Is cloud lightening good for anything?

[Kalemenos]

Killed some void clouds, now I have Cloud Lightening. Supposed to be good for hull attack (100% penetration both shield and armor). But when I engage in combat, I carefully look at the stats after the battle, and the cloud lightening weapon... if it did 1% of all the damage to the hull, it's a miracle. Is there a time, place, enemy, situation, etc., where this weapon is any good?

[felmari]

Basically disrupters for large amounts. Disrupters and lightning bypass shields and armor but have lowish damage output and range. They can be good still though just because it bypasses both those defences but generally you want to go all in.

[Ryika]

Cloud Lightning doesn't really have a use case when it comes to optimized weapons loadouts, but they're not "1% of all damage to the hull"-kind of bad so not sure what loadout you were running there.

If you want to use them, stack only bypass weapons, as combining full-bypass weapons with normal weapons makes no sense - bypass weapons pay for their ability to bypass with a sharp decrease in damage, so all bypass or nothing.

Which means Arc Emitter + Cloud Lightning on Artillery battleships. Again not a "good" combination, but good enough against the AI, and gives the best light show you can have in the unmodded game.

[HappySack]

They're very niche and generally not worth using as the short range and relatively low damage are pretty serious drawbacks.

There are situations where you can mass them to beat Fallen Empire fleets quickly but again this is niche.

[mss73055]

Try them with stealthy destroyers: artillery bow, picket/interceptor stern, picket computer.
This also works with the crisis variant.

[Big mean bunny]

As Happysack said. Basically if you are running pure disruptor and need a L slot filled they are ok especially if you are running cordyceptic. But as general slots go that give you M or S slots you might be better off with other alternatives like fighters.