Mathbusters 29: Console Cooldowns and Clicky Builds Part 2

Welcome to part 2 of our deep dive into active consoles, their cooldown mechanics, and a comparison against more active setups.

If you missed [part 1,](https://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/1wu47xd/mathbusters_28_console_cooldowns_and_clicky/) we covered the definition of an active versus passive console, the various mechanics that lower their cooldowns, and a comparison of a wide range of active-versus-passive consoles across various levels of clickies and budget tiers on energy builds, as well as pros and cons. Unless you’re already familiar with these concepts, please consider that required reading.

In part 2, we’re going to look at the impacts of active consoles apply to exotic builds. As a reminder, that means we're focused on damage sources that scale with Exotic Particle Generators. You know, space magic.

Once again, we’ll be using both parsed data and TRINITY to model the impacts of this.  Solo ISA and the Trouble Over Terrh Elite patrol are the test maps, just like in Part 1. The build will all be iterations on my [EPG Dranuur](https://www.stobetter.com/intro-builds/eph289/Dranuur) because it’s my highest parsing exotic build and can easily swap between passive and more active setups. We’ll use several different budget tiers to try and find those breakeven points.

# Testing

It’s readily apparent that a viable exotic build simply can’t skip active consoles in their entirety. In all scenarios, I’m going to still use the same bridge officer layout and the Unconventional Systems trait, but vary up the amount of other cooldown mechanics and actives.

* **Premium Passive**\-ish) - this will include 2 Restorative Particle Focusers \[EPG\] \[CtrlX\], 2 Exotic Particle Amplifiers \[EPG\], Delphic Tear Generator, You Are Dismissed, Genesis Seed, Krenim Chronophage, Constriction Anchor, Fek’Ihri Torment Engine, Micro Dark Matter Anomaly, and we’ll use the Immolating Phaser Lance to help maintain Universal Designs.  * **Midrange Active** \- we’ll replace Immolating Phaser Lance and Universal Designs with Gemini Device and Exotic Modulation. We’ll also swap out Scientific Bulwark for Strike From Shadows to reduce costs.  * **Premium Active** \- Compared to the passive premium setup, we will load the ship heavily with console actives, as well as slot Subspace Fracture Tunneling Field with 2 procs. The Reslab consoles, Constriction Anchor, Phaser Lance, and one Amplifier are replaced by Bio-Electric Wave Capacitor, Dragonsblood Flame Reactor, Plasma Storm Module, Gemini Device, and Subspace Fracture Tunneling Field. This is my current loadout. * **Premium extra-active with To Hell With Our Orders** (THWOO) - the same loadout as premium active but displace Spore-Infused Anomalies for To Hell With Our Orders (5 triggers).

**Results**


Let’s look at what this tells us:

* The disparity between more passive and more active builds is even more stark on an EPG build than energy build, where you essentially give up too many sources of damage in exchange for buffing the ones you already have. I’m running six anomalies (Gravity Well, Timeline Collapse, Tyken’s Rift, Chronometric Inversion Field, Very Cold in Space, Subspace Vortex), I have only 3 uncon triggers (GW, CIF, TC), and 3 secondary deflector triggers (Destabilizing Resonance Beam, Structural Analysis, and Timeline Collapse), and I have By the Book to extend my boff abilities and if you look at the actual parses, you get these results on the passive build for the top 10 damage sources: * Total DPS: 364K ISA * You Are Dismissed: 36.2K * Deteriorating Secondary Deflector: 34.6K * Chronophage: 24.7K * Particle Emission Plasma Torpedo: 23.9K * Gravity Well III: 23.5K * Micro Dark Matter Anomaly: 20.3K * Gravimetric Photon Torpedo: 20.3K * Anti-Time Entanglement Singularity: 19.6K * Genesis Seed: 18.2K * Spore-Infused Anomalies: 16.3K * This is why active consoles are so build-warping. I’m not really building around them, all my Uncon triggers are things I would run anyway for other purposes, and they’re still providing that much of my build power. The active consoles I’ve chosen simply outscale the passive benefits of having more EPG. It ends up that 1/3rd of my damage comes from 6 consoles (You Are Dismissed, Chronophage, Genesis Seed, Proton Eruptor, Delphic Tear, Micro Dark Matter Anomaly), most of which also have some kind of passive benefit to the build, and again, I’m not really building around their cooldown as hard as I could. This 1/3rd statline from console actives held true on TOTE also.  * Just like with energy builds, a more passive scheme, while also being more expensive, does not come out ahead compared to slotting more efficient actives. Gemini Device does decent damage and has good passive stats. Phaser Lance on this build does okay damage and doesn’t bring useful stats. Even adding Scientific Bulwark and Universal Designs was less important than adding better actives, since the Midrange active build and the Passive Premium build were about the same power.  * Note how much power is lost when I drop Subspace Fracture Tunneling Field and three more powerful actives. That’s a huge fall-off, folks. Even losing two powerful traits in Universal Designs and Scientific Bulwark didn't hurt me too much, but Strike From Shadows and Exotic Modulation are decent enough substitutes. * We’re still solidly Elite-capable (100K) and even on a midrange budget, we could get up to 300K (Elite-carrying), proving once again that EPG is one of the easier ways to get a good Elite-capable build, even if most of you won’t be swayed away from DEW builds.  * At the high end, I did not notice appreciable power increases from going to even more console cooldown reduction with SFTF, To Hell With Our Orders, and Uncon. While I had marginally higher performance, I’d chalk that up to piloting variance rather than an appreciable build difference. We’ll cross-check this against TRINITY, but Spore-Infused Anomalies, while not a huge part of the damage cross-section, is doing enough work, especially with cleaning up errant targets, that I’m not convinced dropping it is a net benefit. All DPS builds tend to benefit from a starship trait that boils down to “Doing a thing you were already going to do deals additional X damage” For beam builds, that could be Broadside Beam Support, Complex Plasma Fires for plasma builds, for kinetic builds it’s Subspatial Warheads and Advanced Precision Guided Munitions. Target That Explosion can be worked in there under the right conditions. It’s the same opportunity cost as consoles, where having a trait that deals decent damage is more important than better stat-sticks.

Here’s what TRINITY shows for our four setups with a link to the [spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pgv6fJM-I8sx94HPQnMb0J2sI1G87uLFXzHFlsWCRfY/edit?usp=sharing).


Here’s what it looks like graphed, and remember that TRINITY’s raw DPS numbers, which are highly artificial, are less important than comparing them against each other.


This is pretty well in-line with our results from ISA/TOTE. TRINITY favors the passive build a little more than the Midrange active build, but again notice the jump in power by slotting higher-end clickies and Subspace Fracture Tunneling Field. There’s not too much to comment here, because it’s largely the same conclusions we’d draw from the parses - except that TRINITY, when used correctly, is valuable to help analyze build performance as a comparative tool.

# FAQ

**Are you saying that we all have to build with uncon all the time on EPG builds? You used it in all of your scenarios.**

This I think requires a little more nuance than with energy builds, where you can fill up on Isomags which strongly benefit beams and cannons. In contrast, some of the strongest passive Exotic consoles are either Exotic Particle Field Exciter \[EPG\], which is expensive and rare, or Exotic Particle Amplifier \[EPG\], which grants its strongest bonus damage buff to non-boff abilities, *including console actives,* so . . . while yes there are some EPG-scaling weapon effects and the Deteriorating Secondary Deflector, you’re going to get more bang-for-your-buck from slotting universal consoles with good actives, and you can get at least 4 of them cheap from the Exchange: You Are Dismissed, Krenim Chronophage, Delphic Tear Generator, and Micro Dark Matter Anomaly.

You’re also probably slotting at least a couple of control powers like Gravity Well and a specialization power, maybe with a Tractor Beam in there too, so might as well if you can afford it. That doesn’t mean you need to run Unconventional Systems necessarily; Subspace Fracture Tunneling Field and/or To Hell With Our Orders can substitute, but I find that 2 of out those 3 mechanics is a sweet spot for exotic builds.

If we reframe the question to ask if it’s better to build around more active consoles and their cooldowns on an Exotic build compared to stuffing more EPG on the build, the answer is categorically yes.

**Does this mean that the 4 “leans” or pillars you wrote of years ago for exotic builds are dead?**

When I wrote [that](https://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/jmizul/weekly_questions_megathread_november_02_2020/gb5htnl/) in 2020, the game was in a very different state. Genesis Seed didn’t even exist yet. Neither did Chronophage, Micro Dark Matter Anomaly, You Are Dismissed, Gemini Device, Ionic Deflector Inversion, Bio-Electric Wave, Proton Eruptor Module, Dragonsblood Flame Reactor, and even Exotic Particle Amplifiers. We had Delphic Tear and Plasma Storm as some of our highest-end consoles.

Since then, yes, the Exotic Particle Amplifiers and Fek’Ihri Torment Engine have helped the other three focus areas to a some extent (Secondary Deflector, Entwined Tactical Matrices-based torps, and Spore-Infused Anomalies), but there has been tremendous power creep in consoles and especially console actives over the last six years, to the point where consoles dominate build theory, especially in the exotic space.

**Will active consoles continue to dominate the meta?**

Who’s to say? It’s a tough spot for the systems design team because consoles help sell ships and that makes $, but now they basically have power-crept the game in a way that means ships are heavily-evaluated based on how much Uncon they can slot, which limits options for future ships based on perceived desirability. It’s a good place for wealthy and/or invested players who can buy all the shinies and get dopamine hits from clicking all their buttons. It’s less ideal for more casual players who don’t want to juggle a bunch of actives or afford a bunch of ships, but as shown above, I still was able to do 300K with only 5 clickies that matter, and most of them were cheap.

It’s not like the other approaches have lost power, but they are definitely behind what active consoles provide, and more of an Exotic build’s power is tied to consoles, since they have better buttons (that scale off the stats they’ve acquired), and worse passive options, and they probably have the seating to spare for control powers that fit naturally with their build anyway.

**Will you be putting console cooldown mechanics on all your exotic builds now?**

I already do. The synergy between Unconventional Systems and a ship with Temporal, Intel, or Pilot seating that already wants to slot Gravity Well is just too good to pass up.

**Is this all on this series?**

Probably for now unless you all can persuade Tilor to write-up something about Spirit of Sacrifice, which he has and I don’t.

# TL;DR

* Active console builds (“clickies”) have a higher ceiling than even more expensive passive builds.  * The nature of Exotic builds having less constraints on bridge officer seating, more natural synergy with control powers scaling off of EPG, and worse passive console options means they are more heavily impacted by active consoles and their cooldown mechanics. Other exotic damage sources like Spore-Infused Anomalies, Deteriorating Secondary Deflector, or Gravimetric/Particle Emission Plasma Torpedoes are now more properly considered the side dish rather than the entree with how much power creep has occurred in console actives.  * 300K DPS remains the ‘beat-the-game” level of DPS unless you’re trying to solo Elite space TFOs and is achievable with active schemes as well as some with a little uncon and some of the cheaper active consoles for exotic builds.  * I’m not sure how well it’d work to skip active consoles or their cooldowns entirely on a science ship, but it’d be inefficient given that four of the better exotic clickies (Chronophage, Micro Dark Matter Anomaly, Delphic Tear, You Are Dismissed) are cheap on the Exchange. But hey, at the end of the day, it's a game, and if building a certain way works for you and you're having fun with it, I'm not here to tell you that you have to change your playstyle, and that's a pretty good of place to end this writeup.