Best weapons

[voxdei20]

So far the only good weapons i've found are the phasers and missiles. Everything else seems to be too heavy for the amount of damage they do when compairing them to phasers. I haven't got the deathray yet so i'm not sure about that (but the amount of damage the guardian does to me seems to suggest it's awesome if it works as well for me as it does for him). Have you guys found any better weapons that you prefer?

[thehive123]

Try plasma ray.
It's kind of new. Was implemented in EA3.

But since I do not think (hope) the balancing of weapons and ship systems is finished yet, I recomend to not to bother too much with it for now.

[GM Pax]

Khanate does best with beams, that jiggers things somewhat.

[Ninjafroggie]

Disruptors are pretty good. If you're going to build an energy weapon build ship, you HAVE to have hyper-x capaciters

[voxdei20]

Why disruptors? you can fit 3 phasors on for the space of a disruptor and 3 phasors do more damage than a disruptor. This is why i can't figure out why you'd use anything other than a phasor untill you hit deathrays as the phasors damage per size is better than everything else as far as i can tell.

[Ninjafroggie]

Originally posted by voxdei20:

Why disruptors? you can fit 3 phasors on for the space of a disruptor and 3 phasors do more damage than a disruptor. This is why i can't figure out why you'd use anything other than a phasor untill you hit deathrays as the phasors damage per size is better than everything else as far as i can tell.

2 reasons: higher range and damage that is not reduced by range. At max distance the phasor will suffer a 50% dropoff in damage simply because of range, and then the shields can soak 10 more of that dmg with absorbtion. This means that a phasor which does 80 damage on paper only does 30 dmg per shot effective at 50 units range (80 dmg * 0.5(range) - 10 (class x shield). Conversely, the disruptor is not reduced by range, so even at the max range of 60 it is still delivering 170 effective dmg to the target (after shield absorb). This means that my 170 dmg from max range is worth the same as 5.5 - 6 phasors (plus I get first shot...range advantage, remember?), and thats a problem because you cant fit 6x as many phasors in the space of the disruptor, you can only fit 3x as many.

Now, at closer range the math looks different, but in a 1 v 1 encounter my disruptor BBs will defeat your phasor BBs every time because I'm going to do enough damage to kill any BB (even my own) with my opening salvo, and phasor armed BBs simply cannot match that kind of damage output at range.

[Doombringer]

There is a post on the main game forum with weapon stats, apparently ion pulse beam is great for how early it is unlocked. (1.33 damage/second/space)

Death Ray is the best weapon now though. (2.5 damage/second/space)

Also the disruptor vs phasor thing: warp displacement device is a thing.

[GM Pax]

Originally posted by Ninjafroggie:

At max distance the phasor will suffer a 50% dropoff in damage simply because of range, and then the shields can soak 10 more of that dmg with absorbtion. This means that a phasor which does 80 damage on paper only does 30 dmg per shot effective at 50 units range (80 dmg * 0.5(range) - 10 (class x shield). Conversely, the disruptor is not reduced by range, so even at the max range of 60 it is still delivering 170 effective dmg to the target (after shield absorb). This means that my 170 dmg from max range is worth the same as 5.5 - 6 phasors (plus I get first shot...range advantage, remember?), and thats a problem because you cant fit 6x as many phasors in the space of the disruptor, you can only fit 3x as many.

You're assuming a 100% chance to hit.

Factor in even a 30% chance to miss, and having more guns begins to look better than having bigger guns. :)

[Ninjafroggie]

Originally posted by GM Pax:

Originally posted by Ninjafroggie:

At max distance the phasor will suffer a 50% dropoff in damage simply because of range, and then the shields can soak 10 more of that dmg with absorbtion. This means that a phasor which does 80 damage on paper only does 30 dmg per shot effective at 50 units range (80 dmg * 0.5(range) - 10 (class x shield). Conversely, the disruptor is not reduced by range, so even at the max range of 60 it is still delivering 170 effective dmg to the target (after shield absorb). This means that my 170 dmg from max range is worth the same as 5.5 - 6 phasors (plus I get first shot...range advantage, remember?), and thats a problem because you cant fit 6x as many phasors in the space of the disruptor, you can only fit 3x as many.

You're assuming a 100% chance to hit.

Factor in even a 30% chance to miss, and having more guns begins to look better than having bigger guns. :)

let's do the math. Disruptors take roughly 3x-4x the space of phasors.
3 disruptors x 33% miss x shield dmg reduction = 2 disruptors hit for 340 dmg
9 phasors x 33% miss x dmg reducing factors = 6 hits for 180 dmg
12 phasors x 33% miss x dmg reducing factors = 8 hits for 240 dmg
Adding in the miss chance does not change the math. Disruptors still have far more effective dmg output at max range than equivalent space worth of phasors, AND I still get to shoot first. My battleships typically carry 140 disruptor cannons if I dont have death rays available...thats 140 x 33% miss = ~93 hits for 15,810 dmg on my opening volley before the phasor-armed ship even gets to fire back. That is enough damage to kill any BB except a pure tank build, and if you built a pure tank, my second salvo will still kill you and your first salvo will definietly NOT kill me.

[voxdei20]

That definatlly makes the disruptor look a lot better. I didn't realize the damage reduction was so much. Unfortunatly the game doesn't really give you any information about that and i can't find a wiki that explains all this.