Imperium Weapons Overview and Shields

[Imperial Tuba]

My goal here is to share what I know and be filled in on the things I don't yet understand or may not even be aware of.

So the big categories for the Imperium's ship-to-ship weapons, as I understand it, are Lances, Macro weapons, and Plasma Macro weapons. I guess there's also torpedoes and Nova cannons, but I consider those more as abilities.

Lances: Perfect accuracy, higher chance to cause critical damage. Reduces enemy armor, whatever that means. I think they might have slower reloads than Macro weapons but can't recall off the top of my head. If not, what are the downsides to Lances? So far, they might be my favorite weapons type. Also, as I understand it, Mechanicus Lances are slightly better than the ones on Imperial Navy or Space Marine ships. Higher crit chance, I think.

Macro Weapons: Seem to be the general purpose weapons for Imperium ships. Same range as Lances, but with degrading accuracy over range. Less armor penetration. Good for ships that want to get in close to brawl by delivering broadsides.

Plasma Macro: Biggest difference I can tell between these and regular macro weapons is twice the range. Haven't really used any ships with them yet. While extra range sounds nice, they still take the penalty for longer shots, so not sure if it adds up in the end. If there was an 'anti-shield' weapon, I would have guessed these were it by name alone, but I haven't seen anything to indicate that they're any more or less effective.

Shields: Aside from being the first thing to degrade before you start taking damage to your hull, I'm not sure what else shields offer when they're active. As far as I can tell, you're still able to launch boarding actions on shielded ships. What's the difference when your shield bar is blue vs purple? Haven't picked up on that yet.

Boarding: I remember reading a post saying that boarding was a useless mechanic. Not sure that I agree, but I don't know enough about the raw numbers that factor into it. I usually just take the opportunity to launch Lighting Strikes or Boarding Assaults when I notice my ships are in range to do so. Also not too savvy on the difference between using the Lighting Strike vs the regular Boarding Assault abilities. I'm guessing the better range of the Lightning Strike may come at the cost of a less effective boarding overall. But I also know there are some commander abilities that have good synergy with the Lightning Strike ability.

Anyways, feel free to correct me if I'm off on my understanding of any of the weapon types or abilities.

[Tommy Gray x Land Raider]

Boarding can be useful against certain factions or when achieving either a mission or bonus objective. Once the enemy's troop step drops to yellow, they suffer 1 system critical, dropping down to red troop step deals 2 system criticals and/or 1 system destroyed (if deck, generators, or engines are targeted). At drifting hulk, the ship is inoperable and suffers 3 system criticals; the enemy may use up their assault cooldown to transfer troops to it.

Shields: purple means shield are offline and recharging, blue means shields are active and prevent lightning strikes. Certain attacks, such as bombers, torpedoes, necron gauss particle whips, and tyranid bio-plasma will pierce through shields and are no less capable of dealing critical hits. The Advanced Shield Pattern upgrade improves experience level 3 ships survivability by giving 25 armor to shields.

Some Plasma macro guns do less damage than some regular macro guns, but the range makes it helpful in wearing down enemy shields. Both regular and plasma macro guns pack bigger punch at very close range once you activate Armor-Piercing Ammunition upgrade.

Lances tend to have a lower close range dps than macro cannons and while they are precise, they can miss the target if the trajectory is blocked by space debris or another enemy ship.

Torpedoes: three types of torpedoes; regular torpedoes that do good burst damage, imperial navy melta torpedoes that damage hull and morale over time, and Adeptus Astartes boarding torpedoes that can do good troop damage. Melta torpedoes tend to be nullified by ships using emergency repairs and are best used on ships that recently used a command skill (emergency repairs, rally, encouraging speech, scanner, call to arms, etc.). Melta torpedoes are completely useless against necrons, but can be a menace to tyranids.

Nova cannon: found on a few Imperial Navy starships and medium to large Adeptus Mechanicus line ships, the nova cannon, after a delay, causes an area explosion that damages shields/hull and morale of those in the blast. The nova cannon on mechanicus ships also has a gravity shot that does no damage but slows down enemy ships in the area. The standard explosive shot, with proper anticipation and placement, will put the hurt on unshielded vessels, especially Aeldari/Eldar and Necron ships.

[Spicy Camel]

Macros do more damage than lances at typical Imperial Navy engagement ranges. Most of your broadside lances are also only medium range, which kinda defeats the purpose (100% accuracy at huge ranges). Ships with broadside lances are cheaper than their all-macro counterparts for a reason.

Plasma macro is just a macro with more range and less damage. Accuracy is terrible at ranges unavailable for normal macros anyway. I'd pick normal macro any day, but plasma ones are preset in many good ships, not much can be done about it.

Imperial boarding is not crazy strong, but again as short range faction you have no reason not to use it. Another aspect - if you put enough boarding charges on target (typically around 10), AI will use "call to arms", halving troop damage, but making ship ineffective in combat and unable to use skills. So you can for example board admiral ship to prevent it using rally.

Last thing not mentioned yet are rams. Most cruiser+ ships have ramming spurs and they are not decorative elements. Ramming does significant hull and morale damage, its good strategy to follow point blank torpedo salvo with all ahead full + brace for impact -> ram.
Should be used with caution against higher class and/or heavy armored ships though.

[Emphyrio]

Lances have lower DPS than macros but the 25 armor reduction is huge. Against a target with 83% armor like space marines, the lance is doing almost 2.5x as much damage as it would if it wasn't armor piercing. Even against thin 50% armor it's doing 1.5x damage. Ideally you would kill shields with macros and the hull with lances, but in reality that's hard to do cleanly with the way most ships weapons are arranged.

Adeptus plasma macros have a significantly higher accuracy than IN and are quite impressive even at the max range. The Lock-On stance is very good with low-accuracy weapons.

[Imperial Tuba]

Appreciate all the replies so far, thanks everyone!

[Koala 4peace]

Originally posted by Emphyrio:

Adeptus plasma macros have a significantly higher accuracy than IN and are quite impressive even at the max range. The Lock-On stance is very good with low-accuracy weapons.

And their lances have a little more punch.

Edit: Ups, OP already mentioned this. My bad.

[Imperial Tuba]

Originally posted by Koala 4peace:

Originally posted by Emphyrio:

Adeptus plasma macros have a significantly higher accuracy than IN and are quite impressive even at the max range. The Lock-On stance is very good with low-accuracy weapons.

And their lances have a little more punch.

Edit: Ups, OP already mentioned this. My bad.

No worries, good to have confirmation on that!

[Ashardalon]

shields main purpose is preventing crits
weapons hitting shields arnt hitting hull, so dont make a crit roll
also cant teleport onto a ship with shields still active
... usually, there are some exceptions to the teleport like nid lictors
but with how weak boarding is those dont matter, the crit preventing is the main purpose

boarding actions reduce the crew number
if you get it down you go to the next layer of crew causing an insignificant reduction in effectiveness, something like 10% in attack speed and boost recovery
also one minor crit, the equivalent of getting shot for 5 seconds
if you get reduced to 0 again you are hulked and you get one perma crit, the equivalent of getting shot for 5 seconds with a little bad luck
then you transfer one crew from another ship and your all fine again along with regaining all morale so by reducing crew you even screw yourself over if your going for a morale focussed build
crew does things, but of all the mechanics in the game it is the weakest and least relevant
except ofcourse for nids who die without crew
so the one faction that should be good with boarding is the only faction that has to fear boarding
orks getting double crits also makes them suffer more from boarding
another close combat faction that should want to get into boarding range but is screwed over by a badly made mechanic

the reason you want to use boarding is because the ai is dumb and will cripple itself to counter the meaningless
just dont ever be fooled into clicking call to arms yourself

[HidesHisFace]

On subject of shields - they are not crazy strong, but they are a line of defense making sure you won't take immediate module damage and crew. No shields = being vulnerable to temporary and permanent status effects.

As for weapons themselves.
Macro weapons:
Macro batteries are your general purpose weaponry, and with proper perks, they become terrifyingly effective at close range.
Plasma macros are largely identical - but they do trade a tiny bit of damage for massive range increase. Sure, their accuracy at long ranges is hot garbage, but it is still damage that will weaken or strip down shields and do some casual hull damage at reasonably safe distances still. It is a good tradeoff.
The reload boosting order affects only macro batteries, so you also have a way of massively improving their damage output. I don't quite remember if Space Marine bombard cannons benefit from that, though.
Generally speaking - macro batteries are bread and butter of imperial vessels - especially Imperial Navy and Marines, slightly less so with Admech.

Lances:
Perfect accuracy, slow rate of fire and generally better chance to disable modules.
The thing is - the damage output is, unfortunately too poor, and imperial lances lack the range to utilise them properly, with exception of very few specific weapons and ships.
For Imperial Navy and Marines - focusing on lances is a bad idea, except maybe the Apocalypse class battleship.
Gothic class cruiser is a trap. It is a horrible ship. 2 Firestorm FRIGATES are cheaper, and have a BETTER firepower at the same range as broadside of Gothic class, for nearly half the cost.

Admech lances... on the other hand. Now we are talking. They may lack the range of the Chaos lances, but they do not trade off any damage, and have superior crit chance to standard imperial lances.
While in Imperial Navy, Gothic class is a trap, in Admech fleet, it is an optimal choice, along with carriers. Generally speaking - you want a broadside boarding if you can help it - but lightning strikes have their niche - when you are chasing the enemy (or running away), or when exposing your own broadside would be risky. Or when deploying this additional tick of crew damage comes in clutch to secure the objective.

Torps - regular torps are always a good choice. Melta torps can also be fantastic, if enemy repair is on cooldown.
Nova cannons also should not be underestimated - massed Nova cannon barrage may be a bit of a cheese, but it is fantastic against horde fleets that would otherwise wipe the floor with your ships.

As for boarding - it is far from useless, but it is not "I win" button either. Well coordinated boarding action can tip the scales in your favour and is a good tool.
Imperial Navy boarders are mediocre. Admech are weak but Space Marine boardding parties are among the top of the line.
Good boarding action is a reliable way to provide permanent debuffs to enemy ships, due to crits and crew attrition rates.
That 10% reload penalty due to crew damage may not seem like much... But it is 10% of every single salvo from the affected ship - and gunnery duels in this game can be rather long - this adds up over time.


There are also strikecraft that you should not forget about.
Imperial strikecraft are generally mediocre and you need to know how to use them. Sending strikecraft alone is a bad idea. Imperial carriers for the most part are battle carriers. You use strikecraft to shield your own ships from enemy bombers and torps, and send your own attack squadrons when enemy has no time to react. When massed, strikecraft can deliver some devastating firepower at very long ranges.
Arguably, Admech are the best imperial subfaction here, purely due to cost-effectiveness of their carriers.

[Ashardalon]

melta torps are pretty disappointing
but vs orks if you can bait out the repair they can pretend to be good
the real target is nids tho, since they have no way to repair
still lack crits, so even in their ideal situation they are worse then the regular torps that can crit

[Imperial Tuba]

Originally posted by Urist:

Gothic class cruiser is a trap. It is a horrible ship. 2 Firestorm FRIGATES are cheaper, and have a BETTER firepower at the same range as broadside of Gothic class, for nearly half the cost.

Uh oh, guess I fell for that one, haha! I've got an Imperial Navy Gothic in my fleet that I love to park in gas clouds with the 'Lock On' stance. With all the other ships, it's hard to tell if it's actually pulling its weight. But hey, at least it looks cool.

[Emphyrio]

The tooltip says that the reload stance works on all "standard" weapons not just macros

[Koala 4peace]

Originally posted by Emphyrio:

The tooltip says that the reload stance works on all "standard" weapons not just macros

That's what the tooltip says. Whether it is actually applied to lance grade weaponry...

Personally i never bothered trying, but a lot of people are convinced that it does not work on lances, so maybe they made the experiment?

[HidesHisFace]

Originally posted by Emphyrio:

The tooltip says that the reload stance works on all "standard" weapons not just macros

The problem is, the tooltip lies - it does NOT apply to lances. The game does not consider lances to be a standard weapon.

I have just checked.

What counts are:
Macro batteries of all sorts
Launch Bays (reload stance cuts down the cooldown from base 60 seconds to 45)
Space Marine bombardment cannons
Chaos missile launchers

[Ashardalon]

lances are weird
the whole unable to miss thing breaks several systems in their engine before they even started building the game

[George W. Kush]

point blank torpedos wont do any damage they have to hit a certain range before activating even says so in their descriptions