Lasers are a poor investment

[Primacide]

So I've been trying out different starship load outs and I had to share the first real lemon: lasers.

The tech is ungodly expensive for starts. You will have to sacrifice two early techs for one laser upgrade in the beginning, and the cost quickly scales - much faster than cannons or fighters.

At level 8 lasers with the convergent light wonder (0 penalty for distance with lasers) and level three lasers tech, I was doing a whopping 100-150 damage. I realize the idea is to stand off and shoot, but realistically you have to get close enough to eliminate asteroid interference, which means at some point the enemy is going to get a crack at your ships.

Also, these level 8 lasers were superseded by my little level 3 cannons at seven hexes out. That means that even from a pretty good distance, weak cannons trump VERY good lasers. I sacrificed a lot of other domains in the game to try to get this strategy to work, but the trade off just isn't worth it. My HP and speed were crap, the lasers are heavy, and the damage dealt was meh. I would say that the biggest perk was picking off those annoying fighters from a long way out. However, if that's the best you get, then lasers are a poor investment. You are much better off putting resources into cannons or fighters for offense.

Just my take and an FYI to folks trying the game for the first time. Get your feet wet with something else first and do lasers when you are ready for a challenge.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

If you have the convergent light wonder and several of the tech upgrades for lasers, then I think they can be useful. Like you said, lasers can be great at taking out fighters at a distance. Otherwise, you are absolutely right in my opinion. Damage wise, cannons are much more potent than lasers. In most of my games, I found lasers to be very underwhelming. I prefer cannons, fighters and torpedoes.

 

[thecrazyscot]

Agreed...while useful to keep fighters at from closing I'm not finding much more use for them.

Maxed out cannons OTOH...wowzers.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Maxed out cannons OTOH...wowzers.

Cannons are wicked strong. They can easily do 300-500 damage per shot. In fact, if your cannons are doing say 400 damage and the enemy's ships only have 250 hp then a lot of that damage is actually overkill. You can actually reduce your cannon modules by 1 and add another module somewhere else.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Cannons are wicked strong. They can easily do 300-500 damage per shot. In fact, if your cannons are doing say 400 damage and the enemy's ships only have 250 hp then a lot of that damage is actually overkill. You can actually reduce your cannon modules by 1 and add another module somewhere else.

Yep. Cannons have a lot of bang for your buck. You can invest a few points in them and use the rest to diversify your arsenal.

 

[CaptainPatch]

I have to disagree. Lasers are what it takes to hit targets way over there. Meanwhile, Cannons require you to be up close and personal -- where the opponent can hammer right back at you, bringing both Lasers and Cannons to bear.

I find the combination of powerful Lasers + LOTS of Fighters works quite well. The Fighters draw enemy fire away from your ships while your ships and Fighters hammer the enemy ships into scrap metal. And keep in mind that those powerful lasers are also mounted on the Fighters, allowing them to hit harder and at greater range as well.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I don't think your investment in lasers effects the damage output of the fighters. That's part of the modules that the fighters get for investing in them.

Plus, the fighters are better at range than the lasers are because you can spam the fighters. They can keep hitting the enemy turn after turn, with more and more fighters getting into combat with each passing turn.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Lasers also have the disadvantage that asteroids can mitigate and even completely block on some maps the damage they do. So if you are on a map with a dense asteroid field and/or asteroids that completely block their damage, lasers become almost useless. On the other hand, fighters can move like 7-8 hexes and navigate between asteroids and in many cases get right behind the enemy for a perfect shot when a laser shot would be completely blocked. So in this case, the fighters are the better long range weapon. Of course, if you are on a map with almost no asteroids, then long range laser shots become good.

 

[sugerdady87]

Weapon investments on ships do not affect fighters. Only the artificial intelligence tech does. Also, it isn't hard to get close up to the enemy in this game. I fully agree with the sentiment of the OP. I tried to get lasers to work several times, and I just ended up mounting cannons.

 

[paralistalon]

I really like the idea of lasers but also find them a bit underpowered at times, often wondering just how far away I have to be for them to outdamage cannons. I feel so cheap moving behind a ship and hitting them like an assassin backstab with cannons, but it's one of the only things that make super tough opponents managable.

 

[Stalker0]

Also agree, lasers seem pretty weak overall.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

If you play with lasers, you are going to be taking a different strategy overall than other load outs. With lasers you will be playing a cat and mouse game where you try to avoid closing with the enemy while seeking line of sight to make hits on their ships, eventually whittling them down to nothing.

With cannon you want to close to point blank range to get big hits. With fighters and torpedoes, you want to close to medium range so your fighters can hit them or so your torpedo salvos can be relatively close-spaced.

 

[Stalker0]

If you play with lasers, you are going to be taking a different strategy overall than other load outs. With lasers you will be playing a cat and mouse game where you try to avoid closing with the enemy while seeking line of sight to make hits on their ships, eventually whittling them down to nothing.

With cannon you want to close to point blank range to get big hits. With fighters and torpedoes, you want to close to medium range so your fighters can hit them or so your torpedo salvos can be relatively close-spaced.

The difference is: The laser strategy doesn't really pay off compared to the others.

The cannon strategy is very powerful, able to decimate the strongest ships.

The fighter strategy gives you good endurance, and decent damage if you manuever properly.

The laser strategy is so poor on damage that it will take 5x as many rounds to kill my enemy (maybe more). Further, asteroids make it so you may not be able to play that cat and mouse forever, and once in medium range cannons blow the pants off of lasers.

Lasers suffer from two main problems:

1) Their low damage is compounded by the distance penalty. Lasers should suffer very little distance penalty, else what is the point?

2) Asteroids blow the vast majority of shots. Lasers should have more base negation of asteroid penalties...as their are very few shots you get to take on many maps.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I don't disagree, I was just illuminating the strategy one should use with lasers as opposed to other load outs.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I played a game yesterday, specifically focusing on a laser load out. It worked but I had some strong wonders to help me. I had the convergent light wonder to make my lasers immune the distance so that I could fire long range shots with no damage penalty. I also snagged the cloaking wonder and focused on some stealth modules. This allowed my ships to stay hidden when far away from the enemy and get the first shot off. I also got stealth torpedoes so I could fire off a barrage of torpedoes while cloaked that were very effective at taking the enemy out. All 3 wonders worked together for an effective stand off strategy. I stay far away from the enemy, fire off torpedoes, stay far away and pick off the survivors with my long range lasers. If the enemy has good shields, my first couple of shots would not do much damage but that's ok since I am cloaked and too far for them to hit me anyway. When I get a shield crit hit, my lasers would do 100-150 damage and I would finish them off.

 

[Aldor]

I find that lasers hit very hard even with only a few levels into them. I also find that the blocking is very rarely a problem. However that's at low/moderate difficulty only (haven't tried hard or impossible yet).

Do lasers (or all weapon systems really) have bonus damage/range on the lower difficulties? Or do opponents have super strong shields/armor at higher levels which make them less effective?

 

[Stalker0]

I find that lasers hit very hard even with only a few levels into them. I also find that the blocking is very rarely a problem. However that's at low/moderate difficulty only (haven't tried hard or impossible yet).

Do lasers (or all weapon systems really) have bonus damage/range on the lower difficulties? Or do opponents have super strong shields/armor at higher levels which make them less effective?

Yeah there must be some scaling, with four levels in lasers I do almost no damage in impossible.

In the time it takes a laser ship to kill a battleship my cannon ship has killed 3

 

[CaptainPatch]

In the time it takes a laser ship to kill a battleship my cannon ship has killed 3

Keep in mind that that cannon ship, having had more kills to its credit, probably also has a higher crew quality, which also affects how hard that ship's weapons hit. (I assume that your "laser ship" has ONLY lasers and the "cannon ship" has ONLY cannons. There aren't separate graphics to denote laser fire from cannon fire. If the ship is close enough for cannons to engage, that graphic represents the weapons effects of both weapons combined.)