You guys loved the first tier list, so I decided to make one for all the weapons in the game. More gameplay is coming soon, let me know what ships you'd like to see me play next!
Mini beam is super efficient, but it doesn’t scale too well later game when you only have 3 weapon slots. I will admit that it goes far, but not far past mid game if you can help it.
Mini beam is very good in like the first 2 sectors but once enemies start having tier 2 shields and your dual lasers or whatever can't pierce shields reliably. It falls off HARD but it can certainly work for you until you get something better. It does its purpose and it does it WELL.
The Vulcan can solo any ship, it fires faster then shields recharge. It trains shooting insanely fast, so you get a gold skill gunner pretty much for free. I'd consider it better then the other 4 power upgrade weapons.
The Vulcan _can_ solo any ship, but it takes a short while to do so. It takes about 30 seconds to rev up to dakka mode and gets reset completely if it gets shut off - but when paired with some missiles/bombs and a strong defence (and also some recharge boosters and gold crew) it can and will tear ships apart stupidly well. The Vulcan is something that requires you to build around it. And if you do, it's really, _really_ good.
@@tjthrasher7G One year late reply but there's FTL Multiverse which is the closest thing to FTL 2 and even expands on the story and adds ton of new content.
@@roguedrones I think a bigger problem is that it's only found on three weapon ships, where it's slot inefficiency is kinda hurtful. It'd be pretty solid on a four weapon ship as the final slot. Halberd Beam, Mini Beam, and Two Flak 1/Burst 2 on a Zoltan A? Yes please. Dual Lasers is kinda like that for me, too. But it's a starting weapon only, and it's not great for the endgame. I'd argue that S tier is great throughout.
@@basteala525 Yeah very good point. Spearmintz missed out on some other important points: chances for breach for example, which for me puts Heavy laser I A or even S. It means that they need to fix the breach before they start fixing weapons/shields, as well as oxygen gets removed from there and more dmg to crew. Breach weapons are absurdly good. He also missed out on efficiency when killing crew (gives you more supplies), which puts Anti-Bio beam into B, maybe A tier. Early game, its a guarantee win. Unlike other A weapons.
@@KUBADUPAPUPADUMB the biggest problem with anti-bio is that it takes a damn long time. you probably won't hit all the crew at once, you have to hit them twice, and if they have medbay/clonebay it can't break that. Also, it doesn't start any fires or breaches or anything so it will often be really fast for them to fix the clonebay/medbay. It is good against medbay in that they won't rush there with 40 health, but if you're using any other weapon taking them to 10 or 25 they will likely go heal
@@octosaurinvasion yeah you’re right. But there are many advantages to them heading right for medbay: it becomes really juicy to hit the medbay with weapons, hacking kills them, and they leave that system. I have had a lot of gain from bio beam, and I often pick it up if I spot it early in the shop. The extra scrap is so helpful
I'd argue that the Ion Bomb is actually very powerful, considering it's 1 Power, yet it causes a 4 Ion. Also considering it's a bomb, it can get pass any sort of defenses like Quad Shields or Defense Drones, and it has multiple applications like instantly disabling Weapons or Drones. Like you said before, if you had been saving up Missiles throughout a run, it MASSIVELY helps.
It's honestly insane even early on. Guaranteeing you can knock out shields and keep them down with a Laser I for 1 power and 1-2 ammo is ludicrously good regardless of your load out. Bypassing everything except Zoltan Shields and enemy hacking is just the icing on the cake, and the latter doesn't even work with a pre-igniter. Just those stats alone mean you can take down the Flagship's Zoltan shields in one rotation with most weapon combinations too. And like hacking you can use it to lock down other systems in a pinch, for way lower upfront costs. Its biggest problem is honestly the charge time. I'd still rate it higher than the Glaive Beam bare minimum, but I think it's low A overall. It's an S-Tier Weapon if you do have a pre-igniter though. Even without, it's comparable to Cloaking/Hacking in value but has a more tolerable scrap cost.
Yeah I feel like most of the Ion Weapons are mis-rated. The Heavy Ion is bad -- it can't self stack and it costs 2 power. It's barely better than just the Ion Blast 1, but costs 2 power. Ion Bomb can make a barely viable Ion build very strong. In most fights you don't need to use more than 1 or 2, because once you cripple the other ship, you don't need to keep bombing.
I agree; I've had multiple winning runs where ion bomb was a key part of my strategy. It's funny that he ranks small bomb much higher than ion bomb, because in my most recent run I had to sell small bomb and replace it with ion bomb in order to get through shields. The only downside to ion bomb is its long 22 second reload time compared to the small bomb's much shorter 13 seconds (although this issue goes away with pre-igniter).
I agree. I've had multiple runs where the crucial piece that let me beat the flagship was an ion bomb consistently knocking out their shields. Being able to bypass shields to deal ion damage is so strong.
Important distinction between the Leto and the Artemis: The Leto does only one damage and the Artemis does two. The Artemis will frequently knock out a system completely early game, while the Leto requires multiple shots and can potentially do next to nothing if the enemy ship has an Engi in the room you need to take down.
Heavy Laser 1 is the weapon you put in the last slot of your beam/ion boat, and manually fire once you've dropped shields. It's incredibly efficient, and a great late-game weapon.
I've found that Heavy Laser also pairs amazingly well with the Flak I. They have similar recharge times so it's great as a precise follow-up to a Flak shot. The Burst II is just that much slower, so you lose out a bit on the recharge time advantage of the Flak.
Came to the comments to say exactly this! *this* I agree that Heavy Laser 1 is C-tier, but ONLY IF you look at it as a shield remover. For 1 power if you're rockin a Heavy Ion II (or two of them--THAT was a fun run lol), the HL1 will ABSOLUTELY RIP a shieldless ship apart, especially after you've started a fire or two. I actually did it first by accident, getting it as a quest reward; but that 1 single extra power bar, took my Engi A with heavy ion II and one attack drone from losing 5+ hull points per battle (and sometimes not being able to gain traction at all with a 3 shield enemy), to decisively winning every fight pretty rapidly. Literal game changer, but conditional, so I'd argue bumping it up to B-tier. Thanks for the awesome tier list!!!
I did a run with the Kestral B where I had 2 Heavy Laser 1's and 2 Burst Laser 2's with 2 automated reloader augments. Very fun to knock out shields with the bursts and then decimate systems with dual fast firing heavy lasers
Mini beam is OP. It's the best beam by far, 1 power, incredibly fast reload, chance of fire. It's an incredibly powerful early game weapon that holds its own throughout the game, it can't win by itself but it's ludicrously OP. Fancier weapons like the Glaive beam or the vulcan can be very powerful but need very specific circumstances to work out.
I agree that it's good early game however I don't think early game has the same prerequisites for weapons as the whole run, and op makes it pretty clear that he considers late game and boss fight potential of the weapons
@@tim6096 I rarely if ever get rid of my mini beam. If I'm using a ship like the Stealth A. It's a really useful addition to having other beam weapons plus hacking. You do need other weapons, but it's super handy to have and useful throughout the run. You can consistently get 4 damage with that thing if you angle it right, which is amazing for 1 power.
I think you have to choose weapons based on how good they are against the flagship. Mini Beam is nice but pretty outclassed. Still definitely not a C tier where the basic laser is.
@@kaynex1039 If I'm doing a run for a ship with a mini beam, I've almost always still got it by the flagship fight. Ideally I can get a hacking and two halberds and a mini which can easily one shot the flagship. But it's also worked with one halberd, one hull beam, and the mini. The mini also works great vs the flagship since it can often do four damage, because of how close the rooms are. It's only real weakness is when it goes against those big slug ships where you can normally only get three damage.
You really underrate those one power weapons like small bomb, duel laser, mini beam and heavy laser. Absurdly cheap for basically no investment is broken. Heavy Laser is probably the best weapon in the entire game in terms of efficiency and speed
Big up Heavy Laser I! My favourite weapon, and possibly the most efficient. It is only ineffective on ships with 3 weapon options (but even then, if you manage a hacking+defense scrambler)
@@toddsilverwolfe dual lasers are definitely more versatile than heavy lasers, but do note that heavy laser has an increased chance of creating hazards like breach/fire as well, based on experience. Nothing is more satisfying than their shields system going down at least one bar if it connects. A BL can’t do that as nicely.
Fire weapons actually combos really well with mind control. When you start a fire, the ai pretty reliably sends 2 crew to deal with it. Mind control one of them, they'll fight each other in the fire. One or both die and the system is toast.
i swear i recently joined the ftl community and the absolute genius of most of.you guys is insane. i feel like my skill in the game has improved by 200% just by reading your tactics!
It's also VERY good if you can get even one rockman and a teleporter for similar reasons. The enemies retreat when they get on low enough health, so even one rockman can reliably stall enemies for long enough that the fire becomes impossible to contain. Granted, the fire bomb is the best for this strategy, but fire weapons in general can pull it off pretty well if you can make it work.
@@thedarkesper5290 Idk if it's my bad luck but the firebomb never gets enough fire going to do much in every playthroughs of mine. Not to mention that it missed so many times in "those mofo moments" where you get only bad rolls and can't do CRAP against the enemy, loosing valubale HP or even die... Firebeam on the other hand only needs one successful shot across as many rooms as possible in order to trigger fires in multiple rooms immediately. More often than not the enemy is just overwhelmed by it and can't do crap. The advantage of fire is of course that you kill the enemy crew and get better loot. Firebombs definitely are not reliable enough to grant you such victories becuse the enemy generally manages to recover from its hits
@@cccpredarmy Ehhhh. Firebeams are better at setting fires, but they have a higher rarity so you won't see them as often. They're the better weapon yeah, but a firebomb isn't that shabby either. Firebombs are definitely capable of doing much of the progress on killing a ship*. Drop it in oxygen and then send in boarders to it/mind control the one that tries to repair it. If two were sent to repair that room, chances are they'll both be softened up enough by the fighting and the fire that they'll just outright leave the room so they don't die. The fire will just spread from there as oxygen breaks, and then the two that left die from suffocation while the third rushes in and either dies trying, or manages to escape once oxygen is repaired again. In which case you can just drop a firebomb on them and they'll drop. *If you use them in conjunction with something else. If the enemy does a complete recovery from a firebomb, then you probably did it wrong.
In a vacuum the Chain Vulcan is probably the best weapon. It's one of the only weapons that can bring down the flagship on it's own once it's going. But it has to get going and stay going.
The one undervalued thing about the 'Chain Vulcan' is that it levels up your crew insanely quickly. It allows you to even have multiple weapon experts on your ship so you can be even more flexible with them. Plus, machine gun go brrrrr
I’ll give the chain Vulcan props for being the only weapon that can feasibly solo the boss without any other weapons active. It’s unlikely, and a bad strategy overall to rely on it alone, but I definitely appreciate it when I have it.
I recently learned how insane the charge ion is. For ion blast 1, you need 2 of them to take down shields. Ion blast 2 only requires a single weapon, but costs 3 power. Charge ion costs 2 power, and can take down all shields by itself. You just need to know how to use it. First, charge it all the way to 3 shots. Then auto fire at the shields. You need at least 2 of those initial shots to hit, but after that point all shields will eventually drop.
this tactic does have a few caveats, particularly if the enemy evades enough shots to break the ionization (doubly so if they have cloaking) but that's true of the ion cascade playstyle in general. It doesn't devalue the charge ion much either way in my opinion; it's still one of the lowest-power-cost options for ion cascading, roughly on par with a pair of ion blast I's, and for that you need to either pick up multiple weapons or start with Zoltan B. That makes it a great supporting weapon, especially alongside an otherwise-solid weapon loadout.
I think you talked a bit too much about how rare the crystal weapons are instead of actually rating their raw combat abilities. Like, yeah you normally wont find them, but that doesnt change if theyre good or bad, they do what they do and thats what should be rated
I think availability is a pretty important aspect of a weapons ability. For example any weapon that uses missiles would become much worse if missiles became rarer.
Yeah like if it's rare and good wouldn't that warrant buying even more? Like I don't understand how being rare makes it inherently worse. I've gotten games where I only see drones in stores for 3 sector's and others where I get 2 burst mk 2
my last run is legit one of the only times ive ever had even a slight use for it lol, zoltan a run, i got to the flagship with only 4 crew alive (2 human 2 zoltan so pretty weak against boarding) opted to shift it from my cargo bay as had no opportunity to sell it at a store, put it in my 4th weapon slot to help deal with the boarding drones/crew teleporting in the 2nd and 3rd stages. think as a rule its more useful for hitting your own ship if you've got very few/very weak crew and need to fend off boarders, especially drones since the breaches can rapidly mean your crew cant fend off the drone at all since you need the zoltan elsewhere to power systems. doors are way more handy there but it was a bit of a help on that run.
I think it's useful on boarding heavy ships with clone bays. It's not like you're using missile parts for anything else with that kind of ship, and killing your crew to get them back to full health really isn't ideal either. I agree, it's very situational, but when it's good, it's good.
It's trash, but I love it. For it to be useful you need to keep it (a 4 power weapon!) alive for ~45s, while dealing very little damage for first ~30s. Any other weapon can fire 2-3 full salvos in that time, often destroying enemy weapons/shields. You need well upgraded weapon systems only as a "buffer" against random missiles/bombs hitting your weapons, but powering any other weapons with these systems is pointless, since Vulcan can solo a whole ship once it gets going. But also... when it gets to 5 charges, you get that amazing feeling of "Vulcan online", and the enemy ship just melts. It's basically "keep this alive for a minute and you win".
Burst Laser III is a godsend on ships that only have three weapon slots. You're always going to be able to buy up to 8 power for your weapons, so I say best to use them all. Burst Laser III costs 4 power, but gives you a whopping 5 shots. That can really gonna help you get you there. S-tier weapon on ships with three weapon slots, but only a B-tier on ships with four slots (tho even then, its A-tier if you get the Weapon Pre-Igniter) . So, it averages out to an A for me.
I think B Tier is fair for it, mostly on the back of the fact that it's solid work on a 3 weapon ship--it's more of a desperation C Tier pick for me on a 4 weapon ship. But I also think it's better than some of the other B Tier Weapons (Heavy Ion, I'm lookin' at you).
More lasers isnt necessarily stronger , hacking on ships with 3 weapon slots makes the disadvantage far more bearable with fast firing weapons like BL1 BL2 HL1. In ftl shooting first is extremely important to negate damage so i always ignore bl3.
@@ajbaker1213 With system support you can make almost any weapon work, but yeah BL 3 is one of the worst. Its power:shot ratio is bad, its charge time is bad, and it takes long enough to fire all of its shots that it doesn't even combo well with beams. Mods that change/add weapons usually buff it so it's usable. 3 slots hurts a little, but there still quite a few combos that let you get 7+ shots per volley, enough to take out RFS missiles and handle ordinary encounters (with support from other systems). I even had one weird run where I took out RFS on hard with 3 weapon power used on stealth A. Made a timed combat drone shot part of the volley and 3rd weapon was a bomb. In sane runs 3 weapons are more than enough.
@@TheMelnTeam Eh it can be done but it's not REALLY worth it. Level 4 shields feel better 99% of the time, and the rest of the time it's one my 8th slot is something like a small bomb/breach 1 to muck up the flagship's shields and take out crew so the third phase is much less strenuous. That charge time on the Burst III is killer, though. I originally thought it was 17 seconds, but apparently it's 19.
In one game i had four burst laser two (two buyed, two founded) with the weapon pre-igniter. Overpowered! I've taken just one damage from the last boss.
Great video, just here to stan for the heavy laser. Yeah, it only takes down 1 shield, but: - get through the shields before with basic lasers or ion, and you are getting double damage, plus a good chance of fires and breaching - if your damage is coming from a beam, you are dropping that 1 shield for only 1 power use All I’m saying is you could take a flak and 3 heavy lasers to the final battle and that could do you great for only 5 power. I’d maybe say mini beam is under-rated for a similar reason, 1 power for 3 damage every, what, 11 seconds? Anyway, I’m glad I found your channel, really enjoying your videos
I have to say that I disagree quite a bit with the anti-bio beam being in the D-tier. It’s certainly something I’d switch out by sector 6-7, but if you can get it early and have a supplementary weapon that’s good enough to drop shields and do just a bit of damage, the anti-bio beam is amazing for a consistent crew kill win condition and the extra scrap that comes along with it if you don’t have boarding as a viable option on that ship. If you really want to talk about a niche strategy, if you’re lucky enough to get two anti-bio beams in a run, you can insta-kill any crew other than rockmen
That’s fair, I suppose I rated it lower because it’s not a strategy I commonly use, I’ll have to give it another try. Iv never really had the dual antibio beam luck so I didn’t count that in.
It's probably C tier. It's good only in the circumstance you get it early for free, and you already have some shield disablers. It's honestly equivalent to the minibeam I'd say.
@@maltardraco9555 pretty sure you can also use boarding/anti-personnel drone in that event (though the station crew aren't very fond of you punching a hole in their station)
I was pleasantly surprised to find out how powerful the Fire Beam is against the Flagship. The artillery rooms are isolated and the operators won't get any help from the rest of the crew, so one or two hits are enough to essentially make that artillery unusable for the rest of the phase (and then, one hit with the fire beam for the following phases). In fact, it may be a bit TOO efficient because last time I tried it, I ended up accidentally killing the entire crew. When ideally you'd want to leave at least one guy alive. Whoops.
I dont tend to use ions for shields, especially ion bomb with its charge time being so long. I shut off the pilot system with it or oxygen if I'm feeling cruel
I just played my first run in over a year, I got the halbert beam, glaive beam, and weapons preigniter in the first sector, and so I just poured all of my money into my weapons as I instantly melted through every ship, so that I could use both later on. it dominated right up until the end of the 7th sector where they got too many shields. So I switched the halbert beam for some missile weapon and carried on with my tearing apart of the rebel fleet. I don’t think I took more than maybe 10 hull damage the entire run, even though I paid no attention to my defenses. It was absolute carnage and it was epic, makes me want to do some more runs.
I mostly agree... except I'd still keep it and be happy with 3 burst 2's just to save on scrap and not have to buy 8 weapon slots. I don't think the cost of t he last weapon slot just for 1 more laser shot out of 11/12 would be worth it over upgrading other things. I kinda think h eavy laser should be 1 tier higher too. It's not great for taking down shields sure, but for only 1 power, it has potential. IIRC it charges faster than the basic laser too doesn't it? Plus it has a chance to breach too I think. It's quite a LOT better than the basic laser IIRC.
@@Ghalion666 Yeah, Realistically you're hanging onto that dual laser since it's way better than its scrap cost at all times. With regard to your other point it's the one thing that people overlook with all nonstandard lasers is that they all have much better breach and fire chances and it does make a difference in some key fights.
fires so fast, 1 energy, 2 shots. Yeah, easy S. If I had 3 burst laser II I would probably use the last slot for a utility weapon like ion, fire, or anti-bio. 9 Shots gets you through everything anyways
@@FlatlandsSurvivor Yeah, if the weapon was ever obtainable outside of external tools I'd literally take 4 of them and use the power to use other tools like drones or boarding parties.
I don't know who I get this video in my recommended so long after its uploading. But I'd just like to put down an opinion, I HARD disgree on the Breach Bomb MK2 being in D tier. It's a 2 power weapon that bypasses both shields and defense drones. And what does it do? 3 damage and breach allows you to knock down 2 shield bubbles, and increase the time the enemy needs to fix it due to the breach. With 2 shields down, even a run with poor shieldbreaking weapons can manage easily. With only 2 shields to get through, you can either easily clear the way for a beam, or just drown the ship in shots to knock down all the dangerous systems. I slept on this thing for a while too, but it's become one of my favorite weapons in the game.
It's a sad day when the Flak II is in the same boat as the Burst Laser Mk III when it shoots 7 projectiles for less power. It's single-shot power is unrivaled and deserves a spot in S tier for it's unrivaled ability to strip a full Super Shield and two layers of regular shield under that for a mere 3 power. If you double up the Flak II's, you'd still have a possible 2 weapon power for other shenanigans.
Pretty much where i thought eveything would be, good list :) have to say ion bomb is in A now for me. If you are on a run with beams and some weak shield busters the ion bomb is 2 shield lockdown for 1 power. With a piercing laser it means the flagship kind of only has 1 shield bar. Still don't buy it in a shop but I keep it now over selling it. I also feel the fire weapons maybe need to be dropped a tier considering they don't work against ai ships and lanius and they aren't very useful in the final boss fight.
I'd like to point out that the big thing about breach weapons, is that the enemy can't repair their systems until the breach is fixed. So if you drop a breach bomb in the enemy weapons or shields, they can't actually fix the damage to the weapons or shield until the hole is repaired. Which makes them better than normal bombs and missiles. Edit: Also, the big difference between the basic laser and the heavy laser is that the heavy laser periodically causes breaches and fires. Which is always nice. It's still not great, though.
Still, the chance of a breach giving you the edge is minimal First you have to LAND the shot, then you need to get lucky enough, the enemy must also not have too good of a repair crew and you have to get lucky enough with your other weapons to capitalize on the advantage the breach gave you. Even then, you usually already have the upper hand when you already got past shields, so you don't even need it It's a bonus, but it's not something you can rely or build around
Vulcan can solo any ship in the game, as long as your gunner has some experience. Experience, however, won't be a problem because after a few slower shots, the gunner starts gaining experience at a rate of 1 experience per second
That's also a good point. Weapons with fast charge times level up gunners much faster than slow charging weapons, which is actually pretty much the worst thing about the Glaive beam. You can basically max your gunner with a single battle using the Vulcan alone, if you torture the enemy a bit. In my opinion, it is an S class tier weapon that I sell my pants for in game, and it almost always works out, because I normally go for shields, engines, and hacking enemy weapons in my games versus mind control and teleporters. Nothing, not even Glaive beam, is as satisfying as turning the enemy into swiss cheese with the Vulcan. If you had to pick a weapon to solo the Flagship, it would always be this one. Beams can't do it, ions no, missiles have crap damage output, of the flaks, only the Flak 2 could do it, but with 4 of the 7 projectiles being eaten by shields plus dodges, it might be worse damage output than missiles, and of the lasers, even the Burst 3 stands almost no chance of doing any damage to the Flagship alone. I think all of this definitely puts the Vulcan in S tier. Edit: Saw another comment about this, but the weapon pre-igniter really changes the game. The Glaive I would say goes up to A tier there, as it can just wreck everything. Especially early game (I think one of the stealth ships gets the Glaive), if you get the pre-igniter, you can instakill everything with zero damage. Which is very important for the ship that starts with the Glaive, as it is incredibly fragile. But generally, high power weapons benefit much more from the pre-igniter than low power weapons, for example, the Flak 2 and Burst 3 get huge boosts, the bombs and missiles too, and the Vulcan can chop something like 20 seconds off the spool time.
Here we go again! (PART 1 OF 2) -Mini-Beam: A-Tier. 1 power for (potentially) 4 undodgeable damage and fast Zoltan breaking is incredible. Sadly, it's locked to initial equip only and its short range makes disabling priority systems vs hull damage a bit luck dependent based on which random interior you face. -Pike Beam: A-Tier on cruisers with 4 weapon slots. B-Tier otherwise. Great weapon, but it needs help to do anything. -Halberd: Solid A-Tier, nearly S-Tier. It gains more value on cruisers with 3 weapon slots than 4 due to that pesky weapons-power cap of 8. Potentially super strong weapon, esp with Ion Blasts and Combat II drones. -Glaive: D-Tier. Takes far too long to charge. The Stealth-B (which is clearly built around this weapon) highlights this weakness better than anything and will teach the player why the "big alpha, slow charge" weapons are generally inferior to the mid-card 2 and 3 power weapons. (hint: punish is worse with slow charging weapons) -Hull Beam: A-Tier. Much better than the Pike Beam and even the Halberd Beam on 4-slot ships. This thing utterly crushes large ships with lots of empty rooms. -Fire Beam: Great fun to play around with, but D-Tier. It's circumstantially good, and actually quite great against the rebel flagship if you manage to get shots past their shields. -Anti-Bio Beam: Note that this was in the original FTL. F-Tier. Theoretically great in pairs with a shield-breaching attack. But boy do you need to stonewall to make it work. I've had some great runs with it on early boarding strats, but those were far too luck-dependent to count as anything other than outliers. Most of the time, it's just plain bad. -BOMBS: A big consideration for 3 vs 4 slot cruisers. All bombs fall into one of two categories: Nice filler weapon, or vendor-trash. Reminder that bombs can be used to target your own ship to aid in repelling boarders. -Small Bomb: Tier-C. Solid performer for boarding strats. A textbook example of a filler weapon. -Fire Bomb: Tier-D. It'd be fantastic if it did even 1 subsystem damage up front. Alas, no such luck. Fun to play around with if you have spare missiles, but usually vendored at the first opportunity. -Healing Burst: F-Tier. Arguably the worst weapon in the game. Only Slug B needs it until it gets Cloning/Medical installed. Otherwise, sell immediately. -Ion Bomb: C-Tier. High risk, high reward, low power req. In theory, it's an incredibly good bomb that's really held back by its long charge time and miss chance. Due to how ion damage works, it's a potentially strong weapon capable of knocking out nearly any system in one shot for a long time. (Once ion damage is applied, there's NO WAY to speed up recovery. No repairs, no subsystem, no micro-magic. Nothing.) But it's just too slow to matter most of the time. -Breach Bomb I&II: C-Tier and D-Tier, respectively. I have nothing to add that the video didn't already mention. -Crystal Lockdown: F-Tier. Waste of ammo. Good boarders don't need it and it does virtually nothing outside of that. -Repair Burst: D-Tier. I've had this weapon save my ass a few times (that I can count on one hand) Still really bad. F-Tier. -Crystal weapons: Basically as you said, they're great weapons but exclusive to Crystal ships. B and C Tier as you will eventually get better replacements or supplements over time. -Advanced Flak and Flak I. Obvious S-Tier. They crack shields and do fairly consistent damage beyond that (flak is inaccurate, but thankfully evasion seems to be checked on a per-shot basis rather than the whole spread) -Flak II: B-Tier on 4 slot ships. A-Tier on 3 slotters. 7 damage per shot is crazy strong, even for 3 power. It has some fairly slow charge times, but is generally the fastest of all "tall" weapons, alongside the Halberd beam. It's independently strong enough to potentially kill on its own (albeit, not as consistently as the Vulcan in this regard) -Ion Blast Mk I: Easy A-Tier. Fast firing. 1 power. Ion Weapons are enablers that can keep your ship from taking damage in ways that are flexible and unlike most other direct fire weapons, retain effectiveness from start to end game. Ion Blast I is among the best filler weapons and certainly the best non-unique filler weapon. -Ion Blast Mk II: S-Tier. No, I am not joking. Why? Well, name any offensive strategy you want in FTL. Beams, Drones, Boarding, Gunboating, even Missiles (suppress engines)...Ion Blast Mk II helps it. It's the best gunnery trainer in the game, and the only weapon that can perma-suppress any amount of shields WHILE occasionally interrupting another subsystem at the same time, all on its own. The 3 power drawback is really only there to keep it from surpassing the Flak I and Burst Laser Mk II as the best weapon. 3 weapon slot ships want at least one "tall" weapon like it, while 4 slot ships can only truly reject the Ion Blast Mk II if they're boating that golden dream combo of four power 2 weapons like quad Flak I/Burst IIs. (read: highly unlikely) If anything, the Ion Blast Mk II teaches the golden rule of FTL: Winning is more about consistency and flexibility than big alpha strikes, because the longer you wait to line up your offense, the more time the enemy has to shoot at you and potentially disabling yours. Ion Mk II doesn't care what phase it is in the enemy's offense. It goes to work immediately, and keeps working until the enemy's guns have stopped, one way or another. It breaches shields, shuts down problematic systems, and enables about a quarter of the weapons in this list to perform at all, and most of the rest to perform optimally. -Heavy Ion: C-Tier. Good if you're stacking other combo weapons like beams or drones, but other weapons do its job much better. Though a solid shield cracker, it will rarely ever hit another subsystem due to its slow rate of fire. -Ion Stunner: B-Tier. Basically, an inferior Ion Blast I, but still good. The gimmick is rarely worth it since the crew stun duration is so short. -Charge Ion: B-Tier. Flexible, but not the best Ion Weapon. Still quite useful. -Chain Ion: C-Tier. Basically an inverted Ion Blast Mk II. Potentially grand, but nowhere near as consistent. PART 1 DONE, PART 2 BELOW.
(PART 2 OF 2) -Basic Laser: C-Tier. No frills filler weapon. There are better 1 power weapons but this thing can technically do game-winning damage in combination with other weapons. -Dual Lasers: A-Tier. Fantastic filler weapon. Strictly better than most 1 power weapons but is unique, and thus, locked to specific ships. -Burst Laser Mk I: B-Tier. Good weapon. Strictly inferior to Dual Lasers but available to all ships. -Burst Laser MkII: S-Tier. Everyone who has played FTL knows why. There's a reason why the beginner ship (Kestrel) starts with it. Ultra-strong. Better accuracy than Flak I too. -Burst Laser MkIII: C-Tier. Its slower charge speed and high cost once again negates its biggest advantage. -Heavy Laser Mk I: C-Tier. Better than Basic Laser, but not by much as said in the video. Definition of Filler-only weapon. At least it's ammo-free. -Heavy Pierce: B-Tier. Unique to Shivan (Rock B). Great filler, and helps its parent ship excel in early game. Basically, a slightly more accurate Crystal Burst I. -Heavy Laser Mk II: C-Tier. Bootstrap weapon. It will get the job done with help from other weapons, but it's not crazy good. -Hull Laser I: A-Tier for exactly the reasons cited. A slower charge time than Dual Lasers is somewhat mitigated by a maxxed out gunner towards the end. -Hull Laser II: Like most tall weapons, time is the enemy. -Charge Laser: A Burst Mk I in disguise that requires more micro. B-Tier. -Charge Laser II: C-Tier. -Chain Laser: A-Tier? Ehh...sure. I've just had uncannily bad luck with it getting knocked out as it reaches its full potential. -Vulcan: C-Tier for 4 slot ships. B-tier for 3 slot. It can win the game on its own. Fantastic with weapons-pre-igniter since it skips the longest initial charge step. -Leto Missile: D-Tier. Barely does subsystem damage. Has accuracy issues, like most missiles. Filler weapon that you're clearly intended to upgrade past early in the game. -Artemis Missile: C-Tier. Was so much better before Advanced Edition. Now? Ships with Defense drones are way too common, especially late game. -Swarm missile: C-Tier. Only other decent missile in the game. -Hermes, Pegasus, Breach, Hull Missiles: All F-Tier. There's way too many drawbacks to missiles as described in the video. They seem to be a weapon that's far more dangerous to the player than vs enemy ships. -DRONES: Since you didn't mention them, I will since many of them are ammo-based weapons systems NOTE: Most drones go up in Tier if you have the Drone Retrieval Arm and since it lets you double up on offensive drones safely without fear of running out. -Combat I: B-Tier. Great performer with reasonably fast attack speed to make up for the player's lack of directed fire over these. -Combat II: A-Tier. Probably the only exception to the "higher power req = worse" trend in FTL, because this thing attacks at around 2-3 times the speed of a Combat I drone (a bit RNG dependent); think of it like a chain laser that starts at max attack speed and doesn't touch your weapons energy capacity at all. If you're doing drone strats, this is basically what you're aiming for (along with a Defense Scrambler). -Beam I: C-Tier. If the enemy's shields are down, this thing will inflict lots of undodgeable small hits in a short amount of time. Otherwise, it's harmless. Caveat-emptor. -Beam II: D-Tier. It moves more slowly which impacts how often it fires. Like the Beam I, its beam doesn't pierce any shields though it does deal twice as much damage vs Zoltan shields per shot than the Beam I. -Fire Drone: D-Tier. Like the Fire Beam, it's super fun, but contingent on your ability to knock out enemy shields. Unlike Fire Beam, I don't recommend using it while boarding since you can't control where the drone goes. -Boarding Drone: B-Tier. Super tough; distracts enemy, and makes a breach upon entry. Why the game doesn't let you target where it enters is beyond me, but it'd be A-Tier if it did since this thing causes a LOT of chaos on the enemy ship. -Ion Intruder Drone: C-Tier. Goes room to room, inflicting strong ion damage. However, it isn't nearly as durable as the Boarding Drone and doesn't occupy enemy crew as long since it doesn't attack them. The rest of the drones are defensive, so I'll omit them here. I will say, that this went on a lot longer than I thought it would and if anyone actually read all this....I hope it's a nice day outside where you are tomorrow, so you can get some of your life back you crazy person. >_>
Hey man, I really like the videos, keep them coming. In future, if you're doing tier videos again, you may benefit from ranking them beforehand off camera, that way you don't miss things like the Artemis always being 1 power on player ships and being pretty much objectively better than the Leto, and the hull laser being 2 power, whereas the dual laser is only 1. Maybe the advice is too little too late since theres not more tier lists to be done for FTL. Either way, keep doing what you do man!
Thanks for the support man! I did a little bit of research before for this one, so I did know about the hull laser and dual laser, I just rank them pretty similar because the power cost is offset by it doing double damage in certain situations. Appreciate the criticism either way!
Love that this game is still getting love. Maybe it's just that I've only had it on Engi B, but I really hate the Heavy Ion. That charge time is murder.
Yeah it's a D-tier weapon. For Ion Weapons, you don't look at the raw damage, you look at its DPS and you look at the power efficiency per DPS. It's worse than the Charge Ion, which in turn is worse than the Ion 1/2.
Yeah this game is still pretty famous but its surprising how few good fangames it has. Darkest dungeon and slay the spire have dozens of good games inspires by them. FTL has very few decent games inspired from it.
Yup. Heavy Ion is only useful when combined with another stacking weapon like Ion Blast II where it reduces the chance of the chain ever getting broken. Really awful on its own. Then you still need beams or drones to actually do damage.
@@Empiro3 how is the charge ion worse? it takes 1 more power than ion 1 and charges 2 secs faster ion 2 takes 2 more power and charges 4 secs faster i always had the perception charge ion is worse but thinking abt it it's literally the same but 2 power and can charge also it can self stack fairly easily unlike ion 1
Super enjoyable video! Agree with the majority of what you said. Most "upgraded" weapon versions are far worse than their lower grade counterparts. Wondering what you think of my comments based on what I missed in the video: 1. Mini beam is one of the best weapons in the game imo, and (possibly together with halberd beam) the best beam weapon in the game. On most ships it does 3-4 system damage, charges in 12 seconds and costs one power. That's more efficient than Flak I or BL II! I don't see how that's in the same tier as a basic laser ;). 2. Healing burst is pretty unreliable because it can miss, but a great use case for it (if you have missiles saved up), is to keep a clone bay crew at full health without sacrificing their skill progression. That extra 5-10% evade that can give you makes a big difference. I agree it's not worth buying, but since it doesn't have to take up a slot (you can switch it in and out in between battles) it's a nice addition to a clone bay build. 3. Breach bombs and Heavy Crystal II have 100% chance to cause a hull breach. That's amazingly reliable to defer repairs and makes a big difference when used in piloting/engines when your enemy is fleeing, or when used on weapons/shields to deny repairs in between volleys. It can snowball a fight pretty quickly. 4. Throwing a stun bomb into a full room before boarding basically gives you free kills. Other AI units can't even move in if the room is full and the ones stunned have no chance of escaping to the medbay. 5. Having a skilled weapons guy and/or automated reloaders totally changes the game for ion weapons. The ion charger for example charges in 6 seconds. Get -20% charge from a max skilled weapons guy and that becomes 4.8 seconds, which is less than the 5 seconds that it takes for ion damage to go away. Because shots come from random directions it might be just too late sometimes, but when you add 1 automated reloader to that mix it does so very consistently! Especially if you open with three charged shots and then autofire it generally stays stacked for the entire fight granted that you don't miss (even without reloaders it stays stacked for super long). 6. Dual lasers shoots 2 shots for 1 power and charges in 10 seconds. Insanely good in the early game, and even in the late game if you have merely 1 power to spare. Only the adv Flak and mini beam are more power efficient! S tier in my book! 7. Heavy Laser I has a 50% chance to cause either a fire or a breach. That together with doing twice the damage makes it incomparably better than a basic laser imo. Also heavy pierce is not better in every single way, since it takes twice as much power ;) 8. Hull Laser I is not pretty much the same as the dual laser or what the heavy laser I wanted to be, because it takes twice as much power as either of those. Hull Laser II has a roughly 50% chance to cause at least one breach as well as 20% chance to cause at least one fire. That's the highest effect chance weapon in the game that doesn't require ammo. The use cases are countless! 9. Charge laser+ is pretty much as good as dual lasers! Same damage, same amount of shots, same amount of power and almost the same amount of charge time. Those should be the same tier. 10. Charge laser II doesn't take less time to charge each shot. That's the laser charger. 11. You put Artemis below Leto since it charges slightly slower, but it does twice as much damage for the same amount of power. Imo that makes Artemis one of the best missiles in the game, since you generally have a missile sitting on standby to give you an edge in a critical moment, which you don't want to spend too much power on. The only Artemis that takes 2 power are enemy Artemis missiles. 12. The bigger missiles are pretty good when found around sector 5-6 or later when you have enough missiles stacked up. The Hermes missile charges pretty fast. The pegasus missile and breach missile have crazy high cumulative chance to cause fires (51% and 30%) and breaches (26% and 56%), with the breach missile also being pretty power efficient.
The Leto needs to be absolutely shat upon into F tier irrelevance. Missiles are for destroying key systems through shields, usually the shield system itself. 1 damage is not even enough to always bring down 1 layer of shields. Paying a missile for that is a joke. I'd rather just have a Basic Laser.
I like this tier list a lot. A few arguments I'd make for different placements: Anti-bio to F, worse than Healing Burst. It's a 2 power beam weapon. That means your weapons need to _fully_ crack their shields, and _then_ you need to hit crewmembers twice (3x if they're Rockmen or Crystal) to kill, and it doesn't even synergize that well with boarding ships because it can hit your own crew and you can't always micro to get your crewmembers off the tiles enemy crew members are on for the duration of a broken shield. By the time your AB Beam becomes useful you've pretty much already beaten the ship by other means. Artemis to B right next to the various bombs. I like having at least one bomb/missile, unpowered, on the weapons slot if for some ungodly reason ion can't take down shields fast enough (e.g. weapon sabotage means I can't use ion and laser at the same time), and the Artemis is a 1-power 2 damage missile that charges faster than most bombs. Breach Bomb I to low A. 1 power Bomb that charges faster than even most missiles and causes breaches? Sign me up. Only downside is that it's locked to 1 ship. If it weren't I'd take it everywhere.
I agree with you on the Artemis and Breach Bomb I that they should be ranked higher, but I do not agree with you on the Anti-bio beam. Now, I will say, if you're running a ship with 3 weapon slots, don't go for it. And if you already have Crew teleporter, don't go for it as well. But otherwise, it's perfectly good. Shield remover is a given for beams in general, so it's not the Anti-bio's fault, and if you have trouble breaking shields, then you're gonna have trouble killing the ships in the first place, let alone using beam weapons. What the Bio beam synergize with is Hacking and Mindcontrol. Hacking is just amazing for beam weapons all around, and Mindcontrol forces enemy crew together, perfect for the bio beam. Even without those system, Bio beam works against anything that isn't unmanned, andmost crew hit by the Bio beam will be at 40 HP, leaving them vulnerable from getting killed by just about any other damage sources. And finally, it frees up a system slot, as one would not want crew teleporters when Bio-beam does the job of killing crew cleaner than sending your own, and like you mentioned, doesn't synergize well with each other. I will say, my experience using the Bio beam is rather pleasant. It's designed to do one thing, and it does that thing very well. And, not to toot my own horn or anything, but I'm a rather experienced FTL player. But I'll rank it a low B. Maybe a high B, if the cards are right, but no higher. It's very easy to bring back ships intact compared to the Fire beam, considering it does no damage at all and affects all crew while Fire beam is lacking against Rockmen and Lanius; But lacks the repair denying utilities of the Fire beam. And you also need good firepower to reliably bring down the shields, something that you might struggle from run to run. Still, it's a very usable weapon, and saying it's worse than the Healing Burst is absolutely insulting.
anti bio beam is good because its the cheapest way in the game to do ship clears for the additional money, you generally throw it out by sector 7-8 but the weapon is more of an investment than a weapon.
What I get from these lists is that it really depends on your play style. When I go blaster, I prioritize recharge & energy efficiency over damage, and therefore put the Mini Beam as A tier and the Halberd Beam, Flak II, and Burst III. Heavy Laser is a solid B for me, as it is cheap and charges fast - bad on its own, great in combination with other weapons.
Thanks for making the video. Enjoyed the different perspective. I do wonder if you undervaluing the ion bombs and breach bomb 2. As bombs these weapons can’t be shot down by defensive drones, and can reliable take down two layers of shields with one hit. Because each hit is so effective, you don’t end up having to fire the weapon as often as with something like a small bomb or fire bomb, helping to conserve ammo. The other major value of bombs in general is they don’t do hull damage. This makes them very useful in coordination with boarding parties to help take out a ships crew but leave the ship itself intact, which can often be more profitable than blowing the ship up.
Heavy lasers, especially heavy1, are imo a high tier weapon; if you have too few anti-sheild it's an anti-sheild that costs 1, if you have anti-sheild it's a 2 dmg weapon that fires *fast*. Much like your sml bomb and ion and stuff it can be tacked on to essentially any weapon build and be quite helpful
Same with Vulkan actually, it cuts down the spinup time by a great amount, from 28.4 seconds until rapid fire down to 19.5 seconds (this is assuming your weapon crew is fully levelled up, which it should be if you have a Vulkan).
I think you're really undervaluing the Flak II, Burst III, and Chain Vulcan. Yes, they're very expensive to run, but they're the only weapons in the game that can reliably take out any enemy ship without *any* help from other weapons. While they're less power-efficient than Flak I or Burst II, there's something to be said for a weapon that, in a pinch, will happily shoot more shots than a maxed-out shield system is capable of handling and slowly chip away at the enemy hull.
The Flak ll in particular is a LUDICROUS amount of dakka for just 3 power. 7 hits is just nuts. More than once, I have been saved in a bad flagship fight by the Flak 2 coming in clutch and finishing a fight on the spot. Also, the Flak ll has a relatively good chance of intercepting fire and drones, which can be useful.
What stops them from being good isn't just the power. If you changed the BL3 to use 2 power it would still be worse than the BL2, and I round argue the same for the flak 2. The real problem is the charge time. 19 seconds for the BL3, 21 seconds for flak 2. By the time you manage to shoot, the opponent has already had one or two volleys. That damage costs scrap to repair, and if it hits something important like weapons or shields, you're in for a very bumpy ride.
I never understood why people think its amazing that a weapon can barely break through shields by itself, weapons are meant to be used in conjunction with one another and this hypothetical scenario where you are only using one weapon for all of your damage basically never exists. 1-2 power weapons will almost always be better both in cost and potency
@@RackaGack It's not that you're relying on one weapon for all your damage. But if all you've found is bad weapons, having just one powerful one can turn the game around. If a weapon can just barely break shields itself, that means all your other weapons can get through and do damage. It's never a situation you want to be in, but it's a solid backup plan if you've gotten really shafted on weapons in your run.
Listening to the talk about beams (the glaive in particular) and supporting weapons, it is clear that B tier weapons can perform as well as S tier if you have the right set-up otherwise. Get a couple little lasers to drop shields, the Glaive, and weapon pre-loader... that enemy ship is crippled before the second shot. If there *is* a second shot.
Thanks! A question though, Is it any point in offsetting weapons with same charge/cooldown time? If two shots hit a shield at the exact same time, is then one of them wasted or dose one of them pass through?
Anti-bio beam is in the base game and if you come across a system that's being overrun by giant spiders you'll be very happy to have it. A niche use, to be sure, but satisfying.
The giant spiders are defeatable????????????? I legit didn't know that. Probably because any time I come across the antibio beam it gets an audible "blech!" and put in the last weapon spot (if that even) and sold at the first shop w/o ever using it. (edit) Also I just assumed the dev had arachnophobia and sense of humor so I'd always pass after dying over 12x in a row.
@@David-qi1ys Hehe. You can defeat the spiders normally, although the odds are not good. But with the anti-bio beam it's guaranteed success with maximum payoff.
Giant Spiders: - If it's in sector 1 and you haven't had any excellent luck, go for it. - If you have an Anti-bio beam, click the blue thing. - If you have a clone bay, there's nothing to lose except some skill points.
Pretty sure you can also use a boarding/anti-personnel drone in that event (though the station crew aren't very fond of you punching a hole in their station)
Love using healing burst for Mantis B - also pairs well with a clone bay if you dont want your crewmembers to take a stat penatly to get them to 100% hp between beacons
The way I see most mark 2's is that when you choose a 3 weapon ship, you can make the difference in firepower of one less weapon by substituting with higher power requirement weapons. Quite similar to the engi A type starting with the ion mark 2. Even if 2 mark 1's are just as effective, take less total power but take 2 weapon slots to run. Or even the flak's. It just makes up the difference in projectile count of running one less weapon. The flaks... 4 mark 1's are guaranteed better than the 2 mark 2's and 1 mark 1 just because of the accuracy loss and time to fire. But you could argue the alpha damage is higher too. So if you have a level 3 cloak or weapons pre igniter you can STILL fire before the enemy gets a shot off and have a higher total potential damage. If you have both though.. fire upon entry, cloak and have another volley ready before they touch you. God tier with either flak setup. Or burst laser.
While yea its really hard to work with the Vulcan with any other weapons or strategies, if you bump up your dodge and buy weapon power as a buffer, you nearly always win fights. The only killer is when weapons gets hacked... that is the only ultimate Vulcan counter. Still an A-tier imo.
If I were to rate: S-tier are weapons you should pretty much always get, and can win you an entire run by itself. The only weapons would be the Flak and Burst 2. I wouldn't put the Halberd beam there. A-tier are really good weapons that fit most builds, but have a drawback. The Mini-Beam, Halberd, Dual Laser and a few others would go here. These weapons stand out because they have really good damage to power, but something like the Mini-Beam or Dual Laser might be replaced because of limited weapon slots. B-tier are good weapons but are build-dependent. The Ion 1, 2, and Bomb go here. I'd put Heavy Laser here because it uses so little power and is a great way to follow a volley. C-tier weapons are also build-dependent but worse (in terms of power or slot efficiency) than B and above weapons. Most of the other Ion weapons fall here, and I'd push a good number of the B-tier weapons here too. For example, the Glaive would go here, because it's a fun weapon to use, but it's expensive and you'd rather get something like the Halberd. D-tier weapons are highly specialized or just plain bad. I agree with most of the ratings here, but I'd move the Breach Bomb 2 up to C. It's really good because it can cripple the enemy for quite some time, and it combos really well with boarding strategies.
For me Heavy laser is B/B+. I feel you underrate it's ability to breach or set fire to a room and also kill anyone in it. It's great for targeting critical systems once the shields are down (like the shields room), which then allows your other weapons to change targets. I think of it as a support weapon.
Spearmintz, next time you do this tier list, do you think that you would be willing to rate the Flagship's Artillery systems for how good they would be if they were allowed to be used by the player? In this, you rated the Fed Beam and the Fed Flak, but are you willing to rate Boss Ion, Boss Beam, Boss Laser, and Boss Missile?
I really like the heavy laser for the midgame where you might not quite have enough energy to power all your weapons while you're upgrading them. It's super cheap to buy as well.
These are great! I've had some different results, but I like your overall analysis. The ion weapons are much better early game before enemies get good dodge chances. Even ion burst 2 doesn't self stack reliably against the capital ship, unfortunately. Late game, I find the bombs (small, ion, breach in particular) are much better than ion guns at punching through sheilds. One ion bomb right before a volley of lasers can mean the difference between a light scratch and crippling the enemy ship. They can still miss, of course, but they only need 1 hit to be really impactful, as opposed to the ion guns needing to not miss several times in a row to make a difference vs 3+ sheild layers. Heavy laser 1 and 2 and pretty solid payload weapons if you can't find a beam. The 50% chance for fire or breach is really good since that often means that the enemies sheilds stay down once they go down. Heavy 1 feels a little awkward late game when dodge chances go up but it's so power efficient it's still not garbage. I evaluate them in comparison to other 'sheilds down' weapoms rather than other lasers i.e. Halbered>hull beam>Heavy laser>glaive...
Ion bomb is great, you can use it once and disable the enemy pilot for basically the whole fight so you never miss. In the flagship fight you can completely disable any system besides shields you want, it also can't stop the drone storm ability.
The Chain Vulcan is a weapon you need to build around. I had a Zoltan ship with it, and spec'd entirely into defense to give it time to ramp up and it just rolled the last 2 sectora and the flagship
I like the Heavy Laser 1 more than you put, i just slightly stagger it after ion/burst 2, and it gets in its 2 dmg, also it does more fire chance than burst laser weapons which you didnt mention, and its got like 9 sec cd? its really nice for that last part of dmg you need.
Something that bumps the Hull Lasers up a tier each for me is that they have a chance of doing Hull Breach, which drains rooms of oxygen and prevents repairs from starting until they fix it, so any damage they do sticks a lot better and forces enemy crew to take damage, not to mention ships with AI pilots can't repair breaches or breached rooms. Heavy Lasers can also do that but Hull Lasers are better for this because they fire more shots, and so if they want damage they can choose to do a LOT more hull damage than Heavy Lasers for less cost. Hull Lasers only doing 1 damage to rooms with Systems is actually an advantage bc you can choose to do less damage to the hull to try to get better rewards for leaving a ship intact but killing the crew, and hull breaches also kill crew real good. Hammer the Shield room and get a hull breach or two while 3 of the crew are in there and you do massive damage to most of the crew, stop repairs, and then can kill them outright. They're GOOD. I would put them in A and S tier for that alone.
the heavy laser 1 may not be good at taking down shields but it's OP in every other way but its niche and as you said with weapons that take one power you can tack it on so on your list it would be a B tier but it can deal hull damage unlike any other 1 power weapon that is purchasable so that's what makes it A tier in my opinion
I personally love the chain Vulcan because it allows you to have so much versatility in a fight when it is fully charged it allows you (with lots of micro) to just delete systems and keep peppering all of the systems down allowing you to in the final boss dink each system to lower charge times and what you can do as soon as something gets fixed you can retarget to slow the system down loads as it goes down one damage and the crew member is then forced to come off it an slow it further.
I'd argue that the anti bio beam is at a higher tier than D, because it still gives you the standard beam blue options (cutting the pirates out of the asteroids) but it can be used to supplement a boarding run by killing crew that run to the medbay, also it has quite a few blue options like the giant alien spiders event for example.
fire beam and bio beam is good if you have anti shield weapon set up, boarders, and plan to take distress calls as giant spiders turn into a payout for you. it's definitely nice to have at the start but does get turned into scrap in the late game. as much as i love the shivan and see the firebeam as a straight upgrade, they're both c tier as you need a niche set up to really love them
the crystal guns, if you don't start with it on your ship, you can only find them on a crystal cluster and to acess a crystal sector you need to do the crystal quest (there's an event that give you can give ou a cristal survival capsule, you can then on another event with scientist analyse it to revive the crystal guy in it (give you a crystal crew member) that will give you a quest location on the next rock cluster you'll find. that quest location is in fact another exit and it leads to the crystal sector. if you go there you'll have a quest location and that quest will unlock crystal ship A in this crystal cluster you can find crystal weapons (in shop principaly but maybe there's special event that give you crystal weapon too)
Ion stunner was the 'tack-on' addition that unlocked The Osprey for me (My favourite ship AND favourite bird) so I might be biased but I think it's as good if not better than the Ion Blast I. When paired with a flak or Burst MkII (especially against a high evasion target) it saves you in situations where you can only deal 1 damage to shields per volley. Without the stun the shield gets repaired between volleys and it's hard to pull their shields down all the way but with the stunner you can 'save your progress' each volley if you hit with the stunner before your main cannon. Important to remember the stun applies even if you hit the bubble and not the system itself.
The heavy laser I is pretty useful to me just because it's so power efficient. You don't hold the lack of shield piercing against the beam weapons, so why hold it against the heavy laser? If you get shields down it can output a lot of damage on a short cool down.
Also a point against fire weapons: If the enemy ship has Engi crew or Rockmen aboard, fires are a lot less powerful, as they can be taken care of easier.
“So what’s the best weapon” Spearmintz: Yes Jk I know it’s really hard what to say is the best weapon since there are so many awesome ones. Personally I love the halberd but you could make so many cases for the others. That’s what’s awesome about the game; there’s so many great strategies and choices!
Stun bomb + any fire weapon is a great way to guaranteed fast-kill crew. Even if you don't have a slug or sensor upgrade, you're usually gonna get 2 crewmen running to a burning shield room.
I would definitely put the ion II in S tier because with it you can lock down any ship's shield and weapon by stagger firing them... with their shield and weapons permanently off line you can basically dominate them with any laser, beam or combat drone.
@@ddshocktrooper5604 That's what the heavy laser is for. Drop the shields once, take out the cockpit... and it's over. Not just weapons, it's amazing for locking down hacking, mind control, drones, and cloak, all of which can be incredibly nasty. I would put it in A though, as it gets completely shut down by defense drone 2, and those are not super uncommon. Oddly enough, the engi cruiser wants to stay out of engi space.
@@timmietimmins3780 And if the heavy laser misses? I dunno, anyone who thinks Ion II is great has not had much experience with engine 5+ ships with cloaking. It's infuriating beyond belief and while technically possible to drop shields before they cloak again and full reset, it basically never happens.
@@ddshocktrooper5604 True, You can't go into the flagship with 4 power worth of weaponry. That's absolutely crazy. But I feel the ion II is solid A tier because it counters so much so well. Cloaking, hacking, jumping away, mind control, zoltan shields.... It does it all. It does need support, but that's true of absolutely every weapon system. I have never gone into the flagship fight with less than 6 power in weapons... and ion+heavy laser I is only 4. It's not surprising that it's hard to take out the flagship with a loadout like that... but it's also hard to take out the flagship with nothing but 2 flak I's, good as they are.
@@timmietimmins3780 Ion II is useful like any other weapon that does something to contribute to lowering shields, like Burst 1, Hull smashers, etc. I am contesting the ludicrous notion that it is an S tier weapon capable of performing the total lockdown of shields that is often attributed to it. Flak mk2 is far more reliable and quicker at keeping shields permanently down than Ion II, and that weapon isn't particularly amazing due to how slow it is. B tier is bare minimum "buy tier" for me and I think Ion II should be B. It contributes, but relying on it as an amazing weapon capable of doing wonderful things will get your killed as often as relying on the glaive.
I actually like the anti-bio beam. It's great to get the more rewarding crew kills in early game, when most enemy ships don't have a med-bay or cloning bay. I've even bought it in late game, as it works well if you use your other firepower to take out the enemy med-bay or cloning bay before using it to rip the crew apart. Not so good for the flagship, admittedly, but still a great way to get extra scrap from crew kill victories without having to board ships.
