🔶 1. Base Damage
This is your starting point.
Base Damage comes from:
Your weapon type (beam/cannon/torp)
Weapon mark level (Mk XII–XV)
Weapon rarity (Rare–Epic)
The weapon's own stats (like 558 DPS)
Think of Base Damage as the foundation.
Everything else multiplies or boosts it.
🔶 2. Category 1 ("Cat1") — Generic Damage Bonuses
These are general damage boosts such as:
+Beam Weapon Damage
+Energy Weapon Damage
+Projectile Weapon Damage
+All Weapon Damage
Where they come from:
Weapon mods like [Dmg]
Consoles like Vulnerability Locators
Skill tree points
Starship traits
Reputations
Cat1 makes your base damage bigger.
🔶 3. Category 2 ("Cat2") — Final Damage Bonuses
Cat2 is often called final damage, because it multiplies after Cat1.
Examples:
+Energy Weapon Damage (Category 2)
+Firing Cycle Haste (also final)
+Damage to Borg
+Critical Severity
Captain abilities like Attack Pattern Alpha
Cat2 stacks additively within itself,
but multiplies against Cat1 to produce much bigger final numbers.
🔶 4. Firing Cycle Haste (“FCH”)
This tells your ship how fast it can fire.
More haste = more shots per second.
More shots = more DPS.
Sources:
Emergency Weapon Cycle
Entwined Tactical Matrices
Strike Wing Escort consoles
Certain reputation consoles
Haste is extremely powerful because it multiplies with both Cat1 and Cat2.
🔶 5. Critical Chance & Critical Severity
Critical Chance = how often you crit
Critical Severity = how big your crits are
Crits are final damage, meaning they multiply everything else.
Examples:
Crit Chance: 30% → crit every third hit
Crit Severity: 200% → crits deal 3× damage
This is why builds with high Crit Sev can hit very hard.
🔶 6. Bonus Damage (Situational)
These are conditional boosts, such as:
+Damage to Borg
+Damage to Targets Affected by Fire
+Damage at Full Shields
+Damage from Flanking
They act like Cat2 but only in certain situations.
🔶 7. Accuracy Overflow
When your Accuracy is higher than a target’s Defense,
the extra Accuracy becomes bonus damage.
This is why Accuracy-heavy builds do more DPS even if they never miss.
🧩 Putting It All Together
Damage in STO works like stacking multipliers, not just adding numbers.
A simple version of the idea:
Final DPS = Base Damage × (1 + Cat1) × (1 + Cat2) × Crit × Haste
This is why a build with:
Good Cat1
Good Cat2
High crits
Good firing haste
…will massively outperform a build that only improves one category.
🔶 Summary
To increase your DPS, you want to improve each category:
Raise Cat1: consoles, skills, weapon mods
Raise Cat2: traits, reputations, certain consoles
Raise Crit Chance and Severity
Raise Firing Cycle Haste
Use situational bonuses whenever possible
Maintain good accuracy
When all of these work together,
even a simple ship becomes a powerful DPS platform.