I've also heard that filling up empty slots with mining lasers can cause EMP arcs to hit those slots instead of critical main guns/engines. Might be a good idea to do that vs few good PD smalls if true.
@@ymfahVery true, facts, real. I tested some just now. EMP hits from the hull targets the nearest turret/hardpoint/engine, so its actually a bit harder to disable turrets in the center of the ship (ex. Medium missile turrets on the Onslaught). Also, the higher the hp of the mount/engine, the longer it takes to repair (ie. applying Armored Weapon Mounts). This makes the S-mod Automated Repair Unit a must-have hullmod. Edit: The Ion Beam’s shield penetrating arc will always target parts that were not covered by the shield arc, if its a 360 shield then it will randomly apply damage to the whole ship.
there are a couple of destroyers from mods that synergise with the gigacannon, since they're flux starved so a tach lance would strain their flux reserves and the alpha strike from the gigacannon fits with the hit&run theme for them on cruisers and capital ships its pointless though
Funny enough, I am going to do fighters next because I'm having trouble ranking some of the missiles. Need to cook with them a little more. Fighters on the other hand, I've got a pretty good idea where to place all of them.
Mining laser is the most slept-on weapon in the game, period. It's the only weapon in the game that allows your empty slots to do something for practically no cost, and that includes both OP and flux. For a weapon with both a niche main role, and a versatility of energy damage type, in certain builds it's a godsent.
as a new player I am enjoying these upto date tier lists, I like the way you break down each weapons roll it is very helpful, and I am noticing that the balance in this game is actually really good.
i would put high intensity laser at S tier because : - 1k range - good efficiency - the enemy can NOT drop its shield as long as you're aiming towards it or else its armor gets vaporized 1k/sec to armor then 500/sec to hull It does not require you to invest in hullmods, it's just a great large energy weapon as is
ive also heard high tech star fortresses will spam you with mines if you dont have any PD. source: comments under a video of a guy killing said star fortress with a kite (he used the emotional support mining laser)
I know the Gigacannon was made as a useless meme weapon, but it'd be nice if there was at least one use case for it. Maybe make it a hybrid weapon and let Mudskipper MkIIs use it. It might actually be a little bit useful to have this tiny fast 2dp boat that can zoom in, unload 2000 hard flux damage, and then fuck off for 10 seconds. Or put it on the Manticore. I dunno.
Yeah, it's a shame that the Lionsguard in general is a meme. I get why they did it but still it feels like wasted potential when they could've put that development time into weapons and ships that I would actually use.
Good placements, I would rate the Ion Beam in B tier. Its great at stunning those pesky frigates because the arc will often jump to the engines if the flux is high enough preventing them from backing away and venting, but more importantly pulling your ships out of position. Looking forward to missiles and fighters next.
I must confess I dearly love all of the ion weapons. I usually run a wolfpack + carrier backline, and there is a certain kind of joy to stripping a ship of all its shields and PD weps with an EMP frigate strike, only to watch it get swarmed by a coordinated fighter strike. Ion my beloved.
Mining Blasters are great with flanking ships that leverage the burst damage on unshielded parts of the ship while saving flux contribution until the target drops shields. The trait of dealing additional bypassing armor damage will greatly help against high armor low tech ships because of the damage reduction passive. Synergizes well with energy weapon mastery since they don't fire until armor or hull is open, and by that time the soft flux from firing other weapons confers additional damage to the blaster's base shots while in range... Or fire the blaster first on the unshielded part, then release Hold Fire for the rest of the weapons to fire with slight damage bonus and expect deeper hull damage.
Mining blaster is a lot of fun to use, especially when paired with the ion pulser. It's just not as generically powerful as the phase lance, which is often its main competition for medium anti-armor.
When you have built-in extended magazines and high power flow on your ship, it's better to use it instead of the phase lance for any weapon other than the Mining blaster. Otherwise, it's better to take the lance.
a funny thing about kinetic blaster: - it's only useful on ships that desperately need kinetic DPS but dont have ballistic slots - it was made by a midline faction - its creator also made the gigacannon
I believe LG executors even mount it in the hybrid slots, just to drive the point home about the flaws of the dikatat. Giving high tech a good anti shield option would crowd out most of the medium options. So for what it's worth I prefer it as a C-tier niche weapon over the alternative.
@@bigbrainenergyguy Yes they do put kinetic blasters in hybrid slots. It's not meant to do kinetic damage, it's meant to do emotional damage. And in my case it works. Also i play with poorly balanced mods occasionally, and can confirm having good kinetic DPS that can go in energy slots trivializes a lot of vanilla options.
There is one good use I can think of for the gigacannon, and it’s the Sunder. Sunder is SUPER scary with this thing. Champion can also evaporate one thing after another with this.
On the Paladin topic, I sometimes like to bring a Sunder with the Paladin in its L slot and kit it out with PD / Optics / Mags etc as well as a commander with the PD skill + Escort mod and tie it to a capital ship for the fancy double Destroyer bonus. Maybe not the best use of the ship and commander but its funny watching it zap stuff and you really can free up some space and flux from other ships not needing as much PD themselves.
@@Propietario283 yeah I might not have been clear enough on that, its obviously not a "good" ship build, its simply funny seeing it spin around with a long range Paladin zapping all over. With Aux Thrusters boosting the agility/turn rate by like +100%, Escort +50%(near capital ship), Helmsmanship and Impact Mitigation? each are like +50% it can spin quite fast. It just looks funny and its not entirely useless, only almost. Spin to win.
These are great! Highly helpful for me. Love that you don't just tell why things are where they are, but also explain why and when those things could be higher or lower tier
Problem with the Paladin is that, in vanilla, there is no use case for it, despite Paladin itself being a really good weapon. There are no ships that have large energy mounts placed in supportive configuration, nor are there enemy fleets that use misile/fighter spam enough to justify taking them. Paragon side turrets WOULD be a good use case, but those have front arc convergence, so you use offensive options there instead to bring all 4 large energies on target. The only place in vanilla you can see Paladins being good, is if you are attacking a Remnant Nexus for some reason (and watch all your missiles and fighers drop dead), or use them to deal with Aspect fighters in Hypershut fight - pretty much the only fight you're justified taking Paladins into. Play modded on the other hand, and you'll swear on them. Anyone who tried to attack an Artillery Station (Industrial Evolution mod) before late-game will tell you to bring as many Paladins you can. Not gonna spoil the suprise here, find out for yourself. Good luck starfarer!
There is only one time where I was able to make some decent use out of the Gigacannon, by putting two of them on the front slots of a Paragon with Plasma Cannons in the turrets. Was it the best thing to put there? Probably not. But the one good thing about this weapon is that it does reaper torpedo damage to shields. The Paragon can compensate for its crap range. And with an alpha strike of 2 reapers (to shields) that cannot be intercepted, you can overload ships very reliably. Still would be better to use Autopulses or Tachyons though...
I really liked using bunch of phase lances on executor and bunch of lg eagles recently Combination of pretty efficient shields with 0 op solar shielding and a lot of burst energy damage really makes remnants with their overfluxed heavy ships struggle to actually secure kills most of the time P. S and that executor uses giga cannons... It one shots half flux fulgents, scintillas, overloaded brilliants and makes Novas reconsider it's life choices
Solar shielding isn’t 0OP on those ships (despite the sindrians having invented the hullmod). the max OP on those ships is lower as if Solar Shielding had been bought.
Being built in does come with the small advantage that you can get the s-mod bonus without actually using up one of your s-mod slots. Immunity to storms and solar flares is pretty nice.
I'm surprised to see the ion pulser in B tier. Ever since the buff to its damage I've found it to be an incredible weapon for overdriven ships and a near straight upgrade over the pulse laser.
Granted as a connoisseur of safety overrides I am completely biased but I'd never put it below the IR autolance, not when it turns enemy ships into hot slag in an instant and is reloaded by the time you get to the next enemy.
pulse laser is sooooo under rated. easily s tier for medium slot, at least a. Hard flux at 300 dps with great efficiency. 3 of these on an eagle wrecks shields, armor and hull, add two hvd and an assault gun on the front and you are cooking anyone in a fight, add sabots and they melt even faster. They are also fantastic against fighters and missiles. Ya there are weapons that do specific jobs better but pulse lasers to every job very well and make a fantastic, efficient base.
Full mining laser is pretty good on Mora. Go full PD, with PD mod, S-Modded gyros, and a full hangar of Sarissas. Kind of a weird build, but not a bad way to bring a lot of PD to the fight, and it just looks cool if you’re playing low tech.
Paladin Paragon can work, but it requires more thought and consideration to reach similar performance to the other options. It makes it stronger defensively, you've just got to make sure the rest of your fleet can substitute the lost damage output. If your goal is to feel like an invincible wall, that can be worth the effort!
A [redacted] capital ship has a large energy slot that is begging for a paladin laser, and given it has a lot of slots that can fit large energy stuff, giving up one doesn't feel so bad.
So there´s this destroyer from the Ship/Weapon Pack called the Nightwalker. It has a large universal turret mount and a system very similar to that of the Scarab...but it´s also a phase ship. Its time acceleration system also keeps working when you phase...in fact its effect gets amplified on top of the regular faster time flow (description literally says that it skips you forward in time). I would highly recommend trying it with a Phase Anchor and Gigacannon, it´s very entertaining. But I agree, F tier in vanilla and even with mods most ships would prefer everything else over the Gigafail Cannon.
I've found the Gigacannon pretty serviceable on the Executor. It's no High Intensity Laser, but it has some significant upsides over it: hard flux when impacting shields and a much lower demand on flux. So it has a niche on midline ships that are trying to be high tech without the flux stats for it. Helps a build with 5 heavy autocannon and 4 IR autolance break through heavy armor. So does the high intensity laser, though (if you remember to shut it off when enemy flux is low). Or presumably the tachyon lance. The Gigacannon you can just leave on and it'll do something useful every 10 seconds, and the forward medium slot options on the Executor aren't so bad that it needs more than that. Meanwhile, kinetic blasters on an Executor are just a mistake.
Awesome, something good to watch after work. Thank you! You say that fighters will be next up, looking forward to it: I could never wrap my head around using them. Will there be something like an “effective use of weapon groups” also? I tend to struggle with/forget this, possibly other players also. (You touched lightly on it in the Ballistic Tierlist video.)
So like i bet your gonna make a missile tier list at this point but are you thinking of making a low mid and high tier ship tier list too to compliment these ones? A campaign skill tier list would be pretty neat too but not nessicary Really love these videos its really nice seeing your thought process all in one video though your usually really good at also explaining it on the regular videos too when they come up
Press F for Gigacannon. The only way i could use this thing is with Odyssey but even then it couldn't even come close to breaking my heart and my space pelvis. It's just meh. No wonder Sindrian Diktat only occupies a single system. Andrada only fired once and boofed. What's even funnier is it's "implied" to be better used on Executor, with higher range of energy projectile weapons. But the damn thing doesn't have flux stats to use it effectively and AI is afraid to fire it because of risk of overloading.
I have to say, in contrast to the ballistic weapon tier list i have to disagree on a couple of ratings here. Heavy Burst Laser - should at least be B tier. Sure, it's not a commonly used weapon, but it's THE weapon of choice if you want to build a dedicated point defense ship. Paladin is out of the question because al ships with large energy turret mounts cost much more DP than you should spend for a PD ship. But this thing can be mounted on frigates and destroyers, has all the advantages of the normal burst laser but cover a much larger area thanks to its larger range. Put two of these on a Meduse together with 4 normal Burst PD, s-modded expanded magazines, ITU, advanced optics and PD skill - you now can remove all PD from the majority of the rest of your fleet. IR Pulse Laser - you really can't put the hightest dps small energy weapon in C Tier, especially when the Antimatter Blaster sits two tiers higher. Sure, the Antimatter blaster has an advantage going against heavier amor and the burst damage can be helpful, but in every other aspects its equal or worse than the IR pulse laser, AND its limited by ammo IR Auto Lance - i understand the reasoning, but it doesn't really pay out. I'd rather have my enemy get into hull earlier than have better hull dps. I've mounted this many times, but monitoring its performance with detailed combat results mod showed it never did more than neglectable damage. Waste of a medium slot. Ion Pulser - this is surely A tier. Huge Burst dps for a medium weapon, large EMP dps on top, decent sustained dps with expanded magzines (s-mod) and pretty decent flux efficiency given it's an emp/normal damage hybrid. Can't image a situation where an IR Auto Lance would be more useful than this. And just in case this all sounded too negativ: thank you very much for your amazing videos!
Great video! I have some differing opinions and arguments supporting those opinions again. Mining laser: This works better in C tier. In addition to the bonuses you list, it actually deals more DPS per OP than PD Laser does. You're more likely to kill salamanders with 4 mining lasers than you are with 1 pd laser. it's still not better (or worse) than PD laser since it's much more per-slot inefficient, but there's many builds where using mining lasers is just better than using pd lasers. PDLaser, LRPDLaser, PDBurst: No disagreement, just wanted to add that on top of all the benefits PDBurst has that you mentioned, pd lasers have a critical flaw where their beam travel speed limits how fast they can kill multiple missiles. PDBurst doesn't care about this as much because its beam travels literally 4x faster than PD laser. The LRPD laser moves 50% faster than the PD laser, but in practice this isn't usually good enough to make up for the lower DPS (the range helps though, like you said). This same issue applies to tac laser with IPDAI. Just wanted to mention this, it's one of the biggest reasons why all the non-pdburst PD lasers suck. Ion Cannon: This feels more like a C tier weapon - it doesn't fit hybrid designs very well since it doesn't rangematch with ballistics. It works with energy builds, but you have access to the ion beam and the ion pulser. Now that S-mod Magazine exists, ion pulser is even more viable on SO builds than it used to be, which makes ion cannon more redundant. It's not a bad weapon, just very low impact and rarely worth the 6 OP. As an aside, I personally think Ion Cannon and IR Pulse Laser should be 600 base range. Mining Blaster: The burst damage this thing causes which does not get wasted very often against shields makes me strongly consider arguing this is an A tier weapon. Its bad range and 1.5 flux efficiency and some of its damage not applying to hull hold it back, but when this thing gets used on ships that want it, it is a terrifying monster. Just wanted to mention how powerful that burst damage is. Heavy Blaster: I feel like this should be A rank. It would be S tier if it was more baseline flux efficient. In addition to all of the various reasons you gave that it is a good weapon, Energy Weapon Mastery keeps it in A tier. -10% flux makes it 1.31 flux efficient before any damage increases it gets which is just so good for a weapon like the HB's weapon stats. Pulse laser or other weapons could use this too of course, but HB is just so wild and goes so well with the ships that can use it, like the any weapon. Kinetic Blaster: I'm convinced this is not a "worse" option than the pulse laser. It should be B rank. To start, it's actually rather easy to get as many KBs as you want by killing Caden's fleet in Askonia. If you wipe his entire fleet, he respawns about a week (Maybe sooner? I forget the exact time) after destruction. Each Caden kill nets you 4 KBs on average. Add the 3 you get from Usurpers and you get it pretty fast. If all you want is 7 KBs, you can reliably kill Caden once with transponder off then fix your relations by giving them a few AI cores. Very low effort, he's pretty easy to find, LG fleets aren't strong. As for the KB itself, It actually deals 25 more hitstrength against armor than the pulse laser does and also has 400 more projectile speed (1,000 vs 1,400) which makes it better at tagging frigates and destroyers. It deals 200 more dps at slightly more flux efficiency vs shields than the pulse laser, but deals much worse dps vs armor. Extending these comparisons, Heavy Needler vs Kinetic Blaster. Downplaying the KB having 5x more hitstrength over needler's 50 is wrong, I feel. It also has 200 more projectile speed (though, this is fixable with Elite BM) and perfect accuracy. The accuracy is the key part here, heavy needler has a pretty big spray pattern that further reduces how much of its damage might reach hull due to armor being nearby. I love using the KB on Heron or Astral as a 'get off me' tool against shielded frigates and destroyers for the above reasons, which doesn't require an officer to make it more accurate. It goes great against more types of factions than just remnant, since you can pair the KB with other energy weapons (like the MB!) or missiles. It's definitively not A tier though and the massive difference in flux efficiency with the Heavy Needler keeps it from being better than the Heavy Needler, but I think you're downplaying the KB too hard. Ion Beam: This just has to be B tier at least. You mention Target Analysis Elite with the Ion Cannon but you don't mention it with the Ion Beam. This deals ruinous EMP damage with its TA Elite and easily outvalues two ion cannons in one slot. Sure, it's a medium slot, but there are still many ships that have a medium energy slot to spare (so long as it isn't SO) that will get far more value than the 6-12 OP spent on your 1-2 ion cannons in smalls. In addition to all the benefits you listed that Ion Beam has, 2 ion cannons also cost 12 OP, for less value than 1 ion beam will give you. Another thing worth mentioning, flameouts in Starsector are ruinous to the flow of a battle and a TA Elite beam is one of the most reliable (though still random) ways to accomplish flameouts. Paladin: My favorite gun in starsector. I wish it was B tier. Buff it! That's all, lol. Gigacannon - Same rarity as KB - just kill Caden's fleet to grab more, rarity is whatever. That said, for purely Vanilla, I agree, it's F tier lol. It could theoretically be D tier if vanilla had some sort of Energy Bolt Coherer ship with many large energy slots converging onto one point. It would, at least, have the single purpose of being large mount filler so that you can equip your plasma cannons. But, that doesn't exist and might be broken or better off with autopulsers, lol! It would be good on the Paragon for an S-mod AWM Gigacannon + Plasma cannon build if it had better turn rate or didn't have a massive chargeup time to fire, but it doesn't. So, yeah. RIP Gigacannon.
The Gigacannon is legitimately the reason why I beat Forlorn Hope. Not saying it's good, but its burst damage meant that when I fired the two of them at the onslaught, it was always enough to drive it away and let me vent. The other weapons took care of the rest of the fleet.
i'm found good value with mining lasers, cheap enough to put on any low tech gang fleet, nice on legions, to better match the flak cannon's range, and a good overlapping network will work together well enough to melt fighters, which i'm most concerned about because the AI has a hard time being bullied by fighters more often than i'd like i do agree they are not at all slot efficient for actual DPS, but they are flux and OP cheap, and wiping fighter wings faster is always a good thing for the long drawn out battles with not too many mods that don't trash the vanilla balance
It's a weird situation where they can often be worth slotting in just because their so cheap and efficient, but if you forget to then the difference in performance is pretty marginal.
Can someone explain to me how the Harbinger is bad? The Harb with three Phase Lances and high scatter amp is my go to early and mid game flagship. It's a ton of fun and very effective. And the ship system is borderline OP. What is there to even complain about?
It's still a fine flagship, but can hard to justify piloting over other phase ships. On top of that it's unreliable in AI hands. Of course you can still make good use of it, and in fact it might show up in a video soon :)
Tachyon Lance my beloved. I almost always pick them up from Tritach black markets if I run into them early game, even if I have no large energy slots in my fleet yet.
Giga Cannon is easy S for me. Put in on any ship with "High Energy Focus" activate it, One shot enemies from behind or just blast them from anywhere. Works well with other burst weapons. This is a antimatter blaster with infinite ammo. Sunder with this thing just slaps. With High energy focus this weapon hits for 3K damage instantly, pair this with other weapons that hit hard (im using kinetic energy weapons for this from a mod, but anything works) and the target either overloads or is disabled by EMP. No other energy weapon allows ships like the sunder to be that much of a one shot nightmare, go in, kill, go out. My favorite sunder setup is 2 Ion Blasters (kinetic EMP damage energy weapon), Giga cannon, 2 Torps can be anything, reaper or atropos good enough, and 2 kinetics that either autofire (like railguns) or any small weapon that does HE damage. Go in, let railguns weaken shields a bit, activate High energy focus, blast the enemy to the sky with 6800 alpha damage + EMP.
The Paladin is very effective in the Champion’s large turret slot, doing so makes them become pretty much invincible against missiles and bombers. Also I find that the Ion Beam works extremely well against most modded ships so I always use it in every modded playthrough.
on rewatch (for fun) back at the giga cannon part. I wonder how effective you can make it on a sunder, its got big burst, the range isnt terrible overall, put escort package on it, let your sunder h-e-f and pop a big hit to nuke a frigate ig? seems... meh
the gigacannon needs pierce shields or something and cost more flux, and for balance give it a longer cool down. Make it an all or nothing gambit where you either kill your opponent or they dodge and kill you.
even longer cooldown? yikes. i kind of like where it's at as an energy version of the hellbore. there just aren't many ships that want something like that.
I thought gigacannon is trash too but after some experiment it's not as bad as you said It's essentially a large AM blaster with infinite ammo, maybe high-c tier but definitely not useless especially on something very mobile like a radiant or odyssey
Shooting over ships isn't unique to the paladin any more btw - dragonfire torps do it, which is actually the thing that makes them good since you can just fire it and then block PD fire with your ship
I kinda disagree with you about Ion Beam, here's why. I tend to build some extreme designs (only fully work with lvl 6 or higher officers, 3 S-mods and elite ordinance) that are highly efficient but just DON'T WORK without Ion beam. For example - extreme Beagle. Same as yours but i shove HVDs and Heavy needler up front with high mobility. With Ion Beam this Beagle can easily take out simulation Onslaught on its own, even tho it takes time, exactly because it can soften the larger target and proceed to mutilate it when it cant retort. Even then, it provides great support by just softening enemy with constant shield-piercing EMP pressure. Graviton just doesn't have the same effect on the battlefield, the presence of ship with Ion beam is very much felt and tactically advantageous. Stacking EMP damage in general is somewhat of a META that lets you deal with overwhelming odds reliably. To add to that, combat AI tends to "see" when the enemy is disabled and is more aggressive toward it, which leads to some clean and fast kills.
Mining laser is so much better than pd laser, more efficient much more cheaper, longer range. It shines with advanced turret gyros. And lets be honest neither will defend against sabots or hammers
Literally agree on everything except you swapped tiers for HIL and Tach Lance. HIL is a mount defining weapon where you will shape your other weapons around it to enable that insane armor damage, while Tachyon is more of a meme that's amazing vs trash fleets but just decent against tougher opponents. And even with Tachyon you still really need that kinetic damage. So yeah I get that it's super fun to use but people seem to overvalue it. Btw amazing ending lol, love the HxH music but man you went a bit too hard at the Gigachad. Sure it's not good for serious ships but try it on a Prometheus MkII. It's genuinely decent there when you combine it with kinetics.
It's the other way around. Sunder prefers HIL to be a long range killer, Champion AI is too dumb to time HEF with Tachyon. Odyssey doesn't want beams, unless it's a Rift Cascade Emitter, or again, HIL for AI builds. Executor once again with 2 HILs as the best build. So what, that leaves Paragon where 4 of them can actually get effective, but even that isn't its strongest build. Maybe on mod ships it's a no brainer, but in vanilla it sure as hell isn't.
Sunder is a destroyer so it cannot outrange larger ships. I agree on other points, but high burst damage and shield penetration really makes TL no-brainer choice. It can even overflux capitals sometimes, because AI fears TL shots and doesn't drop shields. On Odyssey, I use TL + autopulse. Zoom in, make boom, scoot out. Not great against remnants, sure, but does its job against other factions.
Never considered Escort Package on Sunder. It will probably work, yes, but escort destroyers don't fit my style. I mostly tank with capital flagship on center while cruisers do damage on flanks, Sunder - or any destroyer, really - is too fragile for that.
![Officer Tier List [Starsector]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZwHI--uPetM/mqdefault.jpg)
Sir, a second Big Brain Energy tierlist video has hit Starsector.
I've also heard that filling up empty slots with mining lasers can cause EMP arcs to hit those slots instead of critical main guns/engines. Might be a good idea to do that vs few good PD smalls if true.
Lord of the (Space) Rings: Return of the King(s)
Wtf ymfah out of nowhere
@@ymfahVery true, facts, real.
I tested some just now. EMP hits from the hull targets the nearest turret/hardpoint/engine, so its actually a bit harder to disable turrets in the center of the ship (ex. Medium missile turrets on the Onslaught).
Also, the higher the hp of the mount/engine, the longer it takes to repair (ie. applying Armored Weapon Mounts). This makes the S-mod Automated Repair Unit a must-have hullmod.
Edit: The Ion Beam’s shield penetrating arc will always target parts that were not covered by the shield arc, if its a 360 shield then it will randomly apply damage to the whole ship.
Activate the reverse recall all ships
love to see gigacannon getting the placement it deserves
The supreme executor spared no expense when creating his masterpiece.
there are a couple of destroyers from mods that synergise with the gigacannon, since they're flux starved so a tach lance would strain their flux reserves and the alpha strike from the gigacannon fits with the hit&run theme for them
on cruisers and capital ships its pointless though
Holy upload schedule Batman! At this rate we'll be watching videos titled "Your ship builds are VILE".
Fighter/bomber tier list next! I need it in my veins
Honestly i would prefer this over a missile tier list. I cant figure out how to use fighters
Funny enough, I am going to do fighters next because I'm having trouble ranking some of the missiles. Need to cook with them a little more. Fighters on the other hand, I've got a pretty good idea where to place all of them.
@@digitalizedmind6784you use fighters to:
Pressure enemy shields
Bomb enemy capitals with (almost) infinite rockets
Kill enemy fighters
@@bigbrainenergyguy Missile tier list is easy. Just put Pilums at S tier and call it a day.
My favourite moment was when he said "it's tierlisting time" and tierlisted all over starsector.
TRUE!
Now i'm waiting for Omega-weapons tier list
BOY, NOT EVEN SURE WHERE THE CRYOBLASTER GONNA END UP
Mining laser is the most slept-on weapon in the game, period. It's the only weapon in the game that allows your empty slots to do something for practically no cost, and that includes both OP and flux. For a weapon with both a niche main role, and a versatility of energy damage type, in certain builds it's a godsent.
Both the ballistics and the energy weapon list was very helpful in my current place through thank you
as a new player I am enjoying these upto date tier lists, I like the way you break down each weapons roll it is very helpful, and I am noticing that the balance in this game is actually really good.
i would put high intensity laser at S tier because :
- 1k range
- good efficiency
- the enemy can NOT drop its shield as long as you're aiming towards it or else its armor gets vaporized 1k/sec to armor then 500/sec to hull
It does not require you to invest in hullmods, it's just a great large energy weapon as is
You can't drop your shield, unless you're an Onslaught, in which case you eat 1k damage/sec with 500 hit strength for breakfast and ask for seconds.
Ima big high intensity laser fan too
I thought about putting it in S-tier. I ultimately settled on A-tier, but either way it is easily one of the best weapons.
I love doctor house complaning about ai in a mask off tierlist
ive also heard high tech star fortresses will spam you with mines if you dont have any PD. source: comments under a video of a guy killing said star fortress with a kite (he used the emotional support mining laser)
I know the Gigacannon was made as a useless meme weapon, but it'd be nice if there was at least one use case for it. Maybe make it a hybrid weapon and let Mudskipper MkIIs use it. It might actually be a little bit useful to have this tiny fast 2dp boat that can zoom in, unload 2000 hard flux damage, and then fuck off for 10 seconds. Or put it on the Manticore. I dunno.
A long range hybrid antimatter blaster would be highly unbalanced
Yeah, it's a shame that the Lionsguard in general is a meme. I get why they did it but still it feels like wasted potential when they could've put that development time into weapons and ships that I would actually use.
Thanks for the video! Your channel gave me a deeper understanding of the game, and now I actually enjoy it a lot more
Good placements, I would rate the Ion Beam in B tier. Its great at stunning those pesky frigates because the arc will often jump to the engines if the flux is high enough preventing them from backing away and venting, but more importantly pulling your ships out of position. Looking forward to missiles and fighters next.
do you know what also gets blasted by weapons of energy?
bugs that get zapped
edit: yeah recommend no sabotage is hilarious
Thank you my gamer.
Can't believe this slander against the gigachad canon
I must confess I dearly love all of the ion weapons.
I usually run a wolfpack + carrier backline, and there is a certain kind of joy to stripping a ship of all its shields and PD weps with an EMP frigate strike, only to watch it get swarmed by a coordinated fighter strike.
Ion my beloved.
Mining Blasters are great with flanking ships that leverage the burst damage on unshielded parts of the ship while saving flux contribution until the target drops shields. The trait of dealing additional bypassing armor damage will greatly help against high armor low tech ships because of the damage reduction passive.
Synergizes well with energy weapon mastery since they don't fire until armor or hull is open, and by that time the soft flux from firing other weapons confers additional damage to the blaster's base shots while in range... Or fire the blaster first on the unshielded part, then release Hold Fire for the rest of the weapons to fire with slight damage bonus and expect deeper hull damage.
Mining blaster is a lot of fun to use, especially when paired with the ion pulser. It's just not as generically powerful as the phase lance, which is often its main competition for medium anti-armor.
When you have built-in extended magazines and high power flow on your ship, it's better to use it instead of the phase lance for any weapon other than the Mining blaster.
Otherwise, it's better to take the lance.
a funny thing about kinetic blaster:
- it's only useful on ships that desperately need kinetic DPS but dont have ballistic slots
- it was made by a midline faction
- its creator also made the gigacannon
I believe LG executors even mount it in the hybrid slots, just to drive the point home about the flaws of the dikatat.
Giving high tech a good anti shield option would crowd out most of the medium options. So for what it's worth I prefer it as a C-tier niche weapon over the alternative.
@@bigbrainenergyguy Yes they do put kinetic blasters in hybrid slots. It's not meant to do kinetic damage, it's meant to do emotional damage. And in my case it works.
Also i play with poorly balanced mods occasionally, and can confirm having good kinetic DPS that can go in energy slots trivializes a lot of vanilla options.
I already spent about 20h making and testing builds in my 100h of playtime, but these videos managed to teach me some new things, good job.
There is one good use I can think of for the gigacannon, and it’s the Sunder. Sunder is SUPER scary with this thing. Champion can also evaporate one thing after another with this.
On the Paladin topic, I sometimes like to bring a Sunder with the Paladin in its L slot and kit it out with PD / Optics / Mags etc as well as a commander with the PD skill + Escort mod and tie it to a capital ship for the fancy double Destroyer bonus.
Maybe not the best use of the ship and commander but its funny watching it zap stuff and you really can free up some space and flux from other ships not needing as much PD themselves.
Sounds fun, but I am not sure about putting pd weapon in hardpoint.
@@Propietario283 yeah I might not have been clear enough on that, its obviously not a "good" ship build, its simply funny seeing it spin around with a long range Paladin zapping all over.
With Aux Thrusters boosting the agility/turn rate by like +100%, Escort +50%(near capital ship), Helmsmanship and Impact Mitigation? each are like +50% it can spin quite fast.
It just looks funny and its not entirely useless, only almost. Spin to win.
i love tier list tuesday. especially on thursdays. best day of the week for tier list tuesday.
Man i loved that REDACTED in the end of the Video. Looking forward to your other tier lists!
These are great! Highly helpful for me. Love that you don't just tell why things are where they are, but also explain why and when those things could be higher or lower tier
This is awesome content. Please keep making Starsector tier lists/guides/updates etc.
Problem with the Paladin is that, in vanilla, there is no use case for it, despite Paladin itself being a really good weapon. There are no ships that have large energy mounts placed in supportive configuration, nor are there enemy fleets that use misile/fighter spam enough to justify taking them. Paragon side turrets WOULD be a good use case, but those have front arc convergence, so you use offensive options there instead to bring all 4 large energies on target. The only place in vanilla you can see Paladins being good, is if you are attacking a Remnant Nexus for some reason (and watch all your missiles and fighers drop dead), or use them to deal with Aspect fighters in Hypershut fight - pretty much the only fight you're justified taking Paladins into.
Play modded on the other hand, and you'll swear on them. Anyone who tried to attack an Artillery Station (Industrial Evolution mod) before late-game will tell you to bring as many Paladins you can. Not gonna spoil the suprise here, find out for yourself. Good luck starfarer!
There is only one time where I was able to make some decent use out of the Gigacannon, by putting two of them on the front slots of a Paragon with Plasma Cannons in the turrets. Was it the best thing to put there? Probably not. But the one good thing about this weapon is that it does reaper torpedo damage to shields. The Paragon can compensate for its crap range. And with an alpha strike of 2 reapers (to shields) that cannot be intercepted, you can overload ships very reliably.
Still would be better to use Autopulses or Tachyons though...
The best timeline
I really liked using bunch of phase lances on executor and bunch of lg eagles recently
Combination of pretty efficient shields with 0 op solar shielding and a lot of burst energy damage really makes remnants with their overfluxed heavy ships struggle to actually secure kills most of the time
P. S and that executor uses giga cannons...
It one shots half flux fulgents, scintillas, overloaded brilliants and makes Novas reconsider it's life choices
If only there was lions guard champion
That get free solar and energy bolt coherer but gets locked out of its medium ballistics...
Solar shielding isn’t 0OP on those ships (despite the sindrians having invented the hullmod). the max OP on those ships is lower as if Solar Shielding had been bought.
@@Bronimin oh, that's unfortunate
Being built in does come with the small advantage that you can get the s-mod bonus without actually using up one of your s-mod slots. Immunity to storms and solar flares is pretty nice.
I'm surprised to see the ion pulser in B tier. Ever since the buff to its damage I've found it to be an incredible weapon for overdriven ships and a near straight upgrade over the pulse laser.
You could say it's a B+ ranked weapon. I like it a lot, but I can't quite put it in A tier.
Granted as a connoisseur of safety overrides I am completely biased but I'd never put it below the IR autolance, not when it turns enemy ships into hot slag in an instant and is reloaded by the time you get to the next enemy.
The Gigacannon plot twist... I never saw it coming. Well played Brain Man.
The music starting up when you started roasting the Gigacannon was pure cinema btw
pulse laser is sooooo under rated. easily s tier for medium slot, at least a. Hard flux at 300 dps with great efficiency. 3 of these on an eagle wrecks shields, armor and hull, add two hvd and an assault gun on the front and you are cooking anyone in a fight, add sabots and they melt even faster. They are also fantastic against fighters and missiles. Ya there are weapons that do specific jobs better but pulse lasers to every job very well and make a fantastic, efficient base.
SPOILER
I love the surprise reveal with the gigacannon, the music and the F tier appearing is hilarious. Amazing editing and showmanship good Sir
It wasn't what I had planned when I was recording so my voice is a lot less dramatic than the music, but I think that makes it funnier.
SPOILER ALERT 🤬
@@bigbrainenergyguy It absolutely does
@@mortache Whoops. I don't know how to spoiler on youtube, my b
@@Mudssonjust write redacted haha
Full mining laser is pretty good on Mora. Go full PD, with PD mod, S-Modded gyros, and a full hangar of Sarissas. Kind of a weird build, but not a bad way to bring a lot of PD to the fight, and it just looks cool if you’re playing low tech.
that ending was such a twist
I still love using 2 Paladins on a Paragon. It just makes it the heart of the fleet and I can equip more offensive options on my Capitals.
Paladin Paragon can work, but it requires more thought and consideration to reach similar performance to the other options. It makes it stronger defensively, you've just got to make sure the rest of your fleet can substitute the lost damage output. If your goal is to feel like an invincible wall, that can be worth the effort!
A [redacted] capital ship has a large energy slot that is begging for a paladin laser, and given it has a lot of slots that can fit large energy stuff, giving up one doesn't feel so bad.
So there´s this destroyer from the Ship/Weapon Pack called the Nightwalker. It has a large universal turret mount and a system very similar to that of the Scarab...but it´s also a phase ship. Its time acceleration system also keeps working when you phase...in fact its effect gets amplified on top of the regular faster time flow (description literally says that it skips you forward in time). I would highly recommend trying it with a Phase Anchor and Gigacannon, it´s very entertaining.
But I agree, F tier in vanilla and even with mods most ships would prefer everything else over the Gigafail Cannon.
I just knew tachyon lance was S tier😂
Surprised to see ion beam so low though
I fell out of love with the ion beam over time. There's still a place for it in some fleets, but I don't use it nearly as much.
Finally, energy drip.
I've found the Gigacannon pretty serviceable on the Executor. It's no High Intensity Laser, but it has some significant upsides over it: hard flux when impacting shields and a much lower demand on flux. So it has a niche on midline ships that are trying to be high tech without the flux stats for it. Helps a build with 5 heavy autocannon and 4 IR autolance break through heavy armor. So does the high intensity laser, though (if you remember to shut it off when enemy flux is low). Or presumably the tachyon lance. The Gigacannon you can just leave on and it'll do something useful every 10 seconds, and the forward medium slot options on the Executor aren't so bad that it needs more than that. Meanwhile, kinetic blasters on an Executor are just a mistake.
Awesome, something good to watch after work. Thank you!
You say that fighters will be next up, looking forward to it: I could never wrap my head around using them.
Will there be something like an “effective use of weapon groups” also? I tend to struggle with/forget this, possibly other players also. (You touched lightly on it in the Ballistic Tierlist video.)
So like i bet your gonna make a missile tier list at this point but are you thinking of making a low mid and high tier ship tier list too to compliment these ones? A campaign skill tier list would be pretty neat too but not nessicary
Really love these videos its really nice seeing your thought process all in one video though your usually really good at also explaining it on the regular videos too when they come up
Press F for Gigacannon.
The only way i could use this thing is with Odyssey but even then it couldn't even come close to breaking my heart and my space pelvis. It's just meh.
No wonder Sindrian Diktat only occupies a single system. Andrada only fired once and boofed.
What's even funnier is it's "implied" to be better used on Executor, with higher range of energy projectile weapons. But the damn thing doesn't have flux stats to use it effectively and AI is afraid to fire it because of risk of overloading.
The twist in the end. Surprised me!
well shit, I wake up, check youtube, and you just uploaded a video a few minutes ago, Urah!
as a high tech main im immediately closing my game to listen to this
I have to say, in contrast to the ballistic weapon tier list i have to disagree on a couple of ratings here.
Heavy Burst Laser - should at least be B tier. Sure, it's not a commonly used weapon, but it's THE weapon of choice if you want to build a dedicated point defense ship. Paladin is out of the question because al ships with large energy turret mounts cost much more DP than you should spend for a PD ship. But this thing can be mounted on frigates and destroyers, has all the advantages of the normal burst laser but cover a much larger area thanks to its larger range. Put two of these on a Meduse together with 4 normal Burst PD, s-modded expanded magazines, ITU, advanced optics and PD skill - you now can remove all PD from the majority of the rest of your fleet.
IR Pulse Laser - you really can't put the hightest dps small energy weapon in C Tier, especially when the Antimatter Blaster sits two tiers higher. Sure, the Antimatter blaster has an advantage going against heavier amor and the burst damage can be helpful, but in every other aspects its equal or worse than the IR pulse laser, AND its limited by ammo
IR Auto Lance - i understand the reasoning, but it doesn't really pay out. I'd rather have my enemy get into hull earlier than have better hull dps. I've mounted this many times, but monitoring its performance with detailed combat results mod showed it never did more than neglectable damage. Waste of a medium slot.
Ion Pulser - this is surely A tier. Huge Burst dps for a medium weapon, large EMP dps on top, decent sustained dps with expanded magzines (s-mod) and pretty decent flux efficiency given it's an emp/normal damage hybrid. Can't image a situation where an IR Auto Lance would be more useful than this.
And just in case this all sounded too negativ: thank you very much for your amazing videos!
could you also make a tierlist for the battlestations that you can construct in vanilla? which station is the best: low, mid or hightech?
Do you plan to mention anything about the [VERY REDACTED] weapons in the future? Just discovered them recently and I'm having a blast
Look how he delaying third episode, what a gamer
Great video! I have some differing opinions and arguments supporting those opinions again.
Mining laser: This works better in C tier. In addition to the bonuses you list, it actually deals more DPS per OP than PD Laser does. You're more likely to kill salamanders with 4 mining lasers than you are with 1 pd laser. it's still not better (or worse) than PD laser since it's much more per-slot inefficient, but there's many builds where using mining lasers is just better than using pd lasers.
PDLaser, LRPDLaser, PDBurst: No disagreement, just wanted to add that on top of all the benefits PDBurst has that you mentioned, pd lasers have a critical flaw where their beam travel speed limits how fast they can kill multiple missiles. PDBurst doesn't care about this as much because its beam travels literally 4x faster than PD laser. The LRPD laser moves 50% faster than the PD laser, but in practice this isn't usually good enough to make up for the lower DPS (the range helps though, like you said). This same issue applies to tac laser with IPDAI. Just wanted to mention this, it's one of the biggest reasons why all the non-pdburst PD lasers suck.
Ion Cannon: This feels more like a C tier weapon - it doesn't fit hybrid designs very well since it doesn't rangematch with ballistics. It works with energy builds, but you have access to the ion beam and the ion pulser. Now that S-mod Magazine exists, ion pulser is even more viable on SO builds than it used to be, which makes ion cannon more redundant. It's not a bad weapon, just very low impact and rarely worth the 6 OP. As an aside, I personally think Ion Cannon and IR Pulse Laser should be 600 base range.
Mining Blaster: The burst damage this thing causes which does not get wasted very often against shields makes me strongly consider arguing this is an A tier weapon. Its bad range and 1.5 flux efficiency and some of its damage not applying to hull hold it back, but when this thing gets used on ships that want it, it is a terrifying monster. Just wanted to mention how powerful that burst damage is.
Heavy Blaster: I feel like this should be A rank. It would be S tier if it was more baseline flux efficient. In addition to all of the various reasons you gave that it is a good weapon, Energy Weapon Mastery keeps it in A tier. -10% flux makes it 1.31 flux efficient before any damage increases it gets which is just so good for a weapon like the HB's weapon stats. Pulse laser or other weapons could use this too of course, but HB is just so wild and goes so well with the ships that can use it, like the any weapon.
Kinetic Blaster: I'm convinced this is not a "worse" option than the pulse laser. It should be B rank. To start, it's actually rather easy to get as many KBs as you want by killing Caden's fleet in Askonia. If you wipe his entire fleet, he respawns about a week (Maybe sooner? I forget the exact time) after destruction. Each Caden kill nets you 4 KBs on average. Add the 3 you get from Usurpers and you get it pretty fast. If all you want is 7 KBs, you can reliably kill Caden once with transponder off then fix your relations by giving them a few AI cores. Very low effort, he's pretty easy to find, LG fleets aren't strong. As for the KB itself, It actually deals 25 more hitstrength against armor than the pulse laser does and also has 400 more projectile speed (1,000 vs 1,400) which makes it better at tagging frigates and destroyers. It deals 200 more dps at slightly more flux efficiency vs shields than the pulse laser, but deals much worse dps vs armor. Extending these comparisons, Heavy Needler vs Kinetic Blaster. Downplaying the KB having 5x more hitstrength over needler's 50 is wrong, I feel. It also has 200 more projectile speed (though, this is fixable with Elite BM) and perfect accuracy. The accuracy is the key part here, heavy needler has a pretty big spray pattern that further reduces how much of its damage might reach hull due to armor being nearby. I love using the KB on Heron or Astral as a 'get off me' tool against shielded frigates and destroyers for the above reasons, which doesn't require an officer to make it more accurate. It goes great against more types of factions than just remnant, since you can pair the KB with other energy weapons (like the MB!) or missiles. It's definitively not A tier though and the massive difference in flux efficiency with the Heavy Needler keeps it from being better than the Heavy Needler, but I think you're downplaying the KB too hard.
Ion Beam: This just has to be B tier at least. You mention Target Analysis Elite with the Ion Cannon but you don't mention it with the Ion Beam. This deals ruinous EMP damage with its TA Elite and easily outvalues two ion cannons in one slot. Sure, it's a medium slot, but there are still many ships that have a medium energy slot to spare (so long as it isn't SO) that will get far more value than the 6-12 OP spent on your 1-2 ion cannons in smalls. In addition to all the benefits you listed that Ion Beam has, 2 ion cannons also cost 12 OP, for less value than 1 ion beam will give you. Another thing worth mentioning, flameouts in Starsector are ruinous to the flow of a battle and a TA Elite beam is one of the most reliable (though still random) ways to accomplish flameouts.
Paladin: My favorite gun in starsector. I wish it was B tier. Buff it! That's all, lol.
Gigacannon - Same rarity as KB - just kill Caden's fleet to grab more, rarity is whatever. That said, for purely Vanilla, I agree, it's F tier lol. It could theoretically be D tier if vanilla had some sort of Energy Bolt Coherer ship with many large energy slots converging onto one point. It would, at least, have the single purpose of being large mount filler so that you can equip your plasma cannons. But, that doesn't exist and might be broken or better off with autopulsers, lol! It would be good on the Paragon for an S-mod AWM Gigacannon + Plasma cannon build if it had better turn rate or didn't have a massive chargeup time to fire, but it doesn't. So, yeah. RIP Gigacannon.
The hxh music really helped me imagine the despair of the gigacannon as it was cast away into f-tier, never to be seen again.
The Gigacannon is legitimately the reason why I beat Forlorn Hope. Not saying it's good, but its burst damage meant that when I fired the two of them at the onslaught, it was always enough to drive it away and let me vent. The other weapons took care of the rest of the fleet.
i'm found good value with mining lasers, cheap enough to put on any low tech gang fleet, nice on legions, to better match the flak cannon's range, and a good overlapping network will work together well enough to melt fighters, which i'm most concerned about because the AI has a hard time being bullied by fighters more often than i'd like
i do agree they are not at all slot efficient for actual DPS, but they are flux and OP cheap, and wiping fighter wings faster is always a good thing for the long drawn out battles with not too many mods that don't trash the vanilla balance
It's a weird situation where they can often be worth slotting in just because their so cheap and efficient, but if you forget to then the difference in performance is pretty marginal.
Can someone explain to me how the Harbinger is bad? The Harb with three Phase Lances and high scatter amp is my go to early and mid game flagship. It's a ton of fun and very effective. And the ship system is borderline OP. What is there to even complain about?
It's still a fine flagship, but can hard to justify piloting over other phase ships. On top of that it's unreliable in AI hands. Of course you can still make good use of it, and in fact it might show up in a video soon :)
@bigbrainenergyguy true but imo phase ships that aren't the Doom tend to be unreliable in AI hands.
Tachyon Lance my beloved. I almost always pick them up from Tritach black markets if I run into them early game, even if I have no large energy slots in my fleet yet.
Giga Cannon is easy S for me.
Put in on any ship with "High Energy Focus" activate it, One shot enemies from behind or just blast them from anywhere.
Works well with other burst weapons. This is a antimatter blaster with infinite ammo.
Sunder with this thing just slaps.
With High energy focus this weapon hits for 3K damage instantly, pair this with other weapons that hit hard (im using kinetic energy weapons for this from a mod, but anything works) and the target either overloads or is disabled by EMP.
No other energy weapon allows ships like the sunder to be that much of a one shot nightmare, go in, kill, go out.
My favorite sunder setup is 2 Ion Blasters (kinetic EMP damage energy weapon), Giga cannon, 2 Torps can be anything, reaper or atropos good enough, and 2 kinetics that either autofire (like railguns) or any small weapon that does HE damage.
Go in, let railguns weaken shields a bit, activate High energy focus, blast the enemy to the sky with 6800 alpha damage + EMP.
Love this stuff
Big brain energy, what's a mind goblin?!
Everyone always asks "what is a mind goblin?" but they never ask "how is the mind goblin?" :(
It's a- ... It's a psionic-
Is that what Glorbo was? Was Glorbo a mind goblin?
@@bigbrainenergyguy God that bit lives rent free in my mind
The music turnaround for the Gigacannon hahahaha
lets goooo, missile tier list next please
awsome video i would like videos of the worst low tech kinetic ship vs the worst energi higj tech fleet
love from chile biobio
ANOTHER TIER LIST FOR MY AUTISM BRAIN TO LISTEN TO WHILE I DRIVE HOME FOR THANKSGIVING, LESSSSSSS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Gigacannon haters never tried using it on the mantaray. (Bonus points for phase anchors)
There is the fringe case of using the gigacannon on the ziggurat. It's quite fun
The Paladin is very effective in the Champion’s large turret slot, doing so makes them become pretty much invincible against missiles and bombers.
Also I find that the Ion Beam works extremely well against most modded ships so I always use it in every modded playthrough.
Why does every starsector player have such a manly accent
Cant wait for the hullmod tier list
Me using 4 tactical laser on my front slot of my Champion. 👁👄👁
Gotta force these shields up 👺
Oh damn, I didn't realize how recently this was made. I just got into Starsector cause Rar
HEY GRICKO, WHAT'S A "MIND GOBLIN"!?!
Will you do an omega weapons video?
yes
Can't wait for torpedo/missile tier list, hehehoho
on rewatch (for fun) back at the giga cannon part. I wonder how effective you can make it on a sunder, its got big burst, the range isnt terrible overall, put escort package on it, let your sunder h-e-f and pop a big hit to nuke a frigate ig? seems... meh
the gigacannon needs pierce shields or something and cost more flux, and for balance give it a longer cool down. Make it an all or nothing gambit where you either kill your opponent or they dodge and kill you.
even longer cooldown? yikes. i kind of like where it's at as an energy version of the hellbore. there just aren't many ships that want something like that.
ah THATS why the succession war video led me here
Do you think the energy bolt coherer being added to the LG Falcon and Eagle will do anything for them?
The Gigacannon getting F for Fun.
Finally, sex 2
Omg, is this really happening?!?
LET'S GOOOOOOOO
I thought gigacannon is trash too but after some experiment it's not as bad as you said
It's essentially a large AM blaster with infinite ammo, maybe high-c tier but definitely not useless especially on something very mobile like a radiant or odyssey
Would the gigacannon be passable if it instantly fired when you pulled the trigger?
Shooting over ships isn't unique to the paladin any more btw - dragonfire torps do it, which is actually the thing that makes them good since you can just fire it and then block PD fire with your ship
Tier list omega [REDACTED] weapons, next.
i'd imagine how long a ship tier list would be 🤣
Hey BBE. Got an important question for you.
What's a Mind Goblin?
I kinda disagree with you about Ion Beam, here's why.
I tend to build some extreme designs (only fully work with lvl 6 or higher officers, 3 S-mods and elite ordinance) that are highly efficient but just DON'T WORK without Ion beam.
For example - extreme Beagle. Same as yours but i shove HVDs and Heavy needler up front with high mobility. With Ion Beam this Beagle can easily take out simulation Onslaught on its own, even tho it takes time, exactly because it can soften the larger target and proceed to mutilate it when it cant retort.
Even then, it provides great support by just softening enemy with constant shield-piercing EMP pressure. Graviton just doesn't have the same effect on the battlefield, the presence of ship with Ion beam is very much felt and tactically advantageous. Stacking EMP damage in general is somewhat of a META that lets you deal with overwhelming odds reliably.
To add to that, combat AI tends to "see" when the enemy is disabled and is more aggressive toward it, which leads to some clean and fast kills.
now you should rate weapons based on the codex lore
Mining laser is so much better than pd laser, more efficient much more cheaper, longer range. It shines with advanced turret gyros.
And lets be honest neither will defend against sabots or hammers
All Hail the Tachyon
NOT MY NUTS
I thought all EMP weapons are blocked by shields? How does which EMP weapon bypass shields?
Ahh I just saw the description of the Ion Beam. I don't ever recall it actually doing anything though.
Hardflux Or Overfluxing In General
Literally agree on everything except you swapped tiers for HIL and Tach Lance. HIL is a mount defining weapon where you will shape your other weapons around it to enable that insane armor damage, while Tachyon is more of a meme that's amazing vs trash fleets but just decent against tougher opponents. And even with Tachyon you still really need that kinetic damage.
So yeah I get that it's super fun to use but people seem to overvalue it.
Btw amazing ending lol, love the HxH music but man you went a bit too hard at the Gigachad. Sure it's not good for serious ships but try it on a Prometheus MkII. It's genuinely decent there when you combine it with kinetics.
Tachyon lance is no-brainer choice, it just works, therefore - S-tier.
HIL is good, but it is not a no-brainer.
It's the other way around. Sunder prefers HIL to be a long range killer, Champion AI is too dumb to time HEF with Tachyon. Odyssey doesn't want beams, unless it's a Rift Cascade Emitter, or again, HIL for AI builds. Executor once again with 2 HILs as the best build.
So what, that leaves Paragon where 4 of them can actually get effective, but even that isn't its strongest build.
Maybe on mod ships it's a no brainer, but in vanilla it sure as hell isn't.
Sunder is a destroyer so it cannot outrange larger ships. I agree on other points, but high burst damage and shield penetration really makes TL no-brainer choice. It can even overflux capitals sometimes, because AI fears TL shots and doesn't drop shields.
On Odyssey, I use TL + autopulse. Zoom in, make boom, scoot out. Not great against remnants, sure, but does its job against other factions.
Sunder can use Escort Package...
Never considered Escort Package on Sunder. It will probably work, yes, but escort destroyers don't fit my style. I mostly tank with capital flagship on center while cruisers do damage on flanks, Sunder - or any destroyer, really - is too fragile for that.
What game even is this, it's not mentioned anywhere
starsector
@bigbrainenergyguy thx
Gigacannon is for Gigachads only. You shoot, you kill, then you take damage as a alpha male tanking shots without shield just to prove a point.