Ship Power Levels

“Spock, where the hell’s the power you promised?”

“One damn minute, Admiral.”

– Kirk and Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

So what exactly do the power levels of your ship actually do in Star Trek: Online? Armed with a brand new character (no skills, no space traits), the default Light Cruiser with its starting equipment, pen, paper, stopwatch and calculator, here’s what I’ve managed to work out so far.

Index

• Weapon Power
• Shield Power
• Engine Power
  (Updated 11 Mar 2010: Added link to corrected information in the Starship Mechanics article)
• Auxiliary Power
  (Updated 11 Mar 2010: Added link to corrected information in the Starship Mechanics article)
• Power Levels Over 100
  (added 3 Feb, 2010)

Note: Current Power vs Power Setting

With power levels, the important number is the current power level of a system, not the power level you have set. The STO UI reports power levels as two numbers separated by a slash – the first number is the current power to the system, the second number is the power level you have set for the system.

So if your weapons power, for example, is showing 55/50, the current power to weapons is 55, and that’s the number that matters.

Weapon Power

Damage reported by the tooltip for Phaser Beam Array Standard Issue at different power levels:

Weapon Power	Damage
100	200 (160 DPS)
75	150 (120 DPS)
50	100 (80 DPS)
25	50 (40 DPS)

This one seems to be a fairly simple linear relationship, with energy weapons doing double the 50 power damage at 100 power and half the 50 power damage at 25 power.

It’s probably worth noting that the damage reported by a starship weapon’s tooltip in the Weapons Tray or on your Hotbar is dynamic, and appears to show the weapon’s actual damage and DPS adjusted for current power level, skills and other modifiers, whereas a weapon’s tooltip anywhere else (on the Status tab of the Character Status window, in your inventory, at a vendor) is static, and shows the unmodified base damage and DPS at 50 weapon power.

Weapon Power Conclusions

The damage done by energy weapons is increased by 2% for every point of current weapon power over 50, and reduced by 2% for every point of current weapon power below 50.

Shield Power

Thanks to the lack of tooltips showing your current shield levels, this one was more of a pain to test. I let some Borg probes beat on me, then ran out of range and watched the numbers on the ship’s Status tab in the Character Status window, which does show your current shield levels in numerical form:

Shield Power	Regen Rate
100	249-250
75	166-167
50	83
25	0

Note that shields regenerate in 6 second ‘ticks’ – the numbers above are how many shield points were regenerated every ‘tick’.

This appears to be another simple linear relationship, with your shields regenerating at triple the 50 power rate at 100 power.

I’m fairly sure that the slight variation in the numbers is caused by rounding errors – STO seems to track most numbers to at least one or two decimal places, but generally only displays them as integers. My suspicion is that the ‘base’ regen rate of the Shield Array Standard Issue is actually something like 83.3 or so.

It’s perhaps worth noting that the regen rate reported by a shield’s tooltip appears to be static, and shows the shield points regenerated every six seconds at 50 shield power.

Shield Power Conclusions

The rate at which your shields regenerate is increased by 4% for every point of current shield power over 50, and reduced by 4% for every point of current shield power below 50.

Engine Power

UPDATE: Please see the Impulse Speed section of the Starship Mechanics article for more information on how Engine Power levels affect the speed of ships.

Auxiliary Power

Shield drain per pulse reported by the tooltip for Tachyon Beam I at different power levels:

Auxiliary Power	Shield Drain
100	69
75	52
50	34
25	17

This one, at least, appears to be simple – it’s exactly the same relationship as energy weapon damage and weapon power.

UPDATE: Please see the Turn Rate section of the Starship Mechanics article for more details on how Auxiliary Power affects ship turn rates, and the Other Systems section for some initial information on how Auxiliary Power figures into a ship’s Stealth Detection Rating.

Auxiliary Power Conclusions

The shield drain from the Tachyon Beam ability is increased by 2% for every point of current auxiliary power over 50, and reduced by 2% for every point of current auxiliary power below 50. Further testing is required to see if this is constant across all Science abilities that are affected by auxiliary power levels, or if the rate varies from ability to ability.

As mentioned above, please see the Starship Mechanics article for more details on ship turn rates and Auxiliary Power.

Power Levels Over 100

Weapons power levels over 100 continue to increase the damage of energy weapons at the same rate of +2% per point of power. With a combination of a Tier 2 Escort’s +10 power to weapons bonus and the Emergency Power to Weapons I ability, I was able to get weapons power to 122, and the result was a 144% increase in damage from that at 50 weapons power, as expected.

I haven’t yet had the chance to test the other subsystems, but there would seem to be no good reason why they should behave any differently.