Asymmetric all the way. But first some notes
1) you have the best/easiest concentration of large ballistic guns in the sector. The onslaught can only being 2 to bear in a very specific position. Buut you don’t have the best concentration of guns in general. Your lack of small ballistic means that you’re going to be out performed in short ranged when enemies can bring railguns to bear.
2) you have the most missile slots in the sector. The Astral doesn’t have mediums and no one else has two larges.
3) you have the maneuverability to swap sides to deal with different threats. But not necessarily the maneuverability to go back and forth continually.
As such lets start with the missiles. There are three good large missile weapons which do not respect launcher alignment; the squall(with ECCM), the MIRV(with ECCM) and the locust. The squall is decent kinteitc pressure but only has five volleys. It really needs extended missile racks. The MIRV is a good to great finisher on large ships and it has 10. The locust has 15 volleys and is combination point defense/frigate murder. The mediums can either be extra finishers (Harpoons) or burst shield (Sabots) depending on what you feel you need.
If you take the squall you’re going to want to focus on HE guns in the large slot. If you take the MIRV then you want to focus on kinetic guns and if you take the locusts you want to focus on energy damage or HE. A note if you take the MIRV/Kin approach. You’re going to want at least one long range HE gun in the medium slot in order to keep shields up. Otherwise the AI is very good at getting shields up to stop MIRVs while not overloading and eating kinetic damage on armor. Another way to stop this is to put an ion beam in the primary side medium energy slot.
Now let’s talk about the mediums. I do not like the long range medium options. They’re fine really. But I think they are overmatched by their effectiveness in flack and short range anti-fighter/frigate. For the primary side against large targets heavy autocannons are your best bet followed by heavy maulers. Regular flack or HMGs are also good options and I like 2 regular flack on the primary side to knock down fighters and missiles as they come in. This is especially true since I want to keep a longer range than usual against most battleships HVD is OK but you have to remember to turn them off.
On the secondary side I like one HMG and one Assault Chaingun. With ITU these have 700 ish range and will shred any frigate that gets behind you. The big gun slots can be one devastator and one Haephestus or two Haephestus.
This leaves me with three primary builds
2x squall, 2x Harpoon, ECCM, EMR, ITU
PRIMARY SIDE:
2 Haephestus, 2 Flack, 1 Ion Beam
SECONDARY SIDE:
1 devastator, 1 Haephestus,(or 2 Haephestus) 1 HMG, 1 Assault Chaingun (Or 2 HMG)
2x MIRV, 2 x Sabot, ECCM, ITU
PRIMARY SIDE:
2x Mark IX, 1 flack, 1 Heavy Mauler, 1 Ion Beam
SECONDARY SIDE:
2x Haephestus, 2 x HMG
2x Locusts, 2x Sabot, ITU (EMR and ECCM are luxury)
PRIMARY SIDE:
2 x Mjolnir (or 1 Mark IX and 1 Haephestus), 2 flack, 1 Ion Beam
SECONDARY SIDE:
2 x Haephestus, 2 x HMG or 2x Mark IX, 2x Assault Chaingun
Ideally you want a bit of spare OP for resistant flux conduits and some rear PD to clean salamanders
Is this will seem like it’s going to eat a lot of flux, but the idea is that the back side isn’t firing a lot so you’re only using half the flux of your guns at any one time. If you get surrounded/flanked you want to dump as much flux into killing them as fast as possible and then vent to recover. Rather than letting them sit back there. That is why we go with the short range high damage options in the rear medium slots.
