What's the point of kinetic weapons?

[Stretchytall]

I learned having only kinetic weapons is horrible against the interdiction pylons. And energy weapons kill both shields and ships easily enough. So what's the point of kinetic weapons?

[Sasha Mason]

Kinetic weapons deal with shielded targets well enough too, a lot of ships aren't even shielded.

There are certain modifiers though that make it a lot more important, as energy weapons will barely do anything against hull, and kinetic will do barely anything against shield. But it's an optional modifier.

[Stretchytall]

Originally posted by Sasha Mason:

Kinetic weapons deal with shielded targets well enough too, a lot of ships aren't even shielded.

There are certain modifiers though that make it a lot more important, as energy weapons will barely do anything against hull, and kinetic will do barely anything against shield. But it's an optional modifier.

What do you mean that energy weapons are weak against hull? Our energy weapons were destroying ships easily. They didn't seem to have any trouble destroying the ship hulls.

[Sasha Mason]

Originally posted by Stretchytall:

Originally posted by Sasha Mason:

Kinetic weapons deal with shielded targets well enough too, a lot of ships aren't even shielded.

There are certain modifiers though that make it a lot more important, as energy weapons will barely do anything against hull, and kinetic will do barely anything against shield. But it's an optional modifier.

What do you mean that energy weapons are weak against hull? Our energy weapons were destroying ships easily. They didn't seem to have any trouble destroying the ship hulls.

https://i.imgur.com/r73e7nH.png

I did try and explain it in my original comment.

[ExavierMacbeth]

Not including the new Mutators that Sasha mentions...
The guns do have small bonuses vs shields or armor which can make them better/worse depending on the task you are using them for.

The thing is, there are alot of bonuses you can stack (Gun Mods, Relics, More Guns) that can scale up your raw damage quickly enough to make the "vs type" damage bonuses meaningless.

Where it gets noticeable is when you are right on the edge of a threshold... early game before you have Mk2 guns... if you wait to long to get mk3 guns... Or if your just not lucky enough to find the right combination of loot to progress ahead of the enemies HP progression.

For my crew, we each have our own preferences. But it often comes down to what guns we end up with before the 1st Boss... because after that we are too busy trying to push upgrades on existing stuff to spend the resources re-configuring to some optimal preference until everything is Mk3.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Originally posted by Stretchytall:

What do you mean that energy weapons are weak against hull? Our energy weapons were destroying ships easily. They didn't seem to have any trouble destroying the ship hulls.

Unless something drastically changed since the last time I played, a gun type which fire on something it is weak against is only going to do something like 15 or 20% of its listed damage (I don't remember the actual numbers by heart). Your OP and second post heavily hint to me that you were comparing a high end damage energy gun (probably MK2 or 3) to a low damage kinetic gun (probably of lower MK). Everything seem to already be explained above me but the gist of it is that some weapons have different use. You can't really compare a mass firing gatling gun living the spray and pray dream to a sniper weapon which fire a lot of high damage shots but with a very low rate of fire. They both have very different approach to their use and utility and you should consider that as well as the results you are getting.

Now, after all of this is said. If you play solo (like I usually do) you'll start up with both versions of Brain turrets. I usually go to a 1 to 3 or 1 to 4 ratio of energy versus kinetic. The energy guns are basically only there to deal with an eventual shielded target (which is quite rarely a thing or a problem to be honest) and you'll be happy to just drop the shields quick that few times. On a full crew tho it all depend on situation (like explained above) but at the start of a run the "meta" way would be to max out on kinetic for hull damage and use one of the gunner(s) ability to add void damage to drop the shield of an eventual shielded target when it become a thing or a problem. Once you drop the shield of a target then it is not going to go back up if you keep hitting and damaging it. Unfortunately the time between stopping hitting the target and when it get its shield back is quite quick, quick enough that a single gunner would not be able to switch guns to just drop the shield and then switch to a nearby kinetic gun to finish it (which explain the gunner power gambit here).

If you're lucky enough to get good mods tho any gun has the potential to become your run MVP.

[Neomech]

Originally posted by Stretchytall:

I learned having only kinetic weapons is horrible against the interdiction pylons. And energy weapons kill both shields and ships easily enough. So what's the point of kinetic weapons?

Sounds like you're not focusing the shield nodes first. They keep regenerating the shields of all nearby hostiles (Yes that includes proximity mines). So taking out these nodes if you lack energy weapons is a MUST, especially in the earlier stages. Once you've got a couple of decent relics, mods and upgraded weapons then the shields aren't too much of a problem even with a kinetic only build.