What weapon combinations are good now?

[AlureddeValer]

Upgrading is a b*tch now. I have BetterCheats but only use it for upgrading. To offset this, I only upgrade the entire navy every 50 years.
I find that a good combo early-game is to have pure corvette interceptor fleet, with 1 laser and 2 coilguns. Autocannons are actually quite good fighting against other empires, since they rip through everything. Once I get autocannons, I swap coilguns out for them.
As you get into the mid-game and beyond, swap out the lasers for plasma.

 

[Nakkivene]

What do you do when your engineering weapons tech inevitably lags behind physics tech? Say I have level 1 mass drivers and level 3 lasers and level 2 PD. Does it make sense to go PD-2 lasers?

 

[KingAlamar]

Upgrading takes forever though unless you use an exploit or split your fleets.

I usually don't bother updating my fleets to "counter" what the enemy is doing. There are certainly borderline exceptions if i could "hard counter" an entire enemy fleet or similar but usually if you stay balanced [against this AI] there's no need to bother.

 

[KingAlamar]

What do you do when your engineering weapons tech inevitably lags behind physics tech? Say I have level 1 mass drivers and level 3 lasers and level 2 PD. Does it make sense to go PD-2 lasers?

I usually wouldn't bother. If my tech gets imbalanced I find that it will often balance itself back out before I could upgrade my fleet or do something about the imablance anyway.

 

[AlureddeValer]

What do you do when your engineering weapons tech inevitably lags behind physics tech? Say I have level 1 mass drivers and level 3 lasers and level 2 PD. Does it make sense to go PD-2 lasers?

Nah, PD has been, and will probably always be crap. Stick with the mass drivers. If you only have level 1 mass drivers, you are probably in the early game where the bulk of your fighting power should actually be coming from starbases.

 

[Nakkivene]

Nah, PD has been, and will probably always be crap. Stick with the mass drivers. If you only have level 1 mass drivers, you are probably in the early game where the bulk of your fighting power should actually be coming from starbases.

Starbases? I find they often don't figure out into much else but these weird standoffs.

 

[Grand Stone]

How do you specilize in one tech category now?

 

[Chthon]

How do you specilize in one tech category now?

You don't, but 9 times out of 10, you have lots of bio-research from special buildings like genetic labs, and there's often weighted more physics in space for some reason, it can be hard to keep your engineering competitive with the other fields.

That being said, in my latest game, my engineering was highest until mid game and it still is the one that got the farthest so far. That's an outlier for me though.

 

[Promethian]

Nah, PD has been, and will probably always be crap. Stick with the mass drivers. If you only have level 1 mass drivers, you are probably in the early game where the bulk of your fighting power should actually be coming from starbases.

PD's raw damage output has been super buffed. They out class S slot weapons for raw damage output except maybe autocannon. They have a severe penalty against armor and no defense type they are strong against though so they aren't clearly better. Not a complete loss like you seem to have been convinced.

 

[Grand Stone]

You don't, but 9 times out of 10, you have lots of bio-research from special buildings like genetic labs, and there's often weighted more physics in space for some reason, it can be hard to keep your engineering competitive with the other fields.

That being said, in my latest game, my engineering was highest until mid game and it still is the one that got the farthest so far. That's an outlier for me though.

Then I'll add that to my wishlist. Be able to specialize in one field of research. Then you can go laser if you want to focus on physics and kinetic if you focus on engineering...

 

[Grand Stone]

And another issue/question...

What is your thought on power consumption? One of the fun differences between armor and shields is that shields requier power. However, if you skip shield, is there anything else useful to use the power for?

 

[Blurb]

PD's raw damage output has been super buffed. They out class S slot weapons for raw damage output except maybe autocannon. They have a severe penalty against armor and no defense type they are strong against though so they aren't clearly better. Not a complete loss like you seem to have been convinced.

On paper, perhaps - like strike craft their actual damage seems to be far below what is stated.
If you look at your fleet reports, you'll probably find flak/PD consistently being the least damage-dealing weapon of a fleet.

 

[Archael90]

My build is full bypass its extremally efficient, but there are some variations:
a) endgame crisis - extradimensional invader req missiles, and scourge req pd.
b) it needs cloud lightning, so if i dont have it (rarely but it happens) i go mix kinetic and energy, then i try to go with only battleships (and i hate T weapon)
This is very efficient bcs, you have to improve just energy weapon dmg and fire rate, which is extremally easy, bcs physics have only 4 repetable techs

 

[Xephos Demonslayer]

Missiles are terrible atm, and PD is so buffed you can use is as a weapon in its own right.
if you use them anyways, the AI uses a lot of PD atm, so you'd need to go for a macros missile massacre. Missles do more damage to hull, but torpedoes do more damage to armor. If the enemy is using armor, definitely go for torpedoes, but otherwise missiles are usually better. The Whirlwind variants don't have any damage bonus, but can tank more damage, and potentially overwhelm PD better.
Strikecraft, while great in theory, never seem to work, as half my fighters always just go off to the side and never actually engage the enemy, so unless you hard devote your BS's and CR's to strikecraft don't go for it.
Distruptors only is a viable strat, but you have to go all in, and get lighting conduits from voidclouds so you can use large slots. Unless the enemy is a player who knows you have that setup and has crystalline hulls, this will be very effective at ignoring all enemy defense, especially the contingency, Unbidden, an Fallen/Awakened Empires, at the cost of having reduced range and reduced raw damadge. You will want to have destroyers have some PD so you still have a defense against enemy missiles.
If you want to be reasonably ready for anything, go with a mix of lasers and kinetics.
On corvettes, run auto-cannons to melt shields, as they do high dps to them and decent extra damage to hull, and plasma on a second class of corvettes, to melt armor and do even more hull damage. If you get null void weapons, swap out one slot on the anti shield corvs to the null voids to melt shields, and the rest to either lasers, or plasma.

 

[Chthon]

Strikecraft, while great in theory, never seem to work, as half my fighters always just go off to the side and never actually engage the enemy, so unless you hard devote your BS's and CR's to strikecraft don't go for it.

Your strike craft fly in close to shoot, and then fly away to dodge while they reload. They are doing their thing. They don't ever seem to circle the enemy, but that is normal.

 

[KopiG]

Cloud lighting and disruptors are good against FEs/AEs and the Contingency and even the Unbidden.

Could you tell me how to get Cloud Lightning and Arc Emitters? WHat are the requirements?

 

[Chthon]

Could you tell me how to get Cloud Lightning and Arc Emitters? WHat are the requirements?

Kill a wisp and then research the debris.

 

[KingAlamar]

In prior versions I've like bypass weapons against Crisis / Awakened Empire fleets. From what I can tell AEs and maybe Crisis fleets have pretty much all techs and up to 10 repeatables. I could certainly be wrong but my guess is if you can't match their repeatables then it may make sense to go for bypass weapons as long as you've managed to grab some cloud lightning.

 

[Wolfgang I]

Could you tell me how to get Cloud Lightning and Arc Emitters? WHat are the requirements?

You get access to the cloud lighting tech card by killing a void cloud and scanning the debris.
Arc emitters is a normal tech. Look here for a tech tree. https://turanar.github.io/stellaris-tech-tree/