Ship weapon

There are two different types of starship weapons: Energy Weapons and Kinetic Weapons. Energy Weapons do equal damage to both a starship's shields and hull. Kinetic Weapons do full damage to a starship's hull but shields have an innate 75% resistance to kinetic weapons, though some types of kinetic weapons have improved shield penetration. Energy and Kinetic weapons both have different damage subtypes &mdash; for example, Phaser and Plasma are two types of Energy Weapons.

Different ships will have different resistances to each damage subtype depending on hull plating and engineering modules equipped, if any.

Note: see also Shuttle Weapons.

Firing arcs
A weapon's firing arc is the angle of view, measured in degrees (&deg;), inside which an enemy ship must be located. Targets outside of this arc cannot be fired upon by the weapon; you must turn so that the target is within the firing arc in order to fire. (Note that the firing arc for aft-mounted weapons is measured from the rear center, as opposed to the front center for fore weapons.)

You can preview a weapon's firing arc by holding the mouse cursor over that weapon's icon on your action bar. The firing arc only represents the angle at which the weapon can fire; it does not represent its range.



The following table shows the firing arcs of each weapon type in Star Trek Online:

Broadside
A vessel that equips Beam Arrays both fore and aft is most effective when firing from the Broadside i.e. either the port or starboard side of the ship. This is because the 250 degree firing arc of beam array weapons means that there is region where the forward and aft firing arcs overlap. As such, a ship can fire both fore and aft weapons at a target within that overlap region. As the ship is effectively moving sideways relative to the 70 degree overlap region on either side of the ship, it is easier to keep a target within the optimal broadside firing arc.

Cruisers are best suited to firing from the broadside, as they lack the maneuverability to use weapons with a narrower firing arc. Cruisers also have more weapon slots than other types of vessel at the same tier, and so can potentially deal more damage from the broadside. In a tier 5 or tier 6 Cruiser it is possible to fire eight beam arrays in a single shot to devastating effect, though this causes an enormous power drain.

Autofire and firing priorities
You can set your weapons to autofire, by right clicking on the weapon icons of your ship in the space battle UI below the "Fire all beams/ Fire all torpedoes/ Fire all weapons" buttons. The icon will have a green outline and the tool-tip should now read "Autofire enabled". The order in which you activate autofire also determines the firing priorities for weapons with shared cooldowns. This is especially important for torpedo weapons. In practice this means the weapon you enable autofire on first, will have higher priority over the weapons you selected last.

Spherical damage range
There are weapons that make a sphere of damage on impact. If otherwise mentioned, the impact affects every enemy currently in the sphere created from the impact point's coordinates. The Advanced Radiant Quantum Torpedo has the highest spherical damage range of all weapons with 10km in diameter.

Energy weapons
Energy weapon cycles can be divided into two parts: firing cycle and recharge cycle. During the firing cycle, a weapon deals damage and power is drained from weapon subsystem. On cycle end, there is a weapon lockout for a few seconds during the recharge cycle when no damage or power drain will occur. All energy weapons have a 5-second cycle, and fire thusly:
 * Beam weapons fire 4 times per cycle, at one shot per second, and then recharge for 1 second. Thus, their DPS is 80% (4/5) of their base damage.
 * When using, beams fire 5 times per cycle.
 * When using, beams initially fire a single shot and then recharge for 1 second, for a two-second initial firing cycle, before returning to a normal cycle for the duration of the ability.
 * When using, beams fire 2 times per cycle, with each shot doing twice the damage as before.
 * Light cannons fire 3 times per cycle, at 2 shots per second, for a total of 6 shots, and then recharge for 2 seconds. Thus, their DPS is 120% (6/5) of their base damage.
 * When using, light cannons fire 3 times per cycle, at 3 shots per second, for a total of 9 shots.
 * When using, light cannons fire 3 times per cycle, at one shot per second, with each shot doing twice the damage as before.
 * Heavy cannons fire 2 times per cycle, at 2 shots per second, for a total of 4 shots, and then recharge for 3 seconds. Thus, their DPS is 80% (4/5) of their base damage.
 * When using, heavy cannons fire 2 times per cycle, at 3 shots per second, for a total of 6 shots.
 * When using, heavy cannons fire 2 times per cycle, at one shot per second, with each shot doing twice the damage as before.
 * Prior to the Season 13 balance pass, cannons had a 3-second firing cycle and different base damage values.
 * The same patch also re-balanced the effect of your weapon subsystem power level on damage output, making 100 weapon power the baseline.
 * When viewing a weapon's stats in space, the game will act as if it is being affected by no skills, set bonuses or traits, and at 50 weapon power.

Projectile weapons
Torpedo launcher firing cycle is affected by global cooldown and type specific recharge time. Firing a Torpedo activates a recharge time (seen in the table below) before it can be used again. It also activates a shared cooldown of 2 seconds for all slotted Torpedoes. These intervals prevent multiple Torpedoes to be fired at the same time (like Energy weapons are used) and bound them to firing in a sequence.

Mark level
As the Mark (Mk) level of a weapon increases, it gets a damage boost. The boost is as follows, using the example of a Phaser Beam Array at 100 weapon power: This damage boost in the same 'category' as tactical consoles and many other boosts, i.e. if you have a Phaser Beam Array that boosts Phaser damage by 25%, simply add that 25% to the total given above.

Damage types and bonuses

 * See the damage types article for more information.

Special Note: The colors used below only represent the colors of the standard energy weapon types (Phaser, Disruptor, Plasma, Polaron, Tetryon and Antiproton) and their tactical consoles needed to boost the damage of them. They do not represent the colors of the subtypes.

Other

 * Proton damage: Dyson Proton Weapon, Experimental Proton Charge.
 * Kinetic damage: Kinetic Cutting Beam.

Modifiers

 * Main article: Modifier.


 * Energy weapon modifiers
 * standard:
 * Acc: +10% Accuracy
 * CrtD: +20% Critical Severity
 * CrtH: +2% Critical Chance
 * Dmg: +X Damage
 * special:
 * Arc: Only appears on Omni-Directional Beam Arrays, Kinetic Cutting Beam and crafted Dual Heavy Cannons.
 * Over: 2.5% chance to upgrade your next beam attack. Deals critical energy damage. Only appears on crafted beam weapons.
 * Rapid: 2.5% chance to activate Rapid Fire mode for all cannons on your ship for 2 seconds. Only appears on crafted cannon weapons.
 * Pen: All attacks with this weapon ignore 10 Armor Rating. Only appears on crafted weapons.
 * Thrust: Self: +5% speed and turn rate when firing. Only appears on crafted weapons.
 * Snare: To target: -5% speed and turn rate on hit. Only appears on crafted weapons.


 * Kinetic weapon modifiers
 * standard:
 * Acc: +10% Accuracy
 * CrtD: +20% Critical Severity
 * CrtH: +2% Critical Chance
 * Dmg: +X Damage
 * special:
 * Arc: Only appears on Wide Angle Quantum Torpedo Launcher and Wide Angle Voth Transphasic-Chroniton Torpedo Launcher.
 * Spr: 7.5% chance to upgrade your next torpedo attack. Uses multiple torpedoes to attack an area of space.
 * Pen: All attacks with this weapon ignore 10 Armor Rating. Only appears on crafted weapons.
 * Thrust: Self: +5% speed and turn rate when firing. Only appears on crafted weapons.
 * Snare: To target: -5% speed and turn rate on hit. Only appears on crafted weapons.