Best & Worst Weapons

[Deltax]

The fracture cannon, while having a very short range does a damn good job of stopping incoming projectiles, everything except shots from the hecates cannon, ares plasma archcannon, and of course beams stands little chance of getting through while your firing it.

[sun1404]

Yeah. Missiles massacres are useless against the Fracture Cannon. It's like throwing sticks at a raging flamethrower.

[Atarlost]

The ion flame cannon will stop most stuff and it can actually hurt things that aren't close enough to open the airlock and throw water balloons at.

[Song]

The ion flame cannon will stop most stuff and it can actually hurt things that aren't close enough to open the airlock and throw water balloons at.

But it also has rapid drop-off due to being a short range weapon with very wide spread. Pretty much all the short range weapons in the late game (exception being the iocrym repeller) make decent missile-swatters at a pinch.

[sun1404]

The ion flame cannon will stop most stuff and it can actually hurt things that aren't close enough to open the airlock and throw water balloons at.

About that, I guess actually you can throw water balloons at enemies from lightyears in space, if you can aim it right.

[Jay2Jay]

I like the morning star for early to mid games because its kinda like a downgraded fracture cannon. A severely downgraded fracture cannon. I have no idea if there is a new weapon I might like though, since I haven't played since 1.1 beta.

[Atarlost]

The ion flame cannon will stop most stuff and it can actually hurt things that aren't close enough to open the airlock and throw water balloons at.

About that, I guess actually you can throw water balloons at enemies from lightyears in space, if you can aim it right.

Not and have it remain a water balloon. It'll either freeze or boil and I doubt the balloon will survive either.

The ion flame cannon will stop most stuff and it can actually hurt things that aren't close enough to open the airlock and throw water balloons at.

But it also has rapid drop-off due to being a short range weapon with very wide spread. Pretty much all the short range weapons in the late game (exception being the iocrym repeller) make decent missile-swatters at a pinch.

No it doesn't. It theoretically has inverse linear dropoff as a spreading weapon in a plane. The Fracture cannon actually has inverse square dropoff because both lifetime and shot speed are randomized linearly.

In actual practice the Ion Flame Cannon has no drop off against the ICS or most stations and limited drop off against other capital ships because they cover a significant arc at its range limit. The armor damage isn't concentrated, but in practice it rarely is even with single shot weapons. Against gunships it generates a higher hit rate than fixed fire weapons, offsetting the drop off due to spreading.

[Song]

Actually if you made the balloon tough enough it should last a fair while. You'd need to tune the reflectivity to keep the temperature fairly nominal (although this would vary given how far you are from the star you're orbiting). It's not really much different from a pressure suit, plus it doesn't need to stand up to repeated use or withstand micrometeorite strikes.

[catfighter]

Lets just assume the water balloon was made of some futuristic rubber that doesn't break under pressure or temperature changes.
It would actually be a pretty vicious weapon, especially if it spread out and froze. If you dropped it out the back of your ship while someone was chasing you at half the speed of light...well, you can fill in the rest.

[Atarlost]

If you drop something out of your ship while moving half the speed of light it will also be traveling half the speed of light. It's when you're on an opposite Hohmann trajectory from an enemy that dropping things out of your ship works.

Nyrath recommends kitty litter in this application. (scroll down to the example)

[Song]

If you drop something out of your ship while moving half the speed of light it will also be traveling half the speed of light. It's when you're on an opposite Hohmann trajectory from an enemy that dropping things out of your ship works.

Nyrath recommends kitty litter in this application. (scroll down to the example)

Well if the enemy is chasing at half the speed of light, but you're travelling at a lower speed, then it will cause some fantastic damage.


...said fantastic damage will then smear your ship into a big cloud of plasma when it hits you at a little under 0.5C.*



*Edit: Absolute. Not relative. Relative speed is "darned fast".

[EditorRUS]

I don't use many of the weapons because i have some powerful ones. It's pretty strange, but i don't like ion weapons and don't use them at all.
So, best ones to late gate:
1. Ferian plasma cannon.
YUP! It's extremaly powerful for it's level. Ares positron weapons can be good alternative, but the plasma cannon has one good advantage - it SPREADS plasma, while Ares positron ones only shoot with one bullet. So, i think it's the best one.

2. Iocrym fracture cannon.
While it even more powerful than the plasma cannon it fails in one thing: it's goddamn impossible to get quickly. Moreover - iocrym are very rare and there's a chance you won't even get one of these.

3. Ramissier launcher and thermo missiles. Lol, yes, i like it, because that one of things to break though a shield. Be careful: most high-level weapons aren't powerful to quickly burn through a shield. Of course you can get powerful lasers for such target, but there're two disadvantages: 1. You must sweep your weapon to lasers. That can be a little boring when you have many weapons installed. 2. High-level shields resist lasers and make them useless.

So, the tactic is simple: shoot with missiles and a plasma cannon.
Missiles and plasma in couple can destroy powerful ships quickly. As there's no armor that can resist plasma so the plasma is the best type in the game.
Well, there's one disadvantage:
1. Plasma cannon SPREADS the plasma, so, enemies with many segments will get damage in many zones, but not one that let enemy to be destroyed quickly.


About start weapons: well, there's nothing to say.
I prefer to use Baliista, Howitzers, Lasers, and missiles (not a blast weapon!). I don't like particle and ion damage types, so, i use a laser for one half of the game.

But sometimes it's better to win any enemy by luring him to a friendly station with defending force. Or even more - make some BUSINESS~ and cause a war, and stealing stuff from dead ones. My favorite way to win everyone, lol - cause a war.

[sun1404]

I'll still say that the Iocrym Fracture Cannon is a very good weapon, T-rex arms-ranged and all that. Yes it is arguably useless against the last boss because that ship have the only weapon that deals more dps than the IFC, but have you ever faced the Phobos head on and burn it in seconds? If you can dodge the Archcannon until you get in range and spam IFC, it'll actually stop some of the Archcannon shots if you're far enough and your speed is close enough to the Phobos's. And it'll burn through anything in no more than ten seconds.

Anyway, I still prefer the Plasma Archcannon as my best endgame weapon. Nothing says awesome like 300 plasma damage at 100 ls range.

[Aury]

Actually you dont even have to dodge, just fly head on with the cannon firing and it will block the shots

[sun1404]

Well, if you're going in fast enough some lucky shots can break through. I've died that way while thinking I was invulnerable.