Welcome to the second installment of Game Mechanics Revealed. Star Trek Online is filled with vagaries; the
devs are not forthcoming with clarification; the forums are a source of
confusing and contradictory knowledge; the chats are rife with conjecture and
misinformation. In this series, I will
attempt to find the answers and dispel the myths that plague our game.
My partner in science is the ever patient and ever
enthusiastic @JeanLPicard.
Game Mechanics Revealed: EPS Flow Regulators
Many sources on the forums insist that adding EPS Flow
Regulator consoles will help mitigate the large energy drain of cruisers firing
many beam arrays at the same time. It
has also been discussed in chat that these consoles boost the Starship
Electro-Plasma Systems captain skill and therefore provide a benefit to
Emergency Power to Subsystem abilities.
Premise
1) EPS Flow Regulators either prevent energy drain or boost
power return time when firing weapons, therefore increasing damage output of a
cruiser firing many beam weapons at once.
2) EPS Flow Regulators improve Starship EPS skill and
therefore boost effectiveness of EPtS, EPtW etc.
Experiment
1) The aggressor cruiser is armed with 8 polaron beam
arrays. Polaron is chosen because its proc
has the least effect on survivability in a stationary test. At 5 km range and
125 weapons power, the aggressor fires broadside at the target until the target
is destroyed. The test is repeated with
4 EPS Flow Regulator mk xi consoles.
2) Basic test of power boost when using EPtW1 in Earth
orbit.
Results
1)
|
Time to Kill Galaxy Dreadnought (seconds)
|
|
Test
|
Control
|
4x EPS Flow Regulator
|
1
|
47.5
|
49.5
|
2
|
50.0
|
49.0
|
2) Base weapons power is 52. After EPtW1 activation weapons
power is 80, regardless of how many EPS Flow Regulator consoles are used, and
tooltip damage readout remains equal as well.
Conclusion
This console does nearly nothing. Other than switching quickly between power
modes, and maybe coming out of full impulse, there is practically no benefit to
EPS Flow Regulators at all. There are
much better consoles out there, various Armors and Platings, SIF Generators, RCS
Accelerators, use engineering slots for the Borg Console, buy some of the fancy
specialty reward pack consoles off the exchange (subspace jump is pretty useful
and affordable), do anything other than EPS Flow Regulators.
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