Beam weapon choice

[Daz]

When creating new ship designs I often do the following:

I check the Damage/Space-used ratio for the highest value and use that weapon regardless of range. That way I get more bang out of the space used.

DO you know if and how much damage decreases with range?

I also tend to use the weapon with the least space required for PD weapons. That way I can fit many PD weapons on my ship.

DO you know how PD weapons work; is it 1 beam for 1 missile or is the PD damage summed up and applied against the missiles?

[Proteus_MST]

1. Weapons are divided into 3 or 4 Categories: Mass Drivers, Plasma Weapons and Particle Weapons AFAIK although there may be a cateory missing.

Particle Weapons have a good Accuracy and a medium decrerase of Damage with increasing Distance.
Plasma Weapons have a good Accuracy, a very high decrease of Damage with increasing Distance but they have also a extremly good Damage to Mass Ratio. So Plasma Weapons are a good choice for SR-Attack Ships
Mass Drivers on the other Hand don´t have their Damage decreased with increasing Distance, but they have a worse Accuracy than the other Categories.
Some weapons are AFAIK Area Effect, one Example are Missiles, but also other Weapons, like the Lightning Field Generators and I assume the Plasma Weapons.

2. As for PD-Weapons:
Point Defence is resolved just like normal Combat, i.e. a single PD-Weapon also attacks a single Missile/Fighter (at least if it isn´t an Area Effect Weapon). Each Missile has some Hitpoints, but (if equipped with those) may also have Armor and/or Shields.
Damage against Shields and/or armor of Missiles/Fighters is resolved just like for normal Ships, which means that Shots against the Armor/Shields also have a good chance to be deflected, if the Damage of the Weapon is too low.
So it would be a wise choice to take stronger weapons as your Weapons technology advances and not stick to Lasers til the end of the game (because your opponents might develip Missile/Fighter Shileds and Armor and with high enough Armor and Shield Technology the shots of your PD-Weaspons just bounce off without doing damage to the fighter/missile.
On the other hand, if there is Excess Damage after the Destruction of the Fighter / Missile it just dissolves (and is not transferred to nearby Missiles/Fighters) so it is a wise Choice not to take the Weapon with the most damage (and most weight) for your PD-Weapons.
It is best to find a Balance between Damage and weight of your individual PD-Weapons. I for my Part use Hard Beams at the Moment (good Damage and [thanks to Miniaturization Techs] low weight) and I probably stick to them til I am able to field Lightning Generators.

[Proteus_MST]

One additional remark:
I had now the chance to observe, how important the Damage of PD-Weapons really is.
I had my already mentioned Hard Beams as PD-Weapons of Choice. But at one time the Silicoids developed either armor or shields or both for their fighters. Suddenly my PD-Weapons were almost worthless. In most of my Fleets I had 1-3 PD-Escorts with maybe 40-60 Hard Beam Batteries.
They never stood a chance.
I was lucky if I was able to destroy the first Wave of fighters (the ships unleashed a real hellfire at the fighters, but much too rarely shot got through their armor), but even then my Fleets were doomed after the second or third wave (as long as my ships didn´t succeed in locating and destrying the enemy cariers first).
Everything changed when my technology progressed and brand new Escort Ships, equipped with Lightning Field Generators (which do double the damage, Hard Beams do), left the Production Lines. Now all those little spacefighters the Silicoids threw at me got destroyed within Seconds and without causing much harm to my fleet. What a difference, as against my older ships one wave was sufficient to destroy a whole fleet.

[Quintus_AP]

I use a mix of Lightning Fields and PD phasers and they seem to work great. I started doing this way when I realized that the number of PD batteries counts -- there is just some chance that a particular turret will shoot, obviously. When I had small quantities of PD weapons (relatively strong, though), they usually started shooting after the first enemy salvo hit me.

[Hydro]

After reviewed space-to-damage, accuracy (70%), and damage per weapon, fusion seems to be the overall winner until late mid game. Other weapons have more damage, but you get fewer weapons (eg - poor space-to-damage ratio) or have a bad to-hit (such as mass drivers at 50%). Fusion is still competitive after late mid game since it gets improved damage and several miniaturizations. Even in late game I use fusion to fill in those last bits of space on a ship. Later, when much tougher armor and shields are available, fusion is outclassed. Then I like plasma cannon, phasers, and lightning field.

[Bundaybd]

lightning field generators and phasers

I like hard beams in the early game, and then of course lightning field generators later on. Once I get autofire phasers with 2 miniaturizations I use a mix of those with lighning field generators. Also, even later in the game I find that it is important to get the improved phaser upgrade also, in order to punch thru fighter adamantium armor. Would love to see the table of fighter armor strength--I got slaughtered in a battle when my phasers suddenly had little effect on the # of fighters, but the upgrade to improved phasers made a big difference a few battles later.

In fact, one thing I've noticed is that light phaser mounts use the same space as point defense phaser mounts but do much more damage and have better range. It might be a good idea to use a mix of light and PD mounts for these.

BTW, it looks like the AI ship designer always tries to use the best beam possible when autodesigning. Bad amount of overkill and a waste of space.

[Bundaybd]

BTW, I also like to add in some point defense missiles. I usually use merculite with PD chassis, as the warhead is big enough to kill any fighter I've seen but only takes 2 spaces per missile (plus 2 for the launcher). I often use a few of these to use up the last spaces of a ship.

These also come in handy in a missile duel; if these end up being launched at a ship, they may not do much damage, but they do attract as much of his PD fire as heavier missiles do, helping to overwhelm defenses.

I've also had some good luck with improved autofire double miniaturized ion cannons--they only take 7.5 spaces each!

[Bundaybd]

Sorry, I meant for my replies to be titled "point defense weapon choice."

As for antiship beams, right now I like plasma cannon and megabolt cannon for max damage per space, but now that I have access to some good tables of weapons strength, I'm currently analyzing what the best choices really are. On first look it is not as straight forward as damage per space, since there are shield penetration, accuracy and range advantages to other weapons. Really late in the game, the mauler looks really good, with its good shield penetration and 100% accuracy.

[Stormhound]

I tend to stay away from PD missiles at times, because of the rack-count bug. If you mix missles on the same ship, whenever any type runs out, you can't fire more missles...and guess which type tends to run out fastest?

LFG's are a wonderful PD weapon, though.

[Hydro]

I don't build ships with PD missiles either. I like beams since in the early game they can shoot and damage ships (when very close), and in mid and later game there are always things to shoot. Racks become empty and that is bad; beams provide continual defense. The only advantage of PD missiles is that they can kill a fighter before it shoots you. But, they can be shot down so that is rendered somewhat moot.

[CharlesBHoff]

You cannot look at only one number when choseing weapon for your ship. WD/space can be very missleading. Let say my ship beam weapon have than very bad WD/space ratio but have three time the range of your ship beam weapon WD/space ratio which are better than mine. I might have fewer beam weapons but have agreater ranger to fire them at you before your weapons can fire back .

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by CharlesBHoff
You cannot look at only one number when choseing weapon for your ship. WD/space can be very missleading. Let say my ship beam weapon have than very bad WD/space ratio but have three time the range of your ship beam weapon WD/space ratio which are better than mine. I might have fewer beam weapons but have agreater ranger to fire them at you before your weapons can fire back .

Yup and especially if your Ships are faster than the enemys (and you are therefore able to maneuver to stay at range out of the range of the enemy shorter ranged weapons, the enemy is doomed, despite he maybe able to deliver a punch with his greater ranged weapons, which is much larger than yours.

That´s also the reason why I prefer Long Range Fleets over Short Range (I very rarely build a Short Range Fleet).

[Grumbold]

If you use very long range beams you need good sensor ships too. What you can't see you can't shoot and the enemy tends to use quite a lot of ECM.

[Proteus_MST]

Yep, I always tend to have 1-2 Sensorships with Battleships-Size or larger in the Picket Ring and also 1-2 ECM-Ships., which are stuffed with ECM-Pods (thanks to ECM and ECCM-Pods of the same Tech-Level having the same size, I normally have ECM and ECCM-Shps, which have the same Layout, except for the ECCM-Ships having ECCM-Ships on Board and the ECM-Ships instead hsaving the same number of ECM-Pods).

As I am the Leader in technology, I almos always have the advantage of seeing the enemy before he sees me

[benstandby]

ECM and ECCM in the same Task Force

Just so you know, if a TF has both your ECM and ECCM ships in it, the sensor-heavy ECCMs make a lot of noise and allow you to be seen easily while the ECMs are trying to make your fleet run silent on enemy radar. Its like Actively pinging in a submarine while you try to hide.
The only way to do it is to have SRA TF's (usually Flotilla size) with ECCM and all other TF's with ECM.
This way the big "slug-it-out" ships spot and tie up the enemy while the more fragile carrier, LRA, and IF armadas pummel the bastards into bits and pieces