Are antimatter beam weapons useful/good?

[Dirty Rotten Flieger]

All the particle beam weapons ? Is there something I'm missing? They seem terrible.

[Damedius]

Some people like Particle Beams for dedicated PD before Phasers unlock. Other than that they seem to be underwhelming.

[Ericus1]

PD Ion is the hands down best anti-missile weapon in the game. The rest of all the particle weapons suffer from the same problem: by the time you get them they simply kill more slowly that other options available to you. Which leaves no logical reason to use them.

[Dirty Rotten Flieger]

I put the biggest spinal antimatter beam weapon on my Titan flag ship and it does something like 0.00018 damage to enemy ships. Maybe that damage is to something important but I can't tell if it is.

[Yomi]

I find them situational. They are decent at disabling nose guns. They have issue with penetration of thick frontal armor and the speed that internal repairs are done. Aiming for sides is good but at that point why not user arc greens or better phasers.
Any damage to internals belov 0.1 is quickly repaired unless there is many ships doing this damage.

The only particle nose i would use is the neutron lance with at least 3 cyclotrons. This seems to be most effective even with 1 min per shot. But the reserch is expensive.

[Sleepy_Walker]

My opinion on them is similar to Yomi.

I feel they are situational and I find it difficult to justify any of the smaller versions, so I always go for the 4-slot spinal and as many cyclotrons as I can fit (3+ depending on the hull). I currently suspect they pair somewhat with missile (disabled ships make good targets) and with the odd plasma weapon to chip armor, but the fire rate is rather low on the beams so the chances of getting a full penetrating and disabling shot via chipping mechanic is fairly low. I also suspect they can get certain components and result in a ship suddenly exploding when it otherwise should not (maybe got a component which has a chance of exploding?)

I've lightly tried out the neutron lance, with its even slower fire rate, and find it not significantly better compared to firing twice as fast with the antimatter beams. Maybe I am just not noticing it as much since I only have one and a lot is going on.

I have something like 2-3 antimatter/particle beams in my fleets and I see value in them degrading a ship's capabilities. I put one on my center/command titan, which I also put missiles on for easy micromanagement. They tend to be overkill against light craft, work great against medium armor, and struggle against the really heavy armor (until they get close) but less than phasers without chipping being involved. They are certainly not wonder weapons, but I regularly have disable ships floating about which I can destroy without any fuss when I want.

On damage: I normally view anything less than one entire unit of damage as not important and more information that I am almost getting through the armor. This normally means that at a slightly closer range that 0.1 radiation is going to move to 1.0 or higher and hopefully start knocking out or destroying systems for a progressively easier battle.

[Ericus1]

Why would you care the slightest about disabling a ship when you can kill it faster instead? We can't take "prize" ships, we don't get more salvage from taking them"intact", so in the end using them offers no strategic advantage. Dead quicker is better than wounded slower, every time.

[Sleepy_Walker]

Originally posted by Ericus1:

Why would you care the slightest about disabling a ship when you can kill it faster instead? We can't take "prize" ships, we don't get more salvage from taking them"intact", so in the end using them offers no strategic advantage. Dead quicker is better than wounded slower, every time.

*shrug* Disabled is generally dead, just often times less effort and time focused on it. otherwise I do not disagree with your logic. Maybe I just like the high reward aspect of them and block out the low payoff moments.

I know they have saved at least a few ships of mine, like when PD is almost overwhelmed and suddenly one of the near pristine ships is no longer functional. I sure wouldn't bring many, but they have proven valuable enough to bring in token numbers...also the beam is a different color :)

[Projectmayhem]

I have tried the biggest spinal nose antimatter weapons. I think in theory they are suppose to punch through armor and damage components. But what i found is i would rather have a UV phaser or T3 coil(not the siege ones they fire to slow).