Weapon

Up to date for latest version, 0.97a.

There are three main types of weapons in Starsector: Ballistic, Missile, and Energy, though some do not fall exclusively into one of these, such as the Mining Laser or Mining Blaster.

Weapons are also classified into roles such as Point Defense, Assault, Close Support, Strike, and so forth. Each weapon has distinct stats such as damage, damage types, rate of fire, range and accuracy, tailored to fit its role.

As a rule, Low Tech ships use ballistic weapons, High Tech ships use energy weapons, and Midline ships use a mix of both, while missiles are used by all three tech styles.

Non-missile weapons generate flux when firing, while missile weapons do not.

For information about mounting weapons onto a ship see the refitting page.

For a list of all weapons, see the Category:Weapons page.

Ballistic

Ballistic weapons are often mounted on Low Tech and Midline ships, and generally do high explosive, kinetic, or fragmentation damage. They typically have good range and/or flux efficiency.

Type	Small	Medium	Large
High Explosive	Light Assault Gun Light Mortar	Assault Chaingun Heavy Mortar Heavy Mauler	Hephaestus Assault Gun Hellbore Cannon Devastator Cannon
Kinetic	Light Machine Gun Light Dual Machine Gun Light Autocannon Light Dual Autocannon Railgun Light Needler	Heavy Machine Gun Arbalest Autocannon Heavy Autocannon Hypervelocity Driver Heavy Needler	Mark IX Autocannon Gauss Cannon Storm Needler
Energy			Mjolnir Cannon
Fragmentation	Vulcan Cannon	Thumper Flak Cannon Dual Flak Cannon

Energy

Energy weapons usually do energy damage. They come as beams (which travel almost instantly with great accuracy and have long range), or projectiles (which still have high speed and accuracy but lower range). Beam-types only do soft-flux damage to shields.

Burst damage

Energy weapons usually have a similar flux efficiency to ballistic weapons, but are usually considered flux hungry. Blasters and cannons have lower flux efficiency but another culprit are the number of energy weapons which have exaggerated initial firing rates, or with very slow rates of fire but high damage/flux when they do.

• The large Autopulse Laser has the same sustained damage rate as the medium Pulse Laser with worse flux efficiency - but fires five times as quickly in the first three seconds. The PD burst lasers, autolances/autopulsers, and the mining blaster all share this feature. This gives them rather excessive damage up front, but their sutained output is lacklustre compared to their peers. They also generate enourmous flux at the start of combat
• The Gigacannon and Antimatter Blaster both have low average flux use, and the Gigacannon actually has low damage per second too. However, they can only fire once every ten seconds, and when they do they both do a large amount of damage and generate 1500 flux in an instant

Types

Pulse-types have average damage, flux efficiency, and range. Beams have increased range but lower damage. PD beams have increased efficiency and turn rate but even lower damage. Blasters/cannons have increase damage but lower efficiency. There are rules of thumb and exceptions exist. Weapons with a specialisation (like burst damage or kinetic damage) are usually better than average in their role, but worse outside it.

• Beam weapons
  • Beam (laser) weapons fire a continuous beam at the target
  • Lance weapons fire an intermittent beam - 1 second of firing, 4 seconds of idle time
  • Burst lasers fire short duration (0.2-0.3 second) beams, rapidly at first but falling to a lower sustained rate.
• Projectile weapons
  • Pulse lasers fire a continuous stream of projectiles.
  • Blasters & cannons have a lower rate of fire than pulse weapons, and are usually specialised.
• Ion/Particle weapons (beam or projectile)
  • Ion projectiles can cause EMP arcs when impacting a hull, dealing EMP damage to systems not directly hit
  • Ion/particle beams can cause EMP arcs even when striking a shield, knocking out systems even without striking the hull
  • Ion weapons are primarily EMP weapons, but the tachyon lance only has a secondary EMP role
• Autopulse/autolance weapons are pulse/lance weapons with a high initial fire rate like a burst laser
  • Autopulse, autopulse, and burst laser weapons (and the mining blaster) can extend their inital burst period with Expanded Magazines
• PD, point defence weapons, are all beam-type with a high turret turn rate, and may still be useful against other ships
  • PD lasers are small beams intended to shoot down missile
  • PD Burst weapons are small to large and intended to combat fighters too

Hullmods and ship systems

• A number of the weapon-specific hullmods apply to all types of weapons
• The Advanced Optics mod increases beam range
• The High Scatter Amplifier mod increases beam damage and changes that damage to hard flux. Reduces beam range
• The Energy Bolt Coherer is a built-in only mod found commonly on Lion's Guard ships that increases range on non-beam energy weapons
• The High Energy Focus ship system increases energy-type weapon damage by 50% for three seconds

Type	Small	Medium	Large
High Explosive		Mining Blaster	High Intensity Laser
Kinetic		Graviton Beam Kinetic Blaster
Energy	Burst PD Laser PD Laser LR PD Laser Mining Laser Tactical Laser IR Pulse Laser Antimatter Blaster Ion Cannon	Heavy Burst Laser Phase Lance Pulse Laser Heavy Blaster Ion Pulser Ion Beam	Paladin PD System Tachyon Lance Autopulse Laser Gigacannon Plasma Cannon
Fragmentation		IR Autolance

Missile

Main article: Missile

Missiles are generally flux-free damage options, with many missiles dealing higher damage amounts compared to other weapon types. To compensate, most missile weapons have limited ammo and can be shot down by point-defense weapons or incidental weapon fire.

Type	Small	Medium	Large
High Explosive	Annihilator Rocket Launcher Atropos-class Torpedo (Single) Atropos-class Torpedo Rack Breach SRM Hammer-class Torpedo (Single) Hammer-class Torpedo Harpoon MRM (Double) Harpoon MRM Reaper-class Torpedo Swarmer SRM Launcher	Annihilator Rocket Pod Breach SRM Pod Harpoon MRM Pod Jackhammer Proximity Charge Launcher Typhoon Reaper Launcher	Cyclone Reaper Launcher Hammer Barrage Hurricane MIRV Launcher
Kinetic	Gazer DEM SRM Sabot SRM (Double) Sabot SRM	Gazer SRM Pod Sabot SRM Pod	Squall MLRS
Energy	Gorgon DEM SRM	Dragonfire DEM Torpedo Gorgon SRM Pod	Dragonfire Torpedo Pod Hydra MDEM Launcher
Fragmentation	Salamander MRM	Pilum LRM Launcher Salamander MRM Pod	Locust SRM Launcher Pilum LRM Catapult

Notes

• Most weapons have a bonus to turn rate while they are ready to fire (exact turn rate bonus still unknown). This bonus is lost while the weapon is charging up or otherwise firing.
• Weapons on a ship can be disabled by damaging the area around a weapon mount; see the Damage article for details.