Notable Beginner Weapons Discussion

[Mutos]

Hi all,


In any case, my first objective when I do not fly a freighter is to get an omnilaser, the second being a targeting ROM !

Whatever the ship I stick will omni weapons as mains, because they allow to use a ship's maneuver capabilities at their best, specially used in combination with the targeting ROM. Asap, I'll complete them with anything packing a good punch for pounding bases after their fighters complement is gone. And I stick to that. Same for missiles, of course as soon as the money allows...

Namely, my preferred config is an omnilaser as mains, or higher omnis if available, the most powerful cannon I can get for my bucks as secondary and a launcher payload mixing one type of guided missiles, even puny, with one type of the most powerful passive warhead I can get my hands on...

[Dorne]

Longbow Missiles are just as effective on bases as fragmentation missiles, because I can never seem to use the full potential of the frags against them, so it's just impact damage. Pre-st.k, you can afford to use as many missiles as you want so long as you get more from enemy ships in return (drakes, frigates).

[F50]

unfortunately, you need to base-sit to really use the full potential of frags. That said, watch the explosion (marauder strongholds have a larger explosion then their size suggests)!

[obsidean]

I've usually found the fast-fire laser cannon a decent weapon for the beginning game. However, the best item I've ever found in the first 2 areas was a shuriken.. unfortunately its power consumption had me running off to the gas stations a lot.

I'd recommend a fast-fire weapon starting out personally, not depending on the omni helped me develop my flying skills a bit more. A good shield is even better though.

[Cardinal]

Although the fast-fire laser looks pretty with its 10 shots/second, you'll hurt enemies more with a dual-laser cannon, which fires 6x2 shots/second.

Same goes for a dual particle beam weapon, which is better than the shuriken.

[Mutos]

Hi all,


You strike a point, obsidean, the drawback of my method is that bully I am, bully I stay, I probably would hone my flying skills slower than you...

My dogfight method is to use the omni as main and keep dumb-fire missiles ready for when I hit the right lof. If it begins to turn bad, I switch to volleys of guided missiles as a last ditch.

[FAD]

Since I'm usually a freighter 99.9% of the time, I stick with omni-based energy weapons as my primary. Keep the omni laser until I can find an OTL, then enhance that as much as possible along with the calimator. Will also grab a NAMI ASAP for secondary. Will usually pass on an OPC since they're usually found by the time Dwarg come into season. The OTL does fine with them and having the NAMI as backup will finish the job nicely.

Later in the game I seek out the OIC or the IM90 as primary and a Fusionfire Wowitzer as backup...but will still hold onto my NAMI and choice-select missiles for particular missions.

So in general I tend to stay away from ammo weapons save for the NAMI or its big brother in late game.

[Vastin]

I tend to stick heavily to the Shuriken or Lancer for quite a while if I can get either early enough. I try to keep some kind of decent omni equipped as well - whatever the highest available is.

I don't like dealing with the weight or logistics of ammo weapons so I almost never use Missiles or Akans. The main exception I'll make is the Smart Cannon if there are no Omni's available, or I can't buy a Laser Collimator.

I've had a few games though where I get an X-Ray before St.K's. I'll hang onto that for a few systems. But it will inevitably be punted for a lancer or shuriken as the laser resistance mounts.

I generally don't bother with kinetics (too slow), and I hold off on Blast until I can get a howitzer. I'm very fond of howitzers.

[schilcote]

For base game weapons, I like the lasers. The Trident is good, but nothing beats a 325% Omni Laser! Combine that with a SMR (Stephinian Missile Rack) and you can kick copious amounts of rear.

[obsidean]

Meh, I have to admit I use my Spathi Eluder I made for a mod for this game a lot. I've definately noticed one thing, the manuverability I put in for the BUTT launcher really screws you over if you use frag missiles with it, sorry..

On the other hand with the faster in-game ships I've managed to learn how to speed between enemy missle volleys.

If only I could figure out how to replicate an affect from the Star Control 2 game, one of the ships, the Supox Blade has an ability to cut its engines and strafe to the left and right at a fairly high speed. It made me wonder how interesting the computer opponents might be if they could do this.

Omni weapons are good, but considering how few of them there are I've learned gradually not to depend on them possibly showing up in shops.

[omniaddict]

Just for the record, there are some omni weapons that can be farmed off of enemies. The kobol occasionally drop a working omni tev9, and the ares dreadnaughts and destroyers drop the omni lightning cannon. I've seen ranx dreadnaughts drop a working OTL, but I'm not sure what good that would do you at that point

[Mutos]

nothing beats a 325% Omni Laser!

Good idea, schilcote, I agree with you !

[Aury]

Although the fast-fire laser looks pretty with its 10 shots/second, you'll hurt enemies more with a dual-laser cannon, which fires 6x2 shots/second.

Same goes for a dual particle beam weapon, which is better than the shuriken.

really?
I thought shurkien projectiles were 2d5 damage while particle beam was 2d4 damage...
I might be wrong though...
Shuriken sounds like a continuous lightning turret when used with a weapon enhance rom
It's actually more effective with +fast vs. sung fortresses if you stop and slowly drift to get your projectiles in the little gaps between the barriers than the same strat w/ the dual particle in my experience...

[Cardinal]

I thought shurkien projectiles were 2d5 damage while particle beam was 2d4 damage...
I might be wrong though...
Shuriken sounds like a continuous lightning turret when used with a weapon enhance rom
It's actually more effective with +fast vs. sung fortresses if you stop and slowly drift to get your projectiles in the little gaps between the barriers than the same strat w/ the dual particle in my experience...

Shuriken damage is 2-8, the dual particle does 2-9, so the shuriken is marginally less damaging.
The Shuriken will do 10 shots a round as opposed to the dual particles 12.
I'd be quite curious to see the Lancer worked out as comparison.

I do like the Shuriken, and its so easy to find (or flog from the Sung) that I do tend to find myself using it a lot. Dual particle beams weapons are comparitively rare.

Both weapons are 30MW, the Shuriken is level V, the Dual particle beam weapon is level VI.

[Atarlost]

NOTE: I just realized I'm still on 0.99b so take this with a larger grain of salt than you would from my just being a new poster.

I think early (pre St. K) weapon choice depends on whether you get a laser collimnator or a cannon accelerator.

With the former an omni-laser or omni-turbo and a dual laser or dual turbo works pretty well. The fast-fire seems to be the best base cracker when you don't have any WMD and mops up anything up to a Viking I just fine with the collimnator. The Omni is a nice flyswatter and the fast-fire is good enough, though my experience with it comes from a modded ship (the turquoise) I picked up after frustration with a botched military mission made me delete my sapphire game and it looks like it has a much higher turning rate than the default playerships.

With the latter the morningstar is a marvelous non-omni flyswatter (with the sapphire and presumably the wolfen) and with a NAMI for backup does enough damage to handle everything pre St. K. The lower damage is made up for by not missing half or more of your shots against corsairs, hornets, and vikings, and against drakes and corsair IIs it seems to put up an impenitrable barrier to missile shots. Either that or they don't use them properly in 0.99b. I don't remember seeing missiles launched in my other games either so they may have been broken. I don't see an interaction tag for either, but I don't see interaction tags for strelkas and the Ares Lightning turret either and I'm positive I've seen a Phobos shoot down strelkas so I assume all missiles interact at 100 by default.

Post St. K I'm pretty much stuck with the omni-turbo becauser Dwarg and Areans resist particle and I can't afford to schlep around two omnis. The shuriken and lancer are nice too, at least on the sapphire, but they have the same problem as the omni-particle and omni-tev-9. There's not really anything I like for killing Dwarg and Areans until I can pry loose a lightning turret. I'm probably missing something really obvious, but all I can do is long range strafing with a howitzer. I tried the Akan 600 once, but the shots travel so slowly it can't hit a moving target at 60 ls and the main use I have for omnis at this point is avoiding the granularity of aiming in a meduim range duel. (with the sapphire at least. They're more important to the freighter, but even with it I found myself using my fusionfire instead of my omni for sandstorms) The second weapon gets replaced by a howitzer as soon as possible. The recoil and range make it easier to escape after blasting a base and the V can single-shot wind slavers and the fusionfire sandstorms. The next step for me after getting the fusionfire has been to find a Deimos, lure it away from its base, throw fireballs at it, and steal the lightning turret. They seem to be worth a longzhu to repair and they can actually kill Arean light units unlike earlier omnis. I haven't really gotten past lightning turret and fusionfire. A lot of stuff is just too power hungry for a 500 or 600 Mw reactor and I don't really like giving up the ability to use easily looted level VII fuel. The ammo weapons make me nervous about running out unless I'm lugging around thousands of rounds. I wound up using the kiloton for the Huarnica quest in the sapphire game and it was nice. It eliminated everything but the dragon slaver, but it also burned through ammo I had backtracked through several systems to collect. I think after I get done using the "way too many slots assault ship" to experiment with weapons I would never otherwise try and go back to playing for real I'll try collecting for it the whole game and see if that generates enough ammo for semi-regular use.

For launchers I think I prefer the MAG. There seems to be more frag ammo for it than the others. I don't like the NAMI. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think it's the low availability on the seekers and frags combined with the high availability of the decidedly unimpressive longbows. The makayev is nifty and lots of places sell strelkas in big bunches, but it doesn't have frags so it's not good in a stern chase with a mob of vengeful base guards. I haven't tried the reismasser yet. It looks like it may suffer from low ammo availability.