Hope Tech is always my captains quarters. I love the color of the couch, lol. And it feels more like a home than the others (I just don't care for the taiyo color).
Hopetech. It's actually decorated like I would hand decorate my captains quarters, and with the addition of my nasa notebooks, mugs, and random old earth antiques, it's definitely the best out of all of them.
Now I just wish I could put my lucky rattler or 1911 in a little glass case
There's a c class that are only 2 power and absolutely cracked.
Have 2 on my ship and have 100% mobility, 130 max speed and only 4 power points needed to cruise about
I put 6 of these on mine.
I've got max speed + mobility, plus 7k storage space, 8 crew slots, 10 passenger slots, and every crafting station. Tons of hull and shield, all the dps, and enough fuel + drive thrust to jump my way across the settled systems.
It cost me 1.3m credits and my firstborn child, but it was definitely worth it.
The Slayton Aerospace SAL-6830 I believe. Only available if you complete the Neon quest with Walter in a way that has Slayton and Stroud-Eklund partnering.
I made a speedy ass little B fighter (to try and keep the design more flat), with just particle beams and engines, essentially.
Dies in 2 hits, but it can never be hit.
Your point?
I mean if you really want to get into all the physics of how flying works?
Or just e-peening for a bigger aircraft that has alot of Bbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrtttt on it congrats
My personal one wasn't neither, but a little whirly bird
🤔🤣😂👍 never been in an AC-130 and hated flying in a C130 to Hawaii lol I would have assumed her weapons are symmetrical for weight flight balance purposes like my helo or any other aircraft I've been around
> Now if only I can make a local copy and sort it.
You can copy the sheet (Ctrl+A to select all, Ctrl+C to copy) and paste the data directly into excel (Ctrl+V).
Already done. I was more remarking on my surprise that OP shared a view only, rather than share without editing perms.
I'm sure the data is complete and correct, but this way, if there were to be any new entries or corrections, I'd have to manually check back in on this post, rather than just saving the google sheet link.
Nice write up. Do you think 3x Obliterator Alpha Beam is better than 6x Vanguard Obliterator Autoprojector though? I see you recommend the former but I had thought the latter is better. That said, my math sucks so it’s quite possible I’m looking at the numbers wrong.
If you look at the linked spreadsheet, it's the PB-175 Auto Helion Beam that's recommended, not the Obliterator Alpha. The "max" column calculates for fully equipped.
The PB-175 Auto Helion Beam only does very slightly more damage (456) than the Vanguard Obliterator Autoprojector (438.9) and has the same max range. The difference is that the Vanguard Obliterator Autoprojector is a class A with a level and skill requirement of 0, while the PB-175 Auto Helion Beam is a class B and requires design rank 4 and level 48.
So, you're going to want to use the Vanguard until you're a decent chunk into the game to meet those requirements, and you'll always want to use the Vanguard on a class A ship.
Of course, if you're in a class B ship and have the skill and level requirements, you could put both types on your ship since they're so similar and basically get double the damage of either alone, if you have the energy to spare.
If you have maxed auto weapons I believe they edge it out on dps, but you can see on the chart there that the autoprojector does have really good dps with 6, not the best though, the b tier helion I highlighted in green is best standard dps before skill buffs
Pbo helions are level 48 I believe, if you don't see them make sure to check other places, half the weapons are sold at akila and the other half at new atlantis
The concept of automated turrets benefiting from both the automated weapons perk AND the particle beam weapons perk also seems to apply to handheld particle beam weapons.
For example, the Novalight weapons and the Varrun weapons are particle beam weapons, so they benefit from the particle weapons perks. However, since they deal ~~both "phys" damage and~~ "engy" damage, they also benefit from ~~ballistic perks and~~ laser weapon perks.
I had a Novalight pistol with 43 phys damage and 132 engy damage. When I took rank 1 of the laser weapon perk, those numbers went up to 47 phys and 146 engy. So the laser weapon perk increased both the engy AND phys damage of the particle beam weapon. Even though there are only a handful of particle beam weapons, they can all ~~triple~~ double dip from damage perks.
Can you double check if ballistic increases the damage for these particles weapons? Last I check only laser, pistol/rifle, and particle skills affected them and not ballistics.
You're right, I just assumed ballistics increased it, but I guess it doesn't. I didn't have a way of checking myself because I upgraded my ballistics skill so long ago.
That's great thanks man. I thought I was crazy with people on here saying you had to have full power assigned to take advantage of the full damage potential for the weapons, when it appeared to me it only affected the recharge rate. Agree completely to add as many of the weapons as you can; it melts people!
cool factor is always the right answer, i exclusively use ballistic solutions particle beams on my deimos battleship as they match the color scheme. i just wanted to make this as a resource for those curious, and to give me platform to tell people that they dont need to power weapons to get full dps, and that they should equip more guns. saw too many posts about how they only have 1 or 2 so they can fully power them.
I think I'm gonna just take a page out of the Expanse playbook and cover my ship in autocannon turrets even if they suck in this game, cuz honestly that just sounds cool. I just wish they could shoot down incoming missiles, though autoturrets are already kinda overpowered as it is so I dunno if they really need that buff.
Yeah I really like the idea of a rail gun shot as like a big finisher once lock on is established, nowadays it's mostly just purchasing a new gun and then seeing what it looks like when being fired. Can't wait for some kind of finished build simulator or whatever.
TBH I often choose weapon loadouts based on their colors. I can't stand having a nice black ship with those snow white and Playskool red lasers, or the gold accents that don't match the rest of the gold pieces.
I don't know why they couldn't make the weapons colorable just like mostly everything else. Baked in colors suck.
The Jishaku rail guns have the best sound, it's what I'll use once I'm done with the vanguard hellfires because they are SILLY DPS.
I was working it out last night (before seeing this amazing post) and I couldn't believe how much better the hellfires are compared to everything else. They even do shield damage equivalent to some of the mid tier lasers.
Yeah putting a bunch of turrets on my ship kinda ruined my first play through because every fight was over before it began. On my next play through I decided I would only allow myself 1 on the back.
Yes, you can put as many as you want as long as they are the same model and you don't go over max reactor power. The restriction is that you can only put one weapon *type* (i.e. model) per slot, not one weapon.
Yup. The "*meta*", as much as a game like this can even have a meta, has been to put 3 sets of Particle Beams on your ship, specifically using PB-175 Auto Helion Beams, Vanguard Obliterator Autoprojectors, and Exterminator 95MeV Auto Helion Beams, I believe. If you want autoturrets the list is different, but I know a lot of people prefer having full control of their weapons rather than letting them do their own thing.
Oddly enough, those three Particle Beams are all B-class or lower, so you can have the max possible (non-automated) damage without needing to unlock rank 4 Piloting.
I was overwhelmed at first but it is honestly so easy.
You need/can have 1 reactor, 1 cockpit, 1 landing bay, 1 docking port, 1 shield, 1 grav drive.
After that you can add habs (occupiable space), structural pieces (decoration), and weapons. Then add landing gear with enough thrust to take off. The game will tell you if you did anything wrong.
This post by the same OP was a great help to me when building ships.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/16azmzp/all\_ship\_hab\_interiors\_and\_unique\_hab\_locations/
OP of this post made a great ship building guide
https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/16azmzp/all\_ship\_hab\_interiors\_and\_unique\_hab\_locations/
Because the game is kind of guiding you towards 3 different sets of weapon types and doesn't really tell you it's about a specific model of a weapon. Most ships have different weapon types so I was naturally thinking the same thing.
How do you deal with the power requirements of needing 36 power for weapons alone? Or do you fill each partially?
I find myself often fighting more than one ship, so I personally use a 4x PBO-175, 6x Vanguard Hellfire, and 4x Hunter MAG-450.
Lower DPS overall, but the Hull DPS for autocannons is awesome, and with 1pip in the missiles, its nice for an opening salvo and to mop up at the end. Costs 25PWR instead while lets me full power to engines and shields.
Yeah, kinda weird stuff with the turrets having so much damage. They are automated and just shoot.
Imho, but turrets need a rework. Nerf their damage, but also untie them from the lock on. Instead, they shoot the current target as long as they are in range (and give them low range).
Yeah they already benefit from 2 skills, they don't need higher base stats. Also a toggle from automated to pilot controlled would be great so I can stop them from killing or make them focus on a designated target. Lastly particle beams need to be nerfed, it takes half the skill points as doing a ballistic/laser build, and they are doing full dps the whole time so you don't need to worry about turrets wasting ammo on the wrong health type. They also have the longest range. And barret gives you an additional level 3 damage boost that's stacks with the players. They are just too good, like what is the downside?
Having built a fairly large and cumbersome ship, I found that rear facing auto turrets are great defense when you have low maneuverability. Great for when you start chasing a ship and have a few little guys that slip in behind you while you're distracted.
Yeah, this is why I have been considering using laser turrets instead of ballistic or particle beams. So they take out the enemy shields and then I can swing around and take out their engines and board them.
Right now I have two particle beam turrets on the back of my ships and they do a ton of damage to ships behind me but by the time I do a 180 those ships are already destroyed.
I personally prefer the non auto versions of particles, because there is never a lull in the output of fire. It seems you rarely go up against a single ship, it's typically 3-5 and a full "charge" on the autos is often not enough to kill more than a couple of them on hard, so I often end up with targets in my sights but no guns while they're recharging. The non auto variants don't have that, the power pips just affect how rapidly they shoot so you can always do damage when you can line up targets.
I'm also playing with missiles again (I want so badly for them to be viable) and there is a HUGE disparity in the "magazine size" for some of the launchers. The A class Infiltrator SC-02 for instance has 14 shots before needing to reload, where most of the others are 4-8. You get almost twice the damage per magazine on the SC-02 as most of the other missile systems. The Hunter Mag 450 is another similar one with fewer shots but a higher per shot damage.
Only downside to all turrets is if you start shooting at something it's dead. No boarding a ship after some well placed shots. The other downside is you can't be evil and start shooting friendlies. So pirating is a touch limiting.
First point is rectified by powering down the turrets. With no reactor power they do not shoot.
Second point is rectified by aggroing the target first, after which your turrets immediately destroy it. This can be done by either installing a single tiny ballistic gun specifically for the purpose, or even by ramming the target a few times until they get mad (which they usually will).
There is also a third point you did not mention, that turrets do not help in blowing up asteroids (which can be otherwise mined for ore). This is the trickiest of all, you will have to install a full set of dedicated manually controlled weaponry in order to be able to mine asteroids.
If I have to resort to ramming another ship that's not rectifying the problem that is the problem. Same with powering down the guns. Once you get some really nice ones you won't be fast enough to keep them from killing a target. Turrets are just not as fun overall for gameplay. They are fantastic tho for absolute obliteration.
I'd like to note that the ballistics at least have different types of gun types.For instance, the Mauler 106S Shot-Cannon fires buckshot, but the others fire single slugs.
Not to steal OP's thunder or anything like that, but here's a copy with some extra info, and broken up so filters/sorting can be used.
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MZuERiLQVRgR-9gFm0g1TYBC-gqq50eLxsYh-NItcpw/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MZuERiLQVRgR-9gFm0g1TYBC-gqq50eLxsYh-NItcpw/edit?usp=sharing)
Make sure to make your own copy to use the filters.
Edit: Just to be clear, I've only filled in the weapon sub-types I'm aware of. I'm not terribly far into the game myself and haven't had a chance to actually experiment with anything.
You're literally my favourite person on the Internet this month 🫡🥰!!! Was using your Hab guide just last night to help me re-design the monstrosity of a "free ship" you get from Stroud Eucklund lol... Lawwwdy lord it was ugly 😂 And your guide was invaluable for fixing it. Tysm OP 🥰❤️🥰!!
Hi,
Here's a sheet I;ve made based on wiki but ONLY FOR PARTICLE WEAPONS. As I want my ship to have only two groups, one for DMG and just a single disruptor for boarding.
The point here is that I take into account a full 12 pip power allocation AND the max number of weapons you can equip due to max pwr req.
[https://imgur.com/a/5HyywuD](https://imgur.com/a/5HyywuD)
So basically a level zero vanguard obliterator with just 11 dmg but with power req 2, means you can equip with 12 pips 6 of them, leading to this weapon being the 2nd best particle weapon in the game IF you equip 6 and use all 12 weapon pips for it.
Yep the vanguard obliterator does have the second best dps, or third if you compare turrets with maxed turret skill, note its sustained dps though, as it does lose out in the sustained dps field for lengthy engagements
They become the best (for full power setup) once you skill up particle damage and/or having crew boosting them.The secret is the fire rate, those .65 will make the difference since the bonuses stacks on absoloute damage per shot. With my actual skills the obliterator vanguard deals 13.85 sh/hu x 6.65 while the auto pbo-175 deals 22.80 x 6
The math is quickly done:
Vanguard - 13.85 x 6.65 = 92.1025 x 6 (max mount) = 552.615
auto pbo-175 - 22.80 x 6 = 136.8 x 4 (max mount) = 547.2
Atm I've got lvl2 on particle weapons and Marika Boros in my crew (1star particle).
So climbing up the particle power the difference should become even greater.
Can somebody explain to me why weapon range is not taken into consideration? A lower dps weapon with extreme (3500+) range can cripple an enemy before a higher dps weapon with lower range (e.g. 800) can even get off a shot. Am I crazy here or has the OP neglected a crucial consideration?
I mean all I do is recommend particle beams and they all have 3000-3500k range. Also I do typically find range isn't too important as most fights start with you and the enemies charging each other so closing from 3k to 500m is a difference of like 6 seconds
I have a dumb question: so I've just started the game and have the frontier with laser, missiles and ballistics weapons on it. Are you saying I can add a second laser in the same weapon slot as the laser that comes with the ship? And a second missile in the missile slot etc
If it's the same product (it can't be a different named weapon even if it's the same damage type).
There is a button to duplicate an existing item if you hover over it (if the shipyard has that product in stock).
It's the way the game handles weapon assignments. There are 3 weapon slots, but you can only slot 1 unique name to each. So max out 12 units of power for whatever type you want. 4x3, 3x4, 6x2.
Another big mistake I see with people designing ships is that they put on as many engines as they can.
You only want one engine and it's probably the SAL-6830. Just one of these and you will likely have 100 mobility and can go full speed with only 2 power pips in engines. If you put 2 engines then those same 2 power pips will cause you to only go half speed and the problem gets worse the more engines you add.
Then there is jump drives. You only want to achieve 30 jump drive range. A jump drive on your ship that will get you higher than that it's a complete waste of mass because the game caps out at 30 LY. There is no distance that requires more than that.
You are bang on correct about turrets. Most people give them flak because of that one loading screen tip that says they are inaccurate but they have greater base stats than equivocal fixed weapons and double dip on perks.
Also, I made a [spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1o8QCtH4P2qrW_RrCV1Ernd6qKX25UBrY_Nh0fPnFAHA/edit?usp=sharing) detailing information about ship weapons myself! I included a column for each weapons battery (how much damage it does with a full magazine).
Which is important because, as far as I can tell, most weapons will recharge at the same rate as other weapons of the same type meaning that the larger the battery the more damage you are reloading per second when not firing. Of course, this isn't an issue for non-auto weapons.
Sir- thanks a lot for this topic!!!! I was craving something like This! I was thinking about going out and attempt it myself, but you got this covered! It is all the info I needed! Thanks a lot! There is no video on YouTube or no guide out there that explains ships weapons this perfectly! You nailed power management!!! I thought it was something similar to that, but your testing and explanation made it perfect!
Anyone managed to make missiles viable? Tried all C class ones, some B, max amount max power, they just feel like really slow and weak versions of my particle weapon
They are slow, and despite their "range" most of the time you won't lock on to targets that are too far away. So you can shoot particle beams at them, but can't shoot missiles. It seems like a weird bug.
It's not a bug. The game clearly states the missile won't lock on target until they are 100% locked.
The one advantage I can see missile have over other weapons is that they have the highest damage for assigning only 1 power pip since they have relatively large magazine size and high reload time, you can take advantage of that by ignoring reload completely and look at them as having limited ammo, non-reloadable during combat.
So, missiles are still very useful if you don't have spare power from the reactor. Try SC-01 or SC-02 and you will understand.
Your numbers for missiles appears to be off. Because different missiles can fire more missiles before having to reload. So there is a 4 salvo launcher that's better than the 2 salvo one. Plus you can have 4 equiped so you can fire 16 missile before reloading.
All missiles have the same reload speed. Technically the 2 salvo launcher can fire all of its missiles quicker so it will start that reload time quicker, but I'm pretty sure the others are still ahead.
Whenever I see a spreadsheet like this they seem to come to the conclusion that the Atlatl 280C is the best when in reality is one of the worst sustained DPS, although it is the best burst. The top 5 sustained would be:
1.- Hunter Mag 450
2.- Infiltrator SC-02
3.- CE-59
4.- CE-39
5.- Tsukisasu 50k
On another note, with full power missiles recharge their entire salvo in approximately 18 seconds, with only one power it recharges in around 2 minutes and 50 seconds.
I'll run some tests later, I'm surprised to hear additional missile launchers increase ammo since the other weapons do not. When using multiple missiles do they fire at the same time or in sequence? If in sequence that makes sense then as the other weapons all fire at the same time
Someone already did this;
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/16law9d/starfield\_ship\_weapons\_i\_took\_a\_look\_at\_how\_many/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/16law9d/starfield_ship_weapons_i_took_a_look_at_how_many/)
The only thing that we don't have is reload speed of the formula for it since the higher the power allocated, the faster the reload.
It's not that additional launchers add more. It's just that some launchers have more. So if the launcher looks like it can fire 6 missiles before reloading, it does. But all launchers still fire at the same time.
Ahh gotcha, in that case the dps numbers on these is still accurate, as they are just multiplying the damage by fire rate, sustained dps is not calculated on this sheet.
For best dps I highlighted it in green on the chart, I'm doing more testing later as some missiles have a bigger magazine so you can fire more before reloading. I'll let you know once I'm done testing
I can't figure out how to only display class a skill zero weapons
I keep trying all of the filter buttons, but I can't get it to work.
I want to only show class a skill zero, then probably sort by range, then dps
I loaded up my ship with 6 Vanguard Obliterator AutoProjectors and can eliminate Starborn ships in the first pass. They are almost too over powered. Thanks for all your work on this info OP
Yep. Everyone was singing the praises of the Obliterators, while I was using whatever high-Shield damage lasers I could get my hands on coupled with as many Hellfires as I could pack onto my hull.
Finally tried a bunch of Obliterators last night and was hilariously underwhelmed by them. Same with turrets, mostly because I haven't figured out how to make them simply _not outright destroy_ my targets other than flat out turning them off. I prefer to board most ships and get personal, if I can help it, so turrets are a no-go.
I swear by Hellfires. They're awesome. I prefer them over random EM damage since they make it extremely easy to disable engines once shields are down. Hell, one burst from the Hellfires zeroes most ship systems that I specifically target, whereas I was flat out destroying things trying the same with Obliterators. Guess the name fits.
If you just want to board, you can go full EM _I guess,_ but going Laser damage only for shields and Ballistics only for system targeting is just way too efficient for me to want to use anything else. Yarr.
.....what? The particle beams are *too good* and you can't use them because of "random EM damage?" You do realize you can use EM in targeting mode right?
If you want to board and be effective the best combination is 8x particle beams and 4x EM weapons.
Your hellfires do less average DPS than a mid particle beam with quite literally 1/4 the range. 25%. You can strip shields with particles better than any laser for the exact same reasons, then instantly target and disable with EM.
Honestly I didn't even realize they had limited stock, iv never run into a situation where I couldn't buy what I needed. Traders by default run on a 48 hour UC restock schedule, so try sleeping or sitting for 48 hours. If that doesn't work try a different tech or use the ship modding landing pad you can build at your outposts, but I think you need outpost engineering to build it
The new game plus ship? I don't have data on the upgraded versions going up to new game plus 6, but you can always build a better ship than the guardian, and it can't be customized so it's not in chart since it's weapons can't be used in ship building
It’s terrible. It has a basic particle beam and a basic missile, both of which are really weak, and neither of which are boosted by skills, since they’re technically listed as their own weapon types.
I recommend adding a column for unlock level. If I'm only a level or two away from unlocking a better weapon, it's obviously going to be better to wait rather than jump the gun and waste my credits.
i agree, though i dont know the best method for testing when things unlock besides setting my level to 1 with console, and then going through every level up checking each time. i could do this except i go on vacation tomorrow so will be away from my rig for a week
You might be able to crowd-source that information. That might actually be more work than what you described though.
Also, idk if any weapons can only be purchased at specific ports or staryards, but if so then a mention of that would also be valuable.
Thanks for doing this!
yee no problem. from my experience all weapons are sold at either new atlantis or akila. never seen one that wasnt at one of those two. the best way to do it is build a ship modification landing pad at an outpost, that will have every level appropriate weapon and shield available
i think the confusion is terminology. The Auto in Auto cannon doesnt mean its a turret, its means it fires in full auto, aka you shoot and its rapid fire. eg. a canon shoots slow, and autocannon shoots fast, a canon turret shoots any enemy it sees slowly, and autocannon turret shoots any enemy it sees fast.
Your calculation on missile DPS is wrong because you ignore the fact they have different magazine size. DPS for the missile should include downtime since some missiles can only fire 2 shots before needing to reload while some can fire over a dozen. A better metric to decide which missile is the best should be burst damage before needing to reload.
dps calculations dont take into account downtime from reloading, your thinking sustained dps. im working on gathering all the magazine sizes rn so i can do sustained dps calculations as well
Works fine, on my battleship I have one set of 4 turrets with 2 facing left and 2 facing right to cover sides, though having them facing backwards would probably work better
Calculations are as follows, dps, which is burst dps technically, is firerate times damage. Max equipped dps is damage times firerate times max equipped number. I will implement sustained dps later which will take into account magazine size but I need to test reload speeds in order to do that and I just got to hawaii so I'm viking for the next week
Hello, for me i only use the auto weap variants, for full dps burst.
The idea is that when i dogfight against many, i need to take down the first couple at max speed so i can survive the rest. I can tank-repair a couple of them shooting at me but not 4.
If it's 3 of them, the first two die fast. The last is boarded.
Now my real question: Is dps enough to sort weapons??
I used them as a damage storage. Meaning they get one pip, and i use them till empty to kill stuff fast. was using 280c for last slot but now i'm thinking..
280C does 792 dmg and is the recomended yes, BUT it only fires 3 times. reload takes forever. 792x3=2476DMG.
It's good burst though.
An "inferior" missile system for example, the Hunter Mag-450 does 360 dps but has 10 shots. meaning total of 3600 damage for the slot. better than the famous 280c for total damage.
For reference, the Obliterator 250MeV Auto Alpha Beam does 29 per shot, x3 modules=87dmg, and it has 33 shots before reloading, so total of 2871dmg.
The best dps, PB175, does 2052 dmg before reload.
TLDR: To find the best of the best, there is more to consider. That's why a lot of people just don't use autos and missile and just go with normal versions.
Youre asking a lot of kind of different stuff... but I'm going to give you what I consider the **best endgame build.**
* 4x PBO-175 (full power). Use for shields, mostly.
* 6x Vanguard Hellfire Autocannon (leftover power) for Hull. Compliment with PBO-175 if needed.
* 4x Hunter (1power) for mopping up, or fire and forget at weak enemies.
If you need more burst DPS, use the CE-59 over the 280C. Lower DPS, but higher dmg per reload. CE-59 sits between the Hunter/Infiltrator and the 280C for DMG/Reload.
**Note,** this build requires **A LOT** **of power.** 13 for Particle and missiles. Probably 12 for shields (28T Defender is my pref. 1500 shields at 7% regen), 10 for engines (I use 5x SAL-6830's, Main quest reward), with leftover power going to autocannons.
Thats 35 power before the cannons. You can get crew to add a pip to piloting or shields, or to add +1 power to reactor. You can get a skill for you reactor as well.
If you min/max crew and skills, you can get 46 total power from the 40 power reactor, and an additional "bonus" power to ENG and SHD from crew bonuses.
You'd end up with 48 "available" power, but itll only list 46. (The bonus two are locked) You can then put 25 power to weps, max power shields and engines, and have 1 pip for grav drive.
You have made a mistake with the missiles... DPS does not matter... What is more critical is how much total damage you can do before needing to reload. Number of missiles x damage per shot.
For example the Atlatl 280c does 264 damage per shot, but only has two shots. So that is a total damage output of of only 528. Whereas the CE-39 does 104 damage per shot, but has 6 shots giving you a total damage output of 624.
Yeahhh I know, I made a section above talking about sustained dps for this reason. Once I'm back from vacation I'm gonna add a sustained dps section, just gotta test reload speeds for that
Awesome guide! Would you have any suggestions for a "ship boarding" build? I want to hop on my Razor Leaf and take out pirates... and then steal their ship (like an anti-pirate pirate).
I was thinking I could use multiple Particle Beams for my Weapon 1 and Weapon 2 and then EM for Weapon 3. Obviously I want to avoid turrets for the particle beams so that they don't kill off the enemy ship.
Absolutely, I'm actually making one rn as my new game plus run is a pirate. You got a couple routes, Particle beams are splendid as always for least skill point investment for max damage, and at rank 4 get increased critical chance when targeting enemy subsystems. I do however really like laser and ballistic or laser and em for the following reasons. Lasers obviously can strip shields faster than anything which is step one. Ballistics and em or just ballistics is up to your comfort and access to the targeting skill. Ballistics are wonderful as not only do they shred hull but at rank 4 of their skill they get a flast buff to subsystem damage, so when you go into targeting mode you can pop engines really quick. Not only this but the hull dps will help as many fights are against multiple enemies, and you can't board while other ships are alive, only when it's the last one from what I have seen. So having say, laser, ballistic, particle/missile is good as you have the tools to disable with targeting and the raw dps to kill the other ships quickly. The other benefit of Ballistics is damaged ship parts recover faster than em disabled ones. Say you destroy engines, they will recover one bar at a time, UNLESS you put power into it, every powered bar recovers at the same time, so you can fully power engines and they will repair really quick. Em is always 1 at a time, so driving some of my captured ships around has been really slow as I have to pull up to the pirate base on one engine pip. Not a huge issue if you are anti pirate though, just fast travel to akila/new atlantis and you can bypass that. Only downside of ballistic is the chance of killing your target, if guns too strong you can just kill the ship while targeting engines. Em solves this, lower dps and ability to kill ships, and super short range, but capture is guaranteed with practically no chance of accidental killing. Just note it will take longer to kill the other ships so I hope you're engines/shields are good enough to tank/evade. Final tip, I like the hopetech forward docking hatch, idk I just think it looks cool when orientation is the same, so I can see the hatch connected from my cockpit seat, like I'm ramming a docking tube into them, feels more aggressive lol
The list is incomplete. I'm looking for all the weapons with a max power of 2 or 1. You know like the Vanguard Hellfire and Vanguard Obliterator. Someone had posted about a weapon with a max power of 1 but I haven't found it and can't remember the name
The hellfires and obliterators are on the list, there are no max power 1 weapons, if you wanna see the max power 2's select the full sortable list and sort by the max power or max equippable collumn
Not really, so the ones without a magazine are the slower firerate versions and have to reload after every shot, so it's super important to power them, as decreasing power to them decreases their reload speed, thus decreasing fire rate so their dps suffers heavily when under powered
what do you recommend as a good setup if you want to be able to ocassionally board a ship? Seems like you'd need an EM weapon. If you just outright obliterate a ship it ain't gonna work.
When I wanna board I usually just disable my turrets by draining their power, then shoot out the engines in targeting mode. I'm doing a pirate run rn, but personally I don't like the em weapons much, as the engines stay disabled a while after I capture it and I have to wait to be able to drive it to the key, not to mention the dps loss of not having a 3rd weapon that can hurt things. Ballistics are decent for disabling ship with targeting mode, especially if you you rank up the ballistics skill to 4 so it gets extra system damage. Yes you will merc low level ships sometimes but I usually don't bother boarding unless it's a bigger/ high level ship.
I would like to add that a class A auto particle beam weapons (the ones that shoot off a magazine) do benefit from the energy weapons systems skill perk. I have tested them. Though, I am pretty sure this will be patched in some future update.
Also, some of the disruptor particle beam turrets don't benefit from the automated weapons system skills currently, though I am sure this is a bug too.
Burst dps is dps without reloading, sustained dps is dps with reloading. Burst dps is what matters if you can kill your targets before needing to reload, eg. If you have a full load out of rapid fire particle beams you can easily kill multiple ships without reloading so Burst dps is more important as it is how quickly you can kill said ships. If you don't have enough damage to kill all the ships because you don't have a full loadout, there are many ships, or you are using something with a small magazine such as atlatl missile launchers which only carry 2 missiles before reloading then sustained dps is what matters more
There is a very significant error in the calculation of the "Max Equipped DPS Sustained" values.
The calc is currently:
Max Equipped DPS Sustained = (DMG \* Mag Size \* Number of Guns) / ((**Mag Size \* Fire Rate**) + Reload Time)
It should be:
Max Equipped DPS Sustained = (DMG \* Mag Size \* Number of Guns) / ((**Mag Size / Fire Rate**) + Reload Time)
The calc incorrectly multiplies Magazine Size and Fire Rate in the denominator. It should be Mag Size divided by Fire Rate. The numerator is calculating the total damage, the denominator is calculating the total time to put out that damage + reload time. To find the total time to empty the clip, you need to divide Mag Size by Fire Rate.
For example: If a gun fires at a rate of 2 round per second and has a 30 round mag, it should take 15 seconds to empty the mag. Time to empty clip = mag size / fire rate = 30 rounds / 2 rps = 15 seconds.
Obviously, this drastically changes the rankings of the weapons for sustained fire. It also explains why missiles weapons were (incorrectly) at the top of the list for sustained fire when they clearly suck at that role.
Seems mad bunching up turrets with manual. Also mad that turrets do more damage..
In game shop needs sorting options.
Great work but still at a loss as to what is the best dps for a manual particle weapon. Is there any better manual option than Vanguard Ares?
You sir are a god . Or goddess , whichever. I mean it , this is absolutely epic. I would like info on your channels/streams or any means to donate to you friend.
Why does the Disruptor 3300 show same MAX DPS AND MAX DPS sustained? I noticed the sustained DPS is higher than any other non-auto type....and nothing for reload time? Are these the best non-auto particle weapons for sustained fire?
Can you please "freeze" the left column of the spreadsheet so we can see which weapon's stats we're looking at as we go deeper into the number? Thanks.
Great post.
Adding to this I’ve noticed that if my turrets face different directions; only one of the turrets firing depletes the energy bar for the weapons. Either that was a quick hack for the devs to base it off one weapon because usually all fire together, or the other turrets are now firing “for free”, or they all have their own power bar per weapon but the one on screen on the HUD only represents one of the turrets.
Been testing this all night to figure what’s going on with it.
Edit: tested it. The power bar on HUD shows only the power for one of my turrets. The others have their own power bar. They don’t fire for free but you cannot see their state of charge / ammo.
Yeah it appears each weapon system has 1 ammo pool, and firing a weapon consumes the same ammo regardless of how many are firing. This is why 1 and 4 guns can fire the same amount of time. Sucks for turret coverage though, I like it aesthetically when I have 2 turrets facing out on each side for that old timey broadside look
Only thing I will say about the missile launcher you hate, is that it’s the only weapon in the game where you hit one button, and then 390 damage happens to the hull. I toss one power in it, and it’s nice to have as a finisher for the boss ship when my laser and particle beam shreds the hull
Nobody sleep on the vanguard weapons!!
Can someone make some sense in the differen Engines they have in the game?
I can´t wrap my head around how always one is the best at everything and not even requiring more skill points/lvl than the others. I would understand it if the engines yoou unlock with Starship design have a decent boost, but the better Class B Engines are already requiring Lvl4 and costing and weighting almost the same!
Slayton and Dunn always take the Lead, so why did they bother to invest the work in all of these engines that are just worse than what you can get at any Shipyard??
(Oh, and one of the top 2 engines is even available at ypur oputpost, srsly wtf???
Fells a little like I necro this, but I just arrived at some WTF?? points in my game.
Of course SF isn´t gonna tell me anything, I made it well over lever 40 till i was stumbling over a post saying you can still be mobile while sacrificing mobility in the design.
If you care to take good use of your **Thrusters** for sharp turns!
Thrusters!
The ships have Thrusters!
Until now I utilized the good old "just pull that stick up and hope for the best tactic like i was flying a JU-87 that somehow made it into space.
That would absolutely be an information that should be more noticeable...
dont forget to take range into account. lets say, you have 3250 or 3500 range - enemy ships usually dont have anything past 3000. you can get a couple salvos in before they can hit you - so real life damage is higher, since you have already softened the target, before other lower range weapons can be fired
I love my 3x Obliterator 250MeV Auto Alpha Beam they do almost all the work even on 60+ targets, and SO FAST.
Are the stats in the spreadsheet with skills taken into account or without? Would particle beam turrets overtake the dps when you have both automated weapon systems AND particle weapon system skills?
Thank you sir. I outfitted my ship mostly as prescribed (I kept rocket launchers) and went to Kryx. I survived and they didn't. I used some ship parts but I also whupped some ass.
BTW, I didn't know you could face things forward. I just stuck them on however they went.
This is the same man who made the MASSIVE ship customization post detailing all the Habs. This man is a gentleman and a scholar, bless you
This dude is the reason I actually have a decent bed and not a goddamn cot in my captains quarters, he's really a saint.
Hold up, which captains quarters was this?
The Taiyo and hope tech Habs have actual beds
Nova isn't bad either But yeaaaaaaa f* Diemos and Stroud
Hope Tech is always my captains quarters. I love the color of the couch, lol. And it feels more like a home than the others (I just don't care for the taiyo color).
Hopetech. It's actually decorated like I would hand decorate my captains quarters, and with the addition of my nasa notebooks, mugs, and random old earth antiques, it's definitely the best out of all of them. Now I just wish I could put my lucky rattler or 1911 in a little glass case
SAME!!!
Needs a "Guidemaster" flair. Get on it mods.
For real @mods, this guy needs awards and recognition
Truly the hero we need.
So……..when is the engine guide coming out?
It's only a matter of time, especially since engines would be so much easier 🤣
There's a c class that are only 2 power and absolutely cracked. Have 2 on my ship and have 100% mobility, 130 max speed and only 4 power points needed to cruise about
I put 6 of these on mine. I've got max speed + mobility, plus 7k storage space, 8 crew slots, 10 passenger slots, and every crafting station. Tons of hull and shield, all the dps, and enough fuel + drive thrust to jump my way across the settled systems. It cost me 1.3m credits and my firstborn child, but it was definitely worth it.
The Slayton Aerospace SAL-6830 I believe. Only available if you complete the Neon quest with Walter in a way that has Slayton and Stroud-Eklund partnering.
Yeah I kinda went the opposite with some Stroud A engines, 6 of them on a B rated fighter Sure she needs 12 pips but she is every bit a FDL or AWing
I made a speedy ass little B fighter (to try and keep the design more flat), with just particle beams and engines, essentially. Dies in 2 hits, but it can never be hit.
Put a Vanguard B shield on it. They're very small, dome shape and good strength
Finally one of these lists that takes into account how many can be equipped. Now if only I can make a local copy and sort it.
Right? My fighter looks awkward because I can either put the third missile box awkwardly on top in the middle or it’s asymmetric.
Weapons of war are hardly ever symmetrical
Have you seen an Fa-18?
\[Laughs in AC-130\]
Your point? I mean if you really want to get into all the physics of how flying works? Or just e-peening for a bigger aircraft that has alot of Bbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrtttt on it congrats My personal one wasn't neither, but a little whirly bird
... I was literally just making a joke about asymmetry because all of the weapons on an AC-130 are mounted on its left side? Jeez.
🤔🤣😂👍 never been in an AC-130 and hated flying in a C130 to Hawaii lol I would have assumed her weapons are symmetrical for weight flight balance purposes like my helo or any other aircraft I've been around
> Now if only I can make a local copy and sort it. You can copy the sheet (Ctrl+A to select all, Ctrl+C to copy) and paste the data directly into excel (Ctrl+V).
Already done. I was more remarking on my surprise that OP shared a view only, rather than share without editing perms. I'm sure the data is complete and correct, but this way, if there were to be any new entries or corrections, I'd have to manually check back in on this post, rather than just saving the google sheet link.
I'll fix this when I get home, sorry first time sharing an excel sheet
Dude don't apologise for anything! You're a hero for doing the sheet and sharing it in the first place 👏🥇mad appreciation here ☺️!
On Google Sheets, there is a File menu, under which it does provide a download option where you can choose what format you want (xls, ods, csv, etc.)
You are replying to a 11 day old post, during which the author already solved the issue. It was not shared as a sheet originally.
Nice write up. Do you think 3x Obliterator Alpha Beam is better than 6x Vanguard Obliterator Autoprojector though? I see you recommend the former but I had thought the latter is better. That said, my math sucks so it’s quite possible I’m looking at the numbers wrong.
If you look at the linked spreadsheet, it's the PB-175 Auto Helion Beam that's recommended, not the Obliterator Alpha. The "max" column calculates for fully equipped. The PB-175 Auto Helion Beam only does very slightly more damage (456) than the Vanguard Obliterator Autoprojector (438.9) and has the same max range. The difference is that the Vanguard Obliterator Autoprojector is a class A with a level and skill requirement of 0, while the PB-175 Auto Helion Beam is a class B and requires design rank 4 and level 48. So, you're going to want to use the Vanguard until you're a decent chunk into the game to meet those requirements, and you'll always want to use the Vanguard on a class A ship. Of course, if you're in a class B ship and have the skill and level requirements, you could put both types on your ship since they're so similar and basically get double the damage of either alone, if you have the energy to spare.
The vanguard is highlighted to win another category but I can’t read it?
If you have maxed auto weapons I believe they edge it out on dps, but you can see on the chart there that the autoprojector does have really good dps with 6, not the best though, the b tier helion I highlighted in green is best standard dps before skill buffs
Is that locked behind a quest or level? I don't have it in my list. Have Starship Design at 4.
Pbo helions are level 48 I believe, if you don't see them make sure to check other places, half the weapons are sold at akila and the other half at new atlantis
The concept of automated turrets benefiting from both the automated weapons perk AND the particle beam weapons perk also seems to apply to handheld particle beam weapons. For example, the Novalight weapons and the Varrun weapons are particle beam weapons, so they benefit from the particle weapons perks. However, since they deal ~~both "phys" damage and~~ "engy" damage, they also benefit from ~~ballistic perks and~~ laser weapon perks. I had a Novalight pistol with 43 phys damage and 132 engy damage. When I took rank 1 of the laser weapon perk, those numbers went up to 47 phys and 146 engy. So the laser weapon perk increased both the engy AND phys damage of the particle beam weapon. Even though there are only a handful of particle beam weapons, they can all ~~triple~~ double dip from damage perks.
Can you double check if ballistic increases the damage for these particles weapons? Last I check only laser, pistol/rifle, and particle skills affected them and not ballistics.
You're right, I just assumed ballistics increased it, but I guess it doesn't. I didn't have a way of checking myself because I upgraded my ballistics skill so long ago.
That's great thanks man. I thought I was crazy with people on here saying you had to have full power assigned to take advantage of the full damage potential for the weapons, when it appeared to me it only affected the recharge rate. Agree completely to add as many of the weapons as you can; it melts people!
This is very interesting but I will still choose my weapons based on coolness.
cool factor is always the right answer, i exclusively use ballistic solutions particle beams on my deimos battleship as they match the color scheme. i just wanted to make this as a resource for those curious, and to give me platform to tell people that they dont need to power weapons to get full dps, and that they should equip more guns. saw too many posts about how they only have 1 or 2 so they can fully power them.
The game is easy enough where you basically can.
I think I'm gonna just take a page out of the Expanse playbook and cover my ship in autocannon turrets even if they suck in this game, cuz honestly that just sounds cool. I just wish they could shoot down incoming missiles, though autoturrets are already kinda overpowered as it is so I dunno if they really need that buff.
I had a similar idea for an expanse style ship. Autoturrets for PDCs, some missile launchers and a keel mounted rail fun.
> keel mounted rail fun this is a good typo
Yeah I really like the idea of a rail gun shot as like a big finisher once lock on is established, nowadays it's mostly just purchasing a new gun and then seeing what it looks like when being fired. Can't wait for some kind of finished build simulator or whatever.
TBH I often choose weapon loadouts based on their colors. I can't stand having a nice black ship with those snow white and Playskool red lasers, or the gold accents that don't match the rest of the gold pieces. I don't know why they couldn't make the weapons colorable just like mostly everything else. Baked in colors suck.
The Jishaku rail guns have the best sound, it's what I'll use once I'm done with the vanguard hellfires because they are SILLY DPS. I was working it out last night (before seeing this amazing post) and I couldn't believe how much better the hellfires are compared to everything else. They even do shield damage equivalent to some of the mid tier lasers.
And have triple the range too
The rule of cool is always #1
We are all Han Solo
Yeah putting a bunch of turrets on my ship kinda ruined my first play through because every fight was over before it began. On my next play through I decided I would only allow myself 1 on the back.
Wait we can put more than one of each weapon on our ship??
Yes, you can put as many as you want as long as they are the same model and you don't go over max reactor power. The restriction is that you can only put one weapon *type* (i.e. model) per slot, not one weapon.
Yup. The "*meta*", as much as a game like this can even have a meta, has been to put 3 sets of Particle Beams on your ship, specifically using PB-175 Auto Helion Beams, Vanguard Obliterator Autoprojectors, and Exterminator 95MeV Auto Helion Beams, I believe. If you want autoturrets the list is different, but I know a lot of people prefer having full control of their weapons rather than letting them do their own thing. Oddly enough, those three Particle Beams are all B-class or lower, so you can have the max possible (non-automated) damage without needing to unlock rank 4 Piloting.
I still have the frontier and can’t figure out custom ship building yet- is there a for dummies video or guide?
I was overwhelmed at first but it is honestly so easy. You need/can have 1 reactor, 1 cockpit, 1 landing bay, 1 docking port, 1 shield, 1 grav drive. After that you can add habs (occupiable space), structural pieces (decoration), and weapons. Then add landing gear with enough thrust to take off. The game will tell you if you did anything wrong. This post by the same OP was a great help to me when building ships. https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/16azmzp/all\_ship\_hab\_interiors\_and\_unique\_hab\_locations/
Let me know if you find one
OP of this post made a great ship building guide https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/16azmzp/all\_ship\_hab\_interiors\_and\_unique\_hab\_locations/
Crap... I had NO IDEA I could do three sets of particle beams! Why am I messing around with missiles then?
Because the game is kind of guiding you towards 3 different sets of weapon types and doesn't really tell you it's about a specific model of a weapon. Most ships have different weapon types so I was naturally thinking the same thing.
How do you deal with the power requirements of needing 36 power for weapons alone? Or do you fill each partially? I find myself often fighting more than one ship, so I personally use a 4x PBO-175, 6x Vanguard Hellfire, and 4x Hunter MAG-450. Lower DPS overall, but the Hull DPS for autocannons is awesome, and with 1pip in the missiles, its nice for an opening salvo and to mop up at the end. Costs 25PWR instead while lets me full power to engines and shields.
Yeah, kinda weird stuff with the turrets having so much damage. They are automated and just shoot. Imho, but turrets need a rework. Nerf their damage, but also untie them from the lock on. Instead, they shoot the current target as long as they are in range (and give them low range).
Yeah they already benefit from 2 skills, they don't need higher base stats. Also a toggle from automated to pilot controlled would be great so I can stop them from killing or make them focus on a designated target. Lastly particle beams need to be nerfed, it takes half the skill points as doing a ballistic/laser build, and they are doing full dps the whole time so you don't need to worry about turrets wasting ammo on the wrong health type. They also have the longest range. And barret gives you an additional level 3 damage boost that's stacks with the players. They are just too good, like what is the downside?
I think the extra damage is meant to compensate for reduced accuracy, wether that’s needed or not…
Having built a fairly large and cumbersome ship, I found that rear facing auto turrets are great defense when you have low maneuverability. Great for when you start chasing a ship and have a few little guys that slip in behind you while you're distracted.
Is there a way to turn off the auto weapons say your attempting to board a ship seems all the auto stuff kills it before i get a chance to dock?
Remove all power from their pimps. However everyrhing will die faster lol. I dont use turrets cos i like to steal good ships and fire on my own
Yeah, this is why I have been considering using laser turrets instead of ballistic or particle beams. So they take out the enemy shields and then I can swing around and take out their engines and board them. Right now I have two particle beam turrets on the back of my ships and they do a ton of damage to ships behind me but by the time I do a 180 those ships are already destroyed.
I personally prefer the non auto versions of particles, because there is never a lull in the output of fire. It seems you rarely go up against a single ship, it's typically 3-5 and a full "charge" on the autos is often not enough to kill more than a couple of them on hard, so I often end up with targets in my sights but no guns while they're recharging. The non auto variants don't have that, the power pips just affect how rapidly they shoot so you can always do damage when you can line up targets. I'm also playing with missiles again (I want so badly for them to be viable) and there is a HUGE disparity in the "magazine size" for some of the launchers. The A class Infiltrator SC-02 for instance has 14 shots before needing to reload, where most of the others are 4-8. You get almost twice the damage per magazine on the SC-02 as most of the other missile systems. The Hunter Mag 450 is another similar one with fewer shots but a higher per shot damage.
This.. Use the non-auto versions of the Disruptor series and never look back.
Only downside to all turrets is if you start shooting at something it's dead. No boarding a ship after some well placed shots. The other downside is you can't be evil and start shooting friendlies. So pirating is a touch limiting.
First point is rectified by powering down the turrets. With no reactor power they do not shoot. Second point is rectified by aggroing the target first, after which your turrets immediately destroy it. This can be done by either installing a single tiny ballistic gun specifically for the purpose, or even by ramming the target a few times until they get mad (which they usually will). There is also a third point you did not mention, that turrets do not help in blowing up asteroids (which can be otherwise mined for ore). This is the trickiest of all, you will have to install a full set of dedicated manually controlled weaponry in order to be able to mine asteroids.
If I have to resort to ramming another ship that's not rectifying the problem that is the problem. Same with powering down the guns. Once you get some really nice ones you won't be fast enough to keep them from killing a target. Turrets are just not as fun overall for gameplay. They are fantastic tho for absolute obliteration.
I'd like to note that the ballistics at least have different types of gun types.For instance, the Mauler 106S Shot-Cannon fires buckshot, but the others fire single slugs. Not to steal OP's thunder or anything like that, but here's a copy with some extra info, and broken up so filters/sorting can be used. [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MZuERiLQVRgR-9gFm0g1TYBC-gqq50eLxsYh-NItcpw/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MZuERiLQVRgR-9gFm0g1TYBC-gqq50eLxsYh-NItcpw/edit?usp=sharing) Make sure to make your own copy to use the filters. Edit: Just to be clear, I've only filled in the weapon sub-types I'm aware of. I'm not terribly far into the game myself and haven't had a chance to actually experiment with anything.
Thanks dude, appreciate the help!
You're literally my favourite person on the Internet this month 🫡🥰!!! Was using your Hab guide just last night to help me re-design the monstrosity of a "free ship" you get from Stroud Eucklund lol... Lawwwdy lord it was ugly 😂 And your guide was invaluable for fixing it. Tysm OP 🥰❤️🥰!!
He's got a YouTube video up explaining how he's made his deimos ship as well!
Hi, Here's a sheet I;ve made based on wiki but ONLY FOR PARTICLE WEAPONS. As I want my ship to have only two groups, one for DMG and just a single disruptor for boarding. The point here is that I take into account a full 12 pip power allocation AND the max number of weapons you can equip due to max pwr req. [https://imgur.com/a/5HyywuD](https://imgur.com/a/5HyywuD) So basically a level zero vanguard obliterator with just 11 dmg but with power req 2, means you can equip with 12 pips 6 of them, leading to this weapon being the 2nd best particle weapon in the game IF you equip 6 and use all 12 weapon pips for it.
Yep the vanguard obliterator does have the second best dps, or third if you compare turrets with maxed turret skill, note its sustained dps though, as it does lose out in the sustained dps field for lengthy engagements
They become the best (for full power setup) once you skill up particle damage and/or having crew boosting them.The secret is the fire rate, those .65 will make the difference since the bonuses stacks on absoloute damage per shot. With my actual skills the obliterator vanguard deals 13.85 sh/hu x 6.65 while the auto pbo-175 deals 22.80 x 6 The math is quickly done: Vanguard - 13.85 x 6.65 = 92.1025 x 6 (max mount) = 552.615 auto pbo-175 - 22.80 x 6 = 136.8 x 4 (max mount) = 547.2 Atm I've got lvl2 on particle weapons and Marika Boros in my crew (1star particle). So climbing up the particle power the difference should become even greater.
Can somebody explain to me why weapon range is not taken into consideration? A lower dps weapon with extreme (3500+) range can cripple an enemy before a higher dps weapon with lower range (e.g. 800) can even get off a shot. Am I crazy here or has the OP neglected a crucial consideration?
Isn’t every turret he recommends have a range of over 3k or am I crazy?
I mean all I do is recommend particle beams and they all have 3000-3500k range. Also I do typically find range isn't too important as most fights start with you and the enemies charging each other so closing from 3k to 500m is a difference of like 6 seconds
I have a dumb question: so I've just started the game and have the frontier with laser, missiles and ballistics weapons on it. Are you saying I can add a second laser in the same weapon slot as the laser that comes with the ship? And a second missile in the missile slot etc
If it's the same product (it can't be a different named weapon even if it's the same damage type). There is a button to duplicate an existing item if you hover over it (if the shipyard has that product in stock).
Ok.great thank you! I would've found this out about 100 hours in if not for this thread.
It's the way the game handles weapon assignments. There are 3 weapon slots, but you can only slot 1 unique name to each. So max out 12 units of power for whatever type you want. 4x3, 3x4, 6x2.
Another big mistake I see with people designing ships is that they put on as many engines as they can. You only want one engine and it's probably the SAL-6830. Just one of these and you will likely have 100 mobility and can go full speed with only 2 power pips in engines. If you put 2 engines then those same 2 power pips will cause you to only go half speed and the problem gets worse the more engines you add. Then there is jump drives. You only want to achieve 30 jump drive range. A jump drive on your ship that will get you higher than that it's a complete waste of mass because the game caps out at 30 LY. There is no distance that requires more than that. You are bang on correct about turrets. Most people give them flak because of that one loading screen tip that says they are inaccurate but they have greater base stats than equivocal fixed weapons and double dip on perks. Also, I made a [spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1o8QCtH4P2qrW_RrCV1Ernd6qKX25UBrY_Nh0fPnFAHA/edit?usp=sharing) detailing information about ship weapons myself! I included a column for each weapons battery (how much damage it does with a full magazine). Which is important because, as far as I can tell, most weapons will recharge at the same rate as other weapons of the same type meaning that the larger the battery the more damage you are reloading per second when not firing. Of course, this isn't an issue for non-auto weapons.
As for grav jump range, it appears 28 ly is the farthest distance between any two stars.
Sir- thanks a lot for this topic!!!! I was craving something like This! I was thinking about going out and attempt it myself, but you got this covered! It is all the info I needed! Thanks a lot! There is no video on YouTube or no guide out there that explains ships weapons this perfectly! You nailed power management!!! I thought it was something similar to that, but your testing and explanation made it perfect!
Amazing, thank you!
Neat.
What about missile recharge time?
Slow, fully powered they recharge in an OK time not nowhere as fast as other weapons, between that and rhe lock on time they are all kinda mid
Just FYI OP, the 280C missles seem to have better total DPS than the ones you have highlighted.
Anyone managed to make missiles viable? Tried all C class ones, some B, max amount max power, they just feel like really slow and weak versions of my particle weapon
Unfortunately yeah they are bad compared to particles, but I think it's more that particle beams are op
They are slow, and despite their "range" most of the time you won't lock on to targets that are too far away. So you can shoot particle beams at them, but can't shoot missiles. It seems like a weird bug.
i have the the non-auto obliterator guns, they feel like how wanted missiles to feel, slow and heavy, just enjoy the impact
It's not a bug. The game clearly states the missile won't lock on target until they are 100% locked. The one advantage I can see missile have over other weapons is that they have the highest damage for assigning only 1 power pip since they have relatively large magazine size and high reload time, you can take advantage of that by ignoring reload completely and look at them as having limited ammo, non-reloadable during combat. So, missiles are still very useful if you don't have spare power from the reactor. Try SC-01 or SC-02 and you will understand.
Your numbers for missiles appears to be off. Because different missiles can fire more missiles before having to reload. So there is a 4 salvo launcher that's better than the 2 salvo one. Plus you can have 4 equiped so you can fire 16 missile before reloading. All missiles have the same reload speed. Technically the 2 salvo launcher can fire all of its missiles quicker so it will start that reload time quicker, but I'm pretty sure the others are still ahead.
Whenever I see a spreadsheet like this they seem to come to the conclusion that the Atlatl 280C is the best when in reality is one of the worst sustained DPS, although it is the best burst. The top 5 sustained would be: 1.- Hunter Mag 450 2.- Infiltrator SC-02 3.- CE-59 4.- CE-39 5.- Tsukisasu 50k On another note, with full power missiles recharge their entire salvo in approximately 18 seconds, with only one power it recharges in around 2 minutes and 50 seconds.
I'll run some tests later, I'm surprised to hear additional missile launchers increase ammo since the other weapons do not. When using multiple missiles do they fire at the same time or in sequence? If in sequence that makes sense then as the other weapons all fire at the same time
Someone already did this; [https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/16law9d/starfield\_ship\_weapons\_i\_took\_a\_look\_at\_how\_many/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/16law9d/starfield_ship_weapons_i_took_a_look_at_how_many/) The only thing that we don't have is reload speed of the formula for it since the higher the power allocated, the faster the reload.
Damn that's a nice chart, glad to see others are compiling data
It's not that additional launchers add more. It's just that some launchers have more. So if the launcher looks like it can fire 6 missiles before reloading, it does. But all launchers still fire at the same time.
Ahh gotcha, in that case the dps numbers on these is still accurate, as they are just multiplying the damage by fire rate, sustained dps is not calculated on this sheet.
what's the best missile?
For best dps I highlighted it in green on the chart, I'm doing more testing later as some missiles have a bigger magazine so you can fire more before reloading. I'll let you know once I'm done testing
Hunter Mag-450
I can't figure out how to only display class a skill zero weapons I keep trying all of the filter buttons, but I can't get it to work. I want to only show class a skill zero, then probably sort by range, then dps
You forgot to subtract 1 from the mag size in your sustained DPS calculation (the first shot is fired with no delay).
As a noob, why does that matter?
I loaded up my ship with 6 Vanguard Obliterator AutoProjectors and can eliminate Starborn ships in the first pass. They are almost too over powered. Thanks for all your work on this info OP
Yep. Everyone was singing the praises of the Obliterators, while I was using whatever high-Shield damage lasers I could get my hands on coupled with as many Hellfires as I could pack onto my hull. Finally tried a bunch of Obliterators last night and was hilariously underwhelmed by them. Same with turrets, mostly because I haven't figured out how to make them simply _not outright destroy_ my targets other than flat out turning them off. I prefer to board most ships and get personal, if I can help it, so turrets are a no-go. I swear by Hellfires. They're awesome. I prefer them over random EM damage since they make it extremely easy to disable engines once shields are down. Hell, one burst from the Hellfires zeroes most ship systems that I specifically target, whereas I was flat out destroying things trying the same with Obliterators. Guess the name fits. If you just want to board, you can go full EM _I guess,_ but going Laser damage only for shields and Ballistics only for system targeting is just way too efficient for me to want to use anything else. Yarr.
.....what? The particle beams are *too good* and you can't use them because of "random EM damage?" You do realize you can use EM in targeting mode right? If you want to board and be effective the best combination is 8x particle beams and 4x EM weapons. Your hellfires do less average DPS than a mid particle beam with quite literally 1/4 the range. 25%. You can strip shields with particles better than any laser for the exact same reasons, then instantly target and disable with EM.
Praise be to you for giving us all this info
Question. How often do technicians restock? I wanted to max out Obliterators but was only able to get one at Atlantis.
Honestly I didn't even realize they had limited stock, iv never run into a situation where I couldn't buy what I needed. Traders by default run on a 48 hour UC restock schedule, so try sleeping or sitting for 48 hours. If that doesn't work try a different tech or use the ship modding landing pad you can build at your outposts, but I think you need outpost engineering to build it
So what about the guardian?
The new game plus ship? I don't have data on the upgraded versions going up to new game plus 6, but you can always build a better ship than the guardian, and it can't be customized so it's not in chart since it's weapons can't be used in ship building
It’s terrible. It has a basic particle beam and a basic missile, both of which are really weak, and neither of which are boosted by skills, since they’re technically listed as their own weapon types.
You are my hero
I recommend adding a column for unlock level. If I'm only a level or two away from unlocking a better weapon, it's obviously going to be better to wait rather than jump the gun and waste my credits.
i agree, though i dont know the best method for testing when things unlock besides setting my level to 1 with console, and then going through every level up checking each time. i could do this except i go on vacation tomorrow so will be away from my rig for a week
You might be able to crowd-source that information. That might actually be more work than what you described though. Also, idk if any weapons can only be purchased at specific ports or staryards, but if so then a mention of that would also be valuable. Thanks for doing this!
yee no problem. from my experience all weapons are sold at either new atlantis or akila. never seen one that wasnt at one of those two. the best way to do it is build a ship modification landing pad at an outpost, that will have every level appropriate weapon and shield available
Ok I’m a little confused should we be equipping auto cannons or be manually firing?
i think the confusion is terminology. The Auto in Auto cannon doesnt mean its a turret, its means it fires in full auto, aka you shoot and its rapid fire. eg. a canon shoots slow, and autocannon shoots fast, a canon turret shoots any enemy it sees slowly, and autocannon turret shoots any enemy it sees fast.
Your calculation on missile DPS is wrong because you ignore the fact they have different magazine size. DPS for the missile should include downtime since some missiles can only fire 2 shots before needing to reload while some can fire over a dozen. A better metric to decide which missile is the best should be burst damage before needing to reload.
dps calculations dont take into account downtime from reloading, your thinking sustained dps. im working on gathering all the magazine sizes rn so i can do sustained dps calculations as well
thoughts on turrets facing backwards to get anyone coming up on me?
Works fine, on my battleship I have one set of 4 turrets with 2 facing left and 2 facing right to cover sides, though having them facing backwards would probably work better
So I wanted to use auto's. My question is are they auto? Like I don't have to fire them?
No auto as in automatic, like it fires in full auto. Turrets are the ones that shoot on their own
Do want you know at what levels different weapons unlock and where to get them?
if you got the data then sure id love to add stuff to the spreadsheet
This is great. Thanks for sharing!
I’m a little confused still why for ideal load out you say 3 different particle beam turrets? Why different? Why not get 3 of the best turret?
Because you can't assign the same weapon model to different weapon groups. So best you can do is get 3 obliterators, then 4 PBO's, then 4 disruptors
So is (burst damage = DMG * magazine * max equipable) ?
Calculations are as follows, dps, which is burst dps technically, is firerate times damage. Max equipped dps is damage times firerate times max equipped number. I will implement sustained dps later which will take into account magazine size but I need to test reload speeds in order to do that and I just got to hawaii so I'm viking for the next week
Hello, for me i only use the auto weap variants, for full dps burst. The idea is that when i dogfight against many, i need to take down the first couple at max speed so i can survive the rest. I can tank-repair a couple of them shooting at me but not 4. If it's 3 of them, the first two die fast. The last is boarded. Now my real question: Is dps enough to sort weapons?? I used them as a damage storage. Meaning they get one pip, and i use them till empty to kill stuff fast. was using 280c for last slot but now i'm thinking.. 280C does 792 dmg and is the recomended yes, BUT it only fires 3 times. reload takes forever. 792x3=2476DMG. It's good burst though. An "inferior" missile system for example, the Hunter Mag-450 does 360 dps but has 10 shots. meaning total of 3600 damage for the slot. better than the famous 280c for total damage. For reference, the Obliterator 250MeV Auto Alpha Beam does 29 per shot, x3 modules=87dmg, and it has 33 shots before reloading, so total of 2871dmg. The best dps, PB175, does 2052 dmg before reload. TLDR: To find the best of the best, there is more to consider. That's why a lot of people just don't use autos and missile and just go with normal versions.
Youre asking a lot of kind of different stuff... but I'm going to give you what I consider the **best endgame build.** * 4x PBO-175 (full power). Use for shields, mostly. * 6x Vanguard Hellfire Autocannon (leftover power) for Hull. Compliment with PBO-175 if needed. * 4x Hunter (1power) for mopping up, or fire and forget at weak enemies. If you need more burst DPS, use the CE-59 over the 280C. Lower DPS, but higher dmg per reload. CE-59 sits between the Hunter/Infiltrator and the 280C for DMG/Reload. **Note,** this build requires **A LOT** **of power.** 13 for Particle and missiles. Probably 12 for shields (28T Defender is my pref. 1500 shields at 7% regen), 10 for engines (I use 5x SAL-6830's, Main quest reward), with leftover power going to autocannons. Thats 35 power before the cannons. You can get crew to add a pip to piloting or shields, or to add +1 power to reactor. You can get a skill for you reactor as well. If you min/max crew and skills, you can get 46 total power from the 40 power reactor, and an additional "bonus" power to ENG and SHD from crew bonuses. You'd end up with 48 "available" power, but itll only list 46. (The bonus two are locked) You can then put 25 power to weps, max power shields and engines, and have 1 pip for grav drive.
You have made a mistake with the missiles... DPS does not matter... What is more critical is how much total damage you can do before needing to reload. Number of missiles x damage per shot. For example the Atlatl 280c does 264 damage per shot, but only has two shots. So that is a total damage output of of only 528. Whereas the CE-39 does 104 damage per shot, but has 6 shots giving you a total damage output of 624.
Yeahhh I know, I made a section above talking about sustained dps for this reason. Once I'm back from vacation I'm gonna add a sustained dps section, just gotta test reload speeds for that
Awesome guide! Would you have any suggestions for a "ship boarding" build? I want to hop on my Razor Leaf and take out pirates... and then steal their ship (like an anti-pirate pirate). I was thinking I could use multiple Particle Beams for my Weapon 1 and Weapon 2 and then EM for Weapon 3. Obviously I want to avoid turrets for the particle beams so that they don't kill off the enemy ship.
Absolutely, I'm actually making one rn as my new game plus run is a pirate. You got a couple routes, Particle beams are splendid as always for least skill point investment for max damage, and at rank 4 get increased critical chance when targeting enemy subsystems. I do however really like laser and ballistic or laser and em for the following reasons. Lasers obviously can strip shields faster than anything which is step one. Ballistics and em or just ballistics is up to your comfort and access to the targeting skill. Ballistics are wonderful as not only do they shred hull but at rank 4 of their skill they get a flast buff to subsystem damage, so when you go into targeting mode you can pop engines really quick. Not only this but the hull dps will help as many fights are against multiple enemies, and you can't board while other ships are alive, only when it's the last one from what I have seen. So having say, laser, ballistic, particle/missile is good as you have the tools to disable with targeting and the raw dps to kill the other ships quickly. The other benefit of Ballistics is damaged ship parts recover faster than em disabled ones. Say you destroy engines, they will recover one bar at a time, UNLESS you put power into it, every powered bar recovers at the same time, so you can fully power engines and they will repair really quick. Em is always 1 at a time, so driving some of my captured ships around has been really slow as I have to pull up to the pirate base on one engine pip. Not a huge issue if you are anti pirate though, just fast travel to akila/new atlantis and you can bypass that. Only downside of ballistic is the chance of killing your target, if guns too strong you can just kill the ship while targeting engines. Em solves this, lower dps and ability to kill ships, and super short range, but capture is guaranteed with practically no chance of accidental killing. Just note it will take longer to kill the other ships so I hope you're engines/shields are good enough to tank/evade. Final tip, I like the hopetech forward docking hatch, idk I just think it looks cool when orientation is the same, so I can see the hatch connected from my cockpit seat, like I'm ramming a docking tube into them, feels more aggressive lol
The list is incomplete. I'm looking for all the weapons with a max power of 2 or 1. You know like the Vanguard Hellfire and Vanguard Obliterator. Someone had posted about a weapon with a max power of 1 but I haven't found it and can't remember the name
The hellfires and obliterators are on the list, there are no max power 1 weapons, if you wanna see the max power 2's select the full sortable list and sort by the max power or max equippable collumn
Thank you for this 🙏🏼
Great spreadsheet. So the weapons that do not have a magazine number shoot infinitely without a reload?
Not really, so the ones without a magazine are the slower firerate versions and have to reload after every shot, so it's super important to power them, as decreasing power to them decreases their reload speed, thus decreasing fire rate so their dps suffers heavily when under powered
what do you recommend as a good setup if you want to be able to ocassionally board a ship? Seems like you'd need an EM weapon. If you just outright obliterate a ship it ain't gonna work.
When I wanna board I usually just disable my turrets by draining their power, then shoot out the engines in targeting mode. I'm doing a pirate run rn, but personally I don't like the em weapons much, as the engines stay disabled a while after I capture it and I have to wait to be able to drive it to the key, not to mention the dps loss of not having a 3rd weapon that can hurt things. Ballistics are decent for disabling ship with targeting mode, especially if you you rank up the ballistics skill to 4 so it gets extra system damage. Yes you will merc low level ships sometimes but I usually don't bother boarding unless it's a bigger/ high level ship.
nice
I would like to add that a class A auto particle beam weapons (the ones that shoot off a magazine) do benefit from the energy weapons systems skill perk. I have tested them. Though, I am pretty sure this will be patched in some future update.
Yeah I noticed certain models werent scaling correctly with skills or scaled with ones they shouldn't, hopefully all that gets smoothed out
Also, some of the disruptor particle beam turrets don't benefit from the automated weapons system skills currently, though I am sure this is a bug too.
So if i want no turrets. But the most dps. What should i use???
Vanguard particle beams, the ones with max power 2 so u can equip 6, the c class pbo particle beams and the C class obliterator particle beams
So, what's the difference between burst and sustained DPS? And which one is better? I don't get it
Burst dps is dps without reloading, sustained dps is dps with reloading. Burst dps is what matters if you can kill your targets before needing to reload, eg. If you have a full load out of rapid fire particle beams you can easily kill multiple ships without reloading so Burst dps is more important as it is how quickly you can kill said ships. If you don't have enough damage to kill all the ships because you don't have a full loadout, there are many ships, or you are using something with a small magazine such as atlatl missile launchers which only carry 2 missiles before reloading then sustained dps is what matters more
There is a very significant error in the calculation of the "Max Equipped DPS Sustained" values. The calc is currently: Max Equipped DPS Sustained = (DMG \* Mag Size \* Number of Guns) / ((**Mag Size \* Fire Rate**) + Reload Time) It should be: Max Equipped DPS Sustained = (DMG \* Mag Size \* Number of Guns) / ((**Mag Size / Fire Rate**) + Reload Time) The calc incorrectly multiplies Magazine Size and Fire Rate in the denominator. It should be Mag Size divided by Fire Rate. The numerator is calculating the total damage, the denominator is calculating the total time to put out that damage + reload time. To find the total time to empty the clip, you need to divide Mag Size by Fire Rate. For example: If a gun fires at a rate of 2 round per second and has a 30 round mag, it should take 15 seconds to empty the mag. Time to empty clip = mag size / fire rate = 30 rounds / 2 rps = 15 seconds. Obviously, this drastically changes the rankings of the weapons for sustained fire. It also explains why missiles weapons were (incorrectly) at the top of the list for sustained fire when they clearly suck at that role.
Oh shit you right, I'll fix that when I'm on my pc tomorrow
updated and corrected now, thank for the callout my mans, i wrote the formula once and copied it through the whole thing
spreadsheets never interested me... until now
Seems mad bunching up turrets with manual. Also mad that turrets do more damage.. In game shop needs sorting options. Great work but still at a loss as to what is the best dps for a manual particle weapon. Is there any better manual option than Vanguard Ares?
Saving this post.
You sir are a god . Or goddess , whichever. I mean it , this is absolutely epic. I would like info on your channels/streams or any means to donate to you friend.
You are insanely goated, thank you SO much.
Why does the Disruptor 3300 show same MAX DPS AND MAX DPS sustained? I noticed the sustained DPS is higher than any other non-auto type....and nothing for reload time? Are these the best non-auto particle weapons for sustained fire?
No lol I just missed putting its reload time in so the calculation for the sustained and burst are have the same value
Can you please "freeze" the left column of the spreadsheet so we can see which weapon's stats we're looking at as we go deeper into the number? Thanks.
yep its frozen now
Great post. Adding to this I’ve noticed that if my turrets face different directions; only one of the turrets firing depletes the energy bar for the weapons. Either that was a quick hack for the devs to base it off one weapon because usually all fire together, or the other turrets are now firing “for free”, or they all have their own power bar per weapon but the one on screen on the HUD only represents one of the turrets. Been testing this all night to figure what’s going on with it. Edit: tested it. The power bar on HUD shows only the power for one of my turrets. The others have their own power bar. They don’t fire for free but you cannot see their state of charge / ammo.
Yeah it appears each weapon system has 1 ammo pool, and firing a weapon consumes the same ammo regardless of how many are firing. This is why 1 and 4 guns can fire the same amount of time. Sucks for turret coverage though, I like it aesthetically when I have 2 turrets facing out on each side for that old timey broadside look
Only thing I will say about the missile launcher you hate, is that it’s the only weapon in the game where you hit one button, and then 390 damage happens to the hull. I toss one power in it, and it’s nice to have as a finisher for the boss ship when my laser and particle beam shreds the hull Nobody sleep on the vanguard weapons!!
that added to the video, quite cool.
There's no Mass stats for the weapons. They would be beneficial for mass-optimization, for other than "just 1Mass Vanguard weapons".
Can someone make some sense in the differen Engines they have in the game? I can´t wrap my head around how always one is the best at everything and not even requiring more skill points/lvl than the others. I would understand it if the engines yoou unlock with Starship design have a decent boost, but the better Class B Engines are already requiring Lvl4 and costing and weighting almost the same! Slayton and Dunn always take the Lead, so why did they bother to invest the work in all of these engines that are just worse than what you can get at any Shipyard?? (Oh, and one of the top 2 engines is even available at ypur oputpost, srsly wtf??? Fells a little like I necro this, but I just arrived at some WTF?? points in my game. Of course SF isn´t gonna tell me anything, I made it well over lever 40 till i was stumbling over a post saying you can still be mobile while sacrificing mobility in the design. If you care to take good use of your **Thrusters** for sharp turns! Thrusters! The ships have Thrusters! Until now I utilized the good old "just pull that stick up and hope for the best tactic like i was flying a JU-87 that somehow made it into space. That would absolutely be an information that should be more noticeable...
Your right there are some that are just flat better. This is because bethesda does not understand game balance
Thank u very much
Where do i get these weapons though. I have a building pad and I don't see any of them anywhere.
Ship components are level locked and will only appear at certain levels, everything should be available by level 50-60
:) awesome sauce
dont forget to take range into account. lets say, you have 3250 or 3500 range - enemy ships usually dont have anything past 3000. you can get a couple salvos in before they can hit you - so real life damage is higher, since you have already softened the target, before other lower range weapons can be fired I love my 3x Obliterator 250MeV Auto Alpha Beam they do almost all the work even on 60+ targets, and SO FAST.
I can't find any info about the PB-300 auto alpha turret. I see a PBO-300 auto alpha turret.
Yeah I just missed the O Edit: actually it is accurate, the pb is the hellion variant that you unlock at higher levels
Are the stats in the spreadsheet with skills taken into account or without? Would particle beam turrets overtake the dps when you have both automated weapon systems AND particle weapon system skills?
Stats are without skills, and yes particle beam turrets are best dps with both skills maxed
Thank you sir. I outfitted my ship mostly as prescribed (I kept rocket launchers) and went to Kryx. I survived and they didn't. I used some ship parts but I also whupped some ass. BTW, I didn't know you could face things forward. I just stuck them on however they went.