A Comprehensive Weapon Guide (UPDATED AS OF 4.2.3.0)

In this guide I'm going to go over each and every weapon type in the game as well as some tips on how to make better guns. This guide was inspired by a previous weapon guide that seems to have been taken down, to the creator of that guide, I don't remember your name but thank you for the inspiration!

Introduction

Hello and welcome to my weapon guide, in this guide I'll be covering pretty much every weapon system in the game you can build and give some building tips I've learned throughout my playtime. Before we get started I will acknowledge that I mostly have experience with advanced cannons so take the buildings tips I have on other weapons systems with a grain of salt, also I'm assuming you already know how to build AIs and connect them to weapons but if you don't basically you just need to connect a Local Weapons Controller (LWC) to the firing piece of the weapon or the turret it's mounted on.


A Close-In Weapon Systems (CIWS) controller can also work but it will only target incoming CRAM shells and missiles and it only works with weapons on a turret. You can stick an LWC and a CIWS on the same turret and it will act as a dual purpose weapon, shooting at crafts and munitions alike, just make sure both connect back to the AI.

!!IMPORTANT UPDATE!! Flamethrowers and Plasma Cannons now have their own section along with all the new* incendiary components, the different fire effects are explained in the flamethrower section so I'd advise looking at that first if that's the info you're looking for, if there are any errors please do let me know so i can fix it.

(*new to me as I haven't played in a hot minute)

Anyways without further ado let's get into the guide!

Simple Weapons

To start off with we're looking at simple weapons, these guys are by far the easiest to set up, for the majority of them you just have to put the gun down and stick a LWC next to it and you're done! Only downside is that most of them are fairly weak, only being a threat to unarmored targets like most Deep Water Guard craft, still they can be pretty useful secondary/main weapons, especially if you're using the rams.

Melee Weapons

From left to right we have a Ram block, a Drill, and a Tactical Nuke

These are the most basic melee weapons in the game and probably the most effective simple weapons, the Rams are the most versatile and the easiest to use, just slap em on the front of your craft and hit things at high speed. Drills are a bit more complex requiring the main drill block, some drill bits, a power input and a torque amplifier to function as well as an Automated Control Block (ACB) to turn on by itself, the main advantage over rams being that you don't need to be nearly as fast to be effective with them, just catching up to the target will do the trick, there's also more powerful steam drills that require a steam engine to work but that's another story. The Tactical Nuke also needs an ACB to function properly but you can get away with just ramming hard enough into the enemy to set off the nuke, they do a pretty hefty amount of damage but will almost certainly destroy the craft they're attached to so put them on something cheap or very far away from the main body of the craft.

Ye Olde Cannons

From left to right we have a 16 pound gun, a 32 pound gun, and a 64 pound gun with a revolving blast gun at the end

These guns are probably the most basic guns in the game, the 16, 32, and 64 pound guns all function in the same way, they fire one cannon ball and then take a while to reload with each gun firing a more damaging shot with each step up in weight. If you want to be as effective as possible use the 64 pound gun and use a lot of them for best effect. Meanwhile the revolving blast gun fires a lot of shots very quickly in a shotgun style spray, it has an alright field of fire and amount of shots for it's burst but like the other cannons it takes a very long time to reload, about a minute if I'm not mistaken, similar to the cannons you'll want to use more than one of these if you want to do some real damage.

Energy Weapons

On the left, the Simple Laser, on the right, the Shard Cannon

Our very first energy weapons and probably the least used weapons in the game, the Simple Laser takes some time to charge up but once it does it fires a constant beam for a few seconds, it can carve through wood and it's pretty cool looking but you're better off using other weapons for anything with armor. As for the Shard Cannon this thing does quite a lot of damage per shot, almost enough to take out a wood beam with just one shot, it does suffer against metal but not nearly as much as the Laser, you'll want more than one to keep the damage up but this is a fairly effective weapon.

Small Anti-Air (AA)

On the left, the T-Class 20mm Gun, on the right, the R-Class .50 Cal

Our first rapid-fire guns that don't shoot like shotguns, the T-Class is a fairly decent start for your AA guns, it has a pretty decent magazine size and a fairly quick reload of about 6 seconds, if you've forgotten to make an Advanced Projectile System (APS) AA system the T-class is a pretty decent start. On the other hand the R-class is really only a threat against wooden targets, each shot does about half the damage of a T-class shot and it only has 30 rounds per mag with roughly the same reload time as the T-class, still they're a pretty good decoration piece if you need some .50 cal guns on your boat but I wouldn't use them as the only AA on the craft.

Medium AA

From left to right we have the Twin 40mm Mk-H, the Quad 40mm Mk-I, and the Octuple 40mm Mk-S

The first weapons that have explosive weaponry, all 3 guns fire explosive shells with pretty decent damage and AP for their caliber, the Mk-S in particular is the best AA in my opinion that isn't an APS, with 8 shells per shot and a 200 round mag you just can't go wrong with the Mk-S. the Mk-H and Mk-I can still do the same job but they don't have nearly the same mag size, however the reload time is a bit better so if you don't have space for a Mk-S use one of these bad boys and it'll get the job done.

Burst-Fire Guns

On the left, the 30mm Assault Cannon, on the right, the 60mm Auto Cannon

The last burst weapons for the simple weapons, both the 30mm and the 60mm are probably the most effective simple weapons that don't need custom shells to work, however both also have a terrible field of fire so sticking them on a 2-axis turret is advised. The 30mm has a larger mag but a longer reload time and the damage per shot is about half of the 60mm, meanwhile the 60mm only has 9 shots per mag but makes up for it with a 2 second reload time. Despite being good burst cannons I can't really think of a good use for these guys, I have seen the 30mm being used on Steel Strider ships as a cheap CIWS but other than that I'm not sure, if you've come up with a use for them please let me know in the comments.

Custom Shell Cannons

From left to right we have the Type-E 60mm Grenade Launcher, the Type A 3.7" Gun, the Type A(L) 3.7" Gun, the Type L Casemated Gun, and finally the Type L(E) Casemated Gun

Our final category of Simple Weapons and probably the cheapest secondary guns you can get that can actually do something, these guys all fire customized shells from an APS Shell Customizer which will be covered in the Advanced Cannons section down below. The Type-E launcher is the weakest of the bunch thanks to it's 60mm shells however it does make up for this slightly by being the only one in this group to have a magazine, however it does have the same minute-long reload timer of the Blast Cannon so it's pretty limited in it's damage output, still it's a good gun for small craft that need a boost in firepower. Meanwhile the Type A and Type A(L) both have the same shell size of 94mm or 3.7 freedom units, the only difference between the 2 is that the Type A(L) is slightly tankier and a bit more expensive, unless you don't like the gun shield or can't afford the cost I'd recommend using the Type A(L) on your smaller ships if you think they need secondary guns. Finally we have the Type L and Type L(E), despite sharing the same type letter these last 2 guns have different shell sizes, the Type L takes 130mm shells while the Type L(E) takes 150mm shells. They've also got different reload speeds with the Type L(E) taking 8 seconds between shots, nearly double of the Type L's 4.5 second reload, however the Type L(E) makes up for this by firing both barrels at the same time, if you need cheap secondary guns on your battleship and/or dreadnought that can fit basically anywhere these are the guns you're looking for.

That about wraps it up for simple weapons, if you want to take a closer look at their stats I have a link to the wiki here: https://fromthedepths.gamepedia.com/Simple_Weapons

Now that we've gotten that out of the way let's talk about some real guns.

CRAM Cannons

The be all end all of shell size, CRAM Cannons can fire shells up to 2 meters in diameter, and are one of the easiest custom-built guns to put together in the game, it's like playing with legos only these legos fire gigantic shells. They do have some drawbacks however, for one the shells are big enough that any active defenses like a Close-In Weapons System (CIWS) turret or LAMS can and will shoot at them, potentially destroying your shot before impact, also their shell speed can only go up to 200m/s making them a pretty terrible choice for dealing with more agile crafts. Now that we've gone over the basic idea let's go over the blocks you need/want to make them work. As much as I would like to tell you about every single block and how they work in great detail I don't want this guide to take another year to write, so from here on in I'm going to assume you can read the description on each block to find out how they work, I'll still provide a quick reference table for the different blocks with a simplified description as well as pictures of example cannons at the end.

Quick-Reference table

Block	Description	Notes
Firing Piece	Starting point for the weapon, every piece of the cannon must connect either directly or indirectly to this piece.	Fires bullets, duh. Make sure the firing end is pointing where you want it to.
Gauge Increaser	Increases the size of the bullet being fired, boosts damage accordingly.	Shell damage increases with size but loses speed as a trade-off, good idea to have a shell diameter in mind before building.
6-Way Connector	Connects virtually any other block to the firing piece as long as the chain eventually leads to the firing piece.	Pretty much essential in any cannon design, helps to use these blocks to build a "skeleton" that everything else fits into, has different connection variants
Packer x3 (Manual/ Automatic Orientation)	Combines the ammo pellets into a bullet for the gun to fire, manual orientation requires you to make sure everything's pointing the right way, automatic handles all that for you As of Update 3.3.8 Automatic packers are no longer a thing.	Automatic orientation sucks don't use it There's only manual orientation now, try to maximize the number of packers per pellet box, otherwise go nuts.
Payload Compactor	Increases the payload capacity of the shells allowing more pellets to be packed in before firing, becomes more effective when connected to more Packers.	Will slow down reload times but the damage increase may be worth it especially for big doom cannons.
HE/Hardener/Frag/EMP/Incendiary Pellets	Provides different effects based on the amount of pellets and the ratio each of them have with each other, all become more effective when connected to more packers, incendiary effects can be adjusted in the CRAM Settings menu.	HE, Frag, and Incendiary are very good against unarmored targets, however explosive radius is capped at 10 meters for pretty much all explosives in the game except for Flak Munition Defence, Hardener gives more Armor piercing (AP)/Shell health and EMP can fry electronics, the ideal ratio depends on what enemies you're fighting.
Barrel & Barrel Types	Usually makes the gun more accurate while also increasing shell speed, different types will have different effects	Heavy Barrel's beefier, Recoil Suppression helps with recoil, Motor Driven makes the barrel rotate to target faster, Flash Suppression makes the shell harder to detect, Elevation lets the gun aim wayyyy up, and the Bomb chute turns the shell into a low-velocity bomb.
Fusing Box	Allows you to set different fuses with different effects at the cost of payload space.	I can't go over every fuse here but just know that this block is practically essential on any advanced CRAM design.
Laser Targeter	Works in tandem with the Fusing box to accurately set fuses.	Practically a necessity if using timed/altitude fuses.
Fall of Shot Predictor	Will draw a line from the block itself to the predicted endpoint of the shot while aiming the gun.	Useful for manual aiming or figuring out exactly where your craft is firing at a glance, otherwise completely useless.
Interface Screen	Decorative cannon piece.	Originally used to display all the info you'd get by looking at the firing piece's Q menu, now it's just decoration, good for a mock CRT display I guess? old functionality has been restored, still mostly decorative though

With that quick-reference table out of the way, let's discuss cannon design.

CRAM Cannon Example

A fairly basic 5x5 CRAM Cannon design, the main bulk of the cannon is meant to sit below decks in a 5x5 turret space with the firing piece and barrel being above decks to shoot at enemies

Now that we're able to talk about cannon design let's get the basics out of the way. Rule number 1: if you can keep the essential components below decks, keep them below decks, most surface ship cannons follow this philosophy because the bulk of your armor is on the ship hull, so if you can get most of the important stuff behind that armor it's less likely to be hit, if you've designed everything correctly the only things sitting above the waterline should be the firing piece and the barrel. Rule number 2: When designing CRAM Cannons always design in layers, what I mean by this is that it's always good practice to put together one layer of the CRAM Cannon internals to fit in the turret space and then just stack that same layer up to the height you want, here's an example from the previous 5x5 design.


This is what you get if you remove a 1 block layer from that cannon structure, as you can see we have the compactors in the center with the pellets on the corners, both of which are connected on all 4 sides by packers with 6-way connectors to bring everything back to the firing piece, you can take this layer and stack it as many times as you want and it will fit in a 5x5 turret space, the point I'm trying to make here is that you want to plan out your cannon design ahead of time, figure out how big you want the cannon to be and where it's going to go on the ship or craft, this goes for every kind of weapon system but it's good to start learning with CRAM Cannons since they're one of the easiest to put together with the layer method, one last thing to mention is that you'll want to leave the corners open otherwise your turret won't be able to turn, only exception being 3x3 turrets afaik. And Rule Number 3: Don't be afraid to experiment, remember you have the vehicle designer to play around in without being threatened by constant attack so do yourself a favor and use it to mess around with some of your more... theoretical designs. Anyway that's all the tips I have for CRAM Cannons, there's not a lot more I can say here since CRAMs are fairly easy to put together, anyway with CRAMs out of the way we'll move onto the newest weapons system as of 4.0, Ze Flammenwerfer!

Flamethrowers

The newest and most firey addition to the game, Flamethrowers will use vehicle fuel as ammo and they work off of a new fire damage system that also applies to any weapon capable of dealing incendiary damage. Essentially what happens is when a block is set on fire it'll do damage based on how much fuel was applied in the fire attack (1 fuel = 1 damage), but it'll take time for the fire to burn through the fuel and actually deal the damage, in addition to the damage a block's armor value will be reduced making it easier for other damage types to do damage and any blocks destroyed by fire will add fuel to the fire according to their flammability. There's also 2 other properties you can mess with to help increase your fire damaging capabilities: Intensity and Oxidizer, I'll go into more detail in the QRT but long story short intensity helps the fire burn faster and cut through a block's fire resistance, and oxidizer helps cut down the armor value faster in addition to allowing fires to burn underwater. Obviously the properties of fire damage make flamethrowers excellent at burning unarmored targets to ash, while they do suffer in terms of raw damage versus armored targets, the reduction in armor value make flamethrowers excellent secondary weapons to enable your other physical projectiles to do more damage, however thanks to the 400m range cap and the possibility of fuel tank detonation you might be better off using incendiary effects on other longer-range weapons to get the armor reduction effect on your long-range craft, that all being said flamethrowers make excellent close-range weapons and are perfect compliments to melee craft.

Quick-Reference table

Block	Description	Notes
Flamethrower	Starting point for the flamethrower, every piece of the weapon must connect either directly or indirectly to this piece, has 2 variants for connection points, cannot aim through blocks on same object.	Fires, well, fire, duh. Make sure the firing end is pointing where you want it to especially to make sure you don't set your own craft on fire.
Flamer Fuel Pipe	Ports fuel/oxidizer/catalyst to the flamethrower, has length and hull variants.	Use this to connect all your tanks together, can only connect tanks to one flamethrower.
Flamer Fuel Tank	Determines how much fuel the flamethrower has access to, add more to increase damage output, has a large variant and can only connect to same size tank/compressor.	Since this is where all the burny stuff is held if it's destroyed it'll start a fire, keep this and other tanks as protected as possible to minimize that possibility.
Flamer Catalyst Tank	Stores the catalyst necessary for increasing intensity, add more for more intense flames, has a large variant and can only connect to same size tank/compressor.	Intensity speeds up how fast the fuel burns allowing fires to do damage much more quickly, this also essentially acts as the fire's AP value versus fire resistant components, make sure you have enough intensity for the targets you have in mind.
Flamer Oxidizer Tank	Stores the Oxidizer necessary for armor reduction, has a large variant and can only connect to same size tank/compressor.	Oxidizer will cause half of your fire damage to reduce the enemy's armor as well as ensure that your flamethrower can do damage even if the target goes underwater, practically a necessity for taking on armored targets.
Flamer Compressor	Utilizes vehicle power to force the fuel/catalyst/oxidizer through the pipes and up to the flamethrower nozzle, goes on the end of tanks, can only fit 1 per tank, has a large variant and can only connect to same size tank.	Necessary for the flamethrower to actually function, make sure this is also protected.

Thanks to the simplistic nature of Flamethrowers these weapons are among the easiest to set up and deal damage with, There's not much to discuss with design choices beyond changing the ratios between fuel/catalyst/oxidizer so for the example I built what I would consider the minimum effective flamethrower, take a look!

Example Flamethrower

Above we have what i consider the minimum required components for an effective all-round flamethrower

Since flamethrowers are fairly new to me I decided to build an what I would consider the minimum required components to take on metal ships for an example build, statistically speaking you'd only need 7 small fuel tanks to get the required damage output for metal but I went with 10 tanks to give some extra fuel to throw around on the target and allow the fire to propagate to other metal blocks. Admittedly the oxidizer is most likely overkill in this case but intensity will increase how fast oxidizer is burned too so I figured a balanced input would give the effect I wanted. You can get roughly the same damage numbers with 2 large fuel tanks if you need to reduce cost however that will increase the total volume needed for the flamethrower. In any case the previous advice of storing the internals below decks applies doubly so here, with the added caveat of needing to isolate the flamethrower from the rest of the components to prevent the entire craft from burning down, as long as you keep the tanks safe this should make for a very effective hit and run weapon.

With this hot new toy under our belt let's move on to my personal favorite category: Advanced Cannons!

Advanced Cannons

The more versatile custom-built guns in the game, Advanced Cannons, aka Advanced Projectile Systems (APS) cover a wide variety of roles, from anti-ship weapons to anti-air this category has you covered. However there are 2 drawbacks, 1 is that the guns are more complex making it much more difficult to build an effective cannon, and 2 is that the shells can only go up to 500mm in diameter, meaning compared to the mighty CRAM Cannons these guns' damage potential is somewhat reigned in. Still they can be much more effective than CRAMs thanks to the faster shell speed and higher fire rate allowing them to get through LAMS and CIWS a lot more reliably.

Quick-Reference Table (Blocks)

Blocks	Description	Notes
Firing Piece	Starting point for the weapon, every other cannon piece must connect either directly or indirectly to this block.	Pretty much identical to the CRAM cannon in function, just with a whole lot more options in the menu to use.
Gauge Increaser	Increases the shell size and damage at the cost of reload speed and shell speed, can connect to autoloaders.	The actual size of the shell will differ depending on what you want the gun to do, typically 60mm is the bare minimum, 150mm-300mm is medium-gauge, and anything above 300mm is a heavy/main gun.
Gauge Cooling Unit	Decreases the amount of time it takes for the barrel to cool down, can connect to autoloaders.	This will probably be the most common component in your cannon besides autoloaders and ammo racks, good for building the "skeleton" of the cannon.
6-Way Connector	Connects virtually any block to any other block, as long as the chain either reaches the firing piece or Gauge Increasers/Coolers connected to the firing piece.	Pretty much exactly the same function as the CRAM version, really only useful on railguns, if you've built your non-railgun cannons properly you won't need these at all.
Autoloader (1m-8m)	Provides a way to load shells into the gun, length ranges from 1m-8m for different shell sizes.	The more of these you have the faster the fire rate will be, each individual loader can be optimized by having more clips attached to different slots up to a max of 4 in each slot.
Belt-fed Autoloader	Provides a very fast way of loading shells into the gun, will not reload until all rounds in clip are expended or the gun hasn't fired in a while, capped at 1m in length.	The length cap means this autoloader is only good for smaller gauges, that being said if you throw enough lead down range you're bound to damage something, extending the clip can help the gun shoot for longer and adding more input feeders reduces reload time.
Ammo Input Feeder	Loads shells into the clip/autoloader/firing piece, needs an ammo customizer to function.	Reload times can be reduced by adding more of these, other than that not much to say.
Recoil Absorber (1m-8m)	Absorbs recoil from the gun, longer absorbers can take more recoil.	You'll always want a few of these on any gun you build, recoil reduces accuracy so make sure you have enough absorbers to keep up on faster firing guns.
Mantlets	Lets you aim the gun barrel in various different fields of fire without needing a turret, Omni types cover most directions, Elevation types only cover vertical aiming, and AA mantlets give a very high upward field of fire with little downward and nothing laterally.	These blocks are pretty much essential for every gun you build, AA mantlets are great for deck guns and AA guns while the elevation mantlets are good for guns you want to aim both up and down with omni mantlets being great for in-hull mounted guns.
Barrels	Makes the shot more accurate, Heavy barrels are tougher but heavier, Bore Evacuator help with cooling and all the different Muzzle Brakes help reduce recoil.	it's a good idea to include pretty much all of these parts no matter what cannon you're building, only exception would probably be the heavy barrel which is really only useful on very big guns.
Railgun Magnets & Fixtures	Used to provide energy capacity for the railgun to draw from, magnets only attach to magnet fixtures or other magnets and the fixtures only attach to the firing piece.	The more magnets you have the bigger the charge, just keep in mind that you'll also need an appropriate amount of chargers to keep up with the firing rate.
Railgun Charger	Consumes vehicle energy to charge the rails on a railgun.	Include more to speed up charge time, make sure you have enough to keep up with the firing rate!
Laser Targeter	Works in conjunction with shell fuses to automatically set shell detonation parameters.	Pretty much exactly like the CRAM version, only difference is how you put fuses on the shells.
Fall of Shot Predictor	Draws an arc from where the block is placed to where the predicted impact point is.	Just like the CRAM version, good for telling where your gun is aiming but useless for anything else.
Ammo Customizer & Controller	Both blocks work together to build a shell for the gun to fire.	I'll go over this more in the shell module quick reference table but right now all you need to know is this is how you make bullets for your gun.
Ammo Ejector	Tosses all the shells out of the connected autoloader's clips, only connects directly to autoloaders.	Good for keeping your guns from exploding, be aware that shells are still live when they're ejected unless you've included a defuser in the shell design.

While all of these blocks bring a lot more complexity to building the gun, there's also a lot more options to fiddle around with in the menus for these blocks, the Firing Piece for example allows you to set a desired shell gauge, number of barrels as well as plenty of other options for railguns and the like. This also crops up in the Ammo Customiser & Controller which allow you to fine tune your shell's effectiveness a lot more than in CRAM cannons, speaking of which...

Advanced Cannons (Cont.)

Quick Reference Table (Shell Modules)

Shell modules are the individual modules of your cannon's shell that can be changed out for different modules in the Ammo Customiser & Controller blocks, shell length is determined here by how many segments are in sequence with a maximum of 20 modules. All of the different modules and their effects are listed below in the table.

Modules	Description	Notes
Gunpowder Casing	Contains propellant that ignites when gun is fired and pushes the shell out of the gun barrel.	Include more in shell design to make shell go faster, increases cooldown time, can adjust propellant amount to fine-tune shell length.
Railgun Casing	Utilizes magnetic energy from the Railgun to propel the shell at high velocity, allows a much greater portion of energy to be imparted into the shell.	Include more in shell design to increase shell energy capacity, not necessary for railgun to work but it really helps.
HE Warhead	Causes shell to detonate on impact, has a nose variant.	Makes shell go boom, include more for bigger boom, 'nuff said.
Flak Munition Defence Warhead	Causes shell to detonate on impact in a wide radius at the cost of explosive damage, has a nose variant.	Great for AA/CIWS guns, can give HE shells a bit more explosive range.
Frag Warhead	Upon detonation a certain number of fragments are thrown in different directions inside a defined cone, has a nose variant.	Smaller cone angles will reduce the damage of each fragment, wider angles are usually good for AA/CIWS, can be combined with enough armor piercing to throw frags around inside a target.
Incendiary Warhead	Adds incendiary fuel to the shell to allow it to set targets on fire, intensity and oxidizer can be adjusted in the menu at the cost of fuel, has a nose variant.	Great for burning unarmored targets to ash, less effective against metal/heavy armor targets, Flamethrower section goes into more detail.
Solid Warhead	Adds more mass to the shell thereby increasing kinetic damage & AP, also increases shell health.	Good for APHE or straight Kinetic shells, APHE should be combined with a railgun in order to be effective.
Sabot Warhead	Greatly Increases AP by making the shell a very thin metal rod, AP increase comes at the cost of pretty much every other warhead's damage, has a nose variant.	Really good for pure kinetic/AP rounds and makes an excellent sniper shell for a railgun, gun must be very accurate otherwise shell might miss vital components and pass directly through the target.
EMP Warhead	On contact with target, module will send an EMP surge through all conductive blocks greatly damaging electronic blocks, has a nose variant.	Add more to increase EMP damage, good for knocking out AI or disabling shields if combined with a disruptor head.
Smoke Warhead	Creates a smoke cloud on detonation, smoke reduces laser AP.	Good against targets using lasers or LAMS, useless against anything else.
Heavy Head	A nose module that greatly increases kinetic damage, basically the nose variant of the Solid Warhead.	Good nose module for targets with light armor, useless for anything else thanks to no increase in AP.
AP Head	Nose module that adds both AP and kinetic damage, also lets the shell fly faster than the Heavy Head.	Good all-round nose module, use this for APHE shells or when you're not sure what nose cap to use.
Hollow Point Head	Nose module that essentially turns kinetic damage into impact damage, works well with Solid Warheads.	Impact damage ignores armor stacking so this cap is good against light to medium armor.
Shaped Charge Head (HEAT)	This nose cap takes part of the explosive energy from HE warheads and uses it to blast a stream of superheated copper into the target, has a body variant to allow for multiple HEAT attacks in a single shell.	This module is really good if for whatever reason you can't have a fast shell in the gun and still need AP, ERA will block a single HEAT attack and spaced armor will negate some damage.
Squash Head (HESH)	Similar to HEAT, this nose module take some explosive energy from HE and uses it to create a shockwave that turns the interior part of the armor into deadly fragments.	Good against hard targets with a lot of armor stacking, useless against spaced armor.
Disruptor Conduit	Nose module that uses all EMP to weaken planar shields if shell hits a shield, all payloads are weakened by 50%	Pretty good for a specialized anti-shield gun, kinda useless for anything else.
Penetration Depth Fuse	Fuse that causes the shell to detonate a short distance after passing through a block as long as the shell has enough kinetic damage & AP to get through the block.	Practically essential for APHE so the shell doesn't detonate on contact with the target.
Inertial Fuse	Fuse that causes the shell to detonate if the shell's angle changes too quickly past a certain threshold.	Good for making your shell detonate on shields or detonate when the shell otherwise would've been deflected.
Timed Fuse	Fuse that causes shell to detonate after a certain amount of time has passed, works in conjunction with a Laser targeter to adjust the timing relative to target.	Practically essential for any good AA/CIWS gun, also good to help turn near-misses into partial hits with any explosive shells.
Altitude Fuse	Fuse will detonate shell after a certain altitude, works with Laser targeter to adjust the altitude relative to the target.	Might be useful on an AA gun or a specialized depth charge gun? The existence of the Timed fuse seems to negate this one entirely.
Emergency Ejection Defuse	Prevents the shell from detonating after being thrown out of an Ammo Ejector.	Pretty much a necessity if you're using ejectors inside your craft.
Base Bleeder	Increases shell speed at the cost of accuracy, only goes on the rear of the shell.	Useful for pretty much every shell as long as you're not trading casing space for it (although that would reduce cooldown a bit while retaining some speed).
Visible Tracer	Increases the accuracy of the next shot as long as the gun fires fast enough and both shells have similar speeds, however active defenses will pick up the shell more easily, only goes on rear of shell.	Good for high Rate of Fire (RoF) guns and especially AA/CIWS guns where accuracy and RoF are usually paramount.
Supercavitation Base	Shell won't bounce off water and greatly reduces drag while shell is in water, same warhead penalty as sabot.	Good for dedicated anti-sub guns and underside airship guns, only goes on rear of shell.
Graviton Ram	Imparts force on target equal to the unmitigated recoil of the gun, only goes on rear of shell.	Might throw off some shots from the enemy or even capsize them with larger guns but otherwise kind of useless.
Stabilizer Fin Body	Diametric opposite of the Base Bleeder, makes the shell more accurate at the cost of speed.	Good for guns you want to be super accurate and those sniper shells mentioned earlier.

Advanced Cannons (Cont. x2)

Quick Reference Table (Modules Cont.)

Modules	Description	Notes
Gravity Compensator	Imparts a downward force on the shell to keep it more accurate over high trajectories.	Good for mortars and other guns with really high firing arcs.
Skimmer Tip	The diametric opposite to the Supercavitation Base, causes the shell to bounce every time it hits water and increases the possible skim angle.	No viable applications afaik.

Example Cannons

On top we have a 100mm, 500 RPM, 6-barrel design, below we have a 500mm, 24 RPM, single barrel design

Now that we're free to discuss advanced cannon design let's look at some examples starting with the 6-barrel design. Generally if you're going for a high RoF on a gun you'll want to go with a multibarrel since they provide a bonus to cooling, unless you're going for a specific look or are making a very specialized cannon you'll want to go with 6 barrels since that provides the biggest cooling bonus. As for gauge I always like to shoot for 100mm or more for my rapid-fire guns but you can go lower if you have to, 60mm is generally the bare minimum, anything below that and you might as well use a simple weapon for all the effectiveness it will have. For RoF I like to go for 500 RPM or more on my multibarrels, again you can go a bit lower, 400 RPM gives you a nice stream of bullets to work with, going any lower is generally reserved for guns with less than 6 barrels. if you want to copy the design all you need is the same amount of autoloaders, coolers, and recoil absorbers. sticking more clips on will keep the gun firing for longer and if you want to boost the RoF there's 2 things you can do, you can stick on more autoloaders which means more cooling units and recoil absorbers making the gun more expensive, or you can shorten the shell being used in the gun which will reduce damage. If you want to use this design for AA you'll generally want your shells to be moving at around 700-800 m/s, going higher tends to result in the projectile being only 1-2 modules long. Of course you'll also want a laser targeter on the gun and a timed fuse on the shell for the most effective AA, if you want to see the shell I used it'll be in a screenshot down below but generally any shell with flak munition defence or frag is good as long as you're using timed fuses. Now with that out of the way let's look some serious firepower.

As for the big boi gun, 500 mm is the absolute maximum gauge you can have an advanced cannon be, single-barrel designs like this tend to take up a lot of space so you'll really only want to use this type of design on battleships or other very big crafts. Generally for large-caliber single-barrels you'll want to shoot for around 30-ish RPM, obviously I wasn't able to get there with this design but I reckon if you keep the same number of autoloaders and go with 4 clips on each instead of 3 that should do the trick. For an upper limit on fire rate I'd say around 60 RPM is the fastest you want for big shells like this, pushing it any higher tends to eat up a lot of internal space on the craft, potentially taking away some armor. For this design I used 4m autoloaders, if you want to do as much damage as possible with every shot you can use 8m shells but that tends to lower the fire rate quite a bit. If you're planning on converting this to a railgun I wouldn't push the fire rate past 30 RPM, even the most basic railguns tend to eat up a lot of energy and internal space especially if you're using APHE shells so make sure you got a massive engine capable of outputting ridiculous amounts of power. Also limiting the maximum amount of power each bullet takes to fire can help in energy management as well as fire rate if you're running out of space below decks. The last piece of advice I can give here is that sometimes reverse engineering enemy designs might provide some insight as to how to make better cannons, the Scarlet Dawn in particular are practically experts on railguns and big shells so booting up the designer and taking a look at their cannons might be very beneficial.

Of course as I mentioned earlier if you want to take a look at what shells I used there's a screenshot below, the upper shell is used in the 500mm and the lower shell is used in the 100mm. As you can see for the 500 mm I just went for full HE with an intertial fuse, this is the most basic powerful shell you can make but if you're going up against something with heavier armor you can swap out the nose for a HEAT nose. Meanwhile on the 100mm there's a combination of HE and Flak Munition Defence with a timed fuse as well as a visible tracer, if you're going for a CIWS cannon you can swap out the flak head for an HE or Frag head With Flak being rename to Munition Defence it's clear now that's the intended use for a CIWS shell, He can still give a good boost to damage if you're up against some very big CRAM shells, if you're going for pure AA you can swap out the HE body for Frag. The shell in the screenshot is a good dual-purpose shell if you stick both an AMCC and a LWC on the same turret, just make sure the AMCC has priority otherwise weird stuff might happen.


Now that we're done with cannons let's talk about the last projectile-based weapon, Missiles.

Missiles

Possibly the most space-efficient custom weapon system in the game to build, Missiles are practically guaranteed damage on enemy targets if they don't have good active defenses. From cruise missiles to small air-to-air designs, if you don't have much internal space to spare these are a very good option. The only downsides are that unless you're using torpedoes the maximum practical range of missiles is around 2-3 km and missiles do have a speed cap. Anyway without further ado let's get into the weapons that can end the Deep Water Guard really quickly.

Quick Reference Table (Blocks)

Block	Description	Notes
Missile Controller	Basically the firing piece for MIssiles, no other missile block works without it.	While technically the firing piece this is not where the missiles are being fired from.
6-Way Connector	Connects blocks together.	Pretty much exactly like every other 6-way connector.
Wireless Missile Transmitter/Receiver	These 2 blocks work in tandem to wirelessly connect your missile controller to distant components.	Works exactly like the AI wireless system, only downside is your craft is visible to wireless snoopers.
Missile Launchpad & Single Rail Variant	The block missiles are actually fired from and the starting point for the Missile gantry, there's 4 different sizes, Small, Medium, Large & Huge and has a single rail variant that can extend the gantry both ways.	Unlike previous weapons systems you can have as many firing points as you want, unless you're building a super exposed mount point for the missiles use the regular launchpad.
Missile Gantry & Variants	This block is where the missile actually rests before being fired, add more to increase length, Has 2 different types of missile hatches, regular & aerodynamic as well as a single rail variant and the usual size types.	We'll go into more detail on the different missile modules but as a rule of thumb, small missiles are quicker to turn, large missiles do more damage.
Identify Friend or Foe (IFF) Add-on	Allows the missiles being fired to determine which targets are friendly and which targets aren't, missile system only needs 1 connected to get the effect.	Practically a necessity if using Radar, Infrared, or Sonar seekers so you don't shoot your own crafts.
Staggered Fire Add-on	Spaces out missile launches if there are multiple launchpads connected.	Delay can help HE missiles & torpedoes not throw each other off on detonation, also looks cool if used properly.
Laser Emitter	Provides targeting data for any laser targeting modules on the missile(s).	A necessity if using any sort of laser modules on your missiles, gets blocked by smoke.
Winch	Works with the harpoon module on missiles to reel in targets caught by the missile, increase power or number of winches to increase pulling force, only attaches to launchpad.	Works well with melee craft to reel in targets and chop em up, bigger targets might need more force to move.
Ejector Add-on	Ejects the missile before igniting the thruster and activating the warhead, angle and ejection force are set in the missile menu, add more ejectors to increase force, only attaches to launchpad.	Useful if you have missiles set in the hull and need to throw them away from the craft before letting it fly.
LUA Transceiver	Allows the missile to receive commands from a LUA block, needs the relevant Missile module in order to work, only attaches to the launchpad.	If you're fluent in LUA style programming this block is a godsend and lets you guide the missile however you want, if you're not a programmer then there's some pretty good LUA scripts you can find out there.
Munition Decorator	Allows decorating of missiles to make them look however you want.	Great for making the missiles pretty! Useless for anything else!

That's all we have for the basic components but before we move on I want to go over all the missile modules and then we'll take a look at some example missiles.

Missiles (Cont.)

Quick Reference Table (Modules)

Now that we've gone over all the basic components it's time to go over the real complexity for missiles, that being the modules themselves. The menu for the modules looks a lot like the menu for APS rounds, just with some different information.

Missile Module	Description	Notes
Short Range Thruster	Makes the missile go forward, guzzles fuel and has a time limit, goes on rear and missile only takes 1.	Simplest to use and provides the most thrust, only real downside is the time limit.
Variable Thruster	Does the same thing as the short range version but burn rate is adjustable making fuel use more efficient, goes on rear and missile only takes 1.	Really good for cruise missiles thanks to the efficient fuel use, however it doesn't have as much max thrust as the short range version.
Torpedo Propeller	Similar to the Variable Thruster except it only works underwater and is much more efficient, goes on rear and missile only takes 1.	Practically a necessity if planning on making the missile a torpedo.
Secondary Torpedo Prop	Same as the Torpedo Propeller but this works with the thrusters, goes just in front of thruster and missile only takes 1.	Really good for Submarine cruise missiles since it allows the missile to gather speed while getting to the surface.
Fuel Tank	Provides propulsion modules with fuel, add more to increase range of missile.	Keep in mind that short range thrusters have a time limit so any extra fuel after the timer runs out will be wasted, otherwise go nuts add as much fuel as you want/need.
Fins/Turning Thruster	Allows the missile to turn, more effective at ends of missile, turning thruster uses a percentage of the fuel & is less precise but gives more turning force, add more of either fins or thrusters to increase turning rate.	Almost every missile at the very least needs fins to be effective.
Explosive/Frag/Incendiary/EMP Warhead	The 4 different main warhead types, Explosive makes the missile explode, Frag shoots out a bunch of fragments in a cone, Incendiary lights targets on fire, and EMP sends a EMP surge through any conductive blocks, add more warheads to increase damage.	Pretty much the same as previous warheads, however explosives will do much more damage underwater so use those for your torpedoes, also fire will need oxidizer to burn underwater, otherwise customize how you want.
Shaped Charge Head	Uses all Explosive Warheads immediately behind the head to punch through tough armor, penetration factor is adjustable, ERA and Spaced armor will block/mitigate this head, missile only takes 1 at the front and missile will need some other form of guidance.	One of the 2 viable AP methods for missiles, good for small/medium missiles that you want to punch through armor.
Reinforced Body	Increases kinetic damage of missile as well as missile health, works better with thumper head.	Good for punching through LAMS or CIWS.
Thumper Head	A nose variant of the reinforced body, makes the missile fly faster as well as buffing missile health and Impact damage per m/s, missile only takes 1 on the nose and missile will need another form of guidance.	The other viable AP method for missiles thanks to the Impact buff, adding more reinforced bodies increases the amount of damage per m/s.
Active Radar Seeker	Makes missile target the biggest craft on the field, only works above water and needs IFF.	Other than the IFF there's virtually no way to make the missile not target the biggest craft, still very simple to use and good for cruise missiles.
IR Seeker	Same effect as the Radar Seeker, will target the biggest and hottest craft on the field, can be fooled if enemy is too cold, works both above and below water and needs IFF.	Very good for AA missiles, However missiles using this module can be fooled by flares & heat decoys, Signal processor can help filter out decoys.
Laser Designator	Missile will fly towards wherever the missile laser block is pointing, needs said block connected to controller to function as well as line of sight.	Great for manual targeting of missile and for getting past decoys but the laser can be blocked by smoke.
Laser Beam Rider	Same function as the Laser Designator but this can go on the missile body and will not be able to see laser if laser isn't within 30 degrees of missile.	Excellent for missiles that need to have the nose be a warhead for whatever reason, good for high-velocity thumper missiles.
Single Pixel IR Seeker	A much more focused version of the IR Seeker, will only go after targets in it's narrow field of view, doesn't work with Signal Processors.	Basically the IR seeker but you can select targets now by aiming the missile at the target before firing, can easily be fooled by flares or decoys though.
Torpedo Sonar	Same function as the Radar Seeker, only works underwater and needs IFF.	Can be fooled by sonar decoys but signal processors can help, slap this bad boi on any Torpedoes (duh).
LUA Receiver	Allows missile to accept commands from LUA Block, needs LUA Transceiver and Block to function.	While LUA missiles are very powerful they need 3 separate things to function and if any of them break your missile loses it's guidance, still very OP if you can use them right.
Missile Interceptor	Allows the missile to target incoming CRAM shells and Missiles, doesn't need a warhead but will need munition warners in order to function properly.	One of the simpler ways of setting up an active defense system, just make sure the interceptor has a high turn rate & speed, target prediction and maybe APN guidance and you're good to go.
Remote Guidance	Allows missile to take orders directly from the AI mainframe, needs General Processing Power (GPP) to work and relies on what the AI can see.	Basically an AI-driven version of the LUA block, can't be fooled by decoys but requires a lot of processing power to use multiple missiles and ECM Jammers can mess with the targeting, use it wisely.
One-Turn	Makes the missile turn towards the player/AI aimpoint, then lets other guidance systems take over.	Good for any Vertical Launch System (VLS) or any missiles expected to turn just after launch.
Prediction Guidance	Makes missile aim at the expected intercept point rather than at the target itself.	Practically a necessity for AA missiles or any missiles using short range thrusters.
Augmented Proportional Navigation (APN) Guidance	Makes turning with fins more efficient.	Again, practically a necessity for AA missiles, works well with guided bombs too.
Altitude Fuse	Makes missile detonate at a certain altitude.	Good for depth charges I guess? Other than that no viable applications afaik.
Safety Fuse	Stops the missile from detonating on the vehicle it was launched from.	Good for mines or if your missiles have problems exiting the launch bay
Ballast Tank	Adjusts the buoyancy of the missile in water.	Good for any missiles intended to be in the water at some point.

Missiles (Cont. x2)

Quick Reference Table (Modules cont.)

Radar Buoy	Acts like an active radar while floating on or above the water, AI mainframe need a buoy holder for the buoy to work.	Also generates a false contact with enemy passive radar systems, basically a detection system that also acts as a decoy.
Sonar Buoy	Same function as the Radar Buoy except for Sonar, need to be floating on or below the water and AI mainframe needs a buoy holder for the buoy to work.	Same thing as the Radar buoy except purely for waterborne craft, works really well with submarines.
Sticky Flare & Radar/Sonar Target Simulator	Makes the missile emit the relevant temperature/signal to distract the relevant missile, for ex. Radar target simulators will distract Radar guided missiles.	Good for decoys, useless for anything else.
Signal Processor	Filters out decoys be reducing their signal strength, doesn't work with Single Pixel IR seeker.	Practically negates low-power decoys, missile can still be fooled if decoy strength is ridiculously strong.
Cluster Controller/Extension/Ejector	These modules are really complicated but basically, the Controller goes on a larger missile and defines the starting point for the cluster missile, the Extension(s) are placed in front of the Controller and define how long each cluster missile can be, Finally the Ejector goes on a separate smaller missile and tells the controller which missiles it's going to use, both must be connected to the same missile network.	Super complicated but can be very helpful in punching through active defenses by slapping a bunch of reinforced bodies on the controller missile and having the cluster missiles release just before target impact, also looks cool.
Harpoon/Cable Drum	Harpoon attaches a line to the missile and will allow missile to "hook" onto targets and reel them in with the winch block, Cable Drum just provides more cable length for the harpoon.	If no winch is present the missile will just be dragged behind the craft, this can be exploited to drag big expensive decoys and keep them in the fight for longer, both modules are really good for melee craft to give them a bit of range.
Regulator	Extends missile lifetime by 100% of the base lifetime, base lifetime is 20 seconds.	Really good on those expensive decoys mentioned earlier, also good for buoys and any other missile/torpedo that's going to be flying for a while.
Magnet (for mines)	Missile will be pulled toward any nearby craft regardless of actual metal content, doesn't work with IFF and there is a delay before magnet turns on which can be adjusted.	Good for mine layers and depth charges but without the ability to identify friend from foe you can do more harm than good with these things, use them wisely.

As you can see practically all the complexity and nuances of missiles is in the customization screen, it's a lot to wrap your head around but I find it can help to think about what you want your missile to do and then take a look at the different modules and see how they can help your missile do what you want it to. Speaking of missiles I got an example missile here that you can use if you're not sure what to go with.

Example Missile

On top we have our example missile, and on the bottom we have the customization menu for said missile.

Here for our example missile we've got an EMP Frag (EMPF) cruise missile with laser guidance, a variable thruster, and a One turn module installed. I've put in the laser guidance to ensure the missile doesn't get distracted by decoys but you can use remote guidance or even LUA to achieve the same effect. I've also got a One turn on here to get the missile on target since this is a VLS, and finally the Variable thruster at max output with 3 fins. The fins are mostly there just to get the missile to turn during the initial launch but also keep the missile somewhat maneuverable while in flight, and while the variable thruster at max output might seem like it would guzzle fuel, we've got enough tanks on this missile it's not that big of an issue. I've gone for EMPF on this design because it's what will work against most campaign ships with semi-decent to decent armor, even if the frags don't get through the EMP can still do some damage as long as the enemy doesn't have surge protectors, if they do then you're probably better off with pure frag or a more explosive design. This cruise missile design is one of the smaller ones, I usually find it's better to stick with small to medium missiles and reserve the large missiles for cluster systems, because you can cram all the damage you want into on big missile but without any reinforcement all you're going to do is basically make a big target for the active defenses to shoot at and blow up. Still I think this design will work well into the mid-game, by the time you reach late-game you'll probably want to go for a different more durable design but I'll leave that for you to experiment with. Next up we'll take a look at the Lightning Hood's favorite weapon system, Lasers!

Laser Systems

Our first of only 3 customizable energy weapon systems in the game, Lasers can be the most powerful weapon on the battlefield thanks to their fire-based damage being applied instantly and only needing direct line of sight to hit a target and vehicle energy to function. This combined with the fact that lasers can also function as a form of active defense makes them possibly one of the most versatile weapons system in the game. That being said they are saddled with some disadvantages, as with most weapons Lasers have damage falloff which is amplified greatly by water as well as extinguishing fires set by the laser, and the line of sight mechanic means that a small hill can prevent you from doing damage to the target, still those downsides can at least be mitigated to varying degrees with some of the blocks listed below.

Quick-Reference Table

Block	Description	Notes
Multipurpose Laser	Starting point for the Laser system, functions very similarly to the Missile Controller.	Works almost exactly the same as a Missile Controller, minus the wireless receivers and such.
Laser Connector	The laser version of a 6-Way connector.	You know the drill, connects stuff to other stuff, 'nuff said.
Laser Transceiver	Emits a laser beam that other transceivers can pick up and use to connect to the Multipurpose block.	Basically a beam version of the wireless receivers, note that the beam can go through blocks and it doesn't really mater what orientation the receiving transceiver is in.
Laser Coupler	Connects the Multipurpose block to the laser cavities, Q-Switches can be placed on this block to change laser from continuous to pulsed mode.	Add more couplers for more laser cavity attachment points, just make sure each one has the same number of Q-Switches otherwise weird stuff happens.
Q-Switch	Changes laser from continuous to pulsed, adding more Switches results in a faster pulse, needs coupler in order to function.	While a continuous beam sounds cool, it eats more energy to keep firing, however it has higher AP but lower damage, a 4Q pulse laser does pretty much the same job but more efficiently and does more damage at the cost of AP; actual numbers; 0Q: 0.75 damage/energy, 60 Intensity; 4Q: 1 damage/energy, 40 Intensity.
Laser Cavity	Stores energy and provides charging points on 4 sides, must be connected to the coupler in some way.	Does what is says on the tin, add more to increase energy reserves & firepower.
Single Input Cavity	Same function as the Laser Cavity but has 4 times the storage space at the cost of only having 1 charging point.	Good if you're a bit tight on space and can't afford to have pumps on all 4 sides, also good for a "burst" laser setup.
Storage Cavity	Stores a lot of energy but has no charging points, also takes up a lot of space	If you want a lot of energy at the start of the battle or just need to store energy for a LAMS setup this is a really good option.
Laser Destabiliser	Increases the rate at which energy is expended from the laser cavities.	Basically takes the same amount of damage and throws it out faster, good for that "burst" setup mentioned earlier.
Frequency Doubler	Increases Laser AP, actual AP increase per doubler depends on pump volume.	Helpful for cutting through smoke and armored targets.
Laser Pump (1m & 3m Variants)	Pumps energy into the laser cavities, requires vehicle power to run and is susceptible to EMP strikes.	Laser will run out of energy if these pumps aren't present, recharge rate essentially decides long-term damage output, use surge protectors to mitigate EMP strikes.
Short Range Laser Combiner	Basically a firing piece & barrel rolled into one, easy to set up but damage falls of very quickly.	Very good at short ranges, might be good on a melee craft?
Laser Combiner	The actual firing piece for a laser-based weapon, needs to be connected to the multipurpose block.	Functions like any other firing piece, only difference here is that you might actually be able to hit something without the barrel.
Laser Optics/Armored Laser Optics	Helps decrease the damage falloff over distance at the cost of firing arc, armored version has more health but is more expensive.	Ideally a laser with long optics is really what you want for any long-range laser, 10-15m worth of optics should be enough for most mid-range lasers, armored version can help with survivability if you can afford it.
Laser Steering Optics/Armored Laser Steering Optics	Expands the firing arc up to a certain point to help counteract the regular optic's downside, armored version has more health and is more expensive.	Good idea to include a couple of these even on 2-axis laser turrets to make sure your laser can hit as early as possible.
Laser Cutter	The melee form of lasers, needs 2 of these in line with each other and facing each other to create the beam, both must also be connected to a connector block.	Interesting melee method of doing damage, going to be hard to keep a vessel in the beam though.
Laser Anti-Munition System (LAMS) Node	Basically the Laser version of an Anti-Munition Cannon (AMC), will target and shoot down incoming munitions provided there are functioning munition warners present on the craft.	You can stick an AMCC on a Laser turret instead for a stronger active defense system but this is one of the simplest ways to set up an active defense.
Laser Output Regulator	Makes the laser use a percentage of all the cavity's total max energy to evenly distribute the energy load.	Practically a necessity with multiple couplers so one coupler doesn't run out of energy before another and cause problems.
Superheating Modulator	Increases the size of the fires ignited by the laser, at the cost of raw damage output.	Does what it says on the tin, reduces damage by a max of 25% for a max fire fuel increase of 250%, essentially fires will burn longer, can be adjusted in combiner.

Honestly compared to Advanced Cannons and Missiles, Lasers are relatively simple to set up, they only really start getting expensive when you want them to do any significant amount of damage. So obviously with Lasers the focus is less on the system itself and more on the power systems you've put in your vehicle, but that's a topic for another day. Below there's an example laser you can use for a laser turret.

Laser Systems (Cont.)

Example Laser

On top we have the Laser generation array, On the bottom we have an example of an effective Laser Combiner

The generation array is the most important part of your laser system, so we'll start with that first, the example laser above is a 4Q laser capable of a sustained damage output of 3072/sec 1536/sec, the storage cavities are probably overkill but if some of the laser pumps are destroyed or your engines are knocked out it's useful to have a backup reserve to do at least some damage while the recharge systems are down. The frequency doublers are enough to get through medium smoke but even if the Intensity is completely nullified the 3072 1536 damage is still enough to get through metal fairly reliably, obviously you'll probably want a much bigger generation array if you're planning on a deadlier laser but this setup should be good for most of your screen ships or cruisers. On the laser combiner side of things you don't need a lot of steering optics to get the maximum firing arc out of your laser, as a general rule of thumb you'll need 1 steering optic for every 3 regular optics, There's a couple other settings you can mess around with in the combiner itself but the only two that are laser specific with a notable impact is the hold fire below energy % and the energy fraction used by superheater sliders. The first setting prevents the laser from firing if there's not enough energy to do the damage you want, this setting really should only come into play if either the generation array or the engines have taken a hit so make sure you have it set to roughly the minimum amount of energy one shot will take to do full damage. The superheater setting will impact how long fires set by the laser will burn for at the cost of raw damage, this only comes into play if you have a superheater attached to the combiner and can allow your laser to continue doing damage while not firing, I'd consider this to be worthwhile on large lasers that can afford to give up some damage fore the first effect. Other than that I don't really have much advice for lasers, basically just pump up the damage as much as you can and bring up the intensity values with it and you should be good to go, just keep in mind that you're looking at flammability and fire resistance instead of the armor values. With that all said and done let's move on to our next weapons system, Particle Cannons!

Particle Cannons

Our 2nd customizable energy weapon system, Particle Cannons are pretty easy to set up, only needing a tube that ends with a terminator or connects back to the firing piece with an input port. Instead the downsides with Particle Cannons are the lack of accuracy and the sheer cost of the parts involved, as well as drawing energy from vehicle power. Just the short range lens alone is double the cost of an advanced cannon firing piece and given the arms need to take up a fair amount of space to do any meaningful damage, these weapons get really expensive really fast. There is some good news though, in addition to the simplicity Particle Cannons cannot be blocked or mitigated beyond just having a lot of armor, it's practically almost the perfect weapons system if you can get close enough that the accuracy part doesn't matter. That being said due to the cost you might want to reserve these for your late-game craft, trying to build these things in the early-game when you're starved for resources is not really feasible. With all that out of the way there's the usual Quick-Reference table below as well as a couple of example cannons.

Quick Reference Table

Block	Description	Notes
Particle Accelerator Tube(1-4m/corner variant)	Necessary to generate the particles for each shot, needs to be connected to an arm point & a terminator/input port.	Add a lot of these on an arm to increase damage to ridiculous amounts.
Terminator	Goes on the end of an accelerator tube to complete the particle circuit.	Be aware that if this part is destroyed or of the particle tube itself is damaged, particles will fly out of the end of the tube and damage your craft.
Particle Input Port	Connects the particle tube into another arm point, reduces damage loss over range but also reduces base damage slightly and takes up 2 arm points.	Really good for any long-range setups, works best with the Long Range Lens.
Short Range Lens	Probably the simplest lens to use, only has 1 arm point and major inaccuracy but boosts damage slightly and has the biggest general field of fire.	Being a really small, really basic lens, this lens is good for any secondary particle cannons you want on your craft.
Scatter Lens	Has 2 arm points but also has the special effect of shooting multiple beams from 1 arm point if the charge time is long enough.	Basically a particle shotgun, the 2 arm points guarantee at least 2 beams if you're not using the input port, use more of these lenses to fill the battlefield with deadly particle beams.
Vertical Lens	Has 2 arm points and a great vertical field of fire but a lousy horizontal field of fire.	Good for any 1-axis turrets, input port is a better choice here imo.
Long Range Lens & Variants	Has 4-5 arm points depending on the variant used and excellent range & damage falloff characteristics, only downside is the terrible field of fire and the lens' size.	Great for a main particle cannon, input ports are great here if you want to commit to the long-range role, but I have seen some shotgun-style setups floating around.
Melee PAC Lens	Takes all the Particle energy and uses it to generate a constant beam between itself and another lens to slice up enemies with, damage is greatly amplified through this lens.	Has the same problem as the laser cutter but it's not as bad since you can shape the beam to some degree now.

Despite all the expense in setting up and maintaining these things, they are the ultimate counter to any craft if you're willing to spend a lot of resources. That being said there's is still some complexity here in the Particle cannon menu which we'll go over below in the example section, but just know that it isn't nearly as bad as advanced cannons.

Example Cannons

On top we have a short-range terminator cannon, on the bottom a vertical lens input port style cannon

There really isn't much to talk about here building-wise since the pictures pretty much do all the talking for me, if you've read along you'll know the difference between input ports and terminators but if you've skipped ahead: Input ports make cannon more accurate but take away damage and a connection point, terminators are standard and don't have any special effects. As I mentioned earlier the main part of particle cannons is in the particle cannon menu:


As you can see here there's 4 main settings we can mess with, the first being shot type. The 4 different shot settings we have are Impact, EMP, Piercing, and Explosive Shock, Impact is the default and a good all-rounder shot type, it has 15 AP so any cannon setup with enough damage should be able to shred most blocks. EMP will make the shot deliver an EMP pulse on a successful hit, pretty good against stuff like Heavy armor and AI Cores that don't have surge protectors. Piercing raises the AP value up to around 60 AP but takes away quite a bit of damage to achieve this and damage is only inflicted along the particle's path. Explosive shock is the diametric opposite, converting virtually all AP and damage into a fiery explosive shot, good against unarmored targets. That's all well and good but if you want to ramp up your damage the simplest way to do it is with the charge time meter, here you can set how much time the cannon will take to charge up, the more time it takes, the more damage you will do. This can be used to create some devastating particle cannons but the longer charge time can leave you vulnerable to rapid-fire attacks. Next up we've got the Focus meter, this setting will make your cannon more accurate but it will take away some damage in the process, I usually find it best to turn this up high on the long-range cannons and leave any short range cannons alone but an extra 10% can help on the short rangers. And finally we've got Overclocking, this setting will greatly increase damage but also increases power consumption, I usually don't bother with this setting but if you've got some engine power you're willing to sacrifice for a better cannon don't hesitate to turn this setting up. All these settings combined with the physical cannon parts can make some pretty scary weapons that dominate the battlefield, however keep in mind that all these expensive parts are pretty fragile so don't forget about that armor.

With that we'll move onto our last energy weapons system: Plasma Cannons!

Plasma Cannons

Our 3rd and final custom energy weapon system, the Plasma Cannon is the ultimate in destructive technology, thanks to plasma's method of damage propagation, even a fairly small plasma cannon can chew through blocks of armor and ravage the internals of any craft. By default each plasma shot has an AP value of 100 and any block destroyed by a plasma shot will cause a plasma explosion, taking any surrounding blocks with it (assuming their health is low enough) and adding those to the plasma explosion. Damage is halved with each block so it will taper off eventually but needless to say, slow firing high damage plasma guns are capable of literally deleting ships in 1 shot, and since plasma is an energy weapon there's no projectile drop and the plasma charges cannot be shot down, literally the only defense against plasma that isn't just dodging is planar shields and even then the damage reduction is capped at 30% making warp drives a necessity when fighting enemies using this weaponry. With all of these advantages you might be wondering what the downsides are, well there are 2 and they both play into the same idea, first off is the steep upfront cost of the components, while the mantlets are around the same cost as their advanced cannon counterparts, all of the internals are usually double the cost or more compared to advanced cannon internals, in the most extreme case I can think of, the 2m generator is worth 800 materials which is equivalent to 1 8m autoloader and it's clip, that's a material to volume ratio of 400mat:1m^3 for the generator alone! Meanwhile the the mat to volume ratio of the autoloader+clip is 50mat:1m^3, so needless to say plasma weapons will cost you a lot to build. the 2nd cost to worry about is the fact that plasma weapons need both vehicle energy and ammo to run and the vehicle energy requirements can wind up rivaling that of a well-designed railgun, so expect this thing to be a resource hog. In my limited testing though it's 100% worth the cost because of the insane damage output these things are capable of, especially when just 16 charges is capable of chunking its way through blocks of heavy armor beams on the slow firing setting. I apologize for the rambling but I hope I've gotten across just how powerful these things are, let's check out the QRT shall we?

Quick-Reference Table

Block	Description	Notes
Mantlet (AA & Forward Variants)	The Plasma cannon firing piece, everything needs to connect to this.	Each mantlet variant has similar roles to their APS counterparts, use accordingly.
Connector (Hub, L-shape & 1-4m variants)	Connects the mantlet to the collectors to allow plasma charges to flow into the mantlet.	Same purpose as connectors in previous weapons systems, just more expensive.
Collector (4 & 2 side variants)	Serves as a connection point for the chambers, can directly connect to the mantlet.	In a 100% space efficient setup direct connections would be all you need, given the sheer cost of parts try to get as close to that as you can.
Chamber (1-4m variants)	Stores plasma charges until they're ready to be fired, generators will connect to the sides, can be stacked in a chain.	This is where the majority of your damage potential will be stored, any connected generators will eventually fill a single chamber chain.
Generators (1 & 2m variants)	Generates plasma charges from ammo and energy, can be stacked in a chain.	Each generator directly increases the recharge rate and thus the cannon's fire rate, try to go for the 2m variants where possible for maximum recharge speed.
Accelerator (2 & 4m variants)	Essentially the barrel of the plasma cannon, each accelerator allows more energy to be spent on speeding up the plasma shot, capped at 800 energy or 2404 m/s.	From testing it appears that the speed cap is reached at 12m of accelerator length, with the length cap at 16m, that extra length can be used for more heatsinks though so keep that in mind.
Heatsink 2m	Aids in cooling the cannon down with needing to spend energy, becomes more effective as temperature goes up.	Inaccuracy increases as temp goes up so these are especially important at higher fire rates to reduce energy costs.
Magnetic Stabilizer	Reduces damage loss over distance, goes on the end of the accelerator.	Great for long-range applications! Also reduces the damage falloff incurred by water, would not recommend making a sub hunter out of this though.
Magnetic Splitter	Fires multiple charges at once in a shotgun-spray pattern with a max of 10 "pellets", charges get slight damage buff, goes on the end of the accelerator.	From limited testing this seems like the best way to spread the damage around compared to a single shot, punching through armor will be harder though since each individual "pellet" has less damage than a single shot with all charges combined, damage can be further increased by upping the number of charges/projectile.
Magnetic Destabilizer	Splits a single charge into 2 shots, reduces AP value to 20, disables multi-charge shots	Effectively doubles the fire rate without having to add more generators, the 1 charge cap means damage is capped though along with AP so it's great for a CIWS/AA but Useless for anything else.

While the complexity is greatly reduced compared to advanced cannons there's still plenty of design choices to consider when it comes to plasma, let's talk them over while I show an example of a good plasma cannon shall we?

Example Plasma Cannons

Here we have an example of a plasma cannon built with a 4:1 generator to chamber ratio

Since plasma cannons are fairly new to me I've made the same decision I made with flamethrowers and made a cannon with what I would consider to be the minimum required components for a weapon capable of taking on metal ships. Since there's less components to worry about the main factor you want to focus on is the ratio of generators to chambers, generally speaking a higher amount of generators will increase fire rate by charging the chambers faster, and more chambers will increase your damage potential for each shot, I went with an 8m chamber for a total of 8 charges and went with a 4:1 ratio of generators to chambers, in my limited testing I found that ratio to be on par with the typical fire rate of my APS main guns so this should be a good ratio to work with. You might've noticed a lack of damage numbers mentioned and that's because damage is determined in the customization menu, of which I've provided a screenshot below.


As you can see we have several sliders to mess around with, the charges used slider will determine how many charges each shot will draw from the chambers, as you can see 2 charges is enough to destroy 1 beam of metal in a single shot however thanks to plasma's damage mechanics it's more advantageous to use all 8 charges at once in a single, devastating shot.


With nearly 8000 damage packed into a single shot, this configuration can blow away 2 layers of metal in a single shot, and at around ~24 RPM, that's an armor cracking shot every 2.5 seconds, needless to say this one gun rivals some of my old cruiser cannons.

Plasma Cannons (Cont.)

Example Plasma Cannons (Cont.)

The other sliders also affect important aspects of the cannon, Accelerator Energy/Charge will increase the speed of the shot at the cost of vehicle energy, RPM Limit controls fire rate, energy used for cooling will use vehicle energy for cooling (duh), Temp limit will prevent the cannon from firing until the temperature cools down to a set temp, and the burst limit sets how many shots will fire once the temp limit has been reached. Ideally for the heat you're going to have heatsinks on your cannon to help wit base cooling but it's generally a good idea to try and keep the cannon temp under 500 C otherwise you end up losing a substantial amount of accuracy, and if you can't afford the cooling energy or heatsinks the temp and burst limit will function as a backup temp management system, just make sure to set those sliders! As for RPM, sadly there's no handy stat to tell you what to set it to so you kind of have to work out the stat for yourself, with our cannon charging at 3.2 charges/sec if we were firing 1 charge for each shot that works out to 192 RPM (3.2*60=192), that seems a little low for a rapid fire gun but luckily we have a cannon part that can help with that, the Magnetic Destabilizer, we can see the effects of the block in action on our cannon in the screenshot below.


Using our previous cannon and sticking an destabilizer on the end, we can see that the charges/shot slider is gone and instead replaced with a shots/charge stat, this is allows us to double our fire rate, as mentioned previously our cannon here has a charge rate of 3.2, which works out to 192 RPM for 1 charge, multiply that by 2 and we get 384 RPM, approaching the lower end of what I would consider a high enough fire rate for a decent AA/CIWS gun, obviously I think 500RPM is the gold standard but the fact that the previous cannon could potentially fill a CIWS role with only a couple minor tweaks to the settings and an extra block shows how versatile these weapons can be, the removal of the charges/shot slider and the massive AP reduction does mean damage is limited though. Our other multi-shot block also messes with the sliders so let's see what effect the Splitter has on this same cannon.


As you can see in the screenshot we have an inaccuracy added slider, since we've essentially turned the cannon into a shotgun this slider lets us adjust the cone the plasma will fire in, with heat further adding to the innaccuracy if allowed to build up. To get a proper shotgun effect setting the charges/shot slider to 1 on this cannon will give us 8 pellets of plasma, with each pellet doing 1007 damage. While 1 pellet doesn't have the damage to destroy a beam of metal on it's own, remember that we're shooting 8 of them at the same time, and each shot still retains the 100 AP value of the regular shot so this ends up being a good way to spread the damage around on an enemy target, and since we have access to the charges/shot slider we can boost the damage each pellet does at the cost of reducing our pellet count, allowing us to use buckshot instead of birdshot. Thanks to the damage boost we get from the splitter you can use this to further increase the damage of a single fully-charged shot at the cost of not being able to reduce the damage falloff.

Conclusion

That's all the advice I've got for now, regardless if you're a newbie or a veteran, I hope you leave this guide more well-informed on the game's different weapons systems. As always if you've noticed that I missed something please let me know in the comments and if you need help building something the FtD Discord is a great resource that I'll link below, otherwise thanks for stopping by and take care!

FtD Discord: https://discord.com/invite/fromthedepths

Other guide(s) I've done:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3013911783
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2330679762

[Some Random Dude]

Also after way too long of a delay my defensive guides is now out as well, feel free to read that as well!

[Some Random Dude]

Guide has officially been updated with the missing weapons systems, apologies for the delay IRL stuff got in the way, have a read and tell me what you think!

[Some Random Dude]

So apparently at some point during my break from FtD all of my previously saved crafts got deleted, the folders where they were are still there but the files themselves are just gone. This includes the Weapons Testing platform I had saved that I used for this guide. I'm going to poke around online and see if there's a way to get my old saved crafts back if that doesn't work expect any screenshots showing the new weapons systems to look different.

[Doc Nacht]

What about plasma?

[Some Random Dude]

Aaaaand fire weapons just got added, FML

[Some Random Dude]

Found out there's another counter for remote guidance, ECM jammers, updated the missile section to reflect this

[Some Random Dude]

@Sketchy Mike Afaik CIWS/LAMS is the hard counter, that being said since remote guidance means the missile is taking orders directly from the AI it's reliant on what that AI system can see, so if you design your craft to not be seen from the outset that could also help in settings/campaigns where the AI needs detection systems in order to see enemies.

[Sketchy Mike]

is there no counter to remote guidance missiles? besides CIWS/LAMS

[Some Random Dude]

Just checked the numbers, turns out the tooltip did all the math for me, 0Q lasers do 0.75 damage/energy and 4Q Lasers do 1 damage/energy, BUT 0Q lasers have a higher AP with lower damage, will update guide with this info

[Some Random Dude]

@GenJack Which laser part specifically? If you're talking about the Q-switch Notes that's more of a general rule of thumb I've heard parroted around, if you're talking about LAMS then you might be right, a 0Q could probably get more damage in on fast-moving munitions but that's getting into territory I don't know a lot about. Like I mentioned I'm not really familiar with lasers & particle cannons so the info there could be wrong, I'll have to do some testing and run the numbers but thanks for pointing it out!