What are effective weapon combinations other than big cannon/cannon/x?

[NeonSturm]

I found the beam-cannon-explosive interesting. It is like a chainsaw for ships :D

The most effective weapons cut your enemies arrays into many parts and let the weapons drain much more power due to many arrays per computer.

 

[Winterhome]

If you're using piercing or punch-through on anything other than cannon/cannon or beam/cannon, you're going to need multiple output faces to do as much damage as possible.

Make a checkerboard or something.

 

[MrFURB]

I outfit most of my vessels with a mixture of cannon and missile primaries. Some of my favorites would be cannon/beam and missile/missile. I usually attune the cannons to weaken shields while the missiles provide crippling block damage. Other than that I've found that beams with explosive effects are absolute hilarity when they can be used effectively.

 

[Keptick]

I outfit most of my vessels with a mixture of cannon and missile primaries. Some of my favorites would be cannon/beam and missile/missile. I usually attune the cannons to weaken shields while the missiles provide crippling block damage. Other than that I've found that beams with explosive effects are absolute hilarity when they can be used effectively.

You surprise me!

I really like using missile-beam-explosive as a primary and missile-missile to replace turrets :P

 

[rocketman221]

I normally use a cluster of 4 to 12 rapid fire, high dps cannons with explosive or punchthrough for smaller ships and a few high powered dumb fire missiles (millions of damage per shot) with explosive effect for large ships and stations. A big beam weapon with a 100% shield drain effect is also useful for targets with a lot of shields.
Offset the output blocks for your missiles so they don't all hit at the same time for better penetration.

 

[Comr4de]

I still have to test this theory, but I think this will one day be a doomsday weapon (when break_off finally works):
Beam+50% cannon+100% punch through. That will just tear through ships.

Errr, that bug was fixed a while ago. The secondary effect cannot exceed 100% of the main system.

 

[FunnyBunny14]

Isn't punch through the effect that causes a weapon to pass hit a block, destroy it and then move on to the other block until it has no damage left? It would work if it was 100%, as long as your weapon does enough damage. It would then officialy be a massive chainsaw.

 

[Keptick]

Isn't punch through the effect that causes a weapon to pass hit a block, destroy it and then move on to the other block until it has no damage left? It would work if it was 100%, as long as your weapon does enough damage. It would then officialy be a massive chainsaw.

Punch-through doesn't work with beams.

 

[Orphaniel]

Also, all of my friends were really disappointed when the beam weapon turned out to be hardcapped to such low durations, maybe consider increasing them a bit? I was really hoping for a proper cutting beam that will eat all your power but would last like 5-10 seconds if properly fed Basically just hold down the fire button for delicious, hot laser death and release when you're sufficiently worried about your reactors. Hard caps and cooldowns keep the beam usage in check though, and sort of pace the fight.

The exact thing you are describing is BEAM + PULSE You hold fire, and it belches out a five second beam of absolute slaughtering doom, as I stated, I've never encountered any shields able to withstand a single blast from this weapon save for the smallest examples.

add to that @marcus87 's idea about using explosive effect with your beams and you have exactly what you desire. give it a try!

A commonly used image to demonstrate such a fearsome beam cannon

Another fun thing to play with is Custom shaped cannon projectiles, basically, you have your large cannon fire a single blast from an AMC, or a group of five or so, then behind it, you place a staggered bunch of single block AMCs, becaue all the shots travel and fire at the same rate of speed you get a main "slug" with some trailing smaller "particles" behind it, in this way, you develop a plasma cannon look.

 

[Planr]

Isn't punch through the effect that causes a weapon to pass hit a block, destroy it and then move on to the other block until it has no damage left? It would work if it was 100%, as long as your weapon does enough damage. It would then officialy be a massive chainsaw.

Yes, but it also has poor effectiveness against ship shields, and punch-through is already only really useful in massive volleys.

 

[Comr4de]

Isn't punch through the effect that causes a weapon to pass hit a block, destroy it and then move on to the other block until it has no damage left? It would work if it was 100%, as long as your weapon does enough damage. It would then officialy be a massive chainsaw.

OH, I apologize. I thought you meant like 500 beam blocks and 1000 cannon blocks. My bad.

 

[Winterhome]

Another fun thing to play with is Custom shaped cannon projectiles, basically, you have your large cannon fire a single blast from an AMC, or a group of five or so, then behind it, you place a staggered bunch of single block AMCs, becaue all the shots travel and fire at the same rate of speed you get a main "slug" with some trailing smaller "particles" behind it, in this way, you develop a plasma cannon look.

pew pew?

If you shape your cannon the right way, you don't need single blocks. You can get that effect with a load of crosswiring.

 

[Orphaniel]

pew pew?

PEW.

 

[marcus87]

wtf are these red thingies the lasers?

 

[Orphaniel]

Yep, the firing apertures are arranged into a cone shape, because allthe lasers travel at the same speed now regardless of the size of the barrel, it maintains it's cone shape when shooting. I wanted to give the impression of a single, coherent, powerful blast

 

[marcus87]

I think you succeeded, just maye make the cone shape to the back to. It would loke better I think.

 

[Orphaniel]

I'd have to redesign the whole cannon barrel for that, keep in mind that those shots are travelling at such speed (cannon+beam) that you couldn't seem them as clearly as you do here.

 

[marcus87]

That could be the case. Will have to wait for a video then :D