Guide to Ship Weapons | Master Modes 3.23 | Star Citizen

you've probably heard a lot of people talking about laser cannon meta recently and for good reason but what most of these sources don't mention is why this guide is not here to tell you which weapons to use but to break down exactly what the new categories of weapons are and what sets them apart now so you can decide for yourself what fits your situation best welcome to University of Stanton class is in session Star Citizen 3.23 is here and the landscape has shifted completely when it comes to the balance of ship weapons between entirely new stats increased ammo count on ballistics and the fundamental changes to flight and aim and master modes selecting your guns is thankfully no longer as simple as just use laser repeaters today we're going to be making extensive use of the url. games calculator and the SC ship's performance viewer please consider supporting these great tools and the incredible help they provide at understanding this ever changing game links will be in the description below to the new weapons we're going to group them in the two ways that UPF front are the most important the first is weapon size and while we know this is important because it tells us where we can fit them it's also tied with a few exceptions we'll look at later to how far you can shoot nearly all size one weapons have a range of about 2,000 M size 2os will shoot 2300 size 3 2600 size 4S 3,000 and size 5es 3300 second and even more important is the weapons projectile speed you'll find along with some other stats that this is actually split up by manufacturer product line for example all of the cf- laser repeaters by K Claus and verer share a projectile speed of 1,800 m/s by contrast the deadbolt ballistic canons by AIA all share a projectile speed of 900 m a second and so on if you tested Master modes early on one thing you no out remember is that the hodgepodge of stock weapons they came with usually resulted in having two lead Pips to aim at one closer to the Target for the faster projectiles and one farther away for the slower ones choosing projectile speed is important because you can simplify how your ship plays in combat by selecting weapons that have the same or at least close projectile speed so you only have to aim at a single pip rather than having to shift between two or more this is only an option but it's worth considering especially if you're new to the game more on mixing and matching different weapons later in the video each product line performs differently in other regards too if you were to sort this weapons list on url. games by other stats like say fire rate how rapidly the weapon fires spread Max which is how much spread you get on your shots over distance when holding down the trigger and so on you would find each product line grouped up in the list again Asperia light strikes have the highest fire rate and projectile speed of any Laser cannon but the lowest damage per shot bearings M series are the opposite the lowest fire rate and projectile speed but by far the highest damage per shot each manufacturer now has something of a personality that they put into the weapons they make which is kind of cool each line offers a different combination of projectile speed spread damage per shot fire rate and one last important one on energy weapons that most people don't think to look at regen cost per bullet this is how much power your ship's capacitor has to spend for each shot and when we compare it to the damage of the shot listed as Alpha Max we start to find that some weapons make better use of the available able energy than others there's no stat on URL for this so we'll calculate it ourselves and call it damage to energy cost ratio as a side note you can see how much capacitor energy your preferred ship has by looking here for regen pool size or going to urel's ship list and finding the column capacitor crew load dividing this by the regen cost per bullet is how urle calculates how many uh ammos you'll have in each gun it's worth noting here and we'll mention it later that the more energy weapons you have on your ship the fewer shots each one will have because the available capacitor energy is being shared between them remember that for later if we were trying to pick say a size 3 weapon for our ship that's easy to hit with and will give us the most bang for our buck we could land naturally on a few different conclusions the omnos sky 9 takes 3/4 of an energy point to apply one point of damage it's very high projectile speed of, 1400 m a second which many pvpers will remember was exactly the speed of the old laser repeaters but alternatively say if our targets will be very large and slow could be m5a which offers an extremely efficient 2:1 conversion on energy half a point of energy to apply one point of damage with extremely high alpha we need to aim carefully and differently because we'll have limited shots and they'll travel slowly but when they hit the damage will be unmatched for the amount of energy and time we've spent the lower efficiency of the other weapons is a result of their increased fire rates combined with increased projectile speeds you can shoot and spray much faster Landing some damage but not as much as if you were accurate being accurate is always rewarded but cig chose with this weapon set to reward willingness to take a risk on slower single shots than it did staying on target with a fast spraying weapon just like the energy weapons ballistics come with a full range and variety of fire rate Alpha damage and accuracy and their C atories gatlings repeaters and cannons actually make a little more intuitive sense ballistics come with some pros and cons there's a place for them when you need to Target components turrets engine to cells and wings because they can hit through Shields but this comes at a cost in 3.23 all Shields have a 0 to 30% physical absorption which is a semi- random number that's subtracted from your ballistic damage and taken out of the shield hit point pool whatever damage is left minus that is then then reduced further by the Hull's physical resistance which is now at least a flat 50% on All Ships shooting a target with Ballistics means you will be doing less than half the damage but sometimes this is worth it and as we've seen in the arena Commander engineering tests there will be increased opportunity for this in the future SC ship's performance viewer can give you an awesome glance at some of the possibilities here select a ship click on the parts section under a ship's Hall and you'll see a list vital Parts with the green icon will result in the soft death of the ship when destroyed whereas breakable Parts with the red icon will snap off on this Vanguard we can see that shooting off the left engine will deprive the ship of a number of thrusters that otherwise can't be attacked directly unfortunately this doesn't show hit points for man turrets but these can in fact be attacked and disabled with a reasonable amount of direct damage ballistics also offer more consistent fire although they generate heat that has to be managed this heat reduction happens way faster than the ship's capacitor regenerate which means you can be attacking with Ballistics during times when energy weapons would have to recharge the bad news is that you will still eventually run out ammo counts have been massively increased in 3.23 to a level that makes them viable in many more situations but that bar is the time limit on your engagement when it runs out in an all ballistic build your fight is over one thing I like about ballistics is that damage you do with them stays let's say you attack a target with laser cannons and as soon as its Shields are about to fall B it boosts out of range to recharge all of that damage you did is undone with Ballistics they're not getting those hole and component hit points back unless they leave the field to repair this doesn't always offer a clear benefit in some engagements the pilot with energy weapons is going to both strip the Shields and do plenty of damage or destroy the target but it's still something to consider as I mentioned earlier it may be easier when first starting to use the same weapon type on your whole ship but some tests are suggesting that mixing and matching different weapon types will actually give you better overall damage output and this makes sense if you have fewer energy weapons on your ship the remaining capacitor power goes to them and allows them to fire longer combine this with Ballistics firing at the same time with their minimal cooldown and you're getting longer more sustained total damage on your target with some of it happening before the shields even go down but this is also a good time to remember not to get mired too deeply in theoretical debates about damage it's a good start but things that we determine on the Whiteboard only survive until we encounter the next really good pilot who makes something totally unexpected work magic data is beautiful but you are the variable in between get out in the world try things record the results then come back and let me know in the comments what you found works for you as promised we'll take a brief look at these special weapon categories as well many of these come with specific ships and may or may not be removable to use on other ships we'll start with the most obvious the size 7 monsters on the ion and Inferno variants of the Crusader Aries the inferos SF 7B is actually in a pretty good place as ballistic gatlings go per bullet it has more than double the damage of an 85b has better heat management and shares the tightest accuracy spread among gatlings the ion sf7 cannon wasn't quite as lucky but has its place if you're going for very big very slow prey it's finally been shoehorned to its advertised anti-big Ship rooll by a Charged Fire Mechanic pressing the trigger will begin charging and releasing it will fire up to a maximum of 6,000 damage the weakness is that you can't hold it at Max and release it will when it hits Max the shot is going ready or not I feel like they could have taken a page out of descent or overloads book here and given you at least a brief window to hold the charge and build heat in order to get the best shot possible rocket pods do not look promising at present they travel at the slowest projectile speed of 700 m a second so hitting with them will be difficult they only do 150 damage and you only have a small number of shots before they're empty they do have an explosion radius of 4 M which is on par with some smaller missiles but it's unlikely that that low of damage will affect components very much it seems like these weapons simply didn't get a real consideration in the balance pass the Sledge Mass drivers are a type of ballistic cannon with a very high alpha damage and projectile speed 3,000 m a second but limited range 1050 to 1500 M across the size 1 to3 range they also require the SK skill check of holding the trigger down to charge before the weapon fires requiring the shooter to be precisely On Target at the instant it goes off there's an argument for using these as turret weapons on stable platform ships as their projectile speed will make it much easier to land hits on moving targets but the ammo count of 70 makes them an extremely weak Prospect for anything other than a single hit and run attack however singe or tachon cannons are a Banu weapon that behaved just like the Sledge Mass drivers with the charge up skill check and killer 3,000 m a second projectile speed only their energy they don't run out of ammo and they don't suffer from shield and Ballistic damage reduction but they also hit through Shields like ballistics while it would be crazy difficult to use these as a single pilot weapon there is a strong argument for stripping the size three singe cannons from the Banu Defender to use on other ship turrets someone with solid FPS aim in a turret can land absolutely devastating hits on targets within 1500 M with very minimal lead in testing we were routinely blowing Wings off the Gladius straight through its Shields the Vanguard NOS guns are size two and you can equip four of them on your favorite Vanguard model in any combination you wish like all size twos they have a range of 2300 M but the lasers have a speed of 1,000 ballistics 12200 and distortions 1300 m a second individually they tend to be roughly on par with their other size two counterparts but they vary in special ways that probably way deserves its own video the plasma cannons are a vuel energy weapon the size three warlord and five wrath trade a little of their effective range which is hardly a factor for extremely good Energy Efficiency and a higher Alpha damage than you can get for their projectile speed of 1400 m a second while the size 2 whip appears to just be a carbon copy of the m4a however the size one weak and size two wasp are cracked these so-called laser cannons have a higher damage higher refire and the same 1,800 m a second speed as the Light Strike line along with an almost 2 to1 Energy Efficiency the apparent trade-off of these is that they are bespoke and fixed mounted to the vandel ships which means no option to gamble but most people are going to be running fixed anyway watch out for the vandel ships this patch distortions are in an interesting place once again although it is technically possible to shut down a target with sustained fire which will shut it off for its power plants full restart time usually 5 minutes or more they do almost no damage against Shields so it becomes a question of whether you want to sacrifice your main DPS for distortions to use when you get shields down both the Cannons and repeaters have the same projectile speed of 1300 m a second cannons have a 1:1 Energy Efficiency but repeaters cost almost two energy to one damage so cannons will objectively be the way to go here scatters as they always have been are weird if for some reason you were building a ship for the rooll of parking at Point Blank next to a large impossible to miss Target and doing nothing but laying into it sure the damage numbers are technically there but don't expect it to be a Mainline weapon for almost everyone combat range and time one pip are simply too unpredictable for the massive spread these have now some usefulness this has seen before and we'll continue to see is for piracy because the ballistic scatters are extremely handy for quickly blasting open a cargo ramp even through Shields so if you have a particular creative solution to a situation give them a look 3.23 has certainly shaken things up and cut our work out for us we have a whole new weapon set with new properties some of which we may not have even discovered yet and there's lots of room for feedback which I encourage you to leave on spectrum and on issue Council if you found this helpful join the University of Stanton Community where veteran players are happy to help you find your way in this amazing game links are in the description below thanks for watching class dismissed

Channel: University of Stanton

Views: 52,949

Keywords: Star Citizen, Space, Gaming, Space Games, Roberts Space Industries, Guides

Id: 6S4gpU1_KRM

Length: 14min 31sec (871 seconds)

Published: Mon May 13 2024