Ballistic Weapons

[Mecron]

Your place to ask questions and make observations about Ballistic Weapons in the Sots Universe. Ballistic direct fire weapon come in all 3 turret sizes and even includes the super-heavy Siege Driver Special Mount and a rapid fire point defence version.

[splintercell56]

Are their other ballistic weapons in the small turret category other then Gauss Cannons?

[cathexis]

Besides gauss cannons and gauss PD, nope. Though Gauss w/ VRF is a pretty good small weapon until you get up there in the laser tree.

[Bossman]

Or emitters.

[splintercell56]

Thats the thing tho, I really like Ballistic weapons. Having to research both Laser and Ballistics is kind of annoying. Is their a possibility in a patch for the full version or expansion that we will see more Ballistic weapons?

[the_ubernoob]

ballistics will pay off big time if you get to siege cannons. Also I think some of the shinier ballistic guns like bursters don't show up in the demo (either that or I haven't seen them yet)

[Bossman]

Anything past mass drivers has been cut out of the demo because you can't use them without cruisers.

[Mecron]

yes there is a ballistic weapon for every turret size as well as bursters, thumpers and neutronum rounds tech that makes everything hit harder. There is lots of ballisitic love in that tree.

[jefe414]

Question:
Is it worth using a couple of small weapon mounts to house point defense on your other warships (such as the tankers, c&c or even on the forward and rear armor turrets)?

[cathexis]

I'm not sure about with destroyers, but I do know that when I roll with cruisers or dreadnoughts in the beta I tend to put a few PD turrets in so I get good defensive coverage instead of having to worry about dedicated point defense. Granted with those ships the medium and large turrets are what do most of the damage so those small turrets just cry out for a point defense mount.

[Kaorti]

I like to put PD mounts on my support ships and my non-combat ships, that way, If I'm hard pressed and get down to them in my reinfocements, they perform a useful funcion beyond distractions. They tend to be much better at shooting down missiles than at swarming combat ships.

[Spoon]

I. Love. Mass. Drivers.

Spinal around you puny human! Spine I command you Harr Harr Harr! *Shoots an other round* You like doing 360's don't you? Blargh blargh
(Can you guess I like having Tarka destroyers with 3 Mass drivers equiped? )

[OF-pathfinder]

I like mass drivers along with emitters. Shake and zap baby! I repeatedly take down larger Tarka fleets with that combo.

Fun watching mass driver rounds spin the Tarkas into each other

Then frying them with a dose of emitter.

[PiousFlea]

What exactly are Gauss Cannons good for, other than getting upgraded to PD gauss?

In the very early game, with everything unupgraded, an ER with all gauss will beat an ER with all red lasers. However, the moment you get green (and then UV) lasers your gauss guns become obsolete. From what I can tell in the demo, the Light weapons mount seems to basically be a PD slot anyways - as soon as you get a half decent Medium weapon (plasma guns or mdrivers) the damage that ships take from light weapons is nearly irrelevant. Sure, a gauss will hit a cruiser/dread harder than a laser will, but that seems like saying that a SCV will kill a fully upgraded Ultralisk faster than a Probe will. Sure, but in either case it doesn't amount to much.

Are gausses supposed to be useful for anything other than the first few ER scouts? Do they eventually get upgraded to a more hard-hitting Light weapons mount? Or is the Light weapons mount condemned to being point defense and poor man's point defense. (lasers when you dont have PD tech)

[Draven]

Ballistic weapons have a small knock around effect, this effect is small but noticable with a guass small mount. In numbers this can result in an enemy ship having a greatly altered path because they will continiously be knocked around, this can also turn ships so that they cant aim their primary weapons. I was in a game with mecron, and though i was not the combatant apparently one of the enemy players had gauss destroyers and ended up knocking one of mecron's destroyer into an asteroid and thus killing it. A single gauss is useless when compared to green or better lasers, but with enough gauss they can become effective tools. So while gauss ships will do less damage than green laser ships and significantly less than uv laser ships, they will have more control over the fight especially if you have a tight group of gauss destroyers.