What are some good weapons vs aliens?

[Paragon]

Its 2029 and I have just put a couple monitors into space with the intent of sinking my first alien destroyer. I only noticed after building them and a couple test skirmishes that while their engines and armor are workable, their weapon systems are not - often being too slow to actually hit the maneuverable alien vessels.

Right now i'm using copperhead missiles, as they were my first weapon system I got. Should I change to vipers? Or perhaps an entirely different line of research?

[Necroscourge]

A mixture of missiles and torpedoes is useful, because it will overwhelm enemy point defense.

[DeciNinja]

Copperheads are pretty good.

[Taku10001]

An alien fleet of 47 ships with multiple PD weapons wants to have a word with your missileboats :D

[Chicago Ted]

Missiles can be good. Cheaper, more numerous standard missiles to overwhelm PD and allow nuclear-tipped torpedoes to slip in and delete whatever they touch. It's not all roses though. Their limited engine profiles means they can struggle against smaller, more agile ayylmaos. Missiles also lack the magazine depth for sustained engagements, and you kind of need a numbers advantage, too few missiles in the sky and you'll get rekt by PD. This means you'll probably want to have a lot of cheap and therefore bad ships, which means you'll probably bleed pretty heavily for each enemy fleet you destroy.

Lasers are good, especially once you get greens. They're flexible, being able to shoot down both projectiles and ships, they've got endurance for long fights that missiles just don't have, perfectly accurate to hit those aliums that dance circles around your ships, but they don't have a lot of punch, taking quite a while to damage hardier alium ships. I prefer using regular lasers over the dedicated Point Defense options because regular lasers have enough range that a laser on a ship can defend its neighbors, unlike the low range on the dedicated PD.

Plasma's great, not subject to PD, good damage, long range, fast projectile speed. It ain't 100% accurate like lasers but it'll hit more often than not, which is more than I can say for other magnetics.

You'll probably want a mix of weapons in your fleets to cover their different strengths, though each individual ship should probably focus on just one or two types because of how the support utility modules are.

[VoiD]

Mass missiles early game.

Coilguns when you get them

Point defense/lasers are not optional, either you have them and survive combat, or you lose your entire fleet.

[adobo]

Lasers are great. All size 1 lasers only both nose and hull weapons. Nose laser has range so you entire fleet can thin out a missile or kinetic barrage. Broadside lasers can has enough range to cover other ships compared to just having PD. Lasers are instant hit so they swat down smaller ships after they get close and do their flips and exposing their sides.

The only weakness is dealing with heavy ships. But you could mix in some size 1 nose railguns to overwhelm PD or just use the biggest laser to continue with laser spam.

[Mausklickmoerder]

Copperheads should do the trick.