The Discovery lockbox brought a bunch of new interesting things to Star Trek Online, including the U.S.S. Discovery Crossfield-class itself and the ship’s somewhat iconic weapons. These weapons, which drop in weapon boxes that open to provide phaser or disruptor type ground and space weapons.
This review will cover the space weapons and their interesting implications in the STO universe.
The Discovery lock box has a small chance to drop a [Special Equipment Pack – Discovery Disruptor or Phaser Weapons] and this pack then gives the opener a choice of phaser or disruptor weapons and a choice between ground and space (cannon or beams). The weapon received will be a of Very Rare quality and appropriate to the character level that opens it. There is also a small chance that the weapon can be omni-directional in the case of beams or wide-angle in the case of cannons.
These boxes also have a very small chance to drop a [Discovery Vanity Shield], which is a shied costume for ships providing a similar hull look to the U.S.S. Discovery from the show.
The space beam weapons are emitter arrays, which means that instead of broad beams they fire rapid pulses during the usual weapon cycle, but still fire three times like normal. Any captain familiar with already existing emitter arrays such as the Pulse Phaser Beam Array will recognize the similar effect (or Vaadwaur Polaron Emitter Array, although that has slightly different FX). The cannons and turrets fire very similarly to other cannon types, producing rapid-moving streaks of energy.
A full suite of emitter arrays and Beam: Fire at Will can produce a very interesting effect across the broadside of a ship making it look a lot like anti-aircraft tracer fire at night spraying in all directions.
Where these weapons really begin to get interesting is in their mechanics. The disruptor and phaser weapon types do the requisite damage type, but lack the proc associated with that damage type—instead the weapons provide an inherent passive boost of some type.
Weapons come in three different flavors: “emitter-linked,” which provides a +5 boost to Shield Restoration and Capacity; “integrity-linked,” which provides a +5 boost to Starship Damage Control (improves hull restoration) and Capacity; and “sensor-linked,” which provides a +5 boost to Defensive Maneuvering (improves defense) and Starship Weapon Amplification (improves critical hit severity).
These boosts take effect passively and do not require the weapons to be firing or hitting targets.
As a result, a full set of eight beams on a cruiser could be used to deliver a full +40 to Weapon Amplification. This stat adds +10% severity at 50 and +20% severity at 100, so an additional 40 points going into that skill could have a significant effect. For comparison, the [CritD] modifier on a mark 14 weapon provides +20% critical severity increase for that weapon.
Of course, sensor-linked Discovery weapons sell for much higher on the in-game Exchange than the other two flavors.
These weapons trade an interesting special effect and standard weapon procs for passive boosts to particular systems in the game – and, in the case of the sensor-linked weapons, they provide a straight critical damage boost across the board with weapons. The other two types could certainly have a place for increasing survivability in prolonged firefights but they lack the sort of punch a lot of the community looks for when picking out firepower equipment.
“They are certainly interesting and open the door for other such ‘linked’ weaponry in the future,” Cynicman said to VoxExMachina about the weapons. “While the disruptor proc is valuable enough to want to keep, the subsystem shutdown on the phaser is less attractive. I could see sensor-linked phasers for the damage oriented or the emitter-linked ones for tanks.”
Overall, the addition of space weapon types that provide passive boosts is a new mechanic for STO. In the past, most weapon types traded out standard procs for specialized procs alongside different weapon special effects and sounds.
This meant that captains had to come up with strategies to get faster procs or take advantage of procs when they happened – in this case, there’s no waiting, it’s straight passive boosts for installing the weapons.
“This is good for those [captains] that favor consistency,” Cynicman said about the passive boosts replacing procs on these weapons.
[Special thanks to Star Trek Online Twitch streamer Mystarlite for donating the Discovery -linked weapons boxes for this review!]
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