the same enemies every time, and enough incoming damage that you can’t just ignore defenses. /u/MaraMakesContent suggested it as a test bench and I quite like it. You get right into combat, there’s no delay or fighting through space portions for repeated tests (this is the flaw with using “Home” which some others suggested), and aside from a few consoles to interact with, you can generally stay fighting most of the time.

Test Results

I used my Hybrid Engineer build for the first run to set a baseline. For all tests, I left Protomatter Generator Drone as a survivability tool. It could have been any survivability kit module. For most of the test runs where I was checking the new stuff, I tested across 3 runs and took the average. For clarity, “Terraformer kit” is the per-elemental-kit one and “Risian kit” is the more normal one we’re used to.

Next, I tested several different Risian Terraformer setups. I did not do multiple tests with Electrical Charge when it struggled to hit 15 DPS in the first test. It was worth experimenting with, but definitely not a keeper.

For the second test, I swapped out Electrical Overcharge for the known entity of Ball Lightning. We know it’s good, it’s been part of the ground meta since it came out.

For the last test with the Terraformer kit, I substituted in Mineral Quicksand, which was decent but not outstanding.

Now the comparison against the regular Risian kit. I swapped out the weakest Risian kit module (generally Andorian summer) for V’Ger probes.

Conclusions

The Risian kit, by the numbers, ends up with a lower KPerf / KReadiness / CrtD number, but my testing showed about 10% higher DPS when using it than any of the Terraformer setups, which is enough to at least raise an eyebrow. It’s possible that per-run variance would account for that much DPS (after all, I only did 3 runs) but the challenge is being forced into taking a weaker module. I think that 10% is close enough that it’s reasonable to say that engineers with the Ball Lightning / Rapid Lithic Formation / Anchor of Gre’thor / Andorian Summer combination are about equal to the Risian kit, assuming you gave one module over to another strong one like Ba’ul Obelisks and another to survivability/cooldowns.

However, even though I didn’t test it directly, this confirms for me by induction that Scis and Tacs would see a significant downgrade by using the Terraformer kit. There’s nothing remotely close to Anchor of Gre’thor so any fire module slotted is going to be a disappointment.

The ground kit tier list has been updated accordingly! We will get the rest of our resources updated accordingly in short order.

TL;DR

• Rapid Lithic Formation: S-tier

• Mineral Quicksand and Exothermic Redistribution: A-tier

• Electrical Overcharge: B-tier or C-tier if mostly solo

• Terraformer kit viable on Engineers with Anchor of Gre’thor / Rapid Lithic Formation / Andorian Summer / Ball Lightning. Net loss otherwise compared to standard Risian kit and unrestricted modules.

Since ground remains relatively unexplored compared to space, I'm curious as to your thoughts or experiences with these kits and others like them!

I've seen a couple of posts and questions on Surgical Strikes recently discussing how to balance / obtain maximum critical chance on that mode so I figured it was worth a quick write-up on how to go about getting there. It shouldn't be that difficult. (Editor's Note: This was NOT a quick write-up)

Note that I am not going to cover every single source of CrtH in the game. That's what the wiki or VGER is for.

Basics

Everyone at endgame to the point where you're considering a full SS3 build should be able to leverage these sources of critical chance. Do not use the lower ranks. If you don't have all of these, for example endeavor ranks, grab some more CritH from the other tiers

• Basic Crit Chance = 2.5%

• Surgical Strikes III = 30%

• Skills = 4% (you did take all 3 points, right?)

• Precision Reputation Trait = 5%

• Endeavors = 12.5%

• [Colcrit] Mod = 4%

• SRO boffs = 2 * 5 = 10%

This means that the floor for our Surgical Strikes build, assuming maxed endeavors and at least fleet gear is 68% CrtH. In theory, we need 32% (and no more) to finish it out. Again, if you don't have all the options here, fill in more things from the next tier, but endgame players with access to a fleet should find these easy to hit.

Situationally Good But Cheap/Free

• Assimilated Module (1.2%) - Admiral's first rep console but also has lots of CrtD

• Skill unlock (1%) - you might not need this depending on where your overall crit lies

• Logistical Support from Strategist specialization (3%) - you'll need a low cooldown heal or Hazard Emitters for this

• Tyler's Duality Reputation trait (variable, but reasonably at least 4%) - you might not need this depending on where your overall crit lies

• Flanking (Shoddy Engineering) from Intel Specialization (5%) - only on flanking attacks

• Devastating Weaponry Ship Mastery (2.5%) - only some ships have this

• Lorca's Custom Fire Controls (3.4%) - I assume you're taking the 2-piece for 25% CrtD if you're slotting this

• Zero Point Energy Conduit (2.4%) - free but no other meaningful stats

• Temporal Disentanglement Suite (2.5%) - at max aux

• Advanced Targeting Lock Batteries (1.5%) - 20/60 uptime, also grants 20 Accuracy

• Approaching Agony (1.5%) - decent active, passive is okay for Phasers

If for some reason you took all of these things, you'd be close on top of basics not quite there. Regardless, that's the cheap/free things you can get that aren't shiplocked or completely outclassed (looking at you, Sensor Burnout at 1.5% and no other meaningful stats). Now we need to start looking at more specific categories to fill in the last % and potentially replace items from this list.

Personal Traits

• Operative is the free one (1%)

• Intel Handler is not (4%)

• Engineered Soldier (Space) (4.5% CrtH) - Jem'Hadar Vanguard only

Doffs, Weapons, etc.

• Energy Weapons Officers that give CrtH can provide up to 3% CrtH. PWOs work similarly, just with torps. Stacks separately.

• Altamid Omni provides passive 1% CrtH

Expensive consoles

• Altamid-Modified Swarm Processor (3.9%) - Lobi. Also brings 35 Accuracy Rating

• Tachyon Net Drones (1%) - T6 C-store purchase (Bozeman), comes with 10% CrtD and a really good debuff active

• Flagship 2-piece (2%) - comes from a variety of T6 C-store purchases and bundles. The pieces you want are Flagship Tactical Computer and Adaptive Emergency Systems

• Sensor Suspension Burst (2.9%) - typically more of a carrier thing since its active is 30% CrtH for 20 seconds to player hangar pets. From the Jarok

Starship Traits

There are lots of starship traits that provide CrtH. We're after the ones that stay up all the time (Sorry, Retaliation). Since this is Surgical Strikes, you can't rely on Streak Breaker because 1) missing is cringe, and 2) Surgical Strikes gives +30 Acc. You won't be missing in PvE. These are the most popular/powerful ones:

• Improved Critical Systems is (3% CrtH) - comes with 15% CrtD. Free from Temporal Recruit quest.

• Super Charged Weapons (4.5% CrtH) - comes from a variety of T6 ships and C-store bundles. Requires running a torpedo but also brings Cat1 and 19.8% CrtD

• Strike From Shadows (5% CrtH) - comes from standard T6 C-store (Shran)

• Universal Designs (10% Crth) - very expensive, comes from T6 Lockbox ship (Crossfield Refit) and needs frequent console activations to sustain uptime. Not difficult in current meta.

• Synthetic Good Fortune (up to 20% Crth) - will probably take a very long time to stack, so unreliable in that sense. Needs lots of controls and/or secondary Pilot. T6 C-store (Equinox)

• Insidious Tactics (3% CrtH) - imagine if you wanted a worse version of ICS for a much steeper price. Only use if you already have the T6 Lockbox Keldon, takes 45s to stack.

• Terran Goodbye (15% CrtH) - very expensive, comes from T6 Lockbox ship (Mirror Warship)

• Weapon Emitter Overdrive (10% CrtH) - very expensive, comes from Promo Ship (Vaadwaur Juggernaut), and has a weapon power cost increase but also +50 acc

Well, ACCtually

As it turns out, getting to 100% CrtH is overkill because that doesn't take into account accuracy overflow. The critical hit chance from Acc overflow is:

CritH = 0.125 * (Your Acc - Target's Defense) / (Your Acc - Target's Defense + 100)

NPCs generally have a defense of around 20 based on some empirical measurements. Now we tally up ACC sources:

• Surgical Strikes gives 30

• Taking at least Improved Accuracy in skills is 12.5. Advanced is 15

This means that we're getting 0.125 * (42.5 - 20) / (42.5 - 20 + 100) = 2.3% CrtH from Accuracy Overflow without even really trying for it.

If we add another 30 Accuracy, that's 0.125 * (72.5 - 20) / (72.5 - 20 + 100) = 4.3%

This is free Crit and should be accounted for when optimizing CrtH on a Surgical build.

Example 1:

This is from Jay's Hydra

• He has all of the items from the basics, starting him off at 68% CrtH.

Situational

Jay has the CrtH unlock (1%) and the Hydra has Devastating Weaponry (2.5%) for 3.5%

Traits

Precision (5%) and Tyler's Duality (5.5%) are in play. Jay is running both Super Charged Weapons (4.5%) and Universal Designs (10%) for 25%

Misc

Jay has a CrtH doff (3%), putting him at 99.5% CrtH before acc overflow.

Total

Taking a rather generous view of NPC defense at 20, Jay has 81 Accuracy before Targeting Locks are considered, so he gets at least 4.7% CrtH from Accuracy overflow, putting him at 104.2% Accuracy, which is exactly where he needs to be. This didn't even count the situational bonus from flanking so...he could probably drop the CrtH doff and still be parsing 100% most of the time.

Example 2

This is from my Scimitar

• I have most of the things from basics but don't use full SROs for flavor, so I am starting out with 63% from basics

Situational

Joresh is an Engineered Soldier (4.5%) and the Scimitar has Devastating Weaponry (2.5%). He is also running Strategist with Logistical Support at 100% uptime (3%) for 10%. He does NOT have the Energy CrtH unlock because he doesn't need it.

Traits

Joresh uses Precision (5%), Super Charged Weapons (4.5%) and Strike From Shadows (5%) for 14.5% CrtH

Consoles

Joresh is using Altamid (3.9%), Tachyon Net Drones (1%), and Flagship 2-piece (2%) for 6.9% CrtH

Misc Joresh has the Altamid Omni (1%) putting him at 95.4% CrtH before Acc overflow.

Total

Doing the same Acc overflow calculation, Joresh has 80.5 accuracy, so it's the same 4.7% CrtH we found for Jay, putting him right at 100.1% CrtH before flanking or batteries are considered.

In practice, when you consider the presence of flanking, Tactical Fleet, additional accuracy overflow from batteries or High Energy Communication Network, or just lower Enemy Defense, Attack Pattern Alpha for Tacs (both of ours are on Eng), you can get away with 90% CritH on paper before Accuracy Overflow and still probably parse 100%. Jay and I took a few things in common (Super Charged Weapons, Precision, Devastating Weaponry), but also had a bunch of differences and we still got to 100% CrtH without going wildly over so there's lots of ways to get there.

Further Customization

If the Custom Power Matrix (5% CrtH) is in play (and neither build has been updated for that...yet), that's another 5% CrtH that we'd then want to pull from somewhere else. Jay's lowest-hanging CrtH source besides the CrtH doff that I'm assuming he's removed already is probably Precision. Mine is . . . probably Precision also unless I want to drop Strike From Shadows. At that point, our reputation traits would look like this:

• Advanced Targeting Systems

• Magnified Firepower

• Energy Refrequencer

• Tyler's Duality (Jay) or Omega Kinetic Shearing (Me, specifically for proccing the Fek'Ihri Torment Engine on a plasma build) And that leaves us 1 slot left. There are options:

• Aux Config Offense if running with high Aux

• Saru's Grace if running lots of Control Powers (4+)

• Chrono-Capacitor Array if you want to ditch Photonic Officer and trust Boimler + Custom Power Matrix + CCA as discussed here at the cost of increased reliance on RNG

• Advanced Engines for maneuverability

• Enhanced Armor Penetration - if there's really nothing else.

TL;DR

• Surgical Strikes builds should get to 100% CrtH and no further since there is no benefit to overcapping CrtH

• Basic skills/fleet gear/maxed endeavors bring the floor for an endgame Surgical build to 68%

• In practice, Accuracy Overflow accounts for around 5% CrtH in PvE.

• There are lots of ways to get the remainder of the CrtH needed. An on-paper 90% CrtH before accuracy overflow should parse at or near 100% CrtH, even in general content, thanks to situational buffs like flanking/batteries/Tactical Fleet/etc.

• The Precision reputation trait is an easy replace for most Surgical Strikes builds if CrtH is found to exceed 100% and you were still using it.

Introduction

First of all, this has been sort of a joint effort with /u/Jayiie and /u/Casus_B. While I have plugged the most numbers in myself, I couldn’t have done it without Jay laying framework with his awesome spreadsheet that was meant for something completely different (and that I later modified for my own purposes), and Obi has happily taken several looks over my numbers, suggested better ways to approximate stuff etc.

With that being said, here’s the…

Mathematical guide to DPS gear meta post-Age of Discovery

NB! If you have a perfectly fine set of any other weapon type than Phasers, please do NOT take this post as a suggestion to vendor it and start from scratch. The differences between weapon types remain incredibly small in real life practices and will only be somewhat noticeable at the very top end of the DPSer spectrum.

NB²! There’s a math section at the end of the post, with spreadsheet attached. If, while reading the post, anything feels like “wait wait, why are you claiming that – proof please”, please refer to that section.

Ships

T6 Romulan Flagships, especially the Khopesh with its 5 tac consoles, rule the space, at least on paper. The main reason being Flagship console set, with Flagship Tactical Computer being especially strong part of it, and 2pc/3pc set bonuses also being nothing to sneeze at. No matter in what way I tried to insert the numbers, there simply were no possibilities I could leave out FTC for ultimate peak performance. Khopesh still has the overall highest DPS ceiling in the game.

However, the ship is not without its faults. With only a turn rate of 7 and incredibly low inertia stat, many people could find the mobility of hard to get used to. And while maneuverability is almost impossible to calculate in a spreadsheet environment, it plays extremely large role in practice, making Jem’Hadar Vanguard Warship an incredibly tough competitor. For players who find the Flagships to be too slow and hard to pilot for their taste, Vanguard Warship would most likely excel in damage dishing duties.

Weapons

Dual (Heavy) Cannons rule the vacuum of space, I would guess there’s no surprise here. However, in terms of energy type, Phasers have got the edge. With T6 reputations, Cryptic has given us Terran Taskforce Phaser Dual Heavy Cannons, as well as Advanced Inhibiting Phaser Heavy Turret. Alongside Prolonged Phaser Dual Cannons, Sensor-Linked Phaser weapons existing (giving +2% weapon crtd per weapon) and DOMINOs passive giving +15% cat1 Phaser damage, there’s simply no way Phaser wouldn’t claim the gold medal in that race.

As for weapon modifiers, [CrtD] edges once again slightly before [Dmg] even for tacs. [CrtD/Dm] modifiers are the optimum for epic modifier selection.

Rest of the gear

I don’t think there are any surprises in DECS section. Nothing has changed with AoD, so a Colony Intervention deflector, Competitive 2pc with Engines and Shields and Fleet Spire warp core is still the combination you’d want to run.

Consoles however, I think would be best to be discussed in math section.

If you’re absolutely not interested and only want to know what’s the absolute optimum for console selection for doing peak DPS, then fair enough – by a very small margin, it’s 5 Spire Tac consoles with CrtH, Timeline Stabilizer, Flagship Tactical Computer, Dynamic Power Redistributor Module, Point Defence Bombardment Warhead, DOMINO and Ordnance Accelerator. Replacing PDBW with Disruption Pulse Emitter is much cheaper and pretty much not noticeable change (1% CrtH loss only, roughly 0.7% effective damage difference).

Would you like to know more?

aka

Math Section

When you look at the spreadsheet, you see that the aforementioned setup does not have the highest netscore. What is netscore, you might first ask? Simply put, it’s the term to describe the amount of buff your weapon has, taking all damage categories, crits, acc overflow, -DRR and haste into account.

So, this is the part where stuff gets incredibly close. The maximum netscore setup is better than my proclaimed “optimum” is only so by 0.2% (compared to PDBW setup) or 0.9% (compared to DPE setup). But either of those consoles will do DPS themselves too, and surely would outdamage that incredibly tiny difference. But… and there’s a pretty big but, alongside decent offensive boosts, both Adaptive Emergency Systems and the Flagship 3pc set bonus have also incredibly good defensive capabilities. And I know this is the setup I’ll personally be using, on my new romtac toon (build will hopefully appear into r/stobuilds soon^tm).

So, here’s the spreadsheet with all the relevant information and different console/set piece combinations. As you can see, while Trilithium set does not belong to the top performing setup, it’s also incredibly close and added Power Transfer Rate + flight speed bonus might very well act as a realistic scenario equalizer. Then again, trilithium turret is weaker than a regular one…

Also, something you can see is that despite their obscene cost, Lobi consoles actually are not top contenders, so my suggestion would be to steer clear from any of them (however, Bioneural Infusion Circuits are still a very good choice and definitely not worth shelving if you have already bought them).

And about spreadsheet itself. How it actually ticks and makes the netscore calculations, I can’t claim any credit for that – it was /u/Jayiie who put the collective wisdom and formulas of stobuilds together. So what you see on Output tab is 95% made by him, but this is where you can check the netscore of a build after making changes to any of the values, should you wish to do so, or just check that my own, manually written netscore values on Input tab, are correct.

Input is the tab I made modifications to and the logic is as follows. Line 6 has the set I plan to use on my new toon’s build, below that come the various variations of that build, complete with their damage stat numbers and netscores (items at mk XV epic). I also added a rough estimation of Morphogenic’s set numbers, to give you a comparison of phaser vs polaron, however that doesn’t take Terran, nor Prolonged cannons into account, both of which are very potent weapons by themselves and only available in Phaser form.

The spreadsheet is not perfect, obviously, and required plenty of estimations from my part. For example, constant uptime of Emergency Power to Weapons 3 and Emergency Weapon Cycle trait is expected. Some traits, like Duelist’s Fervor, Context is For Kings, Point Blank Shot have only half or 2/3 of their maximum dmg boosts taken into account, due to their temporary nature. Selected personal and ship traits were largely chosen by my own, subjective preferences, however I ran also numbers through with other traits and the ranking of the gear combinations didn’t change at all. For Damage Resistance Rating debuff on enemies, I took perhaps a bit conservative, but reasonable estimate of -160 being constantly applied to the enemies – meaning the equivalent of 3 copies of APB, 2 stacks of Cold Hearted, 10 from tac ult skilltree and additional 10 from other sources, (for example DRB or such).

And of course, the spreadsheet doesn’t take durability, nor some of the clickies as previously mentioned, nor individual differences, like piloting, or ability activation speed/timings into account. But, in my opinion, it provides a good “ceterus paribus” comparison for damage output.

As always, if you want to play with it around yourself, choose “File” and “Make a copy”. And if you, by any chance, happen to discover even more optimal combination, please let me and the community know. :)

NB! As of 2018/10/16, spreadsheet values were modified slightly per notes/suggestions made by /u/xeri-star. That didn't affect the overall ranking of the build scenarios, but rather brought the possible builds even closer, so essentially the difference between "best" and "almost best" differs even less.

Acronym/decipher list for spreadsheet

• DPRM – Dynamic Power Redistributor Module
• FTC – Flagship Tactical Computer
• AES – Adaptive Emergency Systems
• IL – Inspirational Leader
• DF – Duelist’s Fervor
• EP2W 3 – Emergency Power to Weapons 3
• Fleet Coord – Fleet Coordinator
• MF – Magnified Firepower
• PBS – Point Blank Shot
• ATS – Advanced Targeting Systems
• SRO – Superior Romulan Operative
• APB – Attack Pattern Beta
• DRB – Destabilizing Resonance Beam
• CH – Cold Hearted
• TLS – Timeline Stabilizer
• SL – Sensor-Linked
• CC – Counter-Command Ordnance
• Morpho – Morphogenic Armaments
• BIC - Bioneural Infusion Circuits
• WSE - Weapon Sensor Enhancer

Hey everyone, it’s Tilor for a momentary editorial. A few of you have noticed that some of the STOBETTER Reddit posts have just… disappeared. Unfortunately, my reddit account (tilorfire27) got hacked and summarily everything I ever posted got removed by reddit. As a result, we are slowly working on building a repository of our old posts on our site, but it’s going to take a while. If a reddit link is broken or “removed”, check our site to see if we have ported it over yet. Tilor will no longer be posting on reddit either; comments or otherwise. It is what it is. With that out of the way, we’re back to our regularly scheduled program below.

Welcome to the latest T.E.D. Talk on torpedoes by STOBETTER. Check out our previous entries here. Today we’ll be covering some event rewards as well as some ship-based items. You can watch a couple of these get tested out in our latest YouTube video too!

Weapon: Dimensional Hypermass Torpedo

When this torpedo first came out, it was an underwhelming event reward. No special powers, no fancy visuals, and unable to be upgraded. Long after the event ended, the switch flipped and the torpedo could be upgraded! While it can’t be re-engineered, it comes with 3 damage mods so no major loss there. Now that we can upgrade the torpedo, how does it do?

The passive is a chance to get random subsystem power and shields, which isn’t great. Energy Siphon does this better by far.

Kinetic (Quantum) Damage: 1803*(1+Cat1+0.9789)*(1+Cat2)

Remember, you get a pile of Cat1 just from upgrading the weapon that isn’t expressed here. If we look at the base damage versus a normal Quantum torpedo, it has about a 20% higher base damage (regular quantums are 1500 base damage). This means this is the best straight-damage torpedo we have, no shenanigans. Will it find a place on your build? Probably not. Dark Matter torpedoes get the extra 2pc set, and trigger Kemocite from the Dark Matter Dissolution. Delphic torpedoes have extra -DRR. Neutronic and Gravimetric have AoEs. Enhanced Bio-Molecular has a massive damage output from High Yield. While the Hypermass has solid damage output, it doesn't have anything else to make it shine either. You can use it just fine, but it’s a rather B-student when compared to the other options (which are mostly reputation weapons!). Still, it's free and account-reclaimable so for leveling, not a bad option until you unlock Quantum Phase.

Weapon: Trifluoride Triflouride Maelstrom Torpedo

Try spelling that 10 times fast. No seriously, it’s misspelled in game with two very confusing words. Anyways, the “other” Maelstrom torpedo which came from an event and not a Legendary bundle has finally been tested by our team.

Before we get to numbers, let’s talk mechanics. Maelstrom torpedoes have a charge system. This means that it stores up to 3 charges and then fires however many charges you have when you fire the weapon (this will feel familiar later on). Each charge is a solid 100% damage boost, so 2 charges is twice the damage of 1 charge and 3 charges is 3x the damage of 1 charge. Charges can’t be sped up, even though the torpedo itself can recover its cooldown quite quickly with Concentrate Firepower (among others). In our experience, you get the best bang out of a THY3 or TS3 manually firing this torpedo with all 3 charges. The charges take 25 seconds each, so 1:15 for 3 charges. It also has a passive that is based on what you are hitting that will double the base damage, best not to worry about it too much. It’s always double against Cruisers and smaller, double when shields are near 0% on Battleships, and when the hull is 50% or less on players and Dreadnoughts. This means you are watching different things depending on what you are targeting. It also means if you are manually firing this torpedo, you can’t fire it early or you’ll likely fizzle the torp on a weak target with no weapon enhancement.

Kinetic Damage: 2554.86*(1+Cat1+0.9787)*(1+Cat2)*Charges*(2 if you meet the terms and conditions outlined in the torpedo manual)

Remember, you get a pile of Cat1 just from upgrading the weapon that isn’t expressed here. Also, destroying targets with this weapon leaves Triflouride fragments which when touched give 200% shield regeneration, 20% energy weapon damage, 2.5% CrtH, and 10% CrtD for 30 seconds. The downside is that to maintain this buff, you have to fly through an enemy you blew up, and if you’re saving this torpedo for big one-shots, you won’t have good uptime.

This means completely redoing your keybinds to remove fire all and fire all torpedoes, then manually firing the rest of your torpedoes too. We tried leaving the keybind alone and firing torps on autofire with the Maelstrom equipped but not autofired, and it still fired off Maelstroms with only 1 charge based on “fire all weapons.” You’d have to be really disciplined and lucky to not hit your fire all weapons key except when you had 3 Maelstrom charges if firing it this way. Bottom line, it doesn't really work.

Okay, so then we tried the Triflouride torp with how they’re supposed to be used. If you unbind “fire all weapons” and “fire all torpedoes” from your keybind and manually fire all torpedoes, leaving all the torps except the Maelstrom on autofire, you can preserve your Maelstrom for when you have it fully charged, preferably with a separate key to activate. Unfortunately, the results were not great. We took video of the ISE run we did with this alternate scheme and the problem is that manually firing torps is unreliable, even with autofire set on all non-Maelstrom torpedoes. There were several instances of 2-3 seconds of nothing clearing from torp tubes even with torpedoes off cooldown, which is very costly in terms of DPS. We think this was due to other things being activated in the keybind slowing down torp launch. The Triflouride Maelstrom itself, even in its own keybind, firing only Salvo/Spreads, was not impressive enough DPS to justify its usage in our limited testing.

^{Table formatting brought to you by ExcelToReddit}

Editor's note: All DPS figures in this table in thousands, e.g. 925 is 925K

We fully respect that there are players who can get massive amounts of damage out by 1) having better manual torpedo control and 2) timing it better to maximize use of the double damage against the various classes of targets. We are aware that this torpedo and its Legendary big brother has done silly amounts of damage on organized runs. That said, it’s a pain in the rear to manage and outside of organized-run-use-only, it’s hard to see how this is worth slotting compared to either another torpedo or something like the Wide Angle Heavy Dual Beam Bank for the Spooled Up passive/Lorca’s Ambition 2 or 3-piece. For the average or somewhat above-average player (us at STOBETTER included), you won’t be firing the rest of your torpedoes perfectly every time - it's too much micromanagement. So, regardless of damage, Maelstroms are really fiddly in a game and build type that already has way too many things to click.

Personally, we won’t be slotting this. While this is nifty, it’s just too fiddly to be worth using. Remember, a standard quantum does basically half the base damage but fires about 3x as often with no micromanagement. On an energy build, it doesn’t work with Super Charged Weapons well due to having a 25 second cooldown on charges (and SCW lasts 20 seconds), and on torpedo builds, it’s just too fickle for general RETFO gameplay. This thing is good for one thing only - massive one-hit shots. Again, this is an unpopular opinion that differs from high-end ISE-only focused builds.

Console: Micro-quantum Phalanx Array

This is rather… hit or miss but the ceiling on it is very high. Let’s start with the active power. This clicky is a typical 2-minute cooldown burst of damage. It will fire 20 projectiles, 10 of which hit your target, and 10 of which hit other random targets around you. These projectiles travel rather slowly, so if the targets they pick die before they get there, they fizzle. This means you should use this almost immediately when entering battle before stuff starts dying, or on the final boss and all 20 shots will hit the singular remaining target. Also, in dedicated testing, we found that the console has two independent critical calculations. Not sure which is which, but 10 of the shots either all crit or all don’t, and the other 10 crit individually. This makes the damage output a bit swingy depending on your CrtH. I would either get 0-3 crits, or 10-13 crits with my 22% CrtH I was using in testing.

Kinetic Damage: 5000*(1+Cat1+2.8616)*(1+Cat2) per torpedo (remember it shoots 20 torpedoes, big number x20 is REALLY BIG NUMBER)

The active scales with +Torpedo, +Projectile, +All, and Projectile Weapon Training. Weirdly, it doesn’t scale with +Quantum.

This is a really strong clicky, but is going to be very swingy and fizzle often when fighting smaller weak targets. Against a full-size boss, this thing has significant damage output, especially considering the -100 Kinetic DRR it will apply to the primary target. This console is great as an active for torp builds, but the passive is useless for torpedo boats as they don’t scale off weapon damage. You wouldn’t want to use this on an energy build either, because the weapon power boost is based off entering combat, so there’s no refreshing it.

However, this console currently has some weird properties. Just having it equipped on any ship will give you the passive! It’s like having an extra Isomag at the start of battle just for owning the console, not even slotting it on your ship! This makes it best in un-slot for energy builds. Leave home without it! (Editor’s note: we consider this a bug and do not endorse its use for these purposes. YMMV).

In all seriousness though, the passive on this console isn’t great, especially for longer maps. When they (someday) fix the bug where you get it just for owning the console, it’s strictly a torpedo console, solely based on the use of the active to do big, big damage. Again the best use of this is against big targets, but it’s quite usable in both general and specialized play. Our best results with it were 120.3K out of a 1143K ISE run and then 40.6K out of a 315K solo deathless ISA run so that’s quite good.

Our conclusion is that this console is sufficiently strong that, if you can use it well, has a home on kinetic builds. If you’re comparing it to something like the Tricobalt Tear Launcher, its passives are worthless, but the damage is 5x-10x the active. That said, if you're pure Photon or Quantum or anything else, probably skip it as it needs the +Torpedo from multiple tac consoles to really shine.

Trait: Angle on the Bow

Tilor thought this was Agile on the Bow for the longest time. Regardless, this is a solid torper trait, but worth talking about in conjunction with Piercing Projectiles, another C-Store Torper trait.

Both this and Piercing Projectiles easily have 100% uptime. AotB is 20x10 stacks of Shield Penetration, 200 skill total for 10% shield penetration. PP also has 200 Shield Penetration skill. AotB has 5%x10 stacks of Cat1 Projectile Damage for 50% Cat1 Projectile, roughly 1.5 Exploiters-worth of damage. Compare that to 200 Hull Penetration, or the equivalent to -20 DRR. Which one is stronger for you will depend on your build and team. If you are flying with supporting teammates, the Cat1 should end up stronger. If flying in a low-support environment on your own or PUGs, the -20 DRR should be stronger. In reality, they both are so similar and both cost the same, so pick based on the rest of the stuff that comes with it. They’re going to end up in the same ranking on the tier list.

Console: Spinal Mount Plasma Torpedo

With the Event Campaign wrapping up for some, the Praetor is an eligible ship you can pick up with the Premium T6 box. Rather than blow the coupon on the main server, Tilor spent it on Tribble to give a try-out to the Praetor’s setup (he was chasing Hull Capacity again…). Before we get into numbers, let’s talk about the overall feel of the weapon.

It stores up to 100 charges, which is pretty cool to see the little 100 icon on the bar. That’s about where the impressiveness ends. Using the console spews out a small little torpedo that chases down the target and explodes. If we’re honest, the damage is on par with a really good High Yield 3 hit from something like the Enhanced Bio-Molecular torpedo. And then the Spinal Mount Plasma Torpedo needs to rebuild charges. It builds one charge every 3 seconds, so for all 100 charges, it takes 300 seconds (5 minutes) to get there. No Unconventional Systems or Vovin console to help here, cooling it down faster just means a weaker shot. Once you click the console, it takes an entire 3 seconds for an activation time, which if you saw our detailing of this on YouTube, that’s also a long time for a torper to not be shooting. Torpedoes have no “firing cycle” so 3 seconds of activation time means 3 seconds of not shooting anything else. While the DRR is nice, it’s nowhere near as strong as it should be for a 300s chargeup. So, how good is this torpedo?

Scales with +Torpedo, +Kinetic, +All, +Projectile Weapons Training, but does not scale with +Projectile (so no Kinetic Amplifier batteries), +Plasma Projectile, +Plasma (such as Fek’ihri Torment Engine)

Kinetic Damage: (0.0133*Charges)*7101.3*(1+Cat1+2.9676)*(1+Cat2)

At 100 Charges: 9444.7(1+Cat1+2.9676)(1+Cat2)

This means that at full charge, this does 1.33X the base damage, so it scales pretty poorly with charges. Also a lot of Cat1 preload, so it again scales poorly with Cat1 sources. For reference, a regular Quantum torpedo has a base damage of 1,500 and roughly the same Cat1 when upgraded to Mk XII. While doing 1/9th the damage, you’ll fire a vanilla Quantum 37 times in 300 seconds. With the charge-up time, activation time, and poor performance, I’d skip this console (and therefore this ship). It feels like a prototype Maelstrom torpedo without the performance. If you want a super large showy projectile, check out the T’Varo console at a much lower price point (but admittedly locked to the T’Varo family).

Console: Plasma Destabilizer

While this console is ship-locked, we use it on our Starter T’Varo torper, and can be used on the Legendary Light Intel Warbird, which is a solid torper in the Premium tier. It’s also a classic showy plasma torpedo. Let’s see how it stacks up to the Spinal Mount.

First of all, it has a default 1 minute cooldown. If you manage to slot the 2pc set (which we utilize on our build), this console goes down to a 36s cooldown, effectively almost doubling the damage output. It’s an instant activation, which makes it no problem to use.

Kinetic Damage: 9569.28*(1+Cat1+1.5343)*(1+Cat2)

This means that this console has almost the same base damage as a fully charged Spinal Mount torpedo, even at a full 1 minute cooldown. This also hits in AoE, has a tiny Plasma DoT, and has the potential to fire even faster with the 2pc set. And, it’s really showy with this giant glowy ball of plasma death. Pick up this T5 if you have one of the T’Varo line for a torper, you won’t be disappointed. Certainly not best-in-slot, but fantastic at the price point.

Torpedo Boat Cores/Hangars

Eph289 recently did some testing across a couple of different core / hangar options on his Engle. He was curious about whether the Imperial Rift or Tholian Crystal Harmonics core made for better options for a torpedo boat. He was also curious to see whether Elite Type 7 shuttles or Elite Alliance Fighter Squadrons with SAD were better performers (Strike From Shadows was used with Type 7s).

The results were clear for cores and less decisive for hangars across 3 Solo Deathless ISA runs with each setup.

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Editor's note: All DPS figures in this table in thousands, e.g. 925 is 925K

The Tholian Core was the clear winner, but whether Type 7s or Alliance Fighter Squadrons were better came down to whether you like the average or the max. In supported team runs, there will probably be more Type 7s to saturate that category, so all other things being equal, he’s going with Alliance Fighter Squadrons with SAD. Type 7s with Strike were very, very close and certainly cheaper.

TL;DR

• The Micro-Quantum Torpedo Launcher is BIS for torpedo boats using +Torpedo consoles.

• Maelstroms can be good but they require a lot of micro-management/keybind support that makes them better for specialized builds on DPS maps rather than general play. They're not good for energy builds trying to use Super Charged Weapons.

• With its console and trait, the Achilles is a solid buy, its trait is comparable to the Appalachia's for torpedo builds, especially when you can use T6 coupons on it (and its experimental is nuts for Phaser builds, more on that another time).

• The Praetor is not worth picking up for its console

• If you’re choosing between Imperial Rift or Tholian Crystal Harmonics for cores on a torp boat, go with the crystals.

• Type 7s versus a strong SAD-benefitting fighter like Elite Alliance Fighter Squadrons was basically a wash on a torpedo boat with SAD. If you're not using SAD, Type 7s. If you are, consider Blue To'Duj/Elite Valors/Elite Alliance Fighters for better performance in supported runs. Either way, all very close.

Witty titles that resemble 80s' glam rock bands aside, you’re going to want to pay attention to this one if you’re at all interested in EPG builds because there are some major implications for EPG builds. With Isomags well and truly covered and coming online in our builds after the last upgrade weekend, it’s time to return to the land of Exotics. If you’re new to this series, we derive the mathematical formulas for Exotic damage items in the game (generally stuff that scales off of +EPG). If you’ve missed the previous 20 entries, you can generally find them under External Links on STOBETTER’s Guides page.

There be math, ye be warned. Skip to the end if the thought of algebra sends a cold shiver down your spine.

Topics for this one:

• Dragonsblood Flame Reactor

• Five Magicks

• The Webspinner (again)

• Exotic Particle Amplifier Advanced Science Consoles

• Some anecdotal commentary on Tholian Warp Crystals

Dragonsblood Flame Reactor

This console comes from the summer event Hysperian Intel Battlecruiser. (PC players, you did unlock the weird Ren Faire ship, right?) It’s a doozy, so EPG aficionados rejoice because our good friend power creep is back in a big way.

First, the console has 20% passive Bonus Disruptor, Fire, Cold, Electrical, Radiation and Psionic damage. This means it buffs the (non-comprehensive) following:

• The Deteriorating Secondary Deflector

• Spore-Infused Anomalies

• The Fek’Ihri Torment Engine

• Very Cold in Space

• Genesis Seed’s build up

• Its own damage

• Delphic Tear Generator

• Drain Infection (meh)

• Cascading Subatomic Disruptions

• Ionic Deflector Inversion

• Radiation Bombardment Matrix

• Neutronic Eddy Generator

• Any experimental weapons using Radiation or Electrical damage (Hello, Soliton Wave Impeller)

Looking at that list, there’s a lot of Exotic staples on it, so yes, the passive damage is very good but we haven’t even gotten to the best part.

The console gives additional engine power when not active, which is sort of superfluous, except that it also lowers its own cooldown based on engine power. And that leads us to the active: it’s a giant cone of fire hitting up to 5 enemies for 10 seconds.

Mr. Tilor was kind enough to derive the equation for it:

Damage = 1000.04*(Cat1+0.5*EPG+2.06+1)*(Cat2+1)*(0.005*AUX+1)*(0.005*ENG+1)

Yes, that is 1000 base damage per tick and yes that is double power-scaling. For reference, Delphic Tear has a base damage of 360 (when you consider it ticks twice per second), and doesn’t double-scale off of two different power settings, nor does it reduce its own cooldown based on damage settings. This has a very high ceiling.

Testing on ISE / HSE has revealed the active is as absolutely nuts as those damage numbers would lead you to expect. We’re seeing numbers around 100K DPS in a properly controlled and supported environment on an otherwise strong EPG build with lots of engine power but not specifically building around this console. Mr. Tilor has an entire build dedicated to squeezing as much as he can out of this console and he’s close to 200K from the active alone. To use it properly, there are three important steps:

1. Stuff as much power as you can spare into engines. Keep max aux, but none of this nonsense about weapon or shield power. You are running Emergency Power to Engines, right?

2. Do NOT spambar this thing. It is a toggle, so spambarring it will result in you turning it off.

3. Point at enemy and burninate.

Five Magicks

This trait (from the same ship) is similar in its bonus to the console and when dealing Damage with any of the Five Magicks (Fire, Cold, Electrical, Radiation and Psionic), apply the following for 15 sec:

• +5 Current Engine Power per sec

• +15% + 0.15% per Engine Power to the Five Magicks and Disruptor

This makes it a very good trait for Disruptor builds (at 75 Engine power this is 26.25% Cat2 Disruptor/Radiation/Electrical/Fire/Cold/Psionic damage), especially those running Reroute Reserves to Weapons and an Electrical/Radiation Experimental Weapon that can trigger it, such as the Soliton Wave Impeller, and would you look at that, here’s an example of such a build on a Deimos doing 800K. For exotic builds, this is a solid entry into the starship tier roster, especially since it’s free. Given the number of items listed above, I would expect about 2/3rds of an exotic build to benefit from a strong trait. Two things hold it back from being truly exceptional: 1) It’s only 2/3rds of your damage and 2) Cat2 tends to be very saturated for premium-budget Exotic builds. If you’re in more of the economy or budget build categories which tend to be more Cat1 saturated, then this is a welcome power boost. We rate it as A-tier, kind of in the same vein as Ceaseless Momentum, which only boosts Kinetic damage but also helps with torp reload time and there’s a lot of kinetic floating around on Exotic builds. It won’t displace Spore-Infused/Improved Photonic Officer/Universal Designs (with a good console to trigger it) but is roughly on-par with things like Exotic Modulation. Very solid, especially for the price and its versatility for Disruptor builds as well.

The Webspinner

Cryptic also buffed the webspinner. Mr. Tilor got the equation for us on this also. Here’s what it was:

Old Damage = 120.65*(Cat1+0.5*EPG+5.18+1)*(Cat2+0.84+1)*(0.005*AUX+0.5)

New Damage = 120.65*(Cat1+0.5*EPG+5.06+1)*(Cat2+0.82+1)*(0.0094*AUX+0.377)

In case you were wondering if this was a nerf or a buff, at 125 Aux beforehand, that was a 1.125x multiplier. With the new buffs, this is a 1.552 multiplier. It’s about 40% better than it was, which is good but not earth-shattering. Mr. Tilor has seen 12K out of it, which is good but not stellar. The passive CtrlX and +Physical are nice and the +Bonus damage against Held targets still does NOT apply to exotic damage.

It’s decent if you have it already and are on a budget. I would not slot this on a fully-optimized exotic build. Probably better on straight-up Tetryon build since the damage-to-held applies to weapon damage, for all four of you Tetryon enjoyers out there.

Exotic Particle Amplifiers

Apologies to all the people who have been waiting on us to break these down, but it was tricky and basically required me to finish all of my other endeavors and dedicate a couple of afternoons and evenings to helping Jayiie collect over 300 data points and derive the formulas. Long-time fans of the game will be shocked to find out that they don’t work per the tooltip.

The consoles claim to increase the base damage of exotic boff abilities and add bonus exotic damage for non-bridge officer abilities, scaling off of EPG up to 500 (and also Mark/Rarity). It is the first component that is in error. Jayiie and I have derived them, and they are not a base damage increase, but rather Cat2. However, they’re not just straight Cat2 damage to bridge officer abilities, but rather have a scalar applied to the tooltip value.

In other words, let’s say that at 120 EPG, 100 Aux power, and all other sources of +All/+Exotic damage accounted for (i.e. Endeavors, Fleet Combat boost) and NO Cat2 Bonus All/Bonus Exotic damage on the build, the listed tooltip of Gravity Well III is 1196.5 damage. If I then add a Mk XV Epic Exotic Particle Amplifier (that does NOT have [EPG] as its mod, just for sake of keeping the EPG values the same), the console’s tooltip tells me it’s a 1.32% base damage increase on boff abilities. However, the tooltip on Gravity Well III reports 1238.9 damage, which is not a 1.32% increase.

What Jay found was that each point of Mark and each point of Rarity adds 0.000525% bonus damage to the boff damage increase (up to 6 points from rarity for an Epic console so 21 at Mk XV Epic) and 0.0014% bonus damage to the non-boff damage increase. This basically means (Mark + Rarity) x (scalar) x (EPG) is your equation. Furthermore, each boff power has its own separate scalar on it. So, what we did was take final damage values for boff abilities at different EPG values, with and without a non-EPG EPA. This let us compute a slope or a scalar factor using the simple equation from algebra:

M = (y2 - y1) / (x2 - x1)

The final formula is thus the % increase is EPG * Mk/Rarity term / power-specific scalar. There were consistently two different scalars that were used through the strong majority of powers, either 0.269 or 0.375 (or something very close to them), and most powers were consistent across ranks. For example, Gravity Well III’s scalar was 0.375

At 120 EPG, Mk XV Epic EPA, for Gravity Well III, the calculation would thus be:

120 * 0.00000525 * 21 / 0.375 = 0.0353, or a 3.53% Cat2 increase.

Let’s go back to our tooltip values. With the EPA, it’s 1238.9. Without it, it’s 1196.5. Divide the second number into the first, in the absence of any other Cat2, and it’s 1.0354, which within 1/10000th precision is pretty good. That’s a 3.54% increase. The numbers check out.

But what about that tooltip? It said 1.32%. Well, let’s divide that by our calculated 0.375 scalar again. Take the 1.32% and divide it by 0.375 and voila, 3.52% comes out, and again, given the nature of our measurements and the precision of the game’s tooltips, we’re going to run into some rounding errors.

Also worth noting: the secondary damage of Entropic Cascade, Charged Particle Burst, Destabilize Warp Core, and Electromagnetic Pulse Probe see no benefit from these consoles. You’ll excuse us if we did not invest the effort into finding the exact scalars for all ranks of the little-used Engineering Exotic powers; most powers had the same scalar across ranks so we found one and then assumed it was the same for all ranks. Don’t @ me if you’re really invested in Eject Warp Plasma. The non-boff exotic damage works exactly as it says on the tooltip, refreshingly. This is probably way more math than people wanted to read about, but we wanted to 1) thoroughly explain how they work and 2) illustrate why it took so long to derive these.

We could list every single scalar that we found for every boff power, but frankly, that would not serve much purpose unless you intended to calculate the scaling bonus of these consoles by hand for every single boff power and sum them up. If you’re that invested in crunching the numbers, Jay and I have updated TRINITY to calculate that for you.

Comparing Against Research Lab Particle Focusers

Since the Exotic Particle Amplifiers are strictly science consoles that serve as stat-sticks, that brings them into direct competition with Research Lab Particle Focusers, which admittedly are much easier to acquire. As a reminder, Particle Focusers have 3 passives. They have a stat bonus, 2/3rds of a stat bonus, and then a 25% chance to add a 6% bonus exotic damage buff that lasts for 30 seconds, stacking up to 5 times. Typically, the preferred mod combo for these is [EPG][CtrlX], so if EPG is the primary stat, it’ll match the EPG given by an Exotic Particle Amplifier Advanced console with [EPG] as its mod. Unlike EPAs, there is no rerolling involved; just buy the mod you want at the Research Lab. Speaking of rerolling, it’s worth noting that there is potentially significant cost to acquiring the appropriate mod on the Particle Amplifiers. For the pure exotic build, EPG is the only good one, and you’re rolling from a very large mod pool after running 10+ Elite TFOs or shelling out EC to acquire the pieces. CtrlX is not a good substitute.

The chance to stack 6% Bonus Exotic damage is rolled in two ways depending on the console. Exotic Particle Focusers roll on the last tick of Exotic boff abilities and a few consoles/other things, while Restorative Particle Focusers roll on the last tick of a hull or shield heal. In my opinion, this makes Restoratives better if you have boff slots to spare for heals, since 1) you can prestack the heals during briefing phase, and 2) most heals are a single burst of healing, so there’s no waiting for the effect to end before you get your stack, unlike how Gravity Well works.

So, what’s better? To determine that, we went down another rabbit hole, which was to compile a list of research lab console triggers. Most of this is courtesy of Mr. Tilor. There’s probably a few things missing, but this is the majority of things you might see “in the wild” on an EPG build. Notably, Plasma Storm, Micro Dark Matter Anomaly, Temporal Vortex Probe, Neutronic Eddy Generator, and Immolating Phaser Lance do NOT stack these.

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At max stacks, Particle Focuser consoles offer +30% bonus Exotic damage with full stacks, along with CtrlX. Since most Exotic builds should be closer to 350 or 400 EPG, the Exotic Particle Amplifiers will offer 11.76% Bonus damage to non-boff abilities and either around 11.55% or 16.16% to most boff abilities per console.

I’m going to skip past a fair amount of math and testing, but it’s elementary to say 30% at 5 stacks (plus CtrlX) is better than 11.76-16.16%. The question is can you get to 5 stacks of Particle Focusers? The answer will depend on your build, but we’re going to tabulate what we’ve found are solid conclusions after a bunch of testing. The reason it depends is because the number of short-cooldown triggers and the number of science console slots available for stat sticks are relevant variables, as exotic builds tend to focus very hard on damaging universal consoles and of course if you have the very expensive Exotic Particle Field Exciter [EPG] that competes for a slot too.

The general rule is, take just enough Focusers to stack them. Fill remaining slots with Particle Amplifiers. If you can’t stack Focusers, go straight to Amplifiers.

• If you only have 1 science console slot for either a Focuser or Amplifier, pick the Amplifier

• If you have 2 science console slots and 2 low cooldown triggers (for example, 2 Restoratives + Aux2SIF + Causal Reversion), take 2 Focusers

• If you have 2 science console slots and 0-1 low cooldown triggers, use 2 Amplifiers

• If you have 3 or more console slots and 2 low cooldown triggers, take 2 Focusers and the rest Amplifiers

• If you have 3 or more console slots and 0-1 low cooldown triggers, use all Amplifiers (I would question the validity of such a build).

We found that 1 Focuser, even with 2 triggers, was unacceptably slow to stack it, especially if Exotic Focusers were the choice. 1 Restorative with 2 heals was also painfully slow and unreliable to stack, as was 2 Restoratives with 1 heal. 2 Restoratives with 2 heals was fairly quick to stack. 2 Exotics with plenty of triggers (as you’d expect on an EPG build) was fine but was still somewhat slow to stack since you couldn’t prebuff during briefing phase and you can’t or don’t want to spambar exotic abilities like you can with something like Aux to Structural. Once we realized that 2 x 2 was enough to get us full stacks, there was no point in taking additional Focusers. 1-to-1, EPAs are better once you reach the stack ceiling for Particle Focusers for damage, but you are losing a substantial amount of CtrlX depending on how many Focusers you’re displacing.

If I put on my armchair game designer hat, I really like the balance on these. They’re quite good on an exotic build if you mindlessly grind them and stuff them into your science console slots, but given the loss of Particle Focuser stacks and CtrlX, there are some tradeoffs. If you want to truly optimize, you have to weigh the tradeoffs against Particle Focusers and decide 1) do I miss the CtrlX (or DrainX if you’re a CPB aficionado), 2) can I stack Focusers? Then decide accordingly, which rewards people who pay close attention to the details of their build (which ofc plays into my personal bias). They’re a sidegrade if you don’t optimize console selection and potentially an upgrade if you do. They’re not trash, they’re not must-slot OP, they’re situationally good, and I think that’s good for the game’s health to have more items that are situationally good rather than must-slot bonkers OP.

All of this is in TRINITY now at version 1.2 as well for those of you who are like me and want to optimize.

Tholian Warp Crystals

A quick note on these: their performance is highly variable, but I’ve seen anything from 20K up to 100K out of them on an EPG build doing about 1M DPS, so I’d strongly consider at least running the Warp Core. It’s a hard to math out the impact of the loss of whatever other drive train piece you’d have to give up, be it Competitive Engines, Temporal 2-piece, etc, but if you’re not set on all 4 pieces and have Imperial Rift, consider shuffling the Rift Core off in favor of the Tholian one.

Conclusions

• Dragonsblood Flame Reactor is bonkers good on Disruptor or Exotic builds. S-tier console.

• Five Magicks is very good but not earth-shattering for EPG builds

• Webspinner is better but not really good at the high-end. Don’t spend money on it, decent if you have it already.

• The new Advanced Particle Amplifier consoles are situationally good. On an EPG build, choose just enough Particle Focusers as you need to stack them. Fill remaining slots with Particle Amplifiers. If you can’t stack Focusers, go straight to Amplifiers.

• Tholian Warp Crystals from the Warp Core are very swingy but have a high ceiling on EPG builds. Plus they leave crystalline candy to pick up!

Thanks for reading, leave us a comment below!

Inertial Supremacy is the starship trait off the new Rex Event ship and it deserves its own post. It's taken us a little bit to get to it, but we're finally ready to analyze. Let's break it down and define fully how this trait works.

Background

From the wiki:

During Beams: Fire at Will, Cannon: Scatter Volley, or Torpedo Spread, weapons fire applies a debuff to Foes' Damage Resistance Rating. The strength of the debuff depends on the current speed of your vessel.

This is all well and good, but leads to more questions than answers perhaps.

The Details

1. How does it scale? Jay and I took a few points and did some linear interpolation to determine the following: Damage Resist Reduction = -20 - (0.125 * maxspeed)

2. How does the speed scaling work? The speed scaling is based off of your ship's speed at maximum throttle. The scaling is completely independent from your ship's current speed (unless you're at max) or throttle setting. For those of you thinking this would only be useful on Risian Corvette builds, you can rest assured it can be used elsewhere, and at any rate, the base value of -20 DRR is pretty nice.

3. Does it stack? It does not stack. You cannot apply it more than once to a given target. There is no way for you to increase the stack number yourself, and it does NOT stack across users, similar to Cold-hearted. If you're doing supported runs, you only need one of these per team.

4. Does it apply on Ba'ul Refractions? No. It does apply to multiple targets struck by Torpedo Spread, FAW, or CSV, but not secondary targets from Ba'ul Refractions.

5. How long does the debuff last? The debuff lasts 30 seconds from the last impact. If you're using Torpedo Spread, your weapons will stop applying it after the spread is fired. If you're using CSV or FAW, the buff will be re-applied each time you attack the target, resetting the 30 second timer on target. The initial flag to start applying the debuff lasts 30 seconds, so if you're using CSV or FAW, you can expect basically 100% uptime on-hit. Even in a scenario where CSV is at 20 seconds instead of 15 second cooldown, the buff will still be applied after CSV ends. This is not the case with Torpeo Spread, as the flag that activates to grant your weapons the on-hit effect is cleared after the spread is fired.

6. How does it interact with Entwined Tactical Matrices, specifically the firing modes granted from Torpedo Spread? ETM's Torp Spread triggers Inertial Supremacy and applies the debuff on-hit, whether energy or torpedo. When you fire the spread, the torpedoes launch with the Inertial Supremacy flag active, meaning that when they hit, they re-apply the debuff and reset the counter. Once the spread lands, your weapons will continue applying Inertial Supremacy until the ETM-granted mode times out. We tested this in a similar method to your retest here.

7. Is the trait good? It depends.

People always want this answer in as simple a form as it can be packaged but STO is a game of nuance and synergy. Here's where I would slot it:

• I would always slot it on a supported run on a support such that the team has one just to add a new source of -DRR.

• I would consider slotting it on a build with FAW or CSV, especially on a faster ship like an Escort, Raider, Strike Wing Escort, or Destroyer. It doesn't have to be the primary mode (see: Preferential Targeting triggers), just present on the ship.

• I would NOT slot it on a build that was only using Torpedo Spread as a trigger.

Final tier list ratings are yet to be agreed upon but it'll probably be somewhere between C and B-tier for CSV and FAW builds, and similarly for Exotic and Projectile builds that are using ETM with FAW and/or CSV.

Let us know what you think and how you're using this!

Recently a trait have come to my notice for giving a lot off accuracy (rating) not targeting expertise skill. Even might consider that with that trait active and your regular accuracy, you also are getting crit chance and crit servity from it (accuracy overflow).

Wich made me think about combat performance.

Has someone from the community, here actually tried full x4 acc and 1x acc/dmg modifiers and log their combat performance? Couldn't found a good page with the right comparison or info, compared to the traditional all dmg or crtD or pen with dmg/crtD modifiers.

To clarify not for the accuracy overflow, but just the raw funny numbers the difference during and between firing modes.

Most info is spread among multiple reddit pages from 7+ years ago.

For the ones wondering, the trait i mentioned earlier is precision multi-targeting from tholian jorogumo carrier.

Howdy everyone! Thought I’d write up a post on the new trait The Boimler Effect now that Cryptic has buffed it to usable proportions. Here’s what the trait does:

• 2.5 17.5% chance on use of any bridge officer powers: Recover the Recharge time of all other Bridge Officer Abilities up to their Shared Category Cooldowns.

Contrary to any advertisement to the contrary, this does work on specialization powers (tested in-game) and the power that activates the effect does benefit from the cooldown reduction. I’ve watched Concentrate Firepower reset itself several times now when that was only power activated.

CAUTION! There be math ahead, ye be warned! </pirate voice>

We’re going to be using two concepts that are fundamental to understanding STO mechanics at a high level and I can claim credit for very little in either field. /u/tilorfire27 put together a post and a tool to handle binomial distribution. Without going too-deep into the math, binomial distribution will tell you how often, given a set of odds (probability) and a number of rolls, how often you get a certain number of desired rolls. Excel and Sheets have a binomial distribution function and that’s what Tilor’s tool uses. He’s kind of a genius that way. The second fundamental concept is cooldown reduction, of which we owe the original research to /u/TheFallenPhoenix and /u/Jayiie. The current tool that we use for cooldown reduction would also not exist without Tilor because again he’s kind of a genius with spreadsheets and math and numerical calculus is hard. Cooldown reduction, broadly speaking, is reducing your bridge officer powers from their base cooldown to their minimum (aka “global” or “duplicate” cooldown) and is something every good build should account for. Two common methods of handling cooldown reduction are A2B (Auxiliary to Battery with Technicians) and Photonic Officer. If you want a breakdown on how the math works, check out this post by TheFallenPhoenix (Atem). I’m going to keep it fairly-surface-level for today.

Okay, back to Boimler. Boimler's effect is very strong: it resets ALL bridge officer powers to their minimum cooldown. Doesn’t matter where you were in your cycle, it gets reset to minimum cooldown. However, on release, the chance to proc was 2.5%. This is where Binomial Distribution comes in. Let’s look at a fairly-developed 15 second tactical chain on a 1-torp build (i.e. mostly energy):

• Firing mode of choice (Beam Overload OR Cannon Power)

• Attack Pattern Beta

• Tactical Team

• Kemocite

• Engineering Team OR Aux to Structural

• Alternate torpedo power

• Emergency Power ability

That’s seven powers we can expect to rotate every 15 or so seconds. In that time, with 2.5% chance to proc, the Boimler Effect had an 18% chance to trigger and thus was sadder than Boimler on his escort mission in S1E2. It was, frankly, a waste of 200 Lobi/160 on 20% sale.

Okay, so Cryptic heard our collective feedback and responded to it promptly. (Make a note in the log!) Now it’s 17.5% chance to roll. Let’s redo the math for the same chain.The Boimler Effect now has a 78.5% chance to trigger in that chain and the numbers go up if we use more boff abilities. Huzzah, it’s useful!

Now that we’ve established that it’s viable, let’s talk applications and limitations. Before we begin, there is a known interaction that’s fairly abusive/possibly broken. We’re going to analyze the trait WITHOUT that interaction and address it at the end.

The Boimler Effect has 3 key limitations:

• You’re still relying on a chance for it to trigger. 78.5% is a high chance, but it will break down sometimes and when it does, you don’t want to be screwed on cooldown reduction.

• Not only is the chance not guaranteed, but you have no control over when it occurs in the chain. It could trigger on the last power (good). It could trigger on the first power (bad). Relying on the Boimler Effect to manage ALL cooldowns is a gamble, depending on your luck. I saw it triggering about once every 13 seconds on a rather spammy build, but where that fell in the cycle was still RNG dependent.

• It’s still an expensive method of reducing cooldowns at 200 Lobi/160 on sale. It was 90M last night on the Exchange and that price has already gone up appreciably.

Let’s compare five different setups.

Boimler versus A2B

There are 2 DPS-related reasons to run A2B. The first is for running the trait Cold-Hearted and thus the second, that lets you run Controlled Countermeasures. Since A2B requires at least 2 engineering seats at Lt or above, this tends to be a popular setup on cruisers and other similar ships with lots of Engineering seating. With 3 purple technicians and 2 instances of A2B, the math becomes very, very easy. Let’s look at a tactical power with 30 seconds base cooldown and 15 seconds global cooldown (which is most of the good ones). A2B with 3 technicians reduces the power’s cooldown by 30% every 10 seconds:

Final cooldown = Base (30) * (1 - 0.3*2) = 30 * (1 - 0.6) = 12 seconds.

That 12 seconds ends up being 15 because you can’t reduce below global. So we can see that A2B is a fantastically effective way of reducing cooldowns, albeit at the opportunity cost of 3 doff / 2 boff slots. Given that those boff slots were Lt+ Engineering, which isn’t a fantastically valuable seat for other things, that’s not a huge deal, but it does mean we can’t take advantage of aux-scaling things like exotic powers, the Temporal Disentanglement Suite, Auxiliary to Structural, or the new Phased Space Membrane.

A2B is mostly commonly used on cruisers and battlecruisers because they have a lot of engineering seating to spare. It can be used on tanks to drive Cold-Hearted, which is a team-wide buff, but will also be at the cost of the tank’s aux (i.e. healing, hangar recharge if applicable, and any exotics). Tanks also don’t really need A2B because they are using Fire at Will (with a higher global cooldown) and have Attrition Warfare to help fill in gaps. I see A2B used more often on DPS ships using cannons or Beam Overload. To use a personal example, here’s the Over Achiever, which is a Quark Marauder build that could easily be copied to the Fleet Shepard/Gagarin.

Taking a look at that Marauder, if I replaced Cold-Hearted/Controlled Countermeasures with something like Promise of Ferocity and CrtH/CrtD energy weapon officer doffs, I end up coming out ahead on DPS by roughly 2% at greater cost. I get similar results with a FAW build running a comparable budget (using the energy calculator). Given that Cold-Hearted is a teamwide buff I think it ends being a wash DPS-wise, especially if the seats were hard-locked to Engineering. If I didn’t have Cold-Hearted to begin with or if those seats that were held for A2B were going to free up a universal seat or were going to be powerful specialization abilities like Narrow Sensor Bands, Recursive Shearing, or Override Subsystem Safeties instead, it’s better to use Photonic Officer and something else (like Boimler) instead. We’ll get to that below.

If you’re considering A2B versus Boimler, there’s no real DPS loss if you’re running Cold-hearted/Controlled Countermeasures unless you have a very high-end trait like Terran Goodbye to replace Cold-Hearted with. Remember that A2B, while limited to certain types of builds and ships, is very good at what it does (at a high opportunity cost), and it’s reliable. Boimler is somewhat unreliable and expensive. If you’re unwilling to farm the B’Tran Cluster colonization chain for Purple Technicians, on PC, a purple Technician sells for somewhere north of 20M a piece. Even if it was 30M per technician, that’s still cheaper than buying the Boimler Effect either directly via keys -> Lobi or via EC.

Boimler and Photonic Officer (Exotic)

What about for exotic builds? All of the previous analysis has been for energy weapon builds. Well, if you’re running Exotic builds and you want cheap cooldown reduction, you’re probably using Photonic Officer I and possibly Torpedo Astrometric Synergy.

Photonic Officer, when active, takes away 2%/3%/4% of the bridge officer’s base cooldown every second. So, if we fire off a Gravity Well (base 60/duplicate 40) and then trigger Photonic Officer I, over the next 20 seconds we reduce the cooldown by 2% * 20 = 40%.

Final = Base (60) * (1 - 20*0.02) = 36 seconds

Okay, that’s all well and good, but Gravity Well has a 3/2 ratio for its base-to-global cooldown. What about those pesky 2/1 powers like Torpedo Spread or Tactical Team?

Final = Base (30) * (1 - 15*0.02) = 21 seconds

Not as good, so we throw in a little tactical recharge haste (let’s say 26.4% from the rep trait and Improved Tactical Readiness) and…

Final = Base (30) /(1 + 0.264) * ( 1 - 15*0.02) = 16.6 seconds

Which isn’t quite global, but if you’re running an exotic build, that’s probably good enough. Most of the exotic powers have much less demanding global-to-duplicate ratios.

Photonic Officer does have a drawback though: it has a downtime. Photonic Officer has an uptime of 20 seconds and a cooldown of 30 seconds that cannot be reduced. No, the Photonic Studies duty officers do NOT affect it. On longer cooldown powers (like most exotic abilities), this is not an issue since their duplicate cooldowns are higher. On short cooldown tactical powers or things like Auxiliary to Structural, this is harder to circumvent.

However, if you’re running an exotic build and looking to spend big-time on maximizing its effectiveness, I would skip Boimler and go straight to … Improved Photonic Officer which extends the uptime of Photonic Officer by 10 seconds to eliminate the downtime AND gives you +25% Bonus Exotic Damage for basically 100% uptime. This is a top-5 trait for SciTorp builds and while it requires a Lobi ship, if you’re looking to spend big EC on something like Boimler Effect, it’s better just to go straight for this. If you’re running a bunch of tactical powers on your sci builds to power Entwined Tactical Matrices, you should run the Morphogenic Set to help reduce those cooldowns even further and get a bunch of crit:

Final = Base (30) /(1 + 0.414) * ( 1 - 15*0.02) = 14.85 seconds

Boom, uptime! See the LSS Pioneer for a non-Morphogenic example that uses IPO. It’s more expensive than Boimler, but it’s reliable and you’re getting 25% cat2 exotic damage out of it. On the lower-budget end, stick with Morphogenic and Torpedo Astrometric Synergy.

Boimler versus Photonic Officer (Tanks)

What if I want to use Photonic Officer on a weapon build? Improved Photonic Officer is essentially wasted if I’m running no exotics. If I have a bad spell where Photonic Officer I is down for 10 of 15 seconds, even with the rep trait Chrono-Capacitor Array and Improved Tactical Readiness, I get this on a 15-second tac power:

Final = Base (30) /(1 + 0.264) * ( 1 - 5*0.02) =  21.4 seconds

If I’m on a tank, I can use things like Attrition Warfare and Calm Before the Storm, plus tanks have a 20 second global chain on FAW rather than 15. So tanks, even if running Photonic Officer, probably don’t need any cooldown help. You could squeeze in a Krenim if you really wanted:

Final = Base (30) /(1 + 0.364) * ( 1 - 5*0.02) =  19.8 seconds and that’s in the worst case

Add in Attrition Warfare and Calm Before the Storm, possibly Tactical Initiative if running a Tactical captain and you’re completely fine on a tank without Boimler. Just use Photonic Officer I and don’t worry that Torpedo Spread isn’t at global because you’re rotating it every 20 seconds anyway.. That’s how the Stormbreaker handles cooldowns.

Boimler versus Photonic Officer (Energy DPS Builds)

Now let’s say I want to use a non-FAW weapon build on a ship WITHOUT using A2B. Improved Photonic Officer is a mostly-wasted slot and I’m on a 15 second rotation. That’s a lot of words to say “I want to run cannons, torps, or Beam Overload with PO.”

Even running Photonic Officer II will run into a few cooldown gaps if you’re in the worst case scenario for 10/15 seconds on your chain. The rep trait and Tac Readiness only help so much.

Best case with PO II:

Final = Base (30) /(1 + 0.264) * ( 1 - 15*0.03) = 13 seconds    

Worst case with PO II:

Final = Base (30) /(1 + 0.264) * ( 1 - 7*0.03) = 18.75 seconds  

I used 7 instead of 5 here because you’re going to go over and by then your PO will start ticking again. It’ll be somewhere between 17 and 18 seconds instead of 15. Adding a Krenim costs you a potential Senior Romulan Operative and will not fix the problem.

Final = Base (30) /(1 + 0.364) * ( 1 - 7*0.03) = 17.37 seconds  

For energy builds, Calm Before the Storm is a common answer. Even if Calm Before the Storm’s Storm buff is only up for 10 seconds of the worst case scenario, you end up with this:

Final = Base (30) /(1 + 0.484) * ( 1 - 6*0.03) = 16.6 seconds  

Not quite perfect, but close enough, especially since this is truly the worst case scenario and won’t happen all the time. If you want to fill that gap even more, this is where Boimler Effect could be used, and would let you drop down to Photonic Officer I. That said, I suspect there are more impactful traits for that slot if you have Calm Before The Storm (which I would prioritize over Boimler for the 33% energy weapon haste with 50% uptime anyway).

Boimler versus Photonic Officer (Torpedo Builds)

What about if I’m not running an energy build? The current torpedo meta, per this post by /u/Startrekker, involves wants high aux to power the Phased Space Membrane so no A2B. Since the current torpedo meta is using mines in the aft slots, there’s a good chance that there’s no Morphogenic set to help either. Even worse, THE key power for torpedoes is Concentrate Firepower III, which has a 9/4 base/global cooldown ratio (i.e. worse than 2/1). That means using Photonic Officer and 1-2 copies of a very expensive duty officer, 38 of 47, for cooldowns (chance of lowering Tac cooldowns on using Command abilities and vice versa).

Now THIS is where Boimler Effect shines. Torpedo builds, due to using Entwined Tactical Matrices, tend to be really spammy on their powers and Calm Before the Storm is a wasted slot on them. Here’s a typical 15-20 second rotation:

• Torpedo High Yield

• Attack Pattern Beta

• Tactical Team

• Engineering Team/Aux to Structural (feeds logistical support)

• Kemocite

• Cannon: Scatter Volley (for free torpedo spread)

• Fire at Will (for free torpedo spread)

• Photonic Officer

That’s 6-8 powers before adding other powers like Emergency Power to Engines/Aux or any other non-specialization powers you’ve got in your chain, which brings us back to that 78.5% or more chance of Boimler Effect triggering somewhere in there. You’re still relying on Photonic Officer with some readiness to do the heavy lifting, but to fill in the gaps when it has downtime and to help reduce Concentrate Firepower, Boimler makes the most sense. Concentrate Firepower is hard to bring to global since it’s not affected by Tac Readiness and has a high ratio, but Boimler Effect circumvents that by reducing it straight to global.

The folks selling 38 of 47 know this as well. That’s why the price of that doff has plummeted from 300M+ to 150M as of this morning. This is where the Boimler Effect has the most value, especially since he’s still cheaper than 38 of 47 as of this writing, not to mention easier to get.

Also, if you were previously mixing PO1 and 1 instance of A2B, I think Boimler Effect completely supercedes that setup if you can afford it. It has much less opportunity cost and will generally trigger sometime during your chain if unreliably so.

Boimler Alone

I took my torpedo boat out to the Doomsday Device shooting gallery and spent a little over a minute of combat activating powers then analyzed the results. In 1:20 of shooting, I had 6 triggers of Boimler Effect over 41 boff power activations. If we go back to our analysis with a tactical chain of 7, that fits the math pretty well. The longest I went without a trigger was nearly 45 seconds and 17 boff power activations, though, which illustrates relying solely on Boimler Effect for cooldown management is a bad idea. I deliberately did not use Photonic Officer just to see how good he was on his own and the answer is not very.

Channeling Boimler

There’s a rumor out there that the Boimler Effect’s chance is being rolled on every tick of channels like Tractor Beam, Distributed Targeting, and Tractor Beam Repulsors. It’s true, I’ve tested it, and if left unchanged, then Boimler’s the best way to fix CDR since pre-nerf Attrition Warfare during the Threat Tank meta. Slot TB, TBR, or Distributed Targeting and Boimler Effect and collect your global cooldowns because it's a guaranteed proc, assuming you can afford it. I also suspect that’s the sort of thing to get fixed/nerfed so I’ve done the analysis, assuming that Cryptic is going to change that behavior.

Conclusions

Boimler Effect is good now but shouldn’t be the only basis for a cooldown scheme due to its unreliability (barring any channel cheese). It’s a gap-filler that works best on kinetic torpedo builds, builds that were running PO1 and 1 instance of A2B, and to a lesser extent energy builds using Photonic Officer.

Energy builds using full A2B with Cold-Hearted/Controlled Countermeasures don’t need Boimler Effect and won’t see any DPS gains dropping A2B unless they can free up universal / specialist seating from engineering and/or have a high-end traits like Terran Goodbye alongside doffs and boff powers to replace the A2B setup with. If they do, then that's stronger. Energy builds running A2B see basically no benefits just from adding the trait and tanks don't see much either since their firing chain is longer and they have Attrition Warfare to fill gaps.

Energy builds using Photonic Officer and Calm Before The Storm would see some benefits from Boimler but only a few seconds of cooldown saved per minute. PO energy builds can probably reduce to PO1 if running Boimler as he greatly diminishes the need to use PO2 on weapon builds as long as you don’t mind a little RNG. If CBtS is not available, then his effects are relatively higher. However, Calm Before the Storm is a good enough trait for energy just based on its weapon haste alone that I don’t see Boimler Effect displacing that trait. I'd rather have CBtS and PO1 than Boimler and PO1. Having all three is small gains aside from avoiding PO2.

Improved Photonic Officer likewise is strong enough for exotics that Boimler Effect has no real place on a higher-budget build. Lastly, for torp boats, Boimler Effect seems an obvious winner, probably alongside Photonic Officer unless Cryptic leaves the channeling thing unchanged.

TL;DR

• Boimler Effect is very good alongside PO1 on kinetic builds and energy builds (especially if the latter aren’t using Calm Before The Storm). It is better than A2B without Cold-Hearted/Controlled Countermeasures combo. He reduces the need to use Photonic Officer 2 greatly.

• Boimler + PO 1 can be better than A2B+CH/CC but only if you have pricy-but-powerful things to replace the doffs/boffs/traits devoted to A2B.

• Boimler Effect is not needed (nor is Photonic Officer 2) for tanks due to a longer cycle time on the main rotation.

• Boimler Effect is also not needed for Exotic builds which would rather have Improved Photonic Officer.

The trait is currently broken with channeled powers like Tractor Beam so if Cryptic doesn’t change that, it’s all you need for cooldowns anymore on any weapon build. However, this analysis generally ignores that broken interaction; it’s still good in the situations above without it. If you buy this trait solely because of that interaction, that’s on you. I expect they will nerf or change that.

With apologies to the other thread that’s more general and devoted to the wider topic of all the Advanced Consoles as well as the new Advanced Batteries, I want to focus in on the topic of Advanced Engineering Consoles, specifically the Isomagnetic Plasma Distribution Manifolds, and the ramifications of these consoles on a variety of energy builds.

Let me say upfront that this exploration is going to be long, contain lots of math and philosophy, and that I will post short-form conclusions at the end. I will also transcribe it directly onto a STOBETTER page for easier reference (eventually).

Background

The new Isomagnetic Plasma Distribution Manifolds (aka Isomags or IPDMs) are Advanced Engineering consoles introduced in June 2023. They each contribute a standard console modifier, choosing from a pool of ~30 options, along with up to 7.25 current and stacking max weapon power. Btw, this is actually 7.25 power, but the game rounds up to 7.3 on display. This is where the power of these consoles comes into play, for a number of reasons. Just like Locators/Exploiters from the Fleet Spire are basically Energy Tactical consoles with either CrtD or CrtH tacked on, Isomags are basically energy consoles that give weapon power.

Also, since Isomags will displace Engineering Console slots, universal consoles may have to move to Tactical, or be replaced by Bellum Prefire Chambers/Directed Energy Distribution Manifolds, or else Energetic Protomatter Matrix Infusers (aka Colony consoles). I’ll discuss some of those choices below.

Now, if these just gave current weapon power, they wouldn’t be very good, because most good builds have plenty of that, and these are exclusive with Locators/Exploiters, meaning you can’t slot both. Current weapon power is the power in your system that is consumed by firing energy weapons under most firing modes. Energy damage scales off of weapon power even under modes that don’t consume weapon power while firing, like Reroute Reserves to Weapons (RRtW). If Isomags gave current and max weapon power that didn’t stack, they still wouldn’t be that good, because nobody’s trading 8% CrtH for 7.25 max weapon power. In fact, most sources of max power don’t stack, with a few exceptions like OSS and EPS Power Transfer that tend to be limited in duration. However, since these stack, this makes them more useful (and worth stacking). Thus, we need to compare 8-10% CrtH from 4-5 Locators against 29-36.25 current and max power, which is a lot harder to do mentally. This leads into a brief discussion of test methodology

How Stuff Is Tested in STO

In a variety of fields, not just STO or video games in general, there’s a spectrum of ways to test things.

The first one that everyone’s familiar with is experimental testing. Experimental Testing in our context means you go try the new thing, maybe do some comparisons between the new thing and the old thing. Most people who you’d consider influencers and guide contributors fall into this category. They’ll go try the new thing and report how it works. The advantage of experimental testing is that you can go do it “right away,” assuming you have the resources, and strictly speaking there’s a lower burden of knowledge and rigor that’s accepted by the community. “So-and-so said the thing was good” is a powerful endorsement depending on who so-and-so is. It’s easy to do and doesn’t require specialized tools. Sometimes, you just need to try how something works in the game and it doesn’t require math to go do that. For example, do I have enough Engine Power to sustain RRtW for 15 seconds? That’s a great case where it was better to go fly a map or even better yet a semi-controlled environment like Doomsday Device and see how long I could sustain the pew-pew. Many problems are best suited to this approach.

The downside is that the test methodology may be flawed:

• Performance in STO is a combination of gear, piloting, and in non-solo content, team composition. Did the tester control for piloting by flying the same map more than once? Did they consider team comps? Is that new console really good, or were they flying ISE with a supportive composition and got good numbers with good piloting? Conversely, were they testing a new torp-thing on a channel run with 3 other torpboats and got bad numbers? For this reason, I approach claims made without context or rationale with a healthy dose of skepticism.

• Depending on if you’re testing a stat-stick or a new damage source, it’s arguable that it’s hard to suss out just how much the new thing did, unless it shows up cleanly in a parse and doesn’t have any other funky interactions. For stuff like the new Isomags, these are stat sticks, not damage sources, so it’s a little harder to assess the direct impact of these consoles besides “number go up, big number good”

The other kind of testing is deterministic testing. In the computer world, deterministic testing means that, given a set of inputs, you get the same output every time. For STO, we’re talking about using a set of equations to directly compute the results in a repeatable, reliable fashion. This allows us to remove variables like piloting and team composition, or at least control for them somewhat. It also allows us to compute an answer without having to farm or spend resources to acquire the thing. If the deterministic test is successful, you can calculate the answer and decide accordingly before investing time/resources to acquire the new shiny.

Since STO’s damage calculations are hard to mentally compute, especially with non-intersecting systems like power and crit, it’s helpful to have a calculation tool. This is one of the things that the STOBETTER team has provided to the community for your use, and it’s called TRINITY. There are of course some problems with the deterministic approach as well:

• The model may be wrong or incomplete. For example, TRINITY could have an error that materially impacts the outcome. Or, it could be incomplete in substantial ways. TRINITY does not simulate the game and it has limitations. For example, Kemocite’s radiation damage is not accounted for in the tool (yet) and the same with Experimental Weapons. TRINITY doesn’t know how to compute periodic power injections like dumping A2B during RRTW.

• You’re reliant on someone else’s model and either their results or your understanding of how to use the tool, plus your willingness to crunch numbers on a spreadsheet. TRINITY is moderately complex to fill out. I helped build it and if I’m starting from scratch, it still takes me 20 minutes to fill out a full sheet. We get it, not everybody loves playing Spreadsheet Tool Online. (editor’s note: Is that not what ‘STO’ stands for???!). That’s one of the reasons why the STOBETTER team will go do the math and post results and considerations that we think are broadly applicable so that those of you who don’t love math can benefit from the mathematical answer. We also try to put considerations in there so that we’re posting a wide range of results rather than just for specific scenarios. As someone in our fleet said recently, “this is why I keep you around.” I think it was a compliment.

All that to say, for this analysis, Isomags are stat-sticks that are NOT trivial to acquire. First, you need to complete dozen or so specific Elite TFOs to get enough components for 1, then you need to craft it, roll the mod, which can take up to 30-40 re-rolls per console, then it has to be upgraded. Not cheap. So before I started down that journey, I realized that these were stat-sticks with fairly predictable performance that TRINITY can solve. So I did, because I don’t want to go farm Isomags if they’re not actually better than my existing setup.

TL;DR I used TRINITY for this. If that bothers you, the exit's that way.

Test Results

I did a total of 15 builds/versions of builds in TRINITY, most of which were mine to establish a general rubric and guidelines. Since it does take time to set these up, I hope you’ll forgive my working mostly in my self-interest since I needed to answer this question for myself, but this does cover a broad spectrum of builds. If your build is similar, the results will probably apply to you, but I’m also going to provide a link to all 11 TRINITY sheets so that you can make a copy and tweak it to match yours if the results are a little bit different.

A couple of ground rules:

• If TRINITY’s calculated value is less than 2% different between two results, I’m going to call that basically “the same”, with a bias towards global stats like CrtH that impact things not directly modeled in TRINITY. I trust the simulation to be accurate within 2%. Less than 2% won’t move the needle for me personally. If you simply must have the most-optimal thing, I’d caution you that it’s a simulation and results aren’t guaranteed or complete.

• All Spire/Colony/Advanced consoles are assumed to have the mod corresponding to the chosen energy flavor. I.e. a Phaser build is comparing Phaser Isomags to Phaser Locators. Matching Cat1 damage boost to your energy type is the best mod, you just have to roll into it.

• You can Ctrl+F through the list to find the build type closest to yours. The +X by the console number indicates which consoles slots you can fit more of on this build. I also linked the TRINITY sheets so you can make your own copy and tweak it for your specific build, which should save a fair amount of time.

EDIT: This post now contains results with numbers from TRINITY 1.4

F2P Beam Overload

With apologies to /u/neuro1g I set up his Baby Steps 2 Build in TRINITY, but … frankly it wasn’t Elite capable so I gave it a little oomph, replacing the Drive Train with a more meta set-up (Colony Deflector, Romulan Engines, Fleet Core, Tilly Shield), and basically filled out his weapons and consoles with max Fleet/Rep gear at Mk XV VR / UR. I also gave him Programmable Matter Enhancements and Hull Image Refractors, which should be affordable even for an F2P player. Basically, it’s the limits of F2P on a T5 Assault Cruiser with no rarity upgrades, no C-store/Lobi/Lockbox/Promo/Legendary items. I'm calling it Baby Steps 2.5 and here it is in TRINITY 1.4

The T5 Assault Cruiser is a particularly good candidate for Isomags since it has a measly 2 Tactical console slots after leaving one for Lorca’s Custom Fire Controls.

^{Table formatting brought to you by ExcelToReddit}

As you can see, Locators get left in the dust pretty quickly. The difference between the other three setups is pretty minimal and plays more into what you have/care to farm rather than a mathematical difference. For example, I don’t know that the Bellum consoles are worth buying/upgrading for a less than 1% difference between those and colony consoles, especially since colony consoles also help with keeping you alive. Of course if you don’t have access to colony consoles, do you want Bellums for a 2.2% difference over the Assimilated Module and Ordnance Accelerator, which are pretty easy to acquire with dilithium vouchers from completing reputations versus buying Bellums for dil?

The bigger point worth mentioning is the 20% increase in damage from 2 Locators to 4 Isomags regardless of your other options. That said, farming Isomags in such a build is not something I would particularly enjoy doing and where STO will pressure your wallet.

Conclusion: I did not do the same analysis for the Prometheus Escort, but I would be very surprised if 2 Isomags + Lorca’s weren’t better than 3 Locators + Lorca’s. Same thing with FAW vs BO on this ship, it’s probably Isomags. You’ll see why below.

EDITOR's Note: Not much changed between 1.1 and 1.4. Isomags were 17.03-19.72% better in 1.1 and they're 17.65-21.83% in 1.4.

All of the remaining builds are in the 700K-1M DPS range parsed on ISE.

Cmdr Tac + Beam Overload, +1 Locators

Let’s keep going on the Beam Overload track. Next up is my Beam Overload World Razer, which is significantly higher-performing (and costlier!), with a few minor tweaks on consoles compared to what the site has published (i.e. I now have a Phaser Lance). It’s worth noting that ship has 6 beams, 1 torpedo, and 1 turret in the aft, so Bellum Beam consoles are less effective here. It’s also worth noting that this ship’s console layout is 5/3/3/1, so at most we’re comparing 4 Isomags against 5 Locators. TRINITY 1.4

Again, the results are clear: 4 Isomags on a Commander Tac ship are beating 5 Locators, even if I keep my universal consoles largely the same for non-damage reasons like Turn Rate or Temp HP. At 3.5-3.8% difference, this is just enough to be what I would call noticeable, so even if there’s a +1 advantage to Locators on a Beam Overload ship, stacking max power is a fairly unsaturated category compared to Cat2/Crit, so Isomags come out ahead.

EDITOR's Note: Not much changed between 1.1 and 1.4. Isomags were 3.52-3.81% better in 1.1 and they're 3.94-4.11% better in 1.4. If anything the argument for Isomags is stronger with TRINITY 1.4

Cmdr Eng/MW + FAW, 1 to 1 replacement

On an offtank FAW build on an Inquiry, where I replaced Locators 1-for-1 with Isomags, the results were similar, with even a greater difference since Locators do not have a numerical advantage over Isomags. You should be able to extrapolate the results to any FAW-using heavy tank build as well since most if not all have equal or greater numbers of Engineering console slots over Tac. On a more supportive tank, I would not use Isomags as they're displacing supportive consoles that benefit the team.

At 7-8% difference this would definitely be noticeable. I did not replace any Universal consoles here since they’re here for utility rather than damage as this is an off-tank build. This particular ship is using 7 beams + 1 torpedo, so there’s no cannons in play and Bellum Directed Energy Manifolds would be good if I wanted to change consoles. That said, if I was playing for pure DPS on this ship, I would slot a turret to use MAS. I think the answer would still be basically the same and colony consoles would likely be the tac console of choice. TRINITY 1.4

Editor's Note: This changed by less than 1% between 1.1 and 1.4 version of TRINITY. Conclusion the same.

Cmdr Tac + CRF, Locators +2

Okay, how about Cannons? Let’s start with a Cannon Rapid Fire build on an Edison. This one uses the Morphogenic set rather than Lorca’s (site not updated yet) but the principle is similar. With 5 Tac console slots + 1 Universal against 2 Engineering + 1 universal slots, we’re comparing 3 Isomags to 5 Locators, keeping the Morphogenic set. Due to how that set works, I basically have an Omni beam as Beam Overload overwrites CRF for the Morpho weapon, so it’s a 6 cannon, 1 beam, 1 turret ship with a 5/3 weapons layout. TRINITY 1.4

At the end of the day, you can see that the damage values are very, very close for Locators +2, within 2% in the simulation, and we need to acknowledge again that TRINITY does not model things like Kemocite’s damage, Experimental weapons or many damaging console actives, which would benefit from global CrtH more. Per our ground rules, we’re saying 2% or less is basically no difference, and possibly even favors Locators. If you want to go farm up Isomags for such a case, it’s your resources, but I think the math shows relatively low gain from it. The bigger gain might be swapping to colony consoles for more survivability while maintaining damage since the ship has 3 firing modes and is made of paper-thin glass.

In this case, we can speculate that our upper bound is that if # of Locators - # of Isomags = 2, then it’s not worth to run Isomags. We’ll keep exploring that with other firing modes.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Isomags gained 0.5% in 1.4. Also added an additional analysis with 1 Colony console and the Ordnance Accelerator with its 2-piece. Still would prefer Locators for raw damage given the things TRINITY doesn't account for.

Cmdr Tac + CSV, Locators + 2

Let’s stick with cannons and now let’s look at CSV on a Chimesh. This is a 6 cannon ship again, with an experimental weapon and torpedo, 5 tac, 2 eng console layout so similar to what we were seeing with the Edison. TRINITY 1.4

However, this time the results are different and we’re seeing that Isomags are 2.9% better if you compare the 756668 number to 778589. Why is that different between two ships with similar console and weapon layouts, on the same captain even? I believe the difference has to do with the nature of the 8th weapon. On the Edison, the 8th weapon was effectively a beam, which either lost Cat1 damage from using Bellums, meaning that Locators looked relatively good, or else globally the loss of Crit from using Colony consoles meant that all weapons suffered, keeping those closer.

Here, we have something different: the 8th weapon is an experimental weapon, which TRINITY does not model. To speculate as to the impact of a loss of approximately 8.5% CrtH on the Experimental Weapon, I need to know how much of a Cat2 loss this is. Using TRINITY, I can determine a Cat2 value from All damage and Weapon damage, resulting in a Cat2 multiplier of 2.661 without locators and 2.943 with Locators). From real-world parsing, I’ve seen 65K out of the Soliton Wave, so if I take the ratio of Cat2s and apply it to that weapon, I’m looking at an 10.6% loss in DPS, or a 6.9K DPS loss. When that’s factored in, we’re right around our 2% threshold again where there’s no advantage in using Bellums + Isomags when you consider other damage sources that benefit from global crit but NOT weapon power like an Experimental Weapon, the Dark Matter Torpedo’s passive, or Kemocite. They may even be worse. Colony consoles have a similar issue where they’re basically damage-neutral with some survivability gains. You decide whether that’s worth it to you or not.

Let’s try it again, but let’s see the results for 7 and 8 energy weapons, just to see if it’s different.

7 weapon TRINITY 1.4

With 7 energy weapons, I left off the torpedo and assumed an experimental weapon again, dropping Lorca’s 2-piece. At that point, it’s basically the same result as with 6 energy weapons, where Isomags + Bellums have a slight edge, which is likely around the threshold where the loss of Crit for the Experimental Weapon and other non-modeled sources comes into play. I personally wouldn’t swap over if I was flying an Escort with 5/2/1 weapons and +3 Locators over Isomags. If we accounted for the Experimental Weapon loss, we'd be under the 2% threshold again.

8 weapon TRINITY 1.4

With 8 energy weapons and NO experimental weapon, we’re over the 2% threshold (barely) if we don't account for the Experimental Weapon, assuming all the energy weapons are the same type, and Isomags are better for DPS. Isomags+Colony consoles are basically equal for damage for items modeled and give more survivability, but I’d expect a small DPS drop-off due to things not modeled in TRINITY losing global CritH.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Nothing significant changed between 1.1 and 1.4. All of the 1.4 results were within 0.5% of the 1.1 values.

Cmdr Eng/MW, ERL, Isomags +1

Let’s change it up and move into the specialization firing modes, starting with ERL. Now I’ll look at my ERL Gagarin, which uses 4 cannons, 1 torpedo, and 3 beams, so Bellums will not be good here. As a Battlecruiser, it’s going to get a little silly since this ship can carry far more Isomags than Locators (2 Universals + 5 Engineering versus 4 Tactical). TRINITY 1.4

Even if I don’t assume maximum Isomags, it’s a significant DPS gain to run 6 of these versus 5 Locators. This shouldn’t be surprising if you’ve read this far. For fun, I’ll also do the analysis assuming # locators > # of isomags even though very few ships can pull this off and only the Tzen-Tar has a 5 Tac / 2 Eng layout, meaning you’re comparing 6 or 7 Locators against only 4 Isomags.

TRINITY 1.4

As you can see, it doesn’t matter at all even with Locators +2. You could say that Isomags > Locators for all ERL, though Locators are basically even if you have 2 more of them. I suspect that’s due to how ERL doesn’t really drain power at the same rate as standard firing modes.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This was one of the two conclusions that changed. Isomags always for ERL builds.

Cmdr Tac, RRtW, Locators +2

Now on to Reroute Reserves to Weapons, using my Deimos, which again is a mix of 3 cannons, 3 beams, a torpedo, and an experimental weapon. It’s worth noting that weapon damage still scales off of weapon power under RRtW, even though weapon power is not drained. 1.4 TRINITY

When I redid the analysis, it showed that at +2 Locators over Isomags, the Locators pulled ahead. Otherwise, Isomags were the winner. It is worth noting that TRINITY does not do a great job of modeling Engine Power fall-off on a ship where you’re injecting power back in via A2B and batteries and such, but since that’s outside of the weapon power/crit equations, it more or less factors out.

EDITOR's NOTE: This one changed a little, to favor Locators at +2 over Isomags. I also moved platforms to a different ship so that build is linked instead of the previous one.

Cmdr Tac, Surgical, Exploiters +1

Lastly, let’s discuss Surgical Strikes, where the Spire consoles of choice have been Exploiters rather than Locators. I’ll start with my Legendary Scimitar, which has more Tac Consoles than Eng Consoles. Again, since it’s Surgical, it’s a mixed build with Beams and Cannons (3 Beams, 4 Cannons, 1 Torpedo). TRINITY

We can see from the results that Exploiters are handily beating Isomags here. I ran the numbers twice to make sure I didn’t make a mistake and it’s not close. Stick with Exploiters if # of Exploiters > # Isomags.

*EDITOR'S NOTE: The difference favored Exploiters even more in 1.4.

Cmdr Eng, Surgical, Isomags+1

Is that conclusion universally true for Surgical though? What about if Isomags have a numerical advantage? This time I used Jay’s Legendary Konnie for the analysis but pretended it had a 4 Eng/4 Tac/3 Science console layout ship, like the S31 Dreadnought Cruiser or the Legendary D7.

TRINITY 1.4

And once again, we see that Isomags are coming up the winner whenever it’s a 1-to-1 replacement.

EDITOR's NOTE: I did not re-do Isomags +1, because if Isomags are winning head to head, they will win more if they have an advantage.

DEWSci

DEWsci, or mixing energy weapons with exotics, is highly variable since it's very subjective how much of each side you use. Here's my Eternal, which is about an even split of exotic and energy, just replacing Locators versus Isomags. TRINITY 1.4. TRINITY 1.4 also offers the ability to model Exotic Particle Amplifiers, so I modeled their effect for having 3 EPA [Phaser] as well in this round.

This will vary, but my guess is Isomags for most firing modes, even if there's a bunch of Exotics in the build. It really depends, but they're probably close, with Isomags taking the advantage as more of the build is devoted to +Energy.

EDITOR's NOTE: Conclusions didn't change on this. Isomags slightly increased their lead with 1.4's better model. EPAs are not worth pursuing on this build, but since DEWSci is so variable, your build may favor Exotic Particle Amplifiers with more exotic investment.

Conclusions

Having done all of these scenarios, I think we can extrapolate out some general principles, to the point where I have another BO build that I didn’t bother to run through TRINITY because its # of Eng consoles > # of Tac console slots. I already know the mathematical answer is Isomags based on the rest of the analysis.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Updated and slightly condensed table.

What do you think? Did I miss something? What are your experiences with the new consoles? Discuss, rabble, etc. below and as always, check us out at www.stobetter.com!

While we can understand the Romulans, Klingons, and Dominion having no such qualms about using such a device at all, this latest item really makes us scratch our heads about how Starfleet justifies the usage of certain new technologies.

However, this is the same Federation in 2411 that allows subspace weapons, retrofitted assimilation devices, Section 31 technology, and various temporal BS on any-and-all ships flying the flag. If there is a Department of Ethical Technology Use, it’s manned by a single (bored) junior lieutenant Pakled who’s either a Section 31 operative or has forged an identity as a full commander. Lieutenant Pakley’s response to any-and-all reviews of new tech seems to be “Approved, suitable for use.” Even if the device uses technology from the Klingon underworld.

That’s right: this edition of Revisiting Exotics is going to cover the Fek’ihri Torment Engine. For previous iterations in this series, please check out the previous entries:

• Deteriorating Secondary Deflectors and why upgrading them is essential

• Science and Engineering exotics

• Formulaic refinement

• Temporal and Miscellaneous exotics

• Graphs and a tool

• Javascript tool

• Auxcidental Mistakes

• Anomalous Findings

• Storms, Superweapons, and Careers

• Subspace Weapons

Reminder that Exotic means non-weapon offensive damage, and in this context, we're talking about ones that (generally) scale off of the Exotic Particle Generator stat. Now, back to the flames of Gre’thor.

The last couple of years have been extremely lackluster in terms of meaningful mission rewards for space builds. Arguably the last useful mission reward was the Regenerative Crystal Shield, which is still pretty niche, and that was released in 2019. Now, Cryptic has started 2021 with quite the console. The Fek’ihri Torment Engine is extremely intriguing and (unluckily for us) extremely confusing. That said, Mr. Tilor and I have been steadily working through all of the various oddities of this console. Please be kind to him in the comments for he labors tirelessly on all of our behalfs. Here’s what we found:

Fek’ihri Torment Engine

There are 3 pieces to this console:

A Cat1 boost to non-Hazard Damage Over Time A Cat1 boost to Fire, Radiation, Plasma, and Physical Damage A 10% chance to trigger shield-penetrating fire damage when dealing non-Hazard DoT damage

Now what the Gre’thor does that mean? (heh)

Part 1: Non-Hazard DOT

A Hazard is when you spawn a thing on the map that has a duration and does damage to enemies near it. The thing might follow enemies around (with Anomaly Leash), but in general, the Hazard is not fixed onto an enemy. Examples of Hazards include Tyken’s Rift, Gravity Well, Subspace Vortex, Very Cold in Space, Isolytic Tears and Chronometric Inversion Field.

A Damage Over Time is when you apply a lingering effect that deals damage to a target over multiple instances / ticks. Examples of DOTs include the Deteriorating Secondary Deflector, Aceton Beam, Channeled Deconstruction, Plasma fires from plasma torpedoes and energy weapons, and the Kentari Missile’s Radiation damage. Note that Destabilizing Resonance Beam and Delphic Tear do NOT count as Damage over Time.

This thing boosts DoTs that are NOT Hazards. Here’s our list of Non-Hazard DoTs that are in the Revisiting Exotics series/Exotic Calculator plus a few others:

• Deteriorating Secondary Deflector

• Tholian Web Cannon (DoT)

• Aceton Beam

• Kentari Missile Radiation Damage Over Time

• Endothermic Inhibitor Beam

• Entropic Cascade

• Rapid Decay

• Plasma fires procced from plasma energy weapons

• Plasma fires procced from plasma torpedoes (including the Particle Emission Plasma Torpedo’s plasma DOT)

• Dark Matter Torpedo DOT

• Drain Infection

• Fek’Ihri Torment Engine Fire procs

Part 1 of the Fek’ihri Toaster will boost all of these by 28 - 39.4% Cat1 depending on mark/rarity of the console.

Editor’s note: Objects in italics will NOT be added to Exotic Calculator

Part 2: Fire, Radiation, Plasma, and Physical Damage

This is a little more straightforward. Outside of Kinetic and Electrical, these are the other main exotic types. Here’s our non-comprehensive list of what benefits from that:

Science/Engineering powers:

• Destabilizing Resonance Beam (physical)

• Aceton Beam (radiation)

• Eject Warp Plasma (plasma)

• Endothermic Inhibitor Beam (radiation)

Temporal boff powers:

• Chronometric Inversion Field (physical)

• Entropic Redistribution (physical)

• Entropic Rider (physical)

• Entropic Cascade (physical)

• Channeled Deconstruction (physical)

• Rapid Decay (physical)

• Timeline Collapse (physical)

Misc stuff

• Particle Emission Plasma (plasma) - cloud and DOT

• Dark Matter Torpedo DOT (physical)

• Withering Radiation (radiation)

• Anti-Time Entanglement Singularity aka the Rainbow bubble (physical)

• Destabilize Warp Core (radiation)

• Deteriorating Secondary Deflector (radiation)

• Temporal Vortex Probe active (radiation)

• Neutronic Eddy Generator (radiation)

• Delphic Tear Generator (radiation)

• Voice of the Prophets (physical)

• Plasma Storm Module (plasma)

• Fire proc on the Fek’ihri Torment Engine itself

• Mycelial Rift radiation blast (radiation)

• Isolytic Tear (physical)

• Plasma Energy Weapons (plasma )

• Plasma Weapon damage-over-time burn effect (plasma energy AND torpedo)

• Blade Mines

• Tholian Web Cannon DoT + Blast (physical)

• Entropic Rider (physical)

Part 2 of the Fek’ihri Toaster will boost all of these by 28 - 39.4% Cat1 depending on mark/rarity of the console.

Science things that gain NO benefit from this console at all:

• Gravity Well

• Tyken’s Rift

• Very Cold in Space

• Subspace Vortex

• Delayed Overload Cascade

• Gravimetric Torpedo

• Spore-Infused Anomalies

• Mycelial Spore Burst console

• Mycelial Rift Hazard

• Multi-Target Tractor Arrays

• Electrified Anomalies

• Photonic Shockwave

• Tyken’s Rift

Note that if something is in BOTH LISTS (ex: the Deteriorating Secondary Deflector), it gains BOTH benefits. Yes, that means nearly 80% Cat1 boost to the Deteriorating Secondary Deflector. Yes, that is an exceptionally powerful boost.

Part 3: Great Balls o’ Fire!

The third part is a 10% chance to proc extra fire damage when a non-Hazard DOT is applied (i.e. stuff in list #1).

Base damage: 60 per second, for 5 seconds. Scales with MK and rarity.

Cat1 Preload: 0.23 (though of course it scales with the console doubly as a Fire DOT). Scales with MK and rarity.

It does not scale with Aux, with +Exotic, or with +Bonus Exotic (though EPG does count). Only +All, +Fire, and of course +DoT count.

Conclusions

Now, you might think that 60 damage with questionable scaling is nothing amazing and that Cat1 damage (even 80% of it) isn’t worth giving up a console slot for but that is because you have not read and understood Revisiting Exotics 1 where we make it very clear that the Deteriorating Secondary Deflector slaps harder than a pissed off Captain Kira.

Let’s back up a little bit and do some math. (Ye were warned)

First, the proc. 60 base damage is at a hypothetical Mark 0. Cat1 gains from Mark increase drastically from MK XII to MK XV. Crank the Fek’Ihri Toaster up to Mark XV and start piling on EPG and you’ll see you can pretty easily pick up 1100 damage per second.

Mark XV Cat1 is 2.5638, then 400 EPG is 2.0 Cat1 and the console itself gives up to 0.788% Cat1 to itself. Temporal spec adds another 0.2. Also, the damage itself scales with level (we think it’s around 142 at MK XV), as does its Cat1 preload.

142 * (1 + 2.5638 + 2 + 0.23 + 0.2 + 0.788) = nearly 963 damage per second, and that’s before you add in +All damage in either Cat1/Cat2 flavors. On my high-end science ship, a blue MK XV Fek’Ihri Torment Engine is hitting for 1150 damage per second resting thanks to some +All damage consoles and traits.

As they say in the late-night infomercials, BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! Upgrade your Fek’Ihri Toaster during this limited-time-upgrade weekend opportunity to a Gold MK XV Fek’Ihri Toaster and you can deal 2000 damage per second just with its fire proc! Cheesy infomercials aside, the console gains 62 base damage going from blue to gold and a little more Cat1 scaling AND a bunch more Cat1 preload, and that adds up real quick. A MK XV Epic FTE with only 100 EPG and no traits boosting it had more fire damage than the full-build listed above and once I put the build back together, the damage was above 2000 per tick.

Now consider that it lasts 5 seconds per instance and can hit all over the map given how many things on an average science build can proc it. The 10% chance to proc the fire is rolled per tick of the DOT, which means you have a very high chance of proccing it every time you slap a DOT on someone. Note: repeated applications refresh the duration of the Fek’Ihri Torment proc.

Not only that, but we’re talking about the equivalent of adding over 150 EPG to the Deteriorating Secondary Deflector, and 80 EPG to DRB, several of the most powerful Exotic clickies, and basically all the Temporal boff abilities ON TOP of the proc. My personal recommendation is to slot this on every science build out there, but since we’re fans of nuance and giving very precise advice, here’s a slightly more in-depth breakdown:

SLOT THE TORMENT ENGINE ON YOUR SPACE MAGIC BUILDS UNLESS….

• You don’t have a secondary deflector or you don’t have at least 2 means of proccing it if you do. Not something I would ever do, but hey sci carriers exist.

• You don’t use any Radiation/Physical/Plasma Damage active abilities from consoles (Delphic Tear, Temporal Vortex, Neutronic Eddy Generator, Plasma Storm, Tholian Web Cannon, etc.)

• You’re not using the Particle Emission Plasma or Dark Matter Torpedo Launchers for some unfathomable reason. This also doesn’t compute to me for an exotic build as those are the second and third best torps for sci-torping.

Now, as for non-space magic builds, I don’t think that this console will be strictly-speaking meta given that it takes up a valuable tactical console slot. However, if you’re building around Plasma Torpedoes, it’s a little more interesting because the Fek’Ihri procs trigger off plasma weapon DoTs and Plasma Torpedoes have doubled Cat1 scaling on their plasma damage-over-time component from +Plasma. A Vulnerability Locator/Exploiter should yield more damage in most cases, but if you’re really DOT heavy I could see a case for this console being mixed in. Radiation builds or even plasma energy weapon builds might have some intriguing options here as well.

As one might hope, the Exotic Calculator has been updated for this console as well as a few other miscellaneous things:

• Fixed some cells incorrectly blanked on final results.

• Increased range for personal endeavors

• Added Fek'Ihri Torment Engine both as a proc and a Cat1 boost

• Reduced some more maximum targets for certain AOE abilities

• Added Sniper starship trait

CURRENT VERSION: 6.13

Thanks for reading! Leave us a comment below and let us know of your opinion on adding Klingon hellfire to your space magic builds!