Weapons Overview

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Weapons Overview

Lasers

• Weapons of the laser class typically fall into one of two categories, Precise, and Beam weapons.
• Lasers primarily have a Red cost, with a secondary cost of G
• Precise (Pulse) Lasers
  • Offer reasonable raw damage per R cost spent
    • Laser Pulse is 3R for 4 damage, Paired Pulse is 4R1G for 3x2 damage, Heavy Pulse is 8 damage for 5R2G, Quick Pulse is 2R for 3 damage. So typically around or somewhat less than 1.5 damage per R spent, with any R reductions typically transferred into extra G cost.
  • Deal excellent targeted systems damage, second only to railguns
    • This makes precise Lasers an excellent defensive tool, as they effectively “block” damage by breaking enemy weapons, typically 3 Laser cards break a 12 HP system
    • Conversely Lasers can also be an offensive enabling tool, as they can break the enemy’s shield generator, allowing you to tee off on the enemy ship with a hull damage type weapon (Missiles, Flak, etc.)
    • Heavy Pulse with the +50% damage power from Arbalest Gunner crew power offers 12 system damage in a single card
  • Has synergies with playing multiple pulse laser cards in the same turn (Catalyst Pulse, Overload augment, Booster Pulse, Streamline)
  • Be careful about trying to hold too many cards or a combo. Holding too many combo pieces will severely affect your ability to draw into additional combo pieces

• Beam Lasers
  • Beam lasers tend to be non-precise, and focus on dealing damage and heat to the enemy ship
  • Many of these cards have a duration and ongoing cost attached to the weapon
    • Example: Cutting Beam has an initial cost of 3R1G to fire the weapon, but will continue to fire at the start of the next 3 turns, with an ongoing cost of 1G per turn fired
    • Because of this, you need to account for the total cost when evaluating the weapon.
  • While Beam lasers seem to deal excellent damage per R spent when compared to their pulse cousins, there are some very real drawbacks
    • Unlike Precise lasers, Beam Lasers deal reduced system damage, 66% of the total damage is split across 2 random subsystems, dealing 33% to deach. Hull damage in general is worth less than system damage, so simply comparing the raw damage is not an accurate evaluation
    • Continuous Beam lasers deal their damage over several turns. This often results in damage being lost due to firing into Enemy shields. Pulse lasers can play around enemy shields by waiting a turn for them to halve before firing, duration based lasers do not have this option. Continuous Beam Lasers trigger their start of round effect before missiles resolve, so unfortunately Ion Missiles impact after the Beam Laser has already wasted it's shot on shields.
    • Enemy debuffs that reduce player damage completely wreck the low damage of duration based lasers. The Elite Buffs Eutetic Armour and Diffraction Field both apply a -2 damage penalty to Lasers, combined with the Blind debuff (-1 damage) from enemy hacking system can result in the Continuous Beam Laser cards dealing zero damage.

Ion Weapons

• Ion weapons are typically good at breaking enemy shields, with a secondary focus on delaying enemy actions through ionize. Ion cards typically often have conditional effect, often related to shields (shield break, having no shields, shield damage dealt)
• Ionize cards primarily cost G, with a secondary light R cost
  • This typically makes them an efficient pairing with high R cost weapons, like Flak and Precise Lasers, as they do not compete for the same resource
  • Example cards: Sling and Ion Javelin cost 1R2G for 6 Ion damage, dealing 12 Ion damage on activating their conditional effect.
• Ion cards offer a very high shield damage per R spent (6 per R, or 12 per for Sling and Ion Javelin)
• By default, Ionize removes 1 pip from a random enemy system per 6 Ionize applied
  • Unlike random equipment damage, Ionize will not attempt to remove pips from an enemy system that has no pips.
  • This means the more Ionize you apply to the enemy ship, the more likely you will delay a priority system as there are less enemy subsystems with pips to choose from
  • Applying 12+ Ionize stacks in the same action that removes 2+ enemy pips can remove those 2 pips from the same enemy equipment. It’s not guaranteed to remove 1 pip from 2 different systems.
  • Ionize can remove pips from broken enemy subsystems that are being repaired. This can be quite useful, as once an enemy system is broken and starts the 3 turn timer, additional weapon damage won’t delay repairs. Great for ensuring a key enemy system never goes off.
• Removing pips from enemy systems is what gives Ion weapons their defensive utility.
  • While the Ionize system targeting effect is randomized, when compared to shield cards, Ion cards can be played proactively as soon as you draw them. Shields on the other hand often have to wait for an enemy incoming attack, which in a worst case scenario would take up an effective card draw for several turns.
  • Thus taking Ion weapons often let’s you draft less shield cards, which reduces the likelihood you draw something you can’t play right away. This improves the consistency of your deck.

Flak Weapons

• Flak weapons are focused on dealing semi-scaling Hull damage
• Flak cards primarily cost R, with a secondary cost of B.
• Efficient Flak cards like Flak Barrage have a light B cost (3R1B), while cards like Tungsten Rounds have a heavy B cost (4R3B)
• As of the latest Early access patch, Flak now deals 100% of it's base hull damage as equipment damage.
• Stacking Shred only scales Flak cards up to a cap of the max flak damage printed on the card. Evaluating some common Flak cards at their max damage from sufficient Shred
  • Light Barrage (3R) for 5 damage barely out damages the basic Pulse Laser (4 damage) for the same R cost while completely lacking the ability to do targeted system damage. Not a very good card without synergies.
  • Flak Barrage (3R1B) is 7, which is a good improvement over Light Barrage (1B for 2 damage). Unlike Light Barrage, Flak Barrage has a reasonably good chance to apply Shred by itself, and is not reliant on having high Shred stacks, which makes it a significantly better card. Staple card for Flak weapons.
• Most of the true damage potential from Flak cards come from having excellent weapon subsystems that apply only to Flak Weapons
  • Followup spawns a free Flak Shell (0-3 damage) whenever you play a Light Barrage card, Covering Fire, or Spread Shot card. Effectively adding 3 damage to those cards massively improves their damage output (5 to 8, 6 to 9) and has strong synergies with other Flak augments.
  • Momentum Amplifier adds +1 to Flak max damage every time a Flak card hits for Max damage for the duration of the turn. As high shred guarantees a Flak card hits for max damage, playing a chain of Flak cards with Shredding effectively is a +1 damage bonus per card played for the turn. The extra Flak Shells from Followup really let you cash out the high end of this bonus, it’s common to them see fired at +5 damage or higher.
  • Ammo Allocator reduces Flak card R cost by 1 when a Flak card deals minimum Flak damage. With high shred, the minimum damage is equal to the max flak damage. So Flak cards are guaranteed to trigger both minimum and max effects at the same time. Combined with Momentum Amplifier, this makes it much easier to fire off a chain of Flak cards, especially when combined with the Marauder Crew Member’s Draw power.
  • Aim Correction adds +1 max Flak damage per 2 Flak cards played. Synergy with Followup producing Flak cards. Not nearly as powerful as the other 3 augments though, as you only get the damage bonus starting the 3rd Flak card played on that turn, and without the Marauder’s draw power, that’s likely already most of the way through your hand.

Railgun Weapons

• Railgun weapons are precise weapons primarily focused on dealing high Systems damage. This often takes the form of deal X damage + Y bonus system damage (conditional, or +% based). The “average” Railgun card tends to deal 6+ system damage per card. Mass Drivers and Coilguns serve roughly the same purpose.
• Railguns are primarily R and B heavy, as are Mass Drivers. Coilguns tend to use R and G.
  • Pinpoint is an exception to this rule (2R2G)
  • Tungsten Round is 2R3B for 4 damage, +50% to systems, (6 system damage)
• Due to dealing higher system damage per card, it often only takes 2 Railgun cards to break a 12 HP system. Lasers tend to take 3 basic cards to do the same. This typically let’s a railgun break a system earlier as it costs less R, and requires you to find less cards
  • 2 Tungsten Round (2R3B x2) deals 12 equipment damage, as would 2 Kinetic Shot (3R2B x2)
  • 3 Laser Pulse would need 9R to do the same amount of system damage
  • Railguns tend to require less raw R to deal system damage, but have a higher secondary resource cost, which is often favourable
• Railguns secondary effect is often tied to dealing hull damage, or breaking an enemy system
  • This tends to make Railguns weak to shields, as they often deal less raw damage per Red spent than the average weapon, shields prevent the secondary effect till broken
  • So if paired with another weapon that’s not great at breaking shields (e.g. Flak), it’s often a strong consideration to use the Railgun to break the enemy shield system.

Missile Weapons

• Missile cards are typically marked with the Deplete tag, which is the same as the Exhaust mechanic from Slay the Spire. This typically makes Missile cards one time use per combat.
• Missile damage is calculated at the time of launch, and is not affected by modifiers after the fact.
  • Example 1: Paint Target debuff applies +30% missile damage to enemy ships hit by Laser for 2 turns. If you fire a Light Torpedo (8 damage in 2 turns) at an enemy ship with 1 turn remaining on the Paint Target Debuff, the missile will be launched with 10 damage. This damage will not decrease to 8 when the Paint Target debuff falls off the next turn.
  • Example 2: Light Torpedo is fired, and then a Laser Pulse is fired to apply the Paint Target debuff on the same turn. Light Torpedo damage stays at 8.
• Enemy ship PDC massively reduces the damage efficiency of Missiles, as it puts constraints on when you can fire your missiles
  • With Precise weapons + Missiles, it’s often a top priority to break the AMS system immediately over anything else. Missile raw damage can break through shields just fine, but outright losing them to an AMS burst will cripple your damage output
  • Prep Volley can be used to overwhelm enemy AMS, but it’s a slow card and doesn’t immediately protect 2 turn delay missiles. It does offer high damage per R spent, and can self scale with the Triangulate augment, so it can serve as anti-boss scaling solution.