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[Megas]

High-tech were not top gods in all releases, and in some previous releases, some low-tech ships were the most powerful ships.

During early 0.6a, Medusa was the god ship that could solo everything.  It had unlimited PPT.  Back then, ballistics had limited ammo.  Enforcer could solo fights, but it was hard because of ammo.  Needlers, Maulers, and Hellbore had the longest lasting ammo.  Back then, high tech could be considered the best because energy had unlimited ammo, but not ballistics.

0.65, almost everything worked fine, although frigates were optimal in combat because they had superior campaign stats while punching as hard as everything else as a fleet.  And when I say frigates, I mean mostly common frigates like Lasher, Wolf, Vigilance, and even Cerberus, led by Hyperion flagship.  Tempests and Hyperion were very rare and nearly impossible to buy, and Scarab (plus Centurion, Wayfarer, and Shepherd) did not exist back then.  Easiest way to get them was to board them after combat, which was frustrating RNG.  However, food runs blew combat out of the water for leveling.  Hyperion could solo enemies that intercepted your 12+ Atlas fleets hauling food.

During 0.7a, Onslaught was the god ship.  Dominator was the best cruiser (and it had burn cancelling).  (Aurora with Cyclone Reaper was good, but was no match against Paragon.  Dominator could solo the simulator.)  Paragon did not have Advanced Targeting Core at the time, and Tachyon Lance lost its 2500 range.  Dominator could crush Paragon flawlessly.  (I like to see the new Rift Cascade Emitter work like old Tachyon Lance with 2500+ range.)  Also, later 0.7a releases had Burn cancelling (that got removed in 0.8a.)

Also, before 0.8, Hammerhead was awful, with low OP and AAF without flux discount.  Hammerhead that used AAF loses flux war almost immediately and commits suicide.  Enforcer was strong, and with superior ballistics (when ammo limits were removed), was roughly on par with Medusa.

Starting at 0.8, when skills were greatly weakened and AI became the cowards that they are today, low-tech was hurt more by the changes.  Also, Conquest was buffed and became a fast battleship instead of the flimsy oversized cruiser that a battleship could easily crush.

However, a low-tech fleet could work in killing Ordos in previous releases.  It was not the best (because of Sparks and Drovers), but it worked.  If anything, pure midline that did not use Drover/Spark cheese had the most difficulty.

And all of the talk about high-tech dominance forget about Wolf.  Starting with 0.8a (or at least when ion cannon range got cut from 600 to 500), Wolf got left behind, good only for shining beams at unshielded pirates early in the game.  Wolf was good in earlier releases, with omni shield and could solo cruisers and capitals with pre-0.8a skills.

[Kanjejou]

It also show in Low tech weapons and Wings, they are just inferior to the mid tech and high tech stuff in every way, they dont damage burst they arent flux efficient they dont have range they dont aim turn or are accurate projectiles are slow, their only strong point for weapons at least is availability and sometime OP cost but since you miss so much you ahve to double down on them thus consume a lot of flux.

Interceptor fighter: Talons is the worst interceptor, it die fast cost crew and is pretty weak but its super OP cheap but it will eat up you crew where most other intercepter and fighter will be more rounded reason why wasp and claw are a old time favorite.

Heavy fighter: Broadsword are very decent if extremely slow(thus v ery hard countered bu PD), but also undergunned compared to thunder and claw

Bomber: pyranha and kopesh miss way too often or shoot from too close or too far very often. also Kopesh vs longbow,same OP same number of craft but one will work more often thx to sabots and pd and shield the other use unguided rocket

Torpedo: perdition vs dagger 2 hammer vs 3 atropos two unguided on slow bomber vs 3 guided on fasty bomber for barely 3 more OP

[Grievous69]

Low tech has flux inefficient and bad range weapons? My dude what are you on about, if anything that's their biggest strength, lots of ballistic mounts. It's the energy weapons that are crap (but now less so since the recent buffs).

[Megas]

Fighters were different in earlier releases too.

Talons before 0.8 only had Vulcans.  They were weak, unless the enemy only had exposed hull, then they shredded them fast.  (Minimum armor for exposed hull did not exist in earlier releases.)  Also, Broadswords back then had Swarmers but no flares.  Finally, before 0.8, fighters were ships and did not cost OP, but did cost Logistics (pre-0.7) or fleet slots.  Come 0.8, Talons stole the Broadswords' Swarmers and Broadswords got flares instead.  Talons became overpowered (0 OP, two Swarmers per shot) with performance on par or exceeding other 8 OP fighters.  Broadswords became specialized shield breakers or PD distractors.  Then, Talons were nerfed, but they were still good for the price paid, until this release that knocked all fighters down.

Perdition was originally a 12 DP wing with three bombers.  It was overpowered, and disgustingly so with carrier skills and Astral's system.  (Skilled Astral with six original three-per-wing Perditions demolished things left and right with ease.)  Then it was nerfed to be roughly on par with Cobra.

Piranha is the Open Market option, and the quality is what you expect from such starter equipment.  Kind of lame, mainly due to friendly-fire problems, but it gets the job done against battlestations.

Of course, if someone wants to complain about low tech with bad fighters, you cannot forget mining pod, but even that has a niche, namely as free meat shields for warships (Odyssey) or missileships (Legion XIV) that do not care about fighters or do not have the OP for them but might as fill up the bays with something.

[Igncom1]

To be honest if high tech ships weren't as good as they are their flux and cap inefficient weapons would murder them.

Midline is WAYYYY better then High Tech in that it combines hightech beams with ballistic cannons on ships that are more often specialised towards their role, or simply possess massive amounts of firepower for the size and cost.

If not for the 30 ship cap kinda encouraging the use of fewer high quality ships, midlines roster would beat anything in the game.

That's my opinion.

Lowtech while beloved in my heart is only buffed by it's fantastic weapons and number of turrets. If they HAD to use hightechs overpriced wonder weapons, they'd be luddic tier ships.

And missiles are good boyz who didn't do nothing!

[Kanjejou]

All the flux efficient balistic are innacurate, all the energy guns are perfectly accurate have no spread nor recoil and super fast projectiles.

Then lets look at all the autocanons and mortar(since they arent too OP inefficient, inaccurate and slow thus to get your flux efficiency back you have to shot at least at only 75% of the range of the gun or you miss thus the energy boat brawler/wolf or most high tech cruiser will dance in front of enforcer/dominator/onslaught and do no get touched reliably where any high tech ship would wreak such a  ship. yeah taking double damage hard flux can be dangerous if it simply hit anything...

Most balistic  sit at 0.8-1 flux efficiency(halved if you have the right damage)  but energy sit at 1-1.2(halved less often).

Also low tech frigate and destroyer often dont have medium or large will not be able to shot very far with balistic, on the contrary a lot of high tech have med and large slot allowing even frigate and destroyer to easily out manuver and outrange balistic boats.

Mid tach are very good because they can have the best of both world and have very good active skills.

In fact its more that low tech struggle a bit too much more than high tech being too good because Midtech doings great

[intrinsic_parity]

Good small ballistics (railgun, needler) outrange medium energy... Energy damage is never doubled (so efficiency is never halved). The double damage for ballistics is incredibly powerful.

There are very few guns that have poor enough accuracy to miss shields. There are also ways to improve accuracy. Hard points have improved accuracy, and gunnery implants improves accuracy.

[SCC]

I don't know what low-tech weapons are (all the weapons, except for some hidden ones, have the "common" manufacturer type), so I cannot comment on that.
While Broadswords aren't the fastest (I wouldn't call 200 extremely slow, when that's faster than most bombers), they are excellent bomber leaders that distract enemy PD. I find Khopeshes to be pretty reliable, cheap bombers. Piranhas are eh. Perditions were perhaps overnerfed after I won that tournament, in a manner similar to Warthogs before (both had number of fighters in a wing removed; Warthog also lost one light mortar, while Perdition also got an OP increase).
There's also nothing stopping you from using Longbows or Daggers on your low-tech ships.

Good small ballistics (railgun, needler) outrange medium energy... Energy damage is never doubled (so efficiency is never halved). The double damage for ballistics is incredibly powerful.

But what about Graviton Beam and High Intensity Laser?!

[Igncom1]

The HIL is a large.

I always use them on my sunders 

Also the best ballistic weapon is the humble machine gun. They are actually incredible!

[SCC]

For knife-fighting, they are...

[Megas]

Energy is better than before (and not as handicapped compared to ballistics) in this release.  Before then, energy was generally terrible.  Its main advantage in early releases was unlimited ammo, but when that advantage went away, basic energy weapons were flat out inferior to ballistics.  Ballistics had superior range and efficiency.  Some were more powerful back then, like Mauler had 200+ DPS, and Hellbore shot twice as fast.  Some energy weapons had niches, like ion cannon EMPing enemies, or tachyon lance zapping things from beyond fog-of-war range (until about 0.7+).  Energy weapons have been getting slight buffs here and there over the releases, like plasma cannon becoming much more efficient (it used to have worse efficiency than heavy blaster).

[Igncom1]

For knife-fighting, they are...

Are you implying you DON'T boost into long range high tech COWARDS!? 

But yeah I mean use MGs for PD and knife fighting hilarity! their kinetic damage is great and a worthwhile trade over the vulcans frag.

[Asherogar]

I do think the main problem with High tech ships is Shields. Or more precisely lack of instruments to deal with them.

Let's look at armor first. The most effective way to deal with it is HE weapons with high per shot dmg. Alternatively you can use a whole arsenal of missiles and torpedoes. Non-HE weapons with high per shot dmg would work too. Hits on hull disable weapon mounts and modules, reducing enemy ability to fight back. You can use EMP to completely cripple your enemy. And even if all the previous tools are unavailable to you, you still can just brute-force armor, as it is finite resource and you're trading temporary dmg to yourself for permament dmg to enemy.

That's a lot of tools. And any of them also have a lot of options in what weapons exactly are you going to use and how.

And with shields...copious amount of flux effective kinetic dmg. That's the only decent option against shields. Nothing else works. No other options. You can't do anything else against good shield. Missiles? You have a single missile, so you need to center you entire build around this missile. Non-kinetic weapons? You need another High-tech ship with superior flux stats, powerful shield of it's own and skills to make it semi-decent. EMP? You need to build-up hard flux on enemy first and even then it works vastly less effective then against armor. And you can't brute force it, you simply end up dealing way more dmg to yourself then to enemy and even then dmg you're dealt is temporary. You can't even bypass shield as most of the High tech ships have either an omni-shield or pretty wide frontal and superior mobility that renders any attempts to outmaneuver them useless.

You have one tool against shields. And it's pretty limited one.

[Kanjejou]

Needlers of every size are the only pure anti shield weapons(in flux/shield damage ratio) but they barely work on hull and armor...thus a specialised anti shield ship cannot kill anything...

pure HE will wreck armor modules and hull but cannot pierce shield in a timeli fashion if the opponent isnt slow as hell

Pure Hull damage struggle vs shield and armor, its why high tech craft are so hard to kill with vulcan their 100shield point are in fact 400extra hp to remove with vulcan, reason with pd laser are better as point defense.

Energie is "inneficient" in flux/damage ratio but most dont consume much flux/s in their attack time window are put on ship with lots of vent and capacity and usually a good shield thus they have a lot of flux reserve. thus the only weakness they really have is non specilaised damages, which also mean they almost never struggle against anything...


You would expect the on and off of shield to be usefull to try to maximise you flux effectiveness but 90% of the time being shield off will get you wrecked even if you have 2250armor because of EMP and module damages...

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

Still, if fleet size ever becomes floating point, would be cool for low tech to always allow fielding more ships...