dakadaka vs pewpew vs swoosh bam boom boom?

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Sinister2202

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Aug 12, 2009
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Which one do most people use? Which one do people prefer as their spaceport's main weapon? I can't make up my mind for my second game after using swoosh boom boom in my first game.
 
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I've always liked the looks of missiles, so I go for those. At least until the enemy starts to deploy too many point defense systems :p .

Edit: seriously, there is something about seeing two fleets close in and watching as the rockets fly menacingly towards the enemy fleet.
 
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I tried kinetic weapons first game and liked them so much that I've never started with anything else through 4 games now. However, I just made a species for my next game who are natural physicists so it only makes sense to go with lasers for them. We'll see how they compare.
 
I like to start swoosh so i can develop heavy hummmm-KABOOM so they easyli bypass enemy zzzap (ai like to zzzap) before developi tikitikata.
But end game is mix peeew with bzzzt. For that extra 100% damage for both tuks and zzzap.
Autodakas have nice dps, but dotn feel special for my taste.
:)

Translations: missiles->torpedoes->distruptors+plasma+lances
 
Dakadakas all the way. Apparently lasers are Way better right now but I still like kinetic for the effect.

My ship load outs:
Mass Driver/Artillery + lots of auto cannon + flak for max Dakadaka
 
I like dakadaka... daka the most. Something about kinetic weapons sits right with me. And L Kinetic Artillery Mark 2 is pretty decent, I only wish sound effects would be a bit better.

For space ports I use swoosh bam boom boom. Not that it matters much but at least small fire exchange will be done before enemy turns my installation into dust.
 
From a purely mechanical standpoint Kinetic weapons are trash. I've seen a dev post stating they'll get a buff. I really think they should get a damage bonus vs. shields. 50% probably. Here's some info:

(DPT is damage per time from game tooltip, which factors accuracy but not enemy ship evade, though since evade would affect all your weapons [except missiles/torpedoes] I'm not sure it matters here -- Cost is power cost)

lhMW9K5.jpg


There are a lot of balance issues here. For example Torpedoes do more damage than missiles across the board and ignore shields. So...why would you use missiles? The swarmer missiles aren't listed but that "overwhelm point defense" stuff seems like nonsense to me.

Plasma Cannon vs. Stormfire Auto cannon: For one the Autocannon has half the range but in the un-modded game range can end up meaning bupkis because it all turns into a giant bowl of soup as the ships just molest each other. More importantly with the Plasma's 100% armor pen if a ship has just 9.29% armor (A base Destroyer with no added armor has 9%, Cruisers and Battleships have more) then the Plasma is doing more damage. So it's easy to see that Kinetic weapons have no place at all in the game....except the Autocannons sure are fun to watch.

In fact Plasma weapons are basically *the* weapons in the game until you get the high end stuff. Until you start talking about accuracy and evade. If the enemy fleet is all Cruisers and Battleships then you can probably just roll with the numbers here but as most people know right now the Fleet to Beat is All Corvettes Evading All The Time. This makes Torpedoes great but of course they can get point defensed so you just have to throw tons and tons of them to get through. Your hit ratio might end up looking pretty bad, but at least the enemy fleet had to spend on all that point defense instead of more plasma cannons right?

In the end the only weapons worth talking about are Torpedoes and Plasma weapons. Lasers, Disruptors, Kinetics...all trailing behind. Missiles trailing too, maybe just not as far.

P.S. How shitty are those Debris-only weapons right? Four of them are worse than the starter red laser. The Mining Drone Laser is the only weapon from Debris that's even remotely worth trying to use. The rest are utter failures.

P.P.S. It's not on the table but the Lightning weapons have a damage range of like 1-172/195. Yes. One. So while their average damage is fine....that's some unreliable weaponry you got there. They are at least 100% accuracy.

P.P.S. I am aware there are some weapons missing but I guess they're vaguely spoilery...not that it's a huge deal but I just left them off.

Edit: Updated the table with more weapons.
 
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The lightning weapons have a range of 60 and 100% accuracy which makes them completely OP mid game.
 
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The lightning weapons have a range of 60 and 100% accuracy which makes them completely OP mid game.

I guess I restart a lot so I'm not sure what would qualify as "mid-game". To me the Arc weapons seem pretty late game. They're certainly "Late" in terms of their damage output etc. They only compare to the other end game weaponry.


On another note does anybody know how Evade and Accuracy interact in this game? Given a ship with 30% Evade and a weapon with 75% accuracy one way might be that 70% of the time the weapon gets a 75% chance to hit. That doesn't mesh with Missiles/Torpedoes though. They do not miss, regardless of Evade.

I guess it's the reverse then. 75% of the time the weapon gets a hit that the enemy ship then gets a 30% chance to dodge. So 100% chance to hit from missiles just never gives an opportunity for the evade.
 
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I was reading suggestions, trying lazers, kinetics, whatever.
Then just spit, equipped 3 torpedoes on my corvettes and never looked back.
Against AI no matter how much point defense they fit, it rips them apart.
 
Main fleet (against AI):
PD Corvettes with not much in the way of weapons if fighting AI with missiles. Otherwise Torpedo/Missile corvettes.
Torpedo Destroyers.
Disrupter Destroyers.
Kinetic Cruisers (Or Plasma).
Mixed Battleships.

Side Fleet for clearing systems/raiding:
Missile/Torpedo Corvettes.
 
I also tend to take missiles as starting weapons, but switch to torpedoes as soon as they are available. Then, when the tech allows, I add lances or other similar energy weapon to my battleships.

Also, corvettes: 3x small or 1x small & 1x medium? I personally prefer the latter one.
 
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Also, corvettes: 3x small or 1x small & 1x medium? I personally prefer the latter one.

If using missiles I take the medium slot usually for longer range. Especially with the Beautiful Battles mod where range matters a bit more. The downside being that you're firing less missiles so you're not overwhelming enemy point defense as much.

For any other weapon type I stick to small weapons on every ship class as often as hull-sections allow. Given that 4 small weapons do the same damage as 2 mediums or 1 large I see no reason at all to take the bigger weapons which suffer more in terms of accuracy. The exception being the late game Large only weapons that have the 90%+ accuracy.
 
Early game small and medium kinetic autocannons on the corvettes are amazing and kill things very fast with little wasted time on target switching which makes those early spam fights more efficient.
 
Just be careful with relying too much on point defense. There is currently a bug where if the AI fleet has fighters then your PD wont fire.

Lost a game to that bug :)
 
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