Weapon Types

Missiles are 4x slower cooldown and miss 10% of the time, Beams are 3x slower cooldown and do not miss than Kinetics which miss 20% of the time. (All unbuffed)

That is good to know. So basics are...

Missiles

• .25% speed
• 90% accuracy

Beam

• .33% speed
• 100% accuracy

Kinetic

• 100% speed
• 80% accuracy

So... in 12 seconds,  assuming M:10, B:8 and K:4 damage (top of the line Age of War tech each), knowing that a miss isn't a portion of damage but 0%.... on average

Missiles: 3 shots * 10 damage * .9 = 27 damage

Beam: 4 shots * 8 damage * 1 = 32 damage

Kinetic: 12 shots * 4 damage * .8 = 38.4

So I guess in the end, with one gun, Kinetic really is the highest damage total, with beam next and missile lowest. If I add in the mass %, I can get...

Missile: 1 (16.2 Mass)

Beam: 1.125 (14.4 Mass)

Kinetic: 1.93 (8.4 Mass)

That means in 12 seconds, equal mass I am doing

Missile: 27 Damage

Beam: 36 Damage

Kinetic: 74.112 Damage

OK, so after running these numbers (doing it here so someone else might be able to look it over), Kinetic is incredibly powerful overall. It does a lot more damage per second, per mass than either of the other two. Beam is better than missile, faster, more accurate makes it do more damage reliably, while missiles really do fall in last place by quite a bit. Kinetic does 2.75x more damage on average over Missile.

Thanks for the info, helps a lot. Might I know where you found it out?

GC3GlobalDefs.xml, you need to factor range in too, missiles have the longest with 1300, beams at 1000 and kintetic at 800, if your loading up on kinetics you need thrusters so you can close the gap before the second salvo of missiles otherwise your taking 2 or more salvos before you even fire a shot, can be devestating.

Ahh, ok, good to remember about the distance. Forgot all about that.

There used to be a strategic component to it, too. I didn't check if it is still like this, but pre crusade it was:

Missiles:
 - low upkeep
 - low production cost
 - low dps per mass
Beams:
 - high upkeep
 - medium production cost
 - high dps per mass
Kinetics:
 - medium to high upkeep
 - high production cost
 - high dps per mass

So if you are planning on using throw away ships, you used missiles pre crusade. If you traded them one for one, you were winning, because replacing ships was cheaper to you.

Costs and Maintenace values have changed alot with Crusade. Kinetics are now the cheapest to manufacture for example. (not looked at them all in detail)

Looked at the stats. Looks kinda unfinished to me.

 - Maintenance is a "one time" cost (like ressource costs) instead of a flat modifier.
 - beam weapons don't scale in elerium cost.
 - kinetics don't scale in production cost making singularity drivers 4 times as easy to manufacture as doom rays and 6 times as easy as nightmare missiles

I wouldn't expect it to stay that way.
Wouldn't be surprised though, if SD treated weapon balance like a step child either. It's what they have done for over a year now anyways.

Very helpful information, thanks.

Also to be considered are the various support mods that can increase fire rate, accuracy, etc.  I've not run the numbers on this yet. 

My typical strategy involves using Escorts and Capital ships for the defender/attacker doctrine.  Escorts are loaded up with defenses, with the remaining capacity allocated to cheap and efficient Kinetic weapons.  These are good because defenders are the most likely to die, so you waste fewer resources and can replenish them faster.  It also keeps them closer range to their targets so they are more likely to draw fire. 

Capital ships I max out with beam weapons.  Because they shouldn't be taking much fire, you can load on lots of these, spending significant elerium for the more powerful upgraded versions, without as much fear of losing the investment.  

Once I have the tech, I also include a few support ships carrying mostly Fleet bonus mods, such as fleet shields & point defense, fleet beam enhancements to maximize DPS, fleet movement, and a few missiles for good measure. 

I frequently get ideology events which buff targeting.  Might as well be comparing 100% vs. 100%.  I have found the fleet support modules for missiles to be particularly good.  And I have found kinetics to be even more resource-heavy than missiles.

In the end, my resources and my opponents' defenses tend to decide it.  I just adapt my tactics to that. 

Tet - do fleet rate of fire mods stack?  I've found that beam damage does stack (each instance increases all beam damage by 25%) and you can get some absurd damage values from this.  i've not been able to test if rate of fire stacking works, however.  if so, missiles are clearly OP. 

And always were (note the date of the op is twenty seven months ago).

Including what was already talked about you need to adapt the right defenses to the attackers while adapting your attack to not match their defense. Guns to armor, and beams to shields. Point defense to missiles.

Thanks zu.  This isn't quite what I was referring to, as I was thinking of the attack speed support modules - which if they stack could give nearly infinite attack speed. 

But it looks like this is a problem even without the support mod exploit.  it's very disappointing they are not addressing these severe issues -- I really want to like this game, but it's terribly imbalance and exploitable. 

You took a bad time to get into it, in my opinion. I have a couple hundred hours into this game (pre-Crusade). I do like it. But so far Crusade, though it some interesting stuff, is a downgrade I paid for so far. There is a bunch of options for modding the balance and like to tell others here, that they should just mod game in a way they like it, so that's something you could try, if that's your thing.

But since Forgboy has dropped a whole bunch of hints about what he wants to do with the game, I would not get into at the moment, since a bunch of these could change mods fundamentally. So I will wait and see... in what state Crusade is a few months from now, I guess.

It still has a lot of potential.