Photonic Torpedoes are pathetic

[MiKye200]

Lol
Very narrow fire arc and terrible accuracy.

I direct my fleet to target a ship.
They fire and there's a very impressive stream of little red photonic torpedoes; and every one of them misses, slightly behind the target, lol.
So I direct my ships to aim at the front of the target and now, after a long delay, my ships fire again; some of the torpedoes strike the rear of the enemy ship.
My ships are constantly spinning round and round, trying to keep the target in the narrow fire arc.
It's hilarious to watch.

Meanwhile the enemy is shooting me to bits with humble gauss guns, lol.
I won't be researching these again.

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

They aren't very good against cruisers, and totally ineffective vs destroyers, specifically because of the accuracy issue. On the other hand, they will almost never miss when shooting at a dreadnaught. The base photonic torpedoes still aren't that great, but their upgraded varients are very good to spectacular in the late game DN era.

[Mordachai]

Or run my BSOTS mod - they become accurate.

the vanilla game treated them as a non-targetting weapon - I fixed that. They can miss in the same way that a plasma bolt can - but not in the "can't hit a barn at 10 paces" way the native game did.

[unkn0wnx]

Try Kelvinic and Mesonic torpedoes. Those two are very good against Dreadnoughts. Kelvinic plus cutting beams are deadly. Don't use photonic, Gluonic is the worst that I will use.

[MiKye200]

Originally posted by unkn0wnx:

Try Kelvinic and Mesonic torpedoes. Those two are very good against Dreadnoughts. Kelvinic plus cutting beams are deadly. Don't use photonic, Gluonic is the worst that I will use.

Unfortunately, Photonic Torpedoes were the end of that tree, playing as Humans.
Also, no Shield tech, so I restarted only to see no Data Synergy for leadership tech in the C3 tree in my next game.
So, restarted again.
The random tech tree can be brutal.

[unkn0wnx]

Gluonic and kelvinic have fusion as prerequisite. You can't get it in fission era. Mesonic is Anti matter era. You should get to fusion around turn 75-100?
Human has second best chances with direct fire torpedoes, only worse than Morrigi.

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

Originally posted by MiKye200:

Also, no Shield tech, so I restarted only to see no Data Synergy for leadership tech in the C3 tree in my next game.
So, restarted again.
The random tech tree can be brutal.

Data synergy is a core tech that is always researchable. You must not have had the prerequisite cruiser construction tech.

Shields are by no means a requirement for winning the game. The only factions that are particularly likely to get good shields are the dolphins and the crows.

I would suggest you stop just restarting the game everytime you don't roll a tech that you think is necessery to win. It isn't.

[Sniperski]

If I have the possiblity I always research the torp tree as humans, mesonics are a fantastic weapon, they also have a big perk that not everybody knows, they are the only energy wepon that can penetrate meson shields. Some crow and dolphin players will try to rush meson shields in late game in order to create 'invincible' cruisers, they melt like snow in front of a blowtorch once they meet human mesonic dreads.