What are the best weapons?

[Cruul]

New player, so ISDF has a dizzying array of weapons. I've been able to find tables that list various stats but it still isn't obvious to me which weapons are best in which situations, or how to use them optimally. Especially since actual DPS isn't listed or things like time of flight for hitting moving targets and such. Any recommendations on the best go-to weapons for most situations?

[PNB]

It depends mostly on what vehicle you use. Most are limited to 2 or 3 different weapons, but depending on what buildings you have built, you can have additional weapons. If you use the same vehicle most of the time, you'll learn which weapons you like most...that's probably the best way to decide. Personally, I use the tank, armed with chain gun and plasma, even though there are more powerful weapons available to it.

[Aegeis]

Sabre equipped with sp stab and chains is great vs heavy armor if playing in MPI, IA or SP. If playing in strat, you want sp stab and laser, or blast and chains, or pl stab and laser.

For warriors you want arc and gauss, or sonic and gauss in strat, mpi, ia, and sp. You also want blink so you can teleport out of danger.

Rocket tanks you usually want shadower and hornet.

Maulers and Titans are fine the way they are, although sometimes you can put sonic in a titan.

Bulldogs, depends on the situation. For long range attacks and ammo conservation, leave them with plasma. If they are supported with serv trucks, then blast is the go to.

Most of these combinations are the popular choices. Usually in strat the concentration is on human v human dog fighting so any weapon that instant hits is the go to choice, such as arc, gauss, laser, or blast. Most instant hit weapons however are weak vs heavy armor in combat mode, so that's why you usually want them backed up with another weapon that can hurt heavy armor.

[Katherlyn]

FOR ISDF: you're go to for MPI is SP/Chain/MDM/Phantom Vir on sabres and just about anything else. In Strat, usually it's blast/laser or chain sabres with phantom vir.
FOR SCION: it's generally, regardless of game mode, Arc/Gauss/Blink/Deflection or Stasis on warriors and whatever else you can put those guns on. Leaving stock guns on mauler, archer, titan, lancer

[Katherlyn]

Originally posted by jeffkiwi5:

Guns: chain gun or laser (pummel if you want to be weird)

Chain Gun drains ammo but it's easier to aim. Laser is mainly for wrecking scouts and sentries.

Cannons: SP Stabber 90% of the time, because Blast uses too much ammo! Pulse Stab I never use and Plasma (the assault tank's weapon) is only good for range in my opinion.

Put Hornet Missiles on your Rocket Tanks and give Shadower missiles to your Missile Scouts instead of TAG.

Pummel is trash, Chain is much better... and you have to be point blank to do any type of the damage with it and even then it's still trahs.

Originally posted by Hemmingfish:

Originally posted by jeffkiwi5:

Guns: chain gun or laser (pummel if you want to be weird)

Chain Gun drains ammo but it's easier to aim. Laser is mainly for wrecking scouts and sentries.

Cannons: SP Stabber 90% of the time, because Blast uses too much ammo! Pulse Stab I never use and Plasma (the assault tank's weapon) is only good for range in my opinion.

Put Hornet Missiles on your Rocket Tanks and give Shadower missiles to your Missile Scouts instead of TAG.

This post is pretty much spot on. Here's my thoughts as well:

Cannons:
-Blast is incredibly inefficient - 200 ammo cost for 800/600/300 damage, compared to SP-Stab's 16.5 ammo cost for 220/200/180.
-Pulse stab is both slightly stronger and more ammo efficient than SP-Stab at the cost of range and friendly fire.
-Plasma is significantly weaker than both of them in combat form but has much longer range - only give it to units like Assault Tanks and Walkers which can use the assault version, which is much stronger. I'd rather use AT-Stab over it in regular vehicles unless I want to take out a turret or something.

Guns:
- Minigun is actually not weak. It's really easy to understimate, being the default gun, but in sustained combat where ammo is an issue it beats Chaingun for everything except heavy armour.
- Chaingun is more expensive but stronger than minigun, useful against heavy armour
- Laser is precision burst damage, VERY effective against unarmoured units like scouts but does much less damage against light armour and almost nothing against heavy armour
- Pummel is burst damage against large units and close range combat. It's not really weak against anything up close and is great for quickly destroying things.

Missiles:
- Shadower beats TAG in a lot of situations, but loses to it against Lancers and Titans in particular.
- FAF missile is very weak and has almost nothing going for it, except its assault form Hornet is ridiculously powerful against all targets, but especially air.

Mortars:
- Splinter has no redeeming features. It does a lot of damage per use if you lodge it somewhere like inside a Forge, but it costs so much ammo and has a really long reload rate that you're better off using anything else.
- MDM is strictly better than regular Mortar in every way except projectile speed, which is slightly slower.

Splinter is trash in the base game, which is why I have an improved version of it in my KatPak Recy variant. Same with pummel, as I said above, it's garbage, chain is much more useful. Also Chain > Minigun every single time. I do agree, combat plasma isn't that good, it uses too much ammo for the damage it gives.

[Katherlyn]

Hornet and Shadower apparently used two different values for their lock-on time.

[Bytesmee]

Yeah, Hornet is heat-based while Shadower is image-based, so you can see with Archers 1000% heat signature and 10% image signature you'll need Hornet and not Shadower to take them down quickly. FAF apparently uses radar, I'm not sure if anything else does.

[Feared_1]

Yikes... there is some really bad advice in this topic.

For ISDF, the "safest" and best setup will be a Tank with the following:
Cannon: Blast
Gun: Chain Gun
Mortar: MDM Mortar
Special: Phantom VIR (vs other players) or M-Curtian (vs the computer)

A lot of people are complaining about the ammo cost of Blast. Yes, it has an extremely high ammo cost, but it also does extremely high damage when used right. Use BLAST against "light" units like scouts, sentries, or generally hovercraft units (note that Scion Absorbtion shield, the yellow/orange one, will be highly resistant to Blast, so Chain Gun could be used if the enemy has that shield). Use CHAIN GUN against buildings, scavengers, and heavy units. Use MDM MORTAR against defenses (turrets, gun towers, gun spires) or for quick damage against heavy, slow moving units.

Phantom VIR makes you invisible and renders Shadower Missile and Scion Multi-Lock useless, M-Curtian will deflect projectiles like SP-Stab, mortars, etc. It would be useful to know that you can shoot Blast straight through M-Curtian without any deflecting.

Try to get used to weapon switching using the scroll wheel. Against light units, fire off a blast shot, then switch immediately to chain gun to get more damage off, then switch back to blast when the cooldown has worn off. Do NOT use Blast against heavy units as they are very resistant to it. Also, don't miss your blast shots since it does use a lot of ammo. You will find that ammo does tend to run out fast with Blast being used, but you will also be a very powerful opponent on the field as long as you don't run into a sucidal situation.

Shameless plug: The VSR mod is basically the exact same as the stock game with better weapon balance, and you might find that to be slightly more practical to learn with.

[Katherlyn]

Originally posted by Feared_1:

Yikes... there is some really bad advice in this topic.

For ISDF, the "safest" and best setup will be a Tank with the following:
Cannon: Blast
Gun: Chain Gun
Mortar: MDM Mortar
Special: Phantom VIR (vs other players) or M-Curtian (vs the computer)

A lot of people are complaining about the ammo cost of Blast. Yes, it has an extremely high ammo cost, but it also does extremely high damage when used right. Use BLAST against "light" units like scouts, sentries, or generally hovercraft units (note that Scion Absorbtion shield, the yellow/orange one, will be highly resistant to Blast, so Chain Gun could be used if the enemy has that shield). Use CHAIN GUN against buildings, scavengers, and heavy units. Use MDM MORTAR against defenses (turrets, gun towers, gun spires) or for quick damage against heavy, slow moving units.

Phantom VIR makes you invisible and renders Shadower Missile and Scion Multi-Lock useless, M-Curtian will deflect projectiles like SP-Stab, mortars, etc. It would be useful to know that you can shoot Blast straight through M-Curtian without any deflecting.

Try to get used to weapon switching using the scroll wheel. Against light units, fire off a blast shot, then switch immediately to chain gun to get more damage off, then switch back to blast when the cooldown has worn off. Do NOT use Blast against heavy units as they are very resistant to it. Also, don't miss your blast shots since it does use a lot of ammo. You will find that ammo does tend to run out fast with Blast being used, but you will also be a very powerful opponent on the field as long as you don't run into a sucidal situation.

Shameless plug: The VSR mod is basically the exact same as the stock game with better weapon balance, and you might find that to be slightly more practical to learn with.

Blast overall is a poor choice for MPI. It can only work on an assault tank or a walker and that only works when supported by like 10 trucks. You're better off Damage/Ammo-wise with SP. For Strat, I'd agree that Blast and Chain are better or even Blast/Laser in an attempt to alpha strike a recycler.

Note: this is with stock units/stock game. Mod-less. Some mods feature even better/more interesting weapons to use. Example: Slug on an Enforcer or Walker

[Red Spot]

What Feared said.
Blast is still the better choice in MPI. Most that do play MPI probs cant even hit a barn if they stand in front of it with SP. Chain is good enough to take down armor and the blast will help with waves of smaller craft and arc-warriors.

Ever ran a squad of AI controlled tanks equipped with blast into an AI base? They kill, pull them out and repeat. With SP the tanks will die cause they do not push their damage output (less range, more missed shots, poor pathing).

On Warriors, try Sonic and support your anti-armor capability by using Maulers. Sonic/EMP can really put a smile on your face if well used :)

[Aegeis]

Um, what? I'll concede that fighting vs Sabres and other light armored unit in MPI you may want to use blast, however, I end up having the AI using alot of Bulldogs, walkers, Fury Flyer/Fury Tank, interceptor, you get the picture heavy armor units, so blast will be useless in your sabre. Like I said in my post, I suggested what to use in mpi and separate setup for strat because strat is all about that human interaction.

[Feared_1]

I didn't mean to sound aggressive. The original poster asked for the best "go-to weapons for most situations." The reality is that SP-Stab and Chain Gun together on a tank, while powerful, is really only geared toward heavy things (one situation). If the AI/opposing players are using heavy units, then SP-Stab/Chain might be a good option, but if you get hit by a swarm of mortar bikes, you're going to find that much more difficult to fend off if you have SP-Stab on your tank as opposed to Blast.

Just my two cents.

[Katherlyn]

Originally posted by Hemmingfish:

Except SP-Stab out-DPSs Blast, and a tank with blast can't one-shot a mortar bike so you don't even have the benefit of the high alpha.

This. Sp/Chain is the go-to if you don't want to think about it.

[Suicidal Sniper]

Pummel is great, when used to sabotage enemy turrets.

[Red Spot]

Basing advice on heavily modded games does not work. I for one do like your mod, Aegies, but will not use your AIP's. The base game, imo, is much more fun in that regard.
Next to that, chain will take over from SP and Blast supports your alpha strike/counters light craft. Only with weaponlinking on might you 'need' to use both weapons in the same categorie.

Originally posted by Hemmingfish:

Except SP-Stab out-DPSs Blast, and a tank with blast can't one-shot a mortar bike so you don't even have the benefit of the high alpha.

And how much shots do you miss using SP? Did you take that into your calculation or do you have a 100% hitrate? If so, you should play ST and find you might be the best player around ... ;)

[Bytesmee]

Originally posted by Feared_1:

Yikes... there is some really bad advice in this topic.

Gonna sound dickish, but you literally only repeated what was already suggested. How bad could it be if you agree with it? (Minus the ongoing discussion around Blast)

If leading shots with SP-Stab is too hard, stick to Chain Gun. It's practically hitscan, you'll save your ammo, and you'll still kill the elusive light craft faster than using Blast. You can kill 2 Tanks/Warriors/Lancers with Blast before running out of ammo. Less if they come with shields. Outside of being the dedicated Mortar Bike/Scout killer, you are useless less effective against the majority of units and buildings. Of course, this ignores weapon linking, or as Feared mentioned with swapping weapons in between Blast's fire rate. Multiple weapons will always succeed at killing faster. In which case still, SP+Chain > Blast+Chain.

"But what if you miss with SP?" What if a lot of things. Get closer if you must. Missing with SP-Stab isn't the end of the world. Missing with Blast, is.

Originally posted by Cruul:

Any recommendations on the best go-to weapons for most situations?

SP-Stab and Chain Gun.
Arc Cannon (and Gauss Gun).