I completely forgot to mention that in 0.96 the Graviton Beam was buffed. It now applies a stacking debuff lowering the effectiveness of opponents shields. They are viable if you commit to using them across multiple ships, otherwise I would still recommend the Ion Beam.
Second in the series. This one is really dense. There's so much more I wanted to say about energy weapons, but that video would have been an hour and a half long. If you have any questions ask them below and I'll try to answer them as best I can.
HSA is not bad, it's a niche Hullmod for SO builds or Phase Lance/Rift Lance. Hyperion (none SO variant) with Rift lances are more devastating than most cruisers piloted by AI; yes heavy blasters SO Hyperion is better but has peak performance issue. You will see in my next build video ;)
Yeah, I was going to say, the HSA just has it's place. You cant interchange a any energy slot for an HVD, so the comparison was kinda irrelevant. Also, smaller faster ships that are looking to brawl anyway can make use of it, even those annoying GravBeams can be even more pressure if it is all hard flux, it can even bring the longer laser ranges in line with the range of the other guns on a ship. Also, gunships are a thing (as you said with the Hype).
Mining Blasters are very niche weapons, and are perfect against any low tech ship that banks on their armor tanking hits. They use a lot of flux for their damage, but the bonus damage vs only armor can be used to strip out armor that allow frag type weapons to effectively shred the hull. I mount 2 on the Harbinger and an Ion Pulser to perform flanking assassinations on larger ships while the rest of the fleet isolate and close for the kill. The setup made XIV Onslaught bounties crumple from behind while the EMP saves my ships from focus fire. The ion pulser has slightly less damage than the pulse laser, but it fires in triplets to make up for it. If I am going with generalist approach, one mining blaster is replaced with a Thumper, since the blaster's armor cracking job is done.
Because of how flux heavy plasmas, heavy and antimatter blasters are they should only be used as main weapons only on ships that can get in and out of range very quickly, like aurora or odyssey, and will require you to fully build around them High-intensity laser is also the worst beam weapon to pair with high-scatter amlplifier, it's both long range and does explosive damage, phase and rift lances, and in a pinch tachyons and gravitons do much better with it, it also is mostly used on high tech crruisers and some lower tier high tech shipssince they can get a lot of phase lances and move fast enough where short range isn't a problem
Fuck, I thought this was because the game updated and changed how they work. Guess now I have to play again and do a solo energy run with all this new information
Tachyon Lance or bust. Also, with the update (and possibly new one coming soon thanks twitter updates), are you gonna do another ship/weapon tier list? We did get a lot of new stuff from new ships to variants. Haven't even tested out most of them (mostly the Lion's guard ships).
I want to make a new tier list, but honestly I haven't had a chance to try much of the new stuff. I did Long Haul into By The Rules, neither series required new ships/weapons.
high scatter amp is for close range brwaling ships ... especially when they already use safety overrides and or other mods which diminish range above x
Beams, energy/high explosive/emp/kinetic, Projectiles, energy/emp, Energy type missiles, seeking/non seeking. This is all they is in the base game. Most beams suck at shield, most projectiles are very flux hungry....energy missiles run the gamut. Running E builds are much more complicated than the Kinetic/Explosive from ballistics.
Graviton beam with HSA is a 600 range kinetic beam that now does hard flux damage and +10% damage, get buffs from enery mastery or you could just stack range on it again with Gunnery + integrated. How is that bad exactly? THe advantage of beam weapons over ballistics is that beam weapons always hit, this is a big difference in DPS, every ballistic weapon will miss at least some shot, beam weapons will not. Also the examples you mention are very flux inefficient weapons, graviton and other beam weapons are usually 1 to 1. Also I dont see how you can put a ballistic weapon in a energy slot, so what even is this argument? This rant on HSA was completely nonsensical. Graviton + Tachyon and HSA absolutely go to town on everything.
The point I was making was that you are spending resources to make something worse. Sure you can't put ballistics in a energy slot, but it's likely that somewhere else in your fleet you could use a HVD to fulfill the role that you're trying to perform with HSA. There's no need to sacrifice range at all. Changing the example to a different medium energy weapon, for instance the heavy blaster does exactly what you're describing at the same range, with the added benefits of imparting significant armor and hull damage. Again there's no good reason to gimp your beam weapons, their advantage is their incredible range.
I completely forgot to mention that in 0.96 the Graviton Beam was buffed. It now applies a stacking debuff lowering the effectiveness of opponents shields. They are viable if you commit to using them across multiple ships, otherwise I would still recommend the Ion Beam.
Second in the series. This one is really dense. There's so much more I wanted to say about energy weapons, but that video would have been an hour and a half long. If you have any questions ask them below and I'll try to answer them as best I can.
0:00 Intro
0:46 Beams
1:22 Kinetic pairing
1:41 Blasters
2:22 Point Defense
2:51 EMP weapons
3:42 Skills
5:57 Hullmods
10:14 Hardpoints
This was very helpful for someone starting out! Thanks! I'll have to check out the other weapon type videos.
I have tons of guides on the channel. Feel free to check them out 👍
If you make a guide about a weapon class, maybe describe a few weapons in more detail, e.g. the most commonly used ones?
HSA is not bad, it's a niche Hullmod for SO builds or Phase Lance/Rift Lance.
Hyperion (none SO variant) with Rift lances are more devastating than most cruisers piloted by AI; yes heavy blasters SO Hyperion is better but has peak performance issue.
You will see in my next build video ;)
Yeah, I was going to say, the HSA just has it's place. You cant interchange a any energy slot for an HVD, so the comparison was kinda irrelevant. Also, smaller faster ships that are looking to brawl anyway can make use of it, even those annoying GravBeams can be even more pressure if it is all hard flux, it can even bring the longer laser ranges in line with the range of the other guns on a ship. Also, gunships are a thing (as you said with the Hype).
Mining Blasters are very niche weapons, and are perfect against any low tech ship that banks on their armor tanking hits. They use a lot of flux for their damage, but the bonus damage vs only armor can be used to strip out armor that allow frag type weapons to effectively shred the hull.
I mount 2 on the Harbinger and an Ion Pulser to perform flanking assassinations on larger ships while the rest of the fleet isolate and close for the kill. The setup made XIV Onslaught bounties crumple from behind while the EMP saves my ships from focus fire. The ion pulser has slightly less damage than the pulse laser, but it fires in triplets to make up for it.
If I am going with generalist approach, one mining blaster is replaced with a Thumper, since the blaster's armor cracking job is done.
Two guides in two days?? You're spoiling us, Grumpy 😆
Because of how flux heavy plasmas, heavy and antimatter blasters are they should only be used as main weapons only on ships that can get in and out of range very quickly, like aurora or odyssey, and will require you to fully build around them
High-intensity laser is also the worst beam weapon to pair with high-scatter amlplifier, it's both long range and does explosive damage, phase and rift lances, and in a pinch tachyons and gravitons do much better with it, it also is mostly used on high tech crruisers and some lower tier high tech shipssince they can get a lot of phase lances and move fast enough where short range isn't a problem
Fuck, I thought this was because the game updated and changed how they work. Guess now I have to play again and do a solo energy run with all this new information
Tachyon Lance or bust. Also, with the update (and possibly new one coming soon thanks twitter updates), are you gonna do another ship/weapon tier list? We did get a lot of new stuff from new ships to variants. Haven't even tested out most of them (mostly the Lion's guard ships).
I want to make a new tier list, but honestly I haven't had a chance to try much of the new stuff. I did Long Haul into By The Rules, neither series required new ships/weapons.
high scatter amp is for close range brwaling ships ... especially when they already use safety overrides and or other mods which diminish range above x
Hi mate. I would love some suggested builds, pitfalls etc. from you.
the scatter mod really is a meme, but sometimes I use it on "who cares" energy heavy junkships that have those purple short range lance beams.
Beams, energy/high explosive/emp/kinetic, Projectiles, energy/emp, Energy type missiles, seeking/non seeking. This is all they is in the base game. Most beams suck at shield, most projectiles are very flux hungry....energy missiles run the gamut. Running E builds are much more complicated than the Kinetic/Explosive from ballistics.
Missiles next?
I dont know man, my triple pulse laser eagle wrecks shop.
Graviton beam with HSA is a 600 range kinetic beam that now does hard flux damage and +10% damage,
get buffs from enery mastery or you could just stack range on it again with Gunnery + integrated.
How is that bad exactly?
THe advantage of beam weapons over ballistics is that beam weapons always hit, this is a big difference in DPS,
every ballistic weapon will miss at least some shot, beam weapons will not.
Also the examples you mention are very flux inefficient weapons, graviton and other beam weapons are usually 1 to 1.
Also I dont see how you can put a ballistic weapon in a energy slot, so what even is this argument?
This rant on HSA was completely nonsensical.
Graviton + Tachyon and HSA absolutely go to town on everything.
The point I was making was that you are spending resources to make something worse. Sure you can't put ballistics in a energy slot, but it's likely that somewhere else in your fleet you could use a HVD to fulfill the role that you're trying to perform with HSA. There's no need to sacrifice range at all.
Changing the example to a different medium energy weapon, for instance the heavy blaster does exactly what you're describing at the same range, with the added benefits of imparting significant armor and hull damage. Again there's no good reason to gimp your beam weapons, their advantage is their incredible range.