Best weapon type for mass destruction?

[snata04]

I'm building a giant shell and lots of power for a super weapon, but what is the best weapon type for the maximum amount of damage in one shot?

 

[DoomCarrot]

In ONE shot? Missile, of course. But if you want a super mega nuke missile, note that you will only get one shot like every 30 seconds unless you have multiple missile tubes. And missiles are relatively easily shot down by a ship with well thought out point defense coverage.

Personally, there is nothing wrong with such a weapon, just make sure you also have something to take out turrets first.

 

[snata04]

thanks, i just started playing the game again and dont know which weapons are best for what, ill probably put cannons to take out turrets and fill the giant barrel with missiles

 

[RabidBat]

I tell people to experiment and see what works for them.

Not one single weapon is really better than any others, depends on the circumstances. And once you get to just going OP with the weapons almost anything will do again depending on the circumstance.

But yes, in terms of damage missiles probably win because their damage area of effect is much wider than cannons or beams, even if they have explosive effects attached.

Just remember though, power is not every thing. As DoomCarrot said, good point defence aka anti-missile systems, will make missiles useless or massively reduce their effectiveness.

Met plenty of people who have made OP ships with OP weapons and I have obliterated them with a good combination of weapons, manoeuvrability and pilot skill in a much smaller vessel.
Weapon is no good if it cannot get a line of sight on the target, or it fires from such a long range the target has plenty of time to shoot it down and close in for the kill as your weapon recharges (because most super weapons need super power, super power regen and super long cool down times)

This 'shell' is it a ship or a station? Is it a turret or fixed weapon? Just curious as I save my 'super weapons' for station defence, where mass and manoeuvrability doesn't really matter.
For my ships though it will always be a blend of power and skill. Because a brick is still a brick even if it has big guns.

 

[snata04]

This 'shell' is it a ship or a station? Is it a turret or fixed weapon? Just curious as I save my 'super weapons' for station defence, where mass and manoeuvrability doesn't really matter.
For my ships though it will always be a blend of power and skill. Because a brick is still a brick even if it has big guns.

It's a giant ship.

 

[Panpiper]

When you say 'shell', are you referring to a ship or a turret gun? When you say giant, approximately how many blocks and how much power are you talking about? A new player's giant is not the same thing as what someone who has been playing for years might define as giant. Will this weapon be used on a ship or a station? If it is used on a ship, will it be a large and slow ship or a ship capable of closing the range quickly? Will this weapon be manually fired, or be fired by an AI?

 

[Zekester81]

100,000 tubes of 10,000 missile x 10,000 missile x 100% overdrive. No one will ever come near you again. Not to mention that after they destroy everything around you, the rest of the missiles will come back and take you out too.

Honestly, from the vids of the latest patch, beam x Dpulse x piercing(or punch through) might be really powerful in a big cannon. Will have slow fire rate though.

 

[Stormraven]

100,000 tubes of 10,000 missile x 10,000 missile x 100% overdrive. No one will ever come near you again. Not to mention that after they destroy everything around you, the rest of the missiles will come back and take you out too.

Honestly, from the vids of the latest patch, beam x Dpulse x piercing(or punch through) might be really powerful in a big cannon. Will have slow fire rate though.

That's why you set that gun up to fire ONLY if you have a fully charge jump drive, which triggers immediately afterwards. XD

*Pirate ambush jumps the cruiser*
*DEATHBLOOM OF MISSILEDOOM FIRES*
*Cruiser warps away.*
*Pirate raiders pray to their powerless gods while they get eaten alive...*

 

[Az14el]

Missiles are your go to for destructive alpha damage, alpha cannons & beams have some uses but not for sheer block removal.
A mix of punch & piercing lock on missile clusters will perform best all round in this case, just make sure you're firing your missiles in generous groups (5-10+) they're spread out, and they're not like 10k per hit or less.

If you want to kill really big shit, use 1mil+ per hit missile-beam-explosive when their armor HP is down (which punch is best for!)

Also swarmers wont turn around and kill you (only your friends & everything else around you, and likely not your enemy)

 

[kingreol]

Personally the super beam array would be godly.

 

[Drumboy168]

I know this is a necro, but your avatar is seriously just toone great for this question.

You're not fooling anyone, acting all innocent like, Krenic.

 

[Edymnion]

Not like there is a single good answer.

The biggest damage output missile is also very easy to take down by point defense. Entrusting all your damage to one shot is a hail mary pass. Its great if it works, but it probably isn't going to work.

I honestly find steady sustained DPS to be the best answer.

 

[Ithirahad]

Missiles. Large missiles, and tons of missiles. Everywhere.

Enjoy.

 

[DrTarDIS]

For pure sustained block destruction I'd say can/can/explosive 1:1:1 with a checkerboard pattern. It'll be hella power-consuming though.

For a "make this shot count" megaweapon beam-nothing-explosive 1:0:1 checkerboard.

Since explosive wastes 1/7 of it's damage to empty space at the best of times, it's slightly better investment return than missiles that'll waste about 1/2.

Power-death from waffle can be mitigated with creative logic, at the cost of accuracy. The same is true for heat-seeking-missiles.

 

[AtraUnam]

Large missiles, if you painstakingly engineer it a cannon can technically almost equal missiles for block damage and flat out beat them when armor is involved but there are som severe limitations that go along with that.

 

[Tunk]

Missiles are definitely king of block destruction, especially when paired with explosive or overdrive.
Keep in mind however, the amout of ship health damage is dependent on block destruction and the amount of blocks a missile can destroy is dependent on radius and damage.
This means, even with missiles if you have a extreme amount of damage it is best to split the missiles to get more damage out of them.

For example your standard missile, or missile-beam can do about 360k (multiplied by HP penalty) damage each.
A missile with punch/pierce (+5 radius) can do about 1 million.
A missile with overdrive/explosive can do about 2.2 million.

Missile/Pulse nukes can cause 20 million plus damage, if they get a nasty hit in.

Of course, dependent on blocks destroyed (calculated based on half volume here) and if they have enough damage to cause that amount of block destruction, and block composition.

 

[Tamren Shade]

The weapons I typically use for my primary batteries are Missile-Beam-Punch, Cannon-Cannon-Punch, Beam-Cannon-Punch, and Beam-Beam-Ion. Which three I use is dependant on what roll I envisioned for the ship, but I've found dividing the volume of blocks you have by roughly 1/3 and allocating 1/3 to a missile battery, 1/3 to an ion beam, and 1/3 to a continuous fire cannon or beam seems to result in a nice balanced ship.

If I want to make a more missile heavy ship, I'll make my ion beam, or cannon system smaller and put the extra blocks into a 2nd missile battery. I've also made a specialized variant of a destroyer with no missile, but a 15,000 block beam system. That one worked pretty well versus missile heavy ships, but would get ripped to shreds against a cannon heavy ship. I've also noticed that a cannon heavy ship will lose to a missile ship with forward firing full beam missiles. However, vertical launch missiles tend to have a better chance of getting through AMS fire at a moderate range but are horrible at point blank, they'll spend several seconds looping around the target taking AMS fire before impacting. So the above mentioned cannon heavy brawler would do extremely well versus the exact same ship it would lose to, if that ship simply had a VLM battery.

Really, the weapons you choose are dependant how fast your ship is, at what range you plan on engaging your targets, how solid is your AMS system, and what you think those targets will have to shoot back at you. That's one of the cool things about Starmade, there is no weapon mix that is blatantly superior versus every other ship in every other situation. You could even make a few different variants of your ship with different super weapons set up to engage different targets.

 

[Blodge]

I'm building a giant shell and lots of power for a super weapon, but what is the best weapon type for the maximum amount of damage in one shot?

I hope you're taking all this advice with a pinch of salt

 

[jayman38]

Missiles are definitely king of block destruction, especially when paired with explosive or overdrive.
...
For example your standard missile, or missile-beam can do about 360k (multiplied by HP penalty) damage each.
A missile with punch/pierce (+5 radius) can do about 1 million.
A missile with overdrive/explosive can do about 2.2 million.
...

At the size of weapon he's talking about, he'll probably prefer explosive or punch-through over overdrive, for efficiency.

 

[Az14el]

"In One Shot" is a bad idea, many outputs, many distinct hit locations & good firing rate is mostly what makes a good "super weapon".
There are bad ways to do this and good ways, putting many weapon outputs on logic would be a bad way, using many beam support turrets with staggered reload times on each weapons computer would be a good way. Or you could just fly right up to them with a bunch of beam/cannon-cannon *shrugs*.

High fire rate, coming from several individual AI units (so turrets), with good per hit penetration/damage radius is the best way to do block damage. Honestly all 3 common weapon systems should be represented for best effect, though missiles used properly will still deal the heaviest overall block removal, cannons & beams used properly can be close, and deal much more immediately dangerous damage due to their penetration.

So your ultimate super-weapon would be the sum of your whole ship, simply put, sorry for the non-answer answer but it is how it is

Missile-Beam-Punch with around 130-150k damage per missile, if you put a gun to my head and demanded an answer to "what is the superior weapon in starmade" thats probably the answer I'd give. Sounds a bit underwhelming don't it.

Missile-beam-piercing is much less useful due to a recent nerf to its system HP bonus, if wondering if my previous post still applies.