Explanation of tiers:
F - Outclassed by common weapons and should never be used.
D - Underpowered, but still competes with common weapons.
C - Less powerful/versatile than other omega weapons, but balanced enough.
B - Balanced. IMO, omega weapons should have the strength of a weapon one size larger, ie. would a Shock Repeater be balanced if it was a common medium energy?
A - More powerful/versatile than other omega weapons, but balanced enough.
S - Overpowered. Provides extreme versatility like no other weapon does. It's considered unlucky when few/none of these drop in a run. May deserve a small nerf.
Small weapons
Spoiler
Shock Repeater: B
Great for stopping torpedoes as they do not explode after getting shut down by the EMP damage. Protects against heavy fighters by swiftly disabling their engines. Can also be used as a short range EMP DPS weapon; compared to Ion Cannon, it has half the EMP DPS but twice the energy DPS and hit strength. Still struggles against destroyer grade armor however. Is easily distracted by flares and saturation missiles as all small PD weapons are. Shielded fighters are protected from the EMP damage (until they overload).
Minipulser: A
Less efficient than conventional ballistics so the best way to use it is on high tech ships that don't normally have access to specialized anti-shield weapons. Consider smodding Expanded Magazines if these are your ship's primary source of shield damage. With it, it has 1500 burst kinetic damage that recharges in 10 seconds, or 750 every 3.3 seconds which is like a light needler with faster reload time. Runs out of ammo quickly, giving ships (especially the player-piloted ship) periods where it's better to raise or lower shields.
Rift Lance: C
Beam hit strength for the armor damage reduction calculation is equal to half of it's DPS. For continuous beams like tactical laser this is easy to calculate, but with burst beams like this, it can get crazy. Rift Lance emits a 1000 DPS beam compressed into a burst slightly longer than half a second, giving it a hit strength of 500, the same as a Phase Lance, Heavy Blaster and High Intensity Laser. Competent against cruiser grade armor. Struggles against shields despite being labeled as a "general" weapon. The flux efficiency isn't great however, if you have the Ship/Weapon Pack mod installed, the Light Phase Lance is arguably better than this because it has better flux efficiency for an otherwise very similar weapon.
Antimatter SRM: S
Antimatter Blaster is one of my favorite small energy weapons in the game, for a small weapon it has amazing burst damage against both shields and armor. The only thing preventing it from being overpowered is the minuscule range. So what if we just removed that? These things are just absurd if you spam them on a ship with phase anchor. This weapon has no downsides other than high per-shot flux cost and a long recharge time.
Medium weapons
Spoiler
Cryoblaster: S
Imagine a Heavy Blaster that has 30% less flux and damage per shot in exchange for QUADRUPLE damage vs. hull. You'd expect it to be a specialized anti-hull weapon due to it dealing frag damage, but the DPS and hit strength are so high that it just works as a general purpose damage dealer. The only downside is that it's flux is somewhat high, even by energy weapon standards.
Cryoflamer: C
Without expanded magazines, it deals 9000 energy damage over 6 seconds. With it smodded, it should do roughly twice the burst damage from full ammo since it recharges while firing. Low hit strength but often gets through armor anyway due to the extreme damage output and maximum armor damage reduction. Difficult to use with it's pathetic range and high flux/sec when firing, but works good when used optimally. Try piloting a nova with these things, it's fun I promise
Disintegrator: F
Shoot it at the enemy's armor then patiently wait up to 20 seconds for it to dissolve so you can fire other weapons. Completely outclassed by Mining Blaster which does the same thing except instantly. It's not even effective against hull. If you half the OP cost and reclassify it as a small weapon without changing any other stats, it might be balanced. I like the debuff, but it's not worth it on a medium weapon with 700 range.
Rift Beam: C
On paper, it's like an energy flak with it's AoE damage. In practice, it's AI can't work under pressure. The problem is that it doesn't spawn rifts for a brief period when it starts firing, it likes to switch targets a lot, and it stops firing when switching targets. When facing saturation missiles like locusts, it will constantly retarget and struggle to spawn any rifts. Although it's still good against low amounts of fighters, and some players negate it's only flaw by manually aiming it. I would rate it D tier in autofire hands, but B tier in player hands. The only balance change it needs is better autofire AI.
Resonator MRM: A
Very difficult to shoot down or dodge and has enough hit strength to take down frigate grade armor. Very threatening to frigates and high tech. Excellent flux efficiency but low DPS.
Large weapons
Spoiler
Volatile Particle Driver: B
Used to just be an autopulse that did kinetic damage and had range deviation, but shortly after omega was added to the game all of their large weapons have been buffed. Now it has better range, sustained DPS and flux efficiency. With good burst damage on top of good sustained DPS, it's (literally and figuratively) a big problem for high tech mains.
Rift Cascade Emitter: B
Creates rift explosions in a circle around enemies, with the amount and damage scaling depending on distance. Can bypass shields if the arc and distance are small enough. Good shield damage, good armor damage, what can I say besides it's good? It's only downsides are a long refire delay and that it's weak against shields at long range.
Reality Disruptor: S
Easily disables entire battleships assuming they don't have a large shield arc. It was already strong before the debuff was added, I'm not sure why people complained about it. The EMP damage is so high that things like Resistant Flux Conduits aren't gonna save your ships, it's more effective to increase repair speed with smodded Automated Repair Unit and/or Damage Control.
Rift Torpedo Launcher: C
A painfully slow projectile with more health than some frigates (3000). I don't like it because the sustained DPS is only 300, although it's pretty good at overloading battleships. The AI will try it's best to shield tank it, leaving it vulnerable to the same shield damage as three reapers as well as any other burst kinetics you can throw in at the correct time. I'd still rather put a Reality Disruptor in my large missile slots.
These weapons are from Omega Psychasthenia, a Chinese mod you can download on Fossic that adds multiple factions and of course omega content. An English translation of the mod is not out yet but I've heard the author is working on it.
LinkSpoiler
Thermo-Siphon SRM: A
A small missile that costs 1000 flux to fire 350x4 energy damage missiles. The gimmick is that they drain about 200 flux from the firing ship if they hit. Reloads in 2 seconds, recharges a salvo in 8 seconds and stores up to 5 salvos. Can drain hard flux while shields/phase is active. Has 0.71 flux/dmg assuming all shots miss, or 0.014 assuming all shots hit. The primary downside is extremely small range (600). Best mounted in turret slots or with ECCM to decrease the odds they miss, as the tracking isn't great and misses are very punishing. The AI doesn't understand it drains flux on hit, so it will often conserve flux when it doesn't have to, but this weapon is still quite strong if used correctly, especially if it's on the flagship.
Entropy Beam: C
A strange medium PD beam with 1000 range, 250 kinetic DPS, and the ability to freezes missiles when shooting them. Generates a large amount of shield-piercing arcs that do kinetic (not EMP) damage, only disabling weapons and engines if the target's armor is weak. Expensive to run as it has 1 flux per damage, decent at suppressing ships although it can easily get distracted.
Vpdriver S: D
Meant to be a smaller version of VPD, although the only thing it has in common with VPD is the range deviation, so it's more like a larger minipulser. Short base range (600) plus bad efficiency (1 flux/dmg) so it's really just not good. The DPS is alright, but not good enough to make the weapon worth using.
Various irreleveant facts about Omega I just feel like sharing
Spoiler
All (vanilla) Omega ships have 0 shield upkeep cost and infinite PPT.
Omega Cores have 9 skills, along with a hidden skill omega_ecm that increases the fleet's ECM rating by 5/10/15/30%, depending on hullsize.
Omega Cores exist as an item like any other core, but cannot be obtained without mods. They are worth 1 million credits and 15 rep (base). They can be installed into industries, but have no effect. They can be assigned to govern colonies, in which case they have 6 skills including hypercognition. (Alpha core admins have 2 skills)
The code for the omega ship splitting mechanic is in a hidden hullmod called shard_spawner. If you make this hullmod obtainable and put it on other ships, it works. On a Capital (even an atlas), it spawns a Tesseract, two Facets, 1-3 frigates and 1-3 fighter wings.
The aforementioned shard spawner chooses loadouts based on the enemies present. For example if an Omega ship dies while mostly high tech ships are deployed, it's likely to spawn specialized anti-shield ships.
That's all I have for now. Let me know what yall think, I will edit this post if people change my mind about something.
also if you happen to have another mod that adds more omega content plz tell me about it thxChangelog
Spoiler
June 16th 2024
Spoiler
Shock Repeater: A -> B
Minipulser: B -> A
Rift Lance: B -> C
Resonator MRM: B -> A
Reality Disruptor: A -> S
