If you like how a particular torpedo looks or ‘feels’ and we recommend not slotting it, it’s not personal. Now, before we get started, ye be warned: math and wonky game mechanics lie ahead!ĭISCLAIMER: this post is largely written from an endgame performance-focused perspective to analyze and recommend the best torpedoes. Requests to research additional specific torpedoes may be considered, but not if the torpedo is either super bad or super expensive (i.e. 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. The point stands.ĭue to their prevalence in builds, we're going to look at Photon and Quantum torpedoes first. *Yes, we know there are exceptions like Technical Overload and Beam Overload.

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. 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. 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. I've seen a lot of torpedo recommendation questions recently here and on /r/sto, and unfortunately, a lot of mathematically unsound advice too. 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. Spoiler alert, it's basically all correct. We're back to further explore torpedo mechanics and hopefully point out the mathematical reasons why the conventional wisdom on torps is what is. 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.

Photon vs quantum torpedoes