A weapon that cannot see its target does nothing, and no console or trait fixes that. Two players can fly the same build on the same map and post very different numbers, and more often than not the gap is where the ship is pointing. Here are the rules of thumb that matter most, in rough order of how much damage they decide.
Every weapon has a firing arc, the angle in front of it inside which an enemy must sit for it to fire. An aft weapon measures its arc from the rear of your ship, and a fore weapon from the front. The arc is only about angle and says nothing about range. You can preview it in game by holding your cursor over a weapon's icon on your action bar.
| Weapon | Total arc |
|---|---|
| Dual Cannons, Dual Heavy Cannons, Quad and Wing Cannons | 45 degrees |
| Dual Beam Banks and Torpedo Launchers | 90 degrees |
| Beam Arrays | 250 degrees |
| Omni-Directional Beam Arrays and Turrets | 360 degrees |
Treat each arc as centered on the way the weapon faces, so a 250 degree arc reaches 125 degrees to each side. Put a target dead ahead and every fore weapon fires, but aft beam arrays do not, because the target is 180 degrees from their center. Turn so the target sits 90 degrees off your bow and cannons and beam banks stop firing entirely, while beam arrays, fore and aft, keep going. A cannon covers about 12.5% of all directions, a beam bank 25%, and a beam array about 69%.
That table splits energy builds into two styles, as the community's energy guide describes. Cannon and beam bank builds keep the target near the nose, which is called flying nose on. Beam array builds can broadside, turning the ship side on so every weapon fires at once. It is also why Fire at Will builds and tanks lean on beam arrays: they keep working while you circle a group. The trade off is damage per shot, because beam arrays deal the least of the weapon types, so the wide arc is what you are paying for. The Anatomy of a Meta Energy Build covers the weapon side of that choice.
A few items reward it directly. The Broadside Combat Module console, sold with the Kerala Temporal Battlecruiser, gives +25% all damage and +50 damage resistance rating to your broadside arcs. Its Full Broadside active fires at up to five foes in your left and right 90 degree arcs and has a two minute recharge. You can only equip one, and it fits in any console slot. Several published builds also slot the Broadside Beam Support starship trait. Both pay off only if you are actually flying side on, so the piloting comes first and the gear second.
The clearest documented case is the Raider Flanking ability on raiders and some pilot ships, which adds damage when you attack an enemy's rear arc: +33% against NPC enemies and +11% against players, or +40% and +13% with the improved version. It belongs to specific ships, so check whether yours has it before building a plan around it.
Your log records flanking either way. The Combat Log Reader's Hit Breakdown splits hits into Critical, Flank, Normal, and Miss, and the Arbiter Fire at Will build published by STO BETTER reports a flank rate of 30 to 40% alongside 60 to 70% critical hits. The community's own advice is short: do not fly circles around Tactical Cubes, and pay attention to the flanking facing, since both have a large effect.
Your engine slider sets your speed. Fifty power gives base speed, each point above adds 2%, and each point below removes 2%. Speed also raises your defense rating, which is why pilot ships run engines high. Two traps: flying in reverse for more than 10 seconds builds a Reverse Power Drain that strips up to 25 points from every subsystem, and Full Impulse drops your other subsystems to 5, so never enter a fight with it on. Power Levels and Subsystem Management has the numbers.
Different builds want different ranges. The community's exotic guide says an exotic build has the highest ceiling when enemies are many and within a 10 to 12 kilometer radius, and the Fleet Nova exotic build published by STO BETTER is flown at 1.5 to 2.5 kilometers so that its point blank abilities land. Tanks do the opposite job: the Chronos tank build positions close to high threat targets and stays near its team so the enemy keeps shooting it. Torpedo builds want targets that live long enough to be hit, which is why they favor harder content.
Past a certain point, the community cautions, gear is the most expensive way to add damage and piloting gains shrink, so get the geometry right first. The way to know whether flying is the limit is to look at a recorded run. Open the DPS Over Time chart in the Combat Log Reader and find the dips. A dip that lines up with a turn or a run between enemy groups is a piloting problem, not a build problem. The tutorial on the /CombatLog command explains how to record one, and the Build Planner is where to plan a gear change once you know the flying is not what is holding you back.