So I'm making an idea for my weapon setups as a tactical officer. My idea was to run 5 Tetryon beam arrays (3 aft 2 fore) one Antiproton cannon (fore) and one Quantom torpedo launcher (fore) while running the abilities high yield III beam overload II and pattern omega III

The hope/idea was that the beam arrays would do major shield damage and more so being Tetryon in which once gone I'd be able to spin around and fire a high yield torpedo set in attempt to quickly drop hull.

However I'm a complete noob at the game and as this theory sounds good in my brain the question was to the rest of you how would this work out in reality? Would it be able to accomplish what I want it to? Is it a complete failure of an idea?

Any info, tips, advice, etc are much appreciated!

*note* I know that this will not be all of my abilities etc and there was other stations/officers/abilities I did not mention but that is because this was merely a question about weapon tactics/setups

First off, all weapon types except phaser/disruptor are pretty much a waste of time. They don't do any extra damage and they massively eat up your skill points.

Second, no matter what weapon you use, you should use only one energy type in space. Skill points are another big reason for this.

So pick one type (preferably phasers) and specialize in it. Spend those other points elsewhere.

Anti-Proton are acually very good for Escorts... Only time I would take anything else than Phasers ^^

Really, how so? How can you compare phasers to antiprotons? especially on cannons...?

I believe people run AP on escorts because they focus on burst damage, and the proc for AP is +40 crit severity. So if you do get a crit it's gonna be big. However its debatable whether the extra cost to spec in it is worth the chance for increased damage.

okay so here's a scenario....

Say I have two escorts - both have the same skills with respect to the energy weapons they are usuing...

both of them fire at their respective targets (one ship uses phasers and the other uses antiprotons). Unless the antiproton gets the crit bonus they will both dish out the same damage?

As far as I know, yes. If you have the same stats and are using the same abilities both will do the same DPS. Many people prefer phasers because it is cheap to spec in, it also looks canonical too... which may or may not be a big deal to you.

In that case - do phasers recharge faster than antiprotons? or is that all the same.

It's all the same.

The only differences between the space weapons is their proc, color, and cost.

ok so deva and i have been on a quest to get to VA (1st for him 2nd for me) before series 4 eps come out. seeing as how we are alrdy RA 3's im sure we will make it no problem lol. anyways he asked me if this was doable and i wasnt sure if it was i thought about asking on the forums myself, but i found a calculator that is surprisingly accurate and very useful.

http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=tehdeva_0

there is the link to it i hope it works lol if not i could take pics and post them i guess

anyways i myself have been playing sto for about 220 days (Subscribed For: 221.26 days to be exact) and i havnt done much in learning the specs of the game, but i know a good deal of it now that ive ran through it once and going through it again. (we've been on elite since ensign so ive had to learn lol)

but ya take a look at that link and if its no good we will try to revamp it by the time we reach VA