Best Lasers Overall

[Arkadus]

Let me hear your opinions on which lasers you like best for Armor/PD/overall.

[andrei haiducul]

None? Lasers are just generally bad. UV Phasers are "best" technically (UV for best damage, phaser for best fire rate) but they're still effective only in very large numbers with laser engines taking up utility slots.

[Arkadus]

Originally posted by andrei haiducul:

None? Lasers are just generally bad. UV Phasers are "best" technically (UV for best damage, phaser for best fire rate) but they're still effective only in very large numbers with laser engines taking up utility slots.

But the dont use up ammo :) What do you like to use then?

[DWI_Suriil]

Originally posted by Arkadus:

But the dont use up ammo :) What do you like to use then?

https://www.meme-arsenal.com/memes/243a05951bbbdef0e5ae8ea9821c0216.jpg

Lasers have ammo....Called ENERGY. Which is limited.
Each laser have an energy consomtion per hit. And each battry its capacity.

[DWI_Suriil]

To put long story short on a Lasers vs Kinetics.
Kinetics - for large ships.
Lasers - small ships and PD.

To pierce a dreadnault with lasers , even with phasers , takes ages.
Coils just tear it appart in seconds.

How ever lasers are an insta hit-> Great to kill small fast ships with low armor.

[Arkadus]

Originally posted by T.MauvaisLoveStory:

Originally posted by Arkadus:

But the dont use up ammo :) What do you like to use then?

https://www.meme-arsenal.com/memes/243a05951bbbdef0e5ae8ea9821c0216.jpg

Lasers have ammo....Called ENERGY. Which is limited.
Each laser have an energy consomtion per hit. And each battry its capacity.

With late game battery and heatsinks, it's practically unlimited though....but I agree on it taking ages. Usually I wouldnt have issues with it but the game is not stable enough for 2+ hour long battles.

[DWI_Suriil]

Its about 7 minutes of in game time combat for a Battleship or Dread. So either way you want a spare battery in your inventory.
Considering how much laser hits you usually need you will run out of power.

Coils are a sure thing. Better throw a big ass rock in your head , than flashlight you to the death.

AND> God save you to run out of power....cause your PD will not save you anymore


BUT AGAIN. There is a Coils school and Lasers school.
Light fast Laser ships and heavy manly bricks with coils.

Both are viable, but im a Coil Brick man

[Jean Cousteau]

Coil brick men unite

[VVARHEAD]

UV Arc Green Lasers are very potent despite what people here say. Had great success assaulting alien bases and ships with them in the right ship configs. There is related research (laser engines) which I use aswell.

[Morti]

Point defence : i haven't tried another PD weapon ( the stat the game show made me think lasers were the best here, but it weren't the 1st trap of the game )
here i use PD phaser ( 1-2/ ship ) and some light batteries ( if you have phasers : green and IR are ok here as you don't really care about damages, but more on range ) for larger fleets ( so each ship can help to deal with the missile volley )

As offensive weapon
the laser power curve is really different from the other weapons : standard lasers shoot 1 time, arc laser shoot 1.5 ( with a lower armour effectiveness ) and phasers shoot 3, so in term of effective damages when laser deal 1, arc laser deal around 1.7 and phaser deal around 4 ( 1.5 and 3 if you don't consider armour effectiveness )
i've only tried them with big canons on big ships with 4-6 advanced lasers engines works well, once you got 10-12 ships you can deal with most of the aliens fleets ( you probably won't destroy motherships, there you need some light coilguns, just to keep their lasers from shooting you at short range... or more laser ships )

[ulzgoroth]

Laser tech progression is straightforward, if a little weird, so picking the best is easy: phasers in the shortest wavelength you're willing to pay for. UV phasers cost quite a bit of Exotics.

For PD, you use the smallest mount you can. Probably a mix of PD mounts (to counter dense missile launches) and small batteries (to counter mag shells).

For anti-ship, the biggest phaser you're willing to carry is best.

I don't have phasers yet in my game. My top offensive laser is 2-slot nose mount green arc laser, which damages poorly-armored aliens at pretty long range, though it's likely to lose that effect as the aliens seem to be thickening up their armor. Two slot nose is a nice balance of having a big enough aperture that it has about as good divergence as it will get, while not wasting too much space and research on the poor scaling of bigger mounts. And it fits on ships down to destroyer class.


I've been quite skeptical of laser engines. Laser engines add 1/10th of a point of damage, 1/5th for advanced engines. That's single-digit percentages of the damage of any serious offensive laser, and short of a titan you can't fit very many of them.

They might be very strong for point defense lasers, since those do very low damage very rapidly and laser engines say they're a flat add. If it works that way, that'd potentially be impressive, but only for missile/kinetic defense.