What are some ideal starting-the-endgame weapons?

[Blind]

I'm just not having any luck with the SAR40

[newk657]

I recommend thermo missiles. If you've equipped any launchers, you'll be able to get thermo ammo for any of them from Commonwealth Fortresses and Commonwealth Star Carriers (CSCs). These stations always produce ammo which you can buy through dock services.

I would avoid howitzers if you have missiles. Ion blasters are worthwhile, even though they struggle against Rogue Fleet shields. The thermo cannon is good if you can afford the ammo, but against gunships an ion or particle weapon is better suited.

Luminous drones have shields which may resist any one of blast, particle, thermo and ion damage. You will need to be able to switch damage types with your weapons unless you get a plasma, positron or antimatter weapon.

Level 6: JB2 shield buster MAG (good for luminous drones and other gunships.)

Level 7: Thermo cannon, XM900 lucifer missiles, 3K siege MAGs, Red Strelka missiles, Light ion blaster, Xenophobe ion lancer, Katana star cannon. Any level 7 particle weapon does OK.

Level 8: TM7 multitarget cannon, 98R high-flux MAGs, Rasiermesser launcher + Gotha-10 missiles, ion blaster

Level 9: Gotha-400 seekers (good against Phobos), advanced tritium cannon (good against everything), Omni or Heavy ion blaster, NAMI heavy launcher + missiles

[Blind]

Ok, I'm in Heretic and I failed pretty dang hard so everyone is dead... what do I do now? I destroyed 2 Iocrym bases, so I assume there's a third but I can't find it.

I remmeber a long time ago I just had to grind Senintels until a data chip dropped, but IDK

edit: of course, I remember a long LONG time ago where the enemy was a different Iocrym ship and you just had to kill it

[Blind]

There, I managed to win with the Dual Fusionfire... it didn't have enough DPS to keep the Sentinal reinforcements down... but then I remembered that reinforcements are reinforcements so I killed all but one. I also found a Thermo booster which made the whole thing even possible.

In the end it took a Strengthened Shatter to knock down the Command Ship, but I did it... first victory of the version where the Command Ship even exists... of course, that took 11 resurrections since I donked up the Ronin-Chimera quest. (that's where I lost Permadeath)

...

In retrospect the Omni-turbolaser is probably the best weapon in the game. You can get it in the first sector and it lasts well unti Ringer space. It devastates lighter Sungs like nothing.

Defensively I was practically invincible against reasonable threats (not 5000 Ronin-Chimeras), +50% Advanced Novoya with a +50% Novaya Repairer... I daresay it's even mightier than light iocrym armour.


Next playthough I need to rely less on the Kartal launcher... it's good until just after St. Kat, then bases have too much HP/Blast resist - but it's still among the best until then due to the low cost of missiles. (although Drake farming for Longbows might be better)

...

I lucked out and outright FOUND an Omni-Ion somewhere and Domina boosted it up 40%. It's great at destroying all the trash you would want an Omni for like swarms of Sandstorms/Ranx/Centurions... but even then, the smallest capital ships require some WMD.

I think I might try out an Accelerated Morningstar run, since it has more freak chanced to hit those non-noncriticals.



EDIT: Also, it was really weird having no money, but once the Sentinel farm started (it took 65 of them to get the Heretic keys) I was sundenly a millionaire, both in credits and Rin.

[Blind]

In any case: I'd call the Dual Fusionfire the "bare minimum" to beat the game... if it can be done lower, then I merely lack talent/strategy, if it's considered to be too low, then I'm happy I did it.

[Luke]

interesting that none of the archcannons are on the list of recommended weapons.

I have not played through to the new ending yet, but I beat the previous Iocrym ship with the Quianlong and some scrambler cubes and domina powers. Never got the other archcannons.

I typically play with omni's, because I suck as a pilot. IM90 is amazing, but often by the time you get it, guys are Ion resistant so Omni Tev9 is often better. Maybe it depends on enhancements.

For base-cracking, and when facing the really big ships (especially the old end-game ship) I found direct fire weapons were needed for their extra punch. Whatever has the highest WMD rating, typically.

[TooMuchAbstraction]

The Qianlong Archcannon doesn't really scale that well; sure the damage is unresisted but there isn't much of it. The Lamplighter is better but pretty power-hungry. The Ares Plasma Archcannon is simply too hard to get your hands on to be a recommended weapon.

If you want an easy-mode win, order a thermo shell nanofac, a lithium booster, and a bunch of tritium injectors from the Corporate Trading Posts, then get either a standard thermo cannon or an omni thermo cannon. The thermo cannons are balanced (in terms of DPS, power cost, etc.) around being limited by ammo, but the nanofac removes that constraint and makes them ridiculously good. Being able to stack up to +200% damage on them is borderline cheating. You do have the issue that the only good lategame launchers all also deal thermo damage, but honestly with a setup like this you don't really need a launcher. I like the Makayev with Black Strelkas because of the shiny explosions and crowd control, but it does cause a lot of slowdown.