Choose your favourite! Beams vs Lasers poll

[Cetsuo]

Axes or swords. Shotgun or rifle. Mac or PC. We make choices like this everyday, they are part of us. This time the question is: What gun are you bringing to the ship fight?
In my case I like lasers over beams. Sure, they are awesome and do plenty of damage in a short time but high shields will reduce your damage output and the biggest and most destructive ones require quite a lot of energy. Meanwhile, a trusty Burst Laser II with its 3 shots will easily clean the way for your bigger weapons to cause havoc. Im specially fond of synchronizing several Lasers into a big volley capable of taking down enemy shields and still having plenty of juice to rain some destruction at the Rebels.

[Arvis_Jaggamar]

Hard to say. Beams are so much fun with their insane destructiveness, but you'll never get anywhere ONLY using Beam weapons. However, you CAN go all-lasers and win. So Lasers are probably better.

But I think I will still vote Beams as my favorite!

-Arvis

[wckowalski]

It's best to use them in combination with each other. Use lasers to drop the shields then fire the beams.

[Icedfate]

Originally posted by wckowalski:

It's best to use them in combination with each other. Use lasers to drop the shields then fire the beams.

thats usually my strategy if i can find the right combination of items

[Bravo]

I think Ions (particularly ion blast 2) + beams (despite never actually getting the pair together) will work best.

[wckowalski]

In any case you can't rely solely on beams. Even if you have a glaive beam enemies will eventually have 3 shield bars. You also don't have free pick of all the weapons in the game, but you have to choose a combination from the limited pool that is made available in any one playthrough. A weapon that in one playthrough is a great find in combination with what else you find may be useless in another playthrough when you have different other weapons to work with.

[REDRUM]

Combination as explained before works best

[Arvis_Jaggamar]

It occurs to me that the ultimate weapon set-up might look like this:
Dual Lasers - Dual Lasers - Dual Lasers - Glaive Beam.

Combined with a weapon preigniter, that's 7 power for basically an instant victory.

-Arvis

[TokraZeno]

Originally posted by Arvis_Jaggamar:

It occurs to me that the ultimate weapon set-up might look like this:
Dual Lasers - Dual Lasers - Dual Lasers - Glaive Beam.

Combined with a weapon preigniter, that's 7 power for basically an instant victory.

-Arvis

That sounds like the combination I'd probably go with. I suppose the main advantage of beams is versatility. Ability to damage systems/crew without damaging the hull is when you want a devoid-of-life victory from crew death.

[TuHnIx]

my favourite is bomb - bomb - beam - beam was lucky to get that combination in my first playthrough and managed to get to the final boss, didn't win though because I was inexperienced

[Little Dipster]

I like to use the 5 shot laser to break through the shields, maybe take down the shield room, then cut them up with the beam. With a pre-igniter, you can have the shields down and do a ton of hull damage beofre they even fire a shot.

[Mawkish]

Why not both? I had a build that had 1 Burst Laser MKIII with 2 Pike Beams. In conjunction with a steath system, pre-igniter and the stealth weapons aug I was pretty much unstoppable late game, didnt even get below 85% hull at the end of the fight against the mothership. This build would allow me to jump into combat, use the burst lasers to take out the shield system followed by a X of pike beams on the major systems. I would always begin combat by cloaking, and with the stealth weapons I would not reduce my cloak from firing, so cloak, fire, recharge. By the time I got out of cloak I could fire another volly, usually being the end of the encounter.

[Aria of Valor]

I like running 2 Ion MK 1s myself, combine those with a couple beams (or lasers if you don't get the chance to pick up some decent beams) and you can pretty much destroy everything pretty quick (2 Ion MK1s can pretty much perma take down shields and one other system). So while they don't do dmg, Ion's are my fav rather than beams, lasers, or missles :P

[Michael]

I love setting fire to enemy ships with the fire beam.

[Lauren]

Originally posted by Bravo:

I think Ions (particularly ion blast 2) + beams (despite never actually getting the pair together) will work best.

You get that in Zoltan Cruiser Layout B straight away.