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[Grievous69]

NOTE: THIS TOPIC WILL COVER WEAPONS THAT ARE NOT A PART OF THE USUAL GROUP THAT YOU CAN JUST BUY, IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED DON'T READ ANYTHING BELOW!

Well now with that out of the way, plenty of Doritos' weapons have received balance changes so I thought it would be nice to hear where other people use them and how useful do you guys think they are. Also in my current run I'm using mostly low tech ships, so that might affect my opinions a little bit (don't worry tho, I tested the weapons on other ships also).

Antimatter SRM Launcher: Boy is this a fun missile weapon, pretty much a weaker AM blaster but used in missile slots and with regenerating ammo. Seems more suited for support ships and those who won't be in the face of enemies since firing just one a couple of times drives up your flux very quickly. You pay the same price in flux for damage so it might not perform the best on low tech ships who already struggle with flux. All in all very cool thingy, it's well balanced.

Minipulser: Has anyone ever put this on a low tech ship, or midline even? This seems like a godsend for high tech ships who struggle with shield damage, good burst, very precise, but low range that makes them look meh when you have access to Needlers which share the same OP cost. I know Ballistic rangefinder gives bonus range to hybrid weapons on top of its already nice bonus, but you end up spending so much OP that you suffer in other areas. Still very good for its price I guess.

Rift Lance: Not much to say about this one, basically a Phase lance on a small mount. Didn't use it a lot so I'd like to hear something more about this one and how it performs.

Shock Repeater: This one just looks cool even though I'm still not sure if it's worth taking over the regular Burst PD. Same OP cost with more sustain but less range. Seems to do fine but I'm probably biased because I like the look of lightning arcs.

Cryoblaster: Even after the nerf it's a top tier choice, and this one actually has uses on low tech ships with Ballistic rangefinder. You end up with a general purpose precise weapon with decent range and powerful punch. Excellent combo with Breach Pods. Flux is a bit high for low tech ships but you can probably make do with other cheaper weapons to have a place for this bad boy. This is imo the only weapon that's equally good on all ships techs.

Cryoflamer: I want to like this, but I can't. The idea of an "ice flamethrower" is so damn awesome but I just can't look past the negatives. Even with the new Ballistics rangefinder, this thing has low range (funny how the projectile speed looks so slow when you add range) and insane flux cost that your ships that can actually use it, will get overloaded. As for high tech ships, might as well use Ion Pulsers? I don't know, I've yet to find a spot for this thing.

Disintegrator: On the Doritos' side, this thing seems like a beast when pounding your low tech fleet. It becomes an endurance fight to see if you can live without your precious armour. But on the player side, I just want fast kills. Super inaccurate slow damage over time isn't very useful. Again, this is a weapon that I have no clue where to use it well, and again it's such a cool idea for a weapon.

Resonator MRM Launcher: Very high OP cost for a medium missile but it can be worth it, especially on your ships that like to hang back. Nice kinetic pressure that has regenerating ammo, low flux cost and good chance to get hits. Just a solid missile in general.

Rift beam: So is this thing really supposed to be a PD weapon? Imo it does poorly against missiles, which is its primary role it seems. But it does work against groups of fighters and small frigates. Range buff was very welcome, although I'm still torn on the weapon since it's annoying to watch it try to helplessly waste flux on missile it won't destroy and flares. Small suggestion but please let this thing ignore flares, it costs 15 OP on a medium mount...

Reality Disruptor: The mother of all EMP weapons. It's basically the ultimate support weapons since you must sacrifice 30 OP and a large weapon mount for it, so I'm not sure where this would be a good pick. I've been thinking about making one Apogee a shield tank that also EMPs everything in front, other than that I'm kinda iffy with spending so much on a weapon that doesn't deal damage (ok it does very very little). This thing would probably be great against stations, but I'm yet to try it out there. Overall I like what it does and how it looks in combat, but I think it's yet another "looks broken on Doritos, kinda meh on player ships" situation. Now that I think about it, Radiant has large mounts to spare and it could work well there due to Phase skimmer system, but my current run doesn't have the skill to recovers them so it'll be a plan for another playthrough.

Rift Cascade Emitter: The buffs made it much better, but as others have previously said many times, this thing has an identity crisis. It's a 1000 range beam that murders everything in close range, but your ships will mostly use it a near max range where it does like one explosion and that's it. That's a waste of flux and it feels bad. You could probably put it on a reckless officer with lower range weapons but I'm not a fan of my fleet having kamikaze ships. It's perfectly made for Doritos who come in your face to deal damage, less so for player ships. I mean I'm still going to continue using it since it looks so sexy.
Bonus question for smart people and Alex: Does HEF system or any other damage increasing buffs affect the explosions damage? I'm like 90% sure that's fixed but I wanted to make sure just in case.

Rift Torpedo Launcher: I had crazy RNG that I'm yet to see this thing drop for me in 2 runs. Tested it a bit outside campaign and it seems like a super Antimatter SRM Launcher, 1.0 efficiency regenerating missile, but one that outright deletes everything it comes into contact with. Travels very very slowly but has high hitpoints so it appears balanced. I need to get this thing in campaign and properly use it to have a concrete opinion.

Volatile Particle Driver: And lastly, Rift Cascade Emitter but in ballistic form. By that I mean it is another weapon made for something with great speed and also a large mount. I tried using it on my Onslaught and didn't like it really. It's probably a good gun, I'm just partial to the whole projectiles disappearing into thin space inside the weapon range thing. This weapon actually seems like a perfect choice for Ziggurat, if it wasn't so slow after the phase changes lol.

That's all folks! In the end it seems Ballistic rangefinder really helped with the low tech side of these super secret weapons. Still I feel like too many favour high tech ships more, so I'd like to see more additions for low tech ships (which honestly seems a bit hard to do well, thankfully I'm not a developer here haha  ).

[SweetMango]

NOTE: THIS TOPIC WILL COVER WEAPONS THAT ARE NOT A PART OF THE USUAL GROUP THAT YOU CAN JUST BUY, IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED DON'T READ ANYTHING BELOW!

Cryoflamer: I want to like this, but I can't. The idea of an "ice flamethrower" is so damn awesome but I just can't look past the negatives. Even with the new Ballistics rangefinder, this thing has low range (funny how the projectile speed looks so slow when you add range) and insane flux cost that your ships that can actually use it, will get overloaded. As for high tech ships, might as well use Ion Pulsers? I don't know, I've yet to find a spot for this thing.

Resonator MRM Launcher: Very high OP cost for a medium missile but it can be worth it, especially on your ships that like to hang back. Nice kinetic pressure that has regenerating ammo, low flux cost and good chance to get hits. Just a solid missile in general.

Rift Torpedo Launcher: I had crazy RNG that I'm yet to see this thing drop for me in 2 runs. Tested it a bit outside campaign and it seems like a super Antimatter SRM Launcher, 1.0 efficiency regenerating missile, but one that outright deletes everything it comes into contact with. Travels very very slowly but has high hitpoints so it appears balanced. I need to get this thing in campaign and properly use it to have a concrete opinion.

Cryoflamer This monster is the best burst weapon for agile ships like medusa or tempest IMHO.


Resonator MRM Launcher Yep. I agree this one is very solid missile. It gives combat sustainability for my falcon(P). Especially, its 250 kinetic damage per missile is very useful for murdering annoying frigates. 1 salvo 1 kill.


Rift Torpedo Launcher I think Rift torpedo launcher is very hard to use because of its instant huge flux generation. But I find it very useful when it comes to support ship with a cautious officer.(without any non missile weapon. Any short range weapon presence makes the ship close in occasionally.)
It can provide endless INDIRECT fire support constantly outside of enemy weapon range. Rift Torpedo launcher is my favorite [REDACTED] weapon for this reason.

[Ruddygreat]

Antimatter SRM Launcher: Boy is this a fun missile weapon, pretty much a weaker AM blaster but used in missile slots and with regenerating ammo. Seems more suited for support ships and those who won't be in the face of enemies since firing just one a couple of times drives up your flux very quickly. You pay the same price in flux for damage so it might not perform the best on low tech ships who already struggle with flux. All in all very cool thingy, it's well balanced.

<...>

Shock Repeater: This one just looks cool even though I'm still not sure if it's worth taking over the regular Burst PD. Same OP cost with more sustain but less range. Seems to do fine but I'm probably biased because I like the look of lightning arcs.

Just focusing on these 2 because I broadly agree with you for the others

AMSRM - it's far and away the best missile weapon in the game imo, it's capable of putting out (with skills and emr) ~10k damage in >5s, i don't think there's a single vanilla ship that can take that amount of damage.
while the flux cost for that is admittedly high, pair it with a phase ship (with phase anchor for 6x ammo regen lul) and you can provide a basically constant stream of amb shots into a given enemy, phasing to vent soft flux / regen ammo / retreat to vent hard flux

Shock Repeater - It's the best energy anti-missile pd in the game because the arcing effect can flame out missiles and instantly disable (but not kill, autofire is prone to wasting shots on "dead" missiles) them, though it shares the same fate as all energy pd w/r/t struggling with swarms of missiles & fighters

I also agree that they favour high tech too heavily, I don't think i've ever gone out of my way to fight the doritos when i'm doing a low tech (or low tech-adjacent modded faction) run because i'd only use maybe one of the weapons i got from the fight
 

[intrinsic_parity]

I think shock repeater is an upgrade to burst PD, and it can also add some supplemental EMP damage for fast frigates.

Cryoflamer is a SO weapon IMO. I think it's actually nuts with SO.

[Grievous69]

Cryoflamer This monster is the best burst weapon for agile ships like medusa or tempest IMHO.

Spoiler

[close]

But that's the thing, this build is good. I copied it and put it into the simulator, works really well. Then I just swap Cryoflamers with Ion Pulsers and it works even better, that's my whole point. Getting a rare weapon is still somehow worse than using standard weapons you can use whenever.

@intrinsic_parity
If you mean SO on low tech ships, it's still crazy amounts of flux, there's literally no reason not to use Assault Chainguns and Heavy Machine Guns. High tech SO has Ion Pulsers on the other hand.

But glad to hear that Shock repeaters are pulling their weight for PD duty.

[intrinsic_parity]

@intrinsic_parity
If you mean SO on low tech ships, it's still crazy amounts of flux, there's literally no reason not to use Assault Chainguns and Heavy Machine Guns. High tech SO has Ion Pulsers on the other hand.

Definitely not for low tech, more for aurora. Compared to ion pulser, cryoflamer has ~66% higher burst DPS and sustained DPS with the same flux generation, giving it much much better efficiency into shields, but does slightly less armor/hull damage (not super relevant IMO), has less range (irrelevant with SO) and does no ion damage. So it's really whether you value you DPS and shield damage vs ion damage.

[GeckoOBac]

I played around a bit with what I have and mostly I found use for 3 weapons, atm:

Rift Cascade Emitter: I use this on the front 2 large slots for Paragon, in place of the Tachyon Lances I had. It's not strictly better, but it does have considerable advantages when mounted on the paragon on a beam build. The rift distance is based on the weapon current maximum range AFAICT. On the Paragon, the beam's range is over 2000 units, with advanced optics. This means that you'll still deal very high damage at other ships maximum range. And when THAT happens, the rifts chain together and explode at the BACKSIDE of other ships, dealing armour/hull damage even to ships with low shield flux, if they have front or partially raised shields. I keep two tachyon lances on the turrets for the high flux arcing to punish shielded ships.

Antimatter SRM Launcher: I'm using them on my Tempests. I don't use them much anymore, just for pursue/clean up fleets or rarely to cap points or if I'm throwing everything at a difficult fight. They work well on the tempest, given them a powerful staying power missile weapon. If I manage to get 4 I'll see if they work well on the 4 paragon small missile slots, mostly to absolutely NUKE whatever dares coming close to it. ATM I have atropos torps there that work fine for retaliation but it's a once and done thing and I'm definitely not putting missile spec or expanded missiles on the paragon.

And on the same note:

Resonator MRM Launcher: These I do used on the medium universal slots on the Paragon. I used to have HVDs but the missiles do pretty much the same job but are also much more flexible against small craft. Sure they can be shot down (not that easy from what I see) but they also hit more reliably than the HVD. Less hull/armour damage but it's not like they're anywhere near a main weapon for the paragon, they're just meant to add a bit of hard flux to the mostly soft flux composition of damage from the beam build. Range is 2500 too so quite comparable to the beams range, which outranges the HVDs too.

Rift Lance: I like this one a lot tbh, it's a very good weapon, main issue is it's soft flux and you'd want it mostly on a small ship. Problem is, tempests do whatever the *** they want already with their twin pulse lasers, which also do hard flux. I guess they could work on a hybrid build on some other ships that can build some hard flux because these IIRC are rather flux efficient. But overall you acquire these far too late in a playthrough for you to have a serious use case for them, unless you're doing some themed wolfpack only small craft run.

Shock repeater: It seems very strong and efficient on ships where you want good PD, as long as you don't want the PD to also attack ships at some point. I wouldn't put it on any slot where you want an actual weapon to HURT PEOPLE WITH. That said, an offensive use on Omens could be reasonable as it would couple well with their system, and the hyper efficient flux usage means the omens become even more tanky. Not going to be a fast kill of anything, but it's essentialy a NOPE zone for fighters/missiles/small crafts. A full omen meme fleet with these would actually be reasonably effective, the main issue lays in that getting a reasonable number of any of these weapons is a major pain.

[DaShiv]

Reality Disruptor: The mother of all EMP weapons. It's basically the ultimate support weapons since you must sacrifice 30 OP and a large weapon mount for it, so I'm not sure where this would be a good pick. I've been thinking about making one Apogee a shield tank that also EMPs everything in front, other than that I'm kinda iffy with spending so much on a weapon that doesn't deal damage (ok it does very very little). This thing would probably be great against stations, but I'm yet to try it out there. Overall I like what it does and how it looks in combat, but I think it's yet another "looks broken on Doritos, kinda meh on player ships" situation. Now that I think about it, Radiant has large mounts to spare and it could work well there due to Phase skimmer system, but my current run doesn't have the skill to recovers them so it'll be a plan for another playthrough.

A criminally underrated weapon IMO. Very few enemy ships have 360 shields, so Reality Disruptor basically shuts down enemy weapons/engines at will. This greatly reduces the damage you receive and prevents the enemy ship from escaping once it gets into flux trouble, which means a much higher rate of actually finishing off an enemy, especially fast enemies with mobility systems. Also has a surprisingly low flux overhead for a large weapon - great for ships that are more limited by flux than mounts, and works in missile mounts for builds where it's not as cost effective to fully invest in Missile Spec + EMR + ECCM etc. For example, you could use it on the large missile mount of a Champion and focus on using the large energy + medium mounts for damage.

Also: doubles very well as PD, zapping entire waves of incoming missiles (completely neutralizes Squalls) and paralyzing fighter swarms.

Rift Cascade Emitter: The buffs made it much better, but as others have previously said many times, this thing has an identity crisis. It's a 1000 range beam that murders everything in close range, but your ships will mostly use it a near max range where it does like one explosion and that's it. That's a waste of flux and it feels bad. You could probably put it on a reckless officer with lower range weapons but I'm not a fan of my fleet having kamikaze ships. It's perfectly made for Doritos who come in your face to deal damage, less so for player ships. I mean I'm still going to continue using it since it looks so sexy.

The RCE buff wasn't as earth-shattering as people make it out to be: at max rifts (5), its total damage increased from 5250 to 6500, a 23.8% damage increase. Very sizable, but the previous version was already quite usable. It's actually a bit of a sidegrade since at long range (1-2 rifts) RCE does less damage than before; however, because the rift damage was changed to be much more back-loaded, RCE now has a lot more potential to utterly wreck targets when it successfully wraps around shields, especially against smaller ships.

I'm not sure why people say RCE has an identify crisis: you can use it where you'd normally use Tach Lance and receive extra hard flux damage (much more valuable now that HSA is borderline unusable again) + close range "insurance" for when ships get too close to a long-range ship. It's a bit flux-intensive when used this way, but quite worth it IMO. You can also use it where you'd normally use Plasma Cannon and receive extra long range sniping damage before your ship closes into range to use all its other weapons, and it has better stats to boost when you can proc all 5 rifts. In this scenario, it's actually quite flux-efficient:

• Rift Cascade Emitter (5 rifts): 6500 damage at 4500 flux per 6.5s = 1000 DPS (769 hard flux), 1.44 damage/flux, 500 beam hit strength, 750-1250 rift hit strength.
• Plasma Cannon: 750 DPS, 0.91 damage/flux, 500 hit strength.

Because of its multi-range versatility, RCE really shines on ships that are very mount-limited where a single large energy has to carry a lot of water in all situations. For example, it's far and away the best choice for the large energy on an Apogee. It's also completely broken on the Ziggurat, but that ship is a noob cannon anyway.

Rift Torpedo Launcher: I had crazy RNG that I'm yet to see this thing drop for me in 2 runs. Tested it a bit outside campaign and it seems like a super Antimatter SRM Launcher, 1.0 efficiency regenerating missile, but one that outright deletes everything it comes into contact with. Travels very very slowly but has high hitpoints so it appears balanced. I need to get this thing in campaign and properly use it to have a concrete opinion.

Because of how highly the AI prioritizes blocking the Rift Torpedo with its shield (rightfully so), it's primarily an anti-shield weapon for high tech - it'll hit shields 90%+ of the time unless used in linked pairs. Basically the same 1.0 flux efficiency as a Pulse Laser, but with 2000 range and a long delay before impact. The real value IMO is how you can use it to influence enemy AI behavior:

• Completely shuts down enemy venting in a wide radius.
• Locks enemy shields into the torpedo's approach trajectory to expose back for flankers.
• Protects vulnerable ships, discourage swarming, and creates space for venting since enemies are very hesitant to approach an active torpedo and want to back off out of its range.
• Creates openings by causing frequent overloads.

I think people who want to use it as a finisher to instantly delete ships are going to be disappointed at how badly it works in that role due to the terrible projectile speed, but it's actually a very tactically flexible and effective weapon when leveraged correctly.

Rift Cascade Emitter: I use this on the front 2 large slots for Paragon, in place of the Tachyon Lances I had. It's not strictly better, but it does have considerable advantages when mounted on the paragon on a beam build. The rift distance is based on the weapon current maximum range AFAICT. On the Paragon, the beam's range is over 2000 units, with advanced optics.

RCE has very strong synergy with all range extension (Gunnery Implants + Advanced Optics are basically required for max DPS) so it's strictly better than Tach Lance on the Paragon due to its ATC. That said, the Paragon isn't the most exciting or DP-efficient ship to use.

[GeckoOBac]

Rift Cascade Emitter: I use this on the front 2 large slots for Paragon, in place of the Tachyon Lances I had. It's not strictly better, but it does have considerable advantages when mounted on the paragon on a beam build. The rift distance is based on the weapon current maximum range AFAICT. On the Paragon, the beam's range is over 2000 units, with advanced optics.

RCE has very strong synergy with all range extension (Gunnery Implants + Advanced Optics are basically required for max DPS) so it's strictly better than Tach Lance on the Paragon due to its ATC. That said, the Paragon isn't the most exciting or DP-efficient ship to use.

Probably not efficient, but it's a great anchor for very hard stuff, especially if you're not controlling ships (as hard as I try the AI always outperforms me substantially, besides I find controlling the "tactical" gameplay more entertaining anyway).

[Wyvern]

I'll note that the Rift Lance is a top-tier anti-fighter weapon, as well as the best anti-armor small weapon (outside of missiles or antimatter blasters). My preferred Ziggurat variant uses two of them - they're good at clearing out fighters and finishing off agile frigates.

[Grievous69]

I'll note that the Rift Lance is a top-tier anti-fighter weapon, as well as the best anti-armor small weapon (outside of missiles or antimatter blasters). My preferred Ziggurat variant uses two of them - they're good at clearing out fighters and finishing off agile frigates.

Yuup, as I mentioned it's a Phase lance in a small mount so naturally it's going to perform well vs fighters. And luckily small energy mounts are plentiful on most ships.

[intrinsic_parity]

I've tried hard to make rift lance work on a scarab, but it's just reliably outperformed by AMB or AM srm, at least in my testing. I'm currently experimenting with it on aurora, but it feels like it's just not quite worth using for the AI compared to alternatives. It definitely is functional, just not the best option as far as I can tell.

I do like it on Zigg though.

[Grievous69]

Well it seems no one likes Disintegrators so I really tried to use up the weapons I'm still iffy about and made this suppression Champion:

Spoiler

[close]

It works alright, I just need to S-mod something else and add a bit more caps, maybe upgrade PD. But honestly it feels just like a sidegrade of other Champion builds, this one just has that cool factor going for it.

[SweetMango]

Well it seems no one likes Disintegrators so I really tried to use up the weapons I'm still iffy about and made this suppression Champion:

Spoiler

[close]

It works alright, I just need to S-mod something else and add a bit more caps, maybe upgrade PD. But honestly it feels just like a sidegrade of other Champion builds, this one just has that cool factor going for it.

Yep it works but conventional weapon is more efficient as you said before
Alex should buff those underwhelming redacted weapons in the next patch.

[Supraluminal]

I only got Omega weapons fairly recently. I also got my first Odyssey around the same time. I've found they go together very nicely; the Odyssey has quickly become my favorite ship to pilot.

Here's a long-range sniper build that uses a RCE and a TL as the main guns:



It was doing well with just 2x TL before I got the RCE, but swapping out a TL for the RCE was a no-brainer. They have identical handling characteristics and they synergize very nicely - RCE provides hard flux, TL provides EMP arcs. Still fiddling to decide how many Resonators to bring; 2 is feeling like a sweet spot that provides great anti-fighter cover and extra hard flux pressure without breaking the bank on OP. Any extra missile slots get a Pilum or Salamander. New Pilum is a nice fit here since it helps saturate targets with EMP.

The Odyssey seems like the ideal platform for the RCE, really. The RCE is expensive but the Odyssey has the flux capacity to handle it, especially when using Ordnance Expertise. The Odyssey is also absurdly mobile for its size, so while you're prowling around the edges of the battle sniping at range, you just have to watch for opportunities to dash in and generate more rifts with close-range attacks. You have the speed to get in and get out before you get overwhelmed in most cases.

The Shock Repeaters seem to work very well. I think they're more effective than Burst PDs in most cases, and definitely under sustained pressure. (In a 1-on-1 against the sim Astral, the fight is noticeably easier with the Repeaters.) My character has elite PD, so their effective range is actually not bad. As a nice little bonus, they also zap nearby large targets for a bit of EMP damage.

Initially I was using Longbows for my fighters since the TLs are so reliant on hard flux to be fully effective. After picking up some Resonators and the RCE, though, I've switched to Xyphos. It's one less thing to micromanage, and they can save your bacon sometimes with clutch PD and EMP support. But ultimately the choice of fighter isn't that important here, they're not central to the build.

I'm also experimenting with this knife-fighter build:



That's a Volatile Particle Driver for shield-busting and a Cryoblaster to burn down hull. The Hurricane breaks armor on hard targets. The Pilums are sort of an odd fit here, but a) they're cheap and b) I'm partial to infinite-ammo missiles on capitals. More Resonators would be nice but you can't shave too much on vents and caps without becoming unacceptably fragile for close combat.

The VPD is powerful but does require you to get fairly close for full effectiveness. Like the RCE, the Odyssey feels like a great platform for it: As a capital it gets the best range bonus out of the ITU, but it's still fast enough to close distance quickly (Plasma Burn is perfect for this).

The Cryoblaster is also excellent, with enough DPS and single-hit damage to contribute usefully against both shield and armor, and of course it absolutely shreds hull. The range is lacking, but you're trying to get close for the VPD anyway so it's not a huge deal. The only reservation I have is that it's a medium weapon in a large mount, so another choice (Autopulse Laser especially) might be better here. Still a great gun though. It would absolutely shine in the right build with Ballistic Rangefinder.

The Xyphos work really well in this build. You're always fighting in range for them to use their ion beams, and the extra PD is very valuable when you're in the thick of it.

Overall it's a bit riskier than the sniper build, but it is great fun to race around at destroyer speeds, pulling up beside enemies for a few seconds to smash them and then scooting away again. I think I need to rework the missile loadout though; it would probably work better with a Squall in the large and a couple of Breach pods in place of the Pilums.

I've found some of the other Omega weapons to be a little harder to use. The Animatter SRMs are undeniably strong, but the flux spike when you fire them can be hard to swallow. The Disintegrator feels lackluster. I haven't tried the Cryoflamer yet but it's awfully short range (probably mandatory to use Rangefinder with it).

Speaking of which, OP asked about the Minipulser:

Minipulser: Has anyone ever put this on a low tech ship, or midline even? This seems like a godsend for high tech ships who struggle with shield damage, good burst, very precise, but low range that makes them look meh when you have access to Needlers which share the same OP cost. I know Ballistic rangefinder gives bonus range to hybrid weapons on top of its already nice bonus, but you end up spending so much OP that you suffer in other areas. Still very good for its price I guess.

The Ballistic Rangefinder certainly makes them more attractive. I've put Minipulsers on a couple of Manticores, since those come with the Rangefinder built in:



Are they better than Needlers for this? I don't know. They're more accurate and I guess they front-load a bigger damage spike, anyway. They would probably be at their best in a strike build with Expanded Mags though. They're basically a sidegrade in that way; they might be the best in a particular niche but they're not universally superior to other options.

That seems like Alex's goal with balancing most of these Omega weapons anyway. They all have something that makes them unique compared to regular weapons, but also some drawbacks and/or higher costs. They definitely fall on a spectrum though: Resonators are a best-in-slot choice for many builds, broadly useful and easy to get value out of, limited only by their OP cost. The Cryoblaster is very strong, but a little flux-heavy and you have to work around the limited range. Then you have the Disintegrator, which is a fun idea but hard to use effectively.