What is the best spinal mount in 1.8?

[The Shadow Rose]

I have always used a giga cannon and maxed kinetic artillary late game with only building battleships but since 1.8 im finding that the extra range destroys fleets quick but once you close in on them a bit and say i have a fleet of 500k - 800k fighting one say 60% of my power i should slaughter them like i would with corvettes early on if i had just 20% more but im finding that they dont seem to slaughter like they used to.

Thus i must ask the question of should i change the spinal mount and if so what to? Also i know about making cruisers for flak artillary but when you have a million fleet and at least half the galaxy where all the ais had advanced starts on insane and high agression you stop caring about going even with your fleet sizes and just want an insta wipe of theirs if you jump in on them.

At least i do.

[mcsproot]

Arc Emitters I'm pretty sure.

They never miss and wholly bypass armour and shields.

[Tjordas]

Originally posted by mcsproot:

Arc Emitters I'm pretty sure.

They never miss and wholly bypass armour and shields.

Assuming they deal their full damage. Their DPS + shield and armor penetration sound nice, but if you're unlucky, arc emitters could fire 10 shots with two-digit damage values. In order to safely approach the average DPS, they would have to fire very often - but X slots just don't fire very rapidly. The longer the fight and the more battleships, the less margin for error. In every other case, you might deal only crits, or only shoot cotton balls.

[mcsproot]

Originally posted by Tjordas:

Originally posted by mcsproot:

Arc Emitters I'm pretty sure.

They never miss and wholly bypass armour and shields.

Assuming they deal their full damage. Their DPS + shield and armor penetration sound nice, but if you're unlucky, arc emitters could fire 10 shots with two-digit damage values. In order to safely approach the average DPS, they would have to fire very often - but X slots just don't fire very rapidly. The longer the fight and the more battleships, the less margin for error. In every other case, you might deal only crits, or only shoot cotton balls.

If you factor in any shield reduction on Lances, or hitting high armour targets with Giga Cannons, and also factoring in misses, Arc Emitters still come out on top on average.

You say you might be unluck if they constantly do very low damage. You could also be unlucky and have your Giga Cannons miss several times in a row.

The fact they can't miss and they totally ignore armour and shields is what makes up for the high damage variance.

If you have 50 Battleships with Arc Emitters, odds are in your favour. They do tail off towards the end of a fight when shields are low, but on the opening volley they are devastating.

[Tjordas]

Originally posted by mcsproot:

Originally posted by Tjordas:

Assuming they deal their full damage. Their DPS + shield and armor penetration sound nice, but if you're unlucky, arc emitters could fire 10 shots with two-digit damage values. In order to safely approach the average DPS, they would have to fire very often - but X slots just don't fire very rapidly. The longer the fight and the more battleships, the less margin for error. In every other case, you might deal only crits, or only shoot cotton balls.

If you factor in any shield reduction on Lances, or hitting high armour targets with Giga Cannons, and also factoring in misses, Arc Emitters still come out on top on average.

You say you might be unluck if they constantly do very low damage. You could also be unlucky and have your Giga Cannons miss several times in a row.

The fact they can't miss and they totally ignore armour and shields is what makes up for the high damage variance.

If you have 50 Battleships with Arc Emitters, odds are in your favour. They do tail off towards the end of a fight when shields are low, but on the opening volley they are devastating.

You actually have a point there...

Excuse me, I need to redesign my ships.

[mcsproot]

Originally posted by Tjordas:

Originally posted by mcsproot:

If you factor in any shield reduction on Lances, or hitting high armour targets with Giga Cannons, and also factoring in misses, Arc Emitters still come out on top on average.

You say you might be unluck if they constantly do very low damage. You could also be unlucky and have your Giga Cannons miss several times in a row.

The fact they can't miss and they totally ignore armour and shields is what makes up for the high damage variance.

If you have 50 Battleships with Arc Emitters, odds are in your favour. They do tail off towards the end of a fight when shields are low, but on the opening volley they are devastating.

You actually have a point there...

Excuse me, I need to redesign my ships.

I recall reading somewhere else that in prolonged battles, Arc Emitters don't do so well due to the randomness of their damage and that later on most ships are missing shields if they don't have Shield Capacitors.

But like I said, early on they are brutal as those Hyper Shields and Shield Capacitors and high Evasion stats count for NOTHING. Tachyon Lances would win out against the Scourge due to them lacking shields, thus half the bonus of Arc Emitters is negated.

[corisai]

Originally posted by mcsproot:

The fact they can't miss and they totally ignore armour and shields is what makes up for the high damage variance.

If you have 50 Battleships with Arc Emitters, odds are in your favour. They do tail off towards the end of a fight when shields are low, but on the opening volley they are devastating.

Typical mistake actually - to look on single weapon stat ingnoring fleet completely.

In same time arcs do nothing at all to increase efficiency of other guns aboard. Their basic dps is low (and very random).

In fact they work well only vs FE ships. For two reasons :

a) FE ships contain massive amount of damage (and score) in single ship because of insane bonues. Killing even one count and help you a lot.

b) FE have insane bonuses to armor&shied making your weapons quite pathetic against them (without impossible to have 4-5 levels of repeated).

In equal fleet fights balance still in favor of Tachyon & KA combo (their synergy still work). Against crisis event arcs not that good too.

[The Shadow Rose]

Hmm >.> my battleships are averaging 40% hit ratio with max tech against other maxed tech with giga cannons hitting 70% of the time and kinetic hitting 40. Maybe i should be changing kinetic. Every ai seems to be going on full shields and no extra armor at all in my game. Its a bit annoying to have every single empire that makes up half the galaxy in a single federation though -.-

[Scarface One]

Are the Arc Emitters like the "Little Doctor" from Ender's Game? I can TOTALLY see how these would come in handy, but the RNG damage kinda worries me. It would be effective and pretty cool to see it be like the "Little Doctor". Honestly I prefer the Tachyon Lance just for the "Macross" feels.

[The Shadow Rose]

After trying out the focused arc emitters i can say they are far better then giga cannons and with the extra range trait on a admiral at 250k they will wipe another fleet of equal size with next to no losses vs the giga cannon which will lose a min of 10 - 20%

And thats just with range if you jump in on a fleet everything dies lol.

I cant believe how insanely better the arcs are in a fleet battle.

[corisai]

Originally posted by The Shadow Rose:

After trying out the focused arc emitters i can say they are far better then giga cannons

Giga cannons were almost whole time inferior. So nothing surprising here :)

Test it against KA+tachyons synergy.

[Alugere]

I have found them to be terrific against the contingency, as well. The main thing, though, is you have to build your battleships right or have them as artillary support for cruisers.

If I can get them, I love to slap a pair of the medium lightning weapons you pull from void clouds onto the rear portion of the battleship. While weak against shields, they make a great anti-corvette weapon as they also have perfect accuracy and tracking.

[jacobellinger]

Originally posted by Tjordas:

Originally posted by mcsproot:

Arc Emitters I'm pretty sure.

They never miss and wholly bypass armour and shields.

Assuming they deal their full damage. Their DPS + shield and armor penetration sound nice, but if you're unlucky, arc emitters could fire 10 shots with two-digit damage values. In order to safely approach the average DPS, they would have to fire very often - but X slots just don't fire very rapidly. The longer the fight and the more battleships, the less margin for error. In every other case, you might deal only crits, or only shoot cotton balls.

much MUCH later in game they become more viable because of repeating tech for energy woepon fire rate.

[Rin]

Originally posted by jacobellinger:

Originally posted by Tjordas:

Assuming they deal their full damage. Their DPS + shield and armor penetration sound nice, but if you're unlucky, arc emitters could fire 10 shots with two-digit damage values. In order to safely approach the average DPS, they would have to fire very often - but X slots just don't fire very rapidly. The longer the fight and the more battleships, the less margin for error. In every other case, you might deal only crits, or only shoot cotton balls.

much MUCH later in game they become more viable because of repeating tech for energy woepon fire rate.

And you can always even out the percentege of high damage shots with the arc emitter by having many of those firing. I like to use them when I have big battleship fleets and had some very good effects with them.

[The Shadow Rose]

Originally posted by Rin:

Originally posted by jacobellinger:

much MUCH later in game they become more viable because of repeating tech for energy woepon fire rate.

And you can always even out the percentege of high damage shots with the arc emitter by having many of those firing. I like to use them when I have big battleship fleets and had some very good effects with them.

Eh i never do anything besides a spinal mount and all kinetic artillery on my battleships and i go all battleships with no lower ships since im always drowning in so many minerals by that point that i can basically insta rebuild a 3000k fleet on 100 planets in a few years.

Its awesome knowing how good the arcs are though >.> i always used gigas since they seemed to be the best since the game start till the last patch.

That being said though i did discover the dissapointingness of corvettes with 400 shields and 90% evasion the hard way on my current game as fanatical purifiers where i didnt see the battleship tech till year 120 -,-

[corisai]

Originally posted by The Shadow Rose:

Eh i never do anything besides a spinal mount and all kinetic artillery on my battleships

Without plasma cannons? You're shooting into yourself (except some crisis events obliviously) :)

Originally posted by Rin:

And you can always even out the percentege of high damage shots with the arc emitter by having many of those firing. I like to use them when I have big battleship fleets and had some very good effects with them.

Actually more arcs you're have - they start more and more act like should (math-based).

That mean with a LOT of arcs their average dps became abysmal (compared with tachyons).

Sure, full shield pen (because tachyons effective ignore armor too) seem convincing... until you will remember that your BB aren't made only from X-sized slots and sum of dps of conventional guns far greater then from X-guns.

Again, nothing notable changed in BB vs BB combat for a long time.

Arcs are eglible weapon choice only vs FE/AE and inferior against everything else of similiar power with your fleet (yean, against something like unbidden better use gigas to help bring entire fleet damage faster then snipe a small pack of enemies).

Don't overrate them.