Best weapon

[Lazerz]

Whats the best weapon in the game

[Meewec]

depends on what you need to kill

[Jaydent97]

Originally posted by Meewec:

depends on what you need to kill

Everybody ofcourse ;)

[Meewec]

Originally posted by Jaydent97:

Originally posted by Meewec:

depends on what you need to kill

Everybody ofcourse ;)

well, different size weapons are better at killing different size ships. the smaller weapons have better chances to hit so they're good for small ships while the bigger weapons chew through health much faster.

some weapons are better at killing shields, some are better at killing armor and some are better at killing hull. some weapons have armor/shield penetration so they ignore it.

it all depends on what you're going to be fighting. a fleet designed to fight the unbidden will be vastly different than a fleet designed to fight the prethoryn scourge.

[Jaydent97]

I know, but i dont think the OP knows. Lets say for his sake a AI fleet, a Fallen empire fleet and a unbidden fleet.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

There is no best weapon.
You need a few from every weapon or you are handicapping yourself.

Tho i have yet too see anything beat Arc Emitter spamm.

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by Malaficus Shaikan:

There is no best weapon.
You need a few from every weapon or you are handicapping yourself.

Tho i have yet too see anything beat Arc Emitter spamm.

I have. Arc Emitter damage is very unreliable, their possible damage range is huge, from almost no damage to decent, you don't know what you are going to get per shot. At low tech with little armour and shields, anything else will outdamage it. The key advantage to things like these is they bypass tough high tech defences that other weapons need to chew through. If there is no tough defences, anything else will actually kill faster than disruptors and arcs. So it is all situational.

[Blake Walsh]

Neutron Launchers.

Neutron Launchers do a metric shitton of damage, they have a long cooldown and a whopping damage per hit with a +75% multiplier to hull damage, a single barrage of Neutron Launchers from a Battleship can easily erase another Battleship's hull. This massive burst of hull damage means retreat is unlikely and neutron launchers are unsurpassed for making enemy fleets Just Go Away, permanently.

Neutron Launchers also have long range and high accuracy, combined with the massive damage per hit this means unsurpassed first-strike damage.

There is a good argument for combining Neutron Launchers with the Giga Cannon in the X slot, the Giga Cannon has even longer range and deals even more damage per hit and will help take down shields for the Neutron Launchers.


There is also an argument that the Titan Weapon, the Perdition Beam / Ion Cannon is pretty good, it has absurdly long range and is excellent at making whatever it hits suffer spontaneous existence failure. However you are so limited in how many of these you can deploy that they can hardly count for "best weapon", also they don't enjoy the benefit of repeatable tech damage / fire rate bonuses.

[Dakota]

I'd say the best weapon is Focused Arc Emitters paired up with Cloud Lightning and disruptors if you don't have cloud lightning. Just skip all the enemy's repeatable shield and armor tech, cut right into their hull which reduces their firepower so they end up not even busting past your armor and you've nuked their fleet. It starts out small with disruptor fleets having deceptively small fleet power values and taking out fleets double their size or so, eventually runs up to battleships where you take out the enemy's ships when they either only take out your shields or are absorbed by them.

Take for example someone using Neutron Launchers + Mega Cannons. They fire the mega cannons and take out your shield, you fire your arc emitter and rip their hull in half, they keep getting closer, another volley is fired, their one is already weaker in damage due to lower hull health while yours is still kicking hard, you've likely won before they even get the neutron launchers in range, and if not they won't be doing much good at quarter damage.

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

Originally posted by Dakota:

I'd say the best weapon is Focused Arc Emitters paired up with Cloud Lightning and disruptors if you don't have cloud lightning. Just skip all the enemy's repeatable shield and armor tech, cut right into their hull which reduces their firepower so they end up not even busting past your armor and you've nuked their fleet. It starts out small with disruptor fleets having deceptively small fleet power values and taking out fleets double their size or so, eventually runs up to battleships where you take out the enemy's ships when they either only take out your shields or are absorbed by them.

Take for example someone using Neutron Launchers + Mega Cannons. They fire the mega cannons and take out your shield, you fire your arc emitter and rip their hull in half, they keep getting closer, another volley is fired, their one is already weaker in damage due to lower hull health while yours is still kicking hard, you've likely won before they even get the neutron launchers in range, and if not they won't be doing much good at quarter damage.

Except for the fact that they will do full damage for as long as their ship exists, hull damage drops rate of fire not damage per shot.

[Danny]

My battleships tend to go Giga cannon, 2x Kinetic artillery and 2x Neutron launchers.
While stacking as much tracking as possible.

The kinetics kill shields, the neutrons kill armour and they both kill hull.

[Dakota]

Originally posted by Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia:

Originally posted by Dakota:

I'd say the best weapon is Focused Arc Emitters paired up with Cloud Lightning and disruptors if you don't have cloud lightning. Just skip all the enemy's repeatable shield and armor tech, cut right into their hull which reduces their firepower so they end up not even busting past your armor and you've nuked their fleet. It starts out small with disruptor fleets having deceptively small fleet power values and taking out fleets double their size or so, eventually runs up to battleships where you take out the enemy's ships when they either only take out your shields or are absorbed by them.

Take for example someone using Neutron Launchers + Mega Cannons. They fire the mega cannons and take out your shield, you fire your arc emitter and rip their hull in half, they keep getting closer, another volley is fired, their one is already weaker in damage due to lower hull health while yours is still kicking hard, you've likely won before they even get the neutron launchers in range, and if not they won't be doing much good at quarter damage.

Except for the fact that they will do full damage for as long as their ship exists, hull damage drops rate of fire not damage per shot.

Lower rate of fire? Wow that's way more powerful than I expected. This means that you fire your first shot, and they do theirs but when you fire your second they are incapable of firing theirs quick enough, letting you get a free shot on them, increasing their reload time more and/or killing more of their ships so they fire less at you.

Absolutely brutal, not even going to be tempted by tachyon lances anymore.

[Othobrithol]

I think a mixed fleet does better in more varied situations, but there is something to be said for the arc emitter/disruptor fleet. I'd skip the cloud lightning though, the damage is just not high enough compared to a disruptor. Good early but not late.

Sadly, strike craft just continue to underperform even though they are very fun to watch. Better than they used to be but that's not saying much. The animae grow restless.

The power of corvette spam remains the bane of this game's balance.

[MagnusCerebrum]

Giga cannons, neutron torps, kinetic artillery and autocannons.

[Markus Reese]

I will say.... Part of me loves mass swarm carrier groups.... Yes yes... point defence counters.... but such fun!

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by twistedmelon:

I will say.... Part of me loves mass swarm carrier groups.... Yes yes... point defence counters.... but such fun!

Same. I know it's inefficient but the visuals are awesome. Pity due to the inefficiency I only use them in games I already won so it's only seen rarely.

All the talk on "best weapon", "arc emitters" and "giga cannon/neutron launchers" all miss a key point, you adjust your loadout against your enemy by upgrading after checking their weaknesses, you do not just build once and leave the fleet alone. Adjusting the loadout is what upgrading is for, which is why having a shipyard on border chokepoints is useful since you can adjust on the spot instead of pulling the fleet back for refit.

As for the penetrating weapons, they fail rather badly against low/mid tech fleets. I had a battleship penetrating weapons fleet mop up a FE before at 2 to 3 odds, yet the same exact fleet died to a regular empire fleet with mid range tech at 1:1. Against lower tech fleets, the penetrating weapons simply have too unreliable a damage range. IIRC Cloud Lightning was 1-135. You can do 135 damage per shot. Or 1 damage. Same with arc emitters 1 to 1700 damage. Very wide variation. On the other hand, things like the Giga cannon does 900-2600, a lot more consistent damage with a guranteed 900 damage.

Penetrating weapons are not useless but like all other weapons, are very situational. They can be god and at the same time, they can be crap. It's all in the enemy you face.