I'll still disagree on that point personally, as armour is also finite.
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Otherwise I see anti-cap weapons being the large weapons domain.
Devastator's are flak that can sub in as close range anti-armour, not a fan personally as they often outflux my ships.
Gauss are great heavy artillery for shields and lesser beings, they need a steady platform and I find my ai conquest like to jiggle, so I don't use them on those.
Hellbore's are fantastic and are best in class HE, but are very.... bore when compared to more exotic weapons systems.
Hephaestus sound good in concept but armour is better killed by burst damage rather then DPS as I hear it. Still good for just lobbing mass ordinance at the enemy.
Mark IX Autocannon is a dead simple good bang for buck anti-shield weapon. Nothing wrong with it at all even if it might not be up to the task of paragons and starbases all on it's own.
Mjolnir is weird, it's hard to find a good user for it that doesn't kill it's self and it's energy damage type is underwhelming..... but it doesn't need support frankly, just keep firing and you'll kill basically anything that can't run.
Storm Needler's are nice honestly, they lack range which is the big killer but if your AI is like mine then range is never an issue. Stacks with Hephaestus really nicely.
Autopulse is my contender for best large energy. Nothing is worse then this gun as 70% of any battle is shield killing and other energy weapons either simply can't do it, or are very hard to flux for like the plasma. A paragon or radiant with 4-5 of these WILL kill anything else in the game.
High Intensity Laser is a real nice death beam that I love on my Sunders. Shields up or die.
Paladin PD System is getting changed and thank the gods for that. That said it can be nice to use over other large energies that are hard to support, like plasma. Better then downgrading?
Plasma Cannon's would be the best in the game, if not for their horrendous flux stats. Still amazing if you can budger for your own use, or the AI's miss use as point defence weapons. Apogees can use them to snipe onslaught battleships however!
Tachyon Lance's are really good but are overrated in my opinion from people who spend too long fighting pirates or the Hegemony. They do tend to have a faster time to kill then the HIL, but for a greater cost which seems like a fair upgrade/side-grade.
Thermal Pulse Cannon's built into the Onslaught are really decent. If anything you can build the rest of the battleship to mere support elements to these fixed forward guns. Set them to aggressively execute order remnant battleships and two onslaughts can reasonably take it down without a casualty by hounding that teleporting [REDACTED] across the map with their burn drives.