Some item descriptions really could use a double-check, like the Light MG being called a "Dual Purpose" instead of "Point Defense" or the Thumper going to "Suppression" rather than "General". Obviously there is zero rush to do it, but it'd help newer players so very much! I mean I was a "frag is trash" kinda guy until the Beeg Frosty Cannon came out; and subsequently revisited all frag weapons, and found them to be really cool!
@@Aereto Yeah ever since Thumper got its recent 0.25 flux efficiency buff, I've started realizing the thumper is actually good... sometimes. I don't know how I would rate it in a tier list though. I don't think Big Brain is underrating it though, I think the community thinks it's bad though. if I had to, I would make a new F tier, put the light mortar there, leave heavy mortar and LAG in D tier, then I would feel better about the thumper rating on this list. Big Brain's video is great though, brings up a lot of good points!
@@TheSweetSpirit One thing I think people might overlook when "looking" at Thumper, Chaingun and Storm Needler is that they have low flux per shot. Thumper(Frag): 100x20 / 25 flux per shot Chaingun(Explosive): 75 / 60 Storm Needler(Kinetic): 50 / 35 If you put these on a manly-man ship with Shield Shunt you kinda guarantee that no matter what, as long as the ship and guns themselves are not destroyed they can keep shooting since there is no way to overload a ship with soft flux afaik. Even if you hit your max flux all that happens is that their RoF lowers until the rate of flux dissipation is enough to let them fire 1 bullet again which is very often with the low flux cost. The AI can often be caught kinda sitting on its max flux microing the shield, letting some bullets through and then blocking a few etc but that often means like 90% of their guns are not doing much either, no flux cap to fire their multiple 200+ flux projectiles.
@@TheHuffur Main issue with shield shunt is that the player is usually more susceptible to attrition than the enemy is. You're stuck at 30 ships maximum, including logistic ships. You're also stuck at 240 DP ships if you want to maximize your skill bonuses, though you don't need to. You can also 'cheat' your way around it with something like the Prom2 without militarized subsystems. Despite that it's very hard to 'cheat' your way around the 30 ship limit. I think this makes it so that shield shunt in its current form will never be a very good hullmod compared to alternatives, though in a vacuum it works fine.
I feel like heavy mortar can be rated a bit higher due to the lack of medium HE options. It's either mortar(dps) or mauler(range), chaingun limited to SO ships.
It's helpful practice for me to start with something formulaic and well established (like tierlists) before diving into new territory to explain the nuances around fleet composition.
Also, "efficient and cheap is ok for anti-shield but not anti-armor" maybe justified by shields needing long suppressions but armors needing to be eliminated quickly within a short window of time, before the ship runs away or gets shields back up.
sometimes i feel like late game vanilla gets a little bit repetitive when it comes to strategies, i feel like the game need more beheviour-warping hullmods like safety overrides to shakeup gameplay. seeing long range reign supreme is fun the first times, but then you find out that is the best option by such a massive margin that anything else feels like playing in hardmode.
Good quality video, but I have a few objections about some of the logic, just briefly; HMG being D because of ACG is missing out on some builds. HMG mostly range matches with phase lances on the Eagle, use elite PD and it range matches with phase Lance AO. Any ship with ballistic + energies in general may want to use hmg + medium energies. That, on top of how any ship with large mounts has anti-armor solutions and possibly use elite pd, give more ships a reason to use hmg. I actually think HMG is more like C. Gauss cannon is better than advertised even in vanilla, when you field them en masse. They’re especially strong on the invictus, but in general as an example; Base Gauss Legions with manticore support. You’re right that mixing gauss manticore with non-gauss ships is meh, though. Also, try out mjolnir+gauss conquest sometime, the extra gauss range kinda goes nicely in the more rear-positioned side large. I feel light Needler is equal to Railgun in power. Should be on the same tier. The efficiency + burst makes it very competitive. They actually go best combined together. Lowtech ships want light needler too thanks to the flux efficient damage. HVD I feel is slightly overrated (like you say, hehe), because it is competing with the same slot as Heavy Mauler. I know that’s funny after what I said regarding the hmg, but this is S vs A tier compared to D vs C. It’s a good weapon, I just feel like it’s more top of A tier, since small kinetics exist to pair with heavy mauler. Heavy mauler is so good with target analysis that you can use it range mismatched and it’s completely fine, though like HVD you need like at minimum 2 maulers to feel the damage start stacking. Light Autocannon should be B tier. It’s poor man’s railgun, sure, but that accuracy issue you’re taking about is easily fixed with awm alone. Add in gunnery implant and it is surprisingly accurate. The low hitstrength and still not perfect accuracy isn’t ideal though, and if it had 0.9 flux Efficiency I’d say it’s C. The light dual AC actually has worse recoil/accuracy than the light AC on top of worse range. I believe it’s properly a C tier weapon. EDIT: You mentioned captain hector pioneering storm needlers + maulers. Did you mean Drabaa? Or did Drabaa get that from Hector? Just wanted to mention that there's other reasons to use heavy maulers in place of HVDs. Eradicator, where you can prioritize the high dps of railguns as your kinetics and use 3 maulers (using BRF or Elite PD IPDAI to boost your railgun range), Dominator (2 devastators, 0-1 HVD, 1-2 Mauler, railguns/needlers), the Onslaught build you mentioned, XIVLegion 2 Squall 4-5 Mauler build, Base Legion 2 hellbore and some amount of maulers with BRF Railguns, Squall Pegasus, there's more I'm sure. I think B or A is a good tier to put mauler into, I don't really know which it fits better in so I didn't say anything about it at first.
Regarding Railgun vs Needler, one need to remember one is a generalist excel in most categories while the other is only good for kinetic. Early Game, u need to pair needler with anti armor as it barely do anything after the shield was down. Railgun doesn't have that problem, it can deal with most thing just fine thank to high hit strength. Later game, Needler should be paired with other weapons. Same with railgun. In this, needler may come out better but not much. So that is a more of a tie. It is really depending on each situation. With railgun, one would get something back back most of the time but the needler needs to hit the shield only to provide any value from the flux spent
@@huntermad5668 light Needler still deals decent damage against stripped armor, not that much worse than railgun, especially if it’s a got hammerhead armor or worse. Its burst damage nature means it’s likely to get in a lot of damage onto hull before the enemy retreats, which overall helps it ‘equal out’ with the Railgun if you’re looking entirely from a hull damage aspect. Railgun in my experience feels less likely to encourage the enemy to tank shots on armor though, so that’s why I like pairing railguns with needlers. When I said light needler and railgun go well together I meant if you have multiple small slots it’s nice to mix the two of them together. There’s not really much else you can put in a small slot that pairs well with either of them. Even if it’s a hybrid slot, a Railgun + light Needler is a better option than a 700 range base kinetic + ion cannon, provided you have the flux and op to afford them. Light AG is an option in the early game but it’s really not something you willingly want to do very often. Fun fact, LAG is decent at pd with the ipdai pd conversion. It’s horribly flux inefficient but it does a good job killing missiles and fighters.
Welcome back! I wonder if you wanted to create videos on load outs for more or less common ships. I am not new to the game but still struggle to create effective design
Great job!🤘 My pick is Mauler should be A tier, it's pretty good on 3 Storms Onslaught (like on my last video) and Hephaestus / Gauss B tier. Enemy AI really wants to tank Gauss hits with armor so it's pretty good with Escort Package destroyers for example in 0.97 to do overall damage (lot of hull damage you can do with it and it's not rare it does the finale blow).
The Gauss Cannon is genuinely perfect on the Conquest imo, more so than the Mjolnir even late game. Reason being the 2x Gauss + 2x Hurricane combo. You can punch through any shield and shatter any armor, from a completely safe range. The alpha strike to shields is so huge you can reliably overload most ships to support your allies elsewhere on the frontline. And being a Conquest, you are built well to back away from any threats and maintain that range advantage. Sure, you should not strictly need the 1200 range with late game skills, that provide it anyway for the Mjolnir. But having a 'buffer zone' of 300 base units of range is actually huge. Makes it that much harder for something to rush you. Though an argument could be made that on an AI ship, the Mjolnir is still better, for the simple reason that the AI can't aim the gauss properly due to its turret locking in place while 'charging'.
mk9 + mjolnir on conquest is a great combo i would personally put mk9 in A tier because its so cheap and efficient against large targets. a ship like the invictus can mount 2 mark9s and 2 hephaestus guns on the front and basically delete every ship in the game. its also great for the manticore because its so cheap its pretty trash on the dominator though, i prefer devastator+mjolnir
Give us ALL tierlists in current version please. I might have general idea what is good, but there is aways something new I discover while watching your videos
Danm. As a Sector Pirate and a IRL one. I really appreciate a guide for killing. Thanks you for the tips. (Disclaimer, I'm legally obliged to write that im not a real pirate for my future employment. This is a JOKE)
Heavy machine gun is good on some capital ships as weapons that double as anti-missile and anti-flanking guns. Each bullet hits relatively hard enough that it can chip away at smaller ship's armor, not to mention that it pretty much obliterates shields on a short notice. You do need to do funky things to increase its range, but it seriously punishes any high-tech/midline ship trying to brawl.
I've been playing Starsector on and off for years now. And you're the only reason I can make fleet which complement ship and loadout choices. Letting me enjoy the game more. Keep up the great content. Been watching you for a while
As someone who doesn’t have enough spare time to Starsector the weapons in deep detail, you have gifted us with a tier list that includes a good amount of reasoning and information. I salute you and await your future project with much anticipation, mon ami.
I used to play with an XIV Legion with Storm Needlers (in fact, a LOT of needlers...) mounted along with a pair of Hammer Barrages. Needlers force shields down, and let the hammer torpedos connect consistently :)
My S tier based solely on usage in a decently modded game, while still having preference to vanilla weapons: S: railgun, light needler, vulcan / arby, hvd, dualflak, mauler / helbore, mjol, devastator Mostly joking around with this, its just even despite all my modded weapons I tend towards the vanilla package, altho some get new niches on ships that dont exist in vanilla, and some are linda outclassed by op modded weapons (or out niched by some that arent that op) Overall, the vanilla weapon suite is filled with good options, im happy with your little explanation of no F tier, it really is true. Some weapons I have a pref for id rate higher, but thats because of bias for myself :) Glad to hear you talk about your thoughts on the weapons, oh, and I too am someone who pretends safety override doesnt exist
I actually really like the mortar, it's got higher hit strength which makes it effective against armor, and the ordinance savings means you've got more space for railguns/mods, I really warmed up to it after trying it out. It's not quick and is less useful as supplemental pd, but it can help a frigate kill a destroyer. Doesn't extend to the medium mortar, that doesn't save enough points to be useful.
The thumper is really good on brawlers and onslaught because it takes out screen missiles and even direct fire for the onslaught, which is super underrated and I think super valuable on slower front-facing ships
double Gauss Cannon is pretty good and fun on Atlas Mk.II, makes a great artillery ship. Not sure what version I was playing but it's also a civilian ship.
I haven't touched Safety Overrides in... I guess it's several years, now. But that contained my favorite uses for the HMG: ships that had more medium ballistic slots than they could sensibly use for only assault chain guns: Enforcer especially but also the Eradicator. And maybe the Brawler, come to think of it, although I never liked that ship much and didn't use it. It matches up well in combination with the assault chain gun, especially since the flux cost is very low for its damage.
Having the HE have longer range than the kinetics is often rather good due to how it makes the enemies respond. You get in, burst their flux up with the kinetics, then the enemy tries to retreat, but they keep their shield up and don't vent because the HE threat, allowing you to drop shields and lower some flux before charging them again to finish them off. Just saying this off of the onslaught with maulers and storm needlers concept, though it also works with some other setups like destroyers with light or heavy needlers and a mauler, or on the Eagle. Makes me wanna do another run focusing on this concept to see what other weapons are good for long range threat that keeps shield up.
Hellebores are great capital killers and station busters, as much as I understand how armor damage reduction behaves. It is outright destroying the armor and softening the wider area with long enough duration for high fire rate weapons to benefit from the debuff.
With the Gauss Cannon, try 4 of them on the Invictus. You can’t put much else on but you don’t really need too. You can play as the ultra long range support, able to shoot across the entire battlefield and overload any radiant, holding them off while the rest of your fleet kills the rest of the redacted. 4 mjohorn also work well as a shorter range but more lethal version.
On the Heavy Mortar: I find that this weapon is most useful on ships you are going to use to harass enemy cruisers and capitals with. If you are fighting some low tech enemies, you have a cheap way to make the enemy keep their very crappy shields up and they then have to just eat hard flux damage directly or get their armour stripped. Heavy Mauler might be preferred in the role of actual damage dealer but if you just don't have the flux, the cash or the right ship to use it then the Heavy Mortar is a good backup. Just don't expect it to be the star player; it's born to be a reserve weapon but it's a budget bargain one that can surprise you at times buy blowing a hole in a Onslaught's backside or tearing up a mid-line destroyer that got caught out of position.
I like to run Chaingun+HMG on SO Brawlers, since on those I like to use the small slots for missiles (a Brawler is basically just the front of a Hammerhead anyways), to have some Hammers for cracking tough armour, and sure just two chainguns would still be 500 anti-shield DPS, but also 800 flux/s, which is kind of a lot for a Brawler even with SO, as opposed to 890 anti-shield DPS for 520 flux/s with ACG+HMG.
16:35 how big of a difference is ofc subjective, but the difference between an autocannons/hmg 50 dmg vs railgun 100 dmg vs residual armor especially, is very significant
I agree with this, makes killing ships much easier when hull dps is also done by railguns, freeing up the less dps but more hit strength anti armor options
In defense of the light morter; I really like it on LP Lashers for and early-mid game fleet. With mortars in the hard points, that saves me 6 points from *not* using assault guns. I put a needler in the front most swivel, and dual light machine guns in the left and right swivels. I stick reapers in the missile spots, and i still have enough points to slap on Hardened Subsystems, and Stabilized Shields (after maxing flux cap and vents). This is not the *best* lasher build in the universe, but, it makes for a cheap swarmer that stays around *just* long enough to usually kill, distract, or capture key targets. I could not do this with assaults, despite them being a superior weapon, because the ability to rip through shields at such a close range is somewhat integral to this loadout's ability to clean up light-medium sized craft. Really, this is more a celebration of Accelerated Ammo Feed than it is a defense of light mortars, sure, but, I can rely on these frigates, they're pretty cheap (you can easily replace the needler with dual auto cannons if you dont have many to spare) but it is a way to get consistent anti-armor on a very fast, light craft that can decimate shields very quickly and secure kills with torpedoes. Also, as an aside, the AI seems petrified of them, as they'll often chase whatever ship I have them engage into some far off corner presuming that ship isnt capable of just destroying the frigate outright. Whenever i see the combat readiness warning, ill often often up the map just to find they're bullying some cruiser off in the bottom corner, this includes remnant vessels.
Got a question here. How would the tierlist look if Armored Weapon Mounts was a consideration? The 25% (edit: I was confused regarding the recoil reduction value, thanks!) reduction on recoil helps out a few weapons, like the Light and Heavy Needlers. I am mildly ashamed to say that I run 4 Light Needlers on an Onslaught, and it is a joy to see those needles fly in a tight grouping to shread shields... Yes, I downgraded the medium slots for that. I may have drank too deep from the well of Fossic...
AWM does not reduce recoil by 50%, it reduces recoil by 25%. In what limited experience I have reading opinions translated from Fossic into the USC (so, take it with a grain of salt), my opinion is that they focus on a meta that doesn't overlap with actual single player campaigns very well. They do a lot of tournaments over at Fossic and I've done tournaments in NASector, so I can see parallels between things I've noticed for tournaments and what at least some people at Fossic say. So, whenever you see Fossic opinions, keep that in mind that it might not translate 1:1 to your single player campaigns. You're right though, AWM helps LAC a lot. Helps light needler too, actually. So does gunnery implants.
From my experience, 1 heavy needler = 2 light needlers, and there are not many ships that can withstand being pelted by 2 light needlers. That is, if you have 2 medium slots on, say, Eagle, two light needler is a valid option, while one heavy needler and an empty slot is quite similar, but a wee bit worse due to only having 1 firing arc. If you have ship that can field 2 heavy needlers, you will soon feel it being a bit of an overkill.
On stürmneedler: you can use it on middle slots on sides of Invictus instead of 2 devastators, so you can delete stray hi-tech frigates. Too bad that needlers have no PD flag and cannot hit missiles, or it would be SSS+ tier.
Paul Rogers Gaming does get things wrong, but his approach is solid and he covers many other games, where his words are much more accurate. Only guide of his that i found biased towards the easy part of Starsector was his Missiles tierliest tbh. And even in that, his missile choice was more closer to yours in your midline build.
I would swap the Light Mortar with the AG. Mortars are quite enough to fight light armor in tandem with Railguns, while the AG requires too much flux (more than the Railgun) and because of that there is almost no flux left for kinetics, while the ability to fight medium-heavy armor and hulls is not much higher than that of mortars. Also, the Storm Needler with S-moded Mags is an absolute beast, it fits perfectly on Low-Tech ships: Retribution with Mining Blasters melts everything below capital, the Legion's defensive build with PCL, Onslaught with two Needlers and five Thumpers (with manual control they can be used as PDs almost like in High Fleet) does not allow itself to be outflanked and annihilates frigates-destroyers in a second.
1:00 It is nice to see you being polite and deplomatic to a newer player because he completely missed the mark on carriers in that video. It's so wrong that you could change his tone of voice, and you would have a parody video.
Do you plan on doing UAF/other modded weapons. I feel like they get talked about a lot on forums and how they feel but never actually talked about in video format/applying them in a campaign (specifically the weapons, not the ships)
@@bigbrainenergyguy Awesome! Really appreciate that. I feel like the Naval Gun Aesthetic is so cool but I'm terrible with the stats/numbers so I never know if what im throwing on is good lol
LAG is also great for murdering those pesky Broadswords and Warthogs and other heavily armored fighters. Cause they don´t get distracted by the decoy flares, are accurate and with a fast projectile speed. Just too much of a flux hog to throw one on just in case.
Overall I thought this was a great tierlist and I agree with almost everything said. I do feel like you did my boy, the heavy machine gun dirty tho. You said that you don't like SO builds and don't play them but for SO builds such as the LP brawler I think the heavy machine gun slaps hard. The 450 range is ideal for the SO and perfectly matches the chaingun. It also adds a ton of kinetic damage to shuilds at a fantastic flux efficiency and the AI can aim it quite well. On top of all of that it can bring its own point defense for frigates serving a dual purpose. Not saying it is S tier but I believe that it should at least be in C tier for its own very good niche role. I am Luds top guy.
Watching Big Brain pirate from Paul Rogers while I pirate his ideas to pirate more effectively. Brings a salty tear to me plundering occipital lobe implant.
Any fellow 4 Mjolnier on an invictus enjoyers out there? You defintely need to max out the Flux capacity and get ordonance expertise but that F ability claps cheeks with Mjolnirs. I have starred at multiple onslaughts, 1 tapped one of them with the ability, vented in front of the other 2 and then just repeated the process. Yes you will lose a ton of crew and the armor is much thinner than one might at first believe but it has such an incredible amount of hull integrity with hull mods that you can just tank a ton of damage regardless. All my homies love the 4 mjolnir incivtus!
L-Mortar is better than D tier.. Because being so cheap means it goes well with something more expensive. On your Centurion example of the AC vs the Railgun, you could use Railgun + L-Mortar for 9 op, vs 2 AC for 8 op and that is significantly better.
Overall I agree about the mid slot HMG, it's overrated for both brawler and retaliation, too many weapon points even for such high efficiency, BUT it's literally needed for the Hyperion build. Hyperion without HMG is built incorrectly. I don't see any other builds for Hyperion for both manual control and for officer control (most likely aggressive). But this should be fundamental for the Wolf Pack build. However, Hyperion is not something you can just take and forget. I've often noticed how you extol Omen... How you want to add it to almost any fleet, like the Monitor before, for example, before it was nerfed. In fact, I see a properly built Hyperion as a tool for the final battle as well. You don't want to use it for farming missions or for fun if you don't control it yourself, so much so that you carry it in your pocket, disabled, and turn it on when you fly to a system with remnants or with a hegemony fleet that intends to check your colony, so that it can be restored to full combat readiness within a week. And all this semantic nonsense was said only to say "a heavy machine gun is not a D-tier, but a C" And in other respects I agree with the big brains.
There's honestly more things I disagree with that I'd expect (since I tend to agree with your thoughts in general guide videos), but the single biggest thing that I don't get is Mauler being in the same tier as Arbalest. And I even like Arbalests. In general your commentary seems focused on one specific playstyle/fleet setup. For example the Storm Needler is the most busted ballistic weapon right now, even if it doesn't fit on every ship with a large ballistic mount.
On reflection, if there's one thing I'd change, I'd move storm needler to A-tier. Against remnants it's S-tier, but for most of the game when you're fighting other factions it's not quite as good. On top of that it basically forces you to use one of your precious S-mod slots on mags, which the other S-tier weapons don't. I think of arbalest being low B tier while mauler is high B tier. The mauler is good, but it's also got stiff competition as an HE weapon because most of the ships that can use it either have large ballistics or a solid missile package... or both. Hellbores and harpoons are often hard to pass up. I didn't really get into the distinctions between what's higher or lower in each tier because I think it would eat up too much time (the video's already an hour long) and it would distract from the actual information about each weapon.
“Hello, is this the ‘We’re Back’ Department? I’d like to file a claim”.
Alex getting ready to include an entire balance patch with 0.98 so BigBrain has to redo the entire video:
Bigbrain did not like this comment cus he is afraid of this happening
Holy shit. The real John Starsector was the Big Brain we met along the way
The key to a good tier list is putting people's favorite things in C tier.
It's provocative. It gets the people going!
We are one step closer to Mr. Chadicus (formerly Mr. Energy) releasing the coveted fleet composition video.
Oh yeah, it's all coming together.
@@bigbrainenergyguy is it going to be all cruisers or all frigates?
I could listen to you speak on drywall optimal loadouts and I would nod along taking notes
Some item descriptions really could use a double-check, like the Light MG being called a "Dual Purpose" instead of "Point Defense" or the Thumper going to "Suppression" rather than "General". Obviously there is zero rush to do it, but it'd help newer players so very much! I mean I was a "frag is trash" kinda guy until the Beeg Frosty Cannon came out; and subsequently revisited all frag weapons, and found them to be really cool!
Yeah, some of the descriptions feel a little outdated.
Thumpers are slept on typically since they need to have the hullmods and skills necessary to draw out its potential.
@@Aereto Yeah ever since Thumper got its recent 0.25 flux efficiency buff, I've started realizing the thumper is actually good... sometimes. I don't know how I would rate it in a tier list though. I don't think Big Brain is underrating it though, I think the community thinks it's bad though.
if I had to, I would make a new F tier, put the light mortar there, leave heavy mortar and LAG in D tier, then I would feel better about the thumper rating on this list. Big Brain's video is great though, brings up a lot of good points!
@@TheSweetSpirit One thing I think people might overlook when "looking" at Thumper, Chaingun and Storm Needler is that they have low flux per shot.
Thumper(Frag): 100x20 / 25 flux per shot
Chaingun(Explosive): 75 / 60
Storm Needler(Kinetic): 50 / 35
If you put these on a manly-man ship with Shield Shunt you kinda guarantee that no matter what, as long as the ship and guns themselves are not destroyed they can keep shooting since there is no way to overload a ship with soft flux afaik. Even if you hit your max flux all that happens is that their RoF lowers until the rate of flux dissipation is enough to let them fire 1 bullet again which is very often with the low flux cost.
The AI can often be caught kinda sitting on its max flux microing the shield, letting some bullets through and then blocking a few etc but that often means like 90% of their guns are not doing much either, no flux cap to fire their multiple 200+ flux projectiles.
@@TheHuffur Main issue with shield shunt is that the player is usually more susceptible to attrition than the enemy is. You're stuck at 30 ships maximum, including logistic ships. You're also stuck at 240 DP ships if you want to maximize your skill bonuses, though you don't need to. You can also 'cheat' your way around it with something like the Prom2 without militarized subsystems. Despite that it's very hard to 'cheat' your way around the 30 ship limit. I think this makes it so that shield shunt in its current form will never be a very good hullmod compared to alternatives, though in a vacuum it works fine.
This is the sort of thing I love to see, not just “this is here because X” but “This is how you think about your weapons in order to rate them”
I feel like heavy mortar can be rated a bit higher due to the lack of medium HE options. It's either mortar(dps) or mauler(range), chaingun limited to SO ships.
Another banger just dropped.
This guy just can't miss
But Mark IX sure can
Ha!
Where's the 2 hour PowerPoint video?? I crave the numbers
It's helpful practice for me to start with something formulaic and well established (like tierlists) before diving into new territory to explain the nuances around fleet composition.
@@bigbrainenergyguyI'm loving this video, it's awesome for me as a relatively new player! Thanks!
BigPerunEnergy
I feel like the guy who saw Moses come with stone tablets with god's commandments
Btw I thought LMGs are for fighters etc with shields as opposed to Vulcans that are anti missile
Also, "efficient and cheap is ok for anti-shield but not anti-armor" maybe justified by shields needing long suppressions but armors needing to be eliminated quickly within a short window of time, before the ship runs away or gets shields back up.
John Starsector blessing us again with his Big Brain Energy
sometimes i feel like late game vanilla gets a little bit repetitive when it comes to strategies, i feel like the game need more beheviour-warping hullmods like safety overrides to shakeup gameplay. seeing long range reign supreme is fun the first times, but then you find out that is the best option by such a massive margin that anything else feels like playing in hardmode.
errrm that's top text
i can be your bottom text 💞
@@poi9311 😵💫
Hot
Good quality video, but I have a few objections about some of the logic, just briefly;
HMG being D because of ACG is missing out on some builds. HMG mostly range matches with phase lances on the Eagle, use elite PD and it range matches with phase Lance AO. Any ship with ballistic + energies in general may want to use hmg + medium energies. That, on top of how any ship with large mounts has anti-armor solutions and possibly use elite pd, give more ships a reason to use hmg. I actually think HMG is more like C.
Gauss cannon is better than advertised even in vanilla, when you field them en masse. They’re especially strong on the invictus, but in general as an example; Base Gauss Legions with manticore support. You’re right that mixing gauss manticore with non-gauss ships is meh, though. Also, try out mjolnir+gauss conquest sometime, the extra gauss range kinda goes nicely in the more rear-positioned side large.
I feel light Needler is equal to Railgun in power. Should be on the same tier. The efficiency + burst makes it very competitive. They actually go best combined together. Lowtech ships want light needler too thanks to the flux efficient damage.
HVD I feel is slightly overrated (like you say, hehe), because it is competing with the same slot as Heavy Mauler. I know that’s funny after what I said regarding the hmg, but this is S vs A tier compared to D vs C. It’s a good weapon, I just feel like it’s more top of A tier, since small kinetics exist to pair with heavy mauler. Heavy mauler is so good with target analysis that you can use it range mismatched and it’s completely fine, though like HVD you need like at minimum 2 maulers to feel the damage start stacking.
Light Autocannon should be B tier. It’s poor man’s railgun, sure, but that accuracy issue you’re taking about is easily fixed with awm alone. Add in gunnery implant and it is surprisingly accurate. The low hitstrength and still not perfect accuracy isn’t ideal though, and if it had 0.9 flux Efficiency I’d say it’s C.
The light dual AC actually has worse recoil/accuracy than the light AC on top of worse range. I believe it’s properly a C tier weapon.
EDIT: You mentioned captain hector pioneering storm needlers + maulers. Did you mean Drabaa? Or did Drabaa get that from Hector? Just wanted to mention that there's other reasons to use heavy maulers in place of HVDs. Eradicator, where you can prioritize the high dps of railguns as your kinetics and use 3 maulers (using BRF or Elite PD IPDAI to boost your railgun range), Dominator (2 devastators, 0-1 HVD, 1-2 Mauler, railguns/needlers), the Onslaught build you mentioned, XIVLegion 2 Squall 4-5 Mauler build, Base Legion 2 hellbore and some amount of maulers with BRF Railguns, Squall Pegasus, there's more I'm sure. I think B or A is a good tier to put mauler into, I don't really know which it fits better in so I didn't say anything about it at first.
I also disagree with the heavy machine gun position at tier D, I would put it at C. Otherwise the list looks RELEVANT.
Regarding Railgun vs Needler, one need to remember one is a generalist excel in most categories while the other is only good for kinetic.
Early Game, u need to pair needler with anti armor as it barely do anything after the shield was down. Railgun doesn't have that problem, it can deal with most thing just fine thank to high hit strength.
Later game, Needler should be paired with other weapons. Same with railgun. In this, needler may come out better but not much. So that is a more of a tie. It is really depending on each situation.
With railgun, one would get something back back most of the time but the needler needs to hit the shield only to provide any value from the flux spent
@@huntermad5668 light Needler still deals decent damage against stripped armor, not that much worse than railgun, especially if it’s a got hammerhead armor or worse. Its burst damage nature means it’s likely to get in a lot of damage onto hull before the enemy retreats, which overall helps it ‘equal out’ with the Railgun if you’re looking entirely from a hull damage aspect. Railgun in my experience feels less likely to encourage the enemy to tank shots on armor though, so that’s why I like pairing railguns with needlers. When I said light needler and railgun go well together I meant if you have multiple small slots it’s nice to mix the two of them together. There’s not really much else you can put in a small slot that pairs well with either of them. Even if it’s a hybrid slot, a Railgun + light Needler is a better option than a 700 range base kinetic + ion cannon, provided you have the flux and op to afford them. Light AG is an option in the early game but it’s really not something you willingly want to do very often.
Fun fact, LAG is decent at pd with the ipdai pd conversion. It’s horribly flux inefficient but it does a good job killing missiles and fighters.
Gaming
God gaming
Welcome back! I wonder if you wanted to create videos on load outs for more or less common ships. I am not new to the game but still struggle to create effective design
There's a number of other things I want to cover first, but yes I do have this in mind.
Ludd sent this brother to give us wisdom. Praise Ludd!
NEW GOSPEL JUST DROPPED
Im always down to listen to Big Brain Energy ramble about a Starsector topic!
Great job!🤘
My pick is Mauler should be A tier, it's pretty good on 3 Storms Onslaught (like on my last video) and Hephaestus / Gauss B tier.
Enemy AI really wants to tank Gauss hits with armor so it's pretty good with Escort Package destroyers for example in 0.97 to do overall damage (lot of hull damage you can do with it and it's not rare it does the finale blow).
The Gauss Cannon is genuinely perfect on the Conquest imo, more so than the Mjolnir even late game. Reason being the 2x Gauss + 2x Hurricane combo. You can punch through any shield and shatter any armor, from a completely safe range. The alpha strike to shields is so huge you can reliably overload most ships to support your allies elsewhere on the frontline. And being a Conquest, you are built well to back away from any threats and maintain that range advantage. Sure, you should not strictly need the 1200 range with late game skills, that provide it anyway for the Mjolnir. But having a 'buffer zone' of 300 base units of range is actually huge. Makes it that much harder for something to rush you.
Though an argument could be made that on an AI ship, the Mjolnir is still better, for the simple reason that the AI can't aim the gauss properly due to its turret locking in place while 'charging'.
mk9 + mjolnir on conquest is a great combo
i would personally put mk9 in A tier because its so cheap and efficient against large targets. a ship like the invictus can mount 2 mark9s and 2 hephaestus guns on the front and basically delete every ship in the game. its also great for the manticore because its so cheap
its pretty trash on the dominator though, i prefer devastator+mjolnir
Give us ALL tierlists in current version please. I might have general idea what is good, but there is aways something new I discover while watching your videos
Danm. As a Sector Pirate and a IRL one. I really appreciate a guide for killing. Thanks you for the tips.
(Disclaimer, I'm legally obliged to write that im not a real pirate for my future employment. This is a JOKE)
Yeah this guy definitely a pirate irl
The moment you credited another you got my sub.
Heavy machine gun is good on some capital ships as weapons that double as anti-missile and anti-flanking guns. Each bullet hits relatively hard enough that it can chip away at smaller ship's armor, not to mention that it pretty much obliterates shields on a short notice. You do need to do funky things to increase its range, but it seriously punishes any high-tech/midline ship trying to brawl.
54:18 I like how I know we're both thinking about the Legio Castigator.
Back with my favourite starsector content! This world is sorely missing objectively right ship builds and proper tier lists
I've been playing Starsector on and off for years now. And you're the only reason I can make fleet which complement ship and loadout choices. Letting me enjoy the game more. Keep up the great content. Been watching you for a while
Thank you for your kind effort in making this video. I learned alot from viewing. Thanks again.
As someone who doesn’t have enough spare time to Starsector the weapons in deep detail, you have gifted us with a tier list that includes a good amount of reasoning and information.
I salute you and await your future project with much anticipation, mon ami.
Hell yeah
I got recommended the wrong video. I thought this was a tier list of irl guns.
That's pretty funny.
Finally, now I know what my opinions on each weapon are supposed to be, the other tier lists just weren't cutting it.
This video is super helpful. Im gonna put H assault guns on everything now, thank you
I used to play with an XIV Legion with Storm Needlers (in fact, a LOT of needlers...) mounted along with a pair of Hammer Barrages. Needlers force shields down, and let the hammer torpedos connect consistently :)
Now he's making tier lists. You impress me with every new video.
Bonkers.
My S tier based solely on usage in a decently modded game, while still having preference to vanilla weapons:
S: railgun, light needler, vulcan / arby, hvd, dualflak, mauler / helbore, mjol, devastator
Mostly joking around with this, its just even despite all my modded weapons I tend towards the vanilla package, altho some get new niches on ships that dont exist in vanilla, and some are linda outclassed by op modded weapons (or out niched by some that arent that op)
Overall, the vanilla weapon suite is filled with good options, im happy with your little explanation of no F tier, it really is true. Some weapons I have a pref for id rate higher, but thats because of bias for myself :) Glad to hear you talk about your thoughts on the weapons, oh, and I too am someone who pretends safety override doesnt exist
Thank you, Space House, for the priceless info.
I actually really like the mortar, it's got higher hit strength which makes it effective against armor, and the ordinance savings means you've got more space for railguns/mods, I really warmed up to it after trying it out. It's not quick and is less useful as supplemental pd, but it can help a frigate kill a destroyer.
Doesn't extend to the medium mortar, that doesn't save enough points to be useful.
The thumper is really good on brawlers and onslaught because it takes out screen missiles and even direct fire for the onslaught, which is super underrated and I think super valuable on slower front-facing ships
How many thumpers to put on onslaught?
double Gauss Cannon is pretty good and fun on Atlas Mk.II, makes a great artillery ship. Not sure what version I was playing but it's also a civilian ship.
lol, that tier list all over the place line got me good. Will you make a fighter/bomber tier list too after the other(im guessing) weapon types?
Yeah I plan to cover all the weapons and fighters.
@@bigbrainenergyguy ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Thank you Mr. Big Brain Energy!
I haven't touched Safety Overrides in... I guess it's several years, now. But that contained my favorite uses for the HMG: ships that had more medium ballistic slots than they could sensibly use for only assault chain guns: Enforcer especially but also the Eradicator. And maybe the Brawler, come to think of it, although I never liked that ship much and didn't use it. It matches up well in combination with the assault chain gun, especially since the flux cost is very low for its damage.
Having the HE have longer range than the kinetics is often rather good due to how it makes the enemies respond. You get in, burst their flux up with the kinetics, then the enemy tries to retreat, but they keep their shield up and don't vent because the HE threat, allowing you to drop shields and lower some flux before charging them again to finish them off. Just saying this off of the onslaught with maulers and storm needlers concept, though it also works with some other setups like destroyers with light or heavy needlers and a mauler, or on the Eagle. Makes me wanna do another run focusing on this concept to see what other weapons are good for long range threat that keeps shield up.
Hellebores are great capital killers and station busters, as much as I understand how armor damage reduction behaves. It is outright destroying the armor and softening the wider area with long enough duration for high fire rate weapons to benefit from the debuff.
With the Gauss Cannon, try 4 of them on the Invictus. You can’t put much else on but you don’t really need too. You can play as the ultra long range support, able to shoot across the entire battlefield and overload any radiant, holding them off while the rest of your fleet kills the rest of the redacted.
4 mjohorn also work well as a shorter range but more lethal version.
On the Heavy Mortar:
I find that this weapon is most useful on ships you are going to use to harass enemy cruisers and capitals with. If you are fighting some low tech enemies, you have a cheap way to make the enemy keep their very crappy shields up and they then have to just eat hard flux damage directly or get their armour stripped. Heavy Mauler might be preferred in the role of actual damage dealer but if you just don't have the flux, the cash or the right ship to use it then the Heavy Mortar is a good backup.
Just don't expect it to be the star player; it's born to be a reserve weapon but it's a budget bargain one that can surprise you at times buy blowing a hole in a Onslaught's backside or tearing up a mid-line destroyer that got caught out of position.
Thx John, i am terrible with ship load outs, will use it for sure
OH YEAH!!!!!!
I like to run Chaingun+HMG on SO Brawlers, since on those I like to use the small slots for missiles (a Brawler is basically just the front of a Hammerhead anyways), to have some Hammers for cracking tough armour, and sure just two chainguns would still be 500 anti-shield DPS, but also 800 flux/s, which is kind of a lot for a Brawler even with SO, as opposed to 890 anti-shield DPS for 520 flux/s with ACG+HMG.
on and off with starsector and your vid's got me wanting to boot up a new save file and rain terror across the stars
Assuming you’re making a missile and energy list, are you going to make a omega as well? Great video as always!
Excellent video
This man shafted my beloved light mortar, yup, it's a tierlist alright
Awesome! More Starsector content. Hypervolocity drivers are the forever king tho.
16:35 how big of a difference is ofc subjective, but the difference between an autocannons/hmg 50 dmg vs railgun 100 dmg vs residual armor especially, is very significant
I agree with this, makes killing ships much easier when hull dps is also done by railguns, freeing up the less dps but more hit strength anti armor options
Dualflak + Accel Feed is a sight to behold, the Grendel really gets a nice benefit from it
In defense of the light morter;
I really like it on LP Lashers for and early-mid game fleet. With mortars in the hard points, that saves me 6 points from *not* using assault guns. I put a needler in the front most swivel, and dual light machine guns in the left and right swivels. I stick reapers in the missile spots, and i still have enough points to slap on Hardened Subsystems, and Stabilized Shields (after maxing flux cap and vents).
This is not the *best* lasher build in the universe, but, it makes for a cheap swarmer that stays around *just* long enough to usually kill, distract, or capture key targets. I could not do this with assaults, despite them being a superior weapon, because the ability to rip through shields at such a close range is somewhat integral to this loadout's ability to clean up light-medium sized craft.
Really, this is more a celebration of Accelerated Ammo Feed than it is a defense of light mortars, sure, but, I can rely on these frigates, they're pretty cheap (you can easily replace the needler with dual auto cannons if you dont have many to spare) but it is a way to get consistent anti-armor on a very fast, light craft that can decimate shields very quickly and secure kills with torpedoes. Also, as an aside, the AI seems petrified of them, as they'll often chase whatever ship I have them engage into some far off corner presuming that ship isnt capable of just destroying the frigate outright.
Whenever i see the combat readiness warning, ill often often up the map just to find they're bullying some cruiser off in the bottom corner, this includes remnant vessels.
Got a question here.
How would the tierlist look if Armored Weapon Mounts was a consideration?
The 25% (edit: I was confused regarding the recoil reduction value, thanks!) reduction on recoil helps out a few weapons, like the Light and Heavy Needlers. I am mildly ashamed to say that I run 4 Light Needlers on an Onslaught, and it is a joy to see those needles fly in a tight grouping to shread shields...
Yes, I downgraded the medium slots for that.
I may have drank too deep from the well of Fossic...
AWM does not reduce recoil by 50%, it reduces recoil by 25%.
In what limited experience I have reading opinions translated from Fossic into the USC (so, take it with a grain of salt), my opinion is that they focus on a meta that doesn't overlap with actual single player campaigns very well. They do a lot of tournaments over at Fossic and I've done tournaments in NASector, so I can see parallels between things I've noticed for tournaments and what at least some people at Fossic say. So, whenever you see Fossic opinions, keep that in mind that it might not translate 1:1 to your single player campaigns.
You're right though, AWM helps LAC a lot. Helps light needler too, actually. So does gunnery implants.
From my experience, 1 heavy needler = 2 light needlers, and there are not many ships that can withstand being pelted by 2 light needlers. That is, if you have 2 medium slots on, say, Eagle, two light needler is a valid option, while one heavy needler and an empty slot is quite similar, but a wee bit worse due to only having 1 firing arc. If you have ship that can field 2 heavy needlers, you will soon feel it being a bit of an overkill.
You should do one for hull mods
S modded magazines really change the equation. Try a build with IR autolaser with or without it and check the simulation summary sheet
On stürmneedler: you can use it on middle slots on sides of Invictus instead of 2 devastators, so you can delete stray hi-tech frigates. Too bad that needlers have no PD flag and cannot hit missiles, or it would be SSS+ tier.
Mooom, the Peeny Skeenis is making a tier list
Paul Rogers Gaming does get things wrong, but his approach is solid and he covers many other games, where his words are much more accurate. Only guide of his that i found biased towards the easy part of Starsector was his Missiles tierliest tbh. And even in that, his missile choice was more closer to yours in your midline build.
I would swap the Light Mortar with the AG. Mortars are quite enough to fight light armor in tandem with Railguns, while the AG requires too much flux (more than the Railgun) and because of that there is almost no flux left for kinetics, while the ability to fight medium-heavy armor and hulls is not much higher than that of mortars.
Also, the Storm Needler with S-moded Mags is an absolute beast, it fits perfectly on Low-Tech ships: Retribution with Mining Blasters melts everything below capital, the Legion's defensive build with PCL, Onslaught with two Needlers and five Thumpers (with manual control they can be used as PDs almost like in High Fleet) does not allow itself to be outflanked and annihilates frigates-destroyers in a second.
Heavy needler pairs really well with 2 heavy mortars on eradicator
i think the hmg is a bit underused for point defense. late game fleets have lots of shielded fighters which it deals with really well
i love that u reference that dudes videos. you were too nice though.
I actually really like the Light Mortar. It's great for early game Lasher spam.
Light Machine Gun gets quite the upgrade against fighters and missiles from mods that have shields
1:00 It is nice to see you being polite and deplomatic to a newer player because he completely missed the mark on carriers in that video. It's so wrong that you could change his tone of voice, and you would have a parody video.
Do you plan on doing UAF/other modded weapons. I feel like they get talked about a lot on forums and how they feel but never actually talked about in video format/applying them in a campaign (specifically the weapons, not the ships)
I have played with the UAF a little bit, and I do plan on covering mod stuff eventually after I've covered vanilla.
@@bigbrainenergyguy Awesome! Really appreciate that. I feel like the Naval Gun Aesthetic is so cool but I'm terrible with the stats/numbers so I never know if what im throwing on is good lol
LAG is also great for murdering those pesky Broadswords and Warthogs and other heavily armored fighters. Cause they don´t get distracted by the decoy flares, are accurate and with a fast projectile speed. Just too much of a flux hog to throw one on just in case.
Overall I thought this was a great tierlist and I agree with almost everything said. I do feel like you did my boy, the heavy machine gun dirty tho. You said that you don't like SO builds and don't play them but for SO builds such as the LP brawler I think the heavy machine gun slaps hard. The 450 range is ideal for the SO and perfectly matches the chaingun. It also adds a ton of kinetic damage to shuilds at a fantastic flux efficiency and the AI can aim it quite well. On top of all of that it can bring its own point defense for frigates serving a dual purpose. Not saying it is S tier but I believe that it should at least be in C tier for its own very good niche role.
I am Luds top guy.
Watching Big Brain pirate from Paul Rogers while I pirate his ideas to pirate more effectively.
Brings a salty tear to me plundering occipital lobe implant.
light mortar my beloved
21:50 Shields regenerate whereas Armor usually doesn't
its peak
Any fellow 4 Mjolnier on an invictus enjoyers out there? You defintely need to max out the Flux capacity and get ordonance expertise but that F ability claps cheeks with Mjolnirs. I have starred at multiple onslaughts, 1 tapped one of them with the ability, vented in front of the other 2 and then just repeated the process. Yes you will lose a ton of crew and the armor is much thinner than one might at first believe but it has such an incredible amount of hull integrity with hull mods that you can just tank a ton of damage regardless. All my homies love the 4 mjolnir incivtus!
''Bottom text''
*Its in the top*
WOW! ... WOW!
you are a strange critter.
enjoyable as such.
Mjognir on Atlas is goated alongside squalls
THIS IS THE GOSPEL OF TRUTH!!!
L-Mortar is better than D tier.. Because being so cheap means it goes well with something more expensive. On your Centurion example of the AC vs the Railgun, you could use Railgun + L-Mortar for 9 op, vs 2 AC for 8 op and that is significantly better.
I wish i could tierlist all over the place for 55 mins
Using expanded magazine Thumpers, Devastators, and a Storm Needler on an Onslaught is not good, but it is fun as hell.
Well, it do add more shots for ur big ass laser so it is not actually bad
how about heavy machine gun to punish safety override enemies?
Overall I agree about the mid slot HMG, it's overrated for both brawler and retaliation, too many weapon points even for such high efficiency, BUT it's literally needed for the Hyperion build. Hyperion without HMG is built incorrectly. I don't see any other builds for Hyperion for both manual control and for officer control (most likely aggressive). But this should be fundamental for the Wolf Pack build. However, Hyperion is not something you can just take and forget. I've often noticed how you extol Omen... How you want to add it to almost any fleet, like the Monitor before, for example, before it was nerfed. In fact, I see a properly built Hyperion as a tool for the final battle as well. You don't want to use it for farming missions or for fun if you don't control it yourself, so much so that you carry it in your pocket, disabled, and turn it on when you fly to a system with remnants or with a hegemony fleet that intends to check your colony, so that it can be restored to full combat readiness within a week.
And all this semantic nonsense was said only to say "a heavy machine gun is not a D-tier, but a C"
And in other respects I agree with the big brains.
Can you do energy next, pls?
Bottom text when they meet Top text: 😳❤️🔥
H-AC higher than arbalest was a whiplash
gib us the next bug videar john
i crave it in mah boans
it'll be here soon enough
@@bigbrainenergyguy soon enough for me is out 10 minutes agao joan, as i cannot last much longer without it
Can we get more big brain slop content tier lists?
There's honestly more things I disagree with that I'd expect (since I tend to agree with your thoughts in general guide videos), but the single biggest thing that I don't get is Mauler being in the same tier as Arbalest. And I even like Arbalests.
In general your commentary seems focused on one specific playstyle/fleet setup. For example the Storm Needler is the most busted ballistic weapon right now, even if it doesn't fit on every ship with a large ballistic mount.
On reflection, if there's one thing I'd change, I'd move storm needler to A-tier. Against remnants it's S-tier, but for most of the game when you're fighting other factions it's not quite as good. On top of that it basically forces you to use one of your precious S-mod slots on mags, which the other S-tier weapons don't.
I think of arbalest being low B tier while mauler is high B tier. The mauler is good, but it's also got stiff competition as an HE weapon because most of the ships that can use it either have large ballistics or a solid missile package... or both. Hellbores and harpoons are often hard to pass up.
I didn't really get into the distinctions between what's higher or lower in each tier because I think it would eat up too much time (the video's already an hour long) and it would distract from the actual information about each weapon.