Why X-Weapons Are Not Garbage?

[TwiceAHuman]

This is indeed the question I had for a long time. They occupy the entire front section, cost tons of energy and deal roughly 1.5 times more damage that any endgame weapon put in L slot. They are useless in close combat and have a long death-star-charge-thing window before doing anything. So... Are there any hidden mechanics or something that makes them useful? Anything? Anything at all?

 

[Meneliki]

Tachyon Lances used to be the be-all-end-all and were nerfed a little, now they're a tradeoff.

The Focused Arc Emitter is insane. Ignores shield and armor, hits like a truck, and has huge range and insane accuracy/tracking. Being bad in close combat isn't that big a deal when this weapon is on your battleships which should be engaging at super long range. They're great against the Leviathan creatures if you get the modifier from the curators, and they bring down enemy capital ships pretty fast.

 

[tobias.mb]

Range is mainly what the X weapons have going for them. Fleets approach each other rather slowly, so that extra range is a huge window of time, where the X weapons can shoot without retaliation from L weapons.
In a direct confrontation 2x L weapons would be stronger, but that doesn't help you, if the X weapons kills most of your L armored ships before it comes to that.

 

[niallmcfc]

Yep arc emmiters are where it's at. Your XL slot is solely for wiping the enemy capital ships, so as Meneliki said it's mostly about range. Naturally they'll be worse against smaller ships, that's the trade off and it's why cruisers are a thing.

 

[ColZimin]

I only ever play ironman, and I'm not that good at the game, so I often end up fighting against equal/superior AIs. In those battles it often feels like the winner is the side with the most battleships (unless they're extremely outnumbered by destroyers), and X weapons tear through battleships quite effectively. Hence I like to rush for Giga Cannons and such.

X weapons are also a near-requirement for fighting Fallen Empires, again because of range.

 

[Swarzshanaggen]

I use giga cannons. They have the most raw damage of all the extra large weapons (close to twice the damage of kinetic artillery). I think they gave the longest range in the game (not completely sure though). Pretty much the only bad thing is that the modifiers aren't as good as the arc emitters. The only reason I don't use arc emitters instead is because they're more RNG based than damage based.

 

[krios41]

The Focused Arc Emitter is insane. Ignores shield and armor, hits like a truck, and has huge range and insane accuracy/tracking.

Hits like a truck, if it hits at full damage...
But it deals damage between 1 and 200somethingsomething. If you intent to use Tachyon lances you should palce them on a Battleships with Kinetic Artillery.
THe artillery will bring down the shields and then the tachyon lances will rip trough the armor

 

[TwiceAHuman]

I only ever play ironman, and I'm not that good at the game, so I often end up fighting against equal/superior AIs. In those battles it often feels like the winner is the side with the most battleships (unless they're extremely outnumbered by destroyers), and X weapons tear through battleships quite effectively. Hence I like to rush for Giga Cannons and such.

X weapons are also a near-requirement for fighting Fallen Empires, again because of range.

Well, there are corvetes. They may seem like garbage, but you can stack their dodging up to 80% or a bit more, give them either mining lasers (100% armor penetration, no shield maluses, damage a bit smaller than lvl5 laser) or torpedos and swarm the hell out of bigger ships. They also get significantly stronger if you invest in shields and you can literally make hundreds of them in a few months. My favourite ship class, really. Not always the best, but can gives you a lot of advantages if you use it right. Pretty weak against spaceports and stations, but torpedoes still annihilate those.

 

[Foefaller]

XL weapons are generally worth the slot. Battleship AI has them sitting back and firing nonstop while smaller ships (particularity cruisers and corvettes) provide cover, so firing from afar with the biggest guns in the game picking off cruisers and other battlsehips is a very good setup for them.

Tach Lances are still the best XL weapon, especially vs. Leviathans, most FAs and other empire's Cruisers and Battleships. Giga Cannons might have better stats on-paper in most cases, but tachs will beat them out once the shields are gone, and even vs. 2x capacitor loadouts a couple of Kinetic Artillery per Battleship is enough to keep shields peeled off, and even with no slotted armor the Tach will do more damage against larger ships. Only time you need to swap to Giga is if it's to fight the Unbidden, or if your opponent cracked the Enigmatic Fortress and is running around with T6 shields.

Arc Emitter is for fighting swarms of smaller ships, corvettes and, to a lesser degree, destroyers. However, while it's very good at that. A good anti-corvette destroyer setup will kill off corvettes with ease, and Cruiser will annilate destroyers with almost no effort, even if you are fitting every L slot you can on them for fighting other Cruisers and Battleships instead. Only time you really need Arc Emitters is if your fighting someone who is using a massive f%&$ton of corvettes (like, 80-90% of their fleet strength comes from corvettes) and it's quicker/cheaper to retrofit Arc Emitters on your Battleships than to build more destroyers to counter the corvette spam.

 

[Secret Master]

If the enemy is running lots of BBs (or slow cruisers), I find the X slot worth investing in.

That being said...

Well, there are corvetes

In some cases, nimble corvettes make more economic sense. Even if you lose 50 in a battle, it might be cheaper than running BBs. And if the enemy is trying to run some kind of tachyon lance strategy with insufficient destroyers, then those tachyon lances are not paying for themselves when they miss corvettes.

 

[The Founder]

This is indeed the question I had for a long time. They occupy the entire front section, cost tons of energy and deal roughly 1.5 times more damage that any endgame weapon put in L slot. They are useless in close combat and have a long death-star-charge-thing window before doing anything. So... Are there any hidden mechanics or something that makes them useful? Anything? Anything at all?

You ever wonder where the Fallen Empires get thier Combat Strenght from? earlier lances, now XL Slot weapons!
Lances were literally designed from the get go to be unbalanced OP. Back in that time, you could put one into every Large Slots. All lances used to be the be all, end all of weapons. PD did not mater, the enemy ships died before the fighters or missiles ever reached you.

They got reduced to the rarer XL slots to make them less broken. And the FE ships just got a 2nd one to put on all thier BB fronts, so they could once again be slightly OP in that regard. Much better solution.
That was only the time they introduced XL weapons other then the Lance.

About the DPS figures, only compare within teh Category or specific purpose:
A T2 Large Plasma gun does 9.82 DPS
A T1 Particle Lance does 20.02 DPS.
Kinetic Weapon DPS can be misleading. Even if they have armor ignorance, they still deal less damage through armor then a equal energy weapon.
Even with a DPS of 14.17 (Kinetic Artillery) to 9.82 (T2 Large Plasma), the Kinetic Artillery will loose agaisnt armor. Because that is 20% vs 90% ignorance.
Even the Gig-Cannon with it's massive damage and decent armor pen, will loose against a Particle Lance when faced with armor - because that one skips 90%.

Kinetics are good vs Shields. Energy is good vs Armor (except for a few anti-shield guns like disruptors). Missiles are just terrible.
XL slots are good vs Large and Extra Large targets (Cruiser and UP), wich tend to have massive shields and/or armor.
Also thier range is so high with 100, barely any weapon can even shoot at the same time as they.

 

[TwiceAHuman]

You ever wonder where the Fallen Empires get thier Combat Strenght from?

From useless Titans?

 

[TwiceAHuman]

Also for gods sake people, I know the times when lances were widely available! XD

 

[WhiteWeasel]

Also for gods sake people, I know the times when lances were widely available! XD

"Widely available" might be understatement. The only time you used the L slot for anything other than lances is because you have not researched them yet in those days.

 

[Adamsrealm]

XL weapons have some behavioural traits attached to them.

- Lances will prioritise the most un-shielded targets (Lowest shields)
- Giga cannons will prioritise targets with highest shielding
- Arc Emitters target indiscriminately, meaning they focus fire less.

These behaviours technically make lances the best as once a ships shields are down the lances will focus it down and kill it quickly.

 

[krios41]

From useless Titans?

useless titans?
Have you ever fought an FE/AE? those things hit like a truck and hit from super far away.

 

[TwiceAHuman]

useless titans?
Have you ever fought an FE/AE? those things hit like a truck and hit from super far away.

They also go down in seconds after some focused fire, suddenly halving the power of their entire fleet.

 

[The Founder]

They also go down in seconds after some focused fire, suddenly halving the power of their entire fleet.

You know that the Theory of Relativity predicted the extreme Situations in wich it would not apply?

We have no idea what kind of extreme Situations you are even talking about. But we have no doubt that it is one far off extreme Situation not at all Typical for the game called Stellaris in patch 1.4.1

 

[TwiceAHuman]

You know that the Theory of Relativity predicted the extreme Situations in wich it would not apply?

We have no idea what kind of extreme Situations you are even talking about. But we have no doubt that it is one far off extreme Situation not at all Typical for the game called Stellaris in patch 1.4.1

Well, my fleets heavily rely on small ships instead of battleship spam, perhaps this is the case.

 

[Arkona]

I stopped using X-weapons when I couldn't beat an awoken empire with my fleet which was two times smaller than the fleet of the enemy. Instead, I focused on plasma and disruptors and wrecked the bastards with very few casualties.

X-slot weapons seem very powerful on paper but, in practice, I've found them to be quite weak especially if the fleets are large enough. Once they start mixing up, all x-weapons become useless, but you still have to output a lot of damage points to win. Idk, at this time, I'm entirely unconvinced that they can be useful in any way.