Vulcan Laser...best thing ever?

[mcsproot]

I'll admit I was playing on Easy here. But I have never had an easier time taking on the Flagship than using one of these. Just set it to auto-fire over the shield room and bam. I was using my typical 2x mantis boarders to take out the weapons, but other than that I only had a Burst Laser 1 and a Fire Beam (Stealth A). Oh how I love you Fire Beam.

[Engi]

The Vulcan takes about 25 seconds (with no bosts, I THINK) to charge up to were it's firing at one every 1.1 seconds. it's pretty much the GLAVE beam of LAZERS c:

[Gekkibi]

Subjective. The biggest problem is that it requires whopping 4 power. Sure, you can max everything when playing on easy, but that's not necessarily an option on harder difficulties. If you take some weapons system damage then it might go offline, reseting the chain counter. In other words, you're screwed. You need damage buffer if you want to use Vulcan, meaning that you need more than just 4 levels in weapons system. And if you want to minimize the risk of getting damaged before Vulcan has been charged you need additional weapons so that you can take down their weapons, meaning that you more or less need maxed weapons system if you want to have Vulcan (some say that 2x Vulcan is a beast, but in reality it's a paper tiger. Even one system damage and one Vulcan is out. You can't damage their weapons system because you don't have extra system power. You simply have to bet against the RNG).

Vulcan is usually better than Burst III but its flaws don't justify its use on harder difficulties.

[slappy_d0]

2 vulcans, cloak, stealth weapons. Had it once and beat hard, still reminiscing... Nothing compares.

[Pixel Peeper]

It's definitely amazing in that it can take out all enemy shields and still manage to get some serious damage through, all by itself. Once it gets going, it's incredible.

Never used it in combination with a Pre-Igniter, but that must be even more insane as the longest shot wouldn't need to be charged at all.

Losing power to it is disastrous, so you'll want more weapon system bars... which is fine, because with the Vulcan alone nullifying enemy shields, your additional weapons are pretty much free damage, especially if they're beams.

But really, you have to protect it.

[Knox]

I like that once it gets through a shield the extreme rapid small shots just cause tons of fires. hacking / cloak gives a pretty good amount of time to get it up and running.

[Gekkibi]

Originally posted by Bugsby Bearkeley:

Originally posted by Gekkibi:

Vulcan is usually better than Burst III but its flaws don't justify its use on harder difficulties.

I don't know about hard, but on normal it's fine, as long as you adapt (or dedicate) your strategy to using it. Not been a problem for me so far.

Never tried pre-igniter but I got automated reloader once. Made me feel sorry for the poor bastards.

Ah yes, I did say that poorly. I meant that sometimes it's not justified to use Vulcan. It requires extra weapons system upgrades, and sometimes you don't have extra scrap for that. It's also possible that the Vulcan would have bad synergy with the rest of the weapons and systems you use.

[Drain]

It didn't take long after using it for the first time for me to think that 4 power was worth it. Honestly, beforehand, I didn't think much of it from reading the tooltip. But as soon as it charged up the first time, my eyebrows raised a little and I was not disappointed.