Torpedo's vs Phasers

Star Trek Adventures
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So I’m wondering, for those with more experiance with the system, how do torpedos stack up vs Phasers? 5 challange dice seems a little on the weak side, especially as you have to spend threat. whats been peoiples experiance with them

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Different weapons for different times.
Phasers have versatility 2, that’s 2 free momentum to play with. They cost power to fire but are easier d2.
Torpedoes are wicked powerful when shields are down, high yield makes every breach two breaches and devestating when used with full yield as it gives spread. Spread with high yield hits for an extra 2 breaches for each effect you roll, meaning you can destroy any NPC ship in a round if you roll at least 2 or 3 effect, though you may have to aim for a system if it’s a drawn out fight.

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Phasers may seem to be better weapons overall with generally more damage dice and the versatile quality giving you more options or just more damage, but the ‘quirk’ with ST:A combat is that the number of points of damage isn’t the whole story like it is with many other systems. It’s important for measuring shield damage, but for hull and systems there’s no mechanical difference between hitting for 5 and hitting for 4000.

Under normal conditions, a single attack can inflict a maximum of two breaches: One for reducing the shields to zero OR inflicting 1 point of damage or more (after reduction) to a ship with no shields, and one for inflicting more than 5 points of damage after reduction. Adding more points of damage to a phaser attack won’t inflict any more actual damage to the ship after this. A torpedo attack on the other hand can inflict three breaches - under the NPC starship damage rules, enough to disable a Scale 3 ship in a single strike!

The High Yield property of torpedoes will add one extra breach if any number of breaches are caused. The use of a torpedo full spread can increase this further, as the spread damage is resolved separately. So potentially:

  1. Main torpedo attack hits for over 5 damage after reduction and knocks out the target’s shields which only had a couple of points left. That’s two breaches plus high-yield adds one for three total.

  2. Spread is triggered which deals 1 point or more after reduction. As this is a separate hit and the ship is without shields, another breach is caused and high-yield results in a second breach.

  3. Five breaches in a single attack! Someone is having a bad day. Actually if we were lucky and rolled enough effects to hit for more than 5 on the spread attack, we could potentially hit SIX breaches.

In short, phasers are great against shields and for hitting the magic number of 5 damage after resistance, but torpedoes can do horrendous damage to the hull and systems. Incidentally, this is how it seems to work in most Star Trek videogames too!

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