I don't understand why everyone loves the cryoflamer so much. Extremely short-ranged ammo-limited energy with terribly low per-shot damage and 1.0 efficiency. Literally a worse pulse laser for more OP.?
Either there was a stealth balance change or I'm dumb. Likely the latter.It's not the best weapon from the last update, yes, but on some ships it's devastating.
Still wouldn't call it good, though. It's anemic against armor and shieldbreaking is surprisingly no longer an issue for high-tech.
Still wouldn't call it good, though.+
Agree the Shock Repeater is shockingly bad.
I was disappointed by this weapon. Compared to Tachyon Lance, the emitter costs more OP and consumes more flux. And what do I get from this? A little more damage if the beam explodes gloriously. Oh, and the explosion chance varies by distance, less at longer range, so its damage is not so great if you snipe with it, and sniping is the point of this Tachyon Lance knock-off. Also, unlike Tachyon Lance, it lacks EMP and shield piercing. I think Tachyon Lance is the better weapon, and it is better to get more Tachyon Lances than mix this weapon in. It is very flashy, and fun to use, but a letdown overall.
- Rift Cascade Emitter: Murderous doom in a gun. Pairs well with a Tachyon Lance - they've got the same firing rate. The AI has issues aiming the thing, though; if it's under AI control, and the host ship is turning (and outside of simulator duels, the host ship is basically always turning), and the target is anything smaller than a cruiser... it's going to miss. (And then sometimes it misses the cruisers, too.) Also, if you have two of these in a linked group, they usually pick either the same or almost-the-same locations for their rifts, which just doesn't look as good as if the rifts arced in opposite directions.
Overall Grade: A+. Only held back from S-grade by its mediocre performance on AI-controlled ships.
- Resonator MRM Launcher: Compared to a sabot pod, the Resonator is expensive and lacking in punch... but it also has better range and tracking, and never runs out of ammunition. Probably not worth using on a ship with Expanded Missile Racks and a Missile Spec officer, but still just generally a good weapon. (And I, personally, am quite fond of giving my AI-controlled ships weapons that they can't completely waste all their ammunition with.)
Overall Grade: B, maybe B+. It's good, but not amazing, and even for the role of medium kinetic-damage missile, you won't always want to be using these.
Agreed, to become somewhat usable it needs to restore all its ammunition not only 4, for example, if the ship has missile racks or skill let it restore 8 missiles, if the ship has perk and MR let it restore 12 missiles per tick, then it becomes worthy to use.
- Resonator MRM Launcher: Compared to a sabot pod, the Resonator is expensive and lacking in punch... but it also has better range and tracking, and never runs out of ammunition. Probably not worth using on a ship with Expanded Missile Racks and a Missile Spec officer, but still just generally a good weapon. (And I, personally, am quite fond of giving my AI-controlled ships weapons that they can't completely waste all their ammunition with.)
Overall Grade: B, maybe B+. It's good, but not amazing, and even for the role of medium kinetic-damage missile, you won't always want to be using these.
I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion about resonators, but excepting the arc emitters (bad in dragon's HTE mod, bad here) - they're easily the worst of the triangle weapons. Yes, the barrage is longer ranged than a light needler, but that's what it is - a tracking, interceptable light needler, that you're paying 16op and a medium missile slot for. This... this is not a good trade. There's almost no ship that can afford to mount a missile slot with such low impact for such expense, except for pure carriers (which are enormously OP starved and unlikely to be able to afford something more than twice as expensive as a pilum).
You give up 36(!!) sabots for 6 more op, in exchange for infinite 80 kinetic dps.
I rate it somewhere in the neighborhood of the thumper and mining laser.
"80 DPS" is rather severely under-selling the Resonator.
How much DPS do you get from a sabot pod across a whole battle? That's 12,000 kinetic damage worth of missiles. If you can end the battle in 60 seconds? Then yeah, for that, case, you're looking at 400 DPS out of the thing, and should use it over the Resonator.
A battle that drags out to five minutes? Well hey, you're back down to 80 DPS - and, critically, that "DPS" is going to be heavily front-loaded onto whatever random thing your AI-controlled ships happen to focus on first. While, meanwhile, the Resonator is just consistently useful across the whole battle.
Missile Spec and EMR - as I said in the original post - do tilt things somewhat towards the sabot pod, making its ammunition limits less of a concern. On the other hand, even there, I think you're underestimating the Resonator; it regenerates pretty quickly, so you can easily have a two-or-three salvo burst ready to go if you had to back off a bit.
In general, a player can probably get better use out of a regular bursty ammo-limited missile weapon, picking the right times to use it. For the AI, though, ammo regeneration is really nice - it means that you don't need to care about whether the AI wasted its ammunition on some random frigate, it'll have more later.
Rift torpedo is an overrated meme weapon. It costs far too much flux to fire and is easy to shoot down. I can't name a single situation where I would want it over a hurricane.
"80 DPS" is rather severely under-selling the Resonator.
How much DPS do you get from a sabot pod across a whole battle? That's 12,000 kinetic damage worth of missiles. If you can end the battle in 60 seconds? Then yeah, for that, case, you're looking at 400 DPS out of the thing, and should use it over the Resonator.
A battle that drags out to five minutes? Well hey, you're back down to 80 DPS - and, critically, that "DPS" is going to be heavily front-loaded onto whatever random thing your AI-controlled ships happen to focus on first. While, meanwhile, the Resonator is just consistently useful across the whole battle.
Missile Spec and EMR - as I said in the original post - do tilt things somewhat towards the sabot pod, making its ammunition limits less of a concern. On the other hand, even there, I think you're underestimating the Resonator; it regenerates pretty quickly, so you can easily have a two-or-three salvo burst ready to go if you had to back off a bit.
In general, a player can probably get better use out of a regular bursty ammo-limited missile weapon, picking the right times to use it. For the AI, though, ammo regeneration is really nice - it means that you don't need to care about whether the AI wasted its ammunition on some random frigate, it'll have more later.
The greatest tragedy in Starsector is that high tech gets all the interesting ships and all the interesting weapons.
Shock repeaters are shockingly good PD if several can be together, I find. I managed to snag 3 of them to put on the left side of my odyssey and I can turn off my shields when someone fires several reaper torpedos at me, which is suicide to do at anything less than long range for an entire bank of LRPDs or for burst PD when it's out of charges. Maybe I stumbled upon the best use of it somehow.
It's a light needler in a medium missile slot. With a 1.0 flux efficiency. That you can fit on very few things, and only acquire a limited number of them in any run. So sure, I guess you can bring a few gemini along, or one hyperion, but using 32 op for this on a conquest, dominator, aurora, or whatever - ehhhh.It's a 2500 range light needler that very rarely misses and isn't blocked by allies.
Volatile Particle Driver: I've actually never seen this one drop in-game, so my experience is limited. Seems like a good thing to mount one of on a Radiant? The burst nature of it works against its special ability of losing shots and DPS at long range, as the AI will waste most-or-all of that burst while the target's still far away. Could benefit from something like how PD weapons hold onto charges? Make it fire at charge-regen-rate at max range and conserve ammunition until targets are closer? ...Though that would also fare poorly against stuff that's just hovering at max range, so, hm.
Overall Grade: ?. I think it's probably in the C-to-B range, but I'm not sure.