Notable Beginner Weapons Discussion

[Cardinal]

You omni-lovers will out-grow omni-weapons eventually. Let me try to convince you.

Get a Shtorm repeater, find I can usually get one early in the game. Enhance it with the ROM

This weapon is better than an unmodified Hanzo (which won't do you much good against dwarg anyway), I kid you not. It will spew out a pile of blast projectiles in a tight cone which will let you smoke anything thats quick and difficult to hit without an omni. It will destroy any base in half-time. Its also fine after St K's, and is my preferred weapon against the dwarg and the sung.

The Shtorm repeater can also be used to break up wrecks.

Is anything resistant to blast damage?

Ultimately the best weapon for early game is left to chance. What you can find in the weapons shops and destroyed bases is what you get, but I'll take a Shtorm repeater over any other weapon. An omni is a tool. A Shtorm Repeater is an investment.

[F50]

I certainly wouldn't get caught using laser post st. K for long. I generally pick up the shtorm from mayakev (after I pass St. K) as it packs a really nice punch and is really useful against maurauder raid platforms or any basebusting (although the shuriken is pretty good at basebusting itself). That said its range and fragmenting nature means that you will need a longer-range weapon as well.

Shuriken -> tritum cannon, nothing else in between.

[FAD]

You omni-lovers will out-grow omni-weapons eventually. Let me try to convince you.

Get a Shtorm repeater, find I can usually get one early in the game. Enhance it with the ROM

Nope, this guy will never give up his omni weapons...especially for any Shtorm repeater. Don't care for them since they're too short-ranged for my needs... among other reasons.

And as long as I have a decent shield by or after St.K's, I'll stick with my OTL until I can find an OIC to replace it. Sure, it may take a bit longer to get the job done with an OTL in some cases, but there's only a couple ships that are immune to laser--which is why I'll either have a NAMI or Fusionfire as secondary.

[OddBob]

I second the Shtorm it's a great weapon.

Another good midgame weapon I like is the Nandao bolt cannon. It fires faster and does MORE damage per shot than a Mark III (compare max damage on the howitzer of 60 [5d12] to the nandao's 102 [12d8+6]) and ammo can be found in plenty on your friendly neighborhood Earth Slaver.

[Mutos]

Hi OddBob,


Yes and min damage also is 5 (howie) compared to 18 (nandao) ^-^

[Shifter55]

For me, it's always been the Fusionfire Howizter, it never needs ammo, is almost as powerful as a Qianlong Archcannon, has a giant bullet, and most of all it NEVER EVER comes back to hit you in the face (looks furiously at XM900 Lucifers).

It's a bit slow though...

(Only because I got one Pre-St. K's.)

[Cardinal]

For me, it's always been the Fusionfire Howizter, it never needs ammo, is almost as powerful as a Qianlong Archcannon, has a giant bullet, and most of all it NEVER EVER comes back to hit you in the face (looks furiously at XM900 Lucifers).

It's a bit slow though...

(Only because I got one Pre-St. K's.)

Absolutely, I always try and install a Fusionfire Howizter before Rigel Aurilis.

Although you might have found it pre-St. K's, I don't think it really counts in this discussion as you'd need a military rom and a decent reactor to power it, and find someone with advanced enough technology to install it.

That said, the Fusionfire is a fine weapon. I'm using a +140% Fusionfire at the moment. Nasty.

[Ihlosi]

The Yoroi S100 is great, and guzzles less power than the Nephren.

It's only great until you get shot to bits by a bunch of wind slavers.

(or a heliotrope outpost and a bunch of their gunships. Just happened to me right now, *sigh*)

For me, power isn't really a concern since I try to keep solar armor as long as possible.

But back to the original topic: weapons. I find that both mining tools (mining laser, plasma torch) also make good siege weapons in a pinch (especially if you're a freighter/omni weapons player like me). I try to "optimize" both of them, so I can mine faster and do more damage/time when attacking stations.

[Atarlost]

For me, it's always been the Fusionfire Howizter, it never needs ammo, is almost as powerful as a Qianlong Archcannon, has a giant bullet, and most of all it NEVER EVER comes back to hit you in the face (looks furiously at XM900 Lucifers).

It's a bit slow though...

(Only because I got one Pre-St. K's.)

I agree with everyone who says the FFH can't really qualify as early game even if it can be generated, but the Mark I and III are level 5 and 6 respectively, use 10 and 15 Mw respectively, and are nonmilitary. They are just as game changing as the fusionfire if not more so. You can run either on your starting reactor if you're flying the freighter and the Mark I can run off of the sapphire starting reactor as well if you use a low level shield.

The Mark I, if I'm reading the xml correctly, will usually single shot a Corsair and single shot a Viking a bit more than half the time, so it'd be a really good gun to practice aiming with. You get the same sort of intermittant payoff that makes gambling so addictive, except that instead jackpots you get explosions.

[Cardinal]

The Mark I, if I'm reading the xml correctly, will usually single shot a Corsair and single shot a Viking a bit more than half the time, so it'd be a really good gun to practice aiming with. You get the same sort of intermittant payoff that makes gambling so addictive, except that instead jackpots you get explosions.

I agree. Its worth mastering aiming in Transcendence just so you can play around with the Howitzers. The Mark I or Mark 3 are great weapons to use the enhancement rom on.

[Song]

After an entire YEAR of thread-death, this topic interests me enough to post here.


The one thing that hasn't really been mentioned is the Rassiemesser Smartcannon. If you can find an accelerator and either an enhancement ROM or some extra upgrades....it will take out anything short of a drake or frigate. It tracks, and will take out Corsair Is in one hit quite often (if you find upgrades, which ARE quite hard to find). The downsides are the low range, the fact that it's rubbish against advanced reactive/blast armor, and the slight increase in mass due to the weight of ammo. But apart from that, it's a nice weapon for the first bit of the game. And you can always get more ammunition by shooting those T3 transports.

...but it isn't very good against frigates or saving Korolov. Drakes are killable, but tricky.

And I once got a lancer in the second system of the game. Wish i could say the same about reactor upgrades.

And the best luck I have had is (in a hornet playership) finding 3 plates of Gusoku armor in Eridani, and also having the good luck to get some centauri nanos from arco. Great fun.....once I'd mined enough ore to buy the armor.



(Incidentally, I once used a Gem of Despair to go back to eridani. Complete with SN2500, a highly upgraded Omni (Either omni-thermo, omni-ion or IM90) and either a Rasiemesser launcher, a nami heavy or just plain old XM900s. It was....well......fun. )

[Atarlost]

The Smartcannon goes unused because it does about the same damage as its ammoless competitors. 2d6 kinetic / 15 ticks isn't much better than 2d4+1 laser / 15 ticks or 1d6+1(x2) kinetic / 20 ticks and is worse than 1d6+1(x4) kinetic / 30 ticks. or 1d8+3 kinetic / 15 ticks. It's in the middle of the pack for level 3 weapons, but requires ammo. It's only advantage is the tracking, and all the other weapons I listed can simply fire more to because there's no need to conserve ammo.

[Fossaman]

I tend to shun kinetic weapons up until the flenser or dual flenser. For those of you who don't use omni weapons, which laser do you usually go with at the start?

[Aury]

I usually jump from my starting laser directly to something particle.
I like dual lasers when possible. Though it really varies from situation to situation.

[Atarlost]

The lasers tend to be samey because they all have the same shot speed and lifetime. There are no interesting tradeoffs, just raw damage. So let's look at the numbers.

laser:
2.5/10 = 15 dps

bolide:
3.5/10 = 21 dps
dual:
5/10 = 30 dps
fast-fire:
2.5/5 = 30 dps
mining:
12.5/30 = 25 dps

array:
7.5/15 = 30 dps
turbolaser:
6/15 = 24 dps

dual turbo:
12/15 = 48 dps

x-ray:
40/15 = 160 dps

Note that the dual laser and fast-fire (level 2) beat the single turbolaser (level 3). and match the laser array, which suffers from excessive spread and will tend to miss with 2/3 of its shots pulling it down below even the level 1 laser. The only advantage the single turbolaser has is that it won't lose as much damage to roundoff error as the lighter weapons, but they put out a lot more raw damage and by the time resistances start climing you can have a much better weapon than the single turbolaser.

So your best bet is the dual laser or fast-fire until you grab that flenser.

For people who like kinetics the trident and arbalest both put out 36 dps, though the trident will only really do well at point blank. I think these are the most damaging sub level 4 non-missile weapons.