Vulcan Chain Gun: Most Overrated Weapon in the Game?

[Skinny Pete]

Sure, it does a phenomenal amount of damage once it spins up, but what are you doing in the meantime? Usually, getting shot at. Then, if it does get damaged, you have that ridiculously lengthy warmup period again.

Basically, it exaggerates the worst aspects of the Glaive Beam. Plus, it lacks that weapon's strengths. In theory, this is a great weapon for certain encounters, but since you don't know which those will be (except the flagship), you don't know when to switch it in. For instance, a DD Mark II really takes the sting out of it.

I hate being on the wrong end of one of these, but I don't like it much on my own ship eating up half my weapons system even if it's maxed out.

Another overrated weapon: the Flak II. But I think the Chain Laser beats it out for being much beloved while frankly not being all that great.

[boozermonkey]

The beaty of FTL is that there is no "one weapon to win." That bieng said, every weapon has its use. The Vulcan is a shield breaker. Its purpose is to beat any defence, and it does that. You should never use it as your primary weapon because it is not designed for that role.

[FDru]

I thought the concensus was that the vulcan was "not all that". So I would say no, it's not overrated.

[Winter]

Well with the weapon augmentation to speed it up (sorry forgot name) I thought that was only way to make it awesome. But yes, I agree with you OP, I passed it up the other day thinking the same exact thing..

Missiles Naow?? Or missles later? Now? Later? Now? .. I chose now :)

[Ray Robertson]

Missiles are much faster than the Vulcan at getting through shields.

[Agent Graves]

I always buy swarm missiles if I come across them, even if I can't use them at the time (like, when there's not enough missiles to use them with).
Because that is what penetrates defenses effectively. IMO it's the Burst Laser Mk II in missile form.
The Vulcan is a novelty weapon that can be very fun if all the stars allign correctly for you (i.e. you have a good ship to install it on, lots of power, good augmentations to support it, you actually find the bloody thing, etc.).

[slappy_d0]

What I'm doing in the meantime as my vulcan spins up is softening up the enemy with my ion-2 and stun ion through my level 3 stealth cloak with my twin beam drones sitting above.

My pair of auto-reloaders help too...

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by slappy_d0:

What I'm doing in the meantime as my vulcan spins up is softening up the enemy with my ion-2 and stun ion through my level 3 stealth cloak with my twin beam drones sitting above.

My pair of auto-reloaders help too...

Which is great if you even see an Ion II in the whole game. Or two beam drones. Or even one, for that matter. At least the cloak, you can always get, but without the stealth weapons augment, firing disrupts it. Also 4 power for Vulcan, 3 for Ion Blast II. Take more than one damage to a maxed out weapons system and one of those goes offline. If only seven power bars in weapons system, one damage takes out one of your best weapons.

So it's nice if you can arrange to have all that stuff every game, and you can blow 95 scrap if you encounter the Vulcan early in the hopes that you'll get it all.

[Winter]

Originally posted by Skinny Pete:

Originally posted by slappy_d0:

What I'm doing in the meantime as my vulcan spins up is softening up the enemy with my ion-2 and stun ion through my level 3 stealth cloak with my twin beam drones sitting above.

My pair of auto-reloaders help too...

Which is great if you even see an Ion II in the whole game. Or two beam drones. Or even one, for that matter. At least the cloak, you can always get, but without the stealth weapons augment, firing disrupts it. Also 4 power for Vulcan, 3 for Ion Blast II. Take more than one damage to a maxed out weapons system and one of those goes offline. If only seven power bars in weapons system, one damage takes out one of your best weapons.

So it's nice if you can arrange to have all that stuff every game, and you can blow 95 scrap if you encounter the Vulcan early in the hopes that you'll get it all.

My luck with really powerful weapons lately is to see them on the first jump or two in the first sector then I never see them again. It's annoying as hell.

[slappy_d0]

Originally posted by Skinny Pete:

Originally posted by slappy_d0:

What I'm doing in the meantime as my vulcan spins up is softening up the enemy with my ion-2 and stun ion through my level 3 stealth cloak with my twin beam drones sitting above.

My pair of auto-reloaders help too...

Which is great if you even see an Ion II in the whole game. Or two beam drones. Or even one, for that matter. At least the cloak, you can always get, but without the stealth weapons augment, firing disrupts it. Also 4 power for Vulcan, 3 for Ion Blast II. Take more than one damage to a maxed out weapons system and one of those goes offline. If only seven power bars in weapons system, one damage takes out one of your best weapons.

So it's nice if you can arrange to have all that stuff every game, and you can blow 95 scrap if you encounter the Vulcan early in the hopes that you'll get it all.

Exactly my point. It has it's time and place and needs a little help to make it viable. It is however, my favorite gun in the game.

[Bob of Mage]

I have yet to get my hands on the Vulcan, but I would say it's one of those long fight weapons. So it's much better vs big, powerful ships that take a long while to kill. So it would be much better when you are fighting the Flagship, instead of say a sheildless drone in sector one.

[Dr. McWeazel]

Agreed. It's much better for long, hard slugfests against things like Sector 7 Auto-Assaults or about anything you encounter in Sector 8 than against anything you'll encounter in the early game. I would recommend against simply selling the thing, but I wouldn't use it until you had something good for it to supplement or for it to provide support for, like a Glaive Beam. It also works pretty well on ships that hardly need weapons anyway, like the Crystal B and the Mantis B.

In conclusion: Should you get the opportunity to get a Vulcan for free in the early sectors, keep it, even if it is mostly useless right now. You can use it much later on, when it becomes significantly more worthwhile.

[Skinny Pete]

Has anyone actually done Vulcan+Glaive? I'd be really leery of two 4 power weapons, because a single bar off your weapons system and you kiss goodbye to half your power. And on top of that, their cooldowns are so slow once you get them back online, you still have some serious time to wait. Not fun with the Flagship breathing down your neck (I usually don't max out the weapons system until then or near then even if I am going to).

I prefer my weapons on the right side (that get knocked out first) to be lower cost, 2 power bars at most, and only ever to have one 4 power weapon at a time.

[slappy_d0]

Originally posted by Skinny Pete:

Has anyone actually done Vulcan+Glaive? I'd be really leery of two 4 power weapons, because a single bar off your weapons system and you kiss goodbye to half your power. And on top of that, their cooldowns are so slow once you get them back online, you still have some serious time to wait. Not fun with the Flagship breathing down your neck (I usually don't max out the weapons system until then or near then even if I am going to).

I prefer my weapons on the right side (that get knocked out first) to be lower cost, 2 power bars at most, and only ever to have one 4 power weapon at a time.

Yeah, that combo is a terrible idea. Note my dream set-up earlier in the thread. a single sacrificial slot on the right end, and an ion-2 that will pump fast once restored...

[French Toast]

I had two runs where the Vulcan was my primary weapon for both piercing the shields and damaging the enemy's hull to his death, one with the Zoltan B[www.noelshack.com] and one with the Slug A[www.noelshack.com].
In both of them, you can see it synergize well with bombs which I launch on the Piloting system (with Hacking or Mind Control helping the bomb hiting the target) in order to decrease the enemy's evade (to 0 with a Breach II Bomb), so the Vulcan can hit a maximum of time to keep the shields down. Bombs are also pretty cool since they take a very low amount of power (1 to 2), allowing you to not spend enormous amount of scrap into upgrading the Weapon system. Plus, they act like a buffer, protecting your Vulcan.

As everyone know, the main downside of the Vulcan is the time it takes to warm up, so you need things to gain time, like a Zoltan Shield, a Weapon Pre-Igniter, a Cloaking (it almost doesn't disrupt it since he shot only one time if you use it at the beggining), good shields, good engines and maybe some Defense I / II.
I agree on the fact that it is a late game weapon, and on the two runs I got it by sector 7.

I don't think that it is an overrated weapon because it can be very powerful when correctly used, and getting it means you actually have something to use against the flagship, but like every other weapons in this game you must know when and how to use it.
I'll also post the same message about the Flak II if you wish so.

[V'rie Randeeris]

I think that the Vulcan is pretty good but i can see why you think is overpowered