• Oct 30, 2019 Welcome to the 'Star Trek: Athena' website, a site on the Web featuring the stories of the Starship Athena.On this site, in addition to the stories, is some background information on the ship and the characters.
• The Memory Alpha System is a system located in the Tellar Sector of the Alpha Quadrant. It is home to the planet Memory Alpha, the main archive of the Federation.Until the crafting revamp with the release of Season 9.5, Memory Alpha's surface was accessible and served as Research & Development hub for Federation players.

'The Last Outpost' is the fifth episode of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, originally aired within the United States on October 19, 1987. The episode was written by Herbert Wright, based on a story by Richard Krzemien, and directed by Richard Colla. The guest cast included Armin Shimerman, Jake Dengel and Tracey Walter. Although this was Shimerman's first appearance as a Ferengi, he had previously filmed his first appearance in an uncredited role in 'Haven', but that was broadcast after 'The Last Outpost'. He would later gain the role of the Ferengi Quark in the main cast of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Sep 13, 2006 Another Head Test for STVF. Compiled Game Credits: GAME CREATION Story Writer D.C. Fontana Producers Brian Christian, Ken Allen, David Riordan Director Jon Lucas Associate Producer Ron Austin Lead.

Set in the 24th century, the series follows the adventures of the Starfleet crew of the Federation starship Enterprise-D. In this episode, the Enterprise pursue a Ferengi starship to the planet Gamma Tauri IV, where both ships are disabled by an unknown power drain. Away teams from each vessel beam down to the planet where they find an automated system left behind by the Tkon Empire.

This episode marked the first on-screen appearance of the Ferengi, who had been mentioned earlier in the series. They were intended to replace the antagonist roles that Klingons and Romulans played in Star Trek: The Original Series in the new series, but this idea was dropped after their first couple of appearances. Their look was created by Andrew Probert with modifications by Michael Westmore. The tattoo design was created by Mike Okuda, while Probert was also responsible for the design of their starship. The Ferengi were criticised by reviewers following broadcast, and later reviewers had a mostly negative opinion of the episode.

Plot[edit]

The Enterprise is in pursuit of a Ferengi vessel which has stolen an energy converter from an unmanned Federation outpost. While the Ferengi were known to the Federation, this is the first contact with the species, and the Ferengi are thought to be at a similar technology level as themselves. As the chase passes the planet Delphi Ardu IV, both ships suffer power drains causing them to come to a halt. Each crew initially believe the power drain is caused by the other vessel, but Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) realizes that the Ferengi are as confused as they are, and orders the crew to investigate the planet. Operations Officer Lt. Cdr. Data (Brent Spiner) reports that the planet seems to have once been a remote outpost of the 'Tkon Empire' that became extinct 600,000 years ago (during the Middle Pleistocene). Picard contacts the Ferengi and gets them to agree to mutually explore the planet below to try to find the source of the energy drain.

On the planet, the away team is momentarily separated due to effects of the energy field on the transporters. They regroup but are attacked and bound by the Ferengi, who believe the Enterprise crew was planning an ambush of their own. The away team break free, and begin to exchange weapon fire, but the energy expelled is absorbed by a nearby crystalline structure. Data investigates the tree and awakens an entity that displays itself as a humanoid and calls itself Portal 63 (Darryl Henriques) 'a guardian of the Tkon Empire.' Portal 63 asks the two groups if they seek to enter the Tkon Empire, and does not comprehend when it is told that the Tkon have long since disappeared.

The Ferengi accuse the Enterprise away team of being a hostile force; Commander William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) admits that they are hostile to the Ferengi, inadvertently confirming humanity to be indeed hostile in the eyes of Portal 63, who steps forward, apparently ready to attack Riker, and claims his species is barbaric. Riker responds, 'Fear is the true enemy, the only enemy,' while not flinching as the attack comes. Portal 63 accepts this and stands down from the challenge, satisfied that the Federation is civilized, and allows the Enterprise to go free. It further offers Riker the opportunity to destroy the Ferengi vessel, but he declines on the grounds that the Ferengi would learn nothing from such an action. Both away teams return to their ships with power restored, and the Ferengi return the stolen energy converter. As a means of ironic thanks, Riker suggests sending the Ferengi a box of Chinese finger traps, a toy that fascinated Data when he became stuck in one earlier in the mission.

Production[edit]

Creating the Ferengi[edit]

The creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, decided early on that he did not want to repeat the adversaries from Star Trek: The Original Series in The Next Generation. To this extent, the 'bible' produced before the start of the show stated categorically 'No stories about warfare with Klingons or Romulans'.^[2] The Ferengi were designed by Roddenberry and Herbert Wright to fill this gap.^[3][4] They were mentioned in the episodes running up to 'The Last Outpost', which marked their first appearance on screen.^[5] After they re-appeared later in the first season in 'The Battle', the producers thought that they didn't make a suitable adversary and plans for their continued use in this role were dropped.^[6] Their role as major villains in The Next Generation was eventually taken by the Borg.^[7] By the time that they appeared in Deep Space Nine, they were used in a comedic fashion.^[8] The look of the Ferengi and their ship was created by Andrew Probert.^[3][9] The vessel was inspired by a Horseshoe crab and was built by Greg Jein.^[3]

Michael Westmore was responsible for taking Probert's designs for the Ferengi and creating the make-up for the actors to meet that design. In Probert's original concept, the Ferengi had ears which were pointed like a bat. There were concerns from the producers that these would appear simply to be larger versions of the already known Vulcan ears, and so Westmore was told to round off the ears when it came to producing the make-up. Other elements which were changed at the make-up stage included modifications to the nose to increase the volume of wrinkles and dropping the idea of an extended chin as Westmore thought it would save time in applying the make-up. A set of false upper teeth were also created, which were added to a single head piece and a nose piece which comprised the prosthetics for the Ferengi.^[9] Westmore was not pleased when a shot of an actor in costume was leaked without the teeth, he said 'I was annoyed about that photo because the make-up was incomplete. After all the work that went into it, we would have wanted our design in proper form. The photo was like a pirated version of our make-up, because none of us would ever approved it under those circumstances.'^[10]Michael Okuda designed a rank designation tattoo which Westmore applied to the right part of each Ferengi forehead. The symbol means 'Dog eat dog' and was painted green as that is the color of American dollar bills.^{[citation needed]} Each bar (referred to by the production crew as a 'rocker') to the side of the symbol designated a rank, with more bars meaning a higher rank.^[10]

Writing and casting[edit]

In Richard Krzemien's original draft, Portal was referred to as Dilo.^[3] Executive producer Maurice Hurley saw Portal as being a sort of guard-dog,^[11] but thought that the Ferengi turned the concept into 'silliness'.^[12] Director Richard Colla felt that the episode had problems which were only identified after shooting was completed.^[12] Riker's notion of sending Chinese finger traps to the Ferengi vessel at the end of the episode was a reference to The Original Series episode 'The Trouble with Tribbles' where Chief Engineer Scottbeams over a shipload of tribbles to a Klingon ship.^[3]Wil Wheaton later recalled that the cast was unhappy with the episode as they didn't like several aspects of it including the fingercuffs joke and the Ferengi in general.^[13] The episode also featured the first occasion that Geordi La Forge gave a report to the bridge from the engineering section. The producers liked this image so much that from season two onward the character became the Chief Engineer.^[14]

The guest stars in this episode re-appeared in different roles later in the series. Both Tracey Walter and Mike Gomez re-appeared as other Ferengi in the sixth season episode 'Rascals'. This was the second recorded performance of Armin Shimerman in a TNG episode, although the first to be broadcast. He has gone uncredited in a previously filmed role as the face of a Betazoid gift box in 'Haven'. He made a further appearance as a different Ferengi in 'Peak Performance' before gaining the main cast role of the Ferengi Quark in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.^[3] In that role he would also shoot a scene for the movie Star Trek: Insurrection, but it was cut from the final version of the film.^[15] He said of his performance in 'The Last Outpost', 'I was pretty much playing over-the-top villain – that turned out to be very comical. I thought I was being serious, but obviously, it was not serious. It's because there was no subtlety to the performance, there was no attempt to try to give them some real cojones ... It was bad acting. It was just bad acting. They liked it, god bless them, Star Trek liked it.'^[16]

Reception and home media release[edit]

'The Last Outpost' aired in broadcast syndication during the week commencing October 17, 1987. It received Nielsen ratings of 8.9, reflecting the percentage of all households watching the episode during its timeslot. This was the lowest ratings received by any episode during the first season.^[1][17]

There was initial criticism regarding the Ferengi from reviewers.^[5] Several reviewers re-watched the episode after the end of the series. Keith DeCandido reviewed the episode for Tor.com in May 2011, and praised Mike Gomez as the first Ferengi seen in Star Trek, but thought that they were 'far too comical to be taken in any way seriously as the threat the script desperately wanted them to be'.^[14] He said that apart from the first appearance of the Ferengi and Armin Shimerman that the episode wasn't 'anything to write home about'.^[14] He gave it a score of three out of ten.^[14] Cast member Wil Wheaton watched the episode for AOL TV in October 2006. He thought that the episode saw some character growth but felt that the Ferengi 'were a total joke' until they were later partially redeemed by Shimerman as Quark in Deep Space Nine.^[13] He thought that the episode didn't show a great deal of improvement after 'The Naked Now' and 'Code of Honor' and may have resulted in the show losing viewers. He gave it a grade of C.^[13]

Mark A. Altman reviewed the episode for the 1998 book Trek Navigator stating it was 'one big, inferior rip-off of 'Arena'.'^[18] James Hunt wrote about the episode in October 2012 for the website Den of Geek. He thought it worked 'surprisingly well' and that the ending was 'Star Trek at its best - big idea philosophical nonsense'.^[5] He praised the plot twists and said that the Ferengi 'while completely ridiculous, are genuinely hilarious'.^[5] Zack Handlen watched the episode for The A.V. Club in April 2010. He described the Ferengi as 'really, really terrible', and said that Portal was a lazy device reminiscent of such god-like beings in The Original Series.^[19] He gave the episode a grade of C-.^[19]

In 2017, Screen Rant ranked this episode the 13th worst episode of the Star Trek franchise.^[20]

In 2020, GameSpot noted this episode was one of the most bizarre episodes of series.^[21]

The first home media release of 'The Last Outpost' was on VHS cassette was on April 1, 1992, in the United States and Canada.^[22] The episode was later included on the Star Trek: The Next Generation season one DVD box set, released in March 2002,^[23] and was released as part of the season one Blu-ray set on July 24, 2012.^[24]

Notes[edit]

1. ^ ^abNemecek (2003): p. 37
2. ^Roddenberry (1987): p. 11
3. ^ ^abcdefNemecek (2003): p. 38
4. ^Parsons, Dan (February 7, 2013). 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Armin Shimerman: The CFQ Interview'. The Huffington Post. Retrieved March 25, 2013.
5. ^ ^abcdHunt, James (October 5, 2012). 'Revisiting Star Trek TNG: The Last Outpost'. Den of Geek. Retrieved March 25, 2013.
6. ^Nemecek (2003): p. 41
7. ^Nemecek (2003): p. 86
8. ^'Biemler: Ferengi Episodes not Very Funny'. TrekNation. June 15, 2002. Retrieved March 28, 2013.
9. ^ ^abWestmore; Nazzaro (1993): p. 15
10. ^ ^abWestmore; Nazzaro (1993): p. 16
11. ^Gross; Altman (1993): p. 157
12. ^ ^abGross; Altman (1993): p. 158
13. ^ ^abcWheaton, Wil (October 10, 2006). 'Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Last Outpost'. AOL TV. Retrieved March 25, 2013.
14. ^ ^abcdDeCandido, Keith (May 19, 2011). 'Star Trek: The Next Generation Rewatch: 'The Last Outpost''. Tor.com. Retrieved March 25, 2013.
15. ^Nemecek (2003): p. 343
16. ^'An Interview with Armin Shimerman'. IGN. August 4, 2003. p. 2. Retrieved March 25, 2013.
17. ^'Star Trek: The Next Generation Nielsen Ratings – Seasons 1–2'. TrekNation. UGO Networks. Archived from the original on October 5, 2000. Retrieved June 12, 2016.
18. ^Altman, Mark A.; Gross, Edward (1998). 'The Episodes'. Trek Navigator: The Ultimate Guide to the Entire Trek Saga. Little, Brown and Company. p. 125. ISBN0-316-03812-1.
19. ^ ^abHandlen, Zack (April 9, 2010). ''The Naked Now'/'Code of Honor'/'The Last Outpost''. The A.V. Club. Retrieved March 25, 2013.
20. ^'15 Worst Star Trek Episodes Of All Time'. ScreenRant. May 22, 2017. Retrieved July 18, 2019.
21. ^'The 11 Most Bizarre Moments Throughout Star Trek: The Next Generation'. GameSpot. Retrieved January 27, 2020.
22. ^'Star Trek – The Next Generation, Episode 7: The Last Outpost (VHS)'. Tower Video. Archived from the original on April 11, 2013. Retrieved March 25, 2013.
23. ^Periguard, Mark A (March 24, 2002). ''Life as a House' rests on shaky foundation'. The Boston Herald. Archived from the original on June 10, 2014. Retrieved October 13, 2012.(subscription required)
24. ^Shaffer, RL (April 30, 2012). 'Star Trek: The Next Generation Beams to Blu-ray'. IGN. Retrieved October 17, 2012.

References[edit]

• Roddenberry, Gene (1987). Star Trek: The Next Generation Writer/Director's Guide(PDF).
• Gross, Edward; Altman, Mark A. (1993). Captain's Logs: The Complete Trek Voyages. London: Boxtree. ISBN978-1-85283-899-7.
• Westmore, Michael G; Nazzaro, Joe (1993). Star Trek: The Next Generation Make-Up FX Journal. London: Titan. ISBN978-1-85286-491-0.
• Nemecek, Larry (2003). Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion (3rd ed.). New York: Pocket Books. ISBN0-7434-5798-6.

See also[edit]

External links[edit]

• 'The Last Outpost' on IMDb
• 'The Last Outpost' at TV.com
• 'The Last Outpost' at Memory Alpha (a Star Trekwiki)
• 'The Last Outpost' at StarTrek.com

Star Trek Online Weapon Power and Multiple Weapon Damage Scaling Guide by Nagorak

Introduction

The 1.2 patch resulted in a fairly significant change to the the power drain mechanics of weapons. As a result, I have been running combat tests to determine how weapon damage scales in the new system, as more weapons are equipped. I’ve now performed a fairly extensive number of tests so that I am confident in the results, and will be posting them below. But before I do, I’ll include a quick guide to how weapon power and weapon power drain works in the game. If you don’t have a good grasp of how these mechanics work, then the guide may be of use to you. On the other hand, if you already are aware of how weapon power works, then you should probably just skip to the test results, which you should find of more interest.

Contents

I: Simple Introduction To Weapon Power
II: Caveats– How Weapon Power Actually Works In The Game
III: Test Methodology & Test Data
IV: Test Results & Graphs
V: Observations
VI: Conclusion

I: Simple Introduction To Weapon Power

With energy weapons (beams, cannons, turrets), your weapon power setting affects how much damage the weapons will inflict. This only applies to energy weapons: weapon energy has no effect on mines or torpedoes, which do full damage regardless of your weapon power setting.

Technically, energy weapons inflict their rated damage (the one that shows on the inventory screen) at 50 weapon energy, and damage scales from there. For example, at 100 energy your weapons will do twice as much damage as at 50 energy (twice their rated damage). At 25 energy they’ll do half as much as at 50 (half their rated damage), or one quarter as much as they would do at 100.

Even though the inventory damage rating is technically set at 50 energy, from this point forward, I’m going to refer to 100 weapon energy as delivering full damage. It’s easy to envision 100 as being “100% damage”, and if you really want to deliver the most weapon damage that is what your power level should be set to (actually it should be higher than 100, if possible).

Weapon Energy Drain From Firing Multiple Weapons

In addition to the initial power setting of your weapons, there is another mechanic you need to be aware of: weapon energy drain. Firing a single weapon doesn’t result in any energy drain, but when you fire more than one weapon at the same time, your weapon power level is temporarily reduced while they are both firing. For each weapon that is firing after the first, your weapon energy is reduced by a set amount. Most weapons drain 10 energy, with only two exceptions: Dual Heavy Cannons drain 12 energy, and Turrets drain 8 energy. (Once again, this applies only to energy weapons– torpedoes and mines don’t drain energy when they are fired.)

For example, if you fire a single beam weapon, your weapon energy will not be reduced at all. If you fire two beams, your power level will be reduced by 10 (10 for the second weapon). If you fire three beams, your weapon power level will be reduced by 20 (10 for each weapon after the first), and so on.

This energy drain affects your damage output, just as if you had your weapon power set to a lower level. For example, if your energy is set to 100 and you fire two beam weapons, your power will be temporarily reduced to 90. Instead of each beam doing 100% damage, each would do only 90% damage (actually there’s a little more to it than that, but let’s keep it simple for now).

For this reason, firing two beams doesn’t double your damage output compared to a single beam. While, you’d still inflict more damage than you would with a single beam, the total damage output would only be 180%, rather than 200%.

Now, the more weapons you fire, the more this affects you. If you fire 5 beams, instead of your power being reduced by 10, it would instead be reduced by 40, and each beam would do only 60% of its potential damage. The more weapons you add, the less all of them do, resulting in serious diminishing returns. At some point these diminishing returns mean that adding an additional weapon results in very little additional damage, or even reduces your damage output (if your weapon power is set too low)!

Higher Weapon Power Is Needed To Support More Weapons

The higher your weapon power setting, the more weapons you can fire effectively, without experiencing excessive diminishing returns. By the same token, if your weapon energy is set too low, firing too many weapons can be dangerous because it can end up reducing your damage to almost nothing.

To understand this, let’s go back to the 5 beams example above. When firing 5 beams your weapon energy is reduced by 40. If you’re firing at 100 power setting, your energy will be reduced to 60 and each weapon will do 60% of its full damage. However, let’s say your power energy is set to 50. That means your power level when firing 5 beams will drop to 10! Each beam will only do 10% damage, and all 5 combined will only do as much as a single beam fired at 50 power. To make matters worse, if you were to fire 6 (or more) beams at 50 power, your energy level would actually be reduced to zero, and some shots would do no damage!

The bottom line is that if you want to run with a lot of weapons, your weapon energy needs to be at a high setting. If you usually have your weapon energy at 50, because you require a higher shield, auxiliary or engine power setting, then it may be better to equip fewer concurrently firing energy weapons. You can still fill all of your weapon slots, but either add mines or torpedoes, which don’t drain energy, or equip frontal arc weapons like dual beams, which don’t share a firing arc with rear mounted beam arrays (and thus won’t fire at the same time as them).

Raising Your Weapon Power Above 100

It is possible to have more than 100 weapon power by combining inherent ship bonuses, console bonuses, and skill bonuses. The higher your weapon power the more weapons you can fire without each weapon losing too much damage, and the more overall damage your weapons will do.

Obviously this helps no matter how many weapons you are firing, but it is especially helpful if you have 6-8 energy weapons equipped. The reason I mention this is that there is no point in running with 7 beams at 100 weapon power, and even 6 beams is somewhat questionable. The diminishing returns at that power level are simply too high (as you’ll see in the tests below). However, if you can boost your power to 125 it makes a big difference out at the far end of the curve. This can now be seen by comparing the 100 and 125 weapon power charts posted below.

What You Can Do To Increase Your Weapon Power
A question some may have is what you can do to increase your weapon power level settings. There are several different skills that affect weapon power. These are described briefly below.

Warp Core Training– This improves your power levels for all systems when power is set below 75. It has the most effect when your power is at 25 and slowly scales down as your power level setting increases. At a minimum every character should have 7 points in Warp Core Training (the last 2 points are very expensive compared the benefit conveyed). This alone will ensure your weapon power will never be below 29. An important thing to note is that efficiency bonuses are determined based on your power setting, not actual power level. In other words, before any bonuses from ships, consoles or other skills are taken into account.

Energy Weapon Efficiency– Like Warp Core Training, this improves power levels when power is set below 75, but it only affects Weapon Power. Because this is an efficiency power it is worth putting points in it if you sometimes run at 50 weapon power. If you never have your weapon power set at 50, then don’t bother with it, as the bonus is very small beyond that point. But for a science ship which runs high auxiliary power at least part of the time, or a cruiser who sometimes switches to shield power, this skill is essential. For an escort, I personally would not recommend it as you should always have weapon power set to full unless you are running away. With 9 points in this, plus 7 in Warp Core Training, your power level should be a minimum of 37 before ship bonuses.

Weapon Systems Performance– This admiral level skill increases your weapon power regardless of power level. Putting 9 points into this skill will increase your weapon power level by slightly less than 10 points (9.76). This is a skill that should be useful for most ships, regardless of what power level you have weapons set to. Unfortunately because it’s an admiral skill points here take away from what you can put into other important skills, such as your ship command skill, or your Auxiliar Systems Performance skill (same thing but for Aux).

Plasma Distribution Manifolds– These engineering consoles can be used to increase your weapon power, once again regardless of setting. The magnitude of the bonus varies with the mark of the equipment.

For a much more detailed overview of ship power systems, please see PatricianVetinari’s Ship Power Level Calculator post. Included there is a calculator spreadsheet that can be used to figure out the exact power levels you will achieve with a mixture of various skills and consoles.

II: Caveats– How Weapon Power Actually Works In The Game

In terms of the actual game mechanics, things are not quite as simple and straightforward as the explanation I provided above. There are a quirks which reduce the energy drain from firing multiple weapons, and which make firing more weapons slightly more efficient than it otherwise would be.

First of all, not all of your weapons fire at the same time. Instead they start firing in a staggered fashion. When you start firing your weapons, your energy also doesn’t drain out immediately on the first shot, but instead slowly drains out. The combination of these two factors means that your first few weapon shots actually do close to full damage. From that point, damage per shot declines in a stairstep pattern until your power bottoms out. You can actually see this pattern if you look at a graph of a combat damage log. Click here to see an example of this stairstep pattern.

With weapons that have a short firing time and high base damage, like Dual Heavy Cannons, more of their shots end up being made at close to full power, and their energy efficiency is a lot higher because of this.

The other thing is that weapons aren’t firing constantly. When a weapon goes into cool down it no longer drains power, so other weapons that are firing do so at a higher power level. Using the in-game auto-fire or “fire all” function, usually weapons start firing at close to the same time and then end up in cool down at nearly the same time, so this isn’t as helpful as you’d expect. Theoretically you will see increased damage if you get your weapons to fire in a more optimal pattern, but this requires using an outside macro program rather than the in-game auto-fire.

Weapons that are in cool down a greater percent of the time are more energy efficient. Once again, Dual Heavy Cannons benefit the most from this mechanic as they are in cool-down roughly half the time. If you haven’t guessed it already, the combination of these two factors makes DHC the most energy efficient weapons in the game, even though their energy drain of 12 is higher than all other weapons.

In any case, these factors mean that all weapons are more efficient than in the simple example above. Some are more efficient than others, but two weapons firing at the same time do closer to 95% of their full damage, rather than 90%. Three concurrently firing weapons do closer to 87.5% damage each, and this continues out along the entire curve.

You can see the actual impact of these factors in the damage scaling graphs linked below.

III: Test Methodology & Test Data

I’ll briefly describe my testing methodology here for those who are interested in it. Those not interested can feel free to skip it.

I performed my weapon tests by firing on a friend in a private PvP instance with each weapon combination for approximately 10 minutes (sometimes slightly longer because I didn’t stop the tests at exactly the same time). I later went back and performed an additional test run on some weapon combinations.

For weaponry I used all MK I phaser equipment. This was due both to the cheap cost and ease of availability, and also because the lower base damage meant there was less chance of accidentally blowing up my friend, which would have just wasted time.

Tests were performed at the listed weapon power, and with the following relevant skills: 9 Starship Attack Vectors, 9 Energy Weapons, 9 Beams, 9 Cannons, 1 Phasers. No tactical consoles of any kind were equipped, and no EPS relays were equipped.

Once I had completed a test, I trimmed the combat logs so they began with the first shot I fired and ended with the last shot. I then totalled the base magnitude from all shots and divided it by the time in combat to get the DPS figures. Unfortunately, the standard STO log parser doesn’t have an easy option to average base magnitude, so I had to write a quick tool to extract that info from the log.

After I had collected the data, I adjusted it slightly to account for some noise, such as slightly different critical hit percentages. Specifically I set it so that the critical hit percentage for all tests was 4.5% and the critical damage was 150% of normal (160% for DHC). These adjustments resulted in only a very small change in the overall results, but it should make them slightly more accurate overall.

Test Data Links
Weapon Scaling Summary (Text Format)
Weapon Scaling Summary (Spreadsheet Compatible Format)

IV: Test Results & Graphs

Now you’re finally to the interesting part: the results of the tests. Rather than listing a bunch of raw numbers here, which are hard to digest, I’m simply going to provide links to graphs which clearly display the information. If you want more detailed data, you can see my log and summary links above.

Weapon Damage Scaling 35 Weapon Power(Added 01/23/2010)
Weapon Damage Scaling 50 Weapon Power(Added 01/23/2010)
Weapon Damage Scaling 75 Weapon Power
Weapon Damage Scaling 100 Weapon Power
Weapon Damage Scaling 125 Weapon Power

If you’d like to see how this weapon scaling affects your own starship weapons loadout, there is now an easy way to do so! Just download my Starship DPS Calculator, which is based on the above testing!

The weapon scaling graphs show the combined damage output of each weapon type with various numbers of weapons equipped. Damage has been normalized so that 100 equals the damage output of a single beam array at 100 power. Each graph reflects results at a given power level.

The graphs scale from a single weapon up to 4 weapons for frontal arc weapons, and up to 8 weapons for beams and turrets. With the forward arc weapons, I also tested the damage scaling for adding up to 4 rear turrets (unfortunately I could not test 4 DHC/DC and 4 turrets due to not having a high enough Klingon character).

By studying the different graphs you will see that a higher weapon power setting allows you to fire more weapons without experiencing a serious drop off in damage.

V: Observations

A Note On Cannon Weapons

For unknown reasons, all Cannon-based weapons slightly underperform their listed DPS when only a single weapon is equipped. I’m not sure if this is due to the listed DPS being incorrect, as a result of the reduction in damage to small arc weapons that happened slightly after the game was released, or if it has something to do with their mechanics, such as lag between firing cycles.

Star Trek Knline Critd Or Dmg 1

Because cannons tend to be more efficient than beams, however, this deficit is quickly made up as additional weapons are equipped.

Dual Heavy Cannons

Dual Heavy Cannons are by far the most energy efficient weapons. Although they don’t do that much more damage than Dual Cannons when only one or two weapons are equipped, by the time you get to 3 or 4, the difference is quite large. I am not sure whether DHC were intended to be quite this energy efficient or whether it was an oversight on the part of Cryptic. In any case, if you are running with 3 or 4 weapons, Dual Heavies deliver noticeably more damage than Dual Cannons (about 11% at 100 energy, and 9% at 125 energy). This advantage continues when equipping turrets, so that the absolute highest damage in the game can be achieved by mixing DHC in the forward weapon mounts, with turrets in the rear weapon mounts.

Dual Cannons & Cannons

Dual Cannons and Cannons have the same weapon mechanics. They have essentially the same efficiency as one another. Both are slightly more efficient than beam weapons, and slightly less efficient than turrets and dual heavy cannons.

Single Cannons seem to be pretty well balanced, with damage output approximately 15% higher than beam arrays, but having a slightly smaller firing arc. While they do share the front part of the side firing arc with rear equipped Beam Arrays, this “front pocket” is pretty narrow (only 35 degrees), so it can be difficult, though not impossible, to keep enemies within it. For pure damage output a broadside from cannons and beams in that pocket will out-do a pure beam broadside, but it requires a much higher degree of positioning in order to exploit. Especially on sluggish ships like cruisers, attempting to utilize the cannon/beam pocket may prove counterproductive.

Dual Cannons, on the other hand, strike me as somewhat underpowered. Although they are the second-most damaging weapons in the game, their energy efficiency falls well short of Dual Heavy Cannons. While their listed DPS is identical, dual cannons in fact inflict up to 10% less damage. Dual Cannons do have some advantages, including a more consistent rate of fire, and a greater proc rate, so you must choose for yourself which weapon to use, but I personally favor the greater energy efficiency of Dual Heavy Cannons.

Dual Beams & Single Beams

Both of these weapons use the same mechanics, with Dual Beams simply having a higher base damage and a smaller firing arc. Their efficiency is once again nearly identical. One difference between them is how Beam Fire At Will works with both weapons. Dual Beams receive a much larger damage bonus from FAW 2 and FAW 3 than do Beam Arrays.

Those running with a broadside weapon setup should take note of the weapon scaling between 5 and 8 beams. Especially if you are running at lower weapon power settings, you need to be careful of overloading yourself with Beam Arrays. Even at 100 weapon power there is only a small increase in damage by going from 5 beams to 6, and almost no increase going from 6 beams to 7. Equipping 8 beams actually results in a slight decrease in damage output, although it is so minor as to be nearly inconsequential! Increasing weapon power to 125 allows you to use up to 8 beams effectively, but there are still serious diminishing returns toward the far end of the DPS curve.

Turrets

Turrets are among the most energy efficient weapons in the game. They benefit from both the shorter firing time of cannons, which results in a greater percentage of the time spent in cool down, when no power is drained, and the fact they only drain 8 energy for every additional weapon fired.

Star Trek Kline Credit Or Dmg 2017

This efficiency means that there is very little in the way of diminishing returns when equipping multiple weapons. The end result being that at 100 weapon power, turrets begin to approach the damage of beams with 7 weapons equipped, and deliver nearly identical damage to 8 beams. At lower power settings, turrets tend to be a lot more forgiving than beams and regularly exceed their damage output toward the far end of the DPS curve. At 125 weapon power, beams get a larger boost than turrets, so they never quite manage to catch up.

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Turrets do have the advantage of having a 360 degree firing arc, which means there is never a danger of not being able to keep the enemy in your high damage frontal, or broadside, weapons arc. Turrets also benefit from cannon skills, such as Cannon Rapid Fire, and Cannon Scatter Volley. As a result an all-turret build can deliver quite reliable 360 degree damage when used with the proper skills.

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Another advantage of turrets is that they can add damage to any other weapons you have equipped. Rear equipped turrets will add damage to your frontal firing arc. Provided your power level is set to at least 100, there is never a drawback to adding a rear turret to your build. At power levels of 75 and below, you have to be a bit more careful as the energy drain from adding a turret has a more substantial effect.

Conclusion

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I hope this information is of help to some people. If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to post them below and I will try to respond when I have a chance. Thanks for taking the time to read my guide.