Best weapons early game

[Lazerz]

So i only have a few hours and i know nuke misslies arnt good and coil guns and lasers are okay but what is better? i have the chance to get plasma thrower but i dont know if it is really good?

[Seaghauwn]

im pretty sure the plasma thrower deals bonus armour and hull damage i'd say get it

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Whatever has most hull damage is good. Just understand that you need to add something else to the mix to compensate for the weak point of said weapon.

[Red Dox]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=911980839

[Malaficus Shaikan]

From personal experiance:
Early game: 5 lasers, 5 drives, 5 missle, 5 anti missle.

This will slaughter entire fleets.
If you are lazy you can make an anti missle laser driver ship. Not as effective but still effective.

The best weapons are a combination of driver and lasers.
Fighters get shot down, missle get intercepted, plasma and disrupters do crap damage.

Sheer overwhelming firepower>Exotic weaponry.

[Cryten]

Early game I would only have 2 ships in a 20 fleet with PD for taking down the missile from star bases. I would not field any more PD unless you know your enemy is wielding missiles or fighter bays. Avoid missiles at all costs. The AI tends to field PD in their early designs so you will loose a good deal of effective firepower.

Focus on simple lasers and coil guns with shields and armour evenly mixed early on. You can convert to auto-cannons for corvette killing if your aggressive early and get lucky on research. Just beware that a shield heavy empire could roll over this design. Plasma throwers are okay for extra hull damage but armor heavy builds are more common then shield heavy builds so tends to get countered alot.

[corisai]

Best early game weapon is energy siphon.

[corisai]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Red Dox:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=911980839

Please don't share this non-sense and bad "guide". For example just in 30 sec I found two crap advices:
1) mixed fleet including cruisers
2) autoncannons in endgame

[Minoris]

Oprindeligt skrevet af corisai:

Please don't share this non-sense and bad "guide". For example just in 30 sec I found two crap advices:
1) mixed fleet including cruisers
2) autoncannons in endgame

And in 5 seconds I found...
"DISCLAIMER: The following information, opinions and builds are my own personal view of the game.
I do not claim my builds to be the "best meta" builds or anything like this, I simply share what works for me"

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Oprindeligt skrevet af corisai:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Red Dox:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=911980839

Please don't share this non-sense and bad "guide". For example just in 30 sec I found two crap advices:
1) mixed fleet including cruisers
2) autoncannons in endgame

Write your own ;)
Not like there's alternative for people to share anyway.

[corisai]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Minoris:

And in 5 seconds I found...
"DISCLAIMER: The following information, opinions and builds are my own personal view of the game.
I do not claim my builds to be the "best meta" builds or anything like this, I simply share what works for me"

Auto-design may work too. So?

His guide in players guides and don't marked as "pure-RP", still he's advicing to include cruisers in fleet. How many major releases cruisers are too nerfed and don't worth their cost in SP? Since 1.9.x? Maybe even since 1.8.x (unsure about it).

Why he can't just NOTE that cruisers are mostly crap and mono-fleets, while he prefer own way? Just a single statement - and new player will get important info.

Autocannons have horrible drawback (esp in endgame) - again why not mention it?

Battleships aren't "specific niche". They pawn all other ships and only mass torpedo vettes are threat to them (in theory stike craft too, but strike craft carriers are BB&cruisers, both are very vulnerable to alpha strike of mono-BB stack).

See? I don't discuss his weapon loadouts as it's really just a personal preference (while they can be improved too), but lack of fundamental info.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Oprindeligt skrevet af corisai:

he's advicing to include cruisers in fleet. How many major releases cruisers are too nerfed and don't worth their cost in SP? Since 1.9.x? Maybe even since 1.8.x (unsure about it).

Nerfed or not, cruisers still work pretty well, until battleships start to appear in numbers.

[zambies1]

Is ship spam and auto upgrade viable

[corisai]

Oprindeligt skrevet af HugsAndSnuggles:

Write your own ;)

How you'd known that I still not finished my comparison between KA & NT? o_O (well, actually almost done the math, but too lazy to check are KA sticky enough to finish shieldless ships or still try to spread damage).

Oprindeligt skrevet af HugsAndSnuggles:

Nerfed or not, cruisers still work pretty well, until battleships start to appear in numbers.

Yean. But I mention SP on purpose :) In singleplayer often you will be able to skip them entirely (battleship tech is sooo close, only X-sized weapon can provide some issues to get). Ofk it's demand a lot on your economy and political situation.

Oprindeligt skrevet af zambies1:

Is ship spam and auto upgrade viable

Ship spam? It's a way to victory for anyone. Just be sure to spam right ships - for example aside from Swarm crisis & FE fight you don't need a lot of PD.
Auto-upgrade? Sure.
Auto-design? Partially (if you would beeline "bad" techs that AI so love - it will build more or less capable ships).

[Luna Chungus]

Oprindeligt skrevet af corisai:

2) autoncannons in endgame

Why the hate for late game autocannons?

[corisai]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Luna Senpai:

Why the hate for late game autocannons?

They have very high RoF, very low damage and bonus vs hull on top on vs shield. So they will happily try to "finish" enemy ships (including capitals).

And each hit that don't destroying ship since XX % of it's hp (don't remember it and too lazy to dig game files :P) will trigger a roll to retreat.

So practical result of having a lot of autocannons in your fleet will be many enemy ships retreated but not destroyed. This may hurt you a lot, especially if you're in several wars in one time (for example via War in Heavens).

P.S. In early game it's less notable as most of wars are quite short and enemy don't have chance to repair & rebuild his fleet.