Disruptor Battleships and Cruisers

[owlman]

Since I like the mechanics and feeling like a Star Trek villain, I use disruptor fleets. A destroyer with lightning cloud and two s disruptors is a good, solid build. But, I have no idea for larger ships. Should a cruiser have two artillery slots with lightning cloud, or just one lc and a bunch of disruptors? Should battleships have an arc emitter and nothing but lightning clouds, or should I use broadsides for more m disruptors? Titan is easy, just lightning clouds.

[Space Dad]

Most people advise that you build your fleets to whatever you currently need, the shield and armor penetrating weapons are great against fallen empires or anyone with superior defenses, but overall they do less damage then weapons that do bonus damage vs hulls. If you can get a look at your enemies ships, starbases, defense platforms, etc, you can see if they use more shields or armor and what type of weapons they use. I never use point defense unless the enemy has missiles, I use more shields if their weapons are better vs armor, etc etc.

[Pleauser]

balance your load outs for what the enemy has. more pd if they have fighters/missiles in abundance. more large/medium turrets if they have lots of cruisers on up. i use the shield/armor penetration build when i can, it appeals to me - but remain flexible

[Big mean bunny]

A battle ship with an Arc emitter X slot has the same theme and if you don't mind fighter bays you can fill the mid slot with 4 medium disruptors as well. Much more fire power but you keep the feel of the designs. Fly swatter lightning cloud arcs are great early /mid but unless you need energy for say Psi shields I would mount some thing else.....apart from they look so good in battles, they are quite good for base defence though if you are stacking shields :)

[corisai]

1) Cruisers are "poor man battleships" and should be avoided.

2) Battleships with Arc Emitters and Cloud lightings are insanely powerful (especially with AI mod - because with it AI will able to get own repeatables too and since it pen weapons will start to win over "normal" one).

Depending on your desings (access to awesome precog comps + best-ever engimatic decoder) - battleships can get enough tracking with CL to wipe corvettes reliable so... yean, you can end with 100% battleships+single titan fleets.

[corisai]

Originally posted by Big mean bunny:

Fly swatter lightning cloud arcs are great early /mid

You're wrong.
1) They're bad in early/mid game (you lack fleet size to deal with their randomness).
2) They're great in endgame against - FE/AE, Unbidden and Contingency. They average (but NOT bad) even against Swarm - and no other weapon loadouts on same level.
3) They're mediocre at best against vanila "normal empires" (as AI is too dumb to get enough repeatables).
4) BUT - if you're using Glavious AI mod, then AI became more competent and start to push into repeatables itself. Since it penetrating weapons start to develop advantage over "normal" (hp is static, while defences are boosted by repeatables).

[owlman]

Thanks for the advice guys.

As far as cruisers go, yeah, they ain't optimum, but I've had a soft spot for them since Master of Orion 2. Precog picket cruisers with LC and phase disruptors are actually pretty decent. They were the MVPs in a few battles against an Awakened Empire