Best weapon for space combat nowadays ?

[Reskal]

Actually i'm pretty bad in space combat, a bunch of 1-star ships is taking me out. I have only 1 shield upgrade, that helps to the problem but i think my weapon is not good enough also, using a phase beam with several upgrades actually.

From a thread 9 months ago i took following infos:

"Blaze javelin: pros; great long range weapon, almost infinite charge, no reload, cons; terrible at close range due to long wait between shots

Scattershot: pros; great for animals charging you, great for sentinel attack dogs (2 quick shots and a grenade will wipe them out but you have to be right next to it), cons; have to reload after 2 shots, horrible at mid range and beyond

Infraknife accelerator: pros; higher dps than the photon cannon, cons; overheats much more quickly than the photon cannon

Positron ejector: very cool spaceship shotgun, but not practical. Maybe with upgrades you'd be able to 2 or 3 shot pirates, I don't know. Potentially very deadly depending on how much damage the upgrades add, but you have to be close."

But what do you say should one use at best these days ?

[Tom]

I fight almost exclusively with the photon cannon. And I never go into space without plenty of iron. And when I say plenty, I mean I try to keep at least a thousand of iron in the ship, even better 1500, and 500 in the exosuit for reserve. In a fight early in the game with three of the one-star ships I'll often use up a thousand or more on the shield before I've killed them all.

Use the shield recharge keyboard shortcut X-F-F and do it whenever there's a lull in the combat, especially after you kill one of the ships. Keep an eye on your iron when you can spare a glance at your inventory. If the fight starts up when you're near the space station or a freighter you can turn tail and run to safety if the fight's going against you. Like in the song, "you gotta know when to hold 'em, you gotta know when to fold 'em. You gotta know when to walk away, you gotta know when to run."

Your ship turns best when it's flying slowly. So fly slow so that you can turn to follow them when they fly past and then accelerate to try to stay on their tail and blow their socks off from behind while they're pointed away from you. When they stop writhing around and settle down in one place, ease the pipper right in on them and pour in the cannon fire. Watch for overheat, and buy cannon upgrades whenever you can.

At least that's what works best for me. If you've got an upgraded phase beam maybe that will work better for you.

[Tom]

Here's another tip I've never heard from anyone else. When I'm in space and in an asteroid field, I take target practice on the asteroids while I gather iron. I practice turning the ship and moving the pipper quickly toward one of the asteroids and then stopping as quickly as I can right on the target without overshooting. It takes some practice, but it helps in getting your fire on the pirate. Over all the hours I have in this game I've gotten fairly good at space combat. I'm no Red Baron, but I win all my fights.

[Ket]

All of the weapons are viable when upgraded, but they have slighly different roles.

* Phase beam has great accuracy, but requires fuel and its pure stats are among the lowest(but very close to photon cannon and infra-knife), luckily it also requires 3 less upgrades than the others to be fully upgraded. 2 sec cooldown after overheat.

* Photon cannon has pretty good substained damage, and you always have it as a backup, sadly it loses some potential stats by not being able to move the base module. You can fire for a long time without overheating, but watch the heatmeter, it has a massive 8 sec cooldown.

* Infra-knife accelerator fires extremely fast, but also deals pitiful damage, it starts off being stricktly worse than photon cannon, but just barely overtakes it once maxed. It overheats faster than photon cannon, but the heat also reduces somewhat rapidly, try to avoid overheating at all costs as it also got a 8 sec cooldown.

* Cylotron ballista is a kinda interesting weapon, it deals much more damage than the others once upgraded, but suffers from only a quarter of the projectile speed and a slight spread, which can both be positive or negative. Overheats very fast, but also cooldowns very fast so you can hold down the button without having to worry(1.5 sec cooldown). Very bursty weapon. Personal favorite with mouse controls.

* Positron ejector. The shotgun, has a very high potential damage, only need to hit with 2-3 out of the 20 projectiles to deal similar dps to photon cannon, but also got a large spread and low range. Range is usually not an issue in the middle of a dogfight, but it means you can't kill off an enemy at long range like you can with some of the other weapons. Similar to ballista with high burst, fast overheat and very short cooldown(1.5 sec). Pretty good weapon if using a gamepad or have problems aiming.

* And finally the rocket. Not a main weapon, but nice bonus damage if you remember to switch to it often, only takes a single slot to be able to shoot out a 3000 damage rocket every 5 sec. half the projectile speed of photon cannon.

Made a spreadsheet with raw stat comparison and some decent layouts a few months back: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11Wbof8YA2Dlx0FAle79gatXYn3NYnIubBfxrE_dyqrY/

As for space battle strategies, try to shoot the enemy ships from behind for double damage. Run if you are getting overwhelmed, and learn to turn fast so you can shoot them after they go past you, hold back/reverse to turn faster. Enemies will turn around if you are either very very close, far away, or they take a certain amount of damage. Try to move between boosting and not, and holding break/reverse to turn faster to keep up with them.

It is possible to fight 1 vs 1 and take 0 damage by chasing enemies, but takes some practice.

You always got the option of just picking a direction and boosting to get away from combat, usually takes around 30 sec. You are always faster than the pirates even in the worst possible ship as long as you are boosting.

Also take note of the conflict level of the system, higher conflict systems spawn more ships when you get scanned. low conflict spawns 1-2 ships, mid spawns around 3, and high conflict can spawn up to 6 ships, though usually 4-5.

[Reskal]

Many thanks for the lots and helpful info. Will have to try out the cyclotron ballista, seems to fit what i like most.

Have a merry christmas !

[badchad71]

The phase beam destroys the fastest in game. (for me) If you treat it like a semi auto rifle you can fire at 1000 damage each blast and you don't ever worry about overheating. It is immediate instead of having to lead a target and worry about missing. Battles are just over quicker with it, even if it does less damage.

It originally auto-aimed and you would just hold down and watch for overheating, but they changed it.

[Reskal]

Originally posted by badchad71:

It originally auto-aimed and you would just hold down and watch for overheating, but they changed it.

Yes, it only autoaims now if you pretty close targetting the enemy.
My problem is, that i get that much fire until i am able to make good hits, and even with the zero-star pirates, the weakest ones i need 3-4 hits to kill them

[Captain Brendig]

Photon cannon for mining asteroids, phase beam for combat. This works best for me. Keeping a close eye on temperature, I often sweep the beam across a pirate. Positron ejector seems better suited for freighter defense battles.

For on foot my goto weapon is the blaze javelin, but I still use bolt caster as well, especially when dealing with a strider. Blaze javelin is a great one shot and drop, but there is a cool down for every shot so long range aiming is a bit harder when under fire. Bolt with homing adaptor is good for that.