Best bang/buck?

[theCzar]

Do people still look at this board?

anyhow, I've started playing multiplayer moo2 on my college's network with a few other massive moo2 fans, which is fantastic, but ship design is definitely the most interesting aspect, anyone can beat an AI at ship design, but we all have our favourite guns 'n' ammo

But what's gives the best damage for space usage?

I love my plasma cannons, heavy mount, I find they do better damage than disrupters, smaller than maulers and d.rays, and can be miniturised to the point where titans can hold 30+ heavy mounted without any strain.

But of course, these cannons come in the late/mid game

I'm also a big fan of my patented missile platform, no sheilds, no specials except maybe fast missile racks on smaller ships, and then as many of the best missiles you can fit on with only 2 ammo, they need to be backed up with a few hardier ships to dry and draw the fire, but the beauty of the design is that they can lauch their entire firepower and retreat in two turns, before enemy missiles reach them, meanwhile, no ship/starbase can stand up to 40 pulson's in the early game.

they're just two, are there any other exceptional raft you can think of

[Whoha]

That depends on tech. At the highest tech, that would be heavy autofire disruptors, but thats with level III advanced physics.

pretty much every weapon system is good at some point.

[Old n Slow]

My standard is auto fire Mass Drivers (free with class III shields for those creative types)

Seems to be a "cheap", easy to research combo with some punch while the research goes on in other areas. Might get a battle scanner on board or not. But a BB seems to be able to handle most space monsters & most enemies up to late mid-game.

[vmxa1]

Phasors are ship killers and come at the 2000 RP level. After 1.31 Plasma Cannons are not as effective as they were. They are still the coolest sounding though.

[Garth Vader]

Early game I like Hv/AF/AP/CO lasers rather than missile boats.

The reason is because you fire first and can often take out a battleship with a cruiser in one round.

You have problems if they get decent shields or heavy armor.

Oh and you get Hv/AF disruptors at the stellar convertor level.

[theCzar]

why bother with AF? it doesn't increase damage does it?

I've recently built a ship with a large variety of weapons for a field test, it has heavy mounted phasors, mass drivers and gravitons,

i like the piercing ability of mass drivers, though with this and heavy mount, they take the same space as heavy phasors, and i can't see them being as effective

I've experimented recently with ion cannons, they're useless by themselves, but they complement the missile platform well, crippling enemy ships, preventing retreat. just have to make sure to keep'em clear of antarans/beasties

[Garth Vader]

Well it gives you 3 shots which can certainly increase damage.

[vmxa1]

The question is not why bother with AF, but rather why bother with Hv? Once you get deep into the tech tree the ships have enough movement to get close anyway, so skip the heavy mounts.
Early they are very useful as you can stand off from the planetary defense.

[Garth Vader]

I think you get enough increased damage with HV that it's worth the extra space.

I hadn't thought about that for late game. I usually use all 3 mounts, but just have a few on normal mount to help the PD guns or help the HV guns.

[Old n Slow]

Late game I'll upgrade my Mass Drivers to AF Gauss Cannons -- mostly due to the fact that I end up researching the top end of Power & Physics last. A few AF Gc with some of the computer pluses wipes out the Guardian of Orion quite easily.

Hadn't ever given it a thought to skip out on a set of HV guns.

Once all the computer enhancements (+high energy focus) are on board, does the actual gun type make that much of a difference? At the very late stages of the game, one is miniturizing due to advanced tech, so I would thank that the weapon specifics are somewhat less important.

[Whoha]

Autofire because you get 3x firepower for about 1.5 cost.

Heavy is good because it increases about 4 attributes for only 2x the space.

late game 2 of those improvements go away, but shields are much better and much more prevalent. Normal phasors do 7 damage(at point blank range) to class x shields with hard shields(the ai has this alot). Heavies do 17 damage, in addition to the range and reduced dissipation.

Regular disruptors do 0 damage to a planet with barrier fields/class x shields regardless of improvements, heavy disruptors do about 30 damage per shot with all the improvements to a planet.

There are instances where using normal guns is preferable to using heavy guns, but take them on a situation by situation basis.

[Iasius]

For ship to ship combat I lately prefer phasors. Even against hard shields you can fit a lot of them compared to AF disruptors until the end of late game (meaning when your're at 65000-75000 RP on technologies).
However I don't play multiplayer much so I'm not sure what exactly would be the best choice in various stages of the game.
In a non-creative game I almost never pick plasma cannons myself, they don't do enough damage against barrier shields (same as phasors) and they don't pack enough punch to compare to AF phasors once the enemy has lvl VII or X shields (even with hard shields). I'd rather pick phasors and then plasma rifles instead of the other way.
Also, I don't usually pick gauss rifles because class V shields are usually my first pick for shields. I usually go ECM jammer, anti-grav, rad shield, personal shield, warp int., class V shield there.

[Admiral Sparky]

When you get to 2000 RP in Physics, Force Fields, Construction, and Power each, you can spend 60 space units on...

2 Anti-Matter Torpedoes that do 25 damage each, every other turn, for 25 damage/turn total...

A single squadron of Anti-Matter Bombers that do 5-40 damage each, but only every few turns, netting probably no more than 33-50 damage per turn...

2 squads of Interceptors carrying PD Phasors, ten damage per gun, for 80 damage total per turn, not counting refueling and rearming time...

3 HV Graviton Beams that each do 22 damage to shields and 33 damage to armor/structure/systems, for between 66 and 99 damage total...

3 HV Phasors that do 30 damage each, for 90 damage total...

6 HV Neutron Blasters that do 18 damage each, for 108 damage total...

3 or 4 MIRV Merculites, depending on what other mods you select, with 56 damage each for 168-224 damage total on each of the two turns that you will be able to fire, not taking into account the fact that half of them will get jammed or shot down or electrocuted by a Lightning Field...

6 to 8 MIRV Nukes, depending on what other mods you select, with 32 damage each for 192-256 damage total on each of the two turns that you will be able to fire, not taking into account the fact that half of them will get jammed or shot down or electrocuted by a Lightning Field...

7 and a half HV AF Lasers that do 18 damage each, for 135 damage total...

5 and a half HV AF Mass Drivers that do 27 damage each, for 148.5 damage total...

A single HV Death ray for 150 damage total...

6 HV ENV Fusion Beams that do 36 damage each, for 216 damage total!

Not a hard decision in my opinion. Even against Class III Shields, ENV Fusions are better than everything else except Death Rays.

[Urban Ranger]

My all-time favourite weapon is AF SP Phasor. Not good against Heavy Shields or Xeno armour (IIRC), though. Or rather, much less brutal, that is.

[Admiral Sparky]

Shield-piercing sucks.

A Doomstar can have up to 4,500 each of armor and structure but only 525 shields. This means that a non-Shield-Piercing weapon will spend about 5% of its time hitting shields and about 95% of its time hitting ship. Why the bloody hell would you want to have 2/3 as many guns needing to do 95% as much work?