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
).